Category: Cartagena 2016

December 25, 2016

Felice Navidad.

If you saw my smile on Facebook when I was at the bottom of Castillo San Felipe, the largest fort anywhere in the Spanish colonies, you can imagine how much wider it was today when I actually got to scale the fort to take pictures at the top.

Built after Francis Drake ransacked the city and held it hostage for 120,000 ducats, the Spanish government freed the funds to finally build the fort as part of the walls and fortifications to protect Cartagena from future pirate raids.  The Fort did that, helping repel French forces in the 1690s (part of an ongoing struggle with Louis XIV that culminated in the War of Spanish Succession). But the ultimate challenge was during the War of Jenkin’s Ear (1739-1741)—look that one up in your history books—when Admiral Vernon gathered 23000 troops and laid siege to the city.  He was so confident of victory that he prepared victory medals. In vain.  A veritable handful of Spanish soldiers, aided by the unhealthy climate—yellow fever, typhus, and malaria were rampant – sent the English packing.  One of Vernon’s aides, incidentally, was Lawrence Washington, George’s stepbrother, who named his big house Mt. Vernon, supposedly in honor of his chief.

The fort’s chief feature was its size, and its ability to command the harbor.  It was the jewel in a system of forts that blocked access to the harbor here.  It’s not self contained—apparently, troops usually came down to the city for barracks.  There’s an elaborate tunnel system connecting different parts of the fort, though, and, obviously, an arresting view of the old city.  To the other side, Cartagena spouts modern skyscrapers, a casino, McDonald’s, a beach, and the nickname, “Little Miami.”

The other part of the day I spent in the Naval museum, housed in what was once a Jesuit college, next to what is still now (again) a Jesuit church.  The ticket taker tried her best to cool my interest (“No change” meant I had to walk back to the hotel—currency here has lots of zeros; $1 US is about 3300 Colombian pesos—to make sure I could get in), then attempted to dissuade me by telling me the exhibits were all in Spanish (and the guidebook in English was “not for sale.”).  Undeterred, I went in and discovered “no habla espanol” didn’t mean I couldn’t read most of the posters; indeed, the exhibits were mostly posters, with some artifacts, talking about a history of the Caribbean, which was mostly a battle between the lawful Spanish exploiters and the unlawful enemies of El Rey de Espana.  And the wealth of Spain in the New World certainly attracted Spain’s European enemies.  As part of the mercantilist school of thought, colonies existed to make money for the mother country, and so the empires attempted to forbid trade with other powers.  That led to a lot of smuggling, a lot of resentment, and by the end of Spanish rule, was one of the reasons for independence.

The museum gave a nice picture (easier to understand than the words) of the steady deterioration of the Spanish empire, and the gradual friendship with England forged in the wars against Napoleon that led Britain (and the United States, though not for the same reason) to stay out of the Latin American wars of Independence.

Dinner put a nice end cap on our anniversary celebration.  I asked the concierge for a recommendation (as I’d been doing every night) and he suggested a Cartagena restaurant which had local dancing/music, English speaking waiters (a plus), and a local menu. I had shredded rabbit, figuring that was not a dish I’d likely get at home.  It was far enough to take a cab there, but on the way home, we stopped a carriage, which took us around the old town on our way back to the former convent we’ve called home for the past week.

Tomorrow back to the Midwest.  I suppose if I think centigrade, the difference in temperature won’t seem so extreme.  It’s been in the upper 80s here during the day, though the mornings (when I’ve gone biking) have lower humidity, nice breezes, around 75 temperature, and almost no one on the streets.

See you soon.

December 24, 2016

I’m waiting for Santa, who is less apparent here than in Bloomington; perhaps he can’t find a suit to suit this weather.  This is no place for heavy winter clothing.

If you saw my facebook post, you have a pretty good idea of what we’ve been up to, or at least me.  Yesterday, we “hung” around the Museum of the Inquisition, which was part of Spain’s efforts to combat heresy everywhere.  There were three offices in the New World (the others at Lima and Mexico City), that lasted as long as Spanish rule did.  The head of the inquisition had more power than either the governor-general, or the commandant, which surprised me.

You could be hailed before the inquisition for almost any kind of offense against the Church—which included being Protestant or Jewish (a lot of Spanish Jews converted after Ferdinand and Isabella unified Spain, but still were suspect), blasphemous, having banned books (including Kant)…and while there were a lot fewer incarcerations or deaths in Cartagena, the Inquisition lasted over 200 years.  I put it in perspective of what I saw/read about Roger Williams and the early years of the Massachusetts Bay colony, where there was also little tolerance for dissenters (and this was done by dissenters, who left England to practice their own religion).

The museum has some suspicious instruments of torture. There’s a guillotine, but that was not used.  There’s a gallows (hence the hanging around comment), and that was used here, but the usual sentence of death was carried out by burning at the stake; that was presumed to be the only way to reclaim the lost soul.

I had the chance today to go on a tour to Santa Marta, about 200 miles up the coast (or as the Spanish called the north coast, Terra Firma). I went. Santa Marta predates the founding of Cartagena by about 6 years.  The Spanish there found Indians with gold jewelry—apparently gold is loose in the local river, which “sold” the Spanish on the region.

There were two main sites I wanted to see.  The first was where Simon Bolivar died.  Bolivar, a Venezuelan, was one of the premier leaders in the insurrection which ended Spanish rule.  He was born in Caracas, but helped free what are now six countries in northern South America.  He died of tuberculosis at the age of 47.  The estate of his friend had a major sugar cane plantation (for the making of rum, which was one element in the slave trade).  The home is partly a shrine of Bolivar.  It is also an arboretum, with a number of century old trees, not all of which are local; there’s a huge fig tree of the type that I’ve seen in Angkor Wat.  There’s also snakes in the arboretum, with a caveat not to go into the pristine areas since there are poisonous snakes waiting ….

The other site was the old town.  To my dismay, the “other site” on the tour was a swim in the ocean.  I was the only English speaker on the bus, and my nearly 60 year old Spanish might not get me through my high school class.  The guide spoke no English, but one of the tourists (from the Dominican Republic) helped me convince the guide to get a cab to take me to the old section.  The guide (who habla espanol only!) offered to come with and get me there and back.

I had about an hour and a half to wander what is a less upscale version of Cartagena (and totally without walls or fortresses), with a number of colonial houses, government buildings that date back to the colonial or early Republican period.  All went well (though I was disappointed that the gold museum—which had some Indian jewelry, and was in the former customs house) until it was time to leave.  I went back to the Cathedral (supposedly the oldest in South America) since the guide firmly said, “aqui, tres”.  “Tres” came and went. Tres fifteen I started thinking about where I was going to spend the night or how I would get back to Cartagena. Finally, she appeared with her husband (the bus driver)   a shopping bag full of recent purchases.

I got out my English-Spanish dictionary and pointed out the word, “worried”.  She understood that!

Felice navidad and a merry Christmas and happy Hanukah.

Sondra, who had monitored my progress or lack thereof suggested that when we get to Cartagena, I look up a dive shop and talk to the boss about taking me solo.  “You’re not ready for prime time,”  she lectured to the already convinced.

I made contact with Dive Planet in Cartagena, and announced that I wanted to go scuba diving, I had my card, but “was not ready for prime time.”  The boss asked if I could afford a private dive, and when I assured him that I could, we were in business.  We joined one of his tours out to a dive site,   I explained I had never scubad before, and I was really worried.  My goal was to basically snorkel but about 5 feet down and not have to keep coming up for air.

The ride was through the harbor and past some of the surviving forts that guarded the entrance to the largest Spanish fort in the New World.

When we got to an underwater park, he let his group go, and worked patiently with me, reminding me of the basics, particularly how to follow and signal to him.  Somewhat emboldened, I backed over the side and all of a sudden was in the warm Caribbean.  He pointed out the deadly but beautiful Japanese Man-of-War.  When I looked at my depth gauge, I realized I was at 50 feet, which was about the limits I was equipped to handle.  The colors at that depth changed, and had I not been rational, I might have wanted to stay all day.  Fortunately, the boss was smarter than I was, so we went back to have lunch with Carolyn.  One more dive topped the day, and we returned to the city with another check on my bucket list.

I’d said I would not go anywhere specifically to scuba, but the card did enable me to add the activity to possible events.  I could not wait to gush to Patti Koranda and Dick Smith about how well their pupil had done.  Sondra already knew.

December 21,2016

The equinox day

When we got to Cartagena, two things were obvious.

First, the 32 degrees in latitude and 2300 miles in distance resulted in a temperature gain of 90 degrees.  It was -6 when we left home Monday, and 85 degrees when we got here.  While that’s not the reason I came here, it was a change; knowing that it would be much warmer here made the trip from the car to the airport terminal even longer. It’s not a motivator for me, but it could well be a satisficer when I go to the coral reef nearby tomorrow for my first scuba dive in anything other than a central Illinois quarry.  Do you think I might see something other than rusty buses?

The second change was the time warp—we went to a city where 1533 (its founding) is almost as alive as 2016.

Cartagena, today a city of about one million people, was, during the colonial period one of the richest of Spain’s possessions.  It was, among other things, the leading slave port for the plantations and mines of South America and the Caribbean.  (Slavery was abolished in Colombia in 1821, about the time that the Spanish reconquest efforts were defeated by Simon Bolivar).  It was also a warehouse on the Atlantic side, but the biggest city close to the Panama/Pacific routes that brought the wealth of the Philippines and elsewhere in Spanish Asia for transshipping to the mother country, where Charles V (among others) could squander the gold and other minerals in wars to keep the Reformation spreading (in vain).  At one time, there were 18 galleons in port, awaiting a mass departure for Spain; no wonder the French, Dutch, and above all, the English, who had pirates, eyed Cartagena with some interest.  No wonder, too, that this became one of the most fortified cities in the Americas.  The big fort—thanks to a number of British invasions (Sir Francis Drake occupied the city for two weeks, and only a huge ransom got him to depart; the money went back to Elizabeth I, and Drake died impoverished) is the largest in the Americas, perched atop one of the two hills in town.  Naturally, an Augustinian monastery sits on the other.

Small wonder, too, that the old city is walled, and the walls today encircle the tourist town.  Many of the buildings and churches have been restored, but as I said, several date back to the 17^th century.  Our hotel has bikes, and I discovered 630 am is a great time to traverse the narrow streets in relative safety, and without the heat of the midday sun.  It’s really busy with tourists. One restaurant we wanted to reserve said there were no reservations until after the new year!

Cartagena is still a major port, with berths for ships that traverse the Panama canal. That country was once part of Colombia—until the complicated story that led to the Canal Zone and the boast of President Theodore Roosevelt, “I took Panama.”

The recent peace between the FARC rebels and the government ends a 50 year war, but the history of Colombia is rife with similar episodes.  One might note that the Spanish conquest (with 200 soldiers) was aided because two of the Indian tribes had been at war with one another.  The general tone today among the people we’ve talked with is optimism.  Tourism has helped many countries leap stages of economic development.  This may be one.

fred