Holy week in Colombia

Only a month or two behind schedule, here are some highlights of our “Spring Break” (what does that mean on the equator?) trip to Cartagena and Bogota, Colombia in March, 2008. Cartagena is a beautiful colonial city — the old town is completely walled in from back in the day when Sir Francis Drake was trying to attack the city (you can bet the residents of Cartagena weren’t calling him “Sir”!). Everywhere you looked it was gorgeous, and the weather was thankfully hot, just what the doctor ordered after months of cold and wet in Quito!

Bogota was cooler (but not as cold as Quito!) and cosmopolitan, with vibrant street life and some great museums and restaurants. Here are some images from our visit.

Cartagena Pictures

Here is a video of the shark feeding frenzy (a still photo is in the Cartagena slides above): we took a boat from Cartagena to some nearby islands for a day of Caribbean sand and sun. Part of the deal was to go to this aquarium, which featured a guy feeding “pens” of different kinds of sea creatures. The craziest event was the one featuring these really fat sharks.

Here are our Bogota pictures, including the amazing Botero museum. Botero is Colombia’s most famous artist, and perhaps the world’s most famous living painter. Our favorite restaurant in San Antonio, Texas (Rosario’s) features huge replicas of some of Botero’s sympathetic yet critical paintings of big, fat people.

Here are pictures from my rock climbing adventures at Suesca, near Bogota. I got to go two different days, with two different Colombian climbers that I had met a month before when they were visiting my favorite climbing area near Quito. Suesca has over 400 routes of varying length, both bolted routes and trad climbs (where you place your own gear as you go). The Columbians who showed me around, Gonzalo and Ivan, were extremely generous and justifiably proud of this great climbing area.

Monkey Town

Over Halloween/All Saints’ Day weekend, we visited Tena, Ecuador, billed in the Lonely Planet Ecuador guide as the Whitewater Capital of Ecuador. With River People, we rafted two beautiful rivers, the first featuring vertical cliffs draped with two-meter fern leaves, occasionally punctuated with tributary creeks that dropped bridalveil cascades straight into the river. The water was beautiful, the guides were great, the lunch was astounding, and altogether it was a beautiful day.

The other main attraction of Tena and neighboring Misahualli were the monkeys. Misahualli had a band of little Capuchin monkeys running wild on the river beach, and they delighted us with their agility and antics, particulary the moms with babies holding on tight to their backs, and a great interspecies match between a tiny dog and a monkey or three (see brief video below).

Tena itself has this great little park on the peninsula formed at the Pittsburghesque confluence of two rivers right in town. In it there run (semiwild) monkeys of at least three varieties, and a sweet if huge tapir (think horsepig with a very sawed off trunkish schnozz). One of the three monkey varieties is really a marmoset, and a fourth variety had to be caged. The spider monkeys are in confinement not because they would vacate the premises. but because of the havoc they wreak. The male supposedly messed with visitors to the park, particularly bringing children to tears. If the female is released, on the other hand, she crosses the river and makes a beeline for the nearest restaurant or private home, barges into the kitchen and trashes everything she can get her hands on. This kind of delinquent behavior is typical of animals that are intellectually overqualified for their ecological niches - other examples include blue jays tormenting squirrels and cats, crows and pack rats stealing shiny objects, and the high school valedictorian getting busted for shoplifting. More monkey business: if you are a rock climber, or if you just like watching monkeys display their grace and agility in trees, you have to check out this video, taken at the park in Tena, Monkey Working the Crux.

Dog Rallies

One of the ways that Quito, Ecuador and Austin, Texas, USA are similar is that both have (until recently in Austin’s case) an airport smack in the middle of town. In Austin, when Joy and I were first together, this meant that when there was a “norther” (wind from the north) the planes took off right over our house. You had to stop talking and just wait — always difficult yet humbling for me. That changed when they moved the airport to the newly shut down local Air Force Base. Well, the real, secret reason we moved from Austin to Quito is that we strongly associate our idyllic early years together with that all-encompassing roar. We needed that back.

Success is ours! We not only have airplanes flying in and out regardless of the weather, but many more of them, this being a national capital. Moreover, we have an added benefit. Many people in Quito have dogs, as guardians and pets, and our neighborhood is no exception (our landlady has two, bless her heart). When the planes go over, the canine population perceives a grave challenge to their acoustic authority, and immediately call to order what Joy and I have come to call a “dog rally.” The canine agenda emphasizes vocalizations of the widest variety and longest duration, and shows a real egalitarian spirit encompassing dogs of every social class and living situation. I suspect, in fact, that street dogs serve a vital relay function across otherwise deserted stretches between terriers on terraces and yorkies in yards, serving as mongrel mortar in the canine cobblestone.

Just as revelers are loathe to go home when the bars close, dog rallies do not readily end after the plane has moved on. Perhaps neurons are cross-fired that evoke full moons in the collective unconscious — or maybe the plane is never truly out of earshot for these exceptional beasts.

Some People Never Change

In Latin American countries, people rarely have any change. Sometimes vendors are just pretending, out of habit or out of a scarcity mentality. Sometimes — perhaps more often — they really don’t have change. Ironically, the ATMs give out twenties, tens, even fives and ones. This surprising and welcome fact alone may be keeping the economy from grinding to a changeless standstill.

Wednesday night on the way home from school I decided to buy roses at a little kiosk, red ones for Joy. I’d already picked out a bunch when I realized all I had was a $20 bill. The lady assured me she could change it (a mild surprise); then came back a minute later after having gone to the flower booth next door, now imploring me to surrender my hidden stash of change. I reiterated: I had none, ni un centavo. So she disappeared next door again, reappeared, and then walked past me to stand by the sidewalk looking out over the busy street. After a while, I realized she was waiting for her colleague, whom she’d sent across the busy street and down the road to the big supermarket - looking for change. Impatiently, I considered my options. “Forget it, take your roses back — this is ridiculous!” was on the tip of my tongue.  Until I realized, that is, that she had my money, and I was stuck. About 10 minutes later she finally came back carrying a few bills and a fistful of coins, which were painstakingly counted from fetcher to seller, then again by seller, and finally to me. All that trouble for a $1.50 purchase.  The roses are pretty, though; Joy was happy, and all’s well that ends well.

The World Junior Climbing Championships

Meet "Microwave."

Last month we had the honor to host at our house here in Quito the American speed climbing competitor Michael Perry, 16 years old, from Austin, Texas, who currently reigns as the 21st fastest climber in the world in his age group.

Weekend before last Joy and I traveled to Ibarra, 2.5 hours north of Quito, to catch the speed climbing part of the World Junior Climbing Championships.

(above) A captured moment of the part of the competition referred to as “difficulty” (for good reason). By the way, this wall is a lot like the one I climb on in Quito. Very tall, and completely outdoors.

(above) Microwave hits the buzzer, 60 feet up, with an all-points-off

leap the last 5 or 6 feet.  Total time: 16 seconds or so.

To see the general competition results, try here to find out that the Austrian and Japanese men kicked butt, but the American women did great in Difficulty! The Ecuadorians climbed really well in speed also. Here are the links to Michael’s area, Speed Male Youth A.

I didn’t get any video of Michael climbing, but here’s an amazing speed climbing clip from the competition: The audio track (otherwise annoying) provides the helpful info that the slower climber got to the top in 13.88 seconds.