old ass city

it was a sad sad day when we had to leave the promised land. but alas it had to happen and we boarded another bus for a 5 hour journey to cartagena. while we were bummed to leave, this place was not too damn shabby. cartagena consists of two cities really, an old walled city and a more modern and standard downtown. fuck a downtown, we never even saw it. the old city was the hypeness. during the day it was abuzz with shoppers and tourists and locals lurking about selling crap. come night fall the seedy side emerged in full force. shady bars, nice bars, strip clubs, beers on every street corner and hella po-po. we had a great time in the two days we were there, basically left 2 years older. once again met a bunch of local peeps and got ourselves in situations that i cannot image too many other americans have been in. more goodtimes all around fo sure. unfortunately (or fortunately depending on point of view) i did not have my camera on me to capture the nightlife in full. it was hectic and crazy. here is installment #one for you bitches...

this was our bus. no big deal.

there were 2 choices when arriving in town, go to the hip hostel with all the cool cats or go to this hostel with nobody else but have air conditioning. we chose wisely, did i mention it was surface of the sun hot?

couple of night shots from right after we checked in to hostel, crazy beautiful place.

between the shot above and this one a hell of a lot of shit went on. we partied for the most part. this was early morning and this guy was so fired up when i asked if i could take his picture. loves the meat.

this is the most random picture of the trip i would say. i was laying in my bunk thing and someone had written the "ello" and the "ollk" up there. so i added letters to make it say "mellow" and "yellow" from top to bottom and i was pleased. then i realized i could add more so on the left we got matts name (cant see the M) and my initials on the right. like i said, i was pleased. it also says "amy" across the top randomly. dumb but i was not all there at the moment.

the next morning we went out for some daytime exploring. i told you it was rad. so much going on in this little walled place. architecture and statues and shit out the whazoo.

i took this for you marty, thought you might like it. i did.

as we are cruising around this guy stops us and starts talking to us about the city. we didnt know it at the moment but he was a tourist director or some shit. anyway, he asked us if we wanted to see some emeralds because most of them in the world come from colombia so we said (everyone chime in), "fuck it, why not". now let me describe this scene for you right quick, we are carrying skateboards and cans of aguila all sweaty and crap and an armed security guard has to let us in with a key to this million dollar shop. i was scared as piss to break some shit. anyway, the woman was mad nice and showed us a bunch of dope stones and modeled this one for us. random as hell.

this was one of the highlights of the trip. met this kid nicknamed rat (above left) who skated. he came up to us and basically insisted that we see the plaza where they skate everyday. it was at least 111 degrees. glad we went though, you see that place? it was so fun, ledges, stairs and pretty good flatground considering the place was probably a million years old or sumthin. great times, good people, etc etc. matt gave him his board when he left cause the kid was self proclaimed "ghetto" and had to borrow a board all the time but he ripped hella good. he was super pumped about it. we killed it. if you wonder why the pictures are so so, ask matt. and i posted that fuzzy one where i look like i am doing nothing because i had just tailslid that ledge and i wanted to remember it.

this was the university. we got fired out of here real quick, they were in school.

dont ask me, matts nephew knows.

you could skate this spot in a line, trick over wall...trick on bench. one of my favorite photos. matt got the hang of it. kudos homie!

we headed back to hostel to get ready for night number two. it was a doooooozy!

the hi side

during one of our adventures to abandoned beaches and water the color of my stellar eyes, we saw a cliff. yaya you say, so what, a cliff...whoop de fuckin do. this thing was gnar. keeping with the theme of the trip, "fuck it, let's do this". we jumped off the boat to investigate the landing, matlock style. a couple dives down and we determine that we are golden, then the hard part came. climbing this monstrosity. we swam around the side and started our ascent over loose and jagged rocks to the top of the world. once this was accomplished, very proud of ourselves, we had to scale down to this one little point where we could jump from. matty charged it first and with superior grace he lept from the sky and traveled the approximately 75 feet to the deep blue. it was a success for sure but there was a bad side, as he lept i heard a crack on the one rock we had to use to fly. this made me mildly nervous but there was for sure no turning back so i scaled down to the same rock all while clinging to the back wall. fuck it. fly fatass fly! one of the best cliff jumps of my life and i really really enjoi jumping off things. a highlight fo sheez.

one last thing, my good pal j cushing b linked me from his hateboarding column, check his shit! you find my link?

insanity

one of our nights in taganga we got to talking with ever and primo about random ass shit, lots of ins and outs and what-have-yous. seemingly out of the blue primo mentions that he fights cocks and that there is a fight tonight in the next town over of santa marta, although his cock is not fighting. he offered to take us, clearly we had no idea what to expect but of course we were in. had some beers at the hostel and the homies picked us up in a cab for an adventure. we get to some random ass and pretty sketchy part of santa marta and it turns out ever has to tend to some other business. so it is matt, primo and i that take the plunge into a dirt alley kind of place and discover a full blown cock fighting operation. shit was nutzo. about 100 or so colombians and two tall ass white kids, we didnt stand out at all. but fuck it we said and we got all up in the mix. people throwing money around, banging on the walls of the "ring", hella hissing and other shit i had obviously never seen before. we saw three separate fights. peep it...

before each fight the owners of the cocks (i have been trying not to laugh as i type phrases like that but this one got me) meet in the ring and hold out their cocks to each other (baahahaah) and hiss a bunch, sticking their beaks in the other ones face. spectacle to say the least.

and even before they get to the ring each cock goes to a separate "corner" where they have a specific trainer guy. i called this one mick. they file down their back claw and then attach a claw made out of turtle shell that is sharp as fuck to the filed down area using hot wax as the glue. then they tape it up with white athletic tape, just like any boxing trainer would. legit.

the last fight had an all white cock that primo was betting on. he got f-ed up! as you can tell from the pic and the video that should be posted soon. blood looks real red on all white cocks (eww...zing!). all in all this was a crazy experience but super rad, they claim all the cocks lived and there was a ref guy who jumps in and calls the fights once one of them is all messed up. not completely sure if i believe this as they carried a couple off that did not look too good but primo told us that and he was a baddass so i shall believe him.

folks!

i just posted a new thingy but it shows up below the one below...if that makes sense. if you have already seen "para-fuckin-dise" scroll past it for "taganga part deux". saved it as a draft so it published for the earlier day. whatever, you get it. just peep it. or dont. fuck.