Where the Desert Meets the Sea

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.