Chapter 5 - Taganga, Colombia

Our bus is crowded as it makes its way from Parque Tayrona to Taganga.  There seems to be a lot of space around Brenda and me.  Maybe our ‘homeless drifter’ look, our just-been-camping-for-five-days look, our hair matted and uncombed, our wrinkled T-shirts, are making the other passenger’s nervous? 

I turn to Brenda to see if she’s noticed the gap between us and the other people.  A godawful smell hits my nostrils.  Holy Hannah…what is that stench!  Leaning slightly toward her, I take a surreptitious sniff.  Oh my god.  I duck my head furtively toward my armpit and take a whiff.  Eew.  That’s why we have no seat mates.  I nudge Brenda.  She turns to look at me.

“We’re stinking up the bus!  Everyone’s moving away from us,” I whisper.  She looks at the empty space around us then back at me, her eyes wide.  She giggles.  I snort, realizing the humour in the situation and then we both laugh loudly.  Both of us scrunch down in our seats trying to be small, attempting, without success, to stifle our laughter since we can’t stifle our stench. 

Twenty minutes later, we arrive in Taganga.  Still giggling, Brenda and I push through the bags strewn in the aisle and, ignoring the eyes still on us, climb off the bus. 

Just down from the terminal, we see a white concrete hostel, its stark lines softened by the pink flowering bushes climbing its entrance gate.  Three of its patrons, mugs of beer in front of them, wave at us from the outside patio as we turn into the gate.

We book two bunks in the dormitorio.  Though I move fast, Brenda beats me to the shower and I sit on my bed and pray no one comes in and smells me before I can get into the bathroom. 

Clean and fresh, we head back outside toward the small bay that circles Taganga.   Along the promenade, we browse the jewelry lain out on blankets, and smile at the young dreadlocked artists calling out to us to buy a piece.  Pieces of art they are, gorgeous macraméd necklaces with polished stones embedded within the hemp, and silver bracelets, each one more ornate than the last.  Kiosks draw us in with their shelves of trinkets and colourful sarongs.  Though I see lots of the cheesy stuff that every third world market seems to carry, I’m delighted to see some funky woven goods in the mix.  I’m even more delighted at the prices.  For the equivalent of fifteen dollars, I put a beautiful turquoise sarong that will double as my beach towel, and a gorgeous orange woven wallet appliqued in black, white, gold and red into my daypack.   

After leaving the colourful and lively market and beach scene, we walk up past the main street into the residential area.  Behind the glitzy tourist façade that we’ve seen along the bay, Taganga loses its glitter.  Shoeless kids scamper around the village’s dusty unpaved streets, barely noticed, it seems, by their tired-looking mamas who sit gossiping on the narrow stoops in front of their falling-down homes.  Thin, mangy dogs sniff along the road for scraps of food.  It takes us less than an hour to explore the village’s few dirt streets and, slightly sobered by the sights we’ve seen, we return to the beach.

Back at the bay, locals and businesses prepare to welcome the fishermen returning with their daily catches.  Kids and young men run to the shore and wade to the colourful wooden lanchas, forming lines along each side of the boats to haul them to shore.  Money and fish are exchanged at a hectic rate and I watch the rolls of pesos in the fishermen’s hands get larger as the buckets of fish in their boats empty.  

“Que tipo son?” What kind are they?, I ask a grizzly fisherman in yellow latex overalls and rubber boots, pointing at a large flat basin filled with ten or so huge striped fish.  “Estos son wahoo,” he says.  Wahoo – never heard of it.  “Son mahi mahi,” nodding to another bucket of blunt-nosed fish, a row of spines along their back giving them the appearance of a skinhead with a mohawk.  And then the fisherman kicks a small bucket of fish toward me, saying “Y estos son atun.” And these are tuna.

“Atun?  Verdad?” I ask.  Really?  Cool – so that’s what tuna looks like when it’s not in a can.

“They’re tuna!” I say, turning to Brenda.  “Do you wanna buy a couple for dinner?”  She nods, excitedly.

“Puedo tener dos, por favor?”  The fisherman quickly scoops two small fish into a plastic bag and hands it to me. 

“Diez mil,” he says.  I hand the man ten thousand pesos.  What a deal – two tuna for four bucks.   

“Gracias,” I say. 

“De nada.  Disfruta,” he answers.  You’re welcome.  Enjoy.  He turns to the man waiting patiently beside me.  But before he can put his order in, I interrupt with a sudden thought.

“Disculpa. ” Excuse me, I say with an apologetic glance at the waiting man.  “Es facil para cocinarlos? I ask, holding the bag up.”  Is it easy to cook them?  “Si.  Diez minutos.  Muy facil.  Ten minutes.  Very easy.  Awesome.   With a last smile, we walk away from the boats toward the town’s main street with our bag of fish.   

“Let’s get some wine,” Brenda suggests as we pass a small grocery shop.  As soon as we walk through the narrow, open door, we see the wine.  Ignoring the bottles, we grab a litre-sized box of red and take it to the counter.

“Dos mil,” the dull-eyed woman at the till says.  Wow.  Just over a dollar for a litre of wine?  Crazy.  I love this country.    

Back at our dormitory, we grab our small collection of condiments from my pack – little butters, mayonnaises, and salt and pepper packs that we’ve scooped from restaurants.  The kitchen’s on the roof, the desk manager tells us with a gesture toward the stairs, and we start climbing.  Two floors up, we find the kitchen, a tiny thing with two small cupboards, a bashed-up old fridge, and a smattering of pots, pans, dishes and utensils.  The room is huge and empty other than a long wooden table, a few plastic-backed chairs and a couple of old couches.  Over the waist-high wall that surrounds the room, something red catches my eye.  I look out over the wall and see the neighbour’s roof and a red shirt flapping in the light breeze beside several colourful blouses, four pairs of jeans in varying sizes, and, creepily, a couple of faded white wife-beaters.  A small breeze blows over us, cooling the warm room slightly. 

A young guy is at the sink drying the last of his dishes and another sits at the table.  “Hola,” they say at the same time, glancing from Brenda to me. 

“Hola,” I say, smiling.  I walk with the bag of fish to the kitchen’s tiny counter.  Not much to cook on, I think as I look at single burner hotplate that’s plugged in by the fridge.  Brenda comes over.

“So, how do we do this?” she asks. 

“I’m not sure,” I laugh. “ I was kind of hoping you’d what to do.”  “Butter.  That’s all I know about frying fish.”  

I get our butter melting then pull the fish out of the bag.  With a tiny prayer of thanks that we don’t have to clean them – they’ve already been gutted and washed – I sprinkle salt and pepper over the fish and then put the tuna in the kitchen’s one old frying pan.  I turn them over after five minutes, remembering the fisherman’s advice, then when five more minutes have passed, I cut into the fish to check if they’re done.

“It’s still pretty raw,” I say to Brenda with a frown.  “Maybe we should have filleted them.”

“Maybe.  “Should we do it now?” 

“No, I think it’s too late now.  I’ll just let them fry for a few more minutes.” 

As our dinner continues to sizzle on the small stove, the stink of fish begins to permeate the room.  I look at the boys, now relaxed and watching us from an old couch at the side of the big room.  “Lo siento.” I’m sorry, I call to them, making a face to show them I realize we’re stinking the place up.  “Pour them a drink, Brenda,” I suggest.

“Great idea!” she says, pulling two more glasses from the cupboard.  She walks over to their couch.

“No hay problema.” No problem, they say, laughing as they accept el vino. 

I grab two plates and slide a fish on each then bring them to the table where Brenda has set out utensils and two plastic glasses of wine. 

We sit, and in unison, clink our glasses.  “Salud,” I say to her. 

“Cheers,” she answers, grinning.  The rough texture of the well-used plastic glass comes through as I take a mouthful of wine.  It tastes bitter.  Like the plastic.  In unison, we set our glasses down and take a bite of our tuna.  Grimaces appear on both our faces.  “It’s kind of nasty,” I say with a smile to take the edge off my complaint.  I take another sip of wine.  “The wine’s getting better though.”   

And a couple of glasses later of Taganga’s finest four-dollar vino, the wine is almost delicious.  Even our fish tastes better.    

The next morning, we walk through the town toward the beach, looking for some breakfast.  We each buy a papa rellenos for a dollar’s worth of pesos from a food wagon on the promenade above the beach then drench them with the picante sauce that the seller hands to us.  Our first tentative bites quickly turn to full-on chomping as we discover the deliciousness of the deep-fried mashed potato stuffed with bits of hard- boiled egg and ground meat.  As I take another bite, my teeth hit something hard.  Ow, what the heck?  Pulling the offending item from my mouth, I see it’s the pit of a green olive.  Eating more carefully now, we walk down the promenade. 

“Let’s look for a dive shop,” I tell Brenda.  Taganga’s known for its great diving and the reason I wanted to come here. 

We find the Poseidon Dive Shop.  “Buenos dias,” I say to the young boy at the front desk.  “Va a buscear hoy?”  Are you diving today? 

“Si,” he says, gesturing toward a small group on the side of the shop trying on flippers.  “Nos vamos pronto.”  We’re going soon.  “Tiene certificado de busceo?” he asks.  Do I have a diving certificate? 

“Si.”  I show him my PADI ticket.  I love that he asks for it.  Lots of dive shops don’t – especially the small ones that just want to make a buck. 

But that’s not the only reason I love that he asks for my certificate.  My ancient PADI card has this awesome picture of me.  From 1986, a twenty-three year-old, blonde, smooth-skinned chick stares out at me, grinning like a banshee, crazy-excited to have just received her dive certificate from The Great Barrier Reef in Australia.   

Cuanto cuesto por un busceo?” I ask.  How much is a dive?  I convert his answer into dollars.  That’s fair - two dives for a hundred bucks.  I’m in. 

Brenda’s been standing quietly as I talk with the boy.   I turn to her with a grin.  “Yeah, I’m gonna go.  They’re leaving right now!”

“Cool!” That’ll be so fun,” she says, albeit a bit wistfully. “How long will you be?  Should I just hang at the beach and wait?” 

“Yeah,” I say.  “I’ll only be gone for two hours.”

“Okaayy.”  She laughs nervously.  I get it.  She hasn’t done a lot of travelling, let alone by herself.  I don’t even think she’s been as far as Mexico. 

“You’ll be great,” I assure her.  “Just hang out on the beach.  There’s tons of tourists around.” 

“Yeah,” she says as she looks around.  “I’ll go have a cocktail up at that little bar we saw.” 

“Perfect,” I say, grinning.  If I don’t see you on the beach when I get back, I’ll go to the hostel.  Okay?”

I’m excited that Brenda will hang out on her own for a bit.  I love travelling solo.  It’ll be like a mini-solo trip for her.  Locals will chat her up, more so than if I were with her.  And she can go where the wind takes her instead of checking in with me.  She’s super extroverted. 

I watch her walk out of the dive shop, then turn back to the group gearing up.  The young boy at the desk calls to me, waving me over.  He has a liability waiver ready and I happily sign my life away.  He points at some gear on the bench beside me.  I sit down and try on the flippers and mask.  They’re a good fit.  He hands me a weight belt and takes me to some wetsuits hanging on the wall.  He looks through them, perhaps searching for the size he thinks I am. 

“No le quiero,” I tell him.  I don’t want one.  The water is so warm, I don’t know why anyone would need a wetsuit. 

A shout from the door of the shop pulls my eyes in that direction.  I look toward the sound and see a young man in full black wetsuit, his feet bare.  “Ven todos!”  he says.   Come on, everyone, nodding his head out the door.  With lots of excited chatter, we all grab our gear and follow the guy - our dive master it seems - out the shop door, across the promenade and down to the shoreline.   A sleek, white two-engined cruiser awaits us.  A line of tanks with BCD’s attached to half of them (buoyancy control devices – like inflatable life jackets) lie along the side. 

The boat motors out of pretty Taganga Bay and into the open ocean.  Twenty minutes out, we slow and I hear the engine shut off.  The silence is exciting.  Yes!  We’re goin’ diving! 

We jostle each other on our way to the tank our dive master points us to.  I crouch on the floor, trying to steady myself as the boat tips this way and that, and weave my arms backwards through the armholes of the BCD.  Heavy now, with a full tank of oxygen on my back, I haul myself with effort up to the bench seat.  I look down at the multiple straps, regulators and gauges and tentatively begin fastening myself into the gear.  God, I don’t know if I remember how to do this, I think to myself.  It’s been a couple of years since I’ve dived.  I do what I remember -  buckle up, breathe in and out through my regulator to make sure it works well - and then, with some relief, see the dive master coming over.  He connects my BCD to my tank – hmmm…that was a bit of a miss on my part, I think – and tucks my pressure gauge in my belt.  Oh yeah.  I need to be able to easily check it when I’m sixty feet down. 

Following the others, I climb heavily on to the boat’s side, put my regulator into my mouth, and then, with one hand on my mask, fall backwards.  I hit the water, do a quick somersault and come to the surface.  Inflating my BCD so I’m floating, I give a thumbs up to our guide to tell him I’m good.   As he and some others disappear under the sea’s surface, I lift my inflator/deflator hose above my head then release the air I just put into it.  Six bodies sink silently to the sea bottom. 

Within minutes, fish of every imaginable colour dart around me, multi-hued parrot fish, a plate-sized blue angel fish, fins like the teeth of tiny combs lining their graceful bodies.   Decorating the rocky reef, huge open-mouthed coral in tangerine and dark purple, draw me, and I watch with wonder the tiny jewel-coloured fish swimming in and out of their cavernous interior.   I release more air and sink closer to  close to the rocks in blue and gold I encounter eight spiny lobsters under a rock shelf, their antennae in full reactive mode, lined up like red soldiers about to do battle.  I study the cool crustaceans for a long, awed moment.  A few metres further, the gaping mouth and huge head of a giant moray eel emerges from a dark hole between some rocks, and as I hover above it, more of his body slithers from the hole.  What a magnificent creature!  But shivers crawl up my neck as I look at him, so creepy as he stares at me with his cold, pale eyes.  I back up knowing that there’s six more feet of him that could come out after me if he chooses to.  He slithers back into the rocks. 

We explore the reef for another half hour, surface, then motor out to another site to do our second dive.  By the time we finish the second dive, I’m getting chilly.  Maybe I’ll wear a wetsuit next time.  We speed back to Taganga wrapped in our towels to stay warm then head up, when we reach the bay, to the dive shop.  We rinse all the gear we wore in a big fresh-water bucket.  I say thank you as I leave a ten-dollar tip, then head home, anxious to get into a warm shower.  Though, the visibility of the sea was less than great here, the life I’ve seen in the underwater world beyond Taganga Bay is totally worth the two-days budget the trip cost me. 

Back at the dive shop, Brenda’s waiting.  She’s relieved to see me.  “It was fun but weird,” she says, giving me a quick hug.   “Everyone looked at me.”  She continues, talking a mile a minute, clearly relieved to have me hear her story.  “I went up into the town and they stared at me there too.  So weird.  But then this guy came up and started walking beside me, and he asked if he could practice English with me.”  She laughs.  “A very cute guy,” she says.  “Too young…but cute.”  she laughs again. 

“So it wasn’t so bad then?” I say, laughing.  She smiles and shakes her head.  “Not at the end.”

“But yeah, I know how it feels,” I continue.  “When you don’t know the language and you’re by yourself, sometimes it’s scary.  I’m gonna be nervous when you leave in a couple of weeks and head off on my own.”  It’s true.  I’ve loved travelling with Brenda and, although I’m totally pumped to go solo travelling, I’m going to miss her when she leaves.  It’s so wonderful to share the incredible things I’m seeing with someone who’s as excited about them as I am. 

Back at the hostel, we decide to pretty ourselves up and see what the town does on a Saturday night.  I pull my favorite sundress out of my pack, a little wrinkled, but still beautiful with its azure blue, gold and light green design.  Unable to do much with my short locks, I just fluff them up.  I apply some mascara to my thin eyelashes and am good to go.

“You look pretty,” I tell Brenda who’s come out of our small bathroom, garbed in a blue sundress, her arms newly brown from two weeks in the never-ending sunshine. 

Grabbing two delicious fried papa rellenos, we stroll down the promenade.  Passing a group of giggling teens congregated around the plaza’s shade trees, we hear music.  Following the sound, we find a small, dark building with several young guys at its door, smoking.  We walk inside. 

Inside the crowded room, the volume is almost hard to take.  Am I getting old, I wonder?  Yes, I am, I laugh to myself.  The small dance floor is rockin’ with young people and, I see with some relief, a few older bodies.  At a tall table near the window, four young girls lean into each other from their wooden stools, shouting over the music, their dark hair falling over the shoulders of their brightly coloured blouses.  Next to them, a group of old guys turn from watching the girls to stare at Brenda and me. 

The girls around us look at us as we stand in their midst.  We smile at them.  They stare at us, their dark eyes focused on ours, looking us up and down.  I immediately feel old and, at the same time, like an insecure teenager.  Brenda’s grinning though, oblivious of the stares.  She pulls me to the dance floor. 

It’s not long before a couple of older hombres break us up, pulling us off to dance with them.  At least they seem to be pleased to see us, I think as I unsuccessfully try to follow the quick tempo of the song that’s playing.  My partner moves closer to me and then, before I can react, has positioned his lower anatomy way too close to mine.  I move my body away but he follows me like it’s a game.  I look around in a bit of a panic for Brenda, hoping she’ll see and save me from the uncomfortable spot I’m in, and I see that everyone’s doing the genital jig.  I see Brenda then, clearly as astounded as I, similarly trying to evade her partner’s pelvis, and her mouth open and eyes wide in disbelief as she stares at the erotic display of Colombian salsa. 

With great effort, we finally escape our partners and make our way to the bar.  Someone bumps into my shoulder.  I turn and am bumped again from the other side.  I look up to say ‘sorry’ (as every good Canadian does when being bumped into) and see a young dark-haired beauty glaring at me.  Beside her, more girls, looking at us with similar expressions.  What the hell?  Why are they so pissed off at us?  As I look at them confusedly, it comes to me that maybe they, these gorgeous young girls with their beautiful skin and shiny long hair, are mad that we, two well-past twenty-year-old gringas, are in their space, taking their men’s attention. 

Again, though, Brenda is oblivious to these girls’ anger.  She continues to grin at everyone, just happy as hell to be at a party on a beach on the Caribbean coast in South America.   As well she should be.  As I should be. 

I shake off my insecurities and push up to the counter to order us some beers.  We push through the girls, ignoring their continued stares, and head back to the dance floor.  Holding our beers, Brenda and I dance in a style that in no way resembles the sexy latino moves around us.   Because there are way more women than men in the bar, and despite our clear lack of salsa skills, one guy after another, even the young ones, ask us to dance with them.  We refuse them all, and eventually they give up.  The angry darts aimed at us by the women surrounding us taper off, confirming that yes, they were pissed because we were getting their men’s attention.  Now that Brenda and I are staying to ourselves, everyone’s now properly focused on their own good time.   

 We dance ’til we can’t anymore then head out of the bar, leaving the young ones to keep the night going. 

With half-closed sleepy eyes and my legs aching from the unfamiliar dance moves, we head home.  I think about the fun Brenda and I have had over the weeks.  There are some things you just don’t do when you’re alone.  Like go into bars.  Dance.  Laugh with someone when your fish tastes like shit.  Yes, I’m looking forward to travelling by myself – I know it’s going to be so fun and that I’ll have amazing adventures that only happen to solo travellers, but… I’m sure gonna miss having a friend to laugh and dance and share crazy adventures with.