Trouble in Cartagena

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.28.07 | 3:36 PM ET

Thanks to reports of dropping crime under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia just might be the hipster tropical destination du jour. International visits to the country have risen by two-thirds since 2002. But according to an Associated Press report, those flocking to the celebrated colonial port city of Cartagena expecting to find a similarly shrinking crime rate are in for a surprise.

While murder is down in Bogota and Medellin, the AP reports, it’s up in Cartagena, along with armed robberies.

Never mind that Bill Clinton, King Juan Carlos of Spain and others were in town Monday honoring Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or that visitors from cruise ships are expected to double over the next year.

“Cartagena’s efforts to set itself apart from so many other Latin American cities ringed by poverty are failing,” the wire service reports. “No longer, it appears, can it claim immunity from the violence of Colombia’s half-century-old civil conflict.”