Cartagena de Indias

I got sent to Cartagena by work to take part in the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival. I don't mean to make it sound too involuntary... there are some upsides to this job! I was last here in 1996, and in the intervening years, two things have happened: (1) the locals have scrubbed the historic city centre up enormously, and (2) I had forgotten just how astonishingly beautiful this city is. It seems so appropriate for a film festival to take place here, for the whole walled city looks like the back drop to Pirates of the Caribbean. It's late now, so I'm going to leave you with a few quick pics of the place, and an invitation to visit my Justgiving page in order to help me raise the funds to come back here as soon as possible.

This (above) was the showing of a number of short films, including the hilarious Colombian short Rodri which seemed to be an audience favourite after its participation in Cannes last year.

The "Cinema Under the Stars" series finished off the Saturday night with a presentation of the Italian Vittorio di Sico's "Umberto D".

"Taxi?"

Round the corner from the hotel at midnight.

La Mambanegra

Here's a contemporary salsa track that is an instant classic. The video was only recently released, and it is a riot. The characters are taken from the history of Cali and its festivals, but if you want more details on that you're going to have to ask someone who knows something about the city... These guys, La Mambanegra, deliver a sledgehammer blast of salsa that I had the pleasure of seeing live in Circulart in Medellin last year, like some of the other music I've mentioned on here before. Since then I've been desperately searching to find more evidence of them online, but this video just surfaced recently. The singer, Jacobo Velez (link is to a Google translation of a news article on him and this new project), was the founder of contemporary legends "La Mojarra Electrica", although he left recently to focus on this new group. Here they are with "La Compostura" - it's a cliche, but turn it up!

Here's a quick introduction to La Mojarra Electrica in English with subtitles for the interviews.

And here's the last little bit of Mambanegra I can find online, an Electronic Press Kit video on Vimeo:

Let me know what you think... or even better, let them know what you think. La Mambanegra on Twitter.

You say merengue

I've just realised I can't say "meringue" any more. I tried to type it and it came out "merengue". Which is Spanish for "meringue" (man, that looks really weird with the "i" in the middle of the word), and is also the name of a type of music that comes from the Dominican Republic and is exemplified by Juan Luis Guerra.

For some reason Sundays in Colombia are celebrated by baking merengue at home and driving to the side of a road somewhere busy and selling squares of it to people who celebrate Sundays by driving out of the city to find sticky sweet stuff at the side of the road. I don't pretend to understand this custom, but give me a couple more years and I'll get back to you on it. In the meantime, here's Juan Luis with one of his classics...

3 things that nearly killed us this week

It's been a more than usually exciting week on the foreshortened mortality front. We are currently in Medellin, having got here after spending a few days in el valle, near Cali. We travelled north and decided to break the journey by stopping at the Santa Rosa de Cabal thermal spring complex. We lounged in volcanically heated water (up to a temperature of about 40 degrees, according to the book), and then dried off and walked back to the car. As the complex did not, as advertised, have any towels to rent, we had had to take turns with the one towel that my mother had brought all the way from Belfast to Santa Rosa de Cabal. This meant that the girls, the first to dry off, were already back at the car waiting for us as the boys, Oisin and I, grudged through the twilight to join them and head off to find a hotel. As we got to the car, Pati turned and yelled "HIJUEPUTA, una serpiente!" This roughly translates as "FUCK ME, a snake!" I froze for a second, and then turned to see a one metre long snake sliding past where the boy and I had just walked a moment ago. The lad minding the car park went "jesus" in a fairly un-reassuring way, and we all fumbled like mad to get into the car and lock the doors (not the car park lad, we abandoned him to his own fate, which seemed to involve directing the unsuspecting newly arrived 4x4 to drive over the snake. This was unsuccessful and only seemed to guarantee that he would have to share the car park with a really, really, irate snake.) As we stared at each other in disbelief, Pati told us that the car park lad had shouted that it was a "rabo de aji" (chilli tail) - "Coral Snake" in English. I did recall seeing black bands on it, which tallies with the description. A description that includes, according to the Wiki entry, the observation that "New World coral snakes possess one of the most potent venoms of any North American snake". Presumably the South American ones will be harmless, then, eh?

The White City

La Ermita, Popayan

Today we went off to Popayan. We've been staying in Pati's aunt and uncle's house in Palmira, close to Cali, and Popayan was a reasonably smooth two hour drive south from here. The last time I was there was in 1997, and I had good memories of the place - mainly white memories, as the whole of the city centre is maintained in what I presume is its original colonial colour scheme - white. Popayan is 1760m above sea level, so it was fresher than Palmira, which at 1000m above sea level has been doing a good impression of an open air furnace since we've been here.

Happy New Year

If this doesn't yell "love" at you then you're not looking properly. This was taken as we waited for lunch at a restaurant in Villa de Leyva. That's the town where Pati and I got married in 1998. We went back and discovered that the hotel where we betrothed ourselves is back in business as a hotel. It was quite a trip down memory lane, but looking to the future, here's to starting 2013 the way I mean to continue - with a blog post. If you've felt the need of love at some point in 2012, I hope you don't feel its lack in 2013 and for the time being, I hope this photo will send you a big hug from us in Colombia who are thinking of you. xx

Land of saints and scoundrels

If you’re from Colombia and living abroad, or at least in the UK, you’re usually met with three reactions when you mention your place of birth to new acquaintances. I characterise them as the “three C’s” – cocaine, conflict and coffee. These seem to be the exclusive reference points for the people who’ve actually heard of the place. One local ex-pat Anglo blogger recently discussed the drug connotations of this adopted country of residence and the problems of explaining it all to his friends in the UK with the succinct title “Yes I live in Colombia. No, I’m not a coke fiend”. Between drug money and civil war, there is definitely a certain culture of violence, but whether those macrosocial factors can be held to be a causal influence on street violence and crime is a different question. When we first got to Bogotá it would be fair to say we were rigid with paranoia and fear. Big scary city, big scary problems, muggers and killers lurking under every hood, round every corner. For the first month or so it felt like an adventure just opening the front door to put the rubbish out, wondering who would take advantage to push their way in and disembowel us before looting the house. Fear is a wonderful stimulant to paranoid creativity.