Photo of the Day: Bullfight

From Bullfighting in Medellin

brutal, brutal sport, but there is quite a bit of beauty in it also. This shot was from Medellin, Colombia

Photo of the Day: Bullfight almost-goring

From Bullfighting in Medellin

Picture of the Week: Bullfight in Columbia

From Bullfighting in Medellin

Sorry about the quality of this picture. This was early on my trip and I really had no idea how to work my camera. On this one, the bullfight was inside at night with poor lighting and that's why it looks so off.

In another fit of travel luck, we ran into a local Columbian lawyer who was a huge bullfight fan. He took us under his wing for the entire evening, including the post-fight party, and instructed us on the ins and outs of bullfighter.

This guy was the top ranked bullfighter in the world. He was fantastic fighter, but got a little close to this energetic bull and almost got gored. This pic looks like he's gotten the horns, but in fact he was riding on the bull's head and holding on to the horns to avoid getting gored. He threw himself off after about 10 seconds. It was wild.

The Sailboat Blog

The sailboat trip is just going to be one of those stories that desperately needs an editor in order to organize it into coherently. It’s a book story – too long for a blog – but enough people have asked after seeing the photos and video on Facebook, so I’m going to take a whack at it. I apologize in advance for this rough draft, but I think you will get the gist from it – and you should be planning on buying the book anyway.

If it ever gets published. Someone please find me an agent and/or publisher – I pay back personal favors in excellent wine.

My effort to circumnavigate the globe without leaving the ground almost ran aground before I left Central America. If and when you decide to go off on one of these personal odysseys, I suggest doing just a little bit of research before you set out. I, alas, hadn’t really done much of any research before I hit the road, as planning is not one of my fortes.

I had bought the Lonely Planet “Central America on a Shoestring” guide before I left (and also the South American one – I was the envy of the backpacker circuit in Panama and in much demand in the hostels for my South American guidebook). Ahhhh, but that I’d actually read any of the guidebooks before I left home.

I’d seen some TV special about some guy that took a motorcycle trip from Seattle to the tip of South America a few months before I left. Of course, the reason he was on TV was that he only made it overland to Columbia, got kidnapped there and spent two years in captivity before he was set free, but I ignored that part while I watched. I’d heard the Pan-American Highway went from Mexico to the bottom of Chile. I didn’t see this guy’s whole interview, but if he was on motorcycle, didn’t the road have to make it at least to Columbia? After all, he had got kidnapped there. Hell, I’d traveled on the Pan-American for a bit last year, when I went to Nicaragua. That highway, though a bit rough, had to go all the way where I needed to go.

I’d never heard (or read, obviously) of the Darien Gap.

The Pan-American does indeed run from Mexico to almost the bottom of Chile. . . except for a stretch south of Panama City to the Columbia border, called the Darien Gap. It is one of the wildest places on the planet – often compared to the Amazon or parts of New Guinea in that regard. There are no roads through it at all. You can partly explore it if you can find a good local guide that can take you via small canoe some of the rivers in the area.

Finding a guide and navigating the area is only a part of the problem. The bigger parts was whether you are willing to take the risk of dealing with hostile natives, narco-terrorists and members of FARC, the famous Columbian opposition terrorist group, who hides out in the Gap and also in southeastern Columbia. It’s a bad, bad place.

I was flipping through my guidebook somewhere in Honduras or so when I came upon this quandary. In most aspects, guidebooks will go out of their way to caution you about a certain route (“talk to locals, but it might be best to take day-time buses in this area, instead of going by night,” or “certain parts of town can be inhospitable – make sure to check with your hostel before you set out,” and so on).

The book was a bit more blunt for the Darien Gap, where I paraphrase, but the advice was pretty much “you are a gringo. If you go there, you will die. Find another route.”

Message received.

I did later hear a story about a gringo who spoke perfect Latin Spanish that made it through the gap by painting his entire body with the excretion from a local plant, which made his skin color appear to be similar to the natives living there. Although it surely would have been a good story for the book – and body paint does not scare me – I didn’t have time or the aptitude to learn Spanish.

Fortunately the guidebook said that there were plenty of sailboats that did a 5-day crossing from small ports just south of Colon, Panama (the entrance port to the Panama Canal on the Caribbean side) to Cartegena, Columbia. I had looked at the section on Columbia – at this point, I was beginning to realize some advance examination of places I was about to go to was a good idea – and Cartegena sounded like a fabulous place to visit. The guidebook said to check with fellow travelers and at the hostels for specific sailboats, because some boats (and captains) were maintained better than others and the local information would be more up to date than anything they suggested.

I was staying at Luna’s Castle in Panama City and talked to them about booking passage. They quickly shot down the idea of going to Cartegena. According to them, no sailboats were making the crossing, because the prevailing winds were blowing in the wrong direction and the open seas were too rough. They did know of one boat that might be leaving in two days to sail down the coast of Panama and to a port just over the Panama/Columbia border, but then you’d have to take some sort of ferry across a large bay to Turbo, which is on the mainland side of Columbia – and then a 14-hour bus to Cartegena.

MAPPPPPp

I had no option. I had to get to Columbia and this boat was the only way there, except for the flight option, which was certainly out of the question this shortly into the trip.

They called the captain for me and reserved a spot for me on the boat. My travel friend, Linda, was on the other side of Panama, but she wanted a spot also, so we booked her up as well. Captain Marcus said to call in the afternoon the next day, so that he could tell me if they were playing on leaving the day after that or had to postpone for another day. When I called him as scheduled, he said we were going to leave the next day and that I should either meet him at noon at the departure dock or a couple hours earlier in Colon, where he was going to buy groceries before we took off.

I hopped on the train (my first on the trip – and a disappointment) from Panama City to Colon, met Linda there, and then we called Captain Marcus to come pick us up. When he showed up, he told us that he wasn’t going to captain this trip, but his trusted assistant was going to take charge. His trusted assistant’s wife was also going to join us and do all of the cooking. He said the boat slept eight and that there were only six people booked. The first night of sailing was going to be the only long sail – 12 hours – because the boat had just been in for repairs and was docked a little further north than usual.

No worries though, said Captain Marcus, the first night was the only night we had to sleep on the boat and after that, we’d be anchored at deserted islands every night and the boat had plenty of tents to camp out on the beaches under the stars.

I’ll break in at this point to ruin some of the suspense that I might apparently be trying to build up – I did have a good time on the trip. Don’t get me wrong, there are some downsides I’m going to be discussing in a bit, but all in all, the trip was pretty good. That being said, as I read the above paragraphs and remember the conversation with Captain Marcus, I can make this travel generalization: we are all willing to suspend disbelief in the effort to convince ourselves that everything is going to be great – even when confronted with obvious warning flags that should indicate otherwise.

After we stopped at the store to do the shopping for all the food and provisions for the eight of us (six passengers and the alternate captain and his wife) would need on the five day trip, Captain Marcus got a call on his cell that went something like this for my ears:

“Yes, this is Marcus.”
“Sure we have room on the boat. How many?”
“When can you get here?”
“OK. No problems.”
“Yes, that is plenty of time. We will wait for you.”

He turned to us and said, “Well, this is great. There are three other guys that are joining in on the trip. That means that everyone’s share for the groceries is going to be less. Great news!”

I’ll never be able to be a salesperson, for a few reasons. (1) I don’t like people nearly enough (2) I don’t suffer fools gladly -- though in this story, I am he -- and (3) I can make pretty darn good literal lemonade, but don’t do as well with the proverbial version when presented with the lemons of life. Captain Marcus? Lemonade, with an intoxicating kick.

Less cost for us? Yes. Then again, we had bought food for eight people. Now there were eleven (twelve actually, Captain Marcus forgot to mention that the alternate captain and wife were also bringing their kid). More importantly, the boat was supposed to sleep eight. We now had nine (the captain, his wife and the kid were going to sleep on deck or ashore, according to Captain Marcus).

Though Captain Marcus made it clear to us, “those guys booked last. All of you six get a bunk. One of them is going to have to get a spot on the floor the first night. But no worries, after that, everyone can sleep on shore in the tents. It will be great.”

I do admire salesmen.

Right after we finished shopping, we randomly ran into a passenger on his way to meet us at the sailboat. It was a guy named Garret from Montana and we was waiting at a bus stop right outside the store. He’d called in just that morning from Panama City to see if there was an opening (he was the 6th) and rushed over from Panama City.

Captain Marcus and three French passengers got into his pickup truck with all the groceries and headed to the boat. Garret, Linda, and I waited on the bus, caught it and 30 minutes later, we were at the tiny port town also.

The sailboat was named the Ailsa Craig. I actually had seen the Ailsa Craig. I was the only one on the boat, including its owner, who had seen it (Captain Marcus had bought the boat from a Scotsman a while back). It’s a small island made of granite off the western coast of Scotland, near the famous British Open golf course called Turnburry. On a horribly windy and rainy day at Turnburry some years ago, I shot a smooth 100. For those non-golfers out there, 100 is not good. In fact, it’s really bad. Ailsa Craig is right off shore and the local saying goes something like, “if you can’t see Ailsa Craig, the weather is bad, but wait for a few minutes, its changes all the time.” It didn’t change for me that whole round.

On the other hand, one of my favorite minor sports, and one of the few ones I like in the Winter Olympics, is curling – and every curling stone is made from stone quarried from Ailsa Craig. So the omens weren’t all bad.

In addition to his sailboat, Captain Marcus owned a small restaurant and hostel in the little port town we were leaving from (too small to find on the map, so I'm not sure of the name). An important member of the community. He was a French Canadian guy who seemed pretty excited about a lot of things.

Including cocaine. When we were waiting for his cook to bring us some burgers, he pulled Garret and me aside and said, “You guys do blow?” We looked at each other (we’d just met an hour ago), both shrugged our shoulders and said, “No. Why?”

“Because you can get some of the best cocaine in the world on these San Blas islands you guys are going to be sailing through. Straight up from Columbia. Pure. Very pure stuff. I’ve had clients before that have bought it in many places around the world, but they say the coke here is the best they’ve ever had. Little old local ladies will sell it to you, cheap, when you pull into some of the small local towns. Now look, if you want to use it – or smoke some good weed – you can get that there also – that’s perfectly fine by me, but do it on shore. Don’t do it on the boat, OK?”

Garret and I looked at each other and had one of those moments were you know exactly what the other person is thinking, the exact words forming in their head – what the hell was up with this guy? We turned back to him, nodded and told him, “Sure. Nothing on the boat. Cool.”

The last three guys showed up a couple hours later and we were ready to cast off. Captain Marcus had taken all of our backpacks down to the dock and he and the alternate captain had loaded them on board, along with all the groceries and the beer and booze that we bought here in port, once we realized we hadn’t gotten enough at the grocery store.

The three new guys were all Brits that were traveling separately, but met up on the road and were going the same way for a while. Rob had done South America before for a few months and had some great stories about things we needed to see in some of those countries – including the Columbian women. He’d apparently had a Columbian girlfriend for some months when he was down there. I didn’t think too much of it then, but a couple weeks later, I was really envious. His original travel plan was to take a Land Rover from London to Capetown with a friend of his, but his friend’s mother got ill and had to cancel. Rob sold the Land Rover and flew off to Central America for a while.

Adam was a great, great guy with horrible taste in music. I say that not because I thought he had horrible musical taste – we let him plug his iPod into a boom box on board and play his music a few times – and the resulting opinion of his music was unanimous. Mark was a few years older than those two and was on a trip from the U.S. to the tip of South America over about a year.

There was also a nice French couple whose names I never really did get – nor apparently did any of the English speakers get them either. I didn’t notice until someone else mentioned it on about day three of the cruise, but the two of them pretty much just stayed drunk the entire time. It was hard to tell, because they kept to themselves and were very quiet, but once someone mentioned it to me, I did notice that they always had a bottle of rum handy. Fredrick was another French guy on the trip. He was. . .well, he proved over six days to be excitable, unstable and perhaps a bit off his rocker. He was a truck driver back in France that spoke some English, just enough to confuse the heck out of you. From piecing together conversations he had with some of the others, I think at one point he was in the military and had done a lot of traveling in South America and Asia over the years. Or not. It was hard to tell.

Garret was a very cool guy from Montana. By far he was the one that pitched in and helped the most on the boat. Every time the anchor needed to be hauled up (the winch didn’t work), he volunteered. I helped him a few times with that chore and I can say with utmost conviction that I am a weak-ass mo’fo. He also ended up being the one that helped the most with trimming the sails, when the captain needed some help. In a short life, he’d done a lot of stuff – college degree in photojournalism, been on a fishing boat in Alaska, and he was currently a firefighter in the summer – one of the guys they send into the big forest fires for days at a time. He was thinking about doing the training to become a fire jumper, one of those guys they parachute into forest fires. He was meeting his brother, who was teaching in Ecuador, and trying out the surf in a variety of spots along the way.

Linda was one of the many Dutch that I’ve met so far on this trip. For a small little country of 18 million or so, they sure do travel a lot. I’ve certainly met more Dutch than Americans on the hostel circuit, which doesn’t speak very well of our traveling habits, in my book. She was taking six or so months to go through Central America and the northern part of South America. She’d actually run into Garret a week or so before in Panama and they had some mutual travel friends as a result.

So we piled all of our stuff in the Zodiac dingy and made multiple runs out to the sailboat to drop everything off. In the midst of this, I actually recall turning to Garret and Linda (who had already told me, a number of times, that she had a very weak stomach) and said, “Damn, I’m excited about this trip. I think it’s going to be great.”

Right about then, in the secluded harbor where the boat was anchored, I noticed that the winds were quite strong for such a sheltered place. I wondered for just a brief moment if that would make the open water a bit rough. Instead -- no shit -- I turned and said to them, “Feel that? Good sailing weather.”

I’m an idiot.

So we cast off around sundown on the first day for a scheduled twelve-hour, all-night sail. The boat was being powered along by motor to start with and all of us nine passengers spread out on deck to enjoy the ride. Between the Brits and Garret and I, we had probably bought about six cases of Panamian beer, Balboa. Good stuff. In the excitement at the beginning of a new adventure and in spirit of us conquering the sea, we decided that it was appropriate to start drinking right away.

The Brits and Garret and I spread out on the deck in the front of the boat. The sail was not unfurled; we were traveling on the motor. As soon as we left the harbor, the alternate captain headed directly into the incoming waves and we headed out to the Caribbean.

The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.



The boat was pitching back and forth as it hit the waves. I am horrible about judging wave height, but I would say there were four to six foot waves. In any case, big enough that you had to hold on to not get thrown around, or perhaps thrown off. We would hit a wave dead-on and spray would come up over the bow and drench the five of us up on the deck. We all thought it was a great adventure – conquering the sea, whilst stumbling up to the cooler tied down on the right side of the deck to get more beers. Linda and the French were down in the cabin or back at the rear of the boat near the captain, since that area was a bit protected from the elements.

Our group, manly bravado lasted about two hours. By then we were completely drenched. The sun had gone down and it wasn’t cold by any means, but it was a bit chilly, seeing as we were soaked. And it started raining on top of that. Most of the group went into the cabin. I took a seat under a tarp the captain had put up that covered a couple feet on the back side of the cabin.

We obviously weren’t making much progress at all. And the weather wasn’t letting up, in fact, it was getting a little rougher over time. Captain Ulysses told us that we were going to turn back, cast anchor back in the harbor, and get started around dawn the next day and make the long run all day.

That’s right. The alternate captain was a native Panamanian named Ulysses. No joke. After day one of sailing, I was just hoping that wasn’t going to be prophetic. I didn’t have time to wander the world for a decade – though I’m sure it would make for a classic book. I am thinking of a title. . .

The problem with going back was the bunk situation. Captain Ulysses, his wife and their kid go into the Kodiac dingy after we anchored up and motored off to shore to their house. The nine of us were left on board in a boat that frankly should not have slept more than four.

The bunking arraignments were as follows: the French couple got the cabin in front, since they were the only couple. That room had the only bed that could be considered a real one. There were two couches in the cabin and a table between them. One of the couches was a reasonable bunk; it was about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide. The other couch was curved, so you had to sleep in a “C” formation. In any case, both of those spots were OK. The Brits claimed those two spots between the three of them – the 3rd person (the loser in a game of rock, paper, scissors, which was pretty amusing), took some cushions and slept on the floor under the table. Then in the rear of the cabin there were two bunks that you crawled into on each side of the ladder that went back up to the deck. Both of these could be thought of most accurately as coffin beds. They were of a reasonable size, about 7 feet by 3 feet or so, but the ceiling and walls were right there. Once you were lying down, the ceiling was about 2 feet over your head. And both bunks were in the same area as the motor, so the smell back there was awful. Garret took one of those and Linda took the other.

Fredrick and I took the two bunks at the top of the stairs. There was a small enclosed area at the top of the stairs, before you exited to the open air of the back deck area. On each side of the stairs, there was a small area with a cushion on top of the fiberglass. Each was about 5 feet by 2 feet, so you couldn’t fully stretch out when you slept. And though this part of the equation didn’t matter on the first night, its important to mention that Fredrick shared that uniquely French trait (not all French, don’t get me wrong – on this trip itself, the French couple didn’t share this trait -- but I have run into more French of this trait than any other country) of never using deodorant. None of us were able to shower on this trip, but at the risk of offending any French readers of this blog, there was no one that smelled anything like Fredrick by the end of the trip. It was an indescribable odor.

Everyone was supposed to pitch in and help on the trip and I volunteered to cook dinner the first night. A basic spicy penne pasta with sausage. The kitchen was – well it was a bit sparse, even by a small boat’s standards. The pot and pan (yes, one of each) hadn’t been cleaned in quite a while. The single knife was covered with rust. Garret volunteered, as usual, to try to watch them off and scrape the rust off all of all of them, in an attempt to make them somewhat safe to use. An hour or so later, we had heaps of Italian food to chow down on. After the travails of the late afternoon and evening, it was a good way to finish the night.

The next morning, we got started around 7 a.m. for the 10-12 hour trip south to the Kuna capital of Porvenier. The Kuna are the indigenous group that live on the San Blas islands on the Panamanian mainland adjacent to the islands. The government of Panama pretty much lets the Kuna govern themselves, which probably helps explain why Captain Marcus was able to easily buy cocaine there. A few years ago, the Kuna kicked out all foreigners from the San Blas islands and prohibited any non-Kuna from owning property there. The woman are also famous for wearing quite colorful garb, including some wild leg wrappings. One of the other interesting things about how the Kuna live is that they pile their houses one on top of another on the few islands that they inhabit. The small inhabited islands have homes right up next to each other, with very little space in between. Of the 357 or so islands in the San Blas, the Kuna occupy about 50 of them. The rest of the tiny islands are uninhabited and look exactly like your image of a deserted island – or the island from the Bud Light commercials.

The seas were still rough when we set out that day. We ended up motoring the entire way down to Porvenir, never raising the sail at all (Captain Ulysses was a really nice guy, but I am not sure he was the best sailor in the world). The boat was rocking back and forth less than yesterday, but the effect on everyone was less than favorable.

For most of the day, Garret and I sat out on the front deck. Linda was in the cabin the entire day, throwing up with some regularity in the bathroom down there. The French couple spent most of the day in their room downstairs, though I think both of them threw up overboard a couple of times. The Brits likewise were downstairs almost all of the day.

By the afternoon, the stench of the cabin was beyond horrible. The air was completely stale down there, because we had to keep the windows closed, due to the spray of the water. I went inside exactly one time that day, to check on how everyone was doing down there. Bad, bad decision.

I didn’t know this about myself before then, but I apparently have a really developed sense of smell. I do not get seasick. I verified this not too long ago on a six-hour ferry ride from Venice to Croatia in very rough seas, where fully half the 100 passengers on board throw up the entire trip over. I didn’t even get queasy. In fact, the last time I threw up for any reason whatsoever was 23 years ago, my freshman year in college. Fall semester in my condo. The last time I was able to drink tequila. Ever since then, I have not been able to get it close enough to my mouth to drink it, because the smell of it makes me want to wretch.

Perhaps that should have been a clue on my sense of smell.

I went down to check on everyone mid-afternoon. I made it downstairs. Took about 5-6 breaths of “air” down there. Came back up on deck. And promptly threw up over the side of the boat. Twenty-three years of a solid stomach down the tubes.

That night we got to Porvenier, cast anchor, and went ashore to one of the islands to have dinner at one of Ulysses’ friend’s house. Ernesto was a wonderful Kuna guy who spoke excellent English, because he had worked for a number of years in Panama City (and hated it). This dinner was the first time he allowed any of Ulysses’ passengers to come to dinner at his house. Per his request, we each pitched in $1 to buy our food. He and his wife then proceeded to cook and immense amount of fish. We all feasted – filling up our recently emptied stomachs. It was such a fabulous night. Ernesto gave us a tour of his hut, which slept 14 people. It was built for $550, which is a considerable amount of money here. He was obviously, and justifiably, proud of it; he was the patriarch and ruler of this domain. Thatched roof. One big room. Hammocks for everyone, except him and his wife, who had a bed in side closest to the water.

Linda and Mark stayed ashore that night, along with Ulysses, his wife and their kid, so there was more room on the boat that night to sleep. I ended up sleeping on the deck for most of the night, so I could stretch out a bit. And a romance was born ashore that evening. Ulysses was hilarious on the boat the next morning: "Ummmmm. Those two were very loud last night," smiling broadly and pointing to Mark and Linda.

The next couple of days were basically the same: we would sail for 6-8 hours, drop anchor at some deserted island, swim, snorkel, cook out, laze around in the sun. And get up the next day, move along and do the same thing again. It was a nice and peaceful rhythm and the weather was great after the first couple days.

As Captain Ulysses manned the wheel, he would also simultaneously fish off the back of the boat. He had a spool of fishing line and a lure tied up to the end. He'd just hold the spool in his hand, let the line out, then troll. He caught about six fish on the 2nd to last day, to add to our dinner. Good stuff.

One day we stopped at a larger Kuna island to buy some more supplies (most importantly, we’d run out of beer and liquor). We walked around town for a bit, being trailed the entire time with dozens of children that wanted us to take their pictures and show them what they looked like in the LCD display. It was quite endearing. We ate lunch there and bought some really good bread and also some beer. There was only one kind of beer available in this incredibly-off-the-map place. Not Balboa, the Panamanian beer made a few hundred miles away, but Old Milwaukee.

Come this far, and I have to drink one of the worst beers in the world. I don’t even know if I can buy Old Milwaukee in Fayetteville, Arkansas anymore. But that is your only choice in San Blas islands.

We had a good chuckle about our beer plight, but it did lead to a really amusing scene two days later, right before we disembarked, when the Brits played rock, paper, scissors for the last, warm Ole’ Mil’.



On the last day of sailing, we had dolphins follow the boat on and off for a couple hours. Those animals are so amazing to watch in the wild. They would come up on the left side of the boat in a group of 8-12, swim with us for a bit, then jet ahead, make a wide sweeping left hand turn, then come up again and repeat it over and over again.



By the end of the trip – which ended up being seven days and six nights – I was exhausted, and frankly, quite ready to get off the boat. The passengers, with the exception of Fredrick, were great folks. I loved getting to know them and actually ended up traveling with Garret for another week or so in Columbia, but there were just too many people on the sailboat, at least for me. At the end, I was feeling a little stir crazy.

And speaking of crazy, when we finally got to the last little town in Panama, before you went around the corner a couple more coves to get to Columbia, Fredrick the Frenchman went totally and completely around the bend. For the entire trip, the Brits had been egging him on a little bit. A little version of the centuries-old British/French rivalry. There had been a verbal dust-up from Fredrick (initially called “Frenchie” by the Brits behind his back, which evolved to “Napoleon” and finally settled on “Napster” – short for Napoleon) about us eating too much of the food. Then Fredrick yelled at Rob for pissing over the side of the boat, though everyone was doing the same thing for the entire trip.

And lastly, and most crazily, as everyone was packing up their backpacks and hauling them on deck, he walked by Adam and bumped shoulders with him. Adam told him to calm down and that everyone would get off soon enough. Napster apparently misheard him and thought he was telling him to screw off or something like that.

So Napster reached over to the galley and pulled a knife on Adam, waving it in front of him, while yelling at him something along the lines of “I have friends in Bogotá. We will meet in Bogotá and settle this. No respect. No respect.”

It was an appropriately odd and crazy ending to a memorable trip.

Disco night in Medellin

Back to Medellin. On one of the last nights I was there, Scott took us out in the neighborhood we were staying in. Really nice part of town and he lived in the area also, so he knew the spots.

Scott, Garret, Morton and myself, grabbed some good food, and then went to a couple places to get a beer or two. It got to be 1 a.m. or so and Garret and I were about ready to call it a night, when Scott asked if we wanted to go to a local disco, where “the local girls were known to hit on gringos.”

Well we weren’t that tired. Of course we had to go.

The place was called Blue. Not Azul, but Blue. Across the street was the companion bar, Red. I wanted to ask Scott where White was.

We walked it and it might have been the most crowded place I’d ever been in before. The place was about 200 feet long and about 40 feet wide, with a bar that took up about 20 feet of that width for most of the bar. If there weren’t 600 people in there, I’d be surprised. Literally people up against each other for almost the entire length of the bar.

The music alternated between U.S. songs from the 80s and native Columbia music. Pretty much about a half-dozen of each straight. Everyone sang along with all of the songs, except us gringos, who had no idea what the hell the Columbia songs were about.

On the other hand, I did belt out the 80s songs at the top of my lungs. Luckily the music was playing so loud, no one could hear my voice.

There were also about five televisions, including one projection TV that were all playing the same thing simultaneously. Endless loops of episodes of the cartoon, “He-Man and Masters of the Universe.” I suppose it fit with the 80s music theme. I felt pretty certain that I’d never see this cartoon again in my life. . . so I think I should subject you to some clips I found on YouTube:





When we walked in, we pushed our way to the bar to order four beers. Right when we got up there, I felt someone’s hand on my left shoulder tugging me forcefully around. Honestly, my first thought was that we were all about to get in a fight. Given that I had three pretty big guys to cower behind and I’d been drinking all night, I wasn’t nearly as much a coward as I usually would have been.

I turn around and there is this little Columbian girl who is obviously asking me to dance. Well, not asking, basically pulling me out to the dance floor to dance with her and her friends. I figured “what the hell” and went on out there and jumped around like an idiot.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of Columbia’s most beautiful examples of the female form – and damn, there are many, many of those around. But she was cute and apparently thought I was too – and frankly, there is a lot to be said for that sentiment.

And she spoke not a word of English. As I basically speak about 10 words of Spanish, this was going to be interesting. We danced/jumped around for a while. She introduced herself as Martina. I managed to introduce myself back in Spanish and I told her that I only spoke a little Spanish.

And I told her that about fifteen times in the next hour or so. “Me hablo un poco espansol.” Or however your spell that properly. “Me no say.” And so on. I don’t have many ways to say that I don’t understand, but I was pulling them all out as fast as I could.

She kept chattering. Non-stop. It was actually sort of amazing. I know that she understood that I didn’t speak Spanish, but she kept trying. And kept trying. As if repetition would somehow soak through my beer addled brain and reach understanding.

It didn’t.

She sign languaged some heart shaped thing and pointed to her friends making out. Was she saying that her friends were in love or that she was into me? Hell if I knew. She kept pointing to her girl friend and saying “me amiga” something. I got that. That was her friend. What else she was saying was totally beyond me.

At about 2:00 the other guys were ready to go. I stuck around for about 15-20 more minutes and then said I was leaving, in pidgin-Spanish. “Me salida.” “Me vamos.” Sign language of me walking out the door. She kept nodding. I figured I had explained myself as well as I could and proceeded to walk out.

She followed me out. Unexpected. She was cute. And I needed to answer question #5 on my going-away survey at some point. This seemed like a reasonable time.

My hostel was about six blocks away, so I started walking. She was walking along with me. . . and continued to chatter non-stop in Spanish the entire way. I think I understood that she had lived most of her life in Medellin, but spent a few years on Bogotá. A few more things about her amiga back at the bar that I didn’t understand. Ok, whatever.

We got my hostel. I said, “me casa” and made the hand motion that I was going ot walk in. I got the nod. I go up to the front door, ring the bell, the guy buzzes open the door. . . and she’s still standing out on the sidewalk by the road. I’ve been confused for the last two hours, but no so more than now. I walked back out and said this was my place. She nodded and started talking about her amiga and pointing back to the bar area.

I think I understood. She was just walking me home. Sort of the reverse on the Southern gentleman thing. She had to go back and meet her friends at the bar. It was late. Frankly, and this is probably rude, I didn’t care. I did the kiss on both cheek thing, adios and waved goodbye as I walked into my hostel and soon crashed for a solid eight hours.

When I told Garret about it the next day, he got a good chuckle at my expense and then told me that his quick Spanish language guidebook had a section on dating. He thought I might want to spend some time on some of the phrases. I took a look and completely cracked up.

I shit you not – here are some of phrases in Garret’s language guidebook:

Normal:

Would you like to do something tonight?
Quieres hacer algo esta noche?

Would you like a drink?
Puedo ofrecerte una copa?

You have a beautiful laugh?
Tienes una risa preciosa?

I like you very much.
Me gustas mucho.

More unusual for a language guide:

Let’s go to bed.
Vamos a la cama.

I want to make love to you.
Quiero hacerte el amor.

I’m not interested.
No estoy interesado.

What star sign are you?
Cual es tu signo del horoscopo?

I won’t do it without protection.
No lo hare sin preservativos.

Beyond classic:

It’s my first time.
Es mi primera vez.

I can’t get it up – sorry.
Lo siento, no puedo levantaria.

Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.
No te preocupes, lo hago yo.

It helps to have a sense of humor.
Ayuda tener un sentido de humor.


Ain’t it the truth, brother? Ain’t it the truth?

Bus from Cali

Feb. 3 – bus from Cali to Popayan

Paul Theroux is one of the great original travel writers and purveyors of railroads around the world. His first travel book was the Great Railway Bazzar about a train trip from London to Japan and back (part of which I will now be attempting, in my revised route – more on that later). He also wrote The Old Patagonian Express about rail travel from Boston to Argentina and most recently redid the route of his original travel book in the recently released Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

Reading his stuff has been an inspiration to me. Dark Star Safari, his account of his overland trip from Cairo to Capetown was one of the inspirations for me to the the same, in reverse. Great Railway Bazzar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star have partly inspired me to want to do the Trans-Siberian railroad. His style of writing can be caustic and quite sarcastic – needless to say, I like it.

But as it relates to my trip, I felt somewhat like the anti-Theroux. He primarily travels by train. So far on this trip, I have been almost exclusively a bus person.

Those are two entirely separate worlds.

Two days ago, I took a bus from Cali, Columbia about three hours south to Popayan. The bus was one of the mini-bus varieties – it had seats for 19 passengers. Six seats on the right, eight on the left, and five in the back row. When we started out in Cali, there were ten people on the bus.

On anything smaller than the big autobuses, the driver stops to pick up anyone along the side of the road that is waiving the bus down for a ride and is heading in the same direction. This is true for cabs you ride in, vans that run shorter routes (colectivos) between towns an hour or two away, these mini-buses, and chicken buses, of course. Basically you just stand by the side of the road and wave down the vehicle and if they have any space for you, they’ll stop and pick you up.

I wrote that last paragraph before I took the bus from Tulcan (at the Columbia/Equador border) to Quito last night. Our large autobus stopped about fifteen times to pick up whomever and whatever. The term “directo” when you ask about your bus is apparently a relative term.

In any case, back to the mini-bus ride from Cali to Popayan. At Cali we had ten passengers on board. As we traveled down the road, we picked up a new passenger here and there, until the bus was full – 19 seats and 19 passengers.

When we slowed down a couple miles later, I thought we must be dropping someone of, but no. Two more guys get on. The guy taking the money and the tickets go up from his seat on the passenger side of the front cabin and gave his seat to one of the guys. He then pulled out a bucket and some sort of cushion, flipped the bucket upside down, plopped it down between the driver and the other guy and bingo – 21st seat on the bus. He then sat on the steps that led up into the bus.

Some of these bus drivers are. . . well. . . insane. This guy certainly feel into that category. The road between Cali and Popayan was almost entirely mountainous and windy. Beautiful scenery. But it was really not a good idea to look at the road ahead of you and just concentrate on views out to the side.

It was a two lane road the entire way. At one point, I noticed us passing an eighteen wheeler. Slowly. Up a hill. Around two big curves (it took that long to pass at this speed). There was literally no way, none, that he could have seen the road that far ahead. It was double yellow the entire way, but then again, those road markings or signs are just suggestions anyway.

Another time we passed another bus on a straight part of the road. I saw, as must the bus driver, that a motorcycle was coming the other direction. No worries – we were a lot bigger than the bike – it drove off to the shoulder of the road and passed us there.

The entire way during this trip I had a song in my head (for those of you on Facebook that have read my 25 random things). The night before, I had read a comment that my friend, Chance, had written on someone’s Facebook page, “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” So needless to say, for the entire ride, I had that Beatles song running in my head.

About two hours into the ride, I finally decided to flip on the Beatles’ White Album in my iPod. I started in about the middle of the 1st album – “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” then “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and then “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”

Almost as soon as that song started up, the bus slowed down, pulled over to the shoulder, and onto the bus came two Columbian military guys with M-16s. It was my first random drug/passport search. These things, like border crossings, are slightly nerve wracking when you don’t speak any Spanish. This one took a little bit – the guy actually did look at everyone’s ID and did search the luggage, a little bit – but in the end, no worries.

“Happiness is a Warm Gun” while getting searched by a Columbian soldier toting an M16?? Sometimes I wonder if you guys believe that any of this stuff actually does happen to me. . . then again, I’m not that good a fiction writer.

Strip Joint Night in Medillin

Medellin is the 2nd largest city in Columbia with about two and a half million people. It is most famous to Americans as the home of the Medellin cartel, the cocaine distribution outfit presided over by Pablo Escobar at its height in the 80s. He was finally killed after a large manhunt in one of the barrios in Medellin in 1993, after a big shootout with Columbian police, aided in the manhunt by U.S. Special Forces. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medellin_cartel)

After the weeklong sailing trip I took from Panama to Columbia, the first town I ended up in here was Medellin. Garret, one the fellow travelers on the sailboat trip, was headed this way also and he knew a couple other guys that were in town: Scott, a Canadian that is teaching here for two years and Morton, a Danish traveler.

On our second night in town, we decided to go get some cheap pizza around the corner and then go get some beers. Since Scott was the semi-local, we let him choose the location for drinks. It had been raining on and off all afternoon and he said that the nightlife scene would be fairly lame until the skies cleared, so he said we should go to the center of the city and just find a pub there for a couple cheap drinks.

We took a cab down there and walked around for a bit in the drizzle. The couple of places that Scott knew have down there weren’t open yet (it was only about 8 p.m.), so as we walked down another street, he said, “over there is a sort of strange strip club that I’ve been to once before. Looks open. What do ya think?” Morton had never been to a strip club in his life – needless to say, that was plenty of reason to go on in and Garret and I pretty much forced Morton into it.

As a side note, I consider myself a bit of a strip club connoisseur – and yes, I can handle the inevitable comments that will generate. In college, one of my good buddie (Ken -- I'm sure he will appreciate being named in this context), dated a stripper for about six months or so. Of course, our regular drinking establishment became her place of employment, as we were friends of one of the regular dancers. We got complimentary VIP cards, didn't have to pay cover, and most of the dancers would sit at our table and talk with us, while they waited to go on stage. Right out of college, I got a job working on Capitol Hill. One of the lobbyists that regularly worked our office was a guy named Jeff Trinca. He needed a Congressional staffer to accompany him to his favorite strip club, a place called Joanna’s, so that he could write the whole thing off as a lobbying expense to one of his clients. (though lobbying me was fairly futile, since I was only a low-level letter writer for the Senator I worked for). So every Friday afternoon, I had a “committee hearing” at about 2 that I needed to attend, assuming I didn’t have any real work to do. I probably went to Joanna’s with Jeff over a 100 times. Jump forward to my living in Fayetteville after law school – the closest bar to the condo that I owned was the strip club in town, about 50 yards from my front door. I made it by for a beer or three a few times a week. In between those regular stops, I’ve managed to survey clubs in a number of different places.

Amusing additional side note -- I had no idea we were going to a strip joint before we went out. When I packed, I pretty much randomly threw five T-shirts into my backpack. I thought all were plain, one color shirts with no writing on them. One of them is a blue T-shirt and I didn't notice it had a small logo on the top left side of the front of the shirt: Scarlet's in New Orleans. Its a strip joint, needless to say.

This was a whole new world from anything I’d experienced before.

The doorman frisked each of us as we entered. We went down into the basement of this building and grabbed a corner table. The place wasn’t too big, probably a capacity of 60 or so and it was pretty packed. The crowd was almost evenly divided between men and women. The reason for that was that it was part-strip club/part-regular dancing place.

Scott had given us the rough outline before we walked in, but it was strange to see it in person. Against the opposite wall from us was a very small stage, about eight feet by eight feet, where the stripper would normally be dancing. About three or four couples were up there dancing what appeared to be the salsa. Traditional Columbia music was blaring from the speakers in the room and couples were dancing, mingling and drinking. If Scott hadn’t told us this was a strip joint, we’d have never known. We drank a couple beers and caught up on all of our respective adventures in Panama. A few songs went by, then the couples exited the stage, some American rock music started up, and out came the stripper from a back room.

Now, the regular people and the stripper alternating on the stage was certainly a new experience for me, but about two minutes after the stripper took the stage, the music abruptly stopped, the lights came on, and the stripper quickly exited the stage and took a seat at a table next to the stage.

And down the stairs came a dozen policemen and women.

Now we were in new territory. First time I’ve ever been in the middle of a police raid.

Initially, we thought that the cops were there to arrest someone specifically. It looked like they went right up to one particular guy, and he stood up, turned around, and put his hands over his head. I said, “Morton, how cool is this? We get to see an arrest and you get your first strip club experience.”

But it turned out that this guy apparently had just gone through this drill before. The cops frisked him and he sat down. They then proceeded to frisk everyone in the bar, including the wait staff and bartender. . .except for us, the only four gringos in there. One of the cops came over to us while the frisking was going on elsewhere in the room and asked us for some identification in Spanish. Scott translated for us and he was the only one with any form of ID on him. He explained that he was living in town and the other three of us were just in town for a couple days. The cop just nodded and waved us off, in the unmistakable sign language that they didn’t care about us.

I’m getting pretty good at the sort of ¾ sign language, ¼ facial expression and the occasionally-understood-Spanish-word thing.

The cops finished their searches, didn’t arrest anyone, and then all trooped back up the stairs and left. We asked our waitress what they were looking for and she said she had no idea, though you could tell from her expression that this wasn’t her first time to be on the receiving end of a female officer frisking her on the job. One of the busboys came up to gather up our empty beers and said they were looking for guns or drugs. Seemed like a reasonable explanation.

And with that, the stripper got back up from her chair, retook the stage, the lights dimmed and she went back to work. Two songs and then she left the stage and went table to table to ask for tips from the audience (again, Scott explained the protocol to us). We each threw in 500 Columbian pesos or so – the current exchange rate is about 2000 pesos per U.S. dollar – when she came by. Then the local music started up again and the couples went back up on stage.

The whole thing was a bit surreal.

O’, but we weren’t done yet.

We left that place and caught a cab to a different part of town. The cabbie didn’t understand where Scott wanted him to drop us off and rather than try to explain it to him, we decided to get out near a local casino and ATM location, since Garret needed to get some cash (and I wanted to see if there was poker at the casino). Garret got his money and I verified there was a game I could play in the next night and Scott said, “Well, there is this other, very popular strip joint around the corner.”

At this point, Morton had gone from reluctant participant to avid fan. The rest of us felt like we sort of owed him another place, since he had been quizzing us about American strip joints and how they opporated ever since we walked out of the last one.

The second place was more ‘normal’ in most aspects: there were a lot of strippers milling about, very few couples in the crowd, fog machine, strobe lights, much bigger room and in the middle of the room, a 15-20 foot long glass stage, held up about four feet off the ground. It was about four or five feet wide and on each end there was a traditional stripper pole, but the two poles were connected to each other with a metal, ladder-like thing and there were two ropes also strung lengthwise on the outside of the ladder.

More about that later.

I say this strip club was more normal than the last one, but there was one rather large caveat to that proclamation – it was also a whorehouse.

Scott had never been to this place before, but some of his fellow gringo teachers had filled him in on the basic details. The strippers also turned tricks after dancing in some private rooms behind the bar area. According to his friends, the going rate was anywhere between $80,000 and $100,000 Columbian pesos ($40 to $50 U.S. dollars).

A couple interesting things about Columbia in this regard: (1) supposedly the highest per capita rate of plastic surgery of any country in the world – though Venezuela also claims that distinction, (2) I saw a lot of prostitutes in Panama as well and almost all of them were Columbian, according to the locals I was hanging with, and (3) apparently there is much less societal stigma about prostitution here – according to Scott, a good number of the prostitutes are just university students who do it occasionally for a little side money.

Looking around, I think I think one and three were probably true. About 80% of the women were artificially enhanced, though that’s pretty normal in strip joints in the States also, and although it did look like there was a fair number ‘professional’ working girls dancing, there were also a fair number that didn’t look like pros.

So we settled in and ordered our expensive strip joint beers -- $5,000 pesos each. Damn. Two dollars and fifty cents each. Two drink minimum. Jeez.

And out came the first dancer, and I shit you not. . . well, check that.

I’ve said for a long time that I want to make a CD called “Strip Joint Hits.” If you’ve watched any late night TV, you’ve seen the advertisements for CDs like “Mob Hits” and other themed typed CDs. There is a certain type of music that is played almost universally in strip joints, alternating between urban/rap/dance stuff and more classic, heavy metal stuff. I’m not a huge fan of the former, but “Love in an Elevator” by Aerosmith makes my “Strip Joint Hits,” as does “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Motley Crew, “Hot for Teacher” by Van Halen, and some good 80s type stuff, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood doing “Relax.” You get the general point.

So the first girl comes up and starts dancing to. . . “Hotel California” by The Eagles. I think I can conservatively say that I’ve heard well over a couple thousand songs in strip clubs before – and it was the first time I’d ever heard this song in one. Besides it being a really horrible song to dance to, it is really, really long. In a US strip club environment that makes some sense, because the customers are coming up to the stage and tipping the dancers as they dance. Longer song = more time for tips. But here, you don’t go to the stage to tip the dancers, they come around to the tables after they get off stage and collect their tips. I was laughing my ass off.

And of course I figured that song selection could not be topped – until her next song cranked up. It was a medley of songs from the movie “Grease.” Yep. “The Grease Megamix: You're the One That I Want/Greased Lightnin'/Summer Nights.” As looked up and verified just now on wikipedia.com.

Alternative strip joint universe world was pretty much complete.

She came down off stage and we each pitched in about $1,000 pesos (50 cents each) to tip her, which appeared to be about the going rate after watching other locals tip. Another dancer came up and danced a few songs and we again tipped her about a couple bucks. We had to get some change for our bigger bills at one point, because we didn’t have any more thousand or two thousand peso notes for tip purposes.

I made Scott ask one of the dancers that looked like she was a university student what her price was for a “private room dance,” and she said $75,000 – or about $35 dollars or so.

Then the gymnast came on stage. She didn’t have the traditional Columbian look. She was blonde, for one. And didn’t have ‘store boughts,’ as I like to refer to them. But you could tell from the murmurs from the crowd as she came on stage, she was one of the prime attractions here.

The DJ seemed to use double the normal amount of fake fog/smoke to announce her appearance on stage and she began dancing – actually to some Columbian music, which was unusual. Basic pole work and prancing around the stage to start off with, but she then climbed up the pole and started swinging off the ladder suspended over the stage. She locked her legs over some of the rungs of the ladder and took off her top, hanging upside down over the stage. She swung from the two hanging ropes, did some slow back-flip type moves from the ladder to the stage a few times. Somehow she managed to get her skirt and G string off while suspended from the ladder also. This was some serious rope and ladder work.

As she came off stage, to a quite boisterous round of applause from the otherwise very quiet crowd, I turned to my three new friends and proclaimed, “I don’t care what you guys do, but I’m tipping her a full dollar!”

We decided to leave on that note – the night wasn’t going to get any better than that.

Postscript – I made Scott ask. She must have been had the highest rate in the whole place. $120,000 pesos. $60 U.S. dollars.