I will never forget the expression on the face of the Colombian peasant man. My wife explained to him in Spanish, which I think under my arm is indeed a surfboard, despite the fact that we were in a Colombian village that was located somewhere in the middle of the Andes, hundreds miles away from Ocean. After these new man made a joke on us Directions always bad. He shot a smile and a mouthful of rotten teeth showed. Shortly after, he shook his head, thrust his hands into his pockets on the front of the hand-woven poncho Inca style, turned and walked on the road in his town. When the man at the center of the city reached a gust of wind swept the streets and tore off her black hat from his head. As I watched him run after reflection through a cloud of dust, I, “I gotta ‘get to the ocean.”
I began to feel like a fish without water. Surfers can not stay away from dry up the sea for too long or they start “. Then I got up this dirt road in the dusty little town, I realized I had not seen the ocean in over a month. More importantly, I had not sailed there. A mid-term two-month tour, one across the country from Colombia, South America, we were on track for a small Caribbean beach resort at the north end of the field for a well deserved break from the madness that we experienced on this trip. We spent the holidays traveling from Bogota to Medellin, Bogota, and then back again by clicking with various members of the family of my wife. There were breakdowns on the road with pick-pockets and is guilty. Until then, it was not funny, and we want to stay there.
Traveling on a tight budget in a foreign country is the best way to discover the true culture of the country, but it can be very taxing on your soul. We could not afford not to plane tickets to fly in all regions of the country, so we had instead of buses and taxis to take. Some of those bus rides took two days to reach our goal. We crossed some of the most remote areas of Colombia to change buses and taxis to hail the route. On the way we saw some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some very interesting, intense, and strange things. Curses Black Magic and evil is practiced in many parts of Colombia, and I can not say more about it, lest you think me a fool. There are things that are not explained in this world, and many of them occur in Colombia.
There were other things that have happened to us there was even more terrifying than the black magic. Let’s just say it is never good for your bus stopped in the middle of the night by rough-looking men with machine guns on a winding, dark, mountain road. The whole is another story for another time.
Returning to our main story, there were about four hours north of Bucaramanga, and wait to board or one of those colorful buses. All I thought at that time, surfing and relaxing at this place called Tayrona. I told you it was your own thatched hut “choza” and watch the waves from your veranda seating. Sounds to those who surf are not familiar with the sport, which is about as good as it gets for a visitor.
It was not easy, as the surfboard implementation throughout Colombia. We landed in Bogota, in the center of the country a month ago, and I’ve been around our other luggage dragged from a bus or a taxi to another since. It was as if I was living my own little version of the film
Fitzcaraldo, and my surfboard was the ship that was carried for several miles from the mainland. I was determined to be worthwhile.
While we waited for our bus in the little mountain village we were greeted by the usual local people trying to sell us stuff flooded. My wife is a native Colombian who speaks for the majority of these negotiations. These small villages along the main streets of Colombia to live money to people who are just passing through, or wait for a bus. The indigenous people sell everything from bags of purified water), the “empanadas” (meat and potatoes stuffed with sales of homemade dishes from corn dough. My wife and I have survived on food and the water by humans for most of our trip available. Surprisingly, none of us was still sick. However, most of them were by this delicious meal, you must have the miracle of cooking and cleaning practices in a city that has no running water. Something tells me that if the cook can choose between using their last bucket of water to wash their hands before cooking, drinking the water the next day, they had to give up clean. I tried not to think about these things on the trip. I just thought of how the food tastes homemade met with their home-made ingredients.
People certainly know how to cook in Colombia. Wow! The food in this country seemed much more taste than the food I was used in the United States. We really experienced the authentic British food, “Donuts” pandebonos “,” arepas “, you name and we tried together
paths. We were on a budget, and eat the food very good. The people, these foods were as poor as we could, but they could not feed as anyone else in the world. The freshness, lack of pesticides and nutrient rich soils also have much to do, why food is so good in Colombia.
After having our share of “empanadas” that we bought from a small woman with an old village handwoven basket ate, we mixed a fresh fruit smoothie ready. There were always several of these small smoothie is available in every city, we stopped that, on the road, and we have always ensured that we have at least one sample. Whatever the size of a state, the seller has always had the power to run their mixer, cooler and a boom box. I immediately ordered a pair of “Tomate de árbol” smoothies in a booth nearby, then we offered to put us on the bench by former manufacturers smoothie.
We were told by the driver of the bus past that should be our next bus along the “no time”. It has been my experience so far that the driver may or may not be correct. Sometimes bus came right away and the transfer went smoothly. Another time we landed to wait long periods between transfers. These people do not go smoothly.
The mountain roads and leftist guerrillas loading areas, which can cause long delays, buses traveling through, and that’s an understatement. Hanging out waiting in the small town in the middle of nowhere, in the foothills of the Andes on a bus was quite nerve-wracking. The local population of these types of cities have always been highly suspicious that after someone has left a bus came through. Most people go through there. They were particularly suspect a gringo with a surfboard and a Colombian woman. It was a war in that country. Everywhere we went everyone wanted to know which way we were. As we sat in this dusty corn in a remote area of Colombia, I knew we had to wait a long, stressful.