KIRAN GOES PLACES
Cartagena, from its dark, painful past to its painted walls, from dancing in Getsemaní to the smoothest Colombian coffee, is a proper city of contrast. We'd covered a lot of the big stuff on previous trips through, the walking tour, the history of the slave ports and San Basilio de Palenque, the street art, Plaza Trinidad, so this time round felt more like actually living in the city for a few days rather than ticking off a list.
Day one: coffee, tacos and a walking tour we'd basically already done
Good morning from Cartagena. First stop, as always, coffee, in a bit of a rush because we had a walking tour booked. We made it very sweatily to the meeting point with coffee in hand from Ammo Café, just opposite our hostel, using beans from Santa Marta's coffee region. The tour covered ground we half knew already, the winding streets, the indigenous history, the slave trade, San Basilio de Palenque, but it's the kind of history that's worth hearing again. Lunch was sushi at El Rincón, an odd choice for Colombia, but cold and fresh and exactly what we needed in the heat, then a second coffee stop at Nia Bakery for one of their famous cookies.
One thing our guide pointed out that I hadn't heard before, the door knockers all over the old town aren't just decorative. Different animals and symbols meant different things about the house, and if you had an iguana on your door, it meant you had some connection to the royal family.
An iguana door knocker, a small sign that the house once had a royal connection.
We wandered into Getsemaní in the afternoon for our own unofficial street art tour, walked down Calle del Jardín and through the Las Bóvedas arts and crafts market, then stopped for tacos at Los Tacos del Gordo, cheese literally built into the skin of the taco, like a double taco. As evening fell we headed to Alquímico, a three storey bar in an old mansion that's now officially one of the best in the world, every floor a completely different vibe, then finished the night at Café Havana, loud, packed, properly alive even that late.
Day two: painting badly, a salsa class, and the best sushi of the trip
Scorching hot from the moment we woke up. Breakfast was good sourdough, something we'd been missing badly after months without decent bread in South America. Then it was back into Getsemaní for round two of the street art, before an afternoon we hadn't really planned for, painting and sipping wine back at the hostel pool, looking out over the rooftops and the skyline. I went a bit abstract, bright colours, no real plan. Sam's came out actually good.
An unplanned afternoon of painting and wine by the pool, better than half the excursions we'd booked.
Dance is really at the heart of the country, and we wanted a proper taste of it before Medellín, so we booked a class at Crazy Salsa. It was very much a dance studio rather than a bar, so not much atmosphere, but a genuinely good way to actually learn the steps rather than just flailing on a dance floor later that night.
Learning actual steps at Crazy Salsa, rather than just winging it later.
Dinner was at Pezetarian, veggie and seafood dishes, sushi squares and jalapeño so nicely seasoned it barely needed the sauce, genuinely some of the best sushi of the whole trip, temple crunch and all. After dinner it was back to Café Havana, trumpets, flute, singers, everyone up dancing, one of the best nights we'd had in Colombia so far, and worth every bit of that earlier lesson.
Day three: coffee theatre and a very honest afternoon
Colombia's coffee is world famous, grown high in the Andes and handpicked bean by bean, and when in Cartagena you can't really skip Café San Alberto, the country's most awarded coffee, doing this since 1972 and turning the tasting into a full performance. We went for the coffee flight, a proper splurge at around $12 to $13 per person, working through a few different roasts with smelling cards on the side, one tasted more like tea, one properly fruity, reminding us of chewing on raw coffee cherries back in Guatemala.
What we quietly realised halfway through is that a full coffee flight is a lot of coffee, and we were going to be buzzing for about twelve hours after it. So naturally we spent most of the afternoon doing travel admin, visas, bookings, laundry, the unglamorous reality of being away for over six months that never makes it into the highlight reel but takes up a genuine chunk of any long trip.
The bit that never makes the highlight reel, six months in and still doing laundry and visa admin.
Our last dinner was at El Peso, just around the corner from the hostel in Getsemaní, always packed, so we finally went to see what the fuss was about. Seafood birria tacos, not something I'd had before, and a crunchy cauliflower taco alongside, both genuinely excellent and properly reasonably priced.
Seafood birria tacos at El Peso, the neighbourhood spot that was always packed for a reason.
Cartagena is colourful, creative and full of history, and it's a city that feels completely different to anywhere else in Colombia. Give it enough days and it stops being a checklist and starts being somewhere you're just living for a bit, painting badly, doing your laundry, and finally learning which door knocker means what.