First Day in Cartagena

I finally took the time to do some more Colombian show and tell. Brace yourself for excitement, 'cause 5/9/07 is coming at you.

Now comes my favorite part of the little Colombian trip. Cartagena! (Here's its wikipage, and here's the map). While Bogota's weather was a bit cloudy, and cold enough to have to wear a sweatshirt occasionally, Cartagena was exactly the opposite. It is on the northern border of the country, and it sits next to the Caribbean. A sunny, beach filled place, Cartagena is a perfect tourist spot.

Colorful view of Bogota shortly after takeoff.

As soon as I had walked off the plane it was obvious that this place was much different from where I had been previously. A good illustration of this was the several uniformed employees waiting to help me carry my bags at the airport. One would walk up and ask me if they could carry my bags for me(I can only assume, as I had no clue what they were gibbering). I would say no, and they would reluctantly go away. This event repeated itself at least five times. Once we had finally gathered our luggage, we started out the door. One of those uniformed guys was not about to let us escape without giving someone money. He pretty much grabbed my rolling suitcase out of my hand and started carrying it toward our hotel shuttle.... all 20 steps. Then he stood and said "the tip is optional". Oh man, what a bastard. I think I gave him a dollar just to make him go away, but I was not happy about it.

Even in such a beautiful, touristy getaway, there weren't any non-Hispanic people around, so I felt like I was getting singled out to be hastled. One of the very few downsides of this great place is that everyone seems to be hanging around waiting for me and my wallet. I needed to brace myself when leaving a popular museum, because as soon as I was outside I would get ambushed by people getting in my face trying to sell me sunglasses or random trinkets. I admire their entrepreneurial spirit, but they definitely need to work on their marketing approach. I didn't care what they had, I just wanted to get away from them. Well, enough ranting...

We stayed at the Hotel Decameron in an area called Bocagrande. This section of the city is filled with tall hotels lining the beach. A bit farther inland the scene started to become just the usual urban setting, not much different than the neighborhoods I had seen in Bogota. The hotel itself was pretty excellent in part because it was all-inclusive. There were a couple of bars and restaurants on the property, as well as a few that they would shuttle you to if you asked. Our room had a ridiculously good view of the ocean and the old city, which sometimes made it hard to even want to go outside.

A feeble attempt of mine to get artsy with a shot of the resort.

Once we had dumped all of our luggage in the room, we were off to exploring. The boundaries of the historic "Old City" district were fairly obvious due to the large defensive walls surrounding it. Cartagena was pretty hardcore fortified by the Spanish to keep pirates and other baddies from preying on the city. The city was an important stop in the slave trade as well as commodities, and so became a nice target. The biggest visible part of the defensive structures is the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which not only is huge and mean looking, but takes forever to say. A two pronged defense plan.

Close to one of the entrances in the high walls surrounding the city, stands Pedro de Heredia, who founded Cartagena in 1533. (Notice that my picture is better than the one in the link... Booyah, Wikipedia!)

Some giant Colombian colors flying over the fort.

The old colonial defenses are a big part of Cartagena's heritage, and the fort is the center piece. The most interesting part of the fort is supposed to be the labyrinth of tunnels that run beneath it. I think that they were used both to confound enemies as well as store weapons and supplies. I imagined that some pickpocket was waiting for me in this dark maze, so I chickened out and wouldn't go very far inside.

This is where someone was waiting to beat me and take my money.

I don't recall the significance of these things... I think that they are the "traveler's shoes" or something along those lines. Nice view of the fort in the background, though.

"Oh McDonald's, wherever I am, you're always there for me with your sweet, sweet unhealthiness"

More coming up!

Robbery!

It has been a rough couple of days. A couple days ago someone broke into our garage and stole a bunch of stuff. Our old house that we are in the process of cleaning/selling has a separate two car garage in back, and it seems that someone just busted the door in and helped themselves to lawnmowers, a bike, maybe more. My childhood neighborhood isn't what it used to be, so I guess its good that we are getting the heck out of there. Anyway, I suppose it is fortunate that it didn't happen at our current residence.

Angelica got turned down a second time for a visa to come back to work in Carlinville, so it looks like she won't be coming back any time soon. Her experience has definitely educated me about our current visa application process, at least as it applies to Colombia. First, one has to pay for the government's permission to apply for permission to work in the US. Then, each time she applies, she has to buy a sort of pin number. Then she has to pay for a phone call to schedule an appointment for an interview. Then the interview itself costs around 100 dollars. She said that this time the line to get to her interview was around 5 hours long. Then comes the really bad part. An interview with one of the consulate people. Imagine paying all of those fees, waiting in line all that time, just to have a 5 minute interview with a bureaucrat through a prison-like glass wall with the aid of an intercom. Pretty rough stuff. Here is the website for the US embassy in Colombia... I'm considering whether I should write someone and complain.

In order to get my Japanese student visa, I had to send one sheet of paper to the consulate in Chicago along with my passport. A few weeks later they sent me back my passport with a visa inside, just like magic. I guess being an American does provide a few advantages.

Here's some random entertainment. This is what seems to be an Indian ripoff of the Thriller music video. Its so bad, its good. Enjoy.

Christmas in May

My lone free day during my Michigan work trip ended up being much more interesting than I had figured. During our 8 hour long drive to the customer's site, we saw billboard after billboard advertising for a place called Frankenmuth, MI. That much advertising on a highway could mean one of two things. Either the place is really desperate and lame, or really cool. I just had to go and discover which.

This place is crazy. It has around 5,000 residents, so not a large place in any respect. The majority of the downtown area is built to look like a German hamlet. Everything is covered in that brown and white checkered pattern people use when they want to seem authentically European. It seems that the city has some sort of "everything you build has just got to be fake German" law in place, as even a nearby convenience store was quaint looking. While this place does flirt with cheesiness, there are enough quality things to check out that I was willing to forgive its shortcomings.

Kinda cool. The place did give me a few childhood Germany flashbacks.

Since I didn't have to work this particular day, I slept pretty liberally through most of the morning. So, the first thing that I was concerned with once I arrived was food. I at a massive restaurant called Zehnder's. The building (buildings?) had multiple levels, including a giftshop and a small food court kind of place. The wikipedia site boasts that it can seat 1,500 people. Rather than wait at the end of one of several good size lines, I opted to skip all that and just walk right up to the bar and eat. Good chicken there...

Zehnder's

After eating I walked around the town a bit, but my tolerance for silly little gift shops is pretty low. There was a few cheese shops, some sausage places.. candy shops... just like Germany! The city boasted in several places that it had a sister city in Germany. I thought to myself, what sort of self-hating person would travel all the way from Europe to hang out in a fake version of the place that they had just left.

The next place on my list was the place that had been advertised all along the highway a few days before. The place that helped to bring fame to this small town in the middle of nowhere. The one and only Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, the largest Christmas store in the world!! Hehe. That's one thing I can finally cross off of my life goal list. This place is ridiculous. I'm not really even that interested in describing it. Its giant, like 1 and a half football fields worth of all the Christmas stuff ever assembled. Its open all year round... and its big. So big that they hand out maps of the place at the door. And thats that. Once I was thoroughly having the It's a small world after all shivers, I had to rush out of that town back into the dirty, harsh world that I know and love.

Deep in the jungle that is the Christmas store.

Giant Santa: Check



I barely escaped the cheerful clutches of this place with my sense of sarcasm intact.

Up next: the thrilling conclusion of my Colombian odyssey.

Saginaw

Today is my third day in the city of Saginaw, MI. With about 60,000 residents, it is a fairly average place from what I've seen so far. Yesterday me and my coworker toiled for almost a 12 hour day at the customer's site. This trip involves replacing an old server with a new one, and moving all of the old information over. Its not very exciting, so I won't get into specifics. The sight of the old server left an impression on me, though. It was installed around a decade ago, and is the size of a large mini-fridge, only deeper. We had to open it up to do some drive switching, and I just had to take a couple shots of what it looked like inside. I believe that this machine has experienced some unspeakable things.

You know on tv, when someone digs up a coffin and opens it up for whatever reason? They sort of hold a rag to their face, and recoil for a few moments. Same sort of thing happened here.

Shudder.

So, these guys were definitely due for an upgrade. Anyway, today I don't have to go in, so I'm considering my options. It looks like the closest trip to the Canadian border would take less than 2 hours, but I think that I am feeling a bit too lazy for that. We will have to see what happens.

More Colombia Chronicles

Now, on with day 4, the 8th of May. It was a very foggy morning, which was unfortunate because the place I was about to go next was known for its great view of the city. We took a beautiful cable car ride to the top of Monserrate Hill(wikipedia has a pretty complete page on this... considering it is a hill in South America... wikipedia is so great...). During the little cable car's long climb to the top of the hill, we could see parts of the faint foot trail to the top. As the top features a 17th century church, many pilgrims show their devotion by climbing up this dangerous looking path. It was raining lightly on this particular day, so I didn't get to see anyone struggling up the steps.

Here's a nice shot while we are awaiting our cabled chariot from the sky.

A foggy view of downtown Bogota.

The city is slowly being sucked up by the mists.

Once at the top, we had a nice lunch at Saint Clair's House restaurant. We sat by one of the many large windows so that we could continue to enjoy the view through the clear patches in the deep haze that hung over the city below. Apparently the house was built in some other town, but it was later moved to the top of this hill. Why you would move a house up what is almost a mountain, not to mention how, was not explained, but still entertaining to imagine. I had a glass of wine that was warmed up with spices, the taste of the alcohol is strengthened, but so was the flavor and aroma of the wine.

Here's a view of the restaurant. Notice the giant religious statue on the hill in the distance.

After a light lunch, we continued to what is the main attraction of the hill, the little chapel. The Colombians have an interesting way of depicting religious characters. While we generally just have white statues of saints and whatnot, the statues that I saw here were much more graphic, and a lot less peaceful looking. The statue of Jesus at this small church was almost too much to look at. The skin was the color of a man who had spent his life under a harsh sun. His crown of thorns caused blood to run down over his face. It looked like more of a wax replica than a statue.

An outside area of the church is covered in small plaques. When people pray to the scary Jesus statue, and get what they want, they buy a thank you stone and place it here.

After another fun ride on the sky ride, we were ready to continue our exploration of downtown Bogota. One of the big things I was interested in seeing was a bull fight. Apparently the Spanish tradition has a firm footing in this country as well. Unfortunately there is only a short season for the fights.. Oh well, something to look forward to I guess. One of the most interesting sites on the whole trip was near the bull fighting ring. The Museo del Oro(Museum of Gold) contains countless examples of golden artifacts crafted by Pre-Hispanic peoples. At times, the level of detail that these people put into their work was amazing. If one can make generalities, many of the artifacts fell into two groups. Some were for emphasizing the power of the ruler at the time, making him seem more stable and awe inspiring. Things such as large breastplates and masks could make a normal person seem like a god. The other large group of artifacts revolved around the shamans of the civilizations. The gold figures depicted the powers of the shamans, and the terrifying creatures that they could transform themselves into. With our little audio guide/players, we walked around to each of the cases and listened to an explanation, by the time we got to the second floor though, the sheer mass of information and material there causes us to wander and only listen to the especially interesting exhibits.

An interesting side note. The legend of El Dorado, the lost city of gold, originated from stories about these gold covered people living in present day Colombia.

A popular motif in the leaders' accessories was the jaguar.

Here are a couple of implements for the use of coca leaves. They are shaped to symbolize man and woman.

Some pretty excellent headgear.

At one point in the museum, I turned and realized that a small group of school children were standing motionless and staring at me. Among other mumblings, "where are you from?" seemed to be the question coming from them. I replied with a deep "Estados Unidos". Angelica said that their next question was "where is that?". I think that this is a nice illustration of the situation in the country. Even in Bogota, a city of over 6 million inhabitants, I rarely saw a white person. I think that until just recently, tourists have avoided this place because of the threats involved. The fact that the government has been pushing the crazies farther away from the popular areas means that this place will be crawling with annoying foreigners in no time, for better or worse. In the mean time though, I can enjoy being an oddity in a strange land.

After another long, but satisfying day, it was time to go back to Angelica's home and do some quick packing for our next excursion. More on that next time.

A Colombian airport is quite a large pile of confusion.

Having spent some time in such a wonderful place makes my current reality a bit more harsh. After sitting in my little gray box for a week, its time for my weekend reward. Tomorrow starts an over 8 hour drive trip to Saginaw, MI. Ought to be cold and dull. Exciting.