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We went down to the Rio Tobia for a cheap weekend in a hot cabana with a
pool where everyone from Bogota comes down for drinking beer and sitting around a pool on sundays. Most Bogotanos cannot swim.
We went with Annie, and her two friends Ivan and Andres. Excellent time, and when the pool was crowded, even at night as the
insect bats flew over and the glowbeetles glittered in the bamboo coconut trees and heliconia bushes, we swam in the black
sand river Tobia which is full of alluvial gold. No caimans, crocodiles here, and all the local kids dive off the rocks and
talk of their exploits in the wild currents. It was a great adventure, especially for Annie and her friends, who have never
swum in a wild jungle river before with the Parrots flying overhead and the orchids dropping bright blossoms into the swirl.
The bridge leads to guerilla territory much further west. The local town
is a virtual ghost town. The drug dealers who used to look after the place and keep people employed, have left for other
places. They are looked on with respect and a sense of great loss. There are 3000 ghost towns in Colombia where
the FARC left wing guerilla have told everyone to empty the town. Its a deliberate strategy to destabilise the countryside,
but I think it makes the guerilla the people's enemy. It certainly doesnt win hearts and minds. Their numbers
are fast decreasing. The people who have lived their whole lives in these towns end up living on the streets of Bogota with
nothing. Last count 3 million displaced people in Bogota on the streets with stretched government resources for health
and housing. Talk to anyone around these areas and they are so deeply angry and sad, it makes you weep.
You realise when you see the jungles and the mountains how wild this country
is and how impenetrable. Unlike the people, who seem ever optimistic and welcoming and open. The people of this
river valley, some 70kms from Bogota, about 2000 feet down the Andes in the mid/tropical zone, will talk about anything. Politics,
food, football, Australia, US relations, Iraq, and it can get quite animated, but at the end, they always slap you on the
back and say, safe life, safe journeys, and sunshine in your lives.
Lots of love
Mim
OzInBog
July 2004
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