Archive for the 'Colombia' Category

Pamplona, Colombia, 2004-06-02

I caught a bus to Tayrona, accomapanied by Jeff, the Australian with a head of hair straight off Sideshow Bob. From the park entrance it was 10 minutes by jeep and 45 by foot to the beach. They really put a lot of work into the trails and everything, I was very impressed. The facilities at the beach were very nice, hammock space mainly, but they did supply good hammocks (so I didn’t have to use my dinky one). They probably could have accomodated 100X the crowd that was there that night. Might not have been able to feed them. They didn’t do too good of a job of feeding me, though I sure paid enough for them to. [Why is it that everywhere they charge SO MUCH for pasta? It’s probably the cheapest ingredients you could find, and the labor, well, tossing it in the water and then waiting can’t cost them that much either…]

After my Corcovado adventures I was worried that another national park on the coast would be a bit too much. But luckily it was very different landscape. Strewn around the hills and beaches were loads of well worn boulders, which exentuated the natural beauty of the beach and forest. Jeff and I took the 3 hour hike to ‘Pueblito’, the ruins of ancient city a few kms inland (…more like upland, steepupland…). It turned out to be a very small site with just a few crumbling walls, stairways, and circular platforms on which huts would be erected. There were, in fact, a few huts there erected and lived in by a family of authentic Tayrona Indians (with authentic mineral water and beer for sale). The part I liked the most about it all was that this family was the only other people there – that helped out the whole India Jones fantasy that had been started by the wild path up there; it was full of snakes (although all were way under 2 meters), flourescent lizards, bats, tunnels to climb through, and gaps between boulders to jump over.

If I wasn’t too lame, and wanted the REAL Indiana Jones fantasy, I would have done the Ciudad Perdida trek. The Ciudad Perdida was un-perdida in the 70s by grave robbers. Soon the word spread and other grave robbers came by. They didn’t all like each other and they were Colombian. In other words they had lots of guns and used them. Then the gov’t got wise and calmed that down a bit. I’m told that it is one of the best pre-colombian sites you can visit. I’ve also been told that it has similar architecture to Pueblito. The two reports seem to me to be a little contradictory. Of course, anything better seem good after 3 days hiking in the jungle to get there. The trek was higly recomended to me, but for right now it’s too much time, money, and too much jungle. Not to mention the inherit danger of hiking way out into the Colombian jungle. In fact, about 6 months ago a group was kidnapped on that very trek.* One thing I do regret is missing the visit to a little cocaine factory in which you get to see the fields and the whole production process. It’s not an advertised part of the package, but all the people who’ve gone speak highly of it. Yes, I asked, and no, there weren’t any free samples. They had to pay for them.

Anyway, I lamed out, and here I am on my way to Venezuela. I heard horror stories about the coastal route. One Japanese girl I talked in Panama City told of, after a terrible border crossing, having the bus stopped and searched ten times, one of which was a strip search. That sold me on the mountain route. Even if the border ends up being just as bad, I’m very happy I’ve come this way so far.

There didn’t seem to be any direct way from Santa Marta to Cúcuta at the border, so I hopped on a night bus to the nearest big city, Bucaramanga. Night busses are supposed to be nonoes in Colombia. Oh well, Scheiss drauf, if it’s a 9 hour ride and if there’s a night bus there’s just no better way to go. I did make sure to go with the company that I heard pays off various groups to leave their busses alone – something that must be reflected in the ticket price, and that’s ayokay with me. As soon as the terrible Hollywood action movie was over I slept like a baby, no fear in my soul. (No wonder there’s some many bandits here, they get paid to not do things!)

The guidebook informed me of a nice suburb of Bucaramanga called Girón. My plan was to spend the day there and look into getting to the border the next day. No point in rushing things.

Girón was much lovelier than it was made out to be. The whole place was just winding cobblestone streets lined with little houses, all of which were painted white and had dark red tile roofs. It was a great effect in the morning light with the mountains in the background. But, Girón was tiny and after I was lovlied out, there wasn’t much to do. So, I pressed on to Pamplona, 4.5 hours down the 6 hour road to Cúcuta. A road that no one told me would be so amazingly scenic. After winding precariously up steep green valley slopes for the first two hours we reached a high plane. It looked just like the Andean Altiplano I had seen in pictures. And then I realized it was Andean Altiplano. There was something strong about making that connection with a place I considerred to be such a distant foreign thing and what I was actually seeing. It was like comparing it to the pictures in my head really made me feel for the first time that I’ve gone such a long way from home. We stopped for lunch and I asked a food server the altitude. 3600 meters! The lack of trees had been suggesting to me the we were up-there, but whew! This close to the equator agriculture seems to do surprisingly well at that hight.

Next we descended to Pamplona. This is supposedly the oldest town in the northern Andes, and was a major base for Spanish expansion in the area. Doesn’t look like it’s grown much since then, something in its favor, I say. The university here takes up about a tenth of the city, so it’s got that young, smart, college feel. Along with some nice old buildings and a magical mountain setting, it makes for a pretty good stop over. Good capuccino too. How else do you think I could concentrate long enought to write all this crap?








*I do seem to remember hearing something about that in the news. Something about some British bloke escaping in some heroic adventure. Well, fascinatingly, I met a freelance reporter in Taganga who was here working on various stories about local Indians. In the process of her research, she found out from people who lived in that region that in fact the British guy was lying; what they knew, they told her, was that he actually either got sick or faked it well, and they let him go. Furthermore, various parts of his story, when compared to the actual terrain it is to take place in, simply don’t make sense. But that’s ok, everyone needs a story to sell the rights to.

Taganga, Colombia, 2004-05-31

I somehow imagined that it wasn’t a coincidence that all the people I’ve met who’ve been to Colombia say it’s great, and all the people who haven’t been say you’ve gotta be crazy to go there.

So far, for me it’s been scenic, warm (well… really hot, actually), cheap and the people have all been very friendly. Outside of Cartagena there’s very few tourists – only a handful of young backpackers in a few spots. Even in Cartagena, the most touristic of cities, there’s almost none of the fly-in-fly-out taxi-around with my-camera-around-my-neck types. Which is good, I hate seeing all those damned sunburnt American’s clogging everything up. One unfortunate aspect of Cartagena, however, is that the local unemployed think that all the tourists are of the type that they generally are not: walking wallets. I, for one, have already been liberated of my wallet; someone already beat them to it. They still try, buy this knickknack, tour to the islands, city guide, and so on and on. Worthy of special mention is that for every one that’s trying to sell you something miscellaneous, there’s one try to sell you cocaine, and come sundown there are lots of nice ladies who, well, you get the idea… (that’s legal here). It was still a very beautiful city with great people – as long as they aren’t ‘in the tourism industry.’

One guy came by the hostel on Saturday night. Some of the guys had met him earlier in the day and he had offered to guide us to see some of the locals’ hangouts. I followed them all to a very fun, loud, packed club way off the tourist radar in the ‘burbs. Our guide’s sleazy looks made me think he was in for getting a cut from the club for taking us. I guess I forgot that we were in Colombia. All he really wanted was to sell us coke. For very high prices, surprising as that may be. I opted out of buying any, surprising as that may be.

I’m finally out of Cartagena. I enjoyed my bus trip yesterday. I hadn’t yet seen anything outside the city and I want to have an idea of what it looked like out there. The countryside was very calm, green, rural, and not quite as poor as I expected. I had imagined myself being really scared on intercity bus trips, having to worry about paramilitaries and guerillas popping out at any moment to rob the bus and carry me off into the mountains and eat me alive. This bus ride, in fact, was a hell of a lot calmer than some trips on AC-Transit I can remember.

The countryside seems so tranquilo yet Cartagena was supposed to be one of the safest places to visit in Colombia. While I did not at any point feel personally threatened there, I can say it does seem more dangerous than anywhere else I’ve seen. During my stay there was a shootout 2 blocks down the street in which, reportedly, the robbed chased the robbers down a busy avenue shooting in the air. I did not witness that incident, but the one I did witness happened yesterday, just before I was going to the bus station. I headed down to the corner store for some sunscreen. They didn’t have any as I expected, but it was worth a shot. Something was captivating the attention of nearly everyone on the street. I asked the clerks at the store, and they told me that the story spreading down the street was that someone had tried to rob a lady, somehow it went wrong, he panicked, took a ten year girl hostage by machete. A teenaged boy ran by just then, smiled, patted me on the shoulder. He pointed at the epicenter of attention, a doorway of one of the many ancient colorful buildings. “¡Boom boom!” he said, making a little gun-shaped hand and running off. At that moment, trying to run into that doorway was a large, well-dressed man waving a gun around. A smaller, less-well-dressed woman was trying to talk him out of something stupid. It worked. He backed off, slipped the pistol into the back of his pants, and fluffed his baggy shirt until it disappeared underneath. Then he himself disappeared into the crowd.

I couldn’t help it, I starting looking at the backs of other guys’ shirts. You sure don’t seem something like that without wondering.

Three policemen with green vests, white helmets, and very, very large automatic weapons sprinted by and ran into the house. That, I thought, was my queue to exit. Exited I did, right here to Tanganga, a little fishing village with a beach. The village aspect is just an illusion created by steep barren hills surrounding the town, really it’s just a suburb of Santa Marta, the large city right on the other side of the hills and the jumping off point for my next stop: Parque Nacional Tayrona.

Cartagena, Colombia, 2004-05-28

The wet blue hills were marching in formation, off to fight a war somewhere else. We just went up and over them, splash splash, one by one. The only way to know how fast we were going without being able to see land was to look at the bubbles forming off the bow. The answer was not very. This trip has taught me a new respect for those people who would get into a sailboat knowing they could be in it for months at a time, and that might just be in order to fall off the edge of the world. Sailing is goddamn slow. Thank God for the internal combustion engine and all the wonderful things it has done for the world, like allow us to keep going when the wind gets bad.

This is how Ronaldo, our Brazillian Cuba Libre drinking captain should have advertised his boat:

Sail on the full-spa boat! Ammenities include: swimming pool (a bit salty), sun tanning salon (everywhere above deck), and hot hot sauna (everywhere below deck – especially when the engines on)! To be fair, despite the heat rash, sunburn (I tried, mom, I did, there`s just no winning at these lattitudes!) and extreme boredome (up and down up and down splash splash up and down up and down, splash splash) it was an experience I do not regret one bit. I had never before gone out so far as to not see land, and to do that in a little sailboat really helped get across that feeling of “you puny human, look how big and blue and powerful I am and there`s only a Cuba Libre drinking Brazillian, a Canadian trying to quit smoking, and a 30` fiberglass teardrop between you and me.” That is, really it is, a beautiful feeling. A sunset on the open ocean behind far off clouds lit up on the inside by lightning also fell into the beautiful category. As did the San Blas islands, the little archipelago on the way with it`s politically independent Kuna tribe. They were friendly and authentic, came by in a dug-out canoe wearing traditional dress and offered me all sorts of crap for sale: some beautiful cloths for way too much money, some lobsters pulled out by hand, and some avocados. I bought an avocado. I think it was the worst avacado I`ve ever eaten. They asked if we had any cigarettes. David, the other passenger, was trying to quit smoking by the remove yourself from all sources of cigarettes method. We deffinitely did not have any. The Kuna didn`t believe us.

I liked coming in to Cartagena harbor at night. I could see the glow on the horizon for hours before we got there, and approaching a new place at night by sea – especially after two days without seeing land – was an impressive introduction. In the morning we dingied to shore. I stepped on the shore. There was no music, no electric sensations shooting up my feet from my spine. I wondered why the solid earth was rocking back and forth. I sure was satisfied. South America! Whew. I made it all the way without flying once. I jumped a few times along the way probably. But no flying.

Colombia in my mind was a barren wasteland of war and shady drug-runners. Mind you I`ve only seen one city – what I`m told is by far its nicest city – but it seems like a pretty normal place, a lot more well off than I expected, actually. Things ARE different than Central America, but my impression so far makes it hard to imagine that this is a country that has been ravaged by civil war for decades. Well, on and off for centuries, really. A lot of the other travelers I`ve talked to here say it`s probably safer here than many other places, including Venezuela.

Best of all, I`ve been informed that cocaine only costs US$6.00 a gram. Think of all the money I could make importing that stuff. Until I have my business set up, you can get some good shit from this nice man. His family`s been in the business for generations.