This is video shot from a speedboat entering Cartagena Harbor. It’s calmed down a lot, but only a couple of years ago, the narcotraficantes and the Colombian Navy were playing a deadly game of tag here.

The video is extremely bumpy because of the high rate of speed; the boat captain was still a little nervous about going through some of the narrow channels, and past some of the small islands.  If the video isn’t too jerky, you can see the remains of some of the fortifications that have been thrown up over the years.  The harbor at Cartagena has been fought in, over and around for nearly 500 years now, since the Spanish used it as their main loading area for all the melted-down Inca gold and Sir Francis Drake made a bold attack on the big fort (see the pix up at my Flickr site) by marching his men down the peninsula. 

The island we went diving off of is called "Isla de las Piratas" or pirate’s island; there are allegedly sunken hulks of Spanish Galleons littering the coast here.