Cartagena 2013

Cartagena  Colombia 2013.  I had a hard time starting this.  Many years ago I realized that I was a poor Canadian. Both in terms of money and the Canadian notion that winter is "The real Canada".  I have not spent a whole winter in Canada since I discovered Latitude and longitude.   Much of my youth was spent in Colombia.  I love Colombia so I travel there occasionally and this year I went to see if I might care to return for some extended time.
Colombia today is not the Colombia of the eighties. The whole drug issue has gone legit. People say that the drug trade has moved on but I think the deals are the same, it's just that the deals are now done in office towers and the street scene has been abandoned.  The day I arrived in Cartagena a ship was busted with 400 tonnes of coke in La Bahia de Cartagena.  This headline dispelled the notion of a country renewed by a bustling textile industry.

Cartagena has become very popular with both the wealthy internationalistas and the back packing adventure crowd. What hipster doesn't improve his social standing by means of a Colombian stamped passport. So I was a bit adrift here. I fit neither of these demographics and felt oddly at odds with a city that was once my home. One night at a cafe with a Colombian friend she looked at me and saw my disappointment with the scene around us.  Rude of me to be disappointed to see people living well and enjoying themselves but she saw what I saw and said... "tu requerdas cuando Cartagena era nuestra?".  Do you remember when Cartagena was ours?  I knew there was something missing but she clarified the point. Cartagena grew up and so did I.  What was missing here was my youth.

It was a bit of a weird winter of travel. Cuba was not to my liking and now Cartagena was adding to a growing belief that I enjoy the road more than the place. The destination seems a small part of the more important event of getting there.  The good result of this understanding is that there is always more getting there than being there.

My Colombian experience was further tainted by a very thorough search of my person and personal history as I departed the country.  I was finger printed and then forced to submit to a full body xray with a machine that looked as if it had been purchased from a garage sale in Chernobyl. They then unloaded my luggage from the plane and examined it 3 more times.  I finally boarded the plane after yet another interrogation.  The poor passengers waited for my final questioning.  As I said the drug deals are now done in office towers.  The customs agents were polite enough as they hunted my things and history but It did leave a mark.