SPRING BREAK AT JUANCHACO

We had moved from the 13^th floor apartment next to Sears to a tiny two room and a kitchen apartment in Juanambú, just a few blocks away from Colombo. It was a house owned by a German couple and they had rebuilt the house so it had a rentable apartment with its own entrance. The neighboring house was owned by the same family, a daughter, I think and they had done the same thing so we were a bunch of young foreigners living up the hill there. It was a steep climb and very lovely up there; in the evenings the camias and palosantos would spread their almost intoxicating tropical fragrance all over the barrios: Granada, Juanambú, Centenario.

That was before those lovely, old-fashioned barrios were sacrificed to the progress of the city of Cali and the Republican-style homes became offices, boutiques, restaurants and bars, the gardens with camias and jasmins became the thoroughware between the north and the south of the city and the charmful villas were removed to build the bridges next to Intercontinental Hotel.

There was a discotheque called Saint Tropez, not far from the Cafe de los Turcos, that we used to go to, very popular with the foreigners. We never hang out with my brother, except on a few occasions when we went hiking up the Three Crosses hill, or followed the Pance River up the hillside to a swimming hole with icy, crystal water.

We went to Juanchaco and Ladrilleros beaches on the Pacific coast on one Easter week holiday, together with Arties new girlfriend, Adela and her two sisters that she had to bring along to be allowed to go on a trip with the gringo. (They rented a cabin for three in Juanchaco and my brother had to sleep on the beach;( ) We took a bus to Buenaventura and Fabian bought a bottle of aguardiente at the docks, he later claimed that the aguardiente was bad, but it was probably just his own natural intolerance to alcohol which made him a useless, miserable drunk the first day of the vacation. The trip from Buenaventura to Juanchaco took almost an hour in a tugboat and there was no peer, we had to walk on some planks to get ashore and got really wet. We rented a cottage, which was...very rustic to say the least. It was made of grey, unpainted boards, the floor was made of planks with a centimeter or two-wide cracks between each board and the furniture consisted of two beds, That's it. No electricity, no bathroom, nothing but walls, roof, floor with cracks and two beds. And a drunk boyfriend who was in a black, horrible mood.

The tropical night fell on the beach, grey, wide, shallow water and clean shoreline; there were a lot of people mostly from Cali, university students, couples, groups, young people and it was party on the beach, bonfires, aguardiente, guitars and singing. We fought, made up, fought and made up again and finally Fabian fell asleep drunk and exhausted.

The next day was a little better; we swam in the ocean, walked on the beach and dealt with a lot of issues, most of them stemming from our different cultural background and upbringing. He had a horrible hangover and was very remorseful: he said he resented the fact that he was not the first man in my life and that was very much in love with me but felt that he could not trust me entirely because of the different values we had. We sorted out a lot of personal stuff that day, never to take them up again. We ate lunch and dinner at the local eateries: rice, fried plantains and canned tuna: the fishermen had not brought anything back in their boats. We drank cocacola and postobon direct from the bottles and probably got amoebas anyway.

The third day we hiked with a bunch of other young people through a neck of woods on a narrow path to another, smaller but whiter beach, Ladrilleros, a perfect half-moon of a beach, clean and pristine. On the way back we followed the shoreline and stopped at some frehwater falls to bath in the warm, sweet shower plunging down over a cliff formation. My sandals broke apart there and I got to walk rest of the time barefeet. I also got one of my most horrible, painful sunburns I have ever had; with resulting fever, blisters, peeling and unbearable itch all over my arms, face, legs, back and neckline.