Cartagena was not my favorite city.
To be fair, Jordan and I weren’t really in tourist mode when we visited it. Cartagena was the debarkation point for our car, having shipped it around the Darién Gap from Colón, Panama. We felt tired from our Central American blitzkrieg and looked forward to taking a planned travel break in Medellín. We also dreaded the bureaucratic hurdles involved in getting the car out of the port. Crossing borders by land is a pain and by all past traveler’s accounts, shipping across the Darién eclipsed all past pains.
Cartagena’s Coolest Neighborhood
From our Airbnb, we wandered the narrow and serpentine streets of the historic Getsemaní neighborhood. The neighborhood layout, if not all of the stones themselves, date back to the city’s founding in 1533.
Despite being the center of a very well-curated tourist bubble, Getsemaní doubles as a neighborhood populated by long-time locals. Families opened their windows to the daily heat while listening to a mid-afternoon telenovela. People sat on their stoops and watch the human flow circumnavigating their streets.
Interspersed among the locals, ranged the tourists, those temporary installations. Zoned out gringos sat in park benches, their hollow thousand yard stares a testament to the city’s thriving narcotourism. Dreadlocked hippies juggled and beat drums nearby, trying to find themselves among so many strangers. Petite and hard-eyed women carrying heavy backpacks weaved through the foot traffic, seeking lodging in any of the neighborhood’s many hostels.
As I staggered through the graffitied streets one morning, in search of coffee, two women called out to me
from across the street. My reaction was typical for a New Yorker: don’t make eye contact, keep moving forward. They called again. I broke the first rule and made eye contact. I did not stop moving. The women wore heavy make-up and clothes that seemed out of place in the fresh light of dawn. They beckoned emphatically. I kept walking. Moments later my decaffeinated brain pieced together that I had just been propositioned by hookers. Not even sex can displace my morning need for coffee.
Getsemaní neighbors the equally old Walled City (la Ciudad Amurallada). Walls that once kept pirates out (mixed record of success) now keep tourists in. The disjoint streets and jumbled stone edifices within the walls weave themselves into a continuously sprawling market/bar/museum. Loud Americans shout to each other across crowded streets to the unnoticed disdainful glances of Europeans. Colombian merchants beckon all of them alike to blankets festooned with multicolored wares.
Prices everywhere elicited surprise. Cartagena demands a high price of its visitors. We begrudgingly paid for mildly tasty tourist food. As with nearly all heavily-touristed places we’ve visited, the tourist pays for location more than quality. That said, we did make one great food find, in the form of a Venezuelan arepa restaurant. Not only were their arepas better than the other food we had in Cartagena, but they might have been the best arepas I’ve ever had.
More confusing was the coffee. Colombia is well-known for its coffee. Few faces are more recognizable than that of Juan Valdez. In cafe after cafe, restaurant after restaurant, we ordered our preferred drug and were served cups of coffee from foreign-branded pods. Illy, Nescafe, Nespresso. Back at my lab, our most treasured piece of scientific equipment was our Nespresso machine (not joking), but here, that same comfortable flavor was was tinged with disappointment.
As night fell, the volume rose. Electric lights picked up the sun’s slack and drink seekers replaced souvenir seekers. Entertainers took over parks and corners. Even Michael Jackson made an appearance. We picked balcony seats and watched the slow dance of dinner goers, cigarette sellers, lovers and tour guides.
The Impregnable Fortress, Part 1: An Actual Fortress
El Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas was considered impregnable, one of the best designed fortresses of its day. Wikipedia goes into a little more detail on what impregnable means in this case: “The batteries and parapets protect one another, so making it practically impossible to take a battery without taking the whole defence system.” The article goes to mention that “It is the most formidable defensive complex of Spanish military architecture.”
Understanding the fort’s defensive strength, English vice-admiral Edward Vernon knew that the best way to take down such a structure was through overwhelming force. In 1741, he invaded Cartagena with a force of 186 ships and a 12,000 man ground force. The invasion was a total success. For the Spanish.
Nothing about the fortress suggests anything but utilitarian military function. Awesome yet unwelcoming in appearance, the fortress is pure muscle made stone. Short and narrow tunnels connect its various points. No interior space is reserved for luxury.
The Impregnable Fortress, Part 2: Customs
Well, it looks safer than where we’re staying.
While driving Steve and Denise to their Airbnb, their taxi driver had asked Steve if he carried a machete, or maybe just a knife. Steve carried neither.
You should carry a knife, said the driver, this neighborhood is a bit sketchy.
This gave Steve and Denise an interesting perspective on the neighborhood in which the shipping company’s office is located. Not that it made us feel explicitly unsafe, but it was definitely the kind of place where you don’t make a show of having things like cell phones. Or wallets. On the bright side, we had strength in numbers, our group consisting of ten overlanders.
At the shipping office, a nice woman passed us our original Bills of Lading (receipts of our vehicles being loaded onto the ship) through a small barred window. We needed to present these at customs. At the customs office, located in a distant sector of the city, Jordan (who’s name is first on the title) had to sign what was both the same and not the same form seven times. This apparent paradox can only occur in customs offices. Jordan and the other drivers in our group were called into the back office repeatedly over the course of two days. During these sessions, each driver would be presented with a form to sign. In each instance, this was literally the same form that had been signed before, but for each step of the process it needed to be printed and signed anew.
Javier explained that colonial powers had innovated many bureaucratic practices as a way for them to give their subjects the sense that they could communicate with their government, without really having to make any meaningful concessions. I find this hypothesis far too easy to believe.
Two days and several kilos of paperwork later, Jordan donned a hard hat and went to recover our beloved Taiga from her shipping container. As the group came driving out of the holding area, we stopped for some victory photos by our cars and to say our farewells. This annoyed several other drivers, making for a short celebration. Moments later, we were once again bouncing and swerving down a fractured road that would ferry us to our next destination, the madness of Cartagena quickly receding in our rearview mirror.
