Puerto Berrío → La Sierra → Puerto Boyacá → La Dorada → Puerto Bogotá
My misadventures through the "puerto belt" continue.
After my previous regular update, i opted to take the gravel road down the west side of the river, and that happened to be the same day as Glimpse At My Day, so i did a full-blown entry for that leg, mud and all.
The next morning i crossed the river from La Sierra in a small ferry that took me to Puerto Serviez and back to the 45 highway. After noodling around for a bit and still failing to fix my derailleur (that's the S-shaped thing that the chain runs through that helps you change gears), i struggled south on my bike with no front brakes, shoes and socks still mud-ridden. I stopped in at Puerto Boyacá, which was a decent-sized town with a bike shop. The guy at the bike shop fixed the brakes immediately - the cable just needed to be tensioned - but he told me that the reason the chain was rubbing on the derailleur was because the cassette (that's the metal cogs that make up the actual gears) was bent. I suspect that if just one link had been removed from the chain it might have recreated enough tension to work, but it turned out that buying a new cassette, a new chain and getting the guy to install it was only around 60000 pesos ($20), so i figured might as well get it all done.
When i came back to pick up my bike a few hours later, the gears still weren't switching properly. Like, sometimes it'd miss a gear, other times the chain would just jump off completely when switching. These problems are problems with tuning the derailleur, which has several trim screws and a tension adjuster thingy to make sure that it moves over the exact perfect amount each time you switch a gear. It took over half an hour for the guy to adjust it back and forth until finally i was able to switch gears consistently again. And it still isn't perfect - i can tell it isn't adjusted 100%, but after the pain he/we went through just trying to get it to that point, damned if i am going to touch any of those screws again.
With the bike more-or-less fixed, i continued down the highway to a town called La Dorada, across the river from Puerto Salgar and a military airbase.
La Dorada was a depressing-ass town. It's the biggest town i have visited in quite some time, and i judge that soley by the fact that they had a (very small) Éxito department store. But literally everyone in town had a permanent scowl on their face. Every single time i sat down to eat, or took out my wallet to pay for something, throngs of beggars came up to ask me for money. I've seen far more desperate people in Barranquilla and other Caribbean towns - people passed out face down on the sidewalk, people literally dressed in rags - and there is plenty of visible poverty elsewhere in Colombia, but this was a much more aggressive and entitled form of begging that does not sit well with me. I also noticed kids following me, and i hate that i immediately assumed they were pickpockets, because i don't like to assume the worst of people, but it just felt creepy and uncomfortable.
So, of course, i ended up staying there for 4 nights.
The first morning in La Dorada i decided to log on to my online banking and see if my capital gains slips had arrived, despite not hearing anything from my bank. Sure enough, the forms had finally arrived - a month or two behind schedule - so i was able to do my taxes. I figured it'd be a piece of cake - the capital gains slips are filed with the government behind the scenes, so it's just a one-click process to auto-fill all of the data into your tax return (same deal with salary slips), and then all i had to do was add my independent contractor income.
Unfortunately, after i filled that in, a warning popped up saying that i should have registered for a GST number, because when your "business" earns more than $30000 in a year, you have to collect GST from your clients. But the problem is, it's impossible to apply for a GST number backdated 12+ months, so i am basically fucked. Except, technically, i think i'm not fucked because i only had one client, and they were a German company, and i believe that foreign clients are exempt from paying GST, which means i didn't need to collect anything, even if i did technically need to register as a GST collector. I decided not to do anything and just hope that the tax office doesn't audit me.
As a result of the GST hullaballoo, my taxes took about 2 hours longer than the planned 15 minutes to complete, which annoyed the shit out of me. In the end i just paid my owed income tax, which was around $15000. I had $16000 in my checking account, so good news - i didn't have to do any transfers out of my savings/investment account. Bad news - i only have $1000 left for my sabbatical. That kinda put me in a bit of a bum mood, so i asked the hotel to stay a few more nights, since it was one of those $10 per night places.
My clothes all stunk since the last time i got to wash them was Valledupar a couple weeks before. I asked at the hotel if there was a laundromat in town and she shrugged. Didn't even offer to have the hotel staff to do it, despite that being easy money. Southern hospitality, eh? So i walked around town till i found a mysterious blue building that Google said offered laundry service. The front windows were tinted and barred, and it looked like a prison, but after ringing a bell someone came out and assured me they clean clothes. I headed back to the hotel to fetch my stuff - unfortunately not including my pants because i wasn't game to walk 10 blocks wearing longjohns. Then, with my taxes done and my clothes in the wash, i contacted my friend R and set up a Skype date so we could have beers and catch up.
Our Skype date was fun, it's nice to be able to speak English and chat with an old friend... Although we failed the Bechdel test because she has been sucked into a weird dynamic with a guy who has kinda been using her as emotional support through his divorce. The reason she is one of my best friends is because we both agree that romantic relationships are stupid and a total waste of energy. The difference is she still wants to have sex, whereas i do not, so she ends up constantly getting wound up in dumb situations with pathetic, needy men who almost always end up disappointing her.
Anyway, there was an uncharacteristically large amount of "men are trash" stories from her end, and lamentations about the money situation on my end, so although it was cathartic for both of us, i'm not sure that we really solved any of our problems. Well not mine, at least.
The next morning i was hungover, obviously, and i spent almost the entire day playing The Outer Worlds, an RPG where you fly around to different planets and space stations and rage against corrupt corporations and crackpot revolutionaries and ideologues. Normally after a hangover day i'd be ready to move again, but i just ended up feeling even worse the next morning.
I finally made it out of La Dorada after 4 nights, and continued along the tiny 30km leg to Honda.
The scenery is lovely - it's right where the valley of the Río Magdalena narrows, and you get funky-shaped mountains and big cliffs up on both sides - but i wasn't in a shape to enjoy it. The moment i got on my bike, i was out of breath. I've been feeling nauseous the whole time i was in La Dorada, and drinking a bunch of booze didn't help that. I've tried drinking a lot of water, eating simple, but i'm still feeling sick and it sucks the big one. I also seem to have lost all of my lung capacity. I doubt it's COVID since every single passing truck belched out fumes that seemed stronger than ever and made me choke and want to vomit. I checked the air quality reports for La Dorada and Honda, and they are allegedly good, but i don't believe it. My eyes were watering from some kind of dust or particulate in the air, and i started to suspect that the reason i'm not feeling well is exactly because of some kind of air pollution. Even if it's not registering as PM2.5 or PM10, maybe it's agricultural dust or pollen or something.
It was a real struggle to get to Honda, and then when i got there my troubles didn't cease. Even the cheapest, shittiest hotels were asking 90000 pesos ($30) a night. If i hadn't just paid my taxes perhaps i would've eaten that cost - despite it being more expensive than any hotel i've been to in Colombia outside of Cartagena - but today i was just like... no. Fuck no. I realized after cycling a bit more round town why the hotels are so expensive. The place is a tourist trap. There are touts trying to get people into their restaurant, or their hotel, and almost every single hotel has a piscina (swimming pool). Which is a scam, because as i have discovered while traveling here, hotels with piscinas charge more, even if their rooms are the same size or quality as hotels without. And who the fuck uses a hotel pool anyway? I have never used one in my entire life. And i have traveled a lot. It's like those hotels that have gyms, or business centers. Talk about a waste of space. Just put more beds in and drop your prices, for fuck's sake.
So i crossed the river from tourist trap Honda to Puerto Bogotá, which appears to be a poorer residential suburb that also has a handful of budget hotels off the highway for people who just want to overnight here instead of having some wanky boutique holiday experience. 25000 for a room. No air conditioning. It's fine.
I just hope that resting here is going to recover me better than La Dorada did. The people in town are equally grumpy. The lady who set me up in the room came over to me in tears, crying over something that happened at the corner store when she went there to get change for me. And - try as i might - i just couldn't understand what she was saying. Something about how she has worked here for a year and three months, every single day, and... something something something.
I can't fucking understand anybody south of Valledupar. Their Spanish has some kind of weird accent and slang that i don't get, and when they try to explain themselves, they just talk slower instead of trying to find different words that i do know. Also every single person calls me "señor" - which even if it wasn't misgendering would annoy me because FUCK THAT SHIT. And they use "usted" for everything, which is the polite form for "you", which i also absolutely loathe, whether in Spanish or German or French or any damn language that formalizes social hierarchy. Even in English it makes me uncomfortable when people "sir" or "ma'am" me, or anyone for that matter. I'm not your fucking boss. I miss the Carribbean so much, where people would cheerfully call you "mi amor" (my love) or "mami" (often misgendered to "papi" but hey) or - my personal favorite - "mi reína" (my queen). And always "tu", at least outside of stick-up-the-ass restaurants and hotels where i wouldn't want to go anyway. It just feels so much more relaxed and friendly.
And given i found Colombia kinda unfriendly in the first place, you can imagine how much more unfriendly i am finding the people here. I mean, i'm sure they're as nice as anyone else in their personal lives, but there is just some kind of public attitude of irritability and uptightness that is making me even more uncomfortable when i am already feeling shitty.
Cherry on the top? While i was typing this entry up, my pants split at the crotch. Gah!
I am having a miserable week. I miss La Guajira. I miss Barranquilla. I miss the trade winds and the cleaner air they bring. I want to be back in the place where people are laid-back and the music has accordions and you can get watermelon juice along the highway. I don't want to be counting the last of my traveling money and pondering what to do next, i don't want to be worrying about work, i don't want to be thinking about the grotesquely high rents i have to look forward to if/when i go back to Canada...
Oy vey. I am sure i am sounding like a big poopyhead right now. It's not actually too much further to Tatacoa, where i hope to have some clear nights in the wilderness to look up at the stars. Perhaps that will clear my head. Or not. Sigh. I just want my tummy and my body to feel better again. Life is a lot easier to deal with when you're healthy.
After my previous regular update, i opted to take the gravel road down the west side of the river, and that happened to be the same day as Glimpse At My Day, so i did a full-blown entry for that leg, mud and all.
The next morning i crossed the river from La Sierra in a small ferry that took me to Puerto Serviez and back to the 45 highway. After noodling around for a bit and still failing to fix my derailleur (that's the S-shaped thing that the chain runs through that helps you change gears), i struggled south on my bike with no front brakes, shoes and socks still mud-ridden. I stopped in at Puerto Boyacá, which was a decent-sized town with a bike shop. The guy at the bike shop fixed the brakes immediately - the cable just needed to be tensioned - but he told me that the reason the chain was rubbing on the derailleur was because the cassette (that's the metal cogs that make up the actual gears) was bent. I suspect that if just one link had been removed from the chain it might have recreated enough tension to work, but it turned out that buying a new cassette, a new chain and getting the guy to install it was only around 60000 pesos ($20), so i figured might as well get it all done.
When i came back to pick up my bike a few hours later, the gears still weren't switching properly. Like, sometimes it'd miss a gear, other times the chain would just jump off completely when switching. These problems are problems with tuning the derailleur, which has several trim screws and a tension adjuster thingy to make sure that it moves over the exact perfect amount each time you switch a gear. It took over half an hour for the guy to adjust it back and forth until finally i was able to switch gears consistently again. And it still isn't perfect - i can tell it isn't adjusted 100%, but after the pain he/we went through just trying to get it to that point, damned if i am going to touch any of those screws again.
With the bike more-or-less fixed, i continued down the highway to a town called La Dorada, across the river from Puerto Salgar and a military airbase.
La Dorada was a depressing-ass town. It's the biggest town i have visited in quite some time, and i judge that soley by the fact that they had a (very small) Éxito department store. But literally everyone in town had a permanent scowl on their face. Every single time i sat down to eat, or took out my wallet to pay for something, throngs of beggars came up to ask me for money. I've seen far more desperate people in Barranquilla and other Caribbean towns - people passed out face down on the sidewalk, people literally dressed in rags - and there is plenty of visible poverty elsewhere in Colombia, but this was a much more aggressive and entitled form of begging that does not sit well with me. I also noticed kids following me, and i hate that i immediately assumed they were pickpockets, because i don't like to assume the worst of people, but it just felt creepy and uncomfortable.
So, of course, i ended up staying there for 4 nights.
The first morning in La Dorada i decided to log on to my online banking and see if my capital gains slips had arrived, despite not hearing anything from my bank. Sure enough, the forms had finally arrived - a month or two behind schedule - so i was able to do my taxes. I figured it'd be a piece of cake - the capital gains slips are filed with the government behind the scenes, so it's just a one-click process to auto-fill all of the data into your tax return (same deal with salary slips), and then all i had to do was add my independent contractor income.
Unfortunately, after i filled that in, a warning popped up saying that i should have registered for a GST number, because when your "business" earns more than $30000 in a year, you have to collect GST from your clients. But the problem is, it's impossible to apply for a GST number backdated 12+ months, so i am basically fucked. Except, technically, i think i'm not fucked because i only had one client, and they were a German company, and i believe that foreign clients are exempt from paying GST, which means i didn't need to collect anything, even if i did technically need to register as a GST collector. I decided not to do anything and just hope that the tax office doesn't audit me.
As a result of the GST hullaballoo, my taxes took about 2 hours longer than the planned 15 minutes to complete, which annoyed the shit out of me. In the end i just paid my owed income tax, which was around $15000. I had $16000 in my checking account, so good news - i didn't have to do any transfers out of my savings/investment account. Bad news - i only have $1000 left for my sabbatical. That kinda put me in a bit of a bum mood, so i asked the hotel to stay a few more nights, since it was one of those $10 per night places.
My clothes all stunk since the last time i got to wash them was Valledupar a couple weeks before. I asked at the hotel if there was a laundromat in town and she shrugged. Didn't even offer to have the hotel staff to do it, despite that being easy money. Southern hospitality, eh? So i walked around town till i found a mysterious blue building that Google said offered laundry service. The front windows were tinted and barred, and it looked like a prison, but after ringing a bell someone came out and assured me they clean clothes. I headed back to the hotel to fetch my stuff - unfortunately not including my pants because i wasn't game to walk 10 blocks wearing longjohns. Then, with my taxes done and my clothes in the wash, i contacted my friend R and set up a Skype date so we could have beers and catch up.
Our Skype date was fun, it's nice to be able to speak English and chat with an old friend... Although we failed the Bechdel test because she has been sucked into a weird dynamic with a guy who has kinda been using her as emotional support through his divorce. The reason she is one of my best friends is because we both agree that romantic relationships are stupid and a total waste of energy. The difference is she still wants to have sex, whereas i do not, so she ends up constantly getting wound up in dumb situations with pathetic, needy men who almost always end up disappointing her.
Anyway, there was an uncharacteristically large amount of "men are trash" stories from her end, and lamentations about the money situation on my end, so although it was cathartic for both of us, i'm not sure that we really solved any of our problems. Well not mine, at least.
The next morning i was hungover, obviously, and i spent almost the entire day playing The Outer Worlds, an RPG where you fly around to different planets and space stations and rage against corrupt corporations and crackpot revolutionaries and ideologues. Normally after a hangover day i'd be ready to move again, but i just ended up feeling even worse the next morning.
I finally made it out of La Dorada after 4 nights, and continued along the tiny 30km leg to Honda.
The scenery is lovely - it's right where the valley of the Río Magdalena narrows, and you get funky-shaped mountains and big cliffs up on both sides - but i wasn't in a shape to enjoy it. The moment i got on my bike, i was out of breath. I've been feeling nauseous the whole time i was in La Dorada, and drinking a bunch of booze didn't help that. I've tried drinking a lot of water, eating simple, but i'm still feeling sick and it sucks the big one. I also seem to have lost all of my lung capacity. I doubt it's COVID since every single passing truck belched out fumes that seemed stronger than ever and made me choke and want to vomit. I checked the air quality reports for La Dorada and Honda, and they are allegedly good, but i don't believe it. My eyes were watering from some kind of dust or particulate in the air, and i started to suspect that the reason i'm not feeling well is exactly because of some kind of air pollution. Even if it's not registering as PM2.5 or PM10, maybe it's agricultural dust or pollen or something.
It was a real struggle to get to Honda, and then when i got there my troubles didn't cease. Even the cheapest, shittiest hotels were asking 90000 pesos ($30) a night. If i hadn't just paid my taxes perhaps i would've eaten that cost - despite it being more expensive than any hotel i've been to in Colombia outside of Cartagena - but today i was just like... no. Fuck no. I realized after cycling a bit more round town why the hotels are so expensive. The place is a tourist trap. There are touts trying to get people into their restaurant, or their hotel, and almost every single hotel has a piscina (swimming pool). Which is a scam, because as i have discovered while traveling here, hotels with piscinas charge more, even if their rooms are the same size or quality as hotels without. And who the fuck uses a hotel pool anyway? I have never used one in my entire life. And i have traveled a lot. It's like those hotels that have gyms, or business centers. Talk about a waste of space. Just put more beds in and drop your prices, for fuck's sake.
So i crossed the river from tourist trap Honda to Puerto Bogotá, which appears to be a poorer residential suburb that also has a handful of budget hotels off the highway for people who just want to overnight here instead of having some wanky boutique holiday experience. 25000 for a room. No air conditioning. It's fine.
I just hope that resting here is going to recover me better than La Dorada did. The people in town are equally grumpy. The lady who set me up in the room came over to me in tears, crying over something that happened at the corner store when she went there to get change for me. And - try as i might - i just couldn't understand what she was saying. Something about how she has worked here for a year and three months, every single day, and... something something something.
I can't fucking understand anybody south of Valledupar. Their Spanish has some kind of weird accent and slang that i don't get, and when they try to explain themselves, they just talk slower instead of trying to find different words that i do know. Also every single person calls me "señor" - which even if it wasn't misgendering would annoy me because FUCK THAT SHIT. And they use "usted" for everything, which is the polite form for "you", which i also absolutely loathe, whether in Spanish or German or French or any damn language that formalizes social hierarchy. Even in English it makes me uncomfortable when people "sir" or "ma'am" me, or anyone for that matter. I'm not your fucking boss. I miss the Carribbean so much, where people would cheerfully call you "mi amor" (my love) or "mami" (often misgendered to "papi" but hey) or - my personal favorite - "mi reína" (my queen). And always "tu", at least outside of stick-up-the-ass restaurants and hotels where i wouldn't want to go anyway. It just feels so much more relaxed and friendly.
And given i found Colombia kinda unfriendly in the first place, you can imagine how much more unfriendly i am finding the people here. I mean, i'm sure they're as nice as anyone else in their personal lives, but there is just some kind of public attitude of irritability and uptightness that is making me even more uncomfortable when i am already feeling shitty.
Cherry on the top? While i was typing this entry up, my pants split at the crotch. Gah!
I am having a miserable week. I miss La Guajira. I miss Barranquilla. I miss the trade winds and the cleaner air they bring. I want to be back in the place where people are laid-back and the music has accordions and you can get watermelon juice along the highway. I don't want to be counting the last of my traveling money and pondering what to do next, i don't want to be worrying about work, i don't want to be thinking about the grotesquely high rents i have to look forward to if/when i go back to Canada...
Oy vey. I am sure i am sounding like a big poopyhead right now. It's not actually too much further to Tatacoa, where i hope to have some clear nights in the wilderness to look up at the stars. Perhaps that will clear my head. Or not. Sigh. I just want my tummy and my body to feel better again. Life is a lot easier to deal with when you're healthy.