10-14 February 2017

Cabunga was out of town when Lenin and I arrived in Sibundoy, but he gave us directions to get to his family’s house, which was only a few blocks from where the truck had dropped us. Cabunga’s family is indigenous, of the kamsá tribe, and his father is a taita, or tribe leader. When we arrived at the house, his brother and mother greeted us, as well as a golden retriever named Falcón. Benjamin, his brother, was carving a drum out of a tree trunk for the upcoming carnival. He showed us other decorative carvings of animals and faces in various other tree parts. Inside, the house was full of handcrafted indigenous things, including jewelry, musical instruments, bags, and clothing as well as more wood carvings. There were also various animal skins and totumas, a type of gourd or fruit that grows on trees and is used to make bowls and cups.

These flowers are beautiful, but dangerous, and they are growing all over this region of Colombia. They have a chemical call scopolamine, which criminals use to make a person suggestive and easy to take advantage of. The chemical, when ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin, can cause memory loss and make you unable to resist a robbery.

The next morning, Cabunga arrived and told us about his farm not far from where we were. We decided to check it out, but we couldn’t stay very long because our bikes were in Mocoa, and Will had to move out of his house that day. Cabunga assured us that his brother could go get our bikes and keep them at his house in Mocoa, so we could stay as long as we wanted. After a few phone calls to arrange that, we walked to Cabunga’s farm, about an hour down the road. We stopped along the way to buy a chicken, and then at Cabunga’s relative’s house just across the road to drink chicha. Cabunga let the chicken run around with the existing ones in his neighbor’s yard while we passed around a bowl of this fermented corn drink.

Herding cows on bicycles in the vereda of San Silvestre

Once at his farm, we helped Cabunga to fix the wiring on his electric fence. Totally underprepared for this experience, Lenin and I only had one change of clothes and inappropriate footwear. Since Lenin had lost his shoe on the road after Fusa, I had also left my shoes behind in Neiva, so all we had aside from bike shoes were my flip flops and a pair of indigenous sandals made from car tire that Lenin had bought for $2.000 pesos in Santander. I borrowed sandals from Cabunga to walk around the grassy fields, but they were too big, and it was very awkward walking. The fields appeared flat and easy to walk through from a distance, but up close they were full of ruts from the cows, and there was lots of mud hiding below the surface. I didn’t make it out of there clean, but it was a good experience.

That night we returned to the neighbor’s across the road to drink more chicha. We sat in a circle, passing around the totuma that someone would refill from a bucket. Every time I thought we were finally done with the stuff, someone would come back with a full bucket. I had no idea where this much chicha was coming from. Somewhere outside, I think. I imagined a huge trough out in the back yard, full of chicha, where someone would dip the bucket in to refill. I’m pretty sure nobody wanted to keep drinking it, but they all felt obligated to keep passing it around and make each other drink. I avoided getting as drunk as everyone else by pretending to drink with everyone, only putting a little bit of chicha in the totuma when it was my turn. Then someone brought out the rum, and things got weird. When it was time to go, Cabunga was passed out peacefully on the floor, and Lenin was in tears, convinced that he had killed him with his mind. Cabunga’s chicken was still in the yard, wandering around and looking for a place to sleep. He kept peeking through the window at us.

The three of us eventually stumbled back to Cabunga’s house, where Lenin and I climbed up a ladder to the second level to sleep in a tent. The house is still a work in progress, so instead of beds there are three tents on the second floor, and Cabunga has a tent inside of his room on the first floor.

Cabunga had to leave the next day to get his family, who was waiting for him in another town, 8 hours away. Before leaving, we helped him to fertilize the grass he was growing and relocate some plants. We had wanted to hike to a thermal spring, but didn’t have enough daylight or energy for that, so we extended our stay on the farm an extra day.

Collecting milk for morning hot chocolate!

The next morning, we woke up extra early to get a chance to milk the cows, which someone comes to do every morning at 6am. I was anticipating the raw milk to taste very farmy, or the way a cow farm smells when you catch a waft of it in the air while passing on your bicycle. The milk was warm, but otherwise didn’t taste any different from regular store-bought milk. Cabunga didn’t have any refrigeration, so we used what we took to make hot chocolate with breakfast. The rest went with the milker to sell at the market. Cabunga only has two cows that produce milk currently, but each cow yields about 20 liters of milk per day!

Biking to the mountains to find the hot spring

After breakfast, Lenin and I borrowed bicycles to get to the base of a mountain, about 7 miles from Cabunga’s farm, where we would hike up to the thermals. Cabunga had instructed us before he left on how to get to the trail, but we still had quite a difficult time finding the thermals. We were supposed to go just past the yellow bridge and ask for Cabunga’s aunt, where we could keep the bikes while we hiked. We passed at least 4 yellow bridges before we actually came to the right one, and by that point we had asked so many people where the trail was, the last person we asked said we could keep our bikes in their yard.

Hiking in search of thermals

Shortly after entering the hiking trail we passed another couple with a horse. They had never been to the thermals despite living there, but they could give us a detailed description of how to get there, right down to the type of trees we would see before we would have to turn off the main trail. Of course, there were other trails that we kept turning down before we got to the right one, and even then we walked too far along this trail when we were actually supposed to climb back down the other side of the mountain from there.

We found two of these along the way to the river.

We ended up walking a long way to where the trail dead ended at a gate to a small house. A few dogs immediately came to bark at us, and Lenin called out to see if anyone was there. A few moments later, a very old indigenous woman emerged, hobbling over slowly through her garden and to the gate. This lady gave us instructions to go back and walk down into the valley, but not as far as the river, and then turn left to get to the thermals. She also warned us that we should have a machete or something to defend against animals like wild boar, tigers and snakes. This lady was so old and so slow, I wondered when was the last time she could have left her house to visit the thermals, or to go into town for that matter. She complained of terrible pain in her legs, worse than the pain of having a baby. We shared some of our bread with her before going back on the trail.

The trail grew steeper and greener as we approached the river.

From the point where we turned off this trail, things got a little hairy. We found some sticks, which we sharpened and carried with us in case we had to fight off any wild beasts. The trail was basically non-existent as we descended towards the river, which we couldn’t see, but could hear as we approached. I began wondering if we should just turn back and give up on our mission to find the thermals, but Lenin was determined, and at this point I think we had gone too far to turn around and admit defeat. We eventually came to a grassy clearing, and we found a more distinct trail from there going to the left. This trail grew very steep, and we carefully climbed down to a river. Thinking it was the wrong river because we couldn’t see the steam at first, we kept going closer. Emerging from the jungle and into the sunlit, rocky riverbed, we saw another small stream on the other side that joined up with the stream closest to us just a few meters down. Then we noticed the steam. It was a warm day, so it wasn’t as prominent, but the stream closest to us was incredibly hot. Just past where the two streams converged was a shallow pool that was the temperature of a hot tub, and immediately beyond this pool the river plummeted about 10 meters or so in a hot cascade before continuing along a shallow slope as a narrow, winding river.

Lenin bathes in the hot river.

Lenin and I hung out in the hot water for about an hour, ate some snacks, and then hiked back to our bikes. The hike down took half the time that it took for us to find the thermals, but the bike ride back to Cabunga’s farm seemed to take longer.

New ducklings, just a day old, waddle around with their mom.

During our stay at the farm, one of the ducks hatched 7 baby ducklings. There was still an unhatched egg in the nest two days later, which the mother had abandoned to take care of her other seven ducks. The last duckling had only half cracked his egg, so we helped him along and out of the egg. The mom didn’t want anything to do with him though, and everyone we asked told us that he would end up dying. We couldn’t let that happen, so we brought him with us back to Mocoa.

The ride from Sibundoy was a lot faster than the ride there, since we took a passenger van back instead of hitching a ride in a sketchy truck. It was still bumpy enough to make me wonder if I was damaging my brain, and the threat of being covered by a landslide was ever looming in the back of my mind. Back in Mocoa, we stayed a night with the person who had taken our bikes from Will’s house and hit the road (with our new duckling passenger) the next morning.