Into The Jungle

I sit in the bow of a small wooden canoe in a brown creek, holding a primitive cane fishing pole. Monkeys shriek in the trees on either side of the river, pink dolphins frolic in the murky waters ahead, and pairs of colourful macaws fly overhead. I feel the tension grip my line, and yank hard. I pull out another fearsome red bellied piranha, my eighteenth such catch in just over an hour. This is the Amazon alright.

I had caught my first glimpse of the great rainforest from the plane. About half an hour after leaving Bogota, a casual glance out of the plane window revealed the terrain below had dramatically shifted from the usual, well, English-looking, green fields and rolling hills of the Colombia I've come to know, to something entirely different altogether. As far as the eye could see, all was dark. For a second I was flummoxed, thinking the vast featureless expanse below could only be ocean, an impossibility on this landlocked internal flight to the south. Then I realised. The rolling sea below wasn't water, but trees. This wasn't the Pacific, it was the Amazon.

There is something definitely unromantic about air travel; namely the convenience of boarding in one hermetically sealed featureless generic airport and arriving in another equally sterile characterless concrete vault, without any conception of the journey, of the gradual transition from one environment to another. Yet the visual perspective from a plane cannot be beaten. Only from the air can the sheer scale of the Amazon even begin to be comprehended. According to the stats on Wikipedia (not a source I quote with a great deal of confidence), the forest itself occupies over 5.5 million square miles, making it larger than every country on earth except Russia. Colombia's small portion of the rainforest alone is bigger than Germany or California, and it really shows from the air.

Such scale is awe-inspiring, frightening in a way, particularly when one is flying over it. Assuming you didn't succumb to the heat, the biting insects, the deadly snakes, spiders, scorpions or big cats, one could walk for thousands of miles through the forest and never come across anything even closely resembling civilisation. Whether or not such a hike would encounter humans of a lightly less than civilised disposition is unclear; the forest is so vast and unexplored that anthropologists believe there are many "uncontacted" tribes still waiting innocently for the modern world to blunder in and destroy them. I find this prospect quite staggering in its implications. Consider for a moment the possibility, no, the certainty that there are groups of people, more or less like you or I, wandering around in the rainforest totally oblivious to the rest of the world. They have never encountered electricity, machines, in all probability, the wheel. They are unaware of the whole course of human history beyond the narrow confines of their own society, unaware of the existence of a geography beyond their own little world, totally unaware of other languages and cultures. Yes, who knows how many Americans may be wandering lost in the forest?

Incidentally, I do not mention the fear engendered by flying over such a vast expanse of wilderness out of mere curiosity; in my final Spanish class I had been priviliged enough to read a compelling article in Colombia´s premier daily newspaper, El Tiempo, about the truly appalling safety record of Aerorepublica, the country´s second biggest airline, who in recent months have had real problems successfully landing on runways. As Aerorepublica flight 7481 hurtled out of the sky into what seemed like yet more undisturbed green jungle, I can´t say I didn´t think about this questionable record for just a second. While I´m always keen for a spot of off the beaten track adventure, the prospect of hacking a new path through a few hundred miles of virgin rainforest did not fill me with much enthusiasm.

Bearing this is mind, fast forward 48 hours and picture the scene: `Jimmy´, our indigenous guide hacks at the undergrowth with his machete, clearing a path through the jungle. I´m dripping with sweat, and more than a little terrified as my eyes scan the path ahead for all manner of savage beast: poisonous vipers, 30 foot anacondas, giant tarantulas, jaguars, any or all could set upon me at any moment. To make matters worse, I´m wearing only a pair of slightly faded sky blue Tommy Hilfiger boxer shorts and an eccentric Indiana Jones style hat. Quite how I came to find myself wandering through a remote stretch of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest clad only in my pants I´m really not sure. I can only say that at the time, having just finished bathing in a delightfully cool forest stream, it seemed logical to allow myself a chance to dry off before putting my trousers back on. Now, however, as insects, birds and who knows what else hiss, hum and shriek all around me, I´m beginning to reconsider. The Amazon is no place for a man without trousers.

All in all I spent the best part of four days exploring the remote regions of the Rio Javari on the border between Peru and Brazil, and an idyllic four days it was too. Fishing for piranhas, catching caimans (an Amazonian species of crocodile) bare handed, forest walks, scaling the canopy to a platform 130 feet up; I did many unforgettable things and saw many incredible creatures. Yet for me at least, the most amazing sensation of all was the feeling of being so deep in the wilderness. Six hours by boat from Leticia, itself 500 miles from the nearest road, this really was the back of beyond. As I lay in bed at night, nothing but a mosquito net between me and the jungle, listening to the chorus of howls, wails and clicks emanating from the trees and admiring the blindingly bright carpet of stars above, I really felt a very long long way from anywhere. In the age of mobile phones, blackberries, and constant instantaneous communication, that is a rare sensation indeed, and a privilege I feel immensely fortunate to have enjoyed.

I must remember to keep my trousers on next time.

"Chantelle, je t'aime"

"That parrot's dead!" "No he's not, he's just resting!"

Ok, this one is definitely alive.

Yes, that's me, and yes, that's a crocodile.

That's not me, but it is a deadly red-bellied piranha.

Sunrise over the Amazon.

Adios a Colombia

`Hola, como esta? Soy de Inglaterra, y voy a Brasil´
`Ola. Snsh veyt minhuto bem vindo htyu ererh bassaborte´
`Er, Que?´

What the fuck? At this point I realise the utter stupidity of spending a month intensively learning Spanish only to immediately head to Brazil. Portuguese is a truly ridiculous language, of which I understand not a word. The really irritating thing, however, is that it´s sufficiently similar to Spanish that they can understand me perfectly, thus giving the illusion of ease, an illusion that is immediately shattered as soon as they commence their seemingly part Russian, part French, part Latin response, all of which with the kind of accent that should really necessitate some intensive enunciation sessions with a speech therapist.

Still, linguistic nightmares aside, I managed to negotiate my way into Brazil successfully, but such is the way with formalities here in the `Three Borders´region of the Amazon, where Brazil, Colombia and Peru converge on a narrow stretch of river, I took my shiny Brazilian stamp and immediately returned to Colombia. There is effectively no border here, as I discovered last night when I inadvertently wandered into Brazil. Despite the proximity and de facto merger of Leticia and Tabatinga into one united conurbation, the differences between the two towns are striking. Where Tabatinga is dirty, rundown and chaotic, characteristically a frontier town, Colombian Leticia is a sprightly and prosperous place. On the face of it, this fact should be slightly surprising. 500 miles from the nearest road, reachable only by riverboat and plane, aside from a nascent tourist industry there seems little here to support any kind of town, let alone one so obviously prosperous. The economic miracle of Adam Smith´s famous `Invisible Hand´has never seemed so enigmatically well-hidden as here.

The answer to this conundrum, of course, is simple. Cocaine. An oasis of semi-civilsation in the midst of vast swathes of impenetrable jungle resolutely controlled by the FARC, with virtually unpatrolled borders between the coca-leave producing Peru and the cocaine-consuming Brazil, Leticia is a prime spot on the trade route for Colombia´s number one export product. In the interests of idle curiosity I asked a taxi driver a little about the industry in these parts; he was only too happy to respond. (By way of an aside, there is something infinitely rock and roll about sitting on the back of a motorbike discussing the narcotics industry in Spanish as you roar around the streets of a Colombian border town trying to find th best exchange rate from the street money changers.) A kilogram of pure cocaine apparently costs US$1,200 in Leticia, which is quite staggeringly cheap; according to my source (on this particular topic, I think a guy who drives a motorbike in Leticia is probably quite reliable), that same kilo, once cut with various potions and powders, will make 3 kilos in the west, with a street value of around US$300,000. Suddenly it all makes a little more sense. No wonder Pablo Escobar was in the top ten of the Forbes Global Rich List for over a decade. Still, he did die in a hail of bullets in a Medellin sidestreet, so perhaps the life of an international druglord isn´t all gravy...

My brief investigation into Leticia´s import-export industry over, I head to the port to catch a boat down the Rio Javari to a remote ecolodge in Brazil. Or perhaps in Peru? As I´m already officially in Brazil, I avoid the passport formalities of my three fellow explorers, two affable Catalonians and a typically chirpy Colombian, yet follow them to Santa Rosa, Peru anyway. This is my third country in half an hour, which is in itself a little disconcerting. It feels bad to be back in Peru, a country to which, despite its inestimable natural and archaological wonders (everyone should see Machu Picchu once), I took a strong dislike on my last visit in 2002. Santa Rosa is no different. Visibly much poorer than Tabatinga or Leticia, Santa Rosa is little more than wooden shacks rising out of the mud. With typical Peruvian efficiency we find the Immigration Office closed, the presiding bureaucrat at lunch, where we join him in a quite appalling restaurant, replete with various indigenous Amazonian animals caged in heartbreaking squalor. Combined with the excruciating noise emanating from the live band, this makes for a thoroughly unpleasant half hour; finally the necessary formalities finalised, we are free to go. I am officially in Brazil, while Luis, Alfredo and Francesco are officially in Peru. All of us are actually in Colombia, as we stop once more to secure vital supplies - a crate of Aguila beer - for the six hour journey into Brazil. Confused yet? I am...

But so it is that with a slightly heavy heart I say goodbye to Colombia, a country I can honestly say I´ve come to love over the last month. The people, the culture, the scenery; what a fantastic place. I will certainly return one day, hopefully soon, and that´s not something I can say about too many places. You´ll shortly find below a selection of photographic mementos of some of my Colombian amigos and amigas - I hope to see them again one day soon. Perhaps in Nora´s case, on MTV. But for now I move onto new adventures. The Amazon!

Akiel, from Trinidad (and Tobago), and Miguel, my anarchist Spanish teacher


Samuel, the craziest dog in Colombia


Akiel and Paula Andrea. She´s quite normal, for a Colombian

Nora. Like Shakira she´s from Barranquilla. Like Shakira she´s a singer. Unlike Shakira, seeing her emerge from the bathroom in just her lacy underwear was not one of the all time highlights of my time on earth.

The Starbucks Express

The small bus stopped suddenly. My heart froze. Half or dozen or so men in exceedingly dirty clothes and muddy wellington boots, carrying foot-long machetes, were boarding. The first one, his face moustachioed and weather-beaten, and his hands calloused from heavy labour (burying bodies? I mused to myself), paused slightly when he saw me. Then a smile lit up his face as he greeted me: "Buenas tardes señor, ¿como está?".

Someone in Bogota told me that the way to spot FARC members is their penchant for wearing wellies at all times, even in towns on sunny days. If this is correct, Colombia's woes are much greater than I realised, for in the coffee region everyone wears wellies. I only hope the army can hold out against the rampant hordes of welly-wearing Marxists until the weekend when I say "adios" to Colombia. Happily for my bus journey, I think this means of identifying the rebels may lack something in the way of accuracy, as these particular rubber boot aficionados seemed to be employed by the coffee industry rather than the militant revolutionary forces of the international proletariat. Coffee is big business here, and it's taken very seriously indeed by the Colombians, nowhere more so than at the Parque Nacional de Cafe, Colombia's answer to Disneyland. Actually, that's not quite true; no-one could really describe a theme park devoted to coffee beans as serious. Regardless of the tone, it's a very informative place, which teaches the visitor all he or she might want to know (and a good deal more besides) about the whole bean to cup process.

Yet aside from the coffee itself, the main reason to visit the so-called "Zona Cafeteria" is the scenery. Set in lush mountains to the west of Bogotá, quaint little towns and spectacular fincas dot the verdant hillsides. I spent the Independence Day weekend in one such pueblo, Salento, hiking in the countryside during the day and joining in the local July 20th festivities by night. These festivities mostly seemed to consist of eating trout (a local delicacy), drinking aguardiente, and high speed synchronised dancing. One fellow traveller (from Belfast I believe, though I didn't meet him myself) apparently over-indulged in the local culture to such an extent that he was taken into protective custody by the police, who feared the consequences of the local menfolk catching up with the paralytic Ulsterman who had been touching their women. After a 1am call from the cops, the owner of the local traveller's hostal, an affable British chap called Tim, headed down to the station to interpret. After much violence and swearing, it was decided to allow the Irish miscreant to remain in a cell for the rest of the evening; upon his release the next morning, the police insisted he sign a statement affirming he had not been mistreated. Something tells me a Colombian in a similar position in UK might not have been granted such hospitality. What's the Spanish for "fell down the stairs"?

Unlike the unfortunate Ulsterman, however, I managed to restrain myself for once, having to rise early for a trek. Six hours of hiking through a nature reserve in the cloud forest certainly seemed preferrable to a hangover and a story about a Colombian police cell, especially when it afforded the opportunity to see the unique wax palm trees that dot the area. Though certainly aesthetically-pleasing, the wax palm (see photos below) is seemingly a particularly pointless species, growing a ludicrously long thin trunk before sprouting normal palm leaves about 60 feet up in the air. Any time you meet an evangelical Christians who attempts to debunk the theory of evolution with reference to so-called "intelligent design", please direct him to the Valle de Cocora in central Colombia, where a cursory inspection of the Peter Crouch of palm trees will provide him with ample evidence that "intelligent design" is a totally fallacious concept. But more about God later.

After beginning my weekend with a flight to Cali, I planned to return to Bogotá via road, both on grounds of expense (because of the distances involved internal flights in Colombia are not overly cheap) and because I dimly recalled reading some strikingly congratulatory comments about the spectacular scenery on that road in Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonian Express". Indeed, after travelling by train and bus from Boston to Bogotá, Theroux was keen to suggest this particular road passed through some of the most spectacular scenery in the whole of the Americas. Of course when reading such glowing tributes from the comfort of one's armchair, sipping a mug of cocoa, the true implications of words such as "spectacular" are often hidden. Five years ago I crossed the Andes on a bus, in Peru, and after a 20 hour journey so nerve-shatteringly awful I almost turned to religion, I vowed never to do it again. 18 hours of figuratively shitting myself as we barely negotiated hairpin bends on narrow pot-holed roads with vertiginous drops just inches from the outside wheels of the bus were followed by two hours of actually shitting myself after consuming some toxic corn-based snack at a roadside truck stop. "NEVER AGAIN" I promised myself.

In light of this experience, quite how I found myself sitting in the front seat ("for best views" the driver told me in Spanish, without a trace of irony) of a 17 seater minibus snaking its way at high speed around cliff top roads in thick cloud and pouring rain, I'm not sure. Unlike Peruvians, however, Colombians seem to take a slightly more positive view of the concept of road safety, and do therefore have such measures as seatbelts and paved highways in place. Not that a seatbelt would be a great deal of use were the bus to plunge 7,000 feet over the side of a cliff, but I guess it's the thought that counts. In fact, so seriously do the bus companies take the issue of safety, that each of their ticket booths features a highly tasteful scorecard of crashes, injuries and deaths on each route in the last 6 months. I didn't enquire about the stats for a longer timescale; some things are better left unsaid.

In addition to all these admirable measures, it seems Colombian buses are also equipped with a giant digital speedometer, allowing everyone on board to monitor velocity at all times. Should the driver get a little too carried away and exceed the 80km per hour legal limit for his rattling jalopy, a noxious alarm sounds until the speed is reduced. While surely well-intentioned, I found this invention to be totally and utterly terrifying. Who really needs to know that the bus is approaching a 90 degree switchback on the wrong side of the road at 72kph? If you ask me it merely panders to the vanity of the driver's constant Juan Pablo Montoya impressions. And while we're on the subject of Colombia's number one racing driver, I don't ever recall him finding himself confronted with a 15 ton articulated lorry as he takes the racing line through the apex of a blind bend, as happened to our noble chauffeur innumerable times on Sunday. Nor does Señor Montoya have to juggle mobile phones, two-way radios, gear sticks, steering wheels and cholesterol-rich snacks as he tears around the streets of The Principality in his state of the art racing machine.

Yet in truth, none of this really mattered, for we had God on our side all along. As we pulled out of the Terminal de Autobuses in Armenia, just before donning his imaginary flame retardant suit, leather driving gloves and crash helmet, our intrepid driver solemnly crossed himself and offered a couple of silent prayers to the big man upstairs. Many of the passengers followed suit. An hour later, as we deftly avoided the still-smoking scene of a (very) recent head-on collision between a Renault Twingo and a twenty ton truck by sneering at the oncoming traffic and veering casually into the opposite lane at 63kph, I too was on my knees, offering myself in supplication to God, Jahweh, Allah, Buddha, Robbie Fowler, and any other deity I could think of.

Still, on the plus side, our journey to Ibagué was completed in half the official four hour allotment; not an outcome that would be repeated on the second leg of the trip back to Bogotá. In fact, at times on that hellish six hour drive, I was almost overcome with nostalgia for the suicidal tendencies of the earlier driver, particularly when the giant neon speedo dipped below 10kph for the umpteenth time. Night buses in Colombia hold their own particular terrors; Lonely Planet is particularly vehement in its advice to avoid them, and legion are the tales of unwary travellers who lose all their belongings when a nice man with a gun flags down and boards their bus at 2am. Yet such were the crowds of revellers heading home after the Independence Day weekend that waiting for a journey in darkness was the only option. "Still, at least you can't see the cliffs at night", I thought to myself as we waited to depart; fervently hoping for a driver without the quivering moustache and devilish glint in the eye that so often signifies lunacy in South America. I needn't have worried; regardless of the psychiatric state of the driver, our bus' engine was so weak that speed was an impossible dream, and the Colombian army had so many units on highway security patrol over the weekend it was difficult to go 50 yards without seeing a listless pimply youth with a machine gun. What good these soldiers of boredom would actually be in the event of an actual firefight with the FARC or some would-be bandits I'm not sure, but I suppose they act as a deterrent.

Yet there were other horrors to contend with, not least the driver's grim obsession with the spirit-crushingly irritating Vallenato music omnipresent in much of Colombia. There are many ways to kill a man with his own accordion, and I thought of them all as the terrible folk tunes played grimly on and on. At one stage the radio station was briefly changed; my relief was short-lived, however, as a Spanish language version of Robbie Williams cigarette-lighters-in-the-air anthem "Angels" replaced the incessant whining of the accordions. "Angeles" (sample lyric: "voy a amar a los ángeles...") was even more awful in reality than you could ever possibly imagine, and was very nearly the final straw. Yet somehow I survived, finally rolling into Bogotá at 2am, over twelve hours after leaving Salento. For what it's worth, the scenery on the road WAS incredible, at least the small sections I could see through my fingers, and unlike in Peru I managed not to soil myself at any point of the journey, which was a distinct bonus as I'm sure my fellow passengers would agree.

One more week of class in Bogotá, then it's off to the Amazon on Saturday. Sadly I won't be taking the bus - being 500 miles from the nearest road, Leticia is inaccessible by any means except boat or plane - though a couple of weeks from now I will be facing the delightful prospect of a 16 hour journey on Brazil's Trans-Amazonian highway. While there are no mountains to contend with there, I'm sure ample excitement will be provided by the unavoidable traverse of the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve. In case you're not aware, many anthropologists regard the Yanomami as the most violent people on the planet (yes, they're even more violent than Glaswegians). When the road was built in the early 90s, the Brazilian army had to massacre hundreds of Yanomamis irate at the intrusion of the white (well, light brown) man into their territory. Armed only with poison arrows and blow darts, the locals stood little chance of victory, though they did cause a substantial number of deaths. In the circumstances it's probably best not to run into them on the road; to be on the safe side the highway is closed between dusk and dawn and all stoppages are expressly prohibited. I'm not sure what happens in the event of a breakdown...

A rare Colombian Wax Palm Tree

Liverpool and England striker Peter Crouch

Ludicrously tall Wax Palms in the Valle de Cocora

Hummingbird silhouetted against the cloud forest

Hummingbird on a sugar feeder. Mmmm....sugar...

Coffee!

While I understood most of the coffee-making process, I still can't work out where these peanuts come into the equation. What's that? They're beans? What kind of beans?

In Latin America this sign means "don't catch the birds". In Spain, however, it's a more serious offence. Quite how you'd fuck a parrot I don't know...

One Night In Cali

"Pssst, señor, ¿que quieres? Bueno precio..."

Perhaps it's my overactive imagination, perhaps it's the psychotropic antimalarial drugs I'm taking now, or perhaps it's the preponderance of prostitutes, male and female, that proposition taxi passengers at the traffic lights, but I get the sense that Cali is a little bit dodgy. Once the home of Colombia's biggest drug cartel, and still a major base for the narcotics industry, the city also lies on the very edge of FARC-controlled territory. Though usually remaining in rural areas outside of the city, the guerrillas detonated a huge car bomb here in April, an incident that did not fill me with particular excitement as I boarded the plane in Bogota. Upon arrival, a long taxi drive into town ensued. Staring out of the open window into the fetid darkness of the tropical night, there was a certain thrill to be had from the knowledge that somewhere out there lurk earnest peasants in muddy fatigues, carrying AK-47s and copies of "The Communist Manifesto", agitating for the overthrow of liberal capitalist democracy here in Colombia. Just so long as they stay out there and don't start venturing any closer to me, mind, there's a limit to how close I want my thrills.

The city of Cali itself is not beautiful. In many ways nor is Bogota, but the capital has a charming historical district and a striking mountain setting; neither attribute Cali posesses. No matter, however, for despite its preponderence of low-slung American style strip malls, centreless sprawl and slightly eerie emptiness, Cali is widely famed for the beauty of its women and the insanity of its nightlife, both of which had long ago attained near-mythical proportions in my mind at least. I'm not sure why or when I first heard about Cali, but I do know that for a long time I had wanted to go there, my interest piqued by no doubt tall tales of outrageously beautiful gangsters' molls dancing till dawn in sweaty, sexy nightclubs, all underlaid with the definite dark edge that comes from being a city built on white powdery foundations.

In some respects I was slightly disappointed. The nightlife was great, but by Colombian standards lacked just a little something. My strong desire to visit a Caleño Salsatecca to see the locals showing off their salsa skills was tempered with the news that the Juanchito district, home of the Salsateccas, is widely considered off-limits to sane people, let alone gringos, on the grounds of its proximity to some pretty "exciting" slums. I'm not sure if this is true, personally I don't believe it, but for once discretion proved the better part of valour and I elected not to find out. I did, however, head to legendary Cali nightclub, Kukumukara, where I was treated to some quite incredible mountain views. The giant peaks in question were not another extension of the mighty Andes, viewed out of the club's windows however, but were rather contained, more or less anyway, in the skimpy tops of almost every female in the club.

It's quite probable that there are eminent plastic surgeons in Britain, with long and distinguished careers in cosmetic medicine, who have never seen as many silicone breasts as are to be found in a Cali nightclub. In many respects entering Kukumukura was like walking into the pages of Playboy magazine (without the ninety year old pederast in a silk dressing gown in the corner obviously), as a veritable ocean of almost-naked surgically-enhanced flesh lurked at every turn. While some of the women were undeniably attractive, a large number bordered on the grotesque, particularly those who had teamed their artificially-inflated cleavages with similarly pneumatic posteriors. With the temperature in the club rising rapidly, for a time I began to worry about the melting point of silicone, fearing I might suddenly find myself alone, save for numerous steaming piles of molten plastic on the floor. My fears were soon allayed, however, by numerous shots of Aguardiente, the potent local firewater imbibed in vast quantities here. It's nasty stuff, a lot like a kind of sugarfree sambuca, all the more nauseating for being served ice-cold. Still, it's certainly a required ingredient if I am to attempt salsa dancing, which I duly did with little notable success. The other higlight of the evening was certainly one of the bands' live rendition of "La La La La La La Bamba" - to hear a Latin group in a Latin American club actually play that was just too amusing for words.

Anyway, with enough eyefuls of silicone, not to mention Aguardiente, to last a lifetime, I departed Cali early on Friday morning to take in the scenic delights of Colombia's coffee-growing heartlands. About which, more later...

Love In The Time Of Cholera

Bougainvillea fringed wooden balconies overhang narrow cobbled streets lined with brightly painted houses. Horse drawn carts clatter across the stones as laconic, dark skinned men sit on the dusty pavements swigging beer from the bottle and playing dominoes. Music wafts into the night air on the warm ocean breezes, and the most beautiful girls in the world gently sway their hips in doorways, while their grandparents rock rhymthically in their chairs.

As I've already written, the Lonely Planet guidebook describes Cartagena as "a fairy tale city of romance, legends, and sheer beauty" and "the most spectacular colonial city on the continent". I can't vouch for the second claim, as my experience of South America is thus far limited to Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, but I can certainly confirm that Cartagena is indeed a very special place. An hour and a half flying time from Bogota, and Cartagena feels every bit of it. The palm trees lining the runway, the blast of hot air when the door opens, the pools of rainwater in the streets from the customary afternoon storm, even the noticeably darker inhabitants; make no mistake about it, this is the Caribbean.

Yet the difference between Cartagena and Bogota is more than just geographic - there's a distinct time shift between the Andes and the coast. Everything is much slower here, on island time as it were. There's another, more subtle, time difference though; in many respects Cartagena lies in a different century from the capital. While it has the same accoutrements of modern life as any big city in Latin America - internet cafes, cash machines, mobile phones - wandering the old town here could quite easily convince you you'd stepped into a timewarp. Put it this way, Cartagena is the only place I've ever been where the horse drawn carts seem plausibly authentic rather than tacky and artificial.

There is certainly a fairytale quality to all this: the gingerbread houses, the horsedrawn carriages, the walls defending the city from pirates, and Cartagena's history rivals any yarn from a children's storybook. Founded in 1533 on the site of an old Carib Indian settlement, Cartagena quickly grew into the most important port in Spanish America. Almost all the incalcuable treasure - gold, silver, emeralds and the like - extracted from South America's soil was shipped through Cartagena back to Spain. To put the quantities into some kind of perspective, the mines of a single Bolivian town, San Luis Potosi, reputedly yielded sufficient riches to build a solid silver bridge, 6 feet wide, all the way back to Madrid. Cartagena's spectacular architecture was one result of all this commerce; the constant scourge of piracy was another. The most famous of these buccaneers (you may wish to look away now if your version of history was taught in a British school), Sir Francis Drake, held the whole city to ransom in a long and bloody siege in 1586, graciously agreeing not to raze it to the ground upon receipt of ten million pesos. In response to this and numerous other assaults by seamen flying the skull and crossbones, the Spanish colonialiasts ringed Cartagena first with a series of forts, and later with the city walls which still stand today. Standing on the ramparts watching the sun sink slowly into the Caribbean, it's not at all difficult to imagine a pirate galleon sneaking over the horizon...

In addition to its ancient myths and legends, Cartagena was more recently the setting for Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s 1985 novel "Love In The Time Of Cholera", a fantastical fairytale loosely based on his own parents' courtship along Colombia's Caribbean coast. The book, published after his Nobel Prize for Literature yet arguably his best, will soon receive a great deal more publicity when the Hollywood adaptation hits screens across the globe later this year. Directed by Mike Newell, of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" fame, with a screenplay by 'Gabo' himself, and starring Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt, and Catalina Sandino Moreno, the movie promises to put Cartagena even more firmly on the tourist map as it was filmed on location in the city.

The story gets its name from the fearsome cholera epidemic which forms the backdrop to a hilariously absurd love story. In an amusingly (though not for me) apt parallel to the novel, my own whirlwind romance with Cartagena was also painted with a similar backdrop on the canvas as I battled a mysterious stomach ailment. While it obviously wasn't cholera, after some careful reading of the Health section of the Lonely planet (I strongly recommend you never try this), I am however sure that it was one (or all) of Typhoid, Amoebic Dysentry, or Hepatitis A. Still, luckily for me, Colombia, as you all well know, is renowned as the "drug capital of the world", and as a result the regulations regarding prescpriptions are somewhat lax. It seems that in place of the highly secure system in place in Britain (where any totally illegible scribble on something vaguely approximating a green piece of paper with a doctor's name will suffice), merely going up to the counter and saying "Amoxycillin, por favor" will produce favourable results. Whether such leniency extends higher up the drug potency chain is unclear. "Methadone por favor"? Hmmm... Anyway, as a result of my battle with a species of bacteria hitherto unknown to medical science, I ate two meals between last Wednesday and yesterday (Monday), subsisting almost entirely on a diet of gatorade and immodium. Personally I think it could be the new Atkins. Fortunately my initial tentative foray into the field of experimental pharmacology seems to have had some success, and I'm now back eating again. I may limit my intake of the ubiquitos Colombian "frijoles" (beans) for a while, however.

I conclude with an update on the "Usnavy" anecdote from my previous update. It seems another popular name in the Choco is taken from the currency. As the locals astutely inferred, any man important enough to have his picture on a dollar bill must be worth naming your offspring after. Unfortunately, however, that was the full extent of the intelligence on display in Choco province, hence a large number of children now run around the streets known as "Onedollar". To be fair, I'm not sure "George Washington" would be much better, but...

On that note, I'm off to conclude my homework - a 20 minute presentation (in Spanish of course) on "the history of guerillas in Colombia". I'll write again after the weekend, when I should be able to report on Cali, the self-styled salsa capital of the world, and also the Coffee Region. Pictures of Cartagena are below.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition." Except perhaps here, at the Palacio de la Inquisicion.

This being Colombia, dancing in the streets is mandatory.

Like Freddie Mercury, Fernando Botero likes Fat Bottomed Girls.


"¡Dios mio! It's the damned English again!"

Saturday Night In Bogotá

The dancefloor is packed with sweating, gyrating bodies, moving in time to the music. Space is so limited that others are shaking their hips on chairs, tabletops, even the bar; no flat surface is spared. The music is an eclectic mix of salsa, vallenato, reggae, disco, and pop; even gringa Madonna gets an outing, predictably with the ever so slightly Spanish flavoured "La Isla Bonita". All around people are swigging rum, aguardiente (the local aniseed flavoured firewater, effectively a Colombian corruption of sambuca), and whiskey by the bottle. A truly surreal array of actors, or at least I think so, join the revellers in a bewildering selection of costumes. A faun, perhaps Mr Tunnus from C.S. Lewis' classic "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe" prances across the floor, pausing to sniff various body parts of those he passes. An Indian travelling holy man, or sadhu, sashays around, theatrically begging for alms. A pair of conjoined twins, one black, the other white, one tall and thin, the other short and fat, one gay, the other straight, dance a depraved waltz, all the while making suggestive gestures to women and men alike. Despite it all, the crowd dances doggedly on. It's six thirty in the evening.

Part steak restaurant, part bar, part cavernous nightclub, Andres' Carne de Res is a Colombian institution, recently celebrating its 25th birthday. The staff here are all outrageously attractive; it seems quite feasible that those not fortunate enough to get a job at Andres' become Abercrombie models instead. Most of the customers are of a similar ilk, though the age ranges widely from the three or four year olds taking their first steps on the dancefloor, to the seasoned pros the wrong side of seventy. Like all Colombians, however, they seem to have a natural sense of rhythm. Like all gringos, however, I do not. Luckily no-one seems to notice, or care, the dancefloor being far too full to pay attention to anything except the pounding beats.

Away from the jiving mania on the floor, other Colombians are getting on with the serious business of drinking and eating. In this country it seems that just like in London's more anally exclusive nightspots, liquor is purchased by the bottle rather than the shot. Yet unlike at Boujis, Funky Buddha or Cristal this is not to promote an atmosphere of rarefied exclusivity or conspicuous consumption, instead it seems based on the undeniably economic and logistical advantages of buying in bulk. Rather than spending an aggregate couple of hours fighting to get to the bar each time you go out, most of the evening is spent enjoying the company, the food, and most of all the music. Nowhere I've ever been has had such an atmosphere of universal and unadulterated fun on a night out, except perhaps for Pamplona. Yet this was no once yearly fiesta, but an ordinary Saturday night.

We left Andres around 11 to head for a club in the centre of town. Here too was as similar story. A thousand plus people dancing, dancing, dancing, to everything from Colombian classics to old London favourite "Bomba" ("movimiento sexy..."). There's nothing quite like that feeling of realisation that you're singing along, out of tune of course, to a song whose lyrics you have absolutely no idea of. Except perhaps the feeling of realisation that you're singing along to a song whose lyrics you have absolutely no idea of, in a language you don't speak. I'm sure it was a great look for me.

Having said this, perhaps I'm selling myself short on the language (if not the singing voice). I just managed to convince Aerorepublica (a Colombian airline) that I had indeed bought my flight out of here to the Amazon a couple of months back on the internet, and that they did have the money after all. This morning in class we had a debate about global warming, in which I was quite able to articulate (in Spanish) that, in the immortal words of a fat 8 year old from Colorado, it's all a bunch of tree hugging hippy crap anyway. Not because I believe this obviously, but because it's fun to annoy those who wear hemp, bathe in vegetable oil, and postulate that cows farting is the primary cause of climate change.

Interestingly there is no word in Spanish, or Colombian Spanish anyway, for "tree hugger". Nor is there an equivalent phrase to "political correctness". This is just as well, because some of the conversations that seem to go on around the place are rather incompatible with the concept. In the UK I'm not sure you'd be allowed to discuss the striking physical similarities between aboriginal Australians and monkeys ("micos"), the inherent amusement value of the mentally handicapped ("mongolicos"), or the fact that people in Africa are clearly more stupid than people in South America. Yet I've heard all these viewpoints in the last couple of weeks. Not that Colombians are intolerant, just that they like to laugh, and no subject is considered out of bounds.

On which note, I'm sure any Colombians reading this won't begrudge me a gentle laugh at some of their countrymen. Just like in UK, where the proliferation of little girls named "Chardonnay" and "Champagne" reflects their parents' towering ambitions for their offspring to marry a footballer, Colombia has its own share of aspirationally-monikered juniors, most of them with an Anglo-American theme. Yet aside from the cringeworthy copies ("Leidy" is apparently popular), one example stands head and shoulders above the rest. In the desperately poor, devastingly violent province of Choco, on Colombia's remote northwestern Pacific coast, exposure to the outside world comes mostly courtesy of the strong American military presence in the area to protect the Panama Canal. Still, given the fact that the US "liberated" Panama, formerly a Colombian province, from Bogota's control in 1903, one might think local sentiment would be anti-imperialist. As it turns out. so warm are the feelings of local Colombians towards the Yankees, that many of their offspring have been gifted with American names. Statistically by far the most popular is the initially odd-sounding "Usnavy". Odd that is, until you think about what's printed on the side of "US Navy" vessels.

You really couldn't make this stuff up. On which note, I'm off to do my homework on the Pluperfect tense. I'll write again after my trip to Cartagena for the weekend, where aside from the World Heritage colonial architecture, I'll also hopefully find some Brazilians or Argentinians (ideally both) to watch the final of the Copa America on Sunday. They're billing it as "El Gran Clasico" here, and I for one can't wait. If you need entertainment in the meantime, check out the pictures below, or for a laugh, the following link from the BBC website. Apparently "British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6295138.stm

No, I didn't drink it all.

Akiel informs me Burberry has now reached Trinidad. I'm not sure about Tobago.

TGI Fridays - with inflatable dolls.

Dance instructor to me - worst job in the world?

Ah no, not quite.

Apart from the flags, Colombia is in no way like France

News of A Kidnapping

"No Mas Muertes!" "No Al Sequestro!"

After a week here in Colombia´s capital, I was almost beginning to think that this was a normal country. It's a fair bet that the first words most people associate with Colombia are kidnapping or cocaine. Those were certainly the two first reactions I got when I told people I was coming here, generally preceded or followed by a polite nquiry as to my sanity. After a week here in Bogota, such reactions appeared laughable. Surely this urbane, cosmopolitan, modern city populated by hospitable, friendly, and fun-loving people couldn´t be the capital of a nation at war with itself? All that changed for me today.

According to most reports I´ve read this evening, between three and four million people piled onto the streets of Colombia´s four largest cities today, in an almost spontaneous protest for peace. In Bogota alone, over a million people joined together to demand an end to the forty year civil war, an end to kidnapping for political ends, and an end to the mindless killing by the leftist guerillas of the FARC, and ELN, the right wing paramilitaries of the AUC, and the state´s own security forces. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Bogatanos, many dressed in white, brandished placards, banners or simple white handkerchiefs, and blew whistles, banged drums, and sang songs.

In his much acclaimed reportage of the 1990 hostage crisis instigated by infamous narco-tycoon Pablo Escobar, Colombian Nobel Laureate for Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote "News of a kidnapping, no matter how painful, is not as irremediable as news of a murder". That may be so, but now, in 2007, the country´s most famous son is apparently out of step with the majority of Colombian opinion, which has tired of the ongoing brutality. Today they spoke up and said "no mas". "No more".

It was a quite amazing sight, even more incredible given its spontaneity. President Alvaro Uribe, whose controversial military and political assault on the guerillas has had such a positive impact on safety and security in Colombia in the last five years, called the rally yesterday in response to the announcement by FARC earlier this week that 11 Cali politicians captured in 2002 had recently died. The President claims the rebels murdered the men in cold blood; FARC maintain the hostages were killed in the crossfire when government forces attacked the remote jungle camp where they were held. Uribe himself led the protests in Bogota, though I didn´t see himself myself. In a slightly absurd touch, the protest initially seemed to subside around 40 minutes after it had begun at 12 noon, only to restart in earnest an hour and a half later. Trust the Colombians to break for lunch.

A few hours later and the sound and the fury has subsided. Once again, Bogota is quiet - no, not quiet, a city of 8.5 million people addicted to dancing, drinking and partying could never be quiet - but there is no sign of the momentous events of earlier. Once again this is the eminently normal capital of an eminently normal nation. In keeping with this trend I too returned to (relative!) normality, and after another intensive afternoon of Spanish class, this evening booked flights for two weekends away from Bogota. I happened to learn earlier today that in Colombia it is Tuesday, not Friday, the 13th that is considered unlucky - the Freddy Krueger films were translated here as "Martes 13th" not "Viernes 13th". This is just as well, for next Friday, the 13th, I fly to Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast. Lonely Planet describes it variously as "a fairy tale city of romance, legends, and sheer beauty", and "the most spectacular colonial city on the continent". The following Thursday, on the eve of Independence Day, I´ll fly to the party capital of Colombia, Cali, from where I´ll head back by bus through the spectacular Andean scenery of the coffee country.

Perhaps one day it will be the export of that cash crop, rather than cocaine, for which Colombia will be known; perhaps one day it will be Cartagena and Cali rather than kidnapping and chaos that are the first reactions when travellers speak of this country. Perhaps one day the anniversary of July 5th and the declaration of "no mas" will be celebrated with as much fervour as the Bolivarian Revolution. As I write now the radio plays D-Ream´s "Things Can Only Get Better". The last time I heard that song a suave young leader with a winning smile and a message of optimism was striding to the fore.

Alvaro Uribe better hope he does more for his country than Tony Blair did for his.

Goooooooooaaaaaaaaal Coooloooombiiiiiiiaaaaa!

We´ve all heard clips of Latin American football commentators screaming their trademark word at outrageous volume for a seemingly impossible length of time - for many people it´s probably the one thing they associate above all others with the continent. Last night, for the first time, it actually meant something more than a moment´s mirth at the commentator´s expense. Last night, for ten glorious minutes, Colombia led the mighty Argentina in their second game in Copa America´s Group C, thanks to a smart backheel from Edison Perea. For just a moment, the country dared contemplate victory against the hot favourites for the competition, and with it some measure of pennance for their shocking 5-0 defeat to unfancied Paraguay in the opener. In the event, Argentina triumphed with ease, the 4-2 scoreline flattering my adopted team somewhat. It was something of a Pyrrhic victory for Argentina, however. Chelsea misfit and Argentina star Hernan Crespo, now shorn of his trademark outrageous greasy locks, converted the crucial penalty, but in the process proved he is still as idiotic as ever, seriously injuring himself running to the crowd to celebrate.

Unlike Crespo, however, one man who has definitely not lost his defining outrageous barnet is Colombian football icon and scourge of hairdressers everywhere, Carlos Valderrama. His gurning visage and ludicrous shock of orange hair shines out from billboards across Bogota in his new role as marketing champion for a popular brand of potato chips. Personally I daren´t go near the things for fear of waking up with an Einstein-like mop on my head, but the locals seem to like them. If you ask me he´s no Gary Lineker though.

Aside from joining in the all too familiar experience of national mourning that follows the highly predictable exit from major competition of a country´s football team, I´ve also found time to continue my exploration of Colombia´s capital, and I must say, I think I like it here. Somewhat surprisingly to many of you I´m sure, Bogota is in fact a very modern city, which in parts more resembles Mayfair, Miami or Manhattan than the grimy crime-ridden shanties of popular imagination. As I sat sinking "tintos" - the strong, sweet, black coffee on which the nation seems to run - outside a Zona Rosa cafe yesterday afternoon, watching hip, good-looking Bogatanos wander in and out of Versace, Dior, and Diesel boutiques, it occurred to me that I could really have been in any sizeable city in Europea, Australia or America. Yet 24 hours previously I had joined thousands of devout Catholics ascending Cerro de Montserrate, the mountain which dominates eastern Bogota, on their weekly pilgramage to an allegedly divinely empowered Christ statue. My own motivation was more temporal than spiritual - Montserrate provides spectacular vistas across the entire Sabana de Bogota - but it was fascinating to see the faithful go about their business.

Catholicism is at the heart of Latin America´s contradictions, and Bogota is no exception. Prior to my Sunday afternoon pilgrimage, I had inadvertently engaged in a controversial political protest. It was only after the tenth or eleventh volunteer stopped to ask for my participation in their survey that I realised the precise focus of the proceedings, however. The conversation that follows is in Spanish, though it doesn´t require any great grasp of the language to understand.

- "La primera pregunta señor. ¿Usted es - 1) gay, 2) lesbiana, 3) bisexuelo, o 4) transgenero?".
- "Perdon, er, no soy gay"
- "¿No es gay?!"
- "No"
- "Verdad, ¿no es gay? ¿No?"
- "Grrr......"

Still, I guess we´ve cleared up the apparently inexplicable ability of the supposedly nymphomaniac local females to keep their hands off me. It later transpired this survey was part of a much larger rally - this I realised when I stumbled obliviously into a mass protest in the Plaza de Bolivar. In the shadow of the ubiquitous statue of this continent´s great Liberator, an obviously ennervated series of speakers raged against the improprieties inflicted on them by the "Fascist" regime of President Alvaro Uribe. And gay rights are not the only area of Colombian life in which the dominating spectre of the Catholic church holds sway - like much of the continent abortion is illegal here. I for one find it somewhat difficult to reconcile the hedonistic lifestyle, highly provocative dress sense, and all the trappings of modern consumption culture so evident here, with the highly conservative religious underpinnings of being a Catholic nation. Perhaps Colombians do too?

In an effort to answer such questions, or at least to engage with the locals on a more meaningful level than pointing and shouting at items in shops, I today began an intensive Spanish course. When I booked the course a couple of months back I´m not at all sure I quite realised what "intensive" meant. Anyway, five hours of one to one tuition and an hour of conversation practise at lunch later, I am now struggling to stay awake. Ordinarily this wouldn´t be such a problem, however, I have significant amounts of homework to complete by 8.30am. Think of me tomorrow - while you´re swigging Starbucks, trolling the internet and sending personal e-mails by the dozen, I´ll be slaving away in a cold Colombian classroom, struggling with the rudiments of Spanish grammar. I know where I´d rather be...

Please find below a few photos from my initial explorations of the city.

Bogota - bigger than London. Less terrorism too.

La Plaza de Bolivar - you know you're in South America

Colonial architecture in La Candalaria district







Gold "Jaguar Mask" in Museo del Oro

Carlos Valderrama says: "eat Margaritas for curly hair"

For some reason they call it cloud forest

Room with a view - Cerro de Monserrate, Bogota

La Musica de Colombia

It´s 3am, I´ve been up for 22 hours, and the maid has just been dispatched to buy more beer. Music blares loudly from the radio, the unfamiliar beats strangely infectious, and I join the whole family, dog included, dancing in the front room. No-one mocks my clumsy gringo moves, though I´m soon treated to a bewildering array of lessons. Each time I begin to get a vague idea of what I´m doing, the song (and genre) changes, and suddenly it´s meringue instead of vallenato, ragaton instead of cumbia, Shakira instead of salsa. Shakira at least I have heard of; the family are seemingly unable to believe the likes of "Juanes" haven´t proved a smash in Europe and America. When one of his "hits" does eventually grace us, I have to suppress a fit of the giggles; it´s none other than "Tengo la Camisa Negra" (I have the black shirt), the cheesey Europop anthem that provided so much mirth in Bulgaria a couple of weeks back. No matter: we dance on regardless.

While I knew Colombians had a reputation for partying I can´t say I expected a 4am finish on my first night, having not even left the house. Eventually I staggered to bed "early" with the two youngest members of the clan; the older members of the family continued for another couple of hours, led by Nora, the inexhaustable, incomprehensible "costeña" (from the coast) maid. Despite speaking no English at all (and speaking Spanish with the inpenentrable rapid fire delivery apparently typical of Colombia´s Caribbean natives), Nora is somewhat implausibly something of an aficionada of Anglo culture, at least when it comes to music. Her favourite tape, much to the horror of both her erstwhile employers and this newly arrived gringo, is the Grease soundtrack. She is also something of a Beatles fan - to hear her renditions of such classics as "Twiss an Chout" is almost a unique experience. Only the pure parody of an indigenous Indian playing Simon and Garfunkel´s "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on pan pipes outside the Museo del Oro could possibly come close.

Partying aside, the main reason I chose Colombia to learn Spanish was because I guessed there´d be few other tourists, and thus less "hassle" and less opportunity to speak English. After 24 hours in Bogota I can confirm that I was indeed correct on both counts. Nobody speaks English, there is no hassle whatsoever, and there are so few tourists it seems de rigeur to actually stop and chat with any gringos you pass on the street. Or at least it was yesterday with the one American I chanced to meet while wandering the streets for four or five hours. Bogota seems nice enough, though it probably won´t be rivalling Rio or Capetown in most beautiful city awards any time soon it´s certainly picturesque; with mountains on three sides, the numerous hills provide pretty views at every junction. It also feels a lot safer than might have been expected given its reputation in the mid-90s of being "the most dangerous city in the most dangerous country in the world". That´s right, the streets aren´t paved with powdery white stuff, the currency is pesos not hostages, and the FARC, ELN, M19, AUC et al don´t seem to be engaging in guerilla war in the Plaza Bolivar. Well they weren´t today anyway. Quite ironic really that I arrive in a place with such a fearsome reputation the same day that two giant carbombs narrowly fail to explode in London. I know at least a couple of desperados who could reliably be expected to be lurking in the dark corners of Tiger Tiger at 2am on a Thursday...

Other aspects of Colombia´s reputation don´t appear to be true either, at least in Bogota; the bold claims of "the hottest women in the world" seem laughable, though my cab driver from the airport seemed to concur with Lonely Planet that Medellin or Cali has "las mujeres mas bonitas". "According to Lonely Planet", however, is a dangerous caveat for any sentence; the world´s best-selling guidebook led me to believe (after I elected to come here I must add) that Colombian females were "sexually aggressive", particularly towards travellers. Disappointingly I have seen no hint of this so far, no rapes, no sexual assaults, not even a bit of wolf whistling or groping. If this carries on much longer I might start to develop a complex. Perhaps I need to learn how to dance?