Take a turn down magical, real Mompox (photos / video)

In the afternoon heat, the flotsam on Mompox’s former great riverway moves along faster than its people.

The island town, cradled in the arms of the Magdalena river, was founded in 1537 as a Spanish colonial port, when it linked Colombia’s interior to Cartagena, 150 miles upriver. The expansive waters that sustained Mompox now isolate it. Without any bridge, vehicles can only reach Mompox by a ferry that leaves twice daily from Mangangue, though regular water taxis provide a faster alternative for those on foot.

The result is that Mompox has a forgotten feeling; a place where the past looms heavy. Its three main roads follow a broad stretch of the Magdalena. Facing it are the town’s finest homes, most of which were owned by merchants who traded in gems and gold when Mompox was a flourishing port in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The town’s fortunes turned, however, in the early part of the 20^th century when the Magdalena shifted and silt piled up along Mompox’s arm of the river, forcing larger boats to go down one of its lower branches. Now hardly a boat passes by, and those that do are small.

Buildings and row houses, painted ocher or white, line the streets and are in various states of repair. Most seem to be inhabited, with enormous doors and windows open to the street that make it easy to peek inside, where old men and women are nestled in rocking chairs, shading themselves from the heat.

Though ostensibly a tourist town, Momposeans often seem genuinely surprised to see visitors, especially foreign ones. As a result, you may be offered to take a look at the lush gardens at the center of a Mompox home, or be invited to sit in a rocking chair yourself in a formal, high-ceiling sitting room.

Motor taxis, the town’s main form of transportation, rumble along the streets, but there is also the occasional donkey cart heaped with construction materials or local produce. A family of coquettish, ruddy-colored howler monkeys is easily spotted scampering atop the row houses and trees near the river; a favorite retreat of theirs is a giant ficus in the courtyard of the Hostal Doña Manuela, an 18^th century mansion now converted into a comfortable hotel. Faded administrative buildings surround the town’s main squares, two of which boast statues of Simon Bolivar, who arrived in Mompox in 1812 and recruited an army of 400 men who followed him to victory at Caracas.

In the mornings, vendors hawk Mompox cheese, which tastes similar to mozzarella. Mompox’s other original food offerings are sweet wines and compotes made from local fruits, including papaya, mango, lime, tamarind and corozo, similar to cranberry.

The town’s most iconic buildings are its six churches, of which Santa Barbara stands out. Completed in 1613, the church has an ornate wooden alterpiece, with a statue of Barbara standing with sword in hand and the decapitated head of her father at her foot — a bizarre reversal of fortunes, as Barbara was beheaded by her father for her faith. The sanguinary legend of Saint Barbara (after the beheading, her body expelled fire and lightning that killed her father) made a convenient stand-in for Shango, a powerful African god in the Yoruba pantheon, said local historian Jimi Avarado Martinez. For that reason, the church was favored by Mompox’s earliest black residents, free and slave.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish colonists used Mompox as a distribution center for African slaves, brought in to work the mines. The Africans intermarried with the indigenous population, and after emancipation in 1851, with the descendants of Spaniards as well, creating a mélange characteristic of the region, said Alvarado, a fourth-generation momposean. Mompox’s culture, particularly its brand of cumbia music, is distinctly African-inflected today, characterized by chanting, call-and-response, and heavy drumming.

At 5 p.m. Santa Barbara’s church bell, still rung by hand, summons people to mass. Señoras shuffle in, while the faint rhythms of cumbia can be heard from the square. The church’s exterior is adorned with painted reliefs of native plants and Masonic symbols, and its baroque bell tower offers a view of the town.

“To us momposeans,” Alvarado said, “this is the most beautiful church in the world.”

Another legacy of the Spanish colonists is the town’s famous gold and silver filigree jewelry, which is still made by hand in home workshops. A technique originally learned from Arabs, filigree arrived in Mompox with Spanish metalsmiths, who produced fabulous, intricate designs in the recently mined gold. A small museum in town displays 16th century examples of their work, which closely resembles that produced today.

Now the artisans, mostly young men, work in small groups, using pliers, nails and blowtorches to shape and bend the metal — mostly silver. If you venture off Mompox’s main roads, you can find them in their workshops, hunched over a half-finished leaf, stopping only briefly to massage their hands or crack their knuckles. In adjacent showrooms, a small set of earrings shaped like insects, flowers or sombreros sell for as little as $10 (20,000 pesos).

At sunset, the town’s cemetery becomes a magical place, with the purple and red skyline illuminating sun-bleached tombs, on which a surprising number of cats and kittens romp.

Buried in the cemetery is General Joseph Hermogenes Maza, who fought for Colombia’s independence. There is also a bust of momposean poet Candelario Obeso, who in the late 19th century combined the romantic tradition of poetry with the Afro-Colombian vernacular. Guides in the cemetery are happy to recite a few of his verses: in one, Obeso talks of traveling to heaven to take out God for denying him his love.

If you have an extra day, hop on one of the long boats that provide close-up views of the Magdalena’s verdant marshes, filled with wading birds, raptors and kingfishers. The boats sometimes stop in nearby campesino villages that rarely receive outside visitors. Families there live in thatched-roof houses, and groups of children roam the dirt streets—a tough and lively bunch not too shy to ask you to buy them a few sweets, and perhaps offer you an iguana in exchange. The villagers survive by fishing and subsistence farming; some are soon to be pushed off their land to make way for oil extraction.

Upon your return, in the golden afternoon sun, you will see Mompox’s handsome shoreline just as Simon Bolivar would have glimpsed it save for a satellite antennae or two. In his novel “The General in his Labyrinth,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez has the liberator say of the town: “Mompox does not exist…at times we dream of it, but it does not exist.”