by Jane | Jul 26, 2014 | Colombia, Funky Facts, My travels |
Colombia is Colombia! But it’s Colombia!
Both of the above expressions can be heard over and over again, usually accompanied by a nonchalant shrug of one shoulder and a wry smile, and used to excuse or explain away just about anything that needs an excuse or an explanation.
Poor timekeeping, bad driving, any quirk of life that occurs – all are explained away with good humour and an unlimited amount of patience.
The following are not all restricted to Colombia but here they are certainly delivered with a lot of charm and the widest of smiles.
1. The Minute Man (or woman). This is minute as in time rather than teeny tiny people. On every street corner you can find somebody holding up a cracked laminated sign or they have a cardboard notice pronouncing ‘minutos’. Don’t have a cell phone? No problem. Simply use a mobile here and pay for the respective minutes that you have used – and they are cheap. More often than not the phone is tied by a length of string to the other person so you can’t run off with it, but it is the perfect system for people who don’t want to or can’t afford to buy their own mobile. It is also indespensible for travellers who like me still haven’t bothered to purchase a Colombian sim card or for safety reasons would rather not be out and about with a phone.
man on phone – you can just see the string
2. Poor timekeeping: the longer that I spend in Latin America I have come to realise that poor time keeping is not down to rudeness or insensitivity but it is just the attitude of a nation of people who generally live life more slowly and in the moment. This is forced on them to some extent by the bureaucracy and the craziness of the rules (when any rules do exist), the transport systems, the heat and an overall laissaz faire outlook on life. Colombians enjoy the moment. They will not pass a friend in the street without a good gossip and they will stop to pass the time of day with strangers – and if that makes them late for an appointment – well the chances are that if they are meeting with another Colombian then they will have done the same and they will probably both turn up at the same time anyway. So therefore there is no problem.
all the time in the world
3. Bus travel has been described to me by more than one Colombian as an extreme sport. Drivers are recruited on their fearlessness and their ability to keep the accelerator pressed flat to the floor, even when collecting or depositing passengers. Mothers with babies in their arms, twenty school children, crinkly old ladies with a sack of beans over their shoulder or men with boxes of chickens – the bus stops for no one. If you are very lucky there will be a conductor on board who will leap off and give you a not so gentle shove up the arse or take the chickens off you so that you have two hands free, and then the bus will lurch forward again, rolling all the newbies along the aisle. No need to shout ‘move along please’ – the g-force compacts everybody towards the back with little effort, with the already seated passengers holding up willing arms to catch the babies or the beans.
one of the better local buses
4. If bus travel is an extreme sport, then the roads are the adventure playground. Is that a solid double line down the centre? Does it indicate a hazard such as a blind bend or a dangerous corner? Yes, it does, but it is not a warning sign – rather a challenge. Look – a blind bend with a two thousand metre drop down a sheer mountain side – yep – overtake. Even better if you are a bus driver and you can try to overtake a line of long lumbering lorries – on a blind corner – in the mountains – and on the busiest road in the region – it makes the challenge longer and it certainly gets the heart pumping. Bridges under repair with no side safety barriers or carriageways which have been undermined by landslides – those maximum speed signs need to be doubled and then have a zero added to them for that added zing to life.
one of the oh so slow lorries
5. Michelada – This is a beer with attitude. The Colombians drink their beer with additives. Take a beer but first coat the rim of the glass with a hefty amount of lemon juice and salt. Then put a good inch of lemon juice in the glass and more salt before pouring in the beer. This is the standard although I have had a michelada which also contains pepper and chilli – and once one arrived with Worcestershire sauce in it! It’s almost a meal.
6. Arepas are EVERYWHERE and people can’t get enough of them. They are a staple food and probably more important than bread here. They are a sort of thick tortilla made from maize which you can eat cold but are better heated up over the gas flame on a little hot plate. Unfortunately they are served up with every meal – bread, lunch and dinner and I HATE them. I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t like them as they are so bland and inoffensive but there is something of a vague off-putting smell about them. They come in various flavours but they are all horrible as far as I am concerned – on a par with papaya and sopa de mondongo – diced tripe soup (cow’s stomach). I give them away to people at the next table.
7. The mullet hair style is proudly sported all around the country. Gelled and spiked and a reminder of the eighties men are generally exceedingly well groomed and take amazing time and care over their hair and their clothes. I reckon Latin America has more hairdressers and barbers per head (did you get that pun?) of population than on any other continent. Shaved sides, little mohican stripes and rats tails are combed, groomed and preened in any available shiny surface. I have also spotted a large percentage of the men wearing clear varnish on their fingernails and most take an incredible pride in their physique and appearance. I like this trend.
8. Dogs are dressed up. Dogs wear clothe;, coats, scarves, hair ribbons and slides, booties and dresses. They even have football strips for dogs and like the men, they have a passion for nail varnish – well, to be honest, probably the dogs couldn’t care less but their owners do. In a place where the temperature is melting hot it strikes me as odd to add more layers to an already furry creature – although if they sold strait jackets for dogs I would buy one for the dog which tried to attack me the other week and bit the leg of my shorts.
doggie in a dress
9. Men wearing nail varnish and dogs wearing dresses are all perfectly understandable when you realise that the national obsession is looking good. This is historic and goes back to when the drug barons were the celebrities and dressed to kill (another pun there!). Now, not a man, women child or dog goes out without checking themselves in the mirror three times, full makeup is applied and clothes are always spotless and pressed stiffly to attention. Colombians nearly all sport tooth braces for that amazing smile and many women go under the knife and have cosmetic surgery. Many procedures are available in the poorer areas for free but for those who can’t afford to or would rather not add bits on to their bodies (yes they add on, they never deduct) then you can buy uplifting knickers and jeans with butt enhancing pads built into them.
doggie in a football strip
10. We were travelling in a cab late one night in Medellin when the cabbie blatantly ignored several red lights. Wondering aloud if we would actually make it to our destination in one piece or if we would be taken out by another cab doing the same, our driver explained that in Medellin it is actually legal, or at least tolerated for cars to jump red lights after ten o’clock at night. He explained that no driver wanted to sit around at a junction and run the risk of being robbed or shot and the police have enough to do without mopping up the pieces. So we decided that yes, we would rather take our chances at the junctions in the gapme of ‘Traffic Light Russian Roulette’ than that well known arcade game of ‘Shooting Sitting Ducks’.
by Jane | Jun 29, 2014 | Colombia, My travels |
The fantastic cable car system in Medellin
‘I am sad and shocked’. M put into words what I had been thinking as our tourist bus negotiated its way through the city centre traffic in Medellin. M only had a few days in Medellin before flying home so we had opted to go on one of those big red tourist buses and get a good overview of the city. We had seen some beautiful places and parks but we were now driving along underneath the metro line in the Prado barrio. Our hostel receptionist had marked this on our map with a big red cross for danger and we now knew why. The long central reservation which was straddled by the brightly painted concrete legs of the overpass that held up the railway lines and which ran alongside our road was not peopled by jugglers, families or fruit sellers like in other places. In the cold light of day, or rather in the midday sunlight and sitting, standing or lying in full view were men and women either taking drugs or lying comatose from the effects of them.
sleeping it off in the park
A young woman who may have been seventeen or twenty seven with dirty blond hair stared at us with blank eyes as she deeply inhaled from a paper bag. Watching her as she sat alone and cross legged on the paving slabs I could only think with a deep sadness that she was somebody’s daughter or sister or friend. Just a little bit further along a man was heating up and inhaling something from a tin foil wrap and then we spotted countless other men and women doing the same.
flopped down between benches – nobody else bats an eyelid
It was sad and unsettling and in a country where massive numbers of people are dressed in rags and sleep on pavements or in parks, wash and clean their teeth in fountains and rivers or huddle barefoot under tarpaulins when it rains, it was a reality check. Colombia is one of the richest countries in South America yet it appears to have more social problems, crime and danger than many of the poorer ones, ot at least, the worst of them are on public show.
Our arrival in Medellin a couple of days earlier hadn’t boded too well either. Despite meeting a lady on the bus who offered to negotiate with a cabbie at the station with us and would ensure that he would get us to our hostel safe, it went a bit wrong.
Drug dealing and drug taking under the bridge
sleeping it off in the midday sun
The gross man who had promised that he knew exactly where we were to go promptly stated that he was lost once we had left the lady behind and he drove round and round, whilst also getting cross with me because I had accidentally slammed the door a bit hard. He had originally tried to tell us that we should travel with him with our rucksacks in his OPEN boot because they wouldn’t fit (I wish that I had listened to my instincts and not got in the cab) and then he eventually stopped outside what was obviously not our hotel despite having the name and the address on a piece of paper which he kept referring to. The hotel had the wrong name, was in the wrong street and in totally the wrong area. By now me and M were both very uneasy and M suggested we get out anyway and regroup from within the hotel as the staff had come out to meet us and take our bags. The cabbie then tried to double our bill and I saw red! I stuffed less than we had originally agreed into his hand and told the hotelier that he was a bad man and that we needed to get inside safe! In Spanish! So he heard this and lolloped around the cab at me, obviously threatening me. There was then a little bit of chaos whilst we tried to drag our bags inside and shouted at him and then the staff came to our rescue and locked him out!
Phew! My heart sank as after Cali I had really hoped that I would like Medellin.
But the staff at the Prince Plaza Hotel were fantastic. In the first instance they offered us a room and whilst not overly expensive it was a bit out of our budget since we had booked into a dorm in a backpackers hostel. But the staff were great and didn’t turf us out onto the street. They continued to help us, offering us coffee and water, checking the directions for the correct hostel on the internet for us and they even phoned them to confirm that we had reservations and then got us a guaranteed safe cab to take us there. They were so nice and reassuring and I am sorry that we didn’t stay, but what was really incredible was that this was all on Beatriz’s first day working for the hotel. This all happened a couple of months ago so she may not even remember us that night but I really hope that she is still working at the hotel and that she is enjoying her job. Customer service in Latin America is rather different to what we accept as the norm in the UK but this lady certainly pulled out all the stops to help.
houses cling on to the mountainside – view from the cable car
So here we were, after a not too auspicious introduction to Medellin, looking with dismay at the sadder side of life. The previous day we had ridden the cable cars to the enormous park at the top of city and twice we had been turned back from our preferred route by security and warned that we were at risk of kidnap if we continued to hike up there!
As I have already said, M was due to head off to Bogota the following day and fly home and I had arranged to stay and volunteer at a hostel an hour outside the city. I decided that I would honour that commitment but if the region didn’t grow on me soon I would cut my losses and bid farewell to Colombia and head south for Ecuador.
Sign up to receive future blog entries and discover what happened at the EcoHostel and find out what I got up to in Antioquia and what I thought of Medellin. (Here’s a hint – later this week I am going to tackle the immigration office and see if I can extend my tourist visa!)
Note: I have blurred the faces of the people who I have portrayed. They are all somebody’s daughter or son and I would not want them to be identified
by Jane | Jun 24, 2014 | Colombia, My travels |
I sometimes wonder if I am travelling and viewing the world through rose tinted glasses. I am constantly amazed by the sights and the people that I meet but I do worry that I am portraying a skewed image for you. I know that I am a ‘glass-half-full’ sort of a person and I long ago decided that I would live every day looking at things with my holiday goggles on. By that I mean that I go around with my eyes wide open and REALLY look. Yes, that might be a dustbin lorry crawling along the road in front of me but check out the ballet of the bin men as they coordinate the rubbish collections with the dumper truck and watch the banter between them as they work. Check out the fancy tile work on some of the ordinary suburban houses or snoop over a wall and see what funky furniture some people have in their gardens.
who couldn’t fail to be happy looking at this pot
Do you remember the story about Pollyanna? She was an infuriating little individual who always saw the good in everybody but she was a happy little soul and ultimately she lit up the lives of everybody that she came upon. I can bitch with the best of them (although lately I don’t do this very much at all), but I am far calmer now than I ever was and quite simply, I am happy to try to find the good in things. I may be accused of sitting on the fence but there are always two sides to every story and with human nature as it is, there will always be widely differing opinions on everything and everywhere, so who am I to find fault with anything?
So – to Cali. I really want to say that this city was amazing and beautiful and cultural and friendly but I am struggling. There were plenty of things to see and I stayed with a great family and I also spent a few days in a fantastic hostel but Cali is not in my top ten of places to visit. It is however, in the top ten (or seven, or five, depending on which report you read) of the most dangerous cities in the world but I don’t think that that has distorted my opinion either.
suburban living
I initially came into Cali because I had arranged to live with a family and teach/chat in English with Alej the daughter who is at university, but unfortunately my visit coincided with her important exams so most of the time she had her head in her books. I spent a lot of time with her mum Alba who was determined to feed me up on traditional Colombian grub and I have to say, was a very good cook. I had my own room in the modern apartment which was in a purpose-built block within a secure gated complex in the sprawling suburbs of the massive city. Cali is huge and hot and swelters in humidity, so much so that some evenings everybody would just take to the streets and sit outside on benches or under trees to get some respite from the heat inside apartments with few air con units.
colour in Cali Zoo
Together me and Alba visited Cali zoo which is actually not too bad at all as far as zoos go. There they are doing a lot of work to ensure that the enclosures are as animal friendly as possible and steadily upgrading them. The highlight for me was a white tiger with her three six month old (orange) tiger cubs. They were so naughty and were causing their mum no end of trouble but my camera battery chose to die just as we found them. Just like a domestic cat she would occasionally round them up from the field where they were exploring and box their ears or carry them and dump them unceremoniously in a corner, before they would climb over her or romp off again as soon as her attention was fixed on another of her disobedient offspring.
La Ermita
On another day we visited the city centre where we saw the pretty little church of La Ermita and we walked around some of the parks and then went inside the small gold museum. The collection here was pretty impressive, and like many other museums in South America it was set inside a bank. I also travelled around on the Mio system – it was similar to the public transport in Lima and Quito but I never quite got to grips with it as the maps never matched up to the route that I took, so maybe this added to my feeling of disquiet.
While in Cali I also spent a few days in a fantastic backpackers hostel where I had a salsa lesson from a professional dancer. Well, wow! I learned more in that hour than in nearly a year of trampling around in my class in the UK. What a difference a strong lead can make! Although since that lesson I have been out on several occasions and I have found that most latino men can dance and can make me, who has two left feet, look as if I sort of know what I am doing, that lesson was magical and I really DID feel like Baby in Dirty Dancing.
ancient gold pieces
On my first night in Cali at the hostel I went out for some food after dark but I turned back within ten minutes, shocked by the number of homeless people who were sleeping on the street. I was literally stepping over bodies, sleeping, not in doorways but sprawled on the pavements. Most were snoozing quietly but I didn’t feel safe at all, so grabbed a couple of packets of crisps from a small shop and fled for my hostel. I met up with M on the Sunday and together we went into the city centre. It was deserted apart from tramps, beggars and drunks and we very soon made our way back to the safety of my hostel where we could sit and chat in the shade. I later found out that the city centre is a bit of a no-go area on a Sunday when all the shops are closed and the homeless take it over.
sometimes you need to chill
In the hostel, which had hammocks, a swimming pool and a good bar and was an oasis of calm in a crazy city, I bumped into a traveller that I had met the previous month in Ecuador. It always tickles me when I find somebody else that I know – this continent is so huge and whilst there is a recognised ‘back-packer circuit’ many travellers criss-cross and design their own bespoke route, so it is odd to find somebody by accident again.
At my hostel I also met a travel blogger who was in Cali with her Colombian fiance and a friend. Both ladies have teaching jobs in a school in a nearby town and they were visiting Cali for the weekend. The Open Minded Traveler was the first real-life travel blogger that I had met and I was really excited to chat to her and to find out about how she was making the nomadic lifestyle work for her. Check out her blog here and discover how she also turned her back on normality to embrace a life of travel, uncertainty and happiness. Subsequent to our meeting I have found out that she and her fiance are now expecting a baby so maybe she will not be quite so nomadic as she once was, but she has a real gem of a partner and I know that she will be more than happy to settle down with him in Colombia although I hope that she will continue to write.
The lions seemed content
So how can I sum up Cali? Well, if you like salsa you should certainly visit but I personally found the city to to be edgy and scary and I am a lot happier going out in the evening in other cities and towns in Colombia. The zoo is worth a visit and the town centre and the parks which could be done in a day (but not on a Sunday) – but then personally I would jump on a bus and go south to Popayan or north to Medellin, both of which I loved. I don’t like to admit that I don’t like a place as there are so many facets and my philosophy is to see the best in everything if I can (like Pollyanna). I liked the hostel and my home and host family in the suburbs and I am so pleased that I met the Open Minded Traveler and her fiance and friend. Medellin has its share of problems (more of these later) but the homeless, drug addicts and drunks in Cali were so very visible – even bathing and washing their clothes in city centre fountains that I personally found it quite disturbing.
As a side note, I have been to India where the poverty is off the scale and whole families live and sleep on the pavements but I never found it as unsettling as in Cali. Maybe that was because there were whole families on the streets in India with women and children in family groups who were there because of the grinding poverty. In Cali I suspect that the majority of the bedraggled, unkempt men (there were women on the streets in Cali too but they were more discreet) were there as a result of drink or drug abuse and they seemed to take an unhealthy interest in two women strolling around.
by Jane | Jun 11, 2014 | My journey, My travels |
early morning mist rises over the mountains
There are a lot of different types of traveller and I probably encountered most of them whilst I was on the backpacker circuit. I am going to chat about backpackers here rather than the travellers who prefer to stay in AirBnBs or co-living spaces as they tend to be a different breed.
As there are different types of travellers there are of course many reasons for travelling and each traveller is out there and following their own different route and experiencing life in a very personal way. The standard expectation is that most of the backpackers will have taken time out from college or university, taking a gap year (or two) and are they are galloping around as much of the world as they can, before heading back to where ever they call home and settling down to study or start their working life.
There are the adventurers who often travel by motorbike, bicycle or who hitchhike and who push themselves to cover as much ground as they can whilst earning money by busking, fire juggling or working on farms. These are often hard core and they can be found bungee-jumping, parascending off the sides of volcanoes or mountain biking down the Death Road in Bolivia.
a wibbly wobbly ancient railway bridge in Colombia
Another subsection of backpackers are the people who want to learn while they travel, whether it is to learn how to salsa, how to cook, how to do a martial art, yoga or who want to to learn to speak a language. Lessons are generally much cheaper in South America or South East Asia compared to Europe or the US and if you want to learn to salsa then where better than to learn in a country where even the three year old children appear to instinctively know the moves!
Then you have the potential ex-pats who are roaming around and hunting down suitable places where they can one day put down roots. There are sub-groups within this pack which include those who simply want somewhere cheaper/hotter/cooler to retire to, and those who are beginning to resent the rat race or the economic or political situation in their home countries and who want to escape with their money and their sanity more or less intact whilst they are still able to.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that backpackers are all in under the age of twenty five and are only out to party every night either. You will find people of all ages; some may finally have the time and/or money available compared to earlier in their lives and others, like the elderly man from Japan that I met in Malaysia, simply cannot afford a good quality of life in their home country compared to a life of slow travel on the road.
Some travellers, myself included, work whilst moving around, living a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Some put down tentative roots whilst they volunteer for an NGO, teach a foreign language or work in hostels. Others are write books or are travel bloggers. There is a whole realm of work that can be done digitally and supporting websites are popping up all over the place, and more so now since the pandemic changed how the workplace can operate. Writers, programmers and even virtual admin assistants are out there pitching for projects and working. I even came across a lawyer from the US who worked remotely from a hostel room in Medellin. Paypal and the new generation of online banks come into their own too as earnings are paid into bank accounts where they can easily be accessed via the ATMs in the local currencies.
I can’t count how many people that I met over the seven years whilst I was travelling, but it amazed me how few began their journey from a starting point of privilege or ease. Maybe it was because I usually preferred to use backpacker hostels rather than staying in plush hotels but I met all sorts of people from all walks of life, many of whom were, like me, travelling with some sort of emotional baggage. I met a lot of people who were recovering from broken relationships or bereavements or who were travelling and coping with issues such as social anxiety, depression or mental health issues. Following my divorce, experiencing loss and with absolutely no belief in myself when I first set out I found comfort with and I could relate to so many who, rather than remain in the safety of their home communities had decided that the only way to thrive was to do something incredibly difficult and jump right outside of their comfort zone.
These were certainly not people who were running away (as I believed myself to be doing at this stage) but these were people who dug deep and found a strength and power within themselves so much more than many others would ever dream of doing. Many of us were not simply travelling to fill in a gap year but we were travelling to find truth, freedom and knowledge.
My own journey would take me through more than fifty countries where I would experience some fabulous things, but my biggest takeaway of all was of self belief, acceptance and pride in my capabilities.
How did I keep busy whilst travelling?
700 plus steps but the view was worth every one
I wrote a travel blog but it wasn’t all wall-to-wall pleasure and fun. Well, it was for me but it may not be the sort of pleasure and fun that you might welcome or enjoy. In exchange for free or discounted accommodation and other benefits I wrote reports or included links on my blog. I took these seriously and they could be very time consuming, so rather than doing touristy, interesting things, I may be found chained to a desk or a table somewhere. Granted, I usually tried to find a table with a view or preferably a hammock, but I still needed to knuckle down and produce some quality (I hope) articles.
I also engaged with various kinds of volunteering work which tied me into a place and, shock horror, a timetable! To date, I volunteered and worked for three months at SKIP in Peru where I was teaching English. I have worked in a hostel on the beach in Ecuador, I lived with a family in Cali where we all learned about our different cultures (and I hope that I went some way to helping the daughter of the family who is at university to improve her English), and I spent five weeks working on a perma-culture farm and teaching English to children in the local school in the countryside close to Medellin.
…and this was the view!I supplemented my feeble attempts at learning Spanish with formal lessons when I could find them cheaply enough – and I have also took some salsa and yoga lessons, although apart from one dance lesson from an amazing professional dancer in Cali, these were all free of charge, given via other travellers in hostels.
And then I have to factor in the travelling. Getting around in Latin America for instance is relatively easy with its amazing network of buses, BUT for me, at any rate, who is not fluent in the language, travel can sometimes be quite traumatic. First you have to find the Terminal Terrestere – the bus station. Then you have to identify which is the correct and the safest bus from a swarm of touts who yell and push you around, and who do their best to part you from your rucksack. When you do choose your bus you generally get on and sit and wait whilst it fills up, and once it is finally underway the next problem is trying to work out where you are supposed to stop and get off. Then there is always more trauma while you run the gauntlet of cabbies when the genuine and the scammers all look the same, dodge potential hi-jackers and find a hostel.
So why do I do it?
Even after you factor in the air fares you can live so much more cheaply outside of Western Europe or the US. Money goes a long way and generally saved more than half of what I was spending to live day to day in the UK – which was just as well as because I wasn’t one of the lucky lottery winners.
sunset over the Pacific Ocean
I enjoyed my last job in the UK, but who wouldn’t choose to be their own boss and to work for themselves? You can decide what projects to apply for and, contracts permitting, when to move on. If you have a day with no deadlines you can weigh up whether to get a bus up into the mountains, laze around in a hammock chatting to other people or you can take yourself off to a coffee shop and watch the world go by.
I saw sights that I only ever dreamed of such as Machu Picchu and sights that I never even knew existed such as the Quilotoa crater lake. I learnt a foreign language, I practised yoga at sunrise, I slept in mixed dorms and courtesy of some very kind hoteliers I stayed in some very nice hotels.
even with a storm looming, the world is a beautiful place
The distance from my home country was a double-edged sword. On the one hand I missed my friends and family with a vengeance but on the other, the distance made my loss slightly less painful. I didn’t set out to travel because I don’t care about those that are left behind, but sometimes when you have nowhere else to go you have to move forwards. Every so often I would have a major melt down when I thought about my children and I would have loved to share my life and experiences with them; but the sheer scale of the continent and the totally different way of life, language and cultures, not to mention jaw-dropping spectacular landscapes enclosed me in a bubble that suspended reality and cocooned me. It nurtured me and gave me strength and a determination to find peace.
I can’t count how many people that I met over the next seven years whilst I was travelling, but it still amazes me how few began their journey from a starting point of privilege or ease. Maybe it was because I usually preferred to stay in backpacker hostels rather than plush hotels but I met all sorts of people from all walks of life and what really struck me was that so many were, like me, travelling with some sort of emotional baggage. I met an unbelievable number of people who, rather than remain in the safety of their home communities were travelling and coping with social anxieties, low self confidence or emotional issues such as depression. These were not people who were running away (as I believed myself to be doing at this stage) but were people who dug deep and found strength and power within themselves to jump much further out of their comfort zone than so many others would ever dream of doing. Many of us were not simply travelling to fill in a gap year but we were travelling to find truth, freedom and knowledge.
My own journey would take me to more than fifty countries where I would experience some fabulous things, but my biggest takeaway of all was of self belief, acceptance and pride in my capabilities.
I spent one year in South America and contrary to my original plan to return to the office, I continued to travel and live a nomadic life until the pandemic forced me to stop. But I am getting ahead of myself. I want to take you back to the very beginning, to the months before I caught that plane to Peru.
by Jane | May 31, 2014 | Colombia, My travels |
We arrived in Popayán at eight in the evening but our cab driver was unable to get us close to our hostel due to road closures. Assuming this would be because of roadworks we were amazed to discover that the entire town centre was closed off and the streets were packed with spectators who were waiting for a procession.
Me and M and now our new friend Pablo tried making our way through the crowds with me bashing small children on my head with my rucksac and M taking out toes and ankles with her humungous wheely case.
The roads were lines with police and soldiers but one eventually took pity on us and hoisting M’s case onto his shoulder opened the barricades and hustled us down the centre of the road.
Popayan at night
Feeling like penguins in a zoo as EVERYBODY watched us and still puzzled, we walked down through the middle of the roads which were edged with silent crowds four deep until our policeman eventually got us to our hostel which was just a quadra from the main plaza and on the procession route. After checking in, we were thrilled to discover that our dorm had a balcony overlooking the street, so we went out and stood there and we waited to see what on earth was going to happen.
These things are VERY heavy
Out of the dark (by now it was nine thirty pm) a drove of drummers appeared and with enough noise to raise the dead they thudded and hammered their way very slowly past us. They were followed by a brass band and squadrons of soldiers, police, and then little groups from each of the major churches in the area who were all carrying massive religious icons which had been decorated with flowers and gigantic candles. They would walk a few steps and then pause to allow the bearers to rest on long wooden poles balancing the whole thing in a very wobbly way on the ground – these things were massive – and then they would set off again. The crowds by now had lit their candles and were patiently and quietly watching. The whole thing took over two hours to pass us by, but actually it took more like five hours for them to complete the whole route of the town, snaking around and up and down the streets. The following day I saw posters which instructed any observers to observe and participate in total silence in order to preserve the spiritual and religious meaning of the occasion. The silence, apart from the drums or the bands was initially eerie, broken only by the sound of marching footsteps and the occasional organ music (organists were rather bizarrely wheeled along on little carts playing church music to accompany some of the icons).
scouts from Cali on a pilgrimage
When we finally got out exploring the town the next day we were all really pleased to discover that we had rocked up during the Semana Santa celebrations. It turned out that Popayan is renowned throughout Colombia for having the best processions which mark the death of Jesus. Like Bethlehem at his birth, there were few rooms left at the inns and those that were available were overpriced but despite this we ended up opting to stay for three nights.
an impromptu geography lesson
With Pablo we walked down to the old stone bridge and then we climbed high up to the park which overlooked the town. Here I stopped to chat to a group of scouts who were, as always, immaculately turned out in their uniforms, despite having walked over the past week from the city of Cali on a pilgrimage. We all took photos together and then we continued up to the top of the hill where there was a huge statue and lots of people milling around.
icing sugar buildings
On our hike up I had given away a tub of green mangos with salt to a group of three little girls who had been sitting on the grass, and later, whilst we were sitting in the sun and admiring the view, they came over to talk to us. We then spent half an hour chatting to the eight, nine and ten year old and we even had an impromptu geography lesson when Pablo (Picasso) drew a picture of the world and we showed them where we had all come from. Pablo was from Chile, I was from the UK and M from Poland, and whilst the girls knew where Chile was, they didn’t know about the UK or Poland. They were adorable and so interested and interesting, and as usual, it struck me how we expect people to know all about Europe or the United States, when in fact, their more important and relevant world consists of Latin America.
the children’s parade
Semana Santa week marks a major holiday in Popayan with all of the churches stuffed full of cages of icons and hordes of people flowing in and out to view them. Armies of priests were directing proceedings as every day the icons were re-decorated with a new flowery colour theme and all of the public buildings and university buildings were open with free exhibits and squadrons of volunteers manned doorways and stalls, keen to give tourists guided tours of their respective spaces.
The processions would kick off in the late afternoon with the children who carried tiny versions of the icons and then the grown up versions would begin at about eight-ish every night. People would wait patiently whilst the procession curled its way around the town, often walking alongside with their candles. The children especially must have been exhausted by the end of the week because it seemed that the entire town plus all the tourists stayed up until midnight each night. Music and dancing were supposedly banned during this time but we did find a little salsa club which turned the music up and got swinging once the tail end of the parade had passed its doors.
its tough showing tourists around your university
Popayan is a very pretty town and not the first that I have been to in South America which is called the ‘White City’ but unlike those other towns this one really does deserve that reputation. The buildings are a sparkling white and at night under the floodlights appear to be made of icing sugar. The town reminded me of a film set made for a children’s programme with its cobbled streets, little balconies and ice white churches and at every corner I expected to see some TV presenters dressed up in bright clothes or dancing teddy bears.
We had to change hostels after two nights and find another, and we did end up sharing a room in both places with the most weird American guy that I have met yet, but to give him his due he was out there travelling solo. Dorms can be strange spaces and these had extra beds crammed in to accommodate the hordes, but even so, in my mind, your own bed is sacrosanct and you do not perch on the end of somebody else’s unless invited to do so first.
At the beginning of the week a bomb had exploded by the roadside on the way into Popayan and as many of the government and high ranking officials were attending the celebrations, the place was swarming with heavily armed soldiers and police, toting big automatic machine guns. I am a firm believer that guns should be removed from communities and police forces should not be visibly armed such as in the UK but it is very strange how quickly you get accustomed to seeing so many weapons on the streets. And they are not neatly holstered either but held ready for firing in many instances. And coming from the UK where knives are also not tolerated or allowed it is odd to see so many people walking along swinging machetes – although now that I have been using one on more than one occasion I have to agree that a machete is possibly the best tool ever invented.
In many countries, Semana Santa and Easter is a bigger deal than Christmas and I was very pleased that we spent it in one of the best towns and experienced the atmosphere and saw the processions. After three nights in Popayan we were to continue to head north and to Cali where me and M would go our own ways for a couple of weeks. I had arranged to stay with a family here and M was off to stay with friends of friends.
