Month: March 2013

Categories
2017 Carbon Savings Caribbean Sea Oil Exploration Daniel Ortega Geothermal Power Green Energy Grid Hydroelectric Power Nicaragua Percentage of Renewable Energy Small Nation

The Mouse that’s Roaring Less and Less: Nicaragua Works for a Green Grid

This will seem funny for me to write about a country that as of now gets more than half of it’s energy from from Fossil Fuels ( CIA World Factbook Nicaragua Energy ).. but wait a second.. or a few years, and Iceland and New Zealand might have something to worry about.
I refer to the latter two because they are examples of countries that have put a concerted effort into having Carbon Free National Electrical Grids. From what I know, Iceland, with it’s famous Geothermal Plants creating about a quarter of it’s grid energy, and a good deal more of it’s bragging rights, not to mention one of the world’s coolest spas in The Blue Lagoon, the rest coming from hydroelectric dams. As far as I can tell, Iceland is alone in this distinction.

New Zealand, the kings of practicality, are at an impressive 70% carbon free for their grid, and the rest seems to come from a good deal of Natural Gas that they pump themselves.. the most green-washed of Petroleum products, though far from truly green, but it all makes for an impressive mix given that it has a population some 15 times little Iceland’s 300,000 people.. it{s a national goal to someday be carbon free from an electricity standpoint..
but Nicaragua, what the hell can I be talking about? Certainly one of the poorest countries on earth can’t be
riding up on these two international paragons of righteous unstinking defication!?
Nicaragua is a funny place.. it’s poor as hell is true.. one of the last countries in the world that people seem to make about 2 dollars a day in… it was stalled by war and a bet on communism after a Soviet sponsored but perhaps locally justified overthrow of the Somoza Family who ran the country like a hacienda for some 43 years. Then the Sandinista’s came and did a complete about face from it’s Banana Republic past, but this pissed off Ronald Reagan, and the Contras were formed, and poor Nicaragua, betting righteously on the loosing side in a Global Showdown, got it’s social justice but never quite it’s prosperity.. The Sandinista Leadership under Daniel Ortega, a smart but not necessarily perfect Guerrilla Leader turned President, cashed in towards the end when the writing was on the wall, his Soviet Patrons on the ropes, and his Greatest opposition, an outspoken Newspaper Editor, Violetta Chamorra, winning fair elections after some 10 years of Ortega’s somewhat genuine yet hamstrung leadership. She was, by the way, the first female freely Elected Head of State in the Western Hemisphere.
Anyhow, Ortega is plucky, not that bad, and well, he has the experience, which ain’t too easy to come by in such a small country, has the status to Pal around with the Castro’s and Chavez’s of the World in his old Olive Drab Uniform, and he does seem to see what’s going on even if he indulged in some designer glasses and might be looking the other way as Coke streams past his country… And in 2007 he got himself re-elected again after about 10 years of Chamorra’s party. What makes this important, is that unlike the other petty tyrants of the Bolivarian Movement, he doesn’t seem to want to ignore either global warming or the threat of having a Crude Oil dependent grid, especially when his country doesn’t produce any Oil. Even if he gets it cheap, he still has to pay for it, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can get it cheap. Need I remind anyone that Uncle Hugo just passed on? In addition, as if to remind him of the vulnerability, there was a famous CIA operation during the Cowboy days of the Anti Sandinista movement in the 80’s where some CIA agents laid mines in an important Nicaraguan Pacific port and tried to destroy their ability to import oil, and I believe, tried to mortar and destroy their Oil Storage in the port as well. In such a small country, they are just a few tanks away from the lights being out.
Now here’s where it gets interesting.. Nicaragua just won a dispute with Colombia over Control of Economic Rights of a vast part of the Caribbean sea off their Coast. Now Colombia under Santos is no blustery place… it’s beginning to heal from 50 years of Civil War under Santo’s kind of Clinton-esque humanity, but it’s one of the most Libertarian countries on Earth, and you can sure as hell believe they would have explored for oil had they won, but Ortega, he’s a funny cat, and he said no to oil exploration, for what seem to be environmental reasons..
Reuters:Ortega Says No To Oil Exploration
To be sure, eastern Nicaragua is an extension of Honduras’s Mosquito Coast.. it’s virtually uninhabited, almost everyone living between the lakes and the West Coast, over by the Volcanoes. Did somebody say Volcanoes… yep.. this is the part you have been waiting for.

Now realize that Nicaragua is one of the least electrified countries on earth.. it’s an NGO’s Dream of Neediness, but since they allegedly threw the cleptocrats out in 1979 (there might be a few in the new regime..), it’s a rare case of somewhat dignified forward thinking in the Tercero Mundo, even though the only place to even come close to being a modern city in the whole country is Managua, an ugly one at that.. It’s also important to remember that the whole country only uses less than a gigawatt.. heck, there are living room TV’s in America that might use more than a Gigawatt (especially if they are watching Back the Future! ), but in my humble need for hope, I am going to find it where I can, and little Nicaragua is starting to put some out.
Now this blog post all started with me having a juice in the bar of a pretty old hotel in Leon, Nicaragua, kind of Nicaragua’s Boston.. the Second City and revered university town, where even Ortega attended. Not much o a place mind you, and one of those places where when you meet an expat, you are so far out, you don’t pretend you don’t see each other so you they can maintain their only gringo in the world fantasy.. you talk to each other.. so I asked him what the hell he was dong here, and he said living large and working on the nearby Geothermal Plant. We talked a bit, but like many expats, he was living the nights as liquidly as he was sweating the days, and he blurred into a party with a few of his chosen female companions, but for a while I got an earnest recounting of what I believe was his Canadian Company’s assistance of Nicaragua in their quest for Energy Independence. And the research sustains it.. these are little projects, but big for Nicaragua… I have seen Geothermal Plants around the World, Iceland, New Zealand, Hawaii, and they tend to just be a pile of pipes coming out f the ground and an odd building or two, but they have a magical air, like something out of an old Japanese Sci Fi Movie, and as he described the plant a few miles east of Leon, I got that tingle like I had again discovered the birthplace of Godzilla!
Turns out they built two, and my guess is that he was working on San Jacinto.

http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/2012/06/07/nicaragua-looks-to-geothermal-for-energy-independence/
http://renewables.seenews.com/news/ram-power-puts-online-72-mw-geothermal-plant-in-nicaragua-325531
They seem to be expanding as they can, with a possible capacity of 90 Megawatts, which is like 10% of their grid output right now, with likely a few hundred more possible.. feeling a bit hot, Iceland?
Anyhow, they aren’t stopping there.. they are playing with Wind possibilities as well, a few farms that produce maybe 60mw, small installations by world standards, but big drops in this small pond…

my guess is that more are planned… and now to hand it to them, they have a bit of the Brazil thing gong.. it seems that in addition to the large amount of foreign oil they currently have to burn for the rest of the grid, I would guess from their buddies Venezuela or Ecuador, they are able to ween about 10% of it off by burning byproducts of Sugar Cane Production…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Nicaragua
and they aren’t stopping there, stepping now intentionally into the biomass world, not just for burning sugar byproduct:
http://www.nicaraguadispatch.com/news/2013/02/agricorp-signs-deal-for-biomass-plant/6830
My guess is that this will keep rolling along and they just might make the goal I recently discovered, for them to be 94% fossil fuel free by 2017
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/06/94-renewable-energy-by-2017-is-goal-for-nicaragua/
2017 is hardly an arbitrary number, like countries and treaties toss around for 2025, 2040, and 2050.. there must be projects in the works now to justify such a specific goal. Now if you look at the above link about 2017, there is something interesting if you scroll down a bit.. a list of about 45 countries that are largely fossil fuel free, which perhaps would have been good for me to find about an hour ago when  started writing, but if you examine it, it’s a bunch of countries like Colombia that are kind of accidentally clean because they are small and built a lot of Hydroelectric Capacity, which I will admit is my least favorite clean energy, although I am not going to claim much love for hydrogen or intentional biomass either if it creates more carbon that it displaces.
Realizing this makes me appreciate Nicaragua even more, because they are going about this is such a sophisticated way, not just ham fisting it like the massive Three Rivers Gorge in China… so I am proud to now call little Nicaragua the Mouse that is Roaring Less and Less, in reference to the Peter Sellers Film ( the famous creator of Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther Films amongst others), The Mouse that Roared, about a little country in Europe that somehow gets a nuclear bomb almost by accident after attempting to invade America and intentionally loose so as to benefit from something akin to a Marshall Plan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7L7WLFBYR4
Nicaragua, for it’s part, selfishly motivated though it may be, is working to diffuse something akin to a doomsday device for the coming century.. Global Warming.

Categories
Army Corps of Engineers Cadillac Desert Chinatown Dams Drainage LA River Los Angeles Los Angeles River Mayor Villagarosa Plan Restoration Runoff Sewer

A Percolating Renassaince for The LA River

I don’t want to ruin the movie magic.. I don’t want to impose fact where fantasy should reign supreme, shatter the illusions that drive the American Fantasy Machine, but have you ever wondered what the heck this was?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b08DChU5qsg
or hows’about this Greese reprise from the cult classic Repo Man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2AXsF-kwc
Oh wait, we got one more! God I miss the 70’s.. how’s this for a svelt action hero:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF-dgroq4TI
Go Cannon!
That was so random that it looks like the last time I played bumper cars at Lake Quassapaug as a kid…
So kidding aside, it’s the LA River, and what makes the LA River so vital in it’s current form is that, well, it’s kind of a natural disaster, and it has grit, and well, grit can be in short supply in Sunny La La land, but fantasy there is a business (and tongue in cheek, I will say fantasy is a business even more so up in the San Fernando Valley where the river originates, but I will leave that joke up to the adults to figure out!). So when you are too cheap to film on location like The French Connection, why not run people through the world’s biggest drainage ditch to supply a little cement bottled desperation to spice up the visual, even though Paris Hilton is tweezing her dog’s eyebrows a few blocks west.. it’s what’s called character in the land of Sun and Fun.
But I bet a few of you didn’t even ever figure that was a river, ever.. a few of you figured it was just some massive public works thing in the Home from Nowhere landscape of the American industrial nightmare, and I wouldn’t blame you, but a river it is.. and it used to, and upper parts of it still do, look like this:
LA River Kayakers
http://activerain.com/blogsview/3380586/kayak-down-the-los-angeles-river-
Does this photo seem like they have no association with the videos above?

I don’t blame you for thinking that.
You see, since sometime in the mid 2000’s people have started to take the LA river seriously again.. and not just location scouts and cinematographers who endlessly repackage the industrial areas south of downtown and the bridges over the river for car chase after action scene, since car chases in the river are now done!.. so last week! (alright, one more.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-PCs8V7nLg )
So since I wrote about the East River in my piece of Tidal Power, Hope Unda da East River!?, and nothing makes an Angelino insecure like a New Yorker (and vice-versa, but don’t worry fly over states, you don’t worry them at all, just keep investing in stocks and watching movies), I gotto balance the continent, and this is a worthy story. It’s going to be a bit like the Everglades pieces on a smaller scale, but the chicanery in LA tends to be much smoother and more under the radar. LA functions on a subtle form of indifference than Florida.. In California, the public good is the goal AND people get screwed, it’s not nearly so Latin… ask Jack Nickolson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aifeXlnoqY
Believe it or not, Chinatown was about water, the LA River and a few other rivers as a matter of fact,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppGd-2nEOVQ&list=PLE3500CBEEC5651D0
but I’ll get into that in a bit.
My awareness of the LA River as, well, a river, began with my coming across this article a year or two ago, 2011, about the Winnipeg band Twin, and their attempt to Canoe the LA river as a break from Tour:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/04/what_happens_when_six_canadian.php
I feel like I read a version of it in an airplane magazine, and it got my wheels turning. If you didn’t read the whole thing patiently like required of all readers of this blog (Eat Your Meat!), the upshot is that they got arrested, but the fallout has been that this act of civil disobedience, intentional or not, started the wheels of progress turning on the LA river somehow a lot more than the token act by party hound LA Mayor Anthony Villagarosa in 2006 to begin exploring actions to improve the river, or, to be more honest, to turn it into a river again.  

http://www.lariver.org/download_publications.htm

While the plan may be a well written piece of Ecological and Urban Planning, but LA is cash strapped like everyone else these days, and the funds aren’t really there, dream though it may be, but it has been a theme of this blog I am starting to realize that little changes come first, the big changes later, like a locomotive building steam, or perhaps like floodwater coursing down a 50 foot deep channelized sluice that once was a natural watercourse.. things start with a trickle…
So this story comes tied into the three bogeymen of the environment of the American West (I’ll leave out the other three perhaps, the BLM, the DoE, and global warming for now..), the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the LA Water and Power Company. Unlike in Chinatown, and the shenanigans of the California Water Wars in 1915 in the Owens Valley, or later in places like the Colorado River, Colombia River, just about every trickle of water in California as far north as the Klamath, and places like the Hetch Hetchy Dam and Mono Lake, the story of the LA river is a bit more straight forward *straight forward indeed, it’s runs like a bullet!); it was a river.. it flooded, and destroyed things that perhaps shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but were, and the solution became this huge gutter we have now. I would love to give you some stories of intrigue that acolytes of Marc Reisner’s groundbreaking book (since the west is a dry crust these days anyways!), Cadillac Desert would eat up, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SPakQ7hH6I ouch!  watch with caution! but I ain’t nosey enough to imagine a conspiracy theory here. It was, well, again, straight forward.
The idea is that it doesn’t rain much in LA, about 15 inches a year before things started going wacko as we approach 400 ppm CO2, but when it comes, it often comes in torrents. The heavens literally open.. the ground is covered mostly in cement which can intensify rain through rapid heat release, what little ground there is is usually bone dry and doesn’t soak up the rain at first, and to jokingly quote Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver, a NY movie by the way, the rains come and wash all the scum off the streets.. and it has to go someplace in a hurry, scum and all… When there were just natives living there, the Tongva People, known to others as the Gabrielenos, they were used to it, lived on the high spots or the beaches and anticipated this, but then came the Missions, then the Hasciendas, then the Orange Groves with American Families like that of George Patton’s coming west for a new life after their loss in the American Civil War (yes, George Patton was an Angelino, should have been obvious due to his flair for the dramatic.. as an odd bookend, Admiral George Mullen, recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also grew up in none other than Hollywood.), then movies and weather, sun and fun, caught the dreams of a restless nation and world, and within a century the LA basin and it’s environs had to support not the 100k or so people at it’s beginning, but 20 million odd persons now.

So those 20 million people didn’t want to have their homes washed out past Catalina Island once a year as was likely, so they did what Army Corps and Bureau of Rec do so well… they channelized, made it an express bus, and drained the water like any good mid century water engineer dreams of…pollution and all.. does this sound familiar from my Piece on DDT? That river got the same treatment, and dumps out a few miles over from the LA river.. It’s a weird thing, driving around LA.. there are hills for natural features, but nothing you would call a  river.. it’s as if the natural topography got washed away, you never use any ground features for navigation, just the freeways and major boulevards, and for all the desperation the place has for water, they began to look everywhere but right under their feet, as the estuaries and cienegas were dried up for land land land, and almost every inch of rain that fell was exiled to the Pacific instead of being allowed to replenish the local aquifer like happens in just about any place on earth we haven’t screwed up (It appears I was a little premature in this judgement, as they claim to capture 80% of the water in, well, man made dams for replenishment, which give LA 15% of it’s water  scroll down here to ‘DAMS and FLOOD Control’ near the Bottom. I do wonder if that was a post ‘filling in every natural water body in the basin’ figure to come up with 80% replenishment.).
It’s a funny thing to, because I often compare how water moves to how money or emotions move around a place, and California’s state budget is likely the wackiest and most obscenely funded, and if you get pissed at an Angelino, don’t expect much, because your anger flows right off them without soaking in like water flows down the LA River Channel, it’s water off a ducks back, if they didn’t choke to death on soap suds and motor oil, the LA thing is to simply not give a crap what you think.
After the Flood of 1938, which claimed 113 lives and did 40$ million worth of damage in the dollars of the time,

 we were already in the mood for big projects, with the infrastructural leap forward being performed to try to grind us out of the Great Depression,  the US for all intents and purposes a socialist nation at the time, and that flood was all ti took to get the attention of the swarm of ant like workers and agencies created to fix any problem they could find, and 3,000,000 barrels of concrete were laid by 10,000 hands, wait, 20,000 hands assuming they all had them all, 10,000 workers, to fix it up nice and good. Dam’s were built within the next few years. The Greatest Generation didn’t cut no Corners! You could land the space shuttle in that place…
The Core: Endeavor Lands in the LA River   wait.. they did! Didn’t know that Hillary Swank had her Pilots licence, did ya!? Actors are Awesome! Kind of Gives you an aerial view of the problem at about minute 5 doesn’t it… man, what excitement!
But like I said, slowly things are sinking in, and not just on the maybe 5 miles of the 48 mile course of the main branch that aren’t ‘channelized’, and since 2006 moves by the USDEP, Local government and now Local People are starting to happen. There were declarations about that time to declare the river navigable, and to start giving it status’ that just about any other river in the country has under the Clean Water Act.
If there is one thing I know about LA, nothing is hipper than activism.. ask Barbara Streisand or Warren Beatty.. it gets you laid! And activism in LA happens in groups, big showy pretentious groups, but in this case, woo hoo.. the big showy pretentious groups will be another good excuse to show off your buff, sports bras and even swim suits.. doing good one narcissistic hang at a time.. time to pull the Prius over and do some kayaking, because online and in the ‘river’ there is a proliferation of activity since Twin’s 2011 attempted float.
They have had an advocacy group since 1986, but now they seem to have like 4!
http://folar.org/
http://larivercorp.org/
http://www.laep.org/target/units/river/riverweb.html
but why hope now… well, since 2011 the traction seems to be happening.. online you got a documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdWl35DIqHk
might have been older, but they finaly decided to post it…
then you got the Kayakers:
http://lariverexpeditions.com/page_about.php
http://www.theriverproject.org/projects/paddle-the-river
http://paddlethelariver.org/Paddle_the_LA_River/Home.html
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/lariver/confluence/river-notes/even-more-la-river-kayaking-expansion-news.html
Again, this is all in the last two years..
check out the bar on the right, where KCET, the local PBS affiliate has aggregated things about the river:
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/lariver/confluence/
and the Park plan from 2006 is starting to happen:
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/03/stretch_of_la_river_will_be_open_to_the_public_this_summer.php
Now Runners are in on the Game:
http://lariverfunrun.com/
Now people are noticing..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/27/los-angeles-river-storm-drains
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323530404578207642711599814.html
http://www.economist.com/node/21524902
But let me bring you to what to me is the most important link, but let me explain first: People who complain about the Military tend to not have met too many soldiers since the Army went volunteer. They are a pretty crafty and well intentioned group, and if you make it through this video, which rehashes a bit of what we have been discussing, while throwing in a few extra facts, there is a subtly seditious act at the end, again, from 2011. These Army Corps guys have been watching their buddies in the Everglades and elsewhere, they know what environmental restoration is, and they know they can accomplish both flood control and environmental restoration. They are the new breed, and it looks to me like they are asking for the cash to take on the task of creatively turning this sewer back into a river:
Army Corps of Engineers on LA River
Looks like the trickle is turning into a flood..
So maybe it’s time I go home, for my own good, like Jack Nicholson..no matter how pretty Faye Dunaway is. I think it’s gunna happen on it’s own… and I need my nose for other things…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0BVEIjGyo&list=PLE3500CBEEC5651D0

Categories
Uncategorized

A Good Overview of the Ecology of the Andes to include The Sierra

A Good Overview of the Ecology of the Andes to include The Sierra

Categories
Uncategorized

Colombia Reports Concurrs on the FARC Fallign Apart Up North!

I feel pretty proud to have beaten this web page on my conclusions.. Colombia Reports has become my go to for news in english in Colombia, and it is quite thorough.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/28505-farcs-caribbean-bloc-disintegrated-army.html

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/28362-number-of-eln-attacks-drop-significantly-in-february-conflict-monitor.html

the map at the bottom of the second link shows raw data from the month of February. The sierra nevada is thankfully clear of action.

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Uncategorized

Condors in the Sierra

So I recently read something that impressed me. tI turns out that the Andean Condor, the Largest Bird on earth (I once had one fly right towards me, and all I could think of was a C-5 Galaxy, the largest plane on earth, wait, ‘in the free world’ since the Soviet Union back in the day designed one like 5 meters longer in competition during the old cold war, not so old in Colombia!), is found in greatest numbers within Colombia in none other than the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, I am now guessing up in the cliffs of the high peaks area that a climbing expedition would be inhabiting. These numbers were about 10 years old, in a book I found in a Hotel on the birds of Colombia, but it talked about a few concentrations of the birds, and it was slim pickings for Colombia, but the Sierra had 40 individuals at that Count. The bird seems to be healthier further south in it’s range, but this little pocket of Condors kind of intrigues me when I think of the kind of odd oasis of Andean topography the Sierra is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_Condor

http://www.colombiabirding.com/sierranevadastamarta.php

http://www.icesi.edu.co/wiki_aves_colombia/tiki-index.php?page=C%C3%B3ndor%20de%20los%20Andes

It appears that in the Sierra, Condors are seen at their lowest elevations if I am reading this in spanish right. Makes sense since it also might be the northern most point fo their range, so perhaps relatively cooler at lower altitudes, but that’s speculation on my part.

Categories
Air Polution Alaska Cartagena Refinery Colombia Diesel Dinosaur Bones Progress Refining Stink Sulpher Ultra Low Sulfer Diesel United States

What’s That Stink?!: Low Sulfer Diesel.. One Small Step for Man..

Soundtrack: I always thought this song was called What´s That Stink, but it’s What´s at Stake, which is somehow even more appropriate for this post:
Mighty Mighty Bosstones: What´s at Stake
If I had a version of hell as a kid, it was being stuck in the back of the family Station Wagon, the seats all taken by others, trekking down an anonymous American Interstate, in the families 1980 Diesel Station Wagon. It was the Griswalds meet something out of the horror movie Hostel. The stench from the sulfur from both our car and the surrounding trucks made me want to pass out more than once, and perhaps once or twice I did, propped up between my dad´s musty suitcases and the back window, which I used to beg to have opened from 12 feet away to the front seat for air, just to have the stench kick in from the tailpipe, curling up in the icy slipstream of what was usually a New England winter, and make me realize the true devils bargain I had struck, and that we were striking with Diesel. We had a cat named Snowball that gave up the ghost on one of these trips. We assumed it was because my older sister, also once stuck in what we called the Waaay Back with me due maybe to a family friend along (she used to use her 2 years advantage in size in any way possible to avoid this fate), clogged off his little cat box breathing holes with the necessary down jacket some winter trip, but I´m now going to chalk it up to carbon dioxide poisoning in my past the environmental innocence of the 70´s´ new found awareness (this post ifs for you, Snowball!.. sniffle…). I didn´t think much about conservation at age 5, but I sure as hell knew something wasn’t right. This car, by the way, became a legendary turkey, is now on the list of ten worst cars of all times, the Oldsmobile, Buick, or GM station wagons from 1980. You see, Diesel is powerful, and needs a high compression ratio to burn (1 to 9 is typical for a gas engine, like ti was supposed to be, and for a Diesel, you start at 1 to 14 minimum, and go up from there to as high as maybe 1 to 24), especially with just a glow plug instead of a spark to make it commbust, and what GM did, since it takes about 2 years to cure the steel an engine block properly, or at least did in the technology of the day, is take a bunch of gas engines they had on hand, and just call them diesel after the country went mad for fuel efficiency in the wake of the Gas shortages during the OPEC crisis.. since they were short on appropriate ones and people were clamboring for diesel. The end result, to the endless snickers of the Click and Clack´s of the world, was that the crank shaft would literally blow off the bottom of the engine after a while…

10 worst cars of all time
There she is.. the Cutlass Cruiser.. our´s was light blue..
should have been a warning!
So diesel, you have smelled it for years unless you grew up like Romulus and Remus.. it is the power of world ground transportation, and much of our medium scale water transportation as well..

 it is less refined than gasoline (hey, it´s a workin’ man´s thing.. if you refine me, you take away the spunk I need to get things done! Keep your classical music, I loves my rock and roll!) so used to be cheaper, that stench that reminds you of nothing good, belching from a bus you are hustling past, emanating from an idling truck next to the park you are trying to chill in, roaring from the back of some ranchers truck who came into town to catch a Brooks and Dunn show.. it’s something about that combo of mechanical sound (is there something loose in there.. why does it have to make so much noise!?) and smell that the brain finds nothing good about that makes it a foul thing.. and if now is the age of petroleum, than when it comes to hard work, it is the age of Diesel, because it packs more heat and more dependability than any other fuel source at normal temperatures. I know because I personally tried to replace it. I worked on electrifying a boat once, giving it a system to support one of these nifty doo dads:
http://www.torqeedo.com/us/
I once asked a friend of mine at the time who was a salvage captain, and who had been kind of around helping me with my boat conversion, what he thought of what I was doing, and if he ever would think of changing his over. He often worked in bad storms and hurricanes, and his answer was no, because he said he could turn a garden hose onto his diesel and it would just keep whirring away, didn´t even need the electricity going once the glow plugs heated up.. it´s kind of a crushing blow to those of us who know that every ounce of carbon emitted right now is a step further down a long path to a bad place, but this is the logic of the immediate, so how can we find hope in this.. well, back to that stink… that stink is a lot of the things that are expensive to refine off, so, of course, they didn´t, but that stink didn´t do much for diesel power either.. some of the chemicals might have provided engine lubrication or burned to create a bit more unf, but what you really need out of it can still be there if you filter the other crap out that is part of the toxic soup that comes from the dark depths of the earth as crude oil. That stink is mostly Sulfur, and in this form even less somehow enticing than that wet fart smell you get in geothermal springs (c’mon, you know deep down inside you kind of sniff it and like it sometimes..) or after eating too many pickled eggs..
So it ain´t full stop, it ain´t world wide conversion to electric power (give it a bit more time) but the nations of the world are slowly starting to come around individually on what is known as Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel
You see, when the stench is raw, that’s 5000 ppm.. that’s the old stuff. when I cross into Mexico and an old School Bus from Plano Texas welcomes me by roaring into my face until the feeling I want to vomit reminds me my id is home, that is the hard stuff. the 5000 proof..it´s Tequila for trucks..
Rusty Cage by Johnny Cash, warning, scenes from No Country for Old Men
you are back in the 70´s, hells bells for progress, collateral’s be damned…
We seem to have shot right by Low Sulfur Diesel, which does not have any definition.
When you can´t smell the sulphur hardly at all, but you know it’s there just enough to remind you of the old days, you are down to 50ppm, Where Ultra Low seems to be defined, although it’s a nation by nation process. 50ppm is where the US now are, and even places like Thailand as as of 2012…in fact, Europe is down to like 15ppm or less.. that’s the true Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel.. it ain’t that howling moan and stench that makes you think the Gates of Mordor opened up, that stench of dinosaur bones and bleak despair that is something out of the tranche of finally honest 70´s movies, something by BBS productions, or the sad fantasy of machines ruling the world in Maximum Overdrive, it’s actually a bright new future where we might not realize we are harming the environment quite so odorously, or be reminded of it quite so intensely with every stifled breath, but it is better than nothing, because in fact, Sulfur is a bit like Methane, it traps a bit more of the old heat than a standard CO2 molecule does, so supposedly, while changing to sustainably derived electric propulsion is ideal, this is better than nothing. Alaska was slower to adapt than the rest of the US, I think about 2010.. I could smell the difference.. it was like having a nightmare return for the years between US adaptation and Alaskan..
Anyhow, so recently I was in a tropical country, and I was settling into the first city I would visit, and I saw a crew of expats doing what they do, getting drunk and making trouble.. they were the kind of guys I have become used to in places like this.. they are bored, and they bide their time carousing and drinking, but they tend to be a lot more thoughtful than first presentation would indicate.. they left home for a reason, perhaps the money, but there is usually a story there, and these guys didn’t disappoint.. I could tell they were leery of me, so I broke the ice a bit, and I could tell that leeriness was because they were doing something they thought I might not like if I were reflexive or simple.. as the night wore on, I did learn that they were in resource extraction, and that they were working on helping this country rebuild it’s refinery capacity.. since I had revealed a little knowledge, they let me know that while they were helping this country, which I will admit is Colombia, become independent for refining, as they are currently a net exporter of Oil, but have to import refined products, that the expansion in capacity they were working on in Cartagena, but also is being worked on at the other refinery in the boom town of Barrancabarmeja, is in fact going to be low sulfur… they said that the Colombians ¨dinked around for a year¨but the project is on the way, and the two year project is a year done, so look for fresher air in northern Colombia by sometime in 2014.
Now I can’t seem to snap my fingers and make diesel go away, but I breathe a bit easier when a bus goes by back in the good ol’ US of A or Europe, and I am looking forward to the day when Colombians don’t have to hold their breath as they scurry down the streets away from traffic.. they may still be getting poisoned.. we might still be short sighted-ly causing our doom, but it might be a little more hopeful to not have to know so obviously you are being poisoned, and maybe Colombia´s cities and towns will become a little less grey as a result…sometimes perspective is everything…
Off to burn more Dinosaur Bones… Yee Haa!
King of the Road

Categories
Amazonas Cattle Cattle Ranching Choco Coca Growing Colombia Deforestation Ecology Farc Forest Jungle Logging Mining Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

The FARC as Forest Stewards

War is a funny thing.. loaded with unintended consequences… so what happens when the world´s longest war happens in one of the World´s most beautiful countries.. well, amongst other things, a lot of preserved wilderness.
Now this is a funny argument to make, might even be controversial, but hear me now and believe me later, the FARC have been good for the ecology of Colombia. Now before this sounds like an advocacy of the FARC, let me first say that I am not even going to pretend I advocate anything about them. I don´t tend to have much patience for cafe revolutionaries. I could compliment them.. they are tough, they can be effective, and they have held out for a long time, sadly with the aid of a lot of Cocaine Money, and even some help from old Uncle Hugo next door. I could even say that most of the FARC rank and file genuinely believe in what they are doing, I can´t take that away from them, there are a lot of kids living in the jungle with good intentions, but it has been a long 50 years, and even old advocates who saw just how oligarchic Colombia was now believe that it’s time to move on from this struggle. I will say in addition that things like the Valle De Cauca Assemblia Hostage Taking, and the accident though it might have been, up in Bojaya, Choco, with the Gas Cylinder Bomb, give me chills, it was brutal, but war is a funny thing, the world is a funny thing, and somehow, I am arguing, the FARC have been good for the forests.

Let me lay out my point.. when you drop through the rogues gallery of Colombia, there are a few big wheels that have been really wreaking havoc for years.. the FARC and ELN, the now demobilized M-19, the Narcos, the Paramilitaries, but wait, this ain´t no poli sci lesson, this is about ecology, and hope so where they heck am I going with this.. alright, lemme tell a side story for illustration.. I once met a British Army Jungle training specialist.. it was a particularly emotional time for him, because he was in the spot where he had first seen the hint of war at the age of 16 or 18 20 something years before.. he was in western Belize, where he had gone with his regiment to stop a Guatemalan attack on the country, which would have used the San Igancio-Belmopan-Belize City road as it’s axis of attack.. so sometime in the 70´s this guy was a scared kid straddling that road to the west of San Ignacio with his regiment, right where I happened to be staying when he wandered into this bar in San Ignacio a few years back looking for someone to share the story with. I was game, and after he relived it and got a few Belikins into him, I started to ask him about the Jungle, about the Nature you might figure I kind of dig.. so he listed off all the jungles he had seen, and it was a loooong list.. so I then asked him which country had the best, most pristine jungle, he had an answer… I believe he said Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, although it could have been Guinea, but satellite shows Guinea-Bissau being a lot greener, but anyways, when I asked him why, he said it’s because the people there are afraid of the forest, so they leave well enough alone.

Well, if you are a Guerrilla Army that has given your country the grand distinction of “Kidnapping Capitol of the World”, like Colombia is often referred to, then you have created a good bit of Fear yourselves… and I don’t like making Lemon-Aid out of Lemons, but it{s hard not to see some here (actually, Colombians prefer Lime-Aid…). So Colombia is a beautiful country, Jaw Dropping at times in the drama of it{s mountain scenery and jungle expanses, but if you ticked down that list of powerful groups that like to throw their weight around, you would get to their Cattleman´s association quicker than you think. In fact, you would still be on your first two hands.. they have a lot of the Government by the Huevos, and in addition, have strong ties to both the oligarchy, who tended to be the landed gentry, and the old Paramilitaries that are proving to not be so old as land redistribution becomes a hot topic with the Peace Negotiations in Havana and a few months ago in Oslo (this post might actually be quite timely, the negotiations are going well, and this war could end soon…). The Paras are rearing their ugly heads in parts of the country where cattle ranches are being redistributed back to people forced into the cities.. you see, Colombia has a huge proportion of urbanization due to 50 years of trouble, 75%… you are hard pressed to find many third world countries higher that aren’t either in the desert or City States.
CIA World Factbook on Urbanization
again, good for the Environment, bad for the country perhaps, as a lot of a nation’s wisdom comes from those who live close to nature, and not many do in this country who aren’t either carrying a gun or growing something that the law man might not approve of. to round off the list, the Coffee and Coca growers, although the Coca growers and the FARC go hand in had quite often, are two more groups that do like to saw down some wood.. there is logging in Colombia, but nothing on a scale of destruction that makes it stand out.
So back to my main thesis, take a look at this Map:
Colombia Reports FARC Front Map
I bet you if you go anywhere there is a FARC front, you will find a solid forest canopy.. there might not be much bush meat left, but the trees will be growing… since trees = cover… the one exception is where Coca might be grown, which does like it’s share of sunlight, but Coca in the Carbon equation likely beats cattle, which the FARC, I will give on good authority, like to steel cows as well when all that fightin´works em up an appetite, people are even leery to graze near them.
It turns out I am not the only one to notice their occasional ecological bent:
Miami Herald Article on The FARC as Ecologists
and if you travel this country, from their greatest stronghold south of the Llanas in the northern Amazon along the side of the Sierra Occidental South of Villavicencia, to the savages of Choco, the rainiest place on earth where the Marines in Nuqui joke about the FARC front 2 km away and how no one has shot anyone else in years (If you want to know what a weird War this is, and why it has gone on for soooo long.. google the Human Right´s Laws of Colombia), the forest is pristine, and Embrerra Indians still live in their native ways, same in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where their old Front 19 of 800 people is down to perhaps a paltry 15, but the old fear dies hard, and people don’t mess with the woods there…
now before I sound too much like a cheerleader again, I will say their record ain’t perfect.. they blow up oil infrastructure that starts fires, they get involved in some destructive mining operations, and they get in fights with the natives over Coca growing and ecological issues in which case they sometimes kill them if they get too mouthy,
Blog Post by The Marjan Center for the Study of Conservation and Conflict
 but I will gander that the majority of their Areas of Operations outside the good Coca areas (which tend to be mid level mountain sides) are forests worthy of National Park status… something for the boys in Havana to consider, because trust me, the cattle ranchers, lumbermen, coffee men, and coca growers might be looking forward to peace as much as anyone.. so a funny thing to find hope in a war, but I am not quite advocating you grab your trekking shoes, even though they recently disavowed kidnapping.. stick to Peru! I don’t have any stats to back my assertions up, and if you have been reading, you know I love stats, but call it a hunch.
I will admit that I recently read a book on the Orchids of the Serranía de Baudó, just a tiny range by Colombian standards but essentially untouched perhaps due to the FARC, by a Plastic Surgeon from Medellin (trust me, he stays busy), who took it upon himself to explore this range for a week or two each year, over 20 years, until he had found close to 400 species in a small area alone, and I can imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg for what Colombian guide books continually proudly describe as the Megadiversity of their country. So fellas, lay down yer arms, but don’t let the bastards come in after ya!


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The Current Security Situation in the Sierra Nevada De Santa Marta

This might be the most relevant and important entry to this Blog, and the one I worked the hardest to be able to write (although I suffered the most for the entry on Pico’s, that’s for sure!). The following will scare the shit out of you, and then you might be surprised at my conclusion that perhaps for the first time since the 80’s, the Sierra is Climb-able.. this is a news flash potentially worthy of National News in Colombia.. the problem is, or the good part is, that I might be the only person not in the Military who has put this piece of info together, and the Military isn’t in the business of climbing mountains recreationally. My conclusions are derived from personal exploration and a series of conversations with sources within the Brigada (Brigade, which in Colombia can be as many as 10 Batallions, and they currently have defined geographic areas of Operations that I think cover the whole country, but tend to put their units on road blocks and in little fire bases close to Guerilla wildernesses with their headquarters usually in the biggest town around where they have a garrison that locals call ‘El Battalion’)responsible for about 2/3 of the Sierra, with the last third being the western side that has been pacified the longest, which is headquartered I believe in Fundacion on the west side of the Sierra.
The Theme Song for this Entry is One Night in Bangkok, that cheesy 80’s song from the play Chess, because, in Colombia ‘You can feel the Devil walking next to you’… The sad difference between Colombia and Bangkok is that in Asia, the Devil knows he is the Devil and plays his part amiably, and with humor, but in irony deprived Latin America (Mexico and Argentina notably excepted), the devil is either so cunning or so convinced of his own righteousness that he has forgotten or never knew he was the Devil.
If you ask a Colombian Policeman, as I apt to do on occasion, donde estan el FARC-EP!? (where are the Revolutionary Army of Colombia Peoples Army !?) they will give you the standard answer first: Todos Luageres ( Everywhere!) but then, if they feel like being helpful, which is usually, they will either point a finger in the direction of a neighborhood, or tell you “pero no preocupes, es seguro aqui”.. (but don’t worry, it’s safe here… ). For whatever ways in which traveling is somewhat easy in Colombia, pretty low stress, this is a habit of asking this question I have developed that has in fact influenced my itinerary more than once. War has been a fact of life in this country since it’s establishment now 197 years ago (although the revolution began 202 years ago, it almost feels like it never ended, and in a way it didn’t, because the divisions between Santander and Bolivar were the dynamic until the 80’s, when cocaine came along and just added a new even less idealistic player).
For some background, there are 5 human elements to worry about in Colombia. To keep things simple, I am not going to blur the distinctions between these 5 groups, although trust me, things are blurry!:
The FARC
The ELN
Right Wing Paramilitaries
Narco-Trafickers
Petty Criminals

The Military have emerged as the good guys, after again, a blurry past of corruption, then overzealous pursuit of their goals, to include massacres and rampant collusion with the Paramilitaries, and two scandals now entering history, both around 2006, of a commando unit killing for narcos, and another where they killed civilians, perhaps accidentally, then re-dressed them up as FARC to avoid prosecution. But when I see a colombian soldier today I see a friend. I see Operation Jaque and just good people tired of pretending that Colombia will get a better state from Revolution. They have emerged as a professional military in the way that the British Army did in Northern Ireland, kind of a tough extension of the Police, with some protocol skills to boot.
The National Police Force is largely friendly, professional, and what you would want police to be on the street level. I fear cops in the US way more than I ever feared any cops I met in Colombia. They are usually young, friendly, good at giving directions, and are shifted between locations nationwide about once a year to avoid corruption, and again, usually have good people skills. They have a kind of city side with guys sporting pistols, and a kind of almost army side you see in some of the tougher locations.. they can be distinguished from the army by their plain green BDU’s as opposed to the pixellated camouflage of the Army and slightly different ones of the Marines (Naval Infantry). Corruption may exist, but again, when you meet them on the street it has been for me 98% a good experience. The Nationalization was a reform by Uribe and apparently successful, and maybe a good step for Mexico as well.
The famed M-19 no longer exists, they demilitarized years ago after some funny acts like stealing Simon Bolivar’s sword and some not so funny acts like taking the Supreme Court at the behest of Pablo Escobar to stop extradition to the US of Drug lords, with a loss of over 100 lives. The current Mayor of Bogota is a former M-19 member, to show how much they are in the past like a kind of Colombian Weathermen Underground.
So making this relevant to the Sierra, let me remove a few more groups from the Pan-Colombian equation. The ELN’s power base is around Norte De Santander, a department maybe 100 miles south of the Sierra, in the Cordillerra Oriental along the Venezuelan border, and, surprise, surprise, a good area to grow Coca.. it’s a funny theme in Colombia that the People’s Revolution is usually deemed most ripe for success in places that for some strange reason happen to be the mid mountain slopes that make for good coca.. if I wasn’t trying to focus on the sierra, I could expound on this theme quite a bit. Back to the ELN, their Low Thousands if not less strong revolution, a kind of ‘me too’ kid brother to the FARC, is kind of too far away to be of worry in the Sierra.. they have distinct turfs, have battled between each other before, but they have bigger problems and better revenue sources these days than to bother each other.. the ELN has recently made headlines by trying to join the ongoing peace process in Havana, and also returning some recent kidnappers as a sign of good will, although not the two german guys that wandered into Norte De Santander on their Truck trip through South America, but I promised this would conclude in good news!
The Paramilitaries, whom I could smell the stink of all over Valledupar, like if the football players in your high school started picking up guns and killing everyone who made trouble in the halls.. part of you didn’t mind seeing the bully, the FARC, get his, but they often would kill his mom and his girlfriend as well.. it got very ugly… and as I might have mentioned it got very ugly in the Sierra as well. Between Guatepuri and El Atanquez, a battle raged in 2002 that killed 200 people, everything from combat to executions on suspicion of collaboration was to blame.. not to freak you out more, but there were even killings of suspected FARC prostitutes with cans of Bug Spray by the Paramilitaries, not that this is a good way to make the sierra seem attractive, but it was rough for years in Valledupar, which as a cattle ranching town, the home of the Cattleman’s music, Vallenato, kind of a Colombian Austin or Bakersfield musically, was ripe for Paramilitary formation and action. They demobilized in 2006 under an amnesty that tried to wrestle the war back into the hands of the military after it almost went off the skids in the previous 4 years, most notably in somewhat distant Cordoba and Antioquia, although the famed leader of the AUC there had no doubt influence on events in both the Sierra Nevada and La Guajira, Carlos Castano and his two brothers, Vincinte and Fidel, now being immortalized in the somewhat intelligent Caracol Network miniseries Los Tres Caines, the Three Caines. Like Future President Uribe, also from Antioquia, their father, Jesus, had been kidnapped by the FARC and they vowed a revenge that became a national movement. But the paramilitaries are no longer any issue in the Sierra. They are an issue in smuggling in parts of the country, as kind of re-hashed gangs like something out of a bad mercenary movie, and in places where land reform is occurring (one famous group in this instance is called the Black Eagles)..all these areas are in the North of Colombia, but it’s a big country, so nowhere close to the Sierra, thankfully.. all-righty.. so who is left on our rogues list.. ah..
Narcotraficantes.. well, drugs do in fact leave from the Caribbean coast of Colombia still, although I don’t think in the same volume as the Pacific coast and Mexico bound, as Mexico, mostly the Zetas and Sinaloa Cartels, have taken over world distribution, a bit like DeBeers, turning Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia into somewhat decentralized resource suppliers after their previous heydays (first Peru before anyone even knew it was a problem in the 50’s, then Bolivia and Colombia in the 80;s through the rise of Mexico in the last decade or so… Mexico’s Banana Republic’s..oh how the world turns!) These guys work quite silently, but a big group in La Guajira was busted recently, all at a beach party of all things! The Local Gangs shut down Santa Marta on New Years of 2011 as a sign of respect.. no one could party without being killed that year, in kind of the Waikiki of Colombia.. so they are still strong, but they want nothing to do with the high sierra nor climbers nor indigenous would be my guess. the Busted Group seems to have been the newest incarnation of the North Coast Cartel. The production of Coca paste is kind of decentralized, so although the FARC, ELN, or Paramilitaries will control these areas, these guys just buy raw material like any middle man. The big names now in Colombia are Los Rastrejos, and Los Urubanos. They are the heirs of the Cali Cartel. Something called La Officina de Envigado seems to be on the decline, which is the heir of the Medellin Cartel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Rastrojos
In the Hay-Days of the FARC, from 1998 when the FARC went on the offensive but before the election of Uribe in 2002, the 19th front which controlled the Sierra Nevada numbered 800… today: One Squad of about 15 operates in the eastern Sierra in coco growing areas fairly well clear of any areas you might access to climb the mountain.The closest being Guatepuri, and the two valley’s option, but likely still a two day hike for them if not more. I don’t know if they consider themselves the remnants of the 19th front, or are the 59th front I will mention later. I was told by the military that around Guatapuri east you might see 2 or 3 of them at a time, occasionally, but they are merely looking, snooping and pooping as it’s called in the US Army. Guatapuri, with it’s platoon, also feels safe I was told, there has been no FARC action anywhere in the area since 2009. Above Guatapuri, a few people did warn me that in the prior months they had seen the FARC come through, that it was a semi regular occurance, but I had not received the previous information to whittle down whether they come through in force or just to say hi. The Colombian Army actually has pictures of about a 3rd of them on the wall, like yearbook shots.I recently met a Nun in the Anthropology Museum of the Hermanas de Laura (The Sisters of Laura, Laura being a beatified Colombian nun who’s work began with the Embrerra in Choco and western Antioquia about a hundred years ago, and her order spread to looking after and converting natives all over colombia and now other countries) on the west side of Medellin, and I asked her where she had lived.. after a long list she mentioned the Sierra, and I believe their Convent was over in the area I am describing, the mountains above Riohacha. She said that they once threw her off a donkey, but no harm came to her. This is somewhat inconclusive, but the military found it incomprehensible that the FARC would mess with anyone in the Sierra these days.
When the FARC wanted to take over the whole country, the Sierra was a piece of a larger puzzle of taking over all of Colombia. They also see themselves as defenders of the Indigenous, who tolerated and even occasionally assisted them. These days the Sierra has relevance as a short cut from Venezuela to Santa Marta for the dwindling FARC urban presence, perhaps as a trafficking route, but this is the conventional wisdom twice voiced to me why any Guerrillas would be up there..other than protecting so Coca bushes in the east of the range. It is this question that creates the what if? What if two or three did happen by… what if 10 go by headed to Santa Marta?
Who else might be trekking through is the group on the Venezuelan Border. It is now documented fact from a successful cross border operation into Ecuador a few years back that Hugo Chavez for years aided the FARC and even gave them 300 Million USD at one point. There is another group of FARC living on the other side of the Valley in the Sierra Oriental, the Eastern Mountain Range of both the Andes and Colombia. It’s kind of neat that you drive from Maicao and watch the Andes bein as little hills to your left, and by Valledupar there is a 12,000 foot mountain, Painted Mountain, to your left, within maybe 3 hours of the first hill, but that prettiness, like usual in Colombia, comes at a price of them being a bit.. well.. dodgy, 150 strong FARC 59th Front Dodgy.. and mildly active… again, they seem to just be guarding Coca production and smuggling routes (into Venezuela to go to Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean, or out of Colombia via the coast to go to Mexico I am speculating). These guys live up there and go hang in Venezuela when Uncle Hugo likes to have a Bar B Q for them to forget his cancer troubles, and they have committed a few attacks, but against specific targets. It was documented that in 2011 they tried to mess with the rails of the coal train, and they killed a policeman. I don’t know what if anything happened in 2012, although I heard of nothing my first month in Colombia, I hadn’t quite acquired the ear for it yet, still figuring out what was good to eat and where to go. In the 3 months I have been here, to signal the end of the ceasefire they had called for the Havana Negotiations that have been ongoing for a few months, right on a road I had come down weeks earlier, near the junction between the roads to Uruba, Maicao, Riohacha and Valledupar, about 3 miles east of Maicao, they ambushed and killed three policemen, which was national news along with a string of other attacks that all happened to signal that cease fire termination, which was a bit of a negotiating tactic. The few hostages taken that day in other parts of the country, mostly the south west,were released within a week or two as a result of the negotiations. The FARC has, by the way, claimed they are no longer interested in taking hostages, kidnapping as you might call it, in a move that might be seen as a plea for legitimacy to go with these negotiations and a growing feeling of malaise in the country after 50 years of the crap I am writing about.
So the last is petty criminals.. I felt pretty safe with about everyone I met once I was into the Sierra.. there was the Dignity of mountain people.. the Kogui will get drunk and hit you up for cash, claiming it’s for their sick kid, but it’s for a Club Colombia, but I never saw any evidence of crime internally or between the tribes, even though there is a spirited rivalry and distrust between some of them, and of the Mestizos. The Arawaku’s came across as too dignified for such activities, although I once left some gear by a river, and it disappeared, and as I had thought, a few kids had taken it. I found a Mamo, a kind of chief figure, who was a nice measured wise old guy, and he appreciated what likely had happened as I did, asked around and came back with it, although I had to pay a kind of 2 dollar fee which I think they put towards cell phone minutes, but it earned me an offer to stay in their house that night for free, which I took up both out of good nature and curiosity. I didn’t get much of a read on the Wiwa’s although they came across as more patient Kogui’s. The Kancuamos that are basically mestizos now seemed pleasant enough, they party a bit like other modern Colombians but I saw no special tendencies towards delinquency. And no one lives above 7500 ft.. I could see some of the natives being fascinated by modern camping gear and climbing gear, but I doubt you would see them by chance by the time you got the the base camp. I have a friend who wandered up into the sierra two years ago above Nabusimake, and he told me of being quite impacted by Altitude and Malnutrition which was more a condition of his life and inexperience than anything occurring in the Sierra, but a Kogui happened along and insisted he mount his donkey, nursed him for a bit and helped him down the mountain.

video that shows what the sierra was like maybe 10 years ago:

Video on hostage taking nar Santa Marta, but it appears tobe just a criminal thing:

PResident Santos visits an indigenous village in the Sierra, and the Governor’s of all three adjoining states are interviewed.

A police video about taking some doctors to a village to work with the Wiwa’s, someplace on the Santa Marta Side, likely above Minca..

recent attack on 3 cops on read to Maicao:

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