Colombia: first impressions

First impressions of Colombia.

The biggest impression is how nice everyone is; people have been very kind to us. We've been offered rides, given thumbs up as we pass. The restaurant staff take excellent care of us. We've been bought cold drinks by people, given directions. They are patient with us and our Spanish. Friendly, in that happily-friendly way, not the filling-a-requirement way. A little boy bringing me my bicycle helmet when I dropped it. A gentleman warning me that my cellphone was going to fall out of my pocket (it actually was fine but I appreciated his gesture).

Fresh fruit and vegetables available even in the smallest tiendas. There may not be a huge selection, but we've always found at least carrots and passionfruits.

Cash only in all stores, restaurants, and hotels. Almost exclusively I think.

Dogs. Tan colored and bone thin, lazing or trotting everywhere. These are not mean dogs, thank the lord, unlike my harried encounter with dogs in Thailand and the states.

LOUD salsa or merengue music everywhere, in the cities. Playing in shops, blasting out of homes (making it sound like every house may be hosting a birthday party), coming out of cars.

Variety of colors of people, brown and dark brown and light and very dark. As far as I can tell so far there doesn't seem to be any color-based segregation.

Fried food. The little glass aquariums of yellow crescents, circles, and tubes along the highway. Fried road snacks.

Don't flush the toilet paper. There's little waste baskets in the banyos for this purpose.

Don't drink the water. You can buy it in chilled plastic bottles (por turismo), or in 5 liter jugs, or in PLASTIC BAGS. I bought a 5.5L bag of water today, chilled gloriously, and carried it home aslosh on my shoulder. Cutting an edge off the blugging thing and aiming into another jug was a supreme test of focus and confidence: don't let a drop go to waste!

The shopkeepers and venders are much less in your face than in southeast Asia (my only other comparable experience)...they'll mostly let you look without dragging you over to something or breathing on your arm. Of course you'll be paying the white tourist price, and bartering is expected.

Trash, trash, trash. In small piles outside shops, in large piles being picked through by those who have to, collecting in troves in the mangrove roots by the river, flapping off bony trees in the wind.

My short hair is definitely a stand-out; although this culture seems to be daily egalitarian between men and women, the women definitely prize their long locks. I can imagine how ODD I appear here in comparison with the richly chocolate, curvy, long-haired women; I'm pale as pastry (as yet), inarguably tall, flat chested and muscly like the boys....The staring is not nearly as blatant as it was in southeast Asia, though. Thankfully.

The honking. Unlike the states, horn noises do not translate into "you ass-hole", or "out of my way you idiot", instead they translate into "hey everybody! Coming through!", or  "I'm kinda big, watch out."

The hostel cats sound--as ridiculous as this is--remarkably like my cell phone text indicator (for those of you unfortunate enough to know what that sounds like). Yowl-like and piercing and needy and unabashed. Definitely unlike the complacent US housecats I'm accustomed to.

No English or excellent English. People in shops or restaurants so far have had no English vocabulary to offer us but the few people we meet that have speak English speak it very well. In comparison, other places I've traveled the shop keepers have a few basics in English, but here we are left to sonic forth in our mangled Spanish. People are incredibly patient with this though, since I especially sound like a caveman with a brain injury.

Elise put it this way, if you had to make it very simple, Colombia is as if "Puerto Rico and Cambodia mated."

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Accompanying Photos to Parakeets and Pigs

A little traffic on the way to Galerazamba.

Our darling hostel room. I love sleeping with my bike.

Ocean View With Pig.

Fish of bliss.

Found this Halloween vintage Butterfinger in my bike bag--what joy!--and thought of you, Mum, as I enjoyed it (Elise got half of it too, as that's how we share around here). What a funky hand-puppet shadow it made on my chest though.  

Classic view from the highway 90A.

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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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That moment of YES on the bike

After two tumultuous days, this one has been glorious, both in comparison and in its own right.

Since I arrived I have not ridden the bicycle (except in wide-eyed wonder from the airport to the hostel), as I was still acclimating, letting my senses come to terms with what felt safe and what was uncomfortable. I stayed with my musketeers and walked.

But today! I got on the bicycle and set off solo to navigate the city. Finally, on my wheels, the rhythm of pedals and the pulse of the incomprehensible scenes as I flowed past and within them. The taxis, donkey carts, salsa music, the smells of chicken frying, the blaring sunshine. It was a soul-swelling moment of YES, yes I am doing the thing for why I came here. 

I love city bicycling, although my musketeers do not, and in fact it is best done alone for those micro-moment decisions and swerved avoidances.
Without paniers I am swift and maneuverable and joined the flush of humanity headed to central city. This involved some biking up one-way streets, hopping onto sidewalks, lifting the bike over medians. For me it is a zen experience, where I cannot concentrate on any one detail (avoiding potholes, looking for street signs, smiling at an old lady carrying fruit, etc) too much, but must fan out my senses and be aware of all of it at once. And a gentle awareness, too; I actually am not stressed out, because then in stress I'd seize up and lose the joy of it. And most drivers and others on the road are not full of rage, everyone is just going where they need to go and holes in the flow organically produce themselves, and you get around the man pushing the fruit cart while the bus behind you slows down just enough.

I think I'm picking up on one unspoken rule necessary to this, though, which is the Fifth and Sixth Laws of Thermodynamics: objects appearing to make motion in a certain direction are expected to continue in that direction, and, the movement through space of objects should be at steady velocity. Meaning, that if I pull off the sidewalk into the street I should do so smoothly and steadily with conviction, without suddenly changing my course; if Mr Mule Cart looks like he's going to turn left, he is expected to indeed turn left.

It is an un-correographed dance of transport.

I passed through the thickness of the city mess and rode around the jauntily shaped peninsula of Boca Grande and there the streets widened out and it was all ocean views and the ostentatious resort buildings giving me delicious shade. What a blissful little ride that was. Experiencing that area was the high-heeled, well-heeled, air-conditioned turismo Colombia, the preened beaches and numerous taxis; I've been staying deep in some barrio at a sweet hostel for USD$8/night and seeing this side of the city was fascinating contrast.

For the logistically minded:
Tomorrow Lady Elise and I set off on bicycles to begin the actual journey portion of this adventure. We are riding east along the coast, towards Barranquilla, where we will be the weekend for one of the grandest festivals in South America. The festival itself is a UNESCO event. Musketeer Laura will be meeting us there, as she is having her own version of her time in Colombia (bussing and working on a farm, rather than bicycle tripping).

Returning to my bicycle after an afternoon of trotting about the old walled city, and looks like he'd made a friend.

The walled city held such delights for me. I was revelling in the ease and beauty of the day, basting my eyes in the Spanish architecture, enjoying a splurgy Colombian cappuccino (well, just under USD$2 splurging that is), and walking lazily along the top of the fat stone wall encasing the old city. I bought a pair of hideously patterned floofy pants (not shown) and a tiny baby made out of sugar (below). 

Sugar baby.

This guy.

Characteristically colorful street in the walled city.

A Secret Garden, burgeoning out into the street, in the walled city.

Plaza in the walled city.

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Two contrasting street scene videos

Biking along the schmany Boka Grande peninsula, the air conditioned tourist area. Wide roads, lack of traffic, ocean views.

And this is the rest of the city of Cartagena, the press of pulsing humanity in transport. Look how it all flows and works together though.

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Passing of the Peace (Tumultuous Day Numero 2)

Currently, if I express emotion using the right eyebrow I experience a momentary headache. Which is actually kind of amusing because it will then go away immediately. How can this be?

It has to do with a small, now-hilarious (thankfully), head incident which occurred this morning.

The three musketeers (that's Lady Elise, her friend Affable Laura, and myself) set out into the old city of Cartagena for our complimentary Yellow Fever shots yesterday morning. Colombia provides free yellow fever vaccines for anyone entering the country, which is quite gracious in my opinion.

Now, I've had many, many vaccines in my life with little drama (even a series of three "labies" vaccines in Thailand, of all places).

We musketeers have relived the following events, each from our different perspectives, and our simultaneous experiences make this story.

My experience: standing up successfully post-needle and padding out into the warm waiting room of the clinic. A little light-headedness came upon me so I wisely sat down--this will pass soon--but the sitting wasn't sufficient so I put my head between my legs and that wasn't sufficient so I did the very adult activity of fiddling with my toes to distract myself. And then: decades later I was somehow returning from very far away and my vision was distorted and my view aspect was wrongly towards the ceiling and I was 8 years old for a moment too (the first time this happened) and there was much Spanish.... and oh, darnit, oops, so sorry everyone. 

I was splayed on the (extraordinarily filthy) clinic floor.

But what better place to pass out than surrounded by doctors and nurses? Even if they spoke no English. Immediately there was a generous flurry of language-less activity. Two lifted me up and carried me to a spare room with a bed; another brought me ice for my head; yet another returned rapido with a small coconut cookie wrapped in a bit of parchment. "Azucar!"  I felt decidedly wretched for about 45 minutes, but eventually will-powered mind over matter and stood up and walked out through the wobbly ickiness and out into the bright world with my musketeers. But the old city was filled with sweets and I replenished my blood sugar and found myself distracted with shipping and angled metal earrings and HOW WONDERFUL it is to see yourself returning to normal. It was a two-earrings day, for the shopping: a panacea of sorts if there ever can be one.

Lady Elise's version: Ok, so I know Sandra, she's prone to strange stretching poses at arbitrary times, she's stretching her back, that's cool. Wait...her toes?, now THAT'S a little weird, Oh Nooooo there she goes. And Elise looks at the Colombian woman sitting on Sandra's other side, and in that wordless communication surfacing above all languages, they both reach for their respective Sandra arms and try to stem the slow-motion splat towards the floor.

And then Elise had to answer about 40 people questioning her if Sandra had eaten breakfast, "si si, huevos y vegetales!"  And, no, she's not prone to convulsions. All white and narrow, Sandra must've looked half-dead even when she walked in. But Elise is steadfast and solid calm and took someone's blue binder of medical records and began fanning Sandra and wiping the filthy floor tattoos off her.

Laura's experience: go find more sugar!, rapido!, Laura was bid. She set off into the pulsing unlabeled streets and crowds, navigating this world alone on A Quest. One might expect buying some fruit juice would be straightforward, but nothing normally straightforward ever is when you're in a place like Colombia. Without good language skills, either, one cannot quickly ask for directions. So Laura, with serendipity and intuition found herself in a large market. She isolated the mango juice and brought it to the vendor, presenting Senorita Vendor with the only money she happened to be carrying, a single $50,000 note (about $15 USD), which in Colombia is massive. Mrs. Vendor gave her the stink-eye (standard here if you pay for anything with a huge bill like that) but then realized Laura was determined to have this mango juice. So Mrs. Vendor flapped around in her money drawer but lacked enough small bills, so she beckoned the people behind Laura in line to pay her for their purchases, until she could finally break Laura's $50,000. 

What an orchestration! What an unsavory experience! But I am now carrying some sugary snacks wherever I might go. (Not that I'm getting anymore shots here.) But I was well-taken care of and so grateful for that. Once again learning to take nothing for granted.

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Shopping and Wandering, Cartagena Day 2

Troubled Bridge Over Water. Cartagena.

Fashioned myself this very unattractive "purse"; there is no reason to be showing off a neat bicycle bag. My "wallet" is the stupid little blue envelope.

This purchase, for a whopping $6,000 (just under USD2), was my favorite of the day. Pride bike brakes! The world always needs more color.

These ladies' underpants have a special little rouche in the back to accentuate the butt cheeks. (!)  See the diagram on the tag. Ohhhh Latina culture.

Shopping for sugary snacks, what colorful and patterned fun.  A wonderfully bizarre market experience, about 8 stalls set up under a building awning, ALL OF THEM selling the exact same products, and the smell of urine unmistakeably in the air. Welcome to not-America.

One of those Everything Shops. Bright colorful plastic, barely enough aisle space to turn around, salsa music blaring.

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