It’s now been two weeks since I’ve arrived, and this conclusion is obvious. Colombia is as amazing as Indonesia. Perhaps I have a weakness for tropical countries?* This hypothesis seems full of sense. Colombia has everything magical you might look for in a country, geographically speaking: volcanoes, glaciers, three cordilleras for the price of one, the Caribbean Sea and a coast at each ocean, the Amazonian jungle, the desert… There you can go for breathtaking treks by warm or cold weather, scuba diving, fauna and flora observation, beach, discovery of ancient cities or of majestic colonial architecture, or tasting sweet and colorful fruit juse like I love them. This ocean of possibilities is really, really impressive and it’s hard to take decisions regarding what I’ll see next, I always feel like I’m gonna miss out! And for those who worry: Colombia’s blind violence period has been over for a while – since about Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993. Of course one should know what streets to avoid, find people with good pieces of advice, but traveling in Colombia is no risk per se.. Not much more than, say, (Southern) Italy. Ok I’m not 100% sure about that one, but it’s roughly my impression about it. You shouldn’t be an easy target, but it’s also not like they’re gonna abduct you at every corner. And it’s mostly in the cities than one must be careful. As for nature, it offers innumerable splendors. My prediction is that in 10 to 20 years Colombia will be ultra-touristy.

*little detail for those who care: the adjective tropical is actually incorrect, those countries aren’t located on the Tropics but close to the equator, one should say inter-tropical to be accurate

Just before leaving Bogotá I went to Zipaquira, a town not far away, to visit a salt cathedral. Beautiful and impressive, even though the entrance was excessively expensive for the country, it’s located in a still-functioning mine. I learned more about the indigenous  people from the region, the Muisca, as well as about the history of industrialization of the mine and  I walked around this huge underground construction.  The day after, I took a bus for Armenia, crossing the Cordillera de los Andes transversally in order to join my next destination. Since then, I learned that other Southern American countries are crossed by a rather uniform Cordillera, whereas in Columbia this chain of mountains breaks into three, like a triple snake tongue.  What I did by bus is therefore going down one of these branches, because Bogotá is in the heights, and climb up the next one to find myself in the Zona Cafetera, where the climate is particularly proprice to coffee culture.

I thus accomplished my duty and visited this superb region. There I found again the palm and banana trees, plants I love so dear, during a trek in Salento (not in the Puglia of Southern Italy, but Salento Columbia!).  Six little hours walking in the tropical forest of my heart, with a stop at Acaime, the hummingbirds house.  My first hummingbirds, I had never seen any previously! Incredible animals, birds behaving like insects and displaying lots of magical colors. This walk in the Cocora valley, with a couple of very nice Austrians met on the road, ended with the enchanting vision of the highest palm trees in the world (some say they rise up to even 80m).  A few days in Colombia and I’m already happier than happy, great!!! The day after I visited a little finca de cafe, a little familial farm where coffee is produced entirely organically.  We were explained how to grow coffee sustainably, without chemicals nor pesticides (but uniquely with the help of hens for the fertilizer, spicy plants for pesticides, other trees and plants on the ground to soak the additional water/offer shadow/atyrant bugs etc).  Then, they showed us the different steps from the plant to consumable coffee, from the machine that takes out the beans from their red shell to the cooking phase and then the gringing, through the cleaning and drying of coffee beans to remove the greasy envelope that protects them. There I learnt that the longer the coffee beans are cooked, and the darker they get, the stronger the taste but also the less caffeine the coffee contains! A very interesting visit, and yes I forced myself to drink the coffee they offered us; less horrible than expected, because coffee is mildly strong in Colombia compared to European taste. But still, wouldn’t drink it every morning.

In the Zona Cafetera, that spreads across several departments, moving around is done in Willy’s, a variety of mini-jeep whose rights were acquired by Colombia after World War II with the idea of transporting coffee. Since then, the vehicle has taken several other roles, among which people transportation. You get in at the back of the car whose sign on the front indicates the destination you’re interested in, after discussing the price with the driver, and ride across the landscapes of the region’s green hills at 30km/h. In numerous cases, and it obviously also happened to me, place behind scarce inside the vehicle several passengers just stand at the rear and hold on to the metallic structure of the car. An experience that can’t help but recall me of Indonesia! In Armenia, during my last day there, I even had the chance to see a procession of Willy’s, each owner proudly exhibiting what they produce, sell or love, attached to their jeep in positions defying gravity.

After Armenia and Salento I took a bus to the North, to Manizales. I was told it’s a good starting point for Los Nevados, glaciers and volcanoes of the region. I got there in the evening, booked my tour for the morrow, and immediately went to sleep as I had to wake up at 4:30 for an early departure! Several hours of road later (it’s barely possible to go faster than 30km/h due to driving conditions) we got to the altitude of 4000m, a páramos area, and here a little ex-cursus is needed. I had never heard of that mountainous inter-tropical ecosystem, and for a reason: you find it only in certain regions of the world; Eastern Africa, Ethiopia, Central America and mostly the Northern Andes. There, you find it in only four countries; Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia (which itself possesses 70% of the páramos in the Andes/or the world). How this ecosystem is peculiar is its plants, that one doesn’t find elsewhere if I’m not mistaken. It produces a superb visual result, an impression of cactuses (which they aren’t) flown over by big birds that are sometimes eagles, sometimes, far away, condors!

Of course when you hike up you exit the páramo area to find yourself simply high in the mountain, even in the cold (I saw some snow, yes I did). The six-hour trek on the Santa Isabel Nevado was no piece of cake because it was the first time for me at such an altitude, and because we got to 4700m! But gosh was it worth it. It was at the same time my first walk on a glacier (that melts away at a tremendous pace, has extremely diminished in ten years and will have disappeared within 5 years). And since the entire area has to do with volcanoes, and everything I set foot on there was produced by volcanic phenomena, I also walked by a crater rejecting some vapor. Awesome!

The next days I stayed a bit around Manizales and visited the region with my Nevados guide, Pablo: we first went see some more of the Zona Cafetera by walking in Chinchina and Palestina under a strong sun, then we climbed up a little mountain under the rain at Riosucio. I had the chance to get a lot of explanations on the region and the city, which was at the time colonized by inhabitants of Antioquia, a department further North. Lots of walking in a few days for my poor legs which were happy to rest during the several hours that took the trip to Medellin!

I said I’d talk to you about certain topics, here I come. For what concerns the comparison with Jakarta, here are my impressions: Bogota is much cleaner, less polluted, has streets in which to walk (possible infrastructure-wise, whereas Jakarta made it impossible), and way less overwhelmed by motorbikes, as people are moving around in their car. Of course the country isn’t Muslim, so women are not (or even waaaay less) covered and people drink alcohol. And well I find that the quality of life seems higher, perhaps the proportion of the poor and very poor is lower here, and the middle class larger. Where, on the other hand, I find my Indonesian habits is that lots of buildings are simple multilevel blocks whose facades are covered in colored signs, sometimes done by hand, indicating the content of the store or restaurant. You find little street vendors/stands by the road, where one can find take-away food (with the difference that instead of fried rice you’ll get empanadas). You eat loooooots of rice, almost at each meal. The climate is equivalent, thus the weather and flora as well, a bit (although the temperature is in average lower in Bogotá), and you can drink mango juice at any time of the day (or any other of these latitudes’ fruity yuminess). And, finally, busses with random schedules could only remind me of my Indonesian stay. To sum up, I can use a comment a made to a friend, which sinthetises my general impression; that Colombia is a sort of Mediterranean Indonesia (not completely Indonesian, tending towards the Italian under certain aspects due to its latino culture).

Another topic one can’t avoid, especially when arriving in Colombia a few days after President Santos received the Nobel price for a peace he didn’t managed to have the people accept, is that treaty that should have allowed Colombia to put an end to an ultra-long war period. You probably heard about the slight rejection of Colombians, that was close by a few percents only. What was that about? A peace treaty between the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the Colombian government in order to find a solution to the bloody armed conflict that is about fifty years old and has traumatised a majority of Colombians. Who isn’t included in that treaty? Paramilitary groups, which at the time formed to protect themselves from guerilleros, with the benediction of the government, but who turned out just as crual, and killed innocents as well. By the way, who else also turned out crual and killed Colombian citizens? The government. But well, we’re getting too much into details here. Suffices it to say that all this is very complicated and that now the several actors have gotten to a point where it’s more strategic for them to sign the peace than to keep on fighting (no, Santos isn’t just an altruistic saint), and the president wished a plebiscite to confirm his victory, but he got beaten.

Unfortunately, Colombians have been few to vote (about 40% of the population in age of doing so), and the ballots’ verdict was the result of a large desinformation and few campaign. Former President Uribe wanted to make matters complicated for Santos and formed a campaign that stated, grosso modo, that we want peace but not this way. He managed to coallesce with religious right-wing people by pretending that Santos’ peace would lead to a dictatorial, gay and communist regime (yes, that’s heavy), and to make believe that the FARC would be granted impunity regarding the crimes they have committed. And, finally, a campaign manager revealed a posteriori that their goals weren’t to explain the treaty and the ensuing reforms but to spread indignation. They thus predicted to the poor what they don’t wanna hear (roughly: talked about subsidies to the guerilleros), to rich what they don’t wanna hear (roughly: they mentioned a reform that would come along the treaty and not be in their favor), and ended up winning. Actually, the agreement that was formulated is pretty “classical” compared with what was done in other countries with similar situations (among which Northern Ireland). The FARC as a whole would have gotten the possibility to become a party as such, with seats in the parliament, whereas some individuals having confessed their (serious) crimes would have to go through community work sentences (little additional comment: Colombian prisons  are over-full). And of course the treaty isn’t perfect, Santos isn’t perfect, the guerilleros committed atrocities. But peace would probably have a first step towards some improvement for this country that lived for too long in fear and suffering. What’s the saddest about all this? The areas having directly suffered from the war voted yes because they prefer forgiveness to a continuation of suffering.

Here a link to the results summarized in figures and maps, the areas that suffered from the FARC are all included in the departments that voted “yes”: http://plebiscito.registraduria.gov.co/99PL/DPLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ_L1.htm

One could say way more, explain what the FARC conflict originates from (it was at the start a liberal struggle against the government) and the history of violence in Colombia (including, among others, the liberal and conservative parties, which after bloody civil war fights ended up almost indissociable allies, sharing power in the country without great consideration for the citizens). But I don’t know anything about all that, the little I know is thanks to my friends – and my bad memory doesn’t honor their detailed explanations. Let’s stay at that for now.

Colombian reading of the moment: Cien años de soledad (A Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel price of Colombian literature. Telling you that reminds me that Pablo, my guide, told me a citation he saw and found very correct: “Colombia is a country with a Nobel price for literature while it doesn’t read, which won a Nobel price for peace that wasn’t signed… precisely because it doesn’t read”.

Next steps: Medellín (city of Pablo Escobar and Fernando Botero), Guatape and its rock, Jardín, maybe Santa Fe de Antioquia, then the North for the Caribbean coast (can’t wait!)

For more pictures click here