Medellin, meddling, and the death of Harry the parasite.

The route from Bogota to Medellin by bus is long, and fraught with the sort of erratic driving not seen since Maggie Thatcher tried to get down to Waitrose last Thrursday, driving a Range Rover sport.

You have to go up and down the mountains for 10 hours to get through to Medellin from Bogota.

But the scenery is incredible, it reminded me slightly of the winding roads of the South of France. Hairpin bends every 12 meters, as you look down the into a sheer drop of beautiful valleys. But the resemblance soon fades away when I look backwards and see the biggest encompassment of space I have ever seen. As I look to the horizon I can just about see beyond it at yet more miles of mountains and valleys. I just don´t think I´ve seen such a lot of land before.

The Bus driver is predictably insane, swerving across both tiny sides of the road at around 70km a hour, with minimal care about the large delivery trucks coming towards us. I knew I should have just sat at the back, and not directly behind the driver as my ticket stipulated.

One good thing about sitting in death seat 1 is I get a very close look at the trucks coming towards me and I witness a phenomenon that I thought was only seen in England:

The truck driver Mrs.

You seem them around the UK frequently, sitting in the cab next to the driver looking listless and bored, smoking fags, wearing hooped earings, and with their slippered feet up on the dashboard. But always looking quite fit for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that they were willing to sit there for 12+ hours while their fella delivered stuff all over the country, or it could of been the slightly slutty look about them, but I always found these girls quite hot.

And to see the Colombian version gave me a very gentle reminder of home. Then I sat through the film Taken in Spanish. Still a wicked film, even if it was in foreign.

Medellin is smaller than Bogota, but about 20 times prettier. Everything works and there´s a colour about the place, with art and installations dotted around the streets. I would say it´s the most polished city in Colombia.

I get to my hostel and it´s very very nice. It´s newly finished and feels like a boutique hotel, except that it´s being damaged slightly by overuse. Things always look nice until it gets used 20 times a day, then it looks broken.

There´s a free pool table, and as I´m not drinking this will become my home from home, rather than the bar.

Harry the parasite is in his final death throws, I can feel it because I feel loads better, that, and my toilet visits are down to single figures a day now. The temptation to drink is so overwhelming I feel like Ollie Reed, but I resolve to kill Harry before I give in to the drink.

This leads me to playing over 5 hours of pool a night, quickly becoming the most hated figure at Hostel Kiwi, but I never invented winner stays on, so it´s tough tits.

I make a new friend in the shape of James Woodmancy, a wonderful northern guy living in London. He will by the end of the week have inadvertantly come up with the catchphrase of the month after pulling a girl and bringing her back to the hostel.

When we both finally lose at pool we explore the town and take in a Pablo Escobar tour. This is a new tour that is blowing the competiton out of the water. After you´ve seen the normal sites provided by other tours (grave stone, house where he was shot, and the first mansion he built when he started making money) Tatiana (the tour operator, guide, and all round lovely person) takes you to Pablo´s brothers house, where Pablo stayed when he was on the run, and where he would host parties. You see loads of Pablo´s belongings, and then you meet and talk with his brother, which is fascinating. He was jailed for being part of Pablo´s gang and knows a lot about his brothers history.

As the tour goes on I can´t help myself and start butting into Tatiana´s speil, trying to add snippets of info and opinion. She takes it in good grace, and actually seems pleased somebody is taking an interest, but I sense the rest of the group is getting bored and pissed with my interjecting.

I can´t actually remember when I started being this annoying, I always used to shut up in public, unless it was to say something stupid or cuss someone else. Now my mouth runs off like a tap, and I vow to pull my neck in and shut up.

The tour finishes and we head to the hostel, about 10 minutes later Tatiana darts into the hostel, I assume to contiune with the light flirting from the tour. She strides to the table and I´m now convinced that she´s going to put it on me,

"One of you didn´t pay, and I need to pay the driver" are the first words out of her mouth.

Oh.

A guy called Max immediately replies

"That was me, I didn´t pay" in his flat Dutch accent.

He pays and Tatiana leaves. It´s a bit of a shitty end to the tour as we all kind of got on from the hostel, but if someone can do that, then it´s not dissimilar to him not paying for a meal when we go out, or ordering expensive courses just because he knows that we´re splitting the bill.

A 'group meal' tactic I have long hated by the way. Although I turn a blind eye to the 'drink more and make it cheaper on yourself' move, which I feel is justifiable and fair, especially with the friends I´ve got.

Saying that, that´s not as bad as when you go out for a group meal and someone has to say something like,

"Well, I only had the starter salad, and he had the chicken and drank more. And anyway, how much is sparkling water?"

You go out in a group, you pay in a group. If you want to pay alone, eat alone. Yes, it is unfair if you only have a starter, or if you´re not drinking, and if that is the case, don´t leave the house.

After this everyone goes out, to a bar where for 15 pounds you can drink for free until 1am. I don´t go as I´m not drinking, so I play pool with the resident pot smoker who doesn´t leave the hostel, and await the tales the following day.

Woodmancy´s pulled and looks pretty sheepish the following morning. He explains that the driver couldn´t find the hostel so he had to get out about 2 blocks from hostel.

His new lady wasn´t best pleased about the surprise early morning stroll in the rain, but Woodmancy styled it out by saying,

"circa, circa, tranquillo" in terrible Spanish, but with a monotone northern accent. It roughly translates as,

"it´s close, it´s close, calm down"

He gets her through the door and walks her to his 10 man dorm room. He opens the door and her face tells him enough to know that he will need to find alternative accomodation. After she politly declines the showers, toilet, cupboard, and roof, he eventually finds a private room unlocked and sets about it.

There are a few phrases or statements that I never thought would ever come out of my mouth, things like,

"I´ll have Carling/Fosters, I just don´t like the way stella tastes"
"Jade Goody's death was a real loss to Britain, and to society in general"
"Jordan is an excellent role model for women and children"
"I've always thought that George Bush's foreign policy was right on the money. And him doing 'what God told him to do' is a cracking way to run a superpower country"
"Michael McIntyre is one funny indivdual, and his hilarious and original statements about everyday life are spot on"
"He's much funnier than Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, or Micky Flanagan"
"I think reggeton has got a lot going for it musically"
"Sean is really good at pool"

One other statement I thought I'd never say did leave my lips on my penultimate day in Medellin,

"I am bored of staring at tits now"

They're everywhere in Medellin, mostly because it´s the surgery capital of Colombia. Tits, lips arses, faces, and near enough everything else has been sculpted in Medellin. There's even a right of passage that Colombian girls tend to follow, and it runs like this:

Breasts done at 16
Face injections at 18 to stop wrinkles
Arse implants for the 20 birthday

In that order, and all the time! It's mad, but you got to look though. Colombian women are some of the most beautiful women in the world, with or without the plastic.

After a long weekend of wandering the Medellin streets and trying to find parts of the city that are off the beaten track I get on a plane to Leticia, which sits on the border of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil.

And I FINALLY get to have a beer.

Bogota, rain, and family life in Colombia

I arrive in Bogota feeling refreshed and relaxed, and ready to explore a big city and learn a new language.

7 hours of unrelenting rain later I am vexed, bored, and not bothered about leaving my little hostel.

It rains a lot here, I´d say more than in Wales, and I never thought that was possible.

The difference between here and the coast is incredible. The fact that you can have such changes in weather conditions only 3 hours apart (by plane I admit) is quite something.

Anyway, on goes the gortex coat and off to see some museums.

Museums, like churches, have slowly turned from being the unbearable places my parents forced me to go to, to actually being places I find enthralling and enjoyable. Museums because of the interesting stuff, churches because of the beauty, grandeur, man hours involved in building, and the giant waste of time that they are as there is no god.

I visit the gold museum and see the gold that was stolen from the Lost City, as well as hundres of years worth of gold from all over Colombia.

These ancient tribes used gold frequently as pieces to adorn their robes and clothing during religous or spiritual periods or ceremonies. They never considered it as a precious metal and would use it freely. It never had a financial meaning then. It got me thinking as to why people today love it so much? it´s nothing special, just a metal, what good is it if the shit hits the fan anyway? you can´t eat it and it won´t help out if your house is being looted and burnt down by marauding hordes. It´ll just sit there, being gold coloured and heavy, until someone murders you, rapes your kids, and steals it because it´s ´gold´

I visit the Police museum and get my own private tour guide, Mr Diego Chaves. A lovely, friendly man who lived in NY for 7 years but has lost some of his English since moving back to Bogota. He insists,

"I can understand every word you say, I just find it hard to talk back to you"

So he and I wander around while I swear wildly at the 80 -100 children that have come to see the police museum on the same day as me. The little shits run around, only stopping to stare at me as if I was part of the museum. Honestly, you´d think these kids had never seen a small, ginger, one ear bigger than the other, wet, Welshman before in their lives!


And when I say stare, I mean stare like I did when I saw a group of Chinese downs kids dressed like Eminem, and then I had to be escorted from the shopping centre by security.

Diego sniggers and hides his face while I call them all c**ts, and I get cheered up when Diego tells me that for most young people in Colombia with no money it´s either the police or the army for them. Both of which are pretty shitty all told. I ask if Diego intends to climb the promotional ladder, and he says,

"you only move up if you can pay, in 15 years I may be able to be a first level sergent, but I will never go beyond that because I cannot pay"

It ´s quite sad that he knows that no matter how hard he works, he´ll never get further because he can´t pay someone to let him.

Diego takes me to the ´history of weapons´floor of the museum. What exactly the history of weapons has got to do with the police I´m not sure, and as I stand in front of a table of rocks, alongside a huge painting of neanderthal man throwing said rocks at each other, I start to think that maybe the Bogota Police have got too many rooms in this museum, and that they are ´filling out´the space.

This is confirmed when I get taken to the ´log book room´ which is basically all the police signing in books from the last 300 years.

The best rooms are in the basement, by which time some other English speakers have joined the 2 man group. We visit the ´torture´room and finally the Pablo Escobar section.

There´s his brothers Harley, with gold plated engine. Pablo´s gold and silver handguns, the clothes he was wearing the day he died, and loads of posters and surveillance equipment, paid for by the US, to hunt him down. I get a little overzelous and start answering peoples questions on Diego´s behalf, you know, cos his English isn´t very good. This goes well until Diego and I fall out over whether or not Pablo ever got voted in as a local MP, he says no, I say yes, it´s a little awkward, and everyone thinks I´m a jumped up little know all, and that I should shut up. A theme that continued 1 week later when I went on the Pablo tour in Medellin.

Anyway, it was a lovely day, and Diego invited me to go out with him on the weekend to show me around, but as I´d started my 2 week course of drugs to KILL Harry the parasite I declined.

After a week of Spanish lessons, rain, museums, Spanish lessons, and walking around, I decide to leave Bogota and go and stay with a family I met on the Lost City trek.

Marta and Manuel were in our group because Marta is a travel agent, and wanted to experience the lost city to see if it was suitable for her customers. She made Manuel come because he was off school that week. The poor bastard.

She invited all of us to come and stay with her and her family in Chia, about 20 minutes out of Bogota. I don´t think she ever thought that any of us would take her up on it, and she hid her dissapointment well when I called her.

But her welcome to me into her home and life was truly wonderful, and a highlight of my trip so far.

She lives on land that used to be her fathers farm. He sold off parts of the land in stages to buy a farm further out, as Bogota was growing closer and closer to Chia. But he kept plots of land for his family so now Marta lives in a house she built next door to her sister, who lives next to the brother, who lives next to the other sister, who lives next to the father, who lives opposite the mother.

They are amazing ramshackle houses, built by themselves in differing styles, but all beautiful. To have such a sense of family and communtiy in one area was something I´d not experienced before.

Marta took me to a family restaraunt that her cousin owned call ´él portico´. His farther had opened it as a small roadside steakhouse around 20 years previous. It was now a huge place, with 5 huge buildings for conferences and parties, with a bullring in the middle, a church to get married in, and loads of different rooms to have receptions, parties and all sorts in. It was quite a sight, and the food I ate was totally top draw.

That night Manuel was going to a 15th birthday party of a girl from his school. In Colombia the 15th birthday is the first big birthday, and people make a huge deal of it, booking big rooms with bands, food, and music. All oraganzied by the parents with invitations better than most wedding invites I´ve seen.

And no, I don´t mean the ones you designed. You know who you are.

As we drove into Botgota with Manuel and his date, it reminded me of the house parties that I threw around that age. Mostly behind my parents back.

They were drunken disasters, with young men doing childlike things to impress girls, while we all got smashed on cider and lager. People were jumping off the patio and into the flowerbeds, girls were being groped whilst unconcious, ornaments were being slightly smashed, and I was in the middle, hiding evidence quicker than the US goverment about 9/11.

Although my covering of the tracks wasn´t very good. A couple of months later, when the garden had grown into a jungle my Dad would be forced to get the grass trimmer out.

He´d wander into the house with yet another handful of crushed cans, looking perplexed and annoyed muttering,

"I just don´t know where they´re coming from"

"It´s the local kids throwing them over the fence Dad" I would confidently reply before hurtling to my room.

And I´d watch from the window, panic slowly rising inside me, as Dad wrestled to put in new plastic blades on the trimmer, knowing that he was about to fall upon the can equivalent of the Soham girls. minus the United shirts.

Then Dad would no longer be able to accept my ´local kids´theory, and that he would then also begin to realize why 1 crate of strongbow, 2 crates of lager, and some of his coin collection had all gone from the house in the last 2 months.

The following day we all go to watch the world cup final at a friend of Marta´s house.

Driving in Colombia is a particulary frightening exercise. The roads are not well maintained, so drivers lurch from one side of road to the next avoiding potholes, with very little concern about the traffic coming towards them. It´s similar to 2 drivers with Parkinsons playing a game of chicken. But without the fun aspect.

It´s a strange home entertainment set up in Colombian homes, as the TV is in the parents bedroom. or at least in the 4 family homes I visited.

So there´s 15 of us in these lovely peoples bedroom, the game finshes and the kids all dissapear to play and the adults sit around talking about art and holidays.

It then strikes me that I am stuck in a age vacum, I´m too old to play with the 17 year old lads upstairs, yet too young to talk with the adults about art, of course I´d be able to if I could speak Spanish but it´s still a very sobering realization.

So I sit there playing Angry Birds on my Iphone, occasionally answering questions in English about music.

I do sit and think about the family life here in Colombia, and talking to the parents of these lovely kids, you understand that the culture here is totally focused on the children, and making sure they have the best set up in life. And I knw that is the same all over the world, but being surrounded by it here, with these amazing people, makes me slightly jealous of their almost perfect way of life.

And to think that the German goverment still has Colombia on its ´don´t travel list´makes it all the more shocking.

My time is drawing to a close in Bogota, I just can´t stand the rain, and Medellin is calling me. Even though I can´t drink, and it´s considered one of the best party town in Colombia, I have plans for a jungle trip, so need to get through it and head out.

So off I go.