Little Tripe and Socks Street

Cartagena de Indias, the second oldest colonial city in South America, is a newly arrived tourist destination now that Colombia's drug wars and terrorism have been brought approximately under control. An undoubtedly beautiful city in its architecture, it also harbours a unique and quirky Latin Caribbean character. Away from the tourist hotels, simply walking the streets, or the lanes of its surrounding villages, reveals a 'Costeño' way of life and attitude, where nothing is ordinary. For example, the street names, of which the Calle Tripita y Media is just one. The story behind the name is too long to tell here, but has to do with a plain-looking girl who stayed at home working with her fishermen brothers, until one day she went out to a festival wearing socks (no-one wears socks in Cartagena's heat). It makes sense only to Costeños. This is, after all, the territory of Nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Márquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude is generally seen in the West as being part of the literature of Magical Realism, whereas in actuality it is about how life here simply is.