Final Thoughts

I spent my last week in Colombia back in Taganga without the company of my limited-Spanish speaking travel buddy. It was a marked contrast to be in this touristy town while trying to experience it in a non-touristy way. Since my Spanish is far better than my Hebrew, and I stayed there far longer than your average Parque Tairona bound tourist, I ended up making friends with a few of the locals and being more than just a white face with a dollar sign on it. I played soccer with the kids, chatted with vendors, and gave acknowledging waves to the fisherman to drunk to understand my Gringo accent. But I also had a lot of alone time to reflect on my past month in Colombia and how it would seem to a person arriving here for the first time with preconceived notions of blood, danger and cocaine.

I am admittedly biased. I’ve grown comfortable in Colombian culture and have had enough good experiences to mitigate my media-driven initial preconceptions. But I think one with no Latin America experience and halfway malleable pre-conceived notions would find Colombia to be pleasant, beautiful and above all interesting. From the modern city life of Medellin to the laid back farmers in the pueblos, from the touristy bubble of Cartagena to the hectic poverty of the roadside coastal towns, from the mountainous landscapes of the Andes to the tropical beaches of Tairona, Colombia provides stereotype-shattering and thought-provoking experiences that no newspaper, tourism book, or blog can capture.

Medellin is a playground for any single, outgoing, party-guy; or a perfect place to study Spanish or teach English for any gendered person with any marital status. True, it may not be as much fun to be a blond-haired goddess among horny, short, cat-calling Latinos, or be committed to such a goddess when your blue eyes draw more female gazes than there are ounces of silicon in the gazers, but the city is so pleasant in itself that the nightlife (read: women) is just the happy ending to an already great massage.

In Cartagena you might get your happy ending before your massage, or just for ordering the special, but it is still an elegantly historic, romantically invigorating and architecturally beautiful first entry point to Colombia.

The diversity of people, geography, climate and pace is another aspect of Colombia that provokes an analytical traveler. A four-hour bus ride from the cornfields of Nebraska gets you to…. well, the cornfields of Kansas. A four-hour bus ride from Medellin passes through cold to hot climates, goes over mountains to plains, and leaves you hearing a different Spanish accent on the tongues of locals. Eight hours in one direction and you have crossed a cultural, linguistic and climatic dividing cordillera of the Andes and are in the seemingly foreign Bogotá, where as eight hours in the other direction and the light European skin darkens with African influence, “S”s disappear as speech quickens though pace of life slows down, and the cool freshness of mountain air gives way to the palpably hot coastal climate. One could miss all of these distinct delineations that the diversity of this country engenders. Some might be unimpressed or not even care. But for a tuned in traveler, a self-conscious traveler that is aware if his/her surroundings and how they fit into it, Colombia culturally stimulates the mind and senses, while pleasing the eye with its natural beauty.

And with those thoughts I sat cliff-side with Ipod in ear, sun setting over the Tairona waters to my right, fish-filled boats returning to Taganga to my left, and concluded my month in Colombia. Doubtless I will continue to return, but even more sure it won’t be any time too soon. I hope this blog was at least at times entertaining to read, it definitely was entertaining to write and countered the solitude of walking a foreign city alone. I’m now off to Panama for a whole new experience…..working. Check me out at www.adayinpanama.wordpress.com for more observational wit, cultural insight and unabashed sharing of my experiences.