El Laguito

This guide to El Laguito in Cartagena starts with a cup of shrimp cocktail sold from a beach cart and traces the name back to the little lagoon and fishing shore that once sat here. It follows the mid-century construction boom that buried that shoreline in concrete, beginning with a hotel project ordered up after Colombia's own president complained the city needed something grander. The hotel opened with under a hundred rooms and still stands today between Bocagrande and this stretch of sand.