They’d moved me to a lower bunk in another room, so I decided to stay in Santa Marta a few more days.  It was nearly November 1, All Saints Day, tucked right between Halloween and All Souls Day, which I’d claimed as the official launch date for my Haunted Rock enterprise a few years earlier.  The previous year I’d traveled down to Mexico City for the Day of the Dead festivities, and was hoping they’d have something comparable going on in Colombia, but there seemed to be nothing of that magnitude.  People would probably be going to the cemeteries to visit their loved ones, but that was it. 

I’d sent out job inquiries to every teaching job posted on seriousteachers.com by now, but had only heard back from a few schools.  During the summer I’d been offered positions in Myanmar and Vietnam, but had turned them both down, hoping to base myself out of the States again if I could.  There were substitute positions in both Hawaii and California, but I couldn’t live on what they were paying.  I had an interview with a school in China that night.  By now I’d resolved to take almost anything I was offered.  I desperately needed to have some money coming in, no matter where it came from.

My idea was to travel to a town called Mompox next.  From what I’d read the area around the Magdalena River, where it’s based, had inspired the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and his most famous novel, A Hundred Years of Solitude.  Magical Realism is a style of literature that mixes fantasy and reality.  Supernatural occurrences take place amidst the most mundane of circumstances.  Mompox seemed like the perfect place to work on my song and poem galleries.  The problem is that the images were no longer uploading to my website.

I spent a long time searching the internet trying to fix this problem.  One thing that came up was that I might not have enough storage left on my account to add more photos.  That didn’t seem like it would be the case, but I looked into it, discovering that when I’d changed from the Business to the Premium plan on WordPress, my storage had dropped from two hundred to fifteen gigabytes.  I’d used up more than half of that, but there was still space available, so that wasn’t the problem.  Even if I did get the images to start uploading again, however, now I knew that there wasn’t nearly enough storage for the five hundred pictures I wanted to post.  It was a very simple project that should have been easy to execute, yet I was being bedeviled at every turn.

Taking a break from that, I decided to focus on getting to Mompox.  I’d been told that it was very complicated.  You had to take a bus to Barranquilla, then another bus to Magangue, then a motorcycle to the river, then a boat across the river.  Ordinarily, this sort of expedition wouldn’t daunt me, but I was feeling overwhelmed, still under the weather and sick with depression.  I did a number of searches and found that there was one direct bus a day from Santa Marta to Mompox, but when I tried to buy a ticket online the transaction failed to go through on two different websites.  I ended up taking a taxi to the bus station, which was as far away as possible, and took a half hour to get to.  It only took two minutes to buy the ticket and then I had to take a taxi all the way back, but at least it was done.

The best thing about the hostel was the small pool out back.  The climate was so humid I was already getting crotch rot, and a short walk down to the beach and back at midday had drenched me in sweat.  I took a brief swim and tried to just relax and get ready for my interview that night.  A few hours before it, I took a shower and tried to shave.  Halfway through the job, my electric razor seized up, leaving me with half a beard.  That would’ve been perfect if I was auditioning for the lead in Diary of a Madman, the novella by Nikolay Gogol, not the album by Ozzy Osbourne.  I tried charging the battery, then banged it around until it started buzzing again, just long enough to let me finish the job.  Does that count as magical realism?  On some level it must.

I wasn’t nervous about the interview, because I didn’t care much for the job.  It was a Canadian school that had multiple branches in China.  The principal was an American and our conversation was mostly cordial.  It seemed like I could probably be a good fit for them.  When he sent me the follow-up material, however, I saw they were asking me to get a Canadian teaching credential and also looking for a three-year commitment.  That wasn’t going to work.  If I needed to, I’d go back to Saudi Arabia.  In the past I’d gotten offers there based on sending off my resume alone.  If they still wanted me, they could have me.  Anyone who made it easy enough could have me.  My bags were already packed.  I was ready to go.

Santa Marta was the first Spanish settlement in Colombia and is still an important port and hub for Caribbean travel.  I hadn’t had time to do the trek to the Lost City the first time I was there, and now didn’t have the money for it.  There were day trips I could’ve taken, like to Minca in the mountains or to Tayrona National Park, but it wasn’t really a vacation I was on, as much as a reprieve.  The stress and depression were enough to make me wake up every morning feeling like my chest was caving in on my heart, like an aluminum can being crushed.  It wasn’t easy to be around so many carefree, young travelers, but I kept to myself and tried to avoid dampening anyone’s spirit.

The one place that was close enough to get to on my own was Taganga, a fishing village built around a bay, three kilometers from Santa Marta.  The bus that went there left from the cross-roads of Calle 11 and Carrera 11, about five blocks away from the hostel.  The cities in Colombia are broken into calles, which are streets, and carreras, which are like avenues.  Knowing this can help you navigate through unfamiliar neighborhoods, provided the street signs are posted.  Even then, you quite often run into dead ends and can end up desperately lost if you try to follow your inner compass.

I got to the corner and wasn’t sure if I was in the right place, so asked a policeman who seemed to be eighteen years old.  He told me the bus would be around in five minutes and it was.  It was a mini-bus, with only room to stand.  I couldn’t see out the windows and had no idea how long it would take to get to Taganga or where I needed to get off.  I tried to communicate this to the ayudante, or helper, but he was busy and told me to wait.  The bus started up a hill and began to swerve around treacherous curves.  Those of us who were standing leaned hard into each other and struggled to keep our balance.

Nearly everyone was getting off at Taganga, so it wasn’t difficult to know when we arrived.   It was Sunday so there were a lot of people at the beach.  Children were splashing around in the waves.  Vendors walked back and forth with cold drinks and snacks.  A man was selling bags of pink and purple cotton candy.  Music was playing and families were sitting beneath umbrellas or small structures made of tarp.

There were boat trips you could take, but I was content to walk.  On the walkway, beneath the shade of a trees, a band was playing for tips, with an accordion, drums, and a singer on the microphone.  At one restaurant I was trying to take a picture of the fish they had on display and got roped into ordering a red snapper.  It was about seven dollars for a plate that came with rice and beans.  I sat at a wooden table by myself, with a stiff breeze blowing in my face.  The fish was OK, but didn’t have much meat on it.   When I’d finished one side and flipped it over, what was left looked better to comb your hair with than to eat.

It had been a long time since I’d felt like I had anything to celebrate.  Even before the pandemic, I’d been aware that time was running out for me.  I’d boxed myself into a tight corner by sticking with my dreams.  Now I’d seen that they weren’t going to come true in the way I’d once hoped, and there was no way to catch up with those who’d kept their shoulder to the wheel all this time.   In many ways I’d been relegated to a wasteland, normally reserved for just the homeless and insane.

At the end of the beach a group of fishermen were sitting in the shade mending their nets, and beyond them a trail wove up the side of a cliff, the only way to access a few secluded coves.  I reached the top, amidst the distinctive San Pedro cactus that line the hills, and could look down on Taganga on one side and the further beaches on the other.  There was a wall there that had become a canvas for street art.  Someone had painted a giant, purple crab.  Four mushrooms spelled out the word LUNA.  A frowning pink cat wore a yellow duckie life raft around its waist.

When I got back to Santa Marta, I went to visit a small restaurant I’d been to before.  The woman there served papas.  Papas are essentially a ball of mashed potato, with either egg, meat, or chicken inside, that is then deep-fried.  Done right, it is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  The woman, Juvie, I’d talked to the last time.  She had a braided weave and was nearly bursting out of a tank top.  Glad to see me back, we got to talking again.  When she found out I was traveling alone, she said that she’d like to join me, except that she had to work and take care of the kitchen. 

It had been so long since I’d been with a woman, I practically threw my arm around her when I got up to leave.  Maybe she was just being friendly.  When I came back the next day the place was packed and I didn’t get the same vibe.

There was nothing in Santa Marta to mark the Day of the Dead like there’d been in Mexico City the year before.  I still wanted to make a celebration of it somehow.  On Halloween I bought a Batman mask and wore it around the hostel for about two minutes.  It was later appropriated by a security guard, who made a much better Batman and got a lot of laughs.

The next day, All Saints Day, and the two-year anniversary of my Haunted Rock startup, I visited the Cementerio San Miguel, wondering if there’d be any services or ceremonies going on.  It was mostly deserted, populated only by homeless men, sitting amidst the tombstones that line the walkway to the chapel. 

As I was leaving the cemetery there was something strange that did happen, however.  I had the oddest sensation that I was my deceased father, that his spirit had come over me for a moment.  There are similarities between us, but I never thought I looked much like him.  For this very short time, not only did I feel just like him, I could almost see myself from the outside, looking like him, with the hard look of disappointment that sometimes crossed his face in his later years.  One time I’d told him all the things I’d planned on accomplishing in my life.  His response had been, what if you do and nobody cares?  It had hurt my feelings at the time, but now I understood why he’d said it.  It had happened to him.

The next day, the actual Day of the Dead, I had no idea what to do, but then heard about Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, the former hacienda, now museum, where Bolivar had died, and thought that might be a good place to commemorate the day.  Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, is essentially the George Washington of South America.  He and his armies ended Spanish rule in New Granada, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and he was the first president of the Republic of Colombia. 

By the end of his life, Bolivar had either been forced out of or stepped down from the many leadership positions he’d once held, and was determined to go into exile.  He made it as far as Cartagena where he waited for a ship to take him to England.  When the ship failed to arrive and his health began to deteriorate, he was moved to Barranquilla, and then finally to Santa Marta where he passed away from tuberculosis at the age of 47.

The Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino turned out to be close to the bus station.  The website for the museum had warned that any visitor under the influence of alcohol and psychoactive substances, as well as those not wearing a shirt, would be prohibited from entering.  Good thing I wasn’t traveling with Jim Morrison.

I started off by walking through an area that had once been used to distill sugar cane.  Then I came upon a building that housed oil paintings of some of the leaders in the War of Independence, as well as scenes from the battles they’d fought.  One of the wings held military medals and artifacts.  In the main house there was a statue of Bolivar on his death bed.  A chapel held the remains of the physician who’d waited on him in his final hours.

At the end of a long walkway, lined with flags from every nation on the continent, was the enormous Altar de la Patria, where a statue of Bolivar is surrounded by figures from Greek mythology, the hero who brought to life all the virtues and ideals they represent.  A nearby mural recounted all the important events in his life.

After leaving the hacienda, I had a taxi drop me off at the Museo del Oro Tairona, down by the Marina.  I’d probably walked past it four or five times already, so distracted by all the hookers and drug dealers calling to me from Bolivar Park that it had barely registered.  There were some displays of Pre-Columbian pottery and tools, as well as explanations of the indigenous belief systems and practices. 

I read with some interest the legend of the Caiman Man.  It talks of how a boy once became an alligator so he could spy on women bathing in the river.  He had two oils.  One to turn him into an alligator.  The other to turn him back to a boy.  One day he was splashing on the oil to turn him back into a boy and he dropped it.  Only his face and left arm returned to their human form.  The rest of him stayed an alligator.  The picture they used to illustrate this legend showed an old man in an alligator costume, drinking from a bottle of booze, walking through the street, surrounded by children.

Lastly, I returned to the cemetery once more, but nothing that out of the ordinary was happening, only families bringing flowers to the graves and saying prayers for their departed ones.  I passed one tomb where a bicycle had been locked inside.  Either a janitor was using it for a storage closet, or a bicycle enthusiast was looking to come back to earth for one last ride.  Here in Colombia, one more example of magical realism.  Death can’t keep us from what we love.

Although I’ve always been a lone wolf, I do have two families.  The family that I was born into and the family of travelers I continue to meet on my trips.  We don’t know that much about each other.  We almost never keep in touch.  But whenever we meet up, we always have a lot to say.  Nobody cares about our stories.  We care about our stories.   Most people hate to suffer.  We will suffer if we have to.  If you can tell me how to get to a place I’ve never been, I will sit and listen all night.  If I can save you some time and trouble, I will do it for free.  The young can learn from the old, but the old can also learn from the young. 

It was strange for me to be staying in hostels at the age I was at.  Most of my life had been spent in cheap hotel rooms.  In America, at the moment, it was a necessity.  In Colombia I could spring for a private room from time to time, but if I stayed in a dorm, could get by on ten dollars a day.  What I needed was time to find a job and complete my song and poem galleries.  So far, I hadn’t come close to finding a job, and my website was messing up what should have been an easy project.  It looked like I might spend the rest of my life in a dorm.  Either that or on the street.

The bus to Mompox didn’t leave until two-thirty the next day.  That gave me three hours to kill after checking out of my room.  At this point I’d developed such serious crotch rot from the humidity that I was walking like a barrel rider.  I picked up some cream at a pharmacy, but applying it felt like pouring gasoline on a fire.  I got to the bus station and just stood waiting for an hour, sweat dripping down into my shoes.

The assistant, or ayudante, was standing at attention outside the bus a few minutes before we boarded, and it soon became apparent he was new to the job and eager to please.  The driver seemed to be hazing him.  He had him sit in a little folding seat right next to him, and as we got underway, was trying to teach him the right way to clean the inside of the windshield.  He had a little towel that he liked folded in a very specific way.  Then there were two different cleaning agents to choose from.  You had to know which one was right for the occasion.  The assistant got up and had to stretch so far to reach across the window that his shirt came untucked from his pants.  Apparently, the job he did was just OK.  The driver had him do it again, watching as he folded the towel from scratch.

It got dark early and the air-conditioning was cranked up all the way.  My clothes had gotten damp from sweating so much, and suddenly I was freezing.  For a long while we sat in backed-up traffic, due to construction they were doing, and then, when we reached an intersection at Cuatro Viento, got off the relatively smooth road we were on and began to journey down one that was riddled with potholes.

Right at that moment it started to storm.  Lightning and thunder filled the sky, and rain came pouring down.  The driver had the assistant working as hard on the inside of the windshield as the windshield wipers were working on the outside.  All the time, he was talking on the phone, steering with one hand, never slowing down for anything.

When we reached a town called Banco, everyone got off the bus except me and a teenage boy.  At this point the driver handed the bus over to his assistant.  Mompox was supposed to be an hour away.  It probably took us another two and a half hours to get there.  The assistant got behind the wheel as rigidly as a missionary mounting a blow-up sex doll, and proceeded to drive, his white knuckles tensely gripping the steering wheel.  We got behind a truck that wasn’t going more than thirty miles an hour, but the assistant never mustered up the nerve to pass it.  When it finally pulled off the road and we could speed up, the assistant hit a pothole so hard it nearly buckled the bus in two.  The teenage boy and I went flying and the driver swore in surprise.  This was the teachable moment he’d been waiting for all his life.

The driver produced a headlamp and made the assistant accompany him as they went out and inspected the bus for damage.  We must have sat there for twenty minutes.  I think the assistant would’ve gladly resigned his commission at that point and handed the bus back over to the driver, but the driver made him finish the route.  By the time we crept into Mompox, it was close to midnight.  We pulled over by the side of the road and they told me we’d arrived.  There were no lights, no station, nothing.  I had no idea where my hostel was or how to get there.

Just then a man pulled up on a motorcycle.  The driver talked to him and they called me over.  The man took my suitcase and put it on his handlebars.  I got on behind him, just as it started pouring again.  That is why I travel.  Racing through the rain, holding on for dear life, praying that you’re not being swindled.  We pulled up in front of the hostel just as they were bringing the last chair inside.  Although I didn’t see any horses, the room that they assigned me appeared to be a stall.

When I arrived at the hostel in Mompox on the back of a motorcycle it was dark and raining.  A few minutes later and I may have been locked out for the night.  It looked like they were getting ready to shut down.  The young guy working there took me to the room I’d be staying in.  It was the size of a large closet and quartered into four sections.  My top bunk was in the far corner, away from the light and the fan.  I was so tired I just climbed up and laid down in all my clothes.  Nothing could be done about it until the morning.

Mompox was founded in 1537 as an important port on the Magdalena River, and was the first city in Colombia to gain its independence from Spain.  They had their own version of Patrick Henry’s give me liberty or give me death.  Be free or die.  Simon Bolivar spent a lot of time in Mompox, recruiting soldiers and gearing up for his military campaigns.  A rock beside the river, the Piedra de Bolivar, records all his comings and goings.

The next morning, I went out to investigate.  Due to the heavy rains, the river had invaded the banks, swamping benches and trees that were normally part of a park.  It stretched for a quarter mile across and was moving swiftly, carrying branches and clumps of grass and vegetation that were as large as islands.  I followed the walkway that ran beside it, towards the cathedral and center of town.  At a small café I stopped for breakfast, only scrambled eggs and bland arepas, that went down like Styrofoam.   It was miserably humid and the depression I’d been battling all of my life, coupled with wild desperation, returned to crush my heart with dread.

When I reached the Plaza de la Immaculada Concepcion de Maria, the cathedral was open, so I took my hat off and went inside to pay a visit.  The primary altar was reserved for Mary, dressed in blue and gold, attendant angels on both sides of her and flowers at her feet.  In one of the side chapels was her son, carrying his cross, weighted down by all the sin of the world.  Blood was running down his face from the crown of thorns that had been jammed down over his skull.  It looked like he was ready to collapse.

A few blocks from the cathedral I came across another monument to suffering, the house of the poet Calendario Obeso.  He’d been a mulatto, the son of a white hacienda owner and black maid, and his poems reflect the struggles of the black community at the time and the discrimination he faced.  After falling in love with a white woman and failing to win her over with his poetry, he shot himself in the chest and died at the age of 35.  Blown off in life, celebrated in death.  At least he’d escaped the indignity of having to use his poems to fish for compliments on Facebook.

That afternoon there was a festival that took place outside of the cathedral beside the hostel.  It started off with children celebrating their heritage, dressed up in costumes from the different departments of Colombia and singing and dancing to traditional music.  After the sun went down, they taped off the square and it became a dance for adults that they were charging a thousand pesos to get into.  The speakers they’d brought in for it were massive. 

Sitting in the hostel, trying to get my song and poem gallery project back on track, the whole building shook.  I’d discovered that I could once again upload images to the media library and then insert them into the posts, but now knew I didn’t have enough storage space for the complete project.  I’d matched images for 260 poems and 180 songs, so was almost there, but it was clear that the format of my website was far from user-friendly. 

On my laptop, you could just scroll down and see the pictures and words, one after the other, but when I looked up the site on my phone, all it listed was the titles of the posts.  You had to click on each one to open it.  Then I noticed that the menu, with the about section and contact information was frozen and wouldn’t open at all.  There was no way to see who I was or get in touch with me.  The whole thing was just a piece of crap.

The dance in the cathedral square went on until the morning.  There was a young British couple in the next bunk and a woman from the Netherlands who was volunteering at the hostel right below me.  The idea that anyone was going to get any sleep that night was a farce.  The room was as loud as a nightclub.  It was like being trapped on a merry-go-round that you’d gotten sick on.  Every time you thought it was over and started to climb down, the digital beat could kick back in and drag you back onboard for another spin.

Mompox was a great place to reread 100 Years of Solitude.  I was glad I had a pdf copy of it on my laptop.  The storytelling of Gabriel Garcia Marquez seemed to fit the flowing of the Magdalena River right outside my door.  I needed a distraction.  It was all I could do not to throw myself in the river, so heavy was the oppression weighing on my heart.  These were characters who lived, died, and suffered in their time, as well.  The patriarch of the Buendia family spent the last years of his life chained to a tree, driven mad by his quest for the unobtainable.  Children are born with pig tails.  A trail of butterflies follows the memory of a mechanic.  A woman is taken up into the sky while taking down the laundry.  These are just the facts.

In the birthplace of magical realism, I was attempting to create two galleries of my life’s work, one for my songs and one for my poems.  There were not that many of them, but there were enough.  I had matched most of them with pictures from my travels.  Now, however, I did not have enough storage for them on my website, after downgrading to the Premium plan with WordPress.  I’d gone from 200 gigabytes to 15 gigabytes, about the same as you get with a free Google account.  What was I even paying for?

I decided then to just post samples of what I was trying to do on my website.  I already had a best of playlist of twenty-two poems on YouTube, so I went ahead and created one for the songs.  This was drawing from four-hundred and fifty videos that didn’t have that many views combined.  Then I sat down and created the two sample galleries, focusing just on the pictures and the words, but providing links to the playlists in case someone cared to listen.  Instead of being able to show someone what I’d done, I was still stuck showing them what I wanted to do, but all the other songs and poem matches were there on an external drive, ready to be posted when the opportunity arose.

After that, I needed to buy a bus ticket to Bogota, so I went out in search of the bus station.  I’d been dropped off in the middle of night, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  After asking around I tracked down the station on the other side of the cemetery and bought a ticket leaving in two days. 

Mompox was nice, but there wasn’t much to do.  I’d already walked from one end of it to the other a dozen times.  The humidity was stifling, and the fact that I’d barely slept the night before caused anxiety to surge through my chest.  It seemed like the perfect remedy to sit and meditate beside the river, but I couldn’t focus.  The whole time I’d been in Colombia, I’d never managed to make it past a few breath cycles before my mind would just drift off.  The depression was so bad I could taste it in my mouth, like metal.

If my financial situation was better, if I had a place that I considered home, I could probably handle it better, but I’d been living out of a suitcase for fourteen years, my only base in America being my mother’s yard.  It was a hard fall for someone who’d hoped to get across as a writer.  Not only had I not done that, I didn’t even have a community of other artists to commiserate with.  The truth is I’d come to Colombia to die.  All the joy and hope had been stripped from my life.  The good times were just a distant memory.

What I wanted to do was to throw myself into the river and make it look like an accident.  I’d never have a better opportunity.  The current was swift and merciless.  All I needed was to take ten steps forward and be swept away.  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 

Towards evening I heard fireworks coming from the center of town and headed back towards the cathedral.  Outside of it was a man launching rockets that had the force of a small stick of dynamite.  I went into the church and saw it was a special occasion.  Some children were recreating the nativity scene.  Joseph and Mary sat up front.  Mary held a doll on her lap with an enormous head, the same size as a full-grown man.  Around them there were all the animals and angels. 

The three wise men were there as well, and I noticed that they’d been one child short, so an old man had stepped in for them, in a long, yellow robe, with a cloth around his head.  Seeing him up there, doing his best to play his part, actually made me smile.  Hope dies, but hope returns.  That was the gift he brought that night.  Perhaps, it was worth my while to stick around a little bit longer.  Death would come soon enough, no matter what I wished for.

It was not my intention, or even desire, to go on a bird-watching tour, but I needed something to do.  Mompox has the reputation of being a colonial town where time has stood still, and that’s exactly how it felt.  I would wake up early, it would already be hot and humid, and then I’d go outside and the day would not end.  My chest was so tight with anxiety that I could barely breathe.

Someone at the hostel mentioned something about the tour, and I realized it would at least break up the day, so I bought a ticket.  Shortly before three, I walked down the riverwalk toward the double-decker boat for sunset tours.  On the opposite side of it was the narrow, wooden one used for bird-watching.  It had been raining when I pulled into Mompox, but sunny since.  Now, in the twenty minutes between arriving at the launch and the tour beginning, it clouded over and began to rain.

There were only seven of us onboard the boat.  I ended up in the front, sitting next to the guide.  She spent most of the time talking to the couple behind us.  It was raining so hard it was difficult to see the banks of the river, let alone one of the three hundred species of bird life that were allegedly in the vicinity.  There were a few white cranes, and what looked like a kingfisher, but what drew the most attention were the iguanas, stuck out on the branches in the dismal downpour, looking as forlorn as Gaugin’s Yellow Christ. 

We came to a small village and then started up a small channel, eventually making our own trail through the dense, aquatic plant life.  One man stood in the front with a pole, pointing out the best way to go, and using the pole to push us free on the times when the engine seized up.  It was beginning to feel like an adventure.  We stopped at a lagoon where half the other passengers began to change into swimsuits.  I hadn’t known swimming was an option, but couldn’t resist once I saw the others leaping over the side, and stripped down to my underwear, cautioning the guide to cover her eyes.

The water was warm, almost as if we were in the presence of a thermal spring.  As I floated on the surface, little fish began to nip at me.  I said something about it to a French woman and she looked alarmed.  There were supposed to be crocodiles in the river, but I hadn’t heard anything about piranhas.  The water was about ten feet deep.  Sinking all the way to the bottom, I could feel the black silt squish between my toes.

Something about the swim revived my spirits.  Heading back to Mompox at dusk, straight into the rain, felt like we were returning from a combat mission.  There were no real tales to tell, but a small battle had been won, by engaging with a group and being a good sport about the weather, rather than isolating on a bench somewhere, fixating on everything that was going wrong.

That night I was revising the sample galleries I’d just posted on my website, when outside the hostel there was a sudden commotion, the banging of drums, and what sounded like a flute.  I stepped outside and found that five musicians, a cumbia band, had appeared out of nowhere and were giving a performance beside the river.  Cumbia is a form of music that has its origins in Colombia, a combination of African drums and Indigenous wind instruments.  The five musicians were all dressed in white, wearing cane sombreros.  Three of them played drums, one shook the maracas, and the other played a long whistle with one hand.

A group of Colombians on a weekend outing had hired the band to perform and were dancing all around them.  I’d met one of them, Andre, that morning.  He’d already been tipsy, and by now was a roaring mess.  He recognized me and came running over to pull me into the dance circle, insisting I do the mambo with him.  I was in no position to deny him.  How often do you get to dance the mambo to a cumbia band beside the Magdalena River?   I’m not sure it was even the mambo we were doing.  The Tevas on Andre’s feet were slapping the pavement so hard he could’ve been a sixth member of the band.