Derek is still a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. He has extended for a third year as a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, which means he is based out of the central office in San José supporting our project leader.
We arrived to Cartagena, took a taxi to our hotel, dropped of our stuff, and then started walking around to check out the city for the remaining two hours of daylight left.
We made our way to Cartagena´s old city, to the old city wall by the sea, and then started hovering towards a bar to watch the sunset. We were instantly disappointed after talking to the hostess. ¨No estamos serviendo liquor hoy¨. Or that is, there would be no sale of booze for the next two days due to the presidential elections. Talk about disappointment! :)
So we spend the next two days wandering around the city, checking out the beautiful architecture of the restored Old Quarter, but without being able to enjoy a little badly needed alcoholic beverage. And we had the perfect chance to buy a duty free bottle of whiskey in the Panama City airport, in basically a duty free country...so dumb!
After two days we got tired of Cartagena. It was, frankly, too posh and touristy. Cartagena is the major tourism hotspot for Colombia national tourism, and is also growing pretty popular with some Europeans and random travelers. The Old Quarter was filled with expensive hotels and restaurants (or at least relatively, considering our budget constraints). A full meal at a good recent would probably run you between $40-$50 a person.
We were able to find some family run places out of the Old Quarter with full sit-down meals for around $5. To Cartagena´s credit, they had done a very good job restoring the old section of the city to its original styles. It looked like a refined port city your would expect to find in Spain.
On Monday, we headed up the coast about 4 hours to a port town called Santa Marta. It was not what you would call beautiful, but it was more authentic, and there was a really cool backpacker hostal located there, so Derek and I were happy.
We stayed there two nights, taking one day trip to see a nearby fishing village turned tourist outpost, Taganga. Once again, we were not that impressed! The village was filled with Colombian and European tourists, mostly there to do scuba diving. So we retreated to Santa Marta again to regroup and formulate a new plan.
Derek wanted to find a more authentic Colombian town in the interior of the country, so after a little looking around on wiki-travel, we set our sights on a small city called Valledupar (pronounced Va-yay-du-par), located about 5 hours inland not far from the Venezualan border.
On Wednesday we set off for Valledupar. As soon as we boarded the bus/van that was taking us, we started talking to our fellow passengers, and getting a better feel for Colombians.
The gentleman sitting next to me, about 50 years old, was going to a town located just before Valledupar. He was headed there to manage some affairs of a pension that he received from his wife´s work. His wife had died two years ago from hemorragic dengue fever, and the pension had been left behind to the family. I felt bad for him, as he had three young kids at home with no mom.
We began talking about politics, as well as the situation of tourism in the area. ¨You would not have come here 8 years ago,¨ he told me. He explained to me that up until 5 years ago, paramilitaries based in the area were very powerful, and they would come out of the mountains to block the same highway we were traveling at that moment, and then ¨go fishing¨, as they called.
This meant they would basically pull everyone out of the cars and buses at gunpoint, find out who were the people of value - lawyers, politians, police men, soldiers, and some tourists - and then once they had rounded up several dozen people, they would march them off into the mountains, later asking for ransoms from the families or appropriate authorities.
My follow-up question was naturally, ¨Well do they still do that?!¨ ¨No¨, he said, ¨they have been pushed back into the mountains since several years ago.¨ So I breathed a little sigh of relief at that news.
We arrived to Valledupar, encountering some rain along the way, but without problems. And as I am writing now we have been here for 5 days!
Here in Valledupar we have found a very unique city. The city is extremely safe, with security having been restored to the region within the last few years, and has basically been untouched by tourists.
As we´ve walked around the city the last few days, doing different activities like swimming in a couple rivers, or going out to eat, the people have taken a lot of interest in us. It´s obvious that most people do not see many foreigners in the area. And once Derek and I begin talking, they are usually even more suprised. ¨Hey! The gringos speak Spanish!¨.
We have been asked several times, ¨How did you decide to come to Valledupar?¨ We usually just respond that we´ve always been interested in the country, the history, and the culture, but the security situation was never good enough to want to travel in Colombia. ¨How do you like it?¨, they then ask, to which we reply that it´s been fantastic.
During our second day in Valledupar we visited a swimming hole about 1 hour outside of the city, in a small town. There we went swimming and diving off rocks into a local river. We were there alone with just a few locals. It was a lot of fun.
After swimming, we ran into a lady in town that was friends with the hostal-owner in Valledupar, and she invited us back to her house for coffee.
While we were there conversing, a patrol of 5 soldiers came up to the house, they were friends of the lady. She gave them coffee as well, and we began to talk with them. One of the young guys was carrying a machine gun. ¨That´s looks heavy!¨, I said to him. His response kind of suprised me, ¨Here..pick it up!¨ So we posed for a few photos with the soldiers.
The talked with us for about 20 minutes, finished their coffee, and then continued on their way. They had been patroling in the hills since around 6am, and considering it was around 3pm, they had walked quite a ways carring some heavy guns.
The lady spoke very well of the soldiers after they had left. She explained to us that before the government had negotiated a truce with the paramilitaries (or basically, privately armed groups) they used to pass through the countryside from time to time killing people, rich or poor.
Pretty much everyone has acknowledged the security situation has improved dramatically under the eight years with Alvaro Uribe as president. It is probably for that reason that during the elections last week, the candidate from Uribe´s party, Juan Manuel Santos, received about 48% of the vote.
This was still not enough for him to win the presidency, but he will almost surely be the next president following a run-off scheduled for June 20th.
While I´m still in Colombia, I´d like to get into a little more detail about the history of Colombia, about the left-wing FARC, right-wing paramilitaries, government forces, and drug traffickers that have made this country such a dangerous, violent place in the past. This violence is something that still exists within the country, but is much smaller in scope.
For now, Derek and I have to head out the door to catch an overnight bus to Medellín, Colombia´s second biggest city. Medellín has a pretty terrible reputation, considering it was the center of the cocaine trade during the Pablo Escobar years, however I think we are going to be suprised by what we find. Everything we have found about the city by talking to people and doing research suggests it is an extremely modern, prosperous, and safe international city.
So we are going to find out. I look forward to writing about this next leg of our trip...and seeing the World Cup matches starting on Friday!
1 comment:
WOW! A gun toten Henderson. Who would ever have thunk it. Great article Blake, even in english. Have fun and keep us posted.
Barry
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