We were a little overwhelmed by the big city of Bogota… but not Cartagena. It is more our style. It is still a big city with a lot of high rise apartments and hotels along the beaches but we stayed mostly in the old walled city. It is an active neighborhood called Getsemani with waves of tourists there to have a good time. Sometimes it felt like New Orleans with all the people wandering the alleys looking for arepas, empanadas, live music and fun drinks. The streets were covered with decorations like flags and umbrellas and the walls were covered in murals, and the buildings are Caribbean-colorful – so much white, pink, turquoise, cerulean blue . The architecture is beautiful Spanish Colonial with a lot of balconies and open rooftops. Lots of small bars set up on the sidewalks selling margaritas or mojitos for 2 for $5. There were huge wide buses that circled the city at night blaring load music and filled with dancing partiers. Our Airbnb was in the heart of it but we did have a little respite from the action with a small pool in the courtyard of our condo building. But don’t worry, we had our share of the cheap cocktails on the sidewalk.
Our airbnb was also close to the city park which was home to a couple of sloths and a new monkey species for us- a type of tamarin monkey. They were really small with white mohawks. I spent too much time trying in vain to get good sloth and monkey pics. But I have a few I will share.
Cartagena is one of the oldest cities in the Western Hemisphere and has a long history of colonization, pirate wars and then liberation. We walked the visited old city walls and then the old fort to get an idea of the structures the Spanish had to build to fight off pirates and their European enemies. I couldn’t help to think that this is where the idea of the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride was conceived.
This is a beach town with long stretches of sandy beaches with the Miami style strips of hotels and condos. It was really windy most of our time so we didn’t really make time for a beach day. We spent most of our relaxing time around our pool. On our last day, it calmed down a lot and the beaches looked really inviting. Unfortunately, we were already on our bus to our next destination. We did take some pics on our beach walks earlier in the week.
Food was good and still very affordable but we didn’t have a meal that I will remember for a while. Mostly just local food and a lot of pizza. We didn’t really do any day trips here. A lot of people take boat trips out to some islands for some snorkeling or just sitting on a beach all day. We did do a lot of walking around the old town. It really was a charming city and we enjoyed the mix of beautiful colonial town and the new party zones. It is just a really fun place to go with the fun old architecture.
Next stop is going to be a much needed relax week. We are going up into the mountains to the Colombian nature village of Minca. Not much on our agenda but finding waterfalls and birds.