Salento

Plantation House Hostel

 

View from the garden of Plantation House

River Quindio flowing from the mouth of the Corcorán valley from the mirador

Looking up the Calle Real to the fourteen stations of the cross

The town of Salento from the cross on the hill

A colourful beetle on the steps

The city is ringed with beautiful mountains, looking East from Calle Real

El Rincón de Lucy, my favourite comedor

View from the garden of Plantation House, just by the hammock

The view walking past the cemetary to L Sarenna

Opposite La Sarenna

  

The Corcorán Valley

Humming bird at Acaime reserve

Fighting hummingbirds!!??

The arrival

Memo who works as a receptionist at Plantation House, once a drug dealer and robber, now a proud father and chairman of the Aldea de Artisanos, a cooperative whose construction was financed by the Japanese, where he has his home

Mt Morogacho from Finca la Montaña

Corcorán valley on the way back down from the finca la Montaña (the view from the other side)

Wax palms looking down into the valley

Proud Wax palm on the hill standing high above the canopy. These trees are peculiar to the area

Paul and Stado on the walk back from Finca la Montaña

Stado and Sanne, Dutch travellers I originally encountered on a bus in Mexico

Pretentious 10 course meal at La Sarenna

One of the courses; no wonder I still was hungry after 10 of  this size

Savouring the haut cuisine(??)

The chef from Barcelona, a very warm character called Josef with a real sense of drama and occasion. The gourmet denner cost $8, but we could have been in a Michellin 3 star with all the hullabaloo and flourishes

Medellín

I left Bogotá on an early bus for the 10 hour ride to Medellín in order to enjoy the spectacular scenery. But no sooner had we risen into the cordillera when we were enveloped in drizzle and mist, so the the bus swayed along the sharply winding road, whils we were entertained with the usual violent videos that passengers have to endure on Colombian buses, in arctic conditions. The bitter cold due to a fully functioning air conditioning unit cranked up full blast, despite numerous complaints from the passengers. Utterly bizarre when the temperature outside was a perfect 22 - 24 degrees, and a recipe for catching a cold. As we descended into the Rio Magdalena valley, we dropped out of the clouds and were rewarded with spectacular views. Sadly it is extremely difficult to photograph these from a lurching bus as apart from the motion, as the road twists, obstructions cull the opportunities of a good shot. Once I arrived in Medellín, the main hostel location appeared to be in an expensive residential neighbourhood with little local colour except about 1.5 km up the road, where the Zona Rosa is packed with night clubs and bars, and there is a parade of beautiful girls all somehow absorbed in their cellphones, whilst hoping to be noticed. The young guys in the hostel did very well with them. As for me, I was feeling exhausted and did not have the will to do much for some days. I think the news of Jacque's illness knocked me far harder than I had expected it to. I spent most of the time reading in Spanish, practised the guitar for a couple of hours a day and generally chatted with my "house mates". I couldn't even get excited about salsa dancing which is very unusual.  However, I did manage to locate the Sephardic synagogue, which is some achievement as there is no address or contact phone number on the internet nor in the phone book for security reasons. Most Jews seemed to have migrated to this part of the world from the 1930s onwards, so the community is preponderantly askenaz, and the proprtion of sephardis in the sephardi community very small. The Friday night service was a curious hybrid of the 2, and the only real common factor that unites this with other sephardic shuls around the world (apart from sadly only one melody) was that the kids ran riot around the place, regardless of what was going on. It had a very warm and welcoming atmosphere, and there was one community member (Jozef), who reminded me of Gerald so much that I asked him if he was a Nurick.. He is even an engineer who has done impact research in the context of seismic effects on structures. I was invited by Jozef to his Friday night family dinner, at his mother's flat and I felt right at home with the fantastic food, the art on the walls, I could have been at Clairette's in Seapoint. Jozef told me that there was a huge community of converso Jews in Medellín, (some 250 families if I remember correctly) who discovered there "roots and origins" when Israeli contractors were employed to impose/improve security during the era of severe gang violence a couple of decades ago. They inspired so much respect amongst the gangs that many wanted to be Jewish and a number went to Israel to convert. After this initial wave, rabbis were brought out from Israel to do the conversions locally, and this community is very devout, refusing to drive on shabbat etc. I met one family and they were really great people, who really felt a sephardic heritage and that becoming Jewish was a kind of homecoming, even though there was no real evidence of forced conversion in the family history.

I visited Fernando, with whom I had done the Ciudad Perdida walk and spent the afternoon having lunch with his extended family. Afterwards, we went to Tetro Prado to see a 2 handed comedy in the form of "Pais Paisa"  a 2 handed comedy series parodying a typical Medellín couple. As there were a lot of in jokes I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, as I reckoned that I understood about 30% of it, but maybe a lot less in parts. A lot of the fun was being part of the audience and being carried along in the swell of their enthusiasm.

The cable way to Santa Domingo, part of the metro system of Medellín

The separate cableway to Santa Elena to Santa Domingo. As this is undeveloped forest within a national park it is like a tree canopy tour, fun to ride around without getting off at the top. Very few people seem to use it... Maybe it's different at the weekend

View of Medellín at sunset from just below the cable station at Santa Domingo. It's a huge city with gridlocked traffic, the river running through the bottom of the valley is clearly visible.

Listening to Argentinian tango on a Sunday afternoon in the botanical gardens during the Literary festival

The maestros performing

Arty people, an interviewer getting reactions to the man clad in rose petals behind him

A huge effort was made to involve the children by making up songs with them and getting them to dance

....and paint

Bogotá

 My arrival in Bogotá was frought with misunderstanding. To start off with there was a problem with the pay as you go sim card, which delayed my departure from Tunja by 3 hours. Next, the sister of a friend of Aristide had offered me a place to stay, and we arranged to rendezvous at a point which I thought was close to the bus terminal, but actually on the outskirts of town. As I had no local knowledge, it would have meant going back through a traffic jam that the bus had taken 2 hours to negotiate, so in the end I elected to carry on into town by taxi and find a hostel. The terrible thing was that Marta was waiting for me for hours to show up, which I hadn't intended. The Candelária is the old section of Bogotá and a delightful place to wander around. Because it lies on the side of the cordillera, it is very reminiscent of Cape Town, with the mountains rising up behind with a cable way, although the similarity ends when you look the other way; the city sprawls through the middle of a valley and creeps up the hills on the other side, instead of beautiful ocean. It is filled with restaurants and museums, and on Friday evenig carrera Septima which runs from Plaza Bolívar is closed off to traffic and becomes a street market with live music and the most bizarre street theatre from singing midgets, to the best juggling group I've seen in ages, juggling fire clubs and knives from tall unicycles with a quivering audience member in the middle of the crossfire.One place I sadly missed out on was Casa de Citas; I had asked a Colombian staying in the same hostel in San Gil where to see live music in Bogotá and without hesitation he recommended Casa de Citas. When I mentioned this to the people I met in Tunja, they were both shocked and very amused. Apparently Casa de Citas is a euphemism for a brothel, a place to meet "artists" and they warned me about asking a taxi driver to take me there as I could get nto all sorts of unintended trouble. Conclusion: he must have been pulling my leg...So, I didn't even try. However, on my last Sunday, I went for a coffee with a woman who I started chatting to in a supermarket and I told her the story. She found it amusing, but told me that on the contrary, there is such a bona fide place, sadly only about 100m from where I was staying, and we walked there, and it is an upmarket restaurant hosting live performances only on the weekends.Que lástima!

 There are a number of truly wonderful museums in Bogotá, with free entrance to many on a Sunday. My favourite was the Donación Botero, which has a fine collection of  Boteros, European and North American art, as well as a section dealing with post conquest Colombian art, which evolved from being purely religious to secular and sophisticated; a very interesting journey to contemplate.  Under the same roof is the Casa de la Moneda, which was originally the mint, but now is just part of the museum complex, and the evolution of coin and money is exhibited with examples from the barter system used by the indigenous who were apparently astute traders, to the introduction of paper currency. No punches are pulled in describing how the gold which had a spiritual rather than monetary value for the indigenous was initially purchased with a few beads or bits of mirror, to being forcefully stolen from homes, ransoming chiefs and grave robbing. The explanation was that the Spanish Crown had racked up huge debts in the reconquest of Spain as well as mounting the expiditions to the new world that creditors needed paying off. (It was also handy that they expelled the Jews from Spain and expropriated their property too) So as usual it seems that the f$@king bankers are to blame for creating havoc and distress in the world.The mint was created intially to manufacture the coin to pay taxes and levies to Spain. However, the one saving grace is that this museum along with the Gold Museum is the property of Banco de la Republica and they are great treasures for all to enjoy, although somewhat cynically one can't help wandering if they are useful tax dodge and an asset hedge against which they can do some dodgy lending elsewhere!






 The view up the street in the Candelária looking towards the cordillera

The view across the courtyard at Donación Botero/ Casa de la Moneda

An interesting sculpture by Botero

A self portrait of the artist at work (Quite why he needed a model is beyond me.....)

A poignant work entitled "The letter" Although the distorted volume is Botero's trademark, I found it too much of a formula and couldn't find much beauty in the images. Rather the impact for me came from the humanity of these caractures.
 
Gold coins struck by Admiral Vernon to celebrate his conquest of Cartegena in 1740. Even though he had superior manpower (27 000) and firepower (3000 artillery pieces), he was repelled by the one eyed, one armed and one legged Blas de Lezo and failed to take the city. So these are curious tangible tokens of British hubris held at the Casa de la Moneda



View of Bogotá from the top of the cable way at Monserrate




The singing midget on Carrera Septima on a Friday evening

Maria who set me straight about Casa de Citas in the Plaza Bolívar Bogotá











The salt cathedral at Zipequira is touted as one of the wonders and unissable sights of modern Colombia. Although the photos came out reasonably well, I was was mostly unimpressed and unmoved by the cathedral made in the underground channels excavated by the mining of salt. It has stark modern abstract sculptures to represent the stations of the cross on the way down and a simple cross carved into the far wall of the main space. A copy of Micharlangelo's Creation from the Sistine chapel in marble compltes the cathedral. There are some of the usual gaudy Catholic icons and statues in a number of alcoves and the lady chapel, but these seem incongruent. More interesting is that the salt dome was once an evaporated sea bed millions (135?) of years ago, which was sandwiched by upthrust of the strata of the Andean cordillera. Underground streams leached out the salt, and the local indians recognising the salinity, wvaporated trays of it over fire to create salt loaves which they traded for a variety of goods with the other tribes in the Rio Magdalena valley.

One of the stations of the cross on the walk down into the main cavern

 

The cross carved into the wall behind the altar

The relief of the creation of Adam in the centre of the floor of the cathedral

The Long road to Bogotá

With my back finally settling down enough to contemplate a long bus ride, my boots dry and the blog up to date, there was little excuse left to linger in Santa Marta. I left the hotel early in order to catch the 7am bus to Bucaramanga. It was a very long ride and we got in at about 630pm. Rather than stay, I elected to travel on to San Gil, which is a somewhat smaller town reputed to be in some spectacularly rugged country. Unfortunately it was dark, so I missed a lot of the scenery, but the ground seems to rise very gradually from the coast with the occasional range of hills in the distance, and then some hours later, we were winding along the crests of high ridges, looking down into the ravines below. On the coastal plains, there were huge banana and oil palm plantations, which gave way to cattle ranching and horticulture. I arrived in San Gil sometime after 10pm, found a hostel and managed a good rest. Even so, I was exhausted the next day, which must have been partly down to altitude sickness as San Gil is at 1140m above mean sea level, and partly to the long journey. People visit San Gil for the adventure sports, and as my back was still in a very vulnerable state, I had to pass up on the white water rafting and the rappelling (abseiling) I thought to give paragliding a try, as I felt that I should be able to cope with one landing. As fate would have it, the wind wasn't strong enough for a take off, so I spent the afternoon on the side of the hill admiring the countryside.... Interestingly, the major crop around San Gil appears to be what we used to call "burley leaf" tobacco in Zim, all air dried under roof, rather than force dried in barns. The crop appeared to be so abundant and well managed, that I really doubt Zim will ever be able to compete in the near future, of course there are different grades of this poison, so maybe they produce a different variety...

The cathedral like moss in Parque El Gallineral. (This was a pair of trees growing together titled "Matrimonio feliz", higuerón gemelo y ceiba bonga) , The park itself consisted of a natural forest on the bank of the Rio Fonce and was peaceful and beautiful

Parque central in San Gil, a very typical small Colombian city, I loved the market, where you could eat like a king for about $3

The burley tabacco growing outside San Gil...

Villa de Leiva is touted as one of the unmissable places in Colombia, and justifiably so in my opinion. It retains a definite colonial charm, with streets that are cobbled with uneven stones (quite how the women manage their stiletto heels on them is nothing short of miraculous) and a vast Plaza Mayor, on which the local kids fly kites. It is surrounded by picturesque hills, but at 2650m, gets very cold at night. Athough it's main raison d'etre is tourism, it was quiet and fun to wander through the streets. To the west in the valle se Leiva, which was a seabed some 115 million years ago abundant fossils have been found, and the little museum just outside the town was a fascinating introduction to this world for me which so fascinated Darwin. The only problem is that I learn and forget all the names and types of fossils, but the main finds are ictiosaurios, a marine reptile with many similarities to the modern day dolphin, (on display Platypterigius sachicarum, for those who are interested) an elasmosaurios an aquatic version of a sauropod, related to pliosaurios which had short tails, flippers like turtles and heads like crocodiles. A virtually complete pliosaurus skeleton of the species Kronosaurus boyacensis has a dedicated museum built around it in situ some miles away; I had to content myself with some fossilised body parts. Myriad ammonites (fossilised snails) are on display, again it is fascinating that so little is known about these creatures, and the picture that has been deduced from existing species requires great knowledge and imagination.

Looking north-east across the vast Plaza Mayor

Sidewalks paved with ammonites and slate!

View from Casa del Primer Congreso. I stumbled into a lecture of eminent historians paying homage to the founding of the congress on the 200th anniversary of the Bolivarian revolution, to which I was invited and didn't understand a lot of.

Looking west across the Plaza Mayor from the steps of the cathedral

The view across the rooftops from room in Villa de Leiva. I splashed out ($20) and it was for me incredibly luxurious with the best shower I had to date in Colombia. With a lovely lounge with a view of the hills and of the Iglesia del Carmen and monasterio, in which to practise the guitar.

Plaza Mayor with Museo Acuña on the left. Although I really loved his work in the museum in Cartagena, all the struck me here along with a few interesting images was his sheer volume of creativity. It also housed a number of rare books clocks and musical instruments from his personal collection along with some art, the 2 most interesting pieces had been stolen, sadly including a Virgen de la Leche, of the lactating virgin comforting a grown saint, most of which were destroyed as blasphemy on the orders of the church. The other amazing artefact was a violin from the studio of Stradivarius, if not actually made by him, and I wonder how long that will remain there, as the security didn't strike me as that good.

Plaza del Carmen

Kite flying in the Plaza Mayor on Sunday

I wasn't planning on going to Tunja, (27870m and very cold when the sun doesn't shine) but as there was an International Cultural Festival, I thought that this would be a good way to finally get to see some live Colombian music. Imagine my horror when I arrived on a late Saturday afternoon to be greeted with a cacophony beyond the threshold of pain that sounded like a machine self destructing with the occasional stray cats getting mangled in its entrails. It was Metallica day, and I was all set to leave the next day, as I had queued abortively for 40 mins for a seat at a tango demonstration. Mercifully it all stopped at about 9pm. The next day I managed to take in a contemporary and folkloric dance performance, which had some very good moments. Man, can those young kids dance! There was also a classical guitar performance, occasionally accompanying a Brasilian soprano. For all the flowery language of introducing tis grand maestro, I have heard a lot better, and the soprano left me cold too. Still it was good to here some old classical favourites, even though he didn't attempt any really challenging repertoire. The next day was a real treat, as I saw for the first time Joropo music, with 4 real maestros of te Andean harp, accompanied wby Quatro ( small type of 4 stringed guitar, bass ad carpacho (shakers). These were the most amzing consummate musicians, and that was a real privilege. the next day was "Encuentro de las 5 guitarras", of the 5, I only particularly rated 3. Sadly I don't remember their names, but there was an outstanding classical player, another who played flamenco and modern compositions with great virtuosity, passion and warmth, and anoter who played his own jazzy improvisation with a lot of rasguado and strumming technique of various local popular themes, with the audience singing and clapping along. Amazingly, people don't turn their cell phones off, and talk during the music.

The poster from the Festival outside the town hall

Looking down the street off te Plaza Bolivar. Tunja is a very friendly place, but it's hell to try to find a laundry!

The Joropo concert, Carpacho, harp, cuatro and bass.

From right to left, Aristide, Maria (his daughter) Marco. Marco befriended me at the dance performance, and through him I met Aristide, a local university lecturer, who was passionate about music, his little daughter who could dance salsa incredibly well, and a few aquaintances, Rodrigo, his daughter Andrea and her grandmother. They were so inclusive and welcoming to wards me, and Aristide in particular made sure I got into the harp recital as the queue jumping is rampant (all performances were free except for a couple of big pop names)

The main stage in Plaza Bolivar

Colourful folkloric dancing on the main stage

A photographic celebration of the indigenous culture in Plaza Bolivar, but none were actually in sight

A mariachi act, with this incredible little girl singing and dancing her heart out with her parents. Huge talent, presence and timing in one so young. Already she knew all the songs, and even though she couldn't reach the mic she was clearly audible and very, very good.