At the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition in Cartagena
For the last two weeks of our trip, we wanted to go somewhere peaceful and relaxing. Naturally we chose Colombia.
Colombia gets a lot of bad press. Bogota is a modern industrial city with a sparkling new public transportation system, stylish restaurants and bars, and lots of pretty redbrick buildings around a very pretty colonial core. Yes, the security guards at your local supermarket have bullet-proof vests that look thick enough to stop a shell from one of their own pump-action shotguns, but it’s safe. At least the northern and central parts of the city are safe. In the daytime.
But the real issue turned out to be whether I was safe enough for the Colombians.
Just before 9/11, three alleged members of the IRA were arrested on their way out of Colombia and accused of training FARC guerillas. It seemed a strange, magical realist sort of retirement job for Irish terrorists. Their own story, that they travelled on false passports into the Colombian jungle in order ‘to observe the peace process,’ was never very credible, but it also seemed odd that the rich and well-armed FARC, a state within a state that controls half of Colombia, should have anything to learn from the IRA.
They were tried, acquitted on the main charges, and released. The prosecution appealed and the ‘Colombia 3′ were convicted the second time around. But in the meantime they had fled back to Ireland. Ireland has no extraditon agreement with Colombia and won’t negotiate one, citing Colombia´s poor human rights record. (For the same reason U2 refuses to perform there, which seems to bother ordinary Colombians a lot more.) Ever since then Irish citizens, alone among the citizens of western Europe, have required a visa in order to enter Colombia.
I was reminded of all this when I tried, unsuccesfully, to board a plane to Bogota two weeks ago.
I had gotten complacent. Colombia is the 14th country that we have visited on this trip, and the only other place where I needed a visa in advance was communist Vietnam, where everyone needs a visa. An Irish passport is normally a free pass. Oliver North used to carry one, apparently. But not in Colombia.
The staff of Taca airlines offered to let Summer board without me. She considered leaving her idiot husband in Peru, but decided to stay with me. I did what any man would do in the circumstances: got down on my knees and begged for forgiveness.
We checked into a hotel in Lima and I started researching the visa process while Summer worked on the forgiveness, a task that became even harder when I learned that it usually takes two weeks to get a visa, if you get one at all.
So I am extremely grateful to the Colombian consulate in Lima for granting me a visa in one day. I showed up at opening time with all of the paperwork they requested, got an interview with the consul within two hours, and had my visa at 5 p.m. (Note to other Irish citizens thinking of trying this - it made a big difference that I have a U.S. greencard.) They saved the last two weeks of our trip, and my marriage with it.