Cartagena – A Great city

Cartagena seems like a dream now. A wonderful walled city still in pristine condition. Those tranquil streets, the smell of the sea, the slight breeze that cooled my face in an otherwise very humid city. The colourful houses, adorned with flowers and trees. Oh how I wish I could still be there.

Why oh why it took me 10 years to go there is quite unbelievable. I believe that if I’d visited it before. Maybe the last 7 months would have been spent in Cartagena. Oh how my Spanish would have been a lot different. Maybe better, depending on whom you spoke to.

Cartagena as we know it today was founded in 1533, but the area has been inhabited for the last 9000 years. First by the Puerto Hormiga Culture, then later all along the coast by other people like the Tayrona communities.

These communities flourished until about 1500 A.D. when Los Conquistadores came and well we all know what that brutal group of people brought did.

Over the following few hundred years, Cartagena flourished and was one of the richest cities in New Spain.

But with rich cities far away from their lords and masters, they were prone to attacks from pirates or independent businessmen, as I like to call them. But that depends on whom you speak to. A friend of Lina’s in Argentina, does not call me by my name, only el pirata.

One of the first pirates to pillage Cartagena was by a French nobleman Jean-François Roberval, who was a privateer licensed by the king of France. Years later a Basque, Martin Cote would attack the city.

This brought about a programme of defence building. Namely building walls around the city. But Spain being Spain, didn’t rush into this. It took over 200 years to complete the defences of over 11 km’s of wall, with the culmination of the building of the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas.

This finally put an end to the successful attacks by some pirates like John Hawkins and Francis Drake, who ransomed the city to the equivalent of $200, 000,000 of today’s money. All good for the English crown.

Cartagena declared its independence from Spain in 1811. Since then it has seen good times and bad times, but recently the times have been very good.

Today it is the major tourist destination spot in Colombia, and is on the route of the large cruise ships which call into Cartagena for a couple of days, and the passengers wander around getting ripped off by the local vendors.

The tourists as in other old colonial cities are keeping Cartagena in the pristine condition it is today. Thankfully it’s not only foreign tourists who come to Cartagena. Colombians come in droves during December and January and flock to its beaches. It’s kinda funny all the Colombians head to Boca Grande, a strip of beach several km’s in length jammed packed with high rise hotels. Where as all the foreigners head straight to the old city for its quiet, tranquil streets, it’s good restaurants and serenity.

The Colombians come here for the beach and beach only. Which is kinda odd, as it really is a bad beach. The sand is a dark, dirty colour. The sea is not that turquoise green colour we dream of in the Caribbean. It’s also very rough.

But it’s such a difference from the mountains of the interior, that noone really minds.

You can either just drop a towel or rent a small tent to shade you from the sun. In the busy season you will be called upon every few minutes to buy either fruit, drinks, cigarettes, cooked fish, sunglasses, shorts, t-shirts, towels, curios, even massages are offered on it’s beaches. To say it’s a piece of hell is an understatement.

For me Cartagena is only worth going to for the old city. Not it’s beaches.

The people are also very friendly in a genuine way. I have become all too aware of the non genuine way people are friendly in Medellin, but here it was genuine.

Los Cachacos, this literally means “the people who wear suits”. Which is how los Costeños, people from the coast call the non-Costeños. Los Cachacos all think they are superior and above Los Costeños, who regard Los Cachacos as uptight and too materialistic. Los Cachacos all think Los Costeños are lazy. But if you had to work in the heat of the coast, you’d slow down a lot also.

I found the people from La Costa as very warm, friendly and very chilled. Oh how I envy them. Their lives are spent in the street, as it’s so warm, so why not.

La siesta is a big thing there, which is probably why the mountain people think those rather relaxed folk by the sea do not work much either. But I’ve never seen street cleaners work up to midnight before.

The area we stayed in was Getsemani. No garden here. It’s the cheapest place to stay in Cartagena. A few years ago, rooms in certain hotels were rented by the hour. We saw a few down and out scrubbers peddling their wares outside a few bars. It’s amazing how people find ugliness so attractive..

But in these prosperous times, the area of Getsemani is being dolled up to be the hippiest place to stay outside of the old city. Lot’s of Boutique hotels are springing up along its streets. All of them have small pools for you to relax in and cool down from the afternoon heat.

I loved Cartagena and when or if I return to Colombia. It could possibly be the only place I will visit.

Raspado, Shaved Ice Drink Heaven

What works best on a hot day, when your mouth is dry and your body is overheating?

A fizzy drink, that doesn’t quite hit that mark and leaves your mouth dry 5 minutes later.

A bottle of water, that may cool you down for a while but just doesn’t satisfy you.

Well in Cartagena there are vendors wandering around with rickety old carts, loaded with bottles of fruit syrups and big blocks of ice waiting to refresh your spirit.

The drink is called Raspado. It literally means grated or shaved, and in this case it’s the ice that is shaved.

A block of ice is shaved into a bowl by an ancient machine that may have been used to do the same thing in his grandfather’s day. The vendor scoops the shaved ice into a paper cup and a fruit syrup of your choice is poured over the top and allowed to soak in. To finish it off, condensed milk is drizzled over.

It’s sweet and fruity, it definitely cools you down and it so hits the mark.

It is an act of faith that the ice is made from clean water, but as people in the Americas have slightly stronger stomachs than us folk in Europe or North America, no one seems to give it a second thought. I seem to have an iron stomach after so many years of travelling in Asia, so I survived this near death experience, as someone would call it.

The choice of syrups was numerous. I choose mora (loganberry), as they are the only berries that you can buy in Medellin, well apart from unripe yellow strawberries and I’d become kinda addicted to its tart taste.

The condensed milk adds a sweetness that works well on this cooling sweet drink. It went down very well, and it was cheap, which in Colombia makes it a hit.

Cartagena – A Very Welcome Change

To say the food in Cartagena was a welcome change is a bit of an understatement. After 6 months of eating nothing but rice, beans and over grilled tough, tasteless meat. La Costa was a slice of paradise. Why we never came here before is beyond me. It really is.

The city is divided into 2 parts. The old walled city, and everything else.

Everything else seemed like anywhere else in Colombia or the Caribbean for that matter. A large, noisy, chaotic, mad city. My kind of town.

The old walled city is like stepping back in time. Well kinda. It’s a piece of paradise.

It is one of the largest and best preserved old cities I have ever been to. There were very few dilapidated buildings around. Everything was well maintained, streets were clean. Not too much traffic. Actually sometimes I had to pinch myself to remember I was still in Colombia.

The food in the old city is a lot better on average than say in Medellin. As they cater to tourists more, the restaurants are a bit modern looking also. Food is a bit more modern too. No beans, rice and meat here. Well kinda, as the menu of the day on the coast is very different from the interior.

The menu del dia on the coast is coconut rice, fried and squashed crispy plantain, and fried or grilled fish, plus the typical Colombia salad. That never changes.

The coconut rice is cooked with a coconut paste, which is derided from a fresh coconut and fried till a dark brown colour. This is then added to the rice and coconut milk and cooked in the normal way. It ends up a dark brown colour but with a fantastic coconut flavour.

Take a green plantain. Cut it in 2cm thick slices. Deep fry it. Then squash it in a machine similar to a tortilla press, but smaller. Then deep fry it again till crispy. Sprinkle it with garlic salt and there you have a patacon. It should resemble a large gold coin. So named after the money of the Spanish colonial era.

The fish is any that is fresh that day. Either fried or grilled. Sometimes over done, but thankfully most of ours was done just right. All this is finished off with a small salad. It’s a Colombian tradition to serve salad with everything. Ask my mother-in-law.

All washed down with a freshly made fruit juice. Not bad for a maximum of £3.

But Colombians are very traditional, inward looking people and I could after six months that I’d be just as mad here as Medellin. Well maybe not, but you get the drift.

But they do offer other coastal delights in the menu del dia. Plus a lot more different items on their a la carte menus, than your normal eatery in the mountains.

As we were in Cartagena in the off season, we missed the Miss Colombia extravaganza by a week or so. Bummer. We actually saw the “supposed” most beautiful woman in Colombia one day. It’s amazing what a touch of make up can do to a woman. As she looked a little rough in the flesh. She was never my choice, but what do I know, I’m not an obsessed observer.

Anyhows, Cartagena was a little empty. A lot of restaurants were empty, with a few jammed packed. As they were in the best areas of the old city.

One of the best and fun places we ate at, was called “Pizza en el Parque”. The pizza was pretty good, but you just sat on a wall opposite the small hole in the wall. The pizza was delivered to you and put on a stool in front of you. The pizzas were good, beer was cold and the prices cheap. Plus you had the added bonus of watching the world go by as you ate. A favourite pass time of mine. The place had some odd combos. Like pears and apple. Please. But we had a good time none the less.

Also big on the coast is Cazuela de Mariscos. A coconut flavoured stew jam packed with fish and shell fish. The ones we had were thick, flavourful and crammed with fish. Yum yum.

Cartagena is possibly the most expensive city in Colombia, but you pay for the location mostly and it was well worth the extra expense. I just wish we’d gone there years ago. As I’m sure we would have headed straight to la coasta instead of the mountains. Hey ho. We know for next time.