We bought our tickets for Colombia last summer, long before the word Zika entered the daily headlines. By last winter, when it became clear that Colombia had the second-greatest number of cases (after Brazil), I began joking about our upcoming trip to Zikalandia. I don’t think any of us seriously considered not going — but we did get serious about trying to avoid exposure. We bought large bottles of permethrin at REI and sprayed several sets of clothing with it.

We stocked up on various forms of bug repellant, plus Steve and I got anti-malarial medication to help protect us from that danger during our stay in the jungle.

I was more consistent than I’ve ever been about spraying myself with picaridin or smearing on DEET (or both). And when I saw the mosquito netting over our bedroom in the cabana at Rio Claro, it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

And yet…we were aware of very few mosquitoes — indeed few bugs of any kind — anywhere during the trip, even in Cartagena and the river valley. None of us ever heard that creepy high-pitched whine, and none acquired any itchy welts. I noted a few tiny suspicious bumps, and Steve had one obvious red splotchy spot that looked like a bite. But from what? A spider? A mite? Something else?

Now that we’re home, we have 4 more nights of the anti-malarial medication to down. I guess it will take a few weeks to see if any final souvenirs of our travels in Zikalandia develop.

When it comes to partaking in Colombian night life, I’d give us an A for effort, but a C- for accomplishment. This is sad. The streets of Cartagena and Medellin throb with the sound of salsa, and guidebooks rhapsodize about how you can dance till dawn. Our friend Howard reported witnessing hours of dance action when he was here last spring. Given that Michael and Stephanie met through salsa (and are polished dancers), enjoying a true Colombian salsa club seemed imperative. 

We tried first in Cartagena at the Habana Club, the venerable Cuban institution. The interior is cool and retro, and I enjoyed my Cuba Libre, but we learned that the band wouldn’t begin to play until sometime after 10:30 – too late for Steve and me that night. Although Michael and Stephanie stayed later, they reported the next morning that there had been so little room for dancing (in between the bar and the tables) they weren’t tempted to join in for long. 

In Medellin, we tried again. This time our destination was a club where Howard’s young fellow travelers had danced long after midnight. Travel writers rave about this place, and reports of a 9-piece live band on Thursday and Saturday nights further encouraged us. (This was last Thursday night.) After dinner, Michael, Stephanie, Steve, and I grabbed a taxi, arriving at the club around 9:30. The presence of a bouncer at the front door who extracted a 10,000-peso (about $3.50) cover charge from each of us seemed promising. Recorded salsa, cranked up to a deafening volume, filled the dim interior. But inside we found only one other couple, huddled over a bottle of agua ardiente. We ordered drinks and waited. This time we learned that the band wouldn’t arrive until 11, and none of us had the fortitude to hunker down and wait.

Michael and Stephanie flew home from Medellin early Saturday. But Steve and I had one more night in the big city, and I knew how I wanted to spend it — enjoying tango. Although Buenos Aires is the obvious Mecca for that, Howard had told us about his visit to a Medellin tango bar, Salon Malaga, and before the trip, I had confirmed a local enthusiasm for tango when I learned online that an international tango festival was scheduled to unfold (sadly, just days after our departure.) I checked Salon Malaga’s website and read about the weekly “tango show” they hosted every Saturday at 5:30 pm. When we were in Buenos Aires, Steve and I had enjoyed a superb tango performance at a local cultural center; in the hope of seeing something similar, I called and made a reservation for us.

Once AGAIN, after we arrived and settled in at a table, no sign of any show was evident. Still, the scene at the Malaga was pretty entertaining.Almost every inch of wall and pillar space held photos, records, newspaper articles, plaques and awards, and more. At the table next to us, a very tall man in a black suit and fedora nursed a whiskey on the rocks. His shirt collar was white but the rest of it was covered with tangerine stripes that perfectly matched his tie. He fixed me with a penetrating stare. His tablemate had clearly tossed back so many shots of agua ardiente that his speech was slurred, and I couldn’t understand much of it, but what I picked up was that Black Fedora was a great tango artist from Argentina. This seemed credible (he certainly looked the part). 

What I couldn’t believe was that no food was to be had at the Malaga. Every other institution  in Colombia seems to offer food for sale, including the ubiquitous street vendors. To meet the requisite minimum expenditure, it seemed our best choice was a bottle of Argentine malbec. Drinking that on our empty stomachs would probably only improve our tango-dancing prowess, we reasoned.

Sometime long after 6, a guitarist and a keyboard guy did arrive and played tango classics as well as one can without most of the classic tango instruments. The club owner (manager? Impresario?) sang several songs and then yielded the floor to a grand dame of tango who belted out several numbers with great style. But neither of they  (nor his tipsy companion) could persuade Black Fedora to take the stage. He did deign to join in with the Dama at one point, and his tango-singing ability was truly impressive. 

Throughout all of this, no one was dancing! This would have been unimaginable in Buenos Aires. If not splendid, the Malaga’s music certainly was danceable. But I noticed that almost none of the women were wearing anything resembling dance shoes; I saw flats and even sneakers.

About this point, I also remembered that the video clip Howard sent me, taken during his visit here, showed the club jammed with people dancing what looked suspicously like …salsa. Having polished off our bottle of wine and getting hungrier by the minute, Steve and I finally gave up…

Why the tango club and tango festival if people don’t actually dance tango? I have no idea. Maybe like their salsa-dancing counterparts (and the tango-dancing ones in Buenos Aires), Medellin’s tangueros don’t go out until much, much later. As for us, we returned to the excellent Italian joint where we ate the first night, across from our hotel. We were lucky to get a table. It was the final game for Colombia in the first round of the Copa America, and every restaurant in El Poblado was jammed. Fans spilled out of the restaurants and into the streets. They screamed ecstatically, when Colombia scored a second point against the 3 racked up by Costa Rica. But the rally never turned into a rout. Everyone looked a bit deflated, and I could relate to the frustration of getting close — but not close enough — to achieving  something that would have felt so good.

I didn’t expect to fall in love with any place that instantly conjures up images of drug-fueled violence. I’ve liked most of the South American cities I’ve visited: Buenos Aires, Cartagena, Montevideo, Arequipa, Bogota, Cuzco — even dreary Lima had its charms. But I’ve never fantasized about moving to any of them, as I did in Medellin. That’s my test of when a place has really hooked me. 

Let me count some of the hooks.

First, the setting is strikingly beautiful. Medellin developed along the banks of a river that rushes through a valley.  Lushly forested mountains rise almost 4000 feet above the valley floor. Although poor settlements have crept up some of the vertiginous hillsides, they look like glittering tapestries embroidered on the green fabric, rather than blight. Frequent rain washes the air clean, but we had at least partial sun and temperatures in the 70s and low 80s every day of our stay. Medelliners boast that they live in the City of Eternal Spring. 

The energy of the Paisas (as the folks in this region are known) is palpable. Streets and plazas crackle with all manner of activity. At times I mused that it reminded me of New York. But New Yorkers are tenser, more harried. The folks in Medellin have a relaxed sensuality, expressed in part in the way women dress — Haute Slut, Steve and I came to think of it. Females from 14 to 70-plus pour themselves into skin-tight jeans, often shredded strategically to reveal more skin. They wear lots of jewelry and carry flashy purses. Necklines plunge to show off cleavage that’s often enhanced with silicone. (Plastic surgeons thrive here.)

The men clearly are appreciative. We enjoyed the interplay that developed between our walking-tour participants and some local lime-juice vendors. The juice salesmen flirted, cajoled, implored us to buy some of their tasty drinks. They sold some to a couple of the pretty European young women on the tour. Finally, they peeled off, with one of the guys calling out, “Adios mi amor!”

“Which one are you talking to?” our guide shouted after him. 

“She knows,” the juice-vendor shot back, slyly.

Some of the blatant sex is sleazy: tables of hard-core DVD porn in the pedestrian streets (right next to other tables filled with animated kid fare and shoes and jewelry and t-shirts and a hundred other types of wares. We were fascinated to learn the most common place to find flesh-and-blood sex for sale. Prostitutes lean against the walls of big churches in the centro, or strut through the ecclesiatical plazas. Apparently Colombian men appreciate the convenience of being able to dash into the church and ask forgiveness after a quick coupling in a nearby cheap hotel room.

The prostitution is legal, according to our guide.  In contrast, violent crime seems to have disappeared from large parts of the cityscape. Pockets still exist where muggers roam, and you wouldn’t want to venture there at night. But we felt safe catching taxis in the street and walking in a wide variety of neighborhoods. In a broad sense, Medellin feels like a city that has come back from the dead. 

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was THE most dangerous city on the planet. Hernan, our marvelous walking tour guide, said it was even more dangerous than Beirut, then in the grip of a civil war. Medellin’s besieged inhabitants were dealing with the consequences of many internal struggles. It was a city of not just muggers and pickpockets but one where men threw grenades and set off bombs in public spaces; where warring drug lords launched the most bloodthirsty attacks against their rivals and their rivals’ allies. The 50-year-old political and military war between Colombia’s Communist revolutionaries and their fascistic counterparts on the right added poisonous fuel to the fires.

Today residents boast that the city ranks among the safest in South America. Multiple factors have contributed to this, and I won’t even try to explain them. (I understand them better now but still by no means completely.) One is that a heavy-handed strong man (former president Alvaro Uribe) worked hard in the early 2000s to establish what he called a “security platform.” Lots of rights got trampled on during that process, but the overt violence was quelled. At the same time, access to education was expanded dramatically. Six years ago, the government opened negotiations with the left-wing rebels who have fomented so much shocking violence and kidnappings over the years. Hernan, the guide, said another important component was the Medellin government’s embrace of something locals refer to as “democratic architecture.”

What that jargon translates to is investing tax dollars to transform decaying, crime-ridden sites into spaces that foster community. We visited two of the most prominent examples of this, and both dazzled me. 

In a couple of neighborhoods, the city has built a cable-car system to carry folks up the tortuous grade. So mostly it’s middle-class and poor folks whose lives have been significantly improved. Still, for tourists like us, it provides a fascinating aerial view of all the life unfolding below: dogs barking on balconies, orange-suited workers sweeping the streets, children walking next to their mothers.

The cable car line we took up (free to Metro riders) connects with a second cable route  that continued on past the barrios to skim us for five minutes? ten? over wild forest, finally terminating at a huge nature preserve and park.

Yesterday, after Mike and Stephanie departed for their trip home, Steve and I took the metro to another neighborhood to see the series of six escalators that have been built there. They too are free to ride, and they make it easier to survive in this densely vertical community where there are no roads for cars. Along with fantastic murals, large signs have been posted thanking visitors for coming. I lost count of the number of locals who greeted us with warmth and obvious pride. 

 

On Medellin’s metro, which we rode many times, I saw other evidence of bountiful courtesy. The system is not very extensive. It runs on elevated track, and mainly along the riverbed, but we learned that it was easy to connect from it to inexpensive (and ubiquitous) taxis. 

Metro rides only cost about 75 cents, and the cars come along often. Although the system is now 20 years old, no part of it has been defaced or graffitied; everything looks spotless and gleaming. Several times I witnessed young men or women rise to offer their seats to mothers carrying small children, or once, to an elderly nun. 

Hernan said this is because the metro was built during the city’s darkest days, when Medellin was a hellish place. The creation of the metro  gave people hope. It helped carry Medellin’s residents into a time of rebirth. That’s why they’re proud of it; why they cherish it.

Remind me never to say that any bus is the nicest bus I’ve ever been on — not until it reaches its destination. I wrote and posted those words yesterday an hour or so before our “Emperor Elite” double-decker ground to a halt on a remote country road somewhere between Pereira and Medellin. We waited, engine running, for five minutes…ten…fifteen… When the bus steward finally made a pass through our section, I asked him what was the problem. He replied that there were many, many protesters in the road. We had to be patient, he said, but he seemed to reassure me that we would be moving again soon. 

Indeed we did, and in a minute or two we were passing not protesters but evidence of an obviously recent landslide that had reduced traffic on the road to a single lane. Another 5-10 kilometers down the road, we did crawl by hundreds of campesinos clogging the road. Some were carrying signs, but Steve and I were neither fast enough to read nor photograph them. Steve did capture an image of the throng:

Past the demonstration,We barreled along again.  I’m not sure how long it was before the real trouble began. The bus stopped, and this time, the engine went silent. We sat and sat. The temperature began to climb, even in our lower-level first-class compartment. 

The steward finally opened the door to the outside world, and as soon as one or two of the other passengers disembarked, I followed them. My experiences in other places around the world have taught me that when your bus breaks down and the locals start disembarking, it’s wise to join them, the better to sniff out what’s going on. 

After a long time, another (single-decker) Occidental bus to Medellin pulled up, and there seemed to be general agreement that the folks with babies and children should have first priority to get on it. After them, other passengers engaged in a Darwinian struggle to get their suitcases off the disabled bus and onto the rescue bus. 

Sadly, Steve and I were not among the fittest at this enterprise. But we soon chatted up a savvy French-Canadian, now resident in Colombia, who seemed to know the score. The driver, he told us, had become alarmed at the way the transmission was sounding and decided it was unsafe to continue on. A replacement bus was being sent from a town only 20 minutes away, so everyone should be on their way again soon. 

That’s more or less what happened. The rescue bus arrived, we all transferred our luggage, and we continued northward. 

The rest our journey to Medellin still required patience. We were traveling on the two-lane country roads because the main ones are apparently under construction and fraught with delays. However, you do it, the journey twists through vertiginous country the likes of which I have only seen in the Himalayas. It was breathtaking but stunningly slow. (One of the features of the rescue bus was an electronic display of our speed that was so depressingly slow I could barely stand to look at it.)

We finally pulled into the southern bus terminal in Medellin at 6:30 pm, a full three hours after we were supposed to arrive.  Getting a taxi was another trial. The vast majority of the taxis in Medellin are too small to accommodate the four of us and our (modest) suitcases. There was no orderly line-up to wait for the rare larger vehicles. Still, 20 minutes or so fanned our latent aggressiveness sufficiently that we managed to snag one. We arrived at our hotel tense, tired, and hungry. 

But I can tell you this: everything that’s happened since then has convinced me it was worth it to come here. Medellin has enchanted me. It may take me a few days to find the time to explain why. But if you’re patient, that ride will come along.

There’s a tree in the central Andes of Colombia and Peru (and almost nowhere else) that grows higher than any other palm on earth — up to almost 200 feet. The national tree of Colombia, it’s known as the wax palm because a waxy substance covers its trunk. People used to cut the trees down to make candles. Stripping off its leaves for Palm Sunday services also killed a lot of them, and the fact that it takes 80 years for wax palms to reach a reproductive age hasn’t exactly enhanced their survival. In the Cocora Valley, however, not far from the hacienda where we stayed, the palms are protected, and they make the already glorious landscape even more beautiful.

We devoted much of yesterday to a pilgrimage there, hiring the same driver who picked us up at the airport Sunday. Because Stephanie unfortunately had tweaked her back, she opted against a hike into the valley. Instead she and Michael enjoyed it briefly and then were driven to the picturesque nearby town of Salento, while Steve and I struck off on a two-hour hike.

I felt inordinately happy. It wasn’t raining (once again contradicting forecasts), and the air temperature was perfect. The path cut through private farms that mostly seemed to grow happy cows.

For most of the hike, we saw no one, though several groups of horseback riders and/or local horse wranglers passed us. 

The path ascended and descended at times, but the only real challenge was edging our way around the streams and mud holes that blocked our way a number of times. Once again I felt like kissing the portable walking sticks we bought last summer in preparation for our trip to the Himalayas. (They collapse to a size small enough to fit inconspicuously in a carry-on and cost only $20-$40 apiece on Amazon.)

I could have happily gone on to do a longer loop, and the hiking possibilities all around this place are bountiful. But the two-hour excursion was satisfying (and Steve still is battling some minor tumult in his guts.) So Orlando, our driver, picked us up and drove us back to Salento, where the five us of us (Steve, Mike, Stephanie, Orlando, and I) enjoyed more homey Colombian cooking. 

Any account of this day would be incomplete without adding a few words about Orlando. A compact bundle of energy and unquenchable curiosity, he spoke almost no English, but I could understand most of his slow, clear Spanish, and he was extravagant in his praise of my command of the language. I’m happiest in this sort of linguistic situation, conversing with someone who has no choice but to rely on my imperfect Spanish and flatters me about its serviceability. So I gamely babbled away in response to Orlando’s constant comments and questions. The latter ranged widely. What kind of cars did we drive? (and which brand was better: Fords or Chevrolets?) What did we normally eat for lunch? How much did meat cost in America? (staggeringly more, we learned, than it costs in the Colombia’s coffee country, which also happens to be cattle country. Orlando said a kilo of excellent beef typically retails for about $2). Was it true that it cost SeaWorld a ton of money to maintain its orcas? What religions were we? And why? At a certain point, in answer to queries from Orlando, I found myself struggling to explain in Spanish the teachings of Buddhism! I felt like my brain was melting and dribbling out my ears, but a good night’s sleep was restorative, and the irresistible Orlando was in a great help this morning in getting us to the transportation terminal in Armenia and packed onto the non-stop bus to Medellin. 

I’m now writing this post from the first class lower level of the Occidental Fleet’s double-decker “Emperor Elite.” It should theoretically pull into Medellin around 3:30 pm. Steve and I can’t ever remember being on a nicer long-distance bus. For less than $20 a person, we’ve got free wifi, head phones, blankets, electrical charging stations, games, movies, and hot lunch (that’s an extra $2.25.) And, oh yeah, fantastic views of the Andes out the windows.

Ironically, Steve and I spent all morning soaking up Colombian coffee culture, and part of the afternoon… napping. In Steve’s case, he’s feeling a tiny bit under the weather. I don’t have that excuse; I just got sleepy after lunch, and if there’s anyplace in the world better suited to a postprandial siesta, I haven’t seen it. We’re staying on a 36-hectare working coffee farm, in the 133-year-old hacienda built by the family that still runs the farm (after four generations). 

Coffee is the dominant component of the local economy, but tourism has come on strong in recent years, and this morning we had an outing that splendidly illustrated how much fun it can be to stroll up and down the hills see what grows here, and how. 
This was not the first coffee tour Steve and I have taken. We’ve visited growing operations in Kona (Hawaii) and in central Africa (Tanzania and Rwanda). Nonetheless, I found these Colombian highlands to be the most beautiful. The Andes rise darkly in the distance, and closer at hand, the undulating hillsides are densely green with not only Arabica but also plantains, bamboo, coffee walnut, and a headspinning variety of fruit trees.

 Our charming 24-year-old guide, Andres, led us through 10 stages of coffee instruction that included a long stop at a tasting bar in which we took turns guessing at some of the 36 fragrances commonly found in coffee, sniffing grounds, and slurping spoonfuls of the hot brew.

We walked for 90 minutes, learning about the soil and water and nutritional needs of coffee and it’s harvest. (During the peak picking seasons, the workers in these parts can collect some 200 kilos of beans per person per day — for which they’re paid about 15 cents a kilo.) We picked ripe beans ourselves and tasted them, surprised to find they they’re pleasantly sweet. 

Andres told us that he often sees Lukas, the resident hound, sniffing them out and munching on them. (“He gets all hyper!”) Finally, we drank in the vista at a beautiful outdoor lounge where Andres brewed us some of the freshest coffee imaginable.

Sadly, those cups were in stark contrast to most of the coffee we’ve consumed on this trip. Almost all the good stuff gets exported, while Colombians drink the (literal) dregs. Our experiences with Colombian food have been happier, though Although my guidebook warns that “Colombia is not a safe haven for gourmands,” and wryly points out that you don’t see many Colombian restaurants outside the country, we’ve had a number of memorable meals. 
Despite all the hysteria about Zika earlier this year, I haven’t seen a single mosquito, not even in swampy, hot Cartagena. We know they’re around, though, so we’ve been applying liberal amounts of bug repellant. After today, Mike and Stephanie will only have to fend off predatory insects for four more days. (Steve and I will stay on for four days after they depart.)

I awoke at 4:30 Saturday morning, feeling that my left eye was glued shut. This was the same eye in which Steve had splashed a droplet of the volcanic goo on Friday — the obvious cause of my distress. I lay in the dark, wondering if the resulting infection would blind me permanently. After a long, long time, I fell asleep again. But when I woke up for good, around 6:30, the eye seemed mildly improved, and it continued to get better throughout this day that we devoted to seeing Cartagena’s sights.

The old section of Cartagena acquired a wall centuries ago to protect it from the wave after wave of Caribbean pirates who attacked the city over time. Today sections of that protective structure have been lost, but a lot remains, and you can walk along the top of most of it. Steve and I had resolved to do that first, partly because the day dawned sunny and hot and promised to get hotter later. The receptionist at our hotel had assured us it was safe, but almost immediately we had reason to doubt her, when we passed a gaunt young man who looked high on drugs and was holding the leash of an animal that appeared to be part retriever, part Rottweiler. At least 30 feet separated us from them, but the dog suddenly sprang to its feet, and made straight for Steve’s leg. “NO!” Steve bellowed at it, in his best dog-training voice. More effective at protecting him was the muzzle around the dog’s jaws; also the fact that its master stumbled over to collect it. 

After that exciting start, the rest of the day was unremarkable, albeit pleasant. Steve and I circuited the wall and bought Colombian headgear. We ambled up and down the picturesque narrow passages in the Old City, today filled with trendy shops and restaurants and bars and energetic street life.

Back in our more residential neighborhood (Getsemani) we had a superb lunch prepared by a culinary historian, then we went back to our hotel to escape the stunning heat and humidity (105 degrees and 80% humidity, according to my phone). We ventured out again with Mike and Stephanie for sunset cocktails at a bar on the wall and more excellent seafood in the centro. After that, we headed to one of the most famous salsa bars in Cartagena (La Habana), where depressingly, the bouncers let Steve and me in without paying the cover charge (about $9 per person.) Doubtless they guessed we were such geezers we wouldn’t stay for long, and more depressingly, they were right. When we learned that the live band wouldn’t start playing until 10:30, we headed home, though Mike and Stephanie remained and got in an hour or two of (extremely crowded) salsa.

Because Steve and I were asleep so early (10:30 pm in a town where many folks stay up till 3 or 4!), we were able to squeeze in an early morning walk this morning to the great fort of San Felipe de Barajas.

It occupies the heights across from the Old City, and the guidebooks claim it was the largest and most effective fort ever built anywhere on earth by the Spaniards during their long colonial hegemony. We used the audio guides and were genuinely impressed. Pretty much all the gold looted by the Spaniards from South America must have passed through this city. The fort enabled Spanish soldiers to blast would-be looters from any direction. 

Once again, the day was astoundingly, breathtakingly hot — rivers of sweat poured down me, and it made me think (in retrospect) that Vietnam was cool in comparison. After two hours of walking around, I couldn’t take any more, and besides, it was time to pack up and get to the airport for our 12:45 pm flight to Pereira in Colombia’s coffee country. 

Now we’re checked into our hacienda on the grounds of a big coffee plantation in Juan Valdez country. We’ll get the coffee culture tour tomorrow.

Since our arrival in Cartagena Thursday night, I haven’t actually seen any big groups of gringos who looked like they arrived on a cruise ship. But I know they do come here, and I imagine when they arrive, they’re loaded on a bus at the cruise-ship terminal, then driven to the city’s Old Town, where they’re led around to engage in shopping and some sightseeing. Certainly everyone must enjoy that. The ancient, walled city here is a World Heritage Site, and deservedly so. 

For the first of our two full days in Cartagena, however, we engaged in a couple of Latin American diversions. One was an outing to the mud volcano of El Totumo. Truth be told, I had heard about this activity from our (norteamericano) friend Howard Zatkin, who ranks among the world’s most intrepid travelers. Howard traveled around Colombia last year with an adventure-travel group that mainly caters to young Europeans. During their visit to Cartagena, Howard signed up for an excursion, seemed to greatly enjoy it, and recommended that we do it too. You can also find it listed on the TripAdvisor app, where you can buy tickets for an excursion priced at $93 a person. We instead, upon arrival, simply asked the receptionist at our boutique hotel, the Zana, if we could make a reservation with a group for the next day (Friday). She made a call and said we could get the guided excursion (including lunch) for 60,000 pesos a person (about $20 each).

An aging mini-bus picked us up promptly at 8:30 the next morning and spent a good hour driving around and collecting other customers: Mexicans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Brazilians, and Colombians. Except for two adventurous girls from Savannah, Georgia and a tubercular looking German, Steve, Mike, Stephanie and I were the only Anglos on board.  Finally, we all loaded onto a full-size bus and trundled north along the swampy coastline, past mangroves and rugged hills. After more than another hour, we finally arrived at the star attraction: a 50-foot mound that looks like a miniature volcano but contains liquid mud rather than lava. 

Part of what was fascinating about this experience was how impromptu its organization felt. No one told us what to bring (or not bring), so Steve and I packed our bathing suits (while M & S wore theirs under their clothes — the smarter choice). We borrowed a couple of towels from our hotel, but had no idea what we actually would do at the volcano site — where we disembarked to find a chaotic scene packed with what felt like was a thousand rambunctious Colombian school kids. Still, our calm and happy guide, Eliana, somehow managed to direct all 25 of the folks in our group. You gave her your towels to guard, gave your phone or camera to a guy with a fanny pack (Enrique), chucked your shoes in a pile at the base of a steep wooden staircase, and then climbed up it. 

At the top, the full scope of the weirdness of this experience became clear. The pool of mud was only maybe 15-feet square, so a limited number of folks could enter it at any given moment. Once inside, a crew of 5 or 6 men worked helping each tourist down the ladder into the pool, guiding them into a prone position, and vigorously massaging their legs and arms and neck and back. Eliana had told us all that the mud had medicinal and aesthetic properties that would enable us to return home healthier and more beautiful. 

I felt dubious, but the idea of turning back at this point seemed unthinkable. Mike descended first, foll0wed by Stephanie. 

I went third. It felt like stepping into melted chocolate, except that it was only lukewarm and smelled vaguely sulfurous, rather than chocolatey and delicious. Although the massaging had looked vaguely pervy at a distance, by the time I was floating, I had lost all sense of normalcy and just yielded to the man-handling (which never actually felt inoffensive.)

After a minute or two, my massager launched me off like some kayak. I struggled to right myself. The mud is even more weirdly buoyant than the Dead Sea (which Steve and I floated in last year). I learned that it worked best to hold my legs rigidly straight. Then I could just kind of bob there, upright. Any move toward a fetal position was disastrous, though, making you unstable — in a place where any splashing was downright anti-social.

Steve climbed out almost immediately, but Mike, Stephanie, and I hung out for a few minutes before asscending the decrepit and slippery exit ladder. 

That was scary, but only a fraction as terrifying as the main ladder leading down to the ground below. Its every tread was as slippery as if greased; even the railings had treacherous patches. Somehow, I muscled my way down (trying not to think about Michael and Stephanie in my wake but reflecting that if OSHA ever learned about this place, it would probably order the US military to invade and put an immediate stop to it.)

At the bottom, I followed more instructions and made my way down a pathway to some distant tubs and ladies. This turned out to be the only “shower” in the place. Grim indigenous women poured cupful after cupful of dirty looking water over every mud adventurer, roughly rubbing and tugging the bathing suits and body parts. Amazingly, it seemed to get us more or less clean — or clean enough to pack up and climb on the bus again.

The rest of the afternoon was far less interesting. We drove for about an hour, then stopped for a mediocre lunch at a low-rent private beach. That was bad enough, but then Eliana announced that everyone would have an hour to “disfrutar” (“enjoy”) the beach. Steve and I tried to go for a stroll on it, but a life-guardish fellow stopped us and told us it would be dangerous to continue on. He said we could walk for a bit in the other direction. But soon he was chasing after us again and ordering us to return to the group. 

We finally got back to the hotel and had real showers that yielded amazing amounts of additional mud. Later last night we soaked up some of the street life exploding because of the opening game of the America Cup soccer games, in which Colombia was playing the US. The sounds of vuvuzuelas and honking cars and chanting fans filled the air, and we walked for a while trying to find a good place to watch the game. We wound up in a quiet bar, stayed for an hour or so in which the American defeat came to look inevitable. Then Steve and I headed for bed, exhausted by all the native action. 

Besides Bogota and Cartagena, the village of Villa de Leyva invariably ends up on short lists of places to which first-time visitors to Colombia should head. Founded by the Spaniards not long after they took over the place in the 1500s, the town boomed for more than a century because wheat grew so well in its environs. But monoculture eventually destroyed the soil, and almost everyone left; what remained of life in the village was frozen in time. By 1950, only 3000 or so farmers inhabited the town. Then in a happy twist of fate, a Colombian president (who owned land locally) declared it a cultural heritage site. Since then increasing numbers of tourists, expats, and wealthy Colombians seeking vacation homes have flocked here to soak up the colonial color.

It seemed to me that we should follow in their footsteps. But how? It is possible to board an intercity bus in Bogota and take it to Villa de Leyva, but there are sights worth visiting along the way. Instead we splurged and hired a driver to transport us Tuesday morning. The good news was that our driver, Paulina, was careful and never once scared me. On the downside, our Chevrolet was muy compacto. Although our carry-ones fit in the trunk, cramming three of us in the back seat took family togetherness to a whole new level. Because it was my birthday, my fellow travelers kindly ceded me the one commodious (front) seat for most of the ride.


I had figured that if we left Bogota at 9 a.m we might reach Villa de Leyva by 3 p.m and still have time to do a 2.5-hour hike. This proved to be a pipe dream. We got to the principal sight en route — the “Salt Cathedral” of Zipaquira — around 10:20 but had to wait for the start of the English-language tour, which wound up taking a full hour and a half. The cathedral’s pretty interesting. About 25 years ago, local miners carved huge stations of the cross and a full church into the gloomy tunnels and caverns of the salt mine. People claim it’s now the third largest such work in the world (albeit dwarfed by two colossal ones in Poland.)  Steve and I were particularly charmed to learn that the church and the admission fees collected belong to the town (rather than the federal government which owns all mineral rights to the salt). Since it opened, it has grown into a huge tourist attraction, that now generates some $5 million a year. Profits are reportedly being used for schools, hospitals, and other local bounty. The miners never expected their artistic impulse and religious devotion to have any material consequences, but sometimes miracles do happen.

What with visiting the salt works and making another stop for lunch and being blocked repeatedly by road construction, it was past 5 p.m by the time we reached our hostel in Villa de Leyva. And then we spent a bunch more time deciding what to do the next day and booking a tour and figuring out where to eat dinner (many places were closed) and waiting for a taxi to arrive and take us to one that was still open. It was raining and chilly and once at the restaurant, we learned it was basically a sandwich shop, and the only tables available were outside (though, happily, protected by umbrellas big enough to block the drizzle).

Such are the times that can try travelers’ souls. But once again, good luck was with us. It soon became clear that the reason this restaurant is so highly rated online is because the cook and owner are artists. Their canapés and smoked meats and soups were the stuff of culinary headlines. They adorned my tomato soup with birthday wishes and presented me with a piece of delicious cake. By the time we’d consumed it (and finished up a third bottle of the good Chilean Cabernet), we had invited Eduardo and Pilar to visit us any time in San Diego. And I was counting the day among my most memorable birthdays.

Our one full day in Villa de Leyva (yesterday) dawned warm and sunny, and the 5-hour private tour we’d booked while tired and tense turned out to be excellent. Our guide took us to an impressive fossil museum…

…a field filled with a 4000-year-old astronomical calendar, that adjoined another field holding thousand-year-old giant stone phalluses…

…a lovely old monastery…

…and then a vineyard.

Our guide, Angela, also did a terrific job of filling us in on current life in the town, which she insisted has the best weather in the world. “Es un paraiso,” she declared. (It’s a paradise.)

After the tour, we had time to stroll around the time-frozen center of town, and later, to consume another very good meal. It seemed easy to understand what pulls people here. 

And yet we’re moving on. I’m writing this post on our ride to the Bogota Airport, where we’ll catch our flight to steamy Cartagena. I’m hoping to upload it there, or failing that, at our next hotel.