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Full Circle
Day 218: Cartagena
The comforts of the coast. We reach Cartagena nine weeks and a day after leaving Cape Horn.
Cartagena is a city comparatively free of guerrilla activity, and therefore much sought after by Colombians who can afford it. (Though I did hear that Pablo Escobar, most notorious of all the drug barons, threatened to blow it to pieces when the government vacillated on the subject of his extradition.)We're nearly back on course. Cartagena is not a Pacific city (the ocean is 250 miles to the west) but it was the clearing house for the treasures of Spain's Pacific empire. The almost inconceivable wealth of the Andes, extracted by the conquistadors from what is now Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru was carried across the Isthmus of Panama and assembled behind the walls of Cartagena, before being taken onwards to Europe.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 218
- Country/sea: Colombia
- Place: Cartagena
- Book page no: 281
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