Coming back from Cuba, Colombia seems like a different country. I don’t know if it is me that has changed or if it is the country that has changed. Staying at the same hotel that I left 2,5 weeks ago, everything around me is familiar, but most things that I left, seem to have changed.

At this moment, I only have 5 friends. A 2,5 litres of Canada Dry, 2 small bottles of Coca Cola and a half a Ron (I don’t count the half empty bottle of water, as it is literally on its way down the drain). It’s funny how you can make friends with an inanimate entity as Caribbean rum, but it helps a lot, when it actually has a name: Ron. Ron is the name of rum in Spanish. Right now, Ron and I share a room in a town called Tolú. Tolú is the name of a small Colombian town where many Colombians gather and celebrate their holidays. Right now there is no holiday and therefore no celebration. Right now we are alone and work on getting better friends, because tomorrow, or later today, Ron is no longer here and I have to discover Tolú all by myself. It seems like a nice place, but there are no gringos here. Right now, I feel very alone - but I knew I would before I came here. Canada Dry is one of my favorites friends, though. I haven’t enjoyed the company of it for a very long time and after traveling half way around the world to meet up, 2,5 litres of it just does not seem enough. It is, though - to let both Ron and Canada Dry mingle at the same time I need to enjoy them like cigars: in small puffs and giving the impression of me knowing what I am doing. Honestly I don’t, but who cares when I am alone.

Cuba changed something, but not knowing what it changed it is hard to give an accurate description. I don’t really know if I changed for the better or the worse or if I just grew on the experience. When I left Colombia, I thought everybody bothered me with street vendorism. Wherever I went, people tried to sell me all sorts of crap from the street stands: useless ribbons, useless posters, useless clothes, useless food, useless tools for fixing a car, useless fruits and useless taxirides. Wherever I went, people were trying to fixing my shoes even if I wore flip flops. They were trying to sell me water, even if I carried a full bottle in my hand. Wherever I went, I heard the words "at your service". Coming to Cuba, I felt like entering a paradise without annoying street vendors. But the longer I stayed in Cuba, the more I missed the irritating company of the street vendors. At the end of my stay in Cuba, I would give a lot of money for a proper street vendor, but knowing that the money probably would end up in Fidel Castro’s pocket, I never told this out loud to anyone. As a guy from the developed part of the world, I am used to having options. Options to do whatever I want - if I don’t want to parachute one day, I can just let it be. If I don’t want to blow all my money on shoes, I can just let it be and if I don’t want to set fire to a forest, I can just let it be. Trying to choose differently in Cuba is very difficult. I don’t even think they have parachutes in Cuba, I’m amazed how they actually have shoes here and the forests there were not really forests. When the option of choosing is removed, you do not feel as if being in your correct climate. In Cuba, it is hard to choose anything, because the shopping opportunities reminded me the conditions in old Sovjet or during World War II where rationing were the big thing. Not that I actually spent any time in any of these situations, but I have read a book or two. I chose street food several times in Cuba, but there were no one to serve my wish. They had quasi-street vendors, but not real street vendors, as they didn’t really sit on the street and they didn’t really sell real food. Reflecting back on this, it is not hard to imagine how good it felt to get back to Colombia, where the options were a bit less restricted and I kind of looked forward to hearing the first "at your service" singing annoyingly in my ears. To my surprise, no one seemed to want to service me anymore and I don’t really know why.

Coming back to Colombia also made me alone for the first time since I started travelling. After two months on the road, I am feeling like starting over again for the first time. Backpacking is about, among different things, meeting new friends and then breaking up after a while and in many cases it is a hard ritual to go through, but without it you could as well stay at home watching MTV. Backpacking is actually a bit like MTV, though: it’s somewhat dirty, it’s hard to find a theme, you never know what is going to happen next, whenever you feel comfortable you know it will soon change or end, known stories tend to repeat itself and it is difficult to use it to relax. I have enjoyed the company of many different people in the previous two months and when in the company of others, you grow some hair on your chest, as it is easier to push your own boundaries when testing or trying out new things. Now I have no one known around me, apart from Ron and his friends, and the ones that I know are two weeks ahead of me, approximately on the same path as me. I am working my way down towards Ecuador and have spotted some interesting stops on the way down there. The guys I know are working their way down in the same direction - so now I will try to catch up on them before it is to late and before "ze Germans" gets here. Not that I don’t want to be alone - it is just plain boring. Boring to eat alone, boring to walk the streets alone, boring to discover new species of animals alone, boring to plan the day alone, boring to get robbed alone, boring to play football on the beach alone and it is boring to get drunk alone. Most things are boring when you are alone, but some things have to be done alone. Reflecting, going to the toilet, listen to music, getting angry about the attempt of adding gringo tax to any item you buy and packing your bag are some of the things that are best to do alone. No - it is all about options. I want to have the choice of loneliness, I don’t want to have the choice of company, because it is harder to find good company than good loneliness.

Ron and Canada Dry is actually not a good mix. I need to separate them quickly.

I have been hanging out with several different people since I came back to Colombia, but there is only one woman that separates from the crowd. A woman, not quite twice my age but quite close and even more close if I were 5 years younger. A woman I had a hard time to trust and believe, considering my newly found Cuban skepticism to mankind. Spiritually well founded and seemingly on a quest to discover her roots of reincarnation, I spent one evening with here listening to her stories and tried to understand the amazingly different world that she is nurturing, enjoying and feeding of. When listening to her stories, I had two options: I could deduct that she was an absolute freak with too many bad trips from the 70’s in her veins or I could choose to believe every word she told me. With the Cuban experience still live in my brain, my rational and logical instinct was to believe she was an absolute lunatic, but I chose to believe every word she told me. She must be the one who gets my newly developed mistrust to people back on track and she must be the one to plant a seed of curiosity for a world so far away from mine, yet existing in the same one. I only spent less than 12 hours talking to her and her stories are not mine to pass on, but listening to her passion, listening to her experiences, listening to her values, wishes and her life really made me think about how poor most peoples life are, if what she told me actually was achievable. Telling me about enlightenment, the finest details of life, the wonders of meditation and expanding the mind in a way that would only be true if she have lived the words she was telling - or else was it a very detailed manuscript she was remembering. The experience was too mindboggling for me to immediately accept, but I have chosen to believe her words and now I just have to digest the impressions. Too bad that I have no more time with her to confirm my option of choice.

Ron and Canada Dry is getting a long fine. Maybe I should let them mix a bit longer.

When you are on the road, you will see things that are very different, fantastically beautiful, absolutely irrational, unbelievably well shaped, annoyingly stupid, formidable tasting and surprisingly unknown. From the dangers of passing a street in Venezuela to the absolute non-existence of common sense in Cuban arguments. From the lack of meaning of the word "queue" in every country to the strange hand gesture of a Cuban cab-driver, to let guys on the street that the cab is full (looks like an obscene gesture - or is it just a Freudian slip of my brain?). From the intoxication sensation of walking 4700 meters above sea level to the amazing colors of the underwater realm. One of the strangest sensations I have encountered so far on my trip, must be stepping into a vulcano filled with mud, knowing that it is 500 meters deep and somehow connected to the scary underworld. 50km outside the city of Cartagena, a tiny anthill of a vulcano has formed during the last decades and/or centuries. Not more than 15 meters tall, it seems like a tourist trap and everything around the vulcano was definitely build up for tourism, but at the same time knowing that the concept of "mass-tourism" in Colombia is less than 5 years old, I managed to cope with the setup. I also knew, that the surrounding of the vulcano would be a bit tasteless and I was only interested in the top of the vulcano and the content of it.

Worries of the 500 meters of depth crossed my mind in the same way that you worry of the depth of the sea, when crossing it by boat: slightly never. Assuming there were no dangerous animals in the mud, with its periodically bubbly, constantly lukewarm and with the consistence of very thick vanilla and banana milkshake, submerging in the brownish mass of prehistoric goo was a sensation I do not want to forget. The pressure from below or the inability to sink in the mud, made you literally float on top of it at all times. I assume that quicksand has a similar consistence as this mud but there was no chance whatsoever, that you could sink in this mud - I could actually write "my name" in it. Using all your energy trying to push yourself under, was a hard job and however you positioned yourself, you realised that you were more or less stuck. You could be floating vertically without even touching a solid piece of ground with your body. You could be floating horisontally without even trying to hold your breath. Moving around was a bit heavy work, but the feeling of weightlessness was somehow constantly around me. I could lift my feet in front of me and my upper body would just follow the rotation that my feet had started - tilting slightly backwards. Looking at your fingers when covered in the mud, gave me a glimpse into the future. The mud logically enough added a few millimeters to your body and it amazed me how well I actually knew the shape of my hands. When looking at your fingers with a very fine layer of vanilla and banana milkshake on them, they seem very different, but moving a finger just a millimeter makes your eyes see and your senses realise that the fingers actually are the fingers that your brain control. After processing these strange sets of information, you know that the fingers you look at actually are your own, still not recognizing them, and deducting that this must be the fingers of the overweight and 60-80 year old version of yourself. I liked them, though - they had no wrinkles on them.

It tasted kind of prehistoric chicken mixed with a small portion of finely grained stone. Strangely enough, it smelt kind of prehistoric chicken, mixed with a small portion of finely grained stone too. It looked smooth and it was soft by the touch, but underneath the snowy surface, blobs of mud would ruin the impression of silk and my thoughts drifted to the benefits girls must convince themselves to believe the mud does for their skin. Strangely enough, the girls didn’t stay in the mud for very long and the guys where the ones lying in it, playing in it, laughing in it and just relax in it for longest time. I’m not sure if it was the childish fun of pretending that the bubbles where farts or the distant thought of "is it possible to have a pee in this mud" that made us stay in it for a longer time than the girls, but I suspect our skin has been pealed and cleansed in a proper manner. We were slightly better looking, better shaped, better smelling and afterwards, we had to strip for the middle aged women in the nearby lake to get the mud of our bodies. I had mud where I have had no mud before and the middle aged women in the lake knew how to get mud off of my muddy body. Violently showered with water from the lake using a plastic bowl, they knew that mud was in your ears, stuck in your hair and basically everywhere else and I assume they were having great fun when they force you to remove your shorts. Completely naked, covered in water and some sort of water vegetation, I even felt more clean than the girls in the vulcano - afterwards.

I had ordered chicken for lunch and as the middle aged women in the lake scrubbed the last remains prehistoric chicken of my body, my appetite started to rise. Ironically - the women in the lake were missing a lot of teeth.