Cartagena

A port city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, and the first place Harry stays on the trip. The part everyone means by Cartagena is the walled city — the old town inside a Spanish defensive wall, which is where he bases himself.

His first impression is that it is beautiful and unusually easy: Spanish colonial architecture painted in Colombian colours, flowers hanging off the balconies, and short enough distances that he crosses the whole of it on foot in an afternoon. It is also very touristy, which he says he doesn’t mind — he reads the crowds as an economy rebuilding.

The walled city

• Plaza de la Proclamación and the squares around it are the busiest part. The women in traditional dress with fruit bowls on their heads no longer sell fruit — they charge for photographs, having worked out it pays better. Harry calls it good business rather than a scam.
• Street sellers are constant but not pushy. They ask once; no gracias ends it. Most of what is sold — souvenirs, magnets, sunglasses — is aimed squarely at tourists, which he takes as a measure of how many come through.
• The wall itself can be walked, and the stretch where the old city ends is a standard sunset spot. It faces open sea with the waves hitting the base of it.
• The port area is where boats leave for the islands.

The new city

Across the water from the old town is a line of skyscrapers that Harry — and, he says, locals — compare to Miami. The beach district there, Bocagrande, has its own page: it takes a whole video and is where the city’s beach life happens. From the old city wall at sunset you are looking straight at it.

Getsemaní

The art district, about ten minutes’ walk out of the port area. Paintings and wall art line the streets and are sold directly off them, and the houses are the most photographed thing in the city — the same Spanish architecture, painted harder. Front doors are left open onto the street, so you can see straight into people’s front rooms as you pass; Harry remarks that there is essentially no privacy and that nobody seems to mind.

Practical facts

• A handmade painting in Getsemaní: asked at 180,000 pesos, and Harry paid roughly $20–25 (from video – unverified) after a short and half-hearted negotiation. He notes afterwards that a relative had paid about half that for something similar.
• Fried cheese bread from a street stall: 5,000 pesos, which he puts at around $1–1.50 (from video – unverified). Served straight out of the oil and too hot to eat immediately.
• Sunglasses in a souvenir market: opened at 100,000 pesos and settled around 60,000 (from video – unverified). He says on camera that he was ripped off, that they are obviously fake, and that he needed them anyway.
• A meal with a drink should not exceed about $7 (from video – unverified).
• Accommodation: a six-bedroom Airbnb inside the old city, within walking distance of the landmarks, which came with a security guard and a maid who cooked breakfast, did the laundry and made the beds. He does not give the nightly figure on camera. He had never had an Airbnb that included staff before and says so.
• A hotel rooftop pool at the edge of the new city is free to enter provided you buy a drink or food — the staff let them up because it was empty. The view is back across to the high-rises, which he compares to Miami.

The old city at night

Harry rates the walled city as busier after dark than during the day, and it is the only time he calls it the most beautiful city he has been to.

• Street performers on most of the squares — salsa dancers, a saxophonist, rappers, an acrobat, a violinist. He pays them and says why: this is their living and he couldn’t do it. Twenty thousand pesos, four to six dollars (from video – unverified), to a dance troupe. Be aware that once you pay one act, others arrive.
• Plaza de la Trinidad is the square he sets out for.
• Police are visible at the main intersections. A local tells him they are there because of the sex trade rather than street crime.
• You will be offered drugs. Cocaine and cannabis three times in one evening, which he calls a record, along with women at least once. A single refusal ends each approach.
• But not everywhere is walkable after dark. A motorbike rider who couldn’t take the fare — bikes are barred from that zone — warned him unprompted not to walk it either, because his camera or phone would be snatched. This is the sharpest safety warning in the cluster and it contradicts Harry’s own confident daytime read; see ask someone who drives for a living.

A shopping mall inside a theatre

On a friend’s recommendation, and against his own dislike of shopping centres, Harry visits a mall in the old city converted from a former theatre — the seating tiers and an open-air stage are still there, in dark wood. He does not name it on camera.

The top floor is a food court with Asian, Italian, Peruvian, French, barbecue, Spanish, Colombian and Mexican counters. You order at a counter and may sit anywhere; food is brought to you. About $10 for a meal with a drink (from video – unverified). From the outdoor seating you can see the city wall and the new city behind it.

He orders from the Colombian counter and gets chicken pasta, which he says doesn’t look Colombian at all — he records his own uncertainty rather than claiming the dish. Colombian lemonade comes still rather than fizzy, with lime and a lot of ice.

The unrequested guide

Walking near the edge of the walled city, Harry is approached by an English-speaking local who takes him for a drink, walks him to a market for sunglasses, and then asks for money at the end of a tour Harry had never asked for. He pays 10,000 pesos — two or three dollars, and he is clear the amount is trivial — but quietly drops the plan they had made to meet the next day. His verdict is a hustler rather than a bad man, and that he got a drink and a pair of sunglasses out of it. The man’s name is rendered several different ways in the subtitles, so it is not recorded here.

See the gift that isn’t free, which this is the service version of.

Harry’s tips

• Walk it. He crosses the old town, the port and Getsemaní on foot in one afternoon and treats that as the whole method for a new city — see walk the city.
• Expect to be quoted the tourist price, and decide in advance whether you care. He is explicit that he is dressed like a gringo, that the numbers move accordingly, and that on small sums he pays them.
• Nothing here needs booking. The wall, the squares and Getsemaní are all free and all walkable from the old city.

Source videos

• First Impressions of Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8heYtQXrnc
• You Must Visit This Beach in Colombia 🇨🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXYIM4JBRqg
• Solo at Night in Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o94ZDWYXYE
• My Brothers Wedding in Colombia 🇨🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldBGyvMzHM — the boat day out to the islands