visiting Cartagena

If you are good with flags, know where Cartagena is, or follow Patt on Facebook, you have figured out we are now in Columbia -- specifically atop the largest fort in South America, Castillo de San Felipe de Baragas.  

Cartagena is a beautiful tourist city, primarily for Columbians according to a shop keeper I spoke with then American cruise ship patrons, followed by other South Americans and Europeans.  Cruise ship people are in and out in relative short order. The rest stay a little longer.

The "World Heritage" part has old very narrow city streets like this one where Patt is in front of our hotel with street vendors who while persistent will take no for an answer, they just forget who they ask and ask again and again despite the fact that I am wearing sunglasses and do not want another pair.

The city squares are plentiful and mostly fixed up and quite beautiful. And hot, i.e. 'mucho calor'.

One of our customs when traveling is to take the 'hop-on-hop-off' bus tour of a city we are visiting as one of the first things we do when in a new town.  Being old hands at this upper deck, seats behind the stair way - leg room and view and then if possible seats on both sides so avoidance of the sun and take in views from both sides of the bus.

and the old city wall that encloses the old city — well duh — from the other side of the bus.

and on the tour, wouldn't you know it a great hop off place we did not get off at but made a note to come back to was Castillo de San Felipe (note flag at far left end of fort at the top - yup, same flag).

Cartagena was founded in 1533 by the  Spanish commander Pedro de Heredia, for the purpose of exploiting the tombs of the ancient Indian burial grounds in the region for the gold treasure in them and living off the productive farm lands in the area. It was an extremely prosperous activity and additional gold mining followed. The city became extremely wealthy and a regional port for movement of gold from Ecuador and other regions which made Cartagena attractive to pirates both sponsored by other governments and plain old pirate pirates.

As point of reference, 1533 is 60 years before Sir Walter Raleigh lost the Lost Colony at Roanoke.

Construction started on this fort in 1537 and was of course rebuilt many times the last in 1697, though remained in use through Columbia's war with Spain for independence in 1833.

The city was overrun and pillaged many times by various government armies and navies as well as pirate armies. Sir Francis Drake succeed with an armada of 28 or so warships under his command.  This fort was successful in the defense of the city for several attacks but it was also overrun on occasion.

There are many wide open areas for assembling cannons and networks of tunnels inside the fort.

It is quite the trek up and down the ramps to get to the top of the fort or castillo.