Cartagena From the Street

---

13:00,Thursday, September 13. It is not raining, not pouring rain, not torrentially down pouring ... its a deluge! So fierce in fact that the spray of falling rain reaches halfway into the restaurant and splashes my screen. El Bistro is a refuge with good coffee, strudel that's really struessel and lots of the ever suspect ice cubes in water!

While sitting here in El Bistro a man with grey curly hair on head and in his beard crouches opposite on the cement stair of an entrance way. His belongings are in a large white plastic shopping bag, the kind you get when you buy something big at the Mall. Behind his dirt encrusted knee are take out containers… two soups and one flat compartmentalized one. He nibbles with sparse teeth on the contents of the flat box then drinks the soup. His hands are as encrusted as the rest of him. His legs and arms are thin. His clothes are as dirty as his body. Yet he survives. There are many like him in the streets.

While at the Convent looking out over the city, a young boy is spied holding on to the protective barrier that saves the area below from falling construction material. On a long slender stick he has attached a cut in half water bottle. He begs those people taking videos and photos of the city with their expensive digital equipment to put some change into his outstretched container. One hand holds the stick. The other hand holds on to a metal strut. In the trees, at a distance equal too the length of the stick is a partner who takes the money offers out of the plastic half bottle. How much money does he collect in a day? With whom does he have to share? Do both boys have to hand everything over to survive?

Do privileged children on holiday think about how lucky they are?

A toddler in a pink dress runs about in ecstasy, chasing pigeons under the watchful eye of her mother in orange top and jeans. She is so overjoyed her little feet fly of the ground as she runs amongst the birds.

Little Miss Hide-and-Seek takes a rest from running around the foundation of Senor Bolivar.

It is in Bolivar’s Square. He looked on from his high horse.

A young man walks from place to place with his business in a homemade long wooden carrier. He has plastic cups in varying sizes and two or three thermos bottles. He sells sweetened coffee. In the area of Getsemani he uses the kitchen of the Hotel Holiday to prepare and fill his thermos bottles. The tiniest cup, twice the size, maybe three times the size of the containers you squish ketchup into at Burger King, costs 200 pesos … divide by two thousand … that’s 1 cent! He does this all day long. One thermos bottle costs 21.400 pesos.

A man sits in the shop surrounded by a myriad of goods waiting for souvenir starved tourists. He is content to sit and rock. He has been here a long time and is biding his time. There are thousands of tourists in the city. They come by the ship full whenever a cruiser docks in the harbour and they come from France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Holland, England…. one glaring absence… USA.

The leg is within the sights of the lens…suddenly blue capped, head obviously belonging to the leg pops over the edge of the terracotta painted balcony. Quick retreat. The cap disappears and a second approach successfully zooming in gets a shot of a man relaxing during the heat of the day in a somewhat luxurious condom within sight of the wall.

A kissing couple sit on steps designed to carry people along the undulating ramparts of the wall. They embrace within sight of the shops and apartments below. Who chose the incline in the wall to sit behind hoping to be obscured, hoping no one will see them in their passionate embrace. And they are no spring chickens; the man being grey and both being somewhat portly.

The three men sit on the bench veiling away the afternoon hours. Whenever a short skirt, generous bosom or protruding derriere passes by, in unison their eyes travel with the sight.

Its Free Sunday and outside the National Museum the vendors are ready to do business.; hand shaved ice for a very red slushy, cool coconut milk, crisps in a bag, bars that look like ice cream covered in chocolate but must be avoided at all cost, lemonada in a huge plastic crock with a long ladle dispensed with ice in a plastic cup. Coke and water bottled by the same company, cut watermelon, papaya, or pineapple, roasted sausage, a tray filled with one piece chic let boxes, a rolling dresser the top of which serves bread rolls,
An aluminium basin full of homemade sugary things riding on the head of a woman dressed in traditional Creole garb, an aluminium basin suspended from the waist of a man filled with boiled eggs and Cartagena balls (smaller than a ping pong ball made out of some kind of finely minced meat, and softball sized fried dough filled with a mixture on f meat and vegetables.… who needs to sit in a restaurant?


Everybody has a small business; over the shoulder, under the arm, on the head, in a cart, on a three wheeler, at a booth, on a blanket on the ground, in a basin, in a shoeshine box, in a glass case or in a bonefied stall.


In oft repeated incidences bicycles are seen rolling into, standing beside confessionals or being wheeled out of churches. The bicycles have been old and battered, new and sleek, working bicycles carrying paint cans and brushes or pretty bikes with select shopping in a wicker basket ( OK the last one is a lie…although I did see this in France but not in a church). Can a bike be brought into Saint Michael’s Cathedral? Do you have to be catholic?

The people on the excursion bus came from Australia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Canada and England. The bus was full. There was guide and a video man. Both spoke Spanish and English. The driver did a good job going up the hairpin curves to the Monastery.

The gate to the Centenary Park has the dates 1811 and 1911 emblazoned at the top. The gates have been dutifully repainted. It will definitely attract the tourists because attempts are being made to refurbish the once beautiful and well laid out park. Where will the Ladies then ply their trade?

The pizza was so good it disappeared from the board before a photo could immortalize it….35.000 plus beer!

In the Chapel of the Monastery to La Popa…The Virgin … two meter square frames are filled with charms representing miracles performed. Did not see anyone walking up the hill on their knees.

The three toed sloth is only a year old, very docile, and will pose with anyone as long as you pay the master. Snuck this photo… was not paying 50 cents or 2.50 for a picture. The 1000 and 10.000 peso notes are almost the same colour.

A lady from Kitchener sat beside me on the tour bus … OK she is originally from El Salvador … but is it not a small world. It was extremely pleasant to speak too a neighbour.

And this one’s for you J … one uuglee fish…its that one that starts with a c from the ROM. Only its head is lying on a box and the dried out insides can be seen at the back… seems the whole thing was 4 meters long. Can that be right?

From the Internet …“In Cartagena, Colombia, the popular Walled City tourist area, Plaza Santo Domingo, also contains a popular Botero-the reclining nude where hundreds of thousands have lovingly touched, and thereby made shiny, her bronze nipples for: "good love, and good luck". “Have to remember to rub her nipples before leaving this town !…


PLEASE NO PICTURES!

Cartagena wildlife seen in one night includes a medium sized rat scurrying from a door way to under a closed for the night shoe vendors stall, a cockaroach literally making its way across the road and a band of dogs molesting a female in heat along the curb. Her friend a hairy mutt had no chance to defend her or himself against the marauders and had to slink away.

Cartagena nightlife this evening takes the form of two men sitting for dinner at the next table in a restaurant not exactly upscale but with chequered tablecloths, printed menus, and a definite marine motif in decoration.

The men in question contribute to the telling of this tale in four ways:
1. Grizzle and small bones from the soup of the day are simply spit too the floor.
2. Bones from the grilled fish are spit back on too the plate.
3. The cleaning of one nose is done by using the sleeve of the t-shirt to bore for offending bits.
4 The cleaning of the next nose is done by holding one nose hole closed and blowing into the palm of the
hand what ever is the irritant in the open nostril. This manoeuvre is repeated for the opposite side. What
is done with the contents by now in both hands, remains a mystery but it seems safe to assume that the
thigh part of the man’s pant are spattered. He did this with such expertise it is not his first attempt.

My meal of fried meat with rice, papas frito and fried onions was very delicious washed down with a beer and accompanied by entertainment better than TV.

---

Photos

Vendors of Everything

Gates of Delight
What's my friend doing here?