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Acting Jack Spratt
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Cartagena is a colourful colonial town founded in the mid 16th century. Being a Caribbean port it was the first stop in Colombia for the Spanish settlers, thus became a safe haven for all of their fancy goods that they brought from Europe. Unfortunately for them, with all the treasures being stored in Cartegena it quickly became a favourite city for pirates to sack. Since it had no lack of wealth, the powers-that-be in Cartagena decided to make it an inpenetrable fortress and thus built a 20ft stone wall around the entire city. The wall is still there today, surrounding the elaborate balconies and doorways of the beautiful Hispanic archetecture within.
I was here in the midst of ´Semana Santa´, which means that I was in the biggest Colombian tourist destination during the biggest vacation week of the year. Santa Semana is like our Easter, but as is typical of Latin American holidays, it is spread out over one giant party week. The place was rammed; pretty much every Colombian with the money to do so was in Cartagena Still, I was one of the only gringo´s, and even though it was full of tourists, since they were local it still seemed pretty authentic. Weird, I know. Plus, my four days here were completely pirate-free, so the wall must still be working.
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