Saturday, March 13, 2010

Parque Tayrona

Parque Tayrona, one of Colombia’s more than 50 national parks, spans a large portion of Colombia’s northeastern coast and spreads inland for 58 square miles of mountains and jungle. Its mountains are of the Sierra Nevada range, and they run through the park right at the waters’ edge. According to a local, nowhere else in the world are there mountains as high as close to the ocean; they grow out of the sea to 3000 ft quite rapidly and dramatically.

We entered via a small highway that cuts through the park and were dropped at the main entrance on the eastern side. The western portion of the park is more desert, but there are fewer accesses and therefore fewer visitors. Despite its relative accessibility and a smattering of accommodations, it seems that Tayrona, thankfully, has escaped the type of tourism and development that plague Playa Blanca. Even though folks can now drive fairly far into the park, it’s still a lengthy and at times tough hike up to the beaches (no beach-side boat service here). This, coupled with the not-negligible park entrance fee, has helped Tayrona to maintain its rough, somewhat deserted paradise ambiance. Thank goodness.

The park is named for the primary indigenous group that calls it home, the Tayrona. Had we more time, we could have embarked on the multi-day hike from the coast inland to the ruins of one of their ancient settlements—La Cuidad Perdida—characterized by a local as “un lugar estilo Indiana Jones,” or an Indiana Jones-esq place. We opted instead for the half-day hike to and from “El Pueblito,” a much smaller set of ruins that is also part of the vast network of Tayrona settlements that made up the area before good ol’ Colombus & Co. arrived on the scene. The uphill trek—beach diminishing and sea spreading ever wider behind you—is invigorating, and the silent, deserted (save a handful of other adventurers) scene that awaits you at El Pueblito is a fulfilling, if understated, climax. Walking among the stone pathways and ancient homesites puts the nascent nature of our culture—and the antiquity of civilization as a whole—into perspective.

Also humbling, especially coming on the exhausted heels of our hike, was the description by a local of how the Tayrona women gave birth. Apparently these women, 9-months pregnant, came down the mountains to give birth in “La Piscina,” a small bay whose waters—made tranquil by the rim of large rocks that act as breakers—are some of the only swimmable on this part of the coast

Beyond hiking, Shepard and I passed our precious few days in Tayrona reading, swimming, drinking tropical smoothies (ah, heaven!), beating our new Argentine friend Damien at Rummy, and simply relaxing.

All around, the area has a rather wild feel to it, with enormous boulders jutting out into the tumbling waters along much of the shore and since the jungle and mountains that line water remain largely untouched. This, coupled with a dearth of young foreigners whose primary interests lie in sunning and partying, makes Tayrona my favorite of the places we visited in Colombia.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Barranquilla

Disappointed as I was to be away from NOLA during Mardi Gras season, I managed to get a taste of the festivities anyway the day Shepard and I spent enjoying Baranquilla’s Carnaval. According to locals, Baranquilla’s is the next best thing to Brazil, which would unofficially make it the second best in the world.

From the minute we arrived in the city and boarded a local bus bound for the center, the energy and spontaneity of Carnaval abounded. Barranquilleros, Colombianos, and brave foreigners alike flocked toward Villa 40 for the main parade of the day, La Batalla de Flores, dressed in all varieties of outrageous costumes, from representations of principle Carnaval characters to outrageous and arbitrary combinations of color and flare. The air was thick with unbridled celebration and delightful unpredictability, my favorite characteristics of Mardi Gras.

We opted out of the expensive tickets for bleacher seats—the best way to view the parades—and instead vied with thousands of other revelers for a street spot with a view. After a half hour of tippy-toed neck-stretching and one-too-many shaving cream showers (a hallmark of Barranquilla’s Carnaval, apparently, is shaving cream squirted indiscriminately and unapologetically into the crowds), we retreated to a side street, thinking it better to enjoy the raucous merriment from the periphery. We failed there, too, because as soon as these two gringas popped a squat on the sidewalk we were pounced on by the local revelers to join their fun.

It turns out that, since Western tourists aren’t yet commonplace in Colombia, the people are still extraordinarily curious and excited about our presence. Thus we spent the rest of the afternoon passed around between various Colombian friend and family groups—dancing, laughing, being drenched in shaving cream and then doused in baby powder (another Barranquilla hallmark)—in short, truly celebrating Carnaval with the locals.




Saturday, March 6, 2010

Santa Ana & Playa Blanca

After a few days we left Cartagena for a more natural, less-populated landscape. En route we stopped through a pueblito, or tiny town, called Santa Ana. Santa Ana is found on La Isla Barú, an island just east of Cartagena that was settled by escaped African slaves. Little more than a handful of homes, food stands, and trees, you’d really only know of Santa Ana if lived there or had some specific reason to pass through. We, as it turns out, did.

A friend of Shepard’s, Tara, recently moved to Santa Ana to teach English at the one remarkable thing about the town: an elaborate education compound called Barbacoas. The beautiful and extensive campus boasts several open-air classrooms, a library with wifi, a restaurant that serves students two meals a day, faculty housing, and more. Established in the mid-90s, Barbacoas offers the local population an excellent education—teachers are primarily Colombians from surrounding areas supplemented by a handful of North American volunteers teaching English—for virtually nothing: $2 a year.

Though way off the beaten tourist track (or perhaps as a result of), we had a delightful evening at Barbacoas playing Ultimate Frisbee with the students, making homemade chicken empanadas with Tara and her fellow teachers, and soaking in the simplicity of life in a tiny town.

In talking with the English teacher volunteers, it struck us as kind of strange to us that so many of the World Teach volunteers in Colombia (6 of… 18 or 20?) would be assigned to this tiny, out-of-the-way place (the rest are stationed in cities like Baranquilla and Cartagena, as well as in La Zona Cafetera, the coffee-producing zone). Our questions were answered, of course, by the other reason we were passing though Santa Ana: Playa Blanca.

Playa Blanca, a gorgeous stretch of beach—white sands, crystal blue waters—on Barú Island, has long been a hidden treasure of the Caribbean. Until recently, it seems, most tourists came and went from Cartagena completely unaware of their proximity to this tropical jewel. In the last several years, however, it has been “discovered,” and not for the better. During the day it’s crawling with tourists who are boated over from Cartagena in the morning and back in the afternoon and at night with the dozen or so who shack up in one of the “hostels”—a hammock strung under a palm-leaf roof—for the night. Shepard’s Lonely Planet (2009) talks about the probability of the playa being developed as a prime Caribbean vacation spot and of the possibility of the construction of a luxury resort in the next few years. Today, in early 2010, this resort is a reality and they seem to have already begun construction on a second. The path between Santa Ana and Playa Blanca (by which we arrived at the beach on moto taxi) is being bulldozed and a road—for the transport of building supplies and eventually tourists, presumably —is being constructed.

Thus, our inquiries are answered: our friends are there to teach English to future resort workers, the people who make up the pueblito of Santa Ana and who will eventually make sure the resorts of Playa Blanca run efficiently and luxuriously enough to suit wealthy vacationers.

My immediate reaction to this is “what a shame,” but again I find myself asking who am I to condemn an endeavor that will likely bring better livelihoods to the people of Santa Ana? I don’t know enough about the economy of Santa Ana currently, but I saw enough to recognize its impoverished nature, and I wonder if the growing tourism industry in Playa Blanca, however tragic it seems to preservationists (and to those who visited a mostly deserted island paradise as recently as a few years ago), will ultimately be beneficial to the standard of living of these people. The environmentalist in me shudders even as I write this, but I again find myself struggling with the question of whether I, having grown up with all the basic necessities covered and then some, have any right to condemn this development.

You’re probably thinking now of Ecotourism: development that creates jobs for local populations and opens up an area to tourism in an ecologically and socially sustainable way, all the while educating travelers of the necessity of low-impact tourism. How eco-friendly and socially-responsible the developments on Playa Blanca will be remains to be seen, though I’m not hopeful based on what I saw.

Ultimately I’m left thinking that though it’s easy fault development companies and/or the Colombian government for encouraging this kind of development, we—the eager and earnest travelers who just want to see more of the world and who, unfortunately, are accustomed to doing so comfortably—must share in the responsibility.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Cartagena, Colombia

We flew from snowy, freezing NYC to sunny, tropical Cartagena in just a few hours on February 8th. Cartagena is Colombia’s 5th largest city and a haven for travelers, Colombian and foreign alike. The historic “old city” has retained its colonial charm (for better or for worse), including the tall stone walls built to protect the once prosperous port from the pillage and plunder of pirates and colonial powers alike. The colorful stucco buildings and their balconies smothered with tropical vines, narrow but bustling cobblestone streets, and cool coastal breezes only enhance this charm.

The people of Cartagena had a rather bloody struggle for independence from their not-so-beneficent benefactors the Spanish. They lost 1/3 of their population when the crown sieged the city in response to their 1811 declaration of independence, and, as we learned at the city’s quite disturbing Museo de la Inquisisión, its people also suffered a brutal bout of the Inquisition at their homeland’s hands. Colombians finally achieved independence in 1819 after a successful rebellion led by the great liberator Simón Bolívar.

If you venture outside the traditional tourist city center, you quickly arrive in the less polished, more boisterous local scene. Shepard and I walked around these neighborhoods for hours exploring shops, eating patacones con queso (fried green plantains with cheese) and endless fresh tropical fruit, people-watching, and simply soaking it all in. We stayed in one such neighborhood—Getsemaní—a funky area just outside the old city center that was once home to the African slaves that helped build the city.

Our first night in Cartagena we skirted the overpriced tourist restaurants that plague the old city center and instead managed to enjoy enormous platos típicos (Colombian fare) for 4k ($2) each, mostly, I think, because we caught the eye of a bored young Colombian who’s restaurant was empty. Pretty good deal, we thought, until we realized that (as a consequence of our steal, perhaps) he was our new, self-appointed tour guide. So, for the rest of the evening we walked along the murallas, the original stone walls, learning about our new friend and his city.

Somehow the conversation turned early to politics, and he quickly divulged his impatience with Obama, and for anything with even a hint of left, social, political, economical or otherwise. He supports Álvaro Uribe, the current quite-right-wing president, along with an astounding 70-80% of his country-folk. Until recently Uribe boasted the highest approval rating among his LA presidential peers, and for seemingly good reason; in the last eight years of his presidency he has all but turned the country around, creating more stability and peace than the country has seen in decades (or ever?). Though there certainly are still areas of instability and strife, the vast majority of Colombians seem to feel safer and happier about the state of their country than a decade ago, and if it may be used as an (admittedly imperfect) indicator, the tourism industry is on the rapid rise; there are more visitors (albeit still few Americans) here than in ages.

All that said there are still Colombians not benefiting from the current political and economic tides, namely the Cocaleros, or coca-farmers, whose livelihoods (and in some cases their lives) are being wiped out by the indiscriminate spraying of coca fields and all that goes with them—people, homes, animals, other crops and plant species—under the US-backed “Plan Colombia.” With significant funding from the U.S., this initiative aims to eradicate drug-crop production from the Colombia countryside in hopes of stymieing the cocaine trade worldwide and decreasing violent insurgency attributed to it. Critics of the initiative point to the significant negative effects of this effort—environmental, public health, socioeconomic, etc—and to its apparent inefficacy; cocaine is still widely available in the U.S. and Europe.

Many Colombians, our new acquaintance included, have little sympathy for coca farmers and argue that they could just easily grow another crop. I know next to nothing about the validity of that statement (and, indeed, about most of what I’m talking about here… these are simply impressions based on conversations with a few Colombians, reflections with a friend who knows infinitely more about LA politics than I, and the sparse literature I’ve read about the country’s history), so I’ll go no further on that argument here (if you know more about this please speak up!). I’m left wondering, however, how far a people will go, how much they will let go unseen, in the pursuit of normalcy and stability. And, moreover, coming from a country where I can travel without fear day or night, where my freedom of speech and belief is quite uninhibited, and where, born into relative privilege, I have all but endless opportunity at my fingertips, who am I to judge them for it?

We also learned from our new amigo that Uribe has been petitioning for an amendment to the constitution that would allow him a third term in office (he already achieved this to secure his second term). Though Colombian lawmakers supported the referendum, the courts just recently ruled against Uribe on the issue (see article here). Nevertheless, many Colombians still support Uribe’s bid for a third term, our friend included. Shepard and I immediately pointed out the dangers to democracy such a move would pose, but he interrupted our protests and challenged our skepticism by asking how, if the people themselves vote in favor of such an amendment, would it be a challenge to democracy? If the vast majority of the country supports him and things are only getting better and better, he asked, why force unwanted, untested change? And indeed, I find myself thinking why, other than because it’s how we do it in my country, am I so adverse to this idea?