Cooking Rusty

Mompox is hotter than Hades, and Rusty doesn’t like that. But we have dragged him out on the streets with us and just to prove that I have some pictures of Rusty, hotter than ever, with a beautiful city as a backdrop. While this is going on I’m hoping I shall be driving GANNET2 out of a container at the docks in Cartagena. More on that tomorrow; meanwhile Rusty in Mompox. 

The waterfront: 

I have a photo of Rusty staring out at the St Lawrence River when we took him to Québec City a few months after we rescued him in 2016. Now I have a picture of him strolling past Colombia’s Magdalena River. Cool. 

I hope it looks as hot as it felt. I washed my shirt in the sink when we got back to the room to rinse the salt out. That’s how hot it was. 

Lunch: a Mompox sausage patty with a soft fried sweet plantain on top and a corn cake-arepa-on top. 

Rusty was on a water diet which he appreciated deeply. 

Staying well out of the sun: 

A water mark on the river front shows where severe flood level in November 2010 wrecked the city: 

Be surprised: this is a famous tourist attraction in Mompox and everyone comes by. Here? Yup this is the Bolivar Rock (“Piedra de Bolivar”).  

It lists the dates he visited the city starting with the visit that made him

and Mompox famous. 400 men volunteered to march with him to capture Caracas and demand freedom from Spain which took a few battles to achieve. But it started here. 

Every single visit noted, which gives you some idea of how he was viewed. 

He arrived May 18th 1830 before continuing downriver to die in Santa Marta months later. 

These two nice women were sitting in the heat and sold Layne some earrings and a bottle of local wine made from a fruit with a tart dry flavor similar to passion fruit. We had some at lunch and I liked it. 

Filigree silver, where filigree is thin strands woven into lovely designs. 

The ladies said the guy panning for gold had no chance but I hoped he struck it. Mompox has a history of gold and silver art. 

Rusty wanted to rest back where we had lunch. No chance…we wanted air conditioning and we are the humans here. 

We shocked the kids when we addressed them in Spanish and the boys nearby laughed and the girls laughed and it was a moment we never had in Panama. 

I’m dropping off a Longmire novel I brought from the Boquete campground  and I’m picking up a Bourdain memoir I found in the German dominated bookshelf here. 

Goodbye Mompox it was nice knowing you. 

Mompox

I got a lot of interest from my excessively long photo essays of Santa Marta and Camarones so if this is too many pictures you only have yourselves to blame. Actually it’s my fault: everywhere I look is a picture. 

The silted up branch of the Rio Magdalena that runs past Mompox. I had imagined high white walls overlooking the river with gardens and the realty is a little more mundane. 

Homeless seem to camp overnight along the river. 

Waterfront clean up. 

Too many local dogs for Rusty to be comfortable here. The locals look after the dogs but they aren’t loved. 

Our KIA Picanto is off duty for two days. Sunday is an all day drive back to Cartagena to unbox GANNET2  on Monday morning. 

I felt like the vultures were waiting for me to stroke out in the heat. 

Mompox as tourist destination will be a hard sell as it lies at sea level in a steamy river basin. I like how quiet and pretty it is but I can’t imagine rainy season here with a well insulated home and powerful a/c and the money to pay for it. 

If there is a large clean modern grocery store we haven’t found it. 

You may remember how this blog started in 2007 to record my scooter riding days and evolved into a photo record of Key West and my comings and goings there. 

I could do the same in Mompox in old age with a camera, a rescue dog and a linen suit. Except no one would care as Mompox is tvKey West and it is far off the tourist route in Colombia. 

The library in our hotel has shelves loaded with books in German so I suppose some few Europeans wander through here. These was a party of a dozen retired Germans in a tour staying at the hotel when we arrived. Now we have the place to ourselves. 

Pretty middle class homes caged to make the residents feel safe though to me they look more like hails with all the bars. 

The lady was selling horchata, a delicious rice milk drink much enjoyed in Mexico. We had no way to carry it or store it so we had to pass. It’s on our list to taste. 

Mompox Bolivar New Town. They called the city Mompox or Mompós Bolivar to celebrate the Liberator’s connection to the city, where he raised his first volunteer army in 1812. 

Our $64 room. Unimaginably expensive to the men sleeping in the river bank outside. Travel makes inequality stark. 

Drinking water truck: 

These death notices are familiar to me from my youth in Italy. Where I saw them posted on walls here they post them on lampposts. 

This is the death notice I saw in Italy on my visit last June to my village in Umbria, of a woman I grew up with. Same format roughly but in Colombia the notices are put up by different families to honor the dead person. In Italy they are posted only by family members: 

No dogs allowed. When my parish priest told me dogs don’t go to heaven I lost interest in the whole project. 

I don’t think there are fans enough to move the hot fug in the cathedral. 

Mompox adopted the white cross and red background for its flag long before Switzerland chose the same design oddly enough. 

Mompox loves Jazz and has a festival every year. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez used Mompox as the basis for the town of Macondo in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. He spent decades in exile for being too left wing so when he died in 2014 he was mourned in his country of birth and in Mexico home of exiled from all over the world.