The Magic Of Cartagena, Colombia

If it isn't the bright bougainvillea tumbling from the colonial balconies or the quiet shimmer of the Caribbean Sea, then maybe it's the impromptu dance parties in the town plazas, or the joyful din of guitars, bongos and maracas that drifts through the city with the evening breeze.
Just what it is that hooks you, no one knows for sure. But soon enough, you begin to understand what the locals keep saying.
Cartagena is magic.
'There's something mystical in the air,' says Valentino Cortazar, a Colombian painter who lives within the old walled portion of the city in a one-bedroom, two-hammock apartment.
Cortazar, originally from Bogota, said he was splitting time between Miami and shiatsu massage recliner New York when he visited Cartagena eight years ago for an art exhibition--and never left.
That happens here, from time to time, that people get sucked in. Musicians Davis Pineda and Elizabeth Salaazar, who roam the streets with a guitar and bongo drums singing Latin American ballads, said they visited Cartagena from nearby Barranquilla five years ago and found a 'strange energy' they couldn't resist. The people were warmer, happier, different from the rest of Colombia. They live here now, struggling to make ends meet, staying for the music, for the beaches, for reasons they can't explain.
No wonder Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's king of magical realism, set several of his novels in Cartagena.
'Beautiful landscape, beautiful people, beautiful colors,' Cortazar muses one night over wine and massage therapy degree fish, which you'll get your fill of here. 'For an artist, it's perfect.'
It's perfect for a tourist too.
The fifth-largest city in Colombia, Cartagena (pronounced car-ta-HAY-na) has long been a choice vacation spot and professional massage chair convention hub for Colombians both for its beauty and reputation for safety in a land notorious for drug-trafficking and kidnappings. Some European tourists have discovered it, but you don't find many Americans unless they're coming off of cruise ships.
Now, security throughout the country has improved under the tough policies of President Alvaro Uribe, with the high-profile rescue in July of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, held by FARC guerrillas for more than six years, serving as a dramatic example of the weakened state of narco-terrorist groups.
Seeing renewed potential as a tourist destination, the Colombian government has launched a campaign to shed its violent image to attract more foreign visitors.
The slogan: 'Colombia, The only risk is wanting to stay.'
For Cartagena, at least, that rings very true.
Its history is rich and romantic, and some say the ghosts of its past give the city its mystique. Once the largest slave port in the New World, Cartagena fended off pirate attacks, went on witch hunts and sentenced hundreds to die in the name of the Inquisition.
More on that in a moment.
First, you need to hear about the cheap massages.
There's nothing like lying on the beach, wandering Spanish-Afro cumbia band playing nearby, while a woman with a bottle of green gunk and a beach pail full of sea water kneads the knots out of your body.
We're talking a full-body massage, lasting anywhere from half an hour to an hour and costing you only 10,000 to 30,000 pesos ($4 to $13 at current exchange rates), depending on how busy the masseuse has been that day and how good you are at haggling. This is no formal service; the roving masseuses are locals trying to make a living with their green aloe-and-algae concoction. But my masseuse Kari tells me they've gone through training, and as she diligently works out the kinks in my back, I believe her (and love her).
You'll get a lot of that in Cartagena, people trying to sell you things that you don't want, until you realize that you really do.
On the beach and in the streets, women carrying baskets of tropical fruit on their heads offer you mango slices with lime and salt. Men pushing wheelbarrows full of coconuts hack them open with machetes and stick a straw inside for you to sip. Everywhere you turn, vendors are hawking sweets, bracelets, maracas, fruit juices, ice cream, sunglasses, kitchen utensils and buckets full of freshly caught crabs, oysters and fish.
A little orientation:
The heart of Cartagena is the old walled city, known as 'el Centro,' where colorful colonial houses sit along a maze of narrow streets that change names at every block, and where you'll find the aforementioned bougainvillea and impromptu music and dancing. Within these stone walls, built to protect the city from greedy invaders, lived the noble, merchant and religious classes when it was a Spanish colony. Several of the grand houses and convents have been converted to hotels.
The best way to see it is to walk, though for about $14 you can have an informal guided tour in a horse-drawn carriage. Pass through the Plaza de Aduanas and Plaza de Los Coches, former slave markets, and see the Puerta del Reloj, a big clock tower that once was the only way into the walled city. Stop by the Portal de Dulces and buy a typical sweet from one of the rows of identical stands. I recommend the cocada de panela (a coconut-y thing), 30 cents each.
There's lots to see here, including The Palace of the Inquisition, where a tribunal announced the sentences of those found to have engaged in magic, blasphemy and witchcraft. The court here condemned about 800 people to die. Overlooking the Plaza Bolivar (as in the great liberator, Simon Bolivar), the palace has a creepy little museum of torture devices used during the Inquisition.
Outside the walls is the rest of the city--some of it colonial, much of it a modern commercial district, most of it very poor--with some important historical sites and all the beaches.
A popular area is Bocagrande, where high-rise hotels and apartment buildings overlook a long stretch of beach dotted with stands selling pina coladas and other beverages that come with small umbrellas. The beaches are generally dirty, and the grayish color of the water looks more like the Atlantic than the Caribbean, though it's calm and warm like bath water. The most beautiful beaches, with white sand and turquoise water and coral reefs, require a boat ride from Cartagena to the nearby Islas del Rosario, an archipelago about 45 minutes away.
Some worthwhile sights outside of the old city:
La Popa, a convent that sits at the highest point in Cartagena, about 750 feet up. According to the literature inside the convent, a Spanish priest founded La Popa in 1606 after having a vision instructing him to do so.
The view of the city from La Popa is spectacular, and on the winding road up the hill you can see how many locals live. Once you're at the top, you can hear how they live; the festive music rises. Go in the evening, just before the convent closes at 5:30, so you don't suffocate from the heat. It costs about $2 to enter.