My amazing travel partner left ... so i wandered the abandoned streets of Barichara, watching the sun rise and set with the goats for a couple days. It has been really good to be in the mountains, hiking, enjoying the silence, and the company of the random strangers i encounter along the way. Tomorrow i travel to a Santuario de Iguaque, further up in the mountains to spend a couple days in this national park hiking more. Just trying to take in all this nature to hopefully sustain me for a while in the city!

To stay and patiently
peel back the layers
that hug to the core
of a country.
of a loved one.
of ourselves.

MINCA

small farming town in mountains an hour from the carribean coast. A woman in cartagena told us about this little place where she goes to paint. We had our own cabin with kitchen surrounded by mango trees and guadua (similar to bamboo) and we just spent the days hiking to waterfalls and rivers, eating good food, and drinking rum in the evenings with good company.

Rode motorcycles up to a coffee farm an hour from where we were staying and a really nice man showed us around. We met Karen, a spider, who lives in the storage building. She is famous, her offspring are at universities in Bogota and Santa Marta. Fumigation of the land 8-10 years ago to eradicate coca and marijuana plants also nearly eradicated this species of spider. So they are trying to repopulate the area with this native species. The chemicals left in the soil caused the coffee farm to loose their organic license. They are integrating volcanic soil and compost constantly into the soil in hopes of regaining this license in the next few years. And most permanently, there has been an increase of children born with birth defects in the region. Just one example, of so many, of the long term effects of a short term solution.

Cabo de la Vela

Arrived in Riohacha last night, in department of La Guajira, after some time in Medellin and Cartagena. Medellin has been my favorite large city yet full of art, music, and not very touristy. WE went to concerts, casinos, and spent a good part of our time hanging with a group of Hari Krishnas eating excellent vegetarian food, practicing yoga, and singing Krishna mantras.

Cartagena is a romantic colonial town right on the ocean and was dreamlike. We shared an amazing mushroom risotto and saw a really good french movie. however, I had a little trouble with the obvious line between those who are served and those who serve, those who are entertained and those who entertain, those who consume and those who are peddling their wares through the streets. It was difficult to seperate yourself from that.











so we are now in La Guajira, which is the arid peninsula near the venezuelan/colombian border where we are visiting artisan groups again through Aid to Artisans. We spent the day today with a Wayuu community of 20 families who lived an hour truck ride and a very hot 30 minute walk from the hiway through the desert. They work making super intricate and beautiful crocheted bags that take weeks to make. Aid to Artisans is also offering capacity building workshops in working with goat hide and their traditional weavings and crocheted straps to make a variety of bags.

We had an amazing lunch of sun-dried goat meat, rice, and chicha made from maize. learned a lot in a short period of time today but some of the things that stuck out were; The Wayuu live both in Colombia and Venezuela and migrate freely across the borders many times traveling to Venezuela during the dry season and returning to La Guajira when the rainy season starts, Wayuunaiki-Spanish bilingual schools are promoted and prevelant throughout the region, young women when they begin their menstrual cycle spend a 5 year period in seclusion where their only contact is with their mother and their aunt and they dedicate these years to learning about how to become a woman and female labor such as sewing, weaving, and crocheting. Each Wayuu community is named after the mother´s last name, since they maintain a matriarchial structure.

Tomorrow we are visiting artisans who work with ceramics and then we head further north to a place called Cabo de la Vela.

Spent two days working with San Isidro Coffee Association; 94 coffee farmers in mountains 40 minutes outside small town of Pitalitos. Members, Orlando and Rosaria, drove us around visiting the farms and teaching us about the production process of converting raw fruit (cherry) into green coffee beans for export which involves harvesting the fruit, removing the pulp (which is then used for compost), rinsing and drying the beans, and then packaging them to export to roasters abroad. 25% of their sales are Fair Trade and they receive a 10 cent per pound premium that is invested back into community projects such as a middle school, health clinic, reforestation projects (to protect the black oaks), and a regional bird conservation and education program. The association jointly purchased 350 acres of land that is protected forest.

visited rosaria´s fathers granadilla farm... fruit similar to passion fruit which you crack open and suck out seeds embedded in a mucousy membrane. it seems a little nasty until you try it. they´re cheap, fun to eat, and really refreshing.

Then visited small mountain town of San Agustine and the arqueological park that has the largets number of religious monuments/megaliths in s. america. We had the park to ourselves and spent 4 hours hiking around... appreciating the landscape and the imagination in the carvings.

WE have seen some spectacular landscapes. road from San Agustine to Popoyan was in a small bus, bumpy dirt road through a tunnel of jungle (162 km, took 7 hours, averaged 12 mph). This route, we had been warned, is known to have occasional guerilla activity, but that we would be fine if travelling by day. three hours in, we arrived at a small restaurant with soldiers (military) camping out in camouflaged tents and gear... tucked into the jungle... 4 military tanks. We crossed a rickety bridge over an incredible, and profound, river gorge and in a retrospective glance back after crossing i read the yellow road sign ¨peligro, puente en mal estado¨... which spurred a laugh attack and then the little kid in front of us had a laugh attack and hiccups at the same time and then everyone fell asleep and were tossed around to the beat of the vallenato music on the radio. Then out of the jungle we entered into this dessert like terrain and into lush green valleys with snow capped mountains in the distance. amazing!

Artisan visits in Neiva

Spent 5 days in Neiva, the capital of the department of Huila, located along the banks of the Rio Magdalena, and surrounded by dessert. We taught basic computer classes to 20 artisans, all women, all displaced, and in the afternoons visited their workshops. The artisans work with the natural fibers Fique and Mimbre, leather, wood, Tagua (a nut from a palm native to colombia which has similar qualities to ivory) i learned that it was used to make about 25% of all buttons sold in the US before 1920 before the mass production of plastic buttons.

Working with Aid to Artisans and learning from the artisans has been super educational. Not only learning about the artisan processes which is fascinating, but learning about their realities, their struggles. To see their community, their support for one another. We will be working with several indigenous artisan groups in Guajira, northeast part of the country on carribean coast and bordering Venezuela, later in the month.

sueño too

I woke up surrounded by the weavers of time

in the jungles of rain

where past and present join hands

where yesterdays path

no longer exists

overgrown and healed

surrounded by the songs

that have been sung

for thousand of years.