Colombia Part 1: Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Tayrona

Right. I have been having complaints about my tardiness with the blog. Also I have been accused of writing a teen novel, but thats a different matter lol. Colombia is chaos. I will start with that. A headspinning, glorious chaos, that sucks you in, spins you till your head explodes and then still carries on as your headless body careens from one unplanned situation to another. And thats just the buses. The best laid plans of mice and men have no bearing on this country and yet I love the place. Probably why I have not updated too much. I have been too busy doing nothing and everything. And my head hurts. Need some downtime. Need something. Don't think Bogota will be the place to find it, but that where I go next. Anyway enough of this drivle. When I get to part 4 you will understand why my head hurts and what kind of emotional and physical whirlwind I was in for it. Ah a teaser you say. Maybe. Is it worth the build up? Probably not, but everyone needs some PR sometimes eh.

Ah I am tired. Mentally and physically beaten down. Estoy muy frustrado, although that may carry a different connotation in Spanish. It can in English. Thank god for Mark Twain. Have to meet a Dutch girl from Cartagena tomorrow in Bogota, Dom has recovered from his bust up feet and there is a question over whether Mayra will come to Venezuela with me. Too many questions. And I ran out of mulitivitamins, though I did find the smallest scissors in the world to replace the ones customs stole. Thank god for Seal. Though I may finally have got sick of Kiss From a Rose. I thought that song was untouchable. Maybe I should listen to Bryan Adams. That will be interesting, Ah its so pherapeutic to be writing, although I am sure everyone is wandering what I am banging on about. Welcome to Colombia. Como. Ah bugger I have just been sucked by youtube into the Bryan Adams live radio station. Never heard of this song.

Anyway Barranquilla. Dusty, dirty, gritty Barranquilla. We rocked up in town and realised the taxis are on official meters and have set prices. Very strange. Then noone tried to rip us off and everyone gave us genuine prices. Or if they did not and we challenged it they went ok, shrugged their shoulders and gave the real price. Aha we had left Central America behind clearly. That and the Spanish was rapid fire. Like a machine gun battery. I could not understand anything. None of this slow, clear stuff. Rapid fire chaos. I regressed in Spanish level during one short flight. It took me a few days to recover my understanding and even then the people of Mompos make no sense. I had a chest infection from the Darien at this point. It had not upgraded to Dengue Fever. It was just kind of shitty and there. Tom had hassles with his passport at the border and I was double stamped. I may already have mentioned this, but my mind is too tired to care. Its such riveting stuff I figured you might want to hear it a second time. At this point I was still trying to stitch together a fragmenting group. Tom wanted to leave in the morning, I wanted to stay to meet some more couchsurfers, Dom wanted to go, but noone wanted to spend 7 days in Cartagena (we were all eventually stiffed on that front). We met up with some couchsurfers in a bar in one of the posher neighbourhoods (a very, very expensive place, but not as expensive as the clubs in Cartagena). They were 90 minutes late, so it seems Colombian time is even worse than Mexican time. And their driving is even worse than Guatemala. Those are words I never thought I would issue. Guatemalans tried to kill me all the time but they at least vaguely stuck to their side of the road. Colombians drive wherever there is a gap. So the effect is snakes of traffic weaving through each other, looking like the want to crash into some giant auto wreck crochet. A full metal jacket maybe. Damn that was awful. Anyway before this we had wandered into some bar that appeared to just be full of women in blue. Very strange to have a bar dominated by women and for them all to have the same uniform. Either this place employed a lot of extra staff or it was a prostitute hangout. I know where my money was and I was right. We had one cheap beer (though not as cheap as advertsied, because we did not read the small print) and carried on. Anyway one of Andreas friends taught me how to dance close and fast in the Colombian way. She said for an Anglo at least I had rhythm, even if I could not dance. Its impossible here though. They are just too damn fast. One girl in Cartagena said to me its easy. Just do this and then proceeded to make 15,000 rapid movements in less than a minute. Hmm yes, so easy. I tried, failed and she said just dance how you want. Nice. So I did. Sometimes its just easier that way. Especially when you suck. Needless to say I feel constrained from mentioning how good looking the locals are in order to avoid the teen novel connotations. Everyone else seemed to get bored and it was clear that the two groups did not get on. My knitting skills were failing me and I was getting tired of stitching things together everywhere. Always stitching socially and since I bought my thread I still had so many clothes to actually stitch. And I still have not done it. Manana, manana eh. I can't be bothered to write anything more about the night. It was not a great one, it forced my hand into leaving the next day or I would be responsible for fragmenting the group and I cut a deal to head over to Santa Marta.

We all agreed eventually to head to Santa Marta and the inevitable split was postponed a little further. This was like San Andreas fault patching at this point. We arrived in town and it seemd a nice enough place. Right on the coast. We checked into a ridiculously cheap, but also ridiculously shitty hostel. Then we had a really cheap lunch. For $2 here you get soup, a drink and a full plate of food. No more of those bread ans water days that we always had in Central America. Food is simple but good here. Like home cooked granny food. We also went to the Museo Del Oro, which had some interesting Tayrona gold exhibits. The jewel was the model of Ciudad Perdida. We had hoped that would spur Tom's interest in remaining travelling with us, but by this point he was in a funk and I think determined to move on. If he had stayed I think he would have enjoyed it, but alas twas not to be. Dom and I went for a walk and ended up popping into the offices of Turcol. Ah MSTRKRFT this is more like it. Type in rhythm. We managed to get the price down to 380,000 pesos each ($152) which is still the lowest anyone has ever come up with. Class. Dom now thinks I am tight though. I just think I am frugle. Damn banking gone done turned me into a scrooge. Ah Mark Twain. Having fun playing with old style Mississippi English. What you go done that for I hear thee hark. Cos I can comes my reply. I have down rip off prices, but I dont remember anything being expensive in Santa Marta, so perhaps I am just nuts. We did walk into a street protest, complete with burning stuff in the middle of town. We asked the police what was happening. They told us that the students were protesting because evening classes were being scrapped and they liked them because they could laze around all day. Hmm fair enough. We asked the students. They said teachers were not being pàid and the evening classes were being cut because of it and many of them had to work to pay fees and would not be able to study. Always two sides to each story. The correct one and the official one. Then Tom decided to stay in. The honking car/barking dog duo I believe finally tipped him over the edge to leave, although he would be with us for 7 or 8 days more. Dom and I went to a nice little student bar called La Perla to have a few drinks and then turf in for Tayrona in the morning.

This day was where our hostels naffness came to the fore and where we took advantage of it in revenge. Firstly they had offered us the Ciudad Perdida tour for an amazingly generous 550,000 pesos. Only 170,000 more than we had been offered and a definite bargain. Mentires. Then they had decided not to tell us that even though the first bus for Tayrona goes at 5am, the park does not actually open until 8am. Cheers guys. We flopped out of bed, grabbed a bus from the market and then sat around for 90 minutes wondering if we really did need proof of our yellow fever vaccination with us. We did not. They said they needed to change the wristbands. They did not. They wanted to open at 8am. They failed. The main guard wanted to have a piss on the side of the road. He succeeded. One out of four is not bad. Just a shame it was the least useful one for us. At least we got to watch the monkeys and get ignored. There are loads of animals in the park. Its no Manuel Antonio, but it is very good looking. Beautiful beaches. You can take a truck for 2,000 pesos each into the park and I would advise it. We did not take it out of spite and we did a very good job of spiting ourselves. I was proud. Food and drink is prohibitively expensive in the park. Especially food. Bring your own. Having said that I had a very expensive lunch with Yoana in Cartagena and I am not sure how much dinner tonight with Mayra will be. But anyway they were/are probably worth it. Looking at Tom's plate, this place was not. Ah many things happened here. Lets put it in a montage of sorts.

We did the first walk with the lookout and the egg shaped boulders. Interesting and a good beach. We even fought with wooden oars, but mine broke because it was made from two bits of wood. Damn shoddy craftsmanship cost me again. Then we tramped down the beach instead of the pathways. Its highly recommended if you are moderately athletic and you hate your clothes. We found a great looking eco lodge on the beach. They even had a four poster bed on the sand and a hot tub next door. Awesome stuff. Anmd a mere snip at $220 a night. Bit beyond our budget. That room costs the same as Angel Falls almost. Uribe did stay there though while we were there. So the whole park was crawling with military. We were a little disturbed at first, but I prefer the military to the police here in Colombia. By a long way. We ended up bouldering into a dead end and bleeding from different places. Then we scarmbled over some other boulders. This was serious scrambling. Leaping over gaps that scared the crap out of me, sliding free fall with feet breaks, scaling down trees hanging in mid air, crawling through gaps you can't reach and scratching yourself to ribbons on the plantlife. You battle one of these krypton factor courses for an hour and look back with rieghteous satisfaction only to be slapped with righteous indignation as to how truly pathetic it looks from down on the beach. I tore the arse out of my shorts and the skin from my legs. Brutalised, we even had to dodge a snake that Dom found and scattered a bat colony that had been hiding in the rocks. At one point we were tossing water bottles across chasms before making the jumps. There were definitely a few places where mistakes could have been fatal. The worst was when my bag got caught on an overhang and tried to push me over the edge of a cliff. I would scramble, hit the rock, slide down, scramble again and Tom eventually had to haul me over. It was like boarding a chopper in war. Really tough course. The others loved it and I did in moderation. Risking your life is fun, if you do it only 30 minutes at a time, but 3 hours or so is a little excessive. We saw some monkeys and some lizards, though Dom saw more than the rest of us. On one of the deserted beaches after some serious scrambling (to reach the beaches other travellers just can't reach) we came across an army of land crabs, strung out like Japanese world war two soldiers. Every one had his own hole and they ranged in size from small to big enough. It was a sea of blue, but only at 30m. Every crab as if on command hit his hole when you were less than 30m, but from that point the blue line can be seen, hovering next to the whole, wondering if they will need to scramble. Why we are dangerous at less than 30m I don't know. It was probably excessive cautiousness on their behalf. The beaches are good here and fronted by mountainous jungle. It really is an excessively pretty place. The later backpacker beaches are worse than the earlier ones, but you canm actually afford to stay there. The sea is apparently dangerous as well. I think its fine if you can swim well, but the tide is definitely strong and maybe dangerous for the uninitiated and foolish. They do have a swimming pool made from a rock cut off and the water is really refreshing there. We decided we were going to sleep on the beach, but the powers that be decided we would not. In fact they threatened us that we had to leave the backpacker place unless we commited to a hammock. Hmm. We asked if they had mosquito nets. They said no there was no need as there were no mosquitos. So we said good we would sleep on the beach and they said no it was too dangerous with all the mosquitos. Glad that was cleared up then. We snuck back, met a Catalan hippy who travels only on sales of trinkets in her wagon. Dom enjoyed being able to speak Catalan and then we headed to the beach to sleep with the tide and bats. Yet it was too cold. If you have long sleeved stuff you will be ok. If not its a problem. So we scrambled for a tent around midnight and I got a traditionally shit nights sleep in a tent. Always. Damn I hate them so much.

After the night of crap sleep we went to the piscina for the morning and swam. Then we decided to head out but Dom gave us the slip and we did not see him till the exit. We seriously underestmated the time we needed to get to Cartagena. It took us all day. We got there at midnight. This time we took the horse trail back though and it was a different kind of scenery. Pretty but the bouldering is more fun. We had problem with buses. Why are they never actually direct when they say they are. We did drive past Barrabquillas stadium while watching the play on tv and they scored. Kind of funny. Could here the stadium cheer over the live tv football. We were supposed to pay 2,000 pesos for storing our bags in the hostek as well, but we skipped out without paying. Dom was concerned the hostel would call our embassy and they would give us problems. I thought that might be a tad excessive for $0.80. The phonecall would be more expensive than the debt. Ah anyway we got to Cartagena and we stayed there forever doing nothing in particular and yet still managed to get some good stories. That takes skill and dedication. Does this satiate you for a while? Will fire up the rest up to date in Bogota, but you can see Colombia was a cool place. Plenty to do so far, but more to do later.