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 CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) - A colonial gem with the country's priciest real estate, this Caribbean city is Colombia's pride — increasingly popular as a port of call for cruise ships, and aspiring to be the new Cancun with a frenzy of luxury construction.
Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, the king of Spain — the list of celebrities visiting this month alone is rich, the catalog of Colombian notables acquiring Cartagena homes a veritable who's who. An evening carriage ride in the majestically preserved walled city, which has U.N. World Heritage status, is a magical vault into the past.
But Cartagena's efforts to set itself apart from so many other Latin American cities ringed by poverty are failing. No longer, it appears, can it claim immunity from the violence of Colombia's half-century-old civil conflict.
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