The South American Footprint guidebook advises that under no circumstances should tourists walk to La Popa, the 400 year old monastery sat atop a hill in Cartagena, due to the significant risks of getting robbed on the hour walk up.
This morning, I decided to walk up the hill to the aforementioned La Papa, rather than pay the 30,000 pesos that an English guy in my hostel paid a taxi driver yesterday to enjoy the best views of Cartagena. That was, until I stepped of my 1,300 peso bus journey to the bottom of the hill, and started walking through an extremely poor looking housing estate and a young boy came running out his house, shaking his head, and motioning up the hill whilst using a word that sounded remarkably similar to the Spanish verb 'ATACAR' (to attack) for my liking.
A motorcycle rider was summoned down the street, and so it was that I ended up paying 6,000 pesos to sat pillion on the back of a motorcycle with a naked woman painted on the petrol tank, to the top of La Popa and back down again afterwards.
With hindsight, it probably would have been a foolhardy thing to have walked up the hill by myself, if not because of the run down housing estate that I had to walk through, and if not because of the dubious looking young men lingering by the side of the road half-way up that the motorcycle sped past, then definitely because of the spray'painted donkey that I spotted on the way back down.
If a graffiti'd donkey is not an obvious sign that an area is rough and a extranjero is likely to lose his wallet, camera and fake Rayban sunglasses if he walks through it on foot, I certainly don't know what is.
The view of Cartagena from La Popa. Not worth 30 mil pesos in my opinion, but definitely worth 7 and a bit.
Two stick insects at the top of La Popa
A grafitti'd donkey on the way back from La Popa
