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.

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