Cartagena - Cursed by His Holiness


A hat that suits me?? Magical Realism at work again

People will tell you Cartagena is a great place. Travel guides will rave about its history and night life. Fellow travellers will describe streets teeming with life and energy day or night, and a city that loves to get down. All this is true...except when the Pope is in town.

You see, Cat and I came in from Tolú after a few relaxed days, ready to let loose for a night and sink back into bustling city life. We got a bus in from the terminal (very dodgy place - probably the worst I have seen on my trip!) to the old city, dropped our bags, and immediately went in search of a well-needed beer in the still-sweltering Saturday night.
It's a pretty place in the daytime!
Immediately something felt strange. As Seuss might say, we looked all around but no beer could be found. Bars were closed. People were hanging out in the streets, but no one looked festive. It was all very quiet, and frankly a bit unnerving. Everyone was sober. In Latin America, on a Saturday. After walking into a bar that was top of the list of Cartagena hot night spots without luck, we were finally told the reason: His Holiness, Pope Francis I, would be gracing the city on Sunday, and the mayor had decreed that no alcohol was to be sold that weekend. Well, shit.

We gave up on the night out, and planned to go to the famous old fort the next morning. We were up relatively bright and early for backpackers, and wandered across town to the fort. We walk up to the ticket booth, only to be told, "Está cerrado hoy día. The Pope is here". We hadn't realised he would be parading through the city on his way to bless a holy relic, and since the fort overlooked his route it was closed as a security precaution. Feeling that Catholic God was having a laugh at us, we decided we might as well join the parade while we were there, and we managed to get a glimpse:

Well, sort of

So we spent the rest of the day walking the old walls, which was actually pretty cool. We also found a cool cafe/bookshop, and I read some short stories by Jorge Luis Borges in Spanish, who was refreshingly easy to read after attempting the works Colombia's national author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Look at all those gun portals!
As the Pope had left on Sunday, the next day we finally got to see the fort, which was a really cool experience. It's been a long time since I last visited a castle! However, this didn't resemble any of the grandiose castles I had seen before in England. Squat, pyramidic and 100% business, this yellow-stoned defender had been the last line of defence against the many raids and invasions of rival European powers in the colonial ages, notably by Francis Drake. For once I got to see his invasions from the Spanish perspective, though since the Spanish were really just salty about losing some of the gold they had robbed from the natives, I wasn't hugely sympathetic.
Bottom of the fort looking up. Pretty intimidating!
Our last day in Cartagena took us to Playa Blanca, a beautiful beach across the water from the old city. Until recently this was only accessible by a costly speedboat or a bribe to a barge captain, but a new bridge has made it cheap and easy to get there from the city. Once again we spent a day lazing on white sand drinking cocktails, but this beach had lots of vendors offering us trinkets and bits to eat. We bought some fresh crabs with lime for lunch from one guy, a bargain at 4 for 8,000 pesos (about $3AUD). It is possible to stay in a beachside hostel, but we weren't sure it was worth it and headed back to the city for the night.
Blaya Blanca feat. swarthy Dane
While we had a good time here, this city has a dark history that bleeds into the present. Cartagena itself is an interesting place, and not just because of the fortifications. Once upon a time, this was a major slave-trading port, and the slaves freed by law or escape settled the area that is now the sprawling suburbs of Cartagena. To this day, it is a city riven with inequality, with the old city housing the wealthy echelons of society and catering to tourists while much of the city lies ignored with poor service provision. I believe the reason why the bus terminal was so dodgy was because most tourists arrive by plane into the airport just outside the old city, and more transport investment is concentrated there rather than in the more proletarian bus terminal. This is one of the realities of travel in other societies, the confrontation with the unexpected and disheartening alongside the fun and adventure, providing an occasionally bleak perspective on the road we walk.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huarmey - Mud, Sweat and Volunteers

Image
Mariciela in what used to be her bedroom After hearing so much about volunteering from other friends on the road, I decided to give up a couple of weeks to volunteer in a small town badly hit by flooding in March this year. So after a 23 hour bus to Lima, a night in the capital and another 5 hour bus up the coast, I found myself at the scene of one of the most catastrophic disasters to hit Peru in decades. Around the time I was flying into South America, most of the coastal provinces of Peru, normally a desert area, were subject to more rain than they would normally get in a year in a less than week. A lot of significant damage was done in the north of the country which is where most of the disaster response has occurred, but next to the small but important provincial town of Huarmey, the normally very placid local river became a raging torrent that sent flood water as high as 2 metres in two separate floods a few days apart. Before... The organisation I work for, All ...
Read more

Chicken Bus Fear - Should You Catch One?

To get around Central America without wheels of your own, you have two options: chicken buses, or tourist shuttles. Many travellers are nervous of chicken buses and choose to pay very high prices for shuttles, but you don't need to! Here is my list of reasons for shaking off the chicken bus fear and taking the wild ride with the locals: - Chicken buses are cheap! The general price for an inter-city chicken bus is about $1-2 per hour of driving. For example, the bus between Leon and Managua that takes around 2 hours generally costs 50-60 Cordoba or $2, while the minimum shuttle price is $9 for the same amount of time! - There's snacks on chicken buses! Nicaragua in particular has a thriving network of people dedicated to selling fresh food on chicken buses. Whether you want some fresh baked corn bread, donuts with treacle sauce, coconut bread, hot tamales, pineapple pastry popcorn, sweets or just some fruit and veg, the chicken buses have it all. The vendors board the bus ...
Read more

La Vida Nica - Chicken Buses

Image
I thought I would end my blog's long hiatus by doing a few posts about the 6 months I spent in Central America, most of that in Nicaragua. First up in the series is the iconic method of public transport in all Central American countries: the Chicken Bus! These types of buses run inter-city and suburban transport routes across Central America. The name comes from the habit of some locals to take their farm animals with them, and the name has stuck in the tourist community. It isn't as common as people make it out to be - I think in over 100 chicken bus rides I only saw a handful of chickens and a few boxes of chicks. That said, it does always make you giggle when you hear the box above your head tweeting as you drive. To run the bus you need at least two people: the chofer  (driver) and at least one  ayudante  (assistant). The driver's job is simple: navigating the route in as little time as possible, usually achieved through driving that would make Vin Diesel ...
Read more