Volver a colombia
We’d been traveling for almost three months before we finally set foot outside the country, all around the US, with many enjoyable experiences in our patriotic national parks and meeting and working with wonderful people. In early November we nearly became one of the highway statistics as an improperly performed brake job resulted in their disassembling on the highway and damaging part of our axle in the process. It left us wondering if we’d make it in time for some of our appointments, or, given the auto parts supply chain issues, if we’d even make our eventual flight to Colombia. Fortunately, most things worked out for us.
Traveling to Colombia has been a bit of a strange detour, however. It matches little of the rest of our itinerary, some of which was exploring patriotic places wherein we might settle down in some unforeseeable future, and others have a more Asian basis in geographical terms. But this is only thematic oddity. The real strangeness has been a matter of homecoming.
Defining “home”
The task is simple for some. I’ve been a bit vagrant all of my life. The longest I’ve lived in one structure has been about three years. One municipal region, perhaps as many as six. Others, having lived in one house, one town, for their entire lives, have a simpler task: home is that place. As adults we begin to define new homes, but often still talk about our holiday plans as “going home” for many years before transitioning to the more specific “my parents' place” or something similar. And this is the point that interests me: is it something about having had a newer, primary home for an extended period of time that makes it home, or is it something about being at one’s original home anymore, something alienating about the way time passes while away? Is it a matter of settlement or estrangement?
The poetic and cliche among us will retort that home is where the heart is, and I’ll slippery slope those snoring sods with questions of how many shards of their heart are scattered across the planet? Being a wannabe bard myself I have to admit I have a couple such cardiac carvings laying about like horcruxes, keys to my own demise. One is located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, specifically in Santa Marta and the surrounding areas.
Colombia
Many travelers from rich countries like the US, Australia and Europe, finding themselves in poorer countries will say “oh the people are so nice” and you have to wonder if it’s just for the review, just to keep the tourist dollars rolling in, are they as nice to each other as they are to foreigners… Well, Colombians have a long and colorful history of not being nice to each other, but on a day to day basis it’s hard not to notice how readily they build rapports with complete strangers, gringos or otherwise. Their apparent inherent and gentle friendliness seems like the way we should all be towards each other, and to a foreigner it is especially appealing.
Add to that the incredible land in which they live, decorated as it is with mountains, deserts, beautiful beaches on both oceans, jungles, oh wow it’s easier to list the biomes they don’t have: tundra, I think, but some of those mountains definitely have snow on them anyway. It has dedicated 13% of its land mass to its sixty national parks (for reference, the US only has 63). There are fantastic, advanced cities, historic and culturally significant cities that have stood for half a millennium, remote and indigenous villages home to traditional cultural practices and small communities oriented around sustenance.
It certainly has issues with crime (but what nation doesn’t?), and it is still technically in the throes of civil war (but western press is quite certain most western democracies will rejoin that club soon enough), but it is probably harder to get in trouble in the major tourist destinations of Colombia than in major tourist destinations of the US. And nobody comes away from New York or LA feeling anywhere near as wonderful as they do leaving Medellín or Bogotá or — well, Cartagena blows, imo, but I’m sure there’s a crowd to which it appeals.
Santa Marta
The first-founded city in South America, Santa Marta is richly historic and oddly sleepy for such a city of half a million. It parties, without a doubt, and it can be hard to get across a road by foot without risking collision with a moto, yet it has this unassuming quality to it, lacking the pretense of Cartagena, the hustle and bustle of Bogotá, the metropolitan sheen of Medellín. Most tourists are told to use it as a homebase for exploring Parque Tayrona, Minca, Palomino, La Ciudad Perdida, and other major tourist attractions in the Caribbean.
On my first visit to Colombia, I got stuck in Santa Marta.
Places change
Fast-forwarding nearly a decade from our omitted flashback, I wanted to bring my partner to Colombia, particularly to Santa Marta as it is so important to me. It’s a ritual I’ve performed with other former homes of mine, like my grandmother’s former house, my uncle’s cabin, and so on. I consider it a home, despite having never really been legally permitted to describe it as such.
But nothing is static in this world. While Santa Marta is still quite recognizable, parts of it have changed. New infrastructure, new landscaping, new businesses and more. And if we’re to discuss the extended sphere, Minca is bigger, Palomino is louder, and I can’t even imagine how Cabo de la Vela looks: perhaps it’s for the best I won’t have time to make a visit.
But people stay the same
When this biographical fact comes to light, people do in fact make the assumption that these places haven’t changed. That what I found wonderful a decade ago might still have the same character that appealed to me back then, that I may still have the same character who could find value in it back then. In the hostels my revelation of having spent nearly two months in Magdalena and La Guajira (a moment in time: I would have spent years here) opens me to interrogation. “What’s good here? What should I see?”
It’s aggravating. I support the desire to travel and I support everyone traveling as best suits them, but never before have I been subject to justify someone else’s visit to a place that served as refuge to me in a trying and formative time. My affection for Santa Marta is as much based on its fantastic scenic and experiential opportunities as it is on the day to day interactions I had in the market, working alongside a staff of locals and making friends all over the city. The implication that a city is a series of destinations to which instagram filters can be applied and not instead the people who make their lives in it, who work, learn, love and strive in it, who actually care about it and its inhabitants, their neighbors, is a repulsive implication.
Goodbye
Why does returning home, whatever that may be, stimulate our worst impulses? When we go back to our parents' after our first month or so away for college, why do we suddenly feel infantile and incapable? Why did I have such a desperate desire for cigarettes when I returned to Colombia? Are we trying to subconsciously recreate the free and easy times in an environment increasingly unlike that in which said good times transpired; is the background radiation of lightly-buried trauma too powerful in certain places?
Why am I the only one who realizes everything has changed? Why is the frog not leaping from the near-boiling pot?
Because I haven’t been here working, learning, loving, striving, caring. I mean, I’ve cared. I’ve cared lots! Thoughts and prayers! From afar. Not from here. Since I left Santa Marta, it’s been nothing but a fond memory. And perhaps that’s all it should be. I will always love this place, and I’ve been happy to bring my partner here, and grateful for their eternal patience in the face of my eternal hand wringing about how everything’s different and for the worse, but the world has continued to turn since I left this place. Perhaps the adage “you can’t go home” should be considered a warning: “you shouldn’t go home.” It won’t be what you remembered. Better to preserve it as a chapter of your personal narrative, to pick from it the themes you wish to carry through the rest of the book, but leave that final line written as is.
I am my own worst enemy
We took a twelve hour bus advertised as ten hours from Santa Marta to Bucaramanga, spending a night there. A young employee who had grown up in Palomino commiserated with me over what had happened to the town while we looked out over the city from the hostel terrace. Right away in the morning we left for San Gil, and were overwhelmed with suggestions of things we should do. Go cliff jumping in a cave! Paraglide over the canyon! Raft down level five rapids! Bungee jump into the river! We opted to spend the afternoon less adventurously in the beautiful colonial town of Barichara. We spent most of our time trying to find a restaurant that was actually open on a Tuesday, but we also took a surprisingly fascinating tour of the paper manufactory there. Surprising in the same way that our visit to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island was: a seemingly unfitting tourist attraction suggested to us that we quite enjoyed. We made paper
That evening in the hostel we found ourselves having the typical hostel conversations: where are you from, how long are you traveling, where have you been and where are you off too next, names usually being a fifth or sixth question in the conversation, after impulsive habits of excess of have been explicated and even certain political views surfaced. But in San Gil we also found a lot of questions regarding the typical adventure attractions: have you done the rafting how scary is it have you gone to the natural pools what kinda bus fare does it cost what did you think of this or that small town on the camino real pretty skipable I think I’ve heard right what do you have planned tomorrow maybe we can split a cab. And I was asking some of these questions. I felt the pressure of the limited time I had in the area and the many many things that we could do or see weighing on me, I couldn’t waste this time, we had to pack it full, to the brim, justify our visit …!
Was I behaving exactly as those I’d started this blog entry to deride? I started chain smoking and emptying beers as those around me snuck off for bumps of cheap high grade stuff, uncertain how to reconcile my conflicting feelings, my desire to see the world and my desire to respect what was sacred to people, their home, without ever bothering to consult them.
Our last night in San Gil was the Eve of the Immaculate Conception. We had plans to go play Tejo — basically Cornhole with dynamite — with a number of other hostel guests that evening, after spending the day on a surprisingly quiet waterfall hike (populated primarily by Colombians, perhaps because there were none of the guided tours that facilitated gringos visiting the area’s other waterfalls), but we bailed. We learned that in Colombia the night is celebrated as día de las velitas, and received very mixed information on how it is celebrated besides lighting candles and sitting with them until they burn down. We wandered to the town square in search of candles and, in addition to the Christmas lights illuminating the trees, the streets, the walks, the food stands and sculptures, hundreds of people sitting around thousands of candles. We strolled slowly through the park, in awe of the celebration, the likes of which we couldn’t imagine in our patriotic place of birth, before taking our newly acquired candles back to the hostel. Uncertain of the significance of the candles but having told to “make a wish for your family” when lighting one, we took turns lighting candles for our loved ones and watched them burn having hushed conversations about how much we missed our family and friends and hated our inability to support them through their ongoing trials.
The next day I was reunited with one of my dearest friends in Bogotá, and, while we did very little, in all honesty I didn’t want to jet around the city eating, shopping and partying, though we certainly had amazing food, came back one dancy night near sunrise near deaf, and went to a number of holiday markets: I just wanted to sit on the couch watching Netflix and playing Nintendo with them. Fortunately our hangovers on Saturday made a reality of that desire. Home is where the heart is. Why have I voluntarily cast shards of mine across the globe, to the point where even in my patriotic homeland I’m forced to choose between which loved ones I can have a cup of tea with or share a day of mindless gaming with? If I’d known what such a life would be like, would I have opened my heart so liberally, moving or traveling at all, would I do it all the same again?
As much as it hurts, as cliche as it is, I think I would. I couldn’t continue this journey and claim honestly to wish for any different state of affairs.
Ya can’t stay here
Leaving Colombia is heartbreaking. I hold this land so dearly and still it holds so much mystery for me. The mountains, the sands, the jungles, the rivers, and most of all the wonderful people, as wonderful as any one could find in this world, grasp at my soul like every inch of my own country. This world is so big, so vast, its people so numerous and fantastic. Am I making a mistake leaving or have I overstayed already? The flight tickets suggest I’ve stayed exactly as long as I should have, but as I depart for Japan, I can’t help but wonder if maybe I should have planned instead to exhaust my tourism visa in Colombia first. Ālea iacta est. In retrospect, the only choice that will ever have been right will be the one I made.
