'She's watching the detectives': Cartagena, Colombia, tamer than you think

When we told people we were planning a week's vacation in Cartagena, Colombia, their eyes widened and their mouths hung agape.

"Really? Is it safe?" they gasped, as if it were still the era of the Cali Cartel and Pablo Escobar. Some who had been there remembered armed guards and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling the port and the hotels. That was, of course, 20 years ago. Nevertheless, even today, the most common Cartagena FAQ is still "Is it safe in Cartagena?"

"Yes, it's okay," we assured everyone. "Cartagena is a big tourist spot now. It's all perfectly safe, and we're staying in a luxury Airbnb apartment in the Centro Historico."

"Well, be careful anyway!"

We felt so safe there, in fact--so charmed by the brightly colored Cartagenan storefronts, turned-wood window bars, balconies dripping with bougainvillea, 17th-century walls, and multicolored pennants fluttering over the streets--that by our third day in town, we were craving a little real excitement.

A drug bust or two might be nice.

Bill observed that, if you travel enough, you find that the whole world puts on the same face for tourists. All that varies are the climate and the language.

Every spot has its persistent street vendors to whom you must keep saying, "No, thanks" in their native tongue. There are always street performers like the Invisible Man who haunts Cartagena's Plaza San Diego.  Horse-drawn carriages clop up and down the streets, carrying bored girls reading their cell phones. Even what we'd thought were spontaneous explosions of color on the city's exteriors were, we learned, prescribed by city regulation from a palette of approved hues and sequences.

It turned out that our biggest problem here was inadvertently scheduling our stay during Semana Santa (Holy Week), when Cartagena is so flooded with tourists that restaurant reservations become as necessary and hard to come by as they are during Southwest Florida's season.

Then, walking back from the bohemian Getsemani district one day, we noticed more than a few policia, street barriers, trucks full of police motorcycles, and a bomb squad van.

Here, at last, was some excitement!

When we happened upon a group of uniformed soldiers carrying guns, I could no longer contain myself.

"Que pasa?" I asked them, using two of my handful of Spanish words.

The soldiers replied that El Presidente would soon be driven along the route we were walking.

Not quite Pablo, but the president of Colombia was pretty good as far as excitement went. We didn't linger to see him chauffeured past us, but returned to the apartment to prepare for our usual quiet evening.

One of our favorite hangouts had become El Balcon, a restaurant with a balcony bar overlooking the action on Plaza San Diego below--street vendors accosting couples unfortunate enough to be sitting at street level, stray dogs making their nightly rounds, the Invisible Man hopping aboard carriages to startle the passengers.

A huge empanada stand pops up there every night, always drawing a throng hungry for its $1 empanadas, arepas de huevo, and carimanolas. It's been there, in the hands of the same family, for half a century, and never has anyone been made sick by its street food.

While we watched the crowd lining up for eats, suddenly the plaza was swarmed by policia. Something sure was happening, but we didn't know what.  Could this be the big bust we'd been waiting for?

Policia fanned out through the plaza, clearing away all the street vendors, muttering into walkie-talkies, checking their watches.

Then, a mountainous man wearing a civilian's plaid shirt and an unmistakable air of authority--clearly someone whom all the police and the empanada sellers knew and respected--appeared, overseeing the scene from the sidelines.  This, we felt, was a guy who could tell stories about "the day" in Colombia, but what American gringa would dare ask him? Not me.  

Anyhow, he meant business tonight.

We later learned that no drug bust was going down tonight. El Presidente, Ivan Duque, was here, too, dining with guests just on the other side of the plaza.  Protocol demanded the clearing of unsightly street vendors and other riff-raff, and the assurance of security for his visit.

The only street vendor who went relatively undisturbed, though the majority of his customers had scattered, was the empanada seller who, after all these years, appears to be above the law.

And, after surveying the plaza one last time, "Senor Montana" took advantage of being the only one in line for an empanada.