Barranquilla: A Waterfront and a City in Two Days

I was only passing through Barranquilla, just two days, but the city still managed to surprise me. A huge waterfront runs along the wide Magdalena River, full of force and waves, nothing like a calm, quiet river, more like something alive and unruly. It's lovely to walk here both day and night, coffee in hand and a slice of Napoleon cake (by now I've tried what feels like a dozen versions of this cake across Colombia, all delicious, though none quite like the one back home).

The waterfront is full of people: happy couples, families, dog parks, statues of Sofía Vergara and Shakira. The city has kept its old baroque buildings too, churches and mansions that remind you Barranquilla has been around for centuries.

But like everywhere in Colombia, not every neighborhood is equally safe. My friend and I were walking toward the waterfront following Google Maps when a pair of police officers, a young woman and a young man, stopped us and asked where we were headed. When we said the waterfront, they warned us honestly: better not to walk this route, the area gets unsafe, and the gold cross around my neck was better off removed, it could get snatched. They suggested we take a taxi instead. We ended up chatting about the best pizza in town and what to see in two days, and had a laugh. The officers drove off, then came back and waited with us for the taxi. By the time we said goodbye, it felt like saying goodbye to old friends.

We also stopped by the Carnival Museum: dresses, costumes, and artifacts from the famous Barranquilla Carnival, held every year and recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Now I really want to come back just for the carnival itself.

Barranquilla: Where the Magdalena Meets the Caribbean Sea

Our second day held a real adventure: we set off for the place where the murky waters of the Magdalena River meet the Caribbean Sea. As always, I dressed all wrong for the occasion, a linen outfit and sandals, and headed out full of determination anyway.

You get there via the old railway station: from there you can either take the train through some beautiful scenery or grab a tuk-tuk along the waterfront. We went with the tuk-tuk, of course. It rattled us around plenty, but got us to our first stop: beaches lined with umbrellas and restaurants, where the water is already mixed with the river and less salty. I collected a few shells there, though that was on the way back.

The main event was still ahead. We took another tuk-tuk, which carried us down a narrow road between two bodies of water (shaking the whole way) and eventually dropped us where no vehicle could go further. I figured we had maybe twenty minutes of easy walking left before reaching the meeting point of the waters. In reality, it turned out to be a scramble over rocks pounded by waves and piles of driftwood the river had thrown up onto a narrow strip of land. Many tourists simply don't risk going further, there's barely any solid ground underfoot. I regretted my sandals about a hundred times in that moment.

Right at the start of the path you can still see old railway sleepers: a train line once ran here. It was built between the 1920s and 1930s, during the construction of the stone breakwaters (tajamares): steam trains once hauled tons of massive rock blocks along these tracks to fill in a dam right in the middle of the raging water.

At times it was genuinely frightening, and my friend's hand was a real lifeline. But the views were breathtaking: hundreds of crabs on the rocks, bright green lizards on the river side, birds watching you with open curiosity. Along the way we passed half-collapsed fishermen's huts, really more like makeshift shelters, where people still live and fish today, waiting for this place to be rebuilt into the modern tourist project that's already underway. It's hard to put the feeling into words, but I'm glad I saw this place exactly as it was: raw, difficult, real, before it gets paved over and made comfortable for everyone.

In the end, we climbed the highest rock at the end of the path. I was genuinely scared, one wrong step there and things would have gone very badly. I didn't take a single photo at the top: the wind nearly knocked me over, I was afraid of dropping my phone, so I just sat down, taking in the sight of the waves colliding, and my own fear, at the same time.

The walk back felt like an eternity all over again, but by then we knew exactly which stretches to take slowly, like snails, feeling for solid footing, and where the ground was firm. Once we made it back to civilization, we sat in a restaurant for a long time just recovering, no energy left to move. Then I took a quick swim at the beach, rinsed off with fresh water, and we packed up for the trip back, full of unforgettable moments and the feeling that we'd just done something genuinely heroic.