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Woah, what a title! So many different levels! What? Have I been abducted? No, I just thought, you know... sometimes along comes something that's pithy, terse and succinct, and that's too damn good not to use. Oh come on! You'd have done the same. Anyway, it's better than this entry's working title "Colombia, Backpack, Graham". Hmmm, is it too late to start again?

FARC off.

Graham Perkins
2006-08-21 12:41:33

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concerned. Rows of one-storey stone houses and shops each painted in soft tones of pinks, yellows, blues and strung along cobbled streets. One day I'm going to teach the world that tarmac's just better all round but for now it looks quite nice.

I got kicked out of my hotel after two nights for shitting in someone else's bed when I was blind drunk. Just kidding... it was my bed! Or the hotel was fully booked that weekend, I don't remember. Anyway, I couldn't get a bed in any of the hotels and would have been happy to have moved on but a couple of local families I'd got friendly with decided to take me in when they heard about my predicament.

In the end I stayed with them for about ten days. And I absolutely loved it! And they absolutely loved me, hurrah! They were two single sisters who lived side-by-side, one with her 13 year-old son and the other with her 22-year-old daughter. As well as this they had a couple of crazy washed-out alcoholic uncles one of whom I first met when he was having a full-blown argument in the street with what can only be described as a parked car. It turns out his life used to be pretty peachy not so many years ago working as one of Pablo's favourite right-hand men but when the cartel was destroyed his life went off the rails and he hit the bottle in a big way. Eventually his wife left him and recently one of his children died and now he seems to spend his time stumbling around the town, shirt open and bullet wounds hanging out rambling utterly incoherently to anyone who'll listen. Really quite sad.

But let that take nothing away from the family; they were absolutely lovely and once again I couldn't help but feel immensely flattered that I'd been so warmly received into these people's houses and made to feel such an integral part of the family.

Because it was still the high Colombian holiday season, no-one seemed to have any work to do and ...