TIme is the most steadfast of adversaries. When you travel you can seemingly extract more from each passage of time, but so too does it accelerate at alarming rates. This paradox is both beautiful and bemusing.
I guess what I’m saying is I actually forgot to mention this staple of a place from Panama City — Cafe Coca-Cola — but that our being there feels like an incredibly long time ago, and so much has unfolded in the relatively short amount of time since that casting back to it feels shoddy and wrong. Alas, my blog my rules. This cafe right on the cusp of the no-go El Chorillo. Why should I mention it? Why should you care?
Twofold:
It’s the world’s only Coca-Cola branded cafe/restaurant. That’s distinctive and neat.
And in its menu it boasts an incredibly weird list of former patrons, from Che Guevara and Fidel Castro to Pierce Brosnan. What a breakfast party.
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Yeeeea getting to Colombia was a pain. Absurdly, even if you plan on using public transport (non-bookable ahead of time, obviously) to leave the country, the adamant airline staff don’t budge on their demands for proof of onward travel. Much back and forth in fractured Spanish. Yea but how. Yea but you have to. Yea but how. Duno just do it. A dummy ticket saved us but I was riled, and George had to hold enough patience and optimism for both of us. At least 30 minutes passed this way. Tiny tiny little airport too. Stuffy with delays. Good riddance to it.
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Cartagena is ultra touristy but really rather pleasing on the eye. Roll on the breathtakingly incessant bustle and buzz. Motorbikes and taxis and horns and pedestrians and touts. Repeat. The colour and the energy are there, as is the sheer heat. All day long. We did some cultural stuff: walked around the historical defensive haven of the Castle of San Felipe, which has drawn the twinkling, attacking eyes of French barons, rogue pirates and everything in between.
Cartagena was a major colonial foothold and a vital trade port, you see, so the Old Town is nestled within the still-standing fortress wall. We walked around that n all, buying bottles of water every 8 minutes and flirting raucously with heatstroke. An energised and jovial gentleman tried to lure us into a tour by giving us a pro bono nugget: there’s a wall under the sea as well. Haven’t looked into that to corroborate. Feel free. Not enough time. What an adversary. This fella was awfully animated but really rather pleasant. We stood and chatted with him for maybe 10 minutes. He thinks everyone should speak English rather than Spanish because “the gringos got to the moon first…of course they did”.
Getsemani is the backpacker and tourist hotpot now, I guess. Flags and inverted umbrellas and flickering bunting hang above narrow, vibrant lanes. It’s cobbles and it’s cocktails, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Many offensively cheap options on offer around Plaza de Trinidad, a regular hive of comers, goers, hawkers and showers. One street dance crew had to cut their performance short because a man walked through it and got a big bad foot straight to the chest. Class. There are odd clusters of young men that walk around with boomboxes and “freestyle” raps about whoever they latch onto.
A cool frothy
One food van captivated us for a few minutes at a time, dowsing mozzarella on crushed corn and shredded carne. I went to the toilet at one place; let me paint a picture. There’s no door. I’m stood right next to a fella rolling pizza bases, so we both go about our respective business avoiding eye contact, and just down there on the right is a cat staring up at me from its litter tray.
We had it pretty large one night, and ended up dancing salsa in a local bar. A man stole Georgie from me and his woman stole my heart. I think they saw us two oafs trying to sway our hips and stepped in to give us a free lesson. Too right.
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Outta there. Our hostel had the energy of 18-year-old Europeans doing the things they think they should do in Colombia. Mostly blokes and twats walking around like they run the show and leaving shit everywhere.
We headed to Santa Marta then. Pretty gritty. Arrived at the height of 2023’s Fiesta del Mar — a carnival featuring floats and underage children dancing provocatively. Big turtles and lobsters and other sea creature costumes jived to the booming soundsystems. We’d been spending some time travelling with a middle-aged gentleman named Christophe. French fella. Men’s fashion designer. Fantastic facial structure and a good tache. Really good human all round, but a true sasspot. Assuming that the carnival would halt at our presence, he tried to expedite our way across the clamour. In frankness it was enough to stand and watch and admire. A LOT of moving parts.
Our room was really very hot, and the fan just served to circulate thick air, but it had the distinct advantage of being right next to the pool.
Spent a day not doing heaps. Odd jobs. Vital jobs. Swam. Took in some of the nearby squares and streets. It’s not a sketchy city, per se, at least where we were staying, but commerce is rife and evolving to the sway of the tourist trade, and in the handover there are many eyes that take kindly to us folk. Diggers excavate and kick up dust on entire main roads. I got me lid shaved. Georgie thought I was kidnapped.
One evening we walked along the promenade watching the sky change hues. The desolate pleaded for some coins, groups of boys lept into the water from the walkway, and boats bobbed on the shore. An impossible proliferation of other life unfolded without my seeing it or taking note of it. This is the world.
We ate the most outstanding meal to mark a month on the road. A hotpot of lamb and melted cheese with homemade pita chips, some crispy fish croquettes, calamari, and a couple of glasses of wine. A chap played the cello for us. Not for anyone else at the restaurant just for us.
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We roused and headed for Tayrona. Pictures nor words will do it justice so just assume it was wild and rugged and heavenly, with ginormous verdant landscapes and white-sand beaches. It was busy then quiet, with day visitors filtering out of the park by 5pm.
The vistas during that 36 hour trip were something else entirely. Palm trees in dizzying abundance and snaking ridges of the Sierra Nevada. Water clear enough to see your white bits in all their glory beneath the light waves.
We sat on Cabo San Juan until after the sun had gone down. This was a mistake, for we then had to walk the hour route back to our campsite in the pitch black through the jungle, which as a general rule of thumb comes alive after dusk, with big bugs braving some migration and all the noises stepping up a notch. Fortunately, aided by torches and a reasonable general sense of direction, we made it without major incident. Spooky and non-advisable though, 100%.
Our lack of cash and poor-preparedness rendered us two creeps at the end of this mission, peering in at the shoddy restaurant watching people eat. Ooh bet that tastes nice. We had a supper of tepid water and nut mix dust.
This little hammock community was quite something. We had the biggest holes in our mosquito nets, presumably half on account of former residents struggling to figure out how they’re supposed to hang, and half on account of the campsite’s puppies tearing things up.
Playa Arenilla was our pick of Tayrona’s beaches, a stunning curved scape that we chilled on in the morning. Ravenous, mind, no two ways about it. The trail mix was gone and we could just about scrape a popsicle each, but my god was it gorgeous. The heat was intense, and we clung on to this semblance of shade by a large rock but the big burning thing up there moves, notoriously, and we’re cast out like pink little things.
We’re up the front with the capitan on the bus back to Santa Marta, where we breathe for a minute, inhale some delicious, well-deserved seafood, and take a traffic-burdened taxi to Minca.
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Talk about MInca. Why is it so infectious? Why is it so alluring and glorious despite the bites and bugs and blighters? The cooler temperature? The friendliness of the people? The mountains? The slower pace of life? The bakeries dotted about its three or four streets? All of the above?
We did a spectacular sunset hike one evening. Mirador 360 it’s called. Up steep gravel roads until you enter the thick jungle, then you keep going ‘til you’re saturated with sweat and at the zenith. The views doth reward. Smart call hauling ass back down the dense section before it got fully dark though. We’ve learnt our lesson.
Had the best Arepas of our trip thus far. One had chorizo, avocado, cheese and honey in it. One was pulled chicken. One was a sort of crispy pork and fragrant black bean medley. Tickle my tastebuds and call me Trevor.
We’ve obviously been spoilt by waterfalls already because we weren’t particularly taken by the ones we visited in Minca. Got a moto-taxi back down to town, gliding seamlessly past tourists on rented peds coming the opposite way. More than a few wobbles from them. More than a few calf muscles agonisingly close to an exhaust pipe de-gloving incident.
Later we ate courtesy of this Colombian Grandma in her shack just out of town. The chowder was salty and thick and delicious, a sort of ham hock bone broth with a side of love. Spent a night in a tiny mountain cabin called Tanoa, a place with even more bugs and even more bites but I sat there in its net hammock for five hours reading my book and staring out at the shifting clouds.
Soooooooooooooooooooooo commences the chronicles of Sammy Swankles; swankles of course being an intelligent and hilarious combination of ‘swollen’ and ‘ankles’, and the chronicles of course being the plight of skin and tissue tattered by bloodthirsty creatures, leaving the whole region looking rather like a cruel game of dot to dot.
Minca had been a glorious stop, but we move. Semi-trepidatiously got on a couple of moto-taxis to get us to the Bus Terminal. Mine immediately zips one way as Georgie’s takes off in the other direction. Mint. I’m barking ‘donde esta mi novia!’ in my driver’s ear and he casually points just across from us. There she is, beaming. No harm no foul.
If you combined the sauciness of the Gregg’s chicken bake with the chunks and quality of the chicken from the Santa Marta Bus Terminal chicken bake you’d have a really good chicken bake.
Took a long overnight journey to Bucaramanga, and then onward to San Gil, where I take my sock off to discover the ghastly scene. The roads here are worth note, too. Bad. Quite bad. Driving as erratic as it is efficient renders us genuinely airborne a few times. Are seats at the back of the bus more susceptible? Few hours of shuteye gained, somehow, anyhow, nonetheless. We’re sat right next to the toilet. Smells of poo at one stage. Listened to some vintage RnB, and outside the moon is a bonito segment of blood orange.
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San Gil is a super busy spot nestled in the mountains of Santander. Hilly as hell. Walking around is a game of tetris but the blocks are humans and motorbikes and peds and small cars and large 4x4s all jostling for turf. Parque Principal plays host to elderly natives who sip beer and gossip. Casa de Mercado is a lively indoor market with heaps of fresh fruit and vegetables, a splendid colour palette, and other delicacies that tickle various fancies. We have some milkshakes, buy some mangosteens, and eat uber-cheap Arepas.
The next day we go white-water rafting. River Suarez is wild — one of the only places in the world to offer Level 5 rapids. It only takes a Level 4 stretch to prompt an almighty dislocation. Dislocation in every sense: from in the raft to out of the raft; from rubber to air to water; from a patella in its rightful place to very much out of place laterally, and back again. Eat that, Bilbo Baggins. Georgie’s asked me to rephrase. All of us — Georgie the Explorgie, Sammy Swankles, Chatty German Barbara, and three kindly Italian chaps — flopped and flailed dramatically out of the raft as a big bodacious body of water rose to bosh us. My lover was airborne. My knee popped out. Bodies were strewn between sets of gnarly, rushing water, and pain ceded through the necessity of focus. Quite the experience.
Barichara — thirty minutes west of San GIl — is blindingly beautiful. Also hilly as hell. Details. We have spent two days here now, walking its cobbled streets and enjoying its relative quiet. I’m hobbling a wee whiff but things should be fine. Just some sorry strained interior workings. In other news, the steaks are delicious and cheap. The views over the valley are delicious and free. Over an evening vino we somehow go from talking about optimal fry up compositions to the prospect of parenthood. Important content.
The next day, Georgie makes the argument that mayonnaise is second only to the wheel when it comes to great inventions. These are followed closely by the lightbulb, and bug repellent places fourth.
We spent the whole day on a shaded bench up a big hot hill, reading our books in Barichara’s BioParque. Peace and vistas, my good folk.
I’ve been flicking between Daniel Defoe’s classic Robinson Crusoe and Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar. Reading the former on the islands we’ve visited saw some scenes prompt a strange sensation of familiarity, but also a jarring disconnect, given that its protagonist had very little and absolutely no-one, and we have ever-so-much, including cheap, unrefrigerated empanadas. Reading the latter anywhere and everywhere has prompted a resounding humility, for his work is rich with delectable descriptions and apt dialogue; mine has basically none. Of course, I am not Paul Theroux and no-one would care to read my pieces if they were as long and detailed as his travelogues. Perhaps no-one cares to read my pieces anyway.
What a sign off. Until next time, if you’re here.
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