[ Jan.2017 ] On the second day in Cartagena in Colombia, a middle aged guide called Julio came to meet us.
We had a half day walking tour in the old town.
We started from the yellow building near our hotel.
This is a row of souvenir shops now, but it used to be a prison.
Surely, there were numbers printed on the wall of every room.
From there, we went to the city wall from where we could see the blue sea.
This town was established in 1533, but the wall was built in the 1600s.
Cartagena flourished as a trading city for gold and emeralds, so to protect them, they brought slaves from Africa and made them build the wall.
Many countries wanted the wealth of the city and British and French attacked them.
On one occasion, a large number of British troops were lost, not through fighting but because many of their soldiers were killed by mosquitoes.
Julio told us that among those who came to steal their wealth, there was a British man called Drake.
He robbed the graves and stole a lot of gold and emeralds and on top of that he stayed on in the town for 48 days saying “if you give me more gold and silver, then I will go away”.
In the end he got what he wanted and went.
The place he stayed is now a hotel.
There was a plate on the wall which said “Sir Drake”.
According to Julio he was a horrible villain, but in the UK it seems that he is regarded as a kind of hero.
He was a commander at the battle of Armada in 1588 against Spain.
Anyway, the houses within the city wall are mostly sold or rent by Colombian owners to foreigners and they are running hotels or restaurants apparently.
Those colonial houses have narrow entrances, but the depth is big with a courtyard and if you want to buy one, it would cost about 2 million US dollars.
In front of Iglesia de San Pedro Claver, there was a statue of San Pedro talking to a slave.
Here Julio, the black man became enthusiastic.
Pedro Claver was a Spanish priest and he lived in Cartagena for 40 years to devote his life to help those slaves.
They had slave trading in Cartagena in the square nearby and Pedro Claver went there to buy the weakest looking slaves and let them stay in his house.
Then he sent them to the sensible families not as slaves but members of the family.
The statue of the slave standing with San Pedro was a famous person in fact.
Apparently he understood 20 African languages, so he worked for San Pedro as an interpreter.
