First Impressions of Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴

The opening video of the Colombia series. Harry spends an afternoon crossing Cartagena’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
• Cartagena
• The gift that isn’t free
• Don’t grind a price down to nothing