Walden

So, I have been fond of Thoreau`s writing since my senior year in high school. It was the first time I had read something in an English Lit class that struck me, hit a chord. Since then, whenever I travel for long periods of time, I always bring with me a copy of Walden, his most memorable work. While I was living in Senegal with the Peace Corps, I would often open it in my hut when I had finished all the other books I had brought from the regional house library and read a few pages or a chapter but I had yet to sit down and actually read Walden cover to cover. When we were packing for our South American adventure, I of course threw in my pack once again a small copy of Walden & Civil Disobedience and recently had the patience and time to sit, read, and let it sink in and oh has it. I have a tendency while reading to use a pen to mark passages or quotations that I find stirring to the soul and Thoreau is a pro at putting those types of passages down on paper. I wanted to take a few minutes to share some of the remarkable series of words puzzled together to form something, well, transcendental.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. -Economy

But I would say to my fellows, once and for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
-Where I Lived and What I Lived For

I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father`s or his mother`s or his neighbor`s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course... -Economy

...for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. -Where I Lived and What I Lived For

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. -Where I Lived and What I Lived For

And not til we are completely lost, or turned around - for a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost - do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn to points of the compass again as often as he awakes whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not til we are lost, in other words, not til we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. -The Village

The wind which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or cellestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.

The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.

Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

No wonder that Alexander carried the Illiad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only read but actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man`s thought becomes a modern man`s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the momuments of Grecian litereature as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to pretect them against the corrosions of time. Books are the treasured weath of the world and the fit inheritence of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand natually and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. -Reading

I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, theiving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.

The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. -The Ponds

A lake is the landscape`s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth`s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next to the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are the overhanging brows.

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us towards the sun in the system and the heart in men, but draw lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man`s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. - The Pond in Winter

We should be blessed if we live in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of pat opportunities, which we call doing our duty. -Spring

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endevours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a sucess unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary, new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. - Conclusion

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love you life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleaant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man`s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple tree wood, which had stood in a farmer`s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut and afterwards in Massechusetts - from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a ressurection and immortality strengthened by hearing this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodeness in the dead dry life of society, deposited first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well seasoned tomb - heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board - may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society`s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! -Conclusions

"Mbe lun do."

We left Salento heading to Cali, the salsa dancing capital of Colombia. We found a popular hostal among backpackers and travelers called Juvitas that offered free salsa lessons so we stayed there for a few nights, tooks some free lessons, went out on the town dancing and kept heading south. After Cali, we heading a few hours to Popanyan, where we spent Thanksgiving and had a lovely dinner out at an Italian restaurant (courtesy of my family since anything more than a ramen noodle dinner is out of our budget).
From Popanyan, we headed east over a horrendous road, reminiscent of the Dakar-Tamba, to the beautiful town of San Augustin. San Augustin is famous in Colombia for it`s Archaeology Park displaying the carved stones of an ancient civilization circa 3000 B.C. gone long before the rise of the Inca empire and the arrival of the Spanish. Not much is known about them other than what can be discovered and interpreted from their burial mounds and statues. We took a day long Jeep tour around the area visiting different parks, vistas, waterfalls, and villages, then another day spent visiting the main Archaeology park walking around. We stayed with a lovely and hospitable Colombian family owned hostal called Maya Hostal run by the patriarch, Super Mario. San Augustin was one of my favorite places we visited in Colombia.
Heading out of San Augustin, we headed to Mocoa, a place once dominiated by the guerilla terrorist organization F.A.R.C., not even mentioned yet in the Lonely Planet, and with only one hostel, Casa del Rio, owned by a Belgium guy named Filipe. The hostel was in a beautiful location and gorgeous but we were slightly unimpressed with the owner selling the tiny bananas that grow everywhere for 100 pesos a piece (should be free or at least 100 pesos for a handful) and his rule of closing the main building at 11pm when we were 20mins left in watching a movie (come on man, cut us some slack). Always try and stay with locally owned hostals over foreign owned. Local owners are much more hospitable and accommidating. Foreign owners are generally money-driven to all decisions. Gotta love that Capitalism! Anyway, we went on a hike called "El fin del mundo" or "the end of the world" which was SPECTACULAR. A muddy, steep, muddy, and steeper trail leads you up this mountain until you descend into a river valley with waterfall after waterfall, each which have large deep potholes carved from thousands of years of churning and forceful water wearing away at the rock (Which is stronger, water or rock? The Zen master always knows the answer is water), allowing you to jump from the top and swim around in the cool, crisp water before hiking to the next falls. Unbelievable hike. Wait till this place is in the travel books.

Mocoa was our last night in the beautiful, lovely, friendly, inspiring country that is Colombia. It may have had its bad years, many of them. But these people are strong, they believe in happiness above the violence and war that has plagued their soil for so long. They love their family, their country, their heritage, and they love to party, to celebrate life, love and fun times. It was inspiring to see a place or such wealth of spirit after so long living in fear and under corruption. We left Mocoa early, sitting in the back of a pick-up traveling through the mountains on a single lane dirt and gravel road on the side of a cliff, similar the road of dealth in Bolivia, connecting Mocoa with Pasto. From Pasto we headed to Ipialies, from Ipialies to the border. We got our exit stamps in our passport (Spirit Airlines, we weren`t lying...so go stick it where the sun don`t shine as Grandma would put it...I`d put it a little more vulgur but you can figure it out) and walked across the border into Ecuador. Ciao Colombia. "Mbe lun do." ("See you another day")

BIENVENIDOS A YAMBOLOMBIA!!

I read and heard about the small town of Salento, Colombia before I left the states for this journey. Coffee capital of Colombia, beautiful, mind-bending landscapes of the Cocora Valley, tallest palm trees in the world 7,000 ft up in the Andes mountains. How excited we must have been looking back on those webpages, on those photos. Seeing the town and surrounding landscape of Salento in person however, made that awe sitting at a computer look dismal. Salento may be heaven on Earth. The people may be angels or bodhisattvas. The population of the United States could learn alot from the people of Colombia.

We arrived in Salento at night after a two hour bus from Guatape to Medellin, a six hour ride from Medellin to Armenia, and an hour more or less from Armenia to Salento. Dumping rain cornered us into a internet cafe where Kara called the hostel we had found from a hand-made canvas poster in Guatape. Yambolombia! An eco-hostel a few kilometers from the main town owned by a local Colombian family. Gabriel and Carol, and their 14 year old daughter Daniella. Organic farmers, painters, jewelry makers, pure blooded creative artists. The hostel, painted a variety of colors and made from Guadua, a variety of bamboo (thicker than we know it in the states) the place was fantastic. The hostel has a small art studio in the backyard for traveling artists and the owners. On the side of the house, Gabriel has slowly begun terracing the sloping hill to create level organic vegetable gardens. A hike up the hill behind leads to a campfire ring, a flat plateau to camp with tents and a breathtaking view of the Cocora valley. The front porch overlooks a sweeping valley of coffee plantations, rivers, and beyond the lights of Armenia. The eco-hostel offers free coffee, free natural juices (lemonade, orange juice, mora, and more) and free agua-panella, a delicious hot drink with natural panella sugar famous in Colombia. Gabriel, his companion, Carol, and their daughter Daniella sharing their house with wanderers, nomads, like-minded souls.

We spent our first couple of days trying to find the breaks in the rain to hike the 3 or so kilometers into town to wander the streets, check out the artesanal shacks and shops, have a few beers and practice our ever-so-slowly-growing Spanish skills (I speak for myself...dondin dondin). The town center square is surrounded by either bars, restaurants, or trinket shops. We found a great AND cheap place to eat called Lucy´s serving large typical Colombian plates of soup, rice, salad, beans, some mixed vegetables or potatoes, and either a slice-slab of meat or trout. Delicious enough we would come back a few more times throughout our 10 day stint in Salento. At the end of the artesanal street, painted steps led skyward towards another mind-bending vista of the Cocora valley. We were lucky enough to reach the top to discover a beautiful full rainbow spaning the valley. Paradise.

The trip you want to do if you visit Salento is check out the Cocora valley. We caught a Jeep early one morning, standing on the back bumber holding on the the roof rack as we weaved our way down from the relative plateau of Salento into the valley. Gabriel had told us about the hike we needed to check out if we only spent one day in the valley. We made out down a deteriorating dirt (actually at this time of the year it´s knee deep mud from all the horse traffic) path skirting alongside barbed wire and cow pastures. Every so often we wound need to duck under the barbed wire and hike inside the pastures to avoid the pools of two foot deep mud. At one point my finger (thank God not my whole hand) grazed a line of electrified fence while switching between the trail and the pasture giving me a nice shot of adrenaline inducing shock. The pasture slowly turned to forest with the trail leading to a beautiful waterfall (one of hundreds we´ll experience throughout this journey). We followed the trail passing back and forth over the river on rickety bridges made from wood planks and guadua trunks following signs towards the hummingbird reserve. Each sign deceivingly made it seem like the reserve was only a kilometer or less ahead yet after each kilometer we found just another sign. Finally climbing about 3,000 ft in elevation from 6,500 to 8,500 ft, we reached a family run finca and reserve tucked up high in the cloud forests of the Andes mountains. For 3,000 Colombian pesos, the equivalent of roughly $1.50 (which goes towards the keep up of the trails and bridges) you get a nice refreshing cup of agua-panella and a nice slab of queso-campesino, a locally made cheese. The finca is surrounded by sugar-water bird feeders with hummingbirds zipping by back and forth like jet fighters in a dog fight. It was quite difficult to try and capture a focused picture of some of the brighter hummingbirds as the fly in to inhale some sugar water and zip away again.

On the way back down the mountain, we took another steep uphill detour to the "Finca de la Montana" (I haven´t figured out how to make the "n" with the squiggly line above it on these keyboards yet). From the finca, we took the rocky road winding its way back down to the main road in Cocora, conversing with a nice Colombian couple from Cali. Once back in Salento, we finished off a wonderful beautiful day with a cold beer and a nice meal at Lucy´s.

On our last day, we walked down our road from the hostel to a organic coffee plantation to get a tour of the fields and the process from plant to beverage. Our guide, Juan, walked us through the coffee fields, with two varieties of coffee plants interspersed with banana trees to give shade to the coffee. Juan showed us the difference between the ripe and unripe fruits, how you pick the bright yellow and red fruits making your way from plant to plant. Once back at the finca, the fruits are put through a mechanical peeler removing their first skin so that a moist off-white skin remains. The coffee fruits are then washed in water and put out in the sun or inside a greenhouse made from plastic and guadua so the seeds can dry (drying can take anywhere from a couple days in the sun to a couple weeks in the rainy season. Once dry the seeds are put into another peeler to remove their off-white second skin. Once the second skin is removed, you have what we know of as your coffee bean. They are put inside a pot over a hot fire and roasted until their aroma is permeating the whole finca. Once the beans are cooled, they are packaged and sold to town or to travelers and tourists visiting the finca for tours. Each of the three of us bought a bag, the freshest coffee we´ve ever tasted and quite possibly ever will. Throughout the morning, Juan had showed us the plantation of coffee plants, let us pick some ripe fruit from the limbs, peeled them, set them to dry, taken some dried seeds from prior harvest a week ago, peeled them again, roasted them over an open fire, ground them by hand, and made three delicious, fresh, organic cups of black, rich, aromatic coffee. Yum.

Our amazing ten days came to an end and we said our goodbyes to Gabriel, Carol, and Daniella, three people who invited us into their home as stranger, became friends, and felt like family leaving. We took a hand made poster for their hostel to put up in a low key chill hostel later on our journey (Maya Hostel in San Augustin). Gabriel gave us and our luggage a ride on his motocycle and trailer cart pulled behind it to town to catch a bus to Armenia and onward to Cali for some Salsa lessons and dancing. As happy as we were to be continuing our adventure, our journey, a part of us felt the pangs of leaving good friends, not knowing when we´d see them again.

First off, I apologize. I have ADD. I come into an internet cafe to catch up on the blog, check for hostels in the next town or city or country we`re heading to and what happens? A little email, a little news reading, a little football news and predictions (The Ravens are disappointing me). Next thing I know I`m forty minutes into my hour and I have not acomplished a thing. I have been meaning on giving Guatape the time it deserves in writing and now don`t think I will win this time.

The hostel we stayed at in Guatape, Lake View Hostel, had an activity book which travelers could look through at all the wonderful, beautiful things there were to do around Guatape. From climbing la Piedra, to horseback ride to the monastery, to taking a boat tour of the lake and checking out Pablo Escobar`s bombed out finca, to kayaking, to day trips to Rio Biscocho and San Rafael, each page made you want to stay long enough to experience it all. We did our best with the three weeks we were there.

On one of our first couple days, we decided on a trek to a nearby waterfall, unknown to most gringos and Colombians for the matter. The hostel owner made a call to a local family who were hired as our guides. The family, from northern Colombia, was displaced (i.e. kicked off their land by F.A.R.C., the current cocaine controlling group located in the far outposts of Colombia) and moved to Guatape to start over with nothing. They live by the side of the lake in a series of shanty shacks built from pieces of scrap wood and sheet metal. Ismael, the father, will do just about anything for money. He`ll take tourists fishing, hike to the waterfall, sell your bike for you for comission. We met Ismael and his two sons, Jonathon and Esnyder, and their huge black lab, Negro (Yes, his name was Black) outside the hostel and set off on our adventure.
Minutes into our hike, the three of us knew what amazing and beautiful souls our guides contained. Ismael was a born Naturalist. He would stop when he knew there were beautiful photo opportunities, point out birds and offer their names in Spanish, identify the plants and trees that were edible or used for some function. When we crossed the streams over slippery rocks, he or one of his sons held out their hand for Kara, Jess, and I to cross without wiping out. As we made our way from the cow pastures adjacent to the stream into the chilly interior of the forest, Ismael forged ahead with his machete chopping at the branches and bushes that can so easily sneak into the open sun spaces created by a trail. When we reached the waterfall, beautiful of course because every corner of this country is incredibly gorgeous, he warned us about how cold the pool would be, but we were three gringos on an adventure and needed to experience the waterfall in its own element, wet and freezing. Ismael used one of our digital cameras to mark the moment. Only crazy gringos want to swim in ice cold water. Afterward our ever-so-brief dip, we threw on all the layers we brought and began making our way back down through the valley shaped and carved by thousands of years of steady and constant water trickling through the path of least resistance.
On the way back, we thought we`d just take the same road back to the hostel but Ismael, Jonathon, and Esnyder took us a back loop through pastures overlooking the fingers of the lake, sneaking like a thief into the far corners of the Guatape valley. At one point, Ismael jumps up a tree and rips off an entire branch laden with a yellow-green fruit, bright pink on the inside with yellow seeds, delicious (so long as you don`t eat one with a worm inside...no biggie). We make our way, the long way, back towards the hostel and stop at their home. As we walked up, four beautiful tiny puppies come rushing up to greet us. One all black, one mostly black with a white chest and two white paws, one brown, and one a khacki tan. So cute. It was hard not taking one with us. Soon we were walking again making our way back to the hostel, each of us giving Ismael a bit more money than we were obligated to, they deserved it all. I pulled my Livestrong and One bracelets off my wrists and handed them over to Jonathon and Esnyder, small tokens of thanks for their humility and hospitality as our guides.
Over the next two and half weeks in Guatape, we`d randomly see Ismael in town, one time him riding his bike with a guitar case on his back searching for a pick. I don`t think it was his but he was selling it for someone and wanted a pick to be included. The handfuls of travelers to stay at Lake View during our stay, the waterfall hike with Ismael and his sons was the first we would recommend. It`s by far worth it.

We hiked the rock one sunny day, giving us a 360 degree panoramic view of the lake. Wonderful. We took the three hour boat tour around the lake, visiting Pablo Escobar`s finca and restaurant, bombed by the Colombian government sometime back in the early 90`s in an attempt to kill him (He escaped). People have since left their mark on the walls of his lakeside home, restaurant and disco with grafitti (some very talented grafitti artists here in Colombia) while others have clearly dug up and busted down walls looking for stashes of money and cocaine. I`m sure some people found some too. Other days we headed a couple thousand feet less in elevation for a warmer day lounging and swiming the the river, having a cheap beer and a good book sitting in the warm sun. All of these mini-trips and adventures were amazing in their own right but I know, looking back on our time in Guatape, I will remember fondly our hike with Ismael and his sons. A family that has been through so much, seen terror I can only imagine, left with no posessions other than what they can carry, and there they were, happy, smiling, courteous and warm. They are the living breathing example of the Colombian culture and people we have met and experience here over the past five weeks. I would choose Colombia over downtown Baltimore on a scale of trust and ease any day of the week. I hope one day we`ll visit Guatape again and visit with our new friends.