By Jess McGlothlin
We’re sitting at the pitted bar at one of Pablo Escobar’s coastal retreats, the deluge of tropical rain pounding a staccato beat on the roof outside and slowly flooding the foyer. I take another sip of Aguila beer and eye the crab scuttling his way across the rutted floor. He’s aiming for the artificial safety of a 1970s-style side table but I’m not entirely certain he’ll make it; there was a street cat prowling around the open-air building earlier who might want algo para picar.
Turns out the cat doesn’t surface—likely hiding away; this seems to be a place where people and animals alike come to do just that—and the crab makes it. He slides under the weather-worn mahogany table and I wonder who all that table was seen come through this bar. If only the dinged-up wood could talk.
Another clap of thunder sounds overhead—louder, this time—and the power goes out. We’re plunged into darkness, four American anglers, one local inexplicably in holey boxers and nothing else, and one chatty bartender who speaks no English but is fluent in the universal language of “Bar.” He starts digging for old candles and one of my newfound angling comrades turns his cell phone light on, lays it face down on the bar, and sticks a half-drunk water bottle over the light. Bueno. A lantern.
Eventually the bartender gives up looking for the candles and instead serves up another round by water-bottle light, and we toast to the weird paths that have brought us here, now, drinking cheap beer in Pablo Escobar’s vacation bar while water pools around our ankles. Life can be at its best when it’s at its weirdest.
I’d traveled to Colombia solo, headed for a photo job at a fishing lodge in the Darién Gap and had spent the week chasing atún, roosterfish, and other salty species on the fly. After a week at the lodge I found myself back in Bahía Solano, a coastal settlement reachable only via boat or plane.
Our quarters were the Hotel Costa Chocó, a humble little establishment run by a wonderful, matronly abuela. Raquel proved to be a wealth of knowledge, sharing stories about the grand old house which had been one of Escobar’s many retreats around the country. He fished nearly every day he was here; the lobby is still dominated by a sailfish he caught and mounted. The outdoor area where the pool currently resides was his garden, and the now 97-year-old lady who cooked seafood soup for him still lives in town. Eventually the village got too active—too hot—with the local military and rival cartels to serve as a vacation spot, and the home was bartered to a rival cartel as part of a peace treaty.
A peace treaty that didn’t last but, really, is anyone surprised with that?
It’s toward the end of a tuna, arepa, and rice dinner at a small café when my American comrades start speculating about the Hotel Costa Chocó and Escobar. Someone brings up violence, as so often comes up when talking about the famous cartels, and quickly reasons that oh no, that sort of thing couldn’t have happened here. It’s too peaceful.
Nico, a charismatic German who had been our fishing guide, takes another bite of his atún and shoots me a wry look. We’d had enough boat talks over the past week to have a good idea of each other’s world view.
“Oh, there were some murders,” he comments plainly, stabbing another piece of fish.
The table goes silent. Rain pounds the roof, thunder rumbles overhead. The gringos are suddenly quiet. First-world sensibilities are meeting the reality of the place we’re in; slowly maybe starting to make sense of some of the … activity we’d seen while fishing along the Darién Gap over the past week.
But then Nico effortlessly redirects the conversation from bodies and sicarios, adding easily, “There’s still a big hippo problem south of Medellín, too.”
We quickly digress into Escobar’s escaped hippos and different hippopotamus management strategies.
Later that night I retreat to my room, only one floor above the now-quiet bar at the Costa Chocó, and chase a toad-sized cockroach out of my bed before propping the porch door open so I can hear the rain on the street below. I drop down onto the thin, scratchy cotton sheets which feel like they’ve been around since the 80s and appreciate a moment of true contentment. Our flights are delayed tomorrow and, unable to get back to Medellín, I’ll probably miss my flight back to the States and on to the next photo shoot. But I don’t care. I’m in Colombia, in this place, and for the moment that’s enough.
