There are still beautiful buildings, both old and new, but Columbia is a poor country. The average annual income is about $US3,000, but our guide pointed out this average is inflated by the very wealthy. The median income is closer to $300 p.a., which isn’t a lot.
On the plus side they are making progress. Unemployment is aaround 13% which is high compared to Australia (around 5-6%, but not so bad compared to the US (closer to 10%). The government ships in clean water into the poorer areas, delivering it it large reusable plastic barrels. And the problems they had with the drug cartels are far less than they used to be.
There’s still a long way to go.
Cartegenia’s money problems used to be different. In the 16th century they had too much of it. This was a problem because it attracted every pirate in the Caribbean, and worse still, the English navy. If I recall correctly one of the Englishmen who looted the place was Sir Francis Drake. If you’re going to be robbed, you may as well be robbed by the best.
After being rolled for the umpteenth time the King of Spain authorized the construction of a massive fort to protect the city. The protection came at an exorbitant cost, something like three trillion $US if converted to current dollar values. Supposedly after looking at one set of invoices the king walked to his window, and looked out with his telescope, saying that given how much the fort was costing he should be able to see it from Spain.
It is an impressive fort, with a commanding view of the city. Whether it would have been cheaper paying off the pirates is an open question.
After this we saw two old monasteries. Beautiful buildings.
One of them, the Cathedral de San Pedro Claver, has the bones of San Pedro built into the altar. Personally I don’t really understand the appeal of sitting in a church looking at the bones of dead Jesus guys, but it’s a big thing in Catholicism. I guess if you live in squalor praying for magical intervention gives you hope, not to mention keeping you from joining the revolution du jour.
In fairness to San Pedro, “the slave of the slaves”, he worked hard to look aid the slaves. Needless to say this made him unpopular with the slave owners, government, and the church. And, true to form, 250 years later he was recognised as a great humanitarian and visionary, and beatified.
We also walked through the old city of Cartegenia, which has some gorgeous old buildings. The problem was trying to see them without being swamped by vendors.
There were dozens of them at every stop, all selling exactly the same things. We’d run a gauntlet saying “no, gracias” as we went past vendor after vendor after vendor after vendor after... I’m not quite clear why the 28th guy thinks you’ll buy the t-shirt you’ve just said no to 27 times, but they keep trying. I guess that when you’re that poor you need to take a shot at every chance you get.
Emma found it even more exhausting than I did, especially when she’d turn around to find someone standing right next to her shoving a t-shirt or fake Rolex into her face.
There was one vendor who did get our business. Outside one of the monasteries was a guy charging two dollars to let you hold and take a photo of a sloth. There was no way Emma was letting us get off the mountain without letting her hold it, and if the guy had read her properly he could have charged $20.
She fell in love with it. The fur was surprisingly soft, and it gently snuggled into her, like a small very affectionate child.
She was over the moon as we climbed back on our bus. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I looked back as the guy unzipped the sloth, and saw a highly-trained squirrel crawl out.
That night’s entertainment was a British mind-reader named Marc Paul. Emma was too exhausted to catch the show, but I’m quite fond of mentalist/magician Derren Brown (you may recall I’m reading his book “Tricks of the Mind”), so I was keen to see this.
He’s very good. Most of his early tricks were simple to work out, but I was stumped on how he did the main part of his act. He has an audience member blindfold him, while another one hands out cards to five people in the audience to write questions on. He then answers the questions, and adds various personal details: phone numbers, birthdays, family members, mother’s maiden name, and so on.
My best guess is that the blindfold isn’t sealed tight (safe guess), so he can just read the questions. The personal details bit is harder. I can only surmise that he pre-selects a few people who the “audience member” targets when handing out the cards. Even if I’m right it would be hard to guarantee that the plant would always correctly identify the right people and get the cards to them.
Another possibility is that he’s genuinely psychic. Right.
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