After our extremely hot and humid visit to Castillo San Felipe de Barajas it was a huge relief to get back aboard the air-conditioned bus and head to the next destination even if it wasn’t that far away. The old, walled city of Cartagena, in addition to being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is reasonably compact and reasonably easily walkable, but we were still happy to get off our feet and get those cooling vents above our heads pointed firmly at our faces on full. The drive wasn’t very long, therefore, but it was interesting to see quite a lot of surface water on the roads. When it rains (as it apparently had on the day before we arrived), it rains, and Cartagena’s drainage systems clearly struggled in some cases.
Our first stop was at Las Bóvedas. This attractive eighteenth century construction has been used as storage vaults, garrisons, and cells for prisoners, but these days it’s a popular destination for tourists looking for souvenirs and that’s why we were taken there.
We bought some gifts then had a little walk around the area away from the crowds of people while we waited for the time to head back to the bus to come around. As we started back we encountered two palenqueras. These are the women in bright, colourful dresses with fruit on their heads and if you want to take a photo of them then you will be expected to pay a dollar or two to each of them for the privilege.
The history of the palenqueras is an interesting one. During Spanish colonisation of this part of the world some slaves would sometimes escape and form defensive communities far from any oppressive rule while maintaining African traditions and language. These places were called palenques and over time, while the men were protecting their towns – such as Palenque de San Basilio, the first free town in the Americas – the women would engage in trade with nearby cities, including Cartagena.
We hopped back on the bus for a short drive that soon became snarled up in traffic. After a bit of a conversation between the driver and tour guide the decision was made to get off a little earlier than planned and walk to the next destination. It would be hot, of course, but the narrow roads and tall colonial buildings within Cartagena’s walled city offered lots of shady routes.
Door knockers on some of the buildings we passed were pointed out to us. The different types gave some indication as to who had lived there in the past; fish, for instance, would mean sailors or fish merchants had lived there, while the lion was indicative of a former military person’s residence.
We soon passed by the Convento de Santo Domingo, the oldest church in Cartagena, established in the sixteenth century to bring Catholicism to Colombia whether it wanted it or not.
Beside the church was a public square, the Plaza Santo Domingo, once a site for executions during the Inquisition but now home to a sculpture by celebrated Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. If you’ve not seen his art before then it’s well worth a look as he has a very distinctive style that always produces curvy figures and La Gorda Gertrudis is typical of this. Naturally, there are parts of the bronze artwork that are supposed to bring luck to you if you rub them, and naturally it’s not the knees.
Our walk through the fabulously colourful buildings with their various colonial styles shortly brought us to Museo Histórico de Cartagena de Indias, a museum largely focusing on torture and persecutions during Spanish rule. A very nice building with a couple of courtyard spaces and associated shade from the sun but the Inquisition torture equipment was perhaps not as interesting to us as to passengers from the USA, for example, as we had visited a few torture museums in Europe before with arguably far more information and better examples of pain devices.
We had one more brief stop before getting some free time to explore Cartagena, and that was to an emerald jewellery shop. We’re familiar with Colombian emeralds because my wife’s engagement ring has one in it, a fact we mentioned and demonstrated when asked if we wanted to buy one while we were there, and a fact that still didn’t put off the salesperson who tried to insist that every woman should have two at the very least. We did not buy a second one.
We had about half an hour to ourselves at this point so headed off on an aimless wander up and down the attractive roads largely arranged in a grid pattern. We passed by the house in which Sir Francis Drake briefly stayed after his attack on the port and destruction of so many buildings that precipitated the subsequent building of the walls of the city and I was happy to take lots of pictures of the bright, colourful architecture that heavily favoured the colour yellow.
We had a few street vendors approach us but a simple “No, gracias” seemed to work well enough in fending them off. However, there was one interesting moment when a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, came over.
“Are you American?” he asked.
“No, English.”
“Oh, England!” he replied and talked for a moment about football before suddenly asking “Hey, then, do you want some coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I replied.
“No,” he said, then looked around slyly and leaned in to slowly ask again. “Do you want some coffee?”
He was not asking if we wanted some coffee. We still didn’t want the not-coffee he was offering, though, and with a smile we parted company.
We had hoped towards the end of our free time that we’d be able to get into the Plaza de Bolívar as it was close to where we needed to meet up and looked nice and shady under the trees. There was a fountain and sculptures within to photograph too, but the entrance was blocked for repairs for something or the other. Fortunately, though, we got some respite from the heat because a street vendor selling beer and soft drinks from a wheeled fridge passed by at this point and we availed ourselves of two local lagers. Lagers aren’t our first choice when it comes to beers but sometimes when it’s baking hot – and it was baking hot in Cartagena – they’re absolutely perfect.
In the next post from this Ruby Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll conclude our day’s excursion in Cartagena with a short walk before a visit to a church, some traditional dancing, and a museum.