I have seen some idyllic-looking airports in my days. One in particular has stayed in my memory: it’s the airport in the southeastern Thai province of Trat, where the whole airport staff had gathered on the tarmac before take-off and then waved farewell to us, the passengers, with lavish flower arrangements in their hands as the afternoon Bangkok flight took off. Although there is no such extravagant courtesy offered at the Santa Marta airport, it does have another very endearing feature: the bar/restaurant inside the terminal has an outdoor terrace directly overlooking a wide bay in the Caribbean Sea. It’s perhaps not the most exotic looking beach in the world, but it does have one very interesting feature. In the shallow waters there is a multitude of huge man-made cranes. I’m sure they dig into the sediments for an industrial and financial reason, but from a purely artistic point of view, they look like giant prehistoric birds, looking for baby whales to eat.
6I find the following quote from Hobbes’s Leviathan pertinent to my argument: ‘But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of warre one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War.’
7Not to worry dear reader: by the same token I’m also anti-Swedish, anti-English, anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, anti-American, anti-French, at times, even anti-German. Last but not least: I’m always anti-Norwegian!
Medellín
The city of Medellín is an enormous pile of red bricks spread out over an Andean valley and its adjacent hills. Depending on your mood and the time of day you arrive it can seem either a dream or a nightmare — which is not to say that the city is necessarily more nightmarish at night time. Like in all major Latin American cities traffic and pollution are impressive. Medellín’s climate on the other hand is benign. Although the solar zenith is right above you, the average day temperature is more that of a perpetual Mediterranean spring, and in the night it can be wise at times to have a jacket or sweater at hand. Vegetation in between and around tenant areas is lush and there are hundreds of small rivers making their way down the hillsides into the river bed of the valley, creating here and there moments of pure natural magic in the midst of the urban sprawl.
Being dispersed over such a vast area, to go from one end of the city to the other can be quite a project even though the city has an effective metro system. However, there is one particular part of the city where most of the tourists usually end up, and that is the Poblado in the Zona Rosa, centred around the miniscule Parque de Lleras — not much bigger than a tennis court really — where hotels, hostels, restaurants and bars abound (as for myself I nowadays prefer to hang out in the restaurant district around the 70th Avenue in the Estadio).
On weekends the establishments lining the park are jam packed and this is where you will come face to face with the famous Medellín beauties who love to appear on this stage, financed by fathers, husbands and boyfriends, to show off their fabulous bodies. There is live music in every other place and every local man or woman knows how to dance, so the scene is really festive and many of the girls, as I will not get tired to repeat, are just staggeringly beautiful. Supposedly there are more boob, butt and lip jobs carried out per capita here than anywhere else in the world, including Hollywood and Miami Beach. One can hardly turn on a Colombian TV without finding at least some channels showing beauty and dance contests, as ubiquitous as the telenovelas featuring the same Colombian upper class enmeshed in melodramatic conflict, teary-eyed love, betrayals and never ending jealousies.
The whole thing might of course be written off as superlatively superficial, a hopelessly banal Vanity Fair of tropic dimensions, un teatro de muñecas, pulled by cynic corporations and a showbiz world gone bonkers. But judging it from a secure distance and being in the midst of it are two very different things, and I must admit that I have always wished I was a better dancer when I see these girls swing, because if you’re gringo, and can dance for real, you’re the King even if you’re a hundred years old! Last but not least it should be remembered that these people love their music and their dance, and the whole nation, with the president as its prime spokesperson, never get tired of underscoring the both natural resource and cultural asset the nation possesses in its ‘beautiful women’. And believe me, there is nobody around to regard that ‘objectification’ of women as an expression of male prejudice, condescension or patriarchal oppression.
Which brings us to the next attenuating circumstance: Colombia, in spite of its rampant urban cult of youth and beauty, is still very much, and perhaps even more so, a country for old men. You will not find here the open feminine disdain for older blokes so typical of Northern Europe and North America. On the contrary, these girls are still much depending on their sugar daddies, whether real daddies or symbols of the same. You will also, beyond the world of glittering fashion shows and urban glamour nights, see thousands and again thousands of younger beautiful girls who are very traditional in their outlook on life and find absolutely nothing strange in catering loyally to an older guy who, in turn, takes care of and provides for them. One might even say it’s tradition here; it’s reflected even in the telenovelas, where you will sometimes see an older, hairy, corpulent, bald guy — pretty unattractive by today’s media standards — lay in bed together with a smashing young beauty, talking to her in the same casual way as though she’d been his daughter.
Apparently the vast audiences of telenovelas, notably the younger crowds, see nothing appalling in this. As for myself I recall recently seeing the Colombian film Amor en el tiempo de cholera (Love in the Time of Cholera), based on Garcia Marquez’s eponymous bestseller. Supposedly this story is partly autobiographical, and even the older Marquez, who was born and grew up in the area around the colonial jewel Cartagena, never seems to have suffered any shortage of young, fresh new girls to enliven his nights and siestas — famous writer and Nobel laureate that he was!
Notwithstanding, my first visit to Medellín only lasted a couple of days. During that time I managed to pay a visit to the city’s Fine Arts Museum with its comprehensive Botéro collection. It was donated by the artist to the museum on the condition that it would consecrate a whole floor as his own private gallery. The square outside the building is full of his sculptures cast in bronze, and the children love to climb them. I’m not a Botéro fan and have never really understood his particular idea of deformation of the human body — persistently turning naivistically conceived personages into giant Michelin figures, with huge, stocky legs, balloon shaped bodies, round heads coupled with miniscule mouths, hands and feet. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, Botéro himself says he has never been aware of any such deformation. This bewildering statement hasn’t made me understand him any better, but it was impressive to see so many of his big canvases collected in one place.
After the visit I had at least become a bit more interested in his work than I had been before, understanding what a seminal figure he has been in his country’s art history over the last half of a century. To be honest, though, I was more impressed with a couple of very fine aquarellists, the names and works of whom are today probably only familiar to a handful connoisseurs worldwide. I also saw a series of impressive social realist paintings in the expressive and dramatic style of that place and era. The museum restaurant too was very nice with a terrace from which one had commanding view of the Botéro square.
Santa Fé de Antioquia
After having done the compulsory night scene — even in the company of what luckily turned out to be trustworthy locals who drove me round at night time and showed me their preferred hangouts — I felt enough was enough and began to long for the relative tranquillity of a village t
ucked away somewhere in the Andes. This is how I ended up in Santa Fé de Antioquia. It’s only slightly more than an hour’s drive away from Medellín, yet a world apart.
For almost three centuries Santa Fé was the ancient capital of the mountainous administrative region of Antioquia, perched right above the confluent of the Cauca and Tonusca river valleys, the former winding from south to north through the central of the three Andean cordilleras making up the Colombian highlands. It’s a colonial town in the best of Hispanic tradition. Sitting at only 500 metres’ elevation above the sea (as compared to Medellín’s central valley levelling out around 1500 metres) its climate is predominantly dry and hot. Although there are months considered as belonging to winter (meaning they should be predominantly rainy), precipitation is typically sparse and mostly confined to late afternoon squalls. In some periods of the year, for example in January-February, the central plaza, covered in black cobble stones, from midday to early evening turns into a veritable furnace.
There are a few interesting churches as well as some old manors and private properties worth visiting. But it’s above all the stylistic coherence of the original architecture, predominantly tinted white and red, of the central village, that remains the main attraction and furnishes me with one important reason to feel at home inside its symmetric street grid, where the streets running south to north are by far the longer, since the town has been constructed on an oblong hillside, gently ascending towards the north. Although agriculture from all the nearby fields has always been a main source of income, tourism, national and international, is nowadays another important factor in the local economy. The typical tourist would not be a foreigner however, but a couple, or family, from Medellín intent on taking a break from the incessant hustle and bustle of the nearby metropolis.
But if peace and quiet was what I too was primarily looking for, this was not really the place to visit at this time of the year. My very first three weeks in Santa Fé came to straddle the Fiesta de la Virgen Immaculata, La Navidad and the New Year’s celebrations, that is, nearly a month of practically uninterrupted folklore, boisterous Colombian gaiety and the resultant partial straining of my nerves.
I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have made it there many days if it weren’t for the fact that I found a place to stay in town that was perfect for my needs. As a matter of fact, I’m writing these words on the very same premises, separated from my old room by only a wall. I’m happy to be back in this spot which now, with hindsight, has grown very special to me. But now is now and then was then. Two years ago, when I first came to town, I had no idea what to expect. After one night spent in the hostel next door I ended up moving to the Hotel Caseron Plaza, the former patrician mansion of the Gubernador, opposite the rococo cathedral on the town’s main square. I say ‘rococo’ cathedral, though it’s really only the outer facade of it that might me be labelled as a primitive such. The original church is older and really very beautiful in its combination of solid stone and slender brick construction. From an aesthetic point of view it’s a pity that later architects and renovators haven’t continued to envisage additions in harmony with the original building. No intelligible architectural relation whatsoever exists between the original building and its present white washed gable, but this, unfortunately, is very common not only in Latin America, but in the Old World too, where buildings with impressive and beautiful bare stones are painted over with lifeless stucco.
Former Palace of the Gubernador, present day Hotel Caseron Plaza — all that may sound quite fancy. In reality this is a family run establishment visibly headed by the capricious and not always very easy to charm Doña Piedad (I swear, that’s her name!). I always try to catch Doña Piedad when she appears to be in a good mood and prefer, given the choice, to solicit her staff for minor needs such as towels, ice bowls and wine glasses. Doña Piedad is often on the computer and doesn’t look like she very much wants to be distracted from her activities by even a mildly irrelevant question. One such, it appeared to me, was my annoyingly recurrent question as to whether the Wi-Fi would soon be up and working again. The fact that the Internet hadn’t stopped working on her computer (although it had stopped working in three out of four computers lined up in a separate room to the benefit of the guests, as well as in all portable devices carried by the guests themselves) made three full days pass before a technician was finally summoned. He was here this morning, supposedly fixing the problem, which now, at 3 PM persists. However, I still don’t dare to ask Doña Piedad about it. Over time I have learned that no matter how many times the technician comes around, the problem will always be back. And nobody seems to be either interested or capable of doing anything about it.
As I arrived to the hotel this time around (that is, only three days ago as of the moment of writing), I vividly recalled the heated debate we had had last time I was about to check out. I consequently took the precaution to ask Doña personally if she could give me a package deal for five days, since I know room prices on the weekend (and that’s where we’re headed for on a Friday afternoon) to be considerably higher than on regular week days. She said she would have to talk to someone (looking like her father but in reality being her husband) about this and would return to me regarding this as soon as possible. So far I haven’t heard a mouse squeak in this direction, but I did repeat the request to Laura in the reception who said she would pass it on to Doña Piedad, whom I just saw again, behind her desk, scrutinizing me with her inquisitorial eyes. Although she well knows that I would like answers to my two questions, she wouldn’t make the slightest visible effort to give them to me.
Add to this that her injured, and at this time incapacitated husband, who also happens to be the owner of the hotel, inhabits the room closest to the reception and that she has to take care of him — as well. The old man has a nasty fresh scar all the way from the middle of his upper foot half way up to his knee, the result of an unfortunate collision with a motorcycle, and he spends most of his time reading or watching TV in bed. He does have a wheelchair parked outside his room though in case he would like to get around.
With Doña Piedad in charge of daily operations the atmosphere is at times a bit heavy around the reception and I tend to pass it by as quickly as I can, sometimes being obliged to drop my half-square foot wooden key holder there or otherwise carry it around with me in town. I believe this has proven quite beneficial to my working discipline as I now often find myself confined to the deliberate obscurity of my room and its rotating ceiling fan. Once here I feel the best thing I can do during the hot hours of the afternoon is to write. And that’s what I’m doing. Not that the pool is not kept clean and offers pleasant cooling, but the sun chairs are of a dark green hue and hot as furnaces in the sun. Besides I only like to sunbath for moments, not hours. And then, a writer’s got to do what a writer’s got to do — write, right?
Over the last couple of years it has become something of a habit of mine trying to survive the so-called ‘Holiday Season’ as effectively as possible in some remote part of the world. To me the enduring attraction at the Caseron, and that which kept me posted, was and is the hotel’s wooden deck beyond the pool area. It offers a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape. It presents the sun in spectacular skies; it shows stars and moons, mountains in all different shades of and sizes and a distant confluence of rivers. My favourite moment here is the blue hour, just after the sun has disappeared behind the western hill and left the stones around the pool to slowly give off their accumulated heat into the perfectly tempered night. Reclining on a sun chair, a glass in my hand, I enjoy the, albeit, fugitive sensation of perfection, and thank my lucky star to have been brought this far in life. It is true that a tall nearby radio mast in red and white does its best to scatter the illusion of Nirvana, but one gets used to it, secretly remarking to oneself that nothing sub luna must be too perfect, since otherwise we would be forced to regard our mortality as just a horrible calamity, and not, as God wants u
s to believe, the promise of ultimate liberation.
The single room I was offered on a weekly basis was situated next to the pool area, from which a small wooden bridge leads to the above mentioned terrace. It was a solace during so many evenings to bring a bottle of chilled wine up there and observe the sunsets beyond the western mountains: the sun’s corona spreading like a peacock’s feather across the sky, followed by the silky, smooth curtain of the night. Dry air at perfect temperature, the sounds of crickets among the trees and bats whizzing through the air. Then the zodiacal procession, unfolding night after night while the locals enjoy their more mundane parades in the square.
Sheltered by the Colonial Spanish style hotel complex, blissfully blocking out the glaring disco lights and the intense cacophony, I was able, night after night, to spend hours in the company of my old friend Orion, his dog, as well as the bull the former is hunting and the hare the latter is after. Castor and Pollux, the celestial twins were invited along with my special companion Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo and prominent in my astrological birth chart in so far as it was in conjunction with Sol at the moment of my birth. Moreover, Regulus, traditionally associated with the three wise men, the Magi of the East, is celebrated at Twelfth-Night, a week into the new born year.
At ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve I nonetheless felt it would be a shame not to participate in the general celebrations. I went out in the square to have a couple of drinks, and ended up spending the rest of the evening with Alvaro, the landlord of the neighbouring hotel, rustic and charming in its own right, although for obvious reasons also a bit cheaper than the Caseron. Most importantly, it didn’t have a terrace from which the entire galaxy could be studied. I did indeed spend my first night in town in Alvaro’s hotel, but then moved to the bigger one next door, completely taken in by the prospect of privileged solitary nights under the stars.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 6
