astroanne has left 8 comments

astroanne comments on A GOOD HOSTEL?

Lovely, clean and friendly and very good value Casa Aguacanela is amongst the cheapest at 20,000 a night and in terms of quality it is really a great place to stay. The owner, Esperanza is hilarious and the views are quite beautiful. it's central but quiet in terms of traffic noises.

Her email is etrujil at yahoo.com tel 092 556 8382 or see the website
www.casaaguacanelacali.com

All the best and good luck

astroanne comments on Brief travel guide to Cali

Political eco-travel near Cali: Growing the other white powder. ....that's legal but just as lethal.




Most of us know at least a bit about the huge damage that coca-leaf cultivation and the hypocritical US-led `war`against it has done to the forests, animals, waters and people for Colombia. Yesterday I met a group of men and women in Pradera, a little town near the city of Cali, who told me about the cultivation and processing of another white powder that actually does more damage – and it`s all perfectly legal. Yes, I am talking about White Sugar.



As a vegetarian I've always tried not to consume white sugar (or the 'brown' version which is just the white stuff with added dyes) but after this meeting yesterday I'll make sure I never go near the stuff again in any shape or form.



Pradera is a small hot town at the foot of the mountains, near Cali. I was invited to come and meet a group of local people who are part of the Polo Democrático, a fusion of all the progressive left wing parties in Colombia. I expected the meeting to be about the persecution these people are suffering because recently the government and the FARC guerrilla almost arrived at an agreement to demilitarize this area in order to exchange prisoners of war. But Uribe, the cold-blooded madman-president of Colombia, finally twisted the hard-won agreement (which had been worked on for years by several European embassies) to make a humanitarian exchange of prisoners impossible and began putting local leaders in jail for no reason, saying they had to be member of the FARC. Ironically many of these people have been threatened by the FARC because they speak out against guerrilla-committed crimes.



We gathered in a room above a homely, scruffy old peoples home they manage to run on donations and to my surprise what they really wanted to talk about what the damage the sugar-cane growers have done to what was once an incredibly fertile plain worked by small farmers who produced just about everything. Over the last 40 years the small farmers have been driven into the cities by paramilitary violence against them, the rivers and the water table are being sucked dry by the sugar cane plantations and recently the government sold the local river, el Bolo, to an undisclosed multinational who will pipe the water to the port of Buenaventura for shipping to Japan….. A local teacher cried openly when he talked about this. The air stank of burning, and they told me that I was lucky it was not a glyphosate-spraying day. Monsanto Ready Round-Up (glyphosate) is sprayed regularly when the sugar is fully grown as it dries up the green part of the plant and only the sugar-filled canes need to be transported to the refineries.



I had crossed blank seas of sugarcane plantations to get to Pradera, there are none of the rich smells of countryside here, only of burning and chemicals. Here and there small plots still survive,and grow an incredible variety of fruits and vegetables, but the rest in very mono indeed.



Yet in the midst of all the bleak news of destruction, this group of new friends gave me one of the best days I have had in a while. A black friend, a leader from the Pacific coast, who had accompanied me sparked off an impromptu party by singing her own songs about resistance and then local creativity took over. A huge and extremely beautiful black man created a play on the spot that we all had to take part in, home-grown poetry sprouted from all corners of the room, an acrobat took the floor, we all sang and danced to our own songs.



Later they brought in the refreshments, coffee, cheese and….white sugar. I raised my eyebrows and coughed pointedly. Embarrassed, they explained that that's all they could afford, 'panela' - solidified whole sugar-cane juice that still has the molasses in it – has become too expensive to buy locally…..



This small group of people are just beginning to organize protest and resistance, in spite of the danger that this means for them. They would gladly receive visitors, interested in their situation. For foreigners it's not a dangerous area to visit, just an easy hours bus-ride from Cali. You can contact me at astroanne at gmail.com or directly with them at pdapraderavalle at yahoo.es They are trying to protect the headwaters of the Bolo river by buying the lands around it's source and start a locally-run ecological organic panela production plant. As I know nothing of getting funds for projects I promised I'd send these requests out into the world to see if they land on fertile ground somewhere…

astroanne comments on Brief travel guide to Cali

Great reasonably priced new hostel in Cali Casa Aguacanela

Carrera 24A no 2A - 55 Barrio Miraflores, in the centre but quiet, near some of the best dance spots, craft markets and the old town. 12USD the night, really lovely. Recommended.

The owners email is etrujil at yahoo.com, her name is Esperanza

astroanne comments on YOU BE THE JUDGE BUT ONLY COLOMBIANS REPLY

in reply to Jacinto Jacinto has raised a really important issue, one that divides Colombians passionately and extremely, sometimes along the lines of class (i.e. with the poorer people, especially country people, mainly being those who support the FARC) and sometimes not (for many poor people who voted for him, think Uribe is God the Father, as they get their brains addled daily by the extremely shallow yet violently propagandist media here.)

I agree wholeheartedly with all Jacinto writes about Uribe. If you talk of these issues with pro-Uribe Colombians here, they might defend him by telling you how they can now travel by car to visit their farms or the coast, without fear of getting kidnapped at guerrilla roadblocks. This is true but it is a limited truth because the underlying question is WHO can leave Bogota by car - a very small minority here has the money to own a car and go on weekend trips....

I admire Jacintos restrainst when critising Uribe, as the man is actually seriously psychotic, hopefully this will be his downfall someday, and hopefully someday soon - though that is hard and scary to imagine as his supporters, the right wing and the large part of the armed forces who help run the paramilitaries, would bring about a terrible bloodbath with no qualms at all rather than let go of the lands, riches and power they are legalising under his protection. That is one of the reasons why people in Colombia don't take to the streets en masse like the Bolivians or the Ecuadoreans or the Argentinians, to bring down their governments. They have much more to fear from the para-state, which kills easily, with no worries about being held legally responible, as they are armed and supported by the US state.

That's why the guerrilla had to come into existence in the first place. Like most of the armed liberation movements in the world, vulnerable people took up arms because they had to, to survive. Anyone who listens to Uribes blurb about the paramilitaries being formed in the last 2 decades to combat the guerrilla movements is ignoring recent history; the paramilitaries have existed in organised form since the 30s when an enlightened president attempted to share out land belonging to the fuedal lords of that time, and give dirt poor campesinos a few acres to subsist on. When a very few of these dirt poor campesinos managed to organise themselves into a little coop movement in Marquetalia, in the 50s, the US sent their airforce to bombard them.....Figure out for yourself who the terrorists are.

To those of you who might say yeah well thats the past, it's not. Try reading the recent history of the Peace Community of San Jose de Partado who celebrate the 10 anniversary of their existence on the 21 of Marchn 2007. They have refused to take part in the war in any way, with any of the sides and have paid with hundreds of innocents lives and a personal vendetta against them by the President himself. He was governor of Antioquia, busily legalising the paramilitaries there, when they desperately came to the decision in the 90s that the only way they could avoid becoming yet another group of refugees in the city misery belts was to stand up against the war in all its forms.

The FARC have more or less respected this position whilst Uribe takes it as a personal insult and calls them guerrillas, a death threat in this country. The main asassins of their people have been army-supported para killers.

But I do not have the absolute faith Jacinto displays in the guerrilla though I respect his point of view. Like many many Colombians I wish I could have that kind of faith but my own tragic experiences have tempered my beliefs (look up the Green Letters on www.atlantiscommunity.thinkhost.net if you want to read about this in detail.) However, most Colombians I've talked to - even many conservatives, soldiers and extreme right-wingers - admit that Colombia would be in a much worse state of subservience to the US if it were not for the existence of a well-armed guerrilla. I seriously hope that the Bolovarian movement will bring civil sense to this armed resistence movement because many fronts and leaders have lost their political direction and local miliciano groups frequently cause serious problems that has lost the movement much support here. They themselves quietly admit this.


I am grateful to Jacinto for opening such a vital issue as this in a tourists forum (though the people who write here generally have a deeper interest in Colombia than your average tourist). It would be easy for visiting foreigners to conclude that thanks to Uribe the country is safer for tourism. On the surface this seems to be true, but it is good to be aware that the poor of this country are paying dearly for that increased 'security'.
The only thing Jacinto writes that I don't agree with is the Colombian-only stricture. I'm Irish.

A.

astroanne comments on Pictures of Bush visit

The Emporer comes to town You are completely right in all you say Rubito and most Colombians , even the most conservatives, feel exactly the same.
A.

astroanne comments on Arriving in Bogota by plane - cheatsheet

A warning about recent robberies at the airport Two weeks ago a German woman had her money, papers and ticket robbed within the airport, before arriving at customs. She was a bit too relaxed by her own admission, thinking 'there wouldn't be thieves inside the terminal' but it seems someone had been watching her because from her shoulder-bag only these items of value were missing. We also heard that the same thing had happened to 3 Interpol agents not too long ago!
Then as she had no passport the DAS tried to deport her back to Europe and we had to have a four hour sit-down strike to get her released!
I love Colombia and hate having to write these things, but the less easy prey the less thieves.
Anne

astroanne comments on Colombian Films

Two excellent films Golpe de Estadio - a humourous look at the civil war.

Watch it before or after La Primera Noche, a heart-rendingly real representation of the personal situations behind war and displacement.
Anne

astroanne comments on Bogota - hostels and places to stay Travel Guide

New Hostel I am writing about a lovely new hostel that has just opened in the Candelaria on Calle 9 number 2 - 81 called Anandamayi Hostel. First I must warn ye all that this is NOT an objective review as I temporarily live and work here!(though I'm not the owner) However everyone who comes to stay falls in love with the place, so far without exception.
It's slightly more expensive than the cheapest places, 20,000 a night in the dorms (but they are beautiful and sparkling clean and have big, open, wood-fireplaces)30,000 for a private room with shared bathroom and 40,000 for a private room with private bathroom. The common kitchen/sitting room has a big wood stove as well as all mod cons. There are two indoor patios full of flowers and strung with hammocks and a big back garden with ponds, hammocks and benches. The best thing about this place is that it is quiet, no noise of traffic or neighbours, only the birds and the church bells, the views are spectacular and the air is good. A good place to recover if you're a raver and a good place to avoid the noise if you're not.
See pics on www.anandamayihostel.com
tel 341 7208
email anandamayihostel at yahoo.com
Anne