Return to Cartagena

Little more than a week ago we gradually made our way back from everlasting summer to the reality of a spring that is spring only by name. With each flight we moved a bit further away from the Colombian coast’s thirty-plus degrees with eighty-plus percent humidity; at each airport we stepped outside for a few minutes to feel the difference. In Bogotá, early in the evening, I enjoyed the cooler air, thought, just for a moment, with just a tinge of regret that I missed not to have even seen the highlands this time. The climate would have been easier for me to deal with – but I quickly suppressed that ungrateful notion. In Toronto, early in the morning, I saw no snow, and the air, just above the freezing mark, was still. ‘This is not so bad,’ was my observation here. ‘If it’s like this at home …’  In Edmonton, standing outside the departure area door waiting for Carl to pick us up, I wished I had my winter jacket instead of the fleece jacket when the wind drove thin snow into my face. Even from the air we had been able to see that the ground was still white. Back to the reality of home, four times closer to the Arctic Circle than to the equator. Past experience taught me that it doesn’t take long to adjust.

So, how to get from here

back to here?

 It requires a mental leap, admittedly, but it is also very tempting, especially since the sunshine in the first picture has given way to more light snow, temperatures way below where we feel they should be (-9 today, -24 expected overnight), the average depth of snow in the yard still at 37 cm, and wind. Going back to Cartagena, where we spent the last few days of our Colombia trip, sounds like a very pleasant task on a day like this.

We had planned to spend the last few days in Cartagena, by all accounts a beautiful city with its well preserved colonial buildings. When we arrived we were eager to get to Santa Marta for the hike to the Ciudad Perdida: conditions were ideal with the dry weather, and there was no telling when they might change. Since this was the most important undertaking of our trip we wanted to make sure to do everything to make it happen. Thus we had decided then to postpone the exploration of Cartagena's old city till the end. Originally we had planned to take the bus from Cartagena to Bogotá, from where our flight was leaving for Toronto, but when we found a very cheap flight we changed our plans to have more time at the coast. 

No big buses go to Minca because of the narrow, very winding road, so the first part of the trip took place in one of the big vans travelling between Minca and Santa Marta. We had heard that we could get the ticket to Cartagena in Minca already, and if we had understood the man selling us the tickets correctly we’d just have to let our driver know that we wanted to continue on to Cartagena. Even with diminished weekend traffic it took a long time to make our way to Santa Marta’s centre where, we expected, we would end up at the place from where we left at the beginning of the week, trusting that the bus to Cartagena was leaving from that same curbside spot. We recognized the area and kept our eyes open for the calle we remembered, but suddenly the van stopped, the driver said something about Cartagena and indicated that we were to get out. Now what? But no worries: he unloaded our backpacks, hailed a taxi, gave the driver instructions and money – and just like that we were whisked away. Of course we felt a bit at the mercy of the forces that be, but we trusted that the taxi driver knew where we needed to go (obviously much better than we did), and really, after not even ten minutes he stopped in front of a ‘Marsol’ bus office. Everything was in order, and we had about another hour until the bus was leaving for Cartagena. The office, empty but for a ticket counter and a few chairs along the walls, was pleasantly cool and, like so many public places in Colombia, had Wi-Fi. 

Later, on the bus to Cartagena, a boy of maybe twelve or thirteen was my neighbour. He was fiddling with his phone, intermittently listening to it, and seemed a bit bored. While I was still trying to figure out how to start a conversation, feeling his eagerness to break the monotony of the trip by talking to me but reluctant to address a kid that age in my rudimentary Spanish, he asked me in only slightly accented English where I was from. Well, that was much easier than I had expected! It turned out that he was he was living with his Greek father in Baranquilla, a good-sized industrial city between Santa Marta and Cartagena, and was on his way to visit his Colombian mother in Cartagena. He had lived in Belgium until he was ten, and his father speaks English with him. He had many questions and comments and was not shy at all, so time passed quickly, and I found out a little about the life of a (rather well-to-do) kid in Colombia. I couldn’t help but wonder what a conversation with a kid from one of the poor areas of Cartagena would have revealed. 

 A couple of pictures snapped during the bus ride to Cartagena. There are dozens of these little shops-cum-restaurants in the small towns along the road. This one is uncharacteristically empty.

We were less lucky with the taxi driver who was to take us to our small hotel in Getsemaní, hailed as ‘Cartagena’s up-and-coming neighbourhood’ (price and convenience, not that label being the reason for our choice of a place to stay). He nodded when I showed him the address, turned from the ring road between the beach and the city wall and entered the grid of narrow streets of Getsemaní. After going briefly through a one-way street the wrong way he stopped at busy ‘Plaza la Trinidad’ to let us out. We looked at our map, a bit confused as to where we were. Hadn’t we just passed through ‘Tripita y Media’? Now the sign said ‘Calle del Guerrero’, but it seemed to us that we were still in the same straight street. Shouldering our packs we walked back along the way the taxi had taken us. After the next intersection the name of the street changed again; now it was called ‘Calle de San Andrés’. Could we have been so wrong? We kept going, however, and finally saw the ‘Tripita y Media’ sign again. Now it didn’t take us long to find the entrance to ‘Casa Victoria’, our hotel. Why the taxi driver had chosen to drive right past and let us out ten minutes from our destination will remain a mystery. We could have done without it. 
 

Ciudad Perdida, the last day

Again we were the only ones who didn’t have to get up for the sunrise departure. This time, however, it was much easier to stay in bed: the hikers leaving now were strangers to us, and we could just turn over and ignore their preparations. Cigarette smoke drifting over from the dining area before breakfast already made me realize how fortunate we had been with our group in that respect, too. I don’t think it would have even occurred to me that anybody could smoke on this trail.

We’d be leaving at eight this time, and our little cluster was gathered for breakfast at 7:30. We compared notes about a strange thing that had happened in the middle of the night, none of us quite certain what to make of it. I woke briefly to see two cows walking, like specters, between the benches and tables through the dining area, silhouetted against the star-bright sky, heading towards the kitchen, which was on the way out. Surely I must have been dreaming! But no, Lucy, too, had watched them on their silent march, like me questioning if it was for real. Johann told me he had been up in the middle of the night and found one of the sinks in pieces on the ground, yet we had not heard a thing. We checked the muddy ground around the compound, and sure enough: cleft foot prints led right up to the dining area, and when we looked a bit closer in the vicinity of the washroom we found mud clods and more prints. The cows must have got out of their fence during the night, come up the hill behind the washrooms and, trying to squeeze between the first row of bunks and the sinks, knocked one down. 

                I remembered quite well the last stretch of the trail before we arrived at the camp the first night, the long, steep descent through a gully with high mud walls. Then, I had seriously wondered if I would be able to make it all the way to the Ciudad Perdida – a worry which Jorge had put to rest and, as I knew now, was unfounded – and already imagined how I’d ever get up that steep hill again without the aid of a mule. That was before the other long ascents and descents, of course, and while this was still one of the hard ones I knew it would be achievable in the same manner as the others: by taking small, slow steps and, whenever necessary, just stopping and catching my breath. Still, the thought of starting out with this in the morning was daunting. Once we had made it up, however, there would be no more climbing: it would go downhill all the way until the last five minutes into El Mamey. A good thought!

The short rests always offered opportunity to turn around and take in the magnificent landscape behind us, the forested steep hills of the Sierra Nevada, the jungle we had traversed to reach the Ciudad Perdida.  

Johann, too, was working hard on this last uphill slope, his pack as heavy as when we started out, so he didn’t have to make any effort to pace himself to stay with me. Lucy and Cierán were in better shape, but they waited for us when we got too far behind. The steep ascent turned into a moderate one, and after a while we passed a farm with mules and cows. Along the way we had seen several motorbikes; from El Mamey to here they were part of the transportation system, along with the mules that were the only means of getting loads up and down the mountain further on. The sound of an engine always prompted us to step to the side, just like the call, ‘mula, mula!’ at the approach of a mule train. 

 

Not a great picture of a mule train, but the only one I have

 Almost at the point where the road turned downhill Joel passed us on a motorbike – and stopped. Did Johann want to send his pack with him? What a question! The backpack was tied, Joel waved, grinned, and was gone. Sadly, we didn’t know that he’d just drop off the backpack in El Mamey, so we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to him.

It was approaching noon, and we were getting quite close to our destination, hot, sweaty, yet not in the mood for a short swim in the river we crossed using some stepping stones. We just couldn’t be bothered to take off anything we’d have to put back on, no matter how welcome a cool down would have been. A little further on Jorge stopped us and listened, and sure enough: the rustle in the grass beside the trail was caused by a lizard. Often enough I had heard them but only managed to catch a brief glimpse, but this time we were really lucky: a brilliant green one was in the process of eating its dinner, a grasshopper as big as its head at least. It was so intent on its meal that it ignored us, and we all got a good shot of it.

And so the circle closed. Shortly before noon we were back at the little restaurant in El Mamey where we had started five days before. While we waited for our dinner Jorge showed us where he lived: right across the street, which surely must be very convenient for him and much better than having to return to Santa Marta after every hike. The guides have three or four days of rest before they start out on the next trek. For Jorge, it also means he can spend time with his five year old daughter, Emily, whom he proudly introduced to us. 

It was time to say goodbye to our friendly guide who had been so patient and reassuring and had encouraged me to practice my Spanish, no matter how I was struggling to find the right words so that it often was guesswork for him to try and figure out what I wanted to know. But we managed, and I think I learned a thing or two along the way. We heaved our gear onto the roof of ‘Expotur’s’ four-wheel drive vehicle, climbed in, and were on our way back towards Santa Marta. 

Without much fanfare our visit to a magical place, a place so far away from noise, commotion and life as we knew it had come to an end.

After forty-five minutes on the deeply rutted, bumpy road we arrived at the highway. The driver let the four of us out at the corner: we were going right to Palomino from here for a few days of total relaxation, a well-earned break for our tired feet and sore muscles. We had made sure we knew how much the bus ride would cost: 7,000 COP, about $3.20, and the buses were going every fifteen or twenty minutes. Sure enough, though, an enterprising local man flagged down an alternative transportation for us, a gleaming four-wheel drive pickup. ‘Mas confortable! – much nicer, more comfortable – he tried to persuade us. ‘Solamente COP 50,000’. Back to real life … We held firm, however, the pickup driver turned around, likely not impressed, and within minutes the bus stopped to take us along for the price we had been told.

After a half hour drive along banana plantations and the ocean we reached Palomino and parted ways with Lucy and Cierán who were booked into a different hostel. This, at least, thankfully was not yet good-bye: we’d meet up somewhere for a beer or supper during our stay.