Ever since childhood, stories of exotic creatures and primitive tribes have fueled a yearning to visit South America’s legendary Amazon jungle. The purpose of this adventure is to turn ‘one day’ into ‘day one’!
The trip was intended to be a solo effort, but recently smitten by a dazzling beauty named Christine, it seems only natural to ask her to come away with me. Much to my surprise and delight she bravely replies ‘I’d love to’. And that is that! Despite knowing each other for mere months, in the spirit of mutual adventure, we leave our comfort-zone far behind to explore the mysterious continent of South America.
To begin our grand adventure we limber up our exploratory spirits on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by visiting ancient Maya ruins at Tulum, and mastering the craft of rest and relaxation on postcard perfect beaches. Sun, sand, sip, repeat; life is good. Little do we realize how things are about to drastically change!
Our plane arcs over the majestic Andes Mountains with the snowy giants clawing at the sky beneath us, and at an elevation of over 9,300 feet, the landing gear introduces itself to the tarmac in Quito Ecuador. With gallons of anticipation, a pocketful of dreams, and a dog-eared copy of a Lonely Planet travel book stuffed in our backpack, we sever ourselves from all that’s familiar in search of ourselves and whatever may be thrown our way.
Sauntering about Quito’s cobbled streets we befriend a blue and brown eyed llama with lovely thick eye lashes long enough to plait, and decide to name her Dolly. Street markets exude an array of exotic sights and scents, but in foreign lands it’s often better not to ask what you’re eating. Case in point, we are not exactly squealing with delight to learn Ecuador’s national dish of roast ‘cuy’ is actually roast guinea pig!
Slowly getting accustomed to the thin air we bus to the town of Otavalo. Nestled near the base of the Andes Mountains, it is home to the largest and most colorful market in all of South America. The indigenous Otavalos are easily distinguished by their trademark blue ponchos, crown-dented felt fedoras, and bountiful bead adornments. Returning to Quito we make a stop at the earth’s bulging equator line to take the obligatory picture of straddling latitude zero with one leg in each hemisphere.
Searching about town for information on the ethnic Tsachila, we learn the tribe resides 133 km west in the foothills of the Andes. Getting there requires acquiring both transport and an English speaking driver familiar with the area and the tribe’s tongue, but delving into the task we ferret out a guy named Amado.
Snailing along in Amado’s angelic relic over hazardous mountain roads he captivates us with the story of a giant condor swooping down on his Andean village and carrying off his young donkey in its talons! While this may be possible, we can’t help but wonder if he’s concocted the tale as a diversion from the graveyard of ill-fated transportation carcasses littering the perilously steep mountainside.
With empty stomachs we make the blunder of stopping at a little roadside shop masquerading as a food market. Inside it looks like a satanic ritual has taken place. Decomposing carcasses of chickens crawling with flies dangle from meat hooks, and countertops are garnished with severed pig heads and other lunch-loosening ‘mystery meats’ sure to generate weaponized diarrhea! With owners likely named Sam and Ella, we hastily depart in search of a place capable of filling our stomachs rather than turning them!
Hours later the broken road finally fizzles into forest and we abandon the car to walk a narrow squiggle of root-infested trail. Slaloming through a sea of chlorophyll during our botanical foray we try not to choke on our anxiety from rustling sounds nearby in the tangled jungle. Amado tells us not to worry it’s just curious Tsachila who tend to shy away from contact with outsiders.
Machete in hand, Amado helps clear the muscular green veil of undergrowth, and with our curiosity afire, we follow him to a bald enclave of jungle sprinkled with bamboo and palm huts. Amado tells Christine and I to wait while he alone advances to acknowledge the tribe’s chief. We’re not sure what was said, but he returns with permission for us to approach.
What a sight! The diminutive eye-popping tribe has quite the mop on top, with paprika colored hair plastered down from a mixture of grease and the blood-red juice extracted from seeds of the achiote tree. Their bodies have a frightening war paint look with red and blue horizontal stripes purported to protect against evil spirits; and we can’t help but wonder if the tribe’s unease is because of our cadaver-like skin!
With consent from the chief, I find myself in a somewhere south of sane scenario of standing inside the jungle hut of the tribe’s shaman. The earthen-floored hut contains only a few odd items, including knives, feathers, live birds, unrecognizable herbs, and a pile of the red berries used to dye their hair. We also notice a few cooking pots, which to our relief, are not large enough to fit a human!
Our intriguing tribal visit concludes with the tattoo-like ritual of having our hands marked with the blue-black dye of the Jagua fruit; meaning we are welcome to come back to the village for as long as the dye remains. Back in Quito we unsuccessfully try scrubbing away the dye using everything from soap to nail polish remover, but the jungle tattoo will last for over two weeks until our skin regenerates itself.
Our departure from Quito is via the ‘Train Ride to the Sky’. Built in 1899 at the cost of over 2,000 lives, the 288 mile daredevil engineering traverses a near-vertical rock face. Our odd looking transport is called an ‘Autoferro’ (Old 94); a bus body on railroad wheels that precariously clings to the side of throat-lumping gorges while zigzagging up switchbacks cut into the cloud piercing Andes Mountains! Periodic gushing over the exquisite scenery of the ‘Avenue of Volcanoes’ helps offset the hard wooden seats of our over-experienced transport.
Seeking better photos, a Spanish guy and I sneak out the back door of the moving Autoferro and climb up a ladder onto its roof. Scrunched up among bunches of bananas and luggage, we clutch roof rails with one hand and work the camera with the other. However, at altitudes up to 12,000 feet, the icy air quickly wreaks havoc with the blood flow to my extremities and turns them numb. With a higher desire not to expire I cupcake out and get back inside before becoming a mummified carcass to be discovered at the next station!
The villages of Yaguachi, Urbina, Sibambe, Milagro and Riobamba are all dwarfed by an endless swath of mountains, including the legendary Chimborazo and Cotopaxi. After twelve unforgettable heart-palpating hours the Autoferro chugs to its final stop at ‘GUTFOOH’ (get us the fuck out of here). Actually, the dicey destination of squalor is a town called Duran, and our interest in staying peaks at nil!
We cross a murky river to Guayaquil, another town honed by hardship, and worthy of ‘GUTFOOH II’ status. Owing to safety concerns in an area rampant with drug dealers and other garden-variety riff-raff unlikely to win any humanitarian awards, all travel by bus is strongly discouraged. Accordingly, we opt for a cheap flight to Loja, which regrettably means we’re marooned here for two more nights before being able to un-incarcerate ourselves. In case you haven’t guessed, both the ‘GUTFOOH’ brothers are towns in the talons of trouble that we would highly recommend any travelers give a good leaving-alone!
After our flight to Loja we hitch a ride over dirt roads into the city in a dilapidated World War II jeep. The driver, Elvis, has a crooked grin smeared across his bronzed Aztec face and within seconds decisively dispels any notion about his ability to drive sensibly. His concerted effort to spare any wear on the brake pads leads us to believe that if common sense were lard, he wouldn’t be able to grease a pan.
With lodging scarce in the Cuxibamba Valley we’re forced to settle for a modest room above a small grocery store. The runt of a room and the unpleasantness of a nipple-enhancing cold water shower leave us less than jubilant, but unable to find another option it has to suffice for the night.
Divesting ourselves of Casa Disappointment today, we dubiously board a battered ‘chicken bus’ for the next leg of our trip. After a Guinness World Record loading attempt defying the laws of physics, the driver seemingly collects everyone in the village, jamming everyone in together tighter than two coats of paint.
Finally, with a grinding of the gears the bus begins moving and we think we’re on our way. Au contraire, it stops once again. You see chicken buses can never be full. There will always be enough space to scrunch in Mrs. González along with her 6 kids, bundles of veggies, and whatever smelly livestock that counts as kin!
Belching clouds of diesel smoke the bus thuds over washboard mountain roads, while inside, we are immersed in a chorus of squawking chickens, bawling kids, rattling windows; along with the reek of human armpits and a disgruntled pig! Too many hours later, we’re paroled at the isolated Andean village of Vilcabamba; eager to hunt down a room with a shower to scrub the bus off of our skin.
Hidden amongst the Amazon jungle in Cusco, this is sometimes referred to as ‘The lost city of the Incas’, being the last refuge for the empire of the Incas before it fell to the Spaniards in 1572. After a few days in the restful village it’s time for the spine-jarring bus journey back to Loja. From there, despite warnings NOT to, we take another overnight bus to the sketchy ‘frontera’ town of Huaquillas on the border of Ecuador and Peru. Hunkered down in our seats in our own private little world of weariness and woe, we fall asleep on our backpacks. Tonight may be Halloween, but as it turns out there are certainly no treats in store!
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning our sleep is shattered when we are rudely woken by two sour-looking soldiers with a lousy bedside manner; prodding us with the ‘business end’ of their rifles and demanding to see our passports. Groggily fumbling around we hand them over, only to have one of the chest-out tough guys snarl something at us while drawing a forefinger across his neck in the ‘slit throat’ gesture! As our bus journey resumes Christine and I brood over the riddle of this intimidation.
At 05:30 a.m. in the desolate border town of Huaquillas we warily prowl about in the dark until locating the Immigration office and sprawl out on the sidewalk waiting for it to open. As the office opens people enter, then receive clearance and carry on. We, however, are motioned to sit down on the far side of the room.
A half hour later I approach the desk, but the sinister-looking guy in charge has all the charm of a night-hunting snake. He offers only a brusque flick of his wrist as if shooing away a pesky fly, leaving me bathed in bafflement. Approaching again a short while later I receive the same rude treatment, and the tension in the room is growing exponentially.
This sonofabitch is clearly a front-runner as an inductee into the A-hole Hall of Fame. His molasses-colored eyes have the warmth of an injured cobra, and marinating in his ego, he is ominously slouched back with his feet up on the desk having some a kid polish his blunt-toed boots. Definitely a shiver trawling for a spine to run up!
Steeping in anger for far too long and unable to restrain myself, I aggressively unfold from my chair and smash a fist on his desk demanding to make a phone call. Certainly not the best of moves and the consequence is swift. The corners of his lips instantly crawl up his incisors, and with neck veins resembling night crawlers, he reaches under his desk and pulls out a sinister looking assault rifle pointing it directly at me. As the fear-soaked seconds tick by I wonder if he might actually pull the trigger!
Instead, with an evil glare the bastard barks orders in Spanish while jabbing the gun at me, motioning in no uncertain terms to sit back down. Christine’s eyes are as owlish as mine, especially after the throat-slicing gesture on the bus buzzing at the edge of our consciousness. The tension is palpable, and I’m now regretting getting into a pissing contest with this two-legged skunk! With my bravado faded we sit in solemn silence, brooding over how we got into this mess – and to get ourselves out.
A short while later we notice a blonde girl wander in conversing in fluent Spanish. Exasperated with our predicament, I call out and ask if by chance she speaks English. Affirmative, she is an American teaching school in Peru. We ask if she can possibly find out what is happening, and acting as interpreter, Mildred determines our problem is that we have overstayed the departure date on our passports.
After Mildred pleads a good case for us, the villainous official tells her with an icy grin that despite my asinine actions he is in a generous mood, and as a favor to her, will not jail us if we pay him 4,000 Ecuadorian Sucre; a huge chunk of our cash stash. This is more than baksheesh – this is extortion!
Even though he’ll trouser the cash she advises us to pay, because the same thing happened to a friend of hers and he was jailed for two weeks before receiving any food. Travel is all about problem-solving, but contemplating our options doesn’t take long, as in a blinding flash of obviousness we realize we have none!
With no desire to forfeit our freedom we begrudgingly fork over the huge chunk of our travel kitty before he changes his mind. Huffing down the dust-clouded road we’re thinking that if the earth ever gets an enema, this pothole in the road of travel will be the place where the tube is inserted! It will be missed in the same way as a bad case of hemorrhoids.
With Mildred in stride we locate transport from the border to the most northerly town in Peru called Tumbes, in order to find a bus heading to Lima. Chucking our backpacks into a cargo hold in the belly of the bus we settle in for the tedious trip trying to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Hours later, we are detained at another army checkpoint where all passengers must get off and take their luggage with them.
After a search of the bus we’re allowed back on, but as the bus is leaving I happen to notice my backpack still lying on the road beside the cargo hold (likely a planned scam). I rush up to make the bus stop, and as I step off the bus to retrieve my pack, the lowlife driver shouts out his window some drivel about marijuana!
On hearing this, two suspicious soldiers quickly hustle me and my scuffed backpack off into a shabby shack despite my protests of innocence. An exasperating search and Spanish inquisition follow, but with none of the ‘Devils Lettuce’ found I am free to go. With many more Peruvian miles ahead, I get back on the bus, mentally maiming the sneering driver. Some people just need a hug … around the neck … with a rope!
In the middle of the night I go to the back of the bus to stretch out on the floor to catch a few zees, and later when Christine wakes up she has a panic attack noticing I’m not in the seat beside her. It’s so dark she can’t see me so she wakes up Mildred to question the driver. Sinking to uncharted depths in the sea of sleaze, the scumbag behind the wheel tells her I got off in a town 40 miles back! If there happens to be such a thing as reincarnation, I’m pretty sure this prick is coming back as a cockroach!
Aghast, Mildred and Christine search the bus and find me coiled up asleep on the floor at the back. After enduring this truly shitacular few days we are seriously starting to wonder about travels in South America! Arriving in Lima in the early morning hours, we secure backpacks from the cargo hold and I throw the driver a stink eye along with a middle-fingered wave goodbye. Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts – others come along and we want to leave footprints on their face!
Leaving our guardian angel Mildred, the calamitous Canadians are truly exhaustipated (too tired to give a shit), and trying to remember what a bed looks like, pounce on the first room we see, desperate to try and recover from our 36 hours of bus purgatory. Intruding on my sleep tonight is a pleasant dream where the bus driver’s head is held underwater until the bubbles stop!
Christine is struck with one of the many stomach ailments South America has to offer, but luckily after a couple of days ‘trot’ by, feels able to continue. Her only memories of Lima are the bed, and a savage bowl of soup nearly assassinating her taste buds! By now I’m sure she is doubting these travels when she could still be relaxing in a tropical tiki bar at the beach enjoying exotic drinks with cute little paper umbrellas!
Flying from Lima to Iquitos, we are stunned by the immensity of the planet’s largest rainforest and the murky Amazon River writhing through it like a prehistoric python. This is the mightiest river on earth; 6,400 km long, and 330 km wide at its mouth, where over 8 trillion gallons flow out into the ocean daily. This equates to over 6 million gallons a minute; enough water to fill two million bathtubs each second! When the plane brings us back down to earth, we’re immediately enveloped in a brow-mopping humidity while hitching a ride into the once booming rubber capital of Iquitos.
After an exasperating search all we find is a cobwebs in the corners kind of room that even Barbie & Ken would find claustrophobic. After paying for the room we soon discover it to be destination infestation with creepy little bugs everywhere including in the bed. To call it shabby is a true insult to the word!
Still not fully recovered from her ailing innards, Christine is on the brink of tears as she tucks her lustrous long locks up into a shower cap for protection. Then, pounding at the sheets trying to obliterate anything that’s moving, she reluctantly ‘crawls’ into the bed! Man, do I know how to show a gal a good time or what?
I’m comprehensibly bushed, but seeing her capped in the plastic bonnet completely cracks me up. My ‘True North’ on the other hand, seems to have suddenly had a sense of humour bypass. The unromantic abode is not exactly a mint on your pillow kind of place, and she is indeed deserving of high praise for her remarkable intestinal fortitude under such aggravating conditions.
Normally Christine is the sunniest and kindest person I know – but not tonight! Her irate glance absolutely guarantees that I won’t have to worry about her hurting herself in an all-out frenzy to disrobe, and fling herself into my arms for a night of unbridled ecstasy!
After the lousy night we don our sandals and share a cold shower, tap-dancing on any insects we can’t drown! We can’t wait to escape the abode and see what else the gritty jungle town has to offer, and as it turns out we don’t have to wait long for an arresting sight that we’ll never be able to unsee.
Exiting our horrid hovel we step out into a scene that’s nothing short of madness. For reasons eluding logical explanation, the grounds are incredulously blanketed in what appears to be the aftermath of a biblical plague – hundreds upon hundreds of corpses of luckless large black beetles!
Crunching under our feet, the exoskeletons of the profoundly improbable beetle apocalypse sounds much like a camel chewing on a tin can stuffed with celery. Trying to fast-forward ourselves out of what looks like a doomsday scenario playing itself out, I’m thinking that while collecting medicine for Christine at the pharmacy in Lima, I should have also picked up a double dose of ‘Viewforgettin’!
Wandering about town like a pair of upright tortoises beneath our bulky backpacks, we come to a seedy old bar with a lazily circling ceiling fan chopping up the morning light. Ducking inside, it quickly becomes apparent from the number of bent elbows that the swill-pit functions as the official sunblock of Iquitos!
Working the bar with a ‘Hola’ here and a ‘Habla Ingles’ there, we manage to sleuth out valuable info on an indigenous Yagua tribe along with a remote jungle camp where we may be able to stay. And so, armed with this new found information, we are off to ‘find our wild’.
Our geriatric riverboat chugs along the Amazon River until reaching a shallower tributary river for a switch to a smaller boat to reach the primitive camp that will be home for the next couple of days. Accessible only by boat, there’s obviously no electricity but the camp does have kerosene lanterns and a mosquito netting enshrouding the bed. There is even a makeshift shower rigged up in a tree, capable of dumping down muddied water straight from the murky river. Ah, life’s small mercies!
We have to pinch ourselves that we’ve actually made it into the Amazon rainforest. Covering six million square km across eight countries, this is one of the least explored places on the planet, and as darkness encroaches, unknown jungle insects jabbering all around make our first night a most humbling experience.
While we’re penning some notes in camp with the aid of a kerosene lantern, a gargantuan insect looking like a motorized tree branch drops from the hut’s thatched roof onto our table. As ‘Bugzilla’ creepily crawls towards her, a bloodcurdling scream from Ms. Christine reveals that giving up her creature comforts for just plain creatures is not really all that appealing!
With a wish to fish we hire a local with a crude dugout canoe, and five minutes into our paddle are startled by a toothy caiman that worryingly slides off the bank beside us into the tea-coloured river. Beyond a doubt, this is not the place to capsize, as the river is also home to gangs of ravenous piranha, known for having a mouthful of knives and a tendency to shred their prey like crazed zombies!
Our primitive fishing gear consists of a hook created from a small piece of bent wire, attached to a few feet of nylon line tied to a tree branch. However, with the jungle river teeming with fish we easily catch many of the notorious red-bellied piranhas, which before we arrived, had alternate plans for the day.
Our floating hollowed out log contains several inches of rain water, and the peeved piranha already caught furiously fin through it. To the amusement of our flip-flop footed guide, Christine and I throw our feet up in the air in a Canadian version of ‘Riverdance’ whenever one of the scaly carnivores skitters past! With all that’s been going on, I suggest to Christine that we need to keep a journal about our unfolding adventures.
Back at camp the legendary champs of chomp are cooked up and served to us for dinner. The fish are delectable, but then again, our enthusiastic ingestion is most likely because when it comes to piranha, it’s infinitely better to be the diner rather than the dinner! The weaponized jaws of these flesh-shredders look like the work of a deranged orthodontist, and have been plunked on our plates as a memento of the day!
In a rare Amazonian moment tonight a Jivaro Indian wanders into camp, apparently in exile from his own tribe after marrying a Yagua woman. The chance of a raw encounter like this you could count on one finger, as Jivaro are the famed ‘head-shrinkers’; an elusive warlike tribe living deep in the jungles to avoid contact with the outside world.
The tribal outcast’s eerie aura has Christine and I feeling about as comfortable as a pinched nerve, but still, I regret the communication barrier. After all, I think it would be most intriguing to penetrate the mind of a jungle dweller with a fondness for shrinking human skulls!
The Amazon is every bit as awesome as it was in my eight-year-old imagination. Multitudes of big as birds butterflies flutter about like self-propelled flowers, with flamboyantly feathered parrots and Toucans often swooping into camp from the green blur of jungle to devour bananas left out for them. Combined with the most badass bug thugs I’ve ever seen, my inner Tarzan is thriving!
Readying ourselves for a jungle jaunt to reach the primitive Yagua tribe, we hire a guide to pilot us through the unbounded possibilities that come with being immersed in a rainforest. Armed with machetes to go on a ‘chopping spree’ in case of snakes or other hostiles, we hike for several hours through a jungle that has supersized vines clinging like petrified pythons to awesome forest trees standing as tall as office towers.
This is certainly an adrenaline pumping experience, but we’re starting to wilt with the one-two punch of the heat and humidity. Christine most definitely prefers shopping over chopping, and with the abundant snarl of Amazonian plant tentacles whacking us about like a couple of piñatas, I must admit that at this point I’m more concerned about her using her foot-and-a-half-long machete on me, rather than on any hungry Amazon anaconda!
Suddenly reaching a village of huts built on stilts, the scene before us is worthy of an outbreak of exclamation marks! Bare-breasted Yagua women, some with a baby clamped on a breast, have their faces smeared in red paint while stone-faced tribesmen clothed in straw skirts. They stare at the ‘outsiders’ statue-still.
Pet monkeys ricochet around the camp and staked out in the sun to dry is a striking jaguar skin from a kill made yesterday! My wide-eyed adventurer sidekick and I are wonderstruck by the primitive sights now tattooed on the inside of our eyelids. We are actually in a dense jungle shared with jaguars – hot damn, my boyhood dreams are becoming a reality!
The village chief, who barely reaches my armpit, greets us in a feathered headdress with a blowgun in hand. It’s fascinating to see such a short people clutching the taller-than-themselves weapons so desperately relied on in their hunter-gatherer way of life. The blowgun darts are sharpened using piranha teeth and poisoned with curare which turns them from dangerous to deadly by paralyzing their prey.
Seeing my intrigue with the weapon, the chief of diminutive dimensions demonstrates his marksmanship. With more control than an episode of ‘Get Smart’ he takes aim at a canary-sized bird about 40 feet up a tree. Then with cheeks swollen like a foraging chipmunk, an energetic puff into the blowgun launches a dart striking the bird and dropping it to jungle floor as old as it’s ever going to get.
We’re granted an opportunity to try the blowgun, but we may as well be trying to catch a mosquito with chopsticks! Our embarrassing incompetence proves we’d quickly starve to death if forced to rely on it as a source to gather food. Though they’re not likely to be dunking basketballs any time soon, the Yagua appear a happy bunch living in harmony with their environment. Sadly, a collision with civilization is inevitable, and we are incredibly grateful for the opportunity of spending some time with the fascinating tribe.
Vacating the jungle we travel back along the Amazon River to Iquitos aboard an old river boat that has all the speed of a sedated tree sloth. With the withering heat and perpetual perspiration taking a toll, Christine is lying on the deck as limp as overcooked pasta and I’m drooped over the rust-riddled rails like a melted Dali clock, chumming the water with the contents of my stomach! Clearly, we two are through with Peru!
Stopping in Brazil’s city of Tabatinga to sort out visas for Colombia, we’re sardined into a scuffed VW bug with a stone-stupid driver who takes us on a ‘cross country shortcut’ to the Colombia border. He seems to take perverse pleasure in the liver-loosening thuds of a cartoonish conveyance that causes the kangarooing car’s passenger door to repeatedly burst open! Is this an omen of what awaits in Colombia?
The river trading post of Leticia in Colombia is a hub for contraband and cocaine, and its sullen citizens and hellacious 40 degree heat put the kibosh on any plans to stay. Instead, we venture on to Bogota, the armpit of Colombia and murder capital of the world! On my birthday we hear the sound of gunshots fired, but here in life-is-cheap Bogota, only hearing gunshots means you’re having a pretty good day because in this cartel-riddled city gun control only means using both hands!
Waiting at the airport for a flight to Barranquilla we get abruptly hustled off into to a back room by four security men. With eyes like an owl spotting prey, they break a few items during a forensic search of our backpacks for drugs, and seemingly gutted at coming up empty, put against the wall for an insulting pat down. Later we learn that Leticia, Bogota, and Baranquilla form the cartel’s major cocaine smuggling route in South America! Hmm, it would appear my planning for this trip has been somewhat less than extensive!
Afraid of missing our flight we grab our backpacks and bolt out through the doors as if shot from a bazooka. Running across the tarmac Christine experiences a cold dread when almost blown over by the powerful jet engine blast of a nearby plane, but in desperation we keep running after our plane as it slowly begins to taxi out! The front stairs are being withdrawn up into the plane, but in an only-in-Colombia moment, we manage to jump up onto the back stairs and climb aboard the moving plane without injury or arrest! Honestly, where else on this planet could this kind of insanity occur?
The former detainees, now turned action heroes, collapse into our seats, ever so relieved to be one step closer to disinfecting ourselves from our self-induced purgatory. To say this crazy country is putting our newly formed relationship to the test would an understatement of epidemic proportions!
After a pulse-quickening flight through the wrath of an angry lightning storm we land in Barranquilla, only to be goosed by the fickle finger of fate. We are told our next flight is cancelled because of the plane being ‘broken’. Irritation is certainly no stranger to travel, but with these holidays more like horror-days, we scramble to find a bus bound for the larger city of Cartagena, to try and extricate ourselves from there.
Both of us are now unwell and at the mercy of our bowels from parasites partying in our guts, but at least we’ve made it to the old walled city of Cartagena. With our hellish trip curdling what’s left of our sanity, we still have two additional days to endure before throwing off the shackles of the volatile country.
With Colombia hardly a rousing success, we spend the remaining days conceptualizing ways to have the grey matter in our craniums laundered, to cleanse an emotional tsunami of memories from one of the most dangerous countries on earth; screwed up by the killings, cocaine, and cartels of Pablo Escobar and his ilk!
We have only been in South America for a couple of months but it feels as if we have lived a year in those months. Somebody once said, ‘when nothing goes right, go left’, and following said advice, our ‘left’ means destressing from our arduous travels with a much needed transfusion of sanity on the beaches of beautiful Costa Rica.
Experiencing the plane’s wheels lifting off ground and the watching the soil of South America fade away feels so absolutely delightful we’re almost farting flowers!
Mark Colegrave 1981