Tag Archives: Cartagena

Back to the US of A

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In Getsemani, we took photos of the brightly-painted houses.

And fantastic murals.

“It’s almost too perfect,” I remarked to Lynn.  Everywhere I turned was a beautifully-composed photo.  If you can’t take great photos in Cartagena, you can’t take them anywhere.

Even a corner store offered a photo opp of “Still Life with Egg Cartons.”

It was Saturday night and the streets were thronged with people out for a good time.  Who knew who was a tourist and who lived here?

“Air BnB is ruining Cartagena,” Nora had said.  “Rich people are buying places to rent to tourists and Cartagenans cannot afford to live in the center anymore.”  I’ve heard similar laments from Amsterdam to Venice.

We passed through a bustling square with restaurants and bars.  “Want to eat here?” Lynn asked.

It was almost completely dark and there were few streetlights, but naturally I said, “Nah … let’s walk around a bit before it’s pitch dark.  Maybe we can find more photo opps.”

Lynn agreed so we stepped off into a side street.  “Let’s use the trick we used yesterday,” Lynn suggested.  “Where we just keep taking right turns so we can’t get lost.”

“Good thinking.”

But of course the streets in Getsemani weren’t straight, or thoroughfares, and within 10 minutes we were lost.  There were streetlights, but half of them were broken.  People were hanging out drinking and playing cards on the sidewalks.  Murals had been replaced by ugly graffiti.  There was trash, broken and boarded up windows, and mangy dogs wandered past menacingly.  The smell of pot was everywhere.  There was no doubt that this was not a tourist area.

“If we were in Africa,” Lynn said under her breath, “This is when we would hear the drums getting nearer and nearer.”

I laughed.  We smiled at the people we passed, who were staring at us as if to say, “You’ve taken over the rest of our city.  This is our patch.  Just let us enjoy our Saturday night socializing in peace.”

We spent 15 minutes walking through a completely dark, deserted warehouse district.  “If we were in Mississippi,” I said, “This is when we would hear the hound dogs baying, closer and closer.”

After much drama in our heads, we emerged onto the square where we’d started.

“See?!” proclaimed Lynn, “Going in a circle worked, eventually.”

We ate at a nondescript Italian restaurant that had a nice outdoor patio.  I needed to use the bathroom but judging from the exterior it appeared to be a latrine.  Finally I plucked up my courage and entered.  It was a regular indoor bathroom, which I actually found a bit disappointing, but it did have this mysterious sign:

Do Not Point to the Toilet?  Do Not Shoot a Gun Down the Toilet? Do Not Throw a Brick in the Toilet?

—

And as always, too soon, it was time to go home.  A driver picked me up at 10:30 the next morning; Lynn would begin her arduous return via Amsterdam later in the day.  The airport was only five minutes from the center.

This sign left no room for interpretation.

“Drug trafficking is punishable by pain of death or life imprisonment in China, Qatar, Egypt, the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, and 28 other countries.”

In Miami, I went through immigration and customs and then walk-ran to get from the last gate on D concourse to Gate E16, as indicated on the American website.

I followed the signs for E 2-33.  When I reached E11, the next gate was E20.

“E16?” I asked two American Airlines agents.

“There is no Gate E16,” they replied dismissively.  I showed them the screen shot and they doubled down, acting as though I had made it up somehow. American—the airline that dragged that poor man off a plane when he wouldn’t give up his seat for no reason.

The video system went down midflight so, since the same had happened on my arrival flight, I never saw the end of The Color of Water.   They offered free drinks, so I had a beer and chatted with my seatmate.

“Isn’t Colombia a third world country?!” she asked.  “I’m not a racist—I have mi-norities in my family.”

Edens and Getsemani

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Our tour of San Pedro Claver over, we tipped Charles generously—at least I hope he thought it was generous.  He had clearly poured years of his life into learning everything about St. Peter and his namesake church.

Before we left, he scribbled on some scraps of paper and handed them to us along with some business cards.  The business cards were for his cousin’s store, which sells Handy Crafts.

“My cousin, Fabiola, you can tell her I sent you to get a discount.”  The scrap of paper had his contact details on it.  If you ever go to Cartagena and want a personal tour of St. Peter Claver Church, ask for Charles, aka Carlos Arturo Pelaez Martinez, and tell him Anne sent you and you want your discount.

We wandered out into the blinding, blistering hot sun.  In the square, this woman was posing for tourists with a bowl of fruit on her head.  I really hate things like this, but I took a photo and gave her 10,000 pesos.  It felt a bit like I was photographing a zoo animal.  The irony of us being in the former Black Market wasn’t lost on me.  Did her costume have any cultural significance?  She wasn’t interested in talking.  She needed to sell as many photos as she could, literally—Snap Snap!—to make a living.  I guess it was better than working in a factory.

Lynn and I always try to hit a grocery store when we travel. In Colombia, we were fixated on buying some of the crunchy corn kernels—sold in the US as Corn Nuts—which we’d had on salads and in ceviche and soups here.

I don’t know which is more disturbing.  The thought of wiping myself with a white rabbit or that “Exito” means “success.”  An interesting name for toilet paper.

This ranks up with the “Colonial” brand cigarettes I saw in Belize.  I mean really—what was the thinking on the marketing team when they came up with the brand name Dictator for a Latin American rum?  “I’m telling you Jorge, dictators are hot.”  Note that in one photo the man is dressed in a suit with a George Michael beard and in the other he is shirtless and clean shaven.

We found our corn nuts and went to find lunch.

It seems like it’s hard to go wrong in the search for good food in Colombia, especially if you enjoy seafood.  We found a ceviche restaurant and settled in.  There was no point in rushing around the city in this heat.

Being a plant lover, I appreciated that plants, vines, and flower arrangements were incorporated into the décor everywhere in Colombia.

The ceviche didn’t disappoint, although I thought half a pita and Saltine crackers were interesting choices for accompaniments.  I associate Saltines with being broke or nauseous.

The sign on the ladies’ room door.  Again with the fruit hat.  If a restaurant in Minneapolis used this sign, there would be protests that it was racist or at the very least, a case of cultural appropriation.  But this restaurant was owned and operated by Black Caribbeans, so there.

After lunch we returned to the hotel and I headed straight for the pool.  If you’re not a water person, you don’t understand the pure bliss of being in water in the sunshine, surrounded by plants and two very noisy parakeets in a big cage.  I don’t really even know how to swim but I can splash around in a pool for hours.  I ordered a print of this photo and keep it on my desk at work.  I escape here when I need to.

—

Our last evening in Colombia.  Nora had suggested only one thing—Getsemani—a bohemian neighborhood.

“It looks like all we have to do is cross a street,” I said to Lynn as I consulted the map.

“Riiiiiight,” she drawled sarcastically.

But we got clever and left a trail of bread crumbs in the form of photos.

From one side of the clock tower to the other, dusk fell that fast.  With any luck it would be lit up after dark, right?

 

Saving the Slaves

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Our last full day in Colombia.  It was 10 in the morning and already scorching hot in Cartagena.  Lynn and I stepped into the foyer of San Pedro Claver Church; it was cool and dark.  We made our way to some sort of service desk, where a young man was immersed in praying the rosary.  A glass case contained items for sale: Crucifixes, rosaries, scapulars.   In case you don’t know, scapulars are stamp-sized images of saints and such joined by a ribbon and worn around the neck under one’s clothes.

I’m not sure if they’re for good luck or protection or what.

A man stepped up to us from seemingly out of nowhere and I did a double take because in the dimness I thought for a nanosecond he was my long-dead grandfather, Ralph.  He was thin and olive-skinned with slicked down black hair and thick black glasses, and he smelled like tobacco.

He introduced himself as Charles, and launched into a breakneck Spanglish spiel with some French and German thrown in just to keep us on our toes.

“I have studied in France and Italy and Eeenglahterrrrra,” he told us.  He offered to be our guide for a small fee.  And it really was small; I don’t recall how much it was but he showed us around for over an hour and showed us some places I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be.

Even so, he didn’t waste any time.  Charles marched us out of the foyer into the main sanctuary and began pointing.  “This stained glass, she is from Italy,” he recited.  “And this eh-statue, she is from Germany.  All the things you see, they are gifts from other countries.”

Maybe because it was a mish-mash of donated features from European countries, the sanctuary wasn’t particularly beautiful.  The dome was pretty.

The altar had something glowing orange … yes, that’s …

… the bones of St. Peter, who died of Parkinson’s in 1654.

My personal favorite work of art in the sanctuary was this painting depicting a priest converting Chinese, Japanese and Indian heathens all in one go.  The Taj Mahal is in the background.  Nice!

Charles led us onward at a brisk pace, walking and talking.

There was a gallery with an incredible collection of religious and other art, including African carvings and contemporary marble statues.  All of it, even the centuries-old wood sculptures and oil paintings were just there, in the extreme heat and humidity, with stray cats wandering around.

This was a Hall of Bishops or some such.

As Charles waved his hands around, naming every single potentate, I could tell from Lynn’s body language that she was not excited.  When you’ve seen these types of places in Italy, France, and every other European capital, one glowering bishop looks much like another.

This was St. P. in his hunky youth.

Charles kept up a stream of commentary as Lynn and I wandered around the gallery.  I liked this French altar with all-seeing eye at the apex, like on a dollar bill.

Some of the Jesus figures could have been modeled on indigenous people.

There were a number of miracle-performing virgins, some as old as 16th Century.

There was a lovely courtyard.

And the usual dead people everywhere in the walls and floors.  Charles said his parents were among the dead, and that it was only the bones that were interred. What happened to the rest I didn’t want to know.

The upper floor, where St. Peter lived.

The saint’s bedroom.  “He was so humble, he slept on the floor,” Charles said.

You could say St. Peter filled a niche.

Some of the art was very much in the”white savior” genre.

Three hundred thousand slaves were baptized in this font.

“St. Peter, he was a friend to the slaves that were bought and sold in the Black Market,” Charles said.

A friend.  St. Peter had baptized slaves, but had he fed them or advocated for abolition? Charles indicated that St. Peter had ruffled the feathers of the slave traders, which was good, but as usual, I came away with more questions than when I’d started.

Beautiful City in a Sad World

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Colombia has been in the news lately in the US.  Last night there was this story on the PBS News Hour about the election, which is taking place the day this posts.  Near the end, it talks about all the activists who have been threatened—and more than 50 who have been killed—in the ongoing conflict for power.

So I wasn’t overreacting when I worried about our tour guide in Bogota being at risk.  I wrote that Lynn and I would follow him on Facebook and maybe raise a stink if anything happened to him but in reality, what could we really do?  If he suddenly stopped posting, what would we do—call the police in Colombia?  I’m sure they would get a good laugh out of that.  We could contact Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.  I don’t know.  It’s another thing to worry about, along with all the plastic in the ocean and the violence in Gaza and Russian interference in the US elections.

Just for fun, I made a list of the first three titles of emails I saw in a typical morning at work:

And here is a sampling of my daily dose of funding opportunities from the US government:

  • Bureau of International Narcotics-Law Enforcement, Combating Wildlife Trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa
  • Health Services and Economic Research on the Treatment of Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Use
  • National Technical Assistance Resource Center for the Prevention of Sexual Violence
  • Investigation of the Transmission of Kaposi Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus
  • NIH Collaborative Cross Mouse Model Generation and Discovery of Immunoregulatory Mechanisms

That last one is kind of amusing, until you really think about what will happen to the poor mouse.

In one of my daily international news digests this week, there was an article (behind a paywall so I can’t provide a link) about the Colombian government conducting a census of Venezuelan refugees. A few excerpts:

“Exact numbers of people who have arrived are hard to come by and it is difficult to ascertain if people intend to stay in Colombia or move to another country in South America or the Caribbean.

“The lack of accurate data influences the way the United States State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and NGOs can plan for and respond to the crisis, a problem the Colombian government hopes the census will help solve. According to [Felipe] Muñoz, there are 30,000 Venezuelan children in the Colombian public school system, and 25,000 in the child care system. Twenty-five thousand Venezuelans have been provided free medical care by Colombia’s public health system.

“The Colombian government also intends to set up a formal process for Colombians who had fled their own country during a decades-long civil war for Venezuela, but now seek to return home. This includes children that have a parent from each country but were born in Venezuela and do not have Colombian identity papers.

‘They have the right to be Colombian,’ Muñoz said.”

This almost makes me weep.  What a contrast between how Colombia, where the average monthly salary is $692, treats refugees vs. my country—where the average monthly salary is $3,428.

We are a country living with an epidemic of fear and hatred.

—

Lynn and I slept the sleep of the dead after our five-hour drive and two-hour walking tour.

Breakfast was on the rooftop restaurant, which had great views.  That’s the Cathedral in the distance.

We noted that the hotel had witch points on some of the rooflines.  Nora had told us this was a Colonial-era building requirement by the Catholic Church—to keep witches out of buildings.  I guess it works, because we never saw a witch, inside or out.

Soon we were out on the street.  Here’s the Cathedral again, in the distance.  Such a beautiful city.

The interior was cool and quiet.

Lynn led us on to Iglesia San Pedro Claver.  St. Peter Claver, as we know him in the US, was a priest from Barcelona, the first saint of the new world, and—so the legend goes—a champion of slaves.

Anglo American Afro Iberian Caribbean

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It’s been almost a week, but I want to mention the royal wedding. Yeah, that thing that happened last Saturday.  I got up early to watch it with my aunt and cousin.  I watched because I love weddings in general.  My brother is a wedding videographer, so if you love weddings, you can watch his video clips of weddings to your heart’s content.

Mostly I watched because Windsor (technically the adjacent town, Eton) was where I lived for a month last summer, so it was fun to catch glimpses of the places I had frequented.  My friend Sam, whose house I took care of, was on the Long Walk with his wife and kid with their picnic and blanket, waving flags as the carriage drove by.  He WhatsApp’d me a slew of photos.

This is one of the little thrills of traveling or living somewhere else—to be able to point to the TV and say, “I was there!”

—

Out on the street in Cartagena for our two-hour walking tour, our guide Nora talked loudly to be heard over the street noise as the three of us navigated the crowded sidewalks.  Lynn and I gave each other the side eye as we passed certain shops.

These were dress shops.

Nora caught our raised eyebrows and smiled conspiratorially.  “Yes, our ladies like very expressive dresses.” Unlike Nora—who had short cropped hair and was dressed like a tomboy.  “Let us go to the sea barrier,” she suggested.  “It’s less crowded there.”

We passed the house of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  He’s dead now, and Nora wasn’t sure if the house was occupied by his widow or what, but it was still cool to see it.  I had read Chronicle of a Death Foretold before leaving for Colombia and its setting was a rural version of Cartagena, with a very mixed racial and Caribbean vibe.

Across the street was a concert and wedding venue that looking like a wedding cake itself.

Nora continuously read and sent texts as she walked and talked.  She had moved to Cartagena to live with her boyfriend, a musician.  He was 60—more than 20 years older than her.  Would we like to meet him?

That was a bit unexpected on a guided tour, but of course we said yes.

She talked about how the rents were so much higher in Cartagena than where she had moved from—because of tourists and Air BnB driving up prices.  “My brother has also moved here now,” she continued.  “He is in a bar right now with my boyfriend and I will take you to meet them.”

Um, okay?  I don’t mean to imply that I was suspicious or worried about this, but it was a little strange.  Did she just want to hang out with them?

We passed a lovely old wreck of a colonial house for sale.

She led us along the breakwater and explained how Cartagena had been founded by runaway women slaves.  It was a really interesting bit of history I’d never heard, but unfortunately half of the story was lost to the roar of the wind and waves.

We re-entered the city through the thick walls and stood in a plaza. “This was the black market. It’s where that term originated.  Here’s where slaves were auctioned off.”

I had never thought about this before.   A pall of sadness descended over me.

But Nora kept us moving as night fell.  She led us through a food hall selling every kind of pickled, dried, and candied nut, fruit, meat, and …

… ants—I bought a packet for my son the chef.

This place was twice as loud. We shouted “Hello!” to Nora’s boyfriend and brother.  I’m sure this was the place to see and be seen, but we declined the invitation to stay and join this couple on the dance floor.

Cartagena

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“I’m not really interested in a four-hour walking tour,” I said as we approached Cartagena after a five-hour drive.

“Me neither,” Lynn replied.  “Maybe we can ask for the guide to cut it down to two.”

We drove along the Caribbean beachfront, lined with tower-block-like hotels. Then we turned into a tunnel in what appeared to be an ancient wall, and we were inside old Cartagena. It immediately felt like we were in another country.  There were a lot more black folks, and as we would learn in a few hours, this was due to Cartagena’s founding as a slave port.  The streets were wide enough for one car, barely.  Residents and tourists thronged in the street and narrow sidewalks, there were carts selling bananas and sweets half in, half out of the street.  Horse-drawn carriages vied with motor vehicles.  There was music in the air—kids with boom boxes, live music wafting out of restaurants.  It had a vibe that reminded me of Havana or New Orleans.

Since our hotel had changed, our driver drove in circles for a while, then stopped and pointed to a street half a block away. “Your hotel is there, but my truck can’t drive there.”  We alighted, thanked and tipped him, then pulled our bags in the direction he’d pointed.

It was 2:30, and very hot and humid.  This screen shot is from the next morning—it was 26C (80F) at 7:35am.  So much for “getting out early, before it’s too hot.”

Our hotel was the Don Pedro de Heredia, and it was very nice.  A “restored colonial boutique hotel,” is how it was billed.  Our room was enormous, with two queen-sized beds.  “Why is there only that one tiny window?” I wondered aloud.  The window was high up in the wall and smaller than a microwave oven.

“Because of the heat?” Lynn posited.  Yes, that must have been it.  The room had an air conditioning unit—the kind that hangs on the wall and removes humidity—the first we’d seen in Colombia (although we hadn’t been looking).

As usual, I snooped around to find anything interesting or different about this place.  The toilet paper roll was positioned two inches above the floor. That would make for some interesting gymnastics.

A sign on the back of the door warned against sexual exploitation of minors in tourism.

There was also a No Smoking sign but when I opened the door to go for a wander there were two old geezers sitting in the hall in lounge chairs smoking.  So the Smoking Section was right outside our room. Fortunately none of the smoke seeped inside.

These Mayan faces were set in the wall every five feet.

It was the pool I was really after—as I gazed down at it from the fourth floor balcony I knew I would spend as much time in and near it as possible in our 48 hours here.

We were down in the lobby at 3:15, where our guide had been waiting.

“You’re late!” she said.

“But we just arrived …” I felt a bit like a naughty school girl.

We hadn’t eaten since 7am, so we negotiated that our guide, Nora, would return in two hours and cut the tour down to two hours.  She seemed happy with this arrangement.  “It’s a bit less hot at 6 than at 4, but only a bit,” she wagged her finger at us.  “Be sure to wear sun screen and bring water.”  She was younger than us, maybe 40, and tiny as a teenager but had a school marm air about her. “The city comes alive after dark,” she added.

We stepped out into the blinding sun and heat and crowds and held our hands up to shade our eyes as we scanned for the closest restaurant.  The city certainly didn’t seem dead.

“Let’s walk around the block,” I suggested, “so we don’t get lost.”  We found an Italian place and enjoyed a good meal.  Back at the hotel, Lynn napped while I jumped into the pool.  The day had seemed like three days; I could have gone to bed then but as instructed we were in the lobby at 6 sharp.

Waterworld, What a World

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I’m not sure why we were driven five hours from Tayrona to Cartagena, but Lynn and I agreed it was important that we did because it showed us sides of Colombia we wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

We drove south along the coast past more beautiful beaches.  If we had flown from Santa Marta to Cartagena we might have been left with the impression that all of Colombia was unspoiled.

But soon we were driving over a very long causeway with what I can only describe as water-logged slums on either side. Here’s a photo of the place, Tasajeras.

This area stretched along a couple of miles.  Our driver said something about the residents being dependent on tankers for clean water.  Ironic, given that they were surrounded by water, but it made sense.  There were no signs that the houses had indoor plumbing.

And here we were, sitting in air-conditioned comfort behind tinted glass, our suitcase contents probably more valuable than the entire contents of one of these homes.  In dollar terms, anyway.

Everywhere I go, I am very conscious of being a one percenter.  I’m not a one percenter in the US, but I imagine that, compared with the population of the planet, my net worth is higher than 99% of the rest of my fellow humans.  At home, I am probably solidly in the middle, which is fine with me.

As I’ve written before, I started my adult life at 17 by getting pregnant, going on welfare, and moving into subsidized housing.  I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but I know firsthand that the vast majority of people in the world can never get ahead no matter how hard they work because they have no social safety net to support them until they get traction.  And the US is heading backward in that direction.

So I have donations to certain causes automatically deducted from my bank account (HIAS is one of my favorites).  I volunteer to do some small part in fighting mass incarceration in the US, and I work for a nonprofit that supports people who have been affected by war trauma.

Lately I have been trying to buy less plastic.  It’s so hard. Everything is packaged in plastic.  I got an Amazon order last week where the item came inside a small plastic tub, wrapped in a plastic bag, mailed in a giant bubble-wrap plastic envelope.  It made me feel sick.  I set the envelope aside and meant to write to Amazon to complain, but I never did.  Now, recalling all the plastic and other waste choking this watery community in Colombia, I wish I had made the effort.

—

When I travel I tell myself I am supporting the local economy.  Is this true? Would it be better if I stayed home, reduced my carbon footprint, and send a check for the amount of the tour to some Colombian charity?  I don’t know.

We drove through Barranquilla, a city of over a million. I’m sure there are many very nice areas of Barranquilla, but this was pretty much what we saw for 20 minutes as we passed the outskirts.

“Shakira,” said the driver out of the blue, pointing to the city.  Apparently the hip-shaking pop singer is from here.

We drove through a nice residential area down a wide boulevard with signs that announced “Free Wireless,” and just for kicks I tried to connect but we moved on too quickly.  That’s great that they’re making internet available in public parks, I guess.

We stopped at a light and two young men started washing the windshield.

“Venezuelans,” said our driver, as he rolled down his window and gave them some money.  “I don’t need my windshield cleaned but they have no other way to earn money,” he explained.

So a few of my tourist dollars did trickle down.

—

Two more hours.  The driver’s phone rang and he handed it to me.  It was someone from Responsible Travel.

“We have changed your hotel to a much nicer hotel,” she informed me.

Um, okay?  Who knows what happened and it doesn’t matter.  I was just ready to get to a hotel, any hotel.

Saguinus Oedipi

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From the moment we fell off our horses on arrival at Tayrona, Lynn’s mantra had been, “I will not get back on a horse.  I will not ride a horse back to the parking lot.”

She was also sure that, if we walked, we would never find our way—a reasonable assumption given our track record.  We had been told there was an “easy” walking path back to the parking lot.  Hmm. Easy enough to pull roller bags for an hour?

After breakfast, Lynn approached the young man at reception and informed him that we wanted to send our bags back by horse, and that we would like a guide to walk with us to the parking lot.  He smiled as one would smile at a small child who has said something cute but dumb.

“There is no need for a guide.  The path is so easy,” he said slowly, as if English was our second language.

Lynn protested and began to insist, and I wandered off.  I can’t bear conflict if it seems low stakes to me.  I was willing to try the path.  It couldn’t possibly be like the one to the Cabo the day before.  Right?

And it wasn’t.  In the end, the young man wore Lynn down and we walked by ourselves.  I’m so glad we did, otherwise I would have felt bad making a guide stop every two minutes while I took photos of the magnificent sea views.

I saw some strange tracks in the sand. Snakes? Crabs?  No, turtles!

We didn’t see any turtles but it would be fun to be here when the hatchlings emerge.

The path really was flat and easy at the beginning.  “Capybara!” I shouted as one ran through this tunnel of hedge.  I was so glad Lynn got a glimpse of one.

This spectacular beach had, literally, a red flag.

And here is why—it’s a killer beach where more than 100 people have drowned.

Signs often tell you where a destination’s visitors are from.  This one is in Spanish, Italian, English, German, French, and Hebrew.  The English isn’t a great indicator because most travelers will speak some travel English.  I know Israelis get around, but Colombia?  It’s such a long way for them. Maybe that’s the point.  I wondered why there was no Portuguese translation.

We passed one untamed, unpopulated beach after another.  “In five years,” I commented, “I bet you will see throngs of people here, at least at the safer ones.”

The path began to climb, but there were stairs and handrails. Why hadn’t we been directed to this option coming in?  Maybe we had.  Who knows?  It would have made for such a more pleasant first impression.

I was smitten with these huts in the distance.  It turned out that a former colleague would stay here in two weeks’ time and they were more “luxury huts.”

There were plenty of signs on this path.  I found it amusing they were addressed to “Mr. Visitor.”

Farther on, someone had carved in a correction to make it “Dear Visitor.”

There was some fairly steep climbing up and down stairs and roller bags would have been out of the question, so sending them via horseback had been a good compromise.

After an hour we descended onto a flat board walk which led to the parking lot.  We stopped to read the signs about the animals we had never seen.

“Crax Alberti.  Hmmm.  I wonder who that was named for?”  I commented.  “I wonder how many birds and animals and plants were named for Prince Albert during Victoria’s reign.”

“Oh, hundreds, I should think,” replied Lynn, reading the next sign.

“Saguinus Oedipus.  Smart mother fucker,” Lynn pronounced.  Lynn is rarely crude so this caught me off guard and I laughed as we walked on.

At 9am sharp, we emerged to meet our driver from three days before, waiting with our bags loaded into his truck.

“How was it?  Did you enjoy Tayrona?” he asked in Spanish, and I told him we had loved it.  I didn’t mention the horseback ride or the fire ants or cockroaches or the heat stroke.

We settled into silence for the five-hour drive to Cartagena.

Getting There

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Colombia is somewhere between the backpacker and cruise ship stages of tourism.  The tourist vanguard—backpackers—are there en masse.  They’ve been reporting back on how great it is, and now people like Lynn and I have gotten interested.  But it’s not yet to the point, thankfully, where cruise ships and tour buses are belching tourists by the thousands.

Lynn had used Rebecca Adventure Travel for another trip.  It’s an unfortunate acronym, but RAT specializes in socially responsible tourism.  Since we consider ourselves responsible types, we worked with them to design an itinerary.  The company is based in the Netherlands and started out with tours in Ecuador.  They’ve now added Peru and Colombia.  We went back and forth about how many nights we wanted to spend here and there—they were extremely flexible.

The price was $1,660 per person.  That’s a lot of money.  However when you consider that this included three internal flights,  nine hotel nights, breakfast every day, four-hour tours with our own guide in three cities,  rides to/from the airport, and a five-hour drive from the national park to Cartagena, it was a good deal.  The airfare from Minnesota was $1,200.  Yes, Colombia was as expensive to reach as Athens or Paris.

At some point we were handed off to Responsible Travel.  As the name implies, it also specializes in responsible travel.  They are based in the UK and have a US office.  So it was all fairly confusing but at some point if you really want to go somewhere you just have to go with the flow.

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Roxana, my Peruvian pal who has lived in Minnesota for 20 years, happened to be on the same flight to Miami as me.  My brother drove us to the airport and when we checked in we asked if we could be seated together.  Neither of us had seat assignments because, as you know if you’ve flown lately, they won’t give you a seat ahead of time unless you pay extra.  Ka-ching for two inches of extra legroom.  Ka-ching for an a seat closer to the front.  Ka-ching for priority seating.

Why would anyone want to get on a plane first?  It’s not like you’ll be in first class.  You’ll just sit in your cramped seat waiting for all the other passengers to board and watching them fumble around trying to stuff their giant bags into the overhead compartments.

But you can pay extra for that if you like.

We were told it would be impossible for us to be seated together because the plane was full.  We went to the gate and tried again.  Same answer.  So we sat and chatted while we waited to board.  Then we heard someone else asking to be seated together, so we sprang up and somehow, like they were playing Tetris or Jenga, the gate agents got it to work.  It was nice to have three hours together with no distractions.  How often do you get that with a friend?

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Roxana and I parted in Miami; we would see each other in a few days in Medellin.

The flight to Bogota was uneventful and on time, but I arrived late at night.  I got through border control ok but the baggage area was chaos.

If you’ve ever traveled to Latin America from Miami, you will be familiar with the giant and multiple suitcases people bring—full of gifts and clothes and who-knows-what for family members.  There was no system to tell you which carousel your bag would be on.  Bags were piled helter skelter.  None of the employees knew anything.  After 45 minutes and near tears of exhaustion, I inquired at the American Airlines desk and immediately produced my bag.  “Is this yours?”

What a relief.  There was no explanation for why they had singled my bag out to keep behind the counter but the lock looked unmolested so I just rolled away.

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There’s a 1969 movie called “If it’s Tuesday, This must be Belgium.”  It features an ensemble of B List actors who play Americans touring nine European countries in 18 days.

Which is kind of how I felt in Colombia.  There were seven flights in nine days, three major cities, and one major jungle misadventure involving a horseback ride over boulders and a Bataan Death March-type hike which led to a case of possible sun stroke.

I kept having these moments where I didn’t know where I was.  Was I in Italy?  Spain? El Salvador? Oh, that’s right—I’m in Medellin—if this is Tuesday I must be in Medellin.  I kept consulting my damp, crinkled print-out of the tour to re-orient myself.

After seeing Israel and Portugal and Cuba on group tours with packed, dawn-to-midnight itineraries, I swore I would never travel that way again.  And those are small countries.  Colombia is twice as big as Texas and has twice as many people.  Colombia is five times bigger than the UK!

The thing is to know what you’re getting into and to set your expectations accordingly.  I knew I would probably not get enough sleep and have to push myself.  I knew I could do this for nine days. I gave myself permission to say “no” to some things that were on the itinerary and not feel guilty or like I had wasted my money by not doing something I’d already paid for.

And you know what?  It was fine.  It was a great way to get an introduction to the country.

Best of all, it was hot and humid.  I didn’t need to use Chapstick or hand lotion once.  The hacking cough I’d had for months went away.  My hair went crazy curly.  I got sun burned.  I know that’s bad, but I don’t care!

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And now, back to reality.  My brother picked me up at the airport.  He had my down puffer coat and gloves ready for me in the passenger seat.  I picked up my car at his house; it was splattered with dirty slush from the snow plows.  I stopped to pick up milk for my morning coffee at Super America and laughed at that name.  A bundle of mail was crammed into the mailbox, mostly junk. The house was cold and dark; I felt grateful for central heating as I heard the whoosh of the furnace responding instantly to me cranking up the thermostat. I left the milk on the front porch rather than turn on the empty fridge just yet.

I often come back from trips with goals for things to do/do differently.  After being in a jungle, my return goal is to more than double my plant population—from 17 to 40.  None of my plants had died, which I took as a good sign that I could achieve my goal.

It was midnight.  I had been in transit since catching my ride to the airport in Cartagena at 10:30 that morning.  I leaned against my bedroom doorway and gazed lovingly at my bed.  My bed!  Oh, how I had missed it. Every bed in Colombia had been like sleeping on a wooden plank.  In Medillin, the beds were so creaky I had to wear ear plugs so I wouldn’t wake up every time I rolled over. In the jungle, the mattress was narrow and only inches off the floor.  I kept waking up to pull my arm back from the edge of the mattress.  I had seen giant cockroaches, spiders, and grasshoppers; and geckos, in the bath when I turned the light on.  I assumed they were lurking in the dark under my bed, just waiting to run up my hand.

I thought about unpack but I couldn’t face the smelly, dusty clothes I’d been wearing for nine days.

I did pull out a few special gifts I had bought for my son, the cook.  For instance, this snack that was sold on the street—Big-Bottomed Ants.

I’ll write a lot more about Colombia, but for now, here’s one thing they want you to know: