Cartagena de Indias

Founded in 1533, Cartagena is Colombia's tale of two cities. On one hand, there is this incredible walled city with a reputation for attracting pirates from the 17th century (which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and just a few miles away is an insanely crazy downtown beach area that is reminiscent of South Beach in Miami, with its tall buildings, restaurants, bars and discos.

Just down the street from my hotel in the Bocagrande neighborhood (the Miami Beach of Cartagena) is the Cartagena Hilton and the Caribe Hotel, two of Cartagena's most exclusive and famous hotels that put Cartagena in the spotlight in 2012 after Obama's Secret Service agents were caught in a prostitution scandal in both venues.

I toured the old city both at night and during the day, both of which offered different perspectives. At night, the neighborhood is lit up and filled with party goers at the various bars and during the day it's a ghost town because the heat/humidity keeps the tourists away.

Because of its location on the Caribbean sea, Cartagena offered some amazing seafood and I was able to enjoy some incredible shrimp, lobster and oysters at a fraction of the price they would go for in the states.

The highlight of Cartagena is a trip to the castle of San Felipe de Barajas. It was originally constructed in 1536 at at one point, the walls surrounded the entire old city. According to Wikipedia:

The fortification consists of a series of walls, wide at the base and narrow toward the parapet, forming a formidable pattern of bunkers. The batteries and parapets protect one another, so making it practically impossible to take a battery without taking the whole defence system. The stone blocks used to build the castle were said to be splattered with the blood of slaves. Cartagena was a port of the black slave trade. The guns of the castle commanded the whole bay, so that any suspicious vessel attempting to dock could be attacked. The castle is striking for its grand entrance and its complex maze of tunnels. It is the most formidable defensive complex of Spanish military architecture.

 Click here to see more photos of the historical and unique city of Cartagena.