Sorry I haven't posted recently. It's not that I've been busy, I just haven't been really motivated to blog. I've got a bit of a case of cabin fever, I think. Anticipating my upcoming adventure to Panama has kind of left me restless, and in thinking of what i'd be doing in the states—or more accurately, what those I've left behind are doing—has me feeling a little depressed. Strange, huh? But I'm not exactly pining for the monotony of a normal life, so much as caught suspended between dreaming my dreams and living them. And I suppose since panama is my next big dreamed adventure, I have nothing to do but wait it out, and then enjoy it while it lasts.
On Saturday I went with my aunt Machelle and my friend Kevin to a fishing village just outside of Barranquilla called Las Flores. We ate at a resaurant right on the banks of the river Magdelena, the fish was incredible (even as cold leftovers that night).
It went from sunny and clear to rainy in less than an hour. We were worried that we picked a bad day to come see the mouth of the river. But, by the time we had finished our meals it had stopped raining. We decided to walk to the 'trencito'. But after a quick field test proved the frictional qualities of the mud to be lacking (while simultaneously confirming normal gravitational conditions), we decided to take a bici-taxi (bicycle taxi). The 'Trencito' is a passenger car about 12 feet long, with a tarped roof. It sits on tracks that were laid for the purpose of moving material and workers along the 14 kilometro long (or is it miles?) levee, or dike, which separates the sea from the river. This prevents the river banks from fluctuating as much with the tide, or during storms, and effectively puts the mouth some distance from the original mouth of the river. I don't know the exact value of this, but i assume it expands fishing areas, harboring space... Perhaps even helps regulate the flow of garbage into the ocean. Anyway, whatever the reason, it was definitely an undertaking to build.
Since then, the tracks have been turned into somewhat of an obscure tourist attraction, most patrons are Colombianos from different parts of the country. It costs 8.000 pesos ($4) for a roundtrip ride to the end of the tracks. There are about 4 different, individually-owned an opperated passenger cars, with one long plank benches powered with what must be a 12HP gasoline engines, which need a push to help getting the cars moving.
At a couple of points along the way out (circumstantially dictated), we would stop so an in-bound car could pass. This is a familiar concept to me, having worked a summer on a train in Alaska. However, there were no side tracks, or switches. There are only one set of tracks. I assumed the routine, then, would be for the in-bound and out-bound passengers to get off of their respective passenger cars and switch. But the complication, my aunt explained, was that each car is individually owned and operated. I remember a similar issue with water taxis to La Playa Blanca, in Santa Marta, which is inaccessable by land. I assumed that once you were at the beach, it didn't really matter which boat you took back, as long as you had a receipt to show you came in on one. But the problem then would be that one taxi might have a higher in-bound (returning) headcount than outbound, meaning that someone else, supposedly, had a hire outbound (paying end) headcount, and less returning. Therefore, unequal distribution of earnings. So the beach patrons were required to return on the same boat(or at least the same company) as they came with.
So it was at Las Flores. If only one car picked up new/paying passengers, the others would be making no profit. So all patrons were to remain with their original Trencito. So how do they manage it? Some simple math will show us the way.
Tren A is headed AWAY FROM Las Flores going 15 miles per hour, while Tren B is headed TOWARDS Las Flores at 12 miles per hour (this is an educated guess, which assumes equal gear and power configurations between train cars, and assumes roughly 1:1 horsepower to average-sized passenger ratio after canceling out gross vehicle weight). When they meet, each decelerates at roughly the same rate until coming to a (localized) complete stop. The passengers of one car will disembark (I'm not sure what the formula is for determining which it will be, but it includes a complex body mass index calculation which is multiplied by 1.25 per decibel, which is then given an OPIR (or Overall Physical Intimidation Rating) value, which compared between car operators. The bigger guy gets his (right-of-) way.
After the passengers of Tren B have disembarked, the opperators of the two cars then remove Tren B from the tracks as follows:
Respective operators of cars A and B effect the movement of Car B by applying force to said object, when the force applied (roughly on a verical vector) is equal to, and surpassing the the counter-forces (gravity, friction)one end of the car is lifted off the tracks. This process is repeated for the other end. Force is then applied on a lateral vector until Car B is clear of the tracks. Car A is then pushed down the tracks and Car B is replaced on the tracks. Down the line some way, the process was repeated: folks get off of one car while it is taken off the tracks, the other car rolls through, and the first car is put back on the tracks. They do this with commendable efficiency.
Once we got to the end of the line, we found ourselves among fishermen's huts constructed mainly of scrap lumber and junk like shipping pallets, road signs etc. There was a storm brewing on the way out, and now it was upon us; Just as we started to walk to the very end of the levee, the rain came tumbling down. We mused over spontaneous human combustion, lightning, the roofless "baños" which were a glorified perch over the river—sans TP—and at a cost of 200 pesos for men, and 500 for women, as we stood waiting out the storm in the shelter of a bar (the only thing on the chalkboard menu was "cerveza") which was constructed from the same general materials as the surounding shanties.
These shanties ("buildings" in the most basic sense of the word) had a very striking appearance. The wood was an Ashen grey, seasoned with salty mists from the sea just inches away on this narrow strip of piled rocks, and crumbled seashells. On some walls, the nails were neatly in a row, and the oxidation permeated the surounding wood, staining it orange and dark red. The fishermen were scarce—probably weathering out the rain at the end of the levee, some 300 yards further down from where the trencitos stop. After a half hour, everyone boarded the trencitos and we headed back. There were no outbound cars, as no one wants to ride in the rain.
The tarp roof leaked like a cheesecloth. And I was a bit concerned that the lightning, which was about 2-3 miles from us on the other side of the river, might prey upon a hunk of steel rolling along an otherwise low-lying stretch of ground amid what was otherwise a fairly vast waterscape. But we weren't struck. As we got back to the natural land (as opposed to the man-made levee) we found that, in addition to the streamlets that poured through the tarp overhead, the low-hanging branches would shed a wall of water on us, when the train car would bump them as it passed under. We had a little trouble getting a cab out of there, but eventually we found one. See, the streets flood something horrible here. There are no gutters. And barranqueros live in mortal fear of the "Aroyos". Which can Wash away cars and people. The streets become quintessential riverbeds, and a decent amount of rain quickly makes conditions for flash floods. About a month ago, 3 people were reported missing after an aroyo. It's assumed that they were caught up in the stream, dashed against a streetlight or telephone pole, and washed down into the river, and swept out to sea.
But mainly my experience has been that the aroyos are an excuse to stay home and wait it out.
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