I slipped on a pair of loose-fitting cotton shorts, and stepped out of my beach front hotel room for the evening. Within a few steps, I was in the middle of a folkloric dance group.

Women in white embroidered dresses were whirling around their male partners, at the same time, producing a slight breeze in the humid, seaside air.

This is typical of Colombia, a country that takes the art of dancing and beauty pageants seriously. Combine this with the natural, explosive rhythms of Afro-Colombians who heavily populate the coastal areas, and you’ve got one continuous street party.

Although their Spanish conquerors have long left, Colombians continue to emit a flamenco-like atmosphere.

Founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, Cartagena served as a shipping route and storage space for emeralds and gold that was later shipped to Spain.

This picturesque city on the Caribbean coast was once the main entry port of African slaves to the Americas; now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Colombia’s favorite tourist destination.

Cartagena was attacked many times throughout history. The British and French stormed the city in search of cached treasures. Pirates also navigated its waters in search of other hidden riches.

One of the most notable assaults came from Sir Francis Drake, who in 1586, arrived under the cover of darkness with a large group of men. By daylight, they forced most of the city to flee. Before leaving eight months later, they torched homes, businesses, and extorted local government officials out of enormous sums of money, and stole valuable jewels.

The final major attack took place in 1741, when British Commander, Edward Vernon, and George Washington’s half brother, arrived with over 25,000 troops and a battle group of 186 ships. Although the Spaniards and African slaves were outnumbered seven to one, they withheld the onslaught and mounted a counterattack which forced Commander Vernon to withdraw his troops. Unfortunately for him, not before he lost nearly half of his men, and most of his battleships.

Today, Cartagena is a city which continues to hold much of its old Spanish splendor. Scattered throughout the older barrios are balconied colonial buildings, painted in a multitude of colors.

The old, central part of Cartagena is reinforced by 14 miles of stone walls, and other fortifications. Many locals still believe the material used to hold together these stones, was mixed with the blood of African slaves. Whether that is true or not, many slaves died here while helping to fortify the city against pirates.

The Castle of San Felipe de Barajas was built between 1536 and 1657. The same fortress that withstood the onslaught of Commander Vernon and his troops still towers over Cartagena. One glance and it’s obvious why it couldn’t be penetrated.

Modern day Cartagena is conquered routinely by a steady flow of Colombian, and foreign tourists. Most of their focus is on the old city, where they fan out down narrow cobblestone streets in search of historic landmarks.

As you enter Plaza de los Coches (Coach Square), directly beneath the city’s famous clock, you face a huge statue of Pedro de Heredia, who founded the city in 1533. Just to the left of the statue, pastel colored colonial buildings fill the Plaza’s landscape.

In the daytime, women line the sidewalk with their candy stands, selling traditional sweets. People relax on the benches and enjoy traditional music and dancing, street comedy performances and even an occasional sermon from a curbside preacher.

At dusk, horse-drawn carriages line up here, ready to take tourists on a lantern lit tour through the heart of downtown. It’s possible to close your eyes and go back in time as the horse’s hooves resonate off the tight cobbled streets.

At the end of the plaza (about 100 feet), is an open square with a Christopher Columbus monument. This is Plaza de la Aduana (Customs Plaza), and represents a dark side of Cartagena’s past.

In 1564, Cartagena became the gateway to the Americas for many African slaves. Those who survived the treacherous passage got off the ships, and were then lined up in Customs Plaza, paraded around, and auctioned like livestock to the highest bidders.

Directly behind Plaza de la Aduana, is the Plaza San Pedro Claver. Named after Saint Peter Claver, who was warmly nicknamed “slave to the slaves,” this tiny square houses a cathedral that bears his name.

Father Claver showed compassion for the slaves who arrived. He greeted most of them when they were off loaded, and immediately blessed the dying children and the sick. He spent many years providing medical care for injured and ill slaves, and baptized hundreds of thousands during his lifetime.

Five minutes walk outside the walled city, and you’re standing in front of Castle San Felipe. It’s worth the short climb up the steep hill to reach its doors. You can explore the castle’s massive grounds, touch the original cannons, and peer through the portals. You can also gaze over the walls, and view the panorama of the city.

About 20 nautical miles off Cartagena are the Rosario Islands. This archipelago consists of 27 ecologically diverse islands which have been chosen as a National Park by the Colombian government. If you are looking for the perfect place to unwind, it’s here. Good snorkeling, diving, windsurfing, kayaking and hiking are available. The outdoor aquarium and dolphin shows are always a hit with traveling families.

Several boats depart early in the morning from the downtown pier, and glide over the calm waters to the islands in about 45 minutes. The last boats of the day return to Cartagena around four p.m. So, you can pack a lunch and make it a day outing, or spend a few tranquil nights on the islands.

Throughout most of the barrios in the city, you often sense that you’re in a smaller village. During the day, sellers walk the neighborhoods hawking everything from ripe papayas and fresh fish, to pots and pans, and lottery tickets.

Anywhere in the city, you can find makeshift soccer fields where many young boys play, soccer in the blazing sun (and sometimes in monsoon rain) kicking goals like professionals, hoping to be the next Carlos Valderrama, or Ronaldinho.

After watching the dance performance, I wandered down some backstreets and stumbled on some couples nursing cold drinks near an open pit grill. The waft of barbecued chicken filled the muggy night air. The menu looked appetizing, as well.

Cartagena cuisine is a variation of genuine Caribbean and Creole, although you can find a wide range of food and drinks. Outdoor meals usually come with the sounds of Vallenato, Reggaeton, Champeta, or Salsa music, usually thumping from tall speakers, but occasionally live.

Overall, Colombia is an ideal gateway to South America for first-time travelers; whether they’re backpackers, cruise ship passengers, or even those on a family trip.

From the grandeur of the walled city, to scenic beaches, to informal street parties, Cartagena is a destination you will always remember.

Where to stay:

If you’re on a shoestring budget, hotel accommodation in Cartagena can cost as little as $5-10 a night in the Getsemaní area. However, for that price, expect a simple bed, fan, with a shared bathroom and shower. Add another $15 and you can find comfortable rooms in this historic section of town, which happens to be the oldest neighborhood in Cartagena.

The Bocagrande area has the most hotels in Cartagena. Here, you’ll find many hotels on the beach. From small family hotels to 5-Star, there is a price range for everyone.

If you want to be pampered, try the Charleston Hotel. Not only does it offer 5-Star services, it’s cleverly hidden between the city’s ancient walls, and it sits near many tourist attractions in the old city.

The Charleston includes a breathtaking rooftop pool and restaurant area. Here, you get a bird’s-eye view of the Caribbean, Cartagena Bay and the magnificent old city.

Getting there:

Copa Airlines has direct flights from Miami and Panama City, Panama.

AirMadrid has direct flights from Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.

Visa:

American tourists traveling to Colombia need to have a valid U.S. passport, but not a visa. This allows you to stay up to 90 days. This can be extended for another 90 days at the Immigration office (DAS).

By: Stanley Hawkins

I’ll never forget the look on the face of that Colombian campesino man. My wife just explained to him in Spanish that what I am holding under my arm is indeed a surfboard, despite the fact that we were standing in a Colombian village that was located somewhere in the middle of the Andes Mountains, hundreds of miles away from any ocean. After hearing this news the man made a joke about us getting bad directions. He then flashed a smile that revealed a mouth full of rotten teeth. Soon after that he shook his head, tucked his hands into the front pockets of his hand-woven Inca style poncho, turned, and moved on down the only street in his town. When the man reached the center of town a gust of wind swept down the street and blew the black fedora hat off his head. As I was watching him chase after it through a cloud of dust, I thought to myself; “I gotta’ get to the ocean.”

I was beginning to feel like a fish out of water. Surfers cannot stay away from the ocean for too long, or they start to “dry out”. As I was standing on that dirt street in that dusty little town, I realized that I had not seen the ocean in over a month. More importantly, I had not surfed in it. Halfway through a two month excursion across the country of Colombia, in South America, we were on our way to a small Caribbean beach resort on the northeastern edge of the country for a much needed break from the madness we had experienced so far on that trip. We had spent the holidays traveling from Bogotá to Medellín, and then back to Bogotá again to meet and visit with various different members of my wife’s family. There had been some mishaps along the way involving pick-pockets and miscreants. Up to that point it was not fun, and we will leave it at that.

Traveling on a tight budget in a foreign country is the best way to experience the true culture of that country, but it can be quite taxing on your soul. We could not afford plane tickets to fly all over the country, so we had to take busses and taxis instead. Some of those bus rides took over two days to reach our destination. We traveled through some of the most remote areas of Colombia, changing busses and hailing taxis the whole way. Along the way we saw some of the most beautiful scenery on earth, and experienced some very interesting, intense, and strange things. Black magic and evil curses are practiced in many areas of Colombia, and I cannot say any more on that subject, for fear that you would think of me as crazy. There are things that cannot be explained in this world, and a lot of them happen in Colombia.

There were other things that happened to us that were even more terrifying than black magic. Let’s just say it’s never a good thing to have your bus stopped in the middle of the night by rough looking men with machine guns on a winding, dark, mountainous road. That is whole other story for another time.

Back to our main story; we were about four hours North of Bucaramanga, and waiting to board yet another one of those colorful busses. All I could think about at that moment was surfing and relaxing at this place called Tayrona. I was told you can sit in your own thatched-hut “choza” and watch the waves from your front porch. For those who are not familiar with the sport of surfing, that sounds about as good as it gets for a surfer.

It had not been easy carrying that surfboard all over Colombia. We landed in Bogotá in the middle of the country a month before, and I had been schlepping it around with our other luggage from one bus or taxi to the other ever since. It was like I was living my own little version of the movie
Fitzcaraldo, and my surfboard was the ship that was being carried for many miles across dry land. I was determined to make the effort pay off.

While we were waiting for our bus in that little mountain village we were inundated by the usual local people trying to sell us stuff. My wife, being a Colombian native did most of the talking for those negotiations. These little villages along the main roads of Colombia survive on money from people who are just passing through, or waiting for a bus. The local indigenous people sell everything from bags of purified water, to homemade “empanadas” (a meat and potato filled turnover made with corn-meal dough). My wife and I had been surviving on food and water provided by those people for most of our trip. Amazingly, neither of us had been sick yet. Albeit, most of this food had been delicious, you have to wonder about the cooking and cleaning practices in a town that has no running water. Something tells me that if the cook had a choice between using their last bucket of water to wash their hands before cooking, or having water to drink the next day, they’d forego the cleanliness. I tried not to think about stuff like that on that trip. I only thought about how much flavor those homemade items had with their homegrown ingredients.

People sure know how to cook in Colombia. Wow! The food in that country just seemed to have a lot more flavor than the food I was used to in the United States. We really experienced the authentic food of Colombia; “buñuelos, “pandebonos”, “arepas”, you name it and we tried it along
the way. We were on a budget, yet eating very good food. The people who made this food were as poor as one could be, but they could make food like no-one else on earth. The freshness, lack of pesticides, and the nutrient-rich soils also have a lot to do with why the food tastes so good in Colombia.

After we ate our share of “empanadas” that we purchased from a little old village woman carrying a hand-woven basket, we were ready for a freshly blended fruit smoothie. There were always several of these little smoothie stands in every town that we stopped at along the way, and we always made sure that we sampled at least one. No matter how small of a stand, the vender always had electricity to run their blender, ice box, and boom-box. I immediately ordered a couple of “tomate de árbol “smoothies at a nearby stand, and then we sat down on an old wooden bench provided by the smoothie vendor.

We were told by the driver of the last bus that our next bus should be along in “no time at all”. It had been my experience up to that point that this bus driver may, or may not be right. Sometimes the bus came right away and the transfer went smoothly. Other times we ended up waiting long periods of time between transfers. Those ones did not go so smoothly.

The mountain roads and leftist guerilla laden areas that these busses travel through can cause long delays, to say the least. Hanging out in that small town in the middle of nowhere in the foothills of the Andes Mountains waiting for a bus was quite nerve-racking. The local people of those types of towns were always very suspicious of anyone that stayed behind after a bus came through. Most people just passed right through. They were especially suspicious of a Gringo with a surfboard and a Colombian wife. There was a war going on in that country. Everywhere we went everyone wanted to know whose side we were on. As we were sitting in that dusty, one-horse town in a remote area of Colombia, I knew we were in for a long, harrowing wait.

By: Michael Connelly

The foreign and commonwealth office draws up an extensive list of countries that should not be travelled to quite regularly and it is from that our, and other global travel insurance providers’, underwriters decide which countries travel insurance should be provided for. We look at the government travel advice and decide from that whether or not we can provide insurance to travellers.

Although global travel insurance does, by its nature, cover the majority of the world, the current climate ensures that there are some places where the likelihood of incident means that UK travel insurance providers are unable to offer protection. Thankfully, the list is clear of the majority of popular holiday destinations, and you’re unlikely to have your big holiday plans affected. The most likely group to have their travel plans altered by the foreign office’s travel advice are business travellers.

The foreign office’s travel advice is not to travel to the following countries, even if it means losing business – the risk from the warzones listed below is just too great to make the reward worth the danger:

Here’s our top 10 countries to avoid travelling to, and the reasons for the high risk factor! The risk is far from conclusive (the foreign office’s travel advice lists many more countries), but to me, these are the ones that all travellers should avoid like the plague:

10) Liberia

Economic hardship in Liberia is currently making outbreaks of violence common, and foreigners (especially westerners) are at risk targets due to their affluence. This extra likelihood of incident ensures that no UK travel insurance provider would risk offering you cover if you choose to visit Liberia

9) Nepal

Occasional acts of terrorism and political violence in urban areas make Nepal off-limits for those who want to get travel insurance. In September this year, three nearly simultaneous bombs went off in the capital of Kathmandu, killing 3 and injuring many innocent bystanders.

8)Haiti

Haiti is considered off limits to many travellers on account of the high risk of kidnappings and civil unrest that is prominent. At the time of writing, there have been 12 kidnappings of American travellers in 2007 – mostly criminal in nature. In the past, these kidnappings have ended in physical and sexual assaults and shootings. The potential for spontaneous protests and demonstrations has also been known to result in unexpected violence, day or night. It’s no surprise that the government’s travel advice is not to travel here!

7)Yemen

Due to the high levels of terrorist activity in Yemen, westerners are advised to steer clear of Yemen. If this is not possible, then all travellers are encouraged to stay vigilant and to keep a low profile to avoid attacks or kidnapping. The situation is so grave that the US Embassy often restricts American citizens from certain hotels, restaurants and shopping areas.

6)Israel

The Gaza Strip and West Bank has seen immense violence in recent months between Israeli and Palestinian factions, and shootings, kidnappings and violence demonstrations have occurred in each. The region’s continued instability makes travel to Israel widely recommended against – the risk of abduction or worse makes travel insurance impossible to obtain.

5)Democratic Republic of Congo

The democratic republic of Congo remains one of the most dangerous places to travel in Africa, where violence, neglect and corruption has left the country distinctly damaged. Fighting erupted in the streets of Kinshasa in March this year, and the situation remains volatile despite the immediate threat of violence calming down. Travel outside of Kinshasa is difficult and dangerous with security, especially in the north and easy, being unstable. Any traveller brave enough to travel to the Congo should be extremely cautious, avoid the North Kivu district which is the backdrop to armed conflict between government troops and army rebels, avoid crowds and keep a close eye on local media.

4)Burma (Myanmar)

While the human rights situation makes Myanmar an ethically uneasy place to visit, currently there is a lot of personal risk involved as well. Throughout September, the anti-government protests sparked a violent crackdown from the authorities and made international headlines. Although the dusk-til-dawn curfew imposed in some of the towns has been lifted, it still remains an uncertain time to visit the country and you’re unlikely to find any global travel insurance company who will insure you.

3)Colombia

Colombia remains one of the most dangerous places to travel in the world thanks to the crime the country suffers from. The illicit drug trade in urban areas such as Cali and Buenaventura means that there is often a high risk of violence, while the more rural areas expose visitors to the country at risk from narcoterrorist groups who will often kidnap civilians to use for ransom or to gain media attention. Naturally UK travel insurance companies are loathe to insure travellers who choose to ignore these warning and travel to Colombia anyway.

2)Afghanistan

With the war on terror in Afghanistan still fresh in the mind, it’s no surprise that the country remains a big no-go area. Western tourists are obvious kidnap and assassination targets, as many of the disbanded Taliban and Al-Qa’ida forces remain at large and hostile to the new regieme. Additionally, the country remains unsafe due to tribal groups, explosive devices, landmines, military operations and acts of terrorism. Unsurprisingly, the government’s travel advice is to avoid travelling here at all costs!

1)Iraq

Given the high profile nature of western kidnappings by various insurgent groups, and the regular acts of terrorism and hostility to Western troops, it is no surprise that no travel insurance companies will insure travellers to the troubled country. The instability is caused by various groups – Ba’ath regime remnants, transnational terrorists and criminal elements have been known to attack convoys en-route to venues, hotels, restaurants, checkpoints and police stations.

While holidaymakers are unlikely to be affected by these less touristy locations, their riskiness means that business travellers will have to forgo their travel insurance if they are unable to cancel their trips.

By: Patrick Chong