This beautiful place is where we are
now. Yesterday it felt even more like paradise when we finally
arrived. What an adventure it turned out to be to get to Mompox!
People travel between small communities
all the time ...
We had allowed plenty of time to make
it to our ten o'clock bus, so were surprised to find the Co-Taxi
employee we had talked to the night before at the taxi stand, talking
to three people at once but ready to look after us. We were even more
surprised to find the bus waiting already, and stunned when it left
twenty minutes before ten, the time we had been given. It was a good
thing we had aimed to be early!
We drove north on the smooth four-lane
highway for about an hour and then turned northwest to head for El
Banco, making good time all the way. 'Did you say goodbye to the
Andes?' Johann asked when we left the four-lane. I turned around once
more, a bit wistful: I love the highlands, and it's always been a bit
sad to say goodbye. New vistas were awaiting, however, and soon I
turned my attention to the big cattle herds in the savannah-like
landscape. Just like in Costa Rica, huge solitary trees spread their
branches to provide shade for the animals: arboles májicos
here, too. The secondary
highway was surprisingly good, too, and with a well-airconditioned
(this time not too cold) bus we had a pleasant journey. It occurred
to us that the bus we had so fortuitiously reached before the
expected departure time was in fact the one that had been due to
leave at 8:30, in which case it wasn't leaving too early but an hour
late; this was a much more likely scenario. No matter what, we were
glad to make such good time and arrived in El Banco in less than two
hours.
This is when the trouble started. All
of a sudden things came to a complete standstill, and we found
ourselves in a lineup of busses at a place that was most definitely
not the terminal. Only three or four people besides us were left on
the bus by then, and everybody, including the bus driver, was at a
loss what was going to happen next. Finally I gathered that this had
to do with the paro, the
general strike, and that we would not reach the terminal: all roads
into and out of town were barricaded by the strikers.
How
would we continue on? No busses, no taxis – should we return to
Aguachica? And then what? Go on to Cartagena after all? Wait another
night and try again the next day? When would a bus go back?
A
group of guys with motorcycles – the local 'mototaxis' –
surrounded us quickly and talked, all at once, obviously offering to
take us wherever we wanted to go. Mompos? No problem, they could take
us there. But how? We had the big backpack and were two full grown
people, after all (that question, had I thought about it a bit more,
shouldn't have even posed a problem: everybody travels on
motorcycles, whole families sharing a single one, transporting the
most amazing loads). No problema, no problema, we
were assured. Welllll ....
It's
hard to think in a situation like that, faced with a totally
unexpected situation, pressed upon by some very determined people who
try to make the decision for you. The men pointed to their
motorcycles, the shag carpet covering the back seat for a comfortable
ride, very, very eager to take us to Mompox. Johann was very
reluctant (maybe rightly so), and I, weighing the different
possibilities, was not exactly keen, but something nudged me: it
would be alright, I felt, and we'd get to this elusive place within
... what? A couple of hours? What would it be like to travel on the
back of a motorbike, with a backpack on your back, for 70 km? Only
one way to find out.
The intersection was mayhem, strikers, police, and all kinds of
people milling around, and there was no way to get through with a motorcycle either:
mototaxis trying to do so were considered strikebreakers, that much
was clear from their gesticulations even to us. The two men who had
so urgently tried to talk us into going waved us to follow them on
foot, and once we had passed the intersection they took two from a
group of motorbikes, placed the carpets on the back seats, and
gestured for us to get on. 'Are you really sure,' Johann asked. Not
really sure, no, but wanting to. My guy, the one who had done the
talking, assured me that we would travel together, that the road was
quite good for the most part, and that they would drive carefully,
then the other one – his brother-in-law, as it turned out – took
our big backpack in its cover in front of him, Johann in the back,
and I hopped on behind Julio, my (smaller) backpack on my back. We
encountered no trouble on our way out of town, but saw another road
plugged with trucks, mostly, unable to reach their destination.
Within a few minutes we reached the outskirts of town, stopped once
for gas – how that worked is quite evident from the photo – and
were on our way, only a kilometre, maybe, on the dusty, bumpy road
before we reached the smooth highway.
I soon
started to enjoy it: the breeze felt good on my skin, the road was
nearly empty, except for the occasional motorbike or pedal bike, once
or twice, and only after quite a while, a car: news of the strike
must have been keeping people away. To the left and right stretched
savannah or swamp land, cows grazed peacefully, followed by their
attendant white egrets, sometimes only their top half showing in the
swamp. From time to time we slowed down to let a small group cross
the highway. They were in no hurry. We passed through a few small
communities, San Alberto, San Félipe,
San this or that, only a few houses, few people. Every once in awhile
there was a milestone, numbers getting smaller: soon we would reach
the only 'real' town along the way, Guamal, at 35km halfway to
Mompox. The nice, smooth road turned into a dusty one, pocked with
deep potholes which our guys circumnavigated skillfully. For a short
stretch the road improved, and we crossed the Magdalena river, before
it turned again into a maze of bumps and dips. Julio and Damian drove
carefully, and at no time did I feel unsafe. For a while progress was
slowed down by the poor road, but finally the poor stretch was over
and we made good time again.
We had only about 8
km to go when a passing motorbike driver honked his horn at us and
pointed behind him. We turned around to find Johann with his pack
walking towards a bus shelter by the side of the road, and Damian
pushing his bike in the direction of a few small houses a bit further
back: the weight and rough road had proved too much stress for his
rear tire, and he had a flat. The three of us waited for him at the
shelter, used the time to snack on some peanuts and have a drink of
water, and after maybe fifteen minutes he came driving back, ready to
go, but – the tire was already flat again. Back he went, and we
waited again, trying our best to make conversation in my limited
Spanish, limited even more in this case because Julio, like people
here in the lowlands and on the coast in general, speaks a very
different Spanish than the clear pronunciation I was used to from the towns we had
visited before. Somehow people seem to swallow letters, sometimes
whole syllables, which makes it difficult to understand even things I
usually might. But we managed somehow, and he told us that driving
the motortaxi was what he did for a living, mostly in El Banco
itself, but on occasion to towns in the area, Mompox one of them.
With three sons – 16, 14 and six – to raise it cannot be easy.
He asked where we
were from, a question that usually happens much earlier in a
conversation, and nodded when we said Canada, but it soon became
apparent that this didn't mean anything to him. He had no idea where
to find Canada, and I'm not sure if he'd ever heard of it. We told
him that it was much, much colder than here, and Johann showed him
our weather forecast, which, at -11 as a high, was not even an
extreme one. 'Once,' he said – eleven, shaking his head.
'Menos,' I pointed out – minus, but that was more than he
could imagine. We showed him photos from home, with snow, and he
gazed in wonder. Then he remarked on the colour of my eyes and the
paleness of skin (and here I thought I had tanned quite nicely
already) and wondered about Johann's, motioning him to remove his
sunglasses. Does everyone have such light coloured eyes, he asked.
And the hair? Clearly, two completely different worlds had come
together, for each one, quite likely, a day that will stick in our
memories.
Again Darian
returned, this time with a quite new looking tire, and we were on our
way. The tire only lasted for another four or five kilometres,
however, before it again went flat. Darian pointed to Julio's
motorbike: he would take us. 'Juntos' -together – I asked,
incredulously. Si, Julio grinned, todos – everything.
So little left, no problem. I was not afraid for ourselves, but very
much so for Julio's motorbike, not wanting to have another bike break
down, but he had no such qualms. Thus he heaved the pack in front of
him, I climbed on behind him, hanging on to him, and Johann with the
small backpack was in the back. There was not really a place where we
could both put our feet, so I lifted mine up and pointed them
backward, thinking Johann would use the foot rests. Julio headed,
slowly and carefully, for town on the now quite busy road. After
maybe ten minutes we came to an intersection with a few taxis at the
corner, and I asked him to stop: we could go by taxi now and save him
from going further into town with this big load. He didn't object,
called the taxi driver over and made sure we were on the right way.
What a nice man, taking his promise to get us to Mompos seriously
until the very end. We paid the agreed price, waved in parting and
went our separate ways.
We had tried to
find an accommodation while we were waiting for the tire to be
repaired, and had an address we could start out with. We hadn't dared
to book beforehand because the way to Mompos was such a vague thing,
but from the booking.com website we knew that there were plenty of
hotels to choose from. It only took a few minutes until the taxi
driver let us out in front of the 'Café
Mompox', but although a room had clearly been available on
booking.com the guy at the reception regretfully shook his head: no,
he didn't have a room at this moment. His brother did in his hotel,
however: did we want to talk to him? He put me on the phone, and
after a few minutes we were standing in front of the Café
Niento, like the other one a beautiful colonial house, but right on
the Magdalena River instead of facing the main thoroughfare through
town. It really was like landing in paradise
after a rather demanding day.
No comments:
Post a Comment