The bus to Bogotá

During our stay in Cartagena, Colombia, we felt like seeing more of this beautiful country. People were friendly, and eager to prove that Colombia was a lot more than drugs and civil war.

We left Bika in the marina and started the bus ride south to Bogotá; up through the valleys, up the mountain sides; we got the frightening joy of looking down, while the driver seemed to be playing with suicidal thoughts, and drove like there was no tomorrow.

I’ve always dreaded the idea of ending my days in traffic. I could see burnt-out vehicles in the valley below, lying upside down like dead insects.

We changed driver in the middle of nowhere. He held a short speech before taking off, just a reminder about the next stops, but then he ended everything with “and may God be with you on the journey.” I looked at Nina. I didn’t find this comforting at all.

It seemed obvious that the new driver was trying to beat his personal record for the next distance. He was religious, though. I could see how he rapidly crossed himself while passing all these memory shrines along the road; pictures of the dead, crosses and candles.

But religion has nothing to do with respect for other people's lives, as we had seen, and the wild driving continued through the hairpin curves of the Colombian highland.

I'd had enough of this. My nerves were shredded. I managed to talk Nina into an alternative route, with slow local buses. We would also see more of the countryside, I argued.

But at the bus stop we got people asking where we were heading. Bogotá, we said. They shook their heads, we couldn’t go this way, unless we had a death wish and wanted to get kidnapped by FARC or ELN. We had to turn back to the main road.

We continued with the long distance bus, and passed several checkpoints along the main road to Bogotá. Three times the bus got stopped. Every man had to come out, while the women could sit and observe us getting patted down. If I had a gun, well, it might have crossed my mind to hand it over to Nina before getting out. But the Colombian military had a chivalry that was impressing.

Slum and dignity

In Cartagena we decided to get involved with Fundación Querido Amigo, a local organization that provides schooling for one of the many slums in the suburb. The kids also get a school uniform, and a meal a day.

For most of the kids this will be the only meal that day. Everything about the school is falling apart except the spirit. This community have come a long way.

The school is surrounded by a slum that’s lacking almost everything, everywhere. Whole families go to bed hungry. This is the kind of people you’ll see collecting plastic or glass or whatever. You’ll see them sifting through garbage.

You’ll see them pass through the aisle of the bus, in a hopeless attempt to sell chewing gum or candy for a small percentage. You’ll look away because you have to. There’s just too many of them.

We got together with other cruisers and held a fund raising in the marina. Hopefully this initiative will continue. The school is a huge success. You can see so much dignity in these kids' faces that you may wonder if they are really poor. You should have seen the slum they go home to.

Anybody interested can read further here