We arrived in Medellin late in the day, but I had to go directly to coach the youth orchestra. I was a little nervous about it because of the language barrier. I was concerned that they wouldn’t speak any English and that I would have a lot of communication barriers. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out that way at all. We arrived and listened to the orchestra rehearse for a few minutes, and then we had to play with them a bit. That would have been fine but none of us had played in about two or three days, and let’s just say that the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony is not the world’s best warm-up. After that we had about an hour to work with the students in individual groups for each instrument. I worked with my two horn players on how to play together, and how to practice your music for orchestra rehearsal effectively. The language barrier actually wasn’t a problem at all. There was only one word (glue) that I had to ask a translation for.
The following day we had rehearsals all day because it was the first time during the tour where we had a space available for a rehearsal and not just a sound check. Our evening concert was once again outdoors, but it was pouring rain so we didn’t know if we’d actually be playing it until literally five minutes before we started. It turned out ok, though. It only really started raining after the concert.
The next day we left at 5:30 AM for our flight to Cartagena. We got to the airport for our 8 am flight, but the airline hadn’t accounted for the amount of carry-on luggage (with an entire orchestra, you get a lot of carry-on bags), so our flight was kind of delayed. This flight was taking place on July 19, the day before Colombia’s bicentennial, so there was an air show taking place in Bogotá between 10-12 that morning. Our flight had a stopover in Bogotá, and our flight was just delayed enough to make them have to cancel it until after the air show in Bogotá. So we waited in the airport for about an hour until the orchestra and airline decided to just change the flight to go directly to Cartagena. So even though it was awful to have to sit in the airport in Medellín for so long, it was really nice to have a direct flight and have plenty of time to do stuff in Cartagena!
Cartagena is kind of the party capital of Colombia; it’s where all the Colombians go on vacation to go to the beach, maybe like the Colombian equivalent of Miami or something. The first day, we did some shopping and then went to the beach. The beach was really nice, but not comparable to the one I went to in Brazil. The water was super warm and pretty calm, but there was some trash on the beach, and since it’s such a tourist destination there were people pestering us constantly to buy stuff. I wasn’t able to take my camera there either, because it would be really easy for someone to steal stuff there.
The next day we had the whole day free until our concert at night. My friends and I went swimming in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went to walk around the old city. It is a very quaint old town, which even included a castle. It was really awesome to get to see all those old buildings – it was a different side of Colombia that what I’d seen so far. Our concert started at 10:30 that night; the idea was to play the Colombian national anthem last on the program perfectly on the stroke of midnight. We were off by about three minutes, but it was ok. What an experience. The whole huge crowd was enthusiastically singing along to the anthem. Afterwards there was a huge party for YOA with lots of dancing.
The next day we again had a free day until we left for Barranquilla in the night. We went to the beach for a few hours in the morning, and then in the afternoon went and walked around the city some more. I like Cartagena a lot, but at the same time to me it feels less safe than some of the others. I’m not completely sure why, since crime is lower there, but I think it has something to do with the sheer number of tourists everywhere and that fact that I am obviously a gringa.
Last night we took a bus here to Barranquilla. I haven’t had a chance to look around the city yet, but I hope I have a chance to do so before we depart for Cali tomorrow morning.
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