Colombia 2018

Nimsi, Thalia and Megan

Cartagena

Our first day of the trip was just travel from Guadalajara to Cartagena. It was a long day; albeit with smooth travels, from the alarm at 1:36am, then to the airport for migracion and security. We first stopped in Mexico City, as the sun was dawning over the massive city, then to Bogotá and lastly on a late evening flight into Cartagena. After landing on the coast we quickly exited the small airport and were soon in a taxi with the waves crashing on the malecón along the highway as we approached the famous walled city. Although past eleven in the evening, the streets were well-lit and the people outnumbered the cars. After a long day of travel and three airplanes, we settled for some Colombian style hot dogs that included mayo and potato chips on top from a stand down the street and we crashed.

After recovering from day of travel, we enjoyed walking around the polished wall city the next morning. The narrow streets are lined with brightly painted pastel homes, all connected, with creeping bougainvillea falling over the windowsills and rooftops. Many have painted wooden balconies and large framed windows, faded from the sea air, along with detailed door knockers or decors that indicate the profession of the early residents, such as merchants and magistrates. Surrounding the city are seven miles of massive walls built in the 1700s to protect the town from the days of pirates and foreign invasion.

In our tour of the city we stopped by the bóvedas, the old vaults formally used to safehouse the military supplies but that now sell art and souvenirs. We hopped onto a tour bus around the city to see the bay around Cartagena, famous statues, around the Getsemani neighborhood and to visit the San Felipe Castle built to protect the city from a land invasion, including its tunnels running down through the structure. After a chocolate museum and an emerald store, our last stop was the San Pedro Claver church, named after an early human rights defender in Latin America when he denounced slavery in the early 1600s.

During our days in Cartagena, we stayed at a classic backpacker style hostel, aptly named “El Viajero.” The walls were covered with maps and adventure planning. The rooms had bunk beds and while we had a room for just the three of us, the hostel had installed safes for packs and valuables for travelers. The bar and patio area served as a meeting place for the mini-United Nations of backpackers around filled tables and benches, under a huge tree in the center and lights strung about. Chilling on the patio we met backpackers from around the world, speaking multiple languages over their cuba libres and cervezas. Cartagena is a known backpacker haven and we met travelers from Uruguay, Chile, Australia, the US, England, Germany, Brazil, Spain, and Argentina. And for the party vibe that this hostel embraced, they actually observed the established quiet hours, mostly because any one in the mood left the hostel bar for the club scene of Cartagena.

One night we did go out to experience the nightlife to a club with ridiculous fluorescent face paint that glowed in the black light and reggaeton music; both the classics and new jams, all played too loudly. We ended eating the most delicious arepas on the curb in the plaza in the early morning hours. I’m pretty sure that I’m too old for this scene now but my age didn’t really stand out as there were others at least a decade or two older.

One of my favorite things to do in lovely, picturesque towns like this is to wake up early before all the hustle and bustle to go for a walk and to take photos. A few people were out, partiers stumbling back to their hostels, city workers cleaning the streets and local residents off to the work. I strolled through the mostly empty streets and enjoyed the morning cool air and the calm before the next busy day.

Santa Marta

The next stop on our trip is Santa Marta, a beach town east of Cartagena. We arrived later in the evening than anticipated after unnecessary delays and a grumpy bus driver. We arrived at our hostel to find out it had been overbooked. Fortunately, they recognized the fault and helped us arrange equivalent lodging nearby.

Santa Marta has a series of pedestrian only streets near the Parque de los novios, lined with restaurants and bars. The music is blaring as the nightlife locales are calling in their clientele while most are seated at outside tables enjoying dinner. One night we shared an enormous bandeja paisa, a tray full of Colombian food: pork, chicken and carne asada, sausage, chicharron, beans and rice, mini arepas and plantains, with cream, cheese and chipotle salsas. As we devoured the plate marketed “for six,” the streets filled with people strolling by; families eating ice cream, surfers and beach goers still sporting their swimwear, dancers and drummers performing, partiers looking to start the night. The atmosphere is of a smaller beach town, although we’re actually in a city of half million.

Santa Marta has a simple, busy downtown area and sizable port in the bay. We wandered down narrow streets lined with stalls of watch-repairers, fruit sellers, and book vendors. We poked our heads into the supposedly oldest church in Colombia and wandered the boardwalk near the port where the lifts hoisted containers onto barges. We stopped by the internet cafe to arrange a few upcoming travel details and then went to the beach.

After a short taxi ride around the hillside, we first arrived at Playa Blanca and then continued by boat to Playa Grande. This beach had a few places to stay but mostly hosted daytrippers enjoying the sun, sand and waves. We rented some chairs near the shade, dipped in the water, read books and drank Club Colombia beer. I spent most of the trip slowly working my way into Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Cien años de soledad” (or One Hundred Years of Solitude, in English). We ended the afternoon with a delicious late lunch at one of the many palm roof stands. We shared some patacones, fried green plantains, with cheese and I enjoyed orange chicken with rice. In the late afternoon we hopped a local bus back to Santa Marta, showered off the sea water, enjoyed a delicious dinner at a fancy French restaurant and rested early with sunkissed skin and full bellies.

Medellín

We arrived in Medellin in the midafternoon, or rather, to the airport almost an hour outside the city. Our taxi drove us through the foggy, green countryside and then down into the valley on the twisting switchbacks as we approached the city. Overlooking the city, visitors first notice the seemingly endless spread of red brick buildings, creeping up the sides of the valley. We felt the fresh crisp mountain air, in contrast to the sweltering beach temperatures.

Our initial plans to explore the city were on hold once we arrived at the hostel we had booked. Upon arriving, we found it had shut down. Fortunately the young man doing carpentry on the now-emptied space helped us connect to the wifi, let us use his phone to locate and confirm new reservations and contacted the owner to return our deposit. Even our taxi driver waited with us until we were on our way to sorting things out, instead of just dropping us off and leaving. Blunders happen when you travel (often or it would almost take the fun out of travel), but you really see the intentions and compassion when people that don’t need to help, yet go out of their way to get you back on track.

Walking with our backpacks and getting settled into our next hostel, we got a feel for the neighborhoods. The residential area was shady and the main street was lined with cafes, restaurants and stores. The streets were clean. We picked up groceries and ate another traditional Colombian feast at a restaurant in front of a shady park right on the bike route.

We did a morning free walking tour of downtown. Getting downtown was easy with the availability and affordable price of the taxis. Even with the bustling morning traffic in the centro, we arrived smoothly. Most of the movement was mass transit, easing potential traffic problems.

Our tour guide Juan David was increible. He offers daily walking towns for the tips provided by his group. He is an expert on local and national history and aims to share his city with visitors. As he describes, Medellin is a city of contrasts, “doble moral”. From the Catholic church located next to the pirated pornography vendors to the drug wars that have both been idolized and have terrorized the country. He told the history from the indigenous roots through the major impacts of women as the leaders and changemakers in politics and education in Colombia. Our group toured the Plaza Bóveda, in front of the cultural center with it’s architectural mix of old and new. The statues of Fernando Botero have a style recognized around the world with their rounded figures and simple names. As the artist explains, they’re not fat, they’re voluminous. They show proportion.

We continued our city tour with Juan David outside of the centro on the metro to Barrio Moravia. Formerly a city trash dump inhabited by many families that used to survive on the trash and along with other communities in Medellin, this community has shown the world the example of “take back the neighborhood.” The one-time trash dump has been converted to a community garden where (mostly women) work towards sustainability and food security and their children spend their days playing, learning and experiencing new activities in the cultural center. Classes are free and children now have play time rather than working

We wrapped up the tour at the cultural center and continued to lunch with our Medellin tour guide and part of the group of tourists. Juan David led us to a small hole in the wall diner, more bandeja paisa and agua de panela. At first we thought that the panela water sounded strange, because in Mexico, panela is a type of cheese, which would be a strange flavor for water. But, in Colombia, agua de panela is a sweet drink made with brown sugar.

We visited the Casa de Memoria, a museum and memorial to remember the past and to create a better future. The building holds the stories of the forced displacement, the disappearances, military operations and violence during the decades when the narcotraficantes, the FARC, the ELN and the paramilitaries plagued the city. Medellin has taken purposeful steps to recover their city. They have activated a culture of peace, with neighborhood leaders creating radical change. Communities are changing with small projects in which people are actively participating and transforming the city for future generations.

The weather in Medellin has crisp, cool air with frequent rains. Overcast clouds drifting into the valley, falling between the towering red brick buildings, eventually pulling the rain into the city. These are good moments to step into a cafe for a coffee or a bar for a beer and soak in the experiences of the day.

Overall the people of Medellin were incredibly welcoming, maybe that’s the culture of the city, or perhaps the feelings they project to counterbalance the years of violence and the negative reputacion attached to their country. Everytime we asked for directions, sat and conversed with a local resident, needed assistance in getting around or inquired about their city, people were overwhelmingly helpful, friendly and conversational. Even though the city was enormous, it felt approachable. We even found time to sit for a few beers with a former FM4 volunteer from Medellin at one of the endless bars in Parque Llera.

We went on another walking tour of the city that has left a profound impact in my experience in Colombia. Just as in the city tour, we signed up for the free walking Graffiti Tour of the Comuna 13. This community was previously one of the most violent neighborhoods in Medellin; now it receives 10,000 tourists a month. As we saw in the Casa de la Memoria, this is one of the areas that also experienced the effects of the FARC, ELN and narcos. One of the residents guided our walking tour and described his family’s memories and experiences; the displacements from the city center; the military operation “Orion” that killed nine residents; the neighbors hanging white sheets out their windows to surrender to the military; the damage to his family’s arepa stand. After the military operation of 2002, the neighborhood slowly started the transformation.

In the (translated) words of David, our resident guide, “Peace doesn’t come from military operations, it comes from youth that are tired of violence, tired of incarceration.” Investment in the community has come from within and from outside; locally, nationally and internationally. Now the neighborhood includes a community justice house, libraries, electric stairways, programs for youth and disabled adults, community spaces with benches and exercise equipment. We saw kids outside biking on paved walkways and breakdancing. David introduced us to his neighbors and waved to kids playing on the built-in slide.

The culture and the history of the neighborhood was woven into the graffiti covering the buildings. One mural showed animals, each holding a white handkerchief in surrender; the eagle showing liberty; elephants representing family; pandas depicting the the risk of extinction and owls for their wisdom. Other murals showed pride in their Afro Colombian and indigenous roots; others focused on peace, life, hard work, youth empowerment and community transformation. The visit to the Comuna 13 left us with a sense of hope for better tomorrow.

In the late afternoon, we explored another aspect of Medellin’s impressive mass transit system. Connected to the metro lines, we took a quick trip over to the next valley via cable car that goes up and over the hills where metro and buses would be impossible. I was terrified, imagine hopping on a ski lift while the dangling cage keeps moving. Although the cage is fully enclosed, the windows provide a clear view of the city from high above. We looked down on the stacks of homes covering the hillsides; homes crawling up the sides of the valley from informally development without advance planning for roads and public services. While we soared above, my fear of heights didn’t subside, especially with each slow rumble as the cable car reached the next tower. We finally did make it back to solid ground, only to repeat the cable car trauma again on the cable car in Bogotá.

While I feel that the previous experiences in Medellin are the ones that I believe show the current Medellin and demonstrate the culture of the modern city, there’s no escaping the influence that Pablo Escobar had on the city and his international figure, both at that time and currently. To learn about this infamous drug lord, we took a tour of “landmarks” around the city. We viewed the tour as an historical experience; rather than a homage to his character. While some people idolize his persona, most view him as evil due to the 50,000 people killed under his reign and the city that was terrorized by the violence he created. We stopped by the Moncada building where he lived with his family, the gravesite of Escobar and some family members and the building where he was killed by Colombian and US officials in 1993. We walked around “The Cathedral,” the luxury prison that he had built for himself where he lived in relative freedom with a spectacular overlook of the city. Overall my honest impression of the tour and his legacy is weak and underwhelming.

Bogotá

Our last stop in our Colombian adventure was the capital city of Bogotá. We stayed at a quality hostel in the Candelaria neighborhood. While in the massive city of more than eight million people, the neighborhood next to the city center felt like a small town with the red tiled roofs and the wooden window frames. The chilly, wet weather of Bogotá hit us immediately but we were happy to find that the hostel had steamy hot showers, warm comforters and a solid breakfast included.

In Bogotá we had a lovely evening with Diana, sister of my friend Carolina back in Minneapolis. She showed us around the downtown. Walking down side streets again felt like a small town until we connected with a main street and quickly noticed we were in the middle of a large metropolis. We ate a few arepas venezolanas, popped into a few stores and grabbed several beers at a bar with salsa, reggaeton, merengue and vallenato music.

In the morning we strolled through the Plaza Bolivar. Huge flocks of pigeons swarmed anyone feeding them. We learned about the history of the city on another walking tour. From the Museo de Oro, our guide took us through Colombia and Bogotá history through plazas, statues of influential people and through important buildings. She explained the “Bogotazo,” riots after the assassination of the leftist presidential candidate in 1948 which destroyed much of downtown at the time. She walked us down “Calle del Embudo” or “Funnel Alley,” as the street narrows to just a pedestrian path. This street is known for selling chicha, a once prohibited beverage made from fermented corn and fruits. We stopped in the Botero Museum and several other free museums that do not use permanent guides at the artist’s request to allow people the freedom to interpret for themselves. She showed us a famous restaurant/bar next to the cathedral known as “la puerta falsa” or “the false door,” because of a hidden door that the churchgoers could sneak through during lengthy services. Lastly we made a visit to the Gabriel Garcia Marquez cultural center, named for the Nobel awarded Colombian author known for popularizing the style of magical realism.

Also while in Bogotá we made another cable car trip. This time, the trip takes visitors up to Monserrate church that sits high above the city. Our view of the city was cloudy but there must be an impressive view of Bogotá on clear days. The hill was really steep as the cable car slowly raised forty people to the top. Once we disembarked from the cable car, we felt the freezing rain soak our feet and gusty winds rip through our light jackets. We quickly walked the loop with the stations of the cross and around the 17th century church before returning for the ride back down to equally wet streets but slightly less freezing temperatures.

We met many Venezuelans in Medellin and in Bogotá. They were working at the hostels, bars, coffee shops an restaurants we passed through. We also met many on the streets, selling arepas (the Venezuelan style is distinct enough from the Colombian version that it merits its own title). As the economic and political situation in Venezuela continues to worsen, more and more Venezuelans are emigrating to escape the inflation and shortages. Over four million people have left Venezuela, the majority going to Colombia along with other south American countries. As individuals traveling through Colombia for a week, there isn’t much we can do to support these individuales. We stopped to ask each what part of Venezuela they’re from and about their experience in immigrating to Colombia. We bought their arepas when they were selling and we’re sharing their story and experiences back in Mexico and the United States to draw more attention and understanding to the current realities for those living in Venezuela.

We had a both a fun adventure and a valuable cultural experience in Colombia. I felt like the trip was too short for all the wonders that Colombia has to offer. I look forward to returning again soon!