certification

Lost another draft.  Struggling in paradise, as they say.

Today is Molly’s birthday.  It’s the first birthday of hers that we’ve had the opportunity to celebrate together and the first one that we’ve spent in, well, another country, so we started the festivities last night and ended sometime around 4 in the morning.  This was a Thursday night, mind you, and Media Luna’s bars didn’t close until they kicked us out early last night.  Needless to say we’re feeling it today.

Instead of boring readers (and potential future law school admission boards) with the details of last night, I wanted to share some thoughts on two very important aspects of Colombian culture.

The first is the concept of personal space.  My brother participated in a foreign exchange program to India last year and has shared many different opinions on the concept of personal space in India, but one of his observations especially makes sense to me here today: in America, we have too much of it.  Cartagena is not packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists or locals (the bars are a different story altogether) and yet the ease with which strangers approach each other is astounding.  Last night, our friends and I asked for directions from this older woman and she promptly hurried over to within a foot of our faces.  Her earnestness was visible on her face, and our Colombian hostel desk manager explained that Colombians rapidly “close the gap” with people they want to pay attention to – in fact, the faster one approaches a speaker is a sign of higher interest, while to many people standing in the same place as when a conversation started is a sign of disrespect.

We learned a lot about the Colombian idea of personal space during a day trip to the Volcan de Lodo el Totumo, or El Totuma, a large “mud volcano” outside of Cartagena.  It was probably the weirdest thing that’s happened to either of us in recent memory.  Dozens of sweaty tourists from all over the world packed into shuttles and drove the fourth five minutes out to El Totuma without AC.  We then lined up inside of what we were convinced was a middle school locker room from the 1800s while a stressed out tour guide shouted in broken English to leave all of our possessions on a table in the unlocked shower room.  Making our way outside, we systematically climbed up fifty slippery, steep steps on what appeared to be the exterior of a large mole hill before reaching the stunning peak: a small, 10″ by 10″ suspiciously square pool of Matrix-grey mud, at once both reflecting light like a mirror while betraying a consistency of soupy, warm PlayDoh.

Submersion was at this point inevitable, so Molly and I (each clad in our underwear, in public, at the top of a mud volcano – we were not prepared) stepped down a steep wiry ladder as local men covered head to toe in the stuff guide you in to the mud.  These men are “massagers” – as in they excitedly glide tourists over the mud in to the arms of other men who proceed to slide mud over the bodies of completely shocked swimmers.  Molly and I were in the know, as these “massagers” will charge tourists for their craft unless ordered to stop (Molly made sure that the men in that pool wouldn’t get a dime), so instead we spent the better part of twenty minutes examining the incredible pressure on our abdomens, attempting to maintain some semblance of balance and control, and wondering what body part of which person just slid against the back of our legs.

It was a magical experience.

After walking down even steeper stairs and feeling hundred year old mud cake into literally every crevice of our bodies, village women herded us like cattle to the shores of local ponds and used bowls to frantically shower us.  Having an Afro-Carribean grandmother showering off tourists with lake water in a bowl while attempting to give instructions in Spanish is an experience that I will never forget.

Molly and I spent the rest of the afternoon contemplating what had just happened, and while I’m sure there are lessons to be learned about the socio-cultural impact of El Totuma, it was just too weird of an experience to dwell on for any length of time.  If that was uncomfortable reading, well, there’s a reason I didn’t use the pictures that were taken of us in the mud.

Sitting in the shuttle bus leads me to the next topic I want to discuss: food.  I realized that I haven’t spent any time describing food in this blog and I won’t allow my writing to descend into a food review, but as we approached Playa Blanca (a beach included with the El Totuma tour), we could smell the fried fish in the air.  I am convinced that Colombians have perfected the fried fish.  It is buttery and warm and not too salty, requiring dexterity to navigate around the tiny bones but rewarding eaters with a juicy, lime-cured treat.  

As I had to wake up at 6 am to catchup on my technically – hampered blogging opportunities, breakfast sounds pretty good right now.  I should probably get on that.