Colombia's three C's

On Saturday we went through one of the longest road tunnels in Colombia. It's not far from Medellin and connects this part of the Andes with a fertile subtropical valley. It took 8 years to build, is 3 miles long and provides a better route for transporting wood, cattle, grain and the like.

The tunnel typifies the problems that the western countries of South America face with their physical geography. It's a bit like establishing a country in the Alps without the resources to maintain it. Land-slides, brigands and taking 5 hours to go 50 miles have provided generations of missionaries with colourful stories and nationals with a hard life.

At the other end of the tunnel lies the city of Santa Fé. As it's translated name, The Holy Faith, implies, it contains a Catholic Seminary, churches as frequent as pubs in Glasgow and those who beg in God's name. The Spaniards like their Inca predecessors knew that the Andes would provide the kind of isolation that maintains religious tradition.

So forget preconceptions of crazy Latin life: Colombia is Catholic, conservative and noticeably, caring. Yesterday Olwen took a fall on a curb while walking to the Metro station, and before she could say "Yow" a crowd of genuinely concerned locals had picked her up, dusted her down and decided she wasn´t drunk.

We often say it's a privilege to be here. It would be nice if the Colombians felt the same about us.



P.S. There´s a 23 min. documentary about Medellíin on the BBC world service, Friday at 8.06 am: "Medellín Transformed". You can listen to it now on http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/documentary_3.shtml

Photo: The Medellín-Santa Fe tunnel.

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