August 25 - Back at the Hotel Caribe in Panama City. We had a wonderful time in the San Blas Islands. We flew over the Isthmus of Panama in a tiny, ramshackle plane and saw the islands from above. They are breath-takingly beautiful, like sand-encrusted emeralds spilled in to the ice-clear sea. We spent some wonderful times swimming in that beautiful, clear water. Everything was brilliant, pastel-bright, psychedelic - the sand, the trees, the fish.
We took a tour of the islands and visited several Cuna Indian villages. Their artwork is fascinating, something I suspect an acid freak would have no trouble understanding - different colored pieces of cloth sewn together in often bizarre designs.
Alfonso, one of the local Indian leaders we befriended, took us out to the wreck of the Freelance in his dug-out canoe. The 81-foot schooner is a pitiful sight: listing at a 50 degree angle, without masts and battered by row after row of wind-driven waves from the north. It is now just one of the many wrecks which litter the reefs around these islands.
Yesterday I interviewed Rodriguez Gonzalez about the Cerraro Colorado copper deposit. It's a controversial issue because they are hoping to develop the deposit with funds from the Canadian government agency CIDA. The development would compete with copper mines in B.C. so it's a hot topic. Gonzalez is a bag man for the president and a character "with affection shining out of one eye and calculation out of the other." While we were waiting to speak to Rodriguez, one of the secretaries, a beautiful girl, asked if Mike and I were CIA. Do we really look like secret agents or was she teasing us?
We've changed our plans. We're not heading for Quito now but for Cali, Columbia. Mike's brother John has traveled there. I feel peculiar. Can a man step into the same stream a second time? That's a question you can ponder from a lot of different directions. I feel both excited and apprehensive. I never expected to return. When I left, it was as if my time there was finished. I was better. What is drawing me back?
The six months I spent in Cali rejuvenated me. I'll never forget the rambling house on the hill where I lived: sitting in the cool of the evening watching the phosphoric glow of the mountain; the constant electrical buzz of the crickets; a cup of agua aromatica; a few words with Fred, Sherry or Ed, the Peace Corps volunteers who shared the house with me; or a chat with our landlord Alfonso Navarro.
I used to like sitting with Alfonso whether or not he said much. I was impressed by his insights into people and behavior. Occasionally he would get carried away on a topic that interested him and when that happened, his two large, clear brown eyes, which dominated his face, would stir as if large fish at the bottom of those clear pools were threshing around. His eyes were surrounded by enormously long eyelashes in an otherwise undistinguished beefy red face, which gave the impression that he drank a lot, although he didn't.
One topic that interested him was the Indian tribes who lived in the surrounding mountains. He seemed to know quite a lot about them and didn't look down on them or deny his own Indian heritage as many Colombians did in this Mestizo country. When I asked him about the religion of the Indians, he said the gods of these mountain people were small and gentle. He said they never asked a lot and never took a man to spiritual heights, but did little things to help people with their burdens - easing the weight of a man's pack, soothing his aching feet and helping him forget his troubles with an evening of friendship and laughter.
At the back of the house was a shack where a washerwoman lived with several children, some of them adopted. Alfonso let them live there. One of his favorite sayings was, "Pobre gente," (poor people) whenever some disturbance occurred which caused discomfort - the water turning off so that people had to carry it in buckets on their heads. The house had a rustic atmosphere with chickens and barnyard smells, even though it wasn't far from the centre of the city.
It was tranquilo, so tranquilo. No pressures. No worries. Only happy days merging into happy weeks and then into happy months. Even teaching English was fun, although I hadn't done it before. But with classes of beautiful, charming, giggling, flirtatious girls, how could I not enjoy it?
In Cali I began to learn to enjoy the present. When life can be good with so little, why struggle? I think it was the first time I felt no need to strive for some goal or another. The mountain cut the sky like a pastel painting; the strange, dry lightning flashes in the evenings; the electrical tension in the air; the cool breezes from the mountains smelling of unknown plants. It was a magical, healing time for me.
I don't know how long we'll spend in Colombia. It will depend on how our money lasts. I would like to take a trip into the hills to see the Indian tribes.
August 29 - Now luxuriating in a bath in the Hotel Tquendama in Bogota, Colombia. We missed our flight to Cali, paid $20 extra and took a plane to Bogota. We couldn't catch a flight to Cali that night so Braniff paid for us to stay overnight.
Mike met a girl at the hotel and she took us to the Gold Museum. We learned a little bit about a tribe which may warrant further investigation - the Coqui on the Atlantic coast - a tribe sprung from a dead civilization. I wonder what unknown perceptions remain undiscovered there.
Same day - Sitting in the airport in Bogota. Can a man step into the same stream a second time? That question keeps going through my mind. What is taking me back? After leaving Cali, I lived for about a year in France; broke up with my French girlfriend Georgina; spent five unemployed months in Vancouver and nearly had a mental crack-up; worked in a smelter for five months; spent a year at the University of Victoria studying anthropology; a job as city editor on the Martlet; then jobs at Canadian Press, the Colonist, the Thomson chain, the Stirling chain, CKO Radio and a TV show while working in the Victoria Press Gallery. And now Cali again. I feel such a mixture of apprehension and excitement. What will I find there?
I came to love Cali and Calians - their tolerance of one another's weaknesses, their childish, flaring pride, their beauty and sensuality, their love of display. How they love a show! It's as if they're saying Man can't really challenge his fate or the gods, but look at him try. What a show he is making! They become absorbed in the moment. It passes. The feathers droop, the props fall down, but they don't seem to care. Do they find themselves in such transitory moments of illusion?
Illusion? What is that? Just different realities, don Juan the sorcerer of "Journey to Ixtlan" would say.
Aug. 31 (Cali) - I'm back in Cali. Yesterday, dressed in a conservative blue blazer, white shirt and gray pants, I visited the school where I used to teach. It was good to see the people I knew from before: Estrellita with the beautiful eyes, and John, and some of my old students, including Edwardo, the judge.
I sat at my old, regular cafe. What a perfect cafe‚ it is - just off the beaten track but with enough pedestrian traffic to make it interesting - like an eddy in the curve of a river bank in which all manner of odds and ends are caught, some for a few moments, some for a longer time. I've never encountered another caf‚ I enjoyed so much. The girls walk by, beautiful and flirtatious as ever. I met a young American, John Ambrose, and we discussed writing and philosophy, just as in the old days.
Yesterday I visited the old house and learned that my former landlord, Alfonso, is in jail. It was something to do with his management of a finca (farm) and a conflict with a Spaniard. I'll go to see him Saturday with Juan, a university student now living with his family in an apartment in Alfonso's house. All the peace Corps volunteers have left now.
Sept. 2 - Mike has already left for Ecuador. I'll meet him in a few days. Last night I visited the Sexta (big avenue where all the night life happens). I sat down at one of the cafes with John, the young American I had met previously. We were later joined by a 15-year-old Colombian who had spent most of his life in New York. He was a strange concoction - speaking with a New York accent, nervous, boasting of his criminal record and his time in a detention centre, and talking about his rights and what the authorities could and could not do. I don't know how much of what he was saying was true, but when John called over the a middle-aged freak who seemed to be as much together as the young Colombian, I decided to leave. I walked up and down the Sexta a few times, didn't see anybody I knew, and felt quite lonely.
Sept. 3 - Visited Alfonso in prison with Juan yesterday. The prison looked like a World War II prisoner-of-war camp - barbed wire fences and wooden towers with armed soldiers at the top. The prison had two sections. In the middle-class part of the prison where Alfonso lived peddlers walked around selling snacks and mementos.
Alfonso greeted us with great warmth and hospitality. He hadn't changed much. His face was redder and a bit more worn. His eyes, clear as ever, stirred with emotion. In his little cubicle with a hard bed, the peeling parts of girlie pin-ups on the walls, he played a wonderful host. In no time at all it was as if we were back on the side of the phosphoric mountain, sitting in the cool of the evening outside his house, smelling the unknown plants on the breeze coming from the mountain, just pleasantly passing time.
He said he would be out of prison in a few months, although Juan told me later he doubted that was true. Alfonso walked us to an inner gate and watched us walk away. I looked back and studied his face. I was shocked. Alfonso was happy.
Now sitting on my hotel balcony relaxing. I wonder how I'll feel when I arrive back in Victoria, B.C.? It will probably only be for a year. Then I would like to return to South America to study an Indian tribe. What is driving me to do that? Fame and fortune? Curiosity about different realities?
I'm trying to analyze "Journey to Ixtlan." It gets more complicated. In the last chapter Castaneda asks don Genaro, a companion of don Juan, if his journey to Ixtlan is real or a metaphor. "It is real," he replied. "The travelers are not real."
Sept. 5 - I'm now on the plane and bound for Ecuador. Cali is behind me. I feel all mixed up and emotional. Did something draw me to Cali? Can a man step into the same stream a second time? I'm not the same person I was yesterday, and neither is Cali - beautiful, tranquil Cali is becoming a big city. But perhaps don Juan would say that the idea of time as a line running from past to present to future is a cultural concept and it is possible, by going back, to find something of yourself.