Dodgy internet connections. They're all the rage in South America.
I've just quietly fumed through about 17 unsuccessful attempts to buy a plane ticket online. On the 18th time, the purchase was made. I hate those situations where you've entered your credit card details, pressed 'pay' and then the page hangs for eternity as you sit there, pleading with the Internet God* to make it work.
When it finally did work I felt like leaning forward and kissing the monitor. But I'm in a room with three other guys, and they might have thought I was weird.
The flight I booked is from Bogota to Quito for next weekend. Earlier I booked another flight from Santa Marta to Bogota, so now my route out of Colombia is sorted.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. What has been happening since my last post?
I followed in the footsteps of the world's biggest drugs baron, ate enough barbequed food to feed a small country, got blasted by freezing air-con for 14 hours, did too much partying, and got the lurgy.
Sunday night was my final night in Medellin, and the hostel put on a fantastic BBQ:
I ate so much meat that I probably wasn't far off the onset of gout. Pork chunks, chicken legs, different types of chorizo, amazing steak, plus onions, salads, fried bananas, cheese and potatoes. Bleurgh. But good bleurgh.
The following day, a group of four of us went on a Pablo Escobar tour. Pablo, or El Patron - as he was nicknamed in his heyday - was named Forbes' seventh richest man in the world in 1989. He also enjoyed shooting policemen, building ostentatious buildings and getting the world hooked on cocaine.
The tour was great. We were driven round in a little van...
...by the guy who started the tour a few years ago, and his translator guide. She had only been doing the job for a fortnight but had expert knowledge of Pablo and Medellin.
We went to several properties that he built during the '70s and '80s, like 'Monaco' - his first:
All the buildings he built were white (with obvious connotations to the stuff that paid for them!) and in the 'Miami' style, with palm trees and blackened windows.
He moved out of 'Monaco' after the Cali cartel blew up a car outside it, killing two of his security guards and leaving his daughter with partial deafness. That was the first strike in a war between the Medellin and Cali cartels that went on for several years and reached its nadir between 1989 and 1991, when there were car bombs and assassinations on a daily basis.
We also saw some of his planes that were used to transport the drugs overseas, and visited the house where he was finally captured and killed - as he tried to escape across a roof:
In the picture are members of the FBI who helped the Colombians to finally capture El Patron.
Some of the stories we heard were bizarre. When one of the cartel was killed, his mates used to drive the corpse around the city, taking it to strip clubs and fancy restaurants - to give him a happy send-off... He also once offered to pay off Colombia's national debt, but only if the police decriminalised his operations.
We ended the tour with a visit to his grave:
After the tour, I took a trip to the botanical gardens but forgot that most tourist attractions close on Mondays. Gah! But there was a mini garden outside, that I took a few snaps in:
That night, Paul (a Manc) and I got a nightbus to Cartagena. The bus itself was pretty good. Comfy seats, fairly new, no strange smells and quite a smooth ride.
All good, except I happened to have a seat that kept righting itself to the normal sitting position once I'd put it back to recline. So I spent the night being blasted by freezing air from a broken airvent above me, while constantly having to move my seat back. I've had better journeys cramped up in a National Express.
After that, and with a heavy cold (brought on my an evil combination of multiple nights out followed by air-conditioned bus torture), I got to Cartagena, checked into my hostel and went straight out for something to eat.
If there was a doctor to administer a cure for a bad night's sleep and a flu-y head, and he was looking at a restaurant menu, this would be just what the doctor ordered:
Since that first day, I've spent the days lazily wandering around Cartagena in the scorching (32-35 degree) heat, doing very little and trying to get over this bug that I have. My first hostel had really surly staff, no comfy rest areas and was expensive. It looked pretty though:
After a couple of days, I was wandering through a slightly more rough-and-ready area of the city called Getsemani and came across the Media Luna hostel. It has a pool (woohoo!), is housed in a beautiful old building and has little things that elevate it above a lot of other hostels: air-con in the internet/TV room, a massive kitchen, a great roof terrace to watch the sunset:
I moved in.
Once a week, that roof terrace plays host to a big party. A few of us went along this week and had a good night. At one point we were accosted by a group of camera-toting Chileans:
The party normally ends about 4am, but at 2am the music was turned off and we were ushered out. It turns out that some guy had fallen off the wall of the terrace and smashed through the tiled roof of the hostel next door. His weight took him through the floor below, and he ended up landing on a bed. Here's the evidence:
A night on the tiles turning into a night through the tiles.
BOOM BOOM.
And Cartagena itself? It's stunning. I've been to places with similar architecture, particularly in Spain and Portugal, but this place has street after street after street of perfectly-preserved houses, shops, museums and plazas:
The film itself, starring the eternally pouting Natalie Portman, was great. The only strange thing was that the projectionist (if such a word exists) was having problems with the reel, and the sound kept going weird. I felt a bit sorry for the organisers as the audience groaned after the screen temporarily went blank for a second time.
Today I'm going to probably watch one or two more low-key films, might try and watch a bit of Premier League football on TV, sit by the pool for a bit, eat some good food. That's the kind of day you take sabbaticals for.
And tomorrow Gerard (Australian) and I leave for Santa Marta, and specifically Tiganga, up on the coast. We will have a night there before doing a 5-day trek to the Lost City (Ciudad de Perdida) up in the Sierra Nevada next week.
So I'm not sure when the next post will be, but in the meantime here's a few more pics from the past few days:
I've just quietly fumed through about 17 unsuccessful attempts to buy a plane ticket online. On the 18th time, the purchase was made. I hate those situations where you've entered your credit card details, pressed 'pay' and then the page hangs for eternity as you sit there, pleading with the Internet God* to make it work.
When it finally did work I felt like leaning forward and kissing the monitor. But I'm in a room with three other guys, and they might have thought I was weird.
The flight I booked is from Bogota to Quito for next weekend. Earlier I booked another flight from Santa Marta to Bogota, so now my route out of Colombia is sorted.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. What has been happening since my last post?
I followed in the footsteps of the world's biggest drugs baron, ate enough barbequed food to feed a small country, got blasted by freezing air-con for 14 hours, did too much partying, and got the lurgy.
Sunday night was my final night in Medellin, and the hostel put on a fantastic BBQ:
I ate so much meat that I probably wasn't far off the onset of gout. Pork chunks, chicken legs, different types of chorizo, amazing steak, plus onions, salads, fried bananas, cheese and potatoes. Bleurgh. But good bleurgh.
The following day, a group of four of us went on a Pablo Escobar tour. Pablo, or El Patron - as he was nicknamed in his heyday - was named Forbes' seventh richest man in the world in 1989. He also enjoyed shooting policemen, building ostentatious buildings and getting the world hooked on cocaine.
The tour was great. We were driven round in a little van...
...by the guy who started the tour a few years ago, and his translator guide. She had only been doing the job for a fortnight but had expert knowledge of Pablo and Medellin.
We went to several properties that he built during the '70s and '80s, like 'Monaco' - his first:
All the buildings he built were white (with obvious connotations to the stuff that paid for them!) and in the 'Miami' style, with palm trees and blackened windows.
He moved out of 'Monaco' after the Cali cartel blew up a car outside it, killing two of his security guards and leaving his daughter with partial deafness. That was the first strike in a war between the Medellin and Cali cartels that went on for several years and reached its nadir between 1989 and 1991, when there were car bombs and assassinations on a daily basis.
We also saw some of his planes that were used to transport the drugs overseas, and visited the house where he was finally captured and killed - as he tried to escape across a roof:
In the picture are members of the FBI who helped the Colombians to finally capture El Patron.
Some of the stories we heard were bizarre. When one of the cartel was killed, his mates used to drive the corpse around the city, taking it to strip clubs and fancy restaurants - to give him a happy send-off... He also once offered to pay off Colombia's national debt, but only if the police decriminalised his operations.
We ended the tour with a visit to his grave:
After the tour, I took a trip to the botanical gardens but forgot that most tourist attractions close on Mondays. Gah! But there was a mini garden outside, that I took a few snaps in:
That night, Paul (a Manc) and I got a nightbus to Cartagena. The bus itself was pretty good. Comfy seats, fairly new, no strange smells and quite a smooth ride.
All good, except I happened to have a seat that kept righting itself to the normal sitting position once I'd put it back to recline. So I spent the night being blasted by freezing air from a broken airvent above me, while constantly having to move my seat back. I've had better journeys cramped up in a National Express.
After that, and with a heavy cold (brought on my an evil combination of multiple nights out followed by air-conditioned bus torture), I got to Cartagena, checked into my hostel and went straight out for something to eat.
If there was a doctor to administer a cure for a bad night's sleep and a flu-y head, and he was looking at a restaurant menu, this would be just what the doctor ordered:
Since that first day, I've spent the days lazily wandering around Cartagena in the scorching (32-35 degree) heat, doing very little and trying to get over this bug that I have. My first hostel had really surly staff, no comfy rest areas and was expensive. It looked pretty though:
After a couple of days, I was wandering through a slightly more rough-and-ready area of the city called Getsemani and came across the Media Luna hostel. It has a pool (woohoo!), is housed in a beautiful old building and has little things that elevate it above a lot of other hostels: air-con in the internet/TV room, a massive kitchen, a great roof terrace to watch the sunset:
I moved in.
Once a week, that roof terrace plays host to a big party. A few of us went along this week and had a good night. At one point we were accosted by a group of camera-toting Chileans:
The party normally ends about 4am, but at 2am the music was turned off and we were ushered out. It turns out that some guy had fallen off the wall of the terrace and smashed through the tiled roof of the hostel next door. His weight took him through the floor below, and he ended up landing on a bed. Here's the evidence:
A night on the tiles turning into a night through the tiles.
BOOM BOOM.
And Cartagena itself? It's stunning. I've been to places with similar architecture, particularly in Spain and Portugal, but this place has street after street after street of perfectly-preserved houses, shops, museums and plazas:
My visit has also coincided with the 51st International Film Festival of Cartagena Des Indias (to give it its full title). This movie bash is Latin America's biggest, and one of the biggest in the world.
Last night, Sarah (American) and I went to see Black Swan, or El Cisne Negro, at the big convention centre. We had the full red carpet treatment as we went in and were given special Black Swan glasses to pose in...
Today I'm going to probably watch one or two more low-key films, might try and watch a bit of Premier League football on TV, sit by the pool for a bit, eat some good food. That's the kind of day you take sabbaticals for.
And tomorrow Gerard (Australian) and I leave for Santa Marta, and specifically Tiganga, up on the coast. We will have a night there before doing a 5-day trek to the Lost City (Ciudad de Perdida) up in the Sierra Nevada next week.
So I'm not sure when the next post will be, but in the meantime here's a few more pics from the past few days:
 |
| Cat chilling at the hostel in Medellin |
 |
| Graffiti on the Escobar tour |
 |
| Spaceship lands in Medellin |
 | |
| Cartagena |
 |
| Pigeon shitting on sculpture, Cartagena |
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| Yet another attractive plaza, Cartagena |
*presumably this position is currently held by Mark Zuckerberg.