Life in Cartagena has taken a turn from the sublime to the ridiculous. The life I am living is not my own, nor is anything that can be described as more than a game. The group of friends into which I have been initiated is an eclectic selection of restaurant owners, photographers, magazine editors, architects and wedding planners: professionals who have found their way in the world and are settling into a life of luxury. The average age of the extended group is around the mid-thirties, and so I am by far and away the youngest, which has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, my youth (and nationality) carries a novelty, and people are drawn to my fresh, if not naive, view of the world. However, I am often left feeling as if there were some secret that someone neglected to tell me, and though people seem to think I am mature for my age, I often miss just being silly, speaking in a Polish accent, wearing my hair like a pineapple, walking like the vulchers from the jungle book, dancing like my Dad, or shouting obscenities at good looking boys. This is not to say that the group doesn’t like to party. Oh no. The hedonism of Cartagena is something to behold. Often fifty year olds leave me gasping for air in their dust.
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| Homoerotic Guards |
Take Halloween. Colombia takes Halloween very seriously, with every single shop window and street corner paying homage to the night of the living dead. I was invited to a Fiesta de Locos in a restaurant in a decrepit colonial house. The night began at a friend’s house, where vodka was flowing like water. I arrived, (dressed and painted like clown that fell off a lorry, bumped its head and ended up in a disco), leaping through the door (I like to get into character when I don a costume). Sympathetic grimaces bounced from face to face, as only one other person was in costume, and she was a vampish 1940’s flapper girl who men were literally walking into walls from staring at her so much. Luckily, being the group’s adopted daughter, people seemed to find it endearing, and proceeded to pour vodka down their child’s neck.
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| Disco clown with Chilean miner....a bit soon methinks... |
And so to the restaurant.... The huge wooden outside door was “guarded” by two well muscled (I thought rather homoerotic but no one paid any attention to that), masked bouncers, who ticked our names off the list. So what I was down as Isis Fanboo, I was on the list yo’! On entering, we proceeded down a dimly lit corridor and then out onto a court yard with a fountain, hanging greenery (for want of a better word) and a DJ suspended above us on a platform. There were fire eaters, human tigers, palm readers and a crazy lady dressed as a bride running around screaming. I was jealous. It’s been too long since I dressed as a bride....
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| Human Tiger |
An awkwardly polite half hour ensued as the who’s who of Cartagena arrived and I sank further into misery as sexy black cat after naughty Cleopatra after saucy Esmerelda swanned past me, mocking me with their sophistication. I needn’t have worried though, as Cartagena rapidly remembered why it was there: P.A.R.T.Y. And so the whiskey and sparklers came out, fresh hits of the ‘80s assaulted our ears (“this is the music I partied to at your age” seemed to be the phrase of the night) and before you could say “it was acceptable in the ‘80s” Cleopatra was soaking in the fountain, flapper girl was attempting to scale the wall using said “greenery” as ab-sailing ropes and the deranged clown was being removed from the DJ booth by the homoerotic guards after insisting that Don’t you want me baby was “her” song. Suddenly, it was 6am and very, very light and we were unceremoniously thrown out onto the street. It must have been a bizarre scene for the early risers of Cartagena. But this was not enough for the club kids of Cartagena. TO THE BEACH! We piled into cars and taxis like rag dolls with vertigo and descended on the owner of the restaurant’s beach side apartment, trying to keep straight faces as the doorman solemnly allowed us to enter. The day could not have been more beautiful, and the apartment was flooded with light. More whiskey, more costumes, worse music, and to the balcony. 10am, and finally enough possessions were gathered to go to the beach. We filed downstairs (by now a group of 6 survivors, all around 40 years old) and casually dressed in Father Christmas hats and beer bottle shaped sun glasses finally made to the sea, as appalled holiday makers shielded their children. 12pm and I could take no more. I left the others to their whiskey and the sun and taxied back home to bed in a bemused haze. Happy Halloween...
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| Nonchalant fancy dress on the beach. 12 pm....ouch. |
This all leads to the question, “where on earth are all the people my own age?”. The answer is simple. People just do not stay in Cartagena for university. They either go to the capital city Bogota, or, more fashionably, the United States. And because living in Cartagena is unbelievably expensive, they don’t move back there until they have made a small fortune elsewhere. Hence a clear lack of 18-28 year olds. I’m sure they are out there, it’s just that I don’t know any of them. But I really am not complaining, in fact I love this. I love everything about the strange and fictitious world in which these people live, and so far have just about managed to stick to the rules of the game.....
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