What Chapter

This city smells like someone’s been fucking inside a McDonalds wrapper, these streets are cleaned by goose-stepping garbage-men, kicking plastic in every direction. The architecture is faux colonial, the gates are glass and honey. The boy is home. Burn the tires, let a gypsy find solace in some smoke. Queen some coats, wolves with pomade  in their hair, sipping on moonshine, sipping on the memory of that last call, last kiss. Kill the lights, kill the coke. How did we write the future in song and then get surprised by the way it ended?

She drags him across the dance floor like a rag doll, he submits like a struck dog. He pushes her back with his weight propelling him, shoulders driving her into the ground. Burying her, eyes closed imagining trespass. Stomping each other with every step. Tango, tumultuous sad dance made from the pumping systematic loss of blood. From heartbreak and hard drugs. Who can dance it well that has not been fucked and fucked over? No one. No virgins here. If there were who would want them. El Capitol, El Captain. Buenos Aires. My man, dressed in black again and again. Do the laundry kid.

 With champagne in one hand, wine in the other, a mouth with a pain killer cut up under the lip, bus seat kicked to 90 degrees, we enter. Finally ready for vacation, finally ready to enjoy the destruction we’ve caused. 6 months later, its time to relax. First night in, I see Ally Stone in a bathroom against six men in the Falkland Island war revisited. I’m just here to do the dishes. This is a great man, above war so I don’t think he needs to get his hands soiled in this, he just puts em in the soil. Get me. We all need a witness. I’m just here to do the dishes. Repeat. Repeat this.

“Don’t rub me to close. Why you got names like a snake. I don’t know how long you’ve worked here but I’ve worked here longer. If I pulled my dick out it wouldn’t be more awkward, if you introduced me to a congressman I ‘d ask him for a light.”

Ally says this to no one in particular and everyone in general as we enter the pub. Exit the rules and progress. Here we come full circle. Fear, I’m back. Missed you too.

There’s a puma outside licking the air, rubbing ass against the tent. I get up to drink from the river where he drank and see if I can still taste him. There’s an arctic fox playing with his girlfriend I move closer to see if I can chase her, skirts are skirts, on and off paper. Milkshake makers.

Fin Del Mundo, we’ve made it thru the entire continent to the southern most tip of the earth. Glaciers as big as some countries, which ones, I wont google. The hardest trip of my life. The most rewarding time facing death, in a total white out storm with gale-force winds beating me into the ice, my frostbite giving way to hypothermia, a hike of 97 Kilometers, costing me my knees. Ben saved my life when all I could see was glacier and no hope. My brain began to systematically shut off function. All I could think was I don’t wanna die with my pants down, and though I could not see the Peruvian Army shorts I wore, could not feel the limbs I was told I owned, could not know my high-top Nikes from the ice. They said I was naked. My body shaking like pistols in her hand. Mind still stuck on that hand. Lost 700 at the casino that week, but not that hand.

He chiseled ice from me, put life back in me, asked nothing but a humorous line to know I was alive. Some debts are just lifestyles. Round we go, owing each other everything.

You wanna hear I miss you but don’t wanna hear I am coming for you. How should I show up? In shackles or riding motorcycles, with love or hate in my heart? Knowing I scare you makes me afraid.

           She didn’t wait for me, hadn’t spent billions of years shaking off glaciers like dog water in anticipation of me. She never thought of me while throwing temper tantrum gale-force winds, her avalanches were without reproach for my absence, her boulders were not tossed down the sides of her face demanding I be there, yes, I knew she cared little if I climbed her but still I imagined she wanted me, like a lover, I forgot my past fires swept beneath the hearth, I should have remembered that she might also move to kill me, with direct orders. Its good to see you again. Campanero. Another mountain climbed just to see where we stand.

Interlude: Few Were We

Few were we, the wanderers, the lone, seekers of obscure fist-fights. Nomads who navigated entire continents disregarding all the maps that came before, knowing those could only lead down the path of another mans heart. Gypsy lovers of the broken branch, archers with our arrows drawn lit to guide the way. Desiring only to see with fresh eyes, intuitions filthy with experience, hides ruff, paws damp beneath the calluses, drunk on moonshine, teeth full with gristle. Few were we, who had gone to the ends of the earth only to tumble suspiciously down the deep ravines and hungry precipices. Our falling bodies clearing dust, thorn, and path, where even fewer still would leap willingly, with purpose. Not as guides but as battle hymns, singsong odes to great men, the campfire ghosts we honor. Few were we, so few not a single one of us could escape the sheet of loneliness that draped our wind-worn shoulders and raw eroded faces. That same sheet that kept our legs tangled in half slumber thru cold winter beatings. So few were we, a single glance from a stranger need not discern our sadness, we wore it with unmistakable identity like thieves of wine. We carried with us always the look of the hunted even while we tracked the great beast. We sang only the songs of the damned, the blues, the wild open storm we called home, lover, and adversary. We loved true, having one condition, that we would always leave, always return someday hiding strange gifts as better men.  Pulling foreign coin from behind the ears of our children. Grown in the eyes of the land, forged under the weight of her beauty. We died at dawn, stabbed thru the heart with elk antlers, thru the lungs with spades, thru the livers with thick oak barrel spinters, wearing only the names of our brothers. Need not bury us with our treasure; once the ashes scatter we are traveling her round legs once more. Let the funeral pyres burn and the great sea captains return to guide the tides again. Let the earth shake and rattle and kick the Rock'n'Roll back into the boots. The course is set for war, smile for it. Rush to it, leave your belongings behind. One kiss from her is worth more than all your life, absolves you of all you consider your debt. You need only to climb something very high, voyage steps to the edge with eyes closed and take a deep breath to see it. Hunker down low on your haunches between blades of desert grass and run to taste it. Lean and bury your face in the vineyard grapes, source of vagrant elation, to smell it. But you must leave, to be with it. It travels far and swings wide. So tell me goodbye, dear girl, dear campanero, like I tell you.  

-R. Vigilantics

            

Chapter 18: From Condors to Doctors

            I reached into my pockets to find them holding little less than enough for another glass of whiskey if the bartender favored me, I told him the best story I had on me and put the rest of what I had in front of me. A few soles short. He threw a little shine on me as the closing lights went up and my glass filled amber brown and sticky one more time. It was 5 in the morning and I was tired, the rest of my cash along with my backpack was locked away in a dingy room on the other side of the city. Everyone I knew was a day in front of me. I decided to stay on in Cusco another night alone and wait for Halloween to die down.

            I posted up outside the hostel across the street and threw rocks until the guard got distracted, then I slipped by him and grabbed the first empty bed I could find.

            I woke to find myself in the women’s dorm and girls in towels surrounded me with a playful curiosity. One of them immediately remembered me from Colombia and they all welcomed me to breakfast, told me I smelt like booze and offered to dress me up for Halloween. I declined the wardrobe but took em up on the eggs and marijuana. Despite my small protests the night ended well with my face painted like a lion, it felt good to participate again. It’s been years since I’ve dressed up. I stayed out till my bus left at 7AM. Forgetting to wash off the make-up, or not caring, I can’t remember which. I entered my 10-hour ride full of mariachi music and the same damn Adam Sandler movie. I probably look like I make more sense down here this way. A more tangible circus act covered in tattoos with a lions head.

            I show up in Puno to meet up with Ben, Chad, Elizabeth, get off the bus and realizing what a shit-hole the place is, I just get back on and leave. I see Lake Titicaca from the window and don’t feel like I’m missing much but Disneyland style reed islands, frustration, and Bolivia, which I want to go to but refuse to get the vaccines for.

            In Arequipa I can feel Peru coming to a close. This will be my last stop here before I enter Chile, I am excited to go again and long only for Colombia now and her. Although Arequipa reminds me of home as all deserts do. I can smell the sage, feel the cacti, rub the dirt into my pores, close my eyes and imagine the land where I was born with ease. Homesick remedies have to be creative these days.

            I go again to see the doctor here. Where he has me diagnose myself and then gives me medication according to what I think is wrong with me. He tells his assistant to have me pull my pants down and lie ass up on the table and then he comes in and asks me what the fuck I am doing with my pants off. We laugh about it and talk bout bad US movies and tattoos. As the girl at the reception begins to print me my bill he pats me on the back and says this one is on the house. Best hospital experience ever. He still doesn’t fix me. The sides of my legs feel like they have a million ants fighting and dying in them.

            Me and Ben take a taxi out so some local bullfight where two bulls are encouraged to battle each other by having their handlers grab their balls, finger their asses, and excite them in other such old school fashions. The betting system is you yell out a bet and another man takes it or raises it. The first bull to walk away looses. We end up with the old school papas who run this place and I earn their respect by picking the bulls better than they do. I try to trade my I-phone for the most amazing bolo tie I have ever seen and am laughed at, its on a golden rope with a pre-incan coin and I will find my own if it’s the death of me. Treasure has killed many men.  They take us past the gates and introduce us to the refs, the bull owners, the champions. In the middle of the winners circle in the middle of the ring we get prestige placement, hold trophies and are bought drinks.

            The fights come to an end and we hitch a ride in the dark in the back of a deep-dish truck with one of the bulls out to a bar in the barrio where we drink with the prizewinners from the night until everything and everyone feels good and celebrated. Walking back into town we stumble upon a punk rock show with only four people in attendance. Finally I can dance. We bounce the place off the walls and make the band feel like they are better than the Ramones. In the moment it’s true.

            In the morning we pack our bags for a three-day excursion to hike Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. Excitement runs. I love condors and they fly so close here. The canyon doesn’t disappoint me. The condors don’t leave me. A little oasis lies at the bottom for us to rest and make spears. The vastness of this place dwarfs even the biggest story. On the third day I hike the entirety out of  the canyon from the bottom without stopping once. I am proud of myself for this, I know my will is strong for this.

            Another 24-hour bus ride and now I am in Chile. We rent a car and Chad drives us out to one of the best observatories in South America. I can see distant nebulas that no longer exist anymore and shooting stars plainly fire blind every few minutes. I have seen some of the details of these other galaxies in my ayahuasca ceremony, and know things about their positions I didn’t recognize I knew before. I can locate the Andromeda Galaxy with a blindfold on. We keep driving another 5 hours south to the Capitol city of Santiago, a riot is taking place as we enter…police are firing water cannons and tear gas, several walls have been knocked over and most of the public building are covered in graffiti all of the statues are being held hostage. I like it here. The parks are full at night and the people seem to be constantly up to activities. I’ve been here three days all full of soap-box derbies, hells angels tattoo conventions, rude-boy festivals, car shows.  My days in South America now lie severely numbered, after the new year I will go to Amsterdam, two months after that I will be riding a motorcycle from LA to New Orleans with Josh Mills…I hope to get a return flight to Colombia though. I hope between here and there I find it. It’s almost time to put out a new record. I can feel it, but I can’t quite see it. I know it has to be good and I can’t settle. I never do but I tend to rush things. Maybe between all the 20 hour bus rides, bad Spanish, and blank stares…I have learned enough patience to make it work.

The Colombian government has a bounty out on a herd of Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippos. They don’t care what happens to them, they just want them gone. I pull my hat down a little lower and think about the possibilities.

Signing out from the thick my campaneros,

R. Vigilantics

Chapter 17: The End Of The Thick As We Know It.

As the 6 of us began our one-hour ascent to The Temple of the Moon no one spoke. A fevered storm had filled the night. It was Dios De La Muerte and lightning flashed so bright as to momentarily blind and then thunder would roll in minutes later, boom and echo for what seemed like an eternity. Little did I know I would enter there myself. 

Me, Ben, Chad, Mariana, Alej, and Julianno (our shaman), swept forward with our heads bent just above the neck, so as to stay the wind but keep the sight. We passed no other people on this path but directly below us sat the ceremonial pits and stones where the Incans would sacrifice and toss their human offerings. In front of us was where they would bury their own and worship the moon.

We were already soaked fifteen minutes in, as we slipped and wrestled with the mud and growing streams. My pants weighed heavy with water and my poncho did little to keep the feeling that this was fucking crazy off my back.

Once inside the cave we gathered stones to sit and unpacked our supplies for the night, ours consisting of blankets, water, and coca leaves. The Shamans of fur, tobacco, perfumes, tinctures, ayahuasca, rattles, and a stick. He spoke in only Spanish and maybe Quechqua, but had assured me once the medicine took hold I would need not for understanding.

The ceremony began with prayers and offerings, he put some kind of magical seal over the cave entrance to protect us, and we began in the dark with only the smoldering ash of incense burning. He shook, pounded, mixed the ayahuasca in a cup and passed it first to Ben (which worried me because I was told by a guide in the Amazon that the Shaman should always drink it first), then he refilled it and passed it to me, around the circle it went, until finally the Shaman poured for himself a large pull. Slowly and unsteadily I had drank. Fear is what I felt and that I was stupid for feeling it because maybe this was all bullshit.

For the first 20 minutes I sat with my eyes closed and could see nothing but blackness, did I have no soul, no questions? No vision at all I wondered? What could be worse? A growing sense of unease and annoyance began to grow in me, it was freezing in this cave and silent. 

Then he began to chant, I started to feel a heat first in my legs and then wherever he directed it until my whole body was warm. I started to feel very light and displaced in my seat. Slowly a serpent started to form behind him and I leaned closer to rub my eyes disbelieving and see it, not realizing that now I was way to close to him and knocking something over. The sudden clash of realities immediately made me sick and I went outside to vomit blackness upon blackness.

 Out of the cave the world looked wilted and winded and changing like it was inhaling and exhaling. Though I could tell it was raining I couldn’t tell it was different from the trees behind it. Slowly like a newborn trying to walk I made my way back into the cave and tried to find my spot amongst them again, though this time it seemed much lower down and Ben towered above me stoically  while Mariana had completely disappeared into some kind of dark recess right in front of me. The cave had quadrupled in size. 

I began to swoon and had to lay back from the Shaman as he chanted and spoke, then I realized by doing this I was moving away from the ceremony and that without it I would be truly lost, possibly forever. I was already tumbling thru geometric patterns and small Abysses. i had entered a long hallway with many keys and doors and at the end had chose to come back to my Shaman. As I leaned up to see him he turned first into a bear and then into a statue and then into all of his ancestors flickering dead on his face at once. The walls behind him continued to produce streams of serpents and bulges. 

Every question I asked of him he answered simultaneously with the twists of the words in his song and non-verbal communications. Everything he spoke of appeared, he told me to taste sweet and I did. He led me up into the sun and we peeled back layers of deep blue metallic inscriptions and crawled inside. Me and Ben began to speak telepathically. The Shaman lead us up and across the entire universe and back. I understood every word of Spanish he said without a single fault. At some point I receded into myself and deep into the past/future where alternate versions of me each came one by one and offered what gifts they had to give. The Shaman said “look how quickly we can go from one world to the other, its right here, all existing at once.” It was true in a span of less than then first hour I was watching with no doubt, one foot in front of me what was a bear with the face of a million dead leading me into the craziest most amazing thing I have ever experienced in my life. He spit mouthfuls of perfume with his lips directly on our heads. Any worry I had he immediately addressed with the boom of his stick or by simply leading me across a dimension where that worry no longer was relevant. The entire time I experienced the most extreme Deja-Vu. The ceremony winded out as if from a tunnel, he slowly took form again by smoking a big jungle tobacco cigarette and letting me see the light on his face as he flickered back and forth between all the shapes and then passing me a cigarette allowed me to do the same as I went thru all of my past lives and incarnations.

He said I didn’t have to remember what had happened or what I had learned, my soul knew it now and carried it with me as it always had. I was one step closer to the beautiful flight back of true death…and when I needed more I could return to this source and drink again of the medicine until someday I could go home. He would stay with me always as my brother and from my brothers I could drink as well as they would drink from me. 

In my life I have never experienced anything like this, shape shifting, ESP, thought-control, out of body, projection, transcendence, universe, time-travel. I know that these are just the names we have to put to things when the veil becomes lifted and we see that all things are a single unit existing simultaneously, but holy fuck.

The walk back into Cusco seemed perfect with time to adjust as eventually the city lights appeared below us and fireworks lit the sky while they celebrated The Day of the Dead. We had lived it a million times. We clasped each other and parted ways upon entering the city.

That night I dreamed and left my body many times again as I slept next to a beautiful Brazilian woman who had led me here to all of this, and though after a week together the thought that she was leaving back to Brazil in the morning welled me up,  I know now that The Thick is as much about beauty and true gifts as it is about heartache and fistfights. We can use the bad in us to fight for what is true in us. I will always be a little bit of a hooligan and a roughneck but I have other masks that fit me better nowadays, I am a lover and a leader too.

Yes we climbed Wannu and Macchu Picchu, sand-boarded the immense dunes of Wachachina, Sailed out to see sea-lions fight on the Ballestas Islands with TV star captain look-alikes, we went to Catholic-Mass drunk with no sleep in the golden capital cathedrals of Lima, fell asleep on dance floors that smelled of death, we ate beef hearts and gambled in the cities with all the earthquakes. Corey was here and gone, Chad came down and imported a crazy white girl, and Ben is shacked up with Elizabeth who I love in another hotel somewhere. Me, I’m just laying here with the smell still on me waiting for the night-bus out of this city, south to Lake Titicaca, signing out from the end of The Thick as we know it. 

Chapter 16: That Indigenous Drunk

I’m sitting in a room with 6 beds and no windows, dressed in a fur coat that goes well passed my thighs. It’s been a while since I’ve been this high. My mouth is open as if to speak but I’m about to sing. There’s two Uruguayans playing ukuleles and I am telling the story of a loss of love, my melody is high and the boys begin to sing along with me, “Please stranger won’t you hold me” Over and over again goes the chorus “Whoah I’m so lonely.” Chris is beside me encouraging me to never stop. Someone has their arm around me and it feels good, like home in a world away. I may have gotten cut off for spitting on a guinea pig only a few hours before and though I’ll never know why I did it, right now I’m feeling pretty fucking good. Welcome to Lima. To the catacombs of 20,000 bones and Presidential Palaces where you come-to with a distant friend of your grandmothers at 8 in the morning. It’s one thing to know Saint Francis licked the wounds of the sick, it’s another to see it depicted in one of the most gruesome and eloquent paintings you’ve ever laid your molly-balls on. When life becomes literal it looses its possibilities. I prefer it slathered in mystery, after all a senior detective needs a job. Saint Francis take your tongue away, I am better than I used to be. Interpret me well.

For ten Soles I grab a plate of civeche and a beer, sit out overlooking the jagged ocean cliffs that wall this city in and think about a snake I saw once when I was young. I get invited to a boxing match by a ring-girl and her sister, its cold out and I know those punches sting a little worse. I’ve felt em before. The doctor says my rash and sleepless nights are due to a fungal infection. Pour some whiskey on it and take it better places to eat and it will probably go away. I raise it one and take the bus out of town.

Tuk-Tuk drivers hide behind windshields so covered in Jesus decals they need not see, only the lord to guide them as they careen down these thin-lipped streets like stray bullets and three legged dogs. Roads covered in bananas and grain. Streets with no lining tell you to follow your heart. Don’t they know I have two. Huaraz sits her ass just above 10,000 feet and I am supposed to wait a day to acclimate to the altitude. The high Andes surround me and loom down with avalanches for promises like love letters. They’ve wiped this city out before, July of 1941, May of 1970. Not a single building remains from its past. 93 survivors lived to know what it felt like as they clamored to high ground and a sea of snow and boulder crushed 70,000 of their countrymen, somewhere in the states “Let It Be” by The Beatles was playing while this was happening. That’s just life.

I don’t wait to acclimate. I get off the bus and begin to run to the outskirts of the city, I climb over the walls, scramble up the hill, pull myself over the cliff and bury my face in the cross that overlooks all the girls who sleep here and those who go hungry in the streets at night. Just watches them. If I can breathe here I can breathe anywhere in the world. That thought comforts me.

I hiked 10 kilometers that day, the next me and Ben did 14, and the third we did 18. At almost 16,000 feet I found myself looking out over the top of the world, amongst lagoons and glaciers older than all my blood, all my lines. The sun sears you here. The people speak an ancient Andean language called Kichwa, I don’t speak much at all anymore. Against the advice of a local woman we head into the ghetto to help them celebrate a local Catholic holiday. 500 of the drunkest people I have ever seen surround us, the only two white people here. We are treated with all the respect a spectacle can expect to get. Indigenous drunk is just a different kind. You can see it in the tear filled regretful eyes of men who were born to know great secrets but have been cut in half by liquor induced amnesia and the hardest times. They got the roughest hands. Somebody turns his fingers into a gun and puts it to my head telling me he has spent time in hell and that he is still there. Another cries to Ben about his dead godfather. A third kisses me on the neck. A 17 piece peruvian brass band is the soundtrack to that South American affection that reminds me of all my close friends.

This week we go ice-climbing, hiking, camping. We promise each other always to fight back to back. I’ll be on Machu Picchu for my birthday. Corey and Chad will be here. I’ll be in Argentina for Christmas and maybe London for the New Year.

 I’ve been bitten by snakes and attacked by monkeys with sticks, in my life I’ve climbed the Andes and crossed the Amazon. Put out 4 records and played shows with my favorite bands. I sang a song that made a grown man cry and rode on a boat that carried the dead. I’ve wrecked motorcycles just because I knew how much they loved me and left women for less, but never in my life have I been in a place like this, feeling this way. 

Chapter 15: Just For You

To tell you what happened means to relive it, I’m not ready to do that. It’s been too ruff. Too hard already. I can only tell you the story. It’s the only currency that matters in the end. The only one I have, but even this true gold can’t warm me or put me to sleep at night. Though it may allow me to cull those I love and do for them what it cannot do for me. A mans words can stay close even as his breath recedes. This is the only gift if it is kind and the only curse when it is honest. May god keep the company of your heart and stay in the places where I cannot. Forever, I love you.

For weeks we traveled. From desolation to isolation and back again, from nothing and nowhere, to nobody and no way. I spent three days aboard a cargo ship where the sun blistered up layers of flesh in the day and the cold wind eroded them at night. We crushed termites into our skin to repel the mosquitoes. In the jungle we fished piranhas and held crocodiles against their will. In Iquitos violence layered a thick hand against us, at war with the money-changers and men with the quickest hands I’ve ever seen. Even the banks give out counterfeit dollars here, and then refuse to take them back. Kids carry knives, Shamans die of liver failure. A rash has come to ruin my life. I came to get lost without realizing it meant stranded. I can’t go back now, but I am only just realizing what it means that I can’t go back ever.

It seems like ages since I’ve seen an English man or had some warm water pressed up against me. I miss the strong independent western woman, she’s been replaced by a million whores, not in my life but in the world that surrounds me. The tribesmen here have sex with the dolphins and say that the lust can drive them mad, but I think they were mad for lusting. People put curses on those they love to bind them to them, I am close myself. I can feel the jagged edges of where I broke hitting against the waves, all the decisions just becoming reactions against the days. This place is full of sex and bad magic. A religion that has not changed, a people covered in dust.

A spider opened up my thigh like a hot dog bun and left me unable to walk for a few days. I met a German who had amazing posture and was accusing a woman of immaculate conception, a giant cat pissed on him thru mosquito netting and for a moment I believed in karma. Where has the adventure gone? I’ve lost it. I almost lost my life too, in a war against a boat that we had to haul by hand upriver. Neck deep in mud. The fear is hard on our tails. We have traveled from country to country and now reside by large desert walls. Time moves to slow here to get away from it.

Never trust the music. Never love a man with a broken heart. Never quit eating civeche. Always hunt. Always kill. Elect poets to go to war for you. I will, if you find me such. I will come back if you ask me to. Here I am in Peru. Where are you? A world is nothing to travel compared to the places I’ve found my thoughts. I only ask that you respect what I have done, if you make me ask. That was never our style though, was it babe.

Right now a man is asking me to eat a valume. I think I will. He has a mustache that crawls blond across his face. Hair that pulls up towards the ceiling. A Peruvian woman with his baby inside her.  I don’t think he has slept in a couple days. We should just relax he says. He’s right. If only for a moment, I can take his advice.

Chapter 14: A Waterless Grave

I’m kicking, pushing, grabbing and ripping at the life jacket attached to the seat in front of me. I wake with a start. There’s dried blood all down the front of my shirt and pants. I have a wound the size of an eyeball on my hand, one bigger on my shoulder and a rip in my chin. The man on the other side of Ben and Saleem is dead…

Abigail was as sharp as the front teeth of two foxes quick dancing to the music of toothpicks. She was funnier than the time I watched Billy Marsdens dainty horse crumble beneath him. She wore a headband to keep back what seemed like a half-mile of hair and had a little jean shirt she tucked up and twisted in a knot, unbuttoned three buttons down so as to let some cleavage ride in the cool Colombian air with her. Her legs kept the company of a mustard yellow skirt and tights that held high above the ankles. She had cheese-puff shoes and a Lego watch that stole her left wrist from showing. Her facial expressions doted on me and then moved down the graffiti lined streets as her eyes followed the skyline passed the tops of all the mountains. She was constantly saying things like “I don’t understand you” and “I don’t think I like you” but despite these remarks she accompanied me inseparably for the better part of our last three days in Colombia. We moved from Police Torture Museums to pints of beer three liters high that reminded her of the London she had left behind. We danced to impromptu shows and laughed till we had to breathe thru our tears. I passed her headed south on a Wednesday morning from the seat of a small plane as I ascended over the city walls. I slightly waved my hand without realizing it for what it was. Colombia. Missing. I grinded my teeth as I do on flights and sleep. Into the jungle. The Amazon. Leticia.

We land and take a few planks of wood with a motor attached up river into Peru and get our entrance stamps. Here the streets are just pathways lined with large branches to keep them above the thick mud and water. You can see the difference between the countries immediately. You can smell the new food, its quiet here.  Desolate and muddy. Nothing grows along this shore, the water fluctuates so often it will be gone soon. An office sits amongst the debris and the very wood its made of seems to sweat and smoke. We sweet-talk the attendant into the maximum amount allowed for us in Peru, we walk out with a sentence of a 120 days stamped on our passports, etched in our minds that for the next 4 months we will travel here, get kicked out and bounce into Argentina. Lone. Baring down on the tip of the continent against steel grey motorcycles. 

We head back into Colombia the same way we got here. Across felled trees that serve as bridges we wait for our friend Saleem to arrive. Born from Scotland and living in Lima, raised in England, blood baked of Iranian decent. He wears a thick British accent, a steep face and quick laugh. Handsome with the classics. Educated and informed he makes for good company and he can hold his own, proven it on more than one occasion. We have grown close with him over our travels and consider him a brother. We will cross the Amazon into Iquitos together. While we wait overnight for him to arrive we rent motorbikes and ride them thru the jungle into Brazil. Naked as the people here are the dirt roads. Dotted as flesh with freckles stand huts and thatches. Parallel we take the Amazon River for miles. Strange looks brand me either heathen or curiosity. I stand for both. Ride fast in the name of. Bare some flesh and teeth myself.

Saleem enters. We decide to make a marathon of the borders; standing at the ports between Brazil, Colombia, Peru…Leticia was made for an international binge. Bred for lawlessness. A basin for the Wild West, only the steed has changed. 3 countries and as much consumption as you can handle between them. We realize the error of our ways as motorbike after motorbike goes down beneath us.  I am now forced to enter the Amazon Jungle with giant gaping wounds found in a holy trinity. Kicked out of Brazil as the morning enters, we were leaving anyways we reply.

We are 6 hours into a 13-hour boat ride up the Amazon River and someone has already died, next to Ben and Saleem rests his bones and awkward eyes. No one seems to sure how it happened. He just was and then he wasn’t. The heat? The fever? The Food? One man pushes breath into his mouth while another puts his fist to chest. No avail. Still wide eyes. No prayer. No music. Still we ride.  His lifeless body is covered with a blue blanket. I can’t help but say a small prayer, make the holy trinity back across my wounds. Sacrilegious follows folly. It takes a while to digest like any good ghost….but it seems common here. Everywhere you look there are steep signs of the pattern. In some ways this process is expedited by the jungle even as life around it crawls in pace.

 No sleep. I was in such a state of stupid disarray when I board at 4AM that I have no water and there’s none left on this boat. My tongue is sticking to the side of my mouth and it’s the only thing to swallow. The Amazon heat is oppressive and I can barely breathe. We have at least 6 more hours to go. In the seat in front of me a mother is milking her child. In the seat across from me a half bottle of water lies next to the hand of the dead man. I consider both these options with brief clarity and distorted values, then close my eyes and try to force a little sleep. Itch and snarl. Give it the same outlook as any inevitably trapped man and try to find something funny to observe.

Iquitos. We arrive with the smell of some decay. You can only get here by boat or small plane. Closer to the hot stars. Right on the equator. Malaria runs the sunrises, Dengue fever controls the sunsets. Many men made their fortunes off the rubber trade beneath me. It lingers. Once briefed to be the richest city in the world, now it is torn up and toppled over. Piles of dirt and floating cities that do not float this season. Planes don’t fly in the day here because of the vultures. The Witch market boasts your ailments and sell your faith. We stay at a beautiful hotel with a balcony overlooking the jungle. The nearest road out of here is 500 miles away. We gather rubber boots and machetes. We get drunk and fend off hookers with both. 

It’s from here we will enter deep into the jungle. Either by military plane or a four day hike. I have some concerns. A psychoactive infusion awaits us here and links us to the future or keeps us behind it. You get what you need they tell me, but I can’t tell if I have lost some faith or am just in a long moment of doubt. I miss Colombia already, the people, customs, and drink. I used the strength she gave me to leave and now my legs feel clumsy. Lucky for me my tomorrow is never the same, though I did have piranha for breakfast again today.

From The Thick,

            R. Vigilantics

Chapter 13: Even Werewolves Cry

A political rally is raging against the small single street of Salento, around us chants rise with the sticks and cardboard signs made from old beer boxes. The men stop their card games and move to the doorways to raise their glasses. I feel a festive air of danger and do the same. Somewhere in the middle of it the howls and yelps of a vicious dogfight break out and the moon above us appears to show that it has eaten all its days. “Sometimes even werewolves cry.” Even as I say this I know my words will fail me, but everyone laughs and slaps me on my back.

If you were here with me now like I wish you were, you would see Ben and I speaking with a beautiful Turkish girl posted up against the rail of the last real pool-hall on earth. We pass stories back and forth with such intimate sincerity about the gift and curse of life on the run that she begins to cry and reaches out to clasp the back of our necks with shaking hands. At a men’s only bar in the middle of these coffee plantations this is quite the site to see us both holding her.

Old Colombian men with more swagger than tucked in button up shirts switch between cards, stick, and drinks the same way we trade song. Pool sticks with individual player padlocks line the walls. Ranchero 45’s take up what they don’t. The owner (big bellied, bigger mustache) knows us by name, the day before we downed 30 shots with him in an hour just to beat the fear. These men here surrounding us are some of the biggest baddest caballero gangsters I’ve ever met, they were in their prime when Colombia was an all out fucking war zone, they’ve seen more death and heartache than times you’ve put butter to bread. It’s our honor to raise glasses with these papas. It’s what we do. Now in their late 50’s and 60’s they just wanna sit on benches and in doorways, sip, smoke, let out another button, and watch the world go by. Don’t get it mistaken though, with a word they could have you belly up. No one no wiser. Shoulders pushed together we bully in.

From where I stand now, a ten-kilometer hike looking out over the fincas, the coffee plantations, the 100-meter wax palms, and jungle, seeing the world with the eyes of a first kill, it’s hard for me to imagine that it could all end soon. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the angst I felt the last time I was in NYC, or to recall the anxiety that gripped me so hard it broke me and sent me to the emergency room in Portland. I don’t get the same sense of world destruction here. I can still envision a flood warmly washing over the earth but something about being out here makes me feel like I could last as long as the river bed. Not forever, but passed what’s coming. Politics, comets, and war seem as far away as her and her love.

When you eat BBQ in Colombia they give you gloves instead of napkins. You loose some of the taste without your hands against the meat, just like a boxing match vs. a bare-knuckle fight. This layer cheapens with a false sense of sophistication. I try not to make too many of these compromises for comfort against the thick. My thirst for the taste of it on my hands is how I end up staying at a house (with a wonderful Colombian couple) a couple kilometer walk from the nicer ranch of La Sorena. There is no internet here, no tv, just this beautiful house on the mountainside and a half finished pool out back for us to help dig. We BBQ with them over a huge bonfire and dance while we eat with our hands deep into the morning light. We’ve been with them almost a week now.

It was a 9-hour bus ride here from Medillin. Supposed to only be 6 but as we head south towards the jungle the roads along with the infrastructure will slowly disappear into the background.

Back in Medillin we attended the flower parade where the giant floats were carried by the many hundreds each on the back of a single man. Heavy catholic connotations of Jesus carrying his cross prevailed. Low flying military helicopters dropped flower bombs that rained over the large city street.

We rent a car and drive two hours with our new friend Saleem and an Aussie girl named Virginia (but who we call Richmond) deep into the mountains to attend a “finca party” we’ve heard rumors of. Somewhere we find some cops on Kawasaki 250’s down a dirt road and they escort us to the party pointing the way with their drawn gun and even walking us in. We sleep in the car and wake up with the laughter of a good night.

The night before we leave the girl in my room has an epileptic fit and falls behind the coffee table in spurts and twists, after refusing my help she runs out never to be seen again. It must be time for us to go.

 I’ve been on the road now three months, some of those around me almost a year. I’ve learned you can’t trust the music. My Spanish is getting better. I’ve seen floating mountains and women with fake asses left over from the drug money. I’ve tasted the big adventure on most days and slept with its daughters on most nights. I still see speedboats and think they are “water antelopes.” I still think a good story is the only real currency you need. I still like it weird. I don’t think this journey is going to change me in some profound way; I am almost 30 and pretty set in my ways, both good and bad. I do think though that I can get my skill-set up. That I have a lot to learn from these people and can if I let myself. It’s gonna take some time and might happen so slowly I am never aware of any results. I am starting to worry a little about money but I wont let it stop me from spending my last penny and starting from scratch. I’m drinking coffee for the first time in my life and it’s right from the source. I’ve definitely learned the art of the goodbye. I’ve learned that the more beautiful it is the sadder it seems to me. Let me practice it now.

She saw a photo of me squinting against the sun and said,

“So even wolves get caught in headlights.”

In that moment I knew that I loved her more than the sea.

Signing out from The Thick,

                                     Rafael V.

                      

            

Chapter 12: It isn't pretty but it's a fresh start

This is gonna be ruff. The truth is I don’t remember much of what’s happened to me since last I wrote. It’s like looking at a penny thru a whirlwind and trying to decide if it’s counterfeit or to see the date. The things I can relate here are just the cold hard facts and a couple paragraphs I wrote somewhere along the way mixed with random quotes from held tight strangers. It’s going to be disconnected. Lets just imagine a cut-up piece from the Burroughs era and call what we don’t understand art. Works in my favor.

She says “You cant come in here like that covered in hotels and houses. That’s not our culture.” We scrapped something awful and she sent up the coppers. This fucker in full regal uniform looks at me and all these dirty dogs who’ve made a boxing ring in the middle of the place and says, “who’s the leader.” So I tell him take off your shirt and trousers, get in the fucking ring and you’ll find out right quick who the leader is. Tuck tail then didn’t he, after we rang him out a few.”

That’s the story I’m waking up to. Three kids from London I’ve met like a head on collision a few good days before have busted into my room and are telling me to get “lifted” I think its about 8am and its more than obvious they haven’t slept. We knock down beers at the pool till we’re good and fit and somewhere along the way I end up at the World Cup/ Argentina vs. England in a sold out stadium of 45,000 South Americans and about 6 Londoners and New Mexico kids, standing next to Joss whose almost naked and covered in a giant cross of red war-paint. Songs are sung into the night. I think someone is crying.

A few of these days I can barely remember because I’m passed out on pain pills for 30 hours at a time and Bens moved on to Santa Fe or out I don’t know where. I had thrown out my back and it left me facedown on the floor in a pile. The other I had caught a fever that practically burned thru the sheets. I get a massage from two women on the second floor of the hostel and it almost puts me right. Thanks to Maria.

A fist, when thrown by the arm of a sober man rarely makes its pace at a crawl and this one is no exception. It’s a Saturday afternoon and the streets are slick crowded with the fast licks of commerce. My attention split as many directions as my opinions. I don’t notice it till it’s almost to my face. Hackles raised too late, suspicion of ambush in place. Passed me it flies, passed Benjarmin, a wild wide hook that finally descends directly into the mouth of a man walking straight for the heat of it. A total catcher’s mitt. A sound emerges akin to heavy dice being thrown against a thick oak table, clattering and bouncing back into a small pool of spilt whiskey. Blood splatters and big spits against the pavement. A police officer watches from a few feet away with mild thinly veiled amusement at what appears to be a previously agreed upon attack. The man amazingly continues to stand and pour blood and bewilderment while the other assures him that next time he sees him he will engage in the time-tested land-owner approved act of murder. In Spanish it sounds tougher and cooler. The police officer uses slight baton sign language to convey his alliance and assures the limbed bloodstain he should continue quickly about his way. I in a good faith act of desensitization see passed him to a brown leather hat I would like to purchase and do. I guess its what I always thought shopping would be like, or at least what it always reminded me of.

I’m on the Metro Line to a part of town I haven’t explored at night before. The street meat here is savory and cooked by a woman whose not just cooked it for 16 of her own kids for the passed 30 years but probably 16 more that weren’t hers as well. We find a bar where all the waitresses are dressed like nuns and a ranchero 6-piece plays the truest cuts from the ceiling. Thick well-versed paintings line the walls of nuns trying to get a quick peek down Jesus’ skimpy loincloth and other assorted similar debauchery.  For a heavily devout catholic country this place is pretty fucking cool.

A horse parade appears out of nowhere and 10,000 horses begin to do the tango. A private party along one of the edges tells us we can’t come in. I bat my lashes and Ben winks his words and they’ve handed us sandwiches and our own bottle of Aguardiente (some of this shit can actually make you go blind, and I thought it was a myth.) I see a real life advertisement of the fact. 

I’m on the mic playing a show at Kasa Kiwi. I’m at a bar where a shot of whiskey costs 20 bucks. I’m in line at the movies before I realize it, panic and leave. I win money at the casino, I loose money at the casino. Im dancing more than I ever have in this life or any past one. I'm smoking a joint on the roof. Someone says "I'm in" but I know I'm out. I eat fish and avocados everyday. I watch an entire season of Ancient Aliens while sick and then believe in ancient aliens. I swim laps in the biggest pool I've ever seen. I cross-train. I feel good, I look ruff. I cant wait to buy a suit. 

I have a dream about the origin of the wolf and before I know it I wake up 2 hours away from Medillin in Guatape. Here I am today. We’ve just ridden these shit mountain bikes with no breaks 16 kilometers up and down ruff terrain to a monolith in the middle of a chain of lakes in the mountains. It’s beautiful, there’s a ship graveyard here and the air is thin. Suicide showers and slower death buses. We have to get back to Medillin to get our big bags. Then it’s off to the Amazon. I love Colombia but I am looking forward to Peru. This is what its like when I don’t take notes and I show up to a party in The Thick, but sometimes this is just what its like and everything feels like this picture. 

Chapter Eleven: The Dream We Drank

A thick woolen blanket is wrapped around my neck, it itches and the weight lays heavy as it pushes and kicks against my already tired shoulders. She’s too old to travel like this, but we have no choice. It’s cold out and walking gives a sense of some warmth. We hurry against my breath. Her eyes little shadows of brown in the folds of fabric. My arms beneath her. She is five. “Tell me the story about the captains of ice-cream boats and the kidnap junkies who took mama.” She says “Tell me about how you were great once papa.” But I can never tell her. All I can do is wake up to the weep.

Under another unfamiliar roof where the sun can’t access me directly I sip a cold Aguila, one of my few weapons against the war on heat. Alert level adjustment. Belly up against the bar, I meet a man who got here thru a garage door, a sex motel where the cab pulls directly into the room so nobody can see who gets out. A laminated menu of sex toys framed against the mirrored walls. The bill comes up in a dumbwaiter along with whatever else you need. A traveler with a band-aid that he wears like a badge of pride. Look how dangerous this is. Look at me man. No hands. A land-mine model for the cool kids. The war on the thick continues.

            Tell the homeless to go home. Each traveler more racist than the day before. The Chileans hate the Peruvians, everybody hates the Argentineans and the Israelis are a given. Out of sight they demand, as we conquer more and more. Our vision rants and haunts the thick. Quenches it with the reliability of a quick fix. We jimmy-rig the future just seconds prior to walking thru it. We get our news from our immediate surroundings. Those around us become pundits. In these moments this man sitting next to me is my reporter. This bar is his backdrop. The open view of Santa Marta streets gives the weather report. Every time I interject I change the station. Every time he rejects my remarks we fight over the remote. Every metaphor cheapens and waters down how urgent this fight is.

           

                                                          This is where I am.

           

Where cocaine goes on the hotel bill. Where stretch marks are for junkies instead of fat. Holes so big you need a license to scuba dive. Which itch would you like to scratch today…You want it to be warm? Here we are. You want the ocean? There it is. You want a beautiful woman? There she goes. You want to get high? Have at it in public. Now what do you really want? After you’ve had all these things you will need to ask with the sincerity of a dying mans heart…and what should you ask for then, some sleep, the happiness of those you love, for a breath? Well just invite it in with the devil, with the travel, with the conquest, with the good company of desire.

            Santa Marta is the oldest standing city in Colombia. Here we are being the oldest we could be. It’s Independence Day here. The usual show of firepower is shown to celebrate. I stay up drinking with the bartender till the people slowly go the way of the buffalo. We hop in a cab and enter the exit of this city at around 2 a.m. 15 minutes out in a taxi for a girl’s birthday party. There are no speakers at her house and a strange little man drives a car drunk to steal some from his mother. I become a topic of conversation. I fade. I come back in. A man who owns a restaurant here asks me to spend the day shopping for art with him. A girl asks me to jump the border with her. I ask myself if this is what I came for. I feel to comfortable in this scenario.

I just want to swim, being out of breath in the ocean seems to be the only thing that calms me. The further the breakers are, the calmer I get. I’ll be almost thirty before I accept death and space-travel.  Admit I will do both. I’ll be almost forty before my heart breaks. I climb a coconut tree and cut down the pipas with a machete.

            Out in the water a man in a kayak rows up to me as I struggle for a swim. He asks me if I want to rent his kayak, I say no. He asks me if I want to buy any weed, I say no. He asks me if I want any Colombian women, I say no. He winks and rows off easily into the future.

            We take the bus 18 hours back to Medillin. A drunken bus driver kicks us off the road for two hours till a tow truck driver comes. We laugh because we have nothing else. We eat painkillers so we can sleep. We drive the pages of books down the lanes of memories so we can feel accomplished. We loose days.

They are already playing my record when we enter the city limits. They already know what I drink. Gather around with kisses on the cheek. How easy is it to recreate the life I had with the twist I want. How obvious is that failure evident. Very. Back in Medillin I think you can guess a frame of mind. I have my first show out of the country this week. Excitement dog piles execution rifles. I wont cheap poet anymore. I got my visa extended. So for another thirty days I will indulge. In Peru I will abstain. Between I will revolt. Everything I’ve been saying. Next time will be all A’s and B’s I promise. 

Chapter Ten: A bright light in a whorehouse.

I came here to beat it out of me, put in so much work there’s nothing but the dog left. Nothing but the animal that knows all it can about the world it lives in. Roams it with confidence and understanding. Violence in its smile, gusto in its step. I have found an ally in the town of Taganga where the jungle and dessert meet at the sea to share rum and thunderstorms with fishing-boat smugglers and the treasure hunters of the Sierra Nevadas. It’s here I will hone my Spanish, deep sea dive, and work my way thru the jungle. Swim further and further out into the ocean than I ever have before. Never be less and break all my own records for land speed, vice, cunning, and agility. We will make this home for a couple weeks as we big adventure thru the landscape and hold out for my visa to expire so I can get it renewed, as I am not yet ready to leave Colombia. Salt licks the wounds here. Cacti jut from cliff faces to knock the clouds back and forth around the ring. The ocean kicks the sand up and the wind hustles it back down. Perfect.

In Cartagena we matched ourselves against the heat dressed in Mexican wrestling masks made from the sweat of ex-booze. The city teems with the aggressive mentality of Jamaican ghettos. I feel like I’m out gunned once again, not prepared for the local talents of swindle. My street smarts are strong but you loose concentration in the heat after keeping your guard up for days on end. It wears on you. Puts stress marks in a decent heart. Never bring a condom to a bullfight.

We get swept into a nightclub by a little man with a smile so jutted and crooked you could roll dice down it. A giant metal door from the first war (ever) closes behind us by the will of two men larger than us. After fifteen worried strides inside we realize this is no nightclub it’s a whorehouse. We turn to retreat and the power cuts out. Dark engulfs us and I put my hands out to either side prepared to swing and lightly sway my fists. Ben takes our captors by surprise, of course he has a flashlight watch. He attacks bright beams of light over hookers and would be thieves alike, as back to back we retreat to an exit we find with the instincts and execution of two skilled men in what feels like a well-planned jailbreak.

Outside there’s no air to breathe relief into, just more quick steps to take weighed down by the cargo of new perspiration. At night this cities thick walls and streets let out the heat captured by the sun in the day and its twice as hot. Twice as mean. We eat cold seafood cocktails packed to the brim in styrofoam cups. We kick back beers in satchels like we were trying to water all of Afghanistan, but even with our resources stocked up the war doesn’t stop. This land is all throat. No one wants to quit. The more it hurts the more you feel you gotta push on to justify the pain.

One good experience can change everything though, make a place you never wanna go back to become a place you're proud you’ve been. You have to stick it out in towns like this, suffer multiple beatings before it gives you a little kiss...but one sweet peck from a city as mean as this is all it takes to make you fall in love. Boast with pride about her lips on you. A restaurant named Esta Es El Punto does just that. The most amazing owners, food, people. Locals who can see you’ve sweated thru it to find them and deserve a good meal. Fish, rice, soup, plantains, and fresh juice swarm around you and bring you into their fold. Hunker you down and serenade you on the cheap. Tell you you're pretty. We made it. A city like this is all or nothing but once you've found your key it unlocks everything. Skeleton to the full. Things fall in place after that. Reception is granted. Thank you. 

When they say sausage they mean hot dog. When they say spread they mean mango jelly. When they ask you if you want something they’re telling you that you do. It’s a four hour bus ride from Cartagena to Taganga, we get here in seven. We gave up the ship ride into Panama so we can afford our motorcycles in Peru. The jungles cheaper. Taganga is amazing. Excitement crawls in at the first sight. Today we climb. Tomorrow we dive. Here we are. Fishing, skipping stones, smiling into the eyes of the big adventure. Found it again and even though I know it will be lost again as well. My campaneros, it feels good to hold it close today and the day after. Organizing an event for September in Peru and it aint South Americas most lazy feral dog competition. Video soon, Lets see who shows up. Signing out, from the thick. 

Chapter 9: Motorcycle dance boats

Just when I start to wonder why one of the men in charge of running the boat has been staring at my foot tattoo for so long I realize he’s passed out with his head in my legs direction and BOOM we’re off. Speeding down the Caribbean Ocean in a boat meant for 8 but packed with 30 an hour away from any other shore. Why did I bring my laptop I wonder as water drifts and fights over the edge onto my bag. Because I had no idea what I was getting into that’s why. Leaving this island is nothing compared to how we got here. Let me start halfway up the top, it takes us back to Medillin.

Have you ever had a girl you’ve never met before in a strange country you’ve never been before come up and ask you into your ear if you will “fuck her to your new record?” Have you ever slid down into the Colombian ghetto of oblivion with makers and drunks writhing to the music, with a couple of journalists twisted on cheap rum?  Have you seen the mansions with yachts, made music videos on the side streets of hostels. Had a man insist you dance with his wife with as much offer as threat, then invite you to dinner. Had the locals chase each other down in the streets over you. Been left alone without a language. Decided art lived above love and cities died over strangers. Been invited to stay, been coerced to play. Racked up a bar tab like a shopping list for Ethiopia.  Been treated well and had to leave because that’s what you do, even though you want to keep on, you cant stop the big adventure for anyone or anything. That’s the only rule.

In Medillin after all the taxes are said and done, there’s only two categories. There’s no wanna-be-cool-hipster-dj-drug-deal-rich-kid-shes-a-whore-beef. There’s just this. Either you dance or you don’t. And if you don’t dance may the good catholic lord come down and break your legs himself before they do. I can fake my way thru getting up fine off a motorcycle accident and it looks just like it when I do. So I Just move the hips, swing em all the way to the airport where we fly into the Caribbean city of Cartegena instead of taking the 13 hour bus ride. Halfway thru the sky and my anxiety kicks in, what have I done, where’s all the money, who was that man. It stays with me for the first 16 hours of the new city and I have to retreat for the night to lock myself in my hostel room that looks more like a prison cell in purgatory. At least I’m alone in here though. At least it’s away from the pushers and pimps.

Cartegena is beautiful at about a hundred degrees and a hundred percent humidity.  Lets just make the joke and say it’s breathtaking. I have to choke down air like rock salt. Everyones trying to sell you something and saying no just doesn’t work. You have to be as diligent about not buying as they are about getting you to. Walk the thin line between offense and violence. The city itself is separated by three walls that divide each old section. Giant colossal ancient protectors from flood and war. They seem to be batting a low average for success. Rain rips thru the streets and battle scars are everywhere. The food is fruit, rice, and fish. I can deal with that. An old fortress towers above the city where the virgin statues normally go. It is pretty here, reminds of New Orleans, but I have to keep reminding myself that IT IS PRETTY HERE. I see obstacles.

We hear about an island to the north that can maybe hold off a little of this heat exhaustion till we come to our senses. We decide to test our navigational skills. We take a taxi to what appears to be the seediest part of town, where our taxi literally just cuts-off/blocks-in a bus on the road while it honks vigorously and we attempt to get on it like bad movie hijackers. Small negotiations and the driver agrees. The bus rides us for about two hours into the jungle thick where a young man assures us we should get off with him and he can help guide us walking to the closest ferry. Like idiots not sure where we were headed we’ve brought all our packs with us and my loads sitting at about a hundred pounds plus my laptop bag.  We walk thru a small village where the man appears to make jokes with the villagers about us. After about fifteen minutes we get to an old bullet ridden sign that says ferry with a sunken barge on the other side. A large platform pulled by a fishing boat comes along and a few trucks carrying cement get on. We lower our heads in the despair of two men who have passed the point of no return and follow the trucks on foot. They charge us a buck and the barge begins to float cross river. As we approach the other side we see a large gang of 17-year-old banditos on motorcycles and the man on the boat shouts over “I’ve got two, which of you wants em first.” At this point the sentiment between Ben and me goes from “this is what the big adventures all about” to “Ohh fuck.”

On the other side the kids fight to get at us each one on his motorcycle telling us that they can get us the rest of the way to the island with our backpacks if we just jump on, it will only take an hour. My immediate thought is that as soon as we get on the bikes they will split us up and that will be that. But after talking it over for a split second we realize at this point there’s not much choice…we are this side of the river crossing with nobody but us, them, two truck drivers, and a gruff medieval looking ferry captain. None of the above could give two shits if we live. We mumble a tentative yes and off we go on the backs of motorcycles carrying two backpacks a piece on our shoulders. Thru mudslides, dense forest, off road terrain. Stops and starts where we loose sight of each other for miles, but In an hour there’s a heavy sigh of relief. We can see the beach. They charge us 7 bucks a piece, shake our hands, and disappear as we walk the rest of the way. Fuck that was close. Fuck that was plenty. Fuck.

The waters is beautiful, the beach is the white typical sand this region is famous for. We stay in hammocks and eat fish and fruit the locals sell to us. Its good. Life passes by between naps and salt water. Nothing makes you miss a woman more though than being stranded on a beautiful island with another man. We tire after two days of the quiet sun being sucked up into the end of the earth and hitch a boat ride that brings us back around to a captain sleeping at my foot tattoo.

Back in Cartegena we have to decide if we head north for a 6 day hike thru the jungle or set to the seas for five days aboard a cargo ship for the San Blas islands just to the side of the Panamanian border. The mosquitoes will chew the rest of my either way. Just a walking carcass for their itch.  Choose your own adventure, from the thick. My campaneros.

Chapter 8: The missing links

The city streets are littered with amputees, their feet and arms gone along with the old infrastructure of Medillin. The movement of the Zona Rosa leaving them even further displaced. Lying on their backs and huffing glue, hobbling along the sidelines of my peripheral vision, best kept in the graces of god than the pennies of men. I guess. One of them wildly whips a cane at me from the ground and howls. We are all missing something here. Theirs is just more visible than mine. In a country where landmines still kill 3 people a day and take the limbs of many more we seem to glide by them like hovercrafts ripped out of the back pages of a boy-scout magazine.

Our two legs propel us to the dolce donut shop with ease. I know immediately when Ben leaves me to check on the train that something is gonna go wrong. I sense small danger and sugar-glazed goodness. When he doesn’t return for almost 25 minutes I start to go thru all the scenarios of what I should do (sell his stuff/claim his identity/hack his facebook account/eat donuts forever/go for help.) Finally he returns, he had gotten a good old-fashioned shake down by the cops for walking too fast. He had his multi-tool knife with him and they took him down a long hallway to meet “the captain” who snarled and dismissed him with the wave of a hand. I believe the policia who nabbed him were disappointed with their lack of bounty for he had already entered into bargain mode.

            Prostitution is legal down here and the old gringos make me sick with it. Women and the talk of them are in the air everywhere. It’s hard to find a place to escape, and even harder not to loose my tongue or worse my fists. Luckily we have the most beautiful hostel room overlooking the city. We will hold up here for a whole week.

            In Colombia it’s hard to decipher exactly what a shop sells or does. I walk by one where an 80 year-old lady sits behind a desk with an alarm-clock on it and a pig shaped stuffed animal. Nothing else in the room, and I have to decide if I should ask her to make me breakfast. Today I don’t. Tomorrow I will. In a land of no menus, chances are for 5000 Colombian Pesos ($2.50) she will whip me up something with potatoes in it, as long as I have exact change. It’s expected.

            I have decided to only learn my Spanish from the South American politicians I watch on TV. I have decided to free the prostitutes into a hot air balloon. I have decided that the best way to work out is with the concrete buckets of cement on the corner with the locals. That’s where Ben is now. I have decided to make a music video in Colombia. I have decided to turn the landmines into Mexican jumping beans.

            What I haven’t decided though is what I want out of all this and how I should feel about drinking milk out of a bag. Everything comes in bags down here.

When I left out on the big adventure I thought it was a means to an end. A goal in and of itself. Now that I am on it though I realize that even the big adventure needs a purpose too. So from the city of 5 names before this one and the master plan. Medillin dubbed the most violent city in the world up until 2003. What better place to let these ideas miss limbs, clash, and war until one prevails with all the beauty of this city. All the heart of this country. I haven’t had much to eat yet today and therefore no descriptions to give you as we head north and then eventually south to put our feet on the end of the world. Let me just say it’s well worth the price of it. Even in a dark night of the soul. My campaneros. I miss you. 

Chapter 7: Kill The busdriver and the Australians

         The turquoise greens and tomato oranges of the houses and huts that freckle the landscape slowly disappear into the dust as the violent green of the jungle overtakes them one by one. The vines and tall grasses raise up as if to strike the bus and sometimes do. The windows sealed shut, the AC blaring in the night, the drivers ranchera music pounding thru the skull. 3 hours outside of the capitol of Colombia with the worst hangover since Caligula sodomozed the Roman empire and then spit wine up their ass. On a 12 hour bus-ride down slow dirt that would make me re-think my entire trip. Serotonin depletion.
        Two kiwi blokes I hope to the lord I never see again had kept us up drinking bottles of rum till the sun pissed in our eyes. I curse the day were born. I frown with great disdain upon the land they come from. I blame only them for throwing up 10 times in 12 hours. I finally get a dip of sleep to the thought I have to accept that my life will be like this forever, locked in this self made prison barreling down this  ditch of a road at 6 miles an hour. Onward. Slowly forward.
       We arrive in San Gil around midnight with the worried look of two boys who have just been beaten badly. Our room of 6 beds is empty except for us. We lie down to see if we can sleep away the scars. We can. In the morning we eat avocados and fresh pineapple juice and  hike a few miles up the river to a local swimming hole. The water thick and muddy. The desire to swim gone with the midday. Thunderstorms roll in and cover the jungle in fog. A general feeling of "fuck" seeps into me. Holds the hand and breath of an outsider.
        This small jungle town stares at me with every eye. Glares at me with every tooth. I long for the warm smile of someone I know, I can only seem to loose this loneliness between the pages of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. I sit to read and get lost. Ghost in the machine. Autopilot for pages.
        We hike further into the jungle to a 180 meter waterfall. We meet two kids from Mexico City that we get along with and remind us of ourselves. We head out with them and the girls who run the hostel to a discotheque on the edge of town, its surrounded by armed military guards. The feeling pervades. Stairways make bedrooms. Hot heads make wall marks. Who knows what Ben did.
         Its our plan to travel with the Mexico City boys up to Medellin but we grab the last seats on the bus, another 13 hour ride, this time at night so we don't loose a day or have to pay for a room in the city that night. The buses are plastered with religious paraphernalia and roadblocks so frequent merchants have set up permanent stores where the traffic backs up. You don't wanna look out the window into oncoming traffic, it will make you tear up, over canyon edges and fog semi's race at your nuts.
        Finally in Medillin, I have fallen in love with this city. Only a few hours in, I will let you know how the affair goes. The jungle weaves in and out of it as does the beautiful architecture as it switches from colonial to art deco. From the longest bus-ride in the world. From the home of American heartbreak. From where they loose their minds and go AWOL. From the wild world of starches. 6 different kinds of potatoes, roots, and rice later. I see you from the thick as we head north towards the coast and Panama. My campaneros.


      

Chapter SIx: The Botero Yogurt

She had a body like a bag of yogurt that in two days time I would learn resembled a Botero painting of the Mona Lisa almost precisely. Young, fat, and white European. Just because I explain the skin don’t think I got in it. I did not, but she was with us when we entered the bar after it was closed. The soon to be fired bartender insisted that we help ourselves and so we did. Sometimes crime can hold you like a familiar hug in times of loneliness, so the four of us drank and swapped stories until the sun came up. I know a man named Kevin suffered from elephantitus of the ball-sack in Panama. He in turn knows I’ve been shit on. I slept in my clothes next to Ben and woke up in Colombia laughing.

Colombia seems to have four kinds of enforcers, the military, the rebels, the policia, and the street security. Police impersonation is a common thing but I can always smell a cop. They always have a tell. It’s a little threatening to see 17-year-old kids walking around with machine guns but so far they seem to only stare at my tattoos with vague interest. We will see how they become at the roadblocks when I obtain my motorcycle.

Bogotá is a giant colonial city of skinny streets and long winded turns. The buses barely slow down to pick you up and the music never sleeps. The song only changes slightly as you move from bar to room to bus to street. 2640 meters above sea level on the Eastern side of the Andes Mountain Range. A giant church and statue of the Virgin Mary tower above it to the north of the city. Illuminated they guide the way back to the hostel at night where the bathroom is so small that both your head and knees press against the wall while you sit against the toilet. The beds are clean, the bar is cheap, the hammocks swing, and the internet works. Shots of the local aguardiente cost about a buck and its a strong anise liquor. Today we head a few miles up the crease of the Andes Mountains to a local church where they make the stuff out back infused with coca leaves and cinnamon.               

Breakfast here seems to consist of eggs, two different breads, and hot chocolate for you to dip your cheese in. Up here by a village in the mountains we eat blood sausage and potatoes and you can see out over the entire city from here. The ghetto sprawls and spills from the west down into the south. Bandits patrol the roads on the mountain next to us so we don’t hike that way. A train can be seen that goes straight thru a tunnel in the range. A little girl of only about 7 breaks my heart with a smile. We stop to drink tea here.

 Me and Ben decide we need to add a butcher knife to our family. Shopping lists are made as we prepare for our 7-hour bus ride into San Gil where we will repel 60 Meters down a waterfall and sleep in the shade of it. But tonight we will drink this bottle we bought on the mountain and sing songs to the moon in the streets. Down here amongst the beggars, glue junkies, and women we howl.  Up on the right stuff. Gone with the first glimpe. Like Boteros artwork both boisterous and unaffected. Both inspired and unsuspecting. I guess kinda like that young girl. We move fluid like a bag of yogurt.

From the longest mountain range in the world. From the birthplace of coffee and cocaine. From the fingertips of the big adventure. 6 bowls of carne asada soup and a couple bottles of Club Colombia beers later. From the thick my campaneros. I see you and raise you one.