And... touch down!

Smooth entry into one of the world most feared countries, no hickups and made it with my mate to Pasto, a quiet southern town where folks aren´t used to my funny accent and so i tend to keep my mouth shut letting Rosana do the talking. Pasto is at the foot of an active Volcano, level 2, which occasionally puffs up. Breathing masks hang right inside the front door along with the house keys. We´re staying with friends of Rosana´s, who have a small but welcoming home and who took us around for the city tour, which needed only 1 day. Everywhere i look women are wearing clothes so ultra tight and girlie, i choke just looking at them, but somehow beautifully adorened. Who would´ve thought i could look dowdy, ME! I hesitantly said to Roasana that i might need at least one outfit that´s not hanging off of me like a sack of potatoes, so now we´re on the look out for ropa apretadita como una berenjena...

I didn´t have plans on getting to the Pacific coast but knowing it was so close we decided to take a two-day trip to Tumaca and catch the rays. On a minibus, as you do, winding mountains and more pot-holes than you can possible swirve around, we carry along some beautiful landscape, agriculture like patchwork quilt, and some of the most impoverished lands of the country. About 2 hours from the coast the ground gets lusher, the humidity and heat starts to slap you around every which way, coco trees, banana plantations and the endless military checkpoints. No drama really, and no paramilitary or guerrilla in these parts, probably because of the strong military presence and not a stronghold of the former - be assured loved ones, i choose my destinations wisely and with ample international and local advice.

Getting closer into town we see housing, on the shores of this kind of delta river-sea landscape, built rudimentary on stilts and very modest looking. The population on both coasts of columbia, the pacific and the atlantic, is predominantly black, and, suprise, lacking in infrastructure and social and economic benefits that are more likely to be enjoyed by capital cities and whatnot. Off our bus and on to urban transport to the seaside to get to our beachview lodgings - shame the tiolet doesn´t come with a toilet seat. Fish and seafood is great here, and you get folks carrying fresh fish, in the heat, door to door. And have i mentioned the million varieties of corn AND maize cooked in alllll sorts of ways, and although i´m finding hard to have every day, i know i going to miss it later when i´m gone. The row of hut-restaurants on the sand each have music blaring out of them which is a shame cos you can´t make out any one of them. The beach has grey sand.

We were in the disorganised centre of town where there is a concrete football field and tall black boys are playing. Sitting on a bench a young man next to us is intrigued and needs to know where we´re from. At first i joke and say i´m local but he sets me straight by highlighting the color of my arm next to his, he smiles innocently lettingthe facts speak for themselves. He wants to know what australia is like and i start by saying that i don´t even like it. That shocks him cos people generally like where they´re from, he says. I feel i have to explain, justify and exemplify. Life is individualistic, i say, and solitary. There aren´t people all over the street all day long, music isn´t heard on the street neither, folks don´t sing their way to the supermarket, we´re dictated by the car and long distances, and we don´t dance ...well. He looks at me in horror. I´m checking through in my head if what i said is in fact fair about my people. I continue explaining (or try) the different living conditions and landscape of australian life, more to myself it seems than anyone. It starts to rain and Rosana and i turn around to each other like scared cats. We have to catch a bus, we say, and he says good bye and runs off confused.

Out here in international wilderness, i´m constantly presenting and defining not just me but my national identity, but this is not a precise science. I´m not sure i´m doing a good job, and why when people ask me whether to immigrate to australia i tell them there´s better places to go to and i give them the run down of all the things they´ll be missing..? ...my issues? But I AM glad i´m coming back soon, i´ve got it all worked out, well, most of it. (Hey, comments are welcomed but sign in other than anonymous)

So back to Pasto and on the way to Cali, where i get dumped on my own. Later.