Touring Cartagena

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“Your taxi is here!” Olga exclaimed as we quickly decided what to pack for our day trip into Cartagena. Cash, cards, sunscreen, a couple of Cliff bars, both cameras. We came downstairs to find Olga and our driver for the day, Alberto Blanco, stooped over a map bickering over the best sites in the city, plotting our day with a pen and paper.

“Are you on your honeymoon?,” he asked as we cuddled in the backseat, equal parts giddy and anxious about the day’s adventures. Apart from our view of Cartagena in the airport taxi, we’d done almost no research to prepare us for what was ahead.

So we started at the only place to start: the top of the city. “…Si no has subido a la popa, no has vito a Cartagena!” the poster read.  Alberto had taken us under his wing, proudly describing the history and significance of the site. Pointing down toward the city, he explained the day ahead as we oriented ourselves in the heat of Cartagena.

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We ventured back down the steep drive, then up another, landing at Castillo San Felipe de Barajas castle. The audio tour was just 15,000 pesos extra ($5). We were already in a learning mindset, so we splurged, but the headphones hung a half-inch from either ear, making hearing the bombardment of names and dates nearly impossible. (We gave up and read the Wikipedia page instead.) With headphones wrapped around our necks, we stuck our bodies against the cool walls of the tunnels, walking around the castle to capture pictures so that we wouldn’t forget what heat exhaustion threatened to wipe from our memories. (Kinda dramatic, kinda not.)

Alberto swooped us away from the hat vendors (“Don’t buy them here. The price is not fair.”) and into his air-conditioned taxi where he blared jazz music as we drove into the walled city for lunch. Olga had chosen the destination, and we chose platters of chilled rose, ceviche, fish balls, and platters of shrimp served with a coconut rice we had come to love.

Ignoring the suggestion to venture from lunch to the gold museum, we strolled the walled city, popping in and out of air-conditioned stores for reprieve. There was something magic in the liveliness of color set against the suggested safety of the wall.

When we met back up with Alberto, he was eager to show us more, showing us how to sneak in to the most expensive hotel in all of Colombia and introducing us to his mother outside of his childhood home. One of us coaxed the other down from a heat-induced meltdown with the purchase of agua sin gas before Alberto insisted on driving us through the only neighborhood of Cartagena we hadn’t yet seen. We reasoned together that should we move to Cartagena, this is where we’d find our high-rise apartment.

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By 8:00, we were ready to relax over dinner at Carmen where we quickly decided on the extravagant tasting menu with wine pairings. Three hours later, we emerged full, relaxed, and a little bit tipsy. Alberto met us as planned, ready to drive us back to Olga’s, this time with his wife in the front seat. It had started to rain, and they bickered in Spanish about road safety during a rainstorm. “Don’t worry,” he told us. “If we cannot make it back, you will stay at our house. We have an extra bedroom, a bed, it will be for you, no charge.”
We made it back to Olga’s safely, and absolutely exhausted. We tucked ourselves into the mosquito net and drifted to sleep.

Cartagena’s Olga

We arrived to hotel Playa Manglares under less than optimal circumstances. We had tried to contact the host to arrange a car, but she was unresponsive, leaving us in a taxi. A droopy eyed dog with oversized ears swung back and forth through the impoverished streets of Cartagena. We drifted further and further into nothingness on the only road down Baru. (One of us, who will remain unnamed, was certain that this is how the kidnappings happen). We sat outside a large gate on a call with the son of the hotel owner, describing its dark bamboo wood for reassurance that this was, in fact, the right place and we were safe to enter.

“How did you get here?” Olga exclaimed. “I was so worried! I tried to message you!” It was an enthusiasm that never left her voice for the duration of our two day stay. Rolling our bags to the hammocks, we helped ourselves to a drink at the “trust” bar outside, marking off one cerveza and one blanco vino as we tried to calm ourselves enough to see the paradise we had booked just three days before.

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The property was perfect. Palm trees and fallen coconuts. Untouched sand. White hammocks tied to trees mere steps from the Caribbean water. Light white fabrics moving with even the slightest breeze. But it was also a place that felt more real. Blue tarp to suggest failed construction. Thoughtless knickknacks like a smiling sun wind chime. And a number of workers hacking at thick roots near wheel barrels, a definitive sign that this land is not easy to inhabit. There was an authenticity to this paradise that made it feel more honest. Unlike a forced resort, at this place we could relax without the pressure to be.

Our room was the top floor, open to the elements with a pitched wood ceiling, mosquito net covered bed, and outdoor shower that had only one temperature, turned on and off by a knob shaped like a little bird. Meals were served at a table for six between the rooms and the ocean. They happened when they happened, and were what they were, brought out course by course on a large tray and served on beautiful plates that made even pasta look decadent. A tiny, beaded net covered the fresh juices to keep out flies.

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“I bought this property in 1986,” Olga told us as we waited for our cab one morning. “There was nothing here. Not even a road. If we wanted to come, we had to come by donkey.” She went on to tell us that her husband was diagnosed with liver cancer when their children were older. His treatments cost them everything. They had nothing but a piece of land, and doctors told them that he would soon die. So they decided to come, living in a small camp they’d built on the property. They knew that if something were to happen, that there would be no way to get to a hospital. And they knew that something would happen. So they lived, and they waited. “Ten years went by,” she said, “and we were happy.” She went on. “Then one day we were sitting down, talking. He said something funny, and I laughed. He was always so funny. I closed my eyes for only a moment while I laughed, and then I kept talking. I said something else, but he wasn’t there anymore. He was gone. Just like that.”

We don’t know what you would do in those moments, how your mind or body would react. It’s an aloneness we’ve never experienced.

With a gratitude for time mixed with the hardness incited by loss, Olga finished the guest house she and her husband had been constructing. She makes additions when it feels right and meets each visitor with the same enthusiasm, creating the property we had first entered so tentatively. The juxtaposition of the blue tarp with the flowing white fabrics seemed almost reflective of the great beauty and loss in her own life.

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After we left, she wrote to us. She wished us well on the next part of our trip, thanked us for coming, and noted how nice we are together. “We hope you’ll keep yourhappy for always,” she wrote. We are so grateful to this woman for sharing her home and her story with us. We’ll treasure this honest paradise forever.

Nicolas, bicycles, graffiti, and Bogota

Nicolas is out of breath, a bit disheveled, and late for our bike tour. He’s what you would expect in Colombia (though it’s difficult for us to judge considering we were also late). When we began the ride, we started to see this character emerge, one far removed from his first impression.

Some parts of the ride were obligatory. The stop at an expensive juice stand just outside the rich part of town, characterized by European architecture. Even the ride through the red light district, which arguably may have made him more uncomfortable than it made us, as this was the only point in which he lost one of us in a crowd. Then there were other moments in which he lit up. The Garbage Museum. “He just has a different way to see life,” he told us before we wandered into a hoarder’s den. (There was some message in there about consumption in a consumer culture.) Tejo. A game in which you drink beers while throwing rocks at a steel disc lined with gun powder. “This is where I like to bring first dates. That way you know she is okay getting her hands muddy… and drinks beer.” The fruit stand and vegetable stand. “You don’t know spicy until you try this pepper.” We thought he was exaggerating. We thought wrong. But the thing that made him beam… graffiti.

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First, a little more about Nicolas. Nicolas is a 26-year-old local that was born and raised in Bogota. His mother and sister are both psychologists, and his father did something business related that was lost in translation when he attempted to explain it to us. He attended university just a couple years back where he majored in visual arts, and today he is part of a city-wide graffiti group called “MAL” painting the walls and buildings of Bogota.

As we pause by many of his graffiti works, Nicolas shares why each was painted. Reasons varied from politics to history to beautification of rougher areas. It is so easy to pass by graffiti and either not notice it or dismiss it as being inferior in some way, but Nicolas’ works and messages had purpose. Riding on his steel-framed, yellow road bike, Nicolas shared stories of how some of his creations came to be. Next to one was a homeless man that Nicolas and his crew had befriended and who would protect the scaffolding overnight when the painters left. In gratitude, MAL provided the homeless man with clothes, food, and more. Stories like these that are just as much a part of the art as the art itself unfortunately usually get lost.

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We feel fortunate to have learned more about Bogota, about graffiti, and about Nicolas in this 5-hour adventure on our first morning in Colombia.