Emerald City

One of South America’s least-known destinations is also one of its most fascinating – you won’t want to miss this gem.

If you’re up to here with the idea of slogging through more of the cold winter months without a break, why not slip into something more comfortable, like the northern hemisphere, and take advantage of their warmer weather on a well-earned break – well, you have made it nearly half way through the year. An ideal way to sample warmer regions is on a cruise. One of the delights of cruising is that you end up going to places you would never have dreamed of visiting. Take Cartagena, in Colombia, a city with a population about the size of Auckland and a history that goes back nearly 10,000 years to when the area was first occupied. Cartagena is a sensual onslaught of noise, people and colour. It’s one of those places that throws something wonderful at you wherever you turn.

It looked like just one more destination on a cruise that took in the Caribbean, Panama Canal and Mexican Riviera. Expectations were not high. Not only had I never dreamed of going there, I had never heard of it until I saw its name on our itinerary. It was frustratingly difficult to find even any travellers’ guidelines (although some have turned up since: see note below). I would be there for only a few hours and would have to make the most of it.

It’s fashionable to look down on cruising as a travel experience of any lasting value because ships seldom stay in a port more than one day – and sometimes only half a day. That can be frustrating if the port is Corsica or Marseilles, for instance, but there are some places – I won’t name names, Gibraltar – where a day is just the right length of time. There are some where a day is too long. And there are others where a day is just long enough to get a taste of a place and make you decide you will go back there for an in-depth look later on. And if you have a reasonable amount of energy and don’t mind putting your feet to work you can usually pack several sights into one of those short stays.

Some passengers on my ship, with an average weight that proved media reports of an American obesity epidemic are not exaggerated, refused even to disembark in Cartagena, equating the very name of Colombia with phrases like ‘drug lords’, ‘armed bandits’ and ‘cocaine wars’. Although it would be easy to imagine criminal undercurrents to life here, it’s hard to imagine tourists ever being affected, particularly if they keep to the beaten path.

The town can’t lay claim to many major historical events, though what there is has plenty of colour. The Spanish arrived in the 16th century and founded the town we know today. A disastrous fire led to the founding of the first fire brigade in the Americas. Pirates were an ongoing problem. Sir Francis Drake captured it and ransomed it back to Spain.

Tired of being attacked by anyone wanting some easy doubloons, the authorities commenced to build substantial defences and these give the city its distinctive flavour today. The picturesque old town is surrounded by a massive wall and the nearby fort, the spectacular Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, is a World Heritage listed site.

The key word is variety. One minute, as you pause in the heat to enjoy the shade of the giant trees in the town square, you find yourself surrounded by boys trying to sell you CDs of local music. Lots of kids, but all with the same CD. Definitely an opening for some marketing classes here. Turn a corner and there are two policemen with guns patting down a suspect. At the next corner, you’ll probably be lured into one of numerous emerald stores – the stones are a specialty here, well priced and of good quality. You’ll be confronted by row upon row of stones in beautiful settings and encouraged to stay and watch the jewellers at work. The cunning emerald merchants employ two unfair means to keep you in their store in the noonday Caribbean heat: free water and air-conditioning.

Cartagena is not the place to buy luxury goods but as well as emeralds, the embroidered crafts and bags are also worth a look and make great presents. The canny tourist should easily track down some nice pieces of gold.

Among other imports from the old country that were brought here by the Spanish, one of the most evident was the Inquisition – that movement to stamp out Reformation heresies, which was high on torture and fear and low on making anyone sincerely wish to remain or become Catholic. High on the list of sights to which you will be directed, whether on a tour or being adventurously self-starting, is the Palace of the Inquisition on the Plaza de Bolivar. That leafy courtyard looks placid and inviting – until you notice the guillotine mounted at one end. Inside, there are classic instruments of torture that you might have thought existed only in horror movies: a rack, thumbscrews and an iron maiden. There is also an eye-opening and genuinely unsettling list of the sort of trick questions the Inquisition employed to identify witches: How long have you been a witch? How did you become a witch, and what happened on that occasion? What is the name of your master among the evil spirits? (It must have been especially awkward if you hadn’t been properly introduced or had forgotten your evil spirit master’s name.) What words do you pronounce when you fly?

There are 33 questions in all. You’d definitely have to write off the whole day if you were summoned before the Inquisition.

The palace contains other exhibits relating to the town’s history but it’s the gibbet and heretics’ collar (don’t ask) that draw the crowds and elicits the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. Don’t overlook the large scales which were used to weigh suspected witches. If they were too heavy or too light they were in trouble. A similar process is used today to determine whether people are allowed to be television presenters.
 
For a more benevolent side of the Christian influence round here, head to the cathedral which began construction in the 16th century and is one of the oldest in the Americas. Sir Francis managed to knock down a bit of this when visiting but it’s a beautiful building with its lavish gold decorations and cool dark stone interior. It’s a meandering series of arcades on several levels surrounding the central place of worship. There are lush gardens and at least one ancient and toothless guide with minimal English who will offer to show you around, providing commentary so detailed that I had to beg off after 20 minutes because, as has already been explained, time in town was limited. Given the chance, in fact, I felt my volunteer guide could well have made a substantial dent in my time on earth. I made my excuses and left.

The other must-see sight I was determined to squeeze into the day was the San Felipe fort. We’ve already seen that violence and religion are not such strange bedfellows round here, so I guess it’s little wonder that this mighty defensive structure is named after a saint. It is generally regarded, by those who understand these things better than I, as the best example of Spanish architecture in the Americas. It is certainly the biggest.

The fortress is built high on a hill and can be seen from many parts of town. It spreads over a vast area and you need to have your climbing calves on to get there. Once at the summit, however, you find yourself scrambling all over this sprawling edifice, which tilts and turns at seemingly crazy angles. A prospective invader would be left wondering where to begin. By all accounts, it did its job well. Today it boasts a flag so big that it seems to distort perspective – you think that it must be close to appear so large. It’s not.

Several doorways cut into the stone take you into just some of the labyrinthine tunnels that criss-cross beneath the surface of the fortress. Only the bravest would fail to experience just a twinge of uncertainty when in the depths of the complex. Surely they check there’s no one inside before locking up at night? There was little here in the way of signage, guides, or even other visitors, on the day I was there. Some might find the lack of information frustrating, but the more imaginative will find it makes the whole experience romantic and intriguing.

One of the most noticeable features of the fortress is its simplicity – sheer walls, red and grey brick and stone. It’s minimalist rather than baroque as fortresses go. The view, however, is kaleidoscopic. You can see all of Cartagena spread out on all sides. There’s the walled old city itself to catch your gaze, but you’ll also notice how much new Cartagena there is. It’s not, of course, likely to attract the visitor much, unless you’re after a quick car repair or you want to rent a factory, but it is home to most of the population.

By many measures I was entitled now to return to the ship – a tricky taxi ride away in a town where fewer people spoke English than you might have expected. But I couldn’t help myself – I could see the city and its walls and was irresistibly drawn back to it. There was a small risk – I calculated I had about 90 minutes to spare but it would take only a couple of wrong turns to end up in trouble, because if there’s one thing we know for sure about ships, it is that they sail. I walked back towards the city walls and mingled with the lunchtime crowds. Every second building seemed to contain a dark, rough and ready eatery where people were enjoying lunch for a couple of dollars. It was a good opportunity to get a sense of the local dress being an amalgam of American, indigenous and Spanish influences.

Given more time, I would certainly have visited the gold museum and another museum devoted to the great revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar. I would also have tried the beaches and maybe taken a trip to one of the nearby islands. But my taste of the town, brief though it was, was immensely satisfying. Anyone who has read the novels of Nobel prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez – himself a Colombian who worked in Cartagena as a journalist in his early days – will find the city familiar. It’s not that there are buildings or places here that are specifically recognisable from One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera, it’s the spirit of the place. It’s the children doing stunts in fountains to entertain tourists and earn a few cents; it’s the scrawny dog sleeping under a tree at noon; it’s the food stalls in the central park and the stray cats hanging around the beautiful old classical theatre. It’s a parade of school children on an excursion, their dark uniforms in vivid contrast to the pink of hibiscus and the lemon and terracotta-coloured buildings. It’s heat and dust and being glad that Coca Cola can be found anywhere in the world. It’s women in bright local costume carrying baskets of washing on their heads.

And it’s the way all of life seems to be lived outside so that there is always something going on around you. Cartagena, the city of which many people have never heard, provides an unforgettable experience. It’s a lot to absorb and experience in a day that, like Garcia Marquez’s novels, is full of Colombian magic.

For more information about Cartagena, visit cartagenainfo.net

Paul Little
www.wayswithwords.co.nz