Gentle insanity in Aracataca
Annie and Sarah decided they wanted to check out Nacional Parque Tayrona, which I opted out of, mostly from laziness. I just wasn't up for sleeping in a hammock and getting ravaged by mosquitos again to see some beautiful beaches. I've seen beaches...in fact 6 weeks of beaches in brazil was possibly enough to last me for a good number of years. Plus I knew I'd be leaving for central america with more beachfront over there, so I decided against going with.
Instead I thought I might try and couchsurf again for the first time since brazil. I had an offer from a dutch guy to go and visit Aracataca, the birthplace of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also known as Macondo in his books.
This turned out to be an....interesting experience, certainly. Enjoyable in its own quirky way, but so very strange at the same time. Tim, my couch host, was extremely kind, informative, and passionate about the experience he would provide me in aracataca. He walked over to me and i slowly took in the scraggly hair/beard, the apparent sunglasses OVER the initial set of glasses, and a large, unseemly straw hat. I gulped. But luckily Tim was immediately quite likeable. Accompanying him was a small swiss girl named Matilde (unfortunately, she had those types of eyes where you're never quite sure which one to look into, inevitably making you feel nervous that you might be looking into the wrong eye and making HER feel self conscious about having the aforementioned eye) also couchsurfing, and together the three of us hung out for a few random days.
Aracataca is small. incredibly small. So small that probably every single person in that town knew that we were there. And every single person you met was a distinctly odd character. Like the alcoholic painter who insisted on taking me to the main plaza so we could take photos of ourselves laying down on the ground. Or the juice man that made us delicious guayabana shakes and then promptly left, leaving Tim in charge of the stall. And in general there just wasn't much to do there but hang about and say hello to the locals. Tim kept trying to get me to do crazy things (wear silly hats, tie a bandanna around my leg, CARRY A MACHETE) quoting that the "locals would love it". I lay there in tim's tiny apartment that first night, half my body perched on the couch (matilde had the other half), half my body on a series of chairs wondering what a weird day it was.
The nicest part of the trip was walking down to the local river, named "the exercise tree", where the three of us lay in the shallow water in the shade and climbed up and down this massive, wily tree. It was extremely soothing to just muck about with nothing pressing to do.
On my last day Tim shook me awake early and forced me onto a tiny bus. We were going to the nearby town for his tutoring lesson. He had been teaching english to this dentist for a few months, and was excited for her to converse with another native english speaker. This turned out to be one of the more fulfilling things I've done, and again I debated if I should perhaps stop somewhere to teach english or volunteer so I could spend some quality time with some locals.
Instead I thought I might try and couchsurf again for the first time since brazil. I had an offer from a dutch guy to go and visit Aracataca, the birthplace of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also known as Macondo in his books.
This turned out to be an....interesting experience, certainly. Enjoyable in its own quirky way, but so very strange at the same time. Tim, my couch host, was extremely kind, informative, and passionate about the experience he would provide me in aracataca. He walked over to me and i slowly took in the scraggly hair/beard, the apparent sunglasses OVER the initial set of glasses, and a large, unseemly straw hat. I gulped. But luckily Tim was immediately quite likeable. Accompanying him was a small swiss girl named Matilde (unfortunately, she had those types of eyes where you're never quite sure which one to look into, inevitably making you feel nervous that you might be looking into the wrong eye and making HER feel self conscious about having the aforementioned eye) also couchsurfing, and together the three of us hung out for a few random days.
Aracataca is small. incredibly small. So small that probably every single person in that town knew that we were there. And every single person you met was a distinctly odd character. Like the alcoholic painter who insisted on taking me to the main plaza so we could take photos of ourselves laying down on the ground. Or the juice man that made us delicious guayabana shakes and then promptly left, leaving Tim in charge of the stall. And in general there just wasn't much to do there but hang about and say hello to the locals. Tim kept trying to get me to do crazy things (wear silly hats, tie a bandanna around my leg, CARRY A MACHETE) quoting that the "locals would love it". I lay there in tim's tiny apartment that first night, half my body perched on the couch (matilde had the other half), half my body on a series of chairs wondering what a weird day it was.
The nicest part of the trip was walking down to the local river, named "the exercise tree", where the three of us lay in the shallow water in the shade and climbed up and down this massive, wily tree. It was extremely soothing to just muck about with nothing pressing to do.
On my last day Tim shook me awake early and forced me onto a tiny bus. We were going to the nearby town for his tutoring lesson. He had been teaching english to this dentist for a few months, and was excited for her to converse with another native english speaker. This turned out to be one of the more fulfilling things I've done, and again I debated if I should perhaps stop somewhere to teach english or volunteer so I could spend some quality time with some locals.
2 Comments:
I love reading this and thinking about how these fantastical places have always existed, even as we go through life here in a very different world. Like maybe right now someone is climbing the exercise tree and those island women are wearing their mulas.
Hi Jo,
You definately conquered Aracataca, such a shame though you weren't there for new year's, which was a blast! Though the three surfers who were there only just about fitted in the bicitaxi which I was driving around. I'm on a little holidays myself now to the nether#######lands going back to good old Macondo in April.
So, it was lovely having you over. happy travels and see ya'll later.
Tim
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