It’s a few days before Christmas, the temperature is 24 degrees, I’m struggling with the humidity – and it’s only 10.30am. Kayla, our tour guide, is looking a bit guilty. “I’m sorry about the weather,” she says. Then a dramatic pause. “It’s so cold today. Right?” I’m about to start a walking tour of Cartagena, a city on the northern coast of Colombia, and I’m slowly adjusting to the climate – and mentality – of the tropics.
I can see just why it’s known as the Pearl of the Caribbean. The Old Town is a sultry bouquet of extravagant, brightly painted churches and mansions in the Spanish colonial style. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves as they pull carriages echoes through cobblestone streets and plazas that are festooned with stalls of tropical fruits in a rainbow palette. And the entire town is enclosed within 13km of thick, centuries-old stone walls.
After turning a corner, two ingredients from this head-spinning recipe constellate in high definition. The street is dominated by Cartagena’s cathedral, an apricot-coloured basilica topped by a bell tower and dome that dominate the city’s skyline. From here, the cathedral is framed by ornate mansions, in lemon and rosé hues, with bougainvillea-draped wooden balconies painted in azure and sienna.
Beside us are three women in ruffled dresses in the colours of the Colombian flag – yellow, blue and red. On their heads, they balance, with seeming effortlessness, a silver bowl of carefully arranged local fruits – bananas, pineapples, oranges, mangoes, and tangerines. These women are called palenqueras because they’re originally from San Basilio de Palenque – the first free town founded by self-emancipated African slaves in the Americas.
“Cartagena was one of the most important slave ports in the New World,” Kayla tells us. We get a sense of this notorious chapter in the city’s history when she brings us to Plaza de los Coches, where slaves were taken – from the nearby docks – to be sold. Kidnapped in west Africa and placed in shackles, the voyage to Cartagena took at least two months in so-called “tomb ships” (tumbeiros). Here, Kayla fuses the city’s narrative with her own ancestry: her ethnicity is a mix of African and European, and she has traced her family’s roots to Nigeria.
The Spanish arrived here in 1533, making it one of the oldest colonial cities in Latin America. Founded by the conquistador Pedro de Heredia, many of his soldiers were from Cartagena on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, and the new settlement was named after that port. In 1586, Sir Francis Drake attacked this city until he received his ransom, which required mule trains taking several days to transport the gold and silver to his ships. The humiliating assault recalibrated Cartagena’s trajectory: the Spanish started building the impenetrable fortress walls – taking more than 180 years to complete – that still surround the Old Town today.
Some of the coral stone used in the walls was quarried from the Rosario Islands, an archipelago about 35km from Cartagena. Consisting of 27 small islands, the entire area is a national park. I visit Isla Grande, lush and carpeted by mangoes, its shores of sponge-coloured sand gently bathed in the sapphire Caribbean waters. Incongruously, the island was the secret retreat of Colombia’s most notorious drug baron, Pablo Escobar. In a nicotine-yellow motorboat, Luis takes me out to snorkel, and it feels like I’m in a tropical aquarium. In the warm, salty water I see skittish, triangular-shaped angelfish and shoals of pastel-bright parrotfish.
Back in Cartagena, I try some prawns heavily marinated in lime juice – ceviche – as part of a street-food tour. “There’s only one rule today,” Álvaro, our guide, says at the start. “At no time are you allowed to tell me that you’re full.” The zingy ceviche is accompanied by Kola Román, a beloved soft drink invented in Cartagena in 1865 (21 years before Coca-Cola was established). Sickly sweet, the fire-engine-red soda tastes like fizzy cough syrup.
This tour began with another city favourite: a slab of deep-fried, battered plantain that acts like a foundation for a huge chunk of toothpaste-white cheese. The counterpoint between the salty plantain and mild cheese gives the snack its nickname: matrimonio (marriage). TasteAtlas rated Colombia’s traditional pandebono as the world’s best bread roll. Made with flour, eggs, butter, sugar, and, according to Álvaro, “love”, we try these soft, warm, and golden-crusted delights in a bakery that attests to their importance in the local psyche: it’s open 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Showing us the eclecticism of the Colombian diet, we sample refreshing coffee lemonade with ice, sweet popcorn with raw sugar cane, and arepas – a staple, flatbread snack – bursting with cheese and egg. After we vanquish the arepas, Álvaro tells us we’re moving to our next stop, but a droll, older American man on the tour dissents. “My next stop,” he says, “is Weight Watchers.”
Afterwards, to escape the heat and humidity, I step into a mesmerising, air-conditioned bookshop, Ábaco Libros y Café. Exposed brick archways are flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (there’s a ladder to reach the higher ledges) and a waiter serves coffee and alcoholic drinks. In the small English-language section, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and Beautiful World, Where Are You – the only books I see by a contemporary Irish writer – share a shelf with JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
The shop’s centrepiece is a section dedicated to Gabriel García Márquez. The Colombian-born author set Love in the Time of Cholera in a fictionalised city based on Cartagena and there are photos of him receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. Affectionately known as Gabo, the writer’s image also adorns the street art of Getsemaní.
Here, locals sit outside playing board games while artists sell their flamboyant canvases beside murals of the afro-blonde national soccer hero Carlos Valderrama and, arguably, the most famous living Colombian, Shakira. In 1984, the Old Town was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site and today it’s among the most visited destinations in Latin America. In 2014, Forbes magazine described Getsemaní as Colombia’s “coolest new neighbourhood”, but increasing visitor numbers has exacerbated gentrification, pushing residents to Cartagena’s fringes.
A short walk from Getsemaní is the sprawling Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas. The largest fortress constructed by the Spanish in the Americas, it’s honeycombed with tunnels that allowed soldiers stationed in them to hear the footsteps of oncoming invaders. Walking through this dark, claustrophobic maze and then emerging at the top of the fort with its panoramic sweep of the city is a dizzying experience. Sitting on a fortress wall near an enormous flag of Colombia, I watch the sunset, bleaching the sky with melon-tinted streaks, behind the Caribbean.
Earlier, my Old Town tour with Kayla ended at the stately Plaza Santo Domingo. After two hours walking in the sun and humidity, my head is now the same colour as the umbrellas covering the outdoor restaurant tables on its cobblestoned square: tomato red. I’m still trying to decide if Kayla’s initial remarks about the weather were in jest, so, for reassurance, I clarify. “For real heat and humidity,” she says, “come back in June.” Then, with her trademark mischief: “To me, today feels like it’s going to snow.”
Guide to Cartegna
Getting there: KLM (klm.com) flies from Amsterdam to Cartagena via Bogotá and direct from Cartagena to Amsterdam year-round. The city’s official name is Cartagena de Indias.
When to go: The most popular time to visit is the dry season (December to April). Temperatures are relatively consistent throughout the year, but the hottest months are during the wet season (May to November) when the humidity is highest.
Tours: I joined a free Beyond Colombia (beyondcolombia.com) walking tour. The suggested tip is €12. The street food tour (nexperience.com.co/en/street-food-tour-in-cartagena) costs about €40. Book trips to the Rosario Islands through agencies such as Juan Ballena (juanballena.com). A day trip to Isla Grande costs about €100. You can also stay overnight (rosariodemarhotel.com).
Hazards: Unsolicited groups of street rappers might approach you, perform for you, and then demand payment. Kayla’s advice? “Don’t make eye contact and don’t answer their questions.”
Eat: Celele (celelerestaurante.com) specialises in contemporary Caribbean cuisine.
Stay: Cartagena has a wide choice of places to sleep, from the budget Casa Movida (casamovidahostel.com) to the luxury Hotel Casa San Augustín (hotelcasasanagustin.com). You can even stay in Casa de Alba (hotelsalbagroup.com), the residence Sir Francis Drake used when he laid siege to Cartagena.
