Colombia is a South American country. A good idea, therefore, to remind ourselves every now and again that Colombia is also a Caribbean country. The distance (and the traveling time) between Miami International and Cartagena, Colombia’s leading Caribbean destination, is roughly the same – maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less – as between the same MIA and either Aruba, Curaçao, Barbados, Martin-ique, St. Kitts & Nevis, or even the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Avianca, Colombia’s flag-carrier, makes the two hour and 36 minute hop from MIA to Cartagena on a daily basis all year round. (Departure time is 2:10 in the afternoon.) Cartagena is also available non-stop from the U.S. on Spirit Airlines (that’s out of Ft. Lauderdale – and cheap; Spirit also makes non-stop runs from FLL to Colombia’s political capital, Bogotá, and to Colombia’s unofficial industrial and trade capital, Medellín). Cartagena can also be reached on American, Continental, Delta, and JetBlue with a brief stop in Bogotá or on Panama’s Copa Airlines with a brief stop in Panama.

So why Cartagena or any of the other destinations on Colombia’s more than 1,000 miles of Caribbean beachfront? First there’s the question of beaches. Cartagena itself is a city. A big one. Population in excess of a million. On the quality of Cartagena’s own beaches, estimates and feelings differ. On the whole, though, visitors tend to be underwhelmed, and no way am I going to butt heads with consensus opinion on this one.

Get just outside of Cartagena, though, and things start to change, and they change all the faster if you head for one or more of the roughly 50 islands with their many ecological reserves and their marine and submarine parks at distances, by boat, of anywhere from ten minutes to a couple of hours from the downtown Bodeguita dock. Tired of seeing the word Paradise all over the place? If so, no one can blame you. But the Isla de Barú and, even more so, the keys and islets in the Rosario Islands group and in the Archipelago of San Bernardo merit the tag as much as any other spot on the planet does.

On the Rosario Islands, there are give or take ten hotels, some of them quite luxurious, in addition to a lot of impressive-looking private homes on dots of land just barely large enough to contain them. But, for people in Cartagena only for a few days, the Rosarios are also the perfect place for day-tripping – for scuba-diving, for snorkeling, for kayaking, for lying in a hammock and drinking rum cocktails, for a visit to the impressive sea aquarium. Múcura Island, still farther out, in the San Bernardo group, is home to the rústico-luxurious Punta Faro Resort, and there you are only a couple of minutes away from one of the world’s real oddities, namely, Santa Cruz del Islote, which, with something like 1,000 fishermen and their families on about two and a half acres of dry land, is said to be the most densely populated island anywhere in the world.

Unlike many another Caribbean destination, Cartagena’s boosters likes to think of its beaches, though, merely as a bonus. The city’s real appeal is in its beautifully preserved colonial architecture, in its massive fortifications (as walled cities go, this one holds its own against Ávila in Spain and Carcassonne in the south of France), in its cuisine, its music, its nightlife, and its various other cultural manifestations. One thing for sure: whereas at many another Caribbean destination the natives may appear to exist only to wait on the foreign tourists, as waiters in restaurants, as chambermaids, as cab drivers, as sellers of straw hats on the beach, Cartagena is a Colombian place – for Colombians. The people alongside you at the Gold Museum or at the next table at dinner may just possibly be from Cleveland or Phoenix or Seattle. Just as likely, though, they are from Bogotá or Medellín or Calí. Admittedly, many U.S. travelers, and maybe even a majority of U.S. travelers, prefer the more familiar Caribbean arrangements. There are others, though, who will prefer what Cartagena has to offer, which is the feeling of being in a real “foreign” country, however close it may be to home in travel time.

Unlike many another South American holiday, Cartagena can easily be arranged by travel agents without the intermediary of a tour operator, if agents so prefer. The Hotel Charleston Santa Teresa, in a former Carmelite monastery inside the walled part of the city, is a perennial romantic luxury favorite. Book clients into the Charleston; the Charleston will take care of the details. Or do equally well at the Sofitel Santa Clara, also in a former convent, with its 119 knock-out accommodations, including 17 suites, one of them justifiably designated “imperial.” Other high-end Cartagena hotels worth checking out: the impeccable Hilton with its three adult swimming pools plus one for kids on the beach at El Laguito; the 250-room beachside Las Americas Global Resort, also with three swimming pools plus two tennis courts, miniature golf, and a well-equipped fitness center and spa, somewhat to the north of the old city. (The Las Americas is particularly strong in the area of kid-, teenager-, and family-friendliness.) Among the impressive boutique and design hotels: the Agua, the Casa Quero, the Casa Pestagua, the LM. There are plenty more in all categories.

Santa Marta and Tayrona Park
You can forget about non-stop flights from Miami or Fort Lauderdale to the city of Santa Marta, about 100 miles up the coast from Cartagena and past the metropolis of Barranquilla (Gabriel García Márquez-ville) in the direction of the border with Venezuela. Such flights do not exist. Not that that makes Santa Marta so particularly hard to get to. Just as many U.S. visitors will reach Cartagena easily enough via Bogotá, so U.S. visitors can find their way, via the same transfer point, to Santa Marta – and total time in the air will be all of ten minutes greater. But Santa Marta is a different kettle of fish. Santa Marta is said to be the oldest settlement anywhere on the South American land mass (the foundation year was 1525), and it is also, for as much as the average North American visitor is likely to care, the place where South American Liberator Simon Bolivar drew his last breath. Well, people do like tourist attractions, and the hacienda on which Bolivar drew that last breath, as well as the bed-of-the-last-breath and the last carriage in which Bolivar ever rode, are open to visits from, and viewing by, the public. There is one overwhelming reason to go to Santa Marta, though, and that is that Santa Marta is the gateway to Colombia’s Tayrona National Park.

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