Just landed from a two-week trip to Colombia and Venezuela. Very intensive, but not enough to really realise about the disparities within both countries. Let me talk a bit, first, about Cartagena de Indias and then about Bogotá. In a later post I will drop my impressions on Caracas.The first one, Cartagena is a historical city and a very beautiful one (if you move far away from the walls, things change!). It has colourful colonial buildings and very charming squares full of history. Sea food is really good (I really loved Las Muelas de Cangrejo) and the sorrounding islands, called Islas del Rosario, are really close to an objective idea of how the paradise should look like and a good place to dive. Within the walls and the Getsemani Neighbourhood are really good restaurants but also nice "terrazas" to taste good Rhum (try el rincón de Fidel!). Beaches like Boca Grande o la Boquilla are a good start to get the pulse of the local life. You shouldn't miss them! However, besides these beautifuls sights there are others like the Bazurto market, or the Manga neighbourhood, which I'm sure they don't appear in leaflets of travel agencies. They are parts of "the other Caribbean" and show two important features of latinamerican cities: 1. "the missing middle", that is, the inexistence of a consolidated middle class and 2. the high levels of polarization, by which one can find two different societies living in the same city, but doing two completely different lives. One characterised by the opulence and the other by the lack of opportunities.
