33. Bogata, Columbia

33.

Bogotá, Columbia:

My first night in this city I dream this dream: I am observing a sort of mandala and am suddenly aware of being in an “out of the body” astral state. I open my astral eyes and see that I am in starry space speeding toward mythic Egypt. Ahead and to the right of me is another flying form; a woman with a beautiful, serene face. Her wavy black hair is blowing back around me. I follow her downward gaze and see three pyramids on the ground far below. The whole scene begins to throb rhythmically. “What is that?” I ask the form. “It is the beating of your funeral heart.” she replies. Then I think that this projection is my last and that my body has died. In a way I feel glad because I am truly free and happy, yet I also feel afraid. I awaken to return to my earthprobe journey, but wanting to rejoin the guide from my dream.

...

32. Medallin, Columbia

32.

Medallin, Columbia:

I buy rice and stew in the open air bus station of this mountain town. I do not finish everything on my plate and when I stand up to go I am almost knocked over by three hungry shoeshine boys in their eagerness to gobble up my leftovers.

South of Medallin, the bus climbs into the Andes. Tiny villages appear, first high above, then far below the twisting paved highway. The tiled roofs of the mountain cottages are fifty pretty shades of red—smoke leaks through other thatched cottage roofs like smoldering piles of leaves in autumn.

The workingmen here wear dark wool ponchos and carry wicked looking machetes. The women wear shapeless woolen dresses.

When the bus stops in villages, children sell the passengers blocks of white cheese wrapped in a waxy green leaf. It is delicious!

On some adobe walls the Communist’s hammer and sickle symbol are crudely scrawled in red with the slogan in English, “Yankee Imperialist Go Home!” I don’t feel much like a Yankee imperialist, though I probably am one of the few Yankees that will actually see the signs. I think the “Go Home” refers to the coffee and banana economy of this part of the world. There are acres of these plants growing alongside the road.

My wandering mind imagines this drama: Mrs. Olsen, the actress always raving about Columbian coffee on TV is riding in this bus and she becomes offended by the attitude of some of the local people. She asks her son-in-law, the chemist who invented the 100% chemical orange drink, “Tang”, to come up with a coffee substitute which looks, smells, tastes and stimulates just like Columbian-grown coffee, but which is made with good old American chemicals. I ask my imaginary Mrs. Olsen what will become of the coffee based Columbian economy when all the Yankees have indeed gone home and she suggests that they grow bamboo shoots to export to China since bamboo grows as well as coffee here. That way the next time I ride a bus through Columbia I will see “Chinese Imperialist Go Home” written in Chinese on the village walls.

On a more serious note, I have drunk my share of coffee in my time and that probably qualifies me to be a “Yankee Imperialist”. The farmers here are surely as poor as people can be and if my countrymen are gouging them I am sorry. The Columbians I talk to as I travel treat me very well and I wish their economic problem were one I could help solve but it is far beyond my understanding or power. Here and everywhere, the Golden Rule is always a practical economic guideline, it seems to me.

...

31. Bloodlines Survival

31.

I spend part of one day exploring the old “Palace of the Inquisition”.

If the Spanish rulers looked at all like their portraits displayed on the walls here, they must have been mean bastards—but they got a lot done in the way of stonework! Their family trees (also on display) show that heredity was important to them, but they must have been bred for cruelty. The dungeons and showcased torture tools suggest they thought a lot about how to inflict pain. I wonder if they ever experienced happiness. Maybe they had no concept of simple joy. The Inquisition was certainly a grim chapter of history.

So I think about the genetic history, the family bloodlines, in The United States. They seem to be mixed very well for the past two centuries producing a sort of mongrel race bred for survival. And survival means getting through every tough situation alive. When the test comes, make it through. You don’t have to be mean or unkind like these old time Spaniards were, but use the old bean!

The aged churches of Cartagena are dark, grimy and smell of urine. There are tombs and probably all kinds of creepy things under their cracked marble floors.

In the evening, as I observe some unusually animated people talking in a café, I am delighted by the “music” of their conversation. Their talk is song, their gestures; dance. The lively conversation of the group at their table is like a jazz jam session where one instrument carries the melody or rhythm for a while and then becomes background sound as other instruments take their solos. I suppose that if I could understand their language it would only detract from the beauty of the pure music.

Time to move on.

...

30.Cartagena, Colombia

30.

Cartagena, Columbia:

I find a clean, blue and white hotel on the beach with a room and meals for only $2 per day! I am tempted to stay here for a long time!

Cartagena (“Carthage” in English) was a boomtown in the 17th and 18th centuries. There is a big stone fortress overlooking the harbor. Pirates used to make raids on the town periodically but after Drake wrecked the place, the Spanish built this fort and that ended the raids.

The heat is extreme—over 90 degrees Fahrenheit every day. I sit and steam all day. Every evening when it cools off I visit downtown Cartagena by local bus since my hotel is a few miles out of town.

The Spanish rulers must have built this city using slave labor from Africa because the town residents now seem to be progeny of those slaves. The Spanish have disappeared or maybe mixed with the Africans.

The oldest part of the town is built within protective walls and here the crowds are the thickest. Everybody seems to be hustling for a living selling cigarettes or plastic trinkets. The ladies are looking good in tight shirts and slacks; the men look harassed.

...

29.San Andres Island

29.

San Andres Island: The people here are black and it takes me a few days to figure out what language they speak—they speak Spanish with a very local accent. They also speak French and English and they speak all three languages at the same time inventing a new language of their own. When I relax and just talk normally they understand me fine and I can understand them equally well.

But San Andres is no Hawaii by any stretch of the imagination! It’s a hot, poor, sandy lump of an island barely protruding from the green sea. There are some ragged coco palms and some “wrong side of the tracks” cheap hotels and a meager scattering of international tourists—but that’s all.

Still, after the flurry of activity in Costa Rica, some time spent flopped in the hot sand is just what I need. I avoid people and just mellow out.

After a few days, when I’m nicely mellowed, I check my backpack with the airline to Cartagena, Columbia and then miss the plane! The airline holds it for me on the mainland and I learn an important lesson: never travel without carrying everything I value either on my body or in my hands!

...

28. Spanish Studies

28.

There are lots of Costa Rican girls attending the school learning to be bi-lingual secretaries or perhaps more sophisticated women of the world. They like to practice English with me and I enjoy speaking my simple Spanish with them. I also meet some interesting men: pilots, lawyers and businessmen studying English and become a little bit involved in the social life of the city. My new Costa Rican friends like to dance, party and practice English and so do I.

Because I am an unattached young American male I seem to be a threat to some of the local bachelors. They share the illusion that all North Americans are rich and because of my exotic appeal—blue eyes, brown hair and American passport, the local ladies are at least curious. Their curiosity inflames the jealousy of their boy friends and it seems the threatened men react by proposing marriage to their canny girlfriends. The comparative sexual freedom presently enjoyed by European and North American people is not acceptable here. Marriage is the ONLY option for “proper” men and women. So I find I am leaving more happy marriages than broken hearts in my wake. That’s cool.

People have been suggesting that I visit the “Hawaii of the Caribbean”, San Andres Island and since there is no way for a solitary traveler to follow the land bridge between the continents through the jungles, swamps and mountains of Panama, I decide to fly to San Andres and then fly the short hop to South America.

...

27. San Jose Costa Rica

27.

San Jose, Costa Rica:

This modern mountain city is fine! The climate is ideal and the citizens like North Americans. (I have found that the people of other countries South of the Border like to be called “Americans” too. “South Americans”.)

There is an excellent new library here with a large collection of books in Spanish and English and a national museum featuring what I am sure is the world’s largest collection of “sacred metates”, basalt grindstones for corn, carved with figures of alligators and jaguars—very practical kitchen artwork from the old days. The museum also has examples of the “child cuts gold foil” jewelry I saw in Mexico, which the museum suggests originated in the Columbian Andes. That area seems to be the mountain birthplace of early cultures.

I like San Jose so well I enroll in a Spanish language school, the “Centro Cultural Costaricense-Norteamericano” for the last two weeks of their current semester. There are several other non-Spanish speakers in the class,, which makes the two-hour class each day a little more comprehensible to me. The academic study of Spanish grammar is very helpful and useful right now though I usually don’t like classroom study of foreign language very much.

I pay for my classes by designing a brochure for the school.

...

26. San Salvador

26.


Back in San Salvador

I take stock. I’ve been on the road for two months and already I see that I am practically nothing I thought I was. The mirror shows me new things and not all good things by any means.

About morality: I just don’t know what it is right now. I try not to hurt people and that’s easy as long as I keep on the move, but as soon as I roost, relationships start to form, my energy is drained and I spend time and money on nothing I value. So I am selective of my friends and conservative of my energy, time and money—but usually I feel rather lost—searching but not finding. This “earthprobe”—I am literally betting my life that it will help me understand.

There are a couple of letters for me at the San Salvador post office. They help.

(Hey, Tom of the future, when you read these words, remember where you were in evolution and don’t be too appalled! Your earlier self, Starship,) (Check! Tom of the past! Not appalled, just surprised--to still be around after all these changes and years. My goodness, young fellow, you sure had a LOT to learn!! )

I find that my mind becomes strangely active on these super-long bus trips. There’s nothing to do but sit and think. Is this “meditation”? Yesterday, passing through the green hills of Costa Rica, I started having flash on flash of “cosmic truths”. For the first time in my life I understood that “everything IS beautiful and everything IS OK”. Evil vanished. Temporarily.

...

25. Puerto Libertad

25.

Puerto Libertad, El Salvador:

I’m staying in a little green room over a grocery shop. There’s a cafe about a hundred yards away where I buy fried fish and beer. Lots of Americans come to Puerto Libertad to ride the big waves in March according to Oscar, a teenager who tries to sell me some marijuana. I can see why the surfers come. This is a beautiful place in a sort of cheap and dilapidated way.

The beach is peculiar. Millions of multicolored hard plastic packing “peas” mixed with the sand give the beach an odd, unnatural luster, which is kind of pretty.

Too bad the water stinks so disgustingly.

There are a number of faded but expensive hotels on the outskirts of town and a row of wooden one-table beachside cafes serving the local specialty, steamed shellfish. They do a good business by romantic candlelight every evening.

A noisy railway engine pushes freight up and down a pier across from my hotel and when I go out walking the local whores, thinking I am a Greek sailor off the ship anchored offshore make their pitch in Greek. Such accomplished linguists, these ladies!

Well, there’s partying and moaning and showering all night long in the hotel where I am staying and I don’t get much sleep or writing done. Early one morning a sad little girl, maybe six years old, and an old man, maybe eighty, come to my door for a handout. The old guy strums a guitar and the child shakes a rattle and sings. Their whole act depresses me so much I give them a dollar and leave town.

...

24. Managua, Nicaragua

24.

Managua, Nicaragua:

The clock in the ruined bank tower in the city center always reads 1:30.

It stopped when the terrible Managua earthquake struck and has never been restarted.

Thousands died. Buildings toppled into President’s Lake. Cathedral, hospital, businesses and apartments were flattened in moments.

Now thieves and perhaps frightened ghosts are the only inhabitants of the ruins in the old city.

...

There is a young American woman on today’s bus who tells me she came from Boston to Mexico City with a rich old man who spent two thousand dollars on her-- then she ditched him to go and live with two Mexican brothers she met in a night club.

She was having sex with both of them until they got the word that their sister had committed suicide by jumping off a ship leaving a five-year-old child fathered by one of the brothers.

The American didn’t want to care for the child so she took off herself and was now adventuring southward.

I’ll say one thing. The bus ride to El Salvador was educational and far from boring! The American woman stopped in San Salvador town.

I stay in San Salvador for a few days and then head west to the Pacific beaches.

...

23. Guatamala City

23.

Still, there are worse things than these petty thieves and perhaps these lazy soldiers and border guards keep the more violent outlaws at bay. It is a nuisance to unpack and repack my stuff at every crossing, but I am never threatened or frightened. I guess I am paying for “protection” and the border fees are less expensive than hiring my own soldiers as the old-time travelers did. My American passport seems to get me a little—but just a little--automatic respect.

Guatemala City, Guatemala:

A big election is happening here next week. Since arriving I have had the uncomfortable feeling that I am being watched. General So-and-so is making a big TV and poster campaign and soldiers are everywhere with machine guns ready and the mood is Police-state Terror—not the most mellow atmosphere for peaceful sightseeing! When I take my camera out of its case for a photo of the city from an overlooking hill, two guys in a big, black American car drive slowly toward me. They don’t say a word—just glare—but it’s a bit scary for this country boy.

On the other hand, there is a fine municipal library near the capital building where one of the librarians speaks English. He helps me find a few books about the Maya people and about the archaeological work that has been done in this region.

I discover some curious facts. The babies of the original Mayan people who still live in this vicinity have the same blue discoloration near the base of the spine called the “Mongolian Spot”, which true Asian Mongolian infants have, and the Mayan language, I read, is similar to Latin.

...

22. Xing a Border

22.

After a few days at the Californian’s house, I continue my way south by bus. Soon I come to the little countries of Central America.

All the little countries
Have got their little laws.
At all their little borders
We make a little pause.
Into our little pockets
They reach their little claws.
It would have been much cheaper
If I had stayed at Ma’s.

Waiting at a border crossing I pay the inflated “gringo” price for a tall glass of steaming coffee with the local currency printed on rainbow colored paper—flowers on one side and mustachioed politicians on the other. After a final check of my backpack I am allowed to cross the “frontier”. The customs police mark my bag with a big red X in chalk. I think, “You’ve searched my bag and X’ed in red, but you forgot to X my head!”

Another day, another border; the land sharks here are tired women and children selling handfuls of soiled local and foreign money, oranges, bread and disgusting-looking meat. Buy only enough ragged local currency to get across each little country since it will be worthless paper at the next border! As the land bridge between the continents narrows, the sharks crowd closer—the little ones with nickel and dime rip-offs and the bigger ones with tolls, taxes and tanks.

Customs officers type slow. Soldiers slouch, fingers in their battered rifle’s barrels. Heat and dust. The only things moving are the hands of my wristwatch.

...

21. San Cristobal de las Casas

21.

San Cristobal de las Casas

San Cristobal de las Casas is a picturesque village situated in a valley encircled by lush, forested mountains. It has an airport with daily flights to Mexico City and because it is so pretty there are quite a few tourists and even a developing colony of Americans living here.

“My” Californians own an old watermill surrounded by green pastures that they have restored. They have retired here from the USA to enjoy the slower pace and the inexpensive living but they are obviously lonely and bored. We help each other learn Spanish and they show me that the best way to cook eggs is over a very low flame.

They take me with them in their brand new Mercedes to explore several nearby Indian villages. In one village, everyone wears pink vests and straw hats with lots of colorful ribbons hanging from the brim. In the village over the mountain, everyone wears gray and black. I theorize that the “colorful” people will be more peace loving than the “gray” people, but I learn from the local M.D., a young man who was educated in America, that the “colorful” people have the reputation of coming to San Cristobal, getting drunk and bashing each other over the head with stones! So much for THAT theory!

This same young doctor told me a story that illustrates a local attitude toward sex and marriage.

It seems that a young village girl spent the night with her boyfriend. Her hysterical parents brought her to my doctor friend to get his medical opinion—was she still a virgin or not? He examined her and declared she was not. This infuriated the parents even more and they took the girl to several other doctors until they found one that admitted she was still a virgin. This honest doctor is the one the parents paid!

20. Combate Naval

20.

At sunset the entire population of the village gathers on the bank of the river to view the famous “combate naval”.

A brass band plays and some dignitaries make speeches. Soon little model canoes blazing with fireworks come drifting around a bend in the river. People nearby explain to me that these boats represent a flotilla of wild Indians. A battery of cannon on the opposite shore from the spectators begins to fire at the canoes. These cannoneers represent Spanish soldiers.

The Indian canoes blow up and sink one by one while the people on the shore, who look like Indians to me, cheer for the great Spanish victory. Everybody wants to be one of the winners!

This evening there are two other tourists witnessing this battle, a wealthy couple from California who have rented a house in a nearby village. They invite me to come with them to visit their San Cristobal de las Casas home. They have a nice new car and since I have no other plan I go with them.

...

19. Allegory and Ruins

19.

Allegory and Ruins

The last day of the celebration, there is a parade of the townsfolk which seems to me to represent an allegory of human life: Leading the parade are the masked and chanting boys—like awakening spirits—then come the youngest children, boys wearing little suits and girls wearing embroidered dresses, next older girls wearing what appear to be elaborate traditional folkloric dresses and these girls are showered with confetti by slightly older girls walking near them—these older girls are dressed in the latest fashions: tight blouses, silky pants and platform soled shoes.

Next come a cluster of men carrying a statue of a saint followed by what seem to be the important men of the village dressed in black suits decorated with red silk sashes.

Last of all, the old women of the village shamble past dressed in faded black and carrying lighted candles like mourners at a funeral.

There are no old men at all—I suppose men in this culture are expected to die young.

Everyone living in the village marches in this parade and I am almost the only spectator. I have my camera out like a tourist and the people encourage me to take lots of pictures. Some of them have cameras too and take photos of each other.

When the parade is finished, I climb to the top of a desolate hill overlooking the town to explore the ruins of an old adobe church. I walk through mounds of dried dung into the crumbling sanctuary. A huge black vulture flies up from the weeds and rubble, through the partially collapsed dome and circles off into the wide reddish sky.

Thinking partly of Elizabeth—partly of the Parisians and partly of just everything in this solitary earthprobe, I have an incredible feeling of loneliness, loss and sorrow. As I make sketch from inside the ruins, biting insects attack my legs.

...