Parakeets and Pelicans

(I wrote this post Wednesday, but only found WiFi today)

Today was our first journey day. It was such a sense of rightness again to be waking in the dark, attaching all of my belongings to a bicycle, and pedaling out. Leaving the Cartagena city was a frenzy of headlight-to-trunk traffic, again the stew of lorries, buses, and donkey carts. My favorite this time was a young man out on a morning run, colorful spandex jogging outfit and all, right in the road with the traffic. I passed him within just inches on the bicycle.

We took the road 90A towards Galerazamba, and the city buildings dropped away to slums in the mangroves, and then to open dry countryside. Low spindly bushes, bony and tired, were the only things dotting the landscape, save for an occasional palm or cacti. Most of the land use in these parts is for cattle ranging. The world smelled like toast, hot and dry, slightly sweet. Like fall in summer. So goes the dry season here, life on hold until the rains. 

I nearly shrieked in delight to see drops of bright green in the trees--wild parakeets!!!--and hear their unmistakeable cackling.

We passed going the other way at least a dozen cyclists, all done up on fancy bikes in Lycra, and they waved at us good-naturedly. Of course there were the workmen traveling by bicycle, too, those with no other choice of transport. But, compared with Southeast Asia, I'd never seen people riding bikes for fun before.

The 90A road was delicious: paved, wide shoulders, only easy grades. Lady Elise and I know we've got it good when we can stop worrying about potholes, traffic, or maps, and just ride side by side talking about boys.

We've been met with generosity and goodwill the whole day. The passing buses and cars tap their horns in the gentlest manner--like clearing the throat ('scuse us!, coming thru!)--one lady in a truck pulled over to ask if we wanted to put our bikes in the back and ride, families waved at us and smiled, two men at a rest stop bought us cold purple gassy drinks and we chatted in English and Spanish together. They showed us pictures of good Colombian food on their phones and told us what some common expressions in the country mean. (My favorite was how you might call a good friend, "mi amigo! mi llave!", "my friend, my key!"--and traveling here, Elise and I really are each other's keys)

After the dreamy highway, we turned off onto a "side road" to get to the town where we would be staying. This changed our experience mightily. We jostled over a gritty sandy road, slumping into and out of massive potholes, heading into the wind from the coast, shadeless heat in midday. It may have only been 10 kilometers but it felt like a trip to outer space, off the deliciously-paved main highway. The vegetation we were passing was cacti and succulents and mangroves together, such a bizarre combination, all of them looking blown-out and desiccated in this dry season. Biking through sand is no better than wallowing, really. Some dirt bikes zoomed past us effortlessly and a few lorries trundled by, but mostly we were in the middle of nowhere.

We finally reached the town,  Galerazamba, where we had made reservations in a hotel, but when we arrived I could barely believe there could even be a hotel in such a tiny place. We passed the huge salt mine along the coast, and brightly painted small homes, all the roads sandy tracks. I asked a lady peeling garlic off her front porch, "hotel?", she gestured off in a direction.... but then said in Spanish, basically, "I have space here if you need it." Yet more generosity from people.

"There has GOT to be our hotel around here" I said through thick sun-brain to Elise; I had Google maps and a GPS in my device and could see we were practically right on it. But no house numbers, no street signs, no indication of the function of any of these buildings: all of it existing in anonymity for us foreigners, but to people here completely obvious I'm sure.

Finally we did see a small poster-like sign indicating "hostel", although no immediately obvious entrance. A long white wall extended and we walked along it, hopefully. No windows, no way to see inside. Just one narrow white double-door, as if into Narnia, or the Secret Garden, and magically someone was opening it from inside as we approached.

We'd found it. Our hotel. Inside was a different world, with succulent plants in pots, a volley ball net, and thatched tree-shaped structures that were out of Dr Seuss. Mr Hotel showed us a little room, a darling room, painted brightly teal, blue plastic chairs (not red this time!!), and with a cheery Christmas themed table cloth on the nightstand. He brought us a bar of "exotica" green apple soap and towels. TOWELS. I have never smiled so broadly at a towel before; having to carry the weight of every single item I travel with, I am extraordinarily minimalist in what I take (the day's tee shirt will serve as a towel). But to wash off all the road grit, sweat, exhaust, and exhaustion AND THEN towel dry afterwards, my joy was complete.

Actually, my joy was complete after eating half a body of fried fish--meaning an entire fish that had been breaded and deep fried--on the edge of the ocean. It was another anonymous building that we would never have known was a restaurant, except for a kindly stranger pointing it out to us ("casa negra"). Inside the casa negra we find an empty immaculate courtyard, a single (red plastic!) set of table and chairs, and no humans to suggest this would actually be a restaurant. After calling out "Hola!" for a while though, we were met with lovely cooks and eventually the fish. I was admiring the expanse of crashing ocean, and there Elisabeth observes, "oh look! There's a pig." Indeed, a random pig was ambling unhindered along the ocean shore, beneath the pelicans soaring above.

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