Note: to visit the fine web site of National Geographic Click Here	By BART McDOWELL SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR Photographs by O. LOUIS MAZZATENTA SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR
	ITH WISDOM and hospitality, a former President of Colombia urged his official visitors to see the antique city of Cartage- na de noche y en coche-a rhyme in Spanish, "by night and by coach."    Romantic notion, and more: This fortress city on the Caribbean is a world heritage site, as designated by UNESCO.  Like an aging beauty, Cartagena best recaptures her voluptuous past in the dim light of candles and coach lamps.  To the cadence of horse
hoofs, on streets so narrow that balconies almost collide, visitors see baroque facades and castellated bas- tions...a shadowy, lived-in museum with street life and laughter and the gossip of history.    And what history.  As a guardian of Spanish sea-lanes for Peruvian silver and
Mirrored in a street slick with rain, a hired coach stands topsy-turvy before the Church of San Pedro Claver in the romantic colonial quarter of this historic Colombian city. A key port of the Spanish Main from the 16th to the 18th centuries, Cartagena proudly preserves the grand structures of that bygone era.	gold, Cartagena became the most important port in the New World, a storehouse for provi- sions and treasure and a fatal temptation for plunderers.    Now, by day, new parts of the city sprawl wide. Sunbathers, basted with lotions, carpet the beach. Vendors sell raspados-shaved ice with syrup-sea- shell jewelry, and garlands of fishy iguana eggs. Colombians from Bogotá-cachacos to the local folk-come here "so they can stroll the streets in safe- ty," a young policeman says proudly.  "Here people make love, not crime." So growing Cartagena bus- tles, newly noisy with 800,000 people.    Some 70,000 still live within the old battlements. And each afternoon they await "that hour of mysteri- ous flourishing, " as poet Guillermo Valencia called it.  Like an unlucky ship, the sun slips abruptly into the sea.  A strong, steady breeze blows in, rattling
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