From My Notebook 48 Years Ago This Month In Colombia

I’m back again, after three weeks in California and another week recovering from my first dose of Covid: but I’ve had five vaccinations and apart from one day of sickness and a few other days just feeling tired and unbalanced, I’m fine. So as promised I’m going to plunge you back into my diaries of 1975, and I am just leaving Medellin, Colombia, hoping to find a way to get past the Darien Gap to Panama.

Even today, just as then fifty years ago, the Darien Gap is considered an obstacle to human progress. It’s a large area of swamp between Colombia and Panama inhabited, I was told, by primitive tribes. I am very happy for it to be there and resent all those foolish efforts to drive Jeeps and Corsairs and Land Rovers through it. Leave it alone I say, but all the same it was an obstacle to my progress, and I had no idea how I was going to get around it. The only shipping line turned out to be useless, so now I was headed for Cartagena, a port on the Gulf of Mexico, where I hoped to find a solution.

April 3

Start out for Cartagena. High mountains to cross. Get caught in rainstorm and let bike slide into a gulley at roadside. Can’t get it out again and have to wait till rain stops and passing lorry driver helps me lift it out. Very foolish.

Down into Cauca valley – and find that my petrol consumption has dropped to a very satisfying 74 kms per litre, or more. Texaco Special. Apparently, according to Andrès, the octane figures for Esso Extra and the others are phony – not 94 at all, but in the low eighties. Texaco alone have one which corresponds to European two-star, and with this I get the original European results.

Beyond Caucasia – and 30 kms before Planeta Rica – I stop at a hacienda called Aguas Vivas. Looks very nice¬. Building laid out round a garden, with religious statues in middle. All neat, with every imaginable animal. Well, turkeys, ducks, chickens, pigs, dogs and cats. Mango trees, lemons, gourd tree. Big open barn behind, where I put my hammock. Four young farm hands are very good company – until one of them suggests I take him out on the bike to a village 2kms away.

In fact, it’s an endless journey to Planeta Rica – and nothing there anyway but a glass of beer. Coming back we go past the hacienda and he insists it’s further on but he means another village. He’s determined to ride all over Colombia to get another beer. Thank goodness I realise in time and refuse to go any further. We’ve already finished two bottles of Aguardiente and half a bottle of rum, and we’ve been out on this aimless ride for two hours. But it was very pleasant on the hacienda talking, watching the toads catch “grillos” under the lights – with the two maimed turkeys flopping about. One on a stump where his foot should be (a cow trod on both of them two months ago) and walks like a person with a peg leg.

April 4

Given a breakfast of coffee, lemon juice, rice, platanos, beef and egg. Can’t complain. Hot ride to Cartagena. Cattle Ibis, heavy hot air. Like Mombasa. Hit on the lip by a bee. Swells and makes a villainous expression. Cross marshy river by a bridge that seems oddly derelict. Cluster of thatched huts on the riverbank. Fine birds, people floating about in piroguas – but looks very poor and primitive – poorer even than Iguatú.

(It was visiting Iguatú, in Brazil, that got me locked up.)

Cartegena

Come into Cartagena about 4 pm, past Torices (a district of Cartagena) and through wall to old city. Stop for two glasses of flora juice and directions. Ride to Club de Pesca with letter from Chris (a Royal Navy officer I got to know in Bogotá gave me an introduction to Denis Nahum). But Nahum isn’t there.

At the old wall

Looking around I get a slight recollection of Venice – more in the disposition of things – perhaps the Piazza Roma area more – the Manga Bridge – and the atmosphere. Telephone to Nahum’s house. Penny Lernoux, his wife, answers. Go to hotel Plaza Bolivar. Wander about a bit looking for restaurant.

April 5th, Thursday

Visit Dennis Nahum. He is suspicious at first. Asks for a Sunday Times identification.

Fortunately I’m carrying newspaper cuttings with me and I turn the tables on him rather by exposing his suspicions.

“The quickest way to a free meal is to claim that you’re a journalist,” he explains afterwards. “Don’t know how good they are in the Navy (at sorting people out). Was in Naval Intelligence myself so I’m perhaps more suspicious for that reason.”

Thereafter much hospitality, lunch at his home, meet Penny – read her piece about Chile (she is apparently a well-known journalist writing on South American Economy and Politics.)

House is attractive and holds many enviable objects. The cat-o-nine tails and a marlin spike. There’s a toucan, a parrot, a macaw, two monkeys and a bush-baby.

On the quay at Cartegena

April 6th

In morning walk down quayside to find a ship to San Andrés. None to Panama from here it seems.

(San Andrés is an island in the Carribean that used to be called Saint Andrews, a notorious hang out for pirates. It’s not much closer to Panama than Cartagena. I have no idea why I thought going there would get me to Panama.)

Sent to (a man called) Giraldo at Torices. He wants 1,400 pesos. 400 for the passage, 1000 for the bike. Boat is supposed to leave next day. Dinner that night – alone – at club. Penny is finishing outline on a book about the Church in South American politics.

Back to quayside to try to get the price down. Nobody seems interested. Boat should leave at midnight. Then at 4 am. Lunch at club with Denis. Take pictures in afternoon. Eat at Italian place in the evening. Old man and drunken wife who cooks. The Manhattens cost a fortune.

Afterwards back to their place to talk for a while. They go to bed and leave me to while away the hours. After a scotch I decide I must lie down on couch, sleep and wake at 4 sharp. Walk down to quayside, but ship won’t sail they say before 12. Go back to hotel, sleep on couch in lobby.

April 7th

Borrow my old room and get a shower. Walk around a bit on the fortifications with my camera. Call Penny to tell her our lottery tickets won. Ten pesos for seven. Go there for lunch. In middle of the meal there’s an earthquake – a considerable tremor lasting for ten seconds or more – we eventually walk outside by small pool, in case. The maid in the kitchen comes out screaming that everything is falling down (nothing did) but it became quite frightening during the last moments. The damage is done more by the duration than the intensity I’m told.

Eventually, at about 4pm, go back to the ship and wait many hours.

Then Giraldo tries to duck out of the deal, says it’s up to the captain, that there’s no room for the bike, etc He’s very evasive. I have to raise my voice and insist that G. take a moment to settle this matter. (What I tried to say was – “for once, will you speak to me, man to man,” but heaven knows how it came over in Spanish.) He took me on to the ship. The captain turned out to be one of the men I’d seen coming and going with Giraldo. A youngish man, short, sturdy, with a stony face.

G. told him that he’d agreed a price, all told, of 1000 pesos – 600 for the bike, 400 for the passage. I was astounded and had a job hiding it, for G. had resolutely refused to take less than 1000 for the bike alone. Why? Was it a slip?

Seems improbable he would make such a mistake. His livelihood depended on these prices.

Was it too sentimental to suppose that he’d reduced it in respect for the way I’d spoken up to him at last?

(Yes. Most likely he’d hoped to keep the extra 400 for himself).

The Captain demanded to see my passport and saw that I was five days over my visa time. I told him about my enquiries in Medellin, and they sounded very feeble. In fact he refused to believe that a police chief had given me verbal permission to overstay my welcome. A Frenchman who was also going to San Andrés was several months expired, and the captain was sure we would be checked by immigration at San Andrés.

At last he made us promise that if we were sent back on his boat we would pay the fare. We both promptly agreed but I knew the Frenchman didn’t have the money, and later he decided not to risk it. Cheerfully he announced he would go to Ecuador instead.

He was a slim, good-looking man but in a rather old-fashioned Bohemian way, with a little beard and hair brushed back long.

Then there was Skip Kaltenhauser from Kansas University – with the anxious, celluloid smile, overwhelmed by his experiences but quite unable to react naturally to them. Quite unable, too, to express an opinion or a true feeling – but suddenly shattered to find that he had to. He was on a two-month holiday before signing into law school. Now, that prospect seemed deadly, although he couldn’t quite rid himself of the need to achieve more security. I surprised myself by my eloquent condemnation of law school and what it represented.

We walked over to the market together to get some fruit juice – maracaju – he in his strangely baggy shirt and trousers – the former with an intricate pattern in shades of beige, lined with green. He wore a hat too. In his language everything was “neat,” and he strove for a quip constantly. Later, in San Andrés, he thanked me for “showing me some pretty good times” and hoped “he wouldn’t disappoint me.”

The boat went out shortly before midnight, but with none of the magic I’d felt at Laurenco Marques. I got my hammock across the ironwork on the upper deck and gave Skip my foam rubber. He was getting progressively more sick. (We’d eaten tuna fish and mustard on old rolls, perhaps not the best preparation). During the day there were three times I came within an ace of being sick but with a great effort, swallowing the great quantity of saliva that flooded into my mouth, was able to keep it down – and I’m sure it was the best thing to do.

A rooster at dawn in the Caribbean