From whale watching to harvesting raw oysters, to near drowning, to near death by machinegun fire all in two days.

Colombia is bordered by not only several countries, Panama, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador, but also by two oceans, the Indian and the Pacific. Naturally there is a large percentage of the population which lives on the coasts and they have a very marked influence on the rest of the population. The music, laid back laisser faire attitude, and joie de vivre are a colorful component of the Colombian culture which enriches everyone.

The port of Buenaventura on the Pacific ocean is one of the main ports of Colombia and one of the places I frequently visited since the end destination was Juanchaco, a very primitive village which had a muddy beach and was between the ocean and the Amazon forest. It is a place where I would go to see the whales and live in primitive conditions, bonding with nature for a week at a time. The marine life, the flora and fauna were really untouched by the footprint of man.? The quality of air and the unpolluted ocean were a recipe for an elixir which I found regenerating.

The mangroves which were the barrier between the ocean and the forest allowed the ebbing of the tides to reach inland and gently stroke the roots of the mangrove trees. There were inlets which would punctuate the coastline and where I would canoe deep into the forest to be one with nature. The silence and stillness of everything except the orchestra of bird songs were always some of the most relaxing and idyllic highlights of these outings. It was a time where there was absolutely no evidence of man, only raw untouched nature. It was easy to transport myself into dreaming of the world as it once was and how unfortunate and sad to know that man had dedicated himself to its destruction. I imagined myself totally detached from everything and everyone, just allowing myself to be. Just being. What a deep feeling this was. Not really in a state of meditation since I was allowing my thoughts to simply remain in idle position. I imagined that I was a able to hear my own heartbeats and the blood circulating in my arteries and veins.

These were truly moments of unparalleled peace. I thought about how very privileged I was and how unique these experiences were, where I could actually detach from “civilization” to just be. To appreciate myself and my pristine surroundings. There was one particular place where the? sweet water from an underground source had its origins on a rocky bank several miles inside the forest. I loved to get completely undressed and lie in the cold water. I felt dizzy with this total peace. Once out of the jungle and facing people, with the familiar yet almost repulsive smell of food being cooked on open fires I thought about what I had just experienced and that this would be something most people would never even dream about.

The Morros is a shallow rocky outcrop about a couple of miles off the coast of Juanchaco mostly submerged only appearing at low tide. The rocky ridge was home to hundreds of thousands of oysters and other crustaceans which we voraciously ate raw, being careful to wear flip flops while walking on the broken glass - like surface of the miniature island.

On one occasion a group of us had alighted the boat which had taken us there and became so engrossed on? picking up oysters that we forgot to anchor the boat. The tide began to come in and when we next noticed the boat was drifting out to sea. We were wearing flipflops, obviously had no lifejackets, and were stranded on this ridge of rocks. Since we had chosen the afternoon to come to this little paradise because it was cooler, we found ourselves wondering what to do as the sun rapidly approached the horizon on the west. As the tide came in we were buoyed and began to float and could no longer stand. We too began to drift. At first the emotions were of amazement at our stupidity, then anxiety about how long we would be able to stay afloat before exhaustion took over and finally real fear about our chances of survival.

At some time I thought about the fact that we were in very deep water and that without lifejackets the only way we could stay afloat was swimming and resting on our backs. The panic of realizing that this would take several hours if we were lucky enough to even come out alive was the mental war I was waging about swimming like a fiend towards the boat, though on the other hand realizing that it would not be long before I was totally exhausted and probably not be able to coordinate my thoughts. We decided that the best thing to do was to make sure we all stuck together no matter what. The boat had drifted over a mile and none of us felt sufficiently strong to swim the distance alone not to mention that the tide had come in full and we were in really deep water now. We decided to swim together to where we could see the shape of the white outline of the boat getting farther and farther away.

We could hear the very distant sounds of people on the shore. We took it in turns to swim, crawl, then backstroke and all the time giving ourselves confidence and cheer. The adrenaline was pumping hard and for the first hour or so the energy was good, but as we progressed exhaustion began to manifest and we had to really keep up the conversation. I remember very vividly, during one of the backstroke? moments, staring at the dark sky ?and seeing the most brilliant milky way and star studded sky with the bright flickering stars and the gentle rolling of the waves beneath. In a moment of absolute calm I thought to myself, what an amazing thing to happen. Here I was bobbing up and down in the ocean with no life-vest and in that instant at peace, taking in the sky, the stars, the ocean and my own vulnerability.

I was very strongly aware of the darkness of the water below me, the waves which thankfully were not too big and periodically a fleeting thought of ending up as some predators meal. However slowly we ?did make progress in getting to the boat since we were helped by the tide nevertheless it was dark by the time we managed to catch the mooring rope of the boat. We were all exhausted yet exhilarated at having found our boat to be able to go back to land.

Once on the boat I thought about those moments of how easily we can get caught up in total irresponsibility. We easily could have drowned. How amazingly irresponsible we had been and how lucky and as an added bonus we had been able to bond as a group sticking together each encouraging the other which made us lasting friends.

As if by design of events, the next evening after a dinner of fish cooked with Chonta Duro, fried plantain and steamed rice I went to bed in the wooden shack which I had purchased the year before. It comprised a series of wooden walled rooms with bunks and a communal shower (with water brought by PVC pipe from about 2 miles into the mangroves). The whole structure was on stilts since the tides sometimes came up to the construction. It was a very flimsy building with no windows, other than mosquito gauze and a door to actually define each little room.

At about midnight I was a awakened by the sounds of machine gun fire and firearms being shot. The sounds at first appeared about 50 yards away though were getting closer. Two bullets wedged into the roof of my rustic wooden house. I felt the tremor from the impact above my head about 8 feet from where I was standing.

Since I was alone in my own room, I was at first very surprised by the disturbance, then it dawned on me that the shooters were both drunk and high on some kind of drugs and were challenging each other as to who would be able to shoot someone first. Considering that there were no windows in the building and that I was alone, I did not know what to do next. If I went outside I would be a target. If I stayed inside I could also be a target since there was absolutely no protection. I thought the best and safest thing for me to do was to make sure I made no noise and to lie under the bottom bunk.? No sooner had I wedged myself there, that about 10 shots from the machine gun ripped through the flimsy wooden walls of my room at about 5 feet from the floor.

I immediately felt my bowels and bladder telling me that they were seriously not happy. I waited in a cold sweat thinking that one of these crazed people would walk through the door. It seemed like an hour though was probably less than 4 or 5 minutes when there was a burst of laughter from the 3 people who had shot my place up. Their laughter was so paradoxically painful, since laughing should be associated with a positive event. Of course in those days in the little hamlets there was no presence of law and order. It was simply every man for himself, and here I was witnessing this first hand.

I wondered if I had had a gun would I have used it? Would I have gone out and confronted them? Would I have ended up on the wrong side of the machine gun? So many things went through my mind. Would I come out of this event governed by crass stupidity and live to see my kids. I thought of my own children and how really close I had come to being history.

I wondered whether those idiots outside understood the terror which they were able to spread. How thinking they were so macho was in effect a terribly cowardly act. How alcohol and drugs make a toxic and lethal mixture. How the absence of the rule of law emboldens people to limits of irrationality and fearlessness. This was a dark moment for me. I wondered what I was doing in this far off place going from ecstasy in the world of the mangroves, the world of the whales, the world of nature to the opposite extreme of a terrifying experience with no rationale.

After the commotion had died down and I was able to l begin to think in a more measured way, I decided that there will always be evil and stupidity but that I should not let this one event cloud my view of what is and was possible on the other side of the spectrum. To this day I choose to live in the abundance and see things from a positive point of view rather than allow myself to being sucked into the scarcity and negativity which also surrounds us.