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A Journey back in time to Mompos
One thing I definitely wont miss about traveling, are the bus journeys. They are more often than not the cheapest and easiest way to get around South American countries, and they´d been bearable for me until we got to Colombia. For some reason, my travel sickness decided to rear its ugly head on our first bus journey here, could be because of the endless breakneck speeds, the frighteningly misjudged overtaking, or the snaking bumpy roads, or more likely a combination of the three, but every journey since has left me feeling queasy. Possibly the only other thing I didn´t like about Colombia, was the rigmarole of buying bus tickets. You arrive at the bus station and as soon as you´re spotted, numerous bus company drivers/sellers/bag men come at you shouting their destinations, cali cali cali cali!? Once you manage to get past them, you get to the ticket booths where there´s usually a sulky looking teenager who mumbles any reply at you, and when you can work out what he´s saying, it´s usually a ridiculously high price. You then have to try and sweet talk them down, to get to the normal price, and apparently this is something even Colombians have to go through. It gets tiring to say the least.
So I wasn´t relishing the plan for our last week and a half in Colombia. It had dawned on us when we were on the coast that we only had about 6 weeks left of our trip. We´d already spent four in Colombia, and still had a list of places we wanted to go before we could leave, meaning we´d only have a few weeks in Ecuador and Peru. So we had to get a move on, and this meant more traveling, less relaxing, and lots of buses. Our first trip was to Mompos, probably the hardest town in the North of Colombia to get to, as it sits on an island in the middle of the wide Magdalena river, deep in the Bolivar Department, recognised as a Caribbean coastal region by Colombians despite being 3 hours from the nearest coast. We left Taganga at 5am, and didn´t arrive in the sleepy streets of Mompos until about 8pm. It took a combination of taxi, bus, smaller bus, ferry, taxi, canoe and another taxi to get us there, and after a search for a place to rest our heads, we happened across a gem. A little lady called Senora Betty came out to us in the street (as did a lot of other curious Momposinos) whose brother rented out rooms in his house. It wasn´t until after we´d agreed to the room that we met the brother, Armando, or sweaty Armando as we began to call him. With a belly the size of Wales, often exposed for all to admire, and a sheen of sweat being his aura.
Mompos is steamy, surrounded by swamps and river land. The air is so humid it´s not surprising that locals spend their days in their rocking chairs, staring at passers by from their porches and doorways. We wandered around the town, admiring the ornate and colonial streets that don´t seem to have changed for centuries. I found some beautiful hand carved totumas (gourds) in a local hardware shop, and we ate in the evenings at some of the small stalls in the bustling San Francisco Plaza. Our host, Sweaty Armando, spoke a lot. But we couldn´t ever make out what he was saying, let alone what language he was speaking. He didn´t seem to mind our ignorance and would continue to talk to us, calling us by one conjoined name - jameyhannah (pron. himayeeanna). When the time came to leave, we were each given a big wet hug against his naked rotund belly. Thankfully it was another early start at 4 in the morning, and it hadn´t reached it´s peak of sweatiness yet. So we got in our little taxi bus, waved goodbye to Armando and Senora Betty, and headed South East towards San Gil, hoping it was easier to get out than it was to get in!
One thing I definitely wont miss about traveling, are the bus journeys. They are more often than not the cheapest and easiest way to get around South American countries, and they´d been bearable for me until we got to Colombia. For some reason, my travel sickness decided to rear its ugly head on our first bus journey here, could be because of the endless breakneck speeds, the frighteningly misjudged overtaking, or the snaking bumpy roads, or more likely a combination of the three, but every journey since has left me feeling queasy. Possibly the only other thing I didn´t like about Colombia, was the rigmarole of buying bus tickets. You arrive at the bus station and as soon as you´re spotted, numerous bus company drivers/sellers/bag men come at you shouting their destinations, cali cali cali cali!? Once you manage to get past them, you get to the ticket booths where there´s usually a sulky looking teenager who mumbles any reply at you, and when you can work out what he´s saying, it´s usually a ridiculously high price. You then have to try and sweet talk them down, to get to the normal price, and apparently this is something even Colombians have to go through. It gets tiring to say the least.
So I wasn´t relishing the plan for our last week and a half in Colombia. It had dawned on us when we were on the coast that we only had about 6 weeks left of our trip. We´d already spent four in Colombia, and still had a list of places we wanted to go before we could leave, meaning we´d only have a few weeks in Ecuador and Peru. So we had to get a move on, and this meant more traveling, less relaxing, and lots of buses. Our first trip was to Mompos, probably the hardest town in the North of Colombia to get to, as it sits on an island in the middle of the wide Magdalena river, deep in the Bolivar Department, recognised as a Caribbean coastal region by Colombians despite being 3 hours from the nearest coast. We left Taganga at 5am, and didn´t arrive in the sleepy streets of Mompos until about 8pm. It took a combination of taxi, bus, smaller bus, ferry, taxi, canoe and another taxi to get us there, and after a search for a place to rest our heads, we happened across a gem. A little lady called Senora Betty came out to us in the street (as did a lot of other curious Momposinos) whose brother rented out rooms in his house. It wasn´t until after we´d agreed to the room that we met the brother, Armando, or sweaty Armando as we began to call him. With a belly the size of Wales, often exposed for all to admire, and a sheen of sweat being his aura.
Mompos is steamy, surrounded by swamps and river land. The air is so humid it´s not surprising that locals spend their days in their rocking chairs, staring at passers by from their porches and doorways. We wandered around the town, admiring the ornate and colonial streets that don´t seem to have changed for centuries. I found some beautiful hand carved totumas (gourds) in a local hardware shop, and we ate in the evenings at some of the small stalls in the bustling San Francisco Plaza. Our host, Sweaty Armando, spoke a lot. But we couldn´t ever make out what he was saying, let alone what language he was speaking. He didn´t seem to mind our ignorance and would continue to talk to us, calling us by one conjoined name - jameyhannah (pron. himayeeanna). When the time came to leave, we were each given a big wet hug against his naked rotund belly. Thankfully it was another early start at 4 in the morning, and it hadn´t reached it´s peak of sweatiness yet. So we got in our little taxi bus, waved goodbye to Armando and Senora Betty, and headed South East towards San Gil, hoping it was easier to get out than it was to get in!
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