South America redux

Bogota, Colombia
After a while you get used to the smell of the baño basura, its micro-folded units of used toilet paper protecting weak septic systems; you get used to the smell of raw gasoline and faulty exhaust; used to the smell of shit and trash in the streets. You get used to it because the nose is a real Zen character. The nose is where it is whenever it is. The nose knows it´s not going anywhere for a while, so it adapts quickly. It adapts and instead points out the timeless beauty here, the personality and the passion and the 600-year-old presence of the human spirit. There´s a strength here, a connection that goes back generations without interruption, without noticing the changing tides of technology and social interaction.

South of the city en route to Ipiales is a patchwork countryside, little squares of land stitched together by thin rows of spindly trees, and far below a white river splashes and churns, no part of it aware of the overall flow, knowing only to go down, down, down, under rolling foothills thick with vegetation and terraced by the hooves of pastured cows. Heavy clouds crawl over the mountains, dragging their swollen bellies over the sharp peaks and spilling out on the other side. Along the road, motley barbed-wire fences stretch tight between cut branches, festooned with vines and aloe-like plants. Banana trees stand pale green between ramshackle houses and skeletal shacks. A gnarled tree limb leans on a bamboo fencepost like an old man taking a breather. Here and there a cow munches ditch grass at the end of a short taut lead. Corrugated metal roofs glint in the sun as if showing off to their terracotta neighbors. An abandoned sign proclaims "Venta de quesos," and an old man swats at the grass with a machete in an elaborate leather scabbard. Purple mountains shrug in the distance while hens cluck and scratch under a clothesline. In a yard, an upturned section of tractor tire serves as a water trough for a pair of skinny horses. On the other side of a low bridge over a flat stretch of delta, a shoe hangs from the barbed wire like a Christmas ornament. The bus hurtles past leaving only a cough of exhaust and the occasional skid mark from changing gears uphill.

Later a soldier/police in US-marked utility duds stops the bus, sweating as he leans in to check the cargo compartments, holding his assault rifle back with a veiny hand. He waves a thumbs-up at two kids looking on over popsicles, and waves the bus on toward Quito.