Woche 16: Santa Marta

We flew to Santa Marta - a Caribbean coastal city in northern Colombia. At first, we wanted to fly to Cartagena, the larger sister, but we thought a smaller and more intimate place would be better - Santa Marta has only half a million residents, making it the first city established in Colombia by the Spanish. We decided to settle away from the hustle and bustle and traveled an hour east to a small hotel in the Tayrona National Park area - a region of jungles, beaches, and Indian tribes. As soon as we landed, we felt different. The environment suddenly felt familiar, as if we had landed 25 years back on our big trip - after a month in Costa Rica, which felt like an American colony, and two months in the wealthy and relatively western Medellin, Santa Marta felt like South America for the first time as we remember it - simpler and more understandable. Already in the taxi, I felt like the driver and I were having a smooth conversation without any problems. I asked him about this, and he hinted that in Medellin they are more elitist, which is reflected in their more sophisticated and cumbersome language, while those from the north speak succinctly and to the point, without unnecessary additions, and without talking too fast or swallowing syllables, which made my life easier. After a few minutes of conversation about his granddaughters, he made a video call and introduced us to the whole family; the girl was busy playing a game on the phone, but out of respect for Grandpa, she engaged with us in polite conversation... We didn't rent a car and for the first time, we used public transportation - taxis, buses with a conductor standing half out of the bus, and motorcycles. We remembered the experience of arriving at a place with much less control over the situation - entering a national park without knowing exactly what to do, getting into a shared taxi that was supposed to take us to the trailhead - not knowing when the taxi would leave, how long it would take, or the length of the trail. The restaurants are much simpler, the menu hasn't changed since the last visit to the continent, and the pace of work is similar - you have to arrive two hours before you're hungry. The peak of nostalgia was when we ordered lunch in a small hostel, after finishing a trek in the forest, a few minutes later, Yoala said - cards? We pulled out cards and played with the kids until the food arrived.

What was nostalgic for us was a significant challenge for the kids. Moti arrived still sick at the trail, suffering, angry, and complaining incessantly. Even when we reached the beach, he firmly refused to enter the water and enjoy it so we wouldn't feel relieved from the guilt of taking him out of the house that day... But the real challenge for all of us only began the next day.

On our way to Santa Marta, Yoala received a work-related message from someone she met a month earlier in Bogotá. She replied that she was on her way to vacation and asked if he had recommendations for Santa Marta. He sent her the phone number of a childhood friend, Juan, who lives there and highly recommended that we meet him. He is a Colombian guy with Indigenous roots, married to a German woman, speaks English, Spanish, and a bit of the local Indian tribe's language. 15 years ago, he bought a piece of land in the middle of the jungle and lives with his family near the Indian tribe - learning their language and customs. We communicated with him through voice messages on WhatsApp - he said he could meet us in the jungle and introduce us to the chief of the tribe, for a conversation and a ceremony where he would bless us with a blessing to keep us safe. He recommended we sleep in the jungle in a small cabin near the indigenous reserve and meet him in the morning for the discussed gathering. He was in the middle of a trek in the forest and said he would arrive the evening before the meeting at the temple he built near the cabin to conduct an ayahuasca ceremony that would last all night - we could join if we wanted.

Moti vetoed any entry into the jungles, but somehow when he saw pictures of the beautiful cabin in the middle of the forest, he was convinced it didn’t fit the definition and that he would be protected enough from a variety of threats - snakes, tarantulas, and other foul creatures. We took a taxi from our hotel, which was at the end of the world, to the end of the end of the world. At some point, I felt the driver starting to hesitate about continuing the journey into the forest, and the fear of the unknown began to bubble inside me. When we reached the coordinate point in the middle of the forest, he dropped us off and ran away. We met Eduardo there, who loaded us on the back of his open pickup truck and drove us up the mountain through a particularly rugged road. Moti was very scared. When we reached the end of the road, Eduardo loaded our suitcase on his back and led us barefoot on a short journey across a goat path to our cabin. We arrived at a beautiful cabin, but completely open to nature, with no doors or windows and a compost toilet - for Moti, it was the culmination of all his fears. He locked himself in the only room that was somewhat sealed with screens, and we sat downstairs waiting for Juan. He promised to arrive by 5:00 PM to meet us. At 6:00 PM he announced he was running a bit late... At 8:00 PM the night ceremony in his temple was supposed to start, and he still hadn’t arrived. I decided I wasn't going; I was already afraid of it and felt I needed to know and trust who I was going out with for something like this. At 8:30 he walked under our house with his group on the way to the ceremony and called me. I went down to him and we exchanged a few sentences, took a leap of courage, and set off with him into the darkness, into the unknown. In the morning I learned that Moti, Yoala, Michael, and Ofri slept cuddled up all night - scared. Moti took care of himself, Yoala to me, was sure I would come back broken in the morning, even though Juan promised her he would return me safe and even more intact... After a 15-minute walk in the darkness, we arrived at the temple - an open cabin with a thatch roof and hammocks hanging above it, a campfire area, an area for ritual tools, toilets. For some reason, two minutes later the fear completely disappeared, and I felt safe and completely calm. An entire night of long and intense Indian ceremony that included howling and whistling, leaf waving, singing, playing guitar, harmonica, drums, and shell necklaces, drinking a magic potion (and later two more doses after the first dose did nothing to me), a personal cleansing ceremony that involved spitting the magical and foul liquid on all parts of my body, passing a burning incense bowl around me, and a lot of waving, various meditations and guided imagery, and finally, I vomited my soul out. I didn’t meet demons or spirits, only a brief flash of what felt like a subconscious stream in the form of a long corridor with thousands of objects faintly illuminated in the dark, passing by quickly. Juan was truly wonderful, full of goodwill, genuine and authentic, an interesting conversationalist, and on one hand, a stickler in performing the ceremony exactly according to the plan, and on the other hand, without excessive pretension. At 8:00 in the morning, I walked back alone to the cabin, tired but feeling completely at ease in the forest. I thought about the courage in this process. How cautious I consider myself and how easily I flowed with the situation.

In the afternoon, we went for the family ceremony with the Mamo (the title of the Indian priest). All the way, we talked about whether they would perform a show for us or if it would be an authentic meeting. The meeting was much stranger and more authentic than we could handle. Moti arrived frazzled and feeling cheated; as soon as we reached the temple, he saw a not-so-distant cousin of a tarantula, sat down, and grumbled throughout the ceremony. Michael and Ofri were really excited for the ceremony. Michael heard about my night stories and expected something similar, waiting for them to dance around the fire and wave leaves, but none of that happened. We sat in front of the Mamo, who didn’t look at us directly and disgustingly chewed coca leaves. He spoke in his language, his son translated into Spanish, Juan into English, and we into Hebrew. We held a conversation like this for two hours. His interest in the land from which we came led the conversation to surprising places - how the Jews came from all over the world back to the homeland of their ancestors after thousands of years. How do you live during war (when there’s an alarm, they hide underground). They were surprised to hear that we didn’t leave Israel because of the war and laughed at how Moti was more afraid of the jungle than of the war. The long conversation exhausted Ofri, who took Yoala's phone and started taking pictures of the cabin (the only pictures we have from the event), and finally fell asleep in my arms. Michael was super frustrated until they finally reached the ceremonial stage, and even he was far from what we expected. The Mamo said that for the forces of nature to bless us, we first need to give nature a gift. Moti muttered from the back that they surely wanted money now, but they asked for the chi powers of our wombs. They asked us to recall our moment of birth while rolling cotton pieces between our fingers and transfer part of the life forces of our birth to the cotton as a gift to nature. In the end, they gave us bracelets that are supposed to protect us during our stay in Colombia, and we said goodbye to them in peace.

We walked back to the cabin, from there we walked down to the place where we met Eduardo the day before; he was no longer there, but our suitcases were laid out there. A guy arrived on a motorcycle and offered us a ride back to the road - me with a suitcase on the first motorcycle, Moti and Michael on the second motorcycle, Yoala and Ofri on the third motorcycle, and the fourth motorcycle with the big suitcase.

When we arrived at the road, about 100 meters away from us was a luxury hotel (for 600 shekels a night) where we spent the rest of the vacation at the pool and the beach. Resting and processing the experiences we went through.

Checklist: The piano arrived, we got a leasing car, and the IKEA delivery arrived. A decent supply.

See you next week.