Magical Cartagena

MANILA, Philippines - Centuries-old walls surround an area of narrow cobbled streets and Spanish colonial homes and Catholic churches, protecting the enclave from marauders from the sea just outside the walls. Within the walls horse-drawn carriages serve as taxis to interesting spots.

This is not Intramuros but the Old Town of Cartagena, the fifth largest city and top tourist destination in Colombia. Visiting this city named after another one in Spain, you can see why it inspired the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Fondly called “Gabo” by his compatriots, the Nobel laureate worked here as a journalist and spent a lot of time in his sprawling home within the walled fortifications, beside the 17th-century convent of Santa Clara. The convent, which readers will remember from Gabo’s novel Of Love and Other Demons, is now a five-star Sofitel hotel.

Stalls boasting of first edition books by Gabo can be found within the walls below the Torre de Reloj or clock tower, the main entrance to the Old Town. Its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 has helped preserve much of the town’s charming colonial architecture.

It’s not just the Caribbean weather that is hot; Colombian passion shows even when vendors pitch their colorful woven sombreros to visitors. A program to get out-of-school youth off the streets of the Old Town turns them into dancers. Earlier this year the street kids performed a wonderful modern dance tribute to Colombians descended from slaves, at the opening of the annual World Newspaper Congress and World Editors’ Forum. Titled Negra-Anger, their finale was a terrific tribute to the late African-American singer Nina Simone and her most famous song, “Sinnerman.”

Little parks are dotted with sculpture. These range from a life-size bronze of Pope John Paul II, who visited Cartagena for a week in 1986 to mourn 23,000 people killed in a mudslide induced by a volcanic eruption, to sublimely naked, voluptuous Gertrudes, sprawled on her side in front of a church in Plaza Sto. Domingo. Touch this larger-than-life sculpture of Fernando Botero, tourists are told, and they are assured of returning to Cartagena. Botero was born in Medellin, which in recent years gained notoriety for being the home of one of Colombia’s most ruthless drug cartels.

Brush up on your Spanish when you visit Cartagena; many of the locals don’t speak English. And you get a good bargain when you can manage conversational Spanish. Remember that in Spanish, derecho means right, not straight ahead.

Filipinos will see many similarities between Manila and Cartagena. Its Church of San Agustin looks like our San Agustin Church in Intramuros. Vendors push carts selling coconuts for the juice and flesh.

But the Colombian enclave is way ahead in tourism development and preservation of its cultural heritage. Within the Old Town some of Colombia’s wealthiest, including drug cartel leaders or their heirs, maintain colonial mansions nestled amid tropical gardens. Most of the houses have terracotta roofs and are painted in salmon, orange, coral pink and yellow – colors that Colombians say are easier on the eye in the blazing Caribbean sun.

Around the Old Town, picturesque wooden balconies dripping with colorful bougainvilleas and vines overlook narrow cobbled streets where shops selling the country’s key exports – top-grade emeralds and Colombian coffee – open to sidewalks where hats, costume jewelry and tourist kitsch are on sale.

Vending appears regulated. Women who sell pineapples, avocados, red papayas, mangoes and other fruits wear similar gaily colored costumes. They carry the fruit baskets on their heads as they walk to their designated vending spots in the squares that dot the Old Town. Kids run around with flasks filled with Colombian coffee, which they sell for the equivalent of about P7 per Styrofoam cup – 20 times cheaper than in the air-conditioned cafés that abound in the area.

Near the gold and emerald museums is a walk dedicated to another Colombian treasure: its beauty queens. Hollywood has its Walk of Fame; Cartagena’s unique walk features photos of all the Miss Colombias.

During the colonial period, Cartagena served as transshipment point for gold and silver that the Spaniards extracted in Peru and loaded onto galleons – another story familiar to Filipinos whose history lessons include the galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco in Mexico.

The galleons from Cartagena set sail twice a year, attracting the attention of pirates and imperial Spain’s rivals the British and French. Like colonial Manila, Cartagena was also raided by the British – first by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, which prompted Spain’s King Felipe II to order the walled fortifications built by his top architect Bautista Antonelli, and then in 1741 by a flotilla of 186 ships commanded by Admiral Edward Vernon; the walls held and Vernon was repelled. With the repeated raids, it took 200 years for Spain to complete the walls, at the enormous cost of 50 million gold pesos.

Haunted Cartagena

At night the walled city takes on a different appeal. Yellow lights bathe the area in a glow that one either finds romantic or eerie. Filipinos will find affinity with Colombians in the belief in ghosts and the supernatural. Nuns supposedly haunt the Santa Clara and another colonial convent converted into a five-star hotel, the Charleston Santa Teresa.

I didn’t encounter any ghostly presence during my stay at the Charleston, which like the Santa Clara offers magnificent views of the city and the sea.

But it was fun to be warned by a tour guide to watch out for the devil perched on a gargoyle within the walls, ready to put the evil eye on hapless mortals, and to be wary of a mournful, headless monk.

There must be ghosts, too, at the place where the Catholic clergy conducted the Inquisition. The structure remains intact and has been turned into a museum complete with a guillotine and other instruments of torture from the colonial era.

There were no ghosts either when we visited San Felipe de Barajas, the castle crisscrossed with tunnels that was the command center for the Spaniards who held off Admiral Vernon’s 23,000 men and 2,000 cannons in 1741. The massive castle walls, built in a slant to repel bullets, were held together by a durable mixture of cement, sand, water from the sea and beeswax, and remained intact after months of being under siege, but the defenders were said to have wiped out the rats in the castle for sustenance as their food ran out.

Numerology, too

The number 11, tourists quickly learn, has important significance in the history of the city that was founded in 1533 by Spanish conquistadores led by Pedro de Heredia. This was just 12 years after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in Leyte on a Spanish-sponsored expedition and was killed later in Mactan by local chieftain Lapu-Lapu.

Eleven Colombians declared their independence from Spain at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1811. Is the number lucky? A tour guide told us she had bet several times on the number 11 but never won the lottery.

As in the Philippines, actual independence from Spain would take time and much bloodshed, with Simon Bolivar using Cartagena to stage many epic battles to kick out Spanish colonizers. Today the central square where the mayor’s office is located is named after Bolivar. There are regular dance performances in the Plaza de Bolivar.

The walled enclave is dotted with fine restaurants, casual dining areas and mom-and-pop eateries packed with locals feasting on pollo frito con bollo or fried chicken with corn rolls.

For affordable snacks, tourists can sample cheese-filled cornmeal flatcakes called arepas de queso, which vendors fry in many of the little plazas.

Beaches beckon

You can tour the Old Town within a day, but Cartagena has many other attractions outside the walls, starting with its beaches.

Just an hour-long ride away by speedboat is the Rosario Islands archipelago, where you can go swimming and snorkeling, enjoy water sports or a massage and visit an oceanarium while admiring  Cartagena Bay. Resorts offer buffet lunches and allow visitors to walk around for a first-hand look at island life.

Closer to the walled town is the Bocagrande – a modern area that looks like Miami Beach or Waikiki in Honolulu. It is said that drug cartel bosses have driven up real estate prices in the enclave, whose beaches teem even on weekdays with swimmers of all sizes, shapes and ages, their skin bronzed by the Caribbean sun.

Lazing on the beach, or getting a massage in the Rosario archipelago quickly washes away the fatigue of a grueling flight of about a day from Manila to Cartagena. I had to spend a night in Los Angeles to take a connecting flight to Panama and then to Colombia.

In the sultry evening, the music and warm light on the ancient walls transport visitors to Gabo’s land, where reality meets magic, compelling visitors to return.