Paradaise Found . . . Buscando el paraíso

Picture a tropical paradise. 

The sand: soft and white, the water: a turquoise blue-ish green that darkens as it approaches the horizon. The waves lap the shore rhythmically and ambulant vendors offer a plate of fresh mango, guava and watermelon, a coconut opened in front of you with your choice of alcohol or a hat to shade you from the sun. Some offer massage or brightly colored dresses or necklace made out of local coral or pearls.

The beach is deserted with the exception of two or three other beach goers. Small huts line the beach with thatched roofs offering a bed in a cabaña or a hammock and mosquito net to spend the night. Tranquility at it’s finest. This is Playa Blanca on the island of Barú in the region of Cartagena de las indias, Colombia.

Have a little extra cash to spend and want to get there or back quickly? Pay 20-30,000 pesos (about $10) and take a boat 45 minutes directly there.

Feeling like you need to save a little money? Take the route I did – arrive a la locale. Of course, be prepared, because as you know when traveling, what can go wrong, likely will.

I leave the house early to take advantage of the day and head down la avenida del pedregal to the national police tent at the intersection. I have been told that there is where I can flag the bus going to Pasacaballos. I stand on the curb for what seems like an eternity straining to see the signs in the windows of the passing microbuses, Listening as the “helper” hangs out the back door screaming out locations like an auctioneer in one long word, “CentroTerminalMangla”

¿Pasacaballo? I inquire as the bus slows down in front of me and the man shakes his head. “Ya viene,” he assures me and I go back to waiting wondering if he meant that it was right before him or that eventually it would be coming. Colectivo after colectivo passes me by screaming out destinations. Hundreds of taxis give a short honk, slowing as they pass. Every solo moto seems also to be a transportation option with each driver holding a second helmet and giving a short honk as they round the corner. But still no bus for Pasacaballo. I ask the police standing uneer the tent. They too assure me that the bus “Ya viene.” I wait some more and wonder about their definition of “it’s coming” and I remember the day before and how I was not in a hurry. I am not in a hurry now I tell myself and go back to waiting.

Dark clouds swirl above me threatening rain, but I remember that José had been confident that it wouldn’t rain that even if it did, it would be 10 or 20 minutes at best. “It never rains.” He had said and I thought about how many times I had heard that on my trips before.

Finally, after I had begun to feel the hurry in my American self, a busy slows on the other side of the median, the helper motioning for me to come aboard. “¿Pasacaballos? I yell across the two lanes of traffic. The man gestures for me to board and take that as an affirmative. I play frogger across the street to board the bus with three other passengers on board. The bus has green trim around the windshield and bright green seats. Jesus is protecting us according to a sign on the dash. We race through the streets into a section of smaller roads leading out of the city. We miss a pedestrian by inches and pass a moto with three grown men, a cooler and a 2 by 4. We pass a long series of small make shift houses with three sides selling fruit, meat, clothing and other household items. Soon we enter the pueblos of Cartagena, houses haphazardly built seemingly with whatever material was available that day - houses with brick, then stone, then cement, topped with sheet metal roofs. Large potholes pockmark the highways and I pay the helper. The fare on the window reads 1900 pesos. I only have 20,000 and I wonder if I will eventually get change. I check the map. 6.2 miles left to my destination. I practice how I will ask for the change if he doesn’t offer, knowing that if he tells me I gave him 2000, I will never see the other 18,000 pesos again.

After the second toll, the helper leans against my seat between the standing passengers and collects money from everyone around me. I wait for my change. He gives each of them change as they pay. “Ahorita te doy tu cambio.” He says as if reading my mind and I feel momentarily bad for doubting his character until I wonder if Ahorita is much like Ya viene.

The bus stops every 100 feet collecting the passengers on the side of the road who flag down the bus with a wave of their hand. “Parada,” the passengers on board say as they decide that exactly here is where they want to get off. We inch forward between the passengers getting on and off the bus.

Finally we arrive at a corner with a handwritten sign that reads, “Motos para Santa Ana o Isla Barú, Playa Blanca.” The helper motions for me to get off the bus and a lone cyclist approaches me and hands me a helmet. “¿8,000? I offer and he nods his head. I ask him about the clouds above and he responds, “parece que tiene gana de llover.” And I wonder what if that means it will rain or if it will just continue to look like rain. I don’t have to wait long for my answer.

I mount the moto and don the helmet and we take off down an unpaved road past ramshackle huts and small clusters of people crouched by fires on the side of the road. Ruben, my driver, chats amicabally with me as we drive telling me about his four children and how I remind him of a Polish woman he once dated. We stop so he can answer the phone but he tells his son he is “muy lejos del pueblo” and we make a right back onto a paved road and over the bridge to the island of Barú. He offers to take me to a hostel on the beach he knows that’s un poco lejillo and I tell him that sounds fine as I had heard it was good to go further down the beach for accommodations.

I feel the first drops, but hope that that’s all the rain will amount to. It’s not really raining. But after a minute or two we can deny the obvious anymore. It’s not raining – it’s pouring with huge gusts of wind blowing the moto to the far left of the lane and then back toward the center line. We pull over to a group of motos parked on the side of the road and run down to join fifteen or so other men and two women on a porch. Pools of mud form in the front of the patio as the rain pours down. Inside the one room house, two young boys about 5 and 3 wrestle on the bed, the three year old crying for help every so often. Behind them sits a couple on two plastic chairs sharing a bowl of rice, the father intermittently curses for the love of Jesus that the boys calm down.

I stand among the others until the mother insists I sit. I politely refuse but soon find a chair at my back and see the little boy race back to the bed to fight once more with his brother. We watch the rain. I watch the people. They watch me. And we sit and wait.

Soon the rain seems lighter and one mother grabs her young son, his arms still wet from the rain, his mouth sticky from the bag of orange liquid he has just drank. They run back out into the rain and they are off. Soon others follow suit. Ruben looks at me and nods and we don our helmets. He wipes the seat off with a towel and I close the front of my helmet before we leave. We pass through the small town of Santa Ana before arriving at the parquedero in Playa Blanca. The road is once again dirt and rocks and Ruben tells me to hold on tightly as he maneuvers around various people, their coolers, a bus and a fence to head straight down a hill on what appears to be a mountain bike trail hill covered in roots, ruts, rocks and large puddles at least 6-12 inches deep. My father would definitely not approve I think. I can hear him the back of my head as I hold the handles on the back of the moto. We make it through the first section of the flooded road and we head into the second I see the the moto ahead of us lose their balance and the passenger finally dismount and go walking while the moto continues on without her. I ask if I too should get off but Ruben is confident and uses alternate booted legs to  balance and push his way through the standing water and mud. The mosquitoes are out in full force and I look down as we inch forward through the puddle to see my entire left leg black with mosquitoes. I slap them off careful not to lose my balance, hearing my father’s warning of dengue fever and malaria in my head. Finally we round a corner, pass a river and park next to a fence. We have arrived.

We enter “El Paraiso de Mama Ruth” from the back past the bathrooms where one needs to drop water in the toilet to flush, past the showers that are a changing room with a bucket and ladle filled with fresh water.

Don Luis first shows me a cabaña right no the beach. A stilted mini room with a thatched roof, a bed and fan. For just 120,000 pesos or about $40 it can be mine – complete with fresh water, breakfast and a little thatched kiosk to shade me from the sun and sun chair. For half that price I can take the cabaña behind it, but without the amenities. 

I shake my head at both. I am on a budget. “Ahh.” He says with a smile. “Then what you want is the hammock.” He shows me the three hammocks swinging underneath a shade structure, complete with a bed sheet, mosquito net and locker to store my belongings for the low low price of 10,000 pesos or $3.50 after a bit of bargaining. I tell him I don’t have a lock and make a mental note to buy one when back in Cartagena and he hands me a rusty key lock that’s top comes completely out when you unlock it, but when locked it seems to work and I thank him, ready to enjoy the day.

The rain has mostly subsided by now and the sun strains against the cloudy sky making scarce appearances for the rest of the day. The beach is about 5 km long and I run or walk along the beach, bathe in the crystalline waters, sleep in the sand, read and entire book and settle into paradise. I feel a fleeting sensation of guilt and responsibility and shoo it away along with a fly that has landed on my knee.

Don Luis invites me out to look for “tesoros” in the water, but we find only a discarded can of Aguila. 

The sun makes an appearance so the day wanes and lights up the water and the sky. Melissa and her aunt from Cali applaud the sun’s appearance and I like the immediately. “¡Delicioso! ¡Exquisito!” they exclaim running over to their new friend Alejo from Bucaramango.

Later that night we sit at the pizzeria next door where Don Luis makes pizza in an outdoor oven in the sand and serves them on the one table he has at his make shift restaurant.

In the morning, Melissa and her aunt, have gone with Don Luis and another man from the cabaña a Pasacaballos to take a taxi to catch their flight back home. He takes them after their scheduled ride does not show up and refuses payment.

Alejo and I spend the day on his cabaña’s chair, sharing his water, his cold beers and our stories of travels and his studies in Bogatá. Every person that works at the hostel endears themselves to you as their bestfriend, “Corozón, ¿tienes todo?” They catch your eye if they see someone trying to take advantage and call you over as if they need you for a quick second to help you out of a bind.

The days move slowly in paradise but soon it is 3:00 in the afternoon and Alejo leaves to catch a boat back to Cartagena and his own flight back to Bogotá. The hostel is empty save a couple from Medellín that has arrived today. The sun’s rays dance lightly on the crystal blue water.

Don Luis pulls up on his moto, “¿Estás lista mi reina?” he says offering me a helmet. He is headed to Cartagena today to see his children and is only to happy to give me a ride – no he won’t think of taking my money.

It is his pleasure.

No One Seems to Be in a Hurry

Traveling, like life, is filled with choices. Do you want to eat in the hostel or house where you are staying or eat out at a restaurant? Do you want to stay in a hotel, hostel, camping or in a private house? Do you want to go to ______ on your own or with a tour? A full day or half a day or multiple days? Do you want to take the recommendation of Joe traveler or continue down the path you had planned? Do you want to have a plan

One of the aspects of travels I have most come to love is the unexpected nature of the beast. You wake up after having decided that sure you would accompany José, Sabine, the German in the house and Jorge, the Argentinean to the beach instead of going to Playa Blanca only to find the house dark and asleep at 8 am. José off handedly mentions you will all go, “pero más tardecito.” You are not sure if that means later in the morning, later in the day as in the afternoon or not at all. You decide to go for a run to a part of the city you do not yet know. You come back an hour later and now everyone is up, but they are all seated at the table eating breakfast; no one seems in any hurry to go to the beach. 

Ronald, José’s friend from the night before stops by for a beer and then José leaves, saying he has to vote. You are now sure the beach is not happening. You regret momentarily having changed your plans to stay in Cartagena, but recover quickly and begin to research beaches you can get to on your own. Jorge asks what you are doing and says he too wants to go to a beach, as does Sabine. But Jorge needs to go out to change some money. You agree to wait – no one seems to be in a hurry and the day is young.

Jorge comes back at noon and it seems like the time to leave for the beach, only now Sabine needs to wait 40 minutes to call her boyfriend in Germany that she hasn’t spoken to in 3 or 7 weeks and needs to wifi. Jorge decides to cook lunch to take to the beach. No one seems to be in a hurry.

You decide to post an album of your photos on facebook and the phone rings. It’s José wondering if we’re ready to go to the beach. He talks to Jorge – no less than four times – before it is finally time to go to José’s sister’s house in Marbella. We will eat there with some friends of his from Medellín and then go to the beach. Sabine agrees to call her boyfriend from her house and we go outside to get a taxi. José has not given us an exact address so we spend the next 20 minutes driving up and down streets in Marbella until Jorge recognizes the house. No one seems to be in a hurry.

We arrive at the house and are greeted by José, his sister and her son and they proceed to show us around a house they are redecorating before we go upstairs to in theory eat lunch. But the girls from Medellín ya viene and they are bringing chicken. Sabine asks about the internet, but it’s out in the building and she will have to wait another 3 or 7 weeks before she is able to talk to her boyfriend. She shrugs and laughs. Someone is making pasta before we realize we have forgotten the pesto at home. José’s sister says she will go out for bread and soda and does anyone need anything. We sit on the couch and José offers us cookies and asks Sabine to make a salad. No one seems to be in a hurry.

Ruby and Laura from Medellín show up with a chicken and a half and soon the table is full of chicken, rice, fried eggs, toritlla española, bread, salad and both Coca-Cola and a local soda that is red and sweet in taste. It might be strawberry.  José insists on a group photos before we begin. We eat and eat and eat until we can’t eat any more and then José tells us to eat more, so of course we do. Afterwards, coffee is offered and Ruby and José want coffee. It is 2:30 in the afternoon. Absolutely no one is in a hurry.

We get to the beach across the street from José’s sister’s house no earlier than 3:30 in the afternoon and rent 3 chairs for the 8 of us at 1000 pesos a chair. José insists on at least four group photos before we can go into the bath water that is the Caribbean Ocean. The waves are small and we float on the water. We make a starfish with our hands interlaced and one foot touching one another and water goes up our nose and we laugh. It’s impossible to want to hurry.

The sun dips low in the sky and the full moon rises in the distance. We take turns snapping photos of the group jumping into the sky – all of sillohuettes against the dusk sky. We are covered in sunblock, salt and sand.

We leave the beach, the sky a fiery pink and decide to cook milanesas all together back at José’s house. First we have to go back to his sister’s to pick something up; then we have help Ruby and Laura get settled into the apartment they are fixing up since they hadn’t reserved a place to stay; then we go to the store to buy what we need before hailing a taxi back to José’s place. 

It is election day so there in no alcohol for sale but José says he knows a place and disappears with Ruby to find beer while Jorge cooks enough Milanesa to feed a small army. The house is hot with the heat of the day mixed with the heat from the kitchen and I chop lettuce and tomatoes for the salad, while Laura chops guava for dessert. Preparing dinner takes hours, but hurry is not even a word in my vocabulary anymore as the music floats through the house and we chat about Laura’s major and Jorge’s daughter and beautiful it is to meet new people.

José and Ruby arrive with cases of small green bottles of costanita and they are immediately stored in the freezer where they will come out so cold that you will drink them in three sips. A friend of José calls. He has seen him on the street just now and “¿quién fue esta hermosura que estaba con él?” José tells him to come over and meet Ruby if he thinks she is so pretty, but hurry, the table is set and the milanesas are hot.  José insists on a group photos and then we eat and eat and eat until we can’t eat anymore. But somehow we do.

There are more dishes than space on José’s counter and I wash and wash and wash through two costanitas and an entire conversation about a farm reserve that we all must visit. They are still watching the video about it when I come back. “Let’s go to the plaza! It’s Jorge’s last night!” Sabine must get up early and decides not to go, but Nicholas has returned from his day of studying. José calls Maye who is angry that she wasn’t invited to come to the beach and tries to convince her to join us. But she is still offended and cannot be convinced.

We stroll to the plaza taking up the street and sidewalk and jump to one side when a car honks to get by. The plaza is filled with young people juggling and couples kissing and vendors pushing carts selling manzanilla and other infusiones. There is no alcohol because of the ley seca. We sit people watching. Jose’s friend who is enamored with Ruby points out a guy with magnifying glass and a light who is pointing out women who are sitting indecently. “Miramiramira el puntero.” He says mira over and over again as if it were one long word.

Everyone is tired and we meander back to Jose’s house after an hour or two. It is close to midnight when we arrive home and the doorbell rings. It is Maye. She has reconsidered and would like a milanesa and some of the arroz con pesto after all. José is happy to see her and since no one is in a hurry, midnight is the perfect time to share a meal. I am so tired my eyelids feel like weights on my eyes and I say my goodnights and goodbyes.

In bed, the air is heavy and the breeze non existent even though the only thing dividing me from the outside is a bedsheet. Sleep is not in a hurry and neither am I.

Mi Tierra Querida

When I was 21 years old I had many jobs. I taught high school; I waited tables; I taught a Spanish class at the local college. One of my jobs was as an ESL teacher for adults. It was a free class held at one of the local high schools in Newark, Delaware.  

It was there I met Maritza. Maritza was a Colmbian woman from Medellín, Colombia, a place I had not really heard of when I met her. She was a bit older than me, but looked young and had a young spirit. She asked if I would be willing to do an intercambio and practice my Spanish with her while she practiced her English with me. I agreed. To be honest, I was not a very good ESL teacher and the exchange was a bit more lopsided to my advantage. So in the end we became friends.

Over the years, life happened. Martiza lived in the states longer. I moved to San Diego. She came out to visit – thinking maybe she’d stay. She went back to Delaware. She married to a sweet American man and they had a child. I moved to San Francisco. She became a teacher’s aide. Her child started school. But she always talked about her querida tierra, Medellín.

For me, till I met Maritza, Colombia had been on the no fly zone. I could hear my father’s voice reverberating in my head, “Colombia Jennifah? Are you kidding me? What are you going to do – join a drug cartel?” And while my adventurous spirit often called me to the very places that made my father’s blood pressure rise, I too was cautious of Colombia, especially Medillín – home to Pablo Escobar, the famous drug lord of my youth.

When I traveled for the better part of the year in 2005, my boyfriend at the time was still wary of Colombia and Venezuela and didn’t speak Spanish and my father was ready to have a heart attack, so we forwent the northern most countries in South America for the much “safer” Ecuador and Bolivia. In the end, we fear what we don’t know.

So last month, when thinking about where I wanted to spend time during my next trip, my mind wandered to Martiza. It’s been years since we’ve been able to connect in person. Life happens as I mentioned earlier and I no longer spend the kind of time in Delaware that lets me visit all of my friends each time I go. But when I decided to book my trip to Colombia, I knew that my first trip had to be to su querida tierra, Medellín.

I arrived last night at almost 11pm after a 12-hour layover in For Lauderdale. Luckily the beach was close to the airport and I made the most of my day, but by the time I landed, I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open as the taxi driver wove his way from the Medellin airport the 45 minutes down, down, down into the city of Medellín, which despite the seemingly constant downhill, still sits at 4,921 feet above sea level.

I opted for a hostel in Medellín and upon entering immediately remembered why I have steered clear of them in recent years when possible. It’s not that I don’t like hostels. I do, or at least I think I did at some point in my life. But for those of you that don’t know me that well, let me explain. I am a paradox embodied. My family, friends and colleagues, if asked, will all tell you that I am, for all intents and purposes, an extrovert. I love to run into people I know on the street. I over plan my days – though I am getting better at that and I love to talk. That said, I also hate crowds and have always despised the swapping of battle stories that happens at the expo of every marathon or triathlon in regard to how many each person has done, their worst training story, their worst injury etc.

The same holds true for travel. I love to travel. I love go out on my own, find my way, off the beaten path when I can travel. I like to get dirty. I love to learn whatever I can of the language. Eat what I can of the local food (considering I am vegetarian – this can be challenging). Meet the local people. Try – despite my big, bushy, blonde curls to blend in and not just be yet another American. That said, I see the irony in this. It does not escape me that to go to these places I have always had to look in said  Lonely Planet or Rough Guide and that even though know those guides are online, there isn’t much in the way of pioneering and discovery happening these days. That is unless you are really willing to put yourself into a situation where you are going to a place that has never seen a tourist. And finding those places can be a bit of a challenge.

my little room in the hostel

But I digress. . . I had been avoiding hostels. Avoiding the ubiquitous, “how long are traveling? Don’t you hate having to go back? Oh, I am doing at least 6 months, maybe longer. I could never go back.” “You absolutely must try ____. You haven’t been to ______ if you haven’t tried ______.” Yeah, I know I am terrible. I am likely going to you know where for being a terrible, judgmental hypocrite. But there you go. That’s why I avoid other travelers – not always of course – there are those that you meet that you know that you’ll know forever and I have those in my life too.

Today I began my exploration of Medellín with a short run around the neighborhood where I am staying, el poblado. What I didn’t know about el poblado, which was recommended by another friend who had lived in Colombia was that it’s a relatively “posh” neighborhood. It doesn’t scream wealthy as you walk – or in my case – ran around the streets, but it is a very hilly place. Actually, everywhere I went today made San Francisco’s hills seem like a joke. So after 35 minutes of huffing and puffing around the few small parks in this area and some main thoroughfares, I gave up on the run and the strange looks I was getting from the commuters en route to work.

Here are some things I didn’t know about Medellín until I got here – there are over 2 million people living in the city which is divided into 6 zones and 16 communes, which are then divided into 249 neighborhoods. So one aspect of visiting Medellin that surprised me was the sheer size of the city. After my run, I headed down to the Poblado metro station and took the metro north to Acevedo. The metro is unbelievable. It runs above ground so you can see your surroundings and for less than $.75, you can get all over the 147 square miles of the city.

Once in Acevedo, I transferred to a metrocable – which was part of the 75 cent ticket and took a gondola up the mountainside past many of the comunas and barrios of the city. It was interesting to watch the metropolitan city fade into fewer paved streets, more humble dwellings til they became what looked like squatters homes on the hillside. The L line lets me off in Santo Domingo where I paid an additional fee to get on a second cable car up the mountain into a lush forest, leaving Medellín a dot on the horizon.

The metro cable leaves you at the entrance to Parque Arvi which has over 50 nature trails. I was told it was good to go with a guide, but the last guide of the day had just left and I would have had to run to catch up with them. The woman at the tourist desk waved her hand toward a group of people and my skin prickled. “Do you have anything you can do on your own?” I asked.

“Well you can go to this area called the picnic. It’s not recommended many of the trails since they are not well marked and you could get lost easily.”

I briefly heard my dad in my head, shook it off and asked for directions.

“Just head right at the restaurant and then walk on the road for some time. You’ll see the trail. There is a river and some nice water falls.”

“Perfect.” I thought.

While I am sure that the guided tours would have been more spectacular, my few hours of exploration of the park on my own did not disappoint. I headed right at the restaurant and walked up (yes this too was all hills!) an isolated country road. After about 15 minutes, I saw a large building with some armed guards and ignoring the cones on the road, I walked past them toward the men. One of the men, police as it turned out, directed me to the trail I had just missed and I thanked them and headed down a dirt path. I walked down for a while, butterflies crossing my path and yellow birds wishing me good luck. The trail was empty. After about 15 minutes, I came to a fork in the road. I didn’t see a trail marker, but there was a wooden board with no sign on it.

My gut told me to go right, but a small scrawled note on the bottom of the sign in white out read “this way” with an arrow pointing to the left. “Left it is!”

I headed left and saw a few more similar wooden boards and decided that these people were either very kind to guide me to the river and water falls, or they wanted to kill me. Either way I was going to find out. I walked for a few miles, seeing only birds, trees and butterflies The sun snuck in and out of a thundercloud and sent strange rays down into the forest that reminded me of a horror movie. I laughed at the irony of the fact that hiking alone in the states always scared me, but for some reason in Colombia, what made me nervous was my father giving me an “I told you so” lecture should something not fatal happen to me.

Ahhh, so it is true that you can grow up and become an adult, but you never stop being your parents’ children.

Here’s the spoiler alert – I didn’t die. And actually nothing terrible happened at all. I did eventually find the river and the very small waterfalls after hitting a section of paved road and asking a traveler walking up in the opposite direction. Parque Arvi has these great areas for family picnics complete with what looks like metal beds to rest in from all the walking. 

 

And after 10 miles of walking, I was ready for a beer, so I wandered into a little hut restaurant and met Gloria, owner and cook by the side of the road. She recommended an apostle, a local beer, which tasted like malt but refreshed the palate in the way only a beer after a long hike could. 

She recommended I go back to Medellin via bus through Santa Elena to get a different, more local experience, rather than returning on the metro cable. “Plus it will save you 2000 pesos1” she smiled as she told me this (This is essentially 67 cents so yeah, probably not the reason to do it).

The ride back to Medellin made my earlier cable car experience feel like a kiddy ride, as we hurtled through the mountains at breakneck speed around curves designed to go 15 miles tops. Passengers – seemingly all local – held on for dear life and I resisted getting out my camera to photograph the countryside and small villages in favor of holding on so that I could stay mostly in my seat.

One thing that I love about places outside of the US is that people live in the street. The sun had dipped low in the horizon as we came out of Santa Elena and made our way back to the beginnings of Medellin and the streets were full of children, men, women alike. People were everywhere – they ate outside, kicked balls around, rode bikes, held hands, laughed and walked everywhere. Everywhere I looked there were motos, cars, buses, bicycles and laughter.

We ended our bus ride on a street I had not seen before, but from my estimates I could walk back to el poblado. Night had fallen, but it was only 6:00 in the evening and the streets in this neighborhood, that I later found out was Bombona, were full as well. I made my safety checks on the wallet and the phone having just recently learned my lesson and headed down calle 40. Every street seemed to be named calle 40 or 41, so I hoped that my map skills and my sense of direction would serve me well to get to the metro station at Parque Berrío. Part of me just wanted to stop for another beer, an arepa or join a group eating together at one of the street vendors, but I had had a full day and I figured better to end on a safe and positive note.

As I came off the metro in el poblado, I knew just which way to head to get “home” to my hostel. Indeed la tierra querida de mi amiga Maritza had treated me just like one would have expected a querida to do.

Red Eyes and Lay Overs

Back on the road again. 

Doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself not to book the red eye and the long layovers. In the end, when I book, it’s usually been so long since I’ve been on a plane, I have forgotten that the savings doesn’t equal the pain.

Last night’s red eye came complete with three babies/toddlers in our row of 6 passengers. It was the last row of the plane, on a full flight, which meant the seats didn’t recline and the line for the bathroom was along side my seat the entire night. And as I am sure we all know, the red eye these days just feels sooo different than it once was. Recovery is just not the same as it was in my 20s . . . or even 30s for that matter. Who knew that a hangover from flying really existed.

But it didn’t stop there, with the red eye and well positioned infants – last night I realized that even on night flights, the air flight attendants don’t go to sleep; which meant a constant chatter in a lit area at the back of the plane where the air flight attendants were gathered chatting about how Delta was different than Jet Blue and what they were dressing up as for Halloween. It’s amazing I got any sleep at all, but in the end, I did, even if it was between customers’ hands on my head as they waited for the bathroom, the wailing of the small children and the incessant chatter of the staff, all of it melding into a somewhat surreal dream at 36,000 feet.

I guess in the grand scheme of things, having a 12-hour lay over in coastal South Florida isn’t really all that bad. It’s not like being stuck in an airport in Duluth or Modesto. No offense to those places obviously.

So upon landing I did what any sensible traveler with 10 hours on their hands would do and hopped in a cab and made a bee line for the sand.

So here I am – backpack and all - on a mostly empty beach in Fort Lauderdale: wind in my hair, sand on my feet, sun on my face and the ocean waving at me as only she knows how to do.

¡Próxima parada: Medellín Colombia!

Learning to Dance in the Rain

I don’t often plan out my trips. I generally pick out a country or region and choose a starting point, and from there hope to meet enough people that have traveled around the area to round out what I know about a place. It used to be that I bought the lonely planet or rough guide as well and as I went from place to place, I read up about what to do there, its history etc. 

But in recent trips, I have stopped doing that. The Internet is just as robust and much more up to date than any printed guidebook I have found and more environmentally friendly and portable as well. I have become more conservative in some aspects. I generally do book before I arrive, even if it is just hours before hand and tend to use private houses over the hostels though I have stayed in a hostel or two these past few weeks. The thing about hostels is they tend to be filled with 20 years olds and while there is nothing wrong with that, no one wants to be the middle-aged traveler that everyone looks at wondering what happened to them that they couldn’t afford a hotel. Plus even though staying in private houses does not typically introduce you to as many fellow travelers does give you the unique opportunity to meet a local person renting out their house. Which in turn can give you insight into a place that a hostel will never provide. 

I’ve also made it a rule to avoid packaged tours when at all possible, giving in only when time crunches or safety comes into play – and I mean actual danger, not just our illusion of one. Or when they are free and a way to find out a lot in short amount of time, like the free walking tour in Sarajevo.

So suffice to say when I say that Plivtice National Park was the only place in my Dalmatian Coast/Balkans region trip that I wanted to go, that I was excited to visit. I had seen the photos and besides the beaches, which I must visit in every country with a coast, these were the kinds of places I wanted to see. Sure, I love a big city as much as the next girl – I mean I live in one, and I love to visit an old church or monastery and hear about the history of a particular town. But there is something about being surrounded by natural phenomena that gets me like nothing else.

In my head I was going after Mostar. Mostar could have been a day trip from Dubrovnik. I knew that. If I had just booked a tour, I could have been picked up from my place of lodging, carted there and through border patrol with no issue or time situation and then allowed 3 hours to walk around the old city and see the famous bridge picture in every postcard and every internet site depicting Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. But as I mentioned before I hate tours. So I went with,” I’m going to Bosnia!” And as it turns out, that made all the difference.

As you likely know from previous stories, the bus was 3 hours late due to some dip wad bringing weed across the Montenegro-Croatian border and then the flat outside of Dubrovnik with no jack delayed us further. By then I had met a friend and we thought, “sure why not let’s stay in Mostar a second night.” She also couldn’t believe Sarevejo wasn’t on my list of places to visit and when I thought about it further, I thought me neither. So I adjusted my last week of travel and nixed the trip to the island of Brac in favor of seeing Sarajevo. After all I had just seen the island of Mjlet in the same area of the sea  - how different could they be in the end?

But in the back of my mind, I was still planning on spending a day or two in Plivtice. Plivtice has been named a Unesco heritage site in addition to a natural park and was a series of two greenish blue lakes – upper and lower lake with waterfalls and forests abounding everywhere the eye could see. From what I had read, you could do a 3-4 hour walk or a 5-6 hour walk on the low paths next and over the water and I planned to spend every second possible in this natural amusement park.

That is until I spent the 8 hours getting there. Seven hours on a bumpy bus through the Bosnian countryside through every Podunk town you could possibly imagine with the drivers taking a cigarette break every 30 – 40 minutes.

We got off in Bihac, Bosnia with one bus ride to go only to be told that the road was closed and we’d have to take a bus to god knows where to transfer and take a second jalopy to our destination getting us there at least 2-3 hours later. “Oh hell no,” I thought and maybe said aloud to Kristia, my travel companion. That’s when we went for the taxi and 30 Euros later we were safely installed in our little cabin in the woods. Not without incident of course, but I’ll save that story for another day. The later afternoon had little to no light and the rain, while not hard was falling steadily. 57 degrees had never felt so cold.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of the rain on the roof. The sky was gray and the air brisk. I had heard that the time to see Plivtice was on a sunny day – that that was how you would really appreciate the natural beauty of the place.

But such a day was not to materialize. As with my trip up Chirripó in Costa Rica, up Toubkal in Morroco, to the Sahara desert where it hadn’t rained in 50 years, I was about to experience Plivtice in the rain.

I was briefly chagrinned and then I remembered this sign I saw once while in San Pedro Island, Texas with Perry. It was raining then too. (Go figure). We had been walking around the town (if you could call it that) when we got to a bar. There were signs and sayings everywhere. On the front was a sign that read, “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

And just like that, it didn’t matter any more that it was raining. We were there to see Plivtice and Plivtice we would see.

 

Plivtice National Park is like no other place I have ever been in my life. And I have been to many places: I have stood next to the rushing falls of Iguaçu. I have stood at the top (and the bottom of the grand canyon). I have stood ogling the red jutting rocks in Bryce and Zion and seen great salt lakes in Bolivia. But this place felt surreal. It felt like I had just stepped off the big screen of a sci-fi fantasy movie and onto the wooden walkway that twisted and turned through the blue-ish green waters of these lakes. Past the rushing waters of small and large water falls falling from strangely shaped rocks. Into caves dripping moisture on my head, the strangely formed cave walls naturally wet all the time. Green leaves a shade of green I’ve only ever seen in paintings.

Fish gathered in schools at the surface of crystal clear waters.

It was a place so foreign, it felt alien. And for a moment I tried to imagine it in the sunshine, light dancing on the water, the sky a deep shade of blue.

And then I stopped. I was learning to dance in the rain and that meant not waiting for the storm to pass nor imagining what it would look like had it passed. 

 It was perfect as is.

When Given a Choice, Choose the Sweetest Grapes

I know you have heard of the expression sour grapes. But have you ever heard the story of the sweetest grapes? It goes something like this. . .  

An American woman was trying not to be disappointed. A cold beach day was better than a hot work day, she told herself as she walked back to the studio she had rented on the Adriatic coast. 

As she walked up to the door, the owner’s elderly mother stood out front in a black housecoat with flowers, “Dobrodam!” She exclaimed taking the younger woman’s hands in hers. She reached for her heart and motioned upwards toward the sky, talking in Croatian shaking her head. The American woman smiled. The only thing she had understood was catastrophe and assumed she was talking about the wind and colder temperatures.

“It’s ok,” she assured the woman, “It’s beautiful.” She motioned to the sea and the grapes that hung on the vines above their heads. The older woman grasped her hands tightly and reached up to pat her on the shoulder, still shaking her head. 

The American woman smiled and went into her house to prepare for her day. “Bitte?” the older woman’s voice came through the door. She continued talking again in Croatian and the younger woman came out to find out what she wanted. She was holding a pair of scissors and pointing at the grapes overhead. 

The younger woman looked at the rickety metal ladder and agreed to cut down the grapes for the elderly woman. The elderly woman proclaimed, “Super!” over and over again as she held the younger woman’s pants. The younger woman clipped the grapes and passed them down to the woman’s wrinkled hands. A strong wind blew, and the older woman exclaimed something the younger assumed was "Be careful young lady!" or "Wow look at this wind!" They smiled at one another, understanding, even as they did not understand.

The elderly woman motioned for her to get down and reset up the ladder two more times and they repeated the story. The younger woman cut and handed, the older woman received and proclaimed, “Super!” smiling ear to ear.

After filling the small plastic shopping bag, the older woman asked for something the younger woman could not understand. She thought maybe she heard wash and offered the elderly woman a bowl. “Momento, momento.” The older woman said as she hobbled away.

A moment later she was back, the grapes in the bowl freshly washed. The elderly woman smiled and told her something that the younger woman assumed was, “Please eat them - they are for you.” 

And so she did.

They were the sweetest grapes she had ever had.

The two women smiled at each other and the older woman clasped her hands in her own. She patted the younger woman on the shoulder and smiled from ear to ear, her wrinkles deepening around her mouth and eyes. The words and the smile floated in the air as she turned and disappeared into the house. The younger woman smiled, assuming she had said "Welcome to my home!" or something of that nature.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

We arrived in Sarajevo via train from Mostar in the morning. Previously, most of my travel to date had been small towns or cities or sparsely populated islands. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a capital city of half a million people. 

We took a tram from the train station to the old section of town and as I got up to get off, I put my phone in the front part of my small backpack for a second to take the handrail and descend from the train. A man in front of me blocked my way. Kristia, a young women I had met on the way to Mostar was already out on the street waiting for me. A man behind me bumped me, and I looked over my shoulder for a split second to let him know that I was trying to exit the train. Finally, the man in front of me began to move, I exited the train onto the sidewalk and the tram departed. Kristia reached for her phone to check the directions to the hostel and it was then I realized what I had done. I had put my phone in exactly the place to have it pick pocketed by the two men on the train. Classic traveler’s faux pas! And the worst part – I had known it. I opened the compartment and sure enough – gone – all my photos, all my contacts, all my notes and yes all my passwords on my non password protected phone. Crap! 

In case you are curious – it takes approximately three hours to go about the frustrating process of resetting every password you have, reporting your phone lost/stolen, seeing if you have insurance, seeing what you remembered to put on the icloud, remotely adding a password and suspending your service. Certainly it was annoying. But in the grand scheme of things – really not something worth stressing about, but hard to avoid that feeling of “Damn it – I should have. . .”

I could feel the frustration in my body and tried to shake it. I knew it was material, and I needed to just let it go. Being in Sarajevo was just the thing to help me put my little inconvenience into perspective. 

Over the course of the next 7 hours, we walked the streets of Sarajevo taking in the Turkish influence on the eastern side of town from centuries under the Ottoman empire, the Austrian and Hungarian influence on the western side of town. Mosques and minarets, a catholic church Notre Dame style, a Franciscan church and both a Sephardic and Ashkenazi synagogue gave the city an international feel that I had not experienced in the past. On the Turkish side of the city, small alleyways were lined with coffee sets, rugs for sale and copper offerings. Men in Kufi praying skull caps sat together on low benches drinking Bosnian coffee solving the world’s problems. Women in hijabs walked holding their children’s hands. Further down the street past the cathedral, the streets widened, bars lined either side of the street and patrons sat drinking beer solving the world’s problems as well. Everyone – on both sides - was smoking. 

And everywhere you looked, there were ruins, shells of buildings that had once stood before the war, in other places buildings still intact, riddled with bullet holes. The war had ended 20 years earlier, but all around us was the evidence of the devastation. I looked at the people walking around –men and women my age, younger and older. What had they been doing while the war raged on for almost four years?

The two-hour walking tour we took gave us insight into the different parts of the city and our tour guide, in typical Bosnian fanfare told each story sarcastically and with a punch line at the end. This was the third Bosnian man we had spent time listening and talking to, and I was starting to get the impression that Bosnians were not only proud of their culture, they had a bit of a dark, sardonic sense of humor. 

About every 30 minutes, I would look at Kristia and unrelated to what we were learning and observing I would say something to the effect of, “Do you know what’s most annoying about having my phone stolen. . .?”

Actually nothing. I mean of course it’s annoying and frustrating. 

But again I go back to what I said before – in the grand scheme of anything – losing a replaceable material object that I am far to apt to look at instead of looking around at my surroundings – is nothing. 

I was about to have that shown to me in the Srebenica Genocide Museum off the square in front of the cathedral. 

The thing about not knowing what you don’t know is that you don’t know that you don’t know it. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but sitting here right now, rain falling on a metal roof outside the window of my hostel, an old building with a broken window in my sight, I know I am forever changed by what I saw over the last two days. I am struck by what I didn’t know.

In April of 1992, I was busy studying for my final exams in high school, deciding with whom to go to prom and picking out a beach house to spend senior week with my friends. At the time, my biggest conundrums were if I should take my boyfriend who had already graduated and might be bored or go with a friend. I know what your thinking, “OH MY GOD! However did you decide that – what a major catastrophe!” And I get it that high school kids – and maybe college ones too- are narcissistic and self absorbed and feel that the world revolves around them. I didn’t realize that at the time that I was like that, but if I hadn’t been, then this visit to Sarajevo’s tunnel of hope and the Srebenica Genocide Museum wouldn’t have thrown me so much for a loop. 

Sarajevo was besieged by the Army of Republika Srpska on April 5 of 1992 with the intention of creating a new Bosnian Serb state after Bosnia – Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Most people will remember seeing this on the news in the spring of that year. The thing is that the Serbian army figured it would take about four days for them to take the city. . . but the Sarajevans dug in the their heels and refused to quit in a siege that lasted 1,425 days. That’s over 4 years. That is the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. During the siege, access to water, food, and electricity was cut off completely. Buildings were destroyed and the entire city was a target. I tried to put myself at 18 in the shoes of a Bosnian 18 year old. 

From 1992-1995, all regular functioning activities in Sarajevo ceased to exist. And while I went to class and frat parties and lay in the quad, 18 year olds in Bosnia cowered in basements praying their apartment building would be spared. More than 11,000 of them, many of them civilian men, women and children were killed. The only access to any kind of supplies, food or water was through the tunel spasa or tunnel of hope, located under a home near the Sarajevo airport. In just 4 months in the spring of 1993, a Bosnian engineer created the plans for the tunnel’s construction and was dug by hand for 24 hours a day. That 800 meter tunnel was the only access point to humanitarian aid during the war. 

Now maybe you knew all of that – again, you don’t know what you don’t know. I remember seeing the images of the war on the television, reading it in the news, but until I landed in Bosnia earlier this week, I have to say, I just think I really didn’t know.

Samija was our tour guide in the Srebenica Memorial museum. She was just five when the war began. Her descriptions of the genocide and Srebenica as a “safe space” in addition to her later stories of her own experience changed me forever. Samija stood in front of us in the foyer of the museum, dressed in all black and fidgeting with her ring and black shirt and pants before she began, “You may want to take a seat,” she gestured to one small wooden bench in front of her, “I am going to give you a brief – not so brief introduction – before we proceed to the rest of the museum.” Samija was a slight woman and she began by apologizing for her raspy voice – likely from having given the tour multiple times a day every day that month. 

The 20^th anniversary of Srebenica’s mass killings had just passed in July, but you could feel that for Samija, the pain she felt was raw, as if it had happened recently.

She gave us a brief history of how the war began and the events leading up to the UN naming Srebenica a “safe” area for refugees from other Bosnian cities under attack by the Republic of Srpska. The two documentaries we watched and her account of the events leading up to the massacre sent chills into every part of my body. One of the photos on the wall in museum were the words graffitied, United Nothing which described the betrayal that the people felt after having traveled all the way to Srebenica only to be turned away to meet their death. 

She talked to us for more than an hour in a gallery the size of a studio in San Francisco and still I wanted more – how had this happened? How had the UN peacekeepers just stood by and watched it? How had military leaders around the world just closed their eyes and allowed more than 8000 Muslim boys and men to be killed execution style and thrown into mass graves. The Srebenica massacre was labeled the biggest genocide since the Holocaust in the 20^th century. 

After the Holocaust, we said, “Never again.” We blamed the German civilians for turning a blind eye, for saying that they didn’t know about the concentration camps. And this before the Internet, before the world could watch what was happening. 

 In July of 1995, I began packing for my year abroad in Spain. I was leaving the country for the first time. Again when I think back to what was happening my head – I was worried about leaving my boyfriend and if we’d stay together. I was nervous I’d “miss out” on my senior year. And while I was “busy” worrying about myself, men and boys between the ages of 12 and 77 were being separated from the women and shot execution style in school playgrounds outside of Srebenica. Ethnic cleansing was happening. Still to this day, over 1000 of the men and boys killed in the massacre remain unidentified and missing. Sometimes over three generations of a family were knocked out, and there is simply no one to provide a blood sample now to match the DNA. And still today, mothers and wives wait. They wait for their sons and husbands to be identified so that they can finally put them to rest.

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Samija’s passion oozed out of every pore of her being. She was outraged and overwhelmed with emotion, as she led us through the gallery and showed us the heinous acts of violence and racism that had occurred. “It happened here. It can happen in any society.” She said over and over again.

When the tour concluded, my head was spinning, my heart was full and tears welled, waiting to spring. Kristia and I walked into the lobby and I asked Samija how old she had been. “I was 5 when the war began and 11 when it ended.” Her voice wavered as she spoke and her eyes were red around the edges. “We had to eat this –“ she interrupted herself switched into Bosnian and spoke to her colleague on staff, and laughed as she continued, “horse meat in a can.” The girls both began to laugh as they recalled the taste of the meat. 

Sarajevo Rose - Red paint around former explosions

 

She described the tenacity of the people of Sarajevo and showed us a woman that every day, got dressed as if there were no war and put on make up – “people had to keep living.” She looked at her feet, “But our childhood – it was stolen. I remember in November of 1995 after my baby brother was born at 7 months, I was washing his diapers outside in minus 5, 200 times, I was doing this.” 


She laughed, a bitter sad laugh. A generation of young people, robbed of their childhood. 

I wonder about as this group of young people as they come of age and have children of their own. . . the casualties of the genocide and the war in Bosnia from 1992-1995 are great. But what of the survivors? What happens to them as they try to make sense of the international travesty that happened to them in their own home.

I think about what I didn’t know. And I wonder now what I still don’t know.

In 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote: 

“Through error, misjudgment and an inability to recognize the scope of the evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to help save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb campaign of mass murder.”

Our not knowing, our silence, our inability to act when action is needed allow these types of despicable actions to occur.

What will we know in 5 years about the refugee crisis that we don’t know right now? 

What will we know about the death of young black men in the United States at the hands of law enforcement? 

What will we know that is different than what we know right now about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century. 

We don’t know what we don’t know, but it is our obligation as human beings to find out.