Two Days of Solitude

The Lonely Planet has a habit, where Colombia's concerned, to describe anything a bit otherworldly, a bit off track, as being straight out of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. After a while it leaves you slightly infuriated; 'well yes' you think, 'the place where he lived and wrote obviously bears some resemblance to the world of his books.' It's a bit like going to Edinburgh and exclaiming (as I have)over the castle's similarity to Hogwarts.

Now I have no idea if García Márquez has ever been to San Cipriano, a minuscule, ramshackle village, deep in the pacific jungle, but the place is, undeniably, like something out of a storybook.

San Cipriano is home to roughly 300 Colombians mostly descended from African slaves brought to the area to work on the banana plantations. It's proximity to a crystal clear river peppered with idea swimming spots has made it a popular weekend retreat for Calianos but where it all gets a bit odd is the fact that in San Cipriano there are no cars.And there are no cars because there are no roads. Well there is a street, in the sense that there's an unobstructed passage land between the houses, but once the houses end so does the street leaving only a thin, muddy path that winds itself deeper in to the jungle.

'If there's no road' you're probably thinking 'how did you manage to get there?' Obviously if stepping in to Colombia where actually like stepping into One Hundred Years of Solitude we would have levitated there, or rode in on the back of a friendly Jaguar, but it isn't and we didn't. Instead we sat on a flat wooden cart attached to a motorbike (complete with a picture of a scantily clad woman on the seat) and using some physics far beyond my paltry GCSE we were propelled along a disused railway track through the jungle to the T-junction of corrugated iron that is San Cipriano.

The whole journey, which takes about an hour, is a wryly comedic one. For a start only the motorbike's back wheel rotates giving the driver the appearance of being bizarrely motionless and not too dissimilar to a child on a motorbike ride outside a supermarket. Then, because there is only a single track, you will occasionally meet a similar cart coming in the opposite direction. Protocol dictates that each driver switches of his engine, sits back and along with his passengers stares at the cart opposite. For a few minutes nobody speaks before one driver (it always seemed to be us) throws up his hands, climbs off his bike, pulls off the two dazed gringos and their enormous backpacks, before lifting the cart, bike and all, clean off the tracks. The winning driver then trundles past, smug looks from his still sedentary passengers, before bags, cart and people are all thrown back on the tracks and the journey continues.

It is the journey that makes San Cipriano such an alluring destination but the village itself is delightful enough. It is unlike anywhere else in Colombia I have, or will visit, devoid of the usual town square filled with impossibly old men, fruit sellers and a statue of Simon Bolivar. Instead it is just two 'roads', a few kids playing 'three and in' on a bedraggled football pitch and an excellent rope swing swaying above a particularly deep and secluded section of river. For two days it was bliss, before rice, beans, fish and plantain three times a day became a bit too much and jumping back on the H.M.S Bikini Babe we headed back to hot,dusty and boringly modern Cali.

A Lost City Found and a Maternal Revelation.

My Father (who thinks he's a funny man) spent my childhood following my Mother around Europe's various Greek and Roman ruins deriding their 'half-built' state and questioning why we kept taking him to 'buildng sites'. This coupled with a particularly hot traipse around The Valley of the Tombs in Cyprus when I was twelve left me with a deep seated conviction that as an adult I would not 'do' ruins.

However, since I left for Latin America, I have, in fact, become my Mother. I now own a fleece, have enjoyed a rainy hike in Boquete, Panama, and never miss an opportunity to use the loo. So it is no surprise then that last week I signed up for a five day trek to the Cuidad Perdida of Teyuna deep in the Colombia jungle.

Three days hiking to some rubble and the back again all whilst sleeping in hammocks - my Mum's idea of Heaven, my Dad's of Hell.

The hike turned out to be possibly the highlight of my trip so far. Yes it was hard but not overwhelmingly so and we had two brilliant guides, Jesus and Gabriel (so we knew we were in good hands), who were constantly on hand to slice up watermelon and oranges for the weary. Carlos, our translator, knew where all the best, and safest, parts of the river to swim in were and would suggest a dip just as you were thinking 'I'm getting a bit hot'.

The one with the two waterfalls

Over the five days I became quite a connoisseur of these spots weighing up the pros and cons of  'the one with the two waterfalls' versus 'the one with the big rock you could jump off'. My favourite place was 'the one with the really fast current'. There existed in our group a French guy, named Jean, who had a penchant for almost getting swept over rapids. At the spot in question he and a Dane named Rasmus (a common name in Denmark it would seem; his mate was also called Rasmus) finally got dragged down stream. Frantic cries from Gabriel instructed the two to swim with it and to the opposite bank. They then walked upstream and dived back in, across the current, back to cheering group. Well after that we all wanted a go and one by one we swam down the current, off to the side, walked upstream and dived back to safety. 

Lost City Found.

The ruins themselves, although not the trek's highlight, were impressive enough. Two hundred stone terraces soaring above the jungle where the Kogi Indians (who still inhabit the jungle) used to dwell until the Spanish arrived with their European diseases and the city was left to the infected. To my delight at the very top of Teyuna we found six army personal guarding the site from gold diggers, guerrillas and clumsy gringos alike. I may be turning in to my Mother but I am still a Cowley girl and naturally I had to have a picture with the soldiers, wearing one of their hats. The resulting photo definitely trumps my sisters' usual Notting Hill Carnival London Bobby efforts.

So after five days of only washing in streams and having run out of clean socks and t-shirts it was time to return to modern Colombia. In no time we had exchanged the lush idyll of the jungle for the laughably bureaucratic traffic police who impounded our jeep not because it contained twelve people instead of seven, or because the engine and petrol tank were connected by a rubber tube running through the passenger cabin, but because our diver didn't have the correct piece of paper. Civilisation Indeed.

Drink up, me 'earties, Yo Ho.

They say half the fun is getting there and whoever ´they´are they might have been referring to the border between Panama and Colombia. There exists, in the Americas, an optimistic road called the Pan American Highway. The romance being that you can drive all the way from Canada to Argentina on one, nicely paved, road.

And it would do if it weren´t for the Darién Gap.

100km of dense jungle filled to the teeth with bandits, guerrillas and other people who might want to kill or kidnap you. The Darién presents an interesting choice for the pan American traveller...

Do you      a) Fly (boring)

                 b) Do an awkward but cheap mix of flights, boats and buses

          or    c) Sail there

Despite a long family history of sea sickness (my grandfather a WW1 pilot reportedly couldn´t even fly over water without turning green) I plumped for ´c´ and signed myself up for five days onboard a 40ft yacht named ´Impetus´ sailing first through the stunning San Blas archipelago and then across the sea to Colombia´s colonial jewel, Cartagena.

The San Blas Islands number somewhere (it depends who you´re talking to) between the neat 365 to 400 + tiny islands, most sporting little more than a few palm trees, a white sandy beach and an appealing strip of coral reef. A few are home to the island´s autonomous, indigenous people the Kuna Yale. On our first day we hadn´t been on the yacht for more than thirty minutes when two Kuna men appeared in a dugout canoe with ten live lobsters milling about their feet. Bargaining between them and our First Mate ensued and five minutes later we had purchased seven lobsters (one each!) for $20. The second night the event was repeated with enormous red snapper replacing the lobster´s role. Thankfully both our Aussie First Mate and Norwegian Captain were excellent cooks and did the unbelievably fresh food justice.

Dinner!

The first three days were spent cruising between the islands and diving off the boat. Our Captain took us to an amazingly wrecked wreck just a few meters below the water line where we could snorkel amongst the tens of tropical fish and bright corals. Foolishly I indulged in a bit of free diving down to the cabins and swam away with two painful stings on my elbows.

On our first night, between mugs of rum someone noticed a spotted eagle ray gliding past the boat and only a few inches deep. We all rushed over to the side and spent the next half hour watching the graceful creature and its companion ripple around the pool of light our boat created. Having not bee lucky enough to see one when diving in Utila this definitely made up for it!

However after three days of bliss it was time to set sail and we awoke on the fourth day to see the palmed islands slipping out of sight. For a while all we could see were the jagged, forested peaks of the prepossessing Darién before they too disappeared leaving us alone at sea.

Dinner!

Then the sea sickness set in. Clearly my grandfather is alive and well in my veins as I spent most of day four lying on my back listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, then Down and Out in Paris and in London and finally before sleep claimed me most of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. However the next morning the seas had died down and I managed to force down a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, enough to provide a base for the mariners secret weapon; seasickness tablets.

I spent day five feeling like superwoman able to stumble about the boat, sit down, stand up and eat at whim. Amazing stuff! The elation didn´t even subside as night fell because sitting on the deck admiring the bio-phosphorescence around the boat I heard a splash. A loud splash, too loud to be the tuna who had been flinging themselves out of the water all day. Looking down I saw a phosphorescent trail loop under the boat and then out of the water arched two dolphins. The rest of the crew were summoned and we spent our last waking hours on the boat being guided towards the glow of Cartagena by the sparkling dolphins and their ghostly leaping shadows.

The next morning we had arrived in Cartagena and all that remained to be done was to find our land legs and, like the true pirates we had become, hit the rum.

Up Creek and Paddling



Chicken bus heaven

A feature of Central America, that initially causes amusement and the swiftly becomes everyday, is the use of decommissioned US school buses as a primary means of transport. The Chicken bus, so called either because you're packed in like battery farmed chickens or because you're more than likely to be accompanied by a few. feature more often in the life of a traveler than rice and beans.

But eventually you do tire of the posters of the Virgin Mary, the written exclamations 'Jesus es el Señor' and the old ladies who cackling hand you a mango as you alight. So Rachel and I, in the last week have entirely swapped buses in favour of boats. It started with a quick one hour hop over to Isla de Ometepe- a twin volcanoed island in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. After climbing a volcano and relaxing in a hacienda entirely staffed by flirting fifteen year olds we set off in search of the holy grail. A town that could only be reached by boat, El Castillo on the 'mighty' Rio San Juan!

It says something about a place when the easiest way to get there is by a twelve hour boat across an eerie, misty lake followed by a three hour (one and a half express) lancha up the river. However finally, after zig zagging across the river to pick up and drop off all of Nicaragua, you reach a bend and there stands El Castillo. One road lined with wooden stilt houses nestled in verdant rain forest and perched above it all the crumbling fort that gives the town its name.

 So enamored by boats have we become that our tearful goodbye to Nicaragua could only be conducted by boat. Stamping out in San Carlos we glided down the nomansland of the Rio Frio before stamping in at Los Chiles, Costa Rica and much to our consternation... getting on a bus.

Captain Jack Sparrow hell

You realise you've gone a bit off track when the toothless old man who runs your hotel apologises that there's no running water upstairs but if we need to brush our teeth there's plenty downstairs (and gestures to the river), but tiny, sleepy El Castillo does get its fair share of visitors. Principally for acting like and imagined town out of Pirate story.



El Castillo de la Inmaculada Concepciòn de Maria (the fort) was originally built by the Spanish as a river block (it overlooks a set of fairly nasty rapids) to catch pirates as they snuck up and down from the Caribbean to the wealthy city of Granada who would otherwise be carting off the gold they themselves were carting back to Queen Isabel in Spain. At some point we, the British, got in on the act, took the castle and started making it difficult for both the Spanish and the Pirates.



The entire town.



History dispensed with by the morning we chose to sample El Castillo's other delight, kayaking. After tackling the rapids that make El Castillo so strategic (an experience complicated by the drybag of cameras clipped to Rachel's chest) we enjoed a peacful paddle through the Rio San Juan's tributaries and waterways. The air punctuated by unknown birds, unseen monkeys and the ocassional river turtle fleeing from our amateur splashing we seemed a world and an age away from dusty Leon and chi-chi Granada.





Sandinistas and the Pig Witch - an unlikely couple.

I have always had reservations about visiting somewhere like Auschwitz. I worry that the solemnity of the place would fail to impact properly on me and I´d find myself thinking about what I was going to have for lunch. For things like that I´ve always preferred to stick to the history books over real life.

Depictions of torture on the side of La Veinte Uno

Bit, if there´s one thing they know how to do in Central America it´s an atmospheric museum. In San Salvador we visited the house of Archbishop Oscar Romero whose assassination (along with six Jesuit priests, the housekeep and her daughter) is credited with kicking off the El Salvadoran Civil War. The clothes that the nine had been wearing that night, still bloodstained and ruptured by bullets were hung in the museum, invisible man style for the full effect.

If that disturbed our English sensibilities that we were totally unprepared for the Museo de Leyenda y Tradiciones General Joaquin de Arrechada Antigua Carcel de la Veinte Uno. Technically it is the National Guard's 21st garrison which until 1979 held and brutally tortured an assortment of political prisoners, freedom fighters and lunatics. I was expecting akin to Stasi Prison with its chillingly stark rooms that barely suggested what took place within them.I'd forgotten I was in Central America. Interestingly in the few rooms of La Veinte Uno the white walls were covered in simple black drawings depicting the set up of each room and the activities the prisoners might have been engaged in. Outside, the garisson's walls were further drawings of the methods of torture used on the prisoners.

So far, so affecting and quite a moving tribute to the inmates. However the rooms were far from empty. In some bizarre attempt to remind visitor's of Nicaragua's rich cultural history, as well as its violent one, they had set up life sized plastic models of characters from Nicaraguan fairy-tales. And so began our tour round possibly the weirdest museum I have ever visited. We learnt, in the same breath, about the horrors inflicted on prisoners and also about the Pig-witch, a pig with the head of a woman who runs about robbing people.

In fairness to this strange museum the cast of Nicaraguan fairytales are an interesting lot but it does detract slightly when you walk in to a cell and come face to face with Toma tu Teta.

Toma tu Teta (Grab the tit)

Eyeballing her enormous nipples scared me more than any hauntingly bare room ever could. Toma tu Teta is a character who due to her massive breasts and manish arms is unable to get a man. Instead she runs around town, chasing unsuspecting men and ordering them to 'toma tu teta' (grab the tit) whereupon she will force them to suckle until she is satisfied and runs off!

My other favourite character was el Duende. Anyone who's her studied the Andalucian poet Garcia-Lorca will understand el Duende to be the dark, momento-mori of inspiration that is necessary in the creation of great art.

El Duende - inspiration or gnome?


To the Nicaraguan's he is a gnome. A gnome who steals away unbaptised babies at that. I could only smile as I remembered my Spanish professors warning that understanding Lorca could only be achieved through an understanding of el Duende. A gnome.

So after our confusing experience at the museum we fled from lefty, Sandinista Leon. Leaving behind its political murals and chaotic streets we exchanged it for conservative Granada where our liberal souls have been ashamedly soothed by its pastel painted order, where the museums focus on the pre-Columbian and gloss over all that nasty business with Sandino and the company, in Leon at least, he keeps.

Sad times in 'Sleepy' Suchitoto.

This post was going to be about the sleepy El Salvadorian village of Suchitoto. It was going to extol the place's colonial charm, it's white washed building and their red tiled roofs. It was going to wax lyrical about pupusas, the latest in a long line of food stuffs that involve tortilla, and it was going to say that Suchitoto is the perfect place to chill out for a few days.

Then we decided to walk to the waterfall.

Yes that's right, after surviving a night in San Pedro Sula (Central America's murder capital) it was in tiny Suchitoto that Rachel and I had a gun pointed at our heads and our bags emptied.

In the role play section of my GCSE Spanish oral I had to pretend to have been robbed so I am blaming the entire incident on my Spanish teacher Senora Costello, it was her who taught me the word 'testigo', clearly equipping me for this event in my future.

This picture come courtesy of Rachel who didn't get her camera stolen

I actually didn't have to use my muddled Spanish. Rachel whose fluency makes her the best travel buddy ever hastily described what happened whilst I attempted to chip in and just generally make a nuisance of my self. As amazing as her Spanish is Rachel is not clued up on her gun lingo. After repeatedly describing the weapon as a pistola the policeman asked us to draw it and then glancing at our attempts (Ms Lewis, my art teacher never prepared me for this) sighed and corrected us. 'Un revólver'. This was followed by a surreal moment in the police station where everyone was getting their guns out for our comparison and drawing their own version of what we attempting to describe.

The report finished and our contact details left (they even asked us for our facebook, not the most official of channels) we were done. Our entire foray in to violent crime lasted about two hours and left us both with a deep sense of annoyance. It is just one of those things and Suchitoto is genuinely a great place to visit. It was only after our mishap that we learnt you could get the tourist police to walk you down to the falls and avoid such unfortunate incidents.

But, as my father said when I called him to break the news 'you live and learn' and I guess we will.

Getting Muddy in the Mangroves





The great thing about volunteering at the Iguana Station is that you get to see a side of the island your average visitor doesn't venture to.



Mr Osgood and his well behaved dog Popali.



Every Monday, at our weekly meeting, there's usually a great clamour to sign up for a trip and more specifically to go out with one person, Mr Osgood.



Osgood (the Mr is a Caribbean sign of respect) is a reformed Iguana hunter and former chief of police for the island (presumably at the same time). A living legend, he lives next door to the station with his mad German wife Elke. Occasionally when we're chilling on the balcony across the darkness will float Mr Osgood's cry of 'Sammy I hear you' or 'Sammy, what you do?'.



So Once a week Osgood leads a few excitable volunteers through the mangrove swamps of Rock Harbour and over the petrified coal of Iron Bound on an iguana hunt. Except only Osgood, with his hunter's eyes, is any good at spotting them so the rest of us pretend to be looking for knees and elbows (supposedly how you find them) whilst he gets out his fishing rod, bootlace attached, and wrestles a vicious pregnant female from her tree.

Washing our boots at Rock Harbour





Rock Harbour on the northern side is Mr Osgood's favourite hunting spot, and ours too since he will usually leave us to swim on the rarely visited beach whilst he runs off to catch a few more iguanas. Getting there also involves a 100m wade across the lagoon, made more difficult by the station's un-official dog, Beauty, who gets tired halfway across, tries to turn around and ends up getting carried the last 50m.



Guess which foot I lost to the mud?





I reckon the reason why we love going out with Osgood, apart from his hilarious stories and dire warnings that I will die on the mainland, is that he lets you feel like you're ten years old again. Squelching though muddy bogs, jumping from precarious mangrove root to precarious mangrove root, losing a foot or two in the stinking mud, it's like everything your Mother told you not to do.

We return with pillowcases of iguanas, caked in mud and after all that adventure, in need of a nap!