Manizales Part 1 – Not the Smoothest Arrival

The whole travelling alone thing has its positives and negatives but one big plus is that if I feel like getting on a random bus to a random place one day, I can literally just do it. Something about Manizales piqued my interest, probably the fact that it sounds like it should be the name of a superstar Colombian midfielder from the 80’s, so off I went from Salento, JUST BECAUSE I FUCKING COULD.

Here’s the deal with the Coffee region: there are 2 big cities, Armenia and Pereira, which both resemble slightly more run down versions of Hull with marginally more sunshine, and are essentially just used as transit towns. I therefore utilised Armenia to transit through from Bogota to Salento, and Pereira to transit through from Salento to Manizales, and I was pleased with both experiences. Indeed I can confirm that if you don’t leave the bus station you can have a pretty great time in both, in Pereira I even had wifi and found a TV to watch about 8 minutes of the Man Utd vs Olympiakos match with a very agitated old Colombian man who didn’t seem to favour either team but I assume simply supported the notion of good football, hence his agitation. Anyway, Manizales.

I decided to do that whole Tripadvisor worship thing and just choose the number 1 accommodation there since it was a fairly spontaneous visit, and this came in the form of a small lodge up in the hills outside of the city, run by an American-Colombian couple in their 30s, the female of which looked like Mila Kunis I absolutely guarantee you I am not exaggerating here. Getting from the bus terminal to the hills seemed like quite a mission so I jumped in a cab which cost me around three quid for a 25 minute journey, and off we went, and it went fine as cab journeys usually do and we got into the hills as we were meant to and then the driver said we had arrived which I was pleased about so I got out and paid him as is customary for cab rides worldwide and he drove off, and ONLY THEN did I look around me to essentially see I was standing in the middle of a shanty town, prompting some extremely curious villagers to creep out of their iron-roofed shacks to peer at what could only be some kind of alien, albeit with a bloody fantastic beard and wearing shoes from Aldo.

One creeped a bit closer. He poked my backpack with his foot, and said something in Spanish. Now the thing about my Spanish is that it has limited proficiency in the same way a spoon might have limited proficiency when trying to slice open a pineapple. I shrugged and tried to look as apologetic as possible, which elicited some more creeping around me and a lot of suspicious muttering from the fifteen or so villagers assembled for my unprecedented arrival.

Just as I was readying myself for the greatest game of charades ever played, I remembered I had a description of the route saved on my phone (thank you very much Pereira bus station wifi you fucking beauty of a transit hub) and showed it to one younger guy who I assumed wouldn’t be freaked out by an electronic screen. He nodded knowledgeably and in a convoluted but extremely expressive manner that would put most mimes to shame, conveyed to me the plan: we were only 2km away from where I was meant to be, so he would simply drive me up there on his motorbike (simple! and totally safe!) but his friend currently had his motorbike and wouldn’t be returning for an hour so I just needed to chill out with the villagers if that was cool, which it was, because I had literally no other option. And this is where football comes in.

Football is the greatest global connector of people who come from different worlds, have nothing in common, and cannot communicate in any coherent way. Because with football , the key feature is that all important universal commonality: NAMES.

Using just facial expressions, thumbs up and (more frequently) thumbs down, I was offered coffee in one of the shacks and proceeded to talk football with about ten kids and a handful of adults from the village for a good hour. Conclusions were that they have a very low opinion of English footy at the moment, especially “El Manchester” whose current performances seemed to genuinely disgust some of my new local friends, and they have a real penchant for Cristiano Ronaldo and of course national saint Falcao, whose current injury was theatrically acted out by a couple of twelve year old boys. They had inexplicably never heard of Gareth Bale although that could be more to do with my pronunciation that any ignorance on their part (I tried Bale, Bay-el, Bal-ey and El Bale but nothing seemed to ring a bell).

The motorbike finally turned up and we embarked on a slightly perilous mountain road journey with my massive backpack somehow declining to tip the bike over, and rocked up at the gorgeous cabin just in time for dinner with my hosts, Daniel and Mila Kunis, who were regaled with this story in equal or even more detail so LUCKY THEM!

Then I went to bed and dreamt about Falcao dressed as a mime riding a motorbike. Manizales part 2 to follow.