---
type: Video
title: "First Impressions of Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴"
description: A first afternoon walking Cartagena's walled city alone — street food, an art district, a guide who wasn't asked for, and a first read on how cheap Colombia is.
tags: [colombia, cartagena, walled-city, street-food, markets, art, haggling, first-impressions]
timestamp: 2026-08-07T10:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8heYtQXrnc
video_id: d8heYtQXrnc
upload_date: 2022-01-24
duration: 1768
---

# First Impressions of Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴

The opening video of the [Colombia](/countries/colombia.md) series. Harry spends
an afternoon crossing [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md)'s walled city on his own,
with no plan beyond walking and talking to whoever is in front of him — the
method he states outright in the description and demonstrates for the rest of the
video.

What it is really about is money. He buys a painting, a snack, a drink and a pair
of sunglasses, and narrates his own pricing decisions honestly enough that the
video works as a record of what a first-week tourist actually pays in Colombia
rather than what things cost. He overpays on at least two of the four and says so
both times.

The one awkward encounter is a man who attaches himself as a guide without being
asked and wants paying at the end of it. Harry's handling of it — pay the small
sum, don't argue, quietly cancel tomorrow — is the most instructive thing in the
video.

## Key moments

- [00:10] Based in the old walled town, and the first impression: the city is
  beautiful.
- [00:41] Sellers approach immediately; the first magnet is 15,000.
- [02:00] His read on the sellers — they ask once, *no gracias* is enough, and
  they aren't pushy.
- [02:30] Plaza de la Proclamación, and the women in traditional dress who gave
  up selling fruit because photographs pay better.
- [03:36] Fried cheese bread from a stall for 5,000 — about a dollar or a dollar
  fifty — and much too hot to eat.
- [05:43] Meets an English-speaking local at the edge of the walled city; almost
  nobody else here speaks it.
- [06:48] Told it is the windy season, which is why the heat is manageable.
- [07:18] Asks directly whether it's dangerous and is told it isn't.
- [08:27] A drink together at a bar, a conversation about living in Colombia, and
  a plan made to meet the next day.
- [10:37] The port area, and the history — the Spanish, a brief English capture,
  and Colombian independence in the 19th century.
- [11:41] Getsemaní, the art district, ten minutes out of the port.
- [12:42] Haggling for a painting: asked 180,000, he counters 100,000.
- [15:39] Bought at roughly $20–25, and he says on camera he overpaid — a
  relative had paid about half for something similar — and that he doesn't like
  haggling down.
- [16:10] Front doors open onto the street; you can see into people's houses as
  you walk past.
- [17:12] The port, where the island boats leave, and a hunt for sunglasses after
  losing one pair and breaking another.
- [19:37] Sunglasses opened at 100,000 and settled around 60,000.
- [20:49] The guide asks for more money on the way out. Harry gives 10,000 —
  two or three dollars — calls him a hustler, and decides not to meet him
  tomorrow after all.
- [21:50] Still adjusting to a currency that runs in thousands and sometimes
  millions.
- [22:20] Up on the city wall for sunset, with the sea hitting the base of it.
- [23:20] The verdict on cost: one of the cheapest places he has been. Dinner
  with a drink under about $7, and very cheap taxis.
- [24:21] A free rooftop pool at a near-empty hotel — no entry fee if you buy a
  drink — looking back at the new city, which he compares to Miami.
- [26:33] A tour of the six-bedroom Airbnb in the old city, which came with a
  security guard and a maid who cooks breakfast and does the laundry.
- [28:35] He asks the audience how long to stay in Colombia.

## Extracted pages

- [Colombia](/countries/colombia.md)
- [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md)
- [The gift that isn't free](/tips/the-gift-that-isnt-free.md)
- [Don't grind a price down to nothing](/tips/dont-grind-down-people-with-nothing.md)