Travel – Page 3 – Nómada [con] Rumbo

Birthday Reflections: How living in Colombia has changed me (from 25 to 26)

It’s been an amazing birthday week, the kind of week that has me reflecting on all the changes in my life that have brought me to where I am today. One of the greatest changes by far has been all of the transformations and confrontations with self I have made since living in Colombia.

Before, I was never one to socialize among coworkers. I kept my head down and my eyes on my work. I felt afraid to show who I really was most days because I wasn’t sure if anyone I worked with would be able to relate to me. As a result, I stole from myself the opportunities to form bonds with my coworkers and create lasting friendships. I also struggled to define limits in my romantic life. I spent more time spinning my wheels than actually acting with the end result in mind, and that was mainly due to self-doubt and insecurity.

Last year, I was still green to living in another country. I didn’t know many people – I barely knew my coworkers. I mostly spent time with a girl that lived in the same house as me and took care of the kids and the chores (we became friends and have been ever since!). I was far from home and at moments very lonely. But with a few spontaneous invites – and then spontaneously accepting them – from my coworkers, I slowly began to go out and really experience the culture of Valledupar and form relationships which became key to my self-esteem and growth.

I’ve learned that ex-pat camaraderie is strong, even if you don’t come from the same country. My first step outside of my comfort zone in Colombia came when I made and shared king cake with a few coworkers. One of them, Noel, took interest in the place I’m from, Louisiana, mainly for the food and music, and I couldn’t help but open up, little by little. So we began to hang out more, and from there we decided to make a king cake together and have a get-together to share it. Since then, he has become more of a brother than a friend, a trusted confidant that has seen me through hard times, listened to me and my whining, and shared advice with me, and I with him.

Slowly, I allowed myself to get to know my coworkers more and stopped closing myself into my classroom and focusing only on the serious aspects of work. It didn’t hurt that I also finished my TEFL certification around the same time and suddenly had the time to go out and socialize. By keeping my eyes peeled for opportunities to go out and explore my new home, I began to get to know a Colombian teacher at that time working in Prekinder in the school, Osiris, and a young woman from Nigeria working in Nursery named Dami. Osiris spontaneously invited us to go hiking up the local lookout point, Cerro Ecce Homo, one weekend in February and from there the three of us became good friends.

Female friendship is powerful.

Shortly after that, the adventures began. Dami, Noel (my British brother), and I along with a Colombian friend spent a weekend in Nabusimake, an isolated indigenous village nestled in the Sierra Nevada. We slept in tiny bunk beds in a cozy cottage and built a fire outside to make our dinner under the night sky, sharing music and laughter throughout. It’s funny how strangers can become so close in so little time. But near-death experiences will do that. During that particular trip, when we decided to go back to Valledupar, it had started drizzling. Of course we thought, who cares? We were ready to get back and rest and prepare for another exhausting week of work. However, once we were zig-zagging and swerving up and down steep, narrow mountain passes covered in mud and clay, we swiftly realized the err of our thinking. We were screaming in the land rover and hiking up along side it, trying not to get hit, all the while and not to slip down the mountain in turns. It really brought a whole new layer of meaning to our friendship, as surviving a near-death situation usually does.

In this way, many of my coworkers also became great travel companions since we all have pretty much the same aspirations to get out of Valledupar and explore. Last year I managed to either plan or be involved in 4 different trips, including a weekend in Palomino and a whole week discovering coastal cities like Santa Marta, Barranquilla, and Cartagena, and then later go further South to Ocaña – but I’ll have to dedicate another post to those trips.

Then there were all of our little get-togethers. We would go to the large house that Noel and his brother lived in, a hostel of sorts because it housed many temporary or short-term tenants, and make food and blast music. At the end, we would always get fussed at by the house owners for turning the house into a discoteca (which, by the way, we now practically live in one since getting our own house), but we rolled our eyes and turned down the music, choosing to ignore the negativity and keep enjoying each other’s company. It’s not like we don’t suffer through the hours on end of blaring Vallenato music constantly.

Our team has always been close knit. There was birthday party after surprise party throughout the last school year that added to my sense of integration with my coworkers. Even my birthday was celebrated as a surprise which was and wasn’t a total surprise since there was a group dedicated to doing just that last year. Still, that party was one of the most beautiful moments yet and continues to stick with me to this day. After all, I could have never imagined that a group of virtual strangers would take me in, buy me a cake and booze, and celebrate my special day as if we had known each other for more than a couple of months.

People here have sincerely taken me by the heart and the hand and welcomed me into their lives. I began to dance and be myself among these diverse people. We traveled together, from the beaches of Palomino to the rainy streets of Bogota, to the Walled City of Cartagena. We rang in the New Year together, drank together, and complained together about the injustices we have faced at the school and the shitty discrepancies with our own expectations.

More than anything, I became entirely me this year, while also letting another culture transform me. I felt myself truly adopt the costeño dialect when conversing with my close Colombian friends while also being able to stand up and give presentations in Spanish and English in workshops and trainings. I’ve spoken my mind and stood up for myself and my friends more than once in the face of the aforementioned injustices at the school that range from unfair working conditions and sanctions based on false information and bias. I’ve realized I’m not afraid to be the person that says no, that doesn’t work and it doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve discovered my voice, both personally and professionally.

Now that I’m 26, I’m staring over an intimidating precipice. On one side stand my goals, my mountain, the things I’ve been working toward tirelessly since I was in college, and perhaps even before that. I’ve always been tenacious, and now I feel I’m halfway there. First, I wanted to get out of the country. Before I turned 25, I accomplished that goal and found a job that worked for me. I wanted some semblance of stability, which I have achieved, while still being able to save and travel all at once. Then I wanted to continue my education and explore other avenues of employment. That is the part I’m still working on – mainly with writing and translating, but I also have a desire to break out into work related to human rights, social justice, and international relations, because that is where my passions truly lie. But in the meantime, I have to give myself some credit – I’ve become a full-time, certified teacher, and damn competent one, one that knows her students and does everything she can to help them reach their full potential and learn and to be passionate about learning.

I’ve discovered my capabilities and that I don’t need anybody else in order to feel fulfilled in my life or have significant and extraordinary relationships. I’ve also learned and thoroughly internalized that it does no good to compare my life to others. We all get where we need to go at different times. The key is living our moment one second at a time.

I am now quite content with my close friendships, with the variety of people that share their time with me and support me in a variety of ways. The next step is simply deciding: which direction do I need to go in in order to get closer to my mountain? How can I stop measuring every step and just let go as I fall into my future? Because in the end, all we are doing is falling. Nobody knows where we will end up, as much as we try to plan and plot our stops along the way of this vast journey we call life.

I will say that the spontaneous choices I’ve made have ended up being the most rewarding. When I set my mind to something, from the age of 5 to 25 and beyond, I have always found a way to see it through. And even if the results are not what I expected, I find a way to learn so much that the experience is totally worth it and part of what makes me me.

In Colombia, I’ve encountered some of the most loving and genuine people I have ever known. I’ve also encountered selfish people, rude people, people that are only interested in themselves and think nothing of how that self-interest can affect others. That, however, is the human experience – no matter how much culture shock was locked into that experience, it is not culturally dependent – and learning how to distinguish one group from another is also part of growing up. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this year in Colombia has been like a rite of passage for me in which I came through the other side as a fully-fledged woman that has committed herself to her vision and doesn’t back down in the face of adversity.

That’s the direction I want to continue going: upwards and outwards, to help and to let myself be helped in order to grow and mutually impact others in a positive way. The interconnectedness of people is one of the great lessons I’ve learned here, just how much we can make or break an experience by being involved with each other. For those that have blessed my days with their light, I will be forever grateful. And for those that steal my energy, I am thankful to know how to distinguish them from the genuine people who are worth the effort and simply remove them from my life in order to focus my energy on the people that fan my flames.

Life happens fast. I imagine we all experience different rites of passage throughout life and at different stages. When was yours? When did you look in the mirror and realize that you were no longer pretending to be a self-sufficient, self-aware adult, but that you actually were one, and not just a scared, lost kid trapped in an adult’s body? I’m interested to know what that turning point is for people. But I would say in spite of everything I lived in my two post-university years in California, Colombia has defined that for me. And to the universe, I will be forever grateful for pushing me to leap from that precipice and into a new challenge. May I have the courage to leap some more in all the deciding moments that come my way.

Escapaditas/Weekend Getaways: La Mina

Sometimes you have just got to get away. Away from your routine, work, socializing, stress, the endless toil and trouble that seems to fill life in the city. Not to say that I live in a particularly booming metropolis, but sometimes being constantly connected to everyone around me, glued to my phone, obsessing over my goals, planning parties – it can all just really weigh me down psychologically.

Luckily, living in Colombia means having lots of inexpensive avenues to explore more and to really soak in and appreciate the natural world around you. There are so many communities, seemingly untouched by the outside world. Not to say that they aren’t perfectly modern – everyone has to have their smartphone, their TVs, their car, etc. You know, technology is ubiquitous.

But these places are low on signal and high on calm. The interactions and pace of life is slower and more relaxed. It’s almost like being in another time, simply because these places are so different to what any American is used to.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to get out of Valledupar. Parties every weekend can be draining. My friend Linda had mentioned wanting to go to this river called La Mina and stay with her relatives, camping out, so all that was left was to make it happen.

Allow me to help you envision it: a big backward, filled with dogs, ducks, chickens, and plants of all kinds, all set against the most serene of backdrops, the Sierra Nevada mountains.

A finca, which can translate to property or farm depending on how you look at it, is just that – a large patch of land with some crops, palms, and animals (usually) running around. Sometimes its accompanied by a casa campo (country home) and sometimes it has nothing more than a small, hand-constructed casita. The latter was the case in the finca I went to. In the end, my friend was kind of enough to ask her aunt and uncle, who were then kind enough to accept us into their finca.

First thing’s first: transportation. How did we get to La Mina? Well, in Colombia, it is also really easy to get around with minimal planning beforehand. Linda already knew where to go to get the little car, or carrito, that would take us out of the city. My friends Josh, Ninoska, and I met up with her downtown and immediately hopped into the back of a little van.

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The goal of these vehicles is to fill up as much as possible, which is why they are so cheap (we only paid $8.000 each to ride – that’s only about 3 dollars to travel almost an hour away!). So of course the car was full – a lady and her baby and a man in the front, another man, woman, and baby in the back along with the 4 of us. At one point, a man even stood on the back bumper and held on to travel from another town to La Mina! Needless to say, these cheap, easy modes of transportation are a bit clown-car-ish, but they’re hassle-free and cheap, so no complaining is ever done, no matter how sweaty and crowded the conditions.

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The ride was short but filled with lovely scenery. There are around 4 rivers (Rio Guatapurí, Seco, Badillo, Mojao, and a couple other smaller ones I can’t recall) along the way. Once we made it to a small town called Patillal, we headed off-carretera and worked our way along a bumpy path leading towards the mountains.

After arriving, we went about looking around, deciding where we would sleep and setting up camp. Linda and I made the back-friendly decision and slept out in hammocks under a couple trees while Josh and Ninoska set up camp in a big tent towards the far end of the finca.

We goofed around and took loads of pictures. Our hosts treated us with the utmost of hospitality. Not long after we arrived, they picked some large plantains and grilled them up for us while we set up camp and then headed off to take a swim in La Mina river. They also picked some giant yuca which would be our breakfast on Sunday.

20180224_163546 — Josh pretending he dug up this amazing yuca that Linda actually dug up. So very British of him.

After settling in, we all were ready to go dip our toes into La Mina river. The quiet walk through the town was enough to spark conversation between me and Linda as we found ourselves walking much faster than the couple with camera in tow. As we past indigenous Arawak people with their traditional dress – ancient men and young children playing on the side of the road – donkeys and hogs, we discussed how life has become far more complicated for us over simple illusions: time and money. So much of what we do is rushed by this feeling that we aren’t doing enough. This year is for me, I told her, and I want to spend it doing what matters to me, not simply living to work and spend money and then work some more.

IMG-20180225-WA0133 — Loving the sky I’m under.

As we strolled through the crepuscular dirt paths leading down towards the river, we both agreed that it is important to disconnect from all of that noise in order to discover what it really means to be human. We are not so different from any other animal – yet we over-stimulate ourselves constantly with no regards for our basic needs. So much of what we think we need is based on distractions modern society has filled our heads with. Both of us took this trip for a mutual goal: to get out of the city, away from the things that endlessly leave us Stressed Out. We dared to ask ourselves if any of that was what life was actually about or if it is in fact a simple departure from something our ancestors knew all along.

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It’s interesting to note that even though this walk was peaceful, blasts of Vallenato were not far away at any given moment. People in the coastal region of Colombia are bullosa – loud and not ashamed of it. So even as we enjoyed this lazy walk from the finca to the river and back again, we were accompanied by Vallenato blaring somewhere in the distance or at the nearest local. Linda explained that this is a tradition in coastal towns and a strategy to get people to go out and drink at the estancos, or watering hole-bars located along the winding, otherwise abandoned roads.

La Mina river is dangerously beautiful. In some parts, when the water is high, a wrong step on one of the rocks will send you slipping into swift currents that will pull you down into the harsh rockbeds laid out throughout. Some areas have whirlpools and dark waters full of soapy foam. Linda said it was probably due to the water trapped in the same area being splashed against the rocks. A part of me mused if it wasn’t because people often literally bathe in these rivers. Either way, I did very little swimming in the river because though the waters were low, the movement seemed much swifter than what I had seen before and in other places. Not to mention the recent death of a boy in the river came up during conversation. Still, the view at sunset was absolutely breathtaking, and the calm was perfect for an impromptu yoga session.

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Once we were back at the finca, Josh continued to gather wood to make a bonfire. We had decided to roast our salchichas (sausages) over the fire old school camping style and enjoy the clear panorama of the night sky. When we got back, the plantains were ready to eat, so first we restored our energy by eating large, grilled plantains with sloppy, sweet suero, a white cream akin to sour cream but a bit more chunky and – of course – homemade. Linda’s aunt and uncle offered us as much as we wanted, which meant pile after pile of delicious suero on the two big plantains I managed to consume. It’s a must if you live or travel in coastal Colombia!

Then, we stuck our salchichas on sticks and began cooking them up on the fire we built. This went better than expected, however, don’t be fooled – it was hot. It hadn’t hit those low 20 degrees- Celsius temperatures, and the blazing fire just about melted the skin off my hand and face as I tried to hold my sausage over the fire. Josh’s clever solution was to stick the skewers in the ground and watch as they roasted. Once mine was ready, I stuck them in bread and added ketchup American hotdog-style. Linda and her aunt and uncle seemed to find it pretty novel – and tasty.

With bellies full, all that was left was to sit out by the fire and share stories and marvel at the night sky. We looked up and tried to find satellites among the constellations which we also tried to identify. The moon seemed so bright that once the fire simmered out, everyone was lit by an eerie blue light.

With limited technology, I realized how quickly the fatigue filled my body after sunset. Once the sun is down, without artificial light, it’s actually very easy to go to bed early. By 9, Linda and I were curled in our hammocks under blankets, being rocked by the wind – but not sleeping, all the while stirred occasionally by the undulating boom of distant Vallenato and the occasional bursts of barks and cries from the dogs and roosters.

At night, Linda and I were freezing in our hammocks. Turns out one blanket was not enough – my back was cold against the hammock and I curled up to form a cocoon against the chill wind trying to cover every inch of myself with the blanket and the hammock to trap some warmth. Still, in spite of the cold and noise, there is nothing as peaceful as sleeping under the stars (even if the distant music did steal from the orchestra of insects surrounding us – until it finally stopped, briefly at around 4 am).

The climate of La Mina is much cooler than Valledupar because of the higher elevation, and we even saw a bit of rain on the way back (sidenote: it hasn’t rained at all – and much less torrentially, which is the norm – in Valle for over a month). Even though the sun can burn during the day, when the sun went down at night, things gradually became cooler and cooler.

20180225_064419 — Morning shadows and hammocks.

The next day, I struggled to get out of the little womb I had made of the hammock to start the day and make breakfast. By 8 am, everything was ready and eaten. I made a small omelette and some arepas and Linda’s relatives made boiled yuca pulled from the ground the day before along with that delicious suero casero. Of course, all of this went with the traditional tinto, little cups of delicious black coffee. Josh and I couldn’t help by sigh, feeling lucky to be living this amazing Colombian life.

20180225_070817 — The eggs and arepas I made, my humble contribution.

We didn’t have enough time to go up the mountain path to Atanquez, a small indigenous village with its own river landmark. So instead we took off for the chorros, or rushing waters (like a small waterfall crossed with a natural water slide) of La Mina. We took lots of pictures along the hike and enjoyed ourselves splashing in the clear waters (at least until a few families with kids in tow showed up and kind of muddied the experience). It’s a good thing I put on sunscreen, because that sun was blazing hot. Whenever we made it back to the house, we were happy to find bolis, or little bags of ice and juice, waiting for us. They had chocolate, lulo (one of my favorite juices found in Colombia), and some other berry; all were utterly refreshing.

Three things you cannot do without if you make this trip: marshmellows (obviously), bug spray, and weed (if you’re into that sort of thing). We had no insect repellent, which led to Linda and I using the local method of warding off gnats with bites more elusive than bigger mosquitos – a “magic” soap that actually does a good job of keeping them away (don’t ask me how). Still, if you go, I recommend you go prepared. Also, extra blankets don’t hurt either.

We finished our stay by having lunch and lounging around, napping, reading, and joking around in the hammocks. The weather cooled so much that I really did not want to leave, but a bit past two, our transport arrived to take us back, this time in a tiny car with no AC (just like the first).

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I won’t soon forget the hospitality shown to us by Linda’s family, the beautiful sunset and chilly sunrise, the rejuvenating rush of the rivers, and the peaceful Colombian paradise tucked away a mere 45 minutes from Valledupar. It’s mini escapades like this that remind me of just how privileged I am to live in a place still so connected to its land and traditions.

All in all, it was a pretty great way to start my birthday week.