One of the reasons we waited until the Monday after Easter
was to check with the US embassy to see what information they might have. I had a feeling that it would be waste of
time and it was. They would only let one of us in past the perimeter gate after
showing them our passports. The bikes absolutely had to wait outside. A couple of cars needed access and they were
checked over toughly by guards looking for explosives. They would not let Laurie
inside the building and insisted she use the phone outside. After getting a huge cyclical run around
involving an operator and an automated phone system she finally convinced the
operator to let her talk to a real person inside. The guy she talked to said
normally he only assisted US government personal. Helping US citizens with travel safety advice
is apparently not in the mission statement for US embassies. The US has a huge anti-drug operation here so
that is probably a big part of what they do.
The guy said there was armed conflict going on in the north but could
not be more specific than that. He also said he had never heard of anyone bike
touring in Columbia. That we took as a
good thing because we had and if he hadn’t then presumably there haven’t been
any bad incidents. We had heard that the only real places to avoid were the low
elevation towns on the Venezuela border which is well east of the road to the
coast.
While Laurie was talking
repeatedly picking the same options on the phone system, inside two Columbian
motorcycle police zoomed up and blocked the road. They were followed by three very
shinny Chevy Suburban’s with heavy tinted windows and special interior flashing
police type lights. The gate opened for them so that they did not even have to
slow down and then they kept driving into another gated interior area with a
gate that quickly closed after they went in. There was a regular parking lot
outside but whoever was in the car must have been a high very high value target
or informant. Ironically the
choreographed high security entry looked like how you would see big drug deals
being made or how mafia kingpins would meet on TV. Maybe the US embassy is making drug deals? Those big suvs one after another with heavily tinted
windows were about as conspicuous as you could get down here.
I have read repeatedly about American
foreign policy mistakes around the world that often resulted in wars where we
out of touch with the realities of the culture and the reality on the ground
think Vietnam, Iraq and dozens if not hundreds of other examples. This seems
like just another example of that. We need to get out more around the world and
let go of all our preconceived ideas of how things are. Maybe it is all about
fear of the unknown. See the next post for more on the security situation.
