Captain One-Eye's prostitution problem

“We don’t sign contracts or any of that nonsense. Here, you give your word and shake hands. If you keep your side of the deal, no problem. If you don't? Problem.” Saying this, the salty Colombian sailor made a shooting pistol gesture with his hand, squinting the eye that wasn't covered by an eye patch as he took casual aim.

Our passports weren't ready, nothing to do but come back later, but the Cartagena heat was enough to melt the most ardent of itineraries, and what would be a better use of time than lolling around a crumbling yacht harbor, listening to an eye-patched sailor anyway?


He was explaining that Colombia is a culture of honesty. “If we make a deal, and I cheat you? Que me jodes. If you cheat me...” a shrug of the shoulders. Clearly there would be no other option than reliable-calliber justice, if you cheat Captain One-Eye.



He went on to explain that this was the problem with Obama and the prostitutes.


“Obama and the whatnow?” I asked, having been completely out of touch for 5-to-50 days.


The scandal of Secret Service members contracting with prostitutes in Cartagena had broken a week before my arrival in the city. In the US everyone was (pretending to be) shocked that Secret Service agents, single young testosteroney men pursuing a cinematastic career that is remarkably boring despite the constant possibility of death and/or glory, who suddenly found themselves in a place like Cartagena, had gone dancing and come back with hookers. How astonishing!


In Colombia, on the other hand, no one cared a whit that they had gotten hookers. That was uninteresting. The scandal in Cartagena was that they hadn’t paid up as agreed.

The story was that the agents has misunderstood the price, so when the time came to pay up, some of the agents reneged on their agreement. This was unacceptable to el Capitan. “You get a woman, you pay the woman. If you don't understand what you agreed to? That is your problem, you agreed.”


He sat back in his seat, disappointed at the failure in etiquette. I felt embarrassed for my countrymen, and apologetic. “I'm sorry Captain, I'm sure next time they'll be paradigms of moral virtue, and pay for their prostitutes like good, respectable men.”




Did I mention you encounter other perspectives when you travel?

A Cartagena Surprise.

Old Town, Cathedral on
right, Botero on the left.

Buy a coconut, carriage
ride, or colonial balcony.

Cartagena has three main sections (plus the long expanse of skyscraper hotels and offices stretching off down the coast). The Old Town is the primary tourist section, with museums, shops, and discotecas, where old walls, either crumbling or restored, line the narrow streets with colorful exuberance and colonial history. (There’s an expensive restaurant where the slave market used to be.)  Rooms here cost 3-4 suitcases full of money.

San Diego.

To the northeast is San Diego, for the still-affluent but not extravagantly so. The buildings are all in good condition, the paint new, the personality slightly bleached. A relative bargain, it only takes one suitcase full of cash to spend the night here. This is where the well-to-do Colombian tourists seem to stay.

Then there’s Getsemani. Guidebooks describe neighborhoods like this as “gritty.” There are stray dogs, homeless, expanses of rotting garbage, and flocks of backpackers cramming into party hostels. A meal here costs about $4, there are real people in the street and plazas, and you don’t get hassled nearly as much.

Getsemani. Home sweet home.

I got lucky when I rocked up off the boat, Australians in tow, and ended up at the quiet one. There is no real common area to meet people, and there have only been a few other travelers. After a few days the Aussies left and, missing human contact, I went to look at other options. Each time I found a typical backpacker hostel, crammed with drunken kids chasing into each other’s underwear, for about twice the price. I’m too old and spoiled for that crap right now.

So I’ve been enjoying the quiet comfort of the Hotel Familiar (remember, it's Spanish). I got lucky though and met a little group of travelers in a restaurant a couple nights ago, so get to hang out with people as long as I want, then have a quiet place to sleep. We also made friends with the restaurant staff, who have been hanging out with us after work.

Today I ran into one of the waitresses out front (the restaurant is 2 doors down) waiting in the blazing sun for her shift to start. It was brutally hot and I offered to let her wait in my room, which has no aircon but does have a good fan. She hung out for about 10 minutes, checked her facebook on my computer and talked at that machine-gun speed about her family (talking to Colombians is maybe the world’s most challenging and interesting Spanish class) then went to work.

After she left the hotel staff informed me that there is a charge of 15,000 Colombian pesos (about $8) for visitors.

Sorry for the distraction, they just have
such kickass doors here. I have dozens
of pictures like this.

What?!? They pointed to a small sign up in the corner saying as much. Oh. This was one of the stranger things I’ve encountered…it took me a few minutes to figure it out.

Prostitution is legal in Colombia. Apparently the way it works here is they go to the specific bars, pick their girl, then either take them back to their hotel or to another one, which charges an hourly rate. Saying this, I suspect that is how prostitution works all over the world, but I hadn’t really thought about it as being different from the European Red Light Districts, where they have their own little rooms.

Once I started thinking about it I got a new impression of the rooms upstairs, since there is no stairwell that I have seen, nor any people up there, other than what I assumed was a couple getting intimate up there a few days ago.

For the last week I have been living in a brothel.

Well, not really a brothel, per se, but still. The “visitor” charge must be for prostitutes, but since it’s a general-language rule, they’re going to charge me for letting a friend browse her facebook here for 10 minutes. I can’t think of a more peculiar way to throw away $8.

Man, I ate a lot of food today, or, where are the prostitutes? or, warning.

Are my blogs boring as all hell?  “Today I rode a bicycle home from work and it was cold.” Yeah.

Not sure what else to write.  I want to interview prostitutes.  Is that more interesting?  It is for me.  I want to know how they feel about it.  Do they ever enjoy themselves?  Are they friends with each other?  Do they have to work in a different region of the country from where they live?  How long do they do that work for and how are they different after their first two weeks?  Do they view other customers in line at the grocery store differently than they did before?

But right now I’m just full of great Thai food.  One of K’s friends is rather impressively sick of Belgium so in order to change her life is moving to Austria.  Not exactly a complete paradigm shift, but still impressive that she’s doing something instead of just bitching about it (maybe more about that later, if I am not overcome by chicken satay lethargy).

So to farewell her a bunch of us met up at a fancy-pants Thai restaurant in Brussels that has a Michelin star.  Sounds embarrassing to be a one-star restaurant, but, tremendously counter-intuitively, getting a star from a tire-company means you’re hot shit.

So we ate beef and chicken and calamari and scallops and oysters and probably pork and there were massive prawns.  Meat lurked or strutted in most things, but they brought K some specially made vegetarian spring rolls, which scored them big points in my book.

This place was kinda nutty.  They had their own brand of cloth napkins, toothpicks, and even the bottles of beer had a special Blue Elephant label on them.  Que chic, eh?

We went in there before noon, and here I am at 22:49 still feeling full and burping well-seasoned red curry.

Now, this blog makes no sense, and while waiting to see if I would post it I just typed up another one that is way worse.  I’ll post that one first, so an innocent visitor like yourself will see this relatively harmless one first and allow me to warn you that the big one below is a rambling stream of consciousness and really not worth your time, I just feel like I haven’t posted much on here lately and want to use up a few more of google’s infinite memory bits.  Why do I feel like tomorrow morning  I am going to regret posting these?