Colombia (with an "o")

When I told people inside and outside the U.S. that we were going to Colombia, the country in South America, their response never varied. “Oooh. Have you seen Narcos?!” Eventually, I relented and watch the Netflix TV series. When Mr. GetNance suggested we do a Narcos Mexico chaser, I drew the line. We caught up on Killing Eve instead. You know, for something lighter.

Prior to our departure, I also read Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, by Gerald Martin. And Colombia es Pasion, by Matt Rendell, about the rise of Colombia’s impressive tour cyclists. On the plane, I dipped into The World Atlas of Coffee, by James Hoffman, which changed the way I choose and drink my coffee. Kind of neat when a book does that.

My experience actually in Colombia wasn’t anything like the TV shows or the books. In fact, that became our catchphrase for the trip. It’s not what you’re expecting. We did not, to my knowledge, encounter any drug traffickers. Here’s the story …

As it turns out, two days in Cartagena are plenty. Not for the pigeons on the rooftop adjacent to my Movich Hotel balcony. Those winged 50 Shades of Grey sexpots couldn’t have been more filled with bliss. Sadly, I won’t be there for the birth of their offspring. Down on the street level, I ventured onto the cobbled streets in search of Cartagena’s colonial era buildings, emeralds, straw hats, fruit ladies, street art, and vibrant music scene. Which I found, in exaggerated abundance.

I’m going to recommend 8 cups of espresso and 100 jumping jacks as a warm up for what can only be described as a frenzy of selling activity. The clash of the boom box boys’ rap music against the bucket percussionists’ traditional beats created an acquired taste sort of soundtrack for the whole affair. If I were editing a film about Cartagena, it would have lots of fast, erratic cuts, blurred sequences, and random faces pushing into camera. High heart rate stuff. I tried to remain calm and let the dissonance flow through me, teach me. I was a visitor in their country, after all. But two days in, as they say in corporate circles, I pivoted.

Being patted down by nice police officers at the entrance to the boat yard was fun. So was trying not to stare at the outrageously augmented young hotties sashaying past me as I awaited my boat. Local custom, it seems, is for each KimK lookalike to move about with an entourage of two or three gold-bedecked macho men. If this were a film, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (aka Fleabag) would have to do it. There’s no other way to express the confused and conflicted feelings I had in that moment.

Out on Isla de Barú, I was met at a simple wooden dock by the cheerful and welcoming costeños all the Cartagena travel articles had promised me. Barú used to be a peninsula. It was christened an isla when a canal was cut to connect the Caribbean Sea with the Magdalena River—though, in map view, Barú still appears to be very much connected to the mainland.

Today, the island is home to 20,000 residents, a small town, and various resorts. Sofitel Barú Calablanca is a recently opened haven boasting all ocean-view accommodations; infinity and reflecting pools; cabanas, lounges, and daybeds; as well as indoor and outdoor dining venues, bars, and lounges. There’s even a dive center that hosts trips achingly close to the “holy grail of shipwrecks,” the exact location of which is a Colombian state secret. And a beach that is often confused with Playa Blanca, an overcrowded public beach that is on Barú, but closer to Isla de Tierra Bomba.

Within the Sofitel resort, I found contented staff outnumbered the guests three to one. In one of the infinity pools, a small gaggle of gregarious types ordered bottles of Champagne, cocktails, and trays of hot food, which were delivered to them in the pool. At one point, a girl in a muted green bikini left a spent martini glass sitting precariously on the edge of the infinity waterfall. I sat watching it for hours as my new friend-slash-server Alejandro brought me cold washcloths and botanically creative libations.

Another server, Mirabel, told me she drives two hours each morning from Cartagena to get to work. Some guests arrive that way too. Others take the shared catamaran, as I did. Or the helicopter, which flys over the ecstatic gyrations of the Centro Histórico de Cartagena. And now all of that pigeon bliss makes complete sense.