DATA SHEET: 3 months in Barranquilla, Colombia
03-22-2014, 11:42 PM
I've been living in Barranquilla for about a year now and I'm getting ready to take off to Saigon; 20Nation's original datasheet from two years ago is still operative, so I'm just going to add to it.
When to go: December through March is the best time, because the temperature and humidity drop and the breeze kicks up. Even in these cooler months, it's still hot as hell, so the hours before 5:00 when the sun starts to go down should be mostly spent indoors or at the beach. I think the absolute best time to visit is in the days/weeks before carnival, usually in February, when everyone is partying but the crowds haven't arrived yet.
Most people get to Barranquilla by taking a 90-minute bus from Cartagena along a well-maintained coastal highway. The vans just outside of international arrival will take you puerta-a-puerta to Quilla for 30mil/$15. Bus lines like Berlinastur are only 17 mil but don't operate door-to-door. Quilla itself is a generally flat, sprawling city, it reminds me of a smaller Lima with similar but generally hotter girls.
Where to stay: The north side, calle 72 or higher is best. The higher the calle, the higher the carerra, the better in Barranquilla. One nice thing about the city is that there really aren't any bad pockets mixed in with the good like in Bogota or Cali; the entire north side of the city is pretty safe, although Quilla is so physically big that it's not a great walking city. If you are more of a daygamer like me, the Dann Carlton is directly across the street from Buenavista Mall, which is really two upscale malls connected by a skybridge, lots of girls working in the stores and two supermarkets. If you want easier night game logistics, either the Hotel Barranquilla Plaza, which is located next to Parque Washington, or Hotel Windsor on calle 84 will do. Parque Washington and Calle 84 (called Ochentaiquatro)are the two zonas rosas in Quilla, so there's usually some action at night. I don't know about the guest policies of the last two hotels; Dann Carlton requires guest registration but is otherwise cool with guests. There are a handful of Airbnb listings on the north side as well.
The women: Compared to girls in the interior of Colombia, Barranquilleras are a little skinnier (but still very curvy) and not as pretty facially, although by no means are they completely busted like Ecuadorians. Cartagena was a slave trading port and many women there seem to have more Africanized features, but I don't see that as much in Quilla. These girls are mostly Caribbean mestizas, the mixed blood being primarily Mediterranean/Middle Eastern. Not as many head-turners as Medellin but there are some serious beauties, too. Shakira and Sofia Vergara are both from Barranquilla, for example. Edgar Renteria too, for you lurkers that swing that way. The girls range the whole shade spectrum from white to dark, and tend to have great bodies and not wear very much. There are no blue eyes and little natural blonde hair here, so if you have that you will get eyefucked almost daily.
The food: Better than the rest of Colombia, generally. Fresh seafood is abundant and the Middle Eastern influence has helped, too. Hygiene is excellent in Colombia, but you can't drink the local water so that can be an issue. There are tons of Arabic restaurants in Quilla and they seem to be all good and around 20 mil/$10 per entree. There's one called Medio Oriente on calle 85 where you can get a massive rack of ribs for 35mil. Not much good pizza here (Colombians use no pizza sauce), although Salvatore on calle 84 is pretty good. TGIFriday's is the only American chain I've seen besides the usual fast food McD/Burger King/KFC/Subway at the malls. Popsy has the best ice cream, also in the malls.
Approaching: Coastal Colombia is the most open culture perhaps in the world. Do not expect them to approach you, but you should have zero approach anxiety here, because no one here acts like a stranger. Many Costenos don't even use the formal third-person declension, even with people they don't know. If you speak Spanish, just use direct game, make eye contact then walk up and start talking and then gauge her response and body language. The girls here are not afraid. One decent opener is to ask a girl if she's a Paisa. When she says no, tell her that she looks like the girls from Medellin. There is some regional rivalry so don't push it too far, but it's also complimentary because everyone knows how pretty Medellin girls are. Dance game is big. Vallenato, merengue, champeta, salsa, all of it, although I'm speaking thoretically here because I'm tall and generally look like a newborn giraffe taking its first steps when I dance. But if you can speak Spanish and dance, this is your town.
Like the rest of Colombia, it's not a ONS culture, but coastal girls are typically pretty easy after the first encounter. For one, they are a horny bunch. In Medellin I felt I was being squeezed sometimes like a walking wallet to be probed for weakness. The girls here don't have that same vibe- they're more about fun and less about money. Don't get me wrong though, these girls are not going to offer to pay for anything. The coast is poorer, so many coastal girls get around that problem by messing around with 3 or 4 guys at a time, but the non player girls are very traditional and will get super-attached after sex.
Night game wasn't as much for me in Quilla with my shitty dancing and the fact that I don't understand Spanish well with reggaeton blasting at 100 watts. The most upscale clubs are Frogg Leggs, Cocoa Beach and Agua Helada, all in the north, and they do have some great talent, but most girls seem wound pretty tightly to their social circles there. The dudes here are usually friendly and don't cockblock, so like everywhere it's great to make friends, just remember that pretty much any Colombian will rip you off if he can. I don't see much difference in quality between the richer and poorer girls, only the richer girls tend to be whiter. There is a cluster of okay-not-great bars with no cover on calle 84 between carreras 54 and 55, I've been lucky there on weekends. There is another cluster of bars/restaurants in Parque Washington carrera 51B between 79 and 80, and a few on calle 93 between carreras 46 and 51B. If you're feeling brave, there is a strip of discos way in the south on carrera 8, called La Ocho. It is policed and reasonably safe, but these are not the rich kids of Quilla, so be careful- coastal Colombian dudes are very good-natured but also very macho, so things can escalate if you let them. You will need to taxi in and out, you cannot set foot off of the main drag, and there may even be some hookers around trying to pickpocket you, but the talent in the discos is quality even by Colombian standards.
Daygame is super-easy here, the best thing to do is troll the malls and if nothing's doing then go to the mall supermarket and talk to the salesgirls in Exito or Jumbo. Or find a beauty school and wait for a class to end; the girls from these schools are obvious in their hygienist uniforms. Because sarcasm is usually lost on Colombianas, I separated a cute one from a pack of beauty/dental/whatever students by asking her if this was a place for exotic massage. She was surprised and laughed and said no so I said are you sure, I'd really like an exotic massage because my upper leg hurts. It's fun to mess with them because they have no idea if you're being an idiot or if it's just a weird Gringo cultural difference. And even if you're just playing around, they love the attention.
If you are using an American credit/debit card, be prepared that your card may work at the ATMs but not at the retailers. If you need to change money, the exchange places are mostly lined up on calle 72, so you can compare the rates.
You really need to speak some Spanish to game well in Barranquilla, but if you don't then take a bus/taxi down to centro and go to the Colombo Americano English center. You can enter without being hassled, and there is a large courtyard and snack bar inside. There are always at least a few chicas milling around before or between classes, and obviously they want to practice their English. There is also an English library next door, which is not so good for gaming but has a/c and obviously lots of English books, I read the Game Of Thrones series there. Also, this area is only three blocks from Portal del Prado mall, the 2nd best spot to daygame behind Buenavista.
The universities are set up mostly in the way north on the way to the beaches. Universdad Atlantico is the only one I really walked around- it's big and open and has no security to get by, unlike Universidad del Norte. Or you can just bum around the traffic circle just out in front of it where all the students take the buses. The college kids here obviously have social circles, but the girls appear to mess around outside of their cliques as much as in them. I highly suggest hooking up with a college girl in Quilla and then going out to her favorite bars; her closest friends might leave you alone but most of her acquaintances will try to get you in their f-rotation.
Barranquilla is a coastal city but set more on a river than the ocean, so the beaches are a little ways out of town like in Charleston. There is an area called Pradomar close to a beach town named Puerto Colombia that has some decent beach areas, only about 15 minutes from Buenavista Mall and the city. Pradomar/Puerto Colombia would be a nice place to stay if you are more of a beach guy- there are some hotels being built along the beach strip, some American guys are building a beach hostel with a rooftop bar near the plaza in Puerto, and there are taxis and buses leaving every 10 minutes for the city. I stayed out there for a little while, and it was pretty easy to convince girls to come to the beach for the day, eat some fish and drink Aguila beer (the coastal favorite), then afterwards you can take them back to the hotel to wash off the sand.
Another 30 minutes past Puerto is a hot springs mud volcano called Totumo, they let you get in it for a while, it's a different experience. San Nicolas is another thing to see I guess, it's the classic old Spanish plaza and beautiful church, located deep in Barranquilla's centro.
Barranquilla is probably a better place to live than to visit, because it's more of a working city with no real tourist attractions. That said, the north side of the city is quite nice by Colombian standards, gringo saturation here is 0% (which means no panhandling) and the girls are not floored by foreigners but they are curious, easy to talk to, and usually DTF pretty quickly. The best thing to do is pipeline for a week or two on Colombian Cupid before you come into town; if you get them over to Skype and have a couple of chats you have a decent chance of first-encounter banging. You can do Barranquilla as a midweek/weekend stopover, but the longer you're here, the better the experience is, at least for as long as you can stand the unrelenting heat and sun. In terms of picking up, I think it rivals Cali as the easiest major city in Colombia. But have a plan before you get here; if you just show up and start walking around the city like a backpacker you will probably hate it.
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