Worldwide with Wee-Cheng #14: In Colombia Now, and A Second Foray into Brazil – Leticia & Tabatinga, Colombia

#13: In Colombia Now, and A Second Foray into Brazil

25 Feb 2002
Woke out at 5:45am this morning to go to an air force base near Iquitos. It’s a small 6-seater (excluding the two pilots) sea-plane – one of those that sets off and lands on water. The other passengers were Peruvian and Brazilian traders – there is an active border trade in this tri-nation area, some of it legal and benign, and a fair bit of it probably of dubious nature. (Don’t forget the Andean nations are some of the world’s largest producers of narcotics.)

I had thought the flight would involve a wonderful low-altitude view of the Amazon jungle canopy. Instead, I got a free tropical sauna experience in a terribly small, confined space, guaranteed to make most people go mad. By the end of the two-hour flight, I was completely wet with perspiration and terribly disoriented, almost falling into the river as I was getting off the plane.

Fortunately, the Peruvian passport controls were easy enough and within minutes I was on a small boat across the Amazon. On the other side lies the twin cities of Leticia and Tabatinga. The former is the capital of the Colombian department of Amazonia, and the latter a Brazilian border town.

Off the boat, I walked into Leticia unmolested – there is hardly any border control here! The Colombian Passport Control is in the town centre, and when I got there, the officials there hardly bothered to stamp my passport. They uttered something in Spanish which I couldn’t understand. I merely said I was staying for one day and then they returned me my passport and walked away. Well, I am not terribly worried, as I heard that visitors who were not going to other parts of Colombia from here didn’t need to go through the formalities. Even then, their relaxed attitude about it all was amazing, especially when the narcotics-producing centres are not too far away. I am not too worried about the passport stamp, especially when I plan to fly into Bogota, the capital of Colombia, from Ecuador in a few weeks’ time.

Welcome to Wee-Cheng’s country number 80! I walked around this small city, visited the local museum in 1/2 hour. Really, there isn’t much to see here. There are a number of small hotels, catering mainly to Colombians from other parts of the country visiting the capital of their Amazonian territories and the jungle surrounding it, as well as the occasional foreign visitor passing through here from Peru to Brazil or the opposite way. There are also a surprising number of casinos and quite a number of souvenir shops relative to the number of tourists here.

Frankly there isn’t much to do here. I dropped by Tabatinga on the Brazilian side of the border. Again there is no obvious border markings (and no formalities at all) but one realises that the border is crossed when the signboards suddenly became Portuguese rather than Spanish. Nice to be back in Brazil after 2 months. Tabatinga is even more of a cowboy town and fewer buildings. Everything is fairly run-down this side of the border. I bought a US$50 ticket for a 10-hour speed boat journey back to Iquitos, Peru, for tomorrow morning. Gosh! I have to get up at 4am to cross over to the Brazilian side to take the 5 am boat ride. Not much of a choice though. I am definitely not going to take that 2-hour sauna flight again!

Back to Leticia, I lazed around the poolside of the top hotel in town, Anconada (I am not staying there, just using the pool), chatting to some Polish travellers. The TV in the bar is on, and locals watch exciting live reports from the war front 500km north of here. Last week, the Colombian government declared the ceasefire with Marxist rebels over, and marched into rebel-controlled territory the size of Switzerland. The news show government air strikes, fleeing refugees and government troops in action. Here in Leticia, people go about their daily activities, and tourists from other parts of Colombia check out tours to the jungle. It is difficult to imagine that this is a country that has been in a state of civil war for the past 40 years.

Well, it’s time for me to check out local food. Wish me luck for the journey back to Peru. From Iquitos, I will fly back to Lima, and then move northwards along the coast towards Ecuador. I hope to be in Quito, capital of Ecuador, in 10 days’ time, and then off to the fascinating nature wonderland, the Galapagos Islands.

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