I read the NYT obituary of Colombian folk singer Totó la Momposina this morning. She was 85. I have never heard of her. I have never heard her music. But already she is my favorite Colombian folk singer. By far.

My relationship with Colombia is weak at best. My old friend MJB (I use his initials because I don’t know if he would want to be associated with me in print. We have only been friends for 80 years. Yes, you read that correctly.) and I went on an Amazon River trip 50+ years ago that started in Colombia, took a quick look at a town in Brazil, and wound up in Peru. We flew from Miami to Bogota, and through Cali (or was in Medellin?) to Leticia, a small town in southernmost Colombia on the river.

The trip was arranged through a company that had placed a small ad in a periodical, and it worked out pretty well, as long as you weren’t expecting too much in creature comfort.

Digression. I flew to Miami from DC, MJB from St. Louis. His plane was delayed, and I remember sitting on the plane waiting to take off to Bogota wondering where he was. We had no Plan B, and no cell phones. I don’t think we had any pre-arrangements in Bogota. If he missed the plane to Bogota, there was a chance he would miss the plane to Leticia, which I believe was scheduled only a few times a week. Just before the plane to Bogota was about to leave Miami, he appeared, worn out from running from the St. Louis arrival gate. End of digression.

I don’t remember what I expected Bogota to look like. I remember being surprised at tall buildings, and visible tall mountains. I remember the flight from Bogota to Leticia as being uneventful, but I remember thinking that Colombia was clearly one big beautiful country.

Here is Bogota today.

And here is Leticia

Yes, Leticia was small 50 years ago, and looks like it has not grown much since then. Wikipedia says there are about 30,000 people today, and it is an “eco-tourist” hub. In the 1970s, tourism there in the upper Amazon was just beginning.

Digression #2. To get to Leticia, you have to fly or arrive by boat. There is no road connection to the rest of Colombia, even today. End of Digression #2.

We stayed several days at a “resort”. The resort had a number of white frame cabins (a small number), a building where meals were served (not that I remember them), and a rather simple swimming pool. It was in walking distance to the river and to a simple residential area with small frame houses that looked similar to the cabins.

When we flew into Leticia, we were met by two young Americans. We were about 30. They were probably in their twenties, one male, on female. The female was very cute, and I remember thinking that the resort we were staying at was going to be more pleasant than I had assumed. It turned out, I think, that airport pickups were the extent of their jobs at the resort.

But what were they doing there? It took naive me a few days to get suspicious, but it became clear to me that they were there because of drugs. Were they only consumers, or something else? That I don’t know, but I later learned that Leticia was the heart of Colombia’s cocaine industry in the 1970s. And I think our pickup crew sensed immediately that we were not there to get high, so they stayed as far away from us as possible.

The Amazon, by the way, was extraordinarily beautiful and the excursions on the river to various indigenous villages eye-opening. There was a lot of village craft work for sale and I decided to buy 80 Tikuna Indian animal bark paintings for $100. I brought them back and sold them, mainly to friends, for $15 each. It paid for my trip.

Enough for this morning. I am going to sit back, close my eyes, and listen to a little Totó la Mompasino. And await an email from MJB telling me that I don’t remember any of this correctly.