This Morning, This Morning...

 Behold

I have to write about this morning.  It is 7:45 am here.  I woke up at 5:20 in Salento, a small town in the southwestish part of the country. If you can find Pereira on this map, Salento is about 1hour to the southeast, in what I could only describe as the most stunning landscape of green-as-can-be mountain-hills peaking all around as far as the eye can see.  I arrived here yesterday from another small town about 6 hours to the north, named Jardin.  It was equally stunning there, and even more pristine in the pueblo itself.  But rather than pastures, the hills are covered in coffee plants, passion fruit vines, fincas (plantation, or estate).  However, I promtly erased all 200 or so of my pictures from Jardin and the splendid hostel I stayed in, when I was loading everything yesterday afternoon.  The only picture tragedy to occur so far, but I didn't even feel that much anguish, my soul being so renewed and simply grateful after one day in the tranquility there. All the memories are, of course, absorbed in my being.  Sorry I can't share them....but here you can see pictures not even an hour old, of Salento, equally as beautiful.  I really can't describe how happy I feel in the countryside here.  I am slightly dreading returning to Medellin.  But, ah, I won't think of that now when I have two days here ahead of me.   

(I smell Hawaii often here.  The precise combination of relentless green things growing over every piece of land in the perfect amount of hot sun and humidity make the most delicious concoction of smells in whichever continent....Salento is also the first place where I have felt the Open Space - the trails and hills in Walnut Creek I know and love so well - complete with cows and grasses and dry wind)

Ah the cows. They are why I write this morning so enthusiastically.  I milked one!  (This hostel, La Serrana, is an eco farm - hacienda about 1.5 km out of the town of Salento. The most charming place I've stayed in yet.)  At 5:30 as the sun began to rise and the moon still shone perfectly, I met Horatio, the caretaker, down in the stables. After observing him lure the female cow and then tie her hind legs together, he handed me the red plastic bucket and explained how to squeeze from the top of her teat to the bottom in one rolling motion. I couldn't help but at first feel like I was intruding. Ha! But She certainly didn't mind.  The milk came easily.  The milk Horatio and whatever curious guest collect each morning goes right to the kitchen here, for breakfast, to go with coffee, to make yogurt, cheese, etc.  I have not been drinking cows milk for quite a while, but one warm mug of it right after we finished was incredible!

Now it was only 630 in the morning.  Sunrise over these mountain valleys and a cool breeze-- perfect yoga time.

 My yoga view

 My yoga

And now I go to enjoy the breakfast here. I think I will order a fruit smoothie with fresh milk.