God Bless You Miss Colombia
Trip Start
May 26, 2007
1
83
89
Trip End
Ongoing
Cartagena,
Colombia
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Blue Parade
We arrived on a Thursday and pretty much walked straight into a big street party. We rush to a hostel to drop our stuff off at and run straight back out again. It didn't take long for a parade to come samba-ing its way down the streets, filling them with music, dancing, screaming and good vibes. The best part of the parade, for mine, was seeing all the Miss Colombia contestants coming past on floats, wiggling away and wearing, well, not a lot. Despite all these women there though, i would say that i was arguably the guest of honour. The old ladies loved that i was there so they could stop me and stare at my 'freakish' blue eyes, then stop me again to show their friends, then stop me again to get photos with me. The pick pockets eyes lit up when they saw me struttin down the streets as i felt about 100 swift hands brushing past and sifting through my pockets (Suckers, i didn't have a thing on me, which is fortunate cause we even met a girl who had a plastic bag with tampons stolen from her). The younger girls were glad i could make the party as there was another 100 not-so-swift hands grabbin at my arse continuosly. The dancers in the parade were honoured i could attend this ceremony, so much in fact that they singled me out of the crowd (i'm sure i was hard to spot) and pulled me into the parade.
1 Feelin a little blue
I'm sure i'd have been a real crowd pleaser, attempting not only to salsa, but to do it in time with a bunch of professionals, but i'd say the embarrassment was worth having a handful of girls shaking their big fake cans in my face...wouldn't you? And even the hooligans here were happy to see me. There was tonnes of people throwing flour, blue paint, foam, water bungers and who knows what else. I got so targeted i arrived home looking like braveheart while linz got home looking like a smurf.The Mud Monster
If i told you that i scaled to the top of a volcano and jumped in the crater you probably wouildn't believe me would ya. Well its true. Although in this case the volcano is 15m high and it's crater is filled with mud (still technically a volcano though!). The experience was soo much fun though. It was really weird cause it seemed like you should sink to the bottom but it had this kind of zero-g thing going for it. You would just kinda float to the point where you could just lie on top of it while guys pushed you around and moored you like you were a boat or something. These guys would also give you a mud massage for a donation (i paid about 50c, best value massage yet!. After enjoying the soak you got taken down to a lagoon where a lady would wash all the mud off ya, scrubbin ya from head to toe and really getting stuck into the ears. I thought is was hilarious when the woman so casually said "alright, take off your cossies". When in Rome hey, so i took them off while she washed them and then gave my backside a good scrub.
2 Our very first volcano
So i ran over to the group of people we went there with:"Hey guys, how funny is it how you take your pants off while she scrubs your bum!"
"...What are you talking about"
"Umm....Nothing..."
Stop! Thief!
You'd think that a policeman's main duty is to catch criminals. Well not here it's not. It's to catch gringo's with drugs and to, consequently, accept their bribes. We already met one guy who was caught in possession of an ounce of pot and was absolutely packin it until the coppa says "alright...that'll be $75 to avoid prison". The guy, thinking $75 is a pretty good price for freedom, was more than happy to pay. He handed the money over to the coppa, who counted it before headin out the door.
"Don't you want this too?" said the gringo holding out the contraban.
"Nah i don't need any, do what you want with it", was the reply.
So that's basically the colombian style, so you can imagine thoughts of having drugs planted on me crossed my mind when i was walking down the streets alone at night at a policeman stopped me for no reason. I didn't plan on showing the coppa any fear so i just did what i did best and started up a merry old chin wag with him. As i continued to chat away a saw his devilish smirk change into a dumbsruck aw until he eventually asked me "you know who i am right?". "Yeah, police. Right?", before casually continuing my casual conversation, with the utmost of casualness. After that i think his drug raid ambitions ended so he just relaxed and enjoyed my company.
3 The boat
Now, i reckon if i had drugs he would probably help me out of a pickle. 3kgs of cocaine please!An Old Friend
I've been craving a familiar face for almost 6 months now so i'm sure you can understand my disappointment when i tell you the first person we see is kate. She was so nervous about seeing linz she decided to have a bottle of champagne for brekky, which put her rambling and squealing at an all time high. She wanted time alone with linz and thus brought a friend for me, who ended up being about as entertaining as noodle soup, thereby improving my ability to feign interest in conversation by dropping the occasional "oh yeah" at the opportune moments. And lastly, she called me a scrawny, shaggy, smelly backpacker (which realistically is spot on, but she didn't have to be so blunt).
But there were pro's to seeing her again. She is the only person we have met who has been impressed with our spanish...and...what else...um...she brought lindsay a hat?
Getting involved in the drug underworld
If there is one thing my mum has ever taught me it's "don't start fights between drug dealers". Well i've done it now, and by george, i'm doing it again.
One way i find it easy to pass a drug dealer off (at least until later) is to tell them you'll seek them out later, thereby laving the convo quickly and on a friendly basis. Well clearly i told that to one too many dealers, and as i was telling Mr One Too many, another one who i must have told was "my man" saw me, vigourously approached, told the other guy to piss off and, on refusal of the offer, started flailing him limbs like a crazy man.
4 In the mooring
This combination of verbal abuse and limb tossing went on so long i actually had to sit down to a meal in a nearby restaurant to see how it all ended, and from what i can gather i think the bald guy earnt my business.He's done it again
I must say, Linz is good at what he does, and what he does is attract the prossy's. One hunt for girls in this town came to a prompt hault due to every girl we met being a pro and every girl we didn't meet at least looking like one. We even had a girl offer linz a shag for only $15 and even said she'd let me join in for an extra $5 (god bless her).
Why it's a bad idea to drink with poms
We were walking through the streets one night trying to decide where to go out when linz spots a guy we met in Rio entering some nearby club. We figure it'd be great to meet up with all the english boys so we go to follow him in. In the time it took us to reach the club across the street the pom who just entered got thrown out the door like a sack of potatoes. Becasue we were standing right there we had first class tickets to see watch some chick storm out after him and wind up one of the biggest haymakers i've ever seen, releasing it into the guys confused and innocent looking face. After saying her bit she walks inside, meanwhile, old mate pom is too busy retreating up the street to realise the array of guys that the bouncers are holding back from him. Not lnog after the rest of the poms exit the the bar and we meet them out the front. We say a quick hello and then point them in the direction their friend fled. They were just about to take off after him when all of a sudden, who else but old mate himself comes trotting past us on a horse-drawn carriage, the confusion, still ever-present on his face, now slowly spreading to all of ours. We didn't know what to do apart from track him down the next day, cause he had a lot of questions to be answered. But, of course, he didn't remember a thing.
