Cartagena Quotes

“Aún hubiera sucedido que, tras aposentarme en la ciudadela, fuera repentinamente presa del pánico y tuviera que salir huyendo, como los británicos huyeron de Cartagena.”
― Thackeray William Makepeace, Barry Lyndon

“So to avoid the twin dangers of nostalgia and despairing bitterness, I'll just say that in Cartagena we'd spend a whole month of happiness, and sometimes even a month and a half, or even longer, going out in Uncle Rafa's motorboat, La Fiorella, to Bocachica to collect seashells and eat fried fish with plantain chips and cassava, and to the Rosary Islands, where I tried lobster, or to the beach at Bocagrande, or walking to the pool at the Caribe Hotel, until we were mildly burned on our shoulders, which after a few days started peeling and turned freckly forever, or playing football with my cousins, in the little park opposite Bocagrande Church, or tennis in the Cartagena Club or ping-pong in their house, or going for bike rides, or swimming under the little nameless waterfalls along the coast, or making the most of the rain and the drowsiness of siesta time to read the complete works of Agatha Christie or the fascinating novels of Ayn Rand (I remember confusing the antics of the architect protagonist of The Fountainhead with those of my uncle Rafael), or Pearl S. Buck's interminable sagas, in cool hammocks strung up in the shade on the terrace of the house, with a view of the sea, drinking Kola Roman, eating Chinese empanadas on Sundays, coconut rice with red snapper on Mondays, Syrian-Lebanese kibbeh on Wednesdays, sirloin steak on Fridays and, my favourite, egg arepas on Saturday mornings, piping hot and brought fresh from a nearby village, Luruaco, where they had the best recipe.”
― Héctor Abad Faciolince, El olvido que seremos

“the kiss of your neck, the breathing of wildflowers.”
― Gwen Calvo

“Of all the towns of the department of Bolivar, Cartegena is the most picturesque. Not only is it the most old-world town of the department, but of the whole Republic and perhaps of the whole continent of South America... [it] was once the place of meeting of the great Plate fleet, that took the silver gathered together from all the mines of the New World, across the sea to Spain. Many a time the British and French corsairs hung off and on, just out of sight of land, to attack with varying degrees of success.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, Cartagena and the Banks of the Sinú

“I imagined an Instagram filter of Cartagena, a 140-character version, a status update, a quip, a bite, a piece, all of which I would learn were too small to capture the reality I was about to encounter.”
― Erin Zelinka, On Love and Travel: A Memoir