The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America by Brian Kevin Page A

afford to buy the hotel. At first he had just wanted to open a bar, he said, but as the region bounced back from the dark days of paramilitaries and narcotraffickers, he started to see Honda’s tourism potential, and he realized that he didn’t much want to sell shoes or tend bar. What he really wanted was to lead tours to the volcano above Armero, to show people the endangered river turtles and the rock upstream with the strata in the shape of the Virgin. It’s a great job, Ivan told me, and he’s never looked back.
    Meanwhile, other Hondans’ approaches to tourism are still evolving. Back at City Hall, I had flattered the mayor by admiring how pretty the hills were around town, and I’d pointed to a conspicuous cross on top of the largest one, mentioning casually that it must be a lovely hike up, that maybe I would go there to stretch my legs and get an aerial view of the city. I did not expect that on our third morning in Honda I would wake up to find two armed soldiers standing solemnly outside of Ivan’s hotel—a courtesy escort formy hike, sent by the mayor. The surrounding hillsides, Ivan insisted, were perfectly safe. The guerrillas and paramilitaries had been gone for years. But while Hondans are proud of their natural resources and eager to attract travelers, even Ivan admitted they were still working to shake off a half century of civil-war mentality. So I spent that morning hiking in the hills alongside the stoic young soldiers. They were quiet and surprisingly out of shape, sweating up the switchbacks in their head-to-toe fatigues and heavy weaponry. At the top, they shared my water bottle silently, and when we’d come back down, they asked to take a picture before striding off into the streets.
    When I talked about it later with Ivan, it occurred to me that this kind of cultural pragmatism is pretty understandable, and that maybe it helped to explain the no-nonsense mind-set of Julio and the men at the bridge. In a country where cartel kidnappings and paramilitary violence are relatively recent memories, “adventure” as a concept simply doesn’t have much cachet. If Colombians choose to value prudence and
seguridad
over the romance of the trail or the open water, then I suppose, who can really blame them?
    On our third and supposedly final evening in Honda, we were drinking shots of aguardiente, Colombia’s anise-flavored national liqueur, with some of the town fathers we had met at City Hall. We’d run into them at a downtown tavern, where they offered to teach us how to play
tejo
, a uniquely Colombian bar sport that involves throwing rocks at paper packets filled with gunpowder. The head of the chamber of commerce was there, and after several shots, he casually mentioned that our boat was going to be a little delayed. It would be two more days before we could leave for Girardot. Three at the most. Possibly four. But he wasworking on it, he assured us, and he would stop by Ivan’s as soon as he had an update.
    I wasn’t thrilled about the delay, but up until then, we’d been hiring our boats in accordance with Thompson’s Law of Travel Economics, paying steep fees to boatmen who had no reason to travel upstream except for two gringos who were inexplicably opposed to bus travel. It was all starting to take its toll on my finances, and the prospect of paying only for gas was too good to pass up. If it meant a few more days loitering in laid-back Honda, I decided, I would just have to grin and bear it.
    Sky, meanwhile, had no qualms about sticking around. That evening, one of Ricardo’s friends was opening a new nightclub, and we had been invited to the inaugural debauch. I was hesitant, but after all the hospitality we’d been shown, Sky had convinced me that it would be rude not to go. So the plan had been to make a brief appearance, then head back to Ivan’s, ready to hit the river bright and early the next morning. Now, with the chamber head’s revelation, the night was comparatively