This shall be an adventure!

Teresa,

CONGRATULATIONS!

You are the brand new VPTM-Elect!

The selection committee was really impressed with your depth of knowledge in regards to the TM process as well as your commitment to advancing our LC

I am confident that you will do great things for Madison, and will take our TM team to the next level.

I will be contacting you soon to begin our transition. I look forward to working with you and getting you ready to kick some TM butt before I leave!

love
monica

El Final de La Costa

Cartagena
April 11, 2009

Pei and I headed back to Bocagrande for more beach time and a little shopping today. We were both looking for new bags (I miraculously restricted myself to bringing only one here and got royally sick of it. I did buy a Juan Valdez bag in San Gil but still wanted another. Shocking, I know.) We also both needed to pick up various souvenirs for friends and family.

I found a beautiful yellow over-the-shoulder bag for a pretty good price (unfortunately for all the trinket sellers in Cartagena, I am able to bargain in Spanish and do not in fact have any dollars. Countless times after asking in Spanish how much something cost, the seller would take one look at me and reply "Five dollars." Sorry I look so American sir but I live in Colombia and earn pesos just like you do.) I also picked up a few things for people back home.

Then we hit up Juan Valdez again and went to the beach. It seemed a little less hectic than Thursday, which was nice. Still quite a few vendors though, which I didn't mind after I got my cocada (delish coconut/sugar paddy thing.) While we were laying there Carla and Marek randomly walked by so they sat down with us for awhile. After accumulating sand nearly everywhere on my body (it's very fine and being wet in a light breeze is not a good mix) we decided we should start making our way to Centro since there were some things Pei still wanted to buy before we got on our night bus. We opted to take the city bus there since the walk was quite a ways.



It was nice to stroll through Centro one last time before leaving and I picked up a package of authentic costena sweets for everyone back in my house. On our way to catch the bus back to Carmelita's, we stopped at Exito to pick up some chocolates for her family as a thank-you for putting up with our four day unsolicited invasion.

On the bus back to her house, I experienced probably one of the most horrifying things of my life. On the other side of the median on the main drag, we could see a huge crowd of people milling about in a circle, along with some police officers. Traffic on our side of the road was still moving but had slowed down considerably as people tried to see what was going on. The crowd of people made it impossible to see anything.

Until we drove about a hundred feet further and could see as plain as day a body lying in the middle of the road. Hardly anyone was standing around it and the few policemen appeared to be doing generally nothing, as there was no crowd control or ambulance present. Everyone on our bus flocked to the windows to gawk and several started exclaiming that the body had no head. I couldn't personally tell (I didn't really want to find out either way) but it was terrifying and sad and awful all at the same time.

[When we got home I looked online at the Cartagena newspaper and found out he had been hit by a taxi while trying to cross the street. It also confirmed that the man had been decapitated, so this is what the circle of people must have been looking at a hundred feet before the body.]

After we drove by I felt like crying and vomiting at the same time. I have never seen a dead body before. I started thinking about how in many corners of the world tragedies such as this are fairly commonplace and some people are forced to see dead bodies daily. I am lucky to have been raised in a place where shootings, violence, bombings and accidents are extremely rare. This is so cliche but the fragility of life was shoved in my face and made me think about how things can change in a second. One moment he was there and the next he wasn't. And hundreds of people were there to gawk and exclaim, but will ultimately return to their own small lives, forgetting that this man even lost his life.

Or course, I am guilty of the same. We had a bus to catch so we had to continue on home, eat dinner, shower and get to the bus station. We settled in for the overnight ride (better prepared for the cold) and I tried not to think about how easy it would be for our bus to get in an accident as it sped us back to Bucaramanga.

La Costa: Part V

Cartagena
April 10, 2009

We had to get up early to get downtown to meet our tour group for our excursion to El Volcan de Lodo El Totumo. The Cali trainees arranged it for us through their hostel and it turned out to be an excellent deal. After a somewhat late departure (SHOCKING) we headed to the volcano, which is halfway between Cartagena and Barranquilla, about an hour away.


The volcano would probably be more accurately described as a baby volcano. It also deosn't spew ashes and lava, it spews mud. After stripping down to a sports bra and shorts (I didn't want to get my swim suit dirty) I climbed the stairs to the top to have a bath. The opening is probably only about 15 or 20 square feet (I'm a horrible judge of distance but it was baby) and it was quite chaotic with the amount of people trying to have a dip.


We took turns going so we could all have pictures in the volcano. Climbing in it was probably one of the strangest feelings I've ever experienced. The mud is the consistency of sweetened condensed milk, which made it extremely difficult to move. Upon entering, I was immediately seized, laid on my back and pushed by my feet into a free corner of the mud. The man then proceeded to slather my entire body with mud and give me a massage.

After we floated around a bit (floated may not be the right word since it was nearly impossible to move) enjoying how weird it felt, I attempted to make it to the ladder to get out. This was quite a process and after, touching/being touched by multiple strangers in all sorts of places, I managed to get out. At the ladder, another local was there to help de-mud you as much as possible before exiting.

Then you have to walk down another set of stairs (with extreme caution as both they and I were quite slippery) to the nearby lake to rinse off. There, several more locals were available to aide in the continuation of the de-mudding process. I tried to resist but eventually gave in to the molestation because without the help of their buckets and aggressive hands I never would have gotten it all off me. After I felt semi-clean, I headed back to the bus to change into dry clothes.

Our tour then took us to a small fishing village where we got our lunch that was included in the price we paid, at a nice little tent restaurant on the ocean. The patacon and coconut rice were excellent. It took awhile for the food to come but it was relaxing sitting by the ocean. Then our tour piled back on our little bus to head back to Cartagena. We got dropped off by the hostel where we had gotten on and only then did we realize we neglected to ask Carmelita how to get back to her house from Centro.

We didn't have an address (no one in Cartagena uses them anyways) or even a neighborhood to go by, and Carmelita was not answering her phone. After inquiring about the name of a mall that was about 15 minutes from the bus terminal (could that have BEEN any more vague?!), a woman in an internet cafe told us a name, which I recognized. She pointed us in an approximate direction to take one of two buses. We then had to ask a policeman, who told us we needed to go to Avenida de Pedro Herida and we should catch the red bus, right over there (he points.) We asked the driver who confirmed he passes the mall.

Point=Us.

We made it back to Carmelita's (after another infuriatingly long bus ride) exhausted and filthy. After a shower I passed out for a solid two hours which felt glorious. After waiting for Carmelitat's mom to get back with the car for foreverrrrrr, we got dropped off near Centro so I could get a jugo (finding something meatless to eat on Good Friday in a Catholic Country was ridiculously difficult.) We then met up with some Cartagena 2ers to go to a good-bye party for their trainee from Estonia.

The party was up on the wall surrounding Centro where we could hear music from a nearby bar but didn't have to pay to get in. I met several good friends of Erin, who spent last summer in Cartagena, as well as some guy from Rochester (MNers are everywhere) who was living with his girlfriend who is on a Fullbright in Cartagena. It was really fun to meet everyone and just hang out. Pei was still tired from our volcano adventure so we didn't stay out late.

La Costa: Part IV

Cartagena
April 9, 2009

We slept pretty well at Carmelita's last night, although it was a little cold and our mattresses took up the entire floor of her room. She and her family have been so nice to us, considering we pretty much just invited ourselves for a 4 day stay when she hasn't seen her family in 7 months. We lazed around for awhile, her family fed us and then we went to the terminal to buy tickets home. They were quiteeee expensive but we have no choice because our ride fell through.

After shelling out the painfully large amount of money we took one of the world's longest Colombian city bus rides to Bocagrande, which is the main tourist and beach area. We browsed some tacky tourst shops for awhile and then went for lunch on the beach. We sat on plastic chairs at a plastic table in the sand, waiting for our food.


We were not, however, left to enjoy our own company. Approximately every 3 minutes a vendor would stop by to offer us a plethora of things we never knew we needed. This included beer (ok so I knew I needed that...), water, soda, jewelry, clothing, massages, sweets, shrimp cocktail...It was impossible to avoid being bothered since we couldn't move away from our table. At one point, Pei, Carmelita and I were all simultaneously being accosted by costena women smearing coconut oil on us and attempting to give us unsolicited massages. Even after we told them we were faltaing la plata to pay for them, they continued, my masseuse exclaiming over the amount of tension in my back. Finally they stopped but wouldn't leave without a 2000 peso tip.


Then we enjoyed our lunch of half a friend fish (head, eyes, fins included. Think sea bass, Mama), cocnut rice, patacon (smooshed friend platano)and ensalada. It was delicious. After eating, we spent a little time on the beach but it was pretty chaotic. There are hundreds of tents lining the beach, available for rent, as well as beach chairs. The same array of vendors continued to molest us until we walked to another beach to meet up with two Cartagena trainees.




The water here was much calmer because there was a bay and the beach was clearly more heavily populated by locals rather than tourists. The two trainees were from Russia and the Czech Republic. One teaches English at a university here and another is currently out of work after breaking her match. The Russian girl was super friendly and told me she loves meeting people from the US (go figure.)After chatting for awhile on the beach, we started to head home. This process of course took nearly an hour after waiting for a bus that didn't come and then finally hopping in a cab.

I power showered and then hopped back on a bus to meet Liz and her family for dinner. After some difficulty locating one another (the clock tower in Centro is not as visible as I believe a clock tower should be, in order to more easily facilitate using it as a meeting place) we had a very nice dinner. It was good to see Liz again so soon, and her fam too. It made me wish my mama and daddy would come visit me here.

After dinner, they walked me to the bar where I was meeting up with all the @ers. It was a salsa place named Havana with a live band that was quite good. I was exhausted though so we didn't stay very long. It's the kind of place I'd love to go to in Bucaramanga though, since most of our friends don't like to dance Latin.

La Costa: Part III

Cartagena
April 8, 2009


This morning we got up fairly eartly to get started on our way to Cartagena. I ate my pan de chocolate on the beach, saying a last farewell to the beaches of Tayrona. They are beautiful, but I wasn't sad to leave the sketchy bathroom and living out of a backpack on a dirt floor. We hiked out fairly early and it was already getting warm. It had rained the night before (quite snuggy to listen to in my hammock) so the trail out was completely muddy.

Where the path ends, you have to take a jeep to the gate of the park or walk several miles more. We opted for the jeep and were dropped at the entrance to Tayrona. From there, you have to catch a bus to bring you to the terminal in Santa Marta. This involves flagging down random buses driving by on the highway to see if they will stop in the terminal. We got on one almost immediately with another couple we had left Tayrona with.

I'm not sure if sketchy is a sufficient word to describe the bus we got on. It was a coach bus, considerably older than what we rode to get here. There were children EVERYWHERE, sitting on parents laps and sitting 3+ to a seat. The TV was playing one of the most graphic movies I have ever seen and seemed to be bothering no one that it was in no way appropriate for all the children watching.

We stayed on this bus for quite some time while it continuously stopped to let people on and off, to let vendors on to sell us things and once where all the men had to get off while the luggage was searched in the presence of what I believe to be Colombian customs officers (I think the bus may have come from near Venezuela.) After awhile we started realizing we had been on the bus for an awful long time. The woman of the couple we were with went up to ask and it turns out we had passed the Santa Marta terminal and Santa Marta itself quite some time before.

Cool.

So we hopped off this bus to await another that could take us straight on to Barranquilla. While chatting with the man and woman we were with, I learned he is actually one of the Liz's roommates in Bogota. Small word? Apparently. Does Liz know everyone in Colombia? Maybe. We didn't have to wait too long for a Costena bus that had free seats to Barranquilla. We paid $20,000 pesos for a trip to Cartagena, which is pretty decent. It was a 2ish hour ride to B/quilla, where we had to briefly change buses for another 2+ ride to Cartagena.


Upon arriving on the outskirts of Cartagena, we realized we should probably do something about the fact that we had nowhere to stay. Pei called an @er from B/manga whose family lives in Cartagena. She came to the terminal to get us and brought us to her house. Showers and fresh clothes (We were nasty after a 45 minute sweaty hike, a jeep ride and 3 bus rides) were amazing.

Then we took a bus to Centro, the walled city, which was unfortunately far from Carmelita's house. The old town was beautiful at night. The entire part of town is surrounded by a wall and is right on the ocean, which used to go all the way up to the stone. Inside the wall, the buildings are very European with pretty paint jobs and amazing balconies. Streets are quite narrow and lined with vendors, horse drawn carriages and boutiques (if you were to suddenly need a United Colors of Benetton, Cartagena'd have you covered.)



We met up with two AIESEC Cartagena members and got dinner at Crepes and Waffles. Pei and I shared a cheese crepe with prosciutto (said jamon on the menu and I was pleasantly surprised to find this did not mean bologna, as it usually does) that had pesto on the side. It was good pesto, too (Mama you know how picky I am about my pesto.) After a delish C&W ice cream concoction for dessert we wondered a bit more before heading back to Carmelita's.

La Costa: Part II

Parque Tayrona
April 7, 2009

I actually slept pretty well in the hammock last night. It was a little chilly with only a light hoodie, capris and a sheet, but not too bad (nothing like the bus ride) and minus the bug bite that caused my eyelid to swell 3 times its normal size, I didn't get eaten alive either. It was hard to sleep in when the sun came up so early, but I dozed on and off for awhile. After breakfast of a fresh jugo and some granola, Pei and I traveled one beach further than we had gone yesterday. This beach, El Cabo de San Juan, also was good for swimming. There were a lot more people on the beach than the one we were at yesterday, and I can already tell the park is going to be packed by the end of the week.

We ran into Sydney, a former trainee from Medellin, who I was supposed to meet up with in the park but never made concrete plans with. The beach was actually surprisingly full of gringos but I'm glad I noticed her (recognizable from facebook creeping, haha.)
She was with two other trainees from Cali, one from Poland and one from Taiwan, so it was fun to meet them too. It actually wasn't very sunny (which I think was a good thing) but we still lounged around on the beach/in the water. While we were lying there, Ruthie, an American on the Colombian MC, found us on the beach. I had talked to her about meet up but again had made no concrete plans. Maybe Colombia is as small a world as MN....

On the walk back to Arrecifes, we stopped at this little panaderia which yesterday was sadly pan-less. Today, however, it had pan de chocolate literally right out of the oven. It was clearly sent from God, it was so good. The girls who worked at the panaderia , 5 of them, all wore these adorable matching dresses. If only they had domicilios to Bucaramanga....



Back at our place, we took another questionable shower and then ate dinner with Carla and Marek. It was fun to compare experiences with other trainees from around Colombia who have had some of the exact same issues we have. The food at the place was pretty good actually (looked a bit dodgy.) Ruthie, another trainee from Bogota and two other AIESECers met us after dinner and we sat on the beach for awhile. It was so fun to finally meet people I've talked to online for so long and see the @ network in action (sorry I'm a nerd.)

We got kicked off the beach by the park rangers who told us that the beach closed at 8 (it was 9) so unfortunately we had to go back to the campsite. They also informed us that although the sale of alcoholic beverages (all restaurants/tiendas/randos on the beach sell it) was not prohibited, the consumption of them in the park was. Go figure.

La Costa: Part I

So I journaled while I was traveling so I could share my experiences while away from the computer. I'm going to post them as I wrote them, although they are dated last week.

Parque Tayrona
April 6, 2009

So we finally made it to the coast!! After finding out mere hours before we were supposed to leave that our ride fell through, I had my doubts that we would even make it out of the city. Holy Week is THE week to travel, so not only are bus tickets twice the price, the are booked weeks in advance. After making countless phone calls to different companies (half of which didn't even answer the phone, shocker) we found 2 tickets on a 10:30pm overnight to Santa Marta, at $90,000 pesos apiece. Not what we had wanted to pay, but we had no choice if we wanted our much-anticipated vacation to happen.

So we booked those tickets which were delivered an hour later (only in Colombia can you get someone to hand deliver your bus tickets. If only Greyhound had door-to-door service.....) We made the best of our extra day in the city by spending it on the roof of Pei's building (she moved again) at the pool. So it wasn't a complete waste.


After purposefully not napping all day (I wanted to be sure I slept on the bus) I was exhausted and ready for a good sleep. Two of our coworkers came to the bus station with us to see us off and make sure we got on the right bus (it was sweet, but we can in fact read...) We had seats assigned when we bought the tickets so we didn't have to worry about getting good ones. All buses are pretty comfortable since to get between cities here (mountains) the rides are quite long.

The only problem turned out to be the temperature. Now, I knew the buses would be air conditioned and be on the chilly side. Little did I know however, that I would actually be taking an 8-hour bus whose interior had been fashioned to feel like the ARCTIC. I don't think I have ever been that cold at night for that long before in my life. I couldn't feel my toes (I was wearing socks) and the tip of my nose was frozen. I felt as if I had been skiing all day in 10 degree weather and couldn't take a hot shower.

Upon arrival into the Santa Marta terminal at about 7am, it took me several hours to thaw. It was quite warm but I couldn't seem to stop shivering. From the terminal, getting to the entrance of Tayrona was mapped out in my Lonely Planet and involved a taxi ride to the mercado in Santa Marta, a bus to the entrance of the park, a jeep ride to the first campsite and then a 45 minute hike to the beaches. Instead we opted to share a taxi with two other students headed the same direction, which cut out all but the last 45 minute hike. It didn't end up to be too bad but by the time we arrived we were certainly ready for some beach time. The first lodging place had no free hammocks, so we walked closer to the beach and found another place which had two available for the next two nights.


We settled in and got on our suits and headed to the beach, which are supposedly the 2nd most beautiful in the world (I don't know who decided that.) The tides in Arrecifes (where we were staying) are too strong to swim in so we just hung out on the beach. About midday we took a leisurely stroll west, towards the beaches where you can actually get in the water (stopped for an Aquila and arepa con queso along the way). La piscina, the closest beach you can swim at, was just was gorgeous except a bit calmer. We spent the day in and out of the water, lounging. Normally, during vacation I feel guilty about just sitting on the beach and not doing other things. The fabulous part about Tayrona is there IS nothing else to be doing, so you don't have to feel guilty.

We took our time walking back to our campsite and then got ready to shower. This turned out to be a less than pleasant experience. Only three of five showers worked and work is a relative term. The line moved ridiculously slow and once I got a shower I had to hurry. The water barely trickled out but I did come out relatively clean, and at least there were showers...

While I had been waiting in line, I laughed at something a few Americans were talking about and one looked at me and said "You speak English, don't you?" "Yes, yes I do." He walked past med and then turned around and said "Are you Liz's friend?" "Liz Buettner?" "Yes." "Yes." "I've seen a thousand pictures of you two. I'm Scott." (Liz's BFF in Bogota.) "Weird...I can't believe you recognized me!"


We ended up having dinner and playing cards with Scott and his friends visiting from the US. They were quite entertaining and fun to hang out with. Pei and I headed to bed pretty early back in our hammocks, which turned out to get pretty chilly at night. Not too uncomfortable though!

Euphoria

We haven't been apart this long since I was born.

Traveler
EVANS/CAROLINE M

FLIGHT INFORMATION
Mon, 18MAY09 CO1647 L CHICAGO OHARE
(ORD) 7:20PM HOUSTON BUSH INTL
(IAH) 10:02PM 737-500
Mon, 18MAY09 CO884 L HOUSTON BUSH INTL
(IAH) 11:59PM BOGOTA COLOMBIA
(BOG) 4:58AM 737-700

Sat, 30MAY09 CO885 L BOGOTA COLOMBIA
(BOG) 12:15AM HOUSTON BUSH INTL
(IAH) 5:20AM 737-700
Sat, 30MAY09 CO1746 L HOUSTON BUSH INTL
(IAH) 7:25AM CHICAGO OHARE
(ORD) 9:58AM