The Avianca A319 Airbus destined for Colombia's capital, Bogota, waited on the taxiway at New York's JFK airport. I looked out my window and could see planes waiting on the intersecting taxiway – there were about nine other planes ahead of us. This gave me time to cast my eyes around the inside of my plane, as I always do. It was my first flight on a South American airline, so I was more than usually curious. Particularly as Avianca is a Colombian airline and Colombia is described by some as a third world nation. The interior looked clean and tidy. The air stewards and stewardesses were dressed in neat red uniforms. I had an interactive screen in front of me. I grabbed the controller for the screen: some airlines had satellite phones in these things, which would be great, because I needed to call Lucas to let him know I'd changed flights in an attempt to get to his wedding in Medellin on time. I was originally going to fly directly to Medellin and land five hours before the ceremony started, but that flight had been delayed. If everything went right, this plane would get me to Bogota by 1:30PM, and then I would get another flight to Medellin, arriving two hours before the wedding started. Unfortunately, my mobile (cell) phone hadn't worked in the terminal, and there was no satellite phone built into the controller - I swiped my credit card hopefully in the provided slot, but nothing happened.
‘I hope my card details haven’t been recorded for future retrieval by some plane cleaner,’ I thought. 'I'll contact Lucas when I get to Bogota.' I looked out the window again. The wings looked shiny and crack free (although fatigue cracks are invisible to the eye: by the time you can see one, it’s a bit late).
‘An A319 is a pretty small plane and it’s a long way from New York to Colombia. Wasn’t it an Airbus crashed and sank in the Atlantic Ocean a few months ago - it was flying from South America. Actually, I think two Airbuses have crashed in the last year,’ had said one of the guys at work.
Such words were not comforting. Other people had better things to say. ‘Avianca are supposed to have the best service for airlines operating in the States,’ a US courtesy bus driver had said to me. ‘It’s a pity they aren’t bigger – they would really shake the industry up.’
When the time came, the plane took off without incident. ‘Colombia here we come,’ I thought. I really didn’t know what to expect when I landed. I’d done some research, and there were a lot of conflicting messages.
‘Oh you will have the best time. We will show you all around the city. People are so friendly and generous,’ Lucas’ bride Angela had said.
‘We have some Colombian friends are know that they are just the nicest people over there,’ another friend had said.
I wanted to believe them, but I’d heard so much about Colombia’s dark past. The 1984 movie ‘Romancing the Stone’, starring Michael Douglas and Katherine Turner, was set in Colombia. It left me with a fairly terrified impression of the country. Particularly the scene where a baddie threatens to feed the heroes to his crocodiles and someone’s hand gets bitten off. Although the story was fictional, there is the very real statistic that Colombia has a high homicide rate, at 36 people per 100,000 head of population in 2008. Sure, homicides in Colombia have almost halved from the year 2000 rate, but that’s a still heck of a lot compared to 5.4 per 100,000 in the United States, or 1.2 per 100,000 in Australia.
In the 1980s, Colombia was the world’s biggest producer of cocaine. (In fact, it still is the world’s biggest producer of cocaine.) Pablo Escobar, infamous leader of one of the drug cartels, was from the city I was headed for (after changing at Bogota): Medellin. He coined the term ‘silver or lead’ for his policy in dealing with government and law enforcement officials. He rewarded those who assisted him with bribe money, and gunned down those who resisted him. Hundreds of people were killed, perhaps thousands. But he also cultivated a Robin Hood image with the poor in Medellin - he contributed money for infrastructure and many churches around the city were built with his finance. The money in cocaine was more than lucrative – it was a business worth billions. In 1989, he was thought to be the world’s seventh richest man, worth $25 billion dollars. Rumor had it that Pablo had so many crates of US dollars that about 10% got eaten by rats or went mouldy.
With political changes in Bogota, Escobar was eventually caught and jailed. A measure of his influence was that he was allowed to build a prison (actually it sounded like a playboy mansion) of his own design, where he continued to run his cartel until a decision was made to relocate him to a real prison. He escaped and the government hunted him for eighteen months, until they shot him on the rooftops of Medellin in 1993.
The terrorist groups who took control of Colombia’s drug operations after the power vacuum following Escobar’s demise have regularly plotted the downfall of the government. They also kidnap people. 2002 Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped and imprisoned by FARC for years, until Colombia’s President Uribe ordered a successful rescue operation in 2008. I don't know how she’d managed to survive in the jungle for six years, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to experience it firsthand.
The current president, Alvaro Uribe, was also from Medellin, like Escobar. His father was gunned down by FARC in 1983. (They were attempting to kidnap his father.) Since the beginning of Uribe’s presidency in 2002, he has directed the military to eliminate terrorist forces, particularly FARC. He is a popular president because the population is generally tired of conflict and war in their country. He has made close ties with the United States, permitting U.S. access to seven military bases in Colombia to fight drugs and terrorism. He also supports extradition of drug trade operators to the U.S. and other countries. However, he may not have been so resisting of the drug trade in the past. A 1991 US Defense Intelligence Agency report suggests that Uribe was a close personal friend of Escobar’s, dedicated to assisting his drug cartel at the highest levels in government. Pablo Escobar allegedly lent Uribe a helicopter in 1983 to collect his father’s body and his injured brother. Given that Uribe was Medellin’s mayor in 1982 and one of the country’s senators from 1986 to 1994, to me it seems impossible that Escobar did not approach Uribe with one of his “silver or lead” offers. Uribe denies the allegations, saying he was never a friend of Escobar, even when it was fashionable, and that he would never have entered the helicopter if he’d known it was Escobar’s. I had to wonder a bit.
I suspect he works for the greater good of his country, but looking from afar, it is a definite worry when a country’s democratically elected leader changes the rules affecting how long he can stay. I found out later that he changed the country’s constitution so he could successfully run for a second term, and is now trying to change the law again so he can run for a third term from 2010. Ultimate power ultimately corrupts… that’s all I’m saying. Don’t become another dictator, Alvaro.
With all this in mind, my stomach clenched when the Avianca plane crossed over land again, after flying over the ocean for about five hours. The country underneath me looked very green and hilly: difficult to cross by land. Like Australia’s Qantas, Avianca is one of the oldest airlines in the world and it was formed for a similar reason: in the early 20th century, the lack of decent roads in both countries meant that people couldn’t get to hospitals and obtain important services when they needed them. The impenetrable jungles and soaring mountains in Colombia were quite different to the vast open plains of Australia (which turned into impassable mud every time it rained), but the result was the same. Airlines could fly straight over the top, and get people where they needed to go.
The chief stewardess announced something in Spanish and then spoke in English for “gringos” like me. ‘… Muchos Gracias… Excuse me passengers. We will be landing in Bogota shortly. Would you please stow all belongings under the seat in front of you, put away your tray, return your chair to the upright position and ensure your seat belt is fastened. Thank you.’
Many passengers promptly got out of their chairs, opened up the lockers over their seats and pulled out copious quantities of luggage. Others decided it was a good time to visit the toilet. I found it amusing, because President Obama had been on U.S. television yesterday saying that new security measures could require all airline passengers to stay in their seats for the last hour of international flights, without accessing their carry-on luggage and without being permitted to go to the restroom. Of course, that rule applied to planes in U.S. airspace, which we clearly weren’t in now. One passenger unloaded items of clothing and spread them on his seat. Another managed to drop his sizeable bag on top of a seated passenger’s head. The air-stewards and stewardesses smiled patiently and helped people get back into their seats.
The plane descended down towards a plateau between the surrounding hilltops. We went straight over the runway without attempting to land, and flew low across the city. Bogota was enormous, set out in neat grids. Square grey concrete rooftops looked up at me. I could see a six lane highway running along one gridline, with heavy traffic stopping and starting between traffic lights. We made a hard turn over what seemed to be the middle, and dropped towards another runway.
‘Woah. Ohhh. PPPPfff,’sighed the other passengers around as the plane wobbled slightly from side to side. My hands gripped the armrests tightly, as the buildings underneath reached closer and closer towards us.
‘Oooo. Aaaaa,’ sighed some of the passengers, as the plane hung over the runway, almost like a hovering bird – a bird weighing 62 tonnes. Without drama, the plane touched down onto the runway neatly and braked. Simultaneously, the other passengers cheered and clapped their hands. I looked around wide eyed, and then clapped my hands as well.
I’d made it to Colombia. It was about 1:30PM. Now I just had to get to the right city. There were a few more hoops I had to jump through yet…
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