Into los llanos

Best friends since elementary, Johan (left) and David.

(Sept 7, 2012)

No matter how comfortable the bus, all night bus rides are not restful. After a long night of racing through the Colombian countryside we arrived in Paz de Ariporo at around 8:00am.  Though exhausted, we were excited to meet Johan’s friend, David.  David arrived to pick us up in the bus terminal with his friend, Pedro, and half a bottle of Aguardiente (a local liquor similar in taste to sambuca) as he had jokingly promised Johan the day before.

We were all offered a drink and then taken to Pedro’s house in town to chat and get to know each other.  After a coffee at Pedro’s (with a shot of aguardiente), we headed off to the local market for breakfast.  Soup is a very common breakfast in Colombia and Paz de Ariporo was no exception.

The soup you receive is generally (but not always) a clear broth with large chunks of meat (on this occasion, pork) with potato, maize, and green onion.  We had trouble figuring out the meat because it comes in very large pieces and you’re only equipped with a spoon.  There is sometimes lots of fat with the meat as well which is considered “better” (more flavour) but at 8:30 in the morning and after a few early morning shots of hard liquor, the texture was a little difficult to manage. The broth itself, however, was delicious, and a wonderful way to ease our stomachs into the oncoming heat of the mid-morning. 

After doing our best, we headed back to Pedro’s house to, it turned out, drink more aguardiente while making plans for the rest of the day.  With the sun beginning to glare down on our necks, we all decided that the best way to escape the heat was along the shady bank of the nearby river. 

At the river, we were also introduced to a local game called Tejo.  To play Tejo, you are broken up into two teams and everyone gets a trapezoid-shaped (like a cone with the top cut off) metal disk.  Each team has an angled wooden box filled with clay upon which are placed two firecrackers.  The firecrackers make a loud BANG on impact and the object of the game is to take turns throwing the disks at the opposing teams box in order to make their firecrackers explode.  You get points based on how close to the firecracker you get and bonus points if you hit one.

Robin and I were abysmal at the game but it was fun to play and, as you can imagine, even more fun with beer [Editor’s note: After Peter left, it turned out that Robin was actually great at the game and proceeded to lead a close match with Pedro and his wife].  The bottles of aguardiente were still being passed around, though Robin was beginning to politely decline.  Unfortunately, as the male in the couple this meant I was obligted to drink extra to compensate.  Robin realized this later by the look of despair that washed over my face as I was passed yet another shot of aguardiente and at that point she stepped in to drink a few more.

By this point we were realizing we weren’t going to make it to the finca that day and instead we all headed back to Pedro’s to wind down.  We hung out and chatted more at Pedro’s but the aguardiente was starting to catch up to me.  Robin was fairing much better after her aguardiente break during the afternoon so she started intercepting the shots headed my way. By this time, however, the damage had been done and at the first chance I got I stole away to a free hammock to sleep.

The farmhouse at David's finca.  Full of hammocks!

The next morning, we had breakfast at the house and then hopped into David’s car to head out to his finca.  As it turns out, David’s great grandparents were one of the founding families of Paz de Ariporo and therefore had 400 hectares (40 square kilometers) of land outside town.   We drove through the beautiful fields of the plains, honking at straying cows as we neared David’s family finca.  

On the farm, everything seemed much more relaxed.  We lay in hammocks and talked about living in the plains, farming and families.  We made a late lunch and then headed off to give the cows their salt quota.  Later, we went horse riding as the sun began to set, looking for small local crocodiles. We then headed back to the house for more relaxing before bed.  

I played around with taking pictures at night.  This one turned out ok.

It gets dark on the plains at around 6:30 so I was able to practice my night photography and take some neat photos.  By 8:30 the mosquitoes were out in full force and so, as our candle light began to fade we retired to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of the plains. The following morning we had a breakfast of fruit, tried our hand at milking a cow (harder than it looks) before heading back to the village to drive Northwards towards the mountain town of San Gil.