Timeline of Important Events, part II

Theres been ten days since the end of camp, when we all assembled in our final circle on the bug infested grass and there were tears and there were proclaimations of love and thanks and sorrow and hope. Surrounding us was the colour green, swirling botantic, fresh and broken only by flecks and patches of colour; the white trunks of the eucalypts, the dirt road, the bright flowers of red and blue. Our chugging hearts, the desperate hugs, this familar scene. All of us, fast inventing futures in our tired minds. The arms were loosened, last wet kisses, and we were on the bus. Away, to Medellin.

Since then the group has been shrinking daily, people being shaved away by buses and aeroplanes, to school and families, from 27 of us to just me. Today, in the multilayered Bucaramanga station I watched as Jorge and Ana's bus backed out into the soft rain, their faces smooshed to the glass, fingers pulled into sideways vees like presenters on the Colombian music television show Cool Play. This is loneliness. It's been three days with just the three of us, three days in the small town of Barichara, but this time seems longer to me than the whole time the camp lasted. It only seemed right that they join me for the rest of it. But now it is only me.

But first, lets backtrack. In Medellin we celebrated the eve of Colombia's independence by dancing with whistles and flags in a large and famed nightclub crammed full of cowboy gear. On the bartops were teams of professional dancers, gorgeous women with elliptical plastic breasts and sparkles on their skin, thick jawed men built like tree trunks, and midgets chucking headstands. After an hours sleep we head southwards, thirteen of us now, to the Zona Cafetera, our minivans hugging the lush hills stacked with coffee plantations. We bathe in thermal springs, our bodies light and soft in the steam and sulfur and the jungled mountains hugging us tight as the afternoon light glows then fades. We hire a mariachi band to perform two tender songs to us under the looming statue of Simon Bolivar in the empty Pereira plaza. At the Parque Nacional del Café (like a coffee themed Disneyland for 6 year olds, without any actual attractions) we form a guerilla organisation, las FACEP (Fuerzas Armadas Contra el Patacon), committed to ridding Colombia of one of its more bland foods, the mashed plantain patty known as Patacon. Jorge accepts my 5000 peso dare to approach patacon stores and announce our groups intentions to overtake them and "take all the patacon hostage," much to the confusion and amusement of the store ladies. One reaches for the money she is counting out and tucks it away, worriedly.

The highlight of the coffee zone, though, is Valle de Cocora, where tropical looking wax palms rise tall out of the thick white cloud which blankets the forest. We take horses along the valley, over gushing streams and vibrant meadows, the hills on either side eerie and beautiful, the cloud spectral and the tall palms emerging slender, like roman candles. The farms end and we are engulfed by jungle, where we dismount and explore a waterfall before trotting back along the valley as the sun disappears and we pile 16 into an open backed jeep back to town. Darkness now, and the fields along the roadside are coated with, literally, millions of fireflies, glittering like static in the black grass.

We took the nightbus to Bogota. We had to choose between companies, and the one we didn't take rolled into the capital behind us with a shattered window. Woah, we said, and Jorge asked a little girl what had happened. It had been a direct bus to Bogota, but a man had wanted to get off along the way. When the bus driver refused the man took the little red hammer and just smashed the emergency window out, which as you might imagine left many passengers pretty cold for the remaining journey over the high passes of the Andes.

When it was just the three of us left we headed northwards again, to San Gil, and to Barichara.