fear of being mugged. I left the next day for Nicaragua.
Nicaragua was even poorer than Honduras, both countries having been ravaged by war, but somehow there was a bit more fighting spirit. Other than Managua, the capital, trade seemed to take place by the roadside. A young boy would stand entrepreneurially in the central reservation between the two carriageways hawking fifty cabbages or a hundred cartons of unsmokable Honduran cigarettes. I stopped one night at a restaurant where the owner said everything was off apart from the chicken and that I better be quick if I wanted it because it was only big enough for two.
‘ Mira’ he said, pointing at the scrawny thing running in the courtyard. ‘ Es muy pequeno. ’
I treated myself to the whole thing because I was starving. My room that night – and I remember it well – was a tin shack made of panels of corrugated metal heated by the sun and a window without any glass in it. That night the mosquitoes ate much better than I did. At least it was cheap. The next day I took a bus to Managua. A shit-hole, with one smart hotel and lots of crumbling buildings, some of which still had bullet holes tattooed in the walls, a striking form of modern art. Next stop was Costa Rica, the apartment with the two girls, Mary and the dark-haired one who hated me for sleeping with Mary, and then I took the Avianca 737 from San Jose to Quito and spent my first night in the shit-hole that was the Hotel Gran Casino .
I opened the shutters and felt the sun on my face. I reached for my sunglasses, the old black Ray Bans. The fields stretched out before me in a meandering mass of tractor-made lines and squares, but the crop was uniform, and not an inch of ground lay fallow. Juan Andres’s family farm was infinitely nicer than anywhere I’d stayed in Latin America.
I felt incredibly safe, surrounded by the hundreds of acres of green fields, birdsong and the chirping of crickets. This was the real Colombia, not the Colombia you read about in the newspapers. This was the place Juan Andres Montero Garcia had grown up with his brothers and sisters and under his strong mother, the place he first rode a horse, fired a rifle and made a fire. I could see him now, a teenager, studying for his science examinations, sitting on the wooden terrace with his feet up on the balustrade, listening to the crickets. This was life at its simplest; a self-sustaining existence with no intrusion from the outside world. A remote valley, an almost invisible farmhouse with its own water supply. I sighed contentedly. I loved those green fields, the richness of the fauna. For the first time I could see why Colombians were so passionate about Colombia.
***
Monday April 2 nd , 2007
‘ What’s this?’ asked Jack.
‘ Two thousand five hundred’, I replied. ‘For the full ten hours.’
Jack looked rather shocked. ‘I thought you weren’t interested.’
‘I changed my mind. The dinner party. Everyone was so complimentary, and I thought…in for a penny, in for a pound.’
‘This is euros, George. I need pounds.’
‘I can get you pounds. Not a problem. When can we start? What about right now?’
‘Now?’
Jack looked a little taken aback.
‘We’ll need our materials, you see. I’ll need to prepare a little. Just a little time, mind.’
‘Surely we can start now? I want you to tell me all about it in an hour, and I’ll let you off the other nine. You can keep the money.’
‘An hour?’
‘The best ideas should be capable of explanation in under two minutes, Jack, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Not with this one. I tell you what’, he said, rising suddenly and stuffing the money into the breast-pocket of his safari shirt, ‘give me ‘til tomorrow.’
‘Done. I’ll see you here at ten thirty?’
‘Lovely. I’ll tell Jan to get in the Kit Kats.’
I sat smoking on the terrace, letting the sun blast my face. It was nearly eighty degrees, which for early April was hot. What, I wondered,
Nicaragua was even poorer than Honduras, both countries having been ravaged by war, but somehow there was a bit more fighting spirit. Other than Managua, the capital, trade seemed to take place by the roadside. A young boy would stand entrepreneurially in the central reservation between the two carriageways hawking fifty cabbages or a hundred cartons of unsmokable Honduran cigarettes. I stopped one night at a restaurant where the owner said everything was off apart from the chicken and that I better be quick if I wanted it because it was only big enough for two.
‘ Mira’ he said, pointing at the scrawny thing running in the courtyard. ‘ Es muy pequeno. ’
I treated myself to the whole thing because I was starving. My room that night – and I remember it well – was a tin shack made of panels of corrugated metal heated by the sun and a window without any glass in it. That night the mosquitoes ate much better than I did. At least it was cheap. The next day I took a bus to Managua. A shit-hole, with one smart hotel and lots of crumbling buildings, some of which still had bullet holes tattooed in the walls, a striking form of modern art. Next stop was Costa Rica, the apartment with the two girls, Mary and the dark-haired one who hated me for sleeping with Mary, and then I took the Avianca 737 from San Jose to Quito and spent my first night in the shit-hole that was the Hotel Gran Casino .
I opened the shutters and felt the sun on my face. I reached for my sunglasses, the old black Ray Bans. The fields stretched out before me in a meandering mass of tractor-made lines and squares, but the crop was uniform, and not an inch of ground lay fallow. Juan Andres’s family farm was infinitely nicer than anywhere I’d stayed in Latin America.
I felt incredibly safe, surrounded by the hundreds of acres of green fields, birdsong and the chirping of crickets. This was the real Colombia, not the Colombia you read about in the newspapers. This was the place Juan Andres Montero Garcia had grown up with his brothers and sisters and under his strong mother, the place he first rode a horse, fired a rifle and made a fire. I could see him now, a teenager, studying for his science examinations, sitting on the wooden terrace with his feet up on the balustrade, listening to the crickets. This was life at its simplest; a self-sustaining existence with no intrusion from the outside world. A remote valley, an almost invisible farmhouse with its own water supply. I sighed contentedly. I loved those green fields, the richness of the fauna. For the first time I could see why Colombians were so passionate about Colombia.
***
Monday April 2 nd , 2007
‘ What’s this?’ asked Jack.
‘ Two thousand five hundred’, I replied. ‘For the full ten hours.’
Jack looked rather shocked. ‘I thought you weren’t interested.’
‘I changed my mind. The dinner party. Everyone was so complimentary, and I thought…in for a penny, in for a pound.’
‘This is euros, George. I need pounds.’
‘I can get you pounds. Not a problem. When can we start? What about right now?’
‘Now?’
Jack looked a little taken aback.
‘We’ll need our materials, you see. I’ll need to prepare a little. Just a little time, mind.’
‘Surely we can start now? I want you to tell me all about it in an hour, and I’ll let you off the other nine. You can keep the money.’
‘An hour?’
‘The best ideas should be capable of explanation in under two minutes, Jack, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Not with this one. I tell you what’, he said, rising suddenly and stuffing the money into the breast-pocket of his safari shirt, ‘give me ‘til tomorrow.’
‘Done. I’ll see you here at ten thirty?’
‘Lovely. I’ll tell Jan to get in the Kit Kats.’
I sat smoking on the terrace, letting the sun blast my face. It was nearly eighty degrees, which for early April was hot. What, I wondered,
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