Coffee, cocadas and people-watching in Cartagena

Cartagena moves at the pace of its heat, which makes it one of the great sitting-down cities of the Americas. Add the coffee of Colombia and a colonial sweets tradition centuries deep, and an afternoon can disappear very happily indeed.

The mistake most first-time visitors make is to treat the walled city as a checklist of churches and bastions to be marched through by lunchtime. It is really a series of outdoor rooms — plazas, arcades, doorways with a plastic stool in them — and the pleasure lies in occupying them in the right order, with something small and strong, or something cold, in your hand. What follows is that route: a day of coffee, sweets and plaza-watching across the walled city and Getsemaní, arranged around the sun rather than against it.

Key facts

• The local cup: tinto — small, black, heavily sweetened coffee poured from thermoses by street vendors, usually around COP 1,000–2,000
• Sweet icon: cocadas, chewy coconut sweets sold by the palenquera fruit sellers and at the Portal de los Dulces, typically about COP 2,000–5,000 apiece
• Fried glory: arepa de huevo — an egg-stuffed, deep-fried corn arepa, pride of the Caribbean coast, generally around COP 3,000–5,000
• Prime hours: early morning before the heat, and the golden hour on the plazas
• Ground to cover: the walled city (Centro and San Diego) and Getsemaní, roughly ten minutes apart on foot
• Cash: essential, in small notes — the peso has been trading at roughly 3,000 to the US dollar at the time of writing

How long to give it, and in what order

A day is enough, and the order matters far more than the length. Cartagena's heat is not spread evenly across the day: the hours from roughly eleven until three are punishing, and no amount of enthusiasm survives them on foot. So the shape is fixed for you. Street food and tinto at first light, when the city is doing its own shopping. Proper sit-down coffee under a fan or a high colonial ceiling through the worst of the middle. Sweets in the shade of an arcade in the late afternoon. Plazas at golden hour, when the stone goes orange and everyone comes back outside.

If you have two days, spend the second going deeper rather than wider: a guided tasting, a market morning, an hour in a bookshop café. If you have half a day, do the morning half. The fritos counters and the tinto vendors are the part of this that cannot be replicated anywhere else, and they are largely finished by mid-morning.

Base yourself inside the walls or in Getsemaní and the whole route is walkable. The two sit side by side, separated by a park and a short bridge, and the crossing takes about ten minutes. Cartagena's taxis carry no meters, so agree the fare before you get in; the city sets a minimum that has lately been running at around COP 12,000, and most rides within this part of town land close to it. Ride-hailing apps operate here too, and many travellers find them simpler because the fare is settled before anyone moves.

Morning: tinto, arepas and the fritos counters

Before the sun asserts itself, the walled city belongs to the people who live and work in it — and to the tinto vendors weaving through with thermoses and stacked plastic cups. A tiny sweet black coffee for small change, drunk standing in a doorway, is the correct start. It is not specialty coffee and is not trying to be: it is hot, strong, sweet and social, and the whole transaction takes fifteen seconds.

Pair it with an arepa de huevo from a fritos stand: a corn cake fried once, split open, filled with raw egg, then fried again until the shell is crisp and the centre molten. Salt, a squeeze of lime if offered, and one of the sauces on the counter — the sharp fermented cream called suero costeño is the one worth asking for.

The reliable ground for this is Plaza de San Diego, at the quieter northern end of the walled city, where families have been frying on the square for decades. Los Fritos de Dora has been at it for the better part of sixty years, started by Dora Gaviria and now run by her son and granddaughters; the carimañolas — torpedoes of fried cassava stuffed with meat or cheese — are as much the point as the arepas. A cart like this keeps its own hours and published times conflict, so treat it as something that is there when it is there. A few steps away in San Diego, Donde Magola is a tiny counter operation working the same repertoire with a longer list of fillings, chorizo and chicken and shrimp among them, if you want something to compare against.

Eat standing, expect to pay a few thousand pesos a piece, and carry small notes: anything as large as a COP 50,000 bill will defeat most carts.

Midday: proper coffee in the shade

Colombia's specialty movement took a long time to reach its own Caribbean coast — for years the good lots went straight to export — and its arrival in Cartagena is recent enough to still feel like news. Cafés inside the walls and in Getsemaní now pour single-origin coffee from the Andean highlands as pour-overs, siphons and cold brews, which is a strange and wonderful thing to sip within earshot of the sea.

Inside the walls, Época Café Bar is the one to build a midday around: it works directly with a handful of Colombian farms, roasts on site, and occupies a high-ceilinged old room in Centro that runs several degrees cooler than the street. It is popular, so early beats late.

On Plaza Santo Domingo, Café San Alberto runs table-side tastings — a flight through different brewing methods, and a longer session that brings in honey and rum. The brand's own claim is to be the most awarded coffee in Colombia; take that as marketing and judge the cup in front of you. Expect a tasting to cost in the region of USD 35–40 a head, varying with group size, which is a lot by Colombian standards and worth it only if you genuinely want the education rather than just the coffee.

For a quieter hour, Ábaco Libros y Café has combined a serious bookshop with a coffee counter since the early 2000s, on a corner in Centro; it typically opens early and runs into the evening, and nobody minds how long you sit. Érase un Café, also inside the walls, does French press and V60 alongside French-leaning pastries.

In Getsemaní, Libertario Coffee Roasters roasts its own beans and brews by Chemex, V60 and French press, giving a share of its profits to regenerative agriculture; it typically opens around half past eight in the morning and closes in the late afternoon, so it is a morning and midday proposition rather than an evening one. Café del Mural, in a building photographed almost as often as its coffee, is the mirror image: it generally opens mid-afternoon and runs to about eight, and its guided tasting — four or five coffees across different methods, taking roughly an hour and a half — is worth booking ahead.

If you want to push further out, cross into Manga, the residential island just south of Getsemaní, where María Julio Coffee Shop operates as much as a training centre as a café; its founder is a certified barista and a national competition judge. It is about a ten-minute taxi ride, and a different city from the one the tour groups see.

And Juan Valdez, the national chain with several branches around town including one inside the walls, remains a reliable, air-conditioned fallback. There is no shame in it at two in the afternoon.

Afternoon: the sweets arcade

By the Clock Tower, facing Plaza de los Coches, the arcaded Portal de los Dulces has sold sweets since 1921 — long enough that the arcade is now named for the trade rather than the other way around. Roughly two dozen stalls work the colonnade, most run by women who have held the same pitch for decades and many of whom depend on it entirely; the pandemic closure hit them hard, and not everyone came back.

What sits in the glass jars: cocadas in every variation — coconut with panela, with guava, with lime, with milk caramel — plus cubanitos of coconut, cinnamon and sugar rolled together, muñecas de leche, tamarind balls and a wall of boiled sweets. Prices are typically a couple of thousand pesos a piece, and most vendors will let you taste before you commit. Bring small notes; change is scarce and not every stall takes cards.

Elsewhere in the old city, the palenqueras — descendants of the free Black community of San Basilio de Palenque, in their bright layered dresses with fruit bowls balanced on their heads — sell sliced fruit and cocadas. The etiquette is simple and worth observing: buy something before you photograph, and if you want a posed picture, agree the fee first. Around COP 8,000 is the usual expectation. Near the Clock Tower you may be asked for several times that after the shutter has already gone, which is precisely the argument you avoid by settling it in advance.

Golden hour: plaza theatre

Two squares, two Cartagenas, and there is time for both.

Plaza Santo Domingo is the classic stage: terrace tables beneath a church generally held to be the city's oldest, living statues working the crowd, and Fernando Botero's reclining bronze — known locally as Gertrudis — gleaming where thousands of hands have polished her. These terraces are the tourist heart of the walled city and priced accordingly; travellers routinely report paying well over the odds for an unremarkable dinner. Have the drink, watch the show, eat elsewhere.

Plaza de la Trinidad, in Getsemaní, is the local one, in front of a church begun in the 1640s. Street footballers, rappers and dance circles, families spread across the church steps, snack carts working the edges. It builds through the evening and is usually at full volume from around nine. Order a limonada de coco — blended lime, coconut milk and ice, expect to pay somewhere around COP 10,000–18,000 depending on where you buy it — and let the evening happen around you. For a cheaper version of the same pleasure, the raspao carts outside the San Pedro Claver church shave ice to order and drown it in syrup and condensed milk.

Tip: Sweets keep badly in the humidity — buy cocadas fresh in small quantities, and always from stalls doing brisk trade.

What to skip, and why

The middle of the day on foot. This is not a suggestion. Humidity here sits at around eighty-odd per cent for most of the year and the stone radiates heat back at you. Build the sit-down coffee into the hours you would otherwise spend being quietly miserable.

Bocagrande, for this particular day. The high-rise beach strip has its uses — hotels, air conditioning, a supermarket — but the pleasure described here does not exist there. Sleep in it if you must; do not spend the day in it.

Bazurto market, unguided, on a first visit. The city's working market, roughly three kilometres southeast of the walls, is where Cartagena actually shops and eats: fishmongers, fried whole snapper, coconut rice, and the stall known as Donde Cecilia that Anthony Bourdain filmed for his television series Parts Unknown. It is also hot, crowded, disorienting and not built for visitors. Guided market breakfasts generally run three to four hours and cost somewhere around COP 150,000–300,000 a head, and on a first trip that is money well spent.

Buying sweets in bulk to carry home. See the tip above. A cocada is a thing you eat within the day.

Whoever intercepts you at the Clock Tower. Buy from the arcade stalls and from sellers working a fixed pitch, not from the hard sell that finds you.

When it works, and when it does not

The dry season runs from about December through April, and that is when this day is at its easiest: blue light, hard shadows, nothing interrupted. It is also high season, so the plazas are busy and rooms cost more.

The wet months run from roughly May to November, peaking hard in October, which the climate records make comfortably the rainiest month of the year. Rain here tends to arrive as short, violent afternoon downpours rather than all-day drizzle, which is survivable when you were planning to be sitting down anyway — but October is the one month worth actively working around.

The value sits in the shoulders: April and May, and November into the first half of December. Thinner crowds, softer prices, weather that still mostly cooperates. Two fixtures are worth knowing about because they move room rates — the Hay Festival brings writers and their audiences inside the walls, typically in late January, and the city's Independence celebrations fill the streets in mid-November. Both are worth attending on purpose, and worth avoiding by accident.

What the day costs

Remarkably little, done the way it is meant to be done. A tinto, two fritos, a couple of cocadas, a proper filter coffee and a limonada de coco will land somewhere around COP 40,000–60,000 a head — call it roughly USD 15–20 at recent rates. The costs that escalate are all optional: a guided tasting, a market tour, dinner on a Santo Domingo terrace.

Carry cash, and carry it small — notes of COP 10,000 and 20,000 are the useful ones. Almost everything on this route is a cash business, and the most common way a visitor's day here goes sideways is arriving at a stall holding nothing smaller than a COP 50,000 note.

Coffee country meets the Caribbean here, and the collision is delicious. Sit down, order something cold or something tiny and strong, and let the city do the moving for you.