We arrived in La Mesa, after running by to see a lawyer at around 11:30 PM on Tuesday night, a little after one in the morning. After a beer and an introduction to Luisa, Jorge's pet monkey who lives in the backyard, we went to bed.
I mostly just followed Jorge around yesterday, and got on the computer a bit while he was at work. Jorge is Trevor's partner down here. He was born in Colombia, although a bit northeast of here, but moved to California when he was very young to escape danger from leftist rebels in his birthplace. He's has some interesting stories about coming back to visit - once his aunt was shot in the shoulder while trying to escape a FARC roadblock. Young Jorge was in the back seat, and was thrown down on the ground, but got extremely lucky as the national guard appeared at exactly the right moment, weapons firing, and successfully chasing off Jorge's potential captors. Jorge, now 28, has lived here in La Mesa for the better part of the last decade, and has worked with his family business of telecommunications here in Colombia, while his parents are still in LA running a successful residential construction company.
Jorge's a good guy. He's very driven, but has a softer side too. He labels himself as an atheist and an alchemist, although I haven't pressed very hard to see what he really means by this. He really wants to make this company a success, after major setbacks involving the theft of copper wires left the company in a somewhat desperate situation.
Enter Trevor. A good friend from back in Oklahoma who seems to dabble. Everywhere. Nobody's really sure what Trevor does. I'm not sure he knows. But somehow he ended up becoming a partner in a small telecommunications company in La Mesa Colombia, and is searching for someone help him to expand his client base. After flying to Costa to chat with me, he agreed to fly me to Colombia to check it out.
The town is cool. I wouldn't call it beautiful, but that's only to my eye. It's a small town, but larger than what I am used to. Perhaps 30,000 people. It's got a strong city center, surrounding the "new" catholic church built perhaps a couple hundred years ago, abutting the "old" catholic church, built even earlier. In every pueblo down here, there's a small park in front of the catholic church, which serves as a meeting grounds in the evenings, filled with benches similar to the ones all over Costa.
The town center is on a "drunk grid" system, as I have called it. The streets aren't quite perpendicular or even particularly straight, but it resembles a grid system in a not so right-angle type of way. It's mostly brick and clay cinderblock construction, with either lamina or those spanish style clay tile roofs. The church may be the only really pretty building here, although there are some absolutely beautiful houses in one of the hundreds of communal additions surrounding the city.
It lies in the short mountains, but quite lower than Bogota, so it's hot during the day. Pretty hot actually. At night, it can get chilly, perhaps even enough for a blanket. The first night I was here I was happy to have the blanket. The second night I would have preferred without a sheet. If it weren't for that damn mosquito.
The town is used as Trevor and Jorge's base of operations, and then they have repeaters and slave towers to cover the whole town and towns nearby. Some of the nearby towns are sweet little mountain towns, where the kids are still really interested to see a gringo. Those are definitely my kind of places.
I'll be heading into Bogota tonight, as Jorge has to be there in the morning. Not sure where the next 48 hours will take me. Especially unsure where the next two months will take me. But I'll have to start making decisions, likely starting tomorrow.
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