It got cold last night!! See how we added temporary insulation to the van on the road to help keep us warm at night! We ran errands, did some shopping and played some games! Scottsbluff is an adorable little town in the heart of the panhandle!
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I wanna take a break from Colombia photos for a second to recognize some BAD ASS ladies we had the pleasure of guiding during our Wise Women Workshop a week ago!
While up in the beautiful red rock country of Sedona, these ladies climbed, hiked, polar plunged and challenged their comfort zones - AND WE COULDN’T BE MORE PROUD!!! These ladies were rockstars!!! While also in the spiritual vortex, we dabbled in some sound bath meditations, journaling, working in exercises, voila body work sessions & SO much more!! Truly, truly so blessed to hold spaces with beautiful, wonderful individuals like these ladies!! Can’t wait for the next one!!! Where should our next women over 50 retreat be?!?!
Santa Marta. Beautiful chaos on the Caribbean.
Santa Marta was the first city the Spanish colonized in all of South America. They arrived in La Guajira on the peninsula, moved west from the desert and stopped when they hit jungle. And now you have Santa Marta - a rustling port town and fun fact- also where all of your Colombia cocaine used to leave the country from. But since the war on drugs, the towns quieted down and devotes its time to tourism. It has morphed itself into a quaint beach town nestled in the foothills of the tallest coastal mountain range - the Sierra Nevadas of Santa Marta - home to the descendants of Tairona civilizations.
Photo number two is the first two story building in all of South America. It’s two blocks from the sea. And the last photo is the oldest & first church.
I’m currently reading One River by Wade Davis @wadedavisofficial after coming back to the states and I can’t put it down. It’s very surreal to read a book mentioning exact locations where you just left from and him describing the exact feelings and thoughts I’d been having but couldn’t form into words. If you’ve been enjoying these photos & stories from this trip and hope to come on the next one, I highly suggest reading his book and listening to his ted talks. And next I’ll be reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - a famous Colombian author. If you’ve been to Colombia or have any book recs on the indigenous I would LOVE to hear them!!
I want to share some things about the Tairona clothing & traditions with some beautiful portraits.
Misael, the sweetest boy is wearing the traditional clothing for kids. Basically it’s a piece of fabric folded in half, sewn together with cut outs for arms & neck. At this particular village they did not have a loom so they don’t make their fabric in house. They will go into the next village or town that does and bring back fabric. The boys and girls wear the same dress until they are close to their teens. Then the boys will get pants. While there I also never saw any type of diaper. Toddlers & babies were just naked or in the dress.
The men carry around a poporo. Pronounced po-po-do. This is the gourd both men are carrying in their hand. I can’t remember the first mans name, but the second man is Ferme & he was one of our guides within the village. The gourd is given to the man when they turn 18 as a part of the coming of age ceremony. The men can now chew the coca leaf and begin building his gourd. The coca leaf/ gourd is a whole other story but for now I’ll tell you that it’s a leaf they chew on and with the combination of lime from crushed seashells they build the gourd formation. The white bag the men carry is to hold the coca & is called a mochila. Every man has one.
The women wear the same white clothing but in dress form. They also have a necklace of beads, the more extravagant, the wiser and older they are. I’m not sure when the girls get their first necklace but we saw girls around the age of 10 or so wearing a few. Please note, the first women is 98 years old!! The women also have a mochila, but not to carry coca, they use it to carry their babies! The babe will sit inside the bag and they will hang the strap from their head. The baby will hang in the front or back of the mother & a lot of times you will see the older siblings holding the babies like this too!! Also, every Tairona descendant wears a protection bracelet. It’s made from the inside of an aloe looking plant and the women decorate them with beads. This is also the same plant used to make the bags. They receive the bracelet the day they are born and get many more as they...Cont. ⬇️
Let’s talk about La Ciudad Perdida aka “The Lost City” - the second most popular hike in So. America after Machu Picchu.
History first. The destination is an an ancient ruin of a city from the Tairona civilization way back before the Spanish even thought of arriving. We’re talking 800 CE. That’s 650 year earlier than Machu Picchu. This is where they lived, farmed, traded, held spiritual ceremonies - this was their home. The Spanish arrived and at first they were cordial with the Tairona and traded things for gold. Eventually history happened - Spanish got greedy, began stealing gold as well as infecting the Tairona with diseases they weren’t immune too - which lead the civilization to move away from their home and retreat up the mountain to higher ground where the Spanish couldn’t find them. Remember this mountains range they habitat is 19,000 ft tall. That’s a lot of jungle to go through before hitting the glaciers. The Tairona were not fighters, they do not believe in wars or fighting but love and praying. Another thing the Spanish didn’t ever find out was that the Tairona buried gold possessions with their dead under their homes. Each flat pad was a place for a dwelling hut for a home, and still to this day there’s gold possessions buried under those pads.
Eventually word on the La Cuidad Perdida disappeared and the Spanish stopped going to the city, but it was only 40 years ago that the ruins were rediscovered by an archeologist once gold from the ruins started showing up on the black market. But for the Kogui, Arhuaco & Wiwa people the city was never lost. They visited it frequently before the announcement to the rest of the world. Which leads me to the next topic.
This hike was difficult. Takes 4-5 days to complete there & back and there’s no bus or tram you can take to bypass all the hiking.. which is great. Makes people really work for it if they want to see it! But since the rediscovery, the influx in tourism has been real. While I am so grateful that I got to experience the hike I couldn’t help but hate the amount of people I was doing it with. Hundreds and hundreds of people backpack in, stay at the camps, pass by the village .. cont in comments
The second half of our Colombia expedition was spent with the Wayuu in La Guajira.
La Guajira is an aired, barren desert on the most northern tip of Colombia. While driving out, you just can’t even comprehend how people live out here. And not just a few people, the largest indigenous tribe in South America live in this desert - over 400,000 across Colombia & Venezuela.
They are robust, strong people with a history of war & fighting the Spanish for their land but contrasted with kind, opening hearts so eager to share about their culture.
We didn’t get to spend too much time with them and I wish I would have asked more questions at the time. But since we’ve gotten back, I’ve found one book on the tribe, Merachon - living with the Wayuu and have been obsessively it and I can’t wait to go back to hear more stories first hand.
While there, we learned about how they get their water & they showed us their traditional dancing. Their water comes from wells that they dig into the ground and move based upon dreams that they have that tell them where the water will be. The dancing represents different animals, history & family dynamics within the culture.
I’ll share more about the dancing later! But for now enjoy a few from the Wayuu of La Guajira.
10 moments from the Kogui. I had a dream about photo number 2 and photo number 10 is definitely my favorite.
I’m having the hardest time trying to figure out where to begin when telling the stories from Colombia.
So, I’ll start with the kids from the Kogui. The kids are the easiest to connect with. They’re the most curious and just genuinely don’t have any judgement.
We headed to the Kogui camp to learn about their culture and in exchange do a few service projects with them. Upon arriving we headed straight to the edge of their village and dropped supplies. We were greeted with a welcoming ceremony from the Mamos (leaders) but still needed the approval for our help and offerings from head mamo who was in the field somewhere. We headed back to our side of camp and waited til he returned. We waited all afternoon. This was the first time a group of our small size of 10 outsiders had ever visited the village at one time. We understood how overwhelming that could be. So we waited patiently.
The kids on the otherhand were anxious. A few at a time they started peeking their heads around and lurking closer and closer until eventually every kiddo from the village was on our side of camp. And basically while we waited approval we hosted the best PE kids camp you could ever do with very little equipment. There’s only so many games you can make up with oranges, sticks & rope. But the kids loved it. And we even got some parents giggling in the background watching from afar.
The Kogui are a decedents from the ancient Tairona civilization that inhabits the Sierra Nevada mountain range on the northern coast of Colombia. They are one of the few tribes left in Colombia to have never be colonized by the Spanish. There are still 20k koguis to this day thriving in the jungles of Colombia. Their life mission is to pray for the humanity of the world. They call themselves the elder brothers of the world, with everyone else being the younger brothers. And they can’t understand why we are doing what we do to our planet.
I will share more history and stories from the days spent with these beautiful people, but for now, enjoy a few of my first favorite photos while I
Today’s the day. Tonight we leave for Colombia. I have no expectations. I basically skimmed the itinerary and went straight to the packing list. I have an general idea of what we’re doing but not the details. I’m definitely the type of traveler where I don’t need to know what I’m doing every hour of every day, nor do I really want to know. The less I know, the less I sit and visualize what could be or play out scenarios of what I envisioned for that day. With little planning or knowledge, I let things play out like they are supposed to with no expectations, which leave me to less disappointments if something didn’t happen like imagined. Everything is an amazing indescribable surprise because nothing was planned. It’s like all these hidden gems just land into my lap because whether I planned them to happen or not they would still happen either way. This type of traveling allows me to be present. I’m not thinking about what we have planned for tomorrow. I’m not thinking about what will happens the last day of the trip. Im just thinking about now. And this is especially easy this time around since I didn’t plan this expedition. I’m just going. I’m along for the ride.
Now our job when going down to Colombia is to document the expedition. And I’m going to do so with a more thoughtful present approach. While we are there I’ll be taking a leave from my social media. 1. I won’t have cell service 95% of the time & 2. It just seems like the perfect natural time for a break and disconnect. I want to remember this fully. I don’t want to be overwhelmed trying to capture everything on all devices. It’s just a lot to handle.
So this is goodbye for now. I can’t express how grateful I am for this opportunity. This is TRULY a dream come true.
Had fun with you this week little bug. 🌵
A few more from the red rock country.
I’m so looking forward to taking our group of wise women to this insanely beautiful vortex in the middle of the desert. Our scouting trip REALLLLLLY got us excited about it. Still a few spots left if you know of anyone 😉 Women age 50+ link in bio!
