We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  And then we left. The travel began with a Dartmouth Coach bus ride from downtown Hanover to Logan Airport in Boston. We posed for a group photo in front of the bus: Me, Leah, Katrina, and CJ. Sophie and the relatives were there to say goodbye. When the other bus passengers asked what was happening, we explained that we were headed around the world. They gave us skeptical looks—not unjustified given that we were only five minutes into the trip. We flew from Boston to Chicago to see my parents. They housed and fed us for a week, creating immediate budget savings.

  And then on to Fort Lauderdale, where Tess met us without incident. The five us spent the night in a cramped airport hotel room that was both uncomfortable and unaffordable. It dawned on me, and perhaps on the others, that this was not a particularly pleasant way to travel. The accommodations would have to get bigger and cheaper once we were out of the country, or this adventure was not going to work. The next morning, we boarded the plane for the short flight to Cartagena. The humidity of the Caribbean belted us as soon as we climbed down the stairs of the plane onto the tarmac, as if we had walked into a bathroom where someone had just taken a long shower. The five of us walked inside to customs and immigration and joined the long line. Leah was carrying a folder of documents related to Tess: her birth certificate; an affidavit from her parents documenting that she was traveling with us; and myriad other signed, stamped, and notarized papers.

  I made Tess rehearse answers to the questions the immigration officials were most likely to ask, as if I were briefing a witness for a deposition. “Don’t say anything unless they ask you a question,” I advised. “And then say as little as possible.” We reached the front of the line and presented our five American passports. Tess stiffened up and stared forward. Leah clutched the folder of documents, prepared to offer up whatever legal paperwork might be necessary.

  The immigration official gave us a cursory glance, stamped our passports, and waved us through. “Bienvenidos,” he said as we shuffled by.

  We were in Colombia.

  Chapter 4

  If You Want Peace, You Won’t Get Justice

  I took my camera out of my backpack and began shooting. Less than a minute later, an officer across the plaza pointed at me. I was well aware that soldiers and law enforcement types generally do not like to be photographed. The officer began walking briskly in my direction.

  WE ARRIVED IN COLOMBIA in early September with no immediate onward plans. The idea was to make our way down the west side of South America to Patagonia before circling back north to Peru to meet Sophie. That left us two and a half months with no itinerary other than a general intent to move steadily south for four thousand miles. There were places we wanted to visit—Machu Picchu, the Amazon, the Bolivian salt flats—but there was not yet a plan for connecting them. We woke up on the first morning in Cartagena with ten unscheduled weeks ahead of us. Leah popped open her laptop to scout out potential adventures for the day. “Who wants to walk to the ocean?” she asked.

  “Sure,” CJ said without looking up from his book.

  “Or we could go to the Slave Museum,” Leah offered.

  “Okay,” I mumbled.

  “Or the old part of the city?” Leah said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Which one?” Leah asked.

  “Yes,” I repeated.

  “How about if we impale ourselves on Spanish torture devices?” Leah asked.

  “That could be fun,” I answered while typing. (In my defense, I had heard the word “Spanish.”)

  Leah stopped asking questions. An hour later, she pronounced: “We will walk to the Slave Museum and then to the outdoor food market.”

  The walk took us through Cartagena’s narrow streets with their pastel-colored buildings, wrought-iron balconies, and red-tile roofs. We passed a sixteenth century Spanish fort and a handful of churches, each with multicolored bell towers rising above the other buildings. There were flowers spilling over the balconies and creeping from every available space. The day was perfectly clear; the bright sun highlighted the colors of the city against the blue sky. All this colonial beauty made the Slave Museum feel like a slap in the face: a reminder that the lovely Spanish colonial architecture had a darker side. We spent an hour walking through exhibits documenting the scale of the slave trade and the cruelty of Spain’s colonization of the Americas. I was pleased with this first dollop of homeschooling. “What did you think?” I asked CJ on the way out.

  “The air-conditioning felt great,” he answered. Obviously we still had work to do.

  Leah led us on a scenic, meandering walk through the old city and along the ocean. Eventually the midday heat became punishing; there was no shade along on our route. We walked on. Leah paused occasionally to study the map in the guidebook. “Yes, this is Santa Maria Street,” she said proudly. The walk was beginning to feel endless, but none of us dared complain openly lest we inherit the planning role. Instead, we resorted to passive-aggressive humor. “If I collapse and die, I want Katrina to curate my journals,” I said.

  “That would be so sad,” CJ mused. “Dad’s last journal entry would say, ‘Looking forward to a long walk in Cartagena.’”

  “But what if I don’t make it?” Katrina asked.

  “I really like Cartagena,” Tess interjected. “This is a lovely walk, Leah. Thank you.” As the cousin stowaway, Tess was duty-bound to be more polite than the rest of us. CJ pretended to vomit on the sidewalk.

  “Do any of you know how to get home?” Leah asked.

  “Are we still in Colombia?” I asked, prompting guffaws from the group.

  Leah ignored me. “Anyone?” she challenged. We looked back at her blankly. “I didn’t think so,” she said. We ducked into a shady storefront for fresh orange juice, which cooled us down and raised our collective blood sugar.

  The heat notwithstanding, Leah served up some early victories. Most important, we found a rhythm in Cartagena: one major adventure in the morning and then quiet time in the afternoon. Yes, the guidebook said there were ten “must-see” attractions in Cartagena, but squeezing ten things into three days would make us miserable. Leah offered us up the travel equivalent of a single delicious entrée each day instead of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  As noted earlier, Leah was the Budget Czar, also for lack of other applicants. She kept a spreadsheet with a record of every dollar spent. I learned how serious the accounting was going to be when I returned to the apartment after a pleasant morning stroll.

  Leah: “What did you spend on breakfast?”

  Me: “Two dollars on the empanadas.”

  Leah: “That’s it?”

  Me: “Yeah.”

  Leah: “Didn’t you have coffee?”

  Me: “Oh yes. That was a dollar.”

  Leah: “Any refills?”

  Me: “Those were free.” [Momentary relief on my part.]

  Leah: “Did you buy the Economist on the way home?”

  Me: “I did, yes.” [Momentary relief now gone.]

  Leah: “How much did that cost?”

  Me: “I don’t remember.” [True.]

  Leah: “Doesn’t it say on the cover?” [Unfortunately, yes.]

  Me: [Silent as Leah searches the small print on the cover of the Economist for the price in Colombian pesos.]

  Leah: “Where did that pen come from?”

  Me: “What pen?”

  Leah: “In your left hand.”

  Me: “Okay, yes, I bought a pen with the Economist.”

  Leah: “Anything else?”

  Me: “No, I think that’s it.”

  Leah: “So you spent twelve dollars?” [The small print on the cover of the Economist indicated that it was very expensive in Colombia.]

  CJ to Tess in the background: “He’s so busted.” [Teenage laughter.]

  The budget numbers were somewhat arbitrary. When we divided the monthly rent on our house in Hanover by thirty, it came to twenty dollars a person per night. We allocated the same amount per day for food and then twenty d
ollars per person for “other.” All bus tickets, entertainment, daily activities, and most flights would have to fit in that “other” bucket. All in: sixty dollars per person per day. The budget was essential to making the trip work. It is one thing to overspend on a three-day vacation; it is another to go wildly off track for nine months. We could not afford the latter. Leah and I agreed that if the budget left us miserable or unsafe, we would raise our daily spending and shorten the trip. Colombia suggested, happily, that we would not have to do that.

  With no onward tickets from Cartagena, we could go anywhere in Colombia: the coast, a jungle trek, coffee country, the Amazon. Other countries beckoned, too. Wouldn’t it be cool to make it to the very tip of South America? Or Antarctica! To the east, Guyana and Suriname were tantalizingly untraveled. And Rio! What’s not to like about Rio? Or Paraguay? I knew absolutely nothing about Paraguay, which made me want to go there. In the end, we decided to travel from Cartagena to Medellín, where, as described in the first chapter, the children were not kidnapped. After the excitement on the Medellín metro, we opted to explore a quieter, more rural part of Colombia: coffee country.

  Emboldened by our first bus experience from Cartagena to Medellín, we booked tickets for a similarly long ride south from Medellín to Salento, a town nestled among the coffee estates in the Andes. Medellín is nearly a mile above sea level; Salento is higher still. The terrain grew greener and more densely forested as the bus carried us for seven hours along winding mountain roads. Just before sundown, we got off the bus in Salento’s main square, a vibrant plaza surrounded by colorful one-and two-story buildings. Leah had booked rooms at a finca (farm) several kilometers out of town; we had no idea how to get there. The family mood gauge was flashing yellow as we stood with our bags in the picturesque central plaza. “Where is our hotel?” CJ asked.

  “Let me get oriented,” Leah said.

  “We’ll never find it,” Katrina said. “Let’s just check into a hotel in town.”

  “We’ve already paid for the finca,” Leah said.

  “What’s a finca?” CJ asked. “That sounds terrible.”

  “Salento is beautiful,” Tess added.

  “No one threw up on the bus,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.

  “What if ‘finca’ means ‘fleabag’ in Spanish?” CJ asked.

  “It means ‘farm,’” Leah said sharply. “The pictures look lovely.”

  “Everything looks good on the Internet,” Katrina said.

  We opted to eat first and ask directions later. We carried our packs to a small open-air restaurant with a great view of the sun setting on the surrounding mountains. The cool air and plates of grilled meat, grilled fish, and french fries pushed the family’s mood gauge to green. As I paid the check, we asked our waiter how we might get to our finca. It was now dark and we had only vague directions—something about turning off the main road near a yellow bridge.

  The waiter immediately summoned the owner of the restaurant, who declared on the spot that he would drive us there. Never mind that he had no better idea of where “there” was than we did. The owner rushed away from the table. Three minutes later, he drove a sedan into the dining area of the restaurant. I do not mean that he drove his car near the restaurant, or that he parked on the street just beyond the outdoor seating area. He drove his car into the dining area and parked next to our table. “Put the bags in the trunk,” he instructed.

  We squeezed six people, five packs, and assorted smaller backpacks into the restaurant owner’s sedan. He drove us out of town on a dark, winding road. A dense fog had settled over the area. After several kilometers, we saw a structure that looked like it could be a yellow bridge. The restaurant owner turned his car onto a narrow dirt road. The headlights illuminated two dilapidated wooden buildings and an old swing set, all shrouded in the heavy mist. We could see nothing else, not even light in the distance. If this were a horror film, zombies would have appeared, walking stiffly out of the fog.

  We got out of the car and used the flashlight function our phones to search for any clue of the finca. Eventually Tess spotted a small wooden sign for the Hotel Finca El Rancho* with an arrow pointing up a rutted path. We crowded back into the car and drove another kilometer to an inn at the top of a small hill. This turned out to be our finca, though it was hard to discern much about the place in the dark. We bade farewell to the restaurant owner, offering profuse thanks. We checked into three cozy but unheated rooms. The temperature was falling steadily; we climbed under layers of blankets, eager to see what daylight would bring.

  “This place is awesome,” CJ pronounced at breakfast the next morning. We were in a large open-air eating area with views in three directions. By daylight, we could see that the finca overlooked a beautiful pasture with mountains beyond. The weather forecast was for seven consecutive days of rain; that first day, the forecast was proving sadly accurate. Even in a light rain—or perhaps because of it, with the tops of the mountains disappearing into the clouds—the views were impressive. Katrina made her way around the perimeter of the eating area snapping photos of the landscape.

  The owner of our finca appeared at breakfast to take our dinner order and dispense travel tips. “Don’t worry about a little rain,” he admonished us in Spanish. “You should go to the national park.” He told us how to catch the local bus into Salento by waiting on the side of the road near the yellow bridge. From there, we rode for twenty minutes in the back of a jeep with a handful of other international travelers into Los Nevados National Park, an area where the dense greenery of the coffee country abuts the mountains and volcanoes of the Andes, all frosted with layers of white and gray clouds.

  “Whoa,” CJ said as he climbed out of the jeep and stared up at the wax palm trees, the tallest palms in the world. The trees jut up as high as two hundred feet with a single, compact canopy of palm leaves at the top. The combination of these freakish trees, the steep green hills, and the overhanging mist created a Jurassic Park kind of beauty. We walked into a forest where a narrow trail led up a small mountain. The path followed a river, crossing back and forth along rickety bridges with signs warning in Spanish: CAUTION: ONE PERSON AT A TIME. We had no particular destination. Even if we made it to the top of the mountain, all we would be able to see was gray mist and our own colorful jackets. Instead, we hiked until we felt like turning around, admiring the dense, luscious vegetation and trying not to fall off the narrow bridges. We were so soaked that the rain stopped mattering. I had fun searching out the tiny flowers and colorful mushrooms hidden amid the dense greenery or in small crevices in tree trunks.

  By the second morning, the weather had turned warm and sunny, proving the weather forecast blessedly wrong. “Te gusta montar a caballo?” the proprietor of the finca asked at breakfast.

  “What did he say?” CJ asked.

  “Something about mounting a cow,” I said.

  “Horse,” Leah corrected me.

  “He asked if we like horses,” Tess said.

  “For dinner?” CJ asked with concern.

  “To ride, moron,” Katrina said.

  The finca owner suggested that we ride horses to a nearby coffee farm. No one will confuse the Wheelan family for cowboys, but horses are a really good way to explore—like hiking, only less work. Tess and CJ rode in the front, bantering to each other. I could see their mouths moving, but I was sufficiently adept with my horse that I could stay far enough behind not to hear them.

  We rode for an hour to an organic coffee farm and then hiked through the steep fields, where avocado, plantain, and banana trees shaded the coffee plants. After the tour of the farm and a lesson in roasting beans, we drank coffee on the porch of the farmhouse. The owner of the farm pointed to a chicken strutting back and forth in the yard with an odd tuft of orange feathers on its head. “We call that the Trump chicken,” he said, prompting laughter. I assured those sitting on the porch—the coffee farmer, his son, and some Australians who had toured the coffee farm with us—that there was no
chance of Donald Trump being elected president of the United States. They seemed relieved by my expert political analysis.

  In the evenings we relaxed in the covered open-air dining area that doubled as a communal gathering space. The Internet was intermittent at best, so we spent hours playing cards, reading, and writing in our journals. Our card game of choice was whist, a simplified version of bridge in which two-person teams compete against each other. I finished reading a biography of Nelson Rockefeller and began It Can’t Happen Here, the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel about a populist authoritarian leader who rises to power in America. When the temperature in the open-air common area became too frigid, we retired to our rooms and climbed into the comfortable beds. We slept especially well in Salento, both because of the cool nights at high altitude and because the only constraint on when we had to wake up was the risk of missing breakfast.

  We had arrived in Colombia at a historic inflection point. For half a century, the Colombian government had been fighting several rebel groups, the largest of which was the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). That armed conflict—the longest civil war in the hemisphere—was on the brink of resolution. Government officials and FARC representatives had been negotiating in Havana for several years. Right about the time we were leaving in Hanover, the two sides reached a tentative agreement under which the guerrillas would disarm and end their decades-long fight. In exchange, the Colombian government would grant FARC members some degree of amnesty, a guaranteed number of seats in the national legislature, and a monthly stipend to help them reintegrate to civilian life. We had known since before we arrived that the agreement would soon be put to Colombia’s voters for approval in a national referendum.