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During the peak of the day �Ѵdz���ó�� was at its quietest.

It wasn’t until 2008, when an acquaintance, a British journalist in Colombia named Richard McColl, began building a hotel there, that I realized that �Ѵdz���ó�� — a perfectly preserved colonial city nearly 500 years old, set on an island in the Magdalena River — was indeed real.

As the river silted up in the early 19th century and the current shifted directions, �Ѵdz���ó�� fell out of favor as a transit point and its influence began to wane.

It remained that way until the mid-1990s — Unesco named the historic center of �Ѵdz���ó�� a World Heritage Site in 1995 — when the region began to open back up as threats from drug cartels and paramilitary groups began to dissipate.

“What it may do is just motivate a few more people to head on down to �Ѵdz���ó�� from Cartagena.”