Arrival

There's no immigration at the container port where the boat came in, so the Port Agent came on the boat to explain to us the process. He had booked us a taxi to take us to a hotel where we were very strictly instructed that we must stay until the taxi came back for us to take us to immigration when it opened at 5. When the taxi did come back for us, we were taken via some random office in town where the taxi driver popped in, saying he had to pick up some papers for us. The French couple with me (whose freight boat journey from Martinique to Cartegena was the cheapest option for them) were very sceptical, and were shocked when he came out with papers including copies of our passports. I never doubted the randomness of South American bureacracy.

Things I've had an emotional reponse to since I've arrived:

- people with no shoes. The jolt of remembering what it feels like to be surrounded by poverty.
- hearing words I used to hear in Ecuador.
- the sense of familiarity and affection I have for this bit of the world.
- the sense of being an outsider
- the politics of agreeing prices for stuff. Being torn between outrage at getting ripped off, knowing how enormously unimportant 50p is to me, having respect for people trying their luck, worrying about the effect that tourist money can have on a society, wondering if the previous emotion is merely self-justification for being tight, knowledge that my money comes from my family's capitalist history and my cushy job and not from any hard work on my part, and that others have pretty much the same right to it as me. A gauntlet. I'm sure to harden up soon though.

Off to Bogota later today.