Week 7: San Gil and the week of extremities

It was confirmed by the headmaster just before leaving Puerto Colombia that the mum of my house was actually raving mad. Although this helped explain one or two things, I’m not sure exactly why it was I was placed with them.

After extended goodbyes at the school and at the houses of many families, we took a night bus from Barranquilla to San Gil. In between Barranquilla and Bogota on the map, you will see a place called Tunja. San Gil is just before that.


The seats on the buses are comfortable, that wasn’t the problem, it’s that they have this affinity with the air-conditioning. I’ve never known so much madness in all my life. Alex was sleeping in a sleeping bag with a woolly hat. I wore 5 jumpers. I’m not sure of the degree exactly but it was somewhere near arctic temperatures. I knew it was useless to ask them to turn it down from previous experience, so when the bus stopped in the night I got off to warm up. Seeing I was freezing, the bus conductor offered me his coffee. He then helped me to find my bag and even held some of my clothes whilst I rummaged in my bag. All this he preferred to reducing the air-con. I returned to a bus full of shivering Colombians. Apparently every bus is like this.

Entering San Gil was like entering a different country, a pretty colonial town in the mountains. It’s a planet away from the coast: cooler, greener, higher, the people are noticeably whiter.

We found a hostel owned by an Australian. It was so strange to be on the traveller-lonely-planet-trail after so long in the pueblito, surrounded by English people and Americans!

Described as the Interlaken of Colombia, San Gil (after the sporting events of Puerto) seemed to up the game a bit. Moving from baseball and wiggling to Shakira to extreme sports: Caving, paragliding, hydro speeding and white water kayaking.

Caving
My comment to Laura beforehand about wearing a swimming costume for the wet parts now seems like a bit of a joke. I was surprised by how quick was the descent into Dante’s underworld of bat faeces, muddy watering holes and mosquito lava. Within half a minute I was swamped in gunge. The experience improved upon letting go of the idea of salvaging dry parts of your body and giving into the gungy passages. We even slid down a gunge slide and swam through small gungy crevices. The stalagmites and stalactites were pleasant and there were some fresh water passages which you could drink from.

Before

After



During

The next day we took a bus to Barichara, the sweetest little colonial village I’ve ever been to. From there we walked two hours along an old Spanish trail with breath-taking views to another almost prettier tinier village called Giron. I’ll let the photos speak for it:



















That evening, Sean, the owner of the hostel, invited everyone to his farm just outside town for a bring-your-own-food barbeque. It’s in such a peaceful setting, remote, with a view of the town below and hammocks on the veranda. And at night, after many beers, everyone joined in the most precarious activity of jumping off the 6 meter waterfall into the lagoon bellow, just by the farm.

On Thursday Alex, Laura and I parted ways. Alex and Laura were going to another region to trek and I was going to go on to Bogota to stay with my friend Laura Medina and her family (we worked together at the school in Covent Garden).

In the afternoon I went paragliding with a group from the hostel...

These parts are famous for eating ants. There’s always a pull to join in with cultural activity:

Part of the point of these journeys on one’s own is to come to self-realisations, and I’ve realised that if I don’t fancy eating humungous fat dried ants I’m not going to eat humungous fat dried ants, and that’s that.

At some point I tried Hydro Speeding, which was great fun but a little dangerous feeling! This youtube video shows what it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxOhk50fe8&feature=related

San Gil was great but I began to lament being just another tourist on the gringo trail and its alienation from the normal life of people outside in the town. I missed the 35 degree heat novelty and 90% humidity of the coast, some of the friends I’d made, the sea and being the only blonde in the village. Changing my mind about facing the big city and heading on to Bogota and generally being too perezosa (lazy) for travelling, I managed to stay on the farm for 3 nights.

And there, now the lone intrepid explorer, I carved the following plan:
1. Avoid hostels in favour of farms and random luck.
2. Avoid paying for things, in favour of trade.
3. Only speak Spanish, think in Spanish, dream in Spanish, read in Spanish.

Noting that the river instructors didn’t speak English, and that since most of the tourists did, I came to an agreement with a kayaking instructor to swap a kayaking lesson for an English lesson. Although I’m pretty sure this was only agreed to because I have ojos de gatos (cat’s eyes) I decided to ignore this strange ‘come on’ and learn the basics of kyaking. First you need to get the eskimo roll well underway before attempting the rapids. See this youtube link for a demonstration!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxw2QY7w-fs

I reckon I got the most out of the deal because I pretty much got a Spanish lesson in the deal too, since we were speaking in Spanish and I learned all the river terms. Although San Gil was overall reasonably successful for ‘the plan’, staying on the farm had a time limit and I moved back to the hostel, there were way too many foreigners around to be speaking Spanish all the time, and feeling impatient at the speed of trade, after 3 days of nothing happening, I paid for kayaking on the white-water rapids.

By the evening before my kayak lesson I could feel a flu coming on and by morning my symptoms confirmed it. The day was good, but for those of you who know me as fearless, you will be relieved to read I succumbed to the natural instincts of fear and terror. Curving around one particularly beastly white ola (wave) I was tubbed upside down. Rectifying this situation you only have to remember ‘oar up, sweep round with incredible force, click the hips, fail, try again (whilst trapped under a boat under tempestuous white water, swallowing murky water). To think technically at such a moment! Never have natural instincts and the necessary action for survival been so in absolute conflict. Combined with the flu I was completely unable to activate strength to right the boat.

With all my might I managed to bob my head out of the water only long enough to squeal ‘I can’t breathe’, which although not in Spanish, I believe the gist of which was understood, before the weight of the boat, attached to the skirt, attached to me pushed me back under the rapids to sit in a perfectly upright in the kayak, but entirely opposite side of the water as was desirable since I was facing the bottom of the river. I groped around in my drowning panic for the release cord, which I couldn’t find. Eventually I wiggled free and went floating down the river.

Then we all had a good laugh about how Fiona ‘tuvo miedo’ (had fear). I did enjoy the rapids, I was just pretty fearful after that. So I do want to do kayaking again, I just need to get a lot better at it. Overall in was inspired by a day on the river and I pondered, ‘What would Jane Austen think of women white water kayaking?’

In conclusion of the week’s sporting events, the best thing about sport is being made aware of your physicality, which is after all at least 50% of our make-up. The next day, eventually feeling like I’d perhaps spent a bit too long in San Gil after the stay had somehow extended to about 10 days, I hopped on a bus to Villa de Lleyva.

Week 6: The last of the pueblo

Some incidents...


Today as I was walking to Laura’s house, a student from the school, who is 14, walked with me. After she asked the usual questions such as ‘Tiene un novio usted?’ (Do you have a boyfriend?), I decided to turn the question back on her. She said ‘si, pero el es mucho mayor que yo’ (yes, but he’s a lot older than me). ‘Ah’ I said, ‘Cuantas anos tiene?’ She replied, ‘trenta y cuatro’ (thrity four). Why did people ever find Lolita scandalous?

They don’t believe in either flattering or sheltering your ego.

One family, who Laura and Alex ate dinner with, proceeded, after dinner, to tell Laura, in front of Alex, how she was much better than him. This was based on the following three assertions:

• She speaks better Spanish
• She ate all her dinner
• She’s better at dancing bayoneta

One day the father in my house asked me why I didn’t have a brace when my teeth are so crooked. And then he demonstrated it by forming his hands into a crumpled shape. By which point I mocked offence, hiding genuine offense, said I liked my teeth the way they were, and then got out the house sharpish.

One of the English teachers (who can’t really speak English so, to my disbelief, we fare better in Spanish) managed to string together the words,

‘When you came here you was fat, now you thin’.

I tend to give less to the cats these days so I’m not sure how long this will last. After it’s reached the one month mark, the food doesn’t seem so bad. Today I happily ate bland rice with chopped up noodles in it with potato. Carb overload. In fact, Alex pointed out that yesterday he was actually looking forward to oil and rice. Plus dipping fruit in salt has taken an agreeable turn.

Goodbyes are hard. I said goodbye to the family who I give private lessons to. They are very nice people and they are the only ones who have fed me salad.

I went to the aerobics dance class and wiggled away for the last time to the steps of the very gay Latino Bayoneta-loving instructor.

This week I have hung-out with some more students from the university. I went to a romba (party) last night. I found it funny that my friend called their house ‘un mansion de extranjeros’ (mansion of foreigners). But when we arrived I saw why, because the exchange students live in an ex-drug lord’s house, with ornate banisters and a luxurious patio with a swimming pool.

Week Five: Semana Santa, or the Week of Easter

Monday. We bussed two hours to Santa Marta where we purchased hammocks in the market. Santa Marta is the coastal Colombian’s holiday destination hotspot; which doesn’t, however, altogether warrant much space for description. Then a short taxi ride took us to Minka, a tiny place in the mountains, where lies an unusual citing in these parts: a slightly hippy, traveller café, which serves chocolate brownies and café frappes.

The girl in the café said we could put the hammocks up in her garden. She lives with her family in a wooden mountain house and at the bottom of the slope in the garden was a covered wooden patio. We walked to some lagoons with waterfalls and went swimming.



It was bliss when night came, we were blessed with the view of mountains and the twinkling lights in the city far off, until the time came to sleep and the things that go bite in the night came out to taunt us.



Mosquitos bit through the material of the hammock. I could feel pinpricks and poison seeping in through the corner of my eyes and the tips of my fingers. I think this photo of Laura’s leg demonstrates our state by morning.

The Intrepid Explorers
Tuesday. We climbed over 2000m with our packs (reminiscent of World Challenge). Above the cloud, we found San Lorenzo. But, San Lorenzo turned out to be a village with a gate with a lock on it. Confused, yet hopeful, we laboured on until we reached a cell-phone signal tower (the only manmade structure for miles). And just as things were leaning towards the embryonic stages of dismay, a man appeared through the mist. We asked him about accommodation, and he said we could stay with his family. This meant walking more.




The house stood before us like a castle in the clouds on a plot of forestry, surrounded by mountains on all sides. And suddenly, looking at the view of misty cloud at a great height and the forestry below, it had been worth the strain. His wife cooked us a grand meal of rice and eggs and plantain. We played cards with the cousin and then slept, badly, (because it was so cold) in their barn.

Wednesday. The next day their son walked us to a lagoon.
For the way down, he recommended some short-cuts through the jungle, which were reminiscent of Romancing the stone and that movie with Russell Crowe, whilst trying not to remember that this was the last location that tourists were kidnapped by guerrillas in Colombia. (It was in 2003, and now there is a heavy army presence).

Then we returned to Santa Marta to buy some camping supplies for our trip to the nearby Playa Concha with our friends from the café at school in Puerto. We stayed the night in a hostel. It was too hot so I slept badly once again.

Thursday. We bought mosquito nets. Erwin, a chico from the café, telephoned us to say they would be at the beach ahorita.

Ahorita has brought us some amusement since being here. Ahora means NOW. Ahorita, though technically meaning ‘around now’, tends to mean anything between three and seven hours.

Late afternoon we congregated on Playa Concha, where bushy mountains meet white sant and turquoise ocean. A beautiful setting to camp for a few days. However...

Nothing is ever as it seems.

To ask for more would be, it seems, hopelessly Utopian. It was like we had gate-crashed a couples’ weekend.
After the initial alarm we all had a jolly time. When they do camping, they ‘do camping’. This means we ate lots of yummy cooked hot food and had lilos galore.

We erected our hammocks. And for the first time in three days I slept like a baby; cocooned in a wrapping of mosquito net and hammock, with a light sea breeze, that by morning I was almost surprised not to have turned into a butterfly.

I have made the decision to toodle onward with Alex and Laura when they leave next monday, in search of different climes and modern times.
Puerto's done good by me and I've enjoyed being here mucho, but I’ve been a bit shy of my family since they asked me to borrow large amounts of money.

Apparently Cali, famous for its plastic surgery, has the most bum-implants in the world. Maybe I’ll go there…
I will visit some ex-student friends of mine in Medellin and Bogota and see where the wind blows me.