JJ's Travelogue

After a few days here I’ve gained a better understanding of Cartagena. When I wrote the last post I hadn’t really seen most of the old town – only the neighborhood my hotel is in. This neighborhood (Getsemani) is the “bad” area of town, which actually feels safer than the “good” areas of Managua or other Central American cities. Because it’s a bit run down and working-class, you can get a full meal for $2 and decent hotel for $10. But it turns out the rest of the city is not that cheap. Still inexpensive compared to the States, but not by much.

It took me a few tries to actually find the rest of the old town. The winding streets end up confounding my sense of direction, leading me away from the center. In this way the city is like Venice or Amsterdam. I remember visiting Amsterdam for the first time.. I was staying at a hostel that had a midnight curfew, and although I knew where it was, it took me much longer than I thought to reach it due to all the curvy canals. I ended up running as fast as I could for 10 minutes, just making it back before they locked the doors for the night.

Anyway.. the rest of old town is stunningly preserved grand colonial houses, former slave markets, plazas and churches. While not Disneyfied, it’s certainly fairy-tale. Boutique hotels and gourmet restaurants. I think it feels European because of the modern shops retrofitted into old architecture. This mixture gives a cultural richness that’s palpable just walking down the street. The entire city is a photographer’s dream. The pedestrian-friendliness of the layout also gives it the relaxed vibe. Built before automobiles were invented, Cartagena has the same inviting feel as all those small cities in France, Italy, etc. It’s wonderful wandering the streets, day or night. And it feels incredibly safe – well-lit, clean streets, lots of cops around. Occasional touts and hookers, but never any feeling of danger.
I’ve never missed my rollerblades more than here. The city is just made for skating – wide boulevards, open plazas, restricted traffic. Instead I did a bit of parkour on and around the fortification walls.

One evening I sat in one of the open-air plazas and watched locals (or perhaps they were tourists from elsewhere in Colombia) engage with the hawkers. It was neat – my first response is always to brush them off, politely decline, I don’t want to buy anything. But these locals bantered with them, laughing, everyone having a good time. The musicians ended up serenading them, the portrait sketchers did their thing (whilst taking sips of their hosts’ drinks, I noticed), the magicians and mimes (yes, mimes.. doesn’t it make you happy that mimes still exist in the world?) performed. I wonder how much the locals ended up paying in the end. I’m sure it wasn’t much, and it was wonderfully entertaining.

One type of vendor very popular here that I haven’t seen much of in other countries is the coffee/cigarettes/candy guy. There are tons of them roaming the streets day and night. They carry a rack of cigs, candy, mints, sundries slung around their necks like baseball peanut salesmen, and in their hands carry a rack of coffee, cups, and accoutrements. Lovely to have that stuff come to you rather than searching it out. The place where they all refill their thermoses is around the corner from my hotel. Enormous coffee machines the size of industrial refrigerator brewing day and night, but none for sale – it’s only for the vendors.

Another thing I like here is the long row of food stalls set up along the edge of the park. Even late at night, you can wander down and take your pick of cheap grub. These are nearby a long row of book stalls, similar to the ones along the Seine in Paris. I also love the fruit vendors all over town where you can pick up a nutritious delicious snack for cheap – fresh papaya, mango, avocado, melon, coconut, banana, watermelon, and a number of fruits I can’t identify – all cut up and prepared to eat. I’ve fallen in love with passionfruit juice.

As in the rest of Latin America, an inordinate amount of men just stand around on street corners. Or hang out on park benches. Just whiling away the time. Are they jobless? Where are the women? I would get so bored just sitting there. Some of them gab with each other. None of them are seen reading. I saw some playing checkers with bottle caps for pieces, on a hand-painted board.

Another thing witnessed here that I also saw in Central America – a person taking handfuls of water from a pitcher and sprinkling the ground around their cart or business with purpose. It struck me as religious. Are they warding off evil spirits? Blessing the ground? I wish I knew how to ask.

What I think of as Panamanian hats are worn all over here. It’s a great look. I might take one of the strolling vendors up on buying one, but I’d be afraid of crushing it in my travels.

Motorcyclists wear a safety vest that is blazoned in huge letters with the same numbers/letters as their license plate. Their helmets are also stenciled with this number. I suppose it cuts down on theft, since you would have to steal not only the bike but also the helmet and vest.

While colonial houses are beautiful from the outside, they were also built for security and privacy. So it’s nearly impossible to find a hotel room with an outside-facing window. The architecture is all oriented inward towards the courtyard, where your whole family (other hotel guests) can see you. They were also built in the days before large windows, so the rooms are all quite dark. Then again, maybe that’s a stylistic choice – windows in Amsterdam are enormous, and they were built 200 years before these houses..

Another clue that I’m in a more developed country is that the walk signals downtown are audible for the blind. Central America is decades away from that level of accomodation.

I got to peek inside the house where Love in the Time of Cholera was set. Apparently Gabriel García Márquez lived in Cartagena for some time.

Although Cartagenians slur and drop their consonants a bit like the Panamanians, apparently most Colombians speak the best most proper Spanish in South America, so this might be a good country to take a few weeks off and go back to language school.
Colombianas are very touchy-feely, which I love. They’ll reach out and touch you while talking to you. Flirty, I guess it could be called.

The taxis drive me insane with their incessant beeping. The cabs are impossible to miss – bright yellow, with lights on top. And they’re everywhere – you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a free cab. Yet they troll the streets day and night beeping at anyone minding their own business, imploring them to take a ride. Doesn’t matter if it’s dead obvious you don’t actually need a ride. I have been walking the opposite direction of traffic, passed by five empty cabs, and the sixth one will crawl up next to me incessantly honking – ride? ride? I’m free! Shut up and go away!

Another pet peeve – the guys who think that simply by walking past them somehow communicates “hey, I need help buying drugs or a woman!” Seriously, I think they might need medication for these voices they’re hearing. Then they get upset – “well what DO you want, then??” Um, nothing. I’m just.. walking.  So I’m learning how to say “Piss off and get a job and a life, while you’re at it” in Spanish.

A million years ago when I worked in youth hostels I developed ability at spotting scammers. [Another game we would play at the front desk was identifying a person's nationality within the first few seconds of them walking in the door. Germans, for example, always had interesting glasses and technical backpacks.] This sixth sense has now been honed to the point where I can spot a scammer or tout from 30′ away out of the corner of my eye. There must be something to the way they move, for my sense always proves right. At least it gives me fair warning to either ignore them or to not cross paths.

Yesterday I walked up to the old Spanish fort of Castillo de San Felipe, the largest fortress the Spanish built in all their colonies. There are dramatic stories of sackings through the centuries, including this one by the British:

In 1741, the English Commander, Edward Vernon, with 186 ships and 25,000 men laid a three month siege to the city. He was so certain that Cartagena would be his, he had a medal struck commemorating his expected victory. However, the Spaniards, outnumbered seven to one, led by their one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed comandante, held firm behind their walls and fortresses. The smaller cannons on the English ships were able to bombard the outer walls of the fortress seen today but could not reach the distances and heights of Castillo San Felipe. The castle’s cannons on the other hand, made prime targets of the English ships whenever they ventured within range. Vernon lost over 70 ships and 10,000 men in his ill fated attempt to take the city.

Drama! The coolest part of the fort are the tunnels. Many of these are lit and open to the public to explore. I wandered down one of them for a loooong way, probably 60′ underground, judging by the occassional skylight waaaaay up there. This tunnel led to others that clearly don’t receive many visitors. There were no lights by this point but I had a flashlight in my bag, being the boy scout I am. So I pressed on, determined to find where these tunnels led. After another 40m or so I started wading through water. Damn, they’re flooded. Rolling up my pants, I pressed on. Eventually I turned around once the water reached my thighs. No end in sight. I’m fascinated – for what purpose were these tunnels built, and where do they lead?

Last night I found myself at that German bar with real beer and met a fellow American – although he hasn’t lived there for 12 years. Andrew is a sommelier on cruise ships. He works 12-14 hour days seven days a week for six months at a time, but then has three months off. Since he doesn’t have any expenses while on ship, he can spend those three months playing and traveling. He’s been to some fantastically exotic places – Ethiopia last. Andrew also lived in Cambodia for 2 1/2 years and another year or so in Thailand, so he’s got some great stories. We might hang out again, it was the first conversation either of us had had in days.

Tonight I happened upon an impromptu performance in one of the public squares by an Afro-Carribean dance & percussion group. They were fantastic! Very well rehearsed, great scenes, replete with costume changes. They were doing it for the tips, but clearly were having a ton of fun at the same time. The name of this style of dance is the mapalé, which is also the name of a fish. The dance took it’s name because the dancers flail around like fish out of water. I wandered back through the park later and they were still there, rehearsing without music (kind of like Merce, but not). I don’t know how they’re able to move their hips so far so fast – like they’ve got some powerful vibrating machine inside their pelvises, which are completely disconnected from their spinal cords. It’s sexy and a riot. I took a few short videos: one, two, and three. And here is an audio recording I made with the iPhone.  Finally, here are some YouTube videos shot in the very same park (of the same group, I think).

I managed to get a hotel reservation in Barranquilla for Carnaval, which I am very relieved and happy about. The reservation process was hilarious. First I had my front desk buddy call the hotel to inquire. They explained what I needed to do to reserve, which alone required several telephone calls. I had to go down to their bank branch here and deposit the exact amount for the entire length of my stay…
[Allow me to pause here in order to rant about how banks in Latin America are still in the dark ages. First, they think they're doing us a favor by serving us even though they make profit of our money. They're open for business literally only five hours a day - minus an hour and a half for lunch, naturally. Only a certain number of people are let into the bank at a given time, so long lines form down the block in the hot sun. Then you go through a ridiculous security theatre process to get into the bank which includes going through an Orgasmatron-like device which kept malfunctioning and trapping people inside it. I noticed that the floor of this thing was separated such that they could hit a panic button to drop you to the lions below. OK maybe not lions, but it really did appear that you could get shot down like a pneumatic tube. I almost wanted to tempt them. But honestly, one bank could come along and steal all the business by simply having normal opening hours...]
After depositing the money in their account, I took this receipt to a fax shop, wrote out my passport number and other gobbedly-gook, and faxed it to the hotel. Then I returned to my front desk buddy and had him call to confirm it had all been received. The entire process took about three hours. Umm… allow me to introduce you to the concept of CREDIT CARDS, for Pete’s sake.

I caught Obama’s first press conference on the telly. He continues to be a rock star in my book. Did any of you catch it? He was a total policy wonk! Using dozens of multsyllabic SAT-worthy words, he proceeded to go into minute detail about obscure points of his various plans and strategies. Words, let alone concepts, Bush would not have been capable of pronouncing, let alone understanding. I actually glazed over, and I eat this stuff up. But that’s what a President should be – someone who understands all that stuff and makes up his own mind, not simply buying whatever he’s fed.
I also noticed that he called on the Huffington Post – the first time a blog has been acknowledged in a White House press conference. It’s a new dawn. And darling old Helen Thomas, who has peppered 10 presidents now. I love her.

Here are a couple of “slice of life” videos.. just standing on the street corner, taking it all in. Near my hotel and On the boulevard.