Welcome to the second installment of 20 Ways I Was Lost & Found in Translation in Medellin.
Here, I recount the events for which I come to learn several choice new catchphrases — some are part of actual Medellin slang, while others are broken bi-linguistic fragments made up on the spot by yours truly:
7. Day 4: “WASHED” Business
My prayers answered. I see a BOOKSTORE. I go inside and ask the man behind the counter for a Medellin street map. He shrugs his shoulders and points to the one, single shelf with anything actually stacked on it. There I find the following:
- A row of Spanish, Cathy Comic Day Calendars — from the year 2005 (“Muerte a Carbs!”).
- A few Gabriel Garcia Marquez classics
- AND what I loosely translate to be a “How-To-Guide” on welding a plane fuselage out of steel pipes.
This is a “washed” business; i.e. a fake storefront used for money laundering.
8. Night 4: “TOASTED”
On this night, I inhaled! We all inhaled. And then, we sat around listening to “Portishead” and tried to put together Camilla’s brand-new jigsaw puzzle — which so happened to be of a giant steam train in outer space. Seriously!! 99% of the pieces were the exact same shade of BLACK.
“Toasted” is Medellin’s word for what I call “Perma-Fried Fred” — the guy in college who took too much acid and now goes around wearing tinfoil hats and talking to the little green men in crosswalk signs.
9. Night 5: “What the FARC is happening to me?”
This was the closest I actually came to being taken hostage in Medellin. Camilla’s art gallery hosted a private film screening of the newest movie by a highly recognized indie-director. Seconds before pressing play, the director told us we’d be watching the 2-hour, “rough cut” version…
… IN Portuguese
… WITHOUT subtitles!
Luck be this lady — the man sat directly behind me in perfect eyesight of my every twitch, butt adjustment, and head nod SO that I could feel his wilting ego bore into the back of my brain like a Ceti Eel.
10. Day 5: “HAT TRICK”
As I’m walking through the center of Plaza Botero, a piece of paper drops right below my feet. I bend down to pick it up and see it is a lottery ticket. A man with a bouquet of cane-hats appears suddenly at my side and says something like —
“See! It is your destiny that you should buy one of my hats!”
Looks like the street vendors in Medellin know a little something about ‘SEREN-DUPE-ITY‘
11. Day 5: “Aguanta Menos Hipsters” — translation: “I am in favor of LESS Hipsters”
On a concrete wall papered with the “WISHES” of the Medellin people, I spot this sticker.
Turns out, the desire for LESS irony-loving jackbags is universal!
12. Day 6: “Slit my throat now,” ha, ha.
- In the states, we say “Shoot me now!” and make a gesture of a hand-gun pointed at our head to indicate boredom.
- In Medellin, people simply take their index finger to one side of their neck and slowly draw it all the way over to the other side. Somehow, their gesture has a lot more bang for its buck.
13. Day 7: “La policia se guepardos, protegar a la poblacion, que son conejitos.”
One of the officers in Parque de Berrio explains to me:
“La policia se guepardos, protegar a la poblacion, que son conejitos.”
Loosely translated, this means: “The police in Colombia are cheetahs, who guard the people, who are like bunnies.”
I couldn’t help think: In nature, don’t cheetahs tear the heads off of cute little bunnies and disembowel them for dinner? But hey, who am I to mess with their metaphors, especially when I fall into the bunny category.
14. Day 8: “SPE-DRUNKING.”
Me in my bamboo bungalow in the Rio Claro nature preserve.
Spelunking + A bottle of Malbec = Spe-Drunking
15. Day 8: “Que es Mano?! Cual Mano, No Panic!” Translation: “What is Hand? Which Hand No Panic?!!
Ah yes, how can I forget? The title’s very origin! So Camilla, Fer and I decide to do the Rio Claro Canopy tour. And — as I’m being fitted for my first-ever zip-lining holster, the guide quickly runs through the necessary safety precautions — in SPANISH!
“En ingles, por favor,” I ask with increasing agitation.
“No problemo,” Fer assures me. “It’s super safe. Just make sure you put the glove on the right hand or else it will surely be severed.”
“Right as in derecho? Or right as in right?!!” I gulp out seconds before feeling a push onto the cable.
And then, the ear-piercing shrills of “Que es Mano? Cual Mano, No Panic!” decreasing in volume as I slide-and-twirl further and further away on the steel wire 20-feet above a raging river.
16. Day 9: “Hacienda Napoles”
There is no shortage of insane Pablo Escobar stories. The man was, apart from being a ruthless drug lord, a complete whackadoo. Hacienda Napoles was his private, 8-square-mile estate turned Island of Dr. Moreau. He had exotic animals flown in from all over the world to coexist in contrived harmony: Hippopotamus with Bengal tigers with giraffes with goats with, yes — dinosaurs.
On the drive to visit Napoles, Fer hit me with this especially ghastly Escobar story:
When she was just a little girl, Escobar asked his daughter what she wanted for her birthday. She answered: A unicorn. So, without flinching, Escobar ordered his staff to deliver on the girl’s request. Fearing for their life, they had an ivory horn sewn onto the forehead of a horse, which stood upright just long enough to satisfy the girl BEFORE keeling over.
17. Day 9: “What Do I Have To Do To Make You Fall In Love With Me?”
Answer: Take me to Queareparaenamorarte, one of the restaurants featured in the Colombia episode of Anthony Bordain’s “No Reservations.”
On my last day in Medellin, Camilla and I drove up the twisted foothills to Rionegro where this very restaurant is tucked. After a 2-hour lunch, all I can say is:
The food there tastes like what it must feel like to cheat death.
18. Day 9-10: “Cosmo”
The cutest Siamese cat SOUTH of the Equator
19. Day 10: “Country Home”
This does NOT indicate a quaint little cottage in the woods where you pound your dirty clothes on washboards and churn your own butter. This is Chez Botero, Camilla’s family’s gorgeous ranch SLASH future personal writer’s retreat:
20. Day 10: “Solamente mi saber mortal”
If, perchance, you really want to see the inside of the Anti-Narcoticos office at the Medellin airport, all you have to do is give the following answer to the customs agent when he asks you if you have any “SHARP” items to declare:
“Solamente mi saber mortal.”
(What I thought meant: “Only my deadly wit.”)
(Really meant: “Only my lethally sharp saber.”)
Turns out, the biggest thing that got lost in translation on my trip was my own sense of humor.
Nerdy Romantic 