Another epic journey, and Columbia with ze Germans

So again I think it has been a few weeks since my last update, I think the last rant came after the 60hr journey to get to Lima. I remember hoping that I would never go through a journey like that again. Needless to say two days later I was embarking on a 78hr bus journey to get to Bogotá to meet up with my German mate Florian. I looked into a flight and at that notice the cheapest that I could find was going to run me £600. How's about noooo, okay scotty. I began to think about the logistics of getting there, the border crossings, the wholesale lack of Spanish as a dialect. When I began to read about the border crossings the fear set in and I questioned whether I was up to it. But I had come this far and in retrospect it was a good experience. I decided that if I could make a journey like that with only the most basic of Spanish at my disposal then I could make it pretty much anywhere across this continent. The first thing that really struck me was how little anyone here speaks English, and how much effort it was going to be on the organising front. Granted this has never been my strong point, and it took me a couple of days to plan how I was going to get to Bogotá – but even then my plan was full of holes. I knew a basic route and I managed to make an impossibly frustrating phone call to a bus company that was heading to Puiria in the north of Peru. Beyond this I thought that I could take a nights sleep in Quito (Ecuador) in a couple of days – as the lonely planet advises against taking buses at nights. It was a pretty flaky plan but I had written the names of some towns in the various countries, which was probably the minimum that I could do.

I did not really have a great feeling for Lima. I was in the supposed nicest part and it was still a bit of a dive. In fairness I say this about pretty much every city I have ever been to, but as I left the outskirts the poverty and reality really hit home. Huge shanty towns made up of tiny huts littered the horizon. Then shit got even more real when I realised that the road had been cut into some huge mother fucking sand dunes, which must collapse every time it rains. It was pretty nerve racking, these huge sand banks a meter from the bus window and a 200ft drop into the pacific ocean on the other side. 

View from the bus window - road has a pretty solid base I imagine

This bus was a 15hr stint and I after watching a couple of films in Spanish I was given my first taste of the lovely Spanish music that gets played on these journeys. It is impossibly bad. The music itself is this continually upbeat combination of pipes, harmonicas and god knows what else. Apparently they also sing about heartbreak and other such topics but always just continually to these upbeat songs. The best analogy I could draw is imagine burying your dog to the match of the day theme tune. For 15hrs. Anyway, things began to get tough around 8hrs in when I realised that there were not going to be any scheduled stops – aka no burns. There was a toilet on board, I gave it consideration but the smell of that toilet was worse than any lack of nicotine. I was also getting pretty hungry, then at 7am some pikey looking bloke got on the bus with a basket of what looked like buns that had been run over. I did not know what he was saying so I waved some money at him and in exchange I got a squashed roll with a cold fried egg in the middle. Mmm yummy. The alternative to eating it was holding it and looking at it, so I ate it.

The Peru / Ecuador border

We arrived at around 9am and the place was shit, so I booked onto the 9.30am to Lajo, Ecuador The scenery was pretty much desert until approaching the Ecuador border. I was the only westerner on the bus which made me a bit nervous about the border crossing, but it was all pretty smooth going. They could tell that I didn't have a clue what they were saying and I suspect that they could not be assed asking questions any more than I could be assed listening to them. Once in Ecuador as we reached the Andes the scenery was pretty incredible stuff. I arrived in Loja at around 6.30pm and it was too dark to contemplate anything but another bus – it genuinely felt like the safest place to be after standing in the bus terminal for 10 minutes. So I booked the 9.30pm to Quito arriving at 9am the next day. By this point I could no longer feel my legs and I was in some perpetual state of confusion, so it was quite welcome that they use American dollars in Ecuador I had no spare capacity for currency calculations. So another 12hrs of upbeat weird music and I was in the capital. I was so tired and fed up that the thought of getting into the city and finding a hostel made me immediately stumble my way through another bus reservation and onwards another 5hrs to the Columbian border at midday. I had to have my bag between my legs because some fucking goon turned up with a double mattress to store on the bus. Nice one.

Load your double mattress on there ked

When I arrived in the pretty grim town of ipales it was getting dark – and it was the first time that I began to feel a bit scared. Everyone was staring at me but no one was interested beyond that. There was no one trying to hassle me or 'help' me. I had read on the internet that I needed to get a taxi to the border, and not knowing the word for border I just muttered Columbia through a drivers window and off we went. I feel nervous about getting into most taxis over here. Not only are they these shitty little yellow cars that I have never seen, but I am also never sure if I am actually going to arrive where I have asked them to take me. The border crossing was a little nerve racking, lots of shifty looking characters acting shifty, waving wads of cash at me for some reason. Show offs. It was okay, but not an experience I would recommend. Another death ride in a taxi to the nearest town called Tulcan to see that this place was as soulless as ipales, so I went straight to the bus terminal and booked a night bus to Cali. 

Camera does not do it justice

Again, the scenery was unreal when I woke in the morning. The road circumnavigated the Andes, rising high high into the landscape – it really was a sight for very sore eyes. When I arrived in Cali it looked very nice, but I was now within 20hrs of Bogotá so I thought fuck it, may as well just carry on. This journey was a little more real. We were boarded several times by police with torches, camcorders and guns. I had taken a valium to sleep so I was fairly relaxed about it, but when I took out my camera to take a photo the guy next to me quickly intervened and gave me the international sign language for bad idea (slit throat sign). On our first stop this same young guy disappeared into the toilet and came back somewhat rejuvenated. He was sniffing a lot and tapped his leg incessantly for the final 4hrs of the journey. Welcome to Columbia.

By the time I arrived it was around 10pm and dark. I opted for another death taxi and by night the place looked horrendous. All I could see was graffiti, garbage and crack heads. All Florian had given me was the name and address of the hostel, I did not see anything else I would need. The driver could not find the hostel and I could tell he was on the verge of just dumping me somewhere – but other than giving him the address there was not a lot I could do. After an hour of driving around these terrible streets off the back of a 78hr journey he finally located the place and I asked the owner if he had any Germans staying there. 'No' was the answer. Tidy. I had a little walk around and I felt out of breath after about three steps - it wasn't until a few days later that I found out Bogota is at 2600m above sea level. 

Celebration / Protest

The hostel was pretty gash and when I woke up there was a kid opposite me who looked like a Mongolian version of Ronnie Corbett. In a week I did not see this guy leave the hostel once. I was about to take a dump when one of the bedroom doors opened and to my relief me and Florian were stood face to face trying to work out if we were who we thought we were (last time we met I had a shaved head and he had quite long hair – now almost the opposite on both accounts). They had not gone to bed until 6am – something that I have grown pretty well accustomed to over the past few weeks – so we grabbed some breakfast and I went for a wander around on my own whilst he got some more sleep. To be fair the place looked a lot nicer by day. The area was set against the backdrop of a huge mountain and by light the graffiti looked pretty awesome. This area of the city was made up of quaint little colonial side streets and it had a nice feel, other areas were pretty damn ghetto. I wandered into the central area and I stuck out like a sore thumb – I was the only person in eyesight wearing shorts. A few people touched me, which on the whole was a disturbing experience. I managed to walk into the middle of some protest or celebration - it was hard to tell which to be honest - but there were a lot of horses and a lot of people shouting "gringo"at me.

When I got back to the hostel Flo introduced me to his mate Obi, and then he told me that another two guys that he sort of knew from Munich were staying upstairs – and that two of their friends were also arriving in a few days. These guys are all on 3-4 week annual vacations – so for the past couple of weeks I have basically been on a German lads holiday. Pretty, pretty, pretty cheap. Columbia is not as cheap as I was lead to believe by the 2009 version of the Lonely planet. I reckon prices have as good as doubled in the two years since that publication, as tourists begin to return following years of bad press. I have not really felt threatened since being here, but it is not a good idea to walk the streets alone in the big cities after dark. I did this a few times in Bogotá and I walked a bit faster than my usual 0.5mph.

La goon

After a few days of partying flo and obi headed off to San Andres, the £450 return flight priced me out, so I hung around with the German boys for a few more days in Bogotá, went to some big lagoon and then we headed north towards the Caribbean coast, to a party town called Teganga.

The bus took 16hrs, and when we climbed on board the back 8 rows or so had already been taken by some big family type arrangement. I reckon some of these people might have been family friends without kids, because they seemed way too happy to be about to face 16 hours on board a bus with their young children. They were constantly making each other laugh and joking around with the children. There was a real variety of people of different generations, even some old woman was getting involved in the banter. It was great watch them all laugh and joke together, constantly shouting and singing. That was for the first 5 minutes of the 16hr journey, after which it became really quite annoying.

Teganga

Teganga was a pretty cool little place but there were a lot of annoying people trying to be hippies, basically rich but dressed in clothes that look like pyjamas. My other minor issue was that in addition to Spanish I also do not speak German. When the 6 of them were together I kind of felt on the fringes, as there was not a lot I could contribute. When in smaller groups it was cool, as they would speak English, which was not only gratefully received but also very impressive. But it was to be expected, it is not as if all of my mates would start speaking German if there was a German in our group. It was not a real problem for me, as I was spending long, lazy days in a hammock reading and practising my Spanish, but at night I began to feel a bit conscious that I was the only one not talking... They are all top top guys, and each made an effort to talk to me in English on nights out – but I sensed that I was probably also a bit annoying for them at times because someone would always feel that they had to make a translation of a joke or story that was told in German..

Being on this lads holiday reminded me of being away with my own mates. We would go to bed at some awful time, get up at midday, argue about what to do for the rest of the day and then just begin drinking again amidst some half-hearted suggestions. I am actually the youngest person amongst this group, somewhat of a first on my travelling experiences. It is reassuring to see that it is still acceptable to go away partying into your late thirties. These boys could seriously put the booze away – they are Bavarians, it is just what they do. The other problem with a group of seven is that it is almost impossible to make travel arrangements, as each wants to party of whatever on a different night – so three of four would be packed and ready to leave at 9am whilst the other three or four have not gone to bed yet. After two of three attempts we finally managed to leave as a team and headed to Santa Marta, en route to some place well off the beaten track called Palomino, a tiny beach in the Tayrona National Park.

Palomino

For some reason the only ATM in Teganga did not take my cash card. so I ran up a tidy little debt of a cool half million pesos. Once we got to Santa Marta I maxed my daily allowance to pay Christian back and got a little for myself for Palomino. After the 2.5hr bus ride we got off at Palomino and I was a little surprised by what I found. It was literally a few shacks along the road. We had to walk through a sort of palm jungle for about 20 minutes to reach the beach, but when we got there I realised what it was all about. The beach was stunning and deserted. There were a few doss houses along the beach front – offering very basic dorms or hammocks to sleep in, or you could pitch your own tent. We took a place that was recommended to the Germans, which was also owned by Germans – so a bit more German thrown into the equation. The beach had much more of a feeling of the Pacific about it as opposed to the Caribbean – huge waves crashing against each other and nothing on the horizon but a feral pack of dogs. These dogs always make me think about bully. Sometimes when I see a dog I first wonder what its reaction would be to being put inside a computer case.

How a dog in a computer case should look

 I think this probably forms my initial benchmark when assessing the worth of any particular dog (although I also like to take a moment to picture them in a flatcap and sun glasses). I repeatedly get told off at restaurants for feeding the stray dogs. I can understand in part as some of the customers find them a nuisance, and if they are getting fed then they will keep coming back. But here I discovered the angle of the conscious owner, who actually likes and look after certain dogs. They put out the scraps of food into a bowl some distance from the restaurant, so if some douche bag like myself feeds them then they have to essentially shout at their own dog – also making them feel bad. I have seen some pretty maingy looking dogs here. Usually they hang around in packs then you will see one with mainge that has been totally ostracised and lies there on its own, pitifully trying to keep the thousands of flies from its various wounds and sores. It makes me feel terrible – far worse than seeing some advert for starving African children. I then have a moral battle to fight. Is it better to feed these dogs – give them a moment of happiness – or is this just prolonging their misery? As horrible as it sounds I think it is better to just let it starve and end the misery. No one is going to help them, and it is not like there are a lot of vets around even if someone was willing to touch the godforsaken thing and go to the expense and time of healing it. I think this kind of struggle is only really restricted to dogs. When I see a gimpy chicken hobbling around on one leg I can barely contain my laughter. I could probably attribute this to a summer working in a chicken factory – maybe sawing the feet off these horrible creatures desensitised me somewhat. I don't want to see them suffer in some battery, but I also won't lose any sleep about it.

Palomino was a strange little place. Utterly deserted but when I took a stroll at night I came across some weird tribal dance taking place on the beach. It seemed pretty inappropriate – a load of young adolescent girls doing some weird sex-dance whilst some old weird looking guy chanted at them. I don't know what the craic was, but it made quite uncomfortable viewing. 

Lynn these are sex people

After a couple of nights on this beach it quickly became obvious that I was running out of cash, and fast. Needless to say there was not a cash point here, and all of the German lads understandably needed their cash for themselves, as they wanted to stay for a week +. So I was forced to make an exit, a 2.5hr bus journey back to Santa Marta just to take out some ruddy bloody cash. I really wanted to stay there for a few more days but instead I have come down to Cartagena, where my boy Hugo arrives on the 2^nd for a month of travelling around with me – and also have the Germans back for a night or two in a few days. It was nice to leave in a way as I was getting mercilessly ravaged by mosquitoes, and I am not taking any malaria tablets. It is basically like Frank Spencer turning up for work on the first day of a new job wearing roller-skates. This morning I beat my personal best and woke up with 59 bites. Good times.

Dinner

I arrived in Cartegena late, and as with any city, it looked bad by night. Weird people wandering around whispering something about a bloke called charlie in my ear. I spent today having a look round and it really is an unbelievably beautiful city. The historic centre is a world heritage site, and it is easy to see why. I am now trying to make arrangements for Hugo's arrival – it really does take a lot of effort to make plans here, but I am beginning to get to grips with the language a bit better. I can say exactly what I want but when someone speaks to me my mind freezes and I don't recognise a single word – so conversations are quite one way. But everyone is very friendly here, they talk to me, tell me how long they have lived here, tell me that that love English football, pass me a card with a number on it and then tell me to ring if I need cocaine, weed or hookers. I have literally been given about 5 of these cards today – but on the plus side one of these lovable rogues is going to take me to a cock fight on friday – where I will finally get to see some chickens beat the crap out of each other. Anyway, got to shoot, I have some phone calls to make. Bay.