Colombia II: The Exciting Conclusion of South America

Tayrona National Park, Colombia

We spent about two weeks in the Caribbean in Colombia, and it was wonderful... by Caribbean standards. I'm starting to think I might be more of a temperate-weather girl ever since the Belizean Dermatological Disaster of '11. Some of you will remember the head-to-toe sunburn of that fateful trip.  Ever since then I sort of feel like there's a cosmic six-year-old that lives between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and he's got his magnifying glass poised above me and I'm in that white-hot little circle of light, pathetically smearing on sunscreen and hoping against the inevitable.  It's stressful. Yes, I find the Caribbean stressful.  Give me an ER any day.

View from hotel in Taganga

We stepped off the plane in Cartagena and someone wrapped us in a piping hot wet sweater that we couldn't take off. I'm fairly sure that the sun wanted us dead. The pirate-proof walled city of Cartagena was like a tropical, spic n' span New Orleans. We set up home base at the laughably cheap but utterly beachfront Casablanca hotel in a town called Taganga.

Patrick = Poseidon

 

From there we made a brief foray into the nearby Tayrona National Park, a string of photoshopped beaches linked by jungle pathways. I actually saw a woman with her wall calendar from home standing on the beach holding February at eye level and matching up the photo to her viewpoint. It was trippy. Patrick had a sleepless night in the hammock playing patty-cake with some voracious mosquitoes, so we hightailed it outta there back to Taganga via a dubious speedboat on the high seas. No casualties.






Sweet Bogota' street art

After two weeks of being hunted by the bloodthirsty Caribbean sun, Bogotá was just what the doctor ordered. It was cool and rainy. The people dressed casually and comfortably (a lotta black, flannel, and jeans), which is a bit of an anomaly in Colombia. Women wore sensible shoes, like Converse high tops. There were lots of microbreweries in town. Lots of funky little art shops and hip kids. Grunge music wafting through the air. People jogging and biking. It sounds familiar, it feels right... Oh my gosh, it's just like SEATTLE!! It was the perfect last stop in South America to remind us of all the joys we have waiting for us back home. 





Uptight Seattlite

Except, in Seattle you don't get to have chocolate santafereño every morning for breakfast. This Colombian tradition could be the world's most perfect meal. You get a huge cup of hot chocolate and it comes with a slab of white mozzarella-like cheese, a small baguette and a cornbread biscuit. Submerge a hunk of cheese in the hot chocolate. When melted to skungy* perfection, spoon it out (with some chocolate) and smear it on the assorted breads. Dunk and sip your way through the meal. So simple, yet so good!! For added fun, order a tamal ( that's a tamale to us gringos) to go with it.

A Colombian couple having their chocolate at La Puerta Falsa, the oldest cafe in town

We managed to hit the Botero museum and the astonishing Museo de Oro while in town. Those pre-Colombians were pretty glitzy, apparently. Our last night we found ourselves sharing chicha (a nefarious maize-based home brew common throughout the Andes) with some vacationing Ecuadorians and bargaining with ourselves about staying in Bogotá forever. But, lured by the siren song of strange worlds (Inglewood, CA, being strangest among them), we pulled ourselves together and left the continent we had grown to love so much.

Never change, South America, you hear? We love you! You're beautiful just the way you are, don't let nobody tell you any different!



You're beautiful, never change!!!

*skungy- from the noun "skung" which is the thin string formed when melted cheese is divided, as seen when serving fresh pizza. From the Hebertian Patois

Risking it in Colombia

Colombia: the only risk is wanting to stay.

Throughout our travels in South America we had seen this tongue-in-cheek slogan plastered across billboards and the sides of buses. Colombia is working hard to market itself as more of a tropical paradise/purveyor of fine plastic surgery and less of a guerrilla war zone. SOLD!

Sure, traveling by bus at night may still get you shot by FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, the automatic-weapon-toting bullies that prowl the jungle). Sure, there's the occasional car bomb, but people, think about the glorious Caribbean beaches with sand as white as---well, cocaine! Beaches! Boats! Boobs! Butts! This is the new Colombia.

We were cautious travelers for the most part. We only managed one long-haul bus ride while in Colombia and we flew from place to place after that. As two obvious Gringos traveling alone by bus, we received much anxious attention from concerned Colombians. One police officer (after circling my area staring at me for some time) asked me 1. Was I a Colombian? 2. Was I traveling alone? 3.Was my husband Colombian? 4.Was I visiting family here in Colombia? My answers to the negative were met with a slow head shake and a low whistle. Such encouragement was repeated by almost every local person we talked to.

So Colombia's dangerous, huh? Well, in the same way someone with a terminal illness may choose to take up naked motorcycling or drunken hang gliding, we decided to head deep into the jungle on a motorbike-powered wooden cart which ran on railroad tracks.


San Cipriano is an Afro-Colombian settlement inaccessible by road. The residents have rigged up an ingenious mode of transportation using the railroad tracks passing through town. Wooden platforms about the size of a king-sized mattress are furnished with a couple wooden benches and some rail wheels bolted to the underside. A motorcycle parks atop the platform with its back wheel resting on the railroad track. When the driver hits the gas on the cycle, the back wheel powers the whole contraption and it clatters down the tracks, sometimes at speeds of about 40mph. It is awesome.

We were deposited on the side of the highway by a minibus headed for the coast. We knew it was a short walk through a village to the tracks, and we were escorted by a small mob of young moto-railcart drivers all vying for our business (and price-fixing, I might add. This this the other Colombian cartel you don't really hear about). We hopped on a cart with the passing gas can delivery man for a fair price and were soon whisked into the jungle on a rickety cart laden with about 6 jostling cans of natural gas.

The gas man continued to make his regular morning deliveries. One house we stopped at was already bumping off its stilts with salsa beats at ten in the morning. Through the door we glimpsed a bunch of kids dancing in the darkened living room. Jungle boogie indeed.

Eventually we came to the ramshackle village and snapped up a room with commanding views of the train tracks. We then beelined it for the natural reserve for a swim in the crystal clear river.








As we passed through the village, the locals greeted us with a hearty, "Hola Holandes!" Apparently, white people are typically Dutch in these parts, possibly due to the close proximity of the Antilles? We swam. We ate crab coconut milk soup. We saw monkeys and toucans. We weathered a thunderstorm. We passed the evening watching the railroad traffic from our porch. We never once were mugged or kidnapped. However, we were dangerously close to wanting to stay. As a matter of fact, we did stay in Colombia for a few more weeks!

"Inglewood, always up to no good..."

WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! "LOS ANGELES POLICE! OPEN THE DOOR!" I sit straight up in bed. WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! "L.A.P.D. OPEN UP!" Tara rolls over and lets lose a stinging, "Shhhhhhh!" Seven months of communal living has allowed her to not only sleep through most anything, but to chide those who try to interfere with said sleep.

WHAM-WHAM-WHAM! "WHY ARE YOU STALLING? OPEN THE DOOR! IF YOU DON'T THINK THIS IS THE POLICE I SUGGEST YOU CALL 9-1-1 BECAUSE WE'RE COMING IN!" We're both awake now, wide-eyed, staring in the pitch black towards our door.

We hear a click, a door swing open, and an incredible amount of screaming and profanity as the police corral the people in the room across the hall. The main cop, Officer Dillweed, continues in his monotonous screaming. "IS THAT CRACK COCAINE RIGHT THERE? IF THAT'S RIGHT ON THE TABLE, WHAT WERE YOU HIDING WHILE YOU WEREN'T OPENING THE DOOR FOR US? WHERE DO YOU CURRENTLY RESIDE, SIR. AND YOU MA'AM? THAT DOESN'T SOUND LIKE A RESIDENCE TO ME!"

All I can think about is if the crack-smoking John got a better rate on his room than we did.

Dillweed continues, "YOU THINK I'M ACTING CRAZY? YOU MEAN, YOU DON'T LIKE MY SCREAMING? WELL, LETS JUST SAY I DON'T LIKE HAVING MY WORK INTERFERED WITH! YOU REFUSING TO OPEN YOUR DOOR TO US IS INTERFERING WITH POLICE WORK! THEN, US HAVING TO BANG AND BANG AND SCREAM ON YOUR DOOR AT 3:00 A.M. AND WAKE ALL THESE NICE PEOPLE IN THIS HOTEL FUTHER ADDS TO MY ANXIETY!"

I'm not sure Officer Dillweed was sincere in his calling us "nice." I wonder if I should l play the roll of "concerned neighbor" and inform the John he should quit talking until he gets a lawyer. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up 6 hours.

South America is over! And I know, dear reader, we still owe you some information on Colombia, but good things come to those who wait.

Anyway we're heading to Vietnam and we planned a 27-hour layover in LAX to meet up with some friends from Bolivia. We booked the lovely Econo Lodge in Inglewood, CA for the night. We catch a taxi from the airport and as we're going down West Century BLVD our cabbie starts telling us how dangerous it is around here. Tara and I look at each other ironically. Every cabbie since Buenos Aires has been warning us about the dangers of walking around at night, etc. It's strange hearing it in English (albeit with a Serbian accent) and it gives the words an added air of truth. He's rattling off horror stories about crazed, violent pimps assaulting pedestrians when he's interrupted by his GPS, "Destination on left."

He looks in the rear view mirror. Gives us a guilty smile and pops the trunk.

Our hotel is very nice. $55. It's very secure. In fact, the owner's desk is in a bulletproof glass bubble. We're on the 3rd floor and our windows have bars on them. I'd never seen bars on windows on a 3rd floor before. We're very impressed. The steel door to our room looks like at had been worked over with a crow bar. But it held, people, it held.

On the way here we'd passed a Burger King. I can stick my head through our window-bars and see it about a half mile down the road. It's been 8 months and during that time the company has changed ownership. I feel partly responsible abandoning them at such a rough time in their existence and feel it my duty to now gorge myself. Only 27 hours in The States, gotta make 'em count.

Tara and I head out at about 10:30 PM. Fireworks are popping off and it's very festive. Oh, it's the 4th of July. U.S.A! We speedwalk down Century BLVD in a strange way. Whenever a street light is out on our side of the street, we cross to the other. Whenever a person approaches we cross again. This road has 7 busy lanes.

We zig-zag our way and make it! The Burger King is locked but the lights are on. A creeeeepy voice says, "You gotta use the drive thru." Who said that? An exploding firework illuminates a figure leaning against a post.

We scurry around back. Yes, now we are behind a Burger King in Inglewood, CA. It's dark back here. We're jumping up and down on the weight sensor so that Burger King's drive thru computer might recognize us as a car. It does not. Speaking into the microphone doesn't seem to work either.

We walk up the window and the man nervously looks out as us. "I can't serve anyone who is on foot in the drive through lane. It's dangerous. You could get hit by a car." I look around with a questioning air as if to imply, "Do we look like the kind of people who are concerned about danger?" I say our orders and he shakes his head walks off. We wait. Miraculously he comes back with food!

There seems to be more people on the way back to the Econo Lodge. After much zig-zagging we make it back and eat the Burger King. But the food has changed, it's different. Apparently the private equity firm that bought Burger King thought that more packaging and lower quality beef would boost sales. Tara comments on how sad it is to see a Whopper in a box, like it's trying to be a Big Mac. Your beauty was in your difference!

It's morning now. In the daylight, looking our our window, I know this to be the most dangerous city we've visited on our trip. However, we had complimentary Eggos and Fruit Loops for breakfast, so it's OK! U.S.A!