The City of Eternal Spring

I´ve been in Medellin, so called La Ciudad de la Eternal Primavera (appropriately named, the warm breezes and occasional passing showers that water the abundant flowers are very springy), for about 4 days now. And honestly, I don´t have much to show for it. I have another 2 weeks until Angel flies in, so I am taking the sight seeing easy, trying to spread it out over as many days as I can. To my credit I have done some touristing every day. My method of attack is to explore one subway stop a day, which should occupy about 12 days. Granted, it is a bit tedious. The time I´m not being a subway vagrant or reading (luckily I found an awesome book exchange, whew!) I spend shuttling between my hostel´s wonderfully stocked, impeccably clean kitchen and the grocery store.

Today I took an expedition on the cable car system of the metro. One of the few (if not only) cable cars used for mass transit (and not for tourism, although just about everyone on there had their camera out), it connects the poor and once very derelict barrios that line the mountainsides that flank the city to the center. Not long ago, before the metrocable was built, these areas had the highest crime rates of the city (which is saying something, Medellin wasn´t the safest city anyway). The sidewalks are all staircases, the houses mostly shanties. Makes you wonder how they ever got down into the city before (buses aren´t even a viable option). As a secondary function, the metrocable provides beautiful, sweeping views of the city.

Going Home! Eventually.

So, my original return flight was out of Lima, then I changed it to go out of Cancun, and after the third (and I sincerely hope) final change, I will be departing from Managua, Nicaragua on July 10th. Yes, that is earlier. So yes, the title of my blog is a lie (7insouthamerica). But, in all honesty, it was always a lie. Even originally it was only going to be 6.5 months. However, I think 6 months (okay, one day less than 6 months) will be quite sufficient, and the change allows me a couple extra weeks to head up north to Michigan when I get back to see the family and hang out at the cottage. Having both parents and all three girls in the same place at the same time is a rare occurance, and it should be celebrated with barbeques, water skiing, and jet skis.

As I´m leaving Taganga tonight for Medellin, here are a few parting sunset shots that a friend took.

In the Black...Almost.

In an attempt to fill my time (of which I have plenty) and in the interest of my budget, I spent the last week scheming up business plans. After careful consideration and observation I decided that there was a hole in the market, and it was shaped like a brownie. The baked goods in South America as a whole are pretty disappointing, and I figured this was a service that I could offer the tourism industry of Taganga. I looked up a recipe and went into town to get the required ingredients. Made my first batch of brownies from scratch (and realized just HOW much butter goes into those things...and why they are so delicious) and spent 10 minutes trying to sell them on the street. It only took me about 3 of those minutes to remember that I absolutely positively hate selling things. Flashbacks to selling entertainment books in gradeschool gave me the chills. Hopes crushed, I went back home and put the brownies in tupperware. I then made a loop of the village, seeking out the few friends I had made at a scattering of hostels around town. I ended up giving most of them away to randoms sitting around their hostels, and got rave feedback. Hopes revived, I came up with an alternate business plan. So I don´t like sales. That doesn´t cut out my chances entirely, I just needed to find someone to do the dirty work for me. So I made a deal with one of the local juice stand ladies. I would make the brownies and deliver them to the stand in the morning. For every one that sold for 2500 ($1.10), the juice stand lady would get 500. I would return to pick up the money and whatever didn´t sell at the end of the day

Day 1: Made a batch of 12 brownies. By the end of the day, 7 had sold from the juice stand. I only needed to sell 3 to break even on the costs of production, so things were already looking good. But, it was 9pm and I still had 5 brownies to sell. Undeterred from my goal of selling all of them, I set myself up outside the only bar in town (it was Saturday night) with a sign. It took an hour, but I sold the remaining 5. Sucess! I had made enough money to cover all of my expenses for the day, as well as an extra $.65. I´m RICH! ...sort of.

Day 2: Repeat, but with a different juice stand, this one has a better location on the beach. End of the day: disaster. I had borrowed one of my landlord´s plates, and the juice stand had closed a bit early so when I went to retrieve it that night the lady had already cleaned up and taken it home. They were absolutely furious about this, assuming the plate was stolen. After getting screamed at (in spanish, it was good practice, at least), I spent two hours asking just about every person in town where the juice lady lived. I finally recruited the help of an elderly man who walked literally across the whole town with me, finally narrowing in on her neighborhood, street, then house (this took about an hour). I finally found her, "rescued" the plate (since there are NO OTHER green plastic plates in Colombia, even if it had been stolen), and gave the remaining brownies to the old man for his troubles. I returned home to further scolding in spanish. Needless to say, things are a bit weird around the house now. They have calmed down by now, obviously, but I will never be comfortable being there again. So, after a week and a half of laying on the beach, I think it´s time to move on. Pack the bag and get back on the road.

Taganga

After fleeing Cartagena in search of greener pastures, I ended up in Taganga, Colombia. Still not the white sand Caribbean beach of my dreams, it is quite nice in other ways. Namely, the craggy mountains that surround the (perfectly still) water bay that I get to go trail running in early (early early) in the morning when the sun wakes me up at 6:00. Also, not a 10 minute hike up and around of the the mountains is a nicer beach (the beach right near the town has a tendency to collect trash at a semi-alarming rate) with crystal clear water reminiscent of a swimming pool, albeit a little saltier. I´ve been hanging out here for the past week or so doing just about absolutely nothing. After failed attempts to find a job (there are huge fines for employing foreigners under the table, and the neighbors are known to rat you out), my days are passed very...leisurely. After the first couple nights spent in a hostel, I found a really nice apartment on the non-touristy part of town that I am renting (for $6.50 a night, same price as a bed in a dorm room) from a Belgian couple who had been living here for the past year or so. I´ve met a few other gringos who are hanging around here for a decently extended period of time, most of them passing the time getting scuba diving certified for various levels). Me? I´m spending my time getting tan, on accident. Today at the beach besides sitting in the shade under a tarp strug up between trees, and wearing 45spf sunscreen, I managed a slight burn. I must be THAT white, the UV rays can spot whities a mile away and converge on the target in a sneak attack that goes undetected until it is too late.


My typical day starts at 6:00 am when I awake to the blazing sunshine (sun is up around 5:45, Colombia´s time zone is all messed up). Go for a run, come back and make a MASSIVE breakfast and head down to the beach. By 11am it´s already too hot to be in the sun, so it´s fruit juice and siesta time. The fruit juice... Oh, my, the fruit juice. A 16oz cup of blended fresh tropical fruit heaven costs 1500 pesos, around 65 cents. Passion fruit, star fruit, lulo, mango, banana, pineapple, mora (like a blackberry)...you name it, it will go in a blender with some ice and suger and end up being the most delicious liquid experience of your life. Life becomes livable again around 3pm when the sun has slid a little further down the horizon. Maybe a sunset on the beach, maybe some time in an internet cafe...read...waste away a few hours before making dinner and going to bed around 9:30 (hey, I did get up at 6am, remember?). Then the whole thing starts over again early early the next morning. Will I get bored of this? Most definitely. I´m just hoping I can happily spend the next weeks until Angel comes to visit burning under a tarp and chatting up the gringos, occasionally finding someone who wants to toss around a frisbee with me.

Cartagena

Cartagena was...not what I expected. I was thinking beautiful caribbean beachfront, a big but compact city that centered around the beach. Turns out there aren´t really any good beaches near town, and the city is a strange geography of penninsulas and bridges. And, it was pretty pricey. Shoot, there goes my plan of hanging out in Cartagena for a month.

I did have a pretty strange coincidence happen. Way back when in La Paz, I met a couple from Seattle who were staying in my hostel. They were heading north, and I was running in circles (Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Columbia) I randomly ran into them again at a different hostel in Máncora (northern Peru) and hung out with them for a couple days. Not five hours after I arrived in Cartagena, I was walking on top the city walls when I hear "hey!!!" from a taxi down below. It was the Washington couple! After coffee and catching up we went our separate ways with the mention of maybe meeting up for dinner. Around 5 when I hadn´t heard from them, I decided to go out for a walk. I was on top of the city wall again when I hear "MARIEL!". It was the couple from Washington. Apparantly the wall is the unspoken meeting place. Dinner at Hard Rock Cafe for a little taste of home (okay, only appetizers, and shared, dinner was too expensive) and some seriously large glasses of pop (if they came with refills I´d have thought I was back in the states. No such luck...). The following day, after 3 hours spent on hot sweaty city buses and one failed attempt to make it to the nearby Volcan de Lodo (Mud volcano, the tallest in Columbia) made me realize that sometimes it really is worth it to just pay the money and go on the guided tour. Maybe when Angel comes.

The highlight of Cartagena was the museum of Inquisition era torture techniques, and the numerous monuments around town ripe for photo ops. Now I´m in Taganga, a teeny little beach town near Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast. This town is what I expected when I showed up in Cartagena, and I have set down roots (at least for a month). I found a really cool place to stay (I´m not there yet, the room is occupied for the next couple nights), I´ll post pictures when I have officially moved in. I´m excited and nervous to stay somewhere for that long...The longest I´ve stayed in a city not including cruises or treks was 5 days in La Paz. Hopefully this does a bit to remedy my travel-tiredness.