Just before midnight this last day of the year our conversation had moved out to a table in the plaza, and it was here, having endured the fateful bell of midnight and the incessant fireworks, that I finally got so tired of listening in on the repeated vulgarities of an ugly German lesbian, that I decided to retire as discreetly as possible to my quarters. What I didn’t realise was that I had just as discreetly left my suede Peruvian backpack, containing my passport, under the table, where it apparently stayed all night without being spotted by anyone. It was discovered by the hotel staff in the morning. I hadn’t even noticed that the bag was gone when the cleaning lady knocked at my door, saying a gentleman wished to meet with me in the lobby. It was Alvaro’s sympathetic son, to whom I had been introduced the previous evening. He came to deliver the mochila before heading back to Medellín. I never had the time to worry about the loss. But apparently Destiny had considered I wasn’t appreciative enough of the fact that the bag had both been found and piously brought back to me. For this reason He had to come back in the same matter weeks later and teach me another, even starker lesson, the subtext of which I could no longer afford to ignore. However, of these future complications to my life I was still unaware while gazing at the stars and drinking wine on the eve of a new era.
In between my first and second visit to Santa Fe de Antioquia (over the years I think I’ve been there four or five times) an entire condominium complex with two major pool areas have grown up in the valley below the hotel. But none of these condos has the view of the landscape that the external terrace of the Caseron Plaza offers. Who, I always ask myself, wants to have a balcony in a location where the view is abruptly cut off by a neighbouring building? Since the complex is not built in terraces this is the case with all the condos in the second or third line seen from the pool. Still, Santa Fé is located at near commuter distance from Medellín. This kind of community thus is a kind of investment for affluent middle class citizens: professionals, lawyers, medical doctors, etc. who typically would buy a time share unit here, combining the setting of a ‘country house’ with the amenities and guarded security of the city. I’m not envious of their vacation village. I know my sunset view to be so far undisturbed — since colonial Santa Fé is perched on a comparatively gently ascending hill — and that’s the only thing I really care about, then and now.
However, when I first arrived in Santa Fé de Antioquia in mid-December some years ago, the activity in its central Plaza was hectic to say the least. There were podiums being erected and, in one place, an entire small arena with two spectator gradients for the traditional stand-off between man and bull. The spectacle, though not a blood drenched corrida, is dangerous enough as it is. As soon as the young bull has been disentangled from the ropes keeping him tied down, the game is to come as close as possible to him, preferably to pull him by his tail without ending up being skewered on one or even both of his horns. And there are some guys who don’t hesitate to attempt this feat after substantial quantities of aguardente, a beer can in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other — every time the bulls seems to get the better of a challenger the audience, children of the fearless fathers, scream in horror mixed with joy.
The merchants around the square have the advantage of being able to store their merchandise in the same stands they use to display them in. The stand itself, with all its hanging goods, folds back up like a small house the roof of which can be closed and secured with padlocks. All the merchants need is for somebody to collectively watch over these little huts overnight. Clothes, hats, candy, food, drinks, and all kinds of handicraft are in this way easily presented and stashed away every night
In the middle of the Plaza in Santa Fé towers the statue of Don Juan del Corral, who perhaps looks a bit older in bronze than he did in real life. He carried the title of dictator but only lived to be thirty-five. During the Napoleonic era he successfully fought against the Spanish and relieved the sons of slaves in Antioquia from further serfdom. A hero of some standing, no doubt, and one whose claim to fame might have been even more solid had he been granted a longer career. His statuesque presence is like the calm eye of the storm as the fierce winds of the fiesta begin to rush in from all the side streets and set the plaza ablaze. Music played out so loudly as the individual sound systems allow, creating an auditive pandemonium in the plaza that is matched only by the shrill voices of vendors, announcers, performing artists and the whistles of the police paving the way for the procession: hundreds of children dressed up as Madonnas and angels, accompanied by slightly elder folks in animal, dragon or demon shapes. In the midst of the procession there are heavily armed soldiers — one small kiss from one of those automatic guns and there’d be a heap of 50 dead people right on the spot. Young women make their way through the thicket of holy kids and enthusiastically pull the helmets off the soldiers’ heads, only to mount behind them on the motorcycles and put the helmets on their own heads, waving limbs, cheering, drinking, shouting in ecstasy!
After the procession has passed through the square, a male transvestite with huge, spherical knockers protruding over his bra, enters one of the platforms and begins to present the folklore show featuring innocent boys and girls from nearby villages, dressed up in their traditional colourful costumes and dancing more elegantly than you have ever seen youngsters do before. In another corner there is a karaoke variety and song contest for pre-teen girls who try their very best to imitate all the lascivious gestures of the older girls in the business as presented by Latino MTV. Meanwhile there is a religious ceremony going on in the cathedral and the nuns together carry the newly restored remonstrance up the central nave. From under his white robe the priest pulls out his cell phone and begins to take flash pictures of the altarpiece as it is being carried forward and reinstated in its pre-designated niche. Most of the subsequent Mass, on the day of the Virgin Immaculata, is consecrated to fundraising for other objects of the church, allegedly in dire need of renovation.
The incense mixes with oil vapour from the many food stands outside to form the all-encompassing quinta essentia of the fiesta’s electrically charged atmosphere. Above, the stars inexorably move from east to west in their predetermined paths, while the Moon, cloaked in silvery gauze, abides full tide. Far out in the dry, nocturnal landscape an owl takes advantage of the noise of humans to cover up the fluttering of her wings as she sets out to hunt. Still farther out, well beyond the perimetre of festively lit haciendas, fireworks, gun shots, aguardente, salsa and merengue, the silent puma stalks his prey, one careful step after the other.
And this, dear reader, was only the very beginning of the festivities leading up to Christmas and culminating in the New Year’s celebrations, which yours truly duly and patiently lived through, although on some evenings he would deservedly take refuge in the relative calm of his favoured terrace, where the sounds from the square, though still overheard, didn’t completely overpower the subtle music of the spheres, now and henceforth humming in his inner ear.
Never forget your hat!
But the gods were obviously jealous of my bliss and felt the need of sending Nemesis my way. The first loss and miraculous recuperation of the backpack containing my passport at the fiesta of Saint Silvester really should have kept me on the alert. But weeks passed and I became oblivious of the gratitude owed. So there I was one day checking in into a hotel in the city of Manizales in the Caldas Province. Routinely asked to show my passport, I was forced to conclude that it had simply gone missing.
I had reached Manizales from the Antioquian village of Andes. An hour into the trip the bus came to a permanent halt because 200 metres of road had been undermined by an inadequate drainage system that had collapsed into the receding ground. The repair work carried out while traffic on both sides waited would have stunned any road engineer from more northern countries. A few heaps of gravel had been dotted on the ground, while a crane moved back and forth spreading it in wider circles, only to afterwards, and rath
er capriciously, hammer them as flat as possible. The entire procedure took about 45 minutes. Since the heat inside the small bus had become unbearable when there no longer was the slightest draft from the windows, most of the passenger seized the opportunity to step outside to catch a breath of fresh, if also hot, air.
When traffic was on again I couldn’t see that the road had changed much from before, but the gravel obviously had made a difference to someone in position of authority, because the vehicles were allowed again to pass in both directions as best they could. Back on the bumping bus I resumed my conversation with a Dutch couple who had come to Colombia to enjoy its unique bird life. It was the first time I spoke English for a month, and I had a lot to tell. A bit too much really. As sometimes happens I got carried away by my own eloquence and my need for entertainment. Of course, I don’t accuse these perfectly innocent and endearing people, but hadn’t it been for them I probably wouldn’t have lost my passport. Unless it really was Destiny that this should happen.
The critical situation arose as I, on our final half hour ride from nearby Chinchina to the bus terminal in Manizales, suggested we’d split a taxi to the city centre. In principal it was a good idea, particularly if we would have ended up going in the same direction. But whereas I thought I wanted to stay in the city centre (I soon but nevertheless too late realised I didn’t), they had recommendations for a hostel in the general vicinity of the soccer stadium and the best ‘night life’ in town — which they were not interested in anyway. I on the other hand had been in the countryside for a month and could do with some action. To me names like Mountain Inn and the The Stadium suggested establishments located on the outskirts of the city. With hindsight, I was extremely lucky to somehow, at the back of my brain, have retained the name of their hostel. Subsequently my ability to recognise the name, once I had seen it, was to save me a lot of trouble. Here’s how it happened.
The cab ride had been preceded by my interrogation as to the best hotel options for the night (see Chapter II, ‘Colombia’, above for an elucidation of the notorious inability of taxi drivers all over the world to take you to a hotel where you really would like to stay!). As a consequence I wasn’t quite attentive when the rather bulky luggage of the Dutch folks was squeezed through practically all orifices of the small taxi. Normally I rarely allow myself to lose sight of my Peruvian backpack, but for some reason it was stowed by someone else, out of my sight and supervision. With the consequence that when I subsequently jumped out of the car to leave the good couple to their own devices, I was handed the backpack with the commentary: ‘It’s open, I hope it doesn’t matter’. That alone should have alarmed me and prompted an inspection while the cab was still holding. But I was eager to be on my own again and fell victim to a familiar character flaw: my innate impatience. I thus assumed that nothing could have happened to the contents of the bag, although it seemed odd to me that it should have been open since I know I would not have allowed it to ride on my back without having made sure it was securely closed. Alas, it’s only all too easy to know in retrospect what one should have done in advance to avoid an accident.
An armed city guard insisted on following me while I was looking for a hotel to my liking. Facing a reception desk I finally discovered that the little bag of cloth which had travelled inside the mochila was gone. It had also contained my watercolours and brushes, not irreplaceable by any means. A missing passport was an altogether different matter. Understandably I was quite upset — with myself. It immediately struck me as an unforgivable naiveté on my part having left it to the taxi driver and all those ‘helpful hands’ that eagerly stretch out towards you as soon as you arrive in a new place, to storage my precious bag inside the car. Naturally I hadn’t noticed the cab driver’s name, let alone his taxi registration number, or the license plate. I only vaguely remembered what he looked like through the rear mirror. And I didn’t even know, or remember, the names of the Dutch man and woman I had been travelling with. To top it off, I had forgotten the name of the hostel he had shown me on a business card.
After having collectively, and profusely, cursed all presumptive Colombian thieves, I finally pulled myself together and went back to the hotel at which we had first stopped on the taxi driver’s recommendation. The reason I never tried to check in there was the bright lights in the lobby. I had therefore initially asked the driver to keep going. On my request he dropped me off in the middle of a street a couple of blocks away. Coming back to the first place I did recall that the front desk manager had come out on the pavement to see if he was receiving new clients. Perhaps he would remember and be able to identify the cab driver? He wasn’t. But he was helpful all the same. He called the taxi companies and asked them to call on the internal radio for a missing small bag of cloth with a passport in it. I waited in the lobby for an hour. As nobody made any further sign I decided to continue the search myself. I took a taxi back to the bus terminal — a steep ride since the city is built on a mountainside. Once there I tried to get hold of people from the bus companies I had been travelling with, to exclude the possibility that I had accidentally lost my passport on either of the two buses. But it was too late in the evening: both the bus drivers and the other personnel had gone home for the night.
Among the cab drivers now present outside the terminal there was nobody who recalled seeing me arrive, much less what taxi I had been in. I decided my best chance was to try to track down the Dutch couple and asked a driver to bring me to all hostels, one after the other, in the area around the soccer stadium. This he did — grudgingly. Why I don’t understand since he ended up charging me 50 cents for every stop he made. We stopped at two hostels where I asked if a Dutch couple had checked in recently. No luck. But then the name Mountain Inn appeared in lit up letters outside a building. I suddenly recalled this name as the one the Dutchman had referred to. The Dutch themselves were not there, but that was easily explained by the fact that the hotel had possessed no available beds. The manager suggested I try another hostel nearby. There I actually found them, but to no avail. They could only confirm they had seen the bag and that it had indeed been open, but they hadn’t noticed the name of the driver or any taxi license number.
That concluded the search for the evening. I was lucky to get a private room (the idea of having to share a dorm with the motley international crew frequenting these kind of places is just appalling to me) at the nearby Pit Stop Hostel, identifying myself with a maculated passport that contains my still valid Visa to the US and for that reason still travels with me. The next day I called the embassy in Bogotá and found out that I could either get a temporary passport, valid for seven months, on a 24-hours notice, or a regular one in about three weeks. The disadvantage with the former was that it would only be valid for travels in certain countries, the U.S. not being part of them. Since I knew I would have to return to Miami, this option was ruled out. Instead I began to prepare mentally for an eight hour winding bus ride to Bogotá and an early morning visit, the day after that, to my country’s embassy in the capital.
After breakfast I went back to the bus station, waiting for the bus companies to make calls in search of my lost item. Confirmed in my suspicions I took the cable car two stops up the mountain to the Sala de Denuncias (the word denunciation obviously having a somewhat different connotation in Spanish) located at the city police headquarters. The friendly officer on duty helped me fill out the form the embassy would request to be able to process my application. While on the premises I also met with a very cheerful (!) psychiatrist who said he would take me to the local radio station, so that I could ask the people there to spread the news of my loss through the ether. This service was free of charge. The reason I knew about it was that I had run into some people the night before who invited me, to invite them, for a round of aguardiente and salsa in a private flat.
One of the young men of the party had recently moved into a new apartment. Although we were told to be silent while passing th
rough the entry door of the building — there was a night guard on duty in a boot right next to the gate — the apartment door in turn was swung wide open in to the common corridor as soon as we arrived. There were no furniture in the Spartan, yellow-washed salon and hardly a glass to be found in the kitchen. But there was, of course, a huge stereo chain system with speakers that were quickly assembled and in traditional Colombian style made to rock the edifice like an earthquake. One neighbour actually did come by to ask the apartment owner to diminish the volume. His complaint was respectfully heard, but as soon as he’d gone, the volume was cranked up again and the party back on.
The small glass that most of us used was pushed back and forth over the floor. Being both the tourist and one of two backers of the bottle (which, since the alcohol store announced itself closed for the night, had been bought straight from a night guard in the street that these people apparently knew and trusted), I was offered to drink more often than I actually wanted. However, there was general consensus that I should get going, not the least on the part of 23-old Guillermo, a student of political science from Belgium, who was very pleased to converse with me in French. But even he gradually drifted more and more into the arms and lips of his young mistress.
His landlady on the other hand (of a more mature age, it goes without saying) was not all that bad looking but should have had her teeth braided at an early age since they were protruding from under her upper lips at a 45 degree angle. Also she was a bit broad over the hip and didn’t really have any tits to speak of. Pretty otherwise, I should say, and sympathetic in that particular Colombian way that seems to blend passion, loyalty and friendship in a potentially lethal mix. Anyway, she was the one who told me to address myself to the local radio station with an announcement for a missing passport. ‘You offer to pay 20. 000 pesos, 30.000 tops (roughly $15) for anyone who finds it and gives it back to you. That’s the way things like this are done here in Colombia’, she added with an impish smile happily flaunting her rebellious teeth.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 7