Fri 2/12
Wake. Leaving this shit hole of Santa Marta. Go to a beach called Taganga. Taganga is cute but still has the trash blown everyone wants to sell you cocaine thing going on. Darly is flying out to meet me there. Tell Darly to meet me in Palomino - a beach jungle two hour up the coast that we were going to go to tomorrow. She says okay, but she is meeting a friend in Barranquilla, which is two hours in the other direction first. She Colombian-time’s the shit out of me and makes me wait forever, after I knew it was coming, and did everything in my power to not let it happen. Colombians are so good at making people wait.
Meet Darly. Bus to Palomino by dark. Cute town made of shacks selling vegetarian food to tourists. Lots of hippies. Can’t find hostel. Check into the shittiest hostel I’ve ever slept in to this day. Room has no curtains. Door is off the hinge and has no lock. I need to shit. The only toilet is backed up full of shit. Guy has to run across the street to buy toilet paper after convincing his shit stoned hippie friend to give him a few bucks. Back to room. Outlet is torn from wall but if you move it just right, maybe it will charge your phone. Literally get electrocuted by outlet while banging. Pass out.
These two dudes literally stood on the beach like this, no shit, for almost an hour.
Sat 2/13
Wake. Get out of shit hole hostel. Everywhere else is expensive or booked. Darly asks some lady if we can just sleep in her house. Get a cheap room at some nice ladies house. Go to beach. Walk the beach a while. Get to a point where a big river meets an ocean. Tiny little fishing jumping everywhere eating the bugs. Fresh juice. Beautiful. Lay around a while. Beaches are nice but after a while they are still just places where water meet land. Meet up with Thomas and French guys. Drink beers a while. Night. Darly has brought acid. Eat a half an acid. Listen to music and try to play snaps on acid.
Outdoor bar techno party. Dancing. Drinking. Talking. Dancing. Drinking. Can’t stop dancing. Really fun but after a while you realize hell is place where you are unable to stop dancing forever. Darly has a beautiful friend she runs into there. All of Darly’s friends are rich and beautiful. All of the French guys are trying to hit on beautiful friend. Bar closes. Someone says something about an after party. Go to after party. Walk down shit dirt roads past poor concrete houses missing parts of their roofs. One guy has a pyramid of stadium speakers blasting reggaeton stacked in the middle of the street blocking any chance of a car getting by. No one is there. Probably can’t feed his family in the morning. Get to after party. Lots of people but the worst techno you’ve ever heard. And too many hippies. Darly runs off and gets lost in someone’s backyard who chases her out. Everyone is getting lost in drunk drugged black streets on way back. Make it home. Pass out.
Sun 2/14
Plan to go to river. Wake at noon. Bomb veggie lunch. Hippies do somethings rights. Go back to sleep. Wake around 5pm. No river. Find French guys at other hostel. Sit around a while drinking. Darly’s last night before I never see her again. Buy a bottle of wine and some candles. Go to beach. Listen to waves and songs we like on beach blanket holding each other. Bang on beach under so many stars. Sounds romantic but also very sandy. Return home. Pass out.
Mon 2/15
Wake. Catch bus. Split ways in Santa Marta with Darly. Sad goodbyes. I head to Minca. Minca is a little town with a gorgeous river covered in waterfalls. Walk around looking for hostel. Tipped to go to hostel Loma. Camp style hostel on top of huge hill overlooking town and valleys. Can see all the way to Santa Marta. Hammock cabins. Lots of different vistas to watch sunset and drink beers at. People scattered about playing different instruments. Good beer. No wifi. Nice. Cutest girl. Immediately talk to her. English accent. Turns out is from Texas. I make fun of her for a while for faking an English accent because it’s maybe the lamest thing anyone can do.
Walk a road to a part of the river called Pozo Azules. Large emerald pools. Waterfall you can jump off. Swim around and read a while. Head back. Eat three empanadas and a tomato for dinner. Return hostel. English girl Amelia I have now run into in Medellin and Barranquilla is there. She is friends with English Texas girl. Drink a beer and watch sunset. Pretty amazing. Talk shit about hippies for a while. Pass out.
Tues 2/16
Wake. Computer shit and coffee all morning. Bomb veggie breakfast. Hippies do somethings right. Was going to go to other waterfalls, but drought. Go back to Pozo Azules. Hike further up Pozo Azules. Get all the way to end where there is only some Euro guy sitting in front of this huge waterfall who says there has been no one back here all day. There is yellow caution tape stretched across canyon that he sits in front of. He says “the sign back there said this is a sacred space and not to swim, and the only way further is to swim” so I says “it’s fine if this is sacred to someone but it has nothing to do with me.” I swim through the waterfall, climb across a sketchy rock cliff thing, make it to the other side that if I were any better at climbing would have been the coolest thing ever, because it was cliffs that if you slipped and fell you would have only fallen into deep water. Turn back to original waterfall. The only way down is to jump off unknown depth below waterfall. Jump off waterfall. Magical. Forget my lucky hat I got in Peru is on my fucking head. Waterfall eats hat. The sacred wins.
Walk back to town. Eat three more empanadas, no tomato. Report that my hat is missing to English and English Texas. English gives me a new bomb hat. Buy box of wine. Drink box of wine. Teach a bunch of people at hostel how to gamble. Pass out.
Wed 2/17
Wake early. Meet English and English Texas. Coffee. Barefoot hike down river with them. Find great swimming hole with natural rock slides and cliffs. Rivers like this where everything is new and unordinary are one of few places where adults just play and act stupid like kids. English Texas has ass like Houston, Texas (credit to Lil’ Wayne). Can’t stop looking at her ass. Wants nothing to do with me. Return hostel. Planning on going back to Santa Marta after sunset, so have to room. But hostel is composed of 90% female, which is very strange, so can’t leave. Tired which is making me nervous to talk to girls which is making me more tired and more nervous. Sunset I talk to French girl.
Charlene. Not good English. Talk for a while about travel, problems with the world, blah blah whatever. I buy some beers. Talk longer about personal philosophy, neat things we have seen, blah blah whatever. Lay down in dirt. Talking about the differences of culture, projects we have done and might done, blah blah whatever. More beers. Move to private table overlooking separate night valley. Nutella and cigarettes. I spill beer on her tablet and speaker that we are listening to reggae with. People come and take over campsite we are stealing. Go to yoga porch. Lay on pillow. More blah blah whatever beer cigarettes music. Make out. Invites me to her tent, which is good because it’s 11pm and I don’t have a place to stay. Super crazy hot (temperature) not very good jungle banging. Pass out in really uncomfortable tiny tent.
Thurs 2/18
Wake. Didn’t really sleep. Try to bang again. Still just so hot in jungle tent. Eggs fresh bread and squeezed juice. Old English ladies won’t move from one of two tables at restaurant so I stand over them and stare at them. Charlene just asks them to move. Nice move. Walk back to Pozo Azul for third day. Lazily mozy through different pools. Sun and pictures and books. Get to very back waterfall where no one goes. I climb on top of mossy sun rock. She climbs on top of mossy sun rock. Go down on each other for a while on mossy sun rock. Walk back down river and to town. Try to make hill hostel for sunset. Run up hill but just barely miss sunset. I sit and am bored because there is no wifi and the power has been out for two days and I don’t know how to relax or be creative. Debate leaving back to Santa Marta at that moment but would feel bad just leaving French girl. Get sad for some reason. Missing friends. Pass out at 8pm.
Fri 2/19
Wake up. My one night has now been three. Must leave Minca. I only have a few days left of South America. French girl is going to Palomino and ask me if I want to come with. I say no, because I’m going back to shit hole Santa Marta to party. Breakfast. No wifi in town so beer and cigarettes on dirty concrete steps instead. Jeep ride together to Santa Marta bus terminal. Alternative bus terminal is some line of dirty outskirts restaurant/bar/cafe/tienda/phone calls places. Drink a last beer. Have a last cigarette. She leaves in bus. I get on the back of a moto taxi, which is just motorcycle, and me and my heavy ass bag go flying through traffic while my one hand has to hold my helmet on my head instead of hang on to anything during sunset. Way fun. Cafe with internet and stale danish for a while. Check back into $3.50 private hotel room place. Message from OKCupid. Tells me to meet her at her host families house on the outskirts. Sounds weird. I oblige.
Suzie. Walk around a while trying to find her house. She is out looking for me. Addresses are just suggestions in Colombia. Some guy yells “Oh the person you are looking for she went that way!” I’m in another shitty Spanish speaking video game. Finally find her. Brings me to her house where a handful of Colombian teens are giggling and drinking wine. She speaks no Spanish. We eventually just start talking over them and the subject matter is artificial intelligence and free will, which is maybe the first conversation, though be it fucking weird, to have some real substance. Don’t notice when all the Spanish kids are hella bored by this and everyone has left her room, which turns out to be her Airbnb. Talk and talk and talk. Politics, economics, philosophy. She is some blend of feminist, big government communist, etc etc etc. She asks me a question out of the blue, a questions that should be something like, “so where have you been? where are you going?” a question that was something like “what is your community like?” To which I laugh and tell her I need about ten minutes and tell her the entire story of college to the School House to Hammer Time to my band to my thick coagulated apathy. She is baffled someone like me can exist, so I just keep feeding it. Taxi downtown and buy a bottle of wine. Sit on a bench more and more and more talking. Explains to me her specialty is data organization. She is excepted to some specialty program in London. She loves apps and algorithms. Everything can be run with algorithms, including government. She believes in a technocracy. Statistics will make the best society. A government can be run by a few technocrats and very limited democracy. This is what the radical kids are into these days I guess. I just say - “cool.”
We are drunk. Her near scary rational brain is buried in my shoulder and asks a question like “Will you come over and we can cuddle? And maybe if it feels good we can do more?” I laugh. I oblige. Go back to her house. Her hilltop apartment is catching all the wind and it sounds like a tornado. She is playing dead little spoon. I move my hand hand sweetly and relentlessly across her body. She is not responding. War of play attrition. What. Ever. Why? She turns. We make out.
What makes some truly “sexy” is really hard to place. This girl, in appearance and body - is attractive. But not in a crazy Colombian Pegasus sort of attractive (she is Hungarian (by the way)). The sex though is baffling. Some combination of confidence and a full no-fucks given indulgence of pleasure. Some sort of rest-of-brain shut down where all energy is fully focused into primitive bodily chemical and sensation. Some sort of attitude or spirit that some people have that just makes makes you reach out clawing for the edge of the mattress trying to brace yourself before your dick explodes and tears you both in half. Dick explodes. Pass out.
shitty photo from her deck. it's all I got.
Sat 2/20
Wake up. She bends over and cums one hundred times in my face. We make eggs, toast, and smoothies. She is going to the beach with her weird roommates. I am going to a cafe for some coffee and wifi. Originally was going to go to Cartagena. Have realization that my last few days in South America after almost four months I’d rather just spend with my friends. Gather my shit. Head back to Palomino to meet Frenchy, English girl, and French girl.
Palomino. Meet friends. Sit around drinking beers smoking cigarettes talking shit. French girl Charlene is sick and goes to bed. Thomas and I go to bar and eat last half ecstasy pill I have. Bar is whatever. Go to main street true Colombian bar. Everyone inside is coupled up. Every girl is bent over hanging on to a chair or table or pole while every guy is fucking them with clothes on. Thomas and I go outside and sit at a table full of 4-7 year old girls. Thomas is showing them magic tricks. I’m wasted and as impressed with Thomas’ shitty magic tricks as they are. Cute and fun. Pass out.
Sun 2/21
Wake up. News that French girl apparently passed out and collapsed while standing before puking in her dorm all night. Thomas, me, some cute girls, and a super cute big dog we name Wolf walk to a river an hour away. The river is beautiful and the water is perfect we float while looking at the girl’s butts. We manage to sneak up to a big crazy looking bird and float just a few feet away from it while it stares very nervously ate us trying to eat a dead leaf because it think we are only floating heads. I find a golf ball size seed of sort that doesn't sink or float - just sort of swims around where you place it in the water. Play in water for a while. Watch Wolf be a stupid idiot and try to catch Cranes and Iguanas. Head back to hostel. Drink some Beers. Smoke some cigarettes. All head to Santa Marta.
Santa Marta terminal. I say goodbye forever to everyone. Head to Cartagena. Get hostel. Walk around. Eat a pizza and a giant beer. Pass out.
Mon 2/22
Last full day in South America. Walk around Cartagena and go on walking tour. New Orleans looking city but way more white people shopping. Ride on the back of a motorcycle to an island thing called Baru. Walk up and down it drinking some beers. Listen to headphones and watch the sunset half drunk. Head back on motorcycle half drunk. Go to square where I talk to some German girl a while about whatever but then she leaves after a few beers. Walk around to a few bars. Nothing is happening. It’s Monday. Pass out.
someone go to Cartagena and put your dick in his hand
LA COCO LOCURA
directly behind the beautiful beach
gas station.
Tues 2/23
Go shopping with last little bit of money. Haircut. Sunglasses. Looked for Coca Candy to give to all of you but apparently that only exists in Peru and Bolivia and in Colombia people are only offended. Sit with some moto taxi drivers hanging out - the most Colombian part of the center of Cartagena - and drink my last shitty South American beer. Hop on the back of a moto to the airport.
Flight. Fly over Cuba during sunset. Gorgeous. Land Fort Lauderdale. Immigration. Set up like DMV. Yelling agents about where how to stand. Take picture of how funny it is. Told they will take my phone and fine me $500. Lines. More lines. Bus. No money. Charged $13 to take money out on credit card. Find bus. Half the people are obese and mentally ill. A few clearly cracked out. Everything smells like pee. Woman are screaming and fighting in back. Everyone is screaming at them and each other. Hugely obese disgusting woman asks "do you work? Spare a dollar" and then gets super pissed that I don't give her a dollar. Stress level of the bus is through the fucking roof. This sort of bullshit never happened one single time to any extent in the south. I know I look at south america with rose colored glasses, and they have plenty of their own problems, but this shit is fucking ridiculous. We are one of the most privileged wealthy countries, and everyone knows that we are fucked, but seriously - we are so fucked.
Meet Couchsurfing dude. Stay at his apartment. Mid 20's architect in training. Doesn't like it. He talks about one day getting out of Florida. He has never been out west. He gets high. I drink a beer. Pass out.
