Saturday in Suesca

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I awoke in the dark to the sound of my cell phone’s grating alarm. Fighting the urge to smash the vexatious device, I instead flipped it open to shut off the alarm. When my eyes adjusted to the blinding light I saw that it was only 5:00 a.m.

And it was Saturday.

After mustering the motivation to get out of bed, I trudged to the bathroom in hopes a shower would shock me into full consciousness. Luckily, the shower more or less did the trick and I got dressed and sat on my bed to put on my hiking boots—the first time I put them on since the day I got to Colombia.

What had compelled me to wake up at this ungodly hour on the holiest of days was a chance to finally use my hiking boots—to get out of Bogotá and experience the Colombian countryside.

All set, I left my apartment and headed down to the main road to hail a cab. After having a more or less comprehensible conversation with the cab driver, the cab dropped me off in front of a building with two large charter buses parked outside. As I stepped out of the cab, the eighty or so people loitering on the sidewalk next to the buses turned to look at me, curious.

“Hello Mike,” I heard someone say.

Turning to the voice, I saw that it belonged to a short man with a long ponytail resembling an elephant’s tail.

“Juan Carlos?” I said.

“Yes, Sir,” Juan Carlos replied, shaking my hand.

Juan Carlos was the brother of one of my coworkers at Nueva Esperanza and taught and English class for adults. After he learned I was living in Bogotá, he invited me to join him and his students for a day of rock climbing in Suesca, a small rural town north of Bogotá—he thought it would be beneficial for them to be exposed to a native English speaker.


Read the rest at my TravelBlog

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