Hello Friends

Hello friends, it has been a couple of weeks since I have posted something not poop related and for that I apologize.  I was feeling kind of bumbed for a bit, mostly as a result of being a bit overwhelmed by the whole isolation thing.  Its funny, but it hit me a little harder than I thought I would.  But then I forced myself to sit down and do a reality check and I realized that an absurd number of things need to be going right for that to be my biggest woe.  So, here is a list of all the chummy and wonderful things that are going on in the world of Matt.

  

 1) I'm still alive

 2) I’m in Colombia

 3) I’m in Colombia and I’m still alive

I don’t know about you guys, but those three things actually gets me pretty stoked.  But actually the list is really much longer than that and I have had a series of “homygawd I’m actually in Colombia” moments so I am happy to report that all is well in the world of Matt.  But anyways, this is what I’ve actually been up to.

Rivers and Roads:

So during the weekends here I do have lots of time to kill and since I am used to getting up at 6am during of the week I find myself having trouble sleeping the day away.  As such there is lots of sunlight for me to take advantage of so I have been going on long nature walks as any good tourist should.  And oh the things I have seen in almost quite literally my back yard.  There are some unreal tropical birds that I can neither identify, nor really hope to due to my slow trigger finger with a camera and general lack of birding knowledge.  However, its all really quite amazing.  But anyways, there are these signs that I had been looking at that point straight uphill in the town, which report the presence of a nature preserve a couple of kilometers away.  However, they kind of pointed up towards nothing to be honest, so I was a little confused about what they were advertising.  So one day I decided to dawn my flippy floppies and hit the trail and after summiting a hill and then climbing back down into a valley that can really only be described as just jungle, I found myself looking at the front gate of a house, which was most definitely not a nature preserve.  I patiently waited for someone to walk out of the house and called their attention and, quite stupidly, asked if their house, which was obviously not a nature reserve, was in fact the nature reserve I was looking for.  Getting the confused look I should have expected, I was informed that there was a trail which runs along the side of their house, which leads to the promised reserve.  I said my thanks and headed on my way to find a gorgeous river in a valley, with pastures on either side.  Pictures really can’t do this whole thing justice.  The scale and absurdness of this place is just kind of indescribably wonderful.  I found some of my students fishing as well, which was kind of a nice little surprise and they told me that this was a pretty common hang out spot for the local kids.  It’s called the botanical garden, but really isn’t one.  There’s this overgrown area that has the rundown foundation of what I assume was once a pagoda and where the garden once was has now been reclaimed by slower, more powerful forces than mankind.  It is actually a very poetic type of place.  But moving forward I decided to scramble one the rocks for a little while and then returned to the path and eventually ran into the gate of the park.  This place looks straight out of a post apocalyptic novel.  And I don’t at all mean that in a scary or distressing kind of way.  It just looks like it has been years and years since anyone has done any sort of anything to it, which has resulted in kind of a peaceful desolation.  I don’t really know how to capture it in words.  But anyways, it is just wooden frame of a doorway with concrete pillars on either side which then has barbed wire on either side.  The wire has long since rusted into a brown red mess and what was once obviously a brilliantly colored sign shows more of its wooden underneath than its former luster.  The simple wooden door had an old pad lock on it so it was pretty obviously closed, but the barbed wire was pretty obviously cut and then twisted to feign its ability to keep things out, or in for that matter.  I took this as an open invitation to enter, so I did and man was it something.  The old trail is still clear, because I am pretty sure that there are still fairly frequent visitors, but its by far the narrowest trail that I have ever been on.  Standing still you can stick your arms out and touch fauna on either side of you for most of the trail that I saw.  And man this place was quiet.  You can hear a little bit of the river, which really isn’t that far off, some rustling of wind pushing the canopy, and that’s about it.  The only thing that you can really hear is your own footsteps, whose crunch in the dirt simply feels alien and intrusive.  I’d had moments like this in Costa Rica where I realized just how removed humans are from the natural world, but it all came back in an instant as I listened to my own footsteps cut through the otherwise placid scene.  I walked for about 20 minutes, but then decided to turn back due to kind of being freaked out by the spookiness of the whole situation as well as the legions of woodcutter ants, which were just a little too close to my exposed toes.  I’m like 90% sure that they are actually completely harmless, but I was kind of fishing for an excuse to turn back.  However, I fully intend to head back into the mix with some closed toed shoes, so I’ll let you all know how it all works out for yours truly.  And then I left and ran into a bunch of cows, which had decided to move down the hillside and start grazing right on top of the path back to Pueblo Rico.  Now I don’t know if you all have ever been in a staring match with a dozen cows at once, but it some scary stuff.  I know that they are delicious and everything, but when they’re still alive they are more than capable of evening the score on behalf of their lost brethren, if you catch my drift.  So I expertly walked to the river shore to put some distance between the bovines and myself and continued on my merry way. 

The pictures that I have below are from another walk out to the river, but I’ll get some of the park eventually for you all.  On this trip I decided to take a dip in the river and I found a nice quiet spot where the water was deep, the bank widened, and the water slowed down, so I hopped in.  Then I noticed the water smelled and tasted like pasture and I realized that there were many cows on either side of the river just upstream of where I was and that I was swimming in what was at least partially cow poo.  Needless to say I quickly exited the stream and proceeded to feel extremely dirty for the rest of the day.  However, I keep hearing about these swimming spots here in PR, but I have yet to find them or be taken there, but I remain hopeful that I will this weekend, so I will report back on the subject later.

I have another naturey story for y’all, but it will have to wait, because I’m tired and such.  At some point all give you all a quick bio on the people who I spend the most time with and other things.  I find I tend to reflect more on the places and less on the people that I come across so I’ll  do my best a remedying that in the future.  However, for now don’t be like me and forget to acknowledge all the good things that are going on even when it all seems kind of shitty.  And as always, don’t forget to look up. Peace, love, and keep on keepin on my friends.

Ah sorry, the internet here is too sharty to upload pictures at the moment, but they're coming, I promise.  Thats what she said.