CHAPTER 16
The little two prop airplane we were on was flying low over the sparkling blue ocean. It felt strange to be flying, covering so many miles in so short a time. We were used to slowly bouncing along the uneven highways of Central America, maybe only traveling a few hundred miles a day if we were lucky. And now, after nearly 3 months on the road, we would surmount the greatest roadblock of the entire trip in a mere hour. The jungle between Panama and Colombia is physically impassable by land vehicles- and if you choose to hike the muddy trails and take small canoes across the innumerable rivers like the locals, you have a good chance of running into drug-trafficking bandits ferrying their goods the other direction. Even if you mean them no harm, they would just as well bury you in the swamp before trusting you to not say a word to the officials about their activity once you made it through to the other side. With this enormous risk at hand, travel by air or boat around the Darien Gap, is the only sensible option. Even so, there was a small part of me that felt cheated, or cheating, because we had skipped traversing the untamed and untraveled jungle that separates the two continents. But there has been talk of completing the Panamerican highway in the future, so maybe in a few years- or a few dozen years, more likely, considering the way things get done around here- we can return to this forgotten isthmus of land and complete our transit of the Americas.
For the time being, I looked out the little window and saw land collecting on the horizon. Soon I could see the sprawling shantytowns that are the staple of most large cities in Central and South America. My heart began to beat faster with that feeling that I always get right before arriving in a new and strange place. The plane circled around the city, and made a soft landing on the tarmac. South America! Colombia! We made it! Dave and Kacey: 1, Central America: 0
Cartagena de las Indias, or simply Cartagena as most people know it, is a beautiful old colonial town, surrounded by a high wall made out of blocks of ancient coral turned limestone. The skyline is dominated to the south by the massive Castillo de San Felipe, and to the west by the modern skyscrapers of Boca Grande, the expensive beach development that is the weekend retreat for the well-to-do from Bogota and Medellin. The taxi we had hired skirted around the walled city along the rocky coast and entered through a large portico. Only one section of the old town is restored, and has been developed as a rather posh tourist trap for the multitudes of Europeans and Americans that disembark the frequent cruise ships. Being on a traveler’s budget, we passed right through this part of town, and drove into a rundown and neglected neighborhood where most of the cheap hostels are located.  First impressions can be deceiving though, and over the next two weeks, we came to know and love our little barrio of Getsemani.
Considering how easy our transit from Panama to Colombia had been, it was a completely different story for the Golden Boy. We had loaded him into a 40’ shipping container in Colon, handed over a stack of cash, and crossed our fingers that the truck would arrive in Cartagena in the two days promised by the shipping company. Every day we would either call, email, or stop by the local company office to inquire about the whereabouts of our container. Every day we would be told a new story of where the container was, what ship it was on, and that it would arrive to Colombia, quite assuredly, the next day.  And every day we would become more frustrated. I understand that things don’t always go as planned, especially in Central and South America- it is a lesson we have learned well over the past 10,000 miles- but what really gets me is when people make up stories to appease you, even though they know you know they are lying through their teeth. Though we wouldn’t want to hear it (and we wouldn’t have picked their company in the first place if they had told us- which is why they didn’t) it would have been a lot more helpful if they had just told us that the truck would not make it to Colombia in two days, or even a week. We could have gone on a sailing trip to the San Blas islands like we had wanted to. We could have taken a jungle trek to the Ciudad Perdida (apparently as close to Indiana Jones as you can come) for a few days. We could have spent a week on the beach at Tyrona National Park, one of the most beautiful places in Colombia. And most of all, we could have flown to Venezuela to see our friend Taylor, who was only there for two weeks, the same two weeks we spent waiting around in Cartagena for our truck to arrive, everyday thinking it would get there the next. Writing this now, it sounds to me a bit like I am crying over spilled milk, as they say- and other people admittedly, have had good experiences with Barwil- but hopefully, if future travelers read this, they will think twice about using Barwil’s services.
There was nothing we could do about our unwillful imprisonment in Cartagena, so we tried to make the most of our time. In the mornings, we would wake up with the sun and make a circuit of the walls, doing various exercises along the way. I’m sure the locals thought it rather odd seeing two gringos lunging up and down the battlements, but after all those weeks on the road, it felt good to get into a workout routine. The other part of our daily routine was not quite as beneficial to our physique. A few doors down from the small plaza that we frequented almost every night with the other travelers stuck in Cartagena, we had found the most delicious Italian pizza shop in all of South America (which is saying something considering this was our first stop on the continent). Unfortunately, we didn’t discover it until we had already been there a full week, but after that, expecting every day to be our last in town, we would drop in for lunch, dinner, and even sometimes to order a pizza to be delivered to the plaza to satisfy our late night cravings (fueled by the delicious fresh squeezed juices of our favorite street food vendor, Mama Nira). We spent the remainder of our time hanging out with our new found friends: Nick and Rochelle (who are doing the same trip as us with their pitbull Domino- www.ramblerwriter.com), Greg and Cary (who are sailing from Texas to various places in South America), Lee (who is single handedly sailing around the world- www.sailing4sos.com), and of course our Colorado boys Erik and Noah (www.everlater.com/erikmyhre/leaving-corporate/)- and wouldn’t you know it, we got to spend a night or two with our good friends Tim and Amy flew in to Cartagena from Panama before heading off to the beaches of northern Colombia.
Eventually, the fateful day came, and after a very long, frustrating day at the port, we were finally reunited with our other half, the Golden Boy. Leaving Cartagena was a bit more emotional than I had expected. You don’t realize how quickly you can become attached to a place and the friends you have there. But South America was beckoning, and there were unknown numbers of new places to be found and imprinted in our minds as our ‘favorite’. Taylor had already flown home from Venezuela, so we scrapped, once again, our ambitions to drive east, and instead turned our wheel south towards the adventure capital of Colombia- San Gil.
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