April 2002

ihana.com - big trip - diary - colombia - april 2002

 

Chess, dominos and ludo are played in public

Landy negociates the narrow...

...streets of Cartagena

Friday 12 April - Sunday 28 April

Our apartment in the historical part of Cartagena was a welcome change from the hotel. Our neighbours were friendly and, as usual, curious as to what we were doing here. But, after four weekends of waiting, the stereo still hadn't arrived. We were fed up with Cartagena and had no more energy left for the dorises either who are far too much effort. The constant barrage of hawkers selling sunglasses, emeralds and T shirts and people asking us for money is getting very tiring too. Life was brightened up a bit by a fashion show in the street outside the apartment. We'd met a couple of the model dorises in the supermarket that afternoon, so we stood next to the walkway and successfully made them laugh as they paraded past.

The last weekend B went to Baranquilla for Saturday night to see a doris he met. On the following day Uribe, apparently the most promising presidential candidate (described as the "least bad" by one resident), was holding a rally there. As he left in his armoured car the bridge he was driving over blew up. He escaped unscathed but 5 innocent people died and many were seriously injured. B heard the bomb go off, then as he took a taxi to the bus station to return to Cartagena he came across two people lying dead in the road still oozing blood, victims of a motorbike accident.

Nice part of Cartagena...

...Media Luna, the not so nice scene of knife attacks

B, son of Sergio, Sergio, a doris and Richard

What Sergio wrote on our map

After our paid-for time in the flat was finally over we drove 10 minutes along the coast to the seaside village of La Boquilla where there is a camp site. It was more or less deserted with the exception of Sergio and his son. Sergio was a very interesting guy, a 61 year old ex paramilitary dissolusioned with Colombia and waiting for his chance to leave. He told us about his various activities, singlehandedly killing FARC generals at 5 in the morning, everyday stuff. You could see it in his eyes, it was no joke, this guy means business. The FARC massacre of his family, except for his remaining son, was something that made him realise it was time to quit. He told us that Colombia is more dangerous now than it ever has been and helpfully marked our map with locations of paramilitaries and guerillas. Also added to the back of the map was some stuff to say to any paras we may have trouble with, hopefully we won't need it!

B gets muddy

Its great to get it in your eyes, nose and ears

It really is a volcano

A trip 50kms along the road to Volcan Totumba was something well worthwhile. This is a mud volcano, the cone of which is about 15m high with a pool of bubbling grey mud inside about 4m across. We climbed the steps to the top wearing just our surf shorts and jumped in. The mud is slightly warm and feels wicked. Its really bouyant too so you can just lie down and relax. Unfortunately it gets up your nose, in your ears (still had some coming out after a week!) and ruined Ts contact lenses. Afterwards we were led to the side of the lake and washed by two old dorises in the strangely green coloured and ming fringed water.

Arriving in the busy city of Baranquilla, we were driving around aimlessly looking for a hotel when a guy driving a minging brown chevy started yelling at us in english. Robert is an english teacher and has been here for 15 years. He invited us round for tea while his Colombian wife rang up hotels to get us a good deal. This was more like it! That night a bomb went off outside a military office block in Cartagena killing two people and a few days later the army killed 150 guerillas in the mountains near Santa Marta, thanks to a deserter who told them where to look.

Once comfortably in our hotel it was time to check out the nightlife. It was better than Cartagena with stunning girls everywhere. We've had to invent two new catagories, standard wicked and standard awesome, there are just so many that a minging fat bird is actually quite noticeable. We partook in a typical Colombian activity, driving hapharzardly around the city while drinking aguardiente (fairly minging aniseed liquor) and beer with three dorises. They were already pretty pissed when they picked us up and proceeded to down the booze while zooming through the town. We stopped in the market to meet the father of the driver who bought his daughter two more beers to help her on the road to oblivion. Somehow we managed not to crash.

The long awaited stereo finally arrived but this saga is set to go on and on; the removeable face plate wasn't in the box! Also we had to pay a Colombian import tax bill of almost $90, plus another $100 in phone, fax and postal costs all because the stupid doris didn't send it to the airport in Panama as promised. Devastated is a word that springs to mind. No word of the camera still.

The landy got his oil changed for the fourth time, this time changing the well served Texaco 20-50 for some special diesel stuff from Shell, Rimula X 10-40. B got his oil changed too but used a different brand.

The CV Noticias news team

...errrr...now for a commercial break

Wicked fruit salads

Mobile penguins infest the streets of Colombia

Puerto Colombia pier

One of many landies, with footwell vents

Just before we left Baranquilla we did an interview for the main newspaper for the north coast, El Heraldo and they took some pictures. Later the same day we did the same for a TV station and were on the news a couple of days later. It was all done in our 'fluent' (haha) spanish and was very embarrassing.

Next stop Santa Marta for a night of beach camping before we have to drive through the guerilla area. This should be an interesting drive, the ex para guy says theres only a 20% chance of getting stopped in a FARC road block, not the sort of odds that make for stress free Colombian travels! Mixing with the more affluent Colombians has made us almost as paranoid as they all are, most of them haven't travelled by road for years, visiting other cities by air. A whole generation has hardly visited the mountains or even met the indigenous people, yet they think Colombia is well wicked.

 

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