Solo at Night in Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴

Harry goes back out into Cartagena’s walled city after dark, which he reckons is busier than the daytime. The video is built around street performers — dancers, a saxophonist, rappers, a violinist, an acrobat — and he pays most of them, on the argument that this is simply how they make a living and he couldn’t do what they do.

Its most useful thirty seconds are a safety correction that complicates the confident line he took the day before. He tries to hire a motorbike to Plaza de la Trinidad; the rider tells him bikes aren’t allowed in that zone and then, unprompted and against his own interest, tells him not to walk it either because his camera or phone will be snatched. Harry takes the warning seriously and repeats it to camera.

The other thread is tourism. He notes American accents and Hawaiian shirts and says this is the first place in two years that has felt genuinely pre-pandemic — which is why, in a video about being hustled, his tone about the hustling is warm.

Key moments

• [00:12] Out at night in the old city; he says it is as busy as the day, if not more.
• [00:43] Police at the main intersection, which he reads as a safety signal.
• [01:14] A tout offers women; a local explains the police presence in the same breath. Harry declines and moves on.
• [02:18] The coloured streets at night, and a saxophonist. He calls Cartagena the most beautiful city he has been to.
• [03:01] The motorbike rider: bikes aren’t allowed in that area — and don’t walk, your camera or phone will be snatched.
• [04:24] Street dancers, and he gives them 20,000 pesos — four to six dollars.
• [06:33] A shopping mall recommended by a friend, built inside a former theatre, with the seating tiers and an open-air stage still in place.
• [07:33] The top-floor food court: Asian, Italian, Peruvian, French, BBQ, Spanish, Colombian, Mexican.
• [08:04] You order at the counter and sit anywhere; about $10 for a meal and a drink.
• [08:36] Colombian lemonade — not fizzy, served with lime and a lot of ice.
• [09:38] Colombian food generally isn’t spicy at all.
• [10:43] From the mall’s outdoor seating you can see the city wall and the new city beyond it.
• [12:50] Asking for ice cream gets him taken to an ATM instead — a language gap — and then offered cocaine and weed. Third time that day, which he calls a record.
• [13:53] Phone dead, no charger, no directions to his hotel, navigating by asking.
• [14:23] An acrobat doing flips in the square.
• [15:23] Ice cream at last: cappuccino, chosen over tomato.
• [16:25] On paying the performers — and on the rappers’ friends arriving the moment money appeared.
• [17:26] Significant tourism for the first time in two years; it feels pre-pandemic.
• [17:56] No hotel booked for tomorrow night, and he is changing city — see book nothing in advance.

Extracted pages

• Colombia
• Cartagena
• Ask someone who drives for a living