Antioquia, Colombia

Cool, the mountainsides; the wet and drizzling trees. Lightly, the specks of golden sun catch the rusted red of roofs.

Valley walls fall steeply away, to the rushing white, and churned up brown, of the river, far below.



The breeze block houses look like they´re hanging on by their fingertips, white-knuckled and unable to breathe. Teeth clenched. They don´t trust their legs; spindly concrete stilts, stuck in mud and stone, and slipping, surely, slipping. The houses, huts, look new and old, dirty, unfinished, neglected and treasured all at the same time, but slipping, surely, slipping.

As the road climbs higher young boys on BMXs, or old mountain bikes with rusty gears, fly effortlessly past, clinging to the backs of trucks.

The mist closes in. The far off peaks turn grey and disappear. And the glow of the sun falls dull. And then glows not at all at the bottom of a misty sea.

For the next few hours I climb through clouds as though half-blind. All I see is a greywhite blanket, spread thickly all around. The edges of the road, just two metres away, disappear from view.

Small villages announce their presence by sound alone; the monotonous beats of reggaeton fill the wet air, or salsa blares from a point unseen. And children cry and laugh, doing what I do not know. And mothers call to them, "Ven aqui," through the noisy, grey mist "Come!"

As I ride invisibly by, I catch glimpses of unseen gossip, from voices not far away.

"Almost always, he told me, always," she says.

"Well, I saw her, " she says

"No?"

Even an argument reaches my hears, a woman´s voice hard and strained, "Me molesta señora, me molesta."

And another woman´s voice snaps back, "Two times, already. Dos veces!"

And again, "Señora, you´re annoying me. Señora. Go away!"



Invisibly, I climb, through the grey and noisy mist.



A crash of something falling quickly through wet leaves. Fast and heavy. A sound to make you jump.

Then, the small black outlines of children in the grey. The youngest might be four, the eldest eight, perhaps. In their hands, dangle catapults. And gripped in them, stones, I´m sure.

I climb slowly towards them. The eldest toys with the elastic, and laughs at the terror in my eyes. He hasn´t even turned the thing towards me and already he´s won the fight. I haven´t been this scared of an eight year old since I was eight.

The other boys laugh, say something about a gringo, and catapult stones into trees.

Slowly, as the evening falls, I watch the clouds break apart. The deep green Andes, coming reassuringly back.




At the parque, Supia.