Año Nuevo

January 1st, 2011
¨Año Nuevo, es bueno comenzarlo por encima de las nubes¨ - Avianca Aerolineas

What a beauifully simple way to end the year. The women who invited us into their home showed me what it is to love people- I have never felt such warmth and compassion from complete strangers. Without furniture to sit on nor silverware to eat with, Ehren and Jonas´ couch surfer family welcomed eight foreigners to dinner to celebrate life and the coming of a new year. At midnight we were in the streets, kissing the neighbors and dancing while fireworks screamed from all directions. Families were smiling and toasting while the babies looked on in a perfectly content stupor. The adolecents paired up to salsa on the sidewalks while the big kids gathered to hit the town. And there we were, five gringos watching and laughing at the perfect Colombianess of it all...

David and I arrived to Bogota, staying at a chill hostel in the Candelaria on a plaza that faces the very first house built in the very first neighborhood of Bogota. The whole city was strangely quiet as everyone was home with their families for the holiday. Walking back from dinner we met a couple artesanos and struck up a conversation over whiskey shots from the bottle. Again, San Agustin has come to me, it seems there is something there I cannot miss... this time the message comes in the form of a older rasta who has been living in Granada, España for the last three years, but who claims San Agustin as home. He has a pleasant demeaneaur and we go back to his house for warm aguapanela and talk of ´la abuela´, the tribes in Putumayo, medicinal plants of the Amazona, Shaman, guerillas, ideas for non-profit projects, memories of Granada... my head is full of vivid images of these places and these people of the jungle. My senses on full alert. I feel a magnetism...

¨Colombia, el riesgo es que quieras quedar.¨
j