Colombia, here we come. Again.

So we're off to Colombia!
"Colombia?!!" people respond, their eyebrows raising. Then it's either "do you know someone there?" or, more frequently, "isn't that dangerous?"

Why, I wonder, do we often get puzzled queries? When we told folks in the fall that we were going to New York, they murmured rapturously. But when we said they were going to Utah, the response was "Utah? Why go to Utah?" And when I confess my long-held wish to go to Ethiopia, incredulous interrogation always follows. I guess at this stage of life we should be booking package vacations at some all-inclusive resort in Cabo, or maybe seizing a chance to stuff our faces for 10 days on a Caribbean cruise.

Or at least we could hope for a response like "Colombia! I hear it's a beautiful place - great variety and great coffee!". Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Juan Valdez and his associates, coffee is not the drug that Colombia is famous for today.
(For the record, and despite what some folks may think of me, let me state that caffeine is the only drug we will be consuming there.)

So just why are we going to spend a month in Colombia? Well, I'll get to that (though possibly not in today's blog), but first I should point out that this is not our first time to spend a month in this country.

In 1973, recently married, Ruth and I did some crash courses in Spanish and set off for our "luna de miel", our honeymoon in South America. Our chief objective was Chile, then under the leadership of Salvadore Allende and the Unidad Popular, and to get there we chose to go overland. Colombia, at the north of the continent and one short flight from Miami, was our honeymoon start. But by the time we got underway Allende was dead, the Chilean experiment with popular democracy was crushed, and our travel plans became more fluid. One month in Colombia launched a ten month counterclockwise tour through Spanish-speaking South America, and launched a 40 year love we've had of these lands and these peoples.

So what do I remember about our first time in Colombia? For one thing, as I suggested above, it's a beautiful country, rising from the Amazon rainforest to straddle three finger-like ranges of the Andes and drop to the coastline of the Caribbean. It was along that coastline, being poled though the lush mangrove swamps, that our travel planning gave way to blissful enjoyment. In the nation's heartland, lying across the Equator, the mountains' mixture of rainfall and warmth creates growing conditions so lush that we would stare from the bus windows, looking this way and that, trying to count the numbers of shades of green the Colombian palette spread before us.
True, one of the nuanced shades of green at the time came from the much-sought-after Colombian Gold. Fondly do I recall the time in Bogota when we met some Hillel students and spent an evening with them on the rides at a local amusement park, flying from the aerial trapeze and flying from the local bounty!

And crime? Ah,yes, there was that then, too. In fact Colombia has a long, sorry history of violence and crime. The legacy of that history could be seen in the strangest places - like the way men wore their watches. I'm talking pre-digital wind-them-up-with-the-little-wheel watches. Bogoteños routinely wore them on their right hand, meaning a very convoluted left-handed maneuver to wind the wheel or reset the hands. Why would they do such an unreasonable thing? Because, we learned, if the watch is on your left while you're driving your car with the window down (no A/C) and you stop at a red light, a hand holding a knife that cuts leather flashes into your car and......

Rumour had it that the thieves of Colombia went to special schools. To graduate you had to pick your instructor's pocket of a 100 peso bill - while the bill was threaded through the teeth of a comb - without taking the comb or being detected. One fine day, Ruth and I met up with two other travelers and headed for the beaches of Cartagena. Of course, not being so foolish as to leave our stuff on the sand as we all went into the water, we took turns on guard. As the other three splashed and swam, I sat there, my steely gaze fixed upon the backpacks in my care. More resolute than Horton on the egg, I watched over my charges, glancing only infrequently, and for no more than an instant, at my companions in the water. And when they emerged, laughing and dripping, my new companion's first words were "Hey! Where's my pack?"

I must stress that Ruth and I were not naive, not unaware that criminals and con artists sought out tourists as easy marks. One fellow approached us with an offer to buy our American dollars at a better rate than that offered by the banks. We declined. He raised the offer. We counter-offered. He haggled. We all agreed. But Ruth and I were on to these guys, and we watched him like a hawk. While I held the dollars firmly in my hand, he fished around in his pockets, floundering as he pulled a welter of thousand peso notes, hundred peso notes, fives and ones and stacked them all up. He offered me the money and asked for the dollars - but I'm nobody's fool! Ruth and I went through the stack, carefully counting it out, and sure enough it was ten pesos short. He was, of course, truly embarrassed at getting caught, and with great apologies fished around here and there, pulled out ten more singles, counted them onto the stack, and handed me back the stack with flourish and apology. He took my dollars and left, and it was less than a minute later, after he had melted into the crowd, that we realized the thousand and hundred peso notes had gone with him!

So what awaits us this time? Who knows? You (and I) will just have to follow these blogs as they emerge.

Hasta luego.

Avi