Cartagena

Cartagena de Indias earned the nickname La Heroica by surviving centuries of pirate sieges and imperial hunger for the gold stacked in its harbour. Gabriel García Márquez set his ageing lovers loose along these cobbles, and the light on the ramparts still looks enough like his prose that visitors half expect the walled city to have been written rather than built.

Most visitors manage the walls in an afternoon - a photo at the India Catalina monument, a wander through Las Bóvedas souvenir stalls, a mojito in Plaza Santo Domingo before the cruise horn calls them back. It is a fair sample, though not the full ration of a city founded in 1533 and still living to a champeta beat once the day-trippers leave.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace that same ring of stone but slow it to the pace of the stories inside it - through the San Diego gate and into Las Bóvedas, where the old munitions vaults get a story worth lingering for.

Put your earbuds in and walk the walls at your own pace - La Heroica, still standing guard, this time for you.