Leaving the jungle

Hotel Casa d'Antonio, Minca

It is six-thirty in the morning, and I've been listening to the morning sounds of this little jungle village for a while. Insect and bird songs were joined by crowing roosters – not nearly as many as in Palomino, however – and the rumbling of a truck on the road leading by the house was the sign that traffic, too, was about to commence. Now, more and more motos – motorcycles – are part of the soundscape, and it is getting more difficult to hear all the bird voices.

It is our last morning here in the jungle, which is only now sinking in, and I am a little sad. Besides the highlight of the trip, the hike to the Ciudad Perdida, this was my favourite place. Part of the reason might be the climate: it is, at least at night, cooler than at the coast, and I can tolerate this much better. It is, in fact, so 'cool' that both hotels we stayed at had hot showers – something we hadn't encountered anywhere else. When it is +25 at night and +32 during the day, a hot shower is, admittedly, not something you crave. Here, however, it felt quite nice, and I appreciated it especially for washing my hair. Another sign of the lower temperature is the fact that I found blankets in the closet in our room: sheets alone might not be warm enough for everyone.

But it wasn't the more moderate climate alone, of course, what endeared me to Minca. Part of it were the surroundings: the lushness of the jungle, the many shades of green, the amazing leaves in so many forms and textures (I love the tightly rolled shiny leaves, almost like cigars, in their different stages of opening to the perfectly ribbed, firm, bright green leaf itself), the fern groves that look like a forest dinosaurs could have foraged in, the blossoms so perfectly suited to the tiny beaks of hummingbirds. I love the huge trees, their branches reaching for many metres to all sides, and the shady forest floors mottled with filtered sunlight.

Pablo Neruda describes it perfectly in his 'Ode to Enchanted Light': 

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.

A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.

The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.

What will stay in my mind, too, is the incredible volume of the song of the chicharras – cicadas – that puzzled me for the first night up at the Casa del Pozo Azul, when I was ready to attribute it to something like a heavy-duty sprinkler in the neighbouring garden, until the sound accompanied us to where no sprinkler could possibly be running anymore.. The clue to what kind of insect causes this noise came later on our hike down from the coffee farm when we started finding huge-bodied insects, three or four centimetres in length that looked like short little cigars, on their backs on the dusty road. A strange rattling sound first alerted me to their presence: the sound of their translucent wings beating frantically, propelling the insect so that it spun like a top, or a whirling dervish, locked into some strange kind of ritual. My attempt to turn it over with the help of a stick was without success; as soon as its strong claws had grabbed on to the stick and I turned it over it flipped back to the original position. That evening we watched many more, some already lying on the road doing their spinning, others flying in at high speed, almost hurling themselves at the road and immediately starting the whirling process, others already dead, having exhausted whatever strength they had at their disposal to do this.

I asked Kenny, our host at Casa del Pozo Azul, about these strange insects. Chicharras, he said, cicadas. He explained that now, during dry season, they were at the end of their life cycle. What a feast they must provide for all the hungry predators!

I loved, too, the early morning visit to Pozo Azul, the waterfall close to our first hotel after which it is named. It is, as I said before, a popular spot to swim and hang out for tourists and locals alike, but when we got there it lay perfectly still, sunlight slanting in through the branches of the trees, misty water vapour particles dancing in the rays.

In a way, Casa Pozo Azul was perfect, and it was very tempting to stay, but its distance from the village was a bit of a disadvantage, too. We wanted to join 'Jungle Joe', the local bird expert, on an early morning bird watching walk, for instance, and to be there by six would have been a bit more difficult. As it turned out, this bird watching tour didn't come to pass anyway: when we checked with his office yesterday morning he told us he had already cancelled yesterday's hike because he wasn't feeling good, and it was questionable if he was up to it for today. Last night he sent word to our hotel that, regretfully, he had to cancel again. Too bad: I would have loved to find out more about the birds we heard and saw – and there are many! The toucan would probably have been the most coveted bird to see, but there are also several kinds of hummingbirds here, and one small bird that caught my eye several times because it sparkles like a metallic-blue jewel in the foliage, joined by what I assume is the female in metallic-green. These birds were not very shy, so that I got a good look at them a few times.

Our second hotel ... yes, that is another thing I liked here. In our search for a suitable place online I had encountered it a few times, but since it is only 70m from town it seemed too close, the possibility of it being noisy too great. In the 'bus' on our way to Minca from Santa Marta we talked to a young American couple who didn't have accommodation for the first night of their stay, and we mentioned the Casa d'Antonio as a place that might be suitable for a night and be close enough so that they didn't have to search for too long. The hotel is on the way to our first hotel, so we walked together, and they were going to inquire, but before they even had a chance to look for someone an older woman came out onto the step and invited us all in: we, too, were welcome to use the garden and the private swimming spot down in the river, she said. We didn't have time to take her up on this generous offer, but our American friends stayed here for the night, and we left thinking that it could well have been a nice place to stay after all.

Once we had made up our minds to stay another two nights, and had decided that it might be better to be closer to town, the Casa d'Antonio was our first choice – if they had room. We walked in with our backpacks, and the same friendly woman greeted us and immediately started showing the rooms. It didn't take us any time at all to make the decision, and we didn't regret it for a minute.

Not only are the owners very friendly, welcoming people, but the whole place is very clean, the garden, leading all the way down to the river, a feast for the eyes with its many colourful blossoms and darting hummingbirds, but the food at Antonio's restaurant is delicious. We first sampled it with our American friends the night before last; they had tried it before and were very impressed. The owner and his wife immigrated from Castilia, Spain eleven years ago and have had this place for the past eight. The cuisine is exclusively from that region – Antonio makes sure everybody understands how proud he is of his roots – so they offer great paellas, and the 'Shrimp a Pimpil' I had last night were the juiciest, spiciest shrimp I've ever eaten.

We'll take with us the memories of this little town where locals and tourists mix in the few narrow streets, where mototaxis are the main form of transportation and employment for young (and some older) men, a place that feels 'right'. 

We'll also take with us, for a day or so, a certain soreness in our bodies from yesterday's long and strenuous hike that took us straight up and later straight down the winding road through the jungle. We had chosen the other way out of town which leads by the Arimaka waterfalls – bigger than Pozo Azul, so that you have to pay an entrance fee – and up for several kilometres towards the outlook Los Pinos, which, however, is most often shrouded in cloud. We had said from the beginning that we'd just walk as long as we felt like it, hoping, of course, to make it all the way to the top. About six kilometres of constant, partly strenuous climbing, however, in increasing heat since the sun had moved around the mountain, we gave in: we were tired and hot, and we had seen all we wanted to see, enjoyed all I described earlier. There was no need to prove anything to ourselves.

 Our hike was made more special by our little companion, one of the many dogs that seem to belong to everyone and attach themselves to people walking for a morning or a whole day. 'Pero' (dog) looked a little interesting, admittedly, with his almost hound-like face and beautiful colour on short and sturdy legs, his tail curving up. He had chosen us on the way out of town, and he faithfully stayed with us until we decided to turn around. When we stopped, he stopped, lying on a shady part of the road or burrowing in some dry leaves behind us, unconcerned about any mototaxis or four-wheel drive vehicles: they knew better than to run him over, and, unlike us, he was in no hurry to make room for them. He found a different set of humans when we turned around, and I missed him on the way down.

Now, however, it will soon be time to check out and move on to city life again. We'll have breakfast in a little while looking out on the beautiful garden, and I'm sure no rooftop terrace in our hostel in Cartagena will come close to this. 

So now it is time to say good-bye to the jungle, and yet again to a place where we most likely will not ever find ourselves again. As so often I am a bit wistful at that thought, but then, it proves that where I have been has meant something to me, that my life is richer for having been here. What more could I ask for?