Due to Crystalfox’s disappointment at my failure to do enough things that he would enjoy while on holibobs, I thought I would selflessly abandon the city and Joe Kane and head into the mountains to go hiking and horseriding, to see if that might shut him the fuck up for a while. The tone may turn a bit negative in places – apologies in advance. The important thing to remember is that even in the seemingly darkest hours of my journey, I am probably still having a better time than those of you who have to spend the majority of your time working for the man, e.g. the fox.
As I am meeting Maris in Lima on the 12th June and didn’t fancy paying US$350 for a flight from Cartagena to Lima, I decided I would go no further north than Medellín and instead work my way back down south to Lima by bus. Unfortnately this meant missing out on Cartagena and Santa Marta, for the time being at least. The north coast is generally acclaimed to be amongst the highlights of Colombia, at least by people who can tolerate temperatures in the high thirties without feeling like they’re going to die. The good thing about this plan is getting to take in some Colombian countryside and, schedule allowing, a few select highlights of Ecuador and northern Peru.
I am currently in Salento, a beautiful village of 7,000 in Colombia’s coffee-growing region. I’m staying at a hostel called Plantation House, owned by an English guy called Tim and his Colombian wife. It’s a very relaxing place with hammocks, several beautiful collies, a tabby cat and, as the name suggests, a coffee plantation up the road. For various reasons I’ve ended up spending an entire week here rather than the couple of days I originally anticipated.
As if the collies and pussycat didn’t present enough petting opportunities in themselves, when I came into the hostel, I saw a black and white lop-eared rabbit in a fruit crate with a barbeque grill on top as a lid.
I later learned this rabbit belonged to a Canadian couple, Josh and Anya, who win the award for the coolest trivilling idea I have encountered so far: namely, they have been touring the continent in an old Toyota Land Cruiser which they have driven all the way down from British Colombia. I detected a note of jealousy from everybody else in the hostel, especially the “Yah, I’m just back from spending several months in the rainforest where I lived with an indigenous community who accepted me as one of their own” cunts, of which we had two. Who’d have thought a 1980s Toyota Land Cruiser with a rabbit in the back would trump that?
The rabbit’s name is Henry and they bought him in Uruguay. If you’re wondering how they managed to get a rabbit across national borders, the technique is apparently to tell them that the rabbit is in fact a native of the country they are entering, and that they are merely bringing him home. Personally I don’t think I could keep a sufficiently straight face to pull this off.
I spent quite a while in the company of Josh and Anya and another Canadian couple, (another) Josh and Laura, who are more straight-laced and outdoorsy. They are one of the many couples I’ve met who plan their trip with such rigour (e.g. Laura writes the cost of every packet of crisps they buy into a little ledger) that I wonder how they can enjoy themselves sometimes. I actually think this about most couples. Couples trivilling together tend to bitch at each other, a lot, in a way that I would be absolutely mortified by. Being single feels good. [1]
We paid a visit to a coffee farm owned by Don Elias [2], an affable gentleman in his sixties, who gave a great tour of his farm that covered every step of the growing, harvesting and roasting process.
There are two main varieties of coffee grown in Colombia: Robusta, which has more caffeine than flavour, and Arabica, the opposite. Instant coffee is composed mostly of Robusta. The coffee grows as berries (actually referred to as “cherries”) which are red or yellow in colour when ripe, each containing two small greenish-white seeds. When eaten straight off the tree, they have a mild fruity flavour that (to my palate) is nothing like coffee at all.
The cherries are picked by hand, as they become ripe in the case of Arabica beans or for Robusta, by stripping them all off at once, since it’s not worth the extra effort of picking them selectively. Don Elias picked a selection of ripe cherries as he took us around the farm and placed them into a small wicker basket.
As well as coffee trees, there are also banana, pineapple and orange trees planted in their midst. I think this is partially to prove shelter for the coffee trees and partially to provide some delicious fruit to keep the tourists happy on their tour of the farm.
After the beans have been harvested, the skins are removed using a hand-cranked machine, leaving the kernels which are spread out on the concrete floor of a greenhouse to dry. The skins are composted and used to fertilise the next crop. I heard Tim mention an extra step of soaking the beans in water to remove the slimy sugary substance they are coated in, but Don doesn’t seem to do this on his farm.
When the beans have dried, they are put into large sacks and sent off to be exported via a national co-operative. They are shipped unroasted – so called “green coffee”. I was surprised that for the standard commodity Colombian coffee for export, the different varieties are not normally segregated at any stage of the process.
For his own consumption and that of visiting tourists, Don roasts a small amount over an open fire in a pan, at which point they acquire the appearance and aroma of coffee.
His wife brewed a pot of coffee from these freshly-roasted beans and <tedious_trivilling_anecdote> it was of course the best coffee I’ve ever tasted, better than any coffee that any of you have ever tasted since you haven’t been to South America, like me. </tedious_trivilling_anecdote>
The following day the outdoorsy Canadians were planning to go hiking in the nearby Cocora Valley. This is part of the Los Nevados national park and is a sanctuary for Colombia’s national tree, the Wax Palm. It’s also supposed to be home to some spectacled bears. Unfortunately I didn’t know this at the time, although I’m not sure how I’d have gone about finding one anyway.
Most people go for a one-day hike up to a hummingbird sanctuary and back again had I not bumped into the Canadians, I would no doubt have done the same. However they were planning to go for four days and asked if I wanted to come along. Not really knowing what to expect I thought I might as well.
We set off for Cocora on Saturday afternoon on a jeep from the main square in Salento. When I say “on a jeep”, I mean standing on the step intended to be used to get onto the jeep, along with two other people, clinging on for dear life. I think the jeep was the American version of a Suzuki Jimny and could seat six normal-sized adults including the driver. According to Tim, most of the jeep drivers will tell of a record number of passengers somewhere around the 20 mark. Ours had ten so I should count myself lucky.
The hike up to the hummingbird sanctuary was really nice and despite having set off late we arrived before sunset. We had heard a rumour that the woman who owns the place liked smoking but her husband forbade her to do so, and that she was always pleased to have people bring her cigarettes. I therefore bought a pack to take along. When we got there, lo and behold, the whole family were sitting in the kitchen, smoking like chimneys. Who makes up this shit?
We cooked dinner on the Canadians’ extremely cool camping stove that can seems can be run on anything flammable, in this case petrol. Laura got extremely freaked out when she noticed that the dust covering the upturned blackboard we had been using as a table was not actually chalk dust, but some weird kind of mould. We had to wash all the dishes again, this time not putting them back on the table where they could be contaminated by the deadly white mould.
We played cards by candlelight – a game called Yaniv (apparently invented and most popular in Israel). I quite enjoyed it although I found the scoring system a little Quidditch-esque [3].
The next day was more of a challenge: a rougher, steeper, less well marked trail and a longer distance to cover. I was trudging along unable to think of much besides how difficult it was and how I felt like I was going to die and I was never going to volunteer for anything like this again. A few hours later they were talking about the “lost city” hike in the north of the country, reputed to be quite difficult but described by the Canadians as a “low intermediate” hike. Laura randomly mentioned something she’d read on an internet forum from some American girl who said it was the hardest thing she’d ever done and she thought she was going to die and she was never going to do anything like that again. We all had a good laugh at what a loser she must be.
The funny thing about hiking when compared to other enjoyable things like dancing or taking drugs or going on fairground rides that spin you around really fast, is that people doing it don’t really look or act like they’re having fun at the time. They’re mostly panting, gasping or bitching with their partners about something.
Sure, they stop every few hours and admire the lovely view from a particular place, or cook themselves some surprisingly nice pasta out of a packet, or see an interesting animal of some kind. But the main pleasure of hiking seems to be derived from that feeling common to most people (but it seems not me)
of inherent satisfaction at having done something difficult.
If I have children I might start sending them to the gym (or down the mines) once a week from an early age, to try and ensure this part of the brain that deals with self-delusion gets adequately exercised.
Anyway, we eventually made it up to Primavera, the house/farm/hostel/shed that lay at an altitude of 3,700m and was to be our accommodation for the night. Because of my evolutionary adaption to the Irish climate and my protective layer of body fat and hair, I’m not normally too bothered about cold but I forgot how big an effect altitude has on the temperature, and possibly humidity too. Jesus christ on a bike, it was cold. Cold cold cold. I don’t ever remember going to bed fully dressed, coat and all, wrapped up in three decent blankets and still finding myself shivering. [4]
The animals living on this farm didn’t have the best time either, especially the pig. In addition to the fact that he will presumably be eaten at some point, the owner’s children entertained themselves by chasing the pig around his pen while trying to whip him with a rope tied to a stick. If you’re ever wondering how people who live in remote places entertained themselves before the advent of electricity, now you know.
For the morning of day three, Josh’s plan was for us to get up early, around 6am and head up to see the volcano. I learnt that morning that we wouldn’t actually get to walk up to the crater of this volcano and look in (which, to me, is what visiting a volcano would hypothetically be all about) since the last kilometre or so is steep and ice-covered, requiring equipment, clothing and a level of fitness that I didn’t possess. The reason for the proposed early start was to try and reach the summit before the fog drifted in. I was jealous of Josh’s knowledge of how fog tends to behave on a mountain. That is such an outdoorsy person’s thing to know about.
As it happens we actually woke up to a freezing fog blowing in through a small wooden window that I was too cold to get out of my bed to close. I had gone to bed with a very sore right hip (there was a fair bit of jumping over things required) and unsurprisingly a night’s sleep on a bed with effectively no mattress didn’t do anything to improve it. Both of my heels had also been completely sliced open, probably because of my boots not being adequately broken in and my socks not being thick enough. Silly me.
I figured that if this night’s sleep had done nothing to improve my ailment, there’s no reason why the next night’s would either. The plan for day four would be to cover the entire first and second day’s progress – albeit downhill this time. I was already the least prepared member of the group (a familiar feeling for me) and didn’t want the embarrassment of potentially holding up the others. I voiced my concern to non-outdoorsy Josh that I might be better off quitting while I was ahead, skipping the trip to the volcano and heading back down today.
Josh was suffering from a sore knee and fortunately happened to share my opinion that having some part of your body ache with every step you take is not really conducive to a good time. Sounds obvious, I know, but doesn’t seem to be the common opinion among outdoorsy types all the same. [5]
Despite the cold drizzle and our respective injuries, Josh and I set off down the mountain in considerably higher spirits than Josh and Laura. After all we were 24 hours closer than them to getting home and making our withdrawal of enjoyment from the bank of difficult things.
On our way down it wasn’t long until we bumped into two Colombians, Cesar and Christian, sheltering under a tree beside a smouldering, barely-lit fire. We decided to say hello, which proved to be an extremely wise decision.
They had a litre of whiskey, a bag of weed, another bag of coca leaves and a wooden bottle and stick, containing lime made from seashells. A dab of this aids the effectiveness of the coca leaves.
Earlier Josh and I had been talking about a very funny poster that was up on the wall of the house we stayed at. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of it because that would have involved taking my hands out of my pockets but it said along one side in fairly small letters whatever the Spanish is for “Please don’t start forest fires”.
The rest of the poster was taken up entirely by a picture of a scantily-clad woman. Brazenly, there wasn’t even any pun related to scantily-clad women in the text. (Fires are hot, scantily-clad women are hot, I’m sure I could have come up with something). In Colombia, they don’t need to go dressing up a winning idea like that in puns.
Anyway, it happened to come up in conversation (after discussing his job) that Christian, the owner of the forest fire we were standing over, was the one who designed that poster.
Due to the space occupied by their selection of recreational drugs, they had to forego some of the more conventional things to bring camping, such as a tent. As far as I understood they had slept the previous night on the ground on a bed of these big soft fuzzy green leaves [6] that grew in the area with rain ponchos over them. Hardcore.
Fortunately they spoke a bit of English so we sat around chatting and getting drunk, stoned and numb in the mouth. Then we set off down the mountain again behind them.
In place of the cautious progress that Josh and I were making earlier, we sprinted, leapt and slid down the trail in an effort to keep up with the Colombians. I found it totally exhilarating – undoubtedly the most enjoyable part of the hike. It just goes to show that drugs can enhance even the most unexpected situations.
We stopped every now and then for more whiskey, weed and leaves and made very good progress. It seemed like no time until we were back at the entrance to the hummingbird sanctuary. We parted company with Cesar and Christian there as while were stopping for something to eat they were planning on heading straight down. At the sanctuary we met some people from our hostel who were there on the one day hike. Fucking pussies.
The sunlight was even nicer on the way down and I got some really nice photos, especially of the cows. We had to wait a while for a jeep back to Salento but at least we were both sitting on seats this time.
The others returned arrived back at the hostel around the same time the next day, glowing with the satisfaction of having done something difficult. I oohed and aahed over the not especially exciting things that I had missed for it would have been rude not to.
When Josh and Anya, the non-outdoorsy Canadians departed, all those remaining in the hostel gathered outside to wave them off [7]. Their Land Cruiser had been tinkered with extensively by both Josh and various South American mechanics. Modifications included replacing its petrol engine with a diesel engine, converting that diesel engine to run on vegetable oil and adding a turbocharger, which had at some point fallen off and “may” have caused some metal swarf to get into the cylinders. Somewhere along the way the muffler had also gone missing.
It sounded and smelled like an old tractor engine and will probably last as long as one.
The cool Canadians were heading north (and home) so I’m unlikely to bump into them again. The outdoorsy Canadians are heading south so we may well cross paths again – especially considering they have a lead on a possible way to skinflint your way around Galapagos without paying to live on a boat. Could be useful information for me.
A girl from Kildare called Alison arrived at the hostel the next day. She was talking about going horse riding, something I’d been hoping to do [8]. After seeing the condition of some of the poor horses on the trek in Cocora I didn’t think this was necessarily the place to do it but we asked Tim about what was available. He gave us the details of a local contact that he promised was excellent, so we said we’d give it a go.
I hadn’t ridden a horse this millennium so I was a bit wary of how it was going to work out but I needn’t have worried. Both of our horses were very well behaved and Alvarro, our guide, was very friendly and knowledgeable. The route he chose took about three hours and took in plenty more beautiful countryside, a big waterfall and some tunnels for a railway that was never built. Cantering along the riverside pretending I know how to ride a horse was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in Colombia.
The next day I went to a nice café in the village to work through my photos. I was doing so when the owner, Juan Gabriel approached me and asked if I was a photographer. I informed him that I wasn’t, but that I did enjoy taking photographs of things. He asked if I might be willing to take photos of his friend Jairo’s Patacón factory for promotional purposes.
This was to be done on Friday, four days later. I was planning on leaving the next day but I figured it’s not every day you get to see Patacónes being made (patties made from deep-fried plantain) and was promised as much Patacón as I could eat in return. I said I’d be delighted.
In the meantime I met a nice Swedish girl called Maja who spoke better Spanish than me and happened to share my interest in the manufacturing process of traditional Colombian savoury snacks, so I invited her to come along too.
The photo-shoot went well and I did indeed get as much Patacón as I could eat, which turned out to be a fair bit. Amusingly, the staff had all been given new white uniforms to wear for the day and I was asked not to photograph them from the waist down – since they were wearing jeans. I was also asked not to photograph the mouldy parts of the white walls.
I called back round to the café the next day to once again process my photos and the owners were so pleased that they asked if I might photograph their café too, which I was happy to do. In return they fed me delicious food all day. I’ll put the photos of the Patacónes up on flickr but here are some of the café.
Colombians are fantastic people, especially those from the countryside. They are extremely open, friendly and willing to engage in conversation with random people. I definitely hope to come back at some point, hopefully with significanty improved Spanish.
After Salento I spent a few days in San Agustin on the recommendation of Jane’s sister Karen who did a spot of trivilling here herself. I have plenty of long bus journeys ahead of me so I’ll get San Agustin written up some time in the coming week but for the moment, suffice to say she made a good call.
[1] Speaking of things that make me feel good about myself: I’ve come to realise how lucky I am to be able to meet new people and, nine times out of ten, have them walk away thinking I am, at a minimum, a nice normal person. It doesn’t sound like a big deal but it’s unbelievable how many total fucking no-self-awareness freaks you meet in hostels. You see them going from person to person, wondering why nobody will speak to them more than once. My social skills are better than I, and I daresay you as a reader of this blog, would have thought.
[2] One old hobby of mine I’ve revived recently is pretending to not know obvious things to see who’ll be patronising enough to correct me. In this case, I took to referring to Don Elias as “Donald”.
[3] This footnote is just for Crystalfox’s benefit since I seriously doubt any of the rest of you will want to know. The objective of Yaniv is to finish with the lowest score. Each player is initially dealt five cards. The objective is to decrease the number of cards in your hand by forming tricks of either a run of three or more in the same suit, or three or more of a kind. You put either a trick or a single card down on the pile and must pick up either an unknown card from the stack or the top card on the pile of played cards. What the previous person put down has no bearing on what you put down. You want to be the first to make a call that the value of the remaining cards in your hand is lower than anyone else’s. You can only call when the value of your cards is equal to or below five and this ends the round. If you call successfully, your score stays the same and everyone else’s score increases based on the value of the remaining cards in their hands. If you call incorrectly (i.e. someone else turns out to have lower than you) you get 30 plus the value of your cards added to your score. Face cards are worth ten, jokers are worth nothing and can be used a wild card during play. Everything else is face value. Therefore you can’t draw too many conclusions about the value of someone’s hand based on the number of cards they’re holding. None of that I have any issue with. What I don’t like is that if your score at the end of a round is divisible by 50, you have 50 subtracted from it for no obvious reason. I couldn’t imagine wanting to play the game for long enough to recover from the huge distortions in the scoreboard that this rule creates.
[4] I was pleased to tell my mother that I found someone with a house colder than hers.
[5] If you’re thinking “Remind me never to go hiking with you, not even a fairly easy one that takes less than four days”, bear in mind I’m letting it all out now after the event. Seeing how most of the few non-photography-related belongings I brought were being carried in Josh’s backpack by Josh, I made a point of not bitching about anything under any circumstances at the time.
[6] I had picked a few of those myself for arse-wiping purposes since we hadn’t got any toilet paper. Our team, unlike the other team, didn’t think of buying toilet paper before the hike. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to hear I was too constipated to need them.
[7] Like they often do in that BBC series with Ewan McGregor and Cunty O’Slightlyfamousdad cunting their way around the world on motorbikes, pontificating on what a brave and difficult thing it is for them (and the big film crew driving along behind them) to do. These Canadians were far more deserving of a TV programme IMO.
[8] Yes Crystalfox, I see what you (mentally) did there and no, this was the only kind of riding I would be interested in engaging in with Alison, due to her resemblance (in appearance and demeanour) to a youthful Mrs. Doyle. This caused me to start thinking about Father Ted, which caused me to get the song “My Lovely Horse” stuck in my head for most of the time I was riding my lovely horse around. As well as looking a bit like Mrs. Doyle, she is one of those people who takes photographs of herself with tourist attractions in the background. And not always the vaguely tasteful kind where you get someone else to take the photo, but in many cases the camera-held-at-arm’s-length-while-grinning-like-a-tool kind. It’s a good thing I have this blog otherwise I too might have to start assembling a file of photographic evidence that I’ve been abroad in case nobody believes me when I get home.
