Pubdate: 16 Jan 1999
Source: Herald, The (UK)
Contact:  http://www.theherald.co.uk/

THE YEAR OF; LIVING DANGEROUSLY

Although I knew of Colombia's shocking reputation long before
crossing from Ecuador - as the world's major cocaine producer and with
the continent's longest guerrilla insurgency it's a byword for
drug-trafficking, violence and  lawlessness - never in my wildest
nightmares could I have dreamt what awaited  me.

Not that there weren't early warning signs - the German next to me on
the bus told me how, on an overnight coach to Bogot, he'd woken to
find his trouser leg slit open and his money belt surgically removed -
and when I arrived in Pasto it was dark, and dimly-lit streets outside
the bus station were lined by hustlers with narrow trousers, rakish
moustaches and greasy hair.

However, I had to find a hotel, so, pursued by furtive eyes and brazen
offers of "cocana, marijuana!", I set off into the murky night, until
I arrived  at a seedy backstreet hostelaje, where I pushed through
crowds of pimps and  women in minuscule mini-skirts to a scruffy man
slouched against a hissing  coffee machine.

''Wan focky-focky?" he said, wearily. Many cheap Columbian hotels can
be rented by the hour or the night, depending on use.

''Just a room," I replied in Spanish, before following him upstairs to
shabby top-floor rooms smelling of sweat and cheap hair oil, where I
could hear men moaning through thin partitions.

Next morning I set off on the Popayn express up the Pan-American
Highway, a route notorious for armed gangs, masquerading as police or
military, holding up buses at fake checkpoints. Christopher Isherwood,
in The Condo and the Cows, described terrain round La Unin, perched on
its sheer-sided ridge, as resembling "violently crumpled bed-clothes,
with the road scribbled wildly across tremendous valleys, while tilled
fields on opposite mountain-faces look nearly vertical". However,
nerves jangling, I couldn't concentrate, and after 200 miles and a
long grinding descent, I was relieved to arrive seven hours later in
Popayn, the country's most beautiful colonial city.

Founded in 1537 by Pizarro's lieutenant Sebastian de Belalczar, and
known as "Columbia's Burgos", it was meticulously restored after being
severely damaged by the disastrous 1983 earthquake, just as the
much-celebrated Maundy Thursday religious procession was departing.

Now, however, it's once again awash with classical Spanish
architecture, with white-washed, two-storey colonial mansions, church
spires and monasteries overlooked by the snowcapped volcano Purace
(14,000ft).

Soon I set off on the seven-hour bus journey over the Cordillera
Oriental to San Andres, one of South America's most important
archaeological sites, and famous for its pre-Columbian burial mounds
and statues. The mountain road was rough and dangerous - landslides
are frequent - but it was very spectacular, as it climbed to wispy
mountain peaks before winding down vertical gorges covered with
tropical forests, and under gracefully arching torrents to a village
nestling in a small green valley.

The pre-Columbian culture of San Andres, which some archaeologists
link to the Pacific's Easter Island, developed between the sixth and
the fourteenth centuries AD, but by the time the Spanish arrived it
had died out and it wasn't until the eighteenth century that the sites
were discovered - perhaps, like other Andean civilisations, falling
victim to the Incas (this was their northernmost reach).

These are small, circular underground caverns, where torchlight
reveals walls and pillars covered with intricate red, white and black
crisscross designs.

However, it was the stone heads which were most striking - with
rectangular, flattened noses, jutting square chins, staring eyes and
open speechless mouths,  they were like eerie beings trapped forever
in stone in some horrifying  existence. They were so fascinating I
stayed a week.

Every day, hoping men playing cards on overlooking verandas wouldn't
laugh, I wrestled with an amiable, but reluctant hired nag before
cantering up red tracks into deserted green hills to investigate
scattered statues, many highly stylised, six-metre-high masked
monsters or sacred eagles, jaguars and frogs. It was very peaceful,
with only grazing cattle and horses for company - this is ranching
territory and everyone travels by horseback - and little moved except
smoke spiralling into the cloudless blue sky from white-washed
cottage roofs or the gentle Ro Magdalena meandering through the dozing
valley.

Then, at midday, I'd return to San Andres, where occasional buses or
riders trailed dust clouds along the sunbaked road, and idle away
afternoons leaning against shady street corners, drifting into stores
full of candles, leather polish and machetes, or hanging out with
teenagers at the pool hall.

Finally, in the evenings, I'd sit by candlelight in the dark on my
farmhouse balcony - there was no electricity - watching silvery
moonlight bathe the yard,  and listening to crickets humming in
creaking banana trees.

Then it happened. I'd spent the whole day descending to tropical
lowlands near the Amazonian rainforest, and was in a roadside bar in
San Angelo, a wild-west shanty town, watching a cowboy with a 10-
gallon hat and leather chaps gallop up to the sidewalk in clouds of
dust.

He'd just tethered his lather-flecked horse to the grocery store's
post when a khaki-clad soldier with a Kalashnikov hanging casually
from his shoulder suddenly materialised, aggressively demanding my
"papers".

"What papers?" I replied; though I knew this was a notorious
marijuana-growing area, no-one had ever mentioned papers. "Right,
follow me to the police station," he ordered. That was a cramped
building on the tiny square, where a mean-looking young lieutenant
with a pock-marked face, lanky hair and Robert Niven moustache
sprawled behind an ancient desk groaning with faded yellow forms.

I watched unconcerned as - smirking oddly - he ordered soldiers to
search my bags (including military roadblocks, the fifth that day)
until, just as they'd nearly finished, one pulled out a small bag of
marijuana.

"Look what I found!" he exclaimed, grinning broadly.

The lieutenant's eyes narrowed. "Fancy that!" he drawled, turning
accusing to me.

"This is outrageous!" I gasped, unable to believe my eyes. "He just
planted that!"

"Shut up, and strip!" he barked. "Let's see what else
y'got."

"You're crazy!"

"STRIP!" he roared, unfastening his holster.

Protesting violently, I undressed until I was stark naked, except for
the money belt, containing $2000, round my waist.

"Take it off and put it on the table."

I did as commanded, and then stared helplessly as, eyes glinting, he
pulled out fifteen $100 bills. "Right," he smirked, stuffing them into
a grubby envelope, "these stay. You can go."

"You can't do this!" I cried, disbelievingly.

"Watch me," he said. "Get out, or I'll arrest you for
possession."

Throwing my clothes on, I staggered into the scorching midday sun,
where I sat shell shocked, desperately wondering what to do. At last -
I'd decided to try and contact the British Embassy in Bogot - a small
boy I'd asked to take me to the nearest phone led me to the local church.

It was closed for lunch, but after I knocked, the padre, a bearded
young Italian reading a book on liberation theology, invited me inside
and soon, over a spaghetti, he was listening sympathetically as I
poured out my story.

However, he wasn't surprised; the lieutenant, apparently, was
notorious for corruption, as well as being rumoured to be involved in
other activities such as drug-trafficking and gun-running.

At last the padre rose. "Right, come on," he said, and I found myself
following him - warmly greeted by everyone - through backstreets,
until I found myself outside the Police Station.

However, as we entered, the lieutenant, though he rose respectfully,
looked less than pleased at our arrival and soon the two, who clearly
detested each other, were arguing furiously. I never discovered
exactly what the padre said - his Spanish was too fast - though I
could pick out the words "denunciacin," and  "autoridades catlico";
all I know is that 20 minutes later, after the word "excomunin", the
lieutenant suddenly paled, before he went to a rusty safe, took out
the envelope and pushed it angrily across the table. "Bastardo!" he
snarled at me, "get out!"

Unable to believe my luck, I snatched the envelope and hurried
outside, quickly followed by the padre.

"Right," he said, urgently, "I want you to do two things. First, get
out of town! Secondly, make a contribution towards, er, those
struggling to help Columbia's poor."

Without hesitating, I pulled out $200. "I'll never forget this," I
said. "I'm sure that you won't," he replied, before he was suddenly
gone. Then - incredibly, the daily San Andres bus was just leaving - I
fled back to the crossroads at Altamira, where I flagged down an
Espinal bus, and raced 200km north, until, as a fat mellow moon hung
in the sticky darkness, I sank back for the first time, feeling as
safe as one can on Columbian highways, on the overnight Bogot express.

The name Bogot, for me, has always been synonymous with exciting
futuristic architecture and modernity. However, I'd got it wrong -
Columbia's capital was my idea of urban hell. Transferring on arrival
to a packed local bus, where I could feel hands fumbling at my bags, I
suffocated silently as we headed through shanty towns into smog
hanging low over towering skyscrapers.

Then a maze of ring roads and flyovers swept us downtown to faceless
concrete canyons clogged with ancient vehicles trailing clouds of
choking fumes, and irate motorists pounding their horns.

Overwhelmed, I descended and wandered along refuse-strewn pavements
full of legless beggars, destitute street urchins and sleazy men
loitering on graffiti-ridden corners, until I asked passers-by to
recommend the nearest cheap hotel.

"Well, it's not safe to go beyond the Tenth Carrera," one shouted
above the cacophony. "Try Carlos the Fifth."

Overlooking a dual carriageway, it was a squalid dump squeezed between
a gaping hole and a car park - all that was left of once-beautiful
colonial terraces.

Determined to escape Bogot as soon as possible, I immediately set out
for the Avianca offices, where I managed to get a ticket for the early
morning Amazon flight.

Next chore was the bank, where gum-chewing guards fingering sub-
machine guns eyed me nervously as I descended through enormous steel
doors to underground vaults - this was how I imagined Fort Knox - and
tellers counting piles of tattered notes.

Then I retreated to the Museo del Oro, the world's most important gold
collection, where I tucked myself away in top floor strong-rooms,
examining some of the 33,000 exquisite gold pre-Columbian pieces -
Quimbaya poporos (ornamental sticks), Tolima pectorals (crosses) and
extraordinary Cauca men-birds. Next morning, after a dawn call by the
desk clerk, a taxi whisked me through deserted streets to the airport,
where I checked in and a smiling stewardess glanced at my ticket
before I boarded the plane.

Two hours later we taxied to a stop in a deserted air-strip surrounded
by crumpled - but oddly familiar - green mountains. It was very
pretty, but, judging by the lack of tropical forests, it certainly
wasn't the Amazon.

"Where do I change for Leticia?" I asked the stewardess, annoyed, as
we walked across the tarmac; no-one had mentioned having to transfer.

She stared at me as if I was deranged. "In Bogot, of course," she
replied.

My jaw dropped. "But we've just come from there." We looked at each as

mutual comprehension dawned. "Then you've taken the wrong flight," she
said first.

Returning on the same plane, two hours later I was back in Bogot. I'd
covered 1500 miles, flown halfway down Columbia to Pasto - where I'd
originally started my journey - then back again, and it wasn't even
11am. However, as there wasn't another Leticia plane for two days, I
took a taxi straight back to the Carlos the Fifth, where the desk
clerk looked at me astonished. "I thought you were leaving for
Leticia?" he said.

"So did I," I replied.

"Didn't you go, then?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

For an hour, desperate to get out of Bogot, I toyed with his
recommendation of Tunja, a pretty, colonial town two hours north,
where Simon Bolivar defeated the Spanish in 1819. However, after
getting food for the bus at a store opposite, an El Commercio
billboard caught my eye - armed bandits had just ambushed the Tunja
bus and had shot two of the passengers.

"Changed your mind?" the desk clerk inquired pleasantly, as I returned
to the hotel.

"Yes," I said, "I thought I'd read instead. And no need to disturb me
until my plane leaves in two days' time." Then I went to my room,
double-bolted the door, and climbed back into bed.

- ---
MAP posted-by: Rich O'Grady