Published Dec 7^th 2014:

The Caribbean Sea was shiny and flat, with tiny waves lapping softly on the beach. Children played in the water, shouting at each other, and their parents threw them no more than an occasional unconcerned glance. A series of hollow pops sounded as a couple playing beach tennis hit a long streak. The sun was already moving down toward the dusty brown hills behind me, and the worst of the scorching midday heat was over, but it was still uncomfortably hot. From the wooden lounge chairs ahead of us, painted red, yellow, and blue, in the colors of the Colombian flag, a barefoot teenager sauntered over. He asked us if we wanted to rent two of them. I shook my head. We had already found what we were looking for. Underneath one of the very few trees on the beach lay a dead tree trunk, bleached white, worn smooth, and - remarkably - not claimed by anybody. Eric whipped off his shirt and headed for the water, while I sat down, one hand on Eric’s shirt to keep it from blowing away in the hot, dry breeze.

Eric hadn’t even reached the waterline when I saw a man come over, trudging through the soft sand. He sat down on the tree trunk, about a meter and a half away from me. I glanced over and nodded politely. He was very dark brown and had a pot belly. A rim of short grey hair circled his bald pate, and he had a small grey moustache. He wore white swimming trunks, and he was dripping wet. Wiping seawater off his face, he stared at me with undisguised curiosity. Then he smiled and asked me in Spanish where I was from.
I was tired and hot, and not in the mood for conversation, so I pretended I didn’t understand. “No Español,” I said with an apologetic shrug, and turned away.
“Where are you from?” he asked in crystal-clear English, albeit with a thick accent.
I smiled but didn’t say anything.
“USA?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Germany? England? France?” I shook my head again. “Olanda?”
I nodded ever so slightly.
“Aaaahhh, Olanda!” He grinned from ear to ear.
I couldn’t help but smile in return. “Is that good?” I asked.
“Oh, yesss! Olanda, wonderful country!” His small black eyes shone with pleasure.
“Have you ever been there?” I strongly dislike how some people have firm opinions of countries they have never visited, and I suspected this might be the case here.
“Oh, yesss! I visit Olanda many times!”
“Really? How co-”
“Rotterdam, Delft, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Enschede...” He trailed off, but before I could speak, he continued, “Venlo, Maastricht, Breda. Where are you from?”
“Eindhoven.”
“Ah, Eindhoven! I was there. In the South.”
I turned slightly on the tree trunk, to face him. “Why were-”
“Sometimes I stayed several months,” he said, cutting me off. “I stayed with my friend, Jan, in Dordrecht. A wonderful man. The people from Olanda, they are so kind. From there, I visited many other countries. Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria…” He wiped a drop of water off his cheek.
“So how come you-”
“Italy, Spain, England, Luxemburg, Sweden… But the people of Olanda, they are the best. My wife, I even took her with me one time, to see for herself.”
I waited for him to continue.
“I was expert of Jim,” he said, and he leaned back and nodded proudly.
“Jim?” I looked at him in confusion.
“Stone. Jim.” He pursed his lips and nodded again.
I gave him a blank look.
“Like jewel.”
“Gems!” I chuckled.
The man nodded curtly. “I was good at estimating the price. The first time, I went to Antwerp, but my flight was to Amsterdam, so first I visit Olanda. I had never been outside of Colombia before. It was a great time.” He turned away from me and gazed out over the smooth Caribbean Sea.
I took a swig from my water bottle and waited patiently.
Finally he turned back to me. “The people I worked with in Europe, the Jim people, got me into the business.” He gave me a pointed look, with one raised eyebrow, and continued. “They saw that I was smart. I am very good at strategic thinking,” he said, and he grinned and tapped his forehead with his index finger. “And they knew I was safe. I could be trusted with Jim, so I could be trusted with money. Big money.”
I looked at him, searching his face, wondering what he was talking about.
“I was good at it,” he continued. “I became the best. I became very rich.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Eric walking up the beach. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not sure I understand. How did you become rich? From selling gems?”
“No!” He laughed. “The money was from cocaine.”
I blinked rapidly. “You- you smuggled cocaine?”
“Only money.”
“To Europe?”
He laughed heartily, his paunch shaking. “To Colombia of course!”
“So you smuggled drug money back to Colombia?” I asked incredulously.
“Smuggling, sometimes. I already said, I am good at strategy.” He grinned at me. “There are other ways. Better ways.”
Eric arrived at the tree trunk and grabbed his shirt, smiling politely at the man. “Do you want to head on back to Taganga?” he asked me in Dutch.
I replied in English, “I was just talking to this gentleman.” Shifting over on the tree trunk to make room for Eric, I added, “Why don’t we stay for a few more minutes?”
Eric looked curiously at me, but sat down. I introduced Eric and myself, and the gem expert said his name was Nelson López.
“Nelson has visited the Netherlands many times,” I said to Eric, hoping to pull the conversation back afloat. And he’s a top dude in international cocaine traficking and filling me in on the details, I wanted to add, but I wasn’t sure how to work that in. Turning back to Nelson, I said, “Are you going back to Olanda soon?”
“Oh, no.” Nelson shook his head. “I don’t do this anymore.” He ran his right hand down his left arm, stripping off drops of water, and then ran his left hand down his right arm. “I was doing very well,” he continued. “Very, very well. Making a lot of money. I could have bought one of those.” He waved his hand casually toward the other end of the bay, where a huge pleasure yacht lay at anchor. “I could have bought anything I wanted to. But I stopped.”
“Why?”
“It was God.” He looked straight at me, his eyes bright, waiting for my reaction.
“God?”
“God told me to change.”
“He spoke to you?” I asked. “Like in a vision or something?”
“Yes. I said to God, I am not a religious man, I don’t have anything to do with the church. But God, He said, ‘I am claiming you now.’ He showed me two rooms.” Nelson lifted his arm and sketched two rectangles in the air. “One room was full of boxes of cash. Dollars. It was a big room, maybe five meters by five meters, and the boxes were up to the ceiling. It was a lot, a lot of money.” He paused and grinned at me, his eyes sparkling.
I asked the obvious question. “What was in the other room?”
“A bible.”
“Just a bible?”
“Yes, only one bible. On the floor. The first room had billions of dollars, the second just one book. And God made me choose.”
I nodded, prompting him to continue.
“God was giving me an important message. He was telling me that I was living a bad life, but I could still change. He wanted me to change, but it was my choice. So I changed. I chose the second room, with the bible, and I stopped with the business.”
“The other people in the… business, did they let you leave? I thought that was impossible.”
Nelson shrugged. “I made the decision to leave, so I left. Now, I am a Pastor.”
“A Pastor!” I chuckled. “That’s quite a change! In Taganga?”
“No, in Santa Marta. Taganga is no good, too many drugs. I am different now, I want to stay away from drugs.” Nelson frowned. “One time, when I was a Pastor for seven years, an old friend came to talk to me. He said, ‘Nelson, please help us one time. Just one more time.’ But I said no.”
“What did he want you to do? Smuggle more drugs money back to Colombia?”
That last sentence was largely for Eric’s benefit. He had been listening to us in silence, no doubt trying to figure out what we were talking about, and I suppressed a chuckle when I saw his eyes widen.
“Yes. There was a lot of money in Italy. They wanted me to move it here. I would get twenty percent of the total.” He pointed at the yacht out in the bay. “Enough to buy that, two of them. It was tempting, but I knew right away that it was a test from God, so it was very easy for me to say no. And my friend, a year later he also stopped with the business. Now he comes to my church.”
I nodded, smiling.
“Now my life is calm. I live in Santa Marta. Sometimes I come here, for the beach. Sometimes I go to Bogotá because two of my children live there. I have five children, fifteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.” He grinned widely. “I am a poor man, but I am living a good life.”
“That’s great,” I said.
Suddenly Nelson got to his feet and placed his hands in his sides. He squinted up at the sun and then turned to us. “Okay,” he said, extending his right hand. “I am going to swim, and then I am going back to Santa Marta.”
Eric and I also got up, and we shook hands.
“Enjoy your travels in Colombia! Bye!” Nelson turned on his heels and headed toward the water.
We stared after him, speechless, watching as he stepped into the tiny waves that lapped softly on the beach.

The state of Antioquia is one of Colombia’s wealthiest. Paisas, as its inhabitants are called, are said to work hard and to be hospitable. And they’re proud of their land. Coffee plantations and lush forests grow side by side in the fertile soil. “Sow pebbles there, and you’ll harvest rocks,” Andres claimed with a proud grin. We met him in the Amazon region, where he was a tuk-tuk driver, saving up every penny to return home. Antioquia’s capital is Medellín, Colombia’s second city, thriving and bustling. Tall concrete buildings line the churning Medellín River, while low-level residential neighborhoods cover the hillsides. Medellín, nicknamed City of Eternal Spring because of its pleasant climate, has quite a reputation: the women in this city are said to be the most beautiful in the world.

Medellín is also one of the best cities in northern South America to take a Spanish course, and, with over five months in South America ahead of us, Eric and I were in serious need of just that. As my Spanish was better than Eric’s, they put us into two different classes. I watched a smiling Eric follow Lorraine’s swaying hips into a classroom, and then started my own class with Leidy. Leidy, a bright young woman who has a university degree in Spanish literature, but speaks virtually no English, threw me in at the deep end. After two hours of profuse sweating (Eternal Spring must be warm) and a conversación class on religion and poverty in Colombia - in Spanish! - I was ready to drop.
“Are you from a wealthy family?” I asked, fighting to keep my eyelids open and my eyes focused on Leidy’s freckled face. This may sound like a bold question, but we had been discussing the lack of opportunities for education for the poor, and Leidy had just told me about her university education.
Leidy picked some lint off the sleeve of her blue language school polo shirt before she turned to me. “No, my mother’s family is poor,” she answered, “but the government paid for my education.” Looking straight at me without blinking, her face expressionless, she continued, “Because my father was asesinado while working for the government.”
That sounded an awful lot like asassinated. “Asesinado?” I repeated, checking to see if I’d heard right.
Leidy nodded. She then told me that her father had been a bodyguard to a politician. He had been good at his job, and had prevented several attacks on the politician’s life. Criminals accosted him, and told him to butt out. He didn’t. They threatened him, and he ignored them. And then one day they abducted him, took him out into a field, forced him to kneel, and shot him in the neck. They were members of the Medellín Cartel. This was in 1992. Leidy was three years old.

Yes, Medellín has a bit of a reputation, and in most of the world it’s not for its beautiful women. Instead, people know the name of this city because of the infamous Medellín drug cartel, run by Pablo Escobar. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Escobar and his gang turned their hometown into the most violent city in the world. In 1991, the homicide rate was 380 per 100,000 inhabitants, per year. In comparison, this rate is close to 5 for the USA, and 1 for countries in Western Europe. As there were roughly 1.6 million inhabitants in Medellín at that time, this translates to more than 6000 murders per year, or 17 per day. Leidy’s father was just one of depressingly many.

Luckily, violence in Medellín has been on a steady decline in the past ten years, and the city is doing very well. After the Pajaro de Paz (Bird of Peace) sculpture by Medellín-born Fernando Botero was blown apart, killing twenty-three, Botero did not bow to the criminals (read my blog on Botero). Instead, he insisted that the remains of the blown-up bird be left where they are, and he placed a new bird next to it, as an “homage to stupidity.” That reaction appears to be typical for the way the city’s inhabitants are dealing with their bloody past: look it in the eye, acknowledge it, and move on. The mayor has called on his citizens to learn English, to facilitate the increasing number of foreign visitors. Creative recycling solutions, such as the use of discarded soda bottles to build low-income housing, have drawn world-wide attention, and a brand-new metro system, including cable cars that reach up into the poor neighborhoods in the hills, won the city the title of Most Innovative City in 2013. When speaking with the locals, it’s hard not to become infected with their enthusiasm, their faith in a bright future, and their eagerness to work hard to achieve it.

“I know who they are,” Leidy said, back in Spanish class after the weekend. “The men who killed my father. There were two of them. I know their names, and I know what jail they’re in.” Her brown eyes were hard and unblinking. “There is nothing I’d rather do than murder them. Pay somebody to kill them in jail.”
I didn’t speak.
“But you know what?” Leidy shook her head. “I’m not going to do that.”
I nodded, encouraging her to go on.
She leaned forward and spoke intently, her eyes suddenly bright. “What I am going to do, one of these days, is go to the jail and visit them. At first, I won’t tell them who I am. I’ll wear my best clothes. I’ll tell them about my university degree, and that I’m a professional with a good job.” Leidy sat up straight and shook her head, swinging her long hair from one shoulder to the other. She smiled. “I have a great future ahead of me!”
“Yes, you do,” I said, and I smiled back.
She fell back in her chair, her face suddenly serious. After a pause she said, softly, “And then I’ll drop my father’s name. I’ll tell them who I am.”
I waited for her to continue.
Leidy frowned. “Those men, they’ve spent the past 22 years in jail and they’re never getting out. They’re old men now. I think they understand.”
I shook my head slowly. “Understand what?”
“That they may have killed my father, but they did not kill me. Because of them, I had to grow up without a father, and I was very poor, but look where I am now.” She grinned widely. “I win!”

Colombia is in mourning. It has been since April 17^th. That’s the day this country’s most famous citizen, described by the president as “the greatest Colombian who ever lived,” passed away. As all true book-aficionados surely know, I am referring to Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His books dominate every bookstore window, he features prominently on the country’s primary website, and visitors line up in front of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center in Bogotá.

Unfortunately, that only leaves second place for Fernando Botero, painter and sculptor. When we were in Bogotá, we visited the Botero Museum. I was pleasantly surprised. Botero’s paintings and sculptures depict people, animals, and even objects, that are very fat, and in an odd way. I found his work to be of a cheerful nature, without the political commentary that characterizes Garcia Marquez’ work. One of his paintings, that had me chuckling, shows an obese Mona Lisa, and I was highly amused by his bronze sculpture of a ridiculously fat horse.

“They are not fat,” Leidy said to me a few days later, in a strict tone of voice. Eric and I were in Medellín, taking a week of Spanish lessons, and Leidy was my teacher. A large part of my course consisted of conversación, and I was amazed by the variety of topics that Leidy came up with. For the past ten minutes I had been struggling to express my thoughts on Botero’s work in Spanish, and I was pleased with myself for recalling the word gordo, or fat. Apparently, the teacher was not impressed.
“It’s a baby’s perspective,” Leidy continued. She told me that when Botero had his first child, he became fascinated with a baby’s perspective on the world. He thought that adult brains compensate for this, but that babies see their parents as having very wide, flat faces, with the eyes far apart; according to Leidy, that’s what he was trying to illustrate.

“They’re not fat,” I read in a pamphlet the next day. As Leidy had suggested, we were visiting the Museum of Antioquia, in downtown Medellín. Botero is originally from this city, and he donated a large number of his works to the museum. “They’re voluminous,” the text read, “and this makes them sensual.”
Voluminous for sure, but sensual? I still found his works mainly cheerful, and judging from the laughter coming from the people posing with Botero’s statues on the square in front of the museum, I was not the only one. However, in Medellín I also discovered a more serious note - including political commentary - in Botero’s art. For example, it was here that we saw the famous painting “Death of Pablo Escobar,” which depicts the head of the Medellín drug cartel riddled with bullet holes. Hardly sensual, but certainly not amusing either. Neither is the series of paintings on Abu Ghraib.

And then there’s the Pajaro de Paz, which shows some of the worst of what humanity is capable of. As Eric and I stood contemplating Botero’s statue in Parque San Antonio, I thought back to my conversación with Leidy, the day before.
“Which was your favorite statue in Bogotá?” she had asked me, and I described a small bird. A cute, fat bird.
Leidy nodded slowly. “The original statue was very large,” she said, and her face tightened. “Go to Parque San Antonio.” Then she told me the story of the park.

In 1994, in the midst of the drug wars, the city of Medellín opened Parque San Antonio in one of its poorer neighborhoods, in an attempt to improve the locals’ quality of life. To liven up the rather sad-looking park, which was all pavement and no trees, Botero donated a large sculpture of a fat bird, the Pajaro de Paz, or Bird of Peace. One day in 1995, there was a musical event in the park, and it was filled with people. Then, suddenly, the Pajaro de Paz exploded. Explosives had been placed in its hollow belly, through a hole at the bottom. Shards of bronze were ripped off and flung outward. It was a massacre. Twenty-three innocent people died, the youngest of whom was a 7-year old child, and many others were injured. It was probably a FARC bomb; the FARC, although it claims to be a political party, has close ties with the cocaine industry, as drug running is one of its major sources of income. They were probably hurt by the governmental crack-down on drugs in the early 1990’s, and the bomb may have been a form of retaliation.

In 2000, the city wanted to remove the remnants of the exploded bird from Parque San Antonio. Botero protested loudly. He requested that the destroyed Pajaro de Paz be left where it was, as a memorial to the massacre, and as an “homage to stupidity.” He then made a copy of the original statue, and had it placed next to the destroyed one. The destroyed and the new Birds of Peace still stand next to each other today.

I know diddly squat about art, but the blown-up Pajaro, the sculpture of a bird that became a weapon of mass destruction, truly touched me. And Botero’s reaction to this horrific abuse of his work of art gives me hope for the future of humanity. The president may believe that Garcia Marquez is the greatest Colombian who ever lived, but my vote goes to Botero.

“I’ll wait for you right here!”
“Okay, be right back.” I nodded at Eric and headed over to the other side of the lobby. My spirits were high. For the past hour we had walked the cobblestone streets of the colonial center of Bogotá, and now we were at the Botero Museum. I was eager to learn more about Colombian culture. All I needed was a quick pit stop before immersing myself in the works of one of this country’s most famous artists, sculptor and painter Fernando Botero.

I opened the door to the women’s bathroom and stopped smack on the threshold. A crowd of young schoolgirls filled the entire area between the stalls and the sinks. Doors slammed open and shut, the paper towel dispensers clattered loudly, and laughter echoed off the tiled walls. I hesitated, tempted to backtrack and wait outside, when one of the girls looked over and saw me. She nudged her friends, and a wave rippled through the room. Within seconds, the entire group fell silent and twenty girls in white uniform shirts and dark green skirts stood staring up at me, their eyes wide. Then one of the smaller girls lifted her hand and gave a tiny, shy wave. Touched by the gesture, I smiled and waved back, and the spell was broken. The girls laughed cheerfully, faucets spewed water and white noise, and some of the girls started to push by me on their way out.

A few minutes later I walked out of the empty bathroom, shaking droplets of water off my hands. I entered the lobby and stopped dead once more. Eric stood with his back against a wall, a throng of perhaps thirty schoolchildren crowding around him in a semi-circle. He looked over at me, an amused look on his face, and a burst of laughter escaped from my mouth. The boys and girls in uniform turned around, saw me, and separated slightly so I could walk over to Eric; the narrow aisle closed behind me as the children drew back in. Some of the older ones had been bombarding Eric with questions, and now I also became part of their game. They wanted to know where we were from, whether it was cold there, what language we spoke. What kind of work we did and whether we had a car. With the World Cup a few weeks away, most conversations in South America tend to head toward soccer, and it didn’t take long for the children to bring it up. They all knew that “Holanda” is one of the participants, and they asked us whether we thought the Netherlands might win. Naturally, we insisted that Colombia is going to be champion. The entire conversation was in Spanish. One of the older boys had an iPad, and whenever the conversation stranded on a word we didn’t understand, he looked it up on Google Translate and proudly showed it to us.

All this time, the children’s teacher stood toward the back of the lobby, halfway up a staircase. When I joined Eric, he placed his hands on the banister and watched, chuckling softly. However, after the children had been firing questions at us for about ten minutes, he called out something in Spanish.

The children at the rear of the crowd turned toward the staircase, but some of those nearest to us whipped out cell phones and started to take photos of us. One of the girls handed her cell phone to a friend and then boldly posed next to us while her friend took a picture. I’m sure anyone can guess what happened next: we got to pose with another twenty girls and boys, one by one or in pairs, as their friends took pictures, loud laughter ringing out in the lobby.

Finally the teacher started to climb the second half of the staircase, and he called the children over. Waving cheerfully at us, all of them speaking simultaneously in Spanish, the children retreated to the staircase and followed him to the second floor. Eric and I grinned widely at each other. We had, after all, come to the museum for some Colombian culture.

Bogotá is a huge city, with 7 million inhabitants living along a 40-kilometer north-south sprawl. Getting around the city in a car is trying, to say the least. The lines on the pavement are no more than rough guidelines, and size determines right of way. The major roads in the city are an endless, black smoke-belching traffic stand-still, and the smaller streets are a craze of pedestrians dodging tiny yellow cabs that come screeching around corners. Luckily, there is an alternative: the TransMilenio bus system.

On our second morning in Colombia, Eric and I walked cheerfully to the nearest TransMilenio bus station. Eric asked for two tickets to the center of Bogotá and the cashier passed him a single plastic card.
“Dos,” Eric said, and he held up two fingers.
The cashier chattered in rapid Spanish, which we did not understand.
“Dos,” Eric repeated, unsure of what to do.
The cashier muttered something and waved us off, turning to next customer. Huh. We stepped aside and were wondering what to do when the woman who had been in line behind us came over. She said something in which I recognized the word ajuda, or help, and gave us a friendly smile. She appeared to be about fifty, and wore beige pants and an old-fashioned pink sweater. Her hair, bleached blonde, fell down to her shoulders. She held out her own plastic card and started to make a series of movements with it. Speaking rapidly, she repeated the motions a few more times, then asked us whether we understood.
Eric and I looked at each other and shook our heads. “No comprendo,” I mumbled, and Eric held up our card and threw in another “dos” for good measure.
Looking resigned, the woman nodded and gestured for us to follow her. We walked to the curb of Avenida Caracas and waited for the pedestrian light to turn green. The bus platform sits at the center of this eight-lane traffic aorta. Cars use the two outer lanes, on both sides; the four inner lanes are for the TransMilenio buses, with two lanes in each direction. The long, tiled platform is raised one meter above street level, and encased in glass. We watched some buses blow by the station at high speed in the outer bus lanes, while others slowed down in the inner lanes. These pulled over at designated spots along the platform, after which sliding glass doors opened, allowing passengers to get on and off.

A row of turnstiles blocked our entry to the platform. Ducking in front of Eric, the woman pointed at his card and then slapped a sensor pad with her hand. Eric held his card over the sensor, a light turned green, and he pushed forward. Reaching back over the turnstile, he gave me the card. However, nothing happened when I held it over the sensor. “No,” the woman said, followed by a lot of Spanish, and she pointed at a slot in the front of the turnstile. I pushed the card into the slot and - bingo! - the light turned green again. I gave the woman a grateful smile. We would never have figured that out on our own.

Our new friend asked us where we were going, and we named a station in downtown Bogotá, close to where the museums are. She jogged over to a large board that showed about thirty bus lines, jabbed her finger at one, glanced around, and strode rapidly over to a pair of glass doors where a bus was just pulling up. We followed her. The platform doors slid open and the woman pushed her way in, fighting the flow of passengers trying to get off, gesturing urgently for us to stay with her. Gasping, I clutched the greasy metal bar over my head as the bus pulled away from the platform in a violent jerk, and I strained not to fall as the bus swung to the right. My elbow and Eric’s backpack grazed a few faces and I mumbled apologies at the people around us, all of whom were at least a head shorter than me. Their friendly nods and smiles assured me that there were no hard feelings.

The bus settled into a constant speed and I turned to our friend, thanking her profusely for her help.
“Are you also going downtown?” I asked.
She shook her head and explained that she was on her way to the airport to deliver a package, and she’d be getting off the bus at an earlier stop. She worked for Cisco as an engineer. We started a halting conversation, limited only by my Spanish. On closer inspection, the woman appeared to be around forty; her austere clothing and old-fashioned glasses had made her seem older.
“Don’t trust anyone,” she muttered, glancing around. “Colombia is a beautiful country, but the people…” She shook her head, frowning.
I raised one eyebrow, ready to defend a country I had yet to get to know. “From what I heard, Colombians are very nice,” I said.
“Sure. Most are. But there are always opportunists.”
“There are opportunists in every country,” I countered.
“Isn’t that the truth,” she said, and sighed. “So don’t trust anyone.”
Obviously the irony in what she said, after having approached us on the street, was lost on her. We spoke about the museums in Bogotá, and when her bus stop approached she admonished me once more not to trust anyone.
“Where is your passport?” she asked.
“In the hotel, in a safe,” I answered.
“Good.” She nodded approvingly. “Don’t take a camera with you, either.” She whipped out her cell phone and started to type a text message. Frowning at her phone, she mumbled, “Don’t even take a cell phone. It’ll get stolen.” The doors of the bus opened, and she looked over her shoulder, directly at me. “God bless you,” she said in English. Then she looked intently at Eric. “God bless you,” she repeated. She gave a quick wave and hopped off the bus.

The bus pulled away from the platform with a roar. Even though we clung to the overhead bars, we were flung hard into our neighbors, yet the only looks we received were of friendly, open curiosity. I’m sure there are opportunists in Colombia, as well as everywhere else. But as long as there are guardian angels out there like our personal TransMilenio guide, I’m sure we’ll be fine.

Colombia. That country somewhere in South America. Their most popular export product is coffee… or is it cocaine? In the press, Colombia has been largely defined by druglords, cocaine cartels, and cocaine wars. And then there’s the guerrillas whose disruptive actions have been tearing up the country for decades, the FARC proudly in the lead. For as long as I can remember, the Netherlands’ ministry of foreign affairs has been telling Dutch citizens to give Colombia a wide berth, to keep from getting kidnapped by the FARC or caught in the crossfire of a cartel shootout, or from simply disappearing in the jungle. Gotta go see that place, right? Let’s go to Colombia?

My interest in Colombia was first aroused in 2009, when I spoke to several people who were on multi-month journeys in South America. They were all insanely positive about Colombia, the new cool, up and coming. A new president had doubled the police and military forces, and several major drug lords had been chased down and shot. Cuba and Russia had dropped the FARC as their BFF, and the FARC, without the cash to buy arms, was retreating into the most distant reaches of the jungle. Colombia was finally becoming relatively safe, and the first Western visitors were starting to drop in. Apparently the Colombians welcomed tourists with open arms. Go there, was the buzz among seasoned travelers. Go there now, while the country is still pure, while they still love us. Go there before Starbucks and McDonalds take over the colonial town centers, before tourists become walking wallets, before resentment sets in.

We didn’t act on our fellow travelers’ advice. A three-year stay in California got in the way of adventurous international travel, and Colombia was moved to the back burner. A few months ago, when Eric and I started to make plans for a 6-month stay in South America, Colombia didn’t even figure in. It’s too hot, we reasoned, and there’s not a lot to see or do. Shrug. So many countries to visit, we can’t go everywhere, right? Our friends Yvonne and Robert changed our minds. They travelled around South America a few years ago, and in various conversations we had on the topic they kept talking about Colombia. It’s the pura vida, Robert said, smiling widely. And just like that we got curious and decided we wanted to go have a look.

Now, several weeks later, our plane descends toward the Colombian capital of Bogotá, and I gaze out of the window at grey nothingness. Images of California and the Netherlands dance tirelessly across the thick cloud cover. We moved away from California, spent one week in the Netherlands, and are now starting a five-and-a-half-month trip around South America; I can barely wrap my head around all of this. We’ve got over five months of backpacking ahead of us, in which we’ll be living out of the 25 kilograms of luggage that we have between the two of us. Five months without a familiar face, with strange food and foreign languages.

Suddenly the plane dips below the clouds, and a mountainous landscape in a million shades of green dispels my troubled thoughts. Steep forested peaks surround a fertile valley of fields and greenhouses, and a sprawling city glimmers in the distance. Colombia. Let’s go check it out!