Gentle Reader, I have travellers' insomnia, and I really have not had a decent night's sleep since I arrived here. I think there are a few factors at play here. First of all, I have long been a light sleeper, and in the last few years I often do not sleep a full night. In order to arrive here in Colombia, I had to endure a red eye flight from Vancouver to Toronto, then spend nine hours trying to divert myself in the Toronto Pearson International Airport on the very little sleep I got on the plane. Ever since, it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. Of course, my good host and I have been adjusting to each other, only to see our friendship deepen from this experiment of cohabiting, which is rather nice following a year and a half of twice-weekly Skype visits. The building we are in does get very noisy at times, sometimes at night and the early morning. I am also, in my walkabouts, often meeting different and interesting and sometimes challenging people. There is also that strange kind of sacrificial isolation that comes with total cultural immersion. To this day, I have not encountered one single person who isn't Colombian, or who speaks fluent English. Plus, my head is like a beehive that has just come out of hibernation, as I observe, absorb and digest the many strange and interesting things and people that just keep coming my way, and coming my way, and coming my way. It is small wonder that my sleep is compromised.
Last night was particularly bad, and Alonso's brother was coming over at 7 am to join us on a drive to Villeta (pronounced Bee-YAY-tah). I couldn't get to sleep till late and managed just three hours or so of deep sleep before I was up again at shortly past 4 am. I had some breakfast and went back to bed, though I warned Alonso in an email, who was at the moment sleeping quite soundly, that if I couldn't get any more sleep by 9 am, then I wasn't about to make promises about joining them on the trip.
I lay awake, dozing intermittently, till just after 8, then got up anyway, in rather a foul humour. His brother had arrived and I warned them both that I was going to join them but look out because I was fixin' to kill someone. Fortunately, we all knew not to take it very seriously, and I decided to play with my bad mood, turn it into a theatrical farce, and give us all a bit of fun with it, which I think really helped me get over it pretty fast.
So we took a long drive of around 80 kilometers to Villeta, an interesting and beautiful town nestled in the mountains. We stopped at a roadside diner, outdoor, covered with a roof, for breakfast and enjoyed the exquisite fragrances of flowers wafting our way on the breeze while brilliant orange butterflies flitted back and forth. This area has high rugged mountains covered in green, and I distinctly remember seeing this place in past dreams. We continued the long ride through this otherworldly splendour till we arrived in Villeta, where the elevation is a bit lower, so it was quite hot and humid for us as we got out of the car. As we passed through the central square, which is large and full of trees and people and all kinds of activity, I again had a distinct sense that I was revisiting a place I had seen in a dream.
Now it is Sunday, Gentle Reader, and to our most pleasant surprise, I had a good sleep last night. It must have been the physical exhaustion from the hike we did yesterday, and lack of sleep. We started from Villeta, and our objective was to walk about three or four miles along an abandoned railway to a small factory where panela is made.
Click this link to learn more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panela
The heat and humidity in Villeta at first struck us rather hard and, coming from the cooler temperatures in the higher elevations, the two brothers were wearing two layers of shirts and I was wearing a rather heavy black pullover. The central square in Villeta is quite huge with very tall trees and full of colour, life and people. This is another place that I saw previously in some dreams I was having around ten years ago, and the impact for me was rather surreal and disorienting. We got through it okay and when we reached the abandoned railroad it seemed a bit cooler. We were surrounded by lush jungle and the most incredible green everywhere, with small farms and houses along the way, from where periodically we could hear various strains of traditional Colombian music, and it really felt like we were in a movie. Colourful birds and butterflies everywhere. We passed through a village with chickens running around, then went down to a grotto by the river where there was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Alonso's brother refilled our water bottles from a trickle coming through the rocks.
There was no one present at the tiny panela factory but it was open and we went inside for a look. There was the big extractor machine for getting the juice from the sugar cane. and a series of troughs and basins where the juice is cooked and boiled down to a thick syrup, rather like the process for making maple syrup, and the syrup is poured into square or rectangular molds where it dries and solidifies. There was a lot of residual panela in the troughs, so we liberally helped ourselves. Delicious. Some of the local dogs got a bit neurotic, and ran towards us barking, then kind of got over it and left. One came back to make friends and stayed to enjoy being petted.
We stopped at a local outdoor cantina to rest with bottles of a local beverage that is like a combination of cola and beer, two percent alcohol, and very refreshing. We sat in the shade and another local dog came over to befriend us, The lady who runs the cantina seemed very kind and cheerful. We walked back to town by a different route, a regular road, and sat in a patio cafe on the square for cold drinks before we returned to the car for the drive home. We were pretty tired when we got home. I went to bed early while the two brothers stayed up to watch a movie. Alonso's brother spent the night, but just got up. I think Alonso is still in bed, enjoying his well-earned sleep. ano, he's up now and just asked me to contribute my bedsheets for the morning wash load.
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