Deep Inside Colombia- Crossing The Andes with a Surfboard
I'll never forget the look on the face of that Colombian
campesino man. My wife just explained to him in Spanish that
what I am holding under my arm is indeed a surfboard, despite
the fact that we were standing in a Colombian village that was
located somewhere in the middle of the Andes Mountains, hundreds
of miles away from any ocean. After hearing this news the man
made a joke about us getting bad directions. He then flashed a
smile that revealed a mouth full of rotten teeth. Soon after
that he shook his head, tucked his hands into the front pockets
of his hand-woven Inca style poncho, turned, and moved on down
the only street in his town. When the man reached the center of
town a gust of wind swept down the street and blew the black
fedora hat off his head. As I was watching him chase after it
through a cloud of dust, I thought to myself; "I gotta' get to
the ocean."
I was beginning to feel like a fish out of water. Surfers cannot
stay away from the ocean for too long, or they start to "dry
out". As I was standing on that dirt street in that dusty little
town, I realized that I had not seen the ocean in over a month.
More importantly, I had not surfed in it. Halfway through a two
month excursion across the country of Colombia, in South
America, we were on our way to a small Caribbean beach resort on
the northeastern edge of the country for a much needed break
from the madness we had experienced so far on that trip. We had
spent the holidays traveling from Bogot