Cartagena

THE BEST WAY TO CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA From LAX, Spirit Airlines and COPA offer connecting service (change of plane) to Cartagena . Restricted round-trip fares begin at $762, excluding taxes and fees. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 57 (the country code for Colombia), then the number listed below. THE TOUR "The Cartagena of Gabriel García Márquez" audio tour is available through the Tierra Magna tourist office, http://www.tierramagna.com , with a branch in Plaza Santo Domingo, where the tour begins.

Karmairi Hotel Spa is an outstanding boutique property on the beach outside of Cartagena, Colombia. It's a good place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city but close enough to see the sights. A shuttle takes you into town. The staff is very attentive. Rooms from about $170. Karmairi Hotel Spa, Via Manzanillo del Mar, Cartagena, Colombia; 011-57-1-7040654, http://www.karmairi.com Judy Gordon Los Angeles

Earlier this year, I took Overseas Adventure Travel's trip titled "Colombia'sColonial Jewels & Caribbean Coast. " Colombia is a great travel destination, with a plethora of learning and discovery opportunities for adventurous travelers. We visited Bogotá, Santa Marta and my favorite, Cartagena. We experienced everything from coffee tasting to mud baths on the Totuma volcano to a visit to the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá. Overseas Adventure Travel, (800) 955-1925, http://www.oattravel.com . Eleven-day trip from $2,945, including international airfare and taxes.

Oh, postwar American dream, what have you wrought? Isn't it enough to have coated one nation in an endless spew of soulless, cookie cutter homes? At Kopeikin Gallery, Alejandro Cartagena's crisp photographs of new suburban developments in northern Mexico attest that clearly, it is not. On the one hand, his images of tight, economical rows of cubes attest to the steadfast appeal of the dream - who doesn't want a little corner of the earth to call their own? On the other, they highlight the extent to which industrial society has preyed on that simple desire, distorting it into something cold and nightmarish.

IN response to "A Cautionary Note About Cartagena," [Letters, Sept. 18], the presence of armed forces in Cartagena and other Colombian cities has resulted in a drastic decrease in crime. Cartagena is a beautiful place with historic architecture that is without rival in Latin America, and it's also a modern beach resort. Each year hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Canadians visit Colombia. It's time for America to realize that Colombia is much more than what Hollywood movies have depicted and the image that adventurous reporters have created.

As far as international diplomatic meetings go, the Summit of the Americas in the Colombian seaside city of Cartagena that concluded last weekend may not have produced any memorable initiatives or free-trade agreements, at least not as part of the official agenda. But unofficially, the summit managed to grab headlines after allegations surfaced that U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to pre-arrival security detail for President Obama may have engaged in misconduct, including hiring prostitutes.

WASHINGTON - Three Secret Service agents implicated in a prostitution scandal in Colombia - including two supervisors - are leaving the agency as investigators seek to determine whether the embarrassing episode led to a security breach. Officials said it appeared that none of the 11 Secret Service agents who allegedly brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena before President Obama arrived for the Summit of the Americas last weekend had weapons, radios, schedules or other potentially sensitive material in their rooms.

REED JOHNSON certainly had a different experience from what we had ["Cultural Soul of Colombia," Sept. 11]. Our cruise ship stopped in Cartagena several years ago. We were warned not to go anywhere without our taxi driver. There were armed soldiers about every 500 feet. They lined the sea wall. We were taken to two shopping areas. The first had many street vendors, who were the most obnoxious we have ever encountered. They got right in your face, and when you said no, they ran down the street ahead of you and tried again.

When leaders of Latin America, Spain and Portugal meet today in Cartagena, Colombia, hot topics are expected to include economic embargoes on Cuba and Haiti. This will be the fourth summit of Ibero-American heads of state. At last year's meeting, in Brazil, 21 leaders signed a resolution criticizing the U.S. embargo against Cuba's Communist government.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) winds up its 25th ministerial conference Wednesday in the Spanish colonial city of Cartagena, Colombia. In a paper presented at the three-day meeting, ECLAC said economic restructuring in the region during the 1980s often concentrated income and increased poverty, "which at the beginning of the current decade affected about 46% of the population."

Earlier this year, I took Overseas Adventure Travel's trip titled "Colombia'sColonial Jewels & Caribbean Coast. " Colombia is a great travel destination, with a plethora of learning and discovery opportunities for adventurous travelers. We visited Bogotá, Santa Marta and my favorite, Cartagena. We experienced everything from coffee tasting to mud baths on the Totuma volcano to a visit to the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá. Overseas Adventure Travel, (800) 955-1925, http://www.oattravel.com . Eleven-day trip from $2,945, including international airfare and taxes.

WASHINGTON - Three Secret Service agents implicated in a prostitution scandal in Colombia - including two supervisors - are leaving the agency as investigators seek to determine whether the embarrassing episode led to a security breach. Officials said it appeared that none of the 11 Secret Service agents who allegedly brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena before President Obama arrived for the Summit of the Americas last weekend had weapons, radios, schedules or other potentially sensitive material in their rooms.

As far as international diplomatic meetings go, the Summit of the Americas in the Colombian seaside city of Cartagena that concluded last weekend may not have produced any memorable initiatives or free-trade agreements, at least not as part of the official agenda. But unofficially, the summit managed to grab headlines after allegations surfaced that U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to pre-arrival security detail for President Obama may have engaged in misconduct, including hiring prostitutes.

THE BEST WAY TO CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA From LAX, Spirit Airlines and COPA offer connecting service (change of plane) to Cartagena . Restricted round-trip fares begin at $762, excluding taxes and fees. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 57 (the country code for Colombia), then the number listed below. THE TOUR "The Cartagena of Gabriel García Márquez" audio tour is available through the Tierra Magna tourist office, http://www.tierramagna.com , with a branch in Plaza Santo Domingo, where the tour begins.

I paused on a steamy February afternoon in Cartagena's Plaza Santo Domingo. In the square's center, tourists dined on fresh seafood and coconut rice at umbrella-shaded tables. At its edge was the 16th century Santo Domingo Church, whose twisted tower is — local legend has it — the result of the devil's failed attempt to demolish the sanctuary. Touts beckoned passersby into gleaming boutiques, while stray dogs, hoping for table scraps, competed with street musicians for the diners' attention.

It wasn't so long ago that Colombia was synonymous with "narco-state" to many foreigners, and just about the only international visitors were "backpackers and thrill seekers," as a former U.S. ambassador put it. Tell that to the four giant cruise ships that recently docked within hours of one another in this Spanish colonial port city, disgorging 6,000 foreigners. Most headed to Old Cartagena for a day of sightseeing and shopping, jamming the narrow streets of what many believe is the best-preserved colonial city on the continent.

One cannot escape the feeling that President Bush headed in the wrong direction in the effort to address the drug problem by traveling to Colombia. Rather that going there to tell foreign presidents what to do to their countries to solve our problem, it would be symbolically more precise to have them come here, where both the problem and its solution ultimately are to be found. Sure, cocaine production in the Andean nations is part of the problem.

For nearly four centuries, Cartagena was a colonial city overlooking an emerald bay dotted with coral islands. Then, progress struck. An oil refinery was built on the shore in 1955, attracting other petrochemical plants. About the same time, the World Bank provided financing to create a city sewer system. The canal that connects the bay to this country's largest river was straightened in the 1950s and again in the 1980s to make it more navigable.

The effect of climate change is anything but hypothetical to retired Colombian naval officer German Alfonso. Just ask him about the time his neighborhood in this historic coastal city became an island. For five years, Alfonso, 74, has watched tides rise higher and higher in the Boca Grande section of Cartagena. This month, tides briefly inundated the only mainland connection to his neighborhood, a converted sandbar where about 60 high-rise condo and hotel towers have been built in the last decade or so. "Before, people thought it a normal phenomenon.

A few years ago, impoverished fisherman Marcial Ortega could barely afford to feed his 14 children, much less buy them shoes. But now his worries are over. A beneficiary of this region's building boom, he is selling his half-acre beachfront lot and cabanas this month for a cool $1 million. The 63-year-old Ortega held out for years, impassively listening to fast-talking developers bid up the price of his seaside plot.