The "Farm" and Medellin

Well, funny story, the farm we thought we were going to for a couple of weeks did not actually exist. We were in contact with the supposed farmer through wwoof and had a description of the farm:

"This is a small farm located in Cucunuba, a small and pretty town one hour and a half from Bogota. We plant vegetables, make compost, suckle chickens, sheeps. We live like peasants, simple, shy and as cheaper is possible. The life of this town is like in the old times, many people still use the donkey for carrying products and staff from town to home, people is friendly and kind. we like met friends make fire and play music in our free time. Live in the Positive timing!!!!"

OK, it is an odd descirption, we have no idea how you suckle a chicken or a sheep, but we figured parts of it are just difficulty with English. What we did not expect is for the farm to not even exist. The farmer is actually a 27 year old guy who lives with his parents in a very nice colonial home without even a yard or flower pot. He did have some wealthy relatives with land nearby and so we spent some of our time weeding flower gardens in their yards. As you can imagine, this was a bit frustrating. We will admit that the town is a friendly place and it was nice being in such a nice place. We eventually got to laughing pretty hard about living with some guys parents and weeding rich people´s flower gardens and tried our best to live in the positive timing. After his mom dropped a few hints about not being all that excited about her son bringing strangers to the house for her to feed, we decided we should continue on our journey and get out of their way. We dont think there were any bad itentions of misleading us, but maybe just some really strong wishful thinking and not really thinking things all the way through.
We are in contact with another project using sustainable agriculture to address the needs of a village discplaced by the war. No idea if it will work out, but we plan to meet with them and see if we might be of some use there.

We are now in Medellin, Colombia. Former home of Pablo Escobar and stronghold of Colombian drug cartels. Nowadays, Medellin prides itself in its modernity, and instead of drugs, the big money maker in the city is cut flowers. Having the best Metro (kind of a subway but above ground) system we have encountered, we are enjoying seeing the sights. The Metro system is tied into a couple of lines that are not rail, but are sky trams, carrying one over the mountains and over pieces of the city built up the sides of the steep mountains surrounding the city. The city is also home to a large, very nice museum filled with works of Fernando Botero. Google him as his works are lots of fun. A few of the parks also have large scultures by him.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we will head to Cartagena on the northern coast. Supposedly the most beautiful city in Colombia and possibly in all of South America, we are anxious to see what the hype is all about.

Live in the positive timing!

In Bogotá, headed to a FARM!

Yay, we have finally been able to arrange another farm north of Bogotá. We are not sure exactly what work we will be doing or for how long we will stay, but we are very excited nonetheless.

In the comments section yesterday, church Lady Melanie mentioned how our trip has evolved from our original idea and wondered what we might be learning. This is something we reflect on together often and since we are almost halfway and about to head to another farm for more learning, this is a good time to briefly talk about what it is we are learning.

It was our plan to do a lot more farming along the way in our travels. This did not work out exactly as we planned, but it has really been a benefit to us as we have not had to rush through countries that have such rich and interesting histories. We have been able to really take our time and try to wrap our brains around the Peruvian and Bolivian and other peoples and make attempts at connecting current culture with the thousands of years of history that exist in these countries. It has also given us opportunities to venture off the main roads into places full of beauty. But as readers, you know this, so what have we been actually learning?

Well, for us learning is a process that extends well beyond the experience. However, we are really excited about how things have worked themselves out. We were able to start out with a couple of great farming experiences where we learned lots about caring for sheep (including milking them and making cheese!), planting, some harvesting, beekeeping, and many other aspects of organic and sustainable farming, including eating local and in season when there is not a whole lot in season.

This set us up really nicely for the things we would see next, that we did not realize we might see. We see now that through taking our time and learning about indigenous groups and their arts and how the agrarian socieites worked along with interacting with indigenous people and seeing them struggle to keep those traditions and their own culture alive in settings that have often made it difficult if not dangerous to do so. This has helped us to put the meaning into what it is we ultimately hope to do with our knowledge and experiences. We have seen and been saddened by exploitation that runs rampant making us understand the urgency of new local economies that include local food economies in our own town (wherever that ends up being). We have seen the value of beauty in art through our interactions with artisans and through learning about cultural practices that utilize arts not for entertainment, but as a way of making life beautiful and preserving a culture that they see, and rightly so, as worth preserving. From this we have learned little about how to grow food, but have learned lots about the value of local cultures and beauty in those cultures, as well as the work that comes with this art and preservation of local culture. We have learned about the value of hard work in the face of the pressures of industrialism. Having met a family who still plows with a mule, not only because of the economic impossibility of owning a tractor, but also because they feel it is the best way to interact with the land and cultivate their food. They also would be unable to continue thousand year old traditions of cutting the mule´s hair before each field is plowed as a ritual as tractors do not have hair. To value passing on cultural traditions and to value passing on your small tract of land with its fertility in tact (not chocked full of poison and matted down from overuse) to your children more than you value profit is something that Americans including ourselves need to learn. We hope that by seeing the faces of people who live such simple lives and struggle so hard to pass on things that they find to be valuable and not just profitable, the experiences we have had will be transformative and not just educational.

Now we move on to a new farm, ready to learn more and with new eyes through which to see some of the things we may learn. This farm will not be without some sad irony. At the same time that we are working on a small organic farm in Colombia, we will be paying our taxes, part of which go to fund programs supporting aerial spraying of high powered Round-Up on large parcels of land in Colombia in the name of coca erradication. A fact that we find both disheartening and frustrating. We understand the negative effects of cocaine, however, after our experiences with small farmers in Latin America, it seems unjust to put the burden on them, especially with careless spraying of poisons that effect water supplies and cause harm to both human populations and to future hopes of food production on that land.

So, to sum it up, we feel we are learning. We also feel we are changing and seeing things on our journey that we hope will change the way we live when we return to the United States. With this in mind, we also are enjoying every moment of being in beautiful Latin America while still looking forward to our return to be with friends and family who we miss and can´t wait to partner with and continue to learn from (we know our parents and grandparents have years of agriculture and North Carolina culture in them that still needs to be passed on) in figuring out how to live in a way that reflects our experiences on this journey.

Popayan, San Agustin and Cali

We are having a wonderful time thus far in Colombia. The country is absolutely beautiful. The people are friendly and outgoing and the landscapes are incredible.

We spent a few days in Popayán, a whitewashed colonial city with a small town feel. There was very little to see specifically there, so we just wandered the streets and took in the architecture and did our usual people watching.

From Popayán we decided to take a detour to a small town called San Agustin. Located about 120km from Popayán, the road there is the absolute bumpiest ride we have been on. After about 5 hours of bumping along, unable to read and definitely unable to sleep, we heard a loud pop and felt the bus slide to one side of the road (which happened to be the side of the road with a steep drop-off) but foruntately we lacked another 10 feet on being in any danger. We got off the bus and saw the leaf springs lying on the ground and the back axel sitting at a 45 degree angle to the front axel where it had completely broken off of the bus. We were told later to wait for the bus to be fixed if we did not want to be responsible for the rest of our travel. Figuring the fix would be closer to a few days than a half hour, we jumped in the back of a passing pick up truck (which is actually a rather normal form of travel in the countryside) and made our way in 3 different vehicles to our destination. A longer day than planned, but a good story nonetheless.

We stayed at a little hostel run by a family and located on a farm. The farm grows everything from coffee to fresh fruits. Our morning coffee was amazing and the food in general was fantastic. The countryside in San Agustin is an amazing array of greens covered in flowers with steep canyons dropping off in every direction. The region was home to an indigenous group, about which very little is known. however, hundreds of burial sites have been found with statues marking the grave sites. The statues are carved from volcanic rock and were interesting to see. We visited sevceral sites during a day on horseback, making for an especially interesting mode of travel. The horses were rather competitive and were not hesitant to start an all out sprint to get in fron of the other, no matter the desires of the rider. See some of the pictures at the bottom for pictures of the many canyons, waterfalls and statues in San Agustin.

We are now in Cali. A big city known as the Salsa capital of South America. So we will be trying to show off our salsa skills in the evenings while taking in the big city during the day. Being much closer to sea level and about 2 degrees north of the equator, it is hot and we are spending the rest of the day trying to keep cool by drinking some of the most amazing fruit juices we have ever tasted. (Colombia is known for having an amazing variety of fruit).

Tracy ready to go from Ipiales (at the border) to Popayán.


Popayán after our morning climb.


One of the fun statues we visited (there were literally hundreds). This one has been well preserved and retains its color. It is more fun before you learn that the woman represented is taking the child in her arms to be sacrificed (or so anthropologists believe).




Transportation with a mind of its own.


Purdy flowers (there are lots more pics where this came from for the flower lovers)




This 9 year old met us at the waterfall and gave us a wonderful history regarding its name, its altitude, the height it drops and more. Her name is Jessica and we estimate she will likely cure cancer, create world peace and solve world hunger before age 25.


The next few are from a sugar cane mill we visited. The men are making a local treat called Panela. It is very close in taste to molassess and the process is basically identical. (But nothing is as tasty as molassess made in Todd, NC) Panela is cooked a little longer and a bit of oil is added. It hardens when cooled. We got to scrape the table for the extras that dripped outside of the mold.




Tracy standing over one of the large green canyons characteristic of this region.

In Colombia

Just wanted to give a quick update. We have made it into Colombia and are now sitting in Popayán, a small colonial city south of Bogotá. We mae it here after a very important stop in Ibarra, Ecuador. Why was Ibarra important? Because they have the Southern hemisphere´s best ice cream shop, a little place that makes homemade ice cream in a big copper bowl.

We will be gradually working our way north, taking our time and visiting various parts of Colombia along the way, as we continue to be in less and less of a hurry as our continued efforts at farm (or any other volunteer activity) work fail (even though the farming was supposed to be a big part of the plan on this trip, the lack of response from the farms has generated lots of extra time to see ana amazing variety of things, so we certainly aren´t too upset over it... how could we be upset over anything when in an apparent paradise?)

We will update more as we move along.

Baños and Quito and the Colombia Dilemma

OK, time for a new update since we found a decent computer.

We spent a few days in Baños, yes plural for bathroom, but really the city is called Baños de Agua Santa (Baths of Holy Water), named for its plethora of hot springs. It has also been blessed with an abundance of waterfalls and has the curse/fortune of a nearby volcano (curse for obvious reasons, fortune because that is the source of the hot water and because when it is erupting normally it is not a danger and it amazing to look at). We did not get to see the volcano as it was cloudy the whole time we were there.

We have arrived in Quito, the capital of Ecuador for those who did not pay attention in geography or for those who are US citizens. It is a beautiful capital at a relatively high altitude (which means great weather, high of bout 70 year round). The colonial architecture abounds and the modern skyscrapers sprawl. Capital cities in the mountains are especially impressive as you can get great views and really see the magnitude of the city.

We spent part of today in the Northern Hemisphere with the rest of you. It was only a short amount of time where we visited a monument that is located on the equator. BUT, the best part of the monument is the classic story of a great error that is not widely acknowledged today. The French used their fancy instruments (fancy in terms of the 1700s) and marked where they thought was the exact spot of the equator. A monument was eventually built, museums go up, more and more people start to visit and the tourist trap cycle starts. However, along comes GPS technology and shows that the mounment is about half a kilometer away from the equator. The beautiful part of the story is this- about 12 years ago, a local group discovered ruins from indigenous groups from Ecuador that mark the equator as well, built a couple thousand years ago, and this site is on the exact location of the equator, according to GPS. We also learned the history of beliefs of the indigenous groups regarding the equator, which pose quite a juxtaposition to the monument. The monument has etched in it, something to the effect of "This is the line that divides the two hemispheres." In indigenous language, the word for equator, a word which was used to named the city of Quito and the country of Ecuador, means balance and justice and the equator was believed to be the site that brought the two parts of the world together. The man who explained this to us and gave us a fantastic history lesson was really kind and lent us his $350 GPS device to wander down the street with until we found the exact (within 3 meters) location of the equator.

More myths about the equator- water does not spin in different directions in different hemispheres (only large systems are effected by this, not your toilet or sink) and you do not weigh significantly less on the equator (about .3% less, meaning if you drink a bottle of water you effect your weight a lot more than travelling from a pole to the equator).

This afternoon we wandered a bit around Old Town Quito and came across a church reminiscant of a larger Duke Chapel that does not have to worry about liability insurance. We were able to climb in and around the towers on the church, ring the bells, admire the architecture and get great views of the city below us.

Tomorrow we will continue our exploration of this big capital city.

From here we head north and will be crossing into Colombia. Since it is no secret that Colombia has not always been considered a safe place (prior to George W. Bush´s stupid war it ranked number 1 for kidnappings and is up there in the rankings for unexploded landmines), we thought we would explain our thought process along the way about how to deal with the geographic necessity of going through Colombia if we are to not ride any more airplanes along the way. When we departed, we were very unsure of whether we would go into Colombia or Bolivia because of the political situations in both countries. We decided that we would consistently ask for local knowledge along the way and would ask other backpackers in order to make the best decision. All we ever heard about Bolivia was about the marvelous people, the beautiful landscapes, the literally breathtaking altitude and the potential for very uncomfortable busses. No one really discouraged us from going there, although they did warm that as US people we might be given a little harder a time, something we never really experienced aside from jokes (we are never afraid to tell people we are Swiss or Canadian, or maybe even Swedish if we feel adventurous). We have done similar, albeit more extensive research regarding Colombia and have heard very similar things. We have met both travellers as well as Colombians who have told us that travel in Colombia is equally safe at this time as in Peru or Ecuador or Bolivia as long as you remain along the Panamerican (Bogota, Medellin, Cartagena and places in between). We are also told that travel outside those areas is generally safe, but just requires a bit more research to make sure (we dont plan to go outside of this area as most of what we want to experience is there). The landmines, the war, the kidnappings, from what we hear are very much limited to the jungle area of eastern Colombia (where we will not go). The kidnappings are strategic and are of wealthy businessmen, army officers and other folks who could benefit the kidnappers politically or economically (from what we have heard from everyone, this does not include smelly backpackers with torn clothes and with unkempt hair and one with a particularly bushy beard). So we are headed in to continue our journey, expecting to see beautiful people and beautiful country, taking our usual precautions (and maybe a few extras along the way). Lots of people travel in Colombia every day and have no problems at all. We could have gone without mentioning this, but we don´t think Colombia´s reputation is a secret and thus figured we would share our thought process and planning with everyone.

OK here are a few pictures.

Waterfalls in a wonderful lush valley around Baños-


White mans monument to the Equator that is .5km away-



We found the real Equator down the street, zoom in on the GPS and you will it read all zeros.


Quito from the belfry in the Basilica del Voto Nacional-


Tracy with one of the gothic towers jutting up behind her (this place was an ametuer photographers dream, there are 30 more where these came from)-


OK, here is a little game- Who can find Adam (really he is in this photo somewhere, maybe someone with good photo software can shop it and post it somewhere if you find him)