This Macondo, Mompox.
I have been in the town of Mompox for three days now, and for three days I have been teaching short English lessons in the early mornings at the local high school. "English lessons" is what I would like to call them, but really they consist of me drawing a mud-map of the world on the white board to try and explain where Australia is, followed by a field of Spanish questions about my life from giggling teenage girls. "How long will you be here in Mompox?" they ask. "Do you like to dance salsa?""Do you have a girlfriend?" "Do you think Colombian girls have beautiful eyes?" I try to answer in English, but they protest, loudly, in thick costeño accents: "Noooo! E-pañol!" The lesson then deteriorates into a mass photo session, while girls from the younger classes, who have been watching from the doorway, pass notes inviting me to teach in their class tomorrow.
Suffice to say that with enthusiasm like that there are not so many foreign tourists here, in this town. Nor anywhere, much, in Colombia. Presumably the legions of backpackers seeking new and remote locations round the globe are still detered by false conceptions about the threats of narco-terrorism, kidnapping and paramilitary warfare. Somehow both the international media and foreign governments , and with them the tourists, have missed the updates - its not 1991 anymore; Escobar is long-dead, the cartels of Medellin and Cali mostly dismantled, the guerrilla groups pushed deep into the jungles. Colombians are literally scratching their heads as they search for ways to bring the world up to speed on what the actual situation is like, to bring the people in to what is truely a spectacularly beautiful country.
Arriving in Mompox (or, alternatively, Mompós - take your pick) in particular, its impossible not to be completely enchanted. From Bucaramanga I took a combination of bus, car, boat, motorbike and wooden canoe, and dismounted in Plaza de Bolívar in awe. This is a town which is completely off the main roads of Colombia - virtually in the middle of nowhere - but which glows with a colonial charm unlike anywhere else I've been with the exception of Havana. Founded in 1537, Mompox was originally an important trading center and active port, through which all the merchandise from the Caribbean city of Cartegena passed, via the Rio Magdalena to the interior of the colony. In 1810 it was the first town to declare independence from Spain, and here Simón Bolívar conscripted many men for his liberation campaign. By the end of the 19th century, however, shipping was diverted to the other branch of the Magdalena and the town was left to its isolation.
Today, Mompox is a lazy town of long, hot streets lined with whitewashed houses. The windows, open behind elaborate wrought-iron grills, reveal ornate living rooms filled with antique furniture. Through the doors you can see central courtyards, filled with plants and fountains, and bathed in sunlight, while family members inside tip gently in thin rocking chairs made of wicker and dark wood. In the streets men sell lottery tickets for the daily draw, which happens in the middle of the square at four o'clock. Boys wield trays of queso de capa, long stringy tapes of salty cheese wrapped into small balls, while nearby ladies pump metal fruit presses to squeeze the sweetest, most gorgeous orange juice into tin cups. In the botanic garden a medley of the world's trees shelter parakeets, hummingbirds and butterflies. School kids in checked skirts are transported by motorised rickshaws, old toothy men in straw sombreros park their ancient bicycles on kerbsides, young women with podgy stomaches poking over the top of tight jeans cross themselves as they scoot past the churches by motorbike. On the riverfront large trees shelter the roadway from the overwhelming heat, multi-coloured mansions boast massive wooden doors, grey and green iguanas thud along the sloping banks. Clods of grass and tree branches take the fast flow of the brown Magdalena while fish flip and splash by the staircases which run down to the water. There is the sound of bells from balconied church towers. The amazed smile and inquisitive queries of little kids, scampering in little gangs along the malecón. And at night the iron street lanterns, the candlelit bars on the riverside playing old latin tunes on crackling vinyl, the chirping bats, the portable trolleys carting wood ovens from where you can buy guanábana pizza by the slice.
I was meant to be here two days but I extended and have stayed three. Still, it is with great reluctance that I head off tomorrow morning, particularly because tomorrow is the beginning of the town's five day fiesta in celebration of independence; unfortunately I just can't afford any more time if I want to get to everything I want to see on the coast. I have, however, explored real estate prices (anyone wanna share the cost of a $100,000 Spanish colonial mansion with me?) and I have found and bought myself my very own school t-shirt from the college where I have inadvertedly become a sort of local celebrity, so I live in hope that one day I too can be an old Momposino man, wiping sweat from my brow from my very own rocking chair in my very own courtyard, watching my very own granddaughters who flirt with their thick accents that ignore the "s" in "español" and who know how to sing all the words to all the latest reggaeton hits from Puerto Rico without taking even a breath.
