If, like us, you have been somewhere even slightly off the beaten track (like Taganga) the second thing you'll notice is the price. Everything is pretty much twice the price here (1.5 times the price in Bogota). This is because tourism has hit the area. Toronto is only a 5 hour flight away and America is even closer so several hotels in the upmarket beachfront Bocagrande area cater for the week long, all inclusive, crowd. We, on the other hand, were staying in the more wallet friendly backpacker district around Media Luna street (which is also the red light district!)
So this isn't the most unspoilt part of Colombia in tourism terms, but this has some advantages. The tourist cash means that most of the colonial architecture is well maintained in the old city and there is a good selection of museums (although some of these are mainly in Spanish).
Food wise there is a large and diverse selection of restaurants offering everything from local cuisine to curry and sushi (with several Peruvian restaurants thrown in for good measure), in the evening main courses tend to be between 17000 and 50000 in the old town (7-20 pounds).
As we are getting to the end of the trip we are being a bit more money conscious and were lucky that a friend we made while diving, Mike, had also headed to Cartagena. This enabled us to share a couple of mains (and occasionally a starter) between the three of us so we could try more stuff on the menu and also keep costs lower. It was also good because after 2 months travelling together, although we were are in no way bored of each other, a bit of different dinner conversation is a welcome addition.
We ate at the slightly overpriced Pacos, which is in the old town (main courses between 35000 and 55000 pesos) where we had a Thai prawn stir fry, salad and calamari. All of this was pretty tasty but compared to several other restaurants it was not great value.
A much better evening spot for dinner was La Cocina de Pepina in Getsemini, despite its location on a dark alley the food was really nice and local in flavour, we started with a cerviche (they spell it with a b in northern Colombia!) and followed it with 2 different meat dishes, one was an interesting dry cured lamb dish (I think) and the other was a really good beef steak cooked in a local sauce. This is definitely worth a visit (note, it is closed on Mondays!) with mains costing around 30000 (10 pounds) and the fish costing about 17000.
Lunch time is much more reasonable with many places in the old city (such as pizza and pasta, pay extra for the fish) and around media Luna street (coroncoro, although this is not traditional Almuerzos as soup is extra, and unnecessary due to portion size) offering lunch for under 10000 pesos (3.50 gbp) per person.
Pictured below are the meals from la Cocina de Pepina and some shots of the old town in Cartagena
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