I am home in Santa Elena, after an excruciating eighteen day stay in Bogotá and one of the strangest road trips of my life. Bogotá is a rough city situated at high elevation and despite being within the tropical latitudes, Bogotá is cold and it rains often. About half the taxi drivers in Bogotá try some sort of scam to extort more money from their passengers. Soon after I arrived in Bogotá from Pacho in tow behind a tow truck, I left my van in the shop, I lost a credit card and I was temporarily left without access to the little money I possessed. A few days later my tax returns were electronically deposited into my bank account, my house tenants made a punctual deposit of the monthly rent and I again possessed money and I was content and enjoying the hard life of Bogotá. About twelve hours after the money was deposited in my bank account a mob of thieves stole my wallet, which contained my credit and debit cards, my driver’s license and a collection of monetary notes from different parts of the world. In a few minutes I went from a moderately content gringo stranded in Bogotá, to an extremely stressed, somewhat frantic gringo without access to one peso or any hope of escaping Bogotá. After a number of phone calls and hours on hold I cancelled my credit cards, arranged for American Express to send me money via Western Union, arranged for a new debit card to be sent to the hostel where I was staying and thought I had solved the majority of my financial woes. A few days later a new debit card arrived and I went to the bank to withdraw money and discovered that the bank had changed the PIN number. After a few more days and a few more hours on the telephone, mostly spent waiting on hold, I learned that the new PIN number was never mailed to Bogotá, but I at least activated the new debit card and I was able to make with-drawls at the bank window, which are only open weekdays from 9 to 5.
On my sixteenth day in Bogotá the mechanic finally finished rebuilding the motor of my hippie van and worked late into Saturday night because of my presence and insistence and mounted the motor. Finally at about 10:00 PM the van started up and whistled like a Volkswagen whistles. I had managed to make enough cash advances and Western Union transfers to pay the hefty bill for the rebuilt motor. I paid the mechanic and left the shop en-route to my hostel where I intended to stay one last night and prepare for an early morning departure from Bogotá to Santa Elena and my finca just outside of Medellin. About five minutes after I left the shop the van stalled in front of a brothel in a less than desirable barrio of Bogotá. The van would not start so I hailed a cab and returned to my hostel. I summoned the help of a Colombian friend; a tall brute of a man with the build and mentality of a North American football player. We pushed my van aimlessly about Bogotá for a couple hours, mostly as a demonstration of brute strength and masculinity and finally arrived at safe place to park in the streets of Bogotá for the remaining few hours of the night. Finally Monday afternoon about 3:00 PM the mechanic made the last of the repairs and adjustments, I was satisfied with the performance of the rebuilt motor, all of my belongings were packed and I set out on the eight or nine hour road trip to Medellin. In my hasty exodus of Bogotá I failed to withdraw more pesos for the road trip home. What I had in my pocket was just enough to pay for gasoline and the various tolls along the highway and if absolutely necessary a cheap roadside hotel. My debit card was still without PIN, thus a roadside ATM was not an option.
The police stop and search vehicles and check for documents at random check points along the highways of Colombia. I expected to be stopped by the police between Bogotá and Medellin so I devised a story that was mostly the truth to explain why I was traveling alone and without a driver’s license in an uncertified van. My story was something to the effect that my van broke twice, once in Villavicencio and once in Pacho. I arrived in Bogotá in tow behind a tow truck, I spent eighteen days in Bogotá waiting for my van to exit the shop, while I waited in Bogotá a mob of thieves stole my wallet which contained my driver’s license and all but one of my credit cards and that my only remaining credit card was nine hours away in Santa Elena.
Sure enough the police stopped me twice. The police of Colombia are mostly young men in their early twenties that roam the streets and highways of Colombia with machine guns, motorcycles and adrenaline and as a result they are often mischievous. Both times the police stopped me, they asked for my driver’s license and then I gave them my story about my van breaking in Pacho, being robbed of my wallet and driver’s license in Bogotá and that I only had enough money in my pocket to pay for the gasoline and tolls for my return trip to Santa Elena. Both times the police fell into fits of laughter at the spectacle of a gringo in an illegal and uncertified 1955 Volkswagen hippie van somewhere between Bogotá and Medellin, with no driver’s license, and without one peso. The police told me that I had to park my car and take a bus to Medellin and return with a friend with a valid driver’s license. Both times I bought the police a round of coffee and spent a good half hour discussing the women of Colombia, the rivers of Colombia and the climate of Colombia. After the police thoroughly harassed me and entertained themselves for the evening they released me from detention and sent me on my.
I drove late into darkness and my van was running well and consuming gas at a reasonable rate. I considered finding a roadside hotel for the night, but I was confident that my van could cross the cordillera without problems and momentum seemed to be on my side. I was enjoying the warm tropical breeze from my open windows and quite content because my Spanish had progressed to the point that I could lie to the police like a Colombian. After driving an hour or so north up the Magdelena River, I turned west towards the Central Cordillera onto a stretch of highway that until recently was considered dangerous, and is still heavily guarded by the army with tanks and heavy artillery. Now the highway is safe, but the few pueblos that are just a few kilometers up the side roads are not safe pueblos for a gringo or even most Colombians to stop. As I approached the Central Cordillera, I could see the flashes of lightning in the towering cumulus clouds of a heavy tropical thunderstorm that covered the mountains.
Close to Rio Claro and the beginning of the ascent into the Central Cordillera, I finished a large borrito that I had been saving for a week and all was well, quite well. Then the Army stopped me for what I assumed was either to tell me to find a hotel and travel by day because the guerrillas were restless further up the highway, or to check my documents and harass me for driving an uncertified vehicle without a driver’s license. However, to my surprise the army officer pleasantly greeted me and asked me if I would take two young women, one who was sick, to the nearest hospital in Santuario about two hours away. I agreed and the two young women, I would guess in their mid teens, and a child of six or seven years crammed into the front seat with me. We continued up the cordillera and into the heart of the tropical thunderstorm. Heavy rain pounded the metal roof of my van and the bright flashes of lightning against the black night temporarily blinded me. I leaned over the steering wheel and concentrated on following the yellow line that was obscured by the storm. The girl who was sick, the older of the two, vomited out the passenger window and moaned in agony every five minutes or so. The younger girl was talking on the phone with her mother, but I could not hear much over the road noise of my hippie van and the continuous thunder of the tropical downpour. We continued this way for about an hour and then I overheard the younger girl say to her mother “Es como viene el bebé” or “It is like the baby is coming.”
I took another look at the girl who was ill and she was rubbing her pregnant belly. I asked a few question and learned that the girl was seven and a half months pregnant. We passed by two small pueblos, San Luis and San Francisco, but the girl’s mother said they were not safe places to stop. We kept driving up the cordillera into the tropical rainstorm towards Santuario and the nearest safe hospital. Just past Cocorná, only twenty minutes from the hospital in Santuario, the girl’s moans were getting louder and she moved her feet to the dashboard, so I took a look at what was going on and a head had emerged. Less than thirty-seconds later I stopped on the side of the road, exited my van, walked around the front of my van and opened the passenger side door. The girl was amazingly calm and said to me “Can you pass me my baby?” I looked to the rusted steel floor and a little boy was silently squirming around. By my GPS it was exactly midnight, in a tropical thunderstorm, in my 1955 Volkswagen hippie van, on the side of the highway between Bogotá and Medellin. I picked up the little boy and passed him to his mother. We covered the child with my shirt and jacket and continued up the highway towards Santuario. Ten or fifteen minutes later we arrived at a police check point and called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived within minutes and the two girls, the young boy, and the new born boy all loaded into the ambulance and continued to the hospital in Santuario.
At the police check point in Santuario I found a bucket of water and a broom and rinsed some of the mess from the passenger seat, rinsed the vomit from the passenger side door and drank a cup of coffee with several police officers who wanted to spar with me in martial arts and trade a machine gun for my kayak. After a cup of coffee and some strange and random bartering with the police, I continued my journey from Bogotá to Medellin on what had become one of the strangest journeys of my life. I was lost several more times before I finally found my way to Santa Elena and my bed at about six in the morning. I have since talked to the mother that gave birth in my hippie van, and all is well with her new little boy.
-Mark Hentze
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