*Desto3 thanks guest poster, Lynne Shaw, for her travelogue content.

The city of Cartagena, Cartagena de Indias in Spanish, is a port located on the northern coast of Colombia, with a population of about a million. It is the fifth-largest city in Colombia. Economic activities include the maritime and petrochemicals industries, as well as tourism.

Cartagena is a lovely city. It is a combination of colonial elegance and tropical Caribbean fun. Historically, Cartagena was an important port for the slave trade, and the abundance of riches made it a perfect target for pirates. The British, French and Spanish forces were there to share in the booty, and the Spanish built lavish fortifications which still survive today. The old section of the city, the Ciudad Amurallada, is surrounded by perfectly preserved 12 foot walls that can be walked on and enjoy views of sandy beaches and blue ocean. The city itself has narrow, flower lined cobblestone streets and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Nearby is La Boquilla, a small fishing village a few miles north of Cartagena.  Driving there, the inequality of the people is very apparent.  On the ocean side of the road are huge, high-rise luxurious condominium complexes, and on the other side of the road are mangroves filled with shanties.  The condominiums stopped just short of La Boquilla. Then suddenly, the paved roads turned to sand with low-rise shabby housing and outdoor fish restaurants in varying stages of disrepair with mismatched tables and chairs. In La Boquilla there was a band of well-known Columbian musicians who perform professionally, mostly at music festivals.  They play indigenous instruments, the most unusual being the “gait.”  If you’re curious as to what it sounds like, you can listen to them play on you tube: “El Leon Pardo.”

For a price, tourists can ride a “chiva,” in Cartagena, a brightly painted psychedelic open air bus. Beer is included as well as listening to a very loud 3 piece traditional band sitting in the back of the bus. Everyone in Cartegena yells, waves at the chivas, and cheers the bus on, wanting to join the fun.

*Desto3 thanks guest poster, Lynne Shaw, for her travelogue content.

The Colombian coffee Region (Spanish: Eje Cafetero), also known as the Coffee Triangle, is a part of the Colombian Paisa region in the rural area of Colombia, famous for growing and production of a majority of Colombian coffee, considered by many to be the best coffee in the world. There are three departments in the area: Caldas, Quindío and Risaralda. The most visited cities are Manizales, Armenia and Pereira. Pereira is the largest town in the coffee region, a 35 minute flight from Medellin.

Colombia is the third top producer in the world, after Brazil and Vietnam. There are several former coffee plantations that have been converted to haciendas for those who want to visit the region and learn about the coffee making process. One of the best is Hacienda Castilla, dating back to 1716.

The whole area is very lush and tropical, with many beautiful haciendas, well-preserved villages, and of course, great coffee. The area seems relatively untouched by tourism. The coffee region was spared the domestic conflicts of the past decades; no para-military, no guerrillas, just a few drug lords.

One can visit a real working plantation and hacienda nearby, owned by the family of Jesus Martin. Demonstrations are given there about the first few steps in processing the coffee. The separation of the beans inside the “cherry, and then the soaking and the drying of the beans. The rest of the steps are done in a small factory in a nearby town. I learned the difference between “good” and “bad” beans, and was given a pail and guided into the trees to pick only the good berries. I worked in a group of 4, and after 30 minutes, our group had picked 1.5 lbs of beans for a grand total of about $0.10 in salary. Our reward, however, was a delicious buffet lunch served under shade trees and wonderful Colombia Arabica coffee for dessert.

Where is “Juan Valdez,” the iconic personification of Colombian coffee, I wondered?  I was very disappointed to hear that the cowboy I remember from the early days of TV was not Colombian at all, but a Cuban actor. Lo and behold, a perfect facsimile of Juan was standing on a corner with two donkeys loaded down with coffee, waiting to have his picture taken with the tourists. It turned out that he was the perennial winner of the Juan Valdez look alike contest held each year.

*Desto3 thanks guest poster, Lynne Shaw, for her travelogue content.

Mention Medellin, Colombia to any relatively initiated world traveler, or any movie fan and they will tell you that Medellin’s claim to fame comes from its fifty year history as the virtually exclusive source of the world’s cocaine. Coca leaves are easy to grow compared to food crops so it became the crop of choice for many Colombian farmers when the demand rose in response to the extravagantly creative ways that the drug cartels could export cocaine out of the country. The conflict and violence surrounding the drug trade and drug cartels dominated Columbian life for five decades.

Pablo Escobar is probably one of the most notorious drug lords of the 1980’s. During his reign, car bombs and kidnapping were an everyday occurrence in Medellin. A familiar pattern emerged that saw territory in the region commandeered by both the para-military and the cartels. Many people were displaced. In fact, one-fifth of the entire population of Colombia experienced some level of displacement during the height of the drug trade.

This just in: The FORMER cocaine capital of Medellin, Colombia has been rehabbed. The Wall Street Journal has declared it the third most innovative city in the world, next to NYC and Tel Aviv. Big T-Terrorism is now Big T-Tourism thanks to visionary social policies. Slums where police once feared to tread are now linked to innovative businesses and culture by cable cars, a metro train, and a series of escalators. The downtown is filled with skyscrapers, avant-garde architecture and art filled public parks. Big industries including banking, textile manufacturing and fashion have made Medellin home.

What made this all possible?  A recent “60 Minutes” episode traces the story of the rehabilitation of Medellin to a massive government sponsored campaign in the hands of Madison Avenue PR professionals. The ad men targeted the guerrillas, para-military and drug cartel members, many of whom had been recruited as young as 8 years old. Often referred to as “cradle assassins”, these players in the drug trade drama continued to live in the outlying areas with virtually no experience with “normal” life outside the drug wars. Madison Avenue simply posted flyers in the jungle where they continued to live featuring photos of family members and entreaties to come home. They also hung banners offering blanket pardons, saying “all would be forgiven, just come home”. Another incentive dropped thousands of soccer balls. Little by little the combatants in the drug wars were lured back to their communities. The government also instituted massive educational efforts to educate the general population on the importance of forgiveness and inclusion.

Now you can visit the “most dangerous commune, in the most dangerous city, in the most dangerous country in the world” by riding up a series of escalators. Today, this neighborhood is a popular tourist attraction. Stations at the top of each escalator provide narratives and contrasting photographs of what “it” was like in the past and what “it” looks like now. Where once it was completely dominated by para-military and guerrilla forces fighting it out, now it’s a peaceful place where art has helped to heal their troubled history. Beautiful murals painted onto the building walls tell the history of the community. Murals featuring the images of crying women, as well as symbols of love and elephants remind the people to never forget the past so it will not repeat.

The countryside outside of Medellin is full of beautiful green hills with plentiful livestock and crops. The local population traditionally stop for “Onces” (from the word for 11), a time when all work stops and Colombians take a coffee break (kind of like the “fika” for Swedes). Continuing on past the verdant fields you come to a series of man made lakes formed by the damming of a river to provide a large area of rural Colombia with hydroelectric power. Boats tour one of the largest of the lakes in which islands have big gorgeous homes along the shore.  Some of the mansions belonged to the most notorious drug lords. Our boat cruised slowly by the home once owned by Pablo Escobar, now a bombed out shell. The legend, given in a narrative similar to one you might hear on a bus tour of movie star homes, describes the destruction of Pablo’s mansion by a bomb planted under his daughter, Manuela’s, bed by a rival cartel. (The family was not in the house at the time of the bombing.) A gazebo where Pablo once smoked marijuana to relax from a hard day of drug trafficking was visible from the passing boat. (Pablo was not known to be a user of his own product, but locals say he did like his ganja.)

The colorful little town of Guatapé is located on the outskirts of Medellín situated on the reservoir created by the Colombian government for a hydro-electric dam, built in the late 1960s. This quaint town is the gathering place for “Las Vegas”, or the small farms of the area. It is also a growing area of recreation for citizens of Medellín, and aims to be a tourist destination for foreign travellers. New resorts, several restaurants, and rental homes along the lake are popping up for visitors. The unique tile work along the façade of the lower walls of each building in bright colors and dimensioned images are tied to the products sold by the shops, or the beliefs of the residents. Others are cultural images of the farming heritage of the community.

Medellin is currently the most liberal city in Colombia and as such, it is known to be very gay-friendly.  It is also reported to be a major plastic surgery destination and home to the most body-enhanced women in the world – a result of “narco aesthetics”. They have a saying that claims, “There are no ugly women in Medellin, only cheap husbands.”

*Desto3 thanks guest poster, Lynne Shaw, for her travelogue content.

Colombia (Spanish spelling, a popular t-shirt reads ‘It’s Colombia, not Columbia’) is a country in the midst of a cultural renaissance with a very friendly and resilient population. Only 2% of Colombians are indigenous. Contrast that percentage with neighbors in Bolivia whose indigenous population is closer to 50% of the population. The capital city of Colombia is Bogata, home to 33 million inhabitants. Bogota enjoys rank of the third-highest elevation in South America (after Quito and Sucre), at an average of 2,640 metres (8,660 ft) above sea level.

Medical care and educational benefits are accorded to the population based on an elaborate caste system which assigns every citizen at birth to a number between one and six that corresponds to the strata that will determine both the cost and benefits for health services and schooling. Your assignment depends upon your address and a change of residence will automatically result in a change in your status. It is impolite to ask what stratum a person belongs to, however, the strata are far more apparent at the coast where the wealth inequality is the greatest.

In the heart of the old city is the Hotel d’ Opera, converted into a hotel from a beautiful old building that was once the opera house. This area called Candelabra is where government buildings dominate Simon Bolivar Square, and a pedestrian street features artists, singers, dancers, and jugglers. Not far from the hotel a cable car ascends 10K ft to a 17th century church which was once the destination for supplicants who got there on their knees. It’s currently forbidden to get there via knee so the faithful now load their shoes up with stones and walk to the top to provide adequate suffering. The peak offers a commanding view of the city, with a requisite “rue de la crappola” offering all manner of souvenirs, religious and otherwise. Lots of food stalls sell local delicacies and a popular adult beverage known as “aguardiente nectar” – roughly translated, “fire-water”.

Colombia is second only to Holland in exportation of flowers, sold also on the streets by the locals at Bogota’s flower market. The variety and colors were fantastic. Next to the flower market is the food mercado.  One can sample all the exotic fruits like pitaya (dragon fruit), soursop (guava/banana), feijoa (pineapple/guava), mangosteen and lulo (no translation). Also sold are yucca (manioc) bread, avena (Colombian oatmeal), and delicious lechone (pork, cut from the whole roasted pig, and mixed with rice). Very close by there is a “red light district” where the women stand on the sidewalks wearing very little.  Seems prostitution is “legal” in that there is no one to police it.

One of the most popular games in Columbia is called Teja, typically played in a huge back room of small restaurants where men drink beer while playing the game. It is very rare to see women there (the unrinals are open and in the middle of the room…a clue). The game is played by throwing a very heavy disk (kind of like the game of horseshoes) at a small circle surrounded by small packets of gun powder.  The idea is to get the disk in the middle for the most points, or, for less points, hit a packet of gunpowder to make a deafening loud gunshot sound. Heavy objects thrown around by drunk people in the vicinity of small quantities of gun powder: what could be more fun?