Couchsurfing

What a wonderful world we stumbled upon.

Thanks to Sea´s suggestion that we check out couchsurfing we emailed username Vahine and timidly asked if we could come stay. A big open yes and we nervously entered her appartment in the ´miami´area of Cartagena to find out what this was all about. We walked into an atmosphere of big hearts and questioning minds. Sharing a floorspace initially with two Argentian girls and a French couple on their way to Guatemala. Our host was a lovely Tahitian/French girl who has made her home into a kind of open house for people passing by. She served us Tahitian ceviche, and a big baked fish as we sat round her kitchen table and talked and talked.

Then out came the acupuncture needles. I had been suffering from a fever and bad stomach since the trip to the Ciudad Perdida and one of the Argentian girls kindly offered to try and cure me. The ear is supposed to represent the foetus curled up in the womb upside down and so different parts of it correspond to different parts of the body. She pressed with a metal prong to find the most painful parts (which unsurprisingly corresponded to my liver and intestine) and then inserted needles at those points. It worked wonders. My stomach muscles relaxed and I was able to sleep a night without rushing to be sick in the toilet.

Days three and four swapped our lovely Argentinians (who we hope to stay with in Buenos Aires) for a remarkable Colombian woman travelling up through America in her 1960s mercedes. She has already travelled all the way round South America solo and is now on her way to the North to Alaska, if as a Colombian she can make it across the strict US border. In addition was a lovely American girl studying ways of settling peace and the value of story-telling in the justice system.

For the first time since our trip began we were able to find out more about this country that we are enjoying. As a resident of Medellin, Lucana lived through the mafia´s stronghold on her city, when people feared to leave their houses and mothers tried in vain to stop their sons being tempted by the huge wealth that was being offered to them as drug mules, pilots and bodyguards. This business devastated her family. Her brother, a small-time bodyguard, was killed in the big ´clean up´of the city by the police that finally defeated the drug lords. Another brother was shot, paralysed from the waist down. Heads stopped being sent in boxes and forced buyouts of longheld family properties that the mafia took a fancy to.

The drugs are still there but out of the cities. The dealers are now the paramilitaries and guerillas who still control much of the country. They have displaced millions, making Colombia the country with the second most displaced people after the Sudan. The drug trade keeps them from needing to do much kidnapping these days to get money. And now the drugs are not just for export, but internal consumption is growing too.

And now there is a process of victim compensation. Yet who are the victims?

Lucana, generous as the Colombians are, hooked us up with our next two informal couchsurfs. Staying with her brother on his finca on the coast and then with her sister in Medillin which is where I now write this from. A reformed city of eternal spring.

Couchsurfing has opened our eyes and we have hooked into a big international network. But having spent our last couple of weeks as guests, we are looking forward to a bit of time on our own!