On Saturday I saw the sights of Cartagena, starting with the Puerto del Reloj (Clock Gate), which is the main gateway to the old town, leading to the Plaza de los Coches. I also saw several of Cartagena's churches, including the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver (here and here), the Iglesia de Santo Domingo (the city's oldest church), and the Cathedral (here and here, and a rare inside view here). I also went for a walk along Las Murallas, the old town's protective walls, which you can see below.
But maybe the best bits of Cartagena's old town are the ordinary houses, which, in contrast to the numerous white cities that I've visited, are very colourful, and remain pretty much unchanged after hundreds of years. There are a few examples here, here and here. But just to show you that that's not the full story of Cartagena, here is a photo of Bocagrande, which is a wealthy, modern part of Cartagena, and has the big hotels where most package tourists stay. And apart from these few areas that I've mentioned, most of the rest of Cartagena is pretty awful.
On Saturday evening I met up with Boyang, who once again was in the same town as me at the same time. We also met up with a Chinese friend of his, as well as a female Japanese friend of his Chinese friend (the only common language was Spanish). We were walking to the old town to get something to eat when the evening took a bit of a bizarre turn. In the Plaza de los Coches we bumped into another member of Boyang's Spanish course who's currently studying in Cartagena, and who that evening was acting as an interpreter for a group of Chinese travel journalists who were visiting Cartagena. When we met them they were interviewing a man who we soon discovered was the brother of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (presumably the man himself wasn't available). We hung around for a bit, and then joined the entourage as they were shown around the old town. We ended up in what appeared to be a private party in the garden of the Palacio de la Inquisición (the Spanish Inquisition museum), where there was a band playing traditional Colombian folk music.
We eventually left them a couple of hours later, at which point we were finally able to go for dinner. Later that night we went to Café Havana, which is a salsa club with a live band. I'd really been hoping to see a live salsa band before I left Colombia, so I finally had my wish fulfilled. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, but a feisty Colombian girl (with her boyfriend sitting nearby) did her best to embarrass me by dragging me onto the dance floor, as you can see below.
On Sunday I once again wandered around the old town, and I also went to the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which is a huge fortress built in the 17th century to defend the city. There was a pretty good view from the top.
That's about all I have to say about Cartagena, but just to show that I've got my finger on my pulse, look at what the BBC have to say about Medellín. Have they been reading my blog again?
I've now arrived in Santa Marta, which is another city on the Caribbean coast. I'm only planning to stay here for one night, after which I'll head into Tayrona National Park. I'm not feeling particularly happy at the moment, because at some point on my journey here I managed to lose my iPod. I'm not sure where it went, but I think it probably just fell out of my bag. It's pretty annoying, but I guess something like that was bound to happen at some point on my trip. I expect I'll cope without it.
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