Swimming

The Venezuelan I met in the customs and immigration queue did not exactly fill me with confidence. "You should listen carefully since I will only have time to tell you once before you are sucked up into this whirlwind, which is Colombia, senor..." Apparently this whirlwind would suck up my luggage, money, credit cards and at last my clothes, leaving me naked and destitute in a dusty gutter. Regretting at my leisure not having heeding the almost free advice of a well-meaning stranger. It was bullshit of course. The advice that I should be the first at the luggage carousel at all costs was unfeasible. Unless I fancied,tucking my cabin luggage under one arm, facing off my fellow passengers with the other and  charging the wall of armed immigration officials. I'm sure they would have loved that. As it happened no-one had plundered my mountain of luggage, nor did I have to watch the baggage boy with the trolley like a hawk. Both Immigration and Customs were tolerant and polite and this despite the fact I'd lost my reading glasses and had just taken a stab at filling in the forms. All of which were in Spanish anyway.
In no time I had been spotted by the waiting family, enclosed and bundled into a waiting taxi, the luggage boy had already been tipped despatched and we hurtled off in a cloud of dust,through Soledad and into Barranquilla. The whole family fitted into two taxis. At least ten people in each, doors flapping like the wings of flightless birds. All the way to Centro the streets were lined with heavily armed soldiers, armoured carriers at every exit. I thought they had layed on some sort of special do for me, until it filtered through my spanish comprehension that President Ulribe was in Barranquilla and as such had brought half the armed forces with him. The route to the airport being particularly well guarded. Ahhhh so they weren't waving at us! I Loved that pretending to aim at us stuff though! What jolly wags the Colombian military are! And so young!
Anyway I kept my camera well down. This proved to be a good idea since as soon as we hit Centro all the doors were suddenly closed and locked and all the windows were wound up, leaving us precious little air until we hit Norte, North Barranquilla, where the windows came down and we could breathe again.
Within seconds of the taxi pulling up at the kerb I was bundelled out, swept up the first flight of stairs, the younger members of the family following like a baggage train. dumped into a chair, a beer thrust into my hand, a fan trained on me and more family introduced. To my profound discredit all I could muster in my new language was a feeble "Ola!" now and again, but I'm sure that this will change. It's already plain as the 'nariz' on my face that no-one either in the family or it's environs speaks more than a single word of English. If I want my intercourse here in Colombia to constitute of anything more than well-natured monosyllabic grunting, then I'm going to have to learn Spanish pretty fast. The family are great though, they are kind enough to ignore the fact I cannot speak the lingo and continue to speak to me at the same unrelenting pace,(Constenos speak faster than any other Spanish speaking folk by a factor of ten I'm told),smiling at me and then each other in sympathy as if I were some happy, benign oaf.
It would take me more than a week even to begin to remember all their names. Suffice to say though, they really laid on the white tablecloth treatment and after a few days of travelling, the welcome I have received is in itself welcome. Today marked the end of a journey and the start of an adventure.