Loving My Time in Cartagena

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Jan Butchofsky-Houser / Corbis

An overview of Puerta del Reloj, the main gateway that leads to the walled city of Old Town Cartagena, Colombia

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If your main objective is to laze on the beach, you'll want to leave town to do it. The beaches near Cartagena tend to be grimy and raucous. Escape by boat instead, from the town's historic port (you can't miss the old, touristy galleon whose three masts are visible from much of the Old Town) to the Islas del Rosario, an archipelago about 30 miles (1 hour) off the coast. The islands offer proper beaches — though none quite lives up to the postcard-perfect white stretches for which the Caribbean is famous — with snorkeling, scuba-diving and a range of restaurants. I snuck onto the Sofitel's private island for a luxurious, leisurely lunch at the hotel's gourmet restaurant under the mangrove trees. Another upscale island destination popular with the Colombian upper classes is Punta Iguana, which feels like a mini–South Beach. Less-expensive day-trip options dotted around the archipelago range from Colombia's version of a swim-up bar to a variety of touristy beaches equipped with cooking huts where freshly caught fish is simply but succulently prepared. Everywhere, women tout $8 massages. Beware if you're sunburned; sand and a vigorous rub can really chafe. In a few places, hawkers sell rough strands of pearls — they lack the quality of Asian or Middle Eastern pearls but are still a bargain by U.S. prices. (See the best places to travel in a recession.)

When the sun sets, the true life of Cartagena emerges. This town is a foodie mecca, boasting several excellent restaurants, the most famous of which is La Vitrola (Calle Baloco #2-01; +575-660-07-11), a classic bistro serving Cuban food, where waiters and diners usually end up dancing on the tables before the night is over. Another hot spot, Palma (Calle del Curato #38-137; +575-660-27-96), has a Colombian-Italian fusion menu and sits across from the luxury Charleston Hotel, an old Santa Teresa convent that has been fully restored. But the restaurant is so wannabe chic that its stark, monochromatic décor nearly overwhelms the excellent food. After dinner, the party continues. One can dance on the rooftop of the new boutique Hotel LM (Calle de la Mantilla #3-56; +575-664-91-00) or compete with minor European royalty for a table at the nightclub in the Sofitel Santa Clara (Calle del Torno #39-29; +575-650-47-00), which occupies another former convent in the San Diego barrio.

There's no shortage of rooms to rent in the Old Town. Budget hotels and hostels are mostly clustered in Getsemani. Midrange and upscale accommodations can be found everywhere, many in El Centro or San Diego; the latter was once a middle-class neighborhood but is now peppered with million-dollar homes like the one 17 of us rented: a 200-year-old, eight-bedroom, blue row house (Casa Santissimo, San Diego), which goes for $2,500 per week.

If you still have any anxiety about safety, consider this: when we arrived from the airport in a Hyundai minitaxi bursting at the seams, one of our friends left his wallet, heavy with cash, in the back of the cab. He called around to taxi companies that night but despaired of ever seeing his billfold again, resigning himself to the tedium of canceled cards and replaced IDs. The next morning a honk sounded out front — the cabdriver had returned, sheepishly handing back the wallet with everything intact, apologizing profusely for not coming sooner. When asked by my astonished friend why he had brought it back, the cabbie replied simply that he must, with a look in his eye that spoke volumes about the punishment for stealing from tourists. Rarely have I felt so safe in a city; I didn't hesitate to walk home alone at 3 in the morning the couple of times my salsa-weary legs got the best of me before my companions tired.

When I returned to Washington, my skeptical friends asked how my trip went. Go now, was my advice, quickly, before Cartagena is overrun by Starbucks, McDonald's and Hilton — all of which are opening branches there soon. The first time I visited the city — on a business stopover in 2004 — it had a handful of high-rise buildings. Now it has 48, with dozens more under construction. Right now the Cartagena landscape is still shaped by local stores and galleries, Colombian cooking, and the open, curious hospitality of people who haven't yet dealt with pushy hordes of foreign tourists. But they're yearning for the boom that is about to come. At Café del Mar — the Cartagena branch of the famed Ibiza beach bar — a bartender quizzed me one night on how I would describe his city to the people back home. "Tell them," he begged, "tell them it's not like Afghanistan here."

Letting the cool ocean breeze wash over me as I looked out at the Caribbean from the bar's perch on an antique turret, caipirinha in hand and a well-heeled crowd of European and Latin American dancers twisting before me to the ever present salsa, I couldn't have agreed more: if there exists an antithesis of Afghanistan, Cartagena is it.

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