Aqui es la vida a Colombia

Here I am again, sitting in a bus station with 5000 pesos ($2 CDN) in my pocket, ready to roll out through the night to an unknown border with a new frontier beyond. It's been a long time since I've written anything, and even longer since I've posted it. I think this stems from a creative drought compounded by the major adjustment that I've had to make after eight months bouncing over every dirt road in Africa.

But here I am now, y aqui es la vida en Espanol. I am slowly making my way down toward the tip of another continent, down the Panamerican highway that runs along the jagged spine of the Andes toward some imaginary goal. It's very existence once again opens the door to a compulsion to move.

My head was reeling when I touched down here. I couldn't find my feet at first, still thinking like an African in a place where that no longer yielded any results. It was hard to accept that all I had seen was isolated back there, that it was not a reality for anyone around me anymore. I had no idea to what degree the experience had taken over every part of me.

My recovery began in a comfortable apartment situated in an affluent Bogota neighbourhood. My friend Jessica was kind enough to offer up her place and that really hit the mark. I sat drinking cup after cup of colombian coffee, studying spanish, and lying in wait for the cleaning lady to arrive, a captive audience with the patience to put up with my feeble attempts to relate my life story in an unknown language. Beyond this, I found myself particularly adept at contriving situations where I was surrounded by people who spoke no English. This sharpened the learning curve with great benefit to my progress, especially considering I am far too cheap to front the cash for a course. .

I benefit from the fact that most Colombian museums have Spanish only signs, not to mention that most Colombians speak no English. My excitement for the country was awakened by the Museo del Oro which contains a treasure trove of pre-columbian masks and artifacts made of gold. This was something totally different to what I had seen anywhere else, straight out of the pages of National Geographic. After a couple of weeks, I had picked up basic words and expressions and I figured it was time to probe deeper into what made this country tick.

I moved first to Villa de Leyva, a small town with beautiful architecture and rock paved streets. I found it a beautiful but strange place and my search for its pulse led only to the conclusion that it was in a coma. I moved on to San Gil, a true gringo experience, as it is the adventure capital of the country. I didn't last long there either and was eager to get away from the gringos. On to Bucaramanga, fun to say, but not so much fun to visit. There is however one busy street and I spent my day there walking up and down before rejecting gay propositions in a park while waiting for a night bus up to the north coast of the country. That brought me to Santa Marta, the oldest city in the country and a strange place with a ratty strip of beach and even rattier local bars. Of course I managed to find myself in the heart of it as I always manage to drift into the sketchiest areas of town. It was a brief stop there, I had arrived with purpose.

Ciudad Perdida was the ultimate goal. It is an ancient city that was lost to time after its abandonment by the natives during the colonial era. Rediscovered only in 1975, there is a real Indiana Jones feeling about the place, accentuated by the presence of Colombian army guarding against the reappearance of cocaine trafficking rebels. Real adventure in the jungle.

The trek took five days in total, and the whole time is spent soaking wet as a result of rain, rivers and sweat. Deep in that jungle a stone staircase begins at the riverbank and ends at a clearing where the jungle opens into a series of stone platforms where the life of the ancestors took place. The place is haunting with a thick mist that hangs heavy in the air. We moved past altars guarded by modern troops, climbing toward the highest platform that affords a panoramic view of the ruined city and the surrounding jungle.

The trek was great but I hated at least fifty per cent of the other gringos around me. Sure there were the brown scottish-pakistani gringos, and a friendly irishman, but the issue was the cocaine abusing losers who never said a word to us. Probably for the best that we didn't get invited to their “party” in the jungle involving a load of cocaine. Everyone was in bed by ten.

The drug use is a strange story in itself. I spearheaded an initiative to go check out a clandestine coke lab deep in the jungle. Those losers were too scared to go, sketched out or something. While I have never touched the stuff myself, my curiosity ran high and I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the illicit activities of the producers. There I was at seven in the morning watching a guy produce cocaine out of leaves and an assortment of filthy chemicals. The scene grew even more surreal when he began passing out the “samples.” I was one of three lonely gringos who didn't inhale.

Back at camp, the losers were curious albeit shit-scared of the situation and fortunately their emissary had purchased some significant quantity. I understand that it retails for approximately ten euros a gram here, which if further understand to be a fraction of the price anywhere else in the world.

At this point, one thing was clear to me: I don't belong to the backpacker circuit anymore. I had nothing to measure myself against when I was in Africa. There were no tourists back in the Congo. I suppose the experience changed me a lot. Of course I don't fit in with the mochilados.Cheap gringo party hostels don't do anything for me and I've heard all the lame stories before.

With the images of jungles, mountains, great lakes, river valleys and wild beasts in an impoverished land etched in my mind, i put on some old music from the Congo and can't believe all that it was to me. It flashes before me like some distant dream. I don't tell a lot of stories, nobody understands.

This was clearly illustrated to me in Cartagena, a beautiful walled city on the north coast of the country, rich in history some of which lives on in the beautiful Metis features of people descended from the natives, the colonizers and their slaves. From the small salsa clubs tucked in the corner of the old city to the hustlers and pushers running scams on the streets, the city has a real pulse.

The sense of history was overwhelming as Cartagena de Indias was the most important Spanish port on the continent for centuries. It was through here that all the supplies and slaves entered, and from where all the continent's gold and silver left. And you can see it in the buildings, on the streets, in the sea defences, feel it in the atmosphere. Of course that is true only for those who leave the hostel. Many don't.

The backpacker scene really started to get to me. There are hostels where you would have a problem if you didn't speak English, a bit surprising for someone looking for a Colombian experience. The general dynamic involves little more than gringos sitting around telling lame stories about how great they are and how great hostels are in other south american cities. “How was Cuzco?” “Oh, it's so great dude, there is this hostel there with a pool and you can get drunk for really cheap and the chicks are bla bla bla bla.” I mean come on. Sometimes the only reason people even talk to me is out of some sense that the should be polite. They are constantly trying to recussitate dying conversation with :where you from, where you been, where you going, how old are you, what did you do back home, how long you been traveling, how long you got to go.” Just let it die because neither one of us cares. I don't judge people on how many places they visited or how long they've traveled. That's why I can't stand those types of questions, I feel that they stigmatize me and alienate me from most people around for one reason or another. Thus, I am trying a new experiment – telling backpackers that I hate backpackers (kinda like being racist against your own race). More on that as it develops.

I wandered around Cartagena for a few days and managed to make some friends in spite of all negativity noted above. I was so tired of the scene that I decided to head elsewhere and got on a bus back to the middle of nowhere. Somehow I ended up in some sketchy town with no tourists but lots of criminals and prostitutes. I hid in the hotel for a night and caught a riverboat the next morning to some languid backwater called Mompos.

It was hot and sweaty with whitewashed buildings and I arrived just at the time of year that the river flooded all the beautiful colonial streets. This in itself was interesting and I spent a couple of days exploring and doing nothing, happy because there was not a gringo in sight. The lack of anything to do meant that I could study in the evenings, and the absence of any English speakers led me to discover Spanish skills I didn't know I had. I headed back the way I came and boarded a frigid night bus to Medellin.

I rocked up at the station at six on saturday morning and was shocked to find the metro packed with commuters to the point I could hardly find a place to stand. I located a gringo hostel and sat on the terrace drinking coffees in an attempt to fight off the imminent crash from a total lack of sleep. The strategy worked initially and I hit the Museo de Antiochia, visiting the Botero Galleries. Botero is likely the most famous Colombian artist, and his trademark was depicting every living thing as extremely fat. There are fat men, women, children, dogs, cats, horses, hookers, and even a fat Pablo Escobar.

I spent the next few days bumming around town and managed to meet tons of locals including a rasta juggler girl from the subway, but who am I kidding; I made most of my new friends drinking in parks which is a wholesome nightly activity for gringos and locals alike. Strange behaviour and cocaine seem to be mutually reinforcing and this sets the tone for some memorable incidents. .

I went for a piss one night and believe that the gentlemen using the facilities before me were smoking crack in the toilet. I covered my face with my shirt to avoid whatever noxious fumes were lingering and went about my business. Seeing as there was no closing door, I was not surprised that somebody walked in. What did surprise me was he was brandishing a small knife. I took a look and politely asked him not to smoke any crack. He laughed, came in beside me, and started snorting powder off the knifeblade as I made a confident, but decidedly swift exit from the room.

Before I knew it, a week had passed, I had made tons of friends, both gringos and non, and I was nearly out of time in the country. The last stop was another archaeological mission, this time to the south in a beautiful region where the indigenous have left a legacy of amazing statues and rock hewn tombs. I gazed out at the sublime landscape of misty mountains and smoky trees, where flocks of vultures sit on fenceposts. I passed through villages full of pastel coloured houses with tropical gardens and horse drawn carts. Finally I rolled into St. Augustine.

Despite the difficulty of getting there, I arrived to find phosphorescent butterflies fluttering above sacrificial altars. Tales of human sacrifice and ancient burial rites always get my heart pounding and I could almost hear the echoes of rumbling chants reverberating in the hills. There is no shortage of history around St. Augustine, a history that remains mysterious and inaccessible. The people who created it buried it at the onset of the Inca invasion and it remained beneath the earth for centuries. The real tombs are a little further afield in a place called Tierradentro, isolated at the end of a windy, muddy and mountainous road. As expected, the place was beautiful and remote and there were no other tourists to be seen. I stayed in a house with an old woman I met in the village and she made me a massive dinner as I played with her puppy. Perhaps more interesting than the archaeology, was the fact that the town presented the first evidence of the rebel movements that had made such a great impact on the trajectory of the country. As best as I can tell, there is little danger as a tourist, no more than any other country anyway. This is the first place that I visited where people have scrawled FARC on the walls. In most instances, somebody has added an E to the end.

Presently rebels are deep in jungles producing cocaine for some vaguely articulated Marxist ideology. They would be wiped out if not for the porous borders and connivance of neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador. If maintained, the present status quo should ultimately eliminate the deeply entrenched perception of danger that has deterred all but a trickle of tourists for so long.

After nearly six weeks, I reluctantly left Colombia, knowing that I will go back one day. I have concluded that Colombia is ready to boom provided that it can maintain it's political and military stability. I am happy to have seen it before that happens. The old combination of rebels and cocaine has not disappeared, though it casts only a shadow of its former importance in the country and is outweighed at every turn by the sophisticated feel of the cities, the warm and friendly reception that a stranger receives in the villages.

The place is so pristine and beautiful that part of me hopes that the gringos stay scared.