The Bus to Caldas

This slingshot city is a vibrant, perpetual pulse of phrenetic energy, and I am in love. Every morning around ten, the Botero Plaza bell rings, then by noon the street cart vendors pass under my balcony.

“Mango, mango, mango, y platanos y naranjas, van a ver, ven a ver!” 

Their dark, emaciated forms lean into the wooden carts as though pushing through a hurricane gale. Knotted fingers grip the wooden handles firmly as sweat melts from their faces. Some simply call out while others use an aluminum-timbered microphone.

I hop in taxis and ping from barrio to barrio, slinging up and down narrow, cobblestone streets where two cars squeeze side to side and scooters zig-zag on every side, scooters, so many scooters, and how they exist and move and never collide is a lesson in a bafflement of physics.

The tax drivers are all loco, catapulting through alleys, swerving to miss dozen and dozens of scooters, blaring horns and grunting audibly with every veering of pedestrians or cars or motorbike.

It’s humid. I open the window and drag my face through air that seems to have no gravity. It weighs on your skin like a wave, the smells of the barrios, of sancocho, bandeja paisa, and chicharrón (fried pork belly) embedding into my pores.

I get out on a corner at the top of a hill in a barrio called Santa Cruz and watch the taxi sink into the steep downward plunge and disappear. The corner is alive. 

Kids play soccer and volleyball in a lighted court and children sit under banyan trees and paint — yes, paint — from elaborate easels, their brushes dipping into oil paint and smearing landscapes on their whiteboards. Others assemble handmade wooden puzzles or play with handmade wooden toys.

I sit on a cement wall and mingle with my limited Spanish, and I realize how much they appreciate when foreigners attempt to speak the language.

Food vendors cook chicharrón on open grills and grandparents laugh with their grandchildren as teenagers skip through the squares wearing backpacks and Nike shoes. Scooters cut across sidewalks or climb up hills against traffic, some sit, parked in circles where they posture themselves backwards on the parked bikes, sipping cerveza and gobbling Spanish pizza.

What is missing are mobile phones. While they are present, teens and children are not staring at them in any part of this tableau. Columbia, like many countries, puts the US to shame in so many ways. 

Like many European countries, socializing through a connected, family-type community is how Columbia thrives and how people live into their hundreds. For me, this is missing in the States. You see it in the neighborhoods of New York like the Bronx, yet it’s not a cohesive fabric of community. The gatherings you see on corners don’t stay united like in Columbia.

In the US, it’s a selective, sheltered construct, depending on where you live. Neighbors walk to their cars in the morning and perhaps wave, but they don’t knock on your door or invite you to a community dinner. Here, I’ve been invited into homes and to other cities in Columbia by complete strangers. 

Today, my American friend, Thom, who has lived in Columbia for over twenty years, invited me to lunch and wanted to show me the city of Caldas. Thom works with several charities such as Angeles de Medellin, so I’m excited to hear about it.

In his seventies, with a recent hip and shoulder replacement, Thom and I walk to catch the bus and chat. His wobbled gait doesn’t impair his movement — I find myself trying to keep up — and he tells me his surgery was just weeks ago and that he’s done no physical therapy for it.

We take the MetroPlus bus, a lumbering, archaic tin rectangle with an enormous catholic poster of the Virgin Mary adorning the wall behind the driver. It’s filled with every example of status — young professionals, students, laborers, and street vendors.

The bus stops constantly, then chokes forward at what seems like a snail's pace.

“Twenty years. I’ve never understood the buses,” says Thom as we sit facing each other on opposite seats, allowing passengers to squeeze by. “The Metro is excellent, but the drivers are all crazy. He’s doing 45 while all the other buses are passing us.”

At a stop, a man with a large backpack enters and begins pulling different packages of candy from his bag.

“Beunos dias! Candy of every kind,” he yells, “to make your bus ride happy.”

He strolls the bus aisle, pushing candy into laps as some hand him pesos. Some, like Thom and I, refuse. It’s another Medellin grifter, a way to make a living, and this is something that I’ve seen along the Vegas-Medellin strip, route 70, and along any street in Medellin for that matter. It occurs at stop lights — young women pushing cigarette boxes up against the taxi window — tomorrow flowers or chocolate.

During dinner on any patio in the city, countless grifters appear out of nowhere offering flowers and candy and jewelry.

The bus wobbles and jerks and sways as scooters rocket by. Thom and I continue our interrupted conversation until the next stop. This time a young, long-haired kid steps on with a large speaker.

“Si! Mi nombre es Manuel y te traigo alegría con mi música!” Manuel will bring us joy with his music. The speaker blares the Latin pop song Soy Yo (I Am) and he strolls the bus aisle wrapping music.

I fell, I stood up, I walked, I got up

I went against the flow and I also got lost

I failed, I found myself, I lived it and I learned

Some hand him pesos, and like a ghost, folds his speaker into his backpack and at the next stop disappears into the streets.

Thom probably knows more about Columbia than most Columbians, and he admits that in a proud peacocking. Years ago, he bought a house for dirt cheap in Envigado, the city where Pablo Escobar lived and thrived for decades. He educates me on the currency, the food, and the politics.

“Number one rule? Don’t trust anyone. More visiting men have been murdered by girls working for gangs this decade than ever before. Or, these beautiful Latin women seduce then steal your passport to blackmail you.”

I tell him I’ve been careful and kept my passport in the freezer, and that I always carry my wallet clip and phone in my front pocket.

He grins. “If you do meet a Latin girl, if you’ve met family within the first five days, it’s a good sign,” he says.

The bus to Caldas passes through endless barrios, each one different, each one like a honeybee nest with people going-going-going and the endless beat of horns and engines and salsa music beating out of plaster and canyons, as the bus climbs and climbs and when I look out the rear window, I see the deep valley of where we came from now a shadowed haze.

Caldas is odd. Known for its coffee and minerals such as mercury, gold, silver and other minerals, its history is as a railroad town. Yet there is something surreal about it. 

As we approach, an archaic wide cement street mall rises out of the hills with a fountained park in the center. Old men and dogs sit under enormous trees playing cards or chess as mothers push their strollers while kids race by on fancy scooters.

Beyond the mall, a dirt road runs parallel with railroad tracks and an old, western-style town right out of a Hollywood lot emerges from the shadow. Horse posts run along the buildings, each one gnawed as though beavers were at work, only here by horses as they sat tied to the posts.

It’s muddy and horse manure mixes in with the mud and puddles dot the road like small ponds. It’s difficult to dodge the horse crap and Thom walks right through it as though it were a habit, and I realize it is, for he loves this little city at the top of the hill and comes here often.

“Can you imagine?” he says. “The trains rolling through here?” He shakes his head and looks down the tracks.

Thom seems to know everyone that passes and he calls como estes and shakes hands and smiles. In twenty years, his refined Spanish shows. 

We step into a saloon and it’s like an antique shop with American paraphernalia hanging from walls and the ceiling — sewing machines, telephone, horse saddles, old radios, rocking chairs, tables covered with old American advertisements for beer and Rock City — all planted in the middle of Columbia as though for amusement.

It’s like a movie set, with tourists and locals of every type. Attractive, leather pant-wearing women sit at tables drinking beer with their boyfriends as kids splash in the mud and crap.

Outside, tired looking horses stand tied to the posts, available for tourists to ride. Some trot on horses down the muddy road — women dressed in fancy leather boots, wearing gold necklaces and red cowboy hats — Columbian cow girls for a day. It’s like a David Lynch movie, this horse town in the shadow of a giant cement mall, but Thom loves it.

He’s cornered the saloon owners — a family — at the bar and he speaks Spanish and laughs and introduces me. Thom tells me he comes here weekly, gets off the bus like it was the train back then, and shimmies up to the bar even though he doesn’t drink.

“You should see it on the weekends. This town.” 

At lunch, Thom explains his charity work and how difficult it is getting food and water into the pueblos in the mountains. Many of the displaced inhabitants—including children — fled into the remote regions to escape the cartel gangs and civil war. Clean water is unavailable and trucks deliver it into the valley in large containers, all paid for by charities.

“Columbia has a horrific history of violence. The cartels don’t want us in the region and they make that very clear.”

For charities like Angeles de Medellin, non-stop threats exist when attempting to bring toys or water or clothes.

There are other charity venues — the orphanage, seniors, and school children — and this route sounds safer for me and I quickly tell Thom I’d like to serve when I return.

“Around this time, we have many Christmas parties. You know, Columbia is all about Navidad. Every one attends, and the children? It’s a chance to see the kids get toys and clothes they thought they’d never get.” His eyes swell with tears. “It’s what keeps me going. You know?”

After an authentic Spanish lunch, we walk past the cement mall again toward the bus stop as the sun melts over the old city's muddy, pocked road and over the tired horses, and another day folds in the city of Caldas.

Please support the 2024 Angeles de Medellin fundraiser. Help bring clean water, clothes, and toys to displaced children and families of Medellin.