JAN WESTMAAS
Sitting in front of my desktop this morning, I’m feeling nostálgico (homesick) for Colombia, as I view on YouTube Alberto Barros and his orchestra perform Colombia’s most well-known Cumbia – Mi tierra querida (My beloved country). This patriotic song is as close to a national anthem you can get. Colombia has always enthralled me ever since my first visit in 1974 to that vast, geographically and culturally diverse nation on the South American continent. That journey was part of a two-month honeymoon adventure on our own by land across four Andean nations – Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
My wife and I flew from Piarco by Linea Aeropostale de Venezuela (45 minutes) to Maturin, Eastern Venezuela where our ground tour started and ended. Most of the journey was on public buses and trains (Peru) but when the need arose, we hitchhiked. In Venezuela and Colombia (Bucaramanga and Bogota), we stayed with friends or with friends of friends. Otherwise, for the majority of the journey, we sought accommodation in hostels or cheap hotels. One particular hotel in Neiva, Colombia turned out to be a burdel (brothel). In a flash, we made our exit. Fortunately, the bus station was nearby. What a life saver! The driver of the very bus we planned to travel in to our next destination allowed us to board hours before it was due to depart the following morning.
That was 49 years ago. In mid-July this year, under vastly different conditions, luxurious in comparison with our journey in 1974, we revisited Colombia with a group of 30 Trinis on a 13-day overland bus tour. We traversed eight of the country’s 32 departments, to wit: Cundinamarca, Huila, Caldas, Quindío, Tolima, Cauca, Valle de Cauca and Risaralda. The tour started and ended in the country’s capital, Bogota, formerly called Bacata, the base of the Chibcha Indigenous people before the Spanish conquest in the early16th century.
Brave and daring (the vast majority in their 60s and over), our well-travelled group was up to the task. As I look back at our odyssey, the veterans with their infectious enthusiasm, their passion for travel and their willingness to adapt, would put to shame people far younger than they are. “Colombia? You must be crazy”, was the reaction of a friend of a member of our group when he heard of his plans to travel there.
Tainted by images in the media of political instability, violence (guerilla activity) and narco-trafficking, among other things, Colombia hardly features in the bucket list of many “uninformed” and unadventurous travellers. Without exception every member of our group returned with an alternative or different view of Colombia – “la otra cara de mi pais” – the other face of my country, to quote Paul, our affable and tireless bus driver.
Colombia is the only country to be named after Cristobal Colon, the famous or infamous “discoverer” of the New World. Whether this is worth shouting about is debatable but without rewriting history, it is worth remembering the negative impact of European “civilisation” on Colombia’
