Part 2: Lucía and Bahia Solano

[JimD]

Well I didn’t really mean to promise a part 2 but since there is interest I will continue the story. It might be a little anticlimactic. I hope not.  

While we were talking with Herman at his property in Dos Quebradas he told me of a place he thought I might like to visit called Bahia Solano on the pacific coast of Chocó.  Wow! Of the information I had to date about Colombia I’d certainly never heard of that place.  When I got home I tried to look it up on the net but there really wasn’t much information at that time. Anyway I decided I would  return to Colombia and take Lucia to there. It would be fun. She’d really never been far from Trujillo and certainly never gotten on an airplane. On my return trip we met in Cali. She was staying with some relatives there sort of waiting for me. She was also avoiding the bad marrido in Trujillo. He’d been bugging her about me. Not because of jealousy or anything, he was demanding that she get money from me for him. Such is rural romance! I could see when I arrived that she was stressed and it turned out that it was because the big family where she was staying were making her work very hard washing all of their clothes every day by hand of course. She wasn’t going to be allowed to stay there and eat with out working. Surprising then that there was a neighbor lady who was willing to put me up for free. This was in strata 2 Barrio Melendez within walking distance of Unicentro.

The manager girl at the agency I’d used told me about Confenalco which had a travel agency she liked. We went there and there were several options. All were actually up the coast a little way from Bahia Solano at a fishing village called El Valle (not to be confused with Valle De Cauca). There was the Hotel El Valle right in the village and there were a couple of cabaña compounds a half hours walk out along the beach. The hotel was the most economical option and I chose that. I bought a package at the travel agency that included the flight (which was direct from Cali at that time), hotel for five days with  three meals daily and transfers in public jeep from the airport at Bahia Solano to El Valle forty five minutes away on dirt track road. (Two years later the FARC kidnapped a big tour group of retired caleños who had gone up to El Valle to fish. That ended direct flights from Cali.)

Lucia was ridged for most of the flight. In fact I think she was pretty terrified but being a  campesina, a life where everything is tough she was stoic and didn’t  complain or show her fear. At the tiny airport we were met by Yaneth the hotel owner. She recorded us with the army (there is an army base there)  and then we took the jeep to El Valle. Somewhere along the way some bastard behind us reached into Lucia ´s bag and stole her little coin purse with the six or seven hundred pesos she had in it.

We got to El Valle and I thought boy this is as far as you can get from the world and still be in it! If you wanted to go somewhere where you’d never be found this was the place and I quickly got the impression that some of the local denizens where there for precisely that reason. On the street we ran into a Colombian tourist and of course he asked where I was from. I told him and then he said to me in a low voice “be careful” and that he had US citizenship but didn’t want anyone in El Valle to know for fear of being kidnapped.

The hotel was  basic and was one those typical Chocó structures where the walls are made from horizontal wooden boards that have shrunk so you can see between the cracks. Hang a sheet on the wall and you have privacy.  The rooms were on the second floor. Ours was comfortable enough but the shower was just a straight water pipe with a very dinky trickle of cold water. The first floor held the restaurant and a hardware store so that at lunch time Janeth was always switching between cooking and selling a light bulb. Of course light bulbs probably lasted a pretty long time since the electric in the village came from a diesel generator that only ran about four hours a day. Janeth had her own “planta” so we had light until about nine. At least until it broke down.  One of the above mentioned denizens was an old German mechanic who lived with a big black woman. Janeth said he was a very good mechanic but he was very drunk most of the time so catching him sober so he could fix her “planta”  was the problem, (a scene out of The African Queen). One morning he came by in pretty good shape though and did the job.

The food was great. Every morning around eleven a fisherman would come to the hotel and sell something he’d caught earlier that morning to Janeth  and  she would cook it for our lunch.

The only bodies of  water Lucia had ever been in were the creeks and small rivers around Trujillo and she’d never been in water over her head so you can imagine what the Pacific Ocean looked like to her. At El Valle there’s a lot of tidal movement. At low tide the beach is huge and the water  is  calm but at high tide the waves are big and violent and you wouldn’t think of trying to go in the water. Lucia wouldn’t even walk close to the edge of the beach at high tide. At low tide however there were lots pools around big rock formations with water heated by the sun that made safe and comfortable bathing pools for her. After a couple of days she got to where she’d go into the ocean waist deep at mid tide when there were entertaining but not dangerous waves.

Janeth told us if we wanted something to do to go find “Rambo” and he could take us in his dugout up the crystal clear, mangrove lined river through the jungle that emptied into the ocean at El Valle. Rumor had it that he was an ex guerrilla who’d defected and come to a place where no one would bother him. He did indeed have a bit of a Stallone aspect about him. He also seemed to have a little bit of environmental knowledge which was encouraging.  He told us that an interesting trail began on the other side of the river mouth  that you could walk for many kilometers eventually arriving at Parque Nacional Utria. This park is important because it contains a gentle bay where the Jojoba whales spend time with their young during migration and it’s the best place in Colombia to see them up close.  We decided to check out the trail but Rambo was out fishing that day so we had to go find some one else to ferry us across the river mouth. This person had a really small dug out  (these really are hollowed out logs so they are really narrow and really tipsy) and had to make two trips to get both of us across. I was concerned for Lucia in case it capsized because she couldn’t swim. We both made it across safely though and hiked south along the jungle trail for several hours towards Utria. Indians are known for having great eyes and Lucia was no exception. Even though she had one Lazy eye that seemed to always be looking off to the right it didn’t affect her vision.  I’d brought along a pair of binoculars for her and she was totally into spotting birds and lizards and pointing them out to me where upon I would rifle through my guide and try to find it. Lucia would spot birds that were sitting absolutely still in deep shade. Indian eyes. When it started to get late we cut through the jungle to the shore and returned north to El valle hiking along the beach. Once again we had to do the dug out balancing act.  

One morning I got up and Lucia was gone. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I came across Janeth and said have you seen Lucia? Sí está atras. I went out to the back of the hotel and there she was washing our clothes in one of those sort of corrugated  tubs you find everywhere in Colombia. (In a million years I could not imagine my current city girl doing that, the better part of the rest of it either.)

Another day we were hiking along a road out of El Valle enjoying the sights when a campero (Toyota 45 or something) came down the road towards us. It stopped and the driver asked us some questions which Lucia had to answer since my Spanish wasn´t up to it.  The car took off and I could see Lucia was as ridged as she’d been in the airplane. I said what’s up and she said she didn’t trust those people.  (Later I understood because people like that in vehicles like that who came through Trujillo are always paramilitaries, Rastrojos, FARC or some other dangerous people.) That got us into a discussion about trust and she taught me (“taught” because this really was my biggest lesson from the campesina) that there is no trust in Colombia, that not even members of the same family trust each other (at least in her ambiente) and that any campero coming down the road could represent a threat.

It was all in all a great trip and all´s well that ends well and it did. We returned to Cali said our “hasta luegos”  and I flew north.

What happened later? Well I made a practice of calling her from the US and a few weeks later she told me her sister had left for Yopal in los llanos in Casenare departemento with her marrido and Lucia was going to go stay with them for a while since life was hard in Trujillo. In the first call to her when she’d arrived Yopal she told me come to Colombia and take the bus to Yopal,  There’s lots of interesting nature we can see. Yopal es tranquillo and there are lots of foreigners here.  A week or so later I called again and she said don’t come!!!  There are guerrilla all around my sister’s barrio and if they find out that “yo ando con un gringo me van a extortionar!!!” Esos extranjeros de que te conté? Todos tienen guardaespaldas!!!  So that was that.  Some time later Ruud told me she had returned to Trujillo and this time had taken up with a FARC guy.  I wouldn’t doubt that she got her self a FARC guy in Yopal after a week and did me the favor of steering me clear.

My commentary on all of this is find your self a chica whether wife material or not to take to exotic destinations in Colombia. There is just absolutely no experience more rewarding.

[raycjs]

Jim

 thanks for the great report i found it very intersting.



Ray

[Researcher]

    Great report Jim!


    Researcher

[Jeff S]

Yes, Jim, fascinating. Kind of scary too. It's good to remind people you're not in Kansas anymore Toto, too.

[dennislevy]

JimD
Just a fabulous writeup!

I ve been to Choco, but nothing more exotic then Quimbo!

Kudos to you!!!!!

Dennis

[JimD]

Thanks guys. And Dennis "fabulous"? Special thanks I appreciate that! What did you do in Quibdó? I was there for the first time some months back. Really good place to buy artenesias.

[Kiltboy1]

Jim

You lucky Dog You

Go Man Go !

KB

[utopiacowboy]

I hope you continue to write these reports of travels past and present. They are extremely interesting.

[whitey]

Very cool story, and a little scary. 

I don't sit in a Juan Valdez all day drinking coffee (just part of the day ... haha), but I don't know if I have the cojones to venture out into the boonies with the FARC and the paras like you ...

[V_Man]

Jim that is a fascinating report. You said Lucia had a lazy eye but you didn't mention she was such a cutie!

[JimD]

V man yes one eye was always looking off to the right. You see lots of these abnormalities in the pueblos because there is no money to fix problems when children are young. At first her eye put me off but then I grew to like it. It looked like she was alwys coquettishly looking away.

[robert angel]

JimD,

Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed both parts of this story. They were sort of a 'vignette', giving relatively short, but nonetheless interesting studies of the people involved, the land and situation, all intertwined in a well written, thought provoking manner. The politics involved (FARC) and the natural beauty described, including where the Howling monkeys, as well as where the Jojoba whale mlgrate through, were quite interesting, to name but two.

Sounds like you're definitely not the 'air conditioned guided tour bus' kind of guy, that you're more the fellow that like the title of the initial post indicates, who tends to take 'the road less traveled'.

I think I'm that way also. While they say staying at a Holiday Inn Express might make you 'feel' smarter, I think a person's wits are most acute when they're on foreign territory, off the beaten path where danger, as well as rewarding adventure, might be around the next bend.

I couldn't help but feel sad for Lucia, who may have gone with a guy who was with the FARC out of circumstance and necessity and probably could've made some pesos by inviting you back and into a trap. I have been in places where if someone on a small village really wanted to, one phone call to the wrong (wrong for me anyway) people and I could've been kidnapped. It really makes one realize how precious and yet how transient life can be. I wonder what happened to Lucia -- I can only hope she found some medium of happiness in a land where happiness is measured differently than it is in 'first world countries' and doesn't always come easily.

I think that pretty much all the people here looking for a foreign 'significant other' tend to have more of a risk taking, adventurous streak than do the 'average' people around them. It sort of makes us a breed apart.

It's great that you posted a trip report on an adventure that took place sometime ago. I don't think the timing makes it any less relevant. Trip reports may well be the most interesting and entertaining parts of what they have here on P-L and it would be great if more people pulled out great stories of journeys past, as I think they still make great, useful reading. Thanks, man--well done!

Surely some other readers here have some great stories of trips gone by, worth recalling here?

 


 "The Road Not Taken"
 
 
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth;         
 
Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same,         
 
And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back.         
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.   

(By Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920)     
 
 

[whitey]

Robert is BACK!  I missed you, buddy.

[JimD]

Thank you Robert for the very kind words and I´m very glad you found the stories interesting. Lucía is back in Trujillo. My friend who lives there sees her around the park. She is a cristiana now and goes about in long skirts.