COLOMBIA: CARTAGENA, PART I

 March 15, 2023

Bob had arranged in advance for a private city tour in Cartagena, and after we dropped off our luggage at our hotel, we were joined by what turned out to be our best guide of the trip, a young woman named Carolina. She was excellent in perceiving our likes and dislikes and adjusting the tour accordingly.

Cartagena, founded by Spain in 1533 and located on the Caribbean coast of northern Colombia, is a city of almost a million people. It is a major port (one of the largest in South America) and historically part of world exploration and trade. 

Our hotel was kitty-corner from the Castle San Felipe de Barajas, a fortress built in 1536 by African slave labor under Spanish rule. It is an imposing presence and defended the city from attacks many times in the past. Along with the historic city center, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. These days it is used for social and cultural events. 

Our first destination was the Convent of Santa Cruz de la Popa, a convent built by the Spaniards atop Mount la Popa, the highest hill in Cartagena (about 500 feet high). From that spot we pretty much had a 360° view of the city. 

We could see the downtown/business district skyscrapers, which are almost all white. The contrast to the poverty-stricken areas full of cardboard shacks on our way up the mountain was pretty stark. 

Carolina pointed out that the city is huge but only three main roads service it. All the other roads are narrow, two-lane roads, many of which start paved and then the pavement eventually gives way to dirt roads. Large areas flood during the rainy season, and every year those people have to evacuate, but they come back because--where else can they go? Carolina shrugged and said, "This is just the reality of it."

The convent was originally built in 1607, the same year the first permanent settlement was established in North America and named Jamestown after King James I. This is the beautiful cloister.

Inside the convent there is a small but ornate chapel. The center alcove of the altar contains an image of the Virgin of Candelaria. The story is that a friar in Candelaria, a town in the Colombian Andean area, had an apparition of the Virgin tell him to build a church on the hill overlooking Cartagena in order to drive out pagan practices (specifically the worship of a goat) in the area. The friar did as he was told, including throwing the aforementioned goat off the cliff at the top of the hill.

I am intrigued by this painting in the museum. That's the convent on the top left with the Virgin of Candelaria below. The Holy Trinity occupy the upper center, and I'm guessing that is the friar on the right who saw the apparition.  I have no idea who all those people are on the bottom third.

Before we got back in the car to go down to the city proper, we stopped for some fruit, something we had been looking forward to in our travels.

This concoction is "salpicón," a cup of fresh fruit chopped into small pieces and then drenched in a cold, refreshing juice. It was really, really, REALLY delicious, made even more so because we were hot and sweaty.

Once back down in the city, we drove to the Old Town area, parked the car, and set off on foot. This part of the city needs to be walked.

It was fun to see an "Umbrella Alley" like the one in the city where we live. Who stole the idea from whom?

In one square, a bronze reclining nude by Colombian artist Fernando Botero was getting a lot of attention. You can tell where it gets touched the most by the color. Carolina told us that the story is that one day Botero was having coffee in this square and noted that it needed a sculpture to beautify it. The square is bordered on one side by a cathedral, and when someone questioned putting a nude in front of the cathedral, he said something like, "The marriage of God and art. It's perfect!"

We stopped for some photos with the ubiquitous and iconic Palenqueras: black women in very colorful dresses balancing bowls of fruit on their heads. We took dozens of photos--with MY phone--so most of them were lost when my phone was stolen the next day, but luckily either Savannah or Bob took a few as well. We each had a turn balancing the bowl on top of our head.

In 1691 a small village southeast of Cartagena named San Basilio de Palenque declared its independence from Spain. The village, ruled entirely by runaway slaves, became the first free town in the Americas and the Palenqueros and Palenqueras became the first free Africans. To make money, the poor villagers would pack baskets of fruit, put on their traditional African dress, and make the trek to Cartegena on foot to sell their wares.

Today the Palenqueras make a lot more money posing for photos with tourists than they can make selling fruit. In fact, after we took our pictures, I was pulling out my wallet to give them a couple of dollars, but one of them declared. "FIVE dollars. EACH." Would could we say?

The highlight of the day and one of the highlights of the trip was the street food tour we had scheduled with Carolina for the afternoon. During the next few hours, we had some of the best food of the whole trip, and it was all cooked and prepared on rolling carts without the interference of a State Health Department. (Whether that is good or bad depends on whether or not you get sick, right? We stayed healthy.)

We began with several versions of arepas, My favorite was this one, a puffy biscuit cut in half and filled with local cheese, mozzarella cheese, butter, and if you want it, ham or chicken or other fillings.

We tried all kinds of fruit we had never had before.  I think this one with sweet, milky beans inside a long pod is called guama or guaba.

Honestly, I can't remember for sure what these fruits are, but I'm going to make a guess. I think this is granadilla, which has a jelly-like pulp and edible seeds:

  I think this might be tomate de arbol:

Guayaba?

Not a clue what the brown ones are, but the lower ones are mangoes.

I think this one is sapote:

This was our favorite: mangosteen.

Of course, we had to stop at the food carts selling desserts and try an assortment.  I didn't find anything better than a good dark chocolate truffle, but it was fun to try so many sweets that I'd never tasted before.

One of our favorite street food finds was the ceviche stand. 

There were various types of fish to try, including shrimp, snail, squid, octopus, oysters, lobsters, and crab.

Carolina, Bob, and I both got one with an assortment of all types of fish, and Savannah had straight octopus. (Bob's comment: "That's my girl.") Instead of a vinegar sauce, Colombian ceviche has a  creamy tomato-based sauce. It was spectacular--one of my favorite foods of the whole trip. This 8-oz cup cost about $2.00:

Savannah and Carolina, our incredible guide.

We also tried this sweet, milky drink made from corn (cold, refreshing, and delicious) and a crunchy fried thing flavored with anise (not very good) from a nearby food cart.

Our next stop was a juice place. 

First we tasted the fresh fruit, then we had the drink made from it. 

Our favorite was sapote, which tastes like strawberries. We also had lulo juice and something that looked like a tomato.

We learned that you could have the straight juice, or you can order it "with milk," which I think also means "with copious amounts of sugar."  Our "with milk" versions tasted like milkshakes--really good milkshakes.

We stopped again for a few more versions of the ubiquitous arepas.

This one was flat and crunchy. Not my favorite.

I much prefer mine a little doughy and filled with butter, cheese, and other things.

Bob had to try the meat-on-a-spit. I think he liked it.

READING

I had already read a lot of novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's most popular author, and I wanted to try another author. After doing some research, I settled on two fairly short books by Colombian author Tomás González. 

I started with Difficult Light, and found the understatement in this story of a family dealing with the paralysis of one of their sons caused by a car accident a little frustrating.  As the injured son’s pain grows to levels he cannot tolerate, his father, an artist, turns to his canvas to cope while his mother and brother immerse themselves in caring for the young man. Heavy decisions have to be made, and I wanted more than the author revealed about the state of mind of all the characters. However, the story does tell of the power of family and grief. Told by the father in retrospective fashion, the story is revealed bit by bit though the ultimate outcome is clear from early on.

 I liked my second read, The Storm,  much more. A narcissistic, bombastic man takes his two resentful adult sons out on a fishing excursion for into the ocean when a violent storm is clearly brewing on the horizon. The man owns a dingy hotel on the coast of Colombia near Cartagena, and the story is told through the voices of his weekend tenants as well as through him, his sons, his insane ex-wife, and others. I think the writing is amazing and the depth of characters compelling.