After spending three weeks in Bogota in a sprawling colonial Рstyle house in the Chapinero district, I decided that my Spanish was workable enough to tackle this vast continent (well, I can communicate the important things, like ordering food and beer, but then it gets a tad complicated). And I must say, having caf̩s around the corner from my pad in Bogota, a large TV, a soft couch and a buddy from Australia to hang out with was a welcome reprieve from the day-to-day slog of solo traveling. Traveling is not really about grand narratives, they are always a few towns in the past, and they take a little while to weave their way into the coherent present. The day-to-day stuff, like ATMs designed by Kafka, mattresses stuffed with dead porcupines, sketchy dim-lit streets that stand between you and the next bar and slipping on the floor and cutting your head open in unfamiliar bathrooms are the potatoes and beans of traveling (and I thought my biggest danger in Colombia would be leftist paramilitaries, but perhaps it is banality that is always the most dangerous).
For instance, the other day I caught a flight to Cartegena on the Caribbean Coast. Cartagena is a 16th Century Spanish colonial town fortified by a menacing wall to keep out pirates (old school pirates, not Kim Dotcom). I arrive at the airport and search for a cab to take me to the centre of Cartegena to my ‘travelers hotel’ (with a rating of 23 on Hostelworld). I find a cab, a zippy yellow number that looked a bit like a Costco shopping trolley. I take a deep breath and squish in (lucky I am travelling alone) and tell the driver the name of the street, which is Las Tortugas.
We drive into the town, past the fortresses walls and into Getsemani, the backpackers district of Cartegena. The cab drives along a busy road that is hot and polluted, one of those cancerous veins that drain most modern cities. The cab stops on the side of the apocalypse, and I look out the window, but it isn’t ‘Las Tortugas’. I was about to ask him WTF are we, but I don’t know how to say WTF in Spanish, and I have only just learnt the word for turtle.
I decide to get out of the trolley/cab and make my own way as my legs will carry me better than my language skills. I open the door, on the apocalypse side of cab, and of course, given the nature of this journey so far, it collects the side of the Colombian middle class, mirrors go flying, metal on metal and then Spanish on Spanish. The car, a late model Lexus, favoured by many respectable gangsters, is scratched end to end. Then a large Colombian gentleman with some interesting agrarian features gets out and stands next to me holding his rear vision mirror in his hand.
A crowd gathers, backpackers, hawkers, cab drivers, and hot dog sellers. And they are all bellowing in Spanish in an unfamiliar tone. A man that looks a lot like Francis Drake, complete with eye patch, walks up to me and says in a matter-of-fact way, are you going to pay? I hadn’t thought I had an option, and if this were India, I would have already been locked up as ransom. I thought about the Pirates question for a moment and then I said, “I don’t really want to”. And then he says “then legit then before the cops come” (and I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I didn’t want to find out).
I didn’t actually legit, it was more a gentlemanly bow, a few friendly smiles, a greeting here and there, then I’m on my way, briskly walking up a sketchy dim-lit street called ‘Las Tortugas’ to where I found my hotel along with some ethical reflections.
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