She wipes the
sleep out of her eyes and shakes her head once to free the strand of hair that
has stuck to her cheek. It is just barely becoming morning, the last two stars
still bright in the sky next to the crescent moon as she makes her way down the
steep set of rock stairs to the small dinghy that awaits them. The sky’s clouds
are a pinkish orange and she takes her sunglasses out of the case as she waits
for the others because soon the sun will be bright on the horizon and once on
the boat, there will be nothing but holding on for dear life. She is not
looking forward to the journey ahead, but feels content about the last three
days.
What an adventure
to journey to the most remote section of Colombia, la Guajira. To stand on the
northern tip of South America and look out toward the Dominican Republic, Haiti
and Cuba. Beaches so solitary that they seem to go on for miles and miles
without interruption. And the sand dunes that reached so high up that they seem
to meet the sky. Impossible to guess that the ocean was just on the other side,
but when she reached the top, there it was in all it’s greenish blue glory,
waiting for her and the others to slide down the soft dune sand into the
Atlantic ocean.
She hands her
backpack to the slight man on the boat standing barefoot. “¿Y los otros?” he
asks his hands held up in a questioning matter, He taps his empty wrist where a
watch might have been and looks at her, his face a question mark.
She shrugs. “I
told them that it was after 5 am and that they should hurry. I guess they’re
coming.” She asks him where to sit so that she won’t be completely soaked and
he tells her that this boat ride will be easier than the one coming to Punta
Gallinas. She smiles thinking that worse it couldn’t be and remembers being
tossed around in the small boat, drenched by every wave as the boat’s front hit
them hard and soaked everyone on the right side of the boat for two long,
painful hours. That after a bumpy ride in the back of a pick up truck on two
wooden benches bolted to the bottom of the flatbed. Travel to la Guajira was
not to be undertaken lightly.
She climbs aboard
and chooses a seat toward the front and watches as the sky continued to lighten
from a deep twilight to a lighter blue, slowly becoming day.
She wonders if
they will pass by the mangroves one more time, those strange plants that grew
in marshy salt water mixed with fresh, their roots taking hold in the mud and
growing every which way; or past goat island, a small mound in the middle of
the ocean covered in cactus, rocks and sea shells, it’s only inhabitants twenty
goats, left there by the natives. She reminisces how those pink flamingos were
just all standing there - in knee high water just 500 feet from them before
taking off like a flight of cotton candy in the blue sky, and muses that she
couldn’t have invented a better 
adventure.
She had to give
it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, la Guajira was a region worth exploring… made all
that much more worthwhile by the pains needed to arrive.
She thinks about
the reverse journey ahead of her and sighs: first the two hours boat ride on
choppy waters, followed by the harrowing ride through the desert on dusty,
rocky roads in the back of the pick up.
Followed by a stop in Cabo de la Vela
to drop off some of the passengers before 
continuing on for another hour in the
same transportation through the desert to Uribia. What was it that the Mexican
boys were calling it, “¿horriblia?” Mean but funny and kind of true. Though to
be fair to Uribia, she hadn’t spend much time there, just enough to catch a
ride out to Cabo four days earlier.
Then an hour-long car ride back to Riohacha
where finally there would be the typical bus transport out of town to wherever
one wanted to travel along the coast. She pictures what Palomino might look
like, a small beach town at the beginning of la Guajira, just outside of the department
of Magdalena. She smirks thinking about a real bed instead of a hammock and the
possibility of washing her clothes and accessing wifi to get back in touch with
the rest of the world. Just 7 to 8 hours from now.
Her boyfriend and
dad must be worried by now.
More of the
others have joined her by now and the Mexican boys sit with her in the second
row, one on either side. The French Canadians decide to try their hand at the
front row, since the back row had drenched them so badly it looked like that
had jumped directly into the ocean with all their belongings and clothes.
The two French girls
pile on next, the German girl and the American siblings board the boat and we are
ready. The morning is quiet and the travelers are too spent for small talk. La
Guajira has been more than anyone had dared to imagine– solitary and desolate
with low shrubs and turquoise lizards darting across the dusty roads. With
strange rock formations and isolated lighthouses at the tip of Cabo and Punta
Gallinas. As promised the boat ride back is less wet and heads nodd, as the sun
peaks out from behind the clouds that hugged the horizon, heating up the
November morning.
Her face hurts
from smiling. Her cheeks are crispy from almost a week in the desert sun. She
can feel her back aching from the various transportations and sleeping so many
nights in a row in a hammock. Sand has made it’s home in every possible
location in her body.
But her mind is
still . . . still like the desert had been as she walked through it alone two
days earlier. The only sound, the whistle of the wind in the air.
Silencio
total.
Walk down the dirt road toward the
beach. Veer around the puddles and the frogs the size of small rodents.
Say "Buenas" to the young woman washing her clothes in the bucket in her yard. She'll return your greeting.
To your right, there is nothing but ocean and
sky. To your left, hundreds of palm trees. Keep going. 
