The mountains are pulling me higher and higher. The nature is calling with its colors, freshness and vitality. The city of Manizales presents amazing adventures for the approximately 400.000 inhabitants and the stray traveler. I am back in the Andes and here, the coffee is everywhere, cheap and pretty fascinating.

It has been one and a half month since I last saw the amazing Andes and yet another time, its shape, color and majestic appearance mesmerize me. Quite different from the mountains in Northern Europe, I am awed by the raggedness of these massive and omnipresent giants. Standing by the foot of one of these kings of the solid earth, facing the sky and receive the impression of its endless growth into the clouds and knowing that forces from the center of our planet creates these mountains, insures humbleness. Even though you want to conquer a mountain, you should know, that the mountains will humiliate your simple corpus and mankind is not meant to be anywhere up there - permanently.

Looking up towards the skies hanging low, the day starts brutally with a ride in a car where the amount of people exceeds the legal amount of passengers. The quest for the day is climbing one of Colombia’s still active volcanoes - the Nevado del Ruiz volcano. It will be the second volcano I have climbed in Colombia but the difference in height is significant. Climbing the first volcano was an effort of approximately 20 seconds and the satisfaction of summiting was a quite minute. The satisfaction came from entering the 15 meter high volcano and dip my body in the lukewarm mud inside its crater. With a difference in height of approximately 5300 meters, summiting the Ruiz volcano definitely will bring a significantly different sense of satisfaction. The skies seems to hang around and is that a raindrop I am feeling on my cheek?

Growing up in Norway, I somehow imagine that the mountains are a part of me. I know the mountains. I know their quirks and how intense they can be. After spending half my childhood in the wild mountains of the west of Norway, I am confident that any mountain will be small enough for me to conquer. The tallest mountain in Norway is 2469 meters above sea level and I haven’t even been close to summit this peak. Everyone I have talked to yet, tells me that the Ruiz volcano will expose me to almost sub-zero temperatures and harsh environment. I know the mountains and immediately conclude that these people have no grasp of reality. They haven’t even been up there. It might be a bit chilly up there, it might be a bit windy and I might have to use my solid hiking boots, but I can’t get scared by the words of importance from someone who clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Warm clothes are for wimps to wear and I do not perceive myself as one. Looking up toward the skies hanging low, I perform the last check of equipment in my bag - my fleece jacket is ready packet and I am not wearing a t-shirt. Let’s go.

The climate in these regions are noticeably different from the climate near the Caribbean coast. While driving madly through the rough roads towards the skies, the chilled air from the open window catches me by surprise. Have I underestimated my capabilities and should I have listened to the mountain novices of the city? With an altitude of 2153, almost the same height as the highest mountain in Norway, they probably know more about the life of a mountain than me. Suddenly it seems that it is me being the mountain novice. Inhabitants in Manizales lives at the same altitude as the roof of Norway, in a different continent and in a different country, but meters is meters everywhere you go - apart from places like USA, where every length is in feet and inches. Americans have a tendency to exaggerate everything, though. Meals have to be bigger, the cars, the boxes, the drinks, the planes, buses, boats, continent - everything. Having feet and inches, they also makes a plane cruise higher, cars faster and a mountain taller. With the altitude of 17454 feet, this volcano just seems more impressive to climb. Or maybe I am just being stupid. A number means nothing without the quantifier - it being meters, feet, meters pr. second, kilograms, pounds or strictly times. Americans might not be strange after all. I might be.

As the temperature lowers and the altitude raises, the environment changes. The trees and the greens of city surroundings suddenly becomes more sparse, less everywhere and more Grey. I never like to put on all my clothes before I reach the coldest place I will encounter, but today, I must enter the comfort of my fleece at the ridiculously low altitude of 3600 meters. Still 1500 meters before we leave the uncomfortable bumpiness of the crowded car, my primary thoughts of confidence seems to become more and more like second thoughts of doubt. I even have to buy a hat and gloves to protect my brain against the cold to come.

The volcano had its last eruption in 1985 and killed approximately 23000 people. In its path of destruction, some of the strangest landscapes I have ever seen, emerged. It is called the moon valley and both the temperature and the sights made me imagine walking about on the moon. Dust everywhere, shattered rocks spread over the vast area, no plants and with no surprise: no flags have been spiked to the ground. Have no people actually been here? The random footprints might give me the impression of previous visits from what seems to be mankind, but that could just as well be an illusion.

The summit seem so near and it will surprise me if we won’t reach it. The guide we are bringing with us, is very short, very baby faced and has a bit squeaky voice. Am I going to take advice from and follow a 16 years old? He hardly reached my shoulders, how can he reach the end point of our trip? And he had blue eyes - is this little boy to be trusted?

Struggling towards the end point, with a very thin layer of clothings on me, my lungs start to cry for more air. It amazes me how difficult it would be just to get air and distribute the oxygen to the rest of my body, but it is a fact - working in high altitude is hard, even if you don’t like to admit it. The small guide keeps on going higher and higher and to me, it seems to get longer and longer between every rest stop. OK - so I guess the little guide deserves a bit more respect. He is still very small, though, and not the kind of guy you would normally imagine were jumping about in the mountains. He even have equipment for handling the mountains and that is definitely not a bad thing. In the middle of this mental and physical struggle, I realize something that change my impression of the natural hostility: here, there are no one trying to hustle me for money. That is just fantastic and the very few 100 meters to the top do not seem unachievable as they did a minute ago. Even though every step requires more energy that you really have, even though the hale whips from the side and strikes me hard in my face, even though the fingers seem to crave a different temperature than they are exposed to and even if my face slowly becomes more and more numb - I cannot give up. I always wanted to see a volcano and since my last attempt of climbing a high mountain ended in sheer disaster, I cannot give up. This is an active volcano and the smell of sulfur is stinging in my nose. Rotten eggs in the air, fog and clouds fly by at amazing speeds and slippery remains of the eruption 22 years ago makes the challenge more memorable. But when reaching the end point, no view is presented to us apart from the clouds and the whiteness of these. Somewhat disappointed by the missing view, the trip is worth every pesos I paid. The nature reveals its strength and brutality right in front of my eyes and it is for me just to absorb and learn from. The next time, I will bring better clothes and leave the money, because there are no one here, who actually wants them. And that is just fantastic.

Coffee region - whenever I hear the words put together, my brain skips two beats. Mentally jolting, I get an restless sensation in the rest of my body - I need to find out a bit more of this phenomenon. Coffee is for most people something that comes from the shelves of the supermarked but I am more than interested in finding out how the small brown, aromatic and somewhat expensive beans end up in the sealed bags in any shop in the world. Knowing almost nothing about coffee, I am clinging on to the side of the car, that will now take us to a coffee farm. The roads are typical mountain roads: lots of up, down, twist and turns and it is very difficult to sit still not bumping into everyone else in the car. The farm is located on the mountainside and my expectations are non-pronounced. I do not know what to expect, because it is only coffee after all - isn’t it?

The driveway is fantastic, the coffee plants are everywhere, the surroundings secure an absolute noise free atmosphere and the newly fallen rain, gives the whole place a certain glow, as the view of the area opens up to us right in front of our eyes. Running hills in every direction and the color green in any shade you can imagine. Bamboo trees, palms, bananas, flowers, small nice houses and off course: coffee plants, shining in the scattered sunlight. This is almost heavenly and my expectations immediately elevated. This should be the real deal. This place is were coffee is as pure as it can get and this place serves me a cup of its own product upon arrival. To my surprise, the taste is not strong as I expected. It is only pure but somehow weak. Does it taste a little burnt? I guess I should just keep my brain quiet for a while, as I clearly have no idea of what I am talking about. Coffee is a science and I don’t even have the basic knowledge of this mysterious, mythological and moneystrong art of liquid pleasure. I pour milk and sugar in my coffee and suddenly it is as smooth as ever.

Diego is our guide and he looks like a coffee kind of guy. He seem to have coffee in his blood and in his stomach. He likes coffee and he knows coffee. If I ever want to ask anyone of anything about coffee, I’ll ask Diego. "So Diego, what can you tell me about coffee?". The farm is huge and covers almost 100 square kilometers of land. That gives room for a lot of coffee trees and definitely a lot of room for the coffee beans. Even though the area don’t smell of coffee, I know that by the end of the day, I will get another cup of coffee and I guess the coffee will taste a bit better than before, because I probably know a thing or two about the process of coffee production. "Every process starts with the seed", Diego explains. "The seed will be planted and after 20 days of growing, we need to transplant it to the proper growing area", he continues. We are standing in a very small compound and he is elaborating on the early stages of coffee making in Spanish. With no translator the three of us manages to understand most of what Diego tells us. One of us does not speak Spanish, the other one speaks a bit more than me and I understand a fair amount of Spanish. This is a promising start and Diego is very patient when we don’t understand his choice of words. He finds another word or explains his point in another way and uses gestures to make us understand. We understand the coffee making process in Spanish and I am invincible.

At first, I didn’t notice the slightly stinging sensation on my legs and Diego would continue his stories. "After we have transferred the young plants into small plastic bags, we keep them here in the sunlight for 40 days". Overlooking this area, not bigger than a normal swimmingpool, he told us that we were looking at 20 million coffee plants. I had to check my dictionary to see if he really told me what I thought my brain actually heard. "20 million plants??". That is quite a bit of coffee plants and my dictionary stated that I heard him correctly. Gently scratching my legs, I was surprised and amazed by the madly high number of baby coffee plants and gazed around me to look at the grand area of coffee. "If there is 20 million babies just here - how many are there out there?", I said pointing towards an area with grown up plants. "A lot" he replied and I scratched my legs a bit more. The mild introduction to coffee is fascinating, but is somehow interrupted by my increasingly scratching legs. What is that? Why is my feet acting against my fascination against coffee all of a sudden? It just does not make sense.

Looking around, seeing all the green hills, smelling the fresh air and listening to the deafening quietness of the Colombian countryside, I add the factors together and in a flash of a second, the result literally flies by my eyes. Bugs and mosquitoes! I am wearing shorts and I have been so accustomed not to use bug repellent, that I have forgot all about things that will bite me and make me itch for the following hours and hours. The coffee process gets a bit distant at this point and all I can think of, is the bugs and mosquitoes. They are crawling all over my feet and legs and I thought that they were using chemicals to terminate the lives of these nasty little creatures. Obviously, the chemicals are not meant for insects that harms people. The people care for coffee here, and mosquitoes does not give a shit about coffee, so whenever something is sprayed with chemicals, the mosquitoes are probably sitting in the middle of it all, enjoying the shower, eating popcorn with their legs put high on a leaf of some sort of tree, that actually grows in the middle of it all. And now they have found me. I have been lucky throughout the whole trip, and haven’t had many bugbites, but this is awful. Bug repellent? In the house. The house? Far away from us. Do we have time? No. "After the coffee plants have grown to a certain size, the bla bla bla, bla bla bla", Diego continued. His words doesn’t really make sense in this rather painful ordeal. I know, that my feet will itch later on. I know, that I will wake up in the middle of the night with stinging pain. I know that I should listen to Diego, but it is so hard to concentrate. Even though I am in pain, I realize something that change my impression of this natural hostility: here, there are no one trying to hustle me for money.

Apparently, the coffee process is something like this: a seed is planted, a tree grows, coffee beans grow on the tree, they harvest it, the insects are still biting me - get on with it, Diego!! After they harvest the RED beans, they retrieve the stinging 2 beans from the flesh of the coffee berry, after itching the beans for a bit, they are clean, scratching my leg - I can’t help myself. Running through the fields of coffee I am glad it is over. The coffee tastes good, I got a certificate and some food. Where is the taxi? I want to get away from this fantastic place with its beautiful nature. I don’t care how many jumbojet sized bugs there are here - I loved every part of it and tomorrow, my feet is going to be itchy. But at least, I will have most of my money intact.

Most people, when they hear of Poker, they think of gambling. Most people don’t really know what they are talking about, though. Ignorant people with no understanding of the psychology of Poker, the excitement of it and all the other aspects connected to it. I guess most people are just jealous of those who master it. Poker requires skill, and if you want to be good at it, you need a lot of it.

Since I started with Poker, I have admired those who master it completely. They can enjoy Poker all night and still feel they are on top. Others, on the other hand, can loose everything in a blink of an eye. I think, that I have the basic skills needed to become a master of it, but I have no understanding of how to get absolutely fantastic at it. And to be honest, I do not know if I could handle it. Most things associated with it is rather unhealthy, though. Drunkenness, cigars, bad food and maybe a lot of noise. On the more positive side, there is money. Some gets a lot of money and some lose all their money. When it comes to Poker, I must admit, that the ones getting the money, are not the ones you actually think will get the money. The ones who receives the most money, are normally the big ones. The small ones sits back slightly ripped off and with most kinds of mental, and maybe physical hangovers, the day after or simply when the rush settles down. Since I came to South America, I haven’t enjoyed Poker at all, but since I came to Manizales, it is hard not to enjoy it. It is very easy to get involved with it here, since it is almost everywhere. It cost a bit of money, though, but what the hell - you can gain so much from it. Not to say that I have a problem with Poker, no, no. I just find myself in a position where I enjoy it with the others I meet. I haven’t really lost all my money yet and I do not think it will happen, but once in a while, I see Poker drop-outs. They couldn’t handle it and end up on the streets begging for money and try to get into it again. Just for one more time, I guess. I know how addictive it can be and here, I have seen my fair share of victims to it. In my world, it will take a lot of stupidity to end up in the same situation, but I have heard many people tell me, that it can happen to the best of the best just as much, as it can happen to the worst one.

I love the form of Poker. There is hardly anything I do not like about it: even the smell, the shape, the rush it gives, the psychology around it, the market for it, the demand for it and the thrill it can give you. It is perfectly legal and should be enjoyed even by the fanatically Christian population of the world. It should be available everywhere.

Oh - by the way. Did I tell you, that Poker is the local beer?