The Route

as recorded on the inside cover of my journal

You Killed Michael Jackson?

We’re back.  After no less than four (4) security checks at the airport in Bogota, including twice unpacking both my carry-on and my checked big backpack so Colombian soldiers could unfold every piece of clothing and pierce my wrapped guava candies to check for drugs, we arrived in Fort Lauderdale to make our stunned re-entry into Los Estados Unidos.  Things are very different.  People, mostly light-skinned and light-haired, walk around with their heads buried in all forms of gadgetry.  Mustaches are rare.  Police officers are not 15 years old and now look like they could actually break your skull.  The very fat Santa figure at the US Airways check-in counter did not greet us with a servile ” a la orden” as is the norm in Colombia but chastised us for not producing our passports quickly enough.  Empanadas are called Pizza Pockets.  And Michael Jackson is dead?  Brittney Brock is now Brittney Birdsong?  And who the hell is this “balloon boy” fellow?

It goes without saying that, initially, we were both pretty bummed to be back.

But the shock wore off.  Lisa flew to Rhode Island to meet up with her family and see her brother graduate from a Naval Officer Training program (congratulations Kyle), and spent a refreshing few days reuniting with aunts and uncles and cousins in Connecticut.  I flew to San Francisco to dig through storage and unload travel gear, staying with excellent hosts Dean Hasan, Simon Axten, and Paul Janzer in their perch on Russian Hill.  I got to watch Team Zissou fight for a tie against an undefeated rival and I joined Simon, Katie Carter, John Peattie and Mike Scanlon for a pulled pork postgame at the Broken Record, where the bartender treated us like royalty.  Saw Ashoke Chakrabarti, saw Christina Holsberry, saw Golden Boy Pizza.  Ran that epic 8-mile ridge trail in the Marin Headlands in perfect sunny weather and my knee didn’t dislocate.  So things are not all bad: streets are very clean, food is plentiful, cars stop at crosswalks, there are crosswalks to begin with, and best of all, you can flush toilet paper down the toilet, something I’ve always enjoyed doing since I was a little kid.

We’re now in Marblehead, still digging into graduate school applications and getting ready for our first Thanksgiving at either home in four years (Guatemala 2006, Mexico 2007, Arizona 2008).  We haven’t really had time to digest the trip properly, maybe that comes later, maybe in small pieces.  But here’s a start: unofficial trip statistics, as recorded on the back page of my journal throughout the 7 months.

In an ongoing gin rummy match from Sucre to Buenos Aires, Lisa erased a thousand-point deficit somewhere on the Altiplano and held off Laurel to take the first leg: Lisa (15,867), Laurel (15,693), Eli (15,271).  With Andrew on board, a fresh game began and I capitalized on reckless play and smoked Lisa and Goose from Buenos Aires to Cartagena: Eli (9,397), Lisa (8,401), Andrew (7,343).  Post/Pre-Roberts/Nathenson, Lisa thumped me from La Plata to Bogota to claim title of ultimate trip champion: Lisa (8,101), Eli (7,269).

Lisa also destroyed me in the book count, 16 to 7, with her ability to read on moving vehicles without puking.

As Lisa read, Andrew and I played cribbage.  I got the pulls I needed, taking 22 match wins of 33 total games.  One final match stands tied at 1 game a piece which will be finished at Zeitgeist in San Francisco over a pitcher of Lagunitas IPA.

Various Modes of Transportation We Took:

75 buses of all varieties, 73 taxis, 33 subways, 11 collectivos, 8 trains, 8 funiculars, 7 4wD vehicles, 5 airplanes, 5 launches, 5 slides, 3 bikes, 3 cable trams, 3 choo-choos, 2 tuk-tuks, 2 tricycle cabs, 2 pick-up trucks, 2 shuttle vans, and a reed boat, row boat, paddleboat, speed boat, dinosaur truck, horse, ferry, rental car, four-wheeled disco bike, and surfboard.

Most Common Country of Origin of Fellow Travelers:

Top Tier:  England, France, Israel, Australia and the USA.  Strong Showing: Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Netherlands, New Zealand and Canada. On Occasion: Denmark, Italy, Romania, Scotland, Brazil, Sweden and Spain. Rarities: Malaysia, Bulgaria, Poland, Belgium, Slovakia and Ivory Coast.

Our Record in Soccer Games Attended: (2-1-2).  (L) Bolivia 0 – Venezuela 1, Estadio Hernando Siles, La Paz, Bolivia. (W) Universitario 2 – Wilstermann 0, Estadio Olimpico Patria, Sucre, Bolivia. (D) Boca Juniors 1 – Velez Sarsfield 1, La Bombanera, Buenos Aires, Argentina. (W) Millonarios 3 – Independiente Medellin 0, El Campin, Bogota, Colombia. (D) Super Patacon 4 – Azul 4, Municipal Gymnasium, Salento, Colombia.

The Highest Places We Went To: #1 Sol de Manana geyser field, Sud Lipez province, Bolivia, 5000+ meters.  #2 Apacheta Chucura, high point of the Choro Trek, Bolivia, 4860 meters.  #3 Paso de Patapampa, on the road from Arequipa to Chivay, Peru, 4800 meters.  #4 Paso de Salkantay, high point of the trek to Macchu Pichu, Peru, 4600 meters.  #5 Cerro Rico, Potosi, Bolivia, 4250 meters.

and finally, The Cosby Show As South America: Cliff Huxtable = Brazil: dominant personality, undeniably significant, large, a little rotund yet athletic. Claire = Ecuador: solid, reliable, even-keeled latitude, though prone to occasional galapagosian flights of fancy. Theo = Chile: the coolest. Vanessa = Uruguay: overshadowed, envious, devious. Sandra = Argentina: the whitest. Denise = Colombia: beautiful, but with a nasty attitude. Rudy = Peru: the crowd pleaser. Peter = Bolivia: lovable, but lacks courage to retake land lost in kitchen juicer catastrophes. Cockroach = Paraguay: of questionable history. Kenny = Venezuela: bold, sly, womanizer.  Those twins that arrived in the later seasons can be the Guyanas, because nobody knows their names.

 

The Chiquinquira Clampdown

The final jaunt in Colombia took us north to the much-hyped colonial town of Villa de Leyva.  A bus and collectivo combo got us through rainstorms in Tunja and up into the hills, our collectivo rolling away without the driver only once.  A quick-thinking teenager in shotgun slid over to hit the breaks before we made it into crosstown traffic.  The rains never hit Villa de Leyva, so the rural landscape surrounding the town looked a lot like Sucre, browner greens of more arid highlands.

The colonial beauty of the town lives up to the hype, we soon discovered.  The pride of Villa de Leyva is the Plaza Mayor, allegedly the largest plaza in Colombia and the second largest in all of South America.  Low white-washed buildings with clay tile roofs surround the plaza, making the vast expanse seem vaster (is that a word?); the entire thing is paved with uneven slabs of stone, making a traverse somewhat precarious.  Little to no traffic spoils the mood, and the cathedral on the plaza is modest by Latin American standards, quietly picturesque, shrugging out of the way to let the plaza take the glory.  The slopes of an unblemished green mountain act as backdrop, sheltering the whole scene nicely.

We were warned against visiting on a weekend, when the town becomes a retreat for crowds of Colombian city-dwellers, but it is overstated.  Hotel rooms are still plentiful and still cheaper than in Bogotá.  It was good to have some life in the town; the plaza at night was still mostly quiet and restaurants actually had people in them.  We sat with a bottle of wine on the steps of the church as the townsfolk do in the evenings and watched people navigate the cobbles, one of whom, randomly, turned out to be an old friend from Sucre.  We ended up spending only a couple days in Villa de Leyva wandering the streets, hiking the hills, and lazing about in the greatest plaza in the Americas – not Plaza Mayor, but the nearby Plaza del Carmen, quieter, sunny, and almost fully covered in tall grass.  We could have stayed longer but we’re suddenly short on days.

We caught a collectivo south on the backroads of Colombia, where we were stopped at a military checkpoint, made to exit the vehicle (men only), and searched, hands on the hood.  You can imagine how angry Lisa was when she saw the soldier search my back pockets, grabbing my butt.  The soldier checked my ID (“California!?” he laughed), and I was good to go.  In Chiquinquira, we made a seemless transition to a bus moving towards Bogotá that would drop us at our destination, Zipaquira, on the way.  After a second military checkpoint and ID check (“California!?” they laughed), where one young male Colombian passenger was taken away, we were dumped on the side of the highway outside Zipaquira.

With all our gear, we hoofed a couple miles into town, eventually getting lost and then hailing a cab to take us halfway up the city hills to the also-hyped Cathedral of Salt.  Here was once a giant salt mine, and over time, small shrines and chapels dug into the tunnels became larger and more elaborate, eventually becoming what is there now: the largest church we’ve visited in South America, a kilometer underground in the Zipaquira hillside.  It is now a major tourist attraction, and the tunnels are clean, well-lit, and mostly airy.  The central nave is mammoth, as wide as any major surface-dwelling cathedral and with ceilings 100-feet high or more.  An enormous modern cross is carved directly into the walls and backlit with white flourescent tubes; giant columns, maybe 30 feet in diameter, are carved directly into the salt walls.  The entire complex is a pretty absurd sight that you’ll someday have to see for yourself.  Jesus Christ himself would probably scratch his head, too.

After a visit to the surprisingly nice plaza in Zipaquira’s old town, we climbed aboard a bus to Bogotá, our final stop on this seven-month trip.  There we’ll unwind in our final few days in South America and prepare for the start of the real adventure: our return to los Estados Unidos, unemployed and homeless.  Time to lace up the old mooching boots…

Wax Palms and the Finca of Don Elías

Despite the frequent rude awakenings, Salento was our favorite town in Colombia and one of the best stops of our entire trip.  It is a small hilltown in the mountainous coffee region a few hours south of Manizales.  Here, the splinter of the Andes range is green and shaggy like the Appalachians, but it can’t quite shake its sharp angularity.  Land is partially forested, partially planted with crops, and partially cleared for pasture, the green grass chewed short and rippled with cow paths.  An elegant central square was alive on the weekend with food stalls selling mountain trout, and quiet during the week.  Food is cheap, especially at Lucy’s, where we ate a set meal almost every day.  Backpackers have overrun the Lonely Planet famous Plantation House on the outskirts of town, but we found excellent and cheap lodging at Ciudad de Segorbe, run by the friendly Enrique from Spain, who fed us fresh pineapple every morning.  In the streets of town, farmers amble in blue jeans tucked into black rubber boots, with a folded ponchos thrown over their shoulder and wide-brimmed hats shading thick mustaches.  It was once a penal colony; now little old ladies peek out their windows in colonial homes and teenagers show off their motorcycles to passing schoolgirls.  Weekly futsal tournaments under the lights at the small covered gymnasium are a riot, fans going nuts cheering on teams of past-their-prime men, like loveable losers Super Patacon (a patacon is basically a giant banana chip the size of one’s head), or the teams of overweight mothers with zero points for agility but ten points for intensity.

The most popular activity in the area is hiking in nearby Cocora Valley, one of the most beautiful landscapes we’ve seen on this trip.  We jumped in the back of a crumbling WWII-era Willys Jeep, fresh from the liberation of Paris, and rode through the countryside to Cocora: three people including the driver in the front seats, four people including Lisa in the back cab, three people including me riding rear fender, three people sitting on the canvas roof rack, and one guy sitting on top of the spare tire, which was fixed to the outer right side of the rear cab.  At Cocora, a deep-set trail led past a trout farm into a lush green valley with hills to either side; above, a huge jungle crag that would fit nicely at Machu Picchu hangs with misty clouds.  The trail crosses the Rio Quindio on wooden logs and deteriorating suspension bridges with huge gaps missing underfoot.  A small beagle dog joins us for most of the walk to Acaime, a small village buzzing with hummingbirds and serving hot chocolate and cheese, always an odd combo.  A steep climb takes us to a mirador at a ranger station, and a gradual descent back to Cocora boasts some outstanding views back down the valley.  Here grow wax palms, the national tree of Colombia and among the tallest tree species in the world.  Some nearly 175 feet tall, yet their trunks are as skinny as a telephone pole.  It is a wonder how they don’t fall down.  As rains arrived (as they always do, without a doubt, every afternoon in Salento), we exited the valley walking along a soft grassy ridge underneath these otherworldly wax palms – it felt like we were inside a trippy children’s picture book.  Lisa got to ride rear fender on the journey home alongside the president and founder of Boston-based AeroBalloon, Inc. (google it), who clearly provided some interesting conversations about life and career once we got back to town.

Salento also boasts some of the world’s best coffee.  We spent one afternoon hiking a dirt road an hour downhill to the small village of Palestina, where we were met by local farmer Don Elías Pulgarin, who had posted a crude advertisement on the wall at Lucy’s for tours of his small coffee farm for a couple dollars.  He has the classic look of Juan Valdez, though age has turned his hair and mustache silver, his face wrinkled but still glinting with friendly youthful energy.  We met his family, mostly grandkids scampering around, the oldest of whom communicating in only pig snorts; Elías had to think for a minute to remember how many grandkids he had (six).  He took us through his property and told us all about his operation, small and organic.  On the steep slope of land behind his house, with the swollen Rio Quindio below, he grows tomatoes, bananas, yucca, aguacate, sugarcane, lemons, plantains, pineapple, orchids and oregano, but mostly coffee.  He hand picks each bean and throws them in a wicker basket attached to his waist; we watch as the beans are separated from the rind in an old iron crank grinder, then are laid out to dry on a flat, sunny bed of concrete.  Shells will be removed in another old grinder, and the raw beans, each bluish gray and oddly translucent, are roasted on his wood-fire stove.  We grind the toasted beans in the same crank grinder – it is a very satisfying sound -  and collect robust brown piles in a clean metal tin.  His daughter boils water and we sit with his grandkids enjoying the freshest coffee we’ve ever tasted, smooth and delicious.  Salud.  Don Elías thanks us for coming and laments that he doesn’t get enough people visiting; Lisa and I are two of maybe six that have made the trip in the past week.  The popular but smaller and less authentic farm owned by Plantation House hostel takes all his backpacker business, and local Colombians visiting Salento on the weekend rarely want to hike the hour to Palestina and back; a larger, corporate, Disneyland-esque coffee operation outside of the nearby city of Armenia is their finca of choice.  So if you go to Salento, make the trip to meet Don Elías.  The road is beautiful and safe, and you’re unlikely to run into anyone aside from teenagers playing hooky making out in the bushes, as we did.  You won’t be disappointed.  And he has a great name.

Salento was one of those places you can’t quite peel yourself away from, and find yourself staying for weeks and months when you intended to stay just a few nights.  It can destroy your intinerary.  Luckily, we eliminated Popayan and Pasto on the road to Ecuador to have more time in the coffee region, saving the wilds of the southwest for another trip.  It is now a long bus descent from Armenia through the stunning valley around Cajamarca and back up to Bogotá, where we hope to visit some colonial towns to the north and relax in the hammocks at Anandamayi before our flight home.

Things That Woke Us Up In Salento

In order of absurdity, beginning with the least absurd:

Dogs: one dog begins to bark at 4 a.m. and soon the entire town’s canine population is joining in.  No more sleep to be had.  I say eliminate all fences and private yards and allow these beasts to congregate on a communal patch of earth so they can hump each other and what have you and be done with it.  Man needs to sleep.

Roosters: the common expectation is that the rooster will crow at sunrise, but in salento, it begins hours earlier for no good reason.  Bunch of feathered idiots.

The Tamale Guy: why this guy has to be selling tamales at 5 a.m. is a mystery, no one is awake.  Undeterred, he walks every street in town calling out his wares, in the exact same manner as the legendary Tamale Lady in San Francisco.  It’s like a tamale-seller mating call; they’ve been searching the world for each other for decades.  We need a matchmaker to get them together so I can get some sleep.

An Earthquake: 5:30 a.m. and the bed begins wobbling, waking us both up.  Magnitude 5.0 earthquake on the ol’ Richter, nothing more, nothing less.  everything is intact though, and the tamale man apparently felt nothing as he’s still yelling up the street.

And finally, we didn’t think it could get much more ridiculous than an earthquake, but the following morning, I am dreaming and a siren makes its way into my dream.  I slowly wake up and still hear the siren, getting louder, with people screaming and what could be distant gunshots.  There had been a military checkpoint on the road up to Salento from Pereira, and soldiers roaming the town.  As the clamor grew louder and closer, Lisa and I shot out of bed and stuck our heads out the balcony window.  The sun has yet to rise, the sky is dark, the streets are empty.  What is going on?  Has Venezuela invaded?  Looking up the street, the sound amazingly loud, we realize that whatever this is, we’ll see it turn our corner in a matter of seconds.  Then?  Three old-fashioned fire trucks creep by, each one loaded with middle schoolers, each one cranking out its emergency siren, the cloudy procession followed by an elaborate flour and water fight in the street, about 100 kids in all.  The supposed gunshots?  A snare drum.  The screaming?  Adolescent flirting, as pre-teen boys with buckets scoop up muddy puddle water and dump it on shrieking girls, and everyone with fistfuls of flour (why?) pelting their crushes in the face.  The trucks are packed to the brim, they’re rolling through the deserted streets like victorious Cuban revolutionaries.  Here and there, sleepy adults pop their heads out of windows; we are not alone in our confusion.  What the hell?  It’s five o’clock.  Who is supervising these little banshees?  Where are your teachers?  Where are all the high school kids to beat you up?  We never quite found out what this flour fight was all about; our hostel owner dismissed it as business as usual in Salento, probably the start of school or vacation.  Okay.

Poblado, Peñol, and a Sack of Potatoes

A lumpy overnight bus deposited us in Medellin, once upon a time the murder capital of the world.  This is where Pablo Escobar became one of the most powerful and richest men in the world running the Medellin Cartel, running Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine to eager buyers in the United States.  He died running from the law on a Medellin rooftop – you can see the blood-stained clay tiles in that Police Museum in Bogota – and thousands of admirers turned out for his funeral.  The city was once a nightmare, with teenage hitmen knocking off police officers and civilians, and rival Cali Cartel hoodlums trying to move in on Medellin business.  Car bombs were common.  Nowadays, the city is reinventing itself in an admirable way, erecting museums and parks, promoting active living in the same way Bogota has been doing.  Medellin also boasts an excellent and smooth metro system, which includes easy connections to brand new cable trams into the shanties in the hills, reaching out to previously neglected communities to allow them equal ease to take in the city’s new downtown cultural treats.  It also made for a scenic ride for gringos like us.  We didn’t stay long in Medellin, though.  The neighborhood that houses most backpackers, El Poblado, is modern and swanky.  People come here for allegedly legendary nightlife, but not the kind for those of us without fancy shoes or the want to pay $8 for a can of domestic beer.

We moved east, though rural, hilly farmland to Guatapé, a small laketown once a weekend escape for Pablo Escobar himself.  The town itself doesn’t have much to see: an ordinary main square, an ordinary village church, and one block remaining of traditional architecture in typical paisa style, like a dollhouse.  But there’s rural charm, with horses clopping down the street and rubber-booted farmers shooting pool after a long day in the fields.  The principal attraction is a rock in the nearby town of El Peñol.  A massive monolith rising from the green hills next to the lake.  We hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the foot of La Piedra, where you can climb a towering stairway embedded in a fissure.  Views from the mirador at the top are outstanding: the lake, actually a reservoir and product of a downriver dam, stretches in all directions.  It looks like coastal Maine, with wooded fingers of land and blue mini-fjords laid out in a maze, there is no telling which way to the sea.  This is Colombia?  We climbed down and jogged the mile or two back to town, catching the outer limits of a rain squall that had crept over the mountains.  We spent the night and caught game two of the World Series, where a lack of run support sent Pedro Martinez to the dugout frustrated.  The uniform has changed, but some things stay the same.

The following morning we made our way west and south, potatoes rolling all over the floor of our bus as a hole had ripped in the bag of a local merchant.  We arrived in the hilly city of Manizales after dark and hunted a while in a quiet residential neighborhood for the only hostel in town.  Manizales isn’t a backpacker hub, and again, there isn’t a lot to see beside their proud concrete cathedral, climbable with great views at the top, but its a little sad and desperate to learn that they’re under the impression that, at 112 meters, they claim the 5th highest church in the world.  Someone should tell them.  Nonetheless, it was refreshing to spend a couple days in the very normal, middle-class city, walking among Colombian college students and living in what felt like a homestay.  We were in town for a rainy Halloween, too; by day, it is mostly very young kids dressed up in store-bought outfits, carrying tiny plastic jack-o-lanterns half filled with candy.  They haven’t yet learned that pillow cases will hold more.  By night, only a handful of twenty-somethings dress up, most in very literal costumes (the snow white, the vampire, the angel); though it’s growing in popularity in the country, it has a ways to go to meet U.S. standards of ridiculousness.  Manizales was nothing spectacular but also nothing terribly crummy; it was a good reminder of what the average Colombian is like when removed from the tourist trail, and reinforced the safety and comfort we’ve felt in a country for so long overshadowed by the presence of Pablo Escobar chaos.

Food Rice

The second leg of the Axten Era sent us back to Bogotá.  Lisa and I flew Avianca and Simon and Katie flew Aires, and we met again in the serene Posada Anandamayi in Bogotá’s historic center, La Candelaria.  The heat is gone and our long pants and sweaters are back.  Street corners are packed with vendors selling phone calls on cell phones – wireless payphones.  Walls have scrawled messages of protest against Colombia’s controversial deal with the U.S. military.  Beautiful jungle crags loom to the east, and a tram takes you to the top for superb city views.  A couple universities are nearby, including the campus of the University de los Andes, the campus of which feels a lot like Berkeley.  Collectivos look like assault vehicles, some futuristic funk bus that the Ninja Turtles might drive.  There is altitude and a constant, unfulfilled threat of rain.  And on occasion, the bottled water you receive is labelled “Food Rice.”  Just one of those things, I guess.

Bogotá is a vibrant city, with animated streets and a lively student population.  It is a city heading in the right direction, too.  Some years ago, mayors Antanas Mockus and then Enrique Peñalosa took cues from Curitiba, a booming Brazilian city that in the 1960s had been prescribed a master plan for urban growth, seeing tremendous positive results in the decades to follow.  Mockus and Peñalosa recognized the need to diminish the presence of the automobile in urban cores and get Colombians exercising again.  They improved public transportation not by building an expensive subway but by designating lanes or entire streets to the TransMilenio Bus System, ensuring quick commutes unhindered by car traffic.  They built an extensive network of bicycle paths, shrinking or eliminating automobile lanes in favor of leafy and curbed pathways.  Commutes for drivers became worse, and naturally the incentive grew to ditch their cars for bikes or buses.  The result has become a largely comfortable urban core, livable and walkable, getting better by the year.  The TransMilenio now has full reign of the broad Calle 19, with curbside stations and ticket kiosks freeing the drivers of any responsibility to make change.  Though the airport way finding system needs some work, our taxi was clogged in thick traffic while on the parkway beside us hundreds of cyclists zipped along easily.  And Sunday, every Sunday, major streets are blocked to traffic and millions of residents take over running and jogging.  From what we saw, it is hugely, hugely popular.

The urban atmosphere is reflecting the rejuvenated spirit of Bogotá’s residents.  Museums are plentiful.  The four of us knocked off the amusing and proud National Police Museum, with its collection of seized belongings (and gruesome photographs) of Pablo Escobar, then the Museum of Gold with its massive collection of indigenous gold artifacts, and then the excellent and free Botero Museum, with hundreds of obese paintings and sculptures by Colombian legend Fernando Botero.  There is plenty of public street art too, La Candeleria covered in murals and graffiti, with the occasional 4th-floor apartment filled to the ceiling with thousands of bananas, spilling out the open windows.

All this urban activity meant that the Nike Human Race, a global 10k road race that Lisa and I did last year in Vancouver, was quickly sold out before we knew it.  As it was in Vancouver, it would have been a cool way to see a new city.  No worries though: instead, the final night of the Axten Era was spent with the Millonarios, the beloved soccer club of Bogota, as they took on league best Independiente Medellin.  Both teams played flat to start out, but the Millos striker Carmelo Valencia netted one in the final minute of the first half to take all the momentum in the second.  Two more goals in our end shutout the favorites and sent the blue-clad fans home satisfied, and we again escaped another South American futbol match with our lives intact.

It was great to see Simon and Katie and we wished they could have stayed longer, but so it goes in the regular working world.  We now set off without any other companions for the first time since leaving Oruro for Sucre, Bolivia, way back in June.  Up next, Pablo Escobar’s hometown: Medellin.

Plus One Big Cat, Minus One Goose

From Arrecifes, we caught a series of buses west along a coastal isthmus where are situated some of the poorest towns I’ve yet seen: shanties hugging the road, half sunk in mangrove swamps, dugout canoes connecting them to neighbors in an incredibly polluted network of canals, the water stagnant and black and clogged with plastic bags.  This area was where the Colombian military once massacred hundreds of union workers, as well as their wives and children, their way of resolving a banana strike in the interest of United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita, largest distributor of bananas in the United States.  The U.S. Navy was positioned off shore, ready to invade if the dispute wasn’t resolved quickly.  So it goes in Latin America with U.S. foreign affairs.

The coastal humidity and heat we experienced in Santa Marta would only get worse when we arrived in Cartagena, another colonial port still a little rough around the edges.  One such edge was the neighborhood of Getsemani, Cartagena’s Tenderloin, where exists the majority of backpacker infrastructure.  Despite being part of the historic old quarter, Getsemani is teeming with drunks, drug dealers and prostitutes.  But we felt safe; residents are used to gringos by now, the neighborhood is on the slow rise, and besides, we’re now travelling with a sharp-clawed Big Cat.

We met Simon and girlfriend Katie in Getsemani on one of the hottest days of the trip, marking the beginning of the Axten Era of our trip.  The following day would also mark the end of the Nathenson Era, as we bid adios to Andrew as he left to meet other friends in Medellin and Manizales.  We had a bittersweet time in Cartagena, excited to be travelling with Simon and Katie but also missing our bodyguard Goose, excellent companion through Argentina, Chile and Colombia, maker of hilarious conversations and often losing participant of epic cribbage battles.  Whelp, I got the pull I needed: fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, double run makes fourteen and the right jack for fifteen.  You’re in for serious trouble if you threw me a 7 in the crib.

During the only day the eras overlapped, we dragged ourselves through the old walled quarters of the city sweating with every step.  Though it lacks some authenticity, the city within the old walls was enjoyable to wander through, with its colorful facades and overhanging wooden balconies.  In between spectacular thunderstorms, we caught some excellent meals, particularly at La Mulata Cartagena, and really liked the small, leafy plazas, especially that of Simon Bolivar.  But the hundreds of ceiling fans at a Getsemani Cuban bar with a great live band couldn’t stop our collective sweating, our beers getting in on the act as our Aguilas condensated so much our table was an enormous pool of water, dripping onto our laps.  We found ourselves taking multiple cold showers each day – there is understandably no hot water offered.

The beaches here weren’t exactly what we expected: overrun with a constant stream of touts pushing necklaces, sunglasses, t-shirts and shellfish on us.  Constant.  The water was warm consolation, but the touts got to be obnoxious – a stern “no gracias” rarely worked; women grabbed our feet to offer a foot massage or fit us with new lady-sandals and we’d have to kick our legs to get them to leave, angry that we weren’t loose with our gringo dimes.  To escape this, we headed south to Tolú, a small, sleepier seaside town popular with Colombians, from where we hired a boat to take us the Islas San Bernardo, a more relaxed area with great water.  The touts were there too, though, finding ways to interfere with an otherwise relaxing day by the water.  No, I don’t want your clams, lady.  When it comes to beaches, Colombia hasn’t quite got it right.  Though given the proximity of the tiny, cramped, and severely polluted Santa Cruz del Isole, allegedly the most densely populated island in the world, we were lucky to find what we did.  Good times nonetheless, especially the rides on Tolú tricycle taxis, some equipped with your own boombox pumping the latest Daddy Yankee rhythms.

An unexpected highlight (though not without its own share of pushy touts), was El Totumo, the Mud Volcano.  A volcano of mud.  A short bus ride from Cartagena and we were at the foot of a rather pathetic looking pile of dirt, reinforced with crude wooden planks, a stairwell climbing to the top.  Our expectations were low, but upon getting to the top, with nice views of a jungle lagoon, and climbing down a slippery ladder, we were having the awkward time of our lives, suspended in a natural 75-meter deep pool of lukewarm mud.  Your body reacts to it as if water, and you try to dog-paddle yourself around, but you can’t move unless you lie flat and have someone slide you like a log.  Buoyancy is such that you are never submerged below your chest, no matter how hard you try; your legs below can kick but feel no bottom.  Everyone is laughing constantly, especially when people try keeping their mud-heavy swimsuits on when climbing out.  We’d all get naked anyways afterwards, sitting in a couple feet of lagoon water scrubbing ourselves clean.  This is what the future will be like, mark my words: humans suspended all day in pools of volcanic mud as robots do all the work.  It will be glorious.

I Think I Swallowed a Bug

We reached the sweaty, seedy Caribbean coast in the evening after an 11-hour bus ride from Bucaramanga.  We threw our things down in Santa Marta, the oldest surviving Spanish settlement in Colombia, a port city still very rough around the edges.  Our taxi driver took one look at the hostel we had him drop us at and shook his finger No, don’t stay here.  Area’s not safe.  We did anyways and the only trouble we ran into was the harmless 16-year-old prostitute who propositioned Andrew, the spitting iguana on a leash in the corner store, and the toothless, shirtless guy who tried to run off with a computer monitor from our restaurant before our waiter cracked him in the face and kicked him back to the streets.  Check please.

Why did we bother with Santa Marta?  One reason and one reason only: the outstanding trek to the Lost City of the Tayrona.

Back in the mid-1970s, a few graverobbers stumbled upon an enormous stone stairwell in the wild jungles southeast of Santa Marta, and following the steps to the top of high ridges they discovered extensive ruins of an ancient city previously unheard of outside local indigenous circles.  Frankie the alcoholic, the lead man on the job, had been dealing local indigenous goods for many years prior, but now had something special.  He and his sons kept the location secret while they began selling gold artifacts from the city on the black market, which soon made their way into the hands of archeologists questioning the origin of such rare goldwork.  The Spanish had encountered the Tayrona tribes upon first landing in the New World, wiping out most communities while relieving them of their enormous supply of gold, in such abundance that the legend of El Dorado was spawned here.  The archeologists eventually met with Frankie, liquored him up, and were told the location of this Ciudad Perdida, known locally as Teyuna.  During the 1980s, tourist expeditions began out of Santa Marta; Frankie himself led many of them, with a cook named Alberto.  Twenty-five years later, Alberto is now a lead guide, one of the oldest and most experienced in the business.  Alberto is now our guide.

We are five: Lisa, from Alaska, unemployed; Andrew, from New Jersey, unemployed; Eli, from Massachusetts, unemployed; Jeremy, from DC, unemployed; Caroline, from Bogota, unemployed.  A long, uncomfortable ride in the back of a jeep took us to the start of the trail in a town called Machete, where we fueled up on sandwiches and orange Tang.  The first leg of the trail was easy enough, a meandering hike along a quiet river, past abandoned paramilitary camps and old coca farms that had been sprayed with chemicals in the war on drugs, killing not only the coca plants but indigenous crops of avocados and lemon trees.  Then the incline began, switchbacks up ruddy, well-worn trails along a steep ridge.  Then the rains began, turning said trails into mud waterfalls my treadless sneakers had a hard time climbing.  Near the top of the ridge, with lightning striking nearby, we stop for sliced pineapple under a shed; we are soaked solid.  Shaggy mountains and valleys to our right and left as we walk in fat drops of rain along the ridge, the trail looking like a sandy Nantucket dunescape at times.  Steep declines sent us all to the earth in spectacular comedic wipeouts, clothes and backpacks covered in mud.  We reached the riverside hamlet of Adan before the second wave of heavy downpour incited a flash flood, which would have prevented us from crossing the river to our campsite on the far banks.  We did our best to get clean using bucket-showers, changed into dry clothes and hung out with fireflies and a giant bullfrog before climbing into hammocks to sleep.

We started our second day with an interrogation: during the first climb, Caroline had given her backpack to a suspiciously nice woman on horseback, seemingly acquainted with our guide, helping to run supplies from Machete to Adan; this woman later handed the backpack to her young helper, a 13-year-old boy, who delivered it to our campsite.  At some point, Caroline’s wallet was stolen, with all her documents and money; neither woman nor boy were around that evening when it was discovered missing, presumably gone for good.  The following morning, the boy showed up to run more supplies to our next campsite; Alberto sat him down and extracted a sheepish confession from him as we all watched.  The wallet itself was at his house in the hills nearby, and the money was in his pocket.  Caroline was given back her money and then some, Alberto forcing the boy to give up his own money as incentive for him to return soon with the wallet.  He did return, everything now accounted for, but Alberto instructed Caroline to keep the extra cash as the boy’s initial punishment.  How often do you get your wallet stolen in the jungles of Colombia and recover it with profit?  The boy didn’t seem to understand what he did wrong, and griped about his lost money all day.  Though worse punishment awaits, we were told: the Adan area is run (“run” in the mob sense) by a rotund man who was absent that morning, but will be informed of the boy’s infraction at a weekly meeting, at which point he’ll lose his job, or worse, get a severe beating.

Before setting out, we paid a short visit to an illegal cocaine lab, run by one of Adan’s mustachioed entrepreneurs.  We followed a path through dense vegetation, the kind of trail you might expect to follow if you were visiting a jungle cocaine lab.  The lab was no more than a small clearing covered by a tattered tarp, with various supplies strewn about in the mud.  The unnamed Mr. Wizard, age 25, demonstrated the disgusting procedure for turning coca leaves into cocaine, which involved combining leaves with such delicious ingredients as gasoline and sulphuric acid, manually mixing and crushing with a rusty weed-whacker and mud- and horseshit-covered boots, and a series of crude filtrations using stretched t-shirts.  The resulting paste is later refined elsewhere into recreational cocaine; the waste product of this procedure is sold as crack-cocaine.  Mr. Wizard sells his very small paste batches every few months, taking in a couple extra thousand dollars a year, but he’s mostly removed himself from the business, working now on proper fruit and vegetable farms.  An interesting glimpse into the wretched world of cocaine.  Our parents can rest easy knowing that neither of us have ever considered the stuff, the Reagan-era anti-drug campaigns were enough to deter us, if not the disgusting processing behind the drug, if not the incredible violence and bloodshed Colombia has suffered as a result of the international and local drug wars.  More on that later in the trip.

The day’s hike was a series of ups and downs in the hot sun, the trail making its way past coca fields and cow pastures in some of the most idyllic settings in the country.  Lisa, Andrew and I plowed ahead with our cook, Ismael, resting again for pineapple alongside a cool mountain stream.  There is perhaps nothing better, it turns out, than pineapple, after a long hike in the jungles of Colombia.  Later in the afternoon, because of our late start, the rains caught us.  We sloshed our way through a couple indigenous villages, where shaggy-haired jungle sprites raced around thatched-roof mud-and-stick huts in their bare feet and white smocks, asking for candy.  Just as the downpour began to pick up, we reached our camp at Gabriel, where we played cards into the night with three Irish girls sporting thousands of fresh mosquito bites, just back from the ruins on their way out.

The final day of approach was extraordinary.  An early start ensured us plenty of sun and safe crossings of the Rio Buritaca, of which there would be 9.  The trail began with a tricky climb along a rocky cliff, the river rapids below, forcing one member of our party to turn back, Jeremy’s problematic legs unable to navigate the obstacle course of stones and roots.  We are now four.  Our first river crossing was a refreshing traverse of the deceptively deep and fast-moving Buritaca.  With our bags on our backs and shifting stones underfoot, the strong current nearly had its way with each of us.  We then climbed a steep ridge, passing stone-faced indigenous families doing the hike barefoot.  Scenery at the top was stunning.  The trail meandered through small banana plantations and neared the river again, passing another indigenous family, a little girl of about age 7 carrying a rifle over her shoulder.

Soon began a series of 8 river crossings, as we zigzagged up the mighty Buritaca, stopping on occasion to eat and swim.  At this point, there was no time to take off our shoes at each crossing; there is something that makes you feel at peace with the world when you can hike out of a jungle and unflinchingly wade across a rocky river in your shoes and pick up the trail on the other side as if nothing happened.

After the 7th crossing we stopped, and suddenly appearing before us was something out of a Tintin book: a steep stone stairwell descending from the mountain wall and ending high on the opposite river bank.  In the last hour, there had been nothing indicating that anyone had ever set foot in this part of the valley; the worn trail itself had ended at the first crossing, and we had simply been making our way upstream over stoney shores following Alberto.  But here was this mysterious stairwell out of nowhere, camoflaged in its mossy age with the unspoiled jungle on either side of it.  You can only imagine how spooked Frankie must have been when he stumbled upon it.

1200 steps up, almost vertical.  Each step either carved into existing rock or hauled from the river below and placed carefully in the mountain face.  Our excitement was building the same way it did when we climbed towards Macchu Pichu many months ago.  At the top of the first stairwell, our first glimpse of stone walls and circular terraces, the first of hundreds, each once acting as a foundation for the traditional huts like those we’d seen the previous day.  The complex spread before us along the ridge, spilling into the steep jungle on either side, most of it still tangled in trees and vines.  Another 800 steps, including those of what seemed to be a triple-width grand staircase, took us to the city center, where the largest stone wall plateaus held views of the surrounding mountains to rival the setting in Macchu Pichu.  Everywhere, carefully laid stone pathways and stairways recall a Dr. Seuss settlement, or an ant colony, paths disappearing into the jungle below or climbing towards surrounding peaks, wrapping around each circular terrace in a vast web.  Where are we?  It is early afternoon, the sun is still out, and we have reached Teyuna.

Thousands of Tayrona natives once lived here, perched 3,500 feet or so above the ocean; getting word of the Spanish landing on the coast, they fled higher into the mountains as a precaution, their abandoned city eventually sinking into the jungle for more than four centuries.  Nowadays, the ruins are home to some 50 Colombian soldiers, stationed here for 8 month intervals, patrolling the surrounding jungle for guerrilla activity.  After we bathed in a waterfall (isn’t South America cool?) and explored the ruins, we had a chance to hang out with a couple of the soldiers as the sun set.  Richard, 20, and Darwin, 21, hailed from Santa Marta, as did 49 of the 50 soldiers there.  They’ve only got a couple months to go to fulfill their service; they seem to like their post and don’t mind their daily patrol hikes.  “Todo tranquilo,” they said when we asked if they ever run into any trouble.  Save for the snakes, the scorpions, and occasional tiger, so they claim.  In general, they are bored out of their minds, and love talking to the few backpackers who come here – the four of us share the ruins with only four or five others from another group.  They had a few radios, pet dogs and cats, but were out of good reading material: they specifically asked if we had anything by Che Guevara.  Go figure.  We gave Richard and Darwin each a deck of cards, and as thanks they took photos with us and let us hold their guns.  My first assault weapon!  Darwin took interest in my white Peattie-style sunglasses, purchased for a couple bucks on the street in Potosi, Bolivia, so I traded them to him for his battalion patch: Batallon Cordova Mechanizado.  Done deal.

We spend the night at the ruins in a sort of tree house, sharing the clothes lines and outhouses with the soldiers.  We celebrated our accomplishment with a can each of warm, skunky Aguila beer.  I went to bed that night with ankles sore and badly swollen from hundreds of bug bites; I believe they qualified as “cankles.”  No rain that night and clear skies the next day for more explorations of the surprisingly extensive complex.  Before leaving, we had a swim in what the Tayrona believed to be the fountain of youth, from where we nimbly descended the long stairwell to the Buritaca far below, crossed another 9 times, and swam with indigenous children at various swimming holes near Gabriel.  Life does not get much better.

Despite all getting sick from suspected river water in our Tang, we made the long hike from Gabriel all the way to Machete, electing to finish in five days rather than six.  Andrew was so weakened by his bad stomach that he hired a mule for the final leg; we all met back up in Machete, where the whole Sunday town was out drinking, including our driver.  No matter; he navigated the awful roads out of the Sierra Nevada with precision, the 4WD carrying ten bodies, two of which were riding rear fender.  We smell like the dickens.

We rewarded ourselves with four days on the beach, first in trashy, overrun Taganga, then in outstandingly beautiful Arrecifes and Cabo, in secluded Tayrona National Park, where crystal clear lagoons are framed by giant rounded boulders and perfect sand, the kind that’s easy to brush off.  Our bug bites healed, my cankles returned to ankles, I got new sunglasses, and our stomachs recovered their Caribbean swagger.  We drank cold lulo juices and slept in hammocks and rearranged the list of the best things we’ve done on this trip, making big room near the top for the magnificent trek to La Ciudad Perdida.

The Sabajon in Santander

And so we find ourselves in Colombia.  Our parents fear for our lives, but our wallets kiss our feet in laudation.  Internal clocks are now screwed up even moreso than when we arrived in Lima.  Winter in the Andes, straight through Chilean spring and skipped right over to autumn.  Summer?  Fast approaching in another 8 months.

A painless flight with the very capable Avianca Airways, with Lisa gazing out the window to the mountains of Peru below and Andrew chatting it up with the U-13 Chilean National Ping-Pong Team, seated all around him.  They face Venezuela this week and talk a big game.

Though we’ll see it again soon and I’ll write more later, Bogota made for a good-looking arrival in Colombia, its old town nestled directly below sharp jungled peaks that looked like the Yungas in Bolivia.  Drivers are crazy again, music is loud again, streets are dirty again.  And it’s cheap. 

After a short rest in Bogota, we headed north into the hills to the department of Santander.  Thunderstorms reminded us that we were back in the northern hemisphere’s late summer weather.  We arrived in San Gil for a night, where the cell-like hotel room we rented quickly broke the record for cheapest of our trip ($3 each).  We had a swim in a river-fed pool at a small park in town and caught an art gallery opening, complete with complimentary wine and snacks, on the corner of the lively plaza, with its blue-lit fountain.

From San Gil, we took a local bus into the countryside to Barichara, an outstandingly well-preserved colonial hilltown.  Roads paved with huge stone slabs, buildings whitewashed like those in Sucre, no tourist bustle, and excellent views of the surrounding valleys. After a relaxing night in town, we loaded up on bags of water (the cheapest way to buy water is in a sealed plastic bag – bite a hole in the corner and you’re good to go) and set out down a centuries-old trail towards the village of Guane.  The scenic trail cuts through high-hedged farms and cow pastures, paved with stone slabs reminicent of old Inca roads.  A middle-aged woman on her way back from market (just a short two-hour walk for some eggs) and an elderly woman herding goats were the only people we saw on the trail.  At the end, Guane was a real gem, a tiny cobbled colonial hamlet with crumbling estancias and a central plaza lined with shellfish fossils unearthed in the area.  Tobacco leaves drying under thatched-roof huts, and on one corner, local specialty sabajon for sale: essentially Bailey’s Irish Cream but with goat’s milk at an eighth of the price.  A tasty treat.

We hitched a ride back to Barichara in the back of a pickup truck loaded partially with crates of empty lulo juice bottles.  In Barichara, we caught the same local bus back to San Gil, where we transfered to another heading towards Bucaramanga, planning to crash there for a night before making the long journey to the north coast.  Nearing Bucaramanga, with daylight to spare, we made the quick decision to jump off on the side of the highway and walk to the center of Giron, another old colonial town, as if we didn’t have enough of them already.  We caught some peculiar looks from locals as we hoofed our way into the center, where the main plaza and narrow cobbled streets were absolutely packed with people.  Normal Sunday crowds, I was told; no gringos spotted.  Nothing in particular going on, just a lot of hanging out, strolling, eating street meat and listening to mass blaring from speakers at the impressive cathedral.  We found a room with a balcony overlooking the action in the plaza below, a balcony that would remind Pat McGee or Vance Gorham of JJ Catedral Pub in Florence.  We joined the crowds, wandered around the town and smartly tried the street meat.  Which was terrible.  We ended up concocting a makeshift dinner of snacks and groceries from the nearby market and sat with a six-pack on our balcony, watching the crowds fade below.  Not a bad place to rest up before the swelter and adventure of the coast, where we’ll hike many days into the jungle in search of the Lost City of the Tayrona, and later meet up with San Francisco Facebook wizards Simon and Katie, who I hope will be bringing me a hamburger from Polker’s.