Welcome To Party Town
20th Feb
There are some people you want to be, on sight. I want to be the woman in her 60s wearing a fuchsia two piece who’s bent over grinding her butt furiously against a corner of a table.
husband’s ordering a burger from around her chest and waiter is asking how well done, would you like chips or salad with that etc. Both acting like the performance of a lifetime isn’t taking place in the space between them.
Am in a beach bar in Taganga, a fishing village but evidently also a party village and not sure I’m supposed to be here alone? Knew I had to get my own ass to the Caribbean coast, so here I am. Santa Marta city baby, in this cute cove eating a fish supper wishing I was 60 already.
Walk out of Santa Marta airport and you’re hit by the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. A devastating stretch of shore. Asked my taxi driver: wow what’s this stunning beach called?
Airport Beach. He replied.
Oh call some spades some spades for once in your goddamn life. With that in mind I’ll give up and say that the sky here is a nice pale blue because I’ve spent a long time trying to find words for this specific shade of sky. It’s blue, alright? A blue that makes me feel stupid.
Probably why I’m incapable of finding adjectives is I haven’t read enough books but also it feels so unknown because of the contrasting palette of the Sierra Nevada below, an arid brown cutting into a soft hazy sky.
okay sorry am poet?
21st Feb
Today I headed to Tayrona Park. Described online as: The Jewel of Colombia, where jungle meets rugged coast, abundant with wildlife. A paradise.
The problem with paradise is it’s commercially very lucrative. Rose before 6 to avoid the queues, as everybody else did. Spent 3 hours walking on someone’s heels and ended up at a heaving beach. A beach is best enjoyed with buddies I find, and I have none so drew a shit picture of a tree and left.
But beautiful, yes.
Seeing The Sights you’re Supposed To See always detracts some joy. Did you beat the crowds? Did you eat the guidebook? Did both of your eyeballs look at all of the things— Ahhhh let me fester in this random café and see nothing for god’s sake.
Fave type of day is a non-day: Overthinking lunch; walking about a bit.
22nd Feb
Did both of the above. Nice fish. Walked from Taganga to Santa Marta along the road that hugs the cliff, looking out onto a blurry lilac smudge where I presume the horizon would be but the meeting of sea and sky here is secret.
The road curves up, round and down into the city’s outskirts. A few tourists advised me away from exploring outside the centre so what I mean to say is that I am absolutely better and more intrepid than them.
Coming from a place that looms at you with all its apartment blocks and trees on mountains, Santa Marta is refreshing. Homes here are cute blocks, two storeys high with their gated porches, for elders to sit out and chat, for dogs to stick their heads through, for kids to run between playing.
Will say no one seems to have been sent the memo on catcalls but I suppose it’s making up for a distinct lack of harassment I’ve been suffering in Medellin.
Made a pal called Saily who offered me a ride back on her motorbike. Dilemma: Want desperately to hop on Colombia’s fave mode of transport and feel the wind in my hair. Want desperately not to die and continue to feel the average knot speed of wind in my hair that I do daily.
Then I met her 5-year-old – no mother wants to die! I hopped on and my hairs got to enjoy more winds than usual.
23rd February
Apparently there are some pretty dangerous weed-smoking dudes with knives on that road I walked yesterday. Sometimes nice to be naïve, not know about the knife-wielding lunatics and just have a nice time?
It’s 11pm and I’m home from beach bar staring at myself in the mirror again. My very friendly taxi driver asked for a kiss at end of the lift. Most people would have just got out but I replied: oh, um, unfortunately, I can’t be that woman. (Meaning the woman who kisses her taxi driver because he called her pretty.)
What that did was open up a roundtable discussion group between the taxi driver and me which resulted in kissing him on the cheek as a compromise. Why.
Because I am a people-pleaser? Or because I am in fact that woman?
Have decided I really don’t want to delve too deep on this one so anyway I’m convinced he looked like a young Matt Damon — that means the whole exchange was hot!
Googled ‘Young Matt Damon’.
No resemblance.
Good night.