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Stuck in Los Nevados

In the previous post, I’d just discovered that our tour bus to Los Nevados National Natural Park was on the opposite side of a fresh mudslide, thick with vegetation and impassable.

We go back to the coffee plantation ranch house to get our gear for the day.  While we’re there, a crew from the plantation hacks a path through the vegetation.  We are once again given knee-high rubber boots.  With our shoes and cameras in hand, a line of men helps us across the tangle of broken bamboo and mud.  On the far side is a puddle of accumulating water to wade through, then more mud, and finally the tourist bus, where there is somewhat less mud.  We change from the boots to our shoes, balancing on one foot to avoid having muddy socks for the remainder of the day, and climb aboard the bus.  Our guide for the day, Milton, introduces himself and we’re off.

The bus growls up the muddy road, sliding around corners.  Given the state of these roads, it’s no wonder that busses in South America are often associated with the verb ‘plunge’.  As we drive uphill, my mind is constantly devising escape plans, involving a brave leap through a tiny window to safety as the bus and all of the other passengers slides off the side into the green abyss.  But my plans are for naught, as we reach the top of the road safely.

From Manizales we drive uphill, making our way towards the volcanic heights of Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados.  Along the way we pass numerous other slides. Most are a small mound of mud on the road, but about an hour out we encounter a slide that has traffic stopped in a line winding up the hill as far as we can see.

Milton tells us that if we wish, we can walk up the road, so long as we watch for traffic to start moving again and we’re prepared to jump onto the bus as it rolls past.  Dan, Sorin, the two Michaels and I jump off and start walking up the road.  Milton follows along.  We wave to trucks as we pass them, and people seem amused to see us walking.  We clown around, we walk some more. The clouds seem to be hovering a few feet above our heads, blessing us with a steady drizzle of cold rain.  The scenery is incredibly beautiful.

We pass a corner where a muddy stream crosses the road.  Milton explains to us that a year ago, this stream was blocked by a landslide upstream in the hills.  Water backed up behind the mud until it formed a small lake.  When mud dam blew out, it sent a wall of water rushing down the canyon… this wall crossed the road just as a large bus was coming around the corner.  The bus and it’s 60 passengers were swept down the canyon and into the river below where the bus was torn apart by the swollen river and boulders.  There were no survivors.  On the hillside by the creek were crosses for each person killed, including a row of smaller crosses for the children.

You see crosses like these often in Colombia.  Sometimes there will be a single cross with a name, and sometimes there will be an ‘estrella negra’, a black star painted on the road or on the a roadside wall.  The black star will often contain an image showing who was lost.  On one stretch of road we passed a black star containing the classical figures of dad, mom, and child.  They’re a constant reminder to drive carefully.

Eventually we come to a small restaurant alongside the road where the road crew has made its base.  There are a few women inside, cooking for the men working on the road.  We stop and order some steak and eggs, and when they come, they are the most delicious food we’ve tasted in a long time.  The eggs are perfectly cooked, and the steak is tender and wonderfully marinated.  Just as we’re finishing, traffic starts moving and our bus appears.  We jump on and continue on to Los Nevados.

At the entrance to Los Nevados park, we stop at a small food stand.  We all order a cup of coca tea to fortify us for the heights.  It’s good… the tea is prepared very sweet, which counters the bitterness of the coca leaves.  I have a slight buzz, but I’m not sure if it’s from the coca leaves or the altitude.

 

We continue up the dirt road that climbs the mountain in Los Nevados.  The road is made of cinders, and the bus slides through it easily.  The scenery is amazing… different than the verdant lush below.  This is a starker landscape, but still rich.  There are some very unusual plants growing here.  One is a deep green moss that looks softer than silk, but feels like rock.  Milton explains that this moss is like coral… as it grows, it leaves a hard ‘skeleton’ behind, and so constantly expands as a rock-hard mass.  On this one, a few small mushrooms grow.

At about 4,000 meters (13,000′) I see a crest in the road, rising two feet and then quickly dropping down three.  ”This won’t be good” I think to myself. I imagine the bus teetering on top of the ridge of cinders, wobbling back and forth slowly.  The bus plows over the ridge and down the other side, to my amazement.  And then it stops.  The read wheels spin, but we’re not going anywhere.  The driver tries backing up, but the bus just digs itself deeper.

Everyone gets off of the bus.  Dan and Milton inspect the situation.  It’s not good.

The driver gets out of the bus.  He looks concerned.  He walks around the bus to the other side.  He looks more concerned.  The rest of us stand on the hill looking down on the bus.  The driver looks down at the partially-buried tire, looks up at us, looks down.  ”¡Empujar a todos!” he says.  ”Everyone must push!”

From the hillside, there is a palpable sense of skepticism.  Muttering to ourselves, some of us line up behind the tour bus and push.  The men strain against the back of the bus, muscles bulging, their breath steaming like plow horses.  Wheels spin, but nothing else moves.  The bus could have been set in concrete.

Inevitably we turn to cannibalism to survive.

Burning in the dark disapproval (and unfulfilled hunger) of his passengers, Milton suggests we walk up the road to see the view of the volcanic crater.  I think he was being ironic… we’re standing in the middle of a cloud. Visibility is less than 50 feet.

About half the group shrugs, turns, and trudges uphill.  A Los Nevados ranger follows to keep us out of trouble.  We switchback upwards, breathing heavily in the thin cold air.

Four switchbacks up, we come to the snow line.  Ten feet later, wet icy snowballs are flying through the air.  Twenty feet more, and everyone has gotten that our of their system, and we continue upwards.

At 4,500 meters (14,800′) we lose track of the road. We’ve scattered across the snow field trying to find the path when Milton calls us through the ranger’s walkie-talkie.  ”Perhaps you should all come back now” he suggests.  ”There are very unhappy people here.  They are wanting to leave.”

We glissade downhill just in time to see the bus become unstuck.  It’s still facing the wrong direction, and the driver performs a frightening three-point turn.  At one point the rear end of the bus is dangling over the drop, and the rear wheels are beginning to slide over the edge.  From the bleachers, we all shout “Stop!  Stop!” as if the force of our voices could pull the bus back from the brink. The driver shifts into low gear, the bus pulls forward and disaster is averted, for now.

The journey back is uneventful, but there is a little drama.  The travelers who stayed with the bus are unhappy that Milton didn’t call for help.  Milton is upset that they didn’t trust his judgement.  There is a little shouting back and forth, a bit of British arrogance, a bit of Latin temper, but it soon settles down. In a few hours we’re back at the Hacienda, drinking espresso.  Life is good, and interesting.

This has been a very long post, so to reward you for reading this far, here is a photo of a hot guy from the hacienda:

 

Nov 22, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , | 6 Comments »

Muddy in Manizales

We leave Guatapé and head back to Medellín before turning south.  Our truck climbs over mountains and descends into valleys gradually making our way across the amazing Colombian landscape.  Our driver Izzy wears the a woolen hat she purchased on a prior trip.  ”Gossip Llama knows everything”, she says ominously, and her hat stares intensely back at us as we talked about our secrets, hopes and dreams.

A few hours outside of Medellín we come to our first mudslide.  A huge amount of red dirt has slid across the road.  A backhoe is trying to clear a path but has only succeeded in clearing half of the road, and barely.  Traffic crawls through the clearing, sliding and tilting and threatening to get stuck in the mud, which would stop everything.  Big trucks tilt precariously.  When it is our turn to pass through, Izzy steers the truck straight on into the cut, but deep ruts made it hard to steer the front wheels, and we slide towards the side of the road and a drop-off.  Towards the far side of the cut, our front wheels catch, and we lurch uphill towards the backhoe.  Just a few feet before we hit it, our wheels catch in another rut, and our truck straightens out.  We’re past the slide.

It should be the end of the rainy season here in Colombia, but the rains are not tapering off.  The mountains, already saturated, and giving way everywhere. Most result in small piles of mud, or individual boulders dropped on the side of the road.  (Some of the boulders would crush a car, and I wonder whether there is any warning before one falls.)  But some slides, like this one, cover the road, and the only option is to wait for a road crew to clear it.

The rivers are swollen as well.  Every river we’ve seen has been flowing fast, causing huge deadly rapids that also carve away at the edges of towns.  At a roadside truck stop, I see a news report talking of a town where 30 houses have fallen into a river.  The rest of the town has been evacuated.  It’s raining, and the river is not becoming less hungry.

We follow the Río Cauca upstream.  The Cauca is the same river that was passing under the suspension bridge in Santa Fé de Antioquia.  It eventually empties into the Caribbean sea.  It’s red with mud, and apparently is intensely polluted with both industrial and human effluvia for the majority of its length.  We pass the village of La Pintada, where the Cauca has flooded homes along the river.

Our trip south goes very slowly.  Numerous slides stop us along the way, waiting for one-way traffic to go in our direction.  At one site, traffic is stopped for two hours while the road is cleared.  Colombia is a country that is gently subsiding into its deep valleys.  It’s not easy to see how this will be fixed… the mountains are very high and vertical, and the valleys are very deep.  It rains a lot, and there is rich vegetation on the hillsides, which is taking any rock and decomposing it into more mud.

Just after sunset we arrive in the town of Manizales.  Manizales is built along the ridges between a number of valleys, and the city drops away in all directions. We’ll be staying in a farmhouse at the Hacienda Venecia, a coffee plantation in one of the valleys.

Just before entering the city proper, our truck does a tight 3-point hairpin turn off the highway and onto a dirt road heading down into one of the valleys.  In the pitch blackness of a deep valley without electric lighting, our truck makes its way down the one-lane narrow road, barely making turns and brushing the outer edge of the road where it drops down into blackness.  It is raining now, the road is muddy, and did I mention that our truck was not a four-wheel drive? Sometimes it feels like the front wheels are sliding around corners rather than pulling us through them.

A half hour down the road, a single man appears in the headlights.  He is standing in the mud on the side of the road, waving his arms.  He’s yelling “¡Alto! ¡Alto! No se puede pasar!”  I’m leaning out my window, and pass within a few feet of him, but I cannot understand what he is saying because of the wind and rain.  The truck continues it’s controlled slide down the road towards the bottom of the canyon.

Another half hour and Izzy brings the bus to a stop.  In front of us to the left the road has collapsed, a large bite missing where it has slid down into the river below.  15 feet further along the road is a pile of mud and vegetation that has fallen into the road from above.  Everyone on the truck is staring forward at the mess that was a road.  My first thought is “I don’t want to be in the truck when it tries to cross that.”

T.J. immediately wades into the mud, disappearing across the slide onto the other side.  Izzy is worrying about having to back the truck up the hill (it’s much too narrow to turn around.)  One of our group, Ray, walks out in his rain poncho to look at the slide.  In the truck’s headlights, he looks like a ghost.

(In the photo above, he’s standing right at the edge where the road collapsed into the river, and the mudslide is in front of him.)

T.J. reappears.  He tells us that the staff of the coffee plantation is coming and is going to bring us boots so that we can wade through the slide.  I think that this is a terrible idea.  (In my mind, mud slides are not passive things… There is always more mud ready to come down and it is often destabilized by idiots trying to squish through the slide.)

A dozen men appear, carrying knee-high rubber boots.  The largest that they have is size 42.  My foot will simply not fit into those boots.  I’m ready to walk across barefoot when the staff finds a pair of 43′s, which I squeeze onto my feet.  Along with the rest of the group, I squish across the mud, through a gathering pool of water, and between punji sticks of broken bamboo, finally getting to the other side.

When everyone has crossed, we walk in the dark a half mile to the farmhouse that we’ll be calling home for three nights.  We hose the mud off our legs and everyone begins to decompress.  Sorin, Sita, and I skinny-dip in the pool, much to the horror and/or delight of the kitchen staff.  (They don’t know how to react, so they bring us chicken sandwiches poolside.  ”No, don’t get up, here’s your sandwich.”)

After we’ve relaxed, settled into rooms, and have consumed one or three beers, and had a delicious dinner, things are feeling a little less critical.  That’s when five guys appear and begins to set up instruments and an amplifier.  They play, and they’re wonderful… high energy but also relaxed, and it perfectly fits our mood.  While others sit, dance, or swing in hammocks, I manage to take videos of three of their songs.  The band is called ‘Cumbé’, and I got permission to post the videos on YouTube for your enjoyment.  [More videos here and here.]

The next day three of us go up  to look at the slide.  It’s a mess, and it’s hard to imagine how it will be fixed.  Our truck peeks from around the corner where Izzy has backed it for safety.

We return to the farmhouse and have breakfast, followed by a lecture about coffee, including a walk around the plantation.  The entire coffee process is explained to us, from hand-picking ripe berries to removing the outer skin, drying, removing the inner skin, and roasting.

 

While we were on the coffee tour, our truck Cindy appeared at the farmhouse, driven by Izzy.  We all cheered… the road was open!

After the tour, I walk up to see how the repair was done.  On the way uphill, I pass the road crew heading down.  Three guys with shovels and machetes did all of the work.  And the road looked amazingly better… Narrow, but passable.

 

The next day, we’re going to be take a bus up to Los Nevados National Park, a high volcanic park near Manizales.  It’s rained all night long, so after we get dressed, we walk up to the road to see how the slide is doing… only to find that a new slide has covered the road.  This slide is thicker and has brought down entire trees still upright within its mass of vegetation.

Looking through the tangled mess of palms & bamboo, we can see our tour bus waiting patiently for us on the other side.

 

… to be continued.

 

 

Nov 21, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , | 3 Comments »

toys / food

The following photos were taken at a truck stop just south of Medellín…

Nov 21, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Guatapé / Escobar

We leave Medellín this morning heading east, climb winding roads up into the Andes, and finally arrive in the town of Guatapé, a small town situated alongside a huge hydroelectric reservoir.  (The reservoir was created by flooding a huge area, and the low-lying town of El Peñon was relocated in the process.)  The cooler climate (due to altitude) and the enormous opportunity for water sports make Guatapé a popular get-away for residents of Medellín. The town is also trying to attract foreign tourists.  (Though less than ten years ago the region was considered a ‘no-go’ zone.)

Guatapé has a unique look, with every building in town containing a row of brightly-painted tiles along the lower facade.  The images on these tiles are incredibly varied, with many showing images from the family business, or religious images, cartoon characters, and even dragons.

The entire area is dominated by El Peñón de Guatapé, a rock that rides 200 meters straight up from the ground.  (And like an iceberg, it goes down another 400 meters below the surface.)

On one side of the rock are two huge letters, “GI”, each 40′ tall.  The towns of Guatapé and El Peñol both claimed ownership of the rock, and one night (perhaps after drinking a few bottles of Aguardiente) the residents of Guatapé decided to settle the matter by painting the town’s name on the rock in huge white letters facing towards El Peñon. Only the ‘G’ and the first party of the ‘U’ were completed.  Some believe that they ran out of paint after painting the ‘GI’, and others believe that the residents of El Peñol simply shot the painter off of the rock.

In the 1960′s, the two entwined staircases were built up a crack in the rock (apparently by some insane genius hermit).  Dan, Sorin, and I climb the 644 steps to the top. I keep wondering how the whole structure stands on its own. Then I decide that since I’m 100 meters up the rock, it’s better just to trust that he was a genius.  At the top of the rock is a four-story observation tower filled with souvenir shops.

From the top we can see the lake spreading out in all directions, a maze of waterways that brings tourists to Guatapé, and which ensures an endless amount of waterfront property.

That afternoon the three of us rent horses and ride them up into the hills to a Benedictine Monastery.  The location is near the top of a valley, peaceful and quiet.  A sign on the lawn says in Spanish “This is a place for devotion, not a recreational park.”  The monks make chocolates that are well-regarded, so Dan buys 12, one to give every woman on the bus.  Dan tastes one, and then decides to follow a less charitable path of eating them all himself.  (The large chocolates are filled with caramel and figs, and are amazingly delicious.)

 

La Casa de Escobar

The next day we get up early to take a boat across the reservoir.  The boat will be visiting several locations along the way, but everyone is really there to see the vacation home of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

We all climb into the small hostel boat at 9am and and the small engine strains to push us through the water.  The captain keeps shaking his head, staring sadly at me, and saying “Muchos pesos” and making gestures of hopelessness.  The boat pushes forward.

About an hour later we come to a small peninsula extending into the lake.  Unlike the mansions we’ve been seeing along the shore, the home here is a ruin, and is being taken back by the jungle.

The boat pushes against the shore, and we all get off.  The group is strangely hushed, and I am feeling a little spooked.

In 1975, a Pablo Escobar was a petty thief, a 25-year-old stealing cars and selling fake lottery tickets.  Then he decided to enter the drug trade, and he did so with maximum brutality, killing any opposition to the growth of his business.  He purchased judges and police and even was elected to the Colombian Congress.  At the peak of his violence, he was at war with the FARC (a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization), the police, the Colombian Army, the U.S. government, and Los Pepes, a shadowy group that formed solely to destroy Escobar.

Escobar lived in Medellín, and naturally had a vacation home in Guatapé.  At one point, the Colombian army bombed Excobar’s Guatapé home, and he was shot to death in Medellín in 1993.  Since then his vacation home has been looted of anything that could be hauled away, and the remnant is slowly falling apart.

We walk by his pool, filled with green water.  During a party, Escobar discovered a waiter stealing silverware.  Escobar had the waiter bound hand and foot and tossed into the pool, where his guests watched the man drown.  He remained there in the pool for the remainder of the party.

The main house is fairly small, not much larger than the typical California mini-mansion, perhaps 3-4,000 sq.ft. (280-370 m2).  I imagine that the place was furnished with the standard acoutrements of the nouveau-riche, like gold-plated faucets and marble floors, but all of that was gone, and the only furnishings were mud and vines.

 

Not far from the main house is Escobar’s private futból field.  The goal posts are still there.  To one side of the field the bones of a cow are scattered across the grass.  I pick up the head and decide it would be very arty to photograph it on the field.  (“Oh, this would be symbolic!” I’m thinking to myself.)  I spend about 30 minutes positioning the skull, laying on my stomach to take the photo from a dramatic angle.  All of my companions are amused and start taking pictures of me taking pictures of the skull, and then they start copying my low-angle arty photo, which really annoys me.

I pick up the skull and start talking to it, Hamlet-style, which in the end makes a much more entertaining photo.

At the top of the hill over the house is a staff house and some stables.  Behind the stables is a trellis.  I notice some movement at the top of the trellis, and realize that there is a line of leaf-cutting ants hauling chunks of foliage across the top of the trellis.  I know that they have to come down to earth somewhere, so I follow the line to where they are marching down a fallen branch.  Where they walk along the ground, a 6-inch wide path has been cleared off to the distant nest.  The line is filled with ants hauling chunks of leaf, a constant movement back and forth of thousands of ants.

And then it’s time to go.  I walk back to the boat, past walls marked with graffiti and mysterious grave-sized freshly-dug holes.  I’m glad Pablo is dead, and I’m glad that, at least symbolically, I’ve been able to do a little dance on his grave.

 

Nov 20, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Cindy

We’re doing this trip on a Dragoman truck named Cindy, and she’s a tough old bitch.

Cindy is a custom-built expedition vehicle built on a Mercedes truck chassis.  She has a 6200cc diesel engine and in first gear, she can climb up the side of a building.

She holds 700 liters of fuel, a 400 liter fresh water tank, cooking equipment, tents, and spare parts.  She has skid plates bolted to her side, and large propane canisters slung under her belly in cages.  Every doors on the truck has a padlock.

She is piloted by T.J., a kid who is glad to be out of Texas, and Izzy, a tiny british woman who reminds of of Kaylee Fry from the TV series ‘Serentity’.  Both of them are in their 20′s.  While T.J. is the P.R. guy of the trip, making announcements and telling us what to expect, Izzy has the special bond with Cindy.  Whenever we’re about to drive a challenging / possibly-fatal section of road, Izzy takes the wheel.

Driving on a dirt road yesterday, there was a loud ‘ping’ from somewhere below where we were seated.  Today Izzy had one of the truck’s wheels off and was disassembling a hub to change a broken wheel bolt.  She’s like a pixie specializing in truck magic.

Inside the truck are a number of benches as well as windows that roll down to give the occupants a wonderful view of the surroundings and a refreshing breeze.  Towards the back are two four-person tables where passengers can play cards, read magazines, or simply have intense conversations about their dreams.

Overhead are elastic nets where we store hats, wine, fruit, and whatever we might need during the day’s journey.  There is a sound system with speakers over each seat, and anyone can hook up their music player to set the soundtrack for the journey.  (On this trip, everyone’s favorite album so far is “Flight of the Conchords”.)

Life on a Dragoman truck feels a lot like travel with a VW bus.  There are more people and a lot more space, and the vehicle is a lot bigger, but it has the same self-contained feeling of an expedition.  Sorin has been on many of Dragoman’s trucks, and he tells me that the people on the journey make a big difference in the ‘feel’ of the trip.  Australians are generally crazy, the Brits are generally stodgy, and there are rarely any Americans, because we don’t get enough vacation to take a 3+ week Dragoman trip.  There is always at least one person who is clinically insane.

I’m glad I’m on this trip, but I’m not sure if I’ll go on another.  It’s much more comfortable than Burning Man, but a lot less comfortable than Fiji, and you’re sharing tight quarters with so many people.  The personalities are complex and sometimes confusing.

Nov 19, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , | 3 Comments »

Medellín

Put San Francisco in a deep valley, replace the cable cars with aerial tramways (‘telefericos’), add an enormous amount of latin joie de vivre, and that’s Medellín.  A cosmopolitan city of more than three million fashionable people, Medellîn’s location high in the Andes gives it a year-round temperature more pleasant than that of the coastal city of Cartagena.  (‘Medellín’ is pronounced ‘May-dah-jean’ in Colombian spanish, with the accent on the last syllable.)

During the day, the city is busy with industry. The modern light-rail system runs along the river at the bottom of the valley.  It is crowded with white-collar workers during the day, and with club-goers at night. The light rail connects directly to a couple of sky trams running up the mountainsides, giving people an easy way up the sides of the valley to the upper neighborhoods.  Like many such cities, the higher areas are populated by the less wealthy residents, and the wealthy live at the bottom of the valley.  (To understand why this is true, imagine life before motor vehicles.  Every night the poor needed to climb up the sides of the valley to their homes, and the poorer you were, the higher you needed to climb.)

Like most tropical cities, Medellín comes alive after the sun sets.  The plazas are crowded with people strolling, shopping, and checking one another out.  The clubs are filled until 4 in the morning, and no one is afraid to contribute to the party atmosphere.  Every coffee shop, bar, or restaurant has a sound system, from humble boom box screwed into a corner to the bone-liquifying systems in the bigger clubs.  Walking down the street I enjoy Salsa, Reggae, Cher’s International Mega-Hit “Believe!”™, or a Bob Dylan tune.

Medellín is the home of the artist Botero, known for his paintings and sculptures of fat people.  In the Plaza Botero there are a dozen of his larger-than-life-size sculptures of men, women, and animals.  At night, the plaza is packed with people talking, cruising, and (in a few cases) selling themselves or looking to purchase some company.  The energy is amazing, and I feel like I could move to Medellín just so that I could watch people in the Plaza Botero every night.

Walking around Medellín at night, I wonder if the happiness I see in the faces around me is partially because of the end of La Violencia (1948-1958) and the Colombian armed conflict (1964 to approximately 2005 and ongoing…)  During the late 80′s Medellín was a city where the FARC revolutionary army, Pablo Escobar, Los Pepes, the army, and the police were assassinating and bombing one another ruthlessly, with no concern for civilian casualties.  The police were corrupt, and anyone who spoke out against any group became a target.

Now La Violencia is over, Los Papes have disappeared, and FARC only operates in a small portion of the Colombian jungle.  Despite this, Medellín continues to be a violent city, with an average of 9 deaths per day in 2009. (The homicide rate is increasing yearly.)  This may be why the people of Medellín, the Antiogueños, celebrate survival every evening.

The first night, most of our group goes to a nearby Thai restaurant for dinner. The ‘comida typica’ (typical food) in Colombia is fried meat, fried plantains, and a dry arepa (cornmeal patty).  The Thai curries are a nice change of pace, and everyone has a good meal on the restaurant patio beneath the awning while a downpour occurs around us.

Afterwards we walk a short ways down the street to Hooters.  Yes, the same Hooters as in the states, but with Colombian women in the short-shorts and tight white t-shirts.  We drink beer and the waitresses begin lip-syncing to the song “YMCA”.  Everyone in our group understands the irony of that.  A little later, the Hooters girls do a little jiggly birthday dance for Georg, a Swiss member of our group who has just turned 31.

Santa Fe de Antioquia

Sorin and I decided to take a local bus to the nearby town of Santa Fe de Antioquia.  From Medellín, you get there by taking a local bus over to the next valley. We take the Metro to the Medellín Terminal del Norte.  Like most Latin American bus terminals, Medellín Terminal del Norte is a chaos of people, donkey carts, and snack peddlers all dancing from one place to another. There are perhaps a hundred bus companies serving the terminal, and we go to perhaps a half-dozen before finding the bus to Santa Fe, which is leaving in three minutes.  We buy our tickets and climb aboard.

The bus is nearly full, but there are two open seats up front.  We sit in them, but a minute later a woman appears and demands that we vacate her seat.  When we look confused she patiently explains that there are seat numbers printed on the ticket.  Oh.  So we’re at the back of the bus.  And there is a very large woman and her daughter in our assigned seat.  We stand by the seat, and she looks up at us sadly.  We just stand there, gesturing at our ticket.  After a few minutes, she sighs heavily, gets up, and squeezes past us towards the front of the bus, where she finds someone else sitting in her assigned seat.  This shuffling goes on for a few minutes, and ends when the bus driver tells someone to sit in the co-pilot seat up front.  And then we’re off, driving an hour over the mountain.

Santa Fe de Antioquia was founded by the Spanish as a gold mining town.  The gold has mostly run out, but the Spanish colonial architecture has been well-preserved.  It’s a city both pretty and boring… a grid of start white houses surrounding beautiful inner courtyards, as well as the occasional plaza and church.

We hire a chiva pequeña (‘tuktuk’) to take us to Puente de Occidente, a famous suspension bridge about 6 kilometers outside of town. It was completed in 1895 by the José María Villa, who previously participated in the design of the Brooklyn Bridge.  It’s a beautiful span crossing the Río Cauca, and it’s easy to see the influences of its big city brother.  On either side are walkways, with a wooden planked auto lane in the center, just wide enough to hold a small auto.  Some of the handrails have fallen off into the river below, but for the most part the bridge continues to be a safe way to cross the river a century later.

 

 

Below us the Río Cauca flows fast, high, and deep brown, carrying the debris of upriver mudslides towards the  Caribbean Sea.  Sorin and I stand on the bridge in the mid-day sun, watching the river flow by, wondering if we’ll see a dead body.  It’s hypnotic.

Our return bus to Medellín starts out with only four passengers.  The driver takes a meandering path back, driving through every small town along the route, yelling out the window “Medellín! “Medellín! “Medellín!”  One old lady climbs up onto the bus, says something grandmotherly to me, and plops a large bag of very ripe mangos into my lap.  The smell coming out of the bag is overpowering and I immediately feel a little queasy.  What had she said to me?  I didn’t understand any of her mumbled Spanish… she could have said “Please, strong sir, guard these for me. They are my only possession and I am but an old woman.”  Or perhaps she said “Could you throw these out for me?  They stink like a dead dog in the sun.”

By the time we get back to Medellín Station the bus is full, and the passengers pay the driver as they leave, 3,000 pesos or 5,000 or 4,000, depending on some formula which they all understand.  The old woman makes her way off of the bus, says something kindly to me as she grabs her mangos.

Back at the GeoHostel, I set up my computer at the top floor and begin working on this blog post.  Our group is in bunk rooms on the first two floors of the hostel, and the third floor is a public area and roof terrace.  There is another bunk room on the top floor, occupied by a number of 20-something guys.

As I type this, they’re getting ready to go out for the night.  An asian guy is wandering around wearing only a towel, taking a shower in the shared bathroom and emerging in a cloud of cologne.  A cute little guy (‘Stepan’) who seems to have ADHD is working on his computer, and the other guys tease him endlessly about his farts during the night.  He is bemoaning a woman who he bought drinks for the previous evening, who had vanished without sharing his bed.  A woman comes out of the bunk room, and they introduce her to me as “one of your people”, but they’re only joking, she’s from Venezuela.

I ask them how long they’ve been in the hostel, and they tell me that they’ve been there 2-3 months.  They’re mostly from Canada, but they met here at the hostel, and here they’ve stayed, going out drinking every night, picking up women.  It’s a good life for a 20-something.

There is a tall skinny black man (‘Joel’, pronounced ‘Joe-ell’) and the Venezuelan woman tells him that he should shave his chest, an idea that he rejects.  ”A woman should accept me as I am!” he declares, in a sort of reverse feminism.  At this point there are about a half-dozen guys orbiting around my small table as I type.  The asian guy tells the black guy that he should start ‘man-trimming’.  Another tall guy starts talking about how much he’s been masturbating, and he hopes that he gets some tonight because he’s getting carpal tunnel.  Suddenly the Venezuelan woman yells out “I want the Australian to fuck me in the ass!”

I stop typing.  The guys stop their chatter.  And then the room erupts.  “Oh, yeah, he’d do that in a minute!”   “Ooooh, how about me too?”  “That’s gotta be better than the wanking I’ve been doing all week!”

It’s very distracting, but thankfully they all disappear at some point, like a flock of birds that are there and then aren’t, and I’m left alone on the top floor, typing these words.

The next day we’re getting ready to leave Medellín, heading to Guatapé.  As I sit in the lobby with my duffle, I see the Venezuelan woman walk through the hostel lobby and get into a cab.  Though she is wearing sunglasses at 7am, there is no shame in her walk, and I think to myself “Good for you, girl!”

 

Nov 18, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

tolú

It’s dusk in Tolú. The muchachos play fútbol, running in and out of the surf as they kick the white ball between goals set up on the beach. Meanwhile younger kids boogie board using actual boards, rough pieces of planking they salvaged from a construction site.

Nov 17, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

the many varieties of islands

So far on our trip we’ve visited three islands, each different from one another and each revealing a different aspect of Colombia.

Islas Del Rosario

From Cartagena we take a speedboat to the Islas Del Rosario.  The boat zips out of Cartagena Harbor, it’s double engines screaming.  We pass out of the inner harbor and along Boca Grande, the sandbar that protects the harbor, and which is referred to by the locals as “Cartagena’s Miami Beach”.  It’s lined with high-rise hotels and nightclubs.

Another half hour and we leave the lagoon that is the approach to Cartagena’s harbor, passing through the Boca Chica (‘Small Mouth’).  You can enter the lagoon through both Boca Grande or Boca Chica, but Boca Grande is too shallow for most ships.

Because Boca Chica was the standard approach for pirates attaching the city of Cartagena, it was protected by the Fuerte San Fernando de Bocachica, a large stone fortress.  From the Fuerte, a chain ran across the boca to the other side.  This chain was raised to block ship traffic while the fortress fired upon the stopped ships.

We safely shoot past the Fuerte San Fernando de Bocachica and enter the Caribbean Sea.  An hour after leaving Cartagena, we’re curving around the Islas Del Rosario.  These consist of a few larger islands and numerous small islands, all surrounded by shallow coral reefs.

We land on one of the larger islands and are outfitted for diving by a budget resort. Almost immediately we’re put onto a boat and sent our to a dive spot. After our first dive, we return to the island for 20 minutes, and then back out on the same boat.

Underwater is surprisingly beautiful.  Everywhere there are huge (and perfect) heads of brain coral and a good mixture of both hard and soft corals.  We encounter many fish that none of us have seen before, and some of the biggest lion fish I’d ever seen.

Our ride back is uneventful, and everyone is tired from the diving and snorkeling.  It’s raining slightly, and as we approached Cartagena, a rainbow appears, touching down on Convento de la Popa, a convent that sits on a 450′ hill, the highest point in Cartagena.

 

Tolú & the Archipiélago de San Bernardo

We board our truck for the beach town of Tolú, about 4 hours from Cartagena.  It’s the rainy season now, so Tolú isn’t very active.   Many of the storefronts and restaurants are closed, and not much is happening.  We stay at Kevin’s Hotel, which thankfully has a pool and beer, two things we desperately need after our long hot ride.

The next day we all take pedicabs to the harbor, where our tour boat for the Archipiélago de San Bernardo is waiting.  We load up, and I manag to grab the bow of the boat.  (I sit right on the warning that says “no step”.)

We slowly cruise out of the harbor passing fishermen mending their nets.

Once out of the harbor, the boat speeds up.  Up front, I am constantly finding myself dropping with the boat and then slamming down against the water.  The captain does a decent job of avoiding the worse swells, but it seems that every time I relax, I’d find myself in free fall followed by a sudden stop.  My neck and back are hurting from the sudden stops, but I am having an amazing time.  I adopt a rodeo pose, one hand holding onto the prow of the boat, the other riding free behind me, lifting when I fall to take up some of the inertia.

Towards the back of the boat the ride is smoother, but the passengers are constantly soaked with waves coming over the bow.  Every time a big wave hits our small boat, the folks in the back get a face full of water.  And every time Dan gets a face full of water, his expression reflects the eventual revenge he is planning on whomever is responsible.

Eventually he settles on a solution…

The ride out took takes hours.  Two long hours.  Eventually we get to the San Bernardo islands.  The first island we stop at belongs to a hotel.  Our boat pulls up alongside an oceanside pool.  When we arrive, a hot guy appears and proceeds to give us a dolphin show.  This leaves me feeling very conflicted. First of all, they’re beautiful animals, and I loved being able to see them so closely.  But they’re also intelligent creatures being kept in a cage.  But then, nothing would change if I looked away.  So I take photos and admired the dolphin’s beauty, and wished that they were free…

Our next stop is a rough beach that looks more like a shipwreck camp than a resort.  There are some rough huts on a narrow sand bar between the ocean and a dirty lagoon.  We immediately sit under some huts near the water, but are told that those huts were 10,000 pesos per table. We can sit at ‘the restaurant’, another hut that is a little way back from the beach.

Okay, so we do.  Then we’re told that we can go snorkeling, but the best snorkeling was over there, and we can go there by boat.  Which will cost 10,000 pesos a person.  Some of us want to go, but others didn’t.  And that’s when they start using a chainsaw right next to the ‘restaurant’.  Muy tranquillo!

We boat out to do some fairly mediocre snorkeling.  (ProTip: Snorkeling without fins sucks!)  When we return our lunches are waiting, fried fish, rice, and fried plantains.  When I poked my head into the kitchen, I realized that we’re eating parrot fish.

On the way back we stop at Santa Cruz del Islote (Coordinates: 9.785882,-75.85903).  This small island started out a while back with one fishing family living upon it.  Over time they had children, and their children had children, and they brought in spouses to join them on the island.  Today, there is no island left… all that is visible is the village, sitting on the waves.

The entire village sits literally at sea level.  It’s a place both depressing and amazing.  And every day, the men go out to fish, the women do their work of keeping the village clean, and the children (about 50% of the population) go to school and do their chores.  They know of climate change, and the threat to their village, but they also know there is nothing that they can do… so they continue to fish, clean, and do chores, and to love their island home.

 

Nov 16, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , | 3 Comments »

Cartagena Street Scenes

Here are a few photos taken while walking around Cartagena…

(This roughly translates to “If you don’t want problems, don’t pee here”)

 

 

 

Nov 14, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , | 4 Comments »

Graffiti

Walking around Cartagena, I come across an alley painted with the most amazing collection of graffiti.  It’s at the intersection of Carerra 9 & Calle 29 in the Getsemani neighborhood, also known as the ‘outer walled town’ of Cartagena.  The graffiti is notable for its creativity as well as for being in an out-of-the way alley where only locals would normally be walking.  Here are some of my favorite pieces…

Nov 13, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments »

Cartagena Baillenera

The yearly coronation of Miss Colombia is normally a huge event, and a cause of much celebration / drinking.  This year is an even grander fiesta… the pageant is held in Cartagena coinciding with the bicentennial of the city’s independence from Spain on 11 November 1811.

Part of the celebration is the Baillenera, a parade of beauty contestants in Cartagena harbor.  The reinas are rowed through the harbor in small white skiffs by members of the Colombian Navy.  Dan and I got together with our local friends Richard and José to enjoy the event.

We boarded our boat at the harbormaster’s office near the gates to the old city.  The music was already playing loudly, not just from our boat but from each of the hundred or so boats that were around us.  Many were paid party boats like ours, but some were private pleasure yachts.  The harbor was chaos, with boats circling one another endlessly waiting for the queens of Colombia to arrive.  The sexuality in the air was palpable.

Now almost any event with more than three people in Colombia is fueled by aguardiente, which literally means ‘fiery water’.  The photo on wikipedia says it all.  It goes down with a palpable burn that fades away somewhere between 5 to 10 shots. Or maybe it’s just your memory of the pain that goes away. (Like a colonoscopy.)  In either case, beware.  (Oh, and everyone got a free bottle of aguardiente with the purchase of their ticket.  Beware!)

 

Eventually the reinas begin parading by, waving enthusiastically to the crowd, their vaseline’d teeth shining in the mid-day sun.  They are, of course, wearing bikinis.   As the first few boats pass, the crowd cheers them enthusiastically.

 

After the fourth boat, everything starts to dissolve into chaos.  The boats were jockeying for spots along the parade route, but now they are drifting away from the deperately-waving beauty queens, the music being cranked up louder, and the bartender cannot keep up with requests for cans of beer and bottles of aguardiente.

This seems to be happening more or less simultaneously with every yacht.  ”Yes”, they seem to be saying, “we’ve honored the queens, but now let’s party!” And on cue, a pirate ship comes sailing across the bay, it’s sails advertising aguardiente, and three giant bottles on deck.  The drunken pirates have arrived!  Let the festival begin!

 

There are a lot of canoes amongst the million-dollar yachts.  Many of them appear to be handmade.  One canoe, for whatever reason, is being paddled in reverse of the direction one would normally paddle a canoe, the flat ‘stern’ pressing into the waves, the pointy bow trailing behind.  (I blame aquardiente.)

 

Some of these canoes ride low, and there is often a crewman in the canoe dedicated to bailing, often with a cup that alternates as a aguardiente serving vessel. If a huge yacht plows by it can easily swamp these boats.  We caught one that was almost entirely underwater, its two crew desperately trying to bail while the police made a halfhearted attempt to save them.

Watch what happens:

 

On the top deck of our boat, an M.C./D.J. keeps the tunes running, and he keeps screaming “Espuma!”  He’s referring to the cans of foam that are available in Cartagena and on the boat (for 5,000 pesos!)  Imagine a can of shaving cream, make it 1-3′ tall, and fill it with some sort of inert foam that is safe enough to spray directly into a child’s face.  That’s espuma.  And yes, it is as fun as it sounds.  Why don’t we have it in the States?

The music plays, we dance, we drink cervezas & shots of aguardiente.   The espuma flies and tiny battles occur.  The floor is thick with espuma.

 

Eventually the sun begins to set and the boats turn towards shore, where the party will continue in the streets of Cartagena.  Where after sunset there is always a party after sunset.

 

Oh, this has been a very long post, so to reward you for reading this far, here is a photo of a hot guy from the boat:

 

 

Nov 12, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Languor

O.M.G. it’s hot here. Really hot, in the high 80′s. And humid. The air is saturated. And did I mention the heat? The ancient walls of the old city are Pollocked with mold. Water drips onto the sidewalks, condensing on air-conditioned window panes.

The only respite comes at night, and even then the temperature and humidity persists. For most of the residents air conditioning is not an option, so they adapt. Men wear only shorts and flip-flops. Women wear the skimpiest of bikini tops (over their often-ample bosoms.)

For many of the Cartageneros, the only respite is to stop moving, preferably somewhere with some sort of breeze. If you’re fortunate, you can rest on the city walls, where there is often a sea breeze. For most of the residents, the breeze of passing taxis must suffice.

Even Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s full figures are often seen recumbent, languorous in the heat, waiting for the cool of night for their city to come alive once more.

Nov 11, 2011 | Categories: south america | Tags: , , , , | 6 Comments »