My brother visited Colombia several years ago, and his journey was almost as exciting to me as my father’s trip to Peru in the late sixties. As a sheltered American, it’s hard for me to step out of my comfort zone to explore places of such wildness and danger. And though I may never visit these beautiful countries myself, I want to know more about them.

Since my brother was in the US Air Force at the time, and his visit to Colombia was work-related, he went with the safety and structure of a well-planned government venture. Of course, being US military, he could easily be a target, but he was well prepared before he ever stepped onto the plane bound for South America.

This type of traveling reminds me of Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, the story of a man who writes guides for business travelers. His whole philosophy is that if you surround yourself with order, structure and routine, then you can handle the uncertainty and chaos of life and world travel.

The one thing that stands out in my memory of my brother’s trip to Colombia are his photos of the stations of the cross along a hillside, leading to a cross at the top of the hill. With my Catholic upbringing, this is the one thing that connected me to Colombia, this image of a shared spiritual history, and the safety and structure of repeated ritual.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Latin America, losing my religion, magical realism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.