No Turning Back (The Traveler) (11 page)

Gary had already withdrawn two hundred thousand pesos from the airport’s currency exchange. He had been advised to keep no more than four hundred thousand pesos on him at a time, roughly two hundred U.S. dollars. It was comparable to a month’s pay for thousands of poor Colombians. So as they reached the man’s cab and climbed inside, with their luggage placed in the trunk, Gary took the initiative and told their driver, “Forty thousand pesos.” He held the money ready in his right hand.

Their driver observed the money from his rearview mirror and grimaced. He shook his head passionately. “No, no, sixty thousand pesos to hotel.”

“Hey man, you take this forty thousand or you let us back out,” Gary barked at him. “We’re college students.
Universidad
,” he spoke in Spanish.

Their driver froze at the wheel, contemplating it.

“Just let us back out then,” Gary pressed him. “We’ll just take another taxi.”

The driver turned to look Gary in his eyes and to read his tenacity. Seeing that the American would not back down, the man shrugged and grabbed the money.

“Okay,” he grumbled and took off driving.

Taylor grinned as they began their journey toward the city of Medellín, Colombia.

We’re actually down here in South America by ourselves,
he mused while watching the countryside from the open taxi window. The experience was peaceful and just what their minds needed.

Yeah, this feels good,
Taylor admitted to himself as he leaned back and enjoyed the ride.

“How are you feeling over there?” Gary asked him, squeezing his friend’s left arm.

“I’m just trying to take things in, if you let me.”

Their driver eyed them both in his rearview mirror. He grinned and asked them, “You want girls? Meda-yheen has all kinds.”

Before the two friends could answer, their driver held up a brochure with pictures of comely women of all colors.

Gary acknowledged his pitch and laughed it off. “I don’t think I need any help at getting girls,
amigo
. You just show me where the clubs are,” he bragged.

The driver nodded, taking in the young man’s good looks and swagger. He said in a mixture of Spanish and English, “
En Poblado
,
Parque Lleras
has much parties.”

“Yeah, is that right near our hotel?” Taylor asked, overhearing the
Poblado
name again.

Their driver nodded. “
Sí, sí
. Yes.”

“Okay, we can walk there then,” Taylor suggested.

“Yes, or take hotel bus,” the driver advised him.

They arrived in the ritzy area of Poblado on Medellín’s southeast side and pulled up to the striking Intercontinental Hotel.

“Oh, this is definitely nice,” Taylor commented on the tall and wide hotel building. It had a dramatic front view, like a giant, curved wall of a dam in off-white marble.

Instead of climbing out of his taxi to help them with their luggage, their driver slipped Gary a business card through the window. “You call for taxi anytime.” He then popped his trunk and allowed the hotel staff to collect their luggage.

“
Buenas noches.
Good evening
,
” the hotel staff members addressed them in Spanish translation. They wore sharp white uniforms.

“
Buenas noches
,” the Kentucky friends responded. It was approaching six o’clock in the evening.

Gary thought of carrying their luggage inside of the hotel and up to their room to save some cash, but their eager hotel staff was already on the case.

I’m going to have to get more money before we leave the hotel, at this rate,
Gary imagined. He handed ten thousand pesos to the hotel staff just for handling their luggage and taking it up to their room.

“Welcome to the Intercontinental Hotel of
Meda
-
yheen
. You’re names, please?” the registration attendant asked them inside. The olive-toned woman in her late twenties looked as beautiful as a model herself, with her dark hair pulled back into a slick ponytail.

“Gary Stevens. We’re both in the same room.”

The attendant looked up his name in the computer system. “Ah, you’re with us for three nights.”

“Yeah, then we’ll head up to Car-te-heena to get some swim and sun in,” Gary told her.

“We do have a pool here also,” the woman informed them as she handed over their room keys.

“Yeah, but we’ll wait to swim at the beach. We plan to walk the streets and hit the nightclubs here.”

“Ahh, yes,
Parque Lleras
is very nice. Do you want executive club upgrade?” the attendant asked them.

Gary paused and thought about what that meant: more money. He quickly turned the idea down. “Nah, we’ll barely even be in the room. So we’ll just stick with the standard.”

“Okay, room seven-twelve.”

When they arrived in their spacious and comfortable room, Gary felt energized.

“Okay, you take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the sofa. I don’t mind,” he told his friend. “Now let’s freshen up and get the hell out of here.”

Taylor looked at him, exhausted. “Dude, can we chill for a bit. We just got here.”

“You mean, for like an hour or so, right?” Gary asked him.

“At least, man. God!

Taylor fell on his back across the soft queen-size bed, covered in a thick white quilt. It had been an early morning rise, with two flights and several long lines for both of them. Taylor wondered where Gary continued to get his energy from.

This guy’s a beast, like his body’s filled with Rockstar energy juice,
he mused.

Gary immediately walked over to the large window and took in the hotel view that faced the north, looking back into the city. Their room had a beautiful skyline that included the Colombian mountains in the far background. Gary also eyed the Metrocable service in the distance, traveling from the high mountains down to the center city area.

Yeah, we’re definitely taking a ride on that,
he promised himself.

“This is beautiful, man!” he remarked. “This place will look even better at night when the lights pop on. Anyone would love this view,” he hinted.

Taylor caught on to his friend’s hint and began to smile, assuming things.

“What exactly do you have in mind over there, Gary?”

Gary looked back and struggled. “I don’t know, five or six naked Colombian girls, maybe. We could play strip poker in front of the window with some drinks. The more girls you ask over to play, the more they’ll feel comfortable with it. It’s called the ‘group inclusion effect’.”

Taylor broke out laughing, but the idea didn’t sound half bad. He wondered if his friend could actually pull it off.

“If you can get a bunch of girls in here to go for that—”

He stopped in mid-sentence and left the idea open.

But Gary immediately took his comment as a challenge. “All right, you’re on.”

Once Taylor had taken time to recuperate, Gary led them out on the town with digital cameras and his iPhone to document everything, including snapshots of beautiful women—some of whom had no idea that they were being photographed. The guys then rode the Metro train system that traveled from one end of the city to the other. The Metro train traveled beside Medellín’s centrally located river. They followed that excursion with a cable car ride up to the mountains that surrounded the city.

“This is great, man!” Gary expressed, way up above the buildings. The cable car ride was several times higher than anything they had ever been on before. “This is what I’m talking about, the joys of living,” Gary continued. “We should never allow one place to restrict our imaginations, dude. It’s a real big world out here.”

Taylor didn’t feel as excited about the cable car ride up to the mountains. He felt more anxious than anything. The height of the cable was startling. They were literally thousands of feet above ground in a box that was attached to nothing but wires.

Shit! Taylor panicked. He was barely willing to look out at their far-above-the-city view.
Just let this thing make it where it’s going,
he told himself.

Gary was so thrilled that he asked Colombian passengers to take pictures of them while they posed next to the window to document the ride.

“Hey, don’t lean on the glass,” Taylor warned him.

“Aw, cut it out, man. This glass is extra strong.” Gary even faked a shoulder block into the glass before he stopped inches away from it.

“Shit, man! What are you doing?” Taylor complained. His heart jumped into his throat, imaging his friend’s impact taking them and several other passengers out of the window to their death. Even a few of the Colombians looked concerned.

“It’ll be over with before you know it,” Gary promised him. “Then we’ll ride it back down,” he teased.

“Oh, no we’re not,” Taylor protested. “We’re taking a bus or a taxi back down.”

As the night hour descended upon them, they walked through the wide sidewalks of San Juan Road downtown, a two-way street with multiple lanes in each direction.

“Look at this,
mi amigo
. We don’t have a street this big in all of Louisville,” Gary commented as they walked and took in everything.

Taylor told him, “I get the point, Gary. You’re enjoying yourself. You don’t have to keep reminding me every five minutes. Louisville is not exactly the biggest city in America anyway. This place is much bigger than home.”

Gary grinned and was satisfied with his friend’s admission. “Yeah, I’m glad you noticed.”

Before their big city tour closed in on midnight, the guys finally made their way to the
Parque Lleras
club scene, where the most beautiful Colombian women of every hue were on display, enjoying themselves.

Taylor said, “Dude, am I imagining this, or does it seem like every woman here has a perfect set of boobs?”

Gary laughed. “No, you’re seeing it right. Meda-yheen is very big on plastic surgery and boob jobs. Wherever there’s models, there’s plastic surgeons.”

“I see,” Taylor commented, alert.

They casually strolled through the area, observing the many restaurants, bars and night spots before they decided to enter one.

“Jesus Christ!” Taylor exclaimed of the exotic natives. “They’re coming out from everywhere at night. Now I see why you wanted to come here.”

Gary continued laughing. “It looks like I’ll have to keep
you
out of trouble now.”

“Good luck with that,” Taylor retorted. He was so distracted by beautiful women that he could hardly walk straight. His head and eyes were on a swivel, rotating from left to right at everything that moved.

“You’re about to break your neck, Taylor,” Gary warned him. “And that’s a good thing.”

They followed behind several women into a nightclub and showed their valid IDs. The large, organic club blasted Spanish American music from a live band, while girls danced in colorful costumes onstage.

Both Kentucky boys froze at the sight of it. They were in awe. The big loud place was a man’s paradise. The pulsating energy inside the room was overwhelming to them, with stunning women onstage and all around them in the club, including the bar areas. And there were plenty of older tourists spread out around the room. Many of them were married men who had left their wives at home.

Taylor mumbled, “Gary, I’m glad you talked me into this. It looks like five women to every man in here.”

Gary nodded. “Meda-yheen is considered the second model haven of South America. It ranks only behind Sao Paulo, Brazil,” he told him. “And this looks like a pick-up bar. I read about places like this online. But these old guys in here don’t stand a chance against us. All they have is money to burn. But we have
stamina
.”

Taylor shook his head and smiled again.

Gary said, “All we need to do is act like a couple of rock stars, and we’re in.”

“Uh-huh,” Taylor mumbled absentmindedly. He stood there hypnotized by an astonishing image of deep-brown sugar. The woman’s skin in front of him shimmered under a colorful floral
dress, with silky dark waves for hair, and a flower in it to match her outfit. She looked like a perfect DNA stew of Native American, African and Spanish blood, and she was curved like sculpture. But she only took up one space inside the room. There were plenty of others who were just as enticing to the eyes and senses.

Oh my God! I’ve died and gone to heaven!
Taylor told himself.

Gary followed his friend’s eyes to validate the deep- brown beauty for himself. “Oh, yeah, she reminds me of Chilli from the group TLC.
Muy guapa
,” he commented. “Come on, let’s go meet her.”

Taylor froze and stared at him. “Are you serious? Just like that? You’re going after her?”

Gary frowned. “Dude, what do you think she’s here for? They all want to meet people. And we’re not just in here to stare at them. Come on.”

Gary was already pulling out his small book of Spanish phrases from his back pocket.

Taylor shrugged and followed him across the room. Scores of Colombian women eyed the tall, young Americans with curiosity. Who were they? And what was their purpose for being there?

Before they could reach her, Taylor watched the deep-brown Colombian woman strike up a conversation with a round-bellied white man in his fifties.

“You see what I mean?” Gary asked Taylor. “But that old guy doesn’t stand a chance against you. Now, do you want to talk to her or not?”

Taylor paused and thought about it.
What the hell?
he told himself.
You only live once.
So he forced himself to nod. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

As they approached and circled her in the room, the young woman made eye contact with them. Gary quickly smiled and nodded to her.

“Okay, now she knows we’re interested,” he told Taylor. “Let’s wait for her at the bar and buy a couple of drinks. In fact, order three drinks, with something sweet for her, and I’ll get her over here for you.”

Taylor ordered the drinks at the bar from a bilingual bartender while Gary focused on regaining the Colombian’s attention. When she looked in his direction again, he gave her a second nod and continued to stare at her. Before long, she excused herself from him and headed over in Gary’s direction.