Palenque de San Basilio (Day Trip)

San Basilio de Palenque is the first free Black settlement in the Americas — a village 50 kilometres south of Cartagena founded in the 17th century by escaped enslaved Africans (cimarrones) led by Benkos Biohó, who established an independent community in the foothills that the Spanish were never able to reconquer. Palenque maintained its freedom, its African-derived language (Palenquero, the only Spanish-based creole language in Latin America), and its cultural traditions for four centuries, and was designated a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage in 2005.

The village preserves African-descended cultural practices that have disappeared elsewhere in the Americas — the music (bullerengue, a women's drumming and singing tradition), the champion boxing tradition (Palenque has produced several world champions), the cooking (enyucado, a cassava and coconut cake), and the language (a creole mixing Spanish with Bantu languages) are all living traditions. The palenqueras — women in colourful dresses who sell fruit from bowls balanced on their heads in Cartagena's old city — are from Palenque, and their presence in the tourist district connects the colonial city to its African heritage.

Visiting Palenque requires a guide (local community members offer tours) and provides the most important cultural experience accessible from Cartagena — an encounter with the African heritage that shaped Colombia's Caribbean coast but that the colonial architecture of the old city tends to obscure.