Friday, July 30, 2010

30 July 2010, Barranquilla

I write to you from Barranquilla. This is an industrial/residential town, with many neighbourhoods full of one-story houses. I am back to couchsurfing, which has been lovely. I haven´t been on the go, go, go, but have been hanging out talking to G and M. M does not speak English, but we have managed to have some pretty serious girl talk with my limited Spanish and her even more limited English. I think she is very frustrated about this because she tells G that she thinks we would be close friends if we could speak the same language, but I'm just so happy I am communicating and understanding anything at all in Spanish that I am chuffed. Only couchsurfers can speak slow enough for me to understand. No one that I meet in public can slow down their speaking.

I talk in English with G in the mornings and late evenings, when he comes home from work. He is an avid reader, loves Neitzche, considers himself a nihilist and an atheist. He has the exuberance of someone who knows that his ideas are right, though he claims to understand that all is relative to our own egos. We can talk for four hours at a time. And let me tell you, he is doing most of the talking.

Today the three of us went into town and wandered through the streets of street sellers, soaking up the local atmosphere. We went into his favourite used bookshop, a wonderful two-level place of dusty old books in neat piles on the shelves. I bought two more books in Spanish by Eduardo Caballero Calderon. One day I will be able to read them. I began the young adult book by Calderon that I bought and couldn´t get through the first sentence, even with the help of my Spanish/English dictionary. But I will keep trying. How else to learn?

Cartagena is a quaint and romantic place. I preferred the neighbourhood my hostel was in, Getsamani, to the city inside the walls, but both are full of coloured houses with balconies. In Getsamani everything is rustically run-down and the doors to the houses are open so you can see inside to the tile-floored living rooms with couches, porch chairs and television sets. On Tuesday I met an Israeli couchsurfer in the hostel and we went out to an expensive sushi dinner together. We drank mojitos and the chef made me a beautiful gourmet vegetarian sushi, but it was the most expensive day I have had so far in Colombia. The sushi was $515,000 pesos, two drinks (it was happy hour) $13,000.

While we were eating and discussing the politics and economy of Israel, the two New Yorkers I invited myself to sit with in the square in the old town the night before came into the sushi place. I was engrossed in conversation, when I heard a male voice say,`'Is that Rachel?` I had sat with them for an hour and a half or so and talked about the politics and economics of Latin America. They both worked in finance and were much more pro-capitalist than me. I would love to have the Colombians I talk to explain to the Americans I talk to how the West and capitalism have fucked over their country, because I am never able to adequately get across the pillaging nature of capitalism. It is interesting, though, that economic views are so predictable. They are deeply related to one´s country's economic experience. Americans don't really understand the negative impacts of capitalism and South Americans feel exploited not only by the US but mostly by their own corrupt politicians.

The three men and I later met up in the old city to go to a salsa club. But the club was pretty empty and we paid $10,000 (which got us an overpriced drink) to get into a non-salsa discoteque. This was okay. The music was fine, but the boys wanted to stay on the upper level, which was really crowded and I could tell they really wanted to dance with Colombian girls. The Israeli and I didn´t stay that long.

On the Tuesday I took a trip to the Isles de las Roques. I wanted to try to find a little boat to tae me there, as a Swedish guy in the hostel suggested but I wandered around on Monday unable to find the right port for those boats. Instead I went to the modern art museum with a special exhibit on Mexican art and it´s normal South American art exhibit. It was a small and nice gallery. By Monday night I felt I had done Cartagena. I had walked around the old neighbourhoods and some of the ordinary central bits of Cartagena. So, it was good that the trip to Playa Blanca took all day Tuesday. I booked the trip in the hostel and was told to arrive at 7.30am. The large cruising boat didn`t leave until 9.00.

On the boat I talked with a Colombian man and his young son, who both spoke English. They were on a three-month holiday together. The boy was very smart and sweet. Our first stop was at an island with an aquarium. I didn´t want to go to the aquarium, was just desperate to finally get in water - so I hopped into the Caribbean, though there was no beach on this island. Some others were also in the water and one older woman talked to me a lot in rapid-fire Spanish that I barely understood.

The next stop was Playa Blanca, a long beach of white sand, trees, and many people trying to sell you things. We had lunch on the island and I went for a snorkel. It was decent - I saw some nice small phosphorescent fish and one nice coral. Here the Caribbean is very warm and waveless, clear green. So I was a little bit lonely and bored and came back sunburnt.

Now, though Barranquilla doesn't have much to see other than the bar that Marquez and other writers hung out in, and I'm not doing much other than talking, I feel good to be with couchsurfers and in a home. Tonight we are meeting a German couchsurfer and going for drinks at a bar. So next post may be about Barranquilla nightlife.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

24 July 2010, Manizales

My trip has definitely gotten better since leaving big cities. I am also hostelling for a bit, which means I meet people who speak English to hang out with.

On Thursday and Friday I was in the quaint city of Salento. It is a small town of very colourful restaurants and artesan shops. On Thursday I walked the religous steps up a mountain - with messages about Jesus - and then found a trail. I met a man who asked me if I wanted him to take me to the river. I said yes because the river looked and sounded so good. We walked through barbed wire, mud, swamp and when we got to the river he started massaging and kissing me. I wouldn't let him kiss me on the lips, nor would I engage in chatter about his penis size, nor did I touch him back. He was a bit angry. But I bought him a beer and then went back to the hostel, a lovely, small, clean, wood-floored place.

On Friday I went hiking with the other folks in the hostel - young Americans and an old German couple. We walked through a valley of farmland with vews of the mountains before and behind us. We entered the non-cleared part of the mountains and it was beautiful ´bosque´, rainforest. It was such a gorgeous walk that I felt wonderful. Though it did get hard at the end as we kept climbing up and up and up. Finally we reached a mountaintop house serving hot drinks with cheese (this is normal in Colombia). After drinks and a rest we walked all the way back, which took half the time (maybe an hour and a half).

I spent the evening drinking beer with an interesting Israeli boy and left for Manizales in the morning. It was a beautiful mountainous bus trip and Manizales is such a pretty city, strewn through the mountains on all different levels. There is a cable car up to the top, the historic centre, and I took photos.

Today, I spent the day in a national park, in a bus driving from cloud forest to desert. Then my group spent 3 hrs climbing a snow-topped peak. We didn´t climb very far but we climbed to 5,000 feet so it was really hard going. We stopped every 5 minutes to recover our breathing. Climbing at high altitude is not fun and it is cold, and bare dirt peaks covered in snow aren't beautiful to me, but I am glad I made the climb as I kept wanting to give up.

After a big Colombian lunch, we went to hot springs for an hour. In a half hourwe party.

Monday, July 19, 2010

19 July 2010, Cali

Finally, I have gotten back into my gmail account (well, it isn't working at the moment on Z's computer, but thanks to Michelle I was able to reset my password because she got me back into my lipmag account, which was the address my password reset was sent to). So, thank you, Michelle! This makes me feel so much better, having my gmail, my blog, my photos, documents, contacts(!!) back.

Hopefully this sees my mood pick up. I admit I have not been the traveller I would like to be. I am beginning now to recover from the flu thanks to the healthy food that Z keeps serving me and lots of rest. The rest is a problem, though, because I feel more like sleeping than doing anything else. Today I wandered around Cali, a big city of 4 million, and just kept thinking about how down I felt and how I don´t particularly want to be here. I feel at the moment like this trip is something I have to endure. I guess I am just not interested in being in big, non-beautiful cities anymore.

Cali is a party city but I haven't felt up for partying. I must get out soon, but I think Z likes having the company and she is another who is treating me so well. But I need to get to the north coast and its beaches. It will be well deserved. At least it is hot here and, today, sunny.

In Bogota I went to the botanic garden. The tropical greenhouses are very lovely, all palmy and orchidy and lily-paddy. However, it poured so I spent more time reading When I Was Five I Killed Myself (excellent book!) in the cafe than wandering the gardens. I walked from the Transmilenio stop (the train-like bus system), ate fried yucca and plantains while it poured, stopped in a big beautiful wood library while it poured again, walked through a huge park to the botanic gardens. I got lost on the way back in the big park and ended up accepting a ride from a military man to the Transmilenio stop. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and told me he loved me but dropped me off safely at the stop. Well, maybe not so safely: I had to walk along a tiny median strip between the Transmilenio, which has it's own lanes, and the highway in order to get into the stop, which felt very dangerous.

I also spent a day with A´s other couchsurfers going to the Salt Cathedral, a vast, vast serious of coves with crosses and halls with benches made in the salt mine. This is a huge attraction in Colombia, but I wasn't that impressed. Natural caves do it for me much more than a lot of simple religious crosses and a few detailed angels. The scale of the place was the most impressive part.

from World Nomad´s blog, 16 July 2010

So, I´ve lost access to my Blogger blog. I resume journaling here.

Bogota is a nice city. I cannot find a better word than ´nice´. It isn´t beautiful (though there are beautiful things here), it isn´t grand (though there are grand things here). It is neither friendly or unfriendly. It isn´t full of garbage and graffiti, there are many roads of second-world-looking warehouses and shops, there are gated communities and shopping malls.

There is a stunning very old section of colourful small houses, some amazing cathedrals, impressive colonial buildings of grandeur, stylish cafes and bars, industrial roads, large highways, a shitload of road construction, neighbourhoods swathed in new apartment building, identical building after identical building, green mountains rising up around the city. It is warmish but grey, low-lying. Bogota is an incredibly architecturally diverse - hodgepodge - affair. I dig it.

My time here has been marred by the flu that is debilitating me a little bit, my constant dry mouth because I can´t breathe out of my nose. I have played the traditional Colombian game of tejo, where you throw heavy metallic - not disks, not balls - space-ship like objects at a slanted board of mud. The object is to get your tejo to stick in the mud in the middle of two pink paper triangles stuck on the board with gunpowder in them. If you get in the middle zou get 6 points. If you make the gunpowder go off you get 3 points. Otherwise the person whose tejo sticks nearest the middle gets 1 point. I was actually alright at this muddy game that involves drinking beer. You pay for the beer, not the game.

I am not feeling very motivated to write much, or even to do much. Tonight I take a night bus to Cali, where hopefully it is hot and sunny. This, I need.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

And Buenos Aires done

Today I lost my wallet, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Lima. I only lost some Argentinian pesos, but I've also lost yet another debit card. Luckily I have the Travelex card, but it is expensive to use, almost $5 everytime I take out money on it. And if I lose that, well, then...

I am in Bogota at a hostel. It is difficult to organise couchsurfing at the last minute when you have no mobile phone, but I hope to be at A´s, a German couchsurfer living in Bogota, tomorrow. I think I will feel better when I get there. Now, I admit to being a little bit freaked out. I am very tired, it is nighttime and when I went to leave for a walk, the host at the hostel told me to leave everything here in a locker (but I have no lock) and to be careful. So I didn´t go far, just to a shop where I could buy an avocado and a loaf of bread from outside the grilled door of a shop.

Travellers here have stories worse than me losing a wallet. One girl has been pickpocketed (in a group of people) twice in South America. Another also lost his credit card and spent a lot of money to get it couriered to him. But they all seem very nonchalant. It is only me who is timid.

There are many Australians here.

I think some of you will laugh when you read this, but I found a boy in Buenos Aires. This is why I am so tired, not much sleep. It was a true travel adventure. Hector started talking to me at the tango restaurant he works for in La Boca, where I was drinking a glass of wine. He got to me while I was finishing my wine and asked if he could come with me as I left even though I think we had only spoken a few sentences. He doesn't speak any English. I was feeling sick, down, and lonely, so I said yes. We started out with the idea that he´d walk me back to San Telmo but he quickly said we would go to his place to leave his jacket (I think that was the indication, anyway). So I decided to go with him.

He turned out to be super, super sweet. And indefatigable. It felt like an adventure to stay where he lives, in a room. His room is off what seems like the roof of a building. There is a shared kitchen and bathroom. To use the toilet, I had to slide a heavy door, attached to nothing, across the doorway to indicate it was in use. There was no light. Late in the evening he took me to the shared shower, a single stream of water, hot for a little while, then cold. This shower was an attention he paid me. I was happy to stay in bed, but he got me up, provided me with soap, shampoo and conditioner and guided me to the shower. Then he had to have a cold one.

When we got to his room, Hector kept plying me with tea. He left me and bought cold pills. He wanted desperately to feed me but I wasn´t hungry. I couldn't even eat a whole alfombra, the special Argentinian chocolate-coated cookie. He went out again and bought hamburgers, but I still insisted I couldn´t eat. He kept asking me if I was trying to be thin, but truly I was not hungry for once in my life. He also kept cleaning everything up right away: when I took off my skirt and put it on the floor, he took it and draped it over a chair. The television was on and his computer, playing music. He downloaded some Pink Floyd for me. We could barely talk to each other. I could understand nothing he said and my sentences were so poorly put together and badly spoken that it was difficult for him. So, I know almost nothing about him. I guess the prospect of sex gives someone infinite patience. I would have found trying to talk to me unbearably frustrating.

But his kind attentions were persuasive. When I finally got to the point of crawling into his bed and I took my skirt off, he said 'Wow´. I still had my leggings on.

I was so impressed by his intimacy and respect for me that I agreed to meet him again the next night, at his restaurant. However, I finally got in touch with W and organised to meet her and a couple of friends to go see a 6.00pm planetarium show. So I spent the afternoon trying to find the market at La Boca again. I was lost and worried I wouldn´t find Hector before I had to catch a bus to take me into Palermo to meet Wanda. At the last moment I found the market but Hector wasn´t at the restaurant. I left a note for him with his fellow hawkers/waiters asking to meet me at my hostel at 10pm. I felt a little silly going out of my way for this stranger, but he was so kind it felt like the right thing to do. He found me at the bus stop at La Boca, having gotten my note, and did indeed come to get me at 10pm that night.

This second night was not quite as effusive as the first, but still lovely. Hector bought me pizza and gave me beer. I was late to leave for a 5am taxi at the hostel to take me to the express bus to the airport. Hector paid for my taxi and gave me a small tango metal statue and two alfombras to remember him by. He took my email address and kept asking me for my return date to Australia. I think he wants to email me when I get home.

I think I like the way these Argentinians raise their boys. Like M in Venezuela - who grew up in Buenos Aires - Hector was all chivalry and attention. Lovely. And, might I say, lucky me. Lucky that I attract these sorts of men and that I know whom to go home with.

The planetarium show was sold out, so W and her friends and I drank beer at a very lush, old-fashioned velvety bar with wood floors for a couple of hours and then went home. It was also lovely to see W again, who, you remember, hosted me last year.

Obviously meeting Hector greatly increased my mood, but I am back to being flat and anxious. It was nice to be in Buenos Aires because it was familiar and I felt safe, despite the warnings. In Bogota, however, all is again new, English is hard to come by. I put myself in the hands of taxi driver at the airport. He was lovely and treated me fairly, kindly, even, but not a great way to travel in a ´dangerous´country.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Travel blog 2: Return to South America

I am here in Buenos Aires again. It is cold but sunny, an improvement on both Melbourne and Sydney. Sydney was so cold, UniNSW conference rooms so cold, that I came down with a cold. So, I am not in the best spirits for travelling.

I was not able to find a host in Buenos Aires, so I am in a hostel. It is a particularly nice hostel, though, all sort of tango arty, with high ceilings, painted walls, red with murals, tiger-print furniture in the common lounge.

Last night I met with E, who I spent a couple of hours with last year. It was nice to reconnect with this gentlemanly Asian couchsurfer over beer and `Arabic´ food. I ate the smallest falafal sandwich I have ever seen. Sort of large dolmade size! Good thing I had had a large lunch of pizza and empanadas (roquefort and cheese and onion). I was treated to lunch by a young woman I met coming off the plane. We took the bus together to San Telmo, where there are a bunc of hostels. I was very proud to have been able to read the map and know when to get off the bus.

J, the Australian girl who has family in Buenos Aires whom she is visiting, took me to lunch in thanks for lugging one of her big bags around San Telmo in search for hostels. She didn´t end up staying at the hostel with me, though, as a cousin came to pick her up from the suburbs and whisk her away. An interesting young thing, she has a brother whom she lives with in her parents house when they are living in Buenos Aires for 4 months of the year, whom she has an AVO against for domestic violence. She considers herself a feminist and works as an exotic maseusse. Best of luck to her.

I spent a while in the sun in a square in San Telmo today, drinking very nice and expensive hot chocolate. Tango music started to play and tango dancers danced for us, then the woman came around to collect money in a hat. Now I will go to La Boca, the area I loved best last year.