LC / BC

A simple twist of linguistic fate forces me into making comparisons. I refer to the utterly inconsequential fact that we are visiting Colombia, but we live in British Columbia. We've tried using this strange congruence as a conversation point on our travels: "Si. Nosotros vivimos en Colombia Britanica." But usually this just gets blank smiles. Clearly, these folks have not studied their Canadian provinces. Don't they learn anything? And while I'm asking questions, can you tell me where Santander and Boyacá are located? Anyway, seeking to ascribe meaning where none exists, I'm drawn to the amazing fact of these two Columbias and will now proceed to draw deep conclusions from flimsy evidence.

How then to compare British Columbia (hereafter to be referred to as BC) with Latin Colombia (hereafter to be referred to as LC)?

For starters, let's make sure you can spell. BC has a "u", while LC has an "o". You probably spotted that difference long ago, but it never hurts to be certain.

One obvious comparison between BC and LC has to be Coffee. We Vancouverites are devoted to our coffee, with stores selling exotic specialties from Indonesia, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Hawaii. Here, of course, it's all Coffee Of Colombia. And while Vancouver may seem overrun by Starbucks, there continues to be a market for the dozens of specialty coffee shops whose continuing existence amazes me. Here there is either generic coffee sold at a generic restaurant or plastic-table cafe, or else there is Juan Valdez. Yes, good old Juan Valdez, who many of us grew up watching as he would "rise eerly in thee morning, to peek the coffee beans. Peek, peek, peek". Yup, Juan's done good for himself and now runs a big chain of coffee shops in major cities and all airports. And every shop and coffee cup carries the corporate logo: a simple graphic of Juan and his faithful burro (trivia quiz: name Juan Valdez' burro*). Actually, Juan is the marketing creation of the Colombia Coffee Growers Co-op, and they are only too pleased to recount their corporate success in the brochures that sit beside the napkins in the co-op's cafes.

In BC, a takeout coffee comes in a variety of sizes, each a different paper cup with matching lid. In LC a takeout coffee comes only in small (because that's how most Colombians drink it - short and black) but lids don't exist. Of course, in BC you can sit down and get the coffee delivered in a mug, with a spoon for sugar. In LC it comes in a nice china cup and saucer, with a little plastic swizzle stick for sugar. What the...? Again and again, cafe after restaurant, the same presentation: a cup of coffee, with or without milk, in a nice china cup and saucer, with that stupid plastic swizzle. The sugar, by the way, was only rarely in a bowl on the table ( and even more rarely in a bowl graced with a spoon) but usually is served in tiny sealed paper tubes. We kind of liked the sugar tubes because, in addition to the sweetness within, they carried sweetness without in the form of warm little messages of love printed on the wrapper.

Oh, the coffee? Quite good, actually.

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Beer. OK, let's acknowledge that in BC we're beer snobs, with any number of microbreweries creating ales, lagers, weizens, Belgian beers, etc. And, my fellow snobs, let's admit that we're nothing compared to folks in Portland, Oregon. But when you go looking for a good beer in LC, it's a bleak horizon indeed. Imagine that all you could get in Canada was Coors Light and Molson Blue. Hardly worth drinking ( unless, of course, you are teenage yahoos having a beach party). Just such a drought have I endured here. True, there was the one time in Bogota that a restaurant carried a local dark beer. And one tourist restaurant in Cartagena had a wildly overpriced weizen made in Medellin. But other than that, it's been Club Colombiana and Aguila wherever you look. Pishvasser with 4% kick. So this has driven me back into the warm, international embrace of the Coca Cola corporation. Wherever you go, there's always Coke.

What we should be drinking, of course, is water. Flash to BC, where nobody goes on a trail, even on a trail through Stanley Park, without a water bottle. Great consternation when MEC decides to scrap the polycarbonate water bottles and go for aluminum or some latest plastic alternative. Now flash to LC, where refillable water bottles are completely unknown. Going on a hike? Go buy a disposable plastic bottle of Coke or a disposable plastic bottle of water. Want to save on space or reduce plastic? No problem! For about 20 cents you can buy a disposable 250 ml baggie of water. And who is packaging and distributing this modern convenience of life-sustaining fluids? Why, our old friend and ally, the Coca Cola corporation!

Finally, on the topic of liquid refreshments, I appreciate LC for its ubiquitous fruit juices. Whether in a restaurant or on the street, you can usually find someone squeezing fresh orange juice or whipping up some melon or passion fruit or banana beverage. True, they put a lot of sugar in these drinks (not in the squeezed OJ, which is pure), but the base is real, fresh fruit. The closest you can come in BC, unless you choose to mortgage your house for a fresh juice at Granville Island, is Bubble Tea. Now seriously, have you ever gone for Bubble Tea with fresh fruit as your goal?

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Moving from drink to shelter. It's a well-known fact in BC, and elsewhere in North America, that houses on the hill cost more. If there's a view, you pay for it. But come to LC and it reverses. Expensive homes are lower down, while slums climb up the hillsides.

Which brings us to inter-urban transportation. LC has buses. BC does not. Oh, sure, there are some Greyhounds running on some major routes. But you need to be going where they go, which is really only small fraction of the communities that exist, and you need to go when they go, which may be once or twice a day. But what if you wanted to get from Campbell River to Tofino, or Vernon to Grand Forks? Easy! You take a car! People drive because there are no buses, and there are no buses because people drive. But the LC reality is totally different. Heading out of this town for another? Go to the bus station and get called to by the touts for the competing bus lines. There are national bus lines, regional bus lines, and some I swear are family-run operations of two buses between two small towns with stops wherever you need them. And there's no need to wait for 6 PM for the only run of the day. Anytime you enter a central bus station there is a bus going your way that's leaving in five minutes. At least "leaving in five minutes" is what you're told. The bus is leaving in five minutes because the bus is always "leaving in five minutes". But where "five minutes" has a somewhat specific meaning in BC, it's an entirely fluid concept in LC. The phrase "salimos en cinco minutos" is best translated "as soon as we sell enough seats".

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Self-sufficiency. This might be a term I need to explain to some BC folks, since BC makes precious little of what it uses and grows only a fraction of what it eats. Things are to a lesser degree brought in from other states and provinces, and to a greater degree brought in from China. It's startling to see how different LC is. Almost everything you buy in Colombia is made in Colombia. Machinery, clothing, processed foods, etc. Almost everything you eat in Colombia is grown in Colombia. LC may have wide gaps between rich and poor (and is BC any different?), and it's chief export and money-maker is probably drugs (and let's not forget the importance of BC Bud), but it is one of the strongest, most balanced economies in the Americas.

Ecological awareness. Ah, yes. BC and LC are both very hip to preserving our world. The National Parks we visited both had strong regulations protecting the wildlife and land base of the park. For example, the fish we ate in Tayrona were all brought in from elsewhere since the waters are protected, and the coconuts which grew in abundance in the old palm groves were not to be used. Of course, sometimes in this world there is a gap between the stated regulations and the actual practice.....In Amacayacu there was no hunting, though the actual practices of the Native folks in the neighboring villages and even within the park itself.......
We met several people for whom environmental sustainability is a high concern. In Villa de Leyva we got to know some very earnest young people who ran a natural foods and handmade crafts store. In Tayrona, on the first night, the campground received 50 students from an interior university who we're taking environmental studies. Marlene & Diego are working hard to create a retreat centre which is a nature sanctuary in the Amazon. And so they knew, and took us to, a fellow who is managing an entire valley near Bogotá which had become grazing land and crops and which, through native plantings and wildlife enhancement, he was restoring to original cloud forest.
In some places, we saw sorting and recycling bins in place. I believe Bogotá has a weekly recycle pickup. But we also saw bottles and plastic simply tossed into bushes nearly everywhere we went. And while Colombians, men and women, frequently are carrying hand-woven bags to transport their stuff, we never saw a single person in a store who didn't take a plastic bag. Or used a refillable water bottle. Though large cities like Bogotá and Baranquilla are investing in mass transit bus systems, there still appears to be lots of folks whose first choice is a taxi or personal auto.

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BC to LC: a long-winded time-warp anecdote. One of those people who would always drive is Marguerite. We met Marguerite in Villa de Leyva where we were staying at the same hotel. A woman from Bogotá in her 50's, she was spending a few days driving her mother to places the older woman wished to visit. When we asked some functional questions about the buses we needed for our trip to Bogotá, she offered to drive us. Though she lived outside of the city, her mother lived in the general area of our hotel so she needed to go that way anyway. Naturally we accepted. There was one small problem - because the car she was driving (her brother's 4WD which was useful for the rural roads) had an even-numbered license plate, she couldn't drive in Bogotá that day and so we had to stop at her house to get her car which had an odd-numbered plate. Judging by their clothes and the car, we realized this woman had more money than us, though that was clearly no barrier to her friendliness. As we neared Bogotá she left the main route and headed through a nearby town. I tried to guess which house was hers as we passed some modern places on individual lots. But we didn't stop there. Then we drove past a shabbier area. Didn't stop there. Then out of the town and into the countryside again. Past some large farms, down a road, and stopped in front of a large gate and fence. Beyond it was a house that looked OK to me, though not all that impressive. Maybe I had misjudged. But she didn't open the gate - she honked. A woman emerged from the house and opened up for us. Oh! That's the gatekeepers' home. Inside the gate we went down a long drive, curved past more and more fields that clearly belonged to this family, and stopped in the large carport of a long, large single-story house. We went inside for a bathroom break and refreshments as she unloaded her bags and switched her mother's bags to the Camry.
The house was clearly quite old. The ceilings were lower than a modern house would be, but I guess the Mediterranean-stock original owners were of shorter build. The ceilings were also solid wood plank. In fact, it was all solid wood plank - the floors and the walls as well. And throughout, expensive furniture and artwork. One bureau held a collection of candlesticks (from pre-electricity days?) in pewter and silver and I don't know what. One low table held a beautiful collection of carved and inlaid wood boxes. I didn't want to stare, but I felt I was in a private craft museum run by buyers with no financial limitations. Marguerite pointed out a newspaper mounted behind glass on one wall. A long article about the death and glorious career of some general who had been a long-serving governor of the province. This, we assume, was her great-grandfather. The place just whispered "Old Money" from every corner. Not that everything was old - she showed us her recently redone kitchen with all the mod cons. She was obviously very happy with her ancestral home, and somehow it would have been impolite not to comment favorably upon it.
But what to say? What came to mind was "Wow! You are f*****g loaded!" But somehow that didn't seem right. Nor did I want to comment on the wealth of artifacts. But my eye and mind went back to the wood construction of the house itself. Being from BC, I've seen a fair share of wood design. And I have never seen a house constructed with boards as wide as these. There is one place, on Hornby Island, where I've seen a house with wide flooring - all salvaged lumber from an old sailing ship. But no place has floors, walls and ceiling all made from wood that simply isn't on the market because trees of that diameter simply don't exist anymore. Once upon a time BC still had old growth that got milled for some purpose and shipped of to God Knows Where, but I'll never see BC wood like that in my lifetime. So I made a comment like "Lovely old house. I've never seen wood quite this wide before.". To which Marguerite replied "Yes. It's fir. My great grandfather had it shipped down from British Columbia."

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Personal helpfulness. I can't really comment on how folks in BC help strangers. I know I often stop to check on people who are standing at a street corner, looking perplexed. But maybe that's just me. I've also heard it said that folks in BC are superficially warm and polite, but in fact are quite reserved and don't engage with people they don't know. Since I'm not a stranger here, I can't tell. But it certainly seems that the people of LC are always outgoing and helpful. Stop anyone on the street for information and they will always oblige. Always. Even when they don't have the information. Not to give you a response would be rude, so the reasonable thing to do when asked something you don't know is just to make up an answer. After all, it's not the facts that are important in life, it's the human interaction. Unless, perhaps, you are the person looking for the bus station and some obliging soul has directed you 90· off course.
I don't know just how many times that happened to us. The ticket seller who said the boat would leave at 2:00 when it didn't start boarding until 3:30. The tourist office lady who told us where to walk to find the local branch of Citibank - in a town which had no branches of Citibank. The adventure travel office where we were told we could only hike as far as a first waterfall but would need a guide beyond that, only to find that when we arrived (without, thankfully, a hired guide) we could easily get to the third waterfall and swim there. Our Amazon tour leader who assured us that everything was included, and then led us to an ecology centre and told us we'd have to pay. The hostel manager who promised us she'd save us fish for dinner, and then when we sat down told us that the fish had been given to others. The promises of photography projects that were never undertaken. The narration of history that even we knew enough to realize were inaccurate.
Can you imagine someone from BC doing something like that? Could you imagine, say, a traveller, having just had some limited experience with a place, going on and on about that place? Could you imagine a BC resident, so desperate for something to tell people who have come to his blog that he would create massive generalizations about other people and places just in order to convey "information"? So eager to be seen as a humorous writer that he would simply invent material for his readers? So this Canadian, this Israeli and this Colombian walk into a bar.....

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Finally, and again on a serious note, two important observations.
The first is what we saw in 1973 and do not see now: children on the street. The streets of Colombia are still filled with the marginal and the underemployed - folks trying to sell you packages of crackers or the use of their cellphone. But all these people are adults. In 1973 the ranks of the street people were heavy with 12 year old children selling shoelaces or 8 year olds trying to get you to buy gum. Hans Christian Anderson could have written The Little Matchbook Girl based on the reality of life in Bogotá or Medellin. And not just the streets - pathetic looking urchins would approach you in restaurants begging for handouts. I don't know where these kids are now - I'd like to believe the person who told me they're in schools and well-managed group homes. Could be.

The other has to do with personal safety. Not once did we ever feel unsafe. Not once was safety concerns a discussion topic with other travellers. (unlike in Mexico, where conversations are punctuated with "did you hear about..."). Of course, we were selective about where we travelled, and none of the places we went are associated with the narco militias for which Colombia is known. Today, that is. We're told that some of these areas we're quite different a few years ago. And certainly there are still areas today, whole towns or even whole provinces, where the local gang/guerilla/traffickers (hard to sort them apart) run the show and the locals behave accordingly. But these are generally areas off the tourist circuit. Colombians themselves, having spent a decade or so largely keeping to "safe" areas, are now starting to get out and tour their own country.
But it's a militarized place. Auxiliary police, equipped with only a club and a cell phone, are everywhere. Mostly young men doing their military service for two years, they hang out on the street corners in twos or threes, joking amiably with the shopkeepers and the pedestrians, but always seeing and being seen. Highways have police roadblocks, with unsmiling soldiers hoisting their Uzzis (yes, the Israelis have been here) as documents get checked. But we didn't see a lot of them. I saw more soldier-filled jeeps in the towns of Guatemala, but Colombia is not without it's signs of war. Yet none of this limited our movements or made us feel anything other than protected.

So if you're thinking of traveling someplace different next year, Colombia is worth your consideration. There were lots of places we didn't get to that we'd want to, so if you go, please send us your emails. We'd love to tag along.

In the meantime, we'll be in BC, drinking Colombian coffee and Canadian beer.

Avi & Ruth



*trivia answer: Juanita