Cuban son and Salsa fill the air from the array of tiny bars and cafes that line the streets, along with the old buildings making the whole place feel like Havanah, Cuba, or at least what I imagine Havanah to be like.
It used to be the main Spanish port on the Caribbean coast, and was used to store treasures stolen from the indigenous people before they were shipped back to Europe.
As a result, it became a target for pirates and was repeatedly sieged during bloody attacks, some of the worst happening during the 16th century (Bad Karma I say - thats what ye get for being nasty imperial colonialists, yaaarrrggggghhh!). To try to pevent the attacks the Spaniards built huge walls encircling the town, making it into a fortress.
It´s a pretty amazing place. Walking around, you really do fell like you´ve gone back in time a few centuriese. Until you pass the Hardrock Cafe that is. Behind our posada was a park that was home to a troop of little monkeys and some Iguanas which run around fighting each other like battling dinosaurs.
We had a great time on New Year´s eve. Our friends were staying at a hotel with a terrace over-looking the main fort, so we met loads of friends (many of which we´d met previously along the road) there for a cocktail party. At 11-ish we set off for the old town, and later on 7 of us managed to crash a party that was happening in one of the main squares. It´d had been fenced off, and would have cost a couple of hundred dollars to get in, but somehow we just drifted through an opening in the fence! If we´d have actually planned to crash it, we´d have probably been busted, but as we just wandered in spontaneously, without even thinking about it, nobody noticed. After dancing around to the live salsa on stage drinking Champagne, the spontaneity continued when our dutch friend Dustin randomly asked me if i wanted to try and get on stage to rap. There was some famous Reggaeton crew performing, and we agreed that we thought we could do better. So, somehow, he got talking to some of the stage crew, giving them some bullshit about us being a famous crew in Europe. When asked our names, he came out with a beauty of a cliched classic: he was ¨Endo G¨, and I ¨Killa B¨!!!! Incredibly, a short while later, a guy came and said ¨okay, come on¨ and before we could think about it, Dustin and I were lead underneath the stage, up some stairs and into the bright lights! The rest of our friends couldn´t believe what was going on, screaming up at us from the front of the crowd with bemused faces. We were handed a mic each, a beat started, and we took it in turn to rap, 8 bars each, to a crowd of about 1000 people!!! It was insane, non of us could believe it! Everything just happened so spontaneously that night.....if we´d had time to really think about getting up on stage, or thought about what we were going to say, I´m sure we´d have come unstuck. But, we just did it, and it worked...depsite being hammered i do remember us holding down a freestyle on rhythm, and it ended up being the highlight of a crazy old new year´s eve!!! Just a damn shame no one brought out their camera. In hindsight, maybe I should have used that opportunity to denounce President Uribe. Hmmmm, maybe it was a good job I wasn't thinking clearly afterall...
Our roll came to an end when we tried to help ourselves to the free buffet afterwards.....we´d pushed our luck too far, the staff looked unimpressed, and so we decided it was time to leave before we were given the boot.
What a night!
