There were indeed a pair of armed officers at the port who asked for our names, ID numbers and the name of our guide. When they asked where I was from, eyeing me from blond hair to sunburned ankles, I went for my go-to crowd pleaser: “Pasto.” (The Mobile, Alabama of Colombia). It got the expected chuckling reaction and once everyone was humored and relaxed, all we needed was a little smooth talking, eye batting, hand shaking and it was agreed that they had never seen us and we never had any conversation.
So we did not walk down to the dock, we never paid the boy in the motored canoe $5 to take us across, and we certainly did not walk ten kilometers down the trail without a guide toward the caño.
Just when the forks in the road were starting to inspire worst-case-scenario jokes (our laughter tinged with nervousness), the sun gleamed in a curiously bright reflection around the corner. An illusion? A mirage? A metal roof! A sign of human life!
It was shading a posse of uniformed soldiers with their arms crossed looking like bored cowboys waiting for the cattle to come home. They did not threaten us with their weapons or interrogate us with spotlights and handcuffs, as the people in the town made us think would happen if we dared enter the territory without a guide. In fact, they seemed impressed. For all the trials they must suffer living out in the sticks for months at a time with nothing to do but stare at each other, I still don’t understand why they were so awed by our low-budget vacation.
“You came alone? You’re carrying everything in your backpack? You’re just going to put up a tent and sleep in it?”
Yes, it’s called camping. And yes, girls do it too. We were fine! Two healthy young adults, well-prepared with rain gear, flashlights, bug repellant and hiking shoes. There was only one small detail we had forgotten: food.
But this is Colombia and in this country where there are people--albeit two old farmers in the middle of nowhere--there is almuerzo. Next to the army shed, there leaned a rickety wooden house, overflowing with cats, dogs and chickens. The old man called us in for coffee and after serving each of us a plate piled with plantains, almojabana and a mug of hot chocolate, he leaned back in his wooden chair resting his gnarled hands on his belly. With only three teeth in his mouth he said out loud to no one in particular, “Thanks be to God we’ve never suffered from hunger. And I don’t care too much whether the person who shows up at our door is a rich man or a poor man, if he is hungry we will feed him.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent bathing in the river that they say escaped from heaven, with fluorescent pink and green algae blooming below the surface of the Disani clear water. If mermaids had dreadlocks they would be just like those algae, waving in the current, soft and bright.
...to be continued...
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