Those minimal losses little more than nuisance, San Pedro La Laguna experienced a Gringo exchange, Jackson replacing Patrick at the language school and in las calles, quickly a hit with all my knee-high friends and their families, a new white behemoth to maul at every appearance. My last days I spent circulating through San Pedro, despidiendo a mis amigos. Jackson and I were invited to several delicious meals with Josefa’s beautiful family, whose humble doll-house kitchen could barely contain our human-sized figures. We accompanied Josefa and crew to Las Cristalinas as well, a beautiful and contaminated swimming spot somewhere between San Juan y San Pablo La Laguna.
And then, after thirty consecutive hours in airports or aboard planes, after enduring multiple bag searches and questions sessions by US Customs – I got off easy compared to my highly suspect, traditionally dressed Guatemalan doll, who was aggressively squeezed and molested by overzealous agents – I landed in Charlotte, whisked away by my parents, accompanied by my grandma, toward a gluttonous satiating of nine-months building cravings. Big-ass delicious pizzas and pitchers of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (from Revolution Pizza & Ale House in Noda). Forearm-sized cuts of pineapple coconut cake at Landmark Diner. (And good ol’ Southern charm: a gentleman’s club billboard either crude or homicidal: “Come meat our dancers.”)
My three weeks back in the States were a blur. I lost days in front of the bigscreen courtesy of On-Demand programming and Redbox, hours of zombie-ism broken only by scent-triggered staggers to the kitchen, to discover which delicious dinner from my pages-long list of “foods that make my lust for Heidi Klum seem normal” my angelic mother had prepared that night: Chicken enchiladas; Spinach quiche; Shish kabobs; Spinach salad; Roasted root vegetables; More spinach salad; Cobblers; Carrot cake…
There was a fantastic weekend in DC with lil’ bro, piping latin tunes through his plush digs, slaughtering brain cells at the DC-area Beer, Bourbon, & BBQ Festival. Then off to the latest of our beloved, tri-annual family reunions, this year on NY’s Lake George -- another weeklong family party of sporting (shuffleboard, beach volleyball, basketball, soccer, etc.); cards (an entire meeting hall dominated by our family, more groups of fours and sixes circled around tables than a kindergarten class, playing psychological warfare with each and every discard, card counting and contorted faces defining another famous Canasta marathon); and consumption (liquors and mixers smuggled in by the handle, ice horded in trashcans, the solo cups of family young and old kept brimming as we once again flirted with ejection from an “alcohol free” family center -- and I couldn’t have been conspicuous if I’d tried, my entire wardrobe soaked in and reeking of the liter of Guatemalan firewater that had exploded in my checked bag during the flight.)
A week back in NC -- divided between bars, my left-side-of-the-couch spot in front of the TV, and the kitchen -- closed out my vacation within a vacation. The debaucherous 4th of July was extended a few days and celebrated in Raleigh with Kibbs, Russell and Bruce, with special guest appearances by Saul, Shane, Dave, Mike Janes and lots of random girls (whose numbers may or may not be programmed in my mom’s cell phone).
And so I -- sleep deprived after consecutive nights of cervezas and reminiscing about Central America, desde la comida hasta el incredible baile tipico de la Garifuna, la punta; after several weeks of postponing even the most cursory South American planning – materialized in sprawling Bogotá, Colombia
with a hostel reservation somewhere in La Candelaria, a hip but grimy section of the city dotted with universities, museums, cafes and bars, teeming by day and unsafe to walk at night. I spent six nights in Destino Nómado, a fine hostel in a less-mugged area, telling myself every night that the next day was the day I’d do the planning necessary to divorce myself from the city. But the draw of bandeja paisa (the traditional Colombian variety platter), arepas (fried cornmeal discs stuffed with cheese and/or meats), and obleas (Frisbee-sized wafer-discs sandwiching generous slathers of dulce de leche, various fruit jellies, etc); the steady diet of watery beer and aguardiente as prescribed by dorm-encountered friends Paul and Raul; plus my boundless laziness kept me captive.But, for travelers, sometimes laziness breeds opportunity. I was in Bogotá to play futsal against locals. Around to stretch a 30th-floor clubbing session until after-sunrise, in a posh discoteca where coke was snorted as liberally as air despite the omnipresent security. I was available to play tejo, the traditional, alcohol- and shit-talking powered Colombian drinking game involving cases of beer, refills of cases of beer, and tossing metal weights down an alley toward an upward slanted clay-pit, with a metal ring in the middle, on the rim of which are placed small bags of gunpowder – when the weight smashes a pouch against the metal rim, there’s a LOUD and visible explosion, lots of clinking and rejoicing.
I walked the city with Paul and Raul, observing extremes of poverty and wealth – sheet metal- and tarp-walled homes in the shadows of highrises and luxury condos; horse drawn carts behind BMWs. From atop a skyscraper we marveled as the endless city crawled over the surrounding mountains into infinity, gawking at the public-transit-only highway lanes, clogged for miles with exhaust-spewing buses bumper to bumper, packed as tightly and inching as uniformly as trains.
Finally the route out of Bogotá materialized, though not without calamity. After Paul, Alex and I accidentally boarded a bus going away from el terminal de autobuses, we climbed mountainside slums into the far south of the city – where Raul, Colombian himself, had previously mentioned is the place “even Colombians don’t go.
Maybe they’ll find the pieces of your body.” Our route terminated in a black-bus filled parking lot, the silence outside that property suggesting the days decapitations had already been performed. After asking at least five people – from idling bus drivers to tiptoeing locals shocked to learn that gringos, like themselves, are born with bodies assembled – we ascertained that at a nearby corner buses passed heading toward the terminal, where we arrived with, not in, bags.Paul and I arrived in quiet, colonial Villa de Leiva at night, creeping into town in a chorus of incessantly blaring horns and sky-illuminating explosions, accidentally absorbed into a procession as townfolk with blankets draped over their shoulders, slipped over their heads through a single center-cut hole, sauntered past sipping Colombian lagers. For a few days every July -- as happens in every Latin town at some specified point during the year -- Villa de Leiva is transformed into a party, it’s massive central square turned into a maze of vendors, a bullfighting ring constructed, outsiders converging for a few days of dance-and-alcohol saturated revelry. The distant throb of reggaeton became my lullaby.
A daytrip to Santa Sofia for six hours of high-octane hiking was about the only accomplishment during that few day stay, before we departed for Bucaramanga. Where the only notable accomplishment -- beyond practicing my mango peeling and platáno y yuca frying techniques -- has been the daytrip to El Cañon de Chichamocha, a dramatic gorge gutting the Colombian highlands.And I can’t imagine the sun-baked coast will cull more activity from this hammock-bound loafer.
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