Cartagena de Indias

The news on BBC and CNN last night was so unsavoury; endless coverage of the Mumbai attacks, the protests in Bangkok, the US recession, HIV around the world, cholera in Africa, the flood in Venice, the Camorra Mafia in Italy etc etc. I decided instead to watch a movie and reached out for a stack of DVDs dear Harriet gave me some time back that I never had the chance to watch. It was also a good time to test-view my new 106 cm plasma just acquired during the day.

I choose “Love in Time of Cholera" based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s famous novel. It was a wonderful movie about a man’s obsessive love of a woman who turned him down at youth and married someone else. He want though life sexually conquering hundreds of other women but still kept his love for that one woman until he finally married her at a very old age, after tirelessly courting her after her husband died. Javier Bardem was at his best as the scorned, love-stuck but randy old man!

The movie was shot in Cartagena (though in the movie the city was unnamed), which was a treat for me. I had been to Cartagena a few times between 1999–2002 and loved the place. It was supposed to be the safest place in Colombia, where the notorious revolutionary movement FARC would not touch. It was also the favourite holiday destination of the rich for its pleasant Caribbean climate and many other attractions. Its colonial walled city and fortress were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Some parts of it was for me reminiscent of Malacca, some resembling the A Famosa. Gabriel Garcia Marquez had a house there which stood out for its brightly-coloured wall and was a landmark of sorts for the city. The movies ' Romancing the Stone' and ' The Mission' were also filmed in Cartagena.

I enjoyed the old quarters very much and always choose to stay in a hotel within its confine (once in a beautiful and horribly expensive 5-star hotel with so much character and history, and formerly a convent). At night the place took on a magic and you could hear music and laughter everywhere and there were many restaurant to avail to. I once dined al fresco at a pleasant restaurant in a square where you could watch all sorts of going-ons all around. At the end of the dinner I was introduced to the chef who was shortly leaving for Kuala Lumpur to work in a restaurant there, he even showed me his contract! And during my very first visit to Cartagena I stayed in the Hilton by the beach and the GM was someone who had once worked in a Hilton in Malaysia for five years! I was made to feel very welcome by his staff and he even loaned me his car and driver for a day.

I have many recollections of Colombia and its cities I visited. I like Bogota for it’s unique location and climate, the shopping (leather goods, emeralds) and it’s pleasant and attractive people; and Medellin was fascinating for its infamous reputation as the drug cartel city and for its famous square lined with Botero’s fat sculptures. But I always feel more at home in Cartagena – its climate was so like Malaysia’s sweltering hot and sticky, the colours and sounds were pleasing, its people friendly. It was a different ambiance altogether from the rest of Colombia .

If only I had a digital camera then…..