Guilty Tourism in La Guajira, Colombia

Photo Credit to our tour guide Jon.

​Colombia, compared to Canada is a poor country, but life in a Colombian city like Medellin, is not really all that different from life in a Canadian city. The levels of poverty are higher, but the levels of Paisas (a person from Antioquia, but more specifically Medellin) living in relative comfort are also significantly higher than in more rural regions in Colombia. Then, you visit La Guajira, the northern most desert department of Colombia, and poverty takes on new meaning.

A Land of Little

I think La Guajira is a place every traveller to Colombia should go, especially if your typical vacation idea is an all-inclusive Caribbean resort. I also think it is a place all Colombians should visit, just like I feel the Canadian North is a place all Canadians should visit (and by this I mean the TRUE north, not Northern Ontario cottage country, or anything north of Edmonton). This place has stunning desert meets ocean landscapes on one hand, and gut-wrenching poverty and desperation on the other. Have I sold you yet?

A shack not unlike many of the dwellings we saw, but this one's abandoned, and likely used for commerce.

​The residents of La Guajira live in small shelters in blistering heat on the border with Venezuela, which if you have read the news lately at all, is not currently the most desirous border to have. Guajiros custom dictates the exchange of a small gift in appreciation for the crossing of their land. In the 21st century, this means small packets of junk food wrapped in plastic, or small (plastic) bags of water in 300ml quantity. The theme of plastic, and junk food is at once inescapable and tragic. La Guajira is remote, through much of the region there are no roads, little freshwater, and supplies are what the big corporations bring in. Mostly non-perishable junk food. We stopped once for a pee break in one of the more established “towns” only to be told there was nowhere to go as they had not had water in several days, and the reality of the how remote and impoverished they are up here really hit home.
So if there is no water, and little in the way of fresh food, you can imagine garbage collection is not what you would call a priority service, and you would be correct. (All you angry commenters on Trip Advisor should think about this before passing judgement on some of the poorest people on the continent). So, all of the packaging for these candied trinkets ends up scattered all over the barren landscape caught up in garbage fencing, and cactus tines. Ultimately, I would safely bet much of it ends up in the ocean. As an outsider it would be easy to judge the residents here as being untidy or disgusting for allowing this mess to exist with little to no effort to rectify it. But, a more responsible view would be to look inwardly at what you might do in a similar situation. There are few jobs up here, little to no government presence beyond soldiers protecting the border, little food and water, and all of your energy is spent trying to rectify these issues.
Do you really think keeping green would be a top priority? Let’s say you did. You gathered up all of the excess wrappers, then what? Put them on the curb for garbage collection? Burn it? (This does happen). I think this is an excellent opportunity for design thinking geniuses to come up with a viable alternative to the plastic packaging waste, and the issue of getting better quality food to the people who live up here.

Poverty Road

Photo credit, Derrick Mason

"Toll Road" Minders

It is a hard life in La Guajira, people keep sheep, or goats, there is some minimal tourism opportunities, but aside from that there is little opportunity. Many residents rely on the charity of outsiders. If you take a tour with a four wheel drive vehicle, you will drive through literally hundreds of makes shift tolls that the residents set up with broken motorcycle chains, ropes made of, you guessed it, plastic bags, or whatever else might suffice. Here the desperate residents block logical vehicle entrance points and try to prevent you from passing with their wholly inadequate barricades. Often, there will be three or four “barricades” in quick succession no more than five meters apart. They are usually manned by young children to evoke the most sympathy from the wealthy tourists who pass through these roads. It was something I was not expecting, and found it truly heartbreaking, especially when we opened the doors of our vehicle (the window in our land cruiser was broken) and two or three children would then aggressively fight over whatever we were handing out, do this about one hundred times within the span of an two hours and you will really start to question humanity, and your very presence in the region. It seems such a hopeless existence, and you end up feeling privileged guilt. These people, for the most part did not choose to live in poverty, and they have little recourse to get out of it. I just happened to be born in a developed country and while not rich, I am comparative royalty for no other reason than my birthright.

​A Moment that Will Haunt me Forever

One moment that I think will haunt me for the rest of my days occurred on the second day of our tour we were staying at a hostel in Cabo de la Vela, a beautiful beachhead village famous for its kitesurfing. We had breakfast just off of the beach outside our hostel where we had slept in hammocks the night before, and throughout the meal local children were trying to sell us homemade handicrafts. They were not super pushy, just sort of there with their sad eyes hoping for a pittance of business. As we were finishing up, we had a fair amount of food left on the table, watermelon some bread, rice and various fruits, we gradually got up and started heading back to the hostel to get ready to head out, and the children descended on the table scraps like vultures literally clutching and grabbing and yanking from one another. Food which was of little consequence to us seemed a matter of life and death to them.
I am not sure if this is bad parenting, but I made eye contact with my eldest two girls and said remember this moment. We will talk later. They stood there, as tranfixed as me, and nodded. Something told me they already understood. I have since brought up the importance of being thankful for what we have and not moaning because the food is not to your liking, because this is the extreme of what it is like to be without food. They are perhaps still too young to truly appreciate what they saw that day, but I bring it up frequently in hopes that one day they will remember and actually understand the gravity of what they witnessed. This scene bothered me the rest of our trip, and bothers me still because I know that I will ultimately not have time, energy, wherewithal to do anything about it and this makes me feel worse.

A Guajira family that agreed to pose with our girls.

​It is Beautiful, and you Should Go!

reEnough of the depressing side of La Guajira. It has other interesting features. For example, there are limited gas stations, and most, if not all, of the gasoline available here is illegally smuggled from Venezuela. Due to the limited gas stations, gasoline is sold by the pop bottle from the side of the road, or at fuelling areas, and even the major tourist companies partake in this Mad Max style refuelling scheme, it is pretty crazy to see people sucking on hoses and then emptying coke bottles of yellow liquid into gas tanks. I was interested to just see the world operating in a way that I had not seen anywhere else. There already tons of blogs about the beauty of La Guajira, and who the best operators are. We used Magic Expeditions, and were pretty satisfied with them.
Despite the abject poverty, the people we did interact with seemed really happy despite their difficult surroundings and circumstance, Los Dunas de Taroa, were magical, large orange sand hills ending in pristine beachfront coastline. Nearby too, is the northern most point in South America, Punta Gallinas, complete with a less than spectacular lighthouse. However, the scenery for me was unfortunately marred by the reality of life for the forgotten people who live in this barren land, and the fact that I did little more than bear witness to their suffering. If nothing else, La Guajira will make you appreciate your own life all the more.