Off to the old Drug Capital

I said all our clothes were wet in the Amazon and that included my hat.   We’d been told Columbia has no launderettes so were resigned to hoping that our hotel could sort out laundry service late Saturday afternoon and have it finished for Sunday evening because we had an early Monday start.   So after a journey from the Amazon backwaters by small boat, fast boat, taxi, plane, bus, transmilenio and shank’s pony we happened upon a tiny laundry near our hotel back in Bogota.  One washing machine, one tumble dryer, one dry-cleaning machine and room for about three customers, it was about fifteen feet square.   By signs, vaguely Spanish sounding grunts and a lot of goodwill (Goodwill always being the lingua franca) we found out that even though it was 5.15 in the afternoon  she could do the lot and have it dry by 7.00pm.  Backpacks were opened up, everything was dumped in a plastic bag including the shirt I was wearing (I had one shirt that had been kept in a sealed plastic bag) which I changed in the shop while deciding that changing the trousers was a step too far.   At 7.15 we turned up and it was all done for £4 ($6) and our clothes saviour was delighted to get a tip on top.  Tipping is not expected here even by taxi drivers.    When I’d emptied the rest of my bag in the hotel about two dozen small Amazonian ants were scurrying about but were soon slaughtered by the Translocation of Wildlife Police – me.

A Sunday stroll through the neighbourhood towards the cablecar for a ‘top of cablecar’ view of the city but not unexpectedly it was heaving and we didn’t bother.  There was still lots to see regarding how Bogotions/Bogotarians/Bogons (?) spend their time.   It was mostly food and drink of varying levels of unappetisingness sprinkled with religious tat of such kitschness that even Liberace would have thought it a little over the top.   One Senor had an air rifle with darts and a small target set up, behind which was clear air but not much of it to the windows of a block of flats.

Back in Candelaria, the bit of Bogota we’re staying in was a big stage set up with an eardrum blasting announcement going on which consisted of lots of short statements interspersed with “Candelaria”.  Using our finely honed Columbian Spanish linguistic skills we worked out that it was something to do with Candelaria and we hung around to see the fun.   First up were what were described as traditional belly dancers, three young women and a man followed by a whole pile of other traditional belly dancers.   It was obvious that with a belly of the right size, some movement and a sudden stop,  just allowing gravity to do its work is sufficient for some of the dancers.  Impossible of course before Newton invented gravity.   I always thought belly dancing was a middle-eastern thing and then I remembered Shakira the Columbian singer on a video doing the same thing.  So perhaps it really is traditional.  There were lots of people in strange outfits around, some with multi-coloured pointed hats, others in more traditional looking outfits but made out of very modern material and one man dressed in a black frockcoat with a top hat looking for all the world like a cross between an undertaker and Bernie Winters.  This reference will only be understood by Brits of a certain age who know what really bad ‘comedy’ is.   Then it was all spoilt by a singer coming on who could really sing.  Dressed like a cowboy film Mexican with a heavily sequinned suit “all the sequins were sewn on by Pablo himself”, a hat so big that if he rode a horse wearing it he’d probably be lashed to death and one of those old Country and Western shirts with tassels all over that made him look like a huge animated lampshade.   He could sing though.  I remember reading once that ‘Country’ singing is where a man sings to his girl but ‘Country and Western’ singing is where a man sings to his horse.

We’re off to Medellin tomorrow, the centre of the drug cartels when it was at its height.  Pablo Escobar lived somewhere here with a huge estate containing a private zoo and bullring etc. etc.  Imagine the wealth of Croesus and what were probably relatively unsophisticated tastes added together and think what the result might look like.   By the way, no embarrassment yet, whenever we’ve been in a restaurant or bar and I’ve asked for “some Coke” I have always been given a drink.  So ‘The Real Thing’ not ‘the real thing’.   

Our friends Bonnie and Newt from Massachusetts are due in later in the day but are held up for some hours by snowstorms and arrive just after midnight.  We have several days in this city which comes highly recommended but ends up leaving us just a bit less than whelmed.  Frankly there’s just not much here.  The city centre has a museum and statues around a square and the rest is a sort of amorphous lump of city.  The best thing we did was to use the splendid metro system and the free cablecar to take us up to the very poor areas.  After that we had to pay to go a further 3 kilometres or so to a large park area where the only info. we managed to get was that the paths were closed because they were dangerous.   On the free section we’d got talking to a couple of locals who were being very helpful and then when we got to the pay section we met them coming back because it was too expensive for them.  Off they went but we managed to get their attention through the windows and called them back.  We bought them the tickets that they couldn’t afford.  Two tickets cost £2.50, the same as two cups of coffee in any restaurant.   The main restaurant/evening life area isn’t in the centre but in a mainly residential area some miles to the south called El Poblado.  Fortuitously, our hotel is in El Poblado about a 20 minute walk from Restaurant Land.

Our hotel here in Medellin does laundry so when we arrived we were able to get the rest of our stuff washed.  Now this isn’t a convoluted untrue story for a cheap laugh but I managed to leave my dummy wallet in the trousers.  I always carry one on these trips in case I’m robbed.  It has old credit cards with the info. strips cut off and for this trip a selection of low denomination Cambodian banknotes.  It came back undamaged but I can honestly claim to have laundered my money in the drug capital of Columbia.