Incidents of Travel in Latin America

by Lars Holger Holm

  So what was so attractive about all this that it nearly gave me the mountain spell? Well, as I said initially, a mountain spell isn’t a rationally explainable phenomenon, and Lucia’s lunacy was but an ingredient in a cocktail, potent in many other ways too. First and foremost, I think it was the house itself. Rather its surroundings. Perfectly placed on a hill side, surrounded by a garden in which I gathered my own bananas, oranges and mandarins, and from which I produced my own fruit juices, it had a commanding view of the mountains and the intense metallic greenery of the coffee plantations. Then there were the clouds, constantly appearing in new phantasmagorical formations above my head. There was also the history of the place, but above all a feeling, once the agitated swell of the village party had abated, that time here simply ran differently than in other locations known to me. It was almost like an illustration of Einstein’s famous example of a traveller who comes back to Earth after having voyaged in space at near the speed of light, only to find that his own perception of having been travelling for only minutes is contradicted by the fact that not only his parents, siblings and friends have meanwhile died, but that his own children have disappeared too. In other words, time here had come to a kind of standstill for me, although I could see it was actually moving faster and faster for some people around me. This takes a little explanation.

  After Alba there was Theresa who, once I got rid of her lady friend and chaperone, proved to be very warm and stimulating company for some time. But in truth, both Alba and Theresa were eventually to be eclipsed by Asíle, who ultimately is the one for whom time actually accelerated as my own inner clock began to lag behind. She, as opposed to me, had an acute sense of urgency, at least she subsequently told me so. As for my own part, once I had incidentally met with her, as another stranger on the path of life, I was just curious to know if I were ever to meet with her again. In due course we did but I was never really anxious that it wouldn’t come to pass. Perhaps I knew that it was simply destined to happen. As things began to noticeably speed up in the vortex of time mixed with strong emotion, I was suddenly forced to realise that I had begun to outstay my own welcome to myself. Had I remained just another day longer, the inevitable would have occurred already at this early stage, with only all too foreseeable possible confusions and complications. I simply had to clear out of town before it was too late. But then too late caught up with me and I was just about to lose my passport as the mailed invitation from her was renewed, for me to come back and visit with her anytime. I truthfully had to answer, that in normal circumstances I would have been happy to lose my passport in order to be forced to go back to Zauberberg, but as things stood there was going to be a potential problem with my seeing her again, and that was that I would probably not be able to prevent myself from falling in love with her. This was, again in the circumstances, a winner takes all proposal. I expected her to cautiously back out of the trap I was inadvertently setting. Instead she rushed straight into it, and that’s how the story of Asíle and me began for real.

  Capurganá

  The plane took off from Medellín’s centrally located Olea Herrera airport at precisely 9:50 AM. I had had a vague idea about where we were going, but was still unaware of how remote it was, considering we would allegedly still be within the bounds of the civilised world, albeit at its rim. The plane was the smallest commercial aircraft I have ever boarded. Some 20 passenger seats in all — half of them empty — reminded me more of the seats of a Guatemalan chicken bus than that of a plane. There was no hostess on board, and the captain and his co-pilot were in full sight from the passenger cabin, conversing leisurely with one another, gesticulating in the air.

  While bags and provisions were loaded onto the plane, the captain waved a jovial goodbye to the ground crew and casually jammed his side window. Other orifices of the aircraft were shut in the same unceremonious way. With the cabin sealed, we were on our way. I stared hypnotised through the window at a dark discolouring in the fuselage that my heated imagination was only too keen to interpret as a crack in the structure supporting the wing. Realising there was nothing I could do about it, even if there was a crack, I confided in destiny.

  Up and into the clouds. The pile of red bricks named Medellín disappeared behind us. The sight of the Valley of Caucas, surrounded by the two cordilleras making up much of central and southern department of Antioquia, offered a pleasant contrast: a symphony in various shades of green, interspersed with drier patches, cultivated fields and small villages hidden in the mountains, only to be reached by winding dirt roads subject to the constant threat of torrential rains and landslides. From the air, however, everything looked placid and picture perfect, the hills meandering like tranquil waves in an ocean.

  Some 45 minutes into the flight the mountain swell receded. The last slopes merged with the coastal plains and the clouds, originating in the warm moisture of the Earth, became denser. But it was still possible to discern, here and there, the immense stretch of green canopy crowning the Darién selva tropical. Out of nowhere the curly surface of the Gulf of Urabá appeared on starboard while a stretch of coastal wilderness unfolded portside. A rugged coastline, huge rocks, reefs and entire islands appeared clad in trees and bushes in wild disarray. In between these unforgiving entities I spotted secluded bays with tranquil turquoise waters, and in between these miles and miles of unkempt beaches separated by capes of volcanic rock on which the waves of the Caribbean Sea hurled themselves, spurting into the air in foamy cascades. The whole thing would have made a perfect Spielbergian Jurassic Park backdrop, but it was just as well that I couldn’t detect any dinosaurs raising their heads above the treetops to watch our arrival.

  Notwithstanding, the landing in Capurganá was truly spectacular. After having followed the coastline while slowly descending, the captain initiated a sudden turn towards land. Through the cockpit windshield I could see ourselves heading straight for the green mountain ahead. All round us there seemed to be nowhere to go. We were completely enveloped by the jungle, and the hilltops, in all directions, stood tall above our own rapidly dwindling altitude. Then there was a sudden and unexpected clearing. A narrow passage opened up between two green crests. We headed straight for it. As soon as we came abreast with the hilltops, heading fatally for another mountain side, the plane again made a last sharp starboard turn. And there it was, straight ahead of us: the landing strip.

  Final descent was forcibly brusque and steep. Hitting ground we could feel there was probably some reason behind the plane’s seemingly under-pressurised tires, a fact I had noted already as we boarded. An unforeseen object or a hole in the ground could possibly flatten a fully pumped up tire more easily than a half full one, or perhaps send it off course by landing and take-off. When stepping out of the plane into the humid midday I noticed that the tires looked almost rectangular in shape while the aircraft was posed on ground. Whatever the reason for this might be, it was a fact. Another fact was that two eras in human evolution here meet face to face: the taxi to the village centre is an ass harnessed in front of a rustic wooden cart on the sides of which four red, plastic chairs have been suspended, attached by simple ropes.

  Here we were, a heavily armed Colombian soldier controlling ID documents there. Beyond him the local Hannibals, Gustavos, Nelsons and Hectors eager to offer accommodation, boat trips and horseback rides. Beyond them ultimately, the ‘taxi driver’, with a thin wooden stick in his hand to guide the docile donkey. Our papers were cleared and we understood a donkey taxi to be unnecessary, since the plaza, coinciding with the soccer pitch, of the jungle metropolis was to be found only a stone’s throw away. The flight captain once again waved — this time to us — and in the next moment his propeller craft was off, back to Medellín, returning a few scattered souls of European extraction to civilisation. The plane gone, everything on land returned to its habitual state of indolence, like water closing around a stone thrown in muddy water.

  Even the dogs are lazy in Ca
purganá. This laconic observation has the merit of also being true. By nature and acquired habit everything, except the lancias with their oversized Yamaha outboard motors, is slow here. Slow to the point of non-existence. After some searching we found a hotel room to our liking, at the end of the balustrade on the second floor with its own adjacent deck right by the tumultuous sea, next to the pier from which all maritime traffic — the only traffic — in town is directed. But it took the hotel manager, young Joselito (quickly nick-named ‘Don Tranquilo’), forever to make up his mind about accepting the proposal we made him for ten consecutive nights in the establishment he was allegedly running for a Medellín-based owner. He finally consented with a facial expression betraying he had probably been forced to conclude the worst deal of his life. Although the hotel was empty; although it would cost him personally nothing to swing a door open; although this, in the dead waters of low season, clearly was a mutual win-win situation. But money talks, sometimes slowly, but nonetheless inexorably. Asíle’s rubbing of ten virginal, sweet smelling 50,000 peso bills under his nose proved too much of a temptation. He gave up and we got our room at the suggested price.

  Which didn’t prevent him from trying to make our life difficult in other ways, such as suddenly and unexpectedly denying us access to the kitchen (he was eventually paid off by Asíle for the continuance of this service as well) and declaring that the owner — lurking somewhere behind cloud and mountain a thousand miles to the south — was categorically opposed to the idea of letting us use the washing machine. We did try to pay ourselves out of that impasse as well, but here Don Tranquilo was adamant. Most likely, he had indeed asked the owner for permission on our behalf, but he or she probably suspected Don Tranquilo would never admit the machine was ever used by guests and keep the money for running it to himself. At the thought of which the owner had concluded it was better if the machine was used solely for bed linens and towels of the hotel. But even here frugality prevailed. After a week we both felt an exchange of towels and sheets would be welcome, but as nobody in the staff seemed to care too much about our request, Asíle went into the laundry room and availed herself of what we needed.

  By and large our accommodation was quite comfortable. It had contained no less than three different beds plus a two storied bunk bed — which would certainly come in handy and generate mega bucks during high season as hotel and hostel owners in the area have the habit of charging accommodation as per head and not per room. We asked to have some of these extra beds removed. The request was granted and in exchange we got a refrigerator from another room. Still, the double bed had a mattress in typical Colombian style, made of rough fibres straight from nature tightly knit together, that is: hard as a rock. In return we enjoyed the benefit of no less than two ventilators, one suspended from the high ceiling, and the other hanging off the red brick wall, providing efficient cooling in addition to the more or less permanent sea breeze sweeping in through the man-made holes in the wall above the sliding doors. Having sliding doors enabled us to calibrate and direct the amount of breeze allowed inside, in this way saving the flicker from precious candles from constantly going out. The amount of water dispersed by the (cool) shower was acceptable too. And as I said, we had our own terrace overlooking the pier, the centre of activity in the village.

  Gazing further across the sea we were rewarded with the sight of two small islands, one furiously overgrown with thorny vegetation, the other consisting of a solid piece of huge white rock thrown into its present location by a frustrated extra-terrestrial giant trying to hit two mastodons with one stone. Beyond these landmarks the sea was open and, in the present season, dominated by grey skies and a humid atmosphere, the silhouette of the opposite shore of the Gulf of Urabá remained out of sight. Behind us was a stretch of cultivable land on sea level, but the hills rose steeply and abruptly behind this patch to rather impressive heights, all of which were covered in luxuriant vegetation, home to an almost dizzying array of wildlife: birds, insects, butterflies, primates, mammals and reptiles.

  On a good day electricity in the hotel would typically be up and running from 9 AM to 2 AM. In other words, the ventilators and the ice box would stop humming in the wee hours and come back on spinning to morning coffee. During this period, the electricity provided by a communal, petrol fed central power plant was shut down and only the establishments owning their own generators would be able to continue providing energy. It is, however, very possible that some of the hotels, allegedly having no electricity source of their own, do in fact have them. They simply want to save themselves the cost of running them since electricity comes at the price of a petrol that is surprisingly expensive in such proximity to the black veins of Venezuela. As a consequence, only the ‘luxury’ hotel of the village and some home-owners intent on saving their stock of frozen fish from decomposition run some lights and iceboxes in the dead of the night. Otherwise the place, on a moonless night, is pitch dark. Add to this that 2 AM to 9 AM are only the official hours when electricity is not provided. More often than not the lights will go out at any time of the night, sometimes leaving you with no other choice than to try to find your way home like a blind man bereft of cane and dog.

  But man has not become the master of this planet for nothing. Adaptation is the prerequisite of survival and we soon found ourselves accepting this state of affairs as natural. Slightly more difficult to get used to was the surprising scarcity of food articles in this lush farmland and the rather arrogant pride that the locals took in informing their customers that this or that item was unavailable. As mentioned, there is enough farmland available in and around Capurganá to allow the village to grow its own supplies of vegetable and fruit. But the people here take no interest whatsoever in such activities. All the hotels and nearly all of the businesses are owned by the paisas, whereas the majority of the indigenous population seems content to just hang around, occasionally pulling themselves sufficiently together to answer: ‘We don’t have it’! As a consequence, and with the possible exception of fish (there are still fishermen in the village) all foodstuffs, including fruit and vegetables, are brought in once a week from Turbo — a port town set at the bottom of the Gulf — by a wooden diesel-engined ship painted in vivid Caribbean colours, but decrepit enough otherwise. Thus, if you happen to arrive in Capurganá one or two days before the food ship is scheduled to arrive, chances you’ll find even two mouldy tomatoes in the grocery store are next to nil. Although avocados are practically dangling from every second branch, they are rare to find in the stores, not to speak of bananas; two oranges with nearly no juice inside them, if per chance they exist, typically cost more than a dollar, etc.

  As far as the alcohol situation is concerned the situation, somewhat surprisingly, is much better. In addition to the customary selection of Colombian beers (Aguila, Pilsen, Club Colombia), there are Chilean and Argentinian wines, Scotch whiskies, Bailey’s, rum and, of course, the ubiquitous Aguardente Antioquenia — one restaurant even has a bottle of immobile Cointreau perched on its liquor shelf.

  Asíle and I spent our first afternoon ever together resting, getting to know each other in exactly such ways as a bed, albeit hard as rock, is conducive to. For two years we had both been fantasising about each other, and there might have been, on both sides (and for sure on mine) an indistinct suspicion that in the last, critical and decisive instance, the spark, the soul, the emotion, the chemistry — call it what you like — in spite of all good will to the contrary simply wouldn’t be there. I was relieved to feel all my apprehension in this regard vanish like mist before the sun.

  In Cielo

  Having travelled all the way to the primordial wilderness uniting Colombia with Panamá we were of course interested in witnessing first hand its attractions. One of the places we heard about was El Cielo, a waterfall in the jungle, about an hour’s walk from the village. Passing by the airport, to get to the path taking us there, I noticed a sign on the latticed fence at the end of the ru
nway. It didn’t say ‘Parking prohibited’, or even ‘Trespassing prohibited’ as one would perhaps expect, but: ‘Tying horses to the fence prohibited. Fine 50,000 pesos’. I imagined the local metre maid arriving, dressed in uniform, issuing a ticket containing the iron branded ID of the horse owner, pasting it to the forehead of the innocent animal. The rider would then step out of the bar finding himself the victim of the implacable judicial system and, as we all do in such a situation, trying to argue with the representative of the local Parking Enforcement.

  By all means, I don’t know how rigorously this prohibition is upheld; I don’t even know if anybody was ever fined for actually tying his horse to the airport fence. What I do know is that all kinds of creatures — dogs, cats, humans, adults and children — walk the runway freely at any time of the day. Chances to get hit by a plane are rather slim though, especially if you avoid walking the runway around noon on Mondays and Fridays, the only two days in the week when flights are scheduled. Even so, only minutes before we witnessed one of these flights arrive some days later, a little girl, perhaps four years old, calmly strolled up the runway all alone. She did get off just in time, but she could just as well have been present on it when the aircraft at 250 km per hour slammed the tarmac. In seconds it covered the distance from touchdown to the sheds acting as the airport terminal.8