We Are Under Attack & I´m Not Happy
Ahhh me. All night, there has been a bombardment and I haven`t slept. Any shuteye that I might have drifted into was so shallow it didn`t count. Okay, so it wasn`t bullets and rockets. It was NOISE and still is, at 10 a.m. When it began after I had gone to bed, I blamed that partying bunch of Argentinians out on the patio and waited for the merciful noise curfew that is rigidly enforced within the hostel. This was stadium-quality Spanish music booming through the air and rattling our teeth. It all sounds so accordian-like and boring when one can`t appreciate the words, or when one is trying to sink deeper into the sheets and hide from the boombox. Only the poor cilia along my inner ear canal were dancing and they were getting sick and tired of this.
Finally, the Mama in me got the best of my inertia and I struggled out from under my mosquito netting, tiptoed to the door (hoping not to disturb my two good-guy roommates, and slipped out into the dawn. Dawn? This had gone on all night long? The nerve!
Then, I realized that this awfulness wasn´t coming from the hostel, but from down the hill a few hundred yards. There were the five rowdies on their front porch around a boombox, shoulders shaking to the beat, beer bottles in hand. They weren`t ours, at all. I had no imagined authority over them. Creeping back to bed, I wondered what terrible bone they had to pick with Filipe, the owner of this hostel. Surely, they were being vindictive about something and trying to drive away his customers.
Giving up on sleep at about 7:00 a.m., I straggled out for an early breakfast on the patio. That`s when I learned that this is Par For The Course on the weekends. These are simply men, doing what men want to do on a Saturday and Sunday and it could well go on throughout the entire weekend. No one thinks anything about it. Neighbors do not complain. This is life. If we foreigners don`t like it, we can just go back home. They aren`t attacking us….or even aware of our discomfort. We can take it or leave it!
Well, I sure do want to leave it and I`m looking into Cartagena hotels, ready to pay good money to go to a restorative silence. Don´t know if I`ll find anything, but have already given up on the idea of Tayrona Beach as this same experienced guest pointed out. It`s Sunday, and they`ll be crowding out there to do the same thing. This is relaxation for many Colombians. Right now, I have no idea where I`ll wind up, but my computer is timing out, so I`ll continue later.
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