Right a few things first. The first is that I hate this computer. Its so slow. I just watched it reboot when asked to load up msn messenger and then sat on facebook and watched it type one letter at a time like rhythmic clockwork. So slow. One letter every 2 seconds and you don't even get the excitement of guessing what comes next since you just typed it. Well maybe not just. After the last of the sentence is completed eight hours after you typed it you may well have forgotten what you wrote or given up your will to live. Secondly my middle finger on my right hand is bust from playing football earlier. Makes typing hard and typos possible. Thirdly I am feeling melancholy this evening. Was up for clubbing and had the wind knocked out of my sails by ending up watching a film by Paul Verhoeven I believe about how the Nazis treated the Dutch during the final years of World War II. Nothing like that to fire you up for some rumba in Bogota. Was a mistake. Should have just gone drinking. At least we discovered boxed wine is only 9,000 pesos for a box. Thats enough for me for a night easy.
Right I promised character development last time, but I really can't be arsed. Suffice to say at the end of the hike I realised Itay was a nicer guy than I had guessed and really interesting. Would have been good to get to know him a bit more. Jo worked with jaguars in Bolivia for a month. That was kind of cool. He used to walk them or more accurately they used to walk him and he had to avoid being pounced on by the cats. Man this Seal song sucks. Ah better. A bit of killer. Early 90s techno. Retro writing. American Laura was having a whole one year trip paid for by Havard as development for her degree. Those were the most interesting facts. The others were all nice, but had nothing uniquely interesting enough to warrant rattling off any more additional pages than I have to. The ride back took ages. Typical Colombian time keeping. We wrap up the hike at 11am and the journey back is around 40km by car so naturally we get back at 5pm. They eat up their own time as well as ours. One of the jeeps even broke down and then we were treated to some perverse logic. Wilmur had to get on the roof of the bus over the bumpy rickety track, because there was no space. Now the fact that there was one space in the jeep never seemed to occur to anyone. Then when we got down and through the military checkpoint and got onto a normal, safe road. The kind of road you could ride on the roof, Wilmur decides to disembark and ride in the jeep. Jesus and he was our guide. I did find out from Jopke in Bogota that one tour group had not paid their fees and the group were forced to run downhill, while paramilitaries burst from the bushes and executed their driver. While we were stalled at a military checkpoint, Dom offered one of the little kids a sweet if they would take the other sweet as a sweetener for the army guards. It turned out sweet and amusing, even if it could have gone very wrong. We got back eventually and checked into the same place as last time, but in a better and cheaper place. Then just as we were leaving and after I had come back with pizza for Dom, in walks the Israeli girl from Panama. Very random. Dom was too crocked to go out and I joined the others for some drinks. My internet had informed me I had 16 unread messages and multiple other crap that had destroyed my inbox while I was on a six day hike. Some unexpected messages however and I learnt Jopke would be in Bogota and said I would come down for the friday. The night in Taganga was ok. Did randomly bump into Jack from Panama City as well though. Funny three seperate lots of us all in Taganga and not realising the others would be there. He had been delayed from joining us by the breakdown of their boat in the middle of the San Blas islands. Shit this finger is bust. Hmm this slow version of Crazy is a bit shit. oh maybe not its just gone funky. Enough Seal after this one. Met another American girl I knew from Cartagena and everyone seemed to get plastered. The music in El Garaje is mediocre at best as it bounces from salsa, to the Rolling Stones, to Jam Rock, to electronica. Weird mix. I just walked out in the end because I got bored and went back. The Israeli girl rocked up later on and had been arrested by the always uncorrupt Taganga police. They had accused her of having sex on the beach and the guy she was with of having some drugs. Neither was true apparently and they had to pay a 100,000 peso fine. She was also arrested a little later that week for possession of marijuana apparently. Those police are so corrupt.
In the morning I went out and grabbed breakfast for myself and Dom. Got chatting with the Israelis and eventually we made our way for Cartagena. Dom was still injured at this point but made it to Cartagena. This journey takes longer and longer everytime I attempt it. Its like they are going for the world record for incomptent slowness. In Barranquilla in the middle we flirted with a local girl, who was asking me whether I wanted a small bottle of coke like her. I had to get Dom to translate as none of it made any sense to me. In Cartagena we shared a taxi with a cute girl from Cali and he took us to the wrong place. So naturally rather than driving round the block he decided to reverse all the way down the road backwards into head on traffic. Ah Cartagena, you are so nuts. Dom was injured and I was knackered so we opted for Hotel London and gto a room for the night. I was offered some dodgy porn in the corridor, which was about as eventful as this night got. Ah it just felt weird to be sucked back into Cartagena even if it was for one night.
In the morning Dom's condition had not improved and he decided to stay behind to rest. I opted to push on and see some more places as I was getting the urge to see more than the coast, considering I had been in Colombia for well over half a month at this point. I took transport from Cartagena to Magangue and was a little concerned that I did not have enough time to make it to Mompos. Lonely Planet was again wrong, but I am not sure how many boats there were after my half past three boat from Magangue so I would leave early just in case. I had been mulling over the fact that I don't believe in thinking of the past. Jopke had mentioned that it was a curious disposition for a historian. That's true. I had concluded that not thinking on the past meant you would have no regrets though. Because usually if people dwell on their other choices, they will naturally compare the current reality with the other choice and that choice will naturally in their heads have gone ideally. So its not really a fair comparison. There was apparently also an annoying man on the bus next to me, but he could not have been so bad, because I could not remember him. He was always on the phone, polishing his briefcase weirdly or stopping the bus for a piss. From Magangue I took a boat to Bodega. There was a really pretty yellow church off to the left and I have no idea what it is. I have put that the boat was at its limits, but I am not sure what I was thinking. I remember the river being wide and muddy, like by the mud volcano and that it was fun to be back on a boat. It is the premier mode of transport, except for maybe quad bikes and trains. There was a military checkpoint set up on the river. For what I don't know. Well I suppose security is an issue. The military man asked me to open my bag. I asked if he wanted the small one or the big one. His answer was that one. What one. That one. The small one. Yes. Why can't he just say the small one when I asked him. The Spanish is somewhat incomprehensible around Mompos though. I realised now that the film I was watching today contained subtitles as it was in Dutch and I understood most of it. At Bodega we had to take a collectivo taxi to Mompos. Some random long yellow snake flashed across the front of us and we were stopped and given a military patdown. Well I was anyway. At least you know they have a lot of people out for security. I stayed in Mompos in the Casa Amarilla and they overcharged me, but came and refunded me later. I like Colombia. The honesty is touching.
Mompos itself is a beautiful colonial town. It would have been great for Semana Santa, but I am glad I at least got to see it on the way south. Was meeting Mayra in Bucaramanga the next day and moving on so otherwise I would have stayed longer. There was a yellow church that looked like a cake, small cobbled streets running like veins through the city and no electricity when I got there. I did not realise this for 3 hours, thats how little you need it round there. The locals sit out on the riverfront in rocking chairs wiling away the hours. There was a great Moorish church and a purple one that was very pretty. It was fun to wander around this town, but the river was special. It had so many weird phenomenons. I climbed up this decrepid bell tower in the middle of the town, filled with muttering bats. You can see out over the beautiful tiled roofs of the town and on the other side is the river. Sitting on the riverfront at night as the sun goes down, reading Mark Twain is awesome. Feels like being back on the Big Miss onlynot at the same time. The river itself is a mystery. Small fish leap from the waters in groups, while silent lightning dances in the background, giving a mysterious air to the evening. The electricity kicks back in just as the sun drops and the street lights flicker to life to take on the burden in the town. Its as if everyone and everything does just enough work, but never rushes. The river is so crystal clear a vista it resembles a painting by Canaletto. Then the sun dims and the edges blur into a Constable. Finally as the sun dips down, tired from its exertions you see the work of Monet, the lines blurring and dancing into impressionism and the impression it leaves is one of immense satisfaction. Then another bout of lightning crackles silently away to itself and its as if nature itself won't allow a sound to infringe upon this intimacy.
In the morning I got breakfast before heading out. I have listed the gold-mica quote from Twain's Roughin It. To paraphrase it he finds some Mica that shines so brightly that he believes it to be gold. He is told by an old prospector that gold in its natural state is quite dull and all that glitters is not gold. Then Twain states despite this education he still fails to apply it to mankind. He often mistakes men of Mica as men of Gold, while the truly great go on unnoticed. Only those that have no value feel the need to polish their own reputation. If I can write half as many great things as Twain I would be a happy man, for he is so inciteful and cuts to the core of humanity. Genius knows no time constraints. He's also very right. When I was less confident I came across more so by trying far too hard. Now I just relax into my skin. I got an expensive 20,000 peso ride on a truck to El Banco. It was a hot, dustym bumpy three hour ride. Interesting scenery as you pass through the untravelled middle of the country. When I got to the bus station I was accosted by two guys. Both claimed their bus was going next, one was slightly cheaper and both insisted the other was a liar. Hmm a dilemma. How would I know who was telling me the truth. I decided to state that I would pay whichever price went first but I would only pay it when the bus leaves the station. One guy backed down off that. Ah nice to split them. He clearly could not keep his ruse. This bus journey was incredibly long at 8 hours more or less and I was so late getting to meet Mayra. I had a few missed calls and a text that I could not reply to, due to lack of credit. Colombian phone companies came up with the ingenious ruse that phone credit should only last for seven days and then you need to buy some more, regardless of how much you had left. I should really charge it here. I saw a crap Nic Cage film about predicting the future, although it had no sound. Then I slept a bit. I read some part of Twain where he repeated the story he had heard on the overland coach over and over again in print to hammer home how bored he was of the repetition as well. Ironically at this moment the DVD was stuck on the title screen and repeating the same line over and over again until it almost killed the driver. The line was 'And the winner is our very own Lucinda Glass' or some such. Over and over and over and over and over and over etc etc. She may well have been the winner, but I can assure you that the rest of us on the bus were definitely the losers. Then the driver switched over to shitty Mexican music and I hated him for his taste. One more pearler of wisdom before we arrived. 'Necessity is the mother of taking chances'. So true. I was now in Bucaramanga.
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