San Felipe Castle: 10.42251, -75.53912
I really liked exploring the fortress of San Felipe! It was a highlight for my vacation. We didn’t get to see all of the fortress because we only had a limited amount of time off the cruise ship but what we saw was really cool. I would absolutely recommend visiting the fortress! Also, Cartagena is a really cool place to see too and I would love to come back one day to explore more.
Click on the pictures below for detail.
Driving Directions
If you are coming off the cruise ship and want to come to the castle independently, the best way is to walk just outside the port and there will be a few taxis waiting for people. It was about a 15 minute ride from the port to the castle and if we hired an independent taxi service it would have cost us about $5-10 USD to get there – most taxis accepted US dollars too. But since we wanted to see a few other things too we booked through our cruise ship, the Hop-on Hop-off bus service for $40 per person – which makes stops at the castle, the Old City, and other places around town. The Hop-on Hop-off bus service wasn’t very dependable (because they were ALWAYS late) but the people running it were very nice and spoke clear English. If I had to do it over again, I would simply walk out of the port and book an independent taxi to save money.
From the cruise ship terminal:
From the Cartagena airport:
In case you were wondering, Castillo San Felipe de Barajas means San Felipe of Barajas Fort (castle, fort and fortress are used in the same sense here).
While visiting Cartagena in Colombia, I found out that this castle, or fortress, is one of the best things to see in the city – we had a blast exploring it! The fortress is located close in proximity to the “old city” where you can still see many old buildings, Spanish walls and other fortifications.
The fortress was built around 1536 – almost 500 years ago! It was built on top of a hill and expanded several times throughout the centuries. There are lots of things to see and explore at the fortress, which is why I recommend you rent an audio tour from the Box Office at the entrance for an additional cost. You can also pay even more money for a guided tour but I found the audio tour very informative on its own.
Once you arrive at the fortress you will immediately see that it is still in incredible condition. The fortress covers a large area and rises to about 135 feet at its tallest point.
Entrance Fees
To gain entrance into the fortress you will need to purchase tickets from the box office near the entrance gate. You have a few options for tours but no matter what, you have to pay an entrance fee – we paid about $6 USD (you can also pay in Colombian pesos which is cheaper. It was about 10,000 Colombian pesos which is about $3. per person. So it may be beneficial to exchange some currency if you are looking to save even more money). The audio tour was about another $6 USD per audio device. But we haggled them a little bit since we were paying for 3 audio tours so we got the price down a little more.
If you rent an audio tour device, everything is already programmed into it so you simply follow the stations listed on the map and press the number button which corresponds with the station number to hear the information.
The audio tour has the following languages programmed:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Italian
- I think Portuguese is programmed too…
The audio tour has three tour options already programmed into the device depending on how much time you want to spend and what you want to see.
- 60 min length 1-29 stations
- 90 min length 1-32 stations
- 180 min length 1-32+ stations
By the way, if you don’t know Spanish, all of the workers who interacted with us knew English well enough to sell us a ticket and explain how the audio tour worked.
Once you pay the entrance fee you will be given a map of the fortress too.
Once you have purchased your ticket, if you haven’t noticed by now you will be swarmed by people selling small items, beverages and snacks. They all wanted USD prices for their merchandise which is a complete rip off. If you want some souvenirs or beverages, walk down the street and buy snacks at the local stores to save some money and avoid any “gringo” fees.
Proceed through the entrance gate and you will see a few guards checking your tickets and now you are ready to start the tour. The path to the top of the fortress is pretty steep. When I did this trek, it was on a very hot and humid day and I was literally sweating after about 3 minutes of walking up the concrete ramp. You will also see a few vendors selling hats and other items before you get to another entrance gate.
Once inside the red gate you will have another ramp to climb and this is where the audio tours begin.
At first, I thought the audio tour was a little annoying (because it was very slow moving). I wanted to run around and explore everything as fast as I could but once I actually listened to the information I began to get a real sense for what life at the fortress was like.
At the top of the fortress there is a nice area to rest in the shade underneath a gazebo. In the building at the top, there is a another gift shop which sells small items, snacks, beverages and ice cream.
As I walked around, I realized that it would have taken a long time to go from one area to the next. Which is why, the builders made…secret tunnels!!
Ok. So they aren’t really secret tunnels but they are really fun to explore. The map calls the tunnels the “niches of death” because if enemies were coming through, you could hide some of your soldiers in the niches and wait for the bad guys to come by and then BAM! Thus the niches of death.
Some of the tunnels just intersect two defensive batteries to make the fortress easier to move troops around. But one of the tunnel systems goes deep and eventually ends in water.
The tunnels have very dim lighting and there were a few with no lighting at all so I recommend you bring your own flashlight.
Almost all of the tunnels were in the range of around 6 feet tall. Some were taller and some were shorter so you may need to duck. Also, some of the tunnels went down at steep angles so be prepared and make sure you watch your footing so you don’t slip. When we were exploring the tunnels, we only saw a few other people so just be careful.
The picture below is as far as we dared travel in the tunnels. We weren’t prepared for any walking through water but the tunnels definitely kept going!
Back at the top, we saw the large Colombian flag and we had to get a picture of it.
After we explored the castle we took a taxi over to the old city. It was a really fun day!
