Archive for the ‘Colombia’ Category

I recently offered my services as a contributor to Dave Lee’s Colombia site, Medellin Living and to my surprise, my services were accepted! My first post went up today – and more are on the way, so head on over there, take a look, there’s plenty of good stuff to check out.

What’s This?

Parque National de Tayrona, Santa Marta, Colombia

What’s This?

Bandeja

Lunch in Colombia. That’s fried egg, rice, beans, avocado, fried mature plantain, sausage, ground beef, chicken and deep-fried pork rind. What you want me to say – it’s wonderful.

South Americans are not quiet people. The streets are filled with a mixture of shouting, traffic, the thud of a reggaeton track booming from a passing car, sirens and of course, the incessant beeping of car horns.

When I lived in Europe and drove regularly, I have very little memory of using the horn in my car. My first car had a very weak, pathetic beep, more of a parp really, so I tended to avoid it. Plus, horns just aren’t really used much and when they are, people tend to pay attention.

South America (and Colombia in particular) is different. In the 5 minutes I’ve sat here writing this I have heard the honking of a car horn 17 times (honestly, I counted). Oh, make that 18. Once I’d noticed this, I tried to figure out in which circumstances they are used, and more importantly, why?

The Impatient Honk – we’ve all been there – sitting in traffic, the lights ahead turn green, yet the car in front just decides to sit there. At least, that’s what it looks like. So, rather than patiently wait for whatever encumbrance is snarling things up to clear, honk. For 5 seconds. Things don’t move (incredible – how can this be? Can’t they hear the honking?), so honk again. And again. Until persistence and hard work pays off and things start moving again.

The Blocked Honk – linked to the Impatient Horn, except this time driving down a narrow one-way street and the large 4×4 2 cars ahead has stopped. The driver is chatting to someone on the pavement, and ain’t moving. Honks break out until, after 2 minutes the 4×4 reluctantly says bye to his friend and moves on.

The Hola Honk – driving along with the Reggaeton blaring, windows down, arm out the window and a friend is spotted. HONK! Wave arm, shout unintelligibly, make bizarre handsignal meaning “I’ll do something else another time”. Continue driving. An alternative version ends in the driver swerving across the road to talk to the friend and to a  Blocked Honk scenario.

The Transport Honk – this honk was new to me, yet is very prevalent in Ecuador and Colombia. Picture the scene, little ole you is walking innocently down the street, or stood on a street corner when cars, buses, taxis and motorbikes all start honking their horns as they drive past you. At first you don’t notice, then you ignore it, then you look up and see the driver looking at YOU. They’re honking at me! But why? Very simply, you are a pedestrian, they offer transport and you might want a lift for which they get paid. Only you didn’t know it until they kindly honked at you to remind you of how bad a job your feet are doing.

The Coming Through Honk – you know that scene in the film where there is a car chase through a shopping mall and the driver of the chased and out of control car constantly and desperately honks his horn to warn shoppers to get the fuck out of the way? That’s this one transferred to the public highways of South America. Often linked to application of blinking hazard lights for no apparent reason and overtaking on the inside.

The Cos I Can Honk – if the driver has been unlucky enough to avoid any of the above situations for the previous 3 minutes, then he’ll just honk anyway. Cos He Can.

So, keep an eye out for all of the above and if you come across any new ones let me know!

So, we’ve made it back to Colombia – in fact we’ve been back here for over a fortnight. It all started with a mammoth bus day from Otavalo in Ecuador, up to Ipiales where we crossed the border, followed by the worst bus journey so far, up to Popayan. It’s hard to concentrate on the beautiful scenery when the bus is haring down the bendy road, just inches from the edge of the road and the 400m precipice to the river below. We didn’t get to Popayan until 11 at night, went straight to a hostel, and in the morning jumped on a bus to Cali.

Laura is from Cali, and as we’ve been together over a year now, I’d heard a lot about the place, not all of it positive. Along with Medellin, Cali is infamous as being home to a very powerful and violent drug cartel. As the power of Medellin and Pablo waned, Cali and the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers took up the slack. While generally keeping a lower profile than their adversaries in Medellin (no front pages of Time or Newsweek for these boys) they did a pretty comprehensive job of making Cali an unpleasant and dangerous place to live for many years.

But, like Medellin, Cali has shown itself to be very resilient and again, I was pleasantly surprised. The centre is not unattractive (it’s not beautiful, but hey!), the rio Cali runs through the middle of town, surrounded all the way by trees and bushes (which make it harder to see the people washing themselves and clothes in it) and the San Antonio old town certainly gives La Candelaria in Bogota a run for its money. It has one of the best zoos in South America, concentrating mainly on wildlife native to the continent, and run very much along more Western lines than most South American zoos, the animals look well looked after and well housed. I do of course have photos of all this, but am yet to get to a computer, so you’ll just have to wait.

We spent a nice 10 days in Cali (I even risked public ridicule and did my Salsa thing – nobody laughed too loudly and I escaped with my drunken pride virtually intact) and nearly considered staying there for a few months, but came to our senses and headed off again. We’re currently in Bucaramanga, which apart from being the only town I can think of to sound like a Bond villain is famous for its unique and unusual snack, la hormiga culona, which roughly translated means Big-Ass Ant. I’ve bought a packet which I’m working my way through, they’re actually pretty tasty.

We’ll wait until Monday when bus prices halve, due to the end of Semana Santa (Holy Week, nothing to do with Mr Claus), and then we’re off to the beach. The Caribbean to be more precise, which I am looking forward to enormously.

We’ve spent nearly 3 weeks all told in the Amazon region, half in Colombia and half in Peru. I have lots of notes and photos that will one day find themselves onto the blog, but at the moment by and large I’m limited to public internet access or my iPod when there is wifi (which is not very often at the moment), so you’ll have to bear with me.

Overall however it’s been quite an experience, it’s so goddamn big and remote and didn’t really go anywhere off the beaten track but even so.

The river itself is mind-boggingly huge, on the bits we saw it was a good half a mile across, and this is 2,500 miles from the Atlantic. It just dominates everything.

They don’t call it the rainforest for nothing. It sounds like a train coming – it’s perfectly dry and simply overcast and all of a sudden you hear a noise like a strong wind coming. It gets louder and louder, the sky turns instantly darker and within 20 seconds the sky is filled with raindrops the size of pebbles. The downpour continues for 5 minutes then it stops. Just like that. For 10 minutes the water drips from the leaves, giving the impression that it is actually still raining. Then it’s over. For a split second there is complete silence, then the noise of falling water is once again replaced by the squawking of birds and the croaking of frogs.

A quick update from Leticia – got back here last night from a few days in Puerto Narino, which is 70km up the Amazon towards Peru. Tomorrow we’re getting a fast boat from Santa Rosa (an island across the river in Peru) to Iquitos (also in Peru). To buy the ticket we had to go by taxi to Tabatinga (in Brasil) and then back to Leticia airport (in Colombia) to get our exit stamps in the passports. Before getting on the boat we have to go to Peru to get our entry stamps otherwise we’re not allowed back into Colombia and will have to go to Brasil.

All clear?

But on a less bureaucratic note, this really is an incredible region – the jungle is all around and it’s very simple to take little excursions away from the town to get a taste of what the jungle really is like. There is life everywhere, lots of it creepy and crawly, but the air is buzzing with birds and the rivers are full of fish. And pink river dolphins, we even got to see a few…

More detailed accounts will follow when I have a little more time, but now I have to dash to Peru, or maybe Brasil. I’m not sure.

So, we turn up at the airport all excited this morning, ready to begin the jungle adventure. Monkeys here we come!! Except that our ticket is for the 30th and today is the 28th. Kinda put a damper on things…
But, guess what? The day after tomorrow I’m off to the jungle! Yay! Monkeys!

So I’ve got you all excited with a new blog design, loads of fascinating and insightful commentary to read and now I’m going to bugger off for a couple of weeks. Your disappointment is tangible.

This is not because I don’t love you – you know I do – but on Thursday we will be flying down to Leticia, which is slap-bang in the middle of the Amazon jungle and I’m not taking the laptop with me.

We don’t have an exact plan, but it involves lots of boats, very few roads and hopefully monkeys. I still haven’t seen a monkey in all the time I’ve been here and it’s starting to annoy me.

I shall resurface in Peru in a couple of weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t hear much in that time, I’ll be thinking of you…

A monkey like the one what I'm going to see loads of