The World Is Getting Fatter

I've been surprised by the number of heavy people I've seen since we arrived in Colombia. I'm used to it in the USA, England (where we visit semi-regularly, because Barry's family lives there) and Mexico (which has one of the highest diabetes rates in the world), but I did not expect it here. But many many folks we see, both Colombians and tourists, are overweight. As the book title says, "the world is getting fatter."

I was especially surprised a couple of weeks ago, when we met two Swedish women in their twenties. The Swedes I've met during my traveling career seemed to always come with lithe, fashion-magazine bodies. In my mind, it was part of the Swede "package." But these two (though they had the blonde hair, true to the package) were as pudgy as everyone else.

Last night an Argentine family arrived at our hotel. Both the parents and the husband's cousins were heavy.

Like Mexicxo, Colombia excels in fried street food. I haven't sampled much of it because most of it is meat-based. But it sure looks delectable in that fatty, greasy (yum!) way. But Mexica and I assume, Colombia has always offered fried food from street vewndors, so just the existence of it doesn't make the case for greater obesity. In Mexico, the growing overweight of the population is much discussed in the media, and in fact, Mexico City has just embarked on a bicycle-rental program. I have not seen any such concern in the press here.

At least it's not just a problem in the States.

Cartagena

We had heard Cartagena was the most beautiful city in the Americas. So of course, we came. The drive from the bus station to the city did not make it look extraordinary. But after we settled in, we started walking around, and sure enough, it is beautiful, and very reminscent of New Orleans. Pastel-colored buildings (paint colors softer than Mexico), balconies with trellises, narrow streets, old buildings, courtyards, tiny walkways that appear out of nowhere. Plus, of course, the old city walls that we had to walk on.

The city has the same faded beauty I remember from New Orleans. Each corner offer a zillion photo opportunities. Lovely.

One of the things we notice, all over Caribbean Colombia, is the increase in black people. But what´s also noticeable is the ease between races. We had read in our guidebook that there is very little racism in Colombia, and I pick up on that physically. It's wonderful to be in a community where I don't sense hostility.

Yesterday Barry suggested we eat lunch at an Indian restaurant he had spotted. Indian? I was pumped. One thing we have not seen anywhere in Colombia is ethnically diverse restaurants. So we walked from one end of Old Town to the other looking for it, headed down a little corridor off the street to the restaurant, and sat down at a patio table, only to discover it was a restaurant called ¨"Caribe de las Indias," a play on Cartagena's name. Nothing to do with East India! Instead it was same old: rice, a patch of lettuce, and fish. And a Club de Colombia beer that we split, and mango juice. (Not too shabby, even if it wasn't aloe gobi!)

The Fantasy of Stopping

So I mentioned in my last post that I told Barry I was ready to stop.

After several weeks of traveling on buses and shopping for hotels, just stopping for awhile sounds idyllic. My fantasy is this: Barry and I find a comfortable, pretty town, with a simple place to base ourselves. Maybe it's a hotel room with kitchen facilities. Maybe it's a studio apartment. We take walks, we swim, we write, I shop for food and cook, we meet folks, we invite them over for a drink or a meal.

It sounds cozy. It sounds comfortable. It sounds like Eureka!

I miss our cozy apartment in Eureka. Enjoying our late-afternoon glass of wine, looking out at our neighbor apartments. Dipping down to the hot tub once, twice, or several times a day. Cooking up one of my one-pot stews, while Barry watches the Simpsons, three yards away. (Funny. I love our life in Mexico, but right now it's the coziness of our life and home in Old Town that call me). We are at the midway point of our trip. We've been in Colombia for three weeks, and we have another three weeks to go. My mind doesn't absorb this information easily. Three weeks? I think. What on earth will we do all that time?

I know what we'll do. More of the same, pretty much, and the same is good. It's just that at a certain point, my mind rebels. What is all this for? I ask myself. What's the point? What good is it doing anyone? Remind me again, why am I in Colombia?

It was your decision, I tell myself (sternly). You can't blame Barry (God, how I'd love to!) An old drama, blaming him because I'm in some country and I forget why I'm there. But in this case. I chose the country and I chose the dates. Damn!

I always go through this. It's nothing new. And oddly, though I say I want to stop, I'm often the first of us to say, "Let's move on."

The only remedy is to take the next step, whatever that is. Right now the next step is to wake Barry, who is in our dark room and won't wake by himself, and doesn't like to sleep late.

OK, that's what I'll do. Go wake him, make us coffee, go to the store for yogurt, come back, we'll have breakfast, then stroll around Cartagena (which reminded me last night strongly of New Orleans, where I went to college), and surrender to the day.

Santa Marta

We spent four days in Santa Marta, a city of mixed blessings.

We found a hotel we liked, with both a private balcony and a nearby expanded balcony, a kitchen, and very warm hotel staff. Location: a block from the beach. Price: $18 for the room.

The beach was urban. Every morning, during our pre-breakfast swim, we could watch all kinds of marine activity in the harbor. The last morning we watched a cruise ship slowly "stroll" in. Dramatic! I far prefer an interesting, active beach to one which is supposedly beautiful, but where nothing happens. There was a nearby yacht harbor and a pier under construction (I dove off the rocks, but the pier itself was off limits).

Interesting places abound around Santa Marta. One day we went to Minca, a small village in the hills outside of town, not really on the tourist circuit yet. Sat on the verandah of the newest hostel (bought five months ago by an English couple), enjoying a cup of coffee overlooking the valley below. Walked to a swimming hole out of town, which we had to ourselves! A cold pool next to a waterfall-- we could swim over to the falls and be carried back by the force of the water. Delicious.

The next day we took the bus to Tayrona National Park, hiking along muddy paths and beach to our goal, a famously beautiful beach called Cabo San Juan. Beautiful rock promontories and lookouts, yes. But, no freighters or tugboats to watch. It was us and everyone else. Miami Beach. The previous day, sharing a cab with three young women from Argentina, they had said we had to see Cabo San Juan, we couldn't miss it! But we know spectacular beaches all up and down the California coast, including beaches in Humboldt, so maybe I'm spoilt.

Anyway, as I was saying, Santa Marta was a mixed blessing. It's a very gritty city. packed with street vendors, usually mobile, walking or wheeling around selling liquids, spotty fruit (sorry, but the mandarins in the supermarket are fresher), pastries, etc. I see all this street selling as a sign of greater poverty in this part of Colombia, but Barry thinks they must be making a living or they wouldn't be doing it. The city is also noticeably dirtier than the interior part of the country where we've been, with more litter and ramshackle housing.

I also had trouble with restaurants. When I travel I look forward to the evening meal as a time to relax and talk about the day. But the music was so loud in all the restaurants we went to that it was an effort to keep up conversation. The last day I made rice and veggies in the hotel kitchen and we ate up on the terrace.

People in the interior did alert us that the Caribbean is a very distinct part of Colombia, and to be careful of theft. I read an article in a news magazine saying that the leaders of the Caribbean counties wanted much more autonomy and power in Bogota. Quebec and the Basques were cited as models. I asked our hotel staff about an independence movement but they had never heard of it!

I told Barry that I was ready to stop for awhile, but Santa Marta didn't feel like the right place. I'm not sure anywhere on the Caribbean is the right place, just because of the heat and humidity. But we can't leave this area without going to Cartagena, said to be the most beautiful city in the Americas.

Onwards to Cartagena de las Indias, then (the West Indies, it means).

A Well-Earned Beer

It was a long day. We left our San Gil hotel--with our spacious airy room and the great hotel guy, Freddy-- and took a bus one hour to the nearby equivalent of the Grand Canyon--Parque Nacional del Chicamocha. I'm sure it's not as big as the GC, but it looks huge and has two rivers at the bottom creating not one but two gorges. We had hoped to do some hiking but it wasn't set up that way, especially not for only a few hours. So we succumbed to the 'teleferico' (an aerial tramway going down down down one side and up up up the other). The cable car ride was four miles long, from one rim to the other--one of the longest in the world, according to our brochure.

We were stuck on the other side for two hours due to maintenance work, but had fun on the return trip chatting with four guys sharing our cable car, who turned out to be old friends from grade school, now working for the Colombian military and enjoying a weekend reunion.I asked them the question I ask a lot of people, but I was particularly interested in these guys' response because of their profession: "What do you think Mexico should do to overcome its drug problem?"

"Professionalize the police and give them a lot of training, especially in counter-terrorism," was the main answer. They sounded very intelligent and convincing. I know from a colleague in Mexico that police are poorly educated, paid and trained.

Then we went to a sculpture in the park honoring the Colombian Revolution, designed and created by a Bogota sculptor and his team of 400 assistants in a period of three years. For someone as disdainful (or hostile, really) to nationalism as I am, I was surprisingly moved by the beautiful sculpted figures representing archetypal historic individuals fighting for Colombia's freedom 200 years ago.

Barry topped it all off by signing up for a three-minute zipline in the park, but I'd had enough adventures for a few days.

Then we caught another bus for another hour + to Bucamaranga, a city of about 1 1/2 million, followed by a taxi to the airport where we were to fly to Santa Marta, on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Colombia has several budget airlines and we flew one of them, Easyfly. The plane was 1 1/2 hours late, with no written or even oral advisories, so we were all sitting around cluelessly. When the flight did show up, the crew ended up having to order a replacement plane due to some kind of mechanical problem. At least we did take off, finally.

Another hour later, we landed at Santa Marta, the oldest city in South America. By now we had made friends with Jutta from Munich and Francesca from Alsace, France, so we all shared a taxi into the centro of Santa Marta. It was now about 9:00 p.m. On the drive into town, our taxi driver told us that the next day, the whole of the city would participate in a "Paro" (shutdown). All businesses and transport would stop as a protest against the corruption and mismanagement of the city government. With that news, three of the four of us decided to have the taxista (driver) take us on to the nearby fishing village of Taganga, where we had hoped to end up but not that night, since we were already tired. We dropped Jutta off at the hotel we had planned to go to, and headed off for Taganga.

Taganga wasn't far, but we spent a frustrating hour and a half going from hotel to hostel to hotel, looking for rooms and finding nothing, even though this is not theoretically the high season. The poor driver. Many of the roads are unpaved anyway, but after the heavy rains and flooding earlier this winter, you needed a 4-wheel drive to get through. He earned his pay that night.

Finally, worn out, we decided to drive back to the hotel in Santa Marta where we had left Jutta. She was sitting in the reception area and greeted us half-crying, half-laughing: moments after our taxi had left, she realized she had left her small backpack (with netbook and camera) in the trunk of the cab; she had been a bit freaked out realizing the street where the hotel was located, was swarming with prostitutes. None of us had noticed the extra backpack. Frantically she had emailed us, but had no other recourse, until, providentially, we returned.

While the taxi driver asked the hotel guy for some water, we all stood around laughing at the way the day had turned out and rejoicing that we all had a place to sleep. "God is blessing us all," I said to the taxista, as he headed home for the night.

The hotel rooms were cell-like and tiny, and we moved on the next day to a nicer hotel on a nicer street, but first we all went out for a beer on the beach. Never had a beer tasted so good!

The Adventures Never End

Today we rappelled down a 200 ft waterfall! Insane! The cascading water was hitting us like bullets while we tried to keep ourselves on track. It only lasted about ten minutes in real time but I felt on another time plane. Afterwards I swam and dove in the pool below the waterfall.

Between whitewater rafting, caving, torrentismo (today's waterfall rappelling) and tubing down a natural waterslide--it's been a wild week.

Meanwhile an ancient family drama involving Barry's first marriage has resurfaced. It's surreal reading details online that go back 30 years, while we're here enjoying vibrant Colombia. Such is the internet, for better or worse. The drama is not getting to either of us. On the plus side, I called my 89-year-old dad on Skype just to hear his voice and that was wonderful.

And tomorrow, we head for the coast! Colombia has both an Atlantic Coast (beyond the Panema strip), and a Pacific Coast. We're heading to a beach city called Santa Marta. Had planned to bus it but due to heavy winter flooding, many roadblocks are making a long trip even longer, so we are splurging on a flight.

A Leap in the Dark

The last couple of days Barry and I have filled up on adventure sports: river-rafting (Class III rapids, sounded calm but was quite turbulent in places); tubing down natural water slides; and the best of the lot, caving.

We bought our ticket for the caving guide through the "Planeta Azul" extreme sports agency in San Gil, and took the bus to the nearby village where the cave is located. On the bus it started to rain. And rain. By the time we reached the village it was a downpour. Luckily the branch office of Planeta Azul was opposite the bus stop. I was hoping the rain would cancel, but caves are, alas, way underground and unaffected by water. Our young man guide, Wayeen (? I'm writing his name phonetically) met us at the office, we changed our clothes, stashed our backpacks, and sloshed through the bucketing rain and mud about four city blocks to a steep path down to the entrance of our cave.

Soon we were in the first "sala," where the bats live. I love bats. (Side note: in Palo Alto, Barry built a wooden bathouse that we nailed to the outside wall of my then-office (former garage), hoping to attract bats. No success.) Wayeen gave us a little lecture on bats, of which I don't remember much. I was more interested in the experience than information.

From the first sala, we scrambled up and down lots of ledges, to more salas, mud, and a tunnel that we had to crawl through. (I had forgotten how much fun caves are). In the last sala Wayeen pointed to a little rock bench for Barry and me to sit on, and we stayed there for awhile in the dark, in silence. I remembered the assignment my Drama professor at the University of Wales gave us: to return to class after the weekend, having found a place of complete silence. It was a trick question, of course, because no such place exists (OK, maybe in space). I realized sitting there that rarely does complete darkness exist either, except in a cave. It was totally black. No slivers of light, vague shadows, nothing.

We'd been exploring for about an hour. We clambered along some more and then reached the climax of our journey: we walked down about 20 steep steps of a ladder to a tiny platform, not much bigger than a square foot, where we were to jump into a dark pool of water. I was first. Wayeen shone his flashlight on the area where I needed to aim (outside of that area were rocks, which was not confidence-inspiring). It looked a long way down, and out. (It was 5 meters, 40 cm.)

I guess I'm one of those people who just does it. I remember jumping off an unfinished freeway ramp over Lake Washington, in Seattle, where people would hang out and swim in the summer. I walked up the side ramp to the top, stood on the ledge and just jumped. Ditto when I parachuted. Hand on wing, let go of foot, jump. This time, I said to Wayeen, "It looks far," and then, before he answered, I was midair. I must have had my eyes open when I hit water because I saw the lantern on my helmet bobbing in the beautiful blue-green water.

I loved it! I love jumping. (I also love diving, but "no se permite.") I could have done it again, it was so magical.

From there we were not far from the other end of the cavern (and by the way, a cave has one opening only; a cavern has an entrance and exit, we learned during one of Wayeen's lectures).

We hiked up and up and up steep muddy steps to the surface, the earth almost shimmering in its misty green. It looked mystical to me.

And that's what I was doing yesterday afternoon.