Scuba and the Offical Welcome to Colombia

One event begets the next. It´s strange how a seemingly insignificant event can start the dominos dropping. In this case it was sharing a hostal room in Taganga a week ago with a 45 year old woman from Bogota who had two kids, one 30 and one 27. Please do the quick math on that one. Well, we became friends, if you count me fighting sleep late night to listen to her ramble on and on in Spanish about her life reconfirming to me that all women around the world love to talk without picking up on the clues on whether or not that person is in the mood or mental state to talk. This one-sided friendship ended up bearing fruit, going to show that well timed ¨ah¨ and ¨qué fuerte¨ is all it takes to bond with some people.

Caption ¨Tanganga. Where the welcoming happens.¨

The first fruit bore when she brought me to her friend´s restaurant with the smallest, best tasting burritos found in Colombia until now. I became friend´s with the owner of the place, Carolina, and then left to the Crackpackers Lost City tour (see last episode). I returned from the couples intense retreat - couples from Ireland, Germany, and Australia - and was ready to do an underwater therapy session known as scuba in Parque de Tayrona. Nothing is more relaxing for me than floating upside, slowly breathing and watching your bubbles climb through 60 feet of water. Screw looking at the fish, I want to feel like a fish. I float around like a dead belly-up seal with a giant grin for most of the time, only to look around to find my guide every few minutes.

When asked by the Dive Instructor when was the last time I dove I told him about a year ago. So I watched a 20 minute refresher video that covered the important dive pointers like, ¨FACT, PADI divers have more fun than normal people,¨ while showing divers doing hula dancing moves under water. Awesome. I´m prepared.

Caption: ¨Relaxed, happy fishies.¨

Before I realize it I am sitting on a rocking boat with all my gear and realizing that I have not scuba dived in at LEAST 3 years, probably more. I jump into the water, do my own safety check from what I could remember of my Open Water Course from 6 years ago and notice there is a hole in my BCD. I tell the instructor and he says, don´t overinflate it or it could rupture but it should be ok. (For those that do not know, the BCD is a vest that you wear that inflates with air to keep you aloat in the water. If it ruptures you are a lead bowling ball underwater:) At this point my head is spinning and he gives the sign to go down.

Well, here goes nothing.

So I go down and about 10 feet down I have a panic attack. First of all I hardly remember shit from the course and second of all I have a hole in my BCD. Underwater panic is a special sort of panic. You start thinking you can´t breathe properly and you basically freak out and you can hear your heart like a kick drum in your head. I start swimming to the surface. Bye bye group that is already down below on the sea floor.

At the surface there are rough seas and I´m getting rag-dolled. On top of that I have to keep inflating my BCD to stay afloat on top of the water because of the hole. I took a couple of calming breaths. Relaxed myself for two mintues, focused and went back down to meet the group. It was one of those defining life moments. I was able to overcome, get a hold of myself, and get down there and even relax down there for 45 min. That was a mini-everest for me. I left the ocean feeling like a new man.

Later that afternoon over yet another burrito I came across the second fruit that had ripened while I had been in the Lost City, Carolina´s visting friend, Angela, a funny youthful-eyed 27 year old Colombian girl from Calí (a city south of Bogota). Now I don´t get it either, but girls seem to be intrigued by little dirty curley-haired guys traveling by bicycle. I even tell them that I don´t think I´m strong enough to make it but I´m going to try anyway. They tend to agree and tell me that I´m crazy, as we have all already agreed upon.

Well, things happen quickly, especially when you´re moving on the following day. We chatted it up over lunch and I went to run some errands like buying 5 liters of water in giant plastic bags and price-gouged in various other stores due to being a foreigner.

Caption: ¨Not a tourist.¨

Later that night, over a single beer and a single baby-arm sized joint filled with weed from the Cogi tribe in the mountains surrounding the Lost City, we got to know each other better along with some people that happened to be in the bar area of the restaurant.

One of the characters was this black Colombian from Bogota who had just finished a 3 day binge of partying. His nose ached and his nerves were frayed shown by the constantly twitching forehead and over-blinking of his eyelids. You could see him calming down following each exhale of the dragon-like plume of smoke. He got into the mood of telling stories of ¨the good days¨ when his coffe table was literally tiled in silver and gold and covered in piles of coke. It was a time when the indoor parties would last one week straight, were so long and so intense, according to him, it would turn a black man white. The guy was, and to me still is, the king of party. He told story after story until I was in the clouds riding that dragon just mentioned.

When the dragon finally dropped me off back in the bar I found myself with Angela again and with the dilema of where to go. She didn´t want to stay at her place and normally the owners of hostels do not let people bring in ladies due to security issues. More on this later. We go back to my place and the hostel owner lets her in with me, which is a miracle in of itself, but then I find the angles are watching me (well, I was with Angela after all...) because there is no one else sharing my dorm room. Just me and the official Colombian welcoming commitee.

Now I have heard stories about Colombian women. They, like other latin ladies, are known to be a handful in bed. But surely it can´t be that different from Spain. Let me say that this particular lass had two settings...one setting was a blender turned on HIGH and the other setting was Hurricane Ike. Sweet jesus. I´m just glad I got to sleep that night with all the bits and pieces in the same spot they started the day. We passed out sweaty and satisfied, although if there were more condoms around, and thank God there were not, I would have shook hands with death.

I woke up in the morning and noticed that all my stuff (iPod, camera, and cash) were still there but that she was gone. Thank God, I wasn´t robbed blind, but I knew her through someone, but this is Colombia and I figured all good stories ended horrible here. I was then awoken by a rap at the door. It was the owner of the hostal and I reflexively told him that I would pay for the extra visitor last night. He says nothing about it and tells me there was an artisan bag taken last night (filled with the usual hippy bead making stuff, string, endangered eagle talons from the amazon rain forest and other items impossible to replace like a crystalized coral snake eyeball that have no financial worth to us but to these hippies it means their livelyhood.)

Caption ¨The hostel owner. You can tell he does not believe me.¨
Caption: ¨The hostel´s valuable reputation was on the line. This is the street where it is located.¨

The owner, of course, blames it on the girl. I tell him that she didn´t rob me but he either doesn´t believe me or doesn´t care and he tells me I have to talk to the Brazilian man who lost his bag. This Brazilian artisan (someone who travels all over South American by making bracelets and earrings to support himself) is a great guy that can somehow live on 90 cents a day. To give you a visual of what he looks like, imagine Lou Diamond Philips had a baby with another Lou Diamond Philips, then tanned for 6 years, wore no shirt, and wore a necklace with various animal teeth hanging from around his neck.

Luckily I had ¨bro´ed¨ out with this guy earlier by smoking him out earlier. Now we talked and he itemized each precious gem lost and I did genuinely feel bad, and at the same time I was planning a quick escape in the rain on my bike for the bus station 10km away as soon as possible. I told him sorry without mentioning anything regarding the girl, which of course he knew about, and I gifted him a tennis ball-sized sack of the Cogi weed.

As I said, the guy is cool and has a certain presence, like a shaman in his appreticeship stage. I think he hypnotizes ladies and gets them to do whatever he wants.The guy returns 5 minutes later while I´m frantically packing by bags and gives me a necklace he made while the hostal owner is watching. I´m thinking that either this is the coolest guy and he has forgiven me (we are yet to know who is at fault), or he has put a hex on this necklace so I end up under some truck tires before nightfall. I´m so scatter brained I don´t know what to think but I walked over to the hostal owner, because right then seemed like a good time, and I tell the owner that me and the Brazilian guy are cool and that I have him some Marijuana. The owner tells me to bring the girl to his hostel but I explained that she has left for the beach and will return tomorrow, but that I was leaving within the next hour. He told me to leave a message with the restaurant owner, but I knew she was gone too, but OK. I would do it. I hoped on my bike and spent the next 6 hours riding the bike and bus back to Cartagena trying to figure out what the hell I should do with this damn necklace.

This morning, back in Cartagena safe and sound, I have decided I will tie it to my bike. It got me this far...

Caption: ¨Taganga street hair styles.¨