certification

Tuesday 21.6.2016

After pushing our time in Medellin back a day already, Molly and I decided to leave for Manizales to meet up with Guerillmo, an Internet pen pal for the past three months and the Don of a small cattle ranch in rural Colombia. We had no idea what to expect and the shock of our experience, in so many ways, has distracted me from writing this past week.  As we locked our knees riding up warm hills on horseback during the week, a challenge Guerillmo made has stood out:

“Try to count the different types of birds, insects, and plants you see.  Use your eyes.”  

This week has been a sensory overload, in every sense of the word. Exploring nature untouched by civilization, however slight it may be, is profound.  And it’s having an effect, whatever it may be.

In exchange for this sensory overload, I’ve tried to live with our host family in their environment.  This is the first tablet they’ve ever seen and electricity only powers a television and the homemade electric fences that keep cattle in the correct pasture.  I’ll be doing here what I did with the Amande and the San Blas Islands, writing about my thoughts after the experience when Molly and I are in Cali this Wednesday (or earlier, if the four hour bus ride is straight enough).

In this post I wanted to get that thought down somewhere and describe our last day in Medellin.  It was relatively uneventful; Molly and I made breakfast for three and discussed Jorge’s business over fresh papaya.  We interviewed him afterwards and recorded a wonderful conversation about family and its importance in Colombia before being shown a positively surreal loft room and parting ways.

We made our way to the bus station and found a bus to Manizales leaving within ten minutes, so after a suspiciously cheap purchase we rushed onto the “bus”: a van built for six fitting twelve, picking up passengers on the side of the highway and being driven by a man whom I can only assume had a profound trust in a moral God.  The amount of times our driver passed three semitrucks in the left lane and didn’t see what was coming up around the next mountain bend is astounding.

Four hours of sweaty sleep and car sickness was broken up by a brief stop in a small town for fresh mango and cold water.  My seat was built for a population whose national average height is about a foot shorter than me, and yet I couldn’t stop laughing and losing my breath watching the sun pierce crayon-green canyons with sheet roof shack villages teetering on their bluffs.

We made it to Manizales late and took another astoundingly cheap cable car metro ride up the side of the hill to meet Guerillmo in person. He manages the ranch and the several families which reside with his family for work during the week while teaching university classes on agricultural economics on the weekends.  He recently set up his ranch as a WWOOFing site, meaning travelers across the world will get to travel to Manizales and work on his ranch in exchange for free rent and food for the duration of that stay.  He’s young and reserved, preferring the local coffee bar to the dozens of loud holes that aired the Argentina-United States Copa America match the night we met him.

We booked a hostel for the evening and prepared for the next day.