Incidents of Travel in Latin America

by Lars Holger Holm

  The room at the end of a narrow corridor was rather disenchanting. It had only one window facing a shaft that could perhaps be climbed in an emergency. But it was better to hope there would be no fire. As I went out to the reception to ask for an empty glass, I ran into a broadly smiling Colombian man roughly my age, carrying a plastic cup filled with rum in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I glanced over his shoulder into his room and beheld what I took to be one of his younger daughters. In fact they were newlyweds, and she must have been almost thirty years his junior. He offered me cocaine and booze, well, almost his wife as well. But I truly wasn’t in the mood, knowing that cocaine has a most treacherous tendency to enable me to consume any amount of alcohol without feeling its effect — that night. The day after is a very different matter, heralding itself in a hermetically sealed frontal lobe and a view of the horizon not even able to inspire a sense of tired melancholy: it’s just saturated with dread. It is as though time itself has come to a standstill under an eternally leaden sky. Though it might in reality be the most beautiful day in world history, I would be unable to enjoy it. Alas, on some not so memorable occasions in the past my body has forced me to learn the price to be paid for the temporary and artificial exuberance of my mind.

  Instead I took a shower — it even had warm water — and turned on the TV. There were Boca Juniors receiving Estudiantes. Just as the match seemed to get a bit more interesting I discovered, through the corner of my eye, a huge cockroach insidiously trying to hide from me. I chased him from his hiding place behind the refrigerator, and he (why do I assume it must have been a he?), well aware of the fate awaiting him if caught, ran for his life. Apparently he got confused by discovering his own image in the mirror. I took advantage of his hesitation and smacked him dead against the cold glass with one of my shoes. The mirror held but he was squashed. I went to the bathroom to get some toilet paper and wiped the glass clean. I then scooped up his remains from the floor with the tissue and flushed them through the toilette, sermonising: ‘Let that be a warning to all your family and friends!’ Whereafter I poured myself a whisky.

  Even though I gradually came under the influence of the benign Scottish fairy, I didn’t fall asleep until around six in the morning. I woke up at the merciless knock from room service, feeling pretty miserable. The reception wanted to know if I had the intention of staying another day — it was one of those hotels where check-out is expected at 11 AM. At this time I was only able to interpret this as a wilful violation of my privacy and muttered something hardly intelligible and not too courteous. To my defence the following might be advanced: being a frequent guest at hotels I sometimes get the feeling that management would be the happiest if you could check-out before you actually check-in, in this way helping them to avoid the hustle of making a room ready for you and then having to remind you to leave it before you wake up.

  It was the accumulated effect of general fatigue and some pretty irrigated evenings prior to my departure. I still felt unrested, but the idea of staying next to that shaft staring at the Jackson Pollockish painting they had suspended on the wall for the purpose of artistic decoration was even more revolting. I decided to get out of there. Luckily I had some idea of where I was headed.

  When I mentioned the city of Santa-Marta to the receptionist (this one not as pretty as her colleague during the night shift) she offered to arrange a semi-private transportation over there for 30,000 pesos (15 dollars). Considering it was an almost two hour trip I figured taxi, local bus and then taxi again would round up to about the same, and accepted the offer. I then went out in the hot Caribbean sun to hopefully draw some pesos from a teller machine and then have breakfast.

  Hitting the pavement I was immediately struck by the ugliness of the city as well as the lacklustre quality of its inhabitants — in reality they were probably no worse, or no more morose, than people anywhere else in the world. It was the dust in combination with the all-too hot sun, my hangover and my sleepiness, that contributed to produce in me a sensation of being a prisoner in a stuffy, smelly cage I shouldn’t have stuck my head into in the first place. Nonetheless I did have the presence of mind to tell my weary self: ‘This might be the only time of my life when you get to see something of Barranquilla: since your transport will not be before two o’clock, you better go for a walk all the same.’

  This said, I walked one of the interminable avenues for three quarters of an hour. At this point the side streets offered me the optical relief of some colonial looking residences. They were not near the sea or any park, and the compulsory barbed wire, gates crowned with pointed steel and walls lined with crushed bottles, made even the best maintained garden, glimpsed at the end of a long hallway, seem a precarious refuge. But I was tired, and this circumstance might have prevented me from giving even the small part of the city I came to experience a fair appraisal.

  Back at the hotel I was informed that the travel organiser had been unable to gather further passengers; in other words: the run had been cancelled. My remaining option was to take a regular taxi to a road crossing through which the local bus bound for Santa-Marta would pass. By now I was eager to get on my way. Next thing I knew I was dumped at a roadside littered with sheds selling anything from recycled baby diapers to cold beer. My bus was instantly hailed down by one of many self-appointed traffic directors.

  It was a small bus but it did have the unexpected advantage of air conditioning and a seat to almost every passenger. I realized that the young mother across the aisle had some pretty rough hours ahead of her. By extension, I too was in for an ordeal. A cute baby, a little princess for sure, but already now impatiently stretching and bending over the seats, falling down on the floor, where she was finally picked up by the mother only to be given a little symbolic spanking on the butt. It didn’t really help. On the contrary. Screams and tears alternated, in part and temporarily subdued by sweets or an intermittently captivating small object. In short: the little princess was inconsolable.

  It was only all too typical. The mother was not a native Indian. My experience from countries like Peru and Guatemala, where the Indian element is predominant, is that even wet babies almost never scream or whine. Their mothers always seem capable of keeping their kids calm, even during the longest and most strenuous journeys. I think perseverance and mute endurance is just in their blood. But then again, Indian mothers don’t listen to reggaeton and rap day in and day out.

  The vistas as perceived through the side windows were hardly more inspiring. The winter rains (occurring in what northerners would identify as summer months) had been unusually heavy, resulting in extensive inundations of the tropical plains. Vast areas of the lowlands were flooded, and entire villages had been at least temporarily abandoned. The effect of the torrential rains was clearly visible on both sides of the road. Inundated fields and marshlands had turned into lagoons in which rickety sheds seemed to float freely in putrid water. I thought of all the poor people affected and wondered where they had all gone. Some were dead, no doubt; others had perhaps anchored their boats to the rooftops, waiting for the water to subside. Meanwhile there must be scarcity of food and fresh water, disease lurking everywhere.

  At a distance, without previous warning, rose the hills and mountains of the Santa Marta region. The young mother, finally able to silence her toddler, kindly, and with some kind of relief, pointed out its summits to me. From having appeared desolate and abandoned the landscape shrouded itself in an aura of picturesqueness as intense as it was unexpected. Before I knew it we arrived. A taxi brought me to the city centre. I had asked the driver to take me to a hotel. So he did, and I decided the huge colonial and former administration building towering before us would have to do for the night. Even though the hotel as such had many rooms on no less than five floors, it had almost no guests, leaving me with the presentiment of a sojourn in Kafka’s Castle. But I knew that if only the fan would work I’d be able to fall soundly asleep.


  Close to the hotel there was a small plaza featuring the supposedly oldest cathedral — a white-washed building in traditional, rural Spanish style — in all of the South Americas (surprising really how many oldest-of-them-all-churches there can be in this part of the world), bespoken by some conquistador arriving in the Bahía in the year of our Lord 1528. Beyond the cathedral the crowd of street vendors could be seen gathering along the main business street. I passed a statue of the independence hero Simón Bolívar, who in 1830 was buried in the church, although it wasn’t to be his final resting place. Twelve years later his remains were exhumed and transferred to Caracas. I asked one of the vendors for directions to a beer and was told how to reach the beach walk. Minutes later I sat down at a corner café shaded by parasols, furnished with chairs and tables in reddish wood. There was a steady and busy stream of traffic in the street and a multitude of people among lavish Christmas decorations — among them a number of white-bearded, larger-than-life Santa figures — as well as vendors on the beach walk. Behind it a stretch of sandy beach unfolded, ending to the east in the commercial harbour area; to the west it terminated in a couple of moderate high rises. A small island in the middle of the field of vision provided both platform for a lighthouse and a welcome barrier against the muddy Caribbean swell.

  I strolled down the beach walk and found myself a restaurant allegedly specialising in seafood. But the shrimp in garlic, which I would have hoped to be in Spanish tapas style (gently simmering in olive oil, red pimiento etc.), was a disappointment: shrimp drenched in some yoghurt-like white sauce lacking even the relative merits of a Greek tzatziki. I decided to call it a night, paid my bill, found the hotel, crashed, and slept for at least ten hours. Almost surprised, and above all grateful, to find myself still alive I woke up the following morning, curious of what a new day, untainted by nocturnal debauchery, might have in store.

  Parque de Tayrona

  The new day come I decided to first of all change my residence. On my way back to the hotel the previous evening I had passed by a pension called Hotel Paisa. In Colombian Spanish una paisa signifies a woman from the mountainous region of Antioquia, containing a considerable portion of the countries’ northwest, notably the western and central Cordilleras of the Colombian Andes. It was indeed a hotel ran by women. Although they were neither very nice in general, nor specifically accommodating in particular, and seemed to regard any simple demand (a drinking glass, an extra towel) as some kind of intrusion on their privacy, I felt strangely at home there and settled in a small room on the second floor with Wi-Fi, air conditioning (albeit quite noisy), a ventilator, some 100 TV channels and a minuscule, yet private bathroom with running (cold) water.

  For nearly a week this was to be my home. I soon found reason to assume that the edgy attitude of what I took to be the owner, or at least the manager, probably stemmed from the fact that she was a die-hard lesbian. Though no longer quite young she had a nice set of boobs. But there was a chill in the tropical air telling me those knockers would not be up for grabs by any man, no matter how persuasive. She would typically be found — late at night and as I returned home from my own diversions — hanging out in the 1960s style hammock in the patio, smoking cigarettes, impassively verifying my intruding identity while continuing to conspiratorially converse with another female destiny hiding in the dark. From the beginning I had decided not in any way to let her manifest unfriendliness get in my way. But it wasn’t all that easy: some of the other women on this particular scene were almost as hard to get along with.

  I only saw the stern looking woman serving in the restaurant smile one single time. Well, she actually laughed, but it was because I had cracked her open by inadvertently hitting my head against a ceramic flower pot hanging down from the ceiling. In the end it was only the simpleminded cook and another woman, sometimes attending the reception, who would waste a smile on me for no good reason.

  To the atmosphere of distrust was added the imperative that I pay for my room each and every single day in advance. In truth, I couldn’t even order a cup of coffee without being charged and asked to pay for it right away — even after a week on the premises. They had a way of keeping track of every penny owed that made me think of hungry watch dogs. The food they served didn’t look very appetizing either. I did have breakfast there the morning I arrived, but even though I thought it was quite cheap, it wasn’t particularly good. Hence I decided to have my future breakfasts elsewhere. Maybe they took this as an insult. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

  Strangest thing was I liked the place all the same. If I’d ever come back to Santa-Marta I wouldn’t hesitate to take up quarters there again. Partly because accommodation was cheap for what I got. I appreciated that the sheets were often changed and the room kept clean (now I suddenly remember that the cleaning lady was pleasant too, and that I really should have slipped her a tip before I left). I guess some of the unfriendliness seemed pardonable because the ladies were all honest and hardworking. After many years of living in cities and travelling countries, I have learned not to get upset if people turn out — as they occasionally do — to lack a sense of humour. But then again, the lady who laughed so hard when I hit my head on the pot did indeed have a sense of humour, only it was at my expense. And I didn’t find that very funny.

  Once installed in a hotel room to my liking I decided to take my time and don’t rush my visit to the natural reserve Parque de Tayrona — my pretext for coming to Santa Marta in the first place. For the time being the historical centre of the town was practically the only area where I made some sightseeing. The rest of the time I spent behind drawn curtains, contributing columns — in response to an invitation to do so — to a net forum for free thinkers.

  On this platform I presented a theory, the bottom line of which is that nations (as opposed to tribes and other ethnic groups) are accidental social constructions — Israel perhaps being the most arbitrary of them all. A nation state, as we know it from present day political reality and historical antecedents, is the result of warfare and territorial conquest initiated and carried out by ambitious kings and princes.6 Conversely, the modern, post-war definition of nation states as political entities, now and for all hypothetical futures, confined within static, non-expandable borders, spells the beginning to the end of the raison d’être for the nation state as such.

  Nation states — and even less so empires — are very seldom ethnically homogeneous. They don’t even necessarily comprise a linguistically unified area. For example, one of the oldest nation states of Europe is the Swiss Federation. Within its borders no less than four official languages are both spoken and written. Even though the French and Italian spoken within the country’s borders are indistinguishable — abstraction made from the inflections of accents and local expressions — from the French and Italian spoken in France and Italy, these speakers have no problem in seeing themselves as Swiss, that is, as members of a political and social entity distinctly apart from France and Italy.

  In addition, the local Germanic dialects spoken in the so-called German speaking part are so far removed from normative, official German that they merit to almost be considered a separate language, not just a dialect variation. Finally, a minority in parts of the eastern alpine region of the country speaks and writes an archaic derivative of Latin called Rhaeto-Romansch. Considering how natural obstacles have tended to demographically isolate one part of the country from the other, there are few tribal or racial ties uniting these populations. It’s on the contrary clear that Italic, Latin, Ostrogoth and Lombard ethnic elements have over vast periods of time penetrated the south; Frankish and Gaul the northwest; Germanic and Celtic the northeast; and that Switzerland, from its formation in the Middle Ages as an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire, to this day has remained the big carrefour of Europe, remaining as ethnically mixed as it’s linguistically diversified. Yet it is without doubt a nation state. Castilian Spain, with its near constant conflicts w
ith its Basques and Catalan subjects, demanding political freedom in the form of separate statehoods, is another salient example of the arbitrariness of present national borders.

  Likewise France — an almost archetypal nation state in the European context — could only be linguistically united as a French speaking nation at the expense of the suppression and marginalisation of other Latin vulgarisations, such as the Provençal, the Langue d’Oc, and the Catalan. Initially French (la langue d’oeil) was only the particular Latin dialect spoken in the region of L’Isle de France, today’s greater Paris region. As for the racial cohesion of the French nation, the predominantly Germanic and Celtic north has relatively few ethnic characteristics in common with the Mediterranean type of the south.

  The southern regions of Sweden, to give one concluding example, only remained Swedish by virtue of the military predominance imposed by the royal Vasa dynasty. After the death of Gustav III in 1793 (the last king of Vasa lineage) it could, and should indeed, have been expropriated by the Danes, but I guess they too had grown weary of war by then and lacked the necessary force. Nonetheless, geographically, as well as ethnically, the southern province of Skåne has more in common with Denmark than with Sweden; the particular Swedish dialect spoken among its inhabitants is to this day perceived by northerners as more alien to the general Swedish tongue than any other local dialect. Notwithstanding, it’s my opinion that Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are only dialects of one and the same original Norse language, of which Icelandic remains emblematic insofar as it has kept many archaic forms and refused the modernisation and grammatical simplification so typical of other Scandinavian tongues. Alone on linguistic grounds, Scandinavia should have been united under one single crown already in the Middle Ages. It’s an ironic fact that no Swedish or Danish king was ever powerful enough to lastingly bring about such a union. Post Viking Norway, historically speaking, was always a province annexed to either the Swedish or the Danish crown; the country acquired full national independence as late as in 1905.