Birthing Gabriel

In English the greatest writer produced by Colombia would be known as Gabriel Garcia, because that was his father’s last name. In Latin America you get two last names so Gabriel Garcia Marquez got his mother’s last name as well. And all three names together identify one single man born in Aracataca in 1927 who was exiled for his political beliefs and died in Mexico City in 2014. So he gets claimed by both countries but he was only born in one. 

There were two Colombian families waiting for the gate to open at nine and we all trooped in. The house is a reproduction of the original which was burned and knocked down in its life but the museum/home tells the story of the town through the writer’s eyes. The writer was raised by his mother’s parents as his own father took his mother to Barranquilla in pursuit of a career as a pharmacist. Young Gabriel grew up with the manual laborers, indigenous peasants beneath his grandparents notice, and he says from them he got the basis for his “magical realism” in his writing. 

Aracataca was founded in 1885 and has a population of 40,000. This is not a town that has decided to welcome visitors. There are no signs, we got blank stares when we drove into town as though there was no clue why we would be violating their space. I asked at city hall where the internationally famous house is and the clerk, unsure, had to ask for help. 

Marquez butted heads as a journalist with the policies of his government which called him a communist and the threats that followed sent him abroad. 

I got a Hemingway House vibe touring the buildings, below we see a representation of the shack lived in by the help, the people who actually inspired the writer. 

The guy selling the coffee across the street, at twice the usual price, did the tourist thing and chatted with us while we waited for the gate to open. 

After his walk Rusty waited aboard GANNET2 while we adults walked the house. 

He liked hanging out with the locals.  These three idlers in the main square were ready to chat with us, laughing at the city’s lack of tourism awareness. The coffee was cheaper too. 

Weirdos touring town in a Promaster taking random photos; can’t think why? 

The Liberator got his own statue but weirdly his eyes were picked out. Simon Bolivar took the defacing in his stride. 

Creepy…

One thing I discovered in the museum was that United Fruit was huge in this city. We saw lots of banana plantations on the way into town so I shouldn’t have been surprised but I never thought of United Fruit doing banana business down here. 

By 9:30 we were back in Highway 45 to Bogotá which is a pretty second rate road to be honest. In a couple of years there should be a massive four lane freeway leading to the capital. 

For now it’s a mish mash of rough pavement and smooth new roadway, some four lanes in use and long lines of slow trucks plodding through villages. Google Maps says you’ll average 30 miles CV per hour here and as hard as I tried - not too hard!- that’s what we did over the whole day. 

There are long stretches of new road which we weren’t allowed to drive but the local motorcycles took advantage! 

Colombia is a poor country do you see lots of power, moto taxis dash between cars and I am getting less freaked out as they zip past my hood  but you do see some oddities. 

A main intersection below where you push and shove and try to neither kill nor be killed. 

The Andes are getting bigger and beefier as we drive south and inland. 

Road good! Soft vanilla coated in a chocolate crisp. Very refreshing. 

A pause in our eight hour drive. 

At one point the road veers to the right toward Bogotá and before that happened we crossed paths, completely by chance with our container buddies, Alain from Brazil with his wife and child who passed us in their Vermont registered Jeep Cherokee. They stopped for lunch and we caught them up and exchanged some greetings before we took off again for Bucaramanga and followed the road to the left toward the mountains. 

A gas station stop on a one hundred degree afternoon and we were ready for some altitude.

Road food! Fried pastry stick with guava jam inside. Layne insisted we share one which was sensible. 

Bucaramanga is over 3,000 feet and we got to around 1500 feet which was a start but not enough. 

The vendors here were selling fruit and we jumped in sharing the cash. 

Avocados, mandarins, bananas, limes and a giant mango was not a bad haul as we ripped up and down the mountains. 

We were stopped by a police checkpoint, the only one to flag us down the whole day. We chatted and he ended up giving us some useful tourist tips and demanded no bribes and made no threats. A fist pump and we were on our way to our overnight stop, one more scenic Colombian truck stop. 

A long of driving hot the job done. Layne made a dinner of salad and barbecue pork while the a/ c kept us cool. Another day on the road. 

On The Road

If you know the statue is a representation of a singer called Shakira, a native of Barranquilla and Colombia’s most famous export, you know more than I did when we accidentally drove by on the bank of the Rio Magdalena. Then we took the Sunshine Skyway bridge on steroids (!) over the river: 

It was a day of driving and it was exactly what we needed, to be on the road, the three of us with our home. Layne had got it into her head she wanted to see some pink salt flats on the north coast she had heard about. Supposedly the water in the lagoon is bright pink this time of year, and it may very well be true. 

We had read on Google maps that the road to the pink water is not that great but it’s dry season we figured we had a good shot at getting there. Indeed we found the sign to the red water:

What stopped us wasn’t the road surface but the low hanging trees were impassable to our 9 foot tall roof. I wasn’t ready to wreck the a/c now we had it back in place. 

It was great to be on the road exploring random back roads together. Rusty had fun and Webb Chiles wrote to remind me about today, wishing Rusty a happy birthday. We got him in February 2016 and here he is running free:

He’s loving life on the road. He doesn’t know Webb admires him and thinks of him even though I tell him. 

I’m doing all right too thanks for asking. 

We drove the coast to Barranquilla where we had our other goal and here we were more successful. Layne even found big plump blueberries in the concrete jungle that is PriceSmart, the local version of Costco which it closely resembles as it used to be part of that chain.  

Barranquilla is a fishing port on the mouth of the Magdalena River, it’s a tourist center and an industrial port. 

This stretch of coast with its mangroves and refineries, ocean going freighters docked up river all reminded me of the Texas or Louisiana Gulf Coast. It was hot enough, between 90 and 95 degrees. 

We came this way in rental car while we waited for our container bound van to arrive. It was much more relaxed sitting up high aboard GANNET2 holding our own with the trucks and buses. Colombian drivers aren’t particularly aggressive but they drive, pardon me, like they’ve lost their minds. They stop in the roadway, they make sudden turns, they pass like they have a suicide wish, it’s bizarre.  The fishing villages we passed didn’t look particularly homey…

Our plan was to turn inland, and drive south along the highway that runs between the river on the right and the foothills of the Andes to our left. 

Our goal was a truck stop near the town of Aracataca which is the place where the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born and they have a museum in his honor which is on our list, no surprise. We made it around sunset and not a minute too soon. At dark it was still around 90 degrees as we had gained no altitude, that will come later. But the air conditioning did its job!

Here are some pictures from the road: 

City of confusion, Barranquilla, above. I love navigating this stuff!

No tourist sugar coating on this page. 

Don’t you wish you’d paid for a seat on the bus (below) which was hustling to pass on a double  yellow line uphill on a hump in the road? It got worse the further we drive, nudging and shoving and nearly missing. It freaked me out. 

No idea what this monument is but thank you Layne for the road pictures. 

I love road food especially here in Colombia where every damned thing is fried. A 75 cent disc of thin, fried dough sprinkled with sugar crystals. Heaven! 

Oh and coffee, hot and sweet, no milk, no decaffeinated, no flavor choices: just coffee served at your window roadside. I miss this service in the States.