Saturday May 3
Checking in was a breeze, as the Avianca representative put us in line, then went to a nearby kiosk and printed our boarding passes for us. When we got to the counter, the possibly overweight suitcases breezed right through. They didn't even look at the readout on the scale. Proceeding through security was just as easy. On last week's visit to the U.S. Embassy, security missed the four-inch knife I had in the bottom of my purse (to cut the cake at our office party and forgotten by me). Airport security let us pass through with our full water bottles, lotion, etc., which was not exactly reassuring. With an hour until boarding, we took the opportunity to glance around and take in the sights and sounds of Bogota for the last time, at least those that were present in the airport. What a great experience it has been to serve here and we wonder what might become of our efforts. After getting on the plane, settling into our seats, and as the flight attendants prepared to shut the doors, who should appear in the aisle but ……. Edgar! He had rushed to the plane and just made it. They put him in first class, which was great for him, as he returned this morning from training in Lima and was making a quick turnaround to accompany us to Leticia.
The flight to Leticia was about two hours. KR kept looking over at me with a gross look on her face. It seems the guy next to her managed to spend the entire flight picking his nose and using the findings for sustenance (they did not serve a meal). She was extremely grossed out. Yuck!!!!
If you examine a map of Colombia, you will notice it has a tiny southeastern foot that hooks down to take in the north bank of the Amazon River. Most of eastern Colombia is jungle that slopes down from the Andes. At the end of this “foot” sits Leticia. It is accessible only by air or via boats plying the river upstream from Manaus (Brazil) or downstream from Iquitos (Peru). Ever since we heard that the Church had a branch in Leticia (within our “training jurisdiction”), we knew we wanted to check it out.
As we approached Leticia, the clouds thinned and we looked out the window seeing thick green jungle as far as the eye could see and the sun glinting off a HUGE river winding off into the green haze. Eventually, you could make out a small hut with a tin roof every so often, but it wasn't until we were within minutes of landing that the town came into view. The plane taxied to the end of the runway, which ended in a cul-de-sac sort of circle, then made a sharp U-turn heading back down the same runway towards the small terminal. The airport in Leticia is similar to the one in Tegucigalpa when we first arrived in 1999. One small conveyor belt brought the luggage from the tarmac to inside the terminal. After paying a tax to exit the airport, we searched for a taxi big enough to hold the three of us and our four big bags, plus assorted carry-ons (we had ALL our mission stuff except the bag we left in Barranquilla). Luckily, we found an old, beat-up mini-wagon and hopped in. This “taxi” was literally held together by baling wire. Our driver said the roads and climate are rough on vehicles. Our Saturday night hotel, the Waira, was surprisingly nice. Our second floor room had a king bed, air conditioning, a fairly warm shower and a little balcony. All the necessities!
Soon after arriving, it began to sprinkle and within minutes it was pouring buckets which turned the streets into rivers. Scooters, cars, horses, and whatever else used for transport scurried for shelter to wait out the downpour. Leticia is a city of "motos" (motorcycles) and during the rainy season, people are prepared with ponchos and umbrellas. Mike and I stood on the balcony and took it all in, reminiscing about Honduras. We met Edgar for lunch in the hotel restaurant, then returned to our room for a short nap before leaving for the chapel for our 4:00 p.m. meeting (which had been changed to 5:00 p.m. without our knowledge and actually started at 5:30 p.m.) Such is life here:) While we waited for the meeting to begin, the young missionaries who were at the church sang hymns together, while one of the elders and I took turns playing the portable keyboard. The little chapel in Leticia sits on a large, beautiful lot along a main road one block from the border-crossing into Brazil. Palm trees, flowers and a little grass-covered pavilion add to the beauty of the site. About twenty-five people attended the Saturday night meeting, where self-sufficiency was the topic. Sunday, we will speak to the entire congregation more specifically during the two hours after sacrament meeting. We went back to the hotel and crashed for the night in our cool room with the comfy bed.
Pictured: 1) Our welcoming cloudburst, 2) the Leticia Branch church building, and 4) entering the building for our training meeting.
Sunday May 4
I sat propped up in bed Sunday morning and typed out a few thoughts after showering and dressing for church. When I climbed into the lukewarm shower, I was transported back to Honduras and the little motel we used to frequent. The only thing missing was the double bed and the ants. This place is much nicer! Since it was the first Sunday of the month, we left for church without breakfast and arrived five minutes before the meeting began. Between ninety to one hundred people attend each Sunday. We sat behind a sweet family with two small children who I couldn't keep my eyes off, thinking about how we will be sitting with our grandchildren in Stake Conference in two weeks!!! Mike and I stood together at the pulpit, taking turns, in the Latin American tradition, to bear our testimonies. It was bittersweet, this being our last opportunity to do so in Colombia.
After church, it was fun to see families hop on their motorcycles and moto home together - sometimes four to a bike. Everyone uses them, as there are very few automobiles and fewer bicycles! The three of us ate lunch at a restaurant that the members recommended. It featured various kind of exotic fish on the menu and shrunken heads on the walls. Interesting. Afterwards, Mike and I quickly packed up for our move to the Decameron Decalogue Ticuna Hotel, while Edgar returned to the church for another meeting. We tried to book this hotel for our three days in Leticia, but the U. S. Embassy had an excursion for their employees the same weekend and the hotel was full on Saturday. We decided to go ahead and book it for Sunday and Monday, using the Waira only for Saturday. When we checked into the Decameron, we were so glad we moved. It is a slice of paradise in a beautiful peaceful setting. Lizards scurried across the walkways and turtles swam in a flower-covered pond or sunned themselves on wooden platforms. Our room sat ten feet from a beautiful swimming pool that was the perfect temperature for a dip without shivering. Edgar joined us at our hotel for a late dinner, then returned to the Waira before flying out the next day. The dinner was a buffet affair that was quite good, with many local dishes among the choices.
Below: 1) Mike eating an unknown fish with many bones on Sunday afternoon, and 2) the Decameron.
Monday May 5
Good morning Leticia! We slept in until 9:00 a.m. or so and it was heavenly! The phone rang at 9:45 a.m. reminding us that breakfast ended at 10:45 a.m., so we got ready for the day and strolled over to eat. The open, high-ceilings in the dining area gave it a light and airy feeling and ceiling fans whirling most of the day kept the temperature comfortable. Directly above all the tables hung a HUGE green, plastic anaconda looking somewhat like a water-slide, but serving only as a “decoration”. Since there were no windows in the area, the sounds of nature filled the air - croaking frogs, chirping crickets, tweeting birds and lots of turtle silence.
After breakfast we set off for the river - the AMAZON, passing stalls along the way with vendors selling fruits and vegetables. We arrived at the water’s edge feeling the heavy, jungle moisture engulf us. This arm of the Amazon is quite high right now, as it is the rainy season, but dark lines on the trees indicated the river can get much higher. I asked one of the boatmen what happens to the houses on the far side when the water rises. Very nonchalantly he answered, "They wash away." Looking at photographs taken during the dry season, the river arm that Leticia uses becomes almost a creek and people certainly must walk a long way towards the main channel in order to catch a boat. Boats of all shapes and sizes filled the riverbank on the Leticia side. Most prolific were the narrow, flat canoes with a small motor in the back. For a long time, we stood and watched people come and go in these 20-foot long dugouts. Some families came with empty bags and others left carrying bags stuffed with produce, clothing, toys, household items, etc. Leticia is clearly the center of trade for a large area of the jungle. One young boy climbed into his canoe holding his recently purchased battery keyboard. A toddler and his father climbed aboard holding their pink and orange Creamies (orange and white ice cream bars) that melted quickly in the sun while their tongues licked frantically to keep up with the drips. A young girl about 12 years old, dressed in her crisp, blue and white school uniform, paddled two younger siblings from their home across the river to the dock where we stood. Holding the canoe steady with one hand, she helped her charges with the other hand as they climbed out onto the dock and hurried off to school. Her errand complete, she turned the canoe around and paddled back home.
On the next dock over, a large group of people waited for their canoes to arrive. A dock hand told us it was an entire community from a settlement three hours upstream. As they boarded the canoes in the HOT sun with their babies, toddlers, and older family members, their colorful umbrellas popped up and they turned and waved as we took their picture.
After a bit of haggling with a tour operator, we agreed on a price and a boat to take us on a fifteen-minute trip across the river to eat lunch in Santa Rosa, Peru. Yes! Peru is only a short boat ride away! Our transport looked like some old, sun-bleached wreck that had been laying on its side on a stretch of deserted beach somewhere . . . except it had a motor. Though it didn't look like much, I felt safer in that than in one of the shallow canoes, which listed a bit precariously to one side and had a bail bucket sitting in the bottom of the boat - the WET bottom.
Our toothless captain assured us that tourists love to go to Santa Rosa for lunch, as it had great restaurants with good food - “muy rico!" Climbing aboard, I was declared, "muy agile" (very agile) by the captain, as we had to climb across the bow, over the windshield, step onto half of a front seat and then into the back. He commented that Mike wasn’t so agile. On the ride over, we passed by many houses on the opposite bank sitting on wooden stilts with the river flowing beneath. A few, which obviously weren't built high enough to survive the rainy season, sat unoccupied as the river flowed right through the front door and out the back. Once we were out of the tributary and into the main river, we picked up speed, passing large islands created from lily-pad type plants abloom with beautiful pink flowers. We had seen smaller versions of these floating, flower islands going downriver with the current back at the boat launch and realized that pieces must break away from wherever they are growing and then find a place to take root, growing larger and larger until they form a virtual island.
Arriving at Santa Rosa, we left our boat with a promise from our "captain" that he would return in one hour to get us. Santa Rosa is a very tired, very poor, very small little village with not much going for it. We faced the reality that we had been snookered by a Colombian sales pitch. Walking down the main street, we observed fish cooking on a grill, men playing cards, dogs scouring the garbage cans for lunch and people sitting in chairs looking very hot. My favorite memory involved two little boys playing marbles in the packed mud. The played with intensity, taking turns flicking the marbles with their thumbs, groaning when one traveled too far, coming to rest under the wooden sidewalk or in a tall swatch of grass. The smaller of the two boys won the match and the larger boy reluctantly handed him one of his marbles before squatting down to begin another game.
Seeing a tantalizing photo of food displayed on the front wall of a "restaurant" (I use the term loosely), we stepped up to the counter to look at the menu. I could see directly into the "kitchen" where two girls stood at a small wooden table peeling potatoes and cutting off chunks of fish from a large fillet laying in the center of the table (for who knows how long). The owner assured us it was "fresh". I was about to order a bowl of rice when I saw the cat. The mangy-looking creature was halfway into a bucket on the floor, chewing vigorously on something and about to fall completely in. The voice of Weird Al Yankovich came into my mind and I heard him singing his spoof on Cat Steven's, "Cat's in the Cradle." Titled, “The Cat’s in the Kettle” - it goes like this,
Did you ever think when you eat Chinese,
It ain’t pork or chicken, but a fat siamese?
Yet the food tastes great, so you don’t complain.
But that’s not chicken in your chicken chow mein.
Seems to me I ordered sweet-and-sour pork,
But Garfield’s on my fork.
He’s purrin’ here on my fork.
There’s a cat in the kettle at the Peking Moon,
The place that I eat every day at noon.
They can feed you cat and you’ll never know,
Once they wrap it up in dough, boy.
They fry it real crisp in dough.
Chou Lin asked if I wanted more,
As he was dialin’ up his buddy at the old pet store.
I said "Not today. I lost my appetite.
There’s two cats in my belly and they want to fight."
I was suckin’ on a Rolaid and a Tums or two,
When I swear I heard it mew, boy.
And that is when I knew,
There’s a cat in the kettle at the Peking Moon,
I think I gotta stop eatin’ there at noon.
They say that it’s beef or fish or pork,
But its purrin’ there on my fork.
There’s a hair-ball on my fork.
The song sealed the deal. We would eat elsewhere. A mediocre restaurant back at the dock where we first got off the boat suddenly looked really good. I got my standby, Pollo Planchada, and Mike had some kind of unknown fish.
The pictures: 1) our tour boat, 2) the tasty grill choices in Santa Rosa, 3) our dining companions, 3) selling chickens to an open-air restaurant, 5) a very warm Mike eating lunch, and 6) passing boats on the main Amazon channel.
Tuesday May 6
We woke up to a beautiful day in Amazonas and decided to eat breakfast before walking to Brazil! Yes, Brazil is only a few blocks away! Breakfast consisted of moros y cristianos (beans and rice), plus shredded meat in a tasty sauce, along with the usual fare of tropical fruits, juices, eggs, breads and fish soup. Pancakes were on the menu also with honey or chocolate sauce for toppers. I only eat pancakes with homemade syrup, so I passed.
Showering would be done after our walk, since we would for sure be a sweaty mess upon returning to the hotel. It was hotter than the previous two days and as we walked the eight blocks to the border, we were wishing we had a motorcycle like the rest of the city. To enter, we just walked across the street passing between the two countries -- no border checks, no passports needed, nothing! We just crossed the street where a sign announced the border. After a block or two, we could see there was nothing different than what we had been seeing in Leticia, so we turned right around. I stopped at a money exchange place to a pick up some Brazilian coins for the grandkids and for our collection. Sweating like crazy at this point, we walked a few more blocks, then took a three-wheeled mini-cart the rest of the way to the park down the street from our hotel. A woman sat with her mobile drink stand selling juice squeezed from fresh chunks of sugar cane stalks. She tried to talk us into trying her juice, but I couldn't see a Department of Health certificate posted anywhere on her cart (joke!).
We arrived back at the hotel just as a group of guests were leaving for a bicycle ride to Tabatinga, Brazil where we had just been. It was about 10:00 a.m. and the temperature was 90 degrees with 90% humidity. Some of the people were old and we wanted to tell them, "Don't go! It is a trick. You're gonna die!" And to think they actually paid for the privilege. While the bicyclers went off to sweat (and perhaps kill themselves from falling into a pothole in the road) we showered and got all packed up to leave. With an hour to spare, Mike took a mini-nap and I went outside to take some final photos. The lizards were out in force and I snapped some nice shots of them, plus some video clips. They scurried away before I could get really close, but it was fun watching them. Three days was just the right amount of time for us to see everything we wanted to see in this little, jungle town.
Pictured below: 1) Mike trying out the local taxi service, 2) city of "motos", and 3) the Colombia-Brazil border crossing.
We had the hotel hail a taxi to take us to the airport. Guess what? Same taxi driver and rattle trap. We stood in line at the airport (no AC) and it was stifling. Then to top it off, they actually weighed the bags and I had to pull the bags to the side and rearrange to meet the weight requirements. There was no air to breath in the crowded airport as everyone stood there sweating and avoiding eye contact. Mike was extremely uncomfortable and very eager to get going. We waited in line for 40 minutes, only to be told our bags had to be taken by us, personally, to the X-ray machine. There, they opened all the bags and searched them quite thoroughly (why here and not Bogota?). We lost my needles, a tiny screwdriver I used for eyeglasses, and Mike’s razor blades!
At that point, we were literally stuffed into the gate area with no air, 95 degrees and 100 % humidity. We could not buy water without waiting in the security line again. Then it starts raining. Not a drizzle, an absolute, Amazon cloudburst---a sheet of water falling to the tarmac. You could barely see the plane. At that moment things got really interesting. Before our plane arrived, a LAN plane was parked in front of the terminal. Our Avianca plane arrived and parked to the left of it. Both planes were probably equi-distant from the door passengers used to board the plane. Instead of loading us quickly, someone decided the planes should switch positions so the Avianca plane’s stairs could be about 10 feet closer to the door (I assume because of the rain). They maneuvered the planes about with the little trucks and it took forever. And the rain came down harder and harder. Then the dreaded announcement came. Due to visibility issues with the rain, the flight would be delayed. The whole room groaned. Finally, after what seemed like forever, we were handed an umbrella and ushered out the door into the rain, dragging our suitcases behind us as the sideways torrent soaked them thoroughly. We traipsed up the stairs with our wet bags and sat down in our soaking wet clothes. We sat in the plane with no air circulation blowing for another 40 minutes until the rain slackened and we finally took off. So happy! We looked out the windows to see the mighty Amazon disappear behind us as we said farewell to the jungle.
Due to our delays in Leticia, we arrived in Bogota with only 20 minutes to make our connection to Cali. We ran to the connections desk, where they told us we were too late. We ran on to the departure gate anyway, only to find out the time listed in big letters was the BOARDING time, which we made by 20 seconds! Loaded and exhausted, we bid farewell to Bogota! Hello Cali!
On arrival, we caught a taxi large enough to hold all of our bags and waded through bad traffic for 40 minutes until arriving at the Intercontinental Hotel (a very nice hotel with GOOD beds). We were exhausted and ready to fall into bed after eating a quick bite (pizza—delicious--but no red sauce), but discovered that our suitcases had been left out in the Leticia downpour and were thoroughly soaked thru, including most of our clothes including all of Mike’s freshly dry-cleaned suits!). We unpacked and hung everything – suits, pants, jackets, all of our socks, etc. on the lamp shades, shower bar, the TV, doors---in every inch of the room. It was quite the sight. We couldn’t make all of this up if we tried.
To add color: 1) our Leticia taxi, 2) watching the rain at the Leticia airport, 3) saying goodbye to the Amazon, and 4) drying out in Cali.
No comments:
Post a Comment