100,000km - Return to Colombia

Today, we left Brazil and arrived in Colombia. Changed planes in Bogota, then on to Cartagena. Somewhere on the 1st leg, we passed the hundred thousand kilometres travelled. That is a fitting metaphor for how much Colombia has changed since I was first here in 1997.

Back then, when I arrived at the airport, I was met by a security team, holding up not my name but a code. I was told to show passport control a hotel where I had a booking, but that security would take me to a different one. My security had two cars, not one. The second car was there to prevent another car from pushing my car off the road. To top it all, the security had hand grenades. "More effective than guns," but they had guns too, the boss was ex army , and he was simply known as colonel. He stuck with me until I passed airport security on the way out. That was all the time of the civil war that lasted 50 years. Then the FARC surrounded Bogotá and they paid criminals to take businessmen and foreigners hostage. They usually extorted $1Mio for a release. I admit I was a bit scared.

I was back in Bogota in 2012/2013, and since there had been an effective peace agreement, everything had changed. No personal security, I could walk outside!

Now, almost all remnants of the civil war are gone, except some smaller factions of the FARC that are criminal gangs in remoter areas.

One thing is however unchanged and that is that Colombia remains at the centre of global cocain production, but it seems well hidden from view.

This time, I will visit Cartagena for the first time, and we spend our entire stay here in coastal towns. ( I couldn't convince Flo to go to Medellín for a couple of days).Читать далее