Rincon del Mar

Iris' friend's sister's friend knew people who might have possibly been able to find us a place to stay in Rincon del Mar, a fisherman's town a couple hours south of Cartagena.  This opportunity, naturally, was not one to be passed up.  Sixteen dollars, one bus and two motorcycles later, we arrived at the entrance to Paradise... with one slight complication: the gatekeeper didn't want to let us in.  We tried to explain that we weren't just random foreigners, we were practically family with Martin--they guy who knows Claudia, the sister of our friend Eduardo, also known as El Mono (the blonde guy). "You know El Mono, right?" we pleaded. His eyes, a striking white contrast in a black raisin face, narrowed as grey smoke curled slowly upwards from his cigarette, as if it was a great effort to rise below the weight of the hot costal air.  It didn't help that neither of us speaks Co'teño, an S-less spanish spoken by Caribbean Colombians. "Y cómo e' que u'tede' vam pa' ya?" (What business do you have there?) Making ourselves understood was even more challenging.  Every sentence we spoke was met with another unconvinced look from the corner of his eyes and then a repetition of the same question.  Eventually, he warmed up enough to flag down a motorcyclist to take me to Martin who, by an amazing stroke of fortune, was more than happy to receive friends of El Mono, Claudia's brother. Within the hour we had reached heaven--drinking beers and eating fancy cheese, sitting in hammocks and rocking chairs on a marble patio discussing the tragedy of the impending development of the area.  In the stretches of white sand behind the house, dwarf palm trees fluttered in the sea breeze like the eyelashes of a flirtatious woman shyly blinking as if hiding a wonderful secret.  Beyond their shade, a bright aqua iris glistens, seductively, speechlessly luring onlookers into her light.  Emerging on the other side of the trees, the ocean is an illusion.  Is it there?  Or is it a blue-green tear welling up in the bottom of my eye, blinding me to everything below the middle of my vision? Martin, a Spanish-speaking Bill Murray, lounged shirtless on the white cushions of the sofa debating with his significantly younger Colombian lover about Idealism versus Realism.  "I was a dreamer all through my 40s," he said reminiscently, "And then I realized that some things in this life will simply never change."  He shrugged his shoulders.