Gunga- Following Marquez's footsteps

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O Lord, when I die please let my heaven be like Cartagena. For years I have collected any travel article I could find about Colombia especially Bogota and Cartagena. We arrived on Thursday and have been walking, walking, walking ever since. This is a city to be absorbed by all the senses. The smells of fresh fruit being cut and sold in plastic cups on every street corner is enticing. Some we know like pineapple, banana, watermelon, cantaloupe, mango, and others are strange like nispero, guayuana, lulo. The sounds of people selling lottery tickets, sunglasses, beads, bags, water, or coconuts echo through the streets. The clip-clop of horses hooves sound from early morning to late at night as horse drawn carriages bring couples or tourists around the city. Church bells chime and sirens wail. It is all a symphony of life in a Latin city. I love it.

Val has posted some pictures of our journey thus far. You can go to www.flickr.com/photos/maumus/ if you want to see them. Most of you know she is an excelllent photographer.

We have spent part of each day in the Plaza Bolivar. It is said the Marquez would go there to think and write. He used a site across the street from the park in his book ¨Love in the Time of Cholera¨. His hero would write letters in the 'Avenue de Scribes'. In reality, it is the customs house and now houses the headquarters for Colombian Beauty Pageants. Many of the past beauty queens have likenesses of their faces etched in the sidewalk and the dates of their reigns. I prefer to think of it as Marquez wrote in his book as a place where people came to have letters written, especially love letters. We sit in the park and let the daily life of the city pass by us - scared looking tourists from the cruise ships all with name labels and the number assigned to their group pasted on their clothes. They look neither left nor right and follow the guide like he or she is a god. They totally ignore the touts, the fruit ladies who are dressed in gorgeous colored costumes and want to pose for pictures ( for a small fee), the men selling ice cream or water- even though many in the group look like they are going to drop from heat exhaustion. We can only assume that they were told on the cruise ship to stay with the group at all times and NOT to interact with the locals. Such a loss... meanwhile we are interacting like crazy. We are continually telling the sellers of T-shirts, necklaces, bird food, ice cream, paintings, sunglasses, real silver bracelets ( right!), and books ¨no gracias¨ until they finally let us alone. But we all get a good laugh as they circle around and try again.

Tonight we are going to try and find a wedding...

More later,
Carolyn

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Comments

[Bo Ward]

Catching up!
Have been enjoying your blogs so much, as always! Great break from preparing taxes... thank you. Just saw Val's photos, and particularly enjoyed the Botero Museum shots. (I see what you mean, we'd have loved that era!!!) It seems like Cartagena is turning out to be a much better experience for you than Bogota was. If it makes you feel any better, my sister-in-law the travel agent (who has spent a lot of time in South America, too) was very surprised to hear about all the rain you encountered there! She, too, would have thought you were there at the perfect time to have beautiful weather. Tell Val her pictures are the perfect complement to your writing, and I'm loving it all!