| Shangri-La, Chuval or Bongo? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In Search of Chuval This is a tale of two trips to a region west of Aracataca where a seemingly mythical Reserva Natural de Chuval would be the Shangri-La of upper Cienaga wildlife. Like the Shangrila of Lost Horizon, it’s not a place you can count on finding on your first or second attempt. It is a thin green line between agriculture and water, where land changes from dusty dry to swampy wet, where cattle meet Iguana and small alligators and where tensions run high about wise use of this fast disappearing wild landscape. The municipality of Reten, once a part of Aracataca, occupies most of the land between Aracataca and the Cienaga Grande. A strict translation of Cienaga might be “swamp”, but the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta is an expansive brackish estuary that is separated from the Atlantic ocean by long thin embankment maintained as a highway between Barranquilla and Santa Marta as well as major connection along the Via Del Sol (Path of the Sun), or National Highway 45 to the big cities of central and southern Colombia, like Bogota and Bucaramanga. Gabriel García Márquez’s most famous novel, 100 Years of Solitude, makes frequent reference to the great Cienaga. His mythical town of Macondo, that is Aracataca, lives in solitude in part because people cannot find a way out. Tracing Rio Aracataca to its source leads one to the nearly impenetrable snow-capped peaks of the Sierra de Santa Marta. Rio Aracataca drains west through the Bongo to a swampy shoreline at Bocas de Aracataca and the equally challenging Cienaga Grande. Travel north or south requires a series of river crossings that perhaps at one time would have been challenging. Current drought conditions and heavy reliance on irrigation have reduced these rivers to small streams. One reason that I am in Aracataca is to identify opportunities to expand tourism. Some of the most successful efforts by others in this region have been to create a sense of Macondo, or the atmosphere of “Realismo Magico” created in 100 Years of Solitude. Macondo is not Shangri-La. In fact Macondo and Aracataca are understood to be magical in a more ironic sense. For me the pervasive, festive, optimistic attitude of many in the face of a history of political, economic, agricultural and cultural challenges is the underpinning of magic. The center piece for Aracataca remains the Casa Museo where Gabriel García Marquez was raised. Efforts are underway to add to the center and provide scholars with resources to conduct research about Márquez and his writing. I leave this scholarly pursuit to the experts. My interest is finding adventures for other visitors, some wanting a scenic walk along Rio Aracataca, and others wanting a challenging mountain bike ride, mountain climbing or to canoe into the Cienaga Grande. The two hopeless routes of Márques’ Colonel Aurelio Buendia to escape the solitude of Macondo are promising for realismo magico of a different sort, or sport.
BONGO I – January 31, 2016
The first trip to the Bongo was a family adventure akin to taking a safari. Our crew included the Capitán Manuel Barceló, a lawyer with tremendous energy, his two sons Andres (15) and Sergio (9), my wife Donna and I. We loaded the jeep with essentials like boiled green bananas for lunch, water and gasoline. Andres is the official driver for the team. It’s not an easy drive with only the first few miles on rough paved roads. We left Aractaca, drove west through the rapidly growing town of Reten and continued out very bumpy, rocky dirt roads through a series of small hamlets, asking along the way where we can find Reserva Natural Chuval. This seems like a reasonable question. The road from Aracataca to Reten features a series of signs for the natural reserve. However even as we approach the area which we think is Chuval, nobody says they know about it or where it is located. Several suggest it must be down a different road that would require backtracking to our origin and starting over. As we press westward the road is interrupted by farm gates, hers of cows and dusty courtyards.
We arrive at a river bank and a seeming impasse. There is a sort of sandy track to the river and one coming out the other side. El Capitán makes an executive decision to ford the river, and instructs Ansdres that under no circumstances should he slow down once we commit. The jeep makes the plunge and fortunately gets to the other side. We’re off through a few more gates and finally to a farm at the end of the road.
The farm is loaded with flies and mosquitoes as the several workers prepared to turn fresh milk into cheese. It does give you pause to see how food is prepared under these circumstances. To the north of the farm is the Aracataca River. Large dredges have been digging it out, possibly to help drain the land in this area, converting wetlands into farmland.
There’s a 15’ embankment between the cows and the river, which has complicated their lives a bit. Donna and I walked a bit further to another embankment that seems to be the end of tilled land. Beyond this appears to be a big swath of swampy wetlands which are the last remaining buffer between the Cienaga and agricultural land. It’s hard to say how much more will eventually be drained, protected by embankments and farmed, but it is clearly an environmental problem. We didn’t find Chuval, but we did stir some embers. Manuel was contacted shortly there-after by land owners wondering why foreigners were snooping around looking for Reserva Chuval, that they argued never existed despite what the big road signs declare. About that turtle, it was eaten. In fact around this season, particularly Easter/Semana Santa, wild game including turtles, large lizards, some species of wild birds, assorted eggs and fish are all in higher demand. BONGO II – March 12 - Bocas de Aracataca by Bike
The first part of the journey followed the same route as the jeep, but shortly after leaving Reten I took a different road that appeared in Google maps to take you to Bocas de Aracataca. This is the northern fork on the map above. One of the most frustrating planning challenges in all of the communities I have visited is managing solid waste. Cultural practices have not kept pace with technology and consumerism. Food and consumer goods are now pre-packaged, but the habit holding trash until you find a disposal system is still lacking. Paper, plastic, bottls, everything is thrown to the ground as soon as it has no value to the consumer. Much of this is swept up in the morning, scattered by dogs and wind or burned in rubbish piles at night. The pattern happens at the community level as larger quantities of trash are hauled to the border and dumped. The border of Reten is such a dumping ground, so rather than being a gateway inviting people to the community, it is a toxic, disagreeable hurdle you must cross. Reten is taking steps to cope with this problem. They have installed public trash recepticals in their central park. They are participants in a regional land fill and offer curbside trash collection. Even with the basic infrastructure in place, education, economic incentives and the heavy hand of authority are all needed to get beyond the current practice of dumping trash at the earlies possible convenience.
Bocas de Aracataca is the last settlement on the Aracataca River. Houses are on raise bits of land and are connected only by waterways, or at least that is how it appears in aerial photographs. This trip is long, very bumpy dirt, dust and rocks, flat and hot the entire way. I bought more water and some bread at the last store where the old route and my new route diverged. My goal, which seemed a long shot was to make it to Bocas de Aracataca.
The new route is much better than the jeep track. I only had one gate to cross and while trying to decide whether to cross it was fortunate to be greeted by a worker leaving on his motorcycle who said it would be fine. Some owners are not permitting people to cross their land which is a real problem since the roads are connecting small communities. One of the most interesting elements of this trip was a kind of mini-monorail or gondoloa system that was originally constructed to transport bananas from farm to packing plant, but is now used to move clusters of oil palm fruit. I was particularly lucky to pass a section of track just as a worker arrived on the monorail.
I kept going west on the dusty road until it ended at another embankment that again appeared to divide farmed land from wetland, but in this case the farms have crossed the dived and are working to drain more wetlands. The embankment was wide, quite sandy but passable on a bicycle. I wasn’t sure which way to turn, but reasoned that going right, or north, would take me to the Aracataca River, that at this point has merged with the Tucurinca River. Kids were herding cattle along the swamp side of the embankment while the field on the right (farmed) side was on fire. I didn’t see anyone managing the fire, but it was being burned presumably to improve it for pasture. Despite the embankment and the long drought, the land on the farmed side is very boggy, slowing the spread of the fire.
I came to a small encampment on the embankment. I guessed they were there burning the field, but guessed wrong. Two men and a boy were there from the small city of Cienaga hunting wild game to sell during this season of peak demand. They were open and friendly, which was a surprise given that hunting was illegal. I didn’t take any pictures of them. Unlike in the United States, it is very difficult to get a gun in Colombia. Permits are required and difficult to obtain. Few people have guns. When you encounter someone in the bush with a gun doing something illegal, caution is in order. After being increasing mired in loose sand on the embankment I walked the final kilometer until a reached a point that seemed pretty much the end of the line. My GPS/Phone isn’t a lot of help in these locations. I can see a dot where I am located, but I have no 3G access to pull down a base map. It’s funny to know exactly where you are and have no idea where you are at the same time. I recorded the coordinates for later analysis.
Here too I met some people. It turned out that at this end point there is another road out that is passable in a small truck. Their truck was loaded with watermelons which apparently someone out there was growing. We chatted a while. They also offered no theory of the ever evasive Reserva Chuval. Perhaps they were also evasive, but who knows. Rio Aracataca at this point is a mere trickle. Virtually the entire river has been diverted to farming, particularly to the very thirsty palm orchards. I was tempted to leave the bike at this point and try to walk the last couple kilometers to Bocas, but the day was wearing on and I was wearing out.
I churned back along the bank of the Aracataca river, back through farms, back to that little store for more water and to limp the final miles home. The bike is really falling apart under me (and actually did self destruct a few days later). I made it back as the sun set. The entire trip was 70 KM or 42 miles. This is not a great distance, but the heat, sand, rocks and never enough water to drink makes little things harder. I was very disappointed not to do the final stretch to Bocas de Aracataca. My current thought is to build a small canoe to test whether an eco-tour to the Bongo and Cienaga has potential. I like building boats and nobody here has them. The only boats we saw in the bongo were a couple rotting hulls of dugout canoes. On the other hand, I think this concept might work where there is more water in the river. Armed with a canoe it might even be possible to paddle much of the way to Bocas and out into the great Cienga.
One side note: I told my host family that I would be taking the bike to Bocas and joked that I was looking for babillas (small crocodiles). It turns out that looking for babillas also refers to looking for an extra-marital affair. I have yet to escape the jokes about my looking for a babilla in Bongo, or Chuval or Shangri-La. |
