06.29.03
On the beach with paramilitaries
Sunday, June 29, 2003 – Santa Marta
Sara and I got up early this morning to catch a ride into the Parque Tayrona[1]. Rather than spend $50,000 pesos for the ride and another $20,000 each to get in[2] we decided to hitch a ride in the back of a truck carrying supplies and workers who man the various restaurants, booths and rent gear along the beach. The truck ride was a true cultural experience. For $3,000 pesos each we were squished into the back of a covered truck stuffed with people, their kids, bananas, mangos, flats of soda and cooking oil containers full of gasoline to power the outboard motors that the small beach boats use to ferry people to and from the various beaches. The gasoline stunk and threatened to push both Sara and I into motion sickness along with the bumpy ride with only a view between slats of the outside world.
Since we got to the beach with the workers we were there well before the tourists arrived and had it all to ourselves for a good hour. We spent the morning snorkeling around some beautiful coral reefs in crystal clear water. From my diving in Hawaii I was able to recognize and name most of the tropical fish to be found. After an hour or two of this though my sensitive Northwest skin was beginning to threaten to sunburn. That plus the boatload after boatload of tourists that kept pouring into the beach pushed us into the back of a huge open hut where we had reserved lunch.
We tried to relax under a palm tree reading our books but found it hard to do with local kids playing soccer in the sand right in front of us and a large group (about 15) of what looked like frat boys getting drunk and listening to a loud radio right next to us. A sharp ear to the letter of the music blaring out of the nearby boom box revealed that our neighbors were not members of any college fraternity but rather were paras[3]. Their suspected identity was supported by the crew cuts they all wore and the way they carried themselves in their bathing shorts. Being, quite obviously, the only two foreigners on the whole beach Sara and I did not feel terribly comfortable sharing our hut with these folks. To our knowledge paras have yet to kidnap or assassinate US Citizens but as they are basically thugs with guns, and when a bunch of frat boys get drunk while listening to mariachi music about shooting commies and dying with your boots on it is generally wise to move on, so we did. We tried to rent a little beach shelter to hide from the furious mid-day sun but found the wind was throwing a painful stream of sand off the beach towards the shelters. We decided to head back to the beach where we landed early and maybe look for an earlier ride back to town. That evening we learned that after going through many flats of beer the paras had decided to entertain themselves by shooting at beach crabs. I am glad I was not there.
Our plan for an early departure did not pan out. Being a holiday weekend every bus, taxi and group van on the beach was full so we had to wait over 3 hours for the truck that brought us down to head back. As much money as we may have saved I doubt I will want to take many more rides in the back of a work truck in the future.
1 = Tayrona is a huge and gorgeous national park on the coast of Colombia near Santa Marta. It has beautiful beaches and steep mountains covered with dense forest.
2 = At $3,000 pesos to the dollar that comes out to about $30 each.
3 = Paras is short for Paramilitary Forces. They are basically private armies raised by wealthy right wing individuals who fight against the left wing guerrillas and the narco gangsters. The area we are in is under paramilitary control which tends to be safer than guerilla controlled areas (at least safer for rich folk, the paras have massacred whole villages of poor folk), but when you get down to it, narcos, paras and guerillas are all thugs with guns.