Category Archives: Travel

Cartagena: Caribbean, Colonial Colombia

November 27, 2015 by Jeff C | Comments Off

The movie “Romancing the Stone” was set in and around Cartagena, Colombia. Viewers were introduced to a tropical country full of emeralds and bad guys. Another lasting impression: Michael Douglas taught America to mispronounce “Cartagena” – putting a “NYuh” sound as the last syllable rather than the simple (correct) “Nuh.”

_5JC4325

Old Town, “Centro,” in Cartagena Columbia.

 

_5JC5076Cartagena is on Colombia’s northern coast, in the southwest corner of the Caribbean Sea.  Much like Havana (Cuba), San Juan (Puerto Rico), and St. Augustine (Florida), the walled colonial city, guarded by seaside forts, was built by the Spaniards to anchor and protect their trading and shipping empire in the 1500s to 1700s. In that era, Spain controlled much of what is now northwestern South America – modern-day Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador where they still speak Spanish even today.  But the eastern part of South America – the part most directly accessible from Europe – was controlled by the Portuguese (Brazil) and by the French, Dutch, and Brits (the Guyanas). So Spain’s primary access to its South American empire was from the north, through the Caribbean port at Cartagena.

 

Nowadays, Cartagena is probably the most “visitable” city in Colombia. Cruise ships stop here, there are dozens of nice hotels and upscale restaurants, and old town Cartagena’ colonial architecture and Spanish fortifications are great for sightseeing.

_JCE4889.jpg_5JC4417.jpg_JCE4911.jpg_5JC4964.jpg_5JC4351.jpg_5JC4360.jpg_5JC4363.jpg_5JC4952.jpg_5JC4992.jpg_5JC4997.jpg_5JC5124.jpg_5JC5179.jpg_5JC4375.jpg_5JC5141.jpg

_5JC5163-Pano

 

_5JC4461

One of the many stunning murals on alley walls in Getsemani, Cartagena, Colombia.

_5JC4463The amazing wall murals (and the crazy night-time crowd scenes) are in a neighborhood called Getsemani (“HET-seh-MAH-nee”). Named for the biblical garden (“Gethsemane”) – it was, until recently, a rough place, full of some conspicuously un-holy activities. But like much of Colombia, it’s been cleaned up (literally and figuratively) dramatically in the last decade.

_5JC4434

A festive tradition: throwing corn meal on people. It took some negotiation to get a few pictures without them dousing me (and my camera).

It was Cartagena Independence Day weekend, and as we wandered around a church square in Getsemani one day, a guy named Ramone told us there’d be a “fiesta” there that night, with dancing.  I naively envisioned choreographed and costumed Carnival-like holiday spectacle. That night we found a few thousand people crowded around tiny Plaza Santisima Trinidad; their primary activities were recklessly throwing firecrackers into the crowd, and squirting each other with giant shaving-cream cans rigged to spray 20 feet or so. With minor exception, it was all friendly and fun. My camera only got soaked once; it wiped right off.

 

 

_5JC4807

Celebrating Cartegena Independence weekend in Plaza Santisima Trinidad in Getsemani. Not surprisingly, I was unable to keep my camera dry.

 

_5JC4431

By taking these guys’ picture (and joining them in one shot of their rum), I was able to avoid having corn meal rubbed on my head (like they were doing to each other).

* * * *

Since I had a camera-toting buddy on this trip, I get to include a couple of pictures OF me.  Thanks (and photo credit) to Grant Harvey – a long-time friend, one of my G&B law partners, and now a fellow photographer!  That’s Grant in the hat (and yes, he enjoyed the humor of a hat that screamed “tourista”!

 

Cross-Country Colombia: Coffee Farmers, Mountains & Medellin

November 22, 2015 by Jeff C | Comments Off

As usual for me, the further I got from the main cities and main highways, the more interesting my visit to Colombia became.

_5JC3783

Colombian coffee-country landscapes were planted in meticulously organized patterns.

_5JC3763

_5JC3861.jpg_5JC3632-Edit.jpg_5JC3669-Edit.jpg_5JC3754.jpg_5JC3763.jpg_5JC3783.jpg_JCE4804.jpg_5JC3837.jpg_5JC3624.jpg_JCE4774.jpg_5JC3980.jpg_5JC4174.jpg_5JC4183.jpg_JCE4831.jpg

 

_5JC3918

One of several older gentleman farmers hanging around the town square of the hilltop town of La Merced, Colombia.

_5JC3983-c64.jpg_5JC3962.jpg_5JC3932.jpg_5JC3918.jpg_5JC3969.jpg_5JC3943.jpg

* * *

My Hertz reservation for a small pickup truck got fouled up, leaving my friend Grant and me driving a late-model VW Jetta through the mountains in the heart of Colombia.  It’s impossible not to look conspicuously out of place in rural Colombia in a late-model Jetta.  Hertz’s punishment was that their Jetta endured long stretches of dirt-and-gravel mountain roads of the Colombian Andes.  Much of our trip was in the heart of Colombia’s “coffee country.” Most of the patterned agricultural landscape you see in the pictures is coffee.   Despite the mostly hazy and cloudy weather (and my dislike of coffee), the landscapes were striking.

In the hilltop town of El Merced, the town square was full of old guys – mostly just hanging out. It took a fair amount of bi-lingual cajoling to get some of them to let me make a few pictures. The guy with the scarred face was also toting a machete strapped to his hip – which gave me some insight on how his smile may have become so crooked. (They carry machetes as agricultural tools; not as sidearms). I wished for a photograph with that big knife in the picture, but I was barely able to get him to let me photograph him at all.  One of the guys recommended “Asadero La Fonda” as the best restaurant in town for us to have lunch (see picture in the grid); we had lots of meals at places that looked like that.

When you get away from the cities and tourist areas, prices in Colombia can be disconcertingly low. Two meat-and-cheese breakfast pastries, two doughnuts, a cup of (Colombian!) coffee, two Diet Cokes, and a couple of big cookies for the road? COL $8,000 – less than $3 U.S.  At Hotel Colonial in Aguadas, I paid extra for a bigger room with three balcony-windows overlooking the town square (and with a couch, table and chairs, big bathroom, wifi, refrigerator, breakfast included). It was US $20; my buddy’s room (without the ‘view’) was US $8.  (The last image in the grid below is the view from my room).  One regular quandary: What kind of tip do you leave when you get great service and a fine lunch for less than two bucks?

The biggish city of Medellin was the end of our car trip (we flew from there to Cartagena). The plump-looking (and probably familiar-seeming?) statues are by a famous Colombian artist, Botero.

Next stop:  Cartegena.

* * *

_JCE4804

Near Manizales, Colombia

 

_5JC4067

Late Friday night in the town square in in the isolated mountain town of Aguadas, Colombia. Their director was perhaps the best (and surely the most entertaining) clarinet player I’ve ever heard.

 

Images from Salento, Aguadas, and Medellin:

_5JC3534.jpg_5JC3555.jpg_5JC4021.jpg_5JC4059.jpg_5JC4067.jpg_5JC4151.jpg_5JC4196.jpg_5JC4239.jpg_5JC4249.jpg_5JC4287.jpg_5JC4306.jpg_JCE4847.jpg

 

_5JC4249

One of several Botero statues in Medellin, Colombia’s downtown Botero Square. Medellin is Botero’s home town.

_5JC3861

Morning near Aguadas, Colombia.

Overlooking Bogota

November 20, 2015 by Jeff C | Comments Off
_JCE4726

Bogota, Colombia,  just after (above) and just before (below) sunset – from Monserrate, a 10,000 ft mountain just east of downtown.

I spent just 36 hours or so in Bogota before heading west through the Andes. It’s Colombia’s biggest and capital city — with a metro population bigger than Chicago and an elevation higher than Aspen. Bogota has plenty to offer. If you go, plan to stay longer than I did.

_JCE4309

A “protester” (sort of) on Plaza Bolivar (between the Capital and the Supreme Court) in Bogota. Her sign says (I think) “There’s nothing left to say.” Every minute or so she’d just scream “Aaaaaaahhh!” as loud as she could. The capitol police kept a close eye on her and other protesters, but generally let them do their thing.  A statue in the image is Simon Bolivar.

 

In the grid above are views from Monserrate, around Plaza Bolivar and the Catedral Nacional, inside Museo de Oro (Gold); and outside the presidential Palacio Narino.

 

_JCE4285

The central courtyard of Bogota’s Capitolio. The guards were nice enough to let me past the first layer of security to get a few pictures.

The central government square in Bogota is “Plaza Bolivar” — named for 19th Century Latin American hero, Simon Bolivar. He’s credited with liberating from Spain the region of “New Granada” — now Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.  Maybe obvious: “Bolivia” was named after him. Depending on who you believe and how you look at it, it may be a little unclear whether he was benevolently liberating, or if he was attempting his own Napoleon-style conquest. In any case, history has been kind to Bolivar: seemingly every town or city we visited had its own Plaza Bolivar and its own big statue of “El Libertador” himself. (Americans may overlook him, but there are actually prominent Bolivar statues in downtown Paris, in Washington DC, and in New York’s Central Park.) If you see a statue in Colombia and wonder who it is, you can probably win a bet by guessing Bolivar.

A few of the other Plazas (and “estatuas”) Bolivar we encountered, in Salento, Medellin, and Cartegena:

Colombia 2015: Libertad y Orden

November 19, 2015 by Jeff C | Comments Off

Let’s start with the first thing that comes to every American’s mind when you mention the South American nation of Colombia.

_JCE4266-2

In the shadow of Colombia’s Catedral Primada, two Policia Nacional patrol Plaza de Bolivar, between the Colombian Congress and Supreme Court buildings in Bogota.

When I told people I was planning to spend a week or two driving around Colombia, virtually everyone expressed concern about my safety (and sanity). A beautiful tropical country, bisected by the northern Andes and boasting both Caribbean and Pacific coastlines, Colombia seems to be better known for drug cartels, guerilla warfare, and kidnappings. Colombia’s bad reputation was well deserved in the 1990s, but a “Colombian Miracle” has transformed it into a great destination – even if you don’t drink coffee.

Fifteen years ago, Colombia was embroiled in a four-way civil war: the players included communist guerilla groups like the “FARC;” right-wing paramilitary groups that sprung up to oppose the guerillas but took on a terrorist-like life of their own; powerful regional drug cartels (especially Cali and Medellin); and the struggling and outnumbered Colombian military itself. Drug trafficking and violence were the norm. Guerilla and paramilitary groups financed themselves with drugs and kidnapping, while the drug cartels amassed military-like troops and weapons to protect their turf. Colombia was the world’s biggest supplier of cocaine, and huge sections of the country’s roads and territory were out of the government’s control. Millions of Colombians were displaced from their homes. In 1999, the situation was so bad the Colombian government formally ceded vast territories to one of the guerilla groups.

_JCE4865

National Police on a motorcycle, zipping down a side street in Cartegena, Colombia.

But Colombia is in the midst of what some have called the Colombia Miracle, and what almost anyone would call an amazing turnaround. Starting in 1999 and accelerating with the 2002 election of a new get-tough president (Uribe), the Colombian government expanded its police and military forces. The U.S.A. provided money, personnel, weapons, and intelligence assistance. Colombia targeted the drug trade and the guerilla and paramilitary forces, assassinated and captured key leaders, and even had successful “peace talks” with some guerilla and paramilitary groups.

It’s working. The drug cartels have mostly fractured or disappeared. Most of the paramilitary groups have disbanded and disarmed, and the communist guerilla groups are greatly diminished and confined to areas near the Ecuador and Venezuelan borders. Even the guerilla FARC has very recently (just this month) reached a peace agreement with Colombia and claimed that it will stop military training and focus on peaceful means. Drug production is down significantly. In the cities, the police are everywhere and are highly visible (literally so, often in fluorescent yellow-green uniforms), and much of life is back to normal.

_5JC4402

Riot police in Cartegena, Colombia. With these guys around, the risk of an actual riot seemed very low.

Meanwhile – and not coincidentally – the Colombian economy has boomed. Poverty and unemployment levels have plunged; GDP and incomes have soared. Colombia’s highways – though often small and very curvy through the mountains – are in amazingly good shape, thanks to a massive road-construction effort. A mixed blessing of that booming economy is that they’re packed with cargo trucks.

There may be lots of lessons – pro and con – in the Colombia story. The successful strategy had great emphasis on obtaining military and police control, modest efforts at negotiation, and little focus on direct assistance to the 6 million displaced refugee-like Colombians. But the plunge in poverty rates and violence, and rise in incomes may have helped more than direct assistance ever could. The government is reported to have used – unapologetically – some tactics that might make many Americans squeamish (though none worse than their foes were regularly employing). The United States’ financial and military involvement in Colombia’s recovery has been perhaps our most extensive and most successful nation-building exercise in recent history. It’s worth noting, though, that the still-problematic leftist FARC organization was in some ways Colombia’s version of Cuba’s Castro regime (with whom the U.S. is now thawing relations). It’s a complicated world.

The U.S. State Department still has an ominous-sounding travel advisory about Columbia, and did not seem to sanction my chosen itinerary.  But I had a great trip through Colombia – even taking a rental car (with a fellow American buddy) through long sections of remote countryside (from Bogota to Pereira to Medellin and on some tiny side roads through the mountains) that were dangerous FARC and cartel territory not very long ago.  The national tourism board uses a clever slogan that gives a nod to Colombia’s awkward history: “The only risk is wanting to stay.”

_5JC3245

“Libertad y Orden” on the Colombia Coat of Arms. That’s an Andean condor (not an eagle) up on top.

“Libertad y Orden” is Colombia’s official motto; it means “Freedom and Order” (that’s “order” as in “law and order,” presumably). A few years back, Colombians surrounded by a siege of civil and guerilla war had little of either. But in a country now seemingly blanketed with an intimidating but hopefully-benevolent police presence, there is surely much more “order,” and – judging from the bustling streets and highways and from the faces of the people we encountered – there’s apparently much more “libertad,” too.

_5JC3014

 

_5JC3047

_5JC4320

Double Ironman trip: South Africa and Taiwan (via Hong Kong and Macau): But there’s still so much to be done

May 16, 2015 by Jeff C | Comments Off

My Ironman trip around the world — with Scott Humphries and Shane Merz.  Imagine getting the chance to spend almost three weeks circling the globe with a couple of your best friends — yukking it up, exploring two continents, and — oh yes — doing two Ironman triathlons without coming home in between.

J75_1344-Pano

Hong Kong at Night, from Kowloon looking south.  A stopover after Ironman South Africa and before Ironman Taiwan.

 

20150326_152612

Shark Rock Pier, Nelson Mandela Bay, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

 

J75_0744

Scott Humphries, me, and Shane Merz in Hong Kong.

 

1012_026556

Kenting, Taiwan. The last few steps of the six-continents Ironman plan.

IRONMAN PANGEA: SIX CONTINENTS. Some years ago, after finishing our first Ironman (in Brazil), my friends (Scott Humphries, Shane Merz) and I got the bright idea to complete an Ironman triathlon on every continent. The quest required a couple of trips to Europe, retreated briefly to Ironman Texas, and made a trek to Scott’s native Australia. There isn’t actually such an event in Antarctica, so we were down to two remaining continents — Africa and Asia.   Someone (me, I fear) got the further bright idea that we should finish off those two continents with two back-to-back races, in a single two-week period without coming home in between: Ironman South Africa (in Port Elizabeth), then the inaugural Ironman Taiwan (in Kenting, the tropical southern tip of Taiwan).

1012_034215

Scott celebrating his Taiwan finish

 

COLUMBUS WAS RIGHT – OR WAS IT GALILEO? OR…PYTHAGORAS?:  I knew this already, but for the first time I was able to verify for myself that the Earth is round. We left Houston headed eastbound toward South Africa, then eventually got home via Hong Kong, and Taipei from the west.   There were nine flight legs in all, plus a bus, a couple of ferries, a handful of trains, five hotels, and more taxis and shuttle vans than I could count. The logistical absurdity of the adventure required schlepping 100 pounds each of triathlon gear (bicycles, cases, wetsuits, etc.) literally around the world.

 

1012_013432

Shane on the bike in Taiwan

IRON AGE MATH: L = M50-54. Competitions like this are done in age and gender groupings – usually five-year gaps like M (Men) 30-34 (years old), M35-39, and so on. So sixty-year-old females (F60-64) compete against one another – not really against 25-year-old (M25-29) men — although we’re all on the same course at the same time.   For this purpose, you are considered to be whatever age you BECOME during the calendar year. So even if you don’t turn 30 until November, you’re treated as being 30 all year long.

August 2015 will bring a very round-numbered birthday for me, so I was in the “M50-54” age group. Gulp. Seeing “The Big 5-0” associated with my name for the first time was a little startling, but seeing it in this context took some of the sting off.  In fact I’d be more proud of those race finishes if I were, for example, M70-74. (I sometimes claim to be 82 years old because – modesty aside – I look pretty good for an 82-year-old.) Besides, the 50-year old group is often just as fast as even much younger men; the patience and wisdom to pace one’s self is a strong virtue in such events.

I think I’m going to use the more elegant Roman numeral, “L” to denote my age (Come August, that is. I’m still XLIX for another couple of months, thankyouverymuch).

 

20150326_153228_resizedWHO CAN GO THE DISTANCE? WE’LL FIND OUT, IN THE LONG RUN: The races themselves? An Ironman event is a 2.4 mile offshore ocean swim, a 112 mile bike race, then a 26.2 mile (marathon distance) run – all in one day with just 5 minutes or so in between to change your shoes. It usually takes us around 13 hours – starting at sunrise and usually finishing in the dark. The hilly South African bike course was especially brutal (imagine mixing 5,000 feet of vertical climb and nasty winds into those mileages), but at least the area’s much-discussed great white sharks resisted the allure of the nearly 2,000 black-wetsuit-clad swimmers out in Nelson Mandela Bay. (Before the start, the race announcer told us we might be “lucky” enough to see dolphins swimming near us in the bay, so we should look for their dorsal fins. I had a mild suspicion that this was an ingenious fib to prevent widespread panic should anyone spot a shark out there making an otherwise-harmless appearance.)

Taiwan was hot but less windy, and the water was crystal clear for our South China Sea swim. Most important, we all finished both events in good health and even better spirits. The Continental Ironman Quest is complete!

1012_006651.jpg0995_013866.jpg0995_068440.jpgIMG_1796.jpg1012_013046.jpg0995_032143.jpg0995_071893.jpg0995_071894.jpg1012_010700.jpg1012_012776.jpg1012_014921.jpg1012_018287 (1).jpg1012_026523.jpg1012_028122.jpg0995_036308.jpgIMG_1799.jpg1012_026556.jpg1012_029265.jpg1012_034223.jpg
J75_1101

Shane and Scott at the Big Buddha just outside Hong Kong.

 

GOOD FRIENDS, GOOD HEALTH,  AND GOOD FORTUNE: There’s no way any of this intercontinental athletic foolishness would ever be happening (for me) without my two very close friends Scott Humphries and Shane Merz. (You’ve surely heard these names before, e.g., here and here and here . . . ). It does not escape my notice that Scott and Shane have jobs, wives, and kids. How they pull this off, I do not know.  We did a lot of philosophizing during the trek — maybe we were influenced by the those big meditating Buddhas?  One overarching observation:  we were extraordinarily fortunate to have good health and good friends, together with the ability, the means and the freedom to roam and see the world in a way only a tiny fraction of earth’s inhabitants have done through all of its history.

20150328_133932.jpgJ75_0565-HDR.jpgJ75_0613.jpgJ75_0766.jpgJ75_0876.jpgJ75_1403.jpgJ75_1495.jpgJ75_0973.jpgJ75_1051.jpgJ75_1101.jpgJ75_1135.jpgJ75_1270.jpgJ75_1289.jpgGondola2.jpgGondola1.jpgJ75_1513.jpg20150409_212323.jpg20150409_144933.jpg20150409_160207.jpgJ75_1549.jpgJ75_1564.jpg
J75_0829

Evening in Hong Kong

 

JIMMY BUFFETT GETS INVOLVED:  Our Ironman-related travels had already taken us to some amazing places:  Zurich, Rio, Sydney, Germany, the Caribbean, Hawaii and more. This time, we had a week to mostly “kill” between the two races – mixing some sightseeing in among short workouts to stay in shape. We spent four days in Hong Kong and two in Macau, China (a former Portuguese colony with Las Vegas-sized casinos where we watched a guy playing US$100,000 hands of Baccarat).

We rode from Hong Kong island to Macau (on the Chinese mainland) via the high-speed express ferry; we chuckled that it was a “fast boat to China.”  That phrase is a line from Jimmy Buffett song, “Last Mango in Paris.”   In the song, a man reminisces to Buffett about his life of international adventures, then finishes, “But Jimmy, there’s still so much to be done.” I adopted the phrase as a motto of the trip.

This is the year I turn L years old. The six-continents Ironman quest is complete — but there’s still so much to be done.