Santa Elena: Enjoying the Views

One of the greatest pleasures in life, either when you travel or when you live in Cornwall, is to draw back your curtains in the morning and pause for a few seconds as you take in the wonderful views. Now when you stay in 'budget' accommodation around the world, you're more likely to see concrete, garbage and rusty iron than herds of wilderbeast roaming majestically across the savannah, but this morning, just for once, our hearts missed a beat as we realised what good luck we've been having on this expedition. Take a look!




Can you see the guava tree in this shot?

Sometimes travelling can be one big problem-solving excercise. Take this, for example: Caracas is so dangerous (due to La Inseguridad) and so tricky to negotiate with large backpacks, we were seriously scared as we planned our journey through the city last week. Just imagine our amazement and delight to find out that we had purchased tickets which would deliver us not to the expected bus terminal La Bandera, but to the Terminal Oriente, exactly the place we needed to be for our onward connection. So the problem wasn't just solved, it merely evaporated!
Our next major worry was just how, exactly, were we to find our way safely back across Caracas on our way to the airport and onwards to Cuba. The problem was compounded by money issues: don't forget we can only use the cash we are carrying (to get the best exchange rate) and that there are expensive taxis to consider (the airport is at Maiquetia, 26 km away on the northern coast) and there is a hefty departure tax to pay just to leave the country, but we're not quite sure just how much this is going to be. So the logistics of this problem were, quite frankly, huge. Should we try to arrive on a night bus and then go directly to the airport, or should we try to stay overnight in the city and then travel onwards? All this is further complicated by the fact that muggings, express-kidnappings and fake taxi drivers are commonplace here. What to do?
Well, it turns out that Cubana de Aviacion have changed the time of our flight from midday to an evening departure. Problem solved immediately: night bus, taxi to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Somebody up there loves us! Oh, but wait, just hang on there a cotton-picking minute....
This means that we'll be clearing customs in Havana sometime after midnight, with no airport bus, and nowhere booked to stay. Out of the frying pan.....

Venezuela: Santa Elena de Uairen

Before you read much further, go and take a look at the map and find out just exactly where Santa Elena de Uairen is. Roughly speaking, you'll need to be looking at the bottom right-hand corner of Venezuela. Just about on the border with Brazil, and fairly close to the border with Guyana. There's just one road. The rest is pure, pure countryside. This area is called Grand Sabana, and the beautiful, lush, undulating forest and grassland is punctuated by the astonishing and other-worldy tepui which rise up solemnly and vertically from the ground. But being so close to northern Brazil (and only five degrees north of the equator) it's Amazonas. We're in the Parque Nacional de Canaima: there are two main modes of transport; boat and plane. Sometimes the rainforest is just too dense for anything else. But if you're expecting us to visit the Angel Falls, well, humble apologies, for during our planning stage we realised that now it's the dry season and that the famous waterfall would just be a mere trickle. Frustratingly though, do you remember that our Orinoco visit had been thwarted back in January? This was due to unusually high levels of water in the river: this dry season has been exceptionally wet! And we have just heard that the falls have been worth seeing after all. This might well mean another trip to Venezuela!
It's a country that needs a little time to be loved. After Colombia, it came, quite frankly, as a bit of a shock. It's just not the happy playground of the Caribbean that Cartagena turned out to be; it's displaying so many of the 'indicators' of a third world nation. And the growl of the monster sized engines in virtually every vehicle (almost every tiny bus seems to have been re-engined and tuned up to growl like a racing car!) is bordering on the bizarre. But the oil wealth seems not to touch the ordinary citizens, who, quite frankly seem to be struggling very badly.
So our little love affair with this country is fairly on-and-off and very much rollercoaster. The landscapes are fantastic, but Chavez is a disappointment. Yet down here in Santa Elena, we've managed to find something special: a little town that is far more than simply a border post. The surrounding countryside is spectacular, the climate is varied (sometimes unbelievably hot, followed by refreshing breezes) and the town itself is great to spend just a few days.
Remember the food halls of Asia which we raved about last year? Well this afternoon, as we walked along regretting the omnipresent burger stalls and arepas hereabouts, wishing for a Malaysian-style food court, we turned a corner and lo, as manna from heaven, there immediately in front of us was an impressive covered hall of about thirty independent snack bars, cafes and restaurant serving everything from menus del dia, to Brazilian-style Churros and fruit shakes.
The Brazilian influence extends to language here, too: conversations swing between Spanish and Portuguese with ease and fluency.
Here the indigenous people are the Pemon, and yes, of course they have their own, unique language. But this area might be considered somewhat isolated today, in times past it was considered to be the last frontier. Remember the film The Mission, which tells the story of the Jesuits and the Guarani in the 1760s? Well here the Pemon lived completely isolated from the outside world until 1922, when the Capuchins began to set up missions to convert the tribes throughout Southeast Venezuela. And this is exactly the year of the founding of the cathedral of Santa Elena, which we stumbled upon during a walk out of the centre of the town.

Over the Orinoco

Well, look up to the subtitle and scroll right down to our first few blog entries. We promised you the Rio Orinoco, and this should have happened sometime back in early January. But, due to water levels in the river delta, it didn't happen at all.
A promise is a promise, and here it is! We crossed over the Orinoco at Ciudad Bolivar on the way to our final goal in Venezuela, Santa Elena de Uairen. Here is the mighty river:

So we left Coro on the value night bus to Caracas, which delivered us direct to the Terminal de Oriente in time for a very early breakfast of hot coffee and pan de manteca, as well as the chance to buy a ticket for the 8.00am day bus straight out again, direct to Ciudad Bolivar. We saw a little of Caracas by night, and a little of the hills surrounding the city. Very beautiful, but the city: very dangerous, no time to linger! The first few hours of bus journey out East delivered magnificent views of the mountians, the mists and the favelas. Magical, but best enjoyed from the safety and comfort of the bus. We arrived in Bolivar around dusk, just in time to secure a ticket on the night bus down to Santa Elena. Dawn was breathtaking, and suddenly, as we reached the village of San Francisco, we glimpsed Monte Roraima from the bus windows. This is going to be the experience of a lifetime!

Coro: Getting Out of Town!

Corrrr-o! This was only a little frustrating, but we shall reveal all!
The ticket office was due to open at 7 in the morning; the tickets to Caracas from this office were half the price of everybody else and the advice was to get there early! So we made it to the bus terminal just after 6.30, when all the counters were shrouded in darkness and it appeared that, save for a lone man perusing a broadsheet newspaper, we were the only people around. We positioned ourselves slap bang in front of the office window, and waited. Eventually the newspaper man piped up, in rapid and impenetrable Spanish, which we were tempted to ignore, were it not for the fact that what we did manage to glean from his oration was that he had numbered us seven and eight. It began to dawn on us that he was the ‘marker’, and that other people had arrived earlier than us but weren’t waiting by the window: perhaps they had gone off to do some other chores and would return presently. Now what would you do in this situation? Would you accept your number in a non-existent queue from a stranger, or would you pretend to ignore him and plead ignorance and language barrier, thus ensuring that you had become number one and two?
Well, given the appalling, blatant if not flagrant culture of queue jumping in this continent, we decided upon the latter course of action. And we badly wanted the tickets. Now as soon as the office lights had been turned on by the manager coming in to work, people began to appear as if by magic, from every angle, converging upon the two weary travellers. A peroxide blonde woman of a certain age became the most vocal, especially owing to the fact that she had been appointed queue member “Number One”, or should I say “Numero Uno”?. She ranted. She ranted some more, accompanied by a pretty black girl, who seemed to think she was number two. Now their flimsy argument definitely smelt of number twos, and so the British pair stood their ground, blocking all access to the window and impressively holding down the argument completely in Español. Blonde Number One screamed that she had been here since 4.30 in the morning to buy her ticket, and Simon tried to explain that actually she was in error, because she hadn’t really been here (pointing to the ground beneath him) at all, and that she had been over there (pointing to a distant location in the terminal where she had been loitering. And by her rules, we could have argued that we had been there since 1pm yesterday! But all to little avail, whilst Jon took a slightly different tack, by maintaining until he was blue in the face that we were at the head of the queue because that’s exactly where we were standing, and, furthermore, where we had positioned ourselves twenty minutes previously when there was only Newspaper Man standing some few meters away. He also pointed out to them that they should relax because the number of people in the queue anyway did not exceed the capacity of the omnibus, which is what they were making out of this to be honest. And after all, we were British, the world experts in queue etiquette. As all this was heating up nicely and getting itself into full swing, the manager decided to pitch in with some choice comments. What we picked up from his particular version of Spanish was that if the squabbling didn’t cease immediately, he wouldn’t be selling any tickets at all, and that nobody would be going to Caracas. Ouch. The squabbling continued. The manager continued. What we then managed to pick up was the manager’s entire take on the situation, and suddenly things began to swing dramatically in our favour. It became clear that, in his inflated opinion, in order to secure your position in a queue, you need to be physically present in it. Now this clearly isn’t rocket science, it’s just common sense. To underline our inside triumph but also to shut everyone up, and in perfect Spanish, Jon suggested to the assembled throng that they should all consider growing up. The squabbling continued still. The manager emerged from his office and physically began to arrange the members of the mob into their positions in the queue. Meanwhile Jon Number One and Simon Number Two successfully purchased their cut-price tickets to Caracas.
As they hastily walked away from the crowd, it suddenly dawned upon them that they would be sharing a night bus and a long journey with all these people, later on today. Perhaps they will all have forgotten about it by then? They might even turn out to be fun people…
Caracas was filling us with dread, as we were expecting to arrive at Terminal de la Bandera and then have to schlep a further 18 kilometres out to the eastern edge of the city to the Terminal Oriente to catch a bus to Cuidad Bolivar and beyond. We read our tickets with surprise and glee: this bus would take us direct to the eastern terminal. So no wonder it was a cut-price ticket: for people travelling to central Caracas, it would be a major inconvenience. For two guys hoping to get out of town, it was divine providence and so we celebrated with two piping-hot Venezuelan coffees! And they only(!) cost half of our complete bus journey!

Later, just before leaving, the globe-trotting gastronauts sought out the one and only central restaurant in Coro serving a late almuerzo. Washed down with fresh rasperry juice, Jon had some kind of unidentified fried fish with beetroot and arepa (barely passable) and Simon had the local Caribbean delicacy of goat. It was, without doubt the most revolting, repulsively worst meal he has ever eaten...

Venezuela: Further Impressions

Well, following yesterday’s little rant, some much-needed research has been carried out:
Firstly, Chavez has implemented massive programmes of adult education to boost literacy rates, and quality medical care is now available to the poorest sectors of society. So it’s not all doom and gloom here in Venezuela. But somehow the place seems to lack the sheer vibrancy of Colombia, and for all the friendliness of the people we meet, there are far fewer smiles.
Now Coro has some very pleasant facets, but quite frankly, after spending lots of time in Cartagena, there’s just no way it can ever really thrill. But let’s just take a look at face value:

Zamora is the old, cobbled street with the most interesting windows and doorways. We dropped by San Clemente which dates from the sixteenth century, and then proceeded to the cathedral of Coro, which is a Minor Basilica and one of the first sites of Christian worship on the entire continent. There is something about the religious fervour of ordinary people in both Colombia and Venezuela that seems to be on a completely different level to most of the rest of South America, so that’s saying something! Shrines are absolutely everywhere, and treated with the utmost respect. On our first full day in Colombia, we arrived bright and early at the little airport in Pasto. The Avianca crew were just arriving for work, and a smartly uniformed pilot walked purposefully up to a faded wall poster of a famous painting of the Virgen from the shrine near Ipiales, kissed his hand and touched the poster. So all is not lost in the battle with the ‘missionaries’ for the people have their traditions, and hold them dear. And on the subject of mission, this is exactly the word Chavez has used in his crusade for the provision of services to the poor and the outcast.

As we headed back to the sanctuary of the hammocks in El Gallo for a second evening, San Francisco beckoned, with its cloister and soothing lighting. So Coro is a relaxing place to spend a few days, and tomorrow our programme will be an entire twelve hour slot of doing absolutely nothing.

But this lack of action is quite deliberate, for then we are making directly for the very bottom right corner of the country (that’s a technical term, of course) via Caracas. It’s going to involve two consecutive nights on buses, and a transit through one of the most dangerous cities of the world, where La Inseguridad describes the urban terror of opportunistic crime. Once we’ve reached Grande Sabana, there will be Brazilian food to eat and an entire mountain to climb! Wish us luck, keep your fingers crossed, and hope to hear from us by the end of the week.

Coro and the Surroundings!

After swatting more mosquitoes than I can count on two hands, our room in Santa Ana de Coro became completely inhabitable, but just in case any more crazy little critters squeezed through the netting in the windows or under the door, we placed, and angled, the two fans carefully so that they blew around the whole room, covering every inch. We learned from our past trips that mosquitoes and other biting bugs don’t do so well in the face of wind, which thereby formed this rationale. Once convinced of our accurate fan precision positioning we headed out of the comfort of the hostel and went in search of a late night bite. Not a soul was out in the streets and everybody’s lights were either off or the shutters had been fastened so that nobody could break in. Should we have really been out? Well, things turned out as we rewarded ourselves with a neopolitano pasta, Coca-Cola and beer from the only visible restaurant, which was well lit up. On a Sunday night, it seems that everybody is inside. Perhaps as a Catholic country, they treasure Sundays as rest days. We’ll find out if Mondays are equally quiet, or not, tonight as we have one more night here before the next stage of the journey. After the meal it was pretty much straight to bed, and when we woke up this morning, low and behold, there were no mosquito bites! One has just managed to stick its needle-like proboscis through my sock at this moment though. NEVER let your guard down!
As for today, what was in store for us was a real treat! Taking a short, ten-minute hop on the frantic local bus just to the outskirts has never been so easy and the prize at the end was sheer brilliance! We disembarked from the vehicle and marched on for ten more minutes along a short avenue, which came to a dead end. Well, most drivers would call it a dead end, but pedestrians would call it something like a ‘live start’. Certainly the start of an awesome day, even though the day was rolling by already! The concrete disappeared beneath a sudden steep slope of sand, where we eagerly continued hiking up to the brow, pleasantly being shaded by the trees’ wide spreading branches and leaves. At the peak of this sand hill, we were stunned that we had truly reached a large desert of both gentle and raised dunes. It appeared like something straight outside of Aladdin’s cave, and although this sounds absolutely magical, meeting forty thieves was not at all high on our agenda. Least of all here in Latin America!
We discovered that we weren’t alone as we heard numerous shrieks from the nearby thorny shrubbery surrounding us, but it was soon revealed that goats and their kids were the culprits! The wild goats roam freely across the windswept dunes, not really seeming too phased by our humanly presence. That being said, one kid was following far behind his mother and she appeared literally frantic as she choked out a large gruff, whilst projecting her grey and off-pink tongue fiercely forwards in the direction of her beloved. The little baby continued scampering through the sand, which slipped away from his hooves on every step, but he made no real effort to obey his ‘madre’ and hurry up. The rebel!
Having visited the dunes making up the Parque Nacional Los Médanos de Coro, in the harsh midday sun, we are fortunate not to have fried today. The only thing that caught us out were the sneaky grains of sand that filled our shoes, but we had fun making sandcastles out of it all, once emptied!

Venezuela: Santa Ana de Coro

Well. We’ve made it, down the long (and straight) road into the colonial town of Coro, in the mid-north of Venezuela, on the Caribbean. Tomorrow we’re setting off from the UNESCO heritage town to see the famous, heritage sand dunes, and hopefully, the bright blue Caribbean again…
But first, we’ve got to tell you about how we made it here. We boarded our bus out of historical Cartagena around 6 in the evening yesterday, after completing our visits to all the churches of the city. Earlier in the day, Simon had gone to the midday mass at the Franciscan Tercen Orden, which lies at the boundary of Getsemani, and as we prepared to leave, we took one last spin around the wonderful Plaza Trinidad, where, suddenly, and for the first time this week, the massive, fortress-like wooden doors of this grand old church had been flung open, almost as if they knew it was our last chance to visit. The faded grandeur within was exactly what the façade had promised. And then, as we trundled along Calle Media Luna for one last time, this time heavily laden with our backpacks already groaning with souvenirs and gifts, the doors of the tiny San Roque were open as the lights illuminated the blue east wall for the early evening mass. We were on our way…
The crowded town bus to the terminal took a whole hour, edging slowly through the suburbs of teeming market stalls and tiny, brightly-painted bungalows, each surrounded by bars and fences. Salsa pounded from every angle; the bass lines carry the furthest, with their hypnotic rhythms which make the whole body pulsate. A tasty Menu del Dia refreshed the intrepid travellers as they set off on a fiercely air-conditioned night bus to Maicau, the last town in Colombia before the Venezuelan border. Countless police checkpoints tended to impede the progress, but each little village provided a tropical taste of yet more pounding salsa. Terrific! The road signs were fascinating too, for between Barranquilla and Santa Marta we noticed some large yellow ‘beware’ signs which seemed to be alerting night-time motorists to the presence of large ant-eaters in the road!
And then at 5 am, we were in Maicau. We were bundled into the back of a por puesto. The man said it would cost 20,000 pesos. Yes, yes that’s fine. What’s a por puesto, you ask? Well imagine all the cars in a 1970s cop series set in Los Angeles. We’re talking big, really big, old American cars here. That haven’t been serviced or cleaned since the 1970s. Very Venezuelan, very exciting! Our backpacks go in the trunk, which fails to shut; each time the driver tries, the lid just gently and languidly springs up again. But soon a screwdriver fixes the problem, and we’ll be needing that screwdriver a little later, as it’s the only thing able to open the lid… “What’s that Senor? 25,000 pesos?! Now you know that’s not what we just agreed with the other guy! Right, ok then, we’ll just get right out of this petrol fume-ridden, rusting death trap and wait until you can stop lying. Oh, what’s that, 20,000 would be fine?” And we’re off along the road to Paraguachon, the border controls. Dawn is breaking, and as we walk up to the office, the cock crows.
Our smart visas speed our entry, and soon the automobile is off once more, tearing along the road at a hair-raising speed, with four other small concerns which raise all hairs yet further (and we’re not just talking eyebrows here!) Firstly, the pot-holes (well, craters is a more apt description) mean that we can’t just proceed in a straight line: to avoid these massive depressions in the road surface, we have to weave along. And weave we do, at maximum speed. Next, there is the racing line to consider. Now here in Venezuela, they drive on the right: nominally. But it’s much, much more fun to drive on the left, or in the middle. Well that’s what it seems like at any rate. And then there’s the overtaking. Of course it’s a race, and a pretty whacky one, at that. Overtaking must occur at every available opportunity. Especially when there’s a blind corner coming up, or even better, the brow of a hill. And finally, there’s playing chicken. You just put your headlights on full beam, honk your horn furiously, and drive straight at the oncoming vehicles.
The road to Maracaibo has many fascinating diversions, such as the teeming bird life around the Gulf of Venezuela. The villages have a high indigenous population, and we notice the women in long, flowing, colourful robes. But the garbage, the garbage. The country has no environmental policy to speak of, and especially in the town of San Rafael del Mojan, we become acutely aware of one of the very real problems facing Venezuela. In suburban Colombia it was bad, but here, it’s much more hard-core. We arrive in Maracaibo all in one piece, and even manage to dabble on the black market money exchange within seconds of setting foot in the bus terminal. For those of you who may wish to travel to Venezuela in the future, don’t worry about trying to find the black market: it will, without any doubt, find you. Now let’s not forget that there are two exchange rates: the ludicrously high, artificial, yet official, exchange rate of 2.15 Bolivars to the dollar, and then there’s the black market. We achieved a rate of 6.5 Bolivars to the US $, which we considered great! (Us naïve novices thought we were getting a great deal, but still improved on our exchanges when we changed money with our hostel at 7.8 Bolivars to the dollar.) Now which option would you choose? We met a fellow traveller earlier on in our journey who ranted about how expensive Venezuela was, but it was revealed that she used her ATM card and was receiving less than a quarter of what we’ve been getting!
As if by magic, a bus boy appears in front of us screaming ‘Coro! Coro! Coro! (all bus boys shout everything three times in Latin America) and suddenly we find ourselves on a typically Venezuelan bus, bouncing along the highway. The curtains make it tricky to see out of the front window, but the rosary and picture of the Sagrado Corazon lend a spiritual fervour to the expedition. Wind buffets us from the open side windows, and the salsa is set to maximum decibels. Arriba!



The bridge over the Lago Maracaibo affords amazing views of the oil-rich metropolis with its skyscrapers and super-tankers. Columbus himself was the first European to set foot in Venezuela, on his third voyage in 1498, when he anchored within sight of Trinidad. It was only when he found the mouth of the Orinoco that he realised it was not an island, but an entire continent. But it was Amerigo Vespucci who visited Lago Maracaibo in the following year and noticed the thatched homes on stilts in the lake, calling the land ‘Little Venice’.
And what’s Chavez managing to achieve with all this oil wealth? Well, take it from us, this is our final country in this vast continent, and we’ve been everywhere apart from Guyana (and we might even be setting foot there, next week) and Suriname. This is a continent in a mess, and that mess is perhaps even more shocking than India. Yes there is the rural poverty of the campesiños and the hard life they lead managing to scrape by with basic agriculture. But it’s the urban poverty which is the most shocking, most depressing. This is a continent of favelas, with little cohesion and little in the way of support networks. The Base Urban Communities of the Liberation Theologians are swamped by the sprawl of urban confusion; the North American Pentecostalism which is growing exponentially deliberately attempts to thrive on offering a solution to this municipal nihilism. And yet, and yet. Look around, and everywhere there are shrines to the saints. There are fresh flowers, and there are candles. But why hasn’t Chavez managed to follow the model of Cuba and create a world-class educational system (and I’m not thinking of El Sistema here, more of that when we reach Caracas in a few days’ time) and a world-class national health service? With a socialist agenda AND massive oil revenue, surely it’s possible to create a utopian state? What has gone so badly wrong in Venezuela that has turned this into a country ‘on the edge’? Allende tried in Chile back in the 1970s, but that experiment didn’t even have time to get off the ground. But we’ve just come from Colombia, which of course now has a seriously right-wing regime. But in a very short time that regime has completely erased the drug problem, even turning around the reputation of Medellin from being the world’s most dangerous city to a perfectly peaceful and prosperous place. So if the right can do it, why, oh why, can’t the left? Oh, and feel free to respond to any of this in the comments box.
So we arrived in the small historical heart of Coro with it’s charming multicoloured colonial architecture, windows and doorways, and headed for El Gallo. This enclave is a haven of tranquillity in the streets, which after dark are foreboding and menacing. But where is the threat? A few stray dogs, a few passers-by, but none of the muggers we have been expecting. Maybe everybody is at home, behind the shutters and the bars, just waiting for life here to improve. Even just a little.

Cartagena Memories...

Well it’s time to move on, and tonight we’re setting off on an intrepid journey over a land border into Hugo Chavez’s ‘paradise’. If UK citizen’s fly in, no visa is required, but we’ve chosen the more interesting option. And we’re armed with smart, laminated photo-visas in our passports. And we have documentary proof of our onward travel plans out of the continent. It’s another new contry for both of us, and an exciting adventure. There’s some danger on the horizon, too: will it be the snakes, the insects or the urban bandits?
Wish us luck, and whilst you’re doing that, take a swift rifle through some of our favourite moments living in Cartagena de Indias! Oh, and one final acknowlegement: big thanks go to Blanca Zapata, who runs the little Hotel Londres on Calle Media Luna, here in Getsemani, Cartagena de Indias. It's a fantastic, cosy little place, exactly what you might expect from a small, family-run hostel in Caribbean Colombia. Even down to the hammocks! So thanks, Blanca, for your special little place, and for the way you say 'claro' and 'con mucho gusto.' Gustamos mucho!

Cartagena: Full Moon Party!

Tonight it’s a full moon, which keeps on appearing through breaks in the moody clouds. When we were in Thailand, we were constantly hearing about ‘full moon parties’, but surely they don’t happen over here in the Caribbean? Well we decided to invent our own, and proceeded directly to the massive town walls, which were built to turn the entire city into a fortress to withstand the onslaught of French and Dutch ships, and indiscriminate British pirates such as Francis Drake… Have a gander at these two Nosferatu-like shots, where we discovered a small opening in the fortifications right next to the massive Teatro de Heredia.



Meanwhile, back in Getsemani, we stumbled into an old, converted mansion; one of those with a massive, central open-air courtyard. But this one came complete with dry-ice, strobe lighting and the loudest, biggest loudspeakers we’ve ever seen. And that’s even by Colombian standards. Almost immediately, a very friendly young woman came over to Simon, full of smiles and small-talk (unintelligible, we’re afraid, due both to the decibel levels of a rocket, and to the densely incomprehensible lilt and speed of the northern Colombian accent) and offered him a sip of a drink. Tempting though it was, this country still has a rather bad reputation for burundanga, a tasteless and odourless spike which renders the victim unconscious for hours, after which they awake, drowsy and minus all their valuable belongings. So we just danced. We danced to Shakira’s latest hit (did you realise she is Colombian?), sang along to a Lady Gaga classic, and whistled to a song where the one and only lyric is the name ‘Barbara Streisand’. As the dry-ice occasionally cleared in synchronisation with gaps in the clouds, whilst the tropical breezes fanned the revellers, the moon beamed down upon the whole fairy-tale scene.

Cartagena de Indias: More Tasty Flavours

And talking of fish, how about this splendid specimen, fresh from the Caribbean into the frying pan? He’s called a Mojarra, and comes fried with a spicy sauce of onions and peppers, together with coconut rice (don’t ask us why it’s quite so brown…), a whole banana which has been flattened and fried, and a nice salad. All this was preceded by an inoffensive chicken soup on the Menu del Dia (which here is also known as the Corrientazado) and makes an exceptionally cheap but tasty almuerzo. For 8,000 Pesos (this really isn’t much, the exchange rate is running at 2,990 this week)…


Breakfast just a few hours earlier (ok, hands up, we had a lie-in…) was mainly shakes, at (believe it or not) our new local, which has turned out to be better and even cheaper than the trusty old Bolivar. Can you tell the difference here between raspberry milkshake, orange juice and a carrot shake?


Later in the afternoon it was time to cool off. In this heat, all appetite seems to evaporate and all you want to do is to hydrate. And this is the best method in the world… and the tastiest. Now one of these shakes is the most amazing lemonade we’ve ever tasted, and the other is a mystery flavour, selected from the menu for its fascinating name and the fact that we hadn’t tried it yet. Can you guess what it is? Why not post a comment and get the discussion going?!


Right now Cartagena is staging a massive exhibition of the work of Miguel Morales. We stumbled into his exhibition space as he was hanging his latest canvases; we had a chat and he took a photo of us admiring his massive paintings. Here is a small sample of his work, but sadly we haven’t quite had time to return again to the exhibition.

Cartagena Street Party!

Following a filling tea of four different empanadas to share and a fair attempt at the world’s best hotdog each, we sauntered down the street towards the walls of the fortress that enclose Cartagena’s old town. Our ears pricked up as we heard rhythms being busted out on some distant bongos and we couldn’t resist the temptation to get involved. We curiously followed the sounds around the fortress’ turrets and were soon swallowed up by a stampede of circling people, who were virtually all shaking maracas. A small band was generously given one square metre or so in which to play their instruments, including a large melodeon, a clarinet, congas and singers. To be honest, we felt a little out of place. That is until we released THE awesome guiro fish of knowledge, which are made from the pod of some kind of fruit (no idea what fruit, even after being told!), and enhanced the crowds rhythm with our flawless percussion.


Just when we needed her! A bubbly fruit seller in traditional red, blue and yellow, costume (the flag of Colombia) magically appeared with her moreish condensed milk and coconut delights, all balanced on her head! One wasn’t enough, but as we finished scoffing and turned our heads, she had mysteriously disappeared. And in about a further twenty minutes, so did the party!
In a flash, the happening atmosphere left us and it turned out that all the party-goers had crammed into some open buses to escape the police presence. Back we walked across the fort, with only the light evening breeze and the waves of the sea acknowledging us. The fiesta buses rolled past with people inside singing, rattling their maracas and scraping their fish-struments! A few responded enthusiastically when they saw Jon shaking the maracas from the heights of the fort!

Cartagena de Indias: Fiesta and Salsa

Can you believe it? In the Plaza San Diego, the massive, red, fortress-like eponymous monastery has been turned into a luxury hotel. Likewise with the convent of Santa Teresa. I mean, eeek! But fortunately, next to the Plaza Fernandez de Madrid is to be found the small and humble façade of the church of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo. Now this was all closed up when we passed earlier, but suddenly the doors were open and the lights were on! So we popped in, and it’s the run up to his feast day; he sounds quite important, too: Patron of the Bishops of America, Defender of the Indians, Negros and the Poor of America! But this fiesta was fairly low-key, mainly because it’s Lent, but also because it’s going to last nine days, and this is only the first day… But take a look up at the ceiling, and down to the reredos: of all the churches in the historical part of Cartagena, this must surely be the most beautiful.

After that, there was only one thing to do: to pay an extended visit to Don Fidel Leautau, who is always to be found running his bar in the Portal de los Dulces. It’s the best sound system in Cartagena, with the best salsa collection in the whole of Colombia. Wow, was this music loud! But hypnotic, infectious, and, of course, totally addictive! Everybody was out for a good time, and the finger clicking and loud singing around the bar told us so!
Finally, it was time to feast and we went in search of arepas. We will try and find the exact recipe for you.

Palenque

Right out of Africa! An Africa away from Africa! Palenque was definitely worth the painfully slow bus ride to Cartagena’s bus terminal (one hour to travel six kilometres?!) and roughly an hour-and-a-half more on another bus, which stopped and advanced frequently causing our ride to be somewhat jolty. Our driver’s visibility was heftily compromised by the beautiful multicoloured textile covering the top half of his windscreen and his side windows. Very nerve wracking if you ask us! What with the speed of the motorcycles filtering in and out and across scattered queues of heavy, clustered traffic! Every so often there would be stray dogs risking their lives just to cross the road and, even more frequently, loud vehicle horns to keep us alert!
Once we arrived in “Palenque” as the driver had told us the bus was going to, we descended and were approached by a few lads with motorbikes telling us that they’d give us a ride. But of course the distance was easily walkable, even in the tropical midday heat, so they were just more people out to scam the tourists! It turns out that being cynical doesn’t always pay off as during the first steps through the even smaller village of Palenquito, Jon asked an old lady who was cooking a delicious smelling broth in the garden the direction and distance to Palenque itself. It was still five kilometres away, which by normal standards is doable but quite a stretch in this heat, but fortunately, one of the guys came by on his motorcycle and on we crammed; the driver, Simon and Jon. We don’t like motorbikes at the best of times, but we warmed to this and the ride towards Palenque was frankly awesome! It was so good that we arranged to meet the same driver later to take us back to the bus stop.
Meanwhile, Palenque. A mixture of brightly coloured buildings and small bamboo huts with walls reinforced with dried out mud, topped with straw roofs plus an immediate sense of Hispanic absence was a lot to take in for a first impression. It was wonderful!

Our faithful Lonely Planet guidebook says that anthropologists have carried out investigations in the village and have found that the African descendents here are most closely related to Africans from around the mouth of the Congo, East Africa.

This was the ‘first free town for black people in the Americas’ and this is still proudly represented by a statue in the tiny village square of Benkos Bioho breaking his chains. Benkos escaped captivity in Cartagena and established Palenque, 70km away, in 1603. It’s easy to see today just how proud the villagers are to be from there and their friendliness is really heart-warming. Most of the people living here are farmers and it’s very amusing to see almost-microscopic piglets scurrying quickly from place to place, in between the feet of donkeys, and around the domesticated dogs.

A beer or two was enjoyed inside a homestead of a local and these nosey parkers were blown away by the way of life inside; chickens running freely in the square foot yard and bedrooms almost like what we saw in Bangladesh - large, probably made for a few people to share, and surrounded with mud walls.

People who weren’t farmers were cooks of some kind and we noticed small cooking fires in the some tiny mud gardens with alien aromas wafting to the street. One lady collected some sweet coconut goods that had just been made and balanced them on her head in a metal bowl, and off she swayed down the street to start selling.

Life here looks hard, but the people look happy and perhaps the only bad part of our day was having to leave the town.

A Taste of Colombian Fruit

Well this week, just as in many past places over the last three years, we've found our local! And whilst living in Cartagena we are devoting as much time as is physically possible to trying as many fruit shakes from this menu as we can. Watch out for the results! We're certainly working our way through, and part of the fun is not knowing what the heck we just drank!

A Taste of Colombian Nature

Slowly creeping around minding his own business, and very reluctant to be seen was our Sloth friend who sees great joy in eating small pieces of concrete!
I wonder if he's king of the park! Or is he ruled over by the giant, green and orange, stroppy iguanas?!

Cartagena de Indias: Peso de las Brujas

Just to begin with, the first two photos here are tortuous methods used brutally on witches to extract a confession. Many of the innocent died through these tortures. There was one really evil one where the chin of the witch was placed on a flattened, metal bar, as a large metal cap was placed over the head, and the vice on top slowly turned. Those who fell victims to this experienced shattering of the alveolar bones and the mandible, and as the vice continued to be tightened, the cranium eventually was crushed and their brains spewed from their eye sockets. This was spine chilling and the thought brought disgust.



From the Palacio del Inquisicion, a typical view of the lively Cartagenan street and the characteristic wooden balconies made us feel much better!
The rest of the museum was slightly dull, and so we spiced up our visit with some fun shots:

Cartagena de Indias: Street Life in Plaza Trinidad

El Portal de los Dulces

Just outside the main seventeenth-century fortifications of this mighty city lies the walled suburb of Getsemani, featured by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novella Of Love and Other Demons. Even four hundred years ago it was the edgy, alternative and slightly down-at-heel side of town, and nowadays it has the perfect counterpoint of mood to the smart, picture-postcard perfection of the bougainvillea-clad balconies of El Centro and the single-storey central courtyard mansions of San Diego. But the rejas of the windows which reveal the semi-open air life of the homes, shops and hotels are just the same in Getsemani as they are in the historical heart, minus the manicured restorations. But money is pouring into Getsemani rapidly, and the boutique hotels seem to be replacing the brothels. What would Gabo think? Well, one place we keep returning to is the Portal de los Dulces, a significant location in his Love in the Time of Cholera and suddenly the whole world of Magical Realism has come to life. The writers of the Latin American Boom didn’t need to invent Magical Realism at all: it’s simply the wonder of street life in this compelling city. And at the Portal de los Dulces, the shredded shards of coconut ossified in condensed milk provide the quintessential taste of the Spanish Main. Yum…
We’re living in Getsemani this week, and just a short stroll down the Calle Guerrero leads us to the Plaza Trinidad and the fortress-like, unrestored church of the same name. After dark we stumbled upon a massive street party here: countless stalls of hot food being prepared, tropical fruit juice stands, hawkers, loud salsa music, crowds milling around laughing, dancing, feasting, children playing. In fact, the entire neighbourhood had left the confines of the home, and was continuing family life out here in the open air. Grandmothers held court on plastic chairs, whilst preened teenagers chatted in groups, dancing and swaying to the beat. The population here runs from black to mulatto and from mestizo to creolle, with every genetic blending in between, with each person exhibiting their own distinct beauty. And the women proceed around the square gradually, in an elegant swaying motion, like silent music. And this street party we have found, can you guess the best bit? Yes, that’s right, of course. It happens every single day…

Cartagena de Indias: First Impressions

After reaching the colonial centre of breezy Cartagena at sunset, we began the search for the next hostel. We had our budget in our heads and we were ready to go. Jon was approached by a dodgy, gypsy-like woman in Calle Media Luna, who mentioned her hostel, The Pirate. That sounded like just what we needed and came in under budget. We knew that the walk would be a backtrack across town, but we didn’t expect such a trek. We followed the woman up to the first floor who seemed a little embarrassed by the tools on the dust-covered steps. We thought the stairs were bad? The room was in a pretty bad state; the floor was covered in black patches of dirt, the floor of the bathroom/shower was covered in a layer of some unidentifiable fluid that we wouldn’t step barefoot in for fear of a foot fungi, and the slats that were supposed to support the matress on one of the beds were virtually non-existent. We aren’t normally snobby when it comes to rooms and we stayed in much, much worse during our first trip to Asia. Do you remember the rock-bottom, mosquito ridden trap where we stayed in Bangladesh that was only £2 per night? But since we are staying in Cartagena for a few nights, we wanted to get somewhere a little better, but for the same price. Simon suggested that we returned to the other side of the square where he saw the Hotel Familiar, which had a stunning façade, but the room revealed itself to be just as bad and with no bathroom. We stopped for one night all the same and Jon went out in search of a better place for the rest of the week, on his way back from getting some money changed. He stumbled upon the Hostel Londres, which was even cheaper than Hotel familiar (and about the same as The Pirate), but a million times better and cleaner than the two of them. This is where we’ll be staying now and at this very moment we’re being cooled by powerful, whirling fan above our heads.
Exploring Cartagena has been fun and it’s quite lively, considering it’s a Sunday. We have dipped in and out of churches, each one very beautiful and different. Simon even explored the Sanctuary of San Pedro Claver; an art and archaeological museum situated in an old nunnery next to the church.

Bautizo de San Pedro Claver: Juan Mallol Pibernat, 2009

Exploring markets and wandering the walls of the fortress, peering out besides cannons towards the sea, made for a wonderful day, but tomorrow we have things to organise when trading for most begins again.

After watching the burning, fluorescent orange sun submerge itself beneath the horizon we prowled for some typical food.

We did not find this instantly however, but we became sidetracked by rolling bongo beats, singing, high-pitched shouting and complex dancing. The music was more African to be honest, which has rubbed off from the slave descendents that reside here. The dancers moved just as fast as the speedy bongo claps sounded; their hands and feet becoming a blur, and the women’s traditional dresses transforming into a hazy whirlwind of colour. We lost ourselves in time, hypnotised by the sheer talent and it may have been the best dancing performance we’ve seen travelling.

Pasto to Cartagena: Avianca Fiesta!

Our little Fokker taxiing in Cali...
Why is it that when we have to be up early, we’re always up half an hour before the alarm is due to go off? It was a case of up and out, and we headed directly to the bus terminal on foot. There are no buses that serve the airport, so everybody who has a flight must take a taxi, either on the colectivo system mentioned in the last post (where they wait until the taxi is full) or just pay a more expensive fare and go. We entered one taxi who said that we would look for two more people to join us, and just after this moment, another taxi driver pulled up to the side and a very fast, Spanish dialogue commenced that was way beyond our current linguistic level. We watched as the other taxi driver rolled down to the bottom of the hill, literally fifty metres. When he had stopped, our driver coasted down and parked just behind him and told us that the other man would take us to the airport. But we were first informed that we now owed 3000 Colombian pesos because we had been given a ride to outside of the terminal, even though it was just a few footsteps away. Nice plan to con us helpless tourists! However, we weren’t paying anything for that and we watched as our driver paid the deviant his three (peso) grand. This new taxi driver was a lot nicer and he took us directly to the airport without looking for extra passengers, for a discount rate. And for once the discount was brilliant!
After a revolting airport breakfast of scrambled eggs, laden with chunks of thick, grey bacon, we boarded flight one of three to Cali. This was a little Fokker plane, which bore propellers on each of it’s wings and was considerably smaller than the average modern aircraft. Besides a rough patch of turbulence and no food being served on the plane (OK, we weren’t hungry anyway but come on!) the flight went very smoothly. The next flight from Cali to Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, was equally quick! Our only problem was that towards the last twenty minutes of the flight we were bursting for the toilet, and I mean REALLY bursting, as we had been guzzling this gallon sized bottle of water that we bought all the way back in Otavalo. We thought that we wouldn’t be allowed to take the water through customs back in Pasto so we stood drinking as much as we could, but they don’t seem to have the same rules as in Europe (and the rest of the world). What’s worse is that Bogotá’s airport is huge, with massive runways and we spent another twenty minutes seated in the aeroplane with our legs crossed tightly, as the pilot took his sweet time in finding the gate where we would shortly disembark. The moment we exited the plane we ran to the gents and the only thing you need to know is that WE MADE IT!!!
We made sure that we were where we had to be in plenty of time before our final flight to Cartagena and so we went through security control and into the waiting lounge. Our flight had been delayed slightly so now was a perfect time to get lunch, as by this time we were starving! One snag though! There weren’t any shops in the waiting lounge, just loads of patient, and impatient, people. And occasionally there was the waddling fatty who walked past, taunting us with a large “Dunkin’ Donuts” bag. The only thing we could do was to wait until we arrived in Cartagena since Avianca didn’t serve food on this flight either.
All in all, the day was a fantastic tour of some Colombian airports and was cheaper than a painstaking coach ride would have been! Can’t complain!