Dispatch Number 66 -Pig

Observation and processing of an experience is something done best alone, there are no voices to shatter it. On a morning desert walk along a sand road that cut through a forest of scaly wrathlike trees I saw a dirty white pig foraging for food, small enough to still be suckling a tit.

On the way back I saw the same piglet crushed dead in the roadway; a pickup must have run it over by accident. I had seen it foraging for food only an hour before. A life ended with intestines squeezed out and mouth still moist filling with flies. Damp sand stuck to its mouth, tongue and saw-like teeth.

I stood over the runt, felt little emotion, no pity or sentimentality. Alone I experienced this. When walking alone one doesn't have to listen or offer hollow sentimentality or drum up pity about a dead pig and how we should do something like bury it or chase the flies away. It was dead. Nature or the community would take care of it; deserts are extremely efficient in these ways. I stood over it. I continued my walk back to the village where people and water were.

The next morning I drove the same road I walked. The pig was gone.
The peacefulness of aloneness and no voices to shatter it.

David
Otavalo, Ecuador

Dispatch Number 65 -Mechanic

Mechanic
"Mile" the weathered and wrinkled drunk mechanic prattles on something bad with insufferable monologues. Deaf, too, the way drunks are. He was important to befriend for he showed the way to Nazareth over a befuddling maze of dirt track roads. It is so easy to get lost out here. It was how we met Mile in the first place, we got lost and drove into the wrong town.

On the way to Nazareth nearly all the people we passed were members of his family. Men in pickup trucks loaded with cargo and small groups of women walking hunched over with bundles tied to their backs in traditional long dark skirts and white blouses.
With a beer in his hand from the back seat he'd holler in his scratchy voice at them then tell us, that's my cousin, that's my uncle or nephew, and on like that for 10 miles of dirt track.

Once that beer was drained we reached a wood shack, more like a chicken shack that sold snacks and beer. Mile ordered a stop, hopped out and took a drink order at 10am. He frowned, hopped back in the truck, the chicken shack was out of beer. Mile's 10 mile routine was disrupted.

In Nazareth he made introductions, for in these remote and sparsely populated parts of the Guijira desert it means something, it changes they way people interact with you. His introductions and references were extremely helpful.
On second day members of his large family were driving by to say "Hi", people we never met, yet knew who we were. It made the small pueblo more welcoming and less hostile (much of which is in your head). In remote places like this the presence of a stranger is felt like a stone tossed into a calm pond.

David
Otavalo, Ecuador

Dispatch Number 64 -Travelers Epilogue

This is a series of a one month journey in the northeastern region of Colombia on the Atlantic coast near Venezuela. Travel was a mixture of group and solo.

After returning to the comfortable city environs of Cartagena to study Spanish after a month of travel throughout the remote northeast region of Colombia it was by chance I bumped into Sandra who I traveled part of this region with. Over a cup of strong coffee in the lobby of her hostel she went on to relate a most unsettling story. It happened the day we parted ways in Nazareth near the Venezuelan border.

Andreas had been talking excitedly about Venezuela for weeks and was finally setting on his way, Sandra was joining him as a flexible traveler without an agenda. We had all known each other for over a month having met on the sailboat we took from Panama to Colombia. They were told by locals if they had passports that they could get on the daily truck bound for Maracaibo, a city deep in the interior of Venezuela. They would be travelling into another country bypassing normal immigration controls.

We parted ways in Nazareth, an oasis town in the middle of the Guijira desert after a couple weeks traveling together; they jumped on a flatbed cargo truck bound for Venezuela laden with twenty goats, a dozen pigs and twenty-five people under blazing sun. It was the kind of truck the intrepid backpacker loves to take to reach a destination. Deep bush travel. A colorful passage, one to be remarked upon.

The truck out of Nazareth normally arrives in Maracaibo by mid afternoon; it ran late this time arriving as darkness settled on Venezuela's second largest city. Venezuela has an electricity shortage and uses rolling blackouts; Maracaibo, a city of two million without electricity felt menacing upon arrival.

Exhausted from a thirteen hour journey with goats, pigs and an x-ray sun, they were dreaming of a shower and a soft bed when things turned brutal from the moment the truck arrived. They were yanked off the truck like livestock by two Venezuelan policemen demanding passports.
You have no passport stamp, the officer triumphantly exclaimed after examining them.
Peaceful calm Sandra tried to explain the route they took to the uninterested officer, while Andreas who spoke no Spanish stood mute.
You can be put in prison for entering Venezuela without a stamp. Why are you here? the officer pressed on.
OK open your bag and show us all your money, they demanded

Sandra's bag was thoroughly searched as she placed her last $50 on the table with Andreas' $300. Andreas' bag was not searched and he was taken to an adjacent room. The door was shut.

Are you transporting drugs? they asked Sandra
No. came her reply.
We will search you.

He looked down her top and panties for contraband. Andreas was not as fortunate to receive such light treatment, he was cavity searched up his anus. When he came out Sandra could see something had shocked him as he told her in Swiss-German what had just happened. The fear level increased as threats of imprisonment were repeated. Nauseous from his experience Andreas sat down as Sandra related the seriousness of the situation to him.

The police handed back a small portion of $350, so they could get by for the night. The rest was stolen, along with a camera and guitar tuner. Sandra's collection of photos from the journey into the desert and the Children of Camarones were gone.

There was no buildup. The police did not need time to gather their nerve or feel out their prey where one could sense what was coming, instead they moved with great speed and had all this done inside of thirty minutes. It left Sandra and Andreas in a state of shock while they looked for a place to sleep in the dark city. Currently, Venezuela is undergoing political and social change short of upheaval and it is in times like these that police have extraordinary powers with little oversight.

Two nights in Maracaibo was enough as they searched for a safe way out of Venezuela for the relative safety of Colombia. Still without Venezuelan tourist stamps. The journey back to Colombia was difficult and dodgy using a taxi to go part of the way benefiting from the driver's good relations with police at certain check points. When they got to a bridge known for police abuse they switched to a boat to cross the river, then back to a car for the border.

At the immigration station they explained to the Venezuelan border agent why they had no Venezuelan entry stamps doing their best to project calm in a country they were desperate to leave. He held them up a while, but seemed to sense something bad had happened and let them pass without the necessary stamps.

Sandra and Andreas would have a new perspective on travel, it would all be different now. I have met several travelers that related good experiences about Venezuela and returned for second visits.

As for me I was looking into driving the dirt roads of La Guijira along the border of Venezuela and decided against it. The road crossed back and forth between Venezuela and Colombia without any border controls and would require a guide to spot bad people and show the way. As explained to me by the truck drivers in Nazareth I would have to avoid Venezuelan police on the drive since I would have no papers authorizing me or my truck to be in the country. One even suggested making a night run down the road. That sealed it for me, no one had ever suggested a night run to pass a territory. I would be in over my head taking this route, even with a guide.

The risks were too high. I would back track through the blank desert, not an easy decision for me, since I routinely look for loops or circuits to drive rather than repeat terrain. My friends on the cargo truck would be safe, it was a regular route used to move people and goods who were in possession of permanent travel papers.

David
Otavalo, Ecuador

Dispatch Number 63 -Errant Thoughts XIII

Song
"You do whatever you please, I'll do what I can."
-Beck

Road Signs
52 TON
-A bridge sign

On Foot
We ran in the open desert like lost neo-hippies
-A travel family gets out of the truck in a windswept landscape

The Way They Dress
The indigenous women wear loose moo-moo dresses that place a pleasant emphasis on their faces, hair and feet. My imagination wonders.

Rod & Reel
"Fishing can best be described as incessant expectation followed by perpetual disappointment."
-source unknown

Murphy
"Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than you think. If anything can go wrong it will."

Me
As a traveler, the perpetual stranger, I am allowed all my secrets.

Paper Towels
People in Latin America buy only what they need at the moment they need it. This stands in contrast to the North American penchant for buying enough paper towels to outlast a nuclear fallout. Paper towels to last years. Armageddon fears wrapped up in the unassailable logic of economics.

New Year
As a long-term traveler I find myself living increasingly in the present (some would say the life of an escapist). So standing on the shores of the Caribbean this past January the year ahead meant little. Once I made a big deal out of it. This year I did not feel like the dreamy man looking out over the bow spirit at the hopeful sea. Now, things feel more practical and short -this day, this week, this love.

David
Otavalo, Ecuador