Cartagena De Indias
“Fill
your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
William
Wordsworth
Somewhere between the intensely colourful streets of Cartagena’s old walled town and the heavenly tropical islands that sit along her historical coastline I left some pieces of my heart. I know I will go back there someday, not to retrieve those pieces, but to scatter more around the crumbling 16th century cobblestones of this utterly charming Colombian port town. This is no ordinary seaside destination. It overflows with something for every human sense you have and perhaps for the ones you’ve not yet discovered: art, music, history, food, architecture and of course, love.
It was love itself that brought myself, my mother (coughing like an old dog left outside a shed in the damp misty drizzly rain of a West Kerry winter morning) my brother and his family, and a handful of Irish friends to this northern patch of South America’s vast soil. Green palm trees jutted out from wooden slats and welcomed us off the plane and into the humid maritime air, air we would gulp into our Celtic lungs for the next three weeks or so after an unforgettably cold, wet and grey few months back home. I inhaled deeply. My mother inhaled deeply too then her chest rattled like chains on a train line. We both really felt like crying after 14 hours of her incessant (that is NOT an exaggeration) inflight coughing. We didn’t cry though, we held it together, well, until we saw our gorgeous and precious Des and his beautiful Analucy leaning against the pillar outside the airport, arms around each other, waiting for us. Hugs and relief all round. Finally, we had arrived. After hours traversing the North Atlantic Ocean we found ourselves standing on this golden veiled Caribbean seaboard and at the start of what now feels like a very sweet dream.
The roar of the ocean filled the jeep as I rolled down the window. Waves rolled in and crashed against (and often over) low set stone walls set along the beach. Bright yellow taxis and insanely fast public buses raced wildly through vast pools of sea water. The frenetic beeping of car horns punctured the sea’s white noise with heart stopping shrills and the palm trees shook increasingly in the evening air. That happy and edgy hormone that kicks in when I’m somewhere new and unfamiliar kept my jetlag at bay. My brain couldn’t keep up with all the new sights and sounds. As Des navigated the chaotic traffic with his trademark casual and calm manner telling us stories, I started thinking about all the things I wanted to see and do. “I’ll have to visit Medellín, coffee plantations, national parks, I should have brought my hiking boots- hard to fit everything in the bag! (Truth be told my gold stilettoes and other such fancies took priority this time) "I didn’t get any vaccinations, what about the Amazon?” Actually, you know what…. No. Stop, stop, STOP! I quickly realised that this trip was going to be different. There would be no checklist, no guidebook, and no itinerary. I was here to meet new family, new friends, immerse myself in my brother’s new home city and above all be witness to the very special coming together of two lovely people.
Colombia’s neighbour Venezuela, itself in the middle of what could well be the fastest growing humanitarian crisis in Latin American history played a part in this trip to Colombia too. Standing at almost every traffic light or t- junction along the beach were Venezuelan immigrants selling their wares and sadly for some of the women, their bodies. Handwritten notices on blackened cardboard hanging from their weary necks pleading for help. These were doctors, nurses, teachers back in their own country, now selling bic razors and buns in the insufferable midday sun in an attempt to feed themselves and their families. I saw footage of a group of Venezuelan men and women frenetically chasing down a cow in a field in an attempt to kill and eat it. Kill or die from hunger. Seeing these men, women and children fill the beaches and streets made me think of my godchild Henry and the Venezuelan blood that pumps around his lively and beautiful little body. I hope that someday as an adult he will be boarding a flight to Venezuela with his sister to meet his mother's family there and the conflict currently unfurling is spoken about as a long distant memory and one they will say was resolved faster than the world had ever expected.
We laughed a lot on this holiday, a helleva lot actually! We stood, waist high in warm silky sea water a lot too, beers in our hands, red snapper in our bellies, talking, reminiscing and howling with uproarious laughter- mostly at our friend Kevin’s stories from home- stomach clutching, tears rolling down your face stuff, all against the backdrop of yet another perfect sunset. New friends met old ones- all ages and from all over the globe. This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often in life so we savoured and appreciated every second of it. My mother walked into the wrong apartment one morning in Analucy’s building to be met by a man in his bed, in some state of undress I presume. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?” she exclaimed at the red faced proprietor of the apartment before realising her mistake and wondering what in fact she was doing there! Cut to the dance floor the night of the wedding where my mother dancing with some style with some local music star (and his impressive dread locks) when she felt a tap on the shoulder... the guy from the apartment!! Turns out he was a friend of Luci’s. They took a photo to mark their second and altogether less embarrassing encounter!
