Location: Barranquilla, Colombia
I was enjoying the hell out of my first month in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia.
My Welsh fren Dave and I had rented a nice high-rise apartment and were living the most degenerate of lifestyles.
Wake up around noon. Go to the gym. Grab some lunch. Go on a Tinder date. Makes amor. Maybe squeeze 2-3 hours of work in. Then go on another date or go to the club for a lil’ rumba.
Mucho focus on dating and mating.
We even had our buddy Kyle Trouble come visit us for some degeneracy.
P.S: Very good place for my Asian travel bros.
It was the best of times.
Until it wasn’t…
Third-World Tings’
We had made frens with the doorman at this building.
P.S: You should always make frens with the doorman at the building your staying at in Colombia. ALWAYS.
He loved to talk shit and found it hilarious the gringos were bringing back girl after girl after girl to the apartment.
We’d get a pizza delivered and give him a slice.
Or grab a 12-pack of beer and leave him a couple to down after his shift.
He was the homie.
Which ended up coming in handy when shit hit the proverbial fan one afternoon…
And by handy, I mean annoying as hell.
It was around dusk and my fren Dave and I decided it was time for some dinner. We called a cab and were planning to hit one of our favorite restaurants in town — a little Italian place nearby.
We get into the elevator on the 9th floor and start to head down.
Everything seemed normal as the elevator headed down, then…
The lights go out, the elevator turns pitch black. We hear a loud crashing noise.
We start free-falling.
Dropping.
Nothing holding us up.
My stomach goes up into my throat. I feel like I’m about to vomit. This is worse than any turbulence I’ve ever felt.
I can’t even see Dave as we fall because it’s pitch black in the elevator.
I’m literally thinking this elevator is going to crash at the bottom and we’re about to die a miserable death.
These things happen in the third-world from time to time.
But finally…
Then the elevator abruptly stops. Bouncing, hanging around — but not free-falling any longer.
It seems I’m still alive.
I reach for my phone.
Turn on the flashlight and see Dave. He’s whiter than normal, a fucking ghost — with a look of pure horror on his face:
I yell over to him: “What the fuck was that, man?! I thought we were going to die!”
Dave: “Me too! We gotta get the fuck out of here. This clearly isn’t safe.”
I start pushing the emergency button in the elevator feverishly.
The doorman, our buddy, gets on the line and starts trying to calm us down:
“We have the firetruck on the way. They will help you. Just relax. It’s ok!”
The fuck?! We just almost died, G.
Then we hear a noise, the elevator starts to drop again for a second. My stomach right back up into my throat.
FUCK!
“Dave, we gotta get outta here! This thing is going to keep falling!”
I push the top of the ceiling and se if there’s anyway we can maybe climb out. I don’t see many good options.
I start tinkering with the door, Dave shinning his cellphone light on it.
I find a latch and pull it with all my strength.
Pulling the latch gives us half-inch opening of the door and some light.
I try to look out…
The elevator is suspended in mid-air between two different floors.
The little crack is enough to fit a finger in.
I put both hands, one above the other, inside the crack and use every ounce of strength in my body to pry the doors apart.
After ten-seconds or so, the doors break and fly open.
I grab the floor in the middle of the elevator and swing out from under like it’s a tree-branch.
Dave immediately follows.
We’re both shaking in fear. Breathing like we just ran a 400-meter dash.
I look around and notice we are on the 3rd-floor. We live on the 9th-floor.
So we basically free-fell six-floors in an elevator in Barranquilla, Colombia — a very third-world place.
No one would have been surprised if the elevator feel straight to the bottom of the building here.
SUPERMAN
We walk down the stairs and the doorman greets us. He’s literally got tears in his eyes he is laughing so hard.
He keeps point at me and acting like he’s ripping his shirt apart.
I’m baffled…
“What’s so funny, man? The fuck! We almost died.”
He keeps laughing, “You guys have got to see this…come here.”
He walks us over to the computer where the security cameras are and starts rewinding until he gets to the part where I’m prying the doors apart.
He opens us his phone and pulls up a video:
“Watch you, then watch this.”
I watch the video of myself opening the doors and then look at his phone…
The fucker has a video of Superman ripping his shirt off.
He starts rolling in laughter again:
“SUPERMAN! SUPERMAN!” in a shitty Colombian english accent
Fuck off!
I was pissed, but couldn’t help but see the humor in it as we head off to dinner.
However…
For the rest of our time in Barranquilla, a couple of things happened:
We never rode the elevator again. Walking up and down nine flights of stairs multiple times a day.
Every doorman at the building greeted me as “SUPERMAN!” for the rest of the trip.
