Posts Tagged busetas

Originally posted at travelswithdelaney.com.

The camera I bought at an antique shop in Medellin, pre-broken:

I departed the luxurious apartment of Camila and Pilar after taking advantage of their kindness for far too long on a last ditch effort to see a little more of Colombia. I spent a fun day in a cold cold bus to Bogota and spent a weird night in a place called Alegria’s Hostel with a smoky, barracks-style dorm room full of semi-drunken English and a cat that freaked me out 3 times in the middle of the night by jumping up onto my bunk. I rocked over through the Candelaria to Platypus Hostel the next morning and found it full of friendly, English speaking youngsters with whom I spent a night drinking bad beer in the street after a day being a good tourist and finding my way around museums.

The Museo de Oro:

Another Botero Museum:

I left the next day for Santa Marta (after a delicious breakfast-slash-lunch). The 20-or-so-hour freezing cold bus ride was uneventful, other than a late-night stop by the military police to rifle through our bags and belongings looking for drugs and whatnot. And a stop in the middle of nowhere at a huge, roadside cafeteria that sold overpriced food to bus riders. Which I ate, happily.

I cruised through Santa Marta quickly and caught the first buseta I could find to Taganga, where I realized that the name of the hostel which I’d reserved was stored in my phone, which now had no battery. So I wandered around the little beach town with the 14-year-old on my back for a couple hours in the intense heat and sweated profusely until I found an Internet cafe and found the name of the hostel. An hour or so later (the streets in Taganga aren’t marked), I arrived at Hostel Tropical Maison and met Jean, the owner. Jean is the sort of fellow that people all over the world have stories about. He’s an old guy, a jazz pianist, a linguist who speaks at least six linguas, an opinionated storyteller, and a crank.

I was the only one in Jean’s house for the first couple days, which was a bit depressing, frankly. I spent a lot of time hearing about Jean’s lives abroad and his experiences alternately spying for the USIS and being followed by the FBI. And reading trashy novels in the comfy hammocks out back. But then, some very nice kids came and we went to the beach every single day for hours and hours. And I snorkeled like a mad man. And we went to the (two) clubs in Taganga and I danced like an idiot at one of them and tried my very best to flirt with girls. Oh, and my last night there I went nightswimming (in my dorkiest pair of underpants) with very kind, very cute Lizzie and very kind, very Australian James. Which was fun.

Yo Spoon, let’s go to Da Beach:

I came back to Medellin after a tearful (on my part) departure from the funnily, bizarrely inappropriate Canadian/South African couple and even-tempered Clover O’Brien (from guess what country) and found Camila as charming and gracious and lovely as ever. I saw her for just a few sad hours before I jumped in a cab the next morning to catch a plane back to, well, here.

I’m back in the States now, feeling like a bit of a stranger. I think that I’ve rewired by brain in the last almost eight months; some synapses in there have re-fused into a network in which my goal on any given day is to A] Find a place to stay, B] Find someone to hang out with, and C] Find a way to have a little bit of fun (but not too much). But I’m getting the hang of it again.

I loved my little trip. I loved the people I met, the places I saw. And yes, I am different.