Just getting to San Pedro, a small mining town in the San Lucas
Mountains, is a challenge. My teammates and I begin with a three-hour
chalupa ride on the Magdalena Medio River. This small boat functions
as a bus service between river towns, so along the way we pick up
passengers, produce, and a live pig in a sack. We then take a
half-hour taxi trip to Santa Rosa, a small city in the foothills. From
there, we travel into the mountains by van. The road ends at La Y, so
named for the fork in the road. We learn that the dirt road to San
Pedro Frio is dry enough to walk, but I slip into a mud-hole. The
thick red muck traps my boot and it takes two of us to pull it out.
We’re also gaining altitude, so most of the time we are heaving
ourselves up as well as through the mud. But when we arrive at San
Pedro Frio, the view is breath-taking, a light veil of mist weaving in
and out of layers of mountains. I feel I’ve arrived in a mythical
pueblo out of the Colombian novel, A Hundred Years of Solitude…
