August 13, Santa Marta

Such adventures this past week, but not much access to the internet. I can't possibly write everything down in the limited time I have so I'll give a general sweep of impression.

I walked to Pueblito in Parque Tayrona with a beautiful Venezuelan malaria researcher and her rasta boyfriend. Pueblito is this grassy oasis of round rock bases left over from pre-Colombian times. It comes after a long, beautiful, difficult walk up through the jungle, which for us involved a dip in the clear cold water of a shallow sand river. I finished the walk with inner thighs on fire from the rash I get from wearing wet clothes. My clothes have been damp for at least a week. I crave nothing more than doing laundry. But this dampness on my Pueblito journey I owe purely to sweat, which drips from me like from a man as I exercise in the heat of a Colombian coastal day.

That walk did me in and I only stayed in Tayrona overnight. I recoiled a bit from the beaches because it involves... wet, sticky clothes and long walks. Also, the old guy who ran the camp that charges 15 pesos per night for a hammock kept touching me and kissing me and trying to hang out with me. S the beautiful girl from Cali was trying to protect me a bit, I think, from him.

I'm probably the only person in the world who didn't want to stay in Tayrona forever. But, goddamn it, I like floors to put my bags on and places to hang my wet clothes! I have to be more persistent in my questioning of other backpackers to figure out how they do this sort of thing for so long.

Then there is the Palomino saga... I was going to go with S and her boyfriend Mr. C to Palomino and stay with their friend there. But they were on Colombian time, which means who knows when they will leave, if they will actually go where they say they will. My burning thighs wanted out of Tayrona so I left ahead of them, told they will call their friend C and I should wait for him at the gas station. I waited for him at the gas station. I waited for them, figuring at any moment they would emerge from a bus. Finally I let a pudgy young man steer me to a hotel across the street where I finally got a shower.

The hotel room was fusty musty and hot, dark and depressing. I was feeling pretty lousy but when I left the room that night a curly haired boy drinking in the bar next door invited me to join him and his friends for beers. Turns out they are a group of environmentalists, N and D living under gazebos in one of the towns small farms. They are volunteers, teaching recycling and sustainability to children and learning from the locals and organising projects. Most importantly they spoke English, though D, a woman I found a bit mesmerising with her long, long course curls, voluptuous body and bohemian clothes, spoke mostly in slow Spanish to me, helping me to learn.

I drank with them and then met them the next day for a trip to the capital of La Guajira, Mingaeo, where they brought me to meet local school children. There was a festival celebrating an independence battle and the kids were dressed as the Queen of Spain, soldiers, natives and other historical figures. We came at the end of the shows unfortunately but I watched the young kids chase each other around. The boys ran around hitting everybody with pieces of foam broken from a set piece. Now I understand why I was such a geek. If a kid came and randomly hit me I would have taken it personally and got upset. But the girls merely smiled and ran away, kind of joining in the game. Not that some of them didn't hit back.

Later a group of children of various ages encircled me, but I couldn't talk to them much. They asked me to dance and one girl put regaton on her cell phone and danced with me. They seemed thrilled by me even though I couldn't always understand or answer their questions and they gave me a string bracelets and two foil rings to remember them by. I was sorry not to have anything for them, but I gave the girl who gave me the bracelet an earring out of my ear and a bit of change since she actually asked me for money.

So I'm not dipping into the stories but fully tasting them, aren't I?

To come: the beauty of the end of the earth, the 22-year-old from Riohacha who followed me back to Palomino and stole my phone, my ongoing problems saying no to men...

What a crazy, up and down trip I'm having. And now I have absolutely no photos (gone with my phone) so you'll all just have to come to this beautiful country to see it for yourselves!