San Andres Island, Columbia

I took a side trip to San Andres island Columbia. I did a tour trip that was all inclusive. One of my girlfriends from Costa Rica came with me. We had to fly out of San Jose to Panama City and then transfer planes and fly to San Andres. It was her first flight ever and she had some serious white knuckles on the takeoff and landing. We picked a poor time to go because there was a hurricane swirling out in the gulf. Our flight from Panama City was delayed for hours while the storm passed over near to the island. I tried to get our trip changed to a later date but since we were already into it they refused to cancel or change anything. We finally took off and made it to the airport at San Andres about two hours after the storm went by. It was still pouring tropical rain. We transferred to our hotel and took showers and rested a bit before going down to eat our all inclusive dinner. It sucked. I guess I just don't like Columbian style food. They seem to bread and deep fry everything. There is about a half inch thick coating of greasy breading over everything and for bread they eat deep fried balls of dough with some cheese thrown in just to make sure the fat and cholesterol content are sufficient to clog up even the healthiest hearts. I could not eat food like this. So we went out to find some healthier food.

There were some broken windows in some of the shops and almost no people on the streets since a hurricane had passed only a few hours earlier. All the trees were stripped of their leaves and there was debris all over the streets from the big blow. We went to every open restaurant we could find and they all had the same deep fried food. I finally found a restaurant that claimed to have fresh vegetables and European style food and we went in to eat. I explained to the waiter that I was happy to finally find a restaurant that did not serve just Columbian food and he told me they have authentic French, German and Italian style dishes. I ordered some french style beans, a salad and some spaghetti with meatballs. We drank a couple of glasses of aguardiente which is a popular drink while we waited. They tasted like licorice and were very potent. When the first plate of food came out of the kitchen it was the French beans dish. It looked like a half dozen corn dogs on a plate. Each green bean was coated in the same thick breading as all the food at the hotel and deep fried. I wanted to scream. I just pushed the plate back in the hands of the waiter and asked for the bill. They insisted on bringing out the rest of the food first and they did. The meat balls came out next and they were breaded just like the beans were and then had some spaghetti sauce over the top of them. I half expected the spaghetti noodles to come out coated in breading too but they just came out in a gelatinous pile of over cooked starch. I paid my bill and we left without eating any of the food. Instead we found some fresh fruit on the street that we bought and we ate bananas and mangos for our dinner.

We took a public bus back to the area of our hotel. We got on the bus that was crowded with well dressed business workers commuting home after working downtown. I was talking to my girlfriend in Costa Rican Spanish and the people around us heard my girlfriend talking with her Costa Rican accent. All the other passengers on the now standing room only bus immediately started to talk in very threatening and intimidating ways about Costa Ricans. My girlfriend heard them threatening her directly and talking very badly about Costa Ricans in general. She started to shake from fear and then to cry and that just encouraged the entire bus load of people to pick on her even more, directly threatening her life. I was kind of shocked at the behavior of these people that looked so professional in their dress talking such trash to an innocent woman. I grabbed her hand and we went to the door. The people were pushing and shoving at her as we walked to the door. Some of them intentionally stepped on her feet. When we got to the door the driver stopped the bus and opened the door to let us out and even he made some foul mouthed curses at us as we stepped off the bus.

I could not believe the way the people treated her. I know Costa Ricans and also Argentinians are known through out Central and South America for their attitude of treating the people from other countries like dirt because the Costa Ricans and Argentinians feel like they are superior to all the other countries. I had never before seen the other countries do it back to them like they did to my Costa Rican girlfriend. She could not stop crying and kept saying that she wanted to go back home to Costa Rica to get away from these animals. We walked all the way back to the hotel and went up to the room to call it a night.

The next morning I convinced her that everything would be alright because nobody would know she was from Costa Rica unless she spoke to them. I told her to practice her English in public from then on or to just say nothing. She agreed to stay and we went out to the beach. She was still scared and refused to talk. I didn't mind so much that she wasn't talking. We went on a semi submersible boat tour to look at the colorful fish and corals around the island. That too was pretty much a bust. Everything was covered in sand from the big storm the day before. There were schools of colorful tropical fish but not much else to look at. My girlfriend never made a peep the entire ride. She just clung to my side and looked at the fish in silence. We also took a boat ride out to Johny Cay to see the beach and have some lunch. We stuck to eating fruit instead of more fried foods.

In the afternoon we went on a fishing trip. It was meant to be a fishing trip outside the reef but when we got to the opening in the reef, the waves were too big to make it safely through in our little panga so we just trolled around along the inside of the reef and caught a few triggerfish and other fish that I don't know the names of. We just released them all. My girlfriend loves to fish and she was actually enjoying herself for the first time since we left Costa Rica. I let her bring in all the fish that we hooked.

At night we went to a club that had a floor show. Our hotel had a floor show too that we went to earlier but it was just such a pathetic show that it was almost funny to watch. At least this other club had a better show. I drank beer instead of their famous aguardiente drink because I did not want a hangover from the cheap rum in it. I enjoyed the second show. At least it had some good looking Columbian girls in it wearing skimpy clothes. There were a lot of Columbian prostitutes working all over the streets and in the bars and clubs. Some of them were just beautiful girls.

The next day we did a tour around the island. We went to the pirate cave first. It had about six or seven separate museum rooms with authentic pirate junk on display. I think they bought it all at a dollar store. Each room had a guide in it that told you the same things as in all the other rooms but each guide held their hands out for a tip as you left the room. At the end of the tour of the "museum" we got to the pirate cave which was the highlight of the tour. They walked us up to a garbage strewn cave that was full of water and told us that we would have to wade through the filthy chest deep water to get in the cave. Not one person was willing to step into the garbage pit. We got back into our private taxi tour with our driver guide and went to the next site on the tour. The second stop was a blow hole along the beach. We got out and fed the nice colorful fish some bread that they sold us to feed the fish and watched as two kids rented the available snorkles and masks to swim in the school of fish. We asked where the blow hole was and our guide pointed to a drainage pipe and told us the tide was too low for the blow hole to function. He took us over to where the blow hole blows and we looked at the hole in the ground and put our ears down near it to listen to the roar of the missing blow hole. I told the driver that we could go now but that I wanted to stop by again when this attraction was blowing water not just hot air. So went and ate our lunch at a nearby restaurant up on a high hill overlooking the ocean. We had Cuban sandwiches which I really enjoyed. It was the only meal I had in San Andres that I enjoyed. After lunch and a few beers we went back to the blowhole to see if there was any water blowing. This time there was a small puff of water that came out of the pipe and sprayed water up into the air. We oooooood and aaaaaaaawed in jest and left quickly.

We ended the tour there even though there were several other exciting stops we were going to miss. I asked the driver if he would just drive us around and show us interesting thing that he liked instead of these tourist thing. So he agreed.

The first thing he showed us were a bunch of mansions. Some of them were occupied and some of them were empty but they were all drug lord homes. He told us stories about some of the empty ones and how the drug lords were killed by rival cartels or arrested by the government. I found that way more interesting than the tour. Then he showed us the night clubs that the locals go to. They were dance clubs painted black with armed guards standing out in front. Apparently they were open 24/7. He told us that they were very dangerous and had a lot of shoot outs in them. No tourists go to them because they are too dangerous. There is a lot of cocaine and other things going on he told us. Then he took us to show us how the common people live. We went to his uncles farm and he walked us around their house and farm. The entire farm was about five thousand square feet including the ramshackle house. I was kind of surprised the storm did not blow this building down. I enjoyed his personal family tour. He took us to the local swimming beach where no tourists go just locals and we hung out and got some sun while we drank some beer and ate some fried plantain. I tipped him for the tour and told him he should start his own tour company and do the tour he did for us because the other tour was just a rip off.

We spent the rest of out time hanging out at the deserted beach or at our hotel pool. My girlfriend was more relaxed now but she still refused to speak around any other people. We flew back to Panama City and then San Jose Costa Rica and spent one night in San Jose before we drove back to Manuel Antonio again.