JJ's Travelogue

Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, is known as the salsa capital of the country, if not the world. [Salsa the dance form, not the chip dip!] I didn’t get a feel for this famous party atmosphere since I wasn’t there over a weekend, but I did get enough sense of the place to form a positive opinion. It has excellent weather (perhaps even better than Medellín’s), although it can get hot and humid. Being closer to the coast there are noticably more black people here, giving the city a dynamic feeling. There are a lot of attractive plazas and parks. Overall the city is not as organized with the infrastructure as Medellín nor does it have the great views of that city, but it’s still quite pleasant. Cali is also known for “medical tourism”, i.e., a lot of people come here to get plastic surgery. Certainly a lot of the locals have had boob jobs and what-not. The city also has a dramatic history – besides the drug kingpins of the late eighties and early nineties, other dramatic events of taken place. To wit:

On August 7th, 1956 around 1 a.m., seven Colombian army trucks filled with 42 tons of dynamite exploded near the train station, destroying eight city blocks. A nearby army barracks was instantly destroyed, killing all 500 soldiers. Windows were shattered for miles. More than 1,000 people were killed and several thousand injured.

After Cali I came down to Popayán, a pretty colonial city founded in 1537. It’s known as the “white city”, since all the buildings are painted alike.. which by the way, makes it difficult to find your way around since there are no landmarks – everything looks the same. The central historic area of the city is so clean, whitewashed and quaint, it looks almost Disneyesque. It turns out that it was in fact recently (re-)built in the colonial style, since most of it was destroyed in the earthquake of 1983! But I was relieved to find there is a real city beyond the old town. I went for a run up to some hills overlooking the city that afforded nice views.

It’s like being back in some of those Central American colonial towns.. I’ve seen more gringos the last few days than in the previous two months. Due to all the tourism, they have an impressive tourist infrastructure for such a small town – maps, pamphlets, etc.. perhaps due to it’s fame as having the second-largest Easter celebration (Semana Santa) in the world. This is where my buddies in Barranquilla recommended I come for that week.. I’m only two months late!
One nice thing that comes along with tourists is the variety of restaurants to cater to them. Just when I was getting sick of eating the same Colombian basics for every meal, I arrive in a town with an Italian restaurant owned by a Swiss woman, a Chinese place, and several good cafes. Bliss.

One thing I don’t like about Colonial towns is the architecture. Wait, let me rephrase that. The architecture is gorgeous to ogle for an hour.. but after that, you realize it’s not very functional. The design in those days had all the buildings facing inward.. perhaps for security? The upshot being that most hotel rooms face inward, meaning no privacy or natural light.. what windows there are are small.. and it’s difficult to tell what a club/restaurant/shop is like from the street without actually going in and looking around. Sometimes you just want to do a walk-by, know what I mean?

There are an insane number of old churches for what was a very small town. What did they need all of these churches for? It’s not like each one is a different denomination, they’re all Catholic. Maybe they were like the Starbucks of their time – not wanting townspeople to have to be more than a few blocks from any given one.
There are many religious reenactments on television, fitting..
Fully 15 of Colombia’s presidents have come from Popayán. I wonder what that says about the town or about Colombian politics.

The hostel here is excellent. It’s run by a friendly Irish couple who founded HostelTrail, a network of Latin American hostels. It’s clean, modern, efficient, with free WiFi and nice computers, laundry, everything one could want.

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Short post today. Just wanted to share with you a few websites I’ve become enamored with:

1. Wikitravel.org

   It used to be when I wanted to find out about traveling to a country I would consult the Lonely Planet listings. They give a nice summary of a place, the basics for what travelers need to know. But in recent years Wikitravel has far surpassed them. And while Wikipedia is good for facts about a country (geography, history, government, economy, demographics.. similar to what the CIA World Factbook lists), Wikitravel lists things you as a traveler need to know – transportation, where to eat, drink, sleep, staying safe, what to see and do. Plus since it’s a wiki, it’s improving by leaps and bounds daily. I do my part to improve it by adding listings for hotels I like, correcting mistakes I’ve found, etc. As an example, compare the listings for Medellín in Lonely Planet, Wikipedia, and Wikitravel. You’ll see what I mean.
   It’s nice when the world coalesces around one site for a given topic. You want to know about a film you go to IMDb, want to know about a band you go to AllMusic. It’s the same now with Wikitravel.

2. Google News Alerts

   I realize this may not be new to a lot of you, but I recently started using it and love it. You just tell Google what keywords you want news about and it will collate news articles, web mentions, blog postings, etc into a daily or weekly summary and email it to you. It’s a great way to keep tabs on disparate subjects without having to go searching for the news. I’m currently tracking news on Colombia, Merce Cunningham, and Ecuador.

3. Google Maps / Google Earth
   

   You’re no doubt familiar with these tools for checking out your neighborhood, office, driving directions to Aunt Patty’s house, etc. But did you know that their coverage globally is quite good, and the community of people geotagging photos and videos from all over the world is a boon for everyone. Say you’ve read all about a given destination, but still don’t have a feel for it – what it would be like to walk down the street there. Then try these tools. People upload an amazing range of benign photos and videos – their local supermarket, the kids playing in the street, etc – but the upshot is that it gives you a real sense of the place.

4. Couchsurfing.org

   Although I’d read about this site before leaving for my trip and was told about it again by a traveler in Guatemala, I only finally checked it out a week ago.. and discovered the answer to my prayers! As a tourist, it’s difficult to truly get to know a place without the benefit of local knowledge. But I’ve always been vexed by the problem of how to meet local people. Sometimes I’m lucky and they just come up and befriend me, like in Honduras and Barranquilla. In Santa Marta I even successfully broke the ice with a group of locals at a club, but I had a wingman egging me on that night. Usually it’s just too daunting. No more – Couchsurfing to the rescue! As the name implies, it is a social networking site designed to put travelers in touch with locals to crash with. But it’s far more than that. Many people on the site (myself included) are fine staying in hotels, but simply want to meet people for coffee or drinks to get the lowdown on the local scene, or just have a bit of human interaction. One reason it took me so long to sign up is I thought there wouldn’t be that many people on it in these non first-world countries.. boy, was I wrong. In Bogotá alone there are over 2,000 people on the site! Even in the smaller remote towns of Colombia there are dozens of people signed up. Woo-hoo! Wikipedia has a good summary of the site here. If you’re already a member of the site (it’s free if you’re not), please “friend” me, so I can get my profile up.

Extra geeky info, for iPhone owners only:
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This past weekend Eloisa and I had a nice time hiking and staying in cabins up in the woods in the Otun Quimbaya Flora and Fauna Sanctuary. After organizing and working a multi-day conference then going out dancing with the participants, Elo caught a night bus from Bogotá to meet me in Pereira. Naturally she arrived exhausted, but impressively rallied through the day’s adventures. We caught a chiva for the bumpy road to the park. Chivas are wonderfully idiosyncratic buses of rural Colombia. Painted in outlandish colors, they are open-sided (great for experiencing the scenery), and made almost completely of wood!

Since Elo works for the Parks Department she was able to get a discount at the cabin we stayed at the first night, called La Suiza. Like Switzerland. This was a former hacienda that became part of the park system fairly recently. The tourist services (hotel, restaurant, etc) were set up and run at first by a Big Evil Company, but it’s so out of the way that it got no business so they handed it off to a local collective who now run it. Good ending to the saga.

The park is “home of the howler monkey, puma, spectacled bear, tapir, bus, mountain solitude, turkeys, barranqueras, toucans, eagles, among others.” Wild buses, delicious. Unfortunately we didn’t end up seeing much fauna, although a European couple we met saw a monkey and some exotic birds they were pretty psyched about. An interesting couple – they’re English teachers working for one company who rotates them into different countries every couple of years. They’re just finishing up a year and a half in Bogotá and are headed to Bulgaria next. That will be a change! Nice to think about as a fallback profession if I have trouble getting work in the theatre.

The morning after arriving we walked over the Otún River, which provides drinking water to all of Pereira and other nearby cities, to an incredibly high and impressive waterfall. For what is a nondescript small stream coming out of the woods it suddenly plunges 90′ straight down, creating a hypnotically impressive spectacle. Then it carries on downhill being the same mild-mannered little stream. If the weather were warmer I would have loved to try standing under it. I wonder if it would injure.

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After leaving Medellín I headed south to the region known as the “coffee triangle”, for this is where all of the famous Colombian coffee is grown. In addition to coffee, in recent years the area has taken on growing flowers for export (a huge business), plantains, bananas, asparagus, and adventure tourism. There is also a lot of bamboo around (beautiful!) – I think some is for harvest and some is just naturally growing. The triangle is formed by the three cities of Manizales, Pereira, and Armenia. I headed first to Manizales.

Manizales has the most number of universities per capita in Colombia. Fully 1/4 of the residents are students, with females outnumbering males 3 to 1. All this youth around gives a nice vibrancy to the place, but it also makes me feel old! The city has “abrupt topography”, meaning lots of steep hills and great views. The main avenue is at the top of a saddle, and the neighborhoods fall sharply down away from it. The city is building a network of cable cars (aerial trams) similar to Medellín’s, which is nicely progressive and forward-looking. It’s also a bit higher elevation than Medellín, so I’m back to chilly nights and daily rain showers. My hotel is a few blocks from the public market which is fascinating to wander around. A sea of chaos.. dozens upon dozens of vendors shouting their wares (“3 avocados for 1,000 pesos!” ad infinitum), mystery meat entrails dangling from hooks, street children and mangy dogs running around, piles of unidentifiable exotic fruits.

Mom asked me what I do on a daily basis.. good question. Well, I start at 5am with calisthenics, followed by an hour of meditation, then an hour of studying Spanish. Oh wait, that’s what I SHOULD be doing… what I actually do is wake up around 8, go find some breakfast (more on this later, but I’m getting really tired of the same food over and over.. it’s impossible to find variety). I usually catch up on the news over breakfast by reading articles I’ve downloaded to the iPhone – The New York Times, BBC News, and Huffington Post all have good iPhone apps. It’s ironic that I’ve become more informed about U.S. politics since leaving the States. Then I’ll spend anywhere from a few hours to most of the day just walking.. exploring the town, finding sights or neighborhoods I’ve read about.
During all of this walking I’m listening to podcasts, which cheers me up and keeps me connected to the world I left behind. Some of my favorites: A Prairie Home Companion;  The Rachel Maddow Show; Countdown with Keith Olbermann; PRI’s America Abroad, Science and Creativity, and Studio 360; The World’s How We Got Here; Real Time with Bill Maher; TED Talks; This Week in Tech (actually, almost all of the shows on the TWiT network are excellent); The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Sharpling; Seven Second Delay; and assorted yoga and Spanish language lessons.
I usually pop into a net cafe or find WiFi to check my mail and blog a bit. Then it’s evening, the time when it’s most difficult being alone. When I’m feeling self-confident, I’ll find the Zona Rosa and maybe wander into a couple of bars or clubs. But I don’t usually stay for long, since I don’t have that kind of extroverted personality that can just walk up to random strangers and strike up a conversation.. particularly with the language gap. So I might watch a movie instead or just chill in my hotel room.

I have to say honestly that the charm of being in a foreign country has worn off. I’m finding myself more and more annoyed by things rather than enchanted by them. But perhaps all I need is a change of country. I only have a bit left to see in Colombia (Cali, mainly) before crossing over to Ecuador, which I’m looking forward to. Although I will only have three weeks in Ecuador, because I’m aiming to meet some friends in northern Peru the last week of June. Not sure if I mentioned before – my friends Jessica and James Chance, whom I met at Spanish school in Guatemala and then traveled around with for a bit, have been hired by a group of Seventh-Day Adventist missionaries to shoot their 10 day mission trip way up in the mountains in Peru. Jessica wrote to ask if I would like to meet them and provide a bit of atheist foil after all the piety they’ll be immersed in. Of course! So I’ll breeze through Ecuador faster than I probably would if I didn’t have this date, but it will be worth it to see those guys.

Anyway, back to describing the past week.. continue reading the rest of this post (and view the photos)…