La Isla de Ometepe en Lago de Nicaragua

As you might notice, I have no pictures in this post. It is a tragedy because Ometepe is a unique, dramatically beautiful place, an island made of two tall volcanoes in the middle of a lake that stretches from the Costa Rican border to Granada and beyond. It is also a tragedy because instead of ending this story with a description of the kindness and openness of the vast majority of Nicaraguans, it will end with a description of a less savory one.

Of course, using a word like tragedy to describe losing a camera in a country -- I think the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere -- that is still suffering from the aftermath of a brutal civil war, and where begging kids, old women, and skeletal dogs sometimes simultaneously contend for your sympathy is a disgusting exaggeration. It makes me feel even worse that in a place with so much loss I can't stop thinking about eight hundred missing photos.

The journey from Los Chiles in Costa Rica to San Carlos in Nicaragua was our first border crossing by river boat. The banks held an explosion of jungly foliage doubled by reflection in the slow water, and we saw birds, monkeys, and turtles roosting at their respective levels in the greenery. San Carlos is a fairly important town being at the base of Lake Nicaragua where the San Juan River leaves it for the Caribbean, 120 miles away, but it would be a lot more important, or perhaps wiped off the face of the earth, if the U.S. had followed through with the plan to build the isthmian canal there.

We spent the night in San Carlos, and despite stone-faced hostility from the proprietors of the flophouse hotels, we met a lot of friendly people in town including a man who owned a little breakfast joint and hosted a political television show, and a tippling doctor who wept describing the difficulties he faces. He invited us to visit his hospital, which we did the following day, finding him so swamped with patients that he could only spend a few minutes with us.

In the afternoon we boarded a ferry for a twelve hour ride north over Lake Nicaragua. We were treated to another stunning sunset with clouds of all sizes and descriptions giving the sky a look of infinite depth. Near two in the morning, after a nap on the benches, we arrived at Altagracia where we found a hostel that, though run by nice people, appeared to be celebrating Drunken Gringo Nightmare Night. A half dozen Americans and Europeans with a half dozen bottles of Flor de Caña rum (can't fault the rum, it's delicious), every one of them exclaiming at full volume over how drunk they were. "I am sooo drunk!" "Are you drunk?" "I'm so ****ing drunk" "Muy borracha." "MY GOD, I'M DRUNK!"

My God, it was boring, and impossible to sleep through. Furthermore, as a self-respecting gringo who has discovered a fondness for Flor de Caña, it was embarrassing. I think every freshman in college should be forced to take a course entitled "Interesting things to talk about when you're drinking." What do you say, Dad? UCONN might be a good place to start.

The following morning, after getting a little sleep between gringo passout time and neighbors' squawking rooster, barking dog, and radio time, we headed by recycled U.S. school bus to the south side of the island. There we checked into the intensely tranquil El Porvenir surrounded by ancient petroglyphs. We were the only guests and we spent the afternoon reading (Me: The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough about the building of the Panama Canal, which I highly recommend) and enjoying the absence of loud drunks.

The next day we walked for a couple hours along the dirt road, greeted by smiling locals on bicycles and motorbikes, to a hostel where we camped. The hostel, Hacienda Mérida, I had mixed feelings about. It had all the hominess of a Starbucks. At nights it seemed to swarm with security guards, their powerful flashlights periodically filling our tent with harsh light. And it was very much separated from the friendly community around it. But it did have one huge selling point: for fifteen dollars you could use their kayaks as much as you wanted during your stay. We took full advantage.

For one full day we paddled into the river and swamp that bisects the isthmus between the volcanoes. We were joined by our Belgian friend, Hendrick, who we first met in Colombia. The river had an incredible assortment of birds and other wild life. Hilary even spotted a cayman. We sat still in our kayaks watching his wicked eye and snout until they slowly sank below the inky water. The sun was setting across the lake causing the volcano to glow by the time we returned to camp. That night we went to another hostel, El Caballito de Mar (the little horse of the sea), a much more genial place, for a fun party where we had our first taste of Flor de Caña.

The next day we climbed part way up Volcán Maderas to some tall waterfalls, then stayed in a simple, inexpensive little hospedaje run by the delightful family of Doña Dora. We ate steak while a still nursing calf snoozed on the grass beside us and talked for a couple hours with a Cuban man named Armando who was building small scale hydroelectric projects on the island. Armando had spent 8 years separated from his wife and kids before Castro's government finally allowed them to join him in Nicaragua. In the morning we walked around the rest of the south side of the island, through banana plantations and past frontier style houses that only started receiving electricity a year ago. Most of the people were friendly and talkative, if a little surprised to see us, so far from the touristy side of the island.

That night and for the next two we stayed in a comfortable room at the Finca Magdalena, a giant ramshackle building that must have been a kind of barn when the place was solely a coffee plantation. We spent one of the days climbing to the top of Volcán Maderas through the slippery jungle mud and watching the congos (howler monkeys) romp through the canopy.

Finally, after a few bus rides and a ferry to the mainland we ended up in San Jorge. There disaster struck. We were met at the dock by a sleepy eyed cabbie who drove us to the neighboring town of Rivas while trying to sell us on an expensive cab ride to Granada, lying to us repeatedly about the lack of buses and generally not taking no for an answer. When we finally got out, shaking our heads as he continued the hard sell, my camera must have slipped out of my pocket. I realized it was gone as he pulled away and chased him down the street yelling and flapping my Panama hat.

A man named Pedro said he knew the cabbie and put us in his car. We tracked him down, but the cabbie claimed not to have the camera, even after an offer of $100, much more than he could hope to get for it. At the time I wasn't so sure, but now I know he was lying, the way he lied about everything else. But why? I guess it was pride. I can picture him seeing the back of my head shaking as we walked toward the bus station after calling his bluff, hearing me screaming as he pulled away, and finding my little camera in the back seat. And I can almost understand the wounded joy he might have felt seeing me with despairing eyes practically begging him to help me. To just be able to reject it, money and all, with one more lie was probably too delicious for him to pass up.

My parents and Eddy, my teacher from Montevideo, generously offered to send me a new camera but shipping anything to Nicaragua is either a crapshoot or extremely expensive. I still have the camera that I broke back in Argentina and that was partially fixed by Fernando in El Chalten, so I will continue to take pictures until it gives out. But all the pictures going back to the Mono Feliz, save for the mini versions we uploaded to the blog, are gone.

Now, thinking of Armando separated from his family for so long, or the family we talked to who just got electricity, or the starving dogs and ragged children, it seems almost obscene to mourn a few hundred pictures. Still I do.

Costa Rica

Our border crossing from Panama was easy -- the official asked for our tourist cards, I said we didn't have any, he stamped our passports. The cards seem to be something you get or don't depending on your arrival, and that's a problem or isn't depending on your border official. From Paso Canoas we got ourselves on a bus to Golfito, a little town on the Pacific Coast and checked into El Tucan, our flophouse for the night. From Golfito we took a lancha to Puerto Jimenez, an hour and a half across the gulf.



Jamie, a battered Canadian septuagenarian met us at the dock. He would not have looked out of place sitting on the sidewalk at 6th and Market but his unpressured approach and plethora of apparently solid information won us over. We followed him to the squeaky clean Corner, past trees full of red macaws, and bunked down.

Puerto Jimenez is on the Peninsula Osa, home of Parque Nacional Corcovado and much jungle. It turned out that access to many parts of the park is limited right now, due to the rainy season and to current restoration work. Instead of the trek we had planned in Corcovado we decided to check out Bolita, an outpost in the rainforest on the border of the park. We had the isolated cabin, kitchen and hammocks to ourselves and spent a day hiking to several waterfalls with toucans and other beautiful birds overhead. We saw a couple of types of frogs, one of them tiny and red with green legs. And we slept under mosquito netting with four small black bats roosting on the beam above us.



















From Puerto Jimenez we caught the bus for El Palmar and from there to Dominical, a tranquilo little beach town. We checked into Camping Antorchas where Jorge and Deily run a lovely place just off the beach. It is the end of sea turtle egg-laying season and many local organizations are involved in collecting eggs to hatch in protected areas. We met a woman with 3 slightly malformed baby turtles in a plastic bowl, eating shrimp and fattening up for their release.
We spent a day on the beach and then a day hiking in the rain at the eco-retreat Hacienda Baru. In the park the only big animals we saw were pizotes, white nosed coatis. It is wonderful to see these animals walking up tree trunks and nestling down in the crowns of palm trees. We met one on the road and named him Sandwiches.






We were hoping to see sloths in our rainforest time in Costa Rica and moved on to Quepos to check our Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio a bit further north. We stayed in the Mar y Luna hotel in Quepos and took the short bus ride to M.A. where we were treated to at least 5 sloth sightings. They are lovely and strange to watch climing in the trees, moving verrrrry slowly. We also saw a couple of venemous snakes, the eyelash viper and the fer-de-lance, and squirrel and capuchin monkeys. We have still only heard the howler monkeys.







Costa Rica is rather expensive for Central America and we decided to move quickly up to Nicaragua. We met a nice couple from New York on the bus to San Jose who got us excited about Honduras and Mexico, and from San Jose caught the bus for Los Chiles and a river boat to the Nicaraguan border.

Middle Age and Happy Monkeys

As many of you noticed I turned 40 years old on October 9th (thanks for all the emails!) which means I can't go around denying that I am middle aged anymore. I believe life expectancy for a man is in the low to mid 70's, though I suspect surviving adolescence and early adulthood improves this number. Anyway you cut it though, odds say I have lived half my life. Most professional athletes have retired by now, though many writers, artists, and politicians are just getting started. George W. Bush became sober at 40 after an intervention by Mrs. Bush. What would the world be like if he had stayed on the sauce? My guess is Barack Obama doesn't win the Nobel Peace Prize (WHAT?), at least not in his 40's. By 40 Jesus, James Dean, and my mother were all long dead. Somebody said life begins at 40. I guess what I am trying to say is that I have no idea what it means. All I know is that on my 40th birthday I had no urge to buy a Maserati, run off with a secretary, or join a cult. I did, however, greatly enjoy having a squirrel monkey sit on my head.

The reason I had that opportunity is that Hilary and I made our last stop in Panama at the Mono Feliz, an amazingly isolated little outpost on Punta Burica, a peninsula near the border with Costa Rica. After three buses of decreasing size and quality, we made a two and a half hour walk with Pascale and Isabelle (police officers from Montreal who are working with the UN in Haiti training police and soldiers). The path was incredibly muddy. Hilary, aka Boggyfoot, went in over her knee, Isabelle stepped in a patch that swallowed up her entire leg. By the time we got to Mono Feliz we were just about done in. Luckily it was pretty close to paradise.

The Mono Feliz is a group of small simple buildings with a spring fed pool in the jungle next to a beautiful deserted beach. John¨"Juancho" Garvey created the place and lives there with his girlfriend, Luzmila, her kids, and whatever travelers are willing to make it through the mud. It was certainly worth it for us. We enjoyed great company, good food, beautiful scenery, and a huge troop of endangered squirrel monkeys which stopped by at least once a day and would happily relieve you of any bananas you happened to be holding. I finally understand that old saw about the entertainment value of a barrel of monkeys.

I am not not normally a big fan of feeding wild animals, but these monkeys are in no danger of becoming domesticated. They must forage for the real meat of their diet, mostly delicious bugs and bats. Juancho's bananas are just a treat. Central American squirrel monkeys are in trouble partly because of poaching but mostly because of habitat destruction and fragmentation. Juancho's dream is to see Punta Burica turned into a sanctuary for them. It seems unlikely, but if enough people get to meet these monkeys at the Mono Feliz maybe there will be more of an effort to save them.




It is difficult to describe in words a magical place. I hope these pictures give a sense of it. Say hello to our little monkey friends:





















The Mono Feliz was also swarming with these colorful crabs, hermit crabs, and huge bugs including this vicious grasshopper-eating spider. We also got to know Pinto the dog who guarded our tent at night and Blaquito the cat who is the only cat I know who enjoys coconut, popcorn and bread and will let you pick it up by its tail.






The jungle flanked beach was breathtaking, especially as the huge cumulus clouds of the rainy season gathered in the sky. Once again, on our final night, we were treated to a spectacular sunset.










































We finally tore ourselves away on Sunday, avoiding the mud by walking three hours along the beach to the town of Limones where we were picked up before even attempting to hitchhike by Bernard, an interesting and humorous Iranian expat who lives in Panama and has owned several restaurants that sound delicious. On the way to the bus station he took us for a brief beer at a local rodeo and told us how he came to be a chef. He came from a wealthy family in Iran that had a full time cook. This cook had no professional training or teeth, drank Iranian firewater by the gallon, and smoked like hell. Bernard's mother would page through magazines and point to pictures of dishes she wanted for the following day to feed fifty and the cook would pull it off every time to rave reviews. Bernard figures he must have absorbed a bit of that talent, because when he first opened a hotel and restaurant in Panama, he couldn't find a reliable cook so he just started doing it himself, all kinds of food, again to rave reviews. He loves Panama because his girlfriend, Emily (if I remember correctly) is here, because he can completely avoid the news, and because there is no mail service.






If I got any meaning out of my birthday weekend, other than that it is fun to have a squirrel monkey on my head, it was from Juancho and Bernard. I can picture Jauncho after years of sailing around Central America, picking out his beautiful spot on Punta Burica and settling down to the task of turning it into the monkey paradise it is. I see him living out there with Luzmila and his beloved monkeys, hoping enough tourists will make it through the mud to keep him afloat, and that Club Med will never move in next door. I can imagine Bernard coming to Panama from Iran and creating a completely different and delicious life for himself, one entirely without mail (Yes, Grafton, it is possible). No one taught them to do these things. There is no guidebook for it. Most likely they didn't get a whole lot of encouragement at first. Maybe they still suffer uncertainty and wonder what it is all about, but what I admire about them is that they have had the courage to create an interesting life. I hope Hilary and I, as we enter middle age will have that same courage, so that twenty or thirty years from now we will have as interesting stories to tell as Juancho and Bernard.

Panama City

In Panama City we stayed at Luna's Castle in the oldest part of the metropolis, a neighborhood called the Casco Viejo. The Old Quarter sits on a promontory jutting out into the Pacific and reminds those who ought to know of old Havana. Up until quite recently its graceful 18th and 19th century buildings had been left to go to rack and ruin, abandoned by those who could afford to move elsewhere.

In the past few years it has been undergoing renovation, some might say gentrification (there is a wonderful gourmet ice cream shop), and restored residences stand beside dilapidated homes and crumbling facades that house nothing but grass. The area is a historic site and the old buildings must have their remaining original elements retained as they are renovated, meaning that in 10 years this is going to be a quite beautiful, probably quite expensive neighborhood. Whether the people living in those unrenovated buildings are going to be there still we don't know.







The Casco Viejo is home to the presidential palace, also called the Palace of the Herons. On passing we were amazed to see a pair of tall blue herons standing in the marble tiled courtyard. A smaller white heron stood in the fountain that is visible from the sidewalk. From what I read online, herons have been living at the palace since 1922 when the then president's poet friend gave him a pair. There is also a report that President Carter's Secret Service detail accidentally poisoned the herons when he visited in the '70s, never officially confirmed.

Across the Plaza de Francia from the French Embassy stands a monument to the French who died in the first attempt to build a canal across the isthmus. Mike delights in calling the chanticleer and obelisk chicken-on-a-stick.



A good deal of our time in Panama City was spent visiting the museum of the Panama Canal, contemplating the locks or esclusas on the Canal, and riding the Panama Canal Railway. Mike drank a ceremonial beer at the Miraflores Locks, and we spent a pleasant hour riding the rails from Colón to Ciudad de Panamá. On the train we met Christina and Devin, a norteamericano couple driving their Westfalia van from Canada to Patagonia. We were quite jealous contemplating their upcoming introduction to South America.











Along with repeated visits to Granclément (the aforementioned ice cream parlor) we spent time walking on the waterfront where a lovely path stretches from the red roofs of the Casco Viejo to the highrises of the relentlessly modern banking district. And we met up with our friend Steffen, probably for the last time south of the Rio Grande, though he and his parents will be visiting the U.S. sometime. Steffen, Colonel Sanders is waiting for you!

de Colombia a Panamá por las Islas de San Blas

As a wedding present my brother John gave us what is in Spanish poetically called "efectivo", with the instructions that we were to do something special with it during our trip. We are trying to make it all the way home without flying, a goal made difficult by the lack of roads through the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panamá. The Pan-American highway is not entirely pan. So we decided to cross into Central America by sailboat from Cartagena through the San Blas Islands to the Panamanian mainland.

We had heard some stories of drunken captains, shipwrecks, and unseaworthy vessels, but we got a recommendation from the people at our hostel in Cartagena and met our captain, Humberto, a few days before we embarked. Humberto turned out to be sane, smart, and friendly, and had been making the journey about ten times a year for fifteen years on his sailboat, Irene. He was assisted by his nephew, Juan David, who reportedly learned to sail before learning to walk. We were in good hands. Also joining us were a fun Australian couple, Tom and Eliza, and Kristine, an interesting Danish women living in London.






We pulled out of Cartagena around four in the afternoon and continued into the open ocean under sail with nothing but the soft sound of the water and mild flapping of the sails, as the dusk light friscalated over the swells to the horizon.






The following day we spent entirely on the open ocean stopping only to take a swim in the deepest, bluest sea we had ever seen. We saw many little flying fish buzzing over the surface of the water like large dragonflies. A couple even fell into our boat and were converted into tasty snacks by Humberto. We also had several birds use our boat as a resting spot on their long journey, one staying with us for the night.

The last time I had been in the open ocean, I had been deep sea fishing north of San Francisco and had spent almost the entire five hours face down on the deck, sick as a dog, so I was a little nervous about this trip. For those five hours I had wished for death; could I survive five days? Luckily the seas were relatively calm for the first two days. As long as I didn't try to read or do much below deck I was fine. By the time bad weather hit, I was somewhat used to the movement of the boat.













On the second morning, not far from the San Blas islands, we were awoken before five by the U.S. Coast Guard pointing out that the light on our mast was out. This apparently was a red flag for them because we enjoyed their company for the next eight hours. The first half was spent going around in circles followed by a small boat full of coasties as a squall set in, flashing lightning and booming thunder and sending the swell up to give us all a little taste of the queasies.

Humberto's English is quite good, but he had a lot on his plate and it was hard to hear yelling from boat to boat, so I became the spokesperson. After several hours, soaking wet and feeling a bit seasick and still having no information on what was going on, we decide to speed up the process by heading for the islands. I relayed our decision to the officer in a tone of respect that those who remember my teenage years would have marveled at. Soon enough we were boarded by the guards, most of whom were quite friendly, especially Michael Jackson (pictured), from Texas, and Brett from Norwich, Connecticut. They didn't much want to be tossed around on our boat in the rain without breakfast either. Finally in the afternoon the commander on the mothership Thetis decided that we were drug-free and sent us on our way. I was impressed by the professionalism and friendliness of the guards, but it was a little dismaying to have a boat of 150 guardsmen tied up with us for eight hours. That is one heck of a cost to pay to search one small sailboat. I don't think we are going to "win" the "Drug War" this way.



Finally we got to the San Blas Islands, officially part of Panamá but almost exclusively controlled by the native Kuna Indians, and spent the next couple days fishing, eating fish, and snorkeling with fish. I have never seen anything like the profusion of fish we found along a huge coral wall near where we anchored the first night. Now I understand why Humberto said he would gladly turn himself into a dolphin. On our last night we were treated to another amazing Caribbean sunset.































Finally we said goodbye to Humberto, Juan David, Kristine, and Irene and spent a night in Portobelo, once the most important Caribbean port in Central America and now famous for the festival of the Black Jesus. We spent the night trying to get over our land wobbles with Tom and Eliza, playing an Israeli card game, and working on our left-over gin. On the following day, a holiday in Panamá due to the death of beloved former president Edara who brought Panamá out of the Noriega era, we made our way to Panama City on the Pacific side of the isthmus.





Thanks, John, for a wedding present we will never forget.

Barranquilla con los Papis

Barranquilla is not high on the list of tourist towns in Colombia. It is a sprawling gritty port city that lies at the confluence of the Magdalena river and the Caribbean. It has the most famous carnaval celebration in Colombia but in September most tourists give it a miss. But they don't know los Papis.

That is Mami and Papi, my friend Lynn's parents. They raised Lynn and her brother Ken in New Jersey before retiring in full vigor back to Papi's hometown.

We spent 6 days with Mami, Papi, and their cousin Margarita. Also with their 2 immense labradors Choco and Tinto, their talking parrot Yuyo, and their 21 caged songbirds. We ate exceptionally well, slept in our own lovely room, and wrung the sights out of the town with our indefatigable hosts.

The first day we rode the trencito, a platform on wheels that runs along rails formerly used for moving unloaded cargo. It heads out along a long jetty that separates the river from the sea, out on which live subsistence fishermen who also sell beer to the trencito tourists. Mami and Papi like their beer -- we had many communications with waiters along the lines of, "Waiter, bring me another, this bottle must be broken."






We had a great meal at a fish restaurant on the river and then charged off to the zoo where there is the only white tiger in Colombia. That night we caught the Red Sox vs. Angels nailbiter on TV, making Mike very happy indeed.






Thursday we were picked up by Ramiro, a friend who drives a cab, and tooled off to Totumo, a volcano about an hour away. It is not an especially tall volcano and the crater is filled with salutary mud. You mount a rickety wooden staircase in your bathing suit and submerge yourself. We ran into Walther and Suzanne, a German couple we first met in southern Chile, recognizable before getting in.





After rinsing off in the nearby laguna we drove to the Sombrero Vueltiao, a restaurant with a roof constructed to look like the blonde and black straw woven hats ubiquitous in this area.


The next day Mami took the morning off and we went with Papi and Margarita to the recently opened, highly technologized Museo del Caribe. From there we took a walk to the immense central market and then a cab back home with our purchases. We succeeded in taking everyone out for lunch, a small repayment on all the expenditures that they refused to let us have any part of. That evening we strolled to a neighborhood ice cream shop to recognize Leon Crutcher Memorial Hot Fudge Sundae Day. This is an annual family event in honor of my maternal grandfather and the Papis appreciated it fully.






Saturday we took a bus an hour out of town to the Casa Julio Flórez, the house, museum and final resting place of the mustachioed Colombian poet. It is a beautiful place, whitewashed and airy with caned furniture and Florez' melancholy poems on the walls. We had a good lunch at which I drank an entire pitcher of the delicious Colombian limonada and then bussed back home to nap.








That night we met Margarita at La Cueva, an atmospheric old bar where Garcia Marquez and Obregón drank with their friends. From there we headed to La Troja for rumba, bringing our own bottle of Old Parr, Colombia's favorite whiskey. Rumba in Colombia doesn't mean Cuban dance music -- it's the Colombian word for party. At La Troja the salsa dancing went until 4am when we took the rumba back to Margarita's and danced in her front yard until 7. Margarita gave us two CDs of her favorite vallenato singer, Diomedes Diaz, a musician we had wanted to track down. Then she and Mami went to buy piping hot arepas and empanadas for breakfast while we rocked in rocking chairs and Papi tossed back one last Old Parr.

We slept until 2 and got up to find that Mami had meat, potatoes, rice, salad, and fruit ready. Papi got up and we ate very well while Yuyo (the parrot) shouted, meowed, and chuckled maniacally in his cage. After many goodbyes we took a cab to the terminal to take our bus to Cartagena.

¡Muchas gracias, Papi, Mami, y Margarita por una semana cheverissima!

Visiones y Sueños en el Caribe

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.--Acts 2:17

I promise not to start every blogpost with a Bible quote, but this one was too good to pass up. And it is not entirely gratuitous. There is definitely something mystical about the Colombian Caribbean. Maybe it is the color of the water, the mindbending heat, the profusion of plants and animals, or the unearthly colors of the sunsets. Maybe something still lingers in the air from the religious swirl of indigenous cultures and voodoo brought by slaves before being crushed by the Inquisition. Or maybe after almost a year away, getting ready to sail to North America, all the memories of what we have seen in this long continent, are filling our heads with visions and dreams.

We came from Mompós to Cartagena, probably the most visited place in all of Colombia. It has a beautiful colonial old town on a sort of peninsula surrounded by stone walls to keep Sir Francis Drake out. It has wonderful statuary scattered throughout the old town, elaborate doorknockers on giant wooden doors, a park near our hostel (the wonderful Casa Viena) with iguanas and monkeys and reportedly sloths in the trees, and a huge stone fort with long underground passageways to wander around in.

We spent only one day here our first time, before heading up the coast to Parque Nacional Tayrona and the Guajira peninsula, but we are back now getting ready to board the sailboat that will take us to Panama through the San Blas Islands. Yesterday we were followed around for a couple hours by a smiley dog that we named Pericos (after Hilary's favorite breakfast dish). Perhaps our last canine friend from South America.




















We spent two days in the crowded but gorgeous Parque Nacional Tayrona at the base of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the highest coastal mountain range in the world, with a páramo and a permanant ice cap, though that is hard to believe from the bottom where it is crushingly hot and jungly. We spent two nights there swimming and walking through a landscape full of monkeys, frogs, lizards (some with electric blue tails), a profusion of bugs, and bizarre plants entangling everything. One of the most fascinating things was the highway system of the leaf cutter ants. They have cleared long pathways through the jungle where they relentlessly march carrying bright leaves back to their nests to grow the fungus on which they feed.


























From Tayrona we headed for the Guajira peninsula close to the border with Venezuela, highly recommended to us by our friend Steffen. We took a bus past Riohacha to a place called Cuatro Vias (four ways or crossroads) where we found we had just missed the pickup truck, and took a taxi with Daniel and Karen from Bogotá, catching up with the truck in Uribia. We rode in the back with the friendly locals, the kids staring at us wide-eyed.

After two and a half hours of jouncing over the desert roads we reached the small indigenous beach town of Cabo de la Vela where the desert meets the sea. We slept for three nights in hammocks under simple shelters right on the beach. There is little fresh water in town so we bathed in the sea. We took a pleasant walk on the beach with Karen and Daniel and played Uno with them in the evening, listening to vallenato music with few other tourists around. But the most important part of each day was the sunset, dreamy visions in their own right.

There were also many dogs in town who we befriended by day but cursed at night as they sang chorus after chorus of the age old doggy song. On the second night, I discovered that hurling a full two-liter bottle of water into their midst, then shouting and shaking my stick tended to scatter and silence them. One dog named Perry (not by us) took offense and growled at me all the next day, but most of the others, especially Frijoles and Cream Cheese (our names) took it in stride. Also living at our hostel was a small litter of larval puppies with their eyes still shut.

Leaving Guajira was difficult. Partly because it was so beautiful and relaxing and partly because the pickup trucks only leave for Cuatro Vias at four in the morning. One of the few times I have felt paranoid in all of South America was being stuffed into that truck in the dark, bouncing over that horrible dusty desert road, not understanding a word being said, and then suddenly being joined by several hogtied goats bellowing in bloodcurdling fashion. I thought, "What if these people all want to rob us, or sell us to the FARC, or leave us out here in the desert like something out of El Bueno, El Malo, y el Feo? What's to stop them?" But the guy I was most suspicious of turned out to be very kind and friendly, jumping out at Uribia shortly after sunrise to buy us coffees, restoring my vision to reality.

Finally, from Cuatro Vias we grabbed a bus to Barranquilla to join in the big dreams of Mami and Papi, as our time in South America winds down.