If we had planned our trip to Colombia efficiently, we would have had to take the bus from Bogota to visit the coffee region. But for now we didn't want to see any mountains anymore, so the next stop was Cartagena. We wanted hot weather and the sea.
We arrived on Saturday evening in Cartagena by plane from Bogota. The AirBnB caretaker had mixed up our arrival time, so we sat around in the yard for 45 minutes. But when she finally came and we could get in, it was great. The house was newly built and the apartment was great.
Cartagena is often described as the pearl of the Caribbean and they are right! 🙂 The city is considered one of the most beautiful ones in the Caribbean and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. Cartagena used to be the epicentre of trade in gold, silver and precious stones and, due to its sheltered location directly by the sea, has always had an important significance for the country. Today it is the fifth largest city in Colombia with 1.2 million inhabitants. The historical center is surrounded by an 8 km long city wall, which was built during the Spanish colonial rule. This also gives the centre the name Walled City (Ciudad Amurrallada). In Cartagena you walk over cobblestones, get to see colourful colonial houses and historical buildings with a lot of history. This is accompanied by the hoof trampling of the horse carriages and the sight of the ladies from San Basilio de Palenque with their fruit baskets on their heads or selling sweets made of coconut.
Directly outside the Walled City there the quarter Getsemani. This is the former working-class district, which has meanwhile developed into a hipster stronghold. There are a lot of bars, restaurants and hostels and thus it's the absolute favourite destination for backpackers. In principle, Getsemani with its colourful buildings looks like the Walled City, only without any magnificent buildings. But it is a lot more relaxed to stroll through the streets and there are still residential buildings there, while the Walled City consists almost only of tourist shops, more expensive restaurants and hotels. Those who like photography will love Cartagena. So poor Markus always had to wait until I was done with my photography. The deal was to have breakfast (to make the male stomach happy) and find him a place in the shade, then I can photograph as much as I want 😉 Said and done and here you can see some (well OK, many) impressions of the city:
Walled City:
Getsemani:
Harbour area:
In the afternoon we did a freewalking tour, but it was pretty exhausting. A bit like history lessons with a very boring teacher. Of course we learned something anyway and there was some very exciting information there, too. E.g. that in Cartagena there are currently four women per man - so seen in this way it's the paradise of every male single. In addition we also learned, that - just like in Cologne - carnival is celebrated on 11.11., a tradition from the slave time. On this date the slaves had a day off and celebrated their carnival. Cartagena used to be a trading centre not only for gold, silver and diamonds, but also one of the largest slave markets in South America. From Cartagena, more than 1 million slaves were resold to South America for mining or plantation labor.
And then came the excursion that I liked the least from my whole trip so far. I had read about San Basilio de Palenque, the "oldest free village in America". This was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. In the 16th century African slaves organized themselves on the escape from the entire region around Cartagena and built themselves a village as a place of refuge. The battles lasted until 1713, when peace was finally achieved under the condition that no more slaves would be taken in. Since then the inhabitants developed their own traditions, music and with Bantu their own language. An interesting mixture of Spanish and African elements. So far it all sounded very interesting. So we made our trip there. Our guide was super unpleasant and had nothing better to do than to pass us on to his son who was in apprenticeship of being a guide. Of course he couldn't speak English, although we had booked an English speaking tour. There was exactly nothing to see in the village and the musician we visited could not give us a taste of his music because he - now hold on tight - had hiccups. Well, all in all a very strange trip and a lost day. Whereby the fish was very very tasty, which was served to us on a palm leaf. At Tripadvisor I had read that other visitors were very happy with another guide. I would not go there again.
´But the day was not over yet and we wanted to experience something else, we had either the castle with its underground tunnel systems or the inquisition museum to choose from and finally visited the latter. That was super interesting and shocking at the same time. The Inquisition came to Cartagena in 1610 and was practiced until 1821. About 700 people fell victim to it. People were tortured and publicly executed. The church used spies in the city who betrayed people. During this time many fled the city, many Jews e.g. to Medellin.
We had to digest that and decided to go out for something to eat and to get drunk. And this you can do very well in Getsemani. Because in the evening life bubbles in the quarter with all its bars...
So we walked lively through Getsemani and past a roadblock and thought that it was only for cars. But it wasn't. As we walked down the road, everyone around us suddenly got nervous and one came running to us and said that we were blowing up a film set and if we could please keep running and hide in the parking lot driveway. So off we go into the car parking entrance. There was already another guy who had to hide. So together we watched the hustle and bustle from our parking lot and between the two filmtakes we could go on again. Our way led us to the first bar from where we could even watch the film shoot. The waitress said that it was a Netflix production, Fantasía de Brujas or something like that... I was already thinking about the next season of Narcos... 😉
This was the end of our last evening in Cartagena and we continued our journey to Taganga, where we would do a diving course in the next days. Therefore we unfortunately could not visit the surrounding beaches of Cartagena as well as the Rosario Islands, a national park of 27 islands in the Caribbean Sea, because otherwise we would not have had enough time. But apparently it should be quite beautiful there. If you ever come to Colombia, you can tell me how it is there 😉
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