Cartagena de Indias

Boarding the bus in Santa Marta I asked out loud in English and Spanish and to nobody in particular "Is this the bus to Cartagena?" My 'Romancing the Stone' reference fell on deaf ears. Whatever, at least the bus was air-conditioned.

There is no respite from the heat in Cartagnea. Despite it's sea-side status there are no forgiving breezes to steal. The relative humidity regularly hangs about in the 90% bracket as well. The byproduct of all this is a city with many people sitting around doing nothing. Understandably as well since clothes that cloy like second skin and sweat beaded brows are not known to be motivational forces. The upside is that you couldn't ask for a more colorful place to idle away the daylight hours. Calli is known for its beautiful women, Quindio its Arabica beans and Cartagena for the finest colonial architecture in the country. Salt air weathered facades, cobble stone streets and bougainvillea wrapped balconies lend it a fairy tale quality. Sitting on the city walls at night listening to the sonic booms of fireworks its easy to close your eyes and imagine Sirs Francis Drake and Henry Morgan have arrived to sack the city once more.

This being the Caribbean, Salsa is king. In fact the Salsatecas outnumber the churches - a bold statement in any Latin American locale. I am somehow reminded of the movie The Mambo Kings when Armand Assante traces the sign of the cross on his chest and intones "In the name of the Mambo, the Salsa, and the Cha cha cha." I think he might have actually said Rumba instead of Salsa but I digress. So yes dance, the costeños appear to be imbued with some extra dance chromosome which allow their hips to completely unhinge and move independently of everything else. Pigmentation notwithstanding it's easy to pick out the costeños as they are the patrons at the Salsatecas that know every word to every song. Lips in addition to hips are never not moving in time. Take that gringo.

There is a debate as to the geographical origins of Salsa. I have heard it was invented in New York City and took hold in Cuba and vice versa. I think it really depends on what country's passport the person speaking is holding. At any rate it is not Colombia. What is distinctly Caribbean Colombia in origin however is Vallenato music. This upbeat folk music is delivered by accordion player who usually does vocal duty as well while the beat comes from the guacharaca which is similar to the African djembe drum and the guacharaca. The guacharaca is basically a palm stalk with notches that is scraped by a fork with metal tines, producing an almost insect sound(think the intro to The Stones "Gimme Shelter.") A nice way to take in Vallenato is on a local Chiva. The chiva is the old wooden bus that was once the workhorse of rural Colombian transportation. Open-sided, wildly painted and with extra wide bench seats, the chiva is the ultimate party vehicle. For a meager sum you can jump on the bus where upon you are handed a hand percussion instrument and a bottle of dark rum. The band sits in the middle and proceeds with a seemingly bottomless repertoire. At the front the "ayudante" who stands next to the driver, is armed with a microphone and serves as the master of ceremonies. No subject is off limits to the ayudante, if you are from Venezuela the bus gets to vote "Chavez or no Chavez", if you are from the US you will be called on to state your home city and be summarily dismissed as "the rich guy over there", he will lambaste the drivers skills and call out groups of people to stand up and dance. Its a participatory activity at its finest. As the bus idles at a stop light the locals on the street dance and cheer in agreement with the chiva. If you couldn't be happy here ... well then you probably couldn't be happy anywhere. Good times Colombia style.

It doesn't take long to get your head around Cartagena. The people are friendly and forthcoming. If you can't walk to it, it's accessible via a short cab ride, the old walled city, the new city neighborhood of Bocagrande and the marina lie in close proximity. Its not all Salsa and sunsets though, Cartagena is a port down that has a high degree of poverty and the darker seedier element that usually accompanies that. For most folks its the gateway to Central America. Because of the of the risk involved crossing the Darien Gap by land (FARC guerillas, paramilitaries, narco-trafficantes etc.) a healthy cottage industry has sprung up in order to ferry people to Panama via boat. This reinforces the transient feeling of the place, you are either coming or going north or south or simply sitting around. Either way it got Michale Douglas off "The Streets of San Francisco" and on to the big screen. Bromeando por sepuesto ja ja ja.

Ciao

Clifford

There are snaps in, around and about HERE

The Blue Lagoon

Along the two hour trek from the Tayrona Park entrance to my destination, Cabo San Juan , I passed untold legions of leaf-cutter ants, a lone burro and four capuchin monkeys who were well ... monkeying around. Litteraly. The completely unpeopled trail I was on had lead to wildy-woven fantasy that when I reached Cabo I would have the place to myself. My fantasy found a still birth when I came upon two Europeans pitching a tent. Had the beach not been something just short of Eden I might have taken offence. This was a national park after all and so I quickly disposed of the false sense of entitlement my fantasy had spun.

My first sensation I had in Cabo San Juan was one of deja-vu. It took me a minute to put my finger on it but this was how I had pictured the island in The Lord of the Flies back in high school. It was not an island of course but rather the unspoilt Carribean Coast of Columbia, rain forrest jungle ends where the sandline begins. There is little transition. They bays are failry deep and well dilenated by large granite rocks. The granite looks as if it could have possibly been hurled down from the top of the mountain by some ancient Kogi Indian god in some myth creating act of violence. The water itself is warm without being bath water and there is nobody trafficking the beach trying to sell you hippy bracelets. If it weren´t for the breaking of the waves on the shore I believe you could actually hear yourself think in a place like this.

There is one restaurant on the beach that is run jointly by a couple of families. Thier operation is a primitive one as there is no power in the park. From 7-9 PM they fire up a gas powered generator that allows them enough power to light a couple of fluorescent lights and offer a dinner service. Aside from the fish the food is not much to speak of but who orders pasta when the red snapper was swimming within the last 30 minutes?

The night was arguably as enjoyable as the day light. After dinner and dominoes it was a flashlight trek back up to the Gazebo where the hammocks were strung up. Perched up on the Granite overlooking the Carribean was about as much of an accomodation as one actually needed out here. The breeze the flowed into the open-walled structure defrayed the onset of mosquitos. The only thing better than sleeping outside is sleeping outside without being slathered in nauseating scent of insect repellent containing high levels of DEET. Sleeping in a hammock for the entire night sounds like an enticing proposition until you realize that shifting positions requires waking yourself up to so. Being of the mind set that there is no worse sleep than that which comes in fits and starts I discovered another use for my small red raft the next night. The second night I realized that the raft would in fact fit into the width of my hammock. The sight of this of course was much laughter on the part of my neighbors. This laughter quickly subsided when they realized that I had in indeed created the ultimate hanging luxury bed. Ha, my MacGyver moment!

When the heat stroke and 1st degree burns began to set in I turned my attention to the jungle and rain forrest behind me. The park is named after the Tairona Indians. The Tairona are believed to be the oldest "indigenos" on the continent. It was these folks who were first greeted by the Spanish n 1493. A two hour hike from the beach will lead you up a series of primitive rock steps to Pueblito, the ruins of thier former settlement. It´s all very Indiana Jones type stuff when you leave the beach.

There are some pics of the park HERE

Teganga, El Mar Caribe

Medellin is tops. The citys lattitude and altitude conspire together to ensure that everyday in Meddelin is beautiful. The reason it is known as the "City of Eternal Spring" is becuase it is never not 72 degrees with a slight prevailing wind. It has all the conveniences that a big city affords and I am fairly sure it would be a great place to live. At this point though outside of Caracas I have been to every major city on the continent and they just don´t do that much for me anymore. On a smog asphyxiating afternoon my thoughts turned to white sand beaches, bendy palm trees and the undulating rhythms of the Carribean. Within an hour I had collected my things and purchased an overnight bus ticket to Santa Marta.


Santa Marta is a port town with teeming streets. Its a bustle of commerce, a place perhaps to get things done. However a 10 minute collectivo ride from downtown Santa Marta will happily deposit you in the tiny fishing village of Taganga. It´s the kind of place you hesitate to tell other people about but truth be told however it is no Club Med. There are no waiters on the beach serving elaborate cocktails with little umbrellas. Santa Marta is rough charm, blue collar paradise. There are no resorts, the hotels are modest places with pastel painted and sun baked facades. Everything is dusty as there is little paved road and the best beach is not the main beach but rather a 10 minute hike around the promonitory to the neighboring bay. The restaurant scene is largely the row of weathered sea food shacks that dot the beach selling the daily catch. The Santa Marta/Taganga area is distinct geologicaly as it is a place where the mountains meet the sea. Where the beach stops the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta begin. At well over 15K feet it is one of the highest coastal ranges on the planet. With its snow capped peaks it certainly makes for a bit of high contrast curiosity. Every night just after the sun sinks to the bottom of the ocean the trade winds begin to blow and take the temperture down a cool five degrees at least. At about this same time the locals fire up their sound systems. Nearly every house in Taganga seems to posses a large bass bin and two gigantic midrange speaker enclosures on their porches. The music booms and bounces everywhere and curiosly it is always good. Sean Kigston´s "Beautiful Girls" has become the leitmotiv of lazy afternoons. Lastly I feel that one can not speak of Taganga without mentioning its people. As in all of Colombia the people are truly some of the nicest. To pass someone on the street or a trail and not say hello is considered rude. The locals are a spirited bunch who seem generaly pleased that you have paid their funky little hamlet a visit.

I am off to Parque Tayrona now which is a remote stretch of jungle and postcard perfect beaches. It is a well protected national reserve where you can rent a hammock for the night and sleep on the beach. It sounds like the ideal place for a part time castaway. I will let you know how it is.

Some pictures of Santa Marta and Taganga can be found HERE

A Chilly Reception In Bogota

Bogota, few degrees north of the equator and less than a month until the start of summer. Within minutes of landing I swapped out my Brazilian beach uniform of the previous month for pants, a long sleeve shirt and my winter jacket. At an altitude of 8K feet the approaching summer was obviously taking the long way around. Weather notwithstanding it felt refreshing to be back in a Spanish speaking country and back in the shadow of the mighty Andes.

La Candaleria is the colonial epicenter in the southern part of Bogota and is in a word ¨gritty´´ The origninal structures are in decidedly different states of disrepair, poorly lit streets buckle and open holes approach without warning. Despite these pedestrian woes it retains a charm of cultivated neglect. The grid pattern is simple enough to figure out though, Calles run north south and Carreras run east west. I was pleasently surprised to see arepas being sold at regular intervals on the street. I had previously understood the arepa to be an exlcusively Venezuelan treat, at least thats what my arepa bar in the East Village would have me believe. In fact the arepa is simply a staple of the North Andes gifted down from the native indians. If you haven´t had the pleasure of indulging in an arepa they are basically corn bread and cheese patties cooked over an open grill. This is the more traditional approach but you can also opt for the arepa rellena which is two arepas filled with either chcken, pork or shredded beef. Hot off the grill at 75 cents a pop they are a street food conniseur´s nirvana. That being said the empanada bars are also a worthy option. The Colombians eschew the traditonal emapanda dough and use cornmeal trade oven cooking for that of an overworked friolator. I often hear people speaking of the South American cooking as spicy but this is either a regurgitated fallacy or most folks have a very threshold for spice pain because outside of Colombia I have yet find a salsa with a good kick. You average empanda stand here always has a bowl of dark brown fiery salsa at arms lenghth and each bite seems to be rehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.video.gif
Add Videowarded with a large spoonful by the locals. Good stuff. With blistering mouth in tow you don´t have to walk very far in Bogota to see a Fernando Botero image tacked up in some rincon bar or dry cleaner. Botero is to Colombian painting what Gabriel García Márquez is to literature. Fortunately these sun bleached and cigarette stainded reproductions can be upstaged by the originals in the Donnacion Fernando Botero which has an impressive collection of 200 paintings and sculptures. I visited the museum a few differnt times to look at his paintings. He is famous for those blimpy, fleshy and dimuntive people as well as pictures of sliced fruit. Bogota´s north side might as well be light years away though, lots of concrete and steel spaced generously far apart. A place for shopping not walking.

An over night bus deposited me in Calli a few days later. It seems to be a requisite stop on most folks iteneraries. Its chief natural resource being the gene pool. It is known to produce the most beautiful women in all of Colombia and beautiful they are. The problem I found with Calli is that the women are as overwhelming as their city is underwhelming. Aside from nightlife it is about as interesting as watching wet paint dry. It didn´t take long to board a departing bus. I did what any self respecting coffee drinker would do while in Colombia and headed to the Zona Cafetera in the Quindio Valley.

Salento is the smallest and oldest pueblo in the Zona Cafetera. It is the type of place where little old ladies look out window, smile and say hello as you pass by their houses. Surrounded by lush green hills dotted with coffee farms the mist and moody weather lend it a mystical quality. Oranges, lemons, beans, bamboo, tree ferns, bananas and, pineapple grow unattended on the sloping terrain. I think it is one of my favorite places. Needless to say the coffee is as good as coffee gets. On an afternoon hike I stopped into a tiny nondescript Mom and Pop finca to get a tour. The short tour concluded with a tasting. The beans were skillet roasted, ground and percolated in front of me. The subsequent cup of coffee proferred up was pure magic. Doctoring up the brew with sugar or milk was never a consideration, black gold! I am not one to go in for black coffee but there was not the slightest hint of bitter to be found anywhere. If the world had access to this caliber coffee on a daily basis I think the world would be a different place.

Just east of Salento is the Cocora Valley which is real cowboy country. Trails that traverse the farms of the lowland soon give way to thick jungle vegetation, river and waterfalls. It was fun to share space with horses in groups of four or five moving freely about on and off the trails grazing on scrub plant. If I hadnt seen sign of branding on them my assumption would have been that they were wild. After three kilometers of challenging inclines the jungle abruptly ends and you arrive in the cloud forrest. A local farmer had set up a mirador with benches in front of his farm. He was keen to take a break from brushing fresh pitch on his fence posts and chat. There is something very relaxing about talking to a local while clouds pass by in a direct line of sight. One curious element of Cocora are the prescence of wax palms. These palms average a height of 12 stories. At times the fronds of the top appear to be floating on top of the clouds like an ethereal sombrero. Lovely stuff.

The only strking contrast to all this natural beauty up here is the prescense of well armed military personel. The FARC guerillas at one time were well entrenched in the mountains just east of here. My understanding is that they have taken flight much further out and the soldiers are mostly here for visual reassurance. While I as visitor here certainly appreciate that, I find that I feel much better when M16s aren´t around.

Anyway ...

Some pics can be found
HERE

And some newer pics can be found HERE

Some Observations

The following are some recurring themes I have noticed while wandering around Latin America.

1)The dreaded 50 peso note:
Stop at any bank in any city and the ATM will gleefuly burp up your withdrawl denominated in as many 50 peso notes as will fit in you request. The problem is that when you produce one of these 50`s for payment someplace it creates pandemonium. A look of panic comes over everyone`s faces behind the counter. A hain reaction ensues which involves much talk amongst all of the employees in the establishment. Momentarily somewhat will dart out the door with your 50 and go across the street, next door and maybe even upstairs in an effort to break that bill at a neighboring business. If you happen to find youself in a time-sensitive situation the 50 dollar bill is useless to you. Note this situation occurs sometimes with 20s but not as frequently.

2)The Tyrany of the Receipt:
Recibos, facturas, whatever you want to call them are a required part of any business transaction. There are signs up everywhere imploring customers to make sure they have their receipt with them when the leave. I can understand the importance of a receipt with a big ticket item like for instance - a laptop. You are most likely to want and/need that receipt. However if I walk into a kiosko and ask for a small bottle of coke it is no different than if I were purchasing a laptop. Once I have handed over the 50 cents for the small glass bottle of Coca Cola, the dot matrix printer behind the counter will kick into action, spitting out an entire page itemizing my Coca Cola purchase. Sometimes when the printour is finished it will recieve a stamp before being handed over to the recipient. If the business is not of the computer printout variety, the clerk will scribble out your purchase on a small triplicate receipt book and hand it to before you leave. Sometimes the hand written receipt will recive a stamp as well. I haven´t a clue what the stamp says as it is always illegible.

3)Flourescent Lights:
There is only one type of light bulb that exists on the continent and that is the Fluorscent variety. Often the long cylindrical ones that sit in metal fixtures on the cieling. There is no socio-economic correlation either as towards where one finds Flourescent bulbs, a bank, a decent hotel, office buildings, and homes. You are never not under the alien green hue emitted by these awful bulbs. Perhaps this light is actually a thing of reverence down. How else do you explain the fact that none of the ceiling fixutres are fitted with the plastic covers that serve to diffuse the harshness produced by these bulbs? Note to General Electric - a massive PR campaign extolliing the virutes of "soft white" lighting in South America would be revolutionary. It would also likely increase profit margins by 900 percent.

Top three questions I have been asked:

1)Do you know/like The Ramones?
I think the Ramones are possibly the most popular band on the continent. If you answer "yes you like and have seen The Ramones many times", the conversation will include alot of smiling and handshaking. If you mention that you have seen Joey Ramone in a Deli on 2nd Avenue they will most likely offer to buy you a beer and start referring to you as friend. Strange but true.

2)Sept. 11th
Where were you? Who do you think did it?
I think lots of folks recently saw the `Loose Change` conspiracy theory documentary here. It seems to be untimely topical.

3)"What language was that they were speaking in Brokeback Mountain?"
Nobody believes when you say they are speaking English its just a dialect. They refuse to believe or seem very suspicous and will retort something along the lines of "I speak English and I didn´t understand a word those guys were saying. Why wasn´t there subtitles?" Ha ha ha. I kid you not.

Anyway where was I ....

C.

17 Million Paulistas Can't Be Wrong ...

but they might be crazy for living here in Sao Paulo. Sampa as the locals refer to their city is a megalopolis cosmopolis metropolis. Big Scrabble words for a big city. I believe its the the third largest in the world behind Mexico City and Tokyo. This morning over a cup of overly sweetened Brazilian coffee I calculated a route from Jardim Paulista to Centro, simple enough I thought. After a walk that took slightly less time than the gestation period of a baby elephant I reached downtown. After some furtive ducking into doorways to consult my map(I didn't want to look like a tourist and my back pack and beach attire from the day before were obviously fooling everyone) I finally found Edificio Altino Arantes. This was long ago the tallest building in the skyline and suspiciously resembles the Empire State Building. The mirador on the 35th floor is the place to "take it all in." If you envision a pie cut into 64ths and the island of Manhattan represented exactly one slice, that whole pie would likely resemble Sao Paulo. It makes the sprawl of Los Angeles look like Mayberry. The coarse concrete geometry of landscape can only explained by the abscence of any sort of urban planning. It's all very Bladerunner, I have to say I like it. I took a snipped of video as I was fortunate enough to be the only person on top of the Altino Arantes yesterday afternoon. You can find it HERE

Some Room with a View

Morro de São Paulo is one of a handful of villages on the island of Tinhare´. The island is one of an archipelago of 3 small islands 100 miles off the coast of Salvador in Bahia. The primary mode of transportation here is the wheel barrow. There are no cars on the island and if there were I am sure plying the narrow sand streets would be problematic at best. Luggage, dry goods and sometimes small children are all moved along inside the wheel barrow taxi. A true negative carbon footprint!

The village of Morro is easy enough to navigate. The naming conventions are handled by ordianl numbers. There is the 1st Beach(Primeira Praia), the second, third etc. The only anomoly to this naming scheme is the Encanto Beach which is truly a deserted paradise. The beaches get less populated as the numbers increase.

The beaches themselves are the stuff of stock image photography used in travel brochures the world over. The first beach has a break and some nice waves but the rest are held still by surrounding reef. Tracing the coast you find well-spaced Mangrove swamps mingle the clear, cobalt blue and emerald green tones of the tepid bath water. Beyond the beach are hills of Atlantic rain forrest that are dilineated by bougainvillea and coconut groves.

Every lodging on the island is a Mom and Pop shop with no structure exceeding two stories and not a corporate name among them. It has been a week since I traded in the iPod for alternating sounds of breaking surf and the rustling of palm fronds at night. Atmosphereic Ambien, the good stuff.


Some pics can be found HERE