Surfing for Jesus, 9th Dec. '24

I didn’t have to search far for breakfast. A couple of empanadas and a coffee did the trick.
Being my last full day before I head off south, to Bogota and onwards to Guatemala, it’s time to try and summarize what my thoughts are about Palomino, the place, people, culture and the surrounding area.
It’s fascinating area for several reasons: the people are mostly welcoming, kind and cheerful to travelers/tourists like me. Perhaps it’s because there appear to be a few who’ve got ‘lost’ along the way and didn’t find their way back to their country of birth – they’ve ‘gone native’ and stayed. It’s a hippy dream, but no less seductive for being around fifty years late in grabbing hold and luring people in.
The early part of the photos uploaded today show. Something curious and possibly unique: relatively poor people have chosen to celebrate (If that’s the right word) Christmas by making their version of another cliché: the European Christmas tree. I know this is true because their efforts are conical, comical, and kitch in their effort to recreate what’s becoming a significant component of the global image of Christmas.
Fascinatingly, they decorate their ‘trees’ with anything glittering but, importantly, use plastic rubbish to add a bit of ‘twinkle’. It works – and it’s a small effort towards recycling.
The later photos were gathered as I chill-axed by the beach.
I’d had a really good lunch (vegetarian – won’t get caught out again) and finished reading T.U.L.of.B. – when the restaurant owner/manager reminded me that they had an offer on to exchange ‘books for alcohol’. Well, it would have been impolite not to comply.
The waitress must’ve put a double measure of (rum?) into my glass, because I quickly got that lovely, cosy, eversoslightly tipsy feeling that all was well with the world.
A few minutes later, sitting by the beach and watching the surfers work the waves in the just-right sea under the achingly gorgeous sky, I actually began to get what this surfing Zen thing might be all about. The waves come and go. There is never a ‘perfect’ wave, or a ‘perfect’ moment to speed up to try and catch it. It’s almost always missed, and yet, there’ll be a hundred more waves to follow it, and to try to meet with it in time and space.
I turned to a (very laid-back hippy) guy sitting in the seat next to me patting his dog and said, “Life is good”.
It just seemed like the most fitting thing to say.Read more