Greetings,

In 1971, lifelong friend, Frances Vito and I ascended the north face of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, alongside the Palomino River, roughly midway between Santa Marta and Riohacha - not far from Aracataca, Colombia, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- "Gabo"-- was raised by his fantastic, story-telling grandfather. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rquez

During our trek, we reached a high elevation stretch of primitive trail that today is used mostly by Kogi natives travelling between their mountain fastness and the Caribbean coast where they must make intermittent journeys to secure supplies of salt. It is worth mentioning that the north face of the Sierra Nevada is the place where tropical ocean comes closest to permanent snowfield, a lateral distance of just 17 miles. (The Kogi keep cattle, but they do not eat their flesh, Instead, like Kenya's Masai, they tap the bovines' jugulars to supply proteinaceous blood to their diet. Mostly the Kogi eat malanga root which is all Frances and I ate during our time with the tribe. Kogi cattle are also a status symbol. Notably, the Kogi did not keep (or use) beasts of burden so that salt had to be carried from the coast far up mountain in shoulder-slung, criss-crossing "bandolier" bags like the one that has hung for nearly 30 years -- about eight feet from where I now sit -- on the handle of the door leading to my basement where a nearly-indigent Mexican worker now lives. I am grateful for his help.)

Suddenly, in this transcendentally beautiful mountain jungle -- home to cristaline rivers and surpassingly lush greenery - we came upon a well-crafted road made of gorgeously "rounded" stones. (It is, I believe, still unknown how the Kogi drilled holes through polished necklace stones several inches long, some of which are still in Frances' safekeeping.)

These stone-paved roads were (and are) about 9 feet wide, and would suddenly rise up from the forest floor, and then -- 50 to a 100 yards farther on -- would abruptly disappear back into the earth.

These "highways" were well enough built that I'm sure they could be excavated "intact and entire" to reveal their precise points of origin, and their destinations.

Soon it became clear that these roads traversed wild avocado groves, whose trees produced the most massive avocados I've ever seen - fruit that was also of exceptionally high quality. (I wonder if anyone is now cultivating this massive mountain jungle variety.)

When we first stumbled on these avocado groves, I thought it was just a couple of stray trees, and began packing them into my tumpline-carried, fiber sack.

But it soon became clear that there were hundreds and thousands of fruits littering the forest floor, so that it became laughable to even think about gathering them up.

In 1971 -- and again in 1973 -- when Frances and I trekked the lower flanks of 18,799 foot Pico Cristobal Colon en route to Kogi Country, we discovered that the two mestizo families along the way -- whose households were lead by powerful women, Dona Lilia Amariles Lopez and Dona Tilsa, whose kids fed these avocados to their pigs. (These families were the only two Spanish-speaking families we came across between the coast and high-elevation Kogi tribal lands, families which settled the northern slope mountain jungle, not long after the Colombian government opened this face of the Sierra Nevada for settlement in 1954.)

Although it may be a false memory, I seem to recall laughing out loud at discovering these prolific groves in the middle of a jungle, along with the absurd fact that our new friends fed these world-class avocados to their pigs.

Here is the account that triggered this reflection. https://www.interestingfacts.com/remote-inaccessible-places-facts/YtX5sKYHnQAHPR8_

Here are other related links.

La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_de_Santa_Marta

La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City) | From the Heart of the World - The Elder Brother's Warning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0kWs1q3hI (This documentary impresses me as somewhat sensationalized, as if the truth isn't sensational enough. Huaqueros (treasure hunters in search of pre-Columbian artefacts) play an important role at the beginning of this documentary. Back in the early seventies, I knew a few huaqueros - long before their numbers exploded, bringing explosive violence with this "new breed." In those early days, when searching for huacas was just a hobby among mountain people, I even witnessed the "fairy lights" -- in that completely unelectrified land -- that were said to be emanations (some speculated St. Elmo's Fire) that mysteriously marked the location of burial site - entierros, which upon opening, disgorged the booty of sculpted and ceramic artifacts - intermixed with relatively small amounts of pre-Colombian gold jewelry.

La Ciudad Perdida (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lost-city-ciudad-perdida-colombia/index.html

La Ciudad Perdida, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Perdida

"La Tarde Maravillosa de Baltazar - Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon" by Gabriel García Márquez:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1968/05/balthazars-marvelous-afternoon/660104/

"Un Dia de Estos - One of These Days" by Gabriel García Márquez: https://www.flashfictiononline.com/pdf/fpublic0007-one-of-these-days-gabriel-garcia-marquez.pdf

Pax et amor

Alan

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