Colombia Wrap-Up

As promised, here’s the Colombia wrap-up post (finally! I’m glad to be done with it). After 2 months down there, it feels good to be back in the States. I’ve gained a new-found appreciation for American cities: they seem suddenly so clean, spacious, and organized—and the skyscrapers in downtown LA have never looked so beautiful to me before. And the people—they are so diverse! And weird!

I wanted to start this post off with this map, in order to give the non-geographically inclined amongst you an idea of what kind of topography it consists of, and where I have traveled within it. As you can see from my crude, multi-colored route-lines, I’ve only traversed a 1/3 of the country at most. Yet this is about the most that the typical traveler will see of this country, including most Colombians themselves.

The Jungle

The reason for this is that almost 1/2 of the country is immersed in Amazonian jungle, south-east from the Cordillera Oriental range of the Andes wherein Bogotá is nestled. And this is your first clue to the deep, dark, complicated and mysterious heart of Colombia. Even when you’ve traveled across most of the main sightseeing circuit as I have, you are left with some kind of sense of having missed something, that there’s something you didn’t quite grasp about the country and its people. Especially when you consider the on-going civil war and drug trafficking that is so strangely invisible, yet so widely publicized.

And that’s because few travelers (for good reason) venture deep into the jungle, wherein the natives dwell still in their traditional manner, and the birds, insect, and animal life is some of the most diverse on the planet. The jungle that harbors also the rebels and terrorists and drug traffickers.

The Driving

Take a look at that map again, and note that the majority of the populated areas are located within the three Andean ranges that sprawl upward towards the coast. This means that traveling by land is always a harrowing, at times breath-takingly vivid experience. And the few roads that connect the towns and cities are rarely more than two lanes, which means that you’ve got trucks, buses, cars, bicyclists, horses, cows, and people on foot all vying for the same limited stretches of tar. This explains, in part, some of the loco driving in Colombia, because if you don’t drive aggressively and pass at any and every given opportunity, you’re gonna get stuck behind an over-sized truck hauling some industrial machinery.
However, at a certain point, my understanding of the crazy driving ends, and I just think that many drivers in Colombia are just plain horrendous. For example, they don’t have any concept of a middle-ground; it’s either full-speed ahead, or slamming on the brakes. What’s especially ridiculous about that is when they are driving on small city streets with stop lights up ahead, yet they will still achieve full speed before reaching the stop sign, thus assuring the hardest possible braking. This can’t be good for the life of their cars. And yet, oddly enough, all the drivers exhibit the utmost of care and caution when approaching potholes or bumps in the road. They will slow to a crawl and inch over the holes, obviously concerned for the welfare of their vehicle. And then once over it, immediately hit the gas and blast full-speed ahead, until encountering an obstacle, whereupon they slam on the brakes again.

As a pedestrian in Colombia, it is your responsibility to yourself to get the hell out of the way of any approaching vehicles. As in, you will be killed or maimed if you don’t, because the cars will not look out for you. Even the dogs in Colombia understand this, and you will be amazed at the dexterity with which dogs will look both ways and cross the street in high-speed traffic. It makes you realize that American dogs must really be coddled, that they haven’t yet evolved this awareness of the danger of automobiles.

I’m quite thrilled to be done with fearing for my life while walking on the streets. Even when on the sidewalks in Colombia, you still have to be on the look-out for rogue motorcyclists, who will jump the curb at full-speed to circumvent traffic and barrel directly towards you, either skirting you by inches, or forcing you to leap out of the way. This doesn’t occur frequently, but it does happen. Look out.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason everyone is so lackadaisical there in regards to human life and frailty might be due to the great health-care coverage that they enjoy as Colombian citizens. It’s like, hey, no big deal, I just fractured my skull and broke some ribs. I’m covered!

Another thing to mention about the vehicles in Colombia is that they mostly run off of diesel, except for the propane powered engines. You’ll witness buses and trucks belching dense thickets of sun-blocking diesel fumes into the air as they chug up the Cordilleras.

The People

I have read frequently about how clear and well annunciated Colombian Spanish is. Now, some Colombian Spanish is clear and well annunciated. But on the whole, and in general, most Colombian Spanish I heard was most decidedly unclear, nor well annunciated. I don’t know to whom everyone else has been speaking to. It’s been consistently difficult for me to understand anything that people have been saying to me in Colombia, because it’s either been too soft, too fast, or some combination of both. It also doesn’t help that they’ve only been speaking directly to my girlfriend, rather than to me, and she understands even less than I do. Even when I would lean forward and try to enter into the conversation, demonstrating my little tidbit of Spanish-speaking ability, they would continue to ignore me and speak to her. After a while, I just stopped even trying, and let her negotiate the speedy barrage of unknown words on her own.

I have also read many gushing statements on how friendly the Colombian people are. I don’t know that I can be quite so effusive. Now, my extended Colombian family was extremely hospitable—beyond hospitable. But the strangers on the street, the workers in restaurants, hotels, etc, were, on the whole, and in general, more on the rude side of the things.

This isn’t to say that you won’t meet some very nice Colombians in bars and clubs and otherwise. But rather to note that in the many daily transactions (just as in most places in the world, of course), you may be subject to being shoved out of the way, ignored, or having small children yelling in your ear.

Also, there are absolutely no bars on blatant staring down there. I know that I’m freakishly blonde, but I still don’t appreciate being stared at for a half-hour when I’m just trying to eat my breakfast. After a while, both my girlfriend and I would just glare back at people until they got the notion to look somewhere else.

Random thought: could it be that an overabundance of red meat in the Colombian diet contributes to machismo and aggression? Maybe a few more vegetables on their plate, aside from the little sliced tomato and shredded lettuce, might do a body good.

The Food

Waaaay too much fried food, lads, and not even usually fresh nor hot when served, unless you’re in a nicer (i.e. not on the street) joint. Anyone know the stats on the rate of heart failure in Colombia?

I don’t mind eating too much meat for a little while. I just wish the dishes could have been spiced up a tad more. Just a bit more variety. Something that would go slightly above and beyond meat, french fries, beans, rice, and patacones.

But at least, of course, there were the juices. I will truly and dearly miss my jugos de níspero, maracuyá, lulo, and guanábana. And coffee. My favs were the períco—or pintado depending where you be—which is coffee with milk. As opposed to café con leche, which is milk with coffee. There’s a difference. Of course, there’s always just the straight-up cups of tintos, if you want to old-school it, and get with the peops on the streets.

The Sex

Sex seems to be a non-familial issue in Colombia. Colombians are comfortable with their sexuality. So on a long-distance bus ride, for example, the family film for the trip might be “American Pie: Beta House,” Wherein there is a naked sex scene within the first five minutes, continuing with boobies unabated from thereon. Or in a hotel, you might be flipping through the channels and go straight from CNN to GIANT VARICOSE PEEPEE THRUSTING IN VAGINA. This is a hotel where families were staying. Also, sex shops abound in Medellín and Bogotá, with 30 different types of dildos. I didn’t know that many types of dildos existed.
I also am convinced that Colombians watch way too many novelas on television, because they get a little too caught up in moments of passion in public areas. They will not hesitate to stick their tongues down each other’s throats and dry hump in public areas such as in front of museums, or in parks, or next to you in a bar or restaurant, or on street corners. It can be a little gross sometimes.
Colombians furthermore don’t stigmitize plastic surgery nor excessive make-up. You’ll see a number of surgically enhanced boobies, even on men, especially in Cali and Medellín.
There are also a lot of “love hotels” everywhere in Colombia. Make sure you don’t actually stay in one.

The Phones

There ain’t no public telephones nowhere in Colombia, so when you want to make a call, you either go into a place with telephone cabinas, or you pick up a cell-phone from a dude standing on the street with a placard around his neck that says “minutos.” He will have 2 or 3 different cell-phones, one for each different type of carrier, which is made evident by the first 3 digits of the cell-phone number.

If you’ve ever despaired at the general lack of cell-phone etiquette in the United States, then fear not—Colombians are ten times worse. They all have cell-phones with annoying ringtones, and they will happily chat away at full volume in public places. Your bus driver will be chatting on his cell-phone as he whips around a dead-man’s curve in the Cordillera Central at 80 kph. Entire families seated together at a restaurant will be chatting into all their respective cell-phones.

The Businesses

I was amazed at the general lack of business ethics and acumen in Colombia. Overall, most Colombians running their restaurants, internet stores, cafés, and tiendas didn’t really seem all that concerned about making money. I say this because at the time I traveled in Colombia, it just so happened to be concurrent with the time of the year that most Colombians go on vacation, December 15th – January 15th. This meant that many places were just completely closed that entire time, such as restaurants listed in my guidebook. Now, I’m not one to begrudge someone for taking a vacation—however, when you are running a business, I imagine that you are probably trying to make some cash. But most places just go ahead and shut their doors on Sundays, festivos, siesta time, or just whenever they dang feel like it, apparently. It’s rare to find a shop with hours posted on it, but even when you do, don’t expect them to adhere to those hours. It’s just a bit perplexing, because I don’t understand why you would intentionally give up tons of business. On Sundays, for example, there are loads of people walking around in the streets. But little is open. See the market potential there?

A Summation of the Country as a Tourist Destination

It’s a beautiful tropical country. If you are into hiking, cycling, that sort of outdoorsy thing, then there’s plenty for you in Colombia. If you are into drinking a lot of aguardiente or rum, or dancing, or hitting on Latino men or women (or being hit on), then there’s plenty for you in Colombia as well. I sometimes feel like since I didn’t party very much in Colombia, I kind of missed out on one of the defining national past-times.

However, if you are looking for a relaxing, stress-free vacation, most definitely do not come to Colombia, unless you’re set on shelling out the big bucks.

My recommendations for quintessentially Colombian souvenirs: hand-woven Arhuaca mochilas; tropical fruit jams; emeralds—but only if you’ve got some money to spend and an ability to distinguish quality; and finally—of course—a few bags of good coffee.

And Finally

This post is getting a bit over-long, so I’m just going to end it with a brief list of my best and worst times in Colombia.

The Best of Times: gorging on juicy red beef at Andres’ Carne de Res outside of Bogotá on Thanksgiving; chilaxing on my cousin’s finca in Armenia; gorging myself on strange fried meats (such as smoked cow lung) on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city in Cali; walking back from the Parque Nacional del Café in the pouring rain; dancing and drinking with my cousin and friends in Armenia; trekking through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida for my birthday (I know, I made it sound like a nightmare—but I love that kind of shit); drinking fresh níspero juice on the waterfront in Santa Marta; eating a three course meal in Cartagena, accompanied by 2 bottles of Chilean wine, for Christmas dinner; frolicking in warm mud with the consistency of chocolate cream in a mud volcano, and then getting bathed like a newborn babe by an old woman in a lagoon; walking along the river in Medellín at night admiring all the Christmas lights; eating pasteles in La Candelaria; walking around the amazing rose garden at the Botanical Gardens in Bogotá.

The Worst of Times: the infamous 31 hours in an orange truck from Armenia to Santa Marta (the more I think on it, the more skeptical I get on why a truck would deliver oranges all that way, given the price of oil, and the fact that oranges grow rampantly and well on the Caribbean coast; some questions, perhaps, are better left unasked); getting scammed in a restaurant in Santa Marta; getting sick in Parque Tayrona; the Islas del Rosario “tour” in Cartagena; going to a Botanical Garden in Medellín in which there were no flowers—in fact, just going anywhere in Colombia only to find it was in the process of renovation, or just plain closed; getting soaked to the bone by nasty street water in downtown Bogotá; and finally, the plane ride home.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my escapades in Colombia as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them, and thanks for keeping up, or reading a few posts, or reading just this post. This blog will now cease as a journal of my daily mundane existence, excepting for the scattered updates of my physical whereabouts, as I am now engaged in the act of trying to decide, in an as thoroughly researched and thought-through process as possible, where the hell in the United States I wish to settle down in for the next foreseeable chunk of my future. Tally ho!

Luggage Update

So my luggage has been returned, after 3 hellacious days consisting of phonecalls that led nowhere, listless employees that wouldn’t help me until I got pissy with them, a COPA airlines desk that had no phone-number, and when I finally went all the way back to LAX to talk to them in person, I found out that they also don’t even work at their desk until 8 or 9 at night, depending on who you ask. It was a successive series of tragic/comedic errors, culminating in the final punch-line of opening up my long-lost luggage only to find that it had been pilfered by a strangely selective thief. They stole: my Colombian hammock, my REI quick-dry T-shirt that was given to me as a gift by my sister, my Spanish-English dictionary, my Lonely Planet guidebook, my Tom’s of Maine deodorant (!), and my few remaining multivitamins (!). Weird. I’m really mostly pissed about the hammock and the T-shirt. But at least I got the majority of my clothes and luggage back, right? I also had purchased travel insurance before I left, and it should (supposedly) cover missing baggage items. Although I will never be able to replace that hammock. While that hammock was only $14 down there, it would probably fetch anywhere between $50-100 in the States. Damn.
But they DID NOT take, thank god, the two tropical jams that I had obtained right before I left, my mermeladas de lulo y uchuva. I’m pretty excited to give those suckers a spread on some fresh bread.

Luggage Lost and Dreams Deferred

—Sorry, I just re-read this piece after having posted it first thing this morning, whilst still fuming in exasperation. I just realized how absolutely pissy the whole thing sounds, so I apologize. I will leave it posted, however, in the hope that you find some humor in it, and also because I think it still stands as a necessary rant to get it all of my chest—

It was almost like Colombia couldn’t let us escape that easily—we had to be put through the fire of inefficiency, rudeness, and utter chaos and confusion before we could leave its dastardly clutches. Yes, I am now safe and sound in Los Angeles; but minus a piece of luggage. If it were that simple, of course, I would not be elaborating. Alas, the whole truth is not quite so pleasant to remember. . .
It began in Bogota, although at the time, we hadn’t realized that it had begun. It began with our interaction with the Aerorepublica (the carrier for the Copa airlines ticket we had orignally gotten through Orbitz.com) representative who gave us our tickets. As the first leg of our flight was simply from Bogota to Medellin, we were checked in domestically, even though our final destination was international. I tried to clarifiy this with the Aerorepublica chica, and that we only had a mere hour in between flights. Oh, no problem, she reassured us. I double checked. We still had to go through customs, get screened, pay the airport tax, etc, and I was worried that we wouldn’t have time to do that. And what about picking up our luggage, and then re-checking it in? Nothing to worry about, she said flippantly, just ask when you get there, it’s easy. At least, that’s the jist of what I understood she was saying, as she was, of course, speaking in rapid Spanish.
So we arrived in Medellin, and retrieved our luggage. There were no clear signs anywhere to be seen that would give us a clue on where to go next. We asked an official where we should go for our connecting international flight. He pointed us vaguely towards some stairs, and up we went, hurrying because we only had 20 minutes until boarding time for our next flight. We arrived at what looked to be the international gate, which we determined from the sign that said, “international departures.” But it also said Avianca. We approached the gate, skirting around a cluster of a family who were simply standing there talking to each other. Suddenly, the lady in the red coat at the gate snarled at my girlfriend (people in Colombia always speak to my girlfriend, not to me, because she is Latina looking, even though I technically speak better Spanish) and told her that there was a line. We looked around. Apparently, those people who were just standing there were in the line, although they weren’t making any effort to move towards the gate. So we dutifully stepped behind them until they ended whatever involved discussion they were having and moved. Waiting and waiting, getting frantic because we were running short on time. When we finally got up the lady in the red coat, she looked at our tickets and said, “oh, this gate is for other destinations. For Panama City, you have to go up there,” and she pointed up some more stairs. Well, thanks for making us wait in a non-existent line without checking if that was where we should be, biatch. So, we trucked up the stairs, still carrying our luggage, because we had so far seen no such thing as an airline counter. We then arrived at customs. We then dealt with 3 different officials, NONE of whom gave the slightest indication that we shouldn’t have been going through with all of our luggage on us. They passed us on through to the military checkpoint, wherein they go through every inch of your bags, rifling through each page of your books. As I have been to Israel before, this didn’t perturb me that much, as I expected them to be pretty thorough, given that their country is in a civil war and plagued by drug trafficking. What I wasn’t so thrilled about was that they really took their sweet time, and my plane had been boarding for a while now. The soldier going carefully through my shit was actually a nice young lad, and was trying to make conversation with me. I think he was complimenting me on trying to learn Spanish and telling me that I could speak well. Which was funny, because I didn’t understand a damn thing he was telling me, for the reason that he was looking down the entire time and speaking down into my luggage very softly in rapid Spanish. OK, so I finished with that, and then waited, and waited and waited as my girlfriend was being checked. She was obviously having some kind of problem, and as she speaks even less Spanish than I do, I tried to go over to assist her, but of course the soldiers wouldn’t let me. When she finally got through, she was in tears of frustration, because the soldier had taken some items from her. That was when we found out that all of the luggage we had on us was considered to be carry-on items. Where were we supposed to have checked them in?
We arrived at our flight gate, the final passengers to board. The lady took our tickets, and then looked at our luggage. “You can’t take those on,” she told us. Well, what were we supposed to do? We also hadn’t yet paid our airport tax. Now, let me remind you here that we had just been dutifully following the directions given to us this entire time. If anyone had told us, hey, you need to go to the airline counter (wherever that may have been) and check your bags in, then we would have done so. No one told us this at any step durning the time-consuming customs and security process. No one said, hey, you can’t carry on all those big items. NADA.
So anyway, after the lady freaked out, and we freaked out, she frantically took our airport tax (which fortunately we already had the money ready, as we knew about the tax) on the spot, and they took our luggage and gave us little hand-written slips.
Great, so now we were headed to Panama City, and who knew where the hell our bags would end up. And my girlfriend had items taken from her (one of them given to her by her grandmother) that she would never get back, all because 1) the stupid lady at Aerorepublica in Bogota happy-go-luckily just sent us all straight on into doom; then 2) the offical in the luggage pick-up area who send us straight on towards customs; then 3) the Avianca bitch who held us up and then misdirected us (it looked like there were other airline carrier counters behind her, but who knows what those were); and finally, 4) the string of officials we went through at customs who didn’t even blink an eye at the obvious amounts of non-carry on items we were trucking around.
We had been summarily fucked by the whole Colombian airline system (as well as by my retarded tickets, which were the cheapest by far I could find, but which decided to route me through 2 different stops, one of them domestic, before I could head towards the States). Thanks guys!
Well, it would be nice if I could end this tale of tragedy and woe right there. But no.
We switched to our flight to LAX in Panama City, minus our luggage this time, which we could only hope would find their way. However, in my point of view, things were going about as smoothly—minus the hassle in Medellin—as one could hope, given that all of our flights were on time, and we were able to make our connections without delay. We were now on the plane towards what I could only conceive as HOME (i.e. toilets with lids, hot water, vegetables . . .), and though we were still worried about our luggage, at least we knew that we would make it, without having to spend hours stranded in an airport in Panama city.
After the 6 1/2 hours of flight time, which oddly felt like way longer, even though we’d recently been on 14 hour and 10 hour bus rides that felt way shorter. Maybe it has something to do with the strange timelessness of high altitude flight. Or the everpresent smell of air conditioned poo. Anyway, so we arrived in LA at 11 in the evening, as sheduled. My sister’s husband had already kindly agreed (in fact, insisted; a kind soul indeed) that he would pick us up, so we were glad that everything was going as planned. We were taken outside and then shoved into a bus which shuttled us over to the luggage area. People were shoving and running as if they were going to get anywhere fast. I think we were all just thrilled to be on our feet and going somewhere. We were all thinking of hot showers, non-airplane food, and giant, peaceful, toilet-seated dumps. We went through the initial customs screening, and then waited diligently by our alloted luggage carousel. And waited. And waited. Now, let me first get into the scene here at this carousel, which is pretty much repeated in every carousel around the world.
Why is it that human beings are so self-absorbed and greedy that they have to shove to the very front of the luggage pick-up with their little hand-carts, as if their luggage is going to be the first to come around? Why can’t we all just hang back and wait patiently, so that everyone can see the carousel, and then simply step forward and grab our luggage as it comes around? Why is this dream so difficult to realize? Everyone was pushing, shoving, shouldering, elbowing, bumping their little carts into your shins, until you couldn’t even see the carousel at all. And it hadn’t even started yet.
And another word on these f’ing little luggage carts. Why does it have to be right next to the carousel? You can’t haul your stupid luggage 2 feet?
So everyone had their carts all lined up side-by-side like racecars along the carousel. And then . . . the luggage began to thunk down and circle about the carousel! A fight broke out between two large men. A squat lady in heels frantically leapt at her oversized luggage, and fell back with it as she ripped it from off the carousel and into the throng of people, swinging it into my leg and shoving me back into one of those stupid little carts, almost knocking me backwards over it.
People kept doing this—frantically lunging at their luggage when they spotted it, desperately fumbling at the handle as it passed them by and hanging on for dear life because it was too heavy for them, until some kindly large man would gallantly pick it up off the carousel for them, whereupon they would grasp at it and swing it out against all surrounding bystanders. It’s like what, you don’t think your luggage is going to come back around on the fucking carousel 2 minutes later?
One lady stood in front of me lined up in the front-line of the carousel, with her foot propped up on her cart behind her, shoving it back into my shin continuously whenever she would crane forward to see the luggage as it passed. When I saw my girlfriend’s luggage pass by, I shoved between people and grabbed it, taking pleasure in manhandling this lady’s cart and shoving it out of the way, as I had been anointed with the blessing of a luggage in hand.
Good, I thought, there is hope. My girlfriend’s bag is here, so mine must be here too. We waited, until the luggage train petered out, and it wasn’t to be seen. I looked everywhere for the supposed Copa airlines official who should have been there so that I could alert them to my missing luggage. Of course, none to be found. I talked to another airline’s official, and asked them where I could find the Copa representative, or file a missing baggage claim. She looked around wildly and shrugged. Do you know who I could ask who would know? I asked. She shrugged. I walked around the chaotic luggage area, looking for anyone somewhat official who could help me. The most I could wrest from them was that I should go to the airline counter for Copa.
It had now been 2 hours since we had landed. We then got in line for the final little customs crap, and were shunted out into the night. Luckily, my sister’s husband had not given up on us yet, even though our Copa flight was mysteriously completely missing from the list of arrivals, and he had been beginning to think that he had mistaken the day of our flight.
We then followed the signs at the terminal which said that Copa airlines should be at Terminal 6. We passed by it, seeing no Copa counter. And furthermore, it being the middle of the night, all counters were closed anyway. So we went back to my sister’s apartment.
This morning, I tried to call Copa to file my claim. The lady I talked to told me I was talking to Copa in Panama City (even thought it was a US 800 number), so she couldn’t do anything for me. She gave me the number for the LAX airport. I called it and found the number for Copa: the exact same number I had just called. I called the lady I had just talked to back, and she said she didn’t have any number for the Copa at LAX, but she could give me an email address. Great.
So right now I’m just waiting until tonight, when I can get driven back to the airport, where hopefully I can find the Copa desk, as well as an English speaking Copa representative, and where I can then hopefully locate my luggage, or file a claim, or something, whatever shit it is you do for these kinds of fuckups.
The good news is, I’m back in the States. The good news is, I expected to lose my luggage, so my most valuable possessions I have on me. The good news is, I was able to spend some time on a toilet with a seat on it! And I could throw the paper into the toilet! I keep worrying that I’m going to clog the plumbing by doing that. The good news is, I have now taken 2 hot showers—totally hot, and it doesn’t start running out 2 minutes into the shower! This is fucking paradise.
I’ve had a couple cups of the Juan Valdez guajira coffee I’d gotten in Colombia this morning, and now I’m just enjoying being back. I just wanted to get that whole nightmare that was yesterday off my back. Colombia, I made it. I have escaped your clutches intact, with most of my stuff. HA!
Stay tuned for a Colombian wrap-up post, and an update on my luggage. I know you’ll be hanging on the edges of your seats. Sit tight. Drink some coffee.
—Mr. Peeves

Esperando para Los Vuelos a Casa (eventualmente)

I’m sitting here at the airport El Dorado in Bogotá, awaiting my flight to Medellín, where I must then do all the customs crap within the hour before the next flight to Panama City departs, whereupon I then change flights, yet again, for the final long last leg to Los Angeles.

There’s pretty much everything you could desire here at the airport, including donuts de maracuyá at good ol’ Dunkin’ Donuts, artisan stuff, Juan Valdez, and internet (as you can see). I also just got my haircut here at the airport, and it was a damn good haircut! My hair was starting to get pretty ridiculous after 55 days here (i.e. outgrowths and tufts of hair projecting out of my neck and over mine ears), and I had been meaning to get a haircut for a while, but never seemed to find a place open (how typical here in Colombia). It was a hell of a lot better, and cheaper, than the Supercuts haircut I would have received at home.

If you’ve popped over here from Poor But Happy (I just noticed a connecting link to my page was added, thanks to whomever that was!), welcome and please peruse through my various rants and mundane adventures from my trip in Colombia and see if any of my (mis) adventures bear any relation to your own trip, or trip-in-the-making. If you want to ask me any questions or want my opinionated advice, I’m more than happy to share, and thanks for visiting!

If and when I make it back to Los Estados, I’ll post a lil wrap-up and summation of the trip entire. Until then comrades, hasta luego, piiiiigs iiiiiin spaaaaace . . . . .

Thoughts on Money and Poverty: Part II

On my last post on the issue of gentrification, I’d left off with the question of “How can a community expand and develop its wealth locally, while at the same time accepting, encouraging, and embracing external inputs of wealth?” The more I’ve pondered on this, the more I’ve realized that the question is quite a bit more complicated than it sounds. Essentially, what we are really looking at are the root causes of poverty, and considering methods of assisting communities in raising themselves out of it.

The problem with poverty is that there are a lot of differing [mis]perceptions of the issue: the most common one being that of the better off, which assumes that those who are poor are lazy, stupid, or otherwise—that is, if the well-to-do are aware of the issue and consider it at all (it sounds amazing, but having grown up in a well-to-do area, and having worked in the hospitality industry with the extremely well-to-do and their offspring, I know first-hand there are indeed people out there who live in an oblivious bubble, both self-imposed and otherwise). Stemming from this initial prejudice, there are two common perceptions on poverty and the poor: 1) they are an unfortunate and inevitable scourge of humanity, to be ignored, endured, and shut away into their own enclaves; and/or 2) they are to be pitied and supported through the works of charity.

I think what becomes apparent as one examines this issue is that while welfare and charity are quite obviously direly needed by those stranded in extreme poverty, what must be recognized is that charity is ultimately only a temporal bandaid that avoids the root causes that create and sustain the conditions for poverty. What becomes further apparent from this realization is that the poor must be given the structural means to help themselves. In other words, the only ones who can directly and actively work to address the root causes of poverty are the poor themselves. Thus, they require not charity, but a pragmatic and systematic support that hands the money and the tools over to them.

This may at first sound perhaps out of touch with reality or idealistic and overly vague. But this is a concept that has been applied effectively by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh starting in the 70’s, when he introduced the concept of micro-credit and banking for those in poverty with his Grameen Bank. Since then, micro-credit has been further applied successively, most notably, in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Yunus founded a bank which extends credit directly to the poor, so that they could gain the means of raising themselves out of poverty through their own hard work and entrepreneurship. This is an approach to poverty that is staunchly capitalistic in its approach, yet underlied by a basic concern for human welfare. Most approaches to poverty are rooted in that initial notion of charity which we just have outlined above, and exist as non-profit donation-based organizations. These organizations generally do little or nothing in regards to helping the poor help themselves. Rather, it is always a matter of the rich helping or giving to the poor. This position, of course, is already rooted in a problematic perception of poverty that does nothing to empower the poor themselves, and rather perpetuates the symptoms.

The problem with micro-credit is that there haven’t been found ways to translate it into a workable and comparable vision in the United States. The reason for this is that micro-credit works quite well in village-based economies, where the poor have recourse to starting their own business in say, weaving kerchiefs, or vending food, and other such small, individual, street-cart type sales. There exists in such cultures many small, micro-economies in which small entrepreneurs are able to thrive. But in the United States, the economy, lifestyle, and culture is different, and small-time entrepreneurs face a number of hurdles before they can break into the world of commerce.

And this is where my thought begins to shoot out randomly in a haze like a flashlight in the fog. This is where I realize just how much more I need to learn. I have already gone from the issue of gentrification to that of poverty in general, thus expanding and deepening the questions on money and poverty. So at this point, I’m going to step back from these questions and look again at the bigger picture. I think what has been changing in my own thought and perception is that I am no longer fundamentally opposed to capitalism—the concept of making money. I believe that we can consciously make money, while at the same time benefitting the environment and combating poverty. And as these changing ideas sink in, my worldview begins to shift on an everyday level, such that as during this trip to Colombia, I have been noting the influence of wealth, and welcoming it.

The Last Days in Bogotá

 

I don’t really have much to post on about my current activities in Bogotá, as I haven’t been doing much other than eating, attempting to sleep, and drinking hot beverages and imbibing pasteles, but I wanted to post a few pictures. About the most exciting thing in our day is when our neighbor comes back to the hostal at 5:30 in the morning, obviously drunk and probably high, stumbles about his room, falling into the walls, slamming things, shuffling through plastic bags, and then turns on the most obnoxious possible techno music ever made on some tiny, tinny little speakers (which is then left playing throughout the rest of the day), stumbles into the bathroom, which is shared by our entire floor and which we are lucky enough to be located directly next to, and then commences to hurl chunks into the sink and the floor, whereupon he stumbles back into his room, slamming all the doors along the way and leaving the hall light on, and then summarily pukes into his trashcan. We can also hear him talking to himself. He’s obviously an example of what one would politely term a “douche-bag.” I’ve bestowed him also with the nickname of “Techno mouse” because we always hear him scrambling through his plastic bags in the wee hours of the morning, endlessly, as if he’s looking for some stray crumbs somewhere in the dregs (this is what convinces me that he’s on some drugs as well), while blasting his retarded techno, of which we mostly just hear the endless pulse of the 4/4 beat.

Bogotá does have some nice art museums, which we’ve been attending. The Museo Botero is a good one—there’s some world famous paintings in there from artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Matisse, etc, as well as, of course, a hardy selection of gordos from Mr. Botero. Another good museum is the Museo Nacional, which has some lame colonial crap, but also some great ancient pottery, as well as some nice contemporary Colombian paintings. There’s some Botero in there, as well, but some of his older works, before he’d formulated his infamous fat stylistics, and I actually like those better.

Another place we’ve attended that I would recommend visiting is the Jardin Botánico, which I was a little hesitant to visit after the experience in Medellín, but luckily, these gardens are world-class. The most noteworthy sections are the excellent rose gardens, as well as the tropical greenhouses.

Just 2 more days and then we outtie.

Thoughts on Money and Poverty

Some thoughts that have been fomenting somewhere in the back of my dome have been coming to the fore as my trip winds down to a close here in Bogotá, and I’ve had some more time to contemplate the bigger picture. One item that I’ve been considering is the changing perceptions I have of the concept of ‘gentrification’. I’ve always been critical of the influence of big money on people’s lives and communities. I’m especially critical of the bland and complacent lifestyles of the well-to-do, the ‘yuppies’, the SUVS, the suburban sprawl, the homogenous franchises, and so on. But my experience here in Colombia has driven me to question some of the aspects of gentrification that before I immediately and completely rejected. This has been due to the fact that when you’re traveling on a budget here, you’re inevitably staying in some neighborhoods that aren’t exactly high-end. And as a traveler coming from somewhere else, it makes you all the more conscious of the presence of poverty, wealth, and the types of commerce going on around you. And when you are looking simply for a bite to eat, or a place to get a good juice or coffee at, you are looking for some kind of welcome, however tentative that may be. At the very least, simply the product you desire, preferably sanitary and with a smile. But in some places, these basic expectations have been hard to come by, for the very simple reason that many businesses here are run by families or individuals that cater solely to a small local market, and have little interest in growing or developing their operation. They will close for weeks on end for the holiday season, they will not provide customer service aside from plopping down your plate and taking your money, and there’s often a sense that they could really care less for your business.

In such circumstances, I have discovered a sudden appreciation for the Juan Valdez Café chain. Yes, it is a franchise, but there are a few things that you can count on when you enter into one of these ‘yuppie’ establishments: 1) friendly, efficient service; 2) clean facilities, with a bathoom; 3) an atmosphere conducive to sitting, relaxing, chatting, and reading. These are aspects, as Americans, that I think we often take for granted in our businesses. We expect—and demand—adequate customer service, clean facilities, and proper delivery of the product. We live in the land of franchise.

Now let me be clear about something: I despise franchises, both as a concept and in their usual effect on local communities. However, when else has failed, and all I’ve wanted is somewhere to sit and read and drink coffee, Juan Valdez has been there. This isn’t to say that I haven’t discovered some great local cafés and what not. I will happily circumvent Juan Valdez whenever and wherever I can. But there have been times when there just haven’t been any other places open, or air-conditioned, or quiet or spacious enough to read in.

Here in Colombia, they don’t have the knee-jerk allergic reaction to franchises that many of us idealistic Americans have developed. They love their Coca-Cola and Postobon, they love their Juan Valdez, and while there are certainly Colombians who question capitalism and its accompanying imposition of materialistic values, as well as the influence of foreign investment, overall, Colombians seem quite happy with name-brands and familiar franchises. And that may have had a subtle influence on my experience here as well. When everyone drinks Coca-Cola all the time, it makes you more apt to grab one and sip it along with your fried chicken, patacones, and french fries.

But I’m getting off on a tangent. What I was getting at in bringing up the subject of Juan Valdez cafés is that there can be a positive effect from the influx of outside money and businesses. As a traveler and tourist, for example, I am bringing in money from outside into the country, and this is good for their economy. I understand when people speak disparagingly of gringos, and I have never been one to welcome tourists into my own community with open arms. Tourists are, in general, annoying, demanding, and most of their money goes to big business. That said, however, in the big picture, I believe tourism is a good thing for a country as a whole, especially if the tourism is encouraged to developed concurrently with local environmental and social concerns.

And so I’ve been extending that thought into the more general concept of the influx of outside money into any local community. I think that gentrification is easy to criticize and despise, but I think that what also needs to be considered is that inevitably, a community needs outside input in order grow. Before gentrification, a community is generally mired in poverty, and there is little potential for growth and expansion. Gentrification, in fact, could be seen as an inevitable aspect of growth and development.

I’m going to ignore for the moment the myriad negative effects that gentrification can incur on the local community (such as simply driving out all the prior, poor inhabitants), which I am fully aware of, and rather move onto the parable of hip-hop. The growth and development of this music mirrors quite well the growth and development of any community when it encounters a sudden influx of outside wealth. Hip-hop started, of course, in the restrictive hard-knock life of the streets. It was a revolution in articulation. Suddenly, disenfranchised youth found a creative and positive outlet for their passion, desire, anger, and thought. Much like graffiti, it empowered them in a way that, at first, seemed unprofitable to the outside world. It began simply as a method for those who had been unseen and unheard to express themselves. And as hip-hop developed and expanded into other communities, and eventually across the globe, it inevitably became commercialized and diverged into the mainstream, and glitz and glitter and glamour now are the name of the industry game. It seems to be dominated by a rich and famous elite, who proclaim at every chance they can their extravagant wealth. While this aspect of hip-hop can and will be lamented by those who love it for its roots in self-expression and rebellion, at the same time, it can also be seen as an inevitable outgrowth of the expansion and development of the music as a whole. This is analogous to the development of any artist who is “discovered” and inducted into the mainstream. Sometimes, and oftentimes, this sudden influx of outside money and influence results in pathologies and the destruction of an artist’s original intent and purpose. But other times, it simply extends the power, creativity, and influence of the individual to a broader audience, which is a good thing, if they are doing anything original and inspiring. And they develop their style in accordance with this extension (sometimes, of course, losing some of their original fans in the process).

But such is the process of evolution and growth. Communities, like individuals, are not steady-state bubbles. They are influenced necessarily by external factors, and they must utilize and embrace these factors if they are to grow. They can, of course, choose to withdraw inward and fight off all externalities, but inevitably, they either must collapse or expand.

So to get back to my original idea: I am beginning to think that external inputs of wealth are not completely undesirable. The problem, of course, is that most of the time, none of this wealth ends up in the pockets of the original inhabitants of a community, and they are either driven out, or they are left to fester in small controlled pockets within the newer developing community. So the problem I think that must be addressed, therefore, is not that of “gentrification” per se: the problem that must be addressed is: how can a community expand and develop its wealth locally, while at the same time accepting, encouraging, and embracing external inputs of wealth?

I’m going to get into some ideas and approaches to that question in another post, as this one is getting rather long. I wanted to first lay down the foundation for it, however, as for me these ideas are a new direction in thought. I’m beginning, basically, to look more at such issues in an integral fashion, rather than simply separating the negative from the positive and looking only at one side. I’m recognizing that the idea of money and wealth is not so simple as rejecting the entire concept of monetary gain. Rather, the idea is to unite the principle of natural wealth with that of manufactured wealth.

A Summation and List of Colombian Fruits

If you’ve been bored enough to browse through my travels in Colombia, then you’ve most likely noticed that I’m infatuated with the cheap and plentiful jugos on tap most everywhere around here. I figured that it might be a fun and perhaps useful exercise to detail the various frutas that abound, both in jugo and non-jugo form, here in Colombia:

Guayaba – Ah yes, guayaba. Known as ‘guava’ to us estadounidenses, generally the only form we regularly find it in is a canned juice. Down here, they’ve got guayaba pie, various forms of guayaba pasteles, guayaba doughnuts, and guayaba paste. And of course, jugo de guayaba. The quintessential sabor tropicál.

Guanábana – If you live near some Latin American neighborhoods, you may come across this fruit, at least in juice form. It’s a giant green thing with little spikes on it, and it’s exterior is as soft as dough. On the inside is this slimy, white custardy fruit filled with medium-sized black seeds. The taste is pretty unique, sometimes a little bit weird depending on the state of ripeness. It’s probably best in juice form, but I can tell you from personal experience that picking out all the damn seeds from the fruit is a time-consuming and quite messy endeavor. The juice is reputedly very nutritious, so if you come across the stuff and are malnourished, go ahead and treat yourself.

Piñas – The lovely pineapple, these are pretty much everywhere in Colombia in juice form or sold in carts by street vendors, but for some reason not many of the folk have caught onto using it in their cookery. Gourmands most Colombians are not—but if you stray into a higher-end restaurant somewhere in Cartagena, you may find some entrada with a piña based sauce, such as salchicha en salsa de piña (sausage in pineapple sauce: interesting and tasty, if a bit strange).

Chirimoya – This fruit is the more delicious and voluptuous cousin of the guanábana. It has the same custardy, white interior dotted with thick black seeds, but the taste is much closer to that of a postre than that of a medicine. I fell in love with this fruit in Perú, but unfortunately have not seen too much of it in Colombia. If you ever spot one of these babies, rip it open and commence slurping.

Curuba – You’ll find this in juice form all over the place here. In leche, it tastes kind of like strawberry/banana, but there’s some other strange flavor floating around in it that complicates it, and a grittiness to it sometimes as well. I don’t really like this one very much myself, as that “other flavor” reminds me too much of the wet, muddy smell in the jungle.

Níspero – You’ll find this juice more commonly up around the Costa Caribe. Try this shit in leche. It tastes remarkably like a chocolate malt. No shit. It’s good. One of my favorite jugo treats. It still tastes reminiscent of chocolate en agua tambien. There’s a chalkiness to it that can be disconcerting, perhaps, at first, but just think of it like a malt and concentrate on it’s sweet caramel undertones.

Zapote – This seems to be a favorite up on the coast as well, also common in Medellín, usually mixed with milk. It’s got a subtle berryish flavor, but its taste seems to differ a bit depending where you get it. To me, it kind of has a strange taste that reminds me of the smell of new plastic toys, and so it’s not one I usually order. It’s definitely worth a try, however, as the locals certainly seem to dig it.

Lulo – Ah, lulo. This is another one of my favorites in juice form, and you will pretty much find it everywhere. I generally like it mixed with water, as it has a unique taste that doesn’t require sweetening, and it foams up quite nicely. It has a kind of citrusy, limey kind of taste, with some tropical tartness thrown in that makes it unique and tasty. You’ll also find a beverage made from lulo in the Valle de Cauca region called lulada, and I recommend giving that a try as well; it’s got whole fruit chunks in it, and you get to spoon them out and eat them in-between slurping up its seedy juicy goodness out of a straw.

Maracuyá – This is another favorite, and a regular on the scene in Colombian fruit circles, much like the guayaba. We know maracuyá as passionfruit here in the States. You will regularly find maracuyá jam, maracuyá doughnuts, maracuyá ice cream, etc—and of course, the delicious juice, mixed in water. You can also eat the fruit directly out of the rind with a spoon and some sugar, as it is rather tart. Make sure you try this requisite tropical treat. The taste kinda of reminds me of one of those Big Stick popsicles, which I suppose means that there must be hints of cherry and pineapple in there.

Tomate de Árbol – This fruit has an interesting taste that is reminiscent, as the name suggests, of tomato, but is wilder and tarter. You can scoop the fruit out with a spoon and eat it with some sugar sprinkled on it, or in juice form. I’m not a huge fan of the juice myself, but it’s not bad.

Granadilla – This is a close cousin of the maracuyá, and looks the same, with the same gloopy clump of seeds on the inside. This is another fruit that I’d fallen in love with in Peru. I definitely recommend giving this one a try, just for the experience of eating it alone. You won’t find this one in juice form, but it is plenty sweet all on its lonesome straight out the shell.

Pitahaya – This little weird yellow, spiky football-shaped fruit is a tasty little snack. As I mentioned earlier, it tastes pretty much like a watermelon, but it has a completely different type of fruit—it has this clear, white tinted fleshy fruit with little black seeds in it. I think it is supposedly a diarrhetic as well, so restrain yourself from consuming too many at one time.

Borojó – This is an interesting little fruit. Supposedly it’s got some viagra-like properties when mixed up properly. Otherwise, it’s a zesty and strange little juice that is packed with nutritious vitamins and what not. Try it both in agua and leche and see which you like best. There’s an interesting spiciness underlying its berry flavors that comes to the fore in water, but the berriness come out more in the milk.

Feijoa – Another interesting juice, if you can find it. It’s pretty weird tasting; about the closest way I can describe the juice is that if you took a bunch of the green, leafy tops of strawberries and blended them up together, then you would have a taste similar to feijoa. It’s a kind of tart, woody, grassy flavor.

Limonada, naranja, mandarina, manzana (apple), fresa (strawberry) – These are all pretty self-explanatory, but just a quick word on the jugo de naranja—it’s not the type of oranges that we’re accustomed to in the states (or it may just be that they use them when they are green, I’m not quite sure). Here the juice is much more tart, but I think it’s kind of refreshing in the morning to have that little wake up punch in the mouth.

Papaya, Banano, and Mango – I won’t even bother going into these fruits, as we are already quite familiar with them in the States. Suffice to say that they are everywhere, in the form of fruit, juice, and otherwise.

Coco – Coconut. On the Caribbean coast, you can buy them from street vendors, who will chop off the top and stick a straw into it and viola! You’ve got yerself some fresh coco juice. Nice refreshing snack on a hot day. Also ubiquitous in candies and cakes and such, as it should be. You will also find it mixed in with rice on the Caribbean coast, which is one of the few little tasty variations that the typical cuisine will indulge in.

Fruits which I did not get to try, because I either did not spot them anywhere, or were out of season or something, because the juice places would never have them even though they were listed on the menu (¡Que triste!) – mamuncillo, chontaduro, piñuela, uchuva, caimon, trombolo, and some “p”-word fruit that I can’t recall the name of.

Stop the Press—It’s Raining

Well, just when I began to think Bogotá was a civilized modern city, it goes and rains. Not a lot of rain—just your normal intermittent rain shower. And quite obviously, we’re talking tropics here. It rains pretty frequently in Bogotá. And yet—no one, apparently, when they were laying down all those miles and miles of concrete and tar, thought to design in some storm drains into the streets in the city center.

This morning we got up bright and early so that we could grab breakfast and then go do some stupid touristy activity outside the city. And it commenced to rain heavily, of course, right as we walked out the door. Alright, well, no big deal, I just busted out the umbrella that I had ready for such circumstances. The problem, it turns out, was not the water coming down from above, but the water which began to run in rivulets down the sides of the streets. As we huddled together under my umbrella on the little miniscule broken sketchy sidewalks (you’re never quite sure if those hole-covers are going to fall through or not), we then began to get absolutely drenched—not from the rain, but from the taxis and buses which happily swamped us with all the running water in the street as they sped obliviously past. It was a bit of a farce, really, to try to avoid getting rained on when we had buckets of water coming at us sideways. And then when we got to a crosswalk on a bigger street, there were torrents of water gushing down along the sides of the sidewalk. There was no avoiding it—you had to plow along straight through it, ankle deep, your pant legs dragging. It could have been kind of funny, if I wasn’t totally cold and soaked and pissed off, to watch the businessmen stork-stepping frantically through it to get to the other side without being hit by an oncoming bus. And by the way, I don’t think I’m doing it justice by calling it water—this is black-brown city-liquid we’re talking here. All the dog poo and garbage and cigarrette butts and food scraps and all the other nameless and unthinkable detritus of a Colombian city street all washed up and mixed in together, slushing into and saturating your sandals.

It’s just kind of unfathomable to me as to how you could possibly have torrents of uncrossable water alongside of city streets in a city where it rains all the friggin’ time! Exactly what is so complicated about storm drains? Huh?

Not really something to put one in a good mood first thing in the morning, when I probably only slept maybe a solid four hours at the most (can you tell that I’m snappy?). We ducked into a café for breakfast and canceled our plans for venturing outside of the city, electing instead to spend the day hiding away in internet places and cafés and reading and drinking hot chocolate. I sat there cursing the city for its ridiculous lack of human design—and then of course, a beggar on the street spots us through the window and decides to pop his head in and commence yelling at me for money. Now, the thing to note here is that he yells specifically at me, while there are other people sitting there and walking all around him. This is a 5-times-a-day occurrence here in Bogotá—beggars spot my blonde hair and come running from miles around, as if I’m Santa Claus. They ignore all the hordes of well-dressed, moneyed Colombians all around them and hone in on me. Which means, apparently, that gringos must really be shelling out the doe. People actually will wait outside of restaurants for us to come out, poaching us for the pesito. They will follow us for blocks. One kid the other night had us staked out in our restaurant, and came literally running from a block away when he saw us leave, a big smile on his face like it was his birthday. It’s getting pretty old. As a general policy of mine, I never give money to beggars. For one, I don’t like being treated like a faceless cajero automático. For another, I don’t think that giving random individuals on the street money does anything beyond salving one’s conscience in terms of bettering anyone’s lives or taking people out of poverty. There are times when I will give someone a spot of money, if they treat me like a human being instead of like a source of money, and I’ve talked to them for a while. But call me heartless, but I don’t feel much compassion for people who harrass me shamelessly on the street.

As to what my ideas are on actually doing anything about helping to raise people out of poverty, I’ve been working on some thoughts here in Colombia that I’m going to try to work through in another post.

—-Mr. Whiny-pants

Thoughts On Colombia as a Whole

If you came to Colombia without paying attention to the news, or if you hadn’t told anyone where you were going and listened to them freak out about it, then you would have no idea that there was an ongoing civil war. Colombians themselves don’t seem too keen on discussing it. I’m quite certain that many of them would rather just ignore it, and remain just as blissfully unaware as many of us Americans are of the increasing divide between rich and poor in our country. There’s also a certain kind of hardened exterior that Colombians have in general, due to the fact that over half their population lives in poverty. Life here is certainly never easy. The cities never seem to sleep, and everyone is running on caffeine or maybe a little aguardiente. Everyone is just trying to get their little piece of the action, whether it be selling tintos, shining shoes, or standing still and pretending to be a statue on the street corner. Many people’s occupation (including children), apparently, is just to walk the streets all day long and beg for money. These beggars are shameless, approaching you with the hand outstretched, the begging face on, the pleading voice, and most of them will immediately curse you out loudly when you deny them money, which doesn’t make you any more inclined to give them any.

You can tell that the economy, at least for a certain selection of the populace, is booming. Just look at how many high-rises are still being added to the already condensed, busy skyline of Bocagrande in Cartagena. But this growing economy is young and uncertain, and is overshadowed both by the United States on one side, with its questionable infusions of ‘drug war’ money, and Venezuela on the other, with Chavez’ seemingly psychotic manipulations of markets. And the ongoing civil war further increases this shredding and upset from two completely different angles: the right-wing paramilitario on one side, and the rebel guerillas on the other, with the Colombian government somewhere in the middle trying to quell the violence, stablilize the economy, and somehow eradicate (or at least make a show of eradicating) the cocaine trade, which is complicated by the fact that cocaine is largely grown and trafficked by both the rebels and the paramilitary. And now that I’ve seen a cocaine manufacturing plant and realized just how easy it is to make the paste, and considering just how easy it is to grow the plant itself, as it grows like a weed, it seems like a pretty hopeless task to continue to attempt to just eliminate the crops. The fact is, as long as rich Americans continue to stuff that shit up their noses and continue to pay high prices for the stuff—even though it’s easy to grow, easy to make, and is cut endlessly with crap (like flour) before it reaches those high-end nostrils—then it will continue to be grown and traded, because it makes some people with guns and connections a lot of money.

So with an awareness of what’s going on here, somewhere, in Colombia, it makes it all the more remarkable just how invisible it all is. As a tourist, you are in absolutely no danger, unless you go into the lesser visited outlying rural regions where the paramilitary and/or rebels are in control. And even then, simply if you act like an idiot and put yourself into dangerous situations. (As they say here, “No dar papaya“, which is a saying that means, “Don’t put yourself in dangerous situations.) Colombia is safer to visit, I would venture to say, then most major cities in the United States. At least here in Colombia, you don’t have to worry as much about some random unhappy Joe with the inability to socialize mowing you down with a semi-automatic. There’s enough official-type dudes with guns standing idly about here to prevent such occurrences. If you’re gonna get shot, it’s probably gonna occur somewhere out in the jungle, not in the middle of a city street. About the most danger you feel as a tourist is that a taxi driver (or a restaurant in Santa Marta!) will rip you off because you don’t know the appropriate price. Or that someone will steal your wallet or I-pod when you’re sleeping on a bus. That kind of thing. I’d worry about that on a Greyhound in the States, too. And in the States, I’d also be worrying about getting an unwanted reach-around in the bathroom at the bus station (maybe even from a US Senator!), whereas here in Colombia, you have to pay to use the bathroom, so it’s not a concern. Which as my girlfriend observed, may be annoying at first, but then you realize that charging to use a public bathroom is actually a good thing, because the bathrooms are cleaner, and more importantly, because there aren’t random sketchy people in there shooting up or trying to hump you as you urinate.

It’s been hard for me to get a handle on any deeper sense of the situation here in Colombia as I haven’t had any deep political discussions with anyone, and because it’s not, as I’ve said, visible in any immediate sense. I do know that the Colombian military isn’t exactly the most scrupulous in the world, as the military boys out in the jungle on the Ciudad Perdida tour sold and smoked pot with some other trekkers that I’d talked to in Parque Tayrona. And considering also that we were told to hide our valuables from them when we were staying in their camp. Not the most disciplined of soldiers, which makes you question as well just where the boundaries between the paramilitary and the military lie. But these are questions I can’t possibly get any insight on myself without some research from other sources. Boundaries are never quite clear here in any sense, and sometimes one wonders if there really are many observed laws at all, especially when there’s money involved. It’s like the Wild West out here in many ways, and not only in regards to the traffic.

At the moment of this writing, Colombia is making a visible attempt to broaden its tourism industry and to beautify its cities and fix up its roads. This means that for me, a lot of Colombia has been closed or in a state of active renovation, which has been highly annoying, but I can tell you that if you came here in a few years, it would probably be much nicer. For example, the Museo del Oro in Bogotá is being renovated, and I really wanted to see it. They have a little throw-away exhibit at another site, but it’s nothing much to look at. On all the major roads, the road is actively being worked on, which has meant a lot of bumpiness and one-way controlled traffic. In Santa Marta and in Bogota, many sidewalks are half-complete, and you have to step around people working on carefully placing colored bricks into patterns. The whole waterfront walk in Santa Marta was being worked on. It looked like it would be nice someday, but while we were there, it was just one big obstacle course. The Botanical Gardens in Medellín were being renovated, and there was absolutely nothing there to look at when I went. I’m sure they will be very nice in a few years. I’m still a little bitter that I had to pay 2 bucks to go into a park where there were no plants to be seen. And on and on. There’s a lot of public projects being done here, which further reflects the rising economy.

So that’s my thoughts and impressions of Colombia as a whole, in addition to the other lists I’ve made of the little details and quirks. I’ll add more thoughts as they arise.

Meanderings in Bogotá

For our last week in Bogotá, we’re just taking it easy, doing one little touristy activity a day and drinking coffees and wandering about looking for places to eat, which can be harder than it sounds when it seems like every day is a holiday around here. But Bogotá really does have some great places to chill out in and grab a bite to eat at. And none of it has to be typical Colombian fare, which is a godsend.

The other night we even went out for a drink, as there was nothing else to do really, and drank 375 ml of Ron Vieja de Caldas, which is quite a bit tastier than Ron Medellín.

Today we went up to a lookout (always a mirador somewhere here) on a building, and on the walk back, we wandered past a park with a statue of George Washington. What in god’s name is ol’ George doing smack-dab in the middle of downtown Bogotá? Your guess is as good as mine.

Much like the reversal in perspectives I had on Lima whilst in Perú, so too Bogotá now has redeemed its image from the original distaste I had at the beginning of the trip. There are some things, however, that continue to annoy. As mentioned before, Colombians in general are not the most courteous nor empathetic people in the world when it comes to accomodating others on the street. Given how crowded it is, it never fails to amaze me at how much space people will take up on the sidewalks. Couples stroll idly hand-in-hand, never failing to end up moving directly in front of you as you try to bypass them. When we come upon such obstacles, I call them “walls”. Even more annoying, entire families will create “walls”, taking up the entire width of the sidewalk, blissfully unaware of the hordes of people trying to avoid falling into the everpresent holes or get hit by a passing taxi. And they are all holding hands, so it’s impossible to just pass through them, unless you are willing to play a little Red Rover. And let me further elaborate on these aforementioned “holes” in the sidewalks—they are everywhere, and they are deep enough to break your ankle should you be unaware enough to step into one. Apparently, there must be some kind of underground market in water main covers, because they are all missing. These little holes thus turn into subterranean trash receptacles.

We are now stocking up on our Colombian goods while we have the chance. We just obtained a nice Colombian flag-colored hamaca for $14. I’ve got a plethora of hand-woven mochilas, even a little mini-one for the cell-phone. A sack of Juan Valdéz café. And other assorted gifts for the fam. Now that I’ve learned the rules, somewhat, of bargaining, I feel more comfortable browsing the goods. Generally, the more expensive the item, the more you can hope to knock off the initial price, maybe 10 mil pesos or even 20. But for the smaller items, just shoot for 2 or 3 mil off the asking price. I’m sure if you’re a hard bargainer you could do much better. At a certain point, for me, it’s more just a matter of doing it because you’re expected to, rather than trying to save money, as everything is already half the price, or more, than it would be in the States.

Essentially, we’re just enjoying the activities of reading in a café, walking about the historic sections of town, and imbibing pasteles and coffee. Those are in fact the most enjoyable aspects of this trip. These are activities I could just as well do at home, but would not because of the price tag. And there’s just something about doing it in a completely foreign land that makes such experiences enhanced.

Travel Story

Traveling is an experience that always compels a re-evaluation of your own habits and customs, and throws you continuously into new situations that further impel you to critique your own perceptions, your own self-image. During my trip to Perú, I had found myself going through a lot of introspection, for I was traveling alone and often had little else to do but contemplate and turn inward. I also had been dealing with the death of a friend and co-worker, and overall, the whole trip became rather spiritual in nature due to this thought and self-exploration. I was learning self-reliancy, confidence in new and challenging situations, and the ability to allow the universe to manifest some of its boundless potential.

As in any trip, therefore, my trip to Colombia has a sub-context, a narrative that extends throughout, present beneath all of the surface-level passings of circumstance and activity. The whole trip has not been anything at all like what I experienced alone in Perú, and the reason is quite simple: I am traveling with my girlfriend. And thus the underlying story of this trip has been one of our relationship. I had foreseen this before we’d left, knowing that travel is always stressful for relationships, whether between friends, family, or lovers. And it has indeed been a rocky road. All of my experiences on the trip have been filtered through the window of our togetherness.

At first, I found myself frustrated with the lack of freedom. While traveling alone is often lonely, it also gives you the ability to freely associate with strangers in ways that you are buffered against while traveling with other people. You tend to drift into random conversations with people in bars, on the street. You speak only in Spanish because you don’t have any other option, other than just hanging out with other gringo backpackers. You are more open to being placed into potentially sketchy situations, because you have only yourself to worry about.

Traveling with someone changes all of that instantaneously. You have someone to conversate with at all times in English, so thus anywhere you venture into, you always have a buffer of safety with you, wherein you can speak your own language and avoid contact with strangers. And traveling with your girlfriend, you feel much more protective, and less willing to be placed in potentially sketchy situations. You are more secure, and thus more unwilling to take risks.

So I had to contend with these differences and realize that this trip was not going to be the trip that I had envisioned before coming to Colombia. I was not going to go out dancing all the time, I was not going to meet and hang-out with many locals, and I was not going to speak much Spanish beyond the interaction of commerce and transport. Thus, other than the time spent with my extended Colombian family, I have had little insider insight into the culture, and have rather been stuck on the outside, and somewhat bitter about it, I suppose. This has resulted in some squabbles between my girlfriend and I until I came somewhat to terms with the trip as it is and will be.

And on the other side of this has been the self-questioning I’ve been undergoing about our relationship in general. Basically, I was getting something like cold feet, because I was thinking too much about the future, and could only envision the looming mirage of marriage, kids, etc, and this only made me frightened. When all of this internal torment finally came out and I laid it on the table, my girlfriend made me understand that I can’t think that far ahead into the future. I was thinking so much about some distant, uncertain future that I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy what I have right now, which is all that really matters anyway.

When you spend every waking and sleeping minute with another person, all of the bad sides of yourself can’t be shuttered up or given the space needed to be released without inflicting suffering on the other person. I’m the type of person that doesn’t know what he feels immediately, and I need some time to process and work through things before I understand where I’m at. So sometimes, before I know what’s happening, I’ll just start to be mean, because I’m trying to work through something and I don’t know it yet, and I’m trying to get space.

So this journey in Colombia has been a learning experience in ways that go beyond the bus trips and hostal stays and excursions and forays and food and cafés. I’m learning that I’m not always the person I want to be, neither for myself, nor for my girlfriend. I’m learning that I need to learn how to lead, and not just hesitate and wait for things to happen. I’m learning that I can be a difficult person to get along with. I’m learning what it is to be loved in all of my daily and eternal imperfection, and I’m learning how to try and give that love back, unconditionally.

So where my trip to Perú was about introspection and self-questioning, this trip in Colombia has been about my relationship, and about going beyond myself. I think it is somewhat fitting in some ways, given that Colombian culture in general is more fast-paced and based on the fleeting moments of the everyday, with its coke and its plastic surgeries and its ongoing warfare. On another post, I will attempt to grapple some more with what impressions I’ve gotten of Colombia as a whole, as that is a whole ‘nother beast to tackle. Til then.

Back in Bogotá

I’m back in Bogotá after what will be the last harrowing 10 hour bus ride of my life in Colombia. I’m actually happy to be back in this city, even though when I’d left it at the beginning of this trip I know I said I wasn’t enamoured with it. The difference is that now I’m accustomed to Colombia, and out of all the places we’ve been, Bogotá is the most diverse and modern. There’s great food everywhere and cafés that are even open most of the time. I’m using the internet right now after 7 o’clock! I feel comfortable walking around my ‘hood at night without being constantly accosted for money by people missing limbs and courtesy, or having to look at half-naked transvestites.

I’m aware that the tone of my posts as of late have been decidedly negative, and I wanted to temper it all somewhat by acknowledging that I am aware that Colombia is a country coming out of the mists of terrorism, violence, constant warfare, and just now fully sweeping into the global commerce of industrialism. Thus, it is not constructive to simply look at this country and its people through the critical lens of my own country’s position, or to judge too closely, especially when considering that my own country’s government has had some part in fucking some things up down here.

More on all that later, I need to go have some coffee and dessert to unwind. I’ve got 10 more days here to bumble about and drink hot chocolate and fresh fruit juices, so more enlightening posts on Colombia in general, as well as on my own personal inner developments, as if you cared, will be forthcoming with all the extra free time. Chau chau.

El Peñol

Yesterday we ventured out into the surrounding countryside outside Medellín to visit El Peñol, a giant monolith plopped down into a lush valley spotted with lakes. The road out there, of course, is intermittent, hole-filled, and packed with diesel spewing trucks and buses. The rock itself is massive, and they’ve built these crazy concrete stairs up the side of it, and on top, crowned it with this crazy looking castle-like lookout (that last sentence was cool). You haul yourself up these tiny, spiralling concrete stairs, shouldering through the hordes of Latin American tourists and their kids, and after 649 steps, you’re up on top, with a gift shop and snack place! There are some spectacular views of the surrounding valley, if you can make some elbow room to take a picture.

We trekked on back down to a nearby resort/hotel to grab a bite to eat, and it was there that I realized that I am sick to death of Colombian food. I don’t really like criticizing a whole country’s national cuisine, but the fact is that it is really pretty uninspiring. It’s meat, rice, arepas, and platanos—with the platanos being the best thing on the dish. I kind of like the bean soup they have, but that gets old pretty quick as well. This isn’t to say that there aren’t good restaurants and food here—it’s just overall, the typical dishes you end up eating most days are just not anything to write home about. I comfort myself with the everpresent jugos naturales. If it weren’t for the jugos, I’d be up a tree for sure. Speaking of which, I tried another new fruit juice, called feijoa. It tasted like a really tart strawberry. I really will miss the juices. I will miss the juices, the hot chocolate, and the tintos.

Anyway, so then we had to wait around on the side of the road for 40 minutes until a bus passed that wasn’t completely full to the brim with passengers. But don’t get me wrong—the bus that we got on was full, and then got fuller. We were in the bus drivers compartment up front, and I was shoved in directly behind the driver’s seat, such that whenever he reached back to push the lever to open the doors, he had to shove past my leg. My girlfriend and I were sitting on this little seat with our asses hanging over half of it, and my leg was shoved against some level panel, and my shoulder against some window switch, and we were both squeezed in by an overweight lady who took up most of the little seat with her ass. It was a highly uncomfortable bumpy and windy 2 hour trip back to Medellín, to say the least, and not to mention the fumes that were gassing up our lungs. I am glad that there are very few buses remaining in my Colombian future. Just the 9 hour one tomorrow down the Cordillera Central and up the Cordillera Oriental. . . Ack!

Medellín

¡Vale! so here’s my summation of my thoughts and experiences in regards to Medellín so far. Posts have been latent here because apparently internet cafés have to be closed when it would be most convenient to use them. Pretty much everything has been closed of late due to New Year’s, or because it’s Sunday, or because . . . who knows. Highly annoying, considering we’re in a big city. . . but no more complaining on that topic.

Medellín is a large, mostly brick built city inhabiting a lush valley in la Cordillera Central. Its buildings spill upwards all around into the adjoining hills, and views overlooking the city are always nice. On the whole, it is the most organized, clean, and spaciously designed city we have seen in Colombia. They even have trash cans everywhere, which may not sound jaw-dropping, but when the norm everywhere else is to simply toss your trash onto the ground, it’s a nice change. People still toss their trash everywhere, of course, but there’s a slight percentage less of trash on the ground here than elsewhere, at least. Another great aspect of this city is that they have an efficient, cheap, and clean Metro system which covers the center of the city. It gets pretty damn crowded sometimes, though, and you can get packed as if you were in the front row of a U2 concert, held up by your shoulders and unable to move anything except your pipi.

People are also the friendliest here we’ve encountered in Colombia, and this has been especially refreshing after Cartagena, where people seemed to make it a practice to be as rude as possible. It may be that this is due to the temperate climate. The weather is warm and generally mild, with a lot of rain but a lot of sunshine. There are some interesting traits about the people here, though. For example, the young men have these terrible hair styles. It’s kind of like a punk-mullet/faux-mohawk type thing, highly gelled and spiked. It makes them all look like punks—but not the cool, rebellious kind of punk—like the asshole, idiotic kind of punk. And whatever aspect of rebelliousness such a style may have ever portrayed is completely subverted by the fact that tons of them all share it. It’s an unfortunate thing that hopefully the city as a culture will evolve beyond at a later date.

Another thing that is strange here is that the taxis really don’t seem to be that bothered about getting your business. We’ve never had this much trouble hailing taxis anywhere in Colombia, but for some reason in Medellín, the taxi drivers seem to have better things to do. Which is weird, considering they are ostensibly driving taxis around to earn their living. I also have been yelled at a couple times here for slamming their door too hard when I get in. As in, the driver will stop the car, turn around and glare at me and yell at me about slamming it. I’m a little confused by this, as in, since when do they show any concern for their own vehicles when they are driving?

Our hotel is in a kind of shitty area, the type of area that all downtowns of all cities seem to be like. What makes this particular shitty area unique, however, is that we always see transvestites walking around here. Even ones with surgically created boobs. It kind of weirds me out, because from a distance, I’ll just see this skimpy outfit, and then when I get up close, I’ll realize that this chick has got some biceps and shoulders on her, and her waist is a bit thin, and her cheekbones a bit big. . . It’s kind of disappointing, you know? That said, however, there are enough real women with big fake boobs around here to make up for that. . .

We’ve just been slowly taking in the city. We visited the Museo de Antioquia, which exhibits enough Botero artwork to make you sick of him. If you’ve seen one Botero piece, you’ve seen ‘em all. That said, however, I actually really enjoy his work. He obviously makes an effort to be accessible, in contrast to the majority of modern art which is just too abstract and inaccessible to ordinary folk. Botero is all about accessibility—his portraits of gordos are always slightly tongue in cheek, fun and ironic and simple, and always fat. He loves the rotundity thing, Botero. There are a bunch of his sculptures out in the plaza, as well.

We also have gone to Pueblito Paisa, a miniature replica of a traditional village up on an overlooking hillside in the middle of the city, a couple of times. We went during the day, and then up again during the night on New Year’s, to catch the nighttime and daytime cityscape scenery.

We have also hung out a couple of times at the posh Parque Lleras, which of course sports a huge Juan Valdez café, and which is pretty much like Parque de la 93 in Bogotá. This park doesn’t have any open container laws, so it’s kind of the”in” thing for young Colombians to be sitting around drinking these giant cups of mixed drinks around the tree across from the liquor store. There’s also this little dessert place there, Le Bon Café, where you can enjoy some nice desserts and a cup of cappucino, and they’ve got some pretty good breakfast items as well.

We’re leaving tomorrow morning, bright and early, for Bogotá, where we will spend our last week in Colombia. Medellín is nice, but we just haven’t really found our little pocket of nice restaurant, nice café, etc, where we want to pass the rest of our time here. We’re over the bandejas thing, we’re kind of over Colombian typical food in general, to be honest, and the good thing about Bogotá is that there are some nice cafés, and a lot of good non-Colombian food options. And our time in Medellín has been tempered by the fact that everything we try to do, everything is always closed.

Today we’re going over to the Botanical Garden, and then some cemetary that is supposed to be interesting, and then it’s packing time. Hasta luego.

¡Happy New Year’s from Medellín!

Hope y’all had some good New Year’s festivities wherever you be. Here in Medellín I didn’t do anything too crazy, just went up to a lookout spot to see the city at night, then walked back down along the river where all the Christmas lights are strung up. It is indeed a spectacular sight.

All I could think about was all the electricity being wasted. We then walked the long walk back to the slums where our hotel is located—because no taxi would stop and pick us up, for some reason—dodging street kids, drunkards, and transvestites, to celebrate the commencement of the new year in the security of our hotel room, wherein we imbibed a bit of Ron Medellín mixed with some gaseosa. The firecrackers in the streets, of course, went off all night long.

It is my established tradition to give some kind of commemorative New Year’s speech, and not wanting to disappoint, I’ll attempt to dredge up some inspiration for one here. A lot of the sub-narrative of this trip in Colombia, so far unsaid, has been about my relationship with my girlfriend—as I am traveling with her—and when traveling, relationships are always put under stress and challenged in every way. I will delve more into that topic specifically in another post, but for now, my point is that I have been thinking much about what a relationship is really about, and what I would like to do now is to unite some of those conclusions with a broader vision of what our relationships with each other as a human species is all about:

When you love someone, and are interconnected with them deeply, whether a family member, a lover, a friend, or a co-worker (c´mon, you see them everyday and interact with them—that’s an important aspect of our lives!), you have entered into a new world of relations with the entire universe, whether conscious or not. Because the fact is that you have come to realize that you are more than one singular, solitary individual, alone in all the cosmos. You have come to realize, through the act of empathy, compassion, and mutual perception, that you who once were one are now 3. Another way of stating that last bit is to say that what was once 2 distinct individuals is now one. Whatever way you look at it, there is a triune evolution in your existence, in which you evolve upwards into a greater unifying dimension, which allows you to descend back down into a wider, embracing perspective from multiple viewpoints. Think of it this way: two separate, disparate individuals begin to share a life together, and their once distinct and detached worlds begin to mesh, and at some point, you cannot clearly delineate a clear separation between the two anymore, because whereas before there were clearly two, now it becomes manifest that there is really one; or at least, a movement and development towards unity. But at the same time that there is this unity, there are still two clearly distinct individuals, with different personalities and so on. So there co-exists the two separate worlds alongside the higher unifying oneness between them. There is an evolved trinity.

All of that is rather vague, perhaps. But the idea I really want to convey here is that we all exist in our material selves as detached, separate, distinct individuals, with our own personalities, trajectories, perceptions, etc. All of humanity appears, on the surface, as fragmented shards of a fallen deity, split asunder into factions, fear, and locked in the eternal warfare of dominance, greed, and misunderstanding. When leaders rise up that would try to better unify us, they are shot down ruthlessly by barbaric, murderous, bestial elements, such as just recently Benazir Bhutto was so barbarically slain before the eyes of the world. It would seem, at first glance, that there is nothing that can string all of us together.

But the lie in this deception is apparent when you look closely at your own life, at the threads that tie you so intimately and immediately to others. We are not all detached, alone, and astray. We are all evolving together into the greater unknown that lies beyond appearances, beyond multiplicity and fragmentation, beyond logic and reason, beyond complacency and habit. In this world beyond that coexists right here and right now within and above our own, we cannot yet speak—yet we can sing; we cannot yet walk—yet we can fly; we cannot yet understand—yet we can intuit. It exists and we know that it exists because we feel, because we love, because we always and forever will strive to know of this divinity, this greater unity, even in the face of the greatest suffering and despair. It is there. We have love, and we know that this love takes us there. It is in extending this personal love in each of our lives all the way out to include and interpenetrate all of humanity and the world that lies the challenge.

I would like to end this little speech with a quote from my guru of the moment (because whomever I happen to be currently reading is my guru), Sri Aurobindo: “. . . on one side Nature works according to her limited complex of formulas . . . but on the other side there is an overseeing, a higher working and determination—even an intervention—free but not arbitrary, often appearing to us magical and miraculous because it proceeds and acts upon Nature from a divine Supernature: Nature here is a limited expression of that Supernature and open to intervention . . . by its light, its force, its influence. The mechanical, mathematical, automatic law of things is a fact, but within it there is a spiritual law of consciousness at work which gives to the mechanical steps of Nature’s forces an inner turn and value, a significant rightness and a secretly conscious necessity, and above it there is a spiritual freedom that knows and acts in the supreme and universal truth of the Spirit. Our view of the divine government of the world or of the secret of its action is either incurably anthropomorphic or else incurably mechanical; both the anthropomorphism and mechanism have their elements of truth—but they are only a side, an aspect, and the real truth is that the world is governed by the One in all and over all who is infinite in his consciousness, and it is according to the law and logic of an infinite consciousness that we ought to understand the significance and building and movement of the universe.”

Some More General Observations on Colombia

Before I delve into the city that is Medellín, I first have a few more things to clarify about Colombia and it’s inhabitants and add to the list of things that are unique, different, or annoying aquí:

—The internet places here in Colombia all close by 7 every day, and none are open on Sundays. It’s like, how I am supposed to post insomniac creative scribblings in the middle of the night? And what’s up with Sundays, anyway? Is it ungodly to surf the net? C’mon, the boot store is open on Sunday! It really makes me miss Perú, where there was always a late night cheap internet place on every corner—even in the middle of the fucking Amazon jungle! You could only get there by boat or by plane, and yet you could duck into an internet spot around the main plaza in the middle of the night after dancing to cumbia and getting your drink on! And yet in a major fucking city you can’t find anywhere to do a late night post! And in smaller cities like Santa Marta they even close for fucking siesta time! . . . . Ahem.

—Just a side note on Cartagena: if you are ever there, do yourself a favor and desayunar at Mila. It’s this fancy little yuppie pastry place (right next to El Bistro) that serves heavenly hot chocolates and cappucinos, and they also serve the best damn pancakes you may ever eat. These ain’t your mama’s pancakes, neither—I don’t know what the hell they are, but they are served up hot with cream and blackberry jam and syrup, and you will never have a better breakfast anywhere else in Colombia.

—The tinto dudes. These guys are great. They walk around everywhere (especially in Cartagena) slinging carafes of tinto, chocolate, and café con leche. They hop on the buses and proffer their goods, sometimes with homemade sanduches (sandwiches). All you need to do is shout out tinto, and one will appear out of thin air and pour out the hot liquid into a miniature plastic cup for a few pesitos. Even at 5 in the morning, when we were on a taxi on our way to the bus station, we saw these tinto guys walking about everywhere. People really need their little shots of tinto here.

—Arepas. Arepas are these pancake looking things made out of maíze dough and fried with some butter. They are everywhere in Colombia, and they aren’t good. I’m sorry Colombianos, but these little wafers are just pretty damn bland and tasteless, and I have trouble understanding why they are served with every friggin’ meal. I mean, I know that Colombianos love them their white bread and all, but let’s move on from the arepa thing, huh? Let’s try us some wheat breads, maybe, something with raisins, perhaps, or nuts, or something other than bland tasteless dry fried shit!

—Which leads me to my next one: fried shit. Fried snacks are a way of life here. Which means that it segways quite naturally into the acceptance in general of the ubiquitous comidas rapidas (which god forbid if you actually advertised them as such in the States). Here they proudly advertise their presentation of nutritionally deficient foods on their restaurant sign.

—The ATMs, or cajero automaticos, ask you for donations to some children’s charity everytime you withdraw money. It kind of takes you aback at first, and then you just get used to it.

—One last thing on Cartagena before I’m done with it: another aspect of our lovely mildew infested room there was that the ceiling fan was located directly above our head. As in, if you stretched up your arms, your hands would get promptly chopped off. This provided a source of worry and stress in the comfort of my own room, as I had to constantly be aware of not standing on the bed, or putting my arms up when I pulled my shirt over my head, etc. This was further compounded by the fact that these fans are terrifying in general in these old run-down hostals, as they squeak menacingly from side-to-side at high speeds and appear to be ready to fly down directly towards you once they’ve freed themselves from their temporary loose installments.

—There are two places that you are guaranteed to find in any well-to-do neighborhood in Colombia, in any city: 1) a Juan Valdez café, generally situated around the nicest, most expensive plaza (think Starbucks of Colombia); 2) a Crepes and Waffles restaurant. Guaranteed. I’m not complaining, by the way, as we have spent many a happy afternoon beating the heat in the air conditioned cool of a Juan Valdez café. I’ve done at least half of my Life Divine reading there. Thank god for yuppie franchises!

—One last thing: we’re both learning the concept of restraint and sharing when it comes to ordering food. It’s occurred all too often now that we each order a dish and are unable to finish even a 1/3 of what we’re given, and thus made to feel like fat, wasteful Americans. We now share many dishes, and all deserts. I am hoping that we will continue this practice upon our return to the States. Instead of taking shit home in a doggie bag, we’ll finish a whole plate between the two of us, for half the price.

Mildew and Shoes

One of the pleasant carry-overs of our Cartagena experience is that absolutely everything we own now reeks of mildew. Our room in Cartagena was saturated with mildew, but we kind of got used to it during our time there, and didn’t realize how bad it was until we got to Medellín to discover, to our everlasting joy, that all our clothes and bags smell like our stinky old room. So I obtained a little bottle of apple cider vinegar this afternoon to wipe out our bags with, and all my clothes are now in the wash. Thanks, Cartagena!

Another thing I realized this afternoon was that I’d left my dancing shoes under the bed in Cartagena. Man, the maid for our room must be stoked. Not only did she get my Footprint book and my dad’s old poncho, items which I had deliberately left behind (the book was outdated and I wasn’t using it much anymore, and the poncho served me well in the jungle but now was just a plastic-y smelling burden that only cost 2 bucks in the first place), but also my 7 year old dancing shoes which I had just had polished in Plaza Bolivar in the old city. And a tip! Hopefully her husband will enjoy the shoes. They have served me well these past 7 years. You know, it’s funny because I was noticing just how much more room my bag seemed to have while I was packing it to leave, and I thought it was all just cuz of the book. Silly me. I’m debating right now whether to invest in some new dancing shoes here in Colombia, or to just sandal it, if and when I go out, the rest of my time here and enjoy the extra space in mi equipaje. We’ll see.

Estamos en Medellín

After a long, long bus ride (around 14 hours)—though not as long as the orange truck, thank god—we are now situated in Medellín, which is a large metropolitan city in the Cordillera Central. Once the cocaine mafia headquarters of Colombia, now I guess it’s more known for its clothing production.

On the bus, we were treated to hours of little children trying to usurp each other in the volume and piercingness of their yelling, and I spent a number of hours uncomfortably thinking that my bladder was going to explode. I have this problem, see—when I’m in a situation where there is any kind of pressure, I just cannot get the bladder to function. The pressure, in this case, being that I was in a small bathroom on a Colombian bus (meaning that it is driving extremely fast, passing other cars right and left on windy roads, braking suddenly, and nearly tipping over on sharp turns), and then the toilet seat lid didn’t stay up on it’s own, so you had to try to hold it up with one hand while somehow staying upright in the midst of the movement and jerking of the bus, and then one time I even fell backward into the door and the door swung open, as I stood there with my dick hanging out my pants. Long story short, I ventured into the little smelly dungeon of the bathroom 3 times and attempted to squeeze something out of my burgeoning bladder, and no doing. Fortunately, we stopped somewhere for lunch, where I was able to disembark and calmy urinate in a non-moving and quiet situation.

After that, I remained dehydrated for the rest of the time and just listened to my mp3 player to drown out the screaming children (the mothers never seem to be the slightest bit perturbed) and the movies they elected to put on for the ride. The movies they choose to play are unbelievable. On our bus to Armenia, they had played Dr. Doolittle 3, dubbed into Spanish. On this ride, the first movie of choice was American Pie: Beta House. If you haven’t heard of this movie, it’s not surprising, because it sucks and was never released in theaters for a good reason. What made it especially interesting as a choice for a movie on a bus ride in Colombia was that it wasn’t dubbed into Spanish, and the subtitles in Spanish weren’t formatted for the TV screen, so you couldn’t even read the subtitles. So basically, you have these Colombian familys sitting there watching all these gratiutous sex scenes and boob shots. It was kind of strange, and a little embarrassing, if Beta House is the impression they are getting of America. It was made yet stranger by the fact that the movie kept stopping in mid-play, and then the driver’s assistant would keep re-starting the fucking movie, which begins with an especially gratiutous and disgusting sex scene.

The second movie they chose was Wrong Turn, yet another Hollywood gem, this is a scary movie depicting an in-bred mountain man in West Virginia who murders pretty lost young people. At least this movie was dubbed into Spanish.

Well, that nightmare is over at least, and here we are in Medellín. When we left Cartagena, I had been afraid that I would never have a fresh tropical juice again, and I frantically overloaded on juices the night before we left. I’m happy to report that fresh juice places abound here in the city center, and that in fact it is even easier to find fresh juice here than it was in Cartagena. Phew! I will dutifully report on further activities and impressions of the city as this data comes in. Hasta luego.

Islas del Rosario

 

We elected to venture to the Islas del Rosario on our last day on the Caribbean coast. I figured, what the hell, why not, might as well punch out all the little touristy things to do so that we can say we did it and won’t feel like we might have missed something. Big mistake. I had thought that it would be a nice leisurely boat ride out to the islands, where you would see some neat coral reefs and get some nice pictures of the blue-green warm tropical sea. Then off to Playa Blanca, the nicest beach in the area supposedly, where you get to lounge about for a few hours before heading back.  Sounds like a nice spend of day, right?

Let me clarify for you what this tour is about, so that if you are ever thinking of embarking upon this “tour”, then you know what it is about: it is not a tour. It is a shuttle. A very very long shuttle. That takes you first to the aquarium out on one of the islands. Then takes you to the Playa Blanca. Then back. That’s it. There’s no touring. There’s no seeing, other than a lot of open water. What there is a lot of are other Latin tourists, all crammed into the boat like sardines.

We got there bright and early, but some people were already there, and all the seats right next to the side were taken. We began to get a premonition that maybe this wasn’t the kind of trip we wanted to be on when the boat began filling up, then was full, and then was packed, and yet still we were all just sitting there, waiting to go. An hour and half later, the boat finally revved its engines and departed. A pretty young lass in tight clothing handed out flyers to everyone telling us to use our life-vests, right as a voice came on over the loud-speaker telling us not to throw any trash into the sea. Let’s see where all those fucking flyers go.

The voice on the loud-speaker was loud. He spoke directly into the microphone, and seemed to spit his consonants out as forcefully as possible, so that the speakers shook and crackled. My girlfriend broke out her earplugs, and I stuffed my fingers in my ears everytime he made an announcement. Yet remarkably, none of the other Latin American tourists seemed perturbed by it, thus illustrating one observation I’ve made of Colombians and Latin Americans in general: I think their eardrums have all been slightly damaged. No one seems to mind when car horns are bleated right into their faces. No one seems to mind when a child screams the whole bus ride long right into their own mother’s face. No one seems to notice when the music is too loud. And everyone shouts at each other when they talk.

Anyway, so what was especially interesting was that all the other tourists dutifully put their little orange life-vests on. My girlfriend and I looked around and didn’t understand why we would be putting life-vests on when we were seated in a quite sizeable boat that you can stand up and walk around on. What I also didn’t understand was, here we are in a country where they drive like bats out of hell without rules or regulation on city streets dotted with pot-holes the depth of caves, and they never put on seat belts (except when passing a police outpost) and think nothing of it—and yet they all dutifully put on their life-vests while on a giant boat. It was just kind of strange. Needless to say, midway through the trip, most life-vests began to turn into seat cushions, as families listlessly fell asleep in the aisle-ways. By the end, absolutely no one had a life vest on, and in fact, all the life-vests were hung-up and put away.

We motored out to the Islas del Rosario, where we didn’t see anything of the coral reefs, and the only option to see aquatic life was to pay some more money to go into the aquarium, which we elected not to do. We sat and dunked our feet in the clear blue water instead and ate galletas. Then we got onto the boat again early and snagged some seats next to the side, so that we could get a little breeze on our faces at least while sitting crammed into the boat for the next few hours.

The next—and only other—stop was Playa Blanca, the beach renowned for its beachiness. The boat couldn’t dock on the shore, so we had these little mini-shuttle boats come out to unload all the passengers and bring us to shore. The minute you step down off the shuttle and into the surf and slosh onto shore, you are bombarded by the locals vending something, anything. Before I even knew what was happening, still trying to keep my balance in the waves, some guy with a bucket full of shells crammed one into my hand and said, “souvenir.” I looked down at this shell in my hand, and then tried to hand it back. “¡No! Es para ti. Un souvenir. Tranquilo. Tranquilo.” I shoved it back into his bucket, then waved off the succession of coconut pasteles, bracelets, earrings, massages, etc. We found a restaurant and ate some overpriced fried chicken and patácones and coconut rice, which seems to be the one dish you will get everywhere in Cartagena. I really liked patácones (mashed fried platano) when I first came to Colombia, but now I am sick to death of the things. They give me heart-burn.

We then found us a little somewhat-quiet spot in the shade, and we enjoyed a little dunkage in the hot Caribbean water. The beach is quite nice—if only you weren’t being hassled every single minute. It would have been a lot of nicer if we had come on a boat directly to the damn beach, instead of wasting all those hours boating out to the Islas just to go sit outside an aquarium.

I gave in and got a massage—I figured, what the hell, if I’m going to be a lazy tourist on the beach, might as well enjoy it. The girl had some strong fingers, and she worked both hard and fast, and it actually hurt far more then it relaxed or felt good. She kept telling me, this is a good massage, huh? To which I would cringingly reply, yeah, sure, as she banged away at my shoulder blades. My girlfriend snapped a picture.

We were given 2 hours to enjoy the tourist ridden beach (there were at least 5-10 other tours on various sized boats, all on the same itinerary, and all crammed onto the beach for the same time), and so when the time came for us to leave, my girlfriend and I were keeping watch on the little boat shuttles like hawks, so that we could fetch our good seats again from the hordes. Other tourists had the same idea. People could be seen trotting after the shuttle as it approached, and it almost looked like an organized line was forming. An organized line, in Colombia? Of course not! It revealed its true nature once the ramp came down. People began shoving right and left, cutting in front of you, stepping on your toes. It was chaos, but we forced and headbutted our way onto it.  Then, once the shuttle came alongside the boat, the frenzy resumed. It was like a pack of mothers trying to purchase the last few trendy available toys in a store before Christmas. There is no such thing as politeness in South America, my friends, when it comes to getting onto a boat where there are few choice seats. It was like rush hour in Bogotá. You only get somewhere by being aggressive and willing to die. My girlfriend told me to go on ahead of her and just get the seats. I pushed my way into the throng, leaving her to fend her own way out of a pack of overweight tourists, and grimly cut and ankle-bit like all the rest to fight my way onto the boat. I obtained our seats, and we sighed and then enjoyed the breeze the few hours more back to Cartagena.

Let me be clear about something here: this “tour” sucks. I don’t understand why it is recommended by the guidebooks at all. If you want to go to Playa Blanca, then go to Playa Blanca, don’t waste your time and money on the extensive boat trip out to an aquarium first. Unless you really like being stuffed onto a boat with a bunch of other tourists and sitting there all day long on hard seats. And having someone yell at you in Spanish over a loudspeaker.

El Volcán de Lodo El Totumo

We piled into our bus early in the morning and then rounded up the other tourists from their ritzy high-rises in Bocagrande: some Italians, an Ecuadorian family, and another family from Venezuela. No one showed any interest in anyone else. Then we drove out to the mud volcano, yes literally a volcano that bubbles forth mud reputed for its skin enhancing properties.

You change into your swim trunks, kick off your sandals, then ascend the makeshift stairs up to the top, whereupon you hand off your camera to one of the many locals who have established an efficient little system for getting tourists muddy and happy. This dude stands there with 15 or so cameras strapped about his arm, and he seems to remember to whom each belongs to, and must have experience with every digital camera under the sun, as he snaps pictures of all of you individually having your wonderous bathing experience.

You climb down a little wooden ladder and step down into the liqueous mud, which has the consistency of chocolate cream, and suddenly, you are immersed in a pool of mud. It’s somewhat tricky to maneuver in at first. Some local dudes are sitting in the pool and will then grab you and attempt to begin rubbing you down, which is a little weird in my opinion, so we declined the rub-downand sidled over to the wall to enjoy our mud bath in peace. It’s really quite remarkable. I fantasized that I was bathing in chocolate cream, except that this fantasy was shattered rudely every time a large sulpherous bubble erupted out of the pool like a giant farting in a bathtub. You kind of just sit there floating in this mud-cream, and dunk your hair in it, slather it all over your face, swim a little bit, and just laugh at the sheer joy and ridiculousness of it all.

This is an experience not to be missed, I assure you. How often does one get to bathe in a creamy pool of warm mud? Some of the tourists that came with us elected, strangely enough, not to go in, and just dabbed bits of mud on their faces. I couldn’t understand this. Why drive out all the way out to this damn anomaly just to dip your toes in? Dunk into that shit, motherfuckers! While I may not have enjoyed slipping and sliding in the terra cotta-like clay in the jungle, this volcanic mud was different stuff. I don’t know about the beneficial properties of the mud, nor care—it’s just sweet to swim around in.

Then once you’ve had your fill of mud immersion, you walk out to the lagoon a few yards away, and you are then given a strange baptismal experience, as some old local women lead you out into the shallows, sit you down, and then begin to bathe the mud off of you. They have you remove your trunks, and then rinse and wring them out for you. You just sit there in the water trying to breathe as they splash water all over your head, and it’s almost as enjoyable as the mud bath. How often does one get bathed like a babe in the shallows of a lagoon?

At the end, before you hop back onto your bus with the other unfriendly tourists, you then tip the locals for their services; my guide told me that 2 mil pesos each was appropriate. That’s peanuts.

So my advice to you if you ever venture to Cartagena de Indias—definitely make the little side excursion out to El Totumo.

Feliz Navidad

Here’s wishing you a Feliz Navidad from Cartagena, where it’s 88 degrees, but feels like 100 due to the humidity. Not much is open on Christmas day except some restaurants, so we’re just kicking back and sweating, reading, and waiting for the cool of the night to venture out to treat ourselves to a fancy Caribbean Christmas dinner, with wine and shrimp cocktails.

We also decided to treat ourselves last night as well, and ventured into this cool looking Chinese restaurant we’d passed before. Though the interior is one of the nicest we’ve seen, really decked out with lamps and lacquered wood and what not, the experience as a whole was dampened by the fact that out of a giant menu of Colombian-style Chinese food (much heavier on the Colombian side of things), my girlfriend somehow managed to pick fried chicken and french fries. It didn’t look like that on the menu, by the way. She was highly disappointed. We were both somewhat disappointed by the experience, as we’d both ordered dishes, which turned out to be gigantic, and we could only eat a third of each. Meanwhile, another Colombian couple came in (the only other people in the massive joint, and of course seated right next to us) and shared a plate, as we should have done. Another interesting facet of this dining experience was the music, which was a continuously looped 2-minute song that was obviously the only and closest thing to Asian that they could find. This loop consisted of one of those Chinese sounding string instruments playing, then a little light snare and organ action comes in and makes it kind of funky and modern in a tasteful and conservative fashion. Can you tell that I was really listening to it? Couldn’t really help it. I can say that there was one redeeming feature of this dinner, however: we were given cool little pens and a calendar along with our (too expensive) check.

Tomorrow we are off to visit the Volcán de Totumo, which is essentially a huge mound of warm mud. Yes, because we did not get enough mud in the jungle. Now we are going to slather ourselves with it completely, dunk into it, immerse ourselves in it. It’s supposed to have beneficial properties for the skin. Basically, I just realized that if we didn’t visit this thing when we were this close in Cartagena, we would regret it the rest of our lives. How often can you take a dip in a volcano of mud? It’s just one of those things one has got to do, given the chance. More later, with pictures.

¡A la orden!

Yesterday we embarked upon a chiva (a colorful wooden bus) tour of the city, visiting the scenic convent on the hill and the tunnels of the fortress of San Felipe. The tourists, most of whom were Colombian, took pictures of everything—sometimes clampering over each other to fight for a picture of themselves in front of something . They were like the paparazzi of tourism. Some had video cameras, others even had tape recorders and would hold it up to the guide as he gave his speeches. The most annoying facet of the tour, however, was that there was an official videocamera recording the whole thing, so that they could try to sell you the tape at the end for some outrageous fee. The guy with the camera would always be there, as we came up the stairs or out of a tunnel, blinking in the light, waving at us with the videocamera in our face calling, “hey gringos! hey Ingles!” I would try and ignore him, or just glare at the camera. For those putzes who actually purchased the video, I’m sure they’ll enjoy making fun of the awkward, impolite gringos.

 

It being Sunday, absolutely nothing is open except a few restaurants. It’s somewhat unnerving to walk down the city streets and be the only ones there, aside from pigeons. One wonders where they all disappear to. Don’t people need to waste their time and money on Sundays too? I suppose all the tourists hole away in their Bocagrande section of town, where all the giant expensive hotels are (and I’m sure a number of crepes places as well).

Other than that, the other interesting tidbit for the day was that I found a place that sold jugo de borojo. Not having seen that fruit before, of course I had to try it. It was pretty tasty, kind of a berry type of flavor. I then later found out it is considered to have aphrodesiacal properties. Great. That seems to be a theme for me in South America. . .

Let’s see, que más. . . Ah, here’s another thing to love and be miffed at by Cartagena about: the whole “a la orden” thing. It literally means something akin to “at your service,” except that vendors use it here like a catchphrase. It’s basically the set response to anything from someone selling you something, whether in a restaurant, in a store, or on the street. They also say it to you as you pass by them as an attempt to lure you into buying their wares. The funny thing is, though, that no one says it in a “customer service” oriented fashion at all. It’s just the thing to say. “A la orden” they unenthusiastically mumble when you enter their restaurant. “A la orden,” they say when you’ve made your food order. “A la orden”, they say when you say gracias as they place your food on the table. And so on and so forth, throughout the entire process. It’s like alright already, I get it, you’re at my service. Thanks. How about trying out some other service oriented phrases for a change, eh?

The Mean Streets of Cartagena de Indias

 

They say that Cartagena is a city for lovers—and yet the streets are so narrow and filled with both pedestrian, equestrian, and vehicular traffic that there is no way you could ever walk side-by-side holding hands, except along the quieter outskirts. The streets here are indeed fraught with everpresent danger, and you’ve got to be constantly on guard, even when just sitting on a park bench in one of the plazas in the shade of a giant tree trying to escape the heat—because a pigeon very well may shit on you (we were shat on a total of 3 times in the space of a half hour the other day). Even the native Cartageños will sometimes nearly be clipped by a speeding taxi or SUV, and that makes us gringo tourists feel slightly better about ourselves (we’re not just inept tourists!) as we dance frenziedly about the multitudinous gaping holes in the sidewalk, or the deep puddles alongside the curb.

Another thing that can grate on one’s nerves whilst traversing these obstacle-ridden narrow fort-city paths is that Colombian pedestrians aren’t at all in the habit of practicing common courtesy. As in, you will be approaching, single-file, a couple walking side-by-side and taking up the whole entire miniscule slab of concrete that passes here for a sidewalk, and a line of taxis will be blazing past, and as we skirt to the right side to pass the couple, neither will bat an eye, nor move a shoulder, thus either forcing you to dip into the street with your ankle a mere centimeter away from a passing car or horse-drawn carriage, or to simply charge forward with your shoulder forward like a battering ram, and brusquely bang the offending pedestrian aside like a ping-pong ball. People just do not move aside here, nor alter their trajectories unless they absolutely have to. It’s like a constant game of chicken. People also will halt and stand chatting away on their cell-phones in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing you either to push them aside or feint sideways like a prize fighter.

No, common courtesy is not something common here. People who look rather well-dressed for beggars will come up to you while you are eating and beg you for pesitos and tell you that they are hungry. When you try to continue with the conversation they butted into (they always seem to come up right when you are in the midst of a deep conversation), or wave them away, they continue standing right next to you, detailing all the reasons why you should give them money, begging, pleading, batting their eyes at you. Then when you say “no” for the 20th time, plainly annoyed, they will finally turn swiftly away, cursing you loudly. Today while walking along the ramparts at sunset, one guy actually came up to me, put his hand against my chest, and told me to give him money so that he could drink. I was incredulous. He then grabbed my girlfriend’s arm and asked her for money. They are just outright rude, it’s like they demand and expect you to give them money.

Yes, the perils of tourism, I know.

Anyway, all of that said, it’s quite a pleasant little Caribbean hub of tourism on the whole. We discovered our breakfast place this morning, wherein we can have our fresh jugos de maracuyá and eat hot empanadas filled with gooey cheese and ham and corn. Then we also discovered a quiet little bookstore/café tucked away in the ritzy San Diego section of town, where we drank cappucinos (served with little mini-cookies on the side, I love it when they do that shit) and I studied my Spanish and purchased a Pablo Neruda book.

I am now outfitted with my Arhuaca man-purse, and loving it. They really are handy and fashionable little things. I’ll sport it back in the States and be the envy of all you trendy metrosexuals! I assuage my manliness through the knowledge that these handbags were originally worn only by the native men (they traditionally wore 3—one big one for their personal items, another one for work things or whatever, and a third little mini-one to carry their coca leaves for dipping into throughout the day so that they didn’t have to waste precious time eating).

The Navy Lads

Yesterday the stomach dragons officially disapparated out to neverland, and so thus in celebration we assayed forth into the walled city to eat food. Not feeling particularly adventurous just yet, we elected to pop into the gringoesque Pizza and Pasta. On the way there, we saw a group of gringos striding past speaking American, and they all looked kind of like frat boys. It was a little strange. Then, seated in the restaurant next to us were a group of estadounidense guys, 2 of whom we were quite certain were our convivial midnight neighbors from the pleasant night we spent in Hotel Las Vegas. These kids were ghetto. My girlfriend and I debated how some kids from the ghetto ended up wandering the streets of Cartagena. After sipping on some zapote and maracuyá juices, we elected to order a medium pizza—I know, in direct contradiction to Andrea’s sage advice on what not to eat after a stomach dragon visit—which turned out to be not only gigantic, but also doubly greasy due to the addition of bastante butter. We ate as much as we could (2 slices each) without vomiting immediately, and there was still half of the pizza left. Not wanting to let all of that grease and fat go to waste, my girlfriend charitably offered it to another table of gringo men seated behind us, who somewhat hesitantly agreed to take it into their stomachs. She first unsettled them by asking them loudly, “¿Habla Ingles?” (even though she knew they were gringos), and they looked at her strangely until they caught onto the word “Ingles”, and then they eagerly nodded yes. They didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. She asked them where they were from, and one lad was from Florida, another from New Jersey, and one from Georgia. Something suddenly clicked in my mind, especially when we saw the ghetto kids attempting to pay their bill with American dollars. These were military brats! Suddenly it all made sense—the frat-type guys we saw on the way there, the prostitutes, the ghetto youth, the boys from random parts of the United States all seated together in a Pizza and Pasta place . . . They were docked in Cartagena, couldn’t speak any Spanish, didn’t even have Colombian pesos, and were just out to get some ass and pizza and get drunk. Good ol´Navy lads. My girlfriend was proud to have fed some of the boys some grease-laden pizza.

Juxtapositions

One thing that a trip does is to juxtapose your own cultural values and customs with those of another. As I am now over halfway through the trip, I’d like to take a moment to pause and examine some of these differences.

Some of the things that I now more fully appreciate about the United States is:

—although we still have a long way to go, there is a definite growing awareness in the US of waste and the treatment of our environment

—white bread and other processed foods, though still popular with kids, are not a nationwide snack

—people don’t stare blatantly at you

—you don’t have to barter for every single thing

—people don’t come up to you when you are sitting in a restaurant and try to sell you kitchen towels or pens with flashlights

—personal space is generally respected

—noise pollution is not usually acceptable

The things that I appreciate in Colombia that is lacking in the States are:

—a great public health infrastructure

—public tranport is cheap and very accomodating: a bus will stop and wait for someone to go into a store and obtain their groceries

—people get onto buses and sell juices and tintos

—fresh cheap juice! fresh cheap juice!

—need your shoes shined? go to the plaza and sit down on a bench.

—small stores and restaurants on every single block

Cartagena

 

Cartagena is pretty much what we’ve been looking for this whole trip: good pasteles everywhere, an abundance of fried goodness, juices (supposedly; I’m still looking for them, I know they’re here), nice cafés and restaurants, small colorful colonial streets that you could wander aimlessly in all day if you can stand the heat. Unfortunately, we can’t eat anything much because our stomachs are still caught in the vise-grip talons of our stomach dragons. The good news is, they have these great little bakeries scattered about that vend fresh pan de queso, which as it’s name implies, consists of bread melted with cheese, some of them with some mermelada de maracuyá spread inside as well. So at least we can munch on those while waiting to recover, and drink chocolate caliente. We are in full vacation relax mode now, with my main objectives in the next week simply being to find a good juice stall, a good café for chillaxing in, and once able to eat, a nice cheap restaurant. That’s all that’s on the agenda, really, besides celebrating Christmas Caribbean style.

Hotel Las Vegas

Ah, Hotel Las Vegas. How I’ll miss your bleach scrubbed tiles, and how they so forcefully reverberate every single noise throughout your entire structure: every child’s frequent scream, every ounce of television in the room next door, every conversation yelled in Spanish in the lobby, every prostitute adventure taking place in a room down the hall rented for an hour in the early morning. How I’ll miss your overpriced rates—more than a Motel 6 back in the states! How I’ll miss your toilet that doesn’t quite flush, which gets interesting when you have two sick people all night long. And finally, how could I forget the sweet smell of fresh cigarrette smoke wafting through your air conditioner ducts?

I don’t quite understand why this hotel is even mentioned in the guidebooks. We arrived yesterday in the old historic section of the city, sick and tired, and we stumbled about with our luggage through these weird Cartagenian streets with their different names for every damn block trying to find the two hotels listed as cheap in our guidebook (we have grown accustomed to the logical numerical address codes of everywhere else in Colombia). They weren’t cheap; in fact, they were the most expensive of any of this trip thus far, due to the fact that rich Colombians are now on vacation and are flocking to Cartagena. We finally just gave in and booked a room for 2 nights, to recover from our sickness and then find some cheaper accomodations in the less savory parts of town. After one night at Hotel Las Vegas, however, we had to say chau chau.

Fortunately, we went to bed very early because we were exhausted, and thus got in some much needed sleep before the really loud noises transpired. But there was constant noise. You could hear the conversations and televisions of people next door, which was enhanced by the fact that the Colombian couple next door had to shout out every single thing they said. Then there was the ubiquitous child that shouted out every few seconds somewhere down the hall. There always has to be a shouting child here, somewhere. They all shout, high-pitched, angled just perfectly to annoy all non-Colombian ears. Then the two employees in the lobby constantly talked all night long, and someone would enter and walk up and down the halls, yelling another conversation to them, and all of this would echo into our room perfectly due to the entire structure being tiled by some genius.

The pinnacle of the night, however, was when we were awoken in the early morning to the sound of some other Estadounidenses talking out in the halls. As we could hear everything perfectly, I can give a fairly good account of what transpired: they didn’t speak any Spanish, and had apparently been led to this hotel by an English speaking Colombian guy, who probably gets a small kickback for it (we were led to this hotel by the same guy, as a matter of fact, and only accepted because it was one of the ones in our guidebook we were trying to get to). These Americans had picked themselves up some pootang in some bar or club somewhere, or perhaps even on the street. So, they each rented out a room, apparently for an hour, and at the end of the hour, the receptionist came down the hall and banged on the door telling them to “check-out”. One of the guys came down from his room and talked to his friend out in the hallway, telling him to hurry up (“Hurry up, motherfucker! I don’t want to wait out here any longer, motherfucker!”). Then we listened to him talking to his ho about getting her e-mail address (translated between them by the Colombian guy), etc, so that she could write what she had been telling him earlier so that he could look it up. These were not conversations that we were straining to hear, nor wanted to. They were right down the hall, speaking at high volume, as apparently every one in this hotel must speak. The one guy kept telling his friend to hurry up. Apparently the other guy was going for 6 times with his ho.

At 5:30, someone then put on their TV at a volume so high that it was unbelievable.

Anyway, so my advice to you is not to stay in the Hotel Las Vegas when you come to Cartagena, unless you really enjoy listening into the lives and times of other travelers. We’re moving down to the Getsemaní neighborhood, where rates are half that of the old city, even though it’s a mere few blocks away. Our new hostal has a nice big courtyard with plants, and hopefully no prostitute visits in the middle of the night.

On Santa Marta

We are here in Cartagena de las Indias, having finally kissed Santa Marta good-bye. There really is nothing in Santa Marta to do as a gringo tourist, and despite having spent yet another sleepless night journeying to and from the bathroom, we had to leave—had to leave, even though I was justifiably terrified of being that gringo tourist on the bus who shits and vomits all over his seat. Fortunately, the pain of journeying was somewhat eased when we discovered that we could take a small, air-conditioned shuttle bus directly from our hostal. Granted, slightly pricier, but given that under normal circumstances we would have had to carry our bags until we found a taxi—which wasn’t easy in our weakened state—over to the bus terminal outside of town, and then haggle with bus companies over a price, and then wait for the next bus to leave, and then sit and watch our baggage like hawks, it seemed like a pretty good idea. It wasn’t really that much pricier than the normal bus, in fact, and aside from making many excursions through side-streets to pick up other travelers, it was speedy and comfortable.

Another word on Santa Marta, before I’m done with it: there’s literally nothing to do there, unless you happen to be vending fruits or hand-bags. (Rich) Colombian tourists flock to the beach at El Rodadero, but that’s all there is there: beach. In the Centro area, where the gringos stay, there’s sort of a beach. We only found one restaurant that was decent—decent not because of it’s food, which is always the typical comida corriente of meat, rice, beans, and platano—but because of it’s exceptional juices. They served large, tasty juices in a soda glass, and it was one of our few daily activities in Santa Marta, to seat ourselves at its tables located along the waterfront and sip at our níspero, maracuyá, or zapote juices while people watching—or, more frequently, being watched ourselves. If you ever end up in Santa Marta for some reason, then pop in, it’s called Punta Betín and is located just past the Plaza Bolivar along the waterfront (Cra 1C), next to a shop selling mochilas. But not the one right next to the shop selling mochilas: that’s the bad one that tried to scam us.

The only reason gringos do end up in Santa Marta is simply to pass on through to la Ciudad Perdida or Parque Tayrona. We had hoped that Santa Marta would kind of be like a miniature Cartagena, where we could escape the high prices and crowds that Cartagena attracts in its “high” season. But no. No cafés strung about, few pleasant restaurants, and a hell of a time trying to find a damn internet place where you can upload your pictures onto. I suppose there’s dancing and drinking going on during the weekends, but that kind of scene is officially off of our itinerary.

About the most exciting thing that happened in Santa Marta was that the electricty went out all night long (second time this happened, actually) across two blocks the night before we left for Parque Tayrona. Of course, our hostal happened to be on one of these blocks. The residents began crowding into the darkened street, and started a fire in the street down near the waterfront and began protesting. It was somewhat of a half-hearted protest, due to the heat, but a protest nonetheless. We sat on the rooftop of our hostal until it was time to attempt to sleep, which of course was not to occur because there was absolutely no breeze, so no air was coming into the room, and I had to keep getting up and walking over to the window to stick my head out in order to get some fresh breaths of air.

Anyway, so that’s Santa Marta. Oh, but it is good for one thing: the Arhuaca mochilas which are sold in many stores. These are handmade by some of the natives in the mountainous jungle nearby, and are very handy, as well as nice-looking. You will see everyone, guys and gals, sporting these things all around Colombia—even the trendily fashionable chicas in Bogotá.

More on Cartagena, along with pictures, to come. I need to get these stomach dragons quelled somewhat first. . .

Parque Tayrona

 

We’ve just returned from the beaches of Parque Tayrona, which is the requisite post-Ciudad Perdida-trek stop on the traveler’s circuit. We had envisioned ourselves swaddled in hammocks, supping on fresh tropical juices, relaxing on the beach, swimming in lukewarm Caribbean water, and watching the sunset. But I am sorry to say, this trip to Parque Tayrona—one of the number one tourist destinations for Colombianos on holiday as well—was just slightly disappointing. A list of some of the intervening factors: 1) A long, muddy hike into the site, all too clearly reminiscent of the 6-day trek to Ciudad Perdida; 2) you can’t even really swim at these beaches, because of the strong currents—there’s only about 2 slightly dippable bays; 3) you have to walk far to get to these somewhat swimmable bays, except if you’re staying at Cabo, which I’ll get into in a moment; 4) some non-mosquito insect bites the living shit out of you; 5) not many juices at all, and none at Cabo; 6) everything is overpriced, of course; 7) no refrigeration + tropical heat = stomach problems; and 8 ) the hammocks are either not comfortable at all, or it is too crowded and no space, or some people decide to stay up late right next to you and chat away at full volume all night long.

The first night we were there, we stayed at the 1st place you see in Arrecifes. The hammocks sucked (though they look nice enough), but they provided mosquito nets, and the showers and bathrooms are better than any of the hostals we’ve stayed at thus far. And there’s actually toilet paper in there!

Once we had settled our stuff into our nice little wooden lockers and put some food into our stomachs, we went off to dip into the water. After all, the whole point of being in Parque Tayrona is it’s beaches, right? We walked down from our thatched palm structure down to the water, which was a mere few strides away. To find that the sand stretched all about was empty. No one sunbathing, no one frolicking in the surf. And then we noted the no swimming signs, and the fact that the waves were bearing down on the weary shore like taxi drivers on a pedestrian in Bogotá. So, no swimming there. OK. We followed some people who were walking on ahead, and we walked, and we walked, fainting in the sun, until we arrived at a sort-of-bay. It looked plausibly dippable. They sold orange juice at a stand there. We plunked our weary haunches down on a fallen coconut tree and my girlfriend tested the waters, only to be swept up in a strong backward current and plunked down into the sand on her bottom. Not this one, then. We walked on, through dense thickets of jungle foliage and mud, and finally, arrived at La Piscina. There were people there! Sunbathers, popsicle vendors, children in water! We gratefully jumped into the sea. Only to find that you can’t really go too far out, because even in this sheltered bay the waves are strong. You can only really just frolick like children in the first few feet of surf. And then lay in the sun. Or sit in the shade and read a philosophical treatise, as I did. That’s it.

We walked the long haul back, showered in the ritzy showers, ate dinner, and hunkered into our hammocks to sleep. But other people in our sleeping area obviously weren’t ready to sleep, even though there was little lighting. One set of teenagers smoked pot on the steps, a mom smoked a cigarette down the way, and a family conversated loudly in Spanish right next to us. Plus, the hammocks were hung too loose, and I could never get comfortable. Plus, it got cold at night after it rained, and even with my sweater and socks on, I found myself wishing for a blanket. So, no sleep that night.

We decided the next day to hike all the way to El Cabo, which is apparently the spot where most backpackers/gringos end up. It’s a beautiful cape, with its own little mini somewhat-swimmable bay. But the accomodations are a different matter. First of all, it’s crowded. A line of hammocks were strung up side-by-side alongside the restaurant, so close that whenever I would get up to pee in the night, I would bump my ass into the face of the girl sleeping next to me. Second of all, it wasn’t any significantly cheaper than the much nicer 1st place. Third of all, there’s no juice out there. That’s right—no juice.

To compound matters, my girlfriend decided to come down with a fever that morning, and spent the entire rest of the day laid out in her hammock, listless and incapable of movement. Not being much of a beach person in the first place, I didn’t feel very compelled to lay about by myself on a somewhat swimmable bay. So instead, I went off on yet another trek through the jungle, out to another set of ruins called Pueblito, which is essentially identical to la Ciudad Perdida (i.e. bunch of ruins of rocks in terraces where huts once stood), except that rather than trekking 6 days through the jungle for, you only have to hike over an hour’s worth out of El Cabo. It’s actually a fairly strenuous hike, mostly uphill on the way out, with these boulderous semi-steps leading most of the way. Unburdened of my non-hiking girlfriend, I happily mountain-goated my way about, losing the trail at one point and getting lost in thick foliage and sliding my way down a mountain. When I got to Pueblito, about the most interesting thing I can comment on seeing is the baby parrot sitting on an opened coconut and happily munching away while surrounded by a papparazi of Aussies snapping pictures and video. I gave in and took a picture as well, because he was damn cute.

I turned around and headed back, going too fast and slipping and falling a number of times as I sweat buckets. Upon returning to the boring but beautiful El Cabo, I joined my girlfriend in laying about in the hammock, and tried to read as well as I could without straining my neck.

That night, I met up with some trekkers I had seen on the way back from Ciudad Perdida, and shared some of their rum with them and drank some beers. I went to bed at a fairly reasonably late hour, I thought, considering that it gets dark at 5:00, but another group of people stayed up much later conversating right next to the line of people strung up in hammocks, laughing their asses off at things that weren’t even funny and annoying the shit out of me. Apparently, not many people stop to consider that the 30 other people strung up quietly in the night like larvae are actually trying to sleep.

Also, they do not provide you with mosquito nets at this luxurious Cabo location, and I was getting bit the shit out of by some unknown insect whose bites have welled up double the size of normal bites.

Also, I had to keep getting up to piss, because I’m not accustomed to drinking anymore. Which involved a stumbling about in the dark and bumping my ass into the face of the girl next to me, waking up my girlfriend to get her headlamp from her, and then stumbling out and peeing somewhere nearby and then trying to locate which hammock was mine out of the line of 50 other hammocks without shining the headlamp into everyones´faces, and then bumping a few more times into the girl next to me.

Also, I could begin to feel my stomach acting strangely, and could tell that I had some unpleasant bathroom time approaching first thing in the morning.

Also, I couldn’t move or stretch my legs sideways too much in the hammock and get comfortable without fear of swinging into the girl next to me.

Long story short, I slept even less than the 1st night. We had planned on staying three nights at Parque Tayrona, but now having witnessed the scene that is the somewhat-swimmable bays, non-refrigerated overpriced foods, and lack of various fresh juices on-hand, we decided to book it.

So we stumbled in the morning heat back through the jungle, back past the beach, waded through the water, and then had breakfast on the way out. We then tramped slowly back the long way out from Arrecifes through the windy muddy path all too reminiscent of the Ciudad Perdida christening, both my girlfriend and I growing increasingly weak and dizzy.

It was not over yet. The jungle wished to extract every ounce of pleasure and goodwill from our bodies. From the entrance of Arrecifes, it’s another long hour or so walk back to the entrance of the park. We had taken a jeep on the way in, but no transport was to be found on the way out. So we walked, and we walked, the approaching noon heat beating down. This walk down the road, in any other clime or time, would actually be quite pleasant: overhanging shade of dense green trees, a lack of frequent bypassing vehicles, and a slight breeze against the skin. But today, it was a hellish last haul, as my girlfriend stopped to vomit up the dregs of her morning ensalada de frutas, and my stomach burbled away dangerously. We stomped slowly by the remains of giant (giant) grasshoppers slewn by motorized vehicles. And finally, we made it to the entrance, where we just had time to buy a Gatorade before hopping on the bus that drives the hour back into Santa Marta.

And of course, our bus had to be the one stopped by the police and searched. We all had to disembark and watch as the police went through every compartment of our bags. The commanding officer was actually quite pleasant, and conversed with us about where we were from while another policemen shuffled through my backpack.

Anyway, so the synopsis of all of this is: our 3 days at Parque Tayrona was most definitely not relaxing. And yes, the park is beautiful. But the beaches ain’t really for just living it up and swimming, unless you just stay in your hammock all day long. We are more exhausted now then we were before we left, when we were just trying to relax after the long trek. And to top it off, now we’re ill. So my advice to you if you are planning on this requisite trip to Parque Tayrona: be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. Hawaii it may look like, but Hawaii it ain’t.

Books and pictures

Scroll down to some of the earlier posts and check out some of the photos I just finally got posted!

 

As you can see from this picture, I made a slight miscalculation in the size and quantity of books that I lugged along for the trip. I know, The Life Divine probably wasn’t the best pick for light travel reading material. But my thinking on that one was “how else and at what other time will I actually slug through this damn book?” And I have been reading it much more in Santa Marta, now that the only thing to do during the heat of the day is to find a shady nook near the Juan Valdez café. The Spanish-English Dictionary, well, yes, I could’ve brought a smaller one. The Footprint South American Handbook I am going to leave behind, as it is from 2005. And my Spanish books, sadly, have been largely neglected, and my Spanish speaking ability seems to decline each day that I am here.

The trek to the Lost City

 

We are alive, tired, and resting after the trek to Ciudad Perdida. Here’s a synopsis of the 6 day hike into the jungle: uphill, downhill, mud, more mud, lots of mud, slipping in the mud, falling in the mud, getting stuck in the mud, sweating, sweating profusely, getting bit by mosquitoes, getting bit by ticks, getting bit by bedbugs, wading through the river, wading through the river again, slipping on rocks while wading through the river for the 8th time, climbing up and down a thousand tiny steep steps, sleeping in hammocks, sleeping on ratty old mattresses. That’s pretty much the trip in a nutshell. For the nitty gritty day-by-day details, continue on, intrepid reader:

Day 1

After breakfast crepes and tintos, we bundled into the jeep that would take us over the river and through the woods to the little town wherein we would commence our journey. In the jeep we met the other 3 members of our group: an English couple and a lone Englishman, all of whom were already world-travelers, bent on conquering the globe for the next year or two . Other travelers we met along the way also fit this mold: traveling for 5 months to 2 years, traveling all over South America or over the entire known universe. I myself can’t even fathom being away for that long. 2 months or 3 months seems quite substantial enough to me. I think this difference, which can be delineated between the European and American travel norms, is that in the US we pay so much to go to college that the only recourse we have is to immediately embed ourselves in the neverending indentured servitude of a career, whereas in other modern countries, they pay less for the university and it is expected for them to go backpacking and experience the world before settling down to pints in the local pub. Whatever the case, one meets loads of Israelis, English, Aussie, and Kiwi everywhere in South America, all traveling for insanely long amounts of time and with no apparent lack of cash for the journey.

Anyway, to continue with the topic at hand: the jeep ride down the unpaved mountainous road to the small town where we would disembark was a mini-adventure in and of itself, bumping, swinging, and jostling as the driver sung to himself or told vulgar jokes to the guide. We nearly got stuck in the mud at one point, but managed to swerve out of it as chunks of mud spattered across our faces. My girlfriend was visibly pondering what she had gotten herself into.

We finally arrived and we stopped to eat some bologne sandwiches on the ubiquitous white bread which Colombians seem to relish. The journey by foot then began.

Now let me stop to clarify something: when I say that this trek was muddy, I am not speaking of little puddles of mud that you can step daintily around and avoid. When I speak of mud, I speak of the kind of mud that you can only ultimately accept as a part of yourself, the kind of mud you must become one with, the kind of mud you must slog ankle-deep through, the kind of mud that slurps into your sandals and cakes itself to your legs and clothes, the kind of mud you cannot escape.

The first day of the trek was muddy. The lone Englishman had purchased Wellington boots (or “wellis”) specifically for the trip, and he took a certain relish in tramping directly through the muddy bits while the rest of us slipped and slid about. My girlfriend and I only had our Chacos and our Keen sandals, respectively, and these were definitely not the proper footwear for excessive mud. I nearly lost one Keen within the first 20 minutes, when I got my foot completely sucked in by mud and couldn’t remove it. I had to pull my foot out of the sandal and then extricate the sandal by hand by pulling with all my force. I then had to walk barefoot until we reached a river where I could wash them out.

It rained quite a bit that first day as well, rendering what would only have been a strenuous hike into a humid, hot, wet, muddy nightmare. My girlfriend now was appalled at what she had gotten herself into, and I was starting to have some doubts myself. She fell head over heels in the mud. I slipped and did some kind of funky split and pulled a muscle in my leg severely and I thought for a moment that I was through. It was exhausting.

5 hours later, we finally arrived at the little house where we would spend the night. We met a group of fellow travelers there who were passing the night on the way back in from the city. We ate a substantial dinner of eggs, rice, potato, onions, tomatoes, and tinto. We slept in hammocks with mosquito nets, and it took me a while to get comfortable in it, and even longer to fall sleep, because a little child at the house kept waking up and wailing all night long.

Day 2

One of the extracurricular options for the morning was to venture to a nearby cocaine factory, if the group all decided they wished to go and would pay a little extra for it. We decided we would go. It wasn’t a real cocaine factory; it was more a cocaine factory exhibit, set up specifically for the gringos coming through. They took us through the process, from leaf to paste, and showed us what solutions were used at every step. It was highly educational. Among other things, gasoline and sulphuric acid are used in extracting the cocaine from the leaves. Doesn’t really compel you to put it up your nose. It’s a quite simple process, however, and extremely cheap. Considering that it is cut up to 20 times before it even reaches the market in places like LA or New York, it makes you realize that someone out there is making a hell of a lot of money. We were allowed to try the paste at the end, and it made my mouth really numb.

Then off we went for our second day out. This was supposed to be an easier and shorter day. It wasn’t. However, the good news was that it didn’t rain during the hike, so not quite as much slip n’ slide.

Along the way, we passed through an indigenous village.  Called Kogui, they wear robes of white and have long hair and carry little sacks (mochilas) slung over their shoulders. The mochilas are woven from a cactus-like plant called Maguey, which is related (but not the same) to the agave plant in Mexico that they use for tequila. The men also carry poporos, which are little gourds carrying a lime solution that they use in conjunction with chewing coca leaves. They are not necessarily unfriendly, but they are obviously not thrilled by the sight of hundreds of gringos tramping through their village and forest. They will usually say hello to you when you pass by them if you initiate the goodwill, but otherwise remain aloof. I can’t say that I blame them. Our guide wouldn’t even give them a name when I kept asking him what they were called. He just said, “los indigenos” every time I would ask. This probably reflects a general attitude towards the native peoples.

I had asked our “guide”, who is a just a 19 year old local boy, about cacao earlier, and along the path today we passed a cacao tree, and he cut down the fruit for us to try. I was pretty excited, because as anyone who knows me is aware, I eat dark chocolate on a constant basis. The cacao fruit is a large yellow-orange fruit the size of a football, and when you open it up, it has white custardy sectional pieces inside that look rather like garlic cloves. The fruit tastes like a cross between guanábana and banana. They prepare the cacao for chocolate by drying out its seeds just like coffee. On the way back through the village on the 5th day, we saw the seeds being prepared out on a tarp. I have to say, I am quite happy to say that I have eaten of the fruit of cacao.

After a massive neverending downhill section, we arrived at our camp site, which just happens to be shared with the Colombian army. In Colombia, service in the army is a mostly compulsory 2 years for men, and the young lads out in the jungle were quite obviously bored. They pass their days playing cards, jumping off rocks into the nearby river, and ogling the trekking gringo women. It was indeed a bit strange, to be sitting there eating your soup while the soldiers sat there with their semi-automatic weapons and stared at you. They were for the most part quite friendly, however, and one came up to me and started a very awkward conversation with me, the awkwardness further compounded by the fact that I could barely understand his rapid clipped Spanish and had to keep saying, “¿Como?”

Before we went to our hammocks, the guide told us that we should keep our cameras and money in the hammock with us. During the night, some animal—I think a pig—was rooting about our stuff, and I thought at first it was a thief, and I pulled my backpack up into my hammock for a while, until I realized it was just an animal.

Day 3

My girlfriend’s feet were cut up and she was having a very hard time. She isn’t the hiking type to begin with, and while for me hiking through the mountainous jungle is an adventure, for her it is a nightmare. Had I known just how difficult this hike was to have been, I would never have made her do it. This day was a long and difficult day, with over 7 river crossings. By river crossings, I don’t mean stepping across rocks. I mean wading through the river. We finally arrived at the foot of the stairs to climb into the city in the early afternoon. Fortunately, it had not yet rained, so the stairs weren’t slippery. Every other traveler we had seen on the way had told us the stairs were hell. But in fact, the stairs are the easiest part of the trek. They are at least solid and straightforward, if tiny and steep. Apparently the Taironas that built them were the size of midget elves.

After the 1,200 something little mini-stairs up, we were in la Ciudad Perdida, and we had it all to our little group of 5 for that night. As it was my birthday the following day, I broke out the bottle of aguardiente I had hauled along for this express purpose, and we drank a little bit after dinner (mostly just me). At one point in the evening (before I started drinking), I walked over to the bathroom in the dusk and began to urinate. Halfway through, alerted by the sound, I suddenly realized that I had been pissing all over a closed toilet lid! The group had a good chuckle over that one.

Our evening entertainment, aside from relaxed conversation, was in watching the multitudinous bugs come out of the encroaching darkness to fly into the flame of the candle on the table. This was surprisingly good entertainment—better than television.

Our accomodations in the city were ratty old mattresses. We fell asleep to the rain, and awoke to the sound of a waterfall, as well as the moquitoes clamoring outside of the mosquito net to get in.

Day 4

My birthday. Birthdays seem to mean less and less to me the older I get. I also don’t seem to be having any crises about getting to the cusp of leaving my twenties either. What better way to spend one’s birthday? I was out in a historical site in the middle of the Colombian jungle!

The Ciudad Perdida is quite large, although most of it is hidden from sight by the jungle. It consists mostly of stairs and the terraced remains of where family huts once stood. The city is said to have housed between 2000 to 4000 people at one point, before being vacated by the diseases and other tribulations brought on by the Spanish conquest. The Taironas left behind many gold pieces, which were looted in the 70s upon its discovery by a family of looters. Some of the pieces were preserved and can be seen in the Museo del Oro in Bogotá and Santa Marta, and are quite exquisite. They are very small and intricate, some depicting frogs or cats or snakes.

All of us boys took a dip in a little swimming hole in the city which is said to bestow youth. It definitely took some years off my life—but only on the other end. That water was cold. On the way to it, I slipped on the stairs and cut myself up a bit. I was beginning to feel a bit embittered by all of the falling. As someone who prides themself on possessing an exquisite sense of balance and rarely falling, two big falls were more than enough. My girlfriend logged in something like 3 falls a day.

That afternoon, another group arrived at the city with another tour agency, ruining our peaceful personal enjoyment. This group was huge—28 people—and my girlfriend and I had almost ended up in it, because we had been considering delaying our trip by a day. The guide had lied to us and a number of other people, saying that there were only 8 people in the group. In the group were an older English couple and an older German man. The couple looked exhausted, and later that night the old man twisted his ankle, and then later fainted. I hope he made it back alright. The German man (on a trek with his daughter—good sport) had fallen on the rocks in the river and had a big gash in his forehead. Luckily, he happened to have a large bandage for it. That’s one thing to realize about this trek—it’s dangerous, and the guides don’t appear to be equipped with any medical supplies. Our guides (teenage brothers) didn’t even have headlamps, and kept borrowing them from the English couple in our group.

At the cabaña of what seemed to be the site’s caretaker was a little puppy named Shakira whom my girlfriend grew enamoured with instantaneously. I think for my girlfriend, the pinnacle of the trip was not the ruins of an ancient city, it was in holding this little 6 week old puppy.

Day 5

During the night, I kept feeling something biting me, and thought that it was mosquitoes that had gotten into the net. In the morning, I realized that I had been eaten by bedbugs in the ratty old mattress I was sleeping on. So my advice to you if you are going on this trek is: cover up those mattresses before you lay down on them with anything you can.

In the morning, after eating our tuna empanadas splattered with generous doses of ají, we managed to get our guides to actually depart early (something that was difficult to do), because on this day we had to complete in one day what had been days 2 and 3. We had to go back down the trecherous midgit stairs, wade through the river 7-10 more times (the guides said 7; I counted 10), and then after lunch at the army camp, trek back up the giant neverending mountain that we had descended before.  It was a long day.

On the way to the army camp, my guide remembered that I was interested in the Kogui mochilas, and he obtained two from some huts (the guide said something about one of them being a shaman) we passed for me to buy. I was pleased to have obtained a handmade item from the middle of the jungle.

When we got to the army camp, we ate lunch and took a dip in the nearby river and watched the soldiers diving and belly flopping off giant rocks nearby. For the afternoon, we rented a mule for my girlfriend to take, as her feet were cut up and bleeding. The rest of us began the long upward journey, sweating like pigs in the over 100 degree heat and humidity. We finally made it to our desination after an 8 hour long hiking day (which was quick). We were fortunate, again, not to be rained on.

My girlfriend obtained 3 ticks from her mule and had to rip them out with tweezers, presenting yet another facet of the trek for her to be delighted with.

Day 6

The last leg back down to the village. Tired, sun-beaten, feet swollen and cut, little pebbles in my Keens shredding up my ankles. The hellacious tunnels of mud and more mud. But we made it, and then it was just a matter of enduring the 3 hour long Jeep ride back to Santa Marta, with the driver blaring ranchero music. I made the mistake of telling him that I liked the music, whereupon he turned it up and we listened to the same damn 3 songs over and over again. When we finally arrived back at the coast, we stumbled into our hostal and took showers. Then lo and behold, out went the electricity. We spent a very hot and airless night, but I slept like a baby anyway.

So that was the trek. What would normally have been simply a very strenuous hike was made extremely difficult by the extreme heat and humidity, and the excess muddiness and slipperiness. This is not an easy hike, and the trail is nothing more than a river of mud in various states of wetness (except during the months of Jan-March, when it gets extremely dry). So my advice to any future trekkers is: bring some “wellis”, or at least a good change of footwear for the muddy sections, and bring a sweater, because it gets cold at night, and bring something to sleep in that can keep you from the bedbugs. And bring soap, because there’s actually showers at every campsite.

Our guides were little more than teenage boys cooking for us and walking along with us through the jungle. So take your time before you embark and find a guide who you like beforehand, and make sure you are going with a small group. We definitely got lucky with our group, and we in fact realized last night that we rather miss them now that the hike is over. The English couple was particularly nice, and neither my girlfriend nor myself could have made it without their generous donations of foot tape.

As for repellent, well, I used my all-natural Burt’s Bees and I seemed to fare no better but no worse than my companions who were slathering DEET over their bodies. The fact is that you are going to get bit. Just like the mud, it’s something you’ve got to accept and become one with.

As for my girlfriend (read her much more humorous account at her blog), she is not very happy to have done it, but I think perhaps it was a good experience for her to have been pushed well beyond her normal boundaries and capabilities. Her feet hurt, she’s got bites all over, but I think maybe she came away with something more positive than just having held a cute little puppy named Shakira. I know I did. This trek was more like a rite of passage.

Treks and Crooks

 

I hadn’t expected to go on any hiking treks in Colombia due to my girlfriend’s disinclination to venturing into sweaty, mosquito-ridden, trecherous jungle areas. But today—perhaps due to the 100 plus degrees of heat and excess of caffeine, or perhaps due to excess of boredom wrought by days spent sitting at a table drinking strange juices—for some reason she caved in and ventured the idea that we might go into the jungle on a 6 day strenuous hike to la Ciudad Perdida. I, of course, leapt upon the opportunity to be eaten alive by mosquitoes and we booked our trip and we set off . . . tomorrow morning!

First, a little background: the Ciudad Perdida is, as it’s name suggests, an ancient city discovered by looters and later excavated by the government and opened for visits by tourists such as myself—although it’s been an area of paramilitary activity for some time and was too dangerous to visit until very recently. It’s somewhat like the Maccu Picchu of Colombia, except much less touristy and established. It’s set deep in the jungle, so this is our time to see some real wildlife—much better than the zoo, that’s for damn sure. We’ll see how my sunscreen repels on this one. I have the feeling that I’ll get bit the shit out of no matter what I do. But I’m really excited about it, as I love the jungle, and this is a great chance to get a unique perspective on it.

My girlfriend and I just had our first terrible rip-off scam experience here in Colombia, and I am still quite angry and sickened by it. We were walking along the waterfront, where there are a lot of little restaurants and bars, looking for a place to eat. Some guy swept us in, and the dish of the day sounded alright, so down we sat, ordered some beers, and waited, for a long time, for some meat that turned out to be harder than beef jerky. Seriously, it was nearly impossible to sever, let alone chew. But like the good sports we are, we ate as much as physically possible, and then I asked for the check. One of the guys came up and told me it was 76,000 pesos. In US dollars, that’s about $38. And this is when normally you can get a huge, delicious meal anywhere for less than $6. And this is when the food was just outright bad. Obviously, this was unacceptable. I then spent the next 15 minutes using the best of my little Spanish telling them that this was unacceptable. Some other guy came into the scene, who may have been an innocent passerby, or may have been part of the scam, who tried to play the intervener. At the end, I ended up paying 30,000 pesos and walking away. I had thought to yell at a passing policeman, but at the time, the last thing I thought I needed was more confusion, and with the police here, who knows what’s gonna happen. On hindsight, that’s what I should have done. So we got fucked, basically, and we both felt sickened by it. I didn’t even think that such a thing would happen in a restaurant. A taxi, a street vendor, etc, yes, but a restaurant? So from now on, we’re going to be a lot more careful about where we eat. It just sucks when a few crooks end up putting a big dent in your perception of a place, when you know that most people are not out to get you.

Anyway, cie la vie. Off to la selva, where the worst that can happen is just being kidnapped by a rogue soldier or eaten alive by a giant insect or snake!

Stomach Dragon Update! and other topical news

 

Now, finally, to answer the question that I know has been in the back of all of your minds this whole time: my stomach has been just dandy all throughout the trip thus far. I’ve had some spots of unsettledness here and there, but otherwise have been just great. Whether this is due simply to the anti-biotics or whether the probiotic pills are really making the difference is a question that is best left up to scientific research. The first week that I was here, my stomach did make some interesting noises and burble about quite a bit, but nothing came of it. Also, I haven’t been eating anything too sketchy, except for that street vendor-concocted shrimp cocktail last night on the beach, which was delicious and which I highly recommend trying if you are ever in Santa Marta. This old dude plopped down his bags, pulled out a plastic cup, filled it partway with camarones, then some onion salsa type thing, then squirts of mayonese and ketchup, a couple squeezes of fresh lime, and mixed it all up and handed it to me with a spoon, crackers, and a napkin. It was a great sunset watching snack, that’s for damn sure. I’ve also been rinsing my mouth with the tap water after brushing my teeth since I’ve got here as well, and that hasn’t been a problema.

In other news, I fucked up my beloved pair of travel pants (see link above) when I placed a pen in my pocket and it leaked out, forming two large, undying black spots right on the outside of the pocket area. I’m heart-broken, and have been trying to cope by drinking lots of tintos and jugos naturales.

As for Santa Marta, it’s fucking hot. The sun in mid-day heat is no joke. You have to dodge it from shadow to shadow in the city streets like a civilian from snipers. About the best thing that can be said about it is that your clothes dry extremely fast after washing them in the sink.

As for insect bites, the first day here my ankle swelled up so much that you couldn’t even see the bone. What’s especially perturbing about the whole thing is that these mosquitoes, or whatever it is that are biting, are completely invisible and soundless. You don’t hear or see anything. Suddenly you are just aware of this palpatating itch coming from your ankle, or elbow, or neck, and you’ve got to exercise Zen-like restraint to prevent yourself from scratching at it.  Although I suppose in the long run it’s actually a good thing that you don’t have to be further tormented by listening to the little buggers buzzing at you all day long.

However, I seem to have found a repellent that works! No, it was not the all-natural Burt’s Bees which I had expressly brought along for that very purpose. And no, you sceptical nay-sayers, it is not simply that all-natural things do not work. My girlfriend has been applying her supposedly effective DEET based formula and still getting bit up the ying-yang as well. What I observed is that I was not getting bit on the areas of my body to which I had been applying my suncreen. So I’ve been slathering it all over my ankles and hands and arms and neck as well, and it seems to be doing the trick. What is this wonder repellent? Why, it is my all-natural Badger 30 SPF sunscreen! This stuff is not your everyday kind of sunscreen: when you first apply it, it makes you look like a ghost due to the whiteness of it. You’ve got to really work it into your skin, massage it in, and then it disapparates into your pores and does it’s duty quite efficiently, as well as moisturizing and making your skin smell herbal-y. I think the repellent qualities may be due to all the essential oils in it, blocking the pores or something, who knows. But it works! ¡Sweet!

Cosas Diferente Aquí (Colombian version)

 In the tradition of past travel journals, here’s a list of some things that are different or unique here in Colombia:

1) There are great pastries everywhere. You may not know what they are called, but go ahead and point at them and eat them anyway. Trufas, galletas, palitos, pies, brownies, whatever. They’re all good. Especially with some hot chocolate.

2) Helados are also good. As trendy as Crepes and Waffles is, I have to say that their menu of ice cream desserts is overwhelmingly decadent and creative, such that you salivate just by flipping through it.

3) Water can come in little plastic pouches. You just bite off a corner of the top and squeeze.

4) Mayonesa and ketchup also come in little plastic pouches, except with screw tops on them.

5) Colombians will call each other names quite literally descriptive of what they look like. Such as by saying, “Hey black!” or “Hey brown!” to people dependent on their skin tone. They also have television programs that tell you immediately by their titles that their main character is either an “ugly” girl or an overweight person.

6) People certainly don’t mind staring openly at you. Sometimes it’s mild curiosity or boredom, sometimes open flirtation, and other times just blatantly rude and invasive. Not being someone prone to staring myself, it makes me uncomfortable—except when it’s from a cute girl.

7) Every coffee shop sells various coffee drinks with liquor in them.

8 ) For Christmas, people are very into decorating their cities with lights. There is a competition between the major cities, and there is a decision made in favor of the city with the most creative and beautiful presentation and design. In Cali, they had commissioned 7 different artists to decorate the city.

9) Urinals are little cups that are situated quite higher up than in the States. It is just perfect for the altitude of my particular peepee, but I always wonder how shorter people fare here. They must have to go into the stalls to orinar.

10) Lots of bicycles everywhere. Sometimes there’s even bike paths, but usually the bikers are just right alongside the road, nearly sideswiped by the buses and trucks roaring by. Sometimes a whole family will be on one bike: momma, poppa, and the little baby squeezed in between. Ditto with the ubiquitous motos.

11) In the smaller towns, such as Santa Marta, nearly everything shuts down between 12 and 2. Siesta time. And after 8 or 9 on a weekday night, ain’t no food except the little fried food carts. We learned that one the hard way last night. Plenty of beer, though.

Learning from Micro-Economies

What’s interesting to me about Southern American economies is how local- and entrepreneurial-based they are. They are prime examples of the kind of economy in which micro-credit can effectively work to combat poverty, as with a little bit of credit in hand, those in poverty can establish successful commerce. In the United States— except in those neighborhoods still rooted in different lifestyles—people do not have little stores on every corner, nor sell bottles of water and cigarettes and candy on the street. It is rare that you see people walking through traffic at a stoplight vending fruits or soft drinks. The United States is based firmly upon larger businesses, and while this has driven the whole economy upwards, it has also widened the divide between rich and poor.

While I do not think that we can nor should be attempting to regress to village-based economies, I think that there is something we can learn and remember from such economies. They are micro-based, decentralized, tightly interwoven, reflecting the communities and culture. While not as capable of large thrusts of capital and profit-gain, they are also perhaps more stable in other ways, not as subject to housing trends or corporate trading. Most important to recognize, however, is that these micro-economies offer a means of living to those in poverty. They have a chance to start their own little business. People here are selling minutes on their cellulars. “¡Llama llama más!” they call from street sides, a sign detailing the amount of pesos per minute around their necks. Others sell popsicles from bicycle coolers, or hot dogs (perros), or fried goodness, or avocados, or fresh squeezed juice. Competition is fierce, taxis and buses swing through traffic to pick up the stray extra person for a few more pesos.

It seems to me that what we can learn from such styles of commerce is that we need to try to realize and flesh out in reality the so-called American Dream, the Horatio Algers fiction of rags-to-riches, that with solely the sweat off your back you can make a quick buck. Maybe not rag-to-riches, but at least rags-to-adequate food and quality of life. Right now there is little ability for the poor to start their own businesses and compete on the current market, except within small cloisters of alternative communities. Our current market sways and leaps in the winds of giant corporate franchises, subject to complete and utter failure at a moment’s notice, completely and utterly dependent on the balance and poise of giants crafted from sweat and blood that pierce the heavens, top-heavy with money and greed, overly distant from the root and source of their sap and sustenance.

Trim off the tops of these trecherous mounts and feed them to the bottom, that we all may grow a little fatter!

The Trip to Santa Marta

Alright, so I am now in Santa Marta, sweating my balls off and trying desperately not to itch my ankles. We just spent a long, very long 31 hours in and around the truck. And while I may have garnered some backpacker street cred by having been driven from Armenia to Santa Marta in a truck delivering oranges, it is not something that I would recommend. It was slow—slow—and the truck broke down at one point and had to be fixed in the mid-day heat. It also wasn’t the most comfortable of journeys in the world either, as I sat most of the way in the middle with the stick shaft between my legs. However, what can be said of the journey is that it was cheap.

It was nice sometimes to be able to take in the countryside at a slow pace, because the countryside here is gorgeous. It is literally green everywhere. Which isn’t surprising given that we’re in the tropics. But still.

We got on the camion at 6 in the evening on Monday. Franky, our chofer, loaded our luggage up into the back with the oranges, and off we went up the windy roads in the Cordillera Central. It’s interesting to think off all the runaway truck ramps they have in California whenever there is a steep downgrade, and then to compare that with the road out of Armenia. It is steep, windy, narrow, and there ain’t no runaway truck ramps, and about 90% of the car traffic on the highways here is trucks. Massive trucks, small trucks, trucks hauling pipes the size of a monument, trucks hauling fruit, trucks with military stuff. . . And the trucks will be passing each other right and left on these two-lane mountain windy roads in the heavy rain in the night, somehow slipping in right as another truck comes barrelling down the other way.

We stopped at midnight and Franky slept in the back for 5 hours while we attempted to somehow sleep in the cab as some insect made an annoying continuous chirping sound nearby, and the gas station blared reggaeton, and the dogs endlessly barked at each other across the town.

There are military and police (cerdos=pigs) everywhere along the roads, and you will see them searching trucks, buses, and cars everytime you pass one of their stops. Everytime we came up to one of these waystations, Franky would yell to us to put on our seatbelts, as he frantically grabbed at his, and we would grab it and hold it while passing by the police, and then promptly let it go afterwards. One time the police stopped us, and as one of the cops walked up to the driver side, Franky slipped him a quick bill, and we were allowed to drive off.

Another time, when we came up to a weigh station, Franky pulled off some spare tires he had in the back and loaded them into the car of someone he’d commissioned (friend? who knows), and we jumped in the car and waited for him on the other side while Franky got the truck weighed.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, something went wrong with one of the front wheels, and we waited in the shade of a nearby restaurant while Frank drove off on a motorcycle to get a new part. Even in the shade we were sweating profusely and eaten mercilessly by some unseen and unheard insect. Finally, at 5:30, the wheel was fixed, and Franky, covered in oil and sweat, cleaned himself off and ate before taking off for the final, long last leg of the journey. Apparently, when you are a truck driver in Colombia, you must not only be a good driver, but also nimble in dealing with the cerdos, as well as a mechanic, able to fix problems as they arise.

The road to Santa Marta was terrible—bumpy, potholed, incomplete—and loaded with trucks. I got whiplash a number of times throughout the night because I was so tired that my head would swing back without any headrest, and then snap back as I came to over a bump. At 3:00 in the morning, we arrived in Santa Marta. I washed my face, and a thick film of black exhaust came off, along with the accumulated oils and sweat.

I’m just happy to be here and not sitting in the cab of a truck.

En Cali

The drive to Cali was around 3-4 hours from the finca, a lush verdantly green drive (as is apparently all of Colombia, come to think of it) with zaman trees all along the road through the Valle del Cauca, listening to Thievery Corporation and Shakira. Cali is one of the three major cities in Colombia (Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali), and like Bogotá, when you get into the nice parts of town, suddenly you realize just how modern Colombia is. The leaders in Lasik and plastic surgeries reside here (Lasik costs less than $1000; I was tempted), and the plastic surgery can indeed be seen projecting quite visibly from the chests of many women on the streets in Cali. It is also not uncommon to spot some folks (both guys and gals) walking about with tape on their faces from their recent facial enhancements. The breast augmentation is so common, in fact, that there is a term for women who may lack personality, but possess large bamboombas: it is said of such a woman that she has pechonalidad, a mixture of pecho (chest/breasts) and personalidad (personality).

The evening we got to Cali, we met up with my cousin’s extended family at Chipi Chapi, a ginormous brick mall converted from old train warehouses that puts any North American mall to shame. Chip Chapi is not only a mall—it is the place that the well-to-do meet up in, hang out at, have a drink, eat some food, people-watch, plastic surgery assess, etc. We seemed to start all of our excursions here. Chipi Chapi, by the way, is the name of a native tribe that used to reside in the area of Cali, and who have now been honorably immortalized as a gigantic shopping center.

While driving into Cali, we were slowed down by a mass of people on horseback in the streets. This event is called cabalgata, and seems to be some kind of fiesta/horse competition. The horses do this weird kind of high-step/quick trot and demonstrate their prowess. People drink aguardiente. Fun for the whole family.

Once we met up with the exended fam, they took us out to a restaurant in the San Antonio neighborhood, which is the old historic section of town, kind of like La Candelaria in Bogotá, except that people actually live there in Cali. The restaurant, El Zaquán de San Antonio, served comida tipica, which seemed to consist solely (of course) of various forms of fried meat. I gorged myself on empanadas, puerquitos (platano mashed with chicharrón), chicharrón, bofe (smoked cow lung), and costillos (rib). I ate most all of it myself, out of the 10 other people there, and yet somehow did not get ill. I was told that I have the stomach of a Latino, as I kept grabbing at the bofe.

I had a great time showing the family my list of Colombian fruits that I intended to try, and was pleased to see that they got as excited by it as I do. They kept telling me new fruits that I’d never heard of that I needed to try, and when they spotted a níspero tree nearby, two of them got sap all over their clothes trying to grab a fruit for me. So on my list still to try: curubas, badeas, caimones, chontaduros, guamas, mamuncillos, mairoños, grocellas, piñuelos, zapotes, and nísperos. Phew!

The next day we had a large breakfast with the requisite doses of coffee, and I tried pan de yuca, a bread particular to Cali, which is best eaten dipped in coffee or lathered in butter. Then we took the niños out to the zoo. My cousin drove us there, taking a hump on one of the streets at 80 mph and getting a few feet of air, much to the delight of the unbuckled children, and much to my pain and discontent, because I came down right on my tailbone and bruised it.

The zoo was listed in my guidebook and sounded like it would be interesting. It had been a while since I’d been to a zoo, and I’d forgotten that essentially a zoo is just a bunch of cages with miserable animals inside of them. If miserable, dislocated animals is your thing, then definitely go to the zoo in Cali. There you can watch people banging against the windows trying to get a rise out of the monkeys, and see potato chip bags littered all over the floor of animal’s cages. At the Cali zoo, you get very close to the animals, such as in the aviary, where birds will walk along the bath browsing amongst the humans. I felt a little saddened especially by the grizzly bear and the camel at this zoo, both of whom looked to be wondering about why they were in a climate completely foreign to their biology (kind of what I’m wondering right now, as a matter of fact). In any case, I was happy to see a lot of guacamayos and other types of cousins of my amazonian parrot Vinnie.

We ate at the Crepes and Waffles at Chipi Chapi (which seems to be quite the trendy place to be), and then drove back in the night, my cousin’s Toyota landcruiser taking turns at the highest possible speed without turning over.

It is extremely expensive to travel long distance here in Colombia, as there are toll booths located seemingly every several miles or so. We spent almost 30 dollars just on the way to Cali alone. And gasoline is expensive here as well—which is why you will see cars that run on both gasoline and natural gas, such as my cousin’s Landcruiser. Natural gas is less expensive than gasoline, but it also doesn’t get you as far. I imagine it must be somewhat more dangerous as well.

Fiestas en Armenia

We are waiting at an office in Armenia right now for the truck that will take us to la costa Caribe to swing by. We left the finca on a tractor, sitting in the windows and hanging out the sides.

In Cali, I didn’t get the chance to make it to a salsateca, but the night before we had a night on the town in Armenia. It began with some aguardiente drinking at the finca. Aguardiente pretty much just tastes like anise, so if you don’t like that flavor, you wouldn’t like it straight, but otherwise it’s quite smooth and strong.

We then picked up a guy called German who worked in a coffee vending shop, and who had already been drinking some aguardiente himself. He offered me a shot and I obliged. We then drove out to a club in the outskirts of town called “Mint,” with German pontificating loudly about coffee speculation, which of course I didn’t understand any of anyways.

Simply because it was the 1st of December it is a time to party in Colombia, apparently, and on the way there was traffic stopped in places because people on motos were swinging flour (I think that’s what it was) at each other in the streets. Once we arrived at the club, we promptly began swigging another bottle of aguardiente. In Colombia, when you order liquor in a bar, it’s generally by the bottle rather than by the glass. They know how to party.

We danced a little to some salsa and merengue, when suddenly the music when into hardcore techno crap mode. Even the Colombians who brought us to the club realized that it was a bad music night, and we took off. My cousin has a penchant for driving over curbs and islands on the street, and promptly began doing so in earnest. We ended up in front of a bar after one of these displays of car-damaging machismo and we heard live music, so we went on in. It was an old-school bar, with two guys playing traditional Andino music on two guitars. We had a round of beers and while the rest of the group had fun taking pictures and making fun of German—who was passing out in-between rubbing my head and telling me something about “todo el mundo”—I had a great time listening to the music, which was especially refreshing after the stuff in the club.

On the way back to the finca, hordes—literally hordes—of people on motos were crowded everywhere on the streets, faces white with flour. Sometimes 3 adults were packed onto one moto (these are Chinese motorcycles: tiny, cheap, and dangerous).

The next day we drove down to Cali, and I’ll fill you in on the details later (such as a visit to the Zoologíca), because right now I’ve got to go hop on that truck to the costa Caribe. ¡Hasta luego!

Fincas y el Futuro

 

Yesterday I accompanied my cousin out to another finca to observe the harvesting of platanos, as well as the general operations of organic platano growing in Colombia. They actually cut down the platano tree in order to cut off the platanos, and another tree grows alongside of it in it’s stead, while the former tree is hacked apart and placed around the new tree as a mulch, along with compost. My cousin would lift up the pieces of former tree and show me all of the little bugs and various critters living underneath. You can tell immediately whether the platano farm is organic or not because the ground between the platano trees is completely covered with greenery at an organic farm, while a non-organic farm has only dirt in-between.

While at the finca, I drank three tintos (small cup of black coffee) and was wired, as even though I’ve begun drinking my daily cup or two of café con leche, I still am not accustomed to strong coffee. Literally shaking. We went to my cousin’s aunt’s apartment in Armenia for lunch and I was a little embarrassed by the trembling of the fork in my fingers.

Today I was shown the composting operations at my cousin’s farm, but mainly I just sat around most of the day until I finally had a cup of coffee. Apparently I have now joined the worldwide league of coffee addicts.

Tomorrow, we plan to go to Cali for the weekend (not a cien porciento sure yet)—the capital of salsa. I am hoping to venture into a salsateca and see whether I’ve still got some swerve in these gringo hips of mine. We’ll see.

After that, we are planning on heading straight up to Santa Marta en la costa Caribe on one of my cousin’s trucks delivering oranges. Yes, so we shall see first-hand whether riding with oranges will be crazier or more tranquil than riding on a bus. It may be that oranges are more valued than people, so it may be a smooth ride. Stay tuned for more pictures (they will come!).

Parque Nacional del Café

On the 28th, we journeyed to the nearby Parque del Café, which is a themepark—with rides and shows—for the coffee bean, by hopping on a bus and promptly going the opposite direction, thus effectively extending the trip by an hour. I comforted myself by reminding myself that I do that even in my own country (once in Brooklyn en lieu of an interview, and not familiar with the city at all, I jumped on the subway and ended up in the orthodox Russian Jewish section somewhere in the opposite direction (Brighton Beach?), instead of Manhattan).

The Parque del Café is fairly large, with a little introductory sterile museum section devoted to the history of coffee and its methods of consumption and production, and then a large food court, some rides, and a large walking section of the park where you can look at flowers, coffee, bamboo, and other more natural attractions. Apparently the Colombians mainly enjoy only the food and ride sections, as we only saw maybe 2 other people on the walk around the natural areas. It had been drizzling lightly during the walk, and we were treated to a beautiful arco iris (rainbow), as well as a squadron of squawking wild parrots flapping about the sky (apparently parrots have to squawk constantly whilst flying). And then suddenly, at the end of the day, as we were wading through packs of schoolchildren on an outing back to the teleférico (cable car, which took you from the entrance down into the food court/rides area), it began raining heavily. By “raining heavily”, I mean a torrential monsoon downpour. We stood in the middle of the teleférico in a puddle of water trying to keep under the tiny roof, and the side of each of us that faced outwards got completely soaked through. We were also apparently the only people in the park who actually brought an umbrella, so we weren’t as soaked as everyone else. It’s a strange thing here—it rains nearly every day (though not quite as heavily as it did that day), yet no one carries an umbrella. When it begins raining, most people can be found standing along the sides of the street in doorways and restaurants, waiting for the rain to pass (if it passes).

We managed to hop on a bus back to Pueblo Tapao, the little town near the finca, but still had to walk the long road back in thunderous rain from the street out to the finca, and got completely soaked through by the time we made it back. It was also getting dark, and as we were trotting back trying to avoid deep puddles of mud, I thought I was tripping out when I saw a brief light flashing in the bushes out of the corner of my eye. Turns out that it was a luciérnaga (firefly).

Salento

 

On  the 27th, we went to Salento, which is a little town located up in the mountains an half an hour or so from Armenia, which doesn’t really have much to observe except for its stairs with the 14 stations of the cross alongside up to a viewpoint of the valle de cocora. Apparently, the point is to empathize with Christ carrying a cross by comparing it to the burning in your calves as you plod directly upwards. Other than that, the only other requisite thing to do there is to eat some freshly prepared trucha (trout), which we obligingly did as well. It was quite tasty, with pink flesh. A little gato mewed pleadingly underneath our table as we devoured it.

We had meant to journey from there to the Valle de Cocora to see the palmas aceras (giant wax palms that grow in the cloud forest), but unfortunately did not realize that you could only catch jeeps to get there at 8:30, 11:30, and 4:30 throughout the day, and we had just missed the 11:30 jeep. Oh well.

My Spanish has been getting a little bit better, as my cousin speaks English even worse than I can speak Spanish, so I am forced to attempt to conversate with him as much as possible in Spanish. I seem to speak better the more relaxed that I am. Poco a poco.

Traffic and Fearlessness

It would seem that there is much less fear in general in Colombia: fear of death, fear of strangers, fear of sickness, etc. This translates often into brazen displays of recklessness, such as absolutely insane feats by buses and taxis, but it also seems to produce a greater social cohesiveness—it’s like every man for himself, but everyone accommodating each other in getting everything for themselves. This is seen most visibly in the manner that cars and buses and trucks nearly seamlessly merge and wend around each other in dense forests of flowing traffic, all without any concern for lanes or signals. The vehicles get literally within centimeters of each other and pedestrians, often while flying along at 80 mph on a residential road. Accidents certainly do happen here, but they don’t seem to happen any more frequently than in the States—if anything, the frequency of hearing the sirens of an ambulance wafting across the night air seems to be much less. Thus, much more attention is paid to your surroundings and the people around you, because it is recognized that your life may depend on it.

So it would appear at a glance that life is devalued by this apparent lack of concern for safety, but this is not so. Clearly, people here enjoy themselves and don’t seem incredibly stressed by fear or worry, even if many of them live well below modern “living standards”. This closeness with death rather translates into a relaxed enjoyment of fleeting pleasures. Dancing, music, sitting in the sun, etc. So perhaps it is a superficiality that is similar and contrary to the superficality of modern materialism in its way. In the United States, everyone is frightened of each other, frightened of death, frightened of cancer, etc. And I don’t know that we enjoy ourselves any more as a result of our worry and stress, even though we garner higher standards of living. I also don’t know that our traffic moves any more efficiently or safely as a result of our wider streets, multitudinous traffic laws, and giant SUVs. Maybe we need to just relax and enjoy ourselves a little more, and accept death a little bit closer into our daily existence as the inevitable reality that it is . . .

Frutas and Such

Ah, frutas. This morning we ate maracuyá, granadilla, tomate de arbol, and a pitahaya. I’d already eaten a granadilla before in Perú, but was more than happy to eat another one (and will happily eat an infinite amount more). In the same passion fruit family as the granadilla is also the maracuyá, which looks the same and has the same seedy, mucousy interior. However, it is a little more bitter, and is best in juice. The tomate de arbol looks somewhat like a roma tomato with more coloration, but tastes more like a pomegranate, and needs sugar added to it, like the maracuyá. The pitahaya is a crazy looking football-like yellow-orange thing with spikes on it, and inside it has a clear-white flesh with many small seeds. I kept trying to place the taste of it, and finally figured it out: it tastes and has texture quite similar to a watermelon. Not bad.

As for the finca, it is a little paradise. We are pretty much just relaxing and enjoying eating homecooked meals and fresh juice on a dining table out on an open porch, listening to the brahman cows bellowing, the chickens screeching, the insects whirring, and the multitude of birds whistling their various calls. We are situated in a dense thicket of platano trees in a house made of guadua (bamboo). There is no internet there and we have to get into town to use it, so my posts will be scattered for the next week, but stay tuned for more info on this paradise in the mountainous jungle soon, as well as more pictures.

Oh, and one more thing: not only have I now eaten a guava pie, but now also a guava doughnut! Yes! At Dunkin´Donuts no less, in the terminal de buses in Bogotá. I was quite happy to have a tropical fruit doughnut. The meeting of northern and southern Americas in one fried piece of dough. . .

Bus Trip to Armenia and General Observations

¡Vale! so we’re now located on my cousin’s beautiful finca (farm) outside of Armenia in the Quindío district in La Cordillera Central. It’s very lush, green, and tropical out here, and you can bet that I’m gorging myself on exotic fruits. But before I delve any deeper into the sweaty scene here, let me first describe the bus journey to get here, and a few more things I wanted to say about Bogotá before I’m done wid it.

First of all, you know that you’re in trouble when you arrive at the terminal de buses (bus station)—which is a very large, clean, and organized station as far as such things go—and there is a large sign situated outside of the entrance listing all of the different bus companies and their number of accidentes (accidents) and muertos (deaths) for the year. Yes, so apparently the way that one keeps track of the quality of service down here is not by cleanliness, customer service, or food options, but rather by the death tally.

Why this is so becomes apparent once one is locked into the bus, swinging from side to side sucking down fumes as the bus whips down the windiest, narrowest road descending 6,000 ft going 70 mph around hair-pin turns on the wrong side of the road passing horse-drawn carts and families sunning themselves on the side of the road and men lounging in all manner of distraction, and women in tropical wear (read: scantily clad) strutting along in heels. The scenery itself is beautiful, lush, and Hawaii/Amazon/South East Asian in greenness and density of flowers and trees. The views from the mountainsides are breathtaking, but fortunately (and I’ll get to why it is a fortune in a minute), I pretty much nodded off the entire time, happily tossing gently in my soft reclining seat like a potato in a nest. It was fortunate that I was pretty much asleep the entire time, because if I had been awake, I probably would have been pissing in mis pantalones when I saw the kinds of manuevers that my bus driver was making. As it was, I was for the most part blissfully unaware, until the latter part of the trip when I woke back up and watched the bus plummeting seemingly brakeless around a 75 degree turn with no separation between myself and a cliff-drop to oblivion.

What’s interesting about all of this, of course, is that this method of driving (i.e. without any apparent concern for safety) is completely 100 porciente normal here.

So that was the trip. Now to finish with some observations on Bogotá: on Sundays, they close off some of the main streets to cars, and runners, dog-walkers, bikers, and rollerskaters come out in force, for what is perhaps the one day of exercise for many of them. It’s a beatiful thing, seeing them all arrayed along the road in various states of enjoyment or exhaustion, women in sweats swiveling their hips and stretching, men with short-shorts running heavily along, dogs that normally never leave the house suddenly stretched along their leashes and barking joyously, children in spandex uniforms and helmets rollerskating . . . which leads me to my next point:

The uniforms. As in Perú, people here are really into clarifying their roles. Whether you are pumping gas, a policeman, someone cleaning up trash, or a worker on the side of the road, you’ve got some kind of colorful uniform on to denote your function. It seems to even be inherent in the language itself when it comes to delineating the distinctions between masculine and feminine—and thus, women and men themselves seem to have a kind of standard uniform to denote their gender: the women wear tight pants, and the men wear collared shirts (a broad generalization, but when you walk around the streets, this is the kind of stratification you’ll observe). In other words, despite the chaos that is the pedestrian and vehicular traffic, things are still very formal in many other ways.

One other thing: there are security guards everywhere. Standing next to cafés, in parking lots, in every room in museums, in malls, etc. Everywhere. In addition to the police and military standing about everywhere as well. It’s somewhat disconcerting, especially when a security guard comes up to you when you are just taking a picture of a mannequin in a storefront window outside of a mall and tells you not to take any pictures. I asked my cousin about all the seguridad privada and he laughed and said they were there to protect la policía. I guess that makes sense when you consider the broader situation in Colombia.

Movin’ On to Armenia

The last few days we’ve essentially just walked around a bit and drank some coffee and hot chocolate. We’ve been downgraded to hostal status now that my parents have fled back to the states. This translates into an old, hard mattress covered in plastic with a wall that doesn’t quite separate the room from the outer environment, and thus is freezing at all times of day, as well as a shared shower which is located directly alongside of the toilet. Used toilet paper must be placed into a bin, wherein it proceeds to stink up the joint. Towels that are essentially thin pieces of fabric more suited to be used as rags than as moisture absorbants. Rowdy Englishman and Australians and subdued Chilean backpackers. You know the scene.

We’re in La Candelaria section of town now, which is kind of like the old-style, narrow-streets, old-colorful-buildings section of town. It also is known for its “bohemian” atmosphere, which really just means a few scattered Colombians with dreads or weird hats and some bars with swing seats instead of stools and some cafes where you sit on pillows on the ground. That kind of thing. We had been staying in the business district of downtown before, which was fairly unexciting, so it’s nice to be in a more colorful part of town in any case.

One thing that’s strange about Bogotá is that there’s a lot of crepe places around here. Like, crepes seem to be quite the “in” thing. Also, there seems to be a certain trendiness imbued to Mexican eateries here as well, which was unexpected. I expected the McDonald’s and T.G.I. Friday’s and what not . . . but crepes? And “burros”?

We ventured into the Colombian yuppie part of town today, Parque de la 93 and the Zona Rosa, which was bumping on a Saturday eve. There’s some malls around there to rival New Jersey, and people wearing the kind of designer clothing that would get them second looks in Beverly Hills. We popped into a Juan Valdez café and I had me the standard café con leche and we people watched for a bit. Like a mix of the Upper Westside of NYC and the San Vicente of Brentwood.

Tomorrow morning we are about to embark on some new adventures: we are meeting up with my cousin and his new wife (just fresh from a honeymoon in Aruba) and taking a bus out to Armenia, to see his finca and hang-out with the extended fam. I can’t say that I’ll feel any great sorrow in saying goodbye to Bogotá for now. I just haven’t gotten that fresh experience or new connections here yet that makes me want to stay. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that I have been unable to explore any of the live music, bar scene, or go out dancing at all—the only reasons one would really want to be in a large, crowded, dirty city—which I blame fully upon my girlfriend and her disinclination to venture into lively situations. I’m going to get her out one of these nights, though.

To Armenia it is then. Hasta pronto.

Learning Anew Language part II

So thus far I am being humbly reminded that I know nothing of Spanish, in reality. Whatever tentative forays into intermediate levels of comprehension I might have gained 2 years ago in Perú have been lost, apparently. And to be honest, I think what I truly gained more from that trip was a self-reliancy and an openness to potentiality in others rather than any kind of deeper understanding of the language. Here in Colombia, I must begin anew, from scratch. I can’t seem to understand anything anyone says to me, which is not helped by the fact that I have seen little evidence of the supposed clear and slow anunciation that Colombian speakers are purported to have. Everyone we talk to speaks rapidly and in hushed tones, and immediately gets flustered when they are not understood. All I know is that I am going to have to work very hard in the next 2 months to get on a level where I can interact with people as much as I would like to.

Learning a language when you are in the country is much more than just grasping the rules of grammar and memorizing vocabulary—it is also learning the conventions and mannerisms, the assumptions and habits, the way that things work, the way that people interact. If you gain an understanding of these things, you don’t even really have to gain much of an understanding of the language itself, as I’d learned in Perú. You know what is expected when you walk into a cafe or restaurant. You know how to get on and off of the bus. You know how to greet a friend or stranger, and so on. And all of these things are really only comprehended through direct and continuous experience. It’s a new culture, a new system of human interaction, a new methodology of approaching everyday life.

Learning A New Language

It is akin to learning to walk, when your neurons are still formulating and your balance uncertain and the world is all of a vast darkness beyond each moment’s immediate grasp. You are alternately frightened and frustrated by your inability to function as fully as you wish in this new medium you are attempting to acquire skill within. You have to work at it—continuously, completely. You can’t keep ducking back into your comfort zone, which has no place here outside of money. You have to keep falling, and getting back up; falling, and laughing, and getting back up. Eventually, what was once alien impossibility will become unhesitant practicality. Until then, you are an open wound, broken apart into a suffering comprehension of what it takes to become skinned anew.

El Día de Gracias

¡Feliz día de gracias! We celebrated Thanksgiving Day by eating lunch/dinner at Andres Carne de Res, which was over an hour’s drive outside of the city, but well worth it. This is the place in Bogotá to go and get your beef, drink, and dance on, replete with funky decorations, a full selection of every kind of form of beef or chicken you could desire in extreme moments of bestiality, as well as full of a drink list as you could wish for (whether Colombian or otherwise), a group of entertainers/musicians roving about bestowing customers with crowns, kerchiefs, and necklaces and handing them sparklers and commencing to play impromptu songs, and a giant dance floor to boot. The meat is excellent, served on a sizzling platter along with a bib to protect your formalwear from splatter. I had 2 beers and an aguardiente, and I was quite drunk, due to the altitude. The servers did an excellent job attempting to speak English and accomodate our faltering gringo contingent, and my parents thoroughly enjoyed themselves. My father claimed that it was the best hamburger he’d ever laid chomp to. Not a bad way to pass a Thanksgiving day.

Speaking of food and drink, if you ever come to South America, definitely get yourself some hot chocolate. It’s a way of life down here. One of the typical presentations of such is chocolate santafereño, hot chocolate served with cheese and bread, which I imbibed today as a snack.

Yesterday, I ate (or tried to) a giant serving of sancocho de gallína, which was a hearty stew served with a giant piece of chicken sizzling in a broth with yuca, papa, choclo (corn on the cob), and platano. I also ate a couple of arepas as an appetizer, which is another typical little Colombian snack, a kind of glorified pancake topped with cheese and some salsa.

I also had a piece of guava pie, or pie de guayaba, which was tasty and exotic. I’d never thought to have guava outside of a juice drink before. I definitely hope to eat some more of the tropical fruits that I’ve enjoyed down here before, such as maracuya, guanábana, and granadilla.

Another day in Bogotá

I have to say, the café here in Colombia is indeed quite tasty. I’m not a coffee drinker at heart, I’m really more of a tea drinker. But I’ve decided that drinking coffee is one of those things that I’ve got to succumb to whilst here, in the same way that I pretend that driving 50 mph in the thick of dense city traffic without seat-belts is my normal mode-of-existence. So even as a normally non-coffee drinker, having a black cup of joe here is unlike any other coffee drinking experience I’ve had before (which is of course not many, however). I can drink it straight and it barely even tastes bitter at all. It’s really quite tasty, and I think I can get into the pleasant habit of a cup in the morning and a cup after a large lunch to aid in the digestive processes.

Today we had two adventures with my parents: 1) we went to Monserrate, a spot located on top of an overlooking mountaintop above the city, which you get to either by hiking up 3,000 feet and killing yourself, or by taking the teleférico—a cable car. The views, such as can be seen on the top photo from my last post, were very nice, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to see it again with a sunset, hopefully by hiking up to it (fat chance, says my girlfriend), and 2) we actually got to stumble lost and confused through the city streets all afternoon, looking for the Museo del Oro, which was doubly confusing because the exhibit had moved to another museum due to construction. By the end of the few hours it took to straighten out where the hell we were and where the hell this museum was, we had finally understood how streets are labeled, which is fairly logical once you grasp it. At first, however, you feel like you are in a directionless maze, getting pointed in one direction by one local and then another by the next, all speaking such rapid Spanish that you just nod your head as if you understand and then walk away vaguely towards where their finger pointed. There are no street signs, of course, and we learned to read the street numbers on storefronts.

It was good to get out in the streets and feel a little more comfortable meandering about and getting a sense of understanding formed from chaos. More shiznizzle to come soon—my girlfriend has got to pee and my hour is almost up. Hasta luego.

En Bogotá

After a long day of traversing the upper atmosphere, I have finally arrived at my long awaited destination. Here’s the nitty gritty on how it all went down:

11-20: 6 hours of extreme heat and smelliness on the airplane to Panama City, leaving LAX at 1:15 in the morning. I was seated in the middle of a row, squished by a man who should have, in an ideal world, had two seats—hell, give the fucker a whole damn row—to himself. His gargantuan legs couldn’t fit in the small space normally allocated to the average sized human being, and thus were pressed against mine the entire time, compounded further by his annoying tendency to commence waving them from side to side. Another pleasurable trait which this man possessed was that he farted continuously throughout the flight, and due to the aforementioned air-conditioniong problems with the plane, I could smell it quite clearly as soon as he had cut it. To add to this general bombardment of the senses, the blanket which I was given for the flight also smelled extremely rank.

Anyway, so long story short, I didn’t get a wink of sleep on this night flight. Switched to another smaller, functioning-air-conditioner plane in Panama City for the next hour to Bogotá. There at the airport, I was met by my parents, who were already in the city for my Colombian cousin’s wedding. (“There was a lot of salsa dancing!” said they about the wedding.) Exhausted and jet lagged, my girlfriend and I were then led into great exhibition, by my parents, of How To Be The Most Gringo Tourist On The Planet. I don’t really care to get into all the gruesome details of the ensuing nightmare that was the debacle of my parents attempting to sort-of speak Spanish and hail a taxi. Suffice to say that they got ripped off a good solid 3 times before we even made it to the hotel.

However, the hotel is quite plush (in comparison to where we will be staying when we are on our own) with a great view of the hills and overlooking Monserrate. I’m trying to enjoy the space and privacy while I can, and endure the overbearing gringoism of my parents with as much grace and gritted teeth as I can. The benefits are that we get some free meals at some upscale restaurants that we would never have attended otherwise.

First impressions of Bogotá: much like Lima, except with lush greenery and better architecture. Although it is dirty and gas-fume-permeated like any other large Latin American city, it has a sense of cleanliness to it, which I think is due to the large amounts of rain, which washes some of the pollution away from immediate visibility. There also seems to be less obvious examples of extreme poverty in the main parts of the city. Like Lima, the women are tightly clad in jeans or pantalones, such that you wonder how the ass cheeks managed to be squeezed through the top of the pants so that they could be encased so perfectly. Also like Lima, the traffic is noisy and death defying, and Colombianos are packed like sardines into Korean mini-buses that skirt like racecars around corners.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel, we showered off the accumulated oils and farts from our skin and slept until 9 (Colombian time—only three hours ahead of West Coast time). We awoke hungry, but were still slightly trepidatious about venturing out into the darkened alien streets in our jetlagged and hapless state. We also knew that we were in the banking, business district, and that most restaurants were closed by 9. We walked out anyway, past the ubiquitous semi-automatic machine gun armed soldiers standing on the corners, and stumbled into a happy coincidence: Argentina and Colombia had a futbol match, and all self-respecting Colombianos were watching any TV available (we had passed by a congregation of people on the street watching a small TV next to a bus stop). So we found a cafe-hole-in-the-wall a block away that was still open due to the game, in which Colombianos were drinking beer and affixed avidly to 2 TV screens, which were color-warped and hazy from time and chicken cooking fumes. We ordered 2 arroz con pollo dishes, which turned out to be massive, and enjoyed our first cheap comida criolla, eating only a 1/4th of a dish each. When Colombia scored the goal over Argentina, the place went crazy. One man in a suit stood up and pumped his arms up and down at the TV and shouted effusively in short, barking spurts for a good couple of minutes. We then stumbled satiated like blood-fattened mosquitoes back to our hotel and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Some More Time-Killing and Thoughts Before the Trip

Now that I’m all packed up for the trip and ready to jet and have some free time to ponder and pontificate, I figured that I might as well take a moment to reflect on where it is that I am going and why it is that I am going there, and what my expectations are for the trip, as well as more existential concerns.

I am going to Colombia for some very simple reasons, which I have already detailed elsewhere, but will very quickly enumerate again in a cursory manner: 1) I had a great time in Peru two winters ago, and fell in love with South America in general, and knew that I had to go back down to explore some more; 2) My cousin, who just got married in Bogota 3 days ago (we’d already bought our tickets before the marriage was announced; I really wish I could have gone), lives in Armenia and grows platanos, cafe, and raises cattle; 3) a dollar still goes far in Colombia; and 4) what other reason do I need? Colombia is beautiful!

I always try to reduce my expectations for any event in life as much as possible in order to allow for the unknown, but I know that I still hold certain notions in the back of my skull about what I want to occur. For instance, I am very hopeful that the bag I am checking in will not be lost either on the way to or on the way back from Colombia. This is a somewhat dubious hope, considering that on the way back from Colombia, we swap 3 different planes. It’s something I guess I’d just rather not consider, because there’s nothing I can do about it one way or another. The bag must be checked, so I must remain hopeful.

I also have certain expectations based on my last trip to South America. I have the expectation that I will be able to waltz into any town and find cheap accommodation. I expect that the women will be beautiful and will wear very tight-fitting jeans. I expect that there will be the highly visible scourge of poverty everywhere I go. I expect to be seen as a gringo and have some con-artistry attempted to be performed upon me frequently.

But I realize that even as I have these expectations, that Colombia is also a completely different country than Peru. Different ideologies, different histories, different everything. Many cultural aspects, of course, will be comparable. But I want to give the country the chance to speak for itself before I relegate it to the vast gringo conception of “South America.”

What I want to occur on my trip is: I want to experience the people and the culture as it is, not as it is boxed up and presented to a tourist to strip him/her of their money. Such manners of accumulating experience are: talking to everyday people in their contextual environments and in their language i.e. on the street, in bars, in their homes, etc; experiencing daily life in as close a manner as to the locals in each location i.e. using the same transport methods, drinking the local drinks, eating the local food, dancing to the local music. In other words, I’d like to experience Colombia in as an ungringo-like manner as possible. This is impossible completely, but not completely impossible, you know what I’m saying? It’s mostly achieved by not only being adventurous and somewhat willing to take some risks, but furthermore by befriending and hanging out with locals as opposed to backpacking foreigners.

Traveling is also an interesting dilemma when viewed from an environmental and social conservationist conception. To travel by plane is to create a large carbon footprint. To exchange one’s money into another currency wherein it is stretched out multiple times its value is a possibly unscrupulous enterprise. To simply have the express freedom to even travel at all includes you in the percentage of a limited aristocracy in comparison to the vast multitudes that can’t ever leave their country, let alone travel far from their place of birth.

So I do not want to take this trip—nor any trip—lightly, and this is why I even bother to sit and inscribe these inarticulate sentences into my blog right now. I am fully aware of just how fortunate I am to be able to travel for so long (55 days, to be exact), and just to be able to travel at all. This is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to become enriched with life experience, to gain more understanding and insight into a language and a people and a differing perception of the world. So I do not see this as a “vacation,” especially given that I don’t even have any work nor home of my own to come back to. This is a form of schooling. This is an exercise in understanding, a training in dealing with alternate universes. And I am extremely excited to be doing this!

The next post will thus successfully convert this blog into a full TravelBlog for the space of the 55 days that I will be there. So it will become even yet more mundane, even yet more trivial, then my normal meandering abstract posts of yore. But hopefully, also more grounded in reality, more palpable to the touch, and more fruitful in vicarious excitation. Til then, hasta luego.

Itinerary

Today: Pack all our shit, clean up the house as much as possible. Amtrak to Los Angeles. Dinner with sister and nephew.

Tomorrow: Stumble around in the sun most of the day in LA. Lunch with friend. Dinner with another friend. Fly out of LAX at 1 in the morning. Arrive in Bogota at 1:30 in the afternoon. Stay with parents, who are on their way out after attending my cousin’s wedding, for 3 nights. Next 2 nights stay in hostal in La Candelaria. Meet up with cousin and his new wife, drive to Armenia.

And then . . . wide open unknown

Do I sound stressed? I might be a little stressed. Only an hour more and then it’s go time, we’re on the road and on the move from here on out. All my bags are packed. I’m waiting for this stupid laptop battery to drain down to 40%, which is supposedly the ideal amount of juice to leave lithium ion batteries at for storage.

Next post from me I will most likely be in Colombia, unless I get really bored in LA and find a computer to scribble on. Tally ho!