OFF COLOMBIA'S COAST -- These be pirate waters, the fabled Spanish Main.

In the 1600s, Spanish treasure fleets transported tons of silver looted from Peru on a two-month voyage north to Panama. Mule trains carried the treasure across the isthmus to the fever-infested hellhole of Portobello. There, another fleet of galleons waited to take the silver first east along the coast of Latin America, to Cartagena, Colombia, then to Cadiz, Spain.

Where there was treasure, there were pirates. The Spanish Main became the main hunting ground for buccaneers like the famed Capt. Henry Morgan. Many bore "letters of marque" from the British and French crowns, authorizing them as legal pirates to "singe the beard of the king of Spain." These freeboaters were murderous, filthy, cruel, men, scum of the gutter. They bore no resemblance to Hollywood's cute pirates.

Those who think history does not matter should consider that the five-masted vessel on which I voyage has been unable to use its sails because of fierce headwinds. In 1665, a British privateer, Edward Mansfield, led a pirate fleet on this very course, bent on sacking Cartagena. His ships met the same strong winds that buffet us, thwarting his raid.

He might have failed even had the winds held fair, for Cartagena was a powerful fortress, which it remains today, a treasure of 17th century military engineering and a jewel of colonial architecture.

JUST ONE RISK

The Colombian government is desperately trying to develop tourist business, but it's a task as hard as sailing into the wind. A government tourist brochure cheerily proclaims, "Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay." This week, six tourists were kidnapped on the Pacific coast and the usual violence continued across this nation of 44.5 million, Latin America's fourth largest country.

Travel to Colombia, long a world leader in kidnapping, drug dealing and gunplay, is not for the faint of heart. What a tragedy, Colombia is a magnificent nation, with vast resources of coffee, gold, silver, oil, emeralds, and coal, with a charming, friendly people and some of the world's most beautiful women (a title shared with neighbouring Venezuela).

Colombia has been racked by violence since the 19th century. Two parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, massacred one another with mindless abandon. At least 400,000 Colombians died in "La Violencia" from the 1890s until the 1950s.

At the heart of this orgy of violence lay a struggle between big landowners of Spanish descent, known as "latafundistas," and Colombians of mixed or pure Indian or black blood. In the 1970s, Marxist rebel groups began waging guerilla war against the government in Bogota.

Today, the largest of these groups, the FARC, has turned into a combination of ideological extremists and a bandit army. Hidden in the vast Amazonian forests of southern Colombia, the FARC continues to terrorize the nation, staging frequent attacks and kidnappings. FARC currently holds over 700 hostages.

Opposing FARC is the democratic government of Alvaro Uribe, a hardline right-winger who is close to the Bush administration and a major U.S. ally. Uribe's father was killed by FARC in a botched kidnapping.

The army and police are unable to defeat FARC's guerillas, who have increasingly turned to refining and transporting cocaine. Large landowners created their own private army of right-wing death squads, the AUC, with secret backing from the military and police. They have committed almost as many atrocities as FARC.

This week, Venezuela's mercurial leader, Col. Hugo Chavez, enraged Uribe by declaring FARC "a legitimate" movement. FARC receives limited financial and moral support from European and Latin American leftists. Cocaine, kidnapping and extortion supply steady income.

No one knows what to do about long-suffering Colombia. Washington backs Uribe, but rightly fears getting sucked into a jungle war in Colombia. Meanwhile, Colombians continue to suffer and live in terror.

Furious at being unable to sack Cartagena, Capt, Mansfield reportedly lay a dreaded pirate curse on Colombia. Alas, it worked.