Prelude to Living in Providencia, Part Two: "Houses"

To part two of the story in a moment. I am currently writing this post while watching the new version of Grey Gardens on HBO in our rooms (yes, we get HBO. We’re on a remote tropical island where we have to walk thirty minutes to get cell phone and Internet service, but somehow our rooms have HBO. So it goes) after a day spent jetting around the island on a boat tour. Some of Silvia’s extended family showed up pretty much out of the blue yesterday and then took us along today on a group tour around the island. We got to see the whole island from the ocean, climb up this little rock islet for some spectacular views of “The Sea of Seven Colors” (so called because of the myriad blues formed by rock and coral), go snorkeling all around the same islet (although I didn’t actually have a snorkel, so I guess it was technically just swimming around and looking at stuff, which is surprisingly feasible because the water is crystal clear), get an excellent dinner, and end with a long walk on the beach. It was really enjoyable, and probably the first time that I’ve felt really comfortable with the idea of living here for the next two months, which is almost as important as getting to do all the stuff we did. I think I might even getting marginally better at understanding Spanish, and even Silvia is impressed by my ability to look like I know what’s going on. Providencia ftw.

Now for part two, and it’s going to be a long one:
At the airport, we met Silvia’s friend-of-a-friend architect/artist Antonio who owned the house we were planning to stay in. He helped us get all our luggage into one of the pickup truck taxis that are the only real way of getting around here if you don’t have a motorbike, and then we set off around the island. There’s basically one road that goes all the way around the island, so there were some beautiful views just from the car. We parked in front of a dirt clearing with a tiny, rickety wooden house in it. In the house there was a couple who greeted us and Antonio before we set to take our bags to our house, which we were told was higher up on the hill.

Well “higher up on the hill” turned out to mean a 10-15 minute hike (unburdened and without baggage) directly up the mountain, a hard one with a minimal trail, and one that we had to bring all our luggage up. (Have you ever hauled 90 kilos of luggage up a mountain? It’s hard.) The farther up we got, the more worried and exhausted I became, until finally we arrived at the house way up on the mountain. Admittedly, the view was spectacular. On one side, there was a panoramic view of the arc of the reef traced out in cyan and azure against the darker blue of the ocean, and on the other side, the mountainous interior of the island rose up out of the mists. And in the middle was a glorified shack that was supposed to be the aforementioned house. It was a wooden structure with one big room and an outdoor shower and toilet attached to the side. No electricity, no running water, just two hammocks, three beds, and unrestricted communing with nature. Silvia and I hiked back down, half laughing and all worried, and got the rest of our 90 kilos of luggage back up the mountain trail. Antonio then showed us how to get rainwater from the cistern (to be fair, most of the water here is rainwater) and where to start a fire in the “kitchen” and left for the night.

At this point, several things happened that drove the whole situation from dubious to full-on bad. 1) Pola (Silvia’s cat) ran away, and we couldn’t find her because it’s hard to find a cat in the freaking jungle, 2) insects besieged us, 3) the sun set, which wouldn’t be a problem except that we had no power and it’s hard to do stuff in the dark (thankfully we had two flashlights), and 4) a serious storm broke, forcing us to close the four doors (one in each wall of the house) and windows and fortify ourselves in this shack on top of a mountain while a torrential thunderstorm did its best to kill us. (This may all seem kind of melodramatic, but it was also made worse by the fact that I had just been traveling for over 24 hours straight without much food and sleep and wanted nothing more than to eat a solid meal, take a shower, and get into a comfortable bed. It really was like something out of a movie.) Long story short, after the storm abated and it was clear that we were not going to get blown off the mountain, Silvia and I ended up huddled together in the dark under the mosquito netting on one bed, one cat fewer, batting away insects by flashlight, sweaty and dirty from hauling luggage up a mountain, appetites lessened, exhausted but not wanting to go to sleep in the bug-ridden beds, and just generally doubting the whole enterprise. And neither the cell phones nor the internet router-thing got service. This was clearly not going to work for three months.

Eventually we discovered that opening all the doors and windows got a breeze that kept the insects away, made some peanut butter sandwiches, and sat out on the terrace, talking and enjoying the view of the sea by moonlight. So it ended up getting marginally better (and as Silvia pointed out, things couldn’t , but still, when Antonio showed up the next morning, after enlisting his help to find Pola (unsuccessful, though Silvia did manage to run into a tree full of fire ants), we told him it wasn’t going to work out. We had two other leads: a guy he knew with an apartment, and some cabins whose owner Silvia had been talking to until he stopped responding to emails. We hiked down, walked to the apartment (not so good), then headed towards the main town, not knowing how far it was and hoping a taxi would drive by. It started raining again, but it took about 45 minutes for a taxi to show up and give us a ride to the cabins. They were run-down and decrepit and clearly not functional, so we were left more or less homeless.

We made our way to the central town, where we tried the internet again (still not working, a serious problem because I needed it to be able to do the writing that was my source of income), ran into a tourist couple who told us about the hotel they were staying at. We made our way out to there, found a place for the night, then we (mostly Silvia) proceeded to ask a bunch of places nearby about the possibility of staying there for several months. The answer was generally “no” with a few conditional “maybes.” And our luggage was still at the top of the mountain on the opposite side of the island, so we rented a golf cart for 24 hours, went back, hiked up and back down with everything, and moved into a place for the night. We then showered, felt immensely uplifted because we were now clean and not in a shack, finally got cell phone and internet service, then continued to search (in the golf cart) for a place to stay. Each person told us another one to try (and everyone seemed to reference one Miss Vicky), until on the way back at the end of the day, we finally found a place that seemed reasonable. It was a hotel, the sections had multiple rooms, and Silvia knew the guy who ran the place because her dad had offered him good medical advice before (small world). So we talked to him, then headed back for the night, got an actual meal for the first time since Monday afternoon (it was now Wednesday night), and went to sleep.

The next day, we moved into our new place, then returned the golf cart and walked for about 40 minutes in a torrential downpour back to our new place. We then discovered neither the internet nor our cell phones worked at this new place, talked to the owner and learned the internet only worked in two or three places on the island, the closest one was where we had just come from (the 40 minute walk). We also had no transportation and no real access to a kitchen. We were going to try and arrange with a restaurant on the to give us one big meal a day for a reduced price and just have sandwiches for the rest. So there were still some major issues to sort out.

In short, because this is already long enough, over the last few days, we did manage to arrange with a restaurant on the beach to feed us, we have someone who is going to teach us to drive a Vespa and then rent it to us for a month (I took a shot at riding it on my own first and was doing fine until I tried to turn around and hit a rock) so that we have a way to get around, it finally stopped raining, and I have made the 30-40 minute walk to where we get internet and cell phone service so many times that it actually doesn’t seem too bad anymore. And we found a great place to sit on a hotel terrace right by the beach that gets internet and the owner has no problem with me working there. And we finally found Pola by tempting her with cooked fish, hiking up and down the mountain several more times in the process. So all in all, a very trying first week, but things are finally beginning to look up. If nothing else, this has been a serious lesson in not being in control and just going with the flow. In general, you cannot expect anything to happen quickly or efficiently here; you just have to trust that things will work out. So far, it’s gotten us a place to stay and a beautiful beach to frequent, and for the moment, that’s enough.

Prelude to Living in Providencia, Part One: Planes

So I’m here in Providencia, finally moved into the place where it looks as though we’ll be spending the next 2-3 months. It’s Saturday morning, and I started traveling Monday afternoon. It’s been a very long week. I’m sitting in a restaurant called Pizza’s Place that gets good reception for the internet, and although it’s closed now nobody really seems to care that I’m sitting here because nobody really cares what you do here in general. Providencia is undeniably beautiful and has all the allure you’d hope for in a remote, somewhat run-down tropical island. (Though for such a small place, I have to say that it takes an awfully long time to get around, and for an island, there are surprisingly few beaches.) In somewhat reduced form, here follows the chronicle of getting to this point. I’m going to post it in two parts, because a whole lot of crap was packed into the last few days.

Monday, 1:30 pm: My mom and I leave the house, heading for LaGuardia. The plan: NY to Houston to Bogota to San Andres to Providencia, all in all a solid 24 hours of traveling. At this point, I am wishing that I could just cut to Tuesday night and be happily and comfortably moved in, avoiding all of the hassle of traveling. (Big mistake. Tuesday night = extremely, comically miserable. If I had seen into the future, I might have chosen to abandon the whole enterprise.) We arrived at the airport, I went through security and everything, no problem, waited for the plane, and took off on schedule. Arrived in Houston at around 8:00 pm (really 9:00 with the time difference) and killed time until taking a connecting flight to Bogota at midnight. I arrived in Bogota tired but on schedule at 5:00 am. So far, so good.

I met up with Silvia and Pola, her cat, at the Bogota airport. After breakfast at a place called Crepes y Waffles (exactly what it sounds like), we made our way through security, including a security officer opening all my carry-on luggage and squeezing the lining to make sure I wasn’t concealing everything, and caught our flight to San Andres. Upon landing, we made our way past some sort of customs officer who did not seem pleased that we were planning to stay as long as we were. There, our bags were checked again. A guy at the airport helped us store our luggage for a few hours and then drove us to lunch and back. Lunch was stewed conch. It was very good. When we returned to the airport and checked in for our final flight, they informed Silvia that her cat Pola was going to have to be checked. Silvia may have thought that it was cause for concern, but it was in fact hilarious, and both I and the guy moving the luggage acknowledged this fact. When we got to the plane, the guy showed her that Pola was safely stowed on top of all the other luggage (it was a little propeller plane so all the luggage was just in the back). Providencia looked gorgeous from the air. We landed. We made it.

The hilariously, cinematically disastrous escapades of part two to come next.

Traveling

So I am leaving shortly to spend roughly three months in Providencia, a small, somewhat remote island in Colombia. I'm going to be living with my good friend Silvia, spending my time writing, exploring, and learning Spanish. I'll post updates and stories on here, so check back later to find out more about my travels. I'll also try and set up a place to look at pictures (though that might be iffy depending on Internet speed), and I'll post the link here once I get that up and running.