La Guajira Colombia
Healing Shells and Potions
Our Hostess
Shipwreck
Goat Leg Lunch
Healing Shells and Potions
Our Hostess
Shipwreck
Goat Leg Lunch
This is the end of the world, a place so beautiful and desolate, forsaken by God and government in the middle of nowhere Colombia on the coast bordering Venezuela. The Lonely Planet guidebook that we were using for travel information ended paradoxically hundreds of kilometers away from here, giving this place that special travel mystique that is hard to find in these days of accessible tourism. Getting to Cabo de la Vela was a bitch. Helene and I stopped at a crossroads dotted by a few food merchants where the bus line dropped us off before it continued en route to Venezuela. This is the desert, the real outback of Colombia, with an Indigenous population living further off the grid than I could begin to imagine. Passage to Cabo de la Vela was to be made in the back of a pickup truck that served as a taxi, covered with a tarp to ward off the brutal sun, and filled with 23 Wayuu Indians and a live goat that was hogtied and shrieking randomly. If you have never traveled with a hogtied goat, you will not understand the eerily human-like sounds that it produces when frightened. It sounds something like an abused child with Down’s Syndrome crying in panic, and the sound is deeply disturbing. There was no room in the pickup, we were packed and stacked like cordwood as we bumped along the endless rutted dirt road towards the sea that never seemed to get any closer. I am a tall man, 6′2” plus pack, and I was doubled over and compressed for the length of the journey. We passed through small Wayuu villages to pick up and drop off the passengers. It seems impossible that these people should be able to survive in these conditions, the villages are just a few huts made of found material and trash, with makeshift roofs, no windows, nailed together somehow to protect the people from the brutal and impossible desert. What these people do for survival and sustenance evades me. There is no water or electricity. There is no farmable land, no infrastructure, access to education, churches, nothing, just goats and Indians clawing away at the barren land in an unholy symbiosis of mutually dependent survival. I believe that goat must be on the menu every night, as I simply could not see anything else to eat other than weeds and rocks.
After what seemed like hours the sky began to change to a deeper blue and we knew that the sea was close. Cabo de la Vela is a tourist destination of sorts. It is home to a kind of mutant spring break for young Colombians that come to this seaside desert and party like hell for a week and then depart to a more fertile and hospitable home elsewhere. The only industry in this region is a coal mine far away. The Indians that live here are a mix of local Indigenous mixed with Islamic pilgrims from somewhere that must have been hellish enough to prompt a move to this desolate and lost outpost. The town of Cabo consists of small houses made of sticks from a scrawny local tree, a couple of dilapidated concrete buildings, a radio tower, and not much more. There was an infestation of mosquitos that week that was unusual, and no one in town was in any way prepared to deal with the sleepless nights that a sudden and unexpected mosquito plague brings. Everyone was swatting bugs all night, and Cabo has no electricity of running water so that means no fans, no bed coverage because of the intense heat, no repellant for hundreds of miles, no relief from the biting torment. There was also, confusingly, no place to sleep on a budget. There were thatch rooms for rent on the beach at $40 per night and no one would budge on the price despite the town being utterly devoid of tourism. This price was well beyond our budget considering that we were living on a couple of dollars a day the week before, fishing and eating coconuts on a desolate beach near Santa Marta. In town, we found a hamburger stand with a generator and some Latin boombox music, and asked about a place to stay while eating a sad hamburger on a stale bun. The proprietor mentioned that we could pitch out tent at her house, she had a water tank, but her generator at home was broken. It woud be $10 a day. It would do.
Her family was lovely. All of us laughed and spoke of the world, we asked questions about life in Cabo. It seems that she and her husband had wanted out, away from people, society, everything, and had moved to Cabo and built a simple house and lived a simple and happy life. I could relate in every way, as I have always felt like I was carrying a crushing weight when I lived in the States and needed to flee and be far away from what I had always considered to be ever-widening circles of meaningless, soul crushing activity. Later that morning we bought a freshly killed goat leg from a dirty truck, no wrapping, no refrigeration. They just handed us a goat leg with the fresh blood still dripping. Our hostess hung it on a hook next to the house that was out of the sun, and I watched the flies begin land on our lunch. She cooked it well, and we ate with the family for lunch with beans and rice. The next day, across the street in a makeshift hut church, I saw a full blown Penecostal Baptism of the holy spirit complete with speaking in tongues, wild gesticulation, crying and praises to Jesus. It was surreal. The Indians in this hellish place, without sleep from swarms of mosquitos were engaging in this most bizarre American sect of Christianity, gibbering away in unknown dialects and asking God for a mercy that he had surely forgotten to grant eons ago. I suppose whatever mission reaches a place first wins the hearts and minds. Here it was the Pentecostals. Later I went to a local store to buy some potable water in a plastic bag and some ice when a small naked child shit on the floor. It seemed strangely natural. His mother was a teenager and seemed ill prepared for motherhood, as I am sure was her mother before her and so on. With no electricity or water, there is not a lot of activities that are non carnal. Screwing is free, or at least free for nine months.
After a long walk on the beach we went to a small voodoo type shop in the town perimeter to check it out. It sold mostly shark based products, skins and oil, turtle shells and bones. Beasts with large power are to be consumed and ingested to transfer their energy to powerless people. The Chinese have been at this for millennia and it looked like the Indians had been practicing this for quite a long time as well. Everything had a purpose here, shark oil for some ailments, ground turtle shell for something else. There were bottles of snakes in liquid for God knows what. I found Cabo to be beautiful in a strange way. Helene and I sat on the beach and watched fisherman catch baitfish with nets in primitive boats while oil tankers drifted by from Venezuela to Northward destinations full of the precious cargo that powers the civilized world. La Guajira is not the civilized world, not by a stretch. It is wild and untamed, savage and brutal. The light here is striking, laser sharp, and the buildings made of cement crumbling in disrepair have an apocalyptic beauty in the afternoon with the sun at the perfect angle of illumination. The lone concrete church looks like a weapon, some horror designed in the futuristic ’70’s that is an architectural model of fear and control. Our vision of architecture in retrospect is crystal clear, but like propaganda, it can’t really be noticed for what it is until years later.
I really loved my days in Cabo. I will never return, but I am glad that I went. The people are tough, the landscape is brutal, the life is impossible. It is a beautiful place, interesting in so many ways. I was an outsider like I have never felt before. I could have landed from a spacecraft and felt more connected to humanity. La Guajira is the end of the world, but it is a good place to be for a while. When we travel, we consume difference; that is the point and that is why we leave our comfort in search of the unknown. La Guajira is a lot of difference to consume, but as any exotic travel the learning is the reward.
Helene and our Taxi
Typical Home Construction
