Oh boy. Looks like my new average is a post a year 🙃 But what really has my mind in a bender? For a fair bit of time last year I thought I had travelled to Cartagena in 2019. My cloistered mind failed to remember how both January and February of 2020 were technically in 2020 B.C.; i.e., Before Covid.
Some may conclude that my gap in memory and time is completely normal given our collective blackhole. Others may say that time, as we knew it, is slowly dissolving because our days are less divided. (Will breakfast, lunch, and dinner become the next supper? A meal only mentioned in Victorian novels?) Maybe, and maybe. I have another theory though: memories condense time. And for me, memories with vivid colours makes me feel like I did something yesterday, even if some yesterdays are well in the past.
My reasons for travelling are usually art, sites, then food. But in the early months of 2020, I had this odd need to be in colour. Lots of color. Color and heat. Through these D.C. times (i.e., During Covid), I'm still in debt to my higher mind, and my friend who met me in Cartagena IRL.
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The colours in the city were doing a number on my short-term memory. Every day, the minute I woke up, I had to remind myself that I was still in the same time zone, same Western Hemisphere. The city felt far from the rest of the world -- though not removed. It has the usual markers of any city: a divide between the wealthy, working, and surviving (Cartagena's fortress still serves it's purpose); an 'up-and-coming' neighborhood (where we stayed #closethipster); and of, course tourists.
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I often wonder if tourists are a foil to the place itself. Take New York City, a city known for its gloss and sheen, its brash-n-fast talk. Then take tourists in New York City, they're some of the most slap happy people I've ever met. Which makes sense because it's not like New Yorkers are known for their cheery disposition. So what are tourists in Cartagena like? Fantabulous is an understatement.
Some women looked like they were wind swept from a magazine, nary a hair misplaced. Such sightings left me dumbfounded because according to our tour guide, Cartagena's windy season had just started. And I don't mean, "cool ocean breeze", I mean gusts so strong, ferry routes to the popular Rosario Islands could be cancelled for the day. I was hoping I'd see these fantabulous women have their Marilyn Monroe moment, but none seem to have her playfulness. They were there just to be fantabulous. And their men? They were present to document all this fantabulousness of course. But they too had their own thing going on after an ear drop or two. One American fellow had a home in Hanover, NH and Medellin, Colombia, but decided to host his disabled friend in Cartagena because the city is fairly flat. Another American, ex-pat, had a large farm in Central Colombia. He was in Cartagena because he was looking to purchase a small bed and breakfast.
The more "
Sophias and Eds" my friend and I spotted (our nicknames for these fantabulous women), I wondered about the people who lived in Cartagena even more. What are they like? What do they do? Where are they??
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I don't know for certain because my elementary Spanish helped little in conversation*. Looking around though, I think the locals were where they needed to be. Enjoying time like
island time. And why not? The city is on Caribbean Sea. Any why not even if it wasn't? Isn't island time and island life what most of us want in life? A place where time feels like it's in a vacuum, where busy bossy things. just. don't. matter.
Funny how I'm writing this two years into the our collective blackhole vacuum. I hope, in some small way, you're able to enjoy island life.
* The Costeño dialect, the dialect spoken in the Caribbean region of Colombia, isn't just one dialect. Costeño is just a broad classification for the number of sub-dialects this region has. In other words, a Colombian from Bogotá may be lost as well.
Six anchors. "Why and how?" you ask. The days we were there the average daytime high was near 90°F with 70% humidity. Perfectly fine for this cold-blooded mammal until I heard our tour guide say, "Oh, this is cool weather! Spring and summer is very hot. Too hot to walk like this." What's the point of island life if you can't be out to enjoy it? Not to mention the sparse shade from trees in and around the city. There's nothing more I love about island life than the sound -- and shade -- from palm fronds.
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