Sometimes, when Lach and I are traveling to some place new or just out for a day's adventure or even just walking along on the street, we'll amuse ourselves by narrating the current situation in gross exaggeration, pretending that that is the way we would later tell it to a friend or family member wanting to hear more about our experiences in Colombia. We'll make our voices a little deeper, sound a little more nonchalant, say things like, "Yeah, we were walking along the street, and it was dark, it was pretty late at night, we passed this street dog that seemed to have this weird-ass skin disease, and we had just spent our last 2,000 pesos so we literally had, like, nothing on us, but it was cool because..." when really we mean that we were walking home at around 8:30pm and had just gone out to dinner and paid and then realized the first thing we needed to do the next morning was hit up the ATM two blocks away. Not quite such an intense situation.
And we do this to poke fun at our own realization, which has been that traveling in Colombia sounds way more badass than it actually is. I readily admit that I was a bit nervous about it before I set out, but it's proven to be a wonderful, fun country to travel in, and quite safe when you use basic travel common sense.
However... that doesn't change the fact that since we have been to Colombia, and most people we know haven't, we're free to make it sound as scary as we want. And we frequently do this. Just to amuse ourselves.
For example, I could tell you about Monday's excursion to Bahia Concha, one of the most beautiful beaches I've been to in Colombia or anywhere else, with the following...
We leave the hostel thinking it's probably too late to catch a bus. But we'll try anyway. The first few slow down to ask us where we're headed, and we get out about two words before they roar past, clearly not caring whether theirs is the bus that could get us to our desired location. Finally hit on the right bus, Lach rides on my lap in the backseat and we're squished in a row with 3 other people. Everyone on the bus seems to be staring, giving us dirty looks. We hop off at Fundadores, one of the poorest barrios in the city. Manage to convince a guy with a Jeep to drive us the 12km down the road to the beach. He stops for gas on the way, sold in used 2-liter glass soda bottles. Buys a bunch and straps them down on the roof. We take off again. His truck is old, rusted, random wires hanging out of random places, the glove compartment popping open every few minutes to hit Lach on the knee. The road to the beach is dirt, mud, huge rocks, and we bump along, hitting our heads on the ceiling, both of us squashed up there in the front seat next to the driver. He doesn't say a whole lot, but mentions something about how late we are arriving, how he's about to take a whole shitload of people back from the beach, how he hopes we'll be able to find a ride home when we want to leave. We shrug it off... we'll just catch a motorcycle taxi or something. We'll be able to find a ride. No biggie. We bump and splash through the mud pits and puddles and finally get to the park entrance, pay 10,000 pesos to a couple of tough-looking army guys in full camo uniform, big guns, the works. A bit longer on the rocky road and we're at the beach. Late afternoon, slanting golden light, green hills, clear blue water, nothing else. Paradise.
The end of the story is that we do end up taking mototaxis home. Lach hops on with a youngish punk kid and I ride with an older guy, apparently punk kid's mentor. We take off, weaving, picking our track among the rocks and mud of the road. You're not allowed to hang on to guy driving the motorcycle. Nobody with a shred of self respect or street cred would dream of hanging on to the guy driving. Arms around his waist, are you kidding, get real. Instead, you hang on to the little rack just below your seat, or you don't hang on to anything at all. We're zooming along, with Lach and his kid some ways up front. And my driver, the seasoned old mototaxi legend, says Hey, you see this guy up here, this guy, this guy has never beaten me on this road. Not once. Never beaten me. But, you know, I have a lady on board here, so I don't want to go too fast, you know? What do you think... should we catch up to them? And I'm thinking yeah, I'm in Colombia all right, let's catch that punk. So I say yep, hang on to the rack in back, and we take off. We're gunning it, weaving back and forth over the "smooth" parts of the road, picking our track, gaining on them all the time. Barely miss some goats crossing the road and overtake them just before the dirt turns back into paved road. Zoom away, whooping and hollering, back to Fundadores. Screech up next to some dudes selling that day's catch of fish and hop off lightly, hand the guy back his helmet. Mototaxi ride. No biggie.
...And you get the idea. In reality, Fundadores is a place we work in regularly with the non-profit organization, the Jeep guy was literally waiting there when we hopped off the city bus to give us a ride into the park, the military guys weren't carrying huge guns (this time) and the mototaxi ride is really not that intense. But how would you know?
The beach, however, really was that beautiful. Sigh. I'm going to miss this.
So anyway. The above was just my explanation, to illustrate how we make ourselves feel big and cool by pretending that we're these hardcore backpackers conquering Colombia, the land of drugs and outlaws and whatever else. In reality, to me, Colombia will always be the land of passionfruit Gatorade.
However. Going to Cabo de la Vela, one of our last trips, defies this game of ours. We simply cannot exaggerate to make the journey, or the place, any more intense or bewildering than they truly were.
Part of the thing that makes Cabo de la Vela such an intense experience is just the getting there. It's almost, not quite but almost, the northernmost tip of la Guajira, that isolated, barren desert peninsula that juts out over Venezuela, the northern- and easternmost province in Colombia. You have to take three different vehicles to get there: a bus from Santa Marta to Riohacha, a car from Riohacha to Uribia, and from Uribia to Cabo de la Vela, a four-wheel-drive people-and-stuff-transporting pickup truck:
It's almost a good thing that the journey is in stages like that, because it allows you to gradually transition away from "reality" into a place where you're more able to process just what Cabo has waiting for you. First a bus, normal, air-conditioned, in-ride movie playing. By ride two, the car, you're a little more detached, especially after the half hour you spend wandering around in the Riohacha heat trying to figure out exactly where those cars leave from. By the time you reach Uribia and manage to secure a spot in the desert caravan, you're sufficiently heat-stroked and loopy to not be too concerned by the fact that the whole town seems to have a serious goat mistreatment habit:
Note that all of these goats were alive at the time of picture taking. Yes, even the one on the right, laying in the sun with his feet tied, shitting.
You ride out of Uribia crammed in the back of the pickup with about 8 other people. After some time on an endless dirt road, you turn off into the desert, and then the ride gets really strange. Off-roading, splashing through huge puddles and mud pits, taking turns at seemingly random points in the endless landscape of red sand and scrub trees. You're bumping along, hitting your back on the metal cage around the pickup bed, never fully able to sit upright because of the load up top. It all begins to get a bit surreal...
And yes, as mentioned above, although it might be a little confusing in the video, among the provisions our truck was toting over to the folks of Cabo de la Vela was a huge barrel of gasoline... which is why we were asked to not smoke during the ride.
The hatch on the bed of the pickup truck is left open during the ride so that we can squeeze in even more stuff, lashed to the side bars with ropes to keep from falling off.
And once in Cabo de la Vela, it gets even weirder. The town, a community of about 600 people, almost all of them indigenous Wayuu people, was part of this Colombian ecotourism project some years back. From what we could understand, the government attempted to promote community tourism in the region under a program called "Posadas Turísticas de Colombia", in which local families were helped in setting up small lodging and restaurant businesses out of their homes. So literally every house in town has a huge sign that says "Restaurante" or "Hospedaje" on it... and yet... no one seems to know it. As in, you walk in to an outdoor area that appears to be a restaurant, with a sign that says "restaurante", with tables and chairs and a menu on the wall... and no one working there seems to understand why you are there. We literally got the answer one time of "I don't know" to the question "Is this a restaurant?" By someone who worked there. After the fourth or fifth time, you begin to think you're losing your mind.
...And it kind of went on like that. For two days. I should also mention that Cabo de la Vela is generator-powered and has no running water, so showering happens either in a bucket or the ocean, and the washing of hands happens in a little bowl of soapy water. But that wasn't that bad, because I think the bigger mindf*ck is just interacting with the people there. I'm not sure if I'm making it sound dramatic, or if none of this makes sense at all. It's just a weird, weird place.
I should also mention that the two days we were there happened to be some sort of political happening, a visit from either a recently-elected or possibly about-to-be-elected governor, we could never quite work out which, and no one was willing to tell us. So not only was there music blaring all day long, but there were some military guys about to make sure everything went smoothly what with the whole town being gathered in one place for the speeches or rally or whatever it was. So you're just sitting on this really tranquil stretch of light blue ocean, and about 5 paces behind you is a dude in long sleeves, long pants and combat boots, holding one of those big f*ck-off guns that army guys seem to love toting around. As Lach wrote in his journal that day, "how am I supposed to relax here when I wake up from my nap to a man holding an M16 grenade launcher?" So yeah, that was a bit weird too.
One last thing. Leaving Cabo de la Vela. The trucks leave at: 4am, 4am, or 4am. No other times. If you want to leave Cabo, you have to be up at 4am. After two days, I don't know how else to put this, I was REALLY excited to head back to Santa Marta. 4am was fine by me. We bumped along back through the desert in the dark, saw the sun rise through the scrub trees, got to Uribia, took the car, got to Riohacha, took the bus. The same sequence, in reverse, the transition back to normalcy and back to places where people actually talk to you like you are a person.
Still, I think I'm glad we went. It was definitely, definitely off the beaten track. It wasn't necessarily comfortable or easy or friendly, but it was an experience. The journey alone was among the top travel adventures of my life, and the place itself is beautiful... so I'll leave the words for now and just finish with pictures from those few days...
beautiful sunset photo!
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