HRH Prince Charles visits Colombia’s majestic Chiribiquete

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HRH Prince Charles visits the Chiribiquete natural park.
HRH Prince Charles visits the Chiribiquete natural park.

Had you told me ten years ago that the future King of England HRH Prince Charles, would get a bird’s eye view of the Chiribiquete mountains in eastern Colombia, I would have thought you as mad as Mompóx hatter. Had you gone on to say, that the heir apparent would stand at the river’s edge of the technicolour Caño Cristales one October morning, I would have carted you off to bedlam.

While his Royal Highness wouldn’t have had enough time to reach for his watercolours and easel to capture the beauty of these remote natural wonders, he will most likely recall his outing to Los Llanos when ensconced within the mist and moss of the Scottish highlands.

In fact, the father of princes William and Harry, witnessed a part of Colombia very few Colombians will ever see, partly because, the Chiribiquete was one of the FARC’s citadels during those “dark days” of Colombia’s recent history, given its rugged natural fortress topography and impassible canyons. Black Hawk pilots would approach these pre-Cambrian tepuis with extreme caution, and few tourists have touched the ancient rock face with its plethora of pictograms, which could date as far back as 3,000 B.C.

For far too many, a trip to the Chiribiquete was hardly a picnic and photo opportunity. If you were lucky, you were told to keep walking if you surrendered a bottle of Johnny Walker to an AK-47 toting “park warden.” Those days seem to be relegated to a past many would like to forget – but can’t – especially when events unfold such as the recent visit to Cuba by the FARC’s commander “en jefe” Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri – alias “Timochenko” – to meet with his delegates at the peace talks table.

Or then again, last month, when one of the FARC’s most notorious warlords, Henry Castellanos Garzón, known by his nom de guerre as ‘Romaña’ also turned up in Havana, to embed himself with the peace process, wearing the same black beret as when he stomped around the Caguán signaling out captured soldiers as FARC trophies and “prisoners of war.”

Irony has been a protagonist during the peace process in Cuba. While the “Colombian miracle” has been embraced by leaders from the four corners of the world, many at home just can’t relinquish memories of the other miracles – the “pescas milagrosas” – which turned roads into human highways of mass kidnapping. Today, we are led to believe that “all’s well that ends well.” But there’s a catch: we haven’t been told when that end will come. It appears with the not-so-new guerrilla “dream team,” that any surrender of weapons would represent for them a moral and symbolic defeat. Then, after the kidnapping of their latest “prisoner of war,” General Rubén Alzate, the guerrillas have shown that “pescas” are still an integral part of their military strategy. Santos has suspended the Havana talks until the FARC release General Alzate.

We have been sold on a “process’ and a country of endless opportunities. That if we are willing to travel the road less traveled we will find the gold at the end of the rainbow. The gold that gave us El Dorado. Not the airport. The ore which makes mining executives from Toronto to Sydney beam with glee. The metal, which turns the rivers of the Chocó mercurial.

If you’ve read my editorials in the past, you’ll know that I’m hardly a doomsayer. In fact, I’m all for cucumber sandwiches, Earl Grey and a nature-loving Prince visiting Colombia’s protected park, the Chiribiquete. In fact, I too would like to climb the stone plateaus, after meandering silt rivers and rafting through swells of piranha-infested waters.

We really have a lot to be proud of as a country and with no shortage of backcountry adventures to partake in when visiting dignitaries drop by. In Bogotá, as one example, you take ride with a circus on any given day, and in any given buseta. At traffic lights you can appreciate Cirque du Soleil wannabees flame throwing at over heated radiators and traffic-stopping funambulists putting it all “on the line” for a handful of devalued pesos. And let’s not even talk about Barranquilla where every after- noon the locals get to enjoy free water sports when the arroyos turn streets into raging gorges.

These are aspects of life in Colombia princes rarely get to see. Instead, they are wined and dined with the fin- est Nariño Palace china and a soothing Ajiaco as appetizer. State visits come and go and everyone is that much wiser for them. After President Clinton led a candlelight cumbia through the Plaza Santo Domingo in Cartagena, his vision for Colombia became ‘Plan Colombia.’ And after former Secretary of State Hillary drank a beer from a bottle in Café Havana, she made it almost impossible for everyone else, to ever get back in.

When the top brass of the FARC see the picture of the Prince of Wales standing over the vastness of the Chiribiquete, they’ll probably be moved by poetic feelings of nostalgia and regret: for what was once theirs now belongs to all, especially the travel guide writer.

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