Brest Fortress is famous for its defense against the Nazis which took place from the 22nd to the 30th of June, 1941. One of the first battles of Operation Barbarossa, it was a vicious fight. The Brest Fortress, defended by the Red Army against the Wehrmacht, held out longer than expected, and thus became a symbol of Soviet resistance during the Great Patriotic War, along with Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad that spelled the beginning of the end of the Nazi war machine.

I provide more detail at the bottom of this post if you are interested, dear readers.

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This is the dramatic entrance to the Brest Fortress… This image is on the currency of Belarus to give you an idea of how much the symbolism of the Brest Fortress resonates in the consciousness of the people of Belarus:

Walking through the star – patriotic music is played from speakers all around you and is mixed in with the sounds of battle:

Inside the fortress:

The Bug River that meanders through Brest Fortress:

This statue is a monument to the suffering of the defenders of the fortress. With many trapped in isolated sections of Brest Fortress and, therefore, cut off from supplies by the Nazi attackers, the Red Army defenders were driven mad with thirst. Those that tried to sneak out at night to retrieve water (the scene depicted below) were usually picked off by Nazi snipers:

I’m afraid I don’t know the story behind this stern statue gazing down on the eternal flame:

It was absolutely massive though as you can presumable tell by comparing me to the size of the statue:

Here’s another view of the giant head:

And here is the back side of it:

Defenders at this gate put up a particularly strong defense before being overrun. Among those captured were second in command of the fortress, Yefim Fomin, who was executed on the spot for being a Soviet political commissar and a Jew. A plaque honoring him is visible on the left above the spot where he was killed:

The battered walls of the fortress:

An Orthodox church on the grounds of the fortress:

This monument in the center of Brest Fortress is extraordinary for how high it is. While I was taking this picture, one of the workmen near the top dropped his hammer or some other metallic object and I could hear it plinking and clanking for over a minute as it ricocheted off all the levels of scaffolding on its way to the ground:

There is also quite a good museum on the grounds of the Brest Fortress:

Inside the museum:

A defender of Brest Fortress and his dog – together in death:

Dying defenders of Brest Fortress carved final messages on these bricks such as: “We’ll die but we’ll not leave the fortress.” and “I’m dying but I won’t surrender. Farewell, Motherland. 20.VII.41.”

These, believe it or not, are bricks. This is what bricks look like after they have been subjected to sustained attack from a Nazi flamethrower in an effort to kill those taking shelter near and around them:

Hitler and Mussolini visited Brest Fortress in August of 1941. This is a picture from that visit:

The Germans planned to seize the city of Brest and the Brest Fortress which was located in the path of Army Group Center during the first hours of Operation Barbarossa. The fortress and the city controlled the crossings over the Bug River, as well as the Warsaw–Moscow railway and highway and were thus a key strategic objective to secure.

The 3,500-strong defending force comprised regular soldiers, border guards and NKVD men as well as the garrison hospital and a medical unit inside the fortress (up to a total of 7 to 8,000 people.) There were also 300 families of servicemen inside as well.

The fortress had no warning when the Axis invaded on 22 June 1941, and became the site of the first major fighting between Soviet forces and the Wehrmacht which swiftly surrounded the fortress. From the first minutes of the invasion, Brest and Brest Fortress were bombed and shelled by the German Wehrmacht. The initial bombardment took the unprepared fortress by surprise, inflicting heavy casualties on both material and personnel.

The first German assault on the fortress took place half an hour after the bombardment started; thus the surprised Soviet defenders were unable to form a solid front and instead defended isolated strongpoints – the most important of which was the fortress itself. Some managed to escape the fortress, but most were trapped inside by the encircling German forces. Despite their surprise, the subsequent attempt by the Germans to quickly take the fortress with infantry stalled due to organized Soviet rifle and machine gun fire and the horseshoe-shaped design of the fortress.

Although the Soviet soldiers in the opening hours of the battle were stunned by the surprise attack of the heavily outnumbering enemy, being short of supplies and cut off from the outside world, they fought and counter-attacked much harder and longer than the Germans expected. The Germans deployed various powerful mortars, artillery and even resorted to tear gas and flame throwers, but could not break Soviet resistance.

The civilians inside the fortress tended to the wounded, reloaded the machine-gun discs and belts with cartridges and even took up rifles to help defend the fortress. Children brought ammunition and food supplies from half destroyed supply depots, searched for and brought weapons and watched enemy movements.

On 27 June, after a week of assault, the Germans began to use 540 millimeter artillery which fired 1.25 ton shells and two 600-millimeter guns which fired concrete-piercing shells weighing over 2 tons each. Shells from the 600-millimeter guns formed craters 30 meters wide and inflicted gruesome injuries on the defenders, including ruptured lungs of defenders hidden deep within the fortress from the concussive force of the explosions.

It wasn’t just the Soviets that suffered though. The Nazi 45th divisional after-action report of June 30, 1941 related: “The division took 7000 prisoners, including 100 officers. German losses were 482 killed, including 32 officers, and over 1000 wounded.” The magnitude of these losses can be assessed by the fact that the total German losses on the Eastern front up until June 30th, 1941 amounted to 8886 killed. The citadel of Brest therefore accounted for over 5 percent of all fatal casualties.

To give credit where it is due, the date of June 30, 1941 given as the end of the battle for the Brest Fortress is not quite correct. Even after the fortress was officially taken, a few surviving defenders continued to hide in the basements and harassed the Germans for several weeks. The resistance still continued in isolated pockets, primarily underground in the old dungeons, in the Citadel and the Kobrin Fortification. From late June until the very end of July rifle fire and short bursts of machine-gun fire continued to ring out from basements and half-destroyed dungeons with small groups and individual soldiers inside.

The actual front had by then already moved about 300 miles (480 km) east.

There were reports that isolated defenders were weeded out by Germans as late as August when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini visited the fortress with heavy security to protect them from remaining defenders.

As if their lives were not already tragic enough, some of the defenders of Brest Fortress who survived being taken prisoner and then sent to Nazi concentration camps, returned to the USSR after the conclusion of the war only to be immediately imprisoned by the Soviet authorities under charges of treason and collaboration and sent to the Soviet labor camps in Siberia.

Only in the post-Stalin era were both the fortress and her defenders rehabilitated and Soviet propaganda built on the defenders’ heroism and examples of individual hold-outs, creating a myth that an organized defense of the fortress lasted for about a month, containing the German advance.

The fortress was awarded the title Hero Fortress on 8 May 1965 (the twentieth anniversary of the German surrender).

As an interesting “oh by the way” – The area around Brest Fortress was the site of the 1939 Battle of Brześć Litewski, when German forces captured it from Poland during the Polish September Campaign. However, according to the terms of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact the territory around Brest as well as 52 % of Poland was assigned to the Soviet Union. Thus, in the summer of 1941, the Germans had to capture the fortress yet again – this time from the Soviets.

This tekija was built in the 1500s for the dervish cults at the base of a 200-meter sheer cliff face and one is free to explore the elaborate woodwork in its well-preserved, old-style sitting and prayer rooms.

Driving to Blagaj:

When we arrived near the site of the tekija, we noticed that the Buna River was in full flood:

Here is some video I shot:

Flooding made all the more interesting by the fact that the river originates in a cave at the base of the cliff:

I took this picture straight up while standing next to the tekija, so you can see how serious the cliff overlooking the scene is:

Here is a better view of the cliff… Supposedly, there are a number of caves up here:

This is a view down the Buna River from the tekija:

On the way out, we stopped to check out some war damage in Blagaj.

I was particularly taken with this bombed-out church:

It looks like an anti-tank rocket or artillery smacked into this church tower, so perhaps a sniper was holed up in here:

Just a short while before in Plaza Bolivar, a junkie had passionately begged me for some money or heroin – drawing up his sleeves to show me the collapsed veins and infected sores on his arms and making the motion of injecting a syringe into his arm – to help him cope with his cravings and to stave off withdrawal symptoms.

I placed the gentleman below in the same category, although I assumed he had found his much sought after hit of heroin since he was apparently passed out:

On the way back to our hotel an hour or so later, I noticed the gentleman had not moved at all which made me curious. So, moving closer for a more thorough examination, I leaned over and checked his vitals – No pulse. Not breathing. Cold and dead.

Eleonora: Is he OK?

Me: Ummm, he’s dead.

Eleonora: Oh.

After a brief discussion we concluded that it wasn’t something we wanted to get involved in and that summoning the police or medical services wouldn’t do him much good anyway. Also, with the number of police and military personnel patrolling the city, I knew his body would be discovered soon anyway. So, we went back to our hotel and went to bed.

The next evening when we walked by, the whole scene had been cleaned up.

Today, this Teutonic enclave attracts Venezuelans that come for the Black Forest architecture, German cuisine, locally grown strawberries and the agreeable climate.

You can take a shared car or a bus to get here, but I’d recommend the bus. We had a fun time up in the front with our driver and his girlfriend and its a lot cheaper.

This is the entrance to Colonia Tovar:

Homes in the Black Forest style (I can promise you that you don’t see this style elsewhere in Venezuela):

Here is a look out over the valley Colonia Tovar rests in:

The residents may speak Spanish now, but they still look German:

Some Colonia Tovar street scenes:

The town cemetery… Although Colonia Tovar might look like the type of place that would have attracted Nazi war criminals fleeing justice in South America after World War II, to my knowledge none made it up here and, thus, none are buried in this cemetery:

A hipster from Caracas that crossed over the mountain to get a taste of Germany:

Population: 3,500
Elevation: 1,900 meters

Salento was founded in 1850 and is one of the oldest (and possibly the smallest) towns of Quindio. The town is 24 kilometers east of Armenia and today survives on coffee production and trout farming.

Aside from the nearby Valle de Cocora and Don Elias and his coffee plantation, Salento can be charming in its own right.

Upon arriving, I was immediately favorably impressed when this fantastic cat came out to greet us in our hostel:

Street scenes of Salento:

Below is the main street in Salento – Calle Real. At the end of the street are stairs leading up to Alto de la Cruz, a hill topped with a cross.

If you go, do me a favor and give some food to the dogs along the street – particularly a very friendly, but very skinny black female or a white and red, even skinnier, bloodhound male. They really need it and we were, obviously, only able to feed them for the few days we spent in Salento:

Have you ever seen a coffee machine like this? It looks like a steam engine:

Salento is tame, but there are guerillas present in the nearby Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados and the police fortify accordingly:

Here’s how they explained their decision:

Bogota is tough. Drug barons and guerrillas infest the place like flies and brutal violence occurs daily. Around 23 people are murdered each day, and the leading cause of death for citizens aged between ten and 60 is violence. This gives Bogota the highest murder rate per capita of anywhere in the world.

Naturally, a place like this would appeal to me, but as with Caracas, the hype outpaces the reality. La Candelaria, the cobbled historic center is quite lovely and features a number of quality museums such as the Museo Botero, the Museo Militar, the Museo del Oro and the Museo Historico Policia.

If you’re not into museums and cobbled historic centers, Bogota has a lot of emeralds as well. In fact, aside from cocaine, coffee and FARC guerillas, Colombia is also famous for its emeralds and produces the largest percentage of the world’s emeralds (followed by Zambia and Brazil) with some estimates indicating that the mines of Colombia may contain up to 90% of the world’s emerald deposits (primarily in the Boyaca region).

The emerald industry of Colombia is now trying to rehabilitate its image following the ‘wild west’ days dominated by organized crime (the emerald war between 1984 and 1990 left 3,500 people dead) and child labor for which it became known.

If you are looking for emeralds, I strongly recommend visiting Luis Daniel Barragan Pena inside the Edificio Emerald Trade Center. His phone number is 315-325-6291.

Colombia is one of the most developed countries of South America and Bogota certainly reflects that as you should be able to see below.

Fun Fact: Despite popular belief, at least amongst Americans, the letter “u” does not appear anywhere in the name “Colombia.”

I’ll talk a little more about the cocaine and the guerillas at the bottom of this post…

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One of the first things one will notice upon arriving in Bogota are the soldiers and policemen. They are everywhere:

You soon realize that this is probably the last city in the world you’ll get mugged in – at least outside the barrios – and the heavy military presence soon blends in with the background:

I wasn’t sure what was being sold here, but I was ready to buy whatever was on offer:

Perhaps because of the heavy security throughout the city, the security seemed relatively light at the Presidential Palace (below). I was surprised that I could get this close and take pictures. I mean Colombia is still in the midst of a civil war – it isn’t Norway:

Nevertheless, the primary external security was provided by this soldier manning a roadblock:

Plaza Bolivar lit up for Christmas:

As long as we’re touching on Plaza Bolivar, I should mention the Palace of Justice siege on November 6th, 1985. The Palace of Justice siege was an attack against the Supreme Court of Colombia, in which members of the M-19 guerrilla group (allegedly financed by Pablo Escobar with the understanding that they would destroy his criminal records once inside) took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, Colombia, and held the Supreme Court hostage, intending to hold a trial against President Belisario Betancur. Hours later, after a military raid, the incident left all the rebels, 48 Colombian soldiers, numerous civilians and 11 of the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead.

It also left the building reduced to rubble as the guerillas lost control of a fire they set while burning various criminal records.

This is the original Palace of Justice building going up in flames:

And this is the new Palace of Justice building:

One day we decided to take the cable car to the top of the mountain of Monserrate.

While walking to the cable car platform, we noticed a guy that had set up a target one could shoot at with an air rifle for a trifling charge. Some soldiers were standing around watching how people scored. Thinking I was another douchebag gringo, they were impressed when I proceeded to nail the bullseye on the target every time.

However, they were even more impressed when Eleonora stepped up and put in a solid performance as well:

On the top of Monserrate:

The view of Bogota from Monserrate:

Another day, we walked down to the Mirador Torre Colpatria:

It was built in 1979 and is the tallest building in Colombia. And on weekends and holidays, one can take the long elevator trip to the top for the views.

A view out over Bogota with the city’s bullfighting ring in the foreground:

Colombia’s principal legal exports are coffee, petroleum, coal, gold, bananas, cut flowers, chemicals, emeralds, cotton products, sugar and livestock. However, Colombia is probably most known for its principal illegal export: cocaine.

Colombia remains the world’s biggest supplier of cocaine, despite exhaustive efforts to track down cartel leaders, drop devegetation chemicals on coca farms and step up military efforts.

A contemporary history of cocaine in Colombia

The cocaine industry really started to boom in the early 1980s, when the Medellin cartel, led by former car thief Pablo Escobar, became the principal organized narcotics trafficker. Its bosses eventually founded their own political party, established two newspapers and financed massive public works projects and public housing projects. At one point, Escobar even stirred up secessionist sentiments for the Medellin region. By 1983 Escobar’s personal wealth was estimated to be over US$20 billion, making him one of the world’s richest people according to Forbes magazine.

When the government launched a fresh campaign against the drug trade, cartel bosses disappeared from public life and even proposed a ‘peace treaty’ to President Belisario Betancur. In return for immunity from prosecution and extradition, they offered to invest their capital in national development programs and to pay off Colombia’s entire national debt. The government declined this offer, and the violence escalated.

The cartel-government conflict heated up in August 1989, when Liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan was gunned down on orders from the drug lords. The government’s response was to confiscate nearly 1000 cartel-owned properties and sign a new extradition treaty with the US, which led to a cartel-led campaign of violence resulting in bombed banks, homes, newspaper offices and in November 1989, an Avianca flight from Bogota to Cali, which killed all 107 onboard.

After the 1990 election of Liberal Cesar Gaviria as president, things calmed briefly, when extradition laws were sliced and Escobar led a surrender of many cartel bosses. However, Escobar soon departed from his luxurious house arrest and it took an elite, US-backed 1500-man special unit 499 days to track him down, shooting him dead atop a Medellin rooftop in 1993 (there are rumors that it was actually US Delta Force members that gunned Escobar down, but I obviously cannot confirm this).

Amid the violence, the drug trade never slowed. New cartels have learned to avoid the limelight and by the mid-1990s, guerillas and paramilitaries started chipping in to help Colombia keep pace with the world’s rising demand.

As a result of crackdowns under the US-sponsored Plan Colombia, new harder-to-track cartelitos (smaller organized crime groups) have replaced the extinguished mega cartels (capped with the 2008 extradition to the US of Medellin narco king Don Berna. Many of the cartelitos are linked to FARC, who tax coca farmers (earning FARC hundreds of millions of dollars a year). Other cartelitos are linked to the paramilitary groups, who sometimes benefit from government money.

As a result, Colombia still supplies 90% of the USA’s cocaine – often getting there overland via Mexican cartels.

Unfortunately, between 50,000 and 300,000 hectares of pristine Colombian rainforest are cleared every year to grow coca plants for all of this cocaine. Other illegal cash crops include marijuana and opium poppies. And cocaine processors certainly are not particularly concerned about following environmental best practices or limiting their ecological footprint on the rainforest. Processing coca plants into cocaine is a toxic job, requiring chemicals such as kerosene, sulfuric acid, acetone and carbide. These toxins are simply dumped on the ground or into delicate streams and rivers. In addition, armed guerillas and drug runners operating in these forest areas have little respect for their impact on local wildlife.

The guerillas and paramilitaries

FARC: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

ELN: Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional

M-19: Movimento 19 de Abril

UP: Union Patriotica

AUC: Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia

As communism collapsed around the globe, the political landscape for the guerillas shifted increasingly to drugs and kidnapping (kidnapping alone, by one account, brought FARC some US$200 million annually), and paramilitary groups were given license to be involved with drug cartels as long as they kept after the guerillas.

In recent months, FARC has made a military comeback, ambushing troops and kidnapping and killing a provincial governor (that happened while we were in Colombia).

“The FARC seem to be bouncing back,” Leon Valencia, the director of the Nuevo Arco Iris (New Rainbow) thinktank, said recently.

A government scheme in 2005 demobilized 32,000 paramilitary members and many leaders were extradited to the US. However, many lower-ranking “paras” who failed to find jobs or promised state assistance have returned to what they know best – trafficking drugs.

According to the government, the demobilization process was successful. However, shortly after the demobilization process, new successor groups emerged in the entire country that continued the criminal activities. Ummmm, sure…

The city of Medellin, once the showcase of Colombia’s counter-narcotics fight, illustrates the intractability of the problem. A steep fall in violence paved the way for an apparent urban renaissance, but murder rates rose again last year as drug gangs battled for control.

Prominent local figures, with government backing, are now trying to negotiate a truce. That has raised suspicion of a return to the era of discreet pacts, when officials gave cartels free rein to traffic cocaine in return for social peace.

The remote regions of Colombia, particularly the mountains and deep jungle are presently controlled by guerillas or paramilitaries – parts of Choco, Narino, Putumayo and the jungle regions east of the Andes (except for Los Llanos and the area around Leticia) as well as the southern regions of Los Nevados National Park.

The Displaced

Caught in the crossfire between paramilitaries and guerilla forces, and sometimes outright targets, about 3 million people have been displaced since the 1980s, making Colombia home to more displaced persons than any country except Sudan.

About 860 additional people become displaced daily, forced out of their homes at gunpoint – usually stolen for the land, livestock or its location on drug transport routes – sometimes not until a loved one is murdered. Most of the dispossessed are left to fend for themselves, living in tarp-covered huts outside the main cities. The lucky individuals who are able to obtain new land frequently find it in areas with no infrastructure, schools or hospitals. Predictably, displaced children often fall into the world of drugs and crime.

With “victory” in the so-called drug war ever more elusive, it would seem the argument for decriminalization is stronger than ever. It is an experiment no government has yet dared to try.

Important Embassy Locations in Bogota

American Embassy: Calle 22 Dbis No 47-51

Italian Embassy: Calle 93B No 9-92

British Embassy: Carrera 9 No 76-49, piso 9

Old Dongola is situated on the east bank of the Nile opposite the Wadi Al-Malik. Originally founded as a fortress, Old Dongola soon grew into a town. With the arrival of Christianity, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Makuria until the fourteenth century – one of the few states in the world to successfully resist Muslim conquests led by the Rashidun Caliphate.

The peak for Old Dongala was around the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. At that time Old Dongola had many churches, at least two palaces, and a huge monastery. Many homes were well-equipped with everything from bathrooms to wall paintings.

As is the nature of life though, the Kingdom of Makuria collapsed in the fourteenth century due to aggression from Egypt and internal discord.

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To get to Old Dongola from Khartoum one must cross the Nile River which means taking the ferry. As this is Africa, the ferry leaves when it is full. So, a lot of time is spent sitting around waiting for the ferry:

Old boys waiting for the ferry:

Still waiting for the ferry:

Finally, the ferry arrived:

Our side of the river, loaded up quite quickly and so we were soon off:

This is the captain of the ferry:

We spent the night camped on the sand dunes around this man’s home:

Quite close to this chicken coop actually:

The next morning we awoke to discover why it is always good to come properly prepared for trips like this – both our spare and our right front tire were flat:

The patriarch and his family brought tea out to Eleonora and me and hung out with us while Ramadan, our driver and guide, sorted out the tire situation:

With the tire issue resolved, we drove up to the site of Old Dongola.

There isn’t much left:

What is left though, and is quite interesting, is a vast cemetery connected to the Old Dongola site:

My proof shot in the cemetery:

Now, dear readers, I need your help with this one… What is the story here? At first I thought it was a domesticated dog, but someone I showed this picture to pointed out that it looked like a hyena, which it certainly does. So, what is it and how did it get here in the middle of the cemetery?

Our visit to Old Dongola complete, it was time to cross the Nile River again to continue our journey north.

Others waiting for the ferry:

These guys down by the river were waiting as well:

I didn’t quite understand why these guys opted for the ferry, but sure enough, when it arrived, they clambered on board instead of using their own boat:

At last the ferry arrived and we were off again: