A Night With Drug Lords

The first inkling that it was going to be an interesting night was when I met Pablo at the entrance to the party and we started chatting and I told him I was from the US.
“Oh, really?” he said. “I spent 3 years in the US.”
“What part?” I asked.
“Florida” he replied simply.
“Right on, what did you do while you were there?”
“I sat in jail. Apparently the states don’t like it when you bring 5 kilos of heroin into the country.”
It was at this juncture that I realized the invitation-only party I was about to walk into, would be one of the most interesting nights of my life. You see, it started off as a normal Friday night for a backpacker: Sitting at a bar drinking cheap beer with 5 guys representing 5 different countries, Canada, Australia, Ireland, France and England. After a few beers the French guy, Benjamin, mentioned that he had a friend from Cali who had invited him and a few friends to a party that was supposed to be one of the best in Cali. We were all up for mixing in with locals because let’s be honest, traveling is supposed to be about learning the culture and life and what better way to learn about it than from the people who know it best?

As we pulled up to the party, Kique (I don’t know how to spell it but it sounds like Key-Kay), Benjamin’s friend, explained to us that we were lucky to be able to get into a party like this because it was invitation-only and that meant it was the elite of Cali. That was pretty obvious from the start though as the party venue, Shalom Home, was located way up the mountains with a perfect view over the entire city of Cali. Another hint that the party was for the rich was that taxis weren’t allowed near the entrance because they made it look tacky. Besides, when everyone drives Mercedes, BMWs, and Giant SUV’s all with tinted windows and TV’s in the headrests, the demand for taxis isn’t too high.

After being patted down so thoroughly they couldn’t show it on cable TV, we walked into an unknown atmosphere like virgins walking into a brothel. The place flooded with the stench of filthy rich people. Thousands of lights and blasting electronic music blanketed hundreds of people wearing GUCCI sunglasses (yes, in a dark party), designer clothes that are worth more than my life, and the classic chin-up, nose in the air, ‘we’re better than you’ faces. The party was divided into two sections, the filthy rich, and the filthy rich with connections (VIP). Kique immediately got us into the VIP section which was closest to the DJ and was packed with the beautiful people of Cali. It was easy for Kique to get us in because in Colombia, it’s all about who you know and how much power they have. Kique obviously had some connections… and so did Pablo. When he was deported from the States after 3 years in jail, he was supposed to spend another 5 in a Colombian prison… his Colombian boss had more than a few connections and the next day he was back to his normal life in Colombia.

Kique introduced us to a few more of his friends and we all started dancing and chatting it up. After a little while, Kique pointed “El Jefe” out to us. El Jefe is the boss… and yes, we are talking Scarface, movie-style boss. He was sitting at his own private table in the middle of the dance floor. The table looked like a press conference where the Police lay out all the contraband they found after a big arrest. There was piles of coke, heroin and syringes, ecstasy, poppers, acid, and any other drug you could possibly imagine. I have never seen that many drugs in one place before in my life and they were being ingested by people like they were overweight and at an all you can eat buffet. Dancing in front of the table was a group of 5 of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Strategically situated around the room were about 10 big bulky guys standing in the middle of the dance floor not moving (nor changing their grimaces), but simply watching the boss. Us gringos felt like we were in the middle of some crazy movie and asked Kique if he was sure that it was cool for us to be there. He assured us it was all cool because the boss was his friend (see what I mean about connections) and told us to party on.

After some dancing and drinks, we noticed that the dance floor where we were dancing was all couples. We decided to make our way towards the DJ where a group of girls was dancing with a drunk dwarf. We never asked anyone to dance, but just started dancing in the area of the girls. No longer than 5 minutes did some guy come up to me from behind and let me know that we shouldn’t be dancing with the girls. (I won’t go into details of how he convinced me of this because my mom reads my blog, but let’s just say he definitely persuaded me to put a little distance between us.) We decided to move away from the girls and dance closer to the DJ and the boss’ pet dwarf. (I mean absolutely no offense to little people, but the power the boss had was amazing).

For the next little while, things went on fairly normally, or at least we thought so. We just danced and enjoyed ourselves and made sure not to ask any girls to dance. Everything was going fine until we tried to talk to some of the friends Kique had introduced us to. Every time we approached them and started making conversation, they would just say “Sorry, we can’t talk to you” and turn their back to us. It was strange because they weren’t mad at us or busy, they just seemed to have a very apologetic look on there face. We also noticed that just about everyone in the party was staring at us. It’s pretty normal to stand out as a group of gringos, but never have I been stared at as much as that night. Some people gave us looks of ‘what the hell are they doing there’ and others just glared like we had insulted their mother. We hunted down Kique to ask what was going on and that was when things took an unexpected turn for us. Kique looked at us with an ‘oh shit’ expression and asked us what we did. We told him we were just dancing, but he informed us that we weren’t just dancing, we were pissing off the boss. Apparently there is a space on the dance floor just for the boss and his personal guests, but the weird thing about this space is that it isn’t marked and actually changes according to whatever the hell the boss wants. So one minute you might be dancing in a completely fine area, the next, that same spot is his territory. We all just about crapped our pants and probably looked like kids at school who knew the bully was coming for them.

We just danced where we were, away from the boss, for a while until a guy started dancing with us. He wasn’t just any guy though, he was the crazy looking bastard that was standing next to the boss’ table most of the night. The big burly guys standing around the party weren’t nearly as intimidating as this skinny guy with long greasy hair. He looked like a cross between Keith Richards and William Dafoe and his eyes practically read “Careful, I am crazy and not to be messed with.” When he removed the bottle of poppers which was nearly permanently jammed up his nostril, he just stared at me for a few minutes. I asked him how he was doing and his response was simple, “A lot better than you all.” At this point, I (and the alcohol I had consumed) decided that it was time to put a stop to all this. This was childish and stupid and the best way to handle it was for me to go and apologize to the boss and put an end to this all.

Like the dumbass that I am, I walked straight towards the boss’ table. I made it to within a few meters before 2 bulky guys were standing in front of me asking if I had a problem. I told them I just wanted to apologize and with a flick of the wrist, the boss waved them away. I have never been so nervous in my life and I tried to spit out my apology in the best Spanish I could at the time. “ Um, I just want to say that we…we are… really sorry. We are just stupid gringos… and uh… if we did something we weren’t supposed to do, we…we… didn’t know. We had no intentions of doing something wrong and we… uh… sorry. I’m very sorry.” The boss just stared at me menacingly. He said absolutely nothing. I gave one last “I’m sorry”, and walked away feeling his glare burning through my back.

I figured that this was all in the past now and surely the boss would understand that we were just stupid gringos at a party we shouldn’t have been at and we meant no harm. Surely he would call off the dogs. That would have been more probable if the boss was a little more human than I read him for. It was like he watched too many druglord movies and decided that he wanted to live that way. Kique found us and said we had to leave and now! We didn’t have any objections and he escorted us down the road and threw us in a taxi. One of the most interesting nights of my life had come to an end (and luckily not my end). Now I know it was stupid for us to be there in the first place and a lot of you are going to give me a lot shit for being dumb enough to have put myself in that position, but let’s be honest, how many chances do you get to party with druglords? As you some of you may be catching onto, I’m slightly attracted to danger and this was a full dose of ‘tuck your tail between your legs, suck your thumb like a baby’ fear that I experienced and I quite enjoyed it. And now I can cross “piss off a duglord” off my list of things to do in life.

Before making my way down to Cali, I spent a few days in the capital, Bogota. Bogota is a beautiful metropolitan city with a very cultured atmosphere tucked in under the pollution filled gray sky. It was cold and rainy everyday that I was in Bogota, but I still felt the city’s charm and hope to spend more time there in the future. I only had a few days in the city so I packed in as much tourist stuff as I could. We went up the teleferico to get a good city view, walked around the colonial plazas and went to the Botero museum to check out the work of Colombia’s most famous artist. We were a little hesitant to take public buses because just a couple of weeks earlier, guerillas planted bombs in two public buses in Bogota and killed a few people. We decided that the numbers were with us in a city where 7 million people use public transit everyday. I met a few other travelers and we went bowling, something I haven’t done in 8 months and miss like crazy. It wasn’t just a normal bowling alley though… it had tons of character and there was a greasy, horribly tattooed guy that sat behind the lane and set the pins up for you. He screamed your score across the alley and you tried to figure out the math on your own. Bogota was another beautiful city filled with kind and helpful people and I experienced absolutely no problems at all.

After our endeavors in Cali, Benjamin and I decided to head down to San Agustin on our way down towards the Ecuadorian border. The bus ride to San Agustin itself was an interesting trip. It goes through an area which is known for guerilla presence and it was easy to see why. For hours, this horrible road leads you through nothing but forest with not the slightest hint of civilization. The bus ride was quite rough though and you spent a quarter of the time being thrown up in the air and hovering, waiting for the next bump to slam your coccyx up your throat. San Agustin is a small town tucked up in the mountains made famous by the mysterious stone statues that have been found in the surrounding hills. There is very little known about the culture that left behind the beautiful carvings, but they are thought to be one of the first civilizations in the Americas. It is also believed that they were descendents of Asians because some of the statues had the heads of elephants and the last time I checked, there aren’t too many elephants roaming around my neighborhood. Unfortunately, we only had a day to spend in the San Agustin before having to head down south towards Ecuador. We hiked around as much as we could and saw all the statutes we could before passing out back at the hotel. We missed out on seeing some massive waterfalls and other beautiful surrounding areas. It just gives me an excuse to return though.

When we got to Popoyan from San Agustin, we were hoping to just spend a night and then head down to the border. This became quite difficult as the roads leading to Popoyan were all closed due to massive protests by the campesinos. There were 20,000 of them protesting Uribe in the upcoming elections and the free trade agreement with the states. It’s understandable why the free trade agreement would upset them because there is no way they can compete with massive American monopolies. They took their complaints to the road and shut down the Panamericana highway, the main artery of South America and weren’t letting anyone pass. They had taken police officers hostage and there were already a few deaths as a result from the clashes. We ended up spending 2 nights in Popoyan before some traveler’s showed up from down south and explained the hell they went through. The protests were still going on, but the police cleared the road just long enough for a few buses to pass through. The mob threw everything they had at the passing busses and busted a ton of windows. I had to make my way down south to Ecuador so I had little choice. I took a horrible bus up into the mountains further into Guerilla territory in order to make a giant loop around the panamericana and arrive in Pasto, south of the protests.

Unfortunately, my time in Colombia has come to an end. I absolutely loved the country and as I have said numerous times, the people there make a visit worthwhile… I would wait until after the elections are over though. The pre-election chaos in the country is quite unpredictable and can be scary. Although I loved the country, it is still in a precarious situation with the civil war that is tearing through small rural communities. I met a photographer in Popoyan who worked with the Red Cross and was in charge of taking photos of the conflict. Some of the things he described were so gruesome and inhumane that they were even hard to listen to. These main areas of conflict are fairly easy to avoid, and therefore make traveling as a tourist no more dangerous than in surrounding South American countries.

I am now in Quito, Ecuador once again and hop on a plane tomorrow for San Jose, Costa Rica. I’m excited to see my Costa Rican family since I haven’t been able to have contact with them for the past 8 months. I fly home June 5th for my sister’s wedding, thus bringing an end to my trip. I’m pretty bummed about it and would like to stay in South America forever, but real life is calling. I’m pretty sure I will be out on the road again soon though… I’ve got the fever! I will update again from Costa Rica. See everyone soon!

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