after a couple of days just hanging out in santa marta, enjoying serendipitous afternoon conversations with local people, i took off into the mountains again, this time just a two-hour bus ride up to a small village called minca. a german guy operated a small farm up there, and rented out the spare rooms. it was very peaceful and relaxing, and i ate a lot of delicious mangoes which were just then falling, and helped to roast and grind coffee beans and peel and boil mangoes in exchange for my room.
then, it was time finally to leave the coast and head inland.
i arrived last sunday in bogota to beautiful blue skies, and a city with a very european feel, with gleaming twingos competing politely for road space with battered renault 4s, clean streets bustling with pedestrians, and an effective if complex rapid transit system, utilising bendy buses in dedicated lanes.
the following day, i moved out of the hostel and into jason's tiny but very cosy apartment in a colonial building. since then, i have been relaxing and just enjoying being in a city of some size. it's great to wander the streets people-watching, hang out in the parks or plazas, stroll amongst the colonial architecture of the old city, or sip juan valdez coffee amongst the students who are much cooler than me. the girls are, true to reputation, beautiful. i have no idea what the crime figures actually are, but i certainly feel safer here than in any of the central american capitals, and window-shopping along carrera 7 could be in any european city. every sunday several main thoroughfares are closed to vehicular traffic, for cyclists, joggers, skaters, or just strollers.
i really like this city, and i don't think there's another one to rival it this side of buenos aires, so i am inclined to consider staying here a little while.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
Hot chocolate and the charlie factory
You know, I'm really having trouble knowing where to start with this one. Three day's hard hiking brought us to the most beautiful and unspoilt ruins site I have ever seen. And the journey itself was as fascinating as the destination. Here are some of the themes of the week.
Drugs
As some of you may know, apparently some drugs are produced in Colombia. Actually, a lot of drugs. Historically, Marijuana was the crop of choice in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, but in 1980 the Colombian government aided by the US government took a strong anti-drug stance in the region, spraying and killing all the crops. However, marijuana is still widely and cheaply available, as was evidenced on the first day of the trip when Edwin, our guide, distributed the complimentary shopping bag full of weed. Out of the eight of us, two were pretty serious druggies and decided that a block of weed the size of a cabbage would not be enough for the 6 days, so proceeded to buy the same quantity again from the obliging local farmer, for the absurd price of 15,000 pesos (just over 3 quid).
So since the 1980s, of course drug production has stopped, and all those farmers are now growing such crops as bananas, coffee, and cocoa. Or possibly that might have happened if it hadn't been for the developed world's suddenly-burgeoning appetite for a certain white powder, and the slopes of the Sierra Nevada providing perfect conditions for growing its raw ingredient: the coca plant.
As we walked up on the first day, we were flanked on all sides by fields of the pale green, shrubbish plant. Edwin gave us a short introductory lesson as we stopped for a breather halfway up a particularly steep ascent. A small field of coca plants produces a crop three times yearly. The leaves are stripped off, and within four months a new set of leaves has regrown. The plant is extremely hardy, and does not suffer from any of the potentially financially disastrous bug infestations that coffee, banana or coffee plants do. Each farmer has just one small field (although when I say "small", this is a field that yields three kilos of coca paste with each crop.) This distributed system ensures that there is no one point of failure in the cocaine production system.
When we arrived at our first campsite, we were offered a tour of a "factory", more like a shed. This is where the coca leaves are converted into paste for delivery further up the chain, in a childishly simple process involving the addition only of a few simple chemicals -- limestone and gasoline, among others -- and which takes about 8 hours. The paste product is better known in the West as "crack". I know this, because our drug-happy friends, upon returning to this site on the fifth day, enquired as to whether they might perchance purchase some cocaina from the nice man, to which they were told no, only the paste, and it would cost them 15,000 pesos per gram bag. That's just over 3 quid kids, remember? So Martin set to work converting a water bottle into a crack pipe, and I watched fascinated as three guys thought of nothing but their next hit for the next 8 hours. The locals don't touch it: they see nothing wrong with it though. They are simply supplying a market. The larger questions of the rights and wrongs of chemical dependencies just don't even enter the equation.
Kidnapping
Now I didn't know this before I made the trip, but in 2003 11 tourists on this exact hike, with our guide, were kidnapped by the ELN (left-wing paramilitaries) in an attempt to draw national and international attention to the plight of the people living in ELN-controlled areas -- and to highlight that the government was in league with the right-wing paramilitaries. I will not go into the whole story here, as I am sure that it can be found all over the internet, but suffice it to say that it just gave the whole trip yet one more surreal aspect. Most strange was the calm and humorous way that the guides talked about the situation they'd been in.
I should say that it seems that the tourists were in fact very well treated, and when "released" joked that they were pretty happy since they'd paid for a 6 day tour and got another 95 days for free! And that things are pretty safe now for tourists, because the government and the people want the tourist dollar coming in, so the paramilitary groups make sure that they get safe passage. A chunk of our 440,000 peso (100 quid) trek fee went towards paying the relevant protection money.
The hike
I thought it was heavy going. Carl the Irish guy who had hiked Macchu Pichu amongst others thought it was more or less straightforward. Every day we only did 3 or 4 hours actually walking, except the penultimate day when we had to do about 8. What really got me was the almost interminable ascents and descents. On the first day, for instance, we climbed a hill then descended it. So it was more or less 90 minutes of steep climbing, followed by 90 minutes of steep knee-unfriendly downhill.
But the real kicker was the third day, the final approach to the City. This started off well, with a fun if sketchy cable-car river-gorge crossing. Then, after an hour's fairly flat but rough-going hiking, we arrived at a wide fast-flowing river. The plan was to wade through it. Not once though, but eight times. We followed the river valley for about an hour upriver, and since the banks were often too steep, we had to walk through the river. It was about 15 or 20 feet wide, and in places came up above the waist. And the current was strong in spots too. This was where I realised that my waterproof Rohan walking shoes were exactly the wrong kind of footwear: much better some kind of light canvas shoe. I tried it in bare feet: I ended up with bruised toes and nearly slipping and getting washed downriver. But once water gets inside waterproof shoes, it can't get out, so I had the pleasure of walking in two personal squelchy puddles for the rest of the day.
Once I had just about gotten into it, and being wet didn't seem like an option but a basic way of being, we reached The Steps. There are 2000 of the slippery moss-covered buggers apparently, from river to city: I didn't count them. I will never mock the people on the stairmaster at the gym again.
And then of course, two days later, we had to do the whole thing in reverse. And although slippery rock steps coming up might be hard work, slippery rock steps going down are plain dangerous. I found this out when I missed my footing and slipped down about 15. It was only that I had the good luck to slip on a curve that meant I didn't end up in a heap in the river. The adrenalin rush was magic though :).
The indigenas
There are tribes of indigenous people living up in them there hills, too. They were super cute (I seem to have a thing for indigenous people, this could be a bit worrying...), and didn't use money or otherwise enter into the modern world. They lived off what they grew, chewed coca leaves for fun, and man woman and child dressed in long off-white tunics, and wore their black hair long and untied. They had cute pet pigs and little tiny doggies too. Every time our guides were cooking up some food for us, a few would appear, and sit around forlornly looking at us with puppydog eyes, until we'd had our fill, when they would dutifully fill up plastic bags with leftover rice or beans or whatever to take back to their cute little indigi-huts. I wanted to stay and live with them.
Social ineptness
Of course, on a trip like this, spending 6 fairly intense days in close proximity with 6 strangers, it's pretty important that everyone is kind of cool. Although certain members of the party amazed me with their capacity to do drugs (did I mention that someone brought a bottle of blotter acid up to the city, too?), they were all fine to share space with for a week.
With the notable exception of Jens, the American Perl programmer from Melbourne Australia where he had left his recently-divorced wife. He was the most hilariously socially inept person I have ever met, and seemed to carefully craft every phrase in order to make everyone hate him. It is very interesting to watch the social dynamics in these groups: it's a bit like Big Brother et al, except that you are living it, and importantly you can't vote anyone out!
I hate to judge people, so I tried to be nice to him the whole time (especially since we were all trapped together for a week!) but others were not so nice, and unfortunately, by the end, people were coughing and saying "cock" anytime he was talking, and other such playground behaviour. What was worst was that he seemed totally unaware that he was making such an impression. As generally the most socially inept person in a group, it was nice to watch someone else take the role, and to study them close up to see just how they were going wrong. Undoubtedly he was a nice chap deep down, and all his arrogant nonsense and pompous manner was just bluster to cover a complete ignorance of social protocol, but people react pretty fast to that kind of thing, as became clear.
It also came as a timely reminder of the pitfalls of returning to a career in software. Imagine returning to a milieu where such behaviour is considered normal!
Ciudad Perdida
The Lost City itself is beautiful. It's a large area of grassy circular terraces linked by mossy rock stairways high up in the mountains, surrounded by rainforest, waterfalls, and sky. It is a truly magical place and I'm glad it's so difficult to get to, because that allows it some chance of retaining that magic. There are many restrictions in place: for instance, no one tour group can stay there for more than two nights. Also, archaelogical excavation is blocked because of indigenous claims of sacred land, and indigenous people are prevented from living there (and modernizing/spoiling it, in all likelihood) by the government. So for the time being, it belongs to the birds, and the few hardy souls who make the three-day trek up.
Tim's wikipedia link and these images should help to give some idea of the magic of the place.
Conclusions
So, I got to try out my filter bottle in anger finally, and I'm pleased to report that it works well and that I drank river water for a week without getting sick.
On the second day, I hung my (100% polyamide) trousers over the fire to dry, and Misud the Turk caught them just before they caught fire. They are a little singed. And my lovely Rohan walking shoes gave me blisters because the heel padding is more or less worn away, and although I have tried to clean the mud off, don't look like they'll ever be quite the same again after 16 river crossings.
I have got more used to sleeping in hammocks, and doing strenuous exercise every day made me feel so good that I'm determined to do this kind of thing again.
When we arrived back in civilisation again, it was a heavy culture shock. It was Mother's Day, which in Colombia's macho culture means that the women all stay home and look after the children, while the men go out and get plastered.
And after having had delicious hot chocolate every morning for a week, I am thinking of making it a breakfast staple. That and a rock of crack. Only kidding!
Drugs
As some of you may know, apparently some drugs are produced in Colombia. Actually, a lot of drugs. Historically, Marijuana was the crop of choice in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, but in 1980 the Colombian government aided by the US government took a strong anti-drug stance in the region, spraying and killing all the crops. However, marijuana is still widely and cheaply available, as was evidenced on the first day of the trip when Edwin, our guide, distributed the complimentary shopping bag full of weed. Out of the eight of us, two were pretty serious druggies and decided that a block of weed the size of a cabbage would not be enough for the 6 days, so proceeded to buy the same quantity again from the obliging local farmer, for the absurd price of 15,000 pesos (just over 3 quid).
So since the 1980s, of course drug production has stopped, and all those farmers are now growing such crops as bananas, coffee, and cocoa. Or possibly that might have happened if it hadn't been for the developed world's suddenly-burgeoning appetite for a certain white powder, and the slopes of the Sierra Nevada providing perfect conditions for growing its raw ingredient: the coca plant.
As we walked up on the first day, we were flanked on all sides by fields of the pale green, shrubbish plant. Edwin gave us a short introductory lesson as we stopped for a breather halfway up a particularly steep ascent. A small field of coca plants produces a crop three times yearly. The leaves are stripped off, and within four months a new set of leaves has regrown. The plant is extremely hardy, and does not suffer from any of the potentially financially disastrous bug infestations that coffee, banana or coffee plants do. Each farmer has just one small field (although when I say "small", this is a field that yields three kilos of coca paste with each crop.) This distributed system ensures that there is no one point of failure in the cocaine production system.
When we arrived at our first campsite, we were offered a tour of a "factory", more like a shed. This is where the coca leaves are converted into paste for delivery further up the chain, in a childishly simple process involving the addition only of a few simple chemicals -- limestone and gasoline, among others -- and which takes about 8 hours. The paste product is better known in the West as "crack". I know this, because our drug-happy friends, upon returning to this site on the fifth day, enquired as to whether they might perchance purchase some cocaina from the nice man, to which they were told no, only the paste, and it would cost them 15,000 pesos per gram bag. That's just over 3 quid kids, remember? So Martin set to work converting a water bottle into a crack pipe, and I watched fascinated as three guys thought of nothing but their next hit for the next 8 hours. The locals don't touch it: they see nothing wrong with it though. They are simply supplying a market. The larger questions of the rights and wrongs of chemical dependencies just don't even enter the equation.
Kidnapping
Now I didn't know this before I made the trip, but in 2003 11 tourists on this exact hike, with our guide, were kidnapped by the ELN (left-wing paramilitaries) in an attempt to draw national and international attention to the plight of the people living in ELN-controlled areas -- and to highlight that the government was in league with the right-wing paramilitaries. I will not go into the whole story here, as I am sure that it can be found all over the internet, but suffice it to say that it just gave the whole trip yet one more surreal aspect. Most strange was the calm and humorous way that the guides talked about the situation they'd been in.
I should say that it seems that the tourists were in fact very well treated, and when "released" joked that they were pretty happy since they'd paid for a 6 day tour and got another 95 days for free! And that things are pretty safe now for tourists, because the government and the people want the tourist dollar coming in, so the paramilitary groups make sure that they get safe passage. A chunk of our 440,000 peso (100 quid) trek fee went towards paying the relevant protection money.
The hike
I thought it was heavy going. Carl the Irish guy who had hiked Macchu Pichu amongst others thought it was more or less straightforward. Every day we only did 3 or 4 hours actually walking, except the penultimate day when we had to do about 8. What really got me was the almost interminable ascents and descents. On the first day, for instance, we climbed a hill then descended it. So it was more or less 90 minutes of steep climbing, followed by 90 minutes of steep knee-unfriendly downhill.
But the real kicker was the third day, the final approach to the City. This started off well, with a fun if sketchy cable-car river-gorge crossing. Then, after an hour's fairly flat but rough-going hiking, we arrived at a wide fast-flowing river. The plan was to wade through it. Not once though, but eight times. We followed the river valley for about an hour upriver, and since the banks were often too steep, we had to walk through the river. It was about 15 or 20 feet wide, and in places came up above the waist. And the current was strong in spots too. This was where I realised that my waterproof Rohan walking shoes were exactly the wrong kind of footwear: much better some kind of light canvas shoe. I tried it in bare feet: I ended up with bruised toes and nearly slipping and getting washed downriver. But once water gets inside waterproof shoes, it can't get out, so I had the pleasure of walking in two personal squelchy puddles for the rest of the day.
Once I had just about gotten into it, and being wet didn't seem like an option but a basic way of being, we reached The Steps. There are 2000 of the slippery moss-covered buggers apparently, from river to city: I didn't count them. I will never mock the people on the stairmaster at the gym again.
And then of course, two days later, we had to do the whole thing in reverse. And although slippery rock steps coming up might be hard work, slippery rock steps going down are plain dangerous. I found this out when I missed my footing and slipped down about 15. It was only that I had the good luck to slip on a curve that meant I didn't end up in a heap in the river. The adrenalin rush was magic though :).
The indigenas
There are tribes of indigenous people living up in them there hills, too. They were super cute (I seem to have a thing for indigenous people, this could be a bit worrying...), and didn't use money or otherwise enter into the modern world. They lived off what they grew, chewed coca leaves for fun, and man woman and child dressed in long off-white tunics, and wore their black hair long and untied. They had cute pet pigs and little tiny doggies too. Every time our guides were cooking up some food for us, a few would appear, and sit around forlornly looking at us with puppydog eyes, until we'd had our fill, when they would dutifully fill up plastic bags with leftover rice or beans or whatever to take back to their cute little indigi-huts. I wanted to stay and live with them.
Social ineptness
Of course, on a trip like this, spending 6 fairly intense days in close proximity with 6 strangers, it's pretty important that everyone is kind of cool. Although certain members of the party amazed me with their capacity to do drugs (did I mention that someone brought a bottle of blotter acid up to the city, too?), they were all fine to share space with for a week.
With the notable exception of Jens, the American Perl programmer from Melbourne Australia where he had left his recently-divorced wife. He was the most hilariously socially inept person I have ever met, and seemed to carefully craft every phrase in order to make everyone hate him. It is very interesting to watch the social dynamics in these groups: it's a bit like Big Brother et al, except that you are living it, and importantly you can't vote anyone out!
I hate to judge people, so I tried to be nice to him the whole time (especially since we were all trapped together for a week!) but others were not so nice, and unfortunately, by the end, people were coughing and saying "cock" anytime he was talking, and other such playground behaviour. What was worst was that he seemed totally unaware that he was making such an impression. As generally the most socially inept person in a group, it was nice to watch someone else take the role, and to study them close up to see just how they were going wrong. Undoubtedly he was a nice chap deep down, and all his arrogant nonsense and pompous manner was just bluster to cover a complete ignorance of social protocol, but people react pretty fast to that kind of thing, as became clear.
It also came as a timely reminder of the pitfalls of returning to a career in software. Imagine returning to a milieu where such behaviour is considered normal!
Ciudad Perdida
The Lost City itself is beautiful. It's a large area of grassy circular terraces linked by mossy rock stairways high up in the mountains, surrounded by rainforest, waterfalls, and sky. It is a truly magical place and I'm glad it's so difficult to get to, because that allows it some chance of retaining that magic. There are many restrictions in place: for instance, no one tour group can stay there for more than two nights. Also, archaelogical excavation is blocked because of indigenous claims of sacred land, and indigenous people are prevented from living there (and modernizing/spoiling it, in all likelihood) by the government. So for the time being, it belongs to the birds, and the few hardy souls who make the three-day trek up.
Tim's wikipedia link and these images should help to give some idea of the magic of the place.
Conclusions
So, I got to try out my filter bottle in anger finally, and I'm pleased to report that it works well and that I drank river water for a week without getting sick.
On the second day, I hung my (100% polyamide) trousers over the fire to dry, and Misud the Turk caught them just before they caught fire. They are a little singed. And my lovely Rohan walking shoes gave me blisters because the heel padding is more or less worn away, and although I have tried to clean the mud off, don't look like they'll ever be quite the same again after 16 river crossings.
I have got more used to sleeping in hammocks, and doing strenuous exercise every day made me feel so good that I'm determined to do this kind of thing again.
When we arrived back in civilisation again, it was a heavy culture shock. It was Mother's Day, which in Colombia's macho culture means that the women all stay home and look after the children, while the men go out and get plastered.
And after having had delicious hot chocolate every morning for a week, I am thinking of making it a breakfast staple. That and a rock of crack. Only kidding!
wedding bells
an aside from usual travel-related stories...
my brother proposed to his girlfriend whilst they were in mexico last month, and they are engaged to be married in june 2008!
congratulations :)
my brother proposed to his girlfriend whilst they were in mexico last month, and they are engaged to be married in june 2008!
congratulations :)
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
The mighty jungle
In 10 minutes, I am leaving Santa Marta to trek into the jungle to Ciudad Perdida.
Hopefully see you all in 6 days!
Hopefully see you all in 6 days!
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