UPDATE: redraft of prologue and introducing 1st draft of Chapter 1& 2

Confession of a Watchman: The Chronicle of the Keepers

Prologue:

I am the consciousness of the world, the knot in the pit of your stomach. I am the anger that wells up from within, when you see or experience injustice. I am a Watchman and I carry a terrible burden. I come from a long line of Watchers. We are seven men and women scattered across the globe. We carry inside us a seal. A seal we cannot see or touch. Our jobs are to hold these seals until they are claimed by indifference, or to pass them on with our last breaths, as we received it from them, who with their last breaths, gave them to us.

Our terrible burden is to experience the tears of the world. We are mortal and live and die like the rest of humanity. Continuously throughout history, the greater consciousness of life polls the watchers in ways that are subtle. Some call this consciousness God or the Gods, others call it the Prophets or Old Ones. It looks for doubt and lost hope for mankind. It looks for apathy to the pain and suffering of our neighbors, it looks for the once good person, who apathetically passes by the once upon a-child in need and despair.

The watchers have been placed upon the chessboard of humanity to bear whiteness to the rise and or fall of mankind. We who pass from this realm in solitude and isolation shall not convey the seals burdensomely buried within our humanness. Then the seal is broken setting into motion a series of small changes within the world. Each seal which is broken increases the effect and severity of these changes. Were all seals to be broken, the effects on our species would be catastrophic. We are in essence, the canaries in the coal-mine of humanity.

A few of us have been famous, or infamous if you will. I won’t tell you who they are or were, well not yet. Some might guess, as we have on occasion and upon revelation been mistaken for things we are not. We live quite secretly, mostly, until now. We stir, awakened by the cries of this worlds’ children of spirit. The watchers are again restless. The world finds itself at yet another crossroads. There is doubt among the watchers, and it’s growing stronger every cycle.

The First Warning:

The pillars shake and the heavens tremble. The world is unbalanced and teeters upon the brink of ruin at the hands of those whom it was made to nurture. The world has denied its mother and looked upon the fathers’ nakedness in her absence. You have reviled her entreat and turned your back upon the right hand of the father. You have broken the bonds of her loving arms around you as you have shamed her and hidden her beneath a cloak of humiliation.

There is deceit, greed, apathy, hate, and feigned love rotting among those who count themselves the most virtuous of every faith, and these iniquities are greater now than for many generations and the stench of the bile of hypocrisy rises to the gates of our celestial temple where those who have gone before us wait in faltering hope of our return to the source. The lack of trust, and the loss of our ability to empathize with our fellow humankind is bringing this age closer to the edge of its own denial.

Every person carries within them the knowledge and ability to learn from their mistakes and to treat each and every one with love, openness, and honesty in perfect love and perfect trust. Even those of the old ways, who have often been counted as reliable advocates for humankind, and keepers of the balance, have become corrupted by their own desires and counter agendas, whether it be power over others, misplaced blame heaped upon the father for the delinquencies of the children, or the flames of greed fanned on by an unfettered thirst for physical possessions.

The one work demanded of humankind, is to explore and experience the worlds in their fullness and splendors, to perfect the creation by purpose, not to deny it in fallow waste, or to hoard the fullness of its bounty for a very few. 
Misery unto those who seek to hasten the end of creation, or those who urge it on, for their self-loathing and cloaked denials shall discount their names from the roles and they shall not return to the universal soul but they shall drift without a rudder amongst the emptiness beyond the veils.

Affliction to those who profess piety while they speak hatred and vile venom in pretense of the love of our greater self, for we are all, every one, a part of a single body, and to deny justice and love to any part of this body is to deny ourselves and the fullness of the family of humankind.

This is but a brief warning, there is yet a little time. There remains a few seconds more on the clock of our kind. More of us will speak, some softly, some not so softly. A few last warnings, if not from myself, from others like me. Are you serving the greater good of all humanity, or merely satiating your appetite for spoils you cannot enjoy, spoils you cannot hope to make use of, all while the rest of our body lies in hunger and dis-ease?

Unharden your hearts and attend our words with the ears of your soul not those of your belly and baser desires. Close your heart if you dare, but the next generation may well see the end of our time. If we act not to soften our hearts and confess what we have taken from ourselves and from each other, then our reign shall surely pass to histories which shall remain unread in the fullness of time and we shall utterly vanish from the face of the creation.

Chapter 1, 
Ripples in a Pond:

A distant clock strikes three AM. It’s most any urban street USA. The last echoing hums of bustle dwindle as today fades into past and the new day becomes the present. A humming streetlight and a tumbling scrap of paper caught on the breeze, a remnant of what was someone’s grand plan, are the only witnesses to the silent figure slumped against the forgotten wall of what was once a thriving neighborhood business. The figure, a pale scrapheap of past promise and potential, forgotten and left to crumble with the brick and concrete which makes up its bed and headboard.

The figure, cloaked in ill-fitting borrowed clothes, with splitting seams and telling of moth, pulls a pristine new coat tightly around its head, trying to bar the chill of the early morning street. The coat doesn’t make sense with the rest of the figures ensemble.

A camel colored top coat, it almost looks to be Cashmere, and still smells of expensive cologne. I knelt to one knee and placed my palm lightly across the nap of the coats fabric. Partly with the hope of sensing it left there with some magnanimous purpose.

As I briefly close my eyes I can see one who calls himself a maker and shaker, abandon the garment, hurriedly and inconsequentially, leaving it behind on an uptown bench some miles away, as if it had no real worth, racing hastily, prodded on by a frantically misspelled and humorously auto-corrected troublesome business texts of a deal unraveling. “Fiancee fell through backers in panic need your back her yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!”

The dusty figure laying in the gutter stirs slightly at the unperceived notion of my touch, its eyes open to slits which look past me as if I’m not there. In a very real tangible way, I am not.

Its eyes are wet with tears, not for itself or its condition but for the world which created the situation with which it finds itself mired. Lacrimae mundi, the tears of the world. Its breath shallows and its eyes’ inner light begins to dim. Breaths a little slower now, almost inaudible.

A watcher is passing from this world and a seal is being loosed from its bonds. It begins.

Meanwhile, a hemisphere away, barely noticed by the powers of the great financial capitals, just a blip on the morning weather reports, meteorologists blab on about the increasing water temperatures off the coast of Central and South America.

A warm breeze blows across the mountains of Columbia from an intensifying El Niño. Jake Ferrer, a self-made entrepreneur from New York by way of Texas, has recently landed in El Dorado International, Bogotá. He finds himself surrounded by empty space, a sprawling and sparsely populated terminal, not the crowded cattle-pen he had left behind. Jake is no novice to Columbia, he’s made several trips over the years. His parents immigrated to Texas in the early 70’s wishing to raise a family free of the urban insurgencies represented by “M-19”, and from the rise of the drug cartels.

This trip is business. With the help of his family connections, he’s brokered a coffee distribution deal between one of the larger Fair-Trade growing cooperatives, the N.C.C. or Nasa Cooperativa de Café and a national coffee house chain based in New York. Later this morning he’s meeting Hector Martínez, the coops’ market rep and also a part owner, with his wife Maria Calambás Martínez, of one of the larger shade grown farms southwest of the Colombian capitol.

Jake was traveling light, preferring to live off the land so to speak. He would get what he needed locally and then leave it behind. He only traveled with a small carry-on which contained his laptop, a single change of clothes, his favorite hiking shoes and a pair-per-day +1 of his favorite Waffle briefs, $170 bucks each and near impossible to find on the road. His biggest worry at this point was the length of the line at customs, and then getting a cab to his hotel. Hector Martínez was originally supposed to pick him up but that plan was nixed by some last minute flight changes caused by a problem at the office.

As Jake made his way down the mostly empty concourse, he let a sigh of relief escape his throat. Fortunately, the line at customs is short. There are on any given day, he mused to himself, generally more people trying to leave Colombia than to enter. Now he thought, his biggest worry is getting a cab to the hotel without being mugged by the driver. He headed to the wall where the taxi vending machines are, these are another telling sign you have landed in Colombia. It’s a sort of verification and validation system designed to reduce fraud and crime. You don’t actually pay for the ride there, you just put in your destination and it prints out a fair pre-receipt. You can’t get an official cab without one of these tickets, they help tourists separate the official certified cabs from the wildcat shakedown drivers.

“Paseo Millonario” as it’s sometimes known locally, or getting mugged by your cab driver and an accomplice which is picked up after the main fair, is considered by some visitors to be one of the more daunting threats to tourists and businessmen traveling alone in Colombia. Not as common as it used to be, Colombia’s been enjoying an increase in tourism the last few years and the government has made a great deal of progress improving the safety of local transportation in the more popular areas.

Jake recognized that he had the local look and his Spanish was impeccable, but his family has teased him on more than a few occasions that he speaks with a New Yorkers’ accent, he can’t hear it but they swear. It’s a good thing he spends as much time in the gym and at the boxing club. He’s a fairly imposing figure, taller than most Colombians, and can handle himself quite well.

He eyeballed the cab-stand outside the main doors. A Suzuki, a Daewoo, and two Hyundai’s, all tiny yellow boxes on wheels, not the sedans he was accustom to in the city. Jake put on his game face and headed toward the cabs. He figured he had better than 75/25 chance of a safe ride and grabbed the first Hyundai matching the mark on his receipt, it was the first in the line.

Jake approached the cab and slowly leaned toward the drivers’ open window, flashed his receipt, and with puffed-up confidence and a commanding tone said; “Llévame al Lugano Imperial por favor.” He used the opportunity to get the lay of the land before committing to getting inside. Seemed safe enough, he didn’t see anything out of place. The cab was quite clean and the driver politely responded “Yes sir” in English.

It was that damned New York accent, Jake said to himself. Less than an hour in country and he had already been made as a turísticas. The ride to the hotel was vigorous boarder lining on heroing. If the airport was vacant, the streets of Bogota were anything but. The ride reminded him of last year’s trip to Rome, and New York drivers could learn a thing or two from this driver.

Speeding through the streets of the capitol, Jake didn’t remember Bogota being so warm. It’s not exactly hot, but not the usual chill on the air of this mountain city. Another thing that always perplexed him about Bogota, was the waste of prime real estate. There would be a perfect spot for development between two modern office buildings and it’s taken up entirely by a one hundred year-old single family mini-palacio almost right up to the street and surrounded by tall iron fences and just a little away, a small shop that favored a tenement more than a place of business. Bogota was like that, a mix of the old and the new, the rich and the poor, side by side.

The cab made a quick turn down a one-way street and in less than 60 seconds came to a squealing halt. “Your hotel, amigo. 40,000 peso’s.” Jake hopped out and handed the guy twenty U.S., a better than 50% tip. The driver smiled broadly and handed Jake a card with a phone number. “You need to go anywhere, you call me, I take you no problem. YOU CALL ME I TAKE YOU!” as he sped away.

Standing on the pavement of what some would consider one of the most dangerous cities outside of the Middle East, Jake looked up at eight floors of minimalist modern architecture. Stylish but simple. Not as tall a structure as he is accustom to in New York, but every bit as sophisticated. Jake had a sleek modern aesthetic and this was one of his favorite hotels. A welcoming open-air patio like entrance leads into an expansive reception with a long desk across the rear wall. Jake chuckled to himself that it seems the abstract wall art behind the reception desk changes each visit. To the right is a long techno styled cocktail bar back-lit in neon blue and a lounge seating area with contemporary modern furnishings, all tasteful and well maintained. Zen-like in its modern simplicity. This was definably Jakes’ personal style, modern and uncluttered, and his favorite place to stay in Bogota.

“Señor Jake, welcome back, your suite es prepared, we hope you enjoy your stay.” The front desk manager smilingly offered the key-card in his out-stretched hand, palm open. His usual room is the penthouse on the eighth floor. This is the only room with a terrace and he has to have access to the open air, even if it was the notorious open air of Bogota.

It didn’t take long for Jake to get to his room and unpack, set up his laptop, and flick on the tube. International News was talking about the unusual heat waves around the globe that spring. Jake was more interested in the market crawl at the base of his laptops screen. Global weather phenomena were not really on his radar as long as they didn’t interfere with his morning runs. Jake has heard this regularly before and put no stock in global warming. He wasn’t a science denier, he just didn’t care. He was his own man and had no one to worry for him, or he to worry about.

Jake was 28 and a good looking guy, successful and living large and often on the edge. His idea of worrying about the future were the stock futures in his portfolio. He was Catalan by way of his Colombian father and his mother was a Colombian of Lebanese extraction. Jake was a tall swarthy figure with sapphire blue eyes and a classical face, as much a head turner as a deal maker. He was first generation American, the youngest of three; two boys and a girl. Jake was the baby in the family. He has been around the block several times, starting with his families’ ups and downs, mostly due to his father’s gambling, his early teen years were a roller coaster of feast and famine and he vowed to get away to the city and make it big on his own. Jake didn’t want to be reliant on anyone.

He left himself no time for global warming and frankly, he figured he be dead by the time anything truly became a problem. Yada yada, blah blah, mocking the English language news reports on the TV in his room. Jake reached toward the terrace and slid opened the door taking in the morning air, and remembering that acrid smell of Bogota, a cross between pollution and sewage. He hadn't notice it at the airport, the smells of the jet fumes masked the local scent which was always hanging in the air. The Lugano Imperial Suites was about as close as Bogota had to offered, compared to his Manhattan condo. The view from the terrace sure as hell beat Central Park but he also had to admit that New York smelled a heck of a lot better.

Jake scanned the ridge of the mountains, down to the tops of the skyline, one eye on the local scenery and the other on the morning news. Jake laughed off all this scare-tactic liberal crap about global warming, it hasn’t made a dent his portfolio, and he was taking a bigger hit from slumping oil prices. And at worse, he thought, that North Texas acreage he inherited, now little more than scrub, would really make a nice beach front development come the tide.

Jake headed back in to shower off the funk of the morning flight. He had an appointment to keep and a long drive ahead. Jake has a contract to supply shade grown coffee beans to one of the largest coffee chains across the States and he has about 2 hours since touching down in Bogotá before meeting up with Hector, one of the larger Fair Trade growers in Columbia, and then on to the Armenia coffee zone to estimate the early harvest numbers.

Across town, Hector Martínez longs for the cool ride across the mountains as he readies for the journey to the forests on the other side. It’s been the warmest spring on record for Bogota and he just isn’t accustom to that kind of heat this time of year, much less in the mountain capital, usually chilly. 
It’s nearly harvest season. This year’s crop of beans is looking decent and with the harvest slump in the open tiers, and picking slowdowns because of the heat, his shade grown beans are likely to fetch one of the highest prices in several years.

Hector slung his pack into the back of his red jeep and headed to pick up his American buyer before they begin winding their way southwest to the growing regions.

Jake emerged from the shower and quickly dressed into a pair of camo cargo shorts, his favorite hiking shoes and a long-sleeved cotton campaign shirt left untucked and with the sleeves rolled partly up his forearm. He was excited to be traveling through Ibagué, it’s his grandfather’s hometown and on the way to Hectors farm. He was younger when he was last there with his mother. That was the summer after she divorced his dad. That worthless Texas land which Jake inherited was about all his dad had left after losing the rest to gambling debts.

That year was hard on the family, his brother Sebastian disappearing off the map, just walking away from a budding career in finance, and the death of his father only six months after the divorce. His mama talked of Sebastian as the savior of the family. When he went to ground, it was a one two punch for her and she was never quite the same after.

It was through that hardship that Jake learned to rely solely on his own efforts and began to shut out the world around him. It was easier that way. No one to care about him and no one to care about. He made his own destiny and he wasn’t beholding to anything or anybody.

The distant meep-meep of Hectors jeep and Hector yelling his name from below startled Jake from his day dream. He sauntered over to the terrace wall and peered over the side to see Hector eight floors below. Jake stretched his arm out in acknowledgement, tucked his laptop into his bag, slung the strap around his neck and headed to the stairs. He preferred the stairs to elevators. They were an otherwise despised necessity in New York but he avoided them every chance he got and eight floors presented nothing to him.

Jake effortlessly sprinted down the eight flights emerging into the hotels’ lobby. He bounded excitedly toward the open doors and flashed that smile that had closed more than a few business deals. Upon reaching Hector, Jake offered a firm business hand shake and a friendly greeting then carefully placed his bags strap across the back of the headrest and they hopped into the Jeep. Let’s get this show on the road.

He saw that Hector had fitted the back out for the drive, plenty of bottled water, two spare tires, a come-along, and Hectors backpack. This was the first time Jake’s dealt with Hector face to face outside of Skype and he noticed that the video calls didn’t tell the whole story. Hector was probably several years Jake's junior but life had place more than a few marks of character on his weathered face. He was ruggedly built and not a bad looking guy but he wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. Hector put the Jeep in gear and with a jolt of the transmission, they headed out of the central zone toward the road to Ibagué.

Hector was the first to break the silence asking Jake in a loud voice trying to be heard over the road noise, “HOW WAS THE FLIGHT?” “GREAT”, Jake responded, “EXCEPT FOR THE CONNECTION IN ATLANTA, I’VE NEVER CARED FOR THE LAYOUT OF THAT AIRPORT. TRAFFIC’S LIGHT, WE SHOULD MAKE GOOD TIME.” Hector, right on Jake's heels added, “ABOUT THREE HOURS TO IBAGUÉ WHERE WE’LL STOP FOR FOOD THEN ANOTHER HOUR TO THE FARM. MARIA CAN’T WAIT TO MEET YOU.”

The road was paved and in good repair, an improvement to some he has traveled. For a highway, only two lanes, but common south of the states. The greens are deeper and the air thinner but much more sweet than inside of the city. The road to Ibagué was winding with long stretches up then down, up then around and down and back up again, then more long runs of down, before starting it all over once more. Jake thought that parts of this road would make a roller-coaster blush.

The Ridges of the cloud crowned Andes’ were always in view and often the guard rails were all that stood between them and deep ravines. They were passed by an occasional motor cycle and a military patrol, but for the most part they had the road to themselves that day. It was a gorgeous drive flanked by deep-emerald forest of cypress and the giant wax palms on both sides. There were vast stretches of a rich verde ground-cover, a mist hanging just above the ground, and scattered throughout, clumps of majestic wax palms which tower 40 meters or more above the carpet of green. Occasionally, the forest was interrupted by small farms which were heralded by caution signs displaying the silhouette of a bull. Jake thought, you don’t see those in Manhattan. He was usually surrounded by forest of steel and glass, he realized he had missed this. This was the Colombia of which his mother spoke.

Chapter 2,
Déjà vu:

Ibagué is Colombia’s seventh largest city, almost half a million Colombians call it home. It is one of its strongest economies and strategically nestled near major coffee farms and cooperative warehouses, and with Armenia a few hours away, the two serve together as Colombia’s Eje-Cafetero, or Coffee Region. Ibagué plays host to the annual Expo Especiales International Specialty Coffee Fair. Ibagué is also considered the musical capital of Colombia hosting a thriving musical and arts community including Colombia’s premier music conservatory, The Conservatory of Tolima. This region is a frequent destination of importers, brokers, artists, and entrepreneurs from around the world so it’s not unusual to find Americans and Europeans near its café and tree lined cobbled plazas.

Hector’s family keeps a garage and small home in Ibagué to use as a base of operations during the peak of the market season. Near the corner of Carrera 1 & Calle 43, it is centrally located near the university, hotels, and banking areas and a modest walk to the Stadium Manuel-Murillo-Toro. We headed there to lock up the jeep before foraging for a place to eat. Hector cautions that many of the neighborhood café’s may not be much to look at from the outside, but the food is better than the tourist traps and much cheaper.

Jake jokingly reminded Hector that he was no stranger to the area. Even though it has been over two years since Jake had last been in Ibagué, his bearings were returning astonishingly quickly. A left at Carrera 4, then just past the hospital was a popular college grub-stop called “El Pollo De La U”, specializing in local Colombian styled fast food, especially chicken. It was reminiscent of a Colombian version of KFC. To its left was a small grocer and flanking its right, a tanning salon. Aside from the stucco and red tile roofs, this could have easily been any American college neighborhood, full of students and young people unhurriedly passing away the afternoon.

Jake was enjoying the meal as his mind snapped back to business and he began to wonder if he was up to this protracted and relaxed style of approaching the nuts and bolts of business. I would really like to get into ironing out the details and then on with it, he thought. I’ve always been impatient to get to the next deal but I have to admit I’m enjoying this trip more than I anticipated. I just need to relax and roll with it……..Suddenly, Jake was brought out of his musings as something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. What are you staring at? Jake mused as he noticed a man sitting at the back table in the corner of the café.

The man was dressed from head to toe in black leather and wearing dark sunglasses even in the dimly lit café. He couldn’t tell if this guy was staring at him and Hector, or through them. Jake, suddenly tapping into his subconscious, realized this guy had been staring their way for some time. The stranger was ashen blond and definitely looked Anglo in feature, not necessarily out of place for this neighborhood, but there was something else strange in his manner which Jake couldn’t put his finger on. Then he realized the stranger had no food in front of him.

Whispering, “Hector, check out the gringo in the corner staring at us.” Hector looked up from his disappearing chicken, wiping the oil and spice from his lips and responded in a similarly hushed tone. “What gringo?” Jake snapped his head around toward the stranger who was just moments ago lurking in the corner. “He was just there a sec…” cutting his words short and shaking his head, bewildered by the sudden disappearance. Hector laughed, teasing Jake, “Those spices getting to you? Making you see shit? Maybe they’re breading this stuff with coca! Eat up, we need to get back on the road. I want to make it to the farm sometime today and preferably before I’ve got the late afternoon sun directly in my face.”

The odd incident continued to play out in Jakes mind as he and Hector walked back to pick up the jeep. Jake was quiet for the rest of the ride, he couldn’t get the stranger in the café out of his mind. He had never laid eyes upon the guy, not that he could remember, but there was something vaguely familiar about his face. There was a great deal of drama around his brothers’ disappearance, he entertained the thought that this shadowy figure was somehow connected to his brother Sebastian. That drama included investigators from the company Sebastian had worked for. That whole situation never made any sense, the investigators never mentioned why the interest or why Sebastian may have disappeared. The cops never did show up and with that, the family drew some relief that whatever happened, the oldest Farrer son didn’t seem to be wanted by the law. 
The family tried to report it as a missing person but a week after the goons from Sebastian’s old firm had left, a letter arrived written in the elders’ unmistakable hand.

“Dear Mama, I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye properly. I can’t tell you anymore than this. I am all right and in good health, I love you more than you know. Jake, please don’t try to look for me. Besides, it won’t do you any good to try. I know you, you’ll already be checking out the postal stamp on the envelope. Don’t bother coming here. I’ll have already moved on by the time you receive this letter. Carolina, take care of your mama and listen to Jake. I love you all, I have to leave it at this. I’ve got to go. All my Love, Sebi”

Sebi is what my sister called him when she was little. It kind of stuck for the rest of us. I kept wondering if that encounter in Ibagué was somehow connected. Maybe it was another investigator from Sebastian’s old firm thinking I knew where he was, and that I was going to him. Jake, propped his chin with his hand, his left index finger on his cheek, and rubbing his lower lip with his middle finger as he contemplated all possible connections between himself and the vanished stranger. I’m obsessing, I need to stop this and put it out of my mind. He admonished himself. This is unproductive and it’s taking my mind off the deal.

Jake dropped his hand to his lap, turned his head to the passing landscape and drew in a deep breath. Just as he had come to his senses, a road sign passed by them, Armenia — 62Km. Jake hadn’t even noticed they had gone thru a toll booth and the land was closing in on either side of them. Armenia 62km, which would make Hectors’ farm about 45km or so. He had done his homework on google maps. They should be shadowing the Río Coello and soon the Río Bermellón fork which will lead them most the way to Armenia. Traffic started slowing and bunching up. It soon became apparent they were approaching a construction zone.

“IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU COME AROUND” Hector shouting against the drone of the semi-truck idling in front of them. “THIS WILL BE A LOT FAS”, the semi shutting down its engine to save fuel, “a lot faster, once they get the other lanes built. These stops usually only last ten to fifteen minutes, they are probably blasting again.” Jake hopped out of the jeep, placed his hands on his lower back and stretched. “I need to stretch my legs a minute, I have been sitting on my ass for most of the last 12 hours.”

The line of stopped vehicles banked off to the left. Jake moved around the front and to the driver side of the jeep to get a better look at what was going on passed the scene-obstructing semi. He could see the yellow silhouette of a large earth mover crossing the stopped traffic and several figures in orange vests standing around with flags. He was becoming impatient to get moving again.

wwwWHERH-OOOMMmmm. Startled, Jake instinctively vaulted backward against the jeep as a speeding black motorcycle zipped by just a few feet away. The bikes single rider obviously unwilling to wait longer for the road to clear. The bikes’ rider briefly turned his helmet covered head toward Jake as he sped away. Recovering his composure, Jake thought he could hear the sound of engines revving up ahead. “YES”, he exclaimed, excitedly shaking his clinched fist. The sound of starting vehicles was cascading closer to them as Jake bounded to his passenger seat and settled in. Hector and Jake could hear the growl, and see the puffs of exhaust above the aging Peterbilt, as the semi in front of them cranked over its diesel, its’ mighty engine coming to life. They would soon be back on their way.

Finally the guys were again winded their way down the Cello river valley toward their destination. There were a few occasions where their altitude, breaks in the forest, and just the right bend in the road, would all magically come together, allowing a momentary capture of Armenia in the distance, its stucco white buildings glinting in high contrast against the Colombian rain forest.

If Ibague, with its proximity and easier access to the capital, serves as the financial hub and brain of Colombia’s coffee-business, then Armenia is its heart. Armenia, often called locally as “Ciudad Milagro” or Miracle City due to its rapid growth, is only slightly smaller than Ibague and has a population around a quarter-million. Geographically, as compared to Bogotá’s 8,000+ feet elevation, Armenia sits at the halfway point to see-level, just above 4000 feet.

Unencumbered by the steeper peaks surrounding Bogota, Armenia offers visitors several panoramic views down the Río Quindío basin. Here you will find the Colombian National Coffee Park, a theme park dedicated to the meticulous process of growing coffee. In the precincts you will also find along with Hectors’ farm, many coffee farms, small and large, some family owned and family worked but many have been gobbled up by the larger coffee cartels of the oligarchic families. The original owners, commonly locked in indebtedness, can be found working the lands which they had once possessed.

As they moved into the Department of Tolima, the scene was quite familiar. A tenement here and there as they drove, then a few more, and yet another. Some appear to be constructed of popsicle sticks and toothpicks, with roofs made of a mixture of corrugated metal and abandoned signs. As they neared closer to Armenia, the recycled building materials gradually gave way to the brightly painted stucco most frequently portrayed by travel photos. Even these were small by comparison to the suburbs Jake was accustom to seeing in the States.

“We’ll go into town for gasolina and supplies before heading to the farm.” Hector, informed Jake as they wound their way down the hillsides passing through the outskirts of La Villa del Cacique, as Calarcá is called locally. It’s a decent sized suburb of Armenia. As well as coffee farms and the National Coffee festival which Calarcá plays host, many Colombian writers descend on the Villa for an annual meeting of Colombian authors.

Along with its place in the coffee and literary life of Colombia, Calarcá is prized by tourists for its prominent hill and cave conditions which come together drawing hikers and naturists from around the globe. The adventurist can find nature walks, botanical gardens, rock climbing, rappelling, and caving wrapped into one convenient region.

As Hector pulled into a filling station, Jake noticed a local bar across the street. The bar was painted light blue and the front was lined by over a dozen motorcycles. Not the Harley’s one might associate with an American biker gang, but assorted street bikes and dirt bikes all by various manufacturers lining the front of the cantina.

Jake was reminded by the scene, of his brush with the bike on the highway. He instinctively scanned the row of wheeled mounts for the ride which had sent him lurching, half tempted to search inside the place so to share a ‘piece of his mind’ with the rider. Then he saw it, at least he thought that was it. A sleek black Ducati Scrambler with yellow trim. That ‘has’ to be it. Jake started to walk towards the cantina just as Hector caught his shoulder. “Come on man, it’s getting late and we don’t want to be overdue for dinner, Maria is persistent about being on time, besides, you don’t want to miss her cooking, best in Colombia.”

Reluctantly Jake turned his course back to the jeep and he and Hector were once again back on the road. Before long they were just outside of town, between Calarcá and Armenia. They were moving north now, away from Armenia along the Rio Quindío toward the village of Salento. A few kilometers up the road and to the right was their turnoff. It was paved but to say it was a lane and a half would be an exaggeration. Another few Kilometers and they were turning due east along a single lane of crushed gravel. Jake could see the tree covered slopes lighted by the afternoon sun as they headed for the mountainside in the near distance. Hectors farm was at the base where the slopes give way to basin.

Hector points to the left at fence lined green fields where a dozen Cebú cattle graze. “Those are mine.” Said Hector proudly. Jake notices the striking animals. Silver grey in color with a distinctive hump just above the shoulder and slightly smaller than what he grew up around. “Amazing!” Jake exclaimed upon noticing the bull with its near horizontal horns and long drooping ears. “They remind me a little of the Texas Brahman Bulls back home.” Then Hector continued, “A relative of the American Brahman, Ideal for tropical climates and hillsides. This use to be a cattle ranch before Marias father passed. He was the first to make the conversion to coffee.”

The road was tree lined opposite the fences and dotted by the occasional agave. Jake could see the white stucco of the house ahead in the distance surrounded by its smaller outbuildings. The casas y fincas, or farmhouse, was surrounded by wax palm, clumps of birch and tall thorn trees, some snarled by twisted strangling figs creating a strange veined appearance around the trunk of the encapsulated tree. Clusters of agave were strewn here and there across the rolling landscape and the grasses of the low basin were short and lush, not like the unruly tallgrass of the North American plains. They rose around and above the main house and casita’s toward the uprising slopes before disappearing into the thick canopy of the rising mountain.

Jake notices several cars and another jeep parked in the front, and they were close enough now for him to smell the unmistakable aroma of arepas, a version of tortilla native to Colombia, cooking on open fire. He saw several children playing and could hear the sounds of music coming from the casita nearest the main house which would turn out to be a semi open kitchen surrounded by covered picnic tables where they and the farms’ handful of employees and the extended family would settle in for their workday meals. Maria and several family members, along with the children, came streaming out from around the open kitchen as the jeep approached the main house.

Chapter 3,
 The Encounter

The opening passages from the “Chronicle of the Keepers”. RL Liley 2016