To the Caribban

Heading north and getting hotter, we spend an overnight (quite long enough in my view) in Bucamaranga, a ‘gritty’ town as described in Lonely Planet.  Actually we haven’t seen anyone else with a copy since we arrived in Columbia, which is amazing and we’ve seen no tour groups either.  This really is not a touristy place, so far.  I’m writing the beginning of this while we head towards the Caribbean coast away from Bucamaranga on a luxury bus and again we’re the only passengers who are not local.   I’m wired up as if I’m in intensive care.  Computer with a cable to charge the i-pod in my breast pocket and earphones from there while I listen to Bryan Adams because the bus has music plus a film with a Spanish overdub running, both at the same time.  It’s a long journey but we don’t know how long yet.  Our rule of thumb has developed into ‘any bus trip is at least 25% more than anyone says’.    Also we discovered that while “quatros ora” translates literally as four hours, in colloquial lingo it means “whenever we get there”.  Having dropped so much altitude it is baking hot down on the plains but at least the bus has air-con otherwise it would be very uncomfortable.    The journey ended up at 12 hours against a predicted 9.

Yesterday we drove past a canyon which we were told was deeper than the Grand one and we enjoyed some fabulous views.  The drops alongside the road were spectacular too but nowhere near as deep as Bhutan where you’d expect to go through a couple of time zones before you hit the bottom.   We were on that bus yesterday with two other visitors we’d met the day before and had dinner with; two sisters from Rhode Island and Boston, one of whom was on a para-gliding holiday.   To show how we all interpret a scene depending on interest, at one point we saw vultures circling but she didn’t, she saw thermals.

What we do get on the buses are regular food sellers peddling hot food, cold food and drink and although we travel on the buses because we feel that we experience the country better, we don’t eat the food or drink on offer.  Today we had a first, which was a police check.  Everybody’s ID cards were collected while we proferred  Her Majesty’s Request to allow her subjects to pass freely.   That and an inane grin got the passports glanced at and returned.   On this ride I noticed the same street decoration we’ve found in pretty well every country we visit and that’s a pair of trainers tied together and flung across some street cabling.

Arrival at Santa Marta was in the dark so it was a taxi to the hotel.   This place has an old town which is where we are, one block along from the Cathedral and two blocks in from the sea.  It ‘s a lovely little hotel  with a small open courtyard with a plunge pool for cooling off, a roof terrace, Wi-Fi, air-con and breakfast for about £40 ($60) a night.  The town itself appears to be set for the young enjoying the nightlife with throbbing music from almost every bar or restaurant plus the occasional buskers.   The day after we arrived we fancied a coffee so I rushed into a bar/café grabbed  a menu and we sat as far from the almost solid sound blasting from the door as we could at a table we found which was not juddering to the bass.  Then we found out that although it was a café they didn’t serve coffee, just cocktails.   It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that at the end of a shift the staff have blood coming out of their ears from the pounding they must get.  Just along from this one we were in Hemingway’s and had even more of the fruit Jugos which are truly delicious and simply grated ice and fresh fruit juice.   Fruit juice!  Old Ernie would be spinning in his grave.  On Sunday night we discovered that most restaurants were closed although we got into one at 6.45 to be told that they closed at 7.00.   So back to Hemingway’s where we enjoyed dos cervezas and uno  plato de Papas a la Francesca which sounds so much nicer than two beers and a plate of chips, doesn’t it.

Let me tell you something about Columbia, because most people seem to just associate it with drugs.   The government have had serious crackdowns on the drug cartels and the FARC terrorists.  I believe that Columbia is still the world’s largest producer of cocaine so drug problems certainly exist but a lot of drug problems have moved towards Guatemala and particularly Mexico.  There are however still a few FARCking terrorists.   Just after I wrote this bit a Dutch tourist told us about a Government raid on a FARC camp near the Venezuelan border not a million miles from us.  We checked on the old Interweb and it was a land and air attack two days previously which killed a dozen or so terrorists.  Mind you the Tourist people here have a new slogan which is “the biggest danger is wanting to stay”, not as one of my good friends suggested (yes, Dave Lovett, it’s you) “Columbia, not to be sniffed at”.  The country is as big as France, Spain and Portugal with about 44 million people, 80% of whom are mixed race, the tallest mountains are higher than any in the USA and it is the only South American country with a Pacific and Caribbean coastline.   There isn’t a great deal of litter and begging is relatively uncommon but this is the only place I’ve ever seen a beggar with an amplifier and microphone, lying in the street appealing to the public for money.    We’re on the same longitude as the eastern seaboard of the USA but while the US calls it Eastern Standard Time here we call it Columbia Elastic Time.