From Sea To Shining Sea Part 4: Cartagena, Con Amor
Bienvenidos a Miami
“Midnight flight to Miami” sounds like an old blues song, or a noir film set in 1930s Manhattan, but it was just the way we were able to book our flights to Colombia. The indirect overlap of these two trips meant that Beth and I both needed to put in a full week of work between our international travels, but we also needed to be in Colombia by Saturday night for the festivities. So we compromised by grabbing the latest flight out of LAX on Friday evening, with the plan of hitting our hotel at 2pm local time on Saturday, and meeting up with the B2D2 gang for dinner, dancing, and general revelry that evening.
B2D2 is the insider name for our found family here in Los Angeles. The family that we’ve chosen, and who’s chosen us. Some of them we’ve known for longer than they’ve been married and since before they had children; some are more recent additions to our world. But it’s the group where friends have become family; where we’re aunt and (f)uncle to their kids, holiday and birthday defaults, through both births and deaths in the family, graduations, celebrations, blood, sweat, tears, and the occasional semi-drunken revelry. Broadly, B2D2 is Molly, Maria, and their daughter Riley; Matt, Tracey, and their kids Andy and Sacha; and Beth and myself. But because Molly and Maria are such amazing people, wonderful people tend to gravitate towards them as well and become part of their larger family. Thus we were also joined by Hayley, J-Ma, Bruce and Corey, and their kids.
We’ve taken weekend trips together to places like Santa Barbara or Solvang, but have talked for years about one day doing a larger international trip with B2D2. As I mentioned before, this year was Maria’s 50th birthday. Maria’s always wanted to show us the Colombia she remembers growing up. So, being people who Get Shit Done, Molly and Maria decided that Maria’s 50th would be celebrated by all of us together, in Cartagena, Colombia.
Cartagena is an indigenous community turned port turned colonial settlement turned vacation town on the outside southwestern edge of the Caribbean, almost directly south of Jamaica. Sitting near where Colombia intersects Panama, it has a rich history going back over 6000 years, but sprang to global importance in the 1500s during Spanish colonization. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it’s also become one of the preeminent vacation destinations across South America due to its wonderful beaches and islands, excellent night life, and dozens of modern high rise hotels that dot the peninsula. It is also, as I found out later after we’d returned, very Instagram cool right now.
Our flights took us overnight to Miami, a couple hours in Miami, and then Miami to Cartagena. Pretty easy all things considered. And the first flight went off without a hitch. However, Miami’s not my favorite airport - I’ve been a couple times, and if you have a connection, it’s not uncommon to have a mile plus walk to get there. Luckily our gates were pretty close to each other. Then they weren’t. Then they were again. Then they split the difference. (This all happened within the span of an hour or so.) But once we were in Miami proper, we could indulge in one of the few things guaranteed to improve the airport layover experience anywhere in the world: an airport lounge.
I said above that we reveled in airport lounges and flying business class - and it’s true. More than a few of our trips have been scheduled around choosing a flight where we could get business or first class flights into or out of a country. And airports are generally loud and crowded and generally awful, but being able to sit somewhere quiet, grab a beer, and maybe a bite or two makes them 1000% easier to deal with. It makes travel itself more fulfilling, and lets you enjoy the coming and going and anticipation of getting wherever you’re going - instead of spending several hours asking yourself whether any sane jury would really convict you for the crime you’re about to commit against the man putting HIS BARE FEET ON YOUR LUGGAGE.
So it was that once we hit Miami, we marched off in the direction of the nearest lounge I had access to: Turkish Airlines. Good news: it’s one of my favorites (the Turkish Airways lounge at Dulles was a common pre-flight port-of-call for me when I was flying back and forth to DC for business.) Bad news: it was a mile and a half away, and Miami’s airtrain was broken.
We had a couple hours to do so, but walking a mile and a half while dragging luggage was still walking a mile and a half while dragging luggage. Oh, did I mention we weren’t checking bags so everything was over our shoulders and pulled behind? Yeah. Choices were made. But just a few minutes into our hike, we both saw something I’d never seen in Miami before: a man sitting on a golf cart, with a Priority Pass sign, next to a woman with a clipboard asking people if they needed a ride to the lounge.
“Hey,” Beth said, “You’ve got one of those, right?” I did indeed. A brief discussion later, and we were being whisked along the concourse en route to our lounge, feeling very very fancy. Which goes to show that if you carry a clipboard, I and others will definitely cede authority to you. If you’ve never ridden on a golf cart through an airport, it’s kind of a trip. You’re definitely driving somewhere built for walking, not for driving (I had flashbacks to Athens.)
“Permiso,” the driver said, whenever we encountered a group of people inconveniently walking inside the airport. “Permiso!” he repeated, slightly louder, if they didn’t get the hint. “BEEP BEEP!” he shouted as a last resort. (We never found out what happened if that didn’t work.)
Arriving at the Turkish Airways Lounge, thinking to myself that “walking is for suckers” like an asshole, the driver got our flight number, departure time, and promised to be outside, waiting for us, fifteen minutes before boarding started. The sheer intensity with which he promised this granted me such a level of trust in this man’s returning that I would have gladly let him drive my child around in the intervening time, had I a child to accompany him. Yeah, we felt fancy. Yeah, we felt taken care of. Yeah, he got a tip.
Colombia, Finalmente
The actual flight to Colombia was fine enough. At the very least it was uneventful enough to not stick in my brain. Immigration was difficult though. We got in line with everyone else, and then with roughly a hundred people ahead of us, just stood there. We could see people getting through immigration, but it didn’t look like our line was moving at all. Every now and again we’d move a foot or two forward, but often not for minutes at a time. We started wondering whether we’d gotten into the wrong lane, perhaps for people who’d reached the point in life where they simply wanted to wait in one place until they expired of natural causes in situ. It turned out that to handle the several hundred people in line (and more arriving every half hour or so) there were four immigration agents available: two to handle families, one to handle Colombian citizens, and one to handle literally everyone else. Somewhere around two hours later, we finally got up to the counter, where a very gruff man looked at us, looked at our paperwork long enough to register that it was in fact a piece of paper with writing on it, and shunted his head over his shoulder to indicate that we could enter.
Maria had warned us that Colombia is a very cash heavy country. For folks like Beth and I, who travel almost exclusively on our credit cards, this was an adjustment. For instance, we knew the first thing we needed to do after clearing immigration was to grab a cab to our hotel. Cabs required cash (there was no credit card option, and we would never see one our entire trip.) Cash required pesos. And the only place to get pesos at the airport was very aware that they were the only place to change dollars to pesos at the airport. So you can imagine the favorability of the exchange rates we were offered.
“I’ve been in Colombia for four minutes and I’ve already been robbed,” I thought to myself, as I handed over the twenty dollar bill I’d brought just for this occasion. But a few short minutes later, we were in a cab and headed to the Hyatt Regency. Fifty feet from the airport, I was hit with a wall of sense memories.
As is now tradition at this point, let’s rewind a bit.
As some of you might know, I was an exchange student when I was 16 and 17. It happened between my junior and senior years of high school, where I took a year off and went to live in Argentina. Throughout that year, I got to visit almost all of South America, due to an almost fanatical willingness to say yes to anything, a near complete disregard for my own personal safety, and very little actual adult supervision. (My host parents were great, and were also great about saying “sure” when I told them I would probably be back in a week or two and was headed out to parts unknown, with no cell phone or common sense.)
One country I was flat out barred from visiting though was Colombia. I was annoyed at the time, but realistically Colombia in 1997 was not a great tourist destination due to the ongoing war between the military, drug cartels, and paramilitary groups, each fighting some combination of the other two at once. The result was … a lot of civilian casualties. Being 17 and an idiot, I didn’t know that though - I just knew that it was off limits and therefore the most desirable destination on the planet. But having been told that under no circumstances was I to cross the Colombian border, and that if I disregarded this particular rule that I would be forcibly removed from the program and sent home, I grudgingly accepted that I would visit the rest of South American instead. Which I did, only once almost getting kidnapped or nearly buying a hand grenade as a souvenir.
Many years later, a friend of mine joined the Peace Corps. She was settled into St. Lucia, a lovely little Caribbean island, for a three year stint. I only got to visit her once, but it really struck a chord for me, to the point where for a decade afterwards I would still idly check St. Lucia real estate and consider whether or not I wanted to revise my policy on island living.
Getting into Cartagena, I was immediately slammed with both of these memories at the same time. It was undoubtedly South American, with a million little visual indicators that marked it as a close cousin of the other countries I’d visited. Everything from the architecture to the signs to the vehicles was reminiscent of my time in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. But being on the southwest side of the Caribbean, there was also a heavy and distinct Caribbean influence that reminded me of St. Lucia.
I immediately regretted never pursuing the architecture degree I’d once considered, because it meant I lacked the language and terms to describe how these markets looked like what I’d seen speckled throughout suburban Argentina. How these houses shared provenance and ancestry with what I’d seen on the south side of St. Lucia. How the colonial and indigenous and baroque and modern all came together here as visual influences - no doubt extending that influence into the culture as well.
I turned to Beth and said “I feel like this is the midpoint between two places I’ve been before.” I babbled about Bolivia and St. Lucia, but couldn’t really describe it then either. I know at one point I gestured towards a local market with a small motorcycle outside and said “I could tell you the exact layout of that place” - as if mercado arrangement was the thing that would make her go “ah yes, NOW I understand."
I know “this feels like my memories of how other places also felt” sounds like something you say before warning someone about Mercury’s upcoming retrograde or their aura being too wibbly (or not wobbly enough), but in that moment, there was utter sensory familiarity within a place so totally foreign to me that at one point in time it had been off limits entirely. I could not have been more excited to explore. But first, we had to get settled in the hotel, because we had a long night of celebration ahead of us.
The Walls We Build
I will say this about the staff at the Hyatt Regency in Cartagena: they are determined to make you feel welcome. When we got to the hotel around 2pm, our room wasn’t ready. It was supposed to be, and we were supposed to be sleeping, but something was apparently going on and a ten minute wait turned into a thirty minute wait, turned into meeting one of our group for a late lunch and a drink, turned into a couple hours in their thirtieth floor sunset lounge overlooking the Caribbean while a very polite man shoved wine at us and yelled at the kitchen to never stop bringing us food.
It was a welcome show of apology, but it also honestly got to the point where we were whispering to ourselves that if we saw him coming over with another plate of something, we would scream, sprint out the door, and hide out in the pool area until he stopped searching for us. To be clear: normally I’m totally fine with culinary gluttony, but in this case our several hour wait for our room to be available meant we were quickly approaching our actual dinner time, which was the actual birthday dinner we had come to this country for. Meanwhile we were actually very close to throwing up from not wanting to insult this very polite gentleman, and continuing to eat the monstrous amounts of food he’d restaffed the kitchen to provide us. Thankfully, at around 5:30, and 5300 calories, we were told that our 2pm checkin was now available, and our luggage would meet us up there.
Our hotel tower was 32 floors high. We were on the 32nd floor. Beth had very graciously (and intelligently) decided to choose a sea view room, so our seaside hotel’s floor-to-very-tall-ceiling windows faced directly out to the Caribbean, with nothing between us and the horizon aside from the occasional bird. The room itself was lovely too, with a spacious layout, separate lounge area, huge closet, and a very comfortable bed. Probably 500 square feet or so, if I was to guess.
All for the low, low price of 600,000 pesos a night.
Heart stopped? Don’t worry - let’s talk pesos. The first thing to know is that pesos are roughly 4000 pesos to the dollar (at the time we were there.) The second thing to know is that Colombia is without question the least expensive foreign country I’ve ever visited. So that 600,000 peso a night, 500 square foot Caribbean view hotel room with VIP lounge access? About $150 a night. Our cab ride to the hotel? 12,000 pesos - 3 bucks. The egregiously overpriced hotel restaurant ceviche brought to you poolside? 29,000 pesos. About 7 bucks.
In fact, the most expensive meal we had our entire time there, which consisted of a rum tasting, chocolate tasting, multiple cocktails, appetizers, entrees, and post-meal drinks (plus more rum) came to a grand total of about 35 bucks a person. It wasn’t uncommon to walk away from a full lunch with beers, appetizers, and a whole fish caught earlier that day, for under ten bucks. I’m checking my receipts right now, and I bought dinner and drinks for five adults and a kid at one of the better restaurants in town, and it cost me 80 bucks total.
It’s almost shocking how inexpensive Colombia was, even in the most touristy areas, even doing the most touristy things. We’ll get into all the details, but I remember being on the return flight with Beth and commenting that even if we included our travel and accommodations, I was pretty sure that we *saved* money being on vacation in Colombia for that week.
But all of that’s to come. Tonight, we celebrate Maria. And to do so, we must enter the Walled City.
As I mentioned, Cartagena is on the southwest part of the Caribbean. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the three-part Disney documentary from a few decades ago, but it turns out that Pirates and the Caribbean have a history together. Apparently that was a thing for a bit. And apparently, little seaside towns in pirate-infested waters were frequently coming under siege from roving pirate gangs who would sack the town, loot everything not nailed down (including, in one circumstance, a whole bank), and maybe call themselves The King of Cartagena until forcefully deposed by either the locals or the next guy to come a-looting.
So what does a small seaside town do to protect themselves from Pirates? Well, you build a wall around the city to protect yourselves. And if you’re Cartagena, you do so in the most absolutely bonkers, fantasy movie manner possible.
First you build forts. Lots of forts. With overlapping cannons. Lots of cannons. And then you build a wall around the entire city connecting the city and the forts and cannons. Make it twenty feet high and twenty feet thick to ensure no one gets in unless you let them. And since you’re by the sea, the way you do this is by spending two hundred years carving bricks of coral out of the sea.
It’s honestly just the most Pirates of the Caribbean thing I’ve ever heard of. And it’s frankly amazing. When you walk beside the wall, there’s no mistaking it for anything but 11 kilometers of carved coral, with cannons on top. With little tiny openings two people wide that five cars will try to get in and out of at the same time.
Celebration, Exploration
Maria’s birthday was being celebrated at a restaurant she’d picked out called Andres, that felt like a black and white tiled Caribbean beachside bar and restaurant. We had the roof to ourselves, she’d picked out the entire menu to ensure she could show off some of the local cuisine, and we were all prepared for a long evening of eating, drinking, and dancing. Our B2D2 family was joined by some more friends from LA, Maria’s family from Colombia, and together the roughly twenty of us (including a number of kids) indulged in a plenitude of meats, fried potatoes, side dishes, local fruits, and never-ending drinks.
Most of my photos were blurry that evening, which appropriately matches most of my memories of that evening. But I do remember laughing so hard my face hurt, singing and clapping along to the music, dancing with Beth for a bit, cheering as Maria and Molly danced with each other on an empty dance floor, the moment when a full band showed up to play for a bit, and having every child on my back or shoulders roughly three thousand times apiece. It was perfect.
The next morning, we met up with Matt, Tracey, and their kids to walk around the walled city. We started in what’s an excellent analogy for the entire Walled City: La Serrezuela. La Serrezuela is an old bullfighting ring that had fallen into disrepair, which was restored as a part of a larger commercial project. Calling it a “mall” sounds too American, but to be clear there are lots of shops wrapped up around the outsides and underneath the ring. But there are also lots of smaller artisan stands, and restaurants, and ample space is given for the history of the central element itself. The ring and the stands surrounding it have all been fully restored to their original luster. So you can stand in the center, and look up at two levels of spectator space, or walk around the gallery where hundreds of people used to be seated in anticipation of mortal combat. You can feel the wood and look down upon the tile below, or stand in the center and turn in a circle to see hundred of seats above you and imagine the spectacle. It’s only once you leave the ring itself that you enter into the commercialized section where Adidas shops share space with ice cream stands and some dude who weaves and shapes straw hats right there in front of you.
From there, we walked further into the city itself, which felt to me exactly like all the South American towns I’d been to, if someone had stolen the Caribbean aesthetic from all around St. Lucia. Blues and yellows and greens and pinks greeted us around every corner, with every building having their own color scheme unrelated to anything around it. Narrow streets were covered with huge swatches of color, and peppered with massive murals. Hundreds of umbrellas and flags were strung back and forth between buildings and above streets, giving life-saving shade in the heat, while making it feel like you were walking through a technicolor tunnel. Even the streets were painted, with sections reflecting various different countries, cultures, or even just the artistic flair of someone nearby. Shops spilled out onto sidewalks, with clothing racks or a-frame signs touting what was inside. Cafes and restaurants and bars all did the same, with a table or three hugging the building on the narrow sidewalk as friends and neighbors caught up. Street vendors would pull their carts up to corners offering fresh fruit, cold drinks, hats, directions, guided tours, beers, or coffee.
This is also where we discovered that the hustle game in Colombia is strong. Constant. Persistent. Everywhere. And will follow you for a block trying every tactic in the book. If we were anywhere other than our hotel or a private beach, we were constantly being approached by strangers selling beads or tours or ball caps or whatnot. A simple “no gracias” wasn’t enough to move on either, as some would choose to follow you for a few minutes trying to persuade you to buy whatever was being sold. God help you if you looked at something from a vendor for too long, as they’d pull the cart up entirely to follow you around shouting encouragement and offering you a deal. This was jarring at first, but became an ever-present element that I think we started to get used to and ignore by the end of it. Or perhaps we just learned to navigate it better so it wasn’t as much of a bother. But after a long day, I’d get tired of telling hundreds of people “No, gracias” and then pretending to ignore them for the next two minutes as they walked behind me, talking at my back.
Like much of South America, Colombia seemingly exists on the idea that unless it’s explicitly illegal AND there’s someone there to enforce direct and immediate ramifications, then it’s not, strictly speaking, prohibido. Related to this, I’ll address the question of Colombia’s more recent reputation exactly once, and only here: Yes, I was offered cocaine on the streets a half dozen or so times in varying degrees of directness. No, I have no idea whether that was a real offer or just a scheme to sucker tourists. But sometimes it was someone saying “I got everything you need” and thumbing their nose, sometimes it was a more indirect “You want white coffee, white coffee?” But the one I remember - and appreciate - the most was the final offer I got, which was a dude who walked straight up in front of me, and said in a total normal conversational voice without hesitation or concern for anyone’s opinion: “Hey - you want cocaine?” Direct, to the point, and to his credit he nodded and left when I said “No, gracias.” It was always men approaching, and even when Beth and I were together, they only ever approached me. I guess I look like the kind of guy who flies to Colombia and wanders the historical areas looking for coke. Or more likely it’s just a numbers game. Regardless, I have enough genetic heart issues already, so coke isn’t on my personal menu. But if there is one small joyful takeaway: for the first time in a long time, people didn’t look at me and immediately assume I was law enforcement or military.
Lunch was as much a search for food as it was a desire to escape the heat. It’s been a long time since I dealt with tropical heat, but hoo boy does it hit hard. And coastal Colombia in the summer is peak heat and humidity - most days it was mid 90s for both the heat and the humidity percentage. So when one of the kids started crying, pulling his shirt off, and complaining that he was dying, I understood, respected, and empathized with that assessment. Thus we swung into a restaurant they’d patronized the day before, recommending the ceviche. This would be the third ceviche I ate this trip already, on my way to eating roughly forty-five thousand ceviches without regret or concern for the environmental impact that I alone must be having on the local fish population. There was air conditioning, and cold drinks, and good food. And it turns out this wasn’t a moment too soon, as mere minutes after we were seated, the sky opened up.
Now if you’ve never seen one, it’s difficult to describe the sheer amount of water that comes with a tropical downpour. But I want you to remember back to that first year that super soakers came out, and you didn’t have one, but the neighbor kid did, and he invited you over for a squirt gun fight, and then proceeded to just blast you directly in the face with an unyielding wall of pressurized hose water for an afternoon. It’s like that, but coming from everywhere. The awning over the outdoor patio became a waterfall, and the streets became rivers. We couldn’t see across the square, the rain was coming down so hard. And just as quickly as it came, it passed on. Where this torrent of water drained to, I have no idea, but what it left behind was fresh air that felt twenty degrees cooler, and blue skies dotted with puffy white clouds. I don’t understand how or why, but it made the second half of the day infinitely better.
Matt and Tracey took the kids back to the hotel after lunch, while Beth and I continued to wander and explore the city. Aside from the quintet of buskers who followed us for five minutes chanting “McGregor! McGregor!” before trading off to lay down what was objectively a brutally sick 64 bars (it’s fun when people don’t know you know Spanish) the afternoon was spent enjoying our favorite method of travel: getting thoroughly lost in an unfamiliar city somewhere in the world.
I’ve been asked a number of times whether I ever felt unsafe in Colombia. After all, we didn’t stick to the tourist sections, we didn’t know the neighborhoods, and we spent a lot of time just exploring with no idea where it would lead us. The honest answer is that I can’t remember ever feeling unsafe. Now maybe that’s because I look like I can handle myself so no one tried, maybe I have a poorly calibrated sense of self-preservation, and maybe Beth would answer that question differently. But I’ve been places that were unsafe before, and I remember the feeling that creeps up the back of your neck telling you that maybe you’re in danger. I never got the sense that anywhere we went was somewhere we shouldn’t be, or that anyone was looking at us as a target for anything more dangerous than typical tourist scams.
Throughout the afternoon, we found all manner of interesting spots in the city - from historical squares, to narrow alleys which opened up to whole plazas of vendors, to 24 hour clubs thumping away in buildings originally built by Spanish settlers, to a wedding in the Catedral where we were two of probably two hundred people just hanging out outside and watching the events unfold. But my favorite part of Cartagena, without question, was a section of the city called Getsemani.
I don’t know what the direct translation of Getsemani is, but it should be Artist’s Alley. For couple dozen square blocks (or at least as “square” as meandering intersecting paths that were turned into roads can get) almost every business is an art gallery, almost every building is covered in murals, and almost every wall is covered in hanging art for sale. It’s truly incredible - one of the most vibrant and joyfully artistic spots I’ve seen anywhere in the world. For blocks and blocks, you’ll see thousands of paintings hanging on or propped up against anywhere bare wall or building exists, and huge murals given space to shine uncovered. As you walk down the street, artists work in their studios or out on the sidewalk. Each has their own style, and it’s immediately evident when you move from one artist’s area to another. Even empty lots or disused industrial buildings are turned into art galleries, where dozens of artists’ paintings, sculptures, and mixed media projects are on display, with what I have to assume are art dealers there to complete the sale.
We genuinely could have bought thousands of dollars (not pesos - dollars) worth of art. And we almost did. Some of them I stared at for hours, and others moved me to tears. A few Beth kept returning to again and again. The only thing holding us back was that Beth and I had made a concerted effort to not check bags, and had no way of getting anything home. There were assurances that it could all be shipped, but anything we bought we would have wanted to take with us, and some of the works we fell in love with couldn’t be bent or rolled. So for now, our credit cards remained safe. But we have a strong inclination to make a dedicated trip down one day and pick up a number of pieces we saw. One day.
Out In The Walled City
Dinner meant all the families were meeting at a place called El Arsenal, which was purportedly a rum bar, but actually offered incredible cocktails of all types, alongside elevated Colombian cuisine. This was the location of the aforementioned extensive meal, and where I made the mild mistake of ordering a dish that was essentially a traditional Colombian comfort food, done up French style. If the next part of this sentence sounds judgmental, that’s because it’s supposed to: the French influence really ruined the dish. Normally I love French food - butter and wine makes almost everything better. But there was a simplicity of the flavors in the dish that got overwhelmed by the béchamel sauce. Was it bad? Not at all. But in this case, I wanted a little more Colombian cuisine, and a little less elevation. Beth, on the other hand, ordered an appetizer connected with so much melted cheese that she was able to get it well above her head, arms at full extension, before the cheese tendrils separated. I think between the two of us, it's clear she won that round.
Appropriately rummed, cocktailed, chocolated, cuisined, and re-rummed for good measure, some of us decided that we were on fucking vacation in fucking South America, and therefore a nightcap or two was needed. So Beth, me, J-Ma and Hayley went out to find trouble in Cartagena. We were only moderately successful, finding ourselves at a very cool rooftop cocktail bar overlooking half the city, with a DJ any one of us could have been the parent of, and where the cocktails flowed like … well, like glaciers. Even seated in the VIP section (directly in front of the DJ, with VIP apparently standing for Very I-fucking P-loud) it took 20 minutes to order drinks, and 45 minutes to get them. Having thus soured on being cool, we tried to pay the bill for the next 30 minutes.
I have a business plan for Cartagena - it’s a bar where people can order drinks. It will make a billion pesos (or $250,000 at current exchange rates.)
Venue #2 was a spot J-Ma had discovered a couple nights earlier, that was much better suited for our wants and needs that night. Cool, quiet, and feeling like a place Sinatra would have hung out, El Barón was full of dark wood and red leather. It felt like someone had just watched Casablanca and decided to make something that matched the feeling of Rick’s Bar, with just enough modernity to not feel anachronistic. Where effortlessly handsome bartenders made drinks of exquisite complication with an enviable ease. I remember them as mustachioed alcoholic chemists, saying things like “Do you like mescal?” and “would you like to try my favorite?” and “I do not know what this is called, I just invented it.” Which explains why we didn’t leave until roughly 3am, despite knowing we needed to be on a bus at 9am the next day. Look, it was a vacation - choices were made. Bad choices, deliciously crafted, but choices nonetheless.
Which is where we’ll leave it for now: drunk in a cab in Colombia, on our way back to the hotel, while one of the girls texts the bartender to try and arrange a date (I’ll never tell.)
Tomorrow, we finish our journey, and I finally come to the realization that let me figure out how to write all of this down in the first place.
