Cartagena Audio Tours

Cartagena was founded in 1533 and within decades had become the most fortified city in the Spanish Americas, the main port through which South American gold and silver moved toward Seville. The walls the Spanish built between the 16th and 17th centuries, with their bastions and sea gates, still circle the old city completely, and walking their top with the Caribbean visible on one side and the brightly painted colonial houses below on the other is one of the more dramatic urban experiences anywhere in Latin America.

Inside the walled city, the streets narrow and wind in a way that GPS cannot usefully capture.

Bougainvillea spills from balconies. The Plaza de Bolivar, shaded by palms, has Fernando Botero's bronze cat in one corner. Outside the walls, in the Getsemani neighborhood, street art covers the houses of a working-class barrio that has been slowly gentrifying as tourists arrive, creating the familiar tension between authenticity and change. The heat is real and non-negotiable. So is the fresh mango and papaya sold on every corner.