The city made in defense of ´pirates

I arrived in Cartagena at about 11am, after a 2 hour bus ride from Baranquilla. Boy, was I glad to leave that hellish couchsirfing expereince, the only bad one so far, thank moses. A nerdy-weirdo who couldnt hold a conversation with an orangatang. Mickey was his name and he was dating a 20 year old Colombian girl whose family desperately wanted her to marry him (gee, go figire....citizenship baby!). I"m sure sshes dump his bald ass before they even left the Catholic Chapel after the ceremony. He claimes, as I was using his computer, that he could hack into just about anything and it was quite easy to obtain personal information, passwords of any kind. He could read someones most personal stuff, if it was ona computer he claimed. He knew how, but couldnt prove it to me, nor did he seem like he wanted to. i left it at that. He ddint speak a word of Spanish and his girlfired hardly spoke a word of English. This intenfified the wierd factor. Hmmmm 50 year old, computer nerd, who didint leave his house for days, was in Colombia dating a 20 year-old girl. They could hardly communicate, at least verbaly. for crying out loud! On top of all this he says that his Visa was expired and yet he was still living in Colombia. He gave me another one of those..."o yeah, its possible, but Im not going to tell you how".... Yeah right buddy! He was like Napolean dynamites dad, yet more dorky. His voice sounded like a robot. When he looked at you, you felt like you were looking into the small black eyes of a crow. I would say, "So Mickey, what do you do for fun?" He"d respond by saying, "I dont know, why do you want to know so bad?" (im just trying to make conversation a-hole!). 10 more minutes of silence would go by..."so, Mickey, if I need to go to the store, where would be the closest one?" He"d say "its close..and why do you want to eat right now?" Right, so to get to the store I just go to "close" and ill be there...thnaks for the directions dude!! Id ask him for a pot to cook something..Id go up to him and he would be playing video games, drinking cool-aide, eating cheetos (keep in mind hes 50 years old) he would ignore me for a good 2 minutes, as I stood there waiting for a response, hed moan or grunt, turn to me and go "WHAT?!!"...yeah sorry buddy, i interupted your wall-street trading online (aka mariocart for this tool).

I have never met someone so weird

I ended up getting the hell out of there. I packed all of my clothes that night and went to bed quite early. I was up at 530am and wrote a note, puttin git on the bed, thanking him for officially creeping me out of my skin. I B-lined it out of there without verbally saying good-bye.

I had one of those novel moments, which im sure most everyone who goes to school can relate to. Remember your first day of school when you are a kid........You get to school on your very first day and you dont know anyone. You have on the dorkiest outsfit, that your mom made you wear beacuse she thought an embarrassing first day of school was all one needed to break the nervous ice on the first day. All of the kids are standing around nervous and expecting to find a pal.you kind of just turn to the guy or gal nect to you and say "hey, do you want to be my firend?" Its not a matter of credentials, interests, sexual preferences, hobbies, or resumes... Being someones friend is just a matter of turning to the person closest to you, popping the question, "do you want to be my friend?", and booooom, you were mates. Well, keeping that in mind, I walked into Casa Vienna, a hostel in a seedy district known as the Gestamani district in Cartagena. The outside of the building was a sun-bleached red and in small letters read "Casa Vienna". You push a buzzer, which serves like a door-knob. This is connected to the front desk. You push it, the attendant peeks their head out from behind their desk, they give you one look over and zzzztt, the door buzzes open and you rin. I walk in panting like a thick-haired dog on a warm summers day. I pay the dude and he shows me to my room. I walk in, and boom, just like on my first day of school, theres my future pal. I happen to have that, confused, cant find my sun-glasses and they are on my head the whole time-sorta look. There was only one other guy in my room. H ehad the extact same look. I turn to him. he faces me, and zabam, we were friends. This dude went by the name Ezekial. He was from Argentina, liked architecure (he was an architect by trade though). We both gave each other the look of a loner and zaabam, we struck up conversation that would never end becaus eof the excitement we were exchanging for having a cool pal to chill with. Within minutes wer were cracking jokes, high 5ing, and talking about the adventures to come. We eded up walking the entire historical district of Cartagena. A hot stickiness enclosed the whole town that day. As we walked we kept switching to the other end of the street, in an attempt to stay walk in the shade.

For every person visiting Cartagena, there are 5 vendores. Whever you are in town, within 5 minutes of being in the public eye, somene is houding you for a buck or they are trying to tell jewelry or give you a massge (the girls, yo). After awhile, saying No Gracias gets to be quite repetitive and tiresome. So after exhausting all of my "No, Gracias", I began to not even respond to people, look at them, or even acknowledge that the person was in my presence. Apparently in Colombia two things happen as a result of this. Firstly, by not responding, some vedores take it as you didn hear them or you ddnt see them. So by not resonding, one could keep walking down the street, turn around and baaaam, there would be 8 vedores that have been following oyu for a mike. Secondly, for some people it is taken as highly offensive if you dont respond. The Argentina fellow informed me of this, as a guy came up trying to sell soccer jersey"s. He was houding the crap pout of my as Ezequial and I rest at a park bench with a brew. After 2 minutes straight, of him going hey amigo, hey amigo, hey amigo, hey amigo (like a damn nat buzzing in my ear) he threw his hands up, gave me an intimidating glare, and cursed at me. The Argentin informed me the guy said he wanted to give me a woopen for not ebing respectful. I thought this was quite hilarous...people harrass me all day long on the street and if i dont give them the time of day and acknowledge that they are bugging the crap out of me...this is offensive to them?!!! Ha, they would have to deal with my offensive behavior then.

For two days I joined up with some Austrilians and went to playa blanca, off of the coast of colombia. it was paradise, easliy comparable to the best beaches of hawaii. there were no bathrooms, it was hot. lots of mosquitos, and we slept in hammocks. there was no town or covilization for at least 30 miles in each direction. lots of readin, lounging, and story-telling.

Im not in Medellin, where I plan to teach English if I can find some willing students.

written by  kipmaddog on August 1, 2009 from Cartagena, Colombia
from the travel blog: adventures from down south
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