Something to Learn Here - in Colombia

Cartagena, Colombia

January 2024

There is always a day one. First day on the job. First day at school. First day in a new country. Sometimes it feels like home the moment I step off the plane. Other times....well, it takes time.

Mind you, with a destination of South America, as a solo woman traveler, I got a fair number of good intentioned "be carefuls." Even my Rochester, New York 3 am Uber driver felt compelled to throw in some shock by my audacity. "You think they are crazy here? They are really crazy there," said the man who also confessed he had lived all of his 52 years in upstate New York, and had never visited South America.

It's not that he is wrong. I have come to respect that all truths are true in the eyes of the beholder; that we each see and experience the world as a mirror illuminating our own beliefs. And right now, on a 3 am Uber ride, I felt ready to get back to MY own beliefs, and that grounded place of optimism and knowing of the goodness in this world.

To rally myself back to my "truth" I thought back to some of the so-called "dangerous" yet not so dangerous places I have been in my travels, like the sailing trip along the coast of Southern Mexico in 2017 during a "do not travel" advisory from the U.S. Government. As I met wonderful kind-hearted humans, I started to suspect that the advisories were propaganda and economic sanction driven, rather than a thoughtful gesture by the government for American travelers abroad. (Insert my belief system of skepisim of government's intentions here).

It took only a little "remembering" to bring me back to my excitement and confidence, and I felt grateful as I boarded my flight from Miami to Cartagena.

As I write this I am now in Cartagena's Old City. I arrived late yesterday afternoon to a city full of chaos, honking taxis, people everywhere descending on the streets in wild packs. Stimulus overload. So much to see all at once.

I spent the next few hours in the confines of my windowless white-walled cubby of a hotel room - decorated with nothing but clean white walls - a metaphorical clean slate. It was the polar opposite of the chaos right outside the hotel on the streets of Cartagena.

In the silence of my room I considered my life choices and thought, "why am I here?" I imagined other places I could be right now - running on a Southern California boardwalk, camping on a beach in New Zealand, hiking the Camino in Portugal. "I can change my mind and go anywhere in the world" I thought longingly, temptingly. And then I slept.

This morning, as I took a walk in the craziness, made less crazy by the Sunday morning-after-the-Epiphany holiday, I felt my discomfort again, and it whispered to me, "you have something to learn here." I imagined making peace with this discomfort; of seeing through the surface of it all. And so I stopped focusing on everything at once, and began to see the little things one at a time right in front of me. "Where is everyone rushing too and from? We are a busy lot," I thought as I slowed down to watch the swarm of people passing by. And then I noticed a fruit vendor with his old wooden cart full of papaya, a street sweeper erasing the evidence of a rauciss Saturday night, a begger (his brown eyes hungry - a thin arm out stretched towards me), a teenage boy sleeping on a narrow concrete threshold of an elaborate historical doorway - the sounds of a couple of tourists passing by with a delighted giggle. I smiled.

And then I noticed, really noticed, the buildings on the street as if for the first time - The colors - yellow, light purple, light blue, bright white - colonial architecture - the tall four story buildings shadowing the narrow one-way street below- and I felt my discomfort fading, replaced with wonder. My interest in life here today - and life here historically - suddenly peaked with curiousity. And I felt a calm within the chaos.

"I DO have something to learn here," I smiled. Many things, in fact.

It is still just day one of a two month journey into Colombia, and there are many stories yet to unfold and be told. But I do know NOW that I am grateful to be here, and grateful for life's magical way of illuminating our own inner truths. It is a beautiful, rich and diverse world.

Thank you to first days.

PS - photos to come 😘 in my next post.