Fishing Villages and The Curious Affair of Toni the Dog

I have hit rock bottom, altitude 0 and the sea! A 10 hour ride in a night bus with air conditioning turned to -10C brought me in a chilly kind of comfort to the coast and to Taganga, a fishing village tucked in a scenic bay some 8km from the town of Santa Marta.

Finally I really feel like I’m in the tropical zone! Sun block is a joke and a burkha would certainly be the best and only way to prevent third degree sun burn on my winter-virginal white skin. In a word - it’s hot and I am currently doing my famous imitation of a boiled lobster.

But, as always on the coast, the sea and sea breeze make this all eminently bearable. 

Well, a bit more than that.

In fact, not bad at all!

There is just so much one can write about the pleasures of reading a book on the beach, and I’m sure more of this is forthcoming. So I shall now turn my attention to the Curious Affair of Toni the Dog.

To make the trip down to the coast a bit more manageable, I split it into two parts. Meaning I first took a morning bus for 3 hours from San Gil to Bucaramanga and from that terminal hopped straight onto a local bus for Giron, an old tobacco farming village from colonial times. Yet another beautiful, white town.

I spent several hours in Giron killing time before my night bus and getting to know the lay of the land. This included a prolonged sit in the park at dusk. I was not alone! These parks in the central squares of villages are the extended living room of the locals. 

(The above photos are actually from San Gil, but the same principle applies).

Parents, children, young lovers, ice cream vendors and pensioners all rub shoulders on the benches. Young men daringly climbed unclimbeable trees to drop down fruit to their accomplices - a small, round, tangy kind of fruit, which resembles a lyche more that anything else I can think of.

Anyway, enter Toni!

Suddenly a commotion took place in front of my bench as a well dressed lady of some 60-odd years squealed with delight clutching one of the four free ranging dogs that were galavanting around the park.

”Toni, Toni, Toni!”

This Toni was a small white mut of mixed ancestry, though somewhere along the line one suspects scotty-terriers were involved in the making of.

It turned out that this Toni was the dog of a friend of hers - and had been missing in action for eight days. 

Calls were made, Toni was clutched tightly by the lady and all seemed set for a happy reunion. Toni himself seemed resigned to, rather than delighted by, his new status as a lap dog. His eyes longingly followed his three amigos, who were still frolicking freely around the park.

However, things suddenly took an unexpected turn. 

A lady from a slightly disreputable group that sat on tbe two beches opposite me suddenly got up, walked up to Toni and grabbed him in her arms. She firmly carried him to her seat and informed the other lady that Toni was HER dog. Toni himself seemed equally at ease in her arms as in the previous ones. 

Well, you can imagine the scene that ensued. Various gentlemen from the latter lady’s group sided with her and left the first lady outnumbered, though not convinced. There was heated discussion about how many days Toni has been the latter lady’s dog, and nobody backed down.

”Mentira, mentira” - lies, lies - was a commonly heard shout. A sole gentleman from a neighbouring bench tried to placate the warring parties by contributing ”Es perro de todo!” - he’s everyone’s dog - to the discussion.

In the end, force of numbers won the day. The disreputable group left the grounds with Toni happily jumping after them. The first lady - whose story rang true - was left to lament the fate of poor Toni to the others in the park.

I don’t know if Toni left with his rightful owners, but at least his prospects are looking good on the ”continuing to party in the park” front. I suspect that after his disappearing act he would have been kept on a tight leash at the other potential home. Now he can continue to be everybody’s dog.