Dancing Feat – Chapters 7 and 8

Some photographs of the colonial centre of Cartagena, a historic city on Colombia’s Atlantic coast.

It’s heavily linked with both slavery and gold.
Here’s the famous Muisca raft, in the Gold Museum in Bogotá.

Muisca golden raft

And here is musica tropical legend Joe Arroyo singing about an enslaved couple, in his famous hit La Rebelion (the owner of the video has disabled embedding so you have to click through).

This is the mighty and impressive fortress just outside the historic centre, which could be seen clearly from the window of the consulate.

Dancing mapale in the streets of Cartagena. It was seeing this perfomance that convinced me I had to learn mapale, though at this stage of the journey nothing was able to convince me that I also needed to practise.

Mapale

Here’s probably the best known mapale track – El Mapale by Cumbia Soledeña.

This is the Barbara Windsor in Carry on Camping moment that I was referring to.

And this is the classic slice of champeta that I was learning to: La Mala Hierba by Nando Hernandez

Elegant decay in the barrio of Getsemani

Getsemani

Lunch in Getsemani. I think that’s a chicken foot. I don’t knnow if I’m meant to it or if it’s just meant as decoration.

Soup

Cartagena had a fair few visitors over the years, the British included. I don’t know if any of them were stupid enough to get their passports stolen. Mind you, I suspect that their answer might have been “That’s okay – you don’t need a passport if you tick the box on the form marked ‘invading army'”

Naval model

The wall is a special place at sunset.

Here is El Jarabe Tapatio, otherwise known as The Mexican Hat Dance, and here is Clint Eastwood in Firefox being told he must THINK in Russian.

This is Peter Crouch doing the robot and here’s an article about him dancing it for Prince William.

Taking lunch with the pigs and the chickens. That is one seriously nice bit of lunch.

And here are various views of San Basilio de Palenque.

These are the sticky treats that the woman on the bus was selling.

Sticky treats


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