'A Master of Southeast Asia'

I had a late last night in America that consisted of a posse of Tarheel alumni taking on Williamsburg, Brooklyn in formal attire (Williamsburg is a hipster hub; we had on slacks and vests whilst being surrounded by flatbill hats, mustaches, and thick framed nonprescription glasses). The night included me getting a drink poured on my head by a girl for air guitaring the Van Halen solo from ‘Beat It’ in the face of her boyfriend who called our crew awkward, and although the bouncer found it funny I was asked to leave, because they were both apparently regulars, and I was but a mere North Carolinian in transit (luckily the drink was clear, so really it just sterilized my hair).

After waking up surprisingly un-hungover, I hopped on the metro to get to JFK airport, and then waited for 2 hours. When I arrived in Milan after an 8 hour flight, the hallway of the airport had a perfect view of an amazing sunrise over the Alps. Too strung out, I failed to get a picture. I waited in Milan, amongst many Milanese for my next flight—they reminded me of well-bred versions of the Jersey Shore folk, with a little higher clothing budget and less steroids.

After another 6 hour flight I was in Bahrain, which is when it started becoming apparent that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore; there were many forms of man-dresses—some white, some brown, others decorated, but all of them were remarkably clean. There were quite a few women in Hijabs, which I can’t say I have ever seen more than one or two of at a time. There were also a bunch of Indian folks head bobbling to each other. I’m sure I will have more to say about this ‘head bobble’ as I see more of it in action, but for the time being, youtube it. It apparently means yes, no, hi, maybe, as well as more nuanced and elegant ‘fuck-offs’ or other things in certain situations. One Indian guy seemed to ask one of his South Asian brethren to watch his suitcase, which received a head bobble response; 2 minutes later, this dude left the suitcases unattended (maybe that time it meant ‘yeah sure, but only for 2 minutes’).

I also met a self-proclaimed Miami club promoter of Pakistani descent who was going back home to meet a candidate for his arranged marriage. He claimed to have been born and raised in The States, but he had weird gaps in his English, made strange cultural references, and started showing me pseudo-red-carpet photos of girls that he had allegedly hooked up with. Then he went and changed into a man dress—all this aggregated to make me believe he was a spy, but I don’t think there is much espionage work to be had in Miami, so who knows.

After finally shedding him (he was a stage 2 clinger), I picked up an Arabic magazine that was sitting next to my seat. There was a section on staying fit in urban areas; the first suggestion was washing more vigorously in the shower, because it burns more calories. I also noticed a Chili’s, where instead of whatever kind of art a Chili’s has at home, there were pictures of the handsome, mustached members of Bahrain’s royal family.

I arrived in Mumbai after yet another flight. At this point my body didn’t know what to think; it was day time, and I hadn’t slept in God knows how long. After finally being let into the concourse, I decided to just get coffee and try to hold out for a bed later that night in Thailand. An older gentleman was brought over next to me in a wheelchair.  The coffee and 2 all-nighters had me feeling chatty, so I struck up a conversation.

Come to find out, this guy, Ken, was shot in the head in the Vietnam War. After waking up in San Francisco weeks later he was left without the use of his right side, his speech faculties, and his reading and writing ability. All he could say was ‘great,’ but he didn’t know it—he thought he was still speaking fluent English. After months of speech therapy he started getting his language back, and he battled the next 10 years to reteach himself to read. His writing is still heavily impaired, partially because he was right-handed, and his vision has been cloudy since the injury.

Since then, Ken has been hoarding his disability checks and spending 5 months a year in Thailand; his extended passport included pages upon pages of Thai visas. He told me that after spending 10 years going back and forth to Thailand that he felt he was “A Master of Southeast Asia.” So I’m figuring from this that he speaks Thai, lives in a teak hut, and drinks rice whiskey in the Northern Jungles with people that have never seen a car, but apparently his definition of 'Master' differs from mine. Come to find out, he speaks no Thai, uses a travel agent, and his only two suggestions for places to go were Pattaya and Patong, which I later found out are the first and second largest sex tourism hubs in Thailand.

I arrived in Bangkok after another 5 hour flight, took the metro to a hostel, and passed out for the next 12 hours. I woke up feeling like a refreshed ‘Master of Southeast Asia’ and ready to take on crazy-ass Bangkok.

Ximena Farmacy and why America is Awesomer than Everywhere Else (sic)

One of the most rewarding parts of the travel experience for me is the challenging—and sometimes downright shattering—of preconceived notions. I remember the first time I entered a Chinese bathroom with just a porcelain hole in the ground I rethought what it meant to be a bathroom; the first time I got (near)deathly ill from bad food I rethought what it meant to have health codes; the first time I saw a maimed child forced to beg I rethought what it meant to not have things going your way (not to be a Debbie downer, but it’s horrible, and the images still haunt me, and I find it difficult to have any sympathy for 99.99% of Americans who say life sucks).

Ximena Farmacy (sic) was another of those challengers. It first and most obviously shattered the pre-conceived notion I had of how to spell ‘pharmacy,’ but there were much deeper, more fundamental things that this place challenged, and ultimately made me decide to hold onto my American notions, because they are awesome.

Ximena Farmacy is a store in Canoa, Ecuador, a small and super-duper chill beach town. Just to set the tone of the town, neither of its roads is paved, more than a tank top and bathing suit would catch funny looks, dreds are the norm, and I’m pretty sure no one owns a car or pants. The economy relies solely on tourism and necklaces made out of paper clips and seashells; if it’s not shabby jewelry or a hostel bunk you seek, fear not, though—Ximena Farmacy has it covered.

In less square footage than a Sam’s Mart gas station, Ximena Farmacy sells pretty much anything you could need or want; all exaggeration aside, this dimly lit ‘pharmacy’ had 3 different sized flat screen TVs for sale, a men’s AND women’s clothing section, a full service pharmacy, multiple arcade machines, a freezer section, a produce section, a shelf with the gamut of beauty and hygiene products,  an internet café, a stationary department, a bus station, a tour company, a toy store, an impressive candy selection, a massage parlor, and a dairy section—and I am surely emitting things, like all the possible beach knick knacks and souvenirs a tourist could want, yeah, they had those too.

Although I had considered it before, the vast array of products under such a small roof hit me in a way a lot of corner stores hadn’t. While buying bus tickets, snacks, and stomach medicine all at the same time, I got to thinking about retail structure in America, and all the inefficiencies involved. Minus patio furniture and grills this place had literally everything Target has and then some all in the space that the make-up aisle usually takes up (the selection isn’t as good, but do we really need 50 different kinds of shampoo or 20 different kinds of tampons?). Stores of this size in the States are typically heavily specialized: local pet shops, hobby shops, Spencer’s, Claire’s, etc. Why have all that space when you don’t need it?

Because we can.

Sometimes, when you’re awesome, efficiency is not the only concern; we have palatial stores with 30 foot ceilings, chilling AC, and the lighting of a film shoot because we can, and it is awesome, and I love America for it. In no way do I condemn these monstrous megastores either, I just now realize how unnecessarily luxurious and awesome even a K-Mart in the hood is. That realization makes me all the more thankful that I was blessed to be born when and where I was, because after all, I could be somewhere where I’m forced to move the women’s underwear and mangos out of the way to get to the sunscreen.

Slow Boatin' Vol. II: Slow Boat Pros

Iquitos, Peru is allegedly the biggest city in the world that has no roads in or out; comers and goers are relegated to boats and planes for their ingress and egress needs. After enduring the slow boat once, we figured we had seen all the endless jungle and gargantuan polluted river we needed to see at an 8 mph clip, so we were determined to take the fast boat further into Peru. Once again, we got to experience the LARA (Latin American Run Around) first hand whilst searching for fast boat services. The boat agency that runs fast boats said to go to the port, the folks at the port said to go back over to the agency, the mototaxi driver suggested another spot (which he charged us for ultimately even though it didn’t pan out), and then the last agency finally told us there actually are no fast boats further into Peru, despite the fact that another guy at the port had given us a break down of pricing and how the system works. hmmm...

Fatimah setting up our hammocks in choice floating real estate.

It was fly for 130 apiece, or float for 25 apiece. Shit. It appeared that economics had us floating on the giant chocolate milk river once again. This time we were prepared though, we knew just what was in store for us. We went to the market and got another hammock, we got sweet and salty snacks and ample water, and we even showed up a few hours early to ensure a good spot near an electrical outlet with minimal sun exposure. Yeah, we were slow boat pros.

Our boat was the middle one.

Nice combo of storm coming in and sunset as we left

The bathrooms...

3 of the seemingly endless children on the boat... cute in picture form at least...

Come to find out, this boat was a whole lot nicer than the first one; 7 stalls to share with our fellow river goers, sinks, a cleaning crew, and surprisingly decent and hearty meals. There were even some gringos with a Lonely Planet book of Peru (in French, but the numbers and Spanish words are the same so it was semi legible—so what if you miss words like ‘guerillas’ or ‘landmines’), which meant we got to do some further trip planning. Success. Every rose certainly has its thorn, though; this boat ride was a testament to the devout Catholicism of the Peruvian peoples—for every one couple on this boat there seemed to be about 3.4 kids accompanying them. These children were at times cute, at other times devilish, and at all times whiney and annoying. My personal favorite was when one child would cry in the middle of the night, which would cause at least a few others to join in for a cacophony of blood curdling birth control.

Slow Boatin' Vol. I: Crossing the Border

Our time in Colombia was coming to an end, and it was time to deal with the formalities of crossing borders for the first time.

Me and Fatimah on our last day in the Amazon jungle....
Note the backpacks made of palms.

Fatimah and I were fresh out of a 4-day jungle trek when we decided to take our fate into our own hands and deal with our passport stamps and ticket buying to go to Peru ourselves. Rene, a lovely old philosopher and the manager of our hostel was interesting and funny, but tasks that would take someone five, ten, maybe twenty minutes, took Rene three days (it literally took 28 hours to get a roll of toilet paper). Rene had offered to help us, but we didn’t want to be stuck in Leticia another week, so we went over his ponytailed head and did it ourselves. Still covered in mud from the jungle and smelling like 3 days of BO and heavy insect spray, we went to the immigration office at the airport in Colombia for our exit stamps, and then took a boat taxi across the Amazon River to Peru for our entry stamps.

The office in Peru was on a 3 hour lunch break when we arrived so we started asking around for boats, which ended up being just enough time to receive a hefty dose of LARA (Latin American Run Around). The LARA is the product of a cultural phenomenon where people in Latin America will give you advice or directions regardless of if they know what they are talking about, some say in an effort to be ‘polite.’ I would personally much rather hear an ‘I don’t know’ than trudge through a quarter mile of Amazon basin silt just to be told we went the wrong way, but that’s just me, and that’s just the culture. One guy fixing his boat’s engine by rebuilding and reinforcing parts of it with beer cans had actual information, which he presented to us in an 8 minute monologue form, the distilled version was: there is a fast boat that is 70 US dollars and it takes 12 hours and leaves at 4 in the morning; there is also a slow boat for 25 US dollars and takes 3 days and leaves at 8 at night, he suggested this boat, because it included meals and was cheap (he mentioned the meals at least 6 times).

After deliberation and a bit of douchesque and cheap skate decision making on my part, we ended up on the slow boat. Words cannot quite describe the shock I received coming onto this boat. It was like if your grandma had gotten you socks for Christmas, but put them in a Playstation box; a bit of disgust, a bit of anxiety, and a wave of pissed-offedness. This boat consisted of two platforms, one on top of the other, packed to the brim with people in hammocks. There were no lockers and no security; your stuff just went on the floor of the platform under your hammock. Despite the typically entrepreneurial tendencies of both Colombians and Peruvians, nobody was selling hammocks at the docks, so Fatimah and I were relegated to a single hammock.

Our home for 3 days, at least there were life jackets!

Furthermore, our only snack was a bunch of bananas I had bought on a whim because they were 1 Nuevo Sol (35 or 40 cents), which seemed like a good deal for a couple kilos of bananas. They were pretty ripe, however, and started falling on the floor of the boat off their bunch. I’m a proud supporter of the 5 second rule, regardless of what Mythbusters or scientists say, but falling on the floor of this particular boat, even for a fraction of a second, voided any edibility these bananas once had. Furthermore, the boat taxi driver said the boat would accept US dollars because it is a border town operation, which was a lie, and we had no Peruvian currency. So here we were for the next 3 days with a rapidly dwindling and rotting snack stash, one hammock, and no cash. I was pissed, at myself, at the boat, and at the bananas. Fatimah nursed me back to wellbeing with discussions of fasting and how it would be good for us.

Come to find out half of why these boats take 3 days to get to Peru is because they stop at every little Amazon village along the way and pick up and drop off people and cargo. One of the first villages we arrived at teetered on the status of a ‘town’ and had an ATM to prove it. Now we could at least pay for snacks and the boat tickets and things of that sort. The hardware store also sold plug adaptors, so I was able to plug in my laptop on the boat, allowing us to watch movies, and I was able to get my work done.

An example of one of the many Amazon towns we stopped at,
this one apparently had an excess of lumber.

Hour by hour the slow boat, trudging down the river that looked like dirty chocolate milk, was growing on us. There were caveats; such as the two (2) bathrooms that the roughly 80 people on our platform were to share. These were pretty much like permanent Port-O-Johns© with a hose coming down from the ceiling that was, apparently, a shower head. The toilets in these bathrooms used river water, so it was difficult to tell whether people were following the ‘if it’s brown, flush it down’ ideology (they were, however, most certainly letting the yellow mellow). Thieves are also apparently omnipresent on these boats, so wherever we went, one of us would have to keep a look out for our things or we would have to carry a 1000 dollars’ worth of cameras and computers around in a bag. Our hammock placement right next to the kitchen was both good and bad, the upside was we didn’t have to go far for a drink or snack or a place to sit, the downside was that we were sleeping right in a high traffic area, and right next to the table that was the site for afterhours gambling.

Another, slightly slower slow boat we passed.

Another typical day at the office...

The friendliness of the kitchen staff and many of our fellow boat goers, plus the sheer relaxation of having nothing to do were lovely. On the last night I joined the aforementioned gamblers for a late night binge on cheap Brazilian wine that tasted a lot like Wild Irish Rose© or some other kind of high gravity bum wine. We rewarded ourselves for our thrift on the boat with 2 nights in a hotel that was neither seedy nor shabby when we arrived in Iquitos. We also made a pact to avoid slow boats, which we unfortunately had to break about 72 hours later.

Picking Coffee in Salento, (with a step by step of the coffee process)

One little window of good weather in Manizales. This is the main
drag of town, which goes along the top of a mountain ridge.

Manizales was allegedly supposed to be a hip college town with many beautiful sites and a notable nightlife. The upside was that our big hotel room cost us 12 dollars a night, the downside was that it was raining the entire time we were there and the college was on a break, leaving the bars pretty much dead. For 3 days straight, we would wake up, secure breakfast, put on our walking shoes, and then a torrential downpour would ensue. This made for lots of time watching movies on the two (2) American movie stations in English. We couldn’t even score drugs because the nightlife was back at their padres’ houses for the week—we tried once, but the guy never showed up and we ended up waiting on a quiet side street for 30 minutes to no avail. On the third day, we decided enough was enough…

Four hours and two small buses later we were in Salento, a tiny little coffee town with a population of about 4,000. It was much like the little agricultural towns (of probable fantasy) I envision to be in the rolling hills of Oregon and California; it seemed like there was a common agreement that no one was going to work too hard, no one was going to walk too fast, and no one was going to give someone else trouble for partaking in a doobie. For lodging, we decided to go with the Lonely Planet pick, The Plantation House. It was a bit out of town, at least 7 or 8 minutes from the town square (‘far’ by local standards).

The Lonely Planet had deftly reported that the Owner was English, and after seeing his wife, who was a smoking hot older Colombian woman, we figured he’d be a dashing James Bond type Londoner, complete with a popped collar on his custom tailored trench coat. He turned out to look more like a grody version of the old guy from Jurassic Park. Picture Dr. Hammond, less a cane and even-growing facial hair, with the addition of about 35 shades of yellow on his teeth and a strange conversational mannerism that teetered between a stutter and a drawn out ‘um.’

This description may be peppered with bias and envy though, because he is living the dream (my dream). He bought a small coffee farm, which is 7 hectares by satellite, but situated on high sloped hills, so the amount of land which he is being taxed for is actually about half of what he actually has. It had just switched to organic (read much less efficient) when he bought it and was operating at a total loss, so he likely got a good deal. He turned the farm house into the first building of his hostel, and then bought the neighbors out, creating an impressive compound of gringo-sanctuary. He employs some of the local teens and older guys to work the farms and hostel, and sells about half of the coffee produced; the other half is consumed in the hostel, by the workers, and other locals in the favor of the Jurassic Park guy. Three times a week he would give a lecture on the economics and history of coffee farming

Hot wife, check; favor from the locals, check; a renewing audience to BS to, check; new and sometimes interesting world travelers coming in every day, check; boo coos of organic coffee, check. Not too shabby ol’ chap…

The view from our window... you can't put a price on this kinda beauty, but the room cost 8 bucks per person.

They have also cooked up an ingenious scheme for labor. Any gringo can work from 7:30 in the morning to noon at the coffee farms, doing repetitive, semi-arduous labor with the teens he employs, in exchange for a set lunch brought down to the farm (valued at about 7,000 pesos, or 4 bucks). Brilliant… folks from London, Switzerland, Norway, and other spots where a hamburger will run you 20 dollars, all working for less than a dollar an hour. The gringos don’t feel ripped off at all, however. For once we are getting to do something and not have to pay for it, and we're getting an ‘authentic’ coffee picking experience.

From about 8:30 to 10:30 we went around with big baskets strapped to us, picking the red, semi-red, and brown coffee berries off the trees. It was actually loads of fun, it definitely appealed to the inner hunter-gatherer. The idea of picking berries for hours got even better when a distinct smell and plumes of smoke started coming up from where the real employees were…

What the bosses don’t know, and what we were later told to keep privy about, was that every one of the employees we were picking coffee with was holding, hardcore holding. Not the holding that a 45 year old does at a Tom Petty concert when he sneaks a doobie in to spark up during Last Dance, we are talking the holding that a self-respecting high school pot dealer would have with him on 4/20 at the movie theater. I was elected to break the ice with them and see if we could join their silent reggae session. Instead of passing me the joint he had, Alonzo reached into his fanny pack. While I thought the fanny packs they had might have important work papers, or cell phones, or wallets, or even a Colombian ID… nope, just copious amounts of the finest Mary Jane in town. I suppose they did have work papers, but all of which were of the rolling nature. He put a handful of the leafy substance in my palm and handed me 5 rolling papers—being used to paying for everything I asked how much, and he shook his hands as to say ‘on the house.’

We edged our way up the hill, singing songs and joking, occasionally picking a few berries here and there. My guess is that the 5 of us picked about half the amount the 3 pros did, but at least we had a good time doing it. As the midday sun started coming out they said the work out here was over. We didn’t want to go, we were all enjoying this leisurely manual labor, but we found that even more leisurely work awaited us.

Next we shucked beans for another hour while guzzling down fresh coffee and riding out our stoning from earlier. This is the part of the process after the berries are de-seeded and the seeds are left out to dry, the husks are removed by hand and with a sifter and the beans are then roasted to the familiar dark brown color you see when you open your sealed bag from the grocer. Our ‘free’ lunch came and we chowed down, after we were invited to go enhance our hunger with the locals, that is. Here is a rough idea of the process we learned in a single morning's work:

Step 1: Baby coffee beans, built by adding coffee berries and dirt with  water and sunlight.

Step 2: Big coffee plants, made by letting baby coffee plants grow for a while.

Step 3: Picking, red means go, yellow means maybe, and green means no.

Step 4: This machine takes the fleshy and sour outer part of the berry off, leaving a white seed (this becomes the coffee bean!).

Step 5 and 6: After the inner seed is left to dry for a week, the outer layers are peeled off, because they taste bitter  and burn during roasting.

Step 7: All those shucked, dried, and reshucked seeds get put in a big ol' pan for roasting.

After a few hours of frequent stirring, we now have something that resembles what you get in a store!

In the 2 hours of work we did in the fields, including that of the pros, we picked (optimistically) 5 pounds of coffee once the berries were all dried, husked, and roasted. This is B-grade coffee as well; coffee totally unfit for the likes of an American Quizinart or K-cup—it tasted great to me; the beans just weren’t as plump as those from your typical bag of Eight O’ Clock. After the farm, the finished product gets shipped to the states, packaged, shipped to grocery stores, and sold for 8 dollars (4 when on special) a pound. Our day’s work would equate to 3 to 6 or so bags in total, and our coffee wasn’t even export grade. So, ipso facto, this leads me to believe that either someone on the coffee supply chain is getting heavily subsidized or thoroughly screwed in this ordeal (or maybe a bit of both). 

Catching Crabs in Colombia

Tayrona Park is a spiritual center of the pre-Incan natives of the North Colombian coast and the site of the world’s highest coastal mountain range. Just a decade or two ago this area was a big no-no for tourists; cocaine trafficking paramilitary groups used to control the area. These guys didn’t see gringos as humans, per say; they saw them more as a case of shiny new assault rifles thanks to mommy and daddy’s love and savings account. Tayrona is currently managed by a big hospitality corporation which has done well to build extravagant and exorbitantly priced beach front lodges, and the Colombian government has apparently done well to clean out the area of guerillas. Now this beautiful area is receiving a full-on gringo invasion, but the further in you go, the less fluffy white robes and mai tais are present, and the more once in a lifetime wilderness experiences materialize.

When hiking in hot weather, one should cool down
anyway possible.

After taking a cab with a Lil Wayne aficionado who’s forever banned to enter the US due to an illegal stay of over a decade in New York (see previous entry), we arrived at Tayrona. There were old Colombian men with horses attempting to push 10 minute rides on folks who had just arrived, with prices plummeting as we showed less interest (20 thousand... ok 14 thousand... ok 3 thousand!). The first ‘ecolodge’ (read luxury hotel in the jungle) we passed had big dumpsters outside; instead of raccoon, Cayman were digging through the trash, it was like a homeless Jurassic Park—my dreams were already coming true. We made our way down to the beaches and arrived at the ‘camping area’ in the mid afternoon. This ‘camping area’ turned out to be a field with a volleyball net, a restaurant, a covered area, and about 40 square feet with as many shitty tents and hammocks as they could stuff inside it. It was kind of like a KOA, but without the campers and NASCAR shirts. We decided to beat the system and go to the deserted cove next door (roughly 400 yards from the restaurant) and hang our hammocks there, forgoing the 10 dollars they were charging in the gringo ghetto dubbed the ‘camping area.’

The next day, faced with the dilemma of more possibly lame camping at the beaches further into the park or leaving, we opted to chance it and check out Playa Brava. After 4 hours of pretty intense hiking up and down hills in humid 100 degree Caribbean Jungles, we started hearing ocean waves. The jungle opened up into a lush field with an empty pool, a dilapidated volleyball net, some shacks, and cabanas. Past the cabanas was a giant, pristine, white-sand laden cove with 6 to 8 foot waves crashing upon each other. Our inner children took the reins and we sprinted for the monstrous surf; for the next half hour, we were 6 year olds being thrown around like rag dolls by the forces of nature.

We found out later that Playa Brava started out as a cocaine shipping port, due to its remoteness and proximity to the Caribbean and US. As a cover, they installed a swimming pool, volley ball court and a few half built buildings and called it a resort under construction. As the smuggling shifted away from the Caribbean and to the Pacific, there still remained a really sweet vacation spot. The buildings were never finished (and the shells are still there) and a few Cabanas were built next to the beach. Andres, a Colombian writer who weathered the intense hike out to Playa Brava, said that he had been coming here for almost 20 years now, and literally nothing had changed about the place, which he attributes to the difficulty of getting there and the laziness of Colombians to undergo the hike and eventually trash the place.

To the left....

To the right...

On the far end of the cove there was a river that fed into the ocean with mangroves growing around it. While checking it out, we spotted blue crabs. We felt it would be quite appropriate, since we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere with minimal clothing and food, to unleash the hunters inside us. We crafted devices made out of sticks, duct tape, and knives and went about capturing hard-shelled protein sources. We devised a pretty decent system by nightfall, and equipped with our head lamps and spears, we would corner crabs, pin them down with our make-shift tools and grab them from behind by hand. After a few hours we had a pot full of crabs to boil on the beach with the few other adventurous souls that took the hike out.

The cabanas and jungle behind the beach...

The folks that ran the place were a husband and wife, their kids, and one other guy. They lived in a little house in the middle of the property and had a few light bulbs powered by a car battery. Once a week Francisco, the other guy, would take a donkey into town and load it up with supplies—this was pretty much the extent of their outside world connection.

Bonfire with other folks that made the hike out, a couple of writers (left), Ludo (closest), a couple of Googlers (Center), and me and Fatimah.

Blue crabs roasting on an open fire... I know, pretty boss...

After a few days in Playa Brava, one could really start rethinking their life; electricity starts to not seem all that necessary, simple food starts to seem pretty acceptable, and anyplace else in the world starts to seem overcrowded and stressful. We didn’t need millions of LED lights from a TV screen or a busy road full of bars for entertainment—sitting on the beach at night was a subtle but satisfying feast for the senses; jungle noises behind us, ocean crashing in front, stars above us, salt water in our nostrils, and thoughts of simpler times in our heads… well, let’s just say it was a struggle to leave.

Sneyder, Rapper and Cab Driver Extraordinaire

Tayrona is a highlight of the North Coast of Colombia; it boasts ample mileage of hiking trails in the tallest coastal mountain range in the world, ancient ruins of long since conquered people, wildlife, and white sand beaches ranging from totally packed to totally deserted, depending on how deep you go into the park. We were originally going to get dropped off via water by Jack’s late night drinking friend (see previous entry), but we went to the meeting spot and Andy—if that was even his real name—was a no show. It was too late to take the cheap shuttle over to the park, and all the public boats had left; the only viable option was to take a dreadfully expensive cab for an hour and a half or so. Cab drivers in this part of the world are keen observers—they seem to instantly know where you need to go by how you are dressed and what you are carrying. Sneyder was the first cab driver to get our attention. After haggling the fare down below the list price to 55,000 pesos (about 30 dollars), we set out on the road trip to Tayrona.

Sneyder ended up being perhaps the best cab driver I have ever had; he had sweet mix tapes of old Lil Wayne and Kanye West tracks and had an amazing story for why he spoke fluent English. In the 90s, Sneyder attempted to cross the border twice with the aid of well-paid coyotes, and was nabbed at a Florida port the first time, then in North Carolina on the second attempt. On his third attempt he took matters into his own hands. He packed 2 loafs of bread, a bag of lemons, and 5 liters of water, and with the clothes on his back stowed away in a cargo freighter bound to America. Sneyder thought this freighter was heading to one of the typical American states a Colombian ship goes to: Florida or Texas, and he packed accordingly for the 2 day voyage. After the third day he still was not on American soil, neither was he on the fourth or the fifth. He ended up making it all the way to New York, an 8 or 10 day voyage as he remembers. When he finally reached New York, he was skinny, dehydrated, and malnourished. He hopped into the river and swam towards the big buildings. A Puerto Rican couple ended up helping him out of the water, and gave him food and shelter and a job at their car wash. Sneyder then met a slightly more legal Puerto Rican woman that he had a kid with. When attempting to get his kids papers straight to enter school, he ended up blowing his cover, and was sent back to Colombia. Sneyder is now, five years later, working as a cab driver and saving up to start his own cab and shuttle company to meet the growing demands of the Colombian tourist industry and wants to buy land for his son to have to vacation on. He sees his son and baby’s mama twice a year in Costa Rica as of now.

When Sneyder saw that we were ‘cool’ folks he asked us if we minded if he picked up some pot, we said no, and he drove us through a part of Santa Marta that very few Gringos have gone to and come out to tell the tale. He bought it off an old guy on a bike by hanging two fingers out the window while driving past and then meeting him a few blocks down, receiving a quick handoff of two joints. He put some hip-hop instrumentals on and busted some whack rhymes. Then he started telling us about Colombian culture; demonized pot usage because of narcotraffic (he sprayed air freshener on his fingers to mask the smell), Hugo Chavez and the impending war with Venezuela (“he’s fucking crazy, man”), Venezuelan gas (it’s practically free there, and is widely smuggled into Eastern Colombia), propane cars (didn’t even know that existed!), the evils of cocaine (it’ll really narrow your views, it’s so fucked up, it makes everything important go away), how Colombia has changed since Escobar got Swiss-cheesed up and what Colombians did to see that change through (we were tired of living in a war zone, so we voted, and we stopped being so corrupt), and so on and so forth. When the conversation died down he would light his spliff, again, and continue flowing, badly.

By the time we reached the Tayrona we had a new glimpse into Colombia, made possible in large part due to Sneyder’s command of the English language, he could express lofty and abstract things in a way that we could understand, and I paid him the 60,000 (an 8 hour bus ride for 2) without blinking, plus a tip, in hopes that one day Sneyder, Inc. will come to fruition and his son will have a place to come in his father’s motherland.

Taganga and Lara, or Why I Don't Trust People Who Offer Me Stays at Their Condo

So after taking it easy (read a few drinks here and there and white water activities) for the first few weeks of our trip, we decided to rage hard in Taganga. Taganga is formerly a little fishing town outside of Santa Marta that has become in recent times a hub for backpackers looking to ‘party’ in the various senses of the word.

Taganga: what it lacked it looks, it made up for in... I'm still not sure.

There seems to be a higher than average concentration of gap-year (the year in between high-school and college) backpackers and Israelis fresh out of the military, two groups notorious for letting loose in the developing world (with all due rights, they just spent the better part of two decades being told what to do every weekday, or the last 2 years kicking people out of their homes and dealing with the stresses of armed conflict in the hot sun, respectively). Any party enhancers were readily available; many of the Laundromats doubled as purveyors of Colombia’s finest—washed, dried, folded, and jacked, truly one stop shopping. Furthermore, if you didn’t plan ahead, there were always more pushers waiting in the bathrooms of clubs with fanny packs of jewelry bags filled to various levels with the proverbial white girl.

After each of our initial crew of 8 from the hostel drank more per person than any 8 humans should all together, we trekked down to the clubs by the beach— twas truly a caravan of international sploshedness. After drinking and dancing at the club for a few hours, I realized I hadn’t seen Jack in a while. I asked Dan, an awesome Belgian backpacker and jazz musician, where Jack was. In heavily accented English he responded, at the top of his lungs: I DON’T CARE ABOUT JACK, I CARE ABOUT MORE COCAINE!!!! Fair enough.

I found Jack hanging out with older ladies on the balcony of the club; it was apparently the oldest of the older ladies’ birthday. Being in a celebratory state of mind, I started chanting happy birthday. They laughed and started pouring me shots, as they had been for Jack. For the next 20 minutes Jack and I were their slam-hammered entertainment; they fed us more shots, we acted dumber… cause and effect.

After a while, we made our way back over to our gringo posse, but before the ladies left, one came over and introduced herself as Lara, gave me her number, and said her mom had a nice condo in a nearby town that we should come visit. I ingrained this to mind, hoping to get a dose of Latin American hospitality (one of the better hangover treatments I’m aware of), never imagining things to pan out the way they would.

The rest of the night went well; Fatimah and I went back to the hotel around 3 and slept until we were awakened by Jack coming in at 7:30. He excitedly (albeit a murmuring drunken type of excited) told us that he had met a boat driver and drank a bottle of rum with him and that he would get us a cheap boat ride into Tayrona park; then he went on to mumble and ‘practice spanish’ for a little while longer before falling asleep sitting up with his mouth wide open and staring at the thatched ceiling of our top-story cabana.

Perhaps the only surviving photo of the night (It's probably best that way). Why I have a full bag of stuff to go to the club, the world may never know. I do faintly remember bringing a knife for protection and having no issue bringing it into any clubs. hmmmm.

Hungover and halfheartedly ready to take on the next day at 11 or so, we forced some juice into our systems and I called up Lara. I baited her to invite us to stay the night, and she said we were all more than welcome to stay at her mother’s ‘condo.’ We followed her instructions and took a few different public buses to get out to her mother’s small town and then I borrowed someone’s cell phone to let her know we had arrived.

She showed up, and I realized she was not in the late 20s age bracket I had remembered from the dimly lit drunken atmosphere of the previous night; I would say she was more in the ballpark of 40. She brought us to the ‘condo’, which was her parent’s ‘house,’ and showed us our room, then started trying to sell crafts her mother had made out of ‘eco-friendly’ materials (in all honesty, they were pretty bad crafts, but we were polite and said ‘oh, nice’ and ‘that one is cool’ and so on and so forth). Then she offered us lunch, and we said yes, still thinking she was trying to be a good host. Then she gave us a key to our room, which had a number on it. At this point I was realizing we were being tricked into paying to stay at an unattractive house in an undesirable location. Shit.

We talked a little while longer and she dropped the n-bomb while talking to Fatimah, and claimed Afro-Colombians were happy with mundane lower-class jobs, among other racist and semi-racist sentiments. Then she told us that our lunch would be 30,000 pesos apiece (17 bucks or so), which is about 6 to 8 times the typical cost of a meal at a decent restaurant. Then she said she was heading back to Santa Marta and leaving us with her old parents inside, who were busy weaving lopsided lanterns out of recycled bottles.

I should add at this point that Lara lived and studied in New York for 5 years—she knew what she was doing, she knew the word ‘condo,’ she knew that invitations are usually not how you get someone to stay at a seedy out of the way hotel (which this place quite well seemed to be), she knew that she was drawing us in with the prospect of free food and lodging, then rapidly shifting to milking us for every dime she could, and she definitely knew the gravity of the n-bomb to an African American.

At this point, hungover and pissed at the duping we were in the midst of receiving, I told her it was out of our budget and that we would go somewhere else for food. She suggested the mall, and I said ok and which bus to take. She insisted on taking us.

I was assuming this mall, based on the area, would be more a market than a mall, per say, but this mall was, we would later find out, the nicest one in Colombia (Outside Santa Marta… what are the odds?!). It had designer stores, 30 foot ceilings, and indoor fountains. She took us to the food court, her toddler alongside of her. We let her get ahead a bit and we all established amongst ourselves how little we wanted to be in this situation we were in, and that ditching Lara was our best option, before she tried to squeeze us out of any more money. I didn’t want to be a total dick so I slipped off into a toy store to get a gift for her kid—just a small toy or something. Come to find out, the cheapest thing in the store, a single Hotwheels© ambulance, was priced at 14,000 pesos (nearly 8 bucks, apparently these fancy stores actually pay the import tariffs… go figure). So that idea was out the window. When I got over to the food court, Lara was attempting to get Jack to buy a pizza for the group, and I quickly interrupted. I told her we had to go and that I would call her so we could see more of the area, with no intention of actually doing so.

Instead of staying around to hear her try and keep us there, we just walked away— in just a few moments we were out of the mall, on a public bus, and feeling the tension of the last 4 or 5 hours magically melt away. Befittingly, Lara served us up a hefty dose of LARA (Latin American Run Around, feel free to use it, but remember where it came from) that ended up being the most costly in terms of time and stress that we got on our whole trip (and there are a lot of run-arounds to be had as a tourist in Latin America). We got back to Taganga in time for a delicious meal of fresh fish at about a sixth of the price of Lara’s chicken dinner, a little wiser and a little more skeptical of invitations to condos in Colombia.

Esta Noche, Tenemos que Ganar!

Soccer, the most popular sport in the world, the fastest growing sport in America, and my third favorite sport, unless drinking games and bocce are included, then it’s my eleventh favorite. We arrived in Medellin refreshed; we were no longer on the Caribbean coast where I was averaging about 2.6 SPD (shirts per day), we were out of Cartagena where we were averaging 64.8 TFCPD (touts for coke per day), and we were out of Hotel Marlin, the cheapest non-whore house with air conditioning, that may or may not have been a hub for creepy-old-guy sex tourism (it had all the telltale signs, such as creepy-old-guys with cheap whores), where we were experiencing a 0.92 MF (mold factor, a complex algorithm of amount of mold on the walls and ceiling, divided by the total area of wall space, multiplied by the amount of hacking coughs each person had during the night, and then further divided by the level of burning your eyes felt in the morning; 1 being the worst, 0 the best). Medellin was looking up, a pleasant 70 degrees, a metro system (in Latin America!), an apparent lack of coke dealers and whores (at least street level ones, but after going out, I’m pretty sure there were plenty of high level ones… ironic), and the defending champion soccer team of the Postobon© League, Atletico Nacional.

The Metro system was cheap and efficient, and there was a stop especially for the stadium. We went to the box office (well, we went to a lot of box offices, only one of which was open, despite numerous people in most of the box offices we walked up to) and bought 5 tickets in the Popular section. They asked us North or South. I asked which was better. He responded that the South was where the party was at. South it was.

Medellin from the metro system's cable cars that go to the slums.

 We went back to the hostel and mustered up a gringo posse to go the game. After drinking rum for a few hours we realized kickoff—or whatever you call the start of a soccer game—was in about 43 minutes. We drunkenly trotted to the metro and hopped on a car, sharing 1.5 liters of Cuba Libre mixed in a large Coca Cola bottle. We ran from the Metro to the stadium, impulsively buying Jerseys along the way, and arriving to massive lines still outside the stadium. As more doors opened, stampedes of people would sprint to the new line, increasing their chance of seeing the ‘tip off’ (still don’t know the term). We chose wisely in that our line moved fast, and there was not a thorough enough search to find the drinks we were smuggling in (which was a bit disturbing, I suppose, because a handgun or IED could be much smaller than the bottles we brought in unnoticed, and this WAS Colombia).

Inside was shoulder to shoulder madness. Not one person on the South side was sitting, and only a few were not singing every word of the constant fight songs. I can’t stress enough the word ‘constant’ in this context. It was seriously incessant, non-stop, never-ending, or any other synonym. Despite the fact that Nacional was losing within about 2 minutes of the ‘jump ball’ (what DO you call it!?), they kept on singing; in the 83rd minute, now losing 3 to 1, they were still singing, as loudly and crazily as they had in the 7th minute; after losing, they continued, unabashedly, singing one of the seemingly endless fight songs that every fan knew. We went out for drinks afterwards, and it was madness and elation; you would have thought they had one 7 to nothing. 

Singing was optional, standing was not.....

Post-game beers and street food with a few friends we made. I know, sweet jerseys...

Most of the fight songs were either too muffled, too complicated, or we were just too drunk to remember them, be we did remember one; it was a recurring motif for the remainder of the trip:

Esta noche, tenemos que ganar! Tonight, we have to win! (repeat 200x)