Waking up in familiar Taganga, with loud Ballanato music playing from one side, reggae from the other, merely steps from my own beach.  I walk down to the beach for my twice-daily fresh fruit juices with names like Nispero-Maracuyà or Borojo or Zapote-Corumba, served blended with ice in a bucket. not a cup. a bucket.  My Colombian visa expired about a week ago and I am going to deal with this soon. Chilling, partying, swimming, and scuba diving with my good friend Carlos, whom I met in Buenos Aires, although he lives in San Francisco and goes to Burning Man and we have friends in common even.  He only has a few weeks here in Colombia and wants to see a bit of it, so who am I to blow against the wind? 

We just returned from a Scuba Safari, where we lived on a deserted carribean beach in Parque Nacional de Tayrona for 3 days, scuba diving and building bonfires and eating good food and kayaking and snorkelling. I got to go and dive (remember, I`m broke?) in exchange forn cooking and cleaning. Not a bad deal, eh?

Anyways, we`re off either tomorrow night or Tuesday morning, com certeza, to Venezuela, where we`ll be heading to Isla Margarita for New Years, hopefully Taal and Elana (already there) have found a place for us all to stay. Otherwise... Who needs to sleep?

But then again, if Carlos doesn`t want to leave yet... it wouldn`t be that hard to convince me to stay in Colombia. Damn, I love this country. 

¨Where is the gold at the end of your rainbow?¨

One year ago today, I made possibly the best decision of my life. Jumped out of an airplane with a parachute in California, packed my bag, and a few hours later, walked out of the airport into the Amazon Jungle in Manaus, Brazil. It`s been a year to the day that I boarded that plane with a one-way ticket to South America, and only now, still learning to salsa in Colombia, I don`t view this as an accomplishment, where I could ¨close¨ some metaphorical ¨door¨ on this ¨chapter¨ of my life, but rather as a huge humungous door (possibly made of chocolate), that is just beginning to be pried open.
366 Days (thanks Feb. 29th!), 9 countries (will be 10 in 2 days), 2 languages, 2 bad haircuts resulting in needing to shave my head, llama steak, fried ants, grilled rabbit, guinea pig, fried intestines (all edible), and llama fetuses (not edible... i think), 0 robberies or violent situations, 1 near arrest/detention (damn Paraguay), 3 names (Jonathan, Jonny, and sometimes Jhon-a-ton), 1 advanced scuba diver certification, only one piece of clothing left that I began my trip with, wonderful new friends, more doors open in my life than closed, experiences enough to fill a few books (in progress), and no regrets.
This year has given me, among everything else, innumerable perspective. Certain unnamed people were and still are confused or opposed to the path I choose to follow. I have a hard time responding to this. ¨Where is the gold at the end of your rainbow?¨ somebody very close to me recently asked. My only reply is that I am not looking for gold. If I was, I`d be working in a lab. Lines do not have to be the easiest distance between points A and B, and I have found far more interesting things at rainbow ends than gold.  I smile and watch the sun set over the Carribean, it rained a bit earlier today and there is a bright rainbow hitting the hills to the south. Reggaeton music is blaring, fishermen come in with full nets, children are playing futebol, scuba divers are testing equiptment, birds are chasing other birds which are chasing snakes which are chasing their tails, beautiful women are dancing salsa on the beach only because there is music playing, and every day is a new starting point.
This is so much better than gold.

Rainy Colombian Afternoon

Back in Bogota, after my vacation to the Colombian Coast. Scuba Diving and hiking and rumbas and fried fish and fresh fruit juice and playas and friends and... It`s really cold here (unlike the swealtering ¨I want to take off all my clothes and go swimming in the clear Carribean ocean¨ coast), but it feels good to be back. It´s rainy but alive and I could live here for quite a long time. But alas, teaching Portuguese isn`t as fruitful monetarily as I had hoped, and I have decided, rather than sleep on cold wet Colombian streets, to move back to Sao Paulo and work.
Life is exciting these days, I`ve achieved an interesting balance bewteen discovery and familiarity, and I`m going to miss Colombia a lottt. But I know I will be back.
In other news, I have a new website (which you are currently reading), I put a bunch of my fotos from the last year online (see links on the left), and the FauxHawk is back. with a vengence.