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Close Call

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buencamino3:

About fifteen years ago I made a trip to Naranjal  in Valle Del Cauca Department near the border with Chocó. I’ve written that trip up here in the past. After that trip it was off limits for many years because it was occupied by the FARC. That threat has ended and a few weeks ago I decided to return with the same European friend with whom I went before. The town is very remote and many of the residents are Indian. In fact my friend’s secondary motive was to be introduced to an Indian girl by a woman who lives there who had worked for him in his home village of Trujillo some years back. The principal plan however was to take the unpaved road that leads out of Naranjal that we had taken years ago. The attraction is that there are many rare orchids along that road that we both wanted to photograph. The road travels for about thirty kilometers and dead ends near the Chocó border at which point a foot/horse trail begins that heads down the western slope of the Western Cordillera into the jungle.

I drove up from Cali and picked him and his thirteen year son up at the Riofrio traffic circle. We continued north towards Roldanillo and turned off the main road left at Bolivar and headed west towards Naranjal. It was all unpaved but very scenic. We arrived in Naranjal in late afternoon. The plan was to spend the night in the hotel and head down the road towards Chocó the next day making many stops where we saw orchids and anything else of interest. We had time to kill that afternoon so went a river bank at the edge of town where his kid and a local kid went swimming. Shortly after I parked at the rivers edge two guys pulled up on motos and just stood there watching us the hour or so we were there. One was mestizo and the other Indian. My friend took a picture of his kid making sure he had them in the background but we didn’t think much of it.

That evening we sat in a panaderia having a beer when two police on a moto spotted us (two gringos…what the f…ck?!). They asked us for ID and wanted to know what we were doing there.  When we told them our plan they got very serious and had worried looks on their faces. One got on the phone. Then they told us that we absolutely must not go down that road, that the ELN arrived two weeks ago and were just fifteen minutes out of town. Furthermore that the guerrilla knew we were there (the guys by the river) and knew we planned to go down that and were in fact waiting for us. The police said if you go there is nothing we can do for you because there are twenty five of them and only eleven of us. (Those police might have lost their jobs if we were taken).

While the FARC have (mostly) made peace with the government the ELN have not and are pressuring the government to meet their demands by every means they can think including deadly ambushes on police patrols and of course kidnapping any foreigners who fall into their hands. The head of this particular group was reported to be especially vicious  and people in the village later told us the guerrilla had already killed some campesinos and would likely kill us if they got ahold of us. 

Needless to say that put the kibosh on our plans. We spent that night in the hotel. It was  just a big house with a lot of rooms but had a garage where my car could be kept safe for the night after they moved some motos and a refrigerator around. My room was small but thad a bathroom and the bed was perfectly comfortable. All for twelve thousand pesos (four US bucks).

The next morning we hung around because it was auction day when the ganaderos from the surrounding farms brought their cattle in for sale and it was kind of a rodeo. Then we had lunch and headed back. The Indian girl turned out to be too fat. Here’s a map with Cali at the bottom.

Ricardo1:
Great post, thanks for sharing!  A "heads-up" on what could potentially go wrong travelling to out-of-way places in Colombia.
Would be great to see some of your orchid pictures if you have some to post on here.

buencamino3:
Thanks Ricardo. I have an online scrapbook of photos I've taken of various nature subjects. One section is "plants" and in that are "orchids". Just keep clicking to get there. I'm missing IDs on a lot of them though.


https://colombianature.smugmug.com

Ricardo1:
Buencamino, that a great 'scrapbook'.  I looked at Jaimie's photos a while back, and lots are quite impressive.  So are yours, you've obviously devoted a lot of time, probable equipment to get your great images. 


The good thing about Colombia is that there is some much to photograph, nature-wise, the only down-side I see is the insecurity that lies in pretty much all of the country.  I know when I was out-and-about with a Colombiana girlfriend, they were always concerned that my camera (a compact that I usually carried when there) might get stolen.


Thanks for sharing!


p.s. have you been to Colombia BirdFair[/font][/font][/size]
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[/size]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CrVodoLzRM


http://colombiabirdfair.com/concurso-fotografia-celsia/


https://www.facebook.com/colombiabirdfair/

buencamino3:
I have not been to the bird fair because it is held all the way down in the south end of Cali and I am all the way in the north. I'm too lazy to make the drive. Also when they go out on field trips they get the same things I have where I live. I don't want to be cavalier but I wouldn't be so worried about insecurity and camera equipment. I've used mine all over the place from Puracé in Cauca Department to Puerto Nariño on the Amazon. The only place I didn't take any pictures was Naranjal, the place in my trip report. Number one the Indians get very angry if you photograph them (they always go around with angry looks on their faces anyway) and two, there were clearly bad guys in the village either guerrilla in civilian clothes or drug people. In fact we watched from the panaderia as one of the latter was trying to recruit two twelve-year olds right in front of us. My concern there wasn't for my camera...it was for me!

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