Tourists walk in the streets of Cartagena (Colombia). Kaveh Kazemi (Getty Images)
The corpse of a young woman lay limp on the bed.
Her partner, a man her own age, was about to die in the next few hours, in the same hospital, surrounded by the same mystery.
The doctors who had treated them did not understand what was happening.
The chief asked the others to wash themselves well: "We don't know what we are facing."
The death of a JP Morgan worker and an employee of the multinational Procter & Gamble who were spending a few days on vacation in Cartagena de Indias remains a mystery 17 days later.
No one knows the reason that has led them to the grave.
They were two Dutch tourists who were around 30 years old, with their whole lives ahead of them.
Good salary, social position, sense of adventure.
The authorities have not yet released the autopsy and offer no convincing explanation.
nienke bawa,
In the Caribbean city, speculation about what happened fills the sepulchral silence that the authorities maintain.
Everyone wants to know, but so far no one knows what happened.
The image of the most tourist destination in Colombia has been tarnished by a still inexplicable event.
In recent days, the magazine
Traveling lifestyl
e updated an article entitled
Is it safe to travel to Colombia now?
which includes a ticket for the mysterious death of the two tourists.
- Those Dutch didn't come here.
And if they came, everyone is served from the same cauldron.
How are only two going to die?
I ask God and the Virgin what happened.
Edilma Marimón has been serving food in the Bazurto market for more than 40 years.
A labyrinth of stalls where the fresh fish on the wood and the piles of dishes are mixed with a smell that is difficult to bear.
He says that since it was known that they were there on Sunday, August 21, people go less.
The track behind the steps of Bawa, 29 years old, and Kootte, 31, through Cartagena puts the focus on three places where these days they hold their breath waiting for the results of the autopsy.
The market is one of them, but the focus has always been on The Rum Box restaurant.
The first few days, some excited people came to Arsenal street to shout “assassins” at the employees.
The restaurant is owned by the son of the mayor of the city.
Nienke Bawa was the one who made the reservation for Sunday night at this restaurant.
At the last minute, she requested a change through
(in English).
There would no longer be two (she and Bob), but four diners.
Another couple joined the dinner.
She insisted that she wanted a table on the first floor.
The meal started at 8:30 p.m.
They shared various starters, had six cocktails.
Bob ate fish, Nienke, pork chop.
The other woman also fish;
the other man, salmon.
That maintains Abraham Dau, owner of the premises.
The restaurant's cameras recorded the entire scene until the four left at 11:10 p.m.
Bob, tall and blond, leaves the place walking with his hands clasped behind his back.
He seems calm.
Before going through the door, they say goodbye to the staff and when they are out on the street, the four of them talk in a circle and then get lost around a corner, perhaps heading for the historic center.
- The biggest mystery is that the other couple disappeared, says a taxi driver through the rearview mirror.
Of those diners nothing is known with certainty.
Several versions suggest that he would have traveled to Barú, also in Cartagena, and that the investigators would have located them to speak with them.
Neither the Prosecutor's Office nor the police confirm this or the contrary.
There is a blanket of uncomfortable silence over everything that surrounds the case.
- I am not authorized to speak, apologizes one of the researchers.
Bazurto Market in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), this Tuesday. Inés Santaeulalia Fernández
The next day Nienke and Bob suffer symptoms of intoxication.
They spend Monday sick, in their room at the boutique hotel Casa del Coliseo, the third place in which this story is centered, still without an end.
A tastefully restored mansion, with spacious stately rooms with balconies facing the hustle and bustle of the streets of downtown Cartagena.
On the roof there is a swimming pool sheltered from the gaze of curious people.
In the hotel nobody talks about it, the few clients that there are barely cross each other at breakfast.
His lawyer issued a statement in which they assure that the investigative work inside "did not yield any indications about the origin of the death."
In addition, they defend, they only serve a
standard
breakfast about which no one has complained.
The couple got worse as the hours passed, forcing their transfer to the Medihelp clinic towards the end of the afternoon.
She died that same night, he on Tuesday morning.
The investigation was launched while the bodies were repatriated a few days.
The first place investigators went was The Rum Box.
They checked the food and took samples of the drinks.
They analyzed the videos of the premises and requested all the invoices from suppliers.
Abraham Dau does not understand so much delay in an investigation that has affected his business, although this Tuesday all the tables on the first floor are full.
"We are mortified."
Dau assures that there was no intoxication there.
That night they gave numerous dinners and no one else got sick.
He believes that in the cruelty against his restaurant there are political motivations, because he is the son of who he is.
“I am an introvert, this experience has been traumatic.
I'm used to being messed with, but I started this business alone, I've sweated it and bled it."
In the three central places of this plot, nothing has changed much in these two weeks.
The restaurant was only closed to the public on the first day so as not to hinder the investigation.
In the hotel there is an almost mystical silence.
And in the market the stalls continue to offer lobsters that form castles on white aluminum trays and rice cooked by the kilo in enormous iron pots, although if someone mentions "the Dutch" a stir is immediately made.
Gina H. Marimón says without any doubt that no one has ever been intoxicated at their food stalls and threatens to mobilize if someone continues to accuse them of something:
- We are going to make a march to ask that the two alive appear and say what the two dead ate.
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