Cartagena
Cartagena is a another Colombian town on the Caribbean coast. It´s far larger than Santa Marta and sprawls urban decay for kilometers in every direction. Traffic is a nightmare. Trash spills out into the streets. With its size, it`s less homogenous. The bus ride from the terminal on the outskirts to the òld city` area, on the coast, showed definite differences in socioeconomic levels. People in "favelas" to people driving BMWs and everything in between.
We`ve spent our time in Cartagena almost entirely in the old city area. Cartagena was part of the gold circuit, for ships from the old world to travel to the new world, load up on gold, murder some dark-skinned people, pull off some toe-nails, yadda yadda, and return triumphant to Europe. As such, it was a plump target for pirates and was under siege numerous times in its infancy. The `old city` is the walled off central area, right on the coast, which was the original city. Outside of those walls is the sprawl. Inside is a plethora of hotels, banks, hostels, street vendors, artisans, emerald shops, hookers, museums, restaurants, statues, and plazas.
There´s Cafe Havana, with rumba and West African Yoruba-inspired music and posters of famous Cubans floor to ceiling, serving delicious ropas viejas (`old clothes`) and Cuban sandwiches. There´s dusky-eyed beauty with dangerous cleavage working the bar at the marina. There´s a haggard old above-knee amputee sitting on the curb outside the popular hostel, asking for help. There´re salty old sea captains, drinking beer at noon, downing three cans in thirty minutes as they pitch boat trips to Panama to doe-eyed backpackers. Street vendors sell soap and straw hats and replacement blender blades and Harry Potter posters. Others hawk ladles made of polished coconut shell, beaded bracelets, fake Ray Ban sunglasses, and Botero knock-offs (both statues and paintings). In the plazas, people enjoy the shade to read, chat, or watch performers dance (before they pass around a hat).
We spent four nights in Cartagena, total. The first night was a bust as we arrived after dark and had little energy after finding a hostel. Since then we´ve spent a lot of time wandering the city, eaten some ice cream and schmootzy bakery gourmet (think the Mac laptop and Starbucks crowd in the States), visited the Inquisition Museum to look at the torture instruments, picked through the book exchange at a German bistro, and chatted with emerald sellers. On our last night, we went to a theatre and watched a subtitled version of ´Love in the Time of Cholera.´ Appropriate, I thought, since it takes place in Cartagena in the late 1800s and since I chatted with a painter in Santa Marta who did a very nice painting of Marquez. As much as I adore ´100 Years of Solitude,` I really disliked `Love in the Time of Cholera` when I read it while traveling in Afghanistan. While I enjoyed the little vignettes about other women, I found Florentino pitiful and Fermina insipid. I didn`t resonate with either. The movie wasn`t much better, except that it was over in two hours instead of being dragged out for days.
We`ve spent our time in Cartagena almost entirely in the old city area. Cartagena was part of the gold circuit, for ships from the old world to travel to the new world, load up on gold, murder some dark-skinned people, pull off some toe-nails, yadda yadda, and return triumphant to Europe. As such, it was a plump target for pirates and was under siege numerous times in its infancy. The `old city` is the walled off central area, right on the coast, which was the original city. Outside of those walls is the sprawl. Inside is a plethora of hotels, banks, hostels, street vendors, artisans, emerald shops, hookers, museums, restaurants, statues, and plazas.
There´s Cafe Havana, with rumba and West African Yoruba-inspired music and posters of famous Cubans floor to ceiling, serving delicious ropas viejas (`old clothes`) and Cuban sandwiches. There´s dusky-eyed beauty with dangerous cleavage working the bar at the marina. There´s a haggard old above-knee amputee sitting on the curb outside the popular hostel, asking for help. There´re salty old sea captains, drinking beer at noon, downing three cans in thirty minutes as they pitch boat trips to Panama to doe-eyed backpackers. Street vendors sell soap and straw hats and replacement blender blades and Harry Potter posters. Others hawk ladles made of polished coconut shell, beaded bracelets, fake Ray Ban sunglasses, and Botero knock-offs (both statues and paintings). In the plazas, people enjoy the shade to read, chat, or watch performers dance (before they pass around a hat).
We spent four nights in Cartagena, total. The first night was a bust as we arrived after dark and had little energy after finding a hostel. Since then we´ve spent a lot of time wandering the city, eaten some ice cream and schmootzy bakery gourmet (think the Mac laptop and Starbucks crowd in the States), visited the Inquisition Museum to look at the torture instruments, picked through the book exchange at a German bistro, and chatted with emerald sellers. On our last night, we went to a theatre and watched a subtitled version of ´Love in the Time of Cholera.´ Appropriate, I thought, since it takes place in Cartagena in the late 1800s and since I chatted with a painter in Santa Marta who did a very nice painting of Marquez. As much as I adore ´100 Years of Solitude,` I really disliked `Love in the Time of Cholera` when I read it while traveling in Afghanistan. While I enjoyed the little vignettes about other women, I found Florentino pitiful and Fermina insipid. I didn`t resonate with either. The movie wasn`t much better, except that it was over in two hours instead of being dragged out for days.
We blew a day in Cartagena trying to figure out how to get to Panama. Option 1 is to go overland to Turbo, Colombia, then on some boats around the Darien Gap to Puerto Obladia, Panama, a small town and military barracks juuuuust on the Panamanian side. From there, you have to fly to Panama City as there are no roads. The flights were booked for the entire month of December, so that options was out. I pushed for doing that route anyway and then taking Kuna boats up the coast, village to village, until we got to one with a road and a 4x4. Alden wasn´t hot on the idea, so we looked at other options. Option 2 is to take a sail boat from Cartagena to the San Blas Islands off of Panama, near Carti. USD$275 per person, really hit or miss options with boat captains. A charming young German guy, or a nice, rich Argentinian couple, or an old drunkard who was downing beer like nothing before noon (and whose beautiful daughter was tanning on the boat in a bra and denim micro-mini, seemingly sans her "ropa interior").
We didn`t meet the German until later, the Argentinian couples boat ended up being full, and we weren`t hot on the salty sea dog borracho and his lolita daughter. We ended up not doing the 3-5 day sailing trip and instead chose option 3: USD$284 for a one hour flight on Copa, straight from Cartagena to Panama.
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