Bolívar, Colombia

The rolling hills of northern Colombia lent into the sun. A sweltering heat rose from the ground and beat down from the sky. Buffaloes wallowed in mud to their shoulders, and the trunks of trees stood always surrounded by a closely bunched herd of cows, the intermittent shadows of leaves dappled on their hides. People dipped only momentarily into the yellow heat; the darkened angular shade always crowded, the people still as cows. Even the hammocks failed to swing, slumped and exhausted, under a hot and heavy weight.

I hadn´t cycled for almost two weeks and the activities I´d replaced the exercise with, namely drinking too much and sleeping too little, meant that on more than one occasion I had the sensation of fainting as I collapsed into the shade or sat down to drink water.

Small wooden shacks lined a dusty roadside, counters piled high with fruit: oranges and pineapples; passion fruit, guavas and tree tomatoes. Cafes served an abundance of food better suited to the frigid climate of the highlands: mountains of rice; beans and potatoes; slabs of meat and legs of chicken; deep fried empanadas and deep fried bread. Hot steam and hot smoke under the hot roofs rose.

I was tired when I reached San Juan Nepomuceno. Too tired to ask coherently about a place to sleep, and much too tired to pronounce the town´s name properly. Coherency and cultural awareness though are not always so important, and I was soon led to a residencia, and it´s crumbling concrete walls.

An iguana swaggered slowly across the yard. Hens scratched in the dust and dried leaves, leading always behind them a trail of young. And humming birds hovered; blurred wings against sky, and a falling sun.

Inside a moth beat itself against a dirty white wall, and did do so `til it died, exhausted, on a grey and dusty floor.

Iguana, on the road towards Supia.