2013.03.29
Surfing around Couchsurfing.org, I discovered an event posting for backpacking in Sierra Nevadas del Cocouy. And I signed myself right up, really without knowing any solid details about the trip. It seemed like a great deal to me... someone else was doing all of the planning, and all I had to do was show up.
Lorena, the lady I found on
Couchsurfing.org who is organizing the trip, is an industrial
engineer, and the same age I am. She friendly and funny and
sarcastic. She is smart and loves to be in charge and have all of
the details at her fingertips but she is also a little insecure and
chaotic in a combination that I find instantly endearing. Within
moments of walking into her house, I feel like we are friends.
She lives with her whole family, which would be weird in the United
States, but is totally normal in Colombia – and I find the set-up
somewhat enviable, as I begin to see the closeness of family
relationships in this country.
Lorena and I both sort ourselves out before heading to the bus
station to meet her other two friends – who have also never met
each other – for the trip. The bus ride is long and uncomfortable.
But we arrive at the town of Cocouy, and track down our
guide company just fine.
We are all four of us packed into an
SUV for the drive out to the park. A small, thin dude tucks himself
into the jump seat behind the back seat without saying much, and we
head out down the long, rough road to the park base camp. As we sort
ourselves out and head down the trail, the small thin dude turns out
to be our guide, Juan Carlos (Juan is a very
common name...).
Juan
Carlos is average height and thin, and he starts out quiet terse.
Clearly it takes him a little time to warm up to people. As we get
to know him over two days of following him around the mountain, he
opens up a bit and turns out to be funny, intelligent, and full of
energy. The sort of dude whose resting state is stillness, like a
lizard. But he has infinite stamina and can, at any point, jump into
bursts of incredible speed and agility, or sarcasm... He is
indigenous, and tells us that he was born in the town of Cocouy. He
is fierce, but I imagine him to be a very playful father – we met
his wife and one year old son at the house of the guide company
before we left town.
The five of us (four tourists and one
guide) spend the next two days walking all over the park. The second
day JuanCarlos takes us up to The Pulpit, which is a place that is
high enough to have snow – very exciting for people who live at the
equator. Cocouy is incredible.
On this trip, I opted to bring all
of my own food, and not rely at all on the guide company's provided
meals. This turned out to be an outstandingly good move. It sometimes boggles my mind how incredibly bad the food is that
they served. Breakfast really amounted to fried egg with fried hot
dog (salchicha... a signature food). Dinner was a watery potato soup.
The friends I was with had also brought
their own lunches for the trip, white break and canned cream
of chicken, some salted peanuts, and sweet things. Ok, the sweet
things were Bogadillo, an incredibly tasty red paste made of guava
and sugar, often with caramel goo inside... they great. But the
other food, I want nothing to do with. I brought a bag of carrots,
apples, pears, a quinoa flake & chia seed mix, salami sausage,
cheeze, and some fresh hearty greens from the farm I had just been
at. Also some sweet corn pancake things from the store.
And I felt so good! While I am
currently not in tip-top physical shape (i've been a bit
lazy that past few months...), and I'm generally pretty slow walking
up hill, I had lots of energy to keep me going throughout the day.
David, the one dude in our group of tourists, would charge up the
mountain super fast. He is a very athletic dude. But even he would
be solidly exhausted by the end of the day when I was still coasting
on a nice, even burn.
And so here's the thing... me and my
privileged United States self made a point to go out and get the
latest, hot-shit health food for this camping trip. Quinoa, chia
seeds, and fresh vegetables. And the thing is, people here don't
know anything about that. Here in the place where Quiona & chia
seeds come from, people don't
eat them. They aren't easily available.
At one
point as we were stopped for lunch, Joan Carloas mentioned that in
the small indigenous community he lives in, in the hills around the
town of Cocouy village, they ate a dog. The three city kids I'm with
all gasp in horror, while I look at Carlos and nod, thinking “I
would eat that, if I was at someone's house and that is what they put
on the table...”
Juan
Carlos barely eats, and he hardly ever drinks water. His lunch is a
large can of sausages, and nothing else. He seems to be the sort of guy I meet often in construction crews, they guy who is lit from fires of energy from within, and just keeps burning, no matter what sort of fuel is thrown in. He walks up and down a huge
mountain, at some of the highest elevations in the world, every day
of his life. He is fully adapted to his home climate. And yet, I
wonder, what kinds of chronic illnessness exist in his community,
from mal (bad) nourtrition. I wonder how these illnesses compare to
the illnesses of malnoutrishion in the United States – wherein
malnoutrition equals bad
noutrition, not just a simple lack of calories.
As I
self-rightously congradulate myself on my healthy and delicious food
choices (I am most definitely not
well adapted to this terrain, and am happy with my normal routine of
eating every two hours), I wonder again about the ways in which
people are trained to oppress themselves. And I wonder again at the
perceived privileges of United States culture.
While
we chill out at the lodge in the evenings, I bring out my watercolor
paints and try out painting the mountain landscape. I'm not too pleased with my results, but the park staff finds the landscapes of their beloved mountains especially charming. Particularly enthrawled
is a 12yo girl named Renee, who I think is helping her mom at the
park while she's off from school (this is Holy Week of Easter, a BIG
DEAL here...). I lend my paints to Renee on our second day of
hiking, and as we set out, she is happily sitting down for a day of
ARTING.
At the
end of the day (the day we are meant to catch another night but back
to Bogota), Juan Carlos takes stock of our walking speed and energy,
and suggests that we have him hire some horses to cary our bags back
to base camp, and we can take a shortcut route there. Realizing that
we, as a group, are pretty slow, and that all three of my Bogota
friends need to work in the morning, I go along with this new plan.
I check in with JK about how important it is for me to get my paints
back from Renee.
This
is one of those times when I'm floating along, chaught in the current
of momentum of my group. If I had really taken time to check in with
myself, I would have easily realized that I wanted to stay at the
park for a few days, and keep painting. I would have realized that I
really wanted to walk
back to the basecamp to see the painints that Renee did with the
paints I leant her. I would have realized that all of the park staff
really like my paintings and wanted to buy one for themselves, and
that I could have had a great experience selling/gifting artwork to
the people there...
But on
the other hand, my credit cards, which were lost, and where hadn't
arrived before I left Bogoto Friday afternoon, were waiting for me at
the hostel in Bogota... and the idea of staying in this small town
with only the cash available to me in my pocket, while my cards sit
on the hostel check-in desk... and not to mention the energy of
breaking out of the stream of group momentum... And I didn't stay. I
allowed myself to stay in the stream of momentum and be whisked back
to Bogota on another overnight bus...And on the other hand, I was rewarded with some incredibly stunning landscape and views to hike through.
I
wished I had stayed in Cocouy for an extra couple days. I wish I had
even just walked back to the lodge to see Renee's paintings and give
her encouraging words about her art... but I told myself I was Being
Responsible by hurring back to get my cards... Also it is EFFING
COLD in Cocouy – it doesn't matter how close you are to the
equator, when you're at 4,000 meteres, it's damn cold.
And so
I left. And as much as I can justify my reasons, I feel like I have
unfinished business in the Sierra Nevadas del Cocouy. I feel like I
left a piece of my karma there, somehow. I probably won't ever go
back... and if I do, I doubt anyone there will remember me. But it's
hanting, all the same.
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