Pablo Escobar. What an arsehole.

So we went on the Pablo Escobar tour yesterday. For those of you not in the know about this sort of thing, he is Colombia's most imfamous drug lord, who began the cartel movement, introduced coca farming to Colombia and changed the cocaine importation from south america to north america from kilos into tonnes.

I was in two minds about whether I wanted to do the trip. I was worried it would be some kind of macabre gringo glorification of a mass murderer.  Regardless of how many people he killed in this city, there's a certain group within the backpacker community who just want to go and snort coke on his grave (nice.) Plus many people think its wrong that people should be making money out of the horrible things he did to this country

Indeed there is even a tour where you can meet his brother. A. why would I want to do that? and B. Why does he want to do that? He doesn't exactly need the money.

Anyhoo, we went because at the end of the day, you cant really understand Colombia´s socio historical situation without learning a bit about narcotrafficking, and also because we had heard one side of the story  in the Bogota Police museum and thought we should try to gain a more balanced view.

The Bogota Police museum was the most surreal experience of my life! Its a building full of weapon collections, a church and a section on how they killed Escobar and his chums. We were guided around by a police officer who couldn't have been much over 18 years old. He was super friendly and chirpy, happily explaining the different weapons and gory photos we came accross, and throwing in the odd joke for good measure. When the tour ended he actually gave us some sweets and a poster of the museum!!

The Medellin tour turned out to be brilliant though. We went with Paisa Road. I've forgotten our guides name, but she was excellent. Really informative, but she didn't pull any punches. She was very clear about how much damage and suffering Escobar caused but she also had plenty of vitriol for the corrupt officials and rich families that had allowed him to become the person he became. Not least the fact that the section of the government devoted to handling the drug Cartels' confiscated assets is the most corrupt of all the departments. When the new government took over three years ago, this departments could only account for 7000 of the 60 000 vehicles, properties , helicopters ets they were supposed to be selling or renting for the benefit of local community initiatives.  She seemed to me to be very honest and objective. She also enjoyed peppering the talk with a variety of english swear words, which definitely added something to the whole experience.

We visited various buildings he owned, places where he was bombed, where he died and finally his grave. One thing that you can't escape is the fact that his story is probably the most ridiculous life story ever known. If it was written as a fictional novel, nobody would publish it because it would be too farfetched. 


Two of my favourite escobar facts are;


At one point he was so rich that he offered to pay off colombias national debt to america. Just because 
he thought it would be funny if america cocaine users paid for colombias debt!

He collected various exotic animals in his mansion outside medellin; tigers, ostriches etc, all of which where taken to the medellin zoo after he went into hiding. All except the hippos, which where considered to be too big and dangerous. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Medellin climate suits hippos rather well and there are now 34 hippos roaming the hills around medellin!  The local government dont know what to do about it.

Its fair to say that the guy had a sense of humour, which i think is one of the reasons he became such an icon. But he did too many horrific things to even begin to list here. But to give you a general idea, he blew up a commervial flight in order to kill ONE man. Who missed the flight anyway.

ITs also hard to exagerate how powerful he became. By the time he died he had 1 million people working for him directly within the cocaine trade, but a total of three million people working for his various companies. When he went down the Colombian economy took a big hit.

However, I think the thing I liked most about the tour was that it highlighted the fact that Escobar was just the recognisable face of a vast network of corruption, drug trafficking and murder, which continues today just in the new form of the paramitiaries and guerillas who now own most of the production (These are the same paramilitaries who had links to 90 of Uribes government ministers!). Then you´ve got the multi national corporations fighting over stolen land for its resources. And we mustnt forget the USA's bizarre interferences. One of it´s most énlightened´policies being to spray hundreds of hectars of colombia's lush agricultural areas with plant killer every year. Killing not only coca, but practically everything else in its path. I dont think that Uncle Sam is going to come out of this trip in a very positive light.

She finished the tour by saying that the real tragedy was that Colombia was still losing its children to the narco trafficking lifestyle and the egotistical, get rich quick, ´plata o plobo´ (money or a bullet) mentality that has survived the demise of the Cartels. She argued that this was because people are still not ready to talk about what happened openly and as a result the children are not been educated about thier own history.

Overall it was really moving, and I feel like I´ve learnt alot more about Colombian history, how far it has come and how far it has left to go. Although obviously Im still shamefully ignorant. Must read more books!

Actually, thats not how she finished it. My heart stopped when she announced that she would like to offer us all a small quantity of free cocaine to try. (oh no! we were doing sooo well!) Then she burst out laughing - she does that joke everyday just to see the different expressions on her customers' faces!

She did have a flyer attached to her business card asking you to post your ´most hilarious picture of Escobars grave´ though. Hmmmmm.



So after the trip we thought that the only sesnsible thing to do would be to go to the childrens section of the local science museum. Parque Explora is a HUGE interactive complex with a planetarium and aquarium and loads of interactive displays. IT WAS AMAZING. We´re going again before we leave because it put the science museum in london to SHAME.

ME and Dermot had immense amounts of fun beating primary school children at various mind puzzles and interactive games. Although as you can see, they nearly didnt let me play on some of them!

So I suppose you could say that we saw two very different sides of Medellin yesterday.

A day at the mall....

So after bumming around all Sunday, we decided to get up nice and early today to take in some of Medellin's sights, to find that EVERYTHING is closed. EVERYTHING. 

So we took the opportunity to do a bit of shopping and find a card reader so I could start backing up my millions photos. Colombia is famous for its giant shopping malls and we're staying in a pretty upmarket area so we found one that we were told was good for techie things. Damn straight. It was a huge two storey mall devoted entirely to computer gadgets and lingerie. Yes, this is where Medellin comes to get flash pens and male corsets. Very. Strange.

  

Colombia is really westernised, with every city dotted with huge malls, kfcs, macdonalds and the like. It was very strange arriving in Bogota from Cuba because I experienced culture shock about my own culture but on the other side of the world! 

Colombians do like to look good and there are no shortages of nail bars and hairdressers; we once counted 15 on one street! Its also the number one destination in latin america for cosmetic surgery. 

Its not uncommon for men to depilate their underarms and pluck their eyebrows. In Cuba I even encountered some men who shave there arm hair (mmm stubbly). When Mathilda asked one of them about this he replied defensively that "its hot in cuba!" Actually, Cuba won in the manicure department too. I wish I was better at asking people if I could take photos of them, as each woman we encountered had the most amazing nails. Anything from long and glittery to square with diamonds on them. I guess it may be an affordable way for them to express their individual style. I would have loved to have been able to document them.

I'm going to do this post backwards, because that's just the kind of mood I'm in.

So on Sunday we just chilled in the hostal, Casa Kiwi, which is pretty nice, with a big kitchen and roof terrace. I really appreciate being able to cook as it makes me feel more at home. 

We decided to watch some tv. I particularly enjoy watching eighties action movies in spanish. There's usually one on and I've seen them so many times that I know what everyone is saying. Its an excellent opportunity to learn various swear words in Spanish. Including "hasta nunca malditos!" - which is Spanish for "Yippeekiyay motherfuckers!"

Unfortunately there were no films and I discovered to my horror that The Voice, The Graham Norton Show and Jonothan Ross are all regulars on Colombian Sky tv. What must they think of us?

So returning to Saturday and the Music Festival! We visited the reggae, metal and electro stages over the course of the evening. Each of them was in a different park or square in town and it was all absolutely free. The music didnt blow us away, but it was great to see a colombian two tone, death metal and reggae bands. With such hits as 'latin americano hasta muerte' (latin american till i die) and maldito presidente (which translatres roughly as 'the president is a bastard'). The atmosphere was really chilled and friendly with a good mix of age groups. It was a really good night.

On the way there we stopped off at a cafe for an empenada. We got chatting to the waitress, Maria Victoria, who showed us a photography book of Medellin made by her nephew. We asked her for any recommendations of what to do in Medellin, expecting a couple of hints. Instead she got out a pen and paper and got all the customers and passerbys  involved in deciding what the best places for us to go would be. Then, frustrated that there were only old people there who wouldnt know what the best salsa clubs were, she rang her son and sister for advice! unfortunately they didnt pick up. But once again we were blown away by how generous the people we've met have been.  

We met up with three chileanos we had met in Taganga and spent the night partying with them and a venezuelan we had met in the hostal. I really need to buy a cheap camera to take out at night - because i dont have any photos of any of the lovely people we have met so far on our journey. So back to the lingerie/gadget mall i go....

Medellin - the city of eternal spring

Hello again!

So the frat party was not as bad as i was expecting - although we havent really managed to experience any particularly good music yet, aside from salsa - which you can only handle so much of really. We met a really friendly bunch of irish people and spent a really fun night with them. Although three of them had just come from medellin and were definitely not fans of the place, which didnt instill me with much hope for our next stop!

I was woken up the next morning by the heaviest rain I have ever seen, it was like somebody turned a giant tap on directly above the hostel. It was over in half an hour and I spent the afternoon wandering round the historic centre of cartagena. It is really beuatiful with a very relaxed atmosphere. I got totally lost at one point and had to ask the way back several times. Before I came here, everyone who had been before had told me how nice Colombians are, I didn't really know what they meant at the time, but I think Im beginning to understand and appreciate it more. They have an easy going pleasantness about them. Even the hassle of the street sellers (of which there are thousands) is polite and once you´ve said no they are happy to leave you alone. Dermots new method is to immediately ask them where they are from. They usually just give up trying to sell you anything and chat away with you about their town. We get to have pleasant chat and practice our Spanish and it usually ends with a handshake!

A word on street sellers. Ive heard lots of conflicting info about the unemployment rate in Colombia, the IMF said it was as high as 16% but is down to 11% now although many people here seem to think its much much higher. The minimum wage is about 300 american dollors a month, food here is not that cheap and luxuries are more expensive than in Europe as all imports are heavily taxed. At any rate there are a lot of people who have had to think creatively about making money and street sellers are everywhere as a result. In Bogota they sell to the traffic; anything from fruit, chocolate and ciggerettes to toys, stationary and cleaning products. You also get groups of black children break dancing among the cars at traffic lights. We even saw a man balancing a boke on his chin! In the pedestrian areas it great because there are people everywhere selling delicious fresh fruit, juices and snacks (I am going to miss the fruit here sooo much). But you also see people selling inflated paddling pools and lamps - not on stalls - but just walking around! In Bogota there are even people walking around selling emeralds.

The most innovative thing I've seen are the ´minutos cellulares´´. Basically it costs more to call people on your mobile from a different network here, so people buy a phone from every network and then stand in the  street renting their phones by the minute. If you want to call someone on Movistar  - you ask to use their movistar phone - they unfold a chair for you to sit on and you can talk away! Some of them have the phones attached to thier waistcoat by string but most just hand you the phone.

Another thing I've noticed here is that people are generally very trusting. A common way for getting around is to use the ´collectivos´. They are mini bises that go on specific routes around and between the towns. Just like with the normal city buses - you can flag one down where ever you see one and get off where ever you want - which can mean that the journey takes a long time! You get on and try and find a seat - there usually about twelve - but loads more people will squeeze on and they leave the doors wide open while they drive around. Once you've found a seat, you hand the money for your fare to the person infront - they hand on again, and again until it reaches the driver. He then sorts out the change while maneuvering around traffic and hairpin bends and then passes you the change back the same way!
I think its great!


We decided to get the night bus to Medellin as its 13 hours. So we got a taxi from the hostal to the bus station. Having travelled a bit and having got a few taxis in Bogota I thought I was pretty prepared for anything - but that was the scariest drive of my life! There were loads of scooters and I was sure we were going to kill someone; we did clip a car! The roads in Colombia are ridiculously bad. In Bogota they advise you to not step in puddles after its been raining because you just dont know how deep the pot holes will be! as a result the cars have to weave in  and out of lanes to avoid them. Taxis also drive extra fast, and while I cant help but respect the agility and skill of the drivers, I really wish I hadnt just learnt to drive because at least then I wouldn't know how many laws they are breaking!
They also lack the european fascination with seatbelts. Colombians think we are positively ´cute´ for thinking you need them if you sitting in the back seats!

This particular guy was ridiculous tho, and we were both thankful to arrive at the bus station without having the life of a motorcyclist on our conscience.

The bus journey was actually fine - we both slept for most of it and the obligatory violent and gory films were in Spanish so I could ignore most of them, except for the bone crunchings, gun shots and squelchings. However, the first twenty minutes of our journey involved just the dvd menu soundtrack on really loud. Everyone else on the bus seems to think this was fine, but after hearing the same 3 miute loop for the twentieth time, we managed to get some one to speak to the driver. It really seemed that everyone else was going to just sit through it indefinately though!

Medellin has definately lived up to its name as the city of eternal spring. after the oppresive heat of cartagena I cant express how nice it is to be somewhere where I`m not perpetually covered in sweat, sun cream and deet. Its hot and sunny, but its a dry heat with a fresh cool breeze. Its a city of 3 million people surrounded by beautiful mountainous countryside that almost looks like Switzerland.

The city itself is just like any city. There are nice bits and not so nice bits, but the centre is definately not as run down and dirty as some people had been saying. We´re in the upmarket area of Poblado where all the hostels are and its full of parks and green spaces. The centre of town is a couple of stops on the metro, which is the cleanest form of public transport I have ever seen in my life. I believe its the same one which took years to build because the drug cartels kept assasinating the directors of the company because it would compete with the cartel - owned bus services in the town. This is a city with a dark history, of which i will no doubt learn more about when we do the Pablo Escobar tour. Nowadays, however it is as safe as a city can be and very much part of the established backpacker route.

But for now it seems like a typical metropolitan city. There is a music festival happening today, with live concerts happening all over the city in different squares. everything from electro swing to ´doom metal´ (?) so we going to check that out.








I need to buy a card reader as none of the hostels have computers that recognize my sd cards - so as soon as i find one i will upload some photos to make this blog a bit more interesting!


Any way - I'm going to stop now because all the letters have been rubbed of the keyboard I'm using which means that I can only type if I dont think about it too hard. Which, paradoxically, is making my head hurt.

Colombia's Carribean Coast. (with monkeys)

Okay, so nearly one month into our trip and I may just about have managed to start a blog.. Lets see how long this lasts! It's not that I don't want to, because I know that my feeble memory will not be able to hold on to all these new experiences without help, but I don't often find myself infront of a computer.

So I'm not going to start from the beginning because  thats a bit too scary. So we'll begin with our most recent experience of Taganga. After a week of being spoilt rotten by our friends Kerryanne and Conner in Bogota we decided to be lazy and fly up to the Carribean coast instead of busing it.

Our first impressions were a bit underwhelming. Lonely planet describes it as a small backwater fishing village that doesnt quite know whats hit it, and thats pretty accurate. It was cloudy and oppressively hot and humid when we arrived, so you couldnt really see the stunning rolling hills that surround it. Instead we drove along heavily littered streets to Hostel Bayview, which was everything I had been dreading that hostels might be like. It was dirty and cramped, with a group of unnecessarily loud teenage trustaffarions mooching around talking rubbish, all topped off with a stoned porter. We couldn't face walking round with our bags in the heat, so we booked one night there and decided to go for a walk, feeling decidedly dispondent. I got the impression that backpackers like this place so much because of the lack of police presence. Although thats changing as the police do a round of the whole town at 1am every night to ensure that all the bars are closed. It seems however that police don't like walking uphill, as everyone just walks up to a bar on the outskirts of town which stays open as long as there are people buying drinks.


Despite all this, some food and a wander round allowed us to see a bit more of the coast and we managed without too much hassle to swap rooms to Casa de Felipe which was a beautiful big hostel, with shady gardens strewn with hammocks and a beautiful mirador with a view down to the sea. And we saved 5000 cops! woohoo! We spent the night hanging out with 2 french, 2 norwegians, 2 swiss and a guy from Alaska on the Mirador and I felt very much at home - even with the electrical blackout that lasted the rest of the night.

 We went scuba diving the next day, which is really cheap there. We had a really nice tutor who took us on two dives off the back of a boat, just like in the movies. The visibility wasn't great, but we saw loads of different fish, and when we surfaced there was the most amazing sunset. It was Dermot´s first ever dive and he thought it 'wasnt that amazing' (?!#%?!) but I really liked it.

The best bit was definitely Park Tayrona. Its a national park a bus ride away from Taganga. One entry pass allows you to stay there for up to four days and you can camp there or sleep in a hammock. Our journey there was made all the more exciting when somebody smelt smoke in the minibus and we realised that the engine was on fire, but we made it there in the end. Once you get to the entrance its a 45 minute walk through the jungle to the first beach. Well, its not quite jungle, I think the book calls it a semi-dry forest or something, but it felt very jungley. We stayed in Arrecifes in Finca Don Pedro which was an idylic opening in the forest dotted with palm trees and banana plants. There seemed to be two families living there, one ran the restaurant and the other the bakery. As well as the obligatory selection of dogs (they are everywhere in colombia) they also kept ducks and turkeys, which at night were replaced by frogs and bats. 




There are three beautiful beaches in the park and you walk through the jungle to get to them. There are huge butterflies, crabs and a wierd giant guineapig type thing. The dawn chorus was beautiful, and day and night we were treated to a cacophony of insects who rivalled the car alarms in Bogota. We saw two troups of monkeys. The first were a type of Lima that only survives in Colombia. The second troup looked like Cappucins. There were loads of them and some of them got really close. We decided to move on when we realised that a couple of them were squaring up to us though. Unfortunately we didnt see any pelicans though

The wierdest thing we saw was the ants, they had ant motorways cutting accross the paths and through the forest, six lanes wide. Some of the lanes just had ants going in both directions, others had ants carrying leaves and petals back and forth and sometimes you'd see one that had been abandoned, with no ants at all, just bits of leaves left on the ground. Dermot thinks they are planning something big.

The beaches are stunning and more rugged than I was expecting. They were strewn with huge boulders that look like they had been picked up and scattered about by giants. Some of them were split clean in half. The government had built huge artificial reefs around most of the beaches to make them safe to swim in and the sea was crystal clear, although still not completely free of litter, which I was pretty shocked by.

That said, I've been really impressed by the commitment Colombia shows towards environmental concerns. In Park tayrona they seem to have been able to preserve a huge area of natural envrionment while still allowing people to enjoy it and be part of it. Even in Bogota, a city of 9,500,000 people they restrict car owners to only driving 3 days a week. Then on friday afternoons, sunday mornings and bank holidays they have 'cyclevia' where a large number of the main roads are free of cars and the whole city comes out with their children and pets to cycle, jog and rollerblade    around.

We stayed for two nights instead of the one we had planned. But hammocks sound a lot more comfortable than they actually are so we couldn't face a third night in the end. Once again my attempt at packing light basicly involved not bringing most of the things that I actually needed - so getting home to a proper shower and a bed was very welcome. Unfortunatley the fan in our room started making the most horrific noise as soon as we got into bed. So it was another sleepless night choosing between a sweltering room or the deafening noise of a fan that sounded like it was going to fall on our heads at any moment. Dermot snored through most of it, and of course as soon as we got up the fan magically fixed itself so there was no point in complaining.



So now we are in Cartagena, a colonial city 4 hours along the coast. The historic centre is beautiful and there is a nice relaxed atmosphere. Nevertheless after park Tayrona it feels a bit artificial and touristy. To be honest I feel quite relieved to be in a proper city with an ATM that works and a supermarket that has proper food in it. We are staying in the Media Luna Hostel in Dorms. Its a big old colonial building with a pool and sun lounges. It also has a giant alsation whose favourite past time is to stand right on the edge of the pool, poised as if its going to jump right in, but it never does. Its really nice but I can't shake the feeling that I've stumbled into a frat house. There's a party here tonight so I'll reserve judgement until then, although the free jelly shots aren't instilling me with much hope!




Anyway, I've talked far too much already so I'll leave it at that. Next stop Medellin!

And a computer that will recognize my sd card so that I can put up photos! (hopefully)