It took us ten hours, but you can see the highlights in only 10 minutes! It was a great day, going up and down the locks and crossing the Galun Lake. Bonus clips of the new Panamax locks are included.

Enjoy!

 

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Here we go again:

• Spanish move in and conquer the indigenous people
• Spanish need to build a wall and a castle, import workers, slaves and free, from Africa and elsewhere
• Africans and other non-European workers and artisans are relegated to a barrio/slum. Because the Spaniards couldn’t pronounce the indigenous language name for the barrio, they named it Gethsemani, sounds-sorta-like the one in Jerusalem
• The fish and produce market in Gethsemani is moved to make room for public parks, Including the Centennial Park, built to commemorate in 1911 Cartagena’s brief period of independence that occurred in 1811. Those living within the walled Old Town didn’t want the riffraff to celebrate with them, so a park outside the walls was created. (Monkeys and sloths live there now, along with lots of birds and flora.)
• With the loss of the market, locals were forced to move out. By the 1990s, Gethsemani had become the most dangerous and crime ridden neighborhood of Cartagena.
• Pressure builds to expand Cartagena beyond the walls of the Old City. The need accelerates when Cartagena is named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984
• Gentrification set in with a vengeance. Today, about 10 years after the gentrification  hit its stride, Gethsemani is  now one of the safest neighborhoods in Cartagena with lots of hotels, restaurants and artisan shops. Lots of great graffiti art and vibrant colors.

Sounds a lot like the story of District 13 in Medellin, doesn’t it? I guess we need to cheer on elimination of slums and crime but then there’s the fate of previous residents. They move away; they don’t benefit from gentrification. In many cases they are its victims. Art, hip hop and drum programs attempt to give young people a sense of purpose but it’s not an easy solution to a tough problem.

After touring Gethsemani, starting at 9:30 AM we drank, we ate, we drank and ate some more. All before 2:30 PM.

First, a refreshing stop for cold drinks – coconut lemonade in our case – followed by a three course lunch (seafood rice dish and steak) and then five rounds of rum and chocolate tasting. Now we’re back in our hotel “getting pretty” for the sunset cocktail cruise followed by the Farewell Dinner.

Speaking of the hotel, I mentioned yesterday that this building used to be a nunnery and then the city’s charity hospital. Gabriel Garcia Marquez of One Hundred Years of Solitude fame, who lived and wrote in Cartagena, wrote a short novel based on this property. SPOILER ALERT: A young woman is bitten by a rabid dog. She’s brought to the convent for an exorcism, the standard treatment back in the day. A young priest is brought in to drive out the demon, they fall in love and kiss. The priest confesses, is defrocked and sent to a leaper colony. The young woman dies not from rabbis but from the bitter vetches she’s fed by the nuns as part of the exorcism.

Tomorrow,  Friday, its off to Sun City Center. Brother Doug and wife Judy come for a week on Sunday, grandson Griffin (11) comes all by himself on the 14th and cousin Steve and wife Carolyn come the day Griffin leaves. Somewhere in there will be two belated birthday parties for Judy, a symphony concert, a University of Florida basketball game up in Gainesville, and visits with Judy’s brother Dave and wife Rolande over in Indian Shores. Other than that we’ll be sitting around the house staring at each other.

Thanks for traveling with us. It’s fun to know family and friends are following along as we go.

P.S.: Judy’s video of our Panama Canal crossing is coming soon. Stay tuned

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At last, a Spanish city. Lots of churches and cathedrals. Lots of buildings with second-story balconies. Bright colors. And four cruise ships in port at the same time. Everywhere we went we saw people with Bus 6 tags on their shirts. There were more than one Bus 6.

And I bought a genuine Panama hat, my third, this one made in China. Cost me 30,000 Colombian Pesos, about $7.50.

Our first stop after an early start was at the San Filipe de Barajas Castle. It’s not really a castle, it’s a fortress built to defend Spain’s interest in Cartagena from privateers, buccaneers and pirates, France and other foes of Spain. Cartagena had developed as one of Spain’s main ports for shipment of gold, silver and other valuables back home. The attackers coveted the goods, not the land.

Work started in 1536 to support the walls the Spanish had thrown up to protect what is now Old Town Cartagena (where our hotel the Sofitel is located).

It started out as San Lázaro Castle, and was significantly expanded and renamed San Filipe de Barajas Castle in 1657, thereby honoring King Philip IV of Spain. It sits on top of a hill outside the city walls, has three levels and a labyrinth of tunnels, a bunch of cannon and great views of approaching enemy troops. Hard to imagine how anyone could successfully attack such a mighty fortress.

Privateers and buccaneers, operating under license from Britain and France, were successful especially in the early days. King Louis XIV’s forces succeeded. The Spaniards won it back. The British attacked during the War of Jenkin’s Ear but failed. Each time it was attacked it was strengthened.

Next, a stop to learn drumming at the beachfront neighborhood of La Boquilla. La Boquilla is a community of Afro-Colombian people, whose heritage is a mixture of Africans brought to Colombia as slaves to work the plantations and construction projects; those of Spanish descent; and indigenous people. They have formed a school to teach young people Afro-Colombian rhythms, both to preserve the legacy and to give the students an alternative activity to life on the street. Very much like the break dancers we saw in Medellin.

La Boquillas moved here from a beachfront property closer to downtown, which was sold to condo developers. The residents are in a love-hate relationship with development in their new location. A multistory condo/Airbnb abuts the school we attended. Development brings money but it also threatens the culture members of La Boquilla are trying to preserve.

Downtown in the Old City we stopped at the main cathedral of Cartagena, the Cathedral of San Pedro Claver. The big draw here was not just the church but a chance to meet and take photos of Palanqueres, the fruit basket ladies of Cartagena dressed in traditional costumes and balancing fruit on their heads.

A light lunch – two appetizer courses, a main course (seafood stew for Judy, chickpea salad for me) plus dessert. We’re “on our own” for dinner tonight. On our walk back to the Sofitel Judy and I scouted out a restaurant that serves pizza and plays salsa music until 1 AM. After the lunch blowout we need something light. And salsa never hurts.

Back at the hotel we were treated to a historical tour of the hotel. Turns out it was originally a 17th century convent and stayed that way until Independence in 1861. Seems a wealthy lady bequeathed the convent, thereby ensuring a sacred place for her burial. We saw her crypt; it was empty and the location of her bones unknown. Oh well.

Girls came here for several reasons. Some wanted to avoid a loveless, arranged marriage. Some wanted the freedom to learn to read and write, something denied women of that time. Those pregnant out of wedlock might be sent there by their families to avoid shame.

After the State took over from the Catholic order, the building served as an orphanage, jail and until 1974 the city’s charity hospital. Eventually it was purchased by the French company Accor who made substantial improvements, leading it to eventually become a Sofitel property. One of the hotel’s first guest in the 1980s was Fidel Castro.

Tomorrow’s our last day of touring before heading back to Sun City Center. We’ll see another neighborhood, drink rum paired with chocolate and attend the farewell sunset cruise and dinner. After three weeks we’re ready for home.

So here’s the bill for dinner. No salsa but:

·      Pizza, bruschetta and Sangria outside on the next square down from the hotel: $60

·      Rhythm percussion and dance ensemble: $5

·      Rapper trio who complemented me on my shoes from Iceland: $15

·      Guitar vocal duo: $20, which earned us a fourth song: Guantanamera, including Florida in the lyrics.

Best $100 we’ve spent in a long time.

 

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The roads in Colombia aren’t all that bad but they all go up and down hills and curve incessantly as they pass through the hills and mountain sides. That’s why it takes 11 hours and 320 miles to drive from Bogotá to Medellin and why it took us over two hours to go 50 miles to reach the town of Guatapé and Lake Embalse El Peñol-Guatapé. Speed bumps every 100 meters. And Colombian drivers take no prisoners. And motorcyclists? Don’t get me started. But Colombian chaos seems to work well. Everyone knows what to expect.

The ride was through Medellin’s 5 mile/$30 tunnel, past the airport in Rionegro and then through the mostly agricultural country. There was a fair amount of industrial business too. This region to the east of Medellin is the city’s main supplier of fruits and vegetables. 

The town of Guatapé is a retreat for wealthy Medellinistas, being only 15 minutes by helicopter. There’s even a hotel accessible only by helicopter. Columbia’s two biggest fútbol (soccer) players are building a hotel here. And they do a pretty good tourist trade too. Pedro Escobar had a villa here until the rival Cali cartel blew it up. A villa he built for his daughter still stands.

Incidentally, Escobar’s son never got into the family business and disavows his father’s behavior. Some would call Escobar a Robinhood. His son, and Lina, strongly disagree.

Guatapé is located on the shores of Lake Embalse El Peñol-Guatapé, an artificial lake built as a hydroponic project. It supplies 30% of Colombia’s power needs. Columbia sells power generated here to Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Panama. There’s a new project due to come on line soon with four times the generating power. Guatapé will be decommissioned leaving nothing but recreation – not a total loss to be sure. 

The flooding to form the lake took almost 20 years beginning with the original idea in 1960 to flooding in 1978. Residents of the town of Peñol, led by the parish priest, blocked the project until remuneration and new housing could be negotiated. The new town, Peñol, is a collection of nondescript high rise apartment buildings, far from the pastoral setting of their old town. Progress has its victims, here or at the Three Gorges Dam in China where displaced people live far above the Yangtze river, or Stalin’s waterway from Moscow to St. Petersburg where the top of a church steeple sticks out of the water in the  middle of the river. 

A tidbit of folklore: A local priest was visited in his dreams by an angel who warned that Peñol would be attacked by a blue dragon. Fifty years later the dream came true. See the picture of a map of the lake, shaped like a dragon, just like Moosehead Lake is shaped after its namesake.

The town of Guatapé sports a number of Spanish-era buildings, unlike Bogotá and Medellin where most of the old has given way to the new. Lina, our guide, is apologetic but I think Colombia and other Spanish-conquered lands should create their own identity. Maybe lack of Spanish cathedrals and whatnot is bad for the tourist business however. “New” Colombia isn’t as picturesque as Spanish cathedrals.

But Guatapé is colorful, with artwork on the bottom meter or so of many houses: zócalos, panels that depict something of the homeowner’s life. There’s some graffiti art, too but the zócolos are more restrained albeit equally colorful.

The other major attraction here is the granite monolith called El Peńon de Guapé or La Piedra or, if you’re from Peñol, La Piedra de Peñol. It’s an imposing piece of rock with stairs leading up its side to an observation deck and snack bar. It looked like a hard climb to me from a distance but Lina says she’s taken an 85-year-old up in about 25 minutes.

We took an hour’s boat trip on the lake, had a nice lunch at a restaurant with great views, stopped for a group photo in front of La Piedra and then hit the road for the airport. 

We won’t get to Cartagena until 9 PM where a buffet dinner awaits us. On the road in the morning at 7:45 AM to visit the city’s iconic fortress before the worst of the heat and humidity take over. 

 

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Colombia has been in a state of violent uprising for as long as I’ve been alive. But the beginnings of violence here might be traced back to the Spanish arrival in 1449, Simon Bolivar’s fight for independence in 1819 and the Thousand Days War of 1899-1902. And the seeds of the problems spanning the last 70 years might be traced to Las Masacre de las Banneras in 1928. Have you been watching One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix or have you read the book? A fictionalized account of the Colombian Army’s massacre of Chiquita banana workers – 47 to 2,000, depending on who you believe, or even 3,000 as told in One Hundred Years – that was a blow against the rural workers and landholders.

But the actual start of La Violencia began with the assassination of a popular Presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, which sparked riots and violence in Bogotá, called El Bogotazo. La Violencia continued for 10 years, killing 300,000 and displacing millions. It ended with a negotiated peace agreement that called for alternate presidencies with the Liberals and Conservatives serving consecutive terms – without elections.

But then in the 1960s leftist guerrilla groups formed, fighting against governmental sponsored concentration of land ownership. The two main groups, FARC and the National Liberation Army, communist-inspired, initially fought to reclaim land rights for rural peasants. The current Colombian president was a member of another guerrilla group, M19.

The government was ineffective in fighting the guerrillas, so armed illegal paramilitary groups formed to fight the guerrillas.

One might say that the guerrillas were fighting a just cause – equality for the downtrodden rural peoples. But unfortunately, the guerrillas turned to raising cocaine as a means for funding their operations. And the paramilitary groups fought for land to do the same. So the overlay of drugs fueled even greater violence. Pedro Escobar, the Colombian cartel leader, was the main channel of distribution for both sides. He became, at age 27, the second richest man in the world.

Almost 9 million people were displaced and over 1 million killed in a country of 50 million. I’ve already talked about the peace process that culminated in the accord between FARC and the government. The NLA still hasn’t signed, and last minute negotiations fell apart within the last few weeks.

Our speakers today pointed out that the murder rate in Colombia in 2017 was 24.8 per 100,000 population. Washington D.C.’s murder rate in 2023 was 80. The peace agreement, imperfect as it is, has dramatically reduced violence in Colombia.

All of this was recounted to us by two Colombians, one a representative of VAOVA and the other, Enith Moreno, was a FARC member, joining in 1984 at the age of 15. She was the fourth child of nine, her father left when she was 11 and joining was a way of survival and escape from abject poverty. She left FARC in 2001 but continued in supporting roles until 2016 when she signed the peace agreement. Her current role is as a member of MEDEPAZ, and organization dedicated to supporting 12,900 former FARC fighters as they transition to peaceful pursuits and working for peace and reconciliation in communities affected by the armed conflict.

With that overview we traveled via the Metro line to the west side of town where we boarded a cable car that took us up the side of one of Medellin’s many mountain side. The metro and cable car system was put in place not so much as a tourist attraction but as a way to provide low cost transportation for informal settlements, really squatter gatherings, and low-end neighborhoods to reach jobs further down the mountain. The car we took passed over Level 1, 2 and 3 communities.

Level 1 houses are made of wood and lack virtually all services – electrical, water, sewer, schools and so on. Higher levels pick up more services and as mentioned earlier, pay more in taxes. So we began to get an answer as to how Colombia can have such a low average income – $360 per month – in a city with such apparent wealth. It all averages out: a small number of rich people are offset by large number of poor.

Then, back to the question of violence. We visited District 13, as recently as 2002 and even later the most dangerous neighborhood in Medellin, itself the most dangerous city in Colombia. It was home to FARC and other guerrilla groups. Paramilitary groups operated here. The Escobar drug cartel controlled District 13 in the 1980s. Governmental control was nil. The steep slopes and lack of a formal street system in the area made military operations virtually impossible.

Then, in October 2002 as part of the government’s crackdown on violence, District 13 was attacked by government forces using helicopters, tanks and automatic weapons., driving out guerrilla fighters and other militant groups. The operation was successful and today after investment by the government, NGOs and other countries, District 13 is now one of the most visited tourist destinations in Medellin.

Sorry for all the history stuff. I wanted to get it written down before I lost it completely.

Our local guide told us that part of the reason that District 13 has recovered so well is hip hop and break dance and graffiti art. Both dance and art are outlets for youth, replacing gang membership or becoming a hit man. We walked by one break dance school and attended a performance by another.

Lunch downtown and a stroll through Botero Square, home to a dozen or more sculptures donated by the artist and a quick pass through the Museo de Antioquia to see more Botero paintings and other works. Finally dinner at Ritual, high on the side of the mountain with great food and great views of Medellin.

Tomorrow, off we go to Cartagena after visiting the largest lake in Colombia and source of hydroelectric power.

 

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