Tierradentro
Often the size of a city can be measured by its
main outdoor market. Being a medium sized city, Popayàn`s inhabited just two
sides of a full city block. The high-class street merchants wheeled out glass
cases that held carefully arranged headphones, blades and cookware, while the
less prestigious disassembled their broken electronics to fill the space on
their dusty blankets and sold their goods sprocket by sprocket. Lance was
scanning the variety of flashlights in one of the cases, and waved the grinning
Colombian man to him.
¨I want the black one if it works.¨
¨Muy bien.¨
The vendor emptied a box of D batteries and
slid them in the torch. He then raised it to eye level, pointed it at Lance and
flipped the switch twice.
¨It works, ¨ said Lance. He gave the Colombian
7.000 pesos in brightly colored notes and bade him good day.
+ + +
The hostel was a colonial, corner building of
wood and white stone. Lance’s was the corner room with two high windows, each opening
to a different city street. A notice of engraved wood on the wall read, in
English, ¨Keep windows always closed because thieves might steal your goods
with long poles.¨ Lance returned to the room with his purchase, and stuffed it
into his bright blue day bag along with his digital camera, water, travel guide
and assorted warm clothes.
The hostess was seated in a deck chair in the
hallway watching television drama with her Great Dane when Lance appeared. While
she was diligent, her sad, weary demeanor made her seem older than her years
and made one feel guilty for troubling her. Trying his best to appear cheerful,
he said, ¨Hola! ¨ She looked up, gave him a brief smile and then turned her
eyes back to the TV. Her large dog broke the ice by snatching an empty,
one-liter water bottle off the floor and stood attentively in front of Lance.
Lance patted the beast’s head, took the bottle
and chucked it down the hallway behind him. All three of them watched the
bottle, listening to the echo as it bounced against the floor and walls, but
the dog didn’t move. Finally, the dog sat down again and the woman asked in a
brittle voice, ¨What do you need? ¨
Nervously he responded, ¨A taxi. I’m taking a
bus to Tierradentro at 5 in the morning tomorrow and I would hate to bother you
that early. So could you...?¨
¨I’ll call tonight. Anything else? ¨
¨No. Well, yes, is Tierradentro
safe? I mean for gringos? ¨ he asked while tugging on his dirty blond hair and
then adjusting his glasses.
She turned her eyes back to the TV and said,
¨Yes.¨
¨Yes, it is safe then...good. Thanks.¨
He stood there for a moment more, then turned
and went back to his room, muttering, ¨Stupid Dog.¨
+ + +
The bus looked like a cathedral explosion. It
was painted red inside and out with crucifixes, the holy mother and a few
hundred stickers of famous saints plastering the interior. The bossanova was
playing at a volume just at the point of distortion, and the rocky path rattled
every inch of intestine. Lance still managed to sleep a little, until he found
a black, plastic bag in his hand and an annoyed, local man prompting him to
pass it to someone vomiting in the backseat.
Of course, he could not fall asleep again. It
was five hours to Tierradentro on a local tram, and it stopped for anyone on
the roadside that tossed up their arm. The tram filled to ¨capacidad¨ by 8AM
and was still stopping for an additional family of four and a street vendor.
The vendor pressed his round belly against the people in the aisle, selling
what looked like bags of dried onion rings. After doing a circuit, he stood
next to Lance and said with a wide grin, ¨Deutschland.¨
¨No, Stadouniteis, ¨ said Lance.
¨Ah, I lived for two years in
¨It is. I’m from Arizona.¨
¨Ah! Very close to
+ + +
The bus
continued for another two hours, leaking passengers like oil, then the
conductor waved Lance forward, telling him that the last bus was at 4pm. It was
a further two kilometers of dirt road into town with the infrequent house of
stucco and old paint on the roadside. Lance threw the bag strap over his
shoulder and merrily started his trek. Soon after, a white pickup drove past
Lance, stopped just ahead of him and waved him forward. There was a slim,
inoffensive local man in the front seat with a smiling youth to his side, and a
thin, older man amongst several plastic barrels grinning at him from the back, so
he decided that he was in no danger.
¨You’re going to Tierradentro, ¨ said the
driver.
¨Yeah.¨
¨Well, you can come with us if you like.¨
¨Ok, perfect.¨ Lance gave the old man a nod,
and then planted himself amongst the cylindrical
cargo. He rode into town, looking much like a groundhog with its head out of its
hole. He received plenty of curious glances as he rode into town, but none were
offensive. Bobbing his head and feeling quite confident, Lance muttered to
himself, ¨Paramilitary. Pfft. Guerrilla fighters. Ha. This isn’t dangerous, why
don’t more people come here? ¨
The truck stopped at the park entrance. Lance
jumped out, smiled and said thanks, but the driver waved him forward and asked,
¨So where are you from?¨ Lance opened his mouth and leaned forward to answer
when the driver continued, ¨You’re not gringo are you?¨
The world seemed hushed, as he felt suddenly
afflicted by the by the dual fears of death and stage fright. He thoughtfully
answered, ¨No. I-am-from-Ar-iz-on-a.¨
The reality of his response set in slowly, but
it eventually took hold. Lance’s eyes went wide and he turned to run, when he
was interrupted.
¨Ok.
Lance stopped and stared in disbelief.
¨Have a good one.¨
Lance’s mouth twitched, but he made no sound.
Finally, the truck drove away and, his trance
broken, Lance moved in the opposite direction. His was the bigger trail of
dust.
+ + +
It
was fifteen minutes uphill to the first set of tombs. Lance soon resigned
himself to gravity, as his shirt sleeves were already soaked from wiping his
brow. The deadweight of his travel bag was chaffing his shoulder. So after the
initial scare had faded, he walked slowly and stopped often. The first of these
breaks were passed seated on flat rocks, scanning the mountainous, subtropical
landscape and asking a series of morose questions, such as: ¨Now if I was a
sniper and about to shoot myself where I hide?¨ or ¨If I were to ambush a
Gringo on this clearly marked path where would I wait?¨ As the day passed
uneventfully, and the mind drifted from the sad, human element that plagued the
area, the landscape began to look more like a paradise and the monologues
became more congratulatory in tone. He met a few more locals on the dirt path,
and was once cornered by an elderly park employee, who seemed too anxious to
know his nationality. Lance thought it safest to lie and say he was from the
far north of
La Loma de Segovia was
the name of the first set of tombs. As he mounted the hill, a series of
rectangular pavilions came into view. There was a squat man wearing a plain,
white tee and a Panama hat underneath the largest structure. Upon seeing the
man, Lance smiled at him, discreetly cleared his throat and approached.
¨Hello, so you’re here
to visit the tombs?¨
¨Yes.
Yes, I am.¨
¨Excellent! As you can
see, there are several here, but only the most impressive are lit. Do you have
a flashlight? ¨ Lance unzipped his bag and pulled out the jet black device. ¨Perfect. Give me a moment to open them and do be careful
going down.¨
Lance lowered himself
into the first of the dark, cylindrical pits, using the stone steps fixed into
the wall. As he descended, the warm aroma of death greeted him, but the tomb
was well ventilated and made the lingering scent more palatable. At the bottom
was an arched passageway blocked off by a waist-high, picket fence, and beyond
it was a domed chamber. The room was patterned with red and black diamonds and
triangles, and oval heads with phallic noses were carved into the inner columns
and outer wall. He studied the interior from the bottom step, envisioning a
comic fantasy where the ancients communicated with the spirits that inhabited
the carved heads. He then asked one of them for permission to be buried in
their cozy, underground abode, but they didn’t answer. Lance decided the dead
probably didn’t like Americans any more than the living.
After some further musing, Lance climbed out of
the tomb and into another, and then another. There were slight variations in
design. Some had broken columns or head’s chipped out of the wall. Many were unlit, giving the experience of the
grave in the days before flood lighting.
When Lance exited the last, the caretaker in
the Panama hat was waiting above the top step and asked, “So did you enjoy the
tombs?”
“Yes, very impressive. Thank you.”
The man proudly puffed up his chest and said,
“Great, young man. And where are you fr…”
“Yes, I loved the tombs and
The man was silenced and gave an insecure wave
to the already distant tourist.
+ + +
Lance
visited the other sites with similar results, and didn’t stop for lunch, for
fear of missing his ride. At the end of the park trail, there was a visitor’s
center tended by a hardy local named Pietro. He was leaning against the
threshold, when he spotted the unsteady tourist walking down the path. Pietro
waved him into the center, which, inside, was little more than a guestbook
lying on a desk, and then took his place behind the desk.
“Come in, please,” said the attended,
invitingly. Lance obeyed, taking his place opposite Pietro.
“Please, sign our guestbook.”
“Sure,” said Lance. Then he looked down at the
book, which read:
NOMBRE NACCIONALIDAD FECHA
Lance perused the book for a few minutes before
deciding on a response. The last fellow American to visit came many months
prior. A Spaniard had visited earlier in the day and otherwise there were only
a handful of English and Israelis that visited that summer. He took up the pen
and signed:
Lance Powell Estados Unidos 20 Octobre, 2005
“Ah, American. That’s very nice. Thank you for visiting. You
look so tired though. Did you enjoy our tombs?”
Lance smiled and nodded.
“Well, good luck to you then. The bus stop is a
half kilometer further.”
Lance left without comment, but felt much
stronger once the trek was over. He saw no one else on the way out, save two over-sized
hogs and a shirtless man chasing a stray guinea pig.