Casa Clemencia

One of the wonderful people we got to know in Cartagena was Victor Manuel Coneo who worked at the apartment building where we were staying in Bocagrande.  We went to the lobby for internet, and while Luc struggled to download GPS maps of Colombia (and thank goodness he did!), he got to know almost everyone who worked at the Galeon Azul.

Despite an early start, it took us most of the day last Monday to get the vehicles out of Cartagena.  Driving in Cartagena traffic with the bike on the trailer behind was pretty stressful. We were headed to Santa Marta where we had read wonderful things about the beaches, the Park Tayrona and (me) a museum that was a must before visiting the Ciudad Perdido (on our list for the way back).  Victor's home in Clemencia was on the way, and Luc was excited to show him the motorcycle, since the two of them had spent quite a bit of time talking bikes in Cartagena.

Motorcycles are everywhere here!  It is not unusual to see a family of three loaded onto a 125 cc motor cycle.  Outside of the cities there are certainly more motos than cars.  However, a large bike like Luc's 1200 GS is a novelty here, and everyone wants to try it.

We arrived in the late afternoon in Clemencia.  Victor, who had the day off, arrived soon after.  He brought us to his home where we were taken into the full embrace of his lovely family.

Laura, Rosini, Manuela, Rodolfo, Maria, me, Victor

Their home is next to the police station and the central square. We received permission from the police to park the van and trailer in front of the house and station and enjoyed a lovely evening visiting them and the town center.

Clemencia Town Hall

Early the next morning, Victor left on his motorbike for his 5 AM shift at work, but before he left he tapped on the door of the van to say goodbye and to give us a lovely gift.  After breakfast, his cousin and sister, Rosini and Laura, gave us the full tour of Clemencia, which is much bigger than it appears from the main road.

We walked out toward the farms, where there is no running water, so it must be carried.  We also had a tour of the elementary and secondary schools.  What a treat for me to see their schools in action. We arrived back at their home and enjoyed an incredible meal prepared by Victor's aunt Maria before heading toward Santa Marta.

Clemencia is a lovely town, but it was here that we first began to understand the incredible warmth, generosity and opened of Colombians.   Since we spent our first night in Colombia in the camper in Clemencia, we have decided to call our little home the Casa Clemencia.

What happens after your ship comes in?

Our ship has come in!  And since the day before it was allowed to unload at the dock, we have been taking all the required steps so we can begin the next chapter of our South American van and motorcycle adventure.  Finally, there is one step left.

When you are ensnared in a Two Steps Forward One Step Back trap, how many more steps are left when there is one step remaining? 

Many other travelers’ blogs with better tags than ours have summarized the process of retrieving a single vehicle shipped to Colombia.  Multiply that circuitousness by the fact that we have two vehicles (or do we have one vehicle and one item?) both registered to the same individual.   When do we need one form and when do we need two?  And how many copies of each do we need to make at the photocopy place around the corner (do they close for lunch?) before stopping at the desk across the courtyard (follow the arrows) and getting Claudia to write a number on this little half sheet of paper before coming back here? I'm not sure I have the steps quite right but you get the idea.

We left Vermont on August 4^th, spent a lovely weekend with family in Connecticut and New York, then set the land-speed record (no, that was Tim Cahill, but it felt like it) to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and arrived by noon on August 14^th. If we can dance all the right steps (we’ve been taking lessons) on Monday, September 21, Luc will be able to drive his vehicles out of the RoRo port (Roll-on Roll-off) so our adventure can begin!

Forty days and forty nights, but who’s counting?  At least it wasn’t Lent! 

And of course, our adventure has already begun.  For one thing, we are so enchanted with Cartagena and our lovely home here, that it will be very hard to leave.  Due to internet challenges, we will save the illustrated version of Things that Still Enchant but No Longer Astound Us in Cartagena for a later post.

Here's a preview:

 

In the meantime, our fingers are crossed for Monday!

The Sound of Things Falling

The Sound of Things Falling

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, translated by Anne McLean

The place seemed familiar to her that day, not with the simple familiarity of someone who’d been there before but in a more profound or private way, as if she’d read a description of it in a novel. – p. 192

I just finished reading this incredible book for the second time.  When I first read it, I knew little about Colombia, but liked it enough to recommend it to a friend and to load two other books by the author, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, onto my kindle.  Then I quickly forgot almost everything about it except the haunting voice of the narrator.  I wrote as much the other day on a book list I compiled for a friend traveling in Colombia, but I felt like an idiot that I couldn’t recall the plot, so I thought I’d read the first part again to see if that would jog my memory.

Well I’ve just read the whole thing again, as slowly as I could to savor it (I am waiting for a ship, after all), and am looking forward to forgetting just enough that I can read it another time. 

I’m sure the music analogy has occurred to other people about other books, but this is the first book that I’ve read that felt like I was listening to really good music.  That is, the experience I imagine real musicians have when they listen to music and simultaneously hear the different melodies played separately and together by different instruments, the key changes, the harmonies and the variations on the themes.   (When I listen to music I can hear only ever focus on one of these at a time.)

Besides the incredible writing, the story is a fascinating contemplation of what it means to be a Colombian who grew up in the 1980s.  There is history, geography, drug lords, presidents, the peace corp and poetry  (note to self:  search out more poetry by Jose Ascuncion Silva, Leon de Greiff and Aurelio Arturo).  If you are traveling in Colombia, this is a must read (or reread) while you’re here.

Another thing the author does particularly well is to create the experience of doing one thing while listening to something else. What is happening around you when you have headphones on, driving while listening to the separate thread of your own thoughts, hearing a message and being present both in the moment of the recording and of the listening.  This must be the Sound of Things in the title.

One final comment: the translation was extraordinary. Anne McLean, the translator, thanked the same person in Italy in her Translator’s Note that the author had in the Author’s Note.  Does this mean the translator was present during the writing?  Did she return to the same retreat where the author had written the book to hear its sound as she translated?

Next time, I am hoping I’ll be able to read this incredible book in Spanish:  El ruido de las cosas al caer.  But should I read it in Bogota or at a retreat in Italy?

Valiant and Important

El Universal, 4 septiembre 2014

 In hopes of both improving our Spanish and deciphering more of the television coverage of the Vuelta de Espana, we started buying a local newspaper each day almost as soon as we arrived in Cartagena.  We chose El Universal because the vendor told us it had the most sports coverage.  Lukas, a friend and political science major from Holland, later told us the paper was owned by a political strong man and therefore the coverage was skewed.  But he was still working through his 3-day old Le Monde style paper (with no sports section), and we were happily up to date on the latest scandals and bridal showers in Cartagena (though only a little wiser about the Vuelta). So we persist with El Universal.  I think another reason is that here, amongst so much that is unfamiliar, doing anything more than three times gives it a comfortable ritual-like familiarity to be cherished and repeated.

Every day we scan the headlines and choose a few newspaper articles to try to decipher in depth.  We each have our own strategy.  Luc reads the whole article quickly without stopping - to try to get the gist.  I read aloud (muttering or trying to hear the voice of one of our teachers in my head), stopping to sound out the longer words again slowly to see if I hear a similarity I don’t see.  Then we go back, each with our own strategy, armed with dictionaries and grammar books and delight when we recognize a newly learned form or expression (buen hecho!).

So, with dictionary and grammar book in hand, I tackled an article about a local polemic around a monument that had recently been replaced in Cartagena’s Centennial Park. Apparently, “on the first plaque were the names of the 10 women, who, according to an historical investigation, were also shot during the pacification.”

Here’s the background (as I’ve been able to piece it together from the newspaper, museum visits, the Lonely Planet and quick internet searches):

The protective walls of Cartagena were built 400 years ago by “African slaves, indigenous people, mulatos and prisoners” to protect European grave-robbers from pirates who came to Cartagena to steal again what had already been stolen.  The wealth of gold in this part of South America was primarily plundered from mounded gravesites, then melted down and shipped back to Spain.  Two hundred years later, in 1810, Cartagena was inspired by Napoleon’s short-lived overthrow of the Spanish crown to declared its own independence.  At this point it was a walled city with an impregnable fortress.  So Pablo Morillo, the Pacifier, was sent by Ferdinand VII to re-conquer the city, which he accomplished after a 4-month siege in which more than 6000 people died of starvation and disease.  The city eventually surrendered. The following year, in 1816, a group that survived the siege was publicly executed at the Place de la Merced (could this possibly mean mercy?).  According to Wikipedia, Morillo is also famous for the phrase "Spain does not need wise people" (España no necesita sabios) when questioned about ordering the execution of a scientist.

The women whose names were omitted from the new plaque include “Maria Josefa Fernandez, a humble afro-descendant, and Ana Pombo Amador, descendant of a merchant family and well known in the city.”  A group of women are demanding the reinstatement of the names of the martyred women on the monument, and an apology for their omission.  The male historians, however, are not backing down.  They seem to be saying (really?  I must have this part wrong) that they thank God that the previous plaque was destroyed, that they will not apologize for the omission on the new plaque, and that for each name on the plaque there must be demonstrable historical evidence that proves that the person’s acts where in fact valiant and important enough to be included in the memorial.  Implying, obviously, that no such documentation exists for women’s bravery.

All of this has me thinking, of course, about the role of women in societies past and present, especially during war. About what could possibly constitute demonstrable historical evidence the year after 6000 people had died of starvation.  And especially, I think about what it means to be valiant and important.  I think of all the valiant, important women I know today and I wonder what evidence of valor these historians would demand to create a plaque for them all.  I don’t have a lot of answers, but I do have some time to think about it as I read the paper.

Maria Josefa Fernandez

Ana Pombo Amador

Salvadora Alao

Eugenia Arrazola

Leonor Guerra

Angela Llanos

Francisca de Paula Llovet de Esquiaqui

Isabel Narvaez

Maria Ignacia Pineres

Micaela Pineres

Nicolasa Pineres

Josefa Sayas

(Still) waiting for our ship to come in

Sunday futball by the city wall

City Wall - detail

Every few days we leave the walled city and cross the Roman* bridge to Manga to visit Nasly at SC Lines, and each time she smiles and gives us the news in slow spanish – the good news and then the bad news.  First the good news:  the good ship Agata loaded with our roving home and motorcycle, is expected to arrive in Cartagena today, Tuesday, September 16^th at 9:00 AM in the morning.  Bad news:  the port is apparently first come first serve, so Agatha will queue up to be unloaded behind other boats, most likely not before 6:00 AM on Thursday.  Tomorrow we will visit Nasly again, and if the schedule hasn’t changed, we will buy the day-at-a-time life insurance policy, effective Thursday and Friday, that will allow Luc to enter the port area to accompany the inspectors and eventually drive the vehicles, one at a time, out of the port.  If we are extremely lucky, this will be a 2-day process.  Being more cheap than optimistic, we will buy only two days of insurance and most likely be visiting Nasly again next week.

* named after a guy named Roman who was not from Rome

Some doors of Cartagena

In addition to the daily life insurance, Luc will be required to have long pants and leather shoes (I would need all these too if I were to go into the port).  Since we certainly didn’t expect to be needing jeans or steel-toed boots here, this meant a shopping trip into the old city yesterday.  Warned by many blogs to expect conflicting requirements during the port process, we decided to buy the jeans and to find a spot where leather shoes could be purchased, but to hold off buying them until the leather-shoe requirement is confirmed by port officials.  Neither one of us is a lover of shopping, so we steeled ourselves for a challenging episode.  First, we put off the trip until 1:00 PM, then we walked around during the hottest part of the day changing the priorities of our shopping for as long as we could (we also need maps - infuriatingly hard to find in this country).  At last Luc saw a promising store (I have no idea how he selected it) and we dove in.  We were greeted by a young man of about Luc’s size.  We have been practicing our numbers, so we successfully communicated size trenta y dos.  After checking rows of women and children’s sizes, the young man held up a thirty.  Luc managed to ask him, “Could you fit into those?”  The guy shook his head and burst out laughing which was completely infectious. He eventually found a 32 which Luc tried on over his shorts, and they fit better than any other pair of jeans he owns.  Cost:  20,000 COP or $12.  First store.

Street Vendors

  

This whole process had made me wonder if anyone has already written an article about the life of a single bolt of denim.  After being fashioned into hundreds of jeans in a factory of exploited workers, it is imported into the US where it arrives in a container ship.  In various containers, it spreads out across America on the back of trucks and arrives in the boutiques and department stores of the indistinguishable malls of America.  While hanging on racks for a season, a few are purchased.  The remainder are then packed into containers and moved about so they can spend the next season in an outlet store one level down the hierarchy.  Those still on the racks are then loaded back into containers and shipped here to South America where they arrive in the port, spread out on the back of big trucks and then are piled into little trucks and handcarts to various shops, tiendas and street stalls where they are sold for a fraction of the overinflated US price.  (Perhaps I’ve spent entirely too much time on our balcony watching other ships come and go from the port of Cartagena.)

Thinking our ship was coming in a bit sooner, we had our last week at the Nueva Lengua Spanish school last week.  In every way the experience exceeded our expectations.  I wrote a little testimonial for the school’s Facebook page that I won’t repeat here.  We made lasting friends amongst both teachers and other students, took advantage of many of the free afternoon activities, and learned enough Spanish to make shop clerks laugh with us instead of at us.  Now we just have to keep practicing.

Making Empandas with Sra Janice

the Daniels

Ramona, me, Legia, Luc and Midori

Legia with my family slideshow, Luc's new handbag in the foreground

The final week of school coincided with the Colombian week of Amor e Amistad - Love and Friendship - which is a bit like a week-long version of Saint Valentines day but for friends as well as lovers.  We did a secret friend activity with small gifts each day, and then the whole school (some 20 - 30 people, I would guess) gathered and shared the customs of our respective countries, our thoughts on love and friendship and small gifts as our secret friend was revealed.

Sirle as MC - thoughts on love and friendship

Daniel is Luc's secret friend

Daniel had a keychain made for Luc's moto

From Jose - A new van decoration to add to the collection Quinn started

Cartagena is known for its nightlife, of which I can report we have seen exactly zero (this will be no surprise to our friends at home).  We have, however, had a few small gatherings of friends here at this lovely apartment where we have shared friendship, stories, meals, travel tips, blog addresses, plenty of wine and the great view from our balcony.  We look forward to crossing paths again and following each others' adventures throughout South America. 

Fiona, Ingrid

Mairi, Fiona, Mike

Full moon over Cartagena

Check out their blogs:

Fiona – http://pigasusonwheels.wordpress.com/  - especially her fabulous post about spanglish tantrums

Mike and Mairi – awayfarers.wordpress.com -  great posts from China, Tibet and Bogota.

Photos from a few of our other activities over this past week:

Salinas De Galerazamba with Jose, Lukas, Ramona and Camila

 

and the Daniels

Salt Crystals from the mine

Museum of Modern Art

Ana Mercedes Hoyos - sorry this was her only piece in the museum

Beautiful Basura

An artist self-portrait

I liked this study better than the final piece

From the museum of history and the inquisition

Museum courtyard

 

 

Another week in Paradise

“On Sunday, August 30th, 2014, the vessel Agatahad to deviate her course to Kingston, Jamaica due to a severe case ofAppendicitis reported in a crew member.”  As a result we are in Cartagena for an additional week, which means more Spanish classes, more activities with our friends from school, more sports on Colombian TV (Attention Colooombiaaaa!), and more ship gazing from our beautiful patio.

We have very much enjoyed our Spanish classes so far, though by the end of the morning (our classes are from 8 to noon) we can barely form a complete sentence in any language. 

Several times we have recounted various daily routines (our classmates and our own, here and at home).  All in the present tense but with increasing sophistication, I’m sure. Here is ours:  We wake up around 6, with the sun already heating up the port.  After a breakfast of avena (oatmeal) and Kumis (some sort of liquid yogurt) with papayas, mangos, bananas and other mystery fruit, we set out on our walk to school at about 7:20. 

It has surprised me how my impressions of the same route have changed over the two weeks we have been walking to school.  In front of a nearby supermarket, we pass a series of parking places that are tended by a guy with a crutch who makes his living parking cars in the small lot.   He is there every morning.  Limping, smiling, gesturing, shouting, working.   Soon after we arrive at a street corner with an enormous tree. 

Under the tree is a vendor with 4 or 5 thermoses from which he serves tiny plastic cups of coffee, another with candy and gum and phone recharges, and many people drinking coffee or waiting for a bus, taxi collectivo or a taxi moto or just standing around.  We don’t have to walk much father before a big electronic billboard confirms what we have already guessed.  That is it 7:28 in the morning, and that the temperature is 88 (29c+15)*2) and that the humidity is at 88%.  The billboard also tells the time and temperature in NYC and Madrid and Miami and the positive news of the day (noticia positiva) before reminding us to use our hats, gafas and sunscreen to avoid the perils of UV light.

Then the ice vendor with his three wheeled cart as we turn the corner to the boat dock with its barrage of hawkers selling rides on various slow (2 hours) or fast (1 hour) boats to the Playa Blanca and the Isla de Rosario. Though we haven’t been there yet, both boat rides apparently get you completely soaked and provide the chance to sleep in a hammock overnight on the beach.  Also available is also a complete line of bottled waters (agua agua), hat and sunglasses.  At first I felt like walking by these guys was like running a gauntlet, but now we tell them hello, say we are going to school and greet those we’ve spoken to before.

We pass the longest balcony in South America (paced by a European who was called slave of slaves, haven’t quite figured that one out yet), the old city walls, the convention center, and numerous people walking in uniforms to school or work, or sleeping in the shade and of course many honking taxi-collectivos letting us know there is still room for us to squeeze in.

 

In the afternoons, our school offers free organized activities. Tuesday is always Dancing and Cooking.  This week we learned to make empanadas in cooking class, then practiced the steps of the Champeta and Salsa Bomba (what we do can not yet be called dancing).  Colombian start to dance before they start to walk.  This was explained to us by our wonderful teacher, Jesus, who demonstrated how a Colombian father will hold his little baby in the air with his thumbs under the baby’s armpits.  With his ring fingers and pinkies, he pumps the baby’s hips forward – instant baby Champeta!

Other activities include the gold museum, the naval museum, the botanical gardens and yesterday a kayaking expedition.  After about 30 minutes of kayaking, we turned around a point and surfed the kayak over a line of rope and onto a beach.  I am so sorry we didn’t have a camera with us!  For about 15 minutes, we watched two groups of men hauling in what I first thought were 2 separate lines. They slowly approached each other, as did a whirlwind of diving pelicans from the sea.  As the net finally became visible, other men appeared from the beach and completed the haul.  Two guys waded into the net with some sheets of plastic and somehow emerged with a hopping catch of tiny silvery sardine-sized fish.  The bigger fish were hauled into the boat. 

About 45 minutes later, we hauled our own boats back onto our original beach and were approached by a guy with a joint-compound sized bucket covered with a wad of burlap.  Inside the bucket were oysters and the tiny green limones that go with everything here.   It seemed much more reasonable to believe that he had just pried them off the nearby rocks.

Here are some photos from the Botanical garden and museums:

 

One of our nicest evenings so far was a small dinner we had with some friends from school.  Fiona, from London, has just spent 3 months in Detroit working as a social worker.  She will soon embark on a solo bike-ride through South America.  We hope to see her in various campgrounds as we all proceed south.  Our friend Ze’ev (who took these pictures) lives in San Diego and Israel. Many years he stops in NYC on his way between Israel and California to see the US open.  This year, he watched a few minutes of it here with us.  John, from Austin, is working in Tunis for the African development bank.  As you can imagine, it was a fascinating evening.

Just a quick note about another one of my favorite activities, which is to sit on our balcony (or on the couch with Luc’s binoculars) and survey the bay.  When I was a kid I would spend a few weeks each summer with my grandparents in Sayville, Long Island where I would get spectacularly sunburned on the Fire Island beach, and then play endless games of battleship with my patient grandfather in the living room.  After so many games staring at ships on the blue-lined graph paper, every ship in this naval yard appears to me to be either a battleship, an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, a cruiser or a submarine. Here I have managed to avoid the sunburn, but I’ve been tracking the movements of the Colombian Armada, which this week had many visiting dignitaries whose white sailor suits with blue piping that I spied from our balcony.  Still scanning the seas for the second submarine that left its dock on Thursday!