The Spanish Lake
For 200 years the Spanish ruled the seas. South America was theirs. The trade routes, islands, minerals and resources. The Caribbean Sea was known as Spain’s lake. The epicenter of the western hemisphere was the city of Cartagena. This was the largest city in the New World and perfectly situated. It has five deep-water bays that surround it yet it’s right on the beach. (Google a map) The walled city is so large that it actually is shocking to see. Anybody who’s traveled Europe and visited walled cities knows there’s one thing in common… small. Cartagena is huge! Maybe a couple of square miles. We walked every street, we soaked up the history, we enjoyed every minute. Of course you don’t need to sail to Columbia to see Cartagena. You can do that by ship or plane and we highly recommend it.
If the song fits
The weather in Cartagena was a complete change from the Eastern Caribbean. There is less humidity and it creates blue skies like you see in Southern California. Each day we would look out and say “It never rains in Cartagena” and after a few times the song from the 70’s came in to our heads and that became our theme song for the trip. It’s always tough picking music for our videos and this one especially since we are heading through the Panama Canal and then to California. I guess there are plenty of other California songs I can use when we are there because I couldn’t resist it here.
Club of Fish
We checked into our marina Club De Pesca. It was cool and facing the walls of the city. Lots of fancy boats. In fact there are so few marinas in Colombia that anybody who is anybody will end up with their boat here. We spent four days enjoying the sights and working on the boat. The locals couldn’t have been friendlier.
Grand Case eat your heart out
Everyone knows that the culinary epicenter of the Caribbean is the bay of Grand Case on French side of St. Martin. It does have a lot of great restaurants with French chefs but Cartagena should be listed as number 1. Sure Grand Case is on an island which makes it special but we hadn’t had “great food” since we left the northern Caribbean until we reached Cartagena. We assumed the city would be too touristy and the food would be so-so like many places but not here. We spent 4 days and 4 nights inside the walls finding a different lunch and dinner spot every night. The food was amazing and each restaurant had its own flair. When we left to fly home we had already made our plans to return and picked which restaurants we would eat at again.
This video shows our time in Cartagena with some great drone footage. We will visit again. So much to see and do in Colombia and yet the cruisers often sail on by it in favor of the San Blas islands at Panama. Now who’s moving to fast……