History of Julian in Colombia

In lieu of a Substack, …

I have told this story in bits and pieces over the last two years, but I figured I should get it all down. Even if it’s only for me, I want to remember it. This one is not about coffee, just Colombia. 

The morning we left for our two month trip to South America. 

My first visit to Colombia was in July of 2022. LuLu and I were on a field research trip for their PhD. So, LuLu was working, and I was tagging along. We spent most of June in Iquitos, Peru—the largest city in the world, which is not accessible by road, only by plane and boat. I’m pretty sure that’s true. This was my first official trip out of the U.S. (We had gone to Puerto Rico in 2021, which “technically” doesn’t count, but I count it.) There was some culture shock. I remember thinking, “I don’t understand what any of these buildings are for or what anyone is doing with their time.” It was both completely foreign and familiar at the same time. One of the takeaways from my relatively small amount of traveling is that people are the same everywhere. The buildings just look different. 

The buildings of Iquitos, Peru

 

The buildings of Iquitos, Peru

We lived there for almost a month. LuLu had meetings, I took a Spanish class, and we spent a lot of time exploring the city. We took boat tours up and down the river, went to an animal sanctuary where tapirs walked around and monkeys jumped over your head, went to another animal sanctuary where the animals were mostly in cages, and we hiked through the jungle. After a month in Iquitos, we had plans to head to Leticia, Colombia, the biggest (only) Colombian city in the Amazon. Well, technically, we were headed to Cartagena, Colombia, but we were flying out of Leticia. I don’t remember why.  

 

 

 

Iquitos Peru, peki-peki on the Amazon River 

Floating bar, we stayed long enough to see the river go down and for the bar to not be floating anymore. 

 

LuLu swimming in the Amazon. I have swam in the river since taking this, but yes I also think they are insane. 

We decided to take the ferry from Iquitos, 12 hours downriver to Leticia. 6 pm to 6 am. People do it all the time, we’re young, why not? Sure. We got on the boat around 8 pm after waiting there since 6. After two years of traveling and now living in Latin America, I am much more used to waiting now than I was then. The ferry had two lines of seats on either side of an aisle, with two seats in each row. The luggage was all stacked on top of the boat and covered with a tarp. Watching the sunset on the river and watching the trees go by was incredible. Every so often, there would be a small or large set of stairs going up from the river into the community that lived there. We saw people swimming, washing clothes, fixing boats. As the sun started to go down, there wasn’t much left to do other than go to sleep. Keep in mind we’re basically in a speed boat that’s bumping down the Amazon river, and it’s raining. We wake up every so often (in what felt like a fever dream) to the boat stopping along the river to pick up and drop off passengers. People are shouting, they’re stomping up and down on the top of the boat, and the rain looks like it’s blowing sideways. It felt like we were pummeling through space on a tiny bus. We arrive in Santa Rosa, Peru, across the river from Leticia, Colombia. The plan was to get our passports stamped there and then take a smaller boat, called a peki-peki, across into Colombia. To be completely honest, I don’t remember why we had to do that, but we did. Or we tried to. It was only almost 7 am by the time we were getting off the ferry. Our bags were only slightly damp from the rain that poured all night. I had expected worse, so I was happy. We got off the boat, walked the tiny, flimsy piece of wood being used as a bridge, climbed the hill of mud, and found a moto-taxi to take us into the town and to the immigration office. It was closed. It was only 7 am, so of course it was. We made the executive decision to cross the river into Colombia without the stamp. So we went back down the hill, across the tiny wood bridge, and into a boat. In Leticia, we had just enough time to get another taxi to the airport and get on our flight to Cartagena. 

Waiting for the ferry, ours is the one pulling in. 

View from the boat

Tiny, slippery piece of wood off the boat and into the mud. 

Cartagena was beautiful and so, so hot. We stayed in the old part of town, with the old colonial buildings. It looks just like San Juan, and they both look like Spain. We were in Cartagena for a little over a week. LuLu was going to a scientific conference. My dad and his wife met us, and we spent the week together. We did a bike tour together and went to the beach. The women who walk along the beach offering massages did in fact get us. By the time one of the women had grabbed my foot and started massaging, both my dad and LuLu had already said yes. Yes, it’s kind of a scam, but at least you’re getting a massage on the beach in Colombia while also sipping on a piña colada.

On the beach!

Dad and Carol at the market in Cartagena

After Cartagena, we said goodbye to my dad and Carol and flew back to Leticia. After being in Cartagena, it really felt like returning to the jungle. I wouldn’t say we were excited to go back. On our second day in Leticia, we remembered that we had never had our passports stamped. We got a boat back across the river to Peru and went to the immigration office again. I kept my fingers crossed the whole time we sat there. The man didn’t look twice at our passports; he just stamped them and said enjoy Colombia. We said yes of course, and left, trying not to rush.  I still do not remember what the situation was and why we were getting our passports stamped to leave a country. 

Our Airbnb had a roof full of pigeons and was next to an empty yard (swamp) filled with chickens. After a few days in the city, we wanted to do something fun. LuLu looked up a zip-line place in the forest right outside Leticia. There is one road out of Leticia; it goes about 20 kilometers into the forest and then stops. The road stretches through the territories of the Indigenous communities that live in this part of the Amazon (mainly Magüta, Kukama, Huitoto, and Bora). At the zip-line place, we signed waivers and stepped into harnesses, then were led farther into the forest. They hooked us up to a rope and demonstrated how to pull ourselves up, hand over hand, with the harness. My fear of heights was already kicking in. At the top, we found ourselves on a platform at the same height as the tallest trees. Looking out over the jungle was incredible as long as I didn’t look down. As we went through the course, sweating, swearing, and trying not to question the sturdiness of the platforms we stood on, LuLu looked sicker and sicker. I was nauseous as well, most likely just from the height and the heat, so we didn’t overthink of it. We made it through, back to solid ground. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sweaty in my life. We thanked them for the experience, but I wasn’t going to say it was fun, necessarily. It was almost sunset at this point, and we hadn’t thought this far ahead in our plan. We walked along the road, turning every time we heard a motor. But the only taxis that passed were full. LuLu knew there was a bus but did not know what time it would come. I was starting to worry, since we would essentially be in the jungle in the dark in about 20 min. LuLu decided to ask some women sitting on their porch if they knew what time the bus came. They didn’t, but they said, “Don’t worry, the bus always comes.” And it did! I remember LuLu and I talking about how much different that situation would have felt if we were in America. Much scarier. LuLu had been traveling and living in Latin America since they were in high school, and they said they were never too worried. In their experience, the bus always came. 

Nice picture, bad Airbnb. 

Zip Lining! Never been so sweaty in my life. Which is saying something, we're living here now in the dry season with no AC. 

 

 

LuLu on the zip line... with dengue. 

Waiting for the bus (it came).

The next day, when I had recovered from my fear-of-height-induced nausea, and LuLu was still sick, we decided to move to a more comfortable hotel. There was AC and functioning Wi-Fi, but no kitchen. This was a problem because, as we learned in Iquitos, there aren’t really any restaurants in the Amazon that serve food that we can eat. After a night of potato chips and pizza with no cheese, just corn, we went to the clinic the following day. LuLu had dengue. We were sent to the pharmacy for Suero, which LuLu described as coconut-flavored snot. They tried to get me to try some after that, I said no thank you. After the pharmacy, we returned to the hotel, sick and hungry but still appreciating the AC and king-sized bed. We needed to try to find another Airbnb, one with a kitchen. LuLu had meetings, and we were supposed to be in Leticia for at least another week. We packed up slowly; LuLu unable to move very fast. Dengue is also known as “break-bone fever,” and LuLu said that was highly accurate. We took a moto taxi to the street the Airbnb was listed on, lugging our backpacks and extra bags of things that couldn’t fit in the backpacks. We walked up and down that street in the hottest part of the day, searching for an Airbnb that didn’t seem to exist. After a quick crying break, during which a man saw LuLu cry and made his friend go into a store and grab water for them, we talked to someone who pointed it out to us. We’d been walking back and forth underneath it the whole time. It was just a white door on a white wall with no address anywhere. 

Once inside, we quickly realized that we had booked a room in someone else’s apartment, not that it had said that anywhere in the description. It was too late to go anywhere else, and LuLu was too sick. I made us ramen in the shared kitchen. Luckily, the older couple who lived there weren’t home yet. Cooking in a stranger's kitchen with a language barrier between you is an experience I am not interested in having again. Our room had two twin beds with mattresses that felt like a sheet had been put over a wooden table. I am barely exaggerating. LuLu was suffering from break-bone fever, the beds were rock hard, we were sharing the apartment, and on top of that, there was a club across the street that played their music until 4 am. This is one of those experiences that make you question every decision you’ve made that has led you there. It was almost, almost funny how bad the night was. The following day, we woke up and immediately booked a flight to Bogotá. We were going there anyway; we just decided to go a week early. The whole way there, I daydreamed about cocktails, not being sweaty, and meals that we didn’t cook ourselves (or consisted of more than Ritz crackers and fruit). 

BYE Leticia, on the way to Bogotá.

The first week of being in Bogotá, we stayed in bed. LuLu slowly got over the dengue while I fought off a fever. Maybe COVID, maybe just exhaustion + traveling. At least this time, there was Netflix, and we could order takeout from bed. We loved Bogotá, and after about ten days there, we flew to Medellin. LuLu met some people at the university there, and we went to museums and ate out. It was great. 

After two full months of traveling, we went home to Miami for 5 days, then flew to Atlanta and got married a week later. It doesn’t feel like our lives have slowed down at all since then.

Our wedding, August 20, 2022