Cartagena in Two Days

The clock tower gate, no ticket, no published hours, and the standard start point for both cruise shuttles and walking tours. Walk through Plaza de los Coches and Plaza de la Aduana toward Plaza de Bolívar while the streets are still quiet.

Free, Tuesday to Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., closed Monday. Thirty to forty-five minutes for the Zenú goldwork on Plaza de Bolívar, next door to the morning's first paid stop.

$7.61 (24,000 COP) foreign adult, $6.35 (20,000 COP) children/students/teachers/seniors, free under 5, open 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday to Saturday and 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Sunday.

Forty-five minutes to an hour for the former Inquisition tribunal and its municipal history collection.

$9.52 (30,000 COP) foreign adult, $6.98 (22,000 COP) child/student/senior 60+, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., weekends and holidays 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Two days buys the time this plan skipped on day one: the saint's remains, the cloister, and the Baroque facade from inside rather than only from the plaza.

The vaulted former storerooms at the northeastern corner of the walls, now souvenir shops with no fixed price list. Ten minutes unless you are buying, then on to lunch.

Cheaper and less staged than the restaurants inside the walls. Save the neighbourhood's after-dark scene at Plaza de la Trinidad for whichever version of day two ends here, the fork below explains which one does.

Back inside the walls and onto the rampart near Plaza de Santo Domingo, walking toward Baluarte de Santo Domingo as the light goes. No official hours exist for the wall itself. It fills in the last hour before dark and empties within twenty minutes of sunset.

Most operators pick up between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m., so arrive by 7:15 to clear the port charge, reported anywhere from $4.44 (14,000 COP) to $13.01 (41,000 COP) depending on the source, and boarding. The full tour comparison lines up the five main options. a 5-stop tour with lunch and beach clubs and a snorkel-and-aquarium version sit at the lower end of the price range.

Snorkeling, an aquarium stop or a beach club, depending on the tour booked. No official source publishes a current price for a beach chair or a plate of food on the islands themselves. Ask in pesos before you sit down or swim, the same rule that applies at Playa Blanca.

Most boats return between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. No authoritative cutoff time for the last boat of the day is published anywhere, which is itself worth knowing rather than assuming, confirm your specific operator's return window at booking, not on the dock.

$12.06 (38,000 COP) foreign adult, $10.47 (33,000 COP) Colombian national, $5.08 (16,000 COP) children 6 to 13, free under 6, open daily 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with no closed day published. Early is cooler. The fort is exposed stone with little shade, and midday sun is the actual crowd-adjacent problem here, not lines.

A guided walking tour of the castle from $14.81 or a shared tour from $11.52 both cover the tunnels and the layout better than a self-guided pass.

The fort sits a taxi ride from the old town, so lunch is wherever the ride back drops you. This is the slack in the day two plans do not otherwise have, use it for a museum skipped on day one, or simply rest before the evening.

The street art, the balconies strung with paper lanterns, and Plaza de la Trinidad building toward its nightly crowd, heaviest on weekends. This is the version of Getsemaní day one's lunch stop deliberately saved for later: after dark, with the plaza doing what it does best rather than sitting quiet at midday.