Cycles Closing in Colombia

I keep finding myself talking about things which happened in the Canary Islands. It’s at least partly because many things started there, and now they are coming to some completion.

I went to the Canaries to try and hitch a lift on a boat to South America. I didn’t manage that, but nearly two years later, I arrived in Colombia on a sailing catamaran.

When I was in La Tomatera, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, I learned to make macramé, and started to decorate my computer power cable. On the boat to Colombia, I finished it. About half an hour after completion, the cable failed. It held out just long enough to allow me to complete it.

I also made a bracelet, which I have worn permanently since then. Today, I gave it away to a stranger I met on the metro in Medellín, Colombia. I really don’t know why. I didn’t know her name, and do not expect to see her again. I said she could have it if she could get it off. The knot untied.

Now I think where that bracelet had been - so many places. Beaches, mountains, cities, forests. Up to about 35,000 feet, and down to 30 meters under the sea. Boats, trains, cars, planes, and of course the bike. Three continents, and two oceans, and too many islands to remember. Many beds and hammocks, of which most mine. But this is all past. I shouldn’t be dwelling on it. I am here now.

In Las Palmas, I learned to make dreadlocks and had one made for me. In Costa Rica, I made one for someone.

In Costa Rica also, I ate fruit given to us, the rainbow caravan, by market sellers. Today, in Colombia, I bought some bananas and gave them to a beggar who told me she was hungry, and whom I saw foraging unsuccessfully near the river, where there are some banana plants.

I have been cycling my bike. Maybe that will end soon too. I don’t know, that is for the future.