Going The Distance

The day dawns bright, hangovers abound, and a big drive is on the cards: after 5 fabulous days in Bogota, we are heading south to Cali. Leaving the perfect climate (we’ve rejoiced at being able to wear jumpers again) and heading back to the heat.

Every Sunday, from 7am to 2pm, a large chunk of the roads in central Bogota are shut down. It’s the most wonderful initiative – called Ciclovia – which gets the city walking, running and cycling. Though it thwarted our exit from the city somewhat, we eventually drove past hundreds of people, happily pushing prams, rollerblading, carrying their dogs on their bikes… all on the main roads of the city. And it’s initiative of the wonderful Mr Mockus – changing “the software, not the hardware” of the citizens of Bogota.

The road from Bogota to Cali is famously very very uphill for the first part, and very very downhill for the second. All, naturally, on single carriage roads with the freight trucks of Colombia passing along them. Time for me to attempt to get technical for a moment, at high altitude, the bike struggles to get sufficient oxygen for combustion into the engine. All that’s required is to change the jets (which regulate the amount of oxygen which enters the engine), but before you do, whatever bike you ride will wheeze like an asthmatic donkey. And this ours did. The trusty Ural, yet to let us down in any way, did not much enjoy climbing to a height of 3,300m without us taking the time to change its jets. Yet it patiently weaved its way up winding roads, overtook laden lorries, and rumbled along merrily.

We eventually pull into a deserted hotel just outside the PanAmerican town called Melgar. A swim in the pool at dusk, then we settle down to celebrate our first anniversary in front of a DVD on the computer and some happy reminiscing about what we were doing this time last year. We got married in Italy, on the Ligurian coast on the north, in a crumbling villa overlooking a bay. Without wanting to lapse into the inevitable cliches, but doing so anyway, it was the happiest weekend of my life, and sitting with a cold beer at the end of a long day of driving, I was very content to think about it all over again.

When we heard about this place we thought it would be brilliant to include. It’s called Miguel Caballero, established by the eponymous Colombian (www.miguelcaballero.com) in 1992, it is best known for its fashion line of bulletproof clothing worn by heads of state (Obama, Chavez, Uribe, Prince Felipe of Spain) and actors (Steven Seagal). There are different levels of protection (knives, guns, machine-guns, etc) and different types of clothing, men’s mainly – from polo shirts through to leather jackets and dinner jackets.

Miguel Caballero is not married, nor necessarily in a couple (secretary wouldn’t confirm) so we couldn’t get this into the doc, no matter how tenuously. But we did go down there, interview one of his senior blokes, and try on the clothing. Surprisingly lightweight considering what it protects you against. Mike tried a huge, bulletproof flasher mac; and me, a more casual sportsjacket. Niiice.

(They also supply military gear, bike gear, and other stuff. But the James Bond bling is what everyone’s really interested in. In fact, if you type Miguel Caballero into youtube, you’ll see a whole load of people being shot by the man himself, proving the safety credentials of this charming leisurewear)

Well, we had hoped, when we arrived – and panicked – in Bogota, that we could get a few key interviews which we felt would be an interesting representation of Colombia – both the stereotype and the truth. After 5 days here, I don’t think we could have dreamed that we would been able to get as many great interviews – and to top it all off, we managed to talk to a Colombian guy incarcerated in the States for 7 years for trafficking 20kg of cocaine. And his wife.

Biggest coup of all was that he was totally willing to speak to us about it. Though he has asked that his identity remain secret on the film and on the web. So fuzzy faces all round, and a fascinating tale of DEA entrapment of a relative innocent to follow…

We’ll call our interviewee S. And away we go. S was born in Colombia, but was quickly whisked to Miami where he was raised. His father was part of the Colombian embassy over there, so the family were automatically granted papers and right to be in the country. After a few years, the marriage soured, the Colombian ruling government changed and the father was called back to Colombia. The mother and her 5 children decided to stay in the States. The only issue with that was that none of them had the legal papers to do so.

There are ways of dealing with this – basically, they could never leave the country. When S got to an age where he could work, he acquired false papers and got a job to get himself through aviation college. He was working at a restaurant where a Colombian client would come in often. Turns out, unbeknowst to S, that this guy was a very, very wealthy Colombian, part of a one of the biggest drug rings in history – the Cali Cartel,  which the DEA was cracking down on. So much so, in fact, that they put a number of DEA informants into the restaurant to work as waiters alongside S, though he was not aware of it.

The Colombian was naturally suspiscious of people, but really liked S because he was Colombian, so always asked to be served by him. He tipped really well, so S was always pleased to do so, and gradually, the two of them struck up a friendship. S started hanging out with him, going to parties, spending a lot of time with Colombians in Miami, something which he had never really done before – never having been back to Colombia, since he couldn’t leave the country. He really liked it, despite speaking English with barely a trace of a Latin accent, he said he always felt very Colombian, and it was a thrill to hang out with his countrymen. He also said that the drug dealer guy was a great guy – really nice, kind and great fun, not at all like the distant, menacing bad guys surrounded by heavies you see in films.

Meanwhile, he had become good friends with one of the other waiters – one of the DEA plants (not that he knew). The plant asked S to introduce him to the dealer guy, and they all – and other waiter informants – became close, but the guy always trusted S above all because of the Colombian connection (the DEA plant S was friends with was half Eskimo-half Canadian). S is 19 at this point, he’s naive, enthusiastic and trusting.

The Colombian approaches S with the offer of deal: for $140,000, all S has to do is drive a car, laden with 20kg of cocaine, from Miami to the Canadian border (but not across it) where someone would pick up the car. Easy peasy. Or so it seemed. The DEA informant, interesting, had set up the deal with the Colombian, so he’d get a huge chunk of money too, but the Colombian didn’t trust him as much as he trusted S, so he wanted S to come to his place alone, then S agreed to pick up his friend afterwards. The two of them had talked for hours about how they would invest their earnings: they wanted to set up their own restaurant together, which they’d planned to the last detail. S was naturally dubious about the deal, but just couldn’t walk away from the kind of money which might finally make him legit in the States.

He was taken to a house, and shown to the car. “The back of the car had a fake compartment – like the stuff you see in the movies, well, it’s for real.” Around that compartment, they had coffee and syrup in casing, to prevent detection by sniffer dogs. S picked up the car, drove away from the house and went round the corner to pick up his friend. Two minutes after which, the car was completely  surrounded by DEA officers.

Still S had no idea that his partner-in-crime was an informant. This guy gave a totally convincing performance of shock and terror, and the two of them were taken to the DEA detention offices, and interviewed separately, and the first he knew of the DEA guy’s true role was much much later.

S was terrified. He was both scared, and so gutted that he’d been caught after 2 minutes! He was about to be put away for drug trafficking, yet he’d never even reaped any reward for it. That was what he kept thinking – how unfair it was that he’d got caught on his first time…

The mandatory term at trial for drug trafficking is 10 years. But the DEA offered S two options for a shorter term: 1. He could become a DEA informant, and be out again immediately as long as he worked with them. 2. He could accept full culpability for his role in the plot, and go down for 5 years.

S knew that he was completely guilty. “The thing was that there’s a law in the US that says you have to have a mental predisposition prior to first contact with a government informant in order to be guilty of a crime. Although I am 100% guilty, I did not have that predisposition”. ie. when he first met the DEA informant, he was not involved in any way with the drugs trade, and it was only through the guile of the DEA officer (suggesting the deal with the Colombian in order to catch the Colombian, and tangling S up in the middle of it) that got him into the deal.

So his position was immovable: he refused 1. on the grounds that he would never do what his “friend”, the DEA informant, had done to him to someone else, to ruin some random person’s life; he was not prepared to admit his guilt (2) without fighting the case for his own entrapment.

The issue with taking the case to court is that it came with a minimum term of 10 years. Just for going to court. So by standing his ground, and he became determined to fight the beast of the DEA (he had spent the time up to his trial studying law, which he continued when inside and is now a qualified paralegal as well as other qualifications).

To muddy the water further, the Colombian was part of the notorious Cali drug empire, so S’s name became tarnished with that brush. The mere association carried huge implications for S’s trial – despite his protestations that he hadn’t even heard of that gang. He battled and battled, and eventually was given a term of 7.5 years. The DEA didn’t concede to entrapment, the judge believed him to be guilty and yet, he was awarded less than the minimum term, a fact which he strongly believes suggests their recognition that his involvement in the deal was that of a relative innocent.

He went to jail, and for the first year railed against the autorities. He felt that they had basically taken a good guy (who admittedly had fallen in with the wrong crowd, but who had been tricked) and put him somewhere bad, and now it was time to earn his badness. So he fought the authorities at every step, fell in with the worst of the crews in the jail, brewed prison liquor (a revolting sounding process involving grapefruit juice, bread and removed lightbulbs to ferment the thing with the energy source) and months spent in “The Hole”, a dark room not bigger than the one single bed it contained, where he’d pace backwards and forwards, do headstands, beef up. And read. So here was where the big change happened. S started to read the books around him.

After a year of being off the rails, he cleaned up his act. It coincided with a prison move, so he was able to start again. This time, he got in with the Imam inmate of the prison. The Islamic prisoners had their own group, one which didn’t get involved with the violence, but who were left alone on the grounds that they were pretty hard in their own way and kept themselves to themselves. At this point, S embraced Islam. He read the holy texts, and was a really ally of the Imam. He grew his beard and studied with them.

The next phase of his incarceration saw his beard get longer and longer, and him withdraw further from company. Still studying, reading and determined to use his time inside for improvement. He applied to study by correspondence course at a local educational institution, but once they found out that he was not legally a US citizen, they declined him. His grades were better than any of the other students, so he managed to come to a private agreement with the tutors, so though he couldn’t collect credits, he still was able to participate in all classes and have his work marked.

By this point, he’s livid with the US government, he’d prefer to be extradicted to Colombia than life in the half-light of not having the rights of a US citizen. But they didn’t do that. So 68 months later, he left the US prison, left the US for good, and returned to Colombia, a country he didn’t know, with no one he knew there (apart from his estranged father who was living in the Amazon) – and a family trapped in the US, and him trapped outside it.

The interim years are as filled with adventure as the ones before it (though this time it’s all legal), but we ran out of time with him. The story that I can tell you is that he is now happily married to a Colombian lady, and they have two gorgeous little girls. S’s mother unexpectedly appeared from the back of the flat at the end of the interview. Her own mother was very sick, so she returned to Colombia, knowing full well that she would never see the States again, and she now spends a lot of time with her granddaughters. And S has made a good life for himself in Bogota, so our hero is ok.

He’s a very compelling storyteller. He has the occasional twitch in his arm as he recounts the lengthy story. His candour is so engaging that it’s easy to lose oneself in his lifestory, it was only the fact that we were late for our next deadline that meant we had to leave.

I told him to write a book. I doubt I have done any kind of justice to his story here – there is much more detail to be delved into (grapefruit liquor made from bread? Imam immunity? Syrup and coffee casings? Gang segregation inside, etc).

Despite us wanting to find a drug story in Colombia, the stereotype is not the norm. The people here are fabulous – warm, open, generous – and the country is awesome. Roberto Palacio, the writer who we met on Friday, said that the Colombian government had come out with a statistic, in the last couple of years, which suggested that 12,000 Colombians were involved in the drug trade. Many of his US friends couldn’t believe that – surely it was more than that? Roberto countered with – ok, well, let say it’s double that, no, double that, hell, say it’s more like 250,000. That’s still much much less than 1% of the population. And yet the entire country is tarnished with this brush. It’s something I have talked about with everyone – how the image from outside is dramatically different from the truth of the country – and taxi drivers, waiters, friends, interview subjects and hotel/hostel staff alike roll their eyes and say that it makes them very sad to think that’s all their wonderful country is known for.

We leave our 3-interview-day behind us (a whopper, but what a corker!) and go out to Bogota’s most famous restaurant, a place called Andres Carne de Res (www.andrescarnederes.com/) about half an hour’s drive north of the city. It’s one of the best nights out I have had anywhere on the planet. If you find yourself in Bogota, make sure that you make it north to Chia (there’s one in the centre too, we later learnt, which is newer and smaller) to a crammed Swiss chalet style huge world of glowing red hearts, wooden benches, and the best meat you’ll eat north of Argentina (though I’ll get back to you on that one…) We danced until the small wee hours, bumped into an old friend randomly, and loved every minute of it.

Antanas Mockus is a strong force in the spirit of Bogota. He has been mayor of the city twice (1995-96 and 2001-2003) and has left a strong imprint on the character of the place. With the help of the wonderful Carolina, Professor of Colombian Documentary Film at the National University (where Mockus was Principal), we managed to get an interview with this extraordinary man and his lovely wife.

He’s such a fascinating character that his life bears summarizing (thanks Wiki):

• Born in 1952 to Lithuanian immigrants in Bogota.
• Considered a child genius, he could read by 2.
• An accomplished polymath, he is a mathematician, philosopher and politician.
• Rector Generale of the Colombian National University from 1990

(Lots and lots to say about Mockus, a fascinating, brilliant, honorable man and the woman who could satisfy that intellect – but I need to go through the full film. It was one of the most memorable of all our interviews – the objectivity of a philosopher to analyse the profound adoration he feels for his wife)

Herman, the sailor. Away for months at a time throughout their lives together, but married happily for 35 years. How did love survive that? He didn’t see his second son until he was 9 months old. How on earth did the wife cope? No Herman at childbirth, no help with midnight feeds or looking after the eldest son, 2 at the time.

Herman drives a taxi when he’s not at sea. Which is how we met him. He’s a very friendly fellow, and lives far to the west of the city. We go to his home to meet him and his wife, Blanca. They say that they are very traditional – Blanca is the homemaker, and has been at home with her boys throughout their lives. They have a wonderful open-door policy and throughout the interview, friends and family arrive to be fed. Herman explains that women are expected to do all the cooking and cleaning here, and Blanca does that wonderfully. There certainly is a strong sense of homeliness in the place, and the sons drift in and out, always hugging and kissing their mother as they come and go.

Blanca and Herman grew up very close to each other and have known each other all their lives. Blanca’s parents died when she was 12, so she was raised by her traditional and distant grandparents and the community around her, and was left to be mother to her many younger siblings (her brother Gorge even came round to be fed during our interview). She wept as she talked about her childhood. Herman admired her strength, and liked her maturity. They married early, aged 21, and had their first son shortly afterwards. Blanca lives for her children, that is very obvious. She says so, too. She loves being a relatively young mum, because she is great friends with her sons as well their mother.

Their dream was to have a place of their own. But money was scarce, so when their first son was 16 months, Herman took a job on a ship as a merchant seaman. This meant that he was away for 9 months at a time, he’d then come back for 3 months and head off again. Blanca lived with his mother during this time, a relationship which was very close. Herman said that it was of great comfort to him to know that Blanca was with his mother, a woman who loved her like a daughter.

Herman was at sea when his second son was born, and didn’t meet him for another 9 months. This carried on throughout the childhood of the two boys, and Herman admits that, though he loves those boys, he did not have much of a role in their childhoods, and they are much more their mother’s sons. 10 years after the birth of their first son, when the two boys were 10 and 8, Blanca worried that her boys would grow up and leave her, so she and Herman had another son, now 20. By the time he was born, Herman had taken a step back from sailing so was a much stronger presence in his life, something which must create a curious dynamic in the home.

When asked for advice, Herman talked about loyalty and God. Loyalty can’t be easy for a sailor, but he was insistent that it was key to their relationship. This felt much more traditional as a relationship, Herman earns, Blanca raises the kids, but the house is filled with people and love, so something is definitely working. He has been back for a year and will go away again in 6 months or so, but it’s easier now the children are older.

Mike told me afterwards that Blanca had been very worried to have foreigners in her house, that she hadn’t before. She brought glasses of water out for us nervously on plates. But I only found this out after we’d left. I thought she was a warm and generous hostess.

We start the day with an interview with Colombia’s national paper, El Tiempo. We drive the bike out of the garage of the people we are staying with, the paper’s photographer takes some photos, then we have an interview with a journo. It lasts a long time, it’s a good interview, we have the headspace to think about our answers and not deliver our downpat answers. But we reply in fast English, so I don’t know what will come of it. (Will post article as soon as it is released)

We spent some time in the Relationships section of the local bookstore, and found a book which sounded both interesting and very entertaining, so we set out to get an interview with its author. The book is called Sin Pene No Hay Gloria (a play on the Spanish “no pain, no gain” – to become “no penis, no gain”) and with it, the author, Roberto Palacio, sets out to investigate the male psyche. It’s written in the form of many entertaining essays about male complexes, and their history. When we meet him, I suggest that he’s a bit of a male Carrie Bradshow, and he loves that. He says that men don’t spend enough time thinking about what’s going on in their heads with relation to sex (not like women) – they are normally just labelled as “simple” in that department - and actually it bears some investigation.

I have to confess that I have not read the book. I have promised myself that it will be the first Spanish book I read, so expect this blog not to be updated for another 6 months or so… What I do get from it is how entertaining it is. Roberto Palacio taught philosophy at the National University for 18 years, so he’s fiendishly bright, but this is his first foray into print. He researched the book for a year – and took real care in its writing – saying that despite the light tone, he wanted to get lots of information across.

One of the issues that we have encountered in Latin America is that what people say about their love is not necessarily true, but there’s no way to get to the real core: Despite their grand declarations of love, and sweeping romanticism, many Latin men marry one woman, then happily engage in affairs. One person we met in Leon, Nicaragua, owned a factory and said that some of his workers will merrily sit around talking about their various families scattered around town. The women know about each other – it’s almost like a polygamy. Even among wealthier couples, mistresses are not uncommon.

So we took the opportunity to talk to Roberto Palacio about this, as the voice of Latin male psychology. He confirmed that this was indeed commonplace. A chunk of his thesis too, hinged on the violence of the Latin American past being linked to male sexual frustration. Again, I have to confess that I got a little lost in the Spanish of it all. He was fascinating, and we talked for much longer than he had said that he could (he had planned to go to a talk at the University an hour after we arrived, but said that he was really enjoying the interview so decided to sack it off)

Better still, we got an interview with him and his wife, Veronica. Laughter is what characterises their relationship, and again, it’s a pleasure to be around them. They met in their late 30s, Roberto had come out of a 6 year relationship, Veronica was single and a friend suggested that they meet. Another blind date couple! When I asked Roberto what it was about Veronica that he liked, he said that “she was desperate, it was great”. Exactly the kind of response Mike would give about me…

The palpable thing that you can see with couples who have met and married later, is their own individuality. Having lived their 20s and 30s without each other, they are very confident of who they are. I always really like these interviews because there is a maturity in the relationship which comes from a strong involvement of the rational (not some hot-headed teenage romance, instead a considered coupling). They have a gorgeous little girl Gabriella, who hadn’t had a nap so wanted a little more from Veronica than our interview would allow… But it did mean that we could get a great interview with Roberto. Again, we felt so pleased to have met these two. A great couple and the kind of people who I really hope we will cross paths with again.

Still on the hunt for good Bogota stories, we set off for the offices of Fondacion Pais Libre, a charitable organisation here in Colombia which works on behalf of the hundreds of kidnap victims in Colombia. We meet with the Head of Marketing and ask about finding a couple who have lived through the horror of kidnap. She has some ideas and promises to call us back in the next couple of days.

Our big interview today is with the British Ambassador to Colombia, HMA John Dew, and his wife Marion. They are our first interview with a British couple, which at once makes it feel very familiar and very foreign – after all the Latin proclamations of adoration, the more circumspect British expressions of affection come as quite a contrast.
 
John and Marion met in Islington, North London, when Marion interviewed John to be a tenant in a big house shared by 6 people. She said that, though not a believer in that kind of thing, she definitely had a feeling during that first meeting that she would marry him. Their courtship progressed slowly, friends first then a couple. John was then told he would be transferring to Venezuela, and, realising that the Foreign Office was far more generous to married couples, they decided to marry. Not least so that they could go there together.
 
And so it has been from there on in: postings every few years, to Dublin, Madrid, briefly London, Cuba (I can’t imagine how many times he must have been referred to as “Our Man in Havana”…) and now Colombia where they have been for a year.
 
Funnily enough, the interview didn’t follow the usual form, I think precisely because they were English. Rather than going straight for the real content, we rather conversed in good old fashioned Brit style – so the discussion meandered and I came away entertained and informed, but with questions that I wished I had asked.
 
I really wanted to know what strains diplomatic life puts on a relationship: just as you get settled, news comes that it’s time to move; so often the couple have to be representatives of the UK, how does that affect them (public and private personas)? When they arrive in a new place, are they very dependent upon each other? Do they get homesick?
They said that actually it is much harder leaving a place than arriving in one. On arrival, there’s the excitement and energy of finding out about the new city, meeting the new faces in the Embassy; generally, they move as a pair, and think in quite a similar way. Whereas everyone has a different way of leaving a place: some people start to wind down months beforehand, some days or even hours; everyone has different rituals – things they want to do or say or people they want to see before they leave, and it all gets quite fraught.
 
Marion talked about the importance of little routines which they keep, no matter where they are. Coffee and cheesecake in a lovely patisserie – they find one in their new city – every Saturday morning. I liked that thought. Mike and I are the same, we try to keep little things the same wherever we are, though sometimes they get abandoned in whirlwinds of stress – the very things which should not be abandoned. The delight of the weekly Adam and Joe podcast (Mike) and This American Life podcast (me). The weekly attempt to listen to Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time podcast (5 minutes max).
 
They don’t get too homesick because they keep their home in North Oxford. Mike, being North Oxford born and raised, then spent a long time with Marion chatting about places, faces and traditions, which inspired a bit of homesickness in him too.
 
They have been here a year, living in a spectacular walled residence in the middle of the city, and are getting to grips with the place. It’s quite different from their previous posts because of the high levels of security: it’s one of only 7 British positions in the world with an armoured security detail. Between them they have 5 bodyguards who are with them wherever they go. The Ambassador travels with 2 cars always – one to block traffic and check for ambush ahead of him  when he sets out , etc. They say that this has changed their experience of the place – for good and bad. Good: they can go anywhere in the city and worry about neither parking (the volume of cars – and traffic – is huge, the government even has the rule that only certain numberplates are allowed on the roads on certain days) nor security (they don’t have to avoid the sketchier areas because they know they’ll be fine…); but they don’t get to know the place in that way that driving your own car and getting happily lost on your own helps you to.
 
The Ambassador talked about the diplomatic role the UK plays here. I asked about drugs (a topic which all Colombians despise talking about because it tends to be the first thing that foreigners ask them about) and he said that  60% of cocaine in the UK comes directly from Colombia, what a statistic. Corruption is rampant, and justifiably so, a Colombian official had explained to the Ambassador that  drug traffickers have huge  resources to offer,  the equivalent  would be a  UK traffic warden being offered 100,000GBP  not to  issue a ticket. Not even an oligarch could turn that down… Ambassador Dew concluded by saying that the bigger deal is the human rights record here.  Over a thousand cases  are being investigated of government soldiers killing young men, then dressing the corpses in the uniforms of guerillas to up the army’s quota. (Our later interview with recently released FARC kidnap victim, Sigifredo Lopez, confirmed that the government is not as active with internal issues as it could and should be). The Ambassador was  convinced that international interest, help, support for Colombian human rights defenders, and where appropriate pressure, was effective as a catalyst for change. It was tempting for many middle class Colombians  to turn a blind eye to  the more intractable problems of their otherwise beautiful and westernised country (cities certainly).

We left the Ambassador and his wife to head further south in the city. We had a meeting with the Professor of Colombian documentary film and TV at the National University of Colombia, Carolina, and her husband, Professor of Economics at the same institution, Ivan. They have been married for 11 years and have a 6 year old son, David, who appeared in an all in one pyjama suit which was the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Carolina and Ivan are still very much in love. They are one of those couples which are a total pleasure to be around, they radiate their love for each other and have a great laugh while they are at it. Their love story, too, is totally wonderful: the two of them were in a choir in Bogota. When the choir first met, three of the ladies quickly decided that they liked Ivan, so the race was on… Carolina was in the loo and overheard the other two talking about how they felt about Ivan, so she knew she had to act quickly to stake her claim.

By her own admission, she’s very shy at this kind of thing, so it took all the guts she had to approach Ivan and give him a small box of chocolates. The other two women witnessed the gesture, and the die was cast. The only problem was that Ivan was fairly clueless – he said that it just never occurred to him that a woman so lovely would be interested in him. So he said thanks, put the chocolates into his pocket (which broke her heart) and wandered off.

So she mustered all the courage that she had and tried again. This time, she gave him her number. Then she waited, and waited and waited. 2 weeks passed and still nothing. Choir practice came around again, and she went over to him and said quietly, “Ivan, would you mind coming to the shop with me quickly? I have a headache and need to get some tablets.” So he came with her. The minute they were outside, she said, “why haven’t you called?! I’m not the kind of person who gives my phone number to every guy she meets!” At which point, Ivan finally got the message. And they started dated. They were engaged two months later, and they’ve been happily and totally in love since.

The bit that I really loved about their story was that one year prior to their meeting, Carolina had been in Israel at the Wailing Wall. She wrote a list of the characteristics she wanted in a perfect man and she rolled it up, put it in the wall and prayed. She said that the list was long. The first thing she wrote, because she was rubbish at her own finances, was that she wanted an economist. Then thinking that she wouldn’t want to be stuck with a man who only used the left side of his brain, so the next point she put on her list was “creative, an artist”. She then went on to list characteristics (kind, generous, honest, funny, etc). And slipped it into the wall.

One year later, she meets Ivan – an economist who writes and performs music – and sings in a choir. He woos her by writing her songs (of which he has now written her many, saying that she is his muse). And every single thing she wrote on that list is true in Ivan. They are so delighted to be together, it is contagious. With a story like that behind them, they feel that God intended for them to be together, which is incredibly binding (we have seen this over and over again in Latin America). They laugh, they delight in David, and it was a total pleasure to meet them.

Carolina is candid about her need for creativity in a partner. She says she can’t imagine life without the joy of music, art, museum, literature. She can’t see how couples who don’t have that in their lives can get the most out of life. The two of them certainly get the most out of everything they do, it’s inspiring. She spent 8 years researching and writing a book on the history of Colombian documentary film. He did his PhD at Warwick so they lived there for 2 years, and they happily chat to us in English – though the interview itself is in Spanish. He even gets out his guitar and plays us 2 of the songs he has written her. Halfway through David potters out in his little jumpsuit, and says he wants them to come to bed because he can’t sleep without them. What a happy little family.

Mike and I were legally married one year ago today, in East London. We have chosen for this not to be our wedding anniversary (somewhat bizarrely) and instead to go for November 8th, our big Italian wedding day. Mostly because 8.11.08 should be easier for Mike to remember…

Bogota sits at 2,600m. Which is why it has such a lovely, cool climate. And why we feel sick as dogs for the whole of our first day here.

We do our usual thing yesterday of arriving in a new city and panicking that we have no leads. (People often ask how we find the couples that we interview – well the answer is twofold: internet and panic). We spend the morning squabbling about who can use the one internet connection, try and find out as much about Bogota as we can, then try to find people who capture that. Ideas on the table are a guy who makes bulletproof clothing, the British Ambassador and his wife, we’d love to get something on drugs or kidnapping (truth behind stereotype stuff), an Colombian author who has written a collection of funny essays on the penis (!), and we’re trying to get something with the Colombian paper. All distant dreams at this point. Panic.

So we go and see Michael Jackson’s This Is It after firing out emails to all and sundry. Great film. Great cure for severe altitude sickness.

I wake feeling better. Nothing like chips and beer in the room, and forcing Mike to catch up with all the X Factor clips on YouTube with me the night before to restore (relative) sanity to the insane. Not even “no, you can’t buy stamps in the airport, but there’s a place 5km away” and “no, there’s nowhere in the airport you can buy magazines, newspapers or books” can bust my determination to stop being such an irrational psycho.

The flight is a dream: it can cover such distances! In such a short time! With a roof! And air-conditioning! And I can watch telly! Bliss. We arrive in Bogota, get money out, abuse the arrivals’ free wifi and then head to collect the bike from the cargo terminal.

Easier said than done, apparently…

We left it in a warehouse on the outskirts of Panama’s International airport with a company called Aerolinea Cargo Pack. We were told to head to the offices of “LAS” at Bogota airport, as they are the sister company in Colombia. We eventually find the offices (after the usual trawl around all the cargo warehouses in the vicinity of the airport). Mike talks to the man, and of course, he can’t get the bike until he has dealt with customs. Customs is a 5 minute cab ride away. There are no cabs. It’s 20 minutes on foot. Off Mike sets.

Two things are for sure at this stage:
1. It’s much much easier to be in charge of your own travel arrangements, rather than at the mercy of others. (Come back bike! All is forgiven!)
2. The weather in Bogota is wonderful. It’s sunny and breezy. Bliss.

We get the bike and we head to a friend’s sofa in town. Bogota holds much-needed promise.

“I think today may just have been our lowest day yet. I know I have said that a couple of times before, but surely whimpering with tears in Panama airport has to be my nadir thus far? I feel totally broken, like someone is sitting on my chest.”

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A LONG EXPLANATION OF A BAD DAY. THERE’S NOTHING ENLIGHTENING IN IT, NO COUPLES’ STORIES, NO WISDOM ON LOVE, IT’S JUST A RANT. SO PLEASE DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO READ IT.

The above,in quotation marks, was as much as I could write as I wept in Panama City’s airport. It’s now Tuesday, a day later, and with the objectivity of a good night’s sleep and a few hundred miles between me and Panama (writing in Bogota), I know that I won’t be able to recreate the severity of the reasons why I felt such total, all-consuming and black despair.

The day seemed (naively) like it was going to be hard work, but doable:
- Mike: get dollars to fly the bike cargo from Panama to Bogota (the cargo company was asking for around $1000 in greenbacks)
- Mike: having tried to book flights online for Bogota (for us to follow the bike there), and realising it wasn’t possible with a UK credit card, needed to find a Avianca office to buy flight tickets from Panama to Bogota. Preferably today.
- Alanna: update a week’s worth of blog (looks piddly in comparison with the Spanish admin hideousness Mike needed to do. Took me the same length of time, depressingly)
- put bike on plane
- get selves to Colombia

Mike sets off on the bike and leaves me in the seedy restaurant of the place we are staying in. The bike had to be at the Cargo Terminal of Panama’s Tocumen airport by 2pm to be checked in for its flight that evening. We had been told that, with traffic, the journey to the airport can take 2 hours. Mike didn’t have a watch (the strap fell off that very morning). He got back to me at 1.10pm.

He was unspeakably stressed.

He had tried 10 ATMs and 3 banks to try and withdraw the dollars we needed. The night before, knowing that HSBC cards only let you take out $500 every 24 hours, he had taken out that amount. But it was not the previous day in the UK. So he couldn’t get any more out. Our other card is an American Express card. Which you can get as much money as you like out on, but none of the banks he went to, nor the ATMs he tried, accepted AmEx. And the Avianca offices said that all the flights today were full.

Mike’s stress is as ignorable as a slap in the face, so I caught it. We packed as fast as could, set off for the airport, with Mike cursing like a trooper the entire way. Terrified we’d be late for the cargo office, stressed that we didn’t have the money we needed for them to ship the bike, stressed because we wanted to fly to Colombia that evening but didn’t have tickets. Just a red hot, raging, stress vortex of doom. I tried really hard to be the sane one (!!). Of course there’d be a Bureau de Change at the airport where we could buy dollars on the AmEx, of course the traffic would be ok, of course we could try and buy tickets. It didn’t matter if we didn’t make the flight tonight – 2nd Nov is Dia de la Patria in Panama so we’d get some great parade shots, etc.

But nothing calms him down when he’s like that (to be fair, I think it’s as stressed as I have seen him on this trip so far). So I turned off the intercom between our helmets and tried to keep myself calm.

1.57pm. Make it to the airport. Turns out the Cargo Terminal is about a 20 minute drive from the airport. Through the dumps as it happens. Mike, like coiled spring, overtook everything on tiny winding roads, cursing like a trucker all the way. It started to rain (surprise surprise). The cargo terminal is not easily navigable and we drove around, lost and desperate for 15 minutes. Finally we find our girl. She’s calm, she’s wonderful. She says that we can pay the missing dollars when we arrive at Bogota (of course it would be preferable to be paid now, but no worries if not). This should be the end of the stress.

But we don’t work like that. Remember it’s 2.30 and we haven’t had lunch. And we are rubbish without food. Mike makes the mistake of calling AmEx to ask if there’s anyone at the passenger airport who will take AmEx. He’s on the phone for 10 minutes and eventually transferred to a dead number. That soothes him immeasurably, as you can imagine.

With the cargo lady’s permission, we head to the airport to try and get money out on AmEx, try to buy tickets for Bogota, try to eat. Worth saying that the early, gentle drizzle is now a full on, fat dropped, ignore-me-at-your-peril tropical rainstorm. The sky is dark grey, the visibility is low as a result, it’s humid as hell so very sweaty, and no raingear in the world can keep you dry on a bike in the face of this liquid assault.

We shake off the wet. I make us eat first. Canteen grub. (Though it’s worth pointing out at this point, that I’m delighted to be in the airconditioned, dutyfreed, international hub of the airport. Love it. Have missed these babies as we’ve sweated our way across border patrols)

Then to Avianca. No space on flights today. But maybe, if you come back at 4.45pm (in one hour), we can get you on. Buy tickets. To bank. Don’t take AmEx, natch. Back to bike, back to warehouse. We gradually get the bike sorted (knowing that we have to be back at the terminal in 20 minutes and the drive takes 20 minutes). The underground office has 4 people typing in it: the lovely lady who is busting her balls for us, and 3 other rabid facebookers. When the nice lady asks Facebook 1 to order us a cab, she hands over the cab number. Then looks very sullen when asked to call it. “Computer says no” there are no cabs. Have to get a lift from nice lady half way, then we try and find a cab. I fall over in the pouring rain and land on my kneecap, grazing it. Things are not looking good for our heroes.

Back to the airport. Soaking. To the Aviancar desk. 5.01pm (NB flight at 6pm). There’s no one there. We ask. People ignore. We ask again. We’re told to queue for customs. But with no boarding pass, say I, child of standby travel, no cigar. Mike sets off to find the neckless troll who sold us the tickets in the first place. He’s ushered into a small back office where said troll dwells. He asks – “is there space? Have we made it on the flight in an hour?”. “No!” says Henry’s Cat. “I said you had to be here at 4.45pm and you are here at 5.02pm. You are not allowed on the flight.” “but we have an hour…” says Mike. “No”. And she turns back to her troglodite friends and the discussion is closed.

So our bedraggled heroes crumple. We descend to arrivals to try and find a hotel near the airport (we’ll fly the next day at midday). But there’s no one at the hotel information desk. The attendant who said “she’s in the loo” shuffled off after 25 mins with still no sign of “her” – that must be one massive turd she’s a droppin’. Eventually, a security guard says there’s a hotel nearby with a courtesy bus. We wait at the side of the road for it to arrive, it takes half an hour. I cry. It all just feels too much: the incessant rain, the heat, the “NO”s, the weight of what we have taken on, the relentlessness of this whole thing. I’m just so tired. So tired of working this hard this ceaselessly, so tired of being soaking with either sweat or torrential rain, tired of listening to people for hours and hours, tired of living out of a tiny bag, tired of putting on weight like a midWestern lardarse, tired of all the uncertainty the future holds – why are we doing this? What will come of all this hard work?, tired of the fact that we’re only half way through. All of this manifests itself in silent tears. I start to hate Mike too, for sharing this exhaustion with me, for – ridiculously – always using the “tu” form in Spanish instead of the “Usted”, for everything. (you can see how reasonable I was being)

On the courtesy bus, we find out the hotel is $115. That’s pretty much more than we’ve spent on all the hotels in the whole of Central America… Bastards. And the wifi doesn’t work. And our room is the furthest from reception (and reception is the only place we can phone/wifi) and it’s all just shit. And the rain just keeps raining. Fat, hard rain.