Day 51: Reunion with the car & hightailing it out of Cartagena - Tuesday December 28, 2010

Wilmer Ortega, our Colombia agent, and I started out of our elegant Sofitel Santa Clara at 7:30am. I wanted to take few chances on picking up the car today. Carol was quite unhappy about my wasting her time yesterday with my optimism. Guilty as charged. So she stayed in town to track down some maps. Also, she is suffering from another bout of turista. It still took another 4 ½ hours to finish the paperwork for “permission” to get my car back. I am embarrassed for the Colombian people that they have to put up with such man made obstacles that make little sense.

Example: We had to go to 7 windows this time to pay about $60 for the inspection of the car. Why didn’t anyone tell us about it yesterday when we were in the same office – a sequential process? After each paper, one goes through a series of mojos. It was clear that this Gringo was indignant at the senseless process so there was some effort to get me on my way. One fellow at the port has been keeping statistics on how long it takes to clear one’s car in Cartagena Harbor and said that 1-½ days beat the 2+-day average. The misery of shipping the car dominated 12 days. Yikes!

Sr. Ortega lived in the first big town on our way so we gave him a ride home. He regaled me with his life story for the past 15 years. Traffic slows to pedestrian speed when the highway goes through a town’s market or bus/taxi “terminal”. We didn’t care. We drove through one of the major flooded districts. It was so much like the New Orleans situation with poor blacks living in a flood plain. The river overflowed its banks and was even above the elevated highway level in some places. The people just started living on the banks of the elevated highway and made the best of the flooding by fishing instead of farming. After about 4 hours, we were tired and it was nearing dark so we are spending the night at Sincelejo – some 300 miles short of Medillen.