COLOMBIAN COLORS

Text & Photos by Peter Weld

COLOMBIAN COLORS

Text & Photos by Peter Weld

哥倫比亞為“色”鐘情

過去幾十年里，哥倫比亞一直籠罩在濃重的負面影響之中，近年來，她成績斐然，將不堪的過往甩到身后。從北部的卡塔赫納到南部的波帕揚，如今的哥倫比亞是南美旅游地的佼佼者，其文化與色彩的活力足以比肩同一片大陸上的任何國家。

Once used as a jail, Las Bovedas now houses a popular row of souvenir shops in Cartagena.前身為監獄的Las Bovedas現在成為紀念品商店聚集地。

Doors and More

The city of Cartagena was founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, a Spanish conquistador, and for nearly fi ve centuries it has served as a doorway to South America. From here, Spanish settlers spread out across Colombia and far beyond. Explorers arrived to look for legendary cities of gold. Merchants came in search of things to trade. Slaves were brought here forcibly from Africa to work on plantations. Tourists came to see the wonders of“The New World.”

Today the situation has changed a lot: slavery is illegal, of course, and few people believe in cities of gold any more. With the rise of plane travel, merchants are more likely to fl y directly to the country's capital, Bogot?, or to the cities of Medellin and Cali. But tourists continue to sail into Colombia's fi fth-largest city, Cartagena—nowadays on giant cruise ships—and it's still a great place for doorways.

I noticed them everywhere as I strolled the lanes of the historic district of Cartagena: grand old wooden doors, painted in an array of bright colors, with impressive brass knockers. The most common knocker designs included lizards and lions, but with a bit of searching I also found cats, turtles, fi sh, and my personal favorite, a huge octopus on the door leading into a sushi restaurant. (Amusingly, though, many of these big doors had smaller doors set into them, and it was only through the smaller doors that people came and went.)

Cartagena served as a gateway not only for people arriving in South America but also for natural resources and pillaged treasures being sent back to Spain, so not surprisingly it became a prime target for pirates and state-sponsored raiders alike. Among them was the English vice admiral Francis Drake, who arrived in 1586 with 23 ships and 3,000 men; he didn't leave until a month later, having ravaged the city and extracted a hefty ransom. The Spanish government realized then that it had toget serious about defending Cartagena, so it hired an Italian, Battista Antonelli, to design fortifi cations. The plan that he came up with—some eleven kilometers of thick battlements and forts—took decades to implement, but when it was fi nally done, Cartagena had been transformed into one of the best-protected settlements on the entire continent.

Pirates and raiders are nowhere in evidence in 21st-century Cartagena, but the wall still serves an important function: it's where everyone goes in the late afternoon and early evening to see and to be seen. A brisk breeze blows in off the Caribbean as people stroll and bicycle along the top of the wall. (That same breeze makes the surf surprisingly rough, with the result that Cartagena's beaches are not the right place for lounging in a swimsuit while sipping a pi–a colada.) By the time the sun has set, most strollers and bicyclists have already left for one of the city's restaurants—perhaps including the sushi restaurant with the octopus-shaped door knocker.

五彩門戶

在長達五百年的時間里，卡塔赫納都是南美洲的門戶。經由卡塔赫納，西班牙殖民者涌入了哥倫比亞。探險者來此尋找傳說中埋藏金礦的城市；商人來此尋找可供買賣的貨物；非洲的奴隸被強擄到此，開荒種地；旅客來此領略“新世界”的風光。

現今，一切有了翻天覆地的改變：奴役是非法的，很少有人相信黃金城的傳說了。商人更喜歡乘飛機直飛到哥倫比亞的首都波哥大。游客依然從海路來，只不過現在是乘坐巨型游輪。不變的是，卡塔赫納仍是舉足輕重的門戶。

徜徉于卡塔赫納的古城區，隨處可見宏偉古老的木門。門板刷了鮮活色彩，嵌著醒目銅環。最常見的門環裝飾物有蜥蜴、獅子，或其他動物。

卡塔赫納既是通往南美的門戶，又是西班牙殖民者掠奪資源的轉運港，免不了被海盜與列強覬覦。為抵御攻擊，西班牙殖民者筑起長達11公里的城墻。

21世紀的卡塔赫納沒有海盜和列強入侵，但城墻仍不可或缺：傍晚時分，幾乎人人都要上來休閑，在海風中或散步，或騎行。

A stroll through the streets of Cartagena takes you past dozens of interesting doors.漫步卡塔赫納街道，你會發現許多有趣的門。

Not Just a White City

Popay?n is known throughout Colombia as“La Ciudad Blanca,” Spanish for “The White City.” Unlike in Cartagena and other Colombian cities which have preserved Spanish colonial architecture in all the colors of the rainbow, in Popay?n the buildings in the historic district are mostly whitewashed. This unifying color scheme—or maybe “lack-of-color scheme” would be more accurate—gives Popay?n's downtown a distinctly different look and feel.

But “White City” is just one of the Popay?n's nicknames. It's also called “The Jerusalem of the Americas” because of the elaborate religious celebrations at Easter. In fact, the Easter festivities here are reckoned by some to be the second biggest in the world, behind only those in Seville, Spain. Palanquins bearing wooden statues of Jesus and other important fi gures from the Catholic religion are paraded through the streets of Popay?n, with immense crowds watching.

I couldn't be there for the celebrations, but my visit came only about a month before Easter, which meant that everything in the city was being spruced up: a fresh coat of white was being applied wherever it was needed, and in a building near the central square, the wooden statues themselves were being taken carefully apart, repainted and repaired, and then put together again in preparation for their ride through the city streets.

Another of the city's nicknames is “The University City.” Popay?n is the home of the University of Cauca, one of Colombia's oldest and most renowned institutions of higher education, having been established in 1827 by the country's president, Sim—n Bol’var, the famous “liberator” of South America. The university has nearly 13,000 students, and as I strolled the streets of the historic district, I often felt as though I was completely surrounded by students. I ventured into one of the university's buildings to explore. It took up an entire city block, but like most of the structures in the historic district, it wasn't one huge, white monolith; rather, it resembled a square donut: a two-storied building running around all four sides of a beautifully-tended courtyard.

The list of Popay?n's nicknames isn't over yet. When UNESCO established its Creative Cities Network in 2004, Popayán became the fi rst city in the world to be given the title “City of Gastronomy.” (Since then, several other cities,including Chengdu and Shunde in China, have had the title conferred upon them.) The name is a bit deceptive: you might think that it should belong to the city with the most Michelin stars, but that's not the case. Rather, the title was given in recognition of the natural fusion cuisine to be found in Popay?n: remnants of pre-Columbian culinary practices, heavily infl uenced by the colonists from Spain, and further refi ned by slaves brought over from Africa in the 1600s and 1700s.

And then there was the nickname that I gave Popay?n: “City of Snacks.” To be honest, full meals there seemed to me to feature about the same dishes as in the rest of Colombia, but there is also a variety of snacks specifi c to this area. To get a taste of them, I stopped at a caf? called Mora Castilla, where I ended up consuming so many snacks that I didn't need dinner, snacks such as salpic—n payan?s, a drink made with corn, pineapple, and a fruit that I'd never seen or heard of before: lulo.

“The White City,” “The Jerusalem of the Americas,” “The University City,” “City of Gastronomy,” “City of Snacks”—by the time I left, I was thinking of Popay?n as “The City of Nicknames.”

Beautifully-preserved buildings from Colombia's days as a Spanish colony can be found all over the country.殖民地時期留下的建筑物遍布全國各地。

白色之城

波帕揚被譽為哥倫比亞的“白色之城”，古城區的建筑幾乎全為白色。清一色的白為波帕揚平添一分獨特美感。

波帕揚還有“美洲的耶路撒冷”的美稱，因其復活節前會舉辦大型宗教活動。屆時，耶穌及天主教其他重要人物的木像會由人抬著上街游行，參與游行的人為數眾多。

“大學之城”是波帕揚的又一昵稱。此地的考卡大學是哥倫比亞最古老、最負盛名的大學，有上萬名學生。這所大學占地廣，覆蓋整個城區，建筑結構類似環形廣場。

2004年，聯合國教科文組織授予波帕揚“美食之都”的稱號。不是因為有多家米其林餐廳，而是為褒揚當地自然融合的美食風格，在前哥倫布時期烹飪遺風的基礎上融入了西班牙殖民者的口味，又有后期非洲奴隸的改良。

我也給波帕揚起了個昵稱，“零食之城”。波帕揚的正餐與本國其他地方無甚分別，零食卻頗具特色。為飽口福，我專門到咖啡館點了各色零食，其中有種飲料，加了玉米、菠蘿，和從未見過的果茄。

匯集眾多昵稱于一身，我以為，波帕揚是地道的“昵稱之城”。

Top left: In front of the courthouse in Popayán there's a statue of José Mariá Obando, two-time president of Colombia.左上：在波帕揚法院門前，聳立著曾兩度擔任總統的何塞·馬里亞·奧萬多的雕像。

Top right: Popayán'scathedral had to be mostly rebuilt after a huge 1983 earthquake.右上：1983年大地震后重建的波帕揚大教堂。

Left: Two women dressed in the colors of the Colombian flag stand in front of Bogotá's Gold Museum.左：穿著哥倫比亞國旗色的兩名女子在波哥大黃金博物館前。

The Power of Gold

The fi rst Europeans arrived in what would later become Colombia in 1499, but they can hardly be considered to have discovered it: the area had already been inhabited for an estimated 5,000 years before that. Some of the indigenous people lived the simple lives of hunters and gatherers, but others had developed complex civilizations. And when the Spanish saw the elaborate gold jewelry worn by the rulers and upper classes of these civilizations, their eyes lit up with greed: they wanted to conquer the locals and get the gold. In the following centuries hundreds of thousands of local people died, some in battles with the Spanish but many more from diseases that the Spanish had unwittingly brought over with them.

Fast forward 500 years to the early 21st century. The vast majority of Colombians can trace their DNA back to the Spanish, to African slaves, or to both; indigenous people now account for only a small percentage of the country's population. But as in many other places around the world, modern Colombians have embraced the cultures that their ancestors tried so hard to exterminate.

With that thought in mind, I stepped rather tentatively into the Gold Museum at the edge of Bogot?'s La Candelaria district. I don't usually visit museums because I fi nd them sterile, with everything behind glass which throws nasty refl ections into my photos—if photography is permitted at all. But the Gold Museum bowled me over. Room after room showed off the skill of the native goldsmiths: the jewelry they fashioned for kings and queens, the ceremonial implements they created for shamans' rituals, the funerary ornaments they made to be buried with people and carried to the afterlife. There were displays showing the variations in designs between different parts of the country as well as displays describing in detail how gold was panned, mined, smelted, annealed, hammered into shape, and more.

For me, the Gold Museum easily took the prize for Bogot?'s most interesting place, but it was by no means the only attraction. I also enjoyed the Botero Museum, a tribute to Colombia's favorite artist, Fernando Botero. Now in his mid-eighties, he has spent over half a century painting and sculpting in his highly unusual style. “Fat” is the word that most people use while looking at Botero's art, but Botero himself is said to prefer the word “voluptuous.”Whatever adjective you choose, the style is unique: paintings of oversized men dancing with oversized women, statues of oversized babies and cats, even a stereotypical still life of a bowl of fruit—an incredibly oversized bowl containing several orchards' worth of fruit. The museum also includes works by Picasso and other artists, both famous and little known, but none of them manages to be as whimsical as Botero's.

My days in Bogot? passed peacefully. I toured some of the city's many churches, relaxed in decades-old caf?s, and marveled at the colors of the main market. But the color most on my mind was gold, and before leaving, I made another, even longer trip through the Gold Museum. The use of fl ash is prohibited, but otherwise photography is no problem, and I spent several enthralling hours in there, admiring the exhibits all over again and happily photographing them. I felt as though I had been given an opportunity to travel back in time—a golden opportunity.

Once a week, local indigenous people, the Guambiano, come to the town of Silvia, near Popayán, to sell their vegetables.每周一次，當地土著人會到波帕揚附近的小鎮出售蔬菜。

金色誘惑

第一批歐洲人到來前，哥倫比亞已有居民居住了幾千年，他們有些過著簡單的狩獵生活，有些已經發展出復雜的文明。西班牙人看到本地文明社會的黃金飾品時，生出貪念，要奪走黃金。不計其數的土著喪生于戰爭或疾病。

大部分哥倫比亞人都帶有西班牙人、非洲人的基因，土著居民現只占全國人口的少數。現代的哥倫比亞人正擁抱著他們的祖先曾想根除的文化。

這樣想著，我步入了波哥大的黃金博物館。館內一間間展廳陳列著當地金匠的手工藝品：有為國王和王后設計的首飾，有為巫師打造的法器，有為往生之人制作的隨葬品。在此館，可觀賞哥倫比亞不同地區的設計風格，也可飽覽各項黃金工藝的細節。

波特羅博物館也是我喜歡的去處，以哥倫比亞著名藝術家費爾南多·波特羅的名字命名。

很多人愛用“肥胖”一詞來形容波特羅的藝術，但據說波特羅本人更傾向用“飽滿”。無論選擇哪個詞，他的作品風格都獨一無二：肥男胖女共舞的畫作，巨嬰與壯貓的塑像，即便是老套的水果靜物寫生，也甚為夸張。

我在波哥大度過的日子十分平靜，逛教堂，泡咖啡館，驚嘆市場的活力與繽紛，然而占據我腦海最多的顏色是金色。離開前，我又去了一次黃金博物館，花上幾小時重溫展品，感覺就像親身經歷了一次穿越時空之旅——一次黃金之旅。

has

more than its share of negative publicity over the last few decades, but in more recent years the country has made great progress in putting its troubled past behind it. From Cartagena in the north to Popayán in the south, today's Colombia provides an excellent introduction to South American travel, with culture and colors vibrant enough to rival any other country on the continent.