Colombia, the good, the bad, the ugly

ha ha. Well, been having just a good time in Colombia. Yeah, some good has passed, some bad too. Where to start? So, I guess I left off telling you how Colombian girls are the most beautiful in the world. Well, I´ll stick to it, don´t worry...

Since then...geez. I guess I should tell you how I got robbed in the park.

So, I was sitting in the park with two of my amigas, who, coincidentally are beautiful colombian girls...anyway, we were taking a picture of the three of us with the cell of one of the girls. I said, let me take it, my arms are the longest. I was trying to get it right, taking too long. This guy comes over and tries to grab the phone, but I see him coming. He lunges for me, knocks me on my back, for we were sitting. I kicked him with my feet, and he fell back. Then another guy comes, and I see he has a knife. The girls were shouting and hitting the guys with their purses. But since I saw the knife, I stopped resisting and they grabbed the phone from me and ran off really fast. We chased them, but they were gone in a flash. Fortunately, none of us were hurt. But my friend lost her cellphone. I´ve never been assaulted with a knife. But, it´s not good to sit in that park after dark.

That park is about a block from my appartment. But, usually it´s cool. You just can´t sit around there being blond after dark and with your cell phone out...

I guess the next big adventure was going to La Vega. La Vega part two! For those who didn´t know, I originally went to find the family of a good friend of my sisters that I grew up with. She was getting married the same weekend I think. This time, I wasn´t sure what I would find, what I would do. And that leads us to the next adventure...

I loved La Vega so much, that I put my song ¨La Vega¨on my album, and I have two pictures from La Vega on the album too. Good people there.

Oh, it was so nice! I saw my old friends, played with the kids, went to the farm...lots of fun. The weather there is perfect. I was freezing in Bogota. It´s not that cold, but it´s rainy and chilly, and we´re at 8500 feet, pretty high. That´s why the rain and cold...so, the weather in La Vega is nice and warm, I chilled there, relaxed with the good people, sang songs for the children, got away from the madness of Bogota for a bit. It´s good, because Bogota is huge, lots of people, lots of noise, pollution, danger...but La Vega is quiet, safe, good people.

My first night there, I bought a beer from the corner store and sat down with some folks from La Vega. There were two horses tied to a poll close by, and I was admiring them.

I was just chatting with the folks from La Vega, and I met the guys with the horses. They told me that the colombian horses are famed the world over, as the smoothest ride in the world. It´s called, the Colombian paso fino. So, we´re sitting there, hanging out, and they say, why don´t you try it? I had had a couple beers, and being a lightweight, was a little tipsy, and so I said, I don´t know, maybe later...I was quite hesitant. Plus it´s been more than ten years since I mounted a horse. The first time I did, I fell off on top of my sister, and she broke my fall. I said, hey, that fall wasn´t too bad! But, my sister was crying...

Anyway, finally, I said, what the heck, I´ll try it. The guy rode around and gave me a demonstration, and it truly did appear smooth. So, I mounted the horse, and rode around the park of La Vega. It was awesome! It was a very smooth ride, and the horse, very calm and managable. I came back to the corner where they were. They said, go on, go around again! So I did. Man, that horse was smooth.

Thus, I mounted my first time a Colombian horse, the paso fino, smoothest in the world.

By the way, Colombia also has the best coffee. At least, some say so. And I have to say, Colombia has the best juices. They make juices from everything, with milk or water, all kinds of tropical fruits. Man, it´s nice!

So, I passed a lovely time in La Vega, and decided I didn´t really need to try any more to find the mom. People always ask me, what happened, did you find the mom? And, I didn´t have an end to the story. But, I guess I know now the end...

In the end, Blanca, who helped me a ton with the search, found the mom in the register of the town. She said that my friend can find her if she sends the papers of birth and adoption and all that. So, it´s up to her...but she also told me, she thinks the family is probably very poor, because only in these circumstances are babies adopted. So in the end, she was lucky to get to raise out of poverty...

You have to realize, the mothers in Colombia are very loving of their children, in general I would say more than the USA. They are very affectionate and raise their kids with a lot of care. Blanca told me, when mom´s have their babies taken here, they suffer their whole lives for this. So, it´s kinda sad. In my song, La Vega, I glorify La Vega and the people of La Vega, because I met some very good people. But, I think that if this girl grew up there, it would have been very hard. Blanca told me, she may have gone days without eating...so, that´s the rest of the story.

I tend to be an idealist, so it is often that I find my ideal dreams of things shattered. But, I suppose I´m just a dreamer, and I´ll keep dreaming. It´s not the way things are, but the fiction often beats the truth. We all live in a fiction of one sort of another. Every truth has a context, so it depends how large a context you wish to look at. In the big picture, all of us will be dead in 1000 years. Even 100. But thus, it´s not so useful to look at it on such a large scale. So, we all have various things we believe in and live for, and these vary from religion to religion, region to region. And this is what you learn traveling, one of the things. Anyway, gotta run! Later I´ll tell you about how my computer screen just kind of went out, and I don´t know why. Well, now I´ve told you.

So, another dream shattered.

I guess that´s what happened.

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