Maybe I´m just losing my mind because I´m traveling by myself at the moment. Each day is filled with many superficial encounters that are mainly centered around food, water and shelter. The pueblo Colombian´s are nice enough but I´m really not sure what they talk about amongst themselves. They are mainly relaxing in front of their houses like the families on the weekends in the ghettos of Anaheim. Waking up at 6am in Cartagena to rain was all it took for me to postpone my departure another day. I ended up going to a free tango show and violin recital and getting mixed up in a sticky 90201 travel romance drama all at the same time.
Caption: ¨Tango from Argentina in Colombia.¨
Caption: ¨Cameras and microphones always make things look more important than things really are.¨
Caption: ¨Violin recital.¨Here´s the quick wrap up and you can tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 on how big of an asshole I am. I met a nice half Canadian/Swiss girl on the beach in Playa Blanca. Our first conversation took place skinny dipping in the ocean while swimming in bio-phosphorescence. Each time you move, whether it´s your arms or legs deep under, you leave a glowing trail of sparkles like Peter Pan covered in Pixie dust. Add a joint and a hooch mix passed around made out of rum, vodka and wine and you can get the idea of how amazing swimming in the liquid murky covered in glittering stars under the moon with a naked girl.
The girl is 24, we hit it off magically probably more to blame on the atmosphere, wild life and chemicals swimming both over and under our skin. She arrives without a place to sleep and luckily I have a hammock to share that´s just a 2 km walk down the beach. We spend a hot sticky and mostly sleepless night trying to get comfortable in the hammock covered by a mosquito net after I got bored playing kissy face with someone that kissed like a 16 year old. I´m saved by the sun at 6am and walk her halfway down the beach so I can get back to my hammock alone to get an hour of sleep because the night before I had slept only an hour underneath a table with a dog.
Caption: ¨Playa Blanca, where the magic happens.¨ 
Caption: ¨Beach camping and cooking. I spent less than 5 dollars a day while there.¨Long story longer, I end up having dinner with this girl when I get back to Cartagena the following night and I really get to know her, sober. Wow, did that suck. She is as cute as a bug´s ear and nice. Too nice. So apologetically nice that you wonder if she has any personality besides nice. Picture out of control shoulder shrugging and big smiles all night to any comment made as if she didn´t understand English, but yet she does. Yes, it was bad. It turns out that another girl I met through Couchsurfing wants to meet at 8pm so I have to make her flotsam and jetsam but quick. I tell her I´m feeling tired and that we need to find her a taxi. She drags her feet around the city looking for a taxi and I now have ants in my pants. 8.25pm and I feel a weight has been lifted as her taxi pulls away.
Just before she got into the taxi she says, ¨I´m going to miss you¨.
My knee-jerk response is a confused, ¨Huh?¨
I head to the plaza to meet the Colombian CS girl. I see her sitting next to two people that are friends with the Canadian/Swiss girl from where we met on the beach skinny dipping. Are you kidding me? Bad luck. We have beers together and chat in what ends up being a group of about 10 of us. The next night, at the Tango/Violin Recital you´ll never guess who is there. Yep, just my luck. Canada/Switzerland. She is happy but I can tell physically nervous to see me. She hands me a piece of bread to share and her hands are trembling. Jesus. So sweet and nice. After the show I´m looking to leave with the least amount of awkwardness, but she catches me.
¨So, I thought you were leaving this morning,¨ she says.
¨Ah, it was raining when I woke up. Any excuse to stay in Cartagena another day. And it worked out. I got to see a free tango show tonight. I´m probably definitely leaving tomorrow,¨ I lightheartedly reply.
Um...did you go out last night after I took the taxi?¨ she asks with these doe-like eyes.
¨Ah,¨ was my quick thinking reply.
¨Because my friends texted me saying they were having drinks with you last night,¨ she continues.
¨Yep, I did,¨ was my cold and confident reply, now that I know I´m caught
¨Did you happen to run into them or did you plan it,¨and she wont stop with the questions.
Well, if she´s going to put me in a corner.¨Ah, ya, it was a couchsurf meet up,¨ why not tell her now that she is digging for dirt.
¨Oh, I would have come back but the taxi ride was too expensive to go home, then back to the center, then back home,¨ was her reply.
What? She would have come. Oh, that would have been even better. At this point I realize she is still in denial and again, far too sweet. I find a pin-sized opening in the conversation and get the hell out of the Tango Hall with a quick parting beso on the cheek. Now how big of an ass am I? We smooched in the hammock but nothing more. I didn´t feel like I owed her anything, nor her to me anything. I was nice, and fine until I got caught in my own tangled web.
Thank god the weather was nice the next day and I could leave at 7am without any problems. To fill you in on a few quick boring biking tales. I ended up arriving 96km at 2pm at my final destination. I learned a few important tips. The body is a machine. Water is the oil and food is the gasoline. Gatorade is not food. I didn´t eat all riding except for a light breakfast and a banana during the entire 7 hour ride. By 1.30 I had bonked. I couldn´t turn the pedals over. I was exhausted by heat, and what I figured out later, a lack of food. I have now begun eating a breakfast, three lunches (one every two hours) and a dinner. The hunger is fierce. I can eat a bumper off a moving car.
The next day, I took it easy cause my tires sounded like bubblegum stuck on my shoe during a summer day in a Ralph´s asphault parking lot. It was hot. I ended up rolling into a pueblo called Ovejas. I should have just kept going when I asked the kids if they served, ¨almuerzo¨(lunch) and they took the piss of my Spanish accent. It went downhill from there. After having lunch surrounded by 6 kids asking me questions or just watching me put spoon fulls of food in my mouth I checked into one of the darkest, most miserable rooms I have ever visited. One of the kids that showed me to my room made the universal sign of finger in the hole sign for sex, and motioned his head to the 17 year old cleaning girl with Michellin man rolls. I said no thanks.
Then before I could close the door another younger girl came up to ask me to give her a 1000 pesos. Sorry, no. And I locked myself in my bug infested room.
Caption: ¨Ovejas bathroom. No running water. Bucket of water and cup for a shower. You can´t see the mosquitoes but they are there. Prisoners have better amenities. This can be yours too for only 4USD a night, and I still was over charged.¨ The next 5 hours were like being on house arrest. I wanted to leave my room cause it was a super heated shit box, but when I left I saw the boys conspiring to steal my shit. Normally I wouldn´t give it a second thought but there was a giant opening on the ceiling of my shit box that could be climbed over from the next room, which was empty and had a well placed chair against the wall.
I also learned a valuable lesson. Never ever never ever get a Hospedaje (place to sleep) near a bar, and especially not a bar that is blasting music all day and night. In Colombia, as I have noticed in other Latin countries, they have two settings for their music: Off, or Full blast, turned to 11 and getting their money´s worth out of those shitty tinny speakers that can´t handle that much power.
Needless to say, my shit box was right in blasting range. I wore some ear plugs to read outside my room until it got dark. By 8pm I just wanted to finish my dinner and crawl into bed and forget this day had ever happened, but it would not be that easy. While having dinner the owner sat down with me, then two more 17 year old girls joined us. The three of them got to watch me eat, again, and then the dessert was to be one of these girls, according to the owner. I said politely no, for the 5th time (that´s an average of a solicitation per hour. Ovejas, a great place.)
Apparently no one says no to these lovely ladies in this town cause then one of them starts bitching me out with all the sass of a Latina, ¨What?! You don´t like what you see?!¨. This is when I get up, turn my back and say I have a girlfriend in Europe as I gingerly make my way to my room and lock myself in with the mosquitoes.
If you are ever biking in Colombia, give the little pueblo Ovejas a miss.
