Quito to Riobamba

I arrived to Quito one week ago in characteristic fashion, having not done any homework on Ecuador. I haven´t used a guidebook throughout the trip, relying instead on insights and recommendations from fellow travelers as I move along.

Frankly, I wasn´t even aware of what the currency was in Ecuador. After picking up my backpack and wandering around the baggage claim area a bit, and feeling a little dejected finding my lock cut off by Ecuadorean immigration authorities, I realized the currency must be the dollar. A visit to the ATM confirmed this, as it spat out a bunch of fresh greenbacks into my hands.

Ecuador is a different world. All of my travels in Latin America have taught me that the indigenous culture was the minority, an often overlooked group of people in societies dominated by white Spanish blood.

The view from the cab on the way to my hostel proved that I had finally reached the Andes, the land once dominated by great native indian societies, the Incas being the most well known. Here the indian culture is king. It is a nice change.

I think Americans often think everyone south of Texas is a dark brown color and eats spicy food (i.e. like in Mexico). Actually I know this is true, because I used to be one of those people.

The dynamics of race and color in Latin America are much more complex than that simplistic outlook. Latin America is full of descendants of white Spanish colonizers, mixes of indians and Spanish blood, black Carribean peoples, and everything in between.

Physically, the indigenous have a very distinct look. They are almost always short, with dark brown skin, straight hair, and a rounded face.

In demeanor, almost without exception, indians are a reserved people. They walk with a characteristic slowness, as if they already know their fate and their is no need to rush, paying little attention to the random gringo passing by. I would learn more about the indigenous during my next week of travels.

Ecuador is cheaper than Colombia, and Panamá for that matter. It was in a conversation on the San Blas islands off Panamá that I first realized the change in prices I would see during this trip. ¨Oh it´s just gonna get cheaper and cheaper for you,¨ said a random Aussie to whom I had explained my route, traveling from Panamá to Bolivia over the course of roughly three months.

And so it is getting cheaper. In Colombia a room in a dormitory would cost me around $10 a night. Here in Quito, almost without fail, I have been able to find private rooms, with a private bathroom, and hot water for around $8 per night.

When faced with the option of paying $6 for a dormitory or $8 for a private room with bathroom, without blinking I choose the option for a private room. The hard-core backpackers almost always opt for the dormitory, anxious to save a buck and often looking down on those with more ¨expensive¨ tastes. And so I have left their ranks without looking back. I was never that into roughing it anyway. Heck...I´m on vacation.

Food has gotten cheaper too. Breakfast and lunch at a local family establishment cost between $1.50 and $2. And we are talking full, sit-down meals. Lunch almost always includes soup, meat with rice and vegetables, and a natural juice drink. I have no complaints about Ecuadorian cuisine.

Whereas in Colombia I was paying out roughly $40 a day for room, board, transportation, and other expenses, here in Ecuador I seem to be living quite well for $25 a day. A guy could travel for quite a while at that rate of spending...and so I will.

My first two days in Ecuador were spent wandering around Quito, the capital. The weather there was pretty cold due to the city being situated in the Andes at around 2,800 meters (9,200 feet) of altitude. I enjoyed walking around the old city, but in general my time in Quito was pretty unremarkable.

From Quito, I headed to Baños, a small tourist center in the mountains under the shadow of the active (recently very active) volcano Tungurahua. There I found another decent room and spent a couple of days wondering around the town and the surrounding hills.

Baños is an adventure tourism hub, full of advertisements for rock climbing, gliding, bungee jumping, rafting, and other random adrenaline-rushing sports.

I bypassed all of that, still marvelling at the fact that I had my own private room, and opting to read a book and turn in early. The highlight of Baños for me was a four hour hike up a mountain to try to catch a glimpse of smoking Tunguragua, which gave me some great views of the valley, but no sight of the volcano due to the cloud cover.


The town of Baños.

Riobamba, without a doubt, has been (and continues to be) the highlight of my time in Ecuador thus far.

On Sunday I took a bus from Baños to the nearby of city of Riobamba. I had coordinated my visit with a friend, Emily Webster, a Peace Corps volunteer who I knew from Costa Rica that had extended a third-year in Ecuador.

Emily (shown at the start of page) is living in Cacha, a set of indigenous communities in the mountains about 10 kilometers south of Riobamba. She has been there about 8 months in the community, working on environmental conservation initiatives, and a range of other things.

I had contacted Emily about three months before, letting her know I would be traveling in her area and would love to meet up. I wasn´t going to miss an opportunity to have an authentic in-country experience visiting a Peace Corps friend.

Fortunately, Emily was receptive to the idea, and so we coordinated our rendevous in the Riobamba centro across from the train station.

After exchanging hugs and some catching-up conversation, Emily showed me around Riobamba, the regional hub. It´s a fairly nice city, with around 250,000 people. As we toured the city, we ran into a group of American medical students who were in the area providing assistance to some of the local indigenous communities for a month during their summer break. Emily was familiar with them, and they were to pop up time and time again during our next few days.

Getting dark, we finally hailed a cab to take us out to Cacha. It was roughly a 25 minute cab ride, but only ended up costing us about $4.(again with the low prices)

Over the next two days I was able to get a feel for Cacha, as well as Emily´s lifestyle in her site.

With none of the local dwellings meeting Peace Corps standards for homestays, Emily was housed in the local casa communal, or community house. She has running water (although not potable), electricity, a propane gas stove, and a sink (but no shower). On a daily basis, she resorts to cold water bucket showers, and the occasional hot water shower at a home in a nearby town once or twice a week.

The primary language spoken in Cacha is Quichua, a variant of Quechua, the Incan language spoken throughout the language. When I asked Emily if she had learned much Quichua, she demurred and said that she hadn´t learned much. After watching her interact with some of her neighbors that first day, I learned she was just being modest, as I listened to her banter on in Quichua.

The language was fascinating to me. Being a student of the Spanish language, I habitually listened intently to the conversation, but found I understood absolutely nothing. Quichua is from another world...the world before there was a New World.

Emily would always revert back to Spanish after conversing for a little while, her Quichua limitations being reached. The indians spoke Spanish well, and so they would switch back to Spanish with her. Still...I found it amazing to listen to her speak Quichua.

I evened picked up a few words myself. Ashtakamen: See you later. Kayaykamen: see you tomorrow. And mashi, or friend. As the members of her community would invariably ask Emily if I was her husband, or boyfriend, finally coming to visit her. We would respond ¨mana(no), mashi¨.

We had timed my arrival to coincide with an indian activity to celebrate the first day of summer, which was set to take place on Monday. I was told the celebration would include a lot of indian rituals, complex ceremonies, and native foods. Naturally, I wasn´t going to miss this.

We woke up early on Monday and marched up to the top of the hill above the town, following other groups of people headed in the same direction. On reaching the site where the ceremony was to take place, we were surprised by what we found - gringos...quite a few of them.

But not just any gringos, these were some serious hippies, the likes of which I have not seen in all my Widespread Panic / Phish concert going years.

As we were to learn later, the gathering had been announced to religious shamans all throughout the Americas...and these norteamericano-looking people represented different groups in the US and Canada.


Ceremony, with shamans in the inner circle.

But I gotta be honest, to me they just looked like a bunch of hippies.

That really kind of threw me, and while watching the different rituals taking place, I just could not seem to wrap my head around there presence.

Before the ceremonies ended we walked down the hill to a number of food stands that had been set up featuring indigenous foods. Indigenous cuisine is pretty basic, mostly consisting of root vegetables and grains. The medical students volunteering in the area would constantly complain of the malnutrition of the patients they attended to.

There were other sad things happening within the community. Emily had told me how almost all the young adults had moved to the city, and sure enough during my two days I mostly saw little children and older adults. Also, there were lots of abandoned houses in the towns resulting from this exodus, which made for an eerie setting.

On Tuesday, Emily and I hiked up the hillside so I could see the school where she had been doing some work. Our visit coincided with a parents meeting. Emily and I began to work on a world map she had been completing on one of the schoolhouse walls. The start of the meeting was delayed, so many of the parents and kids hovered around us as we worked on the map, then picked up markers and lent a hand. It was fun to see everyone crowding around the map, looking at it with serious consideration.





On Tuesday afternoon we came back down the mountain to Riobamba. It was to be my last night in Riobamba before heading farther south towards Peru.

But then, out at night with some of the medical students, over beers one of them suggested to me ¨Why don´t you climb Chimborazo!?¨ That majestic mountain, the highest in the country at 6300 meters, had been staring down at me for the last few days.

I decided it wasn´t a bad idea. Or that is, after shaking off a hangover the next day, decided it still wasn´t a bad idea. So I consulted a guide, who agreed to take me up the mountain. Tomorrow we have a practice / acclimatization hike, then Saturday we begin our ascent. If all goes well, after a few hours rest in a shelter in the afternoon, we will hike through the night and reach the summit around 6am on Sunday.

So it looks like I will be sticking around Riobamba a little longer.

Bogotá...and some commentary on Colombia

As expected, Bogotá, turned out to be even bigger and more sophisticated than Medellín. For the most part, I spent 3 very tranquilo days walking around the old section of the city, La Candelaria, where my hostel was located.

One of the most important landmarks in Bogotá is without a doubt Plaza de Bolivar (shown above). It´s an impressive square enclosed by the Supreme Court building, a cathedral, the Senate building, and the municipality offices. It was a nice place for people watching.

My first full day in the city I visited the Botero Musueum, an art collection whose primary works displayed are the paintings of Fernando Botero, Colombia´s most famous artist.

I´m not always a huge art fan, but I really liked his paintings. He´s most famous because of how he plays with dimensions in his paintings, most notably by making people and objects look fat or inflated. Case in point below.



In this painting you´ve got a really fat woman, lying on a very wide bed, with almost no space left elsewhere in the room to even walk, and she´s reading a letter from a lover and crying, all the while eating these silly, fat looking orange slices. It´s pretty hilarious.

The shapes, dimensions, and colors make his paintings a lot of...well...fun.

Also during my time in Bogotá I took a train up the mountainside behind the city to the Monserrat monastery which overlooks the capital. The view from there really gives you a healthy respect for the sprawl of Bogotá and it´s 7.5 million inhabitants.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I took a quick day trip two hours outside of the city to a town called Zipaquirá. Zipaquirá is nestled alongside a mountain that is basically pure salt underneath. It has been used to extract salt since the 7th century, when the indigenous began gathering the salt water that ran from under the mountain and drying it out to form salt cakes.

The mine is famous today because a huge cathedral capable of fitting more than 7 thousand people has been built roughly 200 meters underground in the old mine shafts.

It´s supposedly the #1 tourist attraction in all of Colombia, and was definitely pretty impressive. We walked along with a guide more than 2 kilometers down the mine shafts to reach the cathedral.

In the afternoon, I came back into town on the Transmilenio public transportation system, or basically a huge line of buses that shuttle people throughout the city via dedicated lanes that only they can use. It´s no underground, but I found the system pretty impressive.

Once back in the city, I checked out the Gold Museum, run by the National Bank. It is one of the largest collections of gold in the world, mostly from indigenous sites located within the country.

So I stayed pretty busy during my time in Bogotá. I think I was trying to get back to the basics after our partying in Medellín.

Still, I managed to stay at a very active hostel, and every day found myself sitting down for beers to watch a World Cup match or the NBA finals.

Colombia´s History of Violence

I´ve been meaning to write some kind of commentary on the state of things in Colombia...so here goes.

Colombia has a pretty bad image as a very dangerous place to live or travel, and with good reason. It´s important to understand the country´s past to better understand what is happening now in Colombia.

I´ll only go as far back as 1948, when the Liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was poised to come to power, with a promise to unite the people of Colombia. Imagine someone with three times the charisma and popularity of Obama in a period of tense, uncertain times.

On April 9, 1948 Gaitán was assasinated while walking out of his law offices, unleashing massive riots in Bogotá. This unleashed a bloody conflict between Liberals and Conservatives throughout the country from the late 1940´s to early 1950´s, resulting in the deaths of more than 180,000 people. The period is simply called La Violencia.

In the late 1950´s a fragile peace was finally reached, but it could not stop the rise of guerilla groups, the most famous of which is the left-wing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or the FARC.

In Colombia, the central goverment has a long history of not being able to extend control over it´s own borders. Or that is, to provide even basic security throughout the country. You can understand why this is once you realize Colombia is the size of Texas and California combined, and thick with jungle, mountains, rivers, and many hideouts for guerilla movements.

So the left-wing FARC and conservative central government waged what amounts to a constant civil war for decades. Bad, right? It gets much worse.

In response to the central governments inability to crush the FARC and left wing groups, rich landowners and members of the oligarchy took matters in their own hands, raising private armies known as paramilitaries.

These paramilitaries were allowed to operate in certain areas of the country against the FARC with the tacit approval of the national army forces. But as you can imagine the paramilitaries soon resorted to some very shady practices, such as organizing outright ¨death squads¨ to pass through areas known to harbor FARC forces, and eliminate suspected collaborators. (some members of a small village Derek and I visited outside Valledupar told us of past visits and killings by paramilitaries in that area)

So the country was now swarming with government forces, the left wing FARC, and right wing paramilitaries. The advent of cocaine in the 1970´s heated things up even more.

Once the size of the cocaine market became evident, cocaine cartel leaders began making hundereds of millions and investing them in their own set of armed groups and hired assassins.

As the FARC and even right-wing paramilitaries became aware of the huge potential profits, they too began operating in cocaine production to finance their organizations. Pretty soon the right wing paramilitaries had completely shaken free of their masters and become an end unto themselves. Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the drying up of it´s funding sources, the FARC would also take on cocaine production (not too mention kidnapping) as it´s primary financing mechanism.

It can probably be safely said that rock bottom was reached on November 6, 1985, when the Palace of Justice (or the building which houses the Supreme Court) was raided by the left-wing armed group M-19. More than 300 lawyers, judges, and administrators were taken hostage by 35 M-19 guerrilla fighters.

The building was surrounded by the national army forces, and after hearing the demands of M-19 and determining that negotiating or giving in to the group´s demands would only further weaken the government, it was decided the army would be allowed to try to remove the rebels by force.

During the raid by government forces, the Palace of Justice caught fire, and more than 100 hostages were killed, including 11 of the country´s 21 Supreme Court Justices.

Stepping back for a moment...Can you imagine what that would be like? It would be as if an armed group suddenly raided the US Supreme Court and killed four out of the nine justices.

Between the M-19 raid and assassinations of judges and lawyers by cocaine cartels, the Colombian justice system was effectively crippled. It took years for the justice system to regain it´s strength.

Assasinations of political officials (including the 1989 Presidential candidate) continued to afflict the government throughout the 1980s and 90s.

Why does all this matter? The point of this review of Colombian violence is not to romanticize or glorify any of this. Quite the opposite, the real reason is I personally simply can´t imagine violence of that scale.

It´s also important to taking into account the present circumstances in Colombia. The eight years of Alvaro Uribe´s presidency have seen incredible changes in the security conditions around the country.

Uribe´s government effectively cleansed itself of some corrupt elements, waged absolute war against the FARC and other groups that couldn´t be negotiated with, and also coordinated negotiated surrenders with many right-wing groups.

It has not always been pretty or clean. Many people argue (probably correctly) that some paramilitaries have been able to literally get away with murder.

However the changes speak for themselves. The number of yearly kidnappings has dropped from 3,700 in the year 2000, to less than 175 in the 2009. FARC, the only remaining active rebel movement, has dropped from a force of 16,900 to 8,900. More importantly, the have been pushed deep into the mountains and cannot strike at vital regions in the center of the country.

The last 8 years have seen Colombia rescued from a nightmare, and it appears ready to experience a boom - especially economically. During the next 5 to 10 years, I expect the country to become a major tourist destination. I´m really happy to have been able to travel in Colombia some before word gets out, and the masses come flooding in.

Culturally, Colombia has always been a regional leader - with writers such as Gabriel García Marquez, musicians like Juanes and Shakira, and it´s impressive architecture and art in it´s cities. However, in the future, look for Colombia´s image to change in a big way.

I think that about does it for my Colombia rant.

Quito, Ecuador

This morning I arrived in Quito, Ecuador after flying Bogotá. I´ll be in Ecuador roughly two weeks. One of the highlights that I´m really looking forward to is visiting a Peace Corps friend from Costa Rica who extended her service for 1 year here in Ecuador. This weekend I plan to visit her in her community (high in the mountains) and be around for an indigenous festival celebrating the first day of summer. Should be pretty awesome.

Medellín

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. – Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain had it right. This quote definitely holds true for my experience in Medellín. Maybe not so much for dispelling prejudice or bigotry, but definitely for giving me a new perspective on Colombian society.

Colombia, frankly, has an image problem, and with good reason. The new tourism pitch being shown in the US and Europe is ¨Come to Colombia. The only risk is not wanting to leave.¨

As opposed to the old motto ¨Come to Colombia. The only risk is someone else not wanting you to ever leave.¨

He he. Sorry…forgive a guy a little backpacker humor.

In the past, whenever I heard mention of Medellín, only one word would come to mind – cocaine. Okay, cocaine, and possibly the name Pablo Escobar.

Unfortunately, Pablo Escobar, dead since 1994 when he was gunned down, is still Medellín´s most famous citizen. His story is a fascinating one, but also extremely violent. I won´t go into it, but basically he was head of the Medellín cartel for more than a decade, at a time in the 1980´s when cocaine first came to the masses.

At his height he controlled more than 70% of the cocaine trade, and was ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the top 10 richest people in the world during the 1980´s, with a fortune of over $7 billion.

But back to the topic of getting a new perspective on Colombia. Derek and I arrived by bus around 9am on Tuesday morning, and very quickly boarded the Medellín Metrorail, a very modern public metro system running through the center of the city.

We made our way to our hostel (Casa Kiwi…which was to be our glory and downfall), and then headed back out to get a glimpse of the city.

Medellín is Colombia´s second biggest city behind Bogotá. It is home to about 3.5 million people, situated at 1500 meters above sea level, in a valley between two tall mountain ranges.

It is home to universities, museums, art galleries, a botanical garden, fine hotels, colonial architecture, a metrorail system, and all kinds of other cultural ¨stuff¨ that I wouldn’t even begin to know how to appreciate.

Basically, I was really impressed! The city was trendy, modern, and clean. The kids were all dressed in the latest styles. For a moment, I felt like I had wandered back to Spain. It was easily the nicest city I have been to during my travels in Central or South America (including Panama City).

The cool weather was also extremely welcome after a week and a half of sweating it out in the steamy, low-lying region around Cartagena.

The people of Medellín are known in the country as paisas (pronounced pie-zas), a title which they are truly proud to hold. Being a paisa means you are down-to-earth, middle class, and most importantly…not from Bogotá.

I never realized it before coming to Colombia, but the two leading Colombian cities have a fierce rivalry. It can almost be compared to the relationship between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, or Florence and Rome.

Here in Colombia, Bogotá represents power, the rich oligarchy, and white-Spanish decent. Bogotá, since colonial times, has been the seat of the government.

Medellín, one very tall mountain range away, has always somewhat resented the snobbishness and control of the capital. It is a constant source of conversation when talking with people from Medellín.

¨Medellín has the best people, tastiest food, most comfortable weather, and most beautiful women in the country¨, they will say to you. When I told my cab driver this morning that I was headed to Bogotá he said, ¨Why are you going there?! They´re all a bunch of snobs. And the women all have flat asses!¨

I was in no position to argue with him, so only complemented him on the beauty of the paisa women, and promised to continue on to Bogotá so I could find out for myself.

Derek and I didn´t get into many cultural activities during our four days in Medellín. Unless drinking can be included as a cultural activity…which I think it probably can be.

As previously mentioned, our hostel, Casa Kiwi, was to be our downfall.

The hostel is situated in the hills above the city, in a very rich, trendy neighborhood called El Poblado. The streets were lined with stylish cafes, restaurants, and bars. In addition, the hostel boasted a bar ($1 bottles/$1.50 micro-brew beers), a large 3-tiered TV room, a kitchen, pool table, extensive deck overlooking the street, and rooftop pool and patio.

It was obviously a recipe for disaster.

To be fair, the start of the World Cup also played a part in the resulting debauchery. Starting on Thursday morning, a bunch of hung-over, smelly backpackers would clamber down the stairs, filling the TV room before the 8:30am start.

This may not seem like a very impressive feat, but it is when you know a lot of the crowd didn´t go to sleep until 5am, and has been going at that pace for several days.

Irish-accented streams of curses would fill the air, insulting some French player, followed by all kinds of chatter and shouts in Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, German, and the occasional Isreali ranting in Hebrew…which is worth hearing if you ever get the chance.

Up until a couple of days ago I had underestimated the impact the World Cup was to have on my travels.

We met one American traveler, Jeff, whose sole plan for the next month was to hole up in Medellín so he could watch all of the 64 World Cup games. I have to admit, it didn´t sound like a bad plan, especially considering the $1.50 microbrews.

Ironically, none of the five countries I am traveling through qualified for the World Cup. But I don´t think it matters. Between the motley crew of backpackers and Latin American love for football, it should make for some interesting World Cup viewing.

Unfortunately, this morning I had to say goodbye to Derek, as I had to press on to the airport for a quick flight to Bogotá. Derek has to head back to Costa Rica on Sunday to continue working for Peace Corps, which leaves me traveling alone for awhile.

Now after a quick 50 minute flight, (as opposed to the 10 bus ride through the mountain) I´m installed in another trendy hostel in the Bogotá city center. I´ll be here until Wednesday, before flying on to Quito.

I´m kind of looking forward to a few days traveling alone…going at my own pace. I´d also like to get out more than we did in Medellín to understand the historic sites around Bogotá a little better.

But this hostel is also equipped with a bar area selling cheap beer, a large flat-screen TV, and a bunch of soccer loving backpackers…so we´ll see how long that plan lasts.

I keep intending to write a little background on Colombia´s violent history, which is important to understanding the country today, but I seem to have run out of steam again. (i.e. time for a beer and conversation with fellow travelers.)

Cheers.

Cartagena and Around

My Colombia travel partner, Derek, and I met up at the airport in Panama City and boarded a plane for Cartagena on Saturday, June 29th.

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!