In the middle of the south region of Colombia, a desert named La Tatacoa have been formed. It is not technically a desert, but it definitely have some cacti growing there. After getting a few grains of sand in my eyes, I guess I can comply with the name: Desierto de La Tatacoa (The desert of Tatacoa).

The further the travel goes into the heart of Colombia, the more fascinating it gets. Currently stuck in a mountain town in the south of the country, the sights here are amazing. Colombia is much more than the finest line of Colombian cocaine - needed to mention that, just in case Kate Moss is one of the anonymous readers. Colombia is much more than pure coffee from the wet and mountainous areas in the middle. From the petite and voluptuous silicone valleys of the big cities, to the somewhat treelike valleys of the Andes. The branches of the valleys of the Andes, flow through the scenerey like the overground roots of a grown tree, where the curves and structure runs over the forest floor, thickest closest to the actual tree, with unpredictability and durability. It has never been as clear to me as it is now, but the roots of a tree and the foothills of the Andes are more similar than ever and the Andes have received another feature of the tree: its green color. The Andes are green roots and not until today, have I tried to look for the tree it spreads out from. I do not know if I will ever find it, but I will try, cause the display of this somewhat strange similarity, seems more than just a coincidence.

The Colombians gets sad, when they get the impression of tourists visiting their country, just to get a taste of the white powder and today, I understood what these people actually was talking about. For some reason, the nature here is strikingly similar to the nature where I grew up and several times during a 4 hours drive back up in the mountains I got stunned by its beauty. With the Andes as a perfect backdrop to the pictoresque landscape it was too hard to let the eyes wander and rest on something else. Even the slightly irritating Colombian music from the radio, created no kind of distraction from the view, as the car sped through the hillside.

I didn’t mean to go to the desert, but after being tempted by a friend of a fellow traveller, I couldn’t resist. The temptation sounded almost like this: One more cool thing that you can’t miss is the Tatacoa desert, you get there by getting a bus to Neiva and then to a town called Villavieja about an hour from there. The desert is beautiful and the stars at night are amazing and you can sleep in a tent or hammock at the observatory. After this kind of temptation, it didn’t take me long to decide and I went off the next day. I didn’t quite know where Neiva was, but sleeping in a hammock in an observatory, seemed like the thing to do, after too many days in the concrete jungle. I was looking forward to earth, wind and fire in the context of the desert and nothing could stop me.

The one thing that actually stopped me, was the transportation. Even though I thought I was unstoppable, there is apparently something called “last bus” here in Colombia as well. Arriving at Neiva at 22:00 at night, is definitely not recommended, especially when you don’t know the place. Asking for directions to a cheap hotel is normally no problem, but for some reason, it is very easy to forget to ask for a hotel in a safe area of the city. After 12 hours on a bus without anything to eat, the first thing a traveller look for, is food and after locating a “restaurant” within a circle of many dodgy bystanders, the receptionist speaks the secret words: this is a very dangerous area. Thank you, miss - I kind of figured that out myself. Body and wallet intact, there was nothing that could stop me on my way to the desert the day after.

The desert has been formed from being a sea a thousand years ago. To be honest, I guess the “thousand years ago” is just an expression, as I would imagine it would take longer to create a desert. But - on the other hand, it is not really a desert, as mentioned before. The area is nevertheless called a desert and I just have to follow the rules that have been set by the Colombian government. For a long time, the government have seemed a bit different than the governments that I am used to and it is not really natural to throw all prejudices over board and trust them unconditionally. Even naming areas are now subject of disbelief for me.

Since the desert is located in the middle of the southern part of Colombia, with two ridges of the Andes on both sides, the area is spectacular in two ways. The sights are beautiful and gives the opportunity for many fantastic and eyepleasing moments, but the people there, haven’t really learned how to speak properly. How come the old people are so difficult to understand? How come it seems that they do not really care if they are understood or not - they just speak at a speed of their preference and with a pronounciation of their choice. And why do they look at me as if I were an alien, everytime I open my mouth? The three nights preceeding the desert adventure, I spent talking to the nightshift of the hostel we stayed. Improving my skills of Spanish for every passing minute, I am now able to have somewhat fluent conversations in Spanish. With a bit of understanding from the conversational opponent, I get by more than decently, but when speaking to old people, all the confidence gets robbed away from me in an instant. I hate the look in their eyes and the silence following any sentence formed by my brain and performed by my voice. Even asking simple questions like “what do you call this?” while pointing at my foot, results in a distant look in the old peoples face, seemingly disorientated and wildly confused, they finally manage to respond in a mumbly manner and I am as little enlightened as I were just a few seconds ago. Learning Spanish in these conditions are a struggle but surviving through the days of solitude with old people, gives me confidence and strength to cope with the friendly people that I actually can understand. The misunderstandings gets huge, but it is all for the benefit of learning the language.

When leaving for a place with the intention of getting a specific set of experiences, there is allways the possibility of getting disappointed. And believe me - it happened this time. The old people was not a big part of it, but I hoped that my newly achieved Spanish skills would make the stay a bit more pleasant and beneficial. Staying far away from the regular gringo trail I am again in a place without any foreigners. I like it that way - I get to see what most people don’t see and they get to see all the things I miss. How exiting that must sound, I’d rather miss a lot now, just to make the expensive return to the country at a later time in life, when all the sights I’ve seen are more popular and when everything I’ve missed are 10 times more pricy and accessible by everyone. There are no right or wrong way of traveling through a country, but my preference, is to discover more of the places no man have seen - somewhat similar to discovering the moon, but alas, it has already been discovered.

The word “desert” brings several associations into mind: heat, sand, sun, moon and stars. The nightsky around the equator, is an amazing spectacle and its beauty has yet to unreveal itself. As nature continue to surprise, the desert weren’t actually disappointing on this matter either. August the 28th, were the date of the 2nd lunar eclipse in 2007. As this information was passed during the drive towards the desert, the list of expectations just grow. Imagine - having the opportunity to watch a lunar eclipse from an observatory in the middle of the desert? The suspence was almost to hard to bear, as the eclipse was due at about 3-5 o’clock in the morning, and the time of arrival was approximately 10 hours earlier. After paying 10 times the price of a regular ride, the hammock changed owner for the night and a chilling beer found its way into my otherwise empty stomach. And after a few hours of listening to absolute jibberish from the old Spanish people, the hammock seemed more and more tempting to dive into.

I don’t really know how things gets out of hand sometime or how it is actually is possible to misunderstand a very simple question, but my first taste of how the next 2,5 days would be, were given to me in the car on the way to the desert. As me and the driver were the only ones left in the car, driving through the relatively dry landscape, I asked a seemingly simple question: “is this area very dry?” (for those who know Spanish, this is what I asked: “¿Este sitio es muy seco?”). Even though it is now the Shakespearian version of Spanish, I know for sure, that this question will give me a correct answer 9 out of 10 times. To my surprise, the drivers responds “Oh yes, it is very dry. It only rains 4 months a year - april to may and october to november”. To my surprise, the driver responded as he did, even if we could clearly see at least to massive rainstorms ahead of us, as we at this point of the trip were on a hilltop and could view the whole valley in its vastness from one mountain to the other. I pointed this out to the driver who responded that it was not rain, but after convicing him that it was, he didn’t say much more. It didn’t get better, when we actually drove directly in to one of the rainstorms as we arrived at the observatory.

Since the date of the eclipse was the same date as my arrival, I was curious if the astronomist would work in the observatory the same night. As I would assume, unless lunar eclipses were a daily phenomenon, this even would be closely observed by the astronomist and I saw an excellent opportunity to have a glimpse in the telescope the same night. To my surprise, the astronomist were not supposed to worl that night, to my surprise there were no eclipse that night and to my surprise I didn’t see one single star. I hardly saw the moon - at all. To my surprise, I hardly saw the moon and a star at all during the whole time in the desert. Now that was, to my surprise, a bit disappointing.

But one thing did surprise me differently, though. With the same fear of facing disbelieve, as I imagine alien abductees definitely must fear, I can admit to have witnessed a UFO. As I woke up the night to watch the eclipse, I suddenly spotted a bright light hovering over the mountains to the left of me. The light, constantly changing color between red, blue and white, moved in a manner a star does not. Since no other star was visible that night, and since this light clearly was below the skies, I had to rule out the possibility of it being a star. The movement was relatively rapid, seemingly without any pattern but the light was hovering for most of the time. Occationally, the light omitted another beam of light towards the peak of the mountains with the result of the mountainside being lit up. I witnessed this phenomenon at 3 different spots in the sky, within a period of one hour. Having seen many airplanes, helicopters and aircrafts in general in my life, this behaviour does not match any of the known behaviours of any aircraft I’ve seen.

I didn’t ask the old people of any known UFO encounters in the valley, as I would assume that the distant look, seemingly disorientated and wildly confused expressions in their face would grow bigger, as they would have found themselves talking to a strange Norwegian who claims to see strange lights in the night. With the confort of the anonymity of the Internet, I stand forward as a UFO spotter and hope no one would judge me. There were no intoxicating substances in my body and the finest Colombian cocaine, were still in Kate Moss’ nose.