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+{"text":"\n\n_This book is, in essence, a love story. It is a falling in love with self, with another, and with Earth story. The journey of being in love\u2014of letting love in to shape you, grow you, change you\u2014takes you through many landscapes, territories unknown and unfamiliar to you, to the windy, rocky precipice of deep change. The journey is punctuated with surprises, brilliant insights, deep joy, and a discovery of rich, dynamic, internal strengths, and genius. Travel well._\n\n _Dedicated to  \nHailey Elizabeth Kennington  \nand  \nAraina Marie Kennington.  \nAnd for Darian Sahara Marie Ronan\u2014to the  \nday we meet on this extraordinary journey.  \nAlso, to the young girl inside each of us._\n\n _May your spirits stay wild, unbroken, and joined to Earth.  \nMay your bodies be strong and your hearts beat passionately.  \nMay your minds always be hungry.  \nMay you know deep love and ecstatic joy.  \nMay wonder and awe be your constant companions.  \nAnd may your souls be whole and thrum from the adventure._\n\nThanks are extended to the following authors, translators, and publishers for granting permission to reprint:\n\n\"Who Makes These Changes?\" by Rumi, which appears on page 67, is from _The Essential Rumi_ , translated by Coleman Barks, and is used by permission of the translator. _The Essential Rumi_ was originally published by HarperSan Franciso.\n\n\"A Third Body\" and \"One Source of Bad Information,\" which appear on pages 198\u201399 and 213\u201314, are from _Loving a Woman in Two Worlds_ and _Morning Poems_ by Robert Bly, and are used by permission of the author. _Loving a Woman in Two Worlds_ was originally published by Dial\/Doubleday. _Morning Poems_ was originally published by HarperCollins.\n\n\"Flowers\" and \"The Movement of Great Things,\" which appear on pages 98\u201399 and 169\u201370, are from _The Taste of Wild Water: Poems and Stories Found While Walking in Woods_ by Stephen Harrod Buhner, and are used by permission of the author and the publisher, Raven Press, Silver City, New Mexico.\n\n\"Fearing for My Life,\" \"Do You Recognize Me Now,\" and \"A Third Body,\" which appear on pages 33, 187\u201389, and 202\u20133, are from _Dancing with the Beloved_ by Paul Ferrini, and are used by permission of the author and the publisher, Heartways Press, Inc.\n\nThe text from _The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress: Secrets of the Female Taoist Masters_ by Hsi Lai, which appears on page 118, is used by permission of the author. _The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress_ was published by Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont.\n\nThe poem by Rumi beginning \"If you want to know god,\" which appears on page 166, is from _The Spiritual Practices of Rumi_ by Will Johnson, and is used by permission of the author. This version of the poem is Johnson's rewording of the Coleman Barks translation published in _The Essential Rumi_. _The Spiritual Practices of Rumi_ was published by Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont.\n\nSEX AND THE INTELLIGENCE  \nOF THE HEART\n\n\"A beautifully written and honest book about exploring the depths of sensuality and consciousness and how this awareness affects our lives, relationships, and the planet.\"\n\nBRIGITTE MARS, AUTHOR OF _T HE SEXUAL HERBAL_\n\n\"With unflinching honesty, Julie McIntyre beautifully delivers a critically important message for all of us on the path to self-realization: a rarified spirituality divorced from the human energies and impulses of the erotic simply doesn't work. Ecstasy is our birthright, and the shaming of our bodies needs to stop now.\"\n\nWILL JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF _B REATHING THROUGH THE WHOLE BODY_ AND _R UMI'S FOUR ESSENTIAL PRACTICES_\n\n\"Sex, Earth, and Spirit are one. Fearless sex, healed earth, healed soul: all one. The afflicted modern mind has forgotten this truth; contemporary sages merely glimpse it. McIntyre has done the profound work to reclaim and thoroughly live it. With this book, she has created a glorious bible with innumerable inroads to joy.\"\n\nAPHRODITE PHOENIX, AUTHOR OF _A RE THEY BAD GIRLS OR BRILLIANT?_\n_Acknowledgments_\n\nFor all those who've awakened my heart, which beats stronger because of you.\n\nThis being my first book, there are many people\u2014friends, companions, associates, partners-in-crime, pioneers, and believers\u2014for whom I am deeply grateful and who I would like to acknowledge. To all of you, who in no small way encouraged me to lift the bushel basket and reveal what has been tenderly hidden.\n\nTo Stephen Buhner, more than you know, I am eternally, deeply grateful to you, for believing in me, for your love, companionship, deep friendship, and for claiming my soul from the lost and found. Thanks to Trishuwa for your love, for transformation, and for friendship; and to Margaret Rhode for your friendship, love, and all the treats you left at my door. I thank M. John Fayhee for encouraging me to hold nothing back; Jaxon Burgess for your enduring and caring friendship; and Mark Heffernan for your original songs, stories, and friendship. Thanks to Julie and Tanya for giving me a column in _Tapestry_ magazine month after month in which to practice. And thanks to Phil for being a great pen pal.\n\nI thank the men in my life: my lovers, husbands, and partners; James P. Ronan for marriage and friendship and Jon (Hawk) Stravers Sr.; for the Driftless adventures; and Jon Stravers Jr., whose spirit kept showing up in moments of deep grief\u2014may you be whole in spirit on the other side, you are missed dearly. And I thank my son, Garrett Ronan who helped me along the way.\n\nI thank the gang at Isaac's Bar, the Buffalo Bar, and Diane's Parlor in Silver City, New Mexico; the Buckhorn Saloon in Pinos Altos, New Mexico; and the Main Entrance in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. I thank you for your companionship and laughter, support and friendship. I thank you all for being part of my life and encouraging me to be who I am: Allan, Shawn, Fred, Farhad, Luan, Jean, Gay, Erika, Hans, Aleisha, Colette, Benjamin, Challa, Calixte, Kevin, Sahuara, Stephanie, Lisa, Jay, Rebecca, Merla, my Irish family\u2014Lucy, Joseph, Michael, and especially Nikki, for your friendship and support and for reading the manuscript.\n\nI thank Flick, who with aging arthritic joints and loss of hearing traveled countless miles up and down the stairs to my loft and napped on the floor near me while I wrote, fretted, and, at times, excavated this book.\n\nI gratefully acknowledge John Seed, Arne Naes, Johanna Macy, Dolores La Chapelle, and the early Deep Ecologists whose fearless devotion has been a well of inspiration and influence. I thank Rosemary Gladstar for giving me a place to start teaching this work, and the women at the Women's Herbal Conferences, my apprentices and students, who sat in my classes and said to me afterward: \"You have to write this book.\" I am grateful to the life-drawing classes at Western New Mexico University, where I was paid to pose nude while I spent time in interior work.\n\nI thank Jon Graham whose initial letter of acceptance of the manuscript I referred to countless times to keep me going; and Laura and Kate, editors from heaven, who corrected my grammatical inadequacies, made suggestions, and who work to make authors' dreams come true.\n\nAnd thanks to my birth family\u2014for provoking my destiny.\n\nTo the invisibles: I am deeply indebted to the spirits of the Driftless Region of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, the Land of Enchantment, those of Southwest New Mexico who have heard and seen all of me and my internal world and who have walked through the writing of this book side by side with me; Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality who rules my Libra sun and Taurus moon; Eros, the god of sexual love (and the chaos that ensues) and beauty, and from whom the energy and word _erotic_ originates; Psyche, the soul, for drawing forth character; the Muses whose names inspire art, science, and wonder; Dionysus, god of the vine, half-mortal son of Zeus, born of fire and nursed by rain; Artemis, lover of woods and the wild chase over the mountain; and Pan, whose home is all the wild places\u2014thickets and forests and mountains.\n\nI pray I have not disappointed any of you.\n**_Contents_**\n\nCover Image\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nEpigraph\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nIntroduction: It Stops with Me\n\n **PART ONE**\n\n ** _The Fall from Earth_**\n\n **Chapter 1:** Intimacy: Food That Feeds the Soul of Love\n\nTHE YEARNING FOR CONNECTION\n\nIN THE LUMINOUS WORLD OF INTIMACY\n\nFOOD FOR THE SOUL OF LOVE\n\nLEARNING TO HIDE\n\nBIRTHING THE AUTHENTIC SELF\n\nNO SUCH THING AS SAFE\n\n **Chapter 2:** Autonomous Personhood\n\nWHAT IS THE SOUL?\n\nWHO IS \"I\"?\n\nFILLING THE LONG BAG\n\nTHROWING OUT THE OLD SCRIPTS\n\nRETRIEVING YOUR SOUL\n\n **Chapter 3:** Getting to Know You\n\nTHE PARENT, ADULT, AND CHILD IN YOU\n\nTHE PREDATOR INSIDE\n\nACKNOWLEDGING ALL OF YOU\n\nBEGINNINGS ARE SUCH DELICATE TIMES\n\nTHE COUNCIL WITHIN\n\nFINDING THE NURTURING PARENT\n\nRECOGNIZING AND INTEGRATING ALL THE PARTS OF YOU\n\nDEVELOPING CHILD-TO-CHILD INTIMACY\n\nCROSS TRANSACTIONS\n\n **Chapter 4:** The Numinous\n\nSHAKEN BY THE NUMINOUS\n\nIN THE CHURCH OF EARTH\n\nWITNESSED BY SPIRIT\n\n **PART TWO**\n\n ** _Earthly Sexual Body_**\n\n **Chapter 5:** Human Beings\n\nCOUNSEL WITH THE STAR PEOPLE\n\nORIGINS OF THE SEPARATION\n\nIT'S ALL FOR THE CHILDREN\n\nQUELLING THE SONG OF THE WATERS\n\nBECOMING WHOLE\n\nA WORKING DEFINITION OF WILD\n\nDEATH AND DISEASE THROUGH SEPARATION\n\n **Chapter 6:** Finding the Wild\n\nA SACRED VOICE IS CALLING YOU\n\nGOING WILD\n\nCOMING TO LIFE\n\nA DICHOTOMY THAT DAMAGES\n\nTHE SENSING BODY\n\n **Chapter 7:** Choosing Another Way\n\nHEALING OURSELVES, HEALING EARTH\n\nRECLAIMING THE BODY'S SENSING: THE HEART OF THE MATTER\n\nEXPERIENCING THE INTERWORLD\n\nANCIENT HISTORY\n\n **Chapter 8:** The Language of Love\n\nLOVING WITHOUT RESERVATION\n\nTHE SMELL OF LOVE\n\nLEARNING TO LET GO\n\nTHE LANGUAGE OF SENSUALITY\n\n **Chapter 9:** Sacred Sex\n\nLOVING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME\n\nNURTURING THE THIRD BODY\n\nA JOINING OF SOULS\n\nEGO STATES AND SEXUAL POSITIONS\n\n **PART THREE**\n\n ** _Challenges You May Meet on the Road_**\n\n **Chapter 10:** The Dance of Trust\n\nBREAKING THE TRUST\n\nMENDING THE TRUST\n\nINJUNCTIONS\n\nSAY IT OUT LOUD\n\nSEXUAL SECRETS\n\nTRUST, INTIMACY, AND SACRED SEX\n\n **Chapter 11:** Healing Shame\n\nWORKING THROUGH SHAME\n\nTHE SHAME OF SEX\n\nTOUCHING WITH LOVE AND ATTENTION\n\nSEEING BELOW THE SURFACE\n\n **Chapter 12:** Freeing Ourselves from Sexual Tyranny\n\nSACRED SEX AND THE WORLD'S OLDEST PROFESSION\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF SEXUAL LIBERATION\n\nTHE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY: AN ANCIENT ARENA FOR CONFLICT\n\nPORNOGRAPHY: HARMFUL OR CRUCIAL?\n\nSEXUAL PLEASURE IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT\n\nREADING THE INVISIBLE INTO VISIBILITY\n\n **Chapter 13:** Healing the Human Soul\n\nSEEING WHO YOU ARE\n\nSELF-NURTURING\n\nECOSEXUALITY\n\nFinal Words\n\nANOTHER NEW SEXUAL REVOLUTION\n\n **APPENDIX:** Talking to Children and Teens about Sex\n\nADOLESCENTS, SEX, AND INTIMACY\n\nFootnotes\n\nEndnotes\n\nBibliography and Recommended Reading\n\nIndex\n\nAbout the Author\n\nAbout Inner Traditions \u2022 Bear & Company\n\nBooks of Related Interest\n\nCopyright & Permissions\nINTRODUCTION\n\n _It Stops with Me_\n\n_The basic problem is that everybody has sexual thoughts._\n\nJUNE JORDAN, \"A COUPLE OF WORDS ON BEHALF OF SEX (ITSELF),\" IN SOME OF US DID NOT DIE\n\n _Everything that people do is connected with \"sex\": politics, religion, art, the theater, music, is all \"sex.\"_\n\nG. I. GURDJIEFF, _P ARABOLA_\n\nI placed my feet on the trailhead, half hidden under leaf litter. Ideas, thoughts, and images of where this trail might lead, written on disjointed notes, were scattered about the forest floor. Some were stuck on branches set there by winds, still others continued dancing about, flitting here then there. Once the start of this journey called \"writing my first book\" began, there was no turning back, no u-turns allowed, no way of knowing where it would lead, who would appear, or what news they would bear from distant lands. And though I could feel the presence of invisibles\u2014those of myth, of Earth, early travelers of old, writers of the territory and my own destiny\u2014falling in stride behind and alongside me, not knowing where this trail was going was as important as the trail itself.\n\nWriting this book was an exercise in personal psychological restructuring. The experience was the best, and most difficult, therapy I've had, ever. At times I was torn up inside, and at other times, the experience brought me unbounded joy and confidence. There were days when the only reason I wrote was because I had given my word. I have always wanted to be a writer; to not write would be an abomination to my soul. To say it was a love-hate relationship is trite; however, true it is. This book, and the process of it, became my therapist, my lover, my companion. We loved and hated each other. I thought about it all the time; I talked to it, dreamed of it, woke with predawn thoughts of it, with whole chapters lingering in the interworld between sleep and wakefulness.\n\nEros and Psyche spiraled through this journey with me. Eros, the god of love and passion, irresistible and clever, seduces the psyche with temptations of pleasure and occasions for suffering. Love always leads to the interior world of reflection and contemplation.\n\nEros always leads to Psyche. Touching fingers to keyboard, each stroke took me deeper into the meaning of this book, the spirit of which came to sit in my room day by day, taking me around this bend and that, exposing unusual connections and insights, showing things I hadn't, wouldn't have, thought of on my own. Often, it would stand over my shoulder and whisper sweet inspirations and musings in my ear. We walked, trotted, strolled, ran down back alleys and side streets and down the stairwell into the cavern (or abyss as it felt on some days) of my psyche to rattle her awake, to shake the foundation of my beliefs, hang-ups, fears, dreams, history, to emerge fresh and ragged, awake, and drunk from the long, strange trip.\n\n _All serious daring starts from within._\n\nEUDORA WELTY\n\nUntil I gave myself over to the writing and the magic and the struggle, I did not know, could not know, where this book would lead and what it would ultimately become. When you first discover that you are pregnant, you nurture the fetus, the baby, as it grows, and you pray that the baby is healthy, has all its functions and parts, but until the baby is born, you have no idea what she'll look like, how healthy she'll be, what sort of person she'll mature into, and, especially, what'll she do in the world. Such has been my relationship with this book. What it will do in the world I do not know. And like children, it does not belong to me; it never did. I have been merely the messenger.\n\nSaying out loud my personal and family secrets sent me into a three-year spin before I got clear enough that I could be devoted to writing this book. As I wrote the chapter on sacred sex, a wee voice inside me insisted \"You can't say that,\" \"No, don't say that either,\" \"What are you doing describing that intimate thing?\" That part of me and I were able to reach an agreement so I could continue. Conversations with myself continued throughout as I also found myself writing things that confront social, cultural, religious, and political values around sex, sexuality, and our relationship with Earth.\n\nI'm making two assumptions at the beginning of this book. The first one is that if you're reading this, you feel something is missing from your relationships, your love life, and maybe even your life. We have all felt such a sense of something missing\u2014of emptiness\u2014at least once in our lives. Many feel it most poignantly in those quiet moments just after sex, or sometimes after a conversation with a friend: a bit of emptiness like something is absent. There is a knowing in our deep selves that there is the possibility of something more, and perhaps, from time to time, you strive to name it and sometimes even strive to find it. This book is about that missing thing. It explores the nature of deep intimacy, the juice of life, the food that feeds the soul of love and relationships. It also (and necessarily) challenges deeply held beliefs about sex, intimacy, and relationships that are often carried from a young age. It challenges the way we see, think, and feel about sex personally and as a culture, for all these things are involved in the generation of that emptiness that we sometimes feel. And it explores the ecological function of sexuality and our relationship with Earth and the world of the invisibles.\n\nSo, I think it's safe to say we all carry baggage, some lack of clarity, and (to greater or lesser extents) shame about sex and intimacy and about our sexuality, our bodies, our relationships, and our feelings. It is nearly impossible to grow up without some of that detritus, particularly in the United States. We also carry an ecological dysfunction, a disharmony within our personal ecology and with our relationship with the deep ecology of Earth. Thus, the second assumption I am making is that you are looking for some resolution, some healing around all of this.\n\nMost of our parents had issues around sex. They didn't talk to us about sex or bodies or relationships. Many of us grew up thinking, if we ever even heard the word, that intimacy only meant the act of sex or making love. Intimacy often involves sex, but it does not mean sex. Nor is sex the only arena for intimacy. Real intimacy takes place between real people, or rather, people being real\u2014unguarded, undefended, unconcealed, and vulnerable. To be real, without a fa\u00e7ade, requires a willingness to be na\u00efve, to see what's in front of you as if for the first time.\n\nEven if we did get some sex education in school or from our parents, it was almost never from a place of deep caring and genuine sharing. Often, it was guarded, haphazard, or superficial. It almost never included talk about intimacy, emotional openness, masturbation, pleasure, or consciousness. A lot was missing from those teachings, and in the West, it still is.\n\nAll of us grew up being lied to, blatantly or by omission. Shame grew around our sexual longings, sexual interest, and our bodies. Shame grew because it was all a secret and because those who told us about it carried shame in themselves. The baggage and misinformation around sex has not changed in any meaningful way. And since the sexual revolution of the '60s, it has not gotten better. It's gotten worse.\n\nThe use of sex toys\u2014dildos, vibrators\u2014was all hidden. We found out about them from friends and magazines and through our own curiosity driving our need to know. We covertly sought them out where information and access to them hid\u2014in shadows. In seven states (Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia), it is illegal to sell sex toys. Information is systematically withheld from our children. Government, schools, and church programs deliberately lie to children and withhold health services and health products in order to promote abstinence-only propaganda.\n\nThe most powerful thing you can do for yourself, the most healing thing you can do for your children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, and students is to become a subversive activist. Someone, who by means of thinking for yourself, will cause the system of lies and regulations to disintegrate from within bit by bit. But thinking for yourself is only one part of the dynamic; you must think behaviorally and act differently from new choices. Sexual patterns _are_ social constructions; as Carol Hanisch is credited with saying, \"the personal is political.\"\n\nThe way to begin is to inventory and take an honest, penetrating look at your beliefs and values around sex, sexuality, intimacy, eroticism, shame, masturbation, and your body and your relationship with Earth and all her inhabitants. Begin to clear out all the old impediments and deformities around being a sexual, sensual, erotic, fully alive human being. Where did your beliefs and ideas come from? Why do you still hold them, or why do they still hold you? What do they serve? Is there another way of seeing things? What is true for you and why is it true for you? What beliefs and behaviors support you being a fully alive, fully sexual, empowered human being? What are your fears and how do they dictate your beliefs and behaviors?\n\nWhen we stop contaminating sex, love, and intimacy with lies and misinformation, we start shaping our own ecstatic sexual experiences and we begin to decolonize the ideas we carry around sex and intimacy. Until we have thoughts and ideas that are our own, that we have come to through feeling them, through analysis, experimentation, and contemplation, only then can we be free to travel in the realm of the sacred, a realm that our sexuality opens up to us, the realm of the gods. The veil between their realm and this world is thin; sacred sex is one of the ways we can pass through the veil. And traveling in that realm is our birthright. Let no one tell you different.\n\n _To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way._\n\nJUNE JORDAN\n\nSometimes you just have to say: Fuck it, it stops with me. Owning our sexual nature is a subversive act. Giving our children permission and encouragement to think for themselves, to own their sexuality, to be curious is an act of political, emotional, spiritual, and cultural restoration. It is an act of relationship fostering and trust building. And it is a reclamation of the sacred. Giving our children honest information is empowering to them and to our relationship with them. They have a right to know. We have an obligation and a responsibility to tell them and to be present for them when they have questions. It is a loving thing to do. We cannot begin to tell the truth, to step up to the plate of honest information, if the beliefs and information we carry are contaminated. Thus the need for unearthing and sifting through what is true for us and discarding what is not, of separating the wheat from the chaff.\n\nIt means healing the splits between our sexuality, our sexual behaviors, the sexualized Earth, and how sex is pretended to be in our culture. At the time of this writing, Christine O'Donnell, Republican candidate for the Delaware senate (thankfully, she lost), has been on an antisex campaign for ten years. She is antisex, antimasturbation: \"It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to abstain alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust.\" Tiger Woods, the world's best golfer, finalized his divorce and announced that he was taking a break from golf to work on his \"infidelities.\" As a result, he has entered sex addiction therapy. AT&T, one of his largest corporate sponsors, withdrew sponsorship without stating why. The \"public\" is outraged at his \"immoral\" behavior; yet, we are secretly fascinated with the juicy details. This is part of the hidden world of sex\u2014our secret fascinations.\n\nMagazines use sex, eroticism, and sexiness to sell their products; yet, we refuse to admit we are sexual beings, that we have sexual longings and fantasies, except in those magazines and pornographic Internet sites openly devoted to doing so.\n\nImagine this (fantastic) scenario: People take responsibility for their needs and talk with each other honestly about them. What if we (those of us who feel this way) said to each other that one person is not enough to satisfy all our needs, that we need multiple sex partners, and that those who wish to be monogamous should do so without putting fears and moral codes onto other people? What if we gave up that disintegrating toxin, shame, and lived a life of empowerment rather than one of victimhood?\n\nHow can we ever expect to change anything if we are unable to shape our own sexual and core experiences? If we continue to feel oppressed, repressed, and victimized by something that happened chapters ago in our life, by the rules of behavior fed to us by the religious right, neoconservatives, our parents, our culture, and the media, how can we imagine ever changing or having an influence on anything? When will we get our priorities in order and start saying no to political and religious meddling that is mucking up the sanctity of relationships, pleasure, and our spiritual destinies?\n\n _You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave._\n\nBILLIE HOLIDAY\n\nAny energy or inspiration we may have to influence our own lives, communities, schools, and government is diminished while we insist on feeling shame, guilt, and unworthiness about ourselves and while we keep ourselves repressed in the bedroom. As long as we persist in letting others think for us and tell us what appropriate behavior is and acquiesce to scare tactics that threaten to withhold love or money if we don't behave, we will remain utterly powerless in the face of any real or imagined power outside ourselves. If we don't own and take charge of our sexuality, someone else will. (Oh, wait, they already have.) It's time to bring it all back to its rightful owners, to each of us as autonomous individuals. For you must understand, Nature, Gaia, is sexual, sensual, and highly erotic. Nature is having sex all the time; that's one of the reasons why it feels so alive, and it's one of the reasons why, when we are immersed in Nature, we feel alive. Birds and bees are pollinating flowers every day. And flowers? They are the reproductive organs of plants.\n\nTrees, heavy and dripping pollen, rub their branches against each other in sexual friction. Plants have gone through countless metamorphoses in their sexual organs since before the beginning of time, developing ingenious and innovative ways to spread their pollen and propagate their species. Every flower we put on our dining table is the sex organ of a plant. Each time we eat corn on the cob, wrapped in pubic corn silk, we are ingesting corn ovules, which hold the ovary that becomes a seed when fertilized by corn pollen. Flowers exude a seductive odor when ready for mating, causing birds, bees, and butterflies to join in ritual dances of reproduction. Some male plants exude an odor that remarkably resembles the seminal emissions of men and animals. The ailanthus species (tree of heaven) will produce flower clusters that are either female, male, or both. Only the male and male\/female flowers produce the odor that fills the air with the unmistakable scent of a man's ejaculate.\n\nHuman sexuality and our reproductive organs have evolved from plants. Plant reproductive systems were the template or prototype that Gaia innovated on as animals and humans evolved. The semen of animals and men performs the same function in almost precisely the same manner as does the pollen of plants. Pollen enters the sticky folds of the flower's stigma, much like a human vulva, and traverses the whole length of the style, which is analgous to a vagina, until it enters the ovary and comes in contact with the ovule.\n\nSlugs, hermaphroditic (possess both sex organs) and slow moving, make love for hours. Each slug inserts a penis into the other and are then simultaneously impregnated. Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, are one of the most peaceful groups of mammals on the planet. They have evolved a unique system of peacekeeping and bartering: exchanging sex for food. Bonobos engage in tongue kissing, mutual masturbation, face-to-face sex, homosexuality, anal sex, and oral sex. And instead of fighting, they have sex, lots of sex.\n\nWe are inspired and transfixed by mating songs and the tandem flights of birds during courtship. How can we deny our curiosity upon seeing animals being tender and affectionate with each other and even having sex? None of us is unmoved upon seeing spectacular sunrises or the way a full moon enlightens and casts shadows in a dark forest. Nor are we unmoved while sitting on the porch and smelling the rain as a storm thunders toward us across the horizon. Sometimes we are so moved we take the feelings that have been stirred up into the bedroom or to a bed of leaves in the forest.\n\nIf you have ever let your hands caress the slow, smooth curves of water-worn boulders, you have been touched by the erotic, sensual, elemental power of Gaia. However much we try to deny or control Nature, we cannot separate ourselves from her; we are part of Nature. Nature is our nature.\n\nGaia is in a constant state of heat: expanding, reproducing, and expressing herself. Volcanoes and earthquakes\u2014Earth orgasms\u2014shudder and quiver in ecstatic rhythms. The moon pulls on the waters of Earth, causing the ebb and flow of tides. Women's wombs respond to the moon's influence on their bodies and psyches as they circle through menstrual cycles. Semen of the gods rides the ocean waves as foam. Sex is a basic drive in all living organisms. Without sacred sex, how can we imagine the sacredness in land and ecosystems? Indigenous peoples around the world have an ongoing concept of sacred sex that is incorporated into their seasonal and yearly ceremonies to increase abundance. West African tribes have elaborate sex ceremonies that may last for weeks at a time.\n\n _Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep blooming in our civilized vase on the table._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\n\nPerhaps our deepest fear is not that we would be uncivilized and out of control but that we would be free to rediscover the sacredness of being alive. The enchantment of Gaia and the split between wild Earth and our wild natures would be healed. Do we fear the power that is there in the deep Earth, in our deep sexual selves, would be too great? It would seem that we are more afraid of sex, of our sexuality, than we are of drugs, prescription medicines, corporations, or governments.\n\nThere is a tremendous amount of rhetoric coming from the pulpits and benches of religious and political edifices admonishing us on \"right\" or \"moral\" behavior and what is customarily acceptable sexual behavior in and out of the bedroom. Jeffrey Escoffier writes that \"[t]housands of case histories have been researched and published to illustrate the dangers, penalties and pitfalls of any deviation from the prevailing sexual morality.\"\n\nThere are equally similar admonitions regarding our behaviors and relationships to the environment, though those who would have us behave accordingly are incapable, at least not demonstrably capable, of following their own precepts. We need not look any further than current politics, policies, and legislation regarding logging, mining, oil drilling, water-use rights, and so on to find a fairly comprehensive picture of our relationship to the natural world and finite resources. There are just too many rules, rules that never have been and never will be the solution to the problem. If they were, we would all be sexually and ecologically healthier and happier and more secure in the future survivability of the human species. No, rules are not the solution, and moreover, the rules are creating more problems. If they serve anything, it is in forcing us to examine what works, what needs re-working and what needs abolishing.\n\nI assert in the pages that follow that there is a direct relationship between our beliefs, values, and behaviors about sex, sexuality, and intimacy and our beliefs, values, and behaviors toward and about the environment and Earth. I also assert that healing one relationship will heal the other, that the two are intimately, inherently intertwined; how we treat our bodies and ourselves is how we treat Earth. If our sex isn't sacred, we won't treat Earth as sacred.\n\nSex has been around since the first single-celled bacteria duplicated through mitosis in the primordial ooze 3.85 billion years ago. Gaia took that single-celled organism, split it into two, and inserted a drive to reconnect, to be one again. It is that drive to reconnect that urges us toward a more intimate sexual experience. It is that same drive that pulls us out of our four walls and into the wild. In _Dazzle Gradually,_ Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan explore the origins of sex\u2014that drive to reconnect.\n\nSex has many origins: evolutionary, sociolinguistic, and perhaps even unconconsious or metaphysical origins that are not really origins at all, since they stand, at least psychologically, outside of time. Metaphysically, the conjunction of two individuals in an act of mating recalls the original split of each individual in his or her essential solitude from the universe of which he or she is a part. Thus, biology aside, the union of opposites resembles a sort of awkward \"healing\" of the primordial condition in which each of us finds ourselves: separate and alone.\n\nHonoring that innate drive is to acknowledge the gift of life, and it calls us to do deeper healing of the damage caused from secularizing and marginalizing sex.\n\nWhat we would see around us in the natural world, if we choose to take in the view with wonder and awe as if for the first time, is what is inside us, what has always been inside us: our true nature. We would see, as Thoreau said, \"The earth which is like a map spread out around me is but my inmost soul revealed.\"\n\n _This leads us to the concept of most primitives, that \"the sacred\" is power. The \"power\" flows through animals, plants, waterfalls, mountains, humans, etc. in endless abundance._\n\nGREGORY BATESON,  \nQUOTED BY DOLORES LACHAPELLE  \nIN _S ACRED LAND, SACRED SEX_\n\nMany are the attempts to heal that separation, to restore the sacredness and spirit of sex, often through a resurgence of Eastern tantric practices and pagan Earth fertility rites. However, even in these practices there is a tendency to reduce them to techniques and mechanical uses. Western practices of tantric sex are more a hybridization of new age techniques, including yoga, aromatherapy, massage techniques\u2014\"a single invented tradition,\" says David Gordon White in _Kiss of the Yogini._ \"What passes for Tantric sexuality in the West has almost no connection with its original inspiration in medieval India.\" And in _Shamans, Mystics and Doctors,_ Dr. Sudhir Kakar says, \"New Age Tantra is to medieval Tantra what finger painting is to fine art . . . a remarkably unimaginative series of yogic exercises applied to the sexual act . . . a _coitus reservatus par excellence_ . . . a sad attempt to mechanize the mysteries of sexual love.\"\n\nOur separation from our sexuality is equivalent to damaged ecosystems, so eloquently described by Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and so many Deep Ecologists. And like damaged ecosystems, our damaged human ecosystem, separated from sex, is in need of repair. As Deep Ecology principles are applied to heal ecosystems, healing the damaged human ecosystem requires that we be sensitive to our spiritual, physical, and psychological needs and evolution. It is important to seriously consider and explore what role a sense of place, a sense of our place, plays within the circle of all life.\n\nThe healing begins when we shift our perspective from seeing sex as some _thing_ (the character of being either male or female) or a _thing_ (technique) that happens between two beings and move sex into the realm of relationship. Seeing and experiencing sex from a place of communication and relationship takes us into the realm of the sacred and a state of sacredness. Sex as technique will always maintain a level of one-dimensional superficiality, the flat and parched landscape of human secularized experience. Dropping below the surface level of sex brings us to the source of all healing, in the deep waters of relationship and intimacy. Holding sex, our bodies, our relationships, and our place in the great scheme of biological diversity and evolution will return us to the ancient and archaeological roots of our species origins, to the primordial ooze where the first single-celled bacteria split. It returns us to the realm of the invisibles, the gods and goddesses of myth and legend who are more than storybook characters.\n\nSacred sex heals the split that has occurred between spirit and matter, between male and female, between physical and the numinous. It heals the dichotomy between humans and the sexuality of Earth. Sacred sex transmutes the sex act into the rejoining of the original split into male and female and the secularized split of body and soul.\n\nMost of us today are hungering for intimacy in our lives, to feel a deep connection that was lost when extended families broke up and when we fell away from the wild sexuality of Earth that expresses itself through every life-form. First, we must feel connected to and be intimate with ourselves and get to know all the voices inside. Georg Feuerstein writes, \"Intimacy is conditional on our acceptance of embodiment. We must be intimate with ourselves before we can be intimate with another person.\" Once we are intimate with ourselves, we can be present with another human being, and then we can sense the sacred, the numinous, the spirit that enlivens all of life.\n\nSex is a union of the energy of two bodies, two lives, two spirits, two souls. Sex is explosive. It's the process for creating life and for rewriting a life. Sacred sex transforms a physical act into a prayer, a devotion. And in sacred sex, a life, a relationship, a story is transformed. Old wounds are healed. Stories become narratives and not predetermined fatalism for the way our life unfolds. Each becomes something new, something different, something other than what he or she was before. Each being becomes whole, and as a result of that wholeness, Earth moves closer to a state of wholeness.\n\nIn the pages that follow, we'll go beyond and below superficiality, traveling into the territory of the sacred as we repossess and restore the lost connections of intimate relationships with another human being, with Nature, with Gaia, with wildness. In the territory of the sacred, we will once again return to our lives and our world the sacredness of sex and the healing that comes from knowing our true nature and Nature outside us, as well as how the two natures are inextricably interwoven. We will learn to navigate the world with a sense of wonder and awe as we once did as children. Do not let time and familiarity destroy the mystery.\n\nAs I wrote this book, I was primarily telling all this to four people: my three granddaughters Araina and Hailey Kennington and Darian, and the fourth person is the young girl I was that so desperately needed to hear these words so long ago.\n\nThis book is meant for anyone wanting to have a life ensouled with sexual vitality, intimate human and nonhuman relationships, and for those wanting to heal the separation between humans and Earth. It is written from one woman to women in heterosexual relationships, though the work is meant to be used for anyone in any form of relationship: It is transferrable. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say that this book does not affirm the limited reality you may currently live in. But, it does affirm a reality that you could live in if you give up limitations.\n>  \n> \n> **PART 1**\n> \n>  **The Fall from Earth**\n1\n\n _ **Intimacy**_\n\n **Food That Feeds the Soul of Love**\n\n_Love, I know, is essential if death is to be put in its place, and it has a place, but love is essential even if I do not know the words that give it flesh and scent. That is why we find it so difficult to write about sex. Not because we are so inhibited and prudish but because when we write about sex, we get acts and organs, a breast, a vagina, a cock, juices and tongues and thrusts\u2014and wind up with recipes but no food. Orgasm is just a word. We have a hunger and love fills it, however briefly, and our accounts of having sex do not catch what drives us into the night seeking light._\n\nCHARLES BOWDEN,  \n _B LUES FOR CANNIBALS_\n\nWhy isn't love enough? For over fifteen years I have been asking the Universe this question. I had the naive notion that if you love someone enough, have enough integrity and keep your agreements, everything else will take care of itself. I have loved much, deeply, and passionately. But something has always been missing. I hungered for more depth in my relationships, for talks deep into the night about the meaning of life, talks of the personal struggles we all go through. I hungered for soul-to-soul bonding and to be seen at the deepest parts of myself. As much as I ached and fought for more, the missing feeling was always present, pushing on my psyche like a bone spur in the bottom of my foot.\n\nWhat was this hunger, this consuming passion and desire? I wanted to name it, to know its shape and texture. I wanted to know its taste and smell. But it was elusive, some invisible thing I chased in the dream corners of my heart. The reality that was present in my family and relationships never satisfied my heart and soul. I wanted, needed to know the truth, what was real.\n\nThis yearning, this appetite scared me at times for it seemed insatiable. I felt its powerful force pushing on me from the pit of my stomach; a soul hunger always wanting the next meal. Nevertheless, I was driven by an inborn, deep-seated belief that the depth I sensed was possible; it really could be.\n\nWhen many people think of intimacy, it's often oriented around thoughts of making love or having sex, but this was not enough for me. It was emotional and spiritual intimacy that I longed for. Ideally, I wanted to marry it with physical sharing. I wanted a depth of intimacy, a bonding of spirit with another person. Through this bond, in the act of sexual union, my partner and I would travel together in the world of Spirit. That is what I wanted. And eventually, that is what I found.\n\nThe journey of learning the steps to the dance of intimacy was long and well worth the work of transforming myself, of unlearning and dropping defenses that kept intimacy out of my reach.\n\nTHE YEARNING FOR CONNECTION\n\nI was born with a belief that love was supposed to be this way, not the way I saw it in the faces and distant behaviors of my parents, lovers, husbands, and friends, people who said they loved me. I felt love from them. Still, I was unsatisfied. Something was missing, and there was too much space, too much drama, too many games, too much unspoken, between people who said they loved each other.\n\nWhen I was six years old, each night at bedtime my younger sister and I kissed my parents good night. It was an organic movement on my part, an impulse that arose naturally from within, for I had not witnessed that behavior in any of my older siblings. At six years old, I didn't understand why my father wouldn't show his love. Why, when I kissed him on the cheek, didn't he return the kiss, or look me in the eye, or hold me? I needed him to return the affection. I needed to feel his love for me. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He never allowed himself to drop the fa\u00e7ade of strength that he had spent a lifetime building. I felt that he didn't love me. But to my child's mind, it didn't make any sense. How could a father not love his children? So I believed that something was wrong with me, that I was somehow damaged and unlovable.\n\nAs a child, I spent a great deal of time and energy trying to show my father how much I loved him, trying to get below the surface, hoping my love would be returned. As a young adult and well into adulthood, I would bake his favorite desserts and take them to him on Sundays. My parents came to depend on me visiting them with fresh-from-the-oven home-baked cakes and cookies in hand. My mother was often gracious. On a few occasions, my father thanked me. I knew he enjoyed the treats but what I needed was to hear him say something genuine and sincere. At that time I didn't have the skills or permission to ask directly.\n\nWhen I was thirty-eight years old, I moved two hours away from my parents. After years of being a devoted daughter, going through two marriages and two divorces, and raising a son, who was then seventeen, I was finally starting my own life (I'm a late bloomer, but bloom I did). I stopped baking for them, and my visits became irregular. My mother made it clear to me how disappointed my father was. I felt like the bad daughter, which is how I was supposed to feel. Families do that; they have an ingenious way of trying to get you to keep up the old, familiar behavior and family script, to maintain the status quo.\n\nFor forty-seven years, my father and I walked in each other's life, but we never got to know each other. We didn't know how. For seventeen years we were strangers to each other, living under the same roof, eating the same food, working side by side in pained silence. I ask myself if I knew him. Did I know what made him happy, what fed his soul? What drove him to rise each morning? Did intimacy terrify him so much that he'd do about anything to avoid it? Or was it simply that he didn't know how to go there? How did he deal with the pain of his own family, I mean, deeply, inside himself? Outwardly, he didn't hide the rage and betrayal he felt. How did he feel watching his wife of fifty-five years suffering a slow death, helpless to make her well? How could I have made better our time together here on Earth?\n\nIN THE LUMINOUS WORLD OF INTIMACY\n\nWithout intimacy to feed love, relationships are lonely and desperate. In the deepest sense, even among friends, there should be an invisible, yet palpable, flow of trust and love between people. Though rare, I did sometimes experience it, like the time a friend shared a part of himself he had long kept secret.\n\nThe two of us had made a conscious, out-loud agreement to have a deep and intimate relationship where we would actively work to reveal hidden parts of ourselves. In the beginning of our friendship, he found the courage to ask me to sit with him so he could tell me this thing he had carried inside him, hidden. We sat under the grape arbor partly shaded from the afternoon midsummer sun. Sitting across from him, looking into his eyes, I could see how afraid he was, how difficult it was for him to tell me his innermost secrets. His body tensed up as it responded to the inner voices telling him that saying secrets out loud was too risky, that something bad would happen if he did. He sat, uncomfortably at first, on the edge of his chair, facing me with the sun at his back.\n\nSeeing him in distress, I felt the invisible fingers of my heart go out to touch him. My entire being swelled with love and compassion for this man. Gently, I wrapped my heart field around him and held him in it as he began to speak. His body slowly began to relax. It seemed as if with each word he uttered, some resistance flowed out of his body with it. The stress left his face, and then his shoulders relaxed. We held each other's gaze. As the sounds and meanings of each word came up to meet me, I greeted every one, breathed it in, and let it find a place to rest inside me.\n\nAs he talked, I silently acknowledged him with frequent nods of my head. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees or my chin in my hand. Only a few moments had passed when I realized that he and I had moved from the mundane world into some extraordinary, other, and sacred territory. The sounds of the world around us began to fade from our awareness. Water flowing in the nearby stream, an occasional car passing on the road, even the slight breeze in the trees, all these sounds retreated from the world we had entered. My senses were heightened, the warmth of the sun moved from the surface of my skin into the marrow of my bones. Colors took on an iridescent glow. My gaze softened, and the hard edges of the physical world became soft and out of focus, like the edges of a ball of cotton.\n\nWithout diverging from the telling of his own story, my friend and I shared an aware, unspoken understanding that we had slid through an opening between worlds. As we held taut the unseen realm we found ourselves engaged in, a small wild bee flew over to us and then stopped. She hovered at the edge of us, seeming to touch, to taste the bond that was being birthed between the two of us. She hovered, and then moved along the edge, the arc, of an invisible force field from me, to my friend, and back again. As if drinking in nectar from a beautiful, invisible flower, the bee would stop and taste this wonderful food. She never altered her course as she traveled in a curved sweep back and forth from my friend to me. She would stop for a moment, near each of us, in midair, the way a kite pauses momentarily in the air held by the tension of the string and air currents before some imperceptible force gently alters its position.\n\nIn that moment, the three of us were immersed in an ecstatic, luminous world. We had found the key to a door that, until this moment, had been locked. We had entered the world I had hungered for. And in that moment I realized that that world exists side by side with ours. Intimate, deep sharing and a communion of souls collapses the separation of the two worlds. I sensed that all of creation responds to such intimacy as we did. And I wanted that closeness, that experience of the luminous world as a way of life, every day of my life. It took me a long time to get to that place where the two worlds overlap.\n\nFOOD FOR THE SOUL OF LOVE\n\nAfter enough relationships had gone awry, with me going away feeling empty and disappointed, I realized I had taken on the smell of resentment. The need I carried stirred some aspect of my soul, or some need in my soul stirred up the question. It's difficult to know which happened first and doesn't, in this case, really matter. What matters is that I followed it.\n\nI revisited the question.\n\nSitting in a coffeehouse with pen to journal, I held the question in my heart and awareness. \"What is this depth I hunger for?\" \"Why isn't love enough?\" As I wrote, authentic knowledge from the Universe entered my conscious mind, traveled down through my fingertips, out my pen, and appeared on the page:\n\n\"Intimacy is food that feeds the soul of love.\"\n\nI looked at the words I had written. I kept writing to fill out my understanding and to anchor it inside me. Love has a soul that needs tending, feeding, and nurturing. Like a newborn infant that needs to suckle milk from her mother's breast, the food of intimacy is a vital food, a life essence that is chosen daily and given freely. When the infant leaves the womb, she enters a new world of unknown terrain. If we choose the path of intimacy, we must leave the womb of familiar old habits that prevent us from having the love we deserve. Intimacy is our birthright.\n\nIntimacy requires taking risks, going beyond your comfort level. To have a life of intimacy, you must do that which you are most afraid of. The intimate, sacred life asks you to be vulnerable and exposed. It requires sensitizing yourself to the full range of feelings and emotions; from gross to subtle in increasing elegance. Being present with what you are feeling is the ground from which intimacy grows.\n\nYou must be willing to be seen in the deepest part of you and to give up hiding and lying. It requires rigorous self-examination (or as Data from _Star Trek_ says, self-diagnostics) to see yourself clearly so that all of who you are can be present. And it asks that you see and marvel at the world and all that is part of it through the eyes of wonder.\n\nHarriet Goldhor Lerner in _The Dance of Intimacy_ says: \"An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way.\"\n\nI had learned not to let love in too far or too deep. I adopted this from early childhood based on my belief (at that time) that there was not enough love to go around anyhow, so someone was going to get shortchanged and be brokenhearted. And I was afraid that if love got in all the way, or if I allowed myself to open to it, someone would see that something truly was wrong with me, that I wasn't loveable. The risk of someone finding that out was, for too long, far too great. When love started to come into the hidden places inside, like water finding its way through sand, rock, and crevices, I created dams that prevented it from going too far or too deep.\n\nTo have the level of intimacy I longed for, I had to break deeply held beliefs and patterns of behavior. I began to give up ideas of who I thought I was. I gave up the romance of being alone, of marginalizing and privatizing my feelings. I gave up the fa\u00e7ade of strength that I had crafted over the years, the strong, tough part of me that people first met. I crafted that skill from watching my father. It seemed to work for him, and the world is, after all, a dangerous place. I created that strong part to hide how terrified I was underneath. But my strength shielded the secret, tender heart inside me. I kept my natural childlike self in a closet. And as I gave these things up, I found that not many people wanted to look past the illusions or the pain to see the truth of who lay beneath. Eventually, I had to give up wanting to keep others comfortable to have the life I knew I wanted and was meant to live.\n\nI gave up these things because, like razor wire, they hindered the path to what I wanted most: intimacy and the freedom to be intimate. Primarily, I wanted to be free, truly free, the kind of freedom that comes only from being awake, aware, and in charge of my own life; the freedom that is birthed when I am present inside my own body and thoughts and feelings; and the freedom that comes from strength of character, flexibility of options, and not feeling like a victim of anything that is happening around me so that I can choose how I feel, what I think, and how I am in each moment. I gave up hiding, gave up creating fights to make distance because being close was too scary. I chose over and over to do the things that frightened me the most. I could measure the level of intimacy each thing hid by the degree of fear I had around it. If there was tremendous energy running inside me, if I was shaking or felt pressure building, it was a clue that saying something out loud was important, for in my birth family, I had learned at a young age to not make noise and to become invisible. How many of us do that? Learn to remain silent as our deep needs and right to be alive are sacrificed to maintain the status quo?\n\n _I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap._\n\nSPANISH PROVERB\n\nLEARNING TO HIDE\n\nWhen my father's farming partner, an old man who had been a state champion wrestling coach, grabbed my newly blossomed breasts while we were on the hay wagon together, I said nothing.\n\nWhen I was molested and sodomized at age eleven by the hired hand, an all-star eighteen-year-old high-school wrestler, I said nothing.\n\nWhen my first husband beat me and created a bone spur in my hip, I lied and said I had slipped down the stairs. I believed I had to make up something to tell the physician and my family to explain why I couldn't walk or move without pain for days.\n\nI didn't know what to say, how to say it, or whom to say it to. As a survival mechanism, I learned to freeze up and shut down emotionally. Anything else was far too frightening. Though my body was still present, I was somewhere else deep inside my mind, unreachable.\n\nNever did my mother or my older sisters ever talk about a woman's body and the changes it goes through, about sexuality or being sexual. We didn't talk about moon-time cycles. When my first menstrual cycle began at age twelve, I didn't know what was happening. I was visiting a friend when it happened, and she knew. Her stepmother took care of me. She talked to me about what was happening and how to take care of myself. It was the shorthand version about how long the bleeding might last, how I might feel, and what to do about it. What she left out was all the mystery and potential power inherent in the bleeding time. I didn't know it was a rite-of-passage time and that in indigenous cultures a young girl's first moon time is met with great celebration and the young girl is honored and welcomed into the circle of womanhood. What I knew was that I felt alone, confused, and ashamed. I wanted to hide. I spent time wishing I was a boy and doing as many boy things as I could. Not until I was much older did I come to love and work with my female body and the sacredness of her cycles.\n\nI knew my friend's mother had called to tell my mom that I had started to bleed. But when I returned home, not a word was said. After a few hours, I finally asked, \"Did Sharon call you?\" My mother said yes. That was the end of the talk about menstrual cycles. When I was thirteen and wanted to use tampons, my mother accused me of being sexually active. She didn't know that you didn't need to have had sex to be able to use them. Thankfully, my sister, ten years older than me, informed her that it was possible to use tampons without first having had sex. Where my sister got that information I'll never know, but thankfully, she had it and offered it in my defense.\n\nA year into my first marriage my mother took me into her bedroom, fished around in her underwear drawer, and pulled out of one of her size 36 C bras. She handed it to me and suggested I wear it for something that sounded like a clich\u00e9: to show off what God had given me. It worked. If you like the torpedo look. I got the point.\n\nI have to thank my mother here, for despite our problems and dysfunction, she had a sexiness that she carried and a classic, movie-star attractiveness to her. She was a strong woman with a sense of justice. She loved wearing barely enough clothes to keep herself covered, and in the protestant Midwest, she stood out. Only now, after years of working on myself, can I see the impact her behavior had on me, which outweighed the difficult and ill-equipped verbal communication between us. On an unconscious level, she was giving me permission to have my own sense of inner strength and sexuality in the world.\n\nWhen I reached puberty and came into my sexuality, my father pulled away from me completely. I was emotionally cast away from him. An unconscious part of me was learning the power of sex, and without elders or mentors to guide me through it, I was in free fall. For some reason, unknown and unbelievable to me for a long time, older men were attracted to me. I learned quickly, and painfully, that sexuality is a form of power. For me, it became a sideways attempt to get love from men that I couldn't get from my father. But because I thought I was unlovable, I put myself in more than a few dangerous situations proving to myself that I was what I believed I was: damaged goods. The damaged part of me acted out fiercely and desperately.\n\nI watched my family. No one seemed happy. None of us would show genuine love and caring daily as a way of life. We were too afraid, too ignorant, too much asleep and shut down. I lived in an atmosphere of emotional and spiritual poverty, starved of love and affection. We would have fun now and then; but even in the croquet, volleyball, and softball games we played, there was an air of seriousness to them. And we all held back some part of us, as if it were illegal to abandon ourselves to spontaneous, childlike fun and let unrestrained joy be a part of it all. It's taken years for me to be able to play cards again. There was always a deck of cards on the dining table alongside the condiments, and if we weren't working or watching television, which was on all the time, there was a card game going on. It was not fun to me. It was serious, cutthroat, with fists of cards slamming the table. It was passionate, as if the card game were the only place for passion to have expression. Playing cards was how we dissociated from ourselves and each other. We could pretend we were close. My mother dealt with the pain of it by disappearing into the world of crossword puzzles. She would be bent over them at the kitchen table early in the morning, at the end of each meal, and into the late hours of night.\n\nSomething was deeply wrong. I could taste the acridness that hung in the air with each inhalation of breath. I actively began to find something different, unconsciously and clumsily at first. Without a guide or elder, I created my own tattered map from scraps of existential poems, glue sniffing, self-tattooing, my mother's stash of prescription diet pills, Jack Daniels, and advice from the older friends I gravitated toward. They at least had a few more years of time in the territory than I had and they taught me how to swear.\n\nIn my sixteenth year, I began to fight for my own life. I began to make noise and demand to be noticed and I caused outward disturbances. It felt good. No, it felt great. Sixteen years of repressed rage began to leak out the edges as I rebelled against the silence, family lies, and games. I rebelled against being put to sleep, dulled by unspoken codes of behavior and family scripts. The waking up was slow for some years as I fumbled my way along. Incrementally, I began to have some sense of myself, to feel my own boundaries, and to take charge of my life, though from the outside I'm sure it resembled nothing like taking control of my life. From my parents' and counselor's perspectives, I was definitely not in control. I started the habit of running away from home, which dominoed into a ridiculous cycle that no one seemed to know how to break. No one seemed to care enough to find out short of grounding me.\n\nI quit going home after school on Fridays. As soon I was absent without leave for twenty-four hours, my parents reported me missing. Eventually, the police caught up with me, and I was deposited at the police station to wait for my parents to pick me up. The next weekend, it happened all over again. They assigned a probation officer to my case for a year. It was a valuable experience, I must say. I learned things during my brief stint in \"the system\" that showed me the template for how our society operates. I learned how to be crafty, how to play their superficial games and still get what I wanted: older boys in butch cars, sex in backseats, rock and roll, and drugs.\n\nAt the end of that year, I was beginning to feel desperate for a way out of the bottomless, directionless, meaningless existence I had carved out. It was exceedingly uncomfortable and becoming increasingly dangerous. A few of my friends had begun to seek drug and alcohol counseling and attend meetings. Well, I thought, I could surely use someone to talk to, so I went weekly to a counseling session. I also went to that AA meeting place where you say, \"Hi, my name is Julie and I'm an alcoholic.\" During that time, I was not so politely asked to leave school and not come back. Twice. At seventeen I moved out of my parents' house, rented a room, and took a shit job at a capon factory. Was fired twice. I managed to get fired from a capon factory. Twice. That is fucked up.\n\nI thought about one of those twelve steps where you say: \"I am powerless (over alcohol).\" It left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't like feeling powerless (and I still don't), so I set out on a journey to feel powerful (and I still am).\n\nI admitted myself to alcohol and drug rehab. More than once. I was in and out of detox, the psyche ward, and half-way houses for two years. During one of my tours in the detox ward, a remark my counselor made had a lasting impression on me. \"You have to learn how to talk.\" Maybe yes, maybe no, I thought. There is power in silence. But I respected her, so I ruminated on that and concluded that it would be nice to know how to interact, to be socially adept and expressive. It became a personal project and a life goal. I watched people all the time. I watched how people changed when given the opportunity to talk about themselves, to say what they felt out loud. I learned how to engage them and keep the conversation going in directions we were mutually interested in. I began to understand the importance of talking from a simple place about how I felt and what I needed. The daily practice of refining my expression and language choices and calibrating the impact was tiring at first, and frustrating. It's a choice I made again and again even when it made others uncomfortable.\n\nI had to learn discretion and how to do \"readings\" on people and circumstances. I would go into a tailspin, terrified afterward that I had said too much, made someone uncomfortable to the point of him not returning, had revealed too much of myself, and as a result, as sure as hell never freezes, something really bad was going to happen to me.\n\nBIRTHING THE AUTHENTIC SELF\n\nLooking in the rearview mirror at my life, I can see now just how brave, how determined I was. I didn't know I was those things at the time, but that's why a rearview mirror is helpful\u2014it gives you a perspective of the distance and the terrain that you've covered. It may be that you have friends who are able to see the calluses on your feet from walking the path and are willing to remind you.\n\nTo make changes takes courage and fortitude: those qualities of soul that enable you to go head on into the darkness, into uncertainty and difficulty. You must have _spiritus_ and _coeur,_ inspiration and heart _._ Being intimate takes you into uncharted and uncultivated territory. There is no place there for survival mechanisms of defensiveness, paranoia, or making up what other people are thinking or saying. To be in the presence of true intimacy, one must lay down the sword that maintains distance, separation, and game dynamics. In tilling the soil of intimacy, you prepare the ground by doing your own internal work, faithfully, devotedly, as if your life depends on it.\n\nIn the process, you meet your _intimus;_ your inmost nature. Over time you become your own best friend advocating for your needs, wants, and happiness. You learn to craft a life of joy so that all you do, how you make your home and life, brings you a sense of wholeness. The child parts of you begin to relax and trust you to take care of them. You speak on their behalf so their needs and wants get tended to in the open. The old and familiar habits of behavior begin to break down as you choose to do something different.\n\nThis new way is frightening. And liberating. Simple and most difficult. There is a very young part of each one of us who knows that life can be more full, enriching, and deeply rewarding. Begin by discerning wants from deep needs. Needs can be felt in the body somewhat like a slight pressure. The more fear you feel about speaking out loud on your behalf, the more energy there is around the need. And the greater the freedom there is in voicing it. For example: \"I need a hug.\" Adding the phrase _will you_ empowers you and activates the other person. \"Will you give me a hug? I really need one.\" There is natural childlike energy and na\u00efvet\u00e9 in those two words. Say them out loud. Or practice saying them inside yourself to get the feel of them. You can feel how the energy of the words comes from a younger part inside you. Notice how you hold your body when you say it. How is your breathing? What expression does your face take on? With practice you can call up this part of you at will. Allow that part of you to look through your eyes, to speak through your voice. The self of you, who is at the center of all you have been and will ever be, becomes a witness to this small person you once were being born into the world once again.\n\nIt's not unusual to feel a bit shaky inside after speaking so vulnerably. The shakiness is normal for a while until you flex those muscles often enough that the new behavior patterns find their own groove. You literally shake up your internal structure to allow something new to replace the old. Like bushwhacking a new trail in a deep forest, the first swath is difficult. Subsequent trips get easier as the path becomes clearer, well marked. You are essentially creating new neurological pathways. Think of it as adding a new software program to the mainframe of your consciousness. You are breaking the rules about intimacy, about sharing secrets and trusting another human being with your heart and the truth of you. It's important that you understand that you are breaking covert agreements about being a certain way with those close to you, for there may be repercussions. Those close to you may not be happy with the new you. Keep going. Others have gone this way before you and have left maps of the territory. But they are just maps, not the territory itself.\n\nYou are birthing your authentic self. The birthing of self is frightening, uncomfortable, and awkward. It really is like going through the birth canal when you were first born into the world. The journey was fraught with distress, pressure, and uncertainty; an unknown world lay before you. Even so, you made it through (even caesarian babies find a way through and out). And that is exhilarating, to express yourself through the birth canal and continue to be authentic in each moment thereafter.\n\nIt's important to say what you're feeling out loud. \"I feel shaky and kind of scared.\" Ask from the little and undefended parts of you all the questions you need to ask so there is nothing unsaid. Simple and direct questions as a child would ask: \"Do you still love me?\" \"Will you hold me?\" \"Do you still want to be with me?\" \"Do you like being with me?\" \"Do you think I'm pretty?\" \"Will you tell me what you like about me?\" \"I feel funny. Will you sit and talk with me?\" This is a scary experience for many of us, finding a new way to be often is. But, there is life on the other side.\n\nVery few of us were raised in families where talking honestly about how we feel was encouraged. Most of us grew up feeling scared of saying how we feel, and we learned to lie or hide to keep ourselves safe, to not disrupt the unspoken agreements we'd made with those we lived with.\n\nNO SUCH THING AS SAFE\n\n _Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing._\n\nHELEN KELLER\n\nI want to say something about the word _safe_. We like to think we can create an environment in which we feel safe, where our life and well-being are not threatened. Safe does not exist. At most, we can take a calculated risk, which means we consider all the possible variables and potential outcomes and, based on an analysis of the circumstances and risk factors, we decide on a particular action. Take learning to skydive for example. We may decide to skydive after we've taken into account each factor and its potential for danger. When we consider an instructor, we look at his years of training and experience, number of accidents, attitude, awareness, and attention to detail. We inquire about the integrity of the parachute equipment, the condition of the airplane and the pilot's experience, and the wind and terrain. We balance our need for this particular adventure against our fears of it and disappointment if we decide not to do it. When we finally decide, it's a result of weighing all the possible outcomes and agreeing to the risk involved. We take responsibility for the choice.\n\nIn intimate situations, we may want to ask, \"Is it safe to say something?\" First of all, it's a trick question. It's a setup: No matter how the person responds\u2014yes, no, or maybe\u2014the outcome will always be their fault. Responsibility for your well-being is unfairly put in the other person's hands, letting you off the hook of any personal responsibility. Whether or not you feel a situation is safe for you to proceed is ultimately your decision and responsibility. Deciding to take personal responsibility is the first step toward ultimate freedom.\n\n _There's no safety in numbers . . . or anything else._\n\nJAMES THURBER\n\nWhen we were young and chose to hide or not say something, we felt it was the safest thing to do to keep from being beaten or to help us fit in. Making those decisions as children was a smart way to survive; it got us through painful and frightening situations. And it was survival. As grown-ups, we get to do things differently, and the price we pay for not saying or doing something is often our self-respect and dignity and a postponement of freedom as we continue to keep parts of us shut down, hidden, and compromised.\n\nEric Berne said, \"Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, think, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained and are necessary during the first two or three decades of life for biological and social survival. Indeed, such liberation is only possible at all because the individual starts off in an autonomous state, that is, capable of awareness, spontaneity and intimacy, and he has some discretion as to which parts of his parents' teachings he will accept. At certain specific moments early in life he decides how he is going to adapt to them. It is because his adaptation is in the nature of a series of decisions that it can be undone, since decisions are reversible under favorable circumstances.\"\n\n _The significance of being intimate is that in being close, you are thrown back to a time when you decided that being close was too scary, so you folded in on yourself. When you go back to that time, you give yourself the opportunity to be a child again, but this time with the power of an adult. You learn that you no longer have to hide your feelings to survive. You learn that it's ok to have feelings, needs, wants and desires and to say them out loud to another person who will receive all of you without judgment or fear. You learn that you no longer have to hide your feelings to survive but that you can feel alive. You learn to take your place in the relationship rather than adapting to what is there. In so doing, you reclaim the precious parts of yourself-your trust, your faith, your honesty, your integrity, your child like joy and enthusiasm for life. All the things that you locked away in a place where they would not be touched by the devastation in your family._\n\nGENEEN ROTH, _W HEN FOOD IS LOVE_\n\nWhen you choose a life of intimacy and all that it requires and affords, a door opens to some new adventure, to awareness and intuitive development. Light is able to penetrate the shadowed places in your interior house. There comes a point on each journey when you know, without doubt, without hesitation, that you cannot go back to your old life; you cannot be who you once were and also have a new life with new riches. If it were possible, I would have found how to do it. I tried to keep one foot in each life, the old and the new. It's a recipe for crazy making and relationship messes. You have to choose one or the other, and the old life is like the line from _The Matrix:_ \"You've been down that road before, Neo.\"\n\nSexuality is not a thing, an act, or a behavior, but rather a state of being who you are, what your nature is. And it is bound tightly to creativity. Sexuality is used to create, not just life but art, poetry, food, a home. It is given from Eros\u2014the God of sexual passion, that longing for the divine, and it is the instinctive drive to connect to the larger world\u2014and when Eros is made part of all that we do, all that we do becomes alive, enhanced, animated. Food tastes juicier, colors are brighter, and life takes on a luminous sexiness.\n\nHans Hofmann, in _Sex Incorporated,_ writes about the broader meaning of sex.\n\nSex is the action through which we accomplish what sexuality prompts us to do. The term _sex_ should be rescued from its promiscuous meanings in common usage. Restored to its precise significance, sex connotes the interaction by which persons express their most intimate union. _Expression_ is here the most crucial term. The intimacy and mutuality of two people's relationship with each other is not limited to or by sex. But sex expresses most intensely the character of such a union, for better or for worse. That is why sexual intercourse represents the quintessence of sex. From this center, sex radiates in a descending line of significance into all other forms of human interaction and intercourse.\n\nIf you choose a life of awareness and attention to detail, a life dripping with sensuality and intimacy will belong to your true self as you emerge into the light of day. That life asks you to pay attention to the details, to awaken your senses, to relinquish limiting behaviors and beliefs, to be present with what is right in front of you, with what's real from moment to moment.\n**2**\n\n _ **Autonomous Personhood**_\n\n**Fearing for My Life**\n\n _Meeting you,_\n\n _I shuddered,_\n\n _fearing for my life._\n\n _Now I understand why._\n\n _Death has come_\n\n _in the guise of the beloved._\n\n _The one I used to be_\n\n _is gone forever!_\n\nPAUL FERRINI,  \n _D ANCING WITH THE BELOVED_\n\n _All my life I've wanted nothing but to bring sex and friendship together\u2014and I seem to be farther away from it than ever._\n\nERICA JONG,  \n _A NY WOMAN'S BLUES_\n\n _The Self is not a known territory, but a wilderness. Too often we forget that. Too often we reach the boundaries of what we know about ourselves and turn back._\n\nPAUL FERRINI,  \n _T HE WISDOM OF THE SELF_\n\n _The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are._\n\nJOSEPH CAMPBELL,  \n _R EFLECTIONS ON THE ART OF LIVING_\n\n _The gods cannot give you anything that you cannot imagine for yourself._\n\nJULIE MCINTYRE\n\nSo you want intimacy and meaning in your life. The want, the desire to have something, is the beginning, the acorn from which all else will grow. In the wanting, inside that acorn, is an intimation of what it might look like when the want is made manifest, comes to fruition, like the great oak that is inside the acorn. Some part of you has suggestions about how to have that thing in your life, what it will look like, and having the desire sets the creating of it in motion. There becomes a movement in the direction of that thing, in this instance, a relationship. Not just any relationship but one that has a particular feeling and quality to it, and when you imagine it, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside and parts of you relax just imagining it, and you say, \"Yes, that's it, that's what I want.\" Anything that is created begins in the imagination with images.\n\nCreating the life you want begins with desire and imagination. Imagining the love and intimacy you desire and the life you want, a rich life, ecstatic life, creative life, interesting life, romantic life, passionate life, ensouled life. To be in a life other than the life you have been living, imagination and desire to be a person other than the person you have been must be the initiator. Imagination and desire can be the key that turns the ignition of change. You know the definition of insanity\u2014doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. To get different results, you must do something different. You have an image of what you desire, but you haven't been able to have that in your life. Something has to change at a fundamental level. We keep looking for Mister Right to come along; but even if he did, we're still the same person, doing the same things, with the same unhappiness, the same feelings of unworthiness, the same psychoses, and we're still reading from the old scripts our family gave us.\n\nIntimacy comes from the Latin _intimus,_ meaning \"innermost.\" To be intimate with another, we first must become intimate with ourselves, our primary relationship, which is the foundation of intimately relating to others, to Earth, to anyone and anything. There is a problem with being intimate with ourselves when we are more concerned with what others are feeling than what we are feeling. Lacking intimacy with ourselves creates or at least maintains a fragmentation within our self, an incompleteness, an unfinished business of the soul to make itself whole. The soul has its own desires and purposes. It is here to make itself, to remake itself, to be educated in the journey of becoming a human being.\n\nIntimate moments assert themselves into our lives when we least expect it. Consider how uncomfortable it is to see a friend or acquaintance in the grocery store. It's an intimate thing to have someone see what we are buying and taking into our homes. Some of the things in the cart are . . . intimate. Remember the experience of visiting a friend's home for the first time? There is almost always the requisite tour of the house. As you move more deeply into the heart of the home, a little unease begins to push on you for you see intimately how people live and what is important to them. Those feelings of unease build as you approach the bedroom, since we know what goes on in there, in that bed, under those blankets, and suddenly we turn to leave the room, quickly. These are two examples of how uncomfortable we can get simply with superficial intimacy.\n\n _To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life._\n\nROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON\n\nA primary focus of this book is to go beyond and below casual superficiality and assumptions to the place where real and lasting transformation happens. My goal is to get to the source of those uncomfortable feelings and eventually, ultimately, not let them unhinge you.\n\nWHAT IS THE SOUL?\n\nBefore I go further, I feel it's necessary to come to a working understanding and definition of the word _soul_ for the duration of this book.\n\nWe know what love is, and we know it has different meanings with respect to the relationship. \"I love my granddaughter\" has a particular kind of meaning, and you know it when you read it or hear the words. \"I love steamed artichokes\" has another kind of meaning, different from \"I love my granddaughter.\" \"I love my horse\" has still another meaning in it, particular to my relationship with my horse.\n\nBut soul is something that, after more than 3 million years of human habitation on Earth, we cannot seem to agree on. There are other invisibles that we can agree not only exist, we can agree on the meaning of them as well. Wind, for example, and heat and cold are invisible, but we know them through feeling and how our bodies experience them. We know love through feeling it and experiencing it, just as we have the experience of heat and cold.\n\nSoul, like love, is an invisible thing; you can't see it, but you can feel it. The soul of a song that stirs you to the core, the soul of a great poem or story or painting. When we are touched by a great work of art, it is a soul-to-soul touching. A person who is a good soul walks into the room, and you feel the soul of that person walking in. But feeling, knowing our own soul, is even more elusive to us than the soul of a song that moves us deeply. Most of us can agree that the thing that is present in a living body that is not present in a dead body is soul. Soul is not a flat, two-dimensional phenomenon.\n\nThe concept of soul is ubiquitous around the globe and has been since antiquity. Socrates made the appeal that it is the soul that animates the body of a living thing. If a person is clinically brain dead from an accident is the soul still present? Does the soul need a fully functioning body to be present? I have met paraplegics and people with missing limbs and have sat with my dying father-in-law while he was unconscious. I have experienced their souls to be intact, present, and available. We've heard from scientists and from people who have come out of a coma that comatose people are not only able to hear conversations around them but remember them and the feelings in the room. Who is remembering? Contrarily, I have met people who are healthy in body and sick in soul. Soul is the bearer of moral qualities and moves toward ideals of justice, courage, and truth.\n\nThe idea that the soul animates the body doesn't fit when we consider stones, mountains, or trees or even in the way we think of humans and animals as being animated and moving about. Have you met a stone outcropping or stood gazing out from a mountaintop that moved you to stillness and awe? What was it that struck you, caused you to stop in your tracks and stand still, to inhale deeply in those moments? The energy coming off the stone face or rising up from the valley below, from the breathtaking view\u2014is that the soul of the stone or the mountain? Is it the spirit of that place?\n\nSomething has reached out and touched us despite our hurry to get somewhere. And what in us is responding to such spectacle, to such a mystifying feeling? When we stand in an old-growth forest, amid giant redwoods and thousand-year-old trees, what is happening in the silence of the forest that can humble us to tears or raise the hairs on our arms? What happens inside us when a tree we planted as a sapling and watered, nurtured, and loved is suddenly uprooted by a storm or taken out by fire or a neighbor's chainsaw? The part of us that bonded with the tree is deeply affected, changed by its absence; we've lost a dear friend to death. Something invisible is presenting itself to our senses, to our feeling body. Something bigger and outside us, some self-organized whole that cannot be found in its parts has stopped us in our tracks.\n\nMichael Perlman describes the impact trees have on our psyche, our soul, as \"[t]he reforesting of the soul.\" When we sit with a favorite tree or walk in the forest, the impact on our soul is a sense of renewal and of deep connection with someone more than human. I've seen students sit with trees and witnessed the transformative powers trees have on their psyche. The erect straight trunks of pine trees infuse our souls, causing us to stand more erect and treelike; we develop a more profound sense of ourselves, of our boundaries, and feel stronger. Alligator junipers that grow in the high deserts of the Southwest lift our spirits to greater heights, bringing a sense of hope and a feeling of falling in love with all of life. Trees are erotic and sexy; it's not an accident that while walking in a forest with your beloved you are often moved to make love on the forest floor, immersed in the fecund, musky smell of leaf litter and pine needles, beneath a great towering canopy. Pine trees produce a great deal of pine pollen, one of the most abundant and ready sources of testosterone. It increases testosterone in the body and balances the androgen\/estrogen ratio.\n\nThe animistic worldview asserts that everything is ensouled, alive with energy. _Anima_ is Latin for \"soul,\" thus _anima mundi_ is the world soul or soul-infused world, a mysterious life-force energy ensouling all that is created. From archaeological reports, we can surmise that so-called primitive peoples not only believed in an ensouled world but also saw the energies, souls, and spirits of things. They left a visible record of their encounters on cave walls and rock faces and erected monuments to the unseen, yet ensouled forces of the Universe.\n\n _The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience._\n\nEMILY DICKINSON\n\n _Good for the body is the work of the body and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other._\n\nHENRY DAVID THOREAU\n\nI have a sense of what soul is in me, in others, in animals, in plants, and in ecosystems. I cannot definitively define and point to it, nor has science been able to dissect it. I do believe that some things are meant to remain indefinable and mysterious. We understand very little if we can only understand what can be explained. Perhaps soul is one thing that we are not meant to fully grasp, though I think my theory and understanding of it is as workable as anyone's. We are each in our own private, trembling lives, fumbling toward understanding mystery and the mystery of our lives as much as possible.\n\nI believe soul to be the accumulation of all the parts that make up the \"I\" of us.\n\n _[T]he absence of the soul is far more terrible in the living man than in a dead one._\n\nCHARLES DICKENS,  \nBARNABY RUDGE\n\nThe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines soul as \"the principle life in man and animals; animate existence; the principle of thought and action in man commonly thought of as an entity distinct from the body; the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical. Also, occasionally the corresponding or analogous principle in animals; the personification of some quality; the inspirer or leader of some business cause, movement, etc. The chief agent, prime mover or leading spirit.\"\n\nSoul has gone through some interesting semantic evolutions. From the Greek, Psyche is soul. It is through trials and tribulations that we are forced into the arena of psyche to craft responses and build character. In love relationships, Eros is a prime mover creating chaos in our interior world, forcing us downward and into the ground of our psyche. The Celts have defined spiritual wholeness by three conditions. According to the Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom, _cra' bhadh_ is the trust of the soul, or devout observation; _creideamh_ is the heart's consent, or belief; and _iris_ is the mind's pledge, or faith: \"When these three are as one, then there is true strength and power within the _coich anama,_ or the soul-shrine, as the body is termed. The body is like the cover of a triptych which unfolds its panels to reveal a landscape full of wonders.\" _Anam,_ Gaelic for soul, insinuates life's vigor and strength of character and is related to _anal,_ the breath of life. The soul weaves in and out of consciousness and wanders in and out of life. It is seen as dynamic, fluid, and flexible and can travel in and out of the body, and it is \"intimately moved by the mind and the heart, and cannot often be seen as separate from either.\" The Celtic soul is not seen as superior to the body or subservient to a divine master as in Christian definitions of soul. The soul is viewed as a personal responsibility; we are responsible for maintaining its wholeness and integrity.\n\nSoul knowledge is the basis of all self-knowledge. It is intelligent, aware, mysterious, and fascinating, and it influences and shapes who we become. Soul has its own destiny. Soul seeks to know the truth of itself and strives to have meaning, has will toward meaning. When we are unable to find the meaning of our lives, when there is meaninglessness, we do meaningless things, and it is in the midst of meaninglessness that people resort to violence. If we feel our life has no meaning, then what we do\u2014the choices we make and what we think\u2014does not matter.\n\nViktor Frankl articulated three drives, or wills, to meaning in our lives, and two of them occur when the basic will to meaning is frustrated. The will to power and the will to pleasure are \"substitutes of frustrated will to meaning. The search for meaning is our basic concern. Only a man who has been frustrated in his basic concern resorts either to will to power or will to pleasure.\" Living out a search for power ends in violence. The will to seek pleasure or the pursuit of happiness is self-defeating in that it is the very pursuit of happiness that derails us. We think that we can find happiness if we have enough money, enough things, enough love, enough security, and then we won't be afraid or sad any longer. Happiness is a by-product not an end in itself. Happiness is the effect of finding meaning in our lives, though it is related to happenstance; it comes and then it's gone. Joy, however, endures. It is the payoff, the effect of being in love, of loving another human being, of understanding the meaning in our work, our relationship with Earth, and in the experience of being alive. Plotinus asserted that happiness could not be found in the physical world, but that even daily, physical acts were determined by the \"higher phase of the soul.\"\n\nOur lack of having a sense, and an understanding of what soul is in ourselves; what its function is, its role in who we are and what we are drawn to, and what the soul is in all living things means we live in a world with no intimacy. Everything then becomes cold, dead, lifeless material to be used or consumed. Living an ensouled life is to have a relationship with not merely the physicality of Earth, with wilderness, and with sex, but to have joyful interrelations with the livingness of each, with the differentiating soul of each. It is a lack of understanding and intimacy that causes us to fear things we don't understand that leads us to clear-cut forests, to dominate and have power over what we do not know intimately.\n\nSex is not merely some thing or an event in the midst of a circumstance. It is a primal, life-force energy that happens in a soul-filled sea of details\u2014of wants, desires, and hormones. Sex is soul driven to connect with the ancient powers of life, death, and procreation. Owning our wild sexual natures involves self-understanding: bringing our faintly appreciated feelings to full consciousness and becoming more aware of how we individually and as a species are related to other species.\n\n _There is no easy or quick plan to happiness, there is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin. Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul._\n\nMARK TWAIN\n\n _Through soul you build your own world._\n\nJOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE\n\nOnly what you know to be true from your own experiments, feelings, and perceptions has value to your current life. The soul is always seeking to be expressed\u2014that is its goal. It responds in each moment to what is presented to it. As you respond newly in the midst of old, familiar situations, new patterns are laid down, patterns that verify, ascertain, and reveal the soul's true essence. With each pattern, like setting mosaic tiles, the soul becomes ever more sophisticated and true in itself.\n\nThe soul is shaped through life experiences, difficult and challenging family and work relationships\u2014seemingly dead-end jobs or demanding and fulfilling jobs and the trials and joys of marriage and raising children. It is educated in the fabric of life experiences, whether on solitary treks to the wilderness or on crowded subway trains. Through conflicting demands, illness, contrasting experiences, and accidents that when rightly seen may not be accidents at all, the soul discovers what its own values and belief systems are. It is through these life experiences that the soul knows what feels good, right, and true and what is not supportive to its life force and destiny. It is being in the world and through the world that our soul takes on its own unique shape and character. It is helped along if we are present in its making, home in our bodies using our internal sensory guidance system.\n\nThe more our soul, the I of us, is taken into account and accounted for, the more we are able to hold ourselves responsible. The little or large indignities that we at one time accepted become insufferable, and we are moved to respond to restore and maintain our essential dignity and character, to keep our soul intact, so that we are no longer the enemy of ourselves. With the OED definitions we can extrapolate that the I of our soul is the \"chief agent or prime mover.\" The soul is the \"leading spirit\" of our lives, always moving in the direction to complete its wholeness. Ultimately, when we reach the end of our Earthly days, will we be able to face ourselves and answer \"yes\" to the questions: \"Did I become myself?\" \"Did I live my own life?\"\n\nWHO IS \"I\"?\n\nTake a few, slow moments to ponder the following questions. Do you ever eat in secret? Are you afraid to ask for what you want? Does your partner know you masturbate? Do you know what you want? What inspires you? Are you afraid to ask for help when you need it? Do you feel guilty when you ask for help or get what you want? Are you afraid to let your lover see you naked? Are you uncomfortable with your sexuality? Does sex scare you? Have you been waiting for someone else to make you happy? Are your other relationships the primary source of comfort and security? Do you treat yourself often with massage, hot baths, a day off in bed? Do you give yourself what the Italians call the sweetness of doing nothing? Do you enjoy your own company or do you avoid being alone? Do you hide yourself or practice invisibility to feel safe? Have you ever looked at photos of naked women? Naked men? Do you enjoy it? Does anyone else know? What's your favorite type of nude photo? How do you feel about masturbation? Are you comfortable walking around your house naked? What excites you sexually, passionately, gets your juices flowing? Are you pleased with your answers?\n\nWho inside you answered these questions? Did you answer with your head or your heart? Were you honest with yourself? What will you change so you'll feel good about your answers and yourself? What will it take for you to be autonomous, self-ruling, and free?\n\nAsking yourself these questions and others initiates the process of getting to know yourself. We take ourselves for granted and operate unconsciously on autopilot a good bit of the time. We have a surface relationship with ourselves, one that gets us from home to our jobs and back home again. The labor involved in getting to know ourselves is not unlike peeling an onion, one layer at a time. The onion is not really the best metaphor because our psyche is not organized in neat, peel-away-able layers. Though there are tears. The way I work with the parts of me is more like a model of the Native American Medicine Wheel with the I that is I in the center. All the other parts of me, my ego states, are around me like spokes in a wheel. That was my basic working model to begin with, but over time as I worked to integrate and harmonize my fragmented selves, the relationship between my different selves has become a more free-form, organic, and spontaneous working\/playing relationship. Krishnamurti talks about it as the center and says:\n\nThe centre is a bundle of memories, a bundle of traditions, and the centre has been brought about by tension, through pressure, through influence. The centre is the result of time, within the field of culture\u2014and so on. So that is the centre. Now that centre, because it is a centre, has space outside it, obviously. And because of the movement, it has space in itself. If it had no movement it would have no space. So there is space, outside the centre and in it. And the centre is always seeking wider space, to move more widely. To put it differently, the centre is consciousness. That is, the centre has the borders which it recognizes as \"the me.\"\n\nTo get to the center, to the I, we begin to look at how the scripts we were given and the ones we made up for ourselves as children are part of our programming; they've become beliefs about how to act and think and what sort of person we are. They are not subconscious in the clinical sense of the term, but they do run our show without our awareness much of the time. Our subconscious has been running on autopilot for thousands of miles over many years. The conscious is the creative, thinking part of us, as well as the part that can notice what the subconscious is doing and saying. When consciousness is active, we say we are aware or awake. We are actively noticing. When we go unconscious, our default mechanism is to act out the old programming, often with detrimental, unpleasant effects. When the conscious, aware part of you quits paying attention, you stop thinking and essentially go to sleep, then the unconscious and unintegrated parts that have been storing up feelings of mad, sad, scared, and enraged use your mouth to form words that fall out like glass marbles tumbling to the floor. Noisily at that. If we are unconscious, it's nearly impossible to stop it from happening. Then you have a relationship mess on your hands to clean up. If you're very lucky nothing gets broken like pottery or glass or trust.\n\nConsciousness is the interaction of physical and cognitive processes, the faculty of perceiving. Ayn Rand wrote, \"A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something.\" Consciousness is a degree of awareness as opposed to alertness. For example, we've all had the experience of driving along in our car and then realize fifteen miles of road have passed under our wheels without our conscious awareness. Suddenly we \"come to\" and realize we have no memory of driving the car, but we were driving the car. Often we don't remember what we were thinking or where our minds were during the past fifteen miles. Something, or some part, drove the car; some part of us that knew how to drive the car got us safely along the miles that are now behind us while we were doing something else. Were we conscious while we were driving the car as our \"minds\" were someplace else? Were we simply alert enough to prevent an accident? The witnessing self, the I, went someplace else, took a nap, perhaps, or traveled to some distant planet to gather inspiration or work out a problem we've been having. That part came back just in time, and it was the reentry into our bodies that jolted us to awareness of our circumstance and, as it were, good fortune. Maybe we were daydreaming. The point is that during those miles, we can say that we \"went unconscious.\" Our awareness took a detour while we mundanely operated a motor vehicle.\n\nA solid foundation of intimacy with another person begins here, inside yourself, the I that is I. The work is difficult and challenging, and through it you'll confront hidden value systems and beliefs about yourself, about sex, and about how your world and the larger world works as well as your beliefs, values, and relationship with Nature. You'll meet yourself face-to-face, one-on-one. As one of my apprentices has often said, \"This work is changing me.\" Indeed, it does change you; it is a transformation of character. And it is work. It requires making time in your life for you and for any sequestered parts of you to become unsequestered and in the open so they can have a life with you and through you. It is the work of what Jung called making the darkness conscious; bringing into conscious awareness those aspects of ourselves that have been hidden. It is bringing all that has been unconscious into our full awareness.\n\nFILLING THE LONG BAG\n\nEach human being is a complex, interesting, multifaceted system with a multiple personality. As infants, we come into the world as a vortex of energy, unabashed and unrepressed. All our basic needs for survival get met, and if we are lucky, our innate need for love and bonding are met as well. As we grow, we learn to get most of our wants met. As children, we know very well what we want and that we want it now. And we say no to what repels us.\n\nBut it doesn't take long for an infant to discover how to fit into her family or social environments. Between birth and six years old, we are most impressionable, and a great deal of the programming of our subconscious happens between these years. During these early years, we start accepting things that aren't true. This is how the child of us becomes corrupted. We're programmed to devalue and disempower ourselves. By the time we are two or three, we have a growing list of what we are to do to fit in\u2014brush your teeth, eat all your food, pick up your toys\u2014and an even longer list of what not to do\u2014don't eat the dirt, don't hit the dog, don't cry, don't talk in church, don't ask questions, don't play with yourself, don't color outside the lines, don't hit your brother, don't be noisy.\n\nSlowly, the vortex of energy we once were begins to lose vitality as parts of us are put in a bag. The young child learns quickly that parts of her personality are not acceptable to those who love her, so she puts the unlovable or inappropriate parts of herself in a secret room inside her, or they get put in what Robert Bly calls the long bag. In _A Little Book on the Human Shadow,_ he says, \"We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.\"\n\nWe learned to sequester parts of ourselves because they made others feel uncomfortable and were unacceptable in our family, in school, or in social settings. As we grow, we are socialized (made friendly or cooperative) to fit into the narrow definitions of what it means to be a human being, what it means to be happy, and what it means to be a contributing member of society. Often, part of that socialization means that we begin to believe what others say about us either explicitly (\"You cry too easily\" or \"You're lazy\") or indirectly through their behavior toward us.\n\n _Intimate relating begins with the self. It is a toxic fantasy to believe that we can be intimate with others when we have not learned (or are afraid) to be intimate with ourselves. Self-intimacy develops naturally when we have not been excessively poisoned by the toxic attitudes of others toward us or by toxic patterns that we inflict on ourselves._\n\nJERRY GREENWALD, _C REATIVE INTIMACY_\n\nUnfortunately, women and girls are too often told and trained to be nice and to look pretty. Unfortunate because inside those admonitions are messages that intuition is not to be trusted, that who they are and what they are feeling are not trustworthy and that anything besides \"nice\" is not acceptable and certainly wildishness is out of the quesion. They are trained to be powerless. Clarissa Pinkola Est\u00e9s notes: \"Women's curiosity is given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring. In reality, the trivialization of women's curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women's insight, hunches, intuitions. It denies all her senses. It attempts to attack her fundamental power.\"\n\nFor men, as well, intuition is power, is genderless and a function of a healthy soul. Little boys are also given some version of these messages: be nice, tuck in your shirt, comb your hair, don't cry. With these messages planted, boys grow to mistrust their intuitive natures and are unable to discern what's real or what they are feeling and unable to say \"the emperor has no clothes.\" Attempts to kill the willful, wild spirit in children are many and come disguised as teachers, parents, and religious leaders.\n\nWe'll be spending some time in the next chapter getting to know the parts of ourselves we've put in the secret room or the bag we drag behind us. Either metaphor can work, but Bly's metaphor of the long bag expresses how putting parts of ourselves away acts as a weight on who we are; it restricts our movements because often the creative parts, the predator, or the outrageous parts are in that bag. It's time for them to come out, to have a life and to be part of your life. It's time for you once again to be a vortex of energy, a spontaneous, 360-degree personality.\n\nTHROWING OUT THE OLD SCRIPTS\n\nYou can get a sense of how important it is to develop an intimate relationship with yourself if you begin to notice the internal self-critical chatter as you're tending to work or chores, as you interact with other people, as you walk by the mirror and see a reflection of yourself. Take note of how many times you hear a voice inside you that says \"You're getting fat,\" or \"You shouldn't have said that out loud,\" or \"You're not smart enough to do that.\" These lines are scripts; that is, early programming that was given to us and internalized as truth. For some time you've believed the script, and it's influenced who you are and the choices you've made. Now, those admonishments are old, battered, overused; the expiration date has long expired, and they've begun to taste sour in your mouth. They no longer work, nor should they.\n\nEric Berne, founder of transactional analysis, defines scripts as lines and codes of behavior given to us by others, usually family members, but scripts can come from anyone whose authority we take more seriously than our own. The term _scripts_ expresses Berne's idea that each of us follows personal life scripts from early childhood decisions and parental programming. Maintaining the scripts into adulthood restricts our movement and flexibility of responses.\n\nWhen I hear the word _script,_ I have this image of standing on a stage and being handed pages filled with dialogue that is meant for me. I take a cursory look at what is written there and throw it back at the stagehand saying something to the effect of \"Over my dead body I'll say these lines; give me some new ones.\" But there isn't time for anyone to write new lines for me, so I ad-lib (you must be able to improvise). I take a deep, inspiring breath that expands my belly. I inhale inspiration from the air spirit as the in-breath spirals in and down into my womb. A valve opens up, screwed open by the spiraling breath. Some old, ancient matriarchal energy begins to rise up from the primordial womb that connects all sentient, sacred, sexual beings and moves through my womb, up through my belly, dusting off the wild, instinctual, intuitive, truth-telling part of me. I laugh uproariously, a full-bellied, breast-shaking, table-pounding, tears-flowing laugh. I can't stop. Something has been set free, my voice has found its sound in the world, and I hear it echo off the theater walls. I fall in love with the sound of it. I have a vision of other women and children throwing their scripts off the stage or burning them. My soul begins to sing through the instrument of my body.\n\nThrowing out old scripts is going against the unspoken rules of behavior set down by our family and culture. Breaking the rules, speaking out, doing something different, making noise is disconcerting at first. Notice if you feel scared after you've had an outburst of laughter, witticism, or anger, as if you have done something wrong. Est\u00e9s writes about the meaning behind a sudden wild laugh.\n\nIn the sacred, the obscene, the sexual, there is always a wild laugh waiting, a short passage of silent laughter, or crone-nasty laughter, or the wheeze that is a laugh, or the laugh that is wild and animal, or the trill that is like a run on the musical scale. Laughter is a hidden side of women's sexuality; it is physical, elemental, passionate, vitalizing, and therefore arousing. It is a kind of sexuality that does not have a goal, unlike genital arousal. It is a sexuality of joy, just the moment, a true sensual love that flies free and lives and dies and lives again on its own energy. It is sacred because it is so healing. It is sensual for it awakens the body and the emotions. It is sexual because it is exciting and causes waves of pleasure. It is not one dimensional, for laughter is something one shares with oneself as well as with many others. It is a woman's wildest sexuality.\n\n _I think what a joy it is to be alive and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward to the root of this flesh and know myself as once I was._\n\nFRANK HERBERT,  \n _D UNE_\n\n _Man's task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is, the most important product of his effort is his own personality._\n\nERICH FROMM,  \n _M AN FOR HIMSELF_\n\nRETRIEVING YOUR SOUL\n\nThis work, essentially, is doing your own soul retrieval. It is immediate, empowering, and rich and can ultimately bring renewed creativity and joy. The child parts of you that were put away, shut out, and marginalized are given a place to live inside you, an opportunity to be part of your daily life, and given permission to live loud and free and imaginatively. The door through which we wish to walk into freedom and into wholeness is not outside ourselves; we are the door. And once the door is found, one must then get up and walk through it. You may travel to faraway lands and seek a guru, but you will not find what you are ultimately seeking. What you seek is in a place that is too obvious and ordinary to consider: the soul that is called _I am_.\n\nI don't need a minister to mediate between me and my gods or Creator or the wind or Mother Earth or my deceased grandmother or anyone for that matter. I go directly. I sought out intermediaries early on because they were the ones I found to talk to. Also, I was looking for someone else to make decisions for me or think for me. It felt important then in a distorted sense. In hindsight, I see how disempowered I kept myself. Until I found a spiritual path, I didn't know I could do it myself or how. On rare occasions now, I'll ask for external validation and an outside perspective, someone other than my partner or a close friend. Primarily, I go directly to the source, feel for the truth to sound its bell inside me. I no longer want anyone making decisions for me or telling me what to do. I believe in personal responsibility as a catalyst for deep and lasting changes that will echo into the larger society, one concentric ring of change at a time.\n\n _I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime._\n\nELISABETH K\u00dcBLER-ROSS\n\nHaving said all that, there are times we need someone else, another human being, to help us find our way. There are times when we are so deep in our emotional swamps of despair, grief, and fear that we are unable to see, think, or feel. In those times, by all means seek out someone to hear you and help you find your way. Be certain, however, that you are clear about why you are going to that person, what you are asking for, and what you need and that you are always feeling for the truth of it. Having clarity going into a situation can prevent drama and minimize the possibility of a disappointment or disaster.\n\nBeing vulnerable is the hardest thing of all. Sometimes the mere mention of a word brings up thoughts, feelings, and emotions that stop us in our tracks. We make a 180-degree turn and run as fast and far as we can in the other direction. Being vulnerable and self-revealing are tantamount to living an ensouled, intimate life.\n\n _As human beings our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world\u2014that is the myth of the atomic age\u2014as in being able to remake ourselves._\n\nMOHANDAS K. GANDHI\n\n _We all walk in mysteries. We do not know what is stirring in this atmosphere that surrounds us, nor how it is connected with our own spirit. So much is certain\u2014that at times we can put out feelers of our soul beyond its bodilylimits; and a presentiment, an actual insight is accorded to it._\n\nJOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE\n\nBeing aware is one thing. Knowing what your options are in any given moment and circumstance is another thing. And choosing which of several options to act on from a place of wholeness is something else. The necessity for rigorous self-examination is not an academic exercise. You have to actually do it. No one can do it for you. It is the struggle for consciousness. It is a struggle because the parts of you that are invested in your being unconscious, in keeping a safe distance and maintaining old beliefs, will compete to maintain their reality; they will escalate, act out, and have temper tantrums. Those parts will offer you all sorts of justifications for maintaining the old beliefs and behaviors. When this happens, you must sit down with them and hear them out. Then you tell them all the reasons the old ways no longer work, how you want more from life and a deeper understanding of who you are. Tell them you want to be free. You must find inside yourself motivations for the change and hold on to that. Ultimately, you need their agreement, need to have them in alignment with your decisions for lasting change to take root.\n\nSignificant motivations for me are that I want to be free from reactionary, outdated beliefs. I want to create my own value system, not carry ones that belonged to other people who were afraid and didn't care to find another way. I want to know who I am and I want my soul to have its life in its most authentic, gratifying, passionate manner. I want to be honorable in word and deed. I want to live large, be outrageous, outspoken, defiant, incorrigible, irrepressible, unpredictable, creative, a force to be reckoned with. I want to know my interior world and all its inhabitants, all their gifts and virtues and idiosyncrasies, what moves them to tears and makes them shudder with joy and pleasure. These are things that motivate me, keep me going forward through the brambles, rubble and scree, and worn-out collections of cultural and familial scripts and values. These are the forces moving me onward toward clarity of understanding and freedom from habituated manners and fear of movement. I want to be called beloved by myself and to call Earth beloved. I want to feel alive. I want to be free.\n\nBeing intimate with yourself is the beginning of being intimate with another being. Not the new age rhetoric of simply loving yourself more or for the first time, though that is a small and beginning part of it. Intimacy is more than love, for love is never enough. Intimacy is self-knowledge and self-understanding; it is befriending yourself, companioning yourself, and caring enough to notice who you are, who you have been, and who you've always wanted to be. It is caring enough to get your hands dirty digging up the dreams you had as a child, those adventures you've always wanted to have, the projects you wanted to create, the books you wanted to write that have never left you. It is finding a way, if it's the last thing you do, to have them come alive in your life, in this lifetime, so the soul and spirit of you are awake and engaged with living.\n\nIt involves descending the treacherous steps downward into the basement of your psyche to find what makes your soul sing, to discover where your soul would have you go if you were to, at last, ask and listen for the answer that comes in the silent inner knowing deep in the intuitive heart of your child.\n\nIntimacy begins in your inner world, between your legs, in those sensitive nipples, in your bedroom, on Earth\u2014experimenting, exploring what is sexually exciting and pleasingly satisfying to you. It's discovering what makes your soul thrum, what inspires you, what holds you back. It is understanding the meanings in the stride of your walk, the carriage of your shoulders, the tilt of your chin, the look behind your eyes, and, more importantly, the who of you that is looking out of your eyes. This is the work of becoming conscious.\n\n _Making your unknown known is the important thing._\n\nGEORGIA O'KEEFE\n\nConsciousness\u2014that state of being aware of your internal world\u2014begins the journey of becoming an integrated, whole human being from the inside out. It is being present with and aware of how you are feeling and what you are thinking in the midst of doing. Integration and coming to full consciousness begins with where you are. So, where are you right now? In your head? In your heart? Are you aware of your feet, your breathing, the aches and pains in your body? Are you happy, sad, mad, scared, pissed off, frustrated? Take inventory right now of how you feel. Go deeper inside. What voices are you hearing? What are they saying? Are they shouting, joyful, raging, whispering, whimpering? Not least of all: What are you seeing? And who is doing the seeing?\n**3**\n\n _ **Getting to Know You**_\n\n_Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible._\n\nFRANK ZAPPA\n\nI have been trained to use Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis model for identifying and gaining facility with interior ego states. Transactional Analysis is a modality that Berne, a Canadian-born psychiatrist, called interpersonal interactions. Berne described an ego state as \"a coherent system of feelings, and operationally as a set of coherent behavior patterns; or pragmatically, as a system of feelings which motivates a related set of behavior patterns.\" He noted that \"e]go states are normal psychological phenomena.[*1 The human brain is the organ or organizer of psychic life, and its products are organized and stored in the form of ego states.\"\n\nHuman beings are a kaleidoscope of multiple ego states. All of these ego states possess energy. Sometimes a great deal of energy. Have you ever seen a two-year-old having a temper tantrum? Comments Jungian analyst James Hollis: \"It is not that we have a single child within, perhaps hurt, frightened, codependent or withdrawn in compensation, but a whole host of children, a veritable kindergarten, including the class clown, the artist, the rebel, the spontaneous child at one with the world. . . . Virtually all have been neglected or suppressed.\"\n\nEach ego state has a function, and each one will perform its function whether you want it to or not\u2014or are conscious of it or not. It is crucial, over time, to be able to identify the ego states; free any that are repressed or locked away; understand their functions; and make friends with them so that you exist as a coherent, integrated whole. Robert Bly says in _A Little Book on the Human Shadow: \"_ But why would we give away, or put into the bag, so much of ourselves? Why would we do it so young? And if we have put away so many of our angers, spontaneities, hungers, enthusiasms, our rowdy and unattractive parts, then how can we live? What holds us together?\" And many of us are not held together very well, but we find ways to compensate and keep going. There is another way.\n\nThe goal is to have facility with interior ego states so that we walk as whole, integrated human beings in the world.\n\nTHE PARENT, ADULT, AND CHILD IN YOU\n\nBerne thought of every individual as being three different people: a Parent, who is the moral consultant and who may be critical, sentimental, or nurturing; a rational, factual Adult who sets up contracts and commitments with other people and says yes or no; and a compliant, rebellious, or spontaneous Child\u2014the instinctual, intuitive aspect of us, the one who \"takes the trip\" in sex and in life. In the sexual arena, her vocabulary consists of \"Wow, that was great!\" (The Child is a natural aphrodisiac.) And in some cases when the Parent or Adult has used bad judgment, \"ugh, ouch, or yuck.\" When I use the term _Child,_ I'm referring to any aspect of ourselves from infancy to about age twelve but truly, the Child never stops growing. It becomes more sophisticated in the world into the teens, twenties, fifties, and old age. I use the terms _ego state, aspect,_ and _part_ interchangeably.\n\nThe Parent ego state is the voice in our head, which also sometimes uses our mouth to say things out loud. It uses words and phrases such as \"Well done,\" \"I'm proud of you,\" \"I'm sorry you got hurt,\" \"You're the greatest.\" The Parent takes two forms, one direct, one indirect or one nurturing (natural) and one critical (adapted). The nurturing Parent is an actual ego state that is _cathected,_ which means you put energy into that ego state so that a person becomes a nurturing parent. The critical Parent is a Child adaptation, not a natural Parent ego state but an indirect influence of the Parent. This one responds the way the real mother or father actually responded\u2014\"Do as I say, not as I do.\"\n\nThe Adult part of us is matter-of-fact and operates very much like a computer, calculating variables of speed, time, space, and outcomes. It tells you when to cross the street and how much speed is needed to cross safely, when to hold 'em or fold 'em, how to analyze outside data for optimum decision making, and how to operate an iPod and MP3 player. The Adult uses words such as _now, wait, need more information, in ten minutes_ \u2014factual statements. It has no interest in maturity but it is interested in accuracy. The Adult mediates objectively between the Parent and the Child.\n\nThere are also two forms of Child: the natural Child and the adapted Child. The Child personality of us is the little boy or little girl we once were. Each of us has a predominant child ego state; in some it may be the four-year-old, in others it may be the two-year-old or nine-month-old. Berne doubts that it is ever older than six years old. When the natural Child is cathected, we are spontaneous and childlike. The Child is the best part of us, the most creative, joy-filled, intimate, loving, just as real children are. The natural Child is best described as the little girl who has an energy coming off her that is magical and magnetic. When she walks into a room and your heart just goes out to her; you're naturally drawn to her. In men, it's the Child that makes them fun, witty, charming, charismatic (I love charisma), and playful. In women, the Child looks very similar: charming, witty, fun, and playful\u2014these are sexy characteristics. It is the Child in us that loves Nature, loves the elements, loves socializing, loves to have fun, loves to feel, to be nurtured, soothed, held, and stroked.\n\nWhen an adapted Child walks into a room, you immediately know there is something off-putting about her. Adapted Children react to their circumstances and their environment by withdrawing, whining, or pouting; they are disagreeable to be around. They are complicit, behaving as mother or father wants them to behave so they tend to take on the voice of their real parents. This behavior masks painful or scared feelings and their inability to deal with the world around them. An adapted Child might say critical things such as, \"You shouldn't have done that,\" \"Stop being so immature,\" \"That was childish,\" \"Don't be ridiculous.\" Berne says, \"The Parental influence is the cause, and the adapted Child the effect.\n\nTHE PREDATOR INSIDE\n\nAnother part of us, not specifically identified by Berne in his model, is the Predator. Human beings are a predator species with a capacity for unkindness, and cruelty. As Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross was told by a young Jewish woman, a Holocaust survivor who had lost all her brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, \"The Nazis taught me this, there is a Hitler inside each of us, and if we do not come to terms with the Hitler inside us, the violence will never cease.\"*2 Each of us has a Predator living inside, a Mr. Hyde who is the worst in us, and until we face the predator inside, it will always lurk in the murky backwaters of our psyche planning a way out. There is a part of each of us that has wanted, may still want, to cause harm to something or someone. It has tremendous energy, often driven by unresolved anger about a perceived injustice, a discount to the Child, a recent lie told to you by a friend that you have stuffed inside yourself. Or this part may be driven by archaic rage\u2014a deep-seated anger that has been fermenting and bubbling inside you while you've been holding onto something from the distant past. Rage is the kind of anger that the Predator can really sink its hooks into. When motivated by archaic rage, the predator may lob bombs at the person who originally caused you harm or at someone who in some way resembles the original perpetrator. Left unattended, either unresolved anger or archaic rage will result in bitterness, resentment, and soul sickness.\n\nThe human Predator takes two forms\u2014the natural Predator and the adapted Predator\u2014and comes in all sizes. The natural Predator has an ecological function within our structure. Its job is to be alert to danger that may threaten its survival. When life is going along swimmingly with the current, everything seems to be in order, and the Universe is gracing you with relatively calm seas, the Predator relaxes its watch some. Then suddenly the winds pick up and the current becomes rough; the Predator is alerted to danger and engages its 360-degree radar for incoming trouble. Its function is to fight for your life either by hunting for food, a job, or a mate or by defending your life and property, your rights, and your dignity. It fights for what is rightfully yours. When we fail to integrate and work with our natural Predator we become easy prey, falling victim to crime, abuse, theft, financial scams.\n\nHuman beings are carnivores by nature, vegetarian by choice. We have pointed eyeteeth that we expose when we open our mouths to eat meat or vegetables or to smile. We are hunters of the animal order. We have an innate Predator and when that part is integrated its actions feel completely congruent and fluid, in the natural order of things.\n\nThe adapted Predator is another unfavorable adaptation of the Child. The threatened Child can take on and express adapted aspects of the Predator in the same way that a repressed Child expresses the critical Parent. The adapted Predator is the part of us that tears legs off spiders, clear-cuts forests, wages war, kicks dogs, or squashes bugs when there is another option. When given an outlet through hunting animals, whether for sport or food, the natural Predator (the hunter) is given release. When the Predator is afraid it lashes out in an attempt to protect itself. The adapted Predator is learned in childhood when our parents yell at us or strike us. The watching part of us wakes up and begins to look out for danger in the world around us. The Child learns how to attack when it's scared or mad. When our Child feels scared in intimate relationships it's apt to attack the other person in the way that it was attacked when young, which effectively shuts down intimacy. Often what happens is the Predator in the recipient attacks back. Then there is a real relationship mess.\n\nAdapted Predators have not learned how to get their needs met without resorting to games or attacking others; they believe that the world is full of dangers and that people have ill intent. There are power issues involved; adapted Predators want power and control over others and over their environment, and they'll use manipulation to get it. Those who prey on the elderly or the poor for financial gain are expressing the adapted Predator. They'll engage in insurance scams and Ponzi schemes in a misguided effort to come out on top. This type of Predator has no sense of empathy, no connection between themselves and their prey. They see people only as an external means to an end. The adapted Predator is one who has not learned how to get its needs met without causing damage and feels there is no other recourse available when the Parent and Adult are not supplying critical information or tending to fears and terrors about survival.\n\nIntimacy with self requires that we be willing to see each part of ourselves for what it is. Not just the bright, shiny, generous, loving, funny parts, but also the parts that have been hidden, denied, imagined not to exist, overshadowed, and, yes, especially, the parts of you that you have hated and come to resent and be fearful of. Being willing to see the goodness in me was almost as difficult as it was to see that I am certainly capable of being an asshole. We all have a part of us that has lashed out at a loved one or a store clerk or has had temper tantrums. When the pressure of stress builds to the boiling point, it's often the Predator that takes over. There are things that feed the Predator, that arm it with a sword or loaded gun or the verbal equivalent of each. Resentment, jealousy, unresolved anger, deep grief, and shame are some of them. Sometimes, it takes the form of the sexual predator. It prowls nightclubs and dance halls, hunting its prey. Sex isn't always its goal; the game of seduction is. Sex as the goal depends on how serious the player is.\n\nWe're all capable of it. It took some time, but I was finally willing to truly see that part in myself. Then to own it, make a relationship with it, and set limits on its behavior. I have been unkind, and I have hurt people I love and care about. A teacher told me once that there are two kinds of people: assholes and those who know they are assholes. I believed that was true. I also believed that I was a third kind\u2014I wasn't an asshole. Eventually, it came time to own up.\n\nI liked to think I was unkind unintentionally, but the truth is when the Predator is kept in the bag of shadow, it intends to cause hurt. Until I could come to terms with that truth, with the Predator in me, with this capacity to be unkind, I couldn't trust myself. Until I owned this part of me that was unclear, terrified, and strictly interested in survival, I couldn't stop watching, knowing that part could be let loose in the world.\n\nWe've all done something that inflicted some hurt on someone. My sister has a part that, when she was young, used to bite kittens' ears. Thankfully she stopped biting the ears of kittens, but whether she has acknowledged and integrated the Predator part of her is unknown to me. When my brother's girlfriend came to visit for the first time when they were sixteen (they've been married ever since), I, who was seven years younger, watched in horror as she delightedly pulled the legs off a daddy longlegs. This wasn't simply benign curiosity, I could tell by her skill and focus that she had done it before.\n\nWhen my granddaughters at ages nine and six came to visit me one time, it took no time at all to discover their new catch-all phrase: \"It was an accident.\" The first and second time they used it, I let it ride. When I noticed it was becoming a habit and realized they were using the phrase to conveniently excuse some behavior, I had to talk about it. Going unconscious is not an acceptable behavior for me. Nor, dear one, is hitting your little sister an accident. Words don't fall out of our mouths, nor do our hands of their own volition strike at someone accidentally or without intention. The words come out, the hand moves through the air because we've gone unconscious and some part of us that intended to say those words noticed that we went unconscious and took advantage of the moment.\n\nRudeness has become an acceptable violent behavior. We in the Western world seem to be much too willing to shrug off a comment, a behavior, ours or others, as accidents or \"I didn't mean to\" or \"It wasn't my intention.\" This is a significant part of the problem in our world, in our relationships to others and to ourselves. Discounting a person's dignity and lying have become acceptable codes of conduct. Violence begins in our thoughts and is then is expressed in our speech. It escalates to behaviors. If you choose to take on this work and let it change you, you will be in a minority.\n\n _[W]hat is imposed on you from outside is of no value whatever. It doesn't count._\n\nBERTRAND RUSSELL\n\nJust because there is an invitation to incite a riot is no reason to incite a riot. Unkindness does not need to be met with unkindness. What happens \"out there\" is none of our business. What we do with external events that impact us on the inside is of consequence. How we respond, what choices we make, what behaviors we choose are, most certainly, our business. In spite of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we are free to act decisively one way or another. Ultimate freedom is reserved to each human being. How we respond to unchanging conditions and environments is the test of human character. When our soul is fragmented, when we have not found the meaning of our lives, we are powerless and unable to access what Viktor Frankl called \"the defiant power of the human spirit.\"\n\nGandhi had the Predator in him; the difference is he was aware of its existence and worked to keep it from acting out in a way that caused damage. He used its energy to effect change. He may have even given it a new job description, one that would support his work of _ahimsa_. Reading his autobiography, you hear the rage against injustices that he transmuted into a voice of authority to be reckoned with. And he was quite clear that nonviolence is not synonymous with passivity. To be nonviolent requires thought, decisions, and action. Just as there is a Hitler inside us, there is also a Gandhi; we have the capacity for great compassion, forgiveness, truth, and jusice.\n\n _Personal change and the ability to bring about social change are linked. There is no use striving to implement principles such as nonviolence or justice in public affairs as long as one neglects them in one's personal life._\n\nGANDHI,  \n _G ANDHI: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY_\n\nACKNOWLEDGING ALL OF YOU\n\nHaving a Predator inside does not make you a bad person. It's as much a part of your nature as the Child, the Parent, and the Adult. The degree to which you are unwilling to become conscious of the Predator and give it a new job description will determine how frequently and to what degree you let the Predator control your behavior. You cannot alter its behavior if you are unaware of its existence. It's really a matter of self-awareness and setting limits on acting-out behaviors. The Predator is activated when the grown-up or Adult part of you is not paying attention in situations that threaten the Predator's survival. The Predator is interested only in surviving.\n\nThese are not roles we play but ecological and psychological realities. The voices we hear in our head are actual people. It is in your best interest to cultivate relationships with these parts of you; acknowledge them or not, integrate them or not, they are with you for the rest of your life. Ignoring these parts or pretending they don't exist will cause you added grief, and the tremendous sources of energy, creativity, wise council, and personal power these states provide will be unavailable to you.\n\nEveryone has a sense of these many states, but rarely do we take it much further and really look at what it means. We have all heard ourselves or a friend say: \"One part of me wants to do this and another part wants to do this other thing.\" The meditations and exercises in this book will help you get to know who those parts are, and then how to work with competing wants and needs.\n\nThe crucial things in interior work are:\n\n  1. Identify the ego states. Who is talking, poking at me inside, trying to get my attention?\n  2. Free any that are repressed or locked away. We live in a culture that does not support being a fully functioning, self-possessed, confident human being. We live in a Prozac nation, a culture that bombards us from infancy with messages that tell us feeling is bad and talking about feeling is worse.\n  3. Understand their function. Each ego state may or may not know what its function is. Or its function may need to be redirected to another area, given a new job, so it has a place to put its energy into what supports all of you.\n  4. Make friends with them. This takes time and a commitment on your part to work with them daily. There will be parts of yourself that you do not want to see, do not want to even acknowledge exist, much less make friends with. All the more important to accept and befriend them.\n\n _[T]he child is the forerunner of humanity\u2014forerunner in the sense that the child is the possessor of all those traits which, when healthily developed, lead to a healthy and fulfilled human being and thus to a healthy and fulfilled humanity._\n\nASHLEY MONTAGU,  \n _G ROWING YOUNG_\n\n  **MEDITATION**    \n**I've Been Waiting for You**\n\nSet aside about thirty minutes to do this meditation. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed; ask family members not to interrupt you during this time. Turn off your cell phone. Eliminate as many distractions as you can. Create a place with soft lighting and a comfortable place to sit: it's best if you're not lying down. Settle into an overstuffed chair or make a nest of pillows and blankets on the floor to support you so that you feel held and nurtured. Have a journal and pen close by, but not on your lap. (Note: You may want to first record the following instructions, allowing pauses between questions, and listen to them the first time or two you do this exercise.)\n\nNow, close your eyes, letting them rest into the back of your head. Take some deep breaths: inhaling deeply, filling your lungs, your diaphragm, and hold it, hold it, hold it. Exhale completely. Again. And one more time.\n\nSee standing in front of you the Child that you once were. Just see her there. Notice everything about her. What is she wearing? What's her posture? Is she looking at you? Does she seem happy? Is she sad?\n\nHow do you feel seeing her? Will she make eye contact with you? Ask her if she has anything she wants to say to you. Is there anything you want to say to her? Ask her if you can give her a hug. If yes, then for real, reach out your arms and hold her to you. Bring her so close to you that your arms are wrapped completely around your shoulders. Hold your child and yourself close for a few moments. Notice how you feel.\n\nWhen you are ready, thank your Child for coming to be with you. Bring yourself back to where you are sitting, pick up your journal, and write down everything you saw and felt and what she said. Do you like her? Are you comfortable with her? Uncomfortable? There is much information embedded in your response to seeing her. It will give you insights into how and why you have felt the way you have about yourself for many years.\n\nBEGINNINGS ARE SUCH DELICATE TIMES\n\nAnything can happen in this first meeting. You may see your Child clearly or just have a sense of her. For some, the first meeting will be easy. There may be a sense of homecoming, spontaneous joy, and love when you first meet. For those whose denied Child has been put away so deeply and for so long, the work will be difficult. She may be upset that it's been so long since you've spent time with her. She may refuse to look at you. She may have pain to share with you and stories to tell you, happy ones and sad ones. There may be a lot of energy in what she has to say as she's been waiting a long time for you to ask to see her. As well, the reunion may be genuinely joyful.\n\nThere is the story of Carl Jung as he was going through his middle years. He was sitting on the shores of Lake Zurich building sand castles and playing with toy figures, shaping stones, giving neglected regions of his psyche room to be. He knew that \"when we are stuck we are saved by what is within.\"\n\nBeginnings are delicate times. Your Child will be watching to see if you will show up again and want to spend time with her. She may not trust grown-ups, and you are a grown-up. It's important to develop the relationship at her pace, and I suggest you do this work with her daily so trust can begin to be fostered. If she asks you to do something, take it seriously; do not make agreements you are unwilling or unable to keep. That will do more damage than saying, \"I'm sorry, I'm unable to do that. Is there something else that would work for you?\" Offer an alternative that will tend to her need or want. Learning the art of negotiation will be very helpful, for children will ask for things that in the moment you may not be able to deliver. Negotiate time frames or treats. If you ask her to do something she doesn't want to do, take into account that she may want a reward afterward. Ask her what she needs in return. Spending time with your Child and letting her have her wants and needs will bring you more joy and confidence than anything else you could do.\n\nIntimacy depends on freeing up the Child, letting her have her voice and giving her a place to be alive and out loud in the world. To have true and deep intimacy with another human being, you must have true and deep intimacy with yourself. Get to know yourself, reclaim parts of you that have been shut away, repressed, alienated, and marginalized. This is the beginning of the journey to wholeness, of being an integrated, whole human being. This is more important than I can say. It's awkward, and in the beginning, it may seem silly or stupid, even. This work has the power to change your life, to heal wounds, to empower you to speak truth to power. This work\u2014and it is hard work that takes a lot of practice\u2014gets to the core of you, the truth of you, so you can live a life filled with meaning.\n\n _I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself._\n\nALDOUS HUXLEY\n\nFrom this position of empowerment and strength, no one can tell you what your truth is, or tell you to do or be anything but what you know is in you to do or be.\n\nThe child is the major source of energy. I have clients do this work and have seen physiological changes occur before my eyes. It's not unusual to feel different, feel happier, have more hope, and feel less alone even after the first meeting with your Child.\n\nThis relationship is real. The Child of you, the little girl of you is real, and she has been waiting for you to show up for her. It's important to talk over your goals and options with your Child. Include her in the process. If you make a relationship with your Child and then leave her out of your planning, she can and will likely make your life difficult and disruptive. If your Child is not aligned with your goals, you are going to have trouble achieving them. Children are clever at getting you to take notice. If the Child is not worked with consciously, she will break through; once she has tasted freedom, her only goal, if she is ignored, is to get out. She has no investment then in keeping your life orderly if you betray her trust.\n\n _If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you._\n\nTHE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS\n\n ** MEDITATION   \nStarting at the Beginning**\n\nLet's take this deeper still. Return to your sitting place as before and begin again with deep breathing and relaxation. This time, see lying in front of you on the floor, the Infant of you. How does she look? Is she breathing? What color is her skin? Is she moving? How do you feel seeing your Infant? Pick up your Infant, swaddle her in your arms at your breast, and let her nurse. Notice whether you held her in your left or right arm. Allow yourself to experience how the two of you feel being together. Really see her. How does it feel to feed the Infant of you? Let anything you feel rise to the surface. Wrap your love and caring around her as you nurse. Gaze into her eyes and notice the mothering instinct awaken inside you. Notice the degree of hunger she has. Tell her you are glad that she was born.\n\nWhen you are ready, put her down and pick up your journal. Write down everything that happened and everything you felt. Many people feel a sensation in their breasts while nursing their Infant. It's extraordinary, really.\n\nBoth men and women are able to do this meditation. It is as important for men as well to nurse their Infant. Men have mammary glands just the same as women, and there are several instances, historical and recent, where men have either nursed their own children or become wet nurses for surrogate or adopted children.*3 The greatest, most immediate benefit to nursing, for both men and women, is that it begins the emotional bonding of nurturing Parent to Infant, of you to yourself. Nursing your Infant is awkward at first, but it is imperative to bonding with yourself. Occasionally an Infant will look withdrawn, pale, even lifeless or blue. It can be alarming. Trust that you can bring more life to her. Breathe the life and love gently into her. Hold her near you as you fall asleep and again when you wake up in the morning.*4\n\n **Who Makes These Changes?**\n\n _Who makes these changes?_\n\n _I shoot an arrow right._\n\n _It lands left._\n\n _I ride after a deer and find myself_\n\n _Chased by a hog._\n\n _I plot to get what I want_\n\n _And end up in prison._\n\n _I dig pits to trap others_\n\n _And fall in._\n\n _I should be suspicious_\n\n _Of what I want._\n\nRUMI,  \nTRANSLATED BY COLEMAN BARKS\n\nTHE COUNCIL WITHIN\n\n _Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable._\n\nBUCKMINSTER FULLER\n\nWorking with our Child and Infant is the beginning of knowing the multifaceted personality that we are. There are many ego states and personalities inside of us. As human beings, we have been given an elaborate and fascinating inner guidance system.\n\n ** MEDITATION   \nMeeting the Council Members**\n\nBegin as you did with the first meditation, getting comfortable in a quiet place with your journal and pen nearby. Go through a few cycles of deep breathing and relaxation exercises.\n\nSee yourself standing in a forest glade. It's a warm summer day, and there is a slight breeze rustling the leaves. Sunlight is filtering through the canopy, and you watch the dance of light and shadow on the forest floor. You notice a path beneath your feet, and you begin to walk along it. Eventually, the path leads out of the forest into a small meadow of wildflowers and grasses. Following the path down a meadow hill, you come to a stream. There are a few stones placed just so, and you are able to easily step across the stream to the other bank. You walk a few paces on the path along the stream and see just up ahead a one-room structure. Walk to the front door and step inside. Notice everything about this room. Take note of the round table in the middle of the room. How does the room feel? Is there a source of light? Where is it coming from? Take your time noticing; no need to hurry. It's taken awhile for you to arrive at this place. There are chairs, some around the table, some along the wall. Beings are there in that room. Some of them are standing; some are sitting in chairs.\n\nLet your gaze travel the room noticing all who are there. How do you feel seeing them? Are they looking at you? How many of them are there? Do you recognize any of them? Ask them if they have anything they want to say to you. Pay attention to what they are saying to you and how it feels to hear their words. Is there anything you want to say to them, to the members of your inner council, in response?\n\nIt's nearly time to leave. Thank them for being here and talking with you. Do not make any promises or agreements unless you are certain you will keep them. They take these things seriously. Breaking agreements with any members of your inner council exacts a cost.\n\nLeave through the door and step on the trail upstream to the crossing. Pick up the trail and head up the hill through the meadow and back into the forest to where you began. When you are ready, bring yourself back to the place you are sitting. Pick up your journal and write down everything that happened and all that was said.\n\nEvery age you have been and will be is inside you\u2014the child ego state, the teenager, the young adult, the middle-aged adult. You also have inside you your own internal mother and father, your self-nurturing parents. The elder you will become is there too, as well as your future self. You don't have to wait to be that age to give them an active part and voice in your life. There are many times you may need to call on an elder from your inner council for the kind of grounded, mature advice only an elder can offer. We have nonhuman allies too. Some of us may have plant and animal allies. Anyone and anything can show up in our inner council. There are no rules here. Work with any of them individually as you need to.\n\nSome people I've worked with had characters from _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ and another from _Star Trek_. Some members are lifetime guides, and others may show up for a short time to help us through some growth period. I recently had the main character from an Elizabeth Moon novel spontaneously show up while I was in council. She's the captain of a space vessel. \"Kylara Vatta, what are you doing here?\" I asked, in surprise. \"I'm your new captain,\" she announced, smiling. Indeed, I have called on her several times when in need of her particular strengths of quick analysis and decisiveness\u2014strengths that only a captain possesses. If you need someone or a specific teacher to be on your inner council, ask that being from within your council if he or she would be willing to be a member, or call them in. They are similar in function to a board of directors in a corporate body whose mission ideally is the integrity and wholeness of the corporation. I've also enlisted single aspects, certain characteristics that I needed or wanted to have incorporated into my personality. I wanted Spenser from the Robert Parker novels to be on my inner council and Jay from Michelle West's _Hunter's Death_ and _The Hidden City._ I have called on them at times when I felt their particular virtues were needed.\n\nFINDING THE NURTURING PARENT\n\nIf you don't have a good model for a nurturing Parent, find someone you consider fills that role. We all need good models, mentoring in how to be a human being. As examples, Andy Griffith from the forty-year-old television series, the _Andy Griffith Show,_ Jean-Luc Picard from _Star Trek_ 's _Next Generation,_ and the most famous nurturing, wise, compassionate father of all (in my humble opinion), Harper Lee's Atticus Finch. He's strong, yet tender, and willing to stand up for what he believes. Richard Farnsworth in _Anne of Green Gables_ stole my heart with the warm knowing twinkle in his eyes. My favorite has been Fred MacMurray who played Steve Douglas, the father in _My Three Sons._ I couldn't wait to watch that television show when I was growing up. For thirty minutes, several days a week, I would completely lose myself in that world. Mr. Douglas was my father\u2014or the father I wanted. He was kind, funny, compassionate, strong in his values and beliefs, tender, and nurturing. Uncle Charley was curmudgeonly and scared me a little. He masked his nurturing side under the facade of tough love. Tough love is not nurturing; it's tough love.\n\nAs for female role models, it's been a challenge to find comparable traits in female characters, to find actresses who exemplify the combination of compassion, nurturing, and strength. I am tempted to call on Harper Lee herself and Ethel Barrymore. Aunt Bee in the _Andy Griffith Show,_ was matronly, loving, and doting, though I prefer a little more softness and less \"parent.\" And there was some attractive nurturing energy about Gloria Stuart when she played the elderly Rose in _Titanic_ that made me want to be in her presence.\n\nYou can get a sense of what a nurturing Parent looks and feels like. Many of us grow up lacking a consistent nurturing parent. Most of the parents I know are critical; they mask their strength and compassion by being critical and stern. Nurturing Parent role models and the ones you create or call on inside yourself possess genuine caring. You must know yourself well enough so that anything hidden or repressed is cleared up, healed, and not left to contaminate the nurturing part of you.\n\nRECOGNIZING AND INTEGRATING ALL THE PARTS OF YOU\n\nRigorous self-examination describes the process of interior work. You must be able to notice, account for, and be accountable to each part of you that lives within. The more you work with these parts, hear their voices, and understand each one's gifts and virtues and what each can bring to your life, the more whole and integrated you will become, the more alive you will feel, and the more mastery you will have over your life. When all of your inner council can make a decision together, in agreement with one another, the more ease and less drama you will have in your life.\n\nYour heart must be in this\u2014a deep desire and dedication to knowing yourself, to awakening your latent powers of intuition, motive force and creativity. You have a right to do this work, to be whole and happy in yourself and your relationships. And if there is to be any salvation for the human species, each of us must do this work. Now, without delay. Gaining facility with interior ego states takes time, devotion, and practice. But it won't cost you hundreds of dollars and time in therapy sessions, and the effects are immediate, the rewards innumerable.\n\n _All that we have ever been and all that we ever need to be is known in the eternal place inside ourselves where all is quiet._\n\nRAM DASS\n\n _From this moment I am prepared to control whatever personality awakes in me each day. . . . Today I control my destiny . . . I will become master of myself. I will become great._\n\nOG MANDINO SCROLL VI\n\nThe goal of this work is to exist as a coherent, integrated whole. Understand that any ego state can emerge at any time it is needed. In the interior world, all these ego states are interacting whether you are aware of them or not. Sometimes they interact well; often they are in conflict. In the exterior human world, people's many ego states are interacting with each other, sometimes well, often not so well. When they interact well, your life in those moments flows smoothly.\n\nCulturally, pressure exists to locate consciousness in the brain and the adult ego state. In actuality, consciousness is limited to no particular part of the body and no particular ego state. Consciousness can become habituated to body location or ego state by restricting it to particular locations like the adult ego state in the brain. The most fundamental ego state is the Child.\n\n _Being a human being\u2014in the sense of being born to the human species\u2014must be defined also in terms of becoming a human being . . . a baby is only potentially a human being, and must grow into humanness in the society and the culture, the family._\n\nABRAHAM MASLOW, _M OTIVATION AND PERSONALITY_\n\n _What is important to me is not the truth outside myself, but the truth within me._\n\nKONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY\n\nDEVELOPING CHILD-TO-CHILD INTIMACY\n\nAll of this work with interior ego states is important in the context of sacred sex because of the nature of relationship and intimacy. The point of this work is to get to a place of actively noticing your interior world and to then be able to notice your partner's. The more elegant you become with your own interior world, the more intuitive you will become and the more present you can be with your lover. The Child in you understands the nature of sex; she has been pleasuring herself since she was developed enough in the womb to move her hands to her genitals.\n\nBerne describes intimacy as \"a candid Child to Child relationship with no games and no mutual exploitation.\" To get to the place of Child-to-Child relating, a sequence of things happens inside each participant. The Adult assesses the situation, reads the contracts, and commitments to each, and once this is all understood by the Child, the Adult retreats to the background yet continues to monitor the agreements and is in charge of keeping the Parent from interfering and spoiling the fun. Once the Parent is out of the way, the Child becomes freer to engage in spontaneous and fun-filled intimacy. Ideally, the Parent gives its blessing and encouragement, freeing the child of any fear of intimacy and reducing any possible feelings of guilt.\n\nYou can check this out yourself when you embark on an intimate relationship. Listen carefully to the voices inside you, and you will hear the Child exclaiming excitement at the possibility and the Adult reading over the commitments and any reservations or cautions the Parent may be inserting into the conversation. It can happen fairly quickly, so be attentive, but even after the moment has passed you can replay it and slow it down to see what took place.\n\nAs you become sensitized to subtle shifts in your interior world, you will become more attuned to shifts in your partner. You'll recognize the Child in him and be able to communicate directly with that Child. Just as you did when you began to work with the Child in you, there will be a time of trust building and finding your way together. It's quite natural for the Child in him to see the Child in you being happy and present in the relationship, even if on a conscious level he's unaware of it happening. You'll see the changes he's going through, the ego states he moves through, so you can match yours with his.\n\nRemember when you were fifteen years old and you met a boy. The attraction, the awkwardness, the spontaneity, the giggles, the explorations, and the energy of that fifteen-year-old is still there and can be part of your current relationship. Use that energy to bring freshness to the relationship as you become good friends, exploring the world together with wonder and curiosity. Sixteen-year-old ego states are much more daring and exploratory with sex and each other's bodies. It's exciting and clumsy and potent.\n\n _It is vital to see that everything is attended to, lest something goes unattended._\n\nThe difference between sex and lovemaking is that in the latter, we tend to be the most unshielded, the most vulnerable and childlike. It is the Child who knows no distance, no space between desire and action. Sacred sex can be the catalyst for healing the wounds of our birth and our family of origin. It can heal sexual trauma, shame, and disgust. Because sacred sex happens in the arms of love, compassion, and intimacy, it becomes a portal, a threshold between what was and what can be. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. Sometimes I'll ask my lover to fuck me and make love to me at the same time.\n\n _Stepping through to the other side can be frightening._\n\nIt is the Child part of us who decides whether or not someone can be trusted. Respect comes from the Adult, after the Child gives her permission. The Child is always monitoring relationships and situations. She is the one who decides whether or not she likes someone, likes their smell and the sound of their voice. She is highly sensitive to the slightest perturbations, affronts, discounts, and all manner of meanings coming to her from the world; other people and relationships are part of the world.\n\nWhen there is a strong foundation of trust between you and your Child and your Child and your partner, very young ego states may take the opportunity to emerge at will. For the health of that ego state, for healing to happen, it's critical to notice in yourself and in your lover when this is happening. Memories, pictures, visions, smells, and words\u2014communications in various forms\u2014will arise spontaneously to the conscious mind. Follow whatever is happening without censoring. Let them speak, cry, wail, laugh, ask questions. Inside yourself, have the older, nurturing part of you witness and be present with her without interfering. That little one needs to know you are tending to her, companioning her, holding her, hearing her. She needs to know that the grown-up of you is with her and she is not alone inside.\n\nAs wounds begin to open up and the child shows herself\u2014her fears, what she didn't understand long ago (\"Why are grown-ups so mean?\")\u2014you do well to have answers for her. It's all right to not know all the answers; it's not all right to lie about them. Examples of responses are: \"I don't know why grown-ups are mean. Sometimes people get scared, and they don't know what else to do and being mean makes them feel safe.\" \"You know sweetie, your father was not a good person. And I'm sorry he was unkind, but he's not here now, and he can't hurt you anymore.\" \"I wish I could shield you from all the ugliness of the world, but that can never be.\" If you know the truth, say the truth. Primarily, the Child needs to know that you are hearing her and that she can ask for and say what she needs to. Children are children, inside you or born from your loins. Answer their questions without evasion. Children can spot evasion faster than adults so don't confuse them.\n\nAs the Child emerges, there will often be subtle changes in voice, eye movement, word choices, or cadence of speech. It's not unusual for a two-year-old ego state, for example, to emerge. Remember having a conversation with a two-year-old you've known. They don't use big words. Often speech is rapid if there is excitement, slower if there is fear or shyness, and the voice may be nearly a whisper. The more you work with each one, the more you'll come to recognize who is presenting herself. The deeper you are willing to go, the more focused you can be in this work, the more you will come to know yourself, understand yourself, be intimate with yourself, and, thus, be intimate with anyone or anything you wish.\n\nBefore I was deep into this work on myself, I cherished early mornings together with a former lover. It was in those quiet, soft moments, as the sweetness of sleep is drifting away, before full alertness takes hold, when he wasn't fully awake and hadn't yet had time to put up defenses, that he had that little boy, sleepy look on his face. It was then that he was his most vulnerable, sweet, available, spontaneous, and natural childlike self. And so was I. The beauty of this work is that it allows you to enter those states at will at any time and in any place. One day, you'll be moving about your business and suddenly notice that it is the Child of you who is out in the world as the primary ego state.\n\n _And, ah, what joyful ease overcomes you._\n\nYou don't have to be a psychotherapist or a trained mental health professional to do this work. All that is required is that you _do_ the work. We all walk around with unexamined beliefs, prejudices, and assumptions that impact our ability to be intimate, to be real, to be compassionate, to be free. Those unexamined psychological structures contaminate our reading of the map and ultimately the territory of the sacred.\n\nIt helps to read and have resources available. Children (I'm referring to the ones inside you in this instance) love having information; they are hungry for it. They need it to navigate the world, to help make sense of things. If I read a book that is helpful, I go immediately to the bibliography and order anything that catches my eye. I love books; the Child in me loves books. They are friends and teachers, bedtime companions, and trips to other galaxies, other worlds, and the world of fantasy.\n\nI want to clarify a fine point in all this, and that is, if you were to walk around saying, \"my child needs this, my child wants that,\" you may not get the outcome you're expecting. That's what dissociation is. The distinction is _you_ are the one who is responsible for hearing what your Child needs and wants. It's up to you, to use your power to get needs met, to speak on her behalf; you do the work of integration. To use the above phrases as a habit diminishes your power, puts responsibility where it doesn't belong, and will likely irritate the people around you. It's fine to say \"What my Child needs is . . .\" in intimate relationships, especially if there has been a betrayal of some sort.\n\nCROSS TRANSACTIONS\n\nTo understand how ego states interact requires an understanding of transactions. Spending a little time on this will help you understand how communications can go sour and how to avoid it in the future. Eric Berne describes this process in detail in _Games People Play_ and _Sex in Human Loving._ They are worth looking at, if for no other reason than the clarity of the diagrams. As stated earlier, there are three main ego states in each human being: the Child, the Adult, and the Parent. Healthy or straight-across transactions can be described as Child to Child, Adult to Adult, and Parent to Parent. Cross transactions occur, for example, when the Child in one person initiates a conversation or movement and the other person responds from the Adult or Parent ego state.\n\nInitiator (Child): \"I want to play the box drum. It looks like so much fun.\"\n\nRespondent (Parent): \"I'd be glad to buy you one if you agree to play an hour a day with me.\"\n\nChild: \"Um, OK. I can do that, that would be fun.\"\n\nParent: \"I'm serious. I don't want it to sit in your closet like your guitar.\"\n\nUh-huh. Feel that? The Child feels chastised, shamed, and heartbroken. At once, all the fun, excitement, and anticipation of having a drum and playing music with her friend are dashed. She no longer has any interest in playing music with him in any way, shape, or form.\n\nThe Child's initial response of \"Um, OK\" indicated a thoughtful processing of the condition that was put on the gift of the drum: \"If you'll play an hour a day with me.\" She decided that the one hour a day was agreeable and within her parameters of fun. Then came the critical Parent's voice out of her friend's mouth, sucking all the energy out of the room. The Child felt hurt, ashamed, and deeply disappointed: Her friend was mad at her for not playing the guitar and told her it was unacceptable behavior to let the guitar sit in the closet. But it wasn't her friend's voice she heard, it was her mother's voice, or it could be her father's voice\u2014the voice of the Parent\u2014telling her that her behavior wasn't acceptable and to be acceptable you have to do it this other way. To prevent an old pattern of responding with \"Fuck you,\" or holding onto feeling ashamed and being mad at a betrayal of friendship, she went to her friend and still from the Child ego state said, \"Are you mad at me for not playing the guitar regularly?\" The friend is taken aback as he realizes what he had said and responds by saying, \"No, sweetie, no, I'm not mad at you. I'm so sorry I sounded like I was criticizing you, and I understand why you'd feel that way, but no, I'm not mad at you. I'm so sorry, I apologize. It's your guitar; you can play it or not. I really want to play music with you, and I know how busy you are, and I would be heartbroken if we couldn't.\" He went on: \"Are we OK? Do you need anything from me?\"\n\nThe apology was genuine; the Child heard it and felt its sincerity. Moreover, the Child felt heard and cared for. Because the Child trusted her friend and wanted to feel close again, she went to him undefended. Disaster was averted, shame disrupted, and trust and intimacy restored.\n\nWhen we are whole in ourselves, undefended, and willing to maintain trust and intimacy, then we are able to make decisions from a place of wholeness.\n**4**\n\n _ **The Numinous**_\n\n_Numinous: of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a numen. Evoking awe or reverence, as the presence of something holy or divine. Irrational; mysterious, inscrutable. The numinous is the part of spiritual and sacred experience that is characterized by feelings of fascination and awe._\n\n _Sacred: set apart or dedicated to religious use; hallowed; pertaining or related to deity, religion, or hallowed places or things. Consecrated or dedicated to a person or purpose; entitled to reverence or respect; not to be profaned; inviolable._\n\n _T HE READER'S DIGEST  \nGREAT ENCYCLOPEDIC DICTIONARY_\n\nIn all Neolithic, Paleolithic, primitive, and indigenous cultures around the world, life was infused with the sacred, the numinous, a sense of other. Reality for those people, and for many modern people today, was a blending of the holy in all they did. What Western culture considers profane, daily acts\u2014such as eating, having sex, preparing food, and building houses\u2014were, for ancient, indigenous, and primitive peoples, enacted with a sense of the pervasive invisible world around them. To them, the invisible world was sacred; spirit was revered, accounted for, and brought into daily acts.\n\nThe sacred in daily life was not a project, not a means to an end, but a pathway given freely from divine grace and a pathway, as well, leading to divine grace. It took into conscious consideration the intricate weaving together of human and nonhuman, physical and nonphysical, seen and unseen, soul and spirit. The life of the senses breathed the sacred into mundane acts, birthing a life inseparable from anything inside or outside us. The concept of outside was inconceivable as the sacred wove the physical and nonphysical worlds together into a cohesive whole.\n\nSHAKEN BY THE NUMINOUS\n\nIn 1957 Mircea Eliade wrote _The Sacred and the Profane,_ in which he described the world we now live in as having two separate realities. Religious people believe in, have experiences with, and orient their lives with a sense of the _hierophanies,_ that is, the physical manifestation of the holy. \"But for the primitive, such an act is never simply physiological; it is, or can become a sacrament, that is, a communion with the sacred.\" Nonreligious people reduce daily acts as mundane and simply physiological. And the cosmos becomes a place to conquer, reducing life-forms to mathematical and scientific studies as well as a place for dissecting the parts in order to grasp the reality of the whole. But is it possible to live a life that is wholly and completely desacralized?\n\nA lot has changed and transpired since Eliade wrote in 1957, and it would appear that, in fact, it is possible to live without a relationship to the sacred or a sense of anything manifesting holy virtues. Our world order, governments, and secular and religious institutions are seeped in deceit, secrecy, and abuse of power. But these things are nothing new; they have been happening since man created the state as an organizational structure. Eliade gives examples of \"crypto-religious\" behavior on the part of the nonreligious man.\n\nThere are for example, privileged places, qualitatively different from all others\u2014a man's birthplace, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the \"holy places\" of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality _other_ than that in which he participates through ordinary daily life.\n\nI suspect, also, there are moments of profound, extraordinary sexual experiences that touch and move nonreligious people. The sacred and numinous know no boundaries conjured up by humanity's belief or nonbelief in their existence. The Earth quakes in laughter at our absurd religious doctrines and our tendency to draw physical and invisible lines. Lines that cut us off from sources of life-affirming mystery, from each other, from our birth-given, soul-charged experiences of intimacy. We humans have become our own sacred clowns, but we refuse to see our own joke. Listen closely in the still of the night; you'll hear coyote laughing.\n\nOur world, the world of man and woman, of Homo sapiens, is a dendritic spiraling pattern weaving us in, around, and through the (mostly) invisible matrix that holds our very existence tenuously intact. It is arrogant to believe we can render the strands of connection nonexistent. It is possible for some to deny and be unaware of their presence. It is possible to live with no acknowledgement or place for them in one's life.\n\nEven for the nonreligious man, an awakening, an epiphany occurs in desperate situations or during a crisis, altering the sense of reality at once. Times of feeling utterly helpless when our children are seriously ill, a parent is dying, or a life-threatening disease or accident befalls us. It is in these times that a door inside, a portal to the Great Mystery, is revealed, and we, by chance of circumstance, see the way through, see a new chance, a glimmer of hope, as we feel the influence of some invisible force at work in our crisis. A desperate clinging to life, ours or another's, aborts previously held beliefs, and we grasp for the nearest raft that may prolong life.\n\nAs if waking from a deep sleep or comatose state, we see reality with new eyes. What was previously hidden from view by our own making is present and palpable. At least for a while, if not permanently, the person we were has morphed into someone who has become aware of being woven into mystery. Whatever the reason, our prayers were heard, the medicine worked, the rescue workers arrived at the eleventh hour, and something has given us a chance for more time with life. The impact we feel of a life extended, of death averted, remains imprinted on our psyche. Even if, after the crisis has passed, we choose to return to an ordinary and mundane life, are tempted to discount intervention by the numinous, and with each passing day travel farther from the mystery, there has been inserted into the psyche the unexplainable, the nonrational experience that shook us aware for a few, brief moments. Where there was once irrefutable belief in a nonspiritual, nonsacred world, there is now a sliver of doubt; a questioning of attitudes and ideas has entered the mind and soul of the nonreligious. What remains is the impression of a map, delineating a new territory where the sacred has become part of our interior landscape. Whether we choose to pick up the map and rechart our life course or put the whole mysterious experience in a box and slide it under the bed in our interior house is our decision alone.\n\nIN THE CHURCH OF EARTH\n\nThe moments of Spirit intervention are often too tritely called a religious experience, suggesting a philosophical conversion. The words _religious experience_ are too simplistic and overused to describe what is often indescribable. It puts the experience into a category where it doesn't really belong.\n\nPart of this is my own prejudice. The word _religion_ leaves a bad taste in my mouth, left over from my experience with religions, particularly Christianity, and their public aspect of doctrines, hierarchies, and rules of conduct. Religion comes from the Latin _religare,_ meaning \"to bind or restrain,\" as in to be obligated. Religion is man-made, built on promoting the idea that God is \"out there,\" outside us; furthermore, he makes an appearance in specific buildings at prescribed times and days, as set forth in the precepts of the religion's manifesto. The followers of the religion need a middleman to intercede on their behalf, to dictate how they should behave, to absolve them when they wander from the prescribed behavior, to bless, to give permission for marriage, to acknowledge life and death, and to be self-appointed determiners of life and when it begins.\n\nI prefer _spiritual,_ which is a private set of beliefs coming out of personal experiences with the sacred, with Nature, with the numinous. Those times of Spirit intervention, whether during a crisis or while walking through a forest, are spiritual experiences. My use of the word _religion_ is personal and in the context of Cicero's etymology of the word, who traced it to _relegere,_ which means \"to read over again\" or a \"linking back.\" My religion is a spirituality that is by definition a relationship with the powers of the Universe, with incorporeal, immaterial, supernatural essences. When I work with Spirit, I am working with the vital powers and subtle energies that animate the material world.\n\nI'm not religious in the sense of dogma or doing things according to an external authority. I link back and read over and over again the sacred texts or the original word inscribed on the land and in trees, in tracks left by animals passing, sleeping, and eating. The hierographology of pictographs, standing stones, cairns, pot shards or the way a sweat lodge fire is tended\u2014all these speak of ancient relationships to the sacred, to the land, to Nature. I ascribe to no hierarchy in my personal cosmology; there is no overarching sacred leader. I am on equal footing with all that inhabit this earthly life; we each just have different job descriptions. That said, I am in service to something outside myself, greater than myself, and that is to be in service to the _anima mundi,_ the soul of the world, to the Creator and Gaia. To do that, I must simultaneously remake myself into a whole human being.\n\nMy spirituality is not confined to a particular building, creed, or obligations to an organization. My church is the wilderness of southwest New Mexico, the Mississippi River, the forests, mountains, wild water\u2014wherever I find myself. In this, I am of the Dionysian school of the madwomen, the maenads, who had no temples. Edith Hamilton writes about the Maenads and their worship of Dionysus in the wild outdoors.\n\nThey went to the wilderness to worship, to the wildest mountains, the deepest forests, as if they kept to the customs of an ancient time before men had thought of building houses for their gods. They went out of the dusty, crowded city, back to the clean purity of the untrodden hills and woodlands. There Dionysus gave them food and drink: herbs and berries and the milk of the wild goat. Their beds were on the soft meadow grass; under the thick-leaved trees; where the pine needles fall year after year. They woke to a sense of peace and heavenly freshness; they bathed in a clear brook. There was much that was lovely, good, and freeing in this worship under the open sky and the ecstasy of joy it brought in the wild beauty of the world.\n\nI take my communion with the plants, the green nations, the holy waters of hot springs, the sweat lodge. I engage in a dialogue with the spirit keepers of this land, or whatever land I sit on in a sacred manner to share the prayers and smoke of the sacred pipe. Sitting with my pipe, feeling the presence of the spirit keepers of the four winds, the ancestors and the old ones of this land, and my inner council that lives inside me, I am reminded of the mystery of all things. The Great Mystery, the numinous, the incomprehensible largeness of this immense, expansive, extraordinary, beautiful Universe. I am humbled at once by my smallness and my significance at the same time. Feeling them all come in to sit in a circle with me\u2014invisible, palpable to my senses\u2014to hear my prayers, to \"break bread\" together; this is my sacrament.\n\nI am an ordained minister of the Church of Gaia, a nonprofit organization exploring and participating with the nonlinear intelligence of Nature. In the opinion of the organization's founders, \"survivability of the human species depends on human beings once more reconnecting to the Earth. Without this rekindling of our ability to care for the nonhuman world from which we emerged, our behavior will continue to be careless of Earth and its preservation.\" This means that each one of us must learn to \"reinhabit our interbeing with the world,\" as the rain-forest activist John Seed puts it. \"This reinhabiting is essential, not an academic or rhetorical pursuit, and always a personal one.\"\n\nAs a practitioner of Earth-centered spirituality, I continually expose and immerse myself in the numinous territory of sacred lovemaking and with the wild land of southwest New Mexico. Inexhaustibly, I look for novel and deeper ways to participate with life, to understand my place and my responsibilities, and to somehow speak on behalf of those who have no human voice. But to speak on others' behalf, I must first hear what they are saying not only with my ears but with my whole body\u2014my skin, my hair, my feet, my heart.\n\nThey speak in vibrations, images, and feelings. Those forms of communication and expression are the many winds that breathe over the land: tree-bending gale-force winds; sand-blasting dust-storm winds; suck-the-moisture-from-your-skin winds; dry, hot, southwest June winds that take the water out of your lungs. The winds that come in July bring moisture and foretell of the monsoons near arrival, winds that carry a fecund, erotic smell of rain in the forest and release essential oils from the trees. The smell of pi\u00f1on in the early morning air tells of humidity on the rise. The many songs and howls of coyotes tell stories of their lovemaking, their kill, their grieving, and their celebrations. Javelina tracks in red dirt and bites taken out of prickly pear cactus suggest migration patterns and movements. The voice is not solitary and cannot speak without some other: the trees speak through the wind; the wind speaks through the grasses; a coyote's voice speaks through a primordial echo in our soul; fire speaks through wood and air; rivers and streams speak through stones as water journeys off mountains and through valleys. They all speak directly to our hearts and imaginations through the invisible sea of energy we all share and swim in together. To think we can create and sustain a dichotomy, extract ourselves from this sea, creates a kind of insanity, a craziness, in our psyche.\n\nOur own voices speak through vibration, air, breath, earth of our tongues, teeth, vocal chords, mouth, and fire of passion. I must listen attentively, objectively, as if for the first time. I must listen with my whole body, not a part of me, but the whole of me, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, touching, seeing. Only then can I begin to understand the meanings in the communications and how I can be in service to all those voices. Only then can I know if there is anything to translate or if it's time to simply listen, sit on Earth in a sacred manner, and take communion with them.\n\n _Unless we see or hear phenomena or things_\n\n _From within the things themselves,_\n\n _we shall never succeed in recording them in our hearts._\n\nBASHO\n\nWITNESSED BY SPIRIT\n\nWhen I was searching for a spiritual path that felt right to me, I tried on the traditions that were available where I lived. For two years, I was a card-carrying, dues-paying, active member of a Wiccan church in the upper Midwest. After some truly mind-blowing psychic experiences with those women and discovering latent gifts of my own, I came to the conclusion that, that particular feminist path was not for me. I didn't like male bashing or even leaving out the male aspect of the Universe. I said thanks but no thanks, dropped out, quit paying my dues, and tore up my card.\n\nAfter that, I talked to a friend of mine about his Buddhist practices. He invited me to join him at a Tuesday evening _sesshin_ or _zazen_ sitting meditation. We drove along the Mississippi River near New Albin, Iowa. As we drove the long, winding, and rutted gravel road through the sandstone bluffs and deciduous forests to the _zendo,_ I felt a sense of something bigger than and outside of me getting involved in my life.\n\nThe first night of sitting was uncomfortable. I was fidgety, nervous, uncertain, and afraid of doing something wrong. The Buddhist monk gave a brief instruction on how and why to sit on the cushion so that our knees were lower than our hips, taking the stress off our lower backs and straightening the spine. He described how to hold our hands: left hand resting in the right palm with thumb tips lightly touching. He talked about watching our breath and letting thoughts that appear rise and float off like clouds dispersing. It was a very long forty minutes. I was shocked to notice just how much chatter was going on in my mind at any given moment.\n\nZazen agreed with me, and I loved it in return. I enjoyed the experience of sitting weekly with a small group of people, and I added it as a daily practice between the weekly sesshins. During a New Year's Eve sesshin, my experience radically changed. We sat in the usual manner for the prescribed forty minutes, after which there was a ten-minute _kinhin_ or silent walking meditation followed by another forty minutes of sitting. This went on for three hours.\n\nSometime into the second hour, I found myself completely relaxing into the experience. All tension in my body had dissolved. I sat effortlessly as some invisible support held me up. I felt good in myself, almost happy, and quite calm. My eyes were softly focused on a point on the wall in front of me. It wasn't work this time to find the still, silence inside. Each breath took me deeper into being relaxed until I noticed something internally begin to shift. My senses became acutely fine tuned as my peripheral vision expanded. I noticed my skin begin to tingle. The point on the wall and the wall itself began to merge and expand; boundaries blurred. I noticed some new thing was happening in the area of my heart, and I felt something move out from and encircle me. I was acutely aware of being larger than myself. And, I was not myself. I sat still, breathing, soft focused, feeling, watching. The experience grew in strength. A lightness of heart and spirit overtook my senses, and I realized I felt happy, joyful. The physical elements of the room fell away, and I found myself in a strange and wonderful landscape. My body no longer had boundaries; no beginning, no end, nothing between me and the world I had just entered. Or had it entered me? The landscape was barren of any physical markers though there was a sourceless light that filled all space. I experienced a pervading sense of peace, calm, serenity, and an unexplainable, overriding sense of growing joy. Pure, radiant, blissful joy. And love. I was the only human being, the only being in that place, and I was overcome with tremendous, unconditional love. I felt loved. And I felt that I deserved this love. Nowhere inside me was there hesitation, doubts, or feelings of unworthiness.\n\nIt was my first experience of being seen, being witnessed by Spirit. And I was being loved. I held that ecstatic, mystical state, unwavering, for the remainder of the forty minutes. I didn't want to stop, not ever. My visible, physical world was being nourished by the invisible. From that moment forward, I tried to re-create that feeling in my life, and I found I could while I was alone in the woods or sitting along the river. Someplace inside me I knew I could have, was supposed to have, this feeling, this experience with another human being. Simultaneously, I knew this experience was available when connecting with Earth as much as it was here, in the sacred space of meditation, that this was a dynamic experience and as such, it was transferable to other places.\n\nOne afternoon, a few hours before I would be sleeping with my lover, I asked the ancestors if they would show me how to make love like a prayer. What happened was astonishing. As I lay down with him, I reached out my awareness to feel them with me. There was an invisible, palpable presence in the room, between us, with us. The room took on a soft, luminescence. It felt as if they became part of my body, they were so close. I was fully present, watching, participating, and aware of these magnificent beings in the room with us, wrapped around us, between us almost. I gave myself over to this ecstatic experience. It felt as though we were water, fluidly unencumbered by boundaries of any sort. As our two bodies were enraptured, our souls were ravishing each other, spiraling in and out, twining around, sharing fluids, memories, and DNA. All the while, being held in a numinous orb nearly floating off the bed.\n\nRudolf Otto in writing _Das Heilige_ (The Sacred) in 1917 set afire schools of religious and philosophical thought. He set forth profound and, at the time, befuddling concepts of awe-inspiring mystery and human fascination with the mysterious. Otto frequently used the expression _the numinous feeling_. Though the phrase implies the subjective feeling, Otto was quite clear that numinous feelings were both subjective and objective realities.\n\nThe word \"numinous\" has been widely received as a happy contribution to the theological vocabulary, as standing for that aspect of deity which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational or ethical terms. But it is Otto's purpose to emphasize that this is an objective reality, not merely a subjective feeling in the mind; and he uses the word feeling in this connexion not as equivalent to emotion but as a form of awareness that is neither that of ordinary perceiving nor of ordinary conceiving . . . The ambiguity attaching both to the English feeling and the German Gefuhl should not therefore mislead us. We do after all speak of feeling the beauty of a landscape or feeling the presence of a friend, and our \"feeling\" in these cases is not merely an emotion engendered or stimulated in the mind but also a recognition of something in the objective situation awaiting discovery and acknowledgement. It is analogously to such uses that Otto speaks of the \"feeling of the numinous\" or (less aptly) the \"numinous feeling.\"\n>  \n> \n> **PART 2**\n> \n>  **Earthly Sexual Body**\n**5**\n\n _ **Human Beings**_\n\n **The Ground Where the Gods Reside**\n\n_There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot._\n\nALDO LEOPOLD,  \n _A S AND COUNTY ALMANAC_\n\n _The universe is dead for us, and how is it to come alive again? \"Knowledge\" has killed the sun, making it a ball of gas, with spots; \" knowledge\" has killed the moon, it is a dead little earth fretted with extinct craters as with smallpox; the machine has killed the earth for us, making it a surface, more or less bumpy, that you travel over. How, out of all this, are we to get back the grand orbs of the soul's heavens, that fill us with unspeakable joy? How are we to get back Apollo, and Attis, Demeter, Persephone, and the halls of Dis? How even see the star Hesperus, or Betelgeus? We've got to get them back, for they are the world our soul, our greater consciousness, lives in. The world of reason and science, the moon, a dead lump of earth, the sun, so much gas with spots; this the dry and sterile little worldthe abstracted mind inhabits. The world of our little consciousness, which we know in our pettifoggin apartness. This is how we know the world when we know it apart from ourselves, in the mean separateness of everything._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE, \"A PROPOS OF _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\"\n\n _We are so little at peace with ourselves and our neighbors because we are so little at peace with our place in the world, our land. American history has been to a considerable extent the history of our warfare against the natural life of the continent. Until we end our violence against the earth . . . how can we hope to end our violence against each other? The earth, which we all have in common, is our deepest bond, and our behavior toward it cannot help but be an earnest of our consideration for each other and for our descendants.  \nAs long as man relates only to other men, he can be a specialist with impunity; . . . Once he is joined to the earth with permanence of expectation and interest, his concerns ramify in proportion to his understanding of his dependence on the earth and his consequent responsibility toward it. He realizes, because the demands of his place make it specific and inescapable, that his responsibility is not merely that of an underling, a worker at his job, but also moral, historical, political, aesthetic, ecological, domestic, educational, and so on._\n\nWENDELL BERRY,  \n _T HE LONG-LEGGED HOUSE_\n\n _Until I can know what other men know when they say, \"this is where I live,\" I will know nothing of worth\u2014andwhen I can say that & feel it deeply, I'll know most of what I'll ever be able to know. \"This is where I live.\" What a thing to know!_\n\nLEW WELCH,  \nQUOTED BY DOLORES LACHAPELLE  \nIN _S ACRED LAND, SACRED SEX_\n\n _If there can be such a thing as instinctual memory, the consciousness of land and water must lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings. We were bred of the earth before we were born of our mothers. Once born, we can live without our mothers or our fathers or any other kin or friend, or even human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men._\n\nMARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS,  \nQUOTED BY DOLORES LACHAPELLE  \nIN _S ACRED LAND, SACRED SEX_  \nAND BY GABRIEL MILLER  \nIN _T HE FILMS OF MARTIN RITT_\n\nIndigenous and ancient cultures on Earth had, and still have, elaborate systems of ceremonies and rituals that revered the natural world as sacred. The realm of spirit, the invisibles, and the gods came to play and lived among them. These cultures engaged themselves in the changing seasons, made medicine with the phases of the moon, and created rituals to celebrate and mark transitions from one stage of life to another. During ceremonies of harvest and abundance, fermented plant brews flowed freely while the autumn air filled with songs and people danced. They made prayers and offerings to the spirit that moves through all things and to the souls of plants and animals for food, meat, and clothing so these things would continue to be abundant. They took care to maintain balance and harmony in all they did.\n\nTime was set aside for thanking the gods for the growing season, for the stores of food for the winter. And it was a time of thanking Earth and plants and the spirits of growing. Prayers of beseechment for next year's planting season as well as help getting them through the winter months wafted up on spirals of smoke. A keen understanding and awareness of all the beings that were helpful and partly responsible for the tribe's wellbeing and failure, abundance and loss, health and illness were acknowledged and fed to keep them happy and nearby. It was understood that nothing could be done well without assistance and blessings from the unseen world of spirits and ancestors.\n\nCentral to indigenous cosmology is, naturally, the desire to maintain balance in all things to ensure a sustainable future for the generations to come. Ralph Metzner in _Green Psychology,_ says, \"Once we recognize that the human exploitation and destruction of the biosphere is related to a dissociative split within human consciousness between the spiritual and the natural, then the question becomes\u2014how did the separation come about?\"\n\nCOUNSEL WITH THE STAR PEOPLE\n\nThe Inuit live on the treeless, windswept tundra of northern Canada, where the night sky is illuminated only by the Milky Way, far-off galaxies, and star formations whose ancient mythologies are expressed in their names. The Inuit believe in animism. All things, living and nonliving, have a spirit: people, animals, plants, material objects, forces of Nature, and the elements\u2014fire, wind, earth, and air. As David Suzuki and David Knudtson write, \"The heavens high above, they say, are the sacred abode of a mighty spirit. The _anatkut_ (wise ones) say that it is a woman. To this place in the skies and to the potent feminine spirit, the souls of all who die are conveyed.\"\n\n _To these Arctic peoples, the soul embodies the very essence of each form of life. They envision the soul as a tiny being, a minute version of the creature that it animates and transforms. Appropriately, they believe that the soul islocated in a bubble of air in the groin, the same general anatomical area to which the modern biologist assigns the gene-laden germ cells, egg and sperm, bristling with DNA-encoded instruction for assembling a new life. Thus, the soul of a human being is a tiny human being, the soul of caribou a tiny caribou, and that of seal is a tiny seal._\n\nDAVID SUZUKI AND PETER KNUDTSON,  \n _W ISDOM OF THE ELDERS_\n\nThe sky ceiling in that part of the world is unimpeded by artificial light. There are places in the Gila Wilderness, where I live in southwestern New Mexico, that are completely uncontaminated by artificial light. Nights when the moon is dark, the sky people can be seen in their full glory. To plant feet on the ground, head tilted back, and gaze up into a night sky dazzling with trillions of stars and planets is to be humbled. It becomes glaringly apparent why ancient people called them Star People and their ancestors. Staring up at them, there is a sense of their sentience and a keen awareness of being watched and listened to. There is a wisdom there, an aliveness palpable to the senses, heart, and mind, and suddenly, feelings of being alone in the world dissipate into the evening air.\n\nHuman beings have a long history of living in harmony and intimately in relationship with the wild world. Francis Weller notes that \"[i]t is the part of our psychic life that we hold in communion with the life that moves around us.\" When we are in the wild, some primordial, elemental part of us awakens to this truth. Holding that truth, we are able to move from disingenuousness to authentic awareness of the life teeming around us. We become awakened to the innate need in us to recover our lost connections to wild things and places.\n\n _For I was born a thousand years ago, born in the culture of bows and arrows . . . born in an age when people loved the things of nature and spoke to it as though it has a soul._\n\nCHIEF DAN GEORGE,  \nOPEN LETTER, 1975\n\nWe are biologically wired to communicate with, be in relationship with, and live harmoniously as equal members of Earth's species. Edward Goldsmith in _The Way_ states that \"it is part of that intuitive heritage that enables man to be cognitively adjusted to the world in which he lives. However, with the development of the world view of modernism, and in particular of the paradigm of science, the world became 'disenchanted,' secularized and mechanomorphized.\"\n\nFor a short time after my son and I moved to Vernon County in southwest Wisconsin so that he could attend a Waldorf high school, we lived in a one-hundred-year-old brownstone house. We heated the house and water for cooking and bathing with wood. An artesian spring flowed year-round through a pipe under its own underground pressure about ten paces from our front door. The nearest town of two hundred people was six miles from our house. Neighbors were scattered over hills and behind small sections of old tree stands and forest remnants. I had been living in a college town for fifteen years before, and the move to the brownstone in Wisconsin, reawakened something ancient and primordial. Each night, I would unceremoniously bundle myself up in sweaters, gloves, and hat and go stand under the sky. Each night, I would gaze up at those Star People as if I had never seen such a sight before that night while simultaneously feeling an ancient kinship with them. I was awestruck, humility struck, and I prayed and prayed to those ancestors, my ancestors, the ancient ones who live there. Every night for the three months that I lived there, I would go out and talk with them, admire them, pay homage to them.\n\nOne night in the dream time, after weeks of talking with them, I was abruptly transported through a white cloud tube to the place where the Star People live. They were in council. They wanted to meet \"in person\" this being who was talking to them each night, and they wanted me to see them straight on. We held each other in high regard as I stood among them, motionless in the presence of such wise, magnificent, and luminous beings. I wasn't there long before I was ushered, or more like dropped, down a spiraling cloud tube again, and the moment I slammed back into my body, I was met with a raging, spontaneous, full-body orgasm jolting me awake. Spirituality and sex are intimately related.\n\nThe ancestors are real. And they respond.\n\nORIGINS OF THE SEPARATION\n\n _The Christian religion lost, in Protestantism finally, the togetherness with the universe, the togetherness of the body, the sex, the emotions, the passions with the earth and sun and stars._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n\"A PROPOS OF _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\"\n\nSexuality is the sensation of Nature in one's own organism. In primitive and indigenous religions, religion and sexuality were one. When natural sexual expressions were repressed in the human animal during the development of religion and agriculture, this produced an unbridgeable contradiction between sexuality as a sin and religion as a liberation from sin.\n\nHow did we get so far from our relationship with and dependence on the natural world? David Suzuki writes about the origins of the mind-body divide.\n\nThe movement away from the natural world was made possible by a quite remarkable train of thought\u2014ideas that shaped our civilization. Today we take those ideas so much for granted that we see them not as ideas (which can be rethought, revisited, discarded) but as reality. Many thinkers trace the origins of our particular and violent fall from grace, our exile from the garden, back to Plato and Aristotle, who began a powerful process of separating the world-as-abstract-principle from the world-as-experience\u2014dividing mind, that is, from body, and human beings from the world they inhabit. In the process they laid the groundwork for experimental science.\n\nThe move from hunting and gathering to agriculture happened around 11,000 BCE, long before Plato and Aristotle. It began the long repression of sexuality in general and in women's sexuality specifically, which continues to this day, and directly parallels 10,000 years of abusive and oppressive environmental policies toward Earth, toward the environment, and toward wildness. The shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer\u2014from wild mobility to agrarian domestication\u2014changed the interior emotional and psychic landscapes as well as the physical landscape.\n\nOnce the reality of owning land was inculcated in the minds of overlords, boundaries were set up and lines were drawn, and the struggle to accumulate property and material wealth was on. It didn't stop with controlling and domesticating the land; it seeped into the consciousness of our forefathers and spilled over to owning women and slaves.\n\nWith the advent of farming, women were quickly domesticated along with farm animals. Archaeologist Timothy Taylor argues that \"[a] major event in the development of sexual inequality occurred when farming was invented, a system by which people could produce food when they wanted it rather than relying, like every other species, on natural availability.\" Although women were central in the early development of farming, it quickly led to their oppression. With the increased availability of animal milk, along with breast milk, children were birthed more frequently. As sources of milk became more available, the ties that bound women to hearth and home also increased. And the economic value of women decreased as they were taken out of the labor force, unable to generate an income or sense of independence of their own.\n\nMy mother was a farm wife who much preferred sitting on \"her\" tractor and bailer or hayrake and feeding livestock to cooking, cleaning, and changing diapers. My younger sister (born eleven months after me) and I were primarily raised by our two sisters, eight and ten years older. By the time my mother was severely ill with emphysema, she was unable to get disability payments since my father never paid her as a wage earner, and therefore no social security payments were made on her behalf. It was a source of endless arguments and resentment between them.\n\n _How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it, I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all._\n\nHENRY DAVID THOREAU,  \n\"WALKING\"\n\nTaylor, in _The Prehistory of Sex,_ continues, \"While hunter-gatherer sex had been modeled on the idea of sharing and complementarity, early agriculturalist sex was voyeuristic, repressive, homophobic, and focused on reproduction. Afraid of the wild, farmers set out to destroy it.\" Paternity certainty has no value or importance in preagricultural cultures where concern over sexual fidelity was also relatively unimportant.\n\nTaylor argues, \"How a society treats the natural environment and how it views food are both closely connected to its attitudes toward sex and to the particular quality of the relations between the sexes. The rapidly expanding agricultural populations of Neolithic Europe swamped the hunting and foraging peoples who had lived there before by sheer force of numbers. Farming set in motion a cycle of ecological devastation\u2014immediately connected with human sexual and reproductive aims\u2014that seems set to continue until the world's last surviving forests vanish under the plow.\"\n\nAn interesting concept worth pondering is that _fork,_ an Indo-European word, was originally at one with _fuck._ Often the phrase \"spreading my seed\" is used to describe impregnating a woman with the male seed, as in planting seeds in farm furrows. Taylor notes that _\"_ [t]he idea of the female sex as a field into which grain is sown is common among farming cultures and can be found in Talmudic, Egyptian, and Vedic writings. The idea of the female earth mound being entered by the male force is startlingly embodied at Newgrange.\"\n\n _Semen is Latin_\n\n _For a dormant, fertilized,_\n\n _Plant ovum\u2014_\n\n _A seed._\n\n _Men's ejaculate_\n\n _Is chemically more akin_\n\n _To plant pollen._\n\n _See,_\n\n _It is really_\n\n _More accurate_\n\n _To call it_\n\n _Mammal pollen._\n\n _To call it_\n\n _Semen_\n\n _Is to thrust_\n\n _An insanity_\n\n _Deep inside our culture:_\n\n _That men plow women_\n\n _And plant their seed_\n\n _When, in fact,_\n\n _What they are doing_\n\n _Is pollinating_\n\n _Flowers._\n\n _Now_\n\n _Doesn't that change everything between us?_\n\nSTEPHEN HARROD BUHNER,\n\n _T HE TASTE OF WILD WATER_\n\nNewgrange at County Meath, Ireland, is a megalithic tomb built around 3200 BCE, about three hundred years before the pyramids. Construction of the Passage Tomb is estimated to have taken three hundred laborers at least twenty years to construct. The mound covers an acre of land. The inner passage is 19 meters long leading to an inner cruciform chamber. The mound is oriented such that at the winter solstice the sun penetrates the passageway illuminating the inner chamber. The sun was considered to have male penetrating and fertilizing properties.\n\nIn 1890, the massacre at Wounded Knee stripped native peoples of their myths and stories, turning them into property and their land into real estate to be parceled up. The lands conquered by the U.S. government were divided, bought, and sold as private property. Detached from the spirit of the land, new rectangular boundary lines were drawn with no regard for natural landmarks, the sacred or holy. What was once commonly shared wildlands were plowed under, deforested, and desecrated. It happened in other places that European settlers came in contact with: Canada, Australia, Hawaii. In modern times, rain forests around the globe are being stripped of their power. The spiritual order, the ceremonies, the invisibles, whole native cosmologies have been burned, bulldozed, and paved over. We've cut down native trees only to name streets after them in some hollow attempt to immortalize what has been lost. It is a feeble attempt to assuage guilt and loss of something greater than the sum of its parts, as if a street sign serves as a monument to what has been lost. Taking it further, the roots of future generations of trees are sealed off in concrete graves.\n\nRupert Sheldrake writes, \"The scientific and technological conquest of nature expresses a mentality of dominion that had been widespread in the ancient world but was vastly increased in power by technology and amplified by the mechanistic theory of nature has taken the place of Christian missionaries in justifying the dispossession of native peoples and the disregard of their sacred places. Since nature is inanimate, their animistic relationship to the living world around them must be superstitious, their attitudes backwards. They cannot be allowed to stand in the way of progress. And now, like the Buffalo hunters, we can hardly believe what we have done.\"\n\nThere is widespread alienation from ourselves, each other, Earth, and the Spirit that breathes through and animates all things. We have severed the spirit from place, soul from body, sex from sexuality, and truth from power. In places where the wild is cut, mowed, and paved over, the soul of that place goes underground, waiting, while those left behind deal with the aftermath, inhabiting a soul-less landscape and suffering from diseases that arise from living on land that has no soul, that is empty of vitality and life-force energy, that is spiritually dead, where the livingness of the land is unavailable to infuse human souls and food that is grown there is devoid of the sustenance that can only come from ensouled landscapes. And underground is where the soul of place remains until the day when its rightful place is returned to it, until the day some person or peoples are willing to breathe and dance the soul to life once again, not unlike the Native American Ghost Dance of 1889.\n\nWhen the soul of a culture is usurped, stolen, and marginalized, its soul undergoes severe distortions, showing up as diminished vitality, poverty, homelessness, mental disorientation, and dispiritedness. Loss of soul manifests as diseases of the spirit: depression, suicide, overeating, and addictions. In indigenous cultures, shamans, healers, and medicine people would be called in to restore the broken connections. The soul of a culture goes underground until the day of restoration and breathing it into life comes about, if it comes at all.\n\nAfter hominids shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture, from nomadic to settled, the wildness of life began to vanish. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth\u00e1 write about the effect settled life had on concepts of property and paternity.\n\nOnce people were farming the same land season after season, private property quickly replaced communal ownership as the modus operandi in most societies. For nomadic foragers, personal property\u2014anything needing to be carried\u2014is kept to a minimum, for obvious reasons. There is little thought given to who owns the land, or the fish in the river, or the clouds in the sky. Men (and often, women) confront danger together. An individual male's _parental investment,_ in other words\u2014the core element of the standard narrative\u2014tends to be diffuse in societies like those in which we evolved, not directed toward one particular woman and her children, as the conventional model insists.\n\nNot only did Earth need domestication in their view, but also women, wild and earthy, needed limitations set on their provocative sexual power, their sexual nature.\n\nAt the height of the witch inquisitions between 1550 and 1650, a paradigm shift took place. The move from an intuitive, magical, mystical, and visionary worldview to an objective, mechanistic, medical, and science-based view formed the basis for the hysteria and fear of Nature that followed. The shift coincided with the worst outbreak of syphilis in European history.\n\nThe epidemic was shocking. Scholars began to perceive Nature as threatening, no longer seeing it as the divine feminine soul of all creation, as Isis, Artemis, or Sophia. Nature was now seen as deceitful and dangerous. Sexual repression became epidemic as the new disease poisoned the innate trust between men and women.\n\n _When once the woman has tempted us, and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there is no such thing as checking our appetites, whatever the consequences may be._\n\nGEORGE WASHINGTON,  \nLETTER TO MRS. RICHARD STOCKTON, 1783\n\nIT'S ALL FOR THE CHILDREN\n\nWilhelm Reich attained his medical degree in Germany and studied with Freud, becoming one of Freud's favorite students until Reich expanded on Freud's theories. His research on sexual repression was substantial and he wrote _The Sexual Revolution._ Reich was a pioneer in body psychotherapy, founded somatic psychology, and influenced, among others, Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy. Reich traced civilization's suppression of biological (sexual) functioning and saw how it became perverted into social institutions: war, torture, racial hatred, and slavery. He believed that if \"people were using their morality to repress their sexuality, but sexuality made life worth living\u2014was in fact, life itself\u2014then they needed to change their morality and have more satisfying sex; and psychoanalysis had to use whatever means were necessary to get the patient not merely to see this, but to live it.\" Reich was a proponent of contraceptives, divorce, abortion, and the importance of economic independence for women. He believed that the split between mind and body causes us to destroy each other and the planet and allows us to go to war. He believed that we protect ourselves by \"armoring\" from expressing things society says we must not express. He went on to say that if men and women are unable to have orgasms it would lead to neurosis, anti-Semitism, hate, greed, racism and fascism.\n\nSexual energy, like any energy, doesn't stop; it can't be stopped. It has to come out somewhere. It's like trying to keep steam in a boiling kettle. No matter how tightly you hold the lid, as the pressure builds, roiling steam always finds a way out. In the West, suppressed sexual energy is escaping to the tune of $200 billion per year spent on pornography, prostitutes. and Direct TV pay-per-view sex films.\n\nWhen we look closely at the habit of Western culture to clear-cut old-growth forests, turn wilderness into open grazing and residential areas and deserts into gambling meccas, and build locks and damns to control rivers, you'll begin to see that it's not a far stretch at all to then institute laws and regulations that dictate and control our behavior around sexuality and the expression of it. It's not a far leap, hardly a skip, to book banning or the National Endowment of the Arts imposing a \"decency standard.\"*5 It's not far from cancelling the homecoming dance at Vermont's Montpelier High School because of concerns about dirty dancing and student drug use. In September 2010, CraigsList blocked access to the \"adult services\" section and replaced it with a black bar stamped \"censored.\" Craigslist was criticized for allegedly facilitating prostitution and \"sex trafficking\" in the United States. In the summer of 2010, the organization Pornography Harms congratulated itself for being responsible for Facebook's removal of the \"Our Porn Ourselves\" Facebook page, claiming that the material was \"inappropriate\" and too easily available to children. Who's in charge here?\n\nOf course, it's all for the children. We need to protect our children. Who and what are we protecting them from? I know the arguments: We're protecting them from pedophiles, axe murderers, mother rapers, father rapers, pornography, immorality, premarital sex, teenage pregnancy, sex trafficking, cults, drug use, and drug dealers\u2014the arguments go on ad nauseam. As Marty Klein points out numerous times in his Internet newsletter, _Sexual Intelligence,_ \"And then we have completely bogus numbers (bound to be reprinted endlessly)\u2014like the Rebecca Project's 'An estimated 100,000\u2013300,000 American children are at risk for becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.' 'At risk!' Not in any way harmed, just vulnerable! The technical word for this is 'nonsense.'\"\n\nTeens are being prosecuted and charged as adults for \"sexting,\" sending sexual photos of _themselves_ to their friends via cell phones. The laws designed to prevent exploitation of minors by adults are being used to destroy the lives of teenagers\u2014the ones the laws are supposed to be protecting. A Michigan man is facing twenty years in prison for stupidly redoing a video of himself singing a children's song to a group of first graders at their school, under the watchful eyes of their teacher. At his home, he took the video of the performance, spliced in shots of himself singing sexually explicit lyrics to the children. Then, he couldn't resist himself; he posted it on YouTube, disclaiming that \"no actual children have been exposed\" to the song. He's being charged with manufacturing child porn, even though he didn't actually manufacture child porn. He made it all up. No crime was actually committed (unless being tasteless and having a juvenile sense of humor is a crime), and no harm was inflicted.\n\nDavid Sobel, talking about environmental education for second and third graders, writes:\n\nThey hear the story of the murder of activist Chico Mendez and watch videos about the plight of indigenous forest people displaced by logging and exploration for oil. They learn that between the end of morning recess and the beginning of lunch, more than 10,000 acres of rainforest will be cut down, making way for fast food 'hamburgerable' cattle . . . In response to physical and sexual abuse, children learn distancing techniques, ways to cut themselves off from the pain. My fear is that our environmentally correct curriculum will end up distancing children from, rather than connecting them with, the natural world. The natural world is being abused and they just don't want to deal with it.\n\nThe problems are not as simple or as superficial as we'd like to make them out to be. We are teaching our children to be disconnected from their feelings, from the ground of their own experience, to be afraid of Nature and the wild. We are giving them the right and wrong information at the wrong time or not at all. They are losing touch with what's real inside them and with the world in which they live.\n\nThe best way to protect your children is to empower them; give them good, true information and be their friend. Be honest with them. Children love having information, and only with good information can they can begin to make good choices. Be clear about not putting your insecurities and fears on them. Make certain that you do better than your best to keep their wild, intuitive, inquisitive, imaginative, and, yes, sexual selves intact. They will be exposed plenty to institutions, religious leaders, friends, schools, and governments that believe it is their duty to break a child's spirit and strong will and good heartedness. It's your job as a parent, guardian, grandmother, aunt, or uncle to nurture and feed their whole, wild spirit from the moment they take their first breath.\n\n _Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk._\n\nCARL JUNG\n\nQUELLING THE SONG OF THE WATERS\n\nI grew up in the upper Mississippi River Valley of Northeast Iowa. My bones and blood were formed from farm soil and the waters of the Upper Iowa and Mississippi Rivers. My partner for five years before I moved to New Mexico was a raptor researcher along the Mississippi River, so over that time I logged a few hours in his boat with him as we trolled the lakes, backwaters, and islands of that part of the river in pools 9 and 10 (the river between locks are called pools).\n\nOn a quiet, early morning trip in late summer when the river was, what Mark Twain called, \"a lazy river\" and turning leaves of autumn were beginning to scatter across the surface and shoreline, I was becoming entranced by the gentle rocking of the boat against the slow, deliberate, current of the river. Just ahead in my soft vision was a lock, and in my entranced state, I could see how locks and dams act as river birth control, much like an IUD or a diaphragm. The river cannot flow freely, naturally, of her own volition. And there is a reason why so many of us have difficulty crying; our tears are dammed. Too often we feel unable to cry with abandon and without apology. Too often we become afraid of the power of our emotions to express them unrestrained. So, we dam them up; lock them away.\n\n _He gives water to the dead._\n\nFRANK HERBERT, DUNE\n\n _This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it\u2014a vast pulsing harmony\u2014its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries._\n\nALDO LEOPOLD,  \nFROM \"SONG OF THE GAVILAN\"\n\nBuilt below the surface of the Mississippi River are structures called wing dams, which prevent the river from cutting a new channel. The Army Corps of Engineers controls the river\u2014the river's habitats, ecosystems, channel depth, and island formations\u2014via wing dams and locks, damming, and dredging\u2014the process of digging out sand and silt that gets disturbed as tows move barges from city to city.\n\nThe increase in barge traffic on large rivers has nearly killed the Illinois River. One hundred years ago, it was as ecologically diverse as the Mississippi but is now considered \"bleak\" by the corps. The murky brown plumes seen trailing behind a barge in aerial photographs are the result of sand and sediment churned up from the river bottom. The sand, being heavier, settles quickly, but it takes two hours for the sediment to settle, and with anywhere from eleven tows a day near La Crosse to thirty-two a day at Alton, Illinois, the water never clears. Invertebrates are buried by the debris, and fish gills cannot cope with constant high concentrations of silt.\n\nIn 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote: \"The Mississippi will be one of the principal channels of future commerce for the country westward of the Alleghaney . . . This river yields turtle of a peculiar kind, perch, trout, gar, pike, mullets, herrings, carp, spatula fish of 50 lb. weight, cat-fish of 100 lb. weight, buffalo fish and sturgeon.\"\n\nCarp, a hardy fish introduced to the United States in the 1880s, has dominated the commercial fishery of the Mississippi since the early 1900s. All others have declined, including buffalo, catfish, freshwater drum, lake sturgeon, and bullhead. Walleye, sauger, yellow perch, and white bass have disappeared entirely from the commercial catch.\n\nSadly, the Army Corps of Engineers is under heavy pressure from corporations that use the river to transport coal and grain, making the corps blind to other solutions that would work with the river. Rather than shaping the river to suit barge traffic, imagine building barges and boats that fit the river. So much has been lost in the unwillingness to see the sacredness in the largest river on the North American continent and the third largest river in the world. As long as we continue to see Nature as something \"out there,\" we will continue looking for solutions from the outside and from the top down\u2014the reductionist's seat in the spectator's box. \"Solutions\" from this seat have no enduring qualities.\n\nJerry Mander in _The Absence of the Sacred_ addresses this when he says:\n\nThe assumptions have been gaining in strength for thousands of years, fed both by Judeo-Christian religious doctrines that have desanctified the earth and placed humans in domination over it; and by technologies that, by their apparent power, have led us to believe we are some kind of royalty over nature, exercising Divine will. We have lost the understanding that existed in all civilizations prior to ours, and that continues to exist on Earth today in societies that live side by side with our own; we have lost a sense of the sacredness of the natural world. The new technologies don't accept this notion; they live in a world that is removed from it; they themselves have lost touch with the source of that knowledge. They find it silly.\n\nThere has been continual and growing exertion from governments, institutions, religious organizations, and lobbyists to suppress and control the wild in ecosystems and in human behavior. Diminishing biological diversity is analogous to diminishing diversity in human expression as our first amendment rights are undermined with each redefinition.\n\nBECOMING WHOLE\n\n _I would like to recommend that in judging the rightness of our actions toward the natural world, we be guided by a fundamental respect for the dignity of wild Nature. Dignity is the intrinsic quality in all beings that we are morally obligated to uphold. If our behavior does not infringe on the dignity of animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and the relationships among them, our actions are proper and sustainable, both ethically and ecologically._\n\nMOLLIE MATTESON,  \n\"THE DIGNITY OF WILD THINGS,\" WILD EARTH\n\nWe all belong to Earth. We are of Earth, and Earth is inside each of us. Our existence depends on Earth and the elements. The separations we feel are man-made; we took ourselves out of the relationship. We invent labels and hierarchies, we draw lines of separation, and we even manage to separate ourselves from the ground we walk on, the trees we depend on for building our homes and cleaning the air and the plants we harvest for food and medicine. Separation is easy. But it isn't in the natural scheme of things.\n\nThe human predicament is that we can't seem to find the connection between ourselves and Earth. The predicament is that without that connection we are doomed as a species. If we were to know this connection in the deepest part of us, let awareness of that connection permeate and infuse every cell of our three bodies, we would necessarily have to make other choices; it would alter our entire orientation. The predicament continues\u2014we are so deep in the quagmire we can't seem to imagine something else.\n\nUnless you know that the ecosystem of you is intimately connected to the ecosystem of Earth, you won't be whole. Unless you are able to reconcile and integrate all the parts that make up your ecosystem, you will not be able to be integrated into the sensuous ecosystems of Earth. An ecosystem is a biological environment. It consists of all the organisms (ego states) living in a particular area (you or me in our body), as well as the physical components of the environment with which the organisms (ego states) interact, such as the air we breathe and the blood, sweat, piss, tears, light, and shadow in our bodies. _Biocoenosis_ or _biocenosis_ was coined by Karl Mobius in 1877. It refers to all the interacting organisms living together in a specific habitat. An ecosystem is not only the physical and biological components of an environment but also the mental isolates. Our histories, illnesses, and personal and family stories are also part of our inner ecosystem.\n\nIt is the collection of all the parts of us, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It is the sum total of all our parts.\n\nIt doesn't matter if we are red, black, white, tall, short, Muslim, Catholic, pagan, Buddhist, communist, capitalist, or Rosicrucian, each of us belongs to Earth; we all breathe in the same air, the breath of the Great Mystery, and we _get_ to live on Earth together. These words have no meaning without the experience of living on Earth, without \"Gaiaphilia\"\u2014the feeling of love for Earth. Without the experience of belonging to the livingness of Earth, our lives become rhetorical and theoretical like environmentalists who never have dirt under their fingernails. We think that because we've said something, the problem is solved. The problem isn't solved; there are still problems, and we're still fighting, warring, and killing, mutilating each other and destroying other species. We still don't believe or act as if Earth is alive and sentient and aware. Nor do we act from the truth that we have emerged as a species from the womb\u2014the soil and microbes, the water and air\u2014of Gaia. Neither do we want to know that we are sexual, have sex; even as you read these words, someone is having sex, right now. Maybe it's your neighbor or your parents or your sister across the country. It could be your mail carrier, the clerk at the store, your children. It could be you.\n\nA WORKING DEFINITION OF WILD\n\nI've been using the words _wild, wilderness,_ and _Nature_ rather loosely up to this point. Before going further, I want to explore the meanings of each word. Our language lets us be lazy in our descriptions of things, people, and events. For example, to say \"the wind blew wild\" conjures up images in your mind. Other words that could be used and may be more accurate and for certain more descriptive might be: _tumultuous, ferocious, tempestuous, violent, furious_. _The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary_ gives the following definitions of the word _wild:_\n\n1. Inhabiting the forest or open field; not domesticated or tamed; living in a state of nature. 2. Growing or produced without care or culture; not cultivated. 3. Being without civilized inhabitants or cultivation; desert; waste. 4. Living in a primitive or savage way. 5. Boisterous; unruly; unrestrained. 6. Immoral; dissolute; orgiastic.\n\nIt goes on to describe _wild_ as, \"originating violent disturbances; stormy; turbulent; rashly imprudent; showing reckless want of judgment.\"\n\nLooking closer at the origin of the word _wild_ in the Oxford English Dictionary, we find _wild_ with intriguing, old English spellings that conjure up images and feelings about the word's origins.\n\n _The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary_ defines _wilderness_ as follows:\n\nWilderness: 1. an uncultivated, uninhabited, or barren region. 2. A waste, as of an ocean. 3. A multitudinous and confusing collection; a wilderness of curiosities. 4. Wildness. Nature: 1. the fundamental qualities or characteristics that together define the identity of something; essential character. 3. The entire material universe and its phenomena.\n\nWildness is an idea that has moved immensely through time, notes author Robert MacFarlane. \"And in that time, two great and conflicting stories have been told about it. According to the first of these, wildness is a quality to be vanquished, according to the second, it is a quality to be cherished.\"\n\nThe etymology of the word _wild_ is vexed and subtle, but the most persuasive past proposed for it involves the Old High German _wildi,_ and the Old Norse _vilr,_ as well as the pre-Teutonic _ghweltijos_. All three of these terms carry implications of disorder and irregularity, and as Roderick Nash has written, they bequeathed to the English root word _will_ \"a descriptive meaning of . . . willful, or uncontrollable. Wildness, according to this etymology, is an expression of independence from human direction, and wild land can be said to be self-willed land, land that proceeds according to its own laws and principles, land whose habits, the growth of its trees, the movements of its creatures, the free descent of its streams through its rocks are of its own devising and own execution. Land that, as the contemporary definition of wild continues, 'acts or moves freely without restraint; is unconfined, unrestricted.'\"\n\nThe basic definition of wildness has remained constant since those first appearances, but the values ascribed to this quality have diverged dramatically.\n\nOn the one hand, wildness has been perceived as a dangerous force that confounds the order-bringing pursuits of human culture and agriculture. Wildness, according to this story, is cognate with wastefulness. Wild places resist conversion to human use, and they must therefore be destroyed or overcome.\n\nThe soul has a need for the wild. David Abrams in _Becoming Animal_ says it this way:\n\nA calloused coldness, or meanness, results when our animal senses are cut off for too long from the animate earth, when our ears\u2014inundated by the whooping blare of car alarms and the muted thunder of subways\u2014no longer encounter the resonant silence, as our eyes forget the irregular wildness of things green and growing behind the rectilinear daze.\n\nThe definition of that need is personal, but it is there, inside us. Jay Griffiths notes that \"[t]he human spirit has a primal allegiance to wildness, to really live, to snatch the fruit and suck it, to spill the juice. We may think we are domesticated, but we are not. Feral in pheromone and intuition, feral in our sweat and fear, feral in tongue and language, feral in cunt and cock. This is the first command: \"to live fealty to the feral angel.\"\n\nWe get our need for the wild met however we can. Some of us go camping, hike hundreds of miles, go fishing, watch porn, or go to strip clubs. Eros is intimately involved in the ways we fill the need for the wild for Eros is the connector. We don't seek fulfillment from something unless there is a measure of attraction, need, or affection for the thing, whether it's camping, hiking, or sex.\n\nRupert Sheldrake explores the meanings of nature, from inborn characteristics to the wider natural world.\n\nOne of the primary meanings of nature is an inborn character or disposition, as in the phrase _human nature._ This in turn is linked to the idea of nature as an innate impulse or power. On a wider scale, nature is the creative and regulative power operating in the physical world, the immediate cause of all its phenomena. And hence nature comes to mean the natural or physical world as a whole. When nature in this sense is personified, she is Mother Nature, an aspect of the Great Mother, the source and sustainer of all life, and the womb to which all life returns.\n\nOur concept of Nature is entwined with our concepts of and relationships between men and women, nature and humanity, humanity and animals. When we reject the idea of Nature as organic and motherlike and perceive it as cold and inanimate, our relationship to Nature becomes lifeless. But can we really claim Nature is inanimate and lifeless given all the research and writings on the teeming lives of bacteria and fungi, the studies on plant communication, the reproductive forces happening around us, and the mystical experiences most of us have had?\n\nEvery ancient culture on Earth had relationships with the animating forces of the Universe. Pythagoreans took into account the five great elements from which they believed all things were fashioned. The Chinese I Ching and feng shui, the system of ordering homes, gardens, buildings, are set on the foundations of the five elements. Nothing is built or undertaken without consideration of the elements and how they influence wealth, health, happiness, prosperity. Altars are erected to honor the ancestors and deities and to prevent misfortune from coming about as a result of dishonoring the dead, the spirits, and the elements. In Japan, mountains themselves are considered shrines connecting Heaven and Earth.\n\nDEATH AND DISEASE THROUGH SEPARATION\n\nApproximately one hundred years (depending on how you calculate it) of environmentalism and conservation have gone by, and things are getting worse. One hundred percent of the air in the Lower Forty-eight is now contaminated with eight cancer-causing industrial chemicals at levels that exceed safety standards. We are living with an epidemic of cancer, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Lyme disease, and other debilitating diseases Rachel Carson warned of in her groundbreaking work _Silent Spring._ What does it mean when Monsanto sends thiram-treated tomato seeds (the EPA ruled thiram too toxic for home garden use and application requires the use of gloves) and Maxim XL\u2013treated corn and vegetable seeds to earthquake-devastated Haiti? This \"gift\" of 60,000 hybrid seeds was distributed by a $127 million project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The program, called Winner, was designed to promote \"agricultural intensification.\" Monsanto, the same neighborhood corporation that brought us Agent Orange, recorded more than $11.7 billion in sales in 2009. They hold over 650 biotechnology patents, most of them for corn, cotton, and soy. In 2004, in Brazil, Monsanto sold a farm to a U.S Senator for one-third its price in exchange for his work to legalize glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide.\n\nExporting hybrid seeds that devastate and toxify soil, water, and the bodies (human and nonhuman) that ingest genetically modified seeds creates a culture of dependence and sickness. \"The genetically modified seeds, such as those donated and later immolated, cannot be saved from year to year. Some so-called terminator seeds\u2014the DNA of which is altered so as to not drop seed after harvest\u2014require the farmer to buy new seeds from Monsanto the following year in a legally binding contract, instead of collecting the seeds that would have naturally developed on the plant before its DNA was modified.\" This increases poverty and indebtedness; legalized slavery.\n\nWhere there is no free choice, when our natural connections to the land that feeds our bodies and souls are severed, the soil is tilled for feudalism, imperialism, and fascism to emerge. On June 4, 2010, 10,000 Haitian farmers walked 7 kilometers to Hinche to receive the gift of seeds from their benefactor. Upon arrival, it was World Environment Day; the farmers took the 400 tons of vegetable seeds and burned them all. Sometimes you have to say _no_.\n\nIf you are unable to integrate and be in relationship with wild ecosystems, with ego states that naturally occur in Nature just as they do in human beings, with the aliveness and sexuality of Earth, you will never be able to integrate your own sexuality, your inner ecosystems.\n\nReferring to Aphrodite, Michael Perlman comments:\n\nIt is strange how rarely the Goddess of luxuriant sensuality and love is linked with the love of nature, with ecological concerns, with the power of beauty. Her world of sensual and erotic display, of nightclub and bedroom, seems so distant from the backpack trail; we're not in the habit of juxtaposing thoughts of wild nights and the wildness Henry David Thoreau celebrates in his famous essay on walking. We don't generally think of ecological concern as having erotic and sensual power (even though the image of the woods as a sexy place is hardly confined to Greek myth), and recent ecological thought has begun to appreciate the loss in that omission. If, for instance, we are to talk about Greek mythological figures in relation to contemporary ecological concerns, shouldn't we be talking instead about Artemis, goddess of pristine wilderness and inviolate, virgin forest?\n\nAs long as we maintain separation from all that is Earth and sensual, we will never know the kind of majesty and peace that comes from being whole and integrated as a sacred, sexual being, a playing member of the circle of life. And there will be continued assaults on Earth and continued sexual repression.\n**6**\n\n _ **Finding the Wild**_\n\n_Now is the time for you to mark your entry through the spirited gate. You need to find your crossroads, the gateway that can take you anywhere in this world or in any other worlds._\n\nBRADFORD KEENEY,  \n _T HE BUSHMAN WAY OF TRACKING GOD_\n\n _Authentic tidings of invisible things!_\n\nWILLIAM JAMES, _O N SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS_\n\n _The great sun burning with light, the strong earth\u2014dear earth\u2014the warm sky, the pure air, the thought of ocean, the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus._\n\nRICHARD JEFFRIES,  \n _T HE STORY OF MY HEART_\n\n _Our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depends on the feelings the things arouse in us._\n\nWILLIAM JAMES,  \n _O N A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS_\n\nA SACRED VOICE IS CALLING YOU\n\nAbraham Maslow termed mystical experiences _peak experiences_. He said they frequently occur in well-integrated, mature people. Often a mystical experience results from a deep need to feel the numinous, to have an experience that transcends the understanding of the intellect. When we allow ourselves to fall totally, madly in love with the other, to give ourselves over completely to the feelings we have for him or her, the opportunity for the ecstatic to enter our lovemaking is increased. It's as if an invitation has been sent out for the mystical to enter the relationship. As we go deeper and deeper into feeling the love we have for the other, physical boundaries begin to fall away. Love in that deeply intimate place is the catalyst for the mysterious, ecstatic event to unfold between the two, and in our psyches.\n\nJames Hillman describes eloquently the _daimon_ or _fate, genius, calling, soul, destiny_ (he uses these terms interchangeably depending on the context), some invisible guiding force that is with us during our lifetime. Before we take on a human body there is a time when we sit in counsel with the Universe, with God, Creator, the cosmos, with Gaia and whoever else you might recall being there. In this counsel, before we make the journey to Earth, we make agreements about how we can best spend our time here during this chapter of the soul's making. At that time, we are each given a soul companion\u2014a daimon\u2014that guides us here to Earth. The daimon is necessary because on the way to becoming born, we lose our memory of the agreements we made. The daimon is a life companion, a soul guide who helps us navigate this life and to slowly remember why we've come here. Remembering those agreements; to become who we were meant to be, to make the soul's journey, to let the Genius out of the bottle, to enliven our destiny, to participate in making the world a better place, whatever our agreements are, our daimon guides us, pulls us here, pushes us there, brings that experience to us, helping us to be who we came here to be.\n\nThe daimon is alert to movements of our soul's purpose, and those early movements, intimations, can often be seen in early childhood. Edward O. Wilson talks of it this way, \"You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, explosives, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies\u2014the odds are that your obsession will have begun in childhood. The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe. . . . A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.\"\n\nThere has been a fairly obvious theme in my life of relationship experiences, sexual experiences, sexual abuse, sexual violence, sexual ecstasy, wilderness ecstasy, bonding with Earth, Earth sexuality that has undoubtedly helped shape who I've become, who I was born to be, and which has heavily influenced the writing of this book. I chose at each juncture to keep going, to say \"yea\" or \"nay.\" And I am keenly aware of the touch of an invisible guide having a hand in my life and in helping me stay alive in dangerous situations.\n\n _Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions._\n\nERICH FROMM,  \n _T HE REVOLUTION OF HOPE_\n\nThe ancient Greeks had a word (they had a word for everything) for making the invisible visible, _opathe_. We have a passionate desire to make what lies just below the surface of a thing visible to our senses, to our seeing, to our feeling. It is the work of the scientist to see the intimate workings of cells, mitochondria, bacteria, and organs and how all things are in relationship to each other. We need and want to feel the presence of the mysterious in our lives, inside our waking and dreaming. To know, without doubt, that which we came from is here around us and inside us, that we are not alone. We need a sense of mystery, of the unknown, yet we strive diligently to unravel, make sense, to prove or disprove the existence of spiritual forces, numinosity, invisible force fields. We want to know if our prayers and dreams are being heard and answered. We need to know this to have our lives makes some sense, have meaning beyond the mundane. If not, what has been the purpose for the inextinguishable existence of stories, legends, myths from every culture on Earth of gods and goddesses, spirit messages, trees that talk and walk about? We need the myths of old as well as to create new myths; those stories that are made up that have truth in them, help us find our own truths. We endeavor to unravel and unearth the magic and mystery of not only the Universe but, especially, our own humble inner and outer workings. As Richard Earnheart says, \"It is the goal of every serious artist, scientist, and writer: unbridling the unseen, unearthing the undiscovered, unleashing a great tempest of the heretofore unexpected.\"\n\nIt is through sacred sex and relationship with the wild that we strive to satisfy our deeply felt need for the numinous. These deep fully-present connections provide the moments when we glimpse the movement of some great thing inside us, or the movement of a barely visible form skittering past the corner of our eyes, seen but not quite seen. The moments when we feel so much love for a grandchild or lover that we are taken outside ourselves, moved in the core of ourselves. Feeling is at the core of becoming whole, is the center spiral from which sacred sex spins. It is the balm that heals the split between humans and Gaia, and it is this feeling that will repair damage done from the mechanistic, scientific world-view and return us to a state of wholeness. Sacred, ecstatic lovemaking is a gift from the gods; it is a portal through which we experience a spiritual reality, experience our lover as a sacred, holy being. It is in these sacred moments that our ordinary awareness becomes heightened, illuminated, and we experience the all-encompassing presence of spirit and our interrelationship with all beings.\n\n _If you cannot face directly into your sexuality,  \nYou will never discover your true spirituality.  \nYour earthly spirit leads to discovering your heavenly spirit.  \nLook at what created you to discover what will immortalize you._\n\nHSI LAI,  \n _T HE SEXUAL TEACHINGS OF THE WHITE TIGRESS_\n\nIt is not just the moments after sex or, sadly, during sex that we often feel something is missing. Human beings have been feeling that something is missing for a very long time. Rather than try to name what it is, rather than turning to face the feeling and follow it back to its source, we turn to Prozac, television, and therapy and fill our homes with stuff. We think if only we have more stuff, the right stuff, then some psychological shift will magically happen, and we'll fill the loss with the meanings and connections we've been looking for. Stuff dulls our senses so we don't have to feel how much our life doesn't work while we're looking for meaning. What gives our life meaning is something invisible. But meaning doesn't happen in a vacuum, it comes out of being in relationship to the work we are meant to do\u2014with our lovers, with ourselves, with the first plant that communicated with us.\n\nOur relationship with the wildness of Earth is one doorway into the mystical experience. I had been walking the eighty acres of a friend's land for nearly three hours trying to find the right spot to put myself for my third vision quest, which I planned to begin a week later. I crossed the stream, hiked up the hill on the north, then meandered back down and back across the stream, up the southern hill, and around the forest edge. After a few hours, I made my way back to my van. Instinctively, I touched my left earlobe. Gasping in shock, I discovered one of my earrings was gone. It was a special pair, made by a friend who was a Mayan sculptor in the Yucatan. I was horrified and spent a few moments kicking myself in the ass for wearing them on a walk through the forest. I quickly gave it up as I decided that since I was asking a lot of the land and the spirit of the land\u2014to hold me and guide me during my coming four-day fast\u2014I was glad to leave the earring as an offering of gratitude. When leaving a gift for the spirits, it's good to give something that has value and meaning so it's not an idle gesture. I was happy to think of it being out there, somewhere, as one of my giveaways.\n\nA week later, I returned to the land with my backpack, sleeping bag, camp pad, prayer pipe, and water jugs to fast for four days and nights. I began to walk toward the spot I had chosen earlier when I sensed it was now wrong; it didn't feel right today. I continued to walk, but as I prepared to cross the stream, I was stopped suddenly in my tracks, held still, prevented from moving by some invisible force. Instinctively I looked down as if to see what was holding me still. It took a moment for the reality of what I was seeing to register in my awareness. Next to my right foot was the lost earring. The impact of what was happening continued to move deeper into my interior world. Out of eighty acres, the earring could have fallen anywhere. I could have crossed the stream at any point, but here I was and here it was.\n\nAs I stood there feeling everything I was feeling, my mind whirling at the sight of it, an energy force seemed to rise up from the ground and stream, slowly wrapping around me a phenomenal sense of love. Oh, what a rapture to be in the midst of this experience\u2014the numinous, the real, extraordinary. To feel unconditionally loved by the spirit of this land and the spirit of the vision quest. Certain my heart would burst, water flowed freely from my eyes. Something told me to pick it up, to take it back, and place it on my quest altar as a reminder during my time here, a reminder that I was not alone. I had invisible companions who loved me and this was a demonstration of their love and support for what I was doing. My four-day quest became a rich tapestry of meaning.\n\nThere was no doubt, to my way of seeing, that my daimon had a hand in that event. I have no doubt that Gaia, Earth, the spirits of place and of vision quest were instrumental in the confluence of that sequence of events.\n\nThe meaning of that moment when I was stopped in my tracks still percolates and affects my life. I needed that personal experience with those invisibles on that land at that time for my soul work and destiny. It may take years after such an event for the full meaning to come to fruition.\n\nPeople are hungry for the invisibles. We are desperate to know they share our lives and to feel their presence. Note the popularity of the Harry Potter books and movies, _The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, _Stardust, Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia, American Gods,_ and so on. We are like Alice, of _Alice in Wonderland._ When a rabbit walked by as she sat under a tree reading, she knew by the waistcoat he was wearing that he was no ordinary rabbit; she could tell that he was intelligent and aware. She followed him down the rabbit hole into another world because the invisible had spoken to her.\n\nThe use of psychotropics such as marijuana, ayahuasca, peyote, or mushrooms is illegal but the illegality has nothing to do with addiction. These substances are illegal because they open the doors of perception, allowing us to see the invisibles underneath the form of the visible world. Publishers such as Inner Traditions publish New Age and esoteric books on subjects that mainstream publishers won't touch because these subjects validate the existence of the invisibles. The normal response is to deny their existence. As accounts of the invisible realm rise up from the underworld and from the dusty shelves of archaic libraries, they are being met by an equal force ready to discount, discredit, and censor them, as evidenced by the continuing war on drugs and the medical marijuana debate. In recent years there has been an increasing rise in the use of traditional herbal medicine, shamanism, energy work, and channeling and a resurgence of the peyote church and ayahuasca ceremonies as more and more people seek to meet needs that are not being met by allopathic medicine or pharmaceutical drugs. The degree to which people are willing to pay out-of-pocket expenses for non-Western medicine and healers, and risk legal recriminations to participate in \"illegal\" ceremonies speaks volumes of the need for invisibles. What if we actually lived as if the gods of Earth and myth lived among us? What would our life be like if we worked directly with our daimon every day and called on the invisible ancestors\u2014spirits of place, of mountain, of ocean\u2014to help guide us? What would our lives look like? What would it do to our level of hope? How would it change our orientation to Nature, to wilderness, to each other? How would we begin?\n\nGOING WILD\n\nWe need regular infusions of the wild, of the numinous and the touch of the invisibles. We need to seek refuge or renewal in physical wilderness. We may need to smell the sweet vanilla scent of a pine forest or hear the waves rise and fall on the ocean. Wild is known through our senses. Going into wild ecosystems forces us to become aware; that's part of their function, to cause us to shift our focus from the prosaic and ordinary to the heightened, otherworldly, and extraordinary. Each of our senses becomes sharp, fine-tuned; we listen for the deep sounds, look for the unseen as our peripheral vision expands farther and farther out. Our nervous systems are heightened and each hair on our body acts as a kinesthetic radar receptor. We become acutely aware of our own sounds, our breathing, the heaviness of foot on the forest floor, the scratching sound of Gore-Tex, and the tension we are holding in our body. The primordial part of us knows that we are both predator and prey. There are bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and loose rocks to be mindful of. Before we even set foot in areas designated as wilderness or even go to a campground, some internal shift happens\u2014we enroll the Predator part of us, the part that's interested in surviving. If we were to slow down a bit, we would notice that our concerns turn toward providing for what we were taught are the basic necessities for survival: food, shelter, water, and clothing. We begin by taking inventory of equipment and gear on hand. Is it in good working order? Do I need to replace or add anything? How will I protect and defend myself if a bear or mountain lion comes upon my scent, then my camp, then me?\n\nWe ask ourselves questions about the weather, about food and shelter. Do we need a tent or will a tarp be sufficient? Do we want to sleep on the ground sheltered only by the night sky? What if it rains or the temperature drops? Do we have rain gear, enough warm clothing? Is there potable water where we are going? Do we need to bring a purification system? What about food and cooking? The process of preparing for our trip increases our awareness; our senses become more acute. And once we've arrived, we need to know how to read the geography of the land to keep us from pitching camp in the middle of an animal path or in the floodplain of a creek.\n\nAs critically important as the physical needs are, we also need to know how to read the invisible geography of our chosen campsite. How does it feel? Is it benevolent, supportive, friendly, ominous? Some part of us is reading this landscape as that part is always looking for what feels good and avoiding places that feel funny, weird, or scary. We do it each time we go into a coffee shop or restaurant but rarely do we pay attention to what we are actually doing as we search the place to find just the right spot to sit, the spot that feels good. We actually imagine sitting there before our body arrives in the chair. Once in the wilderness, have we acknowledged that the wild has been called home by many others before we hominids showed up? Have we asked permission to camp in the middle of someone else's living room and has it been granted? Have we told the other inhabitants; the plants, the animals, the stones, the trees, the elementals, what we are doing there, how long we intend to stay? Have we asked them if they would grant us a drama-free stay? Have we regarded the spirit of the place and made offerings, or in some way reciprocated, given back in exchange for staying, as we would take a bottle of fine wine to dinner at a friend's house?\n\nDespite our brilliance as a species, we still think the disharmony we feel within ourselves, with each other, and with Earth can be assuaged, ignored, or somehow altered by iPods, the Internet, instant messaging, and bigger, flatter, sharper television screens. Though I enjoy having those things in my life to some degree, none of them has been able to replace intimacy. None of them replaces my experience with the wild or the soul food I find there. The World Wide Web connects me to far-off lands, loved ones living abroad, hard-to-find books, new and old music and research papers. YouTube brings Viktor Frankl, Eric Berne, Virginia Satir and Occupy Wall Street into my office, but these things do not bring the livingness, the soul, of wild ecosystems into my home. They do not bring the scent of pine forest, the spontaneous call of a red-tailed hawk overhead, a lizard sunning itself on the rock in my path. They do not render me awestruck in the same way the soul of the mountains does or the experience of being seen by an ancient, invisible teacher come to walk by my side for a spell. And they certainly do not render my senses alert to the livingness of being immersed in changing landscapes and ecosystems.\n\n _But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghost-like we glide through nature, and should not know our place again._\n\nRALPH WALDO EMERSON,  \n\"EXPERIENCE,\" _S ELF-RELIANCE AND OTHER ESSAYS_\n\nOur electronics keep our eyes engaged in looking while we lose our ability to see. We have become so geometrically single focused that when we look at the M\u00fcller-Lyer arrows pictured below, we can't tell whether one line is longer than the other.\n\n _The M\u00fcller-Lyer arrows_\n\nThe modern Western brain, has been trained by exposure to photographs and representational art and also by exposure to street corners, square rooms, and other \"carpentered\" features of the environment to see cues of depth and distance on two-dimensional pictorial surfaces. This training confuses the Western perception of the M\u00fcller-Lyer diagram. But studies such as one published by Philip L Kilbride and H. W. Leibowitz,\"The Ponzo Illusion among the Baganda of Uganda,\" show that those living an indigenous lifestyle in the non-\"carpentered\" natural world are able to judge the length of the lines accurately. That is, they are able to see the lines as they are: equal in length.\n\nFor the Western brain, the slope of the arrows in the M\u00fcller-Lyer diagram creates the illusion of depth. If you look at a corner inside your house you'll notice that the juncture where two walls meet the ceiling or the floor visually reproduces the M\u00fcller-Lyer line with the inverted arrows, or \"V\" shapes pointing in toward the line. When you position yourself across the street from the corner of a building you'll be able to see that the M\u00fcller-Lyer line with the arrows pointing out away from it is repeated where the vertical line of the corner meets the roof and again at the bottom corner of the building.\n\nMany books have been written by people who travel to exotic lands, go deep into the jungle or to remote islands, to live and study with indigenous peoples. Overwhelmingly, they recount how they were transformed and their senses awakened, how they were finally able to see as indigenous people see. They saw minute details in butterfly larvae and in the patterns of leaves and tree bark. They were able to sense from a distance, when someone was approaching. Then they return to their ordinary life with the stories and myths that reveal some essential truth and even warnings, to write a book telling of their adventures benefiting all who read the accounts. I'm glad they are willing to be messengers.\n\nIt is helpful to travel to other countries and experience other cultures, to be offered a very different perspective. But not all of us can afford to take the time, commit the resources necessary, and then be lucky enough to be accepted into an ancient society that still has the old ways intact, unblemished by missionaries and Western culture.\n\nWhat are we to do, those of us who are homebound, unable to travel? How are we to replicate and access the experience of restoring the indigenous way of seeing and feeling? We can do what indigenous people have always done: What they do is available to us, right here and now. There is not a single thing I can think of (short of being in a coma or a politician) that is stopping us from becoming indigenous to this place, the place where we are living in any given moment.\n\nThe knowledge indigenous people pass on is a wisdom that comes not from schooling, not from higher education, but from being intrinsically part of their habitat and using their heart field as an organ of perception. Indigenous people are as much a part of their landscape as the mosquito larvae, the mountain, the grasses, the u\u00f1a de gato vine. It is wisdom, a body of knowledge that is dynamic and adaptable and transferrable and available. It is wisdom that is transmitted, if you will, directly from the jungle, directly from the mountain, from forests or desert mesas, from the trees and plants in the backyard, to anyone willing and choosing to be the receiver. The more time we spend in the forest, walking through streams and wild landscapes with a hungry heart, a desire to learn, and enough humility to allow ourselves to be educated, the closer we are to becoming indigenous. Humility must be part of the asking; the invisibles must feel, must know\u2014for feeling is knowing\u2014your desire to be touched, to be taught, to be shown.\n\n _In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks._\n\nJOHN MUIR\n\nThe more time we spend in uncivilized landscapes, the more we know, the more intelligent we become, the more tuned to the life of the forest, to the intricate, delicate, minute breathing of the trees, the imperceptible movement of stone. It is unavoidable, then, to become aware of our own internal movements. And one day, when we're not looking, we realize we know things we didn't know we knew and have no memory of learning. It happens spontaneously as you move through your day. Interesting thoughts and insights are there, inside us, bubbling to the surface. We begin to see connections between and among things. We begin to sense and perceive things; we notice the smell of things and places and people. Authentic knowledge is percolating through gray matter. There is a noticed sense of calm that begins to relax our musculature. Our breathing deepens, our heartbeat regulates, and our peripheral vision expands more consistently. We may feel a sense of inner strength and a kinship with other life-forms. With each visit to uncivilized landscapes, we become more present in our bodies and more present with the experience of being there.\n\n _I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is\u2014I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?_\n\nHENRY DAVID THOREAU,  \n\"WALKING\"\n\nSome part of us knows that to give life to that primordial, ancient faculty inside us, the indigenous heart of us, the part that knows how to walk silently through a forest, knows that we have to break a few rules of the culture we live in. \"It's not polite to stare, dear.\" We're wearing a cultural \"chastity belt,\" and I am quite done with the irritation and chaffing that it causes to my sensibilities and free will.\n\n _Dare to be seduced by the senses_.\n\nCultures still living closely connected to nature, who depend on it for survival and livelihood, don't live in carpentered houses with square corners. Because they have not been schooled out of their native senses, their feelings not dulled or shut down, they are able to see when one line is longer than the other. Their seeing hasn't been adulterated nor their vision become pinpoint, forced into straight lines and corners.\n\n _The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were._\n\nHENRY DAVID THOREAU,  \n\"WALKING\"\n\nTo reclaim the body's sensuality and sexuality requires reclaiming the body's sensory perceiving and feeling. Our senses evolved in concert with the wildness of the world. Sensory acuity is the ground where the wild is fostered. We are not encouraged to feel in our culture, to sense, to be sensual and full of sensations, or to find meaning in sexual experiences. Marjorie Hope Nicolson eloquently states it this way: \"Like men of every age, we see in Nature what we have been taught to look for, we feel what we have been prepared to feel.\" The experience of wilderness depends on, is fundamental to, and is accessed through our senses. The singularly most dissident, nonconformist, rebellious thing you can do and the most immediate entrance to the wild state of mind is\n\nto\n\ncome\n\nto\n\nyour\n\nsenses,\n\nnow.\n\nCOMING TO LIFE\n\nWilheim Reich developed somatics, a system of body therapy used in conjunction with psychotherapy, to release held emotions and trauma. Reich wanted a full-body emotional response to life. He believed that if you covered yourself up, armored yourself, you could deaden pain, but you would rob yourself of a life full of joy. Reich asserted there was a direct correlation between aggression and body armoring. He held that the longer a person armors herself, the tenser the musculature becomes, the deeper the psychosis goes. Armoring leads to cancer, arthritis, and rheumatism and dulls awareness, intuition, and creativity. When emotions get backed up inside a person and the musculature becomes more tense and atrophied, the more likely it is for aggression to build and war to occur.\n\nThe armored body is not unlike an animal that has been taken out of its natural habitat and put into a cage. The animal paces back and forth, back and forth, getting more and more tense, feeling the bars of the cage getting closer and the space getting tighter. The animal's territorial rights have been usurped; it needs space to hunt and run. It needs to move, stretch, run free and uninhibited. But it is being confined, its movements restricted artificially against its nature, and it becomes, as a result, violent and rebellious. Krishnamurti describes it this way: \"There is the desire to expand. And when society presses me in, drives me into a certain corner, I explode\u2014which is again a revolt in order to expand. And when one lives in a small flat in a very crowded street and there is no open country to breathe in and no opportunity to go there, I become violent. The animals do this.\"\n\nEverybody wants to be more alive, to feel more alive, to thrive rather then merely live or survive. Psychobiologist Stanley Keleman writes, \"Being more alive means being more sexual, more sensuous. To be more sexual is to broaden one's range of feeling and expressive action.\" Eros, sexual energy, is life-force energy permeating all of creation and influencing our own creativity and ecstatic experiences.\n\n _Wild is sexual; we must become wild once again_.\n\nWilderness is sexual. Jay Griffiths in _Wild_ says, \"[I]f you had to choose part of the human anatomy as an analogy for wilderness, you'd have to go for the loins\u2014and we humans lose an acute and vital part of our sensuality when we ignore the wild world; the grinding of shoots thrusting up into the light; the hungry torsion as snake squeezes snake, birds flightily dipping as they twang an orgasm between wing beats, the delicate incipience of young sexuality in bud and blossom, lizards eyeing each other up for a darting lick of quick sex or basking with satisfied lust.\"\n\nWhen we exercise our senses, feeling into the world as we move through it, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, we awaken the wild inside us. In _A Blue Fire,_ James Hillman makes reference to this when he says, \"When we move with senses acute, listening, watching, breathing in tune with the world about us, recognizing its priority and ourselves as guests, witnessing its 'God-givenness,' then we have made a wilderness area or moment. The restoration of the pristine stars in a fresh attitude toward what is, whatever and wherever it is.\"\n\nWe take back the original meaning of the word _wyld;_ that feeling that is out of the ordinary; that is fresh, unwearied and is present in old-growth forests, magnificent stone outcroppings, the sound of ocean waves cresting and crashing, and our sexual longings. We can be wild in any place or event, and when we do, we subvert the dominant culture's attempts to dwarf our senses and pigeonhole our feelings and colonize our minds. We come alive once again; we become the free, spiraling balls of energy that we were as young children, moving spontaneously and without hesitation through time and space.\n\nBecause the wild is dangerous to so many people's way of thinking (yes, eating the wild will change you), we are taught it must be repressed, suppressed, manicured, trimmed, tamed, cut, sprayed, fenced out, and controlled. The thing about fences is: when you fence something out, something else is being fenced in.\n\nThe soulful wild is a place where our soul can be reclaimed. Once you truly let yourself feel again after a few meals of the wild and sensuous Earth, a shift in consciousness penetrates the foundations of your beliefs and value systems\u2014sometimes slowly and gently over time, other times an unexpected shift in principles and perceptions is thrust into your mind and all that you were before suddenly becomes pregnant with uncivilized thoughts unlike anything you've thought previously. That sudden shift is like that \"aha!\" moment that comes abruptly after you've been mulling over a difficult concept. One moment you're vexed by it, and the next you have clarity that rings pure like temple bells. When wyld inserts itself in our consciousness, a part of us that has been asleep is suddenly awakened. We begin to shift out of unconscious programming into conscious awareness.\n\n _You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them [things seen in Nature]. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose for you would fain perceive something and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced. You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be._\n\nHENRY DAVID THOREAU,  \n _T RUE HARVEST_\n\nOur intuitions and perceptions become clear, and suddenly we are able to see why, for instance, we've had a particular, ongoing problem and why that person in our life has been such an irritation. You begin to see below the water's surface, beyond whatever sparkling reflections have been catching your gaze and distracting you. Moreover, the surface is no longer a satisfying place to be spending your brief life; a hunger for more begins to drive you now out of the familiar into deeper, darker waters. A willingness and need to explore and push the edges of conformity excites and animates your life.\n\nAnd sometimes the shift comes with a painful, life-changing price, as it did with Aldo Leopold the day he killed a wolf.\n\nIn those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into the impassable slide-rocks.\n\nWe reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes\u2014something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.\n\nMany of us turn to writers and poets whose works were stimulated and inspirited while spending time in the forests, mountains, and deserts. They have taken into themselves some nourishment that kneads human souls and thus gives rise to the great works of the likes of Thoreau, Goethe, Leopold, Muir, Schauberger, and LaChapelle. They went into the wild to service an internal hunger and became servants to something outside and greater than themselves.\n\nThere are those of us who make a pilgrimage to a mountain, who need to feel the process of finding wilderness intensely in our bodies\u2014legs pushing our weight up serpentine trails, lungs burning with the cold fire of clear, high air, skin flushing with the heat of exertion, as we ascend, laying this mile beneath our feet and then the next. Or we may go to the seashore for the spray of water as wave after wave is spent on stones. We may need the gentle, low, rhythmic tides on a sandy South Pacific shore. We choose places that fill a need, that match our psychological states or shake us out of them. We go to be stirred up, calmed down, soothed, inspired, renewed, healed. To make love, to be made love to, to be called beloved by Earth. Conversely, we may avoid places like deserts for their irrepressible ability to show us the desert that has for too long existed inside us. Taking the wild inside you, tasting the scent on your tongue, comingling your soul essence with the soul of Gaia, stirs primordial faculties, from groin to reptilian brain to conscious awareness, seducing the senses to shake off the stupor induced by the drugs called culture and materialism.\n\nJohn Seed, the rainforest activist said, \". . . as the implications of evolution and ecology are internalized . . . we begin to identify with all life. . . . alienation subsides . . . 'I am protecting the rain forest' develops into 'I am part of the rain forest protecting myself. I am that part of the rain forest recently emerged into thinking.'\"\n\nAs your perceptions become acute and your seeing more clear, your sense of self grows more whole, sturdy, and potent. Your soul takes on larger dimensions, filling out, dropping baby fat, maturing and becoming sophisticated. You may even feel bigger, taller, taking up more space. You may find yourself changing the way you wear your clothes\u2014tight-fitting jeans are replaced by garments that allow freedom of movement. Unwilling to be constrained, we choose clothes that are loose on our bodies, full of color, and outrageous. You may take on more affect in speech and behavior. Suddenly you notice your arms are moving spontaneously, your hands gesticulating. Your hips begin to loosen and sway, and there is an energy now, coming off your body, and your core scent has changed, becoming musky. You have more energy and improved memory. You shed the garments of civilization, and soon your favorite pair of shoes or your cool leather harness boots are squeezing and constricting your feet. You can wear those favorite shoes only occasionally now as your feet take on a hissing sort of dialect from walking naked between, up, over, and around the valleys and mountains of Gaia's bosom; feet skin touching Earth skin. And over time, we are able to bring life-giving water to our internal desert, transforming it into an oasis.\n\nAnd speaking of shoes . . . The Mamas, or spiritual elders of the Tayrona living in the Sierra Nevada de Marta in Columbia, say shoes break the contact between people and Earth. Walking barefoot in the forest or even around your home has psychological and physical benefits. It connects you immediately to the electrical energy of Earth, grounding you in your body, causing you to be more present. Life-force energy from Earth is directly transmitted through the soles of the feet, increasing awareness and energy. Walking barefoot reduces inflammation in the lower extremities, regulates thyroid function, and reduces stress, and since the bottoms of our feet are full of acupuncture points, the whole body is brought into alignment. Walking shoeless reduces the chances of sprains and deformed feet and toes, as well as strengthening the muscles in the feet and legs and increasing circulation. We are healthier physically, emotionally, and psychologically the more we move about sans shoes. In fact, there is no record of feet disorders before the Renaissance. The introduction of the elevated heel was a brilliant invention to depict wealth (Louis XIV had four-inch heels made for him) and to protect feet from the filth that plagued ancient Egypt and Rome. Butchers were known to wear heels to avoid the carcass debris that littered the floor.\n\nAside from their fashion and functional uses (keeps your feet in the stirrups), heels keep us off balance and insulate our naked feet from the sensual, erotic, wet, gritty, slippery muddy, warm, sandy, and rich soil of Earth.\n\nA DICHOTOMY THAT DAMAGES\n\n _When the great crusade against sex and the body started in full blast with Plato, it was a crusade for \" ideals,\" and for this \"spiritual\" knowledge in apartness. Sex is the great unifier. In its big, slower vibration it is the warmth of heart which makes people happy and together, in togetherness._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n\"A PROPOS OF _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\"\n\nMany spiritual traditions and religious practices have wrongly sought to separate the body and soul; the body is regarded as a place of denigration, an obstacle to enlightenment, while more value is placed on advancing and purifying the soul. Though we all seem to disagree on where exactly the soul resides in the body, or exactly what the soul is, it needs purifying whether or not it can be located.\n\nPlato's philosophy was based on his theory of a soul divided into three components, reason, will, and appetite. He contended that one can identify the parts of the soul because they sometimes clash with one another. He regarded the body and soul as separate entities. As a dualist, he also posited an \"unreal\" world of the senses and physical processes, and a \"real\" world of ideal forms. This way of viewing natural phenomena has had dire consequences.\n\nGeorg Feuerstein writes: \"[Y]et how many spiritual seekers have struggled to realize truth, God or a higher consciousness by escaping what they called 'the prison of the body.' In treating the body as an enemy, that antagonist of the Spirit, they doomed themselves to experiences of an amputated God. They failed to see the body as part of the Great Mystery. We can learn from their mistake.\" The body is the temple of the gods and the vehicle through which soul has life.\n\nBradford Keeney observes that **\"** [c]elibacy makes no sense to a Bushman. 'You've got to be kidding! Are there really people who think that not having sex makes them closer to the gods? What god would want to hang around them? Maybe it's better if you don't go home. Your trickster gods sound boring because they don't know how to have a good time. Hang out with us and you'll learn that God loves sex!'\" The original cultures never had sexual hang-ups or phobias about touching. Keeney goes on to note that this mind-body schism is \"a new development in the scheme of things, and it seems to have started as a word game. Mind got separated from body. Good was separated from evil. Mind married good, while body married evil. Thereafter, whenever mind experiences itself as inseparable from body, a sin of inappropriate union is declared. Being touched by God shifted to being heard by God. But God isn't listening to your words; God wants to be touched. The same is true for you, so go find someone to hug.\"\n\nI was between my fourteenth and sixteenth years. I was in a two-year love-hate relationship with Christianity and the Lutheran church I sporadically attended a mile from our farm. There was something there that I was looking for, some need I had I thought could be met there. So many of the tenets and teachings were a source of rage for me, and still I returned hoping to find something to feed my unnamed hunger, which compelled me to attend. I didn't understand the reason for being born, for being dropped in this family in the middle of no-fucking-where.\n\nInteresting to me was that the single most often misquoted passage from the book of Genesis is that human beings were \"given dominion over all things.\" There was no room in the interpretation of the doctrines for Earth to be alive, aware, and sentient, yet that's how I experienced Earth. Everything, everyone, except human beings, was unfeeling and ignorant. It fell way short of answering how other life-forms were able to last and evolve for billions of years before the \"superior\" human species was created out of the genius of an oversixty, white, lonely, loving, upright, and vengeful god. Something was wrong with what I was being indoctrinated in.\n\nThrough the teachings of Christianity, only humans were created in the image of God, only humans have a soul. But prophetically it is written also in Genesis 9:2: \"[T]he fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are delivered.\" This is the passage from Genesis that is often underemphasized, the part that puts responsibility for caretaking the Earth in the hands of humans. It warns us that however we treat Earth and all that moves on Earth, we shall be treating ourselves for we are part of \"all that moveth upon the Earth.\"\n\nIn whose image are the fishes, the seas, grains of sand, microbes, fungi, and snail made in? Why should human beings presume to think humans are the only species made in the image of God Earth-maker?\n\n _God Yahweh formed man out of the soil of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God Yahweh planted a garden in Eden in the east and placed the man therein . . . God Yahweh took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to serve and preserve it._\n\nDANIEL HILLEL,  \n _O UT OF THE EARTH_\n\nThe word _animal_ comes from the Latin _animalis,_ meaning \"having breath.\" Creator, Earth-maker breathed life into all beings. Can we extrapolate, then, that all animals are living souls, having breath? And further, _spirit_ comes from the Latin _spiritus,_ meaning \"breath.\" All living things have a soul, and it is the spirit, the breath of life, that is given from the Great Spirit that animates and connects all living things. We all breathe the same breath, our inhale is that of the cosmic exhale. Each of us sit, lie, move, creep, crawl, live, die in the same matrix of spirit breath. When we feel _inspired,_ we are filled, imbued with the spirit that moves through all things, and we are aroused to act, to do something with the inspiration. We know it is inspiration for it's as if we have been taken over by some benevolent force that insists we _do_ something without a moment's hesitation.\n\nIt was in the middle of this time of my life that I would often ride my horse into the fields and open spaces behind our house. I loved riding my horse. It was one way I escaped the insanity of my family. I could breathe and smell the fresh air and think clearly without the contamination of our family psychosis.\n\nI was indomitable and unconquerable with my legs wrapped around this magnificent, powerful animal, as mighty muscles, thighs, and shoulders moved and ass swayed beneath me with each stride. I became intoxicated with the primal scent of horse hair wet with sweat. And on one such day, as my horse was walking along with me on her back, the sun warm and low on the horizon on that late summer day, I was lingering deep in thought, as I often did when I was alone, when a peculiar feeling began to take over my senses. It touched the entirety of my body at once as if being bathed in it, a light touch at first, just light enough to get my attention. My skin began to flush and prickle, and I could feel the hairs on my arms and neck stand up. We walked slowly for a few more moments as the feeling got stronger and slid beneath my skin to my muscles, my bones, then each organ was infused with it; my blood took on its pattern until it settled into my bone marrow. I was utterly taken over by it, possessed by it. I stopped my horse. I was taken over by the potency of the feeling so much so it disabled me from movement. A sweet, unfamiliar exotic aroma filled my nostrils briefly. I became acutely aware of a presence near me. Slowly, and with effort, I turned in each direction fully expecting to see someone standing near me. I was surprised to see no one. I sat on my horse, still, and feeling this curious, unsettling phenomena.\n\nFrom somewhere between my head and the space around me, not entirely inside me and not entirely outside me, I heard a voice. It wasn't my voice I heard; it was not any voice I recognized. It was strong and soothing, and in it I felt a deep sense of reverence and deep, abiding love. Like the sun on my skin, a unique warmth soothed my every cell. The words \"I have given you all that you need\" floated like ripe pollen finding ground upon my fertile, virgin consciousness. There was no doubt at the time that I had just heard the voice of God. Even now, decades later, I know it was the voice of God I heard that day, but it was not Yahweh, the standing, upright God of Christianity. My understanding of God is not a self-limiting concept, nor does it exempt me from taking personal responsibility as I'm waiting for the rapture. It is the God of nature, of Spirit; the One who weaves the matrix of life.\n\nFor thirty-five years, those words germinated, grew, composted, grew anew as I worked out various and possible meanings of it. I began initially to look outside myself, attempting to define at first what it was I needed. I had food, clothing, shelter, water, a dog, a horse, a farm, a family, schooling. I had a spiritual hunger; I needed food for that. I used drugs and alcohol in excess, attempting to understand the meanings of it. Later, I sought out teachers and ecstatic experiences until a realization that rang a brilliant tone of truth began slowly to emerge in my understanding. My body is the vehicle that enables me to have this human, incarnate, magnificent experience of being alive on Earth. Without a body, there are no senses, no feelings to get you to take notice, no feelings to follow, no anchor for the invisibles to touch you in their voiceless manner. Keeney writes \"Your feelings must trigger the ropes to pull you in the right direction.\" Feelings are our genius, our unique sensing apparatus that we use to find our way and follow what feels good and joyful. Feelings helps us know when we are in the presence of the Divine, the numinous, and the ecstatic. When we have a \"funny\" feeling, it informs us that something someplace inside is out of harmony. Feelings help us navigate life and the world around us and inside us. Without feelings we would be, what would we be . . . robots . . . a ship at sea with no compass or rudder.\n\nThe body is the vehicle for spirit and soul to have experiences, for them to evolve through a collective, intimate dance. Keleman says, \"A person is not in or out of _touch_ with his body. He _is_ his body. We need to get rid of this crazy idea, 'I have a body.' It's the other way around. This is a fact we may not want to swallow, but the head is not the chief cook and bottle washer; the whole body is.\"\n\nOnce you feel, and you must be in your body to feel, you are no body but yourself. No one can tell you what is truth and what is not; you feel it in your body. You feel truth in your body. Your body does not lie. It cannot lie. It doesn't know how to lie. And once you feel, behaviors are then invented out of imagination as a result of the feeling rather than an imitation or some archaic learned performance.\n\n _In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am._\n\nCARL JUNG\n\nTHE SENSING BODY\n\n _Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation . . . the other eight don't count._\n\nHENRY MILLER,  \n _B IG SUR AND ORANGES OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH_\n\nWhen I feel pain or stress, I feel it; I don't think pain or stress. Because I want to know and understand things, I trace the body feeling back to the first intimation of it, when the pain or stress were just hanging out on the periphery of my energy field before they became so engrained in my physical state, constricting muscles and causing one of my too-frequent tension headaches. I'm able to trace it back to a teeny, tiny, whispering voice and the beginnings of tension, which I recognize as irritation or a nagging feeling. Irritation begins like a breeze ruffling the surface of a still pond; it's just enough in the early stages to get me to pay attention, to notice that something is amiss and I need to tend to it, discover what it is and whether to do something about it or not.\n\nOne thing I hate most in my life is when my body is uncomfortable or restricted in some way, so I pay more attention to the early warning signs, those psychic pinches that, if unattended to, can throw me off my game. Paying attention to the subtlest messages sensitizes my nervous system to what and from where something is incoming, or if something is coming from my unconscious to the surface.\n\nWhen the source of the feeling is coming from outside me, I feel it first in my body as the energy of someone's anger, or their fear touches on the electromagnetic field of my heart and causes an almost undetectable shudder as it continues on and penetrates my physical body. As fast as the speed of light, a psychological part of me feels it. If it's fear that is coming in, a deep part of me gets scared; I hold my breath and take care not to make sudden or large movements until whatever it is has passed or an older part of me takes care to reduce or redirect its impact one way or another.\n\nWe know when we are under stress because we feel it; our muscles tense up and get rigid. We know we are sick because we don't feel well. We buy just the right avocados and pineapples and melons by feeling their ripeness and sensing whether they are happy and alive. We choose activities and experiences that make us feel happy and good. We avoid as much as possible experiences that don't feel good. And it's the feeling of \"doesn't feel good\" that alerts us to look for something different to do.\n\nWe enjoy a cocktail or a glass of wine or a cold beer at the end of the day to unwind and relax after a stressful day at work. Sex feels good; it releases tension and stress. We feel close to another person, are held and loved, and often the afterglow can keep us going into the next day. We are hardwired to seek out what feels good, to repeatedly put ourselves in the company of good feelings.\n\nConditioning out of feeling begins early in life. Each time we tell a child that what she wants is bad for her, will rot her teeth and her mind, we are inserting messages that tell the child she doesn't know what's good for her, that her wants and needs are not trustworthy. When we dictate mealtimes rather than feeding on demand, we are sending messages that the feeling body is untrustworthy and not sophisticated enough to know what is best. Scheduled meals send messages that say natural hunger instincts are not important and they disrupt the orderly functioning of the family. We feel one thing in our body and hear contrary words coming to us from outside. Distrust of innate feelings, needs, and hungers are programmed into us by family, teachers, ministers, and friends who tell us \"Don't be sad,\" \"Don't be angry,\" \"It's not time to eat yet,\" \"You'll spoil your appetite,\" \"Eat all your food,\" \"Don't climb that tree,\" \"Get over it,\" \"Snap out of it,\" \"Masturbation is bad,\" \"Don't eat dirt.\"\n\n _Our education from the start has taught us a certain range of emotions, what to feel and what not to feel, and how to feel the feelings we allow ourselves to feel. All the rest is just non-existent._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n\"A PROPOS OF _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\"\n\nFrom the first day of school, children are taught to sit still. The message is don't move, don't be noticed, don't feel (for if I feel, I'll have to move). We assume that children sitting still cause less disturbance in the classroom. But, there is more going on. In _Your Body Speaks Its Mind,_ Keleman says, \". . . the stilling of the children's bodies induces individual patterns of alertness which enhance and sustain one another. The energy of each child's alertness can then be directed into forming the role of the ideal student.\"\n\nWe have a spiritual imperative and responsibility to encourage ourselves and our children to feel, to trust in the innate wisdom of the body. Giving children time outdoors, in backyards, and in the forests around their homes, encourages self-confidence and trust in their growing intuition and natural instincts\u2014things that cannot be learned in books or classrooms. We owe it to them to foster their innate instinct to bond with Earth in the most natural way inherent in them\u2014play. They love finding secret spots or building forts where they are free to explore, imagine, and dream. They need contact with the real world around them and in their neighborhoods.\n\nChildren are naturally empathic with animals until some adult tells them that animals are dirty or that they have fleas and mites. We pass on our own fears of the outdoors, of ticks, Lyme disease, snakes, and falling from trees. By the time children reach six years of age and are in public school, they are afraid of their own shadows and of a little dirt. Trust in their instinctual movements toward wilderness, trust in their hungers and intuition are put in the bag of shadow.\n\nWe spend on average six hours a day watching television or in front of a computer screen, on our iPods, with MP3 players, or with cell phones clamped to our heads like skull implants. We have instant messaging, Skype messaging, text messaging, and social networks such as Facebook that give us the illusion of having deep, meaningful relationships. We no longer understand the distinction between friend and acquaintance or have real communication, real dialogue, as we become ever more superficial, our lives speeding up, hurling us toward death. Internet social networks give the illusion of intimacy while we reduce ourselves to characters and caricatures. We become a data stream, links of superficial sound and data bites, like medical intake forms that tell a physician very little about the human being filling out the form.\n\nAfter having thousands of images flit across our computer screens every day at an unimaginable speed, we then turn off the screens at some hour of the night for sleep and find ourselves in the midst of relative silence and a field of vision with no moving images. Everything suddenly is s l o w e d w a y d o w n. Then what do we do with ourselves? How do we sleep surrounded by silence? How do we sleep when our brain is processing all those images and information, our immune systems compromised by the nonstop bombardment of radiation from computer screens?\n\nOur values and moral compasses were once formed from living in direct contact with the natural world and the world of invisibles and in tight-knit communities of cooperation and preservation. We understood the intrinsic, delicate balance of living in right relationship with all our relatives, not just upright two-leggeds but every created thing we could see and feel and sense and know.\n\nWe've created a world where our understanding of and relationship to the natural world is becoming squeezed into cubes and bites of information we can access from our homes, Blackberries, or iPads as we run from one mechanical place to the other. Nearly all we do is on the run; we eat on the run, talk on the run, try to keep relationships going on the run, have sex on the run. Slowing down is frightening, and we're not even certain we know how to do it any longer. Jerry Mander says, \"We hear people say that nature is boring, and it is clear why they say this. We don't know how to be with it. We are not slow enough.\"\n\nWe seem unable to accept that we are part of Nature. If we could accept that fact, it would change our fundamental belief about ourselves; we'd realize that we are not special. We're simply an expression of Gaia, one species among approximately thirty million.\n\nBeing of the animal kingdom, human beings are not made to live on a diet of megabytes and gigabytes and artificial frequencies. We are at our best, calmest, and most creative, influential, self-confident, balanced, and healthy when we have regular time walking, sitting, hiking, and being in nature, especially wild ecosystems. Our brains and bodies evolved in the dynamic field of the natural world; it's there that we function at our optimum best physically, psychologically, intuitively, and spiritually. Our senses come alive when we are in natural and wild ecosystems; we are immersed in unusual sounds, interesting smells, and our bodies move differently across unpaved and uneven landscapes.\n\nDenying our feelings, turning away from them because they are too painful or discomforting or we don't know what to do with them, desensitizes us to subtleties in feeling and the meanings they contain. We've been so conditioned to not feel. Lacking awareness of our feelings and letting them atrophy grows a kind of callus on our sensing body. If you've ever learned to play guitar, you know the experience of watching your fingertips get thick with layers of skin. Or have you ever had the experience of having Super Glue dry on your fingertips? Being taught at a young age that our feelings are not to be trusted or acted upon desensitizes our psyche in the same way that getting a little Super Glue on our fingertips dulls our sense of touch. Until the glue wears off, there is a numbness, a desensitization wherever it has dried. Feeling objects with those glue-muffled fingertips produces an odd sensation; feeling is there, but it is dull and distant, almost like a memory. A similar phenomenon occurs with our feelings over time. You sense something is there, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Emotions, which are not the same as feelings, get dumbed down as well, so much so that it takes focus of will to say what you feel. \"I think . . . I feel . . . kinda . . . um . . . don't know . . . sort of . . . like, ah . . . oh, sad . . . I think I feel kind of sad.\"\n\nWhen I work with clients and students, I often begin by getting them into their bodies. I had a student who was very intelligent and articulate, and when she talked, she was very animated. Her arms flew here and there, her eyes were often cast upward, and her chin tilted slightly upward as well. Her voice was high in her throat near her sinuses, and the authority of anything she had to say went drifting up and out of the room like a puff of smoke. She had interesting insights and valuable experiences to share, but when she talked from her head, it was difficult to take her seriously. She wasn't home to own her authenticity, her body of experiences.\n\nI had her feel into her feet, without looking at them and then asked her to talk from her diaphragm. Her energy immediately and visibly shifted; her shoulders relaxed, her chin dropped, her cheeks flushed. She looked more present because she was more present; she was grounded in her body. Then I had her breathe through her heart and bring her breath all the way into her diaphragm. Her eyes grew a little larger and softer, and suddenly there was a beautiful, wise, mature ego state looking out of her eyes. She let go a long, deep sigh. When she spoke from that place, her voice came from deep in her belly (in the belly of Earth), as if the Earth herself were speaking. Through body presence, she brought an authority and aliveness to her life force and into the room. And when she spoke from that place, I noticed my own body shift in response to the power that was now there in the room. I felt her authority and the truth she was speaking. Once a person speaks from inside her own body, from her diaphragm, from her loins, there is sexual power attached to it that we call charisma. That is sexy.\n\nOur sexual health and expression are woven into our hearts and our souls and are anchored through gravity and attraction in our body; the interplay of tension between Eros and Psyche. They touch and are touched by Earth and all beings who share this planet with us. To know we are touching and being touched, we must feel and be at home in our bodies.\n\nOur bodies, our brains, every part of us was designed to be impressed upon by the natural world. We need immersion in the world of nature, the world of invisibles where _spiritus mundi_ is easily and readily accessible. To come back to our sensing bodies, we need to return to the body the source of natural impressions, to have our souls imprinted with the visions of seeing butterflies alight on flowers in bloom, hear birdsong, drink from the deep well of direct knowledge that is found only in wild and natural ecosystems. But not just imprinted, our souls are taught, reshaped out of linear programming and technological programming into something more.\n\nSimply living does not equate with being alive. In Hawaii there is a word for the energy or life force that activates all living beings and the elements and is true vitality\u2014 _mana._ Describing this force, Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole says, \"Mana is like an energy that you get. We believe we get ours from the elements first, the Earth, your sky, your ocean, your God, and all that is inside us. And when we open our mouth to speak, to sing, to play, that's what we let out.\"\n\n _Freud and his psychoanalytic descendants are no doubt correct in their assessment that the search for ideal love\u2014for that one perfect soul mate\u2014is the futile wish of not-fully-developed selves. But it also seems true that the longing for a profound, all-consuming erotic connection (and the heightened state of awareness that goes with it) is in our very wiring. The yearning for fulfillment through love seems to be to our psychic structure what food and water are to our cells._\n\nBARBARA GRAHAM,  \n\"THE FUTURE OF LOVE,\" _U TNE READER_\n\nThe absence of experiential processes reinforces feelings of separation. It is not just another human being that we long to feel the touch of intimacy with. There is longing to feel a deep, innate, natural connection to the living Earth and all that we share our life with. There is a primordial need built into the human species for fenceless open country, for the musky, erotic smells of the forest floor, for the sounds of birds and insects, and for the sight of expansive vistas. In ancient and indigenous cultures, there was no separation, no divide between human beings and Earth. All was sacred, alive, intelligent, aware, and sensual. Plants, trees, stones, and the elements were part of daily relationships for food, medicine, and wisdom. Foragers of the Kalahari and aboriginal tribes in Australia are intimately connected to and have a deep sense of and relationship with the places they inhabit and hunt. They use song lines to connect and bind them to place and to nonhuman beings. As David Abram reports in the _Spell of the Sensuous,_ \"Language is inseparable from song and story, and the songs and stories, in turn, are inseparable from the shapes and features of the land. The chanting of any part of a song cycle links the human singer to one of the animals or plants or powers within the landscape, to Crocodile Man or Pandanus Tree Woman or Thunderstorm Man\u2014to whatever more-than-human being first chanted those verses as he or she wandered across the dreaming Earth. But it also binds the human singer to the land itself, to the specific hills, rocks, and streambeds that are the visible correlate of those sung stanzas.\"\n\nFar from our Western orientation of anthropocentrism, indigenous and aboriginal peoples tend more toward _Gaiacentrism,_ if we must put a \"centrism\" label on the human\/nonhuman relationship of those cultures. It is our anthropocentrism, the political philosophical mind-set that human beings are the center of all things, that is at the center of the separation. Human exceptionalism has various meanings in different contexts. To the ancient Athenians, the ability to reason distinguished humans from the natural world. For Christians, it has been spirit\u2014the human spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual (Christian) life.\n\nIn modern times, human beings have created a Grand Canyon\u2013size physical, emotional, and spiritual chasm that is growing deeper and taking us farther away from our bodies and Earth as holy places. Reclaiming the soul, our inherent, intuitive, instinctual nature, opens the door to remembering and reclaiming the body of Earth and our bodies as sacred, alive, aware, intelligent, sexual, and caring. The gravity of humility pulls us below superficiality, shedding our robes of grandiosity and anthropocentrism. Viewing ourselves as a superior species, for which we see the results of as we look around, has led us to the edge of the shaky precipice of becoming an endangered species. Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis postulate in _Dazzle Gradually_ that the human mind is not as unique or special as we like to believe.\n\nPerhaps the greatest psychological stumbling block in the way of widespread scholarly acceptance of Gaia is the implicit shadow of doubt it throws over the concept of the uniqueness of humanity in nature. Gaia denies the sanctity of human attributes. If intricate planning, for instance can be mimicked by cunning arrays of sub-visible entities, what is so special about Homo sapiens and our most prized congenital possession, the human intellect? The Gaian answer to this is probably that nothing is so very special about the human species or mind. Indeed, recent research points suggestively to the possibility that the physical attributes and capacities of the brain may be a special case of symbiosis among modified bacteria.\n\nFocusing on the deep ecology of Earth and our own deep ecology begins to uproot archaic beliefs and values that prevent us from living an inhabited, authentic life. Working directly with the intelligence of plants, with all the intelligence and graceful beauty of our bodies and through ceremonies, we begin to heal and reclaim the sacredness of Earth, our earthly sexuality, and the bond that has been severed.\n\nHow do we go about reclaiming an intimate connection with the wild Earth, with a stone, a tree, or the animals that live with us? We begin by understanding that connection is a feeling thing, not a thinking thing. Secondly, the mind cannot feel; the mind analyzes and categorizes data, and it interprets feelings. Our feeling sense is the instrument of true knowing. Whether we are creating intimacy with our lover, our children, our friends, or other animals or beings, intimacy begins by teaching yourself to see, to perceive, and to feel as we each did naturally as infants and young children.\n**7**\n\n ** _Choosing Another Way_**\n\n_The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Man does not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself._\n\nCHIEF SEATTLE,  \nLETTER TO ALL, 1854\n\n _The language of the body is the key that can unlock the soul._\n\nKONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY\n\n _If you understand what is being said and live it then you will be in a totally different world. But if you don't live it, daily, then you will just be living as you are. That's all._\n\nJ. KRISHNAMURTI\n\nNone of us ever truly forgets the nurturing, warm comfort of the womb. We spend our lives trying to re-create that feeling of being held and protected from real or imagined demons and threats. We yearn to be fed all the food that sustains our three bodies. Nor do we forget the pain of individuation, of leaving Mother and home, peers, and social circles. Individuation causes a pain of separation, and we seek throughout our lives to have the separation and the resulting loneliness filled with meaningful relationships. We seek to fill our need to have purpose and significance in our work and meaning in our lives. If we succeed in finding those things, they hold little meaning without someone to share them with.\n\nThis desire for intimacy with lovers and friends, to feel that we are not alone in the Universe, is innate in each of us. I do still feel lonely at times, but never alone. If I feel alone, it's simply because I've shut myself down and have not called on the powers of the Universe. They never abandon us; it's we who take ourselves away from them.\n\nThere is a cost, however, in choosing to do and be something different. A willingness to give up whatever the gods ask of you is integral to having a new life. Sometimes their asking is a demand.\n\nFriends may drop away, go away emotionally, or start a fight to create distance when the fingers of intimacy reach beyond their comfort level. Maybe you feel a need to move, one that painfully takes you away from children and grandchildren, the geography that shaped you during your formative years, and all that is familiar.\n\nOne of my lovers told me he was afraid of me. Another said that he didn't know what to do with me. Those statements feel funny, don't they? They meant that I was different; I wanted things they did not. They sensed a thing in me that set me apart from them, and it was that thing that I followed even as I left the relationships and moved 1,100 miles away from my granddaughters and the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Regrettably, at the time I was still young in my learning and becoming aware. I did not know what to do with those statements. I felt alienated and alone in my need. I didn't have the skills then to talk about it, to open up a dialogue to begin to bring the other into my world. What I was certain of then, and still am, is that they did not want the discomfort that depth of intimacy brings. One of my lovers had a habit of losing his cell phone when intimacy began to stretch beyond his comfort level. I had my own habit of distancing: I'd start a fight. My family fought; it's what I know how to do. It's what I did when I was afraid. Fights release pressure that's been building from too much or too little intimacy, not getting our needs met. The aftermath creates space and time. Berne named this game uproar. It's a dance of getting close, fighting, creating distance, getting closer, fighting. Nothing was ever resolved. We didn't have the skill or willingness to analyze what had happened, why it happened, or what to do differently to get to the next level, to deepen our relationship. We painfully maintained the status quo. I painfully left the relationships.\n\nThese relationships could have grown, become more intimate, if I had been able to say: \"When you lose your cell phone I feel abandoned and hurt. I get afraid that you will go away forever, so I do what I know how to do and that is argue.\" He could have said: \"I've always run away, that's why I chose a career that kept me moving for long periods of time.\" Or, \"You're really strong in yourself and I get afraid that I am going to be a disappointment to you so I go away.\" Willingness to self-examine to root out the source of the behavior and willingness to apologize, and mean it, are vital to a healthy relationship.\n\nIt is important to know what you need in a relationship. Is the person able to give you those things, meet your needs? Is he able and willing to go to the places you need him to go to? If not, you're headed for a heartbreak or drama or both. Are you willing to compromise, take what you can get, and still maintain integrity with yourself?\n\nFilling a role for another person that is not the truth of you betrays who you are, your authentic self, and creates a wound in the child of you. The wound that is created takes significant work to mend. Your child self feels you have abandoned her needs, put her back in a bag, and sent the message that it is not acceptable for her to be out in the world. The trust the two of you had will be ruined, and that is difficult to repair. It can be mended over time, when she sees that you will fight for her right and need to be alive and have a life with you. This is one of the basic, most necessary aspects to healing old wounds. Apologize, negotiate, and hear her voice, listen to her needs and wants. Trust can be mended.\n\nWhen it comes to the wholeness of the relationship or the wholeness of self, fight for wholeness of self first. You are your primary relationship, and wholeness in yourself is your primary responsibility. You cannot have a healthy relationship with other people or any aspect of Gaia if you have no internal integrity. The need for rigorous self-examination is of utmost importance. Being honorable with yourself leads to becoming honorable in other relationships. Intimacy begins with being intimate with yourself, all parts of you, and, most especially, your deep self. Self-examination\u2014being attentive to the voices inside, articulating your needs, finding ways to get them met, speaking on behalf of your child\u2014is ecological reclamation of the soul. This work is, in reality, doing your own soul retrieval. It's simply accessing and integrating parts of you that have been marginalized and put, as Robert Bly writes, \"in the long bag of shadow.\" The work is to reclaim the child without destroying the child. Thomas Patrick Malone writes about the importance of the unconscious in establishing intimacy.\n\n\"Unconscious\" is not really a useful or descriptive word. It simply means \"that which is not conscious,\" which really tells us nothing about what it _is._ The negative term belies the power of the concept. Perhaps \"unconscious\" should be renamed the \"intimator,\" the natural connector, the natural spirit, the nexus, or perhaps, in Paul Tillich's phrase, the \"ground substance.\" Whatever it is, it is a universal natural constant, not an absence of something else. Movement into the unconscious while you are awake is intimacy. Without the unconscious, we cannot have intimacy, only knowledge. Only in the intimate, unconscious experience can we know our true ecology, this is the intimate self.\n\nHEALING OURSELVES, HEALING EARTH\n\nAfter I left therapy and counseling, I became captivated with indigenous teachings at about the same time I began working more fully with plant medicines. Something powerful tugged at my heart and mind, something familiar and resonant. I went from one workshop and intensive to another, gathering pieces that worked for me, inspired me, and fueled me until the next one. But always I had a feeling that something important and integral to where I wanted to go was missing. Finally, I heard a teacher speak about the spirit of plants and how to work with them beyond the physical. I wrote to him, and the following year I flew out to spend a weeklong intensive. It was my introduction to the work that has shaped my life and, eventually, this book.\n\nDuring that week, the six of us were introduced to the exercises presented in the following pages. I hated the exercises at first and didn't really believe in them. The last thing I wanted to do was fucking inner child work. I had gotten so sick of hearing about \"my inner child\" from my sister I wanted to projectile vomit on her if I heard it one more time. I went into the work kicking and screaming. But like other therapies and workshops, my bottom line was, \"Well, hell, I've traveled all this distance and paid all this money, I'm going to get my money's worth.\" I would take all the teachings inside me and do what I could with them later. If they stuck and felt right, I'd keep working with them to more or less degrees. If not, they got shit canned.\n\nHere I was, in a small room with just five other people, strangers at that. Intimate? Hell, yes. It was uncomfortable, vulnerable, and emotional. I did the exercises, spent the week giving my all to it, and flew home. I continued to do the work half-heartedly for a few years until I began to see and experience the value of it and the changes I was making\u2014deep, lasting changes. My intuition and senses became sharper, my thinking quicker. My ability to analyze interactions became more elegant. I felt more confident, self-assured, and aware. After some years, it went from being second nature to first; in a healthy family environment, it could have been first to begin with. I can't imagine doing anything different again. It would be impossible to do anything different.\n\nI teach it to my students and apprentices and some clients. It's astonishing to see the changes it makes in people, instantaneously. The goal is to integrate it, let the work change you, take you on, shape the truth of who you are, and bring you into sexual loving. Ultimately, you become the author of your life through this practice. And it does take practice.\n\nMuch of our current dysfunction, lassitude, and discomposure is the result of and can be attributed to the loss of our connection with Nature, with old-growth forests, wild streams, and mountains. And it is the result of the loss of our connection with our own nature, our sexual nature, and our bodies\u2014that sensate, sensing organ of perception. Will Johnson talks about this when he says, \"By losing touch with the energies and sensations inside our bodies, we've severed our connection to the greater world of nature of which we're so intimately a part. The domain of union that spiritual seekers strive to contact is not some kind of exotic or esoteric condition. It is our simplest and most natural state; but we need to be here, fully in our bodies, and we need to heal our alienation from nature, both within and without, in order to experience it.\n\nThe more we take ourselves out of the ecosystem, distance ourselves from Nature, and from our own nature, the more unstable we and our culture become. If some part is cut off, or alienated from the whole, it is no longer whole. When our sexuality is cut off from the body of Earth sexuality, we are unable to function as whole beings; one part does not contain all the parts of the whole. Earth is unable to function and produce as a healthy organism because our relationship is dangerously out of balance. If we are going to live on Earth, then shall we be alive and _live_ on Earth? As long as we live on Earth, we need to be whole; a complete, fully functioning whole.\n\nMany people and environmental groups insist Earth needs our help in healing. What Earth needs from us upright two-leggeds, if anything, is for us to be whole, to own every part of what it means to be part of the biota. That means the feeling aspect of the human species. And sex is a feeling thing. Sexuality, sensuousness, erotica are feeling things; when we allow ourselves to feel, we feel more alive, ensouled. It is a cruel disconnect to deny our innate feeling function. We are sensate beings. We cannot live healthfully denying our feelings.\n\nIf human beings didn't exist on Earth, all species, all life on Earth would do remarkably well without us. How would we do without other species? Where would we get our inspiration, our medicines? Where would we get our air? Our food? Our houses? We could not live at all.\n\nFeelings are not socially constructed; that is, we were feeling the world before we began to think. While we were in our mother's womb, we could feel if we were loved and wanted, or not. Thinking our way through life without feeling cuts off part of our innate intelligence. Our imaginations and feelings have been stifled and subdued. Let's bring them out into the world, shall we? Set them free in the world, let their fingers reach out and touch the other, out there, and watch what adventures rise up to meet you.\n\n _If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature\u2014even a caterpillar\u2014  \nI would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature._\n\nMEISTER ECKHART\n\nRECLAIMING THE BODY'S SENSING: THE HEART OF THE MATTER\n\nMost of us are more or less aware of invisible energy fields. We feel it most when someone walks up to meet us. There comes a certain point at which, as he gets closer in physical proximity, you begin to get a little uncomfortable, when you feel he is now \"in your space.\" You feel a little invaded; he is too close, and it's a discomforting feeling. You may even pull back a bit, stepping out of and away from that space. Often when someone, especially someone we don't know, gets too close, we stop breathing a bit. Once a \"safe\" distance has been reestablished, we can breathe normally again.\n\nThe ancients knew that the organ of perception is the heart. It is through the heart that we are connected to things by means of the senses. Apprehending images is the role of the heart. James Hillman says, \"But the heart's way of perceiving is both a sensing and an imagining: to sense penetratingly we must imagine, and to imagine accurately we must sense.\"\n\nWith each beating of our heart, electrical and magnetic energy is created, and it radiates from our body as the electromagnetic field of the heart. There has been much scientific evidence of this over the past fifteen years. Stephen Buhner writes that the \"electromagnetic field that the heart produces is some five thousand times more powerful than that created by the brain.\" The field of energy that is emitted is measurable with the use of magnetic field meters and is strongest in most people at the surface of the body to about eighteen inches from the body. Even the most sensitive electromagnetic measuring instruments can still detect the field up to ten feet from the body. Being an electromagnetic field, there is no way to determine just how far the heart's electromagnetic field actually extends or whether there are limits to it.\n\nEverything emits a field of energy. What that means is that we are literally swimming in fields of electromagnetic energy. These fields of energy are transmitting meanings to us via our own heart field. The heart perceives the transmission and immediately images appear on the screen of our vision. The soul of the world, the soul of our lover, is not perceived if we are unconscious to our heart as a sensing organ. Keeping the heart in the reductionistic model as a pumping mechanism dooms us to a life of unconsciousness. It's important to begin to work consciously with the energy fields and, more importantly, with the heart as an organ of perception and imagining.\n\nWhen we are in the depths of sacred sex and sexual loving, we are in an ocean of senses, images, and meanings. These images and meanings are communications that flow between two lovers, between human beings and Earth. Because everything in Nature gives off electromagnetic frequencies and Nature is having sex all the time, the sexual energy of Earth is part of the sea of communications, the linguistic medium and meanings we live in every day.\n\nLet's begin to play and work with the heart field that each of us possesses.\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nExpanding the Heart Field**\n\nGet comfortable in a cozy chair, feet on the floor, and take some deep, relaxing breaths. Now, bring your awareness into the area of your heart. Let your breathing move into your heart, as if you are breathing through your heart. In the beginning, it may feel a little tingly in that area, which is a good indication that you're there. If you don't feel it the first time, don't panic, just keep breathing through your heart. You're using a new sensing awareness, one that has been dulled through a lifetime of atrophy. When you feel that you can hold your attention in your heart, stand up and notice how you feel. Do you feel more present, grounded in yourself? Notice that your peripheral vision is expanded; that is, as you look straight ahead, you can see things to your far left and far right. With practice, you'll be able to feel your awareness move into different parts of your body.\n\nTake a walk outside and find a tree that captures your attention. Sit down beside it and take a few deep breaths, relaxing more fully with each one. Let your eyes become soft focused on the tree you've chosen. Notice everything about it: its colors, shapes, textures. Now, ask yourself, \"How does it feel?\" What's the first thing that comes to you? Where do you feel it in your body? Are there any sensations, images, words that accompany the feeling? Sit with the feeling for a moment.\n\nStand up and walk away from the tree about twenty feet. It's helpful to pull your shoulders back and hold your arms straight out at your sides. When you do this, you may feel vulnerable and exposed. You are, that's why many of us become habituated to rounding our shoulders and slouching so we feel that our chests, our hearts, are protected. It's also a way to feel less noticeable. Pulling your shoulders back and up really opens up the heart and lungs and can release emotions we've held there. As you hold your shoulders back, with your heart open, slowly begin to walk toward the tree with your heart field extended. Pay particular attention to the moment your heart field and the \"heart field\" of the tree touch. This is nonphysical kinesthetic touching; touching with the invisible, nonphysical field of the heart. Pause there for a moment and notice how you feel to be touched this way. Continue on toward the tree, noting if the field grows in potency as you move closer to it.\n\nNow, ask your Child to come and sit with you. As you keep your eyes soft focused, ask your Child to tell you everything about this tree. She is the one who has direct access to everything she comes in contact with and to the world trees live in. She knows how to talk with them. Notice, as well, any feelings or emotions in your body. How do you feel doing this?\n\nNext, ask your Infant to be with you and hold her in your arms or on your lap. Infants have no language, but they perceive the world directly. Notice everything your Infant does. If you need to, ask your Child if she would translate for you. Children often translate for preverbal infants; they understand that language. Whatever movements, faces, or changes in color the Infant makes are all communications to you about the tree and its medicine or teachings or power.\n\nIt's helpful to keep a journal of your experiences, your \"readings.\" Just when you think you're not becoming more sensitive, you can compare earlier entries and see how much more keen your perceptions are getting.\n\nYou can do this with anything, but trees are so generous, have potent energy fields, and love to play this way. You may find if you do this with trees of various ages, saplings to very old trees, and of different species, that each has a very different feeling to it. Everything in Nature has it own intelligence, sexuality, and personality, and each moves through ego states just as human beings do. Some trees are sexier than others, just like humans.\n\nThere will come a time when you suddenly realize that this way of feeling and seeing has become a part of how you move in the world. You no longer have to think about it; it just is, you are. Occasionally you'll notice that you are moving too fast, getting wrapped up in and consumed by some mundane event or deadline, and a soft voice inside will whisper to you or somehow make noise or a movement to remind you that you know how to feel better, different, more present, and you'll just make the shift then, in that moment, to breathing through your heart. Once you do that, you'll be in your body again, aware of your feet and surroundings, hearing birdsong and wind.\n\nIn the beginning, you will want to stop soon after you start as it can be unsettling. It just takes practice. You are using sight and sensory feeling that has been malnourished. It's never been completely gone you know. We use this every time we walk into a room or walk in the forest or talk with a friend on the phone. There are immediate psychic \"hits\" we get, but we have learned to ignore them, to let them stay below conscious awareness. With practice and patience with yourself, you will be able to understand just what those hits mean. You'll begin to decipher the meanings in them.\n\n _I am the wind that breathes upon the sea,_\n\n _I am the wave on the ocean,_\n\n _I am the murmur of leaves rustling,_\n\n _I am the rays of the sun,_\n\n _I am the beam of the moon and the stars,_\n\n _I am the power of the trees growing,_\n\n _I am the bud breaking into blossom,_\n\n _I am the movement of the salmon swimming,_\n\n _I am the courage of the wild boar fighting,_\n\n _I am the speed of the stag running,_\n\n _I am the speed of the stag running,_\n\n _I am the strength of the ox pulling the plough,_\n\n _I am the size of the mighty oak,_\n\n _And I am the thoughts of all people_\n\n _Who praise my beauty and grace._\n\nTHE BLACK BOOK OF CARMARTHEN\n\nEXPERIENCING THE INTERWORLD\n\nYou will be astonished to find what happens when you comingle your attention, seeing, and feeling with another living thing in nature. Repeatedly, I feel the thing I'm gazing at in this way responding. They are as equally responsive to this touch, to this silent communication, as we are hungry for it. It is their adventure too, you know. They need us to be part of their life experience. When I sit with a plant and ask it for its body to make medicine and then administer the medicine to myself or to a client, the plants are able to do their work in the world. We have an obligation to do this work, to reclaim our place in the scheme of the natural, wild Earth and the place we call home.\n\nOne fine day, without expectation, something from nature touches you back. You feel a \"hi\" as you walk by the plant. The blue boulders shaped and softened by water spiraling through the canyon touch you like a lover and ask you to lay naked on their cool bodies. Walking through my house, I feel the plants communicating their thirst and hunger, that it's time for watering and feeding.\n\nYou'll be walking along, and suddenly a tree will reach out and touch you. Maybe it's not even a tree in your field of vision, but you know that what is touching you is a tree. As you are touched by the invisible energy of that tree, a rapid series of things happens without you being aware of it. Some invisible part of the tree touches an invisible part of you, and a memory, recognition, and perhaps even a picture is formed in your mind's eye, and you see the tree you've sat with and talked to and wrapped your arms around. All of the feelings and experiences of being with that tree flood your entire being at lightning speed.\n\nOne day, you decide to take an alternate route that bypasses the tree by a hill and dale. You feel the touch of something, and you know in your most earnest self that it is that tree, not just any tree in the park. And something inside switches on automatically, a subconscious decision is made, as if some large hand reached out from the Universe to pivot your body, and you turn, change your direction and plans, and make tracks to that tree. The touch grows in strength and the pull on you stronger, more insistent, and you pick up your pace, and ah, there she is, a magnificent, large, old red oak. As you approach the tree, you feel her move inside you. Her strength touches a primordial and infantile part of you, and tears of reunion and more fall out the corners of your eyes for that love is touching places inside you that need this medicine, medicine you didn't know you needed until it finds a resting place inside, and it's there inside you now because you've been sitting with this tree, getting to know it. Unbeknownst to you, it was getting to know you, see you, all of you, what you have, who you are, and what you need to be whole or to do your work in the world. And for the love of sharing this way, of going to the tree with childlike curiosity, a bond of intimacy was formed, and the tree reciprocated by touching you back. As you feel this awe and wonder overtake you, you say thank you, and you raise your face to the sky and say, \"Yes, I want more of this in my life.\" You affirm the experience and anchor it in this moment by saying yes and thank you out loud.\n\nThis is what an intimate meeting at the interworld between the human world and the world of trees feels like. I was touched by something invisible, yet palpable, and of the ground I stood on beneath that great, sheltering canopy. The mythic power of trees shows up in cultures the world over; the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Life, the tree that connects the underworld of legend to the upper world of the gods. And we humans are in the middle of those worlds, as they pass through us, calling us to take our place in holding the balance between worlds, to hold the balance of human and nonhuman, between caretaking and dominion. We are not smart enough to walk this world without the intermediary help of those who abide in the other worlds. We pass by, casually taking in the scenery, but do we stop to acknowledge the ancient voices whispering to us as leaves rustle on a wind-less day?\n\nAs Michael Perlman says, \"The trees are psychological presences that move the soul\u2014sometimes to right them, sometimes to cut them down, always to somehow imagine them. So it is misleading to speak of 'animism,' or the projection of human qualities onto trees. To speak of 'powerful trees' means addressing the ways in which trees animate the human.\" Nature is ensouled, filled with an aliveness, intelligence, and consciousness. That knowledge has never left us; it's just been buried deep in our subconscious under layers of false information and schooling, religion, the work of putting food on the table, and unsupportive family scripts. We live in a culture that puts very little value on living an inhabited life. And the practice of seeing and feeling in this way is the root of living an inhabited life, a life of purpose directed by soul. It is the beginning of interbeingness, of mutually weaving your being with another. Doing this with parts of Nature starts the process of growing intercommunities. You are engaging in an ecological reclamation that our ancestors never forgot or buried. It is a simple wisdom addressing the heart and of recognizing our kinship with all of creation. And it is paramount to our survival as a species and to the survival of Earth as we know her.\n\nAccording to William Blake, the move to abandon the polytheistic animism of antiquity, what was at the time seen and experienced through the lens of spiritual perception, came about when a system was formed that \"enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood.\" In other words, Ralph Metzner extrapolates, \"the loss of direct perceptual communion with the spirits of nature was brought about by a political move\u2014the institution of priesthoods as intermediaries between the human and the divine.\"\n\nRight now, where you're sitting, look around you; what is the part of Earth that is nearest to you? Some people will get a confused look on their face and uncomfortably look around the room. Perhaps it's the clay pot on the bookshelf? The potted plant sitting on the windowsill? The wood stacked neatly near the fireplace? Maybe it's the beam in the ceiling? These are parts of Earth. But, did you touch your own skin, your own sweet face? That is the part of Mother Earth that is nearest to you. It doesn't get any closer or any more intimate. Touching our own skin and realizing that we are able to do so because we are Earth; we are the pulsing, moving, sweating, shitting, crying, laughing red-blooded, breath of air, fire of digestion and passion, and bones of long dead human, plant, and animal ancestors. Each of us is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Everything that makes up Earth makes up us; we are made of the same substances.\n\nWe are all made up of the soil, rocks, minerals, plants, air, water, and animals that share Earth with us. It's an intimate thing to take into our bodies the bones of our ancestors whose bodies have become part of Earth in the plants and animals we eat and the water we drink. Because of this, we have an evolutionary connection to everything that has been created.\n\nNow, touch your hand to your cheek and hold it there for a moment knowing that you are the result of billions of years of evolution. How do you feel?\n\nGaia, Earth, breathes, reproduces, composts all manner of waste\u2014physical, psychological, and emotional. We breathe oxygen created by plants' respiration. The water we drink sustains the water and electrical systems in our bodies. Going barefoot grounds us into our bodies. When we wear rubber soles on our feet, we are separated, insulated from the electromagnetic field of Earth. As soon as we kick off our shoes and walk barefoot on Earth, we are instantly grounded in ourselves and to Earth. It resets our circadian rhythms, mineralizes our bodies, and reduces inflammation in the lower extremities. The negative charge from Earth through our feet dissolves calcium buildup from positive charges in tumors, heart, kidneys, and gallbladder.\n\n _When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of the great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies\u2014living or nonliving\u2014and will be part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. Moreover, we share not only life's molecules, but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. And since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. Indeed, we belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful._\n\nFRITJOF CAPRA,  \n\"IS THERE ROOM FOR SPIRIT IN SCIENCE?\"\n\nWith each turning of the seasons, we innately feel it in our bodies. As spring begins its stirrings from deep in the heart of Earth, we feel a renewed sense of hope, our energies rise with each young plant that slowly emerges from the warming ground. As warm spring winds cleanse the air of winter, we tend to do our own spring-cleaning of our homes and bodies. We change our diets to eat lighter foods, such as fresh spring greens, and we may be reinspired to start walking or running again. When we feel the first hint of fall in the air, we gather wood, store food, seal windows, and weatherproof our homes. The hunter-gatherer still lives in our DNA; it knows how to live with each changing season. We are influenced deeply by the cycles of Earth, the moon, the sun, thunderstorms, winds, and wild places. Inextricably woven into our DNA is the DNA of Earth and all life-forms that have lived and died.\n\nThink how often we use images of nature to describe our sexual experiences, our orgasms? Try to describe these without metaphors from nature. It can be done, I suppose, but our natural inclination is to reach for the elements and raw elemental power to relate our experiences. Just think of Carole King's \"I feel the earth move under my feet,\" or Barry White's \"It may be winter outside (but in my heart it's spring).\"\n\n _People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live . . . for we never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born._\n\nALBERT EINSTEIN\n\nConversations between our bodies, the invisible field of energy we emanate and are immersed in, and the things and people we surround ourselves with are happening all the time. It doesn't stop; there are just gaps between words, sentences. Even the gaps, the rests, the pauses are rich in meanings and feelings.\n\n _Men of earlier times do not as yet separate their own soul experience from the life of nature. They do not feel that they stand as a special entity beside nature. They experiencethemselves in nature as they experience lightning and thunder in it, the drifting of clouds, the course of the stars or the growth of plants. What moves man's hand on his own body, what places his foot on the ground and makes him walk, for the prehistoric man, belongs to the same sphere of world forces that also causes lightning, cloud formations and all other external events._\n\nRUDOLF STEINER,  \n _T HE RIDDLES OF PHILOSOPHY_\n\n _I have lost, as I have said, some sense of myself. I no longer require as much. And though I am hopeful of recovery, an adjustment as smooth as the way the river lies against the earth at this point, this is no longer the issue with me. I am more interested in this: from above, to a hawk, the bend must appear only natural and I for the moment inseparably a part, like salmon or a flower. I cannot say well enough how this single perception has dismantled my loneliness._\n\nBARRY HOLSTUN LOPEZ,  \n _R IVER NOTES_\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nHeart Field Practice**\n\nBring your breathing awareness to the area of your heart as you did earlier. Notice your peripheral vision. This immediately drops your sensory feeling into your heart, the organ of perception and communication. Physiologically, it is the fastest way to change your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, and it changes the cascade of stress hormones to healing hormones.\n\nChoose some object to look at. As much as possible, stop thinking and simply feel, simply see. If thoughts try to lure you to an unresolved dilemma, return to looking and feeling. Notice everything about the thing you are looking at. How does it feel? Is it mad, sad, happy, scared, lonely? Do you like it? Do you like one part of it more than another? Can you articulate why? Can you see the hands that made it? How did they feel about making it? When we do this with anything, the touch of our heart field and caring begins to slowly awaken the sleeping spirit of the thing. Some things take longer than others to awaken.\n\nKeep your heart wrapped around it. If you have a fondness or appreciation for this thing, you can send that to it. As soon as you do this, the electromagnetic field of the thing you are gazing at and the electromagnetic field of your heart begin to merge. Stay with this, keep feeling.\n\nBefore you know it, the thing you are seeing will begin to alter ever so slightly revealing itself to you in response to your heart. Its history, its medicine, its maker, its needs, if any, will appear on the screen of your vision, and you will feel it in your body. Notice everything that is happening; how you feel, where you feel it in your body, how your breathing is, how your heart feels. Pay attention to any attempt to censor or discount the information that comes to you in any part of you. This is how the thing is communicating to you, through your body. The thing you are seeing and you become intertwined, and the separation, the space between you and the object, has become filled with directed meanings. This is the ecstatic path toward revisioning and living an ensouled life. This is our birthright, and it belongs to everyone.\n\nWhen my partner and I were building our house, each tile, stone, artwork, board, and beam that was brought in was worked with in this way until we could feel the spirit of it begin to awaken and come into the room. We prayed with, talked to, and brought Eros into each piece until everything in our home became alive, our home ensouled. In anything you undertake, you can direct the flow of heart into it.\n\n _This form of wisdom will enable the physician to discern the Unity of Nature and to recognize man as a faithful copy of the great Universe, governed by the same laws and expressing them in his own being. As this is a meta-physical truth, every physician must be also a philosopher. And astrue wisdom comes from within, the physician must posses the faculty of intuition, the handmaiden of self-reliance. Therefore the true physician is one who does his own thinking and is not satisfied merely to repeat the thoughts of others. As intuition and self-reliance are developed in the physician, the secret doors of Nature will open to him._\n\nPARACELSUS\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nExpanding the Heart Field with Your Lover**\n\nAsk your lover to sit with you so that you are facing each other. Breathe through your heart for a few moments. Release any tension you feel in your body. Feel your love for him. Let yourself be filled up with all the love you have inside for your partner. Keep feeling the love you have for him. Hold it there, allow it to grow and expand; reach out with it from your body to touch his. Allow your love to move inside him, gently, as far as he will allow it to. Notice where it stops. Notice how his body shifts, his breathing alters. Does it speed up or slow down? Does he sigh? When love touches deep inside, there is a sigh of acknowledgment, a deep sigh similar to when an infant nurses and has been taking in milk and love from the mother. The love you are giving and he is receiving is a specific kind of food, a kind that we all need. With each deep sigh, love goes in deeper feeding and nourishing his body and soul. There is a point when the deep part of him becomes satiated, and there is that deep, satisfied sigh and often a little quiver will accompany it as he relaxes into receiving your love.\n\nNow, let your love wrap around him and hold it there gently. Nothing to force here, you're just allowing. Notice whatever comes to you without censoring. Notice whatever feelings you have. You may see parts of him you hadn't seen before, discover new things you love about him. You may find yourself falling in love again and deeper still, becoming entranced and dreamy. And you may see and know things about yourself you hadn't before now. You may have stood before your lover with no clothes on, but has he seen you naked? There are many ways to be naked before your loved one in the moments of revelation. The energies of our souls transmit meanings in the invisible force field that is created when heart meets heart.\n\nNow move to more specific areas of his body. Look at his hands and touch one of them with your heart field. How does it feel? How does it look? Is it happy, sad, mad? Does it have significant male or female energy in it? Now do the same thing with his other hand. How does it feel? You may find that assumptions you had are not true and that possibly you have never really looked at his hands this way, with the gaze of your heart, before. Do the same thing with each of his feet. Hold each foot in your hands as you do this, feeling each one, loving each one. Yes, now, you hold his penis in your hand, send your heart field, your love, your caring there. How does it feel? How do you feel seeing him this way? How does his member respond to this kind of intimate touching?\n\nAs you do this over time, you will notice the energy in each part of his body changes in response to your love. Love infused with intimacy and heart changes everything it touches. Each part of him will become more alive, ensouled; the intelligence that is there will wake up and become part of your lovemaking and soon, a marvelous conversation begins between your bodies.\n\nMy thighs were the ugliest part of my body. I didn't like them and tried to change their shape over the years, and I did. But changing the shape of them outwardly never changed the feeling of them. They didn't feel like my thighs; I didn't recognize them. I was dissociated from them, so of course they didn't feel like mine. It was one of the first of many secrets I told my lover and was astonished to hear how incredibly erotic he thought they were. As he spent time loving them, adoring them, talking to them and being friends with them, they began to change, and my relationship with my own thighs changed. I began to appreciate them, to see them in a new light, to see everything wonderful about them I hadn't been willing to see. I noticed the shape of them, the strength of them, the texture and color of them.\n\nWhen you give love to parts of his body, to his hands, for instance, love doesn't linger on the skin, it moves below the surface and goes in as deep as he will let it. Each time you spend a few moments loving them, holding them, love goes in a little deeper, below the skin into the intelligence of muscles and tendons altering holding patterns. It goes into the blood, to the heart, to all the organs, and the ego states, as well, eventually get fed with this love, and they begin to let go of holding patterns.\n\n _If you want to know God,_\n\n _Then turn your face to your friend,_\n\n _and don't look away._\n\nRUMI\n\nTo feel the touch of Spirit on your body, the touch of another human heart touching your heart, you must go to your lover with all defenses put aside. Vulnerability allows access to feelings. Letting down your defenses is the hardest thing of all at times, for the part of us that enjoys our defenses and the space they create has tremendous tenacity. You may need to negotiate with this part of you that is afraid, for it is the fearful part that holds onto armoring. We learn to wear many masks and to develop personalities as we go through life to give us a sense of protection. Those masks and personalities are developed to protect the small Child inside us. But it is just that Child in us that needs to feel this touch, needs to be touched, be seen by another human soul and by the Spirit that moves through all things. It is the Child in us that remembers what it felt like to be immersed in, surrounded by, bathed in that energy field, the Great Mystery, the heartbeat of Earth, the original mother, before coming into the world in human form, and it is that feeling we search for all the days of our lives. It is that feeling, that touch, that we need, in part, to be whole. We need that feeling from our partner, our parents, our friends, for it is love without judgments, it is seeing without condemnation, and then we can begin to feel our presence in life is welcomed and needed.\n\nANCIENT HISTORY\n\nThe concept of the relationship as a vehicle for the sacred is thousands of years old. A bronze sculpture of Shiva's consort, circa 950\u2013960 CE, is known for its blending of sacred sensuality, sexuality, and spirituality. Elaborate statues such as these were commissioned by kings to depict and honor the gods and goddesses of sexuality and fertility. The most famous Indian statue is of Lord Shiva reaching out to touch the breast of his consort, Uma-Parvarti. Hindu sculpture can often be explicitly and unembarrassedly erotic. Physical grace and sexual prowess in kings and queens were regarded as vital and admirable attributes in a ruler. In Hindu tradition, outlined in the Rig Veda, the erotic _rasa,_ or flavor was considered one of the nine _rasas_ comprising the Hindu aesthetic system. The Rig Veda, an ancient Indian text of sacred hymns, begins with the creation of _kama,_ sexual desire: In the beginning was desire, and desire was with God. In the Hindu scheme of things, the gratification of _kama_ remains one of the three fundamental goals of human existence, along with _dharma\u2014_ duty or religion\u2014and _artha,_ the creation of wealth. The sacred poetry of the Vedas was primarily written by people overwhelmed by the beauty and power of nature, which they personified and deified as a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Nature was alive in a pantheistic and animistic worldview.\n\nThe explicitly erotic sculptures along with the long Indian literary tradition of erotic devotional poetry may at one level be read as metaphors for the longing of the soul for the divine and of the devotee for God. Yet such poems and sculptures are also clearly a frank expression of pleasure in life and love and sex.\n\nIn the ecstatic poetry of Kabir, Mirabai, and Hafez, God appears frequently as a lover. It is seen in the writings of Rumi, the Persian poet, whose love affair with Shams demonstrates the sacred fabric of love and devotion, mysticism and eroticism. The Kama Sutra, India's sacred love text, describes the finer points of sexuality and love, the art of living and of sensual pleasures including food, perfume, lotions, incense, flowers, and fine attire, not simply acrobatic sexual positions.\n\nWell known for his interest and explorations in sex and erotic literature, Sir Richard Burton (1821\u20131890) brought the Kama Sutra to the English-speaking world, eighty years before the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In response to the \"Obscene Publications Act of 1857,\" he founded the Kama Shastra Society, devoted to publishing and circulating erotic and sexual literature that would be illegal to publish publicly. In _Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism,_ Deborah Lutz examines two groups of sex rebels devoted to challenging the morality of Victorian England. The Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes included prominent artists, poets, socialists, and clergy. Their activities were often met with ostracism, arrest, censorship, and jail time. Oscar Wilde spent two years of hard labor for being gay. The members were freethinkers and rebels challenging the rigid morality of the day. They championed unpopular ideas and stereotypes of sexuality and women's suffrage. Cole Riley wrote that \"[t]hey saw how difficult it was for women to break out of the stifling laws and stereotypes of the time. They knew that a society could never be truly progressive if women do not equal legal and voting rights, and full rights over their own bodies, including birth control and abortion.\"\n\n _Yes, I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please and with that right neighbor you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. And I have the further right to demand a free and unrestricted exercise of that right, and it is your duty not only to accord it, but, as a community, to see that I am protected in it. I trust that I am fully understood, for I mean just that, and nothing less._\n\nVICTORIA WOODHULL,  \n\"AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE\"\n**8**\n\n _ **The Language of Love**_\n\n**The Movement of Great Things**\n\n _There is memory of ocean,_\n\n _the swelling of waves,_\n\n _the movement of great things,_\n\n _just beneath the surface._\n\n _My conscious mind staggers,_\n\n _a part sleeping begins to waken._\n\n _What is this great thing?_\n\n _That has caught us up?_\n\n _Beloved . . ._\n\n _Shall we find out together?_\n\n _Shall we travel to a land_\n\n _where two-dimensionality does not rule?_\n\n _Where all that we encounter gazes back at us?_\n\n _Where directions for the journey_\n\n _are written in the shape and textures of the land?_\n\n _Where we see, as far as the eye can touch,_\n\n _the soul of us opening outward?_\n\n _Shall we take that step together?_\n\n _Leave the comfort of the porch,_\n\n _and strike cross country,_\n\n _to find the place where the Teacher lives,_\n\n _the place where the big and the little become one,_\n\n _the place from which we came long ago,_\n\n _the place we have heard calling since before we were born?_\n\n _Shall we go out Beloved and take the path before us?_\n\n _Shall we let the perfume of our love_\n\n _fill all our three bodies?_\n\n _Come, take my hand,_\n\n _it has awaited the deep you to fill it,_\n\n _a length of time too long for remembering._\n\n _Come Beloved, let us take this journey together._\n\n _My feet are hungry for the first step._\n\nSTEPHEN HARROD BUHNER,  \n _T HE TASTE OF WILD WATER_\n\nThere is a language to love, and it involves more than words. It is a communication in which directed meanings are passed from one person into another. It flows through the heart field in which love is wrapped and then into the other; an exquisite dialogue that transcends our common language. When two people are in love, this is the linguistic medium they share.\n\nEach part of us has a different story to tell. As we touch with the fingers of our hearts, we read the text of each other's lives. There are stories waiting to be received that live in hands, shoulders, eyes, feet, knees, breasts, and intonations of voice. Our stories are breathed in by the other, and we are then taken to places we have never known, places we have imagined and longed for. Many of our stories have been held secret, never shared before. When another person receives the stories, takes them deeply in, in a sense he lives them experientially. Over time, the threads of one person's life are woven into the fabric of another.\n\nEach part of a person's body has its own distinct feeling and meaning. When you explore your lover's body, you explore the terrain of his life; you enter the geography of his deepest self. We spend time with and hold in wonder the meanings of the other.\n\nIt is the saddest thing in the world to have love to give, to feel the urge to love until you feel your heart nearly burst from it, and have no place to set it, no ground tilled to receive it. Or to have it only partially received or censored so that only a tiny portion of your giving is received. The most joyful thing is to have your love welcomed, recognized, and given a home, a resting place. A place it has longed to be for all eternity.\n\nYou can't have, or give, too much love.\n\n _A journey makes us vulnerable, takes us from our more secure environments and commits us to the unknown. Perhaps this is why the journey has so often been our basic metaphor for life itself. Our life journey is a precarious pilgrimage, a passage through landscapes of promise and peril, a crossing from the darkness of the womb to the shadows of death. We travel in the hope that the light will not fail to guide us, that the star will not be lost, that homecoming will be granted and love not withheld._\n\nTHOMAS MERTON\n\nOur body, the lines in our face, and the look in our eyes hold the stories of who we are, how we became who we are as well as all the wounds and the wonder of us. Stories are the narratives of our soul's journey. They tell of the events, people, and places that touched us and how we were impacted by them. When the stories held in our body are received by another, there is a softening in the soul, an opening to feel the touch of another human heart. There is a release, then, of the burden of carrying stories alone. There is an ebb and flow in all this, a back and forth, a rising and settling, as each part of us opens to receive the other; a knowing of the other's interior world opens and love deepens. Someplace in the middle the two meet, and together they discover a new world. After awhile, who I am begins to move inside the other, and the other inside me; his story becomes mine and mine, his. And the lives we had before are changed.\n\nThe language of love has sound, shape, texture, movement. There are sighs, tears, a tensing and relaxing of the shoulders and breath. The person hearing the thing receives it in his heart field, and there it has a place to live.\n\n _When one finds her voice, her life takes on grace._\n\n _L ADY IN THE WATER_\n\nLOVING WITHOUT RESERVATION\n\nIt's all too easy to be casual about a thing, a life, a concept. It's all too easy to fail to follow the golden thread all the way to the finish, to see it through to the end, as far as it will go, heeding the ebb and flow, rise and fall, obvious and subtle oracles. Out of fear is born the habit to hold something back. We never know when we might, once again, find ourselves with a long swim, alas, back to shore.\n\nIt takes a long time to be willing to love without reserve.\n\nAnd thus, as intimacy feeds the soul of love, a new verse, a new story is written. We become something new, something joined, influenced by the other, changing from moment to moment. As we walk in the world with this new thing inside us, those who encounter us can experience this new song that is being written.\n\n _Love is the willingness and ability to be affected by another human being and to allow that effect to make a difference in what you do, say, become._\n\nGENEEN ROTH, _W HEN FOOD IS LOVE_\n\nJames Hillman writes: \"A heart's image lies within each person. It is what we truly reveal when we fall helplessly in love, for then we are opened to display who we most truly are, giving a glimpse of our soul's genius. People say: 'He looks so different\u2014he must be in love.' 'She's fallen in love; she's truly changed.' When love moves the heart, something else is perceived in the idolized object, which poetic language tries to capture.\"\n\nFalling in love causes the imagination to unfurl. As the imagination expands, we fall in love deeper, wilder, more passionately, hungrily. Love is of the spirit, drawing the soul toward images painted on the heart.\n\nSuch love is not unlike reading a good novel; you find yourself in the story, engaged with the characters. You become invested in their lives and their adventures. You find yourself thinking about them during your day, wondering what they are doing, how they are doing, what's happening next in their lives. You look forward to sitting down with them again to look into their eyes and receive the story of their lives and travels. You witness the transformation of the characters.\n\nLove is like this. It is to become obsessed, wild, madly, chaotically, deeply in love. Each waking moment is filled with thoughts of the beloved. I smell him, feel the touch of him wrapped around me as I move through my day. As my beloved opens to show me more of himself, his stories find a place inside me to live. My caring and love for him grows. I want to call him every hour to hear his voice and to say how much I love him. I leave love notes on his pillow, taped to the mirror, or tucked in his travel bag. I think of him during the day and dream of him at night. When I'm sitting with a cup of my favorite morning drink, I recall our time together, the way he looks at me and sees me, the sound of his breathing, and the feel of him inside me.\n\nI want to touch him, caress his face, rub his tired shoulders, and hold him as he lays his head on my shoulder and falls carelessly to sleep. I allow myself each moment to fall in love with him over and over again. I tell him all the ways I love him, all the details of noticing him and his innuendoes. The various laughs he has: the nasal snorts of fifteen-year-old humor, the snicker, the chuckle, the chortle, and my favorite, the deep, full-out belly laugh. Each laugh has a different quality to it, a different ego state that lets it loose in the room. Each laugh has a meaning in it, the meaning of which part of him is in the room and engaging with me or whoever else is present.\n\nI want to know everything about him, and so I watch as he stands at his closet, doors open. He ponders each thing that catches his eye, and he imagines trying on each piece of clothing to see if it matches how he's feeling that particular day. It's a joy to watch him stand in front of the full-length mirror, looking at himself, turning this way and then the other. He settles into the clothes as each part of him responds to what he's put on. Then, if they all agree on the garments, he's set in his wardrobe for the day. If not, back to the closet they go.\n\nWhen he walks into a room with his personal\/sexual power entering with him, a force to be reckoned with, he has the power to take down any walls of China within me. And I give him that power gladly. I fall in love over and over again with abandon. I tell him all these things, describing in as much detail as I can my noticing of how he carries himself, how he feels in his body, how much I love watching him put on his favorite clothes that are like good friends wrapped around him. I tell him not only the details of my noticing him, but the meanings of them and how they impact me. Watching him prepare food with Eros and exquisite detail, then watching how much he enjoys eating the food is to read chapters, verses of his passion, his gusto, his patience, his reverence for life and love of food and sensory experiences.\n\nTo learn the language of love requires that we, out of love, out of desire, pay attention. The subtleties of this language are easily missed, passed over, ignored. As with the details in anything we are doing, there must be interested consideration. The ecstatic journey of sacred sex begins long before the physical act. Attraction and desire awaken us. A part of my soul reaches out to touch his, and in mutual desire, his touches mine. The dance of getting to know a lover is chaotic, frightening, and exciting. Old pains and hurts rise to the surface, and we may doubt our choice to enter into a relationship again. Eros causes chaos in our previously ordered life. In the midst of chaos, we are forced to travel to our interior. Psyche, the goddess of soul, is excited at the possibility of new experiences, but we struggle between our fears and a new opportunity for romance, love, sex, and intimacy and the changes that may result.\n\nI had been dating a man sporadically for three months vacillating between, \"I want this,\" \"I don't want this.\" Talking to each part of me on both sides of that fence, we all finally came to an agreement that yes, we want to explore this with him. Why not, after all? I was recently divorced after a sixteen-year relationship. He was tall, ruggedly handsome, strong, intelligent, interesting, very sexy, charismatic, fun. He had great lips. _And_ he had his own boat on the Mississippi River. It would be an adventure if nothing else. We had a date planned, so I drove the hour and a half down river to his house. Excitement was building. I had packed an overnight bag and decided that this would be our first night of sleeping together and having sex. We hadn't talked about it until we were sitting on a park bench overlooking the river. He asked me if I would spend the night, if we could just sleep together.\n\nSurprisingly, my fears came up again, but I went back to the agreement I had made with myself to explore this. \"Yes, I think I'd like that very much.\" Of course, I thought \"just sleep together\" was code for \"let's sleep together and have sex.\" Much to my intrigue, surprise, and a little disappointment (I needed to get laid), we actually . . . slept together. We hugged, kissed, caressed, told stories about our lives, and fell asleep in each other's arms. We had a sweet, intimate sharing and the movement toward a deeper relationship. I woke up feeling shy. He'd seen me naked and heard some of my life stories. Would he still want to have sex with me? He was leaving the next day for a month-long river trip. Desire built and hunger grew. I wanted this man.\n\nWhen we were together again on the houseboat, passions were high, hunger nearly overcame us. Still, we didn't have sex. Damn. Until the next night. And it was sweet as honey dripping from the comb.\n\nI didn't tell this story to advocate waiting. It's a personal choice how the dance of having sex for the first time goes and when. The sexless nights we spent together were windows into understanding who this man was. He was romantic, sensual, tender, and strong. It was important to him to build desire, to share something of ourselves, to set a foundation for whatever might follow. We slipped into a comfortability with each other. Our bodies fit together, our lips and tongues somehow already knew each other, knew exactly how to move and talk to each other the way lips and tongues do. We both enjoyed touching, kissing, snuggling, and cuddling immensely. I wanted him. I loved the way he looked at me and the smile that lit up his face when he saw me. I loved the feel of his hands on my body. I loved the smell of him. We began the relationship making love without the in-ing and outing and sweating and moaning. However, once we started in-ing and outing, we didn't stop. There were wonderfully few sexless nights after that.\n\nI surely loved that man but I think we grew mutually frustrated with each other over time; he with how I always wanted more from him, the fights I started, the growing chasm between our value systems, and I with his unwillingness to go to deeper levels of intimacy. We were both strong and independent. He had a well-established career and I was just beginning to understand who I was and what I wanted my life and work to look like. Our lives overlapped infrequently and he understood me less as I began to make deep changes. The lack of deep intimacy in the relationship, my rudimentary relationship skills, and the changes I was making left me feeling unhappy and unsatisfied. I hate endings but I knew that I would never get what I wanted there and I began to feel a pull in another direction, away from that relationship.\n\nI left the relationship less than gracefully. I was in the middle of my fourth decade and had begun to create a body of work that was mine. I could feel my time in the Midwest coming to an end, something new beginning. When I decided to let the relationship go, I resigned myself to not knowing if there would be another partner or other lovers, but I knew I would be devoted to building my work and teaching.\n\nTHE SMELL OF LOVE\n\nEach one of us has our own unique smell, the smell that is our soul signature alone. Sexual attraction is much about smell. Gustav Jager, a German physician and hygienist was the first to formalize the concept of pheromones, which he named anthropines. He correctly identified them as lipophilic compounds that are associated with skin and follicles that determine the individual signature of human odors.\n\nSome deep part of us can smell the other even if it's unconscious; it's part of our unconscious attraction but often comes to conscious awareness during sexual intimacy. You can tell a great deal about a person if you learn to smell below the surface, to the core of a person. And you'll know if his smell is a good match for you, if it's seductive, intoxicating, erotic. It's important to the health of a relationship if you like your partner's smell and if you like him in general. The smell of a person changes as his internal world becomes more whole. A musty smell can indicate that there hasn't been much love in the deep part of him. Lack of intimacy can smell old and rancid. When love is there, feeding a person's soul and whole being, the smell is sweet and fresh as clover.\n\nAlmost as soon as I told the Universe that, lover or not, I would not stop doing my work, my new lover appeared in my life. As he and I grew over the months and years together, I watched him change, grow, and become more himself with my love, with part of my spirit living inside him. I could see him relaxing in the trust that had grown between us, a dependability of one upon the other. There is trust in our love, in our friendship, a knowing that the other will be here: we will be at each other's back and come to each other's aid; we will listen to each other's struggles, joys, dreams, and insights. The desire and hunger is still there, passion is still there, but without the urgency, without clinging in desperation for fear that it will end. Desire and passion need tending to; they need spices and seasonings as well as attention to subtle moods and needs, yours and his.\n\nI often go to the watching place inside me to see myself from new perspectives, a perspective that changes as I change. I hardly recognize who I was even a few years ago. My posture is more erect. More often than not, I walk with confidence through the world. Parts of me have awakened\u2014parts that were asleep and in danger of becoming bitter in my old life because they did not have a place to be alive in the world. They are living in the world now, learning to walk and talk, being educated, becoming part of a fully integrated human being.\n\nI've learned how to love myself, how to fall in love with myself. Such self-love happens most easily when the love of another human being is let inside, is granted permission to pass all the defenses, the objections, and arguments against this act. When I allowed love to pass through all the gatekeepers and journey as rivulets into the deepest parts of myself, parts of me that had never been touched by love, then the journey of loving myself began.\n\nI became my own advocate, knowing what my needs and wants are, saying them out loud as needed, and working to get them met either by myself or by someone else. I learned to do this straightforwardly without the drama of games or cons or sideways attempts. I learned to say no first by giving myself permission to say no. It takes patience and focus and in the beginning is challenging. The closer I came to resolution, to truly giving up game dynamics, the more the scared parts of me escalated, the more focus it took to let them know I was serious. I seriously wanted to be free of old scripts and dramas.\n\nThis is an uncomfortable time when love flows inside to the deepest parts of the self that have never been touched by love; the places inside that are bent and crooked. Love doesn't travel in a straight line. Like the tip of the ocean wave after it's crested and fallen and now meets the shore and the two create a whole new thing, never straight, and the water changes the beach, the rocks, the sand, and the muddy shore, and the shore changes how the water moves, its speed, its impact, and how it moves back away from the shore into the ocean again.\n\nDoing this repeatedly, I let his love come into me, touch me, fill me, grow me, expand me, change me. His love fills all the spaces inside me. He lives inside me, in my heart, and is in my soul. All of him, every part of him, every story of him, each heartbreak and the original wound of his birth family are now part of me. Nothing of him is hidden or secret from me, and nothing of me is hidden or secret from him.\n\nAs the original wound in each of us is healed, made whole by the other's love, our psychological structure is altered. The defenses and games I played have been given up, seen for what they are, and rendered obsolete. I'm not willing to sacrifice myself to keep peace and, rarely, to make someone else happy, though there are times when it's important to put my needs aside temporarily to strengthen our relationship or to tend to something that is more urgent.\n\nI reach for words to describe the depth and breadth of my love for him. I do the best I can with the words at hand. I search the lexicon grasping for others. A thousand words I say each night, and none come near to the depth and breadth of my love for him. There are no words big enough, strong enough, or whole enough to hold the meaning of my feelings for him, though I try. I say \"I love you,\" words that I have and are the truth of my feelings, and yet, they are pale ashes compared to the kaleidoscope of colors that are in the feelings.\n\n _Attempting to fill three words, three syllables_\n\n _With the depth of my feelings for you_\n\n _Resembles mining the secrets of the ocean_\n\n _Holding still the moon_\n\n _Or painting rainbows in the sky_\n\n _With crayons_\n\nFROM THE AUTHOR'S JOURNAL\n\nI want the words that hold the meanings of how I feel. I want to make my feelings known to him, and when I least expect it, the language of love is made known to me. Here inside me, inside him, flowing between us like a sweet, gentle stream it has been all along. The bee was telling me where it was, what it was, and how it tasted. It is that invisible field that pulses from my heart to his and back again. How ignorant of me.\n\nThe language of love is the language of falling in love each day. To learn this language, you must allow yourself to feel, to be aware. Each time I look into his eyes, hear one of his many laughs, or see him walk into a room, I'm aware of many subtle and visible responses in me. My posture changes, I feel the petals of my heart unfold, I feel my soul smile inside. That is love talking.\n\nLove is spoken when I do things that make him happy, those moments when I'm in service to his happiness and joy. His happiness is inextricably woven into mine. Love speaks through the little things I do, just by him taking joy in me. The part of me that came alive in our friendship is free to voice the running commentary she has on life's absurdities. She knows she can be herself, spontaneously without censorship.\n\nBeauty is love. When beauty and love are more than skin deep, a luminous glow radiates from a deep well, sourced from the love they have for themselves; it comes from deep inside them. They're magnetic and attractive and upon seeing them, your eyes are transfixed, following them across the street. And this language is more than skin deep; it's preverbal, beyond the surface, and past fantasy. The language is real, rising up from the deep ocean of self; it travels across the surface of the body and is taken up in the breath of the spirit that moves through and enlivens all things.\n\nLetting the love inside speak, giving myself over to it, to its textures, sights, sounds, and poetry.\n\n **This Simple Thing**\n\n _I awaken slowly, reluctantly,_\n\n _from a deep, and glorious sleep._\n\n _What is this thing that awakens me?_\n\n _What is this invisible touch on my spirit?_\n\n _Ah, it's you my love._\n\n _No need even to open my eyes_\n\n _I feel what you are doing_\n\n _Touching without fingers_\n\n _I smile knowing you are here._\n\n _You've been watching me while I sleep_\n\n _love_\n\n _ecstatic I_\n\n _in this simple thing._\n\nFROM THE AUTHOR'S JOURNAL\n\nLEARNING TO LET GO\n\nWhen I met the man who wanted to take this intimate, sacred, ecstatic journey with me, I was forty-four chronologically and around three years old psychologically. I wasn't very grown-up, educated, or sophisticated in my interactions. I played a lot of games and had few life skills. I was emotionally shut down for the most part, and my fallback survival plan when things got too challenging was to emotionally run away by withdrawing. I fought the urge to withdraw, to shut down. I struggled with my demons and kept going until I reached the other side of it.\n\nI knew a lot about sex and, to a degree, love. But I knew precious little, experientially, about going all the way with love and intimacy, about trusting another or of giving myself into his keeping, and less about how to nurture a healthy relationship. I only imagined how letting that much love in all the way could change me, for I had only seen a few hints of those changes in a few people who had begun to go there. I was about to learn the true meaning of vulnerability, that searing openness and exposure that is sourced from utter defenselessness. I was about to learn the true meaning of surrender. I was about to discover that my understanding of self-love was immature. Many times on the journey, I wanted to run away, to go back to my old life or create a new one that didn't involve having to face the best, and worst, parts of me. Feeling that vulnerable and tender was terrifying and painfully uncomfortable. I'd often rather chew tacks. It distorted my sense of self. Only in the midst of the journey could I see how my soul was distorted, fragmented, and a little crooked in places.\n\nThe prospect of letting go of myself completely, of trusting another so completely, someone who could truly see, who wanted to see every part of me, petrified me with fear and shook me at my core as if a great meteor smacked down in the middle of my idea of myself. Just because you want something doesn't exclude being afraid of it. It filled me with so much terror that I stopped having deep, full-body orgasms. I became emotionally and sexually frustrated and was forced to own how deeply I wanted to have this experience with this man who could love me all the way without holding anything back, who was patient and nonjudgmental, who encouraged me to have that sort of full-body shivering pleasure. To do this, I had to change at the core level of me and go through this deep fear to see what was on the other side, what was so terrifying.\n\nWilhelm Reich used the term _body armoring_ to refer to self-protection, or at least a sense of protection and safety. But body armoring is not localized; it affects our musculature and our nervous system, our ability to think clearly as it constricts our entire physiology. When impulses or emotions are inhibited, the body responds by tensing muscles. \"Inhibited libido,\" he said, \"is tense muscles and relaxed libido is sexual charm.\" Body armoring affects our ability to have open, meaningful, relaxed, and passionate sex. The fear paralyzed my groins and created a tension that was impossible to unlock until I worked with the fear and the parts of me, the Child of me, that was terrified. I had created a split between my mind and body; my body embodied the fear and rage I had around vulnerability, changing behavior patterns, being sexual in a sacred and intimate way rather than just having sex or fucking. Vulnerability unleashes a great outpouring of human potential.\n\nI wanted intimate relating, but I didn't know there was a price to pay. And the price I paid was everything I was so I could become the person I was always meant to be. I changed inside and out. My favorite clothes no longer fit the person I was becoming. My favorite earrings didn't look right. My favorite hangouts changed, and friends dropped away as my voice, my values, and my beliefs were restructured. There is a cost to freedom. I left my birth family and refused to be part of their psychosis or pretend that I fit in.\n\nThe language of love is felt in the kiss on the forehead or top of the head. The endearing moments when your lover is asleep, and the part of him that is bonded with you wakes inside him just enough to reach over to hold you, to feel you close and touch his foot to yours, to know you are still there. Love is there in the darkest night when in the midst of a nightmare, he's there, holding you, telling you, \"Everything's all right.\" Love silently speaks in the still, quiet, dreamy hours of the night.\n\nWhen it comes to sex, making love, and intimacy, our culture is still in kindergarten compared to other cultures such as the Japanese and Chinese, who have entire societies devoted to teaching young men and women not only about sex but about the body and how to make love to another with reverence as an expression of the holy.\n\nThe language of those cultures to describe erotica is marvelous, romantic, and delicate, using words such as _jade dragon, white tigress, green dragon, jade stalk, palace gates, yoni,_ and _lingam_. Compare this to Western language that describes sex and reinforces lovemaking as a heroic performance with the hard-cock approach ignoring delicate desires, imaginations, subtleties, and those all too rare and precious moments of ecstatic intimacy and mystery. Instead, we use the words _private parts, pussy, dick, ball sack,_ and _cunt,_ as if to somehow insulate us from intimacy and tenderness. Those words are suitable to bar talk, but not always suitable in intimate moments. Intimate talk, no matter the words, has a feeling tone to it. It feels like intimacy, or it feels like distance. It draws you in or it repels you; it honors you or it discounts you.\n\nWithout the erotic, sensual Earth to inspire our choices and our architecture, our language, our life, where would we reach for words to describe our experiences? If we weren't sexual beings, what would the Washington monument and space shuttles look like? We know a phallic symbol when we see one. We recognize sperm as a prototype for ships and weapons to invade foreign soil. Our skin cells are modeled after the skin cells of leaves and bark and animal hides; they die and shed and are replaced by new ones.\n\n _Virtually no one has enough accurate, judgment-free information about sex. We don't watch other people do it, we can't find many accurate representations of it in the media, and few of us talk honestly about it with each other. It's almost impossible to know the full range of sexual thoughts and behavior of the people around us\u2014and, therefore, impossible to know how much we have in common._\n\nMARTY KLEIN,  \n _Y OUR SEXUAL SECRETS_\n\nTHE LANGUAGE OF SENSUALITY\n\nThe word _sensuous_ comes from the Latin _sentire,_ \"to feel,\" and the related word _sensus,_ \"to feel and perceive.\" Sensuous refers not only to the physical senses but to any means of feeling, as intellectual or aesthetic sensitivity and intuition, as in the sensuous pleasure of walking in the rain, the sight of soft snow falling in the moonlight, and the way the air smells fresh and clean after a spring rain or monsoon. Sensuous powerfully appeals to the senses in a sexual or quasi-sexual way. John Milton invented the word _sensuous_ to have a synonym of _sensual,_ minus the association with sex. He used the word in an often-quoted formulation of what poetry should be: simple, sensuous, and passionate.\n\nSensuality is a language of love and sex. It is a language of our body and of our nature. When something is sensual, we respond bodily and experience it through our senses. Skin is sensual when it is soft, smooth, and supple. Well-formed muscles are the sensual, erotic landscape of the human form. As skin and our bodies age, we begin to take on the look of stone and tree and landscape that has been shaped and worn by the elements. Georgia O'Keefe is well known for capturing the sensuality and eroticism of stone cathedrals and landscapes in her paintings. Best known of her collection is her flower series capturing the resemblance between the petals of flowers and the female vulva.\n\n _I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at\u2014not copy it._\n\nGEORGIA O'KEEFE\n\nA warm summer breeze on our exposed skin and the way warm bath-waters wrap around our bodies are sensual and erotic experiences. The sway of a woman's hips, the breath escaping softly in a sigh, and the way food is prepared slowly with care and attention to details can all be sensual experiences. Anything that is sensual is erotic and satisfying to our physical body and senses. As we grew in the womb, we were infused in the warm, sensual fluid of prebirth waters. We have an innate understanding of the meaning of and a need for the sensual.\n\nWe all know what sexy is when we see it; we feel it when it walks into the room. We feel the impact of it, our heads turn in that direction; we feel pleasure, are intrigued, interested. Having been trained out of looking and seeing, we watch out the corner of our eyes, trying not to be noticed noticing. There is an energy that comes off a body when sexual energy is either part of who the person is or is part of who the person is trying to be, or what they are wanting to communicate. It's sexual energy, attractive, magnetic, irresistible energy. We can't help but turn our heads and be drawn into its orbit.\n\nSexuality has a language of its own; it speaks in the subtle movements of the eyes shifting and darting, the movement of a thigh, carriage of the body, long, supple movements involving posture and shape; the way a low-cut blouse exposes the mysterious valley between bosomy mountains, or a skirt slides up to show the inside of a thigh. Whether our look is sly or withdrawn or direct and substantial, if our hair is flowing or pulled tightly back, and the ways we hug and touch; spontaneous, passionate, full-body embraces or one arm barely touching a shoulder are speaking the languages of intimacy, sexuality, and invitations. Standing with one hip slightly forward, the set of shoulders, the tilt of the head, use of makeup around the eyes and mouth are sensual ways we present ourselves in our bodies and speak a voiceless communication about how we feel about our sexuality.\n\n _Sexual and creative: these are important words and concepts. You are a sexual being\u2014all humans are. It is up to you to determine how free or how stifled you will be as a sexual being, but you are a sexual being. This sexuality is the core of your creative process, for it is the core of YOU. Sexuality is the deepest part of self-identity, for it is how you relate to SELF and how you relate to others._\n\nALAN SEALE,  \n _I NTUITIVE LIVING AS A SACRED PATH_\n\nThe language of love is a quality, an essence. It is not a form or technique. It's not learning to speak Spanish or Russian. It's a language that is multisensory, multilinguistic, not confined to the voice box and a few hand gestures\u2014though the erotically placed and rhythmic hand gesture is linguistic.\n\nEach of the languages love speaks has meaning. Snuggling and cuddling are filled with meaning. How our bodies and psyches respond to touch is meaning rich. Rigidity in his body or yours and where it's held tells you much about holding patterns and armoring. How he kisses, what position he likes most, and whether he likes to look at your vulva or not, gives you glimpses at his inner world and how he feels about sex and himself. One lover preferred entering me from behind while standing up. The intimacy of face to face was often more than his comfort level would tolerate.\n\nBeing aware of the language of love and sexuality increases our sensitivity to the pervasiveness of these communications happening around and in us. If we understand that we are sexual beings transmitting sexual messages we can shape them directly, become conversant in the dialects and raise them to sophisticated degrees of finesse, nuance, and subtleties. Sacred lovemaking is the divine alchemy of the numinous, physical, spiritual, sexual and soul. The language of love is that of beauty, sex, art of nudity, and earthy sensuality.\n\nThe language of love has many forms and expressions. Whether it is expressed through the spoken word, poetry, song, paintings, or the sacred gaze, the language of love is an essence, a meaning-filled communication. It always comes from and through the heart, so the form matters only in as much as it is your medium of expressing the essence in any moment. In sacred sex, the language of love is expressed through the heart, the joyful attention to details, heightened perceptions, and the physical embrace.\n**9**\n\n _ **Sacred Sex**_\n\n**Do You Recognize Me Now?**\n\n _Can you be completely one with me_\n\n _And still come back to yourself?_\n\n _Can you live in our surrender_\n\n _and carry it back and forth_\n\n _between the world of time_\n\n _and the world where time does not exist?_\n\n _Can you live on the undefended edge,_\n\n _where the breezes of love blow_\n\n _not just for a day or a month or a year, but for an eternity?_\n\n _Can you be defined by that wave_\n\n _into which our two waves merge?_\n\n _Can you live in its trajectory_\n\n _and die in its embrace?_\n\n _Many men have asked you to dance,_\n\n _but has anyone asked you to dance like this?_\n\n _With or without bodies, it does not matter!_\n\n _Will you be all that you are in its fullness_\n\n _and let yourself spill over into me?_\n\n _Will you harvest your tears with mine_\n\n _and water the ground with them?_\n\n _Will you bring me into the secret caves_\n\n _of your doubts and your fears,_\n\n _allowing the moonlight to guide us_\n\n _through the snowy woods?_\n\n _You have come to me from deep waters,_\n\n _ascending from the center of the circle._\n\n _Now as I dance, moving around the circle_\n\n _from one partner to the next,_\n\n _I once again await the depth of your eyes_\n\n _and the electricity of your hand._\n\n _But I am lucky that the dance ends_\n\n _before we come face to face._\n\n _I know when that moment comes_\n\n _I will be lost forever, and so will you!_\n\n _You see, I am not just the one_\n\n _who comes to you in the dance. Rumi says:_\n\n _\"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere._\n\n _They're in each other all along.\"_\n\n _Do you recognize me now?_\n\n _Rumi says: \"Gone inner and outer,_\n\n _no moon, no ground or sky.\"_\n\n _Has anyone asked you to dance like this?_\n\nPAUL FERRINI,  \n _D ANCING WITH THE BELOVED_\n\nWhen I met him, I didn't know much. I knew just enough to feel a spiritual imperative to keep him in my life if even from a distance. We had in us the drive to reconnect, and like shy teenagers, our first meeting was awkward, an undercurrent of unknown passion made balance difficult. There was that powerful attraction, the way metal filings respond to a magnet. His smell, his movements, his cells were astoundingly familiar, and though I didn't understand at the moment, or for a long time, I recognized a kinship in him. There was a great urgency in me to get his attention, engage him in a conversation; some part of me needed to keep him within arm's reach, the manner or form did not matter.\n\nThe urge to reunite, an invisible compass pointing each in the direction of the other, came at just the right time to save each other's life. Ten years came and went before we became lovers. It felt as if we had waited our entire lives to do this dance of ecstatic, sacred love with each other. The first night we made love, I saw the place before time, before the two of us were born, the agreement we made to find one another. I understood the tension, the awkwardness, the discomfort, the attraction, the fear I'd felt all those years. I was suddenly catapulted out of the half-sleeping state I'd been in.\n\nRabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Spiritual Eldering Institute, had these reflections about sex.\n\nI remember thinking of sexuality as that lousy trick that God played on us. How could God do such a terrible thing as to implant in us an urge that is so difficult to resist? This very same urge has been reinforced time and time again since we stopped being amoebas and turned into humans. Just think about how this was reinforced. I had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents. They all did it. Now see how it spreads out to countless beings who all did it. Now think of the children who will have children who will have children who will have children who will all do it. And all this fantastic amount of genetic information is concentrated in one flesh, as it were, of transmission. How else could it be but ecstatic? How else could it be when so much of the past has to transfer itself to so much of the future through such narrow orifices? It can't be but ecstatic.\n\nLOVING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME\n\nWhen we became lovers, we were living in different states, he on the East Coast and me in the Midwest. We talked on the phone several times a week. He often began the conversation telling me something funny that had happened or that he'd read. Laughing together closed the distance, and we slipped into the growing comfort of our companionship. Hearing his laughter, the ache and longing of missing him squeezed around my heart. I so wanted to hold him in my arms.\n\nA thing happens when you miss someone so desperately; the intensity of feeling and need becomes a solvent to all armoring; the shielding we've put up for protection is ineffective. With the armoring and shielding taken down, it becomes possible to surrender to what is there. Somatically, the body responds by letting go of tensions and relaxing the musculature. There is yielding to feeling, and you let yourself follow it, feel it all, everything that is there between the two, inside you, inside him, growing and expanding, filling the room you're sitting in, expanding to fill each room in the entire house, and it continues expanding to fill the neighborhood and the town and beyond. There is no end to its expansiveness.\n\nOur phone conversations took us deeper and deeper into another reality, a place very much like my time sitting in zazen, though there were 1,100 miles, 23 hours of driving, or 8 hours of air travel between us. As we talked and gave ourselves over to feeling love for the other, we slipped between the cracks of reality and illusion into the numinous. Boundaries unraveled. Distance dissipated. Time and space transcended, and we were in each other's presence. Reality began to shift, and soon we could see the other strongly, clearly. Simultaneously, we each felt the other's presence near us, felt the rhythm of our breathing and passion growing between us. We reached out with our love and touched the other's cheek. The sweet, fecund, anciently familiar scent of him filled my senses. Pictures began to appear before my eyes, and inspirations rose up in the gaps between words. \"This is what we do when our soul leaves our bodies, when we are gone from the Earth plane, this is how it feels,\" I whispered. I felt his hands on my skin, his breath on my face, felt him penetrate me, slowly, deeply, as we breathed together, whispering declarations of desire, love, and longing. Years later, we still engage in sacred phone sex, e-mail sex, shower sex, keeping the livingness of our bond whole.\n\nI believe that this is what we are meant to do, are born to do; dance ecstatically with the beloved in the throes of sacred sex, of giving oneself over to sacred traveling in other worlds, suspending time and space. This is the state we are yearning for, aching for, longing for. This is the feeling we are looking for in our relationships, that awe-fullness to experience something wholly other, completely outside ourselves and our normal experience, transported, transmuted, enraptured, and caught up in the sublime.\n\nSometimes the numinous catches hold of us spontaneously. Paying attention to it or not, the feeling gets us to pay attention, to sit up and take notice. Reality begins to shift like the movement of Earth's tectonic plates. Perceptions are altered during this shift; the room becomes luminous, filled with light. Colors shimmer; the edges of things that were a moment ago solid become blurred. You are in nonordinary reality, taken through yourself, outside yourself, into the realm of the gods where the gate is opened by the simple joy of the expansive heart, the feeling of the bond between the two of you: all that you are, all the other is, is in this moment where nothing else exists but the exquisite warmth from the fire of love, birthed from the depth of intimacy. In this moment joy rises up, your heart spilling over with so much love you can no longer contain it, and it has nowhere else to go but to spill out the corners of your eyes.\n\nWhen you go to your lover, go with a sense of wonder and awe as if for the first time. Let your hunger for him, your love for him crack open the shell to reveal the soft, tender center of the heart. With the armoring fallen away, you gain access to the more subtle feelings. You are able to see and feel with your heart. From this place awakens the natural wonder of the child. The same wonder you had as a child long ago, exploring the world around you, splashing in mud puddles and intently watching insects, following their minute movements. Allow that natural curiosity and interest to overtake you as you look into your lover's eyes.\n\nRemember your first times together if you must, to bring that freshness and newness, all that attracted you to him. Bring that to this place until you can marry the familiar and newness spontaneously. Let your eyes soften as your gaze falls on him. See who he is, this being sitting before you: see his goodness, his fears, his passions, his soul, and the child he once was. Become naive once again. The words _naive_ and _na\u00efvet\u00e9_ come from French _na\u00eff,_ \"natural, inborn,\" which comes from Latin _nasci,_ \"to be born,\" and _natura,_ \"birth.\" They describe inborn characteristics. The same Latin word gives us our words _native_ and _nation_. To be na\u00efve is to be childlike, natural, and native, aboriginal in your own skin.\n\nSeeing with your soul is what Rumi referred to as \"gazing raptly.\" In most social situations and even during lovemaking, we rarely make eye contact, rarely see who we are in conversation with. We learn to not look, to cast our eyes away, shut down our hearts and are barely present with the other. Sacred sex means being fully present in body, feeling with skin and heart, attending with mind, and seeing with eyes. Will Johnson in describing this experience of depth seeing says, \"Just stay connected through the gaze, keep surrendering to the current, and accept whatever's around the next bend. Where does this river run to? If anyone knows, there would be no way to tell you. The only way you can find out is to jump in yourself, surrender to its current, and trust its wisdom. Rumi and Shams must have surrendered completely, and the journey they took together is still rightly revered.\"\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nDepth Seeing**\n\nFor this practice, eliminate as many distractions as possible, relax as deeply as you can. Holding the gaze and heart field are hindered if there is tension held anywhere in the body. Tension in the body will become a distraction, and your mind will want to focus there. Breathe into it and free your body of it with each exhalation.\n\nSit face-to-face across from your lover. Look directly into each other's eyes. When you begin, you may find you are naturally drawn to the left or right eye or both simultaneously. There are no rules here. What's important is that you relax into this, keep your eyes soft-focused. It's helpful here as well to have a sense of your peripheral vision. It's impossible to have pinpoint vision while your peripheral vision is enhanced. Keep in mind that your heart field is not unidirectional; it radiates 360 degrees around your body. No matter what sexual position you choose in any moment, you will both be wrapped in the field of the heart.\n\nAllow your heart field to expand while you are gazing. Let it reach out and touch your lover, noticing when the two fields meet and how that feels. Hold this gaze as the fields of your heart touch and then pass into each other. You may feel a little \"buzz\" in the center of your chest as his heart field touches you. Keep breathing easily. With your gaze and the field between you, you'll begin to feel a magnetic pull bringing the two of you closer as your souls begin to merge. Shifts will begin to occur in your body and your awareness. Colors will become brighter, luminous, filling the room. You'll feel strange sensations in your limbs, your head, and every cell of your being as the life force begins to pulsate and radiate throughout. As if a great cloud has been penetrated, your vision will be clearer, your perceptions sharper.\n\nNotice also how your lover's body looks and feels to you as well as everything that is happening inside and around your own skin. Let your seeing become your thinking. The moment your mind becomes active, you will lose the gaze. It's nothing to fret about; gently, not willfully, return to your gaze and heart-field awareness.\n\nWhen our eyes meet in that soulful gaze, it is the feeling in the gaze, the feelings that result in the gaze, that distinguish it from merely looking. It may seem as if you've opened a great book of memories with all the attendant feelings and emotions. You're beginning to ride the wave of ecstatic union, where physical boundaries begin to fall away easily from you and from him. As the physical boundaries fall away, the two of you feel as if you have touched the source of all that is and you've entered the territory of the gods.\n\nIt is the place where day and night entwine as lovers, where wave after wave falls in upon itself, where the real of day slips past and the numinous presents itself. The longer you hold this state and the deeper into the bliss of ecstatic, soul-to-soul communion you go, the sooner you will no longer be riding the wave but will be the wave. The movement will sometimes be fluid, smooth, and calm; at other times a turbulence will rise up inside you. Calm or turbulent, it does not matter, you are going somewhere, to a land where colors have taste and smells have sound. In the soft, sweet gaze of your lover's outward eyes, you begin to feel drunk with love, drinking deep, deeper into his inward eyes, the place of his soul looking back at you.\n\nThere is a feeling in the room now, between and around the two of you; it's palpable. Feel it. Drink it in. Anchor it into the body memory. This is what is real, this feeling, this experience. It is beyond ordinary, day-to-day living. This feeling can be brought into all that you do. It is what an ensouled life feels like. An ensouled life is a real life.\n\nTo get comfortable with this kind of intimate seeing, practice it often for as long as you can. This can be done in any position and during any activity. You'll begin to know the territory and maintain your balance in the presence of whatever arises inside you the more you practice. You'll fall in love with this feeling of being in the gaze\/heart field, wanting to do it with all those you love. With practice, you'll soon be moving in the world gazing at everyone you meet, if you wish.\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nSacred Sex**\n\nTake your lover by his hand and bed down with him. Keep your heart field wrapped around him as you lay naked body to naked body, eye to eye, breath to breath. Bring your lips to softly touch his as you gaze into his eyes, feel the ebb and flow, the in and out of his breath. Match your breathing, inhaling his exhales, exhaling as he inhales your sweet breathing. Breathe together like this as you hold each other's gaze and until you feel you have the rhythm of breathing together, sharing the atmosphere between the two of you. It's okay if you miss a breath, just return to it. Return to his eyes, his face, his heart, his breathing until you feel your two souls embrace. Be aware of that feeling of the numinous, of your two souls, as you slowly begin to be enchanted in the sacred space you've entered into. Hold it as long as you can, breathing naturally. In that rapturous gaze, you are enthralled, enchanted, absorbed. This is a feeling state and it is invisible. The experience within the gaze is the entwining of two souls. Holding the gaze as naturally as you breathe affords a shift in consciousness. Let it shift without restriction; follow where it leads. Looking with only the physical eyes is one dimensional. To gaze is to look with the eyes of the soul.\n\nHold that feeling of rapture in your heart, your energy field\u2014that sophisticated organ of imaginal seeing we call the heart and your awareness as you begin sensuously to travel the landscape of his body with your hands and eyes, your lips and tongue. Take your time. Let your heart feel and see. Feel the textures and curves of each part of him. Let your hands travel around his body as if for the first time, getting to know each part. Explore with other parts of your body, the back of your hand, your forearm, and your feet. Notice that each part of his body has its own personality and that each is communicating with you, with your body and each part of your body. Notice what they are saying, communicating. Notice where he holds tension, which parts are holding back or are afraid, take extra time breathing love into those places, holding them in your heart and its extended field.\n\nKeep in mind you are feeling and sensing your way. Don't fret if you can't hold his gaze at the same time. There is no dogma about what is right and wrong. When working and playing in the realm of the sacred, there are no rules; there is simply following the feeling that presents itself. Follow that, wherever you are drawn to look and gaze there. Follow whatever feelings arise, notice all that is happening. Notice that when you are in this state, your peripheral vision is greatly expanded.\n\nWhere do you feel you want to spend more time, lingering, savoring? Continue dropping deeper and deeper into the soul union, giving yourself over to this journey, this exploration, this ecstatic dance of sacred loving. Gaze deeply at each part of him. Engage yourself with the sweet fragrance of his body, of his sex. Become intoxicated with love and longing to have his soul, his smell, his love, him, inside you. Take his fingers in your mouth, his lips, his nipple, his penis. Each movement you make is slow and deliberately organic, following the energy of each moment, filled with the rapture of love and the depth of your union. Make love as if it's the last time you will ever make love. As your desire and excitation builds, slowly slide him inside you as you continue breathing and holding his eyes in your gaze. Hold him in your heart, sending your deep love for him through the invisible field of energy and your deep seeing. Feel everything, hear everything, smell everything. Become inebriated with feeling, swept up in the ocean of sensing. Feel your sex organs talking to each other, send your love for him from your heart, through your belly, down into your vagina, wrapping around his penis. Pay keen attention to his movements, his breathing, sounds, and smells; his responses are communications from his deep self through his body. Follow the waves of ecstatic love and passion, of sexual energy, as they travel throughout your body. Your vagina will begin to feel more ensouled, more sensitive, alive, and aware. It has its own intelligence as any part of your body does.\n\nPermit whatever images, feelings, emotions to arise and fall away. Allow any sounds that rise out of your deep self, your body, your passion to be part of your lovemaking. As he moves inside you, talk to him with your hands, send your love through them, explore his body, light touch here, more pressure there. Let your fingers and the intelligence in them slide between your two bodies to touch the base of his penis, then his testicles, and that sweet soft crease between his leg and groin. Let them slip along the length of his penis inside you. With each movement notice what that part of his body is communicating to you. Try out different ways of moving with him as he moves inside you. Raise and lower your hips, move side to side, slow down, speed up as he thrusts, penetrating all your bodies. Allow your erotic, sensual, sexual self be completely, freely involved in sacred sex.\n\nYou may discover emotional wounds or physical scars you hadn't felt until now. Send your caring into those places, fall in love with each one. You'll touch parts of his body he doesn't really like. Take your time here. They especially need to be noticed, caressed, kissed, and loved. Keep breathing your love into them with your breath and heart. Really notice him in ways you have not in the past. If you find your mind beginning to chatter on, gently return your attention to breathing through your heart and to gazing. In essence, you give yourself over completely to loving him, to being in service to the sacred communion of sex as holy devotion.\n\nAfter lovemaking, continue holding this space you're in, hold him in your arms, gently kissing his forehead, pronouncing your love for him and how wonderful it is to be with him, how good he feels, all the while keeping your heart field wrapped around the two of you.\n\nPractice often until having your heart field involved intimately in your life becomes as natural to you as breathing. You can have sacred sex and wildly passionate sex at the same time. Sacred sex isn't about holding anything back. That's what fucking is; it's holding back parts of ourselves, holding back love, and, especially, holding back feeling and intimacy. Sacred sex means holding nothing back in order to transform mechanical sex to sex as a divine, fluid, ecstatic experience of two bodies becoming one numinous, boundary-less body.\n\nSacred sex creates a bond between two people, as does sharing heart fields with anyone you are intimate with. To bond with someone is to bring a particular kind of power into the world. A bond is an exchange of soul food. As you bond with someone, a link is created. It must be worked with consciously, with intention and focus.\n\nWhether or not you practice the gaze\/heart field in a sexual relationship or with an intimate friend, you can have this experience, this soul-to-soul meeting with the energy that is birthed between the two. Let the energy take you deeper inside your own feeling body and into the psychic field of the other. You are moving away from \"knowledge of\" to what we call \"knowledge with.\" The gods speak to us through sexual potency and the bond of intimacy, which in turn makes possible an awareness of the world of the gods.\n\nNURTURING THE THIRD BODY\n\nA numen is a local divinity or presiding spirit. When people commit to each other, there is a third entity that is created, that is birthed into existence from the bond of you. The third being created from the bond of the two is an indwelling force or quality that animates or guides the relationship. It is a spiritually alive being. Something that comes into being that is more than the sum of its parts, more than the two of you. Sex is more than the sum of its parts. Just as Earth is more than the sum of its parts. Sacred sex is a ceremony, if you will. It is a communication with the invisibles inside us and the spirit of the relationship.\n\nThe third that is created is birthed through and because of the relationship. It is brought into being, into essence, as an invisible thing, the _anima_ of the relationship. You can't see it, but you can feel it. And your feeling of it will allow you to work with it directly, to shape it, to tend it, nurture it, and feed it with the love between you and your awareness of its presence. Once you become aware of this third being, bring it into sexual touching, into sacred sex. It's a palpable presence, one that gets stronger the more you nourish it through the relationship.\n\nThe two people in the relationship hold this third being in the fore of their hearts and minds. All decisions must be deferred to the whole so the choices that are made ideally enhance the whole or at a minimum maintain the energy and never take energy away from it. Be certain that the soul of the relationship is taken care of and accounted for moment to moment. The third being lives not just in the bedroom; it is alive and becomes part of your day-to-day living. Even if the two of you are in separate households, or separated by miles, the third being that is born out of your bond is still a viable and integral part of the relationship.\n\n **A Third Body**\n\n _A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long_\n\n _at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born_\n\n _in any other nation, or time, or place._\n\n _They are content to be where they are, talking or not-talking._\n\n _Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know._\n\n _The man sees the way his fingers move;_\n\n _he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him._\n\n _They obey a third body that they share in common._\n\n _They have made a promise to love that body._\n\n _Age may come, parting may come, death will come._\n\n _A man and a woman sit near each other;_\n\n _as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,_\n\n _someone we know of, whom we have never seen._\n\nROBERT BLY,  \n _L OVING A WOMAN IN TWO WORLDS_\n\nA JOINING OF SOULS\n\nSacred sex calls us to participate directly in the immense and infinite boundary-less spiritual landscape. It calls us to participate in, within and to transform physical boundaries as we deconstruct, re-create, and recover our authentic being. Sacred sex is not a technique; it's a living communication or conversation, not a dead language of antiquity. It's a communion, a holy sharing of the sacred texts of our mind, body, and soul. In that communion, we are filled with awe, our spirit lifted and moved to stillness.\n\nAs trust in each other grows, as a deep friendship and bond sets anchor, an interesting thing begins to happen. A conversation between each part of me and each part of him begins. During lovemaking, I'm aware of a conversation going on between my vagina and his penis, as they have their own conscious personalities. I feel his love channeling through his organ to places deep inside me. My hands talk to his skin, his skin talks back, our feet chat to each other as they caress and explore the other. As various ego states present themselves through parts of our body and varying sexual positions, there are opportunities to have conversations with each of them.\n\nBeing reunited after an absence, the parts of me that have especially missed him are eager to be reacquainted. The hunger I feel for him is all consuming. I can't wait to touch him, to have my hands on him, to smell him and taste him. Each part of me reunites with each part of him.\n\nAt times I feel like a flip book with a picture that changes as you quickly flip the pages; one ego state after another rises up inside me to meet him and to be seen by him, rekindling and deepening our friendship.\n\nSacred sex is the closest we come to joining our souls with another human being. It is a primordial and biologically encoded urge to marry our spirits during lovemaking, to feel the boundaries of our bodies disappear; to not know where one body ends and another begins, to be inextricably bound spirit to spirit, soul to soul, body to body, as two strands of DNA spiraling in and around the other. There is an innate need, a hunger inside us to know God, to know the infinite and boundless Universe through our sensing body, through the field of our hearts, through the waters of sex and semen and sweat.\n\nBradford Keeney writes about how the Bushmen in Kenya experience their kinship with Nature and God.\n\nWhen Bushmen say they own something, it means not only that they own the feeling for it but also that the feeling has transmitted its essence, its complex nexus of relationships, into their very being. We become the other\u2014whether a friend or a butterfly, redwood forest, giraffe, or seahorse\u2014through our intensely felt union with it. . . . You have to make love with God. The rest of the world seems to have had a marriage ceremony with God, but their marriage hasn't been consecrated. . . . Feeling God is akin to having sex or making love with God. It is a transmission and a reception of the highest and most powerful love. . . . If God is love and we get close to this big love, then how could it not be as amazing as the most intimate experiences of sexuality?\n\nSacred sex happens when we are home in our bodies, and we allow any feelings to arise without censoring and allow the dreamer and the imaginal facility of the heart to be present in our lovemaking. Those parts of us are uninhibited, untethered, and move easily between the worlds of the ordinary and the nonordinary. They are the parts that travel in the world of the written word, when a good novel is able to take us into that world of fiction, making us completely unaware of the physical world where we are sitting with a book in our hands.\n\nThe dreamer in us is able to transcend physical boundaries, go beyond physical touch to the invisible, numinous, touch of spirit on our soul: the sublime. When we experience the numinous, we experience something external to ourselves that is greater than ourselves. The sublime and the transcendent are counterparts to the numinous. The sublime and numinous cannot be analyzed or dissected; they cannot be explicated. These are not matters solely for the mind to ruminate on. These belong to the realm of feeling. Rudolf Otto proposes that \"the sublime may stimulate the capacity to perceive the numinous.\" There is a tendency for the sublime and numinous to pass over into each other.\n\nThe major transformative experience of sex is to reach the state of the _numinous,_ to fall away from the bondage of thought and religious dogma into the open palms of God, of the ancestors waiting for your arrival into the _mysterium tremendum,_ the wild ecstatic state of bliss where your thinking mind is quieted, given over to the power of the moment. The body and soul surrender to the rapture and to the gods that have come to play, flirt, kiss, suck, nibble, love, and tease your mind out of linear, dogmatic thinking, indoctrinization, and walled schooling. The mind stops thinking and makes room for witnessing. \"Some say Human Beings are the ground where the gods reside.\" Joan Halifax in _The Fruitful Darkness,_ says, \"But I am sure that it is not in us but in the interworld between us and sacred space that the gods finally arise.\"\n\n _Consider re-entry into the wild. Become a wild shaman, a wild pagan, a wild Christian, a wild Buddhist, a wild Jew, a wild agnostic, a wild artist, a wild performer, a wild whatever you want to call it because the name is less important than the experience of being wild in this natural though always uncommon way of giving priority to mystery over mastery._\n\nBRADFORD KEENEY,  \n _S HAKING MEDICINE_\n\n _Eros: love-desire connective energy through erotic passion we overcome our habitual egoic insularity and reach out into the core of other beings. Blazing Eros recognizes no barriers; it is the organic impulse toward wholeness.That wholeness is the holy, the sacred. The word holy is etymologically related to \"whole,\" both of which refer to a condition of completeness or fullness._\n\nGEORG FEUERSTEIN,  \n _S ACRED SEXUALITY_\n\n _Holiness is present at every dawn and at every sunset . . . Holiness is in the rain, the snow, every season for the person who embraces his or her own seasons . . . holiness is in the smile we wear and the tears we shed. Holiness is the smile we appreciate on others and their tears that we care for._\n\nBRUCE DAVIS\n\nTo begin with what is sacred, what is holy, I bring it down, Earth into the soil of my body. It is not only something outside me, or apart from me. It is not found only in temples, synagogues, or churches, and it does not start and stop, no ending or beginning. The kingdom of sacred divinity is inside me and inside you. It resides in the space between us where our divine spirits comingle, where our souls intertwine and the boundaries of our bodies diffuse.\n\nUnexpected things happen in the rapture of sacred sex. He's inside you, and the two of you are breathing, looking into each other's eyes. You feel his love moving inside you, going deeper as he moves inside. You feel overwhelming love and trust, and the room takes on a luminous glow. Spirit arrives; the third being has come to be with the two of you.\n\n **A Third Body**\n\n _Lovers give birth to a third body._\n\n _Its lungs have the capacity_\n\n _to breathe for two,_\n\n _although they breathe_\n\n _something other than air._\n\n _Its heart has the strength_\n\n _to keep two alive,_\n\n _although it pumps something_\n\n _other than blood._\n\n _This body is not made of flesh,_\n\n _but of thought and feeling._\n\n _It is the labor of two hearts_\n\n _and two minds_\n\n _that have learned_\n\n _to dance together._\n\n _Although it is created by two_\n\n _who live in separate bodies,_\n\n _those two_\n\n _inhabit this body_\n\n _they have made together_\n\n _when those separate bodies die._\n\nPAUL FERRINI,  \n _D ANCING WITH THE BELOVED_\n\nThe place inside you where you have been hiding grief and sorrow and fears begins to open up with the touch of his love. The place inside you may be a room. It has a flexible door that responds to the touch of his love. It opens, and all that you have been holding back, keeping safe and secret, begins to flow out in a river of tears. From the watching place inside you, notice as the room is emptied of its contents, and you see each part you tucked away behind the door. All the while you are making love with your man inside you. And he is making love with you, breathing with you, holding you. He holds you and loves you while you do the sacred work of letting the sorrow and fear leave your body, your psyche, all the holding in you've been doing is released as the touch of his love, his penis inside you touches the ground of you, and a great torrent of release sweeps through the two of you. What has been emptied can now be filled with something new, something luminous, a wholeness is created in the wake of exiting pain.\n\nEGO STATES AND SEXUAL POSITIONS\n\nAs you travel deeper into the sacred territory of your lovemaking, you may notice him taking on a younger ego state. Listen to his choice of words; notice his playfulness and innocence, the feelings and emotions rising up from deep inside. If he is willing to make love from this place, a younger ego state, he needs to feel you are there to receive him, feel your love and caring of him.\n\nChanging sexual positions facilitates a change in ego states. And these different positions can alter, or alternate, the male\/female energies inside us. For example, the male on top, face-to-face position puts the woman in the traditional place of being receptive, open, inviting, and receiving the male. Being on the bottom is a position of vulnerability, submissiveness, if you will, and it naturally allows for younger ego states to emerge. The man on top from behind can bring to the surface unresolved issues of powerlessness and the rape element. It can also satisfy a need to be dominated or overpowered, to feel the strength of him pushing on you while in a position that compromises your strength.\n\nThe position most likely to access and facilitate _his_ feminine nature is, as you might have surmised, the female-on-top position. He is then not only symbolically and emotionally, but also for real, in the position of receptivity. If he is willing, he can move from symbolically receptive to authentically receptive. That is to say that he makes a conscious choice to be receptive, to open up to receiving your love and letting it fill him.\n\nThere were a few times I became keenly aware of, and quite surprised by, the male in me inside my body, the strength of that part and, at times, its forcefulness. I felt the male in me using my arms and hands to hold my lover strong and tight. It took some time for my partner to get used to so much male energy between the sheets, but he spent time talking to the man of me, so much so that it feels at home being with him and is not shy about influencing our lovemaking. When I feel more male energy in me, I still love having female sexual organs. When I'm on top making love, I tend to have more male energy, but it is not the rule. Often I am the older, mature woman of me. Rarely, in my experience, does that position facilitate a younger ego state.\n\nWhat is really fascinating is that as the relationship develops in strength, trust, and friendship, as your bodies and sexual organs become friends, it's fascinating to notice that his penis feels like it's yours. There often comes the moment that you can't tell who has the vagina and who has the penis. They are, and the two of you are, deep in the ecstatic state of lovemaking. The more your bodies speak to each other, the more your movements are exquisite and flawless as a finely choreographed dance, the more ambiguous ownership of sexual organs.\n\nWhich ego state is present during fellatio? It may be quite a different one during the giving than the receiving. Ingestion of semen has a mystical and potent history. In many cultures, it is considered empowering to the woman and feeds her subtle bodies. In every culture, it has the potential to increase intimacy in the relationship. It also has the potential to extend lovemaking.\n\nBut, don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself; that's where the fun is. As you play and experiment with changing positions, notice how you feel when you are on top. Do you feel more or less masculine, more or less vulnerable or powerful? More deliberate in your moves? How does he feel to you when you are on top? Does he feel softer to you, more yielding, more feminine, open, and receptive even? When you are on the bottom, beneath him, how do you feel? Do you feel more or less vulnerable? Which one do you favor and is the most fun? Which one is more frightening, uncomfortable, and brings up the most \"stuff \"? Does he look younger, older, harder, softer, or more mature in one position than another?\n\nThere may be physical limitations that prescribe which positions are the most comfortable if, for example, you have a physical disability of some kind. Level of fatigue may dictate the choice of positions as well. If your energy levels are low, try facing each other on your side, front to front or front to back. The important thing is to keep your heart field present in each position.\n\nGive each position your attentive noticing. Which ego states come out in which position? Follow that energy; let whoever wants to be present, be present. You're not in charge; you become, if you will, your own spiritual midwife, witnessing, holding, allowing younger parts of you to emerge, say what they want to say, ask questions they need answers to. Let your Child's wonder, curiosity, and enjoyment of sex rise to the surface. All the while, your heart fields are wrapped around each other, your spirits entwined as much or more than your physical bodies are, and engaged in soul-to-soul sharing. Return often to a state of vulnerability and na\u00efvet\u00e9 (it does get less scary). Notice if any defenses begin to arise in you, any tensions in your physical body as well as emotional and psychological armoring that attempts to lock into place. Over time, you may notice that ego states shift position; they are not locked into one position. They are dynamic, evolving, and can move around as they become more integrated in who you are.\n\nAct as if you're making love for the first time, and you're being present with every nuance, each movement, noticing everything and every detail in yourself. It's crucial to undefend moment by moment, opening more of yourself, more of your body and your deepest self, letting him enter every part of you. As his penis enters physically farther, his spirit, his soul essence, his love, his caring, his gaze are also penetrating the deepest oceans of you.\n\nNotice each ego state that makes herself known. The farther he gets inside you, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, the greater the chance for deeply held ego states to emerge from being touched. See your lover through these eyes, the eyes of a young child who loves to look, to feel, and to see. The one who can see deep into your lover's interior world is intuitive and sensitive to what is happening.\n\nAs a fine woodworker knows the defining characteristics of each unique piece of wood he works with\u2014the grain, color, smell, and texture\u2014so too can you know the intimate and defining details of your lover inside and outside. The woodworker takes care to listen to the medium of his expression, waiting for the moment the thing reveals itself. It is no different with a human being; it is relationship and communication.\n\nDon't be afraid to talk, to say how you feel, how much you enjoy the feel of him inside you. The more you talk, the less you'll stay hidden, and the deeper the sharing can go. Continue to be aware of the energy of your heart wrapping around him. Say out loud all the things you enjoy; your favorite positions, how his lips feel, how the two of you kiss. Explore each other's skin, levels of touch, the contours of your bodies. You're beginning the journey of knowing your lover, the geography of his body and the secret territory inside. Tell him all the things you enjoy about him\u2014the way he touches your skin or the way he enters a room. Say out loud what you love about his body and his skin. Go into detail; find details in him that you love, that you adore, that you look forward to meeting each day. Murmur admirations as your fingers whisper slowly along the luscious, wonderful, erotic, curves of his body. Let your fingertips fluidly trace the movement of curvature where neck and shoulder meet and caress each other; continue along his arm to the curve of his hips as he lies on his side; linger in the valley, that sweet sway in the small of his back, drawing spirals with the tip of your finger. Follow the serpentine curves as your two bodies' entwine. How is he responding? Does he like his ears rubbed? Does he let loose a sigh when you touch certain parts of him? As you're tracing the lines of his body, you're also noticing how different areas of his skin have various textures. There are the soft parts of his body, his stomach, his ass, under his arms. Thicker, rougher skin is on his hands, his forearms, maybe his thighs. It's your caring, your love for him, your desire to know him intimately, to know the details of his inner and outer life, that slows you down to notice, to see. Adore each part of him. Fall in love with each one over and over, with abandon.\n\nHe will show you what shadows he casts that illuminate parts of his interior world. The behaviors he acts out, his habits, the choices he makes whisper at what is in the depths of his character. He may show you his thirst for intimacy and fear of it. Is he afraid of speaking in public? Is he uncomfortable being alone? Does he prefer to start his morning quietly and slowly, or does he wake ready to meet the day? What is his relationship with food? Does he love romance? Does he cry at movies? Is he comfortable with you crying at movies? What angers him consistently or spontaneously? What is his relationship with his family? Do you know what soothes him, inspires him, and excites him?\n\nWhen you begin to see below the surface to places that were once hidden from view, when he begins to let your love travel inside to touch his deep child-self, an invisible thing is present there, between the two of you. That invisible thing is trust, unseen yet casting a shadow, a hint of its presence in the look of an eye, the touch of a hand, a secret shared. Sometimes fragile, sometimes strong as steel, trust is a foundational structure upon which the building of the relationship grows.\n>  \n> \n> **PART 3**\n> \n>  **Challenges You May Meet on the Road**\n**10**\n\n _The Dance of Trust_\n\n_Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement._\n\nGOLDA MEIR\n\nAs you may have discovered by now, the process of getting clear, becoming aware, and knowing the deep parts of you as you practice sacred sex and intimacy can occasionally get a little rocky. You may feel off balance, disoriented, and you may even feel that you are shaken to your core. The thing is, when the boat rocks, you never know which way it is going to tip. Rigorous self-examination and trust in the process, yourself, and your partner are crucial. Then, it matters not which way the boat tips if trust is in the framework. Trust cannot exist without the possibility of betrayal, the two coexist on a continuum. Only those we trust at a primal level\u2014ourselves, lovers, husbands, wives, sisters\u2014have the power to betray us. To think it is possible to have any sort of relationship with absolute trust, containment, and security is to place yourself in a world that does not exist.\n\nThe degree of trust between people directly relates to the degree of intimacy they share. Trust and intimacy are dance partners, spiraling, embracing, and weaving the couple into a tighter matrix of relationship. Inside the spiraling dance is the embryo of freedom; freedom to voice that which has been silenced, freedom to bend, to choose, to ask, to feel, to express. There is freedom from games, codependency and drama. And when you feel free to be spontaneous, your life becomes less a life filled with regrets, resentments, and searching and becomes more a life of expressing who you were born to be. Your life is authentic, and you are authentically being. All that you do is a reflection of you, and _you_ are in all that you do.\n\nThe most immediate and deep healing I've experienced was with someone I completely trusted\u2014someone who I knew could betray me because of that very trust, but who I chose to trust nonetheless\u2014someone who saw all the broken and lost parts of me, as well as the intelligent, witty, intuitive, and charming parts. It was having all of me seen, acknowledged, and welcomed into the world, having my secrets received, that allowed parts of me to wake up, that enabled me to come home and begin healing and integrating.\n\nBREAKING THE TRUST\n\nTrust isn't a word or concept that normally comes up in everyday conversations. When it does, it has weight to it. Often, it's mentioned in the context of feelings of betrayal, broken trust, and broken promises or agreements. Trust is often taken for granted, meaning that it is not actively maintained. As we move into any new relationship, there is often a brief period of suspicion, doubt, and hesitation while the Child of you is checking out the other person. At some point, she'll make a decision that she is willing to extend trust to this person and explore the relationship.\n\nTrust is always a decision. If you were to trace back incrementally how you got to the point of trusting someone, you would find a series of moments when you scrutinized the other person out of the corner of your eye, ran all the feelings you were having through your inner council, and got your Adult's information and the Parent's blessing. You would find the moment at which you made the decision based on intuition and feeling and whether or not the person's language was congruent with his behavior. Your Child is calibrating all these things whether you are aware of it or not.\n\nThere are few gray areas in matters of trust; either it is actively being cultivated or it is eroding; either there is trust or there is betrayal. You may find that you trust someone with your deepest self and be watching them at the same time.\n\nMost often we don't consciously think about trust unless we feel someone has done something that causes us to distrust them. They have abused our trust or gone unconscious and let a mean or mad part of themselves say hurtful things out loud. It takes time to rebuild trust after it's been damaged. This is true whether the damage to trust is to the Child in us or the Child in the other person. We fracture or break the trust of the Child in ourself by not keeping our agreements with her, by abandoning her, or by undermining her trust in any number of small ways. We seldom consider the importance of building and maintaining trust in our own self to take care of our own security. James Hillman says, \"What we long for is a situation where one is _protected from one's OWN treachery and ambivalence._ \" Trust should be treated as a real thing that needs tending for it to grow and strengthen the relationship. Getting to the place in a relationship where the two of you are able to relax into your bond, with trust as the adhesive, liberates both of you to be who you are with each other. Trust in yourself frees you to be spontaneous with a diverse palate of responses in your repertoire. Being in a relationship with someone whom you don't trust, or where trust has been damaged and not repaired, diverts energy away from intimacy.\n\nWhen two people have a falling out, it usually starts with one person getting irritated about something. Say you are upset and decide to say something to your partner. But without the skills and experience of interior work and knowing yourself, a part of you, an unconscious part, takes over and says something unkind or damaging, even. Typically, your partner will respond with something equally hurtful, and then the two of you are off to the races. It's common in this scenario for old stuff to come out in the argument. You may bring out things you don't like about your partner, or all the other times they said something or did something hurtful. The reason this happens is that the part of you that spoke has been keeping a file on all the little irritations or slips of the tongue, broken agreements, or promises not fulfilled. In the Transactional Analysis model, it's called saving stamps.\n\nThat part of you\u2014a paranoid part, most often the Predator or the unhappy Child\u2014is keeping score, building an arsenal, and sharpening her blade. If a counterpart in him has been doing the same thing, the argument escalates, one of you leaves slamming the door, and all is quiet for a few hours. This is a version of what Eric Berne called uproar. You may be able to maintain distance while a cool breeze wafts between the two of you for a day or two, until it gets too uncomfortable, and one of you has to say _something._ Often it's just enough to break the ice that's been growing thicker: \"I'm sorry we had a fight.\" \"I'm sorry I yelled at you. I've been really stressed lately.\" Then you hug and go about your lives. Or, you have the most amazing, intense sex of your relationship. Often one of those or a combination is enough to return you to the status quo. A lot of us live our lives just that way.\n\nUnfortunately, in this scenario, even though the two of you are able to cohabitate and return to \"normal\" life, there is a tremendous amount of accumulated debris between you. The part of you that was stressed\u2014if in fact that is the truth, for we often lie or gloss things over to avoid the real problem\u2014and lashed out has not gotten what she needs and has unresolved anger, rage, grief, or fear. The pressure has been released for the time being, but the underlying issue is, once again, being put under a lid. Russell Brand, the English comedian and disc jockey, said, \"You know, these relationships we 'ave, everything sort of bubbles under the surface. No one ever says what they actually mean, do they? It's all a bit pappy and rubbish.\"\n\n **One Source of Bad Information**\n\n _There's a boy in you about three_\n\n _Years old who hasn't learned a thing for thirty_\n\n _Thousand years. Sometimes it's a girl._\n\n _This child had to make up its mind_\n\n _How to save you from death. He said things like:_\n\n _\"Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.\"_\n\n _You live with this child, but you don't know it._\n\n _You're in the office, yes, but live with this boy_\n\n _At night. He's uninformed, but he does want_\n\n _To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy_\n\n _You survived a lot. He's got six big ideas._\n\n _Five don't work. Right now, he's repeating them to you._\n\nROBERT BLY,  \n _M ORNING POEMS_\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nFollowing a Feeling to Its Source**\n\nWhenever you feel something pushing at you from inside, something trying ever so persistently to get your attention, don't ignore the feeling. Follow the feeling to its source inside you. Start by asking yourself, \"What _is_ that? What is going on?\" Turn to face the feeling. If you had to give the feeling a name, what would it be? Mad, sad, glad, or scared? Depressed, grieving, terrified, or lonely? Ask your Child to come and sit with you; ask her to tell you what's going on. She will know. There will be a need she has and wants your help with it. If she's scared, she needs to feel not scared or at least she needs to know that the grown-up part of you will do everything it can to help her feel less scared. She may be sad, in which case you ask her, \"What do you need to feel happy?\"\n\nIf you've been working long hours, she may need physical strokes. If so, ask your partner if he would lie down with you and give you some strokes: stroke your forehead, rub your feet, rub your back, massage your head. Notice how you begin to relax; your breathing lets go in deep exhalations. If you've been holding a lot of emotion back to get through a difficult time, there may be an upwelling of uncontrolled emotion when the love coming through his touch reaches the Child inside you. You're being vulnerable and being held in the love of your partner, and your Child is being held by you, taken care of by you. It may feel so good to her, she may just want to weep a little. Let her; let the tears flow, or the laughter, or the joy rise up and the stress leave.\n\nIt's absolutely not necessary to wait until you know exactly what's going on for you. In fact, it's important in the beginning, until you gain facility with interior ego states, feelings, and emotions, and become intimate with yourself, to start saying out loud that you don't feel like yourself and it's distracting you from being present with your partner.\n\nYou may even say to your partner, for he has likely noticed that you're not feeling yourself, \"I'm a little distracted right now. I feel funny, just not myself. Will you sit and talk with me so I can figure this out?\" Or, \"Will you sit and hold me?\" It may come to light as you're describing how you're feeling that you've been afraid of the upcoming business trip he's about to take. Or you're disappointed about something. Or you're afraid about your finances. It could be anything, but you won't know if you don't look and feel. Trying to work it out inside yourself is possible, may be necessary, and is a valuable skill to have. However, if you are in an intimate relationship, enlisting your partner's help and support\u2014a shoulder to lean on and a loving ear willing to listen\u2014strengthens the relationship and takes the pressure off you. Unshielding yourself to create intimate moments can be a wonderful aphrodisiac.\n\nMENDING THE TRUST\n\nOnce you have betrayed the trust of another, you must do interior work to analyze the dynamics of your behavior; what went unattended, what part was upset, what needs were not met? Then you must own your behavior and then do the necessary work to clean up the mess you've made in the relationship and make amends. It's important, if at all possible, assuming your partner is still talking to you, that he is involved in the repair; that he gets what he needs to feel better with you. It may take time to decide to trust someone again, to reestablish intimacy, but it can happen.\n\nTrust can be repaired if the other person, and the Child inside him, sees that you are taking responsibility for your actions. Saying \"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that,\" might work for some people. It no longer works for me to say it or accept it. When I look at my transaction honestly, with a desire to truly know myself and be whole, I know some part of me meant to say, or do, that thing. It might be that I have been letting pressure build with no strategy in place to relieve it. Parts of me were getting really tired of not having a break; I went unconscious and quit thinking and paying attention. Replaying the event puts me in relation with the movements and communications. Only when I'm in relation to it will I have options from which to do something different.\n\nThis is where maintaining eye contact is essential. It's awkward and uncomfortable in the beginning. Scary, really. Maintaining eye contact while you make amends communicates your willingness to repair trust and intimacy. There will be a strong tendency to want to hide and feel ashamed for screwing up. It's important to not give in to the lure of indulging in feelings of shame but to proactively work to make the relationship whole again.\n\nIf your partner has hurt you, tell him what you need from him to feel better and begin to be friends again. Say everything out loud: \"What you said or did really hurt me. I need to know why you did that so you will not do it, or any version of it, again.\" Sometimes a gift is needed to make up such as: \"I want you to buy me a new futon,\" or \"I want you to take me out for a really nice dinner.\" What you ask for should be equivalent to the damage done. It's important to have your Child involved in the request. What does she need? What would it take for her to feel counted again? Breaking trust, intentionally causing hurt in someone, is a discount to the Child and to the relationship. So reparations need to take both those things into account.\n\nWe all make mistakes and we have all been unkind at times. To heal the damage done from going unconscious, it helps to work at not feeling bad about it, to not wallow in the hurtful thing you did, not indulge yourself in carrying the bad feelings around. Take some time to talk to your Child so she doesn't walk around feeling bad. It doesn't change anything, and it expands the bad feelings between everyone involved for longer periods of time. Resolve it inside yourself as quickly as possible so movement toward intimacy can happen sooner. If necessary, put the bad feelings aside until later, work to heal the damage and the relationship first. That is primary in this scenario.\n\nI had a habit of beating myself up for days after an incident of going unconscious and being unkind. I was a student of self-loathing; it was a familiar behavior. It took time to come to terms with what I had done, but mostly it took time to give up feeling like a piece of shit and reinforcing old scripts about my self-worth. It took a lot of work to come to terms with the predator in me, to integrate that part so she didn't act out. It took time for me to really get that I am capable of hurting someone emotionally. There is a need for rigorous self-examination, of listening to the voices inside, of watching your own movements and taking action to prevent any part of you that is upset from using your mouth. And then you must learn to self-correct in the moment. It's work, particularly in the beginning, and it gets easier. The more you do this work, the fewer mistakes you'll make and the less hurt you'll cause, and the more secure and confident you'll become in yourself.\n\n _You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody  \nor talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone._\n\nFIONA APPLE\n\n _Today I trust my instinct, I trust myself. Finally._\n\nISABELLE ADJANI\n\n _It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself._\n\nGRAHAM GREENE,  \n _T HE MINISTRY OF FEAR_\n\n _Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings._\n\nMILES FRANKLIN\n\nINJUNCTIONS\n\nAn injunction is a writ or an agreement some part of you made to refrain from or forbid an act or speech. Injunctions around behaviors or stories are often made by a very young part of ourselves who made a declaration as the consequence of some painful experience. We have all made some vow, some agreement with ourselves. Injunctions range from never being vulnerable, never depending on anyone, never getting married, never trusting someone ever again, never sharing any intimate part of yourself or your story. Mine were to never trust or depend on anyone and to keep everything to myself. I had injunctions about how to behave in a relationship. I believed that the less that was said, the less opportunity there was for drama, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. The more I kept to myself, secret and private, the more likely the fragile little boat of the relationship and my life would withstand the storm.\n\nI had injunctions about trusting men specifically and people in general. I had decided that whatever I was going to accomplish in my life, I would do it alone. I was the only one I could count on, who would show up and do all the work. A friend called it the Lone Ranger syndrome. It worked pretty well for a while, until I began to burn out. I was on the verge of complete exhaustion, with kidney pain, adrenal fatigue, and massive headaches. My hair was falling out by the handful, and my feet hurt all the time. I had to reexamine how I had structured my life before I became seriously ill. I began to really look at my birth family, our dynamics and unspoken rules about behavior, and consciously chose to do something different, to break the rules, including the ones I had made. As you can see, I've renegotiated those old family agreements. Saying forbidden things, breaking the rules, has terrified me but also liberated me.\n\nBreaking injunctions, conscious and unconscious ones, changes the dynamic with yourself. Breaking an injunction about saying secrets out loud without talking it over with the parts of you that originally made the injunction may have serious consequences. Those parts of you can and will make a mess of things for you to get even and to get your attention. They don't like being left out of such life-changing decisions.\n\nYou may hear things like: \"You shouldn't have said that. You're going to be sorry.\" \"That'll come back to you.\" \"What were you thinking?\" \"You moron!\" The part of us that is scared gets activated and escalates the fear inside. Panic ensues. And you start bargaining with parts of yourself to calm the fear.\n\nHans Hofmann said, \"The real challenge consists in being so true to oneself that sharing oneself nakedly with another person will be unselfconscious and honest, not marred by exaggerated expectations or apprehensions based on past disappointments or unfulfilled fantasies.\"\n\nSAY IT OUT LOUD\n\nEveryone has secrets. Secrets are kept for essentially one reason: fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of being hurt, fear of being seen, fear of being too weird, fear of someone you care for being hurt are all powerful motivations to keep secrets. Secrets themselves can be a source of fear, fear of being found out. This does create a dilemma for anyone who wants to have intimacy and yet hasn't found a way to work with these fears. The human animal is a tribal species. We need other human beings for physical and emotional touch. We are not meant to do this dance of life alone. We may choose to retreat to the wilderness on a solitary quest to heal ourselves and, while out there alone, experience the spirits pushing on internal wounds and the crooked places inside, helping us to grow. But we cannot remain in the wildland alone. Without the touch and love of another human being, we would become physically and psychologically ill.\n\nIn a _A Blue Fire,_ James Hillman expresses it this way:\n\nHow can we know ourselves by ourselves? We can be known to ourselves through another, but we cannot go it alone. This is the hero's way, perhaps appropriate during a heroic phase. The opus of the soul needs intimate connections, not only to individuate but simply to live. For this we need relationships of the profoundest kind through which we can realize ourselves, where self-revelation is possible, where interest in and love for soul is paramount, and where eros may move freely\u2014whether it be in analysis, in marriage and family, or between lovers and friends.\n\nWe all have a thing or two we want to keep close to our heart, something we may even take to the grave with us. If you have such a secret, it's important to find a way to have true resolution and forgiveness in yourself. Then make the conscious choice to keep the secret. The important thing is to choose from free will and not out of guilt or shame. Be attentive to the nature of the secret. Secrets have the potential to do damage to your deep self and to your relationship. Talk it over carefully with all the members of your inner council. The movie _Get Low,_ with Robert Duvall, is a magnificent story of one man's redemption from a secret he carried for forty years, one that he wanted peace with before he died. It's well worth watching.\n\nSecrets have a power of their own. Family secrets that have been kept for generations have a way of insinuating themselves into the psyche of current or future family members. Secrets such as the fact that your mother had an abortion before you were born, your aunt was hidden away in a psychiatric hospital, your great, great grandfather kept slaves, all have a way of slowly eating away at the fabric of family life as well as at the individual family members.\n\nThere is a distinct difference between keeping secrets, which is intentionally hiding information, and maintaining privacy. Privacy is \"the right to maintain a nonrelational sphere of existence.\" For example, when you keep sexual acts between you and your lover, husband, or partner away from the eyes of your neighbors, you are exercising your right to privacy.\n\nSecrets can be used to create distance; for example, if you keep secret that you were beaten in a previous relationship, you might fear being physically vulnerable. If there was emotional abuse, you may be calculating how far you're willing to extend yourself emotionally. In these scenarios, you are holding back parts of yourself. If you secretly have judgments about your body, your sexual organs, an ugly part of your body, the inhibition you feel as a result will directly impact your sexual relations and your enjoyment of them as well as the energy you have available for enjoying life.\n\nIn relationships, keeping secrets about how you're feeling, what's working, what isn't working, what you need and want in the relationship and for yourself leads to loss of self-dignity, erodes intimacy, and creates loneliness. To have the depth of intimacy and sacred sex we've been exploring requires that we say things out loud. Speaking things out loud can be scary if you feel you are breaking personal beliefs, family, and cultural scripts about what is acceptable to say out loud and what is not.\n\nSecrets _can_ make you feel like a phony\u2014inauthentic, isolated, angry\u2014and increase anxiety. Being shut down from our feelings makes us feel disconnected and faraway. If you are secretly dissatisfied with how you and your lover have sex but feel too afraid to talk about it, resentment will start creeping into the relationship. Talking with your partner in a loving way about what each of you likes, doesn't care for, or would really love to have increases intimacy and sexual satisfaction. Sharing things that trouble you, scare you, or bring you joy and excitement increases trust and strengthens the bond.\n\nSharing secrets can build intimacy, but care still needs to be taken about what you tell your partner and how you tell him. Asking yourself the following questions can help you get clear about what to share and the motivations behind your decision to share it:\n\nIs sharing this going to bring us closer or will it cause a rift between us?\n\nWill saying this add to the life and wholeness of the relationship?\n\nHow can I say this thing without threatening our relationship?\n\nDo I need to tell this for my own health and wholeness?\n\nWill this secret push on his sensitivities?\n\nWill this cause harm to my partner?\n\nIf you decide it's going to bring you closer, practice inside yourself saying it to your beloved or whoever it is you're going to tell it to. Imagine the impact you want it to have, the potential outcome, and how it might be received. Own the secret as yours without blaming or projecting.\n\nSEXUAL SECRETS\n\nThe scripts we were given as children are often involved in the dynamics of secrets. They can be used to maintain the script\u2014the beliefs we have about our bodies, ourselves, our sexuality and sex. For example, not telling your lover you have herpes or that you need added lubrication are shame secrets we have about our bodies. Marty Klein says, \"Finally, using sexual secrets to fulfill childhood scripts is very costly . . . scripts emerge as the mind grapples with a single goal: preventing childhood pain. So scripts specifically ignore the needs of contemporary, adult situations.\" When we hide our condition or our needs, we feel isolated, and it reinforces old beliefs that something is wrong with us and that something bad will happen if we reveal our secret. We keep secrets, we unconsciously think, to protect the child in us from harm. It actually creates the situation we are trying to avoid\u2014feeling lonely, isolated, and unworthy. We can't protect the child from pain that happened in the past. Attempting to use secrets, sexual secrets, to protect the child gives us a false sense of power over our situation and relationships. It goes nowhere good. It degrades trust in the relationship and mistrust from the child to you since she's not getting her real needs met. Trust produces intimacy. Giving up old scripts produces freedom to choose.\n\nTelling our sexual secrets and fantasies dictates that we give up ideas about what is proper and appropriate. That can be challenging since our society has many cultural rules about what is proper and appropriate behavior.\n\nAbout every six months (usually after two glasses of wine), much to my partner's fascination, I loosen up my restrictions about telling parts of my past sexual experiences to him. Just when I thought I'd said everything, another few months would pass and we would be having fun\u2014enjoying each other's company, bantering witticisms, telling stories, and sexually flirting\u2014and I would spontaneously tell him about more of my experiences. When I first began doing this, it was fun in the moment, but the next day, afraid I had said too much, I would shyly go to him and ask if he still liked me and did he still want to be with me. I had to ask so the uncertainty would not become a caustic eating at my conscience.\n\nMany of us have sexual fantasies that trigger shame and guilt inside us. This often has roots in religion, when children are led to believe that God magically hears _everything,_ even our most secret and private thoughts. Having sexual fantasies is normal though there are many messages in the media and from religion that tell us otherwise. It's all right to have fantasies about actors since they are unavailable and can be objectified. But having a sexual thought about your neighbor, that's a little too close to home. Fantasies and thoughts are not bad, having them does not make you a bad person; however, acting out fantasies can be damaging to our relationships, our families, our lives.\n\nTalking about sexual fantasies can actually bring people closer; they are intimate thoughts that can enhance a relationship and deepen trust. Noticing that someone looks attractive, sexy, or seductive doesn't mean you're going to run off with him. It means you're not dead. Making comments about it all to your lover or partner is a sign of trust and comfort-ability. You can make it playful and fun. Go back and forth: \"Well, what about that woman. Do you find her sexy? What do you find attractive?\" I know this has potential for escalating into something you don't want. So, be clear in yourself before engaging your mouth. Playful is the best approach; the more playful, the more fun it will be. If you are unable to be playful, it's best to wait until you are filled with love and feel self-possessed; that is, confident and not threatened by outside forces. If you and your lover are able to do this, it can turn into a kind of flirtation between the two of you.\n\nTRUST, INTIMACY, AND SACRED SEX\n\nIt's actually quite a lot of fun when you are able to have a relationship with all the parts of you, to have facility with ego states and their needs, wants, and desires, and to know how each one expresses herself. Even more fun when you can cathect\u2014put energy into or activate\u2014any ego state or state of mind at will. Saying things out loud is a pathway to building trust and engages the other person. Share your thoughts, hopes, dreams, and insights with him. Getting to know each other this way, showing yourself to another person, communicates that you want to have a deeper relationship, that you trust enough to share your deepest self with him. Talking out loud is a way of thinking out loud. When you talk with your awareness in your heart, it opens up the imaginal realm to seeing things you hadn't previously.\n\nDuring sacred sex, as you are arousing each other\u2014talking about what feels good, sharing your love and feeling your hunger and desire building\u2014maintain eye contact, especially when the temptation to close your eyes is greatest. Keeping your eyes open opens wounds, brings them to the surface to be seen and received by the other person. There can be tremendous emotional releasing. It's important, in fact, that you allow everything you are feeling to be felt.\n\nMaintaining eye contact increases trust, healing, and bonding. You can see the other person, see his love of you, see that he is trustworthy. With your eyes open, gazing into your lover's eyes, it's easier to stay present with your partner and with your feelings and body. Notice everything that comes up and stay with it; let it move through you. Let shame, discomfort, and fears have their place, their time for healing. Allow your child to be fully present here.\n\nClosing your eyes takes you inside yourself, and it can be used to shut down the feelings that are arising when things get too uncomfortable. Honor everything that is happening, attend to every detail. Once you have facility with the territory of the sacred in lovemaking, it gets easier to stay present with what's going on between the two of you, what's happening inside you, what's happening inside him, where you travel inside him, the communications between your bodies.\n\nAs you continue to work with the different parts of you, you'll become more experienced, sophisticated, and adept in your responses to your child's need and wants. You'll also be more flexible in responding to old wounds, memories, and issues of trust and shame that will inevitably come to the surface at some, or several, points along the way. As well, you'll become more elegant in your communication skills, analysis, and responses with your partner as you become more whole in yourself, and over time, you will have a greater repertoire of verbal and behavioral options.\n\nYou may doubt what your Child is saying, your perceptions and sensing. It's always that way in the beginning. It's tenuous as the relationship begins and you're sorting out who's who inside. Trust yourself; you'll discover you know more than you think you do. You will find your way. Keep going. Ask questions and feel the responses in your body. Your ability to calibrate and attune to the nuances and subtleties will evolve into a system of sophisticated conversations and insights the more you work with ego states, feeling, and perceiving.\n\n _Once you trust yourself, then you will know how to live._\n\nJOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, FAUST\n**11**\n\n ** _Healing Shame_**\n\n_I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that._\n\nDICK GREGORY\n\nRecognizing shame is easy; you feel the impact of it immediately. Your flushed cheeks may demonstrate outwardly your feelings, and the last thing you want at this uncomfortable moment is to be betrayed by your own physiology. Shame nags and gnaws at you, erodes your dignity, and inserts questions and doubts about your character. Feelings of being a bad person or an inadequate human being or having done something wrong permeate your thoughts and drain energy away from you. You'll spend hours, days, years trying to understand what happened and, mostly, how to unhook yourself from that miserable feeling inside you. The more complete your intimacy is with yourself and the more whole you are in yourself, the quicker you will find resolution to the matter and be able to derail shame before it becomes a runaway train carrying your dignity with it.\n\nAs you begin work to heal shame, an interesting thing happens as it does with any issue you are bringing to conscious awareness to resolve. Inevitably, because the Universe has a sick sense of humor and impeccable timing, people and events will magically plop themselves in front of you for the sole purpose of bringing up the issues you've decided you're ready to be done with. These people and events have an uncanny ability to shoot a stinging arrow smack in the middle of your shame button. It is one of the most irksome phenomena of healing psychological wounds.\n\nWORKING THROUGH SHAME\n\nMy primary shame was around my sexuality, sex, and my body and feelings of inadequacy, of taking up too much space, and of not wanting to be a burden. Of course, there came into my life a woman who knew exactly how to shame me just as I was beginning to taste freedom from it. Everything I had shame about was pushed on in a single transaction. The particulars of what happened aren't important. What is important is the meaning in her transaction with me, which informed me that I didn't have a right to have needs, to be sexual, to ask for what I wanted, or to be happy. What it felt like to my Child was that I didn't have a right to be alive and to be who I am.\n\nIt was impossible to keep my balance, so after the shock of it wore off, I fell apart. I wanted to hide, run away, escape, and shrink into oblivion. I withdrew and nearly went catatonic, unable to move or breathe. I believed that if I breathed or moved I'd be seen, and once seen, something terrible would happen again. I shut down and was unable to think or analyze. My feelings became a tangled mess like those balls of fishing line left caught in a snag of branches.\n\nIt's difficult work to get out of that space. But it is possible. I untangled the transaction in reverse, one inch of line at a time, until I saw where and how it all began. Only then could I see that it wasn't my fault; I had done nothing to provoke it. \"It's my fault\" is the first place I would normally go. The woman who had hurt me had probably been scared or upset. But that didn't matter to me; what mattered was that she had done and said those deeply hurtful things. I told my Child that people are just mean sometimes and that we hadn't done anything wrong. I told her that I and others were immensely glad that she is alive.\n\nI learned to go through this laborious process every time I experienced shame. I would feel it, go into shock and shut down almost entirely, then come back to myself, analyze the transaction, unhook it, and get mad.\n\n _When will my shame fall away?_\n\n _When will I accept being mocked_\n\n _and let my robe of dignity burn up?_\n\n _When the wandering pony inside_\n\n _comes calm to my hand._\n\nLALLA\n\nShame has a physical response in the body and is a crisis of the soul. It's similar to embarrassment, but shame insinuates there is something abhorrently wrong with your moral compass. Simple embarrassment passes; you've committed a social faux pas, a breach of etiquette. Interestingly, it's usage in medical context is to indicate physiological distress as in respiratory embarrassment. And in Portuguese it comes from _embaracar_ meaning \"a noose\" or \"rope.\" Indeed, embarrassment and shame do feel like a noose, choking the life out of us, stealing our dignity and our energy. We feel humiliated, mortified, disgusted with ourselves, unworthy, disempowered, degraded. These are ugly, debilitating feelings to have in any moment, worse to carry them as a way of life. We lose our sense of self, and access to our strength is severely limited when those feelings are present.\n\nShame sticks like black tar. It causes significant physiological responses in the body. Your face gets red and feels warm as the blood vessels dilate, the sensation sliding up your face to the top of your head. Breathing gets shallow and moves up into your chest, with accompanied heaviness and tensing in the shoulders and limbs as if a tremendous weight has descended on you. It seems impossible to look straight ahead; your head drops and you stare at the floor. Moving becomes nearly impossible. Your only wish is to vaporize or die. Nausea may accompany the symptoms as your stomach tenses up. Your head feels like it's being squeezed in a vice grip. You become keenly aware that the only sound you hear is that of your heartbeat thrumming in your ears. Shame isolates you in the depth of deep loneliness. The urge to cover yourself, to hide, run, or disappear, is paramount. Rodin's sculpture _Eve after the Fall,_ where Eve is depicted as lowering her head and covering herself in shame, is thought to be the origin of the word _shame,_ meaning \"to cover.\"\n\n _Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; they have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for gnat or girl?_\n\nELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING\n\nShame is that horrible feeling that I have no control over my life; that someone else has control over how I feel and behave, and I am a mere puppet flailing in response. To save myself from shame, I unlocked each belief about myself that I encountered in the midst of shame. With time, self-loving diligence, and a little rage to keep me focused, I could see the roots of shame and where they were anchored inside. \"Oh, that feels like the time my uncle grabbed my breasts and wanted to have sex with me.\" Most of my shame around sex and sexuality I internalized from my family's discomfort with it and their belief that sex should be a secret. And because I had a strong sexuality, they seemed to feel that there was something demented about me, something inherently and morally wrong with me. Family secrets are a common source of shame. Not talking about your aunt being in a mental institution brings up the shame you feel about being different, or the internalized belief that being in an institution is shameful. Just because something is not talked about does not mean it doesn't exist. It is as present as the elephant in the room that everyone ignores.\n\nLooking back to year eleven, if I had felt that I could tell my mom about the hired hand, I imagine I would have made different life choices. I would have felt more empowered in my life to do so. The event wouldn't have had any power in my life.\n\nAt sixteen, I was raped. Telling my parents about it was the most hideous thing I remember having to do as a young girl. Their response was outrage at the man. Fortunately, they didn't blame me. The way they chose to support me was to notify the sheriff. What I really needed was to be held and nurtured and to feel their love. I wanted to be asked what I needed. My family was skill-less in the nurturing department. I hated knowing they knew that I had sex, forced sex, yes, but sex it was. I felt ashamed, weak, stupid, incompetent, and utterly fucking alone. After the sheriff left, the whole subject seemed to be erased. It was never talked about again. It was gone, deleted, vaporized, as if it never happened. I wondered if I was overreacting and began to question if it even really happened. The lack of humanity and intimacy from my parents when I needed it most warped some part of my psyche, and I always felt a little crazier after that, a little more feral.\n\nTheir response seared scars into the depths of me. As a survival mechanism, the sixteen-year-old I was at the time became my primary ego state. She was the tough cowboy (not cowgirl) and biker (not biker chick) and full of rage. She is still a major part of my personality, an active part of me, though she is more balanced, more whole in herself and integrated. She is the one who can smell bullshit before it walks in the door. She protected me for a long time and is still a significant part of me, but now she is integrated with all the other parts of me, and they are all friends.\n\nShe has her own wardrobe, you see: harness or cowboy boots, several black leather jackets including a vintage biker jacket, two pairs of Levis and two pairs of Gap blue jeans (each with a different attitude), and dark sunglasses. And she hand rolls her own cigarettes. She's most comfortable in bars and saloons where the wood is darkened from years gone by when you could still smoke cigarettes in pubs. The lights are soft, low, and kind. The men and women there have a kind of wild hunger in their eyes, nostrils flaring; they've come looking for something. The gods who love this kind of scene are there always. Eros is sitting on one beam in the ceiling and Dionysus on another, and Psyche is hanging out on a bar stool, waiting for someone to sit down and start chatting.\n\nI don't have regrets about any of the things from my childhood. Nor do I carry hate or rage toward any of my family; sadness has taken its place. I'm certain I wouldn't be who I am without them or those childhood experiences. I have grieved for the young girl of me, for the rape, the sodomy, and for the fact that I was so utterly alone.\n\nShame has its functions. People who have experienced shame have a sense of humility. They have an understanding of suffering, humiliation, and their own humanity. It can also teach us about ourselves, our limitations, our weaknesses, the limits to our competence and autonomy. It can show us where we've let ourselves down and can strongly motivate us to act. Also, it teaches us to have a sense of humor about ourselves. It's a fast way to break the shame cycle.\n\nI hadn't thought about shame for some time when something interesting happened. It was a nonevent, really. A person just walked through the room, didn't even make contact with me. It happened to be someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. I was having a beer with the guys a few days before I was to take part in a ceremony. Part of preparing for that particular ceremony is to eliminate alcohol among other things. I had participated in this ceremony several times over the last year, was familiar with it and how to prepare for it. It was still five days out, but here I was, having a beer. When I saw this person (the facilitator of the ceremony), I felt ashamed, like I had done something wrong. Later that night as I was lying in bed trying to sleep, I kept looking at this feeling and the images it brought up; then analyzing it. Why would I feel that? He didn't even see me, as far as I knew. And the preparations for the ceremony are \"suggestions\" (yes, that's justifying my behavior and it's true). I called up my inner council to ask why I was feeling so ashamed. The answer was there immediately: \"You feel this way because you strive for and have a perfection complex. You don't want to fuck up or lose your integrity. Primarily, the root of it is that you want to be the good girl. And, you didn't do anything wrong.\" Ah, that was it indeed, for it rang a clear, resonate tone. I talked to the young part of me that strived diligently in my family to be the golden child, the peacekeeper, and the perfect daughter. It was the little girl of me that felt shame at breaking or stretching the \"rules.\" I let her know that nothing bad would happen, that I understood what she was feeling, that I was sorry I hadn't talked it over with her and for putting her in that situation. I asked if she would like to give up that old script. There was an immediate and vigorous nod and a clear, \"Yes, I want to.\" She didn't have to \"try to be good\" any longer. She could relax and be herself and let her natural goodness flow unimpeded, unforced. She could give up being good for others for the sake of being good.\n\nShame numbs us to our sexual feelings. We feel we are not good enough or have no right to enjoy sex. On the other hand, we may feel we have to \"put out\" in order to be loved, or we overcompensate sexually in order to not feel. We may have internalized the message that \"good girls\" don't have sex, or if they do have sex, they don't enjoy it, and when we do, we feel a deep conflict and shame about it.\n\nTHE SHAME OF SEX\n\nShame is tightly wound into our sexuality, our feelings about sex, and our sexual organs. Shame seems to have a built-in navigation system that heads directly to our sexual organs\u2014the vagina, uterus, penis, testicles. These are organs that, when engaged, make us feel alive, so it's not unusual for shame to bring up \"right to be alive\" issues side by side with \"right to be or feel sexual\" issues. We become ashamed of having breasts or a dick, ashamed of being alive, and we want to apologize for being a man or a woman. We apologize for our life. It's not an accident that shame issues are intimately attached to illness and diseases of the reproductive systems in men and women.\n\nWhen I got the diagnosis of cervical dysplasia, every atom in the room vaporized. The only thing in my line of vision was each sexual relationship, encounter, rape, indiscretion, seduction, and heartbreak (the ones I received and the ones I caused). I felt dirty, betrayed, ashamed. I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that my sexuality, my feelings about it, and my sexual history were all, directly and plainly, laid out on the delta of my diseased cervix.\n\nBren\u00e9 Brown researched shame through hundreds of interviews and came up with this definition of shame: \"the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.\" When we feel shame, we feel a deep disconnect, a separation from the experience of being alive, wanted, needed, acknowledged. We feel we don't belong, that something is wrong with us, and that \"wrongness\" casts us out.\n\nShame breaks the contact between people and is sometimes employed to disrupt intimacy when it gets too uncomfortable. Or we project it onto other people, it's hard not to when all we see is seen through the lens of shame. People sometimes use it to mask their own sense of unworthiness and unhappiness. It's a cruel game to play. As Nietzsche said, \"What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.\"\n\nWhat I have done that has worked for me is everything that I describe in this book. You can't prevent people from being unkind. You can heal old shame. There will be occasions when you feel shamed or are ashamed, either as a response to something you've done or said in an unconscious moment or from someone else. Recognizing shame can stop you from sliding down into the abyss of self-loathing. These are times when self-love, self-compassion, and self-awareness are crucial. To recover your authentic self from the wounds of shame, begin with what's real. The real is what we are always seeking in our lives. The real is what is true in any moment. It is also that which holds up over time.\n\nThis is not an academic or intellectual exercise. We're going for what's real, and to get the pieces of, to get a sense of the real, before anything else we must feel and think at the same time. Feeling is our body's innate intelligence; it is our internal GPS, our Grounding Positional System. Without it, we are left to our judgments, fears, and old scripts. We are easily influenced and slide (or are jolted in some cases) from our center by outside forces. Truth begins with and inside the body.\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nIdentifying Shame**\n\nThe following statements help reveal internal beliefs. As you say each one, notice how you feel. Does it feel true for you?\n\nI deserve what the person did\/said.\n\nI'm not worthy.\n\nI'm a piece of shit.\n\nI don't belong anywhere.\n\nI deserve to be abandoned.\n\nI am unwanted.\n\nI am unlovable.\n\nI am ugly.\n\nI am dirty.\n\nI am not important.\n\nI am a burden to others.\n\nI don't deserve to live.\n\nI don't have a right to be alive.\n\nBeing born was a mistake.\n\nI am not smart enough, not thin enough, not strong enough, not cute enough, not funny enough, not fun enough, not [fill in the blank] enough.\n\nNotice how you feel with each statement. What comes up inside you? Do you feel angry, justified, arrogant? Do you shut down and deny the statements?\n\nThese are defenses against shame, so we don't have to feel shame's real effect on us. We create defenses to survive the impact. We may resolve to be perfect, so it doesn't ever happen again; we get enraged to divert attention from our flaws; we withdraw to separate ourselves from others and intimate interactions.\n\nThese are all archaic belief systems that have poisoned how we are, who we are, and how we behave. The wounds they cause are deep. We've believed them for so long we have contempt for ourselves. The choices we've made with those beliefs inside have been contaminated. Shame scripts go to the core identity of being a human being. Like computer software programs, they can be rewritten. And it does take time to learn to be a software programmer. Have patience with yourself, be kind and nurturing. Do things that feel good. Shame is part of the cult of secrecy. Talking about it out loud to another person breaks open the secret, diffusing the power of shame. Ask for support and regularly get physical and emotional strokes. When you hear these scripts inside you, it's important to _hear_ them and what the part of you that is saying them needs from you to feel better. Create new, supportive, and life-affirming scripts. Accept your humanity. Being born is not shameful.\n\nWhen we begin to heal shame, whether it came from our family of origin, from relationships, or ourselves, grief will be part of the healing. Grief is a natural response to the losses we experience in life. There is grieving the loss of childhood that never was. We grieve the love and affection from parents that weren't there. We grieve for the pain we caused others. We grieve for how we abandoned ourselves and created a false self. We grieve that we've lived so long without truly knowing ourselves. We may grieve that we haven't grieved. This is especially true for men who are told some form of \"it's not manly to cry or to show grief or sadness.\"\n\nHere is where working with your Child, which is essentially reparenting yourself, is deeply healing. Ask her if she would come and talk with you. Hold her in your lap, close to you. Say to her all the things you needed to hear at her age: \"I love you.\" \"I want you in my life.\" \"I need you in my life.\" Tell her that you're sorry she has carried so much shame and sadness. Tell her that the two of you can talk about things, take walks and explore the world together. Tell her that you are proud of her, how cool, smart, and fun she is. Ask her if she has anything she wants to say, if there is anything she really wants to do. As you have this conversation, really be present, in your heart, so the feeling in the words goes to the deep parts of you, which is where _she_ is.\n\nTo reparent ourselves is to override the damaging scripts and messages we took in when we were children. In this process we can give ourselves new words, new messages, new ways of thinking, and feeling. We give ourselves permission to be alive. Being alive is having feelings, needs, and wants. In this process, we write ourselves anew.\n\nI had decided to take a job as a nude model for the life-drawing class at the university. This decision stirred up every belief I had about myself. The four months before the job began were spent in deep conversations with every part of me, including my body. I was terrified. Every unkind and critical view I had of myself and my body came up. Each day, I would stand naked in front of the mirror and look at what the students would be seeing. It was painful and frightening. I talked endlessly with my Child who was afraid something bad would happen, who was terrified of being naked in front of others. It was one of those life-altering decisions, the kind that you don't fully understand as you make it. Yet you do know that someday its meaning will become clear. I was crying with fear as I left my house the first night.\n\nThe professor hadn't arrived yet, so I sat on the beat-up old couch across from his office. Holding my Child and talking to her, a peculiar thing occurred; I felt a shift begin to happen. I felt bigger, stronger, and more capable, and a sense of deep peace seeped into me. I was proud of myself. Still, I was a little shaky as I walked into the studio awhile later. As I stood in front of the class and let my robe fall away; I was keenly aware that fear and shame were falling to the ground with it.\n\nAlong with reparenting, we are also giving ourselves new behaviors. The words alone won't change much. The old beliefs are anchored in how we hold our body, how fluidly or awkwardly we move. They are held in our breathing patterns, the way we hold our hands, curve our shoulders, and move our hips when we walk. The sum of all past moments is held in _totalidad_ in our current physical body. Though the moments are past, the body remembers the patterns and follows their dictates. Keleman says, \"It's been my experience, as others', that those who are not held enough have a fear of falling and hold themselves stiffly away from earth. Those who feel shame for their sexuality and dislike for their bodily responses never really hold their ground with others. They are always proving themselves or shrinking. They are weak-kneed.\" Until I had intimacy and deep love, I had a paralyzing fear of heights. I couldn't even drive the mountain roads without nearly seizing up. Interestingly, when I felt less than powerful and wobbly, my left knee slipped out of joint easily and painfully. Both of these experiences have been transmuted through the practice of sacred sex.\n\nAs you do the internal work with all the parts of you, I strongly encourage you to get deep tissue bodywork to release the holding patterns. Weekly massages, Rolfing, tai chi, and Feldenkrais work can all facilitate repatterning and letting go of how your body has held beliefs. Watch someone whose walk and movements you particularly enjoy. Follow them without being noticed and begin to take on their walk and body movements, copying them as closely as you can. Notice how you feel with this new movement. When you are out for a walk or stroll, try altering your stride, the movement of your hips, the swing of your arms, the length of your stride until you find something you want to incorporate. Changes will occur in your body as you work with your ego states, as well as with the following exercises.\n\nThe following exercise will take you deeper inside your own body, deepening your relationship with your own piece of Earth, giving you a sense of place inside your own feet. We explored earlier how each part of the body has its own intelligence. Different parts of our body can hold tremendous amounts of emotional, psychological, and spiritual, cuts, scrapes, and bruises, as well as physical stories, injuries, wounds, and pains. Parts of our body can also be sources of tremendous power, wisdom, and strength.\n\nEach of us has a part of our body we would rather not have touched or noticed. Every one of us has a part of our body that we wish were different or completely gone. Most of us have a part of our body that we hate. We walk around hoping no one will notice. We wish we wouldn't notice or have to look at those parts, or that some magic cream will make it all pretty. A friend used to call me _mujer de mas cremas,_ woman of many creams. Creams are superficial. Beauty comes from within, when, at last, love fills all the unloved places.\n\n  **MEDITATION   \nLoving the Body**\n\nSit in a comfortable, quiet place where you won't be disturbed for a few moments. Take some deep, relaxing breaths. Now, see before you the ugliest part of your body. How does that part of your body feel? Is it mad, sad, scared, glad? Ask that part of you if it has anything it needs to say to you. Do you feel shame in or toward that part of your body? Does that part need anything from you? What would it take for that part to be happy? Is there anything you want to say to it? How do you feel seeing a part of your body that has repulsed you and has been discounted for so long?\n\nWhen you're ready, thank that part for coming to be with you and talk with you.\n\nSpend time each day working with this part of your body until it begins to feel happy, and you can feel it integrating into your body. Treat this part just as you have your ego states\u2014as intelligent, alive, aware. It has needed something from you. For you to be healthy, this part needs to be tended, loved, held, and appreciated. Our bodies work hard for us; they are the vehicles through which we enjoy and experience sacred sex, the touch of a loved one, the embrace of a child, earth, sand, grass under our feet, and the sun on our skin. Journaling about this relationship can take you deeper into the meanings, insights, and understandings of that part of your body. Your body is the temple of your soul.\n\nTOUCHING WITH LOVE AND ATTENTION\n\nWhen you touch your lover in that loving way, you may have noticed how he, and different parts of his body, respond to being touched. If you touch on a place he's not comfortable with, he may tense up, pull away, or hold his breath. You may do something similar if he touches, or comments on, a part of you that you don't want to be seen.\n\nHe may volunteer a comment on it, or not. The important thing is to not force the subject but keep the communication open. You could say what you're skittish about, what you love, and what you're shy about. What parts of your body are really sensitive to being touched, sensitive in the sense of \"it makes me really uncomfortable to have my tummy rubbed.\" Actually, it frightened me in the beginning. Abdomens are so soft and vulnerable. Since the first tentative touching, I've come to place his hand when I need to be touched there or when I feel like I want to work more with my fear around it. I place his hand on my lower abdomen (that's so not a sexy word); I breathe deeply, breathing in his touch, all the time talking to the part of me that is afraid. In the beginning, I didn't go too far past the moment of serious discomfort, just enough. Now I can let his hands go there uninterrupted. I'm aware of the love with which he touches me there, how much he loves that part of my body as he communicates all this through his hand and heart, talking to my belly. It's a conversation that flows between his hand and my belly and between each part of our bodies.\n\nThis next exercise will experientially give you an idea of how people hold stories, beliefs, and values in their bodies.\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nDepth Reading on a Stranger**\n\nFind a full-body clothed photograph of someone. You can use one from a newspaper or magazine. Choose one that shows the whole person, head to toe. I discourage you from using a photograph of a relative or close friend. In the beginning, it's too challenging to separate out your own feelings for this person and what you are perceiving. So, at least for the first few times, choose a photograph of someone unknown to you.\n\nHold the photograph in front of you. When you look at the photograph, you won't see the whole person all at once. Your eyes are going to be drawn to one place, then another, then another. When we look at something, we see it in a series of snapshots. Where were your eyes drawn to first? Stay there for a moment. How does that part of the person feel to you? Write down everything that comes to you. Ask your Child to tell you things about that part. Feel that part with your heart field, how does it feel? What's the second part you were drawn to? How does that part feel? Do this with each part you are drawn to, asking your Child to tell about it, then your heart field. Were you drawn to the top or bottom of the body or to particular body parts, like the hands? Are there any parts of the body that seem \"invisible\"?\n\nNext, take a sheet of paper and hold it vertically over the photograph so that part of the paper is covering half the person. Notice everything about this half. What is the hand doing? How does the eye look and feel? What kind of \"energy\" is coming off that side of the person? How does the foot feel? Write down everything. Move the paper so it's vertically covering the other half of the photograph. How does this half feel? What are you drawn to? Does this eye look the same or different from the other one? The foot? Is the energy on this side the same or different from the first side? How does this person feel about their sexuality? Are you uncomfortable asking this question? How do you feel looking at this person as a sexual being?\n\nRepeat the exercise as you move the paper so it's covering the bottom half of the person, horizontally. Go through noticing and asking questions. Then cover the top half and again ask yourself how various parts feel.\n\nRemove the paper and look at the person in the picture again. Do you see anything different or new that you didn't the first time? How do you feel seeing these things?\n\n** EXERCISE   \nDepth Reading on Yourself**\n\nGet a full-body, clothed, head-to-toe photograph of yourself. Keep the picture facedown. Take some deep breaths. Now, turn the picture over and hold it in front of you. What is the first thing you notice? What stands out, gets your attention? How does this part feel? What are you drawn to next? How does that part feel? Is it mad, sad, scared, happy? Really see yourself in your body. How do you feel seeing yourself? Look at your eyes. How do they feel? Can you tell who, of you, is looking out of them?\n\nOften people have splits in their bodies, discernible demarcations where parts are unintegrated and disconnected from the whole person. Can you see where yours are? It can be revealing to cover half your body photograph vertically with a piece of paper, noticing how one side looks. Notice everything: the look in your eye, how you're holding your hand, the direction of your leg and foot, if there is any energy coming off that side of your body, How does it feel? Then move the paper to cover the other side. How does that side look? Are there differences? Is one side more alive than the other? It's not unusual for one side to have more masculine energy than the other, leaning forward ready to move with fist clenched or pulled back trying to be unseen and diminutive. You may have to move the paper back and forth a couple of times to really notice your eyes. Are they the same on each side? Are there different feelings coming from each one? Before integration it's not unusual for a different ego state to be looking out of each eye.\n\nNow move the paper horizontally covering the top half of your body in the photograph. What do you notice? How does that part feel? Are you stable in your feet, grounded, or about to be airborne? Cover the bottom half and repeat the process, really noticing and seeing what is or isn't there. From your photograph, can you tell how you feel about your own sexuality? How do you feel seeing yourself this way?\n\nSEEING BELOW THE SURFACE\n\nThis will give more insight into your body dynamics, physiology, and holding patterns. It can be both instructive and disconcerting but doing the exercise with a desire to know yourself, and for the love of yourself, will help ease the tension around it. Give yourself permission to really see. With practice, you can begin to see below the surface to the truth of what lies there waiting to be revealed.\n\n _The knowledge of nature as it is\u2014not as we imagine it to be\u2014constitutes true philosophy. He who merely sees the external appearance of things is not a philosopher. Thetrue philosopher sees the reality, not merely the outward appearance._\n\nPARACELSUS\n\nTaking a few moments every day to work with different parts of your body will, over time, deepen your relationship with yourself. You'll feel more integrated, more alive, as parts of you, inside and out, begin to be part of your life, part of you.\n\nThe more you are integrated in body and soul, the more resilient and flexible you will be in dealing with shame\u2014whether old or new, self-shaming or from the outside. As you work with trust and shame and healing from the inside, you'll discover an openness of spirit, a healing of the soul, and have new ways of responding to the challenges of becoming a human being in diverse cultural, social, and interpersonal relationships.\n**12**\n\n ** _Freeing Ourselves from Sexual Tyranny_**\n\n_If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n _T HE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF D. H. LAWRENCE_\n\nI present this chapter for calm, reasoned study of pornography and prostituion\u2014topics that are sticky, discomforting, and hairy ones to navigate. The mere mention of the word _pornography_ stimulates an array of responses from various quarters. Finding ways to address these topics without shutting down the discourse forced me to get clear inside myself about it. I'm not flat about it. I have strong opinions about pornography and prostitution, which directly relate to free speech, expression, and the right to choose. These are not the same opinions I held twenty years ago, which is one reason I've included these topics.\n\nFor five decades now I have labored as an apprentice human being. As the apprenticeship enters its the fifth decade, I can still see the remains of a few contaminated beliefs, which, in the continuation of my self-training, I am working to detoxify.\n\nThere are costs to this dance, and regrettably, I fear my son and my lovers paid a good share of the price of me becoming who I am, but primarily of who I wasn't. The issue of pornography, _my_ issue with pornography, came slowly to the surface when my son reached adolescence. My husband found copies of _Playboy_ and _Penthouse_ magazines in his room and reacted by blowing a gasket. I timidly concurred, agreeing that these magazines demeaned women and were somehow going to turn him into a pervert.\n\nEven then, something about my husband's reaction and my compliance with it felt very wrong. Something about our insistence that he not have them in the house was terribly misplaced. For a young boy reaching adolescence, having _Penthouse_ and _Playboy_ in his room is a rite of passage of sorts, and there is nothing wrong with him having them. How else would he find that his interests and curiosity are normal? Moreover, every boy and girl deserves to have their own room, their personal space that is just theirs, away from parental tyranny. The way we handled it was poor at best. The worst is that it may have caused shame around his natural curiosity and emerging hormones and sexuality. That is especially regrettable given that my husband had nude photos of me in his dresser drawer at the time. It could have been an opportunity to talk about sex, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. I never took the time to ask him what he thought of looking at nude women or photos of other people having sex. How did he feel about it? Did he enjoy it? We could have talked about why finding the magazines was so upsetting to my husband. About how he was trying to recover from Catholicism and his own contaminated baggage around sexuality. I didn't take the time to point out to my son that these were actors and though, yes, some people enjoy bondage, being submissive, being overpowered, not everyone does, and certainly not everyone looks the way porn actors do nude. They get paid very well to keep those hard bodies in shape for being photographed.\n\nPornography and prostitution are social quagmires where passions erupt from both sides of the slippery spectrum of controversy. While passions rise over the topics, understanding of them gains little foothold. The debates over pornography are embedded in moral and political ideologies, and as long as the debate stays under those blankets, misunderstandings of the nature, meanings, and functions of pornography flourish. As long as the debate remains in the hands of the church, that bastion of morality, and politicians who wrongly assume that morality can be regulated, it will be difficult to see the possibility that pornography and prostitution may actually have redeeming social functions and value. But as we lose sight of what our individual and social values are, the topic of pornography becomes ever more confusing. How do we begin to sort through these issues when our social value system is corrupt\u2014with banks, Wall Street, corporations, and the government engaging in deceit as policy\u2014and any recourse through the Constitution is undermined?\n\nSex has been difficult to talk about, not in the least because our culture is not clear about it. We have conflicting messages coming to us from a variety of sources. Our own feelings about sex and our sexuality are often convoluted and contaminated with toxic messages. Sex is challenging to talk about because it is moist and leaves a wet spot. And as Eric Berne says: \"In fact, it is more than wet, it is slippery. Anyone who ignores that is going to feel a little sticky talking about it.\"\n\nI have not always been a proponent of pornography or prostitution, though prostitution held a special allure for me when, at sixteen, I considered it as a profession that might be able to get me away from my home. It took an entire twenty-seven seconds for me to dismiss it, as I was too damned scared of life to get myself past the Iowa border. Nonetheless, it required a certain level of devotion to clarity and freedom to sort through my beliefs, thoughts, fears, and assumptions, as well as the debates and opinions around those subjects, and create my own beliefs and values.\n\nSACRED SEX AND THE WORLD'S OLDEST PROFESSION\n\nMy efforts to find writings on sexuality, ecopsychology, nature writings, **D** eep Ecology writings, sacred sex, tantric sex, and sexual history that made connections between Earth, Nature, and human sexuality were nearly futile. Those connections are seldom made though there were a few noteworthy exceptions. Interestingly, it was a woman who chose prostitution as a way of life and made a very good living at it who made the clearest connection. In her book _A Woman Whose Calling Is Men,_ the pseudonymous Aphrodite Phoenix writes about the divine side of prostitution.\n\nBehind every situation that feels earthy and sensually connected, good to oneself and others, and naturally health-bestowing, atonement with Goddess can be fathomed as the underlying spiritual cause. I believe that all prostitutes who experience an increase in feminine power are women who, consciously or not, partake of psychic nourishment from what Sue Monk Kidd calls \"Feminine Divine.\" It's the reason we insist that the work doesn't harm us, and that there's more to the work than just raking in money from meaningless, anonymous sex. In our work we're experiencing a spiritual feminism.\n\nProstitution has been present in nearly every culture and age of the human race. In some cultures, prostitution was viewed as a valuable and healthy part of the culture and economy, such as in ancient Greece where it was a cult of beauty and profit. In some countries it was a royal enterprise, a principal source of revenue for the state, and women and boy prostitutes were trained in the finer points of their profession. Prostitution was common among the Yuma Indians of California and the Colorado tribes. In China, Japan, and Thailand, prostitution is a common form of barter. Even married women participate, sharing the proceeds with their husbands.\n\nScenes depicting sex on undulating beds and mattresses as well as seated positions were found etched on wine-drinking buckets, or _situlae,_ from the Iron Age in Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests that prostitution existed in ancient Rome, as seen in brothel tokens, called _spintriae_. Each token, slightly smaller than a U.S. quarter, depicts a sex scene on one side and a roman numeral, I through XVI, on the other. It's been suggested that the number on the coin related to the cost of the sex scene on the obverse side. Coin specialist Aleksander Bursche of the University of Warsaw undertook his own study and surveyed modern-day prostitutes about the coins, inquiring which acts they charge more for. They told him that positions that afforded deeper penetration, such as sex from behind, caused more vaginal soreness and thus they cost more. Geoffrey Fishburn at the University of New South Wales argued against this theory, noting that the same sex scene appears on coins of differing numerical values and identical scenes show up in Pompeian murals. Another argument suggests that the coins were merely poker chips. Regardless, it does raise titillating questions and suggests the openness of sex, as well as a sexual repertoire, in ancient Rome. Or perhaps, coins, goblets, and murals depicting sex scenes were an homage to the power and eroticism of sex, the beauty and art of naked human bodies entwined in sacred sexual acts. They may even be the earliest versions of pornography.\n\n _Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind._\n\nD. H. LAWRENCE,  \n\"A PROPOS OF _L ADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_\"\n\nThe word _pornography_ has a long, convoluted, and interesting history. It comes from the Greek _porne,_ meaning \"to sell,\" and _graphos, \"_ to write.\" The sex workers in ancient Greece were referred to as the _porne_ , which included both women of importance and boys. They were required to wear elaborate clothing and pay taxes. And in the ancient Middle East, prostitutes were the first to have contact with men returning from battle in order to help them assimilate back into society and recover from the shock of war. In seventeenth-century Japan, the _oiran_ were courtesans and considered \"women of pleasure.\" The highest ranks of courtesan were available only to the wealthy. They were often practiced in fine art, dance, music, and calligraphy, as well as the art of sexual fulfillment, and were well educated.\n\nThe Egyptians had sacred prostitution as did the Persians, who learned the trade from Libya. In Israel both male and females practiced prostitution. The cult of Venus or Mylitta (the Assyrian name for Venus and counterpart to Ishtar, in Greece her name was Aphrodite) in Babylonia passed into Cyprus and Phoenicia. In Cyprus, temples sacred to Astarte, the goddess of fertility, love, and reproduction, dotted the landscape. She had a strong presence until the cult of Yahweh emerged among the Hebrews. The Hebrews knew Astarte as the goddess of the Sidonians and continued to worship her at temples in Mizpah built alongside those of Yahweh, which angered him greatly. Worship of the ancient goddesses formed the basis of many cultures and civilizations who oriented life around them with ritual sex, seasonal goddess celebrations, and elaborate rituals honoring the deities. \"The advent of Christianity and its relatively puritanical views on sex all but killed off the sex cult, but during the world's polytheistic zenith it was one of the firmest pillars of society.\" In Armenia, Venus, was worshipped under the name Ana\u00eftas. Young women lived in Ana\u00eftas's temple and offered amorous services to foreigners. The women left all their earnings on the altar as an offering to the love goddess in hopes of securing a husband.\n\nInnana, the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare, can be dated to the city of Uruk, known as the \"city of courtesan,\" circa 4000 to 3100 BCE. Innana was celebrated and honored at sacred sites and temples along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Eanna, meaning \"house of heaven,\" is the name of the temple in Uruk dedicated to Inanna, where sacred prostitution was a common practice. Innana, considered an aspect of the Great Mother, was a fierce warrior; she was often depicted on the back of a lion. And she is the center of pleasure, \"the one who makes women and men turn to one another in the night.\" Innana gave the gift of blood to women, the healing blood that flows at the new or dark moon that cleanses the body and prepares the womb for the next cycle of the moon's influence on a woman's cycle.\n\nAfter the fall of organized prostitution during the Roman Empire, many prostitutes became slaves until the movement to abolish slavery swept the land, and prostitution was reinstated as a legitimate business during the Middle Ages. Though the medieval Roman Catholic Church viewed sexual relations outside marriage as sinful, prostitution was seen as a tolerable alternative to the greater evils of masturbation, rape, and sodomy; however, the church often urged prostitutes to reform their wicked ways.\n\nCourtiers played an essential part in Renaissance Europe. Royal marriages were made primarily to preserve the bloodline; love and passion was not part of the equation. So it was common for members of the royalty to seek sexual companionship from other people at the court, hence the origin of the terms _to court_ and _courtesan_.\n\nOne of the oldest documents having to do with prostitution was written in 1266 in Venice. The Maggior Consiglio, or Greater Council, decreed the night watch to expel every \"woman of evil life\" from the houses of citizens. After the women were forced out of public houses, they took their business to private houses, or houses of prostitution, which initially were off limits to the night watch's watchful eyes But then a second council decree gave the night watch the power to expel evil women and men from private domiciles and fine them: They were now being forced out of business from their own homes. After a time, wisdom prevailed; the authorities conceded the futility of outlawing prostitution, and the Maggior Consiglio decreed (they liked to decree in the day) that a place in Venice should be found to house the prostitutes.\n\nWhereas, by reason of the multitude of people constantly coming and going, it behooves our State to see to providing some place in Venice proper for the habitation of sinful women:\n\nIt is hereby commanded to the Captains of the City Wards to examine diligently all places on the Rialto which might be suited for such a purpose, and after due examination, to make report to us in writing, namely, concerning the most suitable place and the conditions under which the women in question may be kept there, with which report let them come before the Council of Forty and make their findings known.\n\nProstitution will always have a place in human society. St. Augustine, demonstrating his understanding and knowledge of mankind observed: \"Do away with the prostitute in the human scheme and you will upset everything through an incursion of lust; put them in the matron's place, and you will bring injury and dishonor upon the latter.\"\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF SEXUAL LIBERATION\n\nWilheim Reich coined the phrase _sexual revolution,_ though its roots may be found in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, and later the term _free love_ came into being during the same century. An early proponent at that time was Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft argued that women should not give up freedom and sexuality. She thus made a personal choice to not marry her partner. Later free love proponents included Mary Gove Nichols and Hannah R. Brown, as well as male advocates of the movement such as William Francis Barry, in the mid-to-late 1800s and Gloria Steinem in the twentieth century.\n\nThe early feminists spoke out and wrote against marriage and were radical in their thinking of the time and had a profound impact on sexual relations of their eras. In 1798, the radical Swedenborgians August Nordenski\u00f6ld and C. B. Wadstr\u00f6m published the _Plan for a Free Community_ in which they proposed the establishment of a society of sexual liberty, where slavery was abolished and the European and Negro lived together in harmony. In the treatise, marriage is criticized as a form of political repression. The challenge to traditional morality and religion brought about by the Age of Enlightenment and the emancipatory politics of the French Revolution created an environment where such ideas could flourish.\n\nCharles Fourier, in France in the early nineteenth century, coined the word _feminism_ and said that the suppression of passions is not only destructive to the individual but to society as a whole. He argued that all sexual expressions should be enjoyed as long as people are not abused and that \"affirming one's difference\" can actually enhance social integration.\n\nThough considered scandalous at the time, out-of-wedlock children and sexual liaisons seemed acceptable behavior for admired artists, who were following the dictates of their own wills rather than those of social convention. In this way, these artists were in step with their era's liberal philosophers of the cult of passion, such as Fourier, and their actual or eventual openness can be understood to be a prelude to the freer ways of the twentieth century.\n\nJosiah Warren and the experimental societies viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since marriage laws and measures that discouraged birth control discriminated against women. Discrimination against women continues to this day. Sarah Seltzer, writing for _AlterNet,_ reported on the House's passage of H.R.358, the notorious antiabortion and \"Let Women Die\" bill. According to Seltzer, a major proponent of the bill was the Council of Catholic Bishops, who heavy-handedly and successfully lobbied for some of the worst measures in the bill, taking rights away from women\u2014while the bishops were in the midst of fighting charges of child sex abuse. Meanwhile, in June 2010, in Phoenix, Arizona, a woman, eleven weeks pregnant with her fifth child, was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. She had a right-sided heart failure and was told by her physicians that if she continued the pregnancy she would die. The woman agreed to an abortion. Unfortunately, she was in a Catholic hospital, which forbids abortions. The doctrine of the Catholic Church would have let both mother and child die. Physicians turned to Sr. Margaret McBride, the administrator at the hospital, who gave her approval for an abortion that would save the life in front of them, the mother. By making that decision, she was automatically excommunicated by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Phoenix Diocese.\n\nIn speaking to the sixth International Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Association of North America, Jeannine Parvati Baker, midwife and founder of Hygieia College, spoke movingly about how the dominant culture insulates people from their own vitality.\n\nFrom the current \"war on drugs\" to the obstetrical theater, to the church and temple, people are seeking safety from the raw power of life. Yet birth is as safe as life gets. The ways we scare ourselves from being wild woman, mother, midwife and healer are rooted in fears by the dominant culture. To revision God from being only Father, or Father and Son, or even Divine Parents can help us become free to be fully inspired lovers, connected to our power to be our own healers.\n\nRecognizing that sexuality is spirituality and that ecstasy is a divine right will begin to move us back into a harmonious relationship with the other gender, with our sexuality as a life force, and with the body and ground of our own being. This is the first healing we are called to do.\n\nIf there is anything to be ashamed of, and I use the term cautiously, it is in denying our sexuality and feelings and that Earth is alive and intelligent. It is in not doing something to alter the rate and velocity of our march to self-destruction. It is in not holding our governments, schools, religions, and ourselves accountable for the choices made and the behaviors that come of them.\n\nReverence for our lovers, partners, and children can translate to reverence for Earth, for the nonhuman, numinous dimension of wilderness, of Nature. If the separation that is extant among human relations can be made whole and intimate, then our relationship with the community of Earth can be. Regaining our sense of awe and wonder and our ability to fall in love over and over again from sunrise to sunset will begin to bring the sacred back to our daily lives. Experiences that draw us up and out of our egocentric lives into the larger reality, the community of all beings, must become integrated into our daily lives. Integrating sex into our lives, unapologetically, will inevitably integrate our personal power, our creativity, our voices and bodies for deep and lasting changes in our lives and in our society.\n\n _When I speak of the erotic, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives._\n\nAUDRE LORDE\n\nWe have been taught, programmed if you will, to distrust our eroticism, our sexual power, our allure. Some of us have accepted part and parcel the archaic myth of the fall of man by woman. By accepting the programming and the stories, we have committed a crime against our basic human nature, our bodies and psyches as sexual. The old arguments are beginning to crumble as women speak out and begin to take back and own their rightful place in the arena of sexual freedom. There is hope and a rumbling in the subconscious of women slowly awakening.\n\n _When sleeping women wake, mountains move._\n\nCHINESE PROVERB\n\nTHE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY: AN ANCIENT ARENA FOR CONFLICT\n\n _To discuss the nature and meaning of obscenity is almost as difficult as to talk about God. Until I began delving into the literature which has grown up about the subject I never realized what a morass I was wading into._\n\nHENRY MILLER,  \n _H ENRY MILLER ON WRITING_\n\nThe politics of sexuality is the most ancient arena for human conflict, on par with the domain of religion as a source of conflict, large and small, but then, the two have been bedfellows for thousands of years. It also in large part causes intrapersonal conflict, that is, conflict inside the self. Many, many people watch porn, look at porn magazines, even as they lie to themselves, their partners, coworkers, or priests about it or in some way hide the fact. Many people talk about the subject of pornography, but even talking _about_ pornography is an intimate, self-revealing act and is wrought with fear, anxiety, and suspicion.\n\n _And no, I do not believe it is blasphemous to compare oppression of sexuality to oppressions of race and ethnicity: Freedom is indivisible or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few. Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine._\n\nJUNE JORDON,  \n\"A NEW POLITICS OF SEXUALITY\"\n\nThe politics of sexuality, more than any other oppression, is the exploitation of sexuality for power. In fact, religion has been the vehicle driving the oppression and politics of sexuality. It could be a religion in its own right, the religion of the sexual oppressors or the religion of the sexually oppressed. I do not believe that any one man or woman has the right to tell me what I can or cannot do or what I shall like or dislike or attempt to dictate my behavior regarding my sexuality and how I express it. I do not believe I am blasphemous in saying that pornography has a valid and legitimate place in the scheme of human sexuality. I will go further and say that pornography plays a vital role in relieving the pressure of religious and politically sanctioned morality.\n\nIn _Ensouling Language_ , Stephen Harrod Buhner writes, \"Sex must be _integrated_ into Western cultures as an active and accepted part of what it means to be human for its repression is inherently connected to the ecological and cultural problems we face.\" Integration\u2014to merge, to infuse, to bring together\u2014means no part can be left out. When sexual expression in the form of pornography is left out of something as basic and essential as our sexuality and as inherent to our human beingness, there is a hole left in its place. A hole is there in the place where sexual expression should be, and where holes are, degradation of the wholeness of human beings takes place.\n\n _I kind of like occasional acts of public lewdness. A little bit of real obscenity and indecency actually makes me feel more secure. I get nervous always being on the extreme by myself. Public acts of sex or penis fondling all add to the \"wow, I'm not in Kansas anymore\" feeling._\n\nDALE PENDELL,  \n _I NSPIRED MADNESS_\n\nPart of the problem and legalities around pornography is that it is difficult to define what is objectionable, what goes too far. D. H. Lawrence was right when he said, \"nobody knows what the word obscene means.\" In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart admitted that he couldn't define what material is obscene: \"But I know it when I see it.\" In America, all pornography is legal except that which is deemed \"obscene.\" The legal definition of obscenity in the United States is that it \"must be shown that the average person, applying contemporary community standards and viewing the material as a whole, would find (1) that the work appeals to predominately 'prurient' interest; (2) that it depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and (3) that it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.\"\n\nAs you can see, there are problems with that definition. Contemporary community standards are changing. Obscenity is subjective, that is, its meaning lies in what we bring to it\u2014how we view it and what we think of it. I'm more offended by rudeness, unconscious behavior, and sex without intimacy. What I find truly obscene is an endless war based on lies and misinformation. Our foreign policies, U.S. banking system, public schooling, Catholic priests sexually abusing children, people losing their homes and jobs, and children starving\u2014these things are obscene, vulgar, indecent, cruel, and morally reprehensible.\n\nI don't find pornography offensive or obscene; I do find fuck films distasteful perhaps, extreme maybe, raunchy sometimes. I do find pornography and nude photos titillating, interesting, exciting, yes. Always it gives me permission to live outside the box. \"But in legal parlance, obscenity is a category of speech\u2014speech about sex\u2014that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment. Or so, at least, the Supreme Court has said; many legal scholars find no basis in history or logic for this 'obscenity exception' to the First Amendment.\"\n\n _No argument for the suppression of obscene literature has ever been offered which by unavoidable implications will not justify, and which has not already justified, every other limitation that has ever been put upon mental freedom._\n\nTHEODORE SHROEDER,  \n _C HALLENGE TO SEX CENSORS_\n\n _As we move toward sexual maturity, hyped-up sexual excitation becomes secondary, and the quality of our feelings determine sexual identity. That's the difference between adolescent and adult sexuality. What we see around us is a great deal of fantasy stimulation to make us feel excited. We have manipulated ourselves into accepting stimulation rather than feeling. We've done this by sacrificing our bodies as the sources of our feelings of aliveness, and becoming addicted to the brain and nerves as the pleasure center.  \nOr, conversely, if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force?_\n\nJUNE JORDON,  \n\"A NEW POLITICS OF SEXUALITY\"\n\nSex writer Violet Blue has organized a new movement, Our Porn, Ourselves, whose goal is to bring sex back to its rightful place, to ourselves. To that end, the organizers wrote a manifesto setting themselves apart from right-wing or old-guard feminists who maintain the dominant culture's rules of behavior regarding sexual repression, freedom of speech, self-expression, and the pursuit of sexual health and liberation. Blue writes, \"We women are tired of people trying to control our sexuality by telling us what we should or shouldn't like sexually (porn) based on what someone else thinks is best for us. It's like keeping women in a perpetual state of being children about sex. And women who say they are feminists make it worse by discounting all the women who find porn to be an empowering sex toy. Or if not, to at least give us the benefit of the doubt that we can make that decision for ourselves, thank you very much.\"\n\n **Our Porn, Ourselves Manifesto:  \nPro-Porn Principles**\n\nWE who declare that organizations such as Feminists Against Pornography do not speak for us.\n\nWE who want the world to know that organizations such as Feminists Against Pornography do not represent feminists as a group.\n\nWE who believe that every woman has the right and power to enjoy her sexuality as she decides.\n\nWE who believe that to tell a woman how she may or may not enjoy her sexuality in any way is to deny that woman of her rights over her sexuality.\n\nWE who state that any woman who attempts to control the way another woman enjoys, explores or expresses her sexuality is in fact creating a world that is harmful for all women.\n\nWE who state that we are women, and we like pornography.\n\nWE who state that as women, we are not harmed or threatened by the creation or viewing of pornography, and we wholly support the rights of gender to view, create, and enjoy pornography without judgment.\n\nWE who want a world in which pornography is simply a sex toy enjoyed by all genders and sexual orientations, where women and men view porn within their own self-defined healthy sexuality, without being considered sick, twisted, wrong or morally ill, and that men who enjoy pornography are no more likely to beat their wives, rape women or become pedophiles than anyone else in society.\n\nWE hereby declare ourselves as adult women capable of making our own choices about our bodies and enjoyment of explicit visual stimulation for our sexual health and well-being.\n\nWE hereby demand that our voices be heard.\n\nOn July 22, 2010, Facebook removed the Our Porn, Ourselves Facebook campaign page, according to Our Porn, Ourselves official web-site. The organization Pornography Harms claimed victory and thanked Facebook for removing \"a very inappropriate pro-porn page with links to pornography that our children had easy access to.\"\n\nPornography plays a vital function in the sexual health of human beings. It has been one of the most important places of discourse on sex and sexuality. Pornography shamelessly exposes that which has been kept secret and hidden. It gives our unnamed desires an arena. Pornography exposes us to sex that turns us on, turns us off, intrigues, satisfies, helps expand our ideas of what we like, what we don't like, what we might like if we had an opportunity to try it, and it increases the likelihood and frequency of orgasms, with ourselves or others\u2014a vital function of vitally functioning people. And, who would think of killing or fighting while looking at naked breasts or cocks?\n\nThrough Facebook and other Internet tools, we have the ability to have community discussions around any topic of our choosing. It may be that Internet porn sites will be the arena where community standards regarding porn are set, not by legislators or bishops.\n\nAbout every forty to fifty years, or two generations, there has been a sexual revolution. July 19 and 20, 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first public gathering in the United States to address the rights of women. They were joined by Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, a former slave. It was the Seneca Falls Convention located in Seneca Falls, N.Y. There they drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments calling for women's right to vote, to own property, and to have equal access to education and employment. The late nineteenth century birthed a trifecta of women's organizations: the Suffragists who worked for the right of women to vote; The Social Feminists who birthed the Women's Trade Union League, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Council of Colored Women; and the Radical Feminists who argued that for social and economic equality between men and women. This latter group produced Alice Paul, who introduced the first Equal Rights Amendment in 1910.\n\nElizabeth Cady Stanton developed the \"Bloomer Costume,\" a proactive alternative to the restrictive Victorian dress of the day. The \"freelovers\" of the nineteen century advocated that sex had functions outside of procreation and encouraged the relaxation of external controls in order to experience more personally responsible sexual expression and experimentation.\n\nThe 1920s ushered in the radio, talkies, women's suffrage, and those wild women, the flappers who came to represent the independent woman of the twenties. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. As attitudes toward women changed and birth control became available, a sexual revolution followed.\n\nThe years following World War II found people less likely to defer to external authority on behavior and morality than they did in the previous fifteen years of depression and war. The decades of the 1940s and 1950s saw the rate of single mothers more than double, Alfred Kinsey researching and reporting on _Sexuality and the Human Male_ in 1948, Elvis Presley gyrating on the television screen, the appearance of Hugh Hefner's inaugural issue of _Playboy_ magazine in 1953, and Lucy and Ricky Ricardo sleeping in separate beds on _I Love Lucy_. In the sixties, the first films depicting nudity and sexual intercourse were _Midnight Cowboy_ and _Romeo and Juliette_. Woodstock, love-ins and social activism rose alongside rock and roll, the Vietnam War protests, and the Civil Rights movement.\n\nThe twenty-first century is showing another sexual revolution as the new feminists are writing erotica and producing pornographic films. Sexting, home erotica, and porno films are available to anyone with a camera and Internet access as YouTube has made self-broadcasting possible. The World Wide Web makes available nearly any form of erotica, pornography, nude photos right in the comfort of your own home. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street is the largest, most organized, peaceful protest in our country's history as social revolutions are fueled by the energy of sexual revolutions: Eros and Psyche.\n\nPORNOGRAPHY: HARMFUL OR CRUCIAL?\n\nIn the United States alone, a pornographic video is produced every thirty-nine minutes; 11,000 adult movies are released per year\u2014more than twenty times mainstream movie releases. In 2006, the sum of international revenues from pornographic videos, sexual novelties, magazines, \"dance\" clubs, pay-per-view television, and the Internet was approximately $97 billion. That figure is more than the combined annual revenues of the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball. In the United States, revenues for pornography are larger than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink combined. It's rather mind-boggling to consider that $3,075,64 is being spent on pornography internationally every second. The United States produces more Internet porn than anybody else on the planet.\n\nRecent studies point to porn-induced sexual dysfunction.*6 _Psychology Today_ reported on a growing problem with porn-induced sexual dysfunction. Sexual desire and erections respond to dopamine signals. Dopamine is the reward chemical in the hypothalamus and the central nervous system. Hundreds of young men are reporting erectile dysfunction due to overstimulation from viewing Internet porn. There are enough studies now to show that, indeed, continual stimulation of dopamine from masturbating to Internet porn _can_ cause erectile dysfunction due to desensitization and rewiring of the brain. It is reversible when stimulation from porn is removed.\n\nThese studies suggest porn addiction is the cause. It may be involved, but the more I read on the subject, the more red flags are raised. For one thing, if you do anything repeatedly, including working at a repetitive office or factory job, desensitization can occur. If I eat the same meal every day, my taste buds get desensitized and the food no longer looks appetizing or tastes good to me; I get no enjoyment out of it. Porn addiction, or any addiction, is a _symptom,_ not the cause. If we focus on overuse of Internet pornography, we do a severe disservice to young men. There may be women having similar problems with overstimulation from or habituation to Internet porn (are women having porn-induced clitoral erectile dysfunction?), but men are the most studied since, without an erection, the possibility of great sex with an intimate partner is severely limited, which causes a cascade of other problems, including anxiety, shame, self-esteem issues, relationship difficulties, and functionality.\n\nAre the arguments that porn increases pedophiliac tendencies and makes men want to rape and therefore increases the risk of child abuse and rape legitimate? Aside from any studies done on these issues, think about it reasonably for yourself. Would a person with a healthy moral compass about right and wrong behavior be even remotely interested in viewing films that depict children in sexual acts? Assuming you could even get them to sit still for it. No, people who engage in pedophilia are pedophiles to begin with.\n\nAs Theodore Shroeder states in his work, _Challenge to Sex Censors,_ \"obscenity exists only in the minds that discover it and charge others with it.\" If we were to reflect objectively on the subject matter we would find the law of nature; that is everyone performs the very acts they attribute to others.\n\nPorn films are films and as such are incapable of forcing anyone to do anything he or she doesn't want to do or of being a leading cause of divorce. The leading cause of divorce is the _decision_ to divorce. Pornography is a pressure valve, releasing social and cultural oppression. Studies have repeatedly shown that pornography actually decreases the incidence of rape and aggressive sexual acts. There are more incidences of rape and violence against women in countries where there is no porn than there are in countries where pornography is available. And there are statistics that reveal, without mention of pornography being an instigator, that: \"one out of eight women will be raped while in college and 84% of women who were raped knew the assailant.\" A story in the _Huffington Post_ reported, \"Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.\" Rape in the military is not gender specific, it crosses lines. \"According to the Veterans Affairs Office 37% of the sexual trauma cases reported last year (2010) were men.\"\n\nThe questions not being asked are: Why so much \"porn addiction\" in the first place? And why so much emphasis on it? Why such high statistics of rape in the military? What is missing in our lives? Where is the meaning to life? What do we need to have fulfilling lives? If our life is empty, we may turn to anything to feel better momentarily. Porn is not the problem. The problems we face and apply Band-Aid treatments to are much, much deeper. Perhaps we need to look at the deeper issues of a lack of intimacy, the economic debacle, endless war permeating all of our psyches, rampant lack of hope and opportunities, and the mess we are creating for the next generations. Perhaps porn use is the morphine of the masses so we don't have to feel how bad our lives are. Pornography has always been around in some version. It will always be here.\n\nSEXUAL PLEASURE IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT\n\nIsn't it curious that the clitoris is designed solely for pleasure? It has nothing to do with reproducing the species. It's a sign from God, a direct communication that we are meant to have and enjoy sex outside of procreation. A woman's vagina has its own cycle of sexual response, lubricating about every fifteen minutes during the sleep cycle. Another signpost saying, \"Have sex, a lot of sex, often.\" Studies have shown that as a man ages, or becomes depressed or bored in his relationship, his testosterone levels drop. Studies also show that just talking to a woman he finds attractive and sexy will increase a man's testosterone levels by 12 percent. The most obvious and familiar male sexual response is the erection. There are other clues males generate that indicate sexual interest and arousal such as the steady but not penetrating look in his eyes, the way he holds his body, and the movement of some invisible thing that leaves him and travels to the woman.\n\nPornography is not shameful, nor is watching porn, though there are many people and institutions that would prefer we thought it so. They work very hard to make it shameful and to make those of us who enjoy it feel shameful. Shaming does work temporarily as a behavioral modification tool, but the cost is detrimental to the shamed.\n\nPornography educates us about bodies, showing us there are many kinds of bodies and that sex organs are not all the same. Like fingerprints, every human body is different and unique. There are numerous shapes and sizes and colors of labia majora and minora, penises, clitorises, breasts, areolas, and asses. In some, the labia majora are predominant; in others, they are nearly nonexistent and the labia minora are the most distinguishable features of the vulva. The subtle shading and colorations that occur between the clitoris and the sacrum are fascinating and beautiful. Pubic hair comes curly, straight, kinky, long, short, red, black, blonde, brown, groomed, trimmed, and shaved.\n\nAdults often use pornography with their partners for sexual stimulation\u2014to break up monotony or to increase intimacy. For many people, watching other people have sex is, well, sexy and a turn on. People who view porn tend to choose porn that is within their comfort zone, or they may go beyond what is familiar to them and use it to explore, to answer questions they might have about what other people do, and, then, perhaps, to experiment. They want to watch someone else do what they have only thought about trying out before doing it in the privacy of their own bedrooms.\n\nIsabella Rossellini took the porn world to new heights with her short _Green Porno_ films, which she made for the Sundance Channel. She has combined the elements of short stories, animals, and sex. \"Not everyone is interested in animals, but everyone is interested in sex.\" The _Green Porno_ short (one-minute long) films depict animals, sea creatures, and insects reproducing, yes, having sex. \"They are quite scandalous,\" says Rossellini. \"They make love in funny ways. Some of them are hermaphrodites, some change sex during their lifetime\u2014things that if we would do it as human beings, we would be arrested. But they do it naturally.\" These fantastic clips can introduce children to sex and reproduction in the animal world. They're short, frank, funny, and refreshingly candid. The costumes and props are all made of paper, so it's like watching a live puppet show.\n\nThe problem for some people is the disconnect they experience between what their body is telling them and what their internal programming is telling them\u2014that it's wrong and perverse to view porn. We have the same feelings about pornography that we have about anything that is too revealing, embarrassing, obscene, private, and explicit as well as exciting, interesting, and life affirming. Porn allows us to go to our imaginative extremes. Author Dale Pendell says, \"There _should_ be extremes that are in bad taste. Extremes by definition are in bad taste. You have to allow that. That's what tolerance is. And tolerance is the basis of any kind of free society. And the only hope for people who want to live without Big Brother.\"\n\nListen to your body; it knows what feels good. There is nothing inherently wrong with pornography or watching it. Well, except when you let it interfere with your job, and you miss busting a $550 million Ponzi scheme. Investigations revealed that during one week in 2008, a supervisor at the Securities and Exchange Commission attempted 196 times to view porn on his office computer.\n\nREADING THE INVISIBLE INTO VISIBILITY\n\nPersonally, I don't really like a lot of the porn that's available. It's poorly filmed and acted. Fortunately, that is changing as more women get involved in the industry. More art porn is available, more erotica, which is what I prefer over hard-core porn, though I do occasionally wander outside my porn comfort zone.\n\nLooking at artful, nude photographs of men and women is something I enjoy from time to time. I love looking at the human form and find that looking at nude photos of women, or two women entwined, or a man and a woman entwined, or two men wrapped around each other is erotic, stimulating, and pleasurable. Porn has helped me be more accepting and understanding of myself and my differences and similarities to other women. I feel sexier looking at photos of nudes. The more intimacy I have with myself and others, the more permission and freedom I give myself to express my sexual desires and needs, as well as my sexuality, the more fulfilled I am. Not only am I more fulfilled, I feel more powerful, stronger, and focused and am able to effect change from that place. Personal power and sexuality are inextricably connected.\n\nMy lover and I enjoy occasionally looking at photos of nude women posing in provocative positions. Sometimes it's just men, sometimes men and women. We do \"readings\" on the models. We do readings on nearly everything, so this is no different. If there is a page of thumbnail photos, we let our gaze scan the page and pick the one that gets our attention, that stands out the most. Frequently, the same one gets both our attentions. We then click on that thumbnail for a closer look. In the photo some part of her body will get our attention, and we'll say out loud everything we see. Our eyes become soft focused, allowing us to see how she feels about that part of her body. Typically, the part of her body she really loves, the part she gives the most attention to, puts more energy into, will be more noticeable to the onlooker's gaze.\n\nMost people are adept at hiding, making invisible, essentially, the parts they don't like. You can notice this as you sit waiting in airports or doctors' offices; one person will get your attention over the others, then, as you continue looking, some part of his body will get your attention over other parts. Looking deeper still, you'll begin to see how he feels about that part of his body, and then how that part of his body feels. If you put your gaze on the part that is hidden, you'll see just how that person feels about this part of his body.\n\nLooking at nudes is a good practice for doing readings (developing intuition). You'll be able to see which people really enjoy their bodies, which parts of their bodies are more alive than others. My lover and I talk about what we like, what's appealing, what isn't, and how we can bring it into our relationship. We talk about my posing for him, or dressing up or down, which can lead to playful foreplay and wonderfully passionate, intimate lovemaking as our desire rises.\n\nConsider looking at nude photos of men and women online\u2014there's so much available in the privacy of our own homes now. You'll get a sense of how magnificently, marvelously, variously the human body is crafted in men and women. And, if you allow your seeing, your gaze, to look at the models, you can easily see if they enjoy their bodies and what parts of their bodies they really like and inhabit.\n\nYou'll discern more for yourself about what is attractive to you beyond superficial looks, what inside of them is attractive that is coming to the surface. Consider it research if you must, or just enjoy the show. If you are able to get comfortable looking at naked bodies, you'll become a healthier sexual being. Talking to children, or anyone, about sex will be easier as a natural extension of it.\n\nIf we had a more pluralistic sexuality in our culture, deeper intimacy and connections with lovers, partners, family, friends, and Earth, and more freedoms, would this not translate to reducing the denial of sexuality, sex, and the freedom to express it? A pluralistic sexual environment would lead to fewer power struggles as equality became more the norm.\n\nHaving pornography in the relationship is problematical when one of you feels a need to keep it secret from the other. Secrets and shame are thugs lurking, hand in hand, in the shadows, where they like it best. Feeling as if your lover isn't present while making love right after he watched a porn film isn't pornography's fault. There is a flaw in the relationship, which may be an unwillingness to be intimate or vulnerable. Also, a lot of people really don't know how or what it means to be truly present while making love. There may be an inability to consciously ask for what one needs in a relationship.\n\nThe problem is not pornography. Or pornographers. Or addictions. Or drugs. The source of the problem lies in our inner beings. We are terrified of ourselves, of intimacy, of our power. We are terrified of seeing the truth or speaking our truth. We are afraid of saying no and even of saying yes. Afraid of unveiling ourselves. The crimes against essential human dignity stop with me. The sin of lying to our children, of deceiving them and ourselves must become something else. Placing the blame on something outside ourselves will not change our behavior or circumstances or how we feel. Each of us has our own private ways of dealing with or avoiding the pain of our lives, the pain we see in the world, the pain of growing old. If watching porn helps, don't deny us that as we find ways to be alive in the midst of the heartbreaks and pain.\n**13**\n\n ** _Healing the Human Soul_**\n\n_I became a visitor to some wounded part of myself._\n\nCHARLES BOWDEN,  \n _B LUES FOR CANNIBALS_\n\n _The longest and most exciting journey is the journey inwards._\n\nKONSTANTINE STANISLAVSKY\n\nHaving intimacy in our life necessitates that we be selfish. The word and concept of _selfish_ has gotten a lot of bad press; anyone who is selfish, acts selfish, or takes care of themselves is seen as greedy, negative, or bad. When I talk about being selfish, I'm talking about putting your needs and wants first. When you do that, you are being intimate with yourself, which enables you to be intimate with others. It brings you into alignment with, and accountable to, yourself. This is one of the hardest things to do if we have been raised to put the needs of others before our own. It is also often used to pretend to be intimate. Taking care of others, putting their needs before your own, is a way to withdraw, to take yourself out, of true intimate relating. Taking care of others, worrying about their happiness, tending to their needs is a fa\u00e7ade of responsibility preventing you from _being_ with others.\n\nPretending we're something we're not precludes us from being real. Taking care of someone can sustain a relationship, but it does not feed it. Intimacy nourishes, deepens, and changes relationships and each participant.\n\nThere are times when we want to and need to put our needs on hold. If a friend has become ill or is having a difficult time, you can be of service in the true sense. When it becomes a way of life that interferes with your being present, real, and intimate, it is a problem.\n\nIt took me a long time to understand this and the importance of it, longer still to exorcise the belief and habit of putting myself in second or third place. Once I did, the sense of freedom I experienced propelled me to experimenting with this until it became a way of life, an expression of my intimate self. From that place, I could see how being second or third was unkind to me. It reinforced childhood injunctions about not being seen or taking up too much space.\n\nGandhi was once asked by a friend if his reason for living in a village and serving the people there was purely humanitarian. Gandhi replied, \"I am here to serve no one else but myself; to find my own self-realization through the service of these people.\" Gandhi's liberation was India's liberation. His insistence that \"personal change and the ability to bring about social change are linked,\" is one of his legacies. To know, to feel, to experience myself in the presence and contrast of others is empowering, sometimes joyful, sometimes extremely challenging.\n\nThere is genius in each one of us. Every person is born with a soul, and that soul has an urge, a drive to do something, to be something, to create, to labor, to teach, to become itself, to express itself, to awaken our innate gifts and talents from dormancy. It's not so much the form of what you do that matters; what matters is that you do it in response to the movement of the soul. And that in that movement toward soul fulfillment, you do it well, with finesse, with _el mundo_ of you. Genius is simply to become an expert at being yourself, mastering the subject of your soul. It is not the same thing as being intelligent or having a high IQ; it is a specific _kind_ of intelligence. Genius is natural talent, creative power, heightened intuition, excellence, and imagination. The genius in each of us embodies all those things, and it demands that we let the genie out of the bottle; let it impose itself onto the world, let its power into the room and through your life. When we are able to do this, we bring Eros and Psyche, sexual energy, love, our hearts, our imaginations, our understanding of spirituality and the numinous into all that we do; to become masters of the soul's journey, to become geniuses in sexual and intimate arenas, to become geniuses of our interior worlds. To bring the genius of your heart's perceptions into the world is a legacy to leave those who will come after. Living by the genius of the heart allows your soul to grow. When we are able to do this, we stop looking for meanings and begin to give meaning to our life in relation to the forms or vehicles the soul needs. That's a really nice legacy to leave, especially where soul and genius are concerned. Our legacy is the imprint of our soul on the world.\n\nThe form through which these things are expressed changes according to the needs of the soul; the form itself is part of the expression. It is not the actual expression itself, but the essence of the person that matters. For example, artists use various mediums to express their soul's urge to create and inside the medium\u2014the form\u2014is expression\u2014the act. Out of that action comes the essence or meaning. It's important to have flexibility with the form to facilitate higher development of the soul. Soul needs the form to be dynamic and fluid in response to its own growth.\n\nWhen I teach, consult with clients, work with plants, spend time in the wilderness, hold my granddaughters, or make sacred love I experience some of the happiest and most ecstatic and joy-filled moments in my life. These are areas where my genius lies, where it is given expression. I'm in service to what is fulfilling to me, challenges me, and moves me toward being all I imagine I can be. Being in service to my soul means to take in soul food, to nourish and sustain my soul so that, in turn, my soul can sustain and nourish this body to which it gives form. As well, I tend to the caretaking of my body, that temple to my soul. When I teach or talk to the ancestors or make pilgrimage to the sacred waters of the hot springs, or when I am able to help a client my soul is fed. These things fill a need in me that would be unmet if I let my fear make decisions for me\u2014fears of teaching, of writing, of fucking up. Especially if I am afraid going into a teaching weekend, it gives me pause to self-examine, to work in interior time becoming the master of my destiny, and to remember why I'm doing it\u2014why I _must_ do it. I calibrate the level of fear and level of joy I have as I approach something to the level of importance it holds for my soul.\n\nI have a well-developed, irritating and exasperating habit of putting myself in situations that look uncannily like a box from which there is only one way out\u2014one I have not discovered until I am in the box\u2014and where the old ways out no longer work. Moreover, the old ways are not supposed to work. I have to go through the distress of finding new solutions to new paradoxes, reinventing myself continuously. It forces me to make choices from a grown-up place and a place of vulnerability, maturity, and freedom from reactionary behavior. It is in those difficult moments that character is defined; it is the difference between seeing a thing through to the end and abandoning oneself. This is what Michael Meade calls \"the right kind of trouble.\" The right kind of trouble is deeply troubling to the soul: it can manifest as a period of heightened irritability, restlessness, and perturbation or can even bring on full-blown depression or a psychotic break. These are signals that the soul is disturbed with the status quo, that there is a great need to go to the depths of yourself to find your way through the difficulty.\n\nWe all have our unique ways to innovate and grow. The best choices are those that are made from free choice, free will. Choices made from fear, from old habits, or from \"should\" are doomed to failure and regret. Freedom comes from the prices paid and the time put in to rewrite yourself over and over again, moment to micromoment. It's hard work; the rewards are immeasurable. It is the work that defines and distinguishes between Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong, and more fully developed human beings who have a complete range of emotional, spiritual, feeling responses\u2014who have become the \"I\" that is I from living and being truly alive.\n\nIf one more person chooses to become undefended, to become more whole, the circle of life becomes more healed. Hope has new life, extending out like concentric rings reaching distant shores.\n\nIt is only since healing the original wounds of my family that I can look back and say I know that I have been blessed. I have a fierce determination and a voracious hunger that drives me on to seek out, find the root of, and harvest my own truth. I want to be free.\n\nI knew freedom was possible, is possible still. Though I had excuses and apologies for my behavior, for my searching, for my dissatisfaction, eventually I gave them up. They served me not. Holding on to them depressed my motive force, weighing heavy on my soul. They were coping skills that kept me stuck in old patterns. Giving them up enabled me to take responsibility and ownership of my choices and behaviors. Letting them go meant giving up being a victim and taking up being empowered.\n\nIt took time to be confident in myself. Even after going through torturous decision-making processes, I would second-guess myself. I believed that if I made the wrong choice something horrible would happen. But more than that, I had no certainty, no self-possession, no sense of where I ended and someone else began; other people's needs were convoluted and tangled up in my own. From years of doing this work, I've retrained myself, watched how my body changed shape in response. I dropped \"baby fat\" when I was in my early forties. I've fallen in love with myself, become self-assured, possessed of self. My boundaries are more clear as well as my \"seeing.\" I've given myself permission to feel everything, to live a life of the senses and of sensuousness, to live outside the conventions of the city and to join Dionysus in the wild woodlands and hillsides.\n\nSEEING WHO YOU ARE\n\nIt's valuable to be able to see the impact you have on people in your life and in the world. Try stepping just outside yourself, as if hovering just above your head witnessing your movements through the world. Take note of how you've influenced people. Really see what their life would be like without you in it; see the void your absence would create. Come to know that you matter. _You matter_. The substance of you, the physical, spiritual, psychological aspects of you, is significant. If you feel less than significant, what would it take for you to feel consequential, substantial, influential, noteworthy? Be of consequence. Be outstanding. Be a force to be reckoned with, or will you live an unlived life?\n\n _Well-behaved women seldom make history._\n\nLAUREL THATCHER ULRICH,  \n _W ELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY_\n\nYou are the authority of your life, the author who gets to pen a new story, a personal myth. Becoming the authority of your life necessitates you taking personal responsibility. You must show up for yourself and be accountable to yourself. Writing a life requires drafts, edits, rewrites. It begins with imagining what you want, remembering who you've always wanted to be, and making choices that support and move you in that direction, toward that person you know in your deepest self you are meant to be. That person has been inside you all these years, getting you to notice at times, waiting for you to say, \"Okay, it's time. Let's do this dance. I'm ready, already.\"\n\nThere is a difference between being a writer and an author. Writing is writing, and being a writer is being a writer. As author, you are the original creator of a piece of work; you have given it existence and authority. Authorship determines, points to, and carries responsibility for what is created.\n\nFeel the difference. \"I'm writing my life.\" How does it feel? Where do you feel it? Now, try this: \"I'm authoring my life.\" How does that feel? It has more weight, more gravity, more authority. \"I'm writing my life\" feels more heady, almost as if it's coming out of the eyes. The second one is felt closer to the heart and womb, where creativity is birthed from the fires of passion and imagination.\n\nReaching a state of grace is maturity of soul, courage of heart, and strength of character. Having a sense of humor and self-forgiveness and self-compassion, and being attentive to your intimate self will get you through difficult circumstances. Courage is needed for the obvious, to see inside yourself things you've been afraid to see. Loving yourself takes fierce devotion and courage, for many of us were not raised to love ourselves, to understand what that means and be curious about how self-love feels inside us. The willingness to be changed by the work, to follow it through to the end of your life\u2014that is grace.\n\nIt is not tensile strength that is called for, but strength that is already there inside you waiting to be tapped and used. When I pray about strength, I don't ask for more strength. I ask to use the strength that is already there, inside me, and I ask for help in shaping the strength to fit the shape of the thing I'm working with. It calls for reliance on your self, self-analysis, self-correction, and an indomitable will to make yourself your primary relationship.\n\nThere must be a commitment to give up lying in all its forms; lying to yourself through the games you play and the justifications and excuses that support their continuation. We are ingenious at manufacturing excuses and justifications, but they are forms of self-imprisonment. It is beneficial if you possess a desire to get to the truth of things, to aim a searing hot arrow at pretense, burning away the masks, the self-delusions that cover the truth. The truth that comes from seeing and perceiving directly.\n\nMy definition of lying was expanded, much to my horror, by a plant who blatantly called me a liar. I was shocked to hear it and asked in reply, \"Just what do you mean by that? I'm one of the most honorable people I know.\" She was not humored and responded with, \"In many ways you are; however, you lie by omission. You lie by keeping your needs a secret. You lie by not speaking out. You lie by adapting to circumstances. And in so doing, you betray yourself. Therefore, you are a liar.\"\n\nOuch. That was painful to hear, but she was right. Oh, the ways we delude ourselves. I saw myself in each one of those statements, and I felt what a cruelty it was to myself, to me. Lying sucks the energy out of relationships and undermines agreements to be intimate. It's a hustle to present yourself as something you're not. People just don't look favorably upon being hustled. I thought about each lie, felt into each one, and set about to correct them. This is a good place to talk about devotion since it is easily derailed when we engage in self-deception. _Devotion_ is a word that often conjures up images of religious fervor since it is often used in religious contexts.\n\nThere is a common misunderstanding about devotion and commitment. We think once we have committed to something or someone, everything is taken care of. Devotion and commitment begin first with deciding you want that person to be part of your life; you decide to be devoted and committed to him. You then confirm your commitment each day. Commitment is not something to be taken for granted; you must put energy into it to keep it spiritually alive. Deciding every day to be devoted to self-awareness and self-reflection engages all of you and keeps what you are doing in front of you. Devotedly doing the work is holding context for yourself. To hold context is to put energy into something; you think about, ponder, contemplate, pray if you pray, dream, and imagine the thing you are holding context for. You hold a macrocontext of the work overall and a microcontext for specific problems, issues, behaviors, and motivations you want to understand and resolve.\n\nI knew I was beginning to heal when I found myself being spontaneous. Spontaneously, I was suddenly making fun of my own behaviors and joking about my family: \"My sister's breasts are so huge they are registered as weapons of mass destruction.\" Being able to laugh at the absurdities of life and circumstances allows you to enjoy your own company. Explore yourself and your family from the perspective of a healed, whole person. Ask members of your inner council to join you in this. They see things you haven't. If there is an issue or person in your family that is particularly irritating, bring them to your inner council. You can bring anything to your council, by the way.\n\n _You grow up the day you have your first real laugh\u2014at yourself._\n\nETHEL BARRYMORE\n\nUnderstanding that you are human, and understanding what it means to be human, lays open the threshold of forgiving yourself for your human frailties, which is to have compassion for all your mistakes, the hurtful words that you uttered, the ways you failed your children. Allow yourself to be educated by life and by your mistakes. What happened before you became conscious is in the past. The past as it was has no place and no power now or in the future except in how it shaped you, mentored you, and allowed you to become who you are now. It doesn't have to order your life or condemn you to be who you were when you started out. You get to be different, and you can't get there without forgiving yourself. In forgiveness, we are no longer affected by our past.\n\nThis work heals the past **.** In time, the stories of our lives become memories, echoes, an imprint on the retina of the heart. They no longer have power over us. The scripts our families gave us can no longer influence us. The new life has no tolerance for old behaviors or indulging ourselves in what happened so long ago. The stories and the wounds that we carried are no matter. It's not the wound that matters; it's what happens afterward. And now is afterward.\n\nBeing the initiator of your life is a feeling thing. What feels good? What makes you happy? What will it take for \"I will\" to become \"I am\"? Imagine yourself on your deathbed and looking back on your life. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Do you hear a voice inside yourself saying \"I could have\"? What is the thing you could have done and didn't? Where did you stop yourself? What stopped you? Was it fear? Does it feel good to see these things? Are you willing to let fear and hesitation dictate your life? Are you ready to be the leading lady of your own life?\n\nWhat will it take for you to feel good about who you became, the work you did, the legacy you left? As you look back on your footprints, do you like the imprint you left in your path? What choices must you make now to feel good when the end comes\u2014and come it does to each one of us.\n\n _Is it not time to throw off the shroud? Is it not time to speak out, to cry out, to fly, to test wings, to fall, and to laugh with joy over the divine bruises?_\n\nGERRY SPENCE,  \n _G IVE ME LIBERTY_\n\nYou can walk around unconscious (read, coma), or you can choose to be conscious, aware, awake, alive. You are getting closer to death, to biodegrading, to becoming compost and worm food, even as you read the words on this page. So why not go for it? Create your own myth; become the heroine of your own story. Choosing a life of awareness means giving up the option of going unconscious.\n\nAt some point you'll know you've crossed an invisible line that makes taking up archaic behaviors impossible. You'll know this has happened if you imagine yourself, who you are now, in the old life. When the new you is imagined in the old life, there is a feeling to it, an uneasiness, a disconnect, a misfit. It's sort of a prickly, queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach; your breathing gets shallow or you may even stop breathing. These feelings are communications from the new you.\n\nThen there is grieving. You grieve for the childhood you never had, for the life you've left, and for those whom you've left, or who have left you, who have helped you along the way. There is grief for the unkindnesses toward yourself, your body, your lover, your children, your parents. You grieve for the things you needed to hear as a young girl and the love you needed to feel but didn't. Grieve until you are wrung out and empty of grief, and you will find yourself on the other side of it. You'll know when you're there; it has a feeling to it. Say a silent thank you, I love you. And, good-bye.\n\nBecome the epicenter of your universe. You are the initiator. Initiate. Find your passion, your hunger, and follow it from moment to moment. Ask someone who loves you and who you trust to tell you how he sees you, what he sees and knows to be your strengths and gifts. Simultaneously feeling and thinking your way through this will take you far in crafting a life that brings you joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.\n\nTry on various scenarios in your imagination. Fill in as many details as you possibly can. Ask for help in whatever spiritual tradition that suits you, or create your own spiritual tradition and ceremony. Go to the mountain or the ocean and drink in the power that is there by the bucketful. Watch the birds; listen to them sing up the sun each morning. That is ceremony. It can be simple or elaborate.\n\nAsk the ancestors of your land, of your heritage for help. In Africa, they say they talk to the ancestors because they are closest to them, closest to Earth. God is very busy, they say, but the ancestors, they are here to help. They remember us. They want to help, so sit down at their feet, or do a walk about, or a medicine walk, and have a conversation with them. Give them details. As Sun Bear, the Ojibway holy man said, \"If you ask for crumbs, you'll get a crumby life.\" This is your _life_ we're talking about, your happiness, your joy, your soul's journey.\n\nThe ancestors want to help you. It's their adventure too, you know. They need you to live your life so they can experience what living is like through you. Until I began in devotion, to follow the Earth-centered path, I had a foolish idea that God and the spirits were above Earth, hovering or hanging out in some ethereal, shimmering, invisible-to-my-eye, holier-than-thou, untouchable-by-human hands heavenly realm, a cloud perhaps. I asked myself, Why would they hang out there when there are trees and waterfalls and the smell of cottonwood buds and lavender and a lover's perfume and sex all here on Earth? If I was God or a spirit, this is where I would be spending all my time, invisible or not. This is the place where things are happening. There are many things happening in the realm of the invisibles that I am interested in, but as far as sensate, kinesthetic, erotic, and sensual experiences go, Earth is the place. I fall in love with being here every day as I fall in love with my lover, deeper and fuller.\n\nIt brings our ancestors joy to see us having our dreams fulfilled. They need us to move spontaneously and freely through time and space. They love the sound of laughter and the lightning that flashes out your eyes when you are expressing the truth of who you are in the world.\n\nIn many cultures there are ceremonies that last for days, sometimes weeks, ceremonies with a never-ending fire and long dances with drumming and singing. Often a person dancing is taken over by a spirit; the spirits come to have the ecstatic, sexual experience once again, of blending soul and spirit and body. They come to the human world to help us, and they come to the human world to be helped, to play, to feel. And they come to share the journey and the wisdom of the ages.\n\nWhy is creating your own life important in intimate relationships? Intimacy begins with you. Intimate relationships are best fostered in an environment where both people are self-assured and self-possessed. Each person in the relationship must have a sense of their work in the world, something they take joy in, something that is their creation and a manifestation of their dreams. As a partnership, there must be some joint adventure, a shared dream and shared goals that you hold in your hearts and give energy to, things that strengthen the bond you share.\n\n _Self-awareness is the architect of authenticity_.\n\nMaking unilateral decisions in a partnership, about the partnership, is a recipe for disaster. It is discounting the other and the spirit of the relationship. If you are in a partnership, engage your partner in the process. You must understand how important this is. Say what you have been thinking about, and ask for feedback. Hear, with all of you, what is being said. Ask for clarification if you don't understand something, don't let it lie there and ferment into assumptions and misunderstandings. Saying things out loud is a way of thinking and feeling out loud. And it's a way to fight for the life of the relationship. Not saying things out loud leads to secrets and these kinds of secrets are deadly to your soul and to the relationship. As you talk, you are often able to see more details or get excited about your possibilities, and it sparks the imaginative fires of the other. Speak up when something isn't working for you. Needs cannot get met if you don't know, or won't say, what they are.\n\nDepending on your partner to make you happy, to be the source of your self-esteem, is most certainly a formula for disaster. His presence in your life, his happiness, and the joy and adventures you share together are all sources of and additions to your happiness. His joys and successes infect you, as yours do him. They cannot help but influence you; the two of you are bonded in body, soul, and spirit by the invisible connections between and around you. But he is an addition to you, not your source; you are the most important thing in your life.\n\n _If another person is the most important thing in your life, then you're in trouble and they're in trouble because they become responsible for your suffering and your successes. But if consciousness is the most important thing in our lives and relationship is means toward that end . . . ah! Then we are approaching paradise. We are approaching the possibility of actually becoming a human being before we die._\n\nSTEPHEN LEVINE,  \n _E MBRACING THE BELOVED_\n\nMaturity is taking personal responsibility in crafting a new life. Growing up, being a grown-up, has immeasurable rewards. There are few experiences that compare to having a sense of yourself moving in the world, capable, clear, and certain. There will be times when you feel wimpy, scared, and uncertain. Being a grown-up is being aware of all these feelings as each one comes up, and then tending to them. It means listening to the small part of you that is feeling these things. Take care to listen to what she's feeling; what she needs you to do. You won't know what to do for her if you are unwilling to listen. To listen is to be changed by what you hear.\n\nYou may need to ask your lover to rub your feet or your neck or to just hold you when you're not feeling like yourself. Maybe you need to say, \"I feel wimpy, will you tell me all the things you like about me?\" Yes, it's hard; it feels weird, uncomfortable, unnatural, and completely foreign. We have not been raised this way; we have not been given permission or encouragement to have feelings, to say them out loud in the world. And in our culture, all those uncomfortable things are in place to discourage exploration of that territory. The last thing our culture and our governments want is for us to be walking around feeling good, following our feelings, and noticing that life in these times does not feel good.\n\nLet the Child of you do the asking. She is the one who needs to hear these things. Pay attention to the responses and let them trickle down deep inside you to touch her. With practice, you will be able to feel love moving inside you. You'll feel the changes it makes in your physiology. These changes come in response to love filling you up, lifting your spirit and enlivening you. This looks good on paper and in theory, but when it becomes as natural as breathing, it is glorious. After some time, after the deep parts of you have been fed love and know now that nothing bad will happen by being alive, by taking up space, by getting their needs met, your need to ask for support will diminish and become circumstantial. Emotional incontinence is temporary; you will build new skills, new muscles, and become familiar with the territory.\n\nIn the beginning, it is tiresome; you'll want to stop many times. You're breaking from old behaviors; secret agreements you made with yourself when you were very young are being changed and renegotiated. Part of you will be frightened when you break from family scripts and long-held values. I encourage you to hold that part of yourself, reassure her that you are watching, that you will let nothing bad happen.\n\nSELF-NURTURING\n\nConsult with yourself daily, throughout the day. If you feel overwhelmed, take time out or away. This depth work takes a lot of focus and uses energy, and at times you will feel depleted, wrung out, and you'll get irritated and pissed off at everything as you become exhausted. Stress on yourself and the relationship, upsets, and misunderstandings can be prevented by attending to how you are feeling and what you need and finding ways to renew yourself, to fill up your dwindling reserves of energy.\n\nConsider giving yourself a no-value day\u2014a day when you do nothing that counts toward anything but taking care of yourself. One day might look like this: Don't dress in street clothes; wear your robe and lounge pants all day long. Linger in bed for as long as you can or want to. Read for a bit, or sip tea in bed. Though, honestly, as romantic as that sounds and looks in the movies, in reality it can be awkward and clumsy. Nonetheless, you have to try it at least twice. Linger in bed extra long, bask in the afterglow of great, predawn lovemaking with your beloved or yourself. Read your favorite sci-fi or mystery novel for a few hours. Lie in bed until you choose the one thing that will next make you happy. It could be cooking your favorite breakfast or brunch or lunch. What would make your palate and stomach and the Child in you really happy? Maybe it's taking yourself out for a meal in a cozy, nurturing caf\u00e9. After the meal, maybe back to bed to read more of your sci-fi or mystery novel.\n\nBe sensitive to situational renewal time. If I've been working with people a lot after a teaching weekend, I need time alone or to be held in silence and feel my beloved wrap his love and arms around me. Other times, I need to go alone to the hot springs or on a hike and talk to the ancestors, sit on stone and be filled up with wild landscapes. Maybe I need to gaze at Tree or Stone or River, and feel their gaze on me. If I've been writing all day and straining my eyes and brain, what I need is a glass of fine wine or a shot of tequila (with lime, of course, and no salt, please) and something between my ears besides what I've been writing about, so a good movie is in order. If I feel nostalgic and melancholy, then definitely a romance is in order. If it's been a difficult day, I may want an action, adventure, or karate flick where the bad guys get their asses kicked real good. What I need depends on what I'm feeling.\n\nAsk your lover to take a day off with you. Let the Child in each of you choose something that would be really fun to do together. Plan several days over the next month. And stick to them.\n\nAs you are getting used to the idea, maybe even excited about authoring your life, I give you an exercise that will help you see things about yourself and take you into the territory of your values, beliefs, and deep feelings. Before beginning this exercise, consider making an agreement with yourself to not censor anything, to not hold anything back. You may take a few days or weeks to work on this, for as you move throughout your life in the midst of this assignment, you will find more things to add to each part of it. This exercise is designed to help you get to know yourself better, to see things on paper that maybe you hadn't thought of before. Writing also exercises your faculties of analysis and insight, and helps you to go deeper.\n\n ** EXERCISE   \nExploring Who You Are**\n\nLove\n\nWhat do you love about sex?\n\nWhat do you love about yourself?\n\nWhat do you love about your body?\n\nWhat do you love about your lover?\n\nWhat do you love about your life?\n\nHate\n\nWhat do you hate about sex?\n\nWhat do you hate about yourself?\n\nWhat do you hate about your body?\n\nIs there anything you hate about your lover?\n\nWhat do you hate about your life?\n\nAuthoring\n\nIf you could have any life you wanted, what would it look like?\n\nWhat will it take for you to have that?\n\nWhat steps do you need to take to get there?\n\nIntimacy\n\nHow do you define intimacy?\n\nHow does intimacy feel to you?\n\nDoes creating intimacy frighten you?\n\nDo you know why?\n\nAre you intimate with yourself?\n\nDo you want more intimacy in your life?\n\nWith your partner?\n\nHow will you create that?\n\nI encourage you to use the word _hate_ rather than substituting it with _I don't like_. They are not the same thing, you see. Hate has a particular feel to it; it provides energy to work with, and in lists such as these it lets you know which areas of your life stand out as needing to be changed, altered, redirected, and made whole. \"I don't like\" doesn't offer nearly the same energy, impact, or fuel for change. If you want to make real changes, deep changes, lasting changes in your life, \"I don't like\" isn't going to get you there. You need the passion that hate possesses. If you find yourself avoiding the word _hate_ , you might add it to your list: Why I hate using the word _hate_.*7\n\n _I feel ready to follow even the most trivial hunch._\n\nWILLIAM STAFFORD\n\nECOSEXUALITY\n\nIt is impossible to be whole human beings, fully, consciously, functional human beings, as long as we are disconnected from our sexuality and as long as we deny that our sexuality is implicitly bound up with Earth's sexuality. As long as we continue refusing to see Earth and all her inhabitants and residents as sexual, the disconnect and impoverishment of spirit will continue.\n\nAll of life is sexual; human sex organs have evolved from the prototypes of plants and animals as evolution occurred. Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird note that \"plants have female organs in the form of vulva, vagina, uterus and ovaries, serving precisely the same functions as they do in woman, as well as distinct male organs in the form of penis, glans, and testes, designed to sprinkle the air with billions of spermatozoa, were facts quickly covered by the eighteenth-century establishment with the almost impenetrable veil of Latin nomenclature, which stigmatized the labiate vulva, and mis-styled the vagina; the former being called 'stigma,' the latter 'style.' Penis and glans were equally disfigured into 'filament' and 'anther.'\"\n\nThen there are the bees who instinctively know where the pollen is and its quality and quantity. They take that information back to the hive, and with the shaking of their rear ends, they communicate all that information. Bees are prodigious and libidinous; they shake their sexual energy all over the place, and when we eat honey or bee pollen or royal jelly, we're eating sexual energy. They communicate by dancing. The male bees, called drones, carry \"the wisdom of the hive\" and keep it in harmony by swarming and \"chanting.\" They also wait for females to fly by.\n\nThey fight until there is one who is able to mate with the female. They have sex in flight, then the penis breaks off and the male bee dies. There are advantages to being human.\n\nDucks have an interesting method of copulation. Forced sex is common, but the female duck has an elaborate system of vaginas that tricks the penis into one of several false sheaths. Only when the drake she chooses enters her vagina with his corkscrew penis will she allow her eggs to be fertilized. The human cervix has a complementary function. It is able to discern which sperm would be a good match; Hippocrates believed that a woman could regulate the acceptance or rejection of sperm. The cervix is able to \"upsuck\" or expel semen. Midwives have been studying female sexuality and the reproductive patterns of women for 100,000 years. Midwives today carry gathered knowledge of ancient cultures of women who have intimate knowledge of their bodies, know when they are ovulating, and can say when conception occurred. Few women in the West are so in touch with their body's rhythms and cycles to be able to say when much of anything is happening.\n\nBreast feeding prevents ovulation and suppresses a woman's menstrual cycle. Suckling infants stimulate the breast, increasing hormonal opiates that suppress the production of hormones involved in ovulation. I wonder if men who choose to nurse infants and children have a corresponding hormonal response; that is, does male lactation from breastfeeding suppress sperm-producing hormones?\n\nWe've become a culture separated from our own body of Earth, turning to cultural solutions for everything from birth control to stimulation, relaxation, sleep, and wakefulness. Plant-based birth control and knowledge of one's body has been found in the archaeological records dating as far back as 630 BCE. In the Greek city of Cyrene on Africa's northern tip, women used the plant silphium or laserwort (wild fennel). It became a prized plant for the freedom it provided to enjoy sex without the worry of pregnancy. The plant's importance is evident on a Cyrenian coin, that depicts a regal-looking woman sitting in a chair. One hand is touching the plant and the other is pointing to her genitals. From the fifth century BCE in Greece, lemon halves were applied to the cervix as a spermicide. Plants as a source of bio-available hormones whose uses have stopped and started menstruation and alleviated premenstrual and menopausal symptoms were first taken seriously by the scientific community in 1933 when Boleslaw Skarynski found trihydroxyoestrin in willow, a substance that resembles estrogen. Hormone-containing plants have been used as abortifacients, aphrodisiacs, and contraceptives.\n\nThe use of plants as contraceptives is new information to humans. Animals have been using plants for all manner of healing and controlling population since they appeared on the scene (plants were here first). Plants as contraceptives have been used by animals since they evolved side-by-side on Earth's grand stage. A certain species of red clover, _Trifolium subterraneum,_ is rich in an isoflavone that disrupts reproduction. Over three hundred plant species have been found to contain levels of phytoestrogens (plant compounds that mimic the female reproductive hormone, estrogen). Phytoestrogens are capable of turning reproduction on or off, depending on the timing of their ingestion. In birds and animals, they tend to decrease fertility. All animal reproduction is dependent on plant chemistry.\n\nTompkins and Bird note that, in Teutonic mythology, \"Baldur, god of light, had secretly gazed upon the naked form of the flower princess Nanna as she bathed in a stream. When her natural loveliness was enhanced by the energy over which Baldur ruled, his heart, said the legend, was pierced, and the marriage of Light and Flowers became a foregone conclusion.\"\n\nGustav Theodor Fechner postulated the concept that believing whether plants have a soul or not changes one's whole insight into nature. If humanity admitted to an omnipresent, all-knowing god who bestowed animation on all things, then nothing in the world could be excluded from this munificence, neither plant nor stone nor crystal nor wave. Why would universal spirit, he asked, sit less firmly in nature than in human beings and not be as much in command of nature's power as it is of human bodies? \"That it is a dark and cold world we sit in if we will not open the inward eyes of the spirit to the inward flame of nature.\"\n\nThen there is George Washington Carver, of slave descent, who became an agricultural chemist, later known as the Black Leonardo. Through his unorthodox methods, he was able to turn the peanut, useful only as hog food, into peanut butter and he used peanut oil to heal the atrophied muscles of polio patients. \"Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill. The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough,\" he said.\n\nNot long before Carver's death, a visitor to his laboratory saw him reach out his long sensitive fingers to a little flower on his workbench. \"When I touch that flower,\" he said rapturously, \"I am touching infinity. It existed long before there were human beings on this earth and will continue to exist for millions of years to come. Through the flower, I talk to the Infinite, which is only a silent force. This is not a physical contact. It is not in the earthquake, wind or fire. It is in the invisible world. It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies.\"\n\nThe December 11, 1995, online issue of _High Country News_ reported the deaths of 342 migrating snow geese. Their last stop was a lake that filled in after the Berkeley open-pit copper mine in Butte, Montana, quit operations and closed the mine. The edge of the lake was lined with rocks heavy in pyrite, and when the water hit the rocks, it turned into sulfuric acid. In turn, the sulfuric acid leached metals from the ore, causing the lake water to be filled with arsenic, cadmium, copper, gold, zinc, and silver. When the geese drank the water, they were poisoned to death.\n\nIt has since been discovered that a curious, dark, goopy substance identified as live yeast appeared near the edge of the lake. Testing of the yeast found that it actually absorbed the metals in the lake, which is high in sulfuric acid. And not a mere 5 or 10 percent of heavy metals but as much as 85 to 90 percent. Further testing discovered that this particular yeast is found only in the rectal swabs of . . . snow geese.\n\nAs I write this, there has been a frightening and as yet mysterious and unknown phenomenon: massive deaths of birds and fish have been reported around the world. Thousands of birds have dropped spontaneously en masse from the sky. Explanations that range from Orwellian conspiracy theories, end-of-world times, prophesies come true, solar flares, and government testing in the ionosphere are rampant. I don't have an answer. What I know is that we have no time to put off making changes, real changes, from deep inside each of us. Real changes cannot begin any other place\u2014the kind of changes that move personal mountains and tap the reservoir of human potential buried beneath centuries of oppression, repression, line drawing, and all manner of violence to the human spirit and soul and to the soul of Earth.\n\n _Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is._\n\nWILL ROGERS\n\nIt is impossible to live in the world and not be in relationship to everything in and around you, to everyone and everything you come in contact with. It may be in balance or out of balance, but a relationship you do have. You can get a sense of this if you are able to drop labels for a few moments. For example, if you don't say, \"I have an eating disorder,\" then what do you have? You have a relationship with eating; you have a relationship with food. You have a relationship with your body and with hunger. The next question is: What is the relationship with my body? Without using the words _good_ and _bad,_ try to describe the relationship and how it is. That takes you into the waters of your psyche to plumb the meaning of the relationship and how it affects your movement and your happiness. Try this on: \"I have a relationship with food and my body that has been out of balance for some time. I use food so I don't have to feel or think. I've mistreated my body by overeating or undereating. I've acted like an enemy of my soul and body. I want to change those relationships.\"\n\nIf we suspend the use of labels such as _Muslim_ and _homosexual,_ then what are we left with? What is your relationship to men who love men? Would you know what a Muslim is if we didn't have a word for Muslim? What would your relationship be to someone from Pakistan or Afghanistan? To your brother who sleeps with another man? Relationships are not static; they are living and dynamic, mutable within circumstances and as values and beliefs change. You have a relationship with your children, and the relationship changes as they grow and become independent. You have a relationship with yourself, but do you know yourself, what that relationship is?\n\n _When your priority becomes consciousness, even more than relationship, then conscious relationship is possible._\n\nSTEPHEN LEVINE\n**_Final Words_**\n\n_Nosce te ipsum. Know thyself._\n\nTEMPLE OF APOLLO, DELPHI\n\n _Deconditioning also involves risk and suffering. But it is transformative, freeing the self from helplessness and fear. It unleashes the fifth freedom, the right to an autonomous consciousness. That makes deconditioning about as individual and personal act as is possible. Maybe the only genuine individual act._\n\nJOE BAGEANT,  \n\"AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?\"\n\nUntil we do the deep work of healing our individual psychoses, owning our sexuality, and calling on Eros and Dionysus, Aphrodite and Artemis, the ancestors, and our own inner guidance systems to create a change, all the words and lip service in the world are not going to change one iota of it. If it could, it would have happened far sooner than the time we find ourselves in. As Dale Pendell says in the _Los Angeles Times:_\n\nIt's not that if you make a place for Dionysian energy, that kind of wild and unpredictable God, that everything will go ok. It won't. That's not true at all. But the cost of trying to suppress it is even worse. Then you end up sacrificing your own children. In the United States today we have more people in prison than any other country on a per capita basis. The majority of these are drug crimes. It's a war against ourselves. It's a war against our children. It was a problem for the Greeks but at least they came to realize you had to admit a certain amount of chaos. You can't try to live risk free. If you try to live completely risk free you're going to destroy what you had. What's a really secure environment? San Quentin is pretty secure.\n\nIt is characteristic of human nature to reach for, search for something outside ourselves, to transcend our experience and make some sense of it. Be cautious of becoming overindulgent and insistent upon giving up personal power and deferring to the great Oz (Oz was, as we know, a timid little man\u2014it could have been a woman\u2014behind the machine, not unlike a lot of us), the Christian God, or governments. Frank Herbert in his classic novel _Dune_ showed us the tragedy of the \"messiah delusion.\" There is no messiah, no savior waiting in the wings for just the right moment of despair to crack open and slip in to rescue us. No one will come down from the heavens and rescue us from the path of illusion and irresponsibility we've insisted on treading. There is no rapture coming. The Hopi have been telling us for thousands of years, \"We are the ones we've been waiting for.\"\n\nCharles Bowden poignantly asks us to examine what the real dilemma is.\n\nImagine the problem is not physical, imagine that the problem has never been physical. It is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old growth forests, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on, unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society. Not something that can be solved by some commission or laws or redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper; right to the core of what we call our civilization. And that nothing outside of ourselves can effect real change; that our civilizations, our governments, are sick. And that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead. And that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical, and no amount of driving, no amount of road will help deal with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless, or that we are victims, but that we have lost the fire and belief, and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears. We catch glimpses but we turn our faces swiftly aside. The whistle is always blowing. There is no denying what is before my eyes. We all know the future; we only must say it and face it. There will be no first hundred days for this future; there will be no five year plans, there will be no program. Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future where we possess less but are more. Imagine the problem is a future that terrifies us because we lose our machines, but gain our feet and pounding hearts.\n\nImagine a world, our private world, where we refuse to lie and a world where rudeness is not common behavior. Imagine a world where each of us takes responsibility for our own lives and well-being. Buckminster Fuller articulated it best when he said, \"All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly\u2014right now.\"\n\nHuman beings are flesh-and-blood biological animals, and though we have access to the invisibles to work with, to pray to, to ask for help, they cannot do the work for us; it's not their responsibility to fix the mess we've gotten ourselves into. They come to aid us, to help us find our way, to regain our balance, to open doors and opportunities. It's up to us, then, to do the work.\n\nThere are pockets of people beginning to create change, willing to be innovative and creative and to say, \"Fuck it, it stops here. I take personal responsibility.\"\n\n _You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down._\n\nRAY BRADBURY\n\n _Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame._\n\nERICA JONG\n\nWe need a growing body of people who are willing to make conscious choices and to stand up and speak truth to power, who are willing to own their personal power and sexuality and heal the wound between human beings and Earth. We need people who are willing to get their hands dirty doing the work, willing to stand outside mainstream thought and dogma, and especially, willing to go into the murky waters of their own psyches and heal from inside their own skins. We know so much but do so little. As Buckminster Fuller said, \"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.\" So we begin by deconstructing, dismantling what has not worked in our lives, in our interior world.\n\nJ. Krishnamurti said, \"When you are really learning you are learning throughout your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches you\u2014a dead leaf, a bird in flight, a smell, a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.\"\n\nIn every new movement that begins, its conception is traceable back to an idea. Ideas are at the heart of any new movement. The idea is not always clearly defined, but it is there, an ember, a spark; first in the imaginal then spoken and written. It's always waiting to be given form, made manifest, through the actions and in the lives of men and women.\n\nIncorporating sacred sex more fully into our lives and living as the sexual beings that we are provides us with the challenge and opportunity to be a wholly integrated human being. Despite edicts to focus on the family, divorce and remarriage are common occurrences. Though not officially sanctioned, people are experimenting with alternatives to the nuclear family and traditional marriages\u2014having open marriages, living with extended families. There are movements to incorporate pornography and Earth sexuality into our relationships. The question is no longer whether or not to explore something different; it is how honest, creative, innovative, and clear-sighted are we willing to be. We can no longer afford to ignore the sexual crisis and the need to be openhearted and open-minded in our understanding of sexual dynamics.\n\nIt would appear that each of us is evolving into a more responsible human being who can make choices from a place of deep wholeness. A human being who can make plans according to her own needs and desires and not fit into someone else's plan for her.\n\nIn the end, it may be our distrusting, fearful, inhumane relationships with one another and with Earth, with Nature, that will be the fall of the human species. To keep civilization going, we must invent new values about human beings and sexuality, bringing the wildness of Earth, inviting Eros and Dionysus, Aphrodite and Artemis into all that we do.\n\nI revisited my family story rewriting it while in the arms of my beloved. That story is old and it no longer fits who I've become. I traveled the lands of gods and goddesses of antiquity (they're all still around, you know). I met some of the new ones coming up from the still-fertile, if latent, soil of our sexuality\u2014that ruled by Eros and Psyche. I traced the roots of our repressed sexuality through religious and political oppression, through sexual revolutions, to the brilliance and courage of Lenny Bruce, James Hillman, Eric Berne, Marty Klein, George Carlin, Mary Roach, Aphrodite Phoenix, Laura Agustin, Erica Jong, Stanley Keleman, Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, and Ana\u00efs Nin, to name a few.\n\nThe extremism, fanaticism, repressive attitudes, constipated beliefs, and hypocritical absurdities we insist we hold onto with tooth and claw continue to be bizarre and frustrating. I will be relieved when I see people leaving the church and linking back to Gaia's temples\u2014those formed of green and flesh.\n\n _The people should not be afraid of their government; government should be afraid of their people._\n\n _V FOR VENDETTA_\n\nANOTHER NEW SEXUAL REVOLUTION\n\nJames Baldwin said Shakespeare's \"bawdiness\" mattered to him once he realized that bawdiness signified \"respect for the body.\" Bawdiness will be part of the new sexual, political, and ecological revolution. This is the new sexual revolution; a revolution of authentic voices. A revolution of earthy lustiness, boldness, out-of-the-closet complete ownership of sexual, sensual energy infusing everything we touch and breathe upon. The kind of revolution that pulls us out of the secret holding in and takes us out to Earth to self-baptism in the wild waters, mud between our toes and red clay under our fingernails. This will be a revolution that redefines _pretty_ and _sexy_ and one where beauty comes out of the body from self-love and adoration; the beauty that is created when we abandon ourselves to falling in love\u2014with men, with women, with children, with nonhuman beings\u2014and when that love permeates all that we do.\n\nThis revolution will link us back to our feeling, sensing bodies, our ground of being, and free us to say what is true and real. And it will fill the dry, calcified cracks separating humans and Earth with the slippery healing balm of sexual, sensual energies. It will call on the gods and goddesses of the old ways, those of the new ways, and the spirit beings of the places we call home to be part of healing the wild bond between humans and Earth.\n\nThe new revolution brings mythic elements out of the dreamworld and back to the interworld where humans and gods comingle. It will heal the biodegradation of _anima mundi_ and the soul of each of us that has been happening since we humans took ourselves out from the wild glades. It will of necessity begin inside each of us. When you are able to say, \"Enough is quite enough,\" and \"What I've been doing hasn't worked out so well,\" then you have options available to you. Seek not happiness; it is surely a derailment. Rather, seek what makes your heart thrum and vibrate, what makes you come alive. Happiness comes when we engage in our soul's work. This is the arena in which healing of the Earth begins and takes hold.\n\n _Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiation (and creation), there is one elementary truth . . . that the moment one definitely commits, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. . . . Whatever you can door dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin now._\n\nJOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE\n\nLive inside your own feet and partake of the adventure of your own soul. Follow the essence of things, the feelings inside, and the form will take shape organically. Have sacred sex, lots of sex, wild sex, passionate sex. Feel deeply and with abandon. Owning your personal power, your sexual power, and doing the work of personal healing through intimacy helps everyone. It does not happen until you free yourself and are then able to make choices as a free woman. As Erica Jong says in her novel _Sappho's Leap,_ \"Choice is the luxury of the free.\"\n\nNothing we do happens in a vacuum. All that we do radiates out to the larger society. You are not finished falling down. Growth is the act of returning to your feet and dusting yourself off, gently. It is taking the next step, the unknown step, the one that opens the heart to the remarkable mystery of life, of being. Sooner or later, your life will be over. Two millennia ago Rabbi Hillel said; \"If I don't do it\u2014who will do it? And if I don't do it right now\u2014when will I?\"\n\nIn closing\u2014finally\u2014I quote Eric Berne who continues to help clarify and inspire:\n\nThe somber picture . . . in which human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait, is a commonplace but not the final answer. For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behavior, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy. But all three of these may be frightening and even perilous to the unprepared. Perhaps they are better off as they are, seeking their solutions in popular techniques of social action, such as \"togetherness.\" This may mean that there is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.\n**APPENDIX**\n\n ** _Talking to Children and Teens about Sex_**\n\n_It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men._\n\nFREDERICK DOUGLASS\n\n _In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act._\n\nGEORGE ORWELL\n\n _Saguaros are almost never found in the open. Underhill . . . quoted some Papago words that indicate they may have had the nurse plant concept before it was suggested by Anglo botanists. The Papago belief was \"saguaros have trouble getting started in life. They are so big. Like a fat child, they get sick. But paloverde grows fast like a mother. It bends down the leaves and keeps the wind away.\"_\n\nRUTH UNDERHILL,  \nQUOTED IN _D ESERT PLANTS_ 2 (AUTUMN 1980)\n\nH _omo sapiens_ are not the only species to grow through various ego states and stages of life. We are not the only species to be young, have adolescence, mature, and grow old and sometimes wise. Every species, whether it has roots and flowers, stands on two legs or four, needs elders to teach the young how to be that species. Elder trees teach young trees how to be tree, the archetype. Jacqueline Memory Paterson writes about European and Native American beliefs about the role of elder trees.\n\nThe unique personality of the elder was anciently believed to come from the spirit of the \"Elder Mother\" who dwelt within the tree. The Elder Mother, called Elle or Hyldemoer in Scandinavian and Danish myth, worked strong earth magic and according to legend avenged all who harmed her host trees. No forester of old would touch elder, let alone cut it, before asking the Elder Mother's permission three times over and even then he was still in dread of her possible wrath. Likewise, in many country districts of Europe and Britain, wise people still show respect by touching their hats when passing elder trees, in continuance of ancient custom. Certain North American tribes also believe that elder is the Mother of the human race.\n\nElder bears teach cubs how to be bear. In his book _The Presence of the Past,_ Rupert Sheldrake writes: \"When harvesting plants, I never take the elder plants, insuring that their wisdom and genetic strength can be passed on to the younger generations. According to the morphogenesis view, living organisms, such as badgers, willow trees, or earthworms, inherit not only genes but also habits of development and behaviour from past members of their own species and also from the long series of ancestral species from which their species has arisen.\" We need sages, wise elders to take their place among us, to teach the children. We need elders who have owned their own sexuality unashamedly, unabashedly, humbly, unapologetically. And we need them to pass it on to the children through the teachings and by modeling healthy sexuality.\n\nWe tend often to take ourselves too seriously. This is especially true when talking to children about a topic we consider serious. Or scary. Or difficult. Or bad. Or naughty. Or seriously uncomfortable. One thing we all need to be aware of is that children are inherently intuitive and psychic. They feel vibrations, they sense our tentativeness, how we truly feel about something, and they know when we are lying. Their bullshit meters are very sensitive. Lying is damaging to them and to your relationship with them. When they sense you are lying, it brings your trustworthiness into question and it degrades their self-respect: Why would someone who loves me lie to me?\n\nHow do we talk to children about sex and sexuality? Start where we are, where they are. It's helpful if you can remember when you were their age, what was happening for you and your sexual curiosity. Be honest. Understand that children, at a very young age, are fascinated with their bodies, with our bodies, with sex. To raise sexually healthy children, capable of sexually intimate and healthy relationships, we need to be sexually healthy in ourselves and with our partners. Accepting that your children are sexual beings from the beginning is a very good start.\n\nWith that said, be cautious talking about sex with children until you have tried and enjoyed all kinds of sex\u2014various positions, wet sex, oral sex, licking, touching, caressing, standing up sex, backward sex, sex under the sun and moon, sex on and in a river, battery-operated sex\u2014at least a bazillion times. You ought to know what you are talking about. In other words, to the best of your ability, know what you are talking about.\n\nWhen talking to children about sex, remember, it's about them. I recommend offering personal information only when asked for, or if you have an anecdote that seems to be supportive of the conversation and what was asked. Otherwise, stick to what's real. If you realize some of your fear about talking straight is that you don't have all the facts, now is the time to find them. Don't know where your cervix is and why you have one? Sadly, I had only a vague idea until mine got sick. On one visit with my gynecologist, she inserted a tiny tube with a camera on the end. I watched the monitor as I got an up-close-and-personal look at my cervix as it was healing. It was amazing and revealing to meet that part of me, to say hello \"face-to-face,\" to know what it looked like, what I had been seeing as I prayed and talked with it over the six weeks of healing.\n\nI don't know what the odds are that your child is going to ask you about masturbation, but in the event it does come up, are you comfortable talking about it? Most people aren't comfortable talking about masturbation though most everyone does it. Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general from 1994 to 1995, lost her job after fifteen months for suggesting that teaching masturbation wouldn't be out of place in our school system. Elders said: \"I think that masturbation never got anybody pregnant, does not make anybody go crazy, and what we're about is preventing HIV in our bright young people. Nobody has to teach anybody how to masturbate, God taught us how. So I think that now, even in our society, they're saying that maybe this is something that we should stress more for couples and we know that they do already.\"\n\nSince they were old enough to understand language, I've been telling my granddaughters three primary things: how much I love them, that they can ask me anything, and that I will never lie to them. It's my job to encourage whatever thread of interest they want to follow for as long as they want to follow it. I support their natural curiosity and expose them to wild ecosystems. This includes collecting, and petting, snails, slugs, and worms. In those moments, I feel the trust and bond between the three of us grow deep roots. I take care not to impose my fears onto them. I give them room to explore with parameters, and I give them information on how to fight against what they don't want and for what they do want, to say what they need and want. I talk to them about what to do if they turn around in a crowd and can't see me or their mom: stay where you are. More people get lost by wandering off in a panic. Panic, from Pan, is the imaginal, and it stops rational thought in its tracks. James Hillman says, \"The imaginal is never more vivid than when we are connected to it instinctually.\" When in a panic, the imagination runs without rational thought or adult information.\n\nI began having anatomy talks with my granddaughters when they were four and seven. They referred to both boy's and girl's genitals as \"wieners.\" They giggled when I gave them the words labia, clitoris, and penis. The next day, the seven-year-old, pointing between her legs, asked me: \"What was the el word for this part that girls have and boys don't?\"\n\nDon't fool yourself into thinking that you can wait until adolescence or puberty to have \"the talk.\" Curiosity about the body and what feels good begins in the first year of life. We first learn that the breast and I are separate, that I can move my body this way and get from here to there, and that dirt is interesting to taste.\n\nAs soon as children discover they have a body with physical boundaries, they become fascinated with what it does and can do. Children begin exploring their body parts, including the genitals. It starts very young, younger than you may be comfortable knowing about. I learned this when my son was two years old. I heard him giggling to himself in his crib. I walked in to see him sitting up and playing with his penis. He was enjoying himself very much. He didn't see me, so I quietly backed out of the room and left him to enjoy himself. Toddlers, both boys and girls, find ways of pleasuring themselves before they are a year old. They engage in genital play, fingering, or simple handling of their genitals.\n\nSensual touching begins in the moments immediately following birth when baby is placed on mom's breast. If she chooses to breast feed, the bond is reinforced. Fathers need to bond with infants immediately as well. Holding the infant in his arms next to his chest imprints his heartbeat and smell in the baby.\n\nBabies need ample cuddling, skin-to-skin contact, and nurturing. This is their first experience of intimacy. Dressing them, diaper changing, and bathing them is their first experience of the sensuality of the body. Feeding time is nurturing and cuddling time. If your baby is a boy, you may notice an automatic response of erection during feeding, whether nursing or bottle feeding. It's a normal response. Take care to not discourage or interfere with it. Baby girls have clitoral erections, which, as we know, are less noticeable. It's not unusual for it to be accompanied by vaginal discharges so don't be alarmed if you notice extra fluid in the diaper.\n\nAt around four and five years old, children like to play doctor. They want to see and touch each other's bodies, though the idea of intercourse doesn't occur to them. It's normal behavior for that age. What's not normal or healthy is if older siblings or adults touch their bodies. Parents can and do until children learn how to bathe themselves. This is the age when kids begin learning how to navigate life, and how to resolve conflicts and put their things away. Marty Klein says, \"That's when their sexuality starts developing, too.\" If you want to raise healthy, empowered children, let them explore their sexuality in a safe, comfortable environment; in their own home. If children are healthy, they \"will become more sexual rather than less, and probably on a faster timetable than you're comfortable with.\"\n\nWhen I visit my granddaughters, we snuggle up together at bedtime with a storybook in my hands, I hug them, kiss them all over their faces, tell them how much I love them, how wonderful they are, and we giggle a lot. The conversation flows unhindered in the direction they want it to. They ask about breasts, pubic hair, and kissing boys. \"Yuck,\" says the four-year-old.\n\nWe have fun with the teaching and learning. They are interested and curious, and I encourage those things in them. My job as their grandmother, our job as parents, is to show up and to tell the truth. Our job also is to make certain we are not talking with shame or shaming them for their natural curiosity. Hold the space for them as intelligent beings, capable of thinking and making decisions. The more honest information we give them, the better able they will be to make intelligent, informed decisions.\n\nOne time my granddaughters and I were having dinner out on our first night together. We looked at the menu, and I read the descriptions of meal choices and asked if anything sounded good to them. They decided what they would like to eat. When the waitress came to our table to take our order, I indicated for them to tell her. They both got shy and said, \"You tell her. Mom always orders for us.\" Very quickly I assessed the situation, decided what response would best support them, support our relationship, and help them get the food they wanted without any drama. Thoughtfully, I took a deep breath, leaned forward, looked at them with grandmother eyes, and said: \"Okay girls, here's the deal. When you're at home with your mom and your other grandma, you have certain ways of doing things that works for all of you. And when we're together we have ways of being together that work for us. Since we don't see each other very often, we need to figure it out more quickly. What I'm asking you to do is this: If you want something, anything, it's up to you to ask for it. So you get to tell the waitress what you want to order. It's really fun to do it. Will you both do that?\" They looked at each other hesitantly, so I said, \"It's all right, nothing bad will happen. I'm right here.\" As the sense of freedom and independence percolated, sly smiles crossed their faces. Having a restaurant meal just became even more interesting.\n\nTalking with children about things that matter is to empower them with life skills, tools, and information. It's to build a foundation for them to be free, independent, autonomous, authentic, and shame free. Encourage them to feel and think at the same time. Children are like little detectives, inquisitively asking questions they want answers to. Without your help and an environment where they know they can ask you anything, they will absolutely find out for themselves from other sources, and there are many other sources.\n\nCensoring gives the message that they are not capable of making their own decisions. Children need to be able to make mistakes, to discover where their own comfort zones are, what their limitations are. The stronger the foundation of trust, love, and intimacy you have with them, the healthier that process will be for all of you.\n\nIf you watch television, take note of how many obvious and subtle references there are to sex and sexuality in one hour. Sex is used as a sales pitch so much so that we equate a new car, certain beers, and clothing with being sexual or having sex. As adults, we screen out the meanings in them, but children are exposed to thousands of images and messages about sex long before their senses are dulled, and they are trained out of seeing and analyzing. Watch television with your children and be sensitive to opportunities to talk about what you see, not only in advertisements but in movies, documentaries, and television series. Point out the difference between actors and real people.\n\nThey are like sponges taking in the values and beliefs from the media and of the adults in their lives. Seven-year-olds are well enough aware of adult standards and expectations to be sensitive to their own failures, fears, and mistakes. They are quite skilled at keeping secret their own interest in sex, though they may ask sideways with questions about pregnancy and birth. Seven- to nine-year-olds continue to engage in same-gender sex games, girls primarily, while boys channel it into secret clubs and build clubhouses.\n\nIt's important to keep in mind that the onset of puberty is declining in age. Though studies are primarily aimed at girls, boys are not immune to the effects of pseudoestrogens and hormones in cows' milk, beef, and plastics, which have been found to initiate early puberty. Typically, girls reach puberty between the ages of 9 and 12 and boys between 10 and 14. In the last decade, there has been an increase in the number of 7-yearold girls developing breasts, acne, and pubic hair. Exposure to estrogen in food, plastics, and chemicals is common, and \"[e]strogens do stimulate breast development,\" according to Stanley Korenman, an endocrinologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the 1700s, the average onset of menses was between 17 and 18 years of age. It's been speculated that malnutrition in that time had something to do with the later onset. With the availability of more food and the increase of added hormones to meat and dairy products and chemicals in our water and lotions, the onset of puberty is happening at younger ages.\n\nChildren who are obese are prone to go through puberty at an earlier age. Mt. Sinai School of Medicine studied six- to eight-year-old girls in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and New York City. Urine samples were collected, and the presence of hormone-altering chemicals used in shampoo and lotions were found. Exposure to phthalates and fragrances were associated with early breast and pubic hair development.\n\nIf you notice your child showing signs of early puberty understand that it may have psychological and emotional impacts for them. Imagine being the one girl in your second-grade class with breasts developing.\n\nChildren are the most creative about finding answers on their own and learn early to navigate the Internet. In an era of texting, Facebook, and Twitter, parents are outmaneuvered quickly if they aren't prepared and haven't set a solid foundation of open communication early on. If you don't know the answers, tell your child so and that you will find it for her or the two of you will search it out together. Having a healthy relationship with your own sexuality and intimacy\u2014that is, owning your sexuality, what you know, what you don't know, and being honest with a sense of humor about it\u2014goes a very long way to raising sexually healthy children. Hardly anything compares to it in strengthening the bond between you and your children. Having your own strong, clear foundations around sexuality and intimacy will be invaluable in maintaining close, intimate relationships with your children and as a family.\n\nParents do get nervous as they watch their children grow into sexual beings (as if they hadn't been sexual beings all along). We carry so much fear about touching and hugging and snuggling that, as our children get older, too often we pull back.\n\nYou'll have to find a balance that works to maintain a close relationship with your children, your need for privacy, and their need for sex education. What you decide to share should be based on what feels right to you, is supportive to their healthy development, and is not based on shame, guilt, or fear about sexuality.\n\nSaying no demonstrates that in intimate relationships you can set limits and have a sense of modesty. You don't have to be angry when you say no; saying no can come from the love of the relationship, the child, or yourself and doesn't need to be hurtful or defensive or cause damage to the child or the relationship. Saying no models healthy limit setting, instills trust that you will answer when you feel good about it while encouraging the child to ask whatever he wants.\n\nIn all that my granddaughters and I do together, I encourage them to think and feel for themselves, and I repeatedly give them permission to say no. We cannot start early enough encouraging _them_ to say no. They certainly understand the word's meaning. It's a valuable word two-year-olds learn and use very well and often.\n\nEveryone needs to have permission to say no. If you haven't given it to yourself or the children in your lives, try it right now. Make it a meditation. My inability to say no was convoluted and confused with wanting to be the good girl. Not a very attractive or sexy habit at that. Reflexively, I gave up my needs and wants and happiness to please others. I habitually disempowered myself. Conversely, it is as important to be able to say yes consciously from free will and have some skill in thinking ahead to the consequences of a yes, or no.\n\nBefore we became puritanical about sex and sexuality, extended families in indigenous cultures shared the same sleeping space and sex just happened as a fact of life. There was no separation; everything was a part of life's natural rhythm. Everyone in the household knew how often sex happened, the sounds that were made, and children grew up seeing their parents' genitals. Because this way of life is foreign to us, just the thought of it can make us uncomfortable. Each of us has to examine our own feelings and find what works for us. Some families sleep together in a family bed when their children are small. Others have separate bedrooms. Some people are more comfortable with nudity than others. Whatever your personal comfort level, it helps to be calm and matter-of-fact about asserting your need for privacy. It is important to answer children's questions about sexuality as openly as possible with as little anxiety and fear as possible, for children pick that up very easily. There are ways to answer questions you find difficult with honesty and without the contamination of shame.\n\nHowever you choose to respond to your children's inquiries and curiosities around sex and your sexual privacy, you might find it useful to first consider a few things:\n\n  * What will be the impact of your decisions on your child's sexual health and maturity?\n  * What will be the impact on you and your child's friendship and bond of trust?\n  * What is motivating your decision?\n  * Are you able to step outside cultural fears to make your own considered decisions?\n  * Your children will find answers to their questions, with or without your blessing and support; which would you prefer?\n\nUnderstand the difference between privacy and secrecy; they are not even remotely the same thing though the two do get mixed up. Privacy is a conscious choice to be selective about what information you disclose about yourself. Secrecy, and I'm talking specifically about sexual secrets, keeps the past alive and toxic and it holds us as victims. Secrets isolate us, keep parts of us hidden from our partners and friends, prevent healing, cause doubt and low self-esteem, and can increase paranoid tendencies and fear of being found out. Our fears of conflict and of being rejected all get fed by secrets.\n\nWhen we understand that increasing children's experience within the natural world increases the chances of them becoming healthy, sexual, sensual adults with healthier imaginations, more whole in themselves and with greater capacity for problem solving, only then can we truly see our role in facilitating that growth. As we grow more distant from nature, the physical and emotional distance between each other becomes greater. The natural environment is where children are sensitized; it is the world of sensations and beauty\u2014where air and sun kiss skin, where bare feet touch the sensual Earth, where textures, tastes, smells, and colors are rich and vibrant and ever changing. It is the natural world where a child learns to inhabit her interbeing with the world into which she was born. In natural ecosystems, environments teeming with life, microbes, and the sexual reproduction of plants and animals, children learn the interplay of organisms, and the experience of their life among other life-forms is generated. They need to feel bonded to and inseparable from the experience of living, which uncensored play in Nature fosters. Spending too much time in artificial environments, looking at life on the Internet or under microscopes, causes a sense of schizophrenia where a child's sense of place in the biotic community is never encouraged to grow. Without regular time in nature, a child's senses, sensibilities, and sensory acuity retreats.\n\nChildren learn lessons from the natural world that cannot be taught in classrooms or through lecturing or Internet searches: They are able to experience directly the changing seasons and how other life-forms respond to changes in the environment; how they prepare for winter, make nests, gather food, tend to their young\u2014lessons that translate to human life. They learn that all animals have sex and can see it as a natural function of life and of being alive. More importantly, the education of their senses takes place formatively in the wild or Nature. It is through sensing, developing a keen awareness of subtle, sensory inputs, that they become discerning and learn to trust their bodies and their intuition. They learn what their fears are, how to assess danger, how each fear feels in their bodies and how to work it out in themselves. Nature is a great teacher of values; she is judgment free and unattached to outcomes.\n\nWatch children at play in a natural environment. They are immersed in the now of the experience, their senses keenly tuned to the rhythmic movements and music of nature, their inner world and the outer world flow and intertwine unobstructed, one with the other. There is a silent, elegant communication that is taking place. They are \"sitting\" at the feet of Master and Mother of all that is in rapt attention; it is an attentiveness not found while sitting at desks in school buildings with fluorescent lights humming overhead. They sit on the bosom of the Great Mother, as she feeds and nourishes their bodies with myriad scents and colors of flowers, sounds of birdsong, the sacred dance of air, heat and cold, sun and moon. The elemental world of gnomes, sylphs, undines, and salamanders feeds their imaginations and fosters the knowing of other worlds and beings. This is the village it takes to raise a child. This is where their parents, our parents, and other parents and family are. We come through our human parents, but we are born to our family in the wild.\n\nThe ecological crisis we find ourselves in will not be remedied by more rules, more parental admonitions. The ecological crisis, as well as psychological dysfunctions, is mended by the balm of time in the natural world. When we are born, we need to be placed not only on the breast of our human parent, but we also need to be bonded with Earth.\n\nADOLESCENTS, SEX, AND INTIMACY\n\nAdolescence comes from the Latin _adoescere,_ meaning \"to grow up.\" The term has been in common usage only since 1904 when Stanley Hall \"discovered\" this stage of growth, which he attributed to social changes in the early twentieth century. The National Child Labor Committee was formed in 1904 to abolish all child labor. Child labor laws keep children under sixteen out of the workforce, and universal education laws keep them in secondary schools longer, prolonging the period of dependence.\n\nAdolescence is the time of life between puberty and being an adult. Because it is a time of becoming an adult, a grown-up, adolescents need adults who model healthy sexuality and maturity. Overcoming some of the culture's shames and fears are necessary to being an elder.\n\nThey need to see and experience the adults in their lives feeling and thinking, which then supports and encourages young adults to feel and think for themselves. Because being ill informed about sex can have serious consequences, particular attention needs to be paid to it.\n\nSex hormones are fully activated as children reach adolescence. During teenage years, adolescents begin to assert their independence, and rightfully so. They insist on being autonomous and try in earnest to separate their identity from their parents and siblings. People in this age group tend not to want to hear anything about sex from their parents unless they've had an intimate relationship before the terrible teen years. The teen years are the time when adolescents are learning to grow their own internal mother and father, and it's when they craft and adjust their own moral compass. They need permission to explore their bodies and experiment with dress, hair color, piercings, and tattoos if they wish. They need to find out for themselves what their limits are. Ideally, its best if this can all happen in an environment of love and caring and open communication. Teens are interested in sex; it's a biologically encoded reality that they become more focused on as hormones begin the cascade of bodily changes, altering the geography of their bodies.\n\nThere is an interesting phenomenon that happens between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons during adolescence. When our preteens reach adolescence, the changes that take place inside and externally can be quite dramatic. For girls, it's not just the visible physical changes\u2014blossoming breasts and widening hips\u2014but the hormonal changes that begin the onset of the menstrual cycle and make them fertile and ready to bear children. Pheromones\u2014those chemicals released by the secreting individual that impact the behavior of the receiving individual\u2014are released into the air bringing a whole new element into the family dynamics. There is young and newly awakened sexual energy in the house. The young woman experiments with her cleavage: How much can she show without being sent to her room to change into something else. Literally, she is being asked to change into something more acceptable so that everyone feels more comfortable while the sexual part of her is repressed and denied a life.\n\nWhen this begins to happen and fathers and mothers have little or no information, relationship skills, or comfort with sexuality, they do the one thing they know, the one thing that damages the father\/daughter or mother\/son relationship\u2014and sadly causes damage in young adults coming into sexual power\u2014they shut down emotionally and create distance. The response that would be the most whole for everyone involved is for adults to grow up; work through their discomfort and lack of clarity about being sexual; understand and accept that their children are sexual beings; and start talking\u2014break the silence and stigma around sexuality and sex.\n\nChildren and teens are human beings, read: sexual beings. They have fantasies, desires, needs, and questions. They need to feel good in their bodies, accepted and supported in the changes they are going through. We all know how challenging a time it can be; let's not make it any more painful and confusing.\n\nHans Hofmann notes that \"[s]exuality is for the young a symbol of emancipation from family control and a foretaste of important, independent actions to come. Adolescent expectations about the creativity of sexuality are generally high and their criticisms of the failures of their elders are disarmingly perceptive.\" What else must be emphasized is the intimate relationship between sexuality and self-understanding. Young adults need to unify what they know of themselves as human beings, how they feel and think about themselves and the reality of being a sexual being. An understanding of the body and its role in expressing sexuality is so much more satisfying if there is self-acceptance, admiration of physical attributes and shame free. As Hofmann writes, \"Sex can never be successfully abstracted from earthly enjoyment of the fleshly nature of man.\"\n\nAdolescents want and need to know about safe sex, how to use a condom, the pros and cons of various forms of birth control, where to get birth control, how to love and care for themselves and their evolving bodies, and how to nurture the relationships they will be exploring. One of the most loving things you can do is to give them information on what to do in the event of rape or sexual assault, such as where to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.\n\nThey need to know and it's our job to give them accurate, up-to-date, honest, and truthful information. We cannot fairly expect them to take care of themselves, to act in their own best interests, to make informed choices, to advocate for themselves if we are withholding valuable information, information they must have. Research on teenage males published by the Urban Institute in 2000 suggests that although sex education has become almost universal, students are not receiving even general information early enough to fully protect themselves against unintended pregnancy and STDs.\n\nIf you are a parent depending on schools and teachers to provide your child with good and comprehensive sex education, you're fooling yourself and committing a grave disservice to your sons and daughters. Abstinence-only programs were originally instituted by the Clinton administration in 1996 as part of welfare reform; the Bush administration boosted these programs, which expired in June 2009. In March 2010, at the eleventh hour of the Health Reform Bill under the Obama administration, funding of abstinence-only programs was resurrected to the tune of $50 million dollars a year for five years. What's frightening is the definition of abstinence-only education, which states that it must teach that \"a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity\" and that \"sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful effects.\" This should more accurately be called, abstinence-only propaganda. \"Expected standard\"\u2014by whom?\n\nCurrent and extensive research pointing out that abstinence-only programs don't work. In fact, they fail miserably. For the first time in more than a decade, teen pregnancy rates rose 1 percent between 2005 and 2006 according to the Guttmacher Institute. It's nonpartisan and nonprofit, by the way. The rates rose again from 2006 to 2007. A congressionally mandated study conducted over nine years at a cost of almost $8 million concluded that these programs are not effective in stopping or even delaying teen sex and have no beneficial impact on young people's sexual behavior.\n\n _Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk\u2014real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious._\n\nJACK KEROUAC, _O N THE ROAD_\n\nThe earlier the foundation of self-esteem, self-worth, and a relationship of friendship that is created between you and your children, the easier the adolescent transition and all its inherent quandaries and milieu will be. They are human beings trying to find their way just as we did and still are. Regard them as thinking, intelligent beings, and they are likely to act as that. Regard them in ways that maintains their essential human dignity, whole and intact.\n\nLearning the art of negotiation and making and keeping agreements are essential to healthy relating. You'll have a very difficult time trying to get your teenagers to keep agreements if they see you breaking yours all over the place. Only make agreements you're able and willing to keep. If you find that you are unable to keep an agreement you've made, renegotiate as soon as possible. When negotiating, it's important to acknowledge the agreement, the other person's investment in the agreement, and any inconvenience renegotiating may have caused and then offer alternatives.\n\nIf you and your teen can talk about whatever either of you needs to talk about, transition through these years will be much easier on all of you.\n\nIt's never too late to begin an intimate relationship with your teen if you don't have one already. It does get more difficult with surly teenagers who have a dozen years of repressed rage accumulated. In some instances, it will take tremendous self-effacement on your part to repair any damage that's been done to the relationship. Rage, which is primarily directed at you (it always goes for the closest target), is a natural and healthy response in teens who find themselves in a family and a culture that governs by lies, deceit, power struggles, and lack of accountability while they are being admonished to be something different.\n\nI believe that parents and guardians need to be actively involved in what schools are teaching our children. Schools are businesses, and they don't always have the best interests of our children in mind. While many of us believe our children have a right to full disclosure when it comes to sex education, few of us have the emotional maturity to present the facts objectively. As long as parents, \"intellectuals,\" academia, religious leaders, and politicians are confused themselves about the facts and nature of sex, confusion will be passed on. The prevalence of sexual activity and interest in sex among children and young adults will always be part of life. Meanwhile, as they are kept in the middle of groups competing for power over morality, nothing gets done and people continue to be repressed by widespread ignorance and fear around sexuality.\n\n _By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor. Others have criticized and they have criticized themselves, into embarrassment. When the circus pulls in at five of a dark, cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by._\n\nRAY BRADBURY,  \n _Z EN IN THE ART OF WRITING_\n\nA 2004 study by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation (a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focusing on major health-care issues), and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found that only 7 percent of Americans say sex education should not be taught in schools. Among the remaining 93 percent, most parents seem to be generally content with whatever kind of sex education is taught by their local schools. However, there is disagreement about what kind of sex education should be taught. Fifteen percent of Americans believe abstinence from sexual intercourse should be the only thing taught with no information about how to obtain and use condoms or other forms of contraception. Forty-six percent believe that teaching \"abstinence-plus\" is the most appropriate approach. Abstinence-plus is an approach that considers that while some teens do not abstain from sexual intercourse, sex education should include information on condoms and contraceptives. Thirty-six percent believe that teaching abstinence is not the most important thing but that sex education should focus on teaching teens about responsible decision making regarding sex.\n\nUltimately, the decision school administrators make regarding what sort of sex education program will be taught in their school district is far too often motivated by the greenback. Federal funding is the vehicle that drives the sex education our children are getting in school.\n\nSex education in schools was historically initiated by health advocates to teach children how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, whereas abstinence-only education was entered into and pushed for by evangelical or born-again Christians (NPR\/Kaiser\/Kennedy School National Survey on Sex Education 2004) who believe it is morally wrong to engage in sexual relations before marriage. Seventy-eight percent of born-again or evangelical Christians believe that having sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have a detrimental affect on physical and psychological health.\n\nSex education in Sweden's education system is compulsory and has been since 1956. Sweden believes in open communication as a primary foundation for healthy sexual and marital relations. And they don't pretend that people aren't having sex, teenagers included. (Is the United States even operating in the same century?) \"Swedes generally view sexual intercourse as a natural and expected occurrence during teen years.\"\n\nThe curriculum starts out at age 6 with information on sperm, eggs, and anatomy. From age 12 on the curriculum focus leans toward disease prevention, contraception, sex positions, and same-sex relations. The curriculum is intended to reach all students before age 15, the age of consent. There is a moral dimension involved as well; sex within loving relationships, gender and sexual equality are encouraged.\n\nJuxtaposed to the increase in teen pregnancy in the United States in the apron strings of abstinence-only programs, Sweden's teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates are among the lowest in the world. Sweden's teenage birthrate is 7 in 1,000 compared to 49 per 1,000 in the United States. Among fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds, the cases of gonorrhea in the United States are nearly six hundred times as great on a per capita basis. Pierre-Andre Michaud, chief of the Multidisciplinary Unit for Adolescent Health at the University of Lausanne Hospital in Switzerland and a leading researcher in European teen sexuality, dismisses the idea\u2014widely held in the United States\u2014that sex constitutes risky behavior for teens. In an editorial in May 2006, _Journal of Adolescent Health,_ he wrote: \"In many European countries\u2014Switzerland in particular\u2014sexual intercourse, at least from the age of 15 or 16 years, is considered acceptable and even part of normative adolescent behavior.\" Switzerland has one of the world's lowest rates of abortion and teen pregnancy. Teens in Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands, have easy access to contraceptives, confidential health care and comprehensive sex education. In Sweden, teens have access to free medical care, free condoms and prescriptions for inexpensive oral contraceptives, and general advice at youth clinics\u2014all without parental consent.\n\n\"Abstinence,\" says Michaud, \"is not something the Swiss press on teens. We think it's unfair. It's useless. It's inefficient. We have been advocating the use of condoms . . . and I think that we tend to be successful.\" And Joan-Carles Suris, head of the research group on adolescent medicine at the University of Lausanne, says it this way: \"The main difference is that in the United States sexual activity is considered a risk. Here we consider it a pleasure.\"\n\nThe message of responsible sex education is not restricted to the schoolroom. Throughout Sweden's cities there are youth clinics that provide continued education on and availability to low-cost contraception. Teens are given tools and information, even encouragement and permission to decide for themselves when they are ready for sex and then (horror of horrors) left to behave responsibly.\n\nMuslims who have immigrated to Sweden in the years since the Iraqi war are prohibiting their children from attending the sex education classes. Between 2003 and 2007, Sweden granted full refugee status to 24,799 Iraqis compared to 260 in Britain. With the increase in Muslim parents invoking a decades-old provision designed to give parents the option of taking their children out of Christian instruction, the Swedish government is set to abolish that provision. Sweden has a reputation for being sexually liberal, and in 2008, the state-run pharmaceutical stores launched a line of sex toys aimed at women. The initiative was funded by tax dollars, and within a few days the products became the chain's bestsellers.\n\nFindings in a 2010 study done by the National Foundation for Educational Research in the UK (NFER) found a variety of approaches to sex education around the globe. Astonishingly, the United States isn't listed and if it were, it would be the most conservative and abusive approach on the planet. Norway begins sex education at age six and a few other countries like Finland and Japan delay it a few years, with most countries averaging sex and relationship education between ten and twelve years old. As students get older the curriculum becomes more sophisticated. In Finland, fifteen-year-olds receive an introductory sexual package including a condom.\n\nInterestingly, in the majority of countries parents do not have the right to withdraw their children from sex and relationship classes, though it is permitted in British Columbia and Singapore. Switzerland believes that sex education relies on the parents as well as institutions to \"combat myths.\" In France, sex education is \"one of the core social and civil competencies to be acquired in the course of mandatory education,\" in Victoria, sexuality education is seen as a \"whole-school learning approach,\" while in Hungary schools have \"an unavoidable duty to address the questions of sexual culture and behaviour.\"\n\nWhile schools extol critical thinking skills as part of the curriculum, it doesn't extend to sex education. Sex education that does exist in the United States primarily teaches abstinence only and sex values, it does not explore abstinence as an option, sexual activity as an option, values, relationships, intimacy, communication skills, the fluidity of human sexual responses, or sexual diversity and identity. Sex education is a top-down formula not community building, empowering, or pedagogical.\n\nChange will come when we begin to genuinely care about giving genuine, heart-felt information for the benefit and welfare of our children. It will come when we care about empowering them through the dissemination of factual and objective information that encourages the transformation of information into knowledge and then wisdom. It will come about when we give up our positions that have roots in fear, ignorance, and power struggles.\n_**Footnotes**_\n\n*1 Berne viewed human beings as psychological phenomena, but ego states are really ecological phenomena because human beings have evolved within an ecological context. Every species has built into it a system of multiple ego states. Every species on Earth has an interior world that is a multiple personality where specific ego states emerge at specific times. Take, for example, cats. Everyone knows that a kitten has distinctively different energy than an old cat. The terms _kitten_ and _cat_ have inherently different meanings. Tree saplings have a distinctly different energy than a 100-year-old Juniper or a 4,000-year-old bristlecone pine. Further, there is a decidedly different _feeling_ to the various ages of different species; how we relate to a kitten is very different from how we relate to an old cat, how we interact with a three-year-old girl is very different from how we relate to a ninety-year-old woman. When we see the parents of different species tending to their young, we instinctively understand the part of them (and the part of us) that nurtures.\n\n*2 As told to me by Stephen Harrod Buhner, who studied with K\u00fcbler-Ross. Her story of how she came to recognize the Hitler within is in _Quest: The Life of Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross_ by Derek Gil.\n\n*3 All male mammals, including humans, have rudimentary mammae, and the male nipple is nearly perfect in function. Prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production, is present in both men and women. Evolutionarily, it makes sense that both sexes be capable of providing nourishment to the young to ensure survival of the species. Darwin speculated that among early mammalian ancestors both sexes may have nursed the young, but that over time the mammae in male mammals evolved to be inactive. Today, male lactation is found in at least one species: In an article in the 1996 issue of _Compleat Mother,_ Patty Stuart Macadam of the University of Toronto states that male lactation \"is somewhat common in Dayak fruit bats, a rare species found in Malaysia.\" In a _Scientific American_ article (September 6, 2007), _\"_ Strange but True: Males Can Lactate,\" author Nikhil Swaminathan writes about several instances of human male lactation. For men to be able to produce milk, it takes strong desire coupled with nipple stimulation, with successful lactation happening usually within one to two weeks.\n\n*4 When I work with women with disordered eating there is always a starving Infant inside, one starved for soul food, love, intimacy, being wanted and needed.\n\n*5 In 1989, as a result of the NEA being embroiled in the controversy between \"freedom of expression\" and the right of taxpayers to determine the use of public funds, Congress mandated the Decency Standard (public law 101-512), which has devalued freedom of expression in society.\n\n*6 Note that there are also contrary studies that refute these findings.\n\n*7 This exercise is a modified version of the love\/hate\/admire list found on page 65 of _Ensouling Language_ by Stephen Harrod Buhner.\n_**Endnotes**_\n\nINTRODUCTION. IT STOPS WITH ME\n\n1. Hillman, _A Blue Fire,_ 266.\n\n2. Klein, _America's War on Sex,_ 23 and 89.\n\n3. Hanisch, \"The Personal Is Political.\"\n\n4. _Sex in the 90s,_ MTV news special, 1996.\n\n5. LaChapelle, _Sacred Land, Sacred Sex,_ 254.\n\n6. Escoffier, _Sexual Revolution,_ 176.\n\n7. Margulis and Sagan, _Dazzle Gradually,_ 121.\n\n8. Henry David Thoreau, _The Journal of Henry David Thoreau,_ vol. 6, 740. The full sentence from Thoreau's journal reads, \"This earth which is like a map spread out around me is but my inmost soul exposed.\"\n\n9. White, _Kiss of the Yogini,_ xiii.\n\n10. Kakar, _Shamans, Mystics and Doctors,_ 151.\n\n11. Feuerstein, _Sacred Sexuality,_ 210.\n\nCHAPTER 1. INTIMACY: FOOD THAT FEEDS THE SOUL OF LOVE\n\n1. Lerner, _The Dance of Intimacy,_ 3 _._\n\n2. Berne, _Games People Play,_ 182.\n\n3. Hofmann, _Sex Incorporated,_ 7.\n\nCHAPTER 2. AUTONOMOUS PERSONHOOD\n\n1. Perlman, _The Power of Trees,_ 2.\n\n2. Buhner, _The Natural Testosterone Plan,_ 22.\n\n3. Matthews and Matthews, _The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom,_ 299.\n\n4. Ibid.\n\n5. Frankl, _Man's Search for Meaning,_ 121.\n\n6. Ibid., 122.\n\n7. Krishnamurti, _The Awakening of Intelligence,_ 267.\n\n8. Rand, _For the New Intellectual,_ 124.\n\n9. Bly, _A Little Book on the Human Shadow,_ 18.\n\n10. Est\u00e9s, _Women Who Run with the Wolves,_ 51.\n\n11. Berne, _Sex in Human Loving,_ 139.\n\n12. Est\u00e9s, _Women Who Run with the Wolves,_ 342.\n\nCHAPTER 3. GETTING TO KNOW YOU\n\n1. Berne, _Intuition and Ego States,_ 123.\n\n2. Berne, _Games People Play,_ 27.\n\n3. Hollis, _The Middle Passage,_ 103.\n\n4. Bly, _A Little Book on the Human Shadow,_ 24.\n\n5. Frankl, _Man's Search for Meaning,_ 147.\n\n6. Hollis, _The Middle Passage,_ 104.\n\nCHAPTER 4. THE NUMINOUS\n\n1. Eliade, _The Sacred and the Profane,_ 14 _._\n\n2. Ibid., 24.\n\n3. Hamilton, _Mythology,_ 57.\n\n4. From www.gaianstudies.org.\n\n5. Otto, _The Idea of the Holy,_ xvi.\n\nCHAPTER 5. HUMAN BEINGS: THE GROUND WHERE THE GODS RESIDE\n\n1. Metzner, _Green Psychology,_ 98.\n\n2. Suzuki and Knudtson, _Wisdom of the Elders,_ 49.\n\n3. Weller, \"Reclaiming Our Indigenous Soul.\"\n\n4. Goldsmith, _The Way,_ 124.\n\n5. Suzuki, _The Sacred Balance,_ 276.\n\n6. Taylor, _The Prehistory of Sex,_ 9.\n\n7. Ibid., 142.\n\n8. Ibid., 11.\n\n9. Ibid., 187.\n\n10. Sheldrake, _The Rebirth of Nature,_ 59.\n\n11. Ibid., 60.\n\n12. Ryan and Jeth\u00e1, _Sex at Dawn,_ 13.\n\n13. Phillips, \"Am I a Spaceman?\"\n\n14. Wilhem Reich, lecture on somatic psychology at www.sonoma.edu\/us\u00aders\/d\/daniels\/reich.\n\n15. Moats, \"MHS Homecoming Dance Canceled.\"\n\n16. Klein, \"CraigsList, Sex Trafficking, & the Next Moral Panic.\"\n\n17. Sobel, \"Beyond Ecophobia.\"\n\n18. Davis, _The Father of Waters,_ 87.\n\n19. Ibid.\n\n20. Ibid.\n\n21. Mander, _In the Absence of the Sacred,_ 187.\n\n22. MacFarlane, _The Wild Places,_ 30.\n\n23. Ibid.\n\n24. Ibid.\n\n25. Abrams, _Becoming Animal,_ 134.\n\n26. Griffiths, _Wild,_ 2.\n\n27. Sheldrake, _The Rebirth of Nature,_ 10.\n\n28. Bell, \"Haitians Challenge Monsanto's Influence.\"\n\n29. Stock, \"Manifest Haiti: Monsanto's Destiny.\"\n\n30. Perlman, _The Power of Trees,_ 12.\n\nCHAPTER 6. FINDING THE WILD\n\n1. Hillman, _The Soul's Code,_ 13.\n\n2. Wilson, _Biophilia,_ 65\u201366.\n\n3. Earnheart, Richard, \"About the Artist,\" at www.richardearnhea\u00adrt.com\/aboutheartist\/htm.\n\n4. For more information on the M\u00fcller-Lyer arrows see \"94 Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions by Michael Bach\" at www.michaelbach.de\/ot\/. Click on the link for the M\u00fcller-Lyer Illusion.\n\n5. Philip L Kilbride and H. W. Leibowitz, \"The Ponzo Illusion among the Baganda of Uganda.\"\n\n6. Nicolson, _Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory,_ 1.\n\n7. Krishnamurti, _The Awakening of Intelligence,_ 268.\n\n8. Keleman, _The Human Ground,_ 31.\n\n9. Griffiths, _Wild,_ 48.\n\n10. Hillman, _A Blue Fire,_ 9.\n\n11. Leopold, _A Sand County Almanac,_ 138.\n\n12. Seed, \"Think Like a Mountain.\"\n\n13. Ferry, \"Keepers of the World.\"\n\n14. For more on Plato's worldview see the Indiana University webpage on Human Intelligence atwww.indian\u00ada.edu\/~intell\/plato.shtml.\n\n15. Feuerstein, _Sacred Sexuality,_ 207.\n\n16. Keeney, _The Bushman Way of Tracking God,_ 215.\n\n17. Ibid., 215.\n\n18. Ibid., 249.\n\n19. Keleman, _The Human Ground,_ 35.\n\n20. Keleman, _Your Body Speaks its Mind,_ 58.\n\n21. Mander, _In the Absence of the Sacred,_ 85.\n\n22. Ibid., 86.\n\n23. Montagne, \"Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: The Voice of Hawaii.\"\n\n24. Abram, _Spell of the Sensuous,_ 172.\n\n25. Margulis and Sagan, _Dazzle Gradually,_ 181.\n\nCHAPTER 7. CHOOSING ANOTHER WAY\n\n1. Malone and Malone, _The Art of Intimacy,_ 260.\n\n2. Johnson, _The Spiritual Practices of Rumi,_ 140.\n\n3. Hillman, _City and Soul,_ 37.\n\n4. Buhner, _The Secret Teachings of Plants,_ 86.\n\n5. Perlman, _The Power of Trees,_ 24.\n\n6. Blake, \"The Marriage of Heaven and Earth,\" 38.\n\n7. Metzner, _Green Psychology,_ 108.\n\n8. Dehiia, _Chola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India._\n\n9. Dalrymple, \"India: The Place of Sex,\" 33.\n\n10. Riley, \"Victorian Sex Rebels and Atheists.\"\n\nCHAPTER 8. THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE\n\n1. Hillman, _The Soul's Code,_ 146.\n\n2. From www.anthropin\u00ade.eu\/Anthropine\/Med\u00adia\/praesentation\/an\u00adthropine_english.\n\n3. Wilhelm Reich, lecture on somatic psychology at www.sonoma.edu\/u\u00adsers\/d\/daniels\/r\u00adeich.\n\nCHAPTER 9. SACRED SEX\n\n1. Schachter-Shalomi and Eve Ilsen, \"Sacred Sex.\"\n\n2. Johnson, _Rumi's Four Essential Practices,_ 117.\n\n3. Roach, _Bonk_.\n\n4. Keeney, _The Bushman Way of Tracking God,_ 80.\n\n5. Otto, _The Idea of the Holy,_ 42.\n\n6. Halifax, _The Fruitful Darkness,_ 18.\n\nCHAPTER 10. THE DANCE OF TRUST\n\n1. Hillman, _A Blue Fire,_ 277.\n\n2. Hofmann, _Sex Incorporated,_ 13.\n\n3. Hillman, _The Myth of Analysis_ , 92.\n\n4. Jack Morin, _The Erotic Mind,_ 293.\n\n5. Klein, _Your Sexual Secrets,_ 48.\n\nCHAPTER 11. HEALING SHAME\n\n1. Brown, _I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't),_ 30.\n\n2. Nietzsche, from www.brainyquot\u00ade.com\/quotes\/author\u00ads\/f\/friedrich_n\u00adietzsche_10.html.\n\n3. Keleman, _The Human Ground_ , 53.\n\nCHAPTER 12. FREEING OURSELVES FROM SEXUAL TYRANNY\n\n1. Berne, _Sex in Human Loving_ , 1.\n\n2. Phoenix, _A Woman Whose Calling Is Men,_ book 2, 27\u201328.\n\n3. \"Coins of Ancient Rome,\" www.dengedeng\u00ade.com\/2010\/02\/coins-of-a\u00adncient-rome.\n\n4. Adams, \"Pay for Play.\"\n\n5. \"The Sex Cult of Venus,\" http:\/\/heritag\u00ade-key.com\/rome\/sex-c\u00adult-venus.\n\n6. Diamant, _The Red Tent,_ 158.\n\n7. Mantegazza, _The Sexual Relations of Mankind,_ 272\u201373.\n\n8. Ibid., 270.\n\n9. Seltzer, \"Bishops Are Behind the 'Let Women Die' Act.\"\n\n10. Baker, \"The Deep Ecology of the Family.\"\n\n11. Buhner, _Ensouling Language,_ 271.\n\n12. Miller, _Henry Miller on Writing,_ 175.\n\n13. \"Obscene, Obscenity,\" The 'Lectric Law Library, www.lectla\u00adw.com\/def2\/o\u00ad002.htm.\n\n14. Heins, _Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy,_ 17.\n\n15. From http:\/\/ourporno\u00adurselves.org\/about.\n\n16. Ibid.\n\n17. From www.pornharms.com.\n\n18. From http:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2\u00ad004\/11\/29\/sexual\/r\u00adevolution.\n\n19. Cheesman, \"6 Ways That Porn Runs the World.\"\n\n20. Robinson and Wilson, \"Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction Is a Growing Problem.\"\n\n21. Shroeder, _Challenge to Sex Censors,_ 31. Quoting an anonymous clergyman a century ago.\n\n22. From http:\/\/abacus.ba\u00adtes.edu\/admin\/off\u00adices\/scs\/salt7.html.\n\n23. From www.huffingto\u00adnpost.com\/rep-jane-ha\u00adrman\/finally-some-progres\u00ads-in_b_125504.html.\n\n24. From www.va.gov.\n\n25. From www.orlandosen\u00adtinel.com\/news\/local\/or\u00adl-blogs,0,2664973.htmlpage.\n\n26. Pendell, _Inspired Madness,_ 69.\n\n27. Cohn, \"Did SEC Staffer Surf Porn?\"\n\nCHAPTER 13. HEALING THE HUMAN SOUL\n\n1. Gandhi, _An Autobiography_.\n\n2. Ibid, xvii.\n\n3. From www.mosaicvoices.org.\n\n4. Tompkins and Bird, _The Secret Life of Plants,_ 107.\n\n5. Taylor, _The Prehistory of Sex,_ 60\u201361.\n\n6. Bellows, \"The Birth Control of Yesteryear.\"\n\n7. Engel, _Wild Health,_ 178.\n\n8. Tompkins and Bird, _The Secret Life of Plants,_ 121.\n\n9. Ibid., 134.\n\n10. Ibid., 137.\n\n11. Ibid., 142.\n\n12. Dobb, \"New Life in a Death Trap.\"\n\nEPILOGUE\n\n1. Dale Pendell, interview with Emily Green, _Los Angeles Times,_ 19 October 2003. From http:\/\/quantumtant\u00adra.com\/pendell\/html.\n\n2. Bowden, _Blood Orchid,_ 138, 140.\n\n3. Fuller, _Critical Path,_ xi\n\n4. Fuller, from www.muzz.com\/Buck\u00adminster_Fuller.aspx.\n\n5. Krishnamurti, _Think on These Things,_ 14.\n\n6. Jong, _Sappho's Leap,_ 88.\n\n7. Reeves, _The Character of Leadership,_ 119.\n\n8. Berne, _Games People Play,_ 184.\n\nAPPENDIX. TALKING TO CHILDREN AND TEENS ABOUT SEX\n\n1. Paterson, _Tree Wisdom,_ 279.\n\n2. Sheldrake, _The Presence of the Past,_ 71.\n\n3. From http:\/\/blogs.alte\u00adrnet.org\/speakeasy\/2010\/10\/20\/d\u00adr-jocelyn-elders-ma\u00adrijuana-masturbation-a\u00adnd-medicine.\n\n4. Hillman, _A Blue Fire,_ 98.\n\n5. Calderone and Ramey, _Talking with Your Child about Sex,_ 5.\n\n6. Klein, \"'Catching' Your Kid Playing Doctor.\"\n\n7. Carroll, \"Growing Up Too Soon? Puberty Strikes 7-year-old Girls.\"\n\n8. From www.niehs.hi\u00adh.gov\/research\/supporte\u00add\/sep\/2010\/prenatal.\n\n9. Hofmann, _Sex Incorporated,_ 6.\n\n10. Ibid., 11.\n\n11. See www.advocatesfo\u00adryouth.org\/publicati\u00adons\/429?task=view.\n\n12. For information on sexual and reproductive health, policy analysis, and public education, see www.guttmacher.org\n\n13. From www.kff.org\/news\u00admedia\/upload\/Sex-Educatio\u00adn-in-America-Summary.pdf. See also www.npr.org\/template\u00ads\/story\/story.php?storyI\u00add=1622610.\n\n14. Ibid.\n\n15. Reiss, _The End to Shame,_ 62.\n\n16. Grose, \"Straight Facts about the Birds and Bees.\"\n\n17. Agnvall, \"Is Teen Sex Bad?\"\n\n18. Ibid.\n\n19. Ibid.\n\n20. Grose, \"Straight Facts about the Birds and Bees.\"\n\n21. Vaughan, \"Swedish Muslims and Strawberry Condoms.\"\n\n22. Stockholm Newsroom, \"Swedes Convince Their State Shops to Sell Sex Toys.\"\n\n23. Oscarsson, \"Coming Home from School with Strawberry Condoms.\"\n\n24. From www.nfer.ac.uk.\n**_Bibliography and Recommended Reading_**\n\nAbram, David. _Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology_. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010.\n\n______. _The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World._ New York: Random House, 1996.\n\nAdams, Cecil. \"Pay for Play: Did the Romans Issue Sexually Depictive Tokens for Use in Foreign Brothels?\" _The Straight Dope,_ 18 January 2008. www.straightdop\u00ade.com\/columns\/read\/23\u00ad55\/pay-for-play.\n\nAgnvall, Elizabeth. \"Is Teen Sex Bad? Americans and Western Europeans Don't Agree on What's Normal and Acceptable But Many Health Experts Do.\" Special to _The Washington Post,_ Tuesday, 16 May 2006.\n\nAgustin, Laura Maria. _Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour, Markets and the Rescue Industry_. London: Zed Books, 2007.\n\nAnand, Margo. _The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers_. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher\/Putnam, 1989.\n\nBaker, Jeannine Parvati. \"The Deep Ecology of the Family.\" _Wise Woman Herbal Ezine,_ January 2006. www.susunweed.com\/h\u00aderbal_ezine\/January06\/ch\u00adildbearing.htm.\n\nBarks, Coleman. _The Essential Rumi._ New York: HarperCollins, 1995.\n\nBartholomew, Alick. _Hidden Nature: The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger._ Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2005.\n\nBateson, Gregory. _A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind._ Edited by Rodney E. Donaldson. New York: Cornelia & Michael Bessie Books, 1991.\n\nBell, Beverly. \"Haitians Challenge Monsanto's Influence.\" _Truthout,_ 30 June 2011. www.truth-ou\u00adt.org\/haitians-challe\u00adnge-monsantos-influe\u00adnce\/1309446649.\n\nBellows, Alan. \"The Birth Control of Yesteryear.\" _Damn Interesting,_ 21 May 2007. www.damninteres\u00adting.com\/the-birth-contro\u00adl-of-yesteryear.\n\nBerne, Eric. _Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis._ New York: Grove Press, 1964.\n\n______. _Intuition and Ego States: The Origins of Transactional Analysis: A Series of Papers._ San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977.\n\n______. _Sex in Human Loving._ New York: Pocket Books, 1971.\n\nBlake, William. _Blake: A Collection of Critical Essays._ Edited by Northrop Frye _._ Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966.\n\n______. _The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake_. Edited by David V. Erdman. Commentary by Harold Bloom. New York: Anchor Books, 1988.\n\n______. _Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul_. New York: The Orion Press, 1967.\n\nBly, Robert. _A Little Book on the Human Shadow._ San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1988.\n\n______. _Morning Poems._ New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.\n\n______. _Seven Sources of Shame._ East Montpelier, Vt.: Heaven and Earth, 1989.\n\n______. _Loving a Woman in Two Worlds._ New York: Dial Press, 1985.\n\nBowden, Charles. _Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America_. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.\n\n _\u2014\u2014\u2014. Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground_. 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Buckminster. _Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth._ New York: Simon and Schuster, University of Illinois Press, 1969.\n\n______. _Critical Path,_ 2nd ed _._ New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1982.\n\nGandhi, Mohandas K. _Gandhi: An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth._ Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.\n\nGil, Derek. _Quest: The Life of Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross._ New York: Harper & Row, 1980.\n\nGoldsmith, Edward. _The Way: An Ecological World-View._ Totnes, Devon, UK: Themis Books, 1996.\n\nGreenwald, Jerry A. _Creative Intimacy: How to Break the Patterns That Poison Your Relationships._ New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.\n\nGriffiths, Jay. _Wild: An Elemental Journey._ New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher\/Penguin, 2006.\n\nGrose, Thomas K. \"Straight Facts about the Birds and Bees.\" _U.S. News & World Report,_ 18 March 2007. www.usne\u00adws.com\/usnews\/news\/art\u00adicles\/070318\/26sex.htm.\n\nHalifax, Joan. _The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting with the Body of the Earth_. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.\n\nHamilton, Edith. _Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes._ Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942.\n\nHanisch, Carol. \"The Personal Is Political.\" In _Feminist Revolution,_ eds. Redstockings. New York: Random House, 1979. (Carol Hanisch's essay is dated March 1969, in this collection of feminist essays.)\n\nHarris, Robbie H., and Michael Emberley. _It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing up, Sex and Sexual Health._ Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press.\n\nHerzog, Dagmar. _Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics_. 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Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1990.\n\nRiley, Cole. \"Victorian Sex Rebels and Atheists: How Brave Artists Shook Up Prudish Mores.\" _SeXis Magazine,_ February 16, 2011. www.alterne\u00adt.org\/story\/149913\/victoria\u00adn_sex_rebels_an\u00add_atheists.\n\nRoach, Mary. _Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex_. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.\n\nRoark, Loralee, and Carol Normandy. _It's Not about Food._ New York: Perigee, 1998.\n\nRobinson, Marnia, and Gary Wilson. \"Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction Is a Growing Problem.\" _Psychology Today_ (July 11, 2011).\n\nRoszak, Theodore, Mary E. Gomes, and Allend D. Kanner. _Ecopsychology._ San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995.\n\nRossellini, Isabella. _Green Porno._ New York: HarperCollins, 2009.\n\nRoth, Geneen. _When Food Is Love_. New York: Plume, 1992.\n\nRyan, Christopher, and Cacilda Jeth\u00e1. _Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality._ New York: HarperCollins, 2010.\n\nSatir, Virginia. _Peoplemaking._ Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1972.\n\nSchachter-Shalomi, Zalman, and Eve Ilsen. \"Sacred Sex.\" _YES!_ (October 20, 1997). www.yesmagazin\u00ade.org\/issues\/sustainabl\u00ade-sex\/sacred-sex.\n\nSchenk, Roy U., and John Everingham, eds. _Men Healing Shame: An Anthology._ New York: Springer Publishing, 1995.\n\nSeale, Alan. _Intuitive Living: A Sacred Path._ York Beach, Maine: Weiser Books, 1997.\n\nSears, James T., ed. _Sexuality and the Curriculum: The Politics and Practices of Sexuality Education._ New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1992.\n\nSeed, John. \"Think Like a Mountain.\" _Yoga Journal: The Magazine for Conscious Living_ (March\/April 1986): 76.\n\nSeltzer, Sarah. \"Bishops Are Behind the 'Let Women Die' Act and the Push Against Birth Control\u2014Even as They're Under Fire for Sex Abuse Scandals.\" _AlterNet_ , October 17, 2011. www.alternet.org\/s\u00adtory\/152765.\n\nSheldrake, Rupert. _The Presence of the Past._ Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1995.\n\n______. _The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God_. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.\n\nShroeder, Theodore. _A Challenge to Sex Censors._ Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2003.\n\nSlovik, Scott. _Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez_. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992.\n\nSobel, David. \"Beyond Ecophobia.\" _Yes!_ , November 2, 1998. www.yesmagazi\u00adne.org\/issues\/ed\u00aducation-for-life\/803.\n\nSteinsaltz, Adin. \"Sex is a Meaningful Deed.\" _Parabola_ 32, no. 2, Spiritual Teachings on Sex (Summer 2007).\n\nStock, Ryan. \"Manifest Haiti: Monsanto's Destiny.\" Truthout, January 21, 2011. www.truth-out.org.\n\nStockholm Newsroom. \"Swedes Convince Their State Shops to Sell Sex Toys.\" Reuters, March 7, 2008. www.reuters.com\/a\u00adrticle\/2008\/03\/07\/us-s\u00adweden-sex-shops-idUSL078\u00ad2566120080307.\n\nSundahl, Deborah. _Female Ejaculation & the G-Spot: Not Your Mother's Orgasm Book!_ Forewords by Alice Ladas and Annie Sprinkle. Alameda, Calif.: Hunter House Publishers, 2003.\n\nSuzuki, David. _The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature_. With Amanda McConnell. Vancouver, B.C. Canada: Greystone Books, 2007.\n\nSuzuki, David, and Peter Knudtson. _Wisdom of the Elders: Honoring Sacred Native Visions of Nature_. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.\n\nTaylor, G. Rattray. _Sex in History: The Story of Society's Changing Attitudes in Sex Throughout the Ages._ New York: Vanguard Press, 1970.\n\nTaylor, Timothy. _The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture_. New York: Bantam, 1997.\n\nThoreau, Henry David. \"Walking.\" _Works of Henry David Thoreau._ Edited by Lily Owens. New York: Avenel, 1981.\n\nTompkins, Peter, and Christopher Bird. _The Secret Life of Plants._ New York: Harper & Row, 1973.\n\nVaughan, Hal. \"Swedish Muslims and Strawberry Condoms.\" The Hal Blog, 29 June 2009. http:\/\/halmasonber\u00adg.wordpress.com\/tag\/iraqis.\n\nWeller, Francis. \"Reclaiming Our Indigenous Soul.\" _Sacred Fire Magazine: The Heart of the Living World_ 13 (2011): 32.\n\nWhite, David Gordon. _Kiss of the Yogini: \"Tantric Sex\" in its South Asian Contexts._ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.\n\nWilson, Edward O. _Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species._ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.\n\n **WEBSITES**\n\nCenter for Sexual Pleasure and Health. <http:\/\/thecsph.org>\n\nDamn Interesting. www.damninteresting.com\n\nExaminer.com: National Sex & Relationships. www.examine\u00adr.com\/sex-and-relati\u00adonships-in-national?=1\n\nThe Foundation for Gaian Studies: www.gaianstudies.org\n\nGay History & Literature: Essays by Rictor Norton. <http:\/\/rictornorton.co.uk>\n\nGuttmacher Institute. www.guttmacher.org\n\nHeritage Key, a website about ancient history. <http:\/\/heritage-key.com>\n\nIndiana University, series on human intelligence. www.indiana.edu\/~i\u00adntell\/plato.shtml\n\n _Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine_. www.jultrasoundmed.org\n\nKaiser Family Foundation. www.kff.org\n\nThe 'Lectric Law Library. www.lectlaw.com\/d\u00adef2\/o002.htm\n\nLive Strong. www.livestrong.com\n\nMen Stuff: The National Men's Resource. www.menstuff.org\n\nMiss Maggie Mayhem. <http:\/\/missmaggiemayhem.com>\n\nNational Foundation for Educational Research. www.nfer.ac.uk\n\nNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. _www.niehs.nih.gov_\n\n94 Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions by Michael Bach. www.michaelbach.de\/ot\/\n\nOur Porn, Ourselves. www.ourpornourselves.org\n\nRichard Earnheart, artist's website. www.richardea\u00adrnheart.com\/abouth\u00adeartist\/htm\n\n _Scientific American._ www.scientifica\u00admerican.com\/articl\u00ade.cfm?id=strange-but-tr\u00adue-males-can-lactate&pr\n\n _Sexual Intelligence._ www.sexualint\u00adelligence.org\n\nSexuality & Modernity. www.isis.aus\u00adt.com\/stephan\/writin\u00adgs\/sexuality\/vict.htm\n\n _Susie Bright's Journal._ www.susiebright.com\n\nThe Straight Dope. www.straightdope.com\n\nTruthout. www.truth-out.org\n\nThe University at Texas, Digital Writing & Research Lab. www.cwrl.utexas.edu\n\nWilhem Reich's somatic psychology lecture on Victor Daniels's website in the psychology department at Sonoma State University. www.sonoma.edu\/u\u00adsers\/d\/daniels\/reich\n\n _Yes!_ magazine. www.yesmagazine.org\n_**Index**_\n\nAborgines, 144\u201345, 200  \nAbram, David, 111, 144\u201345  \n _Absence of the Sacred, The_ , 107  \nabstinence, 6, 304\u20135, 307  \nabuse, 23  \naccidents, 41  \nactivism, need for, 4  \nadapted Child, 56\u201357  \nadapted Predator, 57\u201359  \naddiction, 257\u201359, 263  \nAdjani, Isabelle, 217  \nadolescents, 302\u20139  \nAdult, 55\u201357, 61\u201362  \nAesthetes, 167\u201368  \naggression, 128  \nalienation, 100\u2013101  \naloneness, romance of, 22  \nanam, 39  \nancestors, 273\u201374  \nanger, 57  \nanimals, 279\u201380, 281, 282\u201383  \nanimism, 38, 84\u201385, 93\u201394, 158\u201359  \nAnthony, Susan B., 255\u201356  \nanthropocentrism, 145\u201346  \nAphrodite, 114  \nApple, Fiona, 217  \naromatherapy, 11  \nassholes, 59  \nAugustine, Saint, 247  \nauthentic self, 27\u201329  \nauthorship, 269, 277\u201378  \nautonomous personhood, 34\u201353, 274  \nfilling long bag and, 45\u201347  \nknowing self and, 42\u201345  \nmeaning of soul and, 36\u201342  \nold scripts and, 47\u201349  \nsoul retrieval and, 49\u201353  \nawareness, 51, 52\u201353  \nawe, 191, 249\u201350\n\nBageant, Joe, 284  \nBaker, Jeannine Parvati, 249  \nBaldur, 281  \nBaldwin, James, 288\u201389  \nbarefeet, 132\u201333, 160  \nBarry, William Francis, 247\u201348  \nBarrymore, Ethel, 271  \nBasho, 85  \nBateson, Gregory, 11  \nbawdiness, 288\u201389  \nbeauty, 179, 236, 289  \n _Becoming Animal_ , 111  \nbees, 279\u201380  \nbeginnings, 64\u201365  \nBerne, Eric, 30, 47, 54, 73, 213, 290  \nBerry, Wendell, 91  \nbetrayal, 210\u201314  \nbiocoenosis, 109  \nBird, Christopher, 279, 281  \nbirds, 282\u201383  \nbirth control, 280\u201381  \nBlake, William, 159  \nbloomers, 256  \n _Blue Fire_ , A, 129, 219  \nBly, Robert, 45\u201346, 55, 150, 198\u201399, 213\u201314  \nbody  \nlies and, 137\u201338  \nmeditation for, 236  \nsensing of, 138\u201346, 153\u201357  \nbody armoring, 128, 181, 190  \nbodywork, 235  \nbonobos, 8  \nBowden, Charles, 16, 264, 285\u201386  \nBradbury, Ray, 286, 306  \nBrand, Russell, 213  \nbreastfeeding, 66\u201367, 280, 295  \nBrown, Bren\u00e9, 231  \nBrown, Hannah R., 247\u201348  \nBrowning, Elizabeth Barrett, 228  \nBuddhism, 86  \nBuhner, Stephen Harrod, 98\u201399, 153, 169\u201370, 251\u201352  \nBursche, Aleksander, 244  \nBurton, Richard, 167  \nBushmen, 134, 200\n\nCampbell, Joseph, 34  \ncamping, 122\u201323  \nCannibal Club, 167\u201368  \nCapra, Fritjof, 160  \nCarson, Rachel, 113  \nCarver, George Washington, 281\u201382  \ncathected, 56  \ncelibacy, 134  \nCelts, 39  \nceremonies, 92\u201393  \ncervix, 280  \nChallenge to Sex Censors, 258  \nchange, 34\u201335  \nChild, 55\u201357, 63\u201365, 73\u201376  \nrelationships and, 149\u201350  \nshame and, 233\u201334  \ntrust and, 212\u201313, 224  \nchildren, 5\u20136, 102\u20135, 140  \nfilling long bag and, 45\u201347  \ntalking about sex with, 292\u2013309  \nChristianity, 134\u201335, 145  \ncoich anama, 39  \ncommitment, 270\u201371  \nconsciousness, 43\u201344, 52\u201353, 72  \nCouncil, 68\u201370  \ncourage, 269  \ncra'bhadh, 39  \nCraigslist, 103  \ncreideamh, 39  \ncriticism, 47\u201349  \ncross transactions, 76\u201378  \ncuriosity, 46\n\ndaily life, 80  \ndaimons, 116\u201317  \n _Dance of Intimacy, The_ , 21  \ndarkness, 45  \nDavis, Bruce, 202  \n _Dazzle Gradually_ , 10\u201311, 145\u201346  \ndeath, 112\u201314  \nDeep Ecology, 11\u201312, 146  \ndefensiveness, 27  \nDepth Readings, 237\u201340  \nDepth Seeing, 192\u201394  \ndevotion, 270  \nDickens, Charles, 39  \nDickinson, Emily, 38  \nDionysus, 83\u201384, 284\u201385  \ndisease, 112\u201314, 128  \ndistance, 190\u201392  \ndivorce, 258, 287  \ndopamine, 257  \nDouglass, Frederick, 255\u201356, 291  \n\"Do You Recognize Me Now?\" 187\u201389  \ndrugs, 120\u201321  \nducks, 280  \n _Dune_ , 285\n\nEarnheart, Richard, 118  \nEarth, 11\u201312, 108\u20139, 145\u201346, 150\u201352, 160. _See also_ Nature  \nEckhart, Meister, 152  \necosexuality, 279\u201383  \nego states, 54\u201355, 62, 204\u20137  \nEgypt, 245  \nEinstein, Albert, 161  \nElders, Jocelyn, 293\u201394  \nelectronics, 123\u201324, 140\u201342  \nEliade, Mircea, 80\u201381  \nEmerson, Ralph Waldo, 123  \nemptiness, 119  \nenergy fields, 153\u201357  \n _Ensouling Language_ , 251\u201352  \nerectile dysfunction, 257\u201358  \nEros, 31\u201332, 39, 129  \nEscoffier, Jeffrey, 9  \nEst\u00e9s, Clarissa Pinkola, 46, 48  \nexercises  \nDepth Reading on a Stranger, 237\u201338  \nDepth Seeing, 192\u201394  \nExpanding the Heart Field, 154\u201357  \nExpanding the Heart Field with Your Lover, 164\u201365  \nExploring Who You Are, 278\u201379  \nFollowing a Feeling to Its Source, 214\u201315  \nHeart Field Practice, 162\u201364  \nIdentifying Shame, 232\u201333  \nSacred Sex, 194\u201397  \n_See also_ meditations  \nExpanding the Heart Field, 154\u201357  \nExploring Who You Are, 278\u201379  \nexpression, 32  \nextremes, 260\u201361  \neye contact, 216, 223\u201324\n\nFacebook, 103, 141, 255  \nfantasies, 223  \nfarming, 97, 101  \nfears, 5, 9  \nFechner, Gustav Theodor, 281  \nfeelings, body and, 137\u201346  \nfeminism, 247\u201348, 254\u201355  \nFeminists Against Pornography, 254\u201355  \nFerrini, Paul, 33, 34, 187\u201389, 202\u20133  \nFeuerstein, Georg, 12, 134, 201\u20132  \nfights, 148\u201349, 212  \nfish, 106\u20137, 282\u201383  \nFishburn, Geoffrey, 244  \nFollowing a Feeling to Its Source, 214\u201315  \nFourier, Charles, 248  \nFrankl, Viktor, 40  \nFranklin, Miles, 217  \nfreedom, 30, 211, 267\u201368  \nfree love, 247  \nFromm, Erich, 49, 117  \nFruitful Darkness, The, 201  \nfuck and fucking, 74, 98  \nFuller, Buckminster, 68, 286\n\nGaia, 8\u20139, 108\u20139, 145\u201346, 150\u201352, 160. _See also_ Nature  \nGaiacentrism, 145  \n _Games People Play_ , 76  \nGandhi, Mohandas K., 50, 61, 265  \nGenesis, Book of, 135  \ngenitals  \nof plants, 279  \nwords for, 182, 294  \ngenius, 265\u201366  \nGeorge, Dan, 94  \ngifts, 216  \nGila Wilderness, 94  \nGod, 135, 137, 167, 200  \nGoethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 41, 50\u201351, 224, 289\u201390  \nGoldsmith, Edward, 95  \ngrace, 269  \nGraham, Barbara, 144  \nGreene, Graham, 217  \n _Green Porno_ , 260  \n _Green Psychology_ , 93  \nGreenwald, Jerry, 46  \nGregory, Dick, 225  \ngrief, 59, 272\u201373  \nGriffiths, Jay, 111, 129  \nguilt, 7\n\nHaitian farmers, 113  \nHalifax, Joan, 201  \nHamilton, Edith, 83\u201384  \nHanisch, Carol, 4  \nhappiness, 40, 289\u201390  \nhealing, 10\u201312, 150\u201352  \nheart, 27, 153\u201357  \nHeart Field Practice, 162\u201366  \nHerbert, Frank, 49, 105, 285  \n _High Country News_ , 282  \nHillel, Daniel, 135, 290  \nHillman, James, 116, 129, 153, 172\u201373, 212, 219, 294  \nHippocrates, 280  \nHofmann, Hans, 32, 219, 303\u20134  \nHoliday, Billie, 7  \nHollis, James, 55  \nHopi, 285  \n _Huffington Post_ , 258  \nhuman beings, 90\u2013101  \nbecoming whole, 108\u20139  \nchildren, 102\u20135  \ncounsel with Star People, 93\u201395  \ndisconnection from Nature, 104  \nseparation and, 96\u2013101  \n_See also_ soul  \nhumility, 125, 229  \nhunter-gatherer cultures, 96\u201397, 98, 161  \nHuxley, Aldous, 65  \nhybrid seeds, 113\n\n\"I,\" 42\u201345  \nIdentifying Shame, 232\u201333  \nIllinois River, 106  \nimagination, 34\u201335  \nInfant, 66\u201367  \ninjunctions, 218\u201319  \nInnana, 246  \ninner child, 27\u201328, 151  \ninspiration, 27  \nintegrity, 149\u201350  \nintelligence, 265\u201366  \ninternal work, 27, 61\u201364  \ninternet, 256  \ninterpersonal interactions, 54  \ninterworld, 157\u201362  \nintimacy, 5, 16\u201332  \nauthentic self and, 27\u201329, 274  \nChild-to-Child and, 73\u201376  \ndefinitions of, 21, 35  \nhunger for, 12  \nlearning to hide, 23\u201327  \nlove and, 20\u201322  \nluminous world of, 19\u201320  \nsecrets and, 219\u201321  \nwith self, 35, 52\u201353  \nyearning for connection, 16\u201317  \n_See also_ relationships  \nintimus, 27\u201328, 35  \nintuition, 46\u201347, 130, 132  \nInuit, 93\u201395  \ninvisibility, 22, 23\u201327  \nirritation, 138\n\nJager, Gustav, 176  \nJames, William, 115  \nJapan, 245  \njealousy, 59  \nJefferson, Thomas, 106  \nJeffries, Richard, 115  \nJeth\u00e1, Cacilda, 101  \nJohnson, Will, 192  \nJong, Erica, 33, 287, 290  \nJordon, June, 5, 251, 253  \njoy, 40, 48  \nJung, Carl, 45, 64, 105, 138\n\nKakar, Sudhir, 11  \nKamakawiwo'ole, Israel, 144  \nKama Sutra, 167  \nKeeney, Bradford, 115, 134, 137, 200, 201  \nKeleman, Stanley, 128\u201329, 137, 140, 235  \nKerouac, Jack, 305  \nKilbride, Philip L., 123  \nKinsey, Alfred, 256  \n _Kiss of the Yogini,_ 11  \nKlein, Marty, 103, 183, 222, 295  \nKnudtson, David, 93\u201394  \nKorenman, Stanley, 297\u201398  \nKrishnamurti, J., 43, 128, 147, 287  \nK\u00fcbler-Ross, Elisabeth, 50, 57\n\nLai, Hsi, 118  \nlanguage, 144\u201345  \nlaughter, 48, 271  \nLawrence, D. H., 9, 90\u201391, 96, 133, 140, 252  \nLeivowitz, H. W., 124  \nLeopold, Aldo, 11\u201312, 90, 106, 130\u201331  \nLerner, Harriet Goldhor, 21  \nletting go, 180\u201383  \nLevine, Stephen, 275, 283  \nliberation, sexual, 247\u201350, 288\u201390  \nlies and lying, 137\u201338, 270, 293  \nlife  \ncoming alive, 128\u201333  \ncreating, 34\u201335  \nmeaning and, 39\u201340  \n_See also_ human beings  \n _Little Book on the Human Shadow, A_ , 45\u201346, 55  \nlong bag, 45\u201347, 150  \nLopez, Barry Holstun, 162  \nLorde, Audre, 250  \nlove, 169\u201386  \nintimacy, 16\u201317, 20\u201322  \nletting go, 180\u201383  \nsensuality, 183\u201386  \nsmell of, 176\u201380  \nwithout reservations, 172\u201376  \nLoving the Body, 236  \nLutz, Deborah, 167\u201368\n\nMacFarlane, Robert, 110  \nmaking love, 74  \nMalone, Thomas Patrick, 150  \nMamas, 132\u201333  \nmana, 143\u201344  \nMander, Jerry, 107, 141  \nMargulis, Lynn, 10\u201311, 145\u201346  \nmarriage, 248, 287  \nMaslow, Abraham, 72, 116  \nmassage, 11, 235  \nmasturbation, 5, 293\u201395  \nMatteson, Mollie, 108  \nmaturity, 275  \nMcBride, Margaret, 249  \nMcIntyre, Julie  \nbirthing authentic self, 27\u201329  \nchildhood of, 23\u201327  \nearring story of, 119\u201320  \nfather and, 17\u201319, 23  \ngrowth of, 266\u201368  \nissue with pornography, 242  \nlearning to hide, 23\u201327  \nletting go and, 180\u201382  \nneed for intimacy, 16\u201317, 20\u201322  \nnude modeling experience of, 234  \npoetry of, 178\u201379, 180  \nreligion and, 134\u201338  \nshame and, 226\u201330, 231  \nspirituality of, 82\u201388  \nStar People and, 95  \nMeade, Michael, 267  \nmeaning, 39\u201340  \nmeditations  \nI've Been Waiting for You, 63\u201364  \nLoving the Body, 236  \nMeeting the Council Members, 68\u201370  \nStarting at the Beginning, 66\u201367  \n_See also_ exercises  \nMeir, Golda, 210  \nMendez, Chico, 104  \nmenstruation, 23\u201324, 281  \nMerton, Thomas, 171  \nMetzner, Ralph, 93, 159  \nMichaud, Pierre-Andre, 308  \nmidwives, 280  \nMiller, Henry, 138, 250  \nMilton, John, 183  \nmind-body divide, 96\u2013101, 102, 133\u201338  \nMississippi River, 105\u20137  \nMobius, Karl, 109  \nMonsanto, 113  \nMontagu, Ashley, 63  \nmorality, 9\u201310, 102  \nMott, Lucretia, 255\u201356  \n\"Movement of Great Things,\" 169\u201370  \nMuir, John, 11\u201312, 126  \nM\u00fcller-Lyer arrows, 123\n\nnaivete, 192  \nnarratives, 13  \nNash, Roderick, 110\u201311  \nnatural Child, 56\u201357  \nnatural Predator, 57\u201358  \nNature  \nchildren and, 300\u2013302  \nloss of the sacred and, 107  \nas mirror of sexuality, 104  \nreligion and, 107  \nseparation from, 96\u2013101  \nsexuality of, 7\u20139  \nwalks in, 126\u201328  \nneeds, 28  \nNew Age movement, 11  \nNewgrange, 99  \nNichols, Mary Gove, 247\u201348  \nNicolson, Marjorie Hope, 127  \nno, importance of saying, 298\u201399  \nNordenski\u00f6ld, August, 248  \nnuminous, 79\u201388  \ncalling of, 116\u201321  \nEliade on, 80\u201381  \nexperiencing interworld, 157\u201362  \ngoing wild, 121\u201328  \nOtto on, 88  \nsacred sex and, 201\u20132  \nspirituality and, 82\u201388\n\nobesity, 298  \nobscenity, 252\u201353  \nOccupy Wall Street, 256  \nO'Donnell, Christine, 6  \nO'Keefe, Georgia, 52, 183\u201384  \nOlmsted, Thomas J., 249  \n\"One Source of Bad Information,\" 213\u201314  \nopathe, 117  \nopen marriages, 287\u201388  \noptions, 51  \nOrwell, George, 291  \nOtto, Rudolf, 88, 201  \nOur Porn, Ourselves, 254\u201355\n\nParacelsus, 163\u201364, 239\u201340  \nparanoia, 27  \nParent, 55\u201357, 70\u201371  \npassion, 273  \npaternity, 98, 101  \nPaterson, Jacqueline Memory, 292  \nPaul, Alice, 256  \npeak experiences, 116  \npedophilia, 258  \nPendell, Dale, 252, 260\u201361, 284\u201385  \nPenthouse, 242  \nperception, 130, 132  \nPerlman, Michael, 37\u201338, 114, 158\u201359  \npersonal responsibility, 30, 41\u201342, 50, 269, 286\u201387  \npheromones, 176, 303  \nPhoenix, Aphrodite, 243\u201344  \n _Plan for a Free Community_ , 248  \nplants, 7\u20138, 279  \nPlato, 133  \n _Playboy_ , 242  \npleasure, 40, 259\u201361  \n _Pleasure Bound_ , 167\u201368  \nPlotinus, 40  \npolyamory, 6, 287\u201388  \npornography, 6, 245  \ndebate over value of, 257\u201359  \npolitics of, 250\u201357  \nreading people and, 261\u201363  \nsexual pleasure and, 259\u201361  \nPornography Harms, 103, 255  \npositions, sexual, 204\u20137  \npower, 23, 40  \nPredator, 57\u201362, 122, 213  \n _Prehistory of Sex, The_ , 98  \n _Presence of the Past, The_ , 292  \nprivacy, 220, 300  \nprogramming, 43\u201344, 47\u201349  \nprostitution, sacred sex and, 243\u201347  \nPsyche, 39  \nPsychology Today, 257  \npsychotropic drugs, 120\u201321  \npuberty, 297\u201398  \npygmy chimpanzees, 8\n\nrage, 57, 305\u20136  \nRam Dass, 71  \nRand, Ayn, 44  \nrape, 258\u201359  \nRawlings, Majorie Kinnan, 92  \nRebecca's Project, 103  \nred clover, 281  \nReich, Wilhelm, 102, 128, 181, 247  \nrelationships  \ncreating, 34\u201335  \nexercises for, 162\u201365  \nhistory of, 166\u201368  \nold scripts and, 147\u201350  \nself-examination and, 147\u201350, 274\u201375  \n_See also_ intimacy  \nreligion, 82\u201383, 86, 107, 134  \nreparenting, 234  \nrepercussions, 28  \nrepression, 102\u20135  \nresentment, 59  \nresponsibility, 41\u201342, 50, 269, 286\u201387  \nreverence, 249\u201350  \nRig Veda, 167  \nRiley, Cole, 168  \nrituals, 92\u201393  \nRogers, Will, 283  \nRoman Empire, 244\u201345, 246  \nRossellini, Isabella, 260  \nRoth, Geneen, 31, 172  \nrudeness, 60  \nRumi, 67, 166, 167, 192  \nRussell, Bertrand, 60  \nRyan, Christopher, 101\n\n _Sacred and the Profane, The_ , 80  \nsacred sex, 187\u2013207  \nexercises for, 192\u201397  \nhealing and, 12\u201313  \njoining of souls and, 199\u2013203  \nloving through space and time, 190\u201392  \nprostitution and, 243\u201347  \nthird body and, 197\u201399  \ntreatment of Earth and, 10\u201311  \ntrust and, 223\u201324  \nsafety, 29\u201332  \nSagan, Dorion, 10\u201311, 145\u201346  \n _Sappho's Leap_ , 290  \nSchachter-Shalomi, Zalman, 189\u201390  \nschools, 306  \nscripts, 43\u201344, 47\u201349  \nSeale, Alan, 185  \nSeattle, Chief, 147  \nsecrets, 19\u201320, 28, 219\u201323, 263  \nSeed, John, 132  \nself, birthing of, 27\u201329  \nself-examination, 21, 39\u201340, 51, 54\u201378, 274  \nacknowledging all of self, 61\u201364  \nintegrating parts and, 71\u201372  \nmeditations for, 63\u201364, 66\u201367, 68\u201370  \nPredator and, 57\u201361  \nrelationships and, 147\u201350  \nTransactional Analysis and, 54\u201357, 70\u201378  \nselfishness, 264\u201365  \nself-love, 177, 269  \nself-nurturing, 276\u201379  \nSeltzer, Sarah, 248  \nsemen, 7\u20138  \nsenses, 127\u201328, 153\u201357  \nsensing body, 138\u201346  \nsensuality, 183\u201386  \nseparation, 10\u201313, 96\u2013101  \ndamages of, 133\u201338  \ndeath and disease through, 112\u201314  \nsex  \nhealing and, 12\u201313  \norigins of, 10\u201311  \npolitics of, 250\u201357  \npositions and ego states, 204\u20137  \n_See also_ sacred sex  \nsex education, 5\u20136, 292\u2013309  \n _Sex Incorporated_ , 32  \n _Sex in Human Loving,_ 76  \nsexting, 103\u20134, 256  \nsex toys, 4  \nsex trafficking, 103  \nsexual abuse, 23  \nsexual education, 103\u20135  \n _Sexual Intelligence_ , 103  \n _Sexuality and the Human Male_ , 256  \nsexual repression, 102\u20135  \nsexual revolution, 247\u201350, 288\u201390  \nsexual secrets, 221\u201323  \nshadow, 45\u201346  \n _Shamans, Mystics and Doctors_ , 11  \nshame, 4, 5, 7, 59, 225\u201340  \nexercises for, 232\u201333  \nsex and, 231\u201336  \nworking through, 226\u201330  \nSheldrake, Rupert, 100, 112, 292  \nShiva, 167  \nshoes, 132\u201333  \nShroeder, Theodore, 253, 258  \n _Silent Spring_ , 113  \nsilphium, 280\u201381  \nSkarynski, Boleslaw, 281  \nslugs, 8  \nsmell, 176\u201380  \nsnow geese, 282  \nSobel, David, 104  \nsocialization, 46  \nSocrates, 36  \nsomatics, 128  \nsoul  \nhealing of, 268\u201376  \njoining of souls, 199\u2013203  \nmeanings of, 36\u201342  \nseeing with, 192  \nselfishness and, 264\u201368  \nseparation and, 133\u201338  \nwork of, 289\u201390  \nsoul retrieval, 49\u201353, 150  \n _Spell of the Sensuous_ , 144\u201345  \nSpence, Gerry, 272  \nSpirit, witnessing by, 86\u201388  \nspirituality, 82\u201385  \nStafford, William, 279  \nStanislavsky, Konstantin, 72, 147, 264  \nStanton, Elizabeth Cady, 255\u201356  \nStar People, 93\u201395  \nSteinem, Gloria, 247\u201348  \nSteiner, Rudolf, 161\u201362  \nStevenson, Robert Louis, 35  \nstress, 138\u201339  \nSun Bear, 273  \nSuris, Joan-Carles, 308  \nsurrender, 181  \nsurvival mechanisms, 27, 30  \nSuzuki, David, 93\u201394  \nSweden, 307\u20139\n\ntantric sex, 11  \nTaylor, Timothy, 97, 98  \ntears, 105  \nteenagers, 103\u20134, 302\u20139  \ntemper tantrums, 51  \ntension, 138\u201339  \nthird body, 197\u201399  \n\"This Simple Thing,\" 180  \nThoreau, Henry David, 11, 38, 97, 126, 127, 130  \nthree drives, 40  \nThurber, James, 30  \ntolerance, 260\u201361  \nTompkins, Peter, 279, 281  \ntouching, 236\u201339  \nTransactional Analysis, 47, 54  \ntransformation, 35  \ntravel, 124\u201325  \ntrees, 37\u201338, 157\u201359  \ntrust, 177, 207, 210\u201324  \nbreaking of, 211\u201314  \nexercises for, 214\u201315  \ninjunctions and, 218\u201319  \nmending of, 215\u201317  \nsacred sex and, 223\u201324  \nsecrets and, 219\u201323  \nTwain, Mark, 41\n\nUlrich, Laurel Thatcher, 268  \nunconsciousness, 43\u201344, 51, 60, 150  \nUnderhill, Ruth, 291  \nunkindness, 60\u201361  \nuproar, 213\n\nvalidation, 49  \nVenus, 246  \nviolence, 60, 258  \nViolet Blue, 254\u201355  \nvitality, 143\u201344  \nvulnerability, 28, 50, 180\u201381\n\nWadstr\u00f6m, C. B., 248  \nwalking, 126\u201328  \nwants, 28  \nWarren, Josiah, 248  \nWashington, George, 102  \n _Way, The_ , 95  \nWelch, Lew, 91\u201392  \nWeller, Francis, 94  \nWhite, David Gordon, 11  \nwholeness, 149\u201350  \n\"Who Makes These Changes?\" 67  \nWicca, 86  \n _Wild_ , 129  \nWilde, Oscar, 168  \nwilderness, 110, 129  \nwild\/wildness  \ncalling of, 116\u201321  \ncoming to life, 128\u201333  \ngoing wild, 121\u201328  \nmeanings of, 109\u201312  \nwillow, 281  \nWilson, Edward O., 116\u201317  \nwitch hunts, 101  \nWollstonecraft, Mary, 247\u201348  \n _Woman Whose Calling Is Men, A_ , 243\u201344  \nwomen, domestication of, 97  \nwonder, 191, 249\u201350  \nWoodhill, Victoria, 168  \nWoods, Tiger, 6  \nWounded Knee, 99\u2013100\n\nyoga, 11  \n _Your Body Speaks Its Mind_ , 140\n\nZappa, Frank, 54\n_About the Author_\n\nJulie McIntyre is an Earth Ceremonialist and spiritual teacher who leads Earth Medicine apprenticeships, wilderness retreats, and Deep Ecology intensives throughout the United States, Canada, and Ireland. She lives in Silver City, New Mexico.\n_About Inner Traditions \u2022 Bear & Company_\n\nFounded in 1975, Inner Traditions is a leading publisher of books on indigenous cultures, perennial philosophy, visionary art, spiritual traditions of the East and West, sexuality, holistic health and healing, self-development, as well as recordings of ethnic music and accompaniments for meditation.\n\nIn July 2000, Bear & Company joined with Inner Traditions and moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it was founded in 1980, to Rochester, Vermont. 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Powell_\n\nINNER TRADITIONS \u2022 BEAR & COMPANY  \nP.O. Box 388  \nRochester, VT 05767  \n1-800-246-8648 **  \nwww.InnerTraditions.com**\n\nOr contact your local bookseller\nDestiny Books\n\nOne Park Street\n\nRochester, Vermont 05767\n\nwww.DestinyBooks.com\n\nDestiny Books is a division of Inner Traditions International\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012 by Julie McIntyre\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.\n\n **Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**\n\nMcIntyre, Julie.\n\nSex and the intelligence of the heart : nature, intimacy, and sexual energy \/ Julie McIntyre.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nprint ISBN 978-1-59477-397-6\n\nebook ISBN 978-1-59477-698-4\n\n1. Sex. 2. Nature. 3. Mind and body. I. Title.\n\nHQ21.M4634 2012\n\n306.7\u2014dc23\n\n2012002238\n\nFor permissions information please see page vi.\n\nTo send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c\/o Inner Traditions r Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication, or visit the author's websites at **www.sexandtheintell\u00adigenceoftheheart.com** or **www.gaianstudies.org**.\nElectronic edition produced by\n\nwww.dmiepub.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nE-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team\n(http:\/\/www.pgdp.net) from scanned images of public domain material\ngenerously made available by the Google Books Library Project\n(http:\/\/books.google.com\/)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 38128-h.htm or 38128-h.zip:\n      (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/38128\/38128-h\/38128-h.htm)\n      or\n      (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/38128\/38128-h.zip)\n\n\n      Images of the original pages are available through\n      the the Google Books Library Project. See\n      http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?vid=MaYBAAAAQAAJ&id\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, but\n      otherwise the original spelling has generally been retained,\n      even where several different spellings have been used to\n      refer to the same person.\n\n      The printed book contained footnotes and endnotes. The\n      endnotes have been treated as footnotes, and marked with\n      anchors prefixed by E, as in [E01]. When one endnote is\n      referenced twice, the second occurence is marked by adding\n      a b, as in [E12b], and the text of the endnote is repeated\n      in the appropriate place.\n\n      The printed book contained a few features, such as Greek\n      text and illustrations, that could not be reproduced in this\n      format. These have been marked in the text using {curly\n      braces}.\n\n      A list of corrections is at the end of this e-book.\n\n\n\n\n\nMEMOIRS OF  LEONORA CHRISTINA\n\nDaughter of Christian IV. of Denmark\n\nWritten During Her Imprisonment in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen\n1663-1685\n\nTranslated by F. E. Bunnett\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nHenry S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill\n1872\n\nLondon: Printed by\nSpottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square\nand Parliament Street\n\nAll rights reserved\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nIn placing the present translation of LEONORA CHRISTINA ULFELDT'S\nMemoirs before the English reading public, a few words are due from\nthe Publishers, in order to explain the relation between this edition\nand those which have been brought out in Denmark and in Germany.\n\nThe original autograph manuscript of Leonora Christina's record of\nher sufferings in her prison, written between the years 1674 and\n1685, belongs to her descendant the Austrian Count Joh. Waldstein,\nand it was discovered only a few years ago. It was then, at the\ndesire of Count Waldstein, brought to Copenhagen by the Danish\nMinister at Vienna, M. Falbe, in order that its authenticity might be\nthoroughly verified by comparison with documents preserved in the\nDanish archives and libraries, and known to be in the hand-writing of\nthe illustrious authoress. When the existence of this interesting\nhistoric and literary relic had become known in Denmark, a desire to\nsee it published was naturally expressed on all sides, and to this\nthe noble owner most readily acceded.\n\nThus the first Danish edition came to light in 1869, promoted in\nevery way by Count Waldstein. The editor was Mr. Sophus Birket-Smith,\nassistant librarian of the University Library at Copenhagen, who\nenriched the edition with a historical introduction and copious\nnotes. A second Danish edition appeared a few months later; and in\n1871 a German translation of the Memoir was edited by M. Ziegler,\nwith a new introduction and notes, founded partly on the first Danish\nedition, partly on other printed sources, to which were added\nextracts from some papers found in the family archives of Count\nWaldstein, and which were supposed to possess the interest of\nnovelty.\n\nThe applause with which this edition was received in Germany\nsuggested the idea of an English version, and it was at first\nintended merely to translate M. Ziegler's book into English. During\nthe progress of the work, however, it was found preferable to adopt\nthe second Danish edition as the basis of the English edition. The\ntranslation which had been made from M. Ziegler's German, has been\ncarefully compared with the Danish original, so as to remove any\ndefects arising from the use of the German translation, and give it\nthe same value as a translation made direct from the Danish; a new\nintroduction and notes have been added, for which the Danish editor,\nMr. Birket-Smith has supplied the materials; and instead of the\nfragments of Ulfeldt's Apology and of an extract from Leonora\nChristina's Autobiography found in the German edition, a complete\ntranslation of the Autobiography to the point where Leonora's Memoir\nof her sufferings in prison takes up the thread of the narrative, has\nbeen inserted, made from the original French text, recently published\nby Mr. S. Birket-Smith. As a matter of course the preface of Count\nWaldstein, which appears in this edition, is the one prefixed to the\nDanish edition. The manuscript itself of the record of Leonora\nChristina's sufferings in prison was commenced in 1674, and was at\nfirst intended to commemorate only what had happened during the\npreceding ten years of her captivity; it was afterwards extended to\nembrace the whole period down to 1685, and subjected to a revision\nwhich resulted in numerous additions and alterations. As, however,\nthese do not seem to have been properly worked in by the authoress\nherself, the Memoir is here rendered, as in the Danish edition, in\nits original, more perfect shape, and the subsequent alterations made\nthe subject of foot notes.\n\n\n\n\n PREFACE\n TO\n THE DANISH EDITION.\n\n\nWhen, in the summer of 1858, I visited the graves of my Danish\nancestors of the family of Ulfeldt, in the little village church at\nQuaerndrup, near the Castle of Egeskov, on the island of Fyn, I\nresolved to honour the memory of my pious ancestress Leonora\nChristina, and thus fulfil the duty of a descendant by publishing\nthis autograph manuscript which had come to me amongst the heirlooms\nleft by my father.\n\nIt is well known that the last male representative of the family of\nUlfeldt, the Chancellor of the Court and Realm of Her Majesty the\nEmpress Maria Theresia, had only two daughters. One of them,\nElizabeth, married Georg Christian, Count Waldstein, while the\nyounger married Count Thun.\n\nOut of special affection for her younger son Emanuel (my late\nfather), my grandmother bequeathed all that referred to the Ulfeldts\nto him, and the manuscript which I now--in consequence of requests\nfrom various quarters, also from high places--give to publicity by\nthe learned assistance of Mr. Sophus Birket-Smith, thus came to me\nthrough direct descent from her father:\n\n'Corfitz, Count of Ulfeldt of the holy Roman Empire, Lord of the\nlordships Koeltz-Jenikau, Hof-Kazof, Broedlich, Odaslowitz, and the\nfief Zinltsch, Knight of the Golden Vliess, First Treasurer of the\nhereditary lands in Bohemia, Ambassador at the Ottoman Porte,\nafterwards Chancellor of the Court and the Empire, sworn Privy\nCouncillor and first Lord Steward of his Imperial and Royal Majesty\nCarolus VI., as well as of His Imperial Roman and Royal Majesty of\nHungary, Bohemia,' &c.\n\nWe add: the highly honoured paternal guide of Her Majesty the Queen\nEmpress Maria Theresia, of glorious memory, during the first year of\nher government, until the time when the gifted Prince Kaunitz, whose\ngenius sometimes even was too much for this, morally noble lady,\nbecame her successor.\n\nI possess more than eleven imposing, closely written folio volumes,\nwhich contain the manuscripts of the Chancellor of the Empire, his\nnegociations with the Sublime Porte, afterwards with the\nStates-General of the Netherlands, as well as the ministerial\nprotocols from the whole time that he held the office of Imperial\nChancellor; all of which prove his great industry and love of order,\nwhile the original letters and annotations of his exalted mistress,\nwhich are inserted in these same volumes, testify to the sincere,\nalmost childlike confidence with which she honoured him.\n\nBut this steady and circumspect statesman was the direct grandson of\nthe restless and proud\n\nCORFITZ, first Count of Ulfeldt of the Roman Empire, High Steward of\nthe Realm in Denmark, &c., and of his devoted and gifted wife LEONORA\nCHRISTINA, through their son\n\nLEO, Imperial Count Ulfeldt, Privy Councillor, Field-marshal, and\nViceroy in Catalonia of the Emperor Carl VI., and his wife, a born\nCountess of Zinzendorf.\n\nI preserved, therefore with great care this manuscript, as well as\nall other relics and little objects which had belonged to my Danish\nancestress, whose exalted character and sufferings are so highly\ncalculated to inspire sympathy, interest, and reverence. Amongst\nthese objects are several writings, such as fragments of poems,\nprayers, needlework executed in prison (some embroidered with hair of\na fair colour); a christening robe with cap worked in gold, probably\nused at the christening of her children; a very fine Amulet of\nChristian IV. in blue enamel, and many portraits; amongst others the\noriginal picture in oil of which a copy precedes the title page, &c.\n&c.\n\nConsidering that the manuscript has been handed down directly from my\nancestors from generation to generation in direct line, I could not\npersonally have any doubt as to its genuineness. Nevertheless I\nyielded to the suggestions of others, in order to have the\nauthenticity of the manuscript thoroughly tested. In what way this\nwas done will be seen from the Introduction of the Editor.\n\nThough the final verdict of history may not yet have been given on\nCorfitz Ulfeldt, yet--tempus omnia sanat--yon ominous pillar, which\nwas to perpetuate the memory of his crime into eternity, has been put\naside as rubbish and left to oblivion. Noble in forgetting and\npardoning, the great nation of the North has given a bright example\nto those who still refuse to grant to Albert, Duke of Friedland--the\ngreat general who saved the Empire from the danger that threatened it\nfrom the North--the place which this hero ought to occupy in the\nWalhalla at Vienna.\n\nBut as to the fiery temper of Corfitz and the mysterious springs\nwhich govern the deeds and thoughts of mankind, it may be permitted\nto me, his descendant, to cherish the belief, which is almost\nstrengthened into a conviction, that a woman so highly gifted, of so\nnoble sentiments, as Leonora appears to us, would never have been\nable to cling with a love so true, and so enduring through all the\nchanges of life, to a man who was unworthy of it.\n\n                                    JOH. COUNT WALDSTEIN.\n\n  Cairo: December 8, 1868.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                         PAGE\n\n INTRODUCTION                                               1\n\n AUTOBIOGRAPHY                                             31\n\n A RECORD OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE IMPRISONED COUNTESS:--\n\n   PREFACE (TO MY CHILDREN)                                87\n\n   A REMINISCENCE OF ALL THAT OCCURRED TO ME, LEONORA\n     CHRISTINA, IN THE BLUE TOWER, FROM AUGUST 8 OF THE\n     YEAR 1663, TO JUNE 11 OF THE YEAR 1674               102\n\n\n\n\n MEMOIRS\n OF\n LEONORA CHRISTINA.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nAmongst the women celebrated in history, LEONORA CHRISTINA, the\nheroine as well as the authoress of the Memoirs which form the\nsubject of this volume, occupies a conspicuous place, as one of the\nnoblest examples of every womanly virtue and accomplishment,\ndisplayed under the most trying vicissitudes of fortune. Born the\ndaughter of a King, married to one of the ablest statesmen of his\ntime, destined, as it seemed, to shine in the undisturbed lustre of\nposition and great qualities, she had to spend nearly twenty-two\nyears in a prison, in the forced company--more cruel to her than\nsolitary confinement--of male and female gaolers of the lowest order,\nand for a long time deprived of every means of rendering herself\nindependent of these surroundings by intellectual occupation. She had\nto suffer alone, and innocently, for her husband's crimes; whatever\nthese were, she had no part in them, and she endured persecution\nbecause she would not forsake him in his misfortune. Leonora\nChristina was the victim of despotism guided by personal animosity,\nand she submitted with a Christian meekness and forbearance which\nwould be admirable in any, but which her exalted station and her\ngreat mental qualities bring out in doubly strong relief.\n\nIt is to these circumstances, which render the fate of Leonora so\ntruly tragic, as well as to the fact that we have her own authentic\nand trustworthy account before us, that the principal charm of this\nrecord is due. Besides this, it affords many incidental glimpses of\nthe customs and habits of the time, nor is it without its purely\nhistorical interest. Leonora and her husband, Corfits Ulfeldt, were\nintimately connected with the principal political events in the North\nof Europe at their time; even the more minute circumstances of their\nlife have, therefore, a certain interest.\n\nNo wonder that the history of this illustrious couple has formed, and\nstill forms, the theme both of laborious scientific researches and of\npoetical compositions. Amongst the latter we may here mention in\npassing a well-known novel by Rousseau de la Valette,[01] because it\nhas had the undeserved honour of being treated by a modern writer as\nan historical source, to the great detriment of his composition.\nDocuments which have originated from these two personages are of\ncourse of great value. Besides letters and public documents, there\nexist several accounts written by both Corfits Ulfeldt and Leonora\nreferring to their own life and actions. Ulfeldt published in 1652 a\ndefence of his political conduct, and composed, shortly before his\ndeath, another, commonly called the 'Apology of Ulfeldt,' which has\nnot yet been printed entirely, but of which an extract was published\nin 1695 in the supplement of the English edition of Rousseau de la\nValette's book. Some extracts from an incomplete copy discovered by\nCount Waldstein in 1870, in the family archives at the Castle of\nPalota, were published with the German edition of Leonora's Memoir;\ncomplete copies exist in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Leonora Christina,\nwho was an accomplished writer, has composed at least four partial\naccounts of her own life. One of them, referring to a journey in\n1656, to be mentioned hereafter, has been printed long ago; of\nanother, which treated of her and Ulfeldt's imprisonment at Bornholm,\nno copy has yet been discovered. The third is her Autobiography,\ncarried down to 1673, of which an English version follows this\nIntroduction; it was written in the Blue Tower, in the form of a\nletter to the Danish antiquarian, Otto Sperling, jun., who wished to\nmake use of it for his work, 'De feminis doctis.'[02]\n\n [01] _Le Comte d'Ulfeld, Grand Maistre de Danemarc._ _Nouvelle\n historique_, i.-ii. Paris, 1678. 8vo. An English translation, with\n a supplement, appeared 1695: _The Life of Count Ulfeldt, Great\n Master of Denmark, and of the Countess Eleonora his Wife._ Done out\n of French. With a supplement. London. 1695. 8vo.\n\n Another novel by the same author, called _Casimir King of Poland_,\n is perhaps better known in this country, through a translation by\n F. Spence in vol. ii. of _Modern Novels_, 1692.\n\n [02] It is by a slip of memory that Mr. Birket Smith, in his first\n Danish edition of Leonora Christina's memoir of her life in prison,\n describes this work under the name of _De feminis eruditis_.\n\nAbout a century ago a so-called Autobiography of Leonora was\npublished in Copenhagen, but it was easily proved to be a forgery; in\nfact, the original of her own work existed in the Danish archives,\nand had been described by the historian Andreas Hoeier. It has now\nbeen lost, it is supposed, in the fire which destroyed the Castle of\nChristiansborg in 1794, but a complete copy exists in Copenhagen, as\nwell as several extracts in Latin; another short extract in French\nbelongs to Count Waldstein. Finally, Leonora Christina wrote the\nmemoir of her sufferings in the prison of the Blue Tower from\n1663-1685, of which the existence was unknown until discovered by\nCount Waldstein, and given to the public in the manner indicated in\nthe Preface.\n\nIn introducing these memoirs to the English public, a short sketch of\nthe historical events and the persons to whom they refer may not be\nunwelcome, particularly as Leonora herself touches only very lightly\non them, and principally describes her own personal life.\n\n_Leonora Christina_ was a daughter of _King Christian IV._ of Denmark\nand _Kirstine Munk_. His Queen, Anna Catherine, born a princess of\nBrandenburg, died in 1612, leaving three princes (four other children\ndied early), and in 1615 the King contracted a morganatic marriage\nwith Kirstine Munk, a lady of an ancient and illustrious noble\nfamily. Leonora was born July 18 (new style), 1621, at the Castle of\nFredriksborg, so well known to all who have visited Denmark, which\nthe King had built twenty miles north of Copenhagen, in a beautiful\npart of the country, surrounded by smiling lakes and extensive\nforests. But little is known of her childhood beyond what she tells\nherself in her Autobiography. Already in her eighth year she was\npromised to her future husband, Corfits Ulfeldt, and in 1636 the\nwedding was celebrated with great splendour, Leonora being then\nfifteen years old. The family of Ulfeldt has been known since the\nclose of the fourteenth century. Corfits' father had been Chancellor\nof the Realm, and somewhat increased the family possessions, though\nhe sold the ancient seat of the family, Ulfeldtsholm, in Fyen, to\nLady Ellen Marsvin, Kirstine Munk's mother. He had seventeen\nchildren, of whom Corfits was the seventh; and so far Leonora made\nonly a poor marriage. But her husband's great talents and greater\nambition made up for this defect. Of his youth nothing is known with\nany certainty, except that he travelled abroad, as other young\nnoblemen of his time, studied at Padua, and acquired considerable\nproficiency in foreign languages.[03] He became a favourite of\nChristian IV., at whose Court he had every opportunity for displaying\nhis social talents. At the marriage of the elected successor to the\nthrone, the King's eldest son, Christian, with the Princess Magdalene\nSibylle of Saxony, in 1634, Corfits Ulfeldt acted as marechal to the\nspecial Ambassador Count d'Avaux, whom Louis XIII. had sent to\nCopenhagen on that occasion, in which situation Ulfeldt won golden\nopinions,[04] and he was one of the twelve noblemen whom the King on\nthe wedding-day made Knights of the Elephant. After a visit to Paris\nin 1635, in order to be cured of a wound in the leg which the Danish\nphysicians could not heal, he obtained the sanction of the King for\nhis own marriage with Leonora, which was solemnised at the Castle of\nCopenhagen, on October 9, 1636, with as much splendour as those of\nthe princes and princesses. Leonora was the favourite daughter of\nChristian IV., and as far as royal favour could ensure happiness, it\nmight be said to be in store for the newly-married pair.\n\n [03] La Valette's account of his participation in the Thirty Years'\n War is entirely fictitious, as almost all that he tells of\n Ulfeldt's travels, &c.\n\n [04] See _Caroli Ogerii Ephemerides sive, Iter Danicum, Svecicum,\n Polonicum, &c._ Paris, 1656. 8vo. p. 36, 37, 40, by D'Avaux's\n secretary, Ogier.\n\nAs we have stated, Ulfeldt was a poor nobleman; and it is\ncharacteristic of them both that one of her first acts was to ask him\nabout his debts, which he could not but have incurred living as he\nhad done, and to pay them by selling her jewels and ornaments, to the\namount of 36,000 dollars, or more than 7,000_l._ in English\nmoney--then a very large sum. But the King's favour soon procured him\nwhat he wanted; he was made a member of the Great Council, Governor\nof Copenhagen, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.\n\nHe executed several diplomatic missions satisfactorily; and when, in\n1641, he was sent to Vienna as special Ambassador, the Emperor of\nGermany, Ferdinand III., made him a Count of the German Empire.\nFinally, in 1643, he was made Lord High Steward of Denmark, the\nhighest dignity and most responsible office in the kingdom. He was\nnow at the summit of power and influence, and if he had used his\ntalents and opportunities in the interests of his country, he might\nhave earned the everlasting gratitude of his King and his people.\n\nBut he was not a great man, though he was a clever and ambitious man.\nHe accumulated enormous wealth, bought extensive landed estates,\nspent considerable sums in purchasing jewels and costly furniture,\nand lived in a splendid style; but it was all at the cost of the\ncountry. In order to enrich himself, he struck base coin (which\nafterwards was officially reduced to its proper value, 8 per cent.\nbelow the nominal value), and used probably other unlawful means for\nthis purpose, while the Crown was in the greatest need of money. At\nthe same time he neglected the defences of the country in a shameful\nmanner, and when the Swedish Government, in December 1643, suddenly\nordered its army, which then stood in Germany, engaged in the Thirty\nYears' War, to attack Denmark without any warning, there were no\nmeans of stopping its victorious progress. In vain the veteran King\ncollected a few vessels and compelled the far more numerous Swedish\nfleet to fly, after a furious battle near Femern, where he himself\nreceived twenty-three wounds, and where two of Ulfeldt's brothers\nfell fighting at his side; there was no army in the land, because\nCorfits, at the head of the nobility, had refused the King the\nnecessary supplies. And, although the peace which Ulfeldt concluded\nwith Sweden and Holland at Broemsebro, in 1645, might have been still\nmore disastrous than it was, if the negotiation had been entrusted to\nless skilful hands, yet there was but too much truth in the\nreproachful words of the King, when, after ratifying the treaties, he\ntossed them to Corfits saying, 'There you have them, such as you have\nmade them!'\n\nFrom this time the King began to lose his confidence in Ulfeldt,\nthough the latter still retained his important offices. In the\nfollowing year he went to Holland and to France on a diplomatic\nmission, on which occasion he was accompanied by Leonora. Everywhere\ntheir personal qualities, their relationship to the sovereign, and\nthe splendour of their appearance, procured them the greatest\nattention and the most flattering reception. While at the Hague\nLeonora gave birth to a son, whom the States-General offered to grant\na pension for life of a thousand florins, which, however, Ulfeldt\nwisely refused. In Paris they were loaded with presents; and in the\nMemoirs of Madame Langloise de Motteville on the history of Anna of\nAustria (ed. of Amsterdam, 1783, ii. 19-22) there is a striking\n_recit_ of the appearance and reception of Ulfeldt and Leonora at\nthe French Court. On their way home Leonora took an opportunity of\nmaking a short trip to London, which capital she wished to see, while\nher husband waited for her in the Netherlands.\n\nIf, however, this journey brought Ulfeldt and his wife honours and\npresents on the part of foreigners, it did not give satisfaction at\nhome. The diplomatic results of the mission were not what the King\nhad hoped, and he even refused to receive Ulfeldt on his return. Soon\nthe turning-point in his career arrived. In 1648 King Christian IV.\ndied, under circumstances which for a short time concentrated\nextraordinary power in Ulfeldt's hands, but of which he did not make\na wise use.\n\nDenmark was then still an elective monarchy, and the nobles had\navailed themselves of this and other circumstances to free themselves\nfrom all burdens, and at the same time to deprive both the Crown and\nthe other Estates of their constitutional rights to a very great\nextent. All political power was virtually vested in the Council of\nthe Realm, which consisted exclusively of nobles, and there remained\nfor the king next to nothing, except a general supervision of the\nadministration, and the nomination of the ministers. Every successive\nking had been obliged to purchase his election by fresh concessions\nto the nobles, and the sovereign was little more than the president\nof an aristocratic republic. Christian IV. had caused his eldest son\nChristian to be elected successor in his own lifetime; but this\nprince died in 1647, and when the King himself died in 1648, the\nthrone was vacant.\n\nAs Lord High Steward, Ulfeldt became president of the regency, and\ncould exercise great influence on the election. He did not exert\nhimself to bring this about very quickly, but there is no ground for\nbelieving that he meditated the election either of himself or of his\nbrother-in-law, Count Valdemar, as some have suggested. The children\nof Kirstine Munk being the offspring of a morganatic marriage, had\nnot of course equal rank with princes and princesses; but in\nChristian IV.'s lifetime they received the same honours, and Ulfeldt\nmade use of the interregnum to obtain the passage of a decree by the\nCouncil, according them rank and honours equal with the princes of\nthe royal house.\n\nBut as the nobles were in nowise bound to choose a prince of the same\nfamily, or even a prince at all, this decree cannot be interpreted as\nevidence of a design to promote the election of Count Valdemar. The\novertures of the Duke of Gottorp, who attempted to bribe Ulfeldt to\nsupport his candidature, were refused by him, at least according to\nhis own statement. But Ulfeldt did make use of his position to extort\na more complete surrender of the royal power into the hands of the\nnobility than any king had yet submitted to, and the new King,\nFredrik III., was compelled to promise, amongst other things, to fill\nup any vacancy amongst the ministers with one out of three candidates\nproposed by the Council of the Realm. The new King, Fredrik III.,\nChristian IV.'s second son, had never been friendly to Ulfeldt. This\nlast action of the High Steward did not improve the feelings with\nwhich he regarded him, and when the coronation had taken place (for\nwhich Ulfeldt advanced the money), he expressed his thoughts at the\nbanquet in these words: 'Corfitz, you have to-day bound my hands; who\nknows, who can bind yours in return?' The new Queen, a Saxon\nprincess, hated Ulfeldt and the children of Kirstine Munk on account\nof their pretensions, but particularly Leonora Christina, whose\nbeauty and talents she heartily envied.\n\nNevertheless Ulfeldt retained his high offices for some time, and in\n1649 he went again to Holland on a diplomatic mission, accompanied by\nhis wife. It is remarkable that the question which formed the\nprincipal subject of the negotiation on that occasion was one which\nhas found its proper solution only in our days--namely, that of a\nredemption of the Sound dues. This impost, levied by the Danish Crown\non all vessels passing the Sound, weighed heavily on the shipping\ninterest, and frequently caused disagreement between Denmark and the\ngovernments mostly interested in the Baltic trade, particularly\nSweden and the Dutch republic.\n\nIt was with especial regard to the Sound dues that the Dutch\nGovernment was constantly interfering in the politics of the North,\nwith a view of preventing Denmark becoming too powerful; for which\npurpose it always fomented discord between Denmark and Sweden, siding\nnow with the one, now with the other, but rather favouring the design\nof Sweden to conquer the ancient Danish provinces, Skaane, &c., which\nwere east of the Sound, and which now actually belong to Sweden.\nCorfits Ulfeldt calculated that, if the Dutch could be satisfied on\nthe point of the Sound dues, their unfavourable interference might be\ngot rid of; and for this purpose he proposed to substitute an annual\npayment by the Dutch Government for the payment of the dues by the\nindividual ships. Christian IV. had never assented to this idea, and\nof course the better course would have been the one adopted in\n1857--namely, the redemption of the dues by all States at once for a\nproportionate consideration paid once for all. Still the leading\nthought was true, and worthy of a great statesman.\n\nUlfeldt concluded a treaty with Holland according to his views, but\nit met with no favour at Copenhagen, and on his return he found that\nin his absence measures had been taken to restrict his great power;\nhis conduct of affairs was freely criticised, and his enemies had\neven caused the nomination of a committee to investigate his past\nadministration, more particularly his financial measures.\n\nAt the same time the new Court refused Leonora Christina and the\nother children of Kirstine Munk the princely honours which they had\nhitherto enjoyed. Amongst other marks of distinction, Christian IV.\nhad granted his wife and her children the title of Counts and\nCountesses of Slesvig and Holstein, but Fredrik III. declined to\nacknowledge it, although it could have no political importance, being\nnothing but an empty title, as neither Kirstine Munk nor her children\nhad anything whatever to do with either of these principalities.\nUlfeldt would not suffer himself to be as it were driven from his\nhigh position by these indications of disfavour on the part of the\nKing and the Queen (the latter was really the moving spring in all\nthis), but he resolved to show his annoyance by not going to Court,\nwhere his wife did not now receive the usual honours.\n\nThis conduct only served to embolden those who desired to oust him\nfrom his lucrative offices, not because they were better patriots,\nbut because they hoped to succeed him. For this purpose a false\naccusation was brought against Ulfeldt and Leonora Christina, to the\neffect that they had the intention of poisoning the King and the\nQueen. Information on this plot was given to the Queen personally, by\na certain Dina Vinhowers, a widow of questionable reputation, who\ndeclared that she had an illicit connection with Ulfeldt, and that\nshe had heard a conversation on the subject between Corfits Ulfeldt\nand Leonora, when on a clandestine visit in the High Steward's house.\nShe was prompted by a certain Walter, originally a son of a\nwheelwright, who by bravery in the war had risen from the ranks to\nthe position of a colonel, and who in his turn was evidently a tool\nin the hands of other parties. The information was graciously\nreceived at Court; but Dina, who, as it seems, was a person of weak\nor unsound mind, secretly, without the knowledge of her employers,\nwarned Ulfeldt and Leonora Christina of some impending danger, thus\ncreating a seemingly inextricable confusion.\n\nAt length Ulfeldt demanded a judicial investigation, which was at\nonce set on foot, but in which, of course, he occupied the position\nof a defendant on account of Dina's information. In the end Dina was\ncondemned to death and Walter was exiled. But the statements of the\ndifferent persons implicated, and particularly of Dina herself at\ndifferent times, were so conflicting, that the matter was really\nnever entirely cleared up, and though Ulfeldt was absolved of all\nguilt, his enemies did their best in order that some suspicion might\nremain. If Ulfeldt had been wise, he might probably have turned this\nwhole affair to his own advantage; but he missed the opportunity.\nUtterly absurd as the accusation was, he seems to have felt very\nkeenly the change of his position, and on the advice of Leonora, who\ndid not doubt that some other expedient would be tried by his\nenemies, perhaps with more success, he resolved to leave Denmark\naltogether.\n\nAfter having sent away the most valuable part of his furniture and\nmovable property, and placed abroad his amassed capital, he left\nCopenhagen secretly and at night, on July 14, 1651, three days after\nthe execution of Dina. The gates of the fortress were closed at a\ncertain hour every evening, but he had a key made for the eastern\ngate, and ere sunrise he and Leonora, who was disguised as a valet,\nwere on board a vessel on their way to Holland. The consequences of\nthis impolitic flight were most disastrous. He had not laid down his\nhigh offices, much less rendered an account of his administration;\nnothing was more natural than to suppose that he wished to avoid an\ninvestigation. A few weeks later a royal summons was issued, calling\nupon him to appear at the next meeting of the Diet, and answer for\nhis conduct; his offices, and the fiefs with which he had been\nbeneficed, were given to others, and an embargo was laid on his\nlanded estates.\n\nLeonora Christina describes in her Autobiography how Ulfeldt\nmeanwhile first went to Holland, and thence to Sweden, where Queen\nChristina, who certainly was not favourably disposed to Denmark,\nreceived Ulfeldt with marked distinction, and promised him her\nprotection. But she does not tell how Ulfeldt here used every\nopportunity for stirring up enmity against Denmark, both in Sweden\nitself and in other countries, whose ambassadors he tried to bring\nover to his ideas. On this painful subject there can be no doubt\nafter the publication of so many authentic State Papers of that time,\namongst which we may mention the reports of Whitelock, the envoy of\nCromwell, to whom Ulfeldt represented that Denmark was too weak to\nresist an attack, and that the British Government might easily obtain\nthe abolition of the Sound dues by war.\n\nIt seems, however, as if Ulfeldt did all this merely to terrify the\nDanish King into a reconciliation with him on terms honourable and\nadvantageous to the voluntarily exiled magnate. Representations were\nseveral times made with such a view by the Swedish Government, and in\n1656 Leonora Christina herself undertook a journey to Copenhagen, in\norder to arrange the matter. But the Danish Government was\ninaccessible to all such attempts.\n\nThis attitude was intelligible enough, for not only had Ulfeldt left\nDenmark in the most unceremonious manner, but in 1652 he published in\nStralsund a defence against the accusations of which he had been the\nsubject, full of gross insults against the King; and in the following\nyear he had issued an insolent protest against the royal summons to\nappear and defend himself before the Diet, declaring himself a\nSwedish subject. But, above all, the influence of the Queen was too\ngreat to allow of any arrangement with Ulfeldt. The King was entirely\nled by her; she, from her German home, was filled with the most\nextravagant ideas of absolute despotism, and hated the free speech\nand the independent spirit prevailing among the Danish nobility, of\nwhich Ulfeldt in that respect was a true type. Leonora Christina was\ncompelled to return in 1656, without even seeing the King, and as a\nfugitive. It is of this journey that she has given a Danish account,\nbesides the description in the Autobiography.\n\nIt may be questioned whether it would not have been wise, if\npossible, to conciliate this dangerous man; but at any rate it was\nnot done, and Ulfeldt was, no doubt, still more exasperated. Queen\nChristina had then resigned, and her successor, Carl Gustav, shortly\nafter engaged in a war in Poland. The Danish Government, foolishly\noverrating its strength, took the opportunity for declaring war\nagainst Sweden, in the hope of regaining some of the territory lost\nin 1645. But Carl Gustav, well knowing that the Poles could not carry\nthe war into Sweden, immediately turned his whole force against\nDenmark, where he met with next to no resistance. Ulfeldt was then\nliving at Barth, in Pommerania, an estate which he held in mortgage\nfor large sums of money advanced to the Swedish Government. Carl\nGustav summoned Ulfeldt to follow him, and Ulfeldt obeyed the summons\nagainst the advice of Leonora Christina, who certainly did not desire\nher native country to be punished for the wrongs, if such they were,\ninflicted upon her by the Court.\n\nThe war had been declared on June 1, 1657; in August Ulfeldt issued a\nproclamation to the nobility in Jutland, calling on them to transfer\ntheir allegiance to the Swedish King. In the subsequent winter a most\nunusually severe frost enabled the Swedish army to cross the Sounds\nand Belts on the ice, Ulfeldt assisting its progress by persuading\nthe commander of the fortress of Nakskov to surrender without\nresistance; and in February the Danish Government had to accept such\nconditions of peace as could be obtained from the Swedish King, who\nhad halted a couple of days' march from Copenhagen. By this peace\nDenmark surrendered all her provinces to the east of the Sound\n(Skaane, &c.), which constituted one-third of the ancient Danish\nterritory, and which have ever since belonged to Sweden, besides her\nfleet, &c.\n\nBut the greatest humiliation was that the negotiation on the Swedish\nside was entrusted to Ulfeldt, who did not fail to extort from the\nDanish Crown the utmost that the neutral powers would allow. For\nhimself he obtained restitution of his estates, freedom to live in\nDenmark unmolested, and a large indemnity for loss of income of his\nestates since his flight in 1651. The King of Sweden also rewarded\nhim with the title of a Count of Solvitsborg and with considerable\nestates in the provinces recently wrested from Denmark. Ulfeldt\nhimself went to reside at Malmo, the principal town in Skaane,\nsituated on the Sound, just opposite Copenhagen, and here he was\njoined by Leonora Christina.\n\nIn her Autobiography Leonora does not touch on the incidents of the\nwar, but she describes how her anxiety for her husband's safety did\nnot allow her to remain quietly at Barth, and how she was afterwards\ncalled to her mother's sick-bed, which she had to leave in order to\nnurse her husband, who fell ill at Malmo. We may here state that\nKirstine Munk had fallen into disgrace, when Leonora was still a\nchild, on account of her flagrant infidelity to the King, her\nparamour being a German Count of Solms. Kirstine Munk left the Court\nvoluntarily in 1629,[05] shortly after the birth of a child, whom the\nKing would not acknowledge as his own; and after having stayed with\nher mother for a short time, she took up her residence at the old\nmanor of Boller, in North Jutland, where she remained until her death\nin 1658.\n\n [05] La Valette's account of a lawsuit instituted by the King\n against Kirstine Munk, in which she was defended by Ulfeldt--of\n Ulfeldt's duel with Hannibal Sehested, afterwards his\n brother-in-law, &c.--is entirely fictitious. No such things took\n place.\n\nVarious attempts were made to reconcile Christian IV. to her, but he\nsteadily refused, and with very good reason: he was doubtless well\naware that Kirstine Munk, as recently published diplomatic documents\nprove, had betrayed his political secrets to Gustav Adolf, the King\nof Sweden, and he considered her presence at Court very dangerous.\nHer son-in-law was now openly in the service of another Swedish king,\nbut the friendship between them was not of long duration. Ulfeldt\nfirst incurred the displeasure of Carl Gustav by heading the\nopposition of the nobility in the newly acquired provinces against\ncertain imposts laid on them by the Swedish King, to which they had\nnot been liable under Danish rule. Then other causes of disagreement\narose. Carl Gustav, regretting that he had concluded a peace, when in\nall probability he might have conquered the whole of Denmark,\nrecommenced the war, and laid siege to Copenhagen. But the Danish\npeople now rose as one man; foreign assistance was obtained; the\nSwedes were everywhere beaten; and if the Dutch, who were bound by\ntreaty to assist Denmark, had not refused their co-operation in\ntransferring the Danish troops across the Sound, all the lost\nprovinces might easily have been regained.\n\nThe inhabitants in some of these provinces also rose against their\nnew rulers. Amongst others, the citizens of Malmo, where Ulfeldt at\nthe time resided, entered into a conspiracy to throw off the Swedish\ndominion; but it was betrayed, and Ulfeldt was indicated as one of\nthe principal instigators, although he himself had accepted their\nforced homage to the Swedish King, as his deputy. Very probably he\nhad thought that, if he took a part in the rising, he might, if this\nwere successful, return to Denmark, having as it were thus wiped out\nhis former crimes, but having also shown his countrymen what a\nterrible foe he could be. As it was, Denmark was prevented by her own\nallies from regaining her losses, and Ulfeldt was placed in custody\nin Malmo, by order of Carl Gustav, in order that his conduct might be\nsubjected to a rigorous examination.\n\nUlfeldt was then apparently seized with a remarkable malady, a kind\nof apoplexy, depriving him of speech, and Leonora Christina conducted\nhis defence. She wrote three lengthy, vigorous, and skilful replies\nto the charges, which still exist in the originals. He was acquitted,\nor rather escaped by a verdict of Not Proven; but as conscience makes\ncowards, he contrived to escape before the verdict was given. Leonora\nChristina describes all this in her Autobiography, according to which\nUlfeldt was to go to Lubeck, while she would go to Copenhagen, and\ntry to put matters straight there. Ulfeldt, however, changed his plan\nwithout her knowledge, and also repaired to Copenhagen, where they\nwere both arrested and sent to the Castle of Hammershuus, on the\nisland of Bornholm in the Baltic, an ancient fortress, now a most\npicturesque ruin, perched at the edge of perpendicular rocks,\noverhanging the sea, and almost surrounded by it.\n\nThe Autobiography relates circumstantially, and no doubt truthfully,\nthe cruel treatment to which they were here subjected by the\ngovernor, a Major-General Fuchs. After a desperate attempt at escape,\nthey were still more rigorously guarded, and at length they had to\npurchase their liberty by surrendering the whole of their property,\nexcepting one estate in Fyen. Ulfeldt had to make the most humble\napologies, and to promise not to leave the island of Fyen, where this\nestate was situated, without special permission. He was also\ncompelled to renounce on the part of his wife the title of a Countess\nof Slesvig-Holstein, which Fredrik III. had never acknowledged. She\nnever made use of that title afterwards, nor is she generally known\nby it in history. Corfits Ulfeldt being a Count of the German Empire,\nof course Leonora and her children were, and remained, Counts and\nCountesses of Ulfeldt. This compromise was effected in 1661.\n\nHaving been conveyed to Copenhagen, Ulfeldt could not obtain an\naudience of the King, and he was obliged, kneeling, to tender renewed\noath of allegiance before the King's deputies, Count Rantzow, General\nHans Schack, the Chancellor Redtz, and the Chancellor of the\nExchequer, Christofer Gabel, all of whom are mentioned in Leonora's\naccount of her subsequent prison life.\n\nA few days after, Corfits Ulfeldt and Leonora Christina left\nCopenhagen, which he was never to see again, she only as a prisoner.\nThey retired to the estate of Ellensborg, in Fyen, which they had\nstill retained. This was the ancient seat of the Ulfeldts, which\nCorfits' father had sold to Ellen Marsvin, Leonora Christina's\ngrandmother, and which had come to Leonora through her mother. In the\nmeanwhile it had been renamed and rebuilt such as it stands to this\nday, a picturesque pile of buildings in the Elizabethan style. Here\nUlfeldt might have ended his stormy life in quiet, but his thirst for\nrevenge left him no peace. Besides this, a great change had taken\nplace in Denmark. The national revival which followed the renewal of\nthe war by Carl Gustav in 1658 led to a total change in the form of\ngovernment.\n\nIt was indisputable that the selfishness of the nobles, who refused\nto undertake any burden for the defence of the country, was the main\ncause of the great disasters that had befallen Denmark. The abolition\nof their power was loudly called for, and the Queen so cleverly\nturned this feeling to account, that the remedy adopted was not the\nrestoration of the other classes of the population to their\nlegitimate constitutional influence, but the entire abolition of the\nconstitution itself, and the introduction of hereditary, unlimited\ndespotism. The title 'hereditary king,' which so often occurs in\nDanish documents and writings from that time, also in Leonora's\nMemoir, has reference to this change. Undoubtedly this was very\nlittle to Ulfeldt's taste. Already, in the next year after his\nrelease, 1662, he obtained leave to go abroad for his health. But,\ninstead of going to Spaa, as he had pretended, he went to Amsterdam,\nBruges, and Paris, where he sought interviews with Louis XIV. and the\nFrench ministers; he also placed himself in communication with the\nElector of Brandenburg, with a view of raising up enemies against his\nnative country. The Elector gave information to the Danish\nGovernment, whilst apparently lending an ear to Ulfeldt's\npropositions.\n\nWhen a sufficient body of evidence had been collected, it was laid\nbefore the High Court of Appeal in Copenhagen, and judgment given in\nhis absence, whereby he was condemned to an ignominious death as a\ntraitor, his property confiscated, his descendants for ever exiled\nfrom Denmark, and a large reward offered for his apprehension. The\nsentence is dated July 24, 1663. Meanwhile Ulfeldt had been staying\nwith his family at Bruges. One day one of his sons, Christian, saw\nGeneral Fuchs, who had treated his parents so badly at Hammershuus,\ndriving through the city in a carriage; immediately he leaped on to\nthe carriage and killed Fuchs on the spot. Christian Ulfeldt had to\nfly, but the parents remained in Bruges, where they had many friends.\n\nIt was in the following spring, on May 24, 1663, that Leonora\nChristina, much against her own inclination, left her husband--as it\nproved, not to see him again alive. Ulfeldt had on many occasions\nused his wealth in order to gain friends, by lending them\nmoney--probably the very worst method of all. It is proved that at\nhis death he still held bonds for more than 500,000 dollars, or\n100,000_l._, which he had lent to various princes and noblemen, and\nwhich were never paid. Amongst others he had lent the Pretender,\nafterwards Charles II., a large sum, about 20,000 patacoons, which at\nthe time he had raised with some difficulty. He doubted not that the\nKing of England, now that he was able to do it, would recognise the\ndebt and repay it; and he desired Leonora, who, through her father,\nwas cousin of Charles II., once removed, to go to England and claim\nit. She describes this journey in her Autobiography.\n\nThe Danish Government, hearing of her presence in England, thought\nthat Ulfeldt was there too, or hoped at any rate to obtain possession\nof important documents by arresting her, and demanded her\nextradition. The British Government ostensibly refused, but underhand\nit gave the Danish minister, Petcum, every assistance. Leonora was\narrested in Dover, where she had arrived on her way back,\ndisappointed in the object of her journey. She had obtained enough\nand to spare of fair promises, but no money; and by secretly giving\nher up to the Danish Government, Charles II. in an easy way quitted\nhimself of the debt, at the same time that he pleased the King of\nDenmark, without publicly violating political propriety. Leonora's\naccount of the whole affair is confirmed in every way by the light\nwhich other documents throw upon the matter, particularly by the\nextracts contained in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series,\nof the reign of Charles II., 1663-64.\n\nLeonora was now conducted to Copenhagen, where she was confined in\nthe Blue Tower--a square tower surmounted by a blue spire, which\nstood in the court of the royal castle, and was used as a prison for\ngrave offenders (see the engraving). At this point the Memoir of her\nsufferings in the prison takes up the thread of her history, and we\nneed not here dwell upon its contents.\n\nAs soon as Ulfeldt heard that the Brandenburg Government had betrayed\nhim, and that sentence had been passed on him in Copenhagen, he left\nBruges. No doubt the arrest of Leonora in England was a still greater\nblow to him. The Spanish Government would probably have surrendered\nhim to the Danish authorities, and he had to flee from place to\nplace, pursued by Danish agents demanding his extradition, and men\nanxious to earn the reward offered for his apprehension, dead or\nalive. His last abode was Basle, where he passed under a feigned\nname, until a quarrel between one of his sons and a stranger caused\nthe discovery of their secret. Not feeling himself safe, Ulfeldt left\nBasle, alone, at night, in a boat descending the Rhine; but he never\nreached his destination. He was labouring under a violent attack on\nthe chest, and the night air killed him. He breathed his last in the\nboat, on February 20, 1664. The boatmen, concluding from the gold and\njewels which they found on him that he was a person of consequence,\nbrought the body on shore, and made the matter known in Basle, from\nwhence his sons came and buried him under a tree in a field--no one\nknows the spot.\n\nMeanwhile the punishment of beheading and quartering had been\nexecuted on a wooden effigy in Copenhagen. His palace was demolished,\nand the site laid out in a public square, on which a pillar of\nsandstone was erected as an everlasting monument of his crimes. This\npillar was taken away in 1842, and the name was changed from Ulfeldt\nSquare to Greyfriars Square, as an indication of the forgetting and\nforgiving spirit of the time, or perhaps rather because the treason\nof Ulfeldt was closely connected with the ancient jealousy between\nDanes and Swedes, of which the present generation is so anxious to\nefface the traces.\n\nHis children had to seek new homes elsewhere. Christian, who killed\nFuchs, became a Roman Catholic and died as an abbe; and none of them\ncontinued the name, except the youngest son Leo, who went into the\nservice of the German Emperor, and rose to the highest dignities. His\nson Corfits likewise filled important offices under Charles VI. and\nMaria Theresa, but left no sons. His two daughters married\nrespectively a Count Waldstein and a Count Thun, whose descendants\ntherefore now represent the family of Ulfeldt.\n\nLeonora Christina remained in prison for twenty-two years--that is,\nuntil the death of Sophia Amalia, the Queen of Fredrik III. This\nKing, as well as his son Christian V., would willingly have set her\nat liberty; but the influence of the Queen over her husband and son\nwas so strong that only her death, which occurred in 1685, released\nLeonora.\n\nThe Memoir of her life in prison terminates with this event, and her\nafter-life does not offer any very remarkable incidents.\nNevertheless, a few details, chiefly drawn from a MS. in the Royal\nLibrary at Copenhagen, recently published by Mr. Birket Smith, may\nserve to complete the historical image of this illustrious lady. The\nMS. in question is from the hand of a Miss Urne, of an ancient Danish\nfamily, who managed the household of Leonora from 1685 to her death\nin 1698. A royal manor, formerly a convent, at Maribo, on the island\nof Laaland, was granted to Leonora shortly after her release from the\nBlue Tower, together with a sufficient pension for a moderate\nestablishment.\n\n'The first occupation of the Countess,' says Miss Urne, 'was\ndevotion; for which purpose her household was assembled in a room\noutside her bed-chamber. In her daily morning prayer there was this\npassage: \"May the Lord help all prisoners, console the guilty, and\nsave the innocent!\" After that she remained the whole forenoon in her\nbedchamber, occupied in reading and writing. She composed a book\nentitled the \"Ornament of Heroines,\" which Countess A. C. Ulfeldt and\nCount Leon took away with them, together with many other rare\nwritings. Her handiwork is almost indescribable, and without an\nequal; such as embroidering in silk, gold embroidery, and turning in\namber and ivory.'\n\nIt will be seen from Leonora's own Memoir that needlework was one of\nher principal occupations in her prison. Count Waldstein still\npossesses some of her work; in the Church of Maribo an altar-cloth\nembroidered by her existed still some time ago; and at the Castle of\nRosenborg, in Copenhagen, there is a portrait of Christian V. worked\nby Leonora in silk, in return for which present the King increased\nher annual pension. Miss Urne says that she sent all her work to\nElizabeth Bek, a granddaughter of Leonora, who lived with her for\nsome years. But she refused to send her Leonora's Postille, or manual\nof daily devotion, which had been given Leonora on New Year's Day, in\nthe last year of her captivity, by the castellan, Torslev, who is\nmentioned in Leonora's Memoir, and who had taught her to turn ivory,\n&c. This book has disappeared; but amongst the relics of Leonora\nChristina, the Royal Library at Copenhagen preserves some leaves\nwhich had been bound up with it, and contain verses, &c., by Leonora,\nand other interesting matter.\n\nHer MS. works were taken to Vienna after her death. It is not known\nwhat has become of some of them. A copy of the first part of the book\non heroines exists in Copenhagen. Miss Urne says that she possessed\nfragments of a play composed by her and acted at Maribo Kloster; also\nthe younger Sperling speaks of such a composition in Danish verse;\nbut the MS. seems to be lost now.\n\nSeveral of Leonora's relations stayed with her from time to time at\nMaribo; amongst them the above-mentioned Elizabeth Bek, whose mother,\nLeonora Sophie, famous for her beauty, had married Lave Bek, the head\nof an ancient Danish family in Skaane. After Ulfeldt's death Lave Bek\ndemanded of the Swedish Government the estates which Carl Gustav had\ngiven to Ulfeldt in 1658, but which the Swedish Government had\nafterwards confiscated, without any legal ground. Leonora Christina\nherself memorialised the Swedish King on the subject, and at least\none of her memorials on the subject, dated May 23, 1693, still\nexists; but it was not till 1735 that these estates were given up to\nLave Bek's sons. Leonora's eldest daughter, Anne Catherina, lived\nwith her mother at Maribo for several years, and was present at her\ndeath. She had married Casetta, a Spanish nobleman, mentioned by\nLeonora Christina in her Memoir, who was with her in England when she\nwas arrested. After the death of Casetta and their children, Anne\nCatherina Ulfeldt came to live with her mother. She followed her\nbrother to Vienna, where she died. It was she who transmitted the MS.\nof Leonora's Memoir of her life in the Blue Tower to the brother,\nwith the following letter, which is still preserved with the MS.:--\n\n  'This book treats of what has happened to our late lady mother in\n  her prison. I have not been able to persuade myself to burn it,\n  although the reading of it has given me little pleasure, inasmuch\n  as all those events concern her miserable state. After all, it is\n  not without its use to know how she has been treated; but it is\n  not needful that it should come into the hands of strangers, for\n  it might happen to give pleasure to those of our enemies who\n  still remain.'\n\nThe letter is addressed 'A Monsieur, Monsieur le Comte d'Ulfeldt,'\n&c., but without date or signature. The handwriting is, however, that\nof Anne Catherina Ulfeldt, and she had probably sent it off to Vienna\nfor safety immediately after her mother's death, before she knew that\nher brother would come to Maribo himself. Miss Urne says, in the MS.\nreferred to, that the King had ordered that he was to be informed\nimmediately of Leonora's demise, in order that she might be buried\naccording to her rank and descent; but she had beforehand requested\nthat her funeral might be quite plain. Her coffin, as well as those\nof three children who had died young, and whose coffins had been\nprovisionally placed in a church at Copenhagen, was immured in a\nvault in the church of Maribo; but when this was opened some forty\nyears ago, no trace of Leonora's mortal remains could be found,\nthough those of the children were there: from which it is concluded\nthat a popular report, to the effect that the body had been secretly\ncarried abroad, contains more truth than was formerly supposed. Count\nWaldstein states that in the family vault at Leitsmischl, there is\none metal coffin without any inscription, and which may be hers. If\nso, Leonora has, as it were, after her death followed her husband\ninto exile. At any rate, the final resting-place of neither of them\nis known with certainty.\n\n\n\n\n AUTOBIOGRAPHY\n OF\n LEONORA CHRISTINA\n\n 1673.\n\n\n\n\nAUTOBIOGRAPHY.\n\n\nSir,[06]--To satisfy your curiosity, I will give you a short account\nof the life of her about whom you desire to be informed. She was born\nat Fredericksborg, in the year 1621, on June 11.[07] When she was six\nweeks old her grandmother took her with her to Dalum, where she\nremained until the age of four years; her first master there being\nMr. Envolt, afterward a priest at Roeskild. About six months after\nher return to the Court, her father sent her to Holland to his\ncousin, a Duchess of Brunswick, who had married Count Ernest of\nNassau, and lived at Lewarden.\n\n [06] This autobiographical sketch is written in the form of a\n letter to Dr. Otto Sperling the younger, the son of Corfits\n Ulfeldt's old friend, who was for some years Leonora's\n fellow-prisoner in the Blue Tower.\n\n [07] It is curious that Leonora seems for a long time to have been\n under a mistake as to the date of her birthday. The right date is\n July 18, new style.\n\nHer sister Sophia, who was two years and a half older than herself,\nand her brother, who was a year younger, had gone to the aforesaid\nDuchess nearly a year before. I must not forget to mention the first\nmischances that befell her at her setting out. She went by sea in one\nof the royal ships of war; having been two days and a night at sea,\nat midnight such a furious tempest arose that they all had given up\nany hope of escaping. Her tutor, Wichmann Hassebart (afterwards\nBishop of Fyn), who attended her, woke her and took her in his arms,\nsaying, with tears, that they should both die together, for he loved\nher tenderly. He told her of the danger, that God was angry, and that\nthey would all be drowned. She caressed him, treating him like a\nfather (after her usual wont), and begged him not to grieve; she was\nassured that God was not angry, that He would see they would not be\ndrowned, beseeching him again and again to believe her. Wichmann shed\ntears at her simplicity, and prayed to God to save the rest for her\nsake, and for the sake of the hope that she, an innocent girl,\nreposed in Him. God heard him, and after having lost the two\nmainmasts, they entered at dawn of day the harbour of Fleckeroe,[08]\nwhere they remained for six weeks.\n\n [08] On the South Coast of Norway.\n\nHaving received orders to proceed by sea, they pursued their route\nand arrived safely. Her sister being informed of her arrival, and\nbeing told that she had come with a different retinue to\nherself--with a suite of gentlemen, lady preceptor, servants and\nattendants, &c.--she burst into tears, and said that she was not\nsurprised that this sister always insinuated herself and made herself\na favourite, and that she would be treated there too as such. M.\nSophia was not mistaken in this; for her sister was in greater favour\nwith the Duchess, with her governess, and with many others, than she\nwas herself. Count Ernest alone took the side of M. Sophia, and this\nrather for the sake of provoking his wife, who liked dispute; for M.\nSophia exhibited her obstinacy even towards himself. She did all the\nmischief she could to her sister, and persuaded her brother to do the\nsame.\n\nTo amuse you I will tell you of her first innocent predilections.\nCount Ernest had a son of about eleven or twelve years of age; he\nconceived an affection for her, and having persuaded her that he\nloved her, and that she would one day be his wife, but that this must\nbe kept secret, she fancied herself already secretly his wife. He\nknew a little drawing, and by stealth he instructed her; he even\ntaught her some Latin words. They never missed an opportunity of\nretiring from company and conversing with each other.\n\nThis enjoyment was of short duration for her; for a little more than\na year afterwards she fell ill of small-pox, and as his elder\nbrother, William, who had always ridiculed these affections, urged\nhim to see his well-beloved in the condition in which she was, in\norder to disgust him with the sight, he came one day to the door to\nsee her, and was so startled that he immediately became ill, and died\non the ninth day following. His death was kept concealed from her.\nWhen she was better she asked after him, and she was made to believe\nthat he was gone away with his mother (who was at this time at\nBrunswick), attending the funeral of her mother. His body had been\nembalmed, and had been placed in a glass case. One day her preceptor\nmade her go into the hall where his body lay, to see if she\nrecognised it; he raised her in his arms to enable her to see it\nbetter. She knew her dear Moritz at once, and was seized with such a\nshock that she fell fainting to the ground. Wichmann in consequence\ncarried her hastily out of the hall to recover her, and as the dead\nboy wore a garland of rosemary, she never saw these flowers without\ncrying, and had an aversion to their smell, which she still retains.\n\nAs the wars between Germany and the King of Denmark had been the\ncause of the removal of his aforesaid children, they were recalled\nto Denmark when peace was concluded. At the age of seven years and\ntwo months she was affianced to a gentleman of the King's Chamber.\nShe began very early to suffer for his sake. Her governess was at\nthis time Mistress Anne Lycke, Qvitzow's mother. Her daughter, who\nwas maid of honour, had imagined that this gentleman made his\nfrequent visits for love of her. Seeing herself deceived, she did not\nknow in what manner to produce estrangement between the lovers; she\nspoke, and made M. Sophia speak, of the gentleman's poverty, and\namused herself with ridiculing the number of children in the family.\nShe regarded all this with indifference, only declaring once that she\nloved him, poor as he was, better than she loved her rich\ngallant.[09]\n\n [09] Count Christian Pentz, to whom Sophia was married in 1634.\n\nAt last they grew weary of this, and found another opportunity for\ntroubling her--namely, the illness of her betrothed, resulting from a\ncomplaint in his leg; they presented her with plaisters, ointments,\nand such like things, and talked together of the pleasure of being\nmarried to a man who had his feet diseased, &c. She did not answer a\nword either for good or bad, so they grew weary of this also. A year\nand a half after they had another governess, Catharina Sehestedt,\nsister of Hannibal.[10] M. Sophia thus lost her second, and her\nsister had a little repose in this quarter.\n\n [10] Hannibal Sehestedt afterwards married Leonora's younger sister\n Christiana; he became a powerful antagonist of Ulfeldt, and is\n mentioned often in the following Memoir.\n\nWhen our lady was about twelve years old, Francis Albert, Duke of\nSaxony,[11] came to Kolding to demand her in marriage. The King\nreplied that she was no longer free, that she was already betrothed;\nbut the Duke was not satisfied with this, and spoke to herself, and\nsaid a hundred fine things to her: that a Duke was far different to a\ngentleman. She told him she always obeyed the King, and since it had\npleased the King to promise her to a gentleman, she was well\nsatisfied. The Duke employed the governess to persuade her, and the\ngoverness introduced him to her brother Hannibal, then at the Court,\nand Hannibal went with post-horses to Moen, where her betrothed was,\nwho did not linger long on the road in coming to her. This was the\nbeginning of the friendship between Monsieur and Hannibal, which\nafterwards caused so much injury to Monsieur. But he had not needed\nto trouble himself, for the Duke never could draw from her the\ndeclaration that she would be ready to give up her betrothed if the\nKing ordered her to do so. She told him she hoped the King would not\nretract from his first promise. The Duke departed ill satisfied, on\nthe very day the evening of which the betrothed arrived. (Four years\nafterwards they quarrelled on this subject in the presence of the\nKing, who appeased them with his authority.)\n\n [11] Frantz Albrecht, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, the same who in the\n Thirty Years' War alternately served the Protestants and the\n Imperialists. In the battle of Luetzen he was near Gustav Adolf when\n he fell, and he was regarded by many as the one who treacherously\n fired the fatal shot.\n\nIt happened the following winter at Skanderborg that the governess\nhad a quarrel with the language-master, Alexandre de Cuqvelson, who\ntaught our lady and her sisters the French language, writing,\narithmetic, and dancing. M. Sophia was not studious; moreover, she\nhad very little memory; for her heart was too much devoted to her\ndolls, and as she perceived that the governess did not punish her\nwhen Alexandre complained of her, she neglected everything, and took\nno trouble about her studies. Our lady imagined she knew enough when\nshe knew as much as her sister. As this had lasted some time, the\ngoverness thought she could entrap Alexandre; she accused him to the\nKing, said that he treated the children badly, rapped their fingers,\nstruck them on the hand, called them bad names, &c., and with all\nthis they could not even read, much less speak, the French language.\nBesides this, she wrote the same accusations to the betrothed of our\nlady. The betrothed sent his servant Wolff to Skanderborg, with\nmenaces to Alexandre. At the same time Alexandre was warned that the\nKing had sent for the prince,[12] to examine his children, since the\nfather-confessor was not acquainted with the language.\n\n [12] That is, the King's eldest son Christian, who was elected his\n successor, but died before him.\n\nThe tutor was in some dismay; he flattered our lady, implored her to\nsave him, which she could easily do, since she had a good memory, so\nthat he could prove by her that it was not his fault that M. Sophia\nwas not more advanced. Our lady did not yield readily, but called to\nhis remembrance how one day, about half a year ago, she had begged\nhim not to accuse her to the governess, but that he had paid no\nattention to her tears, though he knew that the governess treated\nthem shamefully. He begged her for the love of Jesus, wept like a\nchild, said that he should be ruined for ever, that it was an act of\nmercy, that he would never accuse her, and that from henceforth she\nshould do nothing but what she wished. At length she consented, said\nshe would be diligent, and since she had yet three weeks before her,\nshe learnt a good deal by heart.[13] Alexandre told her one day,\ntowards the time of the examination, that there was still a great\nfavour she could render him: if she would not repeat the little\nthings which had passed at school-time; for he could not always pay\nattention to every word that he said when M. Sophia irritated him,\nand if he had once taken the rod to hit her fingers when she had not\nstruck her sister strongly enough, he begged her for the love of God\nto pardon it. (It should be mentioned that he wished the one to\nstrike the other when they committed faults, and the one who\ncorrected the other had to beat her, and if she did not do so\nstrongly enough, he took the office upon himself; thus he had often\nbeaten our lady.)\n\n [13] In the margin the following addition is inserted: 'She had at\n that time an unusual memory. She could at one and the same time\n recite one psalm by heart, write another, and attend to the\n conversation. She had tried this more than once, but I think that\n she has thereby spoilt her memory, which is not now so good.'\n\nShe made excuses, said that she did not dare to tell a lie if they\nasked her, but that she would not accuse him of herself. This promise\ndid not wholly satisfy him; he continued his entreaties, and assured\nher that a falsehood employed to extricate a friend from danger was\nnot a sin, but was agreeable to God; moreover, it was not necessary\nfor her to say anything, only not to confess what she had seen and\nheard. She said that the governess would treat her ill; so he replied\nthat she should have no occasion to do so, for that he would never\ncomplain to her. Our lady replied that the governess would find\npretext enough, since she was inclined to ill-treat the children; and\nanyhow, the other master who taught them German was a rude man, and\nan old man who taught them the spinette was a torment, therefore she\nhad sufficient reason for fear. He did not give way, but so persisted\nin his persuasion that she promised everything.\n\nWhen the prince arrived the governess did not forget to besiege him\nwith her complaints, and to beg him to use his influence that the\ntutor might be dismissed. At length the day of the examination having\ncome, the governess told her young ladies an hour before that they\nwere to say how villanously he had treated them, beaten them, &c. The\nprince came into the apartments of the ladies accompanied by the\nKing's father-confessor (at that time Dr. Ch(r)estien Sar); the\ngoverness was present the whole time.\n\nThey were first examined in German. M. Sophia acquitted herself very\nindifferently, not being able to read fluently. The master\nChristoffre excused her, saying that she was timid. When it came to\nAlexandre's turn to show what his pupils could do, M. Sophia could\nread little or nothing. When she stammered in reading, the governess\nlooked at the prince and laughed aloud. There was no difference in\nthe gospel, psalms, proverbs, or suchlike things. The governess was\nvery glad, and would have liked that the other should not have been\nexamined. But when it came to her turn to read in the Bible, and she\ndid not hesitate, the governess could no longer restrain herself, and\nsaid, 'Perhaps it is a passage she knows by heart that you have made\nher read.' Alexandre begged the governess herself to give the lady\nanother passage to read. The governess was angry at this also, and\nsaid, 'He is ridiculing me because I do not know French.' The prince\nthen opened the Bible and made her read other passages, which she\ndid as fluently as before. In things by heart she showed such\nproficiency that the prince was too impatient to listen to all.\n\nIt was then Alexandre's turn to speak, and to say that he hoped His\nHighness would graciously consider that it was not his fault that M.\nSophia was not more advanced. The governess interrupted him saying,\n'You are truly the cause of it, for you treat her ill!' and she began\na torrent of accusations, asking M. Sophia if they were not true. She\nanswered in the affirmative, and that she could not conscientiously\ndeny them. Then she asked our lady if they were not true. She replied\nthat she had never heard nor seen anything of the kind. The\ngoverness, in a rage, said to the Prince, 'Your highness must make\nher speak the truth; she dares not do so, for Alexandre's sake.'\n\nThe Prince asked her if Alexandre had never called her bad names--if\nhe had never beaten her. She replied, 'Never.' He asked again if she\nhad not seen nor heard that he had ill-treated her sister. She\nreplied, 'No, she had never either heard or seen it.' At this the\ngoverness became furious; she spoke to the prince in a low voice; the\nprince replied aloud, 'What do you wish me to do? I have no order\nfrom the King to constrain her to anything.' Well, Alexandre gained\nhis cause; the governess could not dislodge him, and our lady gained\nmore than she had imagined in possessing the affection of the King,\nthe goodwill of the Prince, of the priest, and of all those who knew\nher. But the governess from that moment took every opportunity of\nrevenging herself on our lady.\n\nAt length she found one, which was rather absurd. The old Jean\nMeinicken, who taught our lady the spinette, one day, in a passion,\nseized the fingers of our lady and struck them against the\ninstrument; without remembering the presence of her governess, she\ntook his hand and retaliated so strongly that the strings broke. The\ngoverness heard with delight the complaints of the old man. She\nprepared two rods; she used them both, and, not satisfied with that,\nshe turned the thick end of one, and struck our lady on the thigh,\nthe mark of which she bears to the present day. More than two months\nelapsed before she recovered from the blow; she could not dance, nor\ncould she walk comfortably for weeks after. This governess did her so\nmuch injury that at last our lady was obliged to complain to her\nbetrothed, who had a quarrel with the governess at the wedding of M.\nSophia, and went straight to the King to accuse her; she was at once\ndismissed, and the four children, the eldest of which was our lady,\nwent with the princess[14] to Nikoping, to pass the winter there,\nuntil the king could get another governess. The King, who had a good\nopinion of the conduct of our lady, who at this time was thirteen\nyears and four months old, wrote to her and ordered her to take care\nof her sisters. Our lady considered herself half a governess, so she\ntook care not to set them a bad example. As to study, she gave no\nthought to it at this time; she occupied herself in drawing and\narithmetic, of which she was very fond, and the princess, who was\nseventeen years of age, delighted in her company. Thus this winter\npassed very agreeably for her.\n\n [14] Namely, Magdalena Sybilla of Saxony, then newly married\n (October 5, 1634) to Prince Christian, the eldest son and elected\n successor of Christian IV. M. Sophia's wedding to Chr. Pentz was\n celebrated on the 10th of the same month.\n\nAt the approach of the Diet, which sat eight days after Pentecost,\nthe children came to Copenhagen, with the prince and princess, and\nhad as governess a lady of Mecklenburg of the Blixen family, the\nmother of Philip Barstorp who is still alive. After the Diet, the\nking made a journey to Glueckstad in two days and a half, and our lady\naccompanied him; it pleased the King that she was not weary, and that\nshe could bear up against inconveniences and fatigues. She afterwards\nmade several little journeys with the King, and she had the good\nfortune occasionally to obtain the pardon of some poor criminals, and\nto be in favour with the king.\n\nOur lady having attained the age of fifteen years and about four\nmonths, her betrothed obtained permission for their marriage, which\nwas celebrated (with more pomp than the subsequent weddings of her\nsisters), on October 9, 1636. The winter after her marriage she was\nwith her husband at Moen, and as she knew that her husband's father\nhad not left him any wealth, she asked him concerning his debts, and\nconjured him to conceal nothing from her. He said to her, 'If I tell\nyou the truth it will perhaps frighten you.' She declared it would\nnot, and that she would supply what was needful from her ornaments,\nprovided he would assure her that he had told her everything. He did\nso, and found that she was not afraid to deprive herself of her gold,\nsilver, and jewels, in order to pay a sum of thirty-six thousand\nrix-dollars. On April 21, 1637, she went with her husband to\nCopenhagen in obedience to the order of the king, who gave him the\npost of V.R.[15] He was again obliged to incur debt in purchasing a\nhouse and in setting up a larger establishment.\n\n [15] V.R. probably stands for Viceroy, by which term Leonora no\n doubt indicates the post of Governor of Copenhagen.\n\nThere would be no end were I to tell you all the mischances that\nbefell her during the happy period of her marriage, and of all the\nsmall contrarieties which she endured; but since I am assured that\nthis history will not be seen by anyone, and that you will not keep\nit after having read it, I will tell you a few points which are\nworthy of attention. Those who were envious of the good fortune of\nour lady could not bear that she should lead a tranquil life, nor\nthat she should be held in esteem by her father and King; I may call\nhim thus, for the King conferred on her more honours than were due to\nher from him. Her husband loved and honoured her, enacting the lover\nmore than the husband.\n\nShe spent her time in shooting, riding, tennis, in learning drawing\nin good earnest from Charles v. Mandern, in playing the viol, the\nflute, the guitar, and she enjoyed a happy life. She knew well that\njealousy is a plague, and that it injures the mind which harbours it.\nHer relations tried to infuse into her head that her husband loved\nelsewhere, especially M. Elizabet, and subsequently Anna, sister of\nher husband, who was then in her house. M. Elizabet began by\nmentioning it as a secret, premising that no one could tell her and\nwarn her, except her who was her sister.\n\nAs our lady at first said nothing and only smiled, M. Elis... said:\n'The world says that you know it well, but that you will not appear\nto do so.' She replied with a question: 'Why did she tell her a\nthing as a secret, which she herself did not believe to be a secret\nto her? but she would tell her a secret that perhaps she did not\nknow, which was, that she had given her husband permission to spend\nhis time with others, and when she was satisfied the remainder would\nbe for others; that she believed there were no such jealous women as\nthose who were insatiable, but that a wisdom was imputed to her,\nwhich she did not possess; she begged her, however, to be wise enough\nnot to interfere with matters which did not concern her, and if she\nheard others mentioning it (as our lady had reason to believe that\nthis was her own invention) that she would give them a reprimand. M.\nElis... was indignant and went away angry, but Anna, Monsieur's\nsister, who was in the house, adopted another course. She drew round\nher the handsomest women in the town, and then played the procuress,\nspoke to her brother of one particularly, who was a flirt, and who\nwas the handsomest, and offered him opportunities, &c. As she saw\nthat he was proof against it, she told him (to excite him) that his\nwife was jealous, that she had had him watched where he went when he\nhad been drinking with the King, to know whether he visited this\nwoman; she said that his wife was angry, because the other woman was\nso beautiful, said that she painted, &c.\n\nThe love borne to our lady by her husband made him tell her all, and,\nmoreover, he went but rarely afterwards to his sister's apartments,\nfrom which she could easily understand that the conversation had not\nbeen agreeable to him; but our lady betrayed nothing of the matter,\nvisited her more than before, caressed this lady more than any other,\nand even made her considerable presents. (Anna remained in her house\nas long as she lived.)\n\nAll this is of small consideration compared with the conduct of her\nown brother. It is well known to you that the Biel... were very\nintimate in our lady's house. It happened that her brother made a\njourney to Muscovy, and that the youngest of the Biel... was in his\nsuite. As this was a very lawless youth, and, to say the truth, badly\nbrought up, he not only at times failed in respect to our lady's\nbrother, but freely expressed his sentiments to him upon matters\nwhich did not concern him; among other things, he spoke ill of the\nHolstein noblemen, naming especially one, who was then in waiting on\nthe King, who he said had deceived our lady's brother. The matter\nrested there for more than a year after their return from this\njourney. The brother of our lady and Biel... played cards together,\nand disputed over them; upon this the brother of our lady told the\nHolstein nobleman what Biel... had said of him more than a year\nbefore, which B. did not remember, and swore that he had never said.\nThe Holstein nobleman said insulting things against Biel....\n\nOur lady conversed with her brother upon the affair, and begged him\nto quiet the storm he had raised, and to consider how it would cause\nan ill-feeling with regard to him among the nobility, and that it\nwould seem that he could not keep to himself what had been told him\nin secret; it would be very easy for him to mend the matter. Her\nbrother replied that he could never retract what he had said, and\nthat he should consider the Holstein nobleman as a villain if he did\nnot treat B. as a rogue.\n\nAt length the Holstein nobleman behaved in such a manner as to\nconstrain B. to send him a challenge. B. was killed by his adversary\nwith the sword of our lady's brother, which she did not know till\nafterwards. At noon of the day on which B. had been killed in the\nmorning, our lady went to the castle to visit her little twin\nsisters; her brother was there, and came forward, laughing loudly and\nsaying, 'Do you know that Ran... has killed B...?' She replied, 'No,\nthat I did not know, but I knew that you had killed him. Ran... could\ndo nothing less than defend himself, but you placed the sword in his\nhand.' Her brother, without answering a word, mounted his horse and\nwent to seek his brother-in-law, who was speaking with our old\nfriend,[16] told him he was the cause of B.'s death, and that he had\ndone so because he had understood that his sister loved him, and that\nhe did not believe that his brother-in-law was so blind as not to\nhave perceived it. The husband of our lady did not receive this\nspeech in the way the other had imagined, and said, 'If you were not\nher brother, I would stab you with this poniard,' showing it to him.\n'What reason have you for speaking thus?' The good-for-nothing fellow\nwas rather taken aback at this, and knew not what to say, except that\nB... was too free and had no respect in his demeanour; and that this\nwas a true sign of love. At length, after some discussion on both\nsides, the brother of our lady requested that not a word might be\nsaid to his sister.\n\n [16] The old friend is Dr. Otto Sperling, sen., a physician in\n extensive practice at Copenhagen, and intimate friend of Ulfeldt.\n Mr. Biel... signifies most probably a certain Christian Bielke,\n whose portrait still exists at Rosenborg Castle, in Copenhagen,\n with an inscription that he was killed in a duel by Bartram Rantzau\n on Easter eve 1642. If this date is true, Bielke cannot have\n accompanied Leonora's brother Count Valdemar on his journey to\n Russia, as this journey only took place in 1643. Count Valdemar was\n to marry a Russian princess, but it was broken off on his refusing\n to join the Greek church.\n\nAs soon as she returned home, her husband told her everything in the\npresence of our old friend, but ordered her to feign ignorance. This\nwas all the more easy for her, as her husband gave no credence to it,\nbut trusted in her innocence. She let nothing appear, but lived with\nher brother as before. But some years after, her brother ill-treated\nhis own mother, and her side being taken by our lady, they were in\nconsequence not good friends.\n\nIn speaking to you of the occupations of our lady, after having\nreached the age of twenty-one or thereabouts, I must tell you she had\na great desire to learn Latin. She had a very excellent master,[17]\nwhom you know, and who taught her for friendship as well as with good\nwill. But she had so many irons in the fire, and sometimes it was\nnecessary to take a journey, and a yearly accouchement (to the number\nof ten) prevented her making much progress; she understood a little\neasy Latin, but attempted nothing difficult; she then learnt a little\nItalian, which she continued studying whenever an opportunity\npresented itself.\n\n [17] Dr. Otto Sperling, senior.\n\nI will not speak of her short journeys to Holstein, Jutland, &c.; but\nin the year 1646 she made a voyage with her husband by sea, in the\nfirst place to Holland, where she gave birth to a son six weeks after\nher arrival at the Hague. From thence she went with her husband to\nFrance, first to Paris and afterwards to Amiens; there they took\nleave of the King and of the Queen Mother, Regent, and as they were\nreturning by Dunkirk she had the curiosity to see England, and\nbegged her husband to permit her to cross over with a small suite, to\nwhich he consented, since one of the royal vessels lay in the roads.\nShe took a nobleman with her who knew the language, our old friend, a\nservant, and the valet of the aforesaid nobleman, and this was the\nwhole of her retinue. She embarked, and her husband planned to pass\nthrough Flanders and Brabant, and to await her at Rotterdam. As she\nwas on the vessel a day and night, and the wind did not favour them,\nshe resolved to land and to follow her husband, fancying she could\nreach him in time to see Flanders and Brabant; she had not visited\nthese countries before, having passed from Holland by sea to Calais.\n\nShe found her husband at Ostend, and travelled with him to Rotterdam;\nfrom thence she pursued her former plan, embarked at Helvoot-Sluys,\nand arrived at Duns, went to London, and returned by Dover, making\nthe whole voyage in ten days, and she was again enceinte. She was an\nobject of suspicion in London. The Prince Palatine, then Elector of\nHeidelberg,[18] belonged to the party opposed to the beheaded King,\nwho was then a prisoner; and they watched her and surrounded her with\nspies, so she did not make a long sojourn in London. Nothing else was\nimagined, when it was known she had been there, but that she had\nletters from the King of Dan... for the King of Engl.... She returned\nwith her husband to Dan....\n\n [18] Prince Ruprecht, Duke of Cumberland, nephew of Charles I.\n\nIn the year 1648 fortune abandoned our lady, for on February 28 the\nKing was taken from her by death. She had the happiness, however, of\nattending upon him until his last breath. Good God, when I think of\nwhat this good King said to her the first day, when she found him\nill in bed at Rosenborg, and wept abundantly, my heart is touched. He\nbegged her not to weep, caressed her, and said: 'I have placed you so\nsecurely that no one can move you.' Only too much has she felt the\ncontrary of the promise of the King who succeeded him, for when he\nwas Duke and visited her at her house, a few days after the death of\nthe King, finding her in tears, he embraced her, saying: 'I will be a\nfather to you, do not weep.' She kissed his hand without being able\nto speak. I find that some fathers have been unnatural towards their\nchildren.\n\nIn the year 1649 she made another voyage with her husband to Holland,\nand at the Hague gave birth to a daughter. When her husband returned\nfrom this journey, he for the first time perceived the designs of\nHannibal, of Gerstorp, and Wibe, but too late. He absented himself\nfrom business, and would not listen to what his wife told him. Our\nold friend shared the opinion of our lady, adducing very strong\nreason for it, but all in vain; he said, that he would not be a\nperpetual slave for the convenience of his friends. His wife spoke as\na prophet to him, told him that he would be treated as a slave when\nhe had ceased to have authority, that they would suspect him, and\nenvy his wealth; all of which took place, though I shall make no\nrecital of it, since these events are sufficiently known to you.\n\nWe will now speak a little of the events which occurred afterwards.\nWhen they had gained their cause,[19] our lady feared that the strong\nparty which they had then overcome would not rest without ruining\nthem utterly at any cost; so she advised her husband to leave the\ncountry, since he had the King's permission to do so,[20] and to save\nhis life, otherwise his enemies would contrive some other invention\nwhich would succeed better. He consented to this at length, and they\ntook their two eldest children with them, and went by sea to\nAmsterdam. At Utrecht they left the children with the servants and a\nfemale attendant, and our lady disguised herself in male attire and\nfollowed her husband, who took the route to Lubeck, and from thence\nby sea to Sweden, to ask the protection of Queen Christina, which he\nreceived; and as the Queen knew that his wife was with him in\ndisguise, she requested to see her, which she did.\n\n [19] Namely, the process against Dina. _See_ Introduction.\n\n [20] Ulfeldt had not really the permission of the King to leave the\n country in the way he did. These words must therefore be understood\n to mean that the favourable termination of the trial concerning\n Dina's accusations had liberated Ulfeldt from the special\n obligation to remain in Copenhagen, which his position in reference\n to that case imposed upon him.\n\nThe husband of our lady purposed to remain some time in Pomerania,\nand the Queen lent him a vessel to convey him thither. Having been\nthree days at sea, the wind carried them towards Dantzig, and not\nbeing able to enter the town, for it was too late, they remained\noutside the gates at a low inn. An adventure fit for a novel here\nhappened to our lady. A girl of sixteen, or a little more, believing\nthat our lady was a young man, threw herself on her neck with\ncaresses, to which our lady responded, and played with the girl, but,\nas our lady perceived what the girl meant, and that she could not\nsatisfy her, she turned her over to Charles, a man of their suite,\nthinking he would answer her purpose; he offered the girl his\nattentions, but she repelled him rudely, saying, she was not for him,\nand went again to our lady, accosting her in the same way. Our lady\ngot rid of her, but with difficulty however, for she was somewhat\nimpudent, and our lady did not dare to leave her apartment. For the\nsake of amusing you, I must tell you, what now occurs to me, that in\nthe fort before Stade, the name of which has escaped me, our lady\nplayed with two soldiers for drink, and her husband, who passed for\nher uncle, paid the expenses; the soldiers, willing to lose for the\nsake of gaining the beer, and astonished that she never lost, were,\nhowever, civil enough to present her with drink.\n\nWe must return to Dantzig. The husband of our lady, finding himself\nnear Thoren, desired to make an excursion there, but his design was\ninterrupted by two men, one who had formerly served in Norway as\nLieutenant-Colonel, and a charlatan who called himself Dr. Saar, and\nwho had been expelled from Copenhagen. They asked the Mayor of the\ntown to arrest these two persons, believing that our lady was Ebbe\nWl....[21] They were warned by their host that these persons said\nthey were so-and-so, and that these gentlemen were at the door to\nprevent their going out. Towards evening they grew tired of keeping\nguard, and went away. Before dawn the husband of our lady went out of\nthe house first, and waited at the gate, and our lady with the two\nservants went in a coach to wait at the other gate until it was\nopened; thus they escaped this time.\n\n [21] That is, Ebbe Ulfeldt,--a relative of Corfitz who left Denmark\n in 1651 and afterwards lived in Sweden.\n\nThey went by land to Stralsund, where our lady resumed her own\nattire, after having been in disguise twelve weeks and four days, and\nhaving endured many inconveniences, not having gone to bed all the\ntime, except at Stockholm, Dantzig, and Stettin. She even washed the\nclothes, which inconvenienced her much. The winter that they passed\nat Stralsund, her husband taught her, or rather began to teach her,\nSpanish. In the spring they again made a voyage to Stockholm, at the\ndesire of Queen Chr.... This good Queen, who liked intrigue, tried to\nexcite jealousy and to make people jealous, but she did not succeed.\nThey were in Sweden until after the abdication of the Queen, and the\nwedding and coronation of King Charles and Queen Hedevig, which was\nin the year 1654. They returned to Pomerania for a visit to Barth,\nwhich they possessed as a mortgage. There, our lady passed her time\nin study, sometimes occupied with a Latin book, sometimes with a\nSpanish one. She translated a small Spanish work, entitled _Matthias\nde los Reyos_; but this book since fell into the hands of others, as\nwell as the first part of _Cleopatre_, which she had translated from\nthe French, with matters of greater value.\n\nIn the year 1657,[22] her husband persuaded her to make a voyage to\nDannem... to try and gain an audience with the King, and see if she\ncould not obtain some payment from persons who owed them money. Our\nlady found various pleas for not undertaking this voyage, seeing a\nhundred difficulties against its successful issue; but her husband\nbesought her to attempt it, and our old friend shared her husband's\nopinion that nothing could be done to her, that she was under the\nprotection of the King of Sweden, and not banished from Dan... with\nsimilar arguments. At length she yielded, and made the journey in the\nwinter, travelling in a coach with six horses, a secretary, a man on\nhorseback, a female attendant, a page and a lacquey--that was all.\nShe went first to see her mother in Jutland, and remained there three\ndays; this was immediately known at the Court.\n\n [22] This date is erroneous; the journey took place in November and\n December 1656.\n\nWhen she had passed the Belt, and was within cannon-shot of Corsor,\nshe was met by Uldrich Chr. Guldenl...,[23] who was on the point of\ngoing to Jutland to fetch her. He returned with his galley and\nlanded; she remained in her vessel, waiting for her carriage to be\nput on shore. Guld... impatient, could not wait so long, and sent the\nburgomaster Brant to tell her to come ashore, as he had something to\nsay to her. She replied that if he had anything to say to her, he\nought to show her the attention of coming to her. Brant went with\nthis answer; awaiting its issue, our lady looked at her attendants\nand perceived a change in them all. Her female attendant was seized\nwith an attack from which she suffers still, a trembling of the head,\nwhile her eyes remained fixed. The secretary trembled so that his\nteeth chattered. Charles was quite pale, as were all the others. Our\nlady spoke to them, and asked them why they were afraid; for her they\nhad nothing to fear, and less for themselves. The secretary answered,\n'They will soon let us know that.' Brant returned with the same\nmessage, with the addition that Gul... was bearer of the King's\norder, and that our lady ought to come to him at the Castle to hear\nthe King's order. She replied that she respected the King's order\nthere as well as at the castle; that she wished that Gul... would\nplease to let her know there the order of His Majesty; and when\nBrant tried to persuade her, saying continually, 'Oh! do give in, do\ngive in!' she used the same expression, and said also, 'Beg Gul... to\ngive in,' &c. At length she said, 'Give me sufficient time to have\ntwo horses harnessed, for I cannot imagine he would wish me to go on\nfoot.'\n\n [23] U.C. Gyldenlove, illegitimate son of Christian IV. and\n half-brother of Leonora.\n\nWhen she reached the castle she had the coach pulled up. Brant came\nforward to beg her to enter the castle; she refused, and said she\nwould not enter; that if he wished to speak to her he must come to\nher, that she had come more than half-way. Brant went, and returned\nonce again, but she said the same, adding that he might do all that\nseemed good to him, she should not stir from the spot. At length the\ngood-for-nothing fellow came down, and when he was ready to speak to\nher, she opened the coach and got out. He said a few polite words to\nher, and then presented her with an order from the King, written in\nthe chancery, the contents of which were, that she must hasten to\ndepart from the King's territory, or she would have to thank herself\nfor any ill that might befall her. Having read the order she bowed,\nand returned him the order, which was intended to warn her, saying,\n'That she hoped to have been permitted to kiss the King's hand, but\nas her enemies had hindered this happiness by such an order, there\nwas nothing left for her but to obey in all humility, and thanking\nHis Majesty most humbly for the warning, she would hasten as quickly\nas possible to obey His Majesty's commands. She asked if she were\npermitted to take a little refreshment, for that they had had\ncontrary winds and had been at sea all day. Gul... answered in the\nnegative, that he did not dare to give her the permission; and since\nshe had obeyed with such great submission, he would not show her the\nother order that he had, asking her at the same moment if she wished\nto see this other order? She said, no; that she would abide by the\norder that she had seen, and that she would immediately embark on\nboard her ferry-boat to return. Gul... gave her his hand, and begged\nher to make use of his galley.\n\nShe did so. They went half the way without speaking; at length Gul...\nbroke the silence, and they entered into conversation. He told her\nthat the King had been made to believe that she had assembled a\nnumber of noblemen at her mother's house, and that he had orders to\ndisperse this cabal. They had a long conversation together, and spoke\nof Dina's affair; he said the King did not yet know the real truth of\nit. She complained that the King had not tried to know it. At length\nthey arrived by night at Nyborg. Gul... accompanied her to her\nhostelry, and went to his own, and an hour afterwards sent\nScherning[24] to tell her that at dawn of day she must be ready, in\norder that they might arrive at Assens the next evening, which it was\nimpossible to do with her own horses, as they did not arrive till\nmorning. She assented, saying she would act in obedience to his\norders, began talking with Scherning, and conversed with him about\nother matters. I do not know how, but she gained his good graces, and\nhe prevailed so far with Gul... that Gul... did not hasten her\nunduly. Towards nine o'clock the next morning he came to tell her\nthat he did not think it necessary to accompany her further, but he\nhoped she would follow the King's order, and begged her to speak with\nKay v. Ahlefeld at Haderslef, when she was passing through; he had\nreceived orders as to what he had to do. She promised this, and\nGul... returned to Copenhagen, placing a man with our lady to watch\nher.\n\n [24] Probably Povl Tscherning, a well-known man of the time, who\n held the office of Auditor-General.\n\nOur lady did not think it necessary to speak to Kay v. Ahlefeld, for\nshe had nothing to say to him, and she did not want to see more\norders; she passed by Haderslef, and went to Apenrade, and awaited\nthere for ten days[25] a letter from Gul... which he had promised to\nwrite to her; when she saw that he was not going to keep his word she\nstarted on her way to Slesvig, halting half way with the intention of\ndining. Holst, the clerk of the bailiwick of Flensborg, here arrived\nin a coach with two arquebuses larger and longer than halberds. He\ngave orders to close the bar of Boy..., sent to the village, which is\nquite close, that the peasants should hold themselves ready with\ntheir spears and arms, and made four persons who were in the tavern\ntake the same arms, that is, large poles. Afterwards he entered and\nmade a long speech, with no end of compliments to our lady, to while\naway the time. The matter was, that the governor[26] desired her to\ngo to Flensborg, as he had something to say to her, and he hoped she\nwould do him the pleasure to rest a night at Flensborg.\n\n [25] In order to understand how she could wait for ten days at\n Apenrade, it must be borne in mind that the duchy of Slesvig was at\n that time divided into several parts, of which some belonged to the\n King, others to the Duke of Gottorp. Haderslev and Flensborg\n belonged to the King, but Apenrade to the Duke; in this town,\n therefore, she was safe from the pursuit of the Danish authorities.\n\n [26] The governor of Flensborg at that time was Detlef v. Ahlefeld,\n the same who in 1663 was sent to Koenigsberg to receive information\n from the court of Brandenburg on the last intrigues of Ulfeldt.\n\nOur lady replied that she had not the pleasure of his acquaintance,\nand therefore she thought he took her for someone else; if she could\noblige him in anything she would remain at Slesvig the following day,\nin order to know in what she could serve him. No, it was not that; he\nrepeated his request. She ordered Charles to have the horses put to.\nHolst understood this, which was said in French, and begged her for\nthe love of God not to set out; he had orders not to let her depart.\n'You,' said she, in a somewhat haughty tone, 'who are you? With what\nauthority do you speak thus?' He said he had no written order, but by\nword of mouth, and that his governor would soon arrive; he begged her\nfor the love of God to pardon him. He was a servant, he was willing\nto be trodden under her feet. She said: 'It is not for you to pay me\ncompliments, still less to detain me, since you cannot show me the\nKing's order, but it is for me to think what I ought to do.'\n\nShe went out and ordered her lacquey, who was the only determined one\nof her suite, to make himself master of Holst's chariot and\narquebuses. Holst followed her, begging her a hundred times, saying,\n'I do not dare to let you pass, I do not dare to open the bar.' She\nsaid, 'I do not ask you to open;' she got into the coach. Holst put\nhis hand upon the coach-door and sang the old song. Our lady, who had\nalways pistols in her carriage when she travelled, drew out one and\npresented it to him saying, 'Draw back, or I will give you the\ncontents of this.' He was not slow in letting go his hold; then she\nthrew a patacoon to those who were to restrain her, saying, 'Here is\nsomething for drink; help in letting the carriage pass the fosse!'\nwhich they immediately did.\n\nNot a quarter of an hour after she had gone, the governor arrived\nwith another chariot. There were two men and four guns in each\nchariot. Our lady was warned of the pursuit; she begged her two\ncoachmen, whom she had for herself and her baggage, to dispute them\nthe road as much as they could; she ordered Charles always to remain\nat the side of her carriage, in order that she might throw herself\nupon the horse if she saw that they gained ground. She took off her\nfurred robe. They disputed the road up to the bridge, which separated\nthe territory of the King from that of the Duke.\n\nWhen she had passed the bridge she stopped, put on her robe, and\nalighted. The others paused on the other side of the bridge to look\nat her, and thus she escaped again for this time.[27] But it was\namusing to see how the secretary perspired, what fright he was in; he\ndid not afterwards pretend to bravery, but freely confessed that he\nwas half dead with fear. She returned to Barth, and found her husband\nvery very ill. Our old friend had almost given up all hope of his\nrecovery, but her presence acted as a miracle; he was sufficiently\nstrong in the morning to be taken out of bed, to the great surprise\nof our old friend.\n\n [27] The clerk Holst was shortly after, when the Swedes occupied\n Flensborg, put to a heavy ransom by Ulfeldt, in punishment of his\n conduct to Leonora. Documents which still exist show that he\n applied to the Danish Government for compensation, but apparently\n in vain.\n\nJust as our lady was thinking of passing some days in tranquillity,\noccupied in light study, in trifling work, distillations,\nconfectionery, and such like things, her husband mixed himself in the\nwars. The King of Sweden sent after him to Stettin; he told his wife\nthat he would have nothing to do with them. He did not keep his word,\nhowever; he did not return to Barth, but went straight off with the\nKing. She knew he was not provided with anything; she saw the danger\nto which he was exposed, she wished to share it; she equipped herself\nin haste, and, without his sending for her, went to join him at\nOttensen. He wished to persuade her to return to Hamburgh, and spoke\nto her of the great danger; she said the danger was the reason why\nshe wished to bear him company, and to share it with him; so she went\nwith him, and passed few days without uneasiness, especially when\nFriderichsodde was taken; she feared for both husband and son. There\nshe had the happiness of reconciling the C. Wrangel and the C.\nJaques,[28] which her husband had believed impossible, not having\nbeen able to succeed. She had also the good fortune to cure her\neldest son and eight of her servants of a malignant fever named\nSprinckeln; there was no doctor at that time with the army, our old\nfriend having left.\n\n [28] Count Jakob Casimir de la Gardie, a Swedish nobleman. Count\n Wrangel was the Swedish General.\n\nWhen her husband passed with the King to Seeland, she remained at\nFyen. The day that she had resolved to set out on the following to\nreturn to Schone, a post arrived with news that her mother was at the\npoint of death and wished to speak to her; she posted to Jutland,\nfound Madame very ill and with no hope of life. She had only been\nthere one night, when her husband sent a messenger to say that if she\nwished to see him alive she must lose no time. Our lady was herself\nill; she had to leave her mother, who was already half dead; she had\nto take her last farewell in great sorrow, and to go with all speed\nto seek her husband, who was very ill at Malmoe. Two days afterwards\nshe received the tidings of her mother's death, and as soon as the\nhealth of her husband permitted it, she went to Jutland to give the\nnecessary orders for her mother's funeral. She returned once more to\nSchone before the burial; after the funeral[29] she went to\nCopenhagen and revisited Malmoe one day before the King of Sweden\nbegan the war for the second time and appeared before Kopenh....\n\n [29] The funeral took place with great pomp in the church of St.\n Knud, at Odense, on June 23, 1658, together with that of Sophia\n Elizabeth, Leonora's sister, who is mentioned in the beginning of\n the Autobiography.\n\nIn the year 1659 the King of Sweden ordered her husband to be\narrested at Malmoe. She went immediately to Helsingor to speak to the\nKing, but had not the happiness of speaking to him; on the contrary,\nthe King sent two of his counsellors to tell her that she was free to\nchoose whether she would return to her estates and superintend them,\nor go back to Malmoe and be arrested with her husband. She thanked\nHis Majesty very humbly for the favour of the choice; she chose to\nsuffer with her husband, and was glad to have the happiness of\nserving him in his affliction, and bearing the burden with him which\nwould lighten it to him.\n\nShe returned to Malmoe with these news; her husband exhibited too\nmuch grief that she was not permitted to solicit on his behalf, and\nshe consoled him as well as she was able. A few days after, an\nofficer came to their house and irritated her husband so much by his\nimpertinent manner that he had a fit of apoplexy. Our lady was\noverwhelmed with sorrow; she sent for the priest the next morning,\nmade her husband receive the holy communion, and received it herself.\nShe knew not at what hour she might be a widow; no one came to see\nher, no one in consequence consoled her, and she had to console\nherself. She had a husband who was neither living nor dead; he ate\nand drank; he spoke, but no one could understand him.\n\nAbout eight months after, the King began to take proceedings against\nher husband, and in order to make her answer for her husband they\nmixed her up in certain points as having asked for news: whence the\nyoung lady was taken whom her husband brought to Copenhagen? who was\nTrolle? and that she had kept the property of a Danish nobleman in\nher house.[30] Since her husband was ill, the King graciously\npermitted her to answer for him; thus they proceeded with her for\nnine weeks in succession; she had no other assistance in copying her\ndefence than her eldest daughter, then very young. She was permitted\nto make use of Wolff, for receiving the accusations and taking back\nthe replies, but he wrote nothing for her. If you are interested in\nknowing the proceedings, Kield[31] can give you information\nrespecting them.\n\n [30] The young lady was Birgitte Rantzau, who was engaged to\n Korfits Trolle, a Danish nobleman, who had been very active in\n preparing the intended rising of the citizens of Malmoe against the\n Swedes. Ulfeldt was accused of having favoured and assisted this\n design (_see_ the Introduction), and he had brought Trolle's bride\n over to Copenhagen, or accompanied them thither.\n\n [31] Wolf and Kield were servants of Ulfeldt.\n\nWhen the proceedings had lasted so many weeks, and she had answered\nwith regard to the conversations which it was said her husband had\nhad with one and another, they fancied that her husband feigned\nillness. Four doctors were sent with the commandant to visit the sick\nman, and they found that he was really ill; not content with this,\nthey established the Court in his house, for they were ashamed to\nmake her come to them. They caused the city magistrate to come,\nplacing him on one side of the hall, and on the other the Danish\nnoblemen who were under arrest, all as witnesses; eight Commissioners\nsat at a round table, the lawyer in front of the table and two clerks\nat another table; having made these arrangements, our lady was\ndesired to enter.\n\nWe must mention, in the first place, that two of the delinquents who\nwere executed afterwards, and another, together with one of the\nservants of her husband, were brought there. The principal\ndelinquents were summoned first, and afterwards the others, to take\nan oath that they would speak the truth. We must mention that these\ngentlemen were already condemned, and were executed a few days\nafterwards. When the lawyer had said that they had now taken their\noaths according to the law, our lady said, 'Post festum! After having\nproceeded against my husband so many weeks, having based everything\non the tattle of these delinquents, you come, after they are\ncondemned to suffer for their trespasses, and make them take an oath.\nI do not know if this is conformable to law!'\n\nThe lawyer made no reply to this, and, thinking to confuse our lady,\nsaid that he found things contrary the one to the other, cited\npassages, leaves, lines, and asked her if she could make these things\nagree. She, having at that time a good memory, remembered well what\nher own judgment had dictated to her, and said that they would not\nfind her replies what the lawyer said, but so-and-so, and asked that\nthey should be read openly, which was done. The lawyer made three\nattempts of the same kind; when they saw there was nothing to be\ngained by this, the Commissioners attacked her three at a time, one\nputting one question and another, another. She said to them quietly,\n'Messieurs, with your permission, let one speak at a time, for I am\nbut one, and I cannot answer three at once!' At which they were all a\nlittle ashamed.\n\nThe principal point to which they adhered was, that her husband was a\nvassal by oath, and a servant of the King, with which assertion they\nparried every objection. She proved that it was not so, that her\nhusband was neither vassal nor a servant; he had his lands under the\nKing just as many Swedes had elsewhere, without on that account being\nvassals; that he had never taken an oath of fidelity to the King of\nSweden, but that he had shown him much fidelity; that he owed him no\nobligation--this she showed by a letter from the King, in which he\nthanked him for his services, and hoped so to act that he would\nrender him still more. She shut the mouth of the delinquent,[32] and\nbegged the Commissioners to reflect on what she had said.\n\n [32] The person alluded to is a Bartholomaeus Mikkelsen, who was\n executed as ringleader of the conspiracy.\n\nWhen all was over, after the space of three hours, she requested that\nthe protocol might be read before her. The President said that she\nneed have no doubt the protocol was correct, that she should have a\ncopy of it, that they now understood the matter, and would make a\nfaithful report of it to the King. No sentence was passed, and they\nremained under arrest. The King of Sweden died, and peace was\nconcluded, but they remained under arrest. A friend came to inform\nthem, one day, that there was a vessel of war in the roads, which was\nto take them to Finland. When she saw her husband a little recovered,\nthat he could use his judgment, she advised him to escape and go to\nLubeck. She would go to Copenhagen and try to arrange the matter. He\nconsented to it, and she contrived to let him out in spite of all\nthe guards round the house (thirty-six in number).\n\nWhen she received the news that he had passed and could reckon that\nhe was on his way to Lubeck, she escaped also, and went straight to\nCopenh.... Having arrived there, she found her husband arrived before\nher; she was much surprised and vexed, fearing what happened\nafterwards, but he had flattered himself so with the comfortable hope\nthat he would enter into the good graces of the King. The next day\nthey were both arrested and brought to Borringh...[33]; her husband\nwas ill; on arriving at Borr... they placed him on a litter and\nbrought him from the town to the castle, a distance of about two\nleagues.\n\n [33] Bornholm. (_See_ the Introduction.)\n\nIt would weary you to tell you of all that passed at Borr... If you\ntake pleasure in knowing it, there is a man in Hamburgh who can tell\nit you.[34] I will tell you, however, a part and the chief of what I\nremember concerning it. At Ronne, the town where they disembarked at\nBorringh----, our lady wrote to the King and to the Queen in the name\nof her husband, who was ill, as I have already said, and gave the\nmemorials to Colonel Rantzou, who promised to deliver them, and who\ngave hopes of success.[35] There Fos arrived and conveyed them to the\nCastle of Hammershuus. The governor Fos saw that our lady had a small\nbox with her, and was seized with the desire to know what was in it\nand to possess himself of it. He sent one Dina, the wife of the\nwarder to our lady, to offer to procure a boat for their escape.\nThere is no doubt she accepted the offer, and promised in return\nfive hundred crowns. This was enough for Fos; he went one night with\nthe Major to their apartment, thundered like a madman, said that they\nwished to betray him, &c.; the end of the farce was, that he took the\nbox, but, for the sake of a little ceremony, he sealed it with her\nhusband's seal, promising to keep it for its safety.\n\n [34] She refers no doubt to a servant who accompanied them of the\n name of Pfluegge.\n\n [35] The original of this letter to the King exists still.\n\nAbout three weeks after, he took the two prisoners to walk a little\nin the fields; the husband would not go, but the wife went out to\ntake the air. The traitor gave her a long history of his past\nadventures, how many times he had been in prison, some instances of\nhow great lords had been saved by the assistance of those they had\ngained over, and made their fortune. He thought they would do the\nsame. She said she had not much to dispose of, but besides that, they\nwould find other means for rewarding such a service. He said he would\nthink of it, that he had nothing to lose in Dan....\n\nAfter various discussions from day to day, her husband wished her to\noffer him 20,000 rix-dollars; this sum seemed to him too little, and\nhe asked 50,000 dollars. She said that she could easily promise it,\nbut could not keep her word, but provided it was twenty she would pay\nit. He asked for a security; her husband had a note which would give\nsecurity, but our lady did not think it good that he should see this\nnote, and told Fos that in her box there was a letter that could\nsecure it; she did not know that he had already opened the box. Some\ndays after, she asked him if he had made up his mind? He said, 'I\nwill not do it for less than 50,000, and there is no letter in your\nbox which would secure it to me. I have opened it; to-morrow I will\nsend it to Copenh....' She asked him quietly if he had done right in\nbreaking her husband's seal; he answered rudely that he would take\nthe responsibility.\n\nTowards autumn, Hannibal and the other heirs of our lady's mother\nsent to her husband to notify to him that they could not longer delay\ndividing the inheritance, and since they knew that he had in his\npossession papers of importance, they requested to be informed of\nthem. Her husband stated in his reply that Fos had taken his letters,\nand that in a rude manner. This answer having been read in the\npresence of Fos, he flew in a thundering rage, used abusive language\nfirst to the husband and then to the wife, her husband having firmly\npromised our lady not to dispute with this villain, for she feared\nsome evil might result, but to leave her to answer, for Fos would be\nanswered.\n\nShe was not angry; she ridiculed him and his invectives. At length he\ntold her that she had offered him 20,000 dollars to induce him to\nbecome a traitor; she replied with calmness, 'If it had been 50,000,\nwhat then?' Fos leapt into the air like an enraged animal, and said\nthat she lied like a ----, &c. She was not moved, but said 'You speak\nlike an ass!' Upon this he loaded her with abuse, and then retracted\nall that he had just said. She said quite quietly, 'I am not going to\nappeal to these gentlemen who are present (there were four) to be\nwitnesses, for this is an affair that will never be judicially\nsettled, and nothing can efface this insult but blood.' 'Oh!' said\nhe, seizing his sword, and drawing it a little out of the scabbard,\n'this is what I wear for you, madam.' She, smiling, drew the bodkin\nfrom her hair, saying, 'Here are all the arms at present which I\nhave for you.' He manifested a little shame, and said that it was not\nfor her but her sons, if she still had four.[36] She, moreover,\nridiculed him, and said that it was no use his acting the brave\nthere. In short, books could be filled with all the quarrels between\nthese two persons from time to time. He shouted at times with all his\nmight, he spoke like a torrent, and foamed at the mouth, and the next\nmoment he would speak low like another man. When he shouted so\nloudly, our lady said, 'The fever is attacking him again!' He was\nenraged at this.\n\n [36] It will be remembered from the Introduction that Fuchs was\n killed two years after by one of Leonora's sons at Bruges.\n\nSome weeks afterwards he came to visit them, and assumed a humble\nmanner. Our lady took no notice of it, and spoke with him on\nindifferent subjects; but her husband would not speak to him, and\nnever afterwards was he able to draw from him more than a few words.\nTowards Christmas, Fos treated the prisoners very ill, more so than\nformerly, so that Monsieur sent the servant to beg him to treat him\nas a gentleman and not as a peasant. Fos went to them immediately,\nafter having abused Monsieur's servant; and as he entered, Monsieur\nleft the apartment and went into another, and refused to give him his\nhand. Fos was enraged at this, and would not remain, nor would he\nspeak a word to our lady, who begged him to hear her. A moment after,\nhe caused the door to be bolted, so that they could not go out to\ntake the air, for they before had free access to a loft. At every\nFestival he devised means of annoying them; he closed all the\nwindows, putting to some bars of iron, and to others wooden framework\nand boxes; and as to their food, it was worse than ever. They had to\nendure that winter in patience; but as they perceived that Fos's\ndesign was that they should die of hunger, they resolved to hazard an\nescape, and made preparation through the winter, in order to escape\nas soon as the thaw would set in.\n\nOur lady, who had three pairs of sheets that her children had sent\nher, undid some articles of clothing and made cordage and a sail; she\nsewed them with silk, for she had no thread. Her husband and the\nservant worked at the oars. When the moon was favourable to them in\nthe month of April, they wished to carry out the plan they had been\nprojecting for so long a time. Our lady was the first to make the\ndescent: the height was seventy-two feet; she went on to the ravelin\nto await the others. Some time elapsed before her husband came, so\nshe returned, and at last she heard a great noise among the ropes,\nher husband having lost a shoe in his descent. They had still to wait\nfor the valet; he had forgotten the cord, and said that he could not\ncarry it with him.\n\nIt was necessary to descend the rampart into the moats, which were\ndry; the height is about forty feet. Our lady was the first to\ndescend; she helped her husband, for his strength was already\nfailing. When they were all three in the fosse, the moon was obscured\nand a little rain fell. This was unfortunate, as they could not see\nwhich road to take. Her husband said it would be better to remain\nwhere they were till daylight, for they might break their necks in\ndescending the rocks. The servant said he knew the way, as he had\nobserved it when the window was free; that he would go in front. He\nwent in advance, gliding in a sitting position, after him our lady,\nand then her husband; they could not see an inch before them; the man\nfell from an incredible height, and did not speak; our lady stopped,\nshouted to him, and asked him to answer if he was alive.\n\nHe was some time before he answered, so she and her husband\nconsidered him dead; at length he answered, and said he should never\nget out of this ravine; our lady asked him if he judged the depth to\nbe greater than one of the cords could reach? She would tie two\ntogether, and throw the end to him to draw him up. He said that one\ncord would be sufficient, but that she could not draw him up, that\nshe would not be strong enough; she said she could, she would hold\nfirm, and he should help himself with his knees. He took courage, and\nshe drew him up; the greatest marvel was, that on each side of her\nthere was a precipice deeper than that over which he fell, and that\nshe had nothing by which to support herself, except a small\nprojection, which they believed to be of earth, against which she\nplaced her left foot, finding no resting-place for the right one.\n\nWe can truly say that God had granted her his protection, for to\nescape from such a danger, and draw another out of it, could not have\nbeen done by unaided man. Our fool Fos explained it otherwise, and\nused it for his own purposes, saying that without the assistance of\nthe devil it would have been impossible to stand firm in such a\nplace, still less to assist another; he impressed this so well on the\nQueen, that she is still of the opinion that our lady exercises\nsorcery. Fos would take the glory from God to give it to the devil,\nand this calumny has to be endured with many others. But let us\nreturn to our miserable fugitives, whom we left in the fosse. Our\nlady, who had shouted to her husband not to advance, as soon as she\nheard the valet fall, called to him to keep back, turn quietly, and\nto climb upwards, for that there was no passage there; this was done,\nand they remounted the fosse and kept themselves quiet. Her husband\nwished that they should remain there, since they did not know which\nroad to take.\n\nWhile they were deliberating, the moon shone forth a little, and our\nlady saw where she was, and she remembered a good passage which she\nhad seen on the day when she walked out with the governor; she\npersuaded her husband to follow her; he complained of his want of\nstrength; she told him that God would assist him, and that he did not\nrequire great strength to let himself glide down, that the passage\nwas not difficult, and that in ascending on the opposite side, which\nwas not high, the valet and herself could assist him. He resolved,\nbut he found it difficult enough; at length, however, they succeeded;\nthey had then to go half a quarter of a league to reach the place\nwhere the boats were.\n\nHer husband, wearied out, could not walk, and begged her, for the\nlove of God, to leave him where he was; he was ready to die; she\nconsoled him, and gave him restoratives, and told him that he had but\na little step to make; he begged her to leave him there, and to save\nherself with the servant: she would find means afterwards to rescue\nhim from prison. She said no, she would not abandon him; that he knew\nwell the opportunities she had had to escape before, if she had\nwished to forsake him; that she would never quit him nor leave him in\nthe hands of this tyrant; that if Fos ventured to touch him, she was\nresolved on avenging herself upon him.\n\nAfter having taken a little breath, he began again to proceed. Our\nlady, who was loaded with so many ropes and clothes, could scarcely\nwalk, but necessity gave her strength. She begged her husband to lean\non her and on the valet, so he supported himself between them, and in\nthis way arrived where the boats were; but too late, for it was\nalready day. As our lady saw the patrol coming in the distance, she\nbegged her husband to stop there with the valet, saying that she\nwould go forward in advance, which she did. She was scarcely a\nmusket-shot distant from a little town where the major lodged, when\nshe spoke with the guard, and asked them after the major. One of them\nwent for the major, whose name was Kratz.\n\nThe major saw our lady with great consternation; he asked after her\nhusband. She told him where he was, and in a few words she requested\nthat he would go to the castle and tell Major-General Fos that his\nill-treatment had been the cause of the desperate resolution they had\ntaken, and to beg him not to ill-treat them; they were at present\nsick at heart; they could not endure anything; she begged him to\nconsider that those who had resolved to face more than one form of\ndeath, would not fear it in any shape. Kratz conducted the prisoners\nto his house, mounted his horse, and went in search of the governor,\nwho was still in bed, and told him the affair.\n\nThe governor got out of bed like a furious creature, swore, menaced;\nafter having recovered a little, the major told him what our lady had\nbegged him to say. Then he was for some time thoughtful, and said, 'I\nconfess it; they had reason to seek their liberty, for otherwise\nthey would never have had it.' He did not immediately come for the\nprisoners, for he had another apartment prepared for them. As he\nentered, he assumed a pleasant manner, and asked if they ought to be\nthere; he did not say an unkind word, but, on the contrary, said he\nshould have done the same. They were conducted to the Royal Hall to\nwarm themselves, for they were all wet with the rain; our lady had\nthen an opportunity of speaking to the valet, and of taking from him\nthe papers that he had, which contained all that had passed during\nthe time of their imprisonment,[37] and she counselled the valet to\nlay aside the arms that he had upon him, and that if he had anything\nwhich he wished to secure that he would deliver it up to her keeping.\nThe valet gave her what she asked, followed her orders, threw away\nhis arms, but as regarded his own papers he would not give them up,\nfor he did not share her fears; but he knew afterwards, for Fos\ncaused him to be entirely stripped, and took away everything from\nhim, and made him pay well for having noted down the dishes that they\nhad on the first day of the Festivals, and on the rest.\n\n [37] This account of what happened during their imprisonment at\n Hammershuus, written by Leonora herself, is also mentioned in her\n Record of her prison-life in the Blue Tower. But no copy of it has\n yet come to light. Uhlfeldt's so-called apology contains much\n information on this subject.\n\nAt length towards evening our lady and her husband were conveyed into\nanother apartment, and the valet into the body-guard loaded with\nirons. They were there together thirteen weeks, until Fos received\norders from the Court to separate them; meanwhile, he encased the\nprisons in iron. I may well use such a term, for he caused plates of\niron to be placed on the walls, double bars and irons round the\nwindows.[38] When he had permission to separate them, he entered one\nday to begin a quarrel, and spoke of the past; our lady begged him\nnot to say more, but he would go on; he was determined to quarrel. He\nsaid to her, 'Madame, you are so haughty, I will humble you; I will\nmake you so--so small,' and he made a measurement with his hand from\nthe floor. 'You have been lifted up and I will bring you down.' She\nlaughed, and said, 'You may do with me whatever you will, but you can\nnever humble me so that I shall cease to remember that you were a\nservant of a servant of the King my father;' at last, he so forgot\nhimself as to hold his fist in her face. She said to him, keeping her\nhand on her knife which she had in her pocket, 'Make use of your foul\nmouth and accursed tongue, but keep your hands quiet.' He drew back,\nand made a profound bow in ridicule, calling her 'your grace,' asked\nher pardon, and what he had to fear. She said, 'You have nothing to\nfear; if you take liberties, you will meet with resistance--feeble\nenough, but such as I have strength to give you.'\n\n [38] Fuchs' own report on this subject still exists, and in it he\n estimates the iron employed at three tons.\n\nAfter some further invectives, he said farewell, and begged they\nmight be good friends; he came once more and conducted himself in the\nsame manner, but less violently. He said to a captain who was\npresent, of the name of Bolt, that he did it expressly in order to\nhave a quarrel with her husband, that he might revenge himself for\nher conduct upon him, but that her husband would not speak to him. At\nlength the unhappy day of their separation came, and Fos entered to\ntell them that they must be prepared to bid each other a final\nfarewell, for that he had orders to separate them, and in this life\nthey would never see each other again; he gave them an hour to\nconverse together for the last time. You can easily imagine what\npassed in this hour; but as they had been prepared for this\nseparation weeks before, having been warned of it by their guard with\nwhom they could talk, it did not surprise them. Our lady had gained\nover four of the guards, who were ready to let them escape easily\nenough, but her husband would not undertake it, always saying that he\nhad no strength, but that she might do it. Well, they had to abide by\nit; after this sad day[39] they were separated, he in one prison\nbelow and she in another above, one above another, bars before the\nwindows, he without a servant, and she without a waiting woman.\n\n [39] The precise date was June 15, 1661, but the order for their\n separation is dated already on the 4th of April.\n\nAbout three weeks after, our lady fell ill; she requested a woman or\ngirl to wait upon her, and a priest. Fos sent answer, with regard to\na woman or girl to wait upon her, he did not know anyone who would do\nit, but that there was a wench who had killed her child, and who\nwould soon be beheaded, and if she wished for her, she could have\nher. As to a priest, he had no orders, and she would have no priest\neven if death were on her lips. Our lady said nothing but 'Patience;\nI commend it to God.' Our lady had the happiness of being able to\ngive her husband signs daily, and to receive such, and when the wind\nwas not too strong they could speak to one another. They spoke\nItalian together, and took their opportunity before the reveille.\nTowards the close of the governorship of this villain, he was\ninformed of this. He then had a kind of machine made which is used to\nfrighten the cattle from the corn in the summer, and which makes a\ngreat noise, and he desired the sentinel to move this machine in\norder to hinder them hearing each other.\n\nFifteen days before Count Rantzow came to Borringholm to treat with\nthem, Fos had news of it from Copenhagen from his intimate friend\nJaques P...; he visited our lady, told her on entering that her\nchildren had been expelled from Skaane by the Swedes; our lady said,\n'Well, the world is wide, they will find a place elsewhere.' He then\ntold her that Bolt had come from Copenhagen with the tidings that\nthey would never be let at liberty; she replied, 'Never is a long\ntime; this imprisonment will not last a hundred years, much less an\neternity--in the twinkling of an eye much may change; the hand of\nGod, in whom are the hearts of kings, can change everything.' He\nsaid, 'You have plenty of hope; you think perhaps if the King died,\nyou would be free?' She replied, 'God preserve the King. I believe\nthat he will give me liberty, and no one else.' He chatted about a\ngreat many things, and played the flatterer.\n\nAt length Count Rantzow came and made a stay at Borringh... of eleven\nweeks. He visited the prisoners, and did them the favour of having\nthe husband to dine with him, and in the evening our lady supped with\nhim, and he conferred with them separately. Our lady asked him of\nwhat she was accused; he replied, 'Will you ask that? that is not the\nway to get out of Borringholm; do you know that you have said the\nKing is your brother? and kings do not recognise either sisters or\nbrothers.' She replied, 'To whom had I need to say that the King is\nmy brother? who is so ignorant in Denmark as not to know that? I have\nalways known, and know still, the respect that is due to the King; I\nhave never given him any other title than my King and Lord; I have\nnever called him my brother, in speaking of him; kings are gracious\nenough to recognise their sisters and brothers as such; for example,\nthe King of England gives the title of sister to his brother's wife,\nalthough she is of very mediocre extraction.[40] Rantzow replied,\n'Our King does not wish it, and he does not know yet the truth about\nDina's affair.' She said, 'I think the King does not wish to know.'\nHe replied, 'Indeed, by God he desires with all his heart to be\ninformed of it.' She answered, 'If the King will desire Walter to\ntell him, and this with some earnestness, he will be informed of it.'\nRantzow made no reply.\n\n [40] Leonora alludes to the wife of the then Duke of York,\n afterwards James II., who was the daughter of Lord Edward\n Clarendon.\n\nWhen he had concluded everything with her husband, whom he had\nobliged to yield up all his possessions, Rantzow acquainted our lady\nwith the fact; she said that her husband had power to give up what\nwas his, but that the half belonged to her, and that this she would\nnot give up, not being able to answer for it before God nor before\nher children; she had committed no crime; liberty should be given to\nher husband for the half of their lands, and that if the King thought\nhe could retain her with a good conscience she would endure it.\nRantzow with a serious air replied, 'Do not think that your husband\nwill ever be set at liberty, if you do not sign with him.' She said\nthat the conditions were too severe; that they should do better for\ntheir children to die as prisoners, God and all the world knowing\ntheir innocence, than to leave so many children beggars. Rantzow\nsaid, 'If you die in prison, all your lands and property are\nforfeited, and your children will have nothing; but at this moment\nyou can have your liberty, live with your husband; who knows, the\nKing may still leave you an estate, and may always show you favour,\nwhen he sees that you yield to his will.' Our lady said that since\nthere was no other prospect for her husband's liberty, she would\nconsent. Rantzow ordered her husband and herself separately to place\nin writing the complaints they had to bring forward against Fos, and\nall that had happened with regard to their attempt at escape; which\nwas done. Our lady was gracious in her demeanour to Fos, but her\nhusband could not make up his mind even to speak to him. Rantzow\nreturned to Copenh... and eighteen days afterwards the galley of\nGabel came with orders to the new governor (Lieutenant-Colonel\nLytkens, a very well-bred man and brave soldier, his wife a noble\nlady of the Manteuffel family, very polite and pretty), that he\nshould make the prisoners sign the papers sent, and when the\nsignature was done, should send them on together.\n\nThe governor sent first to the husband, as was befitting, who made\ndifficulties about signing because they had added points here and\nthere, and among other things principally this, that they were never\nto plead against Fos. The husband said he would rather die. The good\ngovernor went in search of the wife and told her everything, begging\nher to speak to her husband from the window; when he knew that she\nhad spoken to him, he would return. She thanked the governor, and\nwhen he had gone out she spoke to her husband, and persuaded him to\nsign. Then the governor made her sign also; and after that, towards\nnine o'clock in the evening, her husband came to her, having been\nseparated just twenty-six weeks.[41] They were separated on a\nSaturday, and they met again on a Saturday. Fos was still at the\ncastle; it is easy to believe that he was in great rage. Time does\nnot permit to dwell on it. Two days afterwards they embarked and came\nto Copenhagen, and were received on the Custom-house pier by C.\nRantzow and Gabel. The Queen knew nothing of it. When she was told of\nit she was so angry that she would not go to table. In a few words\nthe King held his ground, and as she would not accept the thanks of\nMonsieur and his wife, the King ordered her to receive them in\nwriting. They spent the Christmas of 1660 in the house of C. Rantzow.\nAfterwards they went to Fyen, to the estate of Ellensborg, which was\ngraciously left to them.[42]\n\n [41] The apology of Uhlfeldt contains an account of this whole\n transaction. He states that when he asked his wife through the\n window whether they ought to sign and live rather than die in\n prison, which would otherwise be their lot, Leonora answered with\n the following Latin verse:\n\n     Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem,\n     Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest.\n     Accidit in puncto, quod non speratur in anno.\n\n [42] Ellensborg was the ancient seat of the Ulfeldt family, which\n had been sold to Ellen Marsvin, Leonora's grandmother, and Leonora\n inherited it from her mother. It is now called Holckenhavn, and the\n seat of Count Holck.\n\nHer husband having permission to go to France to take the waters for\neighteen months, left Ell... with his family in the month of June\n1662, and landed at Amsterdam. Our lady went from thence to Bruges to\nhire a house, and returned to Amsterdam. Her daughter Helena fell ill\nof the small-pox; she remained with her, and her husband and the\nother children went to Bruges. When her daughter had recovered, she\nwent to rejoin her husband and children. She accompanied her husband,\nwho went to France. Having arrived at Paris, the doctors did not\nfind it advisable that he should take the waters, and he returned to\nBruges. Her husband begged our lady to make a journey to England, and\nto take her eldest son with her. She raised obstacles, and showed him\nplainly that she should obtain nothing; that she should only be at\ngreat expense. She had examples before her which showed her that the\nKing of England would never pay her husband. He would not have been\nturned from his purpose at this time but for their son's rencontre\nwith Fos, which prevented the journey that winter, and postponed the\nmisfortunes of our lady, though it did not ultimately prevent them.\n\nBut towards the spring the same design was again brought forward; our\nlady was assisted by the nobleman who followed her afterwards[43] in\ndissuading her husband; but no reasoning could avail; he believed the\nKing could not forget the benefits received, and refuse to pay his\ncousin. Our lady prepared for her departure, since her husband wished\nit. The day that she bade him her last farewell--a fatal day,\nindeed--her husband's heart did not tell him that these would be the\nlast embraces he would give her, for he was so satisfied and so full\nof joy that she and all were astonished. She, on the contrary, was\nsad. The last day of their intercourse was May 24, 1663. She had many\ncontretemps at first, and some time elapsed before she had the honour\nof speaking to the King.\n\n [43] Namely Casetta, a Spanish nobleman, who afterwards married\n their daughter Anna Katherine, but both he and their children died\n soon. (_See_ the Introduction.)\n\nThe King greeted her after the fashion of the country, treated her as\nhis cousin,[44] and promised her all sorts of satisfaction; that he\nwould send his secretary[45] to her to see her papers, which he did.\nThe secretary made her fine promises, but the time was always\npostponed. The minister resident, Petkum, minister of the King of\nDanem..., came to visit her (he had placed some obstacles in the way\nof her demands, from what was told her). She showed him her papers,\ninformed him of the affair, told him that the King of Denmark had had\nall the papers in his hands, and had graciously returned them. The\ntraitor made a semblance of understanding the affair, and promised\nthat he would himself help in securing the payment of her demands.\nBut this Judas always intended to betray her, asking her if she did\nnot like to make excursions, speaking to her of beautiful houses,\ngardens and parks, and offering her his coach. But our lady was not\ninclined to make excursions.\n\n [44] Charles the Second's Grandmother, Anna, the Queen of James I.\n was sister of Leonora Christina's father, Christian IV.\n\n [45] Sir Henry Bennet, afterwards Lord Arlington.\n\nWhen he saw that he could not catch her in this way, he obtained an\norder to arrest her. Our poor lady knew nothing of all this; she had\nletter upon letter from her husband requesting her return. She took\nleave of the King by letter, gave her papers to a lawyer[46] upon a\nreceipt, and set out from London. Having arrived at Dover, and\nintending to embark the same evening for Flanders, a lieutenant of\nthe name of Braten[47] appeared, who came to show her an order from\nthe King of Anglet... which she read herself, the purport of which\nwas that the governor was to arrest such a lady, and to place her in\nthe castle till further orders. She asked the reason why. He said\nthat she had left without permission from the King. She told him\nthat she had taken leave of the King by letter, and had spoken the\nday before her departure with the Prime Minister and Vice-Admiral\nAschew,[48] who had bade her farewell.[49]\n\n [46] A certain Mr. Mowbray.\n\n [47] Elsewhere she writes the name Broughton.\n\n [48] Sir George Askew.\n\n [49] Compare with this account the following extracts in the\n _Calendar of State Papers_, domestic series, 1663, 1664, pp. 196,\n 197, 200:--\n\n 1663--_July 8._--Warrant to Captain Strode, governor of Dover\n Castle, to detain Elionora Christiana, Countess of Uhlfeldt, with\n her husband, if he be found with her, and their servants; to keep\n her close prisoner, and secure all her papers, according to\n instructions to be given by Thos. Parnell.\n\n _July 8._--Warrant to Thos. Parnell to observe the movements of the\n said Countess of Uhlfeldt; to seize her should she attempt to embark\n at Gravesend with her papers, and to detain her close prisoner.\n\n (_July_).--Instructions (by Sec. Bennet) to Thos. Parnell, to go to\n Dover Castle to deliver instructions, and assist in their execution,\n relative to a certain lady (the Countess of Uhlfeldt), who is not to\n be permitted to depart, whether she have a pass or not; but to be\n invited, or if needful compelled, to lodge at the castle, where the\n best accommodation is to be provided for her. It is suspected that\n her husband lies concealed in the kingdom, and will also try to pass\n with his lady, but he also is to be detained, and her servants also.\n\n _July 11._--Thos. Parnell to Williamson. 'Found the Countess (of\n Uhlfeldt) at Dover, and by the aid of the Lieut.-Governor sent the\n searcher to her inn, to demand her pass. She said she had none, not\n knowing it would be wanted. She submitted patiently to be taken to\n the castle, and lodged there till a message was sent to town. The\n Regent's gentleman, the bearer will give an account of all things.'\n\nWhen she came to the castle, the emissary of Petkum presented\nhimself, by name Peter Dreyer. Then the Lieutenant said, 'It is the\nKing of Danemarc who has ordered you to be arrested.' She asked the\ncause. He replied, 'You undoubtedly set out incognito from\nDanemarck.' She replied to this that the King of Danem... had given\nher husband leave of absence for a term of eighteen months, which had\nnot yet expired. They ordered her boxes and those of the nobleman who\naccompanied her to be opened, and they took all the papers.\nAfterwards Dreyer spoke to her, and she asked him why she was\ntreated thus? He said he did not know the real cause, but that he\nbelieved it was for the death of Fos, and that she was believed to\nhave been the cause of his death. They always mentioned this to her,\nand no other cause.\n\nThis double traitor Braten enacted the gallant, entertained her, made\nher speak English (as she was bolder in speaking this language than\nany other), for she had just begun to learn it well, having had a\nlanguage-master in London. One day he told that they intended\nconducting her to Danemarck. She told him there was no need to send\nher to Danem...; she could go there very well by herself. He said,\n'You know yourself what suits you; if you will not go there\nwillingly, I will manage so that you may go to Flanders.' She did not\nsee that this was feasible, even if he was willing; she spoke with\nhim as to the means, saw that he did not satisfy her, and did not\ntrust his conversation; as he was cunning, he made her believe that\nthe King wished her to go secretly, and that he would take it all\nupon himself; that the King had his reasons why he did not wish to\ndeliver her into the hands of the King of Danem....\n\nThis deception had such good colouring, for she had written several\ntimes to the King during her arrest, and had begged him not to reward\nher husband's services by a long arrest, only speaking of what she\nhad done at the Hague for him: she had taken her jewels and rings and\ngiven them to him, when his host would not any longer supply him with\nfood.[50] Her claim was not small; it exceeded 20,000 patacoons.[51]\n\n [50] Several letters written by Leonora during her imprisonment at\n Dover to Charles II., Sir Henry Bennet, &c., are printed in a\n Danish periodical, _Danske Samlinger_, vol. vi.\n\n [51] Reckoning the patacoon to 4s. 8d., this claim would be nearly\n 5,000_l._\n\nOur lady allowed herself to be persuaded that the King of England\nwished her to leave secretly. The traitor Braten told her that he\nthought it best that she should disguise herself as a man. She said\nthat there was no necessity she should disguise herself; that no one\nwould pursue her; and even if it were so, that she would not go in\ndisguise with any man who was not her husband. After having been\ndetained seventeen days at Dover, she allowed herself to be conducted\nby Braten, at night, towards the ramparts, descended by a high ladder\nwhich broke during her descent, passed the fosse, which was not\ndifficult; on the other side there was a horse waiting for her, but\nthe nobleman, her attendant, and the nobleman's valet, went on foot;\nthey would not allow her valet to go with them; Braten made an excuse\nof not being able to find him, and that time pressed; it was because\nthey were afraid that there would be an effort at defence.\n\nWhen she arrived where the traitors were, her guide gave a signal by\nknocking two stones one against another. At this, four armed men\nadvanced; Petkum and Dreyer were a little way off; one held a pistol\nto her breast, the other a sword, and said, 'I take you prisoner.'\nThe other two traitors said, 'We will conduct you to Ostend.' She had\nalways suspected treachery, and had spoken with her companion, in\ncase it happened, what it would be best to do, to give herself up or\nto defend herself? She decided on allowing herself to be betrayed\nwithout a struggle, since she had no reason to fear that her life\nwould be attempted because her son had avenged the wrong done to his\nparents. Thus she made no resistance, begged them not to take so much\ntrouble, that she would go of herself; for two men held her with so\nmuch force that they hurt her arm. They came with a bottle of dry\nwine to quench her thirst, but she would not drink; she had a good\nway to go on foot, for she would not again mount the horse.\n\nShe showed some anger towards her guide, begged him in English to\ngive her respects to the governor,[52] but to convey to the traitor\nBraten all the abuse that she could hurriedly call to mind in this\nlanguage, which was not quite familiar to her. She advanced towards\nthe boat; the vessel which was to convey her was in the roads, near\nthe Downs. She bade farewell to the nobleman. She had two bracelets\nwith diamonds which she wished to give him to convey to her children;\nbut as he feared they would be taken from him, she replaced them\nwithout troubling him with them. She gave a pistol to her servant,\nand a mariner then carried her to the boat; she was placed in an\nEnglish frigate that Petkum had hired, and Dreyer went with her.[53]\nShe was thirteen days on the road, and arrived near the Custom-house\npier on August 8, 1663, at nine o'clock in the morning.\n\n [52] Leonora did not know that the governor of the castle was in\n the plot.\n\n [53] Additional light is thrown on the arrest of Leonora Christina\n at Dover by the following extracts in the _Calendar of State\n Papers_, p. 224, 225:--\n\n _August 1_, _Whitehall_.--(Sec. Bennet) to Capt. Strode. The King is\n satisfied with his account of the lady's escape and his own\n behaviour; continue the same mask, of publishing His Majesty's\n displeasure against all who contributed to it, especially his\n lieutenant, and this more particularly in presence of M. Cassett,\n lest he may suspect connivance. Cassett is to continue prisoner some\n time. The Danish Resident is satisfied with the discretion used, but\n says his point would not have been secured had the lady gone to sea\n without interruption.\n\n _August 1_?--Account (proposed to be sent to the Gazette?) relative\n to Count Uhlfeldt--recording his submission in 1661, the present\n sentence against him, his further relapse into crime after a solemn\n recantation, also signed by his wife who was his accomplice, though\n her blood saved her from sharing his sentence, but who has now\n betrayed herself into the hands of the King of Denmark. She was in\n England when the conspiracy against the King of Denmark's life was\n detected. The King of England had her movements watched, when she\n suddenly went off without a pass, for want of which she was stayed\n by the Governor of Dover Castle, who accommodated her in the castle.\n The Resident of Denmark posted to Dover, and secured the master of a\n ship then in the road, with whom he expected her to tamper, which\n she did, escaped through the castle window, and entering a shallop\n to go on board, was seized and conveyed to Denmark. With note (by\n Lord Chancellor Clarendon) that he is not satisfied with this\n account, but will prepare a better for another week.\n\n[The remaining part of the Autobiography treats of the commencement\nof her imprisonment in the Blue Tower, which forms the subject of the\nfollowing Memoir.]\n\n\n\n\n A RECORD\n OF\n THE SUFFERINGS OF THE IMPRISONED COUNTESS\n LEONORA CHRISTINA.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n_TO MY CHILDREN._\n\n\nBeloved children, I may indeed say with Job, 'Oh, that my grief were\nthoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!\nFor now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea.' My sufferings\nare indeed great and many; they are heavy and innumerable. My mind\nhas long been uncertain with regard to this history of my sufferings,\nas I could not decide whether I ought not rather to endeavour to\nforget them than to bear them in memory. At length, however, certain\nreasons have induced me, not only to preserve my sorrow in my own\nmemory, but to compose a record of it, and to direct it to you, my\ndear children.[54]\n\n [54] In the margin is added: 'As I now hope that what I write may\n come into your hands, my captivity during the last three years also\n having been much lightened.'\n\nThe first of these reasons is the remembrance of the omnipotence of\nGod; for I cannot recall to mind my sorrow and grief, my fears and\ndistresses, without at the same time remembering the almighty power\nof God, who in all my sufferings, my misery, my affliction, and\nanxiety, has been my strength and help, my consolation and\nassistance; for never has God laid a burden upon me, without at the\nsame time giving me strength in proportion, so that the burden,\nthough it has weighed me down and heavily oppressed me, has not\noverwhelmed me and crushed me; for which I praise and extol through\neternity the almighty power of the incomprehensible God.\n\nI wish, therefore, not alone to record my troubles and to thank God\nfor His gracious support in all the misfortunes that have befallen\nme, but also to declare to you, my dear children, God's goodness to\nme, that you may not only admire with me the inconceivable help of\nthe Almighty, but that you may be able to join with me in rendering\nHim thanks. For you may say with reason that God has dealt\nwonderfully with me; that He was mighty in my weakness and has shown\nHis power in me, the frailest of His instruments. For how would it\nhave been possible for me to resist such great, sudden, and\nunexpected misfortunes, had not His spirit imparted to me strength?\nIt was God who Himself entered with me into the Tower-gate; it was He\nwho extended to me His hand, and wrestled for me in that prison cell\nfor malefactors, which is called 'the Dark Church.'\n\nSince then, now for almost eleven years, He has always been within\nthe gate of my prison as well as of my heart; He has strengthened me,\ncomforted me, refreshed me, and often even cheered me. God has done\nwonderful things in me, for it is more than inconceivable that I\nshould have been able to survive the great misfortunes that have\nbefallen me, and at the same time should have retained my reason,\nsense, and understanding. It is a matter of the greatest wonder that\nmy limbs are not distorted and contracted from lying and sitting,\nthat my eyes are not dim and even wholly blind from weeping, and from\nsmoke and soot; that I am not short-breathed from candle smoke and\nexhalation, from stench and close air. To God alone be the honour!\n\nThe other cause that impels me is the consolation it will be to you,\nmy dear children, to be assured through this account of my sufferings\nthat I suffer innocently; that nothing whatever has been imputed to\nme, nor have I been accused of anything for which you, my dear\nchildren, should blush or cast down your eyes in shame. I suffer for\nhaving loved a virtuous lord and husband, and for not having\nabandoned him in misfortune. I was suspected of being privy to an act\nof treason for which he has never been prosecuted according to law,\nmuch less convicted of it, and the cause of the accusation was never\nexplained to me, humbly and sorrowfully as I desired that it should\nbe. Let it be your consolation, my dear children, that I have a\ngracious God, a good conscience, and can boldly maintain that I have\nnever committed a dishonourable act. 'This is thankworthy,' says the\napostle St. Peter, 'if a man for conscience toward God endure grief,\nsuffering wrongfully.' I suffer, thank God, not for my misdeeds, for\nthat were no glory to me; yet I can boast that from my youth up I\nhave been a bearer of the cross of Christ, and had incredibly secret\nsufferings, which were very heavy to endure at such an early age.\n\nAlthough this record of my sufferings contains and reveals nothing\nmore than what has occurred to me in this prison, where I have now\nbeen for eleven years, I must not neglect in this preface briefly to\nrecall to your minds, my dear children, my earlier misfortunes,\nthanking God at the same time that I have overcome them.\n\nNot only you, my dear children, know, but it is known throughout the\nwhole country, what great sorrow and misfortune Dina and Walter, with\ntheir powerful adherents, inflicted on our house in the year 1651.\n\nAlthough I will not mention the many fatiguing and difficult\njourneys, the perils by sea, and various dangers which I have endured\nin foreign countries, I will only remind you of that journey which my\nlord requested me to undertake to Denmark, contrary to my wish, in\nthe year 1657.[E01] It was winter time, and therefore difficult and\ndangerous. I endured scorn and persecution; and had not God given me\ncourage and taken it from him who was to have arrested me, I should\nnot at that time have escaped the misery of captivity.\n\n [E01] This journey really took place in November and December,\n 1656.\n\nYou will remember, my dear children, what I suffered and endured\nduring fourteen months in custody at Malmoe; how the greatest favour\nwhich His Majesty, King Charles X. of Sweden, at that time showed me,\nwas that he left it to my free will, either to remain at liberty,\ntaking care of our property, or to be in prison with my lord. I\nacknowledged the favour, and chose the latter as my duty, esteeming\nit a happiness to be allowed to console and to serve my anxious\nhusband, afflicted as he subsequently was by illness. I accepted it\nalso as a favour that I was allowed (when my lord could not do it\nhimself on account of illness) to appear before the tribunal in his\nstead. What anxiety and sorrow I had for my sick lord, what trouble,\nannoyance and distress, the trial caused me (it was carried on daily\nfor more than nine weeks), is known to the most high God, who was my\nconsolation, assistance, and strength, and who inspired me with\nheart and courage to defend the honour of my lord in the presence of\nhis judges.\n\nYou will probably not have forgotten how quickly one misfortune\nfollowed another, how one sorrow was scarcely past when a greater one\nfollowed in its track; we fared, according to the words of the poet:\n\n    Incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charibdin.\n\nWe escaped custody and then fell into strict captivity, without doubt\nby the dispensation of God, who inspired my lord with the idea of\nrepairing, contrary to our agreement, to Copenhagen instead of\nLuebeck. No pen can describe how sorrowful I was when, contrary to all\nexpectation, I met my lord in Copenhagen, when I had imagined him\nescaped from the power and violence of all his enemies. I expected\njust that which my lord did not believe would happen, but which\nfollowed immediately--namely, our arrest. The second day after my\narrival (which they had waited for) we were apprehended and conveyed\nto Bornholm, where we were in close imprisonment for seventeen\nmonths. I have given a full description of what I suffered, and this\nI imagine is in your keeping, my dear children; and from it you see\nwhat I and my sick lord endured; how often I warded off greater\nmisery, because my lord could not always brook patiently the bad\ntreatment of the governor, Adolf Foss, who called himself Fux.\n\nIt was hard and bitter indeed to be scorned and scoffed at by a\npeasant's son; to have to suffer hunger at his will, and to be\nthreatened and harassed by him; but still harder and more bitter was\nit to be sick beneath his power, and to hear from him the words that\neven if death were on my lips no minister of God's word should come\nto me. Oh monstrous tyranny! His malice was so thoroughly beyond all\nbounds, that he could not endure that we should lighten each other's\ncross; and for this reason he contrived, after the lapse of eleven\nmonths, to have us separated from each other, and to place us each in\nthe hardest confinement.\n\nMy husband (at that time already advancing in years) without a\nservant, and I without an attendant, was only allowed a light so long\nas the evening meal lasted. I cannot forbear bitterly recalling to\nmind the six months of long and hard separation, and the sad farewell\nwhich we took of each other; for to all human sight there was no\nother prospect than that which the governor announced to us--namely,\nthat we were seeing and speaking with each other for the last time in\nthis world. God knows best how hard our sufferings were, for it was\nHe who consoled us, who gave us hope contrary to all expectation, and\nwho inspired me with courage when the governor visited me and\nendeavoured to fill me with despair.\n\nGod confirmed my hope. Money and property loosened the bonds of our\ncaptivity, and we were allowed to see and speak with each other once\nmore. Sad as my lord had been when we were separated at Borringholm,\nhe was joyous when two years afterwards he persuaded me to undertake\nthe English journey, not imagining that this was to part us for ever.\nMy lord, who entertained too good an opinion of the King of England,\nthought that now that he had come to the throne he would remember not\nonly his great written and spoken promises, but that he would also\nbear in mind how, at the time of his need and exile, I had drawn the\nrings from my fingers and had pawned them for meals for him and his\nservants. But how unwillingly I undertook this journey is well known\nto some of you, my dear children, as I was well aware that from an\nungrateful person there is nothing else to be expected but\ningratitude. I had the example of others by whom to take warning; but\nit was thus destined to be.\n\nBitter bread was in store for me, and bitter gall was to fill my cup\nin the Blue Tower of Copenhagen Castle; thither was I to go to eat it\nand drink it out. It is not unknown to you how falsely the King of\nEngland acted towards me; how well he received me on my arrival; how\nhe welcomed me with a Judas kiss and addressed me as his cousin; and\nhow both he himself and all his high ministers assured me of the\nroyal favour, and promised me payment of the money advanced. You know\nhow cunningly (at the desire of His Majesty the King of Denmark) he\nhad me arrested at Dover, and subsequently sent me word through the\ntraitor Lieutenant Braten that he would let me escape secretly, at\nthe same time delivering me into the hand of the Danish Minister\nSimon Petcon, who had me arrested by eight armed men; keeping aloof,\nhowever, himself, and never venturing to come near me. They held\nsword and pistol to my breast, and two of them took me between them\nand placed me in a boat, which conveyed me to a vessel held in\nreadiness by the said Minister; a man of the name of Peter Dreyer\nhaving received orders to conduct me to Copenhagen.\n\nFrom this period this record of my suffering begins. It contains all\nthat happened to me within the gates of the Blue Tower. Reflect, my\ndear children, on these hard sufferings; but remember also God's\ngreat goodness towards me. Verily, He has freed me from six\ncalamities; rest assured that He will not leave me to perish in the\nseventh. No! for the honour of His name, He will mightily deliver me.\n\nThe narrative of my sufferings is sad to hear, and must move the\nhardest heart to pity; yet in reading it, do not be more saddened\nthan can be counterbalanced by joy. Consider my innocence, courage,\nand patience; rejoice over these.\n\nI have passed over various petty vexations and many daily annoyances\nfor the sake of brevity, although the smallest of them rankled sore\nin the wounds of my bitter sorrow.\n\nI acknowledge my weaknesses, and do not shrink from confessing them\nto you. I am a human being, and am full of human imperfections. Our\nfirst emotions are not under our own power; we are often overhasty\nbefore we are able to reflect. God knows that I have often made\nmyself deaf and blind, in order not to be carried away by passion. I\nam ashamed to mention and to enumerate the unchaste language, bad\nwords and coarse invectives, of the prison governor Johan Jaeger, of\nKresten Maansen, the tower warder, of Karen the daughter of Ole, and\nof Catharina Wolff; they would offend courtly ears. Yet I can assure\nyou they surpass everything that can be imagined as indecent, ugly,\nchurlish and unbecoming; for coarse words and foul language were the\ntokens of their friendliness and clemency, and disgusting oaths were\nthe ornament and embellishment of their untruthfulness; so that their\nintercourse was most disagreeable to me. I was never more glad than\nwhen the gates were closed between me and those who were to guard me.\nThen I had only the woman alone, whom I brought to silence,\nsometimes amicably, and at others angrily and with threats.\n\nI have also had, and have still, pleasant intercourse with persons\nwhose services and courtesies I shall remember as long as I live.\nYou, my dear children, will also repay them to every one as far as\nyou are able.\n\nYou will find also in this record of my sufferings two of the chief\nfoes of our house, namely Jorgen Walter and Jorgen Skroder,[E02] with\nregard to whom God has revenged me, and decreed that they should have\nneed of me, and that I should comfort them. Walter gives me cause to\nstate more respecting him than was my intention.\n\n [E02] This man was a German by birth, but settled in Denmark, where\n he was nobilitated under the name of Loevenklau. His bad conduct\n obliged him to leave the country, and he went to Sweden, where he\n had lived before he came to Denmark, and where Ulfeldt, then in\n Sweden, procured him an appointment as a colonel in the army. This\n kindness he repaid by informing the Danish Government against\n Ulfeldt in 1654, in consequence of which he was not only allowed to\n return to Denmark, but even obtained a lucrative office in Norway.\n Here he quarrelled with the viceroy, Niels Trolle, and tried to\n serve him as he had served Ulfeldt; but he failed to establish his\n accusations against Trolle, and was condemned into the forfeiture\n of his office and of his patent of nobility. He then left Denmark\n at least for a season, and how he came to apply to Leonora\n Christina for assistance is not known, as she has omitted to\n mention it in the Memoir itself, though she evidently intended to\n do so.\n\nOf the psalms and hymns which I have composed and translated, I only\ninsert a few, in order that you, my dear children, may see and know\nhow I have ever clung steadfastly to God, who has been and still is\nmy wall of defence against every attack, and my refuge in every kind\nof misfortune and adversity. Do not regard the rhymes; they are not\naccording to the rules which poets make; but regard the matter, the\nsense, and the purport. Nor have I left my other small pastime\nunmentioned, for you may perceive the repose of my mind from the fact\nthat I have had no unemployed hours; even a rat, a creature so\nabominable to others, affording me amusement.\n\nI have recorded two observations, which though they treat of small\nand contemptible animals, yet are remarkable, and I doubt whether any\nnaturalist hitherto has observed them. For I do not think it has been\nrecorded hitherto that there exists a kind of caterpillar which\nbrings forth small living grubs like itself, nor either that a flea\ngives birth to a fully-formed flea, and not that a nit comes from a\nnit.[55]\n\n [55] A pen has afterwards been drawn through this paragraph, but\n the observations occur in the manuscript.\n\nIn conclusion, I beg you, my dear children, not to let it astonish\nyou that I would not avail myself of the opportunity by which I might\nhave gained my freedom. If you rightly consider it, it would not have\nbeen expedient either for you or me. I confess that if my deceased\nlord had been alive, I should not only have accepted the proposal,\nbut I should have done my utmost to have escaped from my captivity,\nin order to go in quest of him, and to wait on him and serve him till\nhis last breath; my duty would have required this. But since he was\nat that time in rest and peace with God, and needed no longer any\nhuman service, I have with reason felt that self-obtained liberty\nwould have been in every respect more prejudicial than useful to us,\nand that this would not be the way to gain the possessions taken from\nus, for which reason I refused it and endeavoured instead to seek\nrepose of mind and to bear patiently the cross laid upon me. If God\nso ordains it, and it is His divine will that through royal mercy I\nshould obtain my freedom, I will joyfully exert myself for you, my\nbeloved children, to the utmost of my ability, and prove in deed that\nI have never deviated from my duty, and that I am no less a good and\nright-minded mother than I have been a faithful wife. Meanwhile let\nGod's will be your will. He will turn and govern all things so that\nthey may benefit you and me in soul and body, to whose safe keeping I\nconfidently recommend you all, praying that He will be your father\nand mother, your counsellor and guide. Pray in return for me, that\nGod may direct me by His good spirit, and grant me patience in the\nfuture as heretofore. This is all that is requested from you by,\n\nMy dearly beloved children, your affectionate mother,\n\n                                    LEONORA CHRISTINA, V.E.G.\n\nWritten in the Blue Tower, anno 1674, the 18th of July, the eleventh\nyear of imprisonment, my birthday, and fifty-third year of my\nage.[56]\n\n [56] The conclusion of the Preface, from the words 'Meanwhile let\n the will of God,' etc. has afterwards been erased, when the\n manuscript was continued beyond the date assigned in the Preface;\n and the following paragraphs, 'I bear also in mind,' etc. were\n intended to form a new conclusion, but do not seem to have been\n properly worked in.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI bear also in mind, with the greatest humility and gratitude, our\ngracious hereditary King's favour towards me, immediately after His\nMajesty came to the throne. I remember also the sympathy of our most\ngracious Queen Regent, and of Her Highness the Electoral Princess of\nSaxony in my unfortunate fate; also the special favour of Her Majesty\nthe Queen.\n\nI have also not forgotten to bear duly in mind the favour shown\ntowards me by Her Majesty the Queen Mother, the virtuous Landgravine\nof Hesse.\n\nI have also recorded various things which occurred in my imprisonment\nduring the period from the year 1663 to the year 1674, intending with\nthese to conclude the record of my sufferings; as I experienced a\npleasure, and often consoled myself, in feeling that it is better to\nremain innocently in captivity than to be free and to have deserved\nimprisonment. I remember having read that captivity has served many\nas a protection from greater dangers, and has guarded them from\nfalling into the hands of their enemies. There have been some who\nhave escaped from their prison and immediately after have been\nmurdered. There have also been some who have had a competence in\nprison and afterwards have suffered want in freedom. Innocent\nimprisonment does not diminish honour, but rather increases it. Many\na one has acquired great learning in captivity, and has gained a\nknowledge of things which he could not master before. Yes,\nimprisonment leads to heaven. I have often said to myself: 'Comfort\nthyself, thou captive one, thou art happy.'\n\nSince the year 1674 constituted only half the period of my captivity,\nI have added in this record of my sufferings some facts that occurred\nsince that time within my prison-gates. I am on the eve of my\nliberty, May 19, 1685. To God alone be the honour, who has moved His\nRoyal Majesty to justice! I will here mention those of whose death I\nhave been informed during my captivity.\n\n1. The Prime Minister of His Majesty, Count Christian of\nRantzow[E03], died in the month of September, 1663. He did not live\nto drink the health of our Princess and of the Electoral Prince of\nSaxony at the feast of their betrothal. Still less did he live long\nenough to see a wooden effigy quartered in mockery of my lord,\naccording to his suggestion. Death was very bitter to him.\n\n [E03] This Count Rantzow was the same who had negotiated the\n compromise with Ulfeldt and Leonora at Bornholm in 1661, and in\n fact brought it about. It was currently reported in Copenhagen at\n the time that he had received a large sum of money from Ulfeldt on\n that occasion, and he afterwards showed his friendly disposition\n towards him by promising him to intercede with the King for\n Christian Ulfeldt when the latter had killed Fuchs. Leonora,\n however, speaks of him as an enemy probably because he presided in\n the High Court of Appeal which condemned Ulfeldt as a traitor. But\n the facts of the case left him scarcely any other alternative than\n that of judging as he did, nor would it have been surprising if\n Ulfeldt's last conduct had altered Rantzow's feelings towards him.\n Rantzow also presided in the commission which examined Leonora in\n the Blue Tower.\n\n2. The Mistress of the Robes of the Queen Dowager, who was so severe\non me in my greatest sorrow, had a long and painful illness; she said\nwith impatience that the pain of hell was not greater than her pain.\nHer screams could often be heard in the tower. She was carried on a\nbed into the town, and died there.\n\n3. The death of Able Catherine was very painful. As she had formerly\nsought for letters on the private parts of my person, so she was\nafterwards herself handled by the surgeons, as she had boils all over\nher. She was cut and burnt. She endured all this pain, hoping to\nlive, but neither the art of the surgeons nor the visits of the Queen\ncould save her from death.[E04]\n\n [E04] Abel Catharina is mentioned in the Memoir itself as the\n person who searched Leonora when she first entered her prison, and\n did so in a very unbecoming manner; she acted, however, under the\n orders of the Mistress of the Robes, M. v. Haxthausen. Abel\n Catharina is otherwise chiefly known as the founder of a charity\n for old women in Copenhagen, which still bears her name.\n\n4. Secretary Erich Krag, who had displayed the malice of his heart in\nmy imprisonment in the 'Dark Church,' was snatched away by death in a\nplace of impurity. He was lively and well, had invited guests to\ndinner, sat and wrote at his table, went out to obey the necessities\nof nature, and was found dead by his attendants when they had waited\nsome time for him.\n\n5. Major-General Fridrich von Anfeldte,[E05] who had more than once\nmanifested his delight at my misfortunes, died as he had lived. He\nwas a godless man and a blasphemer. He fell a victim to jealousy, and\nwent mad, because another obtained an honorary title which he had\ncoveted; this was indeed little enough to deprive him of sense and\nreason. He would hear nothing of God, nor would he be reconciled with\nGod. Both Queens, the Queen Dowager and the Queen Regent, persuaded\nhim at length to be so. When he had received the sacrament, he said,\n'Now your Majesties have had your desire; but what is the good of\nit?' He continued to curse and to swear, and so died.\n\n [E05] This name is mis-spelt for Ahlefeldt. This officer received\n Leonora on her arrival at Copenhagen, as she relates herself. He\n had distinguished himself in the siege of Copenhagen in 1659, and\n died as a Lieutenant-General.\n\n6. General Schak died after a long illness.\n\n7. Chancellor Peter Retz likewise.\n\n8. His Royal Majesty King Friedrich III.'s death accelerated the\ndeath of the Stadtholder Cristoffer Gabel. He felt that the hate of\nthe Queen Dowager could injure him greatly, and he desired death. God\nheard him.[E06]\n\n [E06] Christoffer Gabel is mentioned several times in the\n Autobiography. He was an influential man at the time, in great\n favour at court, and he had a great part in effecting the release\n of Ulfeldt from the prison at Bornholm, for which he, according to\n Leonora's statement, received 5,000 dollars from Ulfeldt. Both he\n and Reedtz were members of the court which condemned Ulfeldt.\n\n9. It has pleased God that I should be myself a witness of Walter's\nmiserable death; indeed, that I should compassionate him. When I\nheard him scream, former times came to my mind, and I often thought\nhow a man can allow himself to be led to do evil to those from whom\nhe had only received kindness and honour.\n\n10. Magister Buch, my father-confessor, who acted so ill to me,\nsuffered much pain on his bed of languishing. He was three days\nspeechless before he died.\n\n11. When the rogue and blasphemer, Christian, who caused me so much\nannoyance in my captivity, had regained his liberty and returned to\nhis landlord, Maans Armfeld in Jutland, he came into dispute with the\nparish priest, who wanted him to do public penance for having seduced\na woman. The rogue set fire to the parsonage; the minister's wife was\nburnt to death in trying to save some of her property, and all the\nminister's possessions were left in ashes. The minister would not\nbring the rogue to justice. He commended him to the true Judge, and\nleft vengeance to Him. The incendiary's conscience began to be\nawakened; for a long time he lived in dread, and was frightened if he\nsaw anyone coming at all quickly, and he would call out and say\ntremblingly, 'Now they are going to take me!' and would run hither\nand thither, not knowing where to go. At length he was found dead on\nthe field, having shot himself; for a long rifle was found lying\nbetween his legs, the barrel towards his breast, and a long ramrod in\nhis hand, with which he had touched the trigger. He did not,\ntherefore, die in as Christian a manner as if he had perished under\nthe hand of the executioner, of which he had so lightly said that he\nshould not care for it at all, so long as he could bring someone else\ninto trouble.\n\n\n\n\nA RECORD OF SUFFERING;\n\n_OR, A REMINISCENCE OF ALL THAT OCCURRED TO ME, LEONORA CHRISTINA, IN\nTHE BLUE TOWER, FROM AUGUST 8 OF THE YEAR 1663, TO JUNE 11[57] OF THE\nYEAR 1674._\n\n [57] Afterwards altered to anno 1685, the 19th of May.\n\n\nThe past is rarely remembered without sorrow, for it has been either\nbetter or worse than the present. If it was more joyous, more happy,\nand full of honour, its remembrance justly saddens us, and in\nproportion as the present is full of care, unhappiness, and\ndishonour. If past times were sadder, more miserable, and more\ndeplorable than the present, the remembrance of them is equally\nsorrowful, for we recover and feel once more all the past misfortunes\nand adversities which have been endured in the course of time. But\nall things have, as it were, two handles by which they may be raised,\nas Epictetus says. The one handle, he says, is bearable; the other is\nnot bearable; and it rests with our will which handle we grasp, the\nbearable or the unbearable one. If we grasp the bearable one, we can\nrecall all that is transitory, however sad and painful it may have\nbeen, rather with joy than with sorrow.[E07] So I will seize the\nbearable handle, and in the name of Jesus I will pass rapidly through\nmy memory, and recount all the wretchedness and misery, all the\ngrief, scorn and suffering, contempt and adversity, which have\nbefallen me in this place, and which I have overcome with God's help.\nI will, moreover, in no wise grieve over it; but, on the contrary, I\nwill remind myself at every step of the goodness of God, and will\nthank the Most High who has been constantly near me with His mighty\nhelp and consolation; who has ruled my heart, that it should not\ndepart from God; who has preserved my mind and my reason, that it has\nnot become obscured; who has maintained my limbs in their power and\nnatural strength, and even has given, and still gives me, repose of\nmind and joyfulness. To Thee, incomprehensible God, be honour and\npraise for ever!\n\n [E07] The passage alluded to occurs in Epictet's Encheiridion,\n chap. 43 (in some editions chap. 65), where he says: 'Every matter\n has two handles, one by which it may be carried (or endured), the\n other by which it cannot be carried (or endured). If thy brother\n has done thee injury, do not lay hold of this matter from the fact\n that he has done thee an injury, for this is the handle by which it\n cannot be carried (or endured); but rather from this side: that he\n is thy brother, educated with thee; and thou wilt lay hold of the\n matter from that side from which it may be managed.' It is easily\n seen how Leonora makes use of the double meaning of the Greek word\n {phoretos}, which is equally well used of an object which can be\n carried in the literal physical sense, and of a matter which can be\n endured or borne with.\n\n {Illustration:\n  DAS ALTE SCHLOSS IN COPENHAGEN MIT DEM BLAUEN THURM.\n  THE OLD CASTLE OF COPENHAGEN.\n  SHOWING THE BLUE TOWER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BACK-GROUND.}\n\nAnd now to proceed with my design. I consider it necessary to begin\nthe record of my sufferings with the commencement of the day which\nconcluded with the fatal evening of my captivity, and to mention\nsomewhat of that which befell me on the vessel. After the captain had\ncast anchor a little outside the pier of St. Anna, on August 8, 1663,\nat nine o'clock in the forenoon, he was sent on shore with letters by\nPeter Dreyer, who was commissioned by Petcon, at that time the\nminister resident in England, of his Majesty the King of Denmark, to\ntake charge of me. I dressed myself and sat down in one of the cabins\nof the sailors on the deck, with a firm resolution to meet\ncourageously all that lay before me;[58] yet I in no wise expected\nwhat happened; for although I had a good conscience, and had nothing\nevil with which to reproach myself, I had at various times asked the\nbefore-mentioned Peter Dreyer the reason why I had been thus brought\naway. To this question he always gave me the reply which the traitor\nBraten had given me at Dover (when I asked of him the cause of my\narrest); namely, that I was, perhaps, charged with the death of\nMajor-General Fux, and, that it was thought I had persuaded my son\nto slay him; saying, that he knew of no other cause. At twelve\no'clock Nils Rosenkrantz, at that time Lieutenant-Colonel, and Major\nSteen Anderson Bilde, came on board with some musketeers.\nLieutenant-Colonel Rosenkrantz did not salute me. The Major walked up\nand down and presently passed near me. I asked him, en passant, what\nwas the matter? He gave me no other answer than, 'Bonne mine, mauvais\njeu;' which left me just as wise as before. About one o'clock Captain\nBendix Alfeldt came on board with several more musketeers, and after\nhe had talked some time with Peter Dreyer, Dreyer came to me and\nsaid, 'It is ordered that you should go into the cabin.' I said,\n'Willingly;' and immediately went. Soon after, Captain Alfeldt came\nin to me, and said he had orders to take from me my letters, my gold,\nsilver, money, and my knife. I replied, 'Willingly.' I took off my\nbracelets and rings, gathered in a heap all my gold, silver, and\nmoney, and gave it to him. I had nothing written with me, except\ncopies of the letters which I had addressed to the King of England,\nnotes respecting one thing or another relating to my journey, and\nsome English vocabularies; these I also gave up to him. All these\nAlfeldt placed in a silver utensil which I had with me, sealed it in\nmy presence, and left the vessel with it. An hour, or somewhat more,\nafterwards, Major-General Friderich von Anfeldt,[59] Commandant in\nCopenhagen, arrived, and desired that I should come to him outside\nthe cabin. I obeyed immediately. He greeted me, gave me his hand, and\npaid me many compliments, always speaking French. He was pleased to\nsee me in health, he feared the sea might have inconvenienced me; I\nmust not allow the time to seem long to me; I should soon be\naccommodated otherwise. I caught at the last word and said, smiling,\n'Monsieur says otherwise, but not better.' 'Yes, indeed,' he replied,\n'you shall be well accommodated; the noblest in the kingdom will\nvisit you.' I understood well what he meant by this, but I answered:\n'I am accustomed to the society of great people, therefore that will\nnot appear strange to me.' Upon this, he called a servant and asked\nfor the before-mentioned silver utensil (which Captain Alfeldt had\ntaken away with him). The paper which Captain Alfeldt had sealed over\nit was torn off. The Major-General turned to me, and said: 'Here you\nhave your jewels, your gold, silver, and money back; Captain Alfeldt\nmade a mistake--they were only letters which he had orders to demand,\nand these only have been taken out, and have been left at the Castle;\nyou may dispose of the rest as you wish yourself.' 'In God's name,' I\nanswered, 'am I, therefore, at liberty to put on again my bracelets\nand rings?' 'O Jesus,' he said, 'they are yours; you may dispose of\nthem as you choose.' I put on the bracelets and rings, and gave the\nrest to my attendant. The Major-General's delight not only appeared\nin his countenance, but he was full of laughter, and was overflowing\nwith merriment. Among other things he said that he had had the\nhonour of making the acquaintance of two of my sons; that he had been\nin their society in Holland; and he praised them warmly. I\ncomplimented him in return, as was proper, and I behaved as if I\nbelieved that he was speaking in good faith. He indulged in various\njokes, especially with my attendant; said that she was pretty, and\nthat he wondered I could venture to keep such a pretty maiden; when\nHolstein ladies kept pretty maids it was only to put their husbands\nin good humour; he held a long discourse on how they managed, with\nother unmannerly jests which he carried on with my attendant. I\nanswered nothing else than that he probably spoke from experience. He\nsaid all kinds of foolish jokes to my servant, but she did not answer\na word. Afterwards the prison governor told me that he (von Anfeldt)\nhad made the King believe, at first, that my attendant was my\ndaughter, and that the King had been long of that opinion. At length,\nafter a long conversation, the Major-General took his leave, saying\nthat I must not allow the time to seem long to me; that he should\nsoon come again; and he asked what he should say to his Majesty the\nKing. I begged him to recommend me in the best manner to their\nMajesties' favour, adding that I knew not well what to say or for\nwhat to make request, as I was ignorant of what intentions they had\nwith regard to me. Towards three o'clock Major-General von Anfeldt\nreturned; he was full of laughter and merriment, and begged me to\nexcuse him for being so long away. He hoped the time had not appeared\nlong to me; I should soon get to rest; he knew well that the people\n(with this he pointed to the musketeers, who stood all along both\nsides of the vessel) were noisy, and inconvenienced me, and that\nrest would be best for me. I answered that the people did not\ninconvenience me at all; still I should be glad of rest, since I had\nbeen at sea for thirteen days, with rather bad weather. He went on\nwith his compliments, and said that when I came into the town his\nwife would do herself the honour of waiting on me, and, 'as it seems\nto me,' he continued, 'that you have not much luggage with you, and\nperhaps, not the clothes necessary, she will procure for you whatever\nyou require.' I thanked him, and said that the honour was on my side\nif his wife visited me, but that my luggage was as much as I required\nat the time; that if I needed anything in the future, I hoped she\nmight be spared this trouble; that I had not the honour of knowing\nher, but I begged him, nevertheless, to offer her my respects. He\nfound various subjects of discourse upon Birgitte Speckhans[E08] and\nother trifles, to pass away the time; but it is not worth the trouble\nto recall them to mind, and still less to write them down. At last a\nmessage came that he was to conduct me from the vessel, when he said\nto me with politeness: 'Will it please you, madame, to get into this\nboat, which is lying off the side of the ship?' I answered, 'I am\npleased to do anything that I must do, and that is commanded by His\nMajesty the King.' The Major-General went first into the boat, and\nheld out his hand to me; the Lieutenant-Colonel Rosenkrantz, Captain\nAlfeldt, Peter Dreyer, and my attendant, went with me in the boat.\nAnd as a great crowd of people had assembled to look at the\nspectacle, and many had even gone in boats in order to see me as they\nwished, he never took his eyes off me; and when he saw that I turned\nsometimes to one side and sometimes to another, in order to give them\nthis pleasure, he said, 'The people are delighted.' I saw no one\ntruly who gave any signs of joy, except himself, so I answered, 'He\nwho rejoices to-day, cannot know that he may not weep to-morrow; yet\nI see, that, whether for joy or sorrow, the people are assembling in\ncrowds, and many are gazing with amazement at one human being.' When\nwe were advanced a little further, I saw the well-known wicked\nBirgitte Ulfeldt,[E09] who exhibited great delight. She was seated in\nan open carriage; behind her was a young man, looking like a student.\nShe was driving along the shore. When I turned to that side, she was\nin the carriage and laughed with all her might, so that it sounded\nloudly. I looked at her for some time, and felt ashamed of her\nimpudence, and at the disgrace which she was bringing on herself; but\nfor the rest, this conduct did not trouble me more than the barking\nof the dogs, for I esteemed both equally.[60] The Major-General went\non talking incessantly, and never turned his eyes from me; for he\nfeared (as he afterwards said) that I should throw myself into the\nwater. (He judged me by himself; he could not endure the change of\nfortune, as his end testified, for it was only on account of an\nhonorary title which another received in his stead that he lost his\nmind. He did not know that I was governed by another spirit than he,\nwhich gave me strength and courage, whilst the spirit he served led\nhim into despair.[61]) When the boat arrived at the small pier near\nthe office of the Exchequer, Captain Alfeldt landed and gave me his\nhand, and conducted me up towards the castle bridge. Regiments of\nhorse and foot were drawn up in the open place outside the castle;\nmusketeers were standing on both sides as I walked forwards. On the\ncastle bridge stood Jockum Walburger, the prison governor, who went\nbefore me; and as the people had placed themselves in a row on either\nside up to the King's Stairs, the prison governor made as if he were\ngoing thither; but he turned round abruptly, and said to Alfeldt,\n'This way,' and went to the gate of the Blue Tower; stood there for\nsome time and fumbled with the key; acted as if he could not unlock\nit, in order that I might remain as long as possible a spectacle to\nthe people. And as my heart was turned to God, and I had placed all\nmy confidence in the Most High, I raised my eyes to heaven, sought\nstrength, power, and safety from thence, and it was graciously\nvouchsafed me. (One circumstance I will not leave unnoticed--namely,\nthat as I raised my eyes to heaven, a screaming raven flew over the\nTower, followed by a flock of doves, which were flying in the same\ndirection.) At length, after a long delay, the prison governor opened\nthe Tower gate, and I was conducted into the Tower by the\nbefore-mentioned Captain Alfeldt. My attendant, who was preparing to\nfollow me, was called back by Major-General von Anfeldt, and told to\nremain behind. The prison governor went up the stairs, and showed\nAlfeldt the way to a prison for malefactors, to which the name of the\n'Dark Church' has been given. There Alfeldt quitted me with a sigh\nand a slight reverence. I can truly say of him that his face\nexpressed pity, and that he obeyed the order unwillingly. The clock\nwas striking half-past five when Jockum closed the door of my prison.\nI found before me a small low table, on which stood a brass\ncandlestick with a lighted candle, a high chair, two small chairs, a\nfir-wood bedstead without hangings and with old and hard bedding, a\nnight-stool and chamber utensil. At every side to which I turned I\nwas met with stench; and no wonder, for three peasants who had been\nimprisoned here, and had been removed on that very day, and placed\nelsewhere, had used the walls for their requirements. Soon after the\ndoor had been closed, it was opened again, and there entered Count\nChristian Rantzow, Prime Minister, Peter Zetz, Chancellor,\nChristoffer von Gabel, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and\nErich Krag, at that time Secretary, all of whom gave me their hands\nwith civility. The Chancellor spoke and said: 'His Royal Majesty, my\ngracious master and hereditary king, sends you word, madame, that His\nMajesty has great cause for what he is doing against you, as you will\nlearn.' I replied: 'It is much to be regretted by me, if cause should\nbe found against me; I will, however, hope that it may not be of such\na kind that His Majesty's displeasure may be lasting. When I know the\ncause I can defend myself.' Count Rantzow answered: 'You will obtain\npermission to defend yourself.' He whispered something to the\nChancellor, upon which the Chancellor put a few questions: first,\nWhether on my last journey I had been in France with my husband? To\nwhich I answered in the affirmative. Then, What my husband was doing\nthere? To which I replied, that he was consulting physicians about\nhis health, whether it would be serviceable to him to use the warm\nbaths in the country, which no one would advise him to do; he had\neven been dissuaded from trying them by a doctor in Holland of the\nname of Borro,[E10] when he had asked his opinion. Thirdly, What I\nhad purposed doing in England? To this I replied that my intention\nhad been to demand payment of a sum of money which the King of\nEngland owed us, and which we had lent him in the time of his\nmisfortune. Fourthly, Who had been in England with me? I mentioned\nthose who were with me in England--namely, a nobleman named Cassetta,\nmy attendant who had come hither with me, a lacquey named Frantz, who\nhad remained in England, and the nobleman's servant. Fifthly, Who\nvisited my husband in Bruges? I could not exactly answer this, as my\nlord received his visits in a private chamber, where I was not\nadmitted. Count Rantzow said, 'You know, I suppose, who came to him\noftenest?' I answered, that the most frequent visitors among those I\nknew were two brothers named Aranda,[E11] the before-mentioned\nCassetta, and a nobleman named Ognati. Sixthly the Chancellor asked,\nWith whom I had corresponded here in the country? To which I\nanswered, that I had written to H. Hendrick Bielcke, to Olluff\nBrockenhuuss, Lady Elsse Passberg, and Lady Marie Ulfeldt;[E12] I did\nnot remember any more. Count Rantzow enquired if I had more letters\nthan those which I had given up? To which I answered in the negative,\nthat I had no more. He asked further, Whether I had more jewels with\nme than those he had seen? I answered that I had two strings of\nsmall round pearls on my hat, and a ring with a diamond, which I had\ngiven a lieutenant named Braten in Dover (it was he who afterwards\nbetrayed me). Count Rantzow asked, How much the pearls might have\nbeen worth? This I could not exactly say. He said, that he supposed I\nknew their approximate value. I said they might be worth 200\nrix-dollars, or somewhat more. Upon this they were all silent for a\nlittle. I complained of the severity of my imprisonment, and that I\nwas so badly treated. Count Rantzow answered, 'Yes Madame, His Royal\nMajesty has good cause for it; if you will confess the truth, and\nthat quickly, you may perhaps look for mercy. Had Marechal de\nBirron[E13] confessed the matter respecting which he was interrogated\nby order of the King, when the royal mercy was offered to him if he\nwould speak the truth, it would not have fared with him as it did. I\nhave heard as a truth that the King of France would have pardoned him\nhis crime, had he confessed at once; therefore, bethink yourself,\nmadame!' I answered, 'Whatever I am asked by order of His Majesty,\nand whatever I am cognizant of, I will gladly say in all submission.'\nUpon this Count Rantzow offered me his hand, and I reminded him in a\nfew words of the severity of my imprisonment. Count Rantzow promised\nto mention this to the King. Then the others shook hands with me and\nwent away. My prison was closed for a little. I therefore profited by\nthe opportunity, and concealed here and there in holes, and among the\nrubbish, a gold watch, a silver pen which gave forth ink and was\nfilled with ink, and a scissor-sheath worked with silver and\ntortoiseshell. This was scarcely done when the door was again\nopened, and there entered the Queen's Mistress of the Robes, her\nwoman of the bed-chamber, and the wife of the commissariat clerk,\nAbel Catharina. I knew the last. She and the Queen's woman of the\nbed-chamber carried clothes over their arm; these consisted of a long\ndressing-gown stitched with silk, made of flesh-coloured taffeta and\nlined with white silk, a linen under-petticoat, printed over with a\nblack lace pattern, a pair of silk stockings, a pair of slippers, a\nshift, an apron, a night-dress, and two combs. They made me no\ngreeting. Abel Cath. spoke for them, and said: 'It is the command of\nHer Majesty the Queen that we should take away your clothes, and that\nyou should have these in their place.' I answered, 'In God's name!'\nThen they removed the pad from my head, in which I had sown up rings\nand many loose diamonds. Abel Cath. felt all over my head to see if\nanything was concealed in my hair; then she said to the others,\n'There is nothing there; we do not require the combs.' Abel Cath.\ndemanded the bracelets and rings, which were a second time taken from\nme. I took them off and gave them to them, except one small ring\nwhich I wore on the last joint of my little finger, and which could\nnot be worth more than a rix-dollar, this I begged to be allowed to\nkeep. 'No,' said the Mistress of the Robes, 'You are to retain\nnothing.' Abel Cath. said, 'We are strictly forbidden to leave you\nthe smallest thing; I have been obliged to swear upon my soul to the\nQueen that I would search you thoroughly, and not leave you the\nsmallest thing; but you shall not lose it; they will all be sealed up\nand kept for you, for this I swear the Queen has said.' 'Good, good,\nin God's name!' I answered. She drew off all my clothes. In my\nunder-petticoat I had concealed some ducats under the broad gold\nlace; there was a small diamond ornament in my silk camisole, in the\nfoot of my stockings there were some Jacobuses', and there were\nsapphires in my shoes. When she attempted to remove my chemise, I\nbegged to be allowed to retain it. No; she swore upon her soul that\nshe dared not. She stripped me entirely, and the Mistress of the\nRobes gave Abel Cath. a nod, which she did not at once understand; so\nthe Mistress of the Robes said: 'Do you not remember your orders?'\nUpon this, Abel Cath. searched my person still more closely, and said\nto the lady in waiting: 'No, by God! there is nothing there.' I said:\n'You act towards me in an unchristian and unbecoming manner.' Abel\nCath. answered: 'We are only servants; we must do as we are ordered;\nwe are to search for letters and for nothing else; all the rest will\nbe given back to you; it will be well taken care of.' After they had\nthus despoiled me, and had put on me the clothes they had brought,\nthe servant of the Mistress of the Robes came in and searched\neverywhere with Abel Cath., and found every thing that I had\nconcealed. God blinded their eyes so that they did not observe my\ndiamond earrings, nor some ducats which had been sown into leather\nround one of my knees; I also saved a diamond worth 200 rix-dollars;\nwhile on board the ship I had bitten it out of the gold, and thrown\nthe gold in the sea; the stone I had then in my mouth.[62]\n\n [58] In the margin is added: 'I had a ring on with a table-diamond\n worth 200 rix-dollars. I bit this out, threw the gold in the sea,\n and kept the stone in my mouth. It could not be observed by my\n speech that there was anything in my mouth.'\n\n [59] That is the Aulefeldt mentioned in the Preface under the name\n of Anfeldt.\n\n [E08] Birgitte Speckhans was the wife of Frants v. Speckhans,\n master of ceremonies, afterwards Privy Councillor, &c. She had\n formerly been in the service of Leonora Christina, who was then at\n the height of her position, and ever afterwards proved herself a\n friend of her and Ulfeldt. It was in her house that they stayed\n after escaping from Malmoe, and she kept some of their movable\n goods for them during their imprisonment at Hammershuus.\n\n [E09] Birgitte Ulfeldt was a younger sister of Corfitz, who, in a\n letter to Sperling, declares her to be his and Leonora's bitterest\n enemy. What is known of her life is certainly not to her advantage.\n\n [60] In the margin is added: 'The sorrow manifested by many would\n far rather have depressed me; for several people, both men and\n women, shed tears, even those whom I did not know.'\n\n [61] This paragraph was afterwards struck out, the contents being\n transferred to the Preface.\n\n [E10] This is the famous Jos. Borro or Burrhus, physician and\n alchymist. He is often mentioned in books of the seventeenth\n century, on account of his wonderful cures and alleged knowledge of\n the art of making gold. In 1667 he came to Denmark, where King\n Fredrik III. spent considerable sums on the establishment of large\n laboratories for him, in a building which is still known as 'The\n Gold-house.'\n\n [E11] D'Aranda was one of the most influential families in Bruges.\n One of them, by name Bernard, was some time in the Danish army,\n afterwards secretary to Corfitz Ulfeldt, and employed by him in\n diplomatic missions. He died in 1658, but when Ulfeldt came to\n Bruges in 1662 he lived for some time with one of Bernard's\n brothers.\n\n [E12] H. Bielke was Admiral of the realm; his wife was an Ulfeldt,\n and it was he who procured Corfitz Ulfeldt his leave of absence in\n 1662, of which he made such regretable use. He, too, was one of the\n judges that convicted him. Oluf Brokkenhuus was Corfitz Ulfeldt's\n brother-in-law; Elizabeth Parsbjerg was the widow of his elder\n brother Lauridts Ulfeldt. Marie Ulfeldt was sister of Corfitz.\n\n [E13] Charles de Goutant, Duc de Biron, a celebrated French\n General, some time favourite of Henry IV. King of France, was found\n guilty of conspiring against his master with the courts of Spain\n and Savoy. Henry IV. forgave him, but he recommenced his intrigues.\n It is supposed that the King would have forgiven him a second time\n if he had confessed his crime; but he refused to do so, and was\n beheaded in 1602.\n\n [62] This passage was afterwards altered thus: 'God blinded their\n eyes so that they did not perceive my earrings, in each of which\n there is a large rose diamond, and from which I have now removed\n the stones. The gold, which is in form of a serpent, is still in my\n ears. They also did not perceive that something was fastened round\n my knee.'\n\nThe Mistress of the Robes was very severe; they could not search\nthoroughly enough for her. She laughed at me several times, and\ncould not endure that I sat down, asking whether I could not stand,\nand whether anything was the matter with me. I answered, 'There is\nonly too much the matter with me, yet I can stand when it is\nnecessary.' (It was no wonder that the Mistress of the Robes could so\nwell execute the order to plunder, for she had frequently accompanied\nher deceased husband. Colonel Schaffshaussen[E14], in war.) When she\nhad searched every part thoroughly, they took all my clothes, except\na taffeta cap for the head, and went away. Then the prison governor\ncame in with his hat on, and said, 'Leonora, why have you concealed\nyour things?' I answered him not a word; for I had made the\nresolution not to answer him, whatever he might say; his qualities\nwere known to me; I was aware that he was skilful in improving a\nreport, and could twist words in the manner he thought would be\nacceptable, to the damage of those who were in trouble. He asked\nagain with the same words, adding 'Do you not hear?' I looked at him\nover my shoulder, and would not allow his disrespect to excite me.\nThe table was then spread, and four dishes were brought in, but I had\nno appetite, although I had eaten little or nothing the whole day.\n\n [E14] This lady is known under the name of Haxthausen; and\n Schaffshausen is probably a mistake on Leonora's part, although of\n course she may have been married to an officer of this name before\n she married N. v. Haxthausen. She was a German by birth.\n\nAn hour afterwards, when the dishes had been carried away, a girl\ncame in named Maren Blocks, and said that she had orders from the\nQueen to remain the night with me. The prison governor joked a good\ndeal with the before-mentioned Maren, and was very merry, indulging\nin a good deal of loose talk. At last, when it was nearly ten\no'clock, he said good night and closed the two doors of my prison,\none of which is cased with copper. When Maren found herself alone\nwith me, she pitied my condition, and informed me that many, whom she\nmentioned by name (some of whom were known to me) had witnessed my\ncourage with grief and tears, especially the wife of H. Hendrick\nBielcke[E12b], who had fainted with weeping. I said, 'The good people\nhave seen me in prosperity; it is no wonder that they deplore the\ninstability of fortune;' and I wished that God might preserve every\none of those from misfortune, who had taken my misfortune to heart. I\nconsoled myself with God and a good conscience; I was conscious of\nnothing wrong, and I asked who she was, and whom she served? She said\nshe was in the Queen's private kitchen, and had the silver in her\nkeeping (from which I concluded that she had probably to clean the\nsilver, which was the case). She said that the Queen could get no one\nwho would be alone with me, for that I was considered evil; it was\nsaid also that I was very wise, and knew future events. I answered,\n'If I possessed this wisdom, I scarcely think that I should have come\nin here, for I should then have been able to guard myself against\nit.' Maren said we might know things and still not be able to guard\nagainst them.\n\n [E12b] H. Bielke was Admiral of the realm; his wife was an Ulfeldt,\n and it was he who procured Corfitz Ulfeldt his leave of absence in\n 1662, of which he made such regretable use. He, too, was one of the\n judges that convicted him. Oluf Brokkenhuus was Corfitz Ulfeldt's\n brother-in-law; Elizabeth Parsbjerg was the widow of his elder\n brother Lauridts Ulfeldt. Marie Ulfeldt was sister of Corfitz.\n\nShe told me also that the Queen had herself spoken with her, and had\nsaid to her, 'You are to be this night with Leonora; you need not be\nafraid, she can now do no evil. With all her witchcraft she is now in\nprison and has nothing with her; and if she strikes you, I give you\nleave to strike her back again till the blood comes.' Maren said\nalso, 'The Queen knows well that my mind has been affected by acute\nillness, and therefore she wished that I should be with you.' So\nsaying she threw her arms round my neck as I was sitting, and\ncaressed me in her manner, saying, 'Strike me, dear heart, strike\nme!' 'I will not,' she swore, 'strike again.' I was rather alarmed,\nfearing that the frenzy might come on. She said further that when she\nsaw me coming over the bridge, she felt as if her heart would burst.\nShe informed me with many words how much she loved me, and how the\nmaid of honour, Carisius, who was standing with her in the window,\nhad praised me, and wished to be able to do something for my\ndeliverance, with many such words and speeches. I accepted the\nunusual caress, as under the circumstances I could not help it, and\nsaid that it would be contrary to all justice to offer blows to one\nwho manifested such great affection as she had done, especially to\none of her sex; adding, that I could not think how the Queen had\nimagined that I struck people, as I had never even given a box on the\nears to a waiting-woman. I thanked her for her good opinion of me,\nand told her that I hoped all would go well, dark as things looked;\nthat I would hold fast to God, who knew my innocence, and that I had\ndone nothing unjustifiable; that I would commend my cause to Him, and\nI did not doubt that He would rescue me: if not immediately He would\ndo so some day, I was well assured.\n\nMaren began to speak of different things; among others of my sister\nElizabeth Augusta[E15], how she had sat in her porch as I had been\nconveyed past as a prisoner, and had said that if I were guilty there\nwas nothing to say against it, but that if I were innocent they were\ngoing too far. I said nothing to this, nor did I answer anything to\nmuch other tittle-tattle. She began to speak of her own persecution,\nwhich she did with great diffuseness, interspersing it with other\nstories, so that the conversation (in the present circumstances) was\nvery wearisome to me; I was besides very tired, and worn out with\ncare, so I said I would try to sleep and bid her good-night. My\nthoughts prevented me from sleeping. I reflected on my present\ncondition, and could in no wise reconcile myself to it, or discover\nthe cause of such a great misfortune. It was easy to perceive that\nsomewhat besides Fux's death was imputed to me, since I was treated\nwith such disrespect.\n\n [E15] Elizabeth Augusta, a younger sister of Leonora, married Hans\n Lindenow, a Danish nobleman, who died in the siege of Copenhagen,\n 1659.\n\nWhen I had long lain with my face to the wall, I turned round and\nperceived that Maren was silently weeping, so I asked her the reason\nof her tears. She denied at first that she was crying, but afterwards\nconfessed that she had fallen into thinking over this whole affair.\nIt had occurred to her that she had heard so much of Lady Leonora and\nher splendour, &c., of how the King loved her, and how every one\npraised her, &c., and now she was immured in this execrable thieves'\nprison, into which neither sun nor moon shone, and where there was a\nstench enough to poison a person only coming in and out, far more one\nwho had to remain in it. I thought the cause of her weeping was that\nshe should be shut up with me in the terrible prison; so I consoled\nher, and said that she would only remain with me until another had\nbeen fixed upon, since she was in other service; but that I for my\npart did not now think of past times, as the present gave me\nsufficient to attend to; if I were to call to mind the past, I would\nremember also the misfortunes of great men, emperors, kings,\nprinces, and other high personages, whose magnificence and prosperity\nhad far exceeded mine, and whose misfortunes had been far greater\nthan mine; for they had fallen into the hands of tyrants, who had\ntreated them inhumanly, but this king was a Christian king, and a\nconscientious man, and better thoughts would occur to him when he had\ntime to reflect, for my adversaries now left him no leisure to do so.\nWhen I said this, she wept even more than before, but said nothing,\nthinking in herself (as she declared to me some days afterwards) that\nI did not know what an infamous sentence had been pronounced upon my\nlate lord,[E16] and weeping all the more because I trusted the King\nso firmly. Thus we went on talking through the night.\n\n [E16] That Leonora here speaks of her husband as her 'late lord,'\n is due only to the fact that the Memoir was not written till after\n his death; at the time of these events he was still alive.\n\nOn the morning of August 9, at six o'clock, the prison governor came\nin, bade me good morning, and enquired whether we would have some\nbrandy. I answered nothing. He asked Maren whether I was asleep; she\nreplied that she did not know, came up to my bed, and put the same\nquestion to me. I thanked her, adding that it was a kind of drink\nwhich I had never tasted. The prison governor chattered with Maren,\nwas very merry considering the early hour, told her his dreams, which\nhe undoubtedly invented merely for the sake of talking. He told her,\nsecretly, that she was to come to the Queen, and ordered her to say\naloud that she wished to go out a little. He said that he would\nremain with me in the meanwhile, until she returned, which he did,\nspeaking occasionally to me, and asking me whether I wished for\nanything? whether I had slept? whether Maren had watched well? But\nhe got no answer, so that the time seemed very long to him. He went\nout towards the stairs and came back again, sang a morning psalm,\nscreamed out sometimes to one, and sometimes to another, though he\nknew they were not there.\n\nThere was a man named Jon who helped to bring up the meals with\nRasmus the tower warder, and to him he called more than forty times\nand that in a singing tone, changing his key from high to low, and\nscreaming occasionally as loud as he could, and answering himself\n'Father, he is not here! by God, he is not here!' then laughing at\nhimself; and then he began calling again either for Jon or for\nRasmus, so that it seemed to me that he had been tasting the brandy.\nAbout eight o'clock Maren came back, and said that at noon two women\nwould come to relieve her. After some conversation between the prison\ngovernor and Maren, he went out and shut the doors. Maren told me how\nthe Queen had sent for her, and asked her what I was doing, and that\nshe answered that I was lying down quietly, and not saying anything.\nThe Queen had asked whether I wept much. Maren replied, 'Yes indeed,\nshe weeps silently.' 'For,' continued Maren, 'if I had said that you\ndid not weep, the Queen would have thought that you had not yet\nenough to weep for.' Maren warned me that one of the two women who\nwere to watch me was the wife of the King's shoemaker, a German, who\nwas very much liked by the Queen. Her Majesty had employed her to\nattend Uldrich Christian Gyldenlowe in the severe and raving illness\nof which he died, and this woman had much influence with the Queen.\nWith regard to the other woman, Maren had no idea who she might be,\nbut the last-mentioned had spoken with the Queen in Maren's presence,\nand had said that she did not trust herself to be alone with me. The\nwomen did not come before four o'clock in the afternoon. The prison\ngovernor accompanied them, and unlocked the door for them. The first\nwas the wife of the shoemaker, a woman named Anna, who generally\nwould not suffer anybody else to speak. The other was the wife of the\nKing's groom, a woman named Catharina, also a German. After greeting\nme, Anna said that her Majesty the Queen had ordered them to pass a\nday or two with me and wait upon me. 'In God's name,' I answered.\n\nAnna, who was very officious, asked me, 'Does my lady wish for\nanything? She will please only say so, and I will solicit it from the\nQueen.' I thanked her, and said that I should like to have some of my\nclothes, such as two night-jackets, one lined with silk and another\nbraided with white, my stomacher, something for my head, and above\nall my bone box of perfume, which I much needed. She said she would\nat once arrange this, which she did, for she went immediately and\nproffered my request. The things were all delivered to me by the\nprison governor at six o'clock, except my box of perfume, which had\nbeen lost, and in its place they sent me a tin box with a very bad\nkind of perfume. When the time arrived for the evening meal,\nCatharina spread a stool by the side of my bed, but I had no desire\nto eat. I asked for a lemon with sugar, and they gave it me. The\nprison governor sat down at the table with the two women, and did the\npart of jester, so much so that no one could have said that they were\nin a house of mourning, but rather in one of festivity. I inwardly\nprayed to God for strength and patience, that I might not forget\nmyself. God heard my prayer, praised be His name. When the prison\ngovernor was tired of the idle talking and laughing, he bade good\nnight after ten o'clock, and told the women to knock if they wanted\nanything, as the tower warder was just underneath. After he had\nlocked both the doors, I got up, and Catharina made my bed. Anna had\nbrought a prayer-book with her, from which I read the evening prayer,\nand other prayers for them; then I laid down and bid them good night.\nThey laid on a settle-bed which had been brought in for them. I\nslumbered from time to time, but only for short intervals.\n\nAbout six o'clock on the morning of August 10 the prison governor\nopened the door, to the great delight of the women, who were\nsincerely longing for him, especially Catharina, who was very stout;\nshe could not endure the oppressive atmosphere, and was ill almost\nthe whole night. When the prison governor, after greeting them, had\ninquired how it fared with them, and whether they were still alive,\nhe offered them brandy, which they readily accepted. When it was\nseven o'clock, they requested to go home, which they did, but they\nfirst reported to the Queen all that had happened during the half-day\nand the night. The prison governor remained with me.\n\nWhen it was near nine o'clock, he brought in a chair without saying\nanything. I perceived from this that visitors were coming, and I was\nnot wrong; for immediately afterwards there entered Count Rantzow,\nprime minister, chancellor H. Peter Retz, Christoffer Gabel, the\nchancellor of the exchequer, and secretary Erick Krag, who all shook\nhands with me and seated themselves by my bed. Krag, who had paper,\npen and ink with him, seated himself at the table. Count Rantzow\nwhispered something to the chancellor. The chancellor upon this began\nto address me as on the previous occasion, saying that his Majesty\nthe King had great cause for his treatment of me. 'His Majesty,' he\nwent on to say, 'entertains suspicion with regard to you, and that\nnot without reason.' I inquired in what the suspicion consisted. The\nchancellor said, 'Your husband has offered the kingdom of Denmark to\na foreign lord.' I inquired if the kingdom of Denmark belonged to my\nhusband, that he could thus offer it, and as no one answered, I\ncontinued and said, 'Good gentlemen, you all know my lord; you know\nthat he has been esteemed as a man of understanding, and I can assure\nyou that when I took leave of him he was in perfect possession of his\nsenses. Now it is easy to perceive that no sensible man would offer\nthat which was not in his own power, and which he had no right to\ndispose of. He is holding no post, he has neither power nor\nauthority; how should he, therefore, be so foolish as to make such an\noffer, and what lord would accept it?'\n\nCount Rantzow said: 'Nevertheless it is so, madame; he has offered\nDenmark to a foreign potentate; you know it well.' I answered, 'God\nis my witness that I know of no such thing.' 'Yes,' said Count\nRantzow, 'your husband concealed nothing from you, and therefore you\nmust know it.' I replied, 'My husband certainly never concealed from\nme anything that concerned us both. I never troubled myself in former\ndays with that which related to his office; but that which affected\nus both he never concealed from me, so that I am sure, had he\nentertained any such design, he would not have held it a secret from\nme. And I can say, with truth, that I am not the least aware of it.'\nCount Rantzow said: 'Madame, confess it while the King still asks you\nto do so.'\n\nI answered, 'If I knew it I would gladly say so; but as truly as God\nlives I do not know it, and as truly am I unable to believe that my\nhusband would have acted so foolishly, for he is a sick man. He urged\nme to go to England in order to demand the money that had been lent;\nI undertook the journey, unwillingly, chiefly because he was so very\nweak. He could not go up a few steps of the stairs without resting to\nget his breath; how should he, then, undertake a work of such labour?\nI can say with truth that he is not eight days without an attack,\nsometimes of one kind sometimes of another.' Count Rantzow again\nwhispered with the chancellor, and the chancellor continued: 'Madame,\nsay without compulsion how the matter stands, and who is privy to it;\nsay it now, while you are asked freely to do so. His Majesty is an\nabsolute Sovereign; he is not fettered by law; he can do as he will;\nsay it.' I answered: 'I know well that his Majesty is an absolute\nSovereign, and I know also, that he is a Christian and a\nconscientious man; therefore, his Majesty will do nothing but what he\ncan justify before God in heaven. See, here I am! You can do with me\nwhat you will; that which I do not know I cannot say.'\n\nCount Rantzow began again to bring forward the Marechal de Birron,\nand made a long speech about it. To this I at length replied, that\nthe Marechal de Birron in nowise concerned me; that I had no answer\nto make on the matter, and that it seemed to me that it was not a\ncase in point. Count Rantzow asked me why, when I was demanded with\nwhom I had corresponded in the kingdom, I had not said that I had\nwritten to him and to the treasurer Gabel. To this I replied that I\nthought those who asked me knew it well, so that it was not necessary\nfor me to mention it; I had only said that of which they probably did\nnot know. Count Rantzow again whispered to the chancellor, and the\nchancellor said: 'In a letter to Lady Elsse Passberg you have written\nrespecting another state of things in Denmark,' (as he said this, he\nlooked at Count Rantzow and asked if it was not so, or how it was);\n'what did you mean by that, madame?' I replied that I could not\nrecollect what cause her letter had given me to answer it in this\nway; what came before or what followed, would, without a doubt,\nexplain my meaning; if I might see the letter, it would prove at once\nthat I had written nothing which I could not justify.\n\nNothing more was said with regard to it. Count Rantzow asked me what\nforeign ministers had been with my lord in Bruges. 'None,' I\nanswered, 'that I am aware of.' He asked further whether any Holstein\nnoblemen had been with him. I answered, 'I do not know.' Then he\nenumerated every Prince in Germany, from the Emperor to the Prince of\nHolstein, and enquired respecting each separately whether any of\ntheir Ministers had been with my husband. I gave the same answer as\nbefore to each question, that I was not aware that any one of them\nhad been with him. Then he said, 'Now, madame, confess! I beg you;\nremember Marechal de Birron! you will not be asked again.' I was\nsomewhat tired of hearing Birron mentioned so often, and I answered\nrather hastily: 'I do not care about the Marechal de Birron; I\ncannot tell what I do not know anything about.'\n\nSecretary Krag had written somewhat hurriedly it seemed, for when at\nmy desire he read aloud what he had written, the answers did not\naccord with the questions; this probably partly arose from hurry, and\npartly from malice, for he was not amicably inclined towards my late\nlord. I protested against this when he read the minutes. The\nchancellor agreed with me in every item, so that Krag was obliged to\nre-write it. After this they got up and took their leave. I requested\nto beg His Majesty the King to be gracious to me, and not to believe\nwhat he had been informed with regard to my husband. I could not\nimagine they would find that he had ever deviated from his duty.\n'Yes,' answered Count Rantzow, 'if you will confess, madame, and tell\nus who is concerned in this business and the details of it, you might\nperhaps find him a gracious lord and king.' I protested by the living\nGod that I knew nothing of it; I knew of nothing of the kind, much\nless of accomplices. With this they went away, after having spent\nnearly three hours with me, and then the prison governor and the\nwomen entered. They spread the table and brought up the meal, but I\ntook nothing but a draught of beer. The prison governor sat down to\ntable with the women. If he had been merry before, he was still more\nso now, and he told one indecent story after another.\n\nWhen they had had enough of feasting and talking he went away and\nlocked the door; he came as usual again about four o'clock in the\nafternoon, and let the women go out, staying with me until they\nreturned, which generally was not for two hours. When the women were\nalone with me, Anna told Catharina of her grief for her first\nhusband, and nothing else was talked of. I behaved as if I were\nasleep, and I did the same when the prison governor was alone with\nme, and he then passed the time in singing and humming. The evening\nmeal was also very merry for the women, for the prison governor\namused them by telling them of his second marriage; how he had wooed\nwithout knowing whom, and that he did not know it until the\nbetrothal. The story was as ludicrous as it was diffuse. I noticed\nthat it lasted an hour and a quarter.\n\nWhen he had said good night, Anna sat down on my bed and began to\ntalk to Catharina, and said, 'Was it not a horrible story of that\ntreacherous design to murder the King and Queen and the whole royal\nfamily?' Catharina answered, 'Thank God the King and Queen and the\nwhole family are still alive!' 'Yes,' said Anna, 'it was no merit of\nthe traitors, though, that they are so; it was too quickly\ndiscovered; the King knew it three months before he would reveal it\nto the Queen. He went about sorrowfully, pondering over it, unable\nquite to believe it; afterwards, when he was quite certain of it, he\ntold the Queen; then the body-guard were doubled, as you know.'\nCatherina enquired how they had learnt it. Anna answered, 'That God\nknows; it is kept so secret that no one is allowed as much as to ask\nfrom whom it came.' I could not help putting in a word; it seemed to\nme a pity that they could not find out the informer, and it was\nremarkable that no one ventured to confess having given the\ninformation. Catherina said, 'I wonder whether it is really true?'\n'What do you mean?' answered Anna; 'would the King do as he is doing\nwithout knowing for certain that it is true? How can you talk so?' I\nregarded this conversation as designed to draw some words from me,\nso I answered but little, only saying that until now I had seen\nnothing which gave credibility to the report, and that therefore I\nfelt myself at liberty not to believe it until I saw certain proof of\nit. Anna adhered to her statement, wondered that there could be such\nevil people as could wish to murder the good King, and was very\ndiffuse on the matter.[E17] She could be at no loss for material, for\nshe always began again from the beginning; but at last she had to\nstop, since she spoke alone and was not interrupted either by\nCatharina or by me.\n\n [E17] When the sentence on Ulfeldt had become publicly known, the\n most absurd rumours circulated in Copenhagen, and found their way\n to foreign newspapers. For instance _the kingdom's_ Intelligencer,\n No. 33, Aug. 10-17, 1663, says, in a correspondence from Hamburg:\n 'They say the traitors intended to set Copenhagen on fire in divers\n places, and also the fleet, to destroy the King and family, to blow\n up the King's palace, and deliver the crown over to another.' The\n Government itself, on hearing of Ulfeldt's plots, made great\n military preparations.\n\nI got up and requested to have my bed made, which Catharina always\ndid. Anna attended to the light during the night, for she was more\nwatchful than Catharina. I read aloud to them from Anna's book,\ncommended myself to God, and laid down to sleep. But my sleep was\nlight, the promenades of the rats woke me, and there were great\nnumbers of them. Hunger made them bold; they ate the candle as it\nstood burning. Catharina, moreover, was very uncomfortable all night,\nso that this also prevented my sleeping. Early on the morning of\nAugust 11 the prison governor came as usual with his brandy\nattentions, although they had a whole bottle with them. Catharina\ncomplained a good deal, and said she could not endure the oppressive\nair; that when she came in at the door it seemed as if it would\nstifle her; if she were to remain there a week she was certain that\nshe would be carried out dead. The prison governor laughed at this.\n\nThe women went away, and he remained with me. He presented me\nMajor-General von Anfeldt's compliments, and a message from him,\nthat I 'should be of good courage; all would now soon be well.' I\nmade no reply. He enquired how I was, and whether I had slept a\nlittle; and answered himself, 'I fancy not much.' He asked whether I\nwould have anything, again answering himself, 'No, I do not think you\nwish for anything.' Upon this he walked up and down, humming to\nhimself; then he came to my bedside and said: 'Oh, the dear King! he\nis indeed a kind master! Be at peace; he is a gracious sovereign, and\nhas always held you in esteem. You are a woman, a weak instrument.\nPoor women are soon led away. No one likes to harm them, when they\nconfess the truth. The dear Queen, she is indeed a dear Queen! She is\nnot angry with you. I am sure if she knew the truth from you, she\nwould herself pray for you. Listen! if you will write to the Queen\nand tell her all about the matter, and keep nothing back, I will\nbring you pen, ink, and paper. I have no wish, on my soul! to read\nit. No, God take me if I will look at it; and that you may be sure of\nthis, I will give you wax that you may seal it. But I imagine you\nhave probably no seal?' As I answered him not a word, he seized my\nhand and shook it rather strongly, saying, 'Do you not hear? Are you\nasleep?' I raised my head threateningly; I should like to have given\nhim a box on the ears, and I turned round to the wall.\n\nHe was angry that his design had failed, and he went on grumbling to\nhimself for more than an hour. I could not understand a word beyond,\n'Yes, yes! you will not speak.' Then he muttered somewhat between his\nteeth: 'You will not answer; well, well, they will teach you. Yes, by\nGod! hum, hum, hum.' He continued thus until the tower warder,\nRasmus, came and whispered something to him; then he went out. It\nseemed to me that there was someone speaking with him, and so far as\nI could perceive it must have been someone who asked him if the ink\nand paper should be brought up, for he answered, 'No, it is not\nnecessary; she will not.' The other said, 'Softly, softly!' The\nprison governor, however, could not well speak softly, and I heard\nhim say, 'She cannot hear that; she is in bed.' When he came in again\nhe went on muttering to himself, and stamped because I would not\nanswer; he meant it kindly; the Queen was not so angry as I imagined.\nHe went on speaking half aloud; he wished the women would come; he\ndid nothing else but beg Rasmus to look for them.\n\nSoon after Rasmus came and said that they were now going up the\nKing's Stairs. Still almost an hour passed before they came in and\nreleased him. When they had their dinner (my own meal consisted of\nsome slices of lemon with sugar) the prison governor was not nearly\nso merry as he was wont to be, though he chattered of various things\nthat had occurred in former times, while he was a quarter-master. He\nalso retired sooner than was his custom. The women, who remained,\ntalked of indifferent matters. I also now and then put in a word, and\nasked them after their husbands and children. Anna read some prayers\nand hymns from her book, and thus the day passed till four o'clock,\nwhen the prison governor let them out. He had brought a book with\nhim, which he read in a tolerably low tone, while he kept watch by\nme. I was well pleased at this, as it gave me rest.\n\nAt the evening meal the prison governor began amongst other\nconversation to tell the women that a prisoner had been brought here\nwho was a Frenchman; he could not remember his name; he sat\ncogitating upon the name just as if he could not rightly hit upon it.\nCarl or Char, he did not know what he was called, but he had been\nformerly several years in Denmark. Anna enquired what sort of a man\nhe was. He replied that he was a man who was to be made to sing,[63]\nbut he did not know for a certainty whether he was here or not.\n(There was nothing in all this.) He only said this in order to get an\nopportunity of asking me, or to perceive whether it troubled me.\n\n [63] That is, give information.\n\nHe had undoubtedly been ordered to do this; for when he was gone Anna\nbegan a conversation with Catharina upon this same Carl, and at last\nasked me whether we had had a Frenchman in our employ. I replied that\nwe had had more than one. She enquired further whether there was one\namong them named Carl, who had long been in our service. 'We had a\nservant,' I answered, 'a Frenchman named Charle; he had been with us\na long time.' 'Yes, yes,' she said, 'it is he. But I do not think he\nhas arrived here yet; they are looking for him.' I said, 'Then he is\neasy to find, he was at Bruges when I left that town.' Anna said she\nfancied he had been in England with me, and she added, 'That fellow\nknows a good deal if they get him.' I answered, 'Then it were to be\nwished that they had him for the sake of his information.' When she\nperceived that I troubled myself no further about him she let the\nconversation drop, and spoke of my sister Elizabeth Augusta, saying\nthat she passed her every day. She was standing in her gateway or\nsitting in the porch, and that she greeted her, but never uttered a\nword of enquiry after her sister, though she knew well that she was\nwaiting on me in the Tower. I said I thought my sister did not know\nwhat would be the best for her to do. 'I cannot see,' said Anna,\n'that she is depressed.' I expressed my opinion that the less we\ngrieved over things the better. Other trifles were afterwards talked\nof, and I concluded the day with reading, commended myself to the\ncare of Jesus, and slept tolerably well through the night.\n\nAugust 12 passed without anything in particular occurring, only that\nAnna tried to trouble me by saying that a chamber next to us was\nbeing put in order, for whom she did not know; they were of course\nexpecting someone in it. I could myself hear the masons at work. On\nthe same day Catharina said that she had known me in prosperity, and\nblessed me a thousand times for the kindness I had shown her. I did\nnot remember having ever seen her. She said she had been employed in\nthe storeroom in the service of the Princess Magdalena Sybille, and\nthat when I had visited the Princess, and had slept in the Castle, I\nhad sent a good round present for those in the storeroom, and that\nshe had had a share in it, and that this she now remembered with\ngratitude. Anna was not pleased with the conversation, and she\ninterrupted it three times; Catharina, however, did not answer her,\nbut adhered to the subject till she had finished. The prison governor\nwas not in good humour on this day also, so that neither at dinner\nnor at supper were any indecent stories related.\n\nOn August 13, after the women had been into the town and had\nreturned, the prison governor opened the door at about nine o'clock,\nand whispered something to them. He then brought in another small\nseat; from this I perceived that I was to be visited by one more\nthan on the previous occasion. At about ten o'clock Count Rantzow,\nGeneral Skack, Chancellor Retz, Treasurer Gabel, and Secretary Krag\nentered. They all saluted me with politeness; the four first seated\nthemselves on low seats by my bedside, and Krag placed himself with\nhis writing materials at the table. The Chancellor was spokesman, and\nsaid, 'His royal Majesty, my gracious Sovereign and hereditary King,\nsends you word, madame, that his Majesty has great cause for all that\nhe is doing, and that he entertains suspicions with regard to you\nthat you are an accomplice in the treason designed by your husband;\nand his royal Majesty had hoped that you would confess without\ncompulsion who have participated in it, and the real truth about it.'\n\nWhen the Chancellor ceased speaking, I replied that I was not aware\nthat I had done anything which could render me suspected; and I\ncalled God to witness that I knew of no treason, and therefore I\ncould mention no names. Count Rantzow said, 'Your husband has not\nconcealed it from you, hence you know it well.' I replied, 'Had my\nhusband entertained so evil a design, I believe surely he would have\ntold me; but I can swear with a good conscience, before God in\nHeaven, that I never heard him speak of anything of the kind. Yes, I\ncan truly say he never wished evil to the King in my hearing, and\ntherefore I fully believe that this has been falsely invented by his\nenemies.' Count Rantzow and the Chancellor bent their heads together\nacross to the General, and whispered with each other for some time.\nAt length the Chancellor asked me whether, if my husband were found\nguilty, I would take part in his condemnation. This was a remarkable\nquestion, so I reflected a little, and said, 'If I may know on what\ngrounds he is accused, I will answer to it so far as I know, and so\nmuch as I can.' The Chancellor said, 'Consider well whether you\nwill.' I replied as before, that I would answer for him as to all\nthat I knew, if I were informed of what he was accused. Count Rantzow\nwhispered with Krag, and Krag went out, but returned immediately.\n\nSoon afterward some one (whom I do not know) came from the\nChancellor's office, bringing with him some large papers. Count\nRantzow and the Chancellor whispered again. Then the Chancellor said,\n'There is nothing further to do now than to let you know what sort of\na husband you have, and to let you hear his sentence.' Count Rantzow\nordered the man who had brought in the papers to read them aloud. The\nfirst paper read was to the effect that Corfitz, formerly Count of\nUlfeldt, had offered the kingdom of Denmark to a foreign sovereign,\nand had told the same sovereign that he had ecclesiastical and lay\nmagnates on his side, so that it was easy for him to procure the\ncrown of Denmark for the before-mentioned sovereign.\n\nA paper was then read which was the defence of the clergy, in which\nthey protested that Corfitz, Count of Ulfeldt, had never had any\ncommunication with any of them; that he had at no time shown himself\na friend of the clergy, and had far less offered them participation\nin his evil design. They assured his royal Majesty of their fidelity\nand subjection, &c. Next, a paper was read, written by the\nBurgomaster and council in Copenhagen, nearly similar in purport,\nthat they had had no correspondence with Count Corfitz Ulfeldt, and\nequally assuring his royal Majesty of their humble fidelity. Next\nfollowed the reading of the unprecedented and illegal sentence which,\nwithout a hearing, had been passed on my lord. This was as unexpected\nand grievous as it was disgraceful, and unjustifiable before God and\nall right-loving men. No documents were brought forward upon which\nthe sentence had been given. There was nothing said about prosecution\nor defence; there was no other foundation but mere words; that he had\nbeen found guilty of having offered the crown of Denmark to a foreign\nsovereign, and had told him that he had on his side ecclesiastical\nand lay magnates, who had shown by their signed protestations that\nthis was not the case, for which reason he had been condemned as a\ncriminal.\n\nWhen the sentence with all the names subjoined to it had been read,\nthe reader brought it to me, and placed it before me on the bed.\nEveryone can easily imagine how I felt; but few or none can conceive\nhow it was that I was not stifled by the unexpected misery, and did\nnot lose my sense and reason. I could not utter a word for weeping.\nThen a prayer was read aloud which had been pronounced from the\npulpit, in which Corfitz was anathematised, and God was prayed not to\nallow his gray hair to go to the grave in peace. But God, who is\njust, did not listen to the impious prayer of the unrighteous,\npraised be His name for ever.\n\nWhen all had been read, I bemoaned with sighs and sorrowful tears\nthat I had ever lived to see this sad day, and I begged them, for\nJesus' sake, that they would allow me to see on what the hard\njudgment was based. Count Rantzow answered, 'You can well imagine,\nmadame, that there are documents upon which we have acted: some of\nyour friends are in the council.' 'May God better it!' I said. 'I beg\nyou, for God's sake, to let me see the documents. Les apparences sont\nbien souvent trompeuses. What had not my husband to suffer from that\nSwede in Skaane, during that long imprisonment, because he was\nsuspected of having corresponded with his Majesty, the King of\nDenmark, and with his Majesty's ministers? Now, no one knows better\nthan his Majesty, and you my good lords, how innocently he suffered\nat that time, and so this also may be apparently credible, and yet\nmay not be so in truth. Might I not see the documents?' To this no\nanswer was given. I continued and said, 'How is it possible that a\nman who must himself perceive that death is at hand should undertake\nsuch a work, and be so led away from the path of duty, when he did\nnot do so at a time when he acknowledged no master, and when such\ngreat promises were made him by the Prince of Holstein, as the\nPrince's letters show, which are now in his Majesty's hands.' Count\nRantzow interrupted me and said, 'We did not find those letters.'\n'God knows,' I replied, 'they were there; of that I am certain.' I\nsaid also, 'At that time he might have done something to gratify a\nforeign sovereign; at that time he had power and physical vigour, and\nalmost the entire government was in his hands; but he never looked to\nhis own advantage, but pawned his own property to hasten the King's\ncoronation, so that no impediment might come between.[64] This is his\nreward! Good gentlemen, take an example of me, you who have seen me\nin prosperity, and have compassion on me. Pray his royal Majesty to\nbe mild, and not to proceed to such severity.'\n\n [64] In the margin the following explanatory note is added: 'When\n his Majesty (Christian IV.) was dead, there was no prince elected,\n so that the States were free to choose the king whom they desired,\n wherefore the Duke of Holstein, Duke Frederick, promised my\n deceased lord that if he would contrive that he should be elected\n king, the land of Fyen should belong to him and a double alliance\n between his children and ours should be concluded. But my lord\n rejected this proposal and would not assist in dispossessing the\n son of Christian IV. of the kingdom. The prince had obtained\n several votes, but my lord contested them.'\n\nThe Chancellor and Treasurer were moved by this, so that the tears\ncame into their eyes. Count Rantzow said to the General and the\nChancellor, 'I think it is a fortnight ago since the sentence was\npublished?' The Chancellor answered, 'It is seventeen days ago.'[E18]\nI said, 'At that time I was still in England, and now I am asked for\ninformation on the matter! Oh, consider this, for God's sake! and\nthat there was no one present to speak on my husband's behalf.' Count\nRantzow enquired whether I wished to appeal against it? I replied,\n'How am I to appeal against a judicial decree? I only beg for Jesus'\nsake that what I say may be considered, and that I may have the\nsatisfaction of seeing the documents upon which the sentence is\nbased.'\n\n [E18] The sentence on Ulfeldt was given on July 24, but probably\n not published till a few days later.\n\nCount Rantzow answered as before, that there were documents, and that\nsome of my friends had sat in the council, and added that all had\nbeen agreed, and that not one had had anything to say against it. I\ndared not say what I thought. I knew well how matters are done in\nsuch absolute governments: there is no such thing as opposition, they\nmerely say, 'Sign, the King wishes it; and ask not wherefore, or the\nsame condemnation awaits thee.'[65] I was silent, and bewailed my\nunhappiness, which was irremediable. When Krag read aloud the minutes\nhe had written, namely, that when I was asked whether I would\nparticipate in my husband's sentence, I had answered that I would\nconsider of it. I asked, 'How was that?' The Chancellor immediately\nreplied, 'No, she did not say so, but she requested to know the\naccusation brought against her husband.' I repeated my words\nagain,[66] I know not whether Krag wrote them or not; for a great\npart of that which I said was not written. Krag yielded too much to\nhis feelings in the matter, and would gladly have made bad worse. He\nis now gone where no false writings avail; God took him away suddenly\nin an unclean place, and called him to judgment without warning. And\nCount Rantzow, who was the principal mover and inventor of that\nillegal sentence, the like of which was never known in Denmark, did\nnot live to see his desire fulfilled in the execution of a wooden\nimage.[E19] When this was done, they rose and shook hands with me.\nThis painful visit lasted more than four hours.\n\n [65] It had happened as I thought. There were some in the council\n who refused to sign, some because they had not been present at the\n time of the procedure, and others because they had not seen on what\n the sentence was founded; but they were nevertheless compelled to\n sign with the others, on the peril of the king's displeasure.\n [Marginal note.]\n\n [66] In the margin is added, 'and asked whether I was permitted to\n appeal against this sentence. All were silent.'\n\n [E19] A line has been drawn in the MS. through the two last\n paragraphs, and their contents transferred to the continuation of\n the Preface.\n\nThey went away, leaving me full of anxiety, sighing and weeping--a\nsad and miserable captive woman, forsaken by all; without help,\nexposed to power and violence, fearing every moment that her husband\nmight fall into their hands, and that they might vent their malice on\nhim. God performed on that day a great miracle, by manifesting His\npower in my weakness, preserving my brain from bewilderment, and my\ntongue from overflowing with impatience. Praised be God a thousand\ntimes! I will sing Thy praise, so long as my tongue can move, for\nThou wast at this time and at all times my defence, my rock, and my\nshield!\n\nWhen the gentlemen were gone away, the prison governor came and the\nwomen, and a stool was spread by the side of my bed. The prison\ngovernor said to me, 'Eat, Leonora; will you not eat?' As he said\nthis, he threw a knife to me on the bed. I took up the knife with\nangry mind, and threw it on the ground. He picked up the knife,\nsaying, 'You are probably not hungry? No, no! you have had a\nbreakfast to-day which has satisfied you, have you not? Is it not\nso?' Well, well, come dear little women (addressing the two women),\nlet us eat something! You must be hungry, judging from my own\nstomach.' When they had sat down to table, he began immediately to\ncram himself, letting it fall as if inadvertently from his mouth, and\nmaking so many jokes that it was sad to see how the old man could not\nconceal his joy at my unhappiness.\n\nWhen the meal was finished, and the prison governor had gone away,\nAnna sat down by my bed and began to speak of the sorrow and\naffliction which we endure in this world, and of the joy and delights\nof heaven; how the pain that we suffer here is but small compared\nwith eternal blessedness and joy, wherefore we should not regard\nsuffering, but should rather think of dying with a good conscience,\nkeeping it unsullied by confessing everything that troubles us, for\nthere is no other way. 'God grant,' she added, 'that no one may\ntorment himself for another's sake.' After having repeated this\nremark several times, she said to me, 'Is it not true, my lady?'\n'Yes, certainly it is true,' I replied; 'you speak in a Christian\nmanner, and according to the scriptures.' 'Why will you, then,' she\nwent on to say, 'let yourself be tormented for others, and not say\nwhat you know of them?' I asked whom she meant. She answered, 'I do\nnot know them.' I replied, 'Nor do I.' She continued in the same\nstrain, however, saying that she would not suffer and be tormented\nfor the sake of others, whoever they might be; if they were guilty\nthey must suffer; she would not suffer for them; a woman was easily\nled away, but happiness was more than all kindred and friends.\n\nAs she seemed unable to cease chattering, I wished to divert her a\nlittle, so I asked whether she were a clergyman's daughter; and since\nshe had before told me of her parentage, she resented this question\nall the more, and was thoroughly angry; saying, 'If I am not a\nclergyman's daughter, I am the daughter of a good honest citizen, and\nnot one of the least. In my time, when I was still unmarried, I never\nthought that I should marry a shoemaker.' I said, 'But your first\nhusband, too, was also a shoemaker.' 'That is true,' she replied,\n'but this marriage came about in a very foolish manner,' and she\nbegan to narrate a whole history of the matter, so that I was left in\npeace. Catharina paced up and down, and when Anna was silent for a\nlittle, she said, with folded hands, 'O God, Thou who art almighty,\nand canst do everything, preserve this man for whom they are seeking,\nand never let him fall into the hands of his enemies. Oh God, hear\nme!' Anna said angrily to her, 'Catharina, do you know what you are\nsaying? How can you speak so?' Catharina answered, 'Yes, I know well\nwhat I am saying. God preserve him, and let him never fall into the\nhands of his enemies. Jesus, be Thou his guide!' She uttered these\nwords with abundant tears. Anna said, 'I think that woman is not in\nher senses.' Catharina's kind wish increased my tears, and I said,\n'Catharina shows that she is a true Christian, and sympathises with\nme; God reward her, and hear her and me!' Upon this Anna was silent,\nand has not been so talkative ever since. O God, Thou who art a\nrecompenser of all that is good, remember this in favour of\nCatharina, and as Thou heardest her at that time, hear her prayer in\nfuture, whatever may be her request! And you, my dear children, know\nthat if ever fortune so ordains it that you can be of any service\neither to her or her only son, you are bound to render it for my\nsake; for she was a comfort to me in my greatest need, and often took\nan opportunity to say a word which she thought would alleviate my\nsorrow.\n\nThe prison governor came as usual, about four o'clock, and let the\nwomen out, seating himself on the bench and placing the high stool\nwith the candle in front of him. He had brought a book with him, and\nread aloud prayers for a happy end, prayers for the hour of death,\nand prayers for one suffering temporal punishment for his misdeeds.\nHe did not forget a prayer for one who is to be burnt; in reading\nthis he sighed, so religious had he grown in the short time. When he\nhad read all the prayers, he got up and walked up and down, singing\nfuneral hymns; when he knew no more, he began again with the first,\ntill the women released him. Catharina complained that her son had\nbeen ill, and was greatly grieved about it. I entered into her\nsorrow, and said that she ought to mention her son's illness to the\nQueen, and then another would probably be appointed in her place; and\nI begged her to compose herself, as the child would probably be\nbetter again. During the evening meal the prison governor was very\nmerry, and related all sorts of coarse stories. When he was gone,\nAnna read the evening prayer. I felt very ill during this night, and\noften turned about in bed; there was a needle in the bed, with which\nI scratched myself; I got it out, and still have it.[67]\n\n [67] In the margin: 'The feather-bed had an old cover, and was\n fresh filled when I was lying in the roads; the needle, in the\n hurry, had therefore been left in.'\n\nOn August 14, when the prison governor opened the door early, the\nwomen told him that I had been very ill in the night. 'Well, well,'\nhe answered, 'it will soon be better.' And when the women were ready\nto go to the Queen (which they were always obliged to do), Anna said\nto Catharina, outside the door, 'What shall we say to the Queen?'\nCatharina answered: 'What shall we say, but that she is silent and\nwill say nothing!' 'You know very well that the Queen is displeased\nat it.' 'Nevertheless, we cannot tell a lie;' answered Catharina;\n'she says nothing at all, so it would be a sin.'[68] Catharina came\nback to the mid-day meal, and said that the Queen had promised to\nappoint another in her stead; in the afternoon, she managed secretly\nto say a word to me about the next chamber, which she imagined was\nbeing put in readiness for me and for no one else; she bid me good\nnight, and promised to remember me constantly in her prayers. I\nthanked her for her good services, and for her kind feeling towards\nme.\n\n [68] In the margin: 'I myself heard this conversation.'\n\nAbout four o'clock the prison governor let her and Anna out. He sang\none hymn after another, went to the stairs, and the time appeared\nlong to him, till six o'clock, when Anna returned with Maren Blocks.\nAt the evening meal the prison governor again told stories of his\nmarriage, undoubtedly for the sake of amusing Maren. Anna left me\nalone, and I lay quiet in silence. Maren could not find an\nopportunity of speaking with me the whole evening, on account of\nAnna. Nothing particular happened on August 15 and 16.\n\nWhen the prison governor let out Anna in the morning and afternoon,\nMaren Blocks remained with me, and the prison governor went his own\nway and locked the door, so that Maren had opportunity of talking\nwith me alone. She told me different things; among others, that the\nQueen had given my clothes to the three women who had undressed me,\nthat they might distribute them amongst themselves. She asked me\nwhether I wished to send a message to my sister Elizabeth. I thanked\nher, but said that I had nothing good to tell her. I asked Maren for\nneedles and thread, in order to test her. She replied she would\ngladly procure them for me if she dared, but that it would risk her\nwhole well-being if the Queen should know it; for she had so strictly\nforbidden that anyone should give me either pins or needles. I\ninquired 'For what reason?' 'For this reason,' she replied, 'that you\nmay not kill yourself.' I assured her that God had enlightened me\nbetter than that I should be my own murderer. I felt that my cross\ncame from the hand of the Lord, that He was chastising me as His\nchild; He would also help me to bear it; I trusted in Him to do so.\n'Then I hope, dear heart,' said Maren, 'that you will not kill\nyourself; then you shall have needles and thread; but what will you\nsew?' I alleged that I wished to sew some buttons on my white\nnight-dress, and I tore off a pair, in order to show her afterwards\nthat I had sewn them on.\n\nNow it happened that I had sewn up some ducats in a piece of linen\nround my knee; these I had kept, as I pulled off the stockings myself\nwhen they undressed me, and Anna had at my desire given me a rag, as\nI pretended that I had hurt my leg. I sewed this rag over the\nleather. They all imagined that I had some secret malady, for I lay\nin the linen petticoat they had given me, and went to bed in my\nstockings. Maren imagined that I had an issue on one leg, and she\nconfided to me that a girl at the court, whom she mentioned by name,\nand who was her very good friend, had an issue of which no one knew\nbut herself, not even the woman who made her bed. I thought to\nmyself, you keep your friend's secret well; I did not, however, make\nher any wiser, but let her believe in this case whatever she would. I\nwas very weak on those two days, and as I took nothing more than\nlemon and beer, my stomach became thoroughly debilitated and refused\nto retain food. When Maren told the prison governor of this, he\nanswered, 'All right, her heart is thus getting rid of its evil.'\nAnna was no longer so officious, but the prison governor was as merry\nas ever.\n\nOn August 17 the prison governor did not open the door before eight\no'clock, and Anna asked him how it was that he had slept so long. He\njoked a little; presently he drew her to the door and whispered with\nher. He went out and in, and Anna said so loudly to Maren, that I\ncould hear it (although she spoke as if she were whispering), 'I am\nso frightened that my whole body trembles, although it does not\nconcern me. Jesus keep me! I wish I were down below!' Maren looked\nsad, but she neither answered nor spoke a word. Maren came softly up\nto my bed and said, 'I am sure some one is coming to you.' I\nanswered, 'Let him come, in God's name.' Presently I heard a running\nup and down stairs, and also overhead, for the Commissioners came\nalways through the apartments, in order not to cross the square. My\ndoors were closed again. Each time that some one ran by on the\nstairs, Anna shuddered and said, 'I quite tremble.'\n\nThis traffic lasted till about eleven. When the prison governor\nopened the door, he said to me, 'Leonora, you are to get up and go to\nthe gentlemen.' God knows that I could hardly walk, and Anna\nfrightened me by saying to Maren, 'Oh! the poor creature!' Maren's\nhands trembled when she put on my slippers. I could not imagine\nanything else than that I was to be tortured, and I consoled myself\nwith thinking that my pain could not last long, for my body was so\nweary that it seemed as if God might at any moment take me away. When\nMaren fastened the apron over my long dress, I said: 'They are indeed\nsinning heavily against me; may God give me strength.' The prison\ngovernor hurried me, and when I was ready, he took me by the arm and\nled me. I would gladly have been free of his help, but I could not\nwalk alone. He conducted me up to the next story, and there sat Count\nRantzow, Skack, Retz, Gabel, and Krag, round the table.\n\nThey all rose when I entered, and I made them a reverence as well as\nI was able. A small low seat had been placed for me in the middle, in\nfront of the table. The Chancellor asked me whether I had not had\nmore letters than those taken from me in England. I answered that I\nhad not had more; that all my letters had been then taken from me.\nHe asked further, whether I had at that time destroyed any letters.\n'Yes,' I answered, 'one I tore in two, and threw it in a closet.'\n'Why did you do so?' enquired Count Rantzow. 'Because' I replied,\n'there were cyphers in it; and although they were of no importance, I\nfeared, notwithstanding, that they might excite suspicion.' Count\nRantzow said: 'Supposing the pieces were still forthcoming?' 'That\nwere to be wished,' I replied, 'for then it could be seen that there\nwas nothing suspicious in it, and it vexed me afterwards that I had\ntorn it in two.' Upon this the Chancellor drew forth a sheet of paper\nupon which, here and there, pieces of this very letter were pasted,\nand handed it to Krag, who gave it to me. Count Rantzow asked me if\nit were not my husband's handwriting. I answered that it was. He\nsaid: 'A part of the pieces which you tore in two have been found,\nand a part are lost. All that has been found has been collected and\ncopied.' He then asked the Chancellor for the copy, who gave it to\nCount Rantzow, and he handed it to me, saying, 'See there what is\nwanting, and tell us what it is that is missing.' I took it, and\nlooked over it and said: 'In some places, where there are not too\nmany words missing, I think I can guess what is lost, but where a\nwhole sentence is wanting, I cannot know.'\n\nMost of the letter had been collected without loss of intervening\npieces, and it all consisted of mirth and jest. He was telling me\nthat he had heard from Denmark that the Electoral Prince of Saxony\nwas to be betrothed with the Princess of Denmark;[E20] and he joked,\nsaying that they would grease their throats and puff out their cheeks\nin order that with good grace and voice they might duly trumpet\nforth each their own titles, and more of the same kind, all in high\ncolouring. He described the way in which Count Rantzow contrived to\nlet people know his titles; when he had a dinner-party, there was a\nman employed to read aloud his titles to the guests, asking first\neach separately, whether he knew his titles; if there was anyone who\ndid not know them, the secretary must forthwith come and read them\naloud.\n\n [E20] Leonora refers to the betrothal of Prince Johan George of\n Saxony and Anna Sophia, the eldest daughter of Fredrik III., of\n which an account occurs in the sequel.\n\nIt seemed that Count Rantzow referred all this to himself, for he\nasked me what my husband meant by it. I replied that I did not know\nthat he meant anything but what he had written; he meant undoubtedly\nthose who did such things. The Chancellor averted his face from Count\nRantzow, and his lips smiled a little; Gabel also did the same. Among\nother things there were some remarks about the Electoral Prince, that\nhe probably cherished the hope of inheriting the Crown of Denmark;\n'mais j'espere ... cela ne se fera point.' Count Rantzow enquired as\nto the words which were wanting. I said, if I remembered rightly, the\nwords had been, 'qu'en 300 ans.' He enquired further as to the\nexpressions lacking here and there, some of which I could not\nremember exactly, though they were of no importance. I expressed my\nopinion that they could easily gather what was wanting from the\npreceding and following words; it was sufficiently evident that all\nwas jest, and this was apparent also to Gabel, who said, 'Ce n'est\nque raillerie.' But Count Rantzow and the General would not allow it\nto pass as jest.\n\nSkack said: 'One often means something else under the cloak of jest,\nand names are used when others are intended.' For in the letter there\nwas something said about drinking out; there was also an allusion\nmade to the manners of the Swiss at table, and all the titles of the\ncanton nobles were enumerated, from which Skack thought that the\nnames of the cities might have another signification. I did not\nanswer Skack; but as Count Rantzow continued to urge me to say what\nmy husband had meant by it, I replied that I could not know whether\nhe had had another meaning than that which was written. Skack shook\nhis head and thought he had, so I said: 'I know no country where the\nsame customs are in vogue at meals as in Switzerland; if there are\nother places where the same customs prevail, he may perhaps have\nmeant these also, for he is only speaking of drinking.'\n\nGabel said again, 'It is only jest.' The cyphers, for the sake of\nwhich I had torn the letter in two, were fortunately complete, and\nnothing was missing. Count Rantzow gave me a sheet of paper, to which\npieces of my lord's letter were pasted, and asked me what the cyphers\nmeant. I replied, 'I have not the key, and cannot solve them out of\nmy head.' He expressed his opinion that I could do it. I said I could\nnot. 'Well, they have been read,' he said, 'and we know what they\nsignify.' 'All the better,' I answered. Upon this, he gave me the\ninterpretation to read, and the purport of it was that our son had\nwritten from Rome, asking for money, which was growing short, for the\nyoung nobleman was not at home. I gave the paper back to Count\nRantzow without saying anything. Count Rantzow requested the\nTreasurer that he should read the letter, and Rantzow began again\nwith his questions wherever anything was wanting, requesting that I\nshould say what it was. I gave him the same answer as before; but\nwhen in one passage, where some words were missing, he pressed me\nhard to say them, and it was evident from the context that they were\nironical (since an ironical word was left written), I said: 'You can\nadd as much of the same kind as pleases you, if one is not enough; I\ndo not know them.' Gabel again said, 'Ce n'est que raillerie.'[E21]\n\n [E21] A copy of the fragments which had been recovered of this\n letter is still in existence.\n\nNo further questions were then made respecting the letters; but Count\nRantzow enquired as to my jewels, and asked where the large diamond\nwas which my husband had received in France.[E22] I replied that it\nhad long been sold. He further asked where my large drop pearls\nwhere, which I had worn as a feather on my hat, and where my large\npearl head-ornament was. 'All these,' I replied, 'have long been\nsold.' He asked further whether I had then no more jewels. I\nanswered, 'I have none now.' 'I mean,' he said, 'elsewhere.' I\nreplied, 'I left some behind.' 'Where, then?' he asked. 'At Bruges,'\nI replied. Then he said: 'I have now somewhat to ask you, madame,\nthat concerns myself. Did you visit my sister in Paris the last time\nyou were there?' I replied, 'Yes.' He asked whether I had been with\nher in the convent, and what was the name of the convent. I informed\nhim that I had been in the convent, and that it was the Convent des\nFilles Bleues. At this he nodded, as if to confirm it. He also wished\nto know whether I had seen her. I said that no one in the convent\nmight be seen by anyone but parents; even brothers and sisters were\nnot allowed to see them.[E23] 'That is true,' he said, and then rose\nand gave me his hand. I begged him to induce his gracious Majesty to\nhave pity on me, but he made no answer. When the Treasurer Gabel\ngave me his hand, I begged the same favour of him. He replied, 'Yes,\nif you will confess,' and went out without waiting for a reply.\n\n [E22] Ulfeldt received this present probably in 1647, when in\n France as ambassador, on which occasion Queen Anna is known to have\n presented to Leonora a gold watch set with diamonds of great value.\n\n [E23] The lady alluded to is Helvig Margaretha Elizabeth Rantzow,\n widow of the famous General Josias Rantzow, who died as a marechal\n of France. She had become a Romanist, and took the veil after her\n husband's death. Subsequently she founded the new order of the\n Annunciata. In 1666 the first convent of this order, of which she\n was abbess, removed to Hildesheim, where she died in 1706.\n\nFor more than three hours they had kept up the interrogation. Then\nthe prison governor came in and said to me: 'Now you are to remain in\nhere; it is a beautiful chamber, and has been freshly whitewashed;\nyou may now be contented.' Anna and Maren also came in. God knows, I\nwas full of care, tired and weary, and had insufferable headache;\nyet, before I could go to rest, I had to sit waiting until the\nbedstead had been taken out of the 'Dark Church' and brought hither.\nAnna occupied herself meanwhile in the Dark Church, in scraping out\nevery hole; she imagined she might find something there, but in vain.\nThe woman who was to remain with me alone then came in. Her pay was\ntwo rix-dollars a week; her name is Karen, the daughter of Ole. After\nthe prison governor had supped with the woman and Maren, Anna and\nMaren Blocks bade me good night; the latter exhibited great\naffection. The prison governor bolted two doors before my innermost\nprison. In the innermost door there is a square hole, which is\nsecured with iron cross-bars. The prison governor was going to attach\na lock to this hole, but he forebore at Karen's request, for she said\nshe could not breathe if this hole were closed. He then affixed locks\nto the door of the outer chamber, and to the door leading to the\nstairs; he had, therefore, four locks and doors twice a day to lock\nand unlock.\n\nI will here describe my prison. It is a chamber, seven of my paces\nlong and six wide; there are in it two beds, a table, and two stools.\nIt was freshly whitewashed, which caused a terrible smell; the floor,\nmoreover was so thick with dirt, that I imagined it was of loam,\nthough it was really laid with bricks. It is eighteen feet high, with\na vaulted ceiling, and very high up is a window which is two feet\nsquare. In front of it are double thick iron bars, besides a\nwire-work, which is so close that one could not put one's little\nfinger into the holes. This wire-work had been thus ordered with\ngreat care by Count Rantzow (so the prison governor afterwards told\nme), so that no pigeons might bring in a letter--a fact which he had\nprobably read in a novel as having happened. I was weak and deeply\ngrieved in my heart; I looked for a merciful deliverance, and an end\nto my sorrow, and I sat silent and uncomplaining, answering little\nwhen the woman spoke to me. Sometimes in my reverie I scratched at\nthe wall, which made the woman imagine that I was confused in my\nhead; she told this to the prison governor, who reported it to the\nQueen, and during every meal-time, when the door was open, she never\nfailed to send messengers to enquire how it fared with me, what I\nsaid, and what I was doing.\n\nThe woman had, however, not much to tell in obedience to the oath\nshe, according to her own statement, had taken in the presence of the\nprison governor. But afterwards she found some means to ingratiate\nherself. And as my strength daily decreased, I rejoiced at the\nprospect of my end, and on August 21 I sent for the prison governor,\nand requested him to apply for a clergyman who could give me the\nsacrament. This was immediately granted, and His Majesty's Court\npreacher, Magister Mathias Foss, received orders to perform for me\nthe duties of his office, and exhorted me, both on behalf of his\noffice and in consequence of the command he had received, not to\nburden my conscience; I might rest assured, he said, that in this\nworld I should never see my husband again, and he begged me to say\nwhat I knew of the treason. I could scarcely utter a word for\nweeping; but I said that I could attest before God in heaven, from\nwhom nothing is hidden, that I knew nothing of this treason. I knew\nwell I should never see my husband again in this life; I commended\nhim to the Almighty, who knew my innocence; I prayed God only for a\nblessed end and departure from this evil world; I desired nothing\nfrom the clergyman but that he should remember me in his prayers,\nthat God might by death put an end to my affliction. The clergyman\npromised faithfully to grant my request. It has not pleased God to\nhear me in this: He has willed to prove my faith still further, by\nsending to me since this time much care, affliction, and adversity.\nHe has helped me also to bear the cross, and has Himself supported\nits heaviest end; His name be praised for ever. When I had received\nthe Lord's Supper, M. Foss comforted me and bid me farewell.\n\nI lay silently for three days after this, taking little or nothing.\nThe prison governor often enquired whether I wished for anything to\neat or drink, or whether he should say anything to the King. I\nthanked him, but said I required nothing.\n\nOn August 25 the prison governor importuned me at once with his\nconversation, expressing his belief that I entertained an evil\nopinion of the Queen. He inferred it from this: the day before he had\nsaid to me that His Majesty had ordered that whatever I desired from\nthe kitchen and cellar should be at once brought to me, to which I\nhad answered, 'God preserve His Majesty; he is a good sovereign; may\nhe show clemency to evil men!' He had then said, 'The Queen is also\ngood,' to which I had made no answer. He had then tried to turn the\nconversation to the Queen, and to hear if he could not draw out a\nword from me; he had said: 'The Queen is sorry for you that you have\nbeen so led away. It grieves her that you have willed your own\nunhappiness; she is not angry; she pities you.' And when I made no\nanswer, he repeated it again, saying from time to time, 'Yes, yes, my\ndear lady, it is as I say.' I was annoyed at the talk, and said,\n'Dieu vous punisse!' 'Ho, ho!' he said, misinterpreting my words, and\ncalling Karen, he went out and closed the doors. Thus unexpectedly I\ngot rid of him. It was ridiculous that the woman now wanted to oblige\nme to attend to what the prison governor had said. I begged her to\nremember that she was now not attending on a child (she had before\nbeen nurse to children). She could not so easily depart from her\nhabit, and for a long time treated me as a child, until at length I\nmade her comprehend that this was not required.\n\nWhen I perceived that my stomach desired food and could retain it, I\nbecame impatient that I could not die, but must go on living in such\nmisery. I began to dispute with God, and wanted to justify myself\nwith Him. It seemed to me that I had not deserved such misfortune. I\nimagined myself far purer than David was from great sins, and yet he\ncould say, 'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my\nhands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and\nchastened every morning.' I thought I had not deserved so exceedingly\ngreat a chastisement as that which I was receiving. I said with Job,\n'Show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto thee that\nthou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine\nhands?' I repeated all Job's expressions when he tried to justify\nhimself, and it seemed to me that I could justly apply them to\nmyself. I cursed with him and Jeremiah the day of my birth, and was\nvery impatient; keeping it, however, to myself, and not expressing it\naloud. If at times a word escaped me, it was in German (since I had\ngenerally read the Bible in German), and therefore the woman did not\nunderstand what I was saying. I was very restless from coughing, and\nturned from side to side on the bed. The woman often asked me how I\nwas. I begged her to leave me quiet and not to speak to me. I was\nnever more comfortable than in the night when I observed that she was\nsleeping; then, unhindered, I could let my tears flow and give free\nvent to my thoughts. Then I called God to account. I enumerated\neverything that I had innocently suffered and endured during my life,\nand I enquired of God whether I had deviated from my duty? Whether I\nought to have done less for my husband than I had done? Whether the\npresent was my recompense for not having left him in his adversity?\nWhether I was to be now tortured, tormented, and scorned for this?\nWhether all the indescribable misfortunes which I had endured with\nhim were not enough, that I had been reserved for this irremediable\nand great trouble? I do not wish to conceal my unreasonableness. I\nwill confess my sins. I asked if still worse misfortunes were in\nstore for me for which I was to live? Whether there was any\naffliction on earth to be compared to mine? I prayed God to put an\nend to my sufferings, for it redounded in no wise to his honour to\nlet me live and be so tormented. I was after all not made of steel\nand iron, but of flesh and blood. I prayed that He would suggest to\nme, or inform me in a dream, what I was to do to shorten my misery.\n\nWhen I had long thus disputed and racked my brains, and had also wept\nso bitterly that it seemed as if no more tears remained, I fell\nasleep, but awoke with terror, for I had horrible fancies in my\ndreams, so that I feared to sleep, and began again to bewail my\nmisery. At length God looked down upon me with his eye of mercy, so\nthat on August 31 I had a night of quiet sleep, and just as day was\ndawning I awoke with the following words on my lips: 'My son, faint\nnot when thou art rebuked of the Lord; for whom the Lord loveth he\nchasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.' I uttered the\nlast words aloud, thinking that the woman was sleeping; possibly she\nawoke at the moment, and she asked me whether I wished for anything.\nI answered 'No.' 'You were speaking,' she said, 'and you mentioned\nyour stockings; I could not understand the rest.' I replied, 'It must\nhave been then in my sleep. I wish for nothing.'\n\nI then lay quietly thinking. I perceived and confessed my folly, that\nI, who am only dust and ashes, and decay, and am only fit for the\ndunghill, should call God to account, should dispute with my Creator\nand his decrees, and should wish to censure and question them. I\nbegan to weep violently, and I prayed fervently and from my heart for\nmercy and forgiveness. While I had before boasted with David, and\nbeen proud of my innocence, now I confessed with him that before God\nthere is none that doeth good; no, not one. While before I had spoken\nfoolishly with Job, I now said with him that I had 'uttered that I\nunderstood not; things too wonderful for me which I knew not.' I\nbesought God to have mercy on me, relying on his great compassion. I\ncited Moses, Joshua, David, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, and others, all\nhighly endowed men, and yet so weak that in the time of calamity\nthey grumbled and murmured against God. I prayed that He would in his\nmercy forgive me, the frailest of earthen vessels, as I could not\nafter all be otherwise than as He had created me. All things were in\nhis power; it was easy to Him to give me patience, as He had before\nimparted to me power and courage to endure hard blows and shocks. And\nI prayed God (after asking forgiveness of my sins) for nothing else\nthan good patience to await the period of my deliverance. God\ngraciously heard me. He pardoned not only my foolish sins, but He\ngave me that also for which I had not prayed, for day by day my\npatience increased. While I had often said with David, 'Will the Lord\ncast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy\nclean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God\nforgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up his tender\nmercies?' I now continued with him, 'This is my infirmity, but I will\nremember the years of the right hand of the Most High.' I said also\nwith Psalm cxix.: 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that\nI might learn thy statutes.'\n\nThe power of God was working within me. Many consolatory sentences\nfrom the Holy Scriptures came into my mind; especially these:--'If so\nbe that we suffer with Christ, that we may be also glorified\ntogether.' Also: 'We know that all things work together for good to\nthem that love God.' Also: 'My grace is sufficient for thee, for my\nstrength is made perfect in weakness.' I thought especially often of\nChrist's words in St. Luke, 'Shall not God avenge his own elect,\nwhich cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I\ntell you that he will avenge them speedily.' I felt in my trouble how\nuseful it is to have learned psalms and passages from the Bible in\nyouth. Believe me, my children, that it has been a great consolation\nto me in my misery. Therefore, cultivate now in your youth what your\nparents taught you in childhood; now, while trouble visits you less\nseverely, so that when it comes, you may be ready to receive it and\nto comfort yourselves with the Word of God.\n\nI began by degrees to feel more at peace, and to speak with the\nwoman, and to answer the prison governor when he addressed me. The\nwoman told me sundry things, and said that the prison governor had\nordered her to tell him everything that I spoke or did, but that she\nwas too wise to do such a thing; that she understood now better than\nshe had done at first how to behave. He went out, but she remained\nshut up with me, and she would be true to me. And as it appeared that\nI did not at once believe what she said, she swore it solemnly, and\nprayed God to punish her if ever she acted falsely towards me. She\nstroked and patted my hand, and laid it against her cheek, and begged\nthat I would believe her, using the words, 'My dearest lady, you can\nbelieve me; as truly as I am a child of God, I will never deceive\nyou! Now, is not that enough?' I answered, 'I will believe you;'\nthinking at the same time that I would do and say nothing but what\nshe might divulge. She was very glad that she had induced me to\nspeak, and said, 'When you lay so long silent, and I had no one with\nwhom I could speak, I was sad, and determined that I would not long\nlead this life, even if they gave me double as much, for I should\nhave become crazed. I was afraid for you, but still more for myself,\nthat my head would give way.'\n\nShe went on talking in this way, introducing also various merry\nstories. When she was young she had been in the service of a\nclergyman, who encouraged his domestics in the fear of God, and there\nshe had learned prayers and sentences from the Bible by heart; she\nknew also the Children's Primer, with the explanatory remarks, and\nsang tolerably well. She knew in some measure how she should walk\nbefore God and behave towards her neighbour; but she acted contrary\nto her knowledge--for she had a malicious temper. She was an elderly\nwoman, but she liked to reckon herself as middle-aged. It appeared\nthat in her youth she had been pretty and rather dissolute, since\neven now she could not lay aside her levity, but joked with the\ntower-warder, and the prison governor's coachman, a man of the name\nof Peder, and with a prisoner named Christian (more will presently be\nsaid with regard to this prisoner; he was free to go about the\ntower).[69]\n\n [69] When I took my meals, the woman had opportunity of talking\n with the three men. The coachman helped the tower-warder Rasmus to\n bring up the food. [Marginal note.]\n\nMaren Blocks often sent me a message through this coachman, besides\nvarious kinds of candied sugar and citron, letting me know from time\nto time whether anything new was occurring. All this had to be done\nthrough the woman. One day she came in when the doors were closed,\nand brought me a message from Maren Blocks, saying, 'My lady, if you\nwill now write to your children in Skaane, there is a safe\nopportunity for you to do so.' I answered, 'My children are not in\nSkaane, yet if I can send a message to Skaane, I have a friend there\nwho will probably let me know how it fares with my children.' She\ngave me a piece of crumpled paper and a pencil. I wrote a few words\nto F. Margrete Rantzow,[E24] saying that she probably knew of my\nmiserable condition, but supposing that her friendship was not\nlessened by it, and begging her to let me know how my children were,\nand from what cause they had come to Skaane, as I had been informed\nwas the case, though I did not believe it. This was what I wrote and\ngave to the woman. I heard nothing further of it, and I imagine that\nshe had been ordered to find out to whom I wrote, &c. (They have been\nbusy with the idea that some of you, my dear children, might come to\nSkaane.) I sewed up the letter or slip of paper in such a manner that\nit could not be opened without making it apparent. I asked the woman\nseveral times if she knew whether the letter had been sent away. She\nalways answered that she did not know, and that with a morose\nexpression, and at last she said (when I once more asked her to\nenquire of Peder), 'I suppose that the person who ought to have it\nhas got it.' This answer made me reflect, and since then I asked no\nfurther.\n\n [E24] Margrete Rantzow was the sister of that Birgitte Rantzow to\n whom there is an allusion in the Autobiography of Leonora, where\n she relates the examination to which she was subjected at Malmoe.\n Margrete's husband was Ove Thott, a nobleman in Skaane, who had\n taken an important part in the preparations for a rising against\n the Swedes, in which Corfitz Ulfeldt was implicated.\n\nI remained all this time in bed, partly because I had nothing with\nwhich to beguile the time, and partly because of the cold, for no\nstove was placed in my prison till after the New Year. Occasionally I\nrequested the woman to manage, through Peder, that I should have a\nlittle silk or thread, that I might beguile the time by embroidering\na piece of cloth that I had; but the answer I received was that he\ndared not. A long time afterwards it came to my knowledge that she\nhad never asked Peder for it. There was trouble enough, however, to\noccupy my thoughts without my needing to employ the time in\nhandiwork.\n\nIt was on September 2 that I heard some one moving early overhead, so\nI asked the woman if she knew whether there was a chamber there (for\nthe woman went up every Saturday with the night-stool). She answered\nthat there was a prison there like this, and outside was the rack\n(which is also the case). She observed that I showed signs of fear,\nand she said, 'God help! Whoever it is that is up there is most\nassuredly to be tortured.' I said, 'Ask Peder, when the doors are\nunlocked, whether there is a prisoner there.' She said she would do\nso, and meanwhile she kept asking herself and me who it might be. I\ncould not guess; still less did I venture to confess my fear to her,\nwhich she nevertheless perceived, and therefore increased; for after\nshe had spoken with Peder, about noon,[70] and the doors were locked,\nshe said, 'God knows who it is that is imprisoned there! Peder would\ntell me nothing.' She said the same at the evening meal, but added\nthat she had asked him, and that he would give no answer. I calmed\nmyself, as I heard no more footsteps above, and I said, 'There is no\nprisoner up there.'[71] 'How do you know that?' she asked. 'I gather\nit from the fact,' I said, 'that since this morning I have heard no\none above; I think if there were anyone there, they would probably\ngive him something to eat.' She was not pleased that my mind was\nquieted, and therefore she and Peder together endeavoured to trouble\nme.\n\n [70] I could not see when she spoke with any one, for she did so on\n the stairs. [Marginal note.]\n\n [71] In the margin is added: 'There was none.'\n\nOn the following day, when the doors were being locked after the\nmid-day dinner (which was generally Peder's task), and he was pulling\nto my innermost door, which opens inside, he put in his head and\nsaid, 'Casset!' She was standing beside the door, and appeared as if\nshe had not rightly understood him, saying, 'Peder spoke of some one\nwho is in prison, but I could not understand who it is.' I understood\nhim at once, but also behaved as if I had not. No one knows but God\nwhat a day and night I had. I turned it over in my mind. It often\nseemed to me that it might be that they had seized him, although\nCassetta was a subject of the King of Spain; for if treason is\nsuspected, there is no thought given as to whose subject the man\nsuspected may be. I lay in the night secretly weeping and lamenting\nthat the brave man should have come into trouble for my sake, because\nhe had executed my lord's will, and had followed me to England, where\nwe parted, I should say, when Petcon and his company separated us and\ncarried me away.\n\nI lay without sleep till towards day, then I fell into a dream which\nfrightened me. I suppose my thoughts caused it. It came before me\nthat Cassetta was being tortured in the manner he had once described\nto me that a Spaniard had been tortured: four cords were fastened\nround his hands and feet, and each cord was made secure in a corner\nof the room, and a man sometimes pulled one cord and sometimes\nanother; and since it seemed to me that Cassetta never screamed, I\nsupposed that he was dead, and I shrieked aloud and awoke. The woman,\nwho had long been awake, said: 'O God! dear lady, what ails you? Are\nyou ill? You have been groaning a long time, and now you screamed\nloudly.' I replied, 'It was in my dream; nothing ails me.' She said\nfurther, 'Then you have had a bad dream?' 'That may well be,' I\nanswered. 'Oh, tell me what you have dreamt; I can interpret\ndreams.' I replied, 'When I screamed I forgot my dream, otherwise no\none can interpret dreams better than I.' I thank God I do not regard\ndreams; and this dream had no other cause than what I have said. When\nthe door was locked after the mid-day meal, the woman said of herself\n(for I asked no further respecting the prisoners), 'There is no one\nimprisoned there; shame on Peder for his nonsense!' I asked him who\nwas imprisoned there, and he laughed at me heartily. 'There is no one\nthere, so let your mind be at peace.' I said, 'If my misfortunes were\nto involve others, it would be very painful to me.'\n\nThus matters went on till the middle of September, and then two of\nour servants were brought as prisoners and placed in arrest; one Nils\nKaiberg, who had acted as butler, and the other Frans, who had been\nin our service as a lacquey. After having been kept in prison for a\nfew weeks and examined they were set at liberty. At the same time two\nFrenchmen were brought as prisoners: an old man named La Rosche, and\na young man whose name I do not know. La Rosche was brought to the\ntower and was placed in the witch-cell; a feather-bed had been thrown\ndown, and on this he lay; for some months he was never out of his\nclothes. His food consisted of bread and wine; he refused everything\nelse. He was accused of having corresponded with Corfitz, and of\nhaving promised the King of France that he would deliver Crooneborg\ninto his hands.[72] This information had been given by Hannibal\nSehested, who was at that time in France, and he had it from a\ncourtesan who was then intimate with Hannibal, but had formerly been\nin connection with La Rosche, and probably afterwards had quarrelled\nwith him. There was no other proof in favour of the accusation.\nProbably suspicion had been raised by the fact that this La Rosche,\nwith the other young man, had desired to see me when I was in arrest\nin Dover, which had been permitted, and they had paid me their\nrespects. It is possible that he had wished to speak with me and to\ntell me what he had heard in London, and which, it seemed to him,\nexcited no fears in me. But as I was playing at cards with some\nladies who had come to look at me, he could not speak with me; so he\nasked me whether I had the book of plays which the Countess of\nPembroke had published.[E25] I replied, 'No'. He promised to send it\nme, and as I did not receive it, I think he had written in it some\nwarning to me, which Braten afterwards turned to his advantage.\n\n [72] Did not this accord well with the statement that my lord had\n offered the kingdom of Denmark to two potentates? [Marginal note.]\n\n [E25] The book in question is probably Philip Sidney's work, 'The\n Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia,' a famous book of its time, which\n Leonora, who does not seem to have known it, has understood to be a\n book by the Countess of Pembroke. It is true, however, that\n Philip's sister, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, had translated\n a French play, Antonius (1592, and again 1595).\n\nHowever all this may be, La Rosche suffered innocently, and could\nprove upon oath that he had never spoken with my lord in his life,\nand still less had corresponded with him.[73] In short, after some\nmonths of innocent suffering, he was set at liberty and sent back to\nFrance. The other young man was confined in an apartment near the\nservants' hall. He had only been apprehended as a companion to the\nother, but no further accusation was brought against him.[E26] At\nfirst, when these men were imprisoned, there was a whispering and\ntalking between the prison governor and the woman, and also between\nPeder and her; the prison governor moreover himself locked my door. I\nplainly perceived that there was something in the wind, but I made no\nenquiries. Peder at length informed the woman that they were two\nFrenchmen, and he said something about the affair, but not as it\nreally was. Shortly before they were set at liberty the prison\ngovernor said, 'I have two parle mi franco in prison; what they have\ndone I know not.' I made no further enquiries, but he jested and\nsaid, 'Now I can learn French.' 'That will take time,' said I.\n\n [73] In the margin is noted: 'I had never seen La Rosche nor his\n companion till I did so at Dover.'\n\n [E26] La Roche Tudesquin had some time been in the Danish army, but\n had returned to France when Hannibal Sehested, while in Paris as\n Ambassador from the King of Denmark, received information from a\n certain Demoiselle Langlois that La Roche was implicated in a\n conspiracy for surrendering the principal Danish fortresses to a\n foreign prince. He and a friend of his, Jaques Beranger, were\n arrested in Brussels in September 1663, but not, as Leonora says,\n immediately brought to Copenhagen. The Spanish Government did not\n consent to their extradition till the following year, and they were\n not placed in the Blue Tower till June 1664. La Roche seems to have\n been guilty of peculation while in the Danish service, but the\n accusation of treason seems to have been unfounded.\n\nIn the same month of September died Count Rantzow. He did not live to\nsee the execution of an effigy, which he so confidently had hoped\nfor, being himself the one who first had introduced this kind of\nmockery in these countries.[E27]\n\n [E27] In the MS. a pen is drawn through this paragraph, of which\n the contents were to form part of the Preface. The date of Count\n Rantzow is moreover not correctly given; he died on November 8,\n five days before the execution of Ulfeldt's effigy.\n\nOn October 9 our Princess Anna Sophia was betrothed to the Electoral\nPrince of Saxony. On the morning of the day on which the festivities\nwere to take place I said to the woman, 'To-day we shall fast till\nevening.' For I thought they would not think of me, and that I should\nnot receive any of the remains until the others had been treated, at\nany rate, to dinner. She wished to know the reason why we were to\nfast. I answered, 'You shall know it this evening.' I lay and thought\nof the change of fortune: that I, who twenty-eight years ago had\nenjoyed as great state as the Princess, should now be lying a\ncaptive, close by the very wall where my bridal chamber had been;\nthank God, that it afflicted me but little. Towards noonday, when the\ntrumpets and kettledrums were sounding, I said, 'Now they are\nconducting the bride across the square to the great hall.' 'How do\nyou know that?' said the woman. 'I know it,' I said; 'my spirit tells\nme so.' 'What sort of spirit is that?' she asked. 'That I cannot\ntell you,' I replied. And as the trumpets blew every time that a new\ncourse of dishes and sweets were produced, I mentioned it; and before\nthey were served the kettledrums were sounded. And as they were\nserved on the square in front of the kitchen, I said each time, 'We\nshall have no dinner yet.' When it was nearly three o'clock, the\nwoman said, 'My stomach is quite shrunk up; when shall we have\ndinner?' I answered, 'Not for a long time yet; the second course is\nonly now on the table; we shall have something at about seven\no'clock, and not before.' It was as I said. About half-past seven the\nprison governor came and excused himself, saying that he had asked\nfor the dinner, but that all hands in the kitchen were occupied. The\nwoman, who had always entertained the idea that I was a witch, was\nnow confirmed in her opinion.[74]\n\n [74] In the margin is added: 'The prison governor told the woman\n about the magnificence of the festivity and Peder also told her of\n it, so that it seemed to her that I could know somewhat from\n customs of former times.'\n\nOn the following day knights were dubbed, and each time when the\ntrumpets blew I did not only say, 'Now they have made a knight' (for\nI could hear the herald calling from the window, though I could not\nunderstand what he said), but even who had been made a knight; for\nthis I guessed, knowing who were in the Council who were not knights\nbefore; and because it was as I said, the woman believed for certain\nthat I was an enchantress. I perceived this, as she put questions to\nme concerning things which I could not know, and to which I often\ngave equivocal answers. I thought perhaps that the fear she had that\nI could know what would happen might hinder her from entangling me\nwith lies. Since then she whispered much less with the prison\ngovernor. She told of a person whom she regarded as a witch, whose\npower, however, consisted in nothing else than in the science of\ncuring French pox, and causing the miscarriage of bad women, and\nother improprieties. She had had much intercourse with this woman.\n\nSome time after the departure of the Electoral Prince it was\ndetermined that a wooden effigy should be subjected to capital\npunishment, and on the forenoon my chamber was opened, swept,\ncleaned, and strewed with sand.[75] When it was opened, towards noon,\nand the woman had been on the stairs, talking with the coachman, she\ncame in, and walking up to my bed, stood as if startled, and said\nhurriedly, 'Oh, Jesus! Lady, they are bringing your husband!' The\nnews terrified me, which she observed; for as she uttered it, I\nraised myself in the bed and stretched out my right arm, and was not\nable to draw it back again at once. Perhaps this vexed her, for I\nremained sitting in this way and not speaking a word; so she said,\n'My dearest lady, it is your husband's effigy.' To this I said, 'May\nGod punish you!' She then gave full vent to her evil tongue, and\nexpressed her opinion that I deserved punishment, and not she, and\nused many unprofitable words. I was quite silent, for I was very\nweak, and scarcely knew where I was. In the afternoon I heard a great\nmurmuring of people in the inner palace square, and I saw the effigy\nbrought across the street by the executioner on a wheelbarrow, and\nplaced in the tower below my prison.\n\n [75] The Queen wished that this wooden statue should be brought\n into my outer chamber, and so placed in front of the door that it\n would tumble into me when my inner door was opened; but the King\n would not permit it. [Addition in the margin.]\n\nThe next morning, at about nine o'clock, the effigy was wofully\ntreated by the executioner, but no sound came from it. At the mid-day\nmeal the prison governor told the woman how the executioner had cut\noff its head, and had divided the body into four quarters, which were\nthen placed on four wheels, and attached to the gallows, while the\nhead was exhibited on the town hall. The prison governor stood in the\nouter chamber, but he narrated all this in a loud tone, so that I\nmight hear it, and repeated it three times.[E28] I lay and thought\nwhat I should do; I could not show that I made but little of it, for\nthen something else perhaps would be devised to trouble me, and in\nthe hurry I could think of nothing else than saying to the woman with\nsadness, 'Oh, what a shame! speak to the prison governor and tell him\nto beg the King to allow the effigy to be taken down and not to\nremain as it is!' The woman went out, and spoke softly with the\nprison governor; but he answered aloud and said, 'Yes, indeed, taken\ndown! There will be more put up; yes, more up;' and kept on repeating\nthese words a good while.\n\n [E28] The execution took place on November 13. The King's order\n concerning it to the prison governor, Jochum Waltpurger, exists\n still. It is to this effect: 'V. G. T., Know that you have to\n command the executioner in our name, that to-day, November 13, he\n is to take the effigy of Corfitz, formerly called Count of Ulfeldt,\n from the Blue Tower where it is now, and bring it on a car to the\n ordinary place in the square in front of the castle; and when he\n has come to the place of justice, strike off the right hand and the\n head, whereafter he is to divide the body into four parts on the\n spot, and carry them away with him, whilst the head is to be placed\n on a spike on the Blue Tower for remembrance and execration.' The\n order was afterwards altered in this particular, that the head was\n to be placed on the town hall, and the four parts of the body one\n at each of the gates of the city. The executioner was subsequently\n ordered to efface the arms of Corfitz and his wife wherever they\n occurred in the town; for instance, on their pews in the churches.\n Leonora states in her Autobiography that the prison governor some\n time after told her that the Queen had desired that the effigy\n should be placed in the antechamber of Leonora's prison, and that\n she should be ordered to see it there; but that the king refused\n his consent.\n\nI lay silently thinking; I said nothing, but indulged in my own\nreflections. Sometimes I consoled myself, and hoped that this\ntreatment of the effigy was a token that they could not get the man;\nthen again fear asserted its sway. I did not care for the dishonour,\nfor there are too many instances of great men in France whose\neffigies have been burnt by the executioner, and who subsequently\narrived again at great honour.\n\nWhen the door was unlocked again for the evening meal, there was a\nwhispering between the prison governor and the woman. A lacquey was\nalso sent, who stood outside the outer door and called the prison\ngovernor to him (my bed stands just opposite the doors, and thus when\nall three doors are opened I can see the staircase door, which is the\nfourth). I do not know what the woman can have told the prison\ngovernor, for I had not spoken all day, except to ask her to give me\nwhat I required; I said, moreover, nothing more than this for several\ndays, so that the prison governor grew weary of enquiring longer of\nthe woman; for she had nothing to communicate to him respecting me,\nand she tormented him always with her desire to get away; she could\nnot longer spend her life in this way.\n\nBut as she received no other consolation from him than that he swore\nto her that she would never get away as long as she lived, for some\ndays she did nothing else than weep; and since I would not ask her\nwhy she wept, she came one day up to my bedside crying, and said, 'I\nam a miserable being!' I asked her why? what ailed her? 'I ail\nenough,' she answered; 'I have been so stupid, and have allowed\nmyself to be shut up here for the sake of money, and now you are\ncross with me and will not speak with me.' I said, 'What am I to say?\nyou wish perhaps to have something to communicate to the prison\ngovernor?' Upon this she began to call down curses on herself if she\nhad ever repeated to the prison governor a word that I had said or\ndone; she wished I could believe her and speak with her; why should\nshe be untrue to me? we must at any rate remain together as long as\nwe lived. She added many implorations as to my not being angry; I had\nindeed cause to be so; she would in future give me no cause for\nanger, for she would be true to me. I thought, 'You shall know no\nmore than is necessary.'\n\nI let her go on talking and relating the whole history of her\nlife--such events as occur among peasants. She had twice married\ncottagers, and after her last widowhood she had been employed as\nnurse to the wife of Holger Wind, so that she had no lack of stories.\nBy her first husband she had had a child, who had never reached\nmaturity, and her own words led me to have a suspicion that she had\nherself helped to shorten the child's days; for once when she was\nspeaking of widows marrying again, she said among other things,\n'Those who wish to marry a second time ought not to have children,\nfor in that case the husband is never one with the wife.' I had much\nto say against this, and I asked her what a woman was to do who had a\nchild by her first husband. She answered quickly, 'Put a pillow on\nits head.' This I could only regard as a great sin, and I explained\nit to her. 'What sin could there be,' she said, 'when the child was\nalways sickly, and the husband angry in consequence?' I answered as I\nought, and she seemed ill at ease. Such conversation as this gave me\nno good reason to believe in the fidelity which she had promised me.\n\nThe woman then took a different tack, and brought me word from the\ncoachman of all that was occurring. Maren Blocks sent me a\nprayer-book through her, and that secretly, for I was allowed no book\nof any kind, nor any needles and pins; respecting these the woman had\nby the Queen's order taken an oath to the prison governor. Thus the\nyear passed away. On New Year's day, 1664, the woman wished me a\nhappy year. I thanked her, and said, 'That is in God's hands.' 'Yes,'\nshe said, 'if He wills it.' 'And if He does not will it,' I answered,\n'it will not be, and then He will give me patience to bear my heavy\ncross.' 'It is heavy,' she said, 'even to me; what must it not be to\nyou? May it only remain as it is, and not be worse with you!' It\nseemed to me as if it could not be worse, but better; for death, in\nwhatever form, would put an end to my misery. 'Yes,' she said, 'is it\nnot all one how one dies?' 'That is true,' I answered; 'one dies in\ndespair, another with free courage.' The prison governor did not say\na word to me that day. The woman had a long talk with the coachman;\nshe no doubt related to him our conversation.\n\nIn the month of March the prison governor came in and assumed a\nparticularly gentle manner, and said, among other things, 'Now you\nare a widow; now you can tell the state of all affairs.' I answered\nhim with a question, 'Can widows tell the state of all affairs?' He\nlaughed and said, 'I do not mean that; I mean this treason!' I\nanswered, 'You can ask others about it who know of it; I know of no\ntreason.' And as it seemed to him that I did not believe that my\nhusband was dead,[E29] he took out a newspaper and let me read it,\nperhaps chiefly because my husband was badly treated in it. I did not\nsay much about it--nothing more than, 'Writers of newspapers do not\nalways speak the truth.' This he might take as he liked.\n\n [E29] The date of Ulfeldt's death is variously given as the 20th or\n the 27th of February, 1664. The latter date is given in a letter\n from his son Christian to Sperling, and elsewhere, (for instance,\n in a short Latin Biography of Ulfeldt called 'Machinationes\n Cornificii Ulefeldii,' published soon after); but the better\n evidence points to the earlier date. Christian Ulfeldt was not, it\n seems, at Basle at the time, and may have made a mistake as to the\n date, though he indicates the right day of the week (a Saturday),\n or he may have had reason for purposely making a misleading\n statement. In Copenhagen the report of his death was long suspected\n to be a mere trick.\n\nI lay there silently hoping that it might be so, that my husband had\nby death escaped his enemies; and I thought with the greatest\nastonishment that I should have lived to see the day when I should\nwish my lord dead; then sorrowful thoughts took possession of me, and\nI did not care to talk. The woman imagined that I was sad because my\nlord was dead, and she comforted me, and that in a reasonable\nmanner; but the remembrance of past times was only strengthened by\nher consolatory remarks, and for a long time my mind could not again\nregain repose. Your condition, my dearest children, troubled me. You\nhad lost your father, and with him property and counsel. I am captive\nand miserable, and cannot help you, either with counsel or deed; you\nare fugitives and in a foreign land. For my three eldest sons I am\nless anxious than for my daughters and my youngest son.[E30] I sat up\nwhole nights in my bed, for I could not sleep, and when I have\nheadache I cannot lay my head on the pillow. From my heart I prayed\nto God for a gracious deliverance. It has not pleased God to grant\nthis, but He gave me patience to bear my heavy cross.\n\n [E30] Ulfeldt and Leonora had twelve children in all, of which\n seven were alive when Corfitz died; and it so happened as,\n explained before, that the youngest, Leo, was the only one who\n continued the name. It is from him that Count Waldstein, the owner\n of the MS., is descended.\n\nMy cross was so much heavier to me at first, as it was strictly\nforbidden to give me either knife, scissors, thread, or anything that\nmight have beguiled the time to me. Afterwards, when my mind became a\nlittle calmer, I began to think of something wherewith to occupy\nmyself; and as I had a needle, as I have before mentioned, I took off\nthe ribands of my night-dress, which were broad flesh-coloured\ntaffeta. With the silk I embroidered the piece of cloth that I had\nwith different flowers worked in small stitches. When this was\nfinished, I drew threads out of my sheet, twisted them, and sewed\nwith them. When this was nearly done, the woman said one day, 'What\nwill you do now when this is finished?' I answered, 'Oh, I shall get\nsomething to do; if it is brought to me by the ravens, I shall have\nit.' Then she asked me if I could do anything with a broken wooden\nspoon. I answered, 'Perhaps you know of one?' After having laughed a\nwhile, she drew one forth, the bowl of which was half broken off. 'I\ncould indeed make something with that,' I said, 'if I had only a tool\nfor the purpose. Could you persuade the prison governor or Peder the\ncoachman to lend me a knife?' 'I will beg for one,' she answered,\n'but I know well that they will not.' That she said something about\nit to the prison governor I could perceive from his answer, for he\nreplied aloud, 'She wants no knife; I will cut her food for her. She\nmight easily injure herself with one.'[76]\n\n [76] In the margin is this note: 'Once when I asked the prison\n governor for some scissors to cut my nails, he answered, and that\n loudly, \"What! what! her nails shall grow like eagles' claws, and\n her hair like eagles' feathers!\" I know well what I thought--if I\n had only claws and wings!'\n\nWhat she said to the coachman I know not (this I know, that she did\nnot desire me to obtain a knife, for she was afraid of me, as I\nafterwards discovered). The woman brought the answer from the\ncoachman that he dared not for his life. I said, 'If I can but have a\npiece of glass, I will see what I can make that is useful with the\npiece of spoon.' I begged her to look in a corner in the outermost\nroom, where all rubbish was thrown; this she did, and found not only\nglass, but even a piece of a pewter cover which had belonged to a\njug. By means of the glass I formed the spoon handle into a pin with\ntwo prongs, on which I made riband, which I still have in use (the\nsilk for this riband I took from the border of my night-dress). I\nbent the piece of pewter in such a manner that it afterwards served\nme as an inkstand. It also is still in my keeping. As a mark of\nfidelity, the woman brought me at the same time a large pin, which\nwas a good tool for beginning the division between the prongs, which\nI afterwards scraped with glass.\n\nShe asked me whether I could think of anything to play with, as the\ntime was so long to her. I said, 'Coax Peder, and he will bring you a\nlittle flax for money and a distaff.' 'What!' she answered, 'shall I\nspin? The devil may spin! For whom should I spin?' I said, 'To\nbeguile the time, I would spin, if I only had what is necessary for\nit.' 'That you may not have, dear lady,' said she; 'I have done the\nvery utmost for you in giving you what I have done.' 'If you wish\nsomething to play with,' said I, 'get some nuts, and we will play\nwith them.' She did so, and we played with them like little children.\nI took three of the nuts, and made them into dice, placing two kinds\nof numbers on each, and we played with these also. And that we might\nknow the {circled dot} which I made with the large pin,[77] I begged\nher to procure for me a piece of chalk, which she did, and I rubbed\nchalk into it. These dice were lost, I know not how; my opinion is\nthat the coachman got possession of them, perhaps at the time that he\ncheated the woman out of the candles and sugar left. For he came to\nher one day at noon quite out of breath, and said she was to give him\nthe candles and the sugar which he had brought her from Maren Blocks,\nand whatever there was that was not to be seen, as our quarters were\nto be searched. She ran out with the things under her apron, and\nnever said anything to me about it until the door was locked. I\nconcealed on myself, as well as I was able, my pin, my silk, and the\npieces of sewing with the needle and pin. Nothing came of the search,\nand it was only a _ruse_ of the coachman, in order to get the\ncandles that were left, for which she often afterwards abused him,\nand also for the sugar.\n\n [77] I removed my nails with the needle, scratching them till they\n came away. I let the nail of the little finger of my right hand\n grow, in order to see how long it would become; but I knocked it\n off unawares, and I still have it. [Marginal note.]\n\nI was always at work, so long as I had silk from my night-dress and\nstockings, and I netted on the large pin, so that it might last a\nlong time. I have still some of the work in my possession, as well as\nthe bobbins, which I made out of wooden pegs. By means of bags filled\nwith sand I made cords which I formed into a bandage (which is worn\nout), for I was not allowed a corset, often as I begged for one; the\nreason why is unknown to me. I often beguiled the time with the piece\nof chalk, painting with it on a piece of board and on the table,\nwiping it away again, and making rhymes and composing hymns. The\nfirst of these, however, I composed before I had the chalk. I never\nsang it, but repeated it to myself.\n\nA morning hymn, to the tune, 'Ieg wil din Priiss ud Synge'[E31]:--\n\n [E31] This hymn-tune is still in use in the Danish Church.\n\n        I\n\n    God's praise I will be singing\n      In every waking hour.\n    My grateful tribute bringing\n      To magnify his power;\n    And his almighty love,\n      His angel watchers sending,\n      My couch with mercy tending,\n    And watching from above.\n\n        II\n\n    In salt drops streaming ever\n      The tears flowed from my eyes;\n    I often thought I never\n      Should see the morning rise.\n    Yet has the Lord instilled\n      Sleep in his own good pleasure;\n      And sleep in gracious measure\n    Has his command fulfilled.\n\n        III\n\n    Oh Christ! Lord of the living,\n      Thine armour place on me,\n    Which manly vigour giving,\n      Right valiant shall I be,\n    'Gainst Satan, death, and sin.\n      And every carnal feeling,\n      That nought may come concealing\n    Thy sway my heart within.\n\n        IV\n\n    Help me! Thy arms extending;\n      My cross is hard and sore:\n    Support its heaviest ending,\n      Or I can bear no more.\n    Too much am I oppressed!\n      My trust is almost waning\n      With pain and vain complaining!\n    Thine arrows pierce my breast.\n\n        V\n\n    In mercy soothe the sorrow\n      That weighs the fatherless;\n    Vouchsafe a happier morrow,\n      And all my children bless!\n    Strength to their father yield,\n      In their hard fate respect them,\n      From enemies protect them;\n    My strength, be Thou their shield.\n\n        VI\n\n    I am but dust and ashes,\n      Yet one request I crave:\n    Let me not go at unawares\n      Into the silent grave.\n    With a clear mind and breast\n      My course in this world closing,\n      Let me, on Thee reposing,\n    Pass to Thy land of rest.\n\nI composed the following hymn in German and often sang it, as they\ndid not understand German; a hymn, somewhat to the air of 'Was ist\ndoch auff dieser Welt, das nicht fehlt?' &c.:--\n\n        I\n\n    Reason speaketh to my soul:\n          Fret not Soul,\n    Thou hast a better goal!\n      It is not for thee restricted\n        That with thee\n        Past should be\n      All the wrongs inflicted.\n\n        II\n\n    Why then shouldst thou thus fret thee,\n          Anxiously,\n    Ever sighing, mournfully?\n      Thou canst not another sorrow\n        Change with this,\n        For that is\n      Which shall be on the morrow.\n\n        III\n\n    Loss of every earthly gain\n          Bringeth pain;\n    Fresh courage seek to obtain!\n      Much was still superfluous ceded,\n        Nature's call\n        After all\n      Makes but little needed.\n\n        IV\n\n    Is the body captive here?\n          Do not fear:\n    Thou must not hold all too dear;\n      Thou art free--a captive solely;\n        Can no tower\n        Have the power\n      Thee to fetter wholly?\n\n        V\n\n    All the same is it at last\n          When thou hast\n    The long path of striving past,\n      And thou must thy life surrender;\n        Death comes round,\n        Whether found\n      On couch hard or tender.\n\n        VI\n\n    Courage then, my soul, arise!\n          Heave no sighs\n    That nought yet thy rest supplies!\n      God will not leave thee in sorrow:\n        Well He knows\n        When He chose\n      Help for thee to borrow.\n\nThus I peacefully beguiled the time, until Doctor Otto Sperling[E32]\nwas brought to the tower; his prison is below the 'dark church.' His\nfate is pitiable. When he was brought to the tower his feet and hands\nwere chained in irons. The prison governor, who had formerly not been\nfriendly with him, rejoiced heartily at the doctor's misfortune, and\nthat he had fallen into his hands, so that the whole evening he did\nnothing but sing and hum. He said to the woman, 'My Karen, will you\ndance? I will sing.' He left the doctor to pass the night in his\nirons. We could hear that a prisoner had been brought in from the\nmurmuring, and the concourse of people, as well as from the locking\nof the prison, which was below mine (where iron bolts were placed\nagainst the door).[78] The joy exhibited by the prison governor\nexcited my fear, also that he not only himself opened and shut my\ndoor, but that he prevented the woman from going out on the stairs,\nby leaning against the outermost door of my prison. The coachman\nstood behind the prison governor making signs; but as the prison\ngovernor turned from side to side, I could not rightly see him.\n\n [E32] Dr. Otto Sperling, the elder, is often alluded to in the\n Autobiography of Leonora as 'notre vieillard;' he was a faithful\n friend of Ulfeldt, and in 1654 he settled in Hamburg, where he\n educated Corfitz's youngest son Leo. He was implicated in Ulfeldt's\n intrigues, and a compromising correspondence between them fell into\n the hands of the Spanish Government, which placed it at the\n disposal of Hannibal Sehested when he passed through the\n Netherlands on his way home from his mission to France in 1663. In\n order to obtain possession of Sperling's person, the Danish\n authorities used the ruse of sending a Danish officer to his house\n in Hamburg, and request him to visit professionally a sick person\n just across the Danish frontier, paying in advance a considerable\n fee. Sperling, who did not suspect the transaction, was arrested\n immediately on crossing the boundary, and brought to Copenhagen. He\n was condemned to death July 28, 1664; but the sentence was\n commuted, and he died in the Blue Tower December 25, 1681. Otto\n Sperling, jun., to whom Leonora sent the MS. of her Autobiography,\n and who often visited her at Maribo, was his son.\n\n [78] The prison cell is outside that in which the doctor is\n immured. It is quite dark where he is. [Note in the margin.]\n\nOn the following day, at about eight o'clock, I heard the iron bolts\ndrawn and the door below opened; I could also hear that the inner\nprison was opened (the doctor was then taken out for examination).\nThe woman said, 'There is certainly a prisoner there; who can it be?'\nI said: 'It seems indeed that a prisoner has been brought in, for the\nprison governor is so merry. You will find it out from Peder; if not\nto-day, another time. I pity the poor man, whoever he may be.' (God\nknows my heart was not as courageous as I appeared.) When my door was\nopened at noon (which was after twelve o'clock, for they did not open\nmy door till the doctor had been conveyed to his cell again), the\nprison governor was still merrier than usual, and danced about and\nsang, 'Cheer up! courage! It will come to pass!'\n\nWhen he had cut up the dinner, he leaned against the outer door of my\nprison and prevented the woman from going out, saying to me, 'I am to\nsalute you from the Major-General von Alfeldt; he says all will now\nsoon be well, and you may console yourself. Yes, yes, all will now\nsoon be well!' I behaved as if I received his words in their apparent\nmeaning, and I begged him to thank the Major-General for his\nconsolation; and then he repeated the same words, and added, 'Yes,\nindeed! he said so.' I replied with a question: 'What may it arise\nfrom that the Major-General endeavours to cheer me? May God cheer him\nin return! I never knew him before.' To this the prison governor made\nno answer at all. While the prison governor was talking with me, the\ncoachman was standing behind him, and showed by gestures how the\nprisoner had been bound hand and foot, that he had a beard and a\ncalotte on his head, and a handkerchief round his neck. This could\nnot make me wiser than I was, but it could indeed grieve me still\nmore. At the evening meal the woman was again prevented speaking with\nthe coachman, and the coachman again made the same signs, for the\nprison governor was standing in his usual place; but he said nothing,\nnor did I.[79] On the following morning the Doctor was again brought\nup for examination, and the prison governor behaved as before. As he\nstood there ruminating, I asked him who the prisoner below was. He\nanswered that there was no one below. I let the matter rest for the\ntime, and as we proceeded to speak of other things, the woman slipped\nout to Peder, who told her quickly who it was. Some days went by in\nthe same manner. When sentence had been pronounced on the Doctor, and\nhis execution was being postponed,[80] and I said nothing to the\nprison governor but when he accosted me, he came in and said: 'I see\nthat you can judge that there is a prisoner below. It is true, but I\nam forbidden to tell you who it is!' I answered: 'Then I do not\ndesire to know.' He began to feel some compassion, and said: 'Don't\nfret, my dear lady; it is not your husband, nor your son, nor\ndaughter, nor brother-in-law, nor any relative; it is a bird which\nought to sing,[81] and will not, but he must, he must!' I said: 'I\nought to be able to guess from your words who it is. If the bird can\nsing what can ring in their ears, he will probably do so; but he\ncannot sing a melody which he does not know!' Upon this he was\nsilent, and turned away and went out.\n\n [79] In the margin is added: 'When the prison governor was singing\n to himself on those first days, he said, \"You must sing, my bird;\n where is your velvet robe?\" laughing at the same time most\n heartily. I inferred from that song who it was.'\n\n [80] In the margin is added: 'In order to grieve the Doctor and to\n frighten him, the prison governor unlocked his cell early on the\n morning after sentence had been passed, and behaved as if the\n priest were coming to him.'\n\n [81] That is, give information.\n\nBy degrees all became quiet with regard to the Doctor, and no more\nwas said about the matter, and the prison governor came in from time\nto time when the door was opened, and often made himself merry with\nthe woman, desiring her to make a curtsey to him, and showing her how\nshe should place her feet and carry her body, after the fashion of a\ndancing-master. He related also different things that had occurred in\nformer times, some of them evidently intended to sadden me with the\nrecollection of my former prosperity: all that had happened at my\nwedding, how the deceased King had loved me. He gave long accounts of\nthis, not forgetting how I was dressed, and all this he said for the\nbenefit of no one else but myself, for the woman meanwhile stood on\nthe stairs talking with the tower warder, the coachman, and the\nprisoner Christian.\n\nMaren Blocks, who constantly from time to time sent me messages and\nkept me informed of what was going on, also intimated to me that she\nwas of opinion that I could practise magic, for she wrote me a slip\nof paper[82] with the request that I should sow dissension between\nthe Lady Carisse and an Alfelt, explaining at length that Alfelt was\nnot worthy of her, but that Skinckel was a brave fellow (Carisse\nafterwards married Skinckel). As the letter was open, the coachman\nknew its contents, and the woman also. I was angry at it, but I said\nnothing. The woman could easily perceive that I was displeased at it,\nand she said, 'Lady, I know well what Maren wishes.' I replied, 'Can\nyou help her in it?' 'No,' she declared, and laughed heartily. I\nasked what there was to laugh at. 'I am laughing,' said she, 'because\nI am thinking of the clever Cathrine, of whom I have spoken before,\nwho once gave advice to some one desiring to sow discord between good\nfriends.' I enquired what advice she had given. She said that they\nmust collect some hairs in a place where two cats had been fighting,\nand throw these between the two men whom it was desired to set at\nvariance. I enquired whether the trick succeeded. She replied, 'It\nwas not properly tried.' 'Perhaps,' I said, 'the cats were not both\nblack?' 'Ho, ho!' said she, 'I see that you know how it should be\ndone.' 'I have heard more than that,' I replied; 'show her the trick,\nand you will get some more sugar-candy, but do not let yourself be\nagain cheated of it by Peder as you were lately. Seriously, however,\nPeder must beg Maren Blocks to spare me such requests!' That she as\nwell as Maren believed that I could practise magic was evident in\nmany ways. My own remarks often gave cause for this. I remembered how\nmy deceased lord used to say (when in his younger days he wished to\nmake anyone imagine that he understood the black art), that people\nfeared those of whom they had this opinion, and never ventured to do\nthem harm. It happened one day at the mid-day meal, when the prison\ngovernor was sitting talking with me, that the woman carried on a\nlong conversation on the stairs with the others respecting the\nwitches who had been seized in Jutland, and that the supreme judge in\nJutland at that time sided with the witches and said they were not\nwitches.[E33] When the door was locked we had much talk about\nwitches, and she said, 'This judge is of your opinion, that it is a\nscience and not magic.' I said, as I had before said, that some had\nmore knowledge than others, and that some used their knowledge to do\nevil; although it might happen naturally and not with the devil's\nart, still it was not permitted in God's Word to use nature for evil\npurposes; it was also not fair to give the devil the honour which did\nnot belong to him. We talked on till she grew angry, laid down and\nslept a little, and thus the anger passed away.\n\n [82] In the margin is added: 'Peder had some time before thrown\n into me eight ducats in a paper, saying, as he closed the door,\n \"Your maid!\" And as the woman knew it, I gave her one of them and\n Peder one. I know not whether my maid had given him more; she had\n many more concealed on her person.'\n\n [E33] The name of this judge was Villum Lange, and it is a curious\n coincidence that a letter from him of a somewhat later time (1670),\n has been found in one of the archives, in which he speaks of this\n very affair, and in which he expresses himself very much in the\n sense here indicated.\n\nSome days after she said: 'Your maid is sitting below in the prison\ngovernor's room, and asks with much solicitude after you and what you\nare doing. I have told Peder of what you have sewed, and of the\nribbons you have made, but he has promised solemnly not to mention it\nto anyone except to Maren, Lars' daughter; she would like so much to\nbe here with you.' I replied: 'It would be no good for her to sit\nwith me in prison; it would only destroy her own happiness; for who\nknows how long I may live?' I related of this same waiting-maid that\nshe had been in my employ since she was eight years old, all that I\nhad had her taught, and how virtuous she was. To this she replied,\n'The girl will like to see what you have sewed; you shall have it\nagain directly.' I handed it to her, and the first time the doors\nwere unlocked she gave it to the prison governor, who carried it to\nthe Queen. (Two years afterwards the prison governor told me this\nhimself, and that when the King had said, 'She might have something\ngiven her to do,' the Queen had answered, 'That is not necessary. It\nis good enough for her! She has not wished for anything better.') I\noften enquired for the piece of sewing, but was answered that Peder\nwas not able to get it back from the girl.\n\nLate in the autumn the prison governor began to sicken: he was ill\nand could not do much, so he let the coachman frequently come alone\nto lock and unlock both the doctor's door below and mine. The iron\nbars were no longer placed before the outermost prison below, but\nfour doors were locked upon me. One day, when Peder was locking up,\nhe threw me a skein of silk,[83] saying, 'Make me some braces for my\nbreeches out of it.' I appeared not to have heard, and asked the\nwoman what it was that he had said. She repeated the same words. I\nbehaved as if I did not believe it, and laughed, saying, 'If I make\nthe braces for him, he will next wish that you should fasten them to\nhis breeches.' A good deal of absurd chatter followed. As meal-time\nwas approaching, I said to the woman, 'Give Peder back his silk, and\nsay that I have never before made a pair of braces; I do not know how\nthey are made.' (Such things I had to endure with smiles.)\n\n [83] In the margin is added: 'As my linen was washed in the\n servants' hall, it once happened that a maid there must unawares\n have forgotten a whole skein of thread in a clean chemise, at which\n I said to the woman: \"You see how the ravens bring me thread!\" She\n was angry and abused me; I laughed, and answered her jestingly.'\n\nAt the time that our former palace here in the city (which we had\nceded by a deed when we were imprisoned at Borringholm) was pulled\ndown, and a pillar (or whatever it is) was raised to my lord's shame,\nthe prison governor came in when he unlocked at noon, and seated\nhimself on my bed (I was somewhat indisposed at the time), and began\nto talk of former times (I knew already that they were pulling down\nthe palace), enumerating everything the loss of which he thought\nmight sadden me, even to my coach and the horses. 'But,' he said,\n'all this is nothing compared with the beautiful palace!' (and he\npraised it to the utmost); 'it is now down, and not one stone is left\non another. Is not that a pity, my dear lady?' I replied: 'The King\ncan do what he will with his own; the palace has not been ours for\nsome time.' He continued bewailing the beautiful house and the garden\nbuildings which belonged to it. I asked him what had become of\nSolomon's temple? Not a stone of that beautiful building was now to\nbe found; not even could the place be pointed out where the temple\nand costly royal palace had once stood. He made no answer, hung his\nhead, and pondered a little, and went out. I do not doubt he has\nreported what I said. Since that day he began to behave himself more\nand more courteously, saying even that His Majesty had ordered him to\nask me whether I wished for anything from the kitchen, the cellar, or\nthe confectioner, as it should be given me; that he had also been\nordered to bring me twice a week confectionery and powdered sugar,\nwhich was done.[84] I begged the prison governor to thank the King's\nMajesty for the favour shown me, and praised, as was proper, the\nKing's goodness most humbly. The prison governor would have liked to\npraise the Queen had he only been able to find cause for so doing; he\nsaid, 'The Queen is also a dear Queen!' I made no answer to this. He\ncame also some time afterwards with an order from the King that I\nshould ask for any clothes and linen I required: this was written\ndown, and I received it later, except a corset, and that the Queen\nwould not allow me. I never could learn the cause of this. The Queen\nalso was not well pleased that I obtained a bottle-case with six\nsmall bottles, in which was sprinkling-water, headwater, and a\ncordial. All this, she said, I could well do without; but when she\nsaw that in the lid there was an engraving representing the daughter\nof Herod with the head of St. John on a charger, she laughed and\nsaid, 'That will be a cordial to her!' This engraving set me thinking\nthat Herodias had still sisters on earth.\n\n [84] In the margin is added: 'I wrote different things from the\n Bible on the paper in which the sugar was given me. My ink-bottle\n was made of the piece of pewter lid which the woman had found, the\n ink was made from the smoke of the candle collected on a spoon, and\n the pen from a fowl's feather cut by the piece of glass. I have\n this still in my possession.'\n\nThe prison governor continued his politeness, and lent me at my\ndesire a German Bible, saying at the same time, 'This I do out of\nkindness, I have no order to do so; the Queen does not know it.' 'I\nbelieve that,' I replied, and thanked him; but I am of opinion that\nthe King knew it well. Some days afterwards Maren Blocks sent for her\nprayer-book back again. I had taught the woman a morning and evening\nprayer by heart, and all the morning and evening hymns, which she\nrepeated to me night and morning. I offered to teach her to read if\nshe would procure an A B C. She laughed at this jeeringly, and said,\n'People would think me crazed if I were to learn to read now.' I\ntried to persuade her by argument, in order that I might thus get\nsomething to beguile the time with; but far from it; she knew as much\nas she needed. I sought everywhere for something to divert my\nthoughts, and as I perceived that the potter, when he had placed the\nstove, had left a piece of clay lying outside in the other room, I\nbegged the woman to give it to me.\n\nThe prison governor saw that she had taken it, but did not ask the\nreason. I mixed the clay with beer, and made various things, which I\nfrequently altered again into something else; among other things I\nmade the portraits of the prison governor and the woman, and small\njugs and vases. And as it occurred to me to try whether I were able\nto make anything on which I could place a few words to the King, so\nthat the prison governor should not observe it (for I knew well that\nthe woman did not always keep silence; she would probably some time\nsay what I did), I moulded a goblet over the half of the glass in\nwhich wine was brought to me, made it round underneath, placed it on\nthree knobs, and wrote the King's name on the side--underneath the\nbottom these words ... il y a un ... un Auguste.[E34]\n\n [E34] The words 'under the bottom ... to ... Auguste,' inclusive,\n have been struck out in the MS., and it has been impossible to read\n more than what here is rendered. In the Autobiography, where the\n same occurrence is related, Leonora says that she put on it the\n names both of the King and of the Queen; that on the bottom she\n wrote to the Queen, and that it was the Queen who discovered the\n inscription; from which it would appear that the Queen at all\n events was included in her ingeniously contrived supplique.\n\nI kept it for a long time, not knowing in what way I could manage to\nget it reported what I was doing, since the woman had solemnly sworn\nto me not to mention it: so I said one day: 'Does the prison governor\nask you what I am doing?' 'Yes, indeed he does,' she replied, 'but I\nsay that you are doing nothing but reading the Bible.' I said: 'You\nmay ingratiate yourself in his favour and say that I am making\nportraits in clay; there is no reason that he should not know that.'\nShe did so, and three days after he came to me, and was quite gentle,\nand asked how I passed my time. I answered, 'In reading the Bible.'\nHe expressed his opinion that I must weary of this. I said I liked at\nintervals to have something else to do, but that this was not allowed\nme. He enquired what I had wanted the clay for, which the woman had\nbrought in to me; he had seen it when she had brought it in. I said,\n'I have made some small trifles.' He requested to see them. So I\nshowed him first the woman's portrait; that pleased him much, as it\nresembled her; then a small jug, and last of all the goblet. He said\nat once: 'I will take all this with me and let the King see it; you\nwill perhaps thus obtain permission to have somewhat provided you for\npastime,'[85] I was well satisfied. This took place at the mid-day\nmeal. At supper he did not come in. The next day he said to me:\n'Well, my dear lady, you have nearly brought me into trouble!' 'How\nso?' I asked. 'I took the King a petition from you! the Queen did not\ncatch sight of it, but the King saw it directly and said, \"So you are\nnow bringing me petitions from Leonora?\" I shrank back with terror,\nand said, \"Gracious King! I have brought nothing in writing!\" \"See\nhere!\" exclaimed the King, and he pointed out to me some French\nwriting at the bottom of the goblet. The Queen asked why I had\nbrought anything written that I did not understand. I asserted that I\nhad paid no attention to it, and begged for pardon. The good King\ndefended me, and the _invention_ did not please him ill. Yes, yes, my\ndear lady! be assured that the King is a gracious sovereign to you,\nand if he were certain that your husband were dead, you would not\nremain here!' I was of opinion that my enemies well knew that my\nhusband was dead. I felt that I must therefore peacefully resign\nmyself to the will of God and the King.\n\n [85] In the margin is added: 'The prison governor told me\n afterwards that the clay things were placed in the King's\n art-cabinet, besides a rib of mutton, which I used as a knife,\n which he also gave to the King; hoping (he said) in this way to\n obtain a knife for me.'\n\nI received nothing which might have beguiled the time to me, except\nthat which I procured secretly, and the prison governor has since\nthen never enquired what I was doing, though he came in every\nevening and sat for some time talking with me; he was weak, and it\nwas a labour to him to mount so many steps. Thus we got through the\nyear together.\n\nThe prison governor gradually began to feel pity for me, and gave me\na book which is very pretty, entitled 'Wunderwerck.'[E35] It is a\nfolio, rather old, and here and there torn; but I was well pleased\nwith the gift. And as he sat long of an evening with me, frequently\ntill nine o'clock, talking with me, the malicious woman was\nirritated.[86] She said to Peder, 'If I were in the prison governor's\nplace, I would not trust her in the way he does. He is weak; what if\nshe were now to run out and take the knife which is lying on the\ntable outside, and were to stab him? She could easily take my life,\nso I sit in there with my life hanging on a thread.'\n\n [E35] This book was doubtless the German translation of Conr.\n Lycosthenes' work, 'Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon.' It is an\n amusing illustrated volume, much read in its time. The translation\n in question appeared in Basle, 1557.\n\n [86] In the margin is added: 'The day that the prison governor had\n taken away the clay things the woman was very angry with me,\n because I gave him a small jug which I had made; she said it was\n made in ridicule of her, the old slut with the jug! I ought to have\n given him the cat which I had also made. I said, \"I can still do\n so.\"'\n\nAbsurd as the idea was, the knife was not only in consequence hidden\nunder the table, but the prison governor for a long time did not\nventure to come to me, but sat outside by my outermost door and\ntalked there just as long as before, so that I was no gainer.[87] (I\ndid not know what the woman had said till three years afterwards,\nwhen it was mentioned by the prisoner Christian, who had heard the\nwoman's chatter.)\n\n [87] In the margin is added: 'At first when the prison governor's\n fear was so great, he did not venture to be alone in the outer\n room. Peder and the tower warder were not allowed both to leave him\n at the same time. I did not know the reason for this.'\n\nOne day when the prison governor intended to go to the holy\ncommunion, he stood outside my outermost door and took off his hat,\nand begged for my forgiveness; he knew, he said, that he had done\nmuch to annoy me, but that he was a servant. I answered, 'I forgive\nyou gladly!' Then he went away, and Peder closed the door. The woman\nsaid something to Peder about the prison governor, but I could not\nunderstand what. Probably she was blaming the prison governor, for\nshe was so angry that she puffed; she could not restrain her anger,\nbut said: 'Fye upon the old fool! The devil take him! I ought to beg\npardon too? No' (she added with an oath), 'I would not do it for\nGod's bitter death! No! no!' and she spat on the ground. I said\nafterwards: 'What does it matter to you that the prison governor asks\nme for my friendship? Do you lose anything by it? If you will not\nlive like a Christian and according to the ordinances of the Church,\ndo not at any rate be angry with one who does. Believe assuredly that\nGod will punish you, if you do not repent of what evil you have done\nand will not be reconciled with your adversaries before you seek to\nbe reconciled with God!'\n\nShe thought that he had done nothing else than what he was ordered to\ndo. I said, 'You good people know best yourselves what has been\nordered you.' She asked, 'Do I do anything to you?' I answered, 'I\nknow not what you do. You can tell any amount of untruths about me\nwithout my knowing it.' Upon this she began a long story, swearing by\nand asserting her fidelity; she had never lied to anyone nor done\nanyone a wrong. I said: 'I hear; you are justifying yourself with the\nPharisee.' She started furiously from her seat and said, 'What! do\nyou abuse me as a Pharisee?' 'Softly, softly!' I said; 'while only\none of us is angry, it is of no consequence; but if I get angry also,\nsomething may come of it!' She sat down with an insolent air, and\nsaid, 'I should well imagine that you are not good when you are\nangry! It is said of you that in former days you could bear but\nlittle, and that you struck at once. But now'----(with this she was\nsilent). 'What more?' I said. 'Do you think I could not do anything\nto anyone if I chose, just as well as then, if anyone behaved to me\nin a manner that I could not endure? Now much more than then! You\nneed not refuse me a knife because I may perhaps kill you; I could do\nso with my bare hands. I can strangle the strongest fellow with my\nbare hands, if I can seize him unawares, and what more could happen\nto me than is happening? Therefore only keep quiet!'\n\nShe was silent, and assumed no more airs; she was cast down, and did\nnot venture to complain to the prison governor. What she said to the\nothers on the stairs I know not, but when she came in, when the room\nwas locked at night, she had been weeping.[88]\n\n [88] In the margin is added: 'Some time after this dispute I had a\n quarrel with her about some beer, which she was in the habit of\n emptying on the floor, saying, \"This shall go to the subterraneous\n folk.\" I had forbidden her to do so, but she did it again, so I\n took her by the head and pushed it back with my hand. She was\n frightened, for this feels just as if one's head was falling off. I\n said, \"That is a foretaste.\"'\n\nOn Sunday at noon I congratulated[E36] the prison governor and said:\n'You are happy! You can reconcile yourself with God, and partake of\nHis body and blood; this is denied to me (I had twice during two\nyears requested spiritual consolation, but had received in answer\nthat I could not sin as I was now in prison; that I did not require\nreligious services). And as I talked upon this somewhat fully with\nthe prison governor, I said that those who withheld from me the\nLord's Supper must take my sins upon themselves; that one sinned as\nmuch in thought as in word and deed; so the prison governor promised\nthat he would never desist from desiring that a clergyman should come\nto me; and asked whom I wished for. I said: 'The King's Court\npreacher, whom I had in the beginning of my troubles.' He said: 'That\ncould scarcely be.' I was satisfied whoever it was.\n\n [E36] This custom of congratulating persons who intend to\n communicate, or just have done so, is still retained by many of the\n older generation in Denmark.\n\nA month afterwards I received the holy communion from the German\nclergyman, M. Hieronimus Buk, who behaved very properly the first\ntime, but spoke more about the law than the gospel. The prison\ngovernor congratulated me, and I thanked him, for he had brought it\nabout.\n\n1665. In this year, on Whitsun-eve, the prison governor ordered\nMay-trees to be placed in my inner prison, and also in the anteroom.\nI broke small twigs from the branches, rubbed off the bark with\nglass, softened them in water, laid them to press under a board,\nwhich was used for carrying away the dirt from the floor, and thus\nmade them flat, then fastened them together and formed them into a\nweaver's reed. Peder the coachman was then persuaded to give me a\nlittle coarse thread, which I used for a warp. I took the silk from\nthe new silk stockings which they had given me, and made some broad\nribbons of it (The implements and a part of the ribbons are still in\nmy possession.) One of the trees (which was made of the thick end of\na branch which Peder had cut off) was tied to the stove, and the\nother I fastened to my own person. The woman held the warp: she was\nsatisfied, and I have no reason to think that she spoke about it, for\nthe prison governor often lamented that I had nothing with which to\nbeguile the time, and he knew well that this had been my delight in\nformer times, &c.[89]\n\n [89] In the margin is added: 'I made the snuffers serve as\n scissors. When Balcke came to me and brought me at my desire\n material for drawers, and requested to know the size, I said I\n could make them myself. He laughed, and said, \"Who will cut them\n out?\" I replied I could do it myself with the snuffers. He begged\n to see me do it, and looked on with no little astonishment.'\n\nHe remained now again a long time with me after meals, for his fear\nhad passed away, or he had, perhaps, forgotten, as his memory began\nto fail him. He said then many things which he ought not. He declined\nperceptibly, and was very weak; he would remain afterwards sitting\noutside, reading aloud, and praying God to spare his life. 'Yes,' he\nwould say, 'only a few years!' When he had some alleviation, he\ntalked unceasingly. Creeping along the wall to the door, he said, 'I\nshould like to know two things: one is, who will be prison governor\nafter me? The other is, who is to to have my Tyrelyre?' (That was\nTyre, his wife.) I replied: 'That is a knowledge which you cannot\nobtain now, especially who will woo your wife. You might, perhaps,\nhave already seen both, but at your age you may yet have long to\nlive.' 'Oh!' said he, 'God grant it!' and looked up to the window.\n'Do you think so, my dear lady?' 'Yes, I do,' I replied. A few days\nafterwards, he begged me again to forgive him, if he had done me any\nwrong since the last time, for he wished to make reconciliation with\nGod before he became weaker, and he wept and protested, saying, 'It\nindeed grieves me still that I should have often annoyed you, and you\ncomfort me.' On Sunday at noon I congratulated him on his spiritual\nfeast.\n\nThus he dragged on with great difficulty for about fourteen days,\nand as I heard that two men were obliged almost to carry him up the\nstairs, I sent him word that he might remain below on the ground\nfloor of the tower, and that he might rest assured I would go\nnowhere. He thanked me, crawled up for the last time to my door, and\nsaid, 'If I did that and the Queen heard of it, my head would answer\nfor it.' I said: 'Then confess your weakness and remain in bed. It\nmay be better again; another could meanwhile attend for you.' He took\noff his cap in recognition of my advice, and bade me farewell. I have\nnever seen him again since then. One day afterwards he crawled up in\nthe tower-chamber, but came no farther.\n\nA man of the name of Hans Balcke was appointed in his place\nto keep watch over the prisoners. He was very courteous. He\nwas a cabinet-maker by trade; his father, who had also been a\ncabinet-maker, had worked a good deal for me in the days of my\nprosperity. This man had travelled for his trade both in Italy and\nGermany, and knew a little Italian. I found intercourse with him\nagreeable, and as he dined in the anteroom outside, in the tower, I\nbegged him to dine with me, which he did for fourteen days. One day,\nwhen he carved the joint outside, I sent him word requesting him to\ncome in. He excused himself, which appeared strange to me.\n\nAfter he had dined, he said that Peder the coachman had jeered at\nhim, and that he had been forbidden to dine with me. When he\nafterwards remained rather long with me talking, I begged him myself\nto go, so that this also might not be forbidden. He had on one\noccasion a large pin stuck in his sleeve, and I begged him for it. He\nsaid, 'I may not give it you, but if you take it yourself, I can't\nhelp it.' So I took it, and it has often been of use to me. He gave\nme several books to read, and was in every way courteous and polite.\nHis courtesy was probably the reason why the prisons were not long\nentrusted to him, for he was also very good to Doctor Sperling,\ngiving him slices of the meat which came up to me, and other good\nfood. In his childhood he had been a playfellow of the doctor's\nchildren. He talked also occasionally a long time with the doctor,\nboth on unlocking and locking his door, which did not please the\nservants.[90] The prison governor lay constantly in bed; he\nendeavoured as often as he could to come up again, but there was\nlittle prospect of it. So long as the keys were not taken from him,\nhe was satisfied.\n\n [90] In the margin is added: 'While Balcke filled the place of\n prison governor, he drank my wine at every meal, which had formerly\n fallen to the tower warder, the coachman, or the prisoner\n Christian, when the old prison governor had not wished for it, so\n that this also contributed to Balcke's dismissal.'\n\nMy maid Maren, Lars' daughter, had risen so high in favour at court,\nthat she often sat in the women's apartment, and did various things.\nOne day the woman said to me, 'That is a very faithful maiden whom\nyou have! She speaks before them up there in a manner you would never\nbelieve.' I replied: 'I have permitted her to say all she knows. I\nhave no fear of her calumniating me.' 'Have you not?' she said\nironically. 'Why does she throw herself, then, on her bare knees, and\ncurse herself if she should think of returning to you?' I said: 'She\nwished to remain with me (according to your own statement), but she\nwas not allowed; so she need not curse herself.' 'Why then do you\nthink,' said she, 'that she is so much in favour at court?' 'Do you\nmean,' I replied, 'that if anyone is in favour at court, it is\nbecause their lips are full of lies? I am assured my maid has\ncalumniated no one, least of all me; I am not afraid.'\n\nThe woman was angry, and pouted in consequence for some time. Some\nweeks afterwards Maren, Lars' daughter, was set at liberty, and\nbecame waiting-maid to the Countess Friis: and Balcke brought me some\nlinen which she still had belonging to me. The woman was not a little\nangry at this, especially as I said: 'So faithful I perceive is my\nmaid to me, that she will not keep the linen, which she might easily\nhave done, for I could not know whether it had not been taken from\nher with the rest.'\n\nAll my guards were very ill satisfied with Balcke, especially the\nwoman, who was angry for several reasons. He slighted her, she said,\nfor he had supplied a basin for the night-stool which was heavier\nthan the former one (which leaked); but she was chiefly angry because\nhe told her that she lived like a heathen, since she never went to\nthe sacrament. For when I once received the holy communion, while\nBalcke was attending to me, he asked her if she would not wish to\ncommunicate also, to which she answered, 'I do not know German.'\nBalcke said, 'I will arrange that the clergyman shall come to you\nwhose office it is to administer the Lord's Supper to the prisoners.'\nShe replied that in this place she could not go with the proper\ndevotion: if she came out, she would go gladly. Balcke admonished her\nseverely, as a clergyman might have done. When the door was closed,\nshe gave vent to puffing and blowing, and she always unfastened her\njacket when she was angry.\n\nI said nothing, but I thought the evil humour must have vent, or she\nwill be choked; and this was the case, for she abused Balcke with the\nstrongest language that occurred to her. She used unheard-of curses,\nwhich were terrible to listen to: among others, 'God damn him for\never, and then I need not curse him every day.' Also, 'May God make\nhim evaporate like the dew before the sun!' I could not endure this\ncursing, and I said, 'Are you cursing this man because he held before\nyou the word of God, and desires that you should be reconciled with\nGod and repent your sins?' 'I do not curse him for that,' she said,\n'but on account of the heavy basin which the accursed fellow has\ngiven me, and which I have to carry up the steep stairs;[91] the\ndevil must have moved him to choose it! Does he want to make a priest\nof himself? Well, he is probably faultless, the saucy fellow!' and\nshe began again with her curses.\n\n [91] In the margin: 'It is indeed a bad flight of stairs to the\n place where the basin was emptied.'\n\nI reproved her and said: 'If he now knew that you were cursing him in\nthis way, do you not think he would bring it about that you must do\npenitence? It is now almost two years since you were at the Lord's\ntable, and you can have the clergyman and you will not.' This\nsoftened her a little, and she said, 'How should he know it, unless\nyou tell him?' I said, 'What passes here and is said here concerns no\none but us two; it is not necessary that others should know.' With\nthis all was well; she lay down to sleep, and her anger passed away;\nbut the hate remained.\n\nThe prison governor continued to lie in great pain, and could neither\nlive nor die. One day at noon, when Balcke unlocked (it was just\ntwenty weeks since he had come to me), a man came in with him, very\nbadly dressed, in a grey, torn, greasy coat, with few buttons that\ncould be fastened, with an old hat to which was attached a drooping\nfeather that had once been white but was now not recognisable from\ndirt. He wore linen stockings and a pair of worn-out shoes fastened\nwith packthread.[92] Balcke went to the table outside and carved the\njoint; he then went to the door of the outer apartment, stood with\nhis hat in his hand, made a low reverence, and said, 'Herewith I take\nmy departure; this man is to be prison governor.' I enquired whether\nhe would not come again to me. He replied, 'No, not after this time.'\nUpon this I thanked him for his courteous attendance, and wished him\nprosperity.[93]\n\n [92] In the margin is added: 'Gabel had said (I was afterwards\n informed) that I was frightened at the appearance of the man, and\n thought it was the executioner. I did not regard him as such, but\n as a poor cavalier, and I imagined he was to undertake the duties\n which Peder the coachman performed.'\n\n [93] In the margin: 'Balcke has waited upon me for twenty weeks,\n and he was accused of having told me what happened outside. In\n proof of this it was alleged that he had told me that Gabel had\n been made Statholder, to whom I afterwards gave this title in M.\n Buck's hearing. Balcke one day could not restrain himself from\n laughing, for while he was standing and talking with me, the woman\n and the man were standing on the stairs outside, chuckling and\n laughing; and he said, \"Outside there is the chatter market. Why\n does not Peder so arrange it that it is forbidden? You can get to\n know all that goes on in the world without me.\"'\n\nPeder the coachman locked the door, and the new prison governor,\nwhose name was Johan Jaeger,[E37] never appeared before me the whole\nday, nor during the evening. I said to the woman in the morning, 'Ask\nPeder who the man is;' which she did, and returned to me with the\nanswer that it was the man who had taken the Doctor prisoner; and\nthat now he was to be prison governor, but that he had not yet\nreceived the keys. Not many days passed before he came with the Lord\nSteward to the old prison governor, and the keys were taken from the\nold man and given to him. The old man lived only to the day after\nthis occurred. In both respects his curiosity was satisfied; he saw\nthe man who was to be prison governor after him (to his grief), and\nthe doctor who attended him obtained his Tyrelyre before the year was\nended.\n\n [E37] It was a Colonel Hagedorn that entrapped and arrested Dr.\n Sperling, and Jaeger played only a subordinate part in that\n transaction. He is stated to have been a cousin of Gabel, and to\n have been formerly a commander in the navy. He was appointed prison\n governor on June 12, 1665, and Balcke therefore doubtless only held\n the appointment provisionally.\n\nThe new prison governor Jaeger[E37b] did not salute me for several\nweeks, and never spoke to me. He rarely locked my doors, but he\ngenerally opened them himself. At length one day, when he had got new\nshoes on, he took his hat off when he had opened the door, and said\n'Good morning.' I answered him, 'Many thanks.' The woman was very\npleased while this lasted. She had her free talk with Peder the\ncoachman (who still for a couple of months came to the tower as\nbefore) and with the prisoner Christian, who had great freedom, and\nobtained more and more freedom in this prison governor's time,\nespecially as Rasmus the tower-warder was made gatekeeper, and a man\nof the name of Chresten was appointed in his place. Among other idle\ntalk which she repeated to me, she said that this prison governor was\nforbidden to speak with me. I said, 'I am very glad, as he then can\ntell no lies about me.' I am of opinion that he did not venture to\nspeak with me so long as Peder brought up the food to the tower, and\nwas in waiting there; for when he had procured Peder's dismissal on\naccount of stealing, he came in afterwards from time to time. The\nvery first time he was intoxicated. He knew what Peder had said of\nBalcke, and he informed me of it.[94]\n\n [E37b] It was a Colonel Hagedorn that entrapped and arrested Dr.\n Sperling, and Jaeger played only a subordinate part in that\n transaction. He is stated to have been a cousin of Gabel, and to\n have been formerly a commander in the navy. He was appointed prison\n governor on June 12, 1665, and Balcke therefore doubtless only held\n the appointment provisionally.\n\n [94] In the margin is added: 'While Balcke waited on me, a folding\n table was brought in for the bread and glasses, and also for the\n woman's food, which she did not take till the doors had been\n locked. There was nothing there before but the night-stool to place\n the dishes on: that was the woman's table.'\n\nBefore I mention anything of the prisoner Christian's designs\nagainst me, I will in a few words state the crime for which he was in\nprison. He had been a lacquey in the employ of Maans Armfelt. With\nsome other lacqueys he had got into a quarrel with a man who had been\na father to Christian, and who had brought him up from his youth and\nhad taken the utmost care of him. The man was fatally wounded, and\ncalled out in the agonies of death: 'God punish thee, Christian! What\na son you have been! It was your hand that struck me!' The other\nlacqueys ran away, but Christian was seized. His dagger was found\nbloody. He denied, and said it was not he who had stabbed the man. He\nwas sentenced to death; but as the dead man's widow would not pay for\nthe execution, Christian remained for the time in prison, and his\nmaster paid for his maintenance. He had been there three years\nalready when I came to the prison, and three times he was removed;\nfirst from the Witch Cell to the Dark Church; and then here where I\nam imprisoned.[95] When I was brought here, he was placed where the\nDoctor is, and when the Doctor was brought in, Christian was allowed\nto go freely about the tower. He wound the clock for the\ntower-warder, locked and unlocked the cells below, and had often even\nthe keys of the tower.\n\n [95] In the margin is added: 'At that time there was a large double\n window with iron grating, which was walled up when I was brought\n here; and Christian told me afterwards how the maids in the\n store-room had supplied him with many a can of beer, which he had\n drawn up by a cord.'\n\nI remember once, when Rasmus the tower-warder was sitting at dinner\nwith the prison governor in my outermost cell, and the prison\ngovernor wished to send Peder on a message, he said to Rasmus: 'Go\nand open! I want Peder to order something. 'Father,' said Rasmus,\n'Christian has the key.' 'Indeed!' said the prison governor; 'that is\npretty work!' And there it rested, for Rasmus said, 'I am perfectly\nsure that Christian will not go away.' Thus by degrees Christian's\nfreedom and power increased after Peder the coachman left, and he\nwaited on the prison governor at meals in my outermost room.\n\nOne day, when the woman had come down from above, where she had been\nemptying the utensils in my room, and the doors were locked, she said\nto me: 'This Christian who is here has been just speaking with me\nupstairs. He says he cannot describe the Doctor's miserable\ncondition, how severe is his imprisonment, and what bad food he gets,\nsince Balcke left. He has no longer any candle except during\nmeal-time, and no light reaches him but through the hole in his door\nleading into the outer room. He begged me to tell you of it; his eyes\nwere full of tears, such great pity had he for him.' I said: 'That is\nall that one can do, and it is the duty of a Christian to sympathise\nwith the misfortune of one's neighbour. The poor man must have\npatience as well as I, and we must console ourselves with a good\nconscience. The harder he suffers the sooner comes the end; he is an\nold man.'\n\nTwo days afterwards she came again with some talk from Christian. The\nDoctor sent me his compliments, and he asked constantly if I was\nwell; she said also, that Christian would give him anything I liked\nto send him. I regarded this as a snare, but I said that Christian\ncould take a piece of roast meat when the prison governor was with\nme, and that he should look about for something into which wine could\nbe poured, and then she could secretly give some from my glass, and\nbeg Christian to give my compliments to the Doctor. This was\naccepted, and I had rest for a few days. Christian conformed entirely\nto the woman, caused a dispute between her and the tower-warder, and\nmade it immediately right again; so that there was no lack of\nchatter. At last she said one day: 'That is an honest fellow, this\nChristian! He has told me how innocently he got into prison and was\nsentenced. He is afraid that you may think he eats and drinks all\nthat you send to the Doctor. He swore with a solemn oath that he\nwould be true to you, if you would write a word to the Doctor.[96] I\nhope you do not doubt my fidelity!' and she began to swear and to\ncurse herself if she would deceive me. She said, he had taken a no\nless solemn oath, before she believed him. I said: 'I have nothing to\nwrite to him. I do not know what I have to write.' 'Oh!' said she,\n'write only two words, so that the old man may see that he can trust\nhim! If you wish for ink, Christian can give you some.' I replied: 'I\nhave something to write with, if I choose to do so, and I can write\nwithout ink and paper.'\n\n [96] In the margin is this note: 'Christian had at that time given\n me some pieces of flint which are so sharp that I can cut fine\n linen with them by the thread. The pieces are still in my\n possession, and with this implement I executed various things.'\n\nThis she could not understand; so I took some pieces of sugared\nalmonds, and made some letters on them with the large pin, placing on\nfour almonds the words: _non ti fidar_! I divided the word _fidar_,\nand placed half on each almond. I had in this way rest for a day, and\nsomewhat to beguile the time. Whether the Doctor could not see what\nwas written on the almonds, or whether he wished to test Christian's\nfidelity, I know not, but Christian brought the woman a slip of paper\nfrom the Doctor to me, full of lamentations at our condition, and\nstating that my daughter Anna Cathrina, or else Cassetta, were the\ncause of his misfortune.\n\nI wished to know more of this, so I wrote to him desiring information\n(we wrote to each other in Italian). He replied that one or the other\nhad left his letter lying somewhere on the table, where it was found\nand despatched; for that a letter of his was the cause of his\nmisfortune. I wrote back to him that it was not credible, but that he\nwas suspected of having corresponded with my lord, and hence his\nletters had been seized. The more I tried to impress this upon him\nthe more opinionated he became,[97] and he wrote afterwards saying\nthat it was a scheme of Cassetta's to get him into the net, in order\nto bring me out of it. When he began to write in this way, I acquired\na strange opinion of him, and fancied he was trying to draw something\nout of me which he could bring forward; and I reflected for some days\nwhether I should answer. At last I answered him in this strain, that\nno one knew better than he that I was not aware of any treason; that\nthe knowledge as to how his correspondence with my lord had become\nknown was of no use to him; that I had no idea why he was sentenced,\nand that no sentence had been passed on me. Some weeks elapsed before\nthe Doctor wrote. At last he communicated to me in a few words the\nsentence passed upon him, and we corresponded from time to time with\neach other.\n\n [97] In the margin is added: 'Such is his character.'\n\nThe prison governor became gradually more accessible, came in at\nevery meal-time, and related all sorts of jokes and buffooneries,\nwhich he had carried on in his youth: how he had been a drummer, and\nhad made a Merry Andrew of himself for my brother-in-law Count Pentz,\nand how he had enacted a dog for the sake of favour and money, and\nhad crawled under the table, frightening the guests and biting a dog\nfor a ducat's reward. When he had been drinking (which was often the\ncase) he juggled and played Punch, sometimes a fortune-teller, and\nthe like.\n\nWhen Chresten the tower-warder, and Christian the prisoner, heard the\nprison governor carrying on his jokes, they did the same, and made\nsuch a noise with the woman in the antechamber that we could not hear\nourselves speak. She sat on Christian's lap, and behaved herself in a\nwanton manner. One day she was not very well, and made herself some\nwarm beer and bread, placing it outside on the stove. The prison\ngovernor was sitting with me and talking, Chresten and Christian were\njoking with her outside, and Christian was to stir the warm beer and\nbread, and taste if it was hot enough. Chresten said to Christian,\n'Drink it up if you are thirsty.' The words were no sooner said than\nthe deed was done, and almost at the same moment the prison governor\ngot up and went away. When the door was locked, the woman seemed to\nbe almost fainting. I thought she was ill, and I was fearful that she\nmight die suddenly, and that the guilt of her death might be laid on\nme, and I asked quickly, 'Are you ill?' She answered, 'I am bad\nenough,' confirming it with a terrible oath and beginning to unbutton\nher jacket. Then I saw that she was angry, and I knew well that she\nwould give vent to a burst of execrations, which was the case.\n\nShe cursed and scolded those who had so treated her; a poor sick\nthing as she was, and she had not had anything to eat or drink all\nday. I said, 'Be quiet, and you shall have some warm beer.' She swore\nwith a solemn oath, asking how it was to be got here? it was summer\nand there was no fire in the stove, and it was no use calling, as no\none could hear. I said, 'If you will be silent, I will cause the pot\nto boil.' 'Yes,' and she swore with another fearful oath, 'I can\nindeed be silent, and will never speak of it.' So I made her take\nthree pieces of brick, which were lying behind the night-stool, and\nplace on these her pot of beer and bread (everything that she was to\ndo was to be done in silence; she might not answer me with words but\nonly with signs, when I asked her anything). She sat down besides the\npot, stirring it with a spoon. I sat always on my bed during the day,\nand then the table was placed before me. I had a piece of chalk, and\nI wrote various things on the table, asking from time to time whether\nthe pot boiled. She kept peeping in and shaking her head. When I had\nasked three times and she turned to me and saw that I was laughing,\nshe behaved herself like a mad woman, throwing the spoon from her\nhand, turning over the stool, tearing open her jacket, and\nexclaiming, 'The devil may be jeered at like this!' I said, 'You are\nnot worthy of anything better, as you believe that I can practise\nmagic.' 'Oh (and she repeated a solemn oath) had I not believed that\nyou could practise magic, I should never have consented to be locked\nup with you; do you know that?' I reflected for a moment what answer\nto give, but I said nothing, smiled, and let her rave on.\n\nAfterwards she wept and bemoaned her condition. 'Now, now,' I said,\n'be quiet! I will make the pot boil without witchcraft.' And as we\nhad a tinder-box, I ordered her to strike a light, and to kindle\nthree ends of candles, which she was to place under the pot. This\nmade the pot boil, and she kissed her hand to me and was very merry.\nOnce or twice afterwards I gave her leave to warm beer in this way:\nit could not always be done, for if the wind blew against the window\n(which was opened with a long pike) the smoke could not pass away. I\nsaid, 'Remember your oath and do not talk of what takes place here,\nor the lights will be taken from us; at any rate we shall lose some\nof them.' She asserted that she would not. I heard nothing of it at\nthe time, but some years afterwards I found that she had said that I\nhad taken up two half-loose stones from the floor (this was\nafterwards related in another manner by a clergyman, as will be\nmentioned afterwards). She had also said that I had climbed up and\nlooked at the rope-dancers in the castle square, which was true. For\nas Chresten one day told the woman that rope-dancers would be\nexhibiting in the inner castle yard, and she informed me of it and\nenquired what they were, and I explained to her, she lamented that\nshe could not get a sight of them. I said it could easily be done, if\nshe would not talk about it afterwards. She swore, as usual, with an\noath that she would not. So I took the bedclothes from the bed and\nplaced the boards on the floor and set the bed upright in front of\nthe window, and the night-stool on the top of it. In order to get\nupon the bedstead, the table was placed at the side, and a stool by\nthe table in order to get upon the table, and a stool upon the table,\nin order to get upon the night-stool, and a stool on the night-stool,\nso that we could stand and look comfortably, though not both at once.\nI let her climb up first, and I stood and took care that the bed did\nnot begin to give way; she was to keep watch when I was on the top. I\nknew, moreover, well that the dancers did not put forth their utmost\nskill at first.[98]\n\n [98] In the margin is added: 'These rope-dancers did things that I\n had never seen before. One had a basket attached to each leg, and\n in each basket was a boy of five years of age, and a woman fell\n upon the rope and jumped up again. But during the time of the other\n woman, I saw a man suspended by his chin and springing back upon\n the rope.'\n\nI could see the faces of the King and Queen: they were standing in\nthe long hall, and I wondered afterwards that they never turned their\neyes to the place where I stood. I did not let the woman perceive\nthat I saw them. During this woman's time I once had a desire to see\nthe people go to the castle-church and return from it. The bed was\nagain placed upright, and I sat for a long time on the top, until\neveryone had come out of church. The woman did not venture to climb\nup; she said that she had been afraid enough the last time, and was\nglad when she had come down.\n\nThe first time I received the holy communion during this prison\ngovernor's time, two brass candlesticks which did not match were\nbrought in, with tallow candles. This displeased the woman, though\nshe said nothing to me. But when at length she was compelled to take\nthe sacrament, after more than three years had elapsed since she had\nbeen at the Lord's table, she begged Chresten, the tower-warder, to\ngo to her daughter (who was in the service of a carpenter in the\ntown), and to get the loan of a pair of beautiful brass candlesticks\nand a couple of wax candles. If she could also procure for her a fine\nlinen cloth, she was to do her best; she would pay for it.\n\nWhether the woman had before thought of the candlesticks and candles\nwhich had been placed for me, or whether Chresten himself thought\nthat it would not be proper to provide better for her, I know not,\nbut shortly before the priest came, Chresten unlocked the outer door\nof my prison and said, 'Karen, hand me out the candlestick you have,\nand two candles.' Her behaviour is not to be described: she asked if\nhe had not spoken with her daughter, and much of the same kind (I did\nnot at the time know what she had desired of Chresten). He made no\nreply to her question, but asked for the candlestick and candles. For\na long time she would not give them, but cursed and scolded. I was\nstill lying down, and I asked her if I should be her maid, and should\ndo it for her? whether she could withhold from him what he requested?\nSo she handed them to him through the hole of the inner door, with so\nmany execrations against him that it was terrible to listen to. He\nlaughed aloud, and went away. This made her still more angry. I did\nmy best to appease her, telling her that such conduct was a most\nimproper preparation, and holding before her the sinfulness of her\nbehaviour. She said she thought that the sin belonged to him who had\ngiven cause for it. I asked her, at last, in what the Lord's Supper\nconsisted? whether it consisted in candlesticks and candles? I\nrebuked her for looking to externals and not to the essential; and I\nbegged her to fall on her knees and pray heartily to God for\nforgiveness of her sins, that He might not impute her folly to her.\nShe answered that she would do so, but she did not do it at once.\n\nI imagine that the clergyman[99] was well informed by Chresten of all\nthat concerned her, as he put to her so many questions: where she was\nborn? whom she had served? and more of the same kind, and finally,\nwhether she had her certificate of confession, and how long it was\nsince she had received the Lord's Supper? After this he confessed her\nin a strange manner; at first as one who had deserved to do public\npenance for great sins, then as a criminal under sentence of death\nwho was preparing for her end; at last consoling her, and performing\nhis office. When all was over and she came in to me, I wished her\njoy. 'Joy, indeed' (she answered); 'there is not much good in it!\nThis does me more harm than good! If I could only get out, I would\nindeed go straight to the sacrament; I reckon this as nothing!' I\ninterrupted her quickly, and said: 'Reflect upon what you are saying!\nblaspheme not God--I will not hear that! You know well what God's\nWord says of those who receive Christ's body and blood unworthily and\nhave trodden under foot his body?' 'Under foot?' said she. 'Yes,\nunder foot!' I said, and I made a whole sermon upon it. She listened\ndecently; but when I was silent, she said: 'He looked upon me as a\nmalefactor, and as one under sentence of death. I have never murdered\nanyone (I thought, we know not what);[100] why should I die? God\nAlmighty grant'----and with this she was silent. I preached to her\nagain, and said that she had deserved eternal death on account of her\nsins, and especially because she had so long kept aloof from the\nLord's table. 'This confession,' she said, 'I have to thank Chresten\nfor; Balcke was also probably concerned in it.' And she began to\ncurse them both. I threatened her with a second confession, if she\ndid not restrain such words. I told her I could not justify myself\nbefore God to keep silence to it, and I said, 'If you speak in this\nway to Chresten, you may be sure he will inform against you.' This\nkept her somewhat in check, and she did not go out upon the stairs\nthat noon.[101]\n\n [99] In the margin is added: 'This was the priest who attended to\n the prisoners, and as he confessed her in the anteroom, I heard\n every word said by him, but not her replies.'\n\n [100] In the margin is added: 'Her child.'\n\n [101] In the margin is added: 'She was in every respect a malicious\n woman, and grudged a little meat to any prisoner. A poor sacristan\n was my neighbour in the Dark Church, and I gave her a piece of meat\n for him. She would not take it to him, which she could easily have\n done without anyone seeing. When I saw the meat afterwards, I found\n fault with her. Then she said, \"Why should I give it to him? He has\n never given me anything. I get nothing for it.\" I said, \"You give\n nothing of your own away.\" This sacristan was imprisoned because he\n had taken back his own horse, the man to whom he had sold it not\n having paid him. He sang all day long, and on Sunday he went\n through the service like a clergyman, with the responses, &c.'\n\nAfter that time she was not so merry by far with the man. She often\ncomplained to me that she was weak, and had strained herself lifting\nthe new basin which Balcke had given her; she could not long hold\nout, she said, and she had asked the prison governor to let her go\naway, but that he had answered that she was to die in the tower. I\nsaid, 'The prison governor cannot yet rightly understand you; ask\nChresten to speak for you.' This she did, but came back with the same\nanswer. One day she said: 'I see well, dear lady, that you would be\nas gladly free of me as I should be to go. What have I for all my\nmoney? I cannot enjoy it, and I cannot be of service to you.' I said:\n'Money can do much. Give some money to the prison-governor, and then\nhe will speak for you. Request one of the charwomen to carry the\nbasin instead of you, and this you could pay with very little.' She\ndid the latter for some weeks; at length one day she said to me, 'I\nhave had a silver cup made for the prison governor. (Her daughter\ncame to her on the stairs as often as she desired, and she had\npermission to remain downstairs the whole afternoon, under pretext of\nspeaking with her daughter. Whether she gave him presents for this, I\nknow not, but I was well contented to be alone. She was, however,\nonce afraid that I should tell the priest of it.) The fact was, the\nprison-governor did not dare to speak for her with the King. She\nasked my advice on the matter. I said, 'Remain in bed when the\ndinner is going on, and I will go out and speak with the\nprison-governor.' This was done. At first he raised some\ndifficulties, and said, 'The Queen will say that there is some trick\nat the bottom of it.' I said they could visit and examine the woman\nwhen she came out; that we had not been such intimate friends; that I\nknew the woman had been sent to wait on me; when she could do so no\nlonger, but lay in bed, I had no attendance from her, and still less\nwas I inclined to wait on her; she did her work for money, and there\nwere women enough who would accept the employment.\n\nThree days afterwards, when the King came from Fridrichsborg, the\nprison-governor came in and said that the woman could go down in the\nevening; that he had another whom Chresten had recommended, and who\nwas said to be a well-behaved woman (which she is).\n\nKaren the daughter of Ole therefore went down, and Karen the daughter\nof Nels came up in her place. And I can truly say that it was one of\nthe happiest days during my severe imprisonment; for I was freed of a\nfaithless, godless, lying[102] and ill-behaved woman, and I received\nin her stead a Christian, true, and thoroughly good (perhaps too\ngood) woman. When the first took her departure, she said, 'Farewell,\nlady! we are now both pleased.' I answered, 'That is perhaps one of\nthe truest words you have ever spoken in your life.' She made no\nreply, but ran as fast as she could, so that no weakness nor illness\nwere perceptible in her. She lived scarcely a year afterwards,\nsuffering severe pain for six weeks in her bed, before she died; the\nnature of her malady I know not.\n\n [102] In the margin is added: 'She had begged Chresten, for more\n than half a year before she left, to tell the prison-governor that\n her life hung on a thread; that I had a ball of clay in my\n handkerchief, and that I had threatened to break her head to pieces\n with it (I had said one day that a person with a ball of that kind\n could kill another). She invented several similar lies, as I\n subsequently heard.'\n\nOn the day after this Karen's arrival, she sat thoroughly depressed\nall the afternoon. I asked her what was the matter. She said, 'Oh! I\nhave nothing to do, and I might not bring work with me! I weary to\ndeath.' I enquired what work she could do. 'Spinning,' she answered,\n'is my work principally; I can also do plain needlework and can knit\na little.' I had nothing to help her in this way; but I drew out some\nends of silk, which I had kept from what I cut off, and which are too\nshort to work with, and other tufts of silk from night-jackets and\nstockings; I had made a flax-comb of small pins,[103] fastened to a\npiece of wood; with this I combed the silk and made it available for\ndarning caps; and I said to her, 'There is something for you to do;\ncomb that for me!' She was so heartily pleased that it was quite a\ndelight to me. I found from her account of this and that which had\noccurred in her life, that she had a good heart, and that she had\noften been deceived owing to her credulity. She had also known me in\nmy prosperity; she had been in the service of a counsellor's lady who\nhad been present at my wedding, and she could well remember the\ndisplay of fireworks and other festivities; she wept as she spoke of\nit, and showed great sympathy with me. She was a peasant's daughter\nfrom Jutland, but had married the quarter-master of a regiment. By\ndegrees I felt an affection for her, and begged her to speak to\nChristian and to enquire how the Doctor was; I told her that\nChristian could occasionally perform small services for us, and could\nbuy one thing or another for us; for he had a lad, in fact sometimes\ntwo, who executed commissions for him, but that I had never trusted\nthe other woman, so that he had never bought anything for me;\nbesides, the other woman had not cared to spin; but that Christian\nshould now procure us what we wanted in return for our candles. And\nas she did not care to drink wine (for at each meal the woman\nreceived at that time half-a-pint of French wine), I said: 'Give\nChresten your wine as I give wine to Christian, then Chresten can let\nit stay with the cellar-clerk and can take it weekly, which will give\nhim a profit on it, and then he will see nothing even if he remarks\nanything.'\n\n [103] In the margin is added: 'The pins I had obtained some time\n ago from the first woman. She had procured them with some needles,\n and, thinking to hide them from me, she carried them in her bosom\n in a paper and forgot them. In the evening when she dropped her\n petticoat to go to bed, the paper fell on the floor. I knew from\n the sound what it was. One Saturday, when she went upstairs with\n the night-stool, I took the pins out of her box, and she never\n ventured to ask for them; she saw me using them afterwards, and\n said nothing about them.'\n\nThis was done, and Christian got us two hand-distaffs. Mine was but\nsmall, but hers was a proper size. I spun a little and twisted it\ninto thread, which is still in my possession. Christian procured her\nas much flax as she desired, and brought her up a whole wreath in his\ntrousers. She spun a good deal on the hand-distaff, and I arranged my\nloom on a stool, which I placed on the table, fastening one beam with\nribbon and cord which I had made myself, so that when the key was put\ninto the staircase-door, I could in one pull loosen my loom and\nunfasten the other beam which was fastened to myself, and put all\naway before the inner door was opened. I made myself also a wooden\nskewer (I had before used a warp), so that I could weave alone; I had\nalso obtained a real weaver's comb; so we were very industrious,\neach at her own work.\n\nThe prison governor was full of foolish jokes, and played tricks such\nas boys enjoy; he tried to jest with the woman, but she would not\njoin him. Almost every day he was drunk at dinner-time when he came\nup. Afterwards he came rarely of an evening, but sent a servant\ninstead, who would lie and sleep on the wall in the window. He wanted\nto jest with me also, and opened his mouth, telling me to throw\nsomething in and see if I could hit his mouth. I laughed and said,\n'How foolish you are!' and begged him to come nearer, and I would see\nif I could hit him. 'No, no,' said he; 'I am not such a fool; I\ndaresay you would box my ears.' One day he came up with a peculiar\nkind of squirt, round in form like a ball, and he placed a small tube\nin it, so small as scarcely to be seen; it was quite pretty. When\npressed in any part, the water squirted out quite high and to a\ndistance. He was saucy, and squirted me. When he saw that I was\nangry, he came to me with the squirt, ran away and sat down with his\nmouth as wide open as possible and begged me to squirt into it if I\ncould. I would not begin playing with him, for I knew his coarseness\nwell from his stories, and I gave him back the squirt. When Karen was\nbringing in the meat, the prison governor had the squirt between his\nlegs, and was seated on a low stool, from which he could squirt into\nthe woman's face; he was some distance from her, and the ball was not\nlarger than a large plum. She knew nothing of the squirt (she is\nsomewhat hasty in her words), and she exclaimed, 'May God send you a\nmisfortune, Mr. governor! Are you insulting me?' The prison governor\nlaughed like an insane man, so pleased was he at this.\n\nBy degrees he became less wild; he rarely came up sober, and he would\nlie on the woman's bed and sleep while I dined, so that Chresten and\nthe woman had to help him off the bed when they had woke him. The\nkeys of the prisons lay by his side, and the principal key close by\n(did he not take good care of his prisoners?).[104] He was not afraid\nthat I should murder him. One evening he was intoxicated, and behaved\nas such; and began, after his fashion, to try and caress me,\nendeavouring to feel my knee and seized the edge of my petticoat. I\nthrust him away with my foot, and said nothing more than: 'When you\nare intoxicated, remain away from me, and do not come in, I tell\nyou.' He said nothing, got up and went away; but he did not come in\nafterwards when he was tipsy, but remained outside in the anteroom,\nlying down in the window, where there was a broad stone bench against\nthe wall; there he lay and slept for some time after my doors were\nlocked, then the coachman and Chresten came and dragged him down.\nOccasionally he came in when he was not drunk, and he gave me at my\nrequest some old cards, which I sewed together and made into a box.\nChristian covered it with thin sticks of fir, which I afterwards\nstitched over, and I even secretly contrived to paint it. I have it\nin my possession. The prison governor saw it afterwards, but he never\nasked where the covering had come from.[105] In this box (if I may\ncall it so) I keep all my work and implements, and it stands by day\non my bed.\n\n [104] In the margin is noted: 'I said one day to the woman, \"Were\n it not for the Queen, who would make the King angry with me, I\n would retaliate upon the prison governor for having decoyed Doctor\n Sperling. I would take the keys when he was sleeping, and wait for\n Chresten to come with the cups, and then I would go up the King's\n stairs and take the keys to the King, just as the lacquey did with\n the old prison-governor. But I should gain nothing from this King,\n and perhaps should be still more strictly confined.\"'\n\n [105] In the margin is noted: 'At first, when this Karen did not\n know the prison governor, she did not venture so boldly to the\n prisoners in the Dark Church to give them anything, for she said,\n \"The prison governor stares at me so.\" I said, \"It is with him as\n with little children; they look staring at a thing, and do not know\n what it is.\" It is the case with him, he does not trouble himself\n about anything.'\n\nChristian's power increased. He waited not only outside at dinner,\nbut he even locked my door in the face of the tower-warder. He came\nwith the perfuming-pan into my room when the woman took away the\nnight-stool; in fact, he subsequently became so audacious that he did\neverything he chose, and had full command over the prisoners below.\nChresten availed himself also of the slack surveillance of the prison\ngovernor, and stayed sometimes the whole night out in the town, often\ncoming in tipsy to supper. One evening Chresten was intoxicated, and\nhad broken some panes of glass below with his hand, so that his\nfingers were bloody; he dashed my wine-cup on the ground, so that it\ncracked and was bent; and as the cup was quite bloody outside when he\ncame in to me, and some blood seemed to have got into the wine, I\nspoke somewhat seriously with the prison governor about it. He said\nnothing but 'The man is mad,' took the cup and went himself down into\nthe cellar, and had the cup washed and other wine put in it. How they\nafterwards made it up I know not. The indentations on the cup have\nbeen beaten out, but the crack on the edge is still there; this suits\nthe cellar-clerk well, for now scarcely half a pint goes into the\ncup. Christian held his own manfully against the prison governor,\nwhen he had a quarrel with some of the prisoners below; and Chresten\ncomplained of this to the prison governor, who came in and wanted to\nplace Christian in the Witch Cell; but he thrust the prison governor\naway, and said that he had nothing to do with him, and that he had\nnot put him into the prison; and then harangued him in such a style\nthat the Governor thanked God when he went away. Christian then\ncalled after him from the window, and said, 'I know secret tricks of\nyours, but you know none of mine.' (One I knew of, of which he was\naware, and that not a small one. There was a corporal who had stabbed\na soldier, and was sought for with the beating of drums: the prison\ngovernor concealed him for several weeks in the tower.) On the\nfollowing morning Christian repented, and he feared that he might be\nlocked up, and came to my door before it had been opened[106] (it\noften happened that the anteroom was unlocked before the food was\nbrought up, and always in the winter mornings, when a fire was made\nin the stove outside), and he begged me to speak for him with the\nprison governor, which I did; so that things remained as they were,\nand Christian was as bold as before.\n\n [106] In the margin is added: 'The hinges of my outer door are so\n far from the wall that they are open more than a hand's breadth, so\n that I have got in large things between them; and above they are\n still more open, and when I put my arm through the peep-hole of the\n inner door and stretch it out, I can reach to the top of the outer\n one, though the woman cannot.'\n\nThe woman and I lived in good harmony together. Occasionally there\nwere small disputes between Christian and her, but at that time they\nwere of no importance. I quieted his anger with wine and candles.\nThis woman had a son, who died just after she had come to me, and a\ndaughter who is still alive; at that time she was in the service of a\ntailor, but she is now married to a merchant. The daughter received\npermission occasionally to come and speak with her mother on the\nstairs. This annoyed Christian, as he thought that through her all\nsorts of things were obtained; and he threatened often that he would\nsay what he thought, though he did not know it, and this frequently\ntroubled the woman (she easily weeps and easily laughs). I could soon\ncomfort her. We spent our time very well. I taught her to read,\nbeginning with A B C, for she did not know a single letter. I kept to\nfixed hours for teaching her. She was at the time sixty years of age.\nAnd when she could spell a little,[107] she turned the book one day\nover and over, and began to rub her eyes and exclaimed, 'Oh God, how\nstrange it is! I do not know (and she swore by God) a single letter.'\nI was standing behind her, and could scarcely keep from laughing. She\nrubbed her eyes again, and (as she is rather hasty with her words)\nshe pointed quickly to an O, and said, 'Is not that an O?' 'Yes,' I\nsaid, and I laughed when she turned to me. She then for the first\ntime perceived that she was holding the book upside down; she threw\nherself on the bed and laughed till I thought she would burst.\n\n [107] In the margin: 'She has a curious manner of spelling. She\n cannot spell a word of three syllables; for when she has to add the\n two syllables to the third, she has forgotten the first. If I urge\n her, however, she can read the word correctly when she has spelt\n the first syllable. She spells words of two syllables and reads\n those of four.'\n\nOne day when she was to read, and did not like to lay aside her\ndistaff, it did not go smoothly, and she gave it up, and said, 'Am I\nnot foolish to wish to learn to read in my old age? What good does it\ndo me? I have spent much money on my son to have him taught to read,\nand see, is he not dead?' I knew how much she was able to do, and I\nlet her go on speaking. She threw the book on her bed, sat down to\nher work, and said, 'What do I need to learn to read in a book? I\ncan, thank God, read my morning and evening prayer.' (I thought to\nmyself, 'badly enough.' She knew very little of her catechism.) I\nsaid (gently): 'That is true, Karen. It is not necessary for you to\nlearn to read a book, as you can read very nicely by heart.' I had\nscarcely said this than she jumped up, took her book again, and began\nto spell. I neither advised her nor dissuaded her, but treated her\nlike a good simple child.[108]\n\n [108] In the margin: 'Once she asked me whether she could not get a\n book in which there was neither _q_ nor _x_, for she could not\n remember these letters. I answered, \"Yes, if you will yourself have\n such a book printed.\"'\n\nI fell ill during this year,[109] and as the prison governor no\nlonger came in to me and sent the servant up of an evening, I begged\nthe woman to tell him that I was ill, and that I wished a doctor to\ncome to me. The woman told him this (for by this time he understood\nDanish, and the woman understood a little German), and when she said,\n'I am afraid she will die,' he answered, 'Why the d---- let her die!'\nI had daily fevers, heat, but no shivering; and as an obstruction was\nthe chief cause of my illness, I desired a remedy. The prison\ngovernor ridiculed the idea. When I heard this, I requested he would\ncome to me, which he did. I spoke to him rather seriously; told him\nthat it was not the King's will that he should take no more care of\nme than he did, that he had more care for his dog than for me (which\nwas the case). Upon this his manner improved, and he enquired what I\nwished for, and I said what I desired, and obtained it. I had become\nrather excited at the conversation, so that I felt weak. The woman\ncried and said: 'I am afraid you will die, dear lady! and then the\nbad maids from the wash-house will wash your feet and hands.' (One of\nthe maids below had sent very uncivil messages to me.) I replied that\nI should not say a word against that. 'What?' said she angrily, 'will\nyou suffer that? No,' she added with an asseveration, 'I would not! I\nwould not suffer it if I were in your place.' So I said, like that\nphilosopher, 'Place the stick with the candlestick at my side, and\nwith that I can keep them away from me when I am dead.'[110] This\nbrought her to reason again, and she talked of the grave and of\nburial. I assured her that this did not trouble me at all; that when\nI was dead, it was all one to me; even if they threw my body in the\nsea, it would, together with my soul, appear before the throne of God\nat the last day, and might come off better perhaps than many who were\nlying in coffins mounted with silver and in splendid vaults. But that\nI would not say, as the prison governor did in his levity, that I\nshould like to be buried on the hill of Valdby, in order to be able\nto look around me. I desired nothing else than a happy end. We spoke\nof the prison governor's coarseness; of various things which he did,\non account of which it would go badly with him if the Queen knew it;\nof his godlessness, how that when he had been to the Lord's Supper,\nhe said he had passed muster; and other things. There was no fear of\nGod in him.\n\n [109] In the margin of the MS. is added: 'When this Karen came to\n me she left me no peace till I allowed her to clean the floor; for\n I feared that which happened, namely that the smell would cause\n sickness. In one place there was an accumulation of dirt a couple\n of feet thick. When she had loosened it, it had to remain till the\n door was opened. I went to bed, threw the bed-clothes over my head,\n and held my nose.'[E38]\n\n [E38] 'Anno 1666, soon after Karen, Nil's daughter, came to me, we\n first discovered that there was a stone floor to my prison chamber,\n as she broke loose a piece of rubbish cemented together, and the\n stones were apparent. I had before thought it a loam floor. The\n former Karen, Ole's daughter, was one of those who spread the dirt\n but do not take it away. This Karen tormented me unceasingly,\n almost daily, that we must remove it everywhere, and that at\n once--it would soon be done. I was of opinion that it would make us\n ill if it was done all at once, as we required water to soften it,\n and the stench in this oppressive hole would cause sickness, but\n that it would be easier and less uncomfortable to remove one piece\n after another. She adhered to her opinion and to her desire, and\n thought that she could persuade the prison governor and the\n tower-warder to let the door remain open till all had been made\n clean. But when the tower-warder had brought in a tub of water, he\n locked the door. I went to bed and covered my face closely, while\n she scraped and swept up the dirt. The quantity of filth was\n incredible. It had been collecting for years, for this had been a\n malefactors' prison, and the floor had never been cleaned. She laid\n all the dirt in a heap in the corner, and there was as much as a\n cartload. It was left there until evening at supper-time, when the\n doors were opened. It was as I feared: we were both ill. The woman\n recovered first, for she could get out into the air, but I remained\n in the oppressive hole, where there was scarcely light. We gained\n this from it, that we were tormented day and night with numbers of\n fleas, and they came to her more than to me, so much so that she\n was often on the point of weeping. I laughed and made fun of it,\n saying that she would now have always something to do, and would\n have enough to beguile the time. We could not, however, work. The\n fleas were thick on our stockings, so that the colour of the\n stockings was not to be perceived, and we wiped them off into the\n water-basin. I then discovered that one flea produces another. For\n when I examined them, and how they could swim, I perceived that\n some small feet appeared behind the flea, and I thought it was a\n peculiar kind. At last I saw what it was, and I took the flea from\n which the small one was emerging on my finger, and it left behind\n evidences of birth: it hopped immediately, but the mother remained\n a little, until she recovered herself, and the first time she could\n not hop so far. This amusement I had more than once, till the fleas\n came to an end. Whether all fleas are born in this manner I cannot\n tell, but that they are produced from dirt and loam I have seen in\n my prison, and I have observed how they become gradually perfect\n and of the peculiar colour of the material from which they have\n been generated. I have seen them pair.'\n\n It is scarcely necessary to say that, as far as natural history is\n concerned, Leonora has committed a mistake.\n\n [110] In the margin is added: 'On the stick there was a tin\n candlestick, which was occasionally placed at the side of my bed. I\n used it for fixing my knitting.'[E39]\n\n [E39] Leonora alludes to an anecdote told by 'Cicero in Tuscul.\n Quaest. lib. i. c. 43.' He recounts that the cynic Diogenes had\n ordered that his body should not be buried after his death but left\n uninterred. His friends asked, 'As a prey to birds and wild\n beasts?' 'Not at all,' answered Diogenes; place a stick by me,\n wherewith I may drive them away.' 'But how can you?' rejoined\n these; 'you won't know!' 'But what then,' was his reply, 'concern\n the attacks of the wild beasts me, when I don't feel them?'\n\nI requested to have the sacrament, and asked M. Buck to come to me at\nseven o'clock in the morning, for at about half-past eight o'clock\nthe fever began. The priest did not come till half-past nine, when\nthe fever heat had set in (for it began now somewhat later). When I\nhad made my confession, he began to preach about murder and homicide;\nabout David, who was guilty of Uriah's death, although he had not\nkilled him with his own hand. He spoke of sin as behoved him, and of\nthe punishment it brings with it. 'You,' he said, 'have killed\nGeneral Fux, for you have bribed a servant to kill him.' I replied,\n'That is not true! I have not done so!' 'Yes, truly,' he said; 'the\nservant is in Hamburg, and he says it himself.' I replied: 'If he has\nso said, he has lied, for my son gave Fux his death-blow with a\nstiletto. I did not know that Fux was in Bruges until I heard of his\ndeath. How could the servant, then, say that I had done it? It was\nnot done by my order, but that I should not have rejoiced that God\nshould have punished the villain I am free to confess.' To this he\nanswered, 'I should have done so myself.' I said: 'God knows how Fux\ntreated us in our imprisonment at Borringholm. That is now past, and\nI think of it no more.' 'There you are right,' he said, as he\nproceeded in his office. When all was over, he spoke with the prison\ngovernor outside the door of my anteroom, just in front of the door\nof the Dark Church, and said that I made myself ill; that I was not\nill; that my face was red from pure anger; that he had spoken the\ntruth to me, and that I had been angry in consequence. Christian was\nstanding inside the door of the Dark Church, for at this time there\nwere no prisoners there, and he heard the conversation, and related\nit to me when I began to get up again and spoke with him at the\ndoor.\n\nSome time afterwards Christian said to me, quite secretly, 'If you\nlike, I will convey a message from you to your children in Skaane.' I\nenquired how this could be done. He said: 'Through my girl; she is\nthoroughly true; she shall go on purpose.' He knew that I had some\nducats left, for Peder the coachman had confided it to him, as he\nhimself told me. I accepted his offer and wrote to my children, and\ngave him a ducat for the girl's journey.[111] She executed the\ncommission well, and came back with a letter from them and from my\nsister.[E40] The woman knew nothing of all this.\n\n [111] In the margin: 'The girl was a prostitute to whom he had\n promised marriage, and the tower-warder--both the former one and\n Chresten--let her in to Christian, went out himself, and left them\n alone.'\n\n [E40] This sister was Hedvig, who married Ebbe Ulfeldt, a relative\n of Corfitz Ulfeldt. He was obliged to leave Denmark in 1651, on\n account of irregularities in the conduct of his office, and went to\n Sweden, where he became a major-general in the army. He is the\n person alluded to in the Autobiography. Several of Leonora's\n children lived in Sweden with their relatives after the death of\n Corfitz Ulfeldt; but in 1668 the Danish Government obtained that\n they were forbidden the country.\n\nBy degrees Christian began to be insolent in various ways. When he\ncame with his boy's pouch, in which the woman was to give him food,\nhe would throw it at her, and he was angry if meat was not kept for\nhimself for the evening; and when he could not at once get the pouch\nback again, he would curse the day when he had come to my door and\nhad spoken with me or had communicated anything to me. She was sad,\nbut she said nothing to me. This lasted only for a day, and then he\nknocked again at the door and spoke as usual of what news he had\nheard. The woman was sitting on the bed, crossing herself fifteen\ntimes (he could not see her, nor could he see me). When he was gone,\nshe related how fearfully he had been swearing, &c. I said: 'You must\nnot regard this; in the time of the other Karen he has done as much.'\nHis courage daily increased. The dishes were often brought up\nhalf-an-hour before the prison-governor came. In the meanwhile\nChristian cut the meat, and took himself the piece he preferred\n(formerly at every meal I had sent him out a piece of fish, or\nanything else he desired). The stupid prison governor allowed it to\ngo on; he was glad, I imagine, that he was spared the trouble, and\npaid no attention to the fact that there was anything missing in the\ndish. I let it go on for a time, for it did not happen regularly\nevery day. But when he wanted food for his boy, he would say nothing\nbut 'Some food in my boy's pouch!' We often laughed over this\nafterwards, when he was away, but not at the time, for it grew worse\nfrom day to day. He could not endure that we should laugh and be\nmerry; if he heard anything of the kind outside, he was angry. But if\none spoke despondingly, he would procure what was in his power.[112]\nOne day he listened, and heard that we were laughing; for the woman\nwas just relating an amusing story of the mother of a schoolboy in\nFrederichsborg (she had lived there); how the mother of the boy did\nnot know how to address the schoolmaster, and called him Herr\nWillas.[E41] He said, 'I am no Herr.' 'Then Master,' said the woman.\n'I am no Master either,' he said; 'I am plain Willas.' Then the woman\nsaid: 'My good plain Willas! My son always licks the cream from my\nmilk-pans when he comes home. Will you lick him in return, and that\nwith a switch on his back?' While we were laughing at this, he came\nto the door and heard the words I was saying: 'I don't suppose that\nit really so happened; one must always add something to make a good\nstory of it.' He imagined we were speaking of him, and that we were\nlaughing at him. At meal-time he said to the woman, 'You were very\nmerry to-day.' She said, 'Did you not know why? It is because I\nbelong to the \"Laetter\"'[E42] (that was her family name). 'It would be\na good thing,' he said, 'to put a stop to your laughter altogether;\nyou have been laughing at me.' She protested that we had not, that\nhis name had not been mentioned (which was the case); but he would\nnot regard it. They fell into an altercation. She told me of the\nconversation, and for some days he did not come to the door, and I\nsent him nothing; for just at that time a poor old man was my\nneighbour, and I sent him a drink of wine. Christian came again to\nthe door and knocked. He complained very softly of the woman; begged\nthat I would reprove her for what she had said to him, as he had\nheard his name mentioned. I protested to him that at the time we were\nnot even thinking of him, and that I could not scold her for the\nwords we had spoken together. I wished to have repose within our\nclosed door. 'Yes,' he answered; 'household peace is good, as the old\nwoman said.' With this he went away.\n\n [112] In the margin: 'In the time of his good humour he had\n procured me, for money and candles, all that I desired, so that I\n had both knife and scissors, besides silk, thread, and various\n things to beguile the time. This vexed him afterwards.'\n\n [E41] The title 'Herr' was then only given to noblemen and clergy.\n Master means 'magister,' and was an academical title.\n\n [E42] The original has here an untranslatable play upon words.\n _Leth_ is a family name; and the woman says 'I am one of the Letter\n (the Leths),' but laughter is in Danish 'Latter.'\n\nAfterwards he caused us all sorts of annoyance, and was again\npacified. Then he wished again that I should write to Skaane.[113] I\nsaid I was satisfied to know that some of my children were with my\nsister; where my sons were, and how it fared with them, I did not\nknow: I left them in God's care. This did not satisfy him, and he\nspoke as if he thought I had no more money; but he did not at that\ntime exactly say so. But one day, when he had one of his mad fits, he\ncame to the door and had a can with wine (which I gave him at almost\nevery meal) in his hand, and he said: 'Can you see me?' (for there\nwas a cleft in the outermost door, but at such a distance one could\nnot clearly see through). 'Here I am with my cup of wine, and I am\ngoing to drink your health for the last time.' I asked: 'Why for the\nlast time?' 'Yes,' he swore, coming nearer to the door and saying: 'I\nwill do no more service for you; so I know well that I shall get no\nmore wine.' I said, 'I thank you for the services you have rendered\nme; I desire no more from you, but nevertheless you may still get\nyour wine.' 'No!' he said; 'no more service! there is nothing more to\nbe fetched.' 'That is true,' I answered. 'You do not know me,' said\nhe; 'I am not what you think; it is easy to start with me, but it is\nnot easy to get rid of me.' I laughed a little, and said: 'You are\nfar better than you make yourself out to be. To-morrow you will be of\nanother mind.'\n\n [113] In the margin: 'Immediately after the girl had been in\n Skaane, he gave her a box full of pieces of wax, on which were the\n impressions of all the tower keys; and amongst them was written,\n \"My girl will have these made in Skaane.\" I had this from the\n woman, who was just then carrying up the night-stool, and on the\n following Saturday I gave the box back with many thanks, saying I\n did not care to escape from the tower in this way. This did not\n please him, as I well saw.'\n\nHe continued to describe himself as very wicked (it was, however, far\nfrom as bad as he really is). I could do nothing else but laugh at\nhim. He drank from the can, and sat himself down on the stool\noutside. I called him and begged him to come to the door, as I wanted\nto speak with him. There he sat like a fool, saying to himself:\n'Should I go to the door? No,' and he swore with a terrible oath,\n'that I will not do! Oh yes, to the door! No, Christian, no!'\nlaughing from time to time immoderately, and shouting out that the\ndevil might take him and tear him in pieces the day on which he\nshould go to my door or render me a service. I went away from the\ndoor and sat down horrified at the man's madness and audacity. Some\ndays passed in silence, and he would accept no wine. No food was\noffered to him, for he continued, in the same way as before, to cut\nthe meat before the prison governor came up. As the prison governor\nat this time occasionally again came in to me and talked with me, I\nrequested him that Christian, as a prisoner, should not have the\nliberty of messing my food. This was, therefore, forbidden him in\nfuture.\n\nSome days afterwards he threw the pouch to the woman on the stairs,\nand said: 'Give me some food for to-night in my lad's pouch.'[114]\nThis was complied with with the utmost obedience, and a piece of meat\nwas placed in the pouch. This somewhat appeased him, so that at noon\nhe spoke with the woman, and even asked for a drink of wine; but he\nthreatened the woman that he would put an end to the laughing. I did\nnot fear the evil he could do to me, but this vexatious life was\nwearisome. I allowed no wine to be offered to him, unless he asked\nfor some. He was in the habit every week of procuring me the\nnewspapers[E43] for candles, and as he did not bring me the\nnewspapers for the candles of the first week, I sent him no more. He\ncontinued to come every Saturday with the perfuming-pan, and to lock\nmy door. When he came in with the fumigating stuff, he fixed his eyes\nupon the wall, and would not look at me. I spoke to him once and\nasked after the doctor, and he made no reply.\n\n [114] In the margin is added: 'At this time there was a peasant\n imprisoned in the Dark Church for having answered the bailiff of\n the manor with bad language. I sent him food. He was a great rogue.\n I know not whether he were incited by others, but he told Karen\n that if I would write to my children, he would take care of the\n letter. I sent him word that I thanked him; I had nothing to say to\n them and nothing to write with. The rogue answered, \"Ah so! Ah\n so!\"'\n\n [E43] The newspapers in question were probably German papers which\n were published in Copenhagen at that time weekly, or even twice a\n week; the Danish _Mercurius_ (a common title for newspapers) was a\n monthly publication.\n\nThus it went on for some weeks; then he became appeased, and brought\nthe woman the papers from the time that he had withheld them, all\nrolled up together and fastened with a thread. When the prison\ngovernor came in during the evening and sat and talked (he was\nslightly intoxicated), and Chresten had gone to the cellar, the woman\ngave him back the papers, thanking him in my name, and saying that\nthe papers were of no interest to me; I had done without them for so\nmany weeks, and could continue to do so. He was so angry that he tore\nthe papers in two with his teeth, tore open his coat so that the\nbuttons fell on the floor, threw some of the papers into the fire,\nhowled, screamed, and gnashed with his teeth. I tried to find\nsomething over which I could laugh with the prison governor, and I\nspoke as loud as I could, in order to drown Christian's voice.[115]\nThe woman came in as pale as a corpse, and looked at me. I signed to\nher that she should go out again. Then Christian came close to my\ndoor and howled, throwing his slippers up into the air, and then\nagainst my door, repeating this frequently. When he heard Chresten\ncoming up with the cups, he threw himself on the seat on which the\nprison governor was accustomed to lie, and again struck his slippers\nagainst the wall. Chresten gazed at him with astonishment, as he\nstood with the cups in his hand. He saw well that there was something\namiss between the woman and Christian, and that the woman was afraid;\nhe could not, however, guess the cause, nor could he find it out; he\nthought, moreover, that it had nothing to do with me, since I was\nlaughing and talking with the prison governor. When the doors were\nclosed, the lamentations found free vent. The woman said that he had\nthreatened her; he would forbid her daughter coming on the stairs and\ncarrying on her talk, and doing other things that she ought not. I\nbegged her to be calm; told her he was now in one of his mad fits,\nbut that it would pass away; that he would hesitate before he said\nanything of it, for that he would be afraid that what he had brought\nup to her would also come to light, and then he would himself get\ninto misfortune for his trouble; that the prison governor had given\nher daughter leave to come to her, and to whom therefore should he\ncomplain? (I thought indeed in my own mind that if he adhered to his\nthreat, he would probably find some one else to whom he could\ncomplain, as he had so much liberty; he could bring in and out what\nhe chose, and could speak with whom he desired in the watchman's\ngallery.) She wept, was very much affected, and talked with but\nlittle sense, and said: 'If I have no peace for him, I will--yes, I\nwill--.' She got no further, and could not get out what she would do.\nI smiled, and said at last: 'Christian is mad. I will put a stop to\nit to-morrow: let me deal with him! Sleep now quietly!'\n\n [115] In the margin: 'It was wonderful that the governor did not\n hear the noise which Christian made. He was telling me, I remember,\n at the time, how he had frightened one of the court servants with a\n mouse in a box.'\n\nShe fell asleep afterwards, but I did not do so very quickly,\nthinking what might follow such wild fits. Next day towards noon I\ntold her what she was to say to Christian; she was to behave as if\nshe were dissatisfied, and begin to upbraid him and to say, 'The\ndevil take you for all you have taught her! She has pulled off her\nslippers just as you do, and strikes me on the head with them. She is\nangry and no joke, and she took all the pretty stuff she had finished\nand threw it into the night-stool. \"There,\" said she, \"no one shall\nhave any advantage of that.\"' At this he laughed like a fool, for it\npleased him. 'Is she thoroughly angry?' he asked. 'Yes,' she replied;\n'she is indeed.' At this he laughed aloud on the stairs, so that I\nheard it. For a fortnight he behaved tolerably well, now and then\ndemanding wine and food; and he came moreover to the door and\nrelated, among other things, how he had heard that the prince (now\nour king) was going to be married. I had also heard it, though I did\nnot say so, for the prison governor had told me of it, and besides I\nreceived the papers without him. And as I asked him no questions, he\nwent away immediately, saying afterwards to the woman, 'She is angry\nand so am I. We will see who first will want the other.' He\nthreatened the woman very much. She wished that I would give him fair\nwords. I told her that he was not of that character that one could\nget on with him by always showing the friendly side.[116] As he by\ndegrees became more insolent than could be tolerated, I said one day\nto the prison governor that I was surprised that he could allow a\nprisoner to unlock and lock my doors, and to do that which was really\nthe office of the tower-warder; and I asked him whether it did not\noccur to him that under such circumstances I might manage to get out,\nif I chose to do so without the King's will? Christian was a\nprisoner, under sentence of death; he had already offered to get me\nout of the tower. The prison governor sat and stared like one who\ndoes not rightly understand, and he made no reply but 'Yes, yes!' but\nhe acted in conformity with my warning, so that either he himself\nlocked and unlocked, or Chresten did so. (I have seen Christian\nsnatching the keys out of Chresten's hand and locking my door, and\nthis at the time when he began to make himself so angry.)\n\n [116] In the margin is added: 'He enticed the prison governor to\n throw a kitten that I had down from the top of the tower, and he\n laughed at me ironically as he told the woman of his manly act, and\n said, \"The cat was mangy! the cat was mangy!\" I would not let him\n see that it annoyed me.'\n\nIf Christian had not been furious before, he became so now,\nespecially at the time that Chresten came in with the perfuming-pan\nwhen the woman was above. He would then stand straight before me in\nthe anteroom, looking at me like a ghost and gnashing his teeth; and\nwhen he saw that I took the rest of the fumigating stuff from\nChresten's hand (which he had always himself given me in paper), he\nburst into a defiant laugh. When the doors were unlocked in the\nevening, and Christian began talking with the woman, he said: 'Karen,\ntell her ladyship that I will make out a devilish story with you\nboth. I have with my own eyes seen Chresten giving her a letter. Ay,\nthat was why she did not let me go in with the perfuming-pan, because\nI would not undertake her message to Skaane. Ay, does she get the\nnewspapers also from him? Yes, tell her, great as are the services I\nhave rendered her, I will now prepare a great misfortune for her.'\nGod knows what a night I had! Not because I feared his threat, for I\ndid not in the least regard his words; he himself would have suffered\nthe most by far. But the woman was so sad that she did nothing but\nlament and moan, chiefly about her daughter, on account of the\ndisgrace it would be to her if they put her mother into the Dark\nChurch, nay even took her life. Then she remembered that her daughter\nhad spoken with her on the stairs, and she cried out again: 'Oh my\ndaughter! my daughter! She will get into the house of correction!'\nFor some time I said nothing more than 'Calm yourself; it will not be\nas bad as you think,' as I perceived that she was not capable of\nlistening to reason, for she at once exclaimed 'Ach! ach!' as often\nas I tried to speak, sitting up in bed and holding her head between\nher two hands and crying till she was almost deluged. I thought,\n'When there are no more tears to come, she will probably stop.'\n\nI said at length, when she was a little appeased: 'The misfortune\nwith which the man threatens us cannot be averted by tears. Calm\nyourself and lie down to sleep. I will do the same, and I will pray\nGod to impart to me His wise counsel for the morrow.' This quieted\nher a little; but when I thought she was sleeping, she burst forth\nagain with all the things that she feared; she had brought in to me\nslips of paper, knife and scissors, and other things furnished by him\ncontrary to order. I answered only from time to time: 'Go to sleep,\ngo to sleep! I will talk with you to-morrow!' It was of no avail. The\nclock struck two, when she was still wanting to talk, and saying, 'It\nwill go badly with the poor old man down below!'[117] I made as if I\nwere asleep, but the whole night, till five o'clock and longer, no\nsleep came to my eyes.\n\n [117] In the margin is added: '1666. While Karen, Nil's daughter,\n waited on me, a Nuremberger was my neighbour in the Dark Church; he\n was accused of having coined base money. She carried food to him\n every day. He sang and read day and night, and sang very well. He\n sang the psalm 'Incline thine ear unto me, O Lord,' slowly at my\n desire. I copied it, and afterwards translated it into Danish. And\n as he often prayed aloud at night and confessed his sins, praying\n God for forgiveness and exclaiming again and again, 'Thou must help\n me, God! Yes, God, thou must help me, or thou art no God. Thou must\n be gracious;' thus hindering me from sleep, I sent him word through\n Karen to pray more softly, which he did. He was taken to the Holm\n for some weeks, and was then set at liberty.\n\nWhen the door was unlocked at noon, I had already intimated to her\nwhat she was to say to Christian, and had given her to understand\nthat he thought to receive money from her and candles from me by his\nthreats, and that he wanted to force us to obey his pleasure; but\nthat he had others to deal with than he imagined. She was only to\nbehave as if she did not care for his talk, and was to say nothing\nbut 'Good day,' unless he spoke to her; and if he enquired what I had\nsaid, she was to act as if she did not remember that she was to tell\nme anything. If he repeated his message, she was to say: 'I am not\ngoing to say anything to her about that. Are you still as foolish as\nyou were last night? Do what you choose!' and then go away. This\nconversation took place, and he threatened her worse than before. The\nwoman remained steadfast, but she was thoroughly cast down when our\ndoors were locked; still, as she has a light heart, she often laughed\nwith the tears in her eyes. I knew well that Christian would try to\nrecover favour again by communicating me all kind of news in writing,\nbut I had forbidden the woman to take his slips of paper, so that he\ngot very angry. I begged her to tell him that he had better restrain\nhimself if he could; that if he indulged his anger, it would be worse\nfor him. At this he laughed ironically, and said, 'Tell her, it will\nbe worse for her. Whatever I have done for her, she has enticed me to\nby giving me wine: tell her so. I will myself confess everything; and\nif I come to the rack and wheel, Chresten shall get into trouble. He\nbrought her letters from her children.' (The rogue well knew that I\nhad not allowed the woman to be cognisant neither of the fact that he\nhad conveyed for me a message to Skaane to my children, nor of the\nwax in which the tower keys were impressed; this was why he spoke so\nfreely to her.) When our doors were locked, this formed the subject\nof our conversation. I laughed at it, and asked the woman what\ndisgrace could be so great as to be put on the wheel; I regarded it\nas thoughtless talk, for such it was, and I begged her to tell him\nthat he need not trouble himself to give himself up, as I would\nrelieve him of the trouble, and (if he chose) tell the prison\ngovernor everything on the following day that he had done for me; he\nhad perhaps forgotten something, but that I could well remember it\nall.\n\nWhen the woman told him this, he made no answer, but ran down, kept\nquiet for some days, and scarcely spoke to the woman. One Saturday,\nwhen the woman had gone upstairs with the night-stool, he went up to\nher and tried to persuade her to accept a slip of paper for me, but\nshe protested that she dare not. 'Then tell her,' he said, 'that she\nis to give me back the scissors and the knife which I have given her.\nI will have them, and she shall see what I can do. You shall both\ntogether get into trouble!' She came down as white as a corpse, so\nthat I thought she had strained herself. She related the conversation\nand his request, and begged me much to give him back the things, and\nthat then he would be quiet. I said: 'What is the matter with you?\nare you in your senses? Does he not say that we shall get into\ntrouble if he gets the scissors and knife back again? Now is not the\ntime to give them to him. Do you not understand that he is afraid I\nshall let the things be seen? My work, he thinks, is gone, and the\npapers are no longer here, so that there is nothing with which he can\nbe threatened except these things. You must not speak with him this\nevening. If he says anything, do not answer him.' In the evening he\ncrept in, and said in the anteroom to her, 'Bring me the scissors and\nthe knife!' She made no answer. On the following morning, towards\nnoon, I begged her to tell him that I had nothing of his; that I had\npaid for both the scissors and knife, and that more than double their\nvalue. He was angry at the message, and gnashed with his teeth. She\nwent away from him, and avoided as much as possible speaking with him\nalone. When he saw that the woman would not take a slip of paper from\nhim, he availed himself of a moment when the prison governor was not\nthere, and threw in a slip of paper to me on the floor. A strange\ncircumstance was near occurring this time: for just as he was\nthrowing in the paper, the prison governor's large shaggy dog passed\nin, and the paper fell on the dog's back, but it fell off again in\nthe corner, where the dog was snuffling.\n\nUpon the paper stood the words: 'Give me the knife and scissors back,\nor I will bring upon you as much misfortune as I have before rendered\nyou good service, and I will pay for the knife and scissors if I have\nto sell my trousers for it. Give them to me at once!' For some days\nhe went about like a lunatic, since I did not answer him, nor did I\nsend him a message through the woman; so that Chresten asked the\nwoman what she had done to Christian, as he went about below gnashing\nhis teeth and howling like a madman. She replied that those below\nmust best know what was the matter with him; that he must see he was\nspoken with in a very friendly manner here. At noon on Good Friday,\n1667,[118] he was very angry, swore and cursed himself if he did not\ngive himself up, repeating all that he had said before, and adding\nthat I had enticed him with wine and meat, and had deceived him with\ncandles and good words. That he cared but little what happened to\nhim; he would gladly die by the hand of the executioner; but that I,\nand she, and Chresten, should not escape without hurt.\n\n [118] In the MS. this date '1667' is in the _margin_, not in the\n text.\n\nThe afternoon was not very cheerful to us. The woman was depressed. I\nbegged her to be calm, told her there was no danger in such madness,\nthough it was very annoying, and harder to bear than my captivity;\nbut that still I would be a match for the rogue. She took her book\nand read, and I sat down and wrote a hymn upon Christ's sufferings,\nto the tune 'As the hart panteth after the water-springs.'[119]\n\n [119] In the margin is added: 'This very hymn was afterwards the\n cause of Christian's being again well-behaved, as he subsequently\n himself told me, for he heard me one day singing it, and he said\n that his heart was touched, and that tears filled his eyes. I had\n at that time no other writing-materials than I have before\n mentioned.'\n\nChristian had before been in the habit of bringing me coloured eggs\non Easter-Eve; at this time he was not so disposed. When the door was\nlocked, I said to Chresten, 'Do not forget the soft-boiled eggs\nto-morrow.' When the dinner was brought up on Easter-Day, and the\neggs did not come at once (they were a side dish), Christian looked\nat me, and made a long nose at me three or four times. (I was\naccustomed to go up and down in front of the door of my room when it\nwas unlocked.) I remained standing, and looked at him, and shrugged\nmy shoulders a little. Soon after these grimaces, Chresten came with\na dish full of soft-boiled eggs. Christian cast down his eyes at\nfirst, then he raised them to me, expecting, perhaps, that I should\nmake a long nose at him in return; but I intended nothing less. When\nthe woman went to the stairs, he said, 'There were no coloured eggs\nthere.' She repeated this to me at once, so that I begged her to say\nthat I ate the soft-boiled eggs and kept the coloured ones, as he\nmight see (and I sent him one of the last year's, on which I had\ndrawn some flowers; he had given it to me himself for some candles).\nHe accepted it, but wrote me a note in return, which was very\nextraordinary. It was intended to be a highflown composition about\nthe egg and the hen. He tried to be witty, but it had no point. I\ncannot now quite remember it, except that he wrote that I had sent\nhim a rotten egg; that his egg would be fresh, while mine would be\nrotten.[120] He threw the slip of paper into my room. I made no\nanswer to it. Some days passed again, and he said nothing angry; then\nhe recommenced. I think he was vexed to see Chresten often receive my\nwine back again in the cup. At times I presented it to the prison\ngovernor. Moreover, he received no food, either for himself or his\nboy. One day he said to the woman, 'What do you think the prison\ngovernor would say if he knew that you give the prisoners some of his\nfood to eat?' (The food which came from my table was taken down to\nthe prison governor.) 'Tell her that!' The woman asked whether she\nwas to say so to me, as a message from him. 'As whose message\notherwise?' he answered. I sent him word that I could take as much as\nI pleased of the food brought me: that it was not measured out and\nweighed for me, and that those who had a right to it could do what\nthey liked with what I did not require, as it belonged to no one. On\nthis point he could not excite our fear. Then he came back again one\nday to the old subject, that he would have the scissors and the\nknife, and threatening to give himself up; and as it was almost\napproaching the time when I received the Lord's Supper, I said to the\nwoman: 'Tell him once for all, if he cannot restrain himself I will\ninform against him as soon as the priest comes, and the first Karen\nshall be made to give evidence; she shall, indeed, be brought\nforward, for she had no rest on his account until I entered into his\nproposals. Whether voluntarily or under compulsion, she shall say the\ntruth, and then we shall see who gets into trouble.' He might do, I\nsent word, whatever he liked, but I would be let alone; he might\nspare me his notes, or I would produce them. When the woman told him\nthis, he thought a little, and then asked, 'Does she say so?' 'Yes,'\nsaid the woman, 'she did. She said still further: \"What does he\nimagine? Does he think that I, as a prisoner who can go nowhere, will\nsuffer for having accepted the services of a prisoner who enjoys a\nliberty which does not belong to him?\"' He stood and let his head\nhang down, and made no answer at all. This settled the fellow, and\nfrom that time I have not heard one unsuitable word from him. He\nspoke kindly and pleasantly with the woman on the stairs, related\nwhat news he had heard, and was very officious; and when she once\nasked him for his cup to give him some wine, he said sadly, 'I have\nnot deserved any wine.' The woman said he could nevertheless have\nsome wine, and that I desired no more service from him. So he\nreceived wine from time to time, but nothing to eat.[121] On the day\nthat I received the Lord's Supper, he came to the door and knocked\nsoftly. I went to the door. He saluted me and wished me joy in a very\nnice manner, and said that he knew I had forgiven those who had done\naught against me. I answered in the affirmative, and gave no further\nmatter for questions; nor did he, but spoke of other trivialities,\nand then went away. Afterwards he came daily to the door, and told me\nwhat news he had heard; he also received wine and meat again. He told\nme, among other things, that many were of opinion that all the\nprisoners would be set at liberty at the wedding of the prince (our\npresent king) which was then talked of; that the bride was to arrive\nwithin a month (it was the end of April when this conversation took\nplace), and that the wedding was to be at the palace.\n\n [120] What he meant by it I know not; perhaps he meant that I\n should die in misery, and that he should live in freedom. That\n anticipation has been just reversed, for his godless life in his\n liberty threw him subsequently into despair, so that he shot\n himself. Whether God will give me freedom in this world is known to\n Him alone.\n\n [121] In the margin is added: 'He could not prevent his boy Paaske\n from having a piece of meat placed for him in front of the door.'\n\nThe arrival of the bride was delayed till the beginning of June, and\nthen the wedding was celebrated in the palace at Nykjobing in\nFalster. Many were of opinion that it took place there in order that\nthe bride might not intercede for me and the doctor.[122] When the\nbride was to be brought to Copenhagen, I said to Christian: 'Now is\nthe time for you to gain your liberty. Let your girl wait and fall on\none knee before the carriage of the bride and hold out a\nsupplication, and then I am sure you will gain your liberty.' He\nasked how the girl should come to be supplicating for him. I said,\n'As your bride--' 'No (and he swore with a terrible oath), she is not\nthat! She imagines it, perhaps, but (he swore again) I will not have\nher.' 'Then leave her in the idea,' I said, 'and let her make her\nsupplication as for her bridegroom.' 'Yes,' he said, in a crestfallen\ntone, 'she may do that.' It was done, as I had advised, and Christian\nwas set at liberty on June 11, 1667. He did not bid me good-bye, and\ndid not even send me a message through the tower-warder or the boy.\nHis gratitude to the girl was that he smashed her window that very\nevening, and made such a drunken noise in the street, that he was\nlocked up in the Town-hall cellar.[123] He came out, however, on the\nfollowing day. His lad Paaske took leave of his master. When he asked\nhim whether he should say anything from him to us, he answered, 'Tell\nthem that I send them to the devil.' Paaske, who brought this\nmessage, said he had answered Christian, 'Half of that is intended\nfor me' (for Christian had already suspected that Paaske had rendered\nservices to the woman). We had a hearty laugh over this message; for\nI said that if Paaske was to have half of it, I should get nothing.\nWe were not a little glad that we were quit of this godless man.\n\n [122] In the margin is added: 'The bride had supplicated for me at\n Nykjobing, but had not gained her object. This was thought to be\n dangerous both for the land and people.'\n\n [123] In the margin is added: 'It was a Sunday; this was the honour\n he showed to God. He went into the wine-house instead of into God's\n house. He came out about twelve o'clock.'\n\nWe lived on in repose throughout the year 1668. I wrote and was\nfurnished with various handiwork, so that Chresten bought nothing for\nme but a couple of books, and these I paid doubly and more than\ndoubly with candles. Karen remained with me the first time more than\nthree years; and as her daughter was then going to be married, and\nshe wished to be at the wedding, she spoke to me as to how it could\nbe arranged, for she would gladly have a promise of returning to me\nwhen the woman whom I was to have in her stead went away. I did not\nknow whether this could be arranged; but I felt confident that I\ncould effect her exit without her feigning herself ill. The prison\ngovernor had already then as clerk Peder Jensen Totzloff,[E44] who\nnow and then performed his duties. To this man I made the proposal,\nmentioning at the same time with compassion the ill health of the\nwoman. I talked afterwards with the prison governor himself about it,\nand he was quite satisfied; for he not only liked this Karen very\nmuch, but he had moreover a woman in the house whom he wished to\nplace with me instead.\n\n [E44] His name was Torslev; see the Introduction and the\n Autobiography.\n\nKaren, Nils' daughter, left me one evening in 1669, and a German\nnamed Cathrina ----[E45] came in her place. Karen took her departure\nwith many tears. She had wept almost the whole day, and I promised to\ndo my utmost that she should come to me when the other went away.\nCathrina had been among soldiers from her youth up; she had married a\nlieutenant at the time the prison governor was a drummer, and had\nstood godmother to one of his sons. She had fallen into poverty after\nher husband's death, and had sat and spun with the wife of the prison\ngovernor for her food. She was greatly given to drinking, and her\nhands trembled so that she could not hold the cup, but was obliged to\nsupport it against her person, and the soup-plate also. The prison\ngovernor told me before she came up that her hands occasionally\ntrembled a little, but not always--that she had been ill a short time\nbefore, and that it would probably pass off. When I asked herself how\nit came on, she said she had had it for many years. I said, 'You are\nnot a woman fit to wait upon me; for if I should be ill, as I was a\nyear or somewhat less ago, you could not properly attend to me.' She\nfell at once down on her knees, wept bitterly, and prayed for God's\nsake that she might remain; that she was a poor widow, and that she\nhad promised the prison governor half the money she was to earn; she\nwould pray heartily to God that I might not be ill, and that she\nwould be true to me, aye, even die for me.\n\n [E45] The name is in blanco; she was probably the Catharina Wolf\n which is mentioned in the Preface.\n\nIt seemed to me that this last was too much of an exaggeration for me\nto believe it (she kept her word, however, and did what I ordered\nher, and I was not ill during her time). She did not care to work.\nShe generally laid down when she had eaten, and drew the coverlid\nover her eyes, saying 'Now I can see nothing.' When she perceived\nthat I liked her to talk, she related whole comedies in her way,\noften acting them, and representing various personages. If she began\nto tell a story, and I said in the middle of her narrative, 'This\nwill have a sorrowful ending,' she would say, 'No, it ends\npleasantly,' and she would give her story a good ending. She would do\nthe reverse, if I said the contrary. She would dance also before me,\nand that for four persons, speaking as she did so for each whom she\nwas representing, and pinching together her mouth and fingers. She\ncalled comedians 'Medicoants.' Various things occurred during her\ntime, which prevented me from looking at her and listening to her as\nmuch as she liked.[124]\n\n [124] In the margin is added: 'A few months after she had come to\n me, she had an attack of ague. She wept, and was afraid. I was well\n satisfied with her, and thought I would see what faith could do, so\n I wrote something on a slip of paper and hung it round her neck.\n The fever left her, and she protested that all her bodily pains\n passed all at once into her legs when I hung the paper round her\n neck. Her legs immediately became much swollen.'\n\nIt happened that Walter,[E46] who in consequence of Dina's affair had\nbeen exiled from Denmark, came over from Sweden and remained\nincognito at Copenhagen. He was arrested and placed in the tower\nhere, below on the ground floor. He was suspected of being engaged\nin some plot. At the same time a French cook and a Swedish baker were\nimprisoned with him, who were accused of having intended to poison\nthe King and Queen. The Swede was placed in the Witch Cell,\nimmediately after Walter's arrest. Some days elapsed before I was\nallowed to know of Walter's arrival, but I knew of it nevertheless.\nOne day at noon, when Walter and the Frenchman were talking aloud\n(for they were always disputing with each other), I asked the prison\ngovernor who were his guests down below, who were talking French. He\nanswered that he had some of various nations, and related who they\nwere, but why they were imprisoned he knew not, especially in\nWalter's case.\n\n [E46] Walter's participation in the plot of Dina is mentioned in\n the Introduction. He was then ordered to leave the country, but\n afterwards obtained a pardon and permission to return. He does not\n seem to have availed himself of this till the year 1668; but his\n conduct was very suspicious, and he was at once arrested and placed\n in the Blue Tower, where he died towards the end of April 1670.\n\nThe two before-mentioned quarrelled together, so that Walter was\nplaced in the Witch Cell with the Swede, and the Frenchman was\nconveyed to the Dark Church, where he was ill, and never even came to\nthe peep-hole in the door, but lay just within. I dared not send him\nanything, on account of the accusation against him. Walter was\nimprisoned for a long time, and the Frenchman was liberated. When M.\nBock came to me, to give me Christ's body and blood, I told him\nbefore receiving the Lord's Supper of Walter's affair, which had been\nproved, but I mentioned to him that at the time I had been requested\nto leave Denmark through Uldrich Christian Gyldenlove. Gyldenlove had\nsworn to me that the king was at the time not thoroughly convinced of\nthe matter, and I had complained that his Majesty had not taken pains\nto convince himself; and I requested the priest to ask the\nStadtholder to manage that Walter should now be examined in Dina's\naffair, and that he and I should be confronted together in the\npresence of some ministers; that this could be done without any\ngreat noise, for the gentlemen could come through the secret passage\ninto the tower. The priest promised to arrange this;[125] he did so,\nand on the third day after Walter was placed in the Dark Church, so\nthat I expected for a long time every day that we should be examined,\nbut it was prevented by the person whose interest it was to prevent\nit.[E47]\n\n [125] In the margin is added: 'When the priest left me, he spoke\n with Walter in front of the grated hole, told him of my desire, and\n its probable result. Walter laughed ironically, and said, \"My hair\n will not stand on end for fear of that matter being mooted again.\n The Queen knows that full well. Say that too!\" While Walter was in\n the Witch Cell hole, he had written to the Queen, but the King\n received the paper.'\n\n [E47] Leonora alludes, no doubt, to the Queen Sophia Amalia.\n\nWalter remained imprisoned,[126] and quarrelled almost daily with\nChresten, calling him a thief and a robber. (Chresten had found some\nducats which Walter had concealed under a stool; the foolish Walter\nallowed the Swede to see that he hid ducats and an ink-bottle between\nthe girths under the stool, and he afterwards struck the Swede, who\nbetrayed him.) Chresten slyly allowed Walter to take a little\nexercise in the hall of the tower, and in the meanwhile he searched\nthe stool. It may well be imagined that at the everlasting scolding\nChresten was annoyed, and he did not procure Walter particularly good\nfood from the kitchen; so that sometimes he could not eat either of\nthe two dishes ordered for him; and when Walter said one day, 'If you\nwould give me only one dish of which I could eat, it would be quite\nenough,' Chresten arranged it so that Walter only received one dish,\nand often could not eat of that. (This was to Chresten's own damage,\nfor he was entitled to the food that was left; but he was ready to\nforego this, so long as he could annoy the others.)\n\n [126] In the margin is noted: 'I looked through a hole in my\n outermost door at the time that Walter was brought up in the Dark\n Church. He wept aloud. I afterwards saw him once in front of the\n hole of the door of his cell. He was very dirty, and had a large\n beard full of dirt, very clotted.'\n\nOnce Chresten came to him with a dish of rice-porridge, and began at\nonce to quarrel with him, so that the other became angry (just as\nchildren do), and would eat nothing. Chresten carried the porridge\naway again directly, and laughed heartily. I said to Chresten, in the\nprison governor's presence, 'Though God has long delayed to punish\nWalter, his punishment is all the heavier now, for he could scarcely\nhave fallen into more unmerciful hands than yours.' He laughed\nheartily at this, and the prison governor did the same. And as there\nis a hole passing from the Dark Church into the outer room, those who\nare inside there can call upstairs, so that one can plainly hear what\nis said. So Walter one day called to the prison governor, and begged\nhim to give him a piece of roast meat; the prison governor called to\nhim, 'Yes, we will roast a rat for you!' I sent him a piece of roast\nmeat through Chresten; when he took it, and heard that I had sent it\nto him, he wept.\n\nThus the time passed, I had always work to do, and I wrote also a\ngood deal.[127] The priest was tired of administering the Lord's\nSupper to me, and he let me wait thirteen and fourteen days; when he\ndid come, he performed his office _par maniere d'acquit_. I said\nnothing about it, but the woman, who is a German, also received the\nLord's Supper from him; she made much of it, especially once (the\nlast time he confessed her); for then I waited four days for him\nbefore it suited him to come, and at last he came. It was Wednesday,\nabout nine o'clock. He never greeted us, nor did he wish me joy to\nthe act I intended to perform. This time he said, as he shook hands,\n'I have not much time to wait, I have a child to baptise.' I knew\nwell that this could not be true, but I answered 'In God's name!'\nWhen he was to receive the woman's confession, he would not sit down,\nbut said 'Now go on, I have no time,' and scarcely gave her time to\nconfess, absolved her quickly, and read the consecrating service at\nposthaste speed. When he was gone, the woman was very impatient, and\nsaid that she had received the holy communion in the field from a\nmilitary chaplain, with the whole company (since they were ready to\nattack the enemy on the following day), but that the priest had not\nraced through God's word as this one had done; she had gained nothing\nfrom it.\n\n [127] In the margin is added: 'From books which had been secretly\n lent me, and I did so with the pen and ink I have before mentioned,\n on any pieces of paper which I happened to procure.'\n\nI comforted her as well as I could, read and sang to her, told her\nshe should repent and be sorry for her sins, and labour to amend her\nways, and not be distracted by the want of devotion in the priest;\nshe could appropriate to herself Christ's sufferings and merits for\nthe forgiveness of her sins, for the priest had given her his body\nand blood in the bread and wine. 'Yes,' she answered, 'I shall, with\nGod's will, be a better Christian.' I said 'Will you keep what you\nhave promised me?' Her vow was, not to drink herself tipsy, as she\nhad once done. I will not omit to mention this. She received, as I\nhave before said, half a pint of French wine at each meal, and I half\na measure of Rhine wine. She could drink both portions without being\nquite intoxicated, for at her meal she drank the French wine and lay\ndown; and when she got up in the afternoon she drank my wine.[128] In\nthe evening she kept my wine for breakfast, but once she had in her\ncup both my wine and her own, so that at noon she had two half-pints\nof wine; she sat there and drank it so quietly, and I paid no\nattention to her, being at the moment engaged in a speculation about\na pattern which I wanted to knit; at length I looked at her because\nit was so long before she laid down; then she turned over all the\nvessels, one after another, and there was nothing in them. I accosted\nher and said, 'How is it? have you drank all the wine?' She could\nscarcely answer. She tried to stand up, and could not. 'To bed, you\ndrunken sow,' said I. She tried to move, but could not; she was sick,\nand crept along by the wall to fetch a broom. When she had the broom,\nshe could do nothing with it. I told her to crawl into bed and lie\ndown; she crawled along and fell with her face on the bed, while her\nfeet were on the ground. There she was sick again, and remained so\nlying, and slept. It is easy to imagine how I felt.\n\n [128] In the margin is noted: 'Chresten was not well satisfied with\n the woman, for in her time he never received a draught of wine, so\n that he once stole the wine from her can and substituted something\n impure in its place; at this she made a great noise, begged me for\n God's sake to give her leave to strike Chresten with the can. She\n did not gain permission to do so; she told Chresten afterwards that\n she had not dared to do it, for my sake. She had a great scar on\n one cheek, which a soldier had once given her for a similar act.'\n\nShe slept in this way for a couple of hours, but still did not quite\nsleep off her intoxication; for when she wanted afterwards to clean\nherself and the room, she remained for a long time sitting on a low\nstool, the broom between her knees and her hair about her ears. She\ntook off her bodice to wash it, and so she sat with her bosom\nuncovered, an ugly sight; she kept bemoaning herself, praying to God\nto help her, as she was nigh unto death. I was angry, but I could\nscarcely help laughing at this sad picture. When the moaning and\nlamenting were over, I said angrily, 'Yes, may God help you, you\ndrunkard; to the guards' station you ought to go; I will not have\nsuch a drunkard about me; go and sleep it out, and don't let me hear\nyou talk of God when you are not sober, for then God is far from you\nand the d----l is near!' (I laughed afterwards at myself.) She laid\ndown again, and about four o'clock she was quite sober, made herself\nperfectly clean, and sat quietly weeping. Then she threw herself with\ngreat excitement at my feet, clung to them, howled and clamoured, and\nbegged for God's sake that I would forgive her this once, and that it\nshould never happen again; said how she had kept the wine &c.; that\nif I would only keep her half a year, she would have enough to\npurchase her admission into the hospital at Luebeck.\n\nI thought I would take good care that she did not get so much again\nat once, and also that perhaps if I had another in her place she\nmight be worse in other things. Karen could not have come at this\ntime, for her daughter was expecting her confinement, and I knew that\nshe would then not be quiet. So I promised her to keep her for the\ntime she mentioned. She kept her word moreover, and I so arranged it\nsix weeks later that she received no more wine, and from this time\nthe woman received no wine; my wine alone could not hurt her. She was\nquite intimate with Walter. She had known him formerly, and Chresten\nwas of opinion that he had given her all his money before he was ill;\nfor he said that Walter had no money any longer. What there was in it\nI know not. Honest she was not, for she stole from me first a brass\nknitting-pin, which I used at that time; it was formed like a bodkin,\nand the woman never imagined but that it was gold. As my room is not\nlarge, it could soon be searched, but I looked for three days and\ncould not find the pin. I was well aware that she had it, for it is\nnot so small as not to be seen, so I said afterwards, 'This brass pin\nis of no great importance; I can get another for two pence.' The next\nday she showed me the pin, in a large crevice on the floor between\nthe stones. But when she afterwards, shortly before she left, found\none of my gold earrings which I had lost, and which undoubtedly had\nbeen left on the pillow, for it was a snake ring, this was never\nreturned, say what I would about it. She made a show of looking for\nit in the dirt outside; she knew I dared not say that I had missed\nit.\n\nThe prison governor at this time came up but rarely; Peder Jensen\nwaited on me.[129] His Majesty was ill for a short time, and died\nsuddenly on February 9, 1670. And as on the same day at twelve\no'clock the palace bell tolled, I was well aware what this indicated,\nthough the woman was not. We conversed on the subject, who it might\nbe. She could perceive that I was sad, and she said: 'That might be\nfor the King, for the last time I saw him on the stairs, getting out\nof the carriage, he could only move with difficulty, and I said to\nmyself that it would soon be over with him. If he is dead, you will\nhave your liberty, that is certain.' I was silent, and thought\notherwise, which was the case. About half-past four o'clock the fire\nwas generally lighted in the outside stove, and this was done by a\nlad whom Chresten at that time employed. I called him to the door and\nasked him why the bell had tolled for a whole hour at noon. He\nanswered, 'I may not say; I am forbidden.' I said that I would not\nbetray him. He then told me that the King had died in the morning. I\ngave free vent to my tears, which I had restrained, at which the\nwoman was astonished, and talked for a long time.\n\n [129] In the margin is added: 'At this time I had six prisoners for\n my neighbours. Three were peasants from Femeren, who were accused\n of having exported some sheep; the other three were Danish. They\n were divided in two parties, and as the Danes were next the door, I\n gave them some food; they had moreover been imprisoned some time\n before the others. When the Danes, according to their custom, sang\n the morning and evening psalms, the Germans growled forth with all\n their might another song in order to drown their voices; they\n generally sang the song of Dorothea.' [E48]\n\n [E48] The song of St. Dorothea exists in many German and Danish\n versions.\n\nI received all that she said in silence, for I never trusted her. I\nbegged her to ask Chresten, when he unlocked the door, what the\ntolling intimated. She did so, but Chresten answered that he did not\nknow. The prison governor came up the same evening, but he did not\nspeak with me. He came up also the next day at noon. I requested to\nspeak with him, and enquired why the bell had sounded. He answered\nironically, 'What is that to you? Does it not ring every day?' I\nreplied somewhat angrily: 'What it is to me God knows! This I know,\nthat the castle bell is not tolled for your equals!' He took off his\nhat and made me a bow, and said, 'Your ladyship desires nothing\nelse?' I answered, 'St. Martin comes for you too.'[E49] 'St. Martin?'\nhe said, and laughed, and went away and went out to Walter, standing\nfor a long time whispering with him in front of the hole; I could see\nhim, as he well knew.[130] He was undoubtedly telling him of the\nKing's death, and giving him hope that he would be liberated from\nprison. God designed it otherwise. Walter was ill, and lay for a long\ntime in great misery. He behaved very badly to Chresten; took the\ndirt from the floor and threw it into the food; spat into the beer,\nand allowed Chresten to see him do so when he carried the can away.\nEvery day Chresten received the titles of thief and rogue, so that it\nmay easily be imagined how Chresten tormented him. When I sent him\nsome meat, either stewed or roasted, Chresten came back with it and\nsaid he would not have it. I begged Chresten to leave it with him,\nand he would probably eat it later. This he did once, and then\nChresten showed me how full it was of dirt and filth.[131]\n\n [E49] The feast of St. Martin is supposed the proper time for\n killing pigs in Denmark. It is reported that when Corfitz Uldfeldt,\n in 1652, had published a defence of his conduct previously to his\n leaving Denmark the year before, he sent a copy to Peder Vibe, one\n of his principal adversaries, with this inscription:--\n\n     Chaque pourceau a son St. Martin;\n     Tu n'echapperas pas, mais auras le tien.\n\n [130] In the margin is added: 'As I was to receive clothes, I asked\n for mourning clothes. Then the prison governor asked me for whom I\n wished to mourn, and this in a most ironical manner. I answered:\n \"It is not for your aunt; it is not for me to mourn for her,\n although your aunt has been dead long. I think you have as good\n reason for wearing mourning as I.\" He said he would report it. I\n did not receive them at once.'\n\n [131] In the margin is added: 'Chresten showed me once some bread,\n from which Walter had taken the crumb, and had filled it full of\n straw and dirt, in fact, of the very worst kind.'\n\nWhen Chresten had to turn Walter in bed, the latter screamed so\npitifully that I felt sympathy with him, and begged Chresten not to\nbe so unmerciful to him. He laughed and said, 'He is a rogue.' I\nsaid, 'Then he is in his master's hands.' This pleased Chresten well.\nWalter suffered much pain; at length God released him. His body was\nleft in the prison until his brother came, who ordered it to be\nburied in the German Church. When I heard that Karen could come to me\nagain, and the time was over which I had promised the other to keep\nher, Cathrina went down and Karen returned to me. This was easily\neffected, for the prison governor was not well pleased with Cathrina;\nshe gave him none of her money, as she had promised, but only empty\nwords in its place, such as that he was not in earnest, and that he\nsurely did not wish to have anything from her, &c.[132] The prison\ngovernor began immediately to pay me less respect, when he perceived\nthat my liberation was not expected.\n\n [132] In the margin is added; 'The prison governor also severely\n reprimanded the woman because she had told me that the King was\n dead; that it would not go as well with me as I thought. She gave\n him word for word.'\n\nWhen the time came at which I was accustomed to receive the holy\ncommunion, I begged the prison governor that he should manage that I\nshould have the court preacher, D. Hans Laet, as the former court\npreacher, D. Mathias Foss, had come to me on the first occasion in my\nprison. The prison governor stated my desire, and his Majesty\nassented. D. Hans Laet was already in the tower, down below, but he\nwas called back because the Queen Dowager (who was still in the\npalace) would not allow it; and the prison governor sent me word,\nthrough Peder Jensen, that the King had said I was to be content with\nthe clergyman to whom I was accustomed, so that the necessary\npreparation for the Lord's Supper was postponed till the following\nday, when Mag. Buck came to me and greeted me in an unusual manner,\ncongratulating me in a long oration on my intention, saluting me\n'your Grace.' When he was seated, he said, 'I should have been glad\nif D. Hans Laet had come in my place.' I replied, 'I had wished it\nalso.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I know well why you wished it so. You wish to\nknow things, and that is forbidden me. You have already caused one\nman to lose his employ.' I asked him whether I had ever desired to\nknow anything from him? 'No,' he replied, 'you know well that you\nwould learn nothing from me; for that reason you have asked me\nnothing.' 'Does the Herr Mag, then,' I said, 'mean that I desired D.\nHans Laet in order to hear news of him?' He hesitated a little, and\nthen said, 'You wanted to have D. Hans Laet in order that he might\nspeak for you with the King.' I said, 'There may perhaps be something\nin that.' Upon this he began to swear all kinds of oaths (such as I\nhave never heard before),[133] that he had spoken for me. (I thought:\n'I have no doubt you have spoken of me, but not in my favour.') He\nhad given me a book which I still have; it is 'St. Augustini\nManuali;' the Statholder Gabel had bought it, as he said more than\nonce, protesting by God that it had cost the Herr Statholder a\nrix-dollar. (I thought of the 5,000 rix-dollars which Gabel received,\nthat we might be liberated from our confinement at Borringholm, but I\nsaid nothing; perhaps for this reason he repeated the statement so\noften.) I asked him whom I had caused to lose his employ. He\nanswered, 'Hans Balcke.[134] He told you that Treasurer Gabel was\nStatholder, and he ought not to have done so.' I said, 'I do not\nbelieve that Balcke knew that he ought not to say it, for he did not\ntell it to me as a secret. One might say just as well that H.\nMagister had caused Balcke to lose his place.' He was very angry at\nthis, and various disputes arose on the subject. He began again just\nas before, that I wanted to have D. Laet, he knew why. I said, 'I did\nnot insist specially on having D. Laet; but if not him, the chaplain\nof the castle, or another.' He asked, 'Why another?' I replied,\n'Because it is not always convenient to the Herr Magister. I have\nbeen obliged to wait for him ten, twelve, and even fourteen days, and\nthe last time he administered his office in great haste, so that it\nis not convenient for him to come when I require him.' He sat turning\nover my words, not knowing what to answer, and at last he said; 'You\nthink it will go better with you now because King Frederick is dead.\nNo, you deceive yourself! It will go worse with you, it will go worse\nwith you!' And as he was growing angry, I became more composed and I\nasked gently why so, and from what could he infer it? He answered, 'I\ninfer it from the fact that you have not been able to get your will\nin desiring another clergyman and confessor; so I assure you things\nwill not be better with you. If King Frederick is dead, King\nChristian is alive.' I said: 'That is a bad foundation; your words of\nthreatening have no basis. If I have not this time been able to\nobtain another confessor, it does not follow that I shall not have\nanother at another time. And what have I done, that things should go\nworse with me?' He was more and more angry, and exclaimed aloud\nseveral times, 'Worse, yes, it will be worse!' Then I also answered\nangrily, 'Well, then let it come.'\n\n [133] In the margin is added: 'Among his terrible curses was one\n that his tongue might be paralysed if he had not spoken for me. The\n following year God struck him with paralysis of the tongue; he had\n a stroke from anger, and lived eight days afterwards; he was in his\n senses, but he was not able to speak, and he died; but he lived to\n see the day when another clergyman administered the holy communion\n to me.'\n\n [134] In the margin is added: 'I saw now that this was the cause of\n Balcke's dismissal.'\n\nUpon this he was quite silent, and I said: 'You have given me a good\npreparation; now, in God's name!' Then I made my confession, and he\nadministered his office and went away without any other farewell than\ngiving me his hand. I learned afterwards that before M. Buck came to\nme he went to the prison governor, who was in bed, and begged him to\ntell Knud, who was at that time page of the chamber,[E50] what a\nsacramental woman I was; how I had dug a hole in the floor in order\nto speak with the doctor (which was an impossibility), and how I had\npractised climbing up and looking out on the square. He begged him\nseveral times to tell this to the page of the chamber: 'That is a\nsacramental woman!'[135]\n\n [E50] This Knud was the favourite of King Christian V., Adam Levin\n Knuth, one of the many Germans who then exercised a most\n unfavourable influence on the affairs of Denmark.\n\n [135] In the margin is added: 'Chresten, who was ill satisfied both\n with Karen and with me, gave us a different title one day, when he\n was saying something to one of the house-servants, upon which the\n latter asked him who had said it? Chresten answered, 'She who is\n kept up there for her.' When I was told of this, I laughed and\n said, 'That is quite right, we are two \"shes.\"'\n\nIn the end of April in the same year my door was opened one\nafternoon, and the prison governor came in with some ladies, who kept\nsomewhat aside until he had said, 'Here are some of the maids of\nhonour, who are permitted to speak to you.' There came in first a\nyoung lady whom I did not know. Next appeared the Lady Augusta of\nGluecksburg, whom I recognised at once, as she was but little altered.\nNext followed the Electoral Princess of Saxony, whom I at once\nrecognised from her likeness to her royal father, and last of all our\ngracious Queen, whom I chiefly looked at, and found the lineaments of\nher countenance just as Peder Jensen had described them. I saw also a\nlarge diamond on her bracelet, and one on her finger, where her glove\nwas cut. Her Majesty supported herself against the folding table as\nsoon as she had greeted me. Lady Augusta ran up and down into every\ncorner, and the Electoral Princess remained at the door. Lady Augusta\nsaid: 'Fye, what a disgusting room this is! I could not live a day in\nit. I wonder that you have been able to endure it so long.' I\nanswered, 'The room is such as pleases God and his Majesty, and so\nlong as God will I shall be able to endure it.' She began a\nconversation with the prison governor, who was half tipsy, and spoke\nwith him about Balcke's marriage, whose wedding with his third wife\nwas taking place on that very day; she spoke against marrying so\noften, and the prison governor replied with various silly speeches.\nShe asked me if I was plagued with fleas. I replied that I could\nfurnish her with a regiment of fleas, if she would have them. She\nreplied hastily with an oath, and swore that she did not want them.\n\nHer question made me somewhat ironical, and I was annoyed at the\ndelight she exhibited at my miserable condition; so when she asked me\nwhether I had body or wall lice, I answered her with a question, and\nenquired whether my brother-in-law Hanibal Sehested was still alive?\nThis question made her somewhat draw in, for she perceived that I\nknew her. She made no answer. The Electoral Princess, who probably\nhad heard of my brother-in-law's intrigues with Lady Augusta,[E51]\nwent quickly up to the table (the book lay on it, in which Karen used\nto read, and which she had brought in with her), took the book,\nopened it and asked whether it was mine. I replied that it belonged\nto the woman whom I had taught to read, and as I gave the Electoral\nPrincess her fitting title of Serene Highness, Lady Augusta said:\n'You err! You are mistaken; she is not the person whom you think.' I\nanswered, 'I am not mistaken.' After this she said no more, but gave\nme her hand without a word. The gracious Queen looked sadly on, but\nsaid nothing. When her Majesty gave me her hand, I kissed it and held\nit fast, and begged her Majesty to intercede for me, at any rate for\nsome alleviation of my captivity. Her Majesty replied not with words,\nbut with a flood of tears. The virtuous Electoral Princess cried\nalso; she wept very sorrowfully. And when they had reached the\nanteroom and my door was closed, both the Queen and the Electoral\nPrincess said, 'It is a sin to treat her thus!' They shuddered; and\neach said, 'Would to God that it rested with me! she should not stay\nthere.' Lady Augusta urged them to go away, and mentioned it\nafterwards to the Queen Dowager, who said that I had myself to thank\nfor it; I had deserved to be worse treated than this.\n\n [E51] Hannibal Sehested was dead already in 1666, as Leonora was no\n doubt well aware. The whole passage seems to indicate that he is\n supposed to have had some love-intrigue with the duchess. Nothing\n has transpired on this subject from other sources, but it is\n certain that her husband, Duke Ernst Gynther, for some time at\n least, was very unfriendly disposed to Hannibal Sehested.\n\nWhen the King's funeral was over, and the Queen Dowager had left the\ncastle, I requested the prison governor that he should execute my\nmessage and solicit another clergyman for me, either the chaplain of\nthe castle or the arsenal chaplain, or the one who usually attended\nto the prisoners; for if I could get no other than M. Buck, they must\ntake the sin on their own heads, for that I would not again confess\nto him. A short time elapsed, but at length the chaplain of the\ncastle, at that time M. Rodolff Moth, was assigned me. God, who has\never stood by me in all my adversity, and who in my sorrow and\ndistress has sent me unexpected consolation, gave me peculiar comfort\nin this man. He consoled me with the Word of God; he was a learned\nand conversable man, and he interceded for me with his Majesty. The\nfirst favour which he obtained for me was, that I was granted another\napartment on July 16, 1671, and Bishop D. Jesper's postil.\n\nHe afterwards by degrees obtained still greater favours for me. I\nreceived 200 rix-dollars as a gift, to purchase such clothes for\nmyself as I desired, and anything I might wish for to beguile the\ntime.[136]\n\n [136] In the margin is noted: 'Some of my money I expended on\n books, and it is remarkable that I obtained from M. Buck's books\n (which were sold by auction) among others the great Martilegium, in\n folio, which he would not lend me. I excerpted and translated\n various matters from Spanish, Italian, French, and German authors.\n I especially wrote out and translated into Danish the female\n personages of different rank and origin, who were mentioned with\n praise by the authors as valiant, true, chaste and sensible,\n patient, steadfast and scholarly.' [E52]\n\n [E52] The Martilegium was probably a German history of Martyrs,\n entitled 'Martilogium (for martyrologium) der Heiligen' (Strasburg\n 1484, fol.). The extracts to which she refers were no doubt her\n earliest collections for her work on Heroines.\n\nIn this year her Majesty the Queen became pregnant, and her Majesty's\nmother, the Landgravine of Hesse, came to be with her in her\nconfinement. On September 6 her Serene Highness visited me in my\nprison, at first wishing to remain incognito. She had with her a\nPrincess of Curland, who was betrothed to the son of the Landgravine;\nher lady in waiting, a Wallenstein by birth; and the wife of her\nmaster of the household. The Landgravine greeted me with a kiss, and\nthe others followed her example. I did not at that time recognise the\nwife of the master of the household, but she had known me formerly in\nmy prosperity at the Hague, when she had been in the service of the\nCountess Leuenstein, and the tears stood in her eyes.\n\nThe Landgravine lamented my hard fate and my unhappy circumstances. I\nthanked her Serene Highness for the gracious sympathy she felt with\nme, and said that she might help much in alleviating my fetters, if\nnot in liberating me from them entirely. The Landgravine smiled and\nsaid, 'I see well you take me for another than I am.' I said, 'Your\nSerene Highness's deportment and appearance will not allow you to\nconceal your rank, were you even in peasant's attire.' This pleased\nher; she laughed and jested, and said she had not thought of that.\nThe lady in waiting agreed with me, and said that I had spoken very\njustly in saying that I had recognised her by her royal appearance.\nUpon this the Landgravine said, 'You do not know her?' pointing to\nthe Princess of Curland. She then said who she was, and afterwards\nwho her lady in waiting was, and also the wife of the master of the\nhousehold, who was as I have before mentioned. She spoke of the pity\nwhich this lady felt for me, and added 'Et moy pas moins.' I thanked\nher 'Altesse tres-humblement et la prioit en cette occasion de faire\nvoir sa genereuse conduite.' Her Serene Highness looked at the prison\ngovernor as though she would say that we might speak French too long;\nshe took off her glove and gave me her hand, pressing mine and\nsaying, 'Croyez-moy, je fairez mon possible.' I kissed her Serene\nHighness's hand, and she then took leave of me with a kiss.\n\nThe virtuous Landgravine kept her word, but could effect nothing.\nWhen her Majesty the Queen was in the perils of childbirth, she went\nto the King and obtained from him a solemn promise that if the Queen\ngave birth to a son I should receive my liberty. On October 11, in\nthe night between one and two o'clock, God delivered her Majesty in\nsafety of our Crown Prince. When all present were duly rejoicing at\nthe Prince's birth, the Landgravine said, 'Oh! will not the captive\nrejoice!' The Queen Dowager enquired 'Why?' The Landgravine related\nthe King's promise. The Queen Dowager was so angry that she was ill.\nShe loosened her jacket, and said she would return home; that she\nwould not wait till the child was baptised. Her coach appeared in the\npalace square. The King at length persuaded her to remain till the\nbaptism was over, but he was obliged to promise with an oath that I\nshould not be liberated. This vexed the virtuous Landgravine not a\nlittle, that the Queen should have induced her son to break his\npromise; and she persisted in saying that a king ought to keep his\nvow. The Queen Dowager answered, 'My son has before made a vow, and\nthis he has broken by his promise to your Serene Highness.' The\nLandgravine said at last: 'If I cannot bring about the freedom of the\nprisoner, at least let her, at my request, be removed to a better\nplace, with somewhat more liberty. It is not to the King's\nreputation that she is imprisoned there. She is, after all, a king's\ndaughter, and I know that much injustice is done to her.' The Queen\nDowager was annoyed at these words, and said, 'Now, she shall not\ncome out; she shall remain where she is!' The Landgravine answered,\n'If God will, she will assuredly come out, even though your Majesty\nmay will it not;' so saying, she rose and went out.\n\nOn October 18 the lady in waiting, Wallenstein, sent for Peder Jensen\nTotzloff, and delivered to him by command a book entitled, D.\nHeinrich Mueller's 'Geistliche Erquickstunden,'[E53] which he gave me\nwith a gracious message from the Landgravine. On the same day I sent\nher Serene Highness, through Totzloff, my dutiful thanks, and\nTotzloff took the book back to the lady in waiting, with the request\nthat she would endeavour to prevail on her Highness to show me the\ngreat favour of placing her name and motto in the book, in\nremembrance of her Highness's generosity and kindness. I lamented my\ncondition in this also, that from such a place I could not spread\nabroad her Serene Highness's praise and estimable benefits, and make\nthe world acquainted with them; but that I would do what I could, and\nI would include her Serene Highness and all her family in my prayers\nfor their welfare both of soul and body. (This I have done, and will\ndo, so long as God spares my life.)\n\n [E53] 'Hours of Spiritual Refreshment.' This very popular book of\n devotion was first published in 1664, and had an extraordinary run\n both in Germany and, through translations, in Denmark. The last\n Danish extract of it was published in 1846, and reached the third\n edition in 1856.\n\nOn October 23 I received the book back through Totzloff, and I found\nwithin it the following lines, written by the Landgravine's own\nhand:\n\n          1671.\n\n      Ce qui n'est pas en ta puissance\n      Ne doit point troubler ton repos;\n      Tu balances mal a propos\n      Entre la crainte et l'esperance.\n      Laisse faire ton Dieu et ton roy,\n      Et suporte avec passience ce qu'il resoud pour toy.\n\n  Je prie Dieu de vous faire cette grace, et que je vous puisse\n  tesmoigner combien je suis,\n\n          Madame, vostre tres-affectionee a vous servir,\n                                            {Monogram}\n\nThe book is still in my possession, and I sent word through Totzloff\nto the lady in waiting to request her to convey my most humble thanks\nto her Highness; and afterwards, when the Landgravine was about to\nstart on her journey, to commend me to her Serene Highness's favour.\n\nIn the same year, 1671, Karen, Nils' daughter, left me on account of\nill health. For one night a woman was with me named Margrete, who was\na serf from Holstein. She had run away from her master. She was a\nvery awkward peasant woman, so towards evening on the following day\nshe was sent away, and in her place there came a woman named Inger, a\nperson of loose character. This woman gave herself out as the widow\nof a non-commissioned officer, and that she had long been in service\nat Hamburg, and nursed lying-in women. It happened with her, as is\noften the case, that one seeks to obtain a thing, and that to one's\nown vexation. Chresten had spoken for this woman with the prison\ngovernor, and had praised her before me, but the prison governor took\nupon another recommendation the before-mentioned Margrete. So long as\nthere was hope that the Landgravine might obtain my freedom, this\nwoman was very amenable, but afterwards she began by degrees to show\nwhat was in her, and that it was not for nothing that she resembled\nDina.\n\nShe caused me annoyance of various kinds, which I received with\npatience, thinking within myself that it was another trial imposed by\nGod upon me, and Dina's intrigues often came into my mind, and I\nthought, 'Suppose she should devise some Dina plot?' (She is capable\nof it, if she had only an instigator, as Dina had.) Among other\nannoyances, which may not be reckoned among the least, was this: I\nwas one day not very well, having slept but little or not at all\nduring the night, and I had lain down to sleep on the bed in the day;\nand she would give me no rest, but came softly past me in her socks,\nand in order to wake me teased a dog which I had,[137] so that he\ngrowled. I asked her why she grudged my sleeping? She answered, 'I\ndid not know that you were asleep.' 'Why, then,' I said, 'did you go\nby in your stockings?' She replied, 'If you saw that, then you were\nnot asleep,' and she laughed heartily by herself. (She sat always in\nfront of my table with her back turned to me; whether it was because\nshe had lost one eye that she sat in that position to the light, I\nknow not.)\n\n [137] In the margin is added: 'This dog was of an Icelandic breed,\n not pretty, but very faithful and sagacious. He slept every\n afternoon on the stool, and when she had fallen asleep, she let her\n hands hang down. Then the dog would get up and run softly and bite\n her finger till the blood came. If she threw down her slippers, he\n would take one and sit upon it. She never got it back again without\n a bloody finger.'\n\nI did not care for any conversation with her, so I lay still; and\nwhen she thought I was asleep, she got up again and teased the dog. I\nsaid, 'You tax my patience sorely; but if once my passion rises, you\nwill certainly get something which will astonish you, you base\naccursed thing!' 'Base accursed thing,' she repeated to herself with\na slight laugh. I prayed to God that he would restrain me, so that I\nmight not lay violent hands on this base creature. And as I had the\nother apartment (as I have before mentioned),[138] I went out and\nwalked up and down between four and five o'clock. She washed and\nsplashed outside, and spilled the water exactly where I was walking.\nI told her several times to leave her splashing, as she spilled the\nwater in all directions on the floor, so that I made my clothes\ndirty, and often there was not a drop of water for my dog to drink,\nand the tower-warder had to fetch her water from the kitchen spring.\nThis was of no avail. One day it occurred to her, just as the bell\nhad sounded four, to go out and pour all the water on the floor, and\nthen come back again. When I went to the door, I perceived what she\nhad done. Without saying a word, I struck her first on one cheek and\nthen on the other, so that the blood ran from her nose and mouth, and\nshe fell against her bench, and knocked the skin from her shin-bone.\nShe began to be abusive, and said she had never in her life had such\na box on her ears. I said immediately, 'Hold your tongue, or you will\nhave another like it! I am now only a little angry, but if you make\nme really angry I shall strike you harder.' She was silent for the\ntime, but she caused me all the small annoyance she could.\n\n [138] In the margin is this note: 'In the year 1672, on the 4th\n May, one of the house-servants was arrested for stealing. Adam\n Knudt, at that time gentleman of the chamber, himself saw him take\n several ducats early one morning from the King's trousers, which\n were hanging against the walls. He was at first for some hours my\n neighbour in the Dark Church. He was then placed in the Witch Cell,\n and as he was to be tortured, he received secret warning of it\n (which was forbidden), so that when the executioner came he was\n found to have hung himself. That is to say, he was said to have\n hung himself, though to all appearance this was not possible; he\n was found with a cloth round his neck, which was a swaddling-cloth\n belonging to one of Chresten, the tower-warder's, children.\n Chresten became my neighbour, and was ostensibly brought to\n justice, but he was acquitted and reinstated in his office.\n\nI received it all with gentleness, fearing that I might lay violent\nhands on her. She scarcely knew what to devise to cause me vexation;\nshe had a silver thimble on which a strange name was engraved; she\nhad found it, she said, in a dust-heap in the street. I once asked\nher where she had found some handkerchiefs which she had of fine\nDutch linen, with lace on them, which likewise were marked with\nanother name; they were embroidered with blue silk, and there was a\ndifferent name on each. She had bought them, she said, at an auction\nat Hamburg.[139] I thought that the damage she had received on one of\nher eyes might very likely have arisen from her having 'found'\nsomething of that kind,[E54] and as I soon after asked her by what\naccident she had injured her eye, she undoubtedly understood my\nquestion well, for she was angry and rather quiet, and said, 'What\ninjury? There is nothing the matter with my eye; I can, thank God,\nsee with both.' I let the matter rest there. Soon after this\nconversation she came down one day from upstairs, feeling in her\npocket, though she said nothing until the afternoon, when the doors\nwere locked, and then she looked through all her rubbish, saying 'If\nI only knew where it could be?' I asked what she was looking for. 'My\nthimble,' she said. 'You will find it,' I said; 'only look\nthoroughly!' And as she had begun to look for it in her pockets\nbefore she had required it, I thought she might have drawn it out of\nher pocket with some paper which she used, and which she had bought.\nI said this, but it could not be so.\n\n [139] In the margin is added: 'She was so proud of her knowledge of\n German that when she sang a morning hymn (which, however rarely\n happened) she interspersed it with German words. I once asked her\n if she knew what her mother's cat was called in Danish, and I said\n something at which she was angry.\n\n [E54] It was a common superstition that persons who understood the\n art of showing by magic the whereabouts of stolen goods, had the\n power, by use of their formulas alone, to deprive the thief of an\n eye.\n\nOn the following day, towards noon, she again behaved as if she were\nlooking for it upstairs; and when the door was closed she began to\ngive loose to her tongue, and to make a long story about the thimble,\nwhere it could possibly be. 'There was no one here, and no one came\nin except us two;' and she gave me to understand that I had taken it;\nshe took her large box which she had, and rummaged out everything\nthat was in it, and said, 'Now you can see that I have not got it.' I\nsaid that I did not care about it, whether she had it or no, but that\nI saw that she accused me of stealing. She adhered to it, and said,\n'Who else could have taken it? There is no one else here, and I have\nlet you see all that is mine, and it is not there.' Then for the\nfirst time I saw that she wished that I should let her see in the\nsame manner what I had in my cardbox, for she had never seen anything\nof the work which I had done before her time. I said, 'I do not care\nat all what you do with your thimble, and I respect myself too much\nto quarrel with you or to mind your coarse and shameless accusation.\nI have, thank God, enough in my imprisonment to buy what I require,\n&c. But as you perhaps have stolen it, you now imagine that it has\nbeen stolen again from you, if it be true that you have lost it.' To\nthis she made no answer, so that I believe she had it herself, and\nonly wanted by this invention to gain a sight of my things. As it was\nthe Christmas month and very cold, and Chresten was lighting a fire\nin the stove before the evening meal, I said to him in her presence,\n'Chresten, you are fortunate if you are not, like me, accused of\nstealing, for you might have found her thimble upstairs without\nhaving had it proclaimed from the pulpit; it was before found by\nInger, and not announced publicly.'\n\nThis was like a spark to tinder, and she went to work like a frantic\nbeing, using her shameless language. She had not stolen it, but it\nhad been stolen from her; and she cursed and swore. Chresten ordered\nher to be silent. He desired her to remember who I was, and that she\nwas in my service. She answered, 'I will not be silent, not if I were\nstanding before the King's bailiff!' The more gently I spoke, the\nmore angry was she; at length I said, 'Will you agree with me in one\nwish?--that the person who last had the thimble in her possession may\nsee no better with her left eye than she sees with her right.' She\nanswered with an oath that she could see with both eyes. I said,\n'Well, then, pray God with me that she may be blind in both eyes who\nlast had it.' She growled a little to herself and ran into the inner\nroom, and said no more of her thimble, nor did I. God knows that I\nwas heartily weary of this intercourse.\n\nI prayed God for patience, and thought 'This is only a trial of\npatience. God spares me from other sorrow which I might have in its\nstead.' I could not avail myself of the occasion of her accusing me\nof theft to get rid of her, but I saw another opportunity not far\noff. The prison governor came one day to me with some thread which\nwas offered for sale, rather coarse, but fit for making stockings and\nnight-waistcoats. I bought two pounds of it, and he retained a pound,\nsaying, 'I suppose the woman can make me a pair of stockings with\nit?' I answered in the affirmative (for she could do nothing else but\nknit). When he was gone, she said, 'There will be a pair of stockings\nfor me here also, for I shall get no other pay.' I said, 'That is\nsurely enough.' The stockings for the prison governor were finished.\nShe sat one day half asleep, and made a false row round the stocking\nbelow the foot. I wanted her to undo it. 'No,' said she, 'it can\nremain as it is; he won't know but that it is the fashion in\nHamburg.'[140]\n\n [140] In the margin is added: 'There was no similar row on the\n other stocking. The prison governor never mentioned it.'\n\nWhen his stockings were finished, she began a pair for herself of the\nsame thread, and sat and exulted that it was the prison governor's\nthread. This, it seemed to me, furnished me with an opportunity of\ngetting rid of her. And as the prison governor rarely came up, and\nshe sent him down the stockings by Totzloff, I begged Totzloff to\ncontrive that the prison governor should come up to me, and that he\nshould seat himself on the woman's bed and arrange her pillow as if\nhe wanted to lean against it (underneath it lay her wool). This was\ndone. The prison governor came up, took the knitting in his hand, and\nsaid to Inger, 'Is this another pair of stockings for me?' 'No, Mr.\nPrison governor,' she answered, 'they are for me. You have got yours.\nI have already sent you them.' 'But,' said he, 'this is of my thread;\nit looks like my thread.' She protested that it was not his thread.\nAs he went down to fetch his stockings and the scales, she said to\nme, 'That is not his thread; it is mine now,' and laughed heartily. I\nthought, 'Something more may come of this.'\n\nThe prison governor came with the scales and his stockings, compared\none thread with the other, and the stockings weighed scarcely half a\npound. He asked her whether she had acted rightly? She continued to\nassert that it was her thread; that she had bought it in Hamburg, and\nhad brought it here. The prison governor grew angry, and said that\nshe lied, and called her a bitch. She swore on the other hand that\nit was not his thread; that she would swear it by the Sacrament. The\nprison governor went away; such an oath horrified him. I was\nperfectly silent during this quarrel. When the prison governor had\ngone, I said to the woman, 'God forbid! how could you say such words?\nDo you venture to swear a falsehood by the Sacrament, and to say it\nin my presence, when I know that it is the prison governor's thread?\nWhat a godless creature you are!' She answered, with a half\nridiculous expression of face, 'I said I would take the Sacrament\nupon it, but I am not going to do so.' 'Oh Dina!' I thought, 'you are\nnot like her for nothing; God guard me from you!' And I said, 'Do you\nthink that such light words are not a sin, and that God will not\npunish you for them?' She assumed an air of authority, and said, 'Is\nthe thread of any consequence? I can pay for it; I have not stolen it\nfrom him; he gave it to me himself. I have only done what the tailors\ndo; they do not steal; it is given to them. He did not weigh out the\nthread for me.' I answered her no more than 'You have taken it from\nhim; I shall trouble myself no more about it;' but I begged Totzloff\nto do all he could that I should be rid of her, and have another in\nher place of a good character.\n\nTotzloff heard that Karen had a desire to return to me; he told me\nso. The prison governor was satisfied with the arrangement. It was\nkept concealed from Inger till all was so settled that Karen could\ncome up one evening at supper-time. When the prison governor had\nunlocked the door, and had established himself in the inner room, and\nthe woman had come out, he said: 'Now, Inger, pack your bundle! You\nare to go.' 'Yes, Mr. Prison governor,' she answered, and laughed,\nand brought the food to me, and told me what the prison governor had\nsaid, saying at the same time, 'That is his joke.' 'I heard well,' I\nanswered, 'what he said; it is not his joke, it is his real\nearnestness.' She did not believe it; at any rate she acted as if she\ndid not, and smiled, saying, 'He cannot be in earnest;' and she went\nout and asked the prison governor whether he was in earnest. He said,\n'Go! go! there is no time for gossip!' She came into me again, and\nasked if I wished to be rid of her. I answered, 'Yes.' 'Why so?' she\nasked. I answered: 'It would take me too long to explain; the other\nwoman who is to remain here is below.' 'At any rate,' said she, 'let\nme stay here over the night.' ('Ah, Dina!' I thought.) 'Not a quarter\nof an hour!' I answered; 'go and pack your things! That is soon\ndone!' She did so, said no word of farewell, and went out of the\ndoor.\n\nThus Karen came to me for the third time, but she did not remain an\nentire year, on account of illness.[141]\n\n [141] In the margin is noted: 'I must remember one thing about\n Karen, Nil's daughter. When anything gave her satisfaction, she\n would take up her book directly and read. I asked her whether she\n understood what she read. \"Yes, of course,\" she answered, \"as truly\n as God will bless you! When a word comes that I don't understand, I\n pass it over.\" I smiled a little in my own mind, but said nothing.'\n\nIn the year 1673 M. Moth became vice-bishop in Fyn. I lost much in\nhim, and in his place came H. Emmeke Norbye, who became court\npreacher, and who had formerly been a comrade of Griffenfeldt; but\nGriffenfeldt did not acknowledge him subsequently, so that he could\nachieve nothing for me with Griffenfeldt.[E55] He one day brought me\nas answer (when I sent him word among other things that his Majesty\nwould be gracious if only some one would speak for me), 'It would be\nas if a pistol had been placed at the King's heart, and he were to\nforgive it.'\n\n [E55] Griffenfeldt, who was then at the height of his power, was\n the son of a wine-merchant, by name Schumacher, but had risen by\n his talents alone to the highest dignities. He was ennobled under\n the name of Griffenfeldt, and was undoubtedly the ablest statesman\n Denmark ever possessed. Eventually he was thrust from his high\n position by an intrigue set on foot by German courtiers and backed\n by foreign influence. He was accused of treason and kept in prison\n from 1676 to 1698, the year before he died, to the great, perhaps\n irreparable damage, of his native country. The principal witness\n against him was a German doctor, Mauritius, a professional spy, who\n had served the Danish Government in this capacity. The year after\n the fall of Griffenfeld, he was himself arrested on a charge of\n perjury, forgery, and high treason, and placed in the Blue Tower;\n he was convicted and conducted to Bornholm, where he died. But\n Griffenfeldt, who had been convicted on his false testimony, was\n not liberated. Griffenfeldt's ability and patriotism cannot be\n doubted, but his personal character was not without blemish; and it\n is a fact that in his prosperity he disclaimed all connection with\n his earlier friends, and even his near relations.\n\nIn the same year my sister Elisabeth Augusta sent me a message\nthrough Totzloff and enquired whether I had a fancy for any fruit, as\nshe would send me some. I was surprised at the message, which came to\nme from my sister in the tenth year of my captivity, and I said,\n'Better late than never!' I sent her no answer.\n\nOne funny thing I will yet mention, which occurred in the time of\nKaren, Nil's daughter. Chresten, who had to make a fire in the stove\nan hour before supper (since it had no flue), so that the smoke could\npass out at the staircase door before I supped, did not come one\nevening before six o'clock, and was then quite tipsy. And as I was\nsitting at the time near the stove in the outer apartment on a log of\nwood, which had been hewed as a seat, I said it was late to make the\nfire, as he must now go into the kitchen. He paid no attention to my\ngentle remark, until I threatened him with hard words, and ordered\nhim to take the wood out. He was angry, and would not use the tongs\nto take the wood out, nor would he permit Karen to take them out with\nthe tongs; but he tore them out with his hands, and said, 'Nothing\ncan burn me.' And as some little time elapsed before the wood was\nextinguished, he began to fear that it would give little satisfaction\nif he so long delayed fetching the meal. He seated himself flat on\nthe ground and was rather dejected; presently he burst out and said,\n'Oh God, you who have had house and lands, where are you now\nsitting?' I said, 'On a log of wood!' He answered, 'I do not mean\nyour ladyship!' I asked, 'Whom does your worship mean, then?' He\nreplied, 'I mean Karen.' I laughed, and said no more.\n\nTo enumerate all the contemptuous conduct I endured would be too\nlengthy, and not worth the trouble. One thing I will yet mention of\nthe tower-warder Chresten, who caused me great annoyance at the end\nof this tenth year of my imprisonment. Among other annoyances he once\nstruck my dog, so that it cried. I did not see it, but I heard it,\nand the woman told me it was he who had struck the dog. I was greatly\ndispleased at it. He laughed at this, and said, 'It is only a dog.' I\ngave him to understand that he struck the dog because he did not\nventure to strike me. He laughed heartily at the idea, and I said, 'I\ndo not care for your anger so long as the prison governor is my\nfriend' (this conversation took place while I was at a meal, and the\nprison governor was sitting with me, and Chresten was standing at the\ndoor of my apartment, stretching out his arms.) I said, 'The prison\ngovernor and you will both get into heavy trouble, if I choose. Do\nyou hear that, good people?' (I knew of too many things, which they\nwished to hide, in more than one respect.) The prison governor sat\nlike one deaf and dumb, and remained seated, but Chresten turned away\nsomewhat ashamed, without saying another word. He had afterwards some\nfear of me, when he was not too intoxicated; for at such times he\ncared not what he said, as regards high or low. He was afterwards\ninsolent to the woman, and said he would strike the dog, and that I\nshould see him do so. This, however, he did not do.\n\nChresten's fool-hardiness increased, so that Peder Totzloff informed\nthe prison governor of his bad behaviour, and of my complaints of the\nwild doings of the prisoners, who made such a noise by night that I\ncould not sleep for it, for Chresten spent the night at his home, and\nallowed the prisoners to do as they chose. Upon this information, the\nprison governor placed a padlock upon the tower door at night, so\nthat Chresten could not get out until the door was unlocked in the\nmorning. This annoyed him, and he demanded his discharge, which he\nreceived on April 24, 1674; and in his place there came a man named\nGert, who had been in the service of the prison governor as a\ncoachman.\n\nIn this year, the ---- May, I wrote a spiritual 'Song in Remembrance\nof God's Goodness,' after the melody 'Nun ruhen alle Waelder.'\n\n        I.\n\n    My heart! True courage find!\n    God's goodness bear in mind,\n    And how He, ever nigh,\n    Helps me my load to bear,\n    Nor utterly despair\n    Tho' in such heavy bonds I lie.\n\n        II.\n\n    Ne'er from my thoughts shall stray\n    How once I lingering lay\n    In the dark dungeon cell;\n    My cares and bitter fears,\n    And ridicule and tears,\n    And God the Lord upheld me well.\n\n        III.\n\n    Think on my misery\n    And sad captivity\n    Thro' many a dreary year!\n    Yet nought my heart distresses;\n    The Lord He proves and blesses,\n    And He protects me even here!\n\n        IV.\n\n    Come heart and soul elate!\n    And let me now relate\n    The wonders of God's skill!\n    He was my preservation\n    In danger and temptation,\n    And kept me from impending ill.\n\n        V.\n\n    The end seemed drawing near,\n    I wrung my hands with fear,\n    Yet has He helped me e'er;\n    My refuge and my guide,\n    On Him I have relied,\n    And He has ever known my care.\n\n        VI.\n\n    Thanks to Thee, fount of good!\n    Thou canst no evil brood,\n    Thy blows are fatherly;\n    When cruel power oppressed me,\n    Thy hand has ever blessed me,\n    And Thou has sheltered me!\n\n        VII.\n\n    Before Thee, Lord, I lie;\n    Give me my liberty\n    Before my course is run;\n    Thy Gracious Hands extend\n    And let my suffering end!\n    Yet not my will, but Thine, be done.\n\nIn this year, on July 25, his royal Majesty was gracious enough to\nhave a large window made again in my inner apartment; it had been\nwalled up when I had been brought into this chamber. A stove was also\nplaced there, the flue of which passed out into the square. The\nprison governor was not well satisfied at this, especially as he was\nobliged to be present during the work; this did not suit his\nlaziness. My doors were open during the time; it was twelve days\nbefore the work was finished. He grumbled, and did not wish that the\nwindow should be made as low as it had been before I was imprisoned\nhere; I persuaded the mason's journeyman to cut down the wall as low\nas it had before been, which the prison governor perceived from the\npalace square, and he came running up and scolded, and was thoroughly\nangry. But it was not to be changed, for the window-frame was already\nmade. I asked him what it mattered to him if the window was a stone\nlower; it did not go lower than the iron grating, and it had formerly\nbeen so. He would have his will, so that the mason walled it up a\nstone higher while the prison governor was there, and removed it\nagain afterwards, for the window-frame, which was ready, would not\notherwise have fitted.\n\nIn the same year Karen, Nil's daughter, left me for the third and\nlast time, and in her stead came a woman named Barbra, the widow of a\nbookbinder. She is a woman of a melancholy turn. Her conscience is\naroused sometimes, so that she often enumerates her own misdeeds (but\nnot so great as they have been, and as I have found out by enquiry).\nShe had two children, and it seems from her own account that she was\nto some extent guilty of their death, for she says: 'Who can have any\ncare for a child when one does not love its father?' She left her\nhusband two years before he died, and repaired to Hamburg, supporting\nherself by spinning; she had before been in the service of a princess\nas a spinning-maid. Her father is alive, and was bookbinder to the\nKing's Majesty; he has just now had a stroke of paralysis, and is\nlying very ill. She has no sympathy with her father, and wishes him\ndead (which would perhaps be the best thing for him); but it vexes me\nthat she behaves so badly to her sister, who is the wife of a tailor,\nand I often tell her that in this she is committing a double sin; for\nthe needy sister comes from time to time for something to eat. If she\ndoes not come exactly on the evening which she has agreed upon, she\ngets nothing, and the food is thrown away upstairs. When at some\nlength I place her sin before her, she says, 'That meat is bad.' I\nask her why she let it get bad, and did not give it in time to her\nsister. To this she answers that her sister is not worthy of it. I\npredict evil things which will happen to her in future, as they have\ndone to others whom I enumerate to her. At this she throws back her\nhead and is silent.\n\nAt this time her Majesty the Queen sent me some silkworms to beguile\nthe time. When they had finished spinning, I sent them back to her\nMajesty in a box which I had covered with carnation-coloured satin,\nupon which I had embroidered a pattern with gold thread. Inside, the\nbox was lined with white taffeta. In the lid I embroidered with black\nsilk a humble request that her Majesty would loose my bonds, and\nwould fetter me anew with the hand of favour. Her Majesty the\nvirtuous Queen would have granted my request had it rested with her.\n\nThe prison governor became gradually more sensible and accommodating,\ndrank less wine, and made no jokes. I had peace within my doors. The\nwoman sat during the day outside in the other apartment, and lay\nthere also in the night, so that I began not to fret so much over my\nhard fate. I passed the year with reading, writing, and composing.\n\nFor some time past, immediately after I had received the yearly\npension, I had bought for myself not only historical works in various\nlanguages, but I had gathered and translated from them all the famous\nfemale personages, who were celebrated as true, chaste, sensible,\nvalorous, virtuous, God-fearing, learned, and steadfast; and in anno\n1675, on January 9, I amused myself with making some rhymes to M.\nThomas Kingo, under the title, 'To the much-famed Poet M. Thomas\nKingo, a Request from a Danish Woman in the name of all Danish\nWomen.' The request was this, that he would exhibit in befitting\nhonour the virtuous and praiseworthy Danish women. There are, indeed,\nvirtuous women belonging to other nations, but I requested only his\npraise of the Danish. This never reached Kingo; but if my good friend\nto whom I entrust these papers still lives, it will fall probably\ninto your hands, my beloved children.\n\nIn the same year, on May 11, I wrote in rhyme a controversial\nconversation between Sense and Reason; entitled, 'Controversial\nThoughts by the Captive Widow, or the Dispute between Sense and\nReason.'\n\nNothing else occurred this year within the doors of my prison which\nis worth recording, except one event--namely, when the outermost door\nof the anteroom was unlocked in the morning for the sake of sweeping\naway the dirt and bringing in fresh water, and the tower-warder\noccasionally let it stand open till meal-time and then closed it\nagain, it happened that a fire broke out in the town and the bells\nwere tolled. I and the woman ran up to the top of the tower to see\nwhere it was burning.\n\nWhen I was on the stairs which led up to the clock-work, the prison\ngovernor came, and with him was a servant from the silver-chamber. He\nfirst perceived my dog, then he saw somewhat of the woman, and\nthought probably that I was there also; he was so wise as not to come\nup the stairs, but remained below at the lowest holes, from whence\none can look out over the town, and left me time enough to get down\nagain and shut my door. Gert was sorry, and came afterwards to the\ndoor and told me of his distress. I consoled him, and said there was\nnothing to fear. Before the prison governor opened the door at noon,\nhe struck Gert with his stick, so that he cried, and the prison\ngovernor said with an oath, 'Thou shalt leave.' When the prison\ngovernor came in, I was the first to speak, and I said: 'It is not\nright in you to beat the poor devil; he could not help it. The\nexecutioner came up as he was going to lock my door, and that made\nhim forget to do so.' He threatened Gert severely, and said, 'I\nshould not have minded it so much had not that other servant been\nwith me.'\n\nThe words at once occurred to me which he had said to me a long time\nbefore, namely that no woman could be silent, but that all men could\nbe silent (when he had asserted this, I had thought, if this be so,\nthen my adversaries might believe that I, had I known of anything\nwhich they had in view, should not have been able to keep silence).\nSo I now answered him thus: 'Well, and what does that signify? It was\na man; they can all keep silence; there is no harm done.' He could\nnot help laughing, and said, 'Well, you are good enough.' I then\ntalked to him, and assured him that I had no desire to leave the\ntower without the King's will, even though day and night all the\ntower doors were left open, and I also said that I could have got out\nlong ago, if that had been my design. Gert continued in his service,\nand the prison governor never told Gert to shut me in in the\nmorning.[142]\n\n [142] In the margin is noted: 'At my desire the prison governor\n gave me a rat whose tail he had cut off; this I placed in a\n parrot's cage, and gave it food, so that it grew very tame. The\n woman grudged me this amusement; and as the cage hung in the outer\n apartment, and had a wire grating underneath, so that the dirt\n might fall out, she burned the rat with a candle from below. It was\n easy to perceive it, but she denied it.'\n\nAt this time I had bought myself a clavicordium, and as Barbra could\nsing well, I played psalms and she sang, so that the time was not\nlong to us. She taught me to bind books, so far as I needed.[E56]\n\n [E56] The MS. itself is bound in a very primitive manner, which\n renders it probable that Leonora has done it herself.\n\nMy father confessor, H. Emmeke, became a preacher at Kioge anno 1676.\nIn the same year my pension was increased, and I received yearly 250\nrix-dollars. It stands in the order that the 200 rix-dollars were to\nbe used for the purchase of clothes and the remaining fifty to buy\nanything which might beguile the time.[E57] God bless and keep his\ngracious Majesty, and grant that he may live to enjoy many happy\nyears.\n\n [E57] It appears from the State accounts that ever since the year\n 1672 a sum of 250 dollars a year had been placed at her disposal.\n It would seem, therefore, that somehow or other a part of them had\n been unlawfully abstracted by someone during the first years.\n\nBrant was at this time treasurer.\n\nOn December 17 in this same year Barbra left me, and married a\nbookbinder's apprentice; but she repented it afterwards. And as her\nhusband died a year and a half after her marriage, and that suddenly,\nsuspicion fell upon Barbra. She afterwards went to her brother's\nhouse and fell ill. Her conscience was awakened, and she sent for\nTotzloff and told almost in plain terms that she had poisoned her\nhusband, and begged him to tell me so. I was not much astonished at\nit, for according to her own account she had before killed her own\nchildren; but I told Peder Totzloff that he was not to speak of it;\nif God willed that it should be made known, it would be so\nnotwithstanding; the brother and the maid in the house knew it; he\nwas not to go there again, even if she sent a message to him. She\nbecame quite insane, and lay in a miserable condition. The brother\nsubsequently had her removed to the plague-house.\n\nIn Barbra's place there came to me a woman named Sitzel, daughter of\na certain Klemming; Maren Blocks had brought about her employment, as\nSitzel owed her money. She is a dissolute woman, and Maren gave her\nout as a spinster; she had a white cap on her head when she came up.\nSitzel's debt to Maren had arisen in this way: that Maren--since\nSitzel could make buttons, and the button-makers had quarrelled with\nher--obtained for her a royal licence in order to free her from the\nopposition of the button-makers, under the pretext that she was\nsickly. When the door was locked in the evening, I requested to see\nthe royal licence which Maren had obtained for her. And when I saw\nthat she was styled in it the sickly woman, I asked her what her\ninfirmity was. She replied that she had no infirmity. 'Why, then,' I\nasked, 'have you given yourself out as sickly?' She answered, 'That\nwas Maren Block's doing, in order to get for me the royal licence.'\n'In the licence,' I said, 'you are spoken of as a married woman, and\nnot as a spinster; have you, then, been seduced?' She hung her head\nand said softly, 'Yes.'\n\nI was not satisfied. I said, 'Maren Block has obtained the royal\nlicence for you by lies, and has brought you to me by lies; what,\nthen, can I expect from your service?' She begged my pardon, promised\nto serve me well, and never to act contrary to my wishes. She is a\ndangerous person; there is nothing good in her; bold and shameless,\nshe is not even afraid of fighting a man. She struck two\nbutton-makers one day, who wanted to take away her work, till they\nwere obliged to run away. With me she had no opportunity of thus\ndisplaying her evil passions, but still they were perceptible in\nvarious ways. One day I warded off a scuffle between her and Maren\nBlocks; for when Maren Blocks had got back the money which she had\nexpended on the royal licence for Sitzel, she wanted to remove her\nfrom me, and to bring another into her place; but I sent word to\nMaren Blocks that she must not imagine she could send me another whom\nI must take. It was enough that she had done this time.[143]\n\n [143] In the margin stood originally the following note, which has\n afterwards been struck out: 'In this year, 1676, the prison\n governor married for the third time; he married a woman who herself\n had had two husbands. Anno 1677, Aug. 9, died my sister Elisabeth\n Augusta.'\n\nIn the place of H. Emmeke Norbye, H. Johan Adolf Borneman became\npalace-preacher; a very learned and sensible man, who now became my\nfather confessor, and performed the duties of his office for the\nfirst time on April 10, 1677.\n\nOn October 9, in the same year, my father confessor was Magister\nHendrich Borneman, dean of the church of Our Lady (a learned and\nexcellent man), his brother H. Johan Adolf Borneman having\naccompanied the King's Majesty on a journey.\n\nI have, thank God, spent this year in repose: reading, writing, and\ncomposing various things.\n\nAnno 1678 it was brought about for me that my father-confessor, H.\nJohan Adolf Borneman, should come to me every six weeks and preach a\nshort sermon.\n\nIn this year, on Easter-Day, Agneta Sophia Budde was brought to the\ntower. Her prison was above my innermost apartment. She was accused\nof having designed to poison the Countess Skeel; and as she was a\nyoung person, and had a waiting-woman in her attendance who was also\nyoung, they clamoured to such an extent all day that I had no peace\nfor them. I said nothing, however, about it, thinking she would\nprobably be quiet when she knew that her life was at stake. But no!\nshe was merry to the day on which she was executed![144]\n\n [144] On a piece of paper which is fastened to the MS. by a pin is\n the following note referring to the same matter: 'On March 4, in\n the same year 1678, a woman named Lucia, who had been in the\n service of Lady Rigitze Grubbe, became my neighbour. She was\n accused by Agneta Sophia Budde, as the person who at the\n instigation of her mistress had persuaded her to poison Countess F.\n Birrete Skeel, and that Lucia had brought her the poison. There was\n evidence as to the person from whom Lucia had bought the poison.\n This woman was a steady faithful servant. She received everything\n that was imposed upon her with the greatest patience, and held out\n courageously in the Dark Cell. She had two men as companions, both\n of whom cried, moaned and wept. From the Countess Skeel (who had to\n supply her with food) meat was sent her which was full of maggots\n and mouldy bread. I took pity on her (not for the sake of her\n mistress, for she had rendered me little good service, and had\n rewarded me evil for the benefits of former times, but out of\n sympathy). And I sent her meat and drink and money that she might\n soften Gert, who was too hard to her. She was tortured, but would\n not confess any thing of what she was accused, and always defended\n her mistress. She remained a long time in prison.[E58]\n\n [E58] The acts of this famous trial are still in existence.\n Originally the quarrel arose out of the fact that the Countess\n Parsberg (born Skeel) had obtained a higher rank than Lady Grubbe,\n and was further envenomed by some dispute about a window in the\n house of the latter which looked down on the courtyard of the\n Countess's house. Regitze Grubbe (widow of Hans Ulrik Gyldenlove,\n natural son of Christian IV. and half-brother of Ulrik Christian\n Gyldenlove, as well as of Leonora Christina), persuaded another\n noble lady, Agnete Budde, through a servant, to poison Countess\n Parsberg. Miss Budde was beheaded, the girl Lucie was exiled, and\n Lady Grubbe relegated for life to the island of Bornholm.\n\nIn the same year, on the morning of July 9, the tower-warder Gert was\nkilled by a thief who was under sentence of death, and to whom he had\nallowed too great liberty. I will mention this incident somewhat more\nin detail, as I had advised Gert not to give this prisoner so much\nliberty; but to his own misfortune he paid no attention to my advice.\nThis thief had broken by night into the house of a clergyman, and had\nstolen a boiling-copper, which he had carried on his head to\nCopenhagen; he was seized with it at the gate in the morning, and was\nplaced here in the tower. He was condemned to be hanged (he had\ncommitted various other thefts). The priest allowed the execution to\nbe delayed; he did not wish to have him hanged. Then it was said he\nwas to go to the Holm; but he remained long in prison. At first, and\nuntil the time that his going to the Holm was talked of, he was my\nneighbour in the Dark Church; he behaved quite as a God-fearing man,\nread (apparently) with devotion, and prayed to God for forgiveness of\nhis sins with most profound sighs. The rogue knew that I could hear\nhim, and I sent him occasionally something to eat. Gert took pity on\nhim, and allowed him to go by day about the basement story of the\ntower, and shut him up at night again.\n\nAfterwards he allowed him also at night to remain below. And as I had\nseen the thief once or twice when my door stood open, and he went\npast, it seemed to me that he had a murderous countenance; and for\nthis reason, when I heard that the thief was not placed of an evening\nin the Dark Church, I said to Gert that he ventured too far, in\nletting him remain below at night; that there was roguery lurking in\nhim; that he would certainly some day escape, and then, on his\naccount, Gert would get into trouble. Gert was not of opinion that\nthe thief wished to run away; he had no longer any fear of being\nhanged; he had been so delighted that he was to go to the Holm, there\nwas no danger in it. I thought 'That is a delight which does not\nreach further than the lips,' and I begged him that he would lock him\nup at night. No; Gert feared nothing; he even went farther, and\nallowed the thief to go up the tower instead of himself, and attend\nto the clock-work.\n\nThree days before the murder took place, I spoke with Gert, when he\nunlocked my door in the morning, of the danger to which he exposed\nhimself by the liberty he allowed the thief, but Gert did not fear\nit. Meanwhile my dog placed himself exactly in front of Gert, and\nhowled in his face. When we were at dinner, the dog ran down and\nhowled three times at the tower-warder's door. Never before had I\nheard the dog howl.\n\nOn July 19 (as I have said), when Gert's unfortunate morning had\narrived, the thief came down from the clock-work, and said that he\ncould not manage it alone, as the cords were entangled. The rogue had\nan iron rod ready above, in order to effect his project. Gert went\nupstairs, but was carried down. The thief ran down after Gert was\ndead, opened his box, took out the money, and went out of the tower.\n\nIt was a Friday, and the bells were to be rung for service. Those\nwhose duty it was to ring them knocked at the tower door, but no one\nopened. Totzloff came with the principal key and opened, and spoke to\nme and wondered that Gert was not there at that time of the day. I\nsaid: 'All is not right; this morning between four and five I was\nrather unwell, and I heard three people going upstairs and after a\ntime two coming down again.' Totzloff locked my door and went down.\nJust then one of the ringers came down, and informed them that Gert\nwas lying upstairs dead. When the dead man was examined, he had more\nthan one wound, but all at the back of the head. He was a very bold\nman, courageous, and strong; one man could not be supposed to have\ndone this to him.\n\nThe thief was seized the same evening, and confessed how it had\nhappened: that, namely, a prisoner who was confined in the Witch\nCell, a licentiate of the name of Moritius, had persuaded him to it.\nThis same Moritius had great enmity against Gert. It is true that\nGert took too much from him weekly for his food. But it is also true\nthat this Moritius was a very godless fellow; the priest who\nconfesses him gives him no good character. I believe, indeed, that\nMoritius was an accessory, but I believe also that another prisoner,\nwho was confined in the basement of the tower, had a hand in the\ngame. For who should have locked the tower-door again after the\nimprisoned thief, had not one of these done so? For when the key was\nlooked for, it was found hidden above in the tower; this could not\nhave been done by the thief after he was out of the tower. The thief,\nmoreover, could not have unlocked Gert's box and taken his money\nwithout the knowledge of Moritius. The other prisoner must also have\nbeen aware of it. It seems to me that it was hushed up, in order that\nno more should die for this murder; for the matter was not only not\ninvestigated as was befitting, but the thief was confined down below\nin the tower. He was bound with iron fetters, but Moritius could\nspeak with him everyday: and for this reason the thief departed from\nhis earlier statement, and said that he alone had committed the\nmurder. He was executed on August 8, and Moritius was taken to\nBorringholm, and kept as a prisoner there.[E55b]\n\n [E55b] Griffenfeldt, who was then at the height of his power, was\n the son of a wine-merchant, by name Schumacher, but had risen by\n his talents alone to the highest dignities. He was ennobled under\n the name of Griffenfeldt, and was undoubtedly the ablest statesman\n Denmark ever possessed. Eventually he was thrust from his high\n position by an intrigue set on foot by German courtiers and backed\n by foreign influence. He was accused of treason and kept in prison\n from 1676 to 1698, the year before he died, to the great, perhaps\n irreparable damage, of his native country. The principal witness\n against him was a German doctor, Mauritius, a professional spy, who\n had served the Danish Government in this capacity. The year after\n the fall of Griffenfeld, he was himself arrested on a charge of\n perjury, forgery, and high treason, and placed in the Blue Tower;\n he was convicted and conducted to Bornholm, where he died. But\n Griffenfeldt, who had been convicted on his false testimony, was\n not liberated. Griffenfeldt's ability and patriotism cannot be\n doubted, but his personal character was not without blemish; and it\n is a fact that in his prosperity he disclaimed all connection with\n his earlier friends, and even his near relations.\n\nIn Gert's place a tower-warder of the name of Johan, a Norwegian, was\nappointed--a very simple man. The servants about court often made a\nfool of him. The imprisoned young woman and her attendant did so the\nfirst time after his arrival that the attendant had to perform some\nmenial offices upstairs. The place to which she had to go was not far\nfrom the door of their prison. The tower-warder went down in the\nmeanwhile, and left the door open. They ran about and played. When\nthey heard him coming up the stairs, they hid themselves. He found\nthe prison empty, and was grieved and lamented. The young woman\ngiggled like a child, and thus he found her behind a door. Johan was\nglad, and told me the story afterwards. I asked why he had not\nremained with them. 'What,' he answered, 'was I to remain at their\ndirty work?' There was nothing to say in reply to such foolish talk.\n\nI had repose within my doors, and amused myself with reading, writing\nand various handiwork, and began to make and embroider my shroud, for\nwhich I had bought calico, white taffeta, and thread.\n\nOn April 7 a young lad escaped from the tower, who had been confined\non the lower story with iron fetters round his legs. This prisoner\nfound opportunity to loosen his fetters, and knew, moreover, that the\nbooby Johan was wont to keep the tower key under his pillow. He kept\nan iron pin in readiness to unlock the door of the room when the\ntower-warder was asleep; he opened it gently, took the key, locked in\nthe booby again, and quitted the tower. The simple man was placed in\nconfinement, but after the expiration of six weeks he was set at\nliberty.\n\nIn his place there came a man named Olle Mathison, who was from\nSkaane; he had his wife with him in the tower. Towards the end of\nthis year, on December 25, I became ill of a fever, and D. Mynchen\nreceived orders to visit me and to take me under his care--an order\nwhich he executed with great attention. He is a very sensible man,\nmild and judicious in his treatment. Ten days after I recovered my\nusual health.\n\nIn the beginning of the year 1680 Sitzel, Klemming's daughter, was\npersuaded by Maren Blocks to betroth herself to one of the King's\nbody-guard. She left me on November 26. In her place I had a woman\nnamed Margrete. When I first saw her, she appeared to me somewhat\nsuspicious, and it seemed to me that she was with child; however, I\nmade no remark till the last day of the month of January. Then I put\na question to her from which she could perceive my opinion. She\nanswered me with lies, but I interrupted her at once; and she made\nuse of a special trick, which it is not fit to mention here, in order\nto prove her false assertion; but her trick could not stand with me,\nand she was subsequently obliged to confess it. I asked her as to the\nfather of the child (I imagined that it was the King's groom of the\nchamber, who had been placed in arrest in the prison governor's room,\nbut I did not say so). She did not answer my question at the time,\nbut said she was not so far advanced; that her size was owing rather\nto stoutness than to the child, as it was at a very early stage.\n\nThis woman, before she came to me, had been in the service of the\nprison governor's wife, and the prison governor had told me she was\nmarried. So it happened that I one day asked her of her life and\ndoings; upon which she told me of her past history, where she had\nserved, and that she had had two bastards, each by a different\nfather; and pointing to herself, she added: 'A father shall also\nacknowledge this one, and that a brave father! You know him well!' I\nsaid, 'I have seen the King's groom of the chamber in the square, but\nI do not know him.' She laughed and answered (in her mother-tongue),\n'No, by God, that is not he; it is the good prison governor.' I truly\ndid not believe it. She protested it, and related some minute details\nto me.\n\nI thought I had better get rid of her betimes, and I requested to\nspeak with the prison governor's wife, who at once came to me. I\ntold her my suspicion with regard to the woman, and on what I based\nmy suspicion; but I made no remark as to what the woman had confessed\nand said to me. I begged the prison governor's wife to remove the\nwoman from me as civilly as she could. She was surprised at my words,\nand doubted if there was truth in them. I said, 'Whether it be so or\nnot, remove her; the sooner the better.' She promised that it should\nbe done, but it was not. Margrete seemed not to care that it was\nknown that she was with child; she told the tower-warder of it, and\nasked him one day, 'Ole, how was it with your wife when she had\ntwins?' Ole answered: 'I know nothing about it. Ask Anne!' Margrete\nsaid that from certain symptoms she fancied she might have twins.\n\nOne day, when she was going to sew a cloth on the arms of my\narm-chair, she said, 'That angel of God is now moving!' And as the\nwife of the prison governor did not adhere to her word, and\nMargrete's sister often came to the tower, I feared that the sister\nmight secretly convey her something to remove the child (which was no\ndoubt subsequently the case), so I said one day to Margrete: 'You say\nthat the prison governor is your child's father, but you do not\nventure to say so to himself.' 'Yes!' she said with an oath, 'as if I\nwould not venture! Do you imagine that I will not have something from\nhim for the support of my child?' 'Then I will send for him,' I said,\n'on purpose to hear what he will say.' (It was at that time a rare\noccurrence for the prison governor to come to me.) She begged me to\ndo so; he could not deny, she said, that he was the father of her\nchild. The prison governor came at my request. I began my speech in\nthe woman's presence, and said that Margrete, according to her own\nstatement, was with child; who the father was, he could enquire if he\nchose. He asked her whether she was with child? She answered, 'Yes,\nand you are the father of it.' 'O!' he said, and laughed, 'what\nnonsense!' She adhered to what she had said, protested that no other\nwas the child's father, and related the circumstances of how it had\noccurred. The prison governor said, 'The woman is mad!' She gave free\nvent to her tongue, so that I ordered her to go out; then I spoke\nwith the prison governor alone, and begged him speedily to look about\nfor another woman for me, before it came to extremities with her. I\nsupposed he would find means to stop her tongue. I told him the truth\nin a few words--that he had brought his paramour to wait on me. He\nanswered, 'She lies, the malicious woman! I have ordered Totzloff\nalready to look about for another. My wife has told me what you said\nto her the other day.' After this conversation the prison governor\nwent away. Peder Totzloff told me that an English woman had desired\nto be with me, but could not come before Easter.\n\nFour days afterwards Margrete began to complain that she felt ill,\nand said to me in the forenoon, 'I think it will probably go badly\nwith me; I feel so ill.' I thought at once of what I had feared,\nnamely of what the constant visits of her sister indicated, and I\nsent immediately to Peder Totzloff, and when he came to me I told him\nof my suspicion respecting Margrete, and begged him to do his utmost\nto procure me the English woman that very day. Meanwhile Margrete\nwent up stairs, and remained there about an hour and a quarter, and\ncame down looking like a corpse, and said, 'Now it will be all right\nwith me.' What I thought I would not say (for I knew that if I had\nenquired the cause of her bad appearance she would have at once\nacknowledged it all, and I did not want to know it), so I said, 'If\nyou keep yourself quiet, all will be well. Another woman is coming\nthis evening.' This did not please her; she thought she could now\nwell remain. I paid no regard to this nor to anything else she said,\nbut adhered to it--that another woman was coming. This was arranged,\nand in the evening of March 15 Margrete left, and in her place came\nan English woman, named Jonatha, who had been married to a Dane named\nJens Pedersen Holme.\n\nWhen Margrete was gone, I was blamed by the wife of the prison\ngovernor, who said that I had persuaded Margrete to affirm that her\nhusband was the father of Margrete's child.\n\nAlthough it did not concern me, I will nevertheless mention the\ndeceitful manner in which the good people subsequently brought about\nthis Margrete's marriage. They informed a bookbinder's apprentice\nthat she had been married, and they showed both him and the priest,\nwho was to give them the nuptial benediction, her sister's marriage\ncertificate.[145]\n\n [145] In the margin is added: 'Ole the tower-warder was cudgelled\n on his back by the prison governor when Margrete was gone, and he\n was charged with having said what Margrete had informed him\n respecting her size.'\n\nIn the same year, on the morning of Christmas Day, God loosened D.\nOtto Sperling's heavy bonds, after he had been imprisoned in the Blue\nTower seventeen years, eight months, twenty-four days, at the age of\neighty years minus six days. He had long been ill, but never confined\nto his bed. Doctor Muenchen twice visited him with his medicaments. He\nwould not allow the tower-warder at any time to make his bed, and was\nquite angry if Ole offered to do so, and implied that the doctor was\nweak. He allowed no one either to be present when he laid down. How\nhe came on the floor on Christmas night is not known; he lay there,\nknocking on the ground. The tower-warder could not hear his knocking,\nfor he slept far from the doctor's room; but a prisoner who slept on\nthe ground floor heard it, and knocked at the tower-warder's door and\ntold him that the doctor had been knocking for some time. When Ole\ncame in, he found the doctor lying on the floor, half dressed, with a\nclean shirt on. He was still alive, groaned a good deal, but did not\nspeak. Ole called a prisoner to help him, and they lifted him on the\nbed and locked the door again. In the morning he was found dead, as I\nhave said.\n\nA.D. 1682, in the month of April, I was sick and confined to my bed\nfrom a peculiar malady which had long troubled me--a stony matter had\ncoagulated and had settled low down in my intestines. Doctor Muenchen\nused all available means to counteract this weakness; but he could\nnot believe that it was of the nature I thought and informed him; for\nI was perfectly aware it was a stone which had settled in the duct of\nthe intestines. He was of opinion, if it were so, that the\nmedicaments which he used would remove it.[146] At this time the\ndoctor was obliged to travel with his Majesty to Holstein. I used the\nremedies according to Doctor Muenchen's directions, but things\nremained just as before. It was not till the following morning that\nthe remedies produced their effect; and then, besides other matter, a\nlarge stone was evacuated, and I struck a piece out of it with a\nhammer in order to see what it was inside; I found it to be composed\nof a substance like rays, having the appearance of being gilded in\nsome places and in others silvered. It is almost half a finger in\nlength and full three fingers thick, and it is still in my\npossession. When Doctor Muenchen returned, I sent him word how it was\nwith me. He was at the time with the governess of the royal children,\nF. Sitzele Grubbe. Doctor Muenchen desired Totzloff to request me to\nlet him see the stone. I sent him word that if he would come to me,\nhe should see it. I would not send it to him, for I well knew that I\nshould never get it again.\n\n [146] In the margin is added: 'Other natural matter was evacuated,\n but the stone stuck fast in the duct, and seemed to be round, for I\n could not gain hold of it with an instrument I had procured for the\n purpose.'\n\nA.D. 1682, June 11, I wrote the following spiritual song.\n\nIt can be sung to the melody, 'Siunge wii af Hiaertens-Grund.'[E59]\n\n [E59] This tune is still in use in Denmark; it is known in the\n Latin church as 'in natali Domini.'\n\n        I.\n\n    What is this our mortal life\n    Otherwise than daily strife?\n    What is all our labour here,\n    The servitude and yoke we bear?\n    Are they aught but vanity?\n    Art and learning what are ye?\n    Like a vapour all we see.\n\n        II.\n\n    Why, then, is thy anxious breast\n    Filled with trouble? Be at rest!\n    Why, then, dost thou boldly fight\n    The phantoms vain that mock thy sight?\n    Is there any, small or grand,\n    Who can payment duly hand\n    At the creditor's demand?\n\n        III.\n\n    Naked to the world I came,\n    And I leave it just the same;\n    The Lord has given and He takes;\n    It is well whate'er He makes.\n    To the Lord all praises be;\n    I will trust Him heartily!\n    And my near deliverance see.\n\n        IV.\n\n    One thing would I ask of Thee.\n    That Thy House I once may see,\n    And once more with song and praise\n    May my pious offering raise,\n    And magnify Thy grace received,\n    And all that Jesus has achieved\n    For us who have in Him believed.\n\n        V.\n\n    If Thou sayest unto me,\n    'I have no desire in thee,\n    There is no place for thee above;'\n    Oh Jesus! look Thou down in love!\n    Can I not justly to Thee say\n    'Let me but see Thy wounds, I pray:'\n    God's mercy cannot pass away.\n\nOn June 27, the Queen sent me some silk and silver, with the request\nthat I would embroider her a flower, which was traced on parchment;\nshe sent also another flower which was embroidered, that I might see\nhow the work should be done, which is called the golden work. I had\nnever before embroidered such work, for it affects the eyes quickly;\nbut I undertook it, and said I would do it as well as I could. On\nJuly 9, I sent the flower which I had embroidered to the governess of\nthe royal children, F. Sitzele Grubbe, with the request that she\nwould present it most humbly to her Majesty the Queen. The Queen was\nmuch pleased with the flower, and told her that it excelled the\nothers which certain countesses had embroidered for her.\n\nI afterwards embroidered nine flowers in silver and silk in this\ngolden work, and sent them to the Queen's mistress of the robes, with\nthe request that she would present them most humbly to her Majesty\nthe Queen. The mistress of the robes assured me of the Queen's\nfavour, and told me that her Majesty was going to give me two silver\nflagons, but I have not heard of them yet. In the same year I\nembroidered a table-cover with floss silk, in a new design devised by\nmyself, and I trimmed it with taffeta and silver fringe; this also I\nbegged Lady Grubbe, the governess of the King's children, to present\nmost humbly to her Majesty, and it was graciously received. On\nNovember 29, I completed the work which I had made for my death-gear.\nIt was embroidered with thread. On one end of the pillow I worked the\nfollowing lines:\n\n    Full of anxiety and care, in many a silent night,\n    This shroud have I been weaving with sorrowful delight!\n\nOn the other end I embroidered the following: (N.B. The pillow was\nstuffed with my hair).\n\n    When some day on this hair my weary head will lie,\n    My body will be free and my soul to God will fly.\n\nOn the cloth for the head I embroidered:\n\n    I know full well, my Jesus, Thou dost live,\n    And my frail body from the dust wilt give,\n    And it with marvellous beauty will array\n    To stand before Thy throne on the great day.\n    Fulfilled with heavenly joy I then shall be,\n    And Thee, great God, in all Thy splendour see.\n    Nor unknown wilt Thou to mine eyes appear!\n    Help Jesus, bridegroom, be Thou ever near!\n\nHer Majesty the Queen was always gracious to me, and sent me again a\nnumber of silkworms that I might amuse myself with feeding them for\nher, and I was to return what they spun. The virtuous Queen also sent\nme sometimes oranges, lemons, and some of the large almanacs, and\nthis she did through a dwarf, who is a thoroughly quick lad. His\nmother and father had been in the service of my deceased sister\nSophia Elizabeth and my brother-in-law Count Pentz.\n\nThe governess of the royal children, F. Sitzel Grubbe, was very\ncourteous and good to me, and sent me several times lemons, oranges,\nmulberries, and other fruits, according to the season of the year.\n\nA young lady, by birth a Donep, also twice sent me fruit.\n\nThe maids of honour once sent me some entangled silk from silkworms,\nwhich they wanted to spin, and did not rightly know how to manage it;\nthey requested me to arrange it for them. I had other occupation on\nhand which I was unwilling to lay aside (for I was busy collecting my\nheroines), but nevertheless I acceded to their wish.[E60] My\ncaptivity of nearly twenty years could not touch the heart of the\nQueen Dowager (though with a good conscience I can testify before God\nthat I never gave her cause for such inclemency). My most gracious\nhereditary King was gracious enough several times in former years to\nintercede for me with his royal mother, through the high ministers of\nthe State. Her answer at that time was very hard; she would entitle\nthem 'traitors,' and, 'as good as I was,' and would point them to the\ndoor. All the favours which the King's majesty showed me--the outer\napartment, the large window, the money to dispose of for\nmyself--annoyed the Queen Dowager extremely; and she made the King's\nmajesty feel her displeasure in the most painful manner. And as she\nhad also learned (she had plenty of informers) that I possessed a\nclavicordium, this annoyed her especially, and she spoke very angrily\nwith the King about it; on which account the prison governor came to\nme one day and said that the King had asked him how he had happened\nto procure me a clavicordium. 'I stood abashed,' said the prison\ngovernor, 'and knew not what to say.' I thought to myself, 'You know\nbut little of what is happening in the tower.' I did not see him more\nthan three times a year. I asked who had told the King of the\nclavicordium. He answered: 'The old Queen; she has her spies\neverywhere, and she has spoken so hardly to the King that it is a\nshame because he gives you so much liberty;' so saying, he seized the\nclavicordium just as if he were going to take it away, and said, 'You\nmust not have it!' I said, 'Let it alone! I have permission from his\nMajesty, my gracious Sovereign, to buy what I desire for my pastime\nwith the money he graciously assigns me. The clavicordium is in no\none's way, and cannot harm the Queen Dowager.' He pulled at it\nnevertheless, and wanted to take it down; it stood on a closet which\nI had bought. I said, with rather a loud voice, 'You must let it\nremain until you return me the money I gave you for it; then you may\ndo with it what you like.' He said, 'I will tell the King that.' I\nbegged him to do so. There was nothing afterwards said about it,[147]\nand I still have the clavicordium, though I play on it rarely. I\nwrite, and hasten to finish my heroines, so that I may have them\nready, and that no sickness nor death may prevent my completing them,\nnor the friend to whom I confide them may leave me, and so they would\nnever fall into your hands, my dearest children.\n\n [E60] 'I have in my imprisonment also gained some experience with\n regard to caterpillars. It amused me at one time to watch their\n changes. The worms were apparently all of one sort, striped alike,\n and of similar colour. But butterflies did not come from all. It\n was quite pretty to see how a part when they were about to change,\n pressed against something, whatever it might be, and made\n themselves steady with a thread (like silkworm's silk) on each\n side, passing it over the back about fifty times, always at the\n same place, and often bending the back to see if the threads were\n strong enough; if not, they passed still more threads round them.\n When this was done, they rapidly changed their form and became\n stout, with a snout in front pointed at the end, not unlike the\n fish called knorr by the Dutch; they have also similar fins on the\n back, and a similar head. In this form they remain for sixteen\n days, and then a white butterfly comes out. But of some\n caterpillars small worms like maggots come out on both sides,\n whitish, broad at one end and pointed at the other. These surround\n themselves with a web with great rapidity, each by itself. Then the\n worm spins over them tolerably thickly, turning them round till\n they are almost like a round ball. In this it lies till it is quite\n dried up; it eats nothing, and becomes as tiny as a fly before it\n dies. Twelve days afterwards small flies come out of the ball, and\n then the ball looks like a small bee-hive. I have seen a small\n living worm come out of the neck of the caterpillar (this I\n consider the rarest), but it did not live long, and ate nothing.\n The mother died immediately after the little one had come out.'\n\n It is perhaps not unnecessary to add that this observation, which is\n correct as to facts, refers to the habits of certain larvae of wasps\n which live as parasites in caterpillars.\n\n [147] In the margin is added: 'The prison governor told me\n afterwards that the King laughed when he had told his Majesty my\n answer about the clavicordium, and had said, \"Yes, yes.\"'\n\nOn September 24, M. Johan Adolf, my father confessor, was promoted;\nhe became dean of the church of Our Lady. He bade me a very touching\nfarewell, having administered the duties of his office to me for\nnearly six years, and been my consolation. God knows how unwillingly\nI parted with him.\n\nAt the beginning of this year H. Peder Collerus was my father\nconfessor; he was at the time palace-preacher. He also visited me\nwith his consolatory discourse every six weeks. He is a learned man,\nbut not like Hornemann.\n\nOn April 3, an old sickly dog was sent to me in the Queen's name. I\nfancy the ladies of the court sent it, to be quit of the trouble. A\nmarten had bit its jaw in two, so that the tongue hung out on one\nside. All the teeth were gone, and a thin film covered one eye. It\nheard but little, and limped on one side. The worst, however, was,\nthat one could easily see that it tried to exhibit its affection\nbeyond its power. They told me that her Majesty the Queen had been\nvery fond of the dog. It was a small 'King Charles;' its name was\n'Cavaillier.' The Queen expressed her opinion that it would not long\ntrouble me. I hoped so also.[E66b]\n\n [E66b] This poem still exists, and is printed in the second volume\n of Hofman's work on Danish noblemen. It is intended to convey an\n account of her own and her husband's fate.\n\nOn August 12 of this year I finished the work I had undertaken, and\nsince my prefatory remarks treated of celebrated women of every kind,\nboth of valiant rulers and sensible sovereigns, of true, chaste,\nGod-fearing, virtuous, unhappy, learned, and steadfast women, it\nseemed to me that all of these could not be reckoned as heroines; so\nI took some of them out and divided them into three parts, under the\ntitle, 'The Heroines' Praise.' The first part is to the honour of\nvaliant heroines. The second part speaks of true and chaste heroines.\nThe third part of steadfast heroines. Each part has its appendix. I\nhope to God that this my prison work may come into your hands, my\ndearest children. Hereafter I intend, so God will, to collect the\nothers: namely, the sensible, learned, god-fearing, and virtuous\nwomen; exhibiting each to view in the circumstances of her life.[E61]\n\n [E61] It has been stated already that a copy of the first part of\n this work is still preserved. Amongst the heroines here treated of\n are modern historical personages, as Queen Margaret of Denmark,\n Thyre Danobod who built the Dannevirke, Elizabeth of England, and\n Isabella of Castilia, besides mythical and classic characters, as\n Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, Marpesia, Tomyris, Zenobia,\n Artemisia, Victorina, etc. There existed not a few works of this\n kind--we need only mention Boccacio's 'Donne Illustri,' in which\n many of these last personages also occur.\n\nI will mention from her own statement somewhat of Jonatha, who now\nattended on me. I will pass over the long story of how she left her\nmother; the fact is, that against her mother's will she married a\nDanish merchant, named Jens Pedersen Holme. But her life and doings\n(according to her own statement) are so strange, that it may be worth\nwhile to record somewhat of them. After they were married, she says,\nit vexed her, and was always in her mind that she had made her mother\nangry, and had done very wrong. Her mother had sent her also a hard\nletter, which distressed her much; and she behaved refractorily\ntowards her husband, and in many ways like a spoilt unreasonable\nchild, sometimes even like one who had lost her reason and was\ndesperate.\n\nIt seems also that her husband treated her as if her mind was\naffected, for he had her looked after like a child, and treated her\nas such. She told him once that she was intending to drown herself in\nthe Peblingeso,[E62] and at another time that she would strike him\ndead. The husband feared neither of these threats; still he had her\nwatched when she went out, to see which way she took. Once she had\nfirmly resolved to drown herself in the Peblingeso, for this place\npleased her; she was even on her way there, but was brought back. She\nstruck her husband, too, once after her fashion. He had come home one\nday half intoxicated, and had laid down on a bed, so that his legs\nrested on the floor. She says she intended at the time to strike him\ndead; she took a stick and tried to see if he were asleep, talking\nloudly to herself and scolding, and touching him softly on the\nshinbone with the stick. He behaved as if he were asleep. Then she\nstruck him a little harder. Upon this he seized the stick and took it\naway from her, and asked what she had in her mind. She answered, 'To\nkill you.' 'He was grieved at my madness,' she said, 'and threw\nhimself on his knees, praying God to govern me with His good spirit\nand give me reason.' The worst is that it once came into her mind not\nto sleep with her husband, and she laid down on a bench in the room.\nFor a long time he gave her fair words, but these availed nothing. At\nlast he said, 'Undress yourself and come and lie down, or I shall\ncome to you.' She paid no attention to this; so he got up, undressed\nher completely, slapped her with his hand, and threw her into bed.\nShe protested that for some days she was too bruised to sit; this\nproved availing, and she behaved in future more reasonably.\n\n [E62] The Peblingeso is one of three lakes which surround\n Copenhagen on the land-side, in a semicircle.\n\nLittle at peace as she was with her husband when she had him with\nher, she was greatly grieved when he left her to go to the West\nIndies. He sent by return vessels all sorts of goods to sell, and\nshe thus maintained herself comfortably.\n\nIt happened at last that the man died in the West Indies, and a\nperson who brought her the news stated that he had been poisoned by\nthe governor of the place named ----, at an entertainment, and this\nbecause he was on the point of returning home, and the governor was\nafraid that Holme might mention his evil conduct. These tidings\nunsettled her mind so, that she ran at night, in her mere\nnight-dress, along the street, and squabbled with the watchmen. She\nwent to the admiral at the Holm, and demanded justice upon the absent\nculprit, and accused him, though she could prove nothing.\n\nThus matters went on for a time, until at last she gained repose, and\nGod ordained it that she came to me. My intercourse with her is as\nwith a frail glass vessel, for she is weak in many respects. She\noften doubts of her salvation, and enumerates all her sins. She\nlaments especially having so deeply offended her mother, and thus\nhaving drawn down a curse upon her. When this fear comes upon her, I\nconsole her with God's word, and enter fully into the matter, showing\nher, from Holy Scripture, on what a repentant sinner must rely for\nthe mercy of God. Occasionally she is troubled as to the\ninterpretation of Holy Scripture, as all passages do not seem to her\nto agree, but to contradict each other. In this I help her so far as\nmy understanding goes, so that sometimes she heartily thanks God that\nshe is come to me, where she finds rest and consolation.\n\nAfter she had been with me for a year or two, she learned that the\ngovernor, whom she suspected, had come to Copenhagen. She said to me,\n'I hear the rogue is come here; I request my dismissal.' I asked her\nwhy. 'Because,' she replied, 'I will kill him.' I could scarcely keep\nfrom laughing; but I said, 'Jesus forbid! If you have any such\ndesign, I shall not let you go.' And as she is a person whose like I\nhave never known before--for she could chide with hard words, and yet\nat the same time she was modest and well-behaved--I tried to make her\ntell me and show me how she designed to take the governor's life.\n(She is a small woman, delicately formed.) Then she acted as if her\nenemy were seated on a stool, and she had a large knife under her\napron. When he said to her, 'Woman, what do you want?' she would\nplunge the knife into him, and exclaim, 'Rogue, thou hast deserved\nthis.' She would not move from the place, she would gladly die, if\nshe could only take his life. I said, 'Still it is such a disgrace to\ndie by the hand of the executioner.' 'Oh, no!' she replied, 'it is\nnot a disgrace to die for an honourable deed;' and she had an idea\nthat any one thus dying by the hand of the executioner passed away in\na more Christian manner than such as died on a bed of sickness; and\nthat it was no sin to kill a man who, like a rogue, had murdered\nanother. I asked her if she did not think that he sinned who killed\nanother. 'No,' she replied, 'not when he has brought it upon\nhimself.' I said, 'No one may be his own judge, either by the law of\nGod or man; and what does the fifth commandment teach us?'[E63] She\nanswered as before, that she would gladly die if she could only take\nthe rogue's life. (I must add that she said she could not do it on my\naccount, for I would not let her out.) She made a sin of that which\nis no sin, and that which is sin she will not regard as such. She\nsays it is a sin to kill a dog, a cat, or a bird; the innocent\nanimals do no harm; in fact, it is a still greater sin to let the\npoor beasts hunger. I asked her once whether it was a sin to eat\nmeat. 'No,' she answered; 'it is only a sin to him who has killed the\nanimal.' She protested that if she were obliged to marry, and had to\nchoose between a butcher and an executioner, she would prefer the\nlatter. She told me of various quarrels she had had with those who\nhad either killed animals or allowed them to hunger.\n\n [E63] The Lutheran Church has retained the division of the\n Commandments used in the Roman Church; and the Commandment against\n murder is therefore here described as the fifth, whilst in the\n English catechism it is the sixth.\n\nOne story I will not leave unmentioned, as it is very pretty. She\nsold, she said, one day some pigs to a butcher. When the butcher's\nboy was about to bind the pigs' feet and carry them off hanging from\na pole, she was sorry for the poor pigs, and said, 'What, will you\ntake their life? No, I will not suffer that!' and she threw him back\nhis money. I asked her if she did not know that pigs were killed, and\nfor what reason she thought the butcher had bought them. 'Yes,' she\nreplied, 'I knew that well. Had he let them go on their own legs, I\nshould have cared nothing about it; but to bind the poor beasts in\nthis way, and to hear them cry, I could not endure that.' It would\ntake too long to enumerate all the extravagant whims which she\nrelated of herself. But with all this she is not foolish, and I well\nbelieve she is true to any one she loves. She served me very well,\nand with great care.\n\nThe above-mentioned governor[E64] was killed by some prisoners on\nboard the vessel, when he was returning to the West Indies. By a\nstrange chance the vessel with the murderers came to Copenhagen.\n(They were sentenced to death for their crime.) Jonatha declared\nthat the governor had had only too good a death, and that it was a\nsin that any one should lose his life on account of it. I practise\nspeaking the English language with Jonatha. She has forgotten\nsomewhat of her mother tongue, since she has not spoken it for many\nyears; and as she always reads the English Bible, and does not at\nonce understand all the words, I help her; for I not only can\nperceive the sense from the preceding and following words, but also\nbecause some words resemble the French, though with another accent.\nAnd we often talk together about the interpretation of Holy\nScripture. She calls herself a Calvinist, but she does not hold the\nopinions of Calvinists. I never dispute with her over her opinions.\nShe goes to the Lord's Supper in the Queen's church[E65]. Once, when\nshe came back to me from there, she said she had had a conversation\nupon religion with a woman, who had told her to her face that she was\nno Calvinist. I asked her of what religion the woman imagined that\nshe was. She replied: 'God knows that. I begged her to mind her own\nbusiness, and said, that I was a Christian; I thought of your grace's\nwords (but I did not say them), that all those who believe on Christ\nand live a Christian life, are Christians, whatever name they may\ngive to their faith.'\n\n [E64] The name of this governor, which is not mentioned by Leonora,\n was Jorgen Iversen, the first Danish governor of St. Thomas. In\n 1682 he returned to the colony from Copenhagen on board a vessel\n which was to bring some prisoners over to St. Thomas. Very soon\n after their departure, some of the prisoners and of the crew raised\n a mutiny, killed the captain and some of the passengers, amongst\n them the ex-governor Iversen. But one of the prisoners who had not\n been in the plot afterwards got the mastery of the vessel, and\n returned to Copenhagen. The vessel struck on a rock, near the\n Swedish coast, but the crew were saved and sent home to Copenhagen\n by the Swedish Government, and the murderers were then executed.\n\n [E65] The Queen's church was a room in the castle where service was\n held according to the Calvinist rite.\n\nIn this year 1684 I saw the Queen Dowager fall from the chair in\nwhich she was drawn up to the royal apartment. The chair ran down the\npulleys too quickly, so that she fell on her face and knocked her\nknee. During this year her weakness daily increased, but she thought\nherself stronger than she was. She appeared at table always much\ndressed, and between the meals she remained in her apartments.\n\nI kept myself patient, and wrote the following:--\n\n_Contemplation on Memory and Courage, recorded to the honour of God\nby the suffering Christian woman in the sixty-third year of her life,\nand the almost completed twenty-first year of her captivity._\n\n    The vanished hours can ne'er come back again,\n    Still may the old their youthful joys retain;\n    The past may yet within our memory live,\n    And courage vigour to the old may give.\n    Yet why should I thus sport with Memory's truth,\n    And harrow up the fairer soil of youth?\n    No fruit it brings, fallow and bare it lies,\n    And the dry furrow only pain supplies!\n    In my first youth, in honourable days\n    Upon such things small question did I raise.\n    Then years advanced with trouble in their train,\n    And spite of show my life was fraught with pain.\n    The holy marriage bond--my rank and fame,\n    Increased my foes and made my ill their aim.\n    Go! honour, riches, vanish from my mind!\n    Ye all forsook me and left nought behind.\n    'Twas ye have brought me here thro' years to lie;\n    Thus can man's envy human joy deny!\n    My God alone, He ne'er forsook me here,\n    My cross He lightened, and was ever near;\n    And when my heart was yielding to despair,\n    He spoke of peace and whispered He was there.\n    He gave me power and ever near me stood,\n    And all could see how truly God was good.\n\n    What Courage can achieve I next will heed;\n    He who is blessed with it, is blest indeed.\n    To the tired frame fresh power can Courage give,\n    Raising the weary mind anew to live;\n    I mean that Courage Reason may instil\n    Not the foolhardiness that leads to ill.\n    Far oftener is it that the youth will lie\n    Helpless, when Fortune's favours from him fly,\n    Than that the old man should inactive stay,\n    Who knows full well how Fortune loves to play.\n    Fresh Courage seizes him; from such a shield\n    Rebound the arms malicious foes may wield.\n    Courage imparts repose, and trifles here,\n    Beneath its influence, as nought appear;\n    But a vain loan, which we can only hold\n    Until the lender comes, and life is told.\n    Courage pervades the frame and vigour gives,\n    And a fresh energy each part receives;\n    With appetite and health and cheerful mind,\n    And calm repose in hours of sleep we find,\n    So that no visions in ill dreams appear,\n    And spectre forms filling the heart with fear.\n    Courage gives honied sweetness to our food\n    And prison fare, and makes e'en death seem good.\n    'Tis well! my mind is fresh, my limbs are sound,\n    And no misfortune weighs me to the ground.\n    Reason and judgment come from God alone,\n    And the five senses unimpaired I own.\n    The mighty God in me His power displays,\n    Therefore join with me in a voice of praise\n    And laud His name: For Thou it is, oh God,\n    Who in my fear and anguish nigh me stood.\n    Almighty One, my thanks be ever thine!\n    Let me ne'er waver nor my trust resign.\n    Take not the courage which my hope supplies,\n    Till my soul enters into Paradise.\n\nWritten on February 28, 1684, that is the thirty-sixth anniversary\nsince the illustrious King Christian the Fourth bade good-night to\nthis world, and I to the prosperity of my life.\n\nI have now reached the sixty-third year of my age, and the twentieth\nyear, sixth month, and fifteenth day of my imprisonment. I have\ntherefore spent the third part of my life in captivity. God be\npraised that so much time is past. I hope the remaining days may not\nbe many.\n\nAnno 1685, January 14, I amused myself with making some verses in\nwhich truth was veiled under the cloak of jest, entitled: 'A Dog,\nnamed Cavaillier, relates his Fate.'\n\nThe rhymes, I suppose, will come into your hands, my dearest\nchildren.[E66]\n\n [E66] This poem still exists, and is printed in the second volume\n of Hofman's work on Danish noblemen. It is intended to convey an\n account of her own and her husband's fate.\n\nOn February 20, the Queen Dowager Sophia Amalia died. She did not\nthink that death would overtake her so quickly; but when the doctor\nwarned her that her death would not be long delayed, she requested to\nspeak with her son. But death would not wait for the arrival of his\nMajesty, so that the Queen Dowager might say a word to him. She was\nstill alive; she was sitting on a chair, but she was speechless, and\nsoon afterwards, in the same position, she gave up her spirit.\n\nAfter the death of this Queen I was much on the lips of the people.\nSome thought that I should obtain my liberty; others believed that I\nshould probably be brought from the tower to some other place, but\nshould not be set free.\n\nJonatha, who had learned from Ole the tower-warder, some days before\nthe death of the Queen, that prayers were being offered up in the\nchurch for the Queen (it had, however, been going on for six weeks,\nthat this prayer had been read from the pulpit), was, equally with\nOle the tower-warder, quite depressed. Ole, who had consoled himself\nand her hitherto with the tidings from the Queen's lacqueys, that the\nQueen went to table and was otherwise well, though she occasionally\nsuffered from a cough, now thought that there was danger, that death\nmight result, and that I, if the Queen died, might perhaps leave the\nprison. They did their best to conceal their sorrow, but without\nsuccess. They occasionally shed secretly a few tears. I behaved as if\nI did not remark it, and as no one said anything to me about it, I\ngave no opportunity for speaking on the subject. A long time\npreviously I had said to Jonatha (as I had done before to the other\nwomen) that I did not think I should die in the tower. She remembered\nthis and mentioned it. I said: 'All is in God's hand. He knows best\nwhat is needful for me, both as regards soul and body; to Him I\ncommend myself.' Thus Jonatha and Ole lived on between hope and fear.\n\nOn March 15, the reigning Queen kept her Easter. Jonatha came quite\ndelighted from her Majesty's church, saying that a noble personage\nhad told her that I need not think of getting out of the prison,\nalthough the Queen was dead; she knew better and she insisted upon\nit. However often I asked as to who the personage was, she would not\ntell me her name. I laughed at her, and said, 'Whoever the personage\nmay be, she knows just as much about it as you and I do.' Jonatha\nadhered to her opinion that the person knew it well. 'What do you\nmean?' I said; 'the King himself does not know. How should others\nknow?' 'Not the King! not the King!' she said quite softly. 'No, not\nthe King!' I answered. 'He does not know till God puts it into his\nheart, and as good as says to him, \"Now thou shalt let the prisoner\nfree!\"' She came somewhat more to herself, but said nothing. And as\nshe and Ole heard no more rumours concerning me, they were quite\ncomforted.\n\nOn March 26, the funeral of the Queen Dowager took place, and her\nbody was conveyed to Roskild.\n\nOn April 21, I supplicated the King's Majesty in the following\nmanner. I possessed a portrait engraving of the illustrious King\nChristian the Fourth, rather small and oval in form. This I\nilluminated with colours, and had a carved frame made for it, which\nI gilded myself. On the piece at the back I wrote the following\nwords:--\n\n    My grandson, and great namesake,\n    Equal to me in power and state;\n    Vouchsafe my child a hearing,\n    And be like me in mercy great!\n\nBesides this, I wrote to his Excellency Gyldenlove, requesting him\nhumbly to present the Supplique to the King's majesty, and to\ninterest himself on my behalf, and assist me to gain my liberty. His\nExcellency was somewhat inconvenienced at the time by his old\nweakness, so that he could not himself speak for me; but he begged a\ngood friend to present the engraving with all due respect, and this\nwas done on April 24.[E67]\n\n [E67] This picture is still preserved at the Castle of Rosenbourg,\n in Copenhagen.\n\nOf all this Jonatha knew nothing. Peder Jensen Totzloff was my\nmessenger. He has been a comfort to me in my imprisonment, and has\nrendered me various services, so that I am greatly bound to him. And\nI beg you, my dearest children, to requite him in all possible ways\nfor the services he has rendered me.\n\nOn May 2, it became generally talked of that I should assuredly be\nset at liberty, and some asked the tower-warder whether I had come\nout the evening before, and at what time; so that Ole began to fear,\nand could not bear himself as bravely as he tried to do. He said to\nme in a sad tone: 'My good lady! You will certainly be set at\nliberty. There are some who think you are already free.' I said, 'God\nwill bring it to pass.' 'Yes,' said he, 'but how will it fare with me\nthen?' I answered, 'You will remain tower-warder, as you now are.'\n'Yes,' said he, 'but with what pleasure?' and he turned, unable to\nrestrain his tears, and went away. Jonatha concluded that my\ndeliverance was drawing near, and endeavoured to conceal her sorrow.\nShe said, 'Ole is greatly cast down, but I am not.' (And the tears\nwere standing in her eyes.) 'It is said for certain that the King is\ngoing away the day after to-morrow. If you are set at liberty, it\nwill be this very day.' I said, 'God knows.' Jonatha expressed her\nopinion that I was nevertheless full of hope. I said I had been\nhopeful ever since the first day of my imprisonment; that God would\nat last have mercy on me, and regard my innocence. I had prayed to\nGod always for patience to await the time of His succour; and God had\ngraciously bestowed it on me. If the moment of succour had now\narrived, I should pray to God for grace to acknowledge rightly His\ngreat benefits. Jonatha asked if I were not sure to be set free\nbefore the King started for Norway; that it was said for certain that\nthe King would set out early on the following morning. I said: 'There\nis no certainty as to future things. Circumstances may occur to\nimpede the King's journey, and it may also happen that my liberty may\nbe prevented, even though at this hour it may perhaps be resolved\nupon. Still I know that my hope will not be confounded. But you do\nnot conceal your regret, and I cannot blame you for it. You have\ncause for regret, for with my freedom you lose your yearly income and\nyour maintenance.[148] Remember how often I have told you not to\nthrow away your money so carelessly on your son. You cannot know what\nmay happen to you in your old age. If I die, you will be plunged\ninto poverty; for as soon as you receive your money, you expend it\non the apprenticeship of your son, who returns you no thanks for\nit.[149] You have yourself told me of his bad disposition, and how\nwrongly he has answered you when you have tried to give him good\nadvice. Latterly he has not ventured to do so, since I read him a\nlecture, and threatened that I would help to send him to the House of\nCorrection. I fear he will be a bad son to you.' Upon this she gave\nfree vent to her tears, and begged that if I obtained my liberty I\nwould not abandon her. This I promised, so far as lay in my power;\nfor I could not know what my circumstances might be.\n\n [148] In the margin is added: 'The woman who attended on me\n received eight rix-dollars monthly.'\n\n [149] In the margin: 'She had him learn wood-carving.'\n\nIn this way some days elapsed, and Jonatha and Ole knew not what the\nissue might be.\n\nOn May 19, at six o'clock in the morning, Ole knocked softly at my\nouter door. Jonatha went to it. Ole said softly, 'The King is already\ngone; he left at about four o'clock.' I know not if his hope was\ngreat; at any rate it did not last long. Jonatha told me Ole's news.\nI wished the King's Majesty a prosperous journey (I knew already what\norder he had given), and it seemed to me from her countenance she was\nto some extent contented. At about eight o'clock Totzloff came up to\nme and informed me that the Lord Chancellor Count Allefeldt had sent\nthe prison governor a royal order that I was to be released from my\nimprisonment, and that I could leave when I pleased. (This order was\nsigned by the King's Majesty the day before his Majesty started.)\n\nHis Excellency had accompanied the King. Totzloff asked whether I\nwished him to lock the doors, as I was now free. I replied, 'So long\nas I remain within the doors of my prison, I am not free. I will\nmoreover leave properly. Lock the door and enquire what my sister's\ndaughter, Lady Anna Catharina Lindenow, says, whether his\nExcellency[E68] sent any message to her (as he promised) before he\nleft. When Totzloff was gone, I said to Jonatha, 'Now, in Jesus'\nname, this very evening I shall leave. Gather your things together,\nand pack them up, and I will do the same with mine; they shall remain\nhere till I can have them fetched.' She was somewhat startled, but\nnot cast down. She thanked God with me, and when the doors were\nunlocked at noon and I dined, she laughed at Ole, who was greatly\ndepressed. I told her that Ole might well sigh, for that he would now\nhave to eat his cabbage without bacon.\n\n [E68] The Excellency alluded to is Ulrik Frederik Gyldenlove, a\n natural son of Frederik III. Anna Catharina Lindenow was daughter\n of Leonora's sister, Elizabeth Augusta, who married Hans Lindenow.\n\nTotzloff brought me word from my sister's daughter that his\nExcellency had sent to her to say that she was free to accompany me\nfrom the tower, if she chose. It was therefore settled that she was\nto come for me late the same evening.\n\nThe prison governor was in a great hurry to get rid of me, and sent\nthe tower-warder to me towards evening, to enquire whether I would\nnot go. I sent word that it was still too light (there would probably\nbe some curious people who had a desire to see me).\n\nThrough a good friend I made enquiry of her Majesty the Queen,\nwhether I might be allowed the favour of offering my humble\nsubmission to her Majesty (I could go into the Queen's apartment\nthrough the secret passage, so that no one could see me). Her Majesty\nsent me word in reply that she might not speak with me.\n\nAt about ten o'clock in the evening, the prison governor opened the\ndoor for my sister's daughter. (I had not seen him for two years.) He\nsaid, 'Well, shall we part now?' I answered, 'Yes, the time is now\ncome.' Then he gave me his hand, and said 'Ade!' (Adieu). I answered\nin the same manner, and my niece laughed heartily.\n\nSoon after the prison governor had gone, I and my sister's daughter\nleft the tower. Her Majesty the Queen thought to see me as I came\nout, and was standing on her balcony, but it was rather dark;\nmoreover I had a black veil over my face. The palace-square, as far\nas the bridge and further, was full of people, so that we could\nscarcely press through to the coach.\n\nThe time of my imprisonment was twenty-one years, nine months, and\neleven days.\n\nKing Frederick III. ordered my imprisonment on August 8, A.D. 1663;\nKing Christian V. gave me my liberty on May 18, 1685. God bless my\nmost gracious King with all royal blessing, and give his Majesty\nhealth and add many years to his life.\n\nThis is finished in my prison.\n\nOn May 19, at ten o'clock in the evening, I left my prison. To God be\nhonour and praise. He graciously vouchsafed that I should recognise\nHis divine benefits, and never forget to record them with gratitude.\n\nDear children! This is the greatest part of the events worth\nmentioning which occurred to me within the doors of my prison. I live\nnow in the hope that it may please God and the King's Majesty that I\nmay myself show you this record. God in His mercy grant it.\n\n1685. Written at Husum[E69] June 2, where I am awaiting the return of\nthe King's Majesty from Norway:\n\n [E69] This Husum is a village just outside Copenhagen, where\n Leonora remained for some months before she went to Maribo, as is\n proved by a letter from her dated Husum, September 18, 1685. Of\n course the last paragraphs must have been added after she left her\n prison, and the passage 'This is finished in my prison' refers, at\n any rate, only to what precedes.\n\nA.D. 1683. New Year's Day. To Myself.\n\n    Men say that Fortune is a rare and precious thing,\n    And they would fain that Power should homage to her bring.\n    Yet Power herself is blind and ofttimes falleth low,\n    Rarely to rise again, wherefore may Heaven know.\n    To-day with humorous wiles she holds her sovereign sway,\n    And could one only trust her, there might be goodly prey.\n    Yet is she like to Fortune, changeful the course she flies,\n    And both, oh earthly pilgrim, are but vain fraud and lies.\n    The former is but frail, the other strives with care,\n    And both alas! are subject to many a plot and snare.\n    Thou hast laid hold on Fortune with an exultant mind,\n    Affixed perhaps to-morrow the fatal _mis_ we find;\n    Then does thy courage fail, this prefix saddens thee,\n    Wert thou thyself Goliath or twice as brave as he.\n    And thou who art so small--already grey with care--\n    Thou know'st not whether evil this year thy lot may share.\n    For Fortune frolics ever, now under, now above,\n    Emerging here and there her varied powers to prove.\n    All that is earthly comes and vanishes again,\n    Therefore I cling to that which will for aye remain.\n\nOn March 14, 1683, I wrote the following:--\n\n    True is the sentence we are sometimes told:\n    A friend is worth far more than bags of gold.\n    Yet would I gladly ask, where do we find\n    A friend so virtuous that he is well inclined\n    To help another in his need and gloom\n    Without a thought of recompense to come?\n    Naught is there new in this, for selfish care\n    To every child of Eve has proved a snare.\n    Each generation hears the last complain,\n    And each repeats the same sad tale again;--\n    That the oppressed by the wayside may lie,\n    When naught is gained but God's approving eye.\n\n    See, at Bethesda's pool, how once there came\n    The halting impotent, some help to claim\n    Among those thousands. Each of pity free,\n    Had no hand for him in his misery\n    To bring him to the angel-troubled stream.\n    Near his last breath did the poor sufferer seem,\n    Weary and penniless; when One alone\n    Who without money works His wise own\n    Will, turned where the helpless suppliant lay,\n    And gently bade him rise and go his way.\n\n    Children of grief, rejoice, do not despair;\n    This Helper still is here and still will care\n    What He in mercy wills. He soothes our pain,\n    And He will help, asking for naught again.\n    And in due time He will with gracious hand\n    Unloose thy prison bars and iron band.\n\nA.D. 1684. The first day. To Peder Jensen Totzloff.\n\n    Welcome, thou New Year's day, altho' thou dost belong\n    To those by Brahe reckoned the evil days among,\n    Declaring that whatever may on this day begin\n    Can never prosper rightly, nor true success can win.\n    Now I will only ask if from to-day I strive\n    The evil to avoid and henceforth good to live,\n    Will this not bring success? Why should a purpose fail,\n    Altho' on this day made? why should it not prevail?\n    Oh Brahe, I believe, when we aright begin,\n    To-day or when it be, and God's good favour win,\n    The issue must be well, and all that matters here\n    Is to commend our ways to our Redeemer dear.\n\n    Begin with Jesus Christ this as all other days.\n    Pray that thy plans may meet with the Almighty's praise,\n    So may'st thou happy be, and naught that man can do\n    Can hinder thy designs, unless God wills it so!\n    May a rich meed of blessing be on thy head bestow'd,\n    And the Lord Jesus Christ protect thee on thy road\n    With arms of grace. Such is my wish for thee,\n    Based on the love of God; sure, that He answers me.\n\n\nLONDON: PRINTED BY\nSPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE\nAND PARLIAMENT STREET\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe following corrections were made:\n\np. 53: length the good-for-nothing[good-for nothing] fellow came down,\n       and\n\np. 55: there for ten days[25] a letter from Gul...[Gl...] which he\n\np. 56: patacoon[patacon] to those who were to restrain her, saying,\n\np. 59: came to see her, no one in consequence[consequenec] consoled\n       her,\n\np. 61: When the lawyer had said that they[t hey] had now taken\n\np. 64: lose in Dan...[Den...].\n\np. 67: It was necessary[neccessary] to descend the rampart into the\n\np. 92: he persuaded[pursuaded] me to undertake the English journey,\n\np. 106: with my attendant. I answered nothing else than[then] that\n\np. 114: silk camisole[camisolle], in the foot of my stockings there\n        were\n\np. 132: Castle[Cstale], I had sent a good round present for those in\n\np. 135: sad day, and I begged them, for Jesus'[Jesu's] sake, that\n\np. 137: decree? I only beg for Jesus'[Jesu's] sake that what I say\n\np. 172: might easily injure herself with one.'[[76]]\n\np. 174: Synge'[[E31]]:--\n\np. 230: of listening to reason, for she at once exclaimed 'Ach[!]\n\np. 239: Karen, Nils'[Nil's] daughter, left me one evening in 1669,\n\np. 241: and the Frenchman[Frenchmen] was conveyed to the Dark Church,\n\np. 241: through Uldrich[Udrich] Christian Gyldenlove. Gyldenlove\n\np. 246: her word moreover, and I so arranged it[at] six weeks\n\np. 259: In the same year, 1671, Karen, Nils'[Nil's] daughter, left\n\np. 264: silent, not if I were standing before the King's\n        bailiff![?][']\n\np. 268: in the time of Karen, Nils'[Nil's] daughter. Chresten, who\n\np. 272: In the same year Karen, Nils'[Nil's] daughter, left me for\n\np. 276: and a half after her marriage, and that suddenly,\n        suspicion[suspipicion]\n\np. 300: Supper in the Queen's church[[E65]]. Once, when she came\n\np. 311: [60] In[in] the margin is added: 'The sorrow manifested by\n        many would far\n\np. 311: [117] In the margin is added: '1666. While Karen, Nils'[Nil's]\n        daughter, waited\n\np. 311: Nils'[Nil's] daughter. When anything gave her satisfaction,\n        she would take\n\np. 311: to set Copenhagen[Copenagen] on fire in divers places, and\n        also the\n\np. 311: Autobiography[Autobiograpy] of Leonora as 'notre vieillard;'\n        he was a faithful\n\np. 311: which placed it at the disposal of Hannibal\n        Sehested[Schested] when he\n\np. 311: [E38] 'Anno 1666, soon after Karen, Nils'[Nil's] daughter,\n        came to me,\n\np. 311: [E51] Hannibal Sehested[Schested] was dead already in 1666,\n        as Leonora\n\np. 311: disposed to Hannibal Sehested[Schested].\n\np. 311: entitled 'Martilogium (for martyrologium[matyrologium]) der\n        Heiligen' (Strasburg\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nJust and Unjust Wars\n\nFifth Edition\n\nJust and Unjust Wars\n\nA Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations\n\nFifth Edition\n\nMichael Walzer\n\nA Member of the Perseus Books Group\n\nNew York\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1977 by Basic Books\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 by Basic Books for Preface to the Fifth Edition and Postscript\n\nPublished by Basic Books,\n\nA Member of the Perseus Books Group\n\nAll rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.\n\nBooks published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com.\n\nDesigned by Jack Lenzo\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nWalzer, Michael.\n\nJust and unjust wars : a moral argument with historical illustrations \/ Michael Walzer. \u2014 Fifth edition.\n\npages cm\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 978-0-465-05270-7 (e-book) 1. War. 2. War\u2014Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Just war doctrine. I. Title.\n\nU21.2.W345 2015\n\n172'.42\u2014dc23\n\n2015010999\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nAux martyrs de l'Holocauste\n\nAux r\u00e9volt\u00e9s des Ghettos\n\nAux partisans de for\u00eats\n\nAux insurg\u00e9s des camps\n\nAux combatants de la r\u00e9sistance\n\nAux soldats des forces alli\u00e9es\n\nAux sauveteurs de fr\u00e8res en peril\n\nAux vaillants de l'immigration clandestine\n\nA l'\u00e9ternit\u00e9\n\n\u2014Inscription at Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem\nContents\n\nPreface to the Fifth Edition\n\nPreface to the First Edition\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nPart One The Moral Reality of War\n\n1 Against \"Realism\"\n\nThe Realist Argument\n\nThe Melian Dialogue\n\nStrategy and Morality\n\nHistorical Relativism\n\nThree Accounts of Agincourt\n\n2 The Crime of War\n\nThe Logic of War\n\nThe Argument of Karl von Clausewitz\n\nThe Limit of Consent\n\nThe Tyranny of War\n\nGeneral Sherman and the Burning of Atlanta\n\n3 The Rules of War\n\nThe Moral Equality of Soldiers\n\nThe Case of Hitler's Generals\n\nTwo Sorts of Rules\n\nThe War Convention\n\nThe Example of Surrender\n\n Part Two The Theory of Aggression\n\n4 Law and Order in International Society\n\nAggression\n\nThe Rights of Political Communities\n\nThe Case of Alsace-Lorraine\n\nThe Legalist Paradigm\n\nUnavoidable Categories\n\nKarl Marx and the Franco-Prussian War\n\nThe Argument for Appeasement\n\nCzechoslovakia and the Munich Principle\n\nFinland\n\n5 Anticipations\n\nPreventive War and the Balance of Power\n\nThe War of the Spanish Succession\n\nPre-emptive Strikes\n\nThe Six Day War\n\n6 Interventions\n\nSelf-Determination and Self-Help\n\nThe Argument of John Stuart Mill\n\nSecession\n\nThe Hungarian Revolution\n\nCivil War\n\nThe American War in Vietnam\n\nHumanitarian Intervention\n\nCuba, 1898, and Bangladesh, 1971\n\n7 War's Ends, and the Importance of Winning\n\nUnconditional Surrender\n\nAllied Policy in World War II\n\nJustice in Settlements\n\nThe Korean War\n\nPart Three The War Convention\n\n8 War's Means and the Importance of Fighting Well\n\nUtility and Proportionality\n\nThe Argument of Henry Sidgwick\n\nHuman Rights\n\nThe Rape of the Italian Women\n\n9 Noncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity\n\nThe Status of Individuals\n\nNaked Soldiers\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (1)\n\nSubmarine Warfare: The Laconia Affair\n\nDouble Effect\n\nBombardment in Korea\n\nThe Bombing of Occupied France and the Vemork Raid\n\n10 War Against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades\n\nCoercion and Responsibility\n\nThe Siege of Jerusalem, 72 A.D.\n\nThe Right to Leave\n\nThe Siege of Leningrad\n\nTaking Aim and the Doctrine of Double Effect\n\nThe British Blockade of Germany\n\n11 Guerrilla War\n\nResistance to Military Occupation\n\nA Partisan Attack\n\nThe Rights of Guerrilla Fighters\n\nThe Rights of Civilian Supporters\n\nThe American \"Rules of Engagement\" in Vietnam\n\n12 Terrorism\n\nThe Political Code\n\nThe Russian Populists, the IRA, and the Stern Gang\n\nThe Vietcong Assassination Campaign\n\nViolence and Liberation\n\nJean-Paul Sartre and the Battle of Algiers\n\n13 Reprisals\n\nDeterrence Without Retribution\n\nThe FFI Prisoners at Annecy\n\nThe Problem of Peacetime Reprisals\n\nThe Attack on Khibye and the Beirut Raid\n\nPart Four Dilemmas of War\n\n14 Winning and Fighting Well\n\n\"Asinine Ethics\"\n\nChairman Mao and the Battle of the River Hung\n\nThe Sliding Scale and the Argument from Extremity\n\n15 Aggression and Neutrality\n\nThe Right to Be Neutral\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (2)\n\nThe Rape of Belgium\n\nThe Sliding Scale\n\nWinston Churchill and Norwegian Neutrality\n\n16 Supreme Emergency\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (3)\n\nOverriding the Rules of War\n\nThe Decision to Bomb German Cities\n\nThe Limits of Calculation\n\nHiroshima\n\n17 Nuclear Deterrence\n\nThe Problem of Immoral Threats\n\nLimited Nuclear War\n\nThe Argument of Paul Ramsey\n\nPart Five The Question of Responsibility\n\n18 The Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens\n\nThe World of Officials\n\nNuremberg: \"The Ministries Case\"\n\nDemocratic Responsibilities\n\nThe American People and the War in Vietnam\n\n19 War Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers\n\nIn the Heat of Battle\n\nTwo Accounts of Killing Prisoners\n\nSuperior Orders\n\nThe My Lai Massacre\n\nCommand Responsibility\n\nGeneral Bradley and the Bombing of St. L\u00f4\n\nThe Case of General Yamashita\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (4)\n\nThe Dishonoring of Arthur Harris\n\nConclusion\n\nAfterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War\n\nPostscript: A Defense of Just War Theory\n\nNotes\n\nIndex\nPreface to the Fifth Edition\n\nThe book of Ecclesiastes ends with a complaint: \"Of making many books, there is no end.\" On the occasion of the fifth edition of Just and Unjust Wars, I can't complain about that; I am grateful for the re-making of this book. But it is also true that \"Of making many wars, there is no end,\" and this should be a universal human complaint. I am writing just as the United States is ending two of the longest wars in its history (in Afghanistan and Iraq)\u2014and beginning another (to degrade and defeat the Islamic State in Syria and, again, Iraq). Each new edition of Just and Unjust Wars has coincided with new wars and new questions about war. I wrote about humanitarian intervention in the preface to the third edition and about wars for regime change in the preface to the fourth.\n\nAs this latest edition is being prepared for publication, intense arguments are under way about asymmetric warfare\u2014arguments that overlap a great deal with central issues in this book. But asymmetric warfare has its own set of moral difficulties and immoral cruelties that require specific, detailed consideration and judgment. For reasons I will come to, judgment is especially important\u2014hence this newly prepared preface.\n\nMost of the wars of the past several decades have been asymmetric; notably, for American citizens, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war (after the first few weeks, when the success of the invasion produced an unexpected insurgency)\u2014also the Israeli wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the Sri Lankan war against the Tamil rebels, and the Russian war in Chechnya. Asymmetric warfare isn't new; the guerrilla wars discussed in chapter 11, especially the Vietnam War, are earlier examples. Some writers believe that traditional just war theory, with its long-established rules about when to fight and how to fight, cannot deal with asymmetry. But if the theory \"worked,\" as I think it did, in helping Americans understand what was wrong in Vietnam, there is no reason why it can't work in other times and places. It is a good theory; we remain indebted to the Catholic theologians who invented it centuries ago.\n\nBut the theory was invented to deal with what we now call \"conventional\" warfare\u2014where two armies are engaged and each one is pretty much like the other in organization and armaments. If there are any rules that govern the fighting, it is easy to imagine that they will be the same for the two armies and for all their soldiers. Wars of that sort are\u2014we should be thankful\u2014rare these days. Iran and Iraq fought an old-fashioned war in the 1980s, and the 1991 Iraq war, against the conquest of Kuwait, was roughly conventional. We can all think of possible wars like those, but they are not likely to happen anytime soon.\n\nIn the more immediate conditions of asymmetry, by contrast, there is only one army, organized, armed, and disciplined by a modern state; its opponents are insurgents, less well-organized, less well-armed, and often without a coordinated system of military discipline or of military justice. Do the same rules apply to armies and insurgents? I want to say that they do, but that requires an argument.\n\nThe insurgents claim the prerogatives of weakness\u2014which follow, they say, from the conventional doctrines of military necessity and last resort applied to their special circumstances. So the old rules do apply, but given the circumstances, not in the same way to the two sides. The insurgents have to be able to hide from the army's overwhelming firepower, so they can't wear uniforms. They can't fight along a \"front\"; they have to be able to strike anytime, anywhere, so they can't always distinguish combatants from civilians. In any case, military targets are often too dangerous for them to attack; killing civilians, they argue, is often the only thing they can do, so it is their \"last resort\" even if they don't actually try anything else. And they can't build fortresses or military bases, for if they don't have a \"front,\" they also don't have a \"rear\" where they can assemble or regroup in safety. The only protection they have is the cover of their own people's homes and neighborhoods.\n\nFor the conventional army, insurgents claiming these prerogatives are a big problem. The army gets no circumstantial exemption from the old rules; it is expected above all to maintain the distinction between combatants and civilians, even if the insurgents deliberately blur the distinction. But how can its soldiers fight against enemies who hide among the civilian population without killing civilians?\n\nThe proportionality rule (see \"The Argument of Henry Sidgwick\" in chapter 8) is supposed to provide criteria for judging those deaths, but proportionality in warfare is not an exact science. Historically, in conventional wars, the rule has most often been read permissively: the value of the military target is so great that a fairly high number of civilian casualties (collateral damage, as it is called) is \"not disproportionate.\" Think about an Allied decision to bomb a German tank factory in World War II. The factory is located in a working-class neighborhood\u2014not for the sake of civilian cover but because that is where factories were built before workers had cars. Given the aiming devices available in 1943, any attack on the factory would kill many civilians. But the death of many civilians, indeed, of almost any number of civilians, is \"not disproportionate\" to the value of stopping the production of tanks for the German war effort. This same argument can be made, and was regularly made, in defense of attacks on considerably less valuable targets\u2014which is the reason for my skepticism about the proportionality rule in this book.\n\nIn recent asymmetric conflicts, by contrast, the rule has been read restrictively. Asymmetry makes for micro-battles, small-scale engagements, and in these engagements, given the overwhelming power of the army and the weakness of the insurgents, even a very small number of civilian casualties seems disproportionate to the military value of the target. For the target may be nothing more than a couple of insurgents firing from the roof of a small apartment building (in Afghanistan) or a single rocket launching crew in the parking lot of a hospital (in Gaza).\n\nThe army argues that it has to respond to the gunfire from the roof and to the rockets from the parking lot, and the civilians it kills, even if their number looks disproportionate, are the moral responsibility of the insurgents who have chosen to fight from civilian cover. The insurgents blame the army's soldiers, who are indeed the actual killers; at the same time the insurgents commonly benefit from the civilian deaths in the court of public opinion. The weak are even more attractive when they are also victims, and it is probably true that insurgent fighters don't only hide behind civilians; they also deliberately expose civilians to attack. But the other side may also benefit from civilian deaths. The army aims, it says, only at military targets, but the collateral damage from its attacks may serve to deter future insurgent war making or discourage civilian support for the insurgents. So perhaps the army isn't as careful as it might be to avoid collateral damage.\n\nSorting all this out doesn't require us to abandon or significantly revise just war theory. It does require that the theory be applied, as the insurgents say, with close attention to the circumstances of asymmetry. Close attention is also critical attention: it doesn't necessarily support the insurgents' claims, nor does it allow just any military response from the army. But before addressing these battlefield issues, I need to consider, briefly, how the battles begin.\n\nThe army is, as it were, already in power, serving a sovereign state whose political policies and moral authority are contested, rightly or wrongly. So it's the insurgents who usually start the war. Claiming the prerogatives that I have just described, they often attack civilian targets, inviting a military response, the more savage the better. But how was the decision to attack reached? The insurgents are militarily weak, but they are not always or everywhere politically weak. They might have launched a political campaign against the policies and authority of the state\u2014through repeated demonstrations, civil disobedience, a mass march, a general strike\u2014and there probably were people in the insurgent organization who argued for this policy: politics before war. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, as Clausewitz said, then politics should come first; military force is supposed to be a \"last resort,\" but even if that's not right, the use of force shouldn't come before or instead of political action (see my Arguing about War, chapters 6\u20137, for an argument about the metaphysical character of \"lastness\"). We should look for a political struggle in advance of any decision to go to war. It seems to me that the justice of the war, assuming for now the justice of the cause, hangs on this previous struggle. When war is not the continuation but the replacement of politics, we should probably call it unjust.\n\nI am not going to say anything more about the causes for which insurgents fight; the recent history of asymmetric war includes a range of violent struggles\u2014from national liberation to religious crusade. Most just war theorists would call the first of these just and the second unjust; that is my own view. But what is critically at issue in asymmetric warfare is less the cause than the conduct of the war. The focus on conduct derives from the extreme danger to which civilians are subjected, first by the insurgents and then by the army. How civilians are treated is a matter of jus in bello, justice in war, but it certainly reflects on the character of the insurgents and of the army (and of the state for which the army fights). A just cause can be undone if it is pursued in unjust ways. Or, better, when we condemn the conduct of an asymmetric war, we are also arguing that the cause, if it is just, must be pursued differently\u2014by a different kind of war or by a return to politics.\n\nNow, let's say, the fighting has begun, and the first attacks are aimed indiscriminately at civilians\u2014with an argument attached: we can't do anything else. This is the standard argument in defense of terrorism, and it is hard to sustain, even if we set aside the political struggle that has just been pre-empted. Not every military target is impregnable to the insurgents. There are always vulnerable targets that can be attacked, if there is a will to attack them\u2014as anyone knows who has toured the sprawling facilities of a modern army. Further evidence for this claim comes from inside the insurgent organization itself, where there are always dissidents who oppose attacks on civilians and argue for the possibility of a purely military campaign. They testify both to the strength of the conventional rules of war and to the weakness of the argument from necessity. I see no reason to give up on those rules; they apply also, as we will see, to the other side.\n\nThe insurgents can in fact distinguish soldiers and civilians among their enemies, and we should condemn every refusal or failure to do that. Their stronger argument is that they can't help their enemies make the same distinction\u2014they can't separate themselves from their own civilians. Theirs, they say, is a popular insurgency; they fight from among the people because they are the people and the people are the insurgents. They aren't going to march off to some distant battlefield where they are certain to be overwhelmed. They will fight from where they live, or from where their people live, with whom they are one. Their human shields are volunteers, and if the insurgents benefit from the death of those shields, that is, from civilian deaths, they are not responsible for them. If the enemy army can't separate the insurgents from the people, it should give up, for there is no way that it can fight justly.\n\nThat is the primary argument of the insurgents, and it is much better than a common secondary argument: that they are fighting from such densely populated areas that they can't distance their fighters from residential neighborhoods. In the Gaza war of 2014, Israel claimed that some 15 percent of the rockets fired by Hamas were fired from residential neighborhoods and from schools, mosques, and hospitals within those neighborhoods. But if 85 percent of the rockets were fired from uninhabited areas, we have to conclude that the other firings were deliberately sited to provoke counterfire that would kill and injure civilians. Clearly the provocation worked. Population density is a problem for the army; I don't think it is an excuse for the insurgents. If the excuse isn't persuasive in Gaza, with one of the highest ratios of people to space in the world, then it must be far less persuasive in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.\n\nBut the insurgents' claim that they are fighting from where they live, that they are at one with their people, is more plausible\u2014though the claim obviously has different truth value in different countries, at different times. The closer the insurgents are to their people, the stronger the argument for oneness, the more likely it is that they won't be blamed for not wearing uniforms (think of the Minutemen in the American War of Independence) or for fighting from homes and neighborhoods. But when they fight that way, they cannot blame the army for the civilians it kills in response\u2014so long as the soldiers live by the rules that still apply to them.\n\nMany conventional wars have been fought in crowded urban neighborhoods; we shouldn't expect insurgents to miss the opportunities offered by cities and also by towns and villages. There is, however, a difference here: a conventional army, fighting its way through a city, will probably kill civilians, but these killings do not benefit the opposing army. In asymmetric warfare, the army's killings definitely benefit the insurgents, who are therefore liable to the charge, which I have already made, that they deliberately expose civilians to enemy fire. But suppose they have the support of many of the men and women they expose, from whose homes and neighborhoods they choose to fight. Then, indeed, the army responding to insurgent attacks will face a difficult and highly charged moral and political decision: how to deal with \"the people,\" that is, with unarmed but possibly hostile civilians, who are indistinguishable from the insurgents.\n\nHere is what I take to be the central issue in asymmetric warfare (it's also an issue in conventional wars, but asymmetry gives it special significance): How should the army fight when its fighting puts \"enemy\" civilians at risk? \"Enemy\" is in scare quotes because, while some of these civilians may well sympathize with or actively support the insurgents (as the insurgents claim), some of them do not; some of them just wish they were somewhere else. And there are always the children, one-third or more of the population, who aren't anyone's enemies. So the insurgents are fighting from among a mixed group of civilians; the army's soldiers are attacking. How should the soldiers plan, organize, and carry out their attack? The key moral issue can be specified more clearly: What risks should the army ask its soldiers to take in order to reduce the risks they impose on \"enemy\" civilians?\n\nIn a sense, the question is unfair. It isn't the soldiers' fault that they aren't fighting on a conventional battlefield against a uniformed enemy. The moral difficulties of asymmetric warfare are imposed on the soldiers, not chosen by them. Nonetheless, they are well-armed and well-trained, and they are backed up by all the resources of a high-tech military force; the civilians they encounter are unarmed and untrained, highly vulnerable, with no backup at all. And it is the soldiers who, whatever their own intentions, put those civilians at risk. I argue in this book, with examples from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, that soldiers have to accept some risk (I don't attempt to say how much) in order to protect civilians from their own deadly fire. The revised version of the double effect doctrine that I describe in chapter 9, which sets up this question, has been widely discussed and adopted by many just war theorists. But the specific issue of risk taking didn't get much attention until the wars in Afghanistan and Gaza.\n\nThe moral burden I place on soldiers is unfair in another way. The insurgents don't take any risks to avoid putting civilians at risk; instead, they often take risks or, in the case of suicide bombers, they choose death precisely in order to kill and injure civilians. Soldiers are supposedly fighting to protect those civilians, so why make their fight harder and more dangerous? Why ask them to take risks to avoid killing \"enemy\" civilians whom their enemies are deliberately putting at risk? There is a pragmatic answer to this question: asymmetric war is also a political struggle\u2014a battle for civilian support, that is, for \"hearts and minds.\" The U.S. Army's revised rules of engagement for soldiers in Afghanistan, announced in 2010, were aimed above all at reducing civilian casualties. The rationale was very simple, and it fits many other asymmetric wars: you don't win hearts and minds by destroying bodies. But in Israel's Gaza wars, winning the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip was probably not a plausible war aim (though Israel certainly would have benefited if Gazans came to believe that the Israeli army was more committed to civilian well-being than the Hamas militants were). In any case, a similar pragmatic argument applies: it is global rather than local hearts and minds that are at issue now, but in international society as it is today the loss is equally damaging\u2014or even more damaging.\n\nPragmatic arguments, however, only hold if they work\u2014in this case if a significant reduction of collateral damage brings with it local support or global sympathy. The moral argument holds whether or not this happens: these people should not be killed, and these soldiers have an obligation to do everything they can to avoid killing them. It is possible, as some critics claim, that the effective meaning of this obligation is that the soldiers won't be able to win asymmetric wars. Asymmetry describes a struggle between a very strong and a very weak military force: a high-tech army against a low-tech insurgency. The difference in firepower is huge. And yet, throughout history, the army rarely defeats the insurgents; even when it doesn't lose the war, it doesn't actually win. The U.S. Army could not defeat the Vietcong in Vietnam; nor could the United States along with its NATO allies defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan; nor were we able to defeat either the Sunni or the Shiite militias in Iraq. The Israelis did not lose the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, but they can't be said to have won. It is indeed possible to win\u2014by giving up on hearts and minds and on any semblance of moral decency and simply killing and killing until the insurgents' civilian cover is literally gone. The Russians in Chechnya and the government of Sri Lanka in its war against the Tamil rebels demonstrate that these wars can be won by a modern army. But can they be won by an army committed to just rules of engagement?\n\nThe answer to this question depends not only on the commitment and competence of the army but also on the moral\/political judgments of everyone else, locally and globally. So it is important to condemn military actions that break the rules, even if these actions don't reach to massive attacks on the civilian population. The army must not look to benefit from the collateral damage it inflicts in the course of legitimate attacks on military targets; it must take positive measures to limit civilian injury. And these positive measures include soldiers accepting risk, to some degree, in order to minimize the risks they impose on civilians. One form of risk taking has been fairly common in both America's and Israel's wars: warning of attacks to come, so that civilians can flee\u2014and insurgents can prepare, if that is possible, for the attack. It is a good thing to warn civilians of impending danger, but warnings are not sufficient. As American soldiers learned in Vietnam, many people don't leave: they are caring for elderly parents or sick children; they are afraid that their homes will be looted; they have no safe place to go.\n\nThere are, then, other things that must be done\u2014and not done. Consider my earlier example of Taliban insurgents firing at American soldiers from the roof of a small apartment building in an Afghan town. The soldiers don't know who is in the building. They could simply pull back and call in an air strike\u2014taking no risks themselves but radically endangering any civilians in the building. The 2010 rules of engagement rightly rule this out, so the soldiers have (in this simplified example) only three options: they can try to get someone into the building to see if civilians are living there, or they can try to get soldiers onto an adjacent roof, so that they can fire directly at the insurgents. Both these actions require the soldiers to accept (some degree of) risk. Or they can withdraw and wait for another encounter with the Taliban insurgents. No army likes to leave the battlefield to the enemy, but if the officer in the field thinks that the risks of the other options are too great, that is the right thing to do.\n\nBut what if there are civilians on the roof, dragged up there by force or willingly standing with the insurgents? And what if the army unit's withdrawal would leave other units, fighting nearby, at risk? Then, even if soldiers succeed in getting onto adjacent roofs, civilians will be killed or injured. Who is responsible for those deaths? If the numbers seem disproportionate to the military value of the building, as they probably will, given the restrictive understanding of proportionality, the army will be blamed. I believe, by contrast, that whenever soldiers have accepted risks in order to minimize the injuries they inflict on civilians, the blame should fall elsewhere. Calling in an air strike would probably be a war crime; killing civilians in a firefight in the circumstances I have just described is not.\n\nSince attacks from the air, from planes or drones, involve no risk for the attacking forces, it might be argued that our judgments is these cases can only be shaped by calculations of proportionality. That may be true, and then we will need to find our way to calculations that are neither too permissive nor too restrictive. But successful air attacks, aimed at legitimate targets, depend heavily on information from the ground, and the collection of information is a dangerous business. Too often, attacks have been launched without sufficient knowledge about the targets or with knowledge provided by unreliable informants, who are often pursuing private vendettas. Many civilians die in attacks of that sort, which should always be condemned. But when the intelligence work is seriously undertaken and its risks accepted, and when civilians are killed because they are being used as cover or deliberately exposed, the army can rightly claim that it has done the best it could in the circumstances of asymmetry.\n\nIt is important to get these judgments right because, as I've already said, asymmetric wars are also political struggles. The insurgents, the soldiers, and the endangered civilians are not the only people involved; all the rest of us are involved. In a sense, this is true also in conventional wars. The point of writing a book like Just and Unjust Wars is to facilitate the judgments that citizens have to make about the wars their countries fight. But in asymmetric warfare, the responsibility to judge the war, to join the arguments about how it is being fought, extends more widely. The world's judgments are important, and if the \"world\" gets things right, the war will probably end with justice done.\n\nThe insurgents should be condemned when they attack civilians and when they deliberately put civilians at risk; they should be praised and supported when they struggle, in the circumstances of asymmetry, to fight justly. The army should be condemned when it fails to do everything it can do, in the circumstances of asymmetry, to avoid killing civilians, and it should be praised and supported when it lives by the moral rules of engagement. Strong judgments of this sort will promote good endings, and I suspect that in the long run the anticipation of strong judgments will make asymmetric wars less likely.\n\nMichael Walzer\n\nPrinceton, New Jersey\n\nMay 2015\nPreface to the First Edition\n\nI did not begin by thinking about war in general, but about particular wars, above all about the American intervention in Vietnam. Nor did I begin as a philosopher, but as a political activist and a partisan. Certainly, political and moral philosophy ought to help us at those difficult times when we choose sides and make commitments. But it does so only indirectly. We are not usually philosophical in moments of crisis; most often, there is no time. War especially imposes an urgency that is probably incompatible with philosophy as a serious enterprise. The philosopher is like Wordsworth's poet who reflects in tranquility upon past experience (or other people's experience), thinking about political and moral choices already made. And yet these choices are made in philosophical terms, available because of previous reflection. It was, for example a matter of great importance to all of us in the American anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s that we found a moral doctrine ready at hand, a connected set of names and concepts that we all knew\u2014and that everyone else knew. Our anger and indignation were shaped by the words available to express them, and the words were at the tips of our tongues even though we had never before explored their meanings and connections. When we talked about aggression and neutrality, the rights of prisoners of war and civilians, atrocities and war crimes, we were drawing upon the work of many generations of men and women, most of whom we had never heard of. We would be better off if we did not need a vocabulary like that, but given that we need it, we must be grateful that we have it. Without this vocabulary, we could not have thought about the Vietnam War as we did, let alone have communicated our thoughts to other people.\n\nNo doubt we used the available words freely and often carelessly. Sometimes this was due to the excitement of the moment and the pressures of partisanship, but it also had a more serious cause. We suffered from an education which taught us that these words had no proper descriptive use and no objective meaning. Moral discourse was excluded from the world of science, even of social science. It expressed feelings, not perceptions, and there was no reason for the expression of feelings to be precise. Or rather, any precision it achieved had an entirely subjective reference: it was the domain of the poet and the literary critic. I don't need to rehearse this point of view (I shall criticize it in detail later on), though it's less prevalent now than it once was. What is crucial is that we disputed it, knowingly or unknowingly, every time we criticized American conduct in Vietnam. For our criticisms had the form at least of reports on the real world, not merely on the state of our own tempers. They required evidence; they pressed us, however trained we were in the loose use of moral language, toward analysis and investigation. Even the most skeptical among us came to see that these criticisms could be true (or false).\n\nIn those years of angry controversy, I promised myself that one day I would try to set out the moral argument about war in a quiet and reflective way. I still want to defend (most of) the particular arguments that underlay our opposition to the American war in Vietnam, but also and more importantly I want to defend the business of arguing, as we did and as most people do, in moral terms. Hence this book, which may be taken as an apology for our occasional carelessness and a vindication of our fundamental enterprise.\n\nNow, the language with which we argue about war and justice is similar to the language of international law. But this is not a book about the positive laws of war. There are many such books, and I have often drawn upon them. Legal treatises do not, however, provide a fully plausible or coherent account of our moral arguments, and the two most common approaches to the law reflected in the treatises are both in need of extra-legal supplement. First of all, legal positivism, which generated major scholarly works in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has become in the age of the United Nations increasingly uninteresting. The UN Charter was supposed to be the constitution of a new world, but, for reasons that have often been discussed, things have turned out differently. To dwell at length upon the precise meaning of the Charter is today a kind of utopian quibbling. And because the UN sometimes pretends that it already is what it has barely begun to be, its decrees do not command intellectual or moral respect\u2014except among the positivist lawyers whose business it is to interpret them. The lawyers have constructed a paper world, which fails at crucial points to correspond to the world the rest of us still live in.\n\nThe second approach to the law is oriented in terms of policy goals. Its advocates respond to the poverty of the contemporary international regime by imputing purposes to that regime\u2014the achievement of some sort of \"world order\"\u2014and then reinterpreting the law to fit those purposes. In effect, they substitute utilitarian argument for legal analysis. That substitution is certainly not uninteresting, but it requires a philosophical defense. For the customs and conventions, the treaties and charters that constitute the laws of international society do not invite interpretation in terms of a single purpose or set of purposes. Nor are the judgments they require always explicable from a utilitarian standpoint. Policy-oriented lawyers are in fact moral and political philosophers, and it would be best if they presented themselves that way. Or, alternatively, they are would-be legislators, not jurists or students of the law. They are committed, or most of them are committed, to restructuring international society\u2014a worthwhile task\u2014but they are not committed to expounding its present structure.\n\nMy own task is different. I want to account for the ways in which men and women who are not lawyers but simple citizens (and sometimes soldiers) argue about war, and to expound the terms we commonly use. I am concerned precisely with the present structure of the moral world. My starting point is the fact that we do argue, often to different purposes, to be sure, but in mutually comprehensible fashion: else there would be no point in arguing. We justify our conduct; we judge the conduct of others. Though these justifications and judgments cannot be studied like the records of a criminal court, they are nevertheless a legitimate subject of study. Upon examination they reveal, I believe, a comprehensive view of war as a human activity and a more or less systematic moral doctrine, which sometimes, but not always, overlaps with established legal doctrine.\n\nIn fact, the vocabulary overlaps more than the arguments do. Hence I must say something about my own use of language. I shall always refer to laws of international society (as these appear in legal handbooks and military manuals) as positive laws. For the rest, when I talk of law, I am referring to the moral law, to those general principles that we commonly acknowledge, even when we can't or won't live up to them. When I talk of the rules of war, I am referring to the more particular code that governs our judgments of combat behavior, and that is only partially articulated in the Hague and Geneva conventions. And when I talk of crimes, I am describing violations of the general principles or of the particular code: so men and women can be called criminals even when they cannot be charged before a legal tribunal. Since positive international law is radically incomplete, it is always possible to interpret it in the light of moral principles and to refer to the results as \"positive law.\" Perhaps that is what has to be done in order to flesh out the legal system and render it more attractive than it presently is. But it is not what I have done here. Throughout the book, I treat words like aggression, neutrality, surrender, civilian, reprisal, and so on, as if they were terms in a moral vocabulary\u2014which they are, and always have been, though most recently their analysis and refinement have been almost entirely the work of lawyers.\n\nI want to recapture the just war for political and moral theory. My own work, then, looks back to that religious tradition within which Western politics and morality were first given shape, to the books of writers like Maimonides, Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez\u2014and then to the books of writers like Hugo Grotius, who took over the tradition and began to work it into secular form. But I have not attempted a history of just war theory, and I quote the classical texts only occasionally, for the sake of some particularly illuminating or forceful argument. I refer more often to contemporary philosophers and theologians (and soldiers and statesmen), for my main concern is not with the making of the moral world but with its present character.\n\nPerhaps the most problematic feature of my exposition is the use of the plural pronouns: we, our, ourselves, us. I have already demonstrated the ambiguity of those words by using them in two ways: to describe that group of Americans who condemned the Vietnam War, and to describe that much larger group who understood the condemnation (whether or not they agreed with it). I shall limit myself henceforth to the larger group. That its members share a common morality is the critical assumption of this book. In my first chapter I try to make a case for that assumption. But it's only a case, it's not conclusive. Someone can always ask, \"What is this morality of yours?\" That is a more radical question, however, than the questioner may realize, for it excludes him not only from the comfortable world of moral agreement, but also from the wider world of agreement and disagreement, justification and criticism. The moral world of war is shared not because we arrive at the same conclusions as to whose fight is just and whose unjust, but because we acknowledge the same difficulties on the way to our conclusions, face the same problems, talk the same language. It's not easy to opt out, and only the wicked and the simple make the attempt.\n\nI am not going to expound morality from the ground up. Were I to begin with the foundations, I would probably never get beyond them; in any case, I am by no means sure what the foundations are. The substructure of the ethical world is a matter of deep and apparently unending controversy. Meanwhile, however, we are living in the superstructure. The building is large, its construction elaborate and confusing. But here I can offer some guidance: a tour of the rooms, so to speak, a discussion of architectural principles. This is a book of practical morality. The study of judgments and justifications in the real world moves us closer, perhaps, to the most profound questions of moral philosophy, but it does not require a direct engagement with those questions. Indeed, philosophers who seek such an engagement often miss the immediacies of political and moral controversy and provide little help to men and women faced with hard choices. For the moment, at least, practical morality is detached from its foundations, and we must act as if that separation were a possible (since it is an actual) condition of moral life.\n\nBut that's not to suggest that we can do nothing more than describe the judgments and justifications that people commonly put forward. We can analyze these moral claims, seek out their coherence, lay bare the principles that they exemplify. We can reveal commitments that go deeper than partisan allegiance and the urgencies of battle; for it is a matter of evidence, not a pious wish, that there are such commitments. And then we can expose the hypocrisy of soldiers and statesmen who publicly acknowledge these commitments while seeking in fact only their own advantage. The exposure of hypocrisy is certainly the most ordinary, and it may also be the most important, form of moral criticism. We are rarely called upon to invent new ethical principles; if we did that, our criticism would not be comprehensible to the people whose behavior we wanted to condemn. Rather, we hold such people to their own principles, though we may draw these out and arrange them in ways they had not thought of before.\n\nThere is a particular arrangement, a particular view of the moral world, that seems to me the best one. I want to suggest that the arguments we make about war are most fully understood (though other understandings are possible) as efforts to recognize and respect the rights of individual and associated men and women. The morality I shall expound is in its philosophical form a doctrine of human rights, though I shall say nothing here of the ideas of personality, action, and intention that this doctrine probably presupposes. Considerations of utility play into the structure at many points, but they cannot account for it as a whole. Their part is subsidiary to that of rights; it is constrained by rights. That is above all true of the classical forms of military maximization: the religious crusade, the proletarian revolution, the \"war to end war.\" But it's true also, as I will try to show, of the more immediate pressures of \"military necessity.\" At every point, the judgments we make (the lies we tell) are best accounted for if we regard life and liberty as something like absolute values and then try to understand the moral and political processes through which these values are challenged and defended.\n\nThe proper method of practical morality is casuistic in character. Since I am concerned with actual judgments and justifications, I shall turn regularly to historical cases. My argument moves through the cases, and I have often foregone a systematic presentation for the sake of the nuances and details of historical reality. At the same time, the cases are necessarily sketched in outline form. In order to make them exemplary, I have had to abridge their ambiguities. In doing that, I have tried to be accurate and fair, but the cases are often controversial and no doubt I have sometimes failed. Readers upset by my failures might usefully treat the cases as if they were hypothetical\u2014invented rather than researched\u2014though it is important to my own sense of my enterprise that I am reporting on experiences that men and women have really had and on arguments that they have really made. In choosing experiences and arguments for discussion, I have relied heavily on World War II in Europe, the first war of which I have memories and the paradigm, for me, of a justified struggle. For the rest, I have tried to pick out the obvious cases: those that have figured largely in the literature of war and those that play a part in contemporary controversies.\n\nThe structure of the book is explained in the second and third chapters, which introduce the main argument. Here I only want to say that my presentation of the moral theory of war is focused on the tensions within the theory that make it problematic and that make choice in wartime difficult and painful. The tensions are summed up in the dilemma of winning and fighting well. This is the military form of the means\/ends problem, the central issue in political ethics. I address it directly, and resolve or fail to resolve it, in Part Four; and the resolution, if it works, must be relevant also to the choices faced in politics generally. For war is the hardest place: if comprehensive and consistent moral judgments are possible there, they are possible everywhere.\n\nCambridge, Massachusetts, 1977\nAcknowledgments\n\nIn writing about war, I have had the support of many allies, institutional and personal. I began my research during the academic year 1971\u201372, while working at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. I wrote a version of the preface and of chapter 1 at Mishkenot Sha'ananim (Peaceful Habitations) in Jerusalem, Israel, in the summer of 1974\u2014a visit made possible by the Jerusalem Foundation; the bulk of the book was completed in 1975\u201376, while I was a Guggenheim Fellow.\n\nFor almost a decade, I went to school with the members of the Society for Ethical and Legal Philosophy, and while none of them are responsible for any of the arguments in this book, they have collectively had a great deal to do with the writing of it. I am especially grateful to Judith Jarvis Thompson, who read the entire manuscript and made many valuable suggestions. With Robert Nozick I have quarreled amicably about some of the hardest issues in the theory of war and his arguments, hypothetical cases, queries, and proposals helped me shape my own presentation.\n\nMy friend and colleague Robert Amdur read most of the chapters and he often forced me to think about them again. Marvin Kohl and Judith Walzer read portions of the manuscript; their comments on matters of style and substance have often been incorporated into my pages. I am grateful also to Philip Green, Yehuda Melzer, Miles Morgan, and John Schrecker.\n\nDuring a quarter at Stanford University and for several years at Harvard, I taught a course on the just war, and learned while I was teaching\u2014from colleagues and students alike. I will always be glad of the cooling skepticism of Stanley Hoffmann and Judith Shklar. I also benefited from the comments and criticisms of Charles Bahmueller, Donald Goldstein, Miles Kahler, Sanford Levinson, Dan Little, Gerald McElroy, and David Pollack.\n\nMartin Kessler of Basic Books conceived this book almost before I did, and assisted and encouraged me at every stage of the writing of it.\n\nWhen I was almost finished, Betty Butterfield undertook to type the final draft and set an astonishing pace, both for herself and for me; without her, the completion of the book would have taken much longer than it did.\n\nAn early version of chapter 12, on terrorism, appeared in The New Republic in 1975. In chapters 4 and 16 I have drawn upon arguments first developed in Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1972. In chapters 14 and 15, I have used portions of an article published in 1974 in the Israeli philosophical quarterly Iyyun. I am grateful to the editors of the three journals for permission to reprint these materials.\n\nI am grateful to the various publishers who have kindly permitted me to reprint material which first appeared under their auspices:\n\nRolf Hochhuth, \"Little London Theater of the World\/Garden,\" lines 38\u201340, in Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva. Copyright \u00a9 1968 by Grove Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc.\n\nRandall Jarrell, \"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,\" line 1, copyright \u00a9 1945 by Randall Jarrell. Renewed copyright \u00a9 1972 by Mrs. Randall Jarrell; and \"The Range in the Desert,\" lines 21\u201324, copyright \u00a9 1947 by Randall Jarrell. Renewed copyright \u00a9 1974 by Mrs. Randall Jarrell. Both appeared in The Complete Poems. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.\n\nStanley Kunitz, \"Foreign Affairs,\" lines 10\u201317, in Selected Poems. 1928\u20131958. Copyright \u00a9 1958 by Stanley Kunitz. This poem originally appeared in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company in association with the Atlantic Monthly Press.\n\nWilfred Owen, \"Anthem for Doomed Youth,\" line 1, and \"A Terre,\" line 6, in The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by C. Day Lewis. Reprinted by permission of the Owen Estate and Chatto and Windus Ltd. and New Directions Publishing Corporation.\n\nGillo Pontecoro, The Battle of Algiers, edited and with an introduction by PierNico Solinas. Scene 68, pages 79\u201380. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.\n\nLouis Simpson, \"The Ash and the Oak\" in Good News of Death and Other Poems. Poets of Today II. Copyright \u00a9 1955 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.\nPart One\n\nThe Moral Reality of War\n\nAgainst \"Realism\"\n\nFor as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.\n\nSometimes this silence is extended to other forms of competitive activity, as in the popular proverb, \"All's fair in love and war.\" That means that anything goes\u2014any kind of deceit in love, any kind of violence in war. We can neither praise nor blame; there is nothing to say. And yet we are rarely silent. The language we use to talk about love and war is so rich with moral meaning that it could hardly have been developed except through centuries of argument. Faithfulness, devotion, chastity, shame, adultery, seduction, betrayal; aggression, self-defense, appeasement, cruelty, ruthlessness, atrocity, massacre\u2014all these words are judgments, and judging is as common a human activity as loving or fighting.\n\nIt is true, however, that we often lack the courage of our judgments, and especially so in the case of military conflict. The moral posture of mankind is not well represented by that popular proverb about love and war. We would do better to mark a contrast rather than a similarity: before Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid. Not that we don't justify or condemn particular attacks, but we do so hesitantly and uncertainly (or loudly and recklessly), as if we were not sure that our judgments reach to the reality of war.\n\nThe Realist Argument\n\nRealism is the issue. The defenders of silent leges claim to have discovered an awful truth: what we conventionally call inhumanity is simply humanity under pressure. War strips away our civilized adornments and reveals our nakedness. They describe that nakedness for us, not without a certain relish: fearful, self-concerned, driven, murderous. They aren't wrong in any simple sense. The words are sometimes descriptive. Paradoxically, the description is often a kind of apology: yes, our soldiers committed atrocities in the course of the battle, but that's what war does to people, that's what war is like. The proverb, all's fair, is invoked in defense of conduct that appears to be unfair. And one urges silence on the law when one is engaged in activities that would otherwise be called unlawful. So there are arguments here that will enter into my own argument: justifications and excuses, references to necessity and duress, that we can recognize as forms of moral discourse and that have or don't have force in particular cases. But there is also a general account of war as a realm of necessity and duress, the purpose of which is to make discourse about particular cases appear to be idle chatter, a mask of noise with which we conceal, even from ourselves, the awful truth. It is that general account that I have to challenge before I can begin my own work, and I want to challenge it at its source and in its most compelling form, as it is put forward by the historian Thucydides and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. These two men, separated by 2,000 years, are collaborators of a kind, for Hobbes translated Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and then generalized its argument in his own Leviathan. It is not my purpose here to write a full philosophical response to Thucydides and Hobbes. I wish only to suggest, first by argument and then by example, that the judgment of war and of wartime conduct is a serious enterprise.\n\nThe Melian Dialogue\n\nThe dialogue between the Athenian generals Cleomedes and Tisias and the magistrates of the island state of Melos is one of the high points of Thucydides' History and the climax of his realism. Melos was a Spartan colony, and its people had \"therefore refused to be subject, as the rest of the islands were, unto the Athenians; but rested at first neutral; and afterwards, when the Athenians put them to it by wasting of their lands, they entered into open war.\" This is a classic account of aggression, for to commit aggression is simply to \"put people to it\" as Thucydides describes. But such a description, he seems to say, is merely external; he wants to show us the inner meaning of war. His spokesmen are the two Athenian generals, who demand a parley and then speak as generals have rarely done in military history. Let us have no fine words about justice, they say. We for our part will not pretend that, having defeated the Persians, our empire is deserved; you must not claim that having done no injury to the Athenian people, you have a right to be let alone. We will talk instead of what is feasible and what is necessary. For this is what war is really like: \"they that have odds of power exact as much as they can, and the weak yield to such conditions as they can get.\"\n\nIt is not only the Melians here who bear the burdens of necessity. The Athenians are driven, too; they must expand their empire, Cleomedes and Tisias believe, or lose what they already have. The neutrality of Melos \"will be an argument of our weakness, and your hatred of our power, among those we have rule over.\" It will inspire rebellion throughout the islands, wherever men and women are \"offended with the necessity of subjection\"\u2014and what subject is not offended, eager for freedom, resentful of his conquerors? When the Athenian generals say that men \"will everywhere reign over such as they be too strong for,\" they are not only describing the desire for glory and command, but also the more narrow necessity of inter-state politics: reign or be subject. If they do not conquer when they can, they only reveal weakness and invite attack; and so, \"by a necessity of nature\" (a phrase Hobbes later made his own), they conquer when they can.\n\nThe Melians, on the other hand, are too weak to conquer. They face a harsher necessity: yield or be destroyed. \"For you have not in hand a match of valor upon equal terms . . . but rather a consultation upon your safety. . . .\" The rulers of Melos, however, value freedom above safety: \"If you then to retain your command, and your vassals to get loose from you, will undergo the utmost danger: would it not in us, that be already free, be great baseness and cowardice, if we should not encounter anything whatsoever rather than suffer ourselves to be brought into bondage?\" Though they know that it will be a \"hard matter\" to stand against the power and fortune of Athens, \"nevertheless we believe that, for fortune, we shall be nothing inferior, as having the gods on our side, because we stand innocent against men unjust.\" And as for power, they hope for assistance from the Spartans, \"who are of necessity obliged, if for no other cause, yet for consanguinity's sake and for their own honor to defend us.\" But the gods, too, reign where they can, reply the Athenian generals, and consanguinity and honor have nothing to do with necessity. The Spartans will (necessarily) think only of themselves: \"most apparently of all men, they hold for honorable that which pleaseth and for just that which profiteth.\"\n\nSo the argument ended. The magistrates refused to surrender; the Athenians laid siege to their city; the Spartans sent no help. Finally, after some months of fighting, in the winter of 416 B.C., Melos was betrayed by several of its citizens. When further resistance seemed impossible, the Melians \"yielded themselves to the discretion of the Athenians: who slew all the men of military age, made slaves of the women and children; and inhabited the place with a colony sent thither afterwards of 500 men of their own.\"\n\nThe dialogue between the generals and the magistrates is a literary and philosophical construction of Thucydides. The magistrates speak as they well might have done, but their conventional piety and heroism is only a foil to what the classical critic Dionysius calls the \"depraved shrewdness\" of the Athenian generals. It is the generals who have often seemed unbelievable. Their words, writes Dionysius, \"were appropriate to oriental monarchs . . . but unfit to be spoken by Athenians. . . .\"a Perhaps Thucydides means us to notice the unfitness, not so much of the words but of the policies they were used to defend, and thinks we might have missed it had he permitted the generals to speak as they probably in fact spoke, weaving \"fair pretenses\" over their vile actions. We are to understand that Athens is no longer itself. Cleomedes and Tisias do not represent that noble people who fought the Persians in the name of freedom and whose politics and culture, as Dionysius says, \"exercised such a humanizing influence on everyday life.\" They represent instead the imperial decadence of the city state. It is not that they are war criminals in the modern sense; that idea is alien to Thucydides. But they embody a certain loss of ethical balance, of restraint and moderation. Their statesmanship is flawed, and their \"realistic\" speeches provide an ironic contrast to the blindness and arrogance with which the Athenians only a few months later launched the disastrous expedition to Sicily. The History, on this view, is a tragedy and Athens itself the tragic hero. Thucydides has given us a morality play in the Greek style. We can glimpse his meaning in Euripides' The Trojan Women, written in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Melos and undoubtedly intended to suggest the human significance of slaughter and slavery\u2014and to predict a divine retribution:\n\nHow ye are blind\n\nYe treaders down of cities, ye that cast\n\nTemples to desolation, and lay waste\n\nTombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie\n\nThe ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die!\n\nBut Thucydides seems in fact to be making a rather different, and a more secular, statement than this quotation suggests, and not about Athens so much as about war itself. He probably did not mean the harshness of the Athenian generals to be taken as a sign of depravity, but rather as a sign of impatience, toughmindedness, honesty\u2014qualities of mind not inappropriate in military commanders. He is arguing, as Werner Jaeger has said, that \"the principle of force forms a realm of its own, with laws of its own,\" distinct and separate from the laws of moral life. This is certainly the way Hobbes read Thucydides, and it is the reading with which we must come to grips. For if the realm of force is indeed distinct and if this is an accurate account of its laws, then one could no more criticize the Athenians for their wartime policies than one could criticize a stone for falling downwards. The slaughter of the Melians is explained by reference to the circumstances of war and the necessities of nature; and again, there is nothing to say. Or rather, one can say anything, call necessity cruel and war hellish; but while these statements may be true in their own terms, they do not touch the political realities of the case or help us understand the Athenian decision.\n\nIt is important to stress, however, that Thucydides has told us nothing at all about the Athenian decision. And if we place ourselves, not in the council room at Melos where a cruel policy was being expounded, but in the assembly at Athens where that policy was first adopted, the argument of the generals has a very different ring. In the Greek as in the English language, the word necessity \"doubles the parts of indispensable and inevitable.\" At Melos, Cleomedes and Tisias mixed the two of these, stressing the last. In the assembly they could have argued only about the first, claiming, I suppose, that the destruction of Melos was necessary (indispensable) for the preservation of the empire. But this claim is rhetorical in two senses. First, it evades the moral question of whether the preservation of the empire was itself necessary. There were some Athenians, at least, who had doubts about that, and more who doubted that the empire had to be a uniform system of domination and subjection (as the policy adopted for Melos suggested). Secondly, it exaggerates the knowledge and foresight of the generals. They are not saying with certainty that Athens will fall unless Melos is destroyed; their argument has to do with probabilities and risks. And such arguments are always arguable. Would the destruction of Melos really reduce Athenian risks? Are there alternative policies? What are the likely costs of this one? Would it be right? What would other people think of Athens if it were carried out?\n\nOnce the debate begins, all sorts of moral and strategic questions are likely to come up. And for the participants in the debate, the outcome is not going to be determined \"by a necessity of nature,\" but by the opinions they hold or come to hold as a result of the arguments they hear and then by the decisions they freely make, individually and collectively. Afterwards, the generals claim that a certain decision was inevitable; and that, presumably, is what Thucydides wants us to believe. But the claim can only be made afterwards, for inevitability here is mediated by a process of political deliberation, and Thucydides could not know what was inevitable until that process had been completed. Judgments of necessity in this sense are always retrospective in character\u2014the work of historians, not historical actors.\n\nNow, the moral point of view derives its legitimacy from the perspective of the actor. When we make moral judgments, we try to recapture that perspective. We reiterate the decision-making process, or we rehearse our own future decisions, asking what we would have done (or what we would do) in similar circumstances. The Athenian generals recognize the importance of such questions, for they defend their policy certain \"that you likewise, and others that should have the same power which we have, would do the same.\" But that is a dubious knowledge, especially so once we realize that the \"Melian decree\" was sharply opposed in the Athenian assembly. Our standpoint is that of citizens debating the decree. What should we do?\n\nWe have no account of the Athenian decision to attack Melos or of the decision (which may have been taken at the same time) to kill and enslave its people. Plutarch claims that it was Alcibiades, chief architect of the Sicilian expedition, who was \"the principal cause of the slaughter . . . having spoken in favor of the decree.\" He played the part of Cleon in the debate that Thucydides does record, that occurred some years earlier, over the fate of Mytilene. It is worth glancing back at that earlier argument. Mytilene had been an ally of Athens from the time of the Persian War; it was never a subject city in any formal way, but bound by treaty to the Athenian cause. In 428, it rebelled and formed an alliance with the Spartans. After considerable fighting, the city was captured by Athenian forces, and the assembly determined \"to put to death . . . all the men of Mytilene that were of age, and to make slaves of the women and children: laying to their charge the revolt itself, in that they revolted not being in subjection as others were. . . .\" But the following day the citizens \"felt a kind of repentance . . . and began to consider what a great and cruel decree it was, that not the authors only, but that the whole city should be destroyed.\" It is this second debate that Thucydides has recorded, or some part of it, giving us two speeches, that of Cleon upholding the original decree and that of Diodotus urging its revocation. Cleon argues largely in terms of collective guilt and retributive justice; Diodotus offers a critique of the deterrent effects of capital punishment. The assembly accepts Diodotus' position, convinced apparently that the destruction of Mytilene would not uphold the force of treaties or ensure the stability of the empire. It is the appeal to interest that triumphs\u2014as has often been pointed out\u2014though it should be remembered that the occasion for the appeal was the repentance of the citizens. Moral anxiety, not political calculation, leads them to worry about the effectiveness of their decree.\n\nIn the debate over Melos, the positions must have been reversed. Now there was no retributivist argument to make, for the Melians had done Athens no injury. Alcibiades probably talked like Thucydides' generals, though with the all-important difference I have already noted. When he told his fellow citizens that the decree was necessary, he didn't mean that it was ordained by the laws that govern the realm of force; he meant merely that it was needed (in his view) to reduce the risks of rebellion among the subject cities of the Athenian empire. And his opponents probably argued, like the Melians, that the decree was dishonorable and unjust and would more likely excite resentment than fear throughout the islands, that Melos did not threaten Athens in any way, and that other policies would serve Athenian interests and Athenian self-esteem. Perhaps they also reminded the citizens of their repentance in the case of Mytilene and urged them once again to avoid the cruelty of massacre and enslavement. How Alcibiades won out, and how close the vote was, we don't know. But there is no reason to think that the decision was predetermined and debate of no avail: no more with Melos than with Mytilene. Stand in imagination in the Athenian assembly, and one can still feel a sense of freedom.\n\nBut the realism of the Athenian generals has a further thrust. It is not only a denial of the freedom that makes moral decision possible; it is a denial also of the meaningfulness of moral argument. The second claim is closely related to the first. If we must act in accordance with our interests, driven by our fears of one another, then talk about justice cannot possibly be anything more than talk. It refers to no purposes that we can make our own and to no goals that we can share with others. That is why the Athenian generals could have woven \"fair pretenses\" as easily as the Melian magistrates; in discourse of this sort anything can be said. The words have no clear references, no certain definitions, no logical entailments. They are, as Hobbes writes in Leviathan, \"ever used with relation to the person that useth them,\" and they express that person's appetites and fears and nothing else. It is only \"most apparent\" in the Spartans, but true for everyone, that \"they hold for honorable that which pleaseth them and for just that which profiteth.\" Or, as Hobbes later explained, the names of the virtues and vices are of \"uncertain signification.\"\n\nFor one calleth wisdom, what another calleth fear; and one cruelty what another justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity . . . etc. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination.\n\n\"Never\"\u2014until the sovereign, who is also the supreme linguistic authority, fixes the meaning of the moral vocabulary; but in the state of war, \"never\" without qualification, because in that state, by definition, no sovereign rules. In fact, even in civil society, the sovereign does not entirely succeed in bringing certainty into the world of virtue and vice. Hence moral discourse is always suspect, and war is only an extreme case of the anarchy of moral meanings. It is generally true, but especially so in time of violent conflict, that we can understand what other people are saying only if we see through their \"fair pretenses\" and translate moral talk into the harder currency of interest talk. When the Melians insist that their cause is just, they are saying only that they don't want to be subject; and had the generals claimed that Athens deserved its empire, they would simply have been expressing the lust for conquest or the fear of overthrow.\n\nThis is a powerful argument because it plays upon the common experience of moral disagreement\u2014painful, sustained, exasperating, and endless. For all its realism, however, it fails to get at the realities of that experience or to explain its character. We can see this clearly, I think, if we look again at the argument over the Mytilene decree. Hobbes may well have had this debate in mind when he wrote, \"and one [calleth] cruelty what another justice. . . .\" The Athenians repented of their cruelty, writes Thucydides, while Cleon told them that they had not been cruel at all but justly severe. Yet this was in no sense a disagreement over the meaning of words. Had there been no common meanings, there could have been no debate at all. The cruelty of the Athenians consisted in seeking to punish not only the authors of the rebellion but others as well, and Cleon agreed that that would indeed be cruel. He then went on to argue, as he had to do given his position, that in Mytilene there were no \"others.\" \"Let not the fault be laid upon a few, and the people absolved. For they have all alike taken arms against us. . . .\"\n\nI cannot pursue the argument further, since Thucydides doesn't, but there is an obvious rejoinder to Cleon, having to do with the status of the women and children of Mytilene. This might involve the deployment of additional moral terms (innocence, for example); but it would not hang\u2014any more than the argument about cruelty and justice hangs\u2014on idiosyncratic definitions. In fact, definitions are not at issue here, but descriptions and interpretations. The Athenians shared a moral vocabulary, shared it with the people of Mytilene and Melos; and allowing for cultural differences, they share it with us too. They had no difficulty, and we have none, in understanding the claim of the Melian magistrates that the invasion of their island was unjust. It is in applying the agreed-upon words to actual cases that we come to disagree. These disagreements are in part generated and always compounded by antagonistic interests and mutual fears. But they have other causes, too, which help to explain the complex and disparate ways in which men and women (even when they have similar interests and no reason to fear one another) position themselves in the moral world. There are, first of all, serious difficulties of perception and information (in war and politics generally), and so controversies arise over \"the facts of the case.\" There are sharp disparities in the weight we attach even to values we share, as there are in the actions we are ready to condone when these values are threatened. There are conflicting commitments and obligations that force us into violent antagonism even when we see the point of one another's positions. All this is real enough, and common enough: it makes morality into a world of good-faith quarrels as well as a world of ideology and verbal manipulation.\n\nIn any case, the possibilities for manipulation are limited. Whether or not people speak in good faith, they cannot say just anything they please. Moral talk is coercive; one thing leads to another. Perhaps that's why the Athenian generals did not want to begin. A war called unjust is not, to paraphrase Hobbes, a war misliked; it is a war misliked for particular reasons, and anyone making the charge is required to provide particular sorts of evidence. Similarly, if I claim that I am fighting justly, I must also claim that I was attacked (\"put to it,\" as the Melians were), or threatened with attack, or that I am coming to the aid of a victim of someone else's attack. And each of these claims has its own entailments, leading me deeper and deeper into a world of discourse where, though I can go on talking indefinitely, I am severely constrained in what I can say. I must say this or that, and at many points in a long argument this or that will be true or false. We don't have to translate moral talk into interest talk in order to understand it; morality refers in its own way to the real world.\n\nLet us consider a Hobbist example. In chapter XXI of Leviathan, Hobbes urges that we make allowance for the \"natural timorousness\" of mankind. \"When armies fight, there is on one side, or both, a running away; yet when they do it not out of treachery, but fear, they are not esteemed to do it unjustly, but dishonorably.\" Now, judgments are called for here: we are to distinguish cowards from traitors. If these are words of \"inconstant signification,\" the task is impossible and absurd. Every traitor would plead natural timorousness, and we would accept the plea or not depending on whether the soldier was a friend or an enemy, an obstacle to our advancement or an ally and supporter. I suppose we sometimes do behave that way, but it is not the case (nor does Hobbes, when it comes to cases, suppose that it is) that the judgments we make can only be understood in these terms. When we charge a man with treason, we have to tell a very special kind of story about him, and we have to provide concrete evidence that the story is true. If we call him a traitor when we cannot tell that story, we are not using words inconstantly, we are simply lying.\n\nStrategy and Morality\n\nMorality and justice are talked about in much the same way as military strategy. Strategy is the other language of war, and while it is commonly said to be free from the difficulties of moral discourse, its use is equally problematic. Though generals agree on the meaning of strategic terms\u2014entrapment, retreat, flanking maneuver, concentration of forces, and so on\u2014they nevertheless disagree about strategically appropriate courses of action. They argue about what ought to be done. After the battle, they disagree about what happened, and if they were defeated, they argue about who was to blame. Strategy, like morality, is a language of justification.b Every confused and cowardly commander describes his hesitations and panics as part of an elaborate plan; the strategic vocabulary is as available to him as it is to a competent commander. But that is not to say that its terms are meaningless. It would be a great triumph for the incompetent if they were, for we would then have no way to talk about incompetence. No doubt, \"one calleth retreat what another calleth strategic deployment. . . .\" But we do know the difference between these two, and though the facts of the case may be difficult to collect and interpret, we are nevertheless able to make critical judgments.\n\nSimilarly, we can make moral judgments: moral concepts and strategic concepts reflect the real world in the same way. They are not merely normative terms, telling soldiers (who often don't listen) what to do. They are descriptive terms, and without them we would have no coherent way of talking about war. Here are soldiers moving away from the scene of a battle, marching over the same ground they marched over yesterday, but fewer now, less eager, many without weapons, many wounded: we call this a retreat. Here are soldiers lining up the inhabitants of a peasant village, men, women, and children, and shooting them down: we call this a massacre.\n\nIt is only when their substantive content is fairly clear that moral and strategic terms can be used imperatively, and the wisdom they embody expressed in the form of rules. Never refuse quarter to a soldier trying to surrender. Never advance with your flanks unprotected. One might construct out of such commands a moral or a strategic war plan, and then it would be important to notice whether or not the actual conduct of the war conformed to the plan. We can assume that it would not. War is recalcitrant to this sort of theoretical control\u2014a quality it shares with every other human activity, but which it seems to possess to an especially intense degree. In The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal provides a description of the battle of Waterloo that is intended to mock the very idea of a strategic plan. It is an account of combat as chaos, therefore not an account at all but a denial, so to speak, that combat is accountable. It should be read alongside some strategic analysis of Waterloo like that of Major General Fuller, who views the battle as an organized series of maneuvers and counter-\u00admaneuvers. The strategist is not unaware of confusion and disorder in the field; nor is he entirely unwilling to see these as aspects of war itself, the natural effects of the stress of battle. But he sees them also as matters of command responsibility, failures of discipline or control. He suggests that strategic imperatives have been ignored; he looks for lessons to be learned.\n\nThe moral theorist is in the same position. He too must come to grips with the fact that his rules are often violated or ignored\u2014and with the deeper realization that, to men at war, the rules often don't seem relevant to the extremity of their situation. But however he does this, he does not surrender his sense of war as a human action, purposive and premeditated, for whose effects someone is responsible. Confronted with the many crimes committed in the course of a war, or with the crime of aggressive war itself, he searches for human agents. Nor is he alone in this search. It is one of the most important features of war, distinguishing it from the other scourges of mankind, that the men and women caught up in it are not only victims, they are also participants. All of us are inclined to hold them responsible for what they do (though we may recognize the plea of duress in particular cases). Reiterated over time, our arguments and judgments shape what I want to call the moral reality of war\u2014that is, all those experiences of which moral language is descriptive or within which it is necessarily employed.\n\nIt is important to stress that the moral reality of war is not fixed by the actual activities of soldiers but by the opinions of mankind. That means, in part, that it is fixed by the activity of philosophers, lawyers, and publicists of all sorts. But these people don't work in isolation from the experience of combat, and their views have value only insofar as they give shape and structure to that experience in ways that are plausible to the rest of us. We often say, for example, that in time of war soldiers and statesmen must make agonizing decisions. The pain is real enough, but it is not one of the natural effects of combat. Agony is not like Hobbist fear; it is entirely the product of our moral views, and it is common in war only insofar as those views are common. It was not some unusual Athenian who \"repented\" of the decision to kill the men of Mytilene, but the citizens generally. They repented, and they were able to understand one another's repentance, because they shared a sense of what cruelty meant. It is by the assignment of such meanings that we make war what it is\u2014which is to say that it could be (and it probably has been) something different.\n\nWhat of a soldier or statesman who does not feel the agony? We say of him that he is morally ignorant or morally insensitive, much as we might say of a general who experienced no difficulty making a (really) difficult decision that he did not understand the strategic realities of his own position or that he was reckless and insensible of danger. And we might go on to argue, in the case of the general, that such a man has no business fighting or leading others in battle, that he ought to know that his army's right flank, say, is vulnerable, and ought to worry about the danger and take steps to avoid it. Once again, the case is the same with moral decisions: soldiers and statesmen ought to know the dangers of cruelty and injustice and worry about them and take steps to avoid them.\n\nHistorical Relativism\n\nAgainst this view, however, Hobbist relativism is often given a social or historical form: moral and strategic knowledge, it is said, changes over time or varies among political communities, and so what appears to me as ignorance may look like understanding to someone else. Now, change and variation are certainly real enough, and they make for a tale that is complex in the telling. But the importance of that tale for ordinary moral life and, above all, for the judgment of moral conduct is easily exaggerated. Between radically separate and dissimilar cultures, one can expect to find radical dichotomies in perception and understanding. No doubt the moral reality of war is not the same for us as it was for Genghis Khan; nor is the strategic reality. But even fundamental social and political transformations within a particular culture may well leave the moral world intact or at least sufficiently whole so that we can still be said to share it with our ancestors. It is rare indeed that we do not share it with our contemporaries, and by and large we learn how to act among our contemporaries by studying the actions of those who have preceded us. The assumption of that study is that they saw the world much as we do. That is not always true, but it is true enough of the time to give stability and coherence to our moral lives (and to our military lives). Even when world views and high ideals have been abandoned\u2014as the glorification of aristocratic chivalry was abandoned in early modern times\u2014notions about right conduct are remarkably persistent: the military code survives the death of warrior idealism. I shall say more about this survival later on, but I can demonstrate it now in a general way by looking at an example from feudal Europe, an age in some ways more distant from us than Greece of the city states, but with which we nevertheless share moral and strategic perceptions.\n\nThree Accounts of Agincourt\n\nActually, the sharing of strategic perceptions is in this case the more dubious of the two. Those French knights, so many of whom died at Agincourt, had notions about combat very different from our own. Modern critics have still felt able to criticize their \"fanatical adherence to the old method of fighting\" (King Henry, after all, fought differently) and even to offer practical suggestions: the French attack, writes Oman, \"should have been accompanied by a turning movement around the woods . . .\" Had he not been \"overconfident,\" the French commander would have seen the advantages of the move. We can talk in a similar way about the crucial moral decision that Henry made toward the end of the battle, when the English thought their victory secure. They had taken many prisoners, who were loosely assembled behind the lines. Suddenly, a French attack aimed at the supply tents far in the rear seemed to threaten a renewal of the fighting. Here is Holinshed's sixteenth-century account of the incident (virtually copied from an earlier chronicle):\n\n. . . certain Frenchmen on horseback . . . to the number of six hundred horsemen, which were the first that fled, hearing that the English tents and pavilions were a good way distant from the army, without any sufficient guard to defend the same . . . entered upon the king's camp and there . . . robbed the tents, broke up chests, and carried away caskets and slew such servants as they found to make any resistance. . . . But when the outcry of the lackeys and boys which ran away for fear of the Frenchmen . . . came to the king's ears, he doubting lest his enemies should gather together again, and begin a new field; and mistrusting further that the prisoners would be an aid to his enemies . . . contrary to his accustomed gentleness, commanded by sound of trumpet that every man . . . should incontinently slay his prisoner.\n\nThe moral character of the command is suggested by the words \"accustomed gentleness\" and \"incontinently.\" It involved a shattering of personal and conventional restraints (the latter well-established by 1415), and Holinshed goes to some lengths to explain and excuse it, stressing the king's fear that the prisoners his forces held were about to rejoin the fighting. Shakespeare, whose Henry V closely follows Holinshed, goes further, emphasizing the slaying of the English servants by the French and omitting the chronicler's assertion that only those who resisted were killed:\n\nFluellen. Kill the [b]oys and the baggage! 'Tis expressly against the law of arms. 'Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offert.\n\nAt the same time, however, he cannot resist an ironical comment:\n\nGower . . . they have burned and carried away all that was in the king's tent, wherefore the king most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner's throat. O, 'tis a gallant king!\n\nA century and a half later, David Hume gives a similar account, without the irony, stressing instead the king's eventual cancellation of his order:\n\n. . . some gentlemen of Picardy . . . had fallen upon the English baggage, and were doing execution on the unarmed followers of the camp, who fled before them. Henry, seeing the enemy on all sides of him, began to entertain apprehensions from his prisoners; and he thought it necessary to issue a general order for putting them to death; but on discovering the truth, he stopped the slaughter, and was still able to save a great number.\n\nHere the moral meaning is caught in the tension between \"necessary\" and \"slaughter.\" Since slaughter is the killing of men as if they were animals\u2014it \"makes a massacre,\" wrote the poet Dryden, \"what was a war\"\u2014it cannot often be called necessary. If the prisoners were so easy to kill, they were probably not dangerous enough to warrant the killing. When he grasped the actual situation, Henry, who was (so Hume wants us to believe) a moral man, called off the executions.\n\nFrench chroniclers and historians write of the event in much the same way. It is from them that we learn that many of the English knights refused to kill their prisoners\u2014not, chiefly, out of humanity, rather for the sake of the ransom they expected; but also \"thinking of the dishonor that the horrible executions would reflect on themselves.\" English writers have focused more, and more worriedly, on the command of the king; he was, after all, their king. In the later nineteenth century, at about the same time as the rules of war with respect to prisoners were being codified, their criticism grew increasingly sharp: \"a brutal butchery,\" \"cold-blooded wholesale murder.\" Hume would not have said that, but the difference between that and what he did say is marginal, not a matter of moral or linguistic transformation.\n\nTo judge Henry ourselves we would need a more circumstantial account of the battle than I can provide here. Even given that account, our opinions might differ, depending on the allowance we were willing to make for the stress and excitement of battle. But this is a clear example, of a situation common in both strategy and morality, where our sharpest disagreements are structured and organized by our underlying agreements, by the meanings we share. For Holinshed, Shakespeare, and Hume\u2014\u00adtraditional chronicler, Renaissance playwright, and Enlightenment historian\u2014and for us too, Henry's command belongs to a category of military acts that requires scrutiny and judgment. It is as a matter of fact morally problematic, because it accepts the risks of cruelty and injustice. In exactly the same way, we might regard the battle plan of the French commander as strategically problematic, because it accepted the risks of a frontal assault on a prepared position. And, again, a general who did not recognize these risks is properly said to be ignorant of morality or strategy.\n\nIn moral life, ignorance isn't all that common; dishonesty is far more so. Even those soldiers and statesmen who don't feel the agony of a problematic decision generally know that they should feel it. Harry Truman's flat statement that he never lost a night's sleep over his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is not the sort of thing political leaders often say. They usually find it preferable to stress the painfulness of decision-\u00admaking; it is one of the burdens of office, and it is best if the burdens appear to be borne. I suspect that many officeholders even experience pain simply because they are expected to. If they don't, they lie about it. The clearest evidence for the stability of our values over time is the unchanging character of the lies soldiers and statesmen tell. They lie in order to justify themselves, and so they describe for us the lineaments of justice. Wherever we find hypocrisy, we also find moral knowledge. The hypocrite is like that Russian general in Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, whose elaborate battle reports barely concealed his total inability to control or direct the battle. He knew at least that there was a story to tell, a set of names to attach to things and happenings, so he tried to tell the story and attach the names. His effort was not mere mimicry; it was, so to speak, the tribute that incompetence pays to understanding. The case is the same in moral life: there really is a story to tell, a way of talking about wars and battles that the rest of us recognize as morally appropriate. I don't mean that particular decisions are necessarily right or wrong, or simply right or wrong, only that there is a way of seeing the world so that moral decision-making makes sense. The hypocrite knows that this is true, though he may actually see the world differently.\n\nHypocrisy is rife in wartime discourse, because it is especially impor\u00adtant at such a time to appear to be in the right. It is not only that the moral stakes are high; the hypocrite may not understand that; more crucially, his actions will be judged by other people, who are not hypocrites, and whose judgments will affect their policies toward him. There would be no point to hypocrisy if this were not so, just as there would be no point to lying in a world where no one told the truth. The hypocrite presumes on the moral understanding of the rest of us, and we have no choice, I think, except to take his assertions seriously and put them to the test of moral realism. He pretends to think and act as the rest of us expect him to do. He tells us that he is fighting according to the moral war plan: he does not aim at civilians, he grants quarter to soldiers trying to surrender, he never tortures prisoners, and so on. These claims are true or false, and though it is not easy to judge them (nor is the war plan really so simple), it is important to make the effort. Indeed, if we call ourselves moral men and women, we must make the effort, and the evidence is that we regularly do so. If we had all become realists like the Athenian generals or like Hobbists in a state of war, there would be an end alike to both morality and hypocrisy. We would simply tell one another, brutally and directly, what we wanted to do or have done. But the truth is that one of the things most of us want, even in war, is to act or to seem to act morally. And we want that, most simply, because we know what morality means (at least, we know what it is generally thought to mean).\n\nIt is that meaning that I want to explore in this book\u2014not so much its general character, but its detailed application to the conduct of war. I am going to assume throughout that we really do act within a moral world; that particular decisions really are difficult, problematic, agonizing, and that this has to do with the structure of that world; that language reflects the moral world and gives us access to it; and finally that our understanding of the moral vocabulary is sufficiently common and stable so that shared judgments are possible. Perhaps there are other worlds to whose inhabitants the arguments I am going to make would seem incomprehensible and bizarre. But no such people are likely to read this book. And if my own readers find my arguments incomprehensible and bizarre, that will not be because of the impossibility of moral discourse or the inconstant signification of the words I use, but because of my own failure to grasp and expound our common morality.\n\n Even oriental monarchs are not quite so toughminded as the Athenian generals. According to Herodotus, when Xerxes first disclosed his plans for an invasion of Greece, he spoke in more conventional terms: \"I will bridge the Hellespont and march an army through Europe into Greece, and punish the Athenians for the outrage they committed upon my father and upon us.\" (The Histories, Book 7, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt.) The reference is to the burning of Sardis, which we may take as the pretext for the Persian invasion. The example bears out Francis Bacon's assertion that \"there is that justice imprinted in the nature of men that they enter not upon wars (whereof so many calamities do ensue) but upon some, at least specious, grounds and quarrels.\" (Essay 29, \"Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates.\")\n\n Hence we can \"unmask\" strategic discourse just as Thucydides did with moral discourse. Imagine that the two Athenian generals, after their dialogue with the Melians, return to their camp to plan the coming battle. The senior in command speaks first: \"Don't give me any fine talk about the need to concentrate our forces or the importance of strategic surprise. We'll simply call for a frontal assault; the men will organize themselves as best they can; things are going to be confused anyway. I need a quick victory here, so that I can return to Athens covered with glory before the debate on the Sicilian campaign begins. We'll have to accept some risks; but that doesn't matter since the risks will be yours, not mine. If we are beaten, I'll contrive to blame you. That's what war is like.\" Why is strategy the language of hard-headed men? One sees through it so easily. . . .\n\nThe Crime of War\n\nThe moral reality of war is divided into two parts. War is always judged twice, first with reference to the reasons states have for fighting, secondly with reference to the means they adopt. The first kind of judgment is adjectival in character: we say that a particular war is just or unjust. The second is adverbial: we say that the war is being fought justly or unjustly. Medieval writers made the difference a matter of prepositions, distinguishing jus ad bellum, the justice of war, from jus in bello, justice in war. These grammatical distinctions point to deep issues. Jus ad bellum requires us to make judgments about aggression and self-defense; jus in bello about the observance or violation of the customary and positive rules of engagement. The two sorts of judgment are logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a just war to be fought unjustly and for an unjust war to be fought in strict accordance with the rules. But this independence, though our views of particular wars often conform to its terms, is nevertheless puzzling. It is a crime to commit aggression, but aggressive war is a rule-governed activity. It is right to resist aggression, but the resistance is subject to moral (and legal) restraint. The dualism of jus ad bellum and jus in bello is at the heart of all that is most problematic in the moral reality of war.\n\nIt is my purpose to see war whole, but since its dualism is the essential feature of its wholeness, I must begin by accounting for the parts. In this chapter, I want to suggest what we mean when we say that it is a crime to begin a war, and in the next I will try to explain why it is that there are rules of engagement that apply even to soldiers whose wars are criminal. This chapter introduces Part Two, where I will examine in detail the nature of the crime, describe the appropriate forms of resistance, and consider the ends that soldiers and statesmen may legitimately seek in fighting just wars. The next chapter introduces Part Three, where I will discuss the legitimate means of warfare, the substantive rules, and show how these rules apply in combat conditions and how they are modified by \"military necessity.\" Only then will it be possible to confront the tension between ends and means, jus ad bellum and jus in bello.\n\nI am not sure whether the moral reality of war is wholly coherent, but for the moment I need not say anything about that. It's enough that it has a recognizable and relatively stable shape, that its parts are connected and disconnected in recognizable and relatively stable ways. We have made it so, not arbitrarily, but for good reasons. It reflects our understanding of states and soldiers, the protagonists of war, and of combat, its central experience. The terms of that understanding are my immediate subject matter. They are simultaneously the historical product of and the necessary condition for the critical judgments that we make every day; they fix the nature of war as a moral (and an immoral) enterprise.\n\nThe Logic of War\n\nWhy is it wrong to begin a war? We know the answer all too well. People get killed, and often in large numbers. War is hell. But it is necessary to say more than that, for our ideas about war in general and about the conduct of soldiers depend very much on how people get killed and on who those people are. Then, perhaps, the best way to describe the crime of war is simply to say that there are no limits at either of these points: people are killed with every conceivable brutality, and all sorts of people, without distinction of age or sex or moral condition, are killed. This view of war is brilliantly summed up in the first chapter of Karl von Clausewitz's On War, and though there is no evidence that Clausewitz thought war a crime, he has certainly led other people to think so. It is his early definitions (rather than his later qualifications) that have shaped the ideas of his successors, and so it is worth considering them in some detail.\n\nThe Argument of Karl von Clausewitz\n\n\"War is an act of force,\" Clausewitz writes, \". . . which theoretically can have no limits.\" The idea of war carries with it for him the idea of limitlessness, whatever actual restraints are observed in this or that society. If we imagine a war fought, as it were, in a social vacuum, unaffected by \"accidental\" factors, it would be fought with no restraint at all in the weapons used, the tactics adopted, the people attacked, or anywhere else. For military conduct knows no intrinsic limits; nor is it possible to refine our notions of war so as to incorporate those extrinsic moral codes that Clausewitz sometimes calls \"philanthropic.\" \"We can never introduce a modifying principle into the philosophy of war without committing an absurdity.\" The more extreme the battle is, then, the more general and intense the violence employed on one side and the other, the closer to war in the conceptual sense (\"absolute war\") it is. And there can be no imaginable act of violence, however treacherous or cruel, that falls outside of war, that is not-war, for the logic of war simply is a steady thrust toward moral extremity. That is why it is so awful (though Clausewitz does not tell us this) to set the process going: the aggressor is responsible for all the consequences of the fighting he begins. In particular cases, it may not be possible to know these consequences in advance, but they are always potentially terrible. \"When you resorted to force,\" General Eisenhower once said, \". . . you didn't know where you were going. . . . If you got deeper and deeper, there was just no limit except . . . the limitations of force itself.\"\n\nThe logic of war, according to Clausewitz, works in this way: \"each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other.\" What results is a \"reciprocal action,\" a continuous escalation, in which neither side is guilty even if it acts first, since every act can be called and almost certainly is pre-emptive. \"War tends toward the utmost exertion of forces,\" and that means toward increasing ruthlessness, since \"the ruthless user of force who shrinks from no amount of bloodshed must gain an advantage if his opponent does not do the same.\" And so his opponent, driven by what Thucydides and Hobbes call \"a necessity of nature,\" does the same, matching the ruthlessness of the other side whenever he can. But this description, though it is a useful account of how escalation works, is open to the criticism that I have already made. As soon as we focus on some concrete case of military and moral decision-making, we enter a world that is governed not by abstract tendencies but by human choice. The actual pressures toward escalation are greater here, less there, rarely so overwhelming as to leave no room for maneuver. Wars no doubt are often escalated, but they are also (sometimes) fought at fairly steady levels of violence and brutality, and these levels are (sometimes) fairly low.\n\nClausewitz grants this, though without surrendering his commitment to the absolute. War, he writes, \"may be a thing which is sometimes war in a greater, sometimes in a lesser degree.\" And again, \"There can be wars of all degrees of importance and energy, from a war of extermination down to a mere state of armed observation.\" Somewhere between these two, I suppose, we begin to say, all's fair, anything goes, and so on. When we talk that way, we are not referring to the general limitlessness of war, but to particular escalations, particular acts of force. No one has ever experienced \"absolute war.\" In this or that struggle, we endure (or commit) this or that brutality, which can always be described in concrete terms. It is the same with hell: I cannot conceptualize infinite pain without thinking of whips and scorpions, hot irons, other people. Now, what is it that we think about when we say, war is hell? What aspects of warfare lead us to regard its initiation as a criminal act?\n\nThe same questions can be introduced in another way. War is not usefully described as an act of force without some specification of the context in which the act takes place and from which it derives its meaning. Here the case is the same as with other human activities (politics and commerce, for example): it's not what people do, the physical motions they go through, that are crucial, but the institutions, practices, conventions that they make. Hence the social and historical conditions that \"modify\" war are not to be considered as accidental or external to war itself, for war is a social creation. At particular points in time, it takes shape in particular ways, and sometimes at least in ways that resist the \"utmost exertion of forces.\" What is war and what is not-war are in fact something that people decide (I don't mean by taking a vote). As both anthropological and historical accounts suggest, they can decide, and in a considerable variety of cultural settings they have decided, that war is limited war\u2014that is, they have built certain notions about who can fight, what tactics are acceptable, when battle has to be broken off, and what prerogatives go with victory into the idea of war itself.a Limited war is always specific to a time and place, but so is every escalation, including the escalation beyond which war is hell.\n\nThe Limit of Consent\n\nSome wars are not hell, and it will be best to begin with them. The first and most obvious example is the competitive struggle of aristocratic young men, a tournament on a larger scale and with no presiding officer in the stands. Examples can be found in Africa, ancient Greece, Japan, and feudal Europe. Here is a \"contention by arms\" that has often captured the imagination, not only of children, but also of romantic adults. John Ruskin made it his own ideal: \"creative or foundational war is that in which the natural restlessness and love of contest are disciplined, by consent, into modes of beautiful\u2014though it may be fatal\u2014play. . . .\" Creative war may not be terribly bloody, but that is not the crucial thing about it. I have read accounts of tournaments that make them sound brutal enough, but no such account would lead anyone to say that it was a crime to organize a tournament. What rules out such a claim, I think, is Ruskin's phrase \"by consent.\" His beautiful aristocrats do what they choose to do, and that is why no poet ever described their deaths in terms comparable to those of Wilfred Owen writing of infantrymen in World War I:\n\nWhat passing-bells for these who die as cattle?\n\n\"To the youths who voluntarily adopt it as their profession,\" writes Ruskin, \"war] has always been a grand pastime. . . .\" We take their choice as a sign that what they are choosing cannot be awful, even if it looks that way to us. Perhaps they ennoble the brutal melee; perhaps not; but if this kind of war were hellish, these well-born young men would be doing something else.[b\n\nA similar argument can be made whenever fighting is voluntary. Nor does it matter a great deal if the men involved don't choose to fight, so long as they can choose to break off fighting without dire consequences. In certain primitive societies, whole age cohorts of young males go off to battle; individuals cannot avoid combat without exposing themselves to dishonor and ostracism. But there is no effective social pressure or military discipline on the battlefield itself. And then there takes place, as Hobbes says, \"on both sides a running away.\" When running away is acceptable, as it often is in primitive warfare, battles will obviously be short and casualties few. There is nothing that resembles \"the utmost exertion of forces.\" Those men who don't run away, but stand and fight, do so not because of the necessities of their case, but freely, as a matter of choice. They seek out the excitement of battle, perhaps because they enjoy it, and their subsequent fate, even if it is very painful, can't be called unjust.\n\nThe case of mercenaries and professional soldiers is more complex and needs to be examined with some care. In Renaissance Italy, wars were fought by mercenary soldiers recruited by the great condottieri, partly as a business venture, partly as a political speculation. City-states and principalities had to rely on such men because the political culture of the time did not allow for effective coercion. There were no conscript armies. The result was warfare of a very limited sort, since recruits were expensive and each army represented a considerable capital investment. Battle became a matter largely of tactical maneuver; physical confrontation was rare; relatively few soldiers were killed. Wars had to be won, as two of the condottieri wrote, \"rather by industry and cunning than by actual clash of arms.\" Thus the great defeat of the Florentines at Zagonara: \"no deaths occurred [in the battle],\" Machiavelli tells us, \"except those of Lodovico degli Obizi and two of his men, who, having fallen from their horses, were drowned in the mud.\" But, once again, I don't want to stress the limited character of the fighting but something prior to that, from which the limits follow: a certain sort of freedom in choosing war. Mercenary soldiers signed up on terms, and if they could not actually choose their campaigns and tactics, they could to some degree fix the cost of their services and so condition the choices of their leaders. Given that freedom, they might have fought very bloody battles and the spectacle would not lead us to say that war was a crime. A fight between mercenary armies is undoubtedly a bad way of settling political disputes, but we judge it bad for the sake of the people whose fate is being settled, not for the sake of the soldiers themselves.\n\nOur judgments are very different, however, if the mercenary armies are recruited (as they most often are) from among desperately impoverished men, who can find no other way of feeding themselves and their families except by signing up. Ruskin makes this point well when he tells his aristocratic warriors: \"Remember, whatever virtue and goodliness there may be in this game of war, rightly played, there is none when you . . . play it with a multitude of small human pawns . . . [when you] urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. . . .\" Then battle becomes a \"circus of slaughter\" in the midst of which no consensual discipline is possible, and those who die do so without ever having had a chance to live in another way. Hell is the right name for the risks they never chose and the agony and death they endure; the men responsible for that agony are rightly called criminals.\n\nMercenaries are professional soldiers who sell their services on the open market, but there are other professionals who serve only their own prince or people and, though they may earn their bread by soldiering, disdain the name of mercenary. \"We're either officers who serve their Tsar and country,\" says Prince Andrey in War and Peace, \"and rejoice in the success and grieve at the defeat of the common cause, or we're hirelings who have no interest in our master's business.\" The distinction is too gross; in fact there are intermediate positions; but the more a soldier fights because he is committed to a \"common cause,\" the more likely we are to regard it as a crime to force him to fight. We assume that his commitment is to the safety of his country, that he fights only when it is threatened, and that then he has to fight (he has been \"put to it\"): it is his duty and not a free choice. He is like a doctor who risks his life during an epidemic, using professional skills he chose to acquire but whose acquisition is not a sign that he hopes for epidemics. On the other hand, professional soldiers are sometimes exactly like those aristocratic warriors who relish battle, driven more by a lust for victory than by patriotic conviction, and then we may well be unmoved by their deaths. At least we will not say, they would not want us to say, what Owen says of his comrades in the trenches, that \"one dies of war like any old disease.\" They died instead of their own free will.\n\nWar is hell whenever men are forced to fight, whenever the limit of consent is breached. That means, of course, that it is hell most of the time; throughout most of recorded history, there have been political organizations capable of marshalling armies and driving soldiers into battle. It is the absence of political discipline or its ineffectiveness in detail that opens the way for \"creative war.\" The examples I have given are best understood as limiting cases, establishing the boundaries of hell. We ourselves are old inhabitants\u2014even if we live in democratic states where the government that decides to fight or not to fight is popularly elected. For I am not considering now the legitimacy of that government. Nor am I immediately interested in the willingness of a potential soldier to vote for a war he has been led to believe is necessary or to volunteer for it. What is important here is the extent to which war (as a profession) or combat (at this or that moment in time) is a personal choice that the soldier makes on his own and for essentially private reasons. That kind of choosing effectively disappears as soon as fighting becomes a legal obligation and a patriotic duty. Then \"the waste of the life of the combatants is one which,\" as the philosopher T. H. Green has written, \"the power of the state compels. This is equally true whether the army is raised by voluntary enlistment or by conscription.\"c For the state decrees that an army of a certain size be raised, and it sets out to find the necessary men, using all the techniques of coercion and persuasion at its disposal. And the men it finds, precisely because they go to war under constraint or as a matter of conscience, can no longer moderate their battles; the battles are no longer theirs. They are political instruments, they obey orders, and the practice of war is shaped at a higher level. Perhaps they really are obligated to obey orders in this or that case, but war is radically changed by the fact that they do so generally. The change is best represented for the modern period (though there are historical analogues) by the effects of conscription. \"Hitherto soldiers had been costly, now they were cheap; battles had been avoided, now they were sought, and however heavy were the losses, they could rapidly be made good by the muster-roll.\"\n\nNapoleon is said to have boasted to Metternich that he could afford to lose 30,000 men a month. Perhaps he could have lost that many and still have maintained political support at home. But he could not have done so, I think, had he had to ask the men he was about to \"lose.\" Soldiers might agree to such losses in a war forced upon them by the enemy, a war of national defense, but not in the sorts of wars that Napoleon fought. The need to seek their consent (whatever the form in which it was sought and given or not given) would surely limit the occasions of war, and if there were any chance at all of reciprocity from the other side, it would limit its means too. This is the sort of consent I have in mind. Political self-determination is not, judging from twentieth-century history, an adequate substitute, though it isn't easy to think of one that would be better. In any case, it is when individual consent fails that \"acts of force\" lose whatever appeal they previously had and become the constant object of moral condemnation. And after that, war also tends to escalate in its means, not necessarily beyond all limits, but certainly beyond those limits that ordinary humanity, as free of political loyalty as of political constraint, would establish if it could.\n\nThe Tyranny of War\n\nWar is most often a form of tyranny. It is best described by paraphrasing Trotsky's aphorism about the dialectic: \"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.\" The stakes are high, and the interest that military organizations take in an individual who would prefer to be somewhere else, doing something else, is frightening indeed. Hence the peculiar horror of war: it is a social practice in which force is used by and against men as loyal or constrained members of states and not as individuals who choose their own enterprises and activities. When we say, war is hell, it is the victims of the fighting that we have in mind. In fact, then, war is the very opposite of hell in the theological sense, and is hellish only when the opposition is strict. For in hell, presumably, only those people suffer who deserve to suffer, who have chosen activities for which punishment is the appropriate divine response, knowing that this is so. But the greater number by far of those who suffer in war have made no comparable choice.\n\nI do not mean to call them \"innocent.\" That word has come to have a special meaning in our moral discourse. It doesn't refer there to the participants but to the bystanders of battle, and so the class of innocent men and women is only a subset (though it is often a frighteningly large subset) of all those in whom war takes an interest without asking their consent. The rules of war by and large protect only the subset, for reasons I will have to consider later on. But war is hell even when the rules are observed, even when only soldiers are killed and civilians are consistently spared. Surely no experience of modern warfare has etched its horror so deeply in our minds as the fighting in the trenches of World War I\u2014and in the trenches civilian lives were rarely at risk. The distinction of combatants and bystanders is enormously important in the theory of war, but our first and most fundamental moral judgment does not depend upon it. For in one sense at least, soldiers in battle and nonparticipating civilians are not so different: the soldiers would almost certainly be nonparticipants if they could.\n\nThe tyranny of war is often described as if war itself were the tyrant, a natural force like flood or famine or, personified, a brutal giant stalking his human prey, as in these lines from a poem by Thomas Sackville:\n\nLastly stood War, in glittering arms y-clad,\n\nWith visage grim, stern looks, and blackly hued;\n\nIn his right hand a naked sword he had\n\nThat to the hilts was all with blood embrued,\n\nAnd in his left (that kings and kingdoms rued)\n\nFamine and fire he held, and therewithal\n\nHe razed towns, and threw down towers and all.\n\nHere is the Grim Reaper in uniform, armed with a sword instead of a scythe. The poetic image enters also into moral and political thought, but only, I think, as a kind of ideology, obscuring our critical judgment. For it is a piece of mystification to represent tyrannical power as an abstract force. In battle as in politics, tyranny is always a relation among persons or groups of persons. The tyranny of war is a peculiarly complex relation because coercion is common on both sides. Sometimes, however, it is possible to distinguish the sides and to identify the statesmen and soldiers who first took the naked sword to hand. Wars are not self-starting. They may \"break out,\" like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims.\n\nThose agents, when we can identify them, are properly called criminals. Their moral character is determined by the moral reality of the activity they force others to engage in (whether or not they engage in it themselves). They are responsible for the pain and death that follow from their decisions, or at least for the pain and death of all those persons who do not choose war as a personal enterprise. In contemporary international law, their crime is called aggression, and I will consider it later on under that name. But we can understand it initially as the exercise of tyrannical power, first over their own people and then, through the mediation of the opposing state's recruitment and conscription offices, over the people they have attacked. Now, tyranny of this sort rarely encounters domestic resistance. Sometimes the war is opposed by local political forces, but the opposition almost never extends to the actual exercise of military power. Though mutinies are common in the long history of war, they are more like peasant jacqueries, quickly and bloodily suppressed, than revolutionary struggles. Most often, real opposition comes only from the enemy. It is the men and women on the other side who are most likely to recognize and resent the tyranny of war; and whenever they do that, the contest takes on a new significance.\n\nWhen soldiers believe themselves to be fighting against aggression, war is no longer a condition to be endured. It is a crime they can resist\u2014though they must suffer its effects in order to resist it\u2014and they can hope for a victory that is something more than an escape from the immediate brutality of battle. The experience of war as hell generates what might be called a higher ambition: one doesn't aim to settle with the enemy but to defeat and punish him and, if not to abolish the tyranny of war, at least to reduce the probability of future oppression. And once one is fighting for purposes of this sort, it becomes terribly important to win. The conviction that victory is morally critical plays an important part in the so-called \"logic of war.\" We don't call war hell because it is fought without restraint. It is more nearly right to say that, when certain restraints are passed, the hellishness of war drives us to break with every remaining restraint in order to win. Here is the ultimate tyranny: those who resist aggression are forced to imitate, and perhaps even to exceed, the brutality of the aggressor.\n\nGeneral Sherman and the Burning of Atlanta\n\nWe are now in a position to understand what Sherman had in mind when he first announced that war is hell. He wasn't merely describing the awfulness of the experience, nor was he denying the possibility of moral judgment. He made such judgments freely, and he surely thought of himself as a righteous soldier. His maxim sums up, with admirable brevity, a whole way of thinking about war\u2014a one-sided and partial way of thinking, I shall argue, but powerful nonetheless. In his view, war is entirely and singularly the crime of those who begin it, and soldiers resisting aggression (or rebellion) can never be blamed for anything they do that brings victory closer. The sentence War is hell is doctrine, not description: it is a moral argument, an attempt at self-justification. Sherman was claiming to be innocent of all those actions (though they were his own actions) for which he was so severely attacked: the bombardment of Atlanta, the forced evacuation of its inhabitants and the burning of the city, the march through Georgia. When he issued the order for the evacuation and burning of Atlanta, the city's aldermen and the Confederate commander, General Hood, protested his plans: \"And now, sir,\" wrote Hood, \"permit me to say that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war.\" Sherman replied that war is indeed dark. \"War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.\" And therefore, he went on, \"those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.\" But he himself deserves no curses at all. \"I know I had no hand in making this war.\" He is only fighting it, not by choice but because he has to. He has been forced to use force, and the burning of Atlanta (so that the city could not again serve as a military depot for Confederate forces) is simply one more example of that use, one of the entailments of war. It is cruel, no doubt, but the cruelty isn't his own; it belongs, so to speak, to the men of the Confederacy: \"You who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war. . . . \" The Confederate leaders can easily restore peace by yielding obedience to federal law, but he can do so only by military action.\n\nSherman's argument expresses the anger that is commonly directed against those who begin a war and inflict its tyrannies on the rest of us. We disagree, of course, when it comes to giving the tyrants a proper name. But that disagreement is intense and heated only because we agree on the moral stakes. What is at issue is responsibility for death and destruction, and Sherman is by no means the only general to take a lively interest in such matters. Nor is he the only general to think that if his cause is just he cannot be blamed for the death and destruction he spreads around him\u2014for war is hell.\n\nIt is the Clausewitzian idea of limitlessness that is at work here, and if that idea is right, there would indeed be no response to Sherman's argument. But the tyranny of war is no more limitless than is political tyranny. Just as we can charge a tyrant with particular crimes over and above the crime of ruling without consent, so we can recognize and condemn particular criminal acts within the hell of war. When we answer the question, \"Who started this war?\" we have not finished distributing responsibility for the suffering that soldiers inflict. There are further arguments to make. That's why General Sherman, though he insisted that the cruelty of war could not be refined, claimed nevertheless to be refining it. \"God will judge . . . ,\" he wrote, \"whether it be more humane to fight with a town full of women [and children] at our back or to remove them in time to places of safety among their own friends and people.\" This is another kind of justification; and whether or not it is made in good faith, it suggests (what is certainly true) that Sherman had some responsibility for the people of Atlanta, even though he did not begin the war of which they were victims. When we focus exclusively on the fact of aggression, we are likely to lose sight of that responsibility and to talk as if there were only one morally relevant decision to be made in the course of a war: to attack or not to attack (to resist or not to resist). Sherman wants to judge war only at its outermost boundaries. But there is a great deal to be said about its interior regions, as he himself admits. Even in hell, it is possible to be more or less humane, to fight with or without restraint. We must try to understand how this can be so.\n\n This, of course, is exactly what Clausewitz wants to deny. In technical terms, he is arguing that war is never an activity constituted by its rules. War is never like a duel. The social practise of duelling includes and accounts for only those acts of violence specified in the rulebook or the customary code. If I wound my opponent, shoot his second, and then beat him to death with a stick, I am not duelling with him; I am murdering him. But similar brutalities in war, though they violate the rules, are still regarded as acts of war (war crimes). Hence there is a formal or linguistic sense in which military action is limitless, and this has undoubtedly influenced our understanding of such action. At the same time, however, \"war\" and related words are at least sometimes used in a more restrictive sense, as in the famous speech of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, one of the leaders of the Liberal Party in Britain during the Boer War: \"When is war not war? When it is fought by methods of barbarism. . . .\" We do still refer to the Boer War, but the argument is not idiosyncratic. I will provide other examples later on.\n\n We can glimpse the mood of the happy warrior in a letter that Rupert Brooke wrote to a friend at the very beginning of World War I, before he knew what it would be like: \"Come and die. It'll be great fun.\" (Quoted in Malcolm Cowley, A Second Flowering, New York, 1974, p. 6.)\n\n Green is arguing against the proposition I have hitherto maintained: that no wrong is done in war if \"the persons killed are voluntary combatants.\" He denies this on the grounds that a soldier's life is not merely his own. \"The individual's right to life is but the other side of the right which society has in his living.\" But that, it seems to me, is only true in certain sorts of societies; it is hardly an argument that could have been made to a feudal warrior. Green goes on to argue, more plausibly, that in his own society it makes little sense to talk of soldiers fighting voluntarily: war is now a state action. The chapter on \"The Right of the State over the Individual in War\" in Green's Principles of Political Obligation, provides an especially clear description of the ways in which moral responsibility is mediated in the modern state; I have relied on it often in this and later chapters.\n\nThe Rules of War\n\nThe Moral Equality of Soldiers\n\nAmong soldiers who choose to fight, restraints of various sorts arise easily and, one might say, naturally, the product of mutual respect and recognition. The stories of chivalric knights are for the most part stories, but there can be no doubt that a military code was widely shared in the later Middle Ages and sometimes honored. The code was designed for the convenience of the aristocratic warriors, but it also reflected their sense of themselves as persons of a certain sort, engaged in activities that were freely chosen. Chivalry marked off knights from mere ruffians and bandits and also from peasant soldiers who bore arms as a necessity. I suppose that it survives today: some sense of military honor is still the creed of the professional soldier, the sociological if not the lineal descendent of the feudal knight. But notions of honor and chivalry seem to play only a small part in contemporary combat. In the literature of war, the contrast between \"then and now\" is commonly made\u2014not very accurately, but with a certain truth, as in this poem by Louis Simpson:\n\nAt Malplaquet and Waterloo\n\nThey were polite and proud,\n\nThey primed their guns with billets-doux\n\nAnd, as they fired, bowed.\n\nAt Appomattox too, it seems\n\nSome things were understood . . .\n\nBut at Verdun and at Bastogne\n\nThere was a great recoil,\n\nThe blood was bitter to the bone\n\nThe trigger to the soul. . . .\n\nChivalry, it is often said, was the victim of democratic revolution and of revolutionary war: popular passion overcame aristocratic honor. That draws the line before Waterloo and Appomattox, though still not quite correctly. It is the success of coercion that makes war ugly. Democracy is a factor only insofar as it increases the legitimacy of the state and then the effectiveness of its coercive power, not because the people in arms are a bloodthirsty mob fired by political zeal and committed to total war (in contrast to their officers, who would fight with decorum if they could). It is not what the people do when they enter the arena of battle that turns war into a \"circus of slaughter,\" but, as I have already argued, the mere fact that they are there. Soldiers died by the thousands at Verdun and the Somme simply because they were available, their lives nationalized, as it were, by the modern state. They didn't choose to throw themselves at barbed wire and machine guns in fits of patriotic enthusiasm. The blood is bitter to their bones, too; they, too, would fight with decorum if they could. Their patriotism is, of course, a partial explanation of their availability. The discipline of the state is not merely imposed on them; it is also a discipline they accept, thinking that they have to for the sake of their families and their country. But the common features of contemporary combat: hatred for the enemy, impatience with all restraint, zeal for victory\u2014these are the products of war itself whenever masses of men have to be mobilized for battle. They are as much the contribution of modern warfare to democratic politics as of democracy to war.\n\nIn any case, the death of chivalry is not the end of moral judgment. We still hold soldiers to certain standards, even though they fight unwillingly\u2014in fact, precisely because we assume that they all fight unwillingly. The military code is reconstructed under the conditions of modern warfare so that it comes to rest not on aristocratic freedom but on military servitude. Sometimes freedom and servitude co-exist, and then we can study the difference between them in clinical detail. Whenever the game of war is revived, the elaborate courtesies of the chivalric age are revived with it\u2014as among aviators in World War I, for example, who imagined themselves (and who have survived in the popular imagination) as airborne knights. Compared to the serfs on the ground, these were aristocrats indeed: they fought in accordance with a strict code of conduct that they invented themselves. There was thralldom in the trenches, however, and mutual recognition took a very different form. Briefly, on Christmas Day 1914, German and French troops came together, drank and sang together, in the no-man's land between their lines. But such moments are rare in recent history, and they are not occasions for moral invention. The modern rules of war depend upon an abstract rather than a practical fellowship.\n\nSoldiers cannot endure modern warfare for long without blaming someone for their pain and suffering. While it may be an example of what Marxists call \"false consciousness\" that they do not blame the ruling class of their own or of the enemy country, the fact is that their condemnation focuses most immediately on the men with whom they are engaged. The level of hatred is high in the trenches. That is why enemy wounded are often left to die and prisoners are killed\u2014like murderers lynched by vigilantes\u2014as if the soldiers on the other side were personally responsible for the war. At the same time, however, we know that they are not responsible. Hatred is interrupted or overridden by a more reflective understanding, which one finds expressed again and again in letters and war memoirs. It is the sense that the enemy soldier, though his war may well be criminal, is nevertheless as blameless as oneself. Armed, he is an enemy; but he isn't my enemy in any specific sense; the war itself isn't a relation between persons but between political entities and their human instruments. These human instruments are not comrades-in-arms in the old style, members of the fellowship of warriors; they are \"poor sods, just like me,\" trapped in a war they didn't make. I find in them my moral equals. That is not to say simply that I acknowledge their humanity, for it is not the recognition of fellow men that explains the rules of war; criminals are men too. It is precisely the recognition of men who are not criminals.\n\nThey can try to kill me, and I can try to kill them. But it is wrong to cut the throats of their wounded or to shoot them down when they are trying to surrender. These judgments are clear enough, I think, and they suggest that war is still, somehow, a rule-governed activity, a world of permissions and prohibitions\u2014a moral world, therefore, in the midst of hell. Though there is no license for war-makers, there is a license for soldiers, and they hold it without regard to which side they are on; it is the first and most important of their war rights. They are entitled to kill, not anyone, but men whom we know to be victims. We could hardly understand such a title if we did not recognize that they are victims too. Hence the moral reality of war can be summed up in this way: when soldiers fight freely, choosing one another as enemies and designing their own battles, their war is not a crime; when they fight without freedom, their war is not their crime. In both cases, military conduct is governed by rules; but in the first the rules rest on mutuality and consent, in the second on a shared servitude. The first case raises no difficulties; the second is more problematic. We can best explore its problems, I think, if we turn from the trenches and the front lines to the general staff at the rear, and from the war against the Kaiser to the war against Hitler\u2014for at that level and in that struggle, the recognition of \"men who are not criminals\" is hard indeed.\n\nThe Case of Hitler's Generals\n\nIn 1942, General von Arnim was captured in North Africa, and it was proposed by members of Dwight Eisenhower's staff that the American commander \"should observe the custom of by-gone days\" and permit von Arnim to visit him before he was sent into captivity. Historically, such visits were not merely matters of courtesy; they were occasions for the reaffirmation of the military code. Thus General von Ravenstein, captured by the British that same year, reports: \"I was taken to see . . . Auchinleck himself in his office. He shook hands with me and said: 'I know you well by name. You and your division have fought with chivalry.'\" Eisenhower, however, refused to allow the visit. In his memoirs, he explained his reasons:\n\nThe custom had its origin in the fact that the mercenary soldiers of old had no real enmity toward their opponents. Both sides fought for love of a fight, out of a sense of duty or, more probably, for money. . . . The tradition that all professional soldiers are comrades in arms has . . . persisted to this day. For me, World War II was far too personal a thing to entertain such feelings. Daily as it progressed there grew within me the conviction that, as never before . . . the forces that stood for human good and men's rights were . . . confronted by a completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated.\n\nOn this view, it doesn't matter whether or not von Arnim had fought well; his crime was to have fought at all. And similarly, it may not matter how General Eisenhower fights. Against an evil conspiracy, what is crucial is to win. Chivalry loses its rationale, and there are no limits left except \"the limitations of force itself.\"\n\nThat was Sherman's view too, but it does not account for the judgments that we make of his conduct, or of Eisenhower's, or even of von Arnim's and von Ravenstein's. Consider now the better-known case of Erwin Rommel: he, too, was one of Hitler's generals, and it is hard to imagine that he could have escaped the moral infamy of the war he fought. Yet he was, so we are told by one biographer after another, an honorable man. \"While many of his colleagues and peers in the German army surrendered their honor by collusion with the iniquities of Nazism, Rommel was never defiled.\" He concentrated, like the professional he was, on \"the soldier's task of fighting.\" And when he fought, he maintained the rules of war. He fought a bad war well, not only militarily but also morally. \"It was Rommel who burned the Commando Order issued by Hitler on 28 October 1942, which laid down that all enemy soldiers encountered behind the German line were to be killed at once. . . .\" He was one of Hitler's generals, but he did not shoot prisoners. Is such a man a comrade? Can one treat him with courtesy, can one shake his hand? These are the fine points of moral conduct; I do not know how they might be resolved, though I am sympathetic with Eisenhower's resolution. But I am sure, nevertheless, that Rommel should be praised for burning the Commando Order, and everyone who writes about these matters seems equally sure, and that implies something very important about the nature of war.\n\nIt would be very odd to praise Rommel for not killing prisoners unless we simultaneously refused to blame him for Hitler's aggressive wars. For otherwise he is simply a criminal, and all the fighting he does is murder or attempted murder, whether he aims at soldiers in battle or at prisoners or at civilians. The chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg put this argument into the language of international law when he said, \"The killing of combatants is justifiable . . . only where the war itself is legal. But where the war is illegal . . . there is nothing to justify the killing and these murders are not to be distinguished from those of any other lawless robber bands.\" And then Rommel's case would be exactly like that of a man who invades someone else's home and kills only some of the inhabitants, sparing the children, say, or an aged grandmother: a murderer, no doubt, though not one without a drop of human kindness. But we don't view Rommel that way: why not? The reason has to do with the distinction of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. We draw a line between the war itself, for which soldiers are not responsible, and the conduct of the war, for which they are responsible, at least within their own sphere of activity. Generals may well straddle the line, but that only suggests that we know pretty well where it should be drawn. We draw it by recognizing the nature of political obedience. Rommel was a servant, not a ruler, of the German state; he did not choose the wars he fought but, like Prince Andrey, served his \"Tsar and country.\" We still have misgivings in his case, and will continue to have them, for he was more than just unlucky in his \"Tsar and country.\" But by and large we don't blame a soldier, even a general, who fights for his own government. He is not a member of a robber band, a willful wrongdoer, but a loyal and obedient subject and citizen, acting sometimes at great personal risk in a way he thinks is right. We allow him to say what an English soldier says in Shakespeare's Henry V: \"We know enough if we know we are the king's men. Our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.\" Not that his obedience can never be criminal; for when he violates the rules of war, superior orders are no defense. The atrocities that he commits are his own; the war is not. It is conceived, both in international law and in ordinary moral judgment, as the king's business\u2014a matter of state policy, not of individual volition, except when the individual is the king.\n\nIt might, however, be thought a matter of individual volition whether particular men join the army and participate in the war. Catholic writers have long argued that they ought not to volunteer, ought not to serve at all, if they know the war to be unjust. But the knowledge required by Catholic doctrine is hard to come by; and in case of doubt, argues the best of the Schoolmen, Francisco de Vitoria, subjects must fight\u2014the guilt falling, as in Henry V, on their leaders. Vitoria's argument suggests how firmly political life is set, even in the pre-modern state, against the very idea of volition in time of war. \"A prince is not able,\" he writes, \"and ought not always to render reasons for the war to his subjects, and if the subjects cannot serve in the war except they are first satisfied of its justice, the state would fall into grave peril. . . .\" Today, of course, most princes work hard to satisfy their subjects of the justice of their wars; they \"render reasons,\" though not always honest ones. It takes courage to doubt these reasons, or to doubt them in public; and so long as they are only doubted, most men will be persuaded (by arguments something like Vitoria's) to fight. Their routine habits of law-abidingness, their fear, their patriotism, their moral investment in the state, all favor that course. Or, alternatively, they are so terribly young when the disciplinary system of the state catches them up and sends them into war that they can hardly be said to make a moral decision at all:\n\nFrom my mother's sleep I fell into the State.\n\nAnd then how can we blame them for (what we perceive to be) the wrongful character of their war?a\n\nSoldiers are not, however, entirely without volition. Their will is independent and effective only within a limited sphere, and for most of them that sphere is narrow. But except in extreme cases, it never completely disappears. And at those moments in the course of the fighting when they must choose, like Rommel, to kill prisoners or let them live, they are not mere victims or servants bound to obedience; they are responsible for what they do. We shall have to qualify that responsibility when we come to consider it in detail, for war is still hell, and hell is a tyranny where soldiers are subject to all sorts of duress. But the judgments we actually make of their conduct demonstrate, I think, that within that tyranny we have carved out a constitutional regime: even the pawns of war have rights and obligations.\n\nDuring the past hundred years, these rights and obligations have been specified in treaties and agreements, written into international law. The very states that enlist the pawns of war have stipulated the moral character of their mutual slaughter. Initially, this stipulation was not based upon any notion of the equality of soldiers but upon the equality of sovereign states, which claimed for themselves the same right to fight (right to make war) that individual soldiers more obviously possess. The argument that I have made on behalf of soldiers was first made on behalf of states\u2014or rather on behalf of their leaders, who, we were told, are never willful criminals, whatever the character of the wars they begin, but statesmen serving the national interest as best they can. When I discuss the theory of aggression and of responsibility for aggression, I will have to explain why that is an inadequate description of what statesmen do. For now, it is enough to say that this view of sovereignty and political leadership, which was never in accord with ordinary moral judgment, has also lost its legal standing, replaced in the years since World War I by the formal designation of war-making as a criminal activity. However, the rules of engagement have not been replaced but expanded and elaborated, so that we now have both a ban on war and a code of military conduct. The dualism of our moral perceptions is established in the law.\n\nWar is a \"legal condition which equally permits two or more groups to carry on a conflict by armed force.\" It is also, and for our purposes more importantly, a moral condition, involving the same permissiveness, not in fact at the level of sovereign states, but at the level of armies and individual soldiers. Without the equal right to kill, war as a rule-governed activity would disappear and be replaced by crime and punishment, by evil conspiracies and military law enforcement. That disappearance seems to be heralded by the United Nations Charter, where the word \"war\" does not appear but only \"aggression,\" \"self-defense,\" \"international enforcement,\" and so on. But even the UN's \"police action\" in Korea was still a war, since the soldiers who fought in it were moral equals even if the states were not. The rules of war were as relevant there as in any other \"conflict by armed force,\" and they were equally relevant to the aggressor, the victim, and the police.\n\nTwo Sorts of Rules\n\nThe rules of war consist of two clusters of prohibitions attached to the central principle that soldiers have an equal right to kill. The first cluster specifies when and how they can kill, the second whom they can kill. My chief concern is with the second, for there the formulation and reformulation of the rules reach to one of the hardest questions in the theory of war\u2014that is, how those victims of war who can be attacked and killed are to be distinguished from those who cannot. I don't believe that this question must be answered in this or that specific way if war is to be a moral condition. It is necessary, however, that at any particular moment there be an answer. War is distinguishable from murder and massacre only when restrictions are established on the reach of battle.\n\nThe first set of rules does not involve any such fundamental issue. Rules specifying how and when soldiers can be killed are by no means unimportant, and yet the morality of war would not be radically transformed were they to be abolished altogether. Consider, for example, those battles described by anthropologists in which warriors fight with bows and unfeathered arrows. The arrows fly less accurately than they would if they were feathered; they can be dodged; few men are killed. It is clearly a good rule, then, that arrows not be feathered, and we may fairly condemn the warrior who first arms himself with the superior and forbidden weapon and hits his enemy. Yet the man he kills was liable to be killed in any case, and a collective (intertribal) decision to fight with feathered arrows would not violate any basic moral principle. The case is the same with all other rules of this kind: that soldiers be preceded into battle by a herald carrying a red flag, that fighting always be broken off at sunset, that ambushes and surprise attacks be prohibited, and so on. Any rule that limits the intensity and duration of combat or the suffering of soldiers is to be welcomed, but none of these restraints seem crucial to the idea of war as a moral condition. They are circumstantial in the literal sense of that word, highly particularized and local to a specific time and place. Even if in practice they endure for many years, they are always susceptible to the transformations brought about by social change, technological innovation, and foreign conquest.b\n\nThe second set of rules does not seem similarly susceptible. At least, the general structure of its provisions seems to persist without reference to social systems and technologies\u2014as if the rules involved were (as I think they are) more closely connected to universal notions of right and wrong. Their tendency is to set certain classes of people outside the permissible range of warfare, so that killing any of their members is not a legitimate act of war but a crime. Though their details vary from place to place, these rules point toward the general conception of war as a combat between combatants, a conception that turns up again and again in anthropological and historical accounts. It is most dramatically exemplified when war is actually a combat between military champions, as among many primitive peoples, or in the Greek epics, or in the biblical tale of David and Goliath. \"Let no man's heart fail within him,\" says David, \"thy servant will go and fight this Philistine.\" Once such a contest has been agreed upon, soldiers themselves are protected from the hell of war. In the Middle Ages, single combat was advocated for precisely this reason: \"Better for one to fall than the whole army.\" More often, however, protection has been offered only to those people who are not trained and prepared for war, who do not fight or cannot: women and children, priests, old men, the members of neutral tribes, cities, or states, wounded or captured soldiers.c What all these groups have in common is that they are not currently engaged in the business of war. Depending on one's social or cultural perspective, killing them may appear wanton, unchivalrous, dishonorable, brutal, or murderous. But it is very likely that some general principle is at work in all these judgments, connecting immunity from attack with military disengagement. Any satisfactory account of the moral reality of war must specify that principle and say something about its force. I shall attempt to do both these things later on.\n\nThe historical specifications of the principle are, however, conventional in character, and the war rights and obligations of soldiers follow from the conventions and not (directly) from the principle, whatever its force. Once again, war is a social creation. The rules actually observed or violated in this or that time and place are necessarily a complex product, mediated by cultural and religious norms, social structures, formal and informal bargaining between belligerent powers, and so on. Hence, the details of noncombatant immunity are likely to seem as arbitrary as the rules that determine when battles should start and stop or what weapons may be used. They are more important by far, but similarly subject to social revision. Exactly like law in domestic society, they will often represent an incomplete or distorted embodiment of the relevant moral principle. They are subject, then, to philosophical criticism. Indeed, criticism is a crucial part of the historical process through which the rules are made. We might say that war is a philosophical creation. Long before philosophers are satisfied with it, however, soldiers are bound by its canons. And they are equally bound, because of their own equality, and without reference to the content or the incompleteness of the canons.\n\nThe War Convention\n\nI propose to call the set of articulated norms, customs, professional codes, legal precepts, religious and philosophical principles, and reciprocal arrangements that shape our judgments of military conduct the war convention. It is important to stress that it is our judgments that are at issue here, not conduct itself. We cannot get at the substance of the convention by studying combat behavior, any more than we can understand the norms of friendship by studying the way friends actually treat one another. The norms are apparent, instead, in the expectations friends have, the complaints they make, the hypocrisies they adopt. So it is with war: relations between combatants have a normative structure that is revealed in what they say (and what the rest of us say) rather than in what they do\u2014though no doubt what they do, as with friends, is affected by what they say. Harsh words are the immediate sanctions of the war convention, sometimes accompanied or followed by military attacks, economic blockades, reprisals, war crimes trials, and so on. But neither the words nor the actions have any single authoritative source; and, finally, it is the words that are decisive\u2014the \"judgment of history,\" as it is called, which means the judgment of men and women arguing until some rough consensus is reached.\n\nThe terms of our judgments are most explicitly set forth in positive international law: the work of politicians and lawyers acting as representatives of sovereign states, and then of jurists codifying their agreements and searching out the rationale that underlies them. But international law arises out of a radically decentralized legislative system, cumbrous, unresponsive, and without a parallel judicial system to establish the specific details of the legal code. For that reason, the legal handbooks are not the only place to find the war convention, and its actual existence is demonstrated not by the existence of the handbooks but by the moral arguments that everywhere accompany the practice of war. The common law of combat is developed through a kind of practical casuistry. Hence the method of this book: we look to the lawyers for general formulas, but to historical cases and actual debates for those particular judgments that both reflect the war convention and constitute its vital force. I don't mean to suggest that our judgments, even over time, have an unambiguous collective form. Nor, however, are they idiosyncratic and private in character. They are socially patterned, and the patterning is religious, cultural, and political, as well as legal. The task of the moral theorist is to study the pattern as a whole, reaching for its deepest reasons.\n\nAmong professional soldiers, the war convention often finds advocates of a special kind. Though chivalry is dead and fighting unfree, professional soldiers remain sensitive (or some of them do) to those limits and restraints that distinguish their life's work from mere butchery. No doubt, they know with General Sherman that war is butchery, but they are likely to believe that it is also, simultaneously, something else. That is why army and navy officers, defending a long tradition, will often protest commands of their civilian superiors that would require them to violate the rules of war and turn them into mere instruments for killing. The protests are mostly unavailing\u2014for instruments, after all, they are\u2014but within their own sphere of decision, they often find ways to defend the rules. And even when they don't do that, their doubts at the time and justifications after the fact are an important guide to the substance of the rules. Sometimes, at least, it matters to soldiers just whom they kill.\n\nThe war convention as we know it today has been expounded, debated, criticized, and revised over a period of many centuries. Yet it remains one of the more imperfect of human artifacts: recognizably something that men have made, but not something that they have made freely or well. It is necessarily imperfect, I think, quite aside from the frailties of humankind, because it is adapted to the practice of modern war. It sets the terms of a moral condition that comes into existence only when armies of victims meet (just as the chivalric code sets the terms of a moral condition that comes into existence only when there are armies of free men). The convention accepts that victimization or at least assumes it, and starts from there. That is why it is often described as a program for the toleration of war, when what is needed is a program for its abolition. One does not abolish war by fighting it well; nor does fighting it well make it tolerable. War is hell, as I have already said, even when the rules are strictly observed. Just for that reason, we are sometimes made angry by the very idea of rules or cynical about their meaning. They only serve as Prince Andrey says in that impassioned outburst that evidently also expresses Tolstoy's conviction to make us forget that war is \"the vilest thing in life. . . .\"\n\nAnd what is war, what is needed for success in war, what are the morals of the military world? The object of warfare is murder; the means employed in warfare\u2014spying, treachery, and the encouragement of it, the ruin of a country, the plunder of its inhabitants . . . trickery and lying, which are called military strategy; the morals of the military class\u2014absence of all independence, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness.\n\nAnd yet, even people who believe all this are capable of being outraged by particular acts of cruelty and barbarism. War is so awful that it makes us cynical about the possibility of restraint, and then it is so much worse that it makes us indignant at the absence of restraint. Our cynicism testifies to the defectiveness of the war convention, and our indignation to its reality and strength.\n\nThe Example of Surrender\n\nAnomalous the convention often is, but binding nonetheless. Consider for a moment the common practice of surrendering, the detailed features of which are conventionally (and in our own time, legally) established. A soldier who surrenders enters into an agreement with his captors: he will stop fighting if they will accord him what the legal handbooks call \"benevolent quarantine.\" Since it is usually made under extreme duress, this is an agreement that would have no moral consequences at all in time of peace. In war it does have consequences. The captured soldier acquires rights and obligations specified by the convention, and these are binding without regard to the possible criminality of his captors or to the justice or urgency of the cause for which he has been fighting. Prisoners of war have a right to try to escape\u2014they cannot be punished for the attempt\u2014but if they kill a guard in order to escape, the killing is not an act of war; it is murder. For they committed themselves to stop fighting, gave up their right to kill, when they surrendered.\n\nIt is not easy to see all this as the simple assertion of a moral principle. It is the work of men and women (with moral principles in mind) adapting to the realities of war, making arrangements, striking bargains. No doubt, the bargain is generally useful to captives and captors alike, but it is not necessarily useful in every case to either of them or to mankind as a whole. If our purpose in this particular war is to win as soon as possible, the spectacle of a prison camp must seem strange indeed. Here are soldiers making themselves at home, settling in for the duration, dropping out of the war before it is over, and bound not to renew the fighting, even if they can (through sabotage, harassment, or whatever), because they promised at the point of a gun not to do so. Surely these are promises that can sometimes be broken. Yet prisoners are not invited to calculate the relative utilities of keeping or of breaking them. The war convention is written in absolutist terms: one violates its provisions at one's moral, as at one's physical peril. But what is the force of these provisions? They derive ultimately from principles that I will take up later on, which explain the meaning of quarter, disengagement, and immunity. They derive immediately and specifically from the consensual process itself. The rules of war, alien as they often are to our sense of what is best, are made obligatory by the general consent of mankind.\n\nNow that, too, is a consent given under a kind of duress. Only because there is no escape from hell, it might be said, have we labored to create a world of rules within it. But let us imagine an escape attempt, a liberation struggle, a \"war to end war.\" Surely it would be foolish then to fight according to the rules. The all-important task would be to win. But it is always important to win, for victory can always be described as an escape from hell. Even the victory of an aggressor, after all, ends the war. Hence the long history of impatience with the war convention. That history is nicely summed up in a letter written in 1880 by the Prussian chief of staff, General von Moltke, to protest the Declaration of St. Petersburg (an early effort to codify the rules of war): \"The greatest kindness in war,\" wrote von Moltke, \"is to bring it to a speedy conclusion. It should be allowable, with that view, to employ all means save those that are absolutely objectionable.\" Von Moltke stops short of a total denial of the war convention; he recognizes absolute prohibitions of some unspecified sort. Almost everyone does. But why stop short if that means falling short of the \"greatest kindness\"? This is the form of the most common argument in the \u00adtheory of war and of the most common moral dilemma in its practice. The war convention is found to stand in the way of victory and, it is usually said, a lasting peace. Must its provisions, must this particular provision be obeyed? When victory means the defeat of aggression, the question is not only important; it is painfully difficult. We want to have it both ways: moral decency in battle and victory in war; constitutionalism in hell and ourselves outside.\n\n But these young men, Robert Nozick argues, \"are certainly not encouraged to think for themselves by the practice of absolving them of all responsibility for their actions within the rules of war.\" That is right; they are not. But we cannot blame them in order to encourage the others unless they are actually blameworthy. Nozick insists that they are: \"It is a soldier's responsibility to determine if his side's cause is just. . . . \" The conventional refusal to impose that responsibility flatly and across the board is \"morally elitist.\" (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, p. 100.) But it isn't elitist merely to recognize the existence of authority structures and socialization processes in the political community, and it may be morally insensitive not to. I do agree with Nozick that \"some bucks stop with each of us.\" A great deal of this book is concerned with trying to say which ones those are.\n\n They are also susceptible to the kind of reciprocal violation legitimized by the doctrine of reprisal: violated by one side, they can be violated by the other. But this does not seem to be true of the other sort of rules, described below. See the discussion of reprisals in chapter 13.\n\n The lists are often more specific and more picturesque than this, reflecting the character of a particular culture. Here is an example from an ancient Indian text, according to which the following groups of people are not to be subjected to the exigencies of battle: \"Those who look on without taking part, those afflicted with grief . . . those who are asleep, thirsty, or fatigued or are walking along the road, or have a task on hand unfinished, or who are proficient in fine art.\" (S. V. Viswanatha, International Law in Ancient India, Bombay, 1925, p. 156.)\nPart Two\n\nThe Theory of Aggression\n\nLaw and Order in International Society\n\nAggression\n\nAggression is the name we give to the crime of war. We know the crime because of our knowledge of the peace it interrupts\u2014not the mere absence of fighting, but peace-with-rights, a condition of liberty and security that can exist only in the absence of aggression itself. The wrong the aggressor commits is to force men and women to risk their lives for the sake of their rights. It is to confront them with the choice: your rights or (some of) your lives! Groups of citizens respond in different ways to that choice, sometimes surrendering, sometimes fighting, depending on the moral and material condition of their state and army. But they are always justified in fighting; and in most cases, given that harsh choice, fighting is the morally preferred response. The justification and the preference are very important: they account for the most remarkable features of the concept of aggression and for the special place it has in the theory of war.\n\nAggression is remarkable because it is the only crime that states can commit against other states: everything else is, as it were, a misdemeanor. There is a strange poverty in the language of international law. The equivalents of domestic assault, armed robbery, extortion, assault with intent to kill, murder in all its degrees, have but one name. Every violation of the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of an independent state is called aggression. It is as if we were to brand as murder all attacks on a man's person, all attempts to coerce him, all invasions of his home. This refusal of differentiation makes it difficult to mark off the relative seriousness of aggressive acts\u2014to distinguish, for example, the seizure of a piece of land or the imposition of a satellite regime from conquest itself, the destruction of a state's independence (a crime for which Abba Eban, Israel's foreign minister in 1967, suggested the name \"policide\"). But there is a reason for the refusal. All aggressive acts have one thing in common: they justify forceful resistance, and force cannot be used between nations, as it often can between persons, without putting life itself at risk. Whatever limits we place on the means and range of warfare, fighting a limited war is not like hitting somebody. Aggression opens the gates of hell. Shakespeare's Henry V makes the point exactly:\n\nFor never two such kingdoms did contend\n\nWithout much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops\n\nAre every one a woe, a sore complaint\n\n'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords\n\nThat makes such waste in brief mortality.\n\nAt the same time, aggression unresisted is aggression still, though there is no \"fall of blood\" at all. In domestic society, a robber who gets what he wants without killing anyone is obviously less guilty, that is, guilty of a lesser crime, than if he commits murder. Assuming that the robber is prepared to kill, we allow the behavior of his victim to determine his guilt. We don't do this in the case of aggression. Consider, for example, the German seizures of Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939. The Czechs did not resist; they lost their independence through extortion rather than war; no Czech citizens died fighting the German invaders. The Poles chose to fight, and many were killed in the war that followed. But if the conquest of Czechoslovakia was a lesser crime, we have no name for it. At Nuremberg, the Nazi leadership was charged with aggression in both cases and found guilty in both. Once again, there is a reason for this identity of treatment. We judge the Germans guilty of aggression in Czechoslovakia, I think, because of our profound conviction that they ought to have been resisted\u2014though not necessarily by their abandoned victim, standing alone.\n\nThe state that does resist, whose soldiers risk their lives and die, does so because its leaders and people think that they should or that they have to fight back. Aggression is morally as well as physically coercive, and that is one of the most important things about it. \"A conqueror,\" writes Clausewitz, \"is always a lover of peace (as Bonaparte always asserted of himself); he would like to make his entry into our state unopposed; in order to prevent this, we must choose war. . . . \" If ordinary men and women did not ordinarily accept that imperative, aggression would not seem to us so serious a crime. If they accepted it in certain sorts of cases, but not in others, the single concept would begin to break down, and we would eventually have a list of crimes more or less like the domestic list. The challenge of the streets, \"Your money or your life!\" is easy to answer: I surrender my money and so I save myself from being murdered and the thief from being a murderer. But we apparently don't want the challenge of aggression answered in the same way; even when it is, we don't diminish the guilt of the aggressor. He has violated rights to which we attach enormous importance. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the failure to defend those rights is never due to a sense of their unimportance, nor even to a belief (as in the street-challenge case) that they are, after all, worth less than life itself, but only to a stark conviction that the defense is hopeless. Aggression is a singular and undifferentiated crime because, in all its forms, it challenges rights that are worth dying for.\n\nThe Rights of Political Communities\n\nThe rights in question are summed up in the lawbooks as territorial integrity and political sovereignty. The two belong to states, but they derive ultimately from the rights of individuals, and from them they take their force. \"The duties and rights of states are nothing more than the duties and rights of the men who compose them.\" That is the view of a conventional British lawyer, for whom states are neither organic wholes nor mystical unions. And it is the correct view. When states are attacked, it is their members who are challenged, not only in their lives, but also in the sum of things they value most, including the political association they have made. We recognize and explain this challenge by referring to their rights. If they were not morally entitled to choose their form of government and shape the policies that shape their lives, external coercion would not be a crime; nor could it so easily be said that they had been forced to resist in self-defense. Individual rights (to life and liberty) underlie the most important judgments that we make about war. How these rights are themselves founded I cannot try to explain here. It is enough to say that they are somehow entailed by our sense of what it means to be a human being. If they are not natural, then we have invented them, but natural or invented, they are a palpable feature of our moral world. States' rights are simply their collective form. The process of collectivization is a complex one. No doubt, some of the immediate force of individuality is lost in its course; it is best understood, nevertheless, as it has commonly been understood since the seventeenth century, in terms of social contract theory. Hence it is a moral process, which justifies some claims to territory and sovereignty and invalidates others.\n\nThe rights of states rest on the consent of their members. But this is consent of a special sort. State rights are not constituted through a series of transfers from individual men and women to the sovereign or through a series of exchanges among individuals. What actually happens is harder to describe. Over a long period of time, shared experiences and cooperative activity of many different kinds shape a common life. \"Contract\" is a metaphor for a process of association and mutuality, the ongoing character of which the state claims to protect against external encroachment. The protection extends not only to the lives and liberties of individuals but also to their shared life and liberty, the independent community they have made, for which individuals are sometimes sacrificed. The moral standing of any particular state depends upon the reality of the common life it protects and the extent to which the sacrifices required by that protection are willingly accepted and thought worthwhile. If no common life exists, or if the state doesn't defend the common life that does exist, its own defense may have no moral justification. But most states do stand guard over the community of their citizens, at least to some degree: that is why we assume the justice of their defensive wars. And given a genuine \"contract,\" it makes sense to say that territorial integrity and political sovereignty can be defended in exactly the same way as individual life and liberty.a\n\nIt might also be said that a people can defend its country in the same way as men and women can defend their homes, for the country is collectively as the homes are privately owned. The right to territory might be derived, that is, from the individual right to property. But the ownership of vast reaches of land is highly problematic, I think, unless it can be tied in some plausible way to the requirements of national survival and political independence. And these two seem by themselves to generate territorial rights that have little to do with ownership in the strict sense. The case is probably the same with the smaller properties of domestic society. A man has certain rights in his home, for example, even if he does not own it, because neither his life nor his liberty is secure unless there exists some physical space within which he is safe from intrusion. Similarly again, the right of a nation or people not to be invaded derives from the common life its members have made on their piece of land\u2014it had to be made somewhere\u2014and not from the legal title they hold or don't hold. But these matters will become clearer if we look at an example of disputed territory.\n\nThe Case of Alsace-Lorraine\n\nIn 1870, both France and the new Germany claimed these two provinces. Both claims were, as such things go, well founded. The Germans based themselves on ancient precedents (the lands had been part of the Holy Roman Empire before their conquest by Louis XIV) and on cultural and linguistic kinship; the French on two centuries of possession and effective government. How does one establish ownership in such a case? There is, I think, a prior question having to do with political allegiance, not with legal titles at all. What do the inhabitants want? The land follows the people. The decision as to whose sovereignty was legitimate (and therefore as to whose military presence constituted aggression) belonged by right to the men and women who lived on the land in dispute. Not simply to those who owned the land: the decision belonged to the landless, to town dwellers and factory workers as well, by virtue of the common life they had made. The great majority of these people were apparently loyal to France, and that should have settled the matter. Even if we imagine all the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine to be tenants of the Prussian king, the king's seizure of his own land would still have been a violation of their territorial integrity and, through the mediation of their loyalty, of France's too. For tenantry determines only where rents should go; the people themselves must decide where their taxes and conscripts should go.\n\nBut the issue was not settled in this way. After the Franco-Prussian war, the two provinces (actually, all of Alsace and a portion of Lorraine) were annexed by Germany, the French conceding German rights in the peace treaty of 1871. During the next several decades, the question was frequently asked, whether a French attack aimed at regaining the lost lands would be justified. One of the issues here is that of the moral standing of a peace treaty signed, as most peace treaties are signed, under duress, but I shall not focus on that. The more important issue relates to the endurance of rights over time. Here the appropriate argument was put forward by the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick in 1891. Sidgwick's sympathies were with the French, and he was inclined to regard the peace as a \"temporary suspension of hostilities, terminable at any time by the wronged state. . . .\" But he added a crucial qualification:\n\nWe must . . . recognize that by this temporary submission of the vanquished . . . a new political order is initiated, which, though originally without a moral basis, may in time acquire such a basis, from a change in the sentiments of the inhabitants of the territory transferred; since it is always possible that through the effects of time and habit and mild government\u2014and perhaps through the voluntary exile of those who feel the old patriotism most keenly\u2014the majority of the transferred population may cease to desire reunion. . . . When this change has taken place, the moral effect of the unjust transfer must be regarded as obliterated; so that any attempt to recover the transferred territory becomes itself an aggression. . . .\n\nLegal titles may endure forever, periodically revived and reasserted as in the dynastic politics of the Middle Ages. But moral rights are subject to the vicissitudes of the common life.\n\nTerritorial integrity, then, does not derive from property; it is simply something different. The two are joined, perhaps, in socialist states where the land is nationalized and the people are said to own it. Then if their country is attacked, it is not merely their homeland that is in danger but their collective property\u2014though I suspect that the first danger is more deeply felt than the second. Nationalization is a secondary process; it assumes the prior existence of a nation. And territorial integrity is a function of national existence, not of nationalization (any more than of private ownership). It is the coming together of a people that establishes the integrity of a territory. Only then can a boundary be drawn, the crossing of which is plausibly called aggression. It hardly matters if the territory belongs to someone else, unless that ownership is expressed in residence and common use.\n\nThis argument suggests a way of thinking about the great difficulties posed by forcible settlement and colonization. When barbarian tribes crossed the borders of the Roman Empire, driven by conquerors from the east or north, they asked for land to settle on and threatened war if they didn't get it. Was this aggression? Given the character of the Roman Empire, the question may sound foolish, but it has arisen many times since, and often in imperial settings. When land is in fact empty and available, the answer must be that it is not aggression. But what if the land is not actually empty but, as Thomas Hobbes says in Leviathan, \"not sufficiently inhabited\"? Hobbes goes on to argue that in such a case, the would-be settlers must \"not exterminate those they find there but constrain them to inhabit closer together.\" That constraint is not aggression, so long as the lives of the original settlers are not threatened. For the settlers are doing what they must do to preserve their own lives, and \"he that shall oppose himself against [that], for things superfluous, is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow.\" It is not the settlers who are guilty of aggression, according to Hobbes, but those natives who won't move over and make room. There are clearly serious problems here. But I would suggest that Hobbes is right to set aside any consideration of territorial integrity-as-ownership and to focus instead on life. It must be added, however, that what is at stake is not only the lives of individuals but also the common life that they have made. It is for the sake of this common life that we assign a certain presumptive value to the boundaries that mark off a people's territory and to the state that defends it.\n\nNow, the boundaries that exist at any moment in time are likely to be arbitrary, poorly drawn, the products of ancient wars. The mapmakers are likely to have been ignorant, drunken, or corrupt. Nevertheless, these lines establish a habitable world. Within that world, men and women (let us assume) are safe from attack; once the lines are crossed, safety is gone. I don't want to suggest that every boundary dispute is a reason for war. Sometimes adjustments should be accepted and territories shaped so far as possible to the actual needs of nations. Good borders make good neighbors. But once an invasion has been threatened or has actually begun, it may be necessary to defend a bad border simply because there is no other. We shall see this reason at work in the minds of the leaders of Finland in 1939: they might have accepted Russian demands had they felt certain that there would be an end to them. But there is no certainty this side of the border, any more than there is safety this side of the threshold, once a criminal has entered the house. It is only common sense, then, to attach great importance to boundaries. Rights in the world have value only if they also have dimension.\n\nThe Legalist Paradigm\n\nIf states actually do possess rights more or less as individuals do, then it is possible to imagine a society among them more or less like the society of individuals. The comparison of international to civil order is crucial to the theory of aggression. I have already been making it regularly. Every reference to aggression as the international equivalent of armed robbery or murder, and every comparison of home and country or of personal liberty and political independence, relies upon what is called the domestic analogy. Our primary perceptions and judgments of aggression are the products of analogical reasoning. When the analogy is made explicit, as it often is among the lawyers, the world of states takes on the shape of a political society the character of which is entirely accessible through such notions as crime and punishment, self-defense, law enforcement, and so on.\n\nThese notions, I should stress, are not incompatible with the fact that international society as it exists today is a radically imperfect structure. As we experience it, that society might be likened to a defective building, founded on rights; its superstructure raised, like that of the state itself, through political conflict, cooperative activity, and commercial exchange; the whole thing shaky and unstable because it lacks the rivets of authority. It is like domestic society in that men and women live at peace within it (sometimes), determining the conditions of their own existence, negotiating and bargaining with their neighbors. It is unlike domestic society in that every conflict threatens the structure as a whole with collapse. Aggression challenges it directly and is much more dangerous than domestic crime, because there are no policemen. But that only means that the \"citizens\" of international society must rely on themselves and on one another. Police powers are distributed among all the members. And these members have not done enough in the exercise of their powers if they merely contain the aggression or bring it to a speedy end\u2014as if the police should stop a murderer after he has killed only one or two people and send him on his way. The rights of the member states must be vindicated, for it is only by virtue of those rights that there is a society at all. If they cannot be upheld (at least sometimes), international society collapses into a state of war or is transformed into a universal tyranny.\n\nFrom this picture, two presumptions follow. The first, which I have already pointed out, is the presumption in favor of military resistance once aggression has begun. Resistance is important so that rights can be maintained and future aggressors deterred. The theory of aggression restates the old doctrine of the just war: it explains when fighting is a crime and when it is permissible, perhaps even morally desirable.b The victim of aggression fights in self-defense, but he isn't only defending himself, for aggression is a crime against society as a whole. He fights in its name and not only in his own. Other states can rightfully join the victim's resistance; their war has the same character as his own, which is to say, they are entitled not only to repel the attack but also to punish it. All resistance is also law enforcement. Hence the second presumption: when fighting breaks out, there must always be some state against which the law can and should be enforced. Someone must be responsible, for someone decided to break the peace of the society of states. No war, as medieval theologians explained, can be just on both sides.\n\nThere are, however, wars that are just on neither side, because the idea of justice doesn't pertain to them or because the antagonists are both aggressors, fighting for territory or power where they have no right. The first case I have already alluded to in discussing the voluntary combat of aristocratic warriors. It is sufficiently rare in human history that nothing more need be said about it here. The second case is illustrated by those wars that Marxists call \"imperialist,\" which are not fought between conquerors and victims but between conquerors and conquerors, each side seeking dominion over the other or the two of them competing to dominate some third party. Thus Lenin's description of the struggles between \"have\" and \"have-not\" nations in early twentieth-century Europe: \". . . picture to yourselves a slave-owner who owned 100 slaves warring against a slave-owner who owned 200 slaves for a more 'just' distribution of slaves. Clearly, the application of the term 'defensive' war in such a case . . . would be sheer deception. . . . \" But it is important to stress that we can penetrate the deception only insofar as we can ourselves distinguish justice and injustice: the theory of imperialist war presupposes the theory of aggression. If one insists that all wars on all sides are acts of conquest or attempted conquest, or that all states at all times would conquer if they could, then the argument for justice is defeated before it begins and the moral judgments we actually make are derided as fantasies. Consider the following passage from Edmund Wilson's book on the American Civil War:\n\nI think that it is a serious deficiency on the part of historians . . . that they so rarely interest themselves in biological and zoological phenomena. In a recent . . . film showing life at the bottom of the sea, a primitive organism called a sea slug is seen gobbling up small organisms through a large orifice at one end of its body; confronted with another sea slug of an only slightly lesser size, it ingurgitates that, too. Now the wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule . . . by the same instincts as the voracity of the sea slug.\n\nThere are no doubt wars to which that image might be fit, though it is not a terribly useful image with which to approach the Civil War. Nor does it account for our ordinary experience of international society. Not all states are sea-slug states, gobbling up their neighbors. They are always groups of men and women who would live if they could in peaceful enjoyment of their rights and who have chosen political leaders who represent that desire. The deepest purpose of the state is not ingestion but defense, and the least that can be said is that many actual states serve that purpose. When their territory is attacked or their sovereignty challenged, it makes sense to look for an aggressor and not merely for a natural predator. Hence we need a theory of aggression rather than a zoological account.\n\nThe theory of aggression first takes shape under the aegis of the domestic analogy. I am going to call that primary form of the theory the legalist paradigm, since it consistently reflects the conventions of law and order. It does not necessarily reflect the arguments of the lawyers, though legal as well as moral debate has its starting point here. Later on, I will suggest that our judgments about the justice and injustice of particular wars are not entirely determined by the paradigm. The complex realities of international society drive us toward a revisionist perspective, and the revisions will be significant ones. But the paradigm must first be viewed in its unrevised form; it is our baseline, our model, the fundamental structure for the moral comprehension of war. We begin with the familiar world of individuals and rights, or crimes and punishments. The theory of aggression can then be summed up in six propositions.\n\n1. There exists an international society of independent states. States are the members of this society, not private men and women. In the absence of an universal state, men and women are protected and their interests represented only by their own governments. Though states are founded for the sake of life and liberty, they cannot be challenged in the name of life and liberty by any other states. Hence the principle of non-\u00adintervention, which I will analyze later on. The rights of private persons can be recognized in international society, as in the UN Charter of Human Rights, but they cannot be enforced without calling into question the dominant values of that society: the survival and independence of the separate political communities.\n\n2. This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members\u2014above all, the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Once again, these two rest ultimately on the right of men and women to build a common life and to risk their individual lives only when they freely choose to do so. But the relevant law refers only to states, and its details are fixed by the intercourse of states, through complex processes of conflict and consent. Since these processes are continuous, international society has no natural shape; nor are rights within it ever finally or exactly determined. At any given moment, however, one can distinguish the territory of one people from that of another and say something about the scope and limits of sovereignty.\n\n3. Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act. As with domestic crime, the argument here focuses narrowly on actual or imminent boundary crossings: invasions and physical assaults. Otherwise, it is feared, the notion of resistance to aggression would have no determinate meaning. A state cannot be said to be forced to fight unless the necessity is both obvious and urgent.\n\n4. Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-\u00addefense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society. Anyone can come to the aid of a victim, use necessary force against an aggressor, and even make whatever is the international equivalent of a \"citizen's arrest.\" As in domestic society, the obligations of bystanders are not easy to make out, but it is the tendency of the theory to undermine the right of neutrality and to require widespread participation in the business of law enforcement. In the Korean War, this participation was authorized by the United Nations, but even in such cases the actual decision to join the fighting remains a unilateral one, best understood by analogy to the decision of a private citizen who rushes to help a man or woman attacked on the street.\n\n5. Nothing but aggression can justify war. The central purpose of the theory is to limit the occasions for war. \"There is a single and only just cause for commencing a war,\" wrote Vitoria, \"namely, a wrong received.\" There must actually have been a wrong, and it must actually have been received (or its receipt must be, as it were, only minutes away). Nothing else warrants the use of force in international society\u2014above all, not any difference of religion or politics. Domestic heresy and injustice are never actionable in the world of states: hence, again, the principle of nonintervention.\n\n6. Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished. The conception of just war as an act of punishment is very old, though neither the procedures nor the forms of punishment have ever been firmly established in customary or positive international law. Nor are its purposes entirely clear: to exact retribution, to deter other states, to restrain or reform this one? All three figure largely in the literature, though it is probably fair to say that deterrence and restraint are most commonly accepted. When people talk of fighting a war against war, this is usually what they have in mind. The domestic maxim is, punish crime to prevent violence; its international analogue is, punish aggression to prevent war. Whether the state as a whole or only particular persons are the proper objects of punishment is a harder question, for reasons I will consider later on. But the implication of the paradigm is clear: if states are members of international society, the subjects of rights, they must also be (somehow) the objects of punishment.\n\nUnavoidable Categories\n\nThese propositions shape the judgments we make when wars break out. They constitute a powerful theory, coherent and economic, and they have dominated our moral consciousness for a long time. I am not concerned to trace their history here, but it is worth emphasizing that they remained dominant even during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when lawyers and statesmen regularly argued that war-making was the natural prerogative of sovereign states, not subject to legal or moral judgment. States went to war for \"reasons of state,\" and these reasons were said to have a privileged character, such that they needed only to be alluded to, not even expounded, in order to terminate all argument. The common assumption in the legal literature of the time (roughly from the age of Vattel to that of Oppenheim) is that states always have, like Hobbist individuals, a right to fight. The analogy is not from domestic to international society, but from the state of nature to international anarchy. But this view never seized the popular imagination. \"The idea of war and the launching of it,\" writes the foremost historian of the theory of aggression, \"were for the ordinary man and for public opinion always loaded with moral significance, demanding full approval if waged with right and condemnation and punishment if without. . . .\" The significance ordinary men attached was exactly of the sort I have been describing: they drew the terrifying experience of war, as Otto von Bismarck once complained, back to the familiar ground of everyday life. \"Public opinion,\" Bismarck wrote, \"is only too ready to consider political relations and events in the light of those of civil law and private persons generally. . . . [This] shows a complete lack of understanding of political matters.\"\n\nI am inclined to think that it shows a deep understanding of political matters, though not always in its applications a knowledgeable or sophisticated understanding. Public opinion tends to focus on the concrete reality of war and on the moral meaning of killing and being killed. It addresses the questions that ordinary men cannot avoid: should we support this war? should we fight in it? Bismarck works from a more distant perspective, turning the people who ask such questions into pawns in the high game of real-politik. But ultimately the questions are insistent and the distant perspective untenable. Until wars are really fought with pawns, inanimate objects and not human beings, warfare cannot be isolated from moral life. We can get a clear view of the necessary links by reflecting on the work of one of Bismarck's contemporaries and on one of the wars at which the German chancellor connived.\n\nKarl Marx and the Franco-Prussian War\n\nLike Bismarck, Marx had a different way of understanding political matters. He regarded war not merely as the continuation but as the necessary and inevitable continuation of politics, and he described particular wars in terms of a world historical scheme. He had no commitment to the existing political order, nor to the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of established states. The violation of these \"rights\" raised no moral problem for him; he did not seek the punishment of aggressors; he sought only those outcomes that, without reference to the theory of aggression, advanced the cause of proletarian revolution. It is entirely characteristic of Marx's general views that he should have hoped for a Prussian victory in 1870 because it would lead to German unification and ease the course of socialist organization in the new Reich and because it would establish the dominance of the German over the French working class.\n\nThe French need a drubbing [he wrote in a letter to Engels]. If the Prussians are victorious, then the centralization of state power will be favorable to the centralization of the working class. German preponderance will shift the center of the working class movement in Western Europe from France to Germany and . . . the German working class is theoretically and organizationally superior to that of France. The superiority of the Germans over the French . . . would mean at the same time the superiority of our theory over Proudhon's, etc.\n\nBut this was not a view that Marx could defend in public, not only because its publication would embarrass him among his French comrades, but for reasons that go directly to the nature of our moral life. Even the most advanced members of the German working class would not be willing to kill French workers for the sake of German unity or to risk their own lives merely in order to enhance the power of their party (or of Marx's theory!) within the ranks of international socialism. Marx's argument was not, in the most literal sense of the word, a possible account of the decision to fight or of the judgment that the war the Germans fought was, at least initially, a just war. If we are to understand that judgment, we would do better to begin with the simplistic assertion of a British member of the General Council of the International: \"The French,\" said John Weston, \"had invaded first.\"\n\nWe know now that Bismarck worked hard and with all his usual ruthlessness to bring about that invasion. The diplomatic crisis that preceded the war was largely of his contrivance. Nothing that he did, however, can plausibly be said to have threatened the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of France; nothing that he did forced the French to fight. He merely exploited the arrogance and stupidity of Napoleon III and his entourage and succeeded in putting the French in the wrong; it was the tribute he paid to the public opinion he deplored. Hence it has never been necessary to correct the argument of John Weston or of those members of the German Social Democratic Workers' Party who declared in July 1870 that it was Napoleon who had \"frivolously\" destroyed the peace of Europe: \"The German nation . . . is the victim of aggression. Therefore . . . with great regret, [we] must accept the defensive war as a necessary evil.\" The \"First Address\" of the International on the Franco-Prussian War, drafted by Marx on behalf of the General Council, took the same view: \"On the German side, the war is a war of defense\" (though Marx went on to ask, \"Who put Germany to the necessity of defending herself?\" and to hint at the true character of Bismarckian politics). French workers were called upon to oppose the war and to drive the Bonapartists from power; German workers were urged to join the war, but in such a manner as to maintain \"its strictly defensive character.\"\n\nSome six weeks later, the war of defense was over, Germany was triumphant at Sedan, Bonaparte a prisoner, his empire overthrown. But the fighting continued, for the chief war aim of the German government was not resistance but expansion: the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. In the \"Second Address\" of the International, Marx accurately described the war after Sedan as an act of aggression against the people of the two provinces and against the territorial integrity of France. He did not believe that either the German workers or the new French republic would be capable of punishing that aggression in the near future, but he looked for punishment nonetheless: \"History will measure its retribution, not by the extent of the square miles conquered from France, but by the intensity of the crime of reviving, in the second half of the nineteen century, the policy of conquest.\" What is striking here is that Marx has enlisted history not in the service of the proletarian revolution but in the service of conventional morality. Indeed, he invokes the example of the Prussian struggle against the first Napoleon after Tilset and so suggests that the retribution he has in mind will take the form of a future French attack on the German Reich, a war of exactly the sort that Henry Sidgwick also thought justified by the German \"policy of conquest.\" But whatever Marx's program, it is clear that he is working within the terms set by the theory of aggression. When he is forced to confront the actualities of war and to describe in public the possible shape of a socialist foreign policy, he falls back upon the domestic analogy and the legalist paradigm in their most literal forms. Indeed, he argued in the \"First Address\" that it was the task of socialists \"to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations.\"\n\nIs this Marxist doctrine? I am not sure. It has little in common with Marx's philosophic pronouncements on morality and little in common with the reflections on international politics that fill his letters. But Marx was not only a philosopher and a letter-writer; he was also a political leader and the spokesman of a mass movement. In these latter roles, his world-historical view of the significance of war was less important than the particular judgments he was called upon to make. And once he was committed to judgment, there was a certain inevitability to the categories of the theory of aggression. It was not a question of adjusting himself to what is sometimes condescendingly called the \"level of consciousness\" of his audience, but of speaking directly to the moral experience of its members. Sometimes, perhaps, a new philosophy or religion can reshape that experience, but this was not the effect of Marxism, at least not with regard to international warfare. Marx simply took the theory of aggression seriously, and so he placed himself in the front ranks of those ordinary men and women about whom Bismarck complained, who judged political events in the light of domestic morality.\n\nThe Argument for Appeasement\n\nThe war of 1870 is a hard case because, with the exception of those French liberals and socialists who challenged Bonaparte and those German social-democrats who condemned the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, none of its participants are very attractive. The moral issues are muddy, and it would not be difficult to argue that the struggle was in fact an aggressive war on both sides, rather than on each in succession. But the issues are not always muddy; history provides wonderfully clear examples of aggression. The historical study of war virtually begins with such an example (with which I also began): the Athenian attack on Melos. But the easy cases raise problems of their own, or rather, one characteristic problem. Aggression most often takes the form of an attack by a powerful state upon a weak one (that is why it is so readily recognizable). Resistance seems imprudent, even hopeless. Many lives will be lost, and to what end? Even here, however, our moral preference holds. We not only justify resistance; we call it heroic; we do not measure the value of justice, apparently, in terms of lives lost. And yet such measurements can never be entirely irrelevant: who would want to be ruled by political leaders who paid them no mind? So justice and prudence stand in an uneasy relation to one another. Later on, I will describe various ways in which the argument for justice incorporates prudential considerations. But now it is important to stress that the legalist paradigm tends in a radical way to exclude them.\n\nThe paradigm as a whole is commonly defended in utilitarian terms: resistance to aggression is necessary to deter future aggressors. But in the context of international politics, an alternative utilitarian argument is almost always available. This is the argument for appeasement, which suggests that giving in to aggressors is the only way of avoiding war. In domestic society, too, we sometimes choose appeasement, negotiating with kidnappers or extortionists, for example, when the costs of refusal or resistance are greater than we can bear. But we feel badly in such cases, not only because we have failed to serve the larger communal purpose of deterrence, but also and more immediately because we have yielded to coercion and injustice. We feel badly even though all that we have yielded is money, whereas in international society appeasement is hardly possible unless we are willing to surrender values far more important. And yet the costs of war are such that the argument for surrender can often be put very strongly. Appeasement is a bad word in our moral vocabulary, but the argument is not morally obtuse. It represents the most significant challenge to what I have been calling the presumption in favor of resistance, and I want now to examine it in some detail.\n\nCzechoslovakia and the Munich Principle\n\nThe defense of appeasement in 1938 sometimes involved the claim that the Sudeten Germans were, after all, entitled to self-determination. But that is a claim that might have been met through some sort of autonomy within the Czech state or through boundary changes considerably less drastic than those that Hitler demanded at Munich. In fact, Hitler's goals reached far beyond the vindication of a right, and Chamberlain and Daladier knew this, or should have known it, and surrendered anyway. It was the fear of war rather than any view of justice that explains their actions. This fear was given theoretical expression in a very intelligent little book, published in 1939 by the English Catholic writer Gerald Vann. Vann's argument is the only attempt that I have come across to apply just war theory directly to the problem of appeasement, and for that reason I shall look at it closely. He defends what might be called the \"Munich principle\":\n\nIf a nation finds itself called upon to defend another nation which is unjustly attacked and to which it is bound by treaty, then it is bound to fulfill its obligations. . . . It may, however, be its right, and even its duty, to try to persuade the victim of aggression to avoid the ultimate evil of a general conflict by agreeing to terms less favorable than those which it can claim in justice . . . provided always that such a surrender of rights would not mean in fact a surrender once and for all to the rule of violence.\n\nThe \"duty\" here is simply \"seek peace\"\u2014Hobbes' first law of nature and presumably near the top of Catholic lists as well, though Vann's phrase \"the ultimate evil of a general conflict\" suggests that it is nearer to the top than in fact it is. In just-war doctrine, as in the legalist paradigm, the triumph of aggression is a greater evil. But it is certainly a duty to avoid violence if one possibly can; this is a duty that the rulers of states owe to their own people and to others as well, and it may override obligations established by international treaties and conventions. But the argument requires the limiting clause at the end, which I would have thought applicable in September 1938. That clause is worth examining, since its purpose is obviously to tell us when to appease and when not.\n\nImagine a state whose government strives to press its boundaries or its sphere of influence outward, a little bit here, a little bit there, continually over a period of time\u2014not quite Edmund Wilson's sea-slug state, something nearer to a conventional \"great power.\" Certainly the people against whom the pressure is being brought have a right to resist; Allied states and possibly other states as well ought to support their resistance. But appeasement, by the victim or the others, would not necessarily be immoral\u2014this is Vann's argument\u2014and there might even be a duty to seek peace at the expense of justice. Appeasement would involve a surrender to violence, but given a conventional power, it would not or might not involve absolute subjection to the \"rule of violence.\" I take it that absolute subjection is what Vann means by \"once and for all.\" He cannot mean \"forever,\" for governments fall, states decay, people rebel; we know nothing about forever. \"Rule of violence\" is a more difficult term. Vann can hardly set the limit of appeasement at the point where it means yielding to greater physical force; that is always what it means. As a moral limit, the phrase must point to something more unusual and more frightening: the rule of men committed to the continual use of violence, to a policy of genocide, terrorism, and enslavement. Then appeasement would be, quite simply, a failure to resist evil in the world.\n\nNow that is exactly what the Munich agreement was. Vann's argument, once we have understood its terms, undermines his own case. For there can be no doubt that Nazism represented the rule of violence, and that its true character was sufficiently known at the time. And there can be no doubt that Czechoslovakia was surrendered to Nazism in 1938; the remnants of its territory and sovereignty could not be defended\u2014at least not by the Czechs\u2014and that, too, was known at the time. But it remains a question whether Vann's argument might not apply to other cases. I will skip the Polish war, for the Poles were confronted again by Nazi aggression and had, no doubt, learned from the Czech experience. But the situation of Finland a few months later was different. There the \"Munich principle\" was urged by all of Finland's friends and by many Finns as well. It did not seem to them, despite the Czech experience, that an acceptance of Russian terms in the late fall of 1939 would have been \"a surrender once and for all to the rule of violence.\"\n\nFinland\n\nStalin's Russia was not a conventional great power, but its behavior in the months before the Finnish war was very much in the style of traditionalist power politics. It sought to expand at the expense of the Finns, but the demands it made were moderate, closely linked to questions of military security, without revolutionary implications. What was at issue, Stalin insisted, was nothing more than the defense of Leningrad, which was then within artillery range of the Finnish border (he did not fear a Finnish attack but a German attack from Finnish territory). \"Since we cannot move Leningrad,\" he said, \"we must move the border.\" The Russians offered to yield more land (though less valuable land) than they sought to take over, and that offer gave the negotiations at least something of the character of an exchange between sovereign states. At an early point in the talks, Marshal Mannerheim, who had no illusions about Soviet policy, strongly recommended making the deal. It was more dangerous for Finland than for Russia for the Finns to be so close to Leningrad. Stalin may well have intended an eventual annexation of Finland, or its transformation into a communist state, but that was not apparent at the time. Most Finns thought the danger, though serious enough, was something less than that. They feared further encroachments and pressures of a more ordinary kind. Hence the Finnish case offers a useful test of the \"Munich principle.\" Should Finland have agreed to terms less favorable than it could justly claim in order to avoid the carnage of war? Should its allies have pressed such terms upon it?\n\nThe first question cannot be answered flatly either way; the choice belongs to the Finns. But the rest of us have an interest, and it is impor\u00adtant to try to understand the moral satisfaction with which their decision to fight was greeted throughout the world. I am not referring here to the excitement that always attends the beginnings of a war and that rarely lasts for long, but rather to the sense that the Finnish decision was exemplary (as the British, French, and Czech decision to surrender, greeted with an uneasy combination of relief and shame, was not). There is, of course, a natural sympathy for the underdog in any competition, including war, and a hope that he can pull off an unexpected victory. But in the case of war, this is specifically a moral sympathy and a moral hope. It has to do with the perception that underdogs are also (usually) victims or potential victims: their struggle is right. Even if national survival is not at stake\u2014as in fact it was, for the Finns, once the war began\u2014we hope for the defeat of the aggressor in much the same way as we hope for the defeat of a neighborhood bully, even if he is not a murderer. Our common values are confirmed and enhanced by the struggle; whereas appeasement, even when it is the better part of wisdom, diminishes those values and leaves us all impoverished.\n\nOur values would also have been diminished, however, had Stalin quickly overwhelmed the Finns and then treated them as the Athenians did the Melians. But that suggests less the desirability of surrender than the critical importance of collective security and resistance. Had Sweden, for example, been publicly committed to send troops to fight with the Finns, there would probably never have been a Russian attack. And the British and French plans to come to Finland's aid, inept and self-serving as these were, probably played a decisive part, along with the early and unexpected victories of the Finnish army, in persuading the Russians to seek a negotiated settlement. The new borders established in March 1940 were far worse than those that had been offered to Finland four months earlier; thousands of Finnish soldiers (and a greater number of Russians) were dead; hundreds of thousands of Finnish civilians were driven from their homes. But against all this must be set the vindication of Finnish independence. I don't know how one strikes the balance, still less how one might have done so in 1939 when vindication seemed an unlikely or at best a chancy prospect. Nor can its value be measured even now; it involves national pride and self-respect as much as freedom in policy-making (which no state possesses absolutely and Finland, since 1940, to a lesser degree than many). If the Finnish war is commonly thought to have been worthwhile, it is because independence is not a value that can easily be traded off.c\n\nThe \"Munich principle\" would concede the loss or erosion of independence for the sake of the survival of individual men and women. It points toward a certain sort of international society, founded not on the defense of rights but on the adjustment to power. No doubt there is realism in this view. But the Finnish example suggests that there is also realism in the alternative view, and in a twofold sense. First, the rights are real, even to the people who must die to defend them; and second, the defense is (sometimes) possible. I don't want to argue that appeasement can never be justified, only to point to the great importance we collectively attach to the values the aggressor attacks. These values are summed up in the existence of states like Finland\u2014indeed, of many such states. The theory of aggression presupposes our commitment to a pluralist world, and that commitment is also the inner meaning of the presumption in favor of resistance. We want to live in an international society where communities of men and women freely shape their separate destinies. But that society is never fully realized; it is never safe; it must always be defended. The Finnish war is a paradigmatic example of the necessary defense. That is why, for all the complexity of the diplomatic maneuvering that preceded the war, the actual fighting has about it a great moral simplicity.\n\nThe defense of rights is a reason for fighting. I want now to stress again, and finally, that it is the only reason. The legalist paradigm rules out every other sort of war. Preventive wars, commercial wars, wars of expansion and conquest, religious crusades, revolutionary wars, military interventions\u2014all these are barred and barred absolutely, in much the same way as their domestic equivalents are ruled out in municipal law. Or, to turn the argument around once more, all these constitute aggressive acts on the part of whoever begins them and justify forceful resistance, as their equivalents would in the homes and streets of domestic society.\n\nBut this is not yet a complete characterization of the morality of war. Though the domestic analogy is an intellectual tool of critical importance, it doesn't offer an entirely accurate picture of international society. States are not in fact like individuals (because they are collections of individuals), and the relations among states are not like the private dealings of men and women (because they are not framed in the same way by authoritative law). These differences are not unknown or obscure. I have been ignoring them only for the sake of analytical clarity. I have wanted to argue that as an account of our moral judgments, the domestic analogy and the legalist paradigm possess great explanatory power. The account is still incomplete, however, and I must look now at a series of issues and historical cases that suggest the need for revision. I cannot exhaust the range of possible revision, for our moral judgments are enormously subtle and complex. But the major points at which the argument for justice requires the amendment of the paradigm are clear enough; they have long been the focus of legal and moral debate.\n\n The question of when territory and sovereignty can rightly be defended is closely connected to the question of when individual citizens have an obligation to join the defense. Both hang on issues in social contract theory. I have discussed the second question at length in my book Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). See especially \"The Obligation to Die for the State\" and \"Political Alienation and Military Service.\" But neither in that book nor in this one do I deal in any detail with the problem of national minorities\u2014groups of people who do not fully join (or do not join at all) in the contract that constitutes the nation. The radical mistreatment of such people may justify military intervention (see chapter 6). Short of that, however, the presence of national minorities within the borders of a nation-state does not affect the argument about aggression and self-defense.\n\n I shall say nothing here of the argument for nonviolent resistance to aggression, according to which fighting is neither desirable nor necessary. This argument has not figured much in the development of the conventional view. Indeed, it poses a radical challenge to the conventions: if aggression can be resisted, and at least sometimes successfully resisted, without war, it may be a less serious crime than has commonly been supposed. I will take up this possibility and its moral implications in the Afterword.\n\n It is probably less important, then, that these calculations be rightly made (since we cannot be sure what that would mean) than that they be made by the right people. One might usefully compare the decisions of the Melians and the Finns in this regard. Melos was an oligarchy, and its leaders, who wanted to fight, refused to allow the Athenian generals to address a popular assembly. Presumably they feared that the people would refuse to risk their lives and their city for the oligarchs. Finland was a democracy; its people knew the exact nature of the Russian demands; and the government's decision to fight apparently had overwhelming popular support. It would fit well with the rest of the theory of aggression if the Finns were again taken as exemplary: the decision to reject appeasement is best made by the men and women who will have to endure the war that follows (or by their representatives). This says nothing, of course, about the arguments one might want to make in the popular assembly: these might well be prudential and cautionary rather than defiant and heroic.\n\nAnticipations\n\nThe first questions asked when states go to war are also the easiest to answer: who started the shooting? who sent troops across the border? These are questions of fact, not of judgment, and if the answers are disputed, it is only because of the lies that governments tell. The lies don't, in any case, detain us long; the truth comes out soon enough. Governments lie so as to absolve themselves from the charge of aggression. But it is not on the answers to questions such as these that our final judgments about aggression depend. There are further arguments to make, justifications to offer, lies to tell, before the moral issue is directly confronted. For aggression often begins without shots being fired or borders crossed.\n\nBoth individuals and states can rightfully defend themselves against violence that is imminent but not actual; they can fire the first shots if they know themselves about to be attacked. This is a right recognized in domestic law and also in the legalist paradigm for international society. In most legal accounts, however, it is severely restricted. Indeed, once one has stated the restrictions, it is no longer clear whether the right has any substance at all. Thus the argument of Secretary of State Daniel Webster in the Caroline case of 1842 (the details of which need not concern us here): in order to justify pre-emptive violence, Webster wrote, there must be shown \"a necessity of self-defense . . . instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.\" That would permit us to do little more than respond to an attack once we had seen it coming but before we had felt its impact. Pre-emption on this view is like a reflex action, a throwing up of one's arms at the very last minute. But it hardly requires much of a \"showing\" to justify a movement of that sort. Even the most presumptuous aggressor is not likely to insist, as a matter of right, that his victims stand still until he lands the first blow. Webster's formula seems to be the favored one among students of international law, but I don't believe that it addresses itself usefully to the experience of imminent war. There is often plenty of time for deliberation, agonizing hours, days, even weeks of deliberation, when one doubts that war can be avoided and wonders whether or not to strike first. The debate is couched, I suppose, in strategic more than in moral terms. But the decision is judged morally, and the expectation of that judgment, of the effects it will have in allied and neutral states and among one's own people, is itself a strategic factor. So it is important to get the terms of the judgment right, and that requires some revision of the legalist paradigm. For the paradigm is more restrictive than the judgments we actually make. We are disposed to sympathize with potential victims even before they confront an instant and overwhelming necessity.\n\nImagine a spectrum of anticipation: at one end is Webster's reflex, necessary and determined; at the other end is preventive war, an attack that responds to a distant danger, a matter of foresight and free choice. I want to begin at the far end of the spectrum, where danger is a matter of judgment and political decision is unconstrained, and then edge my way along to the point where we currently draw the line between justified and unjustified attacks. What is involved at that point is something very different from Webster's reflex; it is still possible to make choices, to begin the fighting or to arm oneself and wait. Hence the decision to begin at least resembles the decision to fight a preventive war, and it is important to distinguish the criteria by which it is defended from those that were once thought to justify prevention. Why not draw the line at the far end of the spectrum? The reasons are central to an understanding of the position we now hold.\n\nPreventive War and the Balance of Power\n\nPreventive war presupposes some standard against which danger is to be measured. That standard does not exist, as it were, on the ground; it has nothing to do with the immediate security of boundaries. It exists in the mind's eye, in the idea of a balance of power, probably the dominant idea in international politics from the seventeenth century to the present day. A preventive war is a war fought to maintain the balance, to stop what is thought to be an even distribution of power from shifting into a relation of dominance and inferiority. The balance is often talked about as if it were the key to peace among states. But it cannot be that, else it would not need to be defended so often by force of arms. \"The balance of power, the pride of modern policy . . . invented to preserve the general peace as well as the freedom of Europe,\" wrote Edmund Burke in 1760, \"has only preserved its liberty. It has been the origin of innumerable and fruitless wars.\" In fact, of course, the wars to which Burke is referring are easily numbered. Whether or not they were fruitless depends upon how one views the connection between preventive war and the preservation of liberty. Eighteenth-\u00adcentury British statesmen and their intellectual supporters obviously thought the connection very close. A radically unbalanced system, they recognized, would more likely make for peace, but they were \"alarmed by the danger of universal monarchy.\"a When they went to war on behalf of the balance, they thought they were defending, not national interest alone, but an international order that made liberty possible throughout Europe.\n\nThat is the classic argument for prevention. It requires of the rulers of states, as Francis Bacon had argued a century earlier, that they \"keep due sentinel, that none of their neighbors do overgrow so (by increase of territory, by embracing of trade, by approaches, or the like) as they become more able to annoy them, than they were.\" And if their neighbors do \"overgrow,\" then they must be fought, sooner rather than later, and without waiting for the first blow. \"Neither is the opinion of some of the Schoolmen to be received: that a war cannot justly be made, but upon a precedent injury or provocation. For there is no question, but a just fear of an imminent danger, though no blow be given, is a lawful cause of war.\" Imminence here is not a matter of hours or days. The sentinels stare into temporal as well as geographic distance as they watch the growth of their neighbor's power. They will fear that growth as soon as it tips or seems likely to tip the balance. War is justified (as in Hobbes' philosophy) by fear alone and not by anything other states actually do or any signs they give of their malign intentions. Prudent rulers assume malign intentions.\n\nThe argument is utilitarian in form; it can be summed up in two propositions: (1) that the balance of power actually does preserve the liberties of Europe (perhaps also the happiness of Europeans) and is therefore worth defending even at some cost, and (2) that to fight early, before the balance tips in any decisive way, greatly reduces the cost of the defense, while waiting doesn't mean avoiding war (unless one also gives up liberty) but only fighting on a larger scale and at worse odds. The argument is plausible enough, but it is possible to imagine a second-level utilitarian response: (3) that the acceptance of propositions (1) and (2) is dangerous (not useful) and certain to lead to \"innumerable and fruitless wars\" whenever shifts in power relations occur; but increments and losses of power are a constant feature of international politics, and perfect equilibrium, like perfect security, is a utopian dream; therefore it is best to fall back upon the legalist paradigm or some similar rule and wait until the overgrowth of power is put to some overbearing use. This is also plausible enough, but it is important to stress that the position to which we are asked to fall back is not a prepared position, that is, it does not itself rest on any utilitarian calculation. Given the radical uncertainties of power politics, there probably is no practical way of making out that position\u2014deciding when to fight and when not\u2014on utilitarian principles. Think of what one would have to know to perform the calculations, of the experiments one would have to conduct, the wars one would have to fight\u2014and leave unfought! In any case, we mark off moral lines on the anticipation spectrum in an entirely different way.\n\nIt isn't really prudent to assume the malign intent of one's neighbors; it is merely cynical, an example of the worldly wisdom which no one lives by or could live by. We need to make judgments about our neighbor's intentions, and if such judgments are to be possible we must stipulate certain acts or sets of acts that will count as evidence of malignity. These stipulations are not arbitrary; they are generated, I think, when we reflect upon what it means to be threatened. Not merely to be afraid, though rational men and women may well respond fearfully to a genuine threat, and their subjective experience is not an unimportant part of the argument for anticipation. But we also need an objective standard, as Bacon's phrase \"just fear\" suggests. That standard must refer to the threatening acts of some neighboring state, for (leaving aside the dangers of natural disaster) I can only be threatened by someone who is threatening me, where \"threaten\" means what the dictionary says it means: \"to hold out or offer (some injury) by way of a threat, to declare one's intention of inflicting injury.\" It is with some such notion as this that we must judge the wars fought for the sake of the balance of power. Consider, then, the Spanish Succession, regarded in the eighteenth century as a paradigmatic case for preventive war, and yet, I think, a negative example of threatening behavior.\n\nThe War of the Spanish Succession\n\nWriting in the 1750s, the Swiss jurist Vattel suggested the following criteria for legitimate prevention: \"Whenever a state has given signs of injustice, rapacity, pride, ambition, or of an imperious thirst of rule, it becomes a suspicious neighbor to be guarded against: and at a juncture when it is on the point of receiving a formidable augmentation of power, securities may be asked, and on its making any difficulty to give them, its designs may be prevented by force of arms.\" These criteria were formulated with explicit reference to the events of 1700 and 1701, when the King of Spain, last of his line, lay ill and dying. Long before those years, Louis XIV had given Europe evident signs of injustice, rapacity, pride, and so on. His foreign policy was openly expansionist and aggressive (which is not to say that justifications were not offered, ancient claims and titles uncovered, for every intended territorial acquisition). In 1700, he seemed about to receive a \"formidable augmentation of power\"\u2014his grandson, the Duke of Anjou, was offered the Spanish throne. With his usual arrogance, Louis refused to provide any assurances or guarantees to his fellow monarchs. Most importantly, he refused to bar Anjou from the French succession, thus holding open the possibility of a unified and powerful Franco-\u00adSpanish state. And then, an alliance of European powers, led by Great Britain, went to war against what they assumed was Louis' \"design\" to dominate Europe. Having drawn his criteria so closely to his case, however, Vattel concludes on a sobering note: \"it has since appeared that the policy [of the Allies] was too suspicious.\" That is wisdom after the fact, of course, but still wisdom, and one would expect some effort to restate the criteria in its light.\n\nThe mere augmentation of power, it seems to me, cannot be a warrant for war or even the beginning of warrant, and for much the same reason that Bacon's commercial expansion (\"embracing of trade\") is also and even more obviously insufficient. For both of these suggest developments that may not be politically designed at all and hence cannot be taken as evidence of intent. As Vattel says, Anjou had been invited to his throne \"by the [Spanish] nation, conformably to the will of its last sovereign\"\u2014that is, though there can be no question here of democratic decision-\u00admaking, he had been invited for Spanish and not for French reasons. \"Have not these two Realms,\" asked Jonathan Swift in a pamphlet opposing the British war, \"their separate maxims of Policy? . . .\" Nor is Louis' refusal to make promises relating to some future time to be taken as evidence of design\u2014only, perhaps, of hope. If Anjou's succession made immediately for a closer alliance between Spain and France, the appropriate answer would seem to have been a closer alliance between Britain and Austria. Then one could wait and judge anew the intentions of Louis.\n\nBut there is a deeper issue here. When we stipulate threatening acts, we are looking not only for indications of intent, but also for rights of response. To characterize certain acts as threats is to characterize them in a moral way, and in a way that makes a military response morally comprehensible. The utilitarian arguments for prevention don't do that, not because the ways they generate are too frequent, but because they are too common in another sense: too ordinary. Like Clausewitz's description of war as the continuation of policy by other means, they radically underestimate the importance of the shift from diplomacy to force. They don't recognize the problem that killing and being killed poses. Perhaps the recognition depends upon a certain way of valuing human life, which was not the way of eighteenth-century statesmen. (How many of the British soldiers who shipped to the continent with Marlborough ever returned? Did anyone bother to count?) But the point is an important one anyway, for it suggests why people have come to feel uneasy about preventive war. We don't want to fight until we are threatened, because only then can we rightly fight. It is a question of moral security. That is why Vattel's concluding remark about the War of the Spanish Succession, and Burke's general argument about the fruitlessness of such wars, is so worrying. It is inevitable, of course, that political calculations will sometimes go wrong; so will moral choices; there is no such thing as perfect security. But there is a great difference, nonetheless, between killing and being killed by soldiers who can plausibly be described as the present instruments of an aggressive intention, and killing and being killed by soldiers who may or may not represent a distant danger to our country. In the first case, we confront an army recognizably hostile, ready for war, fixed in a posture of attack. In the second, the hostility is prospective and imaginary, and it will always be a charge against us that we have made war upon soldiers who were themselves engaged in entirely legitimate (non-threatening) activities. Hence the moral necessity of rejecting any attack that is merely preventive in character, that does not wait upon and respond to the willful acts of an adversary.\n\nPre-emptive Strikes\n\nNow, what acts are to count, what acts do count as threats sufficiently serious to justify war? It is not possible to put together a list, because state action, like human action generally, takes on significance from its context. But there are some negative points worth making. The boastful ranting to which political leaders are often prone isn't in itself threatening; injury must be \"offered\" in some material sense as well. Nor does the kind of military preparation that is a feature of the classic arms race count as a threat, unless it violates some formally or tacitly agreed-upon limit. What the lawyers call \"hostile acts short of war,\" even if these involve violence, are not too quickly to be taken as signs of an intent to make war; they may represent an essay in restraint, an offer to quarrel within limits. Finally, provocations are not the same as threats. \"Injury and provocation\" are commonly linked by Scholastic writers as the two causes of just war. But the Schoolmen were too accepting of contemporary notions about the honor of states and, more importantly, of sovereigns. The moral significance of such ideas is dubious at best. Insults are not occasions for wars, any more than they are (these days) occasions for duels.\n\nFor the rest, military alliances, mobilizations, troop movements, border incursions, naval blockades\u2014all these, with or without verbal menace, sometimes count and sometimes do not count as sufficient indications of hostile intent. But it is, at least, these sorts of actions with which we are concerned. We move along the anticipation spectrum in search, as it were, of enemies: not possible or potential enemies, not merely present ill-\u00adwishers, but states and nations that are already, to use a phrase I shall use again with reference to the distinction of combatants and noncombatants, engaged in harming us (and who have already harmed us, by their threats, even if they have not yet inflicted any physical injury). And this search, though it carries us beyond preventive war, clearly brings us up short of Webster's pre-emption. The line between legitimate and illegitimate first strikes is not going to be drawn at the point of imminent attack but at the point of sufficient threat. That phrase is necessarily vague. I mean it to cover three things: a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active preparation that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk. The argument may be made more clear if I compare these criteria to Vattel's. Instead of previous signs of rapacity and ambition, current and particular signs are required; instead of an \"augmentation of power,\" actual preparation for war; instead of the refusal of future securities, the intensification of present dangers. Preventive war looks to the past and future, Webster's reflex action to the immediate moment, while the idea of being under a threat focuses on what we had best call simply the present. I cannot specify a time span; it is a span within which one can still make choices, and within which it is possible to feel straitened.\n\nWhat such a time is like is best revealed concretely. We can study it in the three weeks that preceded the Six Day War of 1967. Here is a case as crucial for an understanding of anticipation in the twentieth century as the War of the Spanish Succession was for the eighteenth, and one suggesting that the shift from dynastic to national politics, the costs of which have so often been stressed, has also brought some moral gains. For nations, especially democratic nations, are less likely to fight preventive wars than dynasties are.\n\nThe Six Day War\n\nActual fighting between Israel and Egypt began on June 5, 1967, with an Israeli first strike. In the early hours of the war, the Israelis did not acknowledge that they had sought the advantages of surprise, but the deception was not maintained. In fact, they believed themselves justified in attacking first by the dramatic events of the previous weeks. So we must focus on those events and their moral significance. It would be possible, of course, to look further back still, to the whole course of the Arab-\u00adJewish conflict in the Middle East. Wars undoubtedly have long political and moral pre-histories. But anticipation needs to be understood within a narrower frame. The Egyptians believed that the founding of Israel in 1948 had been unjust, that the state had no rightful existence, and hence that it could be attacked at any time. It follows from this that Israel had no right of anticipation since it had no right of self-defense. But self-defense seems the primary and indisputable right of any political community, merely because it is there and whatever the circumstances under which it achieved statehood.b Perhaps this is why the Egyptians fell back in their more formal arguments upon the claim that a state of war already existed between Egypt and Israel and that this condition justified the military moves they undertook in May 1967. But the same condition would justify Israel's first strike. It is best to assume, I think, that the existing cease-fire between the two countries was at least a near-peace and that the outbreak of the war requires a moral explanation\u2014the burden falling on the Israelis, who began the fighting.\n\nThe crisis apparently had its origins in reports, circulated by Soviet officials in mid-May, that Israel was massing its forces on the Syrian border. The falsity of these reports was almost immediately vouched for by United Nations observers on the scene. Nevertheless, on May 14, the Egyptian government put its armed forces on \"maximum alert\" and began a major buildup of its troops in the Sinai. Four days later, Egypt expelled the United Nations Emergency Force from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip; its withdrawal began immediately, though I do not think that its title had been intended to suggest that it would depart so quickly in event of emergency. The Egyptian military buildup continued, and on May 22, President Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would henceforth be closed to Israeli shipping.\n\nIn the aftermath of the Suez War of 1956, the Straits had been recognized by the world community as an international waterway. That meant that their closing would constitute a casus belli, and the Israelis had stated at that time, and on many occasions since, that they would so regard it. The war might then be dated from May 22, and the Israeli attack of June 5 described simply as its first military incident: wars often begin before the fighting of them does. But the fact is that after May 22, the Israeli cabinet was still debating whether or not to go to war. And, in any case, the actual initiation of violence is a crucial moral event. If it can sometimes be justified by reference to previous events, it nevertheless has to be justified. In a major speech on May 29, Nasser made that justification much easier by announcing that if war came, the Egyptian goal would be nothing less than the destruction of Israel. On May 30, King Hussein of Jordan flew to Cairo to sign a treaty placing the Jordanian army under Egyptian command in event of war, thus associating himself with the Egyptian purpose. Syria already had agreed to such an arrangement, and several days later Iraq joined the alliance. The Israelis struck on the day after the Iraqi announcement.\n\nFor all the excitement and fear that their actions generated, it is unlikely that the Egyptians intended to begin the war themselves. After the fighting was over, Israel published documents, captured in its course, that included plans for an invasion of the Negev; but these were probably plans for a counter-attack, once an Israeli offensive had spent itself in the Sinai, or for a first strike at some later time. Nasser would almost certainly have regarded it as a great victory if he could have closed the Straits and maintained his army on Israel's borders without war. Indeed, it would have been a great victory, not only because of the economic blockade it would have established, but also because of the strain it would have placed on the Israeli defense system. \"There was a basic asymmetry in the structure of forces: the Egyptians could deploy . . . their large army of long-term regulars on the Israeli border and keep it there indefinitely; the Israelis could only counter their deployment by mobilizing reserve formations, and reservists could not be kept in uniform for very long. . . . Egypt could therefore stay on the defensive while Israel would have to attack unless the crisis was defused diplomatically.\" Would have to attack: the necessity cannot be called instant and overwhelming; nor, however, would an Israeli decision to allow Nasser his victory have meant nothing more than a shift in the balance of power posing possible dangers at some future time. It would have opened Israel to attack at any time. It would have represented a drastic erosion of Israeli security such as only a determined enemy would hope to bring about.\n\nThe initial Israeli response was not similarly determined but, for domestic political reasons having to do in part with the democratic character of the state, hesitant and confused. Israel's leaders sought a political resolution of the crisis\u2014the opening of the Straits and a demobilization of forces on both sides\u2014which they did not have the political strength or support to effect. A flurry of diplomatic activity ensued, serving only to reveal what might have been predicted in advance: the unwillingness of the Western powers to pressure or coerce the Egyptians. One always wants to see diplomacy tried before the resort to war, so that we are sure that war is the last resort. But it would be difficult in this case to make an argument for its necessity. Day by day, diplomatic efforts seemed only to intensify Israel's isolation.\n\nMeanwhile, \"an intense fear spread in the country.\" The extraordinary Israeli triumph, once fighting began, makes it difficult to recall the preceding weeks of anxiety. Egypt was in the grip of a war fever, familiar enough from European history, a celebration in advance of expected victories. The Israeli mood was very different, suggesting what it means to live under threat: rumors of coming disasters were endlessly repeated; frightened men and women raided food shops, buying up their entire stock, despite government announcements that there were ample reserves; thousands of graves were dug in the military cemeteries; Israel's political and military leaders lived on the edge of nervous exhaustion. I have already argued that fear by itself establishes no right of anticipation. But Israeli anxiety during those weeks seems an almost classical example of \"just fear\"\u2014first, because Israel really was in danger (as foreign observers readily agreed), and second, because it was Nasser's intention to put it in danger. He said this often enough, but it is also and more importantly true that his military moves served no other, more limited goal.\n\nThe Israeli first strike is, I think, a clear case of legitimate anticipation. To say that, however, is to suggest a major revision of the legalist paradigm. For it means that aggression can be made out not only in the absence of a military attack or invasion but in the (probable) absence of any immediate intention to launch such an attack or invasion. The general formula must go something like this: states may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence. Under such circumstances it can fairly be said that they have been forced to fight and that they are the victims of aggression. Since there are no police upon whom they can call, the moment at which states are forced to fight probably comes sooner than it would for individuals in a settled domestic society. But if we imagine an unstable society, like the \"wild west\" of American fiction, the analogy can be restated: a state under threat is like an individual hunted by an enemy who has announced his intention of killing or injuring him. Surely such a person may surprise his hunter, if he is able to do so.\n\nThe formula is permissive, but it implies restrictions that can usefully be unpacked only with reference to particular cases. It is obvious, for example, that measures short of war are preferable to war itself whenever they hold out the hope of similar or nearly similar effectiveness. But what those measures might be, or how long they must be tried, cannot be a matter of a priori stipulation. In the case of the Six Day War, the \"asymmetry in the structure of forces\" set a time limit on diplomatic efforts that would have no relevance to conflicts involving other sorts of states and armies. A general rule containing words like \"seriously\" opens a broad path for human judgment\u2014which it is, no doubt, the purpose of the legalist paradigm to narrow or block altogether. But it is a fact of our moral life that political leaders make such judgments, and that once they are made the rest of us do not uniformly condemn them. Rather, we weigh and evaluate their actions on the basis of criteria like those I have tried to describe. When we do that we are acknowledging that there are threats with which no nation can be expected to live. And that acknowledgment is an impor\u00adtant part of our understanding of aggression.\n\n The line is from David Hume's essay \"Of the Balance of Power,\" where Hume describes three British wars on behalf of the balance as having been \"begun with justice, and even, perhaps, from necessity.\" I would have considered his argument at length had I found it possible to place it within his philosophy. But in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Section III, Part I), Hume writes: \"The rage and violence of public war: what is it but a suspension of justice among the warring parties, who perceive that this virtue is now no longer of any use or advantage to them?\" Nor is it possible, according to Hume, that this suspension itself be just or unjust; it is entirely a matter of necessity, as in the (Hobbist) state of nature where individuals \"consult the dictates of self-preservation alone.\" That standards of justice exist alongside the pressures of necessity is a discovery of the Essays. This is another example, perhaps, of the impossibility of carrying over certain philosophical positions into ordinary moral discourse. In any case, the three wars Hume discusses were none of them necessary to the preservation of Britain. He may have thought them just because he thought the balance generally useful.\n\n The only limitation on this right has to do with internal, not external legitimacy: a state (or government) established against the will of its own people, ruling violently, may well forfeit its right to defend itself even against a foreign invasion. I will take up some of the issues raised by this possibility in the next chapter.\n\nInterventions\n\nThe principle that states should never intervene in the domestic affairs of other states follows readily from the legalist paradigm and, less readily and more ambiguously, from those conceptions of life and liberty that underlie the paradigm and make it plausible. But these same conceptions seem also to require that we sometimes disregard the principle; and what might be called the rules of disregard, rather than the principle itself, have been the focus of moral interest and argument. No state can admit to fighting an aggressive war and then defend its actions. But intervention is differently understood. The word is not defined as a criminal activity, and though the practice of intervening often threatens the territorial integrity and political independence of invaded states, it can sometimes be justified. It is more important to stress at the outset, however, that it always has to be justified. The burden of proof falls on any political leader who tries to shape the domestic arrangements or alter the conditions of life in a foreign country. And when the attempt is made with armed force, the burden is especially heavy\u2014not only because of the coercion and ravages that military intervention inevitably brings, but also because it is thought that the citizens of a sovereign state have a right, insofar as they are to be coerced and ravaged at all, to suffer only at one another's hands.\n\nSelf-Determination and Self-Help\n\nThe Argument of John Stuart Mill\n\nThese citizens are the members, it is presumed, of a single political community, entitled collectively to determine their own affairs. The precise nature of this right is nicely worked out by John Stuart Mill in a short article published in the same year as the treatise On Liberty (1859) and especially useful to us because the individual\/community analogy was very much in Mill's mind as he wrote. We are to treat states as self-\u00addetermining communities, he argues, whether or not their internal political arrangements are free, whether or not the citizens choose their government and openly debate the policies carried out in their name. For self-\u00addetermination and political freedom are not equivalent terms. The first is the more inclusive idea; it describes not only a particular institutional arrangement but also the process by which a community arrives at that arrangement\u2014or does not. A state is self-determining even if its citizens struggle and fail to establish free institutions, but it has been deprived of self-determination if such institutions are established by an intrusive neighbor. The members of a political community must seek their own freedom, just as the individual must cultivate his own virtue. They cannot be set free, as he cannot be made virtuous, by any external force. Indeed, political freedom depends upon the existence of individual virtue, and this the armies of another state are most unlikely to produce\u2014unless, perhaps, they inspire an active resistance and set in motion a self-\u00addetermining politics. Self-\u00addetermination is the school in which virtue is learned (or not) and liberty is won (or not). Mill recognizes that a people who have had the \"misfortune\" to be ruled by a tyrannical government are peculiarly disadvantaged: they have never had a chance to develop \"the virtues needful for maintaining freedom.\" But he insists nevertheless on the stern doctrine of self-help. \"It is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts that these virtues have the best chance of springing up.\"\n\nThough Mill's argument can be cast in utilitarian terms, the harshness of his conclusions suggests that this is not its most appropriate form. The Millian view of self-determination seems to make utilitarian calculation unnecessary, or at least subsidiary to an understanding of communal liberty. He doesn't believe that intervention fails more often than not to serve the purposes of liberty; he believes that, given what liberty is, it necessarily fails. The (internal) freedom of a political community can be won only by the members of that community. The argument is similar to that implied in the well-known Marxist maxim, \"The liberation of the working class can come only through the workers themselves.\" As that maxim, one would think, rules out any substitution of vanguard elitism for working class democracy, so Mill's argument rules out any substitution of foreign intervention for internal struggle.\n\nSelf-determination, then, is the right of a people \"to become free by their own efforts\" if they can, and nonintervention is the principle guaranteeing that their success will not be impeded or their failure prevented by the intrusions of an alien power. It has to be stressed that there is no right to be protected against the consequences of domestic failure, even against a bloody repression. Mill generally writes as if he believes that citizens get the government they deserve, or, at least, the government for which they are \"fit.\" And \"the only test . . . of a people's having become fit for popular institutions is that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labor and danger for their liberation.\" No one can, and no one should, do it for them. Mill takes a very cool view of political conflict, and if many rebellious citizens, proud and full of hope in their own efforts, have endorsed that view, many others have not. There is no shortage of revolutionaries who have sought, pleaded for, even demanded outside help. A recent American commentator, eager to be helpful, has argued that Mill's position involves \"a kind of Darwinian definition [The Origin of the Species was also published in 1859] of self-determination as survival of the fittest within the national boundaries, even if fittest means most adept in the use of force.\" That last phrase is unfair, for it was precisely Mill's point that force could not prevail, unless it were reinforced from the outside, over a people ready \"to brave labor and danger.\" For the rest, the charge is probably true, but it is difficult to see what conclusions follow from it. It is possible to intervene domestically in the \"Darwinian\" struggle because the intervention is continuous and sustained over time. But foreign intervention, if it is a brief affair, cannot shirt the domestic balance of power in any decisive way toward the forces of freedom, while if it is prolonged or intermittently resumed, it will itself pose the greatest possible threat to the success of those forces.\n\nThe case may be different when what is at issue is not intervention at all but conquest. Military defeat and governmental collapse may so shock a social system as to open the way for a radical renovation of its political arrangements. This seems to be what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II, and these examples are so important that I will have to consider later on how it is that rights of conquest and renovation might arise. But they clearly don't arise in every case of domestic tyranny. It is not true, then, that intervention is justified whenever revolution is; for revolutionary activity is an exercise in self-determination, while foreign interference denies to a people those political capacities that only such exercise can bring.\n\nThese are the truths expressed by the legal doctrine of sovereignty, which defines the liberty of states as their independence from foreign control and coercion. In fact, of course, not every independent state is free, but the recognition of sovereignty is the only way we have of establishing an arena within which freedom can be fought for and (sometimes) won. It is this arena and the activities that go on within it that we want to protect, and we protect them, much as we protect individual integrity, by marking out boundaries that cannot be crossed, rights that cannot be violated. As with individuals, so with sovereign states: there are things that we cannot do to them, even for their own ostensible good.\n\nAnd yet the ban on boundary crossings is not absolute\u2014in part because of the arbitrary and accidental character of state boundaries, in part because of the ambiguous relation of the political community or communities within those boundaries to the government that defends them. Despite Mill's very general account of self-determination, it isn't always clear when a community is in fact self-determining, when it qualifies, so to speak, for nonintervention. No doubt there are similar problems with individual persons, but these are, I think, less severe and, in any case, they are handled within the structures of domestic law.a In international society, the law provides no authoritative verdicts. Hence, the ban on boundary crossings is subject to unilateral suspension, specifically with reference to three sorts of cases where it does not seem to serve the purposes for which it was established:\n\n  * when a particular set of boundaries clearly contains two or more political communities, one of which is already engaged in a large-scale military struggle for independence, that is, when what is at issue is secession or \"national liberation\";\n  * when the boundaries have already been crossed by the armies of a foreign power, even if the crossing has been called for by one of the parties in a civil war, that is, when what is at issue is counter-\u00adintervention; and\n  * when the violation of human rights within a set of boundaries is so terrible that it makes talk of community or self-determination or \"arduous struggle\" seem cynical and irrelevant, that is, in cases of enslavement or massacre.\n\nThe arguments that are made on behalf of intervention in each of these cases constitute the second, third, and fourth revisions of the legalist paradigm. They open the way for just wars that are not fought in self-\u00addefense or against aggression in the strict sense. But they need to be worked out with great care. Given the readiness of states to invade one another, revisionism is a risky business.\n\nMill discusses only the first two of these cases, secession and counter-\u00adintervention, though the last was not unknown even in 1859. It is worth pointing out that he does not regard them as exceptions to the nonintervention principle, but rather as negative demonstrations of its reasons. Where these reasons don't apply, the principle loses its force. It would be more exact, from Mill's standpoint, to formulate the relevant principle in this way: always act so as to recognize and uphold communal autonomy. Nonintervention is most often entailed by that recognition, but not always, and then we must prove our commitment to autonomy in some other way, perhaps even by sending troops across an international frontier. But the morally exact principle is also very dangerous, and Mill's account of the argument is not at this point an account of what is actually said in everyday moral discourse. We need to establish a kind of a priori respect for state boundaries; they are, as I have argued before, the only boundaries communities ever have. And that is why intervention is always justified as if it were an exception to a general rule, made necessary by the urgency or extremity of a particular case. The second, third, and fourth revisions have something of the form of stereotyped excuses. Interventions are so often undertaken for \"reasons of state\" that have nothing to do with self-determination that we have become skeptical of every claim to defend the autonomy of alien communities. Hence the special burden of proof with which I began, more onerous than any we impose on individuals or governments pleading self-defense: intervening states must demonstrate that their own case is radically different from what we take to be the general run of cases, where the liberty or prospective liberty of citizens is best served if foreigners offer them only moral support. And that is how I shall characterize Mill's argument (though he characterizes it differently) that Great Britain ought to have intervened in defense of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and 1849.\n\nSecession\n\nThe Hungarian Revolution\n\nFor many years before 1848, Hungary had been a part of the Hapsburg Empire. Formally an independent kingdom, with a Diet of its own, it was effectively ruled by the German authorities in Vienna. The sudden collapse of those authorities during the March Days\u2014symbolized by the fall of Metternich\u2014opened the way for liberal nationalists in Budapest. They formed a government and demanded home rule within the Empire; they were not yet secessionists. Their demand was initially accepted, but controversy developed over the issues that have always plagued federalist schemes: the control of tax revenue, the command of the army. As soon as \"order\" was restored in Vienna, efforts began to reassert the centralist character of the regime, and these soon took the familiar form of military repression. An imperial army invaded Hungary, and the nationalists fought back. The Hungarians were now rebels or insurgents; they quickly established what international lawyers call their belligerent rights by defeating the Austrians and taking control of much of old Hungary. In the course of the war, the new government shifted leftwards; in April 1849, a republic was proclaimed under the presidency of Lajos Kossuth.\n\nThe revolution might be described, in contemporary terms, as a war of national liberation, except that the boundaries of old Hungary included a very large Slavic population, and the Hungarian revolutionaries seem to have been as hostile to Croat and Slovene nationalism as the Austrians were to their own claims for communal autonomy. But this is a difficulty that I am going to set aside, for it did not appear as such at the time; it did not enter into the moral reflections of liberal observers like Mill. The Hungarian Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by such men, especially in France, Britain, and the United States, and its emissaries were eagerly received. Governmental response was different, in part because nonintervention was the general rule to which all three governments subscribed, in part because the first two were also committed to the European balance of power and therefore to the integrity of Austria. In London, Palmerston was formal and cold: \"The British government has no knowledge of Hungary except as one of the component parts of the Austrian Empire.\" The Hungarians sought only diplomatic recognition, not military intervention, but any British dealings with the new government would have been regarded by the Austrian regime as an interference in its internal affairs. Recognition, moreover, had commercial consequences that might have engaged the British more closely on the side of Hungary, for the revolutionaries hoped to purchase military supplies on the London market. Despite this, the establishment of formal ties, once the Hungarians had demonstrated that \"a sufficient portion of them\" were committed to independence and willing to fight for it, would not have been difficult to justify in Millian terms. There can be no doubt of the existence (though there was a reason to doubt the extent) of the Hungarian political community; it was one of the oldest nations in Europe, and its recognition as a sovereign state would not have violated the moral rights of the Austrian people. Military supply to insurgent armies is indeed a complex issue, and I will come back to it with reference to another case, but none of the complexities are apparent here. Soon enough, however, the Hungarians needed far more than guns and ammunition.\n\nIn the summer of 1849, the Austrian emperor asked for the help of Tsar Nicholas I, and Hungary was invaded by a Russian army. Writing ten years later, Mill argued that the British should have responded to this intervention with an intervention of their own.\n\nIt might not have been right for England (even apart from the question of prudence) to have taken part with Hungary in its noble struggle against Austria; although the Austrian government in Hungary was in some sense a foreign yoke. But when, the Hungarians having shown themselves likely to prevail in this struggle, the Russian despot interposed, and joining his force to that of Austria, delivered back the Hungarians, bound hand and foot, to their exasperated oppressors, it would have been an honorable and virtuous act on the part of England to have declared that this should not be, and that if Russia gave assistance to the wrong side, England would aid the right.\n\nThe qualification \"in some sense a foreign yoke\" with regard to Austrian rule in Hungary is curious, for whatever its meaning, it must also qualify the nobility and rightness of the Hungarian struggle for independence. Since Mill does not intend the latter qualification, we need not take the former seriously. The clear tendency of his argument is to justify assistance to a secessionist movement at the same time as it justifies counter-\u00adintervention\u2014indeed, to assimilate the one to the other. In both cases, the rule against interference is suspended because a foreign power, morally if not legally alien, is already interfering in the \"domestic\" affairs, that is, in the self-determinations of a political community.\n\nMill is right, however, to suggest that the issue is easier when the initial interference involves the crossing of a recognized frontier. The problem with a secessionist movement is that one cannot be sure that it in fact represents a distinct community until it has rallied its own people and made some headway in the \"arduous struggle\" for freedom. The mere appeal to the principle of self-determination isn't enough; evidence must be provided that a community actually exists whose members are committed to independence and ready and able to determine the conditions of their own existence.b Hence the need for political or military struggle sustained over time. Mill's argument doesn't cover inarticulate and unrepresented peoples, or fledgling movements, or risings quickly suppressed. But imagine a small nation successfully mobilized to resist a colonial power but slowly being ground down in the unequal struggle: Mill would not insist, I think, that neighboring states stand by and watch its inevitable defeat. His argument justifies military action against imperial or colonial repression as well as against foreign intervention. Only domestic tyrants are safe, for it is not our purpose in international society (nor, Mill argues, is it possible) to establish liberal or democratic communities, but only independent ones. When it is required for the sake of independence, military action is \"honorable and virtuous,\" though not always \"prudent.\" I should add that the argument also applies to satellite regimes and great powers: designed for the first Russian intervention in Hungary (1849), it precisely fits the second (1956).\n\nBut the relation between virtue and prudence in such cases is not easy to make out. Mill's meaning is clear enough: to threaten war with Russia might have been dangerous to Britain and hence inconsistent \"with the regard which every nation is bound to pay to its own safety.\" Now, whether or not it actually was dangerous was surely for the British to decide, and we would judge them harshly only if the risks they declined to run were very slight indeed. Even if counter-intervention is \"honorable and virtuous,\" it is not morally required, precisely because of the dangers it involves. But one can make much more of prudence than this. Palmerston was concerned with the safety of Europe, not only of England, when he decided to stand by the Austrian empire. It is perfectly possible to concede the justice of the Millian position, and yet opt for nonintervention on what are currently called \"world order\" principles. So justice and prudence are (with a certain worldly relish) set in opposition to one another in a way that Mill never imagined they could be. He thought, naively perhaps, that the world would be more orderly if none of its political communities were oppressed by foreign rule. He even hoped that Britain would one day be powerful enough, and have the necessary \"spirit and courage,\" to insist \"that not a gun [should] be fired in Europe by the soldiers of one Power against the revolted subjects of another,\" and to put itself \"at the head of an alliance of free peoples. . . .\" Today, I suppose, the United States has succeeded to those old-fashioned liberal pretensions, though in 1956 its leaders, like Palmerston in 1849, thought it imprudent to enforce them.\n\nIt might also be said that the United States had (and has) no right to enforce them, given the self-serving ways in which its government defines freedom and intervention in other parts of the world. Mill's England was hardly in a better position. Had Palmerston contemplated a military move on behalf of the Hungarians, Count Schwarzenberg, Metternich's successor, was prepared to remind him of \"unhappy Ireland.\" \"Wherever revolt breaks out within the vast limits of the British Empire,\" Schwarzenberg wrote to the Austrian ambassador in London, \"the English government always knows how to maintain the authority of the law . . . even at the price of torrents of blood. It is not for us,\" he went on, \"to blame her.\" He sought only reciprocity, and that kind of reciprocity among great powers is undoubtedly the very essence of prudence.\n\nTo set prudence and justice so radically at odds, however, is to misconstrue the argument for justice. A state contemplating intervention or counter-intervention will for prudential reasons weigh the dangers to itself, but it must also, and for moral reasons, weigh the dangers its action will impose on the people it is designed to benefit and on all other people who may be affected. An intervention is not just if it subjects third parties to terrible risks: the subjection cancels the justice. If Palmerston was right in believing that the defeat of Austria would shatter the peace of Europe, a British intervention ensuring that defeat would not have been \"honorable and virtuous\" (however noble the Hungarian struggle). And clearly, an American threat of atomic war in 1956 would have been morally as well as politically irresponsible. Thus far prudence can be, and has to be, accommodated within the argument for justice. But it should be said that this deference to third party rights is not at the same time a deference to the local political interests of the great powers. Nor does it involve the acceptance of a Schwarzenbergian reciprocity. Britain's recognition of Austria's imperial claims does not entitle it to a similar recognition. The prudential acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe does not entitle the United States to a free hand in its own sphere. Against national liberation and counter-intervention, there are no prescriptive rights.\n\nCivil War\n\nIf we describe the Hungarian Revolution as Mill did, assuming that Palmerston was wrong, ignoring the claims of Croats and Slovenes, it is virtually a paradigm case for intervention. It is also, so described, a historically exceptional, indeed, it is now a hypothetical case. For these circumstances don't often arise in history: a national liberation movement unambiguously embodying the claims of a single, unified political community; capable at least initially of sustaining itself on the battlefield; challenged by an unambiguously foreign power; whose intervention can however be deterred or defeated without risking a general war. More often history presents a tangle of parties and factions, each claiming to speak for an entire community, fighting with one another, drawing outside powers into the struggle in secret, or at least unacknowledged, ways. Civil war poses hard problems, not because the Millian standard is unclear\u2014it would require a strict standoffishness\u2014but because it can be and routinely is violated by degrees. Then it becomes very difficult to fix the point at which a direct and open use of force can plausibly be called a counter-\u00adintervention. And it is difficult also to calculate the effects of such a use of force on the already distressed inhabitants of the divided state and on the whole range of possible third parties.\n\nIn such cases, the lawyers commonly apply a qualified version of the self-help test. They permit assistance to the established government\u2014it is after all, the official representative of communal autonomy in international society\u2014so long as it faces nothing more than internal dissension, rebellion, and insurgency. But as soon as the insurgents establish control over some substantial portion of the territory and population of the state, they acquire belligerent rights and an equality of status with the government. Then the lawyers enjoin a strict neutrality. Now, neutrality is conventionally regarded as an optative condition, a matter of choice, not of duty. So it is with regard to wars between states, but in civil wars there seem to be very good (Millian) reasons for making it obligatory. For once a community is effectively divided, foreign powers can hardly serve the cause of self-determination by acting militarily within its borders. The argument has been succinctly put by Montague Bernard, whose Oxford lecture \"On the Principle of Non-intervention\" ranks in importance with Mill's essay: \"Of two things, one: the interference in the case supposed either turns the balance, or it does not. In the latter event, it misses its aim; in the former, it gives the superiority to the side which would not have been uppermost without it and establishes a sovereign, or a form of government, which the nation, if left to itself, would not have chosen.\"\n\nAs soon as one outside power violates the norms of neutrality and nonintervention, however, the way is open for other powers to do so. Indeed, it may seem shameful not to repeat the violation\u2014as in the case of the Spanish Civil War, where the noninterventionist policies of Britain, France, and the United States did not open the way for a local decision, but simply allowed the Germans and Italians to \"turn the balance.\" Some military response is probably required at such moments if the values of independence and community are to be sustained. But though that response upholds values shared throughout international society, it cannot accurately be described as law enforcement. Its character is not readily explicable within the terms of the legalist paradigm. For counter-\u00adintervention in civil wars does not aim at punishing or even, necessarily, at restraining the intervening states. It aims instead at holding the circle, preserving the balance, restoring some degree of integrity to the local struggle. It is as if a policeman, instead of breaking up a fight between two people, should stop anyone else from interfering or, if he cannot do that, should give proportional assistance to the disadvantaged party. He would have to have some notions about the value of the fight, and given the ordinary conditions of domestic society, those would be strange notions for him to have. But in the world of states they are entirely appropriate; they set the standards by which we judge between actual and pretended counter-interventions.\n\nThe American War in Vietnam\n\nI doubt that it is possible to tell the story of Vietnam in a way that will command general agreement. The official American version\u2014that the struggle began with a North Vietnamese invasion of the South, to which the United States responded in accordance with its treaty obligations\u2014\u00adfollows the legalist paradigm closely, but is on its surface unbelievable. Fortunately, it seems to be accepted by virtually no one and need not detain us here. I want to pursue a more sophisticated version of the American defense, which concedes the existence of a civil war and describes the U.S. role, first, as assistance to a legitimate government, and secondly, as counter-intervention, a response to covert military moves by the North Vietnamese regime. The crucial terms here are \"legitimate\" and \"response.\" The first suggests that the government on behalf of which our counter-intervention was undertaken had a local status, a political presence independent of ourselves, and hence that it could conceivably win the civil war if no external force was brought to bear. The second suggests that our own military operations followed upon and balanced those of another power, in accordance with the argument I have put forward. Both these suggestions are false, but they point to the peculiarly confined character of counter-intervention and indicate what one has to say (at least) when one joins in the civil wars of other states.\n\nThe Geneva Agreement of 1954, ending the first Vietnamese war, established a temporary frontier between the North and the South, and two temporary governments on either side of the line, pending elections scheduled for 1956. When the South Vietnamese government refused to permit these elections, it clearly lost whatever legitimacy was conferred by the agreements. But I shall not dwell on this loss, nor on the fact that some sixty states nevertheless recognized the sovereignty of the new regime in the South and opened embassies in Saigon. I doubt that foreign states, whether they act independently or collectively, sign treaties or send ambassadors, can establish or disestablish the legitimacy of a government. What is crucial is the standing of that government with its own people. Had the new regime been able to rally support at home, Vietnam today would have joined the divided states of Germany (until 1990) and Korea, and Geneva 1954 would be remembered only as the setting for another cold war partition. But what is the test of popular support in a country where democracy is unknown and elections are routinely managed? The test, for governments as for insurgents, is self-help. That doesn't mean that foreign states cannot provide assistance. One assumes the legitimacy of new regimes; there is, so to speak, a period of grace, a time to build support. But that time was ill-used in South Vietnam, and the continuing dependence of the new regime on the United States is damning evidence against it. Its urgent call for military intervention in the early 1960s is more damning evidence still. One must ask of President Diem a question first posed by Montague Bernard: \"How can he impersonate [represent] his people who is begging the assistance of a foreign power in order to reduce them to obedience?\" Indeed, it was never a successful impersonation.\n\nThe argument might be put more narrowly: a government that receives economic and technical aid, military supply, strategic and tactical advice, and is still unable to reduce its subjects to obedience, is clearly an illegitimate government. Whether legitimacy is defined sociologically or morally, such a government fails to meet the most minimal standards. One wonders how it survives at all. It must be the case that it survives because of the outside help it receives and for no other, no local reasons. The Saigon regime was so much an American creature that the U.S. government's claim to be committed to it and obligated to ensure its survival is hard to understand. It is as if our right hand were committed to our left. There is no independent moral or political agent on the other side of the bond and hence no genuine bond at all. Obligations to one's creatures (except insofar as they pertain to the personal safety of individuals) are as insignificant politically as obligations to oneself are insignificant morally. When the U.S. did intervene militarily in Vietnam, then, it acted not to fulfill commitments to another state, but to pursue policies of its own contrivance.\n\nAgainst all this, it is argued that the popular base of the South Vietnamese government was undermined by a systematic campaign of subversion, terrorism, and guerrilla war, largely directed and supplied from the North. That there was such a campaign, and that the North was involved in it, is clearly true, though the extent and timing of the involvement are very much in dispute. If one were writing a legal brief, these matters would be critically important, for the American claim is that the North Vietnamese were illegally supporting a local insurgency, with both men and material, at a time when the U.S. was still providing only economic assistance and military supply to a legitimate government. But that claim, whatever its legal force, somehow misses the moral reality of the Vietnamese case. It would be better to say that the U.S. was literally propping up a government\u2014and shortly a series of governments\u2014without a local political base, while the North Vietnamese were assisting an insurgent movement with deep roots in the countryside. We were far more vital to the government than they were to the insurgents. Indeed, it was the weakness of the government, its inability to help itself even against its internal enemies, that forced the steady escalation of American involvement. And that fact must raise the most serious questions about the American defense: for counter-\u00adintervention is morally possible only on behalf of a government (or a movement, party, or whatever) that has already passed the self-help test.\n\nI can say very little here about the reasons for insurgent strength in the countryside. Why were the communists able, and the government unable, to \"impersonate\" Vietnamese nationalism? The character and scope of the American presence probably had a great deal to do with this. Nationalism is not easily represented by a regime as dependent as Saigon was on foreign support. It is also important that North Vietnamese moves did not similarly brand those they benefited as foreign agents. In nations divided as Vietnam was, infiltration across the dividing line is not necessarily regarded as outside interference by the men and women on the other side. The Korean War might look very different than it does if the Northerners had not marched in strength across the 38th parallel, but had made covert contact, instead, with a Southern rebellion. In contrast to Vietnam, however, there was no rebellion\u2014and there was considerable support for the government\u2014in South Korea. These cold war dividing lines have the usual significance of an international border only insofar as they mark off, or come in time to mark off, two political communities within each of which individual citizens feel some local loyalty. Had South Vietnam taken shape in this way, American military activity, in the face of large-scale Northern connivance at terrorism and guerrilla war, might have qualified as counter-intervention. At least, the name would have been an arguable one. As it is, it is not.\n\nIt remains an issue whether the American counter-intervention, had it been such, could rightly have assumed the size and scope of the war we eventually fought. Some notion of symmetry is relevant here, though it cannot be fixed absolutely in arithmetic terms. When a state sets out to maintain or restore the integrity of a local struggle, its military activity should be roughly equivalent to that of the other intervening states. Counter-intervention is a balancing act. I have made this point before, but it is worth emphasizing, for it reflects a deep truth about the meaning of responsiveness: the goal of counter-intervention is not to win the war. That this is not an esoteric or obscure truth is suggested by President Kennedy's well-known description of the Vietnam War. \"In the final analysis,\" Kennedy said, \"it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it\u2014the people of Vietnam against the Communists. . . .\" Though this view was reiterated by later American leaders, it is not, unhappily, a definitive exposition of American policy. In fact, the United States failed in the most dramatic way to respect the character and dimensions of the Vietnamese civil war, and we failed because we could not win the war as long as it retained that character and was fought within those dimensions. Searching for a level of conflict at which our technological superiority could be brought to bear, we steadily escalated the struggle, until finally it was an American war, fought for American purposes, in someone else's country.\n\nHumanitarian Intervention\n\nA legitimate government is one that can fight its own internal wars. And external assistance in those wars is rightly called counter-intervention only when it balances, and does no more than balance, the prior intervention of another power, making it possible once again for the local forces to win or lose on their own. The outcome of civil wars should reflect not the relative strength of the intervening states, but the local alignment of forces. There is another sort of case, however, where we don't look for outcomes of that sort, where we don't want the local balance to prevail. If the dominant forces within a state are engaged in massive violations of human rights, the appeal to self-determination in the Millian sense of self-help is not very attractive. That appeal has to do with the freedom of the community taken as a whole; it has no force when what is at stake is the bare survival or the minimal liberty of (some substantial number of) its members. Against the enslavement or massacre of political opponents, national minorities, and religious sects, there may well be no help unless help comes from outside. And when a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the idea of self-determination might apply.\n\nExamples are not hard to find; it is their plenitude that is embarrassing. The list of oppressive governments, the list of massacred peoples, is frighteningly long. Though an event like the Nazi holocaust is without precedent in human history, murder on a smaller scale is so common as to be almost ordinary. On the other hand\u2014or perhaps for this very reason\u2014clear examples of what is called \"humanitarian intervention\" are very rare. Indeed, I have not found any, but only mixed cases where the humanitarian motive is one among several. States don't send their soldiers into other states, it seems, only in order to save lives. The lives of foreigners don't weigh that heavily in the scales of domestic decision-making. So we shall have to consider the moral significance of mixed motives.c It is not necessarily an argument against humanitarian intervention that it is, at best, partially humanitarian, but it is a reason to be skeptical and to look closely at the other parts.\n\nCuba, 1898, and Bangladesh, 1971\n\nBoth these cases might be taken up under the headings of national liberation and counter-intervention. But they each have a further significance because of the atrocities committed by the Spanish and the Pakistani governments. The brutal work of the Spaniards is easier to talk about, for it fell short of systematic massacre. Fighting against a Cuban insurgent army that lived off the land and apparently had large-scale peasant support, the Spaniards first worked out the policy of forced resettlement. They called it, without euphemism, la reconcentraci\u00f3n. General Weyler's proclamation required that:\n\nAll inhabitants of rural areas or areas outside the lines of fortified towns will be concentrated within the towns occupied by troops at the end of eight days. All individuals who disobey or who are found outside the prescribed areas will be considered as rebels and judged as such.\n\nI will ask later on whether \"concentration\" in itself is a criminal policy. The immediate crime of the Spaniards was to enforce the policy with so little regard for the health of the people involved that thousands of them suffered and died. Their lives and deaths were widely publicized in the United States, not only in the yellow press, and undoubtedly figured in the minds of many Americans as the major justification for the war against Spain. Thus the Congressional resolution of April 20, 1898: \"Whereas the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States. . . .\" But there were other reasons for going to war.\n\nThe chief of these were economic and strategic in character, having to do, first, with American investment in Cuban sugar, a matter of interest to a section of the financial community; and second, with the sea approaches to the Panamanian Isthmus where the canal would one day be, a matter of interest to the intellectuals and politicians who championed the cause of American expansion. Cuba was a minor element in the plans of men like Mahan and Adams, Roosevelt and Lodge, who were more concerned with the Pacific Ocean than the Caribbean Sea. But the canal that would connect the two gave it a certain strategic value, and the war to win it was worthwhile insofar as it accustomed Americans to imperialist adventures (and led also to the conquest of the Phillipines). By and large, the historical debate over the causes of the war has focused on the different forms of economic and political imperialism, the search for markets and investment opportunities, the pursuit of \"national power for its own sake.\" It's worth remembering, however, that the war was also supported by anti-\u00adimperialist politicians\u2014or rather, that Cuban freedom was supported and then, in consequence of Spanish brutality, the humanitarian intervention of American military forces. The war we actually fought, however, and the intervention urged by populists and radical Democrats were two rather different things.\n\nThe Cuban insurgents made three requests of the United States: that we recognize their provisional government as the legitimate government of Cuba, that we provide their army with military supplies, and that American warships blockade the Cuban coast and cut off the supplies of the Spanish army. Given such help, it was said, the insurgent forces would grow, the Spaniards could not long hold out, and the Cubans would be left to reconstruct their country (with American help) and manage their own affairs. This was also the program of American radicals. But President McKinley and his advisors did not believe the Cubans capable of managing their own affairs, or they feared a radical reconstruction. In any case, the U.S. intervened without recognizing the insurgents, invaded the island, and quickly defeated and replaced the Spanish forces. The victory undoubtedly had humane effects. Though the American military effort was remarkably inefficient, the war was short and added little to the miseries of the civilian population. Relief operations, also remarkably inefficient at first, began as soon as the battles were won. In his standard account of the war, Admiral Chadwick boasts of its relative bloodlessness: \"War of itself,\" he writes, \"cannot be the great evil; the evil is in the horrors, many of which are not necessarily concomitant. . . . The war now beginning between the United States and Spain was one in which these greater horrors were largely to be absent.\" The horrors were indeed absent; far more so, at least, than in the long years of the Cuban Insurrection. But the invasion of Cuba, the three years of military occupation, the eventual granting of a drastically limited independence (under the provisions of the Platt Amendment) go a long way toward explaining the skepticism with which America's professions of humane concern have conventionally been regarded. The entire course of action, from 1898 to 1902, might be taken as an example of benevolent imperialism, given the \"piratical times,\" but it is not an example of humanitarian intervention.\n\nThe judgments we make in cases such as this don't hang on the fact that considerations other than humanity figured in the government's plans, or even on the fact that humanity was not the chief consideration. I don't know if it ever is, and measurement is especially difficult in a liberal democracy where the mixed motives of the government reflect the pluralism of the society. Nor is it a question of benevolent outcomes. As a result of the American victory, the reconcentrados were able to return to their homes. But they would have been able to do that had the United States entered the war on the side of the Spaniards and, together with them, decisively defeated the Cuban insurgents. \"Concentration\" was a war policy and would have ended with the war, whatever the war's end. The crucial question is a different one. Humanitarian intervention involves military action on behalf of oppressed people, and it requires that the intervening state enter, to some degree, into the purposes of those people. It need not set itself to achieve those purposes, but it also cannot stand in the way of their achievement. The people are oppressed, presumably, because they sought some end\u2014religious toleration, national freedom, or whatever\u2014unacceptable to their oppressors. One cannot intervene on their behalf and against their ends. I don't want to argue that the purposes of the oppressed are necessarily just or that one need accept them in their entirety. But it does seem that a greater attention is due them than the United States was prepared to pay in 1898.\n\nThis regard for the purposes of the oppressed directly parallels the respect for local autonomy that is a necessary feature of counter-\u00adintervention. The two revisionist principles reflect a common commitment: that intervention be as much like nonintervention as possible. In the one case, the goal is balance; in the other, it is rescue. In neither case, and certainly not in secessions and national liberation struggles, can the intervening state rightly claim any political prerogatives for itself. And whenever it makes such claims (as the United States did when it occupied Cuba and again when it imposed the Platt Amendment), we suspect that political power was its purpose from the start.\n\nThe Indian invasion of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971 is a better example of humanitarian intervention\u2014not because of the singularity or purity of the government's motives, but because its various motives converged on a single course of action that was also the course of action called for by the Bengalis. This convergence explains why the Indians were in and out of the country so quickly, defeating the Pakistani army but not replacing it, and imposing no political controls on the emergent state of Bangladesh. No doubt, strategic as well as moral interests underlay this policy: Pakistan, India's old enemy, was significantly weakened, while India itself avoided becoming responsible for a desperately poor nation whose internal politics was likely to be unstable and volatile for a long time to come. But the intervention qualifies as humanitarian because it was a rescue, strictly and narrowly defined. So circumstances sometimes make saints of us all.\n\nI shall not say very much about Pakistani oppression in Bengal. The tale is a terrible one and by now fairly well documented. Faced with a movement for autonomy in what was then its eastern province, the government of Pakistan, in March 1971, literally turned an army loose on its own people\u2014or rather, a Punjabi army loose on the Bengali people, for the unity of east and west was already a broken thing. The resulting massacre only completed the break and made it irreparable. The army was not entirely without direction; its officers carried \"death lists\" on which appeared the names of the political, cultural, and intellectual leaders of Bengal. There was also a systematic effort to slaughter the followers of these people: university students, political activists, and so on. Beyond these groups, the soldiers ranged freely, burning, raping, killing. Millions of Bengalis fled into India, and their arrival, destitute, hungry, and with incredible stories to tell, established the moral foundation of the later Indian attack. \"It is idle to argue in such cases that the duty of the neighboring people is to look on quietly.\" Months of diplomatic maneuvering followed, but during that time, the Indians were already assisting Bengali guerrillas and offering sanctuary not only to refugees but also to fighting men and women. The two-week war of December 1971 apparently began with a Pakistani air strike, but the Indian invasion required no such prior attack; it was justified on other grounds.\n\nThe strength of the Bengali guerrillas and their achievements between March and December are matters of some dispute; so is their role in the two-week war. Clearly, however, it was not the purpose of the Indian invasion to open the way for the Bengali struggle; nor does the strength or weakness of the guerrillas affect our view of the invasion. When a people are being massacred, we don't require that they pass the test of self-help before coming to their aid. It is their very incapacity that brings us in. The purpose of the Indian army, then, was to defeat the Pakistani forces and drive them out of Bangladesh, that is, to win the war. The purpose was different from that of a counter-intervention, and for an important moral reason. People who initiate massacres lose their right to participate in the normal (even in the normally violent) processes of domestic self-\u00addetermination. Their military defeat is morally necessary.\n\nGovernments and armies engaged in massacres are readily identified as criminal governments and armies (they are guilty, under the Nuremberg code of \"crimes against humanity\"). Hence humanitarian intervention comes much closer than any other kind of intervention to what we commonly regard, in domestic society, as law enforcement and police work. At the same time, however, it requires the crossing of an international frontier, and such crossings are ruled out by the legalist paradigm\u2014unless they are authorized, I suppose, by the society of nations. In the cases I have considered, the law is unilaterally enforced; the police are self-appointed. Now, unilateralism has always prevailed in the international arena, but we worry about it more when what is involved is a response to domestic violence rather than to foreign aggression. We worry that, under the cover of humanitarianism, states will come to coerce and dominate their neighbors; once again, it is not hard to find examples. Hence many lawyers prefer to stick to the paradigm. That doesn't require them, on their view, to deny the (occasional) need for intervention. They merely deny legal recognition to that need. Humanitarian intervention \"belongs in the realm not of law but of moral choice, which nations, like individuals must sometimes make. . . .\" But that is only a plausible formulation if one doesn't stop with it, as lawyers are likely to do. For moral choices are not simply made; they are also judged, and so there must be criteria for judgment. If these are not provided by the law, or if legal provision runs out at some point, they are nevertheless contained in our common morality, which doesn't run out, and which still needs to be explicated after the lawyers have finished.\n\nMorality, at least, is not a bar to unilateral action, so long as there is no immediate alternative available. There was none in the Bengali case. No doubt, the massacres were a matter of universal interest, but only India interested itself in them. The case was formally carried to the United Nations, but no action followed. Nor is it clear to me that action undertaken by the UN, or by a coalition of powers, would necessarily have had a moral quality superior to that of the Indian attack. What one looks for in numbers is detachment from particularist views and consensus on moral rules. And for that, there is at present no institutional appeal; one appeals to humanity as a whole. States don't lose their particularist character merely by acting together. If governments have mixed motives, so do coalitions of governments. Some goals, perhaps, are cancelled out by the political bargaining that constitutes the coalition, but others are super-added; and the resulting mix is as accidental with reference to the moral issue as are the political interests and ideologies of a single state.\n\nHumanitarian intervention is justified when it is a response (with reasonable expectations of success) to acts \"that shock the moral conscience of mankind.\" The old-fashioned language seems to me exactly right. It is not the conscience of political leaders that one refers to in such cases. They have other things to worry about and may well be required to repress their normal feelings of indignation and outrage. The reference is to the moral convictions of ordinary men and women, acquired in the course of their everyday activities. And given that one can make a persuasive argument in terms of those convictions, I don't think that there is any moral reason to adopt that posture of passivity that might be called waiting for the UN (waiting for the universal state, waiting for the messiah . . . ).\n\nSuppose . . . that a great power decided that the only way it could continue to control a satellite state was to wipe out the satellite's entire population and recolonize the area with \"reliable\" people. Suppose the satellite government agreed to this measure and established the necessary mass extermination apparatus. . . . Would the rest of the members of the U.N. be compelled to stand by and watch this operation merely because [the] requisite decision of U.N. organs was blocked and the operation did not involve an \"armed attack\" on any [member state]? . . .\n\nThe question is rhetorical. Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has a right, at least, to try to do so. The legalist paradigm indeed rules out such efforts, but that only suggests that the paradigm, unrevised, cannot account for the moral realities of military intervention.\n\nThe second, third, and fourth revisions of the paradigm have this form: states can be invaded and wars justly begun to assist secessionist movements (once they have demonstrated their representative character), to balance the prior interventions of other powers, and to rescue peoples threatened with massacre. In each of these cases we permit or, after the fact, we praise or don't condemn these violations of the formal rules of sovereignty, because they uphold the values of individual life and communal liberty of which sovereignty itself is merely an expression. The formula is, once again, permissive, but I have tried in my discussion of particular cases to indicate that the actual requirements of just interventions are constraining indeed. And the revisions must be understood to include the constraints. Since the constraints are often ignored, it is sometimes argued that it would be best to insist on an absolute rule of nonintervention (as it would be best to insist on an absolute rule of a nonanticipation). But the absolute rule will also be ignored, and we will then have no standards by which to judge what happens next. In fact, we do have standards, which I have tried to map out. They reflect deep and valuable, though in their applications difficult and problematic, commitments to human rights.\n\n The domestic analogy suggests that the most obvious way of not qualifying for nonintervention is to be incompetent (childish, imbecilic, and so on). Mill believed that there were incompetent peoples, barbarians, in whose interest it was to be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. \"Barbarians have no rights as a nation [i.e., as a political community]. . . .\" Hence utilitarian principles apply to them, and imperial bureaucrats legitimately work for their moral improvement. It is interesting to note a similar view among the Marxists, who also justified conquest and imperial rule at certain stages of historical development. (See Shlomo Avineri, ed., Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, New York, 1969.) Whatever plausibility such arguments had in the nineteenth century, they have none today. International society can no longer be divided into civilized and barbarian halves; any line drawn on developmental principles leaves barbarians on both sides. I shall therefore assume that the self-help test applies equally to all peoples.\n\n There is a further issue here, having to do with the natural resources that are sometimes at stake in secessionist struggles. I have argued that \"the land follows the people\" (chapter 4). But the will and capacity of the people for self-\u00addetermination may not establish a right to secede if the secession would remove not only land but also vitally needed fuel and mineral resources from some larger political community. The Katangan controversy of the early 1960s suggests the possible difficulties of such cases\u2014and invites us to worry also about the motives of intervening states. But what was missing in Katanga was a genuine national movement capable, on its own, of \"arduous struggle.\" (See Conor C. O'Brien, To Katanga and Back, New York, 1962.) Given the existence of such a movement, I would be inclined to support secession. It would then be necessary, however, to raise more general questions about distributive justice in international society.\n\n The case is different, obviously, when the lives at stake are those of fellow nationals. Interventions designed to rescue citizens threatened with death in a foreign country have conventionally been called humanitarian, and there is no reason to deny them that name when life and death are really at issue. The Israeli raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda (July 4, 1976) seems likely to become a classic case. Here there is, or ought to be, no question of mixed motives: the only purpose is to rescue these people toward whom the intervening power has a special commitment.\n\nWar's Ends, and the Importance of Winning\n\nWhat may be called the modernist view of war is grimly summed up in a poem by Randall Jarrell:\n\nProfits and death grow marginal:\n\nOnly the mourning and the mourned recall\n\nThe wars we lose, the wars we win;\n\nAnd the world is\u2014what it has been.\n\nWar kills; that is all it does; even its economic causes are not reflected in its outcomes; and the soldiers who die are, in the contemporary phrase, wasted. Jarrell speaks in the name of those wasted men, of comrades already dead and of others who know they will soon be killed. And theirs is an authoritative perspective: there have been so many of them. When soldiers die in small numbers, in encompassable battles, they can attribute some meaning to their deaths. Sacrifice and heroism are conceivable notions. But the slaughter of modern warfare overwhelms their capacity for moral understanding; cynicism is their last resort. It is not, however, our last resort, or the most important form of our perceptions of the war in which Jarrell fought. Indeed, most of his fellow survivors would still want to affirm that the world is different, and better, for the Allied victory and the defeat of the Nazi regime. And theirs, too, is an authoritative perspective: there are so many of them. In an age when human sensibility is finely tuned to all the nuances of despair, it still seems important to say of those who die in war that they did not die in vain. And when we can't say that, or think we can't, we mix our mourning with anger. We search for guilty men. We are still committed to a moral world.\n\nWhat does it mean not to have died in vain? There must be purposes that are worth dying for, outcomes for which soldiers' lives are not too high a price. The idea of a just war requires the same assumption. A just war is one that it is morally urgent to win, and a soldier who dies in a just war does not die in vain. Critical values are at stake: political independence, communal liberty, human life. Other means failing (an important qualification), wars to defend these values are justified. The deaths that occur in their course, on both sides, are morally comprehensible\u2014which is not to say that they are not also the products of military stupidity and bureaucratic snafu: soldiers die senselessly even in wars that are not senseless.\n\nBut if it is sometimes urgent to win, it is not always clear what winning is. On the conventional military view, the only true aim in war is \"the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield.\" Clausewitz speaks of \"the overthrow of the enemy.\" But many wars end without any such dramatic ending, and many war aims can be achieved well short of destruction and overthrow. We need to seek the legitimate ends of war, the goals that can rightly be aimed at. These will also be the limits of a just war. Once they are won, or once they are within political reach, the fighting should stop. Soldiers killed beyond that point die needlessly, and to force them to fight and possibly to die is a crime akin to that of aggression itself. It is commonly said of just war theory, however, that it does not in fact draw this line at any point short of destruction and overthrow, that the most extreme military argument and the \"moralist\" argument coincide in requiring that war be fought to its ultimate end. In the aftermath of World War II, a group of writers appeared who insisted that the pursuit of justice was deeply implicated in the horrors of twentieth-century war. They called themselves \"realists,\" and I shall use that name, though these were not in fact followers of Thucydides and Hobbes. Their argument was less general and ultimately less subversive of conventional morality. Just wars turn into crusades, they claimed, and then the statesmen and soldiers who fight them seek the only victory appropriate to their cause: total victory, unconditional surrender. They fight too brutally and too long. They sow justice and reap death. It is a powerful argument, though I shall want to suggest with reference both to the conduct of war and to the purposes for which it is fought that it makes no sense except as a moral argument. The remedy the realists proposed was to give up justice and aim at more modest outcomes. The remedy I want to propose instead is to understand better the justice at which we cannot help aiming.\n\nUnconditional Surrender\n\nAllied Policy in World War II\n\nThe realist position might be summed up in this way. It is a feature of democratic or liberal culture that peace is conceived as a normative condition. Wars can only be fought, then, if some \"universal moral principle\" requires it: the preservation of peace, the survival of democracy, and so on. And once war begins, this principle must be vindicated absolutely; nothing less than total victory will justify the resort to the \"evil instrument\" of military force. The threat to peace or democracy must be completely destroyed. \"Democratic cultures,\" as Kecskemeti has written in his well-known book on surrender, \"are profoundly unwarlike: to them, war can be justified only if it is waged to eliminate war. . . . This crusading ideology . . . is reflected in the conviction that hostilities cannot be brought to an end before the evil enemy system has been eradicated.\" The locus classicus of this ideology is the thought of Woodrow Wilson, and its most important material expression is the Allied demand for unconditional surrender in World War II.\n\nWhat is objectionable about democratic idealism, as the realists describe it, is that it sets goals that cannot possibly be reached, for which soldiers can only die in vain. This is a moral objection, and an important one if soldiers have in fact been asked to die for such purposes as \"the eradication of evil.\" Their most heroic efforts, after all, can only bring a particular war to an end; they cannot end war. They can save democracy from a particular threat, but they cannot make the world safe for democracy. But I am inclined to think that the significance of these Wilsonian slogans has been much overestimated in the realist literature. By the time Wilson brought the United States into World War I, the fighting had already been carried well beyond the limits of justice and reason. The worst of those \"injuries . . . to the structure of human society which a century will not efface\" had already been inflicted, and the men responsible were not innocent Americans but the tough-minded statesmen and soldiers of Britain, France, and Germany. Wilson's Fourteen Points made possible a German surrender on terms that fell far short of the war aims of Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Indeed, it was the German charge that these terms had not been honored in the actual peace settlement (which was true) that led the Allies to insist on unconditional surrender the second time around. \"No such arguments will be admitted by us as were used by Germany after the last war,\" Churchill told the House of Commons in February 1944. \"The policy of unconditional surrender,\" writes Kecskemeti, \"represents a studied contrast with President Wilson's political conduct of the war in 1918.\" But if that is true, it isn't easy to see how both Wilsonian and anti-Wilsonian policies, surrender on terms and unconditional surrender, can be attributed to \"the traditional moralistic all-or-nothing American approach to the problem of war and peace.\"\n\nFor all his idealism, Wilson fought a limited war; his ideals set the limits. (Whether these were the right limits or not is another question.) Nor was World War II an unlimited war, despite the refusal of the Allies to offer terms. The demand for unconditional surrender, Churchill assured the Commons, \"does not mean that we] are entitled to behave in a barbarous manner, nor that [we] wish to blot out Germany from among the nations of Europe.\" What it does mean, he went on, is that \"if we are bound, we are bound by our own consciences to civilization. We are not bound to the Germans as the result of a bargain struck.\" It would have been more precise had he said that the Allies were not bound to the German government, for the German people, the greater number of them, at any rate, must be included under the rubric of \"civilization.\" They were entitled to the protection of civilized norms and could never have been entirely at the mercy of their conquerors. There is really no such thing (in the moral world) as the unconditional surrender of a nation, for conditions inhere in the very idea of international relations, as they do in the idea of human relations\u2014and they are roughly the same in each. Even domestic criminals, with whom the authorities don't usually negotiate, never surrender unconditionally. If they cannot stipulate conditions above those established in the law, it is nevertheless true that the law recognizes rights\u2014the right not to be tortured, for example\u2014which are theirs as human beings and as citizens, whatever their crimes. Nations have similar rights in international society, above all the right not to be \"blotted out,\" deprived forever of sovereignty and freedom.[a\n\nConcretely, the policy of unconditional surrender involved two commitments: first, that the Allies would not negotiate with Nazi leaders, would have no dealings with them of any sort, \"except to instruct them about the details of orderly capitulation\"; secondly, that no German government would be recognized as legitimate and authoritative until the Allies had won the war, occupied Germany, and established a new regime. Given the character of the existing German government, these commitments do not seem to me to represent an excessive idealism. But they do suggest the outer limit of what can legitimately be sought in war. The outer limit is the conquest and political reconstruction of the enemy state, and only against an enemy like Nazism can it possibly be right to reach that far. In his lectures on American diplomacy, George Kennan suggests that unconditional surrender should not have been talked about, but he nevertheless agrees \"that Hitler was a man with whom a compromise peace was impracticable and unthinkable. . . .\" That is, one might say, a realistic moral judgment. It recognizes, without explicitly affirming, the evil of the Nazi regime, and it rightly places Nazism outside the (moral) world of bargaining and accommodation. We can understand the right of conquest and reconstruction only with such an example. The right does not arise in every war; it did not arise, I think, in the war against Japan. It exists only in cases where the criminality of the aggressor state threatens those deep values that political independence and territorial integrity merely stand for in the international order, and when the threat is in no sense accidental or transitory but is inherent in the very nature of the regime.\n\nOne must be careful here; it is at this point that just wars come nearest to crusades. A crusade is a war fought for religious or ideological purposes. It aims not at defense or law enforcement, but at the creation of new political orders and at mass conversions. It is the international equivalent of religious persecution and political repression, and it is obviously ruled out by the argument for justice. Yet the very existence of Nazism tempts us, as it tempted General Eisenhower, to imagine World War II as a \"crusade in Europe.\" So we must draw the line between just wars and crusades as clearly as we can. Consider the following argument of a nineteenth-\u00adcentury English jurist:\n\nThe first limitation of the general right, incident to every state, of adopting whatever form of government . . . [it] may please is this:\n\nNo state has a right to establish a form of government which is built upon professed principles of hostility to the government of other nations.\n\nThis is to draw the line very dangerously, for it suggests that we might make war against governments whose \"professions\" we have some reason to dislike or fear. But professions are not to the point. We have no clear knowledge as to when these are likely to be acted out and when they are not. No single form of government seems particularly prone to aggression. It is certainly not the case, as many nineteenth-century liberals imagined, that authoritarian states are more likely to make war than democracies are: the history of democratic regimes, beginning with Athens, offers no evidence of this. Nor is hostility to governments relevant here, except insofar as these represent the self-determining activities of nations. The Nazis were at war with nations, not governments alone; they were not merely professedly but actively hostile to the very existence of entire peoples. And it is only in response to hostility of this sort that the rights of conquest and political reconstruction come into existence.\n\nBut suppose the German people had risen against Nazism, as they rose against the Kaiser in 1918, and themselves created a new regime. The Allies were apparently committed not to deal even with a revolutionary German government. \"To the morally oriented Allies,\" writes Kecskemeti, \"any abatement from the strict rules of unconditionality meant that some element of the evil past would survive after the loser's surrender and make their victory meaningless.\" In fact, there was another, and a more realistic, motive for strictness: mutual distrust among Hitler's enemies, the needs of coalition politics. The Western powers and the Russians could agree on nothing except an absolute rule. Justice points the other way, for reasons closely akin to those that mark out and drastically limit the practice of intervention. Had the Germans themselves undertaken to destroy Nazism, there would have been every reason to help them and no need for an external reconstruction of their polity. A German revolution would have made the conquest of Germany morally unnecessary. But there was no revolution and painfully little resistance to Nazi rule. Politically significant opposition developed only within the ruling cadre itself, and only in the latter days of a losing war: thus the coup d'etat attempted by the German generals in July 1944. In peacetime, such an attempt would count as an act of self-determination, and if it were successful, other states would have no choice but to deal with the new government. Given a war such as the Nazis fought, and in which the generals were deeply implicated, the case is harder. I am inclined to think that by 1944 the Allies had a right to expect, and to impose, a more thoroughgoing renovation of German political life. Even the generals would have had to surrender unconditionally (as some of them, at least, were ready to do).\n\nUnconditional surrender is rightly regarded as a punitive policy. It is important to see exactly in what sense this is so. The policy would have penalized the German people only insofar as it declared their political liberty temporarily forfeit and subjected them to a military occupation. Pending the establishment of a post-Nazi and an anti-Nazi regime, the Germans were to be placed in political tutelage: it is a consequence of their failure to overthrow Hitler themselves, the chief of the ways in which they were collectively held responsible for the injuries he and his followers caused to other nations. The forfeiture of independence, however, entails no further loss of rights; the punishment was limited and temporary; it assumed, as Churchill said, the continued existence of a German nation. But the Allies also aimed at more particular and far-reaching punishments. They refused to compromise with the Nazi regime because they planned to put its leading members on trial for their lives. To wage war with such a goal in mind, Kecskemeti argues, is to succumb to \"the pedagogic fallacy,\" that is, to try to build a peaceful post-war world \"on the undying memory of a just chastisement.\" But that cannot be done because deterrence doesn't work in international as it does in domestic society: the number of actors is far smaller; their deeds are not stereotyped and reiterated; the lessons of punishment are interpreted very differently by those who administer and by those who receive them; and in any case, they soon become irrelevant as circumstances change. Now, \"just chastisement\" is exactly what the legalist paradigm would require, and Kecskemeti's criticism points toward the need for further revision. But he argues only that deterrence is ineffective, and his argument, while it is plausible enough, is by no means certainly true. I want to suggest instead that the special character of international society makes the full measure of domestic law enforcement morally infeasible, and at the same time that the special character of Nazism in fact required the \"chastisement\" of the leading Nazis.\n\nWhat is special about international society is the collective character of its members. Each decision-maker stands for an entire community of men and women; the impact of his aggressive and defensive wars is felt over a wide geographic and political range. War affects more people than domestic crime and punishment, and it is the rights of those people that force us to limit its purposes. We might consider a new version of the domestic analogy, oriented toward collective rather than individual action: the attack of one state upon another is more like a feudal raid than a criminal assault (even when it is, literally, a criminal assault). It resembles a feud more than a mugging, not only because there are no commonly accepted police, but also because the rituals of punishment will more probably extend than cut off the violence. Short of the most severe and extraordinary measures\u2014extermination, exile, political dismemberment\u2014an enemy state, like an aristocratic clan, and unlike a common criminal, cannot be entirely deprived of the power of renewed activity. But such measures can never be defended, and so enemy states must be treated, morally as well as strategically, as future partners in some sort of international order.\n\nStability among states, as among aristocratic factions and families, rests upon certain patterns of accommodation and restraint, which statesmen and soldiers would do well not to disrupt. But these patterns are not simply diplomatic artifacts; they have a moral dimension. They depend upon mutual understandings; they are comprehensible only within a world of shared values. Nazism was a conscious and willful challenge to the very existence of such a world: a program of extermination, exile, and political dismemberment. In a sense, aggression was the least of Hitler's crimes. It is not quite right, then, to describe the conquest and occupation of Germany and the trial of Nazi leaders as so many (unavailing) efforts to deter future aggressors. They are better understood as the expressions of a collective abhorrence, a reaffirmation of our own deepest values. And it is right to say, as many people said at the time, that the war against Nazism had to end with such a reaffirmation if it was to end meaningfully at all.\n\nJustice in Settlements\n\nThe policy of unconditional surrender, directed at the government but not the people of Germany, was an appropriate response to Nazism. But it isn't always appropriate. Doing justice, in the legalist sense, isn't always the right thing to do. (I have already argued that it cannot be the goal of counter-interventions.) The cardinal mistake of the realists is to suppose that if one fights for \"universal moral principles,\" one must always fight in the same way, as if universal principles did not have concrete and diverse applications. We need, then, to look at a case where limited aims were set, not by the requirements of a realistic analysis\u2014for realism imposes no moral requirements; aggressors can be realists, too\u2014but by the argument for justice.\n\nThe Korean War\n\nThe American war in Korea was officially described as a \"police action.\" We had come to the aid of a state defending itself against a fullscale invasion, committed ourselves to the hard work of international law enforcement. The United Nations' authorization enhanced our commitment, but its terms were in fact shaped unilaterally. Once again, we were at war with aggression itself as well as with a particular foe. Now, what were the war aims of the U.S. government? One would expect that American democracy, slow to anger but terrible in its righteous wrath, should have aimed at the total eradication of the North Korean regime. In fact, our initial aims were limited in character. In the Senate debate over President Truman's decision to rush American troops into battle, it was stated repeatedly that our sole purpose was to drive the North Koreans back to the partition line and to restore the status quo ante bellum. Senator Flanders insisted that the President \"would not be within his rights in pursuing the Korean forces . . . north of the 38th parallel.\" Senator Lucas, a spokesman for the administration, \"wholeheartedly agreed.\" The debate focused on constitutional issues; there had been no declaration of war and so the President's \"rights\" were limited. At the same time, the Senate did not want to declare war and enlarge those rights; its members were satisfied with what might be called a conservative war. \"The acquisitive state,\" writes Liddell Hart, \"inherently unsatisfied, needs to gain victory in order to gain its object. . . . The conservative state can attain its object . . . by foiling the other side's bid for victory.\"\n\nThat was the American goal until we ourselves, in the immediate aftermath of MacArthur's triumph at Inchon, crossed the 38th parallel. The decision to cross is not at all easy to figure out, but it seems to be an example of military hubris far more than of democratic idealism. Its larger political and moral implications do not seem to have been thought about much at the time; the move was defended mostly in tactical terms. To halt at the old line, it was said, would have surrendered the military initiative to the enemy and allowed him to rebuild his army for a new offensive. \"The aggressor's forces should not be permitted to take refuge behind an imaginary line,\" Ambassador Austin told the UN, \"because that would recreate the threat to the peace. . . .\" I will leave aside the odd notion that the 38th parallel was an imaginary line (how then did we recognize the initial aggression?). It is not implausible to suggest that the North Koreans had no right to a military sanctuary and that attacks across the 38th parallel with the limited purpose of preventing their regroupment might be justified. In responding to an armed invasion, one can legitimately aim not merely at a successful resistance but also at some reasonable security against future attack. But when we crossed the old line, we also took on a more radical purpose. Now it was the American goal, sanctioned, again, by the UN, to unify Korea by force of arms and create a new (democratic) government. And that required not limited attacks within the borders of North Korea, but the conquest of the entire country. The question is whether wars against aggression necessarily generate such far-reaching and exalted goals. Is this what justice requires?\n\nIf it is, we would have done well to settle for something less. But it would be strange for Americans to answer that question in the affirmative, since we had formally branded the North Korean attempt to unify the country by force a criminal aggression. Secretary of State Acheson seems to have felt the difficulty when he told the Senate (during the MacArthur hearings) that unification had never been our military objective. We aimed only \"to round up the people that were putting on the aggression.\" That would have created a political vacuum in the North, he went on, and Korea would then have been unified, not through force, but \"through elections and that sort of thing. . . .\" Disingenuous as this is, it nevertheless is indicative of what the argument for justice requires. Defending the morality of American policy, Acheson is forced to insist on the limited character of our military effort and to deny that it ever was a crusade against communism. He did believe, however, that the success of our police action required something very like the conquest of North Korea.\n\nClearly, the analogy in his mind was with domestic law enforcement, where one doesn't simply stop the criminal activity and restore the status quo ante; one also \"rounds up\" the criminals and holds them for trial and punishment. But this feature of the domestic model (and hence of the legalist paradigm) is not easily carried over into the international arena. For the roundup of the aggressors will most often require a military conquest, and conquest has effects that reach far beyond the people who are rounded up. It prolongs a war in which large numbers of innocent men and women are virtually certain to die, and it puts a whole nation, as we have seen, under political tutelage. It does this even if its methods are democratic (\"free elections and that sort of thing\"), because it replaces a regime which the people of the conquered nation had not themselves sought to replace\u2014indeed, for which they had recently fought and died. Unless the activities of that regime are a standing affront to the conscience of mankind, its destruction is not a legitimate military goal. And however grim a picture one paints, the North Korean regime was not such an affront; its policies were more like those of Bismarck's than of Hitler's Germany. Its leaders may well have been guilty of criminal aggression, but their physical capture and punishment seem at most the marginal benefit of a certain sort of military victory, not a reason for seeking such a victory.\n\nThe argument at this point might be put in terms of proportionality, a doctrine often said to fix firm limits to the length of wars and the shape of settlements. In this instance, we would have to balance the costs of continued fighting against the value of punishing the aggressors. Given our present knowledge of the Chinese invasion and its consequences, we can say that the costs were disproportionate (and the aggressors never punished). But even without such knowledge, a strong case might have been made that Acheson's \"round-up\" did not warrant its likely price. On the other hand, it is characteristic of arguments of this sort that an equally strong case could have been made on the other side, simply by enlarging our conception of the purposes of the war. Proportionality is a matter of adjusting means to ends, but as the Israeli philosopher Yehuda Melzer has pointed out, there is an overwhelming tendency in wartime to adjust ends to means instead, that is, to redefine initially narrow goals in order to fit the available military forces and technologies. Perhaps the conquest of North Korea could not be defended as a means of punishing aggressors; it might nonetheless have been defended as a means of doing that and simultaneously abolishing a border that could only be (in fact has been) the focus of future tension\u2014hence, avoiding wars to come. It is necessary in such arguments to hold ends constant, but how does one do that? In practice, the inflation of ends is probably inevitable unless it is barred by considerations of justice itself.\n\nNow justice in settlements is a complex notion, but it has a certain minimal content which seems to have been understood well enough by America's leaders at the beginning of the struggle. Once that minimal content has been realized, it is the rights of the people of the enemy country that rule out further fighting, whatever its added value.b These rights were no doubt badly represented by the North Korean regime, but that in itself is not, as we have seen, a sufficient reason for a war of conquest and reconstruction. It was the crime of the aggressor to challenge individual and communal rights, and states responding to aggression must not repeat the challenge once basic values have been upheld.\n\nI can now restate the fifth revision of the legalist paradigm. Because of the collective character of states, the domestic conventions of capture and punishment do not readily fit the requirements of international society. They are unlikely to have significant deterrent effects; they are very likely to extend rather than restrict the number of people exposed to coercion and risk; and they require acts of conquest that can only be aimed at entire political communities. Except when they are directed against Nazi-like states, just wars are conservative in character; it cannot be their purpose, as it is the purpose of domestic police work, to stamp out illegal violence, but only to cope with particular violent acts. Hence the rights and limits fixed by the argument for justice: resistance, restoration, reasonable prevention. I am afraid that these are not as constraining as they may sound. It will often require a fairly decisive military defeat to persuade aggressor states that they cannot succeed in their conquests. They would not have begun the fighting, obviously, unless their leaders had high hopes. And further military action may be necessary before a peace settlement can be worked out that provides even minimal security for the victim: disengagement, demilitarization, arms control, external arbitration, and so on.c Some combination of these, appropriate to the circumstances of a particular case, constitutes a legitimate war aim. If this falls short of the \"punishment of aggression,\" it has to be said that military defeat is always punishing and that the preventive measures I have listed are also penalties, indeed, collective penalties, insofar as they involve a certain derogation of state sovereignty.\n\n\"The object in war is a better state of peace.\" And better, within the confines of the argument for justice, means more secure than the status quo ante bellum, less vulnerable to territorial expansion, safer for ordinary men and women and for their domestic self-determinations. The key words are all relative in character: not invulnerable, but less vulnerable; not safe, but safer. Just wars are limited wars; there are moral reasons for the statesmen and soldiers who fight them to be prudent and realistic. Overreaching is common in war, however, and has many causes; I do not want to deny that a certain characteristic distortion of the argument for justice is one among them. Democratic idealism in the debased forms of self-righteousness and zeal sometimes prolongs wars, but so does aristocratic pride, military hubris, religious and political intolerance. A few sentences from David Hume's essay \"On the Balance of Power\" suggest that we should add to the list the \"obstinacy and passion\" with which even sophisticated statesmen, like those of eighteenth-century Britain, defend the balance:\n\nThe same peace which was afterwards made at Ryswick in 1697 was offered so early as the year ninety-two; that concluded at Utrecht in 1712 might have been finished on as good conditions . . . in the year eight; and we might have given at Frankfurt in 1743 the same terms which we were glad to receive at Aix-la-Chappelle in the year forty-\u00adeight. Above half of our wars with France . . . are owing more to our own imprudent vehemence than to the ambition of our neighbor.\n\nThe realists have (unrealistically) looked for a single enemy; in fact, they have more than they can handle without the support of a fully developed moral doctrine.\n\nIn the heated debates over America's Korean war, those political and military figures favoring the expansion of the conflict frequently cited the maxim: in war there is no substitute for victory. The idea, it should be said, is more readily traceable to Clausewitz than to Woodrow Wilson; it is anyway a silly idea, since it offers no definition of victory. In the case at hand, that word was presumably meant to describe a condition in which the enemy was utterly broken, without further resources. Given that meaning, it can safely be said that the maxim is historically as well as morally false. Nor is its falsehood an esoteric doctrine; it was widely accepted among American leaders in the early 1950s, and the government was able to sustain, through a difficult time, its search for a substitute. But the maxim is right in another sense. In a just war, its goals properly limited, there is indeed nothing like winning. There are alternative outcomes, of course, but these are accepted only at some cost to basic human values. And that means that there are sometimes moral reasons for prolonging a war. Consider those long months when the Korean negotiations were stalemated over the issue of the forcible repatriation of prisoners. The American negotiators insisted on the principle of free choice, lest the peace be as coercive as war itself, and accepted the continuation of the fighting rather than yield on that point. They were probably right, though it is difficult at this distance to weigh the values involved\u2014and here the doctrine of proportionality is surely relevant. In any case, it follows from the argument for justice that wars can end too soon. There is always a humanitarian impulse to stop the fighting, and attempts are often made by the great powers (or the United Nations) to impose a cease-fire. But it isn't always true that such cease-fires serve the purposes of humanity. Unless they create a \"better state of peace,\" they may simply fix the conditions under which the fighting will be resumed, at a later time and with a new intensity. Or they may confirm a loss of values the avoidance of which was worth a war.\n\nThe theory of ends in war is shaped by the same rights that justify the fighting in the first place\u2014most importantly, by the right of nations, even of enemy nations, to continued national existence and, except in extreme circumstances, to the political prerogatives of nationality. The theory incorporates arguments for prudence and realism; it is an effective bar to total war; and it is, I think, harmonious with other features of jus ad bellum. But the case is different with the theory of means, to which I now must turn. Here there appear to be tensions and even contradictions that are internal to the argument for justice. It is with reference to the conduct of war and not to the end for which it is fought that the urgent need to do justice seems sometimes to lead statesmen and soldiers to act unjustly, that is, to fight without restraint and with a crusading zeal.\n\nOnce we have agreed upon the character of aggression, and of those threats of war that constitute aggression, and of those acts of colonial oppression and foreign interference that justify interventions and counter-interventions, we have also made it possible to identify enemies in the world: governments and armies that can rightly be (and perhaps should be) resisted. The wars that result from this resistance are the responsibility of those governments and armies; the hell of war is their crime. And if it isn't always true that their leaders ought to be punished for their crimes, it is vitally important that they not be allowed to benefit from them. If they can rightly be resisted, they should also be successfully resisted. Hence the temptation to fight by any means\u2014which brings us up against what I have described in Part One as the fundamental dualism of our conception of war. For the rules of encounter take no cognizance whatever of the relative guilt of governments and armies. The theory of jus in bello, though it, too, is founded on the rights of life and liberty, stands independently of and apart from the theory of aggression. The limits it imposes are imposed equally and indifferently on aggressors and their adversaries. And the acceptance of these limits\u2014moderation in battle\u2014may well make it difficult to achieve the ends of war, even if these are moderate ends. Can the rules, then, be set aside for the sake of a just cause? I shall try to answer that question, or to suggest some ways in which it might be answered, but only after examining in detail the nature and practical workings of the rules themselves.\n\n It was once argued by jurists and philosophers that conquerors had a right to kill or enslave the citizens of a conquered state. Against this view, in the name of natural law or human rights, Montesquieu and Rousseau claimed that the conqueror's prerogatives extended only to the state, not to the individual men and women who composed it. \"The state is the association of men, not the men themselves; the citizen may perish and the man remain.\" (The Spirit of the Laws, X.3.) \"Sometimes it is possible to kill the State without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not necessary to the gaining of its object.\" (The Social Contract, I.4.) But this is still too permissive a view, for the rights of individuals include the right of political association, and if the citizen is killed or the state destroyed, something of the man dies too. Even the destruction of a particular regime is only defensible, as I will argue, in exceptional circumstances.\n\n Or it is the rights of one's own people. Consider the classic discussion of proportionality in war in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (II.2). Hector and Troilus are debating the surrender of Helen:\n\nHector. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost\n\nThe keeping.\n\nTroilus. What's aught but as 'tis valued?\n\nHector. But value dwells not in particular will.\n\nIt holds his estimate and dignity\n\nAs well wherein 'tis precious of itself\n\nAs in the prizer. 'Tis mad idolatry\n\nTo make the service greater than the god.\n\nTroilus quickly switches the argument from Helen herself to the honor of the Trojan warriors, and so wins the debate, for the value of honor seems indeed to dwell in particular wills. The move is typical, and it can be countered only with a moral claim: that the Trojan warriors have no right to put a whole city at risk for the sake of their own honor. It is not that the sacrifice is greater than the god, but that the men, women, and children likely to be sacrificed are not necessarily believers in the god and don't share in the worship.\n\n The list can be extended to include the temporary occupation of enemy territory, pending a peace settlement or for some period of time stipulated in the settlement. It does not include annexation, even as a measure of security against further attack. This is so partly for reasons that Marx suggests in his \"Second Address\" (with reference to Alsace-Lorraine): \"If limits are to be fixed by military interests, there will be no end to claims, because every military line is necessarily faulty, and may be improved by annexing some outlying territory; and moreover, they can never be fixed finally and fairly because they always must be imposed by the conqueror upon the conquered and consequently carry within them the seeds of fresh wars.\" It is true, however, that some lines are more \"faulty\" than others and that one can make out both plausible and implausible versions of the argument Marx is opposing. A stronger case against annexation, I should think, rests on the rights of the inhabitants of the annexed land.\nPart Three\n\nThe War Convention\n\nWar's Means and the Importance of Fighting Well\n\nThe purpose of the war convention is to establish the duties of belligerent states, of army commanders, and of individual soldiers with reference to the conduct of hostilities. I have already argued that these duties are precisely the same for states and soldiers fighting wars of aggression and wars of defense. In our judgments of the fighting, we abstract from all consideration of the justice of the cause. We do this because the moral status of individual soldiers on both sides is very much the same: they are led to fight by their loyalty to their own states and by their lawful obedience. They are most likely to believe that their wars are just, and while the basis of that belief is not necessarily rational inquiry but, more often, a kind of unquestioning acceptance of official propaganda, nevertheless they are not criminals; they face one another as moral equals.\n\nThe domestic analogy is of little help here. War as an activity (the conduct rather than the initiation of the fighting) has no equivalent in a settled civil society. It is not like an armed robbery, for example, even when its ends are similar in kind. Indeed, it is the contrast rather than the correspondence that illuminates the war convention. The contrast is readily explicated; we have only to think about the following sorts of cases. (1) In the course of a bank robbery, a thief shoots a guard reaching for his gun. The thief is guilty of murder, even if he claims that he acted in self-defense. Since he had no right to rob the bank, he also had no right to defend himself against the bank's defenders. He is no less guilty for killing the guard than he would be for killing an unarmed bystander\u2014a customer, say, depositing his money. The thief's associates might praise him for the first killing, which was in their terms necessary, and condemn him for the second, which was wanton and dangerous. But we won't judge him in that way, because the idea of necessity doesn't apply to criminal activity: it was not necessary to rob the bank in the first place.\n\nNow, aggression is also a criminal activity, but our view of its participants is very different: (2) In the course of an aggressive war, a soldier shoots another soldier, a member of the enemy army defending his homeland. Assuming a conventional firefight, this is not called murder; nor is the soldier regarded after the war as a murderer, even by his former enemies. The case is in fact no different from what it would be if the second soldier shot the first. Neither man is a criminal, and so both can be said to act in self-defense. We call them murderers only when they take aim at noncombatants, innocent bystanders (civilians), wounded or disarmed soldiers. If they shoot men trying to surrender or join in the massacre of the inhabitants of a captured town, we have (or ought to have) no hesitation in condemning them. But so long as they fight in accordance with the rules of war, no condemnation is possible.\n\nThe crucial point is that there are rules of war, though there are no rules of robbery (or of rape or murder). The moral equality of the battlefield distinguishes combat from domestic crime. If we are to judge what goes on in the course of a battle, then, \"we must treat both combatants,\" as Henry Sidgwick has written, \"on the assumption that each believes himself in the right.\" And we must ask \"how the duties of a belligerent, fighting in the name of justice, and under the restraints of morality, are to be determined.\" Or, more directly: without reference to the justice of their cause, how can soldiers fight justly?\n\nUtility and Proportionality\n\nThe Argument of Henry Sidgwick\n\nSidgwick answers this question with a twofold rule that neatly sums up the most common utilitarian view of the war convention. In the conduct of hostilities, it is not permissible to do \"any mischief which does not tend materially to the end [of victory], nor any mischief of which the conduciveness to the end is slight in comparison with the amount of the mischief.\" What is being prohibited here is excessive harm. Two criteria are proposed for the determination of excess. The first is that of victory itself, or what is usually called military necessity. The second depends upon some notion of proportionality: we are to weigh \"the mischief done,\" which presumably means not only the immediate harm to individuals but also any injury to the permanent interest of mankind, against the contribution that mischief makes to the end of victory.\n\nThe argument as stated, however, sets the interests of individuals and of mankind at a lesser value than the victory that is being sought. Any act of force that contributes in a significant way to winning the war is likely to be called permissible; any officer who asserts the \"conduciveness\" of the attack he is planning is likely to have his way. Once again, proportionality turns out to be a hard criterion to apply, for there is no ready way to establish an independent or stable view of the values against which the destruction of war is to be measured. Our moral judgments (if Sidgwick is right) wait upon purely military considerations and will rarely be sustained in the face of an analysis of battle conditions or campaign strategy by a qualified professional. It would be difficult to condemn soldiers for anything they did in the course of a battle or a war that they honestly believed, and had good reason to believe, was necessary, or important, or simply useful in determining the outcome. Sidgwick apparently thought this conclusion inescapable, once we agree to make no judgment as to the relative utility of different outcomes. For then we must grant that soldiers are entitled to try to win the wars they are entitled to fight. That means that they can do what they must to win; they can do their utmost, so long as what they do is actually related to winning. Indeed, they should do their utmost, so as to end the fighting as quickly as possible. The rules of war rule out only purposeless or wanton violence.\n\nThat is not, however, a small achievement. If it were made effective in practice, it would eliminate a great deal of the cruelty of war. For it has to be said of many of the people who die in the course of a war, soldiers as well as civilians, that their deaths do not \"tend materially to the end [of victory]\" or that the contribution they make to that end is \"slight\" indeed. These deaths are nothing more than the inevitable consequence of putting deadly weapons into the hands of undisciplined soldiers, and armed men into the hands of stupid or fanatical generals. Every military history is a tale of violence and destruction out of all relation to the requirements of combat: massacres on the one hand and, on the other, ill-planned and wasteful battles that are little better than massacres.\n\nSidgwick's twofold rule seeks to impose an economy of force. It requires discipline and calculation. Any intelligent military strategy, of course, imposes the same requirements. On Sidgwick's view, a good general is a moral man. He keeps his soldiers in check, keyed for battle, so that they don't run amuck among civilians; he sends them to fight only after having thought through a battle plan, and his plan is aimed at winning as quickly and as cheaply as possible. He is like General Roberts at the battle of Paardeberg (in the Boer War), who called off the frontal assaults on the Boer trenches ordered by Kitchener, his second in command, saying that the loss of life \"did not appear . . . to be warranted by the exigencies of the situation.\" A simple decision, though not as common in war as one might expect. I don't know if it was made out of any deep concern for human life; perhaps Roberts was thinking only of his honor as a general (who does not send his men to be slaughtered), or perhaps he was worried about the capacity of the troops to renew the fighting on the following day. It was in any case exactly the sort of decision that Sidgwick would require.\n\nBut though the limits of utility and proportionality are very impor\u00adtant, they do not exhaust the war convention; indeed, they don't explain the most critical of the judgments we make of soldiers and their generals. If they did, moral life in wartime would be a great deal easier than it is. The war convention invites soldiers to calculate costs and benefits only up to a point, and at that point it establishes a series of clearcut rules\u2014moral fortifications, so to speak, that can be stormed only at great moral cost. Nor can a soldier justify his violation of the rules by referring to the necessities of his combat situation or by arguing that nothing else but what he did would have contributed significantly to victory. Soldiers who reason in that way can never violate Sidgwick's limits, since all that Sidgwick requires is that soldiers . . . reason in that way. But justifications of this kind are not acceptable, or not always acceptable, either in law or morality. They have been \"generally rejected,\" according to the U.S. Army's handbook of military law, \" . . . for acts forbidden by the customary and conventional laws of war, inasmuch as [these laws] have been developed and framed with consideration for the concept of military necessity.\" Now, what sorts of acts are these, and what are the grounds for forbidding them, if Sidgwick's criteria don't apply? I will have to explain later on how \"military necessity\" is taken into account in framing the prohibitions; I am concerned now with their general character.\n\nBelligerent armies are entitled to try to win their wars, but they are not entitled to do anything that is or seems to them necessary to win. They are subject to a set of restrictions that rest in part on the agreements of states but that also have an independent foundation in moral principle. I don't think that these restrictions have ever been expounded in utilitarian fashion, though it is no doubt a good thing that they be expounded and that military conduct be shaped to their requirements. When we abstract from the utility of particular outcomes, focus exclusively on jus in bello, utilitarian calculations are radically constrained. It might be said that if every war in a series extending indefinitely into the future were to be fought with no other limits than those proposed by Sidgwick, the consequences for mankind would be worse than if every war in that same series were fought within limits fixed by some additional set of prohibitions.a But saying that does not suggest which prohibitions are the right ones. And any effort to figure out the right ones by calculating the likely effects over time of fighting wars in certain ways (an enormously difficult task) is sure to run up against unconstrained utilitarian arguments: that victory here and now will end the series of wars, or reduce the probability of future fighting, or avoid immediate and horrifying consequences. Hence anything should be permitted that is useful and proportionate to the victory being sought. Utilitarianism is obviously most effective when it points to outcomes about which we have (relatively) clear ideas. For that reason, it is more likely to tell us that the rules of war should be overridden in this or that case than it is to tell us what the rules are\u2014beyond Sidgwick's minimum injunctions which can't and don't ever have to be overridden.\n\nUntil the constraints are lifted and the substantial effects of victory and defeat are weighed in the balance, utilitarianism provides only a general endorsement of the war convention (the twofold rule and any others commonly accepted); after that, it is unlikely to specify rules at all but only particular courses of action. When to lift the constraints is one of the hardest questions in the theory of war. I will try to answer it in Part Four, and I will describe at that time the positive role of utilitarian calculation: to mark out those special cases where victory is so important or defeat so frightening that it is morally, as well as militarily, necessary to override the rules of war. But such an argument is not possible until we have recognized rules beyond Sidgwick's and understood their moral force.\n\nMeanwhile, it is worth dwelling for a moment on the precise nature of the general endorsement. The utility of fighting limited wars is of two sorts. It has to do not only with reducing the total amount of suffering, but also with holding open the possibility of peace and the resumption of pre-war activities. For if we are (at least formally) indifferent as to which side wins, we must assume that these activities will in fact be resumed and with the same or similar actors. It is important, then, to make sure that victory is also in some sense and for some period of time a settlement among the belligerents. And if that is to be possible, the war must be fought, as Sidgwick says, so as to avoid \"the danger of provoking reprisals and of causing bitterness that will long outlast\" the fighting. The bitterness that Sidgwick has in mind might, of course, be the consequence of an outcome thought to be unjust (like the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871), but it may also result from military conduct thought to be unnecessary, brutal or unfair, or simply \"against the rules.\" So long as defeat follows from what are widely regarded as legitimate acts of war, it is at least possible that it will leave behind no festering resentment, no sense of scores unsettled, no deeply felt need for individual or collective revenge. (The government or officers' corps of the defeated state may have reasons of its own to encourage such feelings, but that is another matter.) An analogy might be drawn, once again, with a family feud, its origin long forgotten, its justice no longer at issue. A feud of this sort may be carried on for many years, marked by the occasional killing of a father or a grown-up son, an uncle or a nephew, first of one family, then of the other. So long as nothing more happens, the possibility of reconciliation remains open. But if someone in a fit of anger or passion, or even by accident or mistake, kills a woman or a child, the result may well be a massacre or a series of massacres, not stopping until one of the families is wiped out or driven away. The case is at least similar to intermittent war among states. Some limits must be commonly accepted, and more or less consistently maintained, if there is ever to be a peace short of the complete submission of one of the belligerents.\n\nIt is probably true that any limits will be useful here, so long as they are in fact commonly accepted. But no limit is accepted simply because it is thought that it will be useful. The war convention must first be morally plausible to large numbers of men and women; it must correspond to our sense of what is right. Only then will we recognize it as a serious obstacle to this or that military decision, and only then can we debate its utility in this or that particular case. For otherwise we would not know which obstacle out of the infinite number that are conceivable, and the very large number that are historically recorded, is to be the subject of our debates. With regard to the rules of war, utilitarianism lacks creative power. Beyond the minimal limits of \"conduciveness\" and proportionality, it simply confirms our customs and conventions, whatever they are, or it suggests that they be overridden; but it does not provide us with customs and conventions. For that, we must turn again to a theory of rights.\n\nHuman Rights\n\nThe Rape of the Italian Women\n\nThe importance of rights may best be suggested if we look at a historical example placed, as it were, on the margin of Sidgwick's argument. Consider, then, the case of the Moroccan soldiers fighting with Free French forces in Italy in 1943. These were mercenary troops who fought on terms, and the terms included license to rape and plunder in enemy territory. (Italy was enemy territory until the Badoglio regime joined the war against Germany in October, 1943; I don't know if the license was then withdrawn; if so, the withdrawal seems to have been ineffective.) A large number of women were raped; we know the number, roughly, because the Italian government later offered them a modest pension. Now, the argument for giving soldiers privileges of this sort is a utilitarian one. It was made long ago by Vitoria in the course of a discussion of the right of sack: it is not unlawful to put a city to sack, he says, if it is \"necessary for the conduct of the war . . . as a spur to the courage of the troops.\" If this argument were applied to the case at hand, Sidgwick might respond that \"necessary\" is probably the wrong word here and that the contribution of rape and plunder to military victory is \"slight\" in comparison with the harm caused to the women involved. That is not an unpersuasive response, but it is not entirely convincing either, and it hardly gets at the root of our condemnation of rape.\n\nWhat is it we object to in the license given those Moroccan soldiers? Surely our judgment does not hang on the fact that rape is only a trivial or inefficient \"spur\" to masculine courage (if it is a spur at all: I doubt that brave men are the most likely rapists). Rape is a crime, in war as in peace, because it violates the rights of the woman who is attacked. To offer her as bait to a mercenary soldier is to treat her as if she were not a person at all but a mere object, a prize or trophy of war. It is the recognition of her personality that shapes our judgment.b And this is true even in the absence of a philosophical conception of human rights, as the following passage from the Book of Deuteronomy\u2014the first attempt that I have found to regulate the wartime treatment of women\u2014clearly indicates:\n\nWhen thou goest forth to battle against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God deliverest them into thy hands, and thou carriest them away captive, and seest among the captives a woman of goodly form, and thou hast a desire unto her, and wouldst take her to thee to wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thy house . . . and she shall . . . bewail her father and mother a full month; and after that thou mayest go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And . . . if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her . . . for money, thou shalt not deal with her as a slave . . .\n\nThis falls far short of contemporary views, though I expect it would be as difficult to enforce today as it was in the time of the Judean kings. Whatever theological or sociological account of the rule is appropriate, it is clear that what is at work here is a conception of the captive woman as a person who must be respected, despite her capture; hence the month of mourning before she is sexually used, the requirement of marriage, the ban on slavery. She has lost some of her rights, we might say, but not all of them. Our own war convention requires a similar understanding. Both the prohibitions that are covered by Sidgwick's twofold rule and those that lie beyond it are properly conceptualized in terms of rights. The rules of \"fighting well\" are simply a series of recognitions of men and women who have a moral standing independent of and resistant to the exigencies of war.\n\nA legitimate act of war is one that does not violate the rights of the people against whom it is directed. It is, once again, life and liberty that are at issue, though we are now concerned with these two as they are individually rather than collectively possessed. I can sum up their substance in terms I have used before: no one can be forced to fight or to risk his life, no one can be threatened with war or warred against, unless through some act of his own he has surrendered or lost his rights. This fundamental principle underlies and shapes the judgments we make of wartime conduct. It is only inadequately expressed in positive international law, but the prohibitions established there have this principle as their source. Lawyers sometimes talk as if the legal rules were simply humanitarian in character, as if the ban on rape or on the deliberate killing of civilians were nothing more than a piece of kindness. But when soldiers respect these bans, they are not acting kindly or gently or magnanimously; they are acting justly. If they are humanitarian soldiers, they may indeed do more than is required of them\u2014sharing their food with civilians, for example, rather than merely not raping or killing them. But the ban on rape and murder is a matter of right. The law recognizes this right, specifies, limits, and sometimes distorts it, but doesn't establish it. And we can recognize it ourselves, and sometimes do, even in the absence of legal recognition.\n\nStates exist to defend the rights of their members, but it is a difficulty in the theory of war that the collective defense of rights renders them individually problematic. The immediate problem is that the soldiers who do the fighting, though they can rarely be said to have chosen to fight, lose the rights they are supposedly defending. They gain war rights as combatants and potential prisoners, but they can now be attacked and killed at will by their enemies. Simply by fighting, whatever their private hopes and intentions, they have lost their title to life and liberty, and they have lost it even though, unlike aggressor states, they have committed no crime. \"Soldiers are made to be killed,\" as Napoleon once said; that is why war is hell.c But even if we take our standpoint in hell, we can still say that no one else is made to be killed. This distinction is the basis of the rules of war.\n\nEveryone else retains his rights, and states remain committed, and entitled, to defend these rights whether their wars are aggressive or not. But now they do this not by fighting but by entering into agreements among themselves (which fix the details of noncombatant immunity), by observing these agreements and expecting reciprocal observance, and by threatening to punish military leaders or individual soldiers who violate them. This last point is crucial for an understanding of the war convention. Even an aggressor state can rightly punish war criminals\u2014enemy soldiers, for example, who rape or kill civilians. The rules of war apply with equal force to aggressors and their adversaries. And we can now see that it is not merely the moral equality of soldiers that requires this mutual submission; it is also the rights of civilians. Soldiers fighting for an aggressor state are not themselves criminals: hence their war rights are the same as those of their opponents. Soldiers fighting against an aggressor state have no license to become criminals: hence they are subject to the same restraints as their opponents. The enforcement of these restraints is one of the forms of law enforcement in international society, and the law can be enforced even by criminal states against \"policemen\" who deliberately kill innocent bystanders. For these bystanders do not forfeit their rights when their states wrongly go to war. An army warring against aggression can violate the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of the aggressor state, but its soldiers cannot violate the life and liberty of enemy civilians.\n\nThe war convention rests first on a certain view of combatants, which stipulates their battlefield equality. But it rests more deeply on a certain view of noncombatants, which holds that they are men and women with rights and that they cannot be used for some military purpose, even if it is a legitimate purpose. At this point, the argument is not entirely dissimilar from that which obtains in domestic society, where a man fighting in self-defense, for example, is barred from attacking or injuring innocent bystanders or third parties. He can attack only his attackers. In domestic society, however, it is relatively easy to distinguish bystanders and third parties, whereas in international society, because of the collectivist character of states and armies, the distinction is harder to make. Indeed, it is often said that it cannot be made at all, for soldiers are only coerced civilians, and civilians are willing supporters of their armies in the field. And then it cannot be what is due to the victims but only what is necessary for the battle that determines our judgments of wartime conduct. Here is the critical test, then, for anyone who argues that the rules of war are grounded in a theory of rights: to make the combatant\/noncombatant distinction plausible in terms of the theory, that is, to provide a detailed account of the history of individual rights under the conditions of war and battle\u2014how they are retained, lost, exchanged (for war rights) and recovered. That is my purpose in the chapters that follow.\n\n The alternative utilitarian argument is that of General von Moltke: additional prohibitions merely drag out the fighting, while \"the greatest kindness in war is to bring it to a speedy conclusion.\" But if we imagine a series of wars, this argument probably won't work. At any given level of restraint, let's say, a war will take so many months. If one of the belligerents breaks the rules, it might end more quickly, but only if the other side fails or is unable to reciprocate. If both sides fight at a lower level of restraint, the way may be shorter or longer; there isn't going to be any general rule. And if restraints have broken down in one war, they are unlikely to be maintained in the next, so any immediate benefits probably won't show up in the balance over time.\n\n In a powerful essay entitled \"Human Personality,\" Simone Weil has attacked this way of talking about what we can and cannot do to other people. Rights talk, she claims, turns \"what should have been a cry of protest from the depth of the heart . . . into a shrill nagging of claims and counter-claims. . . .\" And she applies her argument to a case very much like ours: \"if a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation, the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.\" (Selected Essays: 1934\u20131943, ed. Richard Rees, London, 1962, p. 21.) Weil would have us refer ourselves instead to some notion of the sacred, of the image of God in man. Perhaps some such ultimate reference is necessary, but I think she is wrong in her claim about the \"sound\" of rights talk. In fact, arguments about human rights have played a significant part in the struggle against oppression, including the sexual oppression of women.\n\n In quoting this sentence I do not mean to endorse the military nihilism it represents. Napoleon, especially in his later years, was given to statements of this sort, and they are not uncommon in the literature on war. One writer claims that they illustrate a quality of leadership that he calls \"robustness.\" Napoleon's exclamation, \"I do not care a fig for the lives of a million men,\" is, he says, an extreme example of robustness. One could think of better names. (Alfred H. Burne, The Art of War on Land, London, 1944, p. 8.)\n\nNoncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity\n\nThe Status of Individuals\n\nThe first principle of the war convention is that, once war has begun, soldiers are subject to attack at any time (unless they are wounded or captured). And the first criticism of the convention is that this principle is unfair; it is an example of class legislation. It does not take into account that few soldiers are wholeheartedly committed to the business of fighting. Most of them do not identify themselves as warriors; at least, that is not their only or their chief identity; nor is fighting their chosen occupation. Nor, again, do they spend most of their time fighting; they neglect war whenever they can. I want to turn now to a recurrent incident in military history in which soldiers, simply by not fighting, appear to regain their right to life. In fact, they do not regain it, but the appearance will help us understand the grounds on which the right is held, and the facts of the case will clarify the meaning of its forfeiture.\n\nNaked Soldiers\n\nThe same tale appears again and again in war memoirs and in letters from the front. It has this general form: a soldier on patrol or on sniper duty catches an enemy soldier unaware, holds him in his gunsight, easy to kill, and then must decide whether to shoot him or let the opportunity pass. There is at such moments a great reluctance to shoot\u2014not always for moral reasons, but for reasons that are relevant nonetheless to the moral argument I want to make. No doubt, a deep psychological uneasiness about killing plays a part in these cases. This uneasiness, in fact, has been offered as a general explanation of the reluctance of soldiers to fight at all. In the course of a study of combat behavior in World War II, S. L. A. Marshall discovered that the great majority of men on the front line never fired their guns. He thought this the result above all of their civilian upbringing, of the powerful inhibitions acquired in its course against deliberately injuring another human being. But in the cases I shall list, this inhibition does not seem a critical factor. None of the five soldiers who wrote the accounts was a \"non-firer,\" nor, so far as I can tell, were the other men who figure importantly in their stories. Moreover, they give reasons for not killing or for hesitating to kill, and this the soldiers interviewed by Marshall were rarely able to do.\n\n1) I have taken the first case from a letter written by the poet Wilfred Owen to his brother in England on May 14, 1917.\n\nWhen we were marching along a sunken road, we got the wind up once. We knew we must have passed the German outposts somewhere on our left rear. All at once, the cry rang down, \"Line the bank.\" There was a tremendous scurry of fixing bayonets, tugging of breech covers, and opening pouches, but when we peeped over, behold a solitary German, haring along toward us, with his head down and his arms stretched in front of him, as if he were going to take a high dive through the earth (which I have no doubt he would like to have done). Nobody offered to shoot him, he looked too funny. . . .\n\nPerhaps everyone was waiting for an order to shoot, but Owen's meaning is undoubtedly that no one wanted to shoot. A soldier who looks funny is not at that moment a military threat; he is not a fighting man but simply a man, and one does not kill men. In this case, indeed, it would have been superfluous to do so: the comical German was soon taken prisoner. But that is not always possible, as the remaining cases suggest, and the reluctance or refusal to kill has nothing to do with the existence of a military alternative. There is always a nonmilitary alternative.\n\n2) In his autobiography Good-bye to All That, Robert Graves recalls the only time that he \"refrained from shooting a German\" who was neither wounded nor a prisoner.\n\nWhile sniping from a knoll in the support line, where we had a concealed loop-hole, I saw a German, about seven hundred yards away, through my telescopic sights. He was taking a bath in the German third line. I disliked the idea of shooting a naked man, so I handed the rifle to the sergeant with me. \"Here, take this. You're a better shot than I am.\" He got him; but I had not stayed to watch.\n\nI hesitate to say that what is involved here is a moral feeling, certainly not a moral feeling that is conceived to extend across class lines. But even if we describe it as the disdain of an officer and a gentleman for conduct that appears to be unmanly or unheroic, Graves' \"dislike\" still depends upon a morally important recognition. A naked man, like a funny man, is not a soldier. And what if the obedient and presumably unfeeling sergeant had not been with him?\n\n3) During the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell had a similar experience as a sniper working from a forward position in the republican lines. It would probably never have occurred to Orwell to hand his gun down the hierarchy of ranks; in any case, his was an anarchist battalion, and there was no hierarchy.\n\nAt this moment a man, presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely to hit a running man at a hundred yards. . . . Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had come here to shoot at \"Fascists;\" but a man who is holding up his trousers isn't a \"Fascist,\" he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don't feel like shooting at him.\n\nOrwell says, \"you don't feel like\" rather than \"you should not,\" and the difference between these two is important. But the fundamental recognition is the same as in the other cases and more fully articulated. Moreover, Orwell tells us that this \"is the kind of thing that happens all the time in wars,\" though with what evidence he says that, and whether he means that one doesn't feel like shooting or that one doesn't shoot \"all the time,\" I don't know.\n\n4) Raleigh Trevelyan, a British soldier in World War II, has published a \"diary of Anzio\" in which he recounts the following episode.\n\nThere was a wonderfully vulgar sunrise. Everything was the color of pink geraniums, and birds were singing. We felt like Noah must have done when he saw his rainbow. Suddenly Viner pointed across the stretch of scrubby heath. An individual, dressed in German uniform, was wandering like a sleep-walker across our line of fire. It was clear that for the moment he had forgotten war and\u2014as we had been doing\u2014was reveling in the promise of warmth and spring. \"Shall I bump him off?\" asked Viner, without a note of expression in his voice. I had to decide quickly. \"No,\" I replied, \"just scare him away.\"\n\nHere, as in the Orwell passage, the crucial feature is the discovery of a man \"similar to yourself,\" doing \"as we had been doing.\" Of course, two soldiers shooting at one another are quite precisely similar; one is doing what the other is doing, and both are engaged in what can be called a peculiarly human activity. But the sense of being a \"fellow-creature\" depends for obvious reasons upon a different sort of identity, one that is entirely dissociated from anything threatening. The fellowship of spring (reveling in the sun) is a good example, though even that is not untouched by the pressures of \"military necessity.\"\n\nOnly Sergeant Chesteron didn't laugh. He said that we should have killed the fellow, since his friends would now be told precisely where our trenches were.\n\nSergeants seem to bear much of the burden of war.\n\n5) The most reflective of the accounts I have found is by an Italian soldier who fought the Austrians in World War I: Emilio Lussu, later a socialist leader and anti-fascist exile. Lussu, then a lieutenant, together with a corporal, had moved during the night into a position overlooking the Austrian trenches. He watched the Austrians having morning coffee and felt a kind of amazement, as if he had not expected to find anything human in the enemy lines.\n\nThose strongly defended trenches, which we had attacked so many times without success had ended by seeming to us inanimate, like desolate buildings uninhabited by men, the refuge only of mysterious and terrible beings of whom we knew nothing. Now they were showing themselves to us as they really were, men and soldiers like us, in uniform like us, moving about, talking, and drinking coffee, just as our own comrades behind us were doing at that moment.\n\nA young officer appears and Lussu takes aim at him; then the Austrian lights a cigarette and Lussu pauses. \"This cigarette formed an invisible link between us. No sooner did I see its smoke than I wanted a cigarette myself. . . .\" Behind perfect cover, he has time to think about his decision. He felt the war justified, \"a hard necessity.\" He recognized that he had obligations to the men under his command. \"I knew it was my duty to fire.\" And yet he did not. He hesitated, he writes, because the Austrian officer was so entirely oblivious to the danger that threatened him.\n\nI reasoned like this: To lead a hundred, even a thousand, men against another hundred, or thousand, was one thing; but to detach one man from the rest and say to him, as it were: \"Don't move, I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to kill you\"\u2014that was different. . . . To fight is one thing, but to kill a man is another. And to kill him like that is to murder him.\n\nLussu, like Graves, turned to his corporal but (perhaps because he was a socialist) with a question, not an order. \"Look here\u2014I'm not going to fire on a man alone, like that. Will you?\" . . . \"No, I won't either.\" Here the line has been clearly drawn between the member of an army who makes war together with his comrades and the individual who stands alone. Lussu objected to stalking a human prey. What else, however, does a sniper do?\n\nIt is not against the rules of war as we currently understand them to kill soldiers who look funny, who are taking a bath, holding up their pants, reveling in the sun, smoking a cigarette. The refusal of these five men, nevertheless, seems to go to the heart of the war convention. For what does it mean to say that someone has a right to life? To say that is to recognize a fellow creature, who is not threatening me, whose activities have the savor of peace and camaraderie, whose person is as valuable as my own. An enemy has to be described differently, and though the stereotypes through which he is seen are often grotesque, they have a certain truth. He alienates himself from me when he tries to kill me, and from our common humanity. But the alienation is temporary, the humanity imminent. It is restored, as it were, by the prosaic acts that break down the stereotypes in each of the five stories. Because he is funny, naked, and so on, my enemy is changed, as Lussu says, into a man. \"A man!\"\n\nThe case might be different if we imagine this man to be a wholehearted soldier. In his bath, smoking his morning cigarette, he is thinking only of the coming battle and of how many of his enemies he will kill. He is engaged in war-making just as I am engaged in writing this book; he thinks about it all the time or at the oddest moments. But this is an unlikely picture of an ordinary soldier. War is not in fact his enterprise, but rather surviving this battle, avoiding the next. Mostly, he hides, is frightened, doesn't fire, prays for a minor wound, a voyage home, a long rest. And when we see him at rest, we assume that he is thinking of home and peace, as we would be. If that is so, how can it be justified to kill him? Yet it is justified, as most of the soldiers in the five stories understand. Their refusals seem, even to them, to fly in the face of military duty. Rooted in a moral recognition, they are nevertheless more passionate than principled decisions. They are acts of kindness, and insofar as they entail any danger at all or lower minutely the odds for victory later, they may be likened to superogatory acts. Not that they involve doing more than is morally required; they involve doing less than is permitted.\n\nThe standards of permissibility rest on the rights of individuals, but they are not precisely defined by those rights. For definition is a complex process, historical as well as theoretical in character, and conditioned in a significant way by the pressure of military necessity. It is time now to try to see what that pressure can and cannot do, and the \"naked soldier\" cases provide a useful instance. In the nineteenth century, an effort was made to protect one type of \"naked soldier\": the man on guard duty outside his post or at the edge of his lines. The reasons given for singling out this lone figure are similar to those expressed in the five stories. \"No other term than murder,\" wrote an English student of war, \"expresses the killing of a lone sentry by a pot shot at long range. It [is] like shooting a partridge sitting.\" The same idea is obviously at work in the code of military conduct that Francis Lieber drafted for the Union Army in the American Civil War: \"Outposts, sentinels, pickets are not to be fired upon, except to drive them in. . . .\" Now, a war is easily imaginable in which this idea was extended, so that only soldiers actually fighting, hundreds against hundreds, thousands against thousands, as Lussu says, could be attacked. Such a war would be constituted as a series of set battles, formally or informally announced in advance, and broken off in some clear fashion. The pursuit of a defeated army could be allowed, so neither side need be denied the possibility of a decisive victory. But perpetual harassment, sniping, ambush, surprise attack\u2014all these would be ruled out. Wars have indeed been fought in this way, but the arrangements have never been stable, because they give a systematic advantage to the army that is larger and better equipped. It is the weaker side that persistently refuses to fix any limits on the vulnerability of enemy soldiers (the extreme form of this refusal is guerrilla war), pleading military necessity. What does this mean?\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (1)\n\nThe plea takes a standard form. This or that course of action, it is said, \"is necessary to compel the submission of the enemy with the least possible expenditure of time, life, and money.\" That is the core of what the Germans call kriegsraison, reason of war. The doctrine justifies not only whatever is necessary to win the war, but also whatever is necessary to reduce the risks of losing, or simply to reduce losses or the likelihood of losses in the course of the war. In fact, it is not about necessity at all; it is a way of speaking in code, or a hyperbolical way of speaking, about probability and risk. Even if one grants the right of states and armies and individual soldiers to reduce their risks, a particular course of action would be necessary to that end only if no other course improved the odds of battle at all. But there will always be a range of tactical and strategic options that conceivably could improve the odds. There will be choices to make, and these are moral as well as military choices. Some of them are permitted and some ruled out by the war convention. If the convention did not discriminate in this way, it would have little impact upon the actual fighting of wars and battles; it would simply be a code of expediency\u2014which is what Sidgwick's twofold rule is likely to come to, under the pressure of actual warfare.\n\n\"Reason of war\" can only justify the killing of people we already have reason to think are liable to be killed. What is involved here is not so much a calculation of probability and risk as a reflection on the status of the men and women whose lives are at stake. The case of the \"naked soldier\" is resolved in this way: soldiers as a class are set apart from the world of peaceful activity; they are trained to fight, provided with weapons, required to fight on command. No doubt, they do not always fight; nor is war their personal enterprise. But it is the enterprise of their class, and this fact radically distinguishes the individual soldier from the civilians he leaves behind.a If he is warned that he is always in danger, it is not so great a disruption of his life as it would be in the case of the civilian. Indeed, to warn the civilian is in effect to force him to fight, but the soldier has already been forced to fight. That is, he has joined the army because he thinks his country must be defended, or he has been conscripted. It is important to stress, however, that he has not been forced to fight by a direct attack upon his person; that would repeat the crime of aggression at the level of the individual. He can be personally attacked only because he already is a fighter. He has been made into a dangerous man, and though his options may have been few, it is nevertheless accurate to say that he has allowed himself to be made into a dangerous man. For that reason, he finds himself endangered. The actual risks he lives with may be reduced or heightened: here notions of military necessity, and also of kindness and magnanimity, have free play. But the risks can be raised to their highest pitch without violating his rights.\n\nIt is harder to understand the extension of combatant status beyond the class of soldiers, though in modern war this has been common enough. The development of military technology, it might be said, has dictated it, for war today is as much an economic as a military activity. Vast numbers of workers must be mobilized before an army can even appear in the field; and once they are engaged, soldiers are radically dependent on a continuing stream of equipment, fuel, ammunition, food, and so on. It is a great temptation, then, to attack the enemy army behind its own lines, especially if the battle itself is not going well. But to attack behind the lines is to make war against people who are at least nominally civilians. How can this be justified? Here again, the judgments we make depend upon our understanding of the men and women involved. We try to draw a line between those who have lost their rights because of their warlike activities and those who have not. On the one side are a class of people, loosely called \"munitions workers,\" who make weapons for the army or whose work directly contributes to the business of war. On the other side are all those people who, in the words of the British philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe, \"are not fighting and are not engaged in supplying those who are with the means of fighting.\"\n\nThe relevant distinction is not between those who work for the war effort and those who do not, but between those who make what soldiers need to fight and those who make what they need to live, like all the rest of us. When it is militarily necessary, workers in a tank factory can be attacked and killed, but not workers in a food processing plant. The former are assimilated to the class of soldiers\u2014partially assimilated, I should say, because these are not armed men, ready to fight, and so they can be attacked only in their factory (not in their homes), when they are actually engaged in activities threatening and harmful to their enemies. The latter, even if they process nothing but army rations, are not similarly engaged. They are like workers manufacturing medical supplies, or clothing, or anything else that would be needed, in one form or another, in peacetime as well as war. An army, to be sure, has an enormous belly, and it must be fed if it is to fight. But it is not its belly but its arms that make it an army. Those men and women who supply its belly are doing nothing peculiarly warlike. Hence their immunity from attack: they are assimilated to the rest of the civilian population. We call them innocent people, a term of art which means that they have done nothing, and are doing nothing, that entails the loss of their rights.\n\nThis is a plausible line, I think, though it may be too finely drawn. What is more important is that it is drawn under pressure. We begin with the distinction between soldiers engaged in combat and soldiers at rest; then we shift to the distinction between soldiers as a class and civilians; and then we concede this or that group of civilians as the processes of economic mobilization establish its direct contribution to the business of fighting. Once the contribution has been plainly established, only \"military necessity\" can determine whether the civilians involved are attacked or not. They ought not to be attacked if their activities can be stopped, or their products seized or destroyed, in some other way and without significant risk. The laws of war have regularly recognized this obligation. Under the naval code, for example, merchant seamen on ships carrying military supplies were once regarded as civilians who had, despite the work they were doing, a right not to be attacked, for it was possible (and it sometimes still is) to seize their ships without shooting at them. But whenever seizure without shooting ceases to be possible, the obligation ceases also and the right lapses. It is not a retained but a war right, and rests only on the agreement of states and on the doctrine of military necessity. The history of submarine warfare nicely illustrates this process, through which groups of civilians are, as it were, incorporated into hell. It will also enable me to suggest the point at which it becomes morally necessary to resist the incorporation.\n\nSubmarine Warfare: The Laconia Affair\n\nNaval warfare has traditionally been the most gentlemanly form of fighting, possibly because so many gentlemen went into the navy, but also and more importantly because of the nature of the sea as a battlefield. The only comparable land environment is the desert; these two have in common the absence or relative absence of civilian inhabitants. Hence battle is especially pure, a combat between combatants, with no one else involved\u2014just what we intuitively want war to be. The purity is marred, however, by the fact that the sea is extensively used for transport. Warships encounter merchant ships. The rules governing this encounter are, or were, fairly elaborate. Worked out before the invention of the submarine, they bear the marks of their technological as well as their moral assumptions. A merchant ship carrying military supplies could lawfully be stopped on the high seas, boarded, seized, and brought into port by a prize crew. If the merchant seamen resisted this process at any stage, whatever force was necessary to overcome the resistance was also lawful. If they submitted peacefully, no force could be used against them. If it was impossible to bring the ship into port, it could be sunk, \"subject to the absolute duty of providing for the safety of the crew, passengers, and papers.\" Most often, this was done by taking all three on board the warship. The crew and passengers were then to be regarded not as prisoners of war, for their encounter with the warship was not a battle, but as civilian internees.\n\nNow, in World War I, submarine commanders (and the state officials who commanded them) openly refused to act in accordance with this \"absolute duty,\" pleading military necessity. They could not surface before firing their torpedoes, for their ships were lightly armed above decks and highly vulnerable to ramming; they could not provide prize crews from their own small number, unless they, too, were to return to port; nor could they take merchant seamen on board, for there was no room. Hence their policy was to \"sink on sight,\" though they did accept some responsibility to assist survivors after the ship was down. \"Sink on sight\" was especially the policy of the German government. The only alternative, its defenders have argued, was not to use submarines at all, or to use them ineffectively, which would have conceded control of the sea to the British navy. After the war was over, perhaps because the Germans lost it, the traditional rules were reaffirmed. The London Naval Protocol of 1936, ratified by all the major participants in the last and the next great war (by the Germans in 1939), explicitly provided that \"in their action with regard to merchant ships, submarines must conform to the rules of international law to which surface ships are subject.\" This is still the \"binding rule,\" according to respected authorities on naval law, though anyone who defends the rule must do so \"notwithstanding the experience of the Second World War.\"\n\nWe can best gain access to this experience by turning immediately to the famous \"Laconia order\" issued by Admiral Doenitz of the German U-boat command in 1942. Doenitz required not only that submarines strike without warning, but also that they do nothing whatsoever to help the crew members of a sunken ship: \"All attempts to rescue the crews of sunken ships should cease, including picking up men from the sea, righting capsized lifeboats, and supplying food and water.\" This order provoked great indignation at the time, and after the war its promulgation was among the crimes with which Doenitz was charged at Nuremberg. But the judges refused to convict on this charge. I want to look closely at the reasons for their decision. Since their language is obscure, however, I shall also ask what their reasons might have been and what reasons we might have for requiring or not requiring rescue at sea.\n\nThe issue clearly was rescue and nothing else; despite the \"binding rule\" of international law, the policy of \"sink on sight\" was not challenged by the court. The judges apparently decided that the distinction between merchant ships and warships no longer made much sense.\n\nShortly after the outbreak of the war, the British Admiralty . . . armed its merchant vessels, in many cases convoyed them with armed escort, gave orders to send position reports upon sighting submarines, thus integrating merchant vessels into the warning system of naval intelligence. On October 1, 1939, the Admiralty announced [that] British merchant ships had been ordered to ram U-boats if possible.\n\nAt this point, the court seemed to reason, merchant seamen had been conscripted for military service; hence it was permissible to attack them by surprise exactly as if they were soldiers. But this argument, by itself, is not a very good one. For if the conscription of merchant seamen was a response to illegitimate submarine attacks (or even to the strong probability of such attacks), it cannot be invoked to justify those same attacks. It must be the case that the \"sink on sight\" policy was justified in the first place. The invention of the submarine had made it \"necessary.\" The old rules were morally if not legally suspended because supply by sea\u2014a military enterprise whose participants had always been liable to attack\u2014had ceased now to be subject to nonviolent interdiction.\n\nThe \"Laconia order\" reached much further than this, however, for it suggested that seamen helpless in the sea, unlike wounded soldiers on land, need not be helped once the battle was over. Doenitz's argument was that the battle, in fact, was never over until the submarine was safe in its home port. The sinking of a merchant vessel was only the first blow of a long and tense struggle. Radar and the airplane had turned the wide seas into a single battlefield, and unless the submarine immediately began evasive maneuvers, it was or might be in great trouble. Seamen had once been better off than soldiers, a privileged class of near-combatants treated as if they were civilians; now, suddenly, they were worse off.\n\nHere again is the argument from military necessity, and again we can see that it is above all an argument about risk. The lives of the submarine crew would be endangered, Doenitz claimed, and the probability of detection and attack increased by this or that extent, if they attempted to rescue their victims. Now, this is clearly not always the case: in his account of the destruction of an Allied convoy in the Arctic Sea, David Irving describes a number of incidents in which German submarines surfaced and offered assistance to merchant seamen in lifeboats without increasing their own risks.\n\nLieutenant-Commander Teichert's U-456 . . . had fired the striking torpedoes. Teichert took his submarine alongside the lifeboats and ordered the Master, Captain Strand, to come aboard; he was taken prisoner. The seamen were asked whether they had sufficient water and they were handed tinned meat and bread by the submarine officers. They were told that they would be picked up by destroyers a few days later.\n\nThis occurred only a few months before Doenitz's order prohibited such assistance, and under conditions which made it perfectly safe. Convoy PQ 17 had dispersed, abandoned by its escorts; it was no longer in any sense a fighting force; the Germans controlled the air as well as the sea. The battle was clearly over, and military necessity could hardly have justified a refusal to help. I should think that if such a refusal, under similar circumstances, could be attributed to the \"Laconia order,\" Doenitz would indeed be guilty of a war crime. But nothing like this was demonstrated at Nuremberg.\n\nNor, however, did the court openly adopt the argument from military necessity: that under different circumstances the refusal to help was justified by the risks it entailed. Instead, the judges reaffirmed the binding rule. \"If the Commander cannot rescue,\" they argued, \"then . . . he cannot sink a merchant vessel. . . .\" But they did not enforce the rule and punish Doenitz. Admiral Nimitz of the U.S. Navy, called to testify by Doenitz's attorney, had told them that \"U.S. submarines [generally] did not rescue enemy survivors if by so doing the vessels were exposed to unnecessary or additional risk.\" British policy had been similar. In view of this, the judges declared that \"the sentence of Doenitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.\" They did not accept the argument of the defense attorneys that the law had effectively been rewritten by informal collusion among the belligerents. But they apparently felt that this collusion did make the law unenforceable (or at least unenforceable against only one of the parties to its violation)\u2014a proper judicial decision, but one that leaves open the moral question.\n\nIn fact, Doenitz and his Allied counterparts had reasons for the policy they adopted, and these reasons fit roughly into the framework of the war convention. Wounded or helpless combatants are no longer subject to attack; in that sense they have regained their right to life. But they are not entitled to assistance so long as the battle continues and the victory of their enemies is uncertain. What is decisive here is not military necessity but the assimilation of merchant seamen to the class of combatants. Soldiers need not risk their lives for the sake of their enemies, for both they and their enemies have exposed themselves to the coerciveness of war. There are some people, however, who are safe against that coerciveness, or who ought to be safeguarded against it, and these people also have a part in the Laconia affair.\n\nThe Laconia was a liner carrying 268 British servicemen and their families, returning home from pre-war stations in the Middle East, and 1,800 Italian prisoners of war. It was torpedoed and sunk off the west coast of Africa by a U-boat whose commander did not know who its passengers were (liners were used extensively by the Allies as troopships). When Doenitz learned of the sinking, and of the identity of the people in the water, he ordered a massive rescue effort involving, initially, a number of other submarines. Italian warships were also asked to hurry to the scene, and the U-boat commander responsible for the sinking radioed in English a general call for help. But the submarines were instead attacked by several Allied planes whose pilots presumably did not know what was going on in the seas below or did not believe what they were told. The confusion is typical enough in time of war: ignorance on all sides, compounded by mutual fear and suspicion.\n\nIn fact, the planes did little damage, but Doenitz's response was harsh. He directed the German commanders to confine their rescue efforts to the Italian prisoners; the British soldiers and their families were to be set adrift. It was this spectacle of women and children abandoned at sea, and the subsequent order that seemed to require its repetition, that was widely thought to be outrageous\u2014and rightly so, it seems to me, even though \"unrestricted\" submarine warfare was by then commonly accepted. For we draw a circle of rights around civilians, and soldiers are supposed to accept (some) risks in order to save civilian lives. It is not a question of going out of their way or of being, or not being, good Samaritans. They are the ones who endanger civilian lives in the first place, and even if they do this in the course of legitimate military operations, they must still make some positive effort to restrict the range of the damage they do. This indeed was Doenitz's own position before the Allied attack, a position he maintained despite criticism from other members of the German High Command: \"I cannot put these people into the water. I shall carry on [the rescue effort].\" It is not kindness that is involved here, but duty, and it is in terms of that duty that we judge the \"Laconia order.\" A rescue effort undertaken for the sake of noncombatants can be broken off temporarily because of an attack, but it cannot be called off in advance of any attack merely because an attack may occur (or recur). For one attack at least has already occurred and put innocent people in danger of death. Now they must be helped.\n\nDouble Effect\n\nThe second principle of the war convention is that noncombatants cannot be attacked at any time. They can never be the objects or the targets of military activity. But as the Laconia affair suggests, noncombatants are often endangered not because anyone sets out to attack them, but only because of their proximity to a battle that is being fought against someone else. I have tried to argue that what is then required is not that the battle be stopped, but that some degree of care be taken not to harm civilians\u2014which means, very simply, that we recognize their rights as best we can within the context of war. But what degree of care should be taken? And at what cost to the individual soldiers who are involved? The laws of war say nothing about such matters; they leave the cruelest decisions to be made by the men on the spot with reference only to their ordinary moral notions or the military traditions of the army in which they serve. Occasionally one of these soldiers will write about his own decisions, and that can be like a light going on in a dark place. Here is an incident from Frank Richards' memoir of the First World War, one of the few accounts by a man from the ranks.\n\nWhen bombing dug-outs or cellars, it was always wise to throw the bombs into them first and have a look around them after. But we had to be very careful in this village as there were civilians in some of the cellars. We shouted down to them to make sure. Another man and I shouted down one cellar twice and receiving no reply were just about to pull the pins out of our bombs when we heard a woman's voice and a young lady came up the cellar steps. . . . She and the members of her family . . . had not left [the cellar] for some days. They guessed an attack was being made and when we first shouted down had been too frightened to answer. If the young lady had not cried out when she did, we would have innocently murdered them all.\n\nInnocently murdered, because they had shouted first; but if they had not shouted, and then killed the French family, it would have been, Richards believed, murder simply. And yet he was accepting a certain risk in shouting, for had there been German soldiers in the cellar, they might have scrambled out, firing as they came. It would have been more prudent to throw the bombs without warning, which means that military necessity would have justified him in doing so. Indeed, he would have been justified on other grounds, too, as we shall see. And yet he shouted.\n\nThe moral doctrine most often invoked in such cases is the principle of double effect. First worked out by Catholic casuists in the Middle Ages, double effect is a complex notion, but it is at the same time closely related to our ordinary ways of thinking about moral life. I have often found it being used in military and political debates. Officers will tend to speak in its terms, knowingly or unknowingly, whenever the activity they are planning is likely to injure noncombatants. Catholic writers themselves frequently use military examples; it is one of their purposes to suggest what we ought to think when \"a soldier in firing at the enemy foresees that he will shoot some civilians who are nearby.\" Such foresight is common enough in war; soldiers could probably not fight at all, except in the desert and at sea, without endangering nearby civilians. And yet it is not proximity but only some contribution to the fighting that makes a civilian liable to attack. Double effect is a way of reconciling the absolute prohibition against attacking noncombatants with the legitimate conduct of military activity. I shall want to argue, following the example of Frank Richards, that the reconciliation comes too easily, but first we must see exactly how it is worked out.\n\nThe argument goes this way: it is permitted to perform an act likely to have evil consequences (the killing of noncombatants) provided the following four conditions hold.\n\n  1. The act is good in itself or at least indifferent, which means, for our purposes, that it is a legitimate act of war.\n  2. The direct effect is morally acceptable\u2014the destruction of military supplies, for example, or the killing of enemy soldiers.\n  3. The intention of the actor is good, that is, he aims only at the acceptable effect; the evil is not one of his ends, nor is it a means to his ends.\n  4. The good effect is sufficiently good to compensate for allowing the evil effect; it must be justifiable under Sidgwick's proportionality rule.\n\nThe burden of the argument is carried by the third clause. The \"good\" and evil effects that come together, the killing of soldiers and nearby civilians, are to be defended only insofar as they are the product of a single intention, directed at the first and not the second. The argument suggests the great importance of taking aim in wartime, and it correctly restricts the targets at which one can aim. But we have to worry, I think, about all those unintended but foreseeable deaths, for their number can be large; and subject only to the proportionality rule\u2014a weak constraint\u2014double effect provides a blanket justification. The principle for that reason invites an angry or a cynical response: what different does it make whether civilian deaths are a direct or an indirect effect of my actions? It can hardly matter to the dead civilians, and if I know in advance that I am likely to kill so many innocent people and go ahead anyway, how can I be blameless?\n\nWe can ask the question in a more concrete way. Would Frank Richards have been blameless if he had thrown his bombs without warning? The principle of double effect would have permitted him to do so. He was engaged in a legitimate military activity, for many cellars were in fact being used by enemy soldiers. The effects of making \"bomb without warning\" his general policy would have been to reduce the risks of his being killed or disabled and to speed up the capture of the village, and these are \"good\" effects. Moreover, they were clearly the only ones he intended; civilian deaths would have served no purpose of his own. And finally, over an extended period of time, the proportions would probably have worked out favorably or at least not unfavorably; the mischief done would, let us assume, be balanced by the contribution to victory. And yet Richards was surely doing the right thing when he shouted his warning. He was acting as a moral man ought to act; he is not an example of fighting heroically, above and beyond the call of duty, but simply of fighting well. It is what we expect of soldiers. Before trying to state that expectation more precisely, however, I want to see how it works in more complex combat situations.\n\nBombardment in Korea\n\nI am going to follow here a British journalist's account of the way the American army waged war in Korea. Whether it is an entirely just account I do not know, but I am more interested in the moral issues it raises than in its historical accuracy. This, then, was a \"typical\" encounter on the road to Pyongyang. A battalion of American troops advanced slowly, without opposition, under the shadow of low hills. \"We were well into the valley now, half-way down the straight . . . strung out along the open road, when it came, the harsh stutter of automatic fire sputtering the dust around us.\" The troops stopped and dove for cover. Three tanks moved up, \"pounding their shells into the . . . hillside and shattering the air with their machine guns. It was impossible in this remarkable inferno of sound to detect the enemy, or to assess his fire.\" Within fifteen minutes, several fighter planes arrived, \"diving down upon the hillside with their rockets.\" This is the new technique of warfare, writes the British journalist, \"born of immense productive and material might\": \"the cautious advance, the enemy small arms fire, the halt, the close support air strike, artillery, the cautious advance, and so on.\" It is designed to save the lives of soldiers, and it may or may not have that effect. \"It is certain that it kills civilian men, women, and children, indiscriminately and in great numbers, and destroys all that they have.\"\n\nNow there is another way to fight, though it is only open to soldiers who have had a \"soldierly\" training and who are not \"roadbound\" in their habits. A patrol can be sent forward to outflank the enemy position. In the end, it often comes to that anyway, as it did in this case, for the tanks and planes failed to hit the North Korean machine gunners. \"At last, after more than an hour . . . a platoon from Baker Company began working their way through the scrub just under the ridge of the hill.\" But the first reliance was always on bombardment. \"Every enemy shot released a deluge of destruction.\" And the bombardment had, or sometimes had, its characteristic double effect: enemy soldiers were killed, and so were any civilians who happened to be nearby. It was not the intention of the officers who called in the artillery and planes to kill civilians; they were acting out of a concern for their own men. And that is a legitimate concern. No one would want to be commanded in wartime by an officer who did not value the lives of his soldiers. But he must also value civilian lives, and so must his soldiers. He cannot save them, because they cannot save themselves, by killing innocent people. It is not just that they can't kill a lot of innocent people. Even if the proportions work out favorably, in particular cases or over a period of time, we would still want to say, I think, that the patrol must be sent out, the risk accepted, before the big guns are brought to bear. The soldiers sent on patrol can plausibly argue that they never chose to make war in Korea; they are soldiers nevertheless; there are obligations that go with their war rights, and the first of these is the obligation to attend to the rights of civilians\u2014more precisely, of those civilians whose lives they themselves endanger.\n\nThe principle of double effect, then, stands in need of correction. Double effect is defensible, I want to argue, only when the two outcomes are the product of a double intention: first, that the \"good\" be achieved; second, that the foreseeable evil be reduced as far as possible. So the third of the conditions listed above can be restated:\n\n  1. The intention of the actor is good, that is, he aims narrowly at the acceptable effect; the evil effect is not one of his ends, nor is it a means to his ends, and, aware of the evil involved, he seeks to minimize it, accepting costs to himself.\n\nSimply not to intend the death of civilians is too easy; most often, under battle conditions, the intentions of soldiers are focused narrowly on the enemy. What we look for in such cases is some sign of a positive commitment to save civilian lives. Not merely to apply the proportionality rule and kill no more civilians than is militarily necessary\u2014that rule applies to soldiers as well; no one can be killed for trivial purposes. Civilians have a right to something more. And if saving civilian lives means risking soldier's lives, the risk must be accepted. But there is a limit to the risks that we require. These are, after all, unintended deaths and legitimate military operations, and the absolute rule against attacking civilians does not apply. War necessarily places civilians in danger; that is another aspect of its hellishness. We can only ask soldiers to minimize the dangers they impose.\n\nExactly how far they must go in doing that is hard to say, and for that reason it may seem odd to claim that civilians have rights in such matters. What can this mean? Do civilians have a right not only not to be attacked but also not to be put at risk to such and such a degree, so that imposing a one-in-ten chance of death on them is justified, while imposing a three-in-ten chance is unjustified? In fact, the degree of risk that is permissible is going to vary with the nature of the target, the urgency of the moment, the available technology, and so on. It is best, I think, to say simply that civilians have a right that \"due care\" be taken.b The case is the same in domestic society: when the gas company works on the lines that run under my street, I have a right that its workmen observe very strict safety standards. But if the work is urgently required by the imminent danger of an explosion on a neighboring street, the standards may be relaxed and my rights not violated. Now, military necessity works exactly like civil emergency, except that in war the standards with which we are familiar in domestic society are always relaxed. That is not to say, however, that there are no standards at all, and no rights involved. Whenever there is likely to be a second effect, a second intention is morally required. We can move some way toward defining the limits of that second intention if we consider two more wartime examples.\n\nThe Bombing of Occupied France and the Vemork Raid\n\nDuring World War II, the Free French air force carried out bombing raids against military targets in occupied France. Inevitably, their bombs killed Frenchmen working (under coercion) for the German war effort; inevitably too, they killed Frenchmen who simply happened to live in the vicinity of the factories under attack. This posed a cruel dilemma for the pilots, which they resolved not by giving up the raids or asking someone else to carry them out, but by accepting greater risks for themselves. \"It was . . . this persistent question of bombing France itself,\" says Pierre Mendes-France, who served in the air force after his escape from a German prison, \"which led us to specialize more and more in precision bombing\u2014that is, flying at a very low altitude. It was more risky, but it also permitted greater precision. . . .\" The same factories, of course, could have been (perhaps should have been) attacked by squads of partisans or commandos carrying explosives; their aim would have been perfect, not merely more precise, and no civilians except those working in the factories would have been endangered. But such raids would have been extremely dangerous and the chances of success, and especially of reiterated success, very slim. Risks of that sort were more than the French expected, even of their own soldiers. The limits of risk are fixed, then, roughly at that point where any further risk-taking would almost certainly doom the military venture or make it so costly that it could not be repeated.\n\nThere is obviously leeway for military judgment here: strategists and planners will for reasons of their own weigh the importance of their target against the importance of their soldiers' lives. But even if the target is very important, and the number of innocent people threatened relatively small, they must risk soldiers before they kill civilians. Consider, for example, the one case I have found from the Second World War where a commando raid was tried instead of an air attack. In 1943, the heavy water plant at Vemork in occupied Norway was destroyed by Norwegian commandos operating on behalf of the British S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive). It was vitally important to stop the production of heavy water so as to delay the development of an atomic bomb by German scientists. British and Norwegian officials debated whether to make the attempt from the air or on the ground and chose the latter approach because it was less likely to injure civilians. But it was very dangerous for the commandos. The first attempt failed, and thirty-four men were killed in its course; the second attempt, by a smaller number of men, succeeded without casualties\u2014to the surprise of everyone involved, including the commandos. It was possible to accept such risks for a single operation that would not, it was thought, have to be repeated. For a \"battle\" that extended over time, consisting of many separate incidents, it would not have been possible.\n\nLater in the war, after production was resumed at Vemork and security considerably tightened, the plant was bombed from the air by American planes. The bombing was successful, but it resulted in the deaths of twenty-two Norwegian civilians. At this point, double effect seems to work, justifying the air attack. Indeed, in its unrevised form it would have worked sooner. The importance of the military aim and the actual casualty figures (foreseeable in advance, let us assume) would have justified a bombing raid in the first place. But the special value we attach to civilian lives precluded it.\n\nNow, the same value attaches to the lives of German as to those of French or Norwegian civilians. There are, of course, additional moral as well as emotional reasons for paying that respect and accepting its costs in the case of one's own people or one's allies (and it is no accident that my two examples involve attacks on occupied territory). Soldiers have direct obligations to the civilians they leave behind, which have to do with the very purpose of soldiering and with their own political allegiance. But the structure of rights stands independently of political allegiance; it establishes obligations that are owed, so to speak, to humanity itself and to particular human beings and not merely to one's fellow citizens. The rights of German civilians\u2014who did no fighting and were not engaged in supplying the armed forces with the means of fighting\u2014were no different from those of their French counterparts, just as the war rights of German soldiers were no different from those of French soldiers, whatever we think of their war.\n\nThe case of occupied France (or Norway) is, however, complex in another way. Even if the French pilots had reduced their risks and flown at high altitudes, we would not hold them solely responsible for the additional civilian deaths they caused. They would have shared that responsibility with the Germans\u2014in part because the Germans had attacked and conquered France, but also (and more importantly for our immediate purposes) because they had mobilized the French economy for their own strategic ends, forcing French workers to serve the German war machine, turning French factories into legitimate military targets, and putting the adjacent residential areas in danger. The question of direct and indirect effect is complicated by the question of coercion. When we judge the unintended killing of civilians, we need to know how those civilians came to be in a battle zone in the first place. This is, perhaps, only another way of asking who put them at risk and what positive efforts were made to save them. But it raises issues that I have not yet addressed and that are most dramatically visible when we turn to another, and a much older, kind of warfare.\n\n In his moving account of the French defeat in 1940, Marc Bloch has criticized this distinction: \"Confronted by the nation's peril and by the duties that it lays on every citizen, all adults are equal and only a curiously warped mind would claim for any of them the privilege of immunity. What, after all, is a 'civilian' in time of war? He is nothing more than a man whose weight of years, whose health, whose profession . . . prevents him from bearing arms effectively. . . . Why should [these factors] confer on him the right to escape from the common danger?\" (Strange Defeat, trans. Gerard Hopkins, New York, 1968, p. 130.) But the theoretical problem is not to describe how immunity is gained, but how it is lost. We are all immune to start with; our right not to be attacked is a feature of normal human relationships. That right is lost by those who bear arms \"effectively\" because they pose a danger to other people. It is retained by those who don't bear arms at all.\n\n Since judgments of \"due care\" involve calculations of relative value, urgency, and so on, it has to be said that utilitarian arguments and rights arguments (relative at least to indirect effects) are not wholly distinct. Nevertheless, the calculations required by the proportionality principle and those required by \"due care\" are not the same. Even after the highest possible standards of care have been accepted, the probable civilian losses may still be disproportionate to the value of the target; then the attack must be called off. Or, more often, military planners may decide that the losses entailed by the attack, even if it is carried out at minimal risk to the attackers, are not disproportionate to the value of the target: then \"due care\" is an additional requirement.\n\nWar Against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades\n\nSiege is the oldest form of total war. Its long history suggests that neither technological advance nor democratic revolution are the crucial factors pushing warfare beyond the combatant population. Civilians have been attacked along with soldiers, or in order to get at soldiers, as often in ancient as in modern times. Such attacks are likely whenever an army seeks what might be called civilian shelter and fights from behind the battlements or from within the buildings of a city, or whenever the inhabitants of a threatened city seek the most immediate form of military protection and agree to be garrisoned. Then, locked into the narrow circle of the walls, civilians and soldiers are exposed to the same risks. Proximity and scarcity make them equally vulnerable. Or perhaps not equally so: in this kind of war, once combat begins, noncombatants are more likely to be killed. The soldiers fight from protected positions, and the civilians, who don't fight at all, are quickly made over (in a phrase I have taken from the military literature) into \"useless mouths.\" Fed last, and only with the army's surplus, they die first. More civilians died in the siege of Leningrad than in the modernist infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, taken together. They probably died more painfully, too, even if in old-fashioned ways. Diaries and memoirs of twentieth-\u00adcentury sieges are entirely familiar to anyone who has read, for example, Josephus' harrowing history of the Roman siege of Jerusalem. And the moral issues raised by Josephus are familiar to anyone who has thought about twentieth-\u00adcentury war.\n\nCoercion and Responsibility\n\nThe Siege of Jerusalem 72 A.D.\n\nCollective starvation is a bitter fate: parents and children, friends and lovers must watch one another die, and the dying is terribly drawn out, physically and morally destructive long before it is over. Though it sounds like the end of the world, the following passage from Josephus refers to a time relatively early in the Roman siege.\n\nThe restraint of liberty to pass in and out of the city took from the Jews all hope of safety, and the famine now increasing consumed whole households and families; and the houses were full of dead women and infants; and the streets filled with the dead bodies of old men. And the young men, swollen like dead men's shadows, walked in the market place and fell down dead where it happened. And now the multitude of dead bodies was so great that they that were alive could not bury them; nor cared they for burying them, being now uncertain what should betide themselves. And many endeavoring to bury others fell down themselves dead upon them. . . . And many being yet alive went unto their graves and there died. Yet for all this calamity was there no weeping nor lamentation, for famine overcame all affections. And they who were yet living, without tears beheld those who being dead were now at rest before them. There was no noise heard within the city. . . .\n\nThis is not a firsthand account; Josephus was outside the walls, with the Roman army. According to other writers, it is the women who last longest in sieges, the young men who soonest fall into that deadly lethargy that precedes actual death. But the account is accurate enough: that is what a siege is like. Moreover, that is what it is meant to be like. When a city is encircled and deprived of food, it is not the expectation of the attackers that the garrison will hold out until individual soldiers, like Josephus' old men, drop dead in the streets. The death of the ordinary inhabitants of the city is expected to force the hand of the civilian or military leadership. The goal is surrender; the means is not the defeat of the enemy army, but the fearful spectacle of the civilian dead.\n\nThe principle of double effect, however it is expounded, provides no justification here. These are intentional deaths. And yet siege warfare is not ruled out by the laws of war. \"The propriety of attempting to reduce [a city] by starvation is not questioned.\" If there is a general rule that civilian deaths must not be aimed at, the siege is a great exception\u2014and the sort of exception that seems, if it is morally warranted, to shatter the rule itself. We must consider why it has been made. How can it be thought right to lock civilians up in the death trap of an encircled city?\n\nThe obvious answer is simply that the capture of cities is often an important military objective\u2014in the age of the city-state, it was the ultimate objective\u2014and, frontal assault failing, the siege is the only remaining means to success. In fact, however, it is not even necessary that a frontal assault fail before a siege is thought justifiable. Sitting and waiting is far less costly to the besieging army than attacking, and such calculations are permitted (as we have seen) by the principle of military necessity. But this argument is not the most interesting defense of siege warfare and not the one, I think, with which commanders themselves have assuaged their consciences. Josephus suggests the alternative. Titus, he tells us, lamented the deaths of so many Jerusalemites, \"and, lifting up his hands to heaven . . . called God to witness, that it was not his doing.\" Whose doing was it?\n\nAfter Titus himself, there are only two candidates: the political or military leaders of the city, who have refused to surrender on terms and forced the inhabitants to fight; or the inhabitants themselves, who have acquiesced in that refusal and agreed, as it were, to run the risks of war. Titus implicitly, and Josephus explicitly, opts for the first of these possibilities. Jerusalem, they argue, has been seized by the fanatical Zealots, who have imposed the war upon the mass of moderate Jews, ready otherwise to surrender. There is perhaps a measure of truth in this view, but it is not a satisfactory argument. It makes Titus himself into an impersonal agent of destruction, set off by the obstinacy of others, without plans and purposes of his own. And it suggests that cities (and why not countries?) that do not surrender are justly exposed to total war. Neither of these is a plausible proposition. Even if we reject them both, however, the attribution of responsibility in siege warfare is a complex business. This complexity helps explain though I shall argue that it does not justify the peculiar status of sieges in the laws of war. It also leads us to see that there are moral questions that must be answered before the principle of double effect comes into play. How did those civilians come to be so near the battlefield, where they are now (intentionally or incidentally) killed? Are they there by choice? Or have they been forced into their encounter with war and death?\n\nA city can indeed be defended against the will of its citizens\u2014by an army, beaten in the field, that retreats within its walls; by an alien garrison, serving the strategic interests of a distant commander; by militant, politically powerful minorities of one or another sort. If they were competent casuists, the leaders of any of these groups might reason in the following way: \"We know that civilians will die as a result of our decision to fight here rather than somewhere else. But we will not do the killing, and the deaths will not in any way benefit us. They are not our purpose, nor a part of our purpose, nor a means to our purpose. By collecting and rationing food, we will do all we can to save civilian lives. Those who die are not our responsibility.\" Clearly, such leaders cannot be condemned under the principle of double effect. But they can be condemned nevertheless\u2014so long as the inhabitants of the city decline to be defended. There are many examples of this sort of thing in medieval history: burghers eager to surrender, aristocratic warriors committed (not to the burghers) to continue the fight. In such cases, the warriors surely bear some responsibility for burgher deaths. They are agents of coercion within the city, as the besieging army is without, and the civilians are trapped between the two. But such cases are rare today, as they were in classical times. Political integration and civic discipline make for cities whose inhabitants expect to be defended and are prepared, morally if not always materially, to endure the burdens of a siege. Consent clears the defenders, and only consent can do so.\n\nWhat of the attackers? I assume that they offer surrender on terms; that is simply the collective equivalent of quarter and should always be available. But surrender is refused. There are then two military options. First, the strongholds of the city can be bombarded and the walls stormed. No doubt, civilians will die, but for these deaths the attacking soldiers can rightly say that they are not to blame. Though they do the killing, these deaths are, in an important sense, not their \"doing.\" The attackers are cleared by the refusal of surrender, which is an acceptance of the risks of war (or, moral responsibility is shifted onto the defending army, which has made surrender impossible). But this argument applies only to those deaths that are in fact incidental to legitimate military operations. The refusal of surrender does not turn the civilians into direct objects of attack. They have not thereby joined the war, though some of them may subsequently be mobilized for warlike activities within the city. They are simply in their \"proper and permanent abode,\" and their status as citizens of a besieged city is no different from their status as citizens of a country at war. If they can be killed, who cannot be? But then it would appear that the second military option is ruled out: the city cannot be surrounded, cut off, its people systematically starved.\n\nThe lawyers have drawn the line differently, though they, too, acknowledge that questions of coercion and consent precede questions of direct and indirect effect. Consider the following case from Machiavelli's Art of War:\n\nAlexander the Great, anxious to conquer Leucadia, first made himself master of the neighboring towns and turned all the inhabitants into Leucadia; at last the town was so full of people that he immediately reduced it by famine.\n\nMachiavelli was enthusiastic about this strategy, but it never became accepted military practice. Moreover, it is not accepted even if the purpose of the forced evacuation is more benign than Alexander's: simply to clear the suburbs for military operations, say, or to drive away people whom the besieging army cannot afford to feed. Had Alexander acted from such motives, and then taken Leucadia by storm, the incidental death of any of the evacuees would still be his special responsibility, since he had forcibly exposed them to the risks of war.\n\nThe legal norm is the status quo. The commander of the besieging army is not conceived to be, and does not think himself to be, responsible for those people who have always lived in the city\u2014who are there, so to speak, naturally\u2014nor for those who are there voluntarily, who sought the protection of city walls, driven only by the general fear of war. He is in the clear with regard to these people, however horribly they die, however much to his purpose it is that they die horribly, because he did not force them into their death place. He did not push them through the gates of the city before he locked them in. This is, I suppose, an understandable way of drawing the line, but it does not seem to me the right way. The hard question is whether the line can be drawn differently without ruling out sieges altogether. In the long history of siege warfare, this question has a specific form: should civilians be allowed to leave the city, saving themselves from starvation and relieving pressure on the collective food supply, after it has been invested? More generally, isn't locking them into the besieged city morally the same as driving them in? And if it is, shouldn't they be let out, so that those that remain, to fight and starve, can really be said to have chosen to remain? During the siege of Jerusalem, Titus ordered that any Jews who fled the city were to be crucified. It is the one point in his narrative where Josephus feels the need to apologize for his new master. But I want to turn now to a modern example, for these questions were directly addressed by the Nuremberg courts after World War II.\n\nThe Right to Leave\n\nThe Siege of Leningrad\n\nWhen its last road and rail links to the east were cut by advancing German forces, on September 8, 1941, Leningrad held over three million people, of whom about 200,000 were soldiers. This was roughly the peacetime population of the city. About half a million people had been evacuated before the siege began, but the number had been made up by refugees from the Baltic states, the Karelian Isthmus, and Leningrad's western and southern suburbs. These people ought to have been moved on, and the evacuation of the city itself speeded up; the Soviet authorities were frighteningly inefficient. But evacuation is always a difficult political issue. To organize it early and on a large scale seems defeatist; it is a way of acknowledging that the army won't be able to hold a line in front of the city. Moreover, it requires a massive effort at a time, it is usually said, when resources and manpower should be concentrated on military defense. And even when the danger is imminent, it is likely to encounter civilian resistance. Politics makes for two sorts of resistance: from those who hope to welcome the enemy and profit from his victory, and from those who are unwilling to \"desert\" the patriotic struggle. Inevitably, the very authorities organizing the evacuation are also conducting a propaganda campaign that makes desertion seem dishonorable. But the greater resistance is nonpolitical in character, deeply rooted in feelings of place and kin: the unwillingness to leave one's home, to separate from friends and family, to become a refugee.\n\nFor all these reasons, the large proportion of Leningraders trapped in the city after September 8 is not unusual in the history of sieges. Nor were they trapped absolutely. The Germans were never able to link up with Finnish forces either on the western or eastern shores of Lake Lagoda, and so there remained an evacuation route to the interior of Russia, at first by boat across the lake, and then as the waters froze, progressively by foot, sled, and truck. Until large-scale convoys could be organized (in January 1942), however, only a slow trickle of people were able to escape. A more immediate escape route was available\u2014through the German lines. For the siege was maintained along a wide arc south of the city, many miles long and in places thinly held. It was possible for civilians on foot to filter through the lines and, as desperation grew within the city, thousands attempted to do so. The German command responded to these attempts with an order, first announced on September 18, and then repeated two months later, to stop the escapes at all costs. Artillery was to be used \"to prevent any such attempt at the greatest possible distance from our own lines by opening fire as early as possible, so that the infantry is spared . . . shooting at civilians.\" I have not been able to find any account of how many civilians died as a direct or indirect result of this order; nor do I know whether or not infantrymen actually opened fire. But if we assume that the German effort was at least partially successful, many would-be escapees, hearing of the shelling or the shooting, must have remained in the city. And there many of them died. Before the siege ended in 1943, more than a million civilians were dead of starvation and disease.\n\nAt Nuremberg, Field Marshal von Leeb, who commanded Army Group North from June to December 1941, and who was therefore responsible for the first months of siege operations, was formally charged with war crimes because of the order of September 18. Von Leeb claimed in defense that what he had done was customary practice in wartime, and the judges, after consulting the legal handbooks, were led to agree. They cited Professor Hyde, an American authority on international law: \"It is said that if the commander of a besieged place expels the noncombatants, in order to lessen the number of those who consume his stock of provisions, it is lawful, though an extreme measure, to drive them back so as to hasten the surrender.\" No effort was made to distinguish \"expelled\" civilians from those leaving voluntarily, and probably the distinction is not relevant to the guilt or innocence of von Leeb. The benefit to the besieged army would be the same in either case. The laws of war permit the attackers to bar the benefit if they can. \"We might wish the law were otherwise,\" said the judges, \"but we must administer it as we find it.\" Von Leeb was acquitted.\n\nThe judges could have found cases in which civilians were allowed to leave besieged cities. During the Franco-Prussian War, the Swiss managed to arrange for a limited evacuation of civilians from Strasbourg. The American commander permitted civilians to leave Santiago before ordering the bombardment of that city in 1898. The Japanese offered free exit for noncombatants trapped in Port Arthur in 1905, but the offer was declined by the Russian authorities. These were all cases, however, in which the attacking army expected to carry the city by storm, and its commanders were willing to make a humanitarian gesture\u2014they would not have said that they were recognizing noncombatant rights\u2014that would cost them nothing. But when the defenders are to be waited out, subjected to slow starvation, the precedents are different. The siege of Plevna in the Russo-\u00adTurkish war of 1877 is more typical.\n\nWhen Osman Pasha's food supplies began to fail, he turned out the old men and women who were in the town and demanded free passage for them to Sofia or Rakhovo. General Gourko [the Russian commander] refused and sent them back.\n\nAnd the student of international law who cites this case, then comments: \"He could not do otherwise without detriment to his plans.\" Field Marshal von Leeb might have recalled the shining example of General Gourko.\n\nThe argument that needs to be made against both Gourko and von Leeb is suggested by the terms of the German order of September 18. Suppose that large numbers of Russian civilians, convinced that they would die if they returned to Leningrad, had persisted in the face of artillery fire and advanced on the German lines. Would the infantry have shot them down? Its officers were apparently uncertain. That sort of thing was the work of special \"death squads,\" not of ordinary soldiers, even in Hitler's army. Surely there would have been some reluctance, and even some refusals; and surely it would have been right to refuse. Or, suppose that these same refugees were not killed, but rounded up and imprisoned. Would it have been acceptable under the laws of war to inform the commander of the besieged city that they would be held without food, systematically starved, until he surrendered? No doubt, the judges would have found this unacceptable (even though they sometimes recognized the right to kill hostages). They would not have questioned the responsibility of von Leeb for these people whom he had, in my alternative case, actually locked up. But how is the siege of a city different?\n\nThe inhabitants of a city, though they have freely chosen to live within its walls, have not chosen to live under siege. The siege itself is an act of coercion, a violation of the status quo, and I cannot see how the commander of the besieging army can escape responsibility for its effects. He has no right to wage total war, even if civilians and soldiers within the city are politically united in refusing surrender. The systematic starvation of civilians under siege is one of those military acts which \"though permissible by custom, is a glaring violation of the principle by which custom professes to be governed.\"\n\nThe only justifiable practice, I think, is indicated in the Talmudic law of sieges, summed up by the philosopher Maimonides in the twelfth century (whose version is cited by Grotius in the seventeenth): \"When siege is laid to a city for the purpose of capture, it may not be surrounded on all four sides, but only on three, in order to give an opportunity for escape to those who would flee to save their lives. . . .\" But this seems hopelessly na\u00efve. How is it possible to \"surround\" a city on three sides? Such a sentence, it might be said, could only appear in the literature of a people who had neither a state nor an army of their own. It is an argument offered not from any military perspective, but from a refugee perspective. It makes, however, the crucial point: that in the direness of a siege, people have a right to be refugees. And then it has to be said that the besieging army has a responsibility to open, if it possibly can, a path for their flight.\n\nIn practice, many men and women will refuse to leave. Though I have described civilians under siege as people in a trap, hostage-like, life in the city is not like life in a prison camp; it is both much worse and much better. There is, for one thing, important work to do, and there are shared reasons for doing it. Besieged cities are arenas for a collective heroism, and even after ordinary love of place gives out, the emotional life of the threatened city makes departure difficult, at least for some of the citizens. Civilians performing essential services for the army will not, of course, be permitted to leave; they are in effect conscripted. Along with the civilian heroes of the siege, they are henceforth legitimate objects of military attack. The offer of free exit turns all those people who choose to remain in the city, or who are forced to remain, even if they are still in their \"proper and permanent abode,\" into something like a garrison: they have yielded their civilian rights. It is another example of the coerciveness of war that men and women must, in this case, leave their homes to maintain their immunity. But that is not a judgment on the siege commander. When he opens his lines to civilian refugees, he is reducing the immediate coerciveness of his own activity, and having done that he probably has a right to carry on that activity (assuming that it has some significant military purpose). The offer of free exit clears him of responsibility for civilian deaths.\n\nAt this point, the argument needs to be made more general. I have been suggesting that when we judge those forms of warfare that closely involve the civilian population, like sieges (and, as we shall see, guerrilla war), the issue of coercion and consent takes precedence over the issue of direction and indirection. We want to know how civilians came to be in militarily exposed positions: what force was used against them, what choices they freely made. There are a wide range of possibilities:\n\n  1. that they are coerced by their ostensible defenders, who must then share responsibility for the resulting deaths, even though they do no killing themselves;\n  2. that they consent to be defended, and so clear the military commander of the defending army;\n  3. that they are coerced by their attackers, driven into an exposed position and killed, in which case it doesn't matter whether the killing is a direct effect or a side effect of the attack, for it is a crime either way;\n  4. that they are attacked but not coerced, attacked in their \"natural\" place, and then the principle of double effect comes into play and siege by starvation is morally unacceptable; and\n  5. that they are offered free exit by their attackers, after which those that remain can justifiably be killed, directly or indirectly.\n\nThe last two of these are the most important, though I will want to qualify them later on. They require a clearcut reversal of contemporary law as stated or restated at Nuremberg, so as to establish and give substance to a principle that is, I think, commonly accepted: that soldiers are under an obligation to help civilians leave the scene of a battle. In the case of a siege, I want to say, it is only when they fulfill this obligation that the battle itself is morally possible.\n\nBut is it still militarily possible? Once free exit has been offered, and been accepted by significant numbers of people, the besieging army is placed under a certain handicap. The city's food supply will now last so much longer. It is precisely this handicap that siege commanders have in the past refused to accept. I don't see, however, that it is different in kind from other handicaps imposed by the war convention. It doesn't make siege operations entirely impractical, only somewhat more difficult\u2014given the ruthlessness of the modern state, one has to say, marginally more difficult; for the presence of large numbers of civilians in a besieged city is unlikely to be allowed to interfere with the provisioning of the army; and, as the Leningrad example suggests, the death of large numbers of civilians is unlikely to be allowed to interfere with the defense of the city. In Leningrad, soldiers did not starve, though civilians died of hunger. On the other hand, civilians were evacuated from Leningrad, once Lake Lagoda had frozen solid, and food supplies were brought in. In different circumstances, free exit might make a greater military difference, forcing a frontal assault on the city (because the besieging army may also have supply problems) or a major prolongation of the siege. But these are acceptable consequences, and they are only \"detrimental\" to the plans of the siege commander if he has not planned for them in advance. In any case, if he wants (as he probably will want) to lift his hands to heaven and say of the civilians he kills, \"It's not my doing,\" he has no choice but to offer them the chance to leave.\n\nTaking Aim and the Doctrine of Double Effect\n\nThe issue is more difficult, however, when a whole country is subjected to siege conditions, when an invading army sets about systematically to destroy crops and food supplies, for example, or when a naval blockade cuts off vitally needed imports. Here free exit is not a plausible possibility (mass migration would be necessary), and the question of responsibility takes on a somewhat different form. Once again, it should be stressed that the struggle to secure and deny supplies is a common feature of ancient as well as modern warfare. It was the subject of legislation long before the modern laws of war were worked out. The Deuteronomic code, for example, explicitly bans the cutting down of fruit trees: \"Only the trees of which thou knowest that they are not trees for food, them thou mayest destroy and cut down, that thou mayest build bulwarks against the city. . . .\" But few armies seem ever to have respected the ban. It was apparently unknown in Greece; during the Peloponnesian War, the destruction of olive groves was virtually the first act of an invading army; judging from Caesar's Gallic Wars, the Romans fought in the same way. In early modern times, long before the scientific destruction of crops became possible, the doctrine of strategic devastation was a kind of conventional wisdom among military commanders. \"The Palatinate was wasted [in the Thirty Years War] in order that the imperial armies should be denied the military produce of the country; Marlborough destroyed the farms and crops of Bavaria for a similar purpose [in The War of the Spanish Succession]. . . .\" The Shenandoah Valley was laid waste in the American Civil War; and the burning of farms on Sherman's march through Georgia had, among other purposes, the strategic goal of starving the Confederate army. In our own time, and with a more advanced technology, vast sections of Vietnam were subjected to a similar destruction.\n\nThe contemporary laws of war require that such efforts be directed, whatever their indirect effects, only against the armed forces of the enemy. Civilians in a city have been thought a legitimate target, civilians at large not so: they are, though in vast numbers, only the incidental victims of strategic devastation. The allowable military purpose here is to make the provisioning of the enemy army impossible, and when generals have exceeded that purpose\u2014attempting, like General Sherman, to end the war by \"punishing\" the civilian population\u2014they have been commonly condemned. Why this is so I am not sure, though why it should be so is easier to make out. The impossibility of free exit rules out any direct attack on the civilian population.\n\nThis is not, however, much protection for civilians, since military supplies cannot be destroyed without first destroying civilian supplies. The morally desirable rule is stated by Spaight: \"If under such peculiar conditions as existed in the Confederate States and in South Africa [during the Boer War] . . . the enemy depends for his supplies on the surplus of cereals, etc., held by the noncombatant population, then a commander is justified by the necessity of war in destroying or seizing that surplus.\" But it is not the case that the army lives off the civilian surplus; more likely, civilians are forced to make do with what is left after the army has been fed. Hence, strategic devastation is not aimed, and cannot be, at \"military produce,\" but at food supplies generally. And civilians suffer long before soldiers feel the pinch. But who is it who inflicts this suffering, the army that destroys food stocks or the army that seizes what remains for itself? This question is taken up in the British government's official history of World War I.\n\nThe British Blockade of Germany\n\nIn its origins, a blockade was simply a naval siege, an \"investment by sea,\" barring all ships from entering or leaving the blockaded area (usually a major port) and cutting off, so far as possible, all supplies. It was not thought legally or morally justifiable, however, to extend this interdiction to the trade of an entire country. Most nineteenth-century commentators shared the view that the economic life of an enemy country could never be a legitimate military objective. The denial of military supplies was, of course, permissible, and given the possibility of stopping and searching ships on the high seas, elaborate rules were developed for the regulation of wartime trade. Lists of goods qualified as \"contraband\" and liable to confiscation were regularly published by belligerent powers. Though these lists tended to get longer and more inclusive, the laws of naval warfare stipulated the existence of a category of \"conditional contraband\" (commonly thought to include foodstuffs and medical supplies) that could not be seized unless it was known to be destined for military use. The relevant principle here was an extension of the combatant\/noncombatant distinction. \"The seizure of articles of commerce becomes illegitimate so soon as it ceases to aim at enfeebling the naval and military resources of the [enemy] country and puts immediate pressure on the civilian population.\"\n\nIn the course of the First World War, these rules were undermined in two ways; first, by extending the notion of blockade, and then by assuming the military utility of all conditional contraband. The result was full-scale economic warfare, a struggle over supply analogous in its purposes and effects to strategic devastation. The Germans fought this war with the submarine; the British, who controlled at least the surface of the sea, used conventional naval forces, blockading the entire German coast. In this case, conventional forces won the day. The convoy system eventually overcame the submarine threat, whereas the blockade, according to Liddell Hart, was a decisive factor in Germany's defeat. \"The spectre of slow enfeeblement ending in eventual collapse,\" he argues, drove the High Command to undertake its disastrous offensive of 1918. More immediate, and less military consequences can also be traced to the blockade. The \"slow enfeeblement\" of a country unhappily entails the actual deaths of individual citizens. Though civilians did not starve to death in Germany during the last years of the war, mass malnutrition greatly heightened the normal effects of disease. Statistical studies carried out after the war indicate that some half million civilian deaths, directly attributable to diseases such as influenza and typhus, in fact resulted from the deprivations imposed by the British blockade.\n\nBritish officials defended the blockade in legal terms by calling it a reprisal for German submarine warfare. More important for our purposes, however, is their consistent denial that the interdiction of supply was aimed at German civilians. The Cabinet had planned only a \"limited economic war,\" directed, as the official history has it, \"against the armed forces of the enemy.\" But the German government maintained its resistance \"by interposing the German people between the armies and the economic weapons that had been leveled against them and by making the civil populace bear the suffering inflicted.\" The sentence invites ridicule, and yet it is hard to imagine any other defense of the naval blockade (or of strategic devastation in land warfare). The passive form of the verb \"inflicted\" carries the argument. Who did the inflicting? Not the British, though they stopped ships and confiscated cargoes; they took aim at the German army and sought only military ends. And then, the official historian suggests, the Germans themselves pushed civilians into the front line of the economic war\u2014it is as if they had driven them into the forward trenches at the Battle of the Somme\u2014where the British could not help but kill them in the course of legitimate military operations.\n\nIf we are to pursue this argument, we will have to assume what seems unlikely: that the British did not in fact aim at the benefits they won from the slow starvation of German civilians. Given that fortunate blindness, the claim that Britain be acquitted of those civilian deaths is at least interesting, though finally unacceptable. It is interesting, first of all, that the official British historian makes the claim in this complex form rather than simply asserting a war right (as in the siege cases) to starve civilians. And it is interesting, secondly, because the acquittal of the British depends so radically on the indictment of the Germans. Without \"interposition,\" the British have no case, for the revised principle of double effect bars the strategy they adopted.\n\nIt is, of course, false to say that the German government \"interposed\" the civilian population between the blockade and the army. The civilians were where they had always been. If they stood behind the army in the national food line, that is where they had always stood. The army's prior claim to resources was not invented in order to cope with the exigencies of the blockade. Moreover, that claim was probably accepted by the great majority of the German people, at least until the very last months of the war. When the British took aim at the enemy army, therefore, they were aiming through the civilian population, knowing that the civilians were there and that they were in their normal place, \"their proper and permanent abode.\" In relation to the German army, they were placed in exactly the same way as British civilians in relation to their own army. It may be that the British did not intend to kill them; killing them wasn't (if we take the official history seriously) a means to the end set by the Cabinet. But if the success of the British strategy did not depend upon civilian deaths, it nevertheless required that nothing at all be done to avoid those deaths. Civilians had to be hit before soldiers could be hit, and this kind of attack is morally unacceptable. A soldier must take careful aim at his military target and away from nonmilitary targets. He can only shoot if he has a reasonably clear shot; he can only attack if a direct attack is possible. He can risk incidental deaths, but he cannot kill civilians simply because he finds them between himself and his enemies.a\n\nThis principle rules out the extended form of the naval blockade and every sort of strategic devastation, except in cases where adequate provision can be made, and is made, for noncombatants. It is not a principle that has been commonly accepted in war, at least not by the combatants. But it is consistent, I think, with other parts of the war convention, and it has gradually won acceptance, for political as much as moral reasons, with reference to a very important form of contemporary warfare. The systematic destruction of crops and food supplies is a frequent strategy in anti-guerrilla struggles, and since the governments engaged in such struggles generally claim sovereignty over the territory and population involved, they have been inclined to accept responsibility for feeding civilians (which is not to say that civilians have always been fed). Just what this involves I will consider in the next chapter. I have been arguing here that even enemy civilians, over whom sovereignty is not claimed, are the responsibility of attacking armies, whenever those armies adopt strategies that put civilians at risk.\n\n It remains true, however, that the issue of \"interposition\" (or coercion) has to be resolved first. Consider an example from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870: during the siege of Paris, the French used irregular forces behind enemy lines to attack trains carrying military supplies to the German army. The Germans responded by placing civilian hostages on the trains. Now it was no longer possible to get a \"clear shot\" at what was still a legitimate military target. But the civilians on the trains were not in their normal place; they had been radically coerced; and responsibility for their deaths, even if these deaths were actually inflicted by the French, lay with the German commanders. On this point, see Robert Nozick's discussion of \"innocent shields of threats\" in Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 35.\n\nGuerrilla War\n\nResistance to Military Occupation\n\nA Partisan Attack\n\nSurprise is the essential feature of guerrilla war; thus the ambush is the classic guerrilla tactic. It is also, of course, a tactic in conventional war; the concealment and camouflage that it involves, though they were once repugnant to officers and gentlemen, have long been regarded as legitimate forms of combat. But there is one kind of ambush that is not legitimate in conventional war and that places in sharp focus the moral difficulties guerrillas and their enemies regularly encounter. This is the ambush prepared behind political or moral rather than natural cover. An example is provided by Captain Helmut Tausend, of the German Army, in Marcel Ophuls' documentary film The Sorrow and the Pity. Tausend tells of a platoon of soldiers on a march through the French countryside during the years of the German occupation. They passed a group of young men, French peasants, or so it seemed, digging potatoes. But these were not in fact peasants; they were members of the Resistance. As the Germans marched by, the \"peasants\" dropped their shovels, picked up guns hidden in the field, and opened fire. Fourteen of the soldiers were hit. Years later, their captain was still indignant. \"You call that 'partisan' resistance? I don't. Partisans for me are men that can be identified, men who wear a special armband or a cap, something with which to recognize them. What happened in that potato field was murder.\"\n\nThe captain's argument about armbands and caps is simply a citation from the international law of war, from the Hague and Geneva conventions, and I shall have more to say about it later on. It is important to stress first that the partisans had here taken on a double disguise. They were disguised as peaceful peasants and also as Frenchmen, that is, citizens of a state that had surrendered, for whom the war was over (just as guerrillas in a revolutionary struggle disguise themselves as unarmed civilians and also as loyal citizens of a state that is not at war at all). It was because of this second disguise that the ambush was so perfect. The Germans thought they were in a rear area, not at the front, and so they were not battle-ready; they were not preceded by a scouting party; they were not suspicious of the young men in the field. The surprise achieved by the partisans was of a kind virtually impossible in actual combat. It derived from what might be called the protective coloration of national surrender, and its effect was obviously to erode the moral and legal understandings upon which surrender rests.\n\nSurrender is an explicit agreement and exchange: the individual soldier promises to stop fighting in exchange for benevolent quarantine for the duration of the war; a government promises that its citizens will stop fighting in exchange for the restoration of ordinary public life. The precise conditions of \"benevolent quarantine\" and \"public life\" are specified in the law books; I need not go into them here. The obligations of individuals are also specified: they may try to escape from the prison camp or to flee occupied territory, and if they succeed in their escape or flight, they are free to fight again; they have regained their war rights. But they may not resist their quarantine or occupation. If a prisoner kills a guard in the course of his escape, the act is murder; if the citizens of a defeated country attack the occupation authorities, the act has, or once had, an even grimmer name: it is, or was, \"war treason\" (or \"war rebellion\"), a breaking of political faith, punishable, like the ordinary treason of rebels and spies, by death.\n\nBut \"traitor\" does not seem the right name for those French partisans. Indeed, it is precisely their experience, and that of other guerrilla fighters in World War II, that has led to the virtual disappearance of \"war treason\" from the law books and of the idea of breaking faith from our moral discussions of wartime resistance (and of peacetime rebellion also, when it is directed against alien or colonial rule). We tend to deny, today, that individuals are automatically subsumed by the decisions of their government or the fate of its armies. We have come to understand the moral commitment they may feel to defend their homeland and their political community, even after the war is officially over. A prisoner of war, after all, knows that the fighting will go on despite his own capture; his government is in place, his country is still being defended. But after national surrender the case is different, and if there are still values worth defending, no one can defend them except ordinary men and women, citizens with no political or legal standing. I suppose it is some general sense that there are such values, or often are, that leads us to grant these men and women a kind of moral authority.\n\nBut though this grant reflects new and valuable democratic sensibilities, it also raises serious questions. For if citizens of a defeated state still have a right to fight, what is the meaning of surrender? And what obligations can be imposed on conquering armies? There can be no ordinary public life in occupied territory if the occupation authorities are subject to attack at any time and at the hands of any citizen. And ordinary life is a value, too. It is what most of the citizens of a defeated country most ardently hope for. The heroes of the resistance put it in jeopardy, and we must weigh the risks they impose on others in order to understand the risks they must accept themselves. Moreover, if the authorities actually do aim at the restoration of everyday peacefulness, they seem entitled to enjoy the security they provide; and then they must also be entitled to regard armed resistance as a criminal activity. So the story with which I began might end this way (in the film it has no end): the surviving soldiers rally and fight back; some of the partisans are captured, tried as murderers, condemned, and executed. We would not, I think, add those executions to the list of Nazi war crimes. At the same time, we would not join in the condemnation.\n\nSo the situation can be summed up: resistance is legitimate, and the punishment of resistance is legitimate. That may seem like a simple standoff and an abdication of ethical judgment. It is actually a precise reflection of the moral realities of military defeat. I want to stress again that our understanding of these realities has nothing to do with our view of the two sides. We can deplore the resistance, without calling the partisans traitors; we can hate the occupation, without calling the execution of the partisans a crime. If we alter the story or add to it, of course, the case is changed. If the occupation authorities do not live up to their obligations under the surrender agreement, they lose their entitlements. And once the guerrilla struggle has reached a certain point of seriousness and intensity, we may decide that the war has effectively been renewed, notice has been given, the front has been re-established (even if it is not a line), and soldiers no longer have a right to be surprised even by a surprise attack. Then guerrillas captured by the authorities must be treated as prisoners of war\u2014provided, that is, they have themselves fought in accordance with the war convention.\n\nBut guerrillas don't fight that way. Their struggle is subversive not merely with reference to the occupation or to their own government, but with reference to the war convention itself. Wearing peasant clothes and hiding among the civilian population, they challenge the most fundamental principle of the rules of war. For it is the purpose of those rules to specify for each individual a single identity; he must be either a soldier or a civilian. The British Manual of Military Law makes the point with special clarity: \"Both these classes have distinct privileges, duties, and disabilities. . . . An individual must definitely choose to belong to one class or the other, and shall not be permitted to enjoy the privileges of both; in particular . . . an individual [shall] not be allowed to kill or wound members of the army of the opposed nation and subsequently, if captured or in danger of life, pretend to be a peaceful citizen.\" That is what guerrillas do, however, or sometimes do. So we can imagine another conclusion to the story of the partisan attack. The partisans successfully disengage, disperse to their homes, and go about their ordinary business. When German troops come to the village that night, they cannot distinguish the guerrilla fighters from any other of the villagers. What do they do then? If, through searches and interrogations\u2014police, not soldier's, work\u2014they seize one of the partisans, should they treat him as a captured criminal or a prisoner of war (leaving aside now the problems of surrender and resistance)? And if they seize no one, can they punish the whole village? If the partisans don't maintain the distinction of soldiers and civilians, why should they?\n\nThe Rights of Guerrilla Fighters\n\nAs this example suggests, the guerrillas don't subvert the war convention by themselves attacking civilians; at least, it is not a necessary feature of their struggle that they do that. Instead, they invite their enemies to do it. By refusing to accept a single identity, they seek to make it impossible for their enemies to accord to combatants and noncombatants their \"distinct privileges . . . and disabilities.\" The political creed of the guerrillas is essentially a defense of this refusal. The people, they say, are no longer being defended by an army; the only army in the field is the army of the oppressors; the people are defending themselves. Guerrilla war is \"people's war,\" a special form of the lev\u00e9e en masse, authorized from below. \"The war of liberation,\" according to a pamphlet of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, \"is fought by the people themselves; the entire people . . . are the driving force. . . . Not only the peasants in their rural areas, but the workers and laborers in the city, along with intellectuals, students, and businessmen have gone to fight the enemy.\" And the NLF drove the point home by naming its paramilitary forces Dan Quan, literally, civilian soldiers. The guerrilla's self-image is not of a solitary fighter hiding among the people, but of a whole people mobilized for war, himself a loyal member, one among many. If you want to fight against us, the guerrillas say, you are going to have to fight civilians, for you are not at war with an army but with a nation. Therefore, you should not fight at all, and if you do, you are the barbarians, killing women and children.\n\nIn fact, the guerrillas mobilize only a small part of the nation\u2014a very small part, when they first begin their attacks. They depend upon the counter-attacks of their enemies to mobilize the rest. Their strategy is framed in terms of the war convention: they seek to place the onus of indiscriminate warfare on the opposing army. The guerrillas themselves have to discriminate, if only to prove that they are really soldiers (and not enemies) of the people. It is also and perhaps more importantly true that it is relatively easy for them to make the relevant discriminations. I don't mean that guerrillas never engage in terrorist campaigns (even against their fellow countrymen) or that they never take hostages or burn villages. They do all those things, though they generally do less of them than the anti-guerrilla forces. For the guerrillas know who their enemies are, and they know where they are. They fight in small groups, with small arms, at close quarters\u2014and the soldiers they fight against wear uniforms. Even when they kill civilians, they are able to make distinctions: they aim at well-known officials, notorious collaborators, and so on. If the \"entire people\" are not really the \"driving force,\" they are also not the objects of guerrilla attack.\n\nFor this reason, guerrilla leaders and publicists are able to stress the moral quality not only of the goals they seek but also of the means they employ. Consider for a moment Mao Tse-tung's famous \"Eight Points for Attention.\" Mao is by no means committed to the notion of noncombatant immunity (as we shall see), but he writes as if, in the China of the warlords and the Kuomintang, only the communists respect the lives and property of the people. The \"Eight Points\" are meant to mark off the guerrillas first of all from their predecessors, the bandits of traditional China, and then from their present enemies, who ravage the countryside. They suggest how the military virtues can be radically simplified for a democratic age.\n\n  1. Speak politely.\n  2. Pay fairly for what you buy.\n  3. Return everything you borrow.\n  4. Pay for anything you damage.\n  5. Do not hit or swear at people.\n  6. Do not damage crops.\n  7. Do not take liberties with women.\n  8. Do not ill-treat captives.\n\nThe last of these is particularly problematic, for in the conditions of guerrilla war it must often involve releasing prisoners, something most guerrillas are no doubt loath to do. Yet it is at least sometimes done, as an account of the Cuban revolution, originally published in the Marine Corps Gazette, suggests:\n\nThat same evening, I watched the surrender of hundreds of Batistianos from a small-town garrison. They were gathered within a hollow square of rebel Tommy-gunners and harangued by Raul Castro:\n\n\"We hope that you will stay with us and fight against the master who so ill-used you. If you decide to refuse this invitation\u2014and I am not going to repeat it\u2014you will be delivered to the custody of the Cuban Red Cross tomorrow. Once you are under Batista's orders again, we hope that you will not take arms against us. But, if you do, remember this:\n\n\"We took you this time. We can take you again. And when we do, we will not frighten or torture or kill you. . . . If you are captured a second time or even a third . . . we will again return you exactly as we are doing now.\"\n\nEven when guerrillas behave this way, however, it is not clear that they are themselves entitled to prisoner of war status when captured, or that they have any war rights at all. For if they don't make war on noncombatants, it also appears that they don't make war on soldiers: \"What happened in that potato field was murder.\" They attack stealthily, deviously, without warning, and in disguise. They violate the implicit trust upon which the war convention rests: soldiers must feel safe among civilians if civilians are ever to be safe from soldiers. It is not the case, as Mao once suggested, that guerrillas are to civilians as fish to the ocean. The actual relation is rather of fish to other fish, and the guerrillas are as likely to appear among the minnows as among the sharks.\n\nThat, at least, is the paradigmatic form of guerrilla war. I should add that it is not the form such war always or necessarily takes. The discipline and mobility required of guerrilla fighters often preclude a domestic retreat. Their main forces commonly operate out of base camps located in remote areas of the country. And, curiously enough, as the guerrilla units grow larger and more stable, their members are likely to put on uniforms. Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia, for example, wore distinctive dress, and this was apparently no disadvantage in the kind of war they fought. All the evidence suggests that quite apart from the rules of war, guerrillas, like other soldiers, prefer to wear uniforms; it enhances their sense of membership and solidarity. In any case, soldiers attacked by a guerrilla main force know who their enemies are as soon as the attack begins; ambushed by uniformed men, they would know no sooner. When the guerrillas \"melt away\" after such an attack, they more often disappear into jungles or mountains than into villages, a retreat that raises no moral problems. Battles of this sort can readily be assimilated to the irregular combat of army units like Wingate's \"Chindits\" or \"Merrill's Marauders\" in World War II. But this is not what most people have in mind when they talk about guerrilla war. The paradigm worked out by guerrilla publicists (together with their enemies) focuses precisely on what is morally difficult about guerrilla war\u2014and also, as we shall see, about anti-guerrilla war. In order to deal with these difficulties, I shall simply accept the paradigm and treat guerrillas as they ask to be treated, as fish among the ocean's fish. What then are their war rights?\n\nThe legal rules are simple and clearcut, though not without their own problems. To be eligible for the war rights of soldiers, guerrilla fighters must wear \"a fixed distinctive sign visible at a distance\" and must \"carry their arms openly.\" It is possible to worry at length about the precise meaning of distinctiveness, fixity, and openness, but I do not think we would learn a great deal by doing so. In fact, these requirements are often suspended, particularly in the interesting case of a popular rising to repel invasion or resist foreign tyranny. When the people rise en masse, they are not required to put on uniforms. Nor will they carry arms openly, if they fight, as they usually do, from ambush: hiding themselves, they can hardly be expected to display their weapons. Francis Lieber, in one of the earliest legal studies of guerrilla war, cites the case of the Greek rebellion against Turkey, where the Turkish government killed or enslaved all prisoners: \"But I take it,\" he writes, \"that a civilized government would not have allowed the fact that the Greeks . . . carried on mountain guerrilla [war] to influence its conduct toward prisoners.\"\n\nThe key moral issue, which the law gets at only imperfectly, does not have to do with distinctive dress or visible weapons, but with the use of civilian clothing as a ruse and a disguise.a The French partisan attack perfectly illustrates this, and it has to be said, I think, that the killing of those German soldiers was more like assassination than war. That is not because of the surprise, simply, but because of the kind and degree of deceit involved: the same sort of deceit that is involved when a public official or party leader is shot down by some political enemy who has taken on the appearance of a friend and supporter or of a harmless passer-by. Now it may be the case\u2014I am more than open to this suggestion\u2014that the German army in France had attacked civilians in ways that justified the assassination of individual soldiers, just as it may be the case that the public official or party leader is a brutal tyrant who deserves to die. But assassins cannot claim the protection of the rules of war; they are engaged in a different activity. Most of the other enterprises for which guerrillas require civilian disguise are also \"different.\" These include all the possible varieties of espionage and sabotage; they can best be understood by comparing them to acts carried out behind enemy lines by the secret agents of conventional armies. It is widely agreed that such agents possess no war rights, even if their cause is just. They know the risks their efforts entail, and I see no reason to describe the risks of guerrillas engaged in similar projects any differently. Guerrilla leaders claim war rights for all their followers, but it makes sense to distinguish, if this is possible, between those guerrillas who use civilian dress as a ruse and those who depend upon camouflage, the cover of darkness, tactical surprise, and so on.\n\nThe issues posed by the guerrilla war paradigm, however, are not resolved by this distinction. For guerrillas don't merely fight as civilians; they fight among civilians, and this in two senses. First, their day-to-day existence is much more closely connected with the day-to-day existence of the people around them than is ever the case with conventional armies. They live with the people they claim to defend, whereas conventional troops are usually billeted with civilians only after the war or the battle is over. And second, they fight where they live; their military positions are not bases, posts, camps, forts, or strongholds, but villages. Hence they are radically dependent on the villagers, even when they don't succeed in mobilizing them for \"people's war.\" Now, every army depends upon the civilian population of its home country for supplies, recruits, and political support. But this dependence is usually indirect, mediated by the bureaucratic apparatus of the state or the exchange system of the economy. So food is passed from the farmer to the marketing co-op, to the food processing plant, to the trucking company, to the army commissary. But in guerrilla war, the dependence is immediate: the farmer hands the food to the guerrilla, and whether it is received as a tax or paid for in accordance with Mao's Second Point for Attention, the relation between the two men is face-to-face. Similarly, an ordinary citizen may vote for a political party that in turn supports the war effort and whose leaders are called in for military briefings. But in guerrilla war, the support a civilian provides is far more direct. He doesn't need to be briefed; he already knows the most important military secret; he knows who the guerrillas are. If he doesn't keep this information to himself, the guerrillas are lost.\n\nTheir enemies say that the guerrillas rely on terror to win the support or at least the silence of the villagers. But it seems more likely that when they have significant popular support (which they don't always have), they have it for other reasons. \"Violence may explain the cooperation of a few individuals,\" writes an American student of the Vietnamese war, \"but it cannot explain the cooperation of a whole social class [the peasantry].\" If the killing of civilians were sufficient to win civilian support, the guerrillas would always be at a disadvantage, for their enemies possess far more fire power than they do. But killing will work against the killer \"unless he has already pre-empted a large part of the population and then limits his acts of violence to a sharply defined minority.\" When the guerrillas succeed, then, in fighting among the people, it is best to assume that they have some serious political support among the people. The people, or some of them, are complicitous in guerrilla war, and the war would be impossible without their complicity. That doesn't mean that they seek out opportunities to help. Even when he sympathizes with the goal of the guerrillas, we can assume that the average civilian would rather vote for them than hide them in his house. But guerrilla war makes for enforced intimacies, and the people are drawn into it in a new way even though the services they provide are nothing more than functional equivalents of the services civilians have always provided for soldiers. For the intimacy is itself an additional service, which has no functional equivalent. Whereas soldiers are supposed to protect the civilians who stand behind them, guerrillas are protected by the civilians among whom they stand.\n\nBut the fact that they accept this protection, and depend upon it, doesn't seem to me to deprive the guerrillas of their war rights. Indeed, it is more plausible to make exactly the opposite argument: that the war rights the people would have were they to rise en masse are passed on to the irregular fighters they support and protect\u2014assuming that the support, at least, is voluntary. For soldiers acquire war rights not as individual warriors but as political instruments, servants of a community that in turn provides services for its soldiers. Guerrillas take on a similar identity whenever they stand in a similar or equivalent relationship, that is, whenever the people are helpful and complicitous in the ways I have described. When the people do not provide this recognition and support, guerrillas acquire no war rights, and their enemies may rightly treat them when captured as \"bandits\" or criminals. But any significant degree of popular support entitles the guerrillas to the benevolent quarantine customarily offered prisoners of war (unless they are guilty of specific acts of assassination or sabotage, for which soldiers, too, can be punished).b\n\nThis argument clearly establishes the rights of the guerrillas; it raises the most serious questions, however, about the rights of the people; and these are the crucial questions of guerrilla war. The intimacies of the struggle expose the people in a new way to the risks of combat. In practice, the nature of this exposure, and its degree, are going to be determined by the government and its allies. So the burdens of decision are shifted by the guerrillas onto their enemies. It is their enemies who must weigh (as we must) the moral significance of the popular support the guerrillas both enjoy and exploit. One can hardly fight against men and women who themselves fight among civilians without endangering civilian lives. Have these civilians forfeited their immunity? Or do they, despite their wartime complicity, still have rights vis-\u00e0-vis the anti-guerrilla forces?\n\nThe Rights of Civilian Supporters\n\nIf civilians had no rights at all, or were thought to have none, it would be a small benefit to hide among them. In a sense, then, the advantages the guerrillas seek depend upon the scruples of their enemies\u2014though there are other advantages to be had if their enemies are unscrupulous: that is why anti-guerrilla warfare is so difficult. I shall want to argue that these scruples in fact have a moral basis, but it is worth suggesting first that they also have a strategic basis. It is always in the interest of the anti-guerrilla forces to insist upon the soldier\/civilian distinction, even when the guerrillas act (as they always will if they can) so as to blur the line. All the handbooks on \"counter-insurgency\" make the same argument: what is necessary is to isolate the guerrillas from the civilian population, to cut them off from their protection and at the same time to shield civilians from the fighting. The last point is more important in guerrilla than in conventional war, for in conventional war one assumes the hostility of \"enemy civilians,\" while in a guerrilla struggle one must seek their sympathy and support. Guerrilla war is a political, even an ideological conflict. \"Our kingdoms lay in each man's mind,\" wrote T. E. Lawrence of the Arab guerrillas he led in World War I. \"A province would be won when we had taught the civilians in it to die for our ideal of freedom.\" And it can be won back only if those same civilians are taught to live for some counter-ideal (or in the case of a military occupation, to acquiesce in the re-establishment of order and ordinary life). That is what is meant when it is said that the battle is for the \"hearts and minds\" of the people. And one cannot triumph in such a battle by treating the people as so many enemies to be attacked and killed along with the guerrillas who live among them.\n\nBut what if the guerrillas cannot be isolated from the people? What if the lev\u00e9e en masse is a reality and not merely a piece of propaganda? Characteristically, the military handbooks neither pose nor answer such questions. There is, however, a moral argument to be made if this point is reached: the anti-guerrilla war can then no longer be fought\u2014and not just because, from a strategic point of view, it can no longer be won. It cannot be fought because it is no longer an anti-guerrilla but an anti-social war, a war against an entire people, in which no distinctions would be possible in the actual fighting. But this is the limiting case of guerrilla war. In fact, the rights of the people come into play earlier on, and I must try now to give them some plausible definition.\n\nConsider again the case of the partisan attack in occupied France. If, after the ambush, the partisans hide in a nearby peasant village, what are the rights of the peasants among whom they hide? German soldiers arrive that night, let's say, seeking the men and women directly involved or implicated in the ambush and looking also for some way of preventing future attacks. The civilians they encounter are hostile, but that doesn't make them enemies in the sense of the war convention, for they don't actually resist the efforts of the soldiers. They behave exactly as citizens sometimes do in the face of police interrogations: they are passive, blank, evasive. We must imagine a domestic state of emergency and ask how the police might legitimately respond to such hostility. Soldiers can do no more when what they are doing is police work; for the status of the hostile civilians is no different. Interrogations, searches, seizures of property, curfews\u2014all these seem to be commonly accepted (I will not try to explain why); but not the torture of suspects or the taking of hostages or the internment of men and women who are or might be innocent. Civilians still have rights in such circumstances. If their liberty can be temporarily abridged in a variety of ways, it is not entirely forfeit; nor are their lives at risk. The argument would be much harder, however, had the troops been ambushed as they marched through the village itself, shot at from the cover of peasant homes and barns. To understand what happens then, we must look at another historical example.\n\nThe American \"Rules of Engagement\" in Vietnam\n\nHere is a typical incident of the Vietnam War. \"An American unit moving along Route 18 [in Long An province] received small arms fire from a village, and in reply the tactical commander called for artillery and air strikes on the village itself, resulting in heavy civilian casualties and extensive physical destruction.\" Something like this must have happened hundreds, even thousands of times. The bombing and strafing of peasant villages was a common tactic of the American forces. It is a matter of special interest to us that it was permitted by the U.S. Army's \"rules of engagement,\" worked out, so it was said, to isolate the guerrillas and minimize civilian casualties.\n\nThe attack on the village near Route 18 looks as if it was intended to minimize only army casualties. It looks like another instance of a practice I have already examined: the indiscriminate use of modern fire power to save soldiers from trouble and risk. But in this case, the trouble and risk are of a sort very different from anything encountered on the front line of a conventional war. It is most unlikely that an army patrol moving into the village would have been able to locate and destroy an enemy position. The soldiers would have found . . . a village, its population sullen and silent, the guerrilla fighters hiding, the guerrilla \"fortifications\" indistinguishable from the homes and shelters of the villagers. They might have drawn hostile fire; more likely, they would have lost men to mines and booby traps, the exact location of which everyone in the village knew and no one would reveal. Under such circumstances, it was not difficult for soldiers to convince themselves that the village was a military stronghold and a legitimate target. And if it was known to be a stronghold, surely it could be attacked, like any other enemy position, even before hostile fire was encountered. In fact, this became American policy quite early in the war: villages from which hostile fire might reasonably be expected were shelled and bombed before soldiers moved in and even if no movement was planned. But then how does one minimize civilian casualties, let alone win over the civilian population? It was to answer this question that the rules of engagement were developed.\n\nThe crucial point of the rules, as they are described by the journalist Jonathan Schell, was that civilians were to be given warning in advance of the destruction of their villages, so that they could break with the guerrillas, expel them, or leave themselves. The goal was to force the separation of combatants and noncombatants, and the means was terror. Enormous risk was attached to complicity in guerrilla war, but this was a risk that could only be imposed on whole villages; no further differentiation was possible. It is not the case that civilians were held hostage for the activities of the guerrillas. Rather, they were held responsible for their own activity, even when this activity was not overtly military. The fact that the activity sometimes was overtly military, that ten-year-old children threw hand grenades at American soldiers (the incidence of such attacks was probably exaggerated by the soldiers, in part to justify their own conduct toward civilians) blurs the nature of this responsibility. But it has to be stressed that a village was regarded as hostile not because its women and children were prepared to fight, but because they were not prepared to deny material support to the guerrillas or to reveal their whereabouts or the location of their mines and booby traps.\n\nThese were the rules of engagement: (1) A village could be bombed or shelled without warning if American troops had received fire from within it. The villagers were presumed able to prevent the use of their village as a fire base, and whether or not they actually were able, they certainly knew in advance whether it would be so used. In any case, the shooting itself was a warning, since return fire was to be expected\u2014though it is unlikely that the villagers expected the response to be as disproportionate as it usually was, until the pattern had become familiar. (2) Any village known to be hostile could be bombed or shelled if its inhabitants were warned in advance, either by the dropping of leaflets or by helicopter loudspeaker. These warnings were of two sorts: sometimes they were specific in character, delivered immediately before an attack, so that the villagers only just had time to leave (and then the guerrillas could leave with them), or they were general, describing the attack that might come if the villagers did not expel the guerrillas.\n\nThe U.S. Marines will not hesitate to destroy immediately any village or hamlet harboring the Vietcong. . . . The choice is yours. If you refuse to let the Vietcong use your villages and hamlets as their battlefield, your homes and your lives will be saved.\n\nAnd if not, not. Despite the emphasis on choice, this is not quite a liberal pronouncement, for the choice in question is very much a collective one. Exodus, of course, remained an individual option: people could move out of villages where the Vietcong had established itself, taking refuge with relatives in other villages, or in the cities, or in government-run camps. Most often, however, they did this only after the bombing had begun, either because they did not understand the warnings, or did not believe them, or simply hoped desperately that their own homes would somehow be spared. Hence it was sometimes thought humane to dispense with choice altogether and forcibly to deport villagers from areas that were considered under enemy control. Then the third rule of engagement went into effect. (3) Once the civilian population had been moved out, the village and surrounding country might be declared a \"free fire zone\" that could be bombed and shelled at will. It was assumed that anyone still living in the area was a guerrilla or a \"hardened\" guerrilla supporter. Deportation had stripped away civilian cover as defoliation stripped away natural cover, and left the enemy exposed.\n\nIn considering these rules, the first thing to note is that they were radically ineffective. \"My investigation disclosed,\" writes Schell, \"that the procedures for applying these restraints were modified or twisted or ignored to such an extent that in practice the restraints evaporated entirely. . . .\" Often, in fact, no warning was given, or the leaflets were of little help to villagers who could not read, or the forcible evacuation left large numbers of civilians behind, or no adequate provision was made for the deported families and they drifted back to their homes and farms. None of this, of course, would reflect on the value of the rules themselves, unless the ineffectiveness were somehow intrinsic to them or to the situation in which they were applied. This was clearly the case in Vietnam. For where the guerrillas have significant popular support and have established a political apparatus in the villages, it is unrealistic to think that the villagers will or can expel them. This has nothing to do with the virtues of guerrilla rule: it would have been equally unrealistic to think that German workers, though their homes were bombed and their families killed, would overthrow the Nazis. Hence the only protection the rules provide is in advising or enforcing the departure not of guerrillas from peaceful villages but of civilians from what is likely to become a battlefield.\n\nNow, in a conventional war, removing civilians from a battlefield is clearly a good thing to do; positive international law requires it wherever possible. Similarly in the case of a besieged city: civilians must be allowed to leave; and if they refuse (so I have argued), they can be attacked along with the defending soldiers. But a battlefield and a city are determinate areas, and a battle and a siege are, usually, of limited duration. Civilians move out; then they move back. Guerrilla war is likely to be very different. The battlefield extends over much of the country and the struggle is, as Mao has written, \"protracted.\" Here the proper analogy is not to the siege of a city but to the blockade or strategic devastation of a much wider area. The policy underlying the American rules of engagement actually envisaged the uprooting and resettlement of a very substantial part of the rural population of Vietnam: millions of men, women, and children. But that is an incredible task, and, leaving aside for the moment the likely criminality of the project, there was never more than a pretense that sufficient resources would be made available to accomplish it. It was inevitable then, and it was known to be inevitable, that civilians would be living in the villages that were shelled and bombed.\n\nWhat happened is quickly described:\n\nIn August 1967, during Operation Benton, the \"pacification\" camps became so full that Army units were ordered not to \"generate\" any more refugees. The Army complied. But search and destroy operations continued. Only now the peasants were not warned before an air-strike was called on their village. They were killed in their villages because there was no room for them in the swamped pacification camps.\n\nI should add that this sort of thing doesn't always happen, even in anti-\u00adguerrilla war\u2014though the policy of forced resettlement or \"concentration,\" from its origins in the Cuban Insurgency and the Boer War, has rarely been carried out in a humane manner or with adequate resources. But one can find counter-examples. In Malaya, in the early 1950s, where the guerrillas had the support of only a relatively small part of the rural population, a limited resettlement (to new villages, not concentration camps) seems to have worked. At any rate, it has been said that after the fighting was over, few of the resettled villagers wanted to return to their former homes. That is not a sufficient criterion of moral success, but it is one sign of a permissible program. Since governments are generally thought to be entitled to resettle (relatively small numbers of) their own citizens for the sake of some commonly accepted social purpose, the policy cannot be ruled out altogether in time of guerrilla war. But unless the numbers are restricted, it will be difficult to make the case for common acceptance. And here, as in peacetime, there is some requirement to provide adequate economic support and comparable living space. In Vietnam, that was never possible. The scope of the war was too wide; new villages could not be built; the camps were dismal; and hundreds of thousands of displaced peasants crowded into the cities, forming there a new lumpen proletariat, miserable, sick, jobless, or quickly exploited in ill-paid and menial jobs or as servants, prostitutes, and so on.\n\nEven had all this worked, in the limited sense that civilian deaths had been avoided, the rules of engagement and the policy they embodied could hardly be defended. It seems to violate even the principle of proportionality\u2014which is by no means easy to do, as we have seen again and again, since the values against which destruction and suffering are to be measured are so readily inflated. But in this case, the argument is clear, for the defense of resettlement comes down finally to a claim something like that made by an American officer with reference to the town of Ben Tre: we had to destroy the town in order to save it. In order to save Vietnam, we had to destroy the rural culture and the village society of the Vietnamese. Surely the equation does not work and the policy cannot be approved, at least in the context of the Vietnamese struggle itself. (One can always shift, I suppose, to the higher mathematics of international statecraft.)\n\nBut the rules of engagement raise a more interesting question. Suppose that civilians, duly warned, not only refuse to expel the guerrillas but also refuse to leave themselves. Can they be attacked and killed, as the rules imply? What are their rights? They can certainly be exposed to risks, for battles are likely to be fought in their villages. And the risks they must live with will be considerably greater than those of conventional combat. The increased risk results from the intimacies I have already described; I would suggest now that it is the only result of those intimacies, at least in the moral realm. It is serious enough. Anti-guerrilla war is a terrible strain on conventional troops, and even if they are both disciplined and careful, as they should be, civilians are certain to die at their hands. A soldier who, once he is engaged, simply fires at every male villager between the ages of fifteen and fifty (say) is probably justified in doing so, as he would not be in an ordinary firefight. The innocent deaths that result from this kind of fighting are the responsibility of the guerrillas and their civilian supporters; the soldiers are cleared by the doctrine of double effect. It has to be stressed, however, that the supporters themselves, so long as they give only political support, are not legitimate targets, either as a group or as distinguishable individuals. Conceivably, some of them can be charged with complicity (not in guerrilla war generally but) in particular acts of assassination and sabotage. But charges of that sort must be proved before some sort of judicial tribunal. So far as combat goes, these people cannot be shot on sight, when no firefight is in progress; nor can their villages be attacked merely because they might be used as firebases or because it is expected that they will be used; nor can they be randomly bombed and shelled, even after warning has been given.\n\nThe American rules have only the appearance of recognizing and attending to the combatant\/noncombatant distinction. In fact, they set up a new distinction: between loyal and disloyal, or friendly and hostile noncombatants. The same dichotomy can be seen at work in the claims American soldiers made about the villages they attacked: \"This place is almost entire V.C. controlled, or pro-V.C.\" \"We consider just about everyone here to be a hard-core V.C., or at least some kind of supporter.\" It is not the military activities of the villagers that are being stressed in statements of this sort, but their political allegiance. Even with reference to that, the statements are palpably false, since at least some of the villagers are children who cannot be said to have any allegiance at all. In any case, as I have already argued in the example of the villagers of occupied France, political hostility does not make people enemies in the sense of the war convention. (If it did, there would be no civilian immunity at all, except when wars were fought in neutral countries.) They have done nothing to forfeit their right to life, and that right must be respected as best it can be in the course of attacks against the irregular fighters the villagers both resemble and harbor.\n\nIt is important to say something now about the possible shape of those attacks, though I cannot talk about them like a military strategist; I can only report on some of the things that strategists say. Bombing and shelling from a distance have undoubtedly been defended in terms of military necessity. But that is as bad an argument strategically as it is morally. For there are other and more effective ways of fighting. Thus a British expert on counter-insurgency writes that the use of \"heavily armed helicopters\" against peasant villages \"can only be justified if the campaign has deteriorated to the extent where it is virtually indistinguishable from conventional war.\" I doubt that it can be justified even then, but I want to stress again what this expert has grasped: that counter-insurgency requires a strategy and tactics of discrimination. Guerrillas can be defeated (and, similarly, they can win) only at close quarters. With regard to peasant villages, this suggests two different sorts of campaigns, both of which have been extensively discussed in the literature. In areas of \"low intensity operations,\" the villages must be occupied by small units specially trained for the political and police work necessary to seek out guerrilla supporters and informants. In areas where the guerrillas are effectively in control and the fighting intense, the villages must be encircled and entered in force. Bernard Fall has reported in some detail on a French attack of this sort in Vietnam in the 1950s. What is involved here is an effort to bring numbers, expertise, and technology directly to bear, forcing the guerrillas to give battle in a situation where fire can be relatively precise, or driving them into a surrounding net of soldiers. If the soldiers are properly prepared and equipped, they need not accept unbearable risks in fighting of this sort, and they need not inflict indiscriminate destruction. As Fall points out, a very considerable number of men are required for this strategy: \"No sealing off of an enemy force could be successful unless the proportion of attackers to defenders was 15 to 1 or even 20 to 1, for the enemy had in its favor an intimate knowledge of the terrain, the advantages of defensive organization, and the sympathy of the population.\" But these proportions are frequently achieved in guerrilla war, and the \"surround and storm\" strategy would be eminently feasible were it not for a second and more serious difficulty.\n\nSince the villages are not (or should not be) destroyed when they are stormed, and since the villagers are not resettled, it is always possible for the guerrillas to return once the specially assembled task force has moved on. Success requires that the military operation be followed by a political campaign\u2014and this neither the French in Vietnam nor the Americans who followed them were able to mount in any serious fashion. The decision to destroy villages from a distance was a consequence of this failure, which is not at all the same thing as the \"deterioration\" of guerrilla into conventional war.\n\nAt some point in the military progress of the rebellion, or in the decline of the political capacity of the government that opposes it, it may well become impossible to fight the guerrillas at close quarters. There aren't enough men or, more likely, the government, though it can win particular battles, has no staying power. As soon as the fighting is over, the villagers welcome back the insurgent forces. Now the government (and its foreign allies) face what is in effect, or rather what has become, a people's war. This honorific name can be applied, however, only after the guerrilla movement has won very substantial popular support. It is by no means true all the time. One need only study Che Guevara's abortive campaign in the jungles of Bolivia to realize how easy it is to destroy a guerrilla band that has no popular support at all. From there, one might trace a continuum of increasing difficulty: at some point along that continuum, guerrilla fighters acquire war rights, and at some further point, the right of the government to continue the struggle must be called into question.\n\nThis last is not a point which soldiers are likely to recognize or acknowledge. For it is an axiom of the war convention (and a qualification on the rules of war) that if attack is morally possible, counter-attack cannot be ruled out. It cannot be the case that guerrillas can hug the civilian population and make themselves invulnerable. But if it is always morally possible to fight, it is not always possible to do whatever is required to win. In any struggle, conventional or unconventional, the rules of war may at some point become a hindrance to the victory of one side or another. If they could then be set aside, however, they would have no value at all. It is precisely then that the restraints they impose are most important. We can see this clearly in the Vietnam case. The alternative strategies I have briefly outlined were conceivably a way of winning (as the British won in Malaya) until the guerrillas consolidated their political base in the villages. That victory effectively ended the war. It is not, I suppose, a victory that can be distinguished in any definitive fashion from the political and military struggle that preceded it. But one can say with some assurance that it has occurred whenever ordinary soldiers (who are not moral monsters and would fight by the rules if they could) become convinced that old men and women and children are their enemies. For after that, it is unlikely that the war can be fought except by setting out systematically to kill civilians or to destroy their society and culture.\n\nI am inclined to say more than this. In the theory of war, as we have seen, considerations of jus ad bellum and jus in bello are logically independent, and the judgments we make in terms of one and the other are not necessarily the same. But here they come together. The war cannot be won, and it should not be won. It cannot be won, because the only available strategy involves a war against civilians; and it should not be won, because the degree of civilian support that rules out alternative strategies also makes the guerrillas the legitimate rulers of the country. The struggle against them is an unjust struggle as well as one that can only be carried on unjustly. Fought by foreigners, it is a war of aggression; if by a local regime alone, it is an act of tyranny. The position of the anti-guerrilla forces has become doubly untenable.\n\n The case is the same with the wearing of civilian clothing as with the wearing of enemy uniforms. In his memoir of the Boer War, Deneys Reitz reports that Boer guerrillas sometimes wore uniforms taken from British soldiers. Lord Kitchener, the British commander, warned that anyone captured in khaki would be shot, and a considerable number of prisoners were later executed. While he insists that \"none of us ever wore captured uniforms with the deliberate intention of decoying the enemy, but only out of sheer necessity,\" Reitz nevertheless justified Kitchener's order by telling of an incident in which two British soldiers were killed when they hesitated to shoot at guerrillas dressed in khaki. (Commando, London, 1932, p. 247.)\n\n The argument I am making here parallels that made by lawyers with reference to \"belligerent recognition.\" At what point, they have asked, should a group of rebels (or secessionists) be recognized as a belligerent power and granted those war rights which customarily belong only to established governments? The answer has usually been that the recognition follows upon the establishment of a secure territorial base by the rebels. For then they actually function like a government, taking on responsibility for the people who live on the land they control. But this assumes a conventional or near-conventional war. In the case of a guerrilla struggle, we may have to describe the appropriate relation between the rebels and the people differently: it is not when the guerrillas look after the people that they acquire war rights, but when the people \"look after\" the guerrillas.\n\nTerrorism\n\nThe Political Code\n\nThe word \"terrorism\" is used most often to describe revolutionary violence. That is a small victory for the champions of order, among whom the uses of terror are by no means unknown. The systematic terrorizing of whole populations is a strategy of both conventional and guerrilla war, and of established governments as well as radical movements. Its purpose is to destroy the morale of a nation or a class, to undercut its solidarity; its method is the random murder of innocent people. Randomness is the crucial feature of terrorist activity. If one wishes fear to spread and intensify over time, it is not desirable to kill specific people identified in some particular way with a regime, a party, or a policy. Death must come by chance to individual Frenchmen, or Germans, to Irish Protestants, or Jews, simply because they are Frenchmen or Germans, Protestants or Jews, until they feel themselves fatally exposed and demand that their governments negotiate for their safety.\n\nIn war, terrorism is a way of avoiding engagement with the enemy army. It represents an extreme form of the strategy of the \"indirect approach.\" It is so indirect that many soldiers have refused to call it war at all. This is a matter as much of professional pride as of moral judgment. Consider the statement of a British admiral in World War II, protesting the terror bombing of German cities: \"We are a hopelessly unmilitary nation to imagine that we [can] win the war by bombing German women and children instead of defeating their army and navy.\" The key word here is unmilitary. The admiral rightly sees terrorism as a civilian strategy. One might say that it represents the continuation of war by political means. Terrorizing ordinary men and women is first of all the work of domestic tyranny, as Aristotle wrote: \"The first aim and end [of tyrants] is to break the spirit of their subjects.\" The British described the \"aim and end\" of terror bombing in the same way: what they sought was the destruction of civilian morale.\n\nTyrants taught the method to soldiers, and soldiers to modern revolutionaries. That is a crude history; I offer it only in order to make a more precise historical point: that terrorism in the strict sense, the random murder of innocent people, emerged as a strategy of revolutionary struggle only in the period after World War II, that is, only after it had become a feature of conventional war. In both cases, in war and revolution, a kind of warrior honor stood in the way of this development, especially among professional officers and \"professional revolutionaries.\" The increasing use of terror by far left and ultranationalist movements represents the breakdown of a political code first worked out in the second half of the nineteenth century and roughly analogous to the laws of war worked out at the same time. Adherence to this code did not prevent revolutionary militants from being called terrorists, but in fact the violence they committed bore little resemblance to contemporary terrorism. It was not random murder but assassination, and it involved the drawing of a line that we will have little difficulty recognizing as the political parallel of the line that marks off combatants from noncombatants.\n\nThe Russian Populists, the IRA, and the Stern Gang\n\nI can best describe the revolutionary \"code of honor\" by giving some examples of so-called terrorists who acted or tried to act in accordance with its norms. I have chosen three historical cases. The first will be readily recognizable, for Albert Camus made it the basis of his play The Just Assassins.\n\n1) In the early twentieth century, a group of Russian revolutionaries decided to kill a Tsarist official, the Grand Duke Sergei, a man personally involved in the repression of radical activity. They planned to blow him up in his carriage, and on the appointed day one of their number was in place along the Grand Duke's usual route. As the carriage drew near, the young revolutionary, a bomb hidden under his coat, noticed that his victim was not alone; on his lap he held two small children. The would-be assassin looked, hesitated, then walked quickly away. He would wait for another occasion. Camus has one of his comrades say, accepting this decision: \"Even in destruction, there's a right way and a wrong way\u2014and there are limits.\"\n\n2) During the years 1938\u201339, the Irish Republican Army waged a bombing campaign in Britain. In the course of this campaign, a republican militant was ordered to carry a pre-set time bomb to a Coventry power station. He traveled by bicycle, the bomb in his basket, took a wrong turn, and got lost in a maze of streets. As the time for the explosion drew near, he panicked, dropped his bike, and ran off. The bomb exploded, killing five passers-by. No one in the IRA (as it was then) thought this a victory for the cause; the men immediately involved were horrified. The campaign had been carefully planned, according to a recent historian, so as to avoid the killing of innocent bystanders.\n\n3) In November 1944, Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, was assassinated in Cairo by two members of the Stern Gang, a right-wing Zionist group. The two assassins were caught, minutes later, by an Egyptian policeman. One of them described the capture at his trial: \"We were being followed by the constable on his motorcycle. My comrade was behind me. I saw the constable approach him. . . . I would have been able to kill the constable easily, but I contented myself with . . . shooting several times into the air. I saw my comrade fall off his bicycle. The constable was almost upon him. Again, I could have eliminated the constable with a single bullet, but I did not. Then I was caught.\"\n\nWhat is common to these cases is a moral distinction, drawn by the \"terrorists,\" between people who can and people who cannot be killed. The first category is not composed of men and women bearing arms, immediately threatening by virtue of their military training and commitment. It is composed instead of officials, the political agents of regimes thought to be oppressive. Such people, of course, are protected by the war convention and by positive international law. Characteristically (and not foolishly), lawyers have frowned on assassination, and political officials have been assigned to the class of nonmilitary persons, who are never the legitimate objects of attack. But this assignment only partially represents our common moral judgments. For we judge the assassin by his victim, and when the victim is Hitler-like in character, we are likely to praise the assassin's work, though we still do not call him a soldier. The second category is less problematic: ordinary citizens, not engaged in political harming\u2014that is, in administering or enforcing laws thought to be unjust\u2014are immune from attack whether or not they support those laws. Thus the aristocratic children, the Coventry pedestrians, even the Egyptian policeman (who had nothing to do with British imperialism in Palestine)\u2014these people are like civilians in wartime. They are innocent politically as civilians are innocent militarily. It is precisely these people, however, that contemporary terrorists try to kill.\n\nThe war convention and the political code are structurally similar, and the distinction between officials and citizens parallels that between soldiers and civilians (though the two are not the same). What lies behind them both, I think, and lends them plausibility, is the moral difference between aiming and not aiming\u2014or, more accurately, between aiming at particular people because of things they have done or are doing, and aiming at whole groups of people, indiscriminately, because of who they are. The first kind of aiming is appropriate to a limited struggle directed against regimes and policies. The second reaches beyond all limits; it is infinitely threatening to whole peoples, whose individual members are systematically exposed to violent death at any and every moment in the course of their (largely innocuous) lives. A bomb planted on a streetcorner, hidden in a bus station, thrown into a caf\u00e9 or pub\u2014this is aimless killing, except that the victims are likely to share what they cannot avoid, a collective identity. Since some of these victims must be immune from attack (unless liability follows from original sin), any code that directs and controls the fire of political militants is going to be at least minimally appealing. It is so much of an advance over the willful randomness of terrorist attacks. One might even feel easier about killing officials than about killing soldiers, since the state rarely conscripts its political, as it does its military, agents; they have chosen officialdom as a career.\n\nSoldiers and officials are, however, different in another respect. The threatening character of the soldier's activities is a matter of fact; the unjust or oppressive character of the official's activities is a matter of political judgment. For this reason, the political code has never attained to the same status as the war convention. Nor can assassins claim any rights, even on the basis of the strictest adherence to its principles. In the eyes of those of us whose judgments of oppression and injustice differ from their own, political assassins are simply murderers, exactly like the killers of ordinary citizens. The case is not the same with soldiers, who are not judged politically at all and who are called murderers only when they kill noncombatants. Political killing imposes risks quite unlike those of combat, risks whose character is best revealed by the fact that there is no such thing as benevolent quarantine for the duration of the political struggle. Thus the young Russian revolutionary, who eventually killed the Grand Duke, was tried and executed for murder, as were the Stern Gang assassins of Lord Moyne. All three were treated exactly like the IRA militants, also captured, who were held responsible for the deaths of ordinary citizens. That treatment seems to me appropriate, even if we share the political judgments of the men involved and defend their resort to violence. On the other hand, even if we do not share their judgments, these men are entitled to a kind of moral respect not due to terrorists, because they set limits to their actions.\n\nThe Vietcong Assassination Campaign\n\nThe precise limits are hard to define, as in the case of noncombatant immunity. But we can perhaps move toward a definition by looking at a guerrilla war in which officials were attacked on a large scale. Beginning at some point in the late 1950s, the NLF waged a campaign aimed at destroying the governmental structure of the South Vietnamese countryside. Between 1960 and 1965, some 7,500 village and district officials were assassinated by Vietcong militants. An American student of the Vietcong, describing these officials as the \"natural leaders\" of Vietnamese society, argues that \"by any definition this NLF action . . . amounts to genocide.\" This assumes that all Vietnam's natural leaders were government officials (but then, who was leading the NLF?) and hence that government officials were literally indispensable to national existence. Since these assumptions are not remotely plausible, it has to be said that \"by any definition\" the killing of leaders is not the same as the destruction of entire peoples. Terrorism may foreshadow genocide, but assassination does not.\n\nOn the other hand, the NLF campaign did press against the limits of the notion of officialdom as I have been using it. The Front tended to include among officials anyone who was paid by the government, even if the work he was doing\u2014as a public health officer, for example\u2014had nothing to do with the particular policies the NLF opposed. And it tended to assimilate into officialdom people like priests and landowners who used their nongovernmental authority in specific ways on behalf of the government. They did not kill anyone, apparently, just because he was a priest or a landowner; the assassination campaign was planned with considerable attention to the details of individual action, and a concerted effort was made \"to ensure that there were no unexplained killings.\" Still, the range of vulnerability was widened in disturbing ways.\n\nOne might argue, I suppose, that any official is by definition engaged in the political efforts of the (putatively) unjust regime, just as any soldier, whether he is actually fighting or not, is engaged in the war effort. But the variety of activities sponsored and paid for by the modern state is extraordinary, and it seems intemperate and extravagant to make all such activities into occasions for assassination. Assuming that the regime is in fact oppressive, one should look for agents of oppression and not simply for government agents. As for private persons, they seem to me immune entirely. They are subject, of course, to the conventional forms of social and political pressure (which are conventionally intensified in guerrilla wars) but not to political violence. Here the case is the same with citizens as with civilians: if their support for the government or the war were allowable as a reason for killing them, the line that marks off immune from vulnerable persons would quickly disappear. It is worth stressing that political assassins generally don't want that line to disappear; they have reasons for taking careful aim and avoiding indiscriminate murder. \"We were told,\" a Vietcong guerrilla reported to his American captors, \"that in Singapore the rebels on certain days would dynamite every 67th streetcar . . . the next day it might be every 30th, and so on; but that this hardened the hearts of the people against the rebels because so many people died needlessly.\"\n\nI have avoided noticing until now that most political militants don't regard themselves as assassins at all but rather as executioners. They are engaged, or so they regularly claim, in a revolutionary version of vigilante justice. This suggests another reason for killing only some officials and not others, but it is entirely a self-description. Vigilantes in the usual sense apply conventional conceptions of criminality, though in a rough and ready way. Revolutionaries champion a new conception, about which there is unlikely to be wide agreement. They hold that officials are vulnerable because or insofar as they are actually guilty of \"crimes against the people.\" The more impersonal truth is that they are vulnerable, or more vulnerable than ordinary citizens, simply because their activities are open to such descriptions. The exercise of political power is a dangerous business. Saying this, I do not mean to defend assassination. It is most often a vile politics, as vigilante justice is most often a bad kind of law enforcement; its agents are usually gangsters, and sometimes madmen, in political dress. And yet \"just assassinations\" are at least possible, and men and women who aim at that kind of killing and renounce every other kind need to be marked off from those who kill at random\u2014not as doers of justice, necessarily, for one can disagree about that, but as revolutionaries with honor. They do not want the revolution, as one of Camus' characters says, \"to be loathed by the whole human race.\"\n\nHowever the political code is specified, terrorism is the deliberate violation of its norms. For ordinary citizens are killed and no defense is offered\u2014none could be offered\u2014in terms of their individual activities. The names and occupations of the dead are not known in advance; they are killed simply to deliver a message of fear to others like themselves. What is the content of the message? I suppose it could be anything at all; but in practice terrorism, because it is directed against entire peoples or classes, tends to communicate the most extreme and brutal intentions\u2014above all, the tyrannical repression, removal, or mass murder of the population under attack. Hence contemporary terrorist campaigns are most often focused on people whose national existence has been radically devalued: the Protestants of Northern Ireland, the Jews of Israel, and so on. The campaign announces the devaluation. That is why the people under attack are so unlikely to believe that compromise is possible with their enemies. In war, terrorism is associated with the demand for unconditional surrender and, in similar fashion, tends to rule out any sort of compromise settlement.\n\nIn its modern manifestations, terror is the totalitarian form of war and politics. It shatters the war convention and the political code. It breaks across moral limits beyond which no further limitation seems possible, for within the categories of civilian and citizen, there isn't any smaller group for which immunity might be claimed (except children; but I don't think children can be called \"immune\" if their parents are attacked and killed). Terrorists anyway make no such claim; they kill anybody. Despite this, terrorism has been defended, not only by the terrorists themselves, but also by philosophical apologists writing on their behalf. The political defenses mostly parallel those that are offered whenever soldiers attack civilians. They represent one or another version of the argument from military necessity.a It is said, for example, that there is no alternative to terrorist activity if oppressed peoples are to be liberated. And it is said, further, that this has always been so: terrorism is the only means and so it is the ordinary means of destroying oppressive regimes and founding new nations. The cases I have already worked through suggest the falsity of these assertions. Those who make them, I think, have lost their grip on the historical past; they suffer from a malign forgetfulness, erasing all moral distinctions along with the men and women who painfully worked them out.\n\nViolence and Liberation\n\nJean-Paul Sartre and the Battle of Algiers\n\nBut there is another argument which, because of the currency it has gained, must be taken up here, even though it has no immediate analogue in wartime debates. It has been put forward in its starkest form by Sartre in a justification of FLN terrorism in Algeria, published as a preface to Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. The summary lines of Sartre's argument are these:\n\nTo shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remains a dead man and a free man.\n\nIn his usual fashion, with a certain zest for Hegelian melodrama, Sartre is here describing what he takes to be an act of psychological liberation. Only when the slave turns on his master, physically confronts him and kills him, does he create himself as a free human being. The master dies; the slave is reborn. Even if this were a believable picture of the terrorist act, the argument is not persuasive; it is open to two obvious and crippling questions. First, is the one-to-one relation necessary? Did it take one dead European to make one free Algerian? If so, there were not enough Europeans living in Algeria; more would have had to be brought over if the Algerian people were to free themselves by Sartrean means. If not, it must follow that someone else besides the man-who-kills can be liberated. . . . How? By watching? By reading about the murder in the newspaper? It is hard to see how vicarious experience can play an important part in a process of personal liberation (as described by an existentialist philosopher).\n\nThe second question raises more familiar issues: will any European do? Unless Sartre thinks all Europeans, including children, are oppressors, he cannot believe that. But if it is only liberating to attack and kill an agent of oppression, we are back with the political code. From Sartre's perspective, that cannot be right, since the men and women he is defending had explicitly rejected that code. They killed Europeans at random, as in the well-known scene from the (historically accurate) film The Battle of Algiers, in which a bomb is set off in a milk bar where French teenagers are drinking and dancing.\n\nMILK BAR. EXPLOSION. OUTSIDE. DAY.\n\nThe jukebox is flung into the middle of the street. There is blood, strips of flesh, material . . . the white smoke and shouts, weeping, hysterical girls' screams. One of them no longer has an arm and runs around howling despairingly; it is impossible to control her. . . . The sound of sirens is heard. . . . The ambulances arrive . . .\n\nSuch an event is not easily reconstructed as an existentialist encounter between masters and slaves.\n\nCertainly, there are historical moments when armed struggle is necessary for the sake of human freedom. But if dignity and self-respect are to be the outcomes of that struggle, it cannot consist of terrorist attacks upon children. One can argue that such attacks are the inevitable products of oppression, and in a sense, I suppose, that is right. Hatred, fear, and the lust for domination are the psychological marks of oppressed and oppressor alike, and their acting out, on either side, can be said to be radically determined. The mark of a revolutionary struggle against oppression, however, is not this incapacitating rage and random violence, but restraint and self-control. The revolutionary reveals his freedom in the same way as he earns it, by directly confronting his enemies and refraining from attacks on anyone else. It was not only to save the innocent that revolutionary militants worked out the distinction between officials and ordinary citizens, but also to save themselves from killing the innocent. Whatever its strategic value, the political code is intrinsically connected to psychological liberation. Among men and women trapped in a bloody struggle, it is the key to self-respect. The same thing can be said of the war convention: in the context of a terrible coerciveness, soldiers most clearly assert their freedom when they obey the moral law.\n\n Among revolutionaries as among government officials, this argument often slides from an analysis of particular cases of duress and necessity (which are rarely convincing) to the general claim that war is hell and anything goes. General Sherman's view is upheld, for example, by the Italian leftist Franco Solinas, who wrote the screenplay for Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and defended the terrorism of the Algerian FLN: \"For centuries they've tried to prove that war is fair play, like duels, but war isn't and therefore any method used to fight it is good. . . . It's not a question of ethics or fair play. What we must attack is war itself and the situations that lead to it.\" (The Battle of Algiers, edited and translated by PierNico Solinas, New York, 1973, pp. 195\u201396.) Compare the same argument made by American officials in defense of the bombing of Hiroshima, chapter 16.\n\nReprisals\n\nDeterrence Without Retribution\n\nWhen the British imposed their blockade of Germany in 1916, they called it a reprisal; when the Germans began the systematic bombing of London in 1940, they defended themselves in the same way. No part of the war convention is so open to abuse, is so openly abused, as the doctrine of reprisals. For the doctrine is, or once was thought to be, permissive with regard to all the rest of the convention. It legitimates actions otherwise criminal, if these actions are undertaken in response to crimes previously committed by the enemy. \"Reprisals,\" writes a pacifist critic of the rules of war, \"mean doing what you think wrong on the plea that someone else did it first.\" And, he goes on, someone else will always do it first. Hence reprisals create a chain of wrongdoing at the end of which every responsible actor can point to some other actor and say \"tu quoque.\"\n\nIt is the explicit purpose of reprisals, however, to break off the chain, to stop the wrongdoing here, with this final act. Sometimes\u2014though it has to be said, not often\u2014that purpose is realized. I want to begin with a case in which it was realized, so that we can at least make sense of what was for many years the conventional opinion\u2014as stated, for example, by a nineteenth-\u00adcentury French lawyer: \"Reprisals are a means of preventing war from becoming entirely barbarous.\"\n\nThe FFI Prisoners at Annecy\n\nIn the summer of 1944, much of France was a battleground. Allied armies were fighting in Normandy; partisan groups, organized now into the French Forces of the Interior and in touch with both the Allies and the Gaullist Provisional Government in Algeria, operated on a large scale in many parts of the country. They wore insignias of battle; they bore their arms openly. It is clear that the 1940 armistice had effectively been voided, and the military struggle resumed. Nevertheless, the German authorities continued to treat captured partisans as war traitors or war rebels, subject to summary execution. On the day after the Allied landings, for example, fifteen partisans captured at Caen were immediately shot. And the executions continued, as the pace of the fighting increased, during the next months. The FFI complained of these executions to the Provisional Government, which in turn sent a formal protest to the Germans. Since they did not recognize the Government, the Germans refused to accept the protest. In their note, the French had threatened reprisals against German prisoners. The continued killing did not, however, elicit any such response\u2014perhaps because troops directly subject to the Provisional Government, recruited outside occupied France, were regularly accorded prisoner-\u00adof-war status by the Germans.\n\nIn August 1944, large numbers of German soldiers in Southern France began surrendering to partisan groups, and the FFI leadership was suddenly in a position to carry out the Government's threat. \"When . . . it became known that the Germans . . . had executed 80 French prisoners, and that further executions were imminent, the FFI command at Annecy decided that 80 of the prisoners in its] hands would in turn be shot.\" At this point, the Red Cross intervened, won a postponement of the executions, and sought from the Germans an agreement henceforth to treat captured partisans as prisoners of war. The partisans waited six days and then, the Germans not replying, the 80 prisoners were shot.[a The effects of the reprisal are not easy to make out, for the German army was hard-pressed, and many other factors must have figured in its decisions. It is apparently true, however, that no partisans were executed after the Annecy shootings.\n\nNow in one sense, this case is easy to judge: the Geneva Convention of 1929, which the French had signed and the FFI itself reaffirmed, explicitly barred reprisals against prisoners of war. No other group of innocent men and women was granted a similar immunity; prisoners were singled out because of the contract implied by surrender, in which they are promised life and benevolent quarantine. Killing them would be a breach of faith as well as a violation of the positive laws of war. But I shall not focus on this exception to the general rule of reprisals, for it does not open up the larger question, whether the deliberate killing of innocent men and women should ever be declared lawful or morally justified. And I doubt very much that we will want to say, in answer to that question, that some innocent people can be killed and others not. The case of the FFI prisoners is useful because it provides a classic example of reprisal, and one in which our sympathies are likely to be engaged, at least initially, on the side of the \"reprisers.\"\n\nReprisals of this sort have as their purpose the enforcement of the war convention. In international society, as in Locke's state of nature, every individual member (every belligerent power) claims the right to enforce the law. The content of this right is the same as it is in domestic society: it is first of all a right of retribution, to punish guilty men and women; it is secondly a right of deterrence, to protect oneself and others against criminal activity. In domestic society, these two most often go together. Criminal activity is deterred by punishing or threatening to punish guilty individuals. That, at least, is the commonly accepted doctrine. In international society, however, and especially in wartime, the two rights are not equally enforceable. It is often impossible to get at guilty individuals, but it's always possible to prevent or try to prevent further criminal activity by responding in kind as the French partisans did, that is, by \"punishing\" innocent people. The result might be described as a one-sided sort of law enforcement: deterrence without retribution.\n\nIt might also be described as a prime example of radical utilitarianism\u2014indeed, of a utilitarianism so radical that utilitarian philosophers have been concerned to deny its existence. Yet it is common enough in the theory as well as in the practice of war. One of the criticisms most frequently leveled against utilitarianism is that its calculations would under certain circumstances require the authorities to \"punish\" an innocent person (to kill or imprison him, under cover of punishment). The usual response has been to adjust the calculations so that they yield different and more conventionally acceptable results. But in the history of international law and in debates over wartime behavior, the effort at adjustment has mostly been foregone. Reprisals have been defended, with admirable directness, on strictly utilitarian grounds. Under the special conditions of combat, at least, utilitarian calculations have indeed required the \"punishing\" of innocent people. The political or military leaders of belligerent powers have commonly invoked the requirement, claiming that no other means were available to check the criminal excesses of their opponents. And detached observers, students of the law, and venerable doctors have generally accepted this as a possible argument \"in extreme cases\" (the cases, of course, are often disputed). Hence it is a \"principle of war law,\" according to a leading authority: \"For every offense punish someone; the guilty, if possible, but someone.\"\n\nThis is not an attractive principle, and it would not be accurate to explain the traditional acceptance of reprisals by reference to it alone. In wartime, after all, innocent people are often attacked and killed in the name of utility, in order, it is said, to shorten the war, save lives, and so on. But such attacks don't have the same status as reprisals. It is not their utility, assuming now that they are in fact useful, that makes reprisals different, but some other quality. This quality is misunderstood, I think, by those writers who describe reprisal as the most primitive feature of the war convention, a survival of the ancient lex talionis. For the talion is a return of evil for evil, and what is crucial about reprisal is precisely that evil, though it may be repeated, is not returned. The new crime has a new victim, who is not the original criminal though he probably has the same nationality. The particular choice is (so far as utility goes) quite impersonal; in this sense, reprisal is chillingly modern. Something, however, of the talion survives: not the idea of return, but the idea of response. Reprisal is characterized by a certain posture of looking back, acting after, which implies a willingness not to act at all, to abide by some set of restraints. \"They did it first.\" This sentence carries a moral argument. I do not believe that it is a very strong argument or one that will take us far. But it serves to mark off reprisal from other, equally useful violations of the war convention. There is no right to commit crimes in order to shorten a war, but there is a right, so it was once thought, to commit crimes (or rather, acts that would otherwise be called crimes) in order to cope with the previous criminal activity of one's enemies.\n\nThe backward-looking character of reprisals is confirmed by the rule of proportionality that restrains them. The rule is quite different and far more precise than that which figures, for example, in the doctrine of double effect. The partisan commanders at Annecy acted in strict accordance with its provisions when they decided to kill 80 Germans in response to the killing of 80 Frenchmen. Reprisals are limited with reference to previous crimes, not with reference to the crimes they are designed to deter (not with reference to their effects or their hoped-for effects). This point has sometimes been disputed by writers committed to utilitarian modes of thought. Thus McDougal and Feliciano argue, in characteristic style, \"that the kind and amount of permissible . . . violence is that which is reasonably designed so to affect the enemy's expectations about the costs and gains of reiteration or continuation of his initial criminal act as to induce the termination of and future abstention from such act.\" They admit that the amount of violence, so determined, may be greater than that originally inflicted by the enemy. In the Annecy case, it might well have been less: the shooting of 40 Germans, or 20, or 10, might have had the same effect as the shooting of 80. But however the calculations work out, this kind of forward-looking proportionality has never been accepted either by the general run of theorists writing about war or by ordinary practitioners. During World War II, to be sure, the Germans often responded to partisan activity in the occupied states of Europe by shooting ten hostages for every German killed. This proportion may have reflected a peculiar notion about the relative value of German lives, or it may have been \"reasonably designed so to affect the enemy's expectations, etc.\" In any case, the practice was universally condemned.\n\nIt was condemned, of course, not only because of the actual disproportion involved, but also because the previous partisan activity was in many cases not thought to violate the war convention. Hence the German response was simply utilitarian deterrence, not law enforcement. It is another feature of the backward-looking character of reprisals that the acts to which they respond must be crimes, violations of the recognized rules of war. Moreover, the rules must be commonly recognized, on both sides of the battleline, if the special character of reprisals is to be maintained. When the British army resorted to reprisals during the War of 1812, an opposition member of the House of Commons, who thought such conduct barbarous, asked why His Majesty's soldiers didn't scalp their captives when they fought with the American Indians or enslave them in their wars with the Barbary corsairs. I suppose the answer is that scalping and enslavement were not thought illegitimate by the Indians and the corsairs. And so the imitation of these practices by the British would not have been understood as law enforcement (nor would it have had any deterrent effect); it would only have confirmed their enemies' notions of appropriate wartime behavior. Reprisals may involve deterrence without retribution, but this must nevertheless be a reactive deterrence, and what it reacts to is a violation of the war convention. If there is no convention, there can be no reprisal.\n\nAt the same time, we are uneasy about reprisals precisely because there is a convention, and one that categorically rules out the acts that reprisal usually requires. If it is wrong, and for the deepest reasons, to kill innocent people, how can it be right to kill them? In treatises on international law, the defense of reprisal is always qualified, first by a great show of reluctance and anxiety, and secondly by some words about the extremity of the case. It is not easy to know what this last qualification means, however, and it appears in fact that any violation of the rules is sufficiently \"extreme\" to justify a proportionate response. Backward-looking proportionality is a genuine limit: it would have barred, for example, the two so-called reprisals with which I began this chapter. But extremity is not a limit at all. It is certainly not true that reprisals are undertaken only when the enemy's crimes pose a drastic danger to the war effort as a whole or to the cause for which the war is being fought. For the purpose of reprisal is not to win the war or prevent the defeat of the cause, but simply to enforce the rules. Perhaps the meaning of the appeal to extremity is like that of the show of reluctance: both suggest a view of reprisal as a last resort. In practice, again, the only action required before one reaches this last resort is a formal protest, such as the French delivered to the Germans in 1944, and a threat to respond in kind if this or that criminal activity is continued. But one might require much more than that, both in the way of law enforcement and in the way of military action. The FFI might, for example, have announced that they would treat German soldiers involved in the execution of captured partisans as war criminals; they might even have begun to publish the names of those who would be accused. Given the military situation of the German army in 1944, such an announcement could well have had a significant effect. Or the partisans might have attempted to raid the prisons or camps where their comrades were being held. Such raids were not impossible, though they would have involved risks entirely absent when one shoots down captured soldiers.\n\nIf the notion of last resort were taken seriously, it would limit reprisal in a radical way. But suppose that the partisans had issued the announcement and undertaken the raids without stopping the German executions. Would they then have been justified in shooting their prisoners? \"A reckless enemy often leaves his opponent no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous outrage.\" But the truth is that there are always other means, more or less dangerous, more or less effective. To argue against the executions isn't to deny the partisans a last resort. It is only to say, for example, that military raids are their last resort. If the raids fail, they can only be tried again; there is nothing more to be done. (Reprisals might fail, too\u2014they usually do\u2014and what comes after that?) This is the conclusion that I want to defend, and I will defend it, once again, by reflecting on the status and character of the German prisoners.\n\nWho are these men? Once they were soldiers; now they are disarmed and helpless. Perhaps some of them are war criminals; perhaps some of them were involved in the murder of captured partisans. Then, surely, they should be put on trial, not shot out of hand. We will want to hear the evidence against them and make sure that we punish the right ones. Only a trial can signal our own commitment to the rules of war. But here, let us assume, are ordinary prisoners who neither made nor carried out criminal decisions. Their day-to-day activities were very much like those of their enemies. How can they be shot out of hand, treated more cruelly than we would treat suspected criminals? It seems incredible that some number of them should be arbitrarily separated from the rest and then killed, simply so that we can announce their deaths, and all this for the sake of justice! Killing them would be murder: the name is exact, no matter what crimes we hope to avoid by becoming murderers. For these men are not mere material out of whose lives we can fashion a deterrent strategy. Even as prisoners, or precisely as prisoners, they have rights against us.\n\nThe current thrust of international law is to condemn reprisals against innocent people, and for essentially the reasons that I have suggested: the helplessness of the victims rules them out as objects of military attack, and their noninvolvement in criminal activity rules them out as objects of retributive violence. The Geneva Convention of 1929, as we have seen, declared prisoners immune; the 1949 Conventions did the same for wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces and for civilian persons in occupied territory. This last provision effectively bars the killing of hostages, the paradigm case of using innocent people for one's own military purposes. The only class of disengaged men and women against whom reprisals are still legally defensible is the civilian population of the enemy country. Its members can still be held hostage, though only at a distance, for the good behavior of their government and army. It has been argued that this way of judging reprisals is a logical extension of the general principle \"that persons whose usefulness as bases of enemy power is precluded . . . by belligerent control or capture cease to be legitimate objects of violence.\" But this is to misstate the general principle. It would allow not only reprisals but also first strikes against enemy civilians. However peaceful their pursuits, after all, these civilians remain a \"significant base of enemy power,\" providing political and economic support to the armed forces. Even children are not \"precluded\" from serving that power: they will grow up to be soldiers, munitions workers, and so on. Yet such people are protected by the war convention; they are admitted, along with prisoners and wounded soldiers, to the class of the innocent. The underlying purpose of recent developments in the law is not to extend a general principle, which is already (in principle) fully extended, but to prohibit its violation in the special circumstances once thought to justify reprisals. And if there are good reasons for doing that, there would seem to be no good reasons for drawing the line as it has currently been drawn.b\n\nSo the necessary judgment is readily summed up: we must condemn all reprisals against innocent people, whether these people are \"subject to belligerent control\" or not. This is to set radical limits to a practice that once was commonly defended, and not with casual or inconsequential arguments. But I don't want to claim that those old arguments have no force at all. They correctly point to a certain moral difference between the initial crime and the reprisal-response. From a position of great detachment, these two may seem to constitute a vicious circle\u2014and a circle fully accounted for by the pious maxim that \"violence breeds violence.\" The maxim, however, is sometimes wrong and, what is more important, it fails to distinguish violence that is responsive and restrained from violence that is neither. Stand beside the French commanders at Annecy and the circle looks different. German guilt in this case is greater than that of the French, because the Germans acted first, breaking the conventional rules for some military advantage; the French reacted, repeating the violations for the declared purpose of re-establishing the rules. I don't know how to measure the difference between them; perhaps it isn't great; but it is worth stressing that there is a difference, even as we give their crimes a common name.\n\nWith regard to the most important of the rules of war, the violation of the rules for the sake of law enforcement is ruled out. The doctrine of reprisal, then, refers only to the lesser parts of the war convention, where the rights of the innocent are not at stake. Consider, for example, the ban on the use of poison gas. Winston Churchill was entirely justified when he warned the German government, early in World War II, that the use of gas by its armies would bring an immediate Allied reprisal. For soldiers have only a war right, and no more basic right, to be attacked with certain weapons and not with others. The rule about poison gas is legally established, but it is not morally required. Hence, when it is violated, parallel and proportionate violations, narrowly aimed at re-establishing the rule and at no larger military purpose, are morally permissible. They are permissible because the people against whom they are directed are already the legitimate objects of military attack. The case is the same with all those informal agreements and reciprocal arrangements that limit the extent and intensity of warfare. Here the threat of reprisal is the major means of enforcement, and there is no reason to hesitate about making the threat or carrying it out. It might be argued that when restraints of this sort are violated, they simply disappear, and then there is no reason to limit one's own violations by attending to the proportionality rule. But that is true only if reprisal fails to restore the old limits. One must aim first at restoration: in that sense, we still use reprisals as a bar to the barbarism of war.\n\nThe Problem of Peacetime Reprisals\n\nBut all this assumes that warfare of the ordinary sort is already in progress. What is at issue is the mode or means of attack. In the case of peacetime reprisals, what is at issue is the attack itself. It has come from across the border: a raid of one sort or another. The victim state responds with a second raid, which isn't aimed at re-affirming the rules of war but at re-\u00adestablishing the broken peace. The crime that is repeated is the act of force, the violation of sovereignty. It will be called aggression and justified as self-defense\u2014talked about, that is, in the language of jus ad bellum\u2014but it remains a \"military measure short of war\" as long as the restraints appropriate to reprisals, established by the theory of jus in bello, are maintained. And so it is best discussed here, with reference to those restraints.\n\nThe Attack on Khibye and the Beirut Raid\n\nThe term \"peacetime reprisals\" is not entirely accurate. The legal handbooks divide their subject into \"war\" and \"peace,\" but much of history is a demi-monde that neither word adequately describes. It is to this demi-monde that reprisals most commonly pertain; they are a form of action appropriate to periods of insurgency, border strife, cease-fire, and armistice. Now it is a feature of such periods that acts of force are not always acts of state in any simple sense. They are not the work of recognized officials and of soldiers acting on official orders, but (often) of guerrilla bands and terrorist organizations\u2014tolerated, perhaps patronized by the officials, but not directly subject to their control. Thus Israel, since its founding in 1948, has repeatedly been attacked by Palestinian guerrillas and terrorists operating out of the neighboring Arab states but not formally affiliated with their armies. In response to these attacks, the Israeli authorities have tried over the years virtually every conceivable form of counter-attack\u2014testing out, as it were, the politics and morality of reprisal. It is a grim and unusual history, providing the theorist with all the examples he could want (and more). And if it doesn't suggest that peacetime reprisals make for peace, it also doesn't point to any alternative response to illegitimate attacks.\n\nMost of the Palestinian raids have been the work of terrorists, not guerrillas; that is, following the argument of the last two chapters, they have been directed randomly against civilian targets: against farmers working near the border, buses on country roads, village schools and houses, and so on. Hence there is no question about their illegitimacy, whatever one thinks of the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. Nor can there be any question that the Israelis have a right to respond in some way. The right exists in the case of any across-the-border raid, but it is especially clear when the raid is aimed at civilians, who can offer no immediate resistance. Nevertheless, particular Israeli responses have indeed been questionable, for it is a hard matter to know what to do in such cases. Terrorists harbored by neighboring states with which one is not openly at war do not provide an easy target. Any military response will be marked by a kind of asymmetry characteristic of peacetime reprisal: the initial foray is unofficial; the counter-attack is the act of a sovereign state, challenging the sovereignty of another state. How do we judge such challenges? What are the rules that govern peacetime reprisals?\n\nThe first rule is a familiar one. Though the terrorist raid is aimed at civilians, the reprisal must not be so aimed. Moreover, the \"reprisers\" must take care that civilians are not the incidental victims of their attack. With regard to its conduct, peacetime reprisal is exactly like war itself, and so certain of our judgments are obvious enough. Consider, for example, the Israeli raid on Khibye:\n\nFollowing the killing of a woman and her two children in a village near Lod Airport, the Israelis launched a night attack against the Jordanian village of Khibye on 14 October 1953. . . . [They] fought their way into the village, rounded up the inhabitants, and blew up forty-\u00adfive houses. Not all the houses were cleared beforehand, and more than forty villagers were buried under the rubble. . . . The brutality of the raid led to sharp protests in Israel and abroad. . . .\n\nThese killings probably cannot be called \"unintended,\" and it certainly cannot be said that due care was taken to avoid them; so the protests were justified; the killings were criminal. But what if no civilians had died, or, as in most on-the-ground Israeli reprisals, only a small number, killed in the course of a firefight with Jordanian regulars? What are we to say of the raid itself, of the Jordanian soldiers killed in its course (who had no part in the murder of Israeli civilians), of the houses destroyed? This is not a standard military operation, though it is the most common form of peacetime reprisal. Its purpose is coercive: to force the officials of a neighboring state to keep the peace and to repress guerrillas and terrorists on their own side of the border. But it is not directly or continuously coercive; otherwise it would require a full-scale invasion. Reprisals have the form of a warning: if our villages are attacked, yours will also be attacked. Hence they must always respond to previous raids. And they are governed, after the rule of noncombatant immunity, by the rule of backward-looking proportionality. Though life cannot be balanced against life, the second raid must be similar in character and scope to the first.\n\nI am inclined to defend counter-attacks of this sort, when these two restraints are accepted. The defense, I should stress, doesn't depend in any way upon the notions of extremity or last resort. In peacetime, war is the last resort (and a long series of terrorist raids might justify a war, if no other means seemed likely to end the series). Reprisal is a first resort to force, once diplomacy has proven ineffective. It is, again, a \"military measure short of war,\" an alternative to war, and that description is an important argument in its favor. But the general argument remains a difficult one, as we can see if we turn to another historical example, where (in contrast to Khibye) the rules of immunity and proportionality were scrupulously respected.\n\nIn 1968, the focus of Palestinian terrorism shifted from Israel itself to the Israeli national airline and its passengers. On December 26 of that year, two terrorists attacked an Israeli plane preparing for takeoff at Athens Airport. Some 50 people were aboard at the time and, although only one was killed, it was clearly the purpose of the terrorists to kill as many as possible. They aimed their guns at the windows of the plane, at seat level. The two men were captured by Athenian police, and it was discovered that they were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization with headquarters in Beirut. They were traveling on Lebanese documents. Repeatedly over the previous months, Israel had warned the Lebanese government that it could not \"escape responsibility\" for its support of groups like the PFLP. Now the Israelis undertook a dramatic reprisal.\n\nTwo days after the Athens attack, Israeli commandos landed by helicopter at Beirut Airport and destroyed 13 planes belonging to civilian airlines licensed in Lebanon. According to an Israeli news release, the commandos \"at great risk to themselves . . . exercised the strictest precautions to prevent civilian casualties. The planes were emptied of passengers and ground crews, and people in the vicinity were led away to safety.\" Whatever the extent of the risks involved, no one was killed; Lebanese authorities later claimed that two Israeli soldiers were wounded during the attack. From a military point of view, the raid was a spectacular success\u2014and, I think, from a moral point of view too. It was clearly responsive to the incident at Athens; it was parallel and proportionate in its means (for one can destroy a great deal of property in answer to the destruction of human life); and it was carried out so as to avoid civilian deaths.\n\nDespite all this, the Beirut raid was much criticized at the time (and condemned at the UN)\u2014above all, because of the seriousness of the attack upon Lebanese sovereignty. It is the attack upon Jordanian sovereignty that would stand out in the Khibye case, too, had civilian lives been spared. The killing of civilians is an affront to humanity, but attacks on military installations and the destruction of civilian property pose a more narrow and direct challenge to the state. Indeed, that is the purpose of the attacks; and the vulnerability of soldiers, on the one hand, and of airplanes, boats, buildings, and so on, on the other, hangs on the vulnerability of the sovereign state. Soldiers are vulnerable, if the state is, because they are the visible symbols and the active agents of its authority. And civilian property is vulnerable because the innocence of its owners extends only to their persons, not (or not necessarily) to their possessions. The value we attach to human life is such that rights to life are forfeit only when particular men and women are actually engaged in war-making or national defense. But the lesser value of property is such that property rights are forfeit whenever the state that protects property, and taxes it, is itself subject to attack. Individuals can be taxed without becoming legitimate targets, but property, or certain sorts of property, may be a legitimate target even if its owners are not.c But this argument hangs on the liability of the state, and that remains a matter of dispute.\n\nThe Israeli argument followed the pattern of positive law (or at least of positive law before the era of the UN). Israel insisted that the Lebanese government had an obligation to prevent the use of its territory as a base for terrorist raids. No one seems to deny the reality of the obligation, but it was argued on behalf of the Lebanese (though not by them) that the government in Beirut was in fact incapable of honoring it. Events since 1968 may seem to have borne out that claim, and if it is right, the Israeli attack would be difficult to defend. It is surely wrong to destroy the property of innocent people so as to bring pressure on other people who are in any case unable to act differently from the way they are acting. But one should never be too quick to deny the competence of an established government, for a certain loss of sovereignty is the legal and moral result of political powerlessness. If a government literally cannot control the inhabitants of the territory over which it supposedly presides, or police its borders, and if other countries suffer because of this incapacity, then surrogate controlling and policing are clearly permissible. And these may well go beyond the limits commonly accepted for reprisal raids. At this point, reprisal is like retributive punishment in domestic society: as punishment assumes moral agency, so reprisal assumes political responsibility. Both assumptions are worth holding onto, for as long as possible.\n\nThe critical question is whether one sovereign state can be forced by another to fulfill its obligations. It is the official position of the UN that this kind of law enforcement, even when it is restrained by the rules of war, is illegal. This position rests not only on the general claim of the UN to declare the (positive) law, but also on its readiness and ability, at least some of the time, to enforce the law itself. But the world organization was clearly not ready or able to enforce the law in 1968; nor has it been ready or able to do so at any time since. Nor is there any evidence that individual members of the UN, however they vote on ritual occasions, are prepared to renounce reprisals when the lives of their own citizens are at stake. Reprisals are clearly sanctioned by the practice of nations, and the (moral) reason behind the practice seems as strong as ever. Nothing the UN has actually done, no effects it can presently have, suggests a centralization of legal or moral authority in international life.d\n\nBut the sheer unreality of the UN position doesn't by itself establish the legitimacy of peacetime reprisals. In his edition of Kelsen's Principles of International Law, Robert Tucker has insisted that anyone defending reprisals must show \"that more often than not the independent use of force by states has served the purposes of law. . . .\" This is to shift the ground from the effectiveness of the UN to the utility of reprisal itself and to invite a historical examination the results of which are not likely to favor the \"reprisers\" in any decisive way. But the ground of reprisal is not its overall effectiveness. It is the right, in the difficult conditions of the demi-monde, to seek certain effects. So long as the conditions exist, the right must also exist, even if those same conditions (as in Locke's state of nature) make it unlikely that rightful action will have entirely satisfactory consequences. If, in a particular case, reprisal is certain to fail, then obviously it should not be tried. But whenever there is some substantial chance of success, it is the legitimate resort of a victim state; for no state can be required passively to endure attacks upon its citizens.\n\nReprisal is a practice carried over from the war convention to the world of \"peacetime,\" because it provides an appropriately limited form of military action. It is better, I think, to defend the limits than to try to abolish the practice. Soldiers engaged in a reprisal raid will cross over an international boundary, but they will quickly cross back; they will act destructively, but only up to a point; they will violate sovereignty, but they will also respect it. And finally, they will attend to the rights of innocent people. Reprisals are always limited responses to particular transgressions: crimes against the rules of war, small-scale breaches of the peace. Though they have often been used, they cannot rightly be used, as a cover for invasions or interventions or assaults upon innocent life. It may be that there are moments of extremity and crisis when state's rights and human rights have to be violated; but such moments are not generated by the particular crimes of our enemies, and the violations are not usefully called reprisals. None of the cases of reprisal that I have come across in the lawbooks and the military histories are extreme cases in any meaningful sense of that term. Nor does the war convention provide for extreme cases. Extremity lies, so to speak, beyond the reach of conventional provision. I will consider its character and provenance in Part Four of this book. The analysis of reprisals concludes the discussion of the ordinary means of war. I must turn now to those extraordinary means that the moral urgency of our ends seems sometimes to require.\n\n I have never understood why, in cases like this one, the men are not simply hidden away when their deaths are announced. Why must they actually be killed? Since deceit of various sorts is accepted under the war convention, it certainly should not be ruled out here. But I have been unable to find any case in which such a ruse was tried.\n\n It is not difficult, however, to account for the present legal situation. The threat to take reprisals against enemy civilians is a crucial feature of the contemporary system of nuclear deterrence, and statesmen and soldiers are not prepared solemnly to denounce that system. Moreover, though nuclear deterrence rests only on threats, and the acts threatened are of such a nature that moral men and women might well refuse at the final moment to carry them out, no one is prepared in advance to admit to inhibitions. \"Any act of cruelty to the innocent,\" wrote an American jurist of the pre-atomic age, \"any act, especially, by which noncombat\u00adants are made to feel the stress of war, is what brave men shrink from, although they may feel obliged to threaten it.\" (T. D. Woolsey, Introduction to the Study of International Law, New York, 1908, p. 211.) But can they threaten it effectively if it is known in advance that they will shrink from acting? I will take up the problems of nuclear deterrence in chapter 17.\n\n This is probably what the lawyers have in mind when they argue that, in cases of reprisal, the private citizen \"is held to be identified with his state.\" The identification is by no means total; it does not obliterate personal rights. Nor, I think, does the effect extend to private homes, which seem to share in the innocence of their inhabitants (unless they have been used as terrorist bases).\n\n With regard to the routine UN condemnations of Israeli reprisals, Richard Falk has written: \"One may argue against the fairness of such constraints upon Israel's discretion in these circumstances, but it is essentially an extra-legal appeal as the organs of the UN have the procedural capacity to authorize or prohibit specific uses of force, and it is the exercise of this capacity that most clearly distinguishes what is 'legal' from what is 'illegal' . . . in international society.\" I am not sure that any legislative body, domestic or international, can abolish self-help unless it provides alternative means of help, but I will leave such matters to the lawyers. Assuming Falk is right, it must be said that the extra-legal appeal is a moral appeal the success of which probably will and certainly should undermine the newly enacted \"law.\" See \"International Law and the US Role in Vietnam: A Response,\" in Falk, ed., The Vietnam War and International Law, Princeton, 1968, p. 493.\nPart Four\n\nDilemmas of War\n\nWinning and Fighting Well\n\n\"Asinine Ethics\"\n\nChairman Mao and the Battle of the River Hung\n\nIn the year 638 B.C., during the period of China's history known as the Spring and Autumn Era, the two feudal states of Sung and Ch'u fought a battle at the Hung River in central China. The army of Sung, led by its ruler Duke Hsiang, was drawn up in battle formation on the river's northern bank; the Ch'u army had to ford the stream. When its soldiers were halfway across, one of Hsiang's ministers came to him and said, \"They are many, and we are few. Pray let us attack them before they are all crossed over.\" The Duke refused. When the enemy army had reached the northern bank but had not yet re-formed its lines, the minister again asked leave to begin the fight; again the Duke refused. Only after the Ch'u soldiers were properly marshaled did he signal the attack. And then, in the ensuing battle, the Duke himself was wounded and his army put to flight. According to the chronicles, the people of Sung blamed their ruler for the defeat, but he said, \"The superior man does not inflict a second wound, and does not take prisoner anyone of grey hairs. When the ancients had their armies in the field, they would not attack an enemy when he was in a defile; and though I am but the poor representative of a fallen dynasty, I will not sound my drums to attack an unformed host.\"\n\nThis is the code of a feudal warrior, an obscure warrior in this case until Mao Tse-tung drew his story out of the chronicles in order to make a modern point. \"We are not the Duke of Sung,\" he declared in one of his lectures On Protracted War (1938), \"and we have no use for his asinine ethics.\" Mao's lecture was an innovative discussion of guerrilla tactics. His argument against the Duke of Sung, however, was familiar enough, and to Chinese as well as Western readers. It is an argument common among practical men, like Hsiang's minister, to whom winning is always more important than aristocratic honor. But it enters significantly into the theory of war only when winning is seen to be morally important, that is, only when the outcome of the struggle is conceived in terms of justice. Some 200 years after the battle at the River Hung, more than two millennia before the communist revolution, the philosopher Mo Tzu perfectly described Mao's case, as he himself must understand it.\n\nSuppose there is a country which is being persecuted and oppressed by its rulers, and a Sage . . . in order to rid the world of this pest raises an army and sets out to punish the evil-doers. If, when he has won a victory, he conforms to the doctrine of the Confucians, he will issue an order to his troops saying, \"Fugitives are not to be pursued, an enemy who has lost his helmet is not to be shot at; if a chariot overturns, you are to help the occupants to right it\"\u2014if this is done, the violent and the disorderly will escape with their lives and the world will not be rid of its pest.\n\nMo Tzu believed in the doctrine of Righteous War. Mao Tse-tung has introduced into China the western theory of the just war. No doubt, there are fine points of difference between these two ideas, which I cannot pursue here. But they are not different in any major way. They set up the tension between winning and fighting well in similar fashion, and for Mo Tzu and Chairman Mao they point to the same resolution: the feudal rules for fighting well are simply cast aside. The tension is overcome as soon as it is recognized. That doesn't mean that there are no rules of engagement at all; I have already cited Mao's \"Eight Points for Attention,\" which recapitulate in democratic style the old chivalric code. But for Mao himself the \"Eight Points\" apparently reflect only the utilitarian requirements of guerrilla war, and they cannot stand against the higher utility of winning\u2014which he is likely to describe in extravagant terms, a combination of Wilsonian idealism and Marxist apocalypse: \"The aim of war is to eliminate war. . . . Mankind's era of wars will be brought to an end by our own efforts, and beyond doubt the war we wage is part of the final battle.\" And in the final battle, no one will insist upon the \"Eight Points.\" Exceptions will readily be made whenever the conflict seems critical. Consider, for example, the last of the Eight: \"Do not ill-treat captives.\" Mao has also argued that guerrilla bands on the move cannot take prisoners. \"It is best first to require the prisoners to hand over their weapons and then to disperse them or execute them.\" Since prisoners are not conceived as men-with-rights, the choice between dispersal and execution is purely tactical, and to insist in all cases upon the rule against ill treatment would presumably be an example of \"asinine ethics.\"\n\nNor were rights thought to be at stake in the old warrior codes. Duke Hsiang believed it unworthy and demeaning to strike a wounded soldier or attack an unformed host. Combat was only possible between peers; otherwise war would not be an occasion for the display of aristocratic virtue. It is not hard to understand why anyone convinced of the moral urgency of victory would be impatient with such notions. Of what use is the (undoubted) virtue of the Duke of Sung if the world is ruled by violence and aggression? Indeed, a war in which the Duke's virtue was more important than a military triumph would seem to be a very unimportant war. Thus the argument of Hsiang's minister after the defeat of the Sung army: \"If we grudge a second wound, it would be better not to wound at all. If we would spare the grey-haired, we had better submit to the enemy.\" Either fight all-out or not at all. This argument is often said to be typical of American thought, but in fact it is universal in the history of war. Once soldiers are actually engaged, and especially if they are engaged in a Righteous War or a just war, a steady pressure builds up against the war convention and in favor of particular violations of its rules. And then, more often than the belligerent powers are prepared to admit\u2014itself a matter of interest\u2014the rules are broken. They are not broken for the sake of military necessity alone. That argument justifies too much, and it does so without reference to the cause for which the war is being fought. The rules are broken for the sake of the cause. It is with some version of the argument for justice that the violations are defended.\n\nOn this view, the rules have no standing in any war that is worth fighting. They are at most \"rules of thumb,\" general precepts of honor (or utility) to be observed only until observing them comes into conflict with the requirements of victory. But this is to misunderstand the status of the war convention. If we consider noncombatant immunity rather than warrior honor, and the protection of human rights rather than the expediencies of guerrilla war\u2014that is, if we attend to what is really fundamental in the rules of war\u2014the conflict between winning and fighting well is not so easily resolved. If we recognize, for example, that the protection afforded by the \"Eight Points\" is morally required, and that men and women are rightly indignant if they are robbed and ravaged by guerrilla bands, then Mao's rules take on a greater significance than their author attributes to them. They cannot simply be set aside; nor can they be balanced, in utilitarian fashion, against this or that desirable outcome. For the rights of innocent people have the same moral effectiveness in the face of just as in the face of unjust soldiers.\n\nAnd yet the case for breaking the rules and violating those rights is made sufficiently often, and by soldiers and statesmen who cannot always be called wicked, so that we have to assume that it isn't pointless. Anyway, we know its point all too well. We know how high the stakes sometimes are in war and how urgent victory can be. \"For there are peoples,\" as Simone Weil has written, \"[who] have never recovered after having once been conquered.\" The very existence of a community may be at stake, and then how can we fail to consider possible outcomes in judging the course of the fighting? At this point if at no other, the restraint on utilitarian calculation must be lifted. Even if we are inclined to lift it, however, we cannot forget that the rights violated for the sake of victory are genuine rights, deeply founded and in principle inviolable. And there is nothing asinine about this principle: the very lives of men and women are at stake. So the theory of war, when it is fully understood, poses a dilemma, which every theorist (though not, fortunately, every soldier) must resolve as best he can. And no resolution is serious unless it recognizes the force of both jus ad bellum and jus in bello.\n\nThe Sliding Scale and the Argument from Extremity\n\nThe immediate issue is whether we should discriminate between soldiers fighting a just war and soldiers fighting an unjust war. It is, of course, those who claim membership in the first group who raise the issue, making what might be called an appeal against combatant equality. Though such appeals are particular in character, they have a general form. They all involve the claim that the equality I have been defending is merely conventional and that the truth about war rights is best expressed in terms of a sliding scale: the more justice, the more right. Something like this appears to be what the philosopher John Rawls has in mind when he says, \"Even in a just war, certain forms of violence are strictly inadmissible; and when a country's right to war is questionable and uncertain, the constraints on the means it can use are all the more severe. Acts permissible in a war of legitimate self-defense, when these are necessary, may be flatly excluded in a more doubtful situation.\" The greater the justice of my cause, the more rules I can violate for the sake of the cause\u2014though some rules are always inviolable. The same argument can be put in terms of outcomes: the greater the injustice likely to result from my defeat, the more rules I can violate in order to avoid defeat\u2014though some rules, and so on. The value of this position is that it grants the existence of rights (of some sort) while still opening the way for soldiers resisting aggression to do (some of) the things they believe necessary for victory. It allows the justice of one's cause to make a difference in the way one fights. Exactly how much of a difference is allowed, however, is radically unclear, and so is the status of the men and women who are now drawn into the hell of war so that justice can triumph. The practical effects of the argument are probably more far-reaching than its proponents would like, but I will say nothing about these effects until I can look at a number of historical cases. First, however, something more must be said about the structure of the argument.\n\nAccording to the war convention as I have described it, there is no range of actions, over which the sliding scale might move, between legitimate combat and inadmissible violence. There is only a line, not entirely distinct but meant simply to mark off the one from the other. Given this view, the argument quoted from Rawls might be taken to mean that borderline cases should be decided systematically against that country whose \"right to war is questionable\" or even that the military and political leaders of that country should keep some distance away from the border, never doubling the doubtfulness of their cause with the doubtfulness of their methods. This last would simply be a plea for scrupulousness, which is always a good thing. But there is another meaning that can be drawn out of Rawls' argument (though I don't think it is his own meaning): that the class of \"strictly inadmissible\" acts should be kept very small, and space should be opened up within the rules of war where the sliding scale might be applied. The effect of sliding the scale to point x within this space, it should be said, is not to remove all restraints on military action up to that point, but rather to leave only the restraints of usefulness and proportionality. The sliding scale makes way for those utilitarian calculations that rules and rights are intended to bar. It creates a new class of generally inadmissible acts and of quasi-rights, subject to piecemeal erosion by soldiers whose cause is just\u2014or by soldiers who believe that their cause is just. And so it enables those soldiers to do terrible things and to defend in their own consciences and among their associates and followers the terrible things they do.\n\nNow, the extreme form of the sliding-scale argument is the claim that soldiers fighting a just war can do anything at all that is useful in the fighting. This effectively annuls the war convention and denies or suspends the rights that the convention was designed to protect. The war rights of the just are total, and any blame their actions entail falls upon the leaders of the other side. General Sherman took this view of war, as we have seen, and I have called it the \"war is hell\" doctrine. It is not so much a resolution of the tension between winning and fighting well as a denial of its moral significance. The only kind of justice that matters is jus ad bellum. Beyond that there are only such considerations as rational men will always attend to: they will not waste their substance in useless killing of the innocent, though they will kill them readily enough if victory seems to require it. It may be that this is what the sliding scale comes to in any case, but its advocates at least claim to recognize the existence of rules and rights, and so their argument requires a separate analysis.\n\nThe only alternative to the sliding scale, it is often said, is a position of moral absolutism. To resist the slide, one must hold that the rules of war are a series of categorical and unqualified prohibitions, and that they can never rightly be violated even in order to defeat aggression. But that is a hard line to take, and especially so in the modern age, when aggression has assumed such frightening forms. Perhaps the Duke of Sung was right not to break the warrior code for the sake of his dynasty. But if what is being defended is the state itself and the political community it protects and the lives and liberties of the members of that community. . . . Fiat justicia ruat coelum, do justice even if the heavens fall, is not for most people a plausible moral doctrine.\n\nThere is an alternative doctrine that stops just short of absolutism and that I shall try to defend in the chapters that follow. It might be summed up in the maxim: do justice unless the heavens are (really) about to fall. This is the utilitarianism of extremity, for it concedes that in certain very special cases, though never as a matter of course even in just wars, the only restraints upon military action are those of usefulness and proportionality. Throughout my discussion of the rules of war, I have been resisting this view and denying its force. I have argued, for example, against the notion that civilians can be locked into a besieged city or reprisals taken against innocent people \"in extreme cases.\" For the idea of extremity has no place in the making of the war convention\u2014or if it is said that combat is always extreme, then the idea is naturalized within the convention. The rules are adjusted to the everyday extremities of war; no further adjustment is possible if we are to have any rules at all, and if we are to attend to the rights of the innocent. But now the question is not one of rule-\u00admaking, but of rule-breaking. We know the form and substance of the moral code; we must decide, at a moment of desperation and looming disaster, whether to live (and perhaps to die) by its rules.\n\nThe sliding scale erodes the convention bit by bit, and so it eases the way for the decision-maker who believes himself \"forced\" to violate human rights. The argument from extremity permits (or requires) a more sudden breach of the convention, but only after holding out for a long time against the process of erosion. The reasons for holding out have to do with the nature of the rights at issue and the status of the men and women who hold them. These rights, I shall argue, cannot be eroded or undercut; nothing diminishes them; they are still standing at the very moment they are overridden: that is why they have to be overridden. Hence breaking the rules is always a hard matter, and the soldier or statesman who does so must be prepared to accept the moral consequences and the burden of guilt that his action entails. At the same time, it may well be that he has no choice but to break the rules: he confronts at last what can meaningfully be called necessity.\n\nThe tension between the rules of war and the theory of aggression, between jus in bello and jus ad bellum, can be dealt with in four different ways:\n\n  1. the war convention is simply set aside (derided as \"asinine ethics\") under the pressure of utilitarian argument;\n  2. the convention yields slowly to the moral urgency of the cause: the rights of the righteous are enhanced, and those of their enemies devalued;\n  3. the convention holds and rights are strictly respected, whatever the consequences; and\n  4. the convention is overridden, but only in the face of an imminent catastrophe.\n\nThe second and fourth of these are the most interesting and the most important. They explain how it is that morally serious men and women, who have some sense of what rights are, come nevertheless to violate the rules of war, escalate its brutality and extend its tyranny. The fourth seems to me the right argument. It provides the best account of the two kinds of justice and most fully recognizes the force of each. I shall focus on it in the chapters that follow, but try at the same time to suggest the inadequacies and dangers of the sliding scale. I will look first at a number of cases involving the practice of neutrality, perhaps the most disputed feature of the war convention. Since neutral rights constitute a kind of noncombatant immunity, they might have been taken up earlier on. The disputes they have generated, however, raise questions less about the content than about the force and endurance of rights in war. How long must one wait before breaking the rules? The answer I want to defend is best expressed by reversing Chairman Mao's dictum: with reference to our own conventions, and until the very last minute, we are all the Duke of Sung.\n\nAggression and Neutrality\n\nThe doctrine of neutrality has a twofold form, which is best expressed (and which is conventionally expressed) in the language of rights. States possess, first, a right to be neutral, which is simply an aspect of their sovereignty. In any prospective or on-going conflict between two other states, they are free to opt for what might be called the condition of \"thirdness.\" And if they do that, they then possess neutral rights, specified at great length in positive international law. As with the war convention generally, the initial right and the subsequent rights exist without reference to the moral character of the belligerent powers or to the probable outcome of the war. The more convinced we are, however, that one of the belligerents is an aggressor or that the outcome is going to be disastrous, the more likely we are to deny the very possibility of noninvolvement. How can the rest of us respect its right to stand and watch if, by violating that right, we might avert the destruction?\n\nThese questions have been posed with a special insistence in the years since World War II, but in fact the argument implicit in them is an old one. Consider, for example, a British proclamation issued in 1793: the political and military policies of the revolutionary government of France, it was said, involved \"all the surrounding powers in one common danger . . . giving them the right . . . imposing on them the duty, to stop the progress of an evil which exists only by the successive violation of all law and property. . . .\" The practical consequence of this sort of thing is obvious. If states don't do their duty, they can be forced to do it. One asserts the urgency of the struggle, and one erodes or denies the right to be neutral, in order to pave the way for the violation of neutral rights. The history of neutrality provides many examples of such violations, defended with some version of the argument from extremity or with the sliding scale, and I shall refer to that history in order to analyze those defenses. But first I must say something about the nature of neutrality itself and its place in the war convention.\n\nThe Right to Be Neutral\n\nNeutrality is a collective and voluntary form of noncombatancy. It is collective in that its benefits obtain for all the members of a political community without reference to the status of individuals. Soldiers and civilians are alike protected, so long as their state is \"not engaged in war-making.\" The rights of disengagement distribute equally to all citizens. Neutrality is voluntaristic in that it can be assumed at will by any state with regard to a war or a prospective war between any other states. Individuals can be conscripted, but states cannot. They may ask that other powers formally acknowledge their neutrality, but the condition is unilaterally assumed and the acknowledgment unnecessary. The \"scrap of paper\" that Germany brushed aside when it invaded Belgium in 1914 did not establish Belgian neutrality; the Belgians themselves did that. And had the Germans formally renounced their guarantee or waited for its expiration, their invasion would still have been the crime it was said to be at the time. It would have been a crime, that is, as long as the Belgians not only claimed the rights but also observed the duties of a neutral state.\n\nThese duties can be summed up very simply, although international law on this subject is elaborate and detailed: they require a strict impartiality toward the belligerents, without reference to the justice of their cause or to any sentiments of neighborliness, cultural affinity, or ideological agreement. It is not only fighting on one or another side that is prohibited, but every sort of official discrimination. This rule is very strict; if it is violated, neutral rights are forfeit, and the neutral state is subject to reprisals from whichever belligerent is injured by the violations. The rule applies, however, only to state action. Private citizens remain free to choose sides in a variety of ways, to campaign politically, raise money, even raise volunteers (though they cannot launch forays across the border). What is more important, normal patterns of trade may be maintained with both belligerents. Hence the neutrality of any given state is likely to be more helpful to one side than to the other. So far as the warring powers are concerned, neutrality is rarely a matter of equal benefit, for neither the balance of private sympathy and effort nor the balance of trade is likely to be even between them.a But neither can complain of the unofficial help the other receives. This is a help that cannot be helped; it derives from the very existence of the neutral state, its geography, economy, language, religion, and so on, and could only be interdicted by the most rigorous coercion of its citizens. But the neutral state is not required to coerce its own citizens. So long as it takes no positive action to help one side or the other, it has fulfilled its duty not to get involved, and then it is automatically entitled to the full enjoyment of its right not to get involved.\n\nThe moral basis of the right is not entirely clear, however, in large part because its domestic analogue is so unappealing. In both political and moral life, the \"neuter\" is not a person one instinctively likes. Perhaps he has a right to avoid if he can the quarrels of his neighbors, but what about their troubles? We have to ask again: can he stand and watch a neighbor being assaulted on the street? Might not the neighbor say at such a time, \"You're either for me or against me\"? As a revolutionary slogan, that sentence suggests, perhaps, an unwarranted pressure and a threat of retaliations to come. But in the case at hand, its message is simpler and less objectionable. Surely a strict neutrality here, a refusal to discriminate in any way in favor of the victim, would be disquieting and strange. Neighbors are not mere spectators, studying one another's misfortunes from some great distance. The social life they share entails a degree of mutual concern. On the other hand, if I am obligated to be \"for\" my neighbor, I am not obligated to rush to his rescue\u2014first, because that may not be an effective way of being for him; and second, because it may be disastrous for me. I have a right to weigh the risks of joining the battle. But let's assume that the risks are minor: there are a large number of us watching, and I can count on the support of the others if I take the lead; or there is a policeman around the corner, and I can count on him to take the lead. Then I have no right to be neutral, and any efforts on my part to escape, make excuses, bury my head in the sand, are sure to be thought reprehensible.\n\nBut the right of a state is different, and not only because there is no policeman around the corner. For there may well be a majority of states and an overwhelming predominance of force at least potentially available on behalf of a state under attack, thought to be the victim of aggression. All that stands in the way of mobilizing this force, it may be, is the war convention and the right of neutrality. Even in such a case, the right holds, because risk in war is very different from what it is in domestic fighting. Years ago, John Westlake argued that \"neutrality is not morally justifiable unless intervention in the war is unlikely to promote justice or could do so only at a ruinous cost to the neutral.\" Ruination is to be avoided, but is this only the ruination of states? When a state joins a war, it risks its survival to this or that degree, depending on the nature of the conflict, the power of its allies, and the readiness and fighting capacity of its army; and these risks may be acceptable or not. But at the same time, it condemns an indefinite number of its citizens to certain death. It does this, to be sure, without knowing which citizens those are. But the decision itself is irrevocable: once fighting begins, it is certain that soldiers (and probably civilians, too) will die. The right of neutrality follows from this fact. Like other provisions of the war convention, it represents a limit on the coerciveness of war. At least this group of men and women, citizens of the neutral state, who do not choose to risk their lives, will be protected from having to do so.\n\nBut why should these men and women be immune and free when so many others are driven into battle? In what possible way are they entitled to their neutrality? The question is especially important if we imagine a situation where a particular state's decision to be neutral means that more people will be killed than would be killed if it joined the war, for the participation of its armies might turn the tide and shorten the fighting by so many weeks or months. But the leaders of such a state are not required to calculate as if every human life carried the same moral weight for every decision-maker at every moment in time. Their people's lives are not international resources to be distributed in war so as to balance the risks or reduce the losses of other people. These are innocent lives. With reference to the soldiers of the neutral state, that means only that they have not yet been attacked and forced to fight. Still, they are disengaged, and no one has a right to challenge their disengagement. Perhaps that disengagement is a matter of luck; it is often, in cases of successful neutrality, a matter of geography. But people are entitled to their good fortune in such matters, as states are, or are presumed to be, entitled to their geographic locations.b\n\nSo neutral citizens are immune from attack; the coerciveness of war can never willfully be extended beyond the limits fixed by the material causes of the conflict and the military organization of the states involved. The leaders of a neutral state are entitled to maintain that immunity; indeed, they may be bound to do so, given the consequences of its loss for their fellow citizens. The same solidarity that makes noninvolvement at home morally questionable may well make it obligatory in the international arena: this group of men and women must save one another's lives first. They cannot do this by killing other people, unless those others are attacking them. The rules of neutrality suggest, however, that they can do it by allowing other people to die rather than dying themselves. If they have incurred obligations toward some of those people\u2014for the sake, perhaps, of collective security\u2014then, of course, they cannot allow them to die; otherwise, the right holds, even if its assertion seems ignoble.\n\nBut there is one sort of case in which this right might be denied. Imagine (what is easily imaginable) that some great power launches a campaign of conquest, aimed not merely at this or that state but at some larger ideological or imperial goal. Why should such a campaign be resisted only by its first victims, when in fact many other states will be threatened if the initial resistance fails? Or consider the common argument that aggression anywhere threatens everyone. Aggression is like crime: if one does not stamp it out, it will spread. Then again, there is no reason for the immediate victims to fight alone. They are fighting on behalf of future victims, that is, of all other states, and the others will reap the benefits of their fighting and dying. How can they stand aside? President Wilson took this position in his war message of April 2, 1917: \"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable when the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples.\" He presumably meant morally feasible, since a practical alternative to war, namely continued neutrality, clearly existed. The argument against that alternative must go something like this. If one imagines a particular aggressor moving on from one triumph to another, or if one imagines a radical increase in the incidence of aggression as a result of this particular triumph, then it has to be said that peace and freedom are in general danger. And then continued neutrality is not morally feasible; for while a neutral state has or may have a right to let others die in quarrels of their own, it cannot let them die on its behalf. Any danger that is shared by all the members of international society is morally coercive, even if it is not yet materially present, for all of them.\n\nThis argument, however, rests uneasily on \"imaginings\" about which there is no general agreement and which often look painfully implausible after the fact. It seems very strange today, for example, that any conceivable outcome of World War I could have been thought to pose a universal threat to peace and freedom (or a greater threat than was posed by the actual outcome). And this is so even if one grants that the war began with an act or a series of acts of aggression. The mere recognition of a criminal attack, without some profoundly pessimistic or, as in this case, highly extravagant view of its likely consequences, does not require the leaders of a neutral state to draw President Wilson's conclusions. They can always refuse to do so, imagining in their turn that their own country and the whole world are in no real danger. That is a unilateral view of the situation, to be sure, and one can argue (as I would often be inclined to do) with the leaders who put it forward. But they and their people are entitled to act on it. That is the real right of neutrality.\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (2)\n\nAt this point, however, the crucial moral decision may not lie with the neutral state. The belligerents also have a choice: to respect neutral rights or not. Violations of those rights are usually thought to be an especially bad kind of aggression\u2014on the principle, I suppose, that it is worse to strike out at uninvolved states than at states with which one has been quarreling. Unless we take a rather permissive view of the initial resort to violence, this seems a dubious principle. On the other hand, attacks on neutrals are usually an especially clear kind of aggression, whereas responsibility for the war itself may be difficult to assess. When armies move across the frontier of a state that has maintained a strict impartiality, we have little difficulty in recognizing the move as a criminal act. Violations short of armed attack are harder to recognize but almost equally reprehensible, for they invite and justify military responses from the other side. If neutrality collapses and the war is extended to new territory and people, the crime is that of the first violator (assuming a proportionate response from the second).\n\nBut what if neutrality is violated for a good cause: for the sake of national survival and the defeat of aggression; or, more largely, for the sake of \"civilization as we know it\" or the \"peace and freedom\" of the whole world? Here is the paradigmatic form of the collision between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The belligerent power believes itself pressed by the exigencies of a just war. The neutral state is firm in its rights: its citizens are not bound to sacrifice themselves to someone else's exigencies. The belligerent power talks of the vital importance of the ends for which it is fighting; the neutral state invokes the rules of war. Neither side is entirely convincing, though in particular cases we must choose between them. I have tried to make the strongest possible case for neutral rights. Their violation almost certainly entails the killing (or the causing to be killed) of innocent people, and so it is not a casual matter even when the end in view is very important. Indeed, we are likely to recognize good men fighting for important ends by their reluctance to invade neutral states and force their citizens to fight. The value of that reluctance will be apparent if we look at two cases in which neutral rights were wrongly violated: first, on the plea of necessity, and second, with the argument more justice, more right. The first is the most famous violation of neutrality since the Athenian attack on Melos, and I have given it the name originally assigned in wartime propaganda.\n\nThe Rape of Belgium\n\nThe German attack on Belgium in August 1914 is unusual in that it was openly and honestly described by the Germans themselves as a violation of neutral rights. The speech of Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg to the Reichstag on August 4 deserves to be remembered.\n\nGentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. Our troops have already entered Belgian territory.\n\nGentlemen, that is a breach of international law. It is true that the French government declared at Brussels that France would respect Belgian neutrality as long as her adversary respected it. We know, however, that France stood ready for an invasion. France could wait, we could not. A French attack on our flank on the lower Rhine might have been disastrous. Thus we were forced to ignore the rightful protests of the Government of Belgium. The wrong\u2014I speak openly\u2014the wrong we thereby commit we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained.\n\nHe who is menaced as we are and is fighting for his highest possession can only consider how he is to hack his way through (durch-haven).\n\nThis is frank talk, though it is not quite like the \"frankness\" of the Athenian generals at Melos. For the chancellor does not step outside the moral world when he defends the German invasion. He grants that a wrong has been done, and he promises to make it good after the fighting is over. That promise was not taken seriously by the Belgians. Their neutrality having been violated and their borders crossed, they had no reason to expect anything good from the invaders; nor did they believe that their independence would be respected. They chose to resist the invasion, and once their soldiers were fighting and dying, it is hard to see how the wrong the Germans had done could ever be made good.\n\nThe force of von Bethmann Hollweg's argument lies not in the promise of reparation, but in the plea of necessity. This will be a useful occasion to consider again what the plea might mean\u2014and to suggest that here, as in military history generally, it means a great deal less than it appears to do. We can see clearly in the chancellor's speech the two levels at which the concept works. First, there is the instrumental or strategic level: the attack on Belgium was necessary, it is being argued, if German defeat was to be avoided. But that is an improbable argument. The attack had long seemed to the General Staff the most expedient way of striking a hard blow against the French and winning a quick victory in the west (before Germany was fully engaged with the Russians on the eastern front). By no means, however, was it the only way of defending German territory. A French invasion along the lower Rhine, after all, could only outflank the German army if the Germans were mobilized for action further north (along the Belgium frontier). The chancellor's actual claim was that the odds of victory would be improved and German lives saved if the Belgians were sacrificed. But that expectation, which turned out to be wrong, had nothing to do with necessity.\n\nThe second level of the argument is moral: not only is the attack necessary to win, but winning itself is necessary, since Germany is fighting for its \"highest possession.\" I don't know what von Bethmann Hollweg thought Germany's highest possession was. Perhaps he had in mind some notion of honor or military glory, which could only be upheld by victory over the nation's enemies. But honor and glory belong to the realm of freedom, not necessity. We are likely to think that Germany's victory was morally necessary (essential, required) only of its survival as an independent nation or the very lives of its people were at stake. And on the best construction of the German cause, that was certainly not the case; what was at stake was Alsace-Lorraine, Germany's African colonies, and so on. So the argument fails on both levels. It would have to succeed on both, I think, before the violation of Belgian neutrality could be defended.\n\nThe German chancellor puts forward exactly the sort of argument that would be appropriate at a time of genuine extremity. He rejects every kind of deceitfulness. He does not pretend that the Belgians have failed in their duty of impartiality. He does not claim that the French have already violated Belgian neutrality or even that they are threatening to do so. He does not argue that Belgium cannot rightly stand aside in the presence of (French) aggression. He recognizes the force of the war convention and hence of the right of neutrality, and he makes the case for overriding that right. He wants to override it, however, not at the last minute but at the very first, and not when Germany's survival is in danger but when the dangers are of a more ordinary kind. So his is not a plausible case; its structure is right, but not its content. Nor was it thought plausible at the time. The German invasion was almost universally condemned (by many Germans, too). It was an important reason for the determination and high morale with which Britain entered the war and for the sympathy with which the Allied cause was viewed in other neutral countries\u2014the United States, above all. Even Lenin, who led the leftist opposition to the war, thought the defense of Belgium a reason to fight: \"Let us suppose that all the states interested in the observation of international treaties declared war on Germany, with the demand for the liberation and indemnification of Belgium. In such a case, the sympathies of Socialists would, of course, be on the side of Germany's enemies.\" But, he went on, that is not what the war is really about. He was right; the war as a whole does not lend itself to an easy description in terms of justice and injustice. But the attack on Belgium does. We must turn now, and at much greater length, to a harder case.\n\nThe Sliding Scale\n\nWinston Churchill and Norwegian Neutrality\n\nThe day after Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939, King Haakon VII formally proclaimed Norway's neutrality. The policy of the king and his government was not founded on political or ideological indifference. \"We never had neutrality of thought in Norway,\" the Foreign Minister wrote, \"and I never wanted it.\" Norway's political and cultural ties were with the Allies, and there seems no reason to doubt what historians of the period tell us: \"The Norwegians firmly believed in the high ideals of democracy, individual freedom, and international justice.\" They were not, however, prepared to fight for those ideals. The war was a struggle among the great powers of Europe, and Norway was very much a small power, traditionally disengaged from European machtpolitik, and now virtually disarmed. Whatever the moral importance of the issues over which the war was being fought, the Norwegian government could hardly intervene in any decisive way. Nor could it intervene at all without accepting great risks. Its first task was to make sure that Norway was still intact and its citizens alive at the end.\n\nWith this purpose in mind, the government adopted a strict policy of \"neutrality in deed.\" On balance, this policy favored the Germans, even though most of Norway's normal trade was with the Allied powers, especially Britain. For the Germans depended on Norway for a very large part of their iron ore supply. The ore was mined at Gallivare in northern Sweden, and during the summer months it was shipped out of the Swedish town of Lulea on the Baltic Sea. But in the winter, the Baltic froze; then the ore was moved by rail to Narvik on the Norwegian coast, the nearest warm-water port. There German ships picked it up and carried it down the coast, keeping within Norwegian territorial waters so as to avoid the British navy. The German ore supply was thus protected by Norwegian (and Swedish) neutrality, and for this reason the invasion of Norway was no part of Hitler's original strategic plan. Instead, \"[he] emphasized repeatedly that in his opinion the most desirable attitude for Norway as well as for the rest of Scandinavia would be one of complete neutrality.\"\n\nThe British view was very different. During the long months of the \"phony war,\" Scandinavian neutrality was a constant topic of Cabinet discussion. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed one plan after another to interdict the shipments of iron ore. Here was a chance, he argued, here was the only chance, to strike a quick blow against Germany. Instead of waiting for a German attack in France and the Low Countries, the Allies could force Hitler to disperse his armies and to fight\u2014Churchill never doubted that the Germans would fight for their ore supply\u2014in a part of the world where the strength of the British navy could most effectively be brought to bear. The French were also disinclined to wait for an attack on their own soil. Sir Edward Spears writes of Prime Minister Daladier that \"his views on military matters were confined to keeping warlike operations as remote from France as possible.\" The Norwegian prime minister no doubt had a parallel idea in mind. But there is this difference: the war which the Norwegians wished to see fought in France, and which the French were ready to fight in Norway, was France's and not Norway's war. Churchill confronted the same difficulty; Norwegian neutrality was a bar to each of his plans. It was only a moral and legal bar, perhaps, for he did not expect the Norwegians to fight very hard for their neutrality, but it was an important bar nonetheless, since the British were inclined to distinguish themselves from their enemies by their respect for international law and justice. \"All the cards are against us in playing with these neutrals,\" General Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, confided to his diary. \"Germany does not mean to respect them if it so suits her and we must respect them.\" The case was especially difficult because it did in fact suit the Germans, but not the British, to respect Norway's neutral rights.\n\nThe Russo-Finnish war opened a new possibility for Allied strategists (and moralists). The League of Nations, which had said nothing about the German attack on Poland, now condemned the Russians for waging an aggressive war. Churchill, who \"sympathized ardently with the Finns,\" proposed to send troops to Finland in fulfillment of Britain's obligations under the Covenant\u2014and to send them via Narvik, Gallivare, and Lulea. Under the plan drawn up by the General Staff, only a battalion of soldiers would actually have reached Finland, while three divisions would have guarded the \"lines of communication\" across Norway and Sweden, not only stopping the shipments of iron ore, but seizing it at its source and digging in for an expected German response in the spring. It was a bold plan which would almost certainly have led to a German invasion of Sweden and Norway and to large-scale military operations in the two countries. \"We have more to gain than to lose,\" Churchill argued, \"by a German attack on Norway.\" One immediately wants to ask whether the Norwegians had more to gain than to lose. Apparently they did not think so, for they rejected repeated requests that they permit the free passage of British troops. The Cabinet decided in favor of the expedition anyway, but the instructions prepared for its commander would have allowed him to proceed only in the face of \"token opposition.\" General Ironside worried that the political will necessary for success did not exist. \"We must . . . remain quite cynical about anything except stopping the iron ore.\" The Cabinet seems to have been cynical enough about its Finnish cover. As it turned out, however, the members were unwilling to do without it, and when the Finns sued for peace in March 1940, the plan was shelved.\n\nChurchill now pressed a more modest proposal. He urged the mining of Norwegian territorial waters, so as to force German merchant ships out into the Atlantic where the British navy could capture or sink them. It was a proposal he had made immediately after the war began and that he brought forward whenever his larger plans seemed in danger. Even this \"genteel little act of bellicosity,\" however, encountered opposition. Though the Cabinet seemed favorable to Churchill's original presentation (in September 1939), \"the Foreign Office arguments about neutrality were weighty, and I could not prevail. I continued . . . to press my point by every means and on all occasions.\" It is interesting to note, as Liddell Hart does, that a similar project had been brought forward in 1918 and rejected by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Beatty. \"[He] said it would be most repugnant to the officers and men in the Grand Fleet to steam in overwhelming strength into the waters of a small but high-spirited people and coerce them. If the Norwegians resisted, as they probably would, blood would be shed; this, said the Commander-in-Chief, 'would constitute a crime as bad as any that the Germans had committed elsewhere.'\" The words have a somewhat archaic ring (and it should be said that Beatty's last line, repeated in 1939\u201340, would not have been true), but many Englishmen still felt a similar repugnance. These were more likely to be professional diplomats and soldiers than civilian politicians. General Ironside, for example, not always the cynic he pretended to be, wrote in his diary that the mining of Norwegian waters, though it could be described as \"a reprisal for the way Germany had treated neutral ships . . . may well start off some form of totalitarian war.\"\n\nChurchill presumably believed that Britain was in for that kind of war anyway, given the political character of its enemy. He defended his proposal with a moral argument focusing on the nature and long-term goals of the Nazi regime. It is not merely that he did not sympathize with Beatty's repugnance; he told the Cabinet that such feelings courted disaster, not for Britain alone but for all Europe.\n\nWe are fighting to re-establish the reign of law and to protect the liberties of small countries. Our defeat would mean an age of barbaric violence, and would be fatal, not only to ourselves, but to the independent life of every small country in Europe. Acting in the name of the Covenant, and as virtual mandatories of the League and all it stands for, we have a right, indeed are bound in duty, to abrogate for a space some of the conventions of the very laws we seek to consolidate and reaffirm. Small nations must not tie our hands when we are fighting for their rights and freedom. The letter of the law must not in supreme emergency obstruct those who are charged with its protection and enforcement. It would not be right or rational that the aggressive Power should gain one set of advantages by tearing up all laws, and another set by sheltering behind the innate respect for law of its opponents. Humanity, rather than legality, must be our guide.\n\nThis is a powerful argument, though its rhetoric is sometimes misleading; it requires close examination. I want to begin by accepting Churchill's description of the British as defenders of the rule of law. (Indeed, they vindicated their claim to that title by refusing for months to adopt his proposals.) It may even be accurate to talk of Britain as the \"virtual mandatory\" of the League of Nations, so long as one understands that phrase to mean that it was not the actual mandatory; the British decision to invade Norwegian waters was as unilateral as was Norway's decision to stay out of the war. The problem lies in the consequences Churchill believes to follow from the justice of Britain's cause.\n\nHe puts forward a version of what I have called the sliding scale argument: the greater the justice of one's cause, the more rights one has in battle.c But Churchill pretends that these are rights against the Germans. The British, he says, are entitled to violate those legal conventions behind which Germany is sheltering. Legal conventions, however, have (or sometimes have) their moral reasons. The purpose of the laws of neutrality is not primarily to protect belligerent powers but to save the lives of neutral citizens. It was in fact the Norwegians who were sheltered by the \"letter of the law\"; the Germans were only its secondary beneficiaries. This ordering suggests the crucial difficulty with the sliding scale. However much the rights of the British are enhanced by the justice of their cause, they can hardly acquire a title to kill Norwegians or to put their lives at risk unless Norwegian rights are somehow simultaneously diminished. The sliding scale argument presupposes and requires some such symmetry, but I do not see how it can be generated. It is not enough to argue that the just side can do more. Something must be said about the objects as well as the subjects of this military doing. Who is being done to? In this case, the objects are Norwegian citizens, who are in no sense responsible for the war into which they are to be dragged. They have not challenged the rule of law or the peace of Europe. How have they become liable to attack?\n\nThere is an implicit answer to this question in Churchill's Cabinet memorandum. He obviously believes that the Norwegians ought to be involved in the struggle against Germany, not only because their involvement would be good for Britain, but also because, if Britain and France were forced into a \"shameful peace,\" they would certainly be among the \"next victims.\" Neutral rights fade away, he argues, when brought up against aggression and illegal violence on the one hand and legitimate resistance on the other. Or at least, they fade away whenever the aggressor poses a general threat: to the rule of law, the independence of small nations, and so on. Britain is fighting on behalf of Germany's future victims, and they must sacrifice their rights rather than hinder the struggle. Taken as moral exhortation, this seems to me, in the circumstances of 1939\u201340, entirely justified. But it remains a question whether the sacrifice is to be required because the Norwegians recognize the German threat or because the British do. Churchill is repeating Wilson's argument of 1917: neutrality is not morally feasible. But this is a dangerous argument when made not by the leader of a neutral state but by a leader of one of the belligerents. It is not a question now of the voluntary surrender of neutral rights, but of their \"abrogation for a time.\" And even that phrase is a euphemism. Since human life is at stake, the abrogation is not temporary, unless Churchill plans to raise the dead after the war is over.\n\nIn most wars, it can plausibly be said that one side fights justly, or probably does, or fights with greater justice than the other, and in all these cases the enemy against which it fights may well pose a general threat. The right of third parties to be neutral is a moral entitlement to ignore those distinctions and to recognize or not to recognize that threat. It may well be that they have to fight if they do recognize a danger to themselves, but they cannot rightly be forced to fight if they do not. They may be morally blind, or obtuse, or selfish, but these faults do not turn them into the resources of the righteous. This is, however, exactly the effect of Churchill's argument: the sliding scale is a way of transferring the rights of third parties to the citizens and soldiers of a state whose war is, or is said to be, just.\n\nBut there is another argument in Churchill's memorandum which does not require the application of the sliding scale; it is most clearly suggested by the phrase \"supreme emergency.\" In an emergency, neutral rights can be overridden, and when we override them we make no claim that they have been diminished, weakened, or lost. They have to be overridden, as I have already said, precisely because they are still there, in full force, obstacles to some great (necessary) triumph for mankind. To British strategists, Norwegian neutrality was an obstacle of just this sort. It appears now that they greatly exaggerated the effects they could have had on Germany's war effort by cutting off the ore shipments. But their estimates were honestly made, and they were shared by Hitler himself. \"We can under no circumstances afford to lose the Swedish ore,\" he told General Falkenhurst in February 1940. \"If we do, we will soon have to wage war with wooden sticks.\" That attractive prospect must have weighed heavily with the British Cabinet. They had available to them a simple utilitarian argument, backed up by a theory of justice, for violating Norway's neutral rights: the violations were militarily necessary to defeat Nazism, and it was morally essential that Nazism be defeated.\n\nHere again is the two-level argument, and in this case the argument works on the second level: the moral necessity is clear (I will try to explain why this is so in the next chapter). That is why we are likely to be far more sympathetic to Churchill's than to von Bethmann Hollweg's position. But the instrumental or strategic claim is as questionable in the Norwegian as in the Belgian example. The Allied armies had not yet fought a single battle; the force of the German blitzkrieg had not yet been felt in the West; the military significance of the airplane was not yet understood. The British still had full confidence in the Royal Navy. The First Lord of the Admiralty certainly had such confidence: all his Norwegian plans depended upon naval power. Only a Churchill, having called the situation at the beginning of 1940 a \"supreme emergency,\" could still find words to describe Britain's danger six months later. The truth is that when the British finally decided \"to sail in overwhelming strength into the waters of a small but high-spirited people and coerce them,\" they were not thinking of avoiding defeat but (like the Germans in 1914) of winning a quick victory.\n\nSo the British move is another example of overriding at the first minute rather than the last. We judge it less harshly than the German attack on Belgium, not only because of what we know of the character of the Nazi regime, but also because we look back on the events of the next months which so quickly brought Britain to the brink of national disaster. But it has to be stressed again that Churchill had no foresight of that disaster. To understand and weigh the actions he advocated, we must stand beside him in those early months of the war and try to think as he did. Then the question is simply this: can one do anything, violating the rights of the innocent, in order to defeat Nazism? I am going to argue that one can indeed do what is necessary, but the violation of Norwegian neutrality was not necessary in April 1940; it was only a piece of expediency. Can one then reduce the risks of fighting Nazism, at the expense of the innocent? Surely one cannot do that, however just the struggle. Churchill's argument hangs on the reality and the extremity of the crisis, but here (in his own view) there was no crisis. The \"phony war\" was not yet a supreme emergency. The emergency came on unexpectedly, as emergencies are likely to do, its dangers first revealed by the fighting in Norway.\n\nThe final British decision was made late in March, and the Leads were mined on April 8. The next day, the Germans invaded Norway. Eluding the British navy, they landed troops all along the coast, even as far north as Narvik. It was a response not so much to the actual laying of the mines as to the months of plans, arguments, and hesitations, none of which were concealed from Hitler's agents and strategic analysts. It was also the response Churchill had expected and hoped for, though it came too soon and with complete surprise. The Norwegians fought bravely and briefly; the British were tragically unready to defend the country they had made vulnerable to attack. There were a number of counter-landings by British troops; Narvik was captured and held for a short time; but the navy was ineffective against the German airforce, and Churchill, still First Lord of the Admiralty, presided over a series of humiliating evacuations. Germany's ore supply was safe for the duration of the war, as it would have been had Norway's neutrality been respected. Norway was an occupied country, with a fascist government; many of its soldiers were dead; the \"phony war\" was over.\n\nAt Nuremberg in 1945, German leaders were charged with having planned and carried out an aggressive war against Norway. Liddell Hart finds it \"hard to understand how the British and French governments had the face to approve . . . this charge.\" His indignation derives from his belief that neutral rights are equally invulnerable to the claims of just and unjust belligerents. So they are, and it would have been better if after the war the British had acknowledged that the mining of the Leads had been a breach of international law and that the Germans were entitled, if not to invade and conquer Norway, at least to respond in some military way. I do not want to deny the anomaly of the argument that Hitler's Germany could have any rights at all in its wars of conquest. German entitlements, however, came by way of Norwegian rights, and so long as one recognizes the practice of neutrality, there is no way around them. In a supreme emergency, indeed, it may be necessary \"to hack one's way through,\" but it is no virtue to be too eager to do that or to do it too soon, for it is not the opposing army that is hacked through in such a case, but innocent men and women, whose rights are intact, whose lives are at stake.\n\n Neutral states have sometimes sought a more perfect neutrality by embargoing all trade with belligerent powers. But this does not seem a plausible course. For if the normal balance of trade favors one belligerent, a total embargo is likely to favor the other. There is no zero point; the status quo ante bellum seems the only reasonable norm.\n\n But this argument doesn't seem to work with reference to the property and prosperity (rather than the lives) of the citizens. If a state can discriminate economically against an aggressor, even if the costs to itself are considerable, it seems bound to do so, unless the discrimination is likely to involve it in the fighting. Aggressor states, of course, have a right to respond to discriminatory measures, by force if necessary. But they won't always be in a position to respond, and if they are not, the measures may be morally required. When the League of Nations invoked economic sanctions against Italy in the Ethiopian War of 1936, it made the requirement legal as well. But I should think that the moral obligation would have held had there been only an Ethiopian appeal and no League resolution. In any case, the example suggests the relative status of property rights in the theory of war.\n\n Hugo Grotius, who generally favors the sliding scale, is particularly clear on the question of neutrality: \"From what has been said we can understand how it is permissible for one who is waging a just war to take possession of a place situated in a country free from hostilities.\" He sets three conditions, the first of which does not quite fit the Norwegian case: \"that there is not an imaginary but a real danger that the enemy will seize the place and cause irreparable damage.\" But Churchill might have argued that the Germans enjoyed all the benefits of seizure without the effort. See Of the Law of War and Peace, Book II, Chapter ii, Section x.\n\nSupreme Emergency\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (3)\n\nEveryone's troubles make a crisis. \"Emergency\" and \"crisis\" are cant words, used to prepare our minds for acts of brutality. And yet there are such things as critical moments in the lives of men and women and in the history of states. Certainly, war is such a time: every war is an emergency, every battle a possible turning point. Fear and hysteria are always latent in combat, often real, and they press us toward fearful measures and criminal behavior. The war convention is a bar to such measures, not always effective, but there nevertheless. In principle at least, as we have seen, it resists the ordinary crises of military life. Churchill's description of Britain's predicament in 1939 as a \"supreme emergency\" was a piece of rhetorical heightening designed to overcome that resistance. But the phrase also contains an argument: that there is a fear beyond the ordinary fearfulness (and the frantic opportunism) of war, and a danger to which that fear corresponds, and that this fear and danger may well require exactly those measures that the war convention bars. Now, a great deal is at stake here, both for the men and women driven to adopt such measures and for their victims, so we must attend carefully to the implicit argument of \"supreme emergency.\"\n\nThough its use is often ideological, the meaning of the phrase is a matter of common sense. It is defined by two criteria, which correspond to the two levels on which the concept of necessity works: the first has to do with the imminence of the danger and the second with its nature. The two criteria must both be applied. Neither one by itself is sufficient as an account of extremity or as a defense of the extraordinary measures extremity is thought to require. Close but not serious, serious but not close\u2014neither one makes for a supreme emergency. But since people at war can rarely agree on the seriousness of the dangers they face (or pose for one another), the idea of closeness is sometimes made to do the job alone. Then we are offered what might best be called the back-to-the-wall argument: that when conventional means of resistance are hopeless or worn out, anything goes (anything that is \"necessary\" to win). Thus British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, writing in 1932 about the dangers of terror bombing:\n\nWill any form of prohibition of bombing, whether by convention, treaty, agreement, or anything you like, be effective in war? Frankly, I doubt it, and in doubting it, I make no reflection on the good faith of either ourselves or any other country. If a man has a potential weapon and has his back to the wall and is going to be killed, he will use that weapon, whatever it is and whatever undertaking he has given about it.\n\nThe first thing that has to be said about this statement is that Baldwin does not mean his domestic analogy to be applied literally. Soldiers and statesmen commonly say that their backs are to the wall whenever military defeat seems imminent, and Baldwin is endorsing this view of extremity. The analogy is from survival at home to victory in the international sphere. Baldwin claims that people will necessarily (inevitably) adopt extreme measures if such measures are necessary (essential) either to escape death or to avoid military defeat. But the argument is wrong at both ends. It is simply not the case that individuals will always strike out at innocent men and women rather than accept risks for themselves. We even say, very often, that it is their duty to accept risks (and perhaps to die); and here as in moral life generally, \"ought\" implies \"can.\" We make the demand knowing that it is possible for people to live up to it. Can we make the same demand on political leaders, acting not for themselves but for their countrymen? That will depend upon the dangers their countrymen face. What is it that defeat entails? Is it some minor territorial adjustment, a loss of face (for the leaders), the payment of heavy indemnities, political reconstruction of this or that sort, the surrender of national independence, the exile or murder of millions of people? In such cases, one's back is always to the wall, but the dangers one confronts take very different forms, and the different forms make a difference.\n\nIf we are to adopt or defend the adoption of extreme measures, the danger must be of an unusual and horrifying kind. Such descriptions, I suppose, are common enough in time of war. One's enemies are often thought to be\u2014at least they are often said to be\u2014unusual and horrifying. Soldiers are encouraged to fight fiercely if they believe that they are fighting for the survival of their country and their families, that freedom, justice, civilization itself are at risk. But this sort of thing is only sometimes plausible to the detached observer, and one suspects that its propagandistic character is also understood by many of the participants. War is not always a struggle over ultimate values, where the victory of one side would be a human disaster for the other. It is necessary to be skeptical about such matters, to cultivate a wary disbelief of wartime rhetoric, and then to search for some touchstone against which arguments about extremity might be judged. We need to make a map of human crises and to mark off the regions of desperation and disaster. These and only these constitute the realm of necessity, truly understood. Once again, I am going to use the experience of World War II in Europe to suggest at least the rough contours of the map. For Nazism lies at the outer limits of exigency, at a point where we are likely to find ourselves united in fear and abhorrence.\n\nThat is what I am going to assume, at any rate, on behalf of all those people who believed at the time and still believe a third of a century later that Nazism was an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives, an ideology and a practice of domination so murderous, so degrading even to those who might survive, that the consequences of its final victory were literally beyond calculation, immeasurably awful. We see it\u2014and I don't use the phrase lightly\u2014as evil objectified in the world, and in a form so potent and apparent that there could never have been anything to do but fight against it. I obviously cannot offer an account of Nazism in these pages. But such an account is hardly necessary. It is enough to point to the historical experience of Nazi rule. Here was a threat to human values so radical that its imminence would surely constitute a supreme emergency; and this example can help us understand why lesser threats might not do so.\n\nIn order to get the map right, however, we must imagine a Nazi-like danger somewhat different from the one the Nazis actually posed. When Churchill said that a German victory in World War II \"would be fatal, not only to ourselves, but to the independent life of every small country in Europe,\" he was speaking the exact truth. The danger was a general one. But suppose it had existed for Britain alone. Can a supreme emergency be constituted by a particular threat\u2014by a threat of enslavement or extermination directed against a single nation? Can soldiers and statesmen override the rights of innocent people for the sake of their own political community? I am inclined to answer this question affirmatively, though not without hesitation and worry. What choice do they have? They might sacrifice themselves in order to uphold the moral law, but they cannot sacrifice their countrymen. Faced with some ultimate horror, their options exhausted, they will do what they must to save their own people. That is not to say that their decision is inevitable (I have no way of knowing that), but the sense of obligation and of moral urgency they are likely to feel at such a time is so overwhelming that a different outcome is hard to imagine.\n\nStill, the question is difficult, as its domestic analogue suggests. Despite Baldwin, it is not usually said of individuals in domestic society that they necessarily will or that they morally can strike out at innocent people, even in the supreme emergency of self-defense. They can only attack their attackers. But communities, in emergencies, seem to have different and larger prerogatives. I am not sure that I can account for the difference, without ascribing to communal life a kind of transcendence that I don't believe it to have. Perhaps it is only a matter of arithmetic: individuals cannot kill other individuals to save themselves, but to save a nation we can violate the rights of a determinate but smaller number of people. But then large nations and small ones would have different entitlements in such cases, and I doubt very much that this is true. We might better say that it is possible to live in a world where individuals are sometimes murdered, but a world where entire peoples are enslaved or massacred is literally unbearable. For the survival and freedom of political communities\u2014whose members share a way of life, developed by their ancestors, to be passed on to their children\u2014are the highest values of international society. Nazism challenged these values on a grand scale, but challenges more narrowly conceived, if they are of the same kind, have similar moral consequences. They bring us under the rule of necessity (and necessity knows no rules).\n\nI want to stress again, however, that the mere recognition of such a threat is not itself coercive; it neither compels nor permits attacks on the innocent, so long as other means of fighting and winning are available. Danger makes only half the argument; imminence makes the other half. Now let us consider a time when the two halves came together: the terrible two years that followed the defeat of France, from the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1942, when Hitler's armies were everywhere triumphant.\n\nOverriding the Rules of War\n\nThe Decision to Bomb German Cities\n\nThere have been few decisions more important than this one in the history of warfare. As a direct result of the adoption of a policy of terror bombing by the leaders of Britain, some 300,000 Germans, most of them civilians, were killed and another 780,000 seriously injured. No doubt, these figures are low when compared to the results of Nazi genocide; but they were, after all, the work of men and women at war with Nazism, who hated everything it stood for and who were not supposed to imitate its effects, even at lagging rates. And the British policy had further consequences: it was the crucial precedent for the fire-bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities and then for Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The civilian death toll from Allied terrorism in World War II must have exceeded half a million men, women, and children. How could the initial choice of this ultimate weapon ever have been defended?\n\nThe history is a complex one, and it has already been the subject of several monographic analyses. I can review it only briefly, attending especially to the arguments put forward at the time by Churchill and other British leaders, and always remembering what sort of a time it was. The decision to bomb cities was made late in 1940. A directive issued in June of that year had \"specifically laid down that targets had to be identified and aimed at. Indiscriminate bombing was forbidden.\" In November, after the German raid on Coventry, \"Bomber Command was instructed simply to aim at the center of a city.\" What had once been called indiscriminate bombing (and commonly condemned) was now required, and by early 1942, aiming at military or industrial targets was barred: \"the aiming points are to be the built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories.\" The purpose of the raids was explicitly declared to be the destruction of civilian morale. Following the famous minute of Lord Cherwell in 1942, the means to this demoralization were specified: working-\u00adclass residential areas were the prime targets. Cherwell thought it possible to render a third of the German population homeless by 1943.\n\nBefore Cherwell provided his \"scientific\" rationale for the bombing, a number of reasons had already been offered for the British decision. From the beginning, the attacks were defended as reprisals for the German blitz. This is a very problematic defense, even if we leave aside the difficulties of the doctrine of reprisals (which I have already canvassed). First of all, it appears possible, as one scholar has recently argued, that Churchill deliberately provoked the German attacks on London\u2014by bombing Berlin\u2014in order to relieve pressure on R.A.F. installations, until then the major Luftwaffe target. Nor was it Churchill's purpose, once the blitz began, to deter the German attacks or to establish a policy of mutual restraint.\n\nWe ask no favor of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, \"No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us.\"\n\nNeedless to say, the people of London were not in fact asked to vote on such a convention. Churchill assumed that the bombing of German cities was necessary to their morale and that they wanted to hear (what he told them in a radio broadcast of 1941) that the British air force was making \"the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind.\" This argument has been accepted by many historians: there was \"a popular clamor\" for revenge, one of them writes, which Churchill had to satisfy if he was to maintain a fighting spirit among his own people. It is especially interesting to note, then, that a 1941 opinion poll showed that \"the most determined demand for [reprisal raids] came from Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the North Riding of Yorkshire, rural areas barely touched by bombing, where some three-quarters of the population wanted them. In central London, conversely, the proportion was only 45 percent.\" Men and women who had experienced terror bombing were less likely to support Churchill's policy than those who had not\u2014a heartening statistic, and one which suggests that the morale of the British people (or perhaps better, their conventional morality) allowed for political leadership of a different sort than Churchill provided. The news that Germany was being bombed was certainly glad tidings in Britain; but as late as 1944, according to other opinion surveys, the overwhelming majority of Britishers still believed that the raids were directed solely against military targets. Presumably, that is what they wanted to believe; there was by then quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. But that says something, again, about the character of British morale. (It should also be said that the campaign against terror bombing, run largely by pacifists, attracted very little popular support.)\n\nReprisal was a bad argument; revenge was a worse one. We must concentrate now on the military justifications for terror bombing, which were presumably paramount in Churchill's mind, whatever he said on the radio. I can discuss these only in a general way. There was a great deal of dispute at the time, some of it technical, some of it moral in character. The calculations of the Cherwell minute, for example, were sharply attacked by a group of scientists whose opposition to terrorism may well have had moral grounds, but whose position, to the best of my knowledge, was never stated in moral terms. Explicit moral disagreement developed most importantly among the professional soldiers involved in the decision-\u00admaking process. These disagreements are described, in characteristic fashion, by a strategic analyst and historian who has studied the British escalation: \"The . . . debate had been beclouded by emotion on one side of the argument, on the part of those who as a matter of moral principle objected to making war on civilians.\" The focus of these objections seems to have been some version of the doctrine of double effect. (The arguments had, to the mind of the strategic analyst, \"a curiously scholastic flavor.\") At the height of the blitz, many British officers still felt strongly that their own air attacks should be aimed to minimize civilian casualties. They did not want to imitate Hitler, but to differentiate themselves from him. Even officers who accepted the desirability of killing civilians still sought to maintain their professional honor: such deaths, they insisted, were desirable \"only insofar as [they] remained a by-product of the primary intention to hit a military target. . . .\" A tendentious argument, no doubt, yet one that would drastically have limited the British offensive against cities. But all such proposals ran up against the operational limits of the bomber technology then available.\n\nEarly in the war, it became clear that British bombers could fly effectively only at night and, given the navigational devices with which they were equipped, that they could reasonably aim at no target smaller than a fairly large city. A study made in 1941 indicated that of those planes that actually succeeded in attacking their target (about two-thirds of the attacking force), only one-third dropped their bombs within five miles of the point aimed at. Once this was known, it would seem dishonest to claim that the intended target was, say, this aircraft factory and that the indiscriminate destruction around it was only an unintended, if foreseeable, consequence of the justified attempt to stop the production of planes. What was really unintended but foreseeable was that the factory itself would probably escape harm. If any sort of strategic bombing offensive was to be maintained, one would have to plan for the destruction that one could and did cause. Lord Cherwell's minute was an effort at such planning. In fact, of course, navigational devices were rapidly improved as the war went on, and the bombing of specific military targets was an important part of Britain's total air offensive, receiving top priority at times (before the June 1944 invasion of France, for example) and cutting into the resources allowed for attacks on cities. Today many experts believe that the war might have ended sooner had there been a greater concentration of air power against targets such as the German oil refineries. But the decision to bomb cities was made at a time when victory was not in sight and the specter of defeat ever present. And it was made when no other decision seemed possible if there was to be any sort of military offensive against Nazi Germany.\n\nBomber Command was the only offensive weapon available to the British in those frightening years, and I expect there is some truth to the notion that it was used simply because it was there. \"It was the only force in the West,\" writes Arthur Harris, chief of Bomber Command from early 1942 until the end of the war, \"which could take offensive action . . . against Germany, our only means of getting at the enemy in a way that would hurt at all.\" Offensive action could have been postponed until (or in hope of) some more favorable time. That is what the war convention would require, and there was also considerable military pressure for postponement. Harris was hard-pressed to keep his Command together in the face of repeated calls for tactical air support\u2014which would have been coordinated with ground action largely defensive in character, since the German armies were still advancing everywhere. Sometimes, in his memoirs, he sounds like a bureaucrat defending his function and his office, but obviously he was also defending a certain conception of how the war might best be fought. He did not believe that the weapons he commanded should be used because he commanded them. He believed that the tactical use of bombers could not stop Hitler and that the destruction of cities could. Later in the war, he argued that only the destruction of cities could bring the fighting to a quick conclusion. The first of these arguments, at least, deserves a careful examination. It was apparently accepted by the Prime Minister. \"The bombers alone,\" Churchill had said as early as September 1940, \"provide the means of victory.\"\n\nThe bombers alone\u2014that poses the issue very starkly, and perhaps wrongly, given the disputes over strategy to which I have already referred. Churchill's statement suggested a certainty to which neither he nor anyone else had any right. But the issue can be put so as to accommodate a degree of skepticism and to permit even the most sophisticated among us to indulge in a common and a morally important fantasy: suppose that I sat in the seat of power and had to decide whether to use Bomber Command (in the only way that it could be used systematically and effectively) against cities. Suppose further that unless the bombers were used in this way, the probability that Germany would eventually be defeated would be radically reduced. It makes no sense at this point to quantify the probabilities; I have no clear notion what they actually were or even how they might be calculated given our present knowledge; nor am I sure how different figures, unless they were very different, would affect the moral argument. But it does seem to me that the more certain a German victory appeared to be in the absence of a bomber offensive, the more justifiable was the decision to launch the offensive. It is not just that such a victory was frightening, but also that it seemed in those years very close; it is not just that it was close, but also that it was so frightening. Here was a supreme emergency, where one might well be required to override the rights of innocent people and shatter the war convention.\n\nGiven the view of Nazism that I am assuming, the issue takes this form: should I wager this determinate crime (the killing of innocent people) against that immeasurable evil (a Nazi triumph)? Obviously, if there is some other way of avoiding the evil or even a reasonable chance of another way, I must wager differently or elsewhere. But I can never hope to be sure; a wager is not an experiment. Even if I wager and win, it is still possible that I was wrong, that my crime was unnecessary to victory. But I can argue that I studied the case as closely as I was able, took the best advice I could find, sought out available alternatives. And if all this is true, and my perception of evil and imminent danger not hysterical or self-\u00adserving, then surely I must wager. There is no option; the risk otherwise is too great. My own action is determinate, of course, only as to its direct consequences, while the rule that bars such acts is founded on a conception of rights that transcends all immediate considerations. It arises out of our common history; it holds the key to our common future. But I dare to say that our history will be nullified and our future condemned unless I accept the burdens of criminality here and now.\n\nThis is not an easy argument to make, and yet we must resist every effort to make it easier. Many people undoubtedly found some comfort in the fact that the cities being bombed were German and some of the victims Nazis. In effect, they applied the sliding scale and denied or diminished the rights of German civilians so as to deny or diminish the horror of their deaths. This is a tempting procedure, as we can see most clearly if we consider again the bombing of occupied France. Allied fliers killed many Frenchmen, but they did so while bombing what were (or were thought to be) military targets. They did not deliberately aim at the \"built-up areas\" of French cities. Suppose such a policy had been proposed. I am sure that we would all find the wager more difficult to undertake and defend if, through some strange combination of circumstances, it required the deliberate slaughter of Frenchmen. For we had special commitments to the French; we were fighting on their behalf (and sometimes the bombers were flown by French pilots). But the status of the civilians in the two cases is no different. The theory that distinguishes combatants from noncombatants does not distinguish Allied from enemy noncombatants, at least not with regard to the question of their murder. I suppose it makes sense to say that there were more people in German than in French cities who were responsible (in some fashion) for the evil of Nazism, and we may well be reluctant to extend to them the full range of civilian rights. But even if that reluctance is justified, there is no way for the bombers to search out the right people. And for all the others, terrorism only reiterates the tyranny that the Nazis had already established. It assimilates ordinary men and women to their government as if the two really made a totality, and it judges them in a totalitarian way. If one is forced to bomb cities, it seems to me, it is best to acknowledge that one has also been forced to kill the innocent.\n\nOnce again, however, I want to set radical limits to the notion of necessity even as I have myself been using it. For the truth is that the supreme emergency passed long before the British bombing reached its crescendo. The greater number by far of the German civilians killed by terror bombing were killed without moral (and probably also without military) reason. The decisive point was made by Churchill in July of 1942:\n\nIn the days when we were fighting alone, we answered the question: \"How are you going to win the war?\" by saying: \"We will shatter Germany by bombing.\" Since then the enormous injuries inflicted on the German Army and manpower by the Russians, and the accession of the manpower and munitions of the United States, have rendered other possibilities open.\n\nSurely, then, it was time to stop the bombing of cities and to aim, tactically and strategically, only at legitimate military targets. But that was not Churchill's view: \"All the same, it would be a mistake to cast aside our original thought . . . that the severe, ruthless bombing of Germany on an ever-increasing scale will not only cripple her war effort . . . but will create conditions intolerable to the mass of the German population.\" So the raids continued, culminating in the spring of 1945\u2014when the war was virtually won\u2014in a savage attack on the city of Dresden in which something like 100,000 people were killed. Only then did Churchill have second thoughts. \"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. . . . The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.\" Indeed it does, but so does the destruction of Hamburg and Berlin and all the other cities attacked simply for the sake of terror.\n\nThe argument used between 1942 and 1945 in defense of terror bombing was utilitarian in character, its emphasis not on victory itself but on the time and price of victory. The city raids, it was claimed by men such as Harris, would end the war sooner than it would otherwise end and, despite the large number of civilian casualties they inflicted, at a lower cost in human life. Assuming this claim to be true (I have already indicated that precisely opposite claims are made by some historians and strategists), it is nevertheless not sufficient to justify the bombing. It is not sufficient, I think, even if we do nothing more than calculate utilities. For such calculations need not be concerned only with the preservation of life. There is much else that we might plausibly want to preserve: the quality of our lives, for example, our civilization and morality, our collective abhorrence of murder, even when it seems, as it always does, to serve some purpose. Then the deliberate slaughter of innocent men and women cannot be justified simply because it saves the lives of other men and women. I suppose it is possible to imagine situations where that last assertion might prove problematic, from a utilitarian perspective, where the number of people involved is small, the proportions are right, the events hidden from the public eye, and so on. Philosophers delight in inventing such cases in order to test out our moral doctrines. But their inventions are somehow put out of our minds by the sheer scale of the calculations necessary in World War II. To kill 278,966 civilians (the number is made up) in order to avoid the deaths of an unknown but probably larger number of civilians and soldiers is surely a fantastic, godlike, frightening, and horrendous act.a\n\nI have said that such acts can probably be ruled out on utilitarian grounds, but it is also true that utilitarianism as it is commonly understood, indeed, as Sidgwick himself understands it, encourages the bizarre accounting that makes them (morally) possible. We can recognize their horror only when we have acknowledged the personality and value of the men and women we destroy in committing them. It is the acknowledgment of rights that puts a stop to such calculations and forces us to realize that the destruction of the innocent, whatever its purposes, is a kind of blasphemy against our deepest moral commitments. (This is true even in a supreme emergency, when we cannot do anything else.) But I want to look at one more case before concluding my argument\u2014a case where the utilitarian accounting, however bizarre, seemed so radically clear-cut to the decision-makers as to leave them, they thought, no choice but to attack the innocent.\n\nThe Limits of Calculation\n\nHiroshima\n\n\"They all accepted the 'assignment' and produced The Bomb,\" Dwight Macdonald wrote in August 1945 of the atomic scientists. \"Why?\" It is an important question, but Macdonald poses it badly and then gives the wrong answer. \"Because they thought of themselves as specialists, technicians, and not as complete men.\" In fact, they did not accept the assignment; they sought it out, taking the initiative, urging upon President Roosevelt the critical importance of an American effort to match the work being done in Nazi Germany. And they did this precisely because they were \"complete men,\" many of them European refugees, with an acute sense of what a Nazi victory would mean for their native lands and for all mankind. They were driven by a deep moral anxiety, not (or not most crucially) by any kind of scientific fascination; they were certainly not servile technicians. On the other hand, they were men and women without political power or following, and once their own work was done, they could not control its use. The discovery in November 1944 that German scientists had made little progress ended their own supreme emergency, but it did not end the program they had helped to launch. \"If I had known that the Germans would not succeed in constructing the atom bomb,\" Albert Einstein said, \"I would never have lifted a finger.\" By the time he found that out, however, the scientists had largely finished their work; now indeed technicians were in charge, and the politicians in charge of them. And in the event, the bomb was not used against Germany (or to deter its use by Hitler, which is what men like Einstein had in mind), but against the Japanese, who had never posed such a threat to peace and freedom as the Nazis had.b\n\nStill, it was an important feature of the American decision that the President and his advisors believed the Japanese to be fighting an aggressive war and, moreover, to be fighting it unjustly. Thus Truman's address to the American people on August 12, 1945:\n\nWe have used [the bomb] against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war . . .\n\nHere again, the sliding scale is being used to open the way for utilitarian calculations. The Japanese have forfeited (some of) their rights, and so they cannot complain about Hiroshima so long as the destruction of the city actually does, or could reasonably be expected to, shorten the agony of war. But had the Japanese exploded an atomic bomb over an American city, killing tens of thousands of civilians and thereby shortening the agony of war, the action would clearly have been a crime, one more for Truman's list. This distinction is only plausible, however, if one renders a judgment not only against the leaders of Japan but also against the ordinary people of Hiroshima and insists at the same time that no similar judgment is possible against the people of San Francisco, say, or Denver. I can find, as I have said before, no way of defending such a procedure. How did the people of Hiroshima forfeit their rights? Perhaps their taxes paid for some of the ships and planes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor; perhaps they sent their sons into the navy and air force with prayers for their success; perhaps they celebrated the actual event, after being told that their country had won a great victory in the face of an imminent American threat. Surely there is nothing here that makes these people liable to direct attack. (It is worth noting, though the fact is not relevant in judging the Hiroshima decision, that the raid on Pearl Harbor was directed entirely against naval and army installations: only a few stray bombs fell on the city of Honolulu.)\n\nBut if Truman's argument on August 12 was weak, there was a worse one underlying it. He did not intend to apply the sliding scale with any precision, for he seems to have believed that, given Japanese aggression, the Americans could do anything at all to win (and shorten the agony of war). Along with most of his advisors, he accepted the \"war is hell\" doctrine; it is a constant allusion in defenses of the Hiroshima decision. Thus Henry Stimson:\n\nAs I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of War, I see too many stern and heartrending decisions to be willing to pretend that war is anything else but what it is. The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives.\n\nAnd James Byrnes, Truman's friend and his Secretary of State:\n\n. . . war remains what General Sherman said it was.\n\nAnd Arthur Compton, chief scientific advisor to the government:\n\nWhen one thinks of the mounted archers of Ghengiz Khan . . . the Thirty Years War . . . the millions of Chinese who died during the Japanese invasion . . . the mass destruction of western Russia . . . one realizes that in whatever manner it is fought, war is precisely what General Sherman called it.\n\nAnd Truman himself:\n\nLet us not become so preoccupied with weapons that we lose sight of the fact that war itself is the real villain.\n\nWar itself is to blame, but also the men who begin it . . . while those who fight justly merely participate in the hell of war, choicelessly, and there are no moral decisions for which they can be called to account. This is not, or not necessarily, an immoral doctrine, but it is radically one-sided; it evades the tension between jus ad bellum and jus in bello; it undercuts the need for hard judgments; it relaxes our sense of moral restraint. When he was choosing a target for the first bomb, Truman reports, he asked Stimson which Japanese cities were \"devoted exclusively to war production.\" The question was reflexive; Truman did not want to violate the \"laws of war.\" But it wasn't serious. Which American cities were devoted exclusively to war production? It is possible to ask such questions only when the answer doesn't matter. If war is hell however it is fought, then what difference can it make how we fight it? And if war itself is the villain, then what risks do we run (aside from the strategic risks) when we make decisions? The Japanese, who began the war, can also end it; only they can end it, and all we can do is fight it, enduring what Truman called \"the daily tragedy of bitter war.\" I don't doubt that that was really Truman's view; it was not a matter of convenience but of conviction. But it is a distorted view. It mistakes the actual hellishness of war, which is particular in character and open to precise definition, for the limitless pains of religious mythology. The pains of war are limitless only if we make them so\u2014only if we move, as Truman did, beyond the limits that we and others have established. Sometimes, I think, we have to do that, but not all the time. Now we must ask whether it was necessary to do it in 1945.\n\nThe only possible defense of the Hiroshima attack is a utilitarian calculation made without the sliding scale, a calculation made, then, where there was no room for it, a claim to override the rules of war and the rights of Japanese civilians. I want to state this argument as strongly as I can. In 1945, American policy was fixed on the demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan. The Japanese had by that time lost the war, but they were by no means ready to accept this demand. The leaders of their armed forces expected an invasion of the Japanese main islands and were preparing for a last-ditch resistance. They had over two million soldiers available for the fighting, and they believed that they could make the invasion so costly that the Americans would agree to a negotiated peace. Truman's military advisors also believed that the costs would be high, though the public record does not show that they ever recommended negotiations. They thought that the war might continue late into 1946 and that there would be as many as a million additional American casualties. Japanese losses would be much higher. The capture of Okinawa in a battle lasting from April to June of 1945 had cost almost 80,000 American casualties, while virtually the entire Japanese garrison of 120,000 men had been killed (only 10,600 prisoners were taken). If the main islands were defended with a similar ferocity, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Japanese soldiers would die. Meanwhile, the fighting would continue in China and in Manchuria, where a Russian attack was soon due. And the bombing of Japan would also continue, and perhaps intensify, with casualty rates no different from those anticipated from the atomic attack. For the Americans had adopted in Japan the British policy of terrorism: a massive incendiary raid on Tokyo early in March 1945 had set off a firestorm and killed an estimated 100,000 people. Against all this was set, in the minds of American decision-makers, the impact of the atomic bomb\u2014not materially more damaging but psychologically more frightening, and holding out the promise, perhaps, of a quick end to the war. \"To avert a vast, indefinite butchery . . . at the cost of a few explosions,\" wrote Churchill in support of Truman's decision, \"seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.\"\n\n\"A vast indefinite butchery\" involving quite probably the deaths of several million people: surely this is a great evil, and if it was imminent, one could reasonably argue that extreme measures might be warranted to avert it. Secretary of War Stimson thought it was the sort of case I have already described, where one had to wager; there was no option. \"No man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hand a weapon of such possibilities for . . . saving those lives, could have failed to use it.\" This is by no means an incomprehensible or, on the surface at least, an outrageous argument. But it is not the same as the argument I suggested in the case of Britain in 1940. It does not have the form: if we don't do x (bomb cities), they will do y (win the war, establish tyrannical rule, slaughter their opponents). What Stimson argued is very different. Given the actual policy of the U.S. government, it amounts to this: if we don't do x, we will do y. The two atomic bombs caused \"many casualties,\" James Byrnes admitted, \"but not nearly so many as there would have been had our air force continued to drop incendiary bombs on Japan's cities.\" Our purpose, then, was not to avert a \"butchery\" that someone else was threatening, but one that we were threatening, and had already begun to carry out. Now, what great evil, what supreme emergency, justified the incendiary attacks on Japanese cities?\n\nEven if we had been fighting in strict accordance with the war convention, the continuation of the struggle was not something forced upon us. It had to do with our war aims. The military estimate of casualties was based not only on the belief that the Japanese would fight almost to the last man, but also on the assumption that the Americans would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. The war aims of the American government required either an invasion of the main islands, with enormous losses of American and Japanese soldiers and of Japanese civilians trapped in the war zones, or the use of the atomic bomb. Given that choice, one might well reconsider those aims. Even if we assume that unconditional surrender was morally desirable because of the character of Japanese militarism, it might still be morally undesirable because of the human costs it entailed. But I would suggest a stronger argument than this. The Japanese case is sufficiently different from the German so that unconditional surrender should never have been asked. Japan's rulers were engaged in a more ordinary sort of military expansion, and all that was morally required was that they be defeated, not that they be conquered and totally overthrown. Some restraint upon their war-making power might be justified, but their domestic authority was a matter of concern only to the Japanese people. In any case, if killing millions (or many thousands) of men and women was militarily necessary for their conquest and overthrow, then it was morally necessary\u2014in order not to kill those people\u2014to settle for something less. I have made this argument before (in chapter 7); here is a further example of its practical application. If people have a right not to be forced to fight, they also have a right not to be forced to continue fighting beyond the point when the war might justly be concluded. Beyond that point, there can be no supreme emergencies, no arguments about military necessity, no cost-accounting in human lives. To press the war further than that is to re-commit the crime of aggression. In the summer of 1945, the victorious Americans owed the Japanese people an experiment in negotiation. To use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting such an experiment, was a double crime.\n\nThese, then, are the limits of the realm of necessity. Utilitarian calculation can force us to violate the rules of war only when we are face-to-face not merely with defeat but with a defeat likely to bring disaster to a political community. But these calculations have no similar effects when what is at stake is only the speed or the scope of victory. They are relevant only to the conflict between winning and fighting well, not to the internal problems of combat itself. Whenever that conflict is absent, calculation is stopped short by the rules of war and the rights they are designed to protect. Confronted by those rights, we are not to calculate consequences, or figure relative risks, or compute probable casualties, but simply to stop short and turn aside.\n\n George Orwell has suggested an alternative utilitarian rationale for the bombing of German cities. In a column written for the leftist journal Tribune in 1944, he argued that the bombing brought the true character of contemporary combat home to all those people who supported the war, even enjoyed it, only because they never felt its effects. It shattered \"the immunity of civilians, one of the things that have made war possible,\" and so it made war less likely in the future. See The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, New York, 1968, Vol. 3, pp. 151\u2013152. Orwell assumes that civilians had really been immune in the past, which is false. In any case, I doubt that his argument would lead anyone to begin bombing cities. It is an apology after the fact, and not a convincing one.\n\n In his novel The New Men, C. P. Snow describes the discussions among atomic scientists as to whether or not the bomb should be used. Some of them, his narrator says, answered that question with \"an absolute no,\" feeling that if the weapon were used to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, \"neither science nor the civilization of which science is bone and fibre, would be free from guilt again.\" But the more common view was the one I have been defending: \"Many, probably the majority, gave a conditional no with much the same feeling behind it; but if there were no other way of saving the war against Hitler, they would be prepared to drop the bomb.\" The New Men, New York, 1954, p. 177 (Snow's emphasis).\n\nNuclear Deterrence\n\nThe Problem of Immoral Threats\n\nTruman used the atomic bomb to end a war that seemed to him limitless in its horrors. And then, for a few minutes or hours in August 1945, the people of Hiroshima endured a war that actually was limitless in its horrors. \"In this last great action of the Second War War,\" wrote Stimson, \"we were given final proof that war is death.\" Final proof is exactly the wrong phrase, for war had never been like that before. A new kind of war was born at Hiroshima, and what we were given was a first glimpse of its deadliness. Though fewer people were killed than in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, they were killed with monstrous ease. One plane, one bomb: with such a weapon the 350 planes that raided Tokyo would virtually have wiped out human life on the Japanese islands. Atomic war was death indeed, indiscriminate and total, and after Hiroshima, the first task of political leaders everywhere was to prevent its recurrence.\n\nThe means they adopted is the promise of reprisal in kind. Against the threat of an immoral attack, they have put the threat of an immoral response. This is the basic form of nuclear deterrence. In international as in domestic society, deterrence works by calling up dramatic images of human pain. \"In the groves of their academy,\" wrote Edmund Burke of the liberal theorists of crime and punishment, \"at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.\" The description is uncomplimentary, for Burke believed that domestic peace must rest upon some other foundation. But there is this much to be said for the gallows: in principle, at least, only guilty men need fear the death it brings. About the theorists of deterrence, however, it must be said, \"In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the mushroom cloud\"\u2014and the cloud symbolizes indiscriminate slaughter, the killing of the innocent (as in Hiroshima) on a massive scale. No doubt, the threat of such slaughter, if it is believed, makes nuclear attack a radically undesirable policy. Doubled by a potential enemy, the threat produces a \"balance of terror.\" Both sides are so terrified that no further terrorism is necessary. But is the threat itself morally permissible?\n\nThe question is a difficult one. It has generated in the years since Hiroshima a significant body of literature exploring the relation between nuclear deterrence and just war. This has been the work mostly of theologians and philosophers, but some of the strategists of deterrence have also been involved; they worry about the act of terrorizing much as conventional soldiers worry about the act of killing. I cannot review this literature here, though I shall draw upon it freely. The argument against deterrence is familiar enough. Anyone committed to the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is bound to be appalled by the specter of destruction evoked, and purposely evoked, in deterrence theory. \"How can a nation live with its conscience,\" John Bennett has asked, \"and know that it is preparing to kill twenty million children in another nation if the worst should come to the worst?\" And yet, we have lived with that knowledge, and with our consciences too, for several decades now. How have we managed? The reason for our acceptance of deterrent strategy, most people would say, is that preparing to kill, even threatening to kill, is not at all the same thing as killing. Indeed it is not, but it is frighteningly close\u2014else deterrence wouldn't \"work\"\u2014and it is in the nature of that closeness that the moral problem lies.\n\nThe problem is often misdescribed\u2014as in the following analogy for nuclear deterrence first suggested by Paul Ramsey and frequently repeated since:\n\nSuppose that one Labor Day weekend no one was killed or maimed on the highways; and that the reason for the remarkable restraint placed on the recklessness of automobile drivers was that suddenly everyone of them discovered he was driving with a baby tied to his front bumper! That would be no way to regulate traffic even if it succeeds in regulating it perfectly, since such a system makes innocent human lives the direct object of attack and uses them as a mere means for restraining the drivers of automobiles.\n\nNo one, of course, has ever proposed regulating traffic in this ingenious way, while the strategy of deterrence was adopted with virtually no opposition at all. That contrast should alert us to what is wrong with Ramsey's analogy. Though deterrence turns American and Russian civilians into mere means for the prevention of war, it does so without restraining any of us in any way. Ramsey reproduces the strategy of the German officers during the Franco-Prussian War who forced civilians to ride on military trains in order to deter saboteurs. By contrast with those civilians, however, we are hostages who lead normal lives. It is in the nature of the new technology that we can be threatened without being held captive. That is why deterrence, while in principle so frightening, is so easy to live with. It cannot be condemned for anything it does to its hostages. It is so far from killing them that it does not even injure or confine them; it involves no direct or physical violation of their rights. Those critics of deterrence who are also committed consequentialists have had to imagine psychic injuries. Thus Eric Fromm, writing in 1960: \"To live for any length of time under the constant threat of destruction creates certain psychological effects in most human beings\u2014fright, hostility, callousness . . . and a resulting indifference to all the values we cherish. Such conditions will transform us into barbarians. . . .\" But I don't know of any evidence that bears out either the assertion or the prediction; surely we are no more barbarians now than we were in 1945. In fact, for most people, the threat of destruction, though constant, is invisible and unnoticed. We have come to live with it casually\u2014as Ramsey's babies, traumatized for life in all probability, could never do, and as hostages in conventional wars have never done.\n\nIf deterrence were more painful, we might have found other means of avoiding nuclear war\u2014or we might not have avoided it. If we had to keep millions of people under restraint in order to maintain the balance of terror, or if we had to kill millions of people (periodically) in order to convince our adversaries of our credibility, deterrence would not be accepted for long. The strategy works because it is easy. Indeed, it is easy in a double sense: not only don't we do anything to other people, we also don't believe that we will ever have to do anything. The secret of nuclear deterrence is that it is a kind of bluff. Perhaps we are only bluffing ourselves, refusing to acknowledge the real terrors of a precarious and temporary balance. But no account of our experience is accurate which fails to recognize that, for all its ghastly potential, deterrence has so far been a bloodless strategy.\n\nSo far as consequences go, then, deterrence and mass murder are very far apart. Their closeness is a matter of moral posture and intention. Once again, Ramsey's analogy misses the point. His babies are not really the \"direct object of attack,\" for whatever happens on that Labor Day weekend, no one will deliberately set out to kill them. But deterrence depends upon a readiness to do exactly that. It is as if the state should seek to prevent murder by threatening to kill the family and friends of every murderer\u2014a domestic version of the policy of \"massive retaliation.\" Surely that would be a repugnant policy. We would not admire the police officials who designed it or those pledged to carry it out, even if they never actually killed anybody. I don't want to say that such people would necessarily be transformed into barbarians; they might well have a heightened sense of how awful murder is and a heightened desire to avoid it; they might loathe the work they were pledged to do and fervently hope that they never had to do it. Nevertheless, the enterprise is immoral. The immorality lies in the threat itself, not in its present or even its likely consequences. Similarly with nuclear deterrence: it is our own intentions that we have to worry about and the potential (since there are no actual) victims of those intensions. Here Ramsey has put the case very well: \"Whatever is wrong to do is wrong to threaten, if the latter means 'mean to do.' . . . If counter-\u00adpopulation warfare is murder, then counter-population deterrent threats are murderous.\" No doubt, killing millions of innocent people is worse than threatening to kill them. It is also true that no one wants to kill them, and it may well be true that no one expects to do so. Nevertheless, we intend the killings under certain circumstances. That is the stated policy of our government; and thousands of men, trained in the techniques of mass destruction and drilled in instant obedience, stand ready to carry it out. And from the perspective of morality, the readiness is all. We can translate it into degrees of danger, high and low, and worry about the risks we are imposing on innocent people, but the risks depend on the readiness. What we condemn in our own government, as in the police in my domestic analogy, is the commitment to murder.a\n\nBut this analogy, too, can be questioned. We don't prevent murder any more than we control traffic in these bizarre and inhuman ways. But we do deter or seek to deter our nuclear adversaries. Perhaps deterrence is different because of the danger its advocates claim to avoid. Traffic deaths and occasional murders, however much we deplore them, do not threaten our common liberties or our collective survival. Deterrence, so we have been told, guards us against a double danger: first, of atomic blackmail and foreign domination; and second, of nuclear destruction. The two go together, since if we did not fear the blackmail, we might adopt a policy of appeasement or surrender and so avoid the destruction. Deterrence theory was worked out at the height of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and those who worked it out were concerned above all with the political uses of violence\u2014which are not relevant in either the traffic or police analogies. Underlying the American doctrine, there seemed to lurk some version of the slogan \"Better dead than Red\" (I don't know the Russian parallel). Now that is not really a believable slogan; it is hard to imagine that a nuclear holocaust was really thought preferable to the expansion of Soviet power. What made deterrence attractive was that it seemed capable of avoiding both.\n\nWe need not dwell on the nature of the Soviet regime in order to understand the virtues of this argument. Deterrence theory doesn't depend upon a view of Stalinism as a great evil (though that is a highly plausible view) in the same way that my argument about terror bombing depended upon an assertion about the evils of Nazism. It requires only that we see appeasement or surrender to involve a loss of values central to our existence as an independent nation-state. For it is not tolerable that advances in technology should put our nation, or any nation, at the mercy of a great power willing to menace the world or to press its authority outwards in the shadow of an implicit threat. The case here is very different from that which arises commonly in war, where our adherence to the war convention puts us, or would put us, at a disadvantage vis-\u00e0-vis them. For disadvantages of that sort are partial and relative; various counter-\u00admeasures and compensating steps are always available. But in the nuclear case, the disadvantage is absolute. Against an enemy actually willing to use the bomb, self-defense is impossible, and it makes sense to say that the only compensating step is the (immoral) threat to respond in kind. No country capable of making such a threat is likely to refuse to make it. What is not tolerable won't be tolerated. Hence any state confronted by a nuclear adversary (it makes little difference what the adversary relationship is like or what ideological forms it assumes), and capable of developing its own bomb, is likely to do so, seeking safety in a balance of terror.b Mutual disarmament would clearly be a preferable alternative, but it is an alternative available only to the two countries working closely together, whereas deterrence is the likely choice of either one of them alone. They will worry about one another's readiness to attack; they will each assume their own commitment to resist; and they will realize that the greatest danger of such a confrontation would not be the defeat of one side or the other but the total destruction of both\u2014and possibly of everyone else too. This in fact is the danger that has faced mankind since 1945, and our understanding of nuclear deterrence must be worked out with reference to its scope and imminence. Supreme emergency has become a permanent condition. Deterrence is a way of coping with that condition, and though it is a bad way, there may well be no other that is practical in a world of sovereign and suspicious states. We threaten evil in order not to do it, and the doing of it would be so terrible that the threat seems in comparison to be morally defensible.\n\nLimited Nuclear War\n\nIf the bomb were ever used, deterrence would have failed. It is a feature of massive retaliation that while there is or may be some rational purpose in threatening it, there could be none in carrying it out. Were our \"bluff\" ever to be called and our population centers suddenly attacked, the resulting war could not (in any usual sense of the word) be won. We could only drag our enemies after us into the abyss. The use of our deterrent capacity would be an act of pure destructiveness. For this reason, massive retaliation, if not literally unthinkable, has always seemed undo-able, and this is a source of considerable anxiety for military strategists. Deterrence only works, they argue, if each side believes that the other might actually carry out its threat. But would we carry it out? George Kennan has recently given what must be the moral response:\n\nLet us suppose there were to be a nuclear attack of some sort on this country and millions of people were killed and injured. Let us further suppose that we had the ability to retaliate against the urban centers of the country that had attacked us. Would you want to do that? I wouldn't . . . I have no sympathy with the man who demands an eye for an eye in a nuclear attack.\n\nA humane position\u2014though one that should probably be whispered, rather than published, if the balance of terror is to be sustained. But the argument might look very different if the original attack or the planned response avoided cities and people. If a limited nuclear war were possible, wouldn't it also be do-able? And might not the balance of terror then be re-established on the basis of threats that were neither immoral nor unconvincing?\n\nOver a brief timespan, in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, these questions were answered with an extraordinary outpouring of strategic arguments and speculations, overlapping in important ways with the moralizing literature I described earlier. For the debate among the strategists focused on the attempt (though this was rarely made explicit) to fit nuclear war into the structure of the war convention, to apply the argument for justice as if this sort of conflict were like any other sort. The attempt involved, first, a defense of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in deterring and, if that failed, in resisting conventional or small-scale nuclear attacks; and it involved, secondly, the development of a \"counter-force\" strategy directed at the enemy's military installations and also at major economic targets (but not at entire cities). These two had a similar purpose. By holding out the promise of a limited nuclear war, they made it possible to imagine actually fighting such a war\u2014they made it possible to imagine winning it\u2014and so they strengthened the intention that lay behind the deterrent threat. They transformed the \"bluff\" into a plausible option.\n\nUntil the late 1950s, the tendency of most people was to regard the atomic bomb and its thermonuclear successors as forbidden weapons. They were treated on analogy with poison gas, though the prohibition on their use was never legally established. \"Ban the bomb\" was everyone's policy, and deterrence was simply a practical way of enforcing the ban. But now the strategists suggested (rightly) that the crucial distinction in the theory and practice of war was not between prohibited and acceptable weapons but between prohibited and acceptable targets. Massive retaliation was painful and difficult to contemplate because it was modeled on Hiroshima; the people we were planning to kill were innocent, militarily uninvolved, as removed from and ignorant of the weapons with which their leaders threatened us as we were of the weapons with which our leaders threatened them. But this objection would disappear if we could deter our adversaries by threatening a limited and morally acceptable destruction. Indeed, it might disappear so entirely that we would be tempted to give up deterrence and initiate the destruction ourselves whenever it seemed to our advantage to do so. This was certainly the tendency of much strategic argument, and several writers painted rather attractive pictures of limited nuclear war. Henry Kissinger likened it to war at sea\u2014the very best kind of war, since no one lives in the sea. \"The proper analogy . . . is not traditional land warfare, but naval strategy, in which self-contained, highly mobile] units with great fire power gradually gain the upper hand by destroying their enemy counterparts without physically occupying territory or establishing a front line.\" The only difficulty is that Kissinger imagined fighting a war like that in Europe.[c\n\nTactical and counter-force warfare meets the formal requirements of jus in bello, and it was seized upon eagerly by certain moral theorists. That is not to say, however, that it makes moral sense. There remains the possibility that the new technology of war simply doesn't fit and cannot be made to fit within the old limits. This proposition can be defended in two different ways. The first is to argue that the collateral damage likely to be caused even by a \"legitimate\" use of nuclear weapons is so great that it would violate both of the proportionality limits fixed by the theory of war: the number of people killed in the war as a whole would not be warranted by the goals of the war\u2014particularly since the dead would include many if not most of the people for whose defense the war was being fought; and the number of people killed in individual actions would be disproportionate (under the doctrine of double effect) to the value of the military targets directly attacked. \"The disproportion between the cost of such hostilities and the results they could achieve,\" wrote Raymond Aron, thinking of a limited nuclear war in Europe, \"would be colossal.\" It would be colossal even if the formal limits on targeting were in fact observed. But the second argument against limited nuclear war is that these limits would almost certainly not be observed.\n\nAt this point, of course, one can only guess at the possible shape and course of the battles; there is no history to study. Neither moralists nor strategists can refer to cases; instead they design scenarios. The scene is empty; one can fill it in very different ways, and it is not impossible to imagine that limits might be maintained even after nuclear weapons had been used in battle. The prospect that they would be maintained and the war extended over time is so frightening to those countries on whose soil such wars are likely to be fought that they have generally opposed the new strategies and insisted upon the threat of massive retaliation. Thus, as Andr\u00e9 Beaufre has written, \"Europeans would prefer to risk general war in an attempt to avoid war altogether rather than have Europe become the theater of operations for limited war.\" In fact, however, the risks of escalation will be great whatever limits are adopted, simply because of the immense destructive power of the weapons involved. Or rather, there are two possibilities: either nuclear weapons will be held at such low levels that they won't be significantly different from or of greater military utility than conventional explosives, in which case there is no reason to use them at all; or their very use will obliterate the distinction between targets. Once a bomb has been aimed at a military target but has, as a side effect, destroyed a city, the logic of deterrence will require the other side to aim at a city (for the sake of its seriousness and credibility). It is not necessarily the case that every war would become a total war, but the danger of escalation is so great as to preclude the first use of nuclear weapons\u2014except by someone willing to face their final use. \"Who would even launch such hostilities,\" Aron has asked, \"unless he was determined to persist to the bitter end?\" But such a determination is not imaginable in a sane human being, let alone in a political leader responsible for the safety of his own people; it would involve nothing less than national suicide.\n\nThese two factors, the extent even of limited destruction and the dangers of escalation, seem to rule out any sort of nuclear war between the great powers. They probably rule out large-scale conventional war, too, including the particular conventional war about which the strategists of the 1950s and 1960s were most concerned: a Russian invasion of western Europe. \"The spectacle of a large Soviet field army crashing across the line into western Europe in the hope and expectation that nuclear weapons would not be used against it\u2014thereby putting itself and the USSR totally at risk while leaving the choice of weapons to us\u2014would seem to be hardly worth a second thought. . . .\" It is important to stress that the bar lies in the totality of the risk: not in the possibility of what the strategists called a \"flexible response,\" finely adjusted to the scope of the attack, but in the stark reality of ultimate horror should the adjustments fail. It may well be that \"flexible response\" enhanced the value of a counter-population deterrent by making it possible to reach that final point in \"easy\" stages, but it is also and more importantly true that we have never begun the staged escalation and are never likely to begin it, because of what lies at the end. Hence the persistence of counter-population deterrence, and hence also the virtual end of the strategic debate, which petered out in the middle 1960s. At that point, I think, it became clear that given the existence of large numbers of nuclear weapons and their relative invulnerability, and barring major technological breakthroughs, any imaginable strategy is likely to deter a \"central war\" between the great powers. The strategists helped us to understand this, but once it was understood it became unnecessary to adopt any of their strategies\u2014or at least, any particular one of them. We continue to live, then, with the paradox that pre-existed the debate: nuclear weapons are politically and militarily unusable only because and insofar as we can plausibly threaten to use them in some ultimate way. And it is immoral to make threats of that kind.\n\nThe Argument of Paul Ramsey\n\nBefore deciding (or refusing) to live with this paradox, I want to consider in some detail the work of the Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey, who has over a period of years argued that there exists a justifiable deterrent strategy. From the beginning of the moral and strategic debates, Ramsey has been a sharp opponent of the advocates of counter-city deterrence and also of those of its critics who think that it is the only form of deterrence and therefore opt for nuclear disarmament. He has condemned both these groups for the all-or-nothing character of their thinking: either total and immoral destruction or a kind of \"pacifistic\" inertia. He argues that these twin perspectives conform to the traditional American view of war as an all-out conflict, which must therefore be avoided whenever possible. Ramsey himself, I think, is a Protestant soldier in a different tradition; he would have Americans gird themselves for a long, continuous struggle with the forces of evil.\n\nNow if there is to be a justified deterrent strategy, there must be a justified form of nuclear war, and Ramsey has conscientiously argued \"the case for making just war possible\" in the modern age. He takes a lively and well-informed interest in the strategic debates and has at various times defended the use of tactical nuclear weapons against invading armies and of strategic weapons against nuclear installations, conventional military bases, and isolated economic objectives. Even these targets are only \"conditionally\" permissible, since the proportionality rule would have to be applied in each case, and Ramsey does not believe that its standards will always be met. Like everyone (or almost everyone) who writes about these matters, he has no zest for nuclear combat; his main interest is in deterrence. But he needs at least the possibility of legitimate warfare if he is to maintain a deterrent posture without making immoral threats. That is his central purpose, and the effort to achieve it involves him in a highly sophisticated application of just war theory to the problems of nuclear strategy. In the best sense of the word, Ramsey is engaged with the realities of his world. But the realities in this case are intractable, and his way around them is finally too complex and too devious to provide a plausible account of our moral judgments. He multiplies distinctions like a Ptolemaic astronomer with his epicycles and comes very close at the end to what G. E. M. Anscombe has called \"double-think about double effect.\" But his work is important; it suggests the outer limits of the just war and the dangers of trying to extend those limits.\n\nRamsey's central claim is that it is possible to prevent nuclear attack without threatening to bomb cities in response. He believes that \"the collateral civilian damage that would result from counter-force warfare in its maximum form\" would be sufficient to deter potential aggressors. Since the civilians likely to die in such a war would be the incidental victims of legitimate military strikes, the threat of counter-force warfare plus collateral damage is also morally superior to deterrence in its present form. These are not hostages whom we intend to murder (under certain circumstances). Nor are we planning their deaths; we are only pointing out to our possible enemies the unavoidable consequences even of a war justly fought\u2014which is, we could honestly say were we to adopt Ramsey's proposal, the only sort of war we were preparing to fight. Collateral damage is simply a fortunate feature of nuclear warfare; it serves no military purpose, and we would avoid it if we could, though it is clearly a good thing that we cannot. And since the damage is justifiable in prospect, it is also justifiable here and now to call that prospect to mind for the sake of its deterrent effects.\n\nBut there are two problems with this argument. First, the danger of collateral damage is unlikely to work as a deterrent unless the damage expected is radically disproportionate to the ends of the war or the value of this or that military target. Hence Ramsey is driven to argue that \"the threat of something disproportionate is not always a disproportionate threat.\" What that means is this: proportionality in combat is measured, let's say, against the value of a particular missile base, while proportionality in deterrence is measured against the value of world peace. So the damage may not be justifiable in prospect (under the doctrine of double effect), and yet the threat of such damage may still be morally permitted. Perhaps that argument is right, but I should stress that its result is to void the proportionality rule. Now there is no limit on the number of people whose deaths we can threaten, so long as those deaths are to be caused \"collaterally\" and not by taking direct aim. As we have seen before, the idea of proportionality, once it is worked on a bit, tends to fade away. And then the entire burden of Ramsey's argument falls on the idea of death by indirection. That is indeed an important idea, central to the permissions and restraints of conventional war. But its standing is undermined here by the fact that Ramsey relies so heavily on the deaths he supposedly doesn't intend. He wants, like other deterrent theorists, to prevent nuclear attack by threatening to kill very large numbers of innocent civilians, but unlike other deterrent theorists, he expects to kill these people without aiming at them. That may be a matter of some moral significance, but it does not seem significant enough to serve as the cornerstone of a justified deterrent. If counter-force warfare had no collateral effects, or had minor and controllable effects, then it could play no part in Ramsey's strategy. Given the effects it does have and the central part it is assigned, the word \"collateral\" seems to have lost much of its meaning. Surely anyone designing such a strategy must accept moral responsibility for the effects on which he is so radically dependent.\n\nBut we have not yet seen the whole of Ramsey's design, for he doesn't pull back from the hardest questions. What if the likely collateral damage of a just nuclear war isn't great enough to deter a would-be aggressor? What if the aggressor threatens a counter-city strike? Surrender would be intolerable, and yet we cannot ourselves threaten mass murder in response. Fortunately (again), we don't have to. \"We do not need . . . to threaten that we will use [nuclear weapons] in case of attack,\" Bernard Brodie has written. \"We do not need to threaten anything. Their being there is quite enough.\" So it is, too, according to Ramsey, with counter-city strikes: the mere possession of nuclear weapons constitutes an implicit threat which no one actually has to make. If the immorality lies in uttering the threat, then it may in practice be avoided\u2014though one may wonder at the ease of this solution. Nuclear weapons, Ramsey writes, have a certain inherent ambiguity: \"they may be used either against strategic forces or against centers of population,\" and that means that \"apart from intention, their capacity to deter cannot be removed from them. . . . No matter how often we declare, and quite sincerely declare, that our targets are an enemy's forces, he can never be quite certain that in the fury or the fog of war his cities may not be destroyed.\" Now, the possession of conventional weapons is both innocent and ambiguous in exactly the way Ramsey suggests. The fact that I am holding a sword or a rifle doesn't mean that I am going to use it against innocent people, though it is quite effective against them; it has the same \"dual use\" that Ramsey has discovered in nuclear weapons. But the bomb is different. In a sense, as Beaufre has said, it isn't designed for war at all. It is designed to kill whole populations, and its deterrent value depends upon that fact (whether the killing is direct or indirect). It serves the purpose of preventing war only by virtue of the implicit threat it poses, and we possess it for the sake of that purpose. And men and women are responsible for the threats they live by, even if they don't speak them out loud.\n\nRamsey presses on. Perhaps the mere possession of nuclear weapons won't be enough to deter some reckless aggressor. Then, he suggests, we must distinguish \"between the appearance and the actuality of being . . . committed to go to city exchanges. . . . In that case, only the appearance should be cultivated.\" I am not sure exactly what that means, and Ramsey (for once) seems reluctant to say, but presumably it would allow us to hint at the possibility of massive retaliation without actually planning for it or intending to carry it out. Thus we are offered a continuum of increasing moral danger along which four points are marked out: the articulated prospect of collateral (and disproportionate) civilian deaths; the implicit threat of counter-city strikes; the \"cultivated\" appearance of a commitment to counter-city strikes; and the actual commitment. These may well be distinct points, in the sense that one can imagine policies focused around each of them, and these would be different policies. But I am inclined to doubt that the differences make a difference. To rule out the last for moral reasons, while permitting the first three, can only make people cynical about one's moral reasons. Ramsey aims to clear our intentions without prohibiting those policies that he believes necessary (and that probably are necessary under present conditions) for the dual prevention of war and conquest. But the unavoidable truth is that all these policies rest ultimately on immoral threats. Unless we give up nuclear deterrence, we cannot give up such threats, and it is best if we straightforwardly acknowledge what it is we are doing.\n\nThe real ambiguity of nuclear deterrence lies in the fact that no one, including ourselves, can be sure that we will ever carry out the threats we make. In a sense, all we ever do is \"cultivate the appearance.\" We strain for credibility, but what we are putatively planning and intending remains incredible. As I have already suggested, that helps make deterrence psychologically bearable, and perhaps also it makes a deterrent posture marginally better from a moral standpoint. But at the same time, the reason for our hesitancy and self-doubt is the monstrous immorality that our policy contemplates, an immorality we can never hope to square with our understanding of justice in war. Nuclear weapons explode the theory of just war. They are the first of mankind's technological innovations that are simply not encompassable within the familiar moral world. Or rather, our familiar notions about jus in bello require us to condemn even the threat to use them. And yet there are other notions, also familiar, having to do with aggression and the right of self-defense, that seem to require exactly that threat. So we move uneasily beyond the limits of justice for the sake of justice (and of peace).\n\nAccording to Ramsey, this is a dangerous move. For if we \"become convinced,\" he writes, \"that in the matter of deterrence a number of things are wicked which are not,\" then, seeing no way of avoiding wickedness, we will \"set no limits on it.\" Once again, this argument is precisely right with reference to conventional warfare; it catches the central error of what I have called the \"war is hell\" doctrine. But it is persuasive in the case of nuclear warfare only if one can describe plausible and morally significant limits, and that Ramsey has not done; nor have the strategists of \"flexible response\" been able to do it. All their arguments depend upon the ultimate wickedness of counter-city strikes. The pretense that this is not so carries with it dangers of its own. To draw insignificant lines, to maintain the formal categories of double effect, collateral damage, noncombatant immunity, and so on, when so little moral content remains is to corrupt the argument for justice as a whole and to render it suspect even in those areas of military life to which it properly pertains. And those areas are wide. Nuclear deterrence marks their outer limits, forcing us to contemplate wars that can never be fought. Within those limits there are wars that can and will and perhaps even should be fought, and to which the old rules apply with all their force. The specter of a nuclear holocaust does not invite us to act wickedly in conventional wars. Indeed, it probably is a deterrent there, too; it is hard to imagine a repetition of Dresden or Tokyo in a conventional war between nuclear powers. For destruction on such a scale would invite a nuclear response and a drastic and unacceptable escalation of the struggle.\n\nNuclear war is and will remain morally unacceptable, and there is no case for its rehabilitation. Because it is unacceptable, we must seek out ways to prevent it, and because deterrence is a bad way, we must seek out others. It is not my purpose here to suggest what the alternatives might look like. I have been more concerned to acknowledge that deterrence itself, for all its criminality, falls or may fall for the moment under the standard of necessity. But as with terror bombing, so here with the threat of terrorism: supreme emergency is never a stable position. The realm of necessity is subject to historical change. And, what is more important, we are under an obligation to seize upon opportunities of escape, even to take risks for the sake of such opportunities. So the readiness to murder is balanced, or should be, by the readiness not to murder, not to threaten murder, as soon as alternative ways to peace can be found.\n\n Would it make any difference if this commitment were mechanically fixed? Suppose we set up a computer which would automatically respond to any enemy attack by releasing our missiles. Then we informed our potential enemies that if they attacked our cities, theirs would be attacked. And they would be responsible for both attacks, we might say, since in the interval between the two, no political decision, no act of the will, would be possible on our side. I don't want to comment on the possible effectiveness (or the dangers) of such an arrangement. But it is worth insisting that it would not solve the moral problem. The men and women who designed the computer program or the political leaders who ordered them to do so would be responsible for the second attack, for they would have planned it and organized it and intended that it should occur (under certain conditions).\n\n This is obviously the grim logic of nuclear proliferation. So far as the moral question goes, each new balance of terror created by proliferation is exactly like the first one, justified (or not) in the same way. But the creation of regional balances may well have general effects upon the stability of the great power equilibrium, thereby introducing new moral considerations that I cannot take up here.\n\n Kissinger later moved away from these views, and they have pretty much dropped out of the strategic debates. But this picture of limited nuclear war is worked out in graphic detail in a novel by Joe Haldeman (The Forever War, New York, 1974), where the fighting goes on not at sea but in outer space. Many of the strategic speculations of the 1950s and 1960s have ended up as science fiction. Does this mean that the strategists had too much imagination or that the authors of science fiction have too little?\nPart Five\n\nThe Question of Responsibility\n\nThe Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens\n\nThe assignment of responsibility is the critical test of the argument for justice. For if war is fought not under the aegis of necessity but, most often, of freedom, then soldiers and statesmen have to make choices that are sometimes moral choices. And if they do that, it must be possible to single them out for praise and blame. If there are recognizable war crimes, there must be recognizable criminals. If there is such a thing as aggression, there must be aggressors. It is not the case that for every violation of human rights in wartime we can name a guilty person or group of persons. The conditions of war supply a plethora of excuses: fear, coercion, ignorance, even madness. But the theory of justice should point us to the men and women from whom we can rightly demand an accounting, and it should shape and control the judgments we make of the excuses they offer (or that are offered on their behalf). It does not point to people by their proper names, of course, but by their offices and circumstances. We learn the names (sometimes) only as we work our way through cases, attending to the details of moral and military action. Insofar as we name the right names, or at least insofar as our assignments and judgments are in accordance with the actual experience of war, sensitive to all its painfulness, the argument for justice is greatly strengthened. There can be no justice in war if there are not, ultimately, responsible men and women.\n\nThe question here is of moral responsibility; we are concerned with the blameworthiness of individuals, not their legal guilt or innocence. Much of the debate about aggression and war crimes, however, has focused on the latter issue, not the former. And as we read through these arguments, or listen to them, it often seems that what is being said is this: that if an individual is not legally liable for some particular act or omission but, as it were, merely immoral, not much can usefully be said about his guilt. For legal liability is a matter of definite rules, well-known procedures, and authoritative judges, while morality is nothing more than endless talk, where every talker has an equal right to his opinions. Consider, for example, the view of a contemporary law professor who believes that the \"essentials\" of \"the question of war crimes\" can be set forth \"with tolerable clarity and brevity,\" so long as one caveat is accepted: \"I shall make no attempt to say what is immoral\u2014not because I believe morality unimportant, but because my views on it are entitled to no more weight than Jane Fonda's or Richard M. Nixon's, or yours.\" Of course, morality is unimportant if all opinions are equal, because then no particular opinion has any force. Moral authority is no doubt different from legal authority; it is earned in different ways; but Professor Bishop is wrong to think that it doesn't exist. It has to do with the capacity to evoke commonly accepted principles in persuasive ways and to apply them to particular cases. No one can argue about justice and war, as I have been doing, without striving for an authoritative voice and laying claim to a certain \"weightiness.\"\n\nMoral argument is especially important in wartime because\u2014as I have said before, and as Bishop's \"brevity\" makes clear\u2014the laws of war are radically incomplete. Authoritative judges are rarely called to the business of judging. Indeed, there are often prudential reasons for not calling them, for even well-wrought judicial decisions are likely at certain moments in the history of international society to be understood only as acts of cruelty and vengeance. Trials like those that took place at Nuremberg after World War II seem to me both defensible and necessary; the law must provide some recourse when our deepest moral values are savagely attacked. But such trials by no means exhaust the field of judgment. We have more to do in these matters, and it is my purpose to do it here: to point at criminals and possible criminals across the whole range of wartime activity, though not to suggest, except tangentially, how we should deal with such people. What is crucial is that they can be pointed at; we know where to look for them, if we are ready to look.\n\nThe World of Officials\n\nI will begin with the assignments and judgments that are required by the crime of war itself. That is to begin with politics rather than combat, civilians rather than soldiers, for aggression is first of all the work of political leaders. We must (naively) imagine them sitting around the elegant table of an old-fashioned chancellery or in the electronic fastness of a modern command room plotting illegitimate attacks, conquests, interventions. No doubt it is not always like that, though recent history provides ample evidence of direct and open criminal planning. \"Statesmen\" are more devious, aiming at war only indirectly, like Bismarck in 1870, and taking a very complicated view of their own efforts. Then it is not easy, perhaps, to mark out aggressors, though I think we should start with the assumption that it is always possible. The men and women who lead their people into war owe them and us an accounting. For every person who is killed, every drop of blood that falls is\n\n. . . . a sore complaint\n\nGainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords.\n\nListening to the excuses and lies, and also to the true accounts, of political leaders, we search for the \"wrongs\" that lie behind the fighting and are its moral cause.\n\nThe lawyers have not always encouraged this search. Until 1945, at least, they have held that \"acts of state\" cannot be the crimes of individual persons. The legal reasons for this denial lie in the theory of sovereignty, as it was once understood. Sovereign states by definition know no superiors, it was argued, and accept no external judgments: hence there is no way to prove the criminality of acts imputed to the state, that is, carried out by recognized authorities in the course of their official duties (unless domestic law provides procedures for bringing such proof to bear). This argument is without moral effect, however, for in this regard states were never morally but only legally sovereign. All of us are capable of judging the acts of political leaders, and we commonly do so. Nor does legal sovereignty any longer provide protection against external judgments. Here Nuremberg is the decisive precedent.\n\nBut there is another, more informal version of the \"act of state\" doctrine, which refers not to the sovereignty of the political community but to the representativeness of its leaders. We are often urged not to condemn the acts of statesmen, or not to be too quick to condemn them, since, after all, these people are not acting selfishly or for private reasons. They are, as Townsend Hoopes wrote of America's leaders during the Vietnam War, \"struggling in good conscience . . . to serve the broad national interest according to their lights.\" They are acting for the sake of other people and in their name. The same assertion can be made on behalf of military officers, except when the crimes they commit are passionate or selfish. It might be made, too, on behalf of revolutionary militants who kill innocent people for the sake of the cause (not because of any personal grudge), even though the cause has no official but only a putative connection to the national interest. These are leaders, too; they may have risen to their \"offices\" by means not all that different from those adopted by more conventional officials, and they can sometimes say that acts of the movement or the revolution are as representative as acts of state. If this argument is acceptable in the case of statesmen and officers, I can see no reason to reject it in the case of revolutionaries. But it is a bad argument in all these cases, for it is false to suggest that representative functions are morally risk-free. They are instead peculiarly risky, precisely because statesmen, officers, and revolutionaries act for other people and with wide-ranging effects. They act sometimes so as to endanger the people they represent, sometimes so as to endanger the rest of us; they can hardly complain if we hold them subject to moral judgment.\n\nPolitical power is a good that people seek. They aspire to office, connive at control and leadership, compete for positions from which they can do evil as well as good. If they hope to be praised for the good they do, they cannot escape blame for the evil. Still, blame is always resented, even when we may think it well-deserved, and it is important to try to say why this is so. Moral criticism goes very deep; it calls into question a leader's good faith and his personal rectitude. Since political leaders are rarely cynical about their work, and can never afford to appear to be cynical, they take such criticism seriously and dislike it intensely. Disagreement they can accept (if they are democratic leaders), but not accusations of criminality. Indeed, they are likely to treat all moral criticism as an illegitimate displacement of political controversy. I suppose they are right to recognize that morality is often a mask for politics. The case is the same with the law. Legal accusation can be a very powerful form of political attack, but though it is often used in that way, and often degraded in the use, it remains true nevertheless that political leaders are bound by the legal code and can rightly be charged and punished for criminal acts. Similarly with the moral code: though the terms of praise and blame are universally available and often misused, the code is still binding, and praise and blame are at least sometimes appropriate. The misuse of law and morality is common in wartime, and so we have to be careful not only in punishing political leaders for the wars they wage but also in stigmatizing them. They have no a priori claim to escape the stigma of aggression, however, when they violate the rights of another people and force its soldiers to fight.\n\nActs of state are also acts of particular persons, and when they take the form of aggressive war, particular persons are criminally responsible. Just who those persons are, and how many they are, is not always apparent. But it makes sense to begin with the head of state (or the effective head) and the men and women immediately around him, who actually control the government and make key decisions. Their accountability is clear, like that of the commanders of a military campaign for the strategy and tactics they adopt, for they are the source rather than the recipients of superior orders. When they defend themselves, they don't look up the political hierarchy, but across the battleline: they blame their opponents for forcing them to fight. They point to the intricate complexity of the pre-war maneuvering and to the extravagant demands and harassing actions of their adversaries. They have long stories to tell:\n\nWho first attacked? Who turned the other cheek?\n\nAggression perpetrated is as soon\n\nDenied, and insult rubbed into the injury\n\nBy cunning agents trained in these affairs,\n\nWith whom it's touch-and-go, don't tread-on-me,\n\nI-dare-you-to, keep-off, and kiss-my-hand.\n\nTempers could sharpen knives, and do; we live\n\nIn states provocative.\n\nIn order to work our way through the claims and counter-claims, we need a theory such as I have attempted to set forth in Part Two of this book. Often enough, despite the cunning agents, the theory is readily applied. It is worth setting down some of the cases about which we have, I think, no doubts: the German attack on Belgium in 1914, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, the Japanese attack on China, the German and Italian interventions in Spain, the Russian invasion of Finland, the Nazi conquests of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland, the Russian invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Egyptian challenge to Israel in 1967, and so on\u2014the twentieth century makes for easy listing. I have argued that the American war in Vietnam belongs to the same series. Sometimes, no doubt, the going is more muddy; political leaders are not always in control of their own provocations, and wars do break out without anyone planning or intending to violate anyone else's rights. But insofar as we can recognize aggression, there should be little difficulty in blaming heads of state. The hard and interesting problems arise when we ask how responsibility for aggression is diffused through a political system.\n\nAt Nuremberg, the crime of aggression (\"crime against peace\") was said to involve \"the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of [aggressive] war.\" These four activities were distinguished from the planning and preparation of particular military campaigns and from the actual fighting of the war, which were (rightly) held to be noncriminal in character. Now, \"planning, preparation, initiation, and waging\" would appear to be the work of a fairly large number of people. But in fact the courts restricted the range of accountability so that convictions were obtained only against those officials who were part of \"Hitler's inner circle of advisors\" or who played such a major role in the making or execution of policy that their protests and refusals would have had a significant impact. Persons lower down the bureaucratic hierarchy, though their contribution was cumulatively significant, were not held individually responsible. It is not at all clear, however, just where we should draw that line; nor is it clear that we ought to assign blame in the same way as we assign legal culpability. The best way to deal with these issues is to turn immediately to a critical case.\n\nNuremberg: \"The Ministries Case\"\n\nIn an important article on responsibility for crimes of war, Sanford Levinson has analyzed the Nuremberg verdicts, focusing especially on the trial of Ernst von Weizsaecker, who was State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry from 1938 to 1943, second only to von Ribbentrop (one of the \"inner circle\") in the foreign policy hierarchy. I want to follow Levinson's account, and then draw some conclusions from it. Von Weizsaecker was charged with crimes against the peace and initially convicted, but the conviction was reversed upon review. His defense emphasized two points: first, that he took no part in actual policy planning, and secondly, that within the Foreign Ministry he opposed Nazi aggression; he was also involved, at least marginally, in underground opposition to Hitler's regime. The review court accepted this defense, emphasizing its second part: von Weizsaecker's diplomatic activity, which \"aided and abetted\" German war plans, was so important that it would have been held against him had he not criticized Hitler's policies within his ministry and passed information to more active opponents outside. Thus the line of criminal responsibility was drawn so as to include officials like von Weizsaecker, while he himself was acquitted because, though he clearly played a part in \"preparing\" an aggressive war, he also \"opposed and objected to\" that war.\n\nThe prosecution argued the insufficiency of this opposition: since he knew of plans for aggression, it was said, he had a positive duty to reveal those plans to the potential victims. But the court rejected this argument because of the risks such action would have entailed and also because it might have led to greater German losses on the battlefield.\n\nOne may quarrel with, and oppose to the point of violence and assassination, a tyrant whose programs mean the ruin of one's country. But the time has not yet arrived when any man would view with satisfaction the ruin of his own people and the loss of its young manhood. To apply any other standard of conduct is to set up a test that has never yet been suggested as proper and which, assuredly, we are not prepared to accept as either wise or good.\n\nThis is too strong, I think, for it is obviously not a question of \"viewing with satisfaction\" the battle losses of one's own side. One might be greatly saddened by them and still feel it morally right to protect the innocent people of the victim state. And surely we would think it both wise and good, indeed heroic, had some German opponent of Hitler warned the Danes or the Belgians or the Russians of the coming attacks. But there is probably no legal or moral obligation to act in this way. Not only the risk but also the inner pain that a man might feel at such a time is more than we require. On the other hand, von Weizsaecker's alternative actions, though they satisfied the judges, may have amounted to less than we require. For he continued to serve the regime whose policies he disapproved; he did not resign.\n\nThe issue of resignation came up more directly in connection with charges that von Weizsaecker was guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the latter relating to the extermination of the Jews. Here, too, he argued \"that minimal participation should be negated by the fact that he opposed what was being done.\" But in this case, intra-office opposition was not deemed sufficient. The SS had formally requested the Foreign Ministry's opinions in regard to its policy on the Jewish question. And von Weizsaecker, though he knew what that policy was, had voiced no objections. Apparently he thought his silence the price of his office, and he wanted to retain his office so that he \"might be in a position to initiate or aid in attempts to negotiate peace\" and so that he might continue to pass on information to Hitler's underground opponents. But the court held that \"One cannot give consent to . . . the commission of murder because by so doing he hopes eventually to be able to rid society of the chief murderer. The first is a crime of imminent actuality while the second is but a future hope.\" The court did not believe that failure to resign was itself a matter of criminal liability. While it might be true that no \"decent man could continue to hold office under a regime which carried out . . . wholesale barbarities of this kind,\" indecency is not a crime. But to hold office and keep silent was a punishable offense, and von Weizsaecker was sentenced to seven years in prison.\n\nNow, the criteria of \"significant contribution\" or the possibility of \"significant protest\" seem entirely appropriate in deciding upon trial and punishment. The standards of blame, however, are much more strict: we need to say more about indecency. If von Weizsaecker was bound to resign in protest, I don't see why lesser officials with similar knowledge were not similarly bound. In the United States during the Vietnam years, only a very small number of foreign policy officials resigned, most of them holding low-level positions, but those resignations were morally heartening (to those of us, at least, who knew their reasons) in a way which suggests that they should have been imitated. The courage required to resign in Germany in the late 1930s or early 1940s was far greater than that required in the U.S. three decades later, where opposition to the war was public and vociferous. But it was not a death-defying courage that was necessary even in Germany, but something less, well within the reach of ordinary people. Many officials who failed to resign offered excuses for not doing so, which suggests that they recognized the imperative, however dimly. These excuses were mostly like von Weizsaecker's, focused on distant goods. But there were also men who remained in office in order to engage, often at great personal risk, in concrete and immediate acts of benevolence or sabotage. The most extraordinary of these was the SS lieutenant Kurt Gerstein, whose case has been carefully documented by Saul Friedlander.\n\nGerstein represented the type of man who, by virtue of his deepest convictions, disavowed the Nazi regime, even hated it inwardly, but collaborated with it in order to combat it from within and to prevent worse things from happening.\n\nI cannot retell Gerstein's story here; it is enough to say that it demonstrates that it was possible to live a moral life even in the SS, though at a cost in personal agony (Gerstein eventually committed suicide) which we can expect few people to pay. Resignation is much easier, and sometimes, I think, we must take it as the minimal sign of moral decency.\n\nVon Weizsaecker's case invites us to reflect on one further problem. The State Secretary was a diplomat who carried out negotiations with foreign countries under instructions from his superiors. But he was also an advisor to those superiors; his own views were frequently requested. Now advisors are in a curious position with regard to both legal and moral judgment. Their most important advice is often given orally, whispered in the ruler's ear. What is written down may be incomplete, tailored to the requirements of bureaucratic correspondence. We miss the nuances and qualifications, the subtle signs of doubt, the private emphases and hesitations. If sufficient documentation is available, we may go ahead and make judgments anyway. It's certainly not the case that only \"line\" and never \"staff\" officials can be held responsible for decisions made. But whispering in the ruler's ear is problematic; it is easier to suggest what should be said than what we should do if we suspect that it hasn't been said.\n\nWhat von Weizsaecker said was probably insufficient, for according to his own account he urged nothing more than the likelihood of German defeat; his opposition to Hitler's policies were always expressed in expediential terms. Perhaps those were the only terms likely to be effective in Germany during those years. That is probably true in other cases, too, even with governments less openly committed to a program of conquest. But it is often important to use the language of morality, if only to break through the forms of euphemism and silence with which officials conceal even from themselves the extent and nature of the crimes they are committing. Sometimes the best way for an advisor to say no is simply to give an accurate name to the policy he is being asked to approve. This point is beautifully made in a speech in Shakespeare's King John. With hints and indirection, John had ordered the murder of his nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany. Later he came to regret the murder and turned on his courtier, Hubert de Burgh, who had carried it out.\n\nHadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause\n\nWhen I spoke darkly what I purposed,\n\nOr turned an eye of doubt upon my face,\n\nAs bid me tell my tale in express words,\n\nDeep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off . . .\n\nBut thou dist understand me by my signs,\n\nAnd didst in signs again parley with sin;\n\nYea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,\n\nAnd consequently thy rude hand to act,\n\nThe deed which both our tongues held vile to name.\n\nThe speech is hypocritical, but it captures the common quality of bureaucratic acquiescence, and it suggests very forcefully that advisors and agents, when they have the opportunity, must speak out \"in express words,\" using the moral language that we all know. They may be judged insufficiently tough or hard-headed if they talk that way. But to be \"tough\" enough to carry out policies that are literally unmentionable is either to be very cowardly or very wicked.\n\nDemocratic Responsibilities\n\nWhat about the rest of us\u2014citizens, let's say, of a state engaged in an aggressive war? Collective responsibility is a hard notion, though it is worth stressing at once that we have fewer problems with collective punishment. Resistance to aggression is itself \"punishing\" to the aggressor state and is often described in those terms. With reference to the actual fighting, as I have already argued, civilians on both sides are innocent, equally innocent, and never legitimate military targets. They are, however, political and economic targets once the war is over; that is, they are the victims of military occupation, political reconstruction, and the exaction of reparative payments. We may take the last of these as the clearest and simplest case of collective punishment. Reparations are surely due the victims of aggressive war, and they can hardly be collected only from those members of the defeated state who were active supporters of the aggression. Instead, the costs are distributed through the tax system, and through the economic system generally, among all the citizens, often over a period of time extending to generations that had nothing to do with the war at all. In this sense, citizenship is a common destiny, and no one, not even its opponents (unless they become political refugees, which has its costs, too) can escape the effects of a bad regime, an ambitious or fanatic leadership, or an overreaching nationalism. But if men and women must accept this destiny, they can sometimes do so with a good conscience, for the acceptance says nothing about their individual responsibility. The distribution of costs is not the distribution of guilt.\n\nAt least one writer has tried to argue that political destiny is a kind of guilt: existential, unavoidable, frightening. For the soldier or citizen of a state at war, writes J. Glenn Gray in his philosophical memoir of World War II, is the member of a \"coarse, vulgar, heedless, and violent\" community and, willy-nilly, a participant in an enterprise \"whose spirit is to win at any cost.\" He cannot cut himself loose.\n\nHe is bound to reflect that his nation has given him refuge and sustenance, provided him with whatever education and property he calls his own. He belongs and will always belong to it in some sense no matter where he goes or how hard he seeks to alter his inheritance. The crimes, therefore, that his nation or one of its units commits cannot be indifferent to him. He shares the guilt as he shares the satisfaction in the generous deeds and worthy products of nation or army. Even if he did not consciously will them and was unable to prevent them, he cannot wholly escape responsibility for collective deeds.\n\nMaybe; but it is not an easy move from \"the ache of guilt,\" which Gray almost lovingly describes, to hard talk about responsibility. It might be better to say of loyal citizens who watch their government or army (or their comrades in battle) doing terrible things that they feel or should feel ashamed rather than responsible\u2014unless they actually are responsible by virtue of their particular participation or acquiescence. Shame is the tribute we pay to the inheritance that Gray describes. \"A burning sense of shame at the deeds of his government and the acts of horror committed by German soldiers and police was the mark of a conscientious German at the close of the war.\" That is exactly right, but we won't ourselves blame that conscientious German or call him responsible; nor need he blame himself unless there was something he should have done, and could do, in the face of the horror.\n\nPerhaps it can always be said of such a person that he could have done more than he did do. Certainly conscientious men and women are likely to believe that of themselves; it is a sign of their conscientiousness.\n\nOn this or that occasion he has been silent when he should have spoken out. In his own smaller or larger circle of influence he has not made his whole weight felt. Had he brought forth the civil courage to protest in time, some particular act of injustice might have been avoided.\n\nSuch reflections are endless and endlessly dispiriting; they lead Gray to argue that behind collective responsibility there lies \"meta-physical guilt,\" which derives from \"our failure as human beings to live in accordance with our potentialities and our vision of the good.\" But some of us, surely, fail more dismally than others; and it is necessary, with all due caution and humility, to mark out standards by which we can measure the respective failures. Gray suggests the right standard, though he goes on very quickly to insist that we can never apply it to anyone but ourselves. But that kind of self-regard is not possible in politics and morality. Judging ourselves, we necessarily judge other people, with whom we share a common life. And how is it possible to criticize and blame our leaders, as we sometimes must do, without involving their enthusiastic followers (our fellow citizens)? Though responsibility is always personal and particular, moral life is always collective in character.\n\nThis is Gray's principle, which I mean to adopt and expound: \"The greater the possibility of free action in the communal sphere, the greater the degree of guilt for evil deeds done in the name of everyone.\" The principle invites us to focus our attention on democratic rather than authoritarian regimes. Not that free action is impossible even in the worst of authoritarian regimes; at the very least, people can resign, withdraw, flee. But in democracies there are opportunities for positive response, and we need to ask to what extent these opportunities fix our obligations, when evil deeds are committed in our name.\n\nThe American People and the War in Vietnam\n\nIf the argument in chapters 6 and 11 is right, the American war in Vietnam was, first of all, an unjustified intervention, and it was, secondly, carried on in so brutal a manner that even had it initially been defensible, it would have to be condemned, not in this or that aspect but generally. I am not going to re-argue that description, but assume it, so that we can look closely at the responsibility of democratic citizens\u2014and at a particular set of democratic citizens, namely, ourselves.\n\nDemocracy is a way of distributing responsibility (just as monarchy is a way of refusing to distribute it). But that doesn't mean that all adult citizens share equally in the blame we assign for aggressive war. Our actual assignments will vary a great deal, depending on the precise nature of the democratic order, the place of a particular person in that order, and the pattern of his own political activities. Even in a perfect democracy, it cannot be said that every citizen is the author of every state policy, though every one of them can rightly be called to account. Imagine, for example, a small community where all the citizens are fully and accurately informed about public business, where all of them participate, argue, vote on matters of communal interest, and where they all take turns holding public office. Now this community, let us say, initiates and wages an unjust war against its neighbors\u2014for the sake of some economic advantage, perhaps, or out of zeal to spread its (admirable) political system. There is no question of self-defense; no one has attacked it or is planning to do so. Who is responsible for this war? Surely all those men and women who voted for it and who cooperated in planning, initiating, and waging it. The soldiers who do the actual fighting are not responsible as soldiers; but as citizens, they are, assuming that they were old enough to have shared in the decision to fight.a All of them are guilty of the crime of aggressive war and of no lesser charge, and we would not hesitate in such a case to blame them publicly. Nor would it make any difference whether their motive was economic selfishness or a political zeal that appeared to them entirely disinterested. Either way, the blood of their victims would complain against them.\n\nThose who voted against the war or who refused to cooperate in the waging of it could not be blamed. But what would we think of a group of citizens that didn't vote? Had they voted, let's say, the war might have been avoided, but they were lazy, didn't care, or were afraid to come down on one side or the other of a hotly disputed issue. The day of the crucial decision was a day off from work; they spent it in their gardens. I am inclined to say that they are blameworthy, though they are not guilty of aggressive war. Surely those of their fellow citizens who went to the assembly and opposed the war can blame them for their indifference and inaction. This seems a clear counter-example to Gray's assertion that \"No citizen of a free land can justly accuse his neighbor . . . of not having done as much as he should to prevent the state of war or the commission of this or that state crime. But each can . . . accuse himself. . . .\" In a perfect democracy, we would know a great deal about one another's duties, and just accusations would not be impossible.\n\nImagine now that the minority of citizens that was defeated could have won (and prevented the war) if instead of merely voting, they had held meetings outside the assembly, marched and demonstrated, organized for a second vote. Let's assume that none of this would have been terribly dangerous to them, but they chose not to take these measures because their opposition to the war wasn't all that strong; they thought it unjust but were not horrified by the prospect; they hoped for a quick victory; and so on. Then they are blameworthy, too, though to a lesser degree than those slothful citizens who did not even bother to go to the assembly.\n\nThese last two examples resemble the good samaritan cases in domestic society, where we commonly say that if it is possible to do good, without risk or great cost, one ought to do good. But when the issue is war, the obligation is stronger, for it is not a question of doing good, but of preventing serious harm, and harm that will be done in the name of my own political community\u2014hence, in some sense, in my own name. Here, assuming still that the community is a perfect democracy, it looks as if a citizen is blameless only if he takes back his name. I don't think this means that he must become a revolutionary or an exile, actually renouncing his citizenship or loyalty. But he must do all he can, short of accepting frightening risks, to prevent or stop the war. He must withdraw his name from this act (the war policy) though not necessarily from every communal action, for he may still value, as he probably should, the democracy he and his fellow citizens have achieved. This, then, is the meaning of Gray's maxim: the more one can do, the more one has to do.\n\nWe can now drop the myth of perfection and paint a more realistic picture. The state that goes to war is, like our own, an enormous state, governed at a great distance from its ordinary citizens by powerful and often arrogant officials. These officials, or at least the leading among them, are chosen through democratic elections, but at the time of the choice very little is known about their programs and commitments. Political participation is occasional, intermittent, limited in its effects, and it is mediated by a system for the distribution of news which is partially controlled by those distant officials and which in any case allows for considerable distortions. It may be that a politics of this sort is the best we can hope for (though I don't believe that) once the political community reaches a certain size. Anyway, it is no longer as easy to impose responsibility as it is in a perfect democracy. One doesn't want to regard those distant officials as if they were kings, but for certain sorts of state action, secretly prepared or suddenly launched, they bear a kind of regal responsibility.\n\nWhen a state like this commits itself to a campaign of aggression, its citizens (or many of them) are likely to go along, as Americans did during the Vietnam War, arguing that the way may after all be just; that it is not possible for them to be sure whether it is just or not; that their leaders know best and tell them this or that, which sounds plausible enough; and that nothing they can do will make much difference anyway. These are not immoral arguments, though they reflect badly on the society within which they are made. And they can, no doubt, be made too quickly by citizens seeking to avoid the difficulties that might follow if they thought about the war for themselves. These people are or may be blameworthy, not for aggressive war, but for bad faith as citizens. But that is a hard charge to make, for citizenship plays such a small part in their everyday lives. \"Free action in the communal sphere\" is a possibility for men and women in such a state only in the formal sense that serious governmental restraint, actual repression, doesn't exist. Perhaps it should also be said that the \"communal sphere\" doesn't exist, for it is only the day-by-day assumption of responsibility that creates that sphere and gives it meaning. Even patriotic excitement, war fever, among such people is probably best understood as a reflex of distance, a desperate identification, stimulated, it may be, by a false account of what is going on. One might say of them what one says of soldiers in combat, that they are not to blame for the war, since it is not their war.b\n\nBut as an account of all the citizens, even in such a state, this is certainly exaggerated. For there exists a group of more knowledgeable men and women, members of what political scientists call the foreign policy elites, who are not so radically distanced from the national leadership; and some subset of these people, together with others in touch with them, is likely to form an \"opposition\" or perhaps even a movement of opposition to the war. It would seem possible to regard the entire group of knowledgeable people as at least potentially blameworthy if that war is aggressive and unless they join the opposition. To say that is to presume upon the knowledge they have and their private sense of political possibility. But if we turn to an actual case of imperfect democracy, like the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the presumption doesn't seem unwarranted. Surely there was knowledge and opportunity enough among the country's elites, the national and local leaders of its political parties, its religious establishments, its corporate hierarchies, and perhaps above all its intellectual teachers and spokesmen\u2014the men and women whom Noam Chomsky has named, in tribute to the role they play in contemporary government, \"the new mandarins.\" Surely many of these people were morally complicitous in our Vietnam aggression. I suppose one can also say of them what many of them have said of themselves: that they were simply mistaken in their judgments of the war, failed to realize this or that, thought that was true when it was not, or hoped for this result which never came about. In moral life generally, one makes allowances for false beliefs, misinformation, and honest mistakes. But there comes a time in any tale of aggression and atrocity when such allowances can no longer be made. I cannot mark out that time here; nor am I interested in pointing at particular people or certain that I can do so. I only want to insist that there are responsible people even when, under the conditions of imperfect democracy, moral accounting is difficult and imprecise.\n\nThe real moral burden of the American war fell on that subset of men and women whose knowledge and sense of possibility were made manifest by their oppositional activity. They were the ones most likely to reproach themselves and one another, continually asking whether they were doing enough to stop the fighting, devoting enough time and energy, working hard enough, working as effectively as they could. For most of their fellow citizens, anxious, apathetic, and alienated, the war was merely an ugly or an exciting spectacle (until they were forced to join it). For the dissidents, it was a kind of moral torture\u2014self-torture, as Gray describes it, though they also tortured one another, wastefully, in savage internecine conflicts over what was to be done. And this self-torture bred a kind of self-righteousness vis-\u00e0-vis the others, an endemic failing on the Left, though understandable enough under conditions of aggressive war and mass acquiescence. The expression of that self-righteousness, however, is not a useful way to get one's fellow citizens to think seriously about the war or to join the opposition: nor was it useful in this case. It is not easy to know what course of action might serve these purposes. Politics is difficult at such a time. But there is intellectual work to do that is less difficult: one must describe as graphically as one can the moral reality of war, talk about what it means to force people to fight, analyze the nature of democratic responsibilities. These, at least, are encompassable tasks, and they are morally required of the men and women who are trained to perform them. Nor is it dangerous to perform them, in a democratic state, waging war in a distant country. And the citizens of such a state have time to listen and reflect; they, too, are in no immediate danger. War imposes harsher burdens than any these people have to bear\u2014as we shall see when we consider, finally, the moral life of men at arms.\n\n Why aren't they responsible as soldiers? If they are morally bound to vote against the war, why aren't they also bound to refuse to fight? The answer is that they vote as individuals, each one deciding for himself, but they fight as members of the political community, the collective decision having already been made, subject to all the moral and material pressures that I described in chapter 3. They act very well if they refuse to fight, and we should honor those\u2014they are likely to be few\u2014who have the self-certainty and courage to stand against their fellows. I have argued elsewhere that democracies ought to respect such people and ought certainly to tolerate their refusals. (See the essay on \"Conscientious Objection\" in Obligations.) That doesn't mean, however, that the others can be called criminals. Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels, but it is also the ordinary refuge of ordinary men and women, and it requires of us another sort of toleration. But we should expect opponents of the war to refuse to become officers or officials, even if they feel bound to share combat risks with their countrymen.\n\n But see the note in Anne Frank's Diary: \"I don't believe that only governments and capitalists are guilty of aggression. Oh no, the little man is just as keen on it, for otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago.\" I'm sure she is right about the keenness, and I don't want to excuse it. But we don't, for all that, call the little men war criminals, and I am trying to explain why we don't. (The Diary of a Young Girl, trans. B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, New York, 1953, p. 201.)\n\nWar Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers\n\nWe are concerned now with the conduct of war and not its overall justice. For soldiers, as I have already argued, are not responsible for the overall justice of the wars they fight; their responsibility is limited by the range of their own activity and authority. Within that range, however, it is real enough, and it frequently comes into question. \"There wasn't a single soldier,\" says an Israeli officer who fought in the Six Day War, \"who didn't at some stage have to decide, to choose, to make a moral decision . . . quick and modern though [the war] was, the soldier was not turned into a mere technician. He had to make decisions that were of real significance.\" And when faced with decisions of that sort, soldiers have clear obligations. They are bound to apply the criteria of usefulness and proportionality until they come up against the basic rights of the people they are threatening to kill or injure, and then they are bound not to kill or injure them. But judgments about usefulness and proportionality are very difficult for soldiers in the field. It is the doctrine of rights that makes the most effective limit on military activity, and it does so precisely because it rules out calculation and establishes hard and fast standards. Hence in my initial cases I will focus on specific violations of rights and on the defenses that soldiers commonly offer for these violations. The defenses are basically of two sorts. The first refers to the heatedness of battle and the passion or frenzy it engenders. The second refers to the disciplinary system of the army and the obedience it requires. These are serious defenses; they suggest the loss of self that is involved in warfare, and they remind us that most soldiers most of the time have not chosen the combat and discipline they endure. Where is their freedom and responsibility?\n\nBut there is a related issue that I must consider before trying to mark out the realm of freedom from the coercions and hysteria of war. The war convention requires soldiers to accept personal risks rather than kill innocent people. This requirement takes different forms in different combat situations, and I have already discussed these in considerable detail; my concern now is with the requirement itself. The rule is absolute: self-\u00adpreservation in the face of the enemy is not an excuse for violations of the rules of war. Soldiers, it might be said, stand to civilians like the crew of a liner to its passengers. They must risk their own lives for the sake of the others. No doubt this is easy to say, less easy to do. But if the rule is absolute, the risks are not; it is a question of degree; the crucial point is that soldiers cannot enhance their own security at the expense of innocent men and women.a This might be called an obligation of soldiering as an office, but it is a hard question whether one can rightly be said to assume such obligations when one comes into the office as unwillingly as most soldiers do. Imagine a liner manned by kidnapped sailors: would the members of such a crew be bound, as the ship was sinking, to see to the safety of the passengers before seeing to their own?\n\nI am not sure how to answer that question, but there is a crucial difference between the work of coerced crew members and that of military conscripts: the first group is not in the business of sinking ships, the second is. Conscripts impose risks on innocent people; they are themselves the immediate source of the danger and they are its effective cause. And so it is not a question of saving themselves, letting others die, but of killing others in order to improve their own odds. Now that they cannot do, because that no man can do. Their obligation isn't in practice mediated by the office of soldiering. It arises directly from the activity in which they are engaged, whether that activity is voluntary or not, or at least it arises so long as we regard soldiers as moral agents and even if we regard them as coerced moral agents. They are not mere instruments; they do not stand to the army as their weapons do to them. It is precisely because they do (sometimes) choose to kill or not, to impose risks or accept them, that we require them to choose in a certain way. That requirement shapes the whole pattern of their rights and duties in combat. And when they break out of that pattern, it is a matter of some significance that they don't by and large deny the requirement. They claim, instead, that they literally were not able to fulfill it; that they were not at the moment of their \"crime,\" moral agents at all.\n\nIn the Heat of Battle\n\nTwo Accounts of Killing Prisoners\n\nIn his fine memoir of World War I, Guy Chapman tells the following story. After a minor but bloody advance from one line of trenches to the next, he encountered one of his fellow officers, his face \"slack and haggard, but not from weariness.\" Chapman asked him what was wrong.\n\n\"Oh, I don't know. Nothing. . . . At least. . . . Look here, we took a lot of prisoners in those trenches yesterday morning. Just as we got into their line, an officer came out of a dugout. He'd got one hand above his head, and a pair of fieldglasses in the other. He held the glasses out to S________, . . . and said, 'Here you are, sergeant, I surrender.' S________ said, 'Thank you, sir,' and took the glasses with his left hand. At the same moment, he tucked the butt of his rifle under his arm and shot the officer straight through his head. What the hell ought I to do?\"\n\n\"I don't see that you can do anything,\" I answered slowly. \"What can you do? Besides I don't see that S________'s really to blame. He must have been half mad with excitement by the time he got into that trench. I don't suppose he ever thought what he was doing. If you start a man killing, you can't turn him off like an engine. After all, he is a good man. He was probably half off his head.\"\n\n\"It wasn't only him. Another did exactly the same thing.\"\n\n\"Anyhow, it's too late to do anything now. I suppose you ought to have shot both on the spot. The best thing now is to forget it.\"\n\nThat sort of thing happens often in war, and it is commonly excused. Chapman's argument makes some sense: it is, in effect, a plea of temporary insanity. It suggests a kind of killing frenzy that begins in combat and ends in murder, the line between the two being lost to the mind of the individual soldier. Or it suggests a frenzy of fear such that the soldier cannot recognize the moment when he is no longer in danger. He is not, indeed, a machine that can just be turned off, and it would be inhumanly righteous not to look with sympathy on his plight. And yet, if it is true that enemy soldiers are often killed trying to surrender, it is also true that a relatively small number of men do the \"extra\" killing. The rest seem ready enough to stop as soon as they can, whatever the state of mind they had worked themselves into during the battle itself. This fact is morally decisive, for it suggests a common acknowledgment of the right to quarter, and it proves that the right can in fact be recognized, since it often is, even in the chaos of combat. It is simply not true of soldiers, as one philosopher has recently written, that \"war . . . in some important ways makes psychopaths of them all.\" The argument has to be more particular than that. When we make allowances for what individual soldiers do \"in the heat of battle,\" it must be because of some knowledge we have that distinguishes these soldiers from the others or their circumstances from the usual ones. Perhaps they have encountered enemy troops who feigned surrender in order to kill their captors: then the war rights of other troops are made problematic in a new way, for one cannot be sure when killing is \"extra.\" Or perhaps they have been under some special strain or have been fighting too long and are near to nervous exhaustion. But there is no general rule that requires us to make allowances, and sometimes, at least, soldiers should be censured or punished for killings that take place after the battle is over (though summary execution is probably not the best form of punishment). They should certainly never be encouraged to believe that a total lack of restraint can be excused merely by reference to the passions that cause it.\n\nThere are officers, however, who encourage exactly that belief, not out of compassion but calculation, not because of the heat of the battle but in order to raise the temperature of men in combat. In his novel The Thin Red Line, one of the best accounts of jungle fighting in World War II, James Jones tells of another incident of \"extra\" killing. He describes a new army unit, its members un-blooded and without confidence in their ability to fight. After a hard march through the jungle, they come upon a Japanese position from the rear. There is a brief and savage fight. At a certain point, Japanese soldiers start trying to surrender, but some of the Americans cannot or will not stop the killing. Even after the firefight is definitely over, those Japanese who have succeeded in surrendering are brutally treated\u2014by men, so Jones wants to suggest, who are caught up in a kind of intoxication, their inhibitions suddenly gone. The commanding officer watches all this and does nothing. \"He did not want to jeopardize the new toughness of spirit that had come over the men after achieving success here. That spirit was more important than whether or not a few Jap soldiers got kicked around or killed.\"\n\nI suppose that soldiers must be \"men of spirit,\" like Plato's guardians, but Jones' colonel has mistaken the nature of their spiritedness. It is almost certainly true that they fight best when they are most disciplined, when they are most in control of themselves and committed to the restraints appropriate to their trade. \"Extra\" killing is less a sign of toughness than of hysteria, and hysteria is the wrong kind of spiritedness. But even if the colonel's calculations were correct, he would still be bound to stop the killing if he could, for he cannot train and toughen his men at the expense of Japanese prisoners. He is also bound to act so as to prevent such killings in the future. This is a crucial aspect of what is called \"command responsibility,\" and I will take it up in detail later on. It is important to stress now that it is a large responsibility; for the general policy of the army, expressed through its officers, the climate they create by their day-to-day actions, has far more to do with the incidence of \"extra\" killing than does the intensity of the actual fighting. But this doesn't mean that individual soldiers must be excused; indeed, it suggests once again that heatedness isn't the issue, but murderousness; and for their own murderousness individuals are always responsible, even when under the conditions of military discipline they are not exclusively so.\n\nIt is a feature of criminal responsibility that it can be distributed without being divided. We can, that is, blame more than one person for a particular act without splitting up the blame we assign. When soldiers are shot trying to surrender, the men who do the actual shooting are fully responsible for what they do, unless we recognize particular extenuating circumstances; at the same time, the officer who tolerates and encourages the murders is also fully responsible, if it lay within his power to prevent them. Perhaps we blame the officer more, for his coolness, but I have tried to suggest that combat soldiers, too, should be held to high standards in such matters (and they will surely want their enemies held to high standards). The case looks very different, however, when combatants are actually ordered to take no prisoners or to kill the ones they take or to turn their guns on enemy civilians. Then it is not their own murderousness that is at issue but that of their officers; they can act morally only by disobeying their orders. In such a case, we are likely to divide as well as distribute responsibility: we regard soldiers under orders as men whose acts are not entirely their own and whose liability for what they do is somehow diminished.\n\nSuperior Orders\n\nThe My Lai Massacre\n\nThe incident is infamous and hardly needs retelling. A company of American soldiers entered a Vietnamese village where they expected to encounter enemy combatants, found only civilians, old men, women, and children, and began to kill them, shooting them singly or collecting them in groups, ignoring their obvious helplessness and their pleas for mercy, not stopping until they had murdered between four and five hundred people. Now, it has been argued on behalf of these soldiers that they acted, not in the heat of battle (since there was no battle) but in the context of a brutal and brutalizing war which was in fact, if only unofficially, a war against the Vietnamese people as a whole. In this war, the argument goes on, they had been encouraged to kill without making careful discriminations\u2014encouraged to do so by their own officers and driven to do so by their enemies, who fought and hid among the civilian population. These statements are true, or partly true; and yet massacre is radically different from guerrilla war, even from a guerrilla war brutally fought, and there is considerable evidence that the soldiers at My Lai knew the difference. For while some of them joined in the murders readily enough, as if eager to kill without risk, there were a few who refused to fire their guns and others who had to be ordered to fire two or three times before they could bring themselves to do so. Others simply ran away; one man shot himself in the foot so as to escape the scene; a junior officer tried heroically to stop the massacre, standing between the Vietnamese villagers and his fellow Americans. Many of his fellows, we know, were sick and guilt-ridden in the days that followed. This was not a fearful and frenzied extension of combat, but \"free\" and systematic slaughter, and those men that participated in it can hardly say that they were caught in the grip of war. They can say, however, that they were following orders, caught in the grip of the United States Army.\n\nThe orders of Captain Medina, the company commander, had in fact been ambiguous; at least, the men who heard them could not agree afterwards as to whether or not they had been told to \"waste\" the inhabitants of My Lai. He is quoted as having told his company to leave nothing living behind them and to take no prisoners: \"They're all V.C.'s, now go and get them.\" But he is also said to have ordered only the killing of \"enemies,\" and when asked, \"Who is the enemy?\" to have offered the following definition (in the words of one of the soldiers): \"anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or who appeared to us to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him; sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her.\" That is a very bad definition, but it isn't morally insane; barring a loose interpretation of the \"appearance\" of enmity, it would have excluded most of the people killed at My Lai. Lieutenant Calley, who actually led the unit that entered the village, gave far more specific orders, commanding his men to kill helpless civilians who were neither running nor hiding, let alone carrying rifles, and repeating the command again and again when they hesitated to obey.b The army's judicial system singled him out for blame and punishment, though he claimed he was only doing what Medina had ordered him to do. The enlisted men who did what Calley ordered them to do were never charged.\n\nIt must be a great relief to follow orders. \"Becoming a soldier,\" writes J. Glenn Gray, \"was like escaping from one's own shadow.\" The world of war is frightening; decisions are difficult; and it is comforting to slough off responsibility and simply do what one is told. Gray reports soldiers insisting on this special kind of freedom: \"When I raised my right hand and took the [army oath], I freed myself of the consequences for what I do. I'll do what they tell me and nobody can blame me.\" Army training encourages this view, even though soldiers are also informed that they must refuse \"unlawful\" orders. No military force can function effectively without routine obedience, and it is the routine that is stressed. Soldiers are taught to obey even petty and foolish commands. The teaching process has the form of an endless drill, aimed at breaking down their individual thoughtfulness, resistance, hostility, and waywardness. But there is some ultimate humanity that cannot be broken down, the disappearance of which we will not accept. In his play The Measures Taken, Bertolt Brecht describes militant communists as \"blank pages on which the Revolution writes its instructions.\" I suppose there are many drill sergeants who dream of a similar blankness. But the description is a false one and the dream a fantasy. It is not that soldiers don't sometimes obey as if they were morally blank. What is crucial is that the rest of us hold them responsible for what they do. Despite their oath, we blame them for the crimes that follow from \"unlawful\" or immoral obedience.\n\nSoldiers can never be transformed into mere instruments of war. The trigger is always part of the gun, not part of the man. If they are not machines that can just be turned off, they are also not machines that can just be turned on. Trained to obey \"without hesitation,\" they remain nevertheless capable of hesitating. I have already cited examples of refusal, delay, doubt, and anguish at My Lai. These are internal confirmations of our external judgments. No doubt we can make these judgments too quickly, without hesitations and doubts of our own, paying too little attention to the harshness of battle and the discipline of the army. But it is a mistake to treat soldiers as if they were automatons who make no judgments at all. Instead, we must look closely at the particular features of their situation and try to understand what it might mean, in these circumstances, at this moment, to accept or defy a military command.\n\nThe defense of superior orders breaks down into two more specific arguments: the claim of ignorance and the claim of duress. These two are standard legal and moral claims, and they seem to function in war very much as they do in domestic society. It is not the case, then, as has often been argued, that when we judge soldiers we must balance the necessities of military discipline (that obedience be quick and unquestioning) against the requirements of humanity (that innocent people be protected). Rather, we view discipline as one of the conditions of wartime activity, and we take its particular features into account in determining individual responsibility. We do not excuse individuals in order to maintain or strengthen the disciplinary system. The army may cover up the crimes of soldiers or seek to limit liability for them with that end (or that pretended end) in view, but such efforts do not represent the delicate working out of a conception of justice. What justice requires is, first of all, that we commit ourselves to the defense of rights and, second, that we attend carefully to the particular defenses of men who are charged with violating rights.\n\nIgnorance is the common lot of the common soldier, and it makes an easy defense, especially when calculations of usefulness and proportionality are called for. The soldier can plausibly say that he does not know and cannot know whether the campaign in which he is engaged is really required for the sake of victory, or whether it has been designed so as to hold unintended civilian deaths within acceptable limits. From his narrow and confined vantage point, even direct violations of human rights\u2014as in the conduct of a siege, for example, or in the strategy of an anti-guerrilla campaign\u2014may be unseen and unseeable. Nor is he bound to seek out information; the moral life of a combat soldier is not a research assignment. We might say that he stands to his campaigns as to his wars: he is not responsible for their overall justice. When war is fought at a distance, he may not be responsible even for the innocent people he himself kills. Artillery men and pilots are often kept in ignorance of the targets at which their fire is directed. If they ask questions, they are routinely assured that the targets are \"legitimate military objectives.\" Perhaps they should always be skeptical, but I don't think we blame them if they accept the assurances of their commanders. We blame instead the far-seeing commanders. As the example of My Lai suggests, however, the ignorance of common soldiers has its limits. The soldiers in the Vietnamese village could hardly have doubted the innocence of the people they were ordered to kill. It is in such a situation that we want them to disobey: when they receive orders which, as the army judge said at the Calley trial, \"a man of ordinary sense and understanding would, under the circumstances, know to be unlawful.\"\n\nNow, this implies an understanding not only of the circumstances but also of the law, and it was argued at Nuremberg and has been argued since that the laws of war are so vague, uncertain, and incoherent that they can never require disobedience. Indeed, the state of the positive law is not very good, especially where it relates to the exigencies of combat. But the prohibition against massacre is plain enough, and I think it is fair to say that common soldiers have been charged and convicted only for the knowing murder of innocent people: shipwrecked survivors struggling in the water, for example, or prisoners of war, or helpless civilians. Nor is it a question here only of the law, for these are acts that not only \"violate unchallenged rules of warfare,\" as the British field manual of 1944 states, but that also \"outrage the general sentiments of humanity.\" Ordinary moral sense and understanding rule out killings like those at My Lai. One of the soldiers there remembers thinking to himself that the slaughter was \"just like a Nazi-type thing.\" That judgment is precisely right, and there is nothing in our conventional morality that renders it doubtful.\n\nBut the excuse of duress may hold even in a case like this, if the order to kill is backed up by a threat of execution. I have argued that soldiers in combat cannot plead self-preservation when they violate the rules of war. For the dangers of enemy fire are simply the risks of the activity in which they are engaged, and they have no right to reduce those risks at the expense of other people who are not engaged. But a threat of death directed not at soldiers in general but at a particular soldier\u2014a threat, as the lawyers say, \"imminent, real, and inevitable\"\u2014alters the case, lifting it out of the context of combat and war risk. Now it becomes like those domestic crimes in which one man forces another, under threat of immediate death, to kill a third. The act is clearly murder, but we are likely to think that the man in the middle is not the murderer. Or, if we do think him a murderer, we are likely to accept the excuse of duress. Surely someone who refuses to kill at such a time, and dies instead, is not just doing his duty; he is acting heroically. Gray provides a paradigmatic example:\n\nIn the Netherlands, the Dutch tell of a German soldier who was a member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages. Suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to participate in the execution. On the spot he was charged with treason by the officer in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly executed by his comrades.\n\nHere is a man of extraordinary nobility, but what are we to say of his (former) comrades? That they are committing murder when they fire their guns, and that they are not responsible for the murder they commit. The officer in charge is responsible, and those among his superiors who decided on the policy of killing hostages. Responsibility passes over the heads of the members of the firing squad, not because of their oaths, not because of their orders, but because of the direct threat that drives them to act as they do.\n\nWar is a world of duress, of threat and counter-threat, so we must be clear about those cases in which duress does, and those in which it does not count as an excuse for conduct we would otherwise condemn. Soldiers are conscripted and forced to fight, but conscription by itself does not force them to kill innocent people. Soldiers are attacked and forced to fight, but neither aggression nor enemy onslaught forces them to kill innocent people. Conscription and attack bring them up against serious risks and hard choices. But constricted and frightening as their situation is, we still say that they choose freely and are responsible for what they do. Only a man with a gun at his head is not responsible.\n\nBut superior orders are not always enforced at the point of a gun. Army discipline in the actual context of war is often a great deal more haphazard than the firing squad example suggests. \"It is a great boon of frontline positions,\" writes Gray, \"that . . . disobedience is frequently possible, since supervision is not very exact where danger of death is present.\" And in rear areas as well as at the front, there are ways of responding to an order short of obeying it: postponement, evasion, deliberate misunderstanding, loose construction, overly literal construction, and so on. One can ignore an immoral command or answer it with questions or protests; and sometimes even an overt refusal only invites reprimand, demotion, or detention; there is no risk of death. Whenever these possibilities are open, moral men will seize upon them. The law seems to require a similar readiness, for it is a legal principle that duress excuses only if the harm the individual soldier inflicts is not disproportionate to the harm with which he is threatened. He is not excused for the murder of innocent people by the threat of demotion.\n\nIt has to be said, however, that officers are far more capable than enlisted men of weighing the dangers they face. Telford Taylor has described the case of Colonel William Peters, an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, who refused a direct order to burn the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Peters was relieved of his command and placed under arrest, but he was never brought before a court martial. We may admire his courage, but if he anticipated that his superiors would (\"prudently,\" as another Confederate officer said) avoid a trial, his decision was relatively easy. The decision of an ordinary soldier, who may well be subject to summary justice and who knows little of the temper of his more distant superiors, is much harder. At My Lai, those men who refused to fire never suffered for their refusal and apparently did not expect to suffer; and that suggests that we must blame the others for their obedience. In more ambiguous cases, the duress of superior orders, though it is not \"imminent, real, and inevitable\" and cannot count as a defense, is commonly regarded as an extenuating factor. That seems the right attitude to take, but I want to stress once again that when we take it we are not making concessions to the need for discipline, but simply recognizing the plight of the common soldier.\n\nThere is another reason for extenuation, unmentioned in the legal literature, but prominent in moral accounts of disobedience. The path that I have marked out as the right one is often a very lonely path. Here, too, the case of the German soldier who broke ranks with his fellow executioners and was promptly executed by them is unusual and extreme. But even when a soldier's doubts and anxieties are widely shared, they are still the subject of private brooding, not of public discussion. And when he acts, he acts alone, with no assurance that his comrades will support him. Civil protest and disobedience usually arise out of a community of values. But the army is an organization, not a community, and the communion of ordinary soldiers is shaped by the character and purposes of the organization, not by their private commitments. Theirs is the rough solidarity of men who face a common enemy and endure a common discipline. On both sides of a war, unity is reflexive, not intentional or premeditated. To disobey is to breach that elemental accord, to claim a moral separateness (or a moral superiority), to challenge one's fellows, perhaps even to intensify the dangers they face. \"This is what is most difficult,\" wrote a French soldier who went to Algeria and then refused to fight, \"being cut off from the fraternity, being locked up in a monologue, being incomprehensible.\"\n\nNow, incomprehensible is perhaps too strong a word, for a man appeals at such a time to common moral standards. But in the context of a military organization, that appeal will often go unheard, and so it involves a risk that may well be greater than that of punishment: the risk of a profound and morally disturbing isolation. This is not to say that one can join in a massacre for the sake of togetherness. But it suggests that moral life is rooted in a kind of association that military discipline precludes or temporarily cuts off, and that fact, too, must be taken into account in the judgments we make. It must be taken into account especially in the case of common soldiers, for officers are more free in their associations and more involved in discussions about policy and strategy. They have a say in the shape and character of the organization over which they preside. Hence, again, the critical importance of command responsibility.\n\nCommand Responsibility\n\nBeing an officer is not at all like being a common soldier. Rank is something men compete for, aspire to, glory in, and so even when officers were initially conscripted, we need not worry about holding them rigidly to the duties of their office. For rank can be avoided even when service cannot. Junior officers are killed at a high rate in combat, but still there are soldiers who want to be officers. It is a question of the pleasures of command; there is nothing quite like it (so I am told) in civilian life. The other side of pleasure, however, is responsibility. Officers take on immense responsibilities, again unlike anything in civilian life, for they have in their control the means of death and destruction. The higher their rank, the greater the reach of their command, the larger their responsibilities. They plan and organize campaigns; they decide on strategy and tactics; they choose to fight here rather than there; they order men into battle. Always, they must aim at victory and attend to the needs of their own soldiers. But they have at the same time a higher duty: \"The soldier, be he friend or foe,\" wrote Douglas MacArthur when he confirmed the death sentence of General Yamashita, \"is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason of his being . . . [a] sacred trust.\" Precisely because he himself, gun in hand, artillery and bombers at his call, poses a threat to the weak and unarmed, he must take steps to shield them. He must fight with restraint, accepting risks, mindful of the rights of the innocent.\n\nThat obviously means that he cannot order massacres; nor can he terrorize civilians with bombardment or bombing, or uproot whole populations in order to create \"free-fire zones,\" or take reprisals against prisoners, or threaten to kill hostages. But it means more than that. Military commanders have two further and morally crucial responsibilities. First, in planning their campaigns, they must take positive steps to limit even unintended civilian deaths (and they must make sure that the numbers killed are not disproportionate to the military benefits they expect). Here the laws of war are of little help; no officer is going to be criminally charged for killing too many people if he does not actually massacre them. But the moral responsibility is clear, and it cannot be located anywhere else than in the office of commander. The campaign belongs to the commander as it does not belong to the ordinary combatants; he has access to all available information and also to the means of generating more information; he has (or ought to have) an overview of the sum of actions and effects that he is ordering and hoping for. If, then, the conditions set by the doctrine of double effect are not met, we should not hesitate to hold him accountable for the failure. Second, military commanders, in organizing their forces, must take positive steps to enforce the war convention and hold the men under their command to its standards. They must see to their training in this regard, issue clear orders, establish inspection procedures, and assure the punishment of individual soldiers and subordinate officers who kill or injure innocent people. If a great deal of such killing and injuring takes place, they are presumptively responsible, for we assume that it lay within their power to prevent it. Given what actually happens in war, military commanders have a great deal to answer for.\n\nGeneral Bradley and the Bombing of St. L\u00f4\n\nIn July 1944, Omar Bradley, in command of American forces in Normandy, was engaged in planning a breakout from the invasion beachheads established the month before. The plan that he worked out, code-named COBRA and approved by Generals Montgomery and Eisenhower, called for the carpet bombing of an area three and a half miles wide, one and a half deep, along the P\u00e9riers road outside the town of St. L\u00f4. \"Air bombing, we calculated, would either destroy or stun the enemy in the carpet\" and so permit a quick advance. But it also posed a moral problem, which Bradley discusses in his autobiography. On July 20, he described the coming attack to some American newsmen:\n\nThe correspondents listened quietly to the outline of our plan, craned their necks as I pointed to the carpet and . . . tallied the air strength that had been assigned to us. At the close of the briefing, one of the newsmen asked if we would forewarn the French living within bounds of the carpet. I shook my head as if to escape the necessity for saying no. If we were to tip our hand to the French, we would also show it to the Germans. . . . The success of COBRA hung upon surprise; it was essential we have surprise even if it meant the slaughter of innocents as well.\n\nBombing of this sort, along the line of battle and in close support of combat troops, is permitted by positive international law. Even indiscriminate fire is permitted within the actual combat zone. Civilians are thought to be forewarned by the proximity of the fighting. But as the correspondent's question suggests, this does not resolve the moral issue. We still want to know what positive measures might have been taken to avoid \"the slaughter of innocents\" or reduce the damage done. It is important to insist on such measures because, as this example clearly shows, the proportionality rule often has no inhibitory effects at all. Even if a large number of civilians lived in those five square miles near St. L\u00f4, and even if all of them were likely to die, it would seem a small price to pay for a breakout that might well signal the end of the war. To say that, however, is not to say that those innocent lives are forfeit, for there may be ways of saving them short of calling off the attack. Perhaps civilians all along the battlefront could have been warned (without giving up surprise in a particular sector). Perhaps the attack could have been redirected through some less populated area (even at greater risk to the soldiers involved). Perhaps the planes, flying low, could have aimed at specific enemy targets, or artillery have been used instead (since shells could then be aimed more precisely than bombs), or paratroops dropped or patrols sent forward to seize important positions in advance of the main attack. I am in no position to recommend any of these courses of action, although, in the event, any of the last of them might have been preferable, even from a military point of view. For the bombs missed the carpet and killed or wounded several hundred American soldiers. How many French civilians were killed or wounded Bradley does not say.\n\nHowever many civilians died, it cannot be said that their deaths were intentional. On the other hand, unless Bradley worked his way through the sorts of possibilities I have listed, it also cannot be said that he intended not to kill them. I have already explained why that negative intention ought to be required from soldiers; it is the domestic equivalent of what the lawyers call \"due care\" in domestic society. With reference to specific and small-scale military actions (like the bombing of cellars described by Frank Richards), the people required to take care are common soldiers and their immediate superiors. In cases such as the COBRA campaign, the relevant individuals stand higher in the hierarchy; it is on General Bradley that we rightly focus our attention, and on his superiors. Once again, I have to say that I cannot specify the precise point at which the requirements of \"due care\" have been met. How much attention is required? How much risk must be accepted? The line isn't clear. But it is clear enough that most campaigns are planned and carried out well below the line; and one can blame commanders who don't make minimal efforts, even if one doesn't know exactly what a maximum effort would entail.\n\nThe Case of General Yamashita\n\nThe same problem of specifying standards comes up when one considers the responsibility of commanders for the actions of their subordinates. They are bound, as I have said, to enforce the war convention. But even the best possible system of enforcement doesn't preclude particular violations. It proves itself the best possible system by seizing upon these in a systematic way and by punishing the individuals who commit them so as to deter the others. It is only if there is a massive breakdown of this disciplinary system that we demand an accounting from the officers who preside over it. This, in effect, is the demand formally made upon General Yamashita by an American military commission in the aftermath of the Philippine campaign in 1945. It was said of Yamashita that he was responsible for a large number of specified acts of violence and murder inflicted upon unarmed civilians and prisoners of war. That these acts had in fact been committed by Japanese soldiers no one denied. On the other hand, no evidence was presented to show that Yamashita had ordered the violence and murder nor even that he had known about any of the specified acts. His responsibility lay in his failure \"to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of the members of his command, permitting them to commit brutal atrocities. . . .\" Defending himself, Yamashita claimed that he had been entirely unable to exercise control over his troops: the successful American invasion had disrupted his communication and command structure, leaving him in effective charge only of the troops whom he personally led, in retreat, into the mountains of northern Luzon; and these troops had committed no atrocities. The commission refused to accept this defense and sentenced Yamashita to death. His appeal was carried to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the case, despite memorable dissents by Justices Murphy and Rutledge. Yamashita was executed on February 22, 1946.\n\nThere are two ways of describing the standard to which Yamashita was held by the commission and the Court majority. The defense lawyers argued that the standard was one of strict liability, radically inappropriate in cases of criminal justice. That is to say, Yamashita was convicted without reference to any acts he committed or even to any omissions that he might have avoided. He was convicted of having held an office, because of the duties said to inhere in that office, even though the duties were in fact undo-able under the conditions in which he found himself. Justice Murphy went further: the duties were undo-able because of the conditions that the American army had created.\n\n. . . read against the background of military events in the Philippines subsequent to October 9, 1944, these charges amount to this: \"We, the victorious American forces, have done everything possible to destroy and disorganize your lines of communication, your effective control of your personnel, your ability to wage war. In these respects we have succeeded. . . . And now we charge and condemn you for having been inefficient in maintaining control of your troops during the period when we were so effectively besieging and eliminating your forces and blocking your ability to maintain effective command.\"\n\nThis is probably an accurate description of the facts of the case. Not only was Yamashita unable to do the things that commanders should do, but if we push the argument back, he was in no sense the author of the conditions which made those things impossible. I should add, however, that the other judges did not believe, or did not admit, that they were enforcing the principle of strict liability. According to Chief Justice Stone, the question was \"whether the law of war imposes on an army commander a duty to take such appropriate measures as are within his power to control the troops under his command. . . .\" It is easy to answer that question affirmatively, but not at all easy to say what measures are \"appropriate\" under the adverse conditions of combat, disorganization, and defeat.\n\nOne wants to set the standards very high, and the argument for strict liability is utilitarian in character: holding officers automatically responsible for massive violations of the rules of war forces them to do everything they can to avoid such violations, without forcing us to specify what they ought to do. But there are two problems with this. First of all, we don't really want commanders to do everything they can, for that requirement, taken literally, would leave them little time to do anything else. This point is never as telling in their case as it is in the case of political leaders and domestic crime: we don't require our leaders to do everything they can (but only to take \"appropriate measures\") to prevent robbery and murder, for they have other things to do. But they, presumably, have not armed and trained the people who commit robbery and murder, and these people are not directly in their charge. The case of military commanders is different; hence we must expect them to devote a great deal of time and attention to the discipline and control of the men with guns they have turned loose in the world. But still, not all their time and attention, not all the resources at their command.\n\nThe second argument against strict liability in criminal cases is a more familiar one. Even doing \"everything\" is not the same as doing it successfully. All we can require is serious efforts of specific sorts; we cannot require success, since the conditions of warfare are such that success isn't always possible. And the impossibility of success is necessarily an excuse\u2014given serious effort, an entirely satisfactory excuse\u2014for failure. To refuse to accept the excuse is to refuse to regard the defendant as a moral agent: for it is in the nature of moral agents (of human beings) that their best efforts sometimes fail. The refusal disregards the defendant's humanity, makes him into an example, pour encourager les autres; and that we have no right to do to anyone.\n\nThese two arguments seem to me right, and they exonerate General Yamashita, but they also leave us with no clear standards at all. In fact, there is no philosophical or theoretical way of fixing such standards. That is also true with regard to the planning and organization of military campaigns. There is no sure rule against which to measure the conduct of General Bradley. The discussion of double effect in chapters 9 and 10 pointed only in a fairly crude way toward the sorts of considerations that are relevant when we make judgments about such matters. The appropriate standards can emerge only through a long process of casuistic reasoning, that is, by attending to one case after another, morally or legally. The chief failure of the military commission and the Supreme Court in 1945, aside from the fact that they failed to do justice to General Yamashita, is that they made no contribution to this process. They did not specify the measures that Yamashita might have taken; they did not suggest what degree of disorganization might serve as a limit on command responsibility. Only by making such specifications, again and again, can we draw the lines that the war convention requires.\n\nWe can say more than this, I think, if we turn back briefly to the My Lai case. The evidence brought forward at the trial of Lieutenant Calley and the materials collected by newsmen carrying on their own investigations of the massacre clearly suggest the responsibility of officers superior to both Calley and Medina. The strategy of the American war in Vietnam, as I have already argued, tended to put civilians at risk in unacceptable ways, and ordinary soldiers could hardly ignore the implications of that strategy. My Lai was itself in a free-fire zone, routinely shelled and bombed. \"If you can shoot artillery . . . in there every night,\" one soldier asked, \"how can the people in there be worth so much?\" In effect, soldiers were taught that civilian lives were not worth much, and there seems to have been little effort to counteract that teaching except by the most formal and perfunctory instruction in the rules of war. If we are fully to assign blame for the massacre, then, there are a large number of officers whom we would have to condemn. I cannot put together a list here, and I doubt that all of them could have been or ought to have been legally charged and tried\u2014though this might have been a useful occasion to apply, and improve upon, the Yamashita precedent. But that many officers are morally chargeable seems certain, and their blameworthiness is not less than that of the men who did the actual killing. Indeed, there is this difference between them: in the case of the ordinary soldiers, the burden of proof lies with us. As in any murder case, we must prove their knowing and willful participation. But the officers are presumptively guilty; the burden of proof, if they would demonstrate their innocence, lies with them. And until we find some way of imposing that burden, we shall not have done all that we can do in defense of the \"weak and unarmed,\" the innocent victims of war.\n\nThe Nature of Necessity (4)\n\nI have left the hardest question for last. What are we to say about those military commanders (or political leaders) who override the rules of war and kill innocent people in a \"supreme emergency\"? Surely we want to be led at such a time by men and women ready to do what has to be done\u2014what is necessary; for it is only here that necessity, in its true sense, comes into the theory of war. On the other hand, we cannot ignore or forget what it is they do. The deliberate killing of the innocent is murder. Sometimes, in conditions of extremity (which I have tried to define and delimit), commanders must commit murder or they must order others to commit it. And then they are murderers, though in a good cause. In domestic society, and particularly in the context of revolutionary politics, we say of such people that they have dirty hands. I have argued elsewhere that men and women with dirty hands, though it may be the case that they had acted well and done what their office required, must nonetheless bear a burden of responsibility and guilt. They have killed unjustly, let us say, for the sake of justice itself, but justice itself requires that unjust killing be condemned. There is obviously no question here of legal punishment, but of some other way of assigning and enforcing blame. What way, however, is radically unclear. The available answers are all likely to make us uneasy. The nature of that uneasiness will be apparent if we turn again to the case of British terror bombing in World War II.\n\nThe Dishonoring of Arthur Harris\n\n\"He will perhaps go down in history as a giant among the leaders of men. He gave Bomber Command the courage to surmount its ordeals. . . .\" So writes the historian Noble Frankland about Arthur Harris, who directed the strategic bombing of Germany from February 1942 until the end of the war. Harris was, as we have seen, the determined advocate of terrorism, resisting every attempt to use his planes for other purposes. Now, terror bombing is a criminal activity, and after the immediate threat posed by Hitler's early victories had passed, it was an entirely indefensible activity. Hence Harris' case isn't really an example of the dirty hands problem. He and Churchill, who was ultimately responsible for military policy, faced no moral dilemma: they should simply have stopped the bombing campaign. But we can take it as an example, nonetheless, for it apparently had that form in the minds of British leaders, even of Churchill himself at the end. That is why Harris, though of course criminal charges were never brought against him, was not treated after the war as a giant among the leaders of men.\n\nHe had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader. \"From this work,\" writes Angus Calder, \"Churchill and his colleagues at last recoiled. After the strategic air offensive officially ended in mid-April [1945], Bomber Command was slighted and snubbed; and Harris, unlike other well-known commanders, was not rewarded with a peerage.\" In such circumstances, not to honor was to dishonor, and that is exactly how Harris regarded the government's action (or omission). He waited a while for his reward and then, resentfully, left England for his native Rhodesia. The men he led were similarly treated, though the snub was not so personal. In Westminster Abbey, there is a plaque honoring those pilots of Fighter Command who died during the war, listing them all by name. But the bomber pilots, though they suffered far heavier casualties, have no plaque; their names are unrecorded. It is as if the British had taken to heart Rolf Hochhuth's question:\n\nIs a pilot who bombs\n\npopulation centers under orders\n\nstill to be called a soldier?\n\nAll this makes a point, though it does so indirectly and in so equivocal a fashion that we cannot but notice its moral awkwardness. Harris and his men have a legitimate complaint: they did what they were told to do and what their leaders thought was necessary and right, but they are dishonored for doing it, and it is suddenly suggested (what else can the dishonor mean?) that what was necessary and right was also wrong. Harris felt that he was being made a scapegoat, and it is surely true that if blame is to be distributed for the bombing, Churchill deserves a full share. But Churchill's success in dissociating himself from the policy of terrorism is not of great importance; there is always a remedy for that in retrospective criticism. What is important is that his dissociation was part of a national dissociation\u2014a deliberate policy that has moral significance and value.\n\nAnd yet, the policy seems cruel. Stated in general terms, it amounts to this: that a nation fighting a just war, when it is desperate and survival itself is at risk, must use unscrupulous or morally ignorant soldiers; and as soon as their usefulness is past, it must disown them. I would rather say something else: that decent men and women, hard-pressed in war, must sometimes do terrible things, and then they themselves have to look for some way to reaffirm the values they have overthrown. But the first statement is probably the more realistic one. For it is very rare, as Machiavelli wrote in his Discourses, \"that a good man should be found willing to employ wicked means,\" even when such means are morally required. And then we must look for people who are not good, and use them, and dishonor them. Perhaps there is some better way of doing that than the way Churchill chose. It would have been better if he had explained to his countrymen the moral costs of their survival and if he had praised the courage and endurance of the fliers of Bomber Command even while insisting that it was not possible to take pride in what they had done (an impossibility that many of them must have felt). But Churchill did not do that; he never admitted that the bombing constituted a wrong. In the absence of such an admission, the refusal to honor Harris at least went some small distance toward re-establishing a commitment to the rules of war and the rights they protect. And that, I think, is the deepest meaning of all assignments of responsibility.\n\nConclusion\n\nThe world of necessity is generated by a conflict between collective survival and human rights. We find ourselves in that world less often than we think, certainly less often than we say; but whenever we are there, we experience the ultimate tyranny of war\u2014and also, it might be argued, the ultimate incoherence of the theory of war. In a troubling essay entitled \"War and Massacre,\" Thomas Nagel has described our situation at such a time in terms of a conflict between utilitarian and absolutist modes of thought: we know that there are some outcomes that must be avoided at all costs, and we know that there are some costs that can never rightly be paid. We must face the possibility, Nagel argues, \"that these two forms of moral intuition are not capable of being brought together into a single, coherent moral system, and that the world can present us with situations in which there is no honorable or moral course for a man to take, no course free of guilt and responsibility for evil.\" I have tried to avoid the stark indeterminacy of that description by suggesting that political leaders can hardly help but choose the utilitarian side of the dilemma. That is what they are there for. They must opt for collective survival and override those rights that have suddenly loomed as obstacles to survival. But I don't want to say, any more than Nagel does, that they are free of guilt when they do that. Were there no guilt involved, the decisions they make would be less agonizing than they are. And they can only prove their honor by accepting responsibility for those decisions and by living out the agony. A moral theory that made their life easier, or that concealed their dilemma from the rest of us, might achieve greater coherence, but it would miss or it would repress the reality of war.\n\nIt is sometimes said that the dilemma ought to be concealed, that we should draw the veil (as Churchill tried to do) over the crimes that soldiers and statesmen cannot avoid. Or, we should avert our eyes\u2014for the sake of our innocence, I suppose, and the moral certainties. But that is a dangerous business; having looked away, how will we know when to look back? Soon we will avert our eyes from everything that happens in wars and battles, condemning nothing, like the second monkey in the Japanese statue, who sees no evil. And yet there is plenty to see. Soldiers and statesmen live mostly on this side of the ultimate crises of collective survival; the greater number by far of the crimes they commit can neither be defended nor excused. They are simply crimes. Someone must try to see them clearly and describe them \"in express words.\" Even the murders called necessary must be similarly described; it doubles the crime to look away, for then we are not able to fix the limits of necessity, or remember the victims, or make our own (awkward) judgments of the people who kill in our name.\n\nMostly morality is tested only by the ordinary pressures of military conflict. Mostly it is possible, even when it isn't easy, to live by the requirements of justice. And mostly the judgments we make of what soldiers and statesmen do are singular and clearcut; with whatever hesitations, we say yes or no, we say right or wrong. But in supreme emergencies our judgments are doubled, reflecting the dualist character of the theory of war and the deeper complexity of our moral realism; we say yes and no, right and wrong. That dualism makes us uneasy; the world of war is not a fully comprehensible, let alone a morally satisfactory place. And yet it cannot be escaped, short of a universal order in which the existence of nations and peoples could never be threatened. There is every reason to work for such an order. The difficulty is that we sometimes have no choice but to fight for it.\n\n Telford Taylor suggests a possible exception to this rule, citing a hypothetical case which has often been discussed in the legal literature. A small detachment of troops on a special mission or cut off from its main force takes prisoners \"under such circumstances that men cannot be spared to guard them . . . and that to take them along would greatly endanger the success of the mission or the safety of the unit.\" The prisoners are likely to be killed, Taylor says, in accordance with the principle of military necessity. (Nuremberg and Vietnam, New York, 1970, p. 36.) But if it is only the safety of the unit that is in question (its mission may already have been accomplished), the proper appeal would be to self-\u00adpreservation. The argument from necessity has not, despite Taylor, been accepted by legal writers; the argument from self-preservation has won greater support. In his military code for the Union Army, for example, Francis Lieber writes that \"a commander is permitted to direct his troops to give no quarter . . . when his own salvation makes it impossible to cumber himself with prisoners.\" (Taylor, p. 36n.) But surely in such a case the prisoners should be disarmed and then released. Even if it is \"impossible\" to take them along, it is not impossible to set them free. There may be risks in doing that, but these are exactly the sorts of risks soldiers must accept. The risks involved in leaving wounded men behind are of the same sort, but that is not a satisfactory reason for killing them. For a useful discussion of these issues, see Marshall Cohen, \"Morality and the Laws of War,\" in Held, Morgenbesser, and Nagel, eds., Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs, New York, 1974, pp. 76\u201378.\n\n It may be useful to suggest the sorts of commands that should be issued at such a time. Here is an account of an Israeli unit entering Nablus during the Six Day War: \"The battalion CO got on the field telephone to my company and said, 'Don't touch the civilians . . . don't fire until you're fired at and don't touch the civilians. Look, you've been warned. Their blood be on your heads.' In just those words. The boys in the company kept talking about it afterwards. . . . They kept repeating the words. . . . 'Their blood be on your heads.'\" The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six Day War, London, 1970, p. 132.\nAfterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War\n\nThe dream of a war to end war, the myth of Armageddon (the last battle), the vision of the lion lying down with the lamb\u2014all these point toward an age definitively peaceful, a distant age that lies across some unknown time-break, without armed struggle and systematic killing. It will not come, so we have been told, until the forces of evil have been decisively defeated and mankind freed forever from the lust for conquest and domination. In our myths and visions, the end of war is also the end of secular history. Those of us trapped within that history, who see no end to it, have no choice but to fight on, defending the values to which we are committed, unless or until some alternative means of defense can be found. The only alternative is nonviolent defense, \"war without weapons,\" as it has been called by its advocates, who seek to adjust our dreams to our realities. They claim that we can uphold the values of communal life and liberty without fighting and killing, and this claim raises important questions (secular and practical questions) about the theory of war and the argument for justice. To treat them as they deserve would require another book; I can offer only a brief essay, a partial and tentative analysis of the ways in which nonviolence relates, first, to the doctrine of aggression, and then to the rules of war.\n\nNonviolent defense differs from conventional strategies in that it concedes the overrunning of the country that is being defended. It establishes no obstacles capable of stopping a military advance or preventing a military occupation. \"Although minor delaying actions against the incursions of foreign troops and functionaries may be possible,\" writes Gene Sharp, \"civilian defense . . . does not attempt to halt such entry, and cannot successfully do so.\" That is a radical concession, and I don't think that any government has ever made it willingly. Nonviolence has been practiced (in the face of an invasion) only after violence, or the threat of violence, has failed. Then its protagonists aim to deny the victorious army the fruits of its victory through a systematic policy of civilian resistance and noncooperation: they call upon the conquered people to make themselves ungovernable. I want to stress that it is not war but civilian resistance that has usually been regarded as a last resort, because war holds out at least the possibility of avoiding the occupation that evokes or requires the resistance. But we might reverse this ordering were we to decide that resistance is as likely to end the occupation as military action is to prevent it, and at a much lower cost in human lives. There is as yet no evidence that that proposition is true, \"no cases in which . . . civilian defense has caused an invader to withdraw.\" But no nonviolent struggle has ever been undertaken by a people trained in advance in its methods and prepared (as soldiers are in the case of war) to accept its costs. So it might be true; and if it is, we should have to regard aggression very differently from the way we do at present.\n\nIt might be said that nonviolence abolishes aggressive war simply by virtue of the refusal to engage the aggressor militarily. Invasion is not morally coercive in the ways I described in chapter 4, men and women cannot be forced to fight, if they have come to believe that they can defend their country in some other way, without killing and being killed. And if there really is some other way, at least potentially effective, then the aggressor cannot be charged with forcing them to fight. Nonviolence de-escalates the conflict and diminishes its criminality. By adopting the methods of disobedience, noncooperation, boycott, and general strike, the citizens of the invaded country transform aggressive war into a political struggle. They treat the aggressor in effect as a domestic tyrant or usurper, and they turn his soldiers into policemen. If the invader accepts this role, and if he responds to the resistance he encounters with curfews, fines, jail sentences, and nothing more, the prospect is opened up of a long-term struggle, not without its difficulties and painfulness for civilians, but far less destructive than even a short war, and winnable (we are assuming) by those same civilians. Allied states would have no reason to intervene militarily in such a struggle; which is a good thing, since if they too were committed to nonviolent defense, they would have no means of intervening. But they could bring moral and perhaps also economic pressure to bear against the invaders.\n\nThis, then, would be the position of the invaders: they would hold the country they had \"attacked,\" could establish military bases wherever they pleased, and enjoy whatever strategic benefits these yielded them (vis-\u00e0-vis other countries, presumably). But their logistics problems would be severe, for unless they brought along their own personnel, they could not depend upon the local transportation or communication systems. And since they could hardly bring along an entire workforce, they would have great difficulty exploiting the natural resources and the industrial productivity of the invaded country. Hence the economic costs of the occupation would be high. The political costs might well be higher. Everywhere their soldiers would encounter sullen, resentful, withdrawn, and noncooperative civilians. Though these civilians would never take up arms, they would rally, demonstrate, and strike; and the soldiers would have to respond, coercively, like the hated instruments of a tyrannical regime. Their military \u00e9lan might well fade, their morale erode, under the strains of civilian hostility and of an on-going struggle in which they never experienced the release of an open fight. Eventually, perhaps, the occupation would become untenable, and the invaders would simply leave; they would have won and then lost a \"war without weapons.\"\n\nThis is an attractive, even though it is not a millennial, picture. Indeed, it is attractive precisely because it is not millennial, but conceivable in the world we know. It is only just conceivable, however; for the success I have described is possible only if the invaders are committed to the war convention\u2014and they won't always be committed. While nonviolence by itself replaces aggressive war with political struggle, it cannot by itself determine the means of struggle. The invading army can always adopt the common methods of domestic tyrants, which go well beyond curfews, fines, and jail sentences; and its leaders, though they are soldiers, may well be tempted to do that for the sake of a quick \"victory.\" Tyrants will not, of course, lay siege to their own cities or bomb or bombard them; nor will invaders who encounter no armed opposition. But there are other, probably more efficient, ways of terrorizing a people whose country one controls, and of breaking their resistance. In his \"Reflections on Gandhi,\" George Orwell points out the importance of exemplary leadership and wide publicity in a nonviolent campaign and wonders whether such a campaign would even be possible in a totalitarian state. \"It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard from again.\" Nor would civilian resistance work well against invaders who sent out squads of soldiers to kill civilian leaders, who arrested and tortured suspects, established concentration camps, and exiled large numbers of people from areas where the resistance was strong to distant and desolate parts of the country. Nonviolent defense is no defense at all against tyrants or conquerors ready to adopt such measures. Gandhi demonstrated this truth, I think by the perverse advice he gave to the Jews of Germany: that they should commit suicide rather than fight back against Nazi tyranny. Here nonviolence, under extreme conditions, collapses into violence directed at oneself rather than at one's murderers, though why it should take that direction I cannot understand.\n\nIf one faces an enemy like the Nazis, and if armed resistance is impossible, it is virtually certain that the men and women of the occupied country\u2014those who have been marked out for survival, at any rate, and perhaps even those who have been marked out for death\u2014will yield to their new masters and obey their decrees. The country will grow silent. Resistance will be a matter of individual heroism or of the heroism of small groups, but not of collective struggle.\n\nThe success of nonviolent resistance requires that soldiers (or their officers or political leaders) refuse at some early point, before civilian endurance is exhausted, to carry out or support a terrorist policy. As in guerrilla war, the strategy is to force the invading army to bear the onus of civilian deaths. But here the onus is to be made especially clear (especially unbearable) by the dramatic absence of any armed struggle in which civilians might be collusive. They will be hostile, certainly, but no soldiers will die at their hands or at the hands of partisans who have their secret support. And yet, if their resistance is to be broken decisively and quickly, the soldiers will have to be prepared to kill them. Since they are not always prepared to do that, or since their officers are not always sure that they will do it again and again, as might be necessary, civilian defense has had a certain limited effectiveness\u2014not in expelling an invading army, but in preventing the attainment of particular goals set by its leaders. As Liddell Hart has argued, however, these effects have only been possible\n\nagainst opponents whose code of morality was fundamentally similar [to that of the civilian defenders], and whose ruthlessness was thereby restrained. It is very doubtful whether non-violent resistance would have availed against a Tartar conqueror in the past, or against a Stalin in more recent times. The only impression it seems to have made on Hitler was to excite his impulse to trample on what, to his mind, was contemptible weakness\u2014although there is evidence that it did embarrass many of his generals, brought up in a better code . . .\n\nIf one could count on that \"better code\" and look forward to a nonviolent test of wills\u2014civilian solidarity against military discipline\u2014there would, I think, be no reason to fight: political struggle is better than fighting, even when victory is uncertain. For victory in war is also uncertain; and here it might be said, as it cannot easily be said in the case of war, that the citizens of the occupied country will win if they deserve to win. As in the domestic struggle against tyranny (so long as the struggle doesn't degenerate into massacre), we judge them by their capacity for self-help, that is, by their collective determination to defend their liberty.\n\nWhen one cannot count on the moral code, nonviolence is either a disguised form of surrender or a minimalist way of upholding communal values after a military defeat. I don't want to underestimate the importance of the second of these. Though civilian resistance evokes no moral recognition among the invading soldiers, it can still be important for its practitioners. It expresses the communal will to survive; and though the expression is brief, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it is likely to be long remembered. The heroism of civilians is even more heartening than that of soldiers. On the other hand, one should not expect much more from civilians confronted with a terrorist or potentially terrorist army than brief or sporadic resistance. It is easy to say that \"Non-violent action is not a course for cowards. It requires the ability and determination to sustain the battle whatever the price in suffering. . . .\" But this sort of exhortation is no more attractive than that of a general telling his soldiers to fight to the last man. Indeed, I prefer the exhortation of the general, since he at least addresses himself to a limited number of men, not to an entire population. The case is similar with guerrilla war, which has this advantage over civilian resistance: it recapitulates the military situation where only a relatively few people are asked \"to sustain the battle\"\u2014though the others will suffer too, as we have seen, unless the opposing army fights in accordance with the war convention.\n\nThe comparison with guerrilla war is worth pursuing further. In an armed insurrection, the coercing and killing of civilians by enemy soldiers has the effect of mobilizing other civilians and bringing them into the insurgent camp. The indiscriminate violence of their opponents is one of the major sources of guerrilla recruitment. Nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, is possible on a significant scale only if civilians are already mobilized and prepared to act together. The resistance is simply the physical expression of that mobilization, directly, in the streets, or indirectly, through economic slowdowns and political passivity. Now the coercion and killing of civilians is likely to break the solidarity of the resistance, spreading terror through the country and eventually producing a dulled acquiescence. At the same time, it may demoralize the soldiers who are called upon to do what appears to them\u2014if it appears to them\u2014indecent work, and it may undercut support for the occupation among the friends and relatives of those soldiers. Guerrilla war can produce a similar demoralization, but the effect is compounded by the fear soldiers must feel in the face of the hostile men and women among whom they are forced to fight (and die). In the case of nonviolent defense, there will be no fear; there will only be disgust and shame. The success of the defense is entirely dependent upon the moral convictions and sensibilities of the enemy soldiers.\n\nNonviolent defense depends upon noncombatant immunity. For this reason, it is no service to the cause to ridicule the rules of war or to insist (as Tolstoy did) that violence is always and necessarily unrestrained. When one wages a \"war without weapons,\" one appeals for restraint from men with weapons. It is not likely that these men, soldiers subject to military discipline, are going to be converted to the creed of nonviolence. Nor is it critical to the success of the \"war\" that they be converted, but only that they be held to their own putative standards. The appeal that is made to them takes this form: \"You cannot shoot at me, because I am not shooting at you; nor am I going to shoot at you. I am your enemy and will remain so as long as you occupy my country. But I am a noncombatant enemy, and you must coerce and control me, if you can, without violence.\" The appeal simply restates the argument about civilian rights and soldierly duties that underlies the war convention and provides its substance. And this suggests that the transformation of war into a political struggle has as its prior condition the restraint of war as a military struggle. If we are to aim at the transformation, as we should, we must begin by insisting upon the rules of war and by holding soldiers rigidly to the norms they set. The restraint of war is the beginning of peace.\nPostscript: A Defense of Just War Theory\n\nIn the years since this book was first published, just war theory has become a minor academic industry; it has proved particularly engaging for contemporary philosophers, though political theorists and legal scholars are also working on the difficult issues of morality and war. The literature seems vast, given what writing on this subject was like in the middle years of the last century. Vietnam is the major reason for the surge of interest, but interest has been sustained by America's subsequent wars, which have been greater in number and longer in duration than anyone expected.\n\nMany recent books and articles are critical of what is called standard (or even orthodox) just war theory, which this book is often taken to represent. I have read some of this literature, but mostly I have listened to the critical arguments at lectures and academic conferences in the United States and abroad\u2014and sometimes I have responded to them. I want to respond here, not to particular philosophers but to the cohort of recent academic writers about war who believe that the distinctiveness of just war theory is unnecessary; war's dilemmas are in no way exceptional; they do not differ from the moral dilemmas of everyday life, and they can be dealt with by the familiar methods of analytic philosophy. What is at issue, in part, is the very subject of the theory. What is just war theory about?\n\nThere are at least two answers to this question, one of which I want to defend as strongly as I can. The first answer is that just war theory is about war, and the second answer is that just war theory is about moral philosophy. The difference is most simply a matter of focus. Toward what issues, what hard questions, what specific circumstances, is the theorist's attention directed? But we might also think of it in a backward looking way. What was the theorist reading before she began writing? And since I bear some small responsibility for the academic industry, I will begin autobiographically, with my own reading matter.\n\nBefore I wrote Just and Unjust Wars, I read some key texts in Catholic moral theology and early international law\u2014Augustine, Aquinas, and Vitoria; Grotius and Puffendorf, and a few others. I read a handful of \u00adnineteenth- and twentieth-century legal textbooks and a couple of contemporary theorists, like Paul Ramsey, the most important Protestant writer on war in the 1950s and 1960s. But the greater part by far of my reading was not in theory at all but in military history, both academic and popular, and then in the memoir literature produced by soldiers of different ranks (preferably the lower ranks: junior officers and foot soldiers, who make the toughest moral decisions on the battlefield); and then in wartime journalism and commentary (especially about Vietnam, the immediate occasion of my own writing). Finally I read many of the novels and poems that deal with the experience of fighting and the company of soldiers. The nontheoretical genres, and the books and articles they include, seemed to me the critically necessary material for my project\u2014partly because I had never been a soldier myself and I needed to learn as much as I could about the experience of war. But I also focused on histories, memoirs, essays, novels, and poems because I wanted the moral arguments of my book to ring true to their authors\u2014and to the men and women about whom they were writing.\n\nLooking over the recent flood of books and articles about justice and injustice in war, I sense that many authors are not reading the way I did. They are preoccupied with the academic literature about moral philosophy and just war theory. They are reading the journals, not the journalists; they are reading each other. This is a common academic practice, but it has always seemed to me problematic\u2014especially when the subject is politics and war.\n\nAfter reading each other, these theorists argue with each other (and sometimes with the rest of us), disagreeing about significant theoretical points and about fine points, too. Some of the disagreements are about ethical issues like self-defense and responsibility\u2014issues that arise not only in wartime but also in civil society in time of peace and in many ordinary domestic contexts. Many of these theorists take the view that issues of this sort can be delineated most clearly and addressed most conclusively in contexts far removed from war and even in hypothetical and elaborately constructed cases that have no historical or practical reference at all. So they have no need to read, say, military history; the debate is focused elsewhere, and all that is necessary is to read the works of the other participants in the debate.\n\nI don't want to deny the possible usefulness of this sort of philosophical labor. Issues that arise in war, but also in other real and imagined contexts, can certainly be addressed, illuminated, and perhaps even resolved, in the other contexts. But I worry that the illuminations and resolutions won't ring true to the people I have always tried to address, for whom war is a primary subject and a personal experience. But how can that be? Surely if we have figured out what personal responsibility (for example) means\u2014in the way that many contemporary philosophers figure things out, by abstracting from particular cases, by inventing examples that test every possible definition, by calling each other to account with increasingly refined examples\u2014then we also know what personal responsibility means in war. There is no point in reading historical analyses of military decisions, or subjective accounts of decision making in the field, or fictional narratives about combat, since none of these are designed for philosophical purposes. What counts is the cleverness of the design and the questions that it highlights and helps us answer.\n\nFor these theorists wars and battles are like street crimes and marital disputes in civil society; they involve the same kind of moral dilemmas. They are \"cases\" to which theorists need to apply the rules of everyday morality. In order to figure out the rules, they may start from the cases, playing with them, changing their details, even inventing possible and impossible variations that test our understanding of the rules as they are, or as they might be, or should be. But these theorists have no commitment to the actual cases until they know the applicable rules, and hypothetical cases will do just as well in figuring things out\u2014perhaps better, since they impose no reality constraints on their designers. Still, all the cases, real and hypothetical, are in some sense familiar, that is, they can be imagined to arise, however improbable they are, in everyday life.\n\nI want to argue, against this view, that wars and battles are not \"cases\" to which the law and morality of everyday life can be applied; by definition, they don't take place in civil society. War is a long-standing human practice (however uncomfortable we are with it), which represents a radical break with our ordinary social activities. The practice of war has been argued about and reflected on over many centuries, and it has its own law and even its own morality\u2014which have been produced through the adaptation of ordinary law and morality to the peculiar circumstances of war. If we want to understand why that adaptation was necessary and what it has produced, we need to turn first to war itself. We need to understand what wars and battles are, how they have been experienced over the years, and how their moral and legal rules have been worked out. That's the point of reading military history and soldiers' memoirs. Only then can we turn to particular wars, particular battles, and particular incidents in battles; only then do we have cases to which we can apply the rules and come to grips with the peculiar tensions to which these applications are subject. And then, finally, we will be in a position to argue for or against revisions of the rules. We can learn a lot about the rules and the tensions and the possibly necessary revisions by reading what earlier international lawyers and just war theorists have written, but some of their key arguments will seem strange or incomprehensible unless we begin with the literature of war itself.\n\nIt is especially strange that just war theory, in its standard form, requires us to judge the conduct of a war independently of our judgment of its character, so that what soldiers are permitted to do or barred from doing in battle doesn't depend on whether their war is just or not. I am going to focus here on this strange requirement, which lies at the center of contemporary philosophical debates. What the required independence of the two judgments means is that we grant soldiers on both sides, whether their cause is just or unjust, an equal right to fire their guns, so long as they aim only at each other and not at innocent civilians. We treat soldiers on the battlefield as moral equals. Many (it may be most) of the philosophers working on these issues today are highly critical of this equality, and of the separation of ad bellum justice from in bello justice. They think it is obviously wrong to judge soldiers by how well they fight, without reference to the rightness or wrongness of the war they are fighting. They want soldiers fighting a just war to be able to do things, like firing their guns, that soldiers fighting an unjust war are barred from doing. And their argument makes a lot of sense if, as I wrote about one of them, we imagine war to be a peacetime activity. Indeed, standard just war theory is untenable if we take wars and battles to be like street crimes and marital disputes.\n\nWe need an example here, not hypothetical, so let's compare aggressive war to a bank robbery in, say, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Let Philadelphia represent a peaceful civil society. We would certainly not judge the conduct of the robbery independently of the wrongfulness of robbing banks, as if the wrong didn't make a difference. It does make a difference. If there is a shoot-out between the bank robber and a bank guard, it can't be the case that the two of them have an equal right to shoot so long as neither of them aims at innocent bystanders. Though they are both subject to moral constraints, the guard has rights that the robber obviously doesn't have. So, by analogy, shouldn't we say that the just warrior, defending his country, has rights that the unjust warrior, invading the country, doesn't have?\n\nThis is the central challenge (though there are others, related to this one) posed by many contemporary moral philosophers to the standard or orthodox theory of just war\u2014the theory that I have tried to develop and defend. According to the standard theory, aggressive war is indeed a crime, but it isn't the crime of the ordinary soldiers who fight it. The criminals are the men and women, mostly men, the political and military leaders, who consult together and decide, let's say, to attack a neighboring country. The Nuremberg tribunal got it right, then, when it indicted the heads of the Nazi party, state, and army, and allowed ordinary German soldiers to go home. But how can these soldiers be guiltless, who marched into Poland, Russia, Belgium, France, and so many other countries? To answer that question (which I have now put in the strongest possible way), we must focus on what actually happens in the world of war. For this is a world where life is radically unlike life in Philadelphia or in any peaceful civil society, even one beset by armed and possibly violent bank robbers.\n\nWhat is special, what is peculiar, about war? I have a short list of features that moral and political theorists, philosophers too, should attend to\u2014a list that could be expanded. It is designed only to serve the immediate purposes of my argument here.\n\nFirst, the circumstances of war are intensely coercive, and they are coercive in ways that are probably not equaled anywhere else. Slavery and imprisonment are highly coercive institutions, and conscription for military service is sometimes compared to them (by its opponents). The comparison can be useful in political debates, though it is greatly exaggerated. But it is hard to exaggerate the coerciveness of the battlefield, where life is always at risk and soldiers are compelled to act in ways that have no precedent in their own, or in any, civilian experience. Command decisions are also subject to the coerciveness of war\u2014hence the claim of \"military necessity.\" Moral theorists who try to set limits to that claim, as I tried to do in Just and Unjust Wars, must acknowledge its possible force. In the heat of battle, officers are driven to do cruel things, which they would never imagine doing in domestic society, by the belief that they have no alternative or, rather, that the only alternative is defeat\u2014which they take to mean subjection and possibly death, not so much for themselves as for their country and their fellow citizens. If we want, sometimes, to challenge that belief, we must understand the circumstances that produce it.\n\nSome of the legal and moral institutions of war acknowledge and even legitimize its coerciveness. Consider the prisoner of war convention (I will repeat here an argument I make in chapter 3), which makes the practice of individual or group surrender on the battlefield possible. Surrender is an implicit agreement: the surrendering soldier, threatened with death, agrees to give up fighting, and his captors agree, whether they think his war just or unjust, to provide him with what lawyers call \"benevolent quarantine for the duration of the war.\" But this is an agreement that the captive has made under extreme duress, and according to the ordinary law and morality of domestic life, it cannot have any binding force. And yet we recognize and accept its binding force, so that soldiers who try to escape from a prisoner of war camp are treated as if they have broken their word and thereby acted contrary to the law and morality of war; they are subject to punishment, even to capital punishment. I suppose one could argue that in the \"original position,\" as it is described by John Rawls, all potential soldiers would agree to the prisoner of war convention and that this hypothetical consent gives it binding force. But then we would have to explain why many prisoners try to escape and rejoin the fighting and why we celebrate their efforts\u2014why they are commonly described as heroes in books and films when they might plausibly be described as men who have broken their (hypothetical or tacit) promise and put a useful and humane convention at risk.\n\nThe coerciveness of war explains the prisoner of war convention, for there is no other way to allow soldiers to stop fighting without being killed. But there is a second feature of war that explains why some soldiers violate the convention and why we call them heroes.\n\nSecond, war is an intensely collective and collectivizing experience. When political or moral theorists talk about war, and especially about just war, they commonly begin with the right of individual self-defense. But this is only a bare beginning, and as an introduction to the understanding of warfare, it is somewhat misleading. Wars are fought by individuals, indeed, but not by individuals who are principally engaged in defending themselves. They are members of a collective, to which they attach value, often great value, and they are engaged in a project that is not merely their own. Most often the collective is a state, but it can also be a militant organization that functions like a state: it recruits fighters for a cause, trains and organizes them, and sends them into battle. The cause of many militant organizations is to establish a state; the cause for which states organize armies is to defend their own existence and the common life and individual lives of their citizens.\n\nIt is a fact of our moral history that many individuals are willing to risk their lives for these causes. This is not easy to understand. If states exist primarily to defend life, then how can life be sacrificed to defend the state? That is the question posed most clearly in the political theory of Thomas Hobbes, to which he offered no satisfactory answer. And in fact the defense of the state (and the pursuit of the cause of any militant organization) not only requires the defenders to put their own lives at risk but also requires them to put the lives of many other people at risk\u2014the fighters they oppose, most obviously, but also the civilians they and their opponents claim to be defending. Some philosophers, working upward, so to speak, from individual self-defense, doubt that any of this can be justified. The value of my life, or yours, may justify violent self-defense, but it is hard for these philosophers to understand how any collective could have that kind of value.\n\nThey have not, however, succeeded in convincing the rest of us. Patriotism and loyalty are, no doubt, often misguided, but they shouldn't be incomprehensible. Collectives like the state (or the army of the state) are indeed instrumental; they have no intrinsic value. But they make possible, and then they defend, another collective, a community whose existence is of centrally important value to (most of) its members. This value has many sources: history and memory, traditions of belief and practice, a culture of political engagement, the continuity of families, the sense of place, the immediacy of a way of life. When these seem to be in danger, many of us will risk our lives in their defense. Even in ordinary times, we are, all of us, collectivists of some sort\u2014on behalf of our families, or religious communities, or nations, or nation-states. But this is a fairly weak collectivism, which only sometimes wins out over individual self-interest. The acceptance of martyrdom in a time of religious persecution is the chief example of this kind of victory. Persecution creates conditions something like those experienced in a nation under attack, when the sense of danger intensifies our collectivist sensibilities, our patriotism and loyalty. And then the defense of the common life\u2014and of the necessary agencies of that defense, like states and armies\u2014regularly trumps the defense of the self. That is why captured soldiers will sometimes try to escape from the prisoner of war camp: they want to resume the fighting (and they are willing to accept the risks of doing that) because they think that the victory of their nation or the success of their cause is critically important.\n\nThe intensified collectivism of war also intensifies the coerciveness of war. In some wars, soldiers fight because they have been impressed or conscripted. But when the common life is in danger or when people think it is in danger, citizens will rush to enlist in the army. We call them volunteers, but they are probably acting under very strong social pressure and also under the pressure of their own consciences\u2014where conscience means what the word suggests: the knowledge they share with God, in the original religious formulation, or the knowledge they share with other members of their community, in secular understandings. In wartime, and commonly in both the religious and secular versions, what young men and women know is that they ought to volunteer (conscientious objection is exceptional even when it is permitted). This is collectivized knowledge, and it provides a powerful push toward what is only in a highly qualified sense a \"voluntary\" enlistment.\n\nOnce you are in the army, you are a member of a very strong collective of combatants, and all the people you leave behind are members of another strong collective, the civilian population. These memberships are matters of life and death\u2014hence they are \"strong\" in ways that no other memberships, no peacetime memberships, can ever be. I may be a committed professional, a lawyer, doctor, or teacher; I may be a devout member of a religious community, or a political party activist, or a class-conscious worker, but none of these affiliations, though they are undoubtedly very important, is collectivized in as radical a way as combatants and noncombatants are, where being a member determines whether you can, or cannot, be targeted and killed. Perhaps there are soldiers who, given the morality of everyday life, don't deserve to be targeted (they are against the war; they shoot their guns in the air), perhaps there are civilians who do deserve to be targeted (they are fierce and uncompromising hawks). In the circumstances of war, we cannot make these distinctions.\n\nThe moral equality of soldiers finds its parallel in the moral equality of civilians. Individuals are incorporated into both these collectives without regard to their personal moral standing. By contrast, in peacetime civil society, life and death decisions are made, in hospitals and courtrooms, for example, with careful attention to individual cases. Soldiers may receive that kind of attention after the war, if they are tried for war crimes. But when the two armies are engaged, and civilians are radically at risk, individual attentiveness isn't possible. We fight with soldiers; we don't fight with civilians.\n\nThe collectivism of war extends, so to speak, all the way down. It would be wrong to think of a battle as a series of encounters between individual soldiers. War is often chaotic, and soldiers are sometimes cut off from their units, forced to fight on their own, thinking at that moment only of their own survival. But battles commonly are collective engagements, shaped by a strategic plan and then by the tactical decisions of field commanders, which are enforced by rigorous military discipline. Soldiers fight together, helping each other, hoping to survive but aiming at a local victory: a target destroyed, a hill captured, a road opened, an enemy battalion outflanked or surrounded. The local victory has value only as a part of some larger scheme, but if that value is real to the soldiers involved, it justifies the risks they take, and it may justify (as self-defense would not) the risks they impose on nearby civilians. Soldiers make individual decisions about the risks they take and the risks they impose, but they make these decisions in the context of the collectivism (and the coerciveness) of war.\n\nNo one reading the literature of war can miss the sense of its strangeness\u2014and its awfulness. To be forced to risk your life, again and again, for collective purposes: this is not what anyone wants for himself or for the people he cares about. He may think that it is important to fight (it sometimes is); he may even think that the cause is worth dying for (it sometimes is), but he would rather be doing something else. The sense that many soldiers have of being radically committed and of wishing so strongly that they weren't\u2014that too probably finds no easy equivalent in ordinary life. And this internally contradictory but emotionally powerful sense is common to soldiers on both sides of the battle. Indeed, soldiers on both sides recognize, if only intermittently, the feelings they share; they see themselves in the others.\n\nPerhaps one can construct hypothetical cases that reproduce this feature, or other features, of wartime experience, though I doubt that cases taken from civil society (the bank robber and the bank guard, for example) or any of the hypothetical and constructed cases (variations on the famous trolley car story, say) actually get close enough. And I worry that theorists who focus on these kinds of cases aren't thinking about war at all. They are not interested, or not sufficiently interested, in what actually happens on the battlefield and what it feels like to be there.\n\nThird, war is a world of radical and pervasive uncertainty. The outcome of skirmishes and battles is hard to predict; the life chances of any particular soldier change from minute to minute; the knowledge available to officers making decisions is painfully limited. These physical and factual uncertainties probably can't be matched in ordinary civilian life, and they exist alongside moral uncertainties that almost certainly can't be matched. Most often in civilian life we have a fairly good idea about what ought to be done or about who can tell us what ought to be done. Moral practice has a certain habitual quality, and moral and legal authority is routinized. But in the anarchic society of states, which is also the world of war, both morality and authority are radically contested.\n\nThis doesn't mean that individual soldiers and groups of soldiers won't be convinced of the justice of their cause; they will be convinced, or most of them will, with whatever lingering anxieties. The soldiers of country A will follow the lead of their parents and peers, of their teachers and preachers, and of their prime ministers and presidents (this is another example of the collectivizing tendency of warfare). The difficulty is that all these people, from parents to presidents, exist in two entirely separate sets. And the soldiers from country B, opponents of country A, will be equally convinced, and some of them similarly anxious; they will be following the same leads. And there is no one in the world, literally no one, to whom these two groups of soldiers can turn for impartial and authoritative guidance. Uncertainty exists, so to speak, at the highest level. In international society, there are virtually no cases where warring states, and the neutral states watching them, agree on a single moral, political, or military description of the war; nor is there any routine way of appealing from this or that description to some ultimate judge. Wars end, one way or another, but disagreement doesn't. The moral contests outlast the battles\u2014as we can see if we compare the history books produced for state schools in the victorious and in the defeated country.\n\nBut what if a particular soldier knows that the war his country is fighting is unjust? Or what if the rest of us know that and think he should know it too? How can he fight in such a war? How can anyone fighting unjustly claim a right to kill his opponents, who are fighting justly? These are rhetorical questions; they are commonly asked by philosophers who insist that jus ad bellum determines jus in bello\u2014or, at least, that the two can't be independent of each other\u2014and who further insist that they know which of the warring states has ad bellum justice on its side. Reflecting on the certainty that, it seems to me, underlies these questions, I am reminded of Oliver Cromwell's response to similar certainties among Puritan ministers during the English Revolution: \"Think ye in the bowels of Christ, that ye may be wrong!\" That's not where I think, but I take the point. Given the circumstances of war, soldiers have a right to be wrong, and they have a right to think that they may be wrong and to defer to the decisions of (let's say) their democratically elected leaders. They also have a right to think that though they should oppose the war as citizens, they are bound to fight it as soldiers\u2014because there are many states that would not survive for long in the world of war, in international society as it exists today, without a disciplined army. And, finally, soldiers have a right to refuse to fight in a war they believe to be unjust; in cases like the Nazi war effort with which I began this argument, refusal is certainly the best response. But it is an act of heroism, and it can't be morally required; unheroic conduct isn't criminal conduct.\n\nBut mostly soldiers sincerely believe that their war is just, for reasons that seem sufficient to them, and this belief gives a certain shape to their battles, which are fought between soldiers certain of their cause in a world where all causes are uncertain. I am not making a relativist argument here; I have argued over many years that (most) wars, on one side or the other, are objectively just or unjust. But this objectivity has no political or judicial embodiment. There is no agent of objectivity. And that is one reason for the deep principle of (standard, orthodox) just war theory: that soldiers have an equal right to fight, whether their cause is, or isn't, objectively just. Soldiers on both sides have exactly the same rights and obligations. If they are captured, they must be treated similarly and equally, that is, in accordance with the (morally strange) prisoner of war convention. And after the war, they should be encouraged and helped in exactly the same way to go home and resume their civilian existence.\n\nIn fact, all the special features of the world of war conspire to produce this principle of warrior equality, which obviously has no domestic equivalent (again: bank robbers and bank guards are not equals, even if the bank turns into a battlefield). The different forms of wartime coerciveness\u2014social pressure, conscription, army discipline, military necessity\u2014impact the soldiers on both sides in roughly the same way. The heightened sense of collective belonging and commitment is felt in similar ways by all of them. And they all live with the same uncertainties.\n\nIf we want to constrain the conduct of soldiers on the battlefield, we must recognize these similarities. We must insist that all soldiers, whether they think their cause is just or unjust, and whether we think their cause is just or unjust, have the same rights and, what is even more important, the same obligations. No group of soldiers, claiming to be just warriors, can arrogate to themselves rights they deny to others or claim exemption from everyone else's obligations\u2014for if that is allowed and justified, there will soon be no constraints at all.\n\nThe moral equality of soldiers is perhaps the strangest rule of war. But philosophers who deny its morality seem to me to miss the force of that preposition: \"rule of war.\" To understand the rule, you have to take an interest not only in moral theory, which accounts for the strangeness of the rule, but in war itself, which accounts for the existence of the rule.\nNotes\n\nPreface to the First Edition\n\n. The most concise and forceful exposition of these reasons is Stanley Hoffmann, \"International Law and the Control of Force,\" in The Relevance of International Law, ed. Karl Deutsch and Stanley Hoffmann (New York, 1971), pp. 34\u201366. Given the present state of the law, I have most often cited positivists of an earlier age, especially W. E. Hall, John Westlake, and J. M. Spaight.\n\n. The pioneering work of this sort is Myres S. McDougal and Florentino P. Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order (New Haven, 1961).\n\n. For a useful study of these writers, see James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200\u20131740 (Princeton, 1975).\n\n1 Against \"Realism\"\n\n. This and subsequent quotations are from Hobbes' Thucydides, ed. Richard Schlatter (New Brunswick, N.J., 1975), pp. 377\u201385 (The History of the Peloponnesian War, 5: 84\u2013116).\n\n. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Thucydides, trans. W. Kendrick Pritchett (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 31\u201333.\n\n. See F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London, 1907), esp. ch. XIII.\n\n. The Trojan Women, trans. Gilbert Murray (London, 1905), p. 16.\n\n. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York, 1939), I, 402.\n\n. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, second ed., rev. Sir Ernest Gowers (New York, 1965), p. 168; cf. Jaeger, I, 397.\n\n. Plutarch's Lives, trans. John Dryden, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (London, 1910), I, 303. Alcibiades also \"selected for himself one of the captive Melian women. . . . \"\n\n. Hobbes' Thucydides, pp. 194\u2013204 (The History of the Peloponnesian War, 3:36\u201349).\n\n. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. IV.\n\n. The Charterhouse of Parma, I, chs. 3 and 4; J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World (n.p., 1955), II, ch. 15.\n\n. C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), p. 137.\n\n. Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, excerpted in William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry V (Signet Classics, New York, 1965), p. 197.\n\n. Henry V, 4:7, ll. 1\u201311.\n\n. David Hume, The History of England (Boston, 1854), II, 358.\n\n. Ren\u00e9 de Belleval, Azincourt (Paris, 1865), pp. 105\u201306.\n\n. See the summary of opinions in J. H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth (Cambridge, England, 1919), II, 171ff.\n\n. For an excellent and detailed account, which suggests that Henry's action cannot be defended, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York, 1976), pp. 107\u201312.\n\n2 The Crime of War\n\n. Clausewitz should now be read in the new translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, On War (Princeton, 1976). But this book appeared after my own work was finished; I have quoted Clausewitz from a graceful, though abridged version by Edward M. Collins, War, Politics, and Power (Chicago, 1962), p. 65. Cf. Howard and Paret, p. 76.\n\n. Press conference, January 12, 1955.\n\n. Clausewitz, p. 64. Cf. Howard and Paret, pp. 75\u201376.\n\n. Clausewitz, pp. 72, 204. Cf. Howard and Paret, pp. 81, 581.\n\n. John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive: Four Lectures on Industry and War (New York, 1874), pp. 90\u201391.\n\n. Wilfred Owen, \"Anthem for Doomed Youth,\" in Collected Poems, ed. C. Day Lewis (New York, 1965), p. 44.\n\n. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. XXI. For a description of primitive warfare of this sort, see Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider, Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age (New York, 1968), ch. 6.\n\n. Quoted in J. F. C. Fuller, The Conduct of War, 1789\u20131961 (n.p., 1968), p. 16.\n\n. Machiavelli, History of Florence (New York, 1960), Bk. IV, ch. I, p. 164.\n\n. Ruskin, p. 92.\n\n. War and Peace, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, n.d.), Part Two, III, p. 111.\n\n. \"A Terre,\" Collected Poems, p. 64.\n\n. Fuller, Conduct of War, p. 35.\n\n. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, \"The Induction,\" Works, ed. R. W. Sackville-\u00adWest (London, 1859), p. 115.\n\n. This and the following quotations are from William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (New York, 1875), pp. 119\u201320.\n\n3 The Rules of War\n\n. Louis Simpson, \"The Ash and the Oak,\" Good News of Death and Other Poems, in Poets of Today II (New York, 1955), p. 162.\n\n. See for example, Fuller, Conduct of War, ch. II (\"The Rebirth of Total War\").\n\n. Edward Rickenbacker's Fighting the Flying Circus (New York, 1919) is a lively (and typical) account of the chivalry of the air. In 1918, Rickenbacker wrote in his flight diary: \"Resolved today that . . . I will never shoot at a Hun who is at a disadvantage . . .\" (p. 338). For a general account, see Frederick Oughton, The Aces (New York, 1960).\n\n. Quoted in Desmond Young, Rommel: The Desert Fox (New York, 1958), p. 137.\n\n. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York, 1948), pp. 156\u201357.\n\n. Ronald Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander (New York, 1970), pp. 294, 311. See also Young, pp. 130\u201332.\n\n. Quoted in Robert W. Tucker, The Law of War and Neutrality at Sea (Washington, D.C. 1957), p. 6n. Tucker's discussion of the legal issues is very useful; see also H. Lauterpacht, \"The Limits of the Operation of the Law of War,\" in 30 British Yearbook of International Law (1953).\n\n. Henry V, 4:1, ll. 132\u201335.\n\n. Francisco de Vitoria, De Indis et De Iure Belli Relationes, ed. Ernest Nys (Washington, D.C., 1917): On the Law of War, trans. John Pawley Bate, p. 176.\n\n. Randall Jarrell, \"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,\" in The Complete Poems (New York, 1969), p. 144.\n\n. See below, ch. 18. For a historical account of these issues, see C. A. Pompe, Aggressive War: An International Crime (The Hague, 1953).\n\n. Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago, 1942), I, 8.\n\n. Gardner and Heider, Gardens of War, p. 139.\n\n. First Samuel, 17:32.\n\n. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston, 1955), p. 92.\n\n. War and Peace, Part Ten, XXV, p. 725.\n\n. For a discussion of this agreement, see my essay \"Prisoners of War: Does the Fight Continue After the Battle?\" in Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).\n\n. Moltke in Seinen Briefen (Berlin, 1902), p. 253. The letter is addressed to J. C. Bluntschli, a noted scholar of international law.\n\n4 Law and Order in International Society\n\n. Henry V, 1:2, ll. 24\u201328.\n\n. The judges distinguished \"aggressive acts\" from \"aggressive wars,\" but then used the first of these as the generic term: see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgment (Washington, D.C., 1947), p. 16.\n\n. Quoted in Michael Howard, \"War as an Instrument of Policy,\" in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 199. Cf. On War, trans. Howard and Paret, p. 370.\n\n. John Westlake, Collected Papers, ed. L. Oppenheim (Cambridge, England, 1914), p. 78.\n\n. See Ruth Putnam, Alsace and Lorraine from Caesar to Kaiser: 58 B.C.\u20131871 A.D. (New York, 1915).\n\n. Henry Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics (London, 1891), pp. 268, 287.\n\n. Leviathan, ch. 30.\n\n. Leviathan, ch. 15.\n\n. For a critique of this analogy, see the two essays by Hedley Bull, \"Society and Anarchy in International Relations,\" and \"The Grotian Conception of International Society,\" in Diplomatic Investigations, chs. 2 and 3.\n\n. See Vitoria, On the Law of War, p. 177.\n\n. Lenin, Socialism and War (London, 1940), pp. 10\u201311.\n\n. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1966), p. xi.\n\n. It is worth noting that the United Nations' recently adopted definition of aggression closely follows the paradigm: see the Report of the Special Committee on the Question of Defining Aggression (1974), General Assembly Official Records, 29th session, supplement no. 19 (A\/9619), pp. 10\u201313. The definition is reprinted and analyzed in Yehuda Melzer, Concepts of Just War (Leyden, 1975), pp. 26ff.\n\n. On the Law of War, p. 170.\n\n. See L. Oppenheim, International Law, vol. II, War and Neutrality (London, 1906), pp. 55ff.\n\n. C. A. Pompe, Aggressive War, p. 152.\n\n. Quoted in Pompe, p. 152.\n\n. Quoted in Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 438.\n\n. Minutes of the General Council of the First International: 1870\u20131871 (Moscow, n.d.), p. 57.\n\n. Roger Morgan, The German Social-Democrats and the First International: 1864\u20131872 (Cambridge, England, 1965), p. 206.\n\n. \"First Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on the Franco-Prussian War,\" in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1951), I, 443.\n\n. \"Second Address . . . ,\" Selected Works, I, 449 (Marx's italics).\n\n. Selected Works, I, 441.\n\n. See the arguments made by Churchill at the time: The Gathering Storm (New York, 1961), chs. 17 and 18; also Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (London, 1963). For a recent scholarly reappraisal somewhat more sympathetic to Chamberlain, see Keith Robbins, Munich: 1938 (London, 1968).\n\n. Gerald Vann, Morality and War (London, 1939).\n\n. Max Jakobson, The Diplomacy of the Winter War (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 117.\n\n. Jacobson reports an admission by the Swedish prime minister that had Sweden been publicly committed to assist Finland in the autumn of 1939, the Soviet Union would probably not have attacked (p. 237).\n\n5 Anticipations\n\n. D. W. Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law (New York, 1958), p. 59. My own position has been influenced by Julius Stone's critique of the legalist argument: Aggression and World Order (Berkeley, 1968).\n\n. Quoted from the Annual Register, in H. Butterfield, \"The Balance of Power,\" Diplomatic Investigations, pp. 144\u201345.\n\n. Francis Bacon, Essays (\"Of Empire\"); see also his treatise Considerations Touching a War with Spain (1624), in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding et al. (London, 1874), XIV, pp. 469\u2013505.\n\n. Oxford English Dictionary, \"threaten.\"\n\n. M. D. Vattel, The Law of Nations (Northampton, Mass., 1805), Bk. III, ch. III, paras. 42\u201344, pp. 357\u201378. Cf. John Westlake, Chapters on the Principles of International Law (Cambridge, England, 1894), p. 120.\n\n. Jonathan Swift, The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War (1711), in Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott (London, 1901), V, 116.\n\n. As late as the eighteenth century, Vattel still argued that a prince \"has a right to demand, even by force of arms, the reparation of an insult.\" Law of Nations, Bk. II, ch. IV, para. 48, p. 216.\n\n. Compare the argument of Hugo Grotius: \"The danger . . . must be immediate and imminent in point of time. I admit, to be sure, that if the assailant seizes weapons in such a way that his intent to kill is manifest, the crime can be forestalled; for in morals as in material things a point is not to be found which does not have a certain breadth.\" The Law of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (Indianapolis, n.d.), Bk. II, ch. I, section V, p. 173.\n\n. Walter Laquer, The Road to War: The Origin and Aftermath of the Arab-\u00adIsraeli Conflict, 1967\u20138 (Baltimore, 1969), p. 110.\n\n. Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army (New York, 1975), p. 212.\n\n. Luttwak and Horowitz, p. 224.\n\n6 Interventions\n\n. \"A Few Words on Non-Intervention\" in J. S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (New York, 1873), III, 238\u201363.\n\n. See Irving Howe, ed., The Basic Writings of Trotsky (New York, 1963), p. 397.\n\n. John Norton Moore, \"International Law and the United States' Role in Vietnam: A Reply,\" in R. Falk, ed., The Vietnam War and International Law (Princeton, 1968), p. 431. Moore addresses himself specifically to the argument of W. E. Hall, International Law (5th ed., Oxford, 1994), pp. 289\u201390, but Hall follows Mill closely.\n\n. For a brief survey, see Jean Sigmann, 1848: The Romantic and Democratic Revolutions in Europe, trans. L. F. Edwards (New York, 1973), ch. 10.\n\n. Charles Sproxton, Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution (Cambridge, 1919), p. 48.\n\n. \"Non-Intervention,\" pp. 261\u201362.\n\n. See S. French and A. Gutman, \"The Principle of National Self-\u00addetermination,\" in Held, Morgenbesser, and Nagel, eds., Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs (New York, 1974), pp. 138\u201353.\n\n. This is the general position of R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and World Order (Princeton, 1974), esp. ch. 9.\n\n. Sproxton, p. 109.\n\n. See, for example, Hall, International Law, p. 293.\n\n. \"On the Principle of Non-Intervention\" (Oxford, 1860), p. 21.\n\n. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (New York, 1961), chs. 31, 40, 48, 58; Norman J. Padelford, International Law and Diplomacy in the Spanish Civil Strife (New York, 1939) is an incredibly na\u00efve defense of the nonintervention agreements.\n\n. A useful statement of this position can be found in the essay by John Norton Moore already cited; see note 3 above. For an example of the official view, see Leonard Meeker, \"Vietnam and the International Law of Self-Defense\" in the same volume, pp. 318\u201332.\n\n. I shall follow the account of G. M. Kahin and John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam (New York, 1967).\n\n. \"On the Principle of Non-Intervention,\" p. 16.\n\n. See Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), ch. 6.\n\n. Kahin and Lewis, p. 146.\n\n. Ellery C. Stowell suggests some possible examples in Intervention in International Law (Washington, D.C., 1921), ch. II. For contemporary legal views (and newer examples), see Richard Lillich, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations (Charlottesville, Va., 1973).\n\n. Quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism (New York, 1972), I, 111.\n\n. Quoted in Stowell, p. 122n.\n\n. See, for example, Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898 (Baltimore, 1936) and Walter La Feber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion (Ithaca, 1963); also Foner, I, ch. XIV.\n\n. Foner, I, ch. XIII.\n\n. F. E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: Diplomacy (New York, 1909), pp. 586\u201387. These lines are the epigraph to Walter Millis' account of the war: The Martial Spirit (n.p., 1931).\n\n. Millis, p. 404; it should be noted that Millis also writes of the American decision to go to war: \"Seldom can history have recorded a plainer case of military aggression . . .\" (p. 160).\n\n. For a contemporary account by a British journalist, see David Loshak, Pakistan Crisis (London, 1971).\n\n. John Westlake, International Law, vol. I, Peace (2nd ed., Cambridge 1910), pp. 319\u201320.\n\n. Thomas M. Franck and Nigel S. Rodley, \"After Bangladesh: The Law of Humanitarian Intervention by Military Force,\" 67 American Journal of International Law 304 (1973).\n\n. Julius Stone, Aggression and World Order, pp. 99.\n\n7 War's Ends, and the Importance of Winning\n\n. \"The Range in the Desert,\" The Complete Poems, p. 176.\n\n. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (2nd rev. ed., New York, 1974), p. 339: Liddell Hart himself holds a different, and a much more sophisticated, position.\n\n. War, Politics and Power, p. 233; cf. the new translation of Howard and Paret, p. 595.\n\n. The work of Reinhold Niebuhr was the major inspiration of this group, Hans Morganthau its most systematic theorist. For works more immediately relevant to my purposes in this chapter, see George Kennan, American Diplomacy: 1900\u20131950 (Chicago, 1951); John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); Paul Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat (New York, 1964). For a useful critique of the \"realists,\" see Charles Frankel, Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy Association Headline Series, no. 224 (1975).\n\n. Spanier, p. 5.\n\n. Kecskemeti, pp. 25\u201326.\n\n. On the connection between Wilson's \"world view\" and his desire for a compromise peace, see N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1970), pp. 43, 52ff.\n\n. The Hinge of Fate (New York, 1962), p. 600.\n\n. Kecskemeti, pp. 217, 241.\n\n. Hinge of Fate, p. 600; see also Churchill's cabinet memorandum of January 14, 1944, p. 599.\n\n. American Diplomacy, pp. 87\u201388.\n\n. Robert Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (Philadelphia, 1854), I, 315.\n\n. Kecskemeti, p. 219.\n\n. See Raymond G. O'Connor, Diplomacy for Victory: FDR and Unconditional Surrender (New York, 1971).\n\n. Kecskemeti, p. 240.\n\n. For a general view of punishment as public condemnation, see \"The Expressive Function of Punishment,\" in Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton, 1970), ch. 5.\n\n. Glen D. Paige, The Korean Decision (New York, 1968), pp. 218\u201319.\n\n. Strategy, p. 355.\n\n. Quoted in Spanier, p. 88.\n\n. Quoted in David Rees, Korea: The Limited War (Baltimore, 1970), p. 101.\n\n. Concepts of Just War, pp. 170\u201371.\n\n. Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 338.\n\n. Hume, Theory of Politics, ed. Frederick Watkins (Edinburgh, 1951), pp. 190\u201391.\n\n8 War's Means and the Importance of Fighting Well\n\n. Elements of Politics, pp. 253\u201354.\n\n. Elements of Politics, p. 254; for a contemporary statement from a roughly similar point of view, see R. B. Brandt, \"Utilitarianism and the Rules of War,\" 1 Philosophy and Public Affairs 145\u201365 (1972).\n\n. Byron Farwell, The Great Anglo-Boer War (New York, 1976), p. 209.\n\n. The Law of Land Welfare, U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual FM 27\u201310 (1956), para. 3. See the discussion of this provision in Telford Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam (Chicago, 1970), pp. 34\u201336, and Marshall Cohen, \"Morality and the Laws of War,\" Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs, pp. 72ff.\n\n. Elements of Politics, p. 264.\n\n. For an example of the \"morality\" of the feud, see Margaret Hasluck, \"The Albanian Blood Feud,\" in Paul Bohannan, Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict (New York, 1967), pp. 381\u2013408.\n\n. The story is told in Ignazio Silone, \"Reflections on the Welfare State,\" 8 Dissent 189 (1961); De Sica's film Two Women is based on an incident from this period in Italian history.\n\n. On the Law of War, pp. 184\u201385.\n\n. Deuteronomy 21:10\u201314. This passage is ignored in Susan Brownmiller's analysis of the \"true Hebraic concept . . . of rape\" in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York, 1975), pp. 19\u201323.\n\n. See, for example, McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 42 and passim.\n\n9 Noncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity\n\n. S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire (New York, 1966), chs. 5 and 6.\n\n. Wilfred Owen, Collected Letters, ed. Harold Owen and John Bell (London, 1967), p. 458 (14 May 1917).\n\n. Good-bye to All That (rev. ed., New York, 1957), p. 132.\n\n. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York, 1968), II, 254.\n\n. The Fortress: A Diary of Anzio and After (Hammondsworth, 1958), p. 21.\n\n. Sardinian Brigade: A Memoir of World War I, trans. Marion Rawson (New York, 1970), pp. 166\u201371.\n\n. Archibald Forbes, quoted in J. M. Spaight, War Rights on Land (London, 1911), p. 104.\n\n. Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Orders 100, April, 1863 (Washington, 1898), Article 69.\n\n. M. Greenspan, The Modern Law of Land Warfare (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 313\u201314.\n\n. G. E. M. Anscombe, Mr. Truman's Degree (privately printed, 1958), p. 7; see also \"War and Murder\" in Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience, ed. Walter Stein (London, 1963).\n\n. See Sir Frederick Smith, The Destruction of Merchant Ships under International Law (London, 1917) and Tucker, Law of War and Neutrality at Sea.\n\n. H. A. Smith, Law and Custom of the Sea (London, 1950), p. 123.\n\n. Tucker, p. 72.\n\n. Tucker, p. 67.\n\n. Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, trans. K. H. Stevens (London, 1959), p. 261.\n\n. The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17 (New York, n.d.), p. 157; for other examples, see pp. 145, 192\u201393.\n\n. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgment, p. 140.\n\n. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 259.\n\n. Old Soldiers Never Die (New York, 1966), p. 198.\n\n. Kenneth Dougherty, General Ethics: An Introduction to the Basic Principles of the Moral Life According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Peekskill, N.Y., 1959), p. 64.\n\n. Dougherty, pp. 65\u201366; cf. John C. Ford, S. J. \"The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,\" in War and Morality, ed. Richard Wasserstrom (Belmont, Calif., 1970). I cannot make any effort here to review the philosophical controversies over double effect. Dougherty provides a (very simple) text book description, Ford a careful (and courageous) application.\n\n. For a philosophical version of the argument that it cannot make a difference whether the killing of innocent people is direct or indirect, see Jonathan Bennett, \"Whatever the Consequences,\" Ethics, ed. Judith Jarvis Thomson and Gerald Dworkin (New York, 1968).\n\n. Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea (London, 1951), pp. 54, 142\u201343.\n\n. I have been helped in thinking about these questions by Charles Fried's discussion of \"Imposing Risks on Others,\" An Anatomy of Values: Problems of Personal and Social Choice (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), ch. XI.\n\n. Quoted from the published text of Marcel Ophuls' documentary film, The Sorrow and the Pity (New York, 1972), p. 131.\n\n. Thomas Gallagher, Assault in Norway (New York, 1975), pp. 19\u201320, 50.\n\n10 War Against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades\n\n. The Works of Josephus, trans. Tho. Lodge (London, 1620): The Wars of the Jews, Bk. VI, ch. XIV, p. 721.\n\n. See, for example, Elena Skrjabina's remarkable memoir, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader (Carbonville, Ill., 1971).\n\n. Charles Chaney Hyde, International Law (2nd rev. ed., Boston, 1945), III, 1802.\n\n. The Works, p. 722.\n\n. M. H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), p. 128, for an account of aristocratic obligations in such cases.\n\n. The Art of War, trans. Ellis Fameworth, rev. with an intro. by Neal Wood (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 193.\n\n. Spaight's discussion is the best: War Rights, pp. 174ff.\n\n. The Works, p. 718.\n\n. I shall follow the account of Leon Goure, The Siege of Leningrad (Stanford, 1962).\n\n. Goure, p. 141; Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (Washington, D.C., 1950), XI, 563.\n\n. The citation is from Hyde, International Law, III, 1802\u201303.\n\n. Spaight, pp. 174ff.\n\n. Spaight, pp. 177\u201378.\n\n. Hall, International Law, p. 398.\n\n. The Code of Maimonides: Book Fourteen: The Book of Judges, trans. Abraham M. Hershman (New Haven, 1949), p. 222; Grotius, Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, ch. XI, section xiv, pp. 739\u201340.\n\n. See Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, \"Leningrad.\"\n\n. Deuteronomy 20:20.\n\n. Hobbes' Thucydides, pp. 123\u201324 (2:19\u201320); War Commentaries of Caesar, trans. Rex Warner (New York, 1960), pp. 70, 96 (Gallic Wars 3:3, 5:1).\n\n. A. C. Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany (London, 1937), pp. 213\u201314.\n\n. Spaight, p. 138.\n\n. Hall, International Law, p. 656.\n\n. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Real War: 1914\u20131918 (Boston, 1964), p. 473.\n\n. The studies were carried out by German statisticians, but the results are accepted by Bell. He is a little reluctant, however, to regard these results as a sign of the \"success\" of the British blockade: see p. 673.\n\n. Bell, p. 117. Cf. the same argument made by a French historian, Louis Gui\u00adchard, The Naval Blockade: 1914\u20131918, trans. Christopher R. Turner (New York, 1930), p. 304.\n\n11 Guerrilla War\n\n. The Sorrow and the Pity, pp. 113\u201314.\n\n. For a useful survey of the legal situation, see Gerhard von Glahn, The Occupation of Enemy Territory (Minneapolis, 1957).\n\n. See, for example, W. F. Ford, \"Resistance Movements and International Law,\" 7\u20138 International Review of the Red Cross (1967\u201368) and G. I. A. D. Draper, \"The Status of Combatants and the Question of Guerrilla War,\" 45 British Yearbook of International Law (1971).\n\n. Quoted in Draper, p. 188.\n\n. Quoted in Douglas Pike, Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 242.\n\n. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings (Peking, 1966), p. 343.\n\n. Dickey Chapelle, \"How Castro Won,\" in The Guerrilla\u2014And How to Fight Him: Selections from the Marine Corps Gazette, ed. T. N. Greene (New York, 1965), p. 223.\n\n. Draper, p. 203.\n\n. See Michael Calvert, Chindits: Long Range Penetration (New York, 1973).\n\n. Draper, pp. 202\u201304.\n\n. Guerrilla Parties Considered with Reference to the Laws and Usages of War (New York, 1862). Lieber wrote this pamphlet at the request of General Halleck.\n\n. Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 196\u201397.\n\n. See The Guerrilla\u2014And How to Fight Him; John McCuen, The Art of Counter-\u00adRevolutionary War (London, 1966); Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping (Harrisburg, 1971).\n\n. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York, 1936), Bk. III, ch. 33, p. 196.\n\n. For a graphic description of soldiers going beyond these limits, see Victor Kolpacoff's novel of the Vietnam War, The Prisoners of Quai Dong (New York, 1967).\n\n. Race, p. 233.\n\n. Jonathan Schell, The Military Half (New York, 1968), pp. 14ff.\n\n. For an account of forcible deportation, see Jonathan Schell, The Village of Ben Suc (New York, 1967).\n\n. The Military Half, p. 151.\n\n. Orville and Jonathan Schell, letter to The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1969; quoted in Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia (New York, 1970), pp. 292\u201393.\n\n. See the description of the camps that the British set up for Boer farmers: Farwell, Anglo-Boer War, chs. 40, 41.\n\n. Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (New York, 1966), p. 125.\n\n. Don Oberdorfer, Tet (New York, 1972), p. 202.\n\n. Schell, The Military Half, pp. 96, 159.\n\n. Kitson, p. 138.\n\n. Street Without Joy (New York, 1972), ch. 7.\n\n. See the account of Regis Debray, Che's Guerrilla War, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Hammondsworth, 1975).\n\n12 Terrorism\n\n. But Liddell Hart, the foremost strategist of the \"indirect approach,\" has consistently opposed terrorist tactics: see, for example, Strategy, pp. 349\u201350 (on terror bombing).\n\n. Rear Admiral L. H. K. Hamilton, quoted in Irving, Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, p. 44.\n\n. Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1948), p. 288 (1314a).\n\n. The Just Assassins, in Caligula and Three Other Plays, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1958), p. 258. The actual historical incident is described in Roland Gaucher, The Terrorists: From Tsarist Russia to the OAS (London, 1965), pp. 49, 50n.\n\n. J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: A History of the IRA (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 161\u201362.\n\n. Gerold Frank, The Deed (New York, 1963), pp. 248\u201349.\n\n. James E. Bond, The Rules of Riot: Internal Conflict and the Law of War (\u00adPrinceton, 1974), pp. 89\u201390.\n\n. Pike, Viet Cong, p. 248.\n\n. Race, War Comes to Long An, p. 83, which suggests that it was precisely the best public health officers, teachers, and so on who were attacked\u2014because they constituted a possible anti-communist leadership.\n\n. Pike, p. 250.\n\n. Pike, p. 251.\n\n. The argument, I suppose, goes back to Machiavelli, though most of his descriptions of the necessary violence of founders and reformers have to do with the killing of particular people, members of the old ruling class: see The Prince, ch. VIII and Discourses, I:9 for examples.\n\n. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York, n.d.), pp. 18\u201319.\n\n. Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, ed. Piernico Solinas (New York, 1973), pp. 79\u201380.\n\n13 Reprisals\n\n. G. Lowes Dickinson, War: Its Nature, Cause, and Cure (London, 1923), p. 15.\n\n. H. Brocher, \"Les principes naturels du droit de la guerre,\" 5 Revue de droit international et de legislation compar\u00e9e 349 (1873).\n\n. Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (New York, 1975), I, 478.\n\n. Frits Kalshoven, Belligerent Reprisals (Leyden, 1971), pp. 193\u2013200.\n\n. Kalshoven, pp. 78ff.\n\n. See, for example, the essays of H. J. McCloskey and T. L. S. Sprigge in Contemporary Utilitarianism, ed. Michael D. Bayles (Garden City, N.Y., 1968).\n\n. Spaight, War Rights, p. 120.\n\n. Spaight, p. 462.\n\n. McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 682.\n\n. See Robert Katz, Death in Rome (New York, 1967) for an account of one of the most brutal Nazi reprisals.\n\n. Spaight, p. 463n.\n\n. Greenspan is typical: \"Only in exceedingly grave cases should there be resort to reprisals.\" Modern Law of Land Warfare, p. 411.\n\n. Lieber, Instructions, Article 27 (emphasis added).\n\n. Kalshoven, pp. 263ff.\n\n. McDougal and Feliciano, p. 684.\n\n. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (New York, 1962), p. 359. A distinction similar to the one I am defending here is suggested by Westlake: \". . . the laws of war are too deeply rooted in humanity and morality to be discussed on the footing of contract alone, except it may be some parts of no great importance which convention might have settled otherwise than it has.\" International Law, II, 126.\n\n. See Kalshoven on \"non-belligerent reprisals,\" pp. 287ff.\n\n. Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, p. 110.\n\n. For accounts and evaluations of the raid, see Richard Falk, \"The Beirut Raid and the International Law of Reprisal,\" 63 American Journal of International Law (1969) and Yehuda Blum, \"The Beirut Raid and the International Double Standard: A Reply to Professor Falk,\" 64 A.J.I.L. (1970).\n\n. See the general condemnation voted by the Security Council on April 9, 1964, cited in Sydney D. Bailey, Prohibitions and Restraints in War (London, 1972), p. 55.\n\n. Hans Kelson, Principles of International Law, 2nd ed., rev. Robert W. Tucker (New York, 1967), p. 87.\n\n14 Winning and Fighting Well\n\n. The Chinese Classics, trans. and ed. James Legge, vol. V: The Ch'un Ts'ew with The Tso Chuen (Oxford, 1893), p. 183.\n\n. Military Writings, p. 240.\n\n. Quoted in Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (Garden City, New York, n.d.), p. 131.\n\n. Military Writings, pp. 81, 223\u201324.\n\n. Basic Tactics (New York, 1966), p. 98.\n\n. The Chinese Classics, V, 183.\n\n. The Need for Roots, trans. Arthur Wills (Boston, 1955), p. 159.\n\n. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 379. Compare Vitoria: \". . . whatever is done in right of war receives the construction most favorable to the claims of those engaged in a just war.\" On the Law of War, p. 180.\n\n. This seems to be G. E. M. Anscombe's position in the two essays already cited: Mr. Truman's Degree and \"War and Murder.\"\n\n. For a discussion of what it means to \"override\" a moral principle, see Robert Nozick, \"Moral Complications and Moral Structures,\" 13 Natural Law Forum 34\u201335 and notes (1968).\n\n15 Aggression and Neutrality\n\n. Philip C. Jessup, Neutrality: Its History, Economics, and Law (New York, 1936), IV, 80 (emphasis added).\n\n. W. E. Hall, The Rights and Duties of Neutrals (London, 1874) is the best account of the laws of neutrality.\n\n. Westlake, International Law, II, 162.\n\n. The speech is reprinted in The Theory and Practice of Neutrality in the Twentieth Century, ed. Roderick Ogley (New York, 1970), p. 83.\n\n. Theory and Practice of Neutrality, p. 74.\n\n. Liddell Hart, The Real War, pp. 46\u201347.\n\n. For an example of the American response, see James M. Beck, The Evidence in the Case: A Discussion of the Moral Responsibility for the War of 1914 (New York, 1915), esp. ch. IX.\n\n. Socialism and War, p. 15.\n\n. Nils Oervik, The Decline of Neutrality: 1914\u20131941 (Oslo, 1953), p. 241.\n\n. Oervik, p. 223.\n\n. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (New York, 1961), Bk. II, ch. 9.\n\n. Assignment to Catastrophe (New York, 1954), I, 71\u201372.\n\n. Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries 1937\u20131940, ed. Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly (New York, 1962), p. 211.\n\n. Ironside Diaries, p. 185.\n\n. Ironside Diaries, p. 216.\n\n. History of the Second World War (New York, 1971), p. 53.\n\n. Ironside Diaries, p. 238.\n\n. The Gathering Storm, p. 488.\n\n. Oervik, p. 237.\n\n. For an account of the campaign, see J. L. Moulton, A Study of Warfare in Three Dimensions: The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (Athens, Ohio, 1967).\n\n. History of the Second World War, p. 59. Cf. General Ironside's entry for February 14, 1940: \"Winston is now pressing for his laying of mines in neutral Norwegian waters as the only means of forcing the Germans to violate Scandinavia and so give us a chance of getting into Narvik.\" The Ironside Diaries, p. 222.\n\n16 Supreme Emergency\n\n. Quoted in George Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima (New York, 1966), p. 67.\n\n. See J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York, 1967), ch. 5: \"Images of the Enemy.\"\n\n. But the claim that one can never kill an innocent person abstracts from questions of coercion and consent: see the examples cited in chapter 10.\n\n. See Quester, Deterrence and F. M. Sallagar, The Road to Total War: Escalation in World War II (Rand Corporation Report, 1969); also the official history by Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (London, 1961).\n\n. Noble Frankland, Bomber Offensive: The Devastation of Europe (New York, 1970), p. 41.\n\n. The Story of the Cherwell minute is told, most unsympathetically, in C. P. Snow, Science and Government (New York, 1962).\n\n. Quester, pp. 117\u201318.\n\n. Quoted in Quester, p. 141.\n\n. Quoted in Angus Calder, The People's War: 1939\u20131945 (New York, 1969), p. 491.\n\n. Calder, p. 229; the same poll is cited by Vera Brittain, a courageous opponent of British bombing policy: Humiliation with Honor (New York, 1943), p. 91.\n\n. \". . . it was not [Cherwell's] ruthlessness that worried us most, it was his calculations.\" Snow, Science and Government, p. 48. Cf. P. M. S. Blackett's post-war critique of the bombing, worked out in narrowly strategic terms: Fear, War, and the Bomb (New York, 1949), ch. 2.\n\n. Sallagar, p. 127.\n\n. Sallagar, p. 128.\n\n. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, pp. 38\u201339.\n\n. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, p. 134.\n\n. Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (London, 1947), p. 74.\n\n. Calder, p. 229.\n\n. The Hinge of Fate, p. 770.\n\n. For a detailed account of this attack, see David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (New York, 1963).\n\n. Quoted in Quester, p. 156.\n\n. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1957), p. 178.\n\n. Robert C. Batchelder, The Irreversible Decision: 1939\u20131950 (New York, 1965), p. 38. Batchelder's is the best historical account of the decision to drop the bomb, and the only one that treats the moral issues in a systematic way.\n\n. A. Russell Buchanan, The United States and World War II (New York, 1964), I, 75.\n\n. \"The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,\" Harper's Magazine (February 1947), repr. in The Atomic Bomb: The Great Decision, ed. Paul R. Baker (New York, 1968), p. 21.\n\n. Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), p. 261.\n\n. Atomic Quest (New York, 1956), p. 247.\n\n. Mr. Citizen (New York, 1960), p. 267. I owe this group of quotations to Gerald McElroy.\n\n. Batchelder, p. 159.\n\n. Batchelder, p. 149.\n\n. Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1962), p. 639.\n\n. \"The Decision to Use the Bomb,\" p. 21.\n\n. Speaking Frankly, p. 264.\n\n. The case would be even worse if the bomb were used for political rather than military reasons (with the Russians rather than the Japanese in mind): on this point, see the careful analysis of Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1975).\n\n17 Nuclear Deterrence\n\n. \"The Decision to Use the Bomb,\" in The Atomic Bomb, ed. Baker, p. 21.\n\n. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Everyman's Library, London, 1910), p. 75.\n\n. See, for example, Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience, ed. Stein; Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed. John C. Bennett (New York, 1962); The Moral Dilemma of Nuclear Weapons, ed. William Clancy (New York, 1961); Morality and Modern Warfare, ed. William J. Nagle (Baltimore, 1960).\n\n. \"Moral Urgencies in the Nuclear Context,\" in Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, p. 101.\n\n. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York, 1968), p. 171.\n\n. \"Explorations into the Unilateral Disarmament Position,\" in Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, p. 130.\n\n. See the novel Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (New York, 1962) for a possible scenario.\n\n. Paul Ramsey, \"A Political Ethics Context for Strategic Thinking,\" in Strategic Thinking and Its Moral Implications, ed. Morton A. Kaplan (Chicago, 1973), pp. 134\u201335.\n\n. George Urban, \"A Conversation with George F. Kennan,\" 47 Encounter 3:37 (September 1976).\n\n. For a review and critique of this literature, see Philip Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence (Columbus, Ohio, 1966).\n\n. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York, 1957), p. 180.\n\n. On War, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New York, 1968), p. 138.\n\n. See the article \"Warfare, Conduct of\" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed., Chicago, 1975), Macropaedia, Vol. 19, p. 509.\n\n. On War, p. 138.\n\n. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York, 1973), p. 404 (author's emphasis).\n\n. The bulk of Ramsey's articles, papers, and pamphlets are collected in his book The Just War; see also his earlier work War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Justly Conducted? (Durham, 1961).\n\n. \"War and Murder,\" p. 57.\n\n. The Just War, p. 252; see also p. 320.\n\n. The Just War, p. 303.\n\n. War and Politics, p. 404.\n\n. The Just War, p. 253 (author's emphasis); see also p. 328.\n\n. \"Warfare,\" p. 568.\n\n. The Just War, p. 254; see also pp. 333ff.\n\n. The Just War, p. 364. Ramsey is paraphrasing Anscombe's critique of pacifism: see \"War and Murder,\" p. 56.\n\n18 The Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens\n\n. Joseph W. Bishop, Jr., \"The Question of War Crimes,\" 54 Commentary 6:85 (December 1972).\n\n. See the suggestion of Sanford Levinson, \"Responsibility for Crimes of War,\" 2 Philosophy and Public Affairs 270ff. (1973).\n\n. For a useful account of this doctrine, tracing it back to the jurisprudence of John Austin, see Stanley Paulson, \"Classical Legal Positivism at Nuremberg,\" 4 Philosophy and Public Affairs 132\u201358 (1975).\n\n. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia, p. 310.\n\n. Stanley Kunitz, \"Foreign Affairs,\" in Selected Poems: 1928\u20131959 (Boston, 1958), p. 23.\n\n. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, vol. 11 (1950), pp. 488\u201389; see the discussion in Levinson, pp. 253ff., and in Greenspan, Modern Law of Land Warfare, pp. 449\u201350.\n\n. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14 (n.d.), p. 383; see Levinson, p. 263.\n\n. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14, p. 472; see Levinson, p. 264.\n\n. For a discussion of the Vietnam cases, see Edward Weisband and Thomas M. Franck, Resignation in Protest (New York, 1976).\n\n. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, trans. Charles Fullman (New York, 1969).\n\n. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14, p. 346.\n\n. King John 4:2, ll. 231\u201341.\n\n. For the contemporary law of reparations, see Greenspan, pp. 309\u201310, 592\u201393.\n\n. The Warriors, pp. 196\u201397.\n\n. The Warriors, p. 198.\n\n. The Warriors, p. 199.\n\n. In thinking about these issues, I have been greatly helped by the essays in Joel Feinberg's Doing and Deserving.\n\n. The Warriors, p. 199.\n\n. See Richard A. Falk, \"The Circle of Responsibility,\" in Crimes of War, ed. Falk, G. Kolko, and R. J. Lifton (New York, 1971), p. 230: \"The circle of responsibility is drawn around all who have or should have knowledge of the illegal and immoral character of the war.\"\n\n. American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1969).\n\n19 War Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers\n\n. The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six Day War (London, 1970), p. 126.\n\n. I owe this point to Dan Little.\n\n. Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality (New York, 1966), pp. 99\u2013100.\n\n. Richard Wasserstrom, \"The Responsibility of the Individual for War Crimes,\" in Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs, p. 62.\n\n. The Thin Red Line (New York, 1964), pp. 271\u201378.\n\n. On the difficulties of surrender in the midst of a modern battle, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle, p. 322.\n\n. See the discussion of this point by Samuel David Resnick, Moral Responsibility and Democratic Theory, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Harvard University, 1972).\n\n. Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath (New York, 1970); see also David Cooper, \"Responsibility and the 'System,'\" in Individual and Collective Responsibility: The Massacre at My Lai, ed. Peter French (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 83\u2013100.\n\n. Hersh, p. 42.\n\n. The Warriors, p. 181.\n\n. The Measures Taken, in The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays, trans. Eric Bentley (New York, 1965), p. 82.\n\n. The best account of the present legal situation is Yoram Dinstein, The Defense of Obedience to Superior Orders in International Law (Leiden, 1965).\n\n. McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 690.\n\n. Quoted in Kurt Baier's analysis of the Calley trial, \"Guilt and Responsibility,\" Individual and Collective Responsibility, p. 42.\n\n. See Wasserstrom, \"The Responsibility of the Individual.\"\n\n. Quoted in Telford Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam, p. 49.\n\n. The Warriors, pp. 185\u201386.\n\n. The Warriors, p. 189.\n\n. McDougal and Feliciano, pp. 693\u201394 and notes.\n\n. Nuremberg and Vietnam, p. 55n.\n\n. Jean Le Meur, \"The Story of a Responsible Act,\" in Political Man and Social Man, ed. Robert Paul Wolff (New York, 1964), p. 204.\n\n. Quoted in A. J. Barker, Yamashita (New York, 1973), pp. 157\u201358.\n\n. Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York, 1964), pp. 343\u201344.\n\n. For the relevant law, see Greenspan, Modern Law of Land Warfare, pp. 332ff.\n\n. See Fried, Anatomy of Values, pp. 194\u201399.\n\n. I shall follow the account of A. Frank Reel, The Case of General Yamashita (Chicago, 1949).\n\n. Reel, p. 280: the appendix of this book reprints the Supreme Court decision.\n\n. On strict liability, see Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, pp. 223ff.\n\n. Hersh, p. 11.\n\n. \"Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,\" 2 Philosophy and Public Affairs (1973), pp. 160\u201380.\n\n. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, p. 159.\n\n. Calder, The People's War, p. 565; Irving, Destruction of Dresden, pp. 250\u201357.\n\n. Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva, trans. Robert David MacDonald (New York, 1968), p. 192.\n\n. The Discourses, Bk. I, ch. XVIII.\n\n. 1 Philosophy and Public Affairs (1972), p. 143.\n\nAfterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War\n\n. Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives (Boston, 1971), p. 93; cf. Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack, War Without Weapons: Non-Violence in National Defense (New York, 1975), p. 135.\n\n. Sharp, p. 52.\n\n. But an enemy state might threaten to bomb rather than invade; on this possibility, see Adam Roberts, \"Civilian Defense Strategy,\" in Civilian Resistance as a National Defense, ed. Roberts (Hammondsworth, 1969), pp. 268\u201372.\n\n. Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, vol. 4, p. 469.\n\n. Louis Fischer, Gandhi and Stalin, quoted in Orwell's \"Reflections,\" p. 468.\n\n. \"Lessons from Resistance Movements\u2014Guerrilla and Non-Violent,\" in Civilian Resistance, p. 240.\n\n. For a brief account of Czech resistance, see Boserup and Mack, pp. 102\u201316.\n\n. Sharp, p. 66; but he believes that the degree and extent of suffering will be \"vastly smaller\" than in regular warfare (p. 65).\nIndex\n\nAcheson, Dean, \u2013\n\nact of state doctrine, \u2013\n\nadvisors, responsibility of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nAfghanistan, xix\n\naggression, \u2013, ,\n\nas act of state, \u2013\n\ncrime of, \u2013,\n\ndefinition of, \u2013\n\ndomestic analogy and, \u2013,\n\nneutrality and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nnonviolent defense against, \u2013\n\nresponsibility for, \u2013\n\ntheory of, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nthreats and, \u2013, , ,\n\nAgincourt, battle of, \u2013\n\nAlcibiades, \u2013\n\nAlexander the Great,\n\nAlgiers, battle of, \u2013\n\nAlsace-Lorraine, \u2013\n\nambush, , ,\n\nin guerrilla war, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nAnjou, Duke of, \u2013\n\nannexation, , , ,\n\nAnscombe, G. E. M., ,\n\nappeasement, \u2013, \u2013\n\nAquinas, St. Thomas, xxvi,\n\naristocratic soldiers, \u2013, \u2013\n\nAristotle,\n\nArnim, Hans-J\u00fcrgen von, \u2013\n\nAron, Raymond, \u2013\n\nassassination, \u2013, \u2013\n\nasymmetric warfare, xiii\u2013xiv\n\nnoncombatant casualties in, xviii\u2013xxii\n\nproportionality rule in, xv\n\nrisk taking in, xix\u2013xxii\n\nAthens, \u2013\n\nAtlanta, burning of, \u2013\n\natomic bomb\n\nSee Hiroshima, nuclear deterrence\n\nAustin, Warren,\n\nAustrian Empire, \u2013\n\nBacon, Francis, , \u2013\n\nbalance of power, \u2013, , ,\n\nbalance of terror, \u2013, \u2013\n\nBaldwin, Stanley,\n\nBangladesh. See India's intervention in East Pakistan\n\nbarbarians, , ,\n\nBeatty, Admiral David, \u2013\n\nBeaufre, Andr\u00e9, ,\n\nBeirut raid, \u2013\n\nBelgium\n\nGerman \"rape of,\" , \u2013\n\nneutrality of,\n\nbelligerent rights, , ,\n\nbenevolent quarantine, \u2013, , \u2013,\n\nBennett, John,\n\nBernard, Montague, ,\n\nBethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, \u2013\n\nBishop, Joseph W., Jr.,\n\nBismarck, Otto von, \u2013,\n\nBloch, Marc,\n\nblockades, ,\n\nof Germany by Great Britain, \u2013,\n\nmoral responsibility in, \u2013\n\nin Spanish American War,\n\nBoer War, ,\n\nBomber Command (R.A.F.), \u2013, \u2013\n\nbombing\n\nterror, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nSee also specific locations\n\nboundaries, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nBradley, General Omar, \u2013,\n\nBrecht, Bertolt,\n\nBritain. See Great Britain\n\nBrodie, Bernard,\n\nBrooke, Rupert,\n\nBurke, Edmund, , \u2013,\n\nByrnes, James, ,\n\nCalder, Angus,\n\nCalley, Lieutenant William, \u2013, ,\n\nCampbell-Bannerman, Henry,\n\nCamus, Albert, \u2013\n\nCastro, Raul,\n\nChadwick, Admiral F. E.,\n\nChapman, Guy, \u2013\n\nCherwell, Lord (F. A. Lindemann), \u2013\n\nChina, , \u2013\n\n\"Chindits,\"\n\nchivalry, \u2013\n\nChomsky, Noam,\n\nChurchill, Winston,\n\natomic bomb and, \u2013\n\non bombing German cities, , , , \u2013\n\non German victory, \u2013\n\nNorway's neutrality and, \u2013\n\nreprisal warning,\n\non supreme emergency, \u2013, ,\n\nunconditional surrender and,\n\ncitizens, ,\n\nSee also democratic citizens; noncombatants\n\ncivil war, , , \u2013\n\nnonintervention in, , \u2013\n\nself-help in, ,\n\nSpanish, \u2013\n\nof U.S., \u2013, ,\n\ncivilians, ,\n\nSee also noncombatant immunity; rights\n\nClausewitz, Karl von, xvi, \u2013, ,\n\nCleon, ,\n\nCOBRA, \u2013\n\ncode of honor, \u2013\n\ncoercion,\n\nof conscripts, \u2013, , ,\n\nresponsibility and, , \u2013\n\nin sieges, \u2013,\n\nof war, \u2013,\n\ncollateral damage, \u2013\n\nSee also double effect, noncombatant casualties; noncombatant immunity\n\ncollective freedom, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\ncollective punishment, \u2013\n\ncollective rights, , ,\n\ncollective security, ,\n\ncollectivism, of war, \u2013\n\ncolonization, , , , \u2013\n\ncombatant\/noncombatant distinction, \u2013, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nSee also innocence; noncombatant immunity; rights\n\ncommand responsibility, \u2013, \u2013\n\n\"Commando Order,\"\n\ncommandos, , \u2013\n\ncommunity\n\npolitical, \u2013\n\nof soldiers, \u2013\n\nCompton, Arthur,\n\nconquest, \u2013, , , ,\n\nconscientious objection, \u2013, ,\n\nconscripts, , ,\n\ncoercion of, \u2013, , ,\n\nconsent\n\nin sieges, \u2013,\n\nin social contract, \u2013\n\nin surrender,\n\nin war generally, \u2013\n\ncontraband,\n\ncontract,\n\ncounter-city warfare, , \u2013\n\ncounter-force warfare, \u2013\n\ncounter-intervention\n\nin Hungarian Revolution, \u2013\n\nself-help and,\n\nin Vietnam War,\n\ncrime,\n\nof aggression, \u2013,\n\nSee also war crimes\n\nCromwell, Oliver,\n\ncrusade, \u2013,\n\nCuba\n\ninsurrection against Spain, \u2013\n\nrevolution in,\n\nCzechoslovakia\n\n\"Munich principle\" and, \u2013\n\nRussian invasion of, \u2013,\n\nin World War II, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nDavid and Goliath,\n\nDeclaration of St. Petersburg,\n\nDeladier, Edouard,\n\ndemocracy, , , , , \u2013\n\nchivalry and, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility and, \u2013\n\nunconditional surrender and,\n\ndemocratic citizens\n\nconscientious objection among, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility of, \u2013\n\nsoldiers compared to,\n\ndeterrence, , , \u2013, \u2013\n\nSee also nuclear deterrence\n\nDeuteronomy, \u2013,\n\nDiodotus,\n\nDionysius of Halicarnassus, \u2013\n\ndiplomacy, ,\n\nbefore Six Day War,\n\nDoenitz, Admiral Karl, \u2013\n\ndomestic analogy, \u2013, \u2013\n\naggression and, \u2013,\n\nappeasement and, \u2013\n\narmed robbery, \u2013\n\nof deterrence, -272\n\nof due care, \u2013\n\nfamily feuds, \u2013\n\nlaw enforcement and, , \u2013\n\non neutrality, \u2013\n\nself-defense and, \u2013\n\ndouble effect, doctrine of, xix,\n\nintention in, , \u2013\n\nlimited nuclear war and, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nproportionality rule in, , \u2013\n\nrevision of,\n\nrisk in, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsieges and, \u2013\n\nDresden, firebombing of,\n\nDryden, John,\n\ndue care, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nduels, \u2013\n\nduress, \u2013, , \u2013,\n\nEast Pakistan. See India's intervention in East Pakistan\n\nEban, Abba,\n\nEcclesiastes, xiii\n\nEgypt, Six Day War and, \u2013\n\nEinstein, Albert,\n\nEisenhower, General Dwight D., \u2013, ,\n\nends of war, , \u2013, , , ,\n\nenemies, ,\n\nidentification of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nSee also insurgents\n\nequality\n\nSee soldiers, moral equality of\n\nescalation, \u2013, ,\n\nin limited nuclear war, \u2013\n\nespionage,\n\nEthiopia War (1936), , \u2013\n\nEuripides,\n\nextremity\n\nutilitarianism of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nFalk, Richard,\n\nFalkenhurst, General Nikolaus von,\n\nFall, Bernard,\n\nFanon, Franz,\n\nFeliciano, Florentino P.,\n\nfeuds, , \u2013\n\nFinland,\n\nindependence of, \u2013\n\n\"Munich principle\" and, \u2013\n\nRusso-Finnish War, \u2013,\n\nFlanders, Ralph, \u2013\n\nFLN (Algeria), \u2013\n\nforced resettlement, ,\n\nin Vietnam War, \u2013\n\nFrance, \u2013,\n\nAlsace-Lorraine and, \u2013\n\nbombing of St. L\u00f4, \u2013\n\nGerman occupation of, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nreprisals in, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nSpanish Civil War and, \u2013\n\nWar of Spanish Succession and, \u2013\n\nWorld War II Allied bombing in, \u2013,\n\nFranco-Prussian War, \u2013, ,\n\nFrank, Anne,\n\nFrankland, Noble, \u2013\n\nfreedom, \u2013, \u2013,\n\ncollective, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility and, \u2013, , ,\n\nrules of war and,\n\nSee also coercion; consent; duress; tyranny\n\nFrench Forces of the Interior, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nFriedlander, Saul,\n\nFromm, Erich,\n\nFuller, Major General J. F. C.,\n\nGandhi, Mohandas, \u2013\n\nGaza war, xvii\u2013xix\n\nGeneva Agreement (1954),\n\nGeneva Conventions (1929 and 1949), , \u2013\n\nGenghis Khan,\n\nGermany, \u2013, ,\n\nAlsace-Lorraine and, \u2013\n\nBelgium neutrality and, , \u2013\n\nFrance occupation by, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nFranco-Prussian War and, \u2013,\n\nGreat Britain blockade of, \u2013,\n\nGreat Britain bombing of cities in, xv, \u2013, \u2013\n\nNorway's neutrality and, \u2013\n\nSpanish Civil War and, \u2013\n\nunconditional surrender for,\n\nGerstein, Kurt,\n\nGraves, Robert,\n\nGray, J. Glenn, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\nGreat Britain, \u2013\n\nGerman city bombing by, xv, \u2013, \u2013\n\nGermany blockade by, \u2013,\n\nHungarian Revolution and, \u2013\n\nLondon Naval Protocol of, , , \u2013,\n\nNorway's neutrality and, \u2013\n\nR.A.F. of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nRusso-Finnish War and, \u2013\n\nSpanish Civil War and, \u2013\n\nWar of Spanish Succession and, \u2013\n\nGreece, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nGreen, T. H.,\n\nGrotius, Hugo, xxvi, ,\n\nguerrilla war,\n\nambush in, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nanti-guerrilla warfare, \u2013, \u2013\n\nfighters' rights in, \u2013\n\nideology in, , \u2013\n\ninternational law and, \u2013,\n\nnoncombatant immunity in, \u2013\n\nnonviolent defense and, \u2013\n\nas \"people's war,\" \u2013,\n\nprisoners of war in, , \u2013, \u2013,\n\nsabotage in, \u2013,\n\nwinning in, \u2013\n\nGuevara, Che,\n\nguilt,\n\nreparations and, \u2013\n\nshame and, \u2013\n\nHaakon, VII (king of Norway),\n\nHaldeman, Joe,\n\nHarris, Air Marshal Arthur, , , \u2013\n\nHenry V, of England, \u2013, ,\n\nHerodotus,\n\nHiroshima, , , , , \u2013\n\nhistorical relativism, \u2013\n\nHitler, Adolf, , ,\n\nadvisors of, \u2013,\n\natomic bomb and,\n\nCommando Order from,\n\nNorway and, \u2013\n\nHobbes, Thomas, , \u2013, , ,\n\nHochhuth, Rolf,\n\nHolinshed, Raphael,\n\nhonor, \u2013, \u2013\n\nHood, General John,\n\nHoopes, Townsend,\n\nhostages, , \u2013,\n\nHsiang, Duke of Sung, \u2013\n\nhumanitarian intervention, ,\n\nin Cuba's insurrection against Spain, \u2013\n\nIndia in East Pakistan, \u2013\n\njudgment in, \u2013\n\nlegalist paradigm revision for, \u2013\n\nmotives in, , \u2013\n\nHume, David, , ,\n\nHungarian Revolution (1848\u20131849)\n\nGreat Britain and, \u2013\n\nJohn Stuart Mill on, \u2013\n\nprudence related to, \u2013\n\nRussia and, \u2013\n\nHussein, King of Jordan,\n\nHyde, Charles Chaney,\n\nhypocrisy, xxvii, \u2013,\n\nimperialism, , , , \u2013, \u2013\n\nIndia's intervention in East Pakistan, \u2013\n\nindividual rights, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\ninnocence\n\ndefined, ,\n\nterrorism and, , , \u2013,\n\ninsurgents, \u2013\n\nin asymmetrical warfare, xiv\n\nneutrality related to,\n\nnoncombatant casualties and, xvii\u2013xviii\n\npolitics of, xvi\n\nproportionality rule and, xv\u2013xvi\n\nself-help for, ,\n\nintelligence, xxi\u2013xxii\n\nintention, \u2013\n\nin double effect, \u2013\n\nin nuclear deterrence, , \u2013\n\npreventive war and, \u2013\n\ninternational law,\n\nguerrilla war and, \u2013,\n\nkilling and, \u2013\n\nneutrality and, \u2013,\n\npreventive war and,\n\nreprisal and, \u2013\n\nwar convention and,\n\nInternational on the Franco-Prussian War, \u2013\n\ninternational society\n\naggression and, \u2013, \u2013\n\ncollective character of,\n\nindependent states as,\n\npunishment from, \u2013\n\nrights of members, \u2013\n\nstability in, \u2013\n\nintervention,\n\ncounter-intervention, \u2013, \u2013\n\nhumanitarian, , \u2013\n\nSee also nonintervention; self-determination\n\nIraq,\n\nIrish Republican Army, ,\n\nIronside, General Edmund, \u2013\n\nIrving, David, \u2013\n\nIsrael\n\nBeirut raid by, \u2013\n\nEntebbe airport raid by,\n\nGaza war and, xvii\u2013xix\n\nKhibye raid by, \u2013\n\nPalestinian raids on, \u2013\n\nSix Day War of, \u2013, ,\n\nItalian-Ethiopian War, , \u2013\n\nItaly, , \u2013\n\nRenaissance, \u2013\n\nwomen's rape in, \u2013\n\nJaeger, Werner,\n\nJapan\n\nin Russo-Japanese War,\n\nTokyo firebombing, , \u2013,\n\nunconditional surrender and, \u2013\n\nin World War II, , , , , \u2013\n\nJarrell, Randall,\n\nJerusalem, siege of, \u2013,\n\nJews\n\nin Jerusalem siege, \u2013,\n\nNazism and, \u2013,\n\nSee also Israel\n\nJones, James,\n\nJordan,\n\nJosephus, \u2013,\n\njustice,\n\nlegalist paradigm of, \u2013\n\nMarx on, \u2013\n\nmeaning of, \u2013\n\nprudence and, \u2013\n\nrealists' critique of, \u2013\n\nresponsibility and, \u2013\n\nin settlements, \u2013,\n\ntensions in the theory of, \u2013,\n\nvigilante, \u2013\n\nof war and in war (jus ad bellum and jus in bello) distinguished, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\nSee also aggression; rights; war convention\n\nKatangan secession,\n\nKecskemeti, Paul, \u2013, \u2013\n\nKelsen, Hans,\n\nKennan, George, ,\n\nKennedy, John,\n\nKhibye raid, \u2013\n\nkilling, \u2013, , \u2013\n\ndomestic analogy on, \u2013\n\ninternational law and, \u2013\n\nmurder compared to, \u2013, \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013, , , \u2013,\n\nstandards for, \u2013\n\nSee also massacres; noncombatant immunity\n\nKissinger, Henry,\n\nKitchener, General H. H.,\n\nKorean War, \u2013\n\nbombardment in, \u2013\n\nlaw enforcement in, \u2013\n\nnegotiations in,\n\nproportionality rule in, \u2013\n\npunishment in, \u2013\n\nrights in, \u2013\n\nU.S. ends in, \u2013\n\nKossuth, Lajos,\n\nLaconia Affair, \u2013\n\nlanguage\n\nof morality, xxiii\u2013xxvii,\n\nof positive laws, xxv\u2013xxvi\n\nof strategy, \u2013\n\nabout war, xxiii\u2013xxiv\n\nlast resort, xiv, xvi, , , \u2013, ,\n\nlaw enforcement, ,\n\ndomestic analogy and, , \u2013\n\nreprisals as, \u2013, \u2013\n\nLawrence, T. E.,\n\nLeague of Nations, ,\n\nLebanon, xiii, xx,\n\nLeeb, Field Marshal R. von, \u2013\n\nlegal positivism, xxiv\u2013xxvi, , , , , ,\n\nUN and, \u2013\n\nlegalist paradigm,\n\nrevision of, \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nstated, \u2013\n\nlegitimacy, \u2013, , , \u2013\n\nin acts of war, \u2013, , \u2013, , ,\n\nof Vietnam government, \u2013\n\nLenin, V. I., , \u2013\n\nLeningrad, siege of, , \u2013,\n\nLevinson, Sanford,\n\nLex talionis,\n\nLiddell Hart, B. H., , , , , \u2013\n\nLieber, Francis, , ,\n\nlimited nuclear war\n\ncollateral damage in, \u2013\n\ncounter-force warfare and, \u2013\n\ndouble effect and, \u2013\n\nescalation in, \u2013\n\nflexible response and, ,\n\nmassive retaliation in, \u2013\n\nnaval warfare compared to,\n\nnuclear deterrence and, \u2013\n\nPaul Ramsey on, \u2013\n\nlimited war, \u2013, , , , ,\n\nLocke, John,\n\nLondon Naval Protocol (1936), , , \u2013,\n\nLouis XIV, of France, \u2013\n\nLucas, Scott,\n\nLussu, Emilio, \u2013\n\nMacArthur, General Douglas,\n\nMacdonald, Dwight,\n\nMachiavelli, Nicolo, , ,\n\nMaimonides, Moses,\n\nMalaya,\n\nMannerheim, Marshal K. G.,\n\nMao Tse-tung, \"Eight Points for Attention,\" , \u2013\n\nMarshall, S. L. A.,\n\nMarx, Karl, \u2013,\n\nMarxism, , , \u2013\n\nmassacres, \u2013\n\nSee also India's intervention in East Pakistan; My Lai massacre\n\nmassive retaliation, , \u2013,\n\nMcDougal, Myres, S.,\n\nMcKinley, William,\n\nMedina, Captain Ernest, \u2013,\n\nMelos, \u2013,\n\nMelzer, Yehuda,\n\nMendes-France, Pierre,\n\nmercenaries, \u2013, ,\n\nmerchant seamen, \u2013\n\n\"Merrill's Marauders,\"\n\nMetternich, K. von, ,\n\nMill, John Stuart, \u2013\n\n\"Ministries Case,\" \u2013\n\nMo Tzu,\n\nMoltke, General H. J. von, \u2013,\n\nMontesquieu, Baron de,\n\nmoral absolutism, \u2013\n\nmoral reality of war, defined,\n\nmoral relativism, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility. See responsibility, moral\n\nmorality, ,\n\nhypocrisy and, xxvii, \u2013\n\nlanguage of, xxiii\u2013xxvii,\n\npolitics and, \u2013\n\npractical, xxvii, \u2013\n\nstrategy and, \u2013\n\nMoroccan soldiers, \u2013\n\nMoyne, Lord (W. E. Guinness), ,\n\n\"Munich principle,\" \u2013\n\nmurder, , ,\n\nkilling compared to, \u2013, \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013, , , \u2013,\n\nMurphy, Frank, \u2013\n\nMy Lai massacre, \u2013, \u2013\n\nMytilene, \u2013\n\nNagel, Thomas,\n\nNapoleon Bonaparte, ,\n\nNapoleon III, of France,\n\nNasser, Gamal Abdel, \u2013\n\nNational Liberation Front (Vietnam), ,\n\nnational minorities, \u2013\n\nnaval warfare\n\nlimited nuclear war compared to,\n\nmerchant seamen in, \u2013\n\nnecessity in, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity in, \u2013\n\nNorway's neutrality and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nrisk in, \u2013\n\nsink on sight in, \u2013\n\nSee also London Naval Protocol\n\nNazism\n\nJews and, \u2013,\n\nsupreme emergency of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nas ultimate threat, \u2013\n\nunconditional surrender and, \u2013\n\nnecessity,\n\nclaim of, criticized, \u2013\n\nas defense of terrorism, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nmilitary, defined, \u2013\n\nmoral, in India's intervention in East Pakistan, \u2013\n\nnature of, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin naval warfare, \u2013\n\nresponsibility and, , \u2013\n\nrules of war and, \u2013\n\nsupreme emergency and, \u2013\n\nin Thucydides, \u2013\n\nwar convention and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nneutrality, , , ,\n\naggression and, \u2013, \u2013\n\ndomestic analogy on, \u2013\n\ninternational law and, \u2013,\n\nof Norway, \u2013\n\nproperty and, \u2013\n\nright of, \u2013\n\nsliding scale of, \u2013\n\nsupreme emergency and, \u2013\n\nviolations of, \u2013\n\nNgo Dinh Diem,\n\nNicholas I, of Russia, \u2013\n\nNimitz, Admiral Chester,\n\nnoncombatant immunity, ,\n\ndouble effect and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin guerrilla war, \u2013\n\nin naval warfare, \u2013\n\nin nonviolent defense,\n\nin nuclear deterrence,\n\nreprisal and, \u2013\n\nself-defense and,\n\nterrorism and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin war convention, xiv\u2013xxi, , \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nwho qualifies for, , , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nnoncombatants, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nnonintervention,\n\nin civil war, , \u2013\n\nMill's defense of, \u2013\n\nnonviolent defense,\n\ncommunal values in, \u2013\n\nguerrilla war and, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity in,\n\npolitics of, \u2013,\n\nwar convention in,\n\nNorway\n\nneutrality of, \u2013\n\nVemork raid and, \u2013\n\nNozick, Robert,\n\nnuclear deterrence\n\nimmoral threats and, \u2013\n\nintention in, , \u2013\n\nlimited nuclear war and, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity in,\n\nproportionality rule in,\n\nreprisal in, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsupreme emergency and, \u2013\n\nwar convention and,\n\nSee also limited nuclear war\n\nNuremberg Trials, , , ,\n\nDoenitz in, \u2013\n\n\"Ministries Case,\" \u2013\n\nvon Leeb, \u2013\n\nobedience, , \u2013\n\noccupation, \u2013\n\nFrench resistance to German, \u2013\n\nnonviolent resistance to, \u2013\n\nofficers,\n\ncommand responsibility of, \u2013, \u2013\n\ndue care by, \u2013\n\nstrict liability of, \u2013\n\nsuperior orders, \u2013\n\nofficials\n\nadvisors to, \u2013\n\nheads of state, , \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility of, \u2013\n\nresignation by, \u2013\n\nsabotage by, \u2013\n\nsilence of,\n\nOkinawa, battle of,\n\nOman, C. W. C., \u2013\n\nOphuls, Marcel, \u2013\n\nOppenheim, L.,\n\nOrwell, George, \u2013,\n\nOwen, Wilfred, , ,\n\nPaardeberg, battle of,\n\nPakistan. See India's intervention in East Pakistan\n\nPalestinians, xvii\u2013xix, \u2013\n\nPalmerston, Henry John Temple, , \u2013\n\nPanama canal, \u2013\n\nParis, siege of,\n\npeace\n\nas end of war, , ,\n\nas normative condition,\n\npeacetime reprisals, \u2013\n\nPearl Harbor,\n\nPeloponnesian War, \u2013\n\n\"people's war,\" , \u2013,\n\nPeters, Colonel William,\n\nPhillipines, The, \u2013, \u2013\n\nPlato,\n\nPlatt Amendment, \u2013\n\nPlevna, siege of,\n\nPlutarch,\n\npoison gas, ,\n\nPoland, in World War II, , , \u2013\n\npolitical assassination, \u2013\n\npolitical community, rights of, \u2013\n\nPopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,\n\nPort Arthur,\n\npositive laws, xxv\u2013xxvi, , , \u2013,\n\npre-emptive strikes, \u2013, \u2013\n\npreventive war\n\nbalance of power and, \u2013\n\ncriteria for, \u2013\n\nself-preservation in, \u2013\n\nsuspicion and, \u2013\n\nprisoners of war,\n\nin guerrilla war, , \u2013,\n\nkilling of, at Agincourt, \u2013\n\nkilling of, in heat of battle, \u2013\n\nin reprisals, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nrights of, , \u2013,\n\nprofessional soldiers, \u2013,\n\nproportionality rule, xvi, xxi\u2013xxii, ,\n\nin doctrine of double effect, , \u2013\n\nin Korean War, \u2013\n\nin nuclear deterrence,\n\nin reprisals, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin war convention, xv, \u2013\n\nprudence, \u2013\n\npunishment\n\ncollective, \u2013\n\nby international society, \u2013\n\njust war as, \u2013\n\nin Korean War, \u2013\n\nreprisal and, \u2013,\n\nunconditional surrender as, \u2013\n\nquarter, in surrender, , , , \u2013\n\nR.A.F. See Bomber Command\n\nRamsey, Paul, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nrandomness, of terrorism, \u2013, ,\n\nrape, \u2013\n\nRavenstein, General Johann von,\n\nRawls, John, ,\n\nrealism, \u2013, , ,\n\nlimited nuclear war and, \u2013,\n\nmoral argument in, \u2013\n\nrelativism and, \u2013\n\nSee also Melos\n\nrealists, \u2013, , \u2013, ,\n\njustice critique of, \u2013\n\non winning, \u2013\n\nrefugees, \u2013\n\nReitz, Deneys,\n\nrelativism\n\nhistorical, \u2013\n\nmoral, \u2013\n\nRenaissance Italy, \u2013\n\nreparations, , , \u2013\n\nreprisals, \u2013\n\nbelligerent, rationale of,\n\ninternational law and, \u2013\n\nas law enforcement, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin nuclear deterrence, \u2013, \u2013\n\npeacetime, \u2013\n\nprisoners of war in, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nproportionality rule in, \u2013, \u2013\n\npunishment and, \u2013,\n\nvictims of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nresignation, \u2013\n\nresistance, See nonviolent defense\n\nresponsibility, legal, ,\n\nfor aggression, \u2013\n\nof officers (command responsibility), , , \u2013\n\nof officials, \u2013\n\nof soldiers, \u2013\n\nSee also international law\n\nresponsibility, moral,\n\nin blockades, \u2013\n\ncollective, \u2013\n\nof democratic citizens, \u2013\n\nfreedom and, \u2013, , ,\n\nguilt and, \u2013\n\nresignation and, \u2013\n\nin sieges, \u2013\n\nof soldiers, xix\u2013xxi, , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nin supreme emergency, \u2013\n\nfor war crimes, , , \u2013, , \u2013,\n\nretribution, \u2013\n\nSee also reprisals\n\nrevolution, \u2013\n\nin Cuba,\n\nFranco-Prussian War and, \u2013\n\nSee also Hungarian Revolution\n\nRichards, Frank, \u2013,\n\nrights, xxviii\n\naggression and, \u2013\n\nbelligerent, , ,\n\nof civilians, ,\n\ncollective, , ,\n\nconquest, \u2013\n\nof guerrilla fighters, \u2013\n\nindividual, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\nin international society, \u2013\n\nto life and liberty, \u2013\n\nof merchant seamen, \u2013\n\nof neutrality, \u2013\n\noverriding of, \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013\n\npolitical community, \u2013\n\nof prisoners of war, , \u2013,\n\nof self-defense, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nof soldiers, \u2013\n\nto territorial integrity, \u2013\n\nof women, \u2013\n\nSee also noncombatant immunity; prisoners of war; sovereignty; state rights\n\nrisks, xx\u2013xxii, ,\n\nin doctrine of double effect, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin naval warfare, \u2013\n\nof soldiers, \u2013\n\nRoberts, General Frederick Sleigh,\n\nRoman Empire, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nRommel, General Erwin, \u2013\n\nRoosevelt, Franklin,\n\nRousseau, Jean-Jacques,\n\n\"rules of engagement\"\n\nin Afghanistan, xix\n\nin Vietnam War, \u2013\n\nrules of war, xxvi\n\nextremity in, \u2013\n\nmoral absolutism in, \u2013\n\nnecessity and, \u2013\n\nnoncombatants in, \u2013\n\noverriding of, \u2013\n\nsieges and,\n\ntwo sorts of, \u2013\n\nviolation of, \u2013\n\nSee also utilitarianism\n\nRuskin, John, ,\n\nRussia\n\nCzechoslovakia's invasion by, \u2013,\n\nFinland and, \u2013,\n\nHungarian revolution and, \u2013\n\nLeningrad, siege of, , \u2013,\n\nNicholas I of, \u2013\n\nnuclear deterrence and, ,\n\nRusso-Finnish War, \u2013,\n\nRusso-Japanese War,\n\nRusso-Turkish War,\n\nRutledge, Wiley Blount,\n\nsabotage,\n\nin guerrilla war, \u2013,\n\nby officials, \u2013\n\nsack, \u2013\n\nSackville, Thomas,\n\nSartre, Jean-Paul, \u2013\n\nSchell, Jonathan, \u2013\n\nSchwarzenberg, Count,\n\nsecession\n\nboundaries and,\n\nHungarian Revolution as, \u2013\n\nnatural resources and,\n\nself-determination in, \u2013\n\nSedan, battle of, \u2013\n\nself-defense, ,\n\ndomestic analogy and, \u2013\n\njustification of, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity and,\n\npeacetime reprisals as,\n\npermissible acts in,\n\nright of, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nsupreme emergency and,\n\nself-determination,\n\nJohn Stuart Mill's defense of, \u2013\n\npolitical,\n\nin secession, \u2013\n\nself-help in, \u2013\n\nvirtues in,\n\nself-help,\n\nin civil war, ,\n\ncounter-intervention and,\n\nfor insurgents, ,\n\nself-determination and, \u2013\n\nself-preservation, \u2013,\n\nself-respect, \u2013, \u2013\n\nSergei, Grand Duke, \u2013,\n\nsettlements, justice in, \u2013\n\nstatus quo ante and, \u2013\n\nSee also Korean War\n\nShakespeare, William, \u2013, , , , \u2013\n\nshame, \u2013\n\nSharp, Gene, \u2013\n\nSherman, General William Tecumseh,\n\n\"war is hell\" doctrine, \u2013, ,\n\nSidgwick, Henry, ,\n\nutilitarianism of, \u2013\n\nsieges\n\ncoercion in, \u2013,\n\nconsent in, \u2013,\n\ndouble effect and, \u2013\n\nof Jerusalem, \u2013,\n\nof Leningrad, , \u2013,\n\nmoral responsibility in, \u2013\n\nof Plevna,\n\nrefugees from, \u2013\n\nSee also blockades\n\nSimpson, Louis, \u2013\n\nSix Day War,\n\ndiplomacy before,\n\nEgypt and, \u2013\n\nIsraeli pre-emption in, \u2013, \u2013\n\nself-defense and, ,\n\nsliding scale, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsnipers, \u2013,\n\nSnow, C. P.,\n\nsocial contract, \u2013\n\nsocialism, \u2013, \u2013\n\nMarxism, , , \u2013\n\nsoldiers\n\naristocratic, \u2013, \u2013\n\ncitizens compared to,\n\ncommunity of, \u2013\n\nconscripts, \u2013, , , , , ,\n\ndeaths of, \u2013\n\ndecision-making by,\n\nlegal responsibility of, \u2013\n\nmercenaries, \u2013, ,\n\nmoral equality of, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility of, xix\u2013xxi, , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nMoroccan, \u2013\n\nnaked, \u2013\n\nobedience of, , \u2013\n\nprofessional, \u2013,\n\nrights of, \u2013\n\nuniforms and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nSolinas, Franco,\n\nSolzhenitsyn, Alexander,\n\nsovereignty, \u2013\n\ndefinition,\n\nresponsibility and,\n\nright of neutrality and,\n\nself-determination and,\n\nterritorial integrity and, \u2013\n\nSoviet Union, ,\n\nSee also Russia\n\nSpaight, J. M.,\n\nSpain\n\nCivil War, \u2013\n\nCuba's insurrection against, \u2013\n\nSpanish Civil War, \u2013\n\nSpanish Succession, War of, \u2013\n\nSpanish-American War, \u2013\n\nSparta, \u2013, \u2013\n\nSpears, Edward,\n\nSt. L\u00f4, bombing of, \u2013\n\nStalin, Joseph,\n\nStalinism,\n\nStendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle),\n\nStern Gang, ,\n\nStimson, Henry, \u2013, ,\n\nStone, Harlan Fiske,\n\nStraits of Tiran, \u2013\n\nStrasbourg,\n\nstrategic devastation, \u2013\n\nstrategy\n\nincompetence in,\n\nlanguage of, \u2013\n\nmorality and, \u2013\n\nstrict liability, \u2013\n\nSuarez, Francisco, xxvi\n\nsubmarines, \u2013,\n\nSuez War, \u2013\n\nsuperior orders, \u2013\n\nSupreme Court, U.S., \u2013\n\nsupreme emergency,\n\nChurchill on, \u2013, ,\n\ndefined, \u2013\n\nmoral responsibility in, \u2013\n\nof Nazism, \u2013, \u2013\n\nnecessity and, \u2013\n\nneutrality and, \u2013\n\nnuclear deterrence and, \u2013\n\nutilitarianism and,\n\nSee also Hiroshima\n\nsurrender,\n\nof individual soldiers, , \u2013, , , \u2013\n\nnational, \u2013\n\nquarter in, , , , \u2013\n\nin sieges, \u2013\n\nin war convention, \u2013\n\nSee also unconditional surrender\n\nSweden, , \u2013\n\nSwift, Jonathan,\n\nSwiss,\n\nTalmud, law of sieges,\n\nTausend, Captain Helmut, \u2013\n\nTaylor, Telford, ,\n\nterritorial integrity, \u2013\n\nterror bombing, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nterrorism, xvii\n\nassassination compared to, \u2013\n\nin battle of Algiers, \u2013\n\ncode of honor and, \u2013\n\ninnocence and, , , \u2013,\n\nmilitary necessity, claim of, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nrandomness of, \u2013, ,\n\nunconditional surrender and,\n\nThirty Years War, ,\n\nthreats\n\naggression and, \u2013, , ,\n\nimmoral, \u2013\n\nin preventive war, \u2013\n\nbefore Six Day War, \u2013\n\nultimate, \u2013\n\nThucydides, \u2013\n\nTilset, battle of,\n\nTitus, emperor of Rome,\n\nTokyo, firebombing of, , \u2013,\n\nTolstoy, Leo, , , ,\n\ntraitors, \u2013,\n\ntrench warfare, , , , ,\n\nTrevelyan, Raleigh,\n\nTrotsky, Leon,\n\nTruman, Harry,\n\nHiroshima decision by, , \u2013\n\nKorean War and, \u2013\n\nTucker, Robert W.,\n\nTurkey,\n\nRusso-Turkish War,\n\ntyranny of war, \u2013, \u2013\n\nUN. See United Nations\n\nunconditional surrender\n\nappropriateness of, \u2013\n\nChurchill and,\n\nJapan and, \u2013\n\nNazism and, \u2013\n\nas punishment, \u2013\n\nrights in, \u2013\n\nterrorism and,\n\nWilson, Woodrow, and, \u2013\n\nuniforms, \u2013, \u2013\n\nUnited Nations (UN), xxiv\u2013xxv, , \u2013\n\nIndia's intervention in East Pakistan and, \u2013\n\nUnited States (U.S.)\n\nCivil War of, \u2013, ,\n\nCuban Insurrection and, \u2013\n\nKorean War and, \u2013\n\nSpanish Civil War and, \u2013\n\nSpanish-American War, \u2013\n\nVietnam War and, \u2013\n\nYamashita and, \u2013\n\nutilitarianism\n\natomic bomb and, , \u2013\n\nof extremity, \u2013, \u2013\n\npreventive war and, ,\n\nrape, utilitarian defense of, \u2013\n\nreprisal and, \u2013\n\nSidgwick on, \u2013\n\nsliding scale of, \u2013\n\nin strict liability,\n\nsupreme emergency and,\n\nterror bombing and,\n\nin war convention, \u2013\n\nVann, Gerald, \u2013\n\nVattel, Emmerich de, \u2013\n\nVemork raid, \u2013\n\nvictory. See winning\n\nVietnam, \u2013\n\nVietnam War, xxiii\u2013xxiv, , ,\n\ncounter-intervention in,\n\nforced resettlement in, \u2013\n\nMy Lai massacre, \u2013, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant warning in, \u2013\n\nNorth Vietnam insurgents in, \u2013\n\nresponsibility for, \u2013\n\n\"rules of engagement\" in, \u2013\n\nU.S. intervention and, \u2013\n\nvigilante justice, \u2013\n\nVitoria, Francisco de, , , ,\n\nwar\n\ncivil, \u2013, , , \u2013,\n\ncoercion of, \u2013,\n\ncollectivism of, \u2013\n\ndefinition of,\n\nguerrilla, \u2013, , , \u2013\n\nimperialist, ,\n\nlimited nuclear, \u2013\n\nlogic of, \u2013\n\n\"people's,\" , \u2013,\n\npreventive, \u2013\n\nreasons for, , \u2013, , \u2013,\n\nrevolutionary, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\nas state right,\n\nuncertainties of, \u2013\n\nuniqueness of, \u2013\n\nvalues in, \u2013\n\nwar convention, \u2013, ,\n\nargument against, \u2013\n\natomic bomb and, \u2013\n\ncynicism about, \u2013, \u2013\n\ndefinition of,\n\ndouble effect in, xix, \u2013\n\nguerrilla war and, , \u2013,\n\ninsurgents in, xiv\u2013xv, xviii\n\ninternational law and,\n\njustifications in, \u2013\n\nlimited nuclear war and, \u2013,\n\non naval warfare, \u2013\n\nnecessity and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nnoncombatant immunity in, xiv\u2013xxi, , \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nin nonviolent defense,\n\nnuclear deterrence and,\n\noverriding of, \u2013\n\nprohibitions in, \u2013\n\nproportionality rule in, xv, \u2013\n\nreprisals and, , , \u2013, ,\n\nsurrender in, \u2013\n\ntension with theory of aggression, \u2013\n\nutilitarianism in, \u2013\n\nSee also rules of war\n\nwar crimes, , \u2013\n\nNuremberg Trials, , , \u2013, , \u2013,\n\n\"war is hell\" doctrine, \u2013,\n\nWar of 1812, \u2013\n\nwar rebellion,\n\nwar treason,\n\nwarfare\n\nasymmetric, xiii\u2013xxii\n\ncounter-city, , \u2013\n\ncounter-force, \u2013\n\nlimited, \u2013, , , , ,\n\nsiege, \u2013,\n\nsubmarine, \u2013,\n\ntrench, , , , , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nSee also naval warfare\n\nWaterloo, battle of, , \u2013\n\nWebster, Daniel, \u2013\n\nWeil, Simone, ,\n\nWeizsaecker, Ernst von, \u2013\n\nWestlake, John,\n\nWeston, John,\n\nWeyler y Nicolau, General Valeriano,\n\nWilson, Edmund,\n\nWilson, Woodrow, \u2013, ,\n\nwinning, xx, \u2013,\n\nethics against, \u2013\n\nin guerrilla war, \u2013\n\nof Korean War, \u2013\n\nmeaning of,\n\nrealists on, \u2013\n\nsacrifices for, \u2013\n\nSee also settlements, justice in\n\nwomen, \u2013\n\nas noncombatants,\n\nXerxes,\n\nYamashita, General Tomoyuki, , \u2013\n\nYugoslav partisans,\n\nZagonara, battle of, \n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Contents\n  2. Preface to the Fifth Edition\n  3. Preface to the First Edition\n  4. Acknowledgments\n  5. Part One: The Moral Reality of War\n  6. 1 Against \"Realism\"\n  7. The Realist Argument\n  8. The Melian Dialogue\n  9. Strategy and Morality\n  10. Historical Relativism\n  11. Three Accounts of Agincourt\n  12. 2 The Crime of War\n  13. The Logic of War\n  14. The Argument of Karl von Clausewitz\n  15. The Limit of Consent\n  16. The Tyranny of War\n  17. General Sherman and the Burning of Atlanta\n  18. 3 The Rules of War\n  19. The Case of Hitler's Generals\n  20. Two Sorts of Rules\n  21. The War Convention\n  22. The Example of Surrender\n  23. Part Two: The Theory of Aggression\n  24. 4 Law and Order in International Society\n  25. The Rights of Political Communities\n  26. The Case of Alsace-Lorraine\n  27. The Legalist Paradigm\n  28. Unavoidable Categories\n  29. Karl Marx and the Franco-Prussian War\n  30. The Argument for Appeasement\n  31. Czechoslovakia and the Munich Principle\n  32. Finland\n  33. 5 Anticipations\n  34. Preventive War and the Balance of Power\n  35. The War of the Spanish Succession\n  36. Pre-emptive Strikes\n  37. The Six Day War\n  38. 6 Interventions\n  39. Self-Determination and Self-Help\n  40. Secession\n  41. Civil War\n  42. The American War in Vietnam\n  43. Humanitarian Intervention\n  44. Cuba, 1898, and Bangladesh, 1971\n  45. 7 War's Ends, and the Importance of Winning\n  46. Unconditional Surrender\n  47. Justice in Settlements\n  48. The Korean War\n  49. Part Three: The War Convention\n  50. 8 War's Means and the Importance of Fighting Well\n  51. Utility and Proportionality\n  52. Human Rights\n  53. 9 Noncombatant Immunity\n  54. Naked Soldiers\n  55. The Nature of Necessity (1)\n  56. Submarine Warfare: The Laconia Affair\n  57. Double Effect\n  58. Bombardment in Korea\n  59. The Bombing of Occupied France and the Vemork Raid\n  60. 10 War Against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades\n  61. Coercion and Responsibility\n  62. The Right to Leave\n  63. Taking Aim and the Doctrine of Double Effect\n  64. The British Blockade of Germany\n  65. 11 Guerrilla War\n  66. The Rights of Guerrilla Fighters\n  67. The Rights of Civilian Supporters\n  68. The American \"Rules of Engagement\" in Vietnam\n  69. 12 Terrorism\n  70. The Russian Populists, the IRA, and the Stern Gang\n  71. The Vietcong Assassination Campaign\n  72. Violence and Liberation\n  73. 13 Reprisals\n  74. The FFI Prisoners at Annecy\n  75. The Problem of Peacetime Reprisals\n  76. The Attack on Khibye and the Beirut Raid\n  77. Part Four: Dilemmas of War\n  78. 14 Winning and Fighting Well\n  79. The Sliding Scale and the Argument from Extremity\n  80. 15 Aggression and Neutrality\n  81. The Right to Be Neutral\n  82. The Nature of Necessity (2)\n  83. The Rape of Belgium\n  84. The Sliding Scale\n  85. 16 Supreme Emergency\n  86. Overriding the Rules of War\n  87. The Limits of Calculation\n  88. 17 Nuclear Deterrence\n  89. Limited Nuclear War\n  90. The Argument of Paul Ramsey\n  91. Part Five: The Question of Responsibility\n  92. 18 The Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens\n  93. The World of Officials\n  94. Nuremberg: \"The Ministries Case\"\n  95. Democratic Responsibilities\n  96. The American People and the War in Vietnam\n  97. 19 War Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers\n  98. In the Heat of Battle\n  99. Superior Orders\n  100. Command Responsibility\n  101. General Bradley and the Bombing of St. L\u00f4\n  102. The Case of General Yamashita\n  103. The Nature of Necessity (4)\n  104. The Dishonoring of Arthur Harris\n  105. Conclusion\n  106. Afterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War\n  107. Postscript: A Defense of Just War Theory\n  108. Notes\n  109. Index\n\n## Landmarks\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Preface\n  4. Start of Content\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n**Making Your Small Farm Profitable**\n\n# Making Your Small Farm Profitable\n\nRon Macher\n\nForeword by Howard W. \"Bud\" Kerr, Jr.\n\nThe mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.\n\nEdited by Deborah Burns and Marie Salter\n\nCover design by Meredith Maker\n\nCover photograph \u00a9 by Larry Lefever\/Grant Heilman Photography, Inc.\n\nText design and production by Erin Lincourt\n\nPhotographs by Larry Lefever\/Grant Heilman Photography, Inc., except those on page 232 by Nick DeCandia; 98 and 150 by Jane Grushow\/Grant Heilman Photography, Inc.; 50, 74, 184 by Grant Heilman\/Grant Heilman Photography, Inc.; 42 by Joel Sartore\/Grant Heilman Photography, Inc.; 16 by Kristi Ann Gilman-Miller.\n\nLine drawings by Chuck Galey, except those on pages 12, 56, 82, 161 (bottom) by Cathy Baker; 161 (top) by Brigita Fuhrmann; 161 (middle) by Millie Holderread; 54 and 55 by Alison Kolesar; 31, 39, 78, 83, 95, 125, 130, 136, 145, 148, and 187 by Elayne Sears; 162 by Becky Turner.\n\nIndexed by Nan Badgett\/Word\u2022a\u2022bil\u2022i\u2022ty\n\n\u00a9 **1999 by Margaret Radcliffe**\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means\u2014electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other\u2014without written permission from the publisher.\n\nThe information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For additional information please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way North Adams, MA 01247.\n\nStorey books are available for special premium and promotional uses and for customized editions. For further information, please call 1-800-793-9396.\n\nPrinted in United States by Versa Press  \n20 19 18 17 16 15 14\n\n**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**\n\nMacher, Ron.\n\nMaking your small farm profitable \/ Ron Macher.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index  \nISBN 978-1-58017-161-8  \n1. Farm management. 2. New agricultural enterprises. I. Title.\n\nS561. M24 1999\n\n630\u2032.68\u2014dc21 99-16219\n\nCIP\n\n## Dedication\n\nTo my wife, Joanne,  \nand to my children, Jean and Jeff\n\n## Contents\n\nForeword\n\nPreface\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nI. Getting Started\n\n1. Deciding to Farm\n\nWhat Is a Small Farm?\n\nBecoming a Farmer\n\nThe Farming Life\n\nAgripreneurship\n\n2. Starting a Farm\n\nStarting a Farm Plan\n\nEvaluating Your Resources\n\nGetting Help\n\nII. Farming\n\n3. Some Principles of Good Farming\n\n4. A Living, Healthy Soil\n\nThe Physical Nature of Soil\n\nWorking the Soil\n\nOur Living Soil\n\nSoil and Plant Roots\n\nCrop Rotation\n\nCover Crops and Green Manure\n\nNitrogen and Legumes\n\nFeeding Livestock in Rotations\n\n5. Weatherproofing Your Farm\n\nThe Effects of Climate\n\nWater\n\nAltering Your Farm Environment\n\nExtending the Season\n\nCaring for Livestock in Winter\n\nIII. Planning and Marketing\n\n6. Your Goals and Farm Planning\n\nPlanning\n\nSetting Goals\n\nDeveloping Your Farm Plan\n\n7. Marketing\n\nEight Steps to Identifying the Market\n\nNiche Marketing\n\nAll About Niche Markets\n\nAdd-on Value\n\nTwelve Ways to Sell Your Products\n\nPricing Your Product\n\nAdvertising\n\nYour Farm as a Destination\n\n8. Selecting Your Enterprise\n\nTypes of Enterprises\n\nEnterprise Cost Analysis\n\nDiversity\n\nSustainability\n\nIv. management\n\n9. Machinery\n\nAcquiring Machinery\n\nDetermining Equipment Size\n\nVariables to Consider\n\nEconomics of Machinery\n\nBuying Equipment\n\n10. Farm Management\n\nRecipe for Success\n\nKnowledge Is Power\n\nMaking Choices\n\nManagement Tools\n\nManaging Labor\n\nPlanning for Farm Efficiency\n\n11. Where We Are Going\n\nLand and Farms\n\nIndustrialization of Agriculture\n\nFarms and People\n\nSuccess on Sustainable Farms\n\nMy Vision\n\nAppendix A: Metric Conversions Chart\n\nAppendix B: Resource Lists\n\nBooks\n\nBook Sources\n\nPeriodicals\n\nInternet Sites\n\nUniversity Sources\n\nFederal Agencies\n\nMap Sources\n\nResource Lists\n\nSeed and Plant Catalogs\n\nSupplies\n\nAssociations and Organizations\n\nIndex\n\n## Foreword\n\nThe agricultural industry is as old as America.\n\nGenerations before Columbus discovered the New World, natives of the Western Hemisphere grew maize, squash, and root crops. Our ancestors tilled the soil for subsistence and later embraced farming as a vocation. Over the years, because of scientific breakthroughs, new technology, and improved systems, the number of people employed in farming has declined; still, the business of farming remains vital to our well-being as a people and a nation.\n\nMost of America's nearly two million farms are considered \"small,\" with seven out of ten grossing less than $50,000 a year. Despite their preponderance, operators of small farms have often felt neglected by our national farm programs. Sources of advice for farmers starting out have about dried up, with agricultural county agents admitting that they have time to service only full-time farmers\u2014a group whose numbers are declining. The state departments of agriculture have marketing advice aplenty but are of little help to newcomers asking questions about credit, cropping recommendations, and cultural information. Needed are individual human beings whose hands are on the rural pulse and who have lots of information in their heads, but it remains to be seen who will train them or who will pay them. People have been spoiled for more than a century, recipients of free advice from the government, but that advice is gone now and won't be coming back.\n\nA big establishment and greater sales volume do not guarantee a corresponding increase in profits. Likewise, buying land and calling that land a farm cannot ensure that your investment will be profitable. The days of starting out on a few dollars are over, and farming is now complex. People in the business are specialists, and many even have training in business theory. Such is farming in 1999, and so it will be in the years to come.\n\nToday, as well as tomorrow, the most important piece of farm equipment is knowledge. Understanding complex situations or agribusiness production and marketing problems will be paramount to staying in business year after year. In this era of high technology, vacillating consumer wants and tastes, and shifting market conditions, farm managers and agricultural entrepreneurs are seeking help to cope with these and other situations. In the past\u2014indeed, too frequently\u2014people would \"shut the gate after the horse was out of the barn\" and then go look for the horse. Now, the preferred method is to have a plan of action in place before going to the barn\u2014knowledge is the key.\n\nIt starts with you. You must decide what is good for you, your family, and the farm business before purchasing resources or even planting a seed. Anyone can own a farm and call themselves a farmer, but to become profitable you must acquire and apply business skills.\n\n_Making Your Small Farm Profitable_ is your road map for planning a successful journey into the vast and diverse landscape of agriculture in the years ahead. Ron Macher is a veteran farmer, a true friend of mine and yours, and a huge advocate of small farms. Ron has \"been there and done that\" for agriculture for many decades. He writes from the heart for the sole purpose of instructing and guiding novice entrepreneurs, wanna-bes, and tried and true \"dirt under the fingernails\" farm people. Ron, like me, is close to the earth\u2014we are both proven small farm operators. We have been close friends and colleagues championing America's small farm community for many years. (Ron was in the private sector, while I served the public via the U.S. Department of Agriculture.)\n\nIn the early 1980s we witnessed the tragic loss of many family farms. Ron did not stand idly by as this occurred; rather, he launched a new publication aimed at Midwest farm families. The fledgling farm magazine _Missouri Farm_ grew in popularity, and later the magazine's name was changed to _Small Farm Today_ \u2014now the industry bellwether.\n\nOver the years, with the advent of new crops and technology, Ron found that his working hours were increasingly devoted to being an executive, not a farmer. This role brought a new kind of obligation, and Ron soon felt the kind of responsibility he has today; he got a glimpse of the complicated future he and others would face in industrialized agriculture. Already, he was greatly disturbed by the failure of government, both federal and state, to provide the information that small farm operators required. He took it upon himself to meet that need and began editing and publishing his magazine, now in circulation for more than 15 years.\n\n_Making Your Small Farm Profitable_ is the outgrowth of Ron's vast experience in farming and his knowledge of journalism. Over the years, he learned how to share this experience and delegate the details of his business to others. Written for people who want to be profitable regardless of their farm status, novice or veteran, full-time or part-time, this book is your guide from the earliest stages of farming, when all things and topics are nebulous, to a genuine high point in farming\u2014when you make a bank deposit, confirming that your small farm _is_ profitable.\n\nHoward W. \"Bud\" Kerr, Jr.  \nFormer Director, Office of Small-Scale Agriculture,  \nU.S. Department of Agriculture\n\n## Preface\n\nWhen you are disking a field to plant corn, the sun is shining, and the earth smells fresh, you are probably not thinking about whether that process will make you money. Farmers invariably find production agriculture more fun than the business side of farming, which involves heady subjects like marketing, sales, and cost evaluations. Still, to become a successful agripreneur, you'll need to learn to enjoy the business side of farming as well. It is my sincere hope that this book will help beginning and established farmers make their farms profitable and their livelihoods satisfying, moving us forward to a more consistently sustainable agriculture and ultimately fostering sustainable communities.\n\n### What Is Agripreneurship?\n\nAgripreneurship is the profitable marriage of agriculture and entrepreneurship\u2014more plainly, turning your farm into a business. Most farmers regard agriculture as a combination of philosophy and lifestyle, so in its broadest sense agripreneurship binds together philosophy, lifestyle, and business, yielding ideals that give you purpose and goals to strive for. Agripreneurship is a mental attitude that can give you the strength and motivation to break from tradition.\n\n### About Sustainable Agriculture\n\nSustainable agriculture is a site-specific, whole-farm approach to agriculture. Land, people, goals, capital, crops, and livestock are managed to yield the best possible results on the farm. Not tied to any one model of agriculture, sustainable agriculture strives to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of the family farm.\n\nBy reducing inputs, sustainable agriculture encourages conservation and multiple uses of resources. It promotes diversity, using multiple species and natural methods to recycle matter and nutrients to maintain the land's productivity, now and in the future. Sustainable agriculture encourages local food production, providing food to society at a reasonable cost while supporting the farmer with an acceptable level of income. Finally, sustainable agriculture fosters a diverse and sustainable farming community as well as a sustainable society, drawing together farmers, lenders, consumers, and institutions in cooperative partnerships.\n\n### A Sustainable Community\n\nWhen considered strictly from an agricultural standpoint, we quickly recognize that society comprises four major groups: farmers, lenders, consumers, and institutions.\n\n  * Farmers are those who provide food and fiber to our nation. Their farms provide a reserve of natural habitat for wildlife, supply oxygen, and act as filters for our watersheds. Farmers instill in their children a strong work ethic and a good set of values.\n\n  * Lenders are important suppliers of start-up capital for companies of all sorts. In agriculture, lenders supply monies to agripreneurs and processing facilities, allowing farmers to sell their products directly at retail prices.\n\n  * Consumers are those who buy the products that individual farmers and institutions produce. Consumers provide farmers with the income they need to continue their operations.\n\n  * Institutions include universities, government agencies, and businesses. Institutions create consumer goods, add value to products, and perform research.\n\nThese four groups are the cornerstones of our society, the community of America. To be a sustainable community, the community requires sustainable agriculture. Respect and cooperation among these groups promotes just that.\n\n### Why Do You Need This Book?\n\n_Making Your Small Farm Profitable_ provides a blueprint for farmers. In one volume, I try to tie together the whole picture of farming, show new farmers what they can do and how to choose where to begin, and share my keys to success. I have been a farmer for 34 years and have made a lot of mistakes in that time; some people call this \"experience.\" My fifteen years as a publisher have exposed me to thousands of farm failures and farm success stories. This book should keep you from making some of the mistakes I have made and seen others make\u2014mistakes that can potentially cost thousands of dollars. All of this useful knowledge will be yours with a modest investment of reading time and by practicing the thinking process detailed here.\n\n### About This Book\n\nBack in the first rural crisis in 1984, I started a magazine for small farmers (now _Small Farm Today_ ), because information they needed was not readily available. Recently, I decided to write a book about farming, because the information for new farmers and farmers trying to survive in this age of industrial agriculture is not readily available. There are many good books about individual species of livestock, many useful gardening books, many great books about the reasons for and philosophy of farming, but few books that tie all these aspects together or that help the reader choose where to start.\n\nThis book takes a how-to approach\u2014it does not specifically detail how to raise, say, cattle or pumpkins, but rather how to farm successfully and profitably. It is a whole-farm planning approach that ties together outside and on-farm resources with your personal, family, and farm goals. It's about the principles that make your thinking process work like a well-oiled machine.\n\nThroughout the book, you'll find called out in the text pearls of wisdom, guiding principles that, if followed, will help make your farming life more manageable and productive. We begin with a discussion of the basics, information and techniques that will assist you to get started or that will help improve your existing operation. Many of these are things I wish I had known years ago when I was starting out.\n\nLater chapters discuss principles of good farming, resources (location, soil, water, and climate among them), and basic farming methods to help you determine what and how you want to farm.\n\nThen we help you refine your goals, following that up with a discussion of marketing, enterprise choices, machinery, and management. In the final chapters, we tie it all together and send you out as an agripreneur.\n\nYou _can_ make money on your farm. You _can_ enjoy it. Read on to find out how.\n\n## **Acknowledgments**\n\nMy special thanks to my wife, Joanne, for the use of half her kitchen table for a year, and for her tolerance of the many piles of books and papers that covered it. I also thank Deborah Burns and Marie Salter of Storey Books, for their good ideas and professionalism. To the readership of _Small Farm Today_ magazine\u2014you asked for a book on making a small farm pay\u2014here it is.\n\nFinally, I am grateful for the help and assistance of Paul Berg, editor at _Small Farm Today_. Writers draw strength and inspiration from countless sources, and many people influenced what I have written. In particular, Paul was the prodder who helped me create the most useful book I could. His editing skills and suggestions enabled me to say what I wanted in the best possible manner. My thanks to Paul for all the hours and effort he expended in helping me get this book completed.\n\n###### Part i\n\n## Getting Started\n\n###### Chapter One\n\n## Deciding to Farm\n\nWhy do people farm?\n\nFarming can be rewarding. There is nothing like the feeling that comes from walking through a still-foggy field in the morning to find newborn triplets from your favorite ewe, or seeing a foot-long ear on your latest strain of open-pollinated corn, or just looking across your land at sunset and saying, \"This belongs to me!\"\n\nFarming can be frustrating. Why did that chain choose to break on your planter right in the middle of the farthest field at 3 P.M., forcing you to have to go to town to get another, only for it to be dark when you got back? Why did it rain for three straight weeks while you were trying to plant your vegetables, not raining a drop since? A man once told me, \"There's no way in hell I'd have a job where my income depended on whether or not it rained!\"\n\nFarming can be tough. The number of farmers in the United States has shrunk from 6.5 million in the 1930s to only 2 million in the 1990s. Less than 12 percent of all farmers make a sustainable living wage from the farm, and we are losing almost one hundred farms per day. Agricultural experts (economists in particular) have been predicting the demise of small farms for the past 50 years. \"Look before you leap\" certainly seems like good advice if you are thinking about becoming a farmer.\n\n_Today's small farms range from quarter-acre specialty herb farms to many-acred traditional and alternative crop and livestock farms that sell value-added products directly to the consumer. Can you visualize your farm_?\n\nThe total number of farms in the United States has declined from a high approaching 70,000 in the 1930s to 20,000 today.\n\nSo why do people farm?\n\nThe reasons that people begin to farm are as varied as the snowflakes that are just now beginning to fall on my newly budding trees. Some farmers are sons and daughters following in their parents' footsteps. Some have fond memories of spending summers on the farm of a grandfather or uncle. Some are influenced (as I was) by an elderly neighbor talking about his life on the farm.\n\nThe Rural Sociology Department at the University of Missouri did a study in the 1950s, asking why people chose to farm. Large and small farmers alike were questioned. Here were the first three reasons:\n\n  1. \"I like to work outdoors.\"\n\n  2. \"It's a good place to raise my children.\"\n\n  3. \"I'll always have a place to live and food to eat.\" (Not necessarily true, if you have a mortgage.)\n\nFourteenth of the fifteen reasons listed was \"It provides a good income,\" and fifteenth was \"I don't know how to do anything else.\" Obviously, lifestyle was a big reason that people farmed, if income was so far down on the list.\n\nAlmost 40 years after the University of Missouri study, the DuPont Company hired Doanes Agricultural Service to do a study on why farmers farm and what farming practices they used, among other such questions.\n\nIn that study, conducted in 1996, the first three answers were still lifestyle choices, but \"good income\" moved up to seventh place. Income seems to be more important to people now than it was four decades ago, but lifestyle is still the principal reason someone farms.\n\nLater in this chapter, I will explain the importance of farm income for small farmers, and why it should be your number one goal; the reason will probably surprise you. But even though you need a good income to be a farmer, that is probably not _why_ you want to be a farmer.\n\nThis is also true of me. The reasons I farm all involve the independent lifestyle, self-reliance, being in harmony with nature, and the feelings of goodness that come from my land. Self-reliance and a love of the outdoors are an ingrained part of our American heritage, and farming is a way to celebrate that heritage. Henry Ford said it best: \"The further removed we are from the land, the greater our insecurity.\"\n\n### What Is a Small Farm?\n\nIf you are planning to farm, you are almost certainly going to start with a small farm. You will be in good company\u201479 percent of all the farms in the United States are small farms, according to the 1997 Census of Agriculture. There is also good news for small farmers\u2014while the total number of farms has decreased, the number of small farms is actually increasing at a rate of about 2 percent per year, and this trend is predicted to continue for at least the next 10 to 20 years.\n\nHow much land do you have to have to be a small farm? The answer is up to you. I define a small farm as any farm that has 179 acres or fewer, or that has a gross income of $50,000 per year or less. This seems to be a reasonable compromise between acreage and income\u2014but not everyone agrees. As you read this book, don't get hung up on numbers and definitions. There are hundreds of government bureaucrats and university professors making $100,000 a year arguing about what's a large farm and what's a small farm. To make the matter worse, many people confuse small farms, family farms, and sustainable agriculture. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has no official definition of farm sizes. Meanwhile, according to the National Small Farm Commission, a small farm is any farm grossing $250,000 per year or less. This is 94 percent of all the farms in the United States, and includes what I would call midsize farms.\n\n# Terms\n\nThe confusion between small farms, family farms, and sustainable agriculture is somewhat understandable, because all three share similar characteristics.\n\n  * A _small farm_ is any farm that comprises 179 acres or less, or that grosses $50,000 or less per year. Small farms are usually family farms but may or may not be sustainable.\n\n  * A _family farm_ is any size farm\u2014small, medium, or large\u2014in which family members supply the majority of needed farm labor. A family farm is not necessarily sustainable.\n\n  * _Sustainable agriculture_ is an economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable system of agriculture that may be used on any size farm.\n\nThere even seems to be some argument as to what constitutes a farmer. The first definition of a farmer in Webster's _New_ _World Dictionary_ is \"a person who earns his living by farming; especially, one who manages or operates a farm.\" While Webster was content to define a farm and a farmer using only words, the rest of the world seems to prefer definitions involving numbers. The Usda has changed the definition of a farm nine times. In the 1950s and 1960s, a farm was any place smaller than 10 acres but selling $250 or more of agricultural products per year, or any place of 10 acres or more from which $50 of agricultural products were sold per year.\n\nCurrently, the Usda defines you as a farmer if you sell $1,000 worth of agricultural products per year. In 1996, the U.S. Bureau of the Census proposed changing that figure to $10,000 (presumably to save itself some counting). There was an outcry from universities, because the sizes of their federally funded programs are determined by the number of farmers living in their state; in the end, the $1,000 figure has prevailed.\n\nMy own definition of a farmer is quite simple: If you think you're a farmer, you are a farmer. Any size acreage, from a small garden to 3,000 acres, where a person or family tries to make a living (or part of a living) from the land is a farm. A small farm is any farm that is small, regardless of cash inflow or outgo. The \"Biggest Little Farm in America\" grosses $238,000 from \u00bd acre of gourmet vegetables. I know several owners of 80-acre farms who gross $50,000 to $60,000 per year, with a final (net) profit of $25,000 to $30,000. On research plots on my 80-acre farm, with a combination of vegetables and livestock, we have grossed $3.00 per square foot, and netted $1.32 per square foot. If we expanded these practices to a full acre (43,560 square feet), this would yield a gross profit of $130,680 and a net profit of $57,500.\n\nThe definitions of farms and farmers probably always will be contested by a variety of university, corporate, government, and individual entities. If we are to progress as farmers, these definitions are not necessarily important. We must simply know who we are, what we are about, and where we are going. Agricultural problems are solved by solutions, not definitions.\n\n# How The IRS Defines a Farmer\n\nThe U.S. Internal Revenue Service (Irs) has its own definition of a farmer. Because farmers, unlike hobbyists, are allowed tax reductions, the Irs defines them rather strictly. The short explanation (available in \"Farmer's Tax Guide 225\") is that you may file as a farmer by March 1 if at least two-thirds of your gross income is from farming. Further, your farming activities are presumed not to be a hobby if profits result in any three of five consecutive tax years, ending with the tax year in question\u2014with exceptions for raising horses. Obviously, the Irs is not interested in unsuccessful farmers.\n\nA more detailed explanation is available in publication N-1000, \"Farmers for Tax Purposes\" (italics are mine):\n\nWho is a farmer: _All individuals, partnerships, or corporations that cultivate, operate, or manage farms for gain or profit, either as owners or tenants, are regarded as farmers_. To be classified as a farmer, a taxpayer must meet the two-fold test of participation to a significant degree in the growing process and assumption of a substantial risk of loss from that process. Thus, a taxpayer who gets rent based on farm production is a farmer. But if the rent is fixed, he isn't a farmer unless he materially participates in the farm's operation or management. A taxpayer is engaged in the business of farming if he belongs to a partnership so engaged.... _Farmers include persons engaged in oyster farming, the raising of bees, breeding and raising chinchillas, mink, foxes, and other furbearing animals_. Feedlot operators have been held to be farmers with respect to stock they own, as well as with respect to stock handled for customers. _But a taxpayer engaged in forestry or the raising of timber is not engaged in farming. Neither is a taxpayer who sells Christmas trees grown, without planting or cultivation, on land he owns_.\n\nWell, that really clears things up! This is why I call myself an agripreneur, instead of a farmer.\n\n### Becoming a Farmer\n\nFarming, in some respects, is easy; making a living from a farm is hard. In addition to being a farmer, I want to help you become an agripreneur.\n\n_Agripreneur_ is a term I coined in 1987 to describe the readership of my magazine, _Small Farm Today_. An entrepreneur, according to Webster's dictionary, is someone who runs a business at his\/her own financial risk\u2014a middleman. An agripreneur is someone who runs an agricultural business\u2014farming in particular\u2014at his or her own risk.\n\nI will discuss this in more detail in later chapters, but for now, ask yourself some simple questions:\n\n  * \"How much money do I need in order to live comfortably and support my family? $15,000? $20,000? $50,000?\"\n\n  * \"How long will it take to achieve this level of income, and will I be happy when I achieve it?\"\n\n  * \"Do I want to farm part time? Full time? Start part time and grow from there?\"\n\n  * \"How much money do I already have in order to start farming, and how much do I wish to borrow?\"\n\n  * \"What skills and resources do I have? Am I good with livestock, or can I learn to be? Am I good with machinery, or maybe carpentry\u2014to build hog houses or poultry houses? What skills do I have that I really enjoy? What skills am I weak in or do I really dislike?\"\n\n# Self \u2013 Evaluation\n\nBecoming an agripreneur involves changing the way you think about farming. When you decide to start a farm, you need to ask how farming will satisfy both your monetary needs and your personal goals, now and in the future. This is a question that you will want to reevaluate frequently as you continue in farming.\n\nThese are not questions you will know all the answers to now, but you need to keep them in mind as we proceed.\n\nDo not be critical of your skills at this point. There are many people entering farming today with no farming background. These people have good business and computer skills\u2014which can be a farming asset\u2014but don't have any of the basic day-today knowledge to run a farm, from milking a cow to planting corn. If you are one of these people, don't worry; you can learn.\n\n#### Full-Time Farming: Pros and Cons\n\nIf you want to start out as a full-time farmer and have no experience, you have chosen a difficult road; you will have to do all your learning while you are striving to make enough money to satisfy your personal goals. It is even harder if you took out a mortgage and a big loan; on a full-time farm, your business, your home, and your lifestyle are all tied together in one big package.\n\nOn the other hand, in full-time farming you are your own boss and set your own hours. You are the Ceo of planning, developing, and determining your destiny. It is highly rewarding to lay out a plan and guide it to completion, correcting your failures and overcoming obstacles. No amount of money can give you the feeling you get in the springtime from watching the birth of a scruffy bright-eyed calf or a litter of tiny piglets, as your farm renews and repopulates itself in its never-ending cycle of life.\n\n#### Part-Time Farming: Pros and Cons\n\nPart-time farming allows you to have your cake and eat it too. Combining farming with a town job or seasonal off-farm labor can be difficult to manage, juggling the demands of both workplaces, but you'll have more financial safety. It is certainly a safer transition for new farmers; their farming mistakes will not have the capability to cost them their entire income. An off-farm job provides the financial security and the borrowing power of a steady paycheck, and reduces the risks involved in a weather-dependent business. You can experience the rewards of farming and learn as you go without the stress of a \"root-hog-or-die\" existence.\n\n#### Gaining Knowledge\n\nI was lucky enough to have some knowledge when I started. I grew up in a rural area, although my father did not farm. I worked on several farms nearby and learned skills as varied as driving a team of mules to harvest a potato crop, raking and baling hay, and milking a ten-cow herd by hand for grade C milk. If you are new to farming and you know any farmers, talk to them and do chores with them whenever you get the chance.\n\nPeople who grew up on farms do not always discuss their finances in depth, nor do they necessarily know why they do things the way they do. They may simply be carrying out the instructions they learned about _how_ to do it, without understanding the principles of _why_ they do it. To be a successful agripreneur, you must understand your operations completely, from the how to the why.\n\n### The Farming Life\n\nPrinciple: _Farming goals must be family goals. To move to a farm, the entire family needs to be prepared for what life will be like_.\n\nAlthough life on the farm is much easier than it was in the past\u2014due to the advent of electricity, county water, and the automobile\u2014a farm is still a rural environment, and when it gets dark, there are no streetlights. Dust and mud are \"up close and personal\" every day and every season. Dirt and gravel roads are harder to manage than concrete, and no city crew comes out to clean snow off your street. You will probably be far away from medical help, a fire department, and the police. Your children will have fewer playmates, and visiting the neighbors may require hopping into a car.\n\nOn a farm, you'll have to deal with nature. Nature is cyclical, slow, and unpredictable. After a beef cow is bred, she is pregnant for 9 months, and then you must wait another 6 months before you can sell her feeder calf to get back any income. Many field crops take 6 months to a year from planting to harvest to income. The weather can act up at any time, drowning your crops or freezing your livestock.\n\nIf you are new to farming, all of this will require some adjustment. Fortunately, there are genuine advantages to a rural life. People in a rural environment learn to become more independent\u2014to rely on their own inner strength. Family members who work together and share will learn to depend on each other much more than they would in an urban environment, where everyone is going in different directions.\n\nThe most important thing that agriculture has furnished this country with is not food or fiber, but, rather, a set of children with a work ethic and a good set of values. Doing farm chores that must be done\u2014it is not acceptable to say, \"Oh, I'll feed the goats next Saturday\"\u2014gives children a basis for a work ethic that will continue throughout their lives. These values carry over into the rural community, creating a quality of life that we all want\u2014and need.\n\nChildren who grow up on a farm learn responsibility and reliability.\n\nOne of the biggest differences between a town business and a farm is that at the end of the day, you leave a town business and go home. With a farm, your business, your home, your family, and your lifestyle are all linked. Dinner-table discussions on a farm usually include a lot more \"business talk\" than do dinner-table discussions in town. And when your home and farm are at the same location and your mortgage entangles both, if your farm is not profitable, you can lose both your home and your business in one fell swoop.\n\nOn the bright side, watching the sun set after a hard day's work is much more satisfying from your porch than it is from rush-hour traffic. And to start the day's work, all you have to do is step outside instead of stuffing your briefcase and jumping into your car.\n\nNone of the obstacles is hard to overcome. The important thing is for the entire family to be prepared for a lifestyle change. Husband, wife, and children must know why they are making this choice and what part they will contribute to the whole.\n\n### Agripreneurship\n\n_Sustainable farming_ is the current catchphrase in agricultural circles. Sustainable farming simply means farming that sustains itself\u2014a continuous cycle that does not wear out the land or the farmer, replenishes the livestock and crops, and enables the family to continue farming. There are many elements to sustainability, such as diversity and \"low input\"\u2014but the most important principle of sustainability is to be profitable. Memorize this sentence: \"To be sustainable, it must be profitable.\"\n\nThis is important for the survival of your farm and is part of my definition of agripreneurship. Apripreneurs must have a positive attitude and practice a sustainable type of farming that satisfies both personal and family goals. Because agripreneurship involves sustainability, and sustainability requires profitability, we will make this the guiding principle of agripreneurship.\n\n#### A Profitable Farm\n\nPrinciple: _Your farm must be profitable_.\n\nMany people believe the goal of being profitable is to get wads of money so they can spend it on what they want. These people pursue high-paying jobs and put in endless hours of work to get rich, so they can be happy.\n\nThe reason to make your farm profitable is simple: As long as you take in more money than you spend, your farm can improve in fertility and has a potential for sustainability. A farm can generate large numbers of bills\u2014your goal is to be able to pay them.\n\nIf your farm has to be subsidized with off-farm income, it is not sustainable in the long run. Eventually you'll deplete your savings, or you will retire from your job. Even part-time farms should be sustainable. Make your farm pay for itself.\n\nIn today's small-farm market, your only real financial security lies in your ability to sell yourself and your products. You will be responsible for your own success or failure. In conventional agriculture, a farmer simply raises the crop and then hauls it to the middleman to sell. The middleman passes on the crop to the retailer and eventually to the consumer. To be an agripreneur, you must be your own middleman, selling your product directly to the consumer.\n\n#### The Big Picture\n\nPrinciple: _You must look at the whole picture_.\n\nAgripreneurship involves examining your operation as a whole. Its parts should support each other, and you need to be aware of how efficiently each part is succeeding\u2014or failing.\n\nIn a factory job, workers simply screw part A into part B and never see the whole. In most office jobs, each worker gets a piece of a project, or a single account out of several. An agripreneur must be aware of each piece, each account, and how they are linked. Your farm is the entire factory, the whole company, and you need to know how all of it works.\n\nTo see the whole picture, you must look beyond your farm, too. Is your product something you can sell in your area? Are there \"new\" products that would be appreciated in the local community? How does what you raise affect neighboring farms? How does what they raise affect you? What will be the overall effects in the local region?\n\n#### Planning\n\nPrinciple: _Think. Think. Think_.\n\nAgripreneurship is the \"thinking person's agriculture.\" You must plan carefully, for both your farm and your family. Your plan should include time for rest and recreation, because this renews your spirit and gives you time to think about your farm and learn what others do. Farming is physical by nature, but it is not how hard you work, but how smart you work. The difference between a conventional farmer and an agripreneur is that the agripreneur does more thinking and less doing. If you wear yourself out physically and mentally, you will accomplish nothing. Learn to enjoy the trip, as well as the destination.\n\nIn agripreneurship, your reasoning process, backed by reading and research, enables you to make decisions that affect or contribute to all facets of your farm and your personal and family goals. A thinking person evaluates all of his or her options and tries to keep an open mind. My favorite maxim is, \"Just because it's new doesn't make it better, and just because it's old doesn't make it obsolete.\" An agripreneur will take the most useful of the new with the best of the old and apply it to his or her own farm in an individual style. To discover what will work and what won't requires research, experimentation, and thought.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nThere are other principles to both sustainability and agripreneurship, but this will get you started. Remember that agripreneurship\u2014and farming\u2014is a never-ending process of discovery. Your farm will evolve into a unique entity and meet your personal goals, family goals, and farm goals. Once you grasp and apply these principles, you can become independent, self-sufficient, successful, and happy. Just think of this as your agricultural self-help book.\n\n###### Chapter Two\n\n## Starting a Farm\n\nThere are many different types of farms, from large monoculture farms that produce a single product to general diversified farms that raise a little bit of everything (see chart for examples). Farms can range in size from thousands of acres down to \u00bd acre or even smaller. A shiitake mushroom farmer in southern Missouri got her start with eight mushroom logs. Now she farms thousands of logs.\n\nThe important thing to consider when choosing a farm type is to find something you like to raise that is compatible with your climate and that can be marketed for a profit. We will discuss this further after you have done some farm planning.\n\n### Starting a Farm Plan\n\nWhether you are buying a new farm or jump-starting an old farm, you must have a plan. To begin your farm planning, first assess your available resources, both personal and property.\n\nIf you are new to farming, there is a definite advantage to deciding what you will farm (vegetables, grains, dairy cattle, ostrich,\n\n_Farming furnishes children with a work ethic, a good set of values, and a true sense of family_\n\n###### Some Types Of Farms\n\nFarm Type | Product\/Characteristics  \n---|---  \nTraditional crop | Field crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and milo  \nCrop and livestock | May use rough ground for pasturing livestock and the rest of the property for traditional field crops  \nSpecialty crop | Herbs, cut or dried flowers (outdoors or in greenhouses), industrial field crops such as guayule (a rubber substitute) and kenaf (used as fiber by the paper industry), one or several varieties of vegetables, fruits (from kiwis to apple orchards), and berries; fruits and vegetables can be marketed as either fresh produce or value-added crops (canned tomatoes or dried blueberries or jam, for example)  \n_Unusual crop_  \nButterflies | Live butterflies, for use at weddings and parties  \nBees and insects | Rent insects out for pollinating crops  \n_Aquaculture_  \nWorms | Worms for fish bait  \nGoldfish and tropical fish | Fish for the aquarium trade  \nFee fishing | Consumers pay a daily fee or a per-pound fee for fish they catch on the farm  \nFood fish | Catfish, trout, and other fish are raised for sale to stores, restaurants, and consumers  \n_Exotic animals_  \nElk, bison, deer, mountain sheep, donkeys, ratites (e.g., ostriches, emus, and rheas) | Raised for meat, hides, and specialty by-products such as emu oil or velvet from elk antlers (used medicinally)\n\n# What Is Added Value?\n\nValue is added when a raw commodity is changed in a way that makes it more convenient to market and gives it a longer marketing life. Examples of value-added crops include cornmeal, jams and jellies, and tomato juice.\n\nfor example) and how you will market it (roadside stand, farmers' market, sale barn, value added) before you purchase the land. On the other hand, it is difficult to find the perfect farm that has everything you want at a price you can afford. So whether it is a new farm or an old one, you need to evaluate the property. By _property_ , I mean not just the land you own, but also what you will place on it.\n\n### Evaluating Your Resources\n\nMake a big resource list (see box on page 20)\u2014try to include on it everything you can think of. A list of what you know and what you need to know is the first step to a successful farm. If you know what you have available, it will make it easier to work out what is required for whatever enterprise you choose.\n\nFarm planning is like a road map: You must know where you're going, or it will be awfully hard to get there. In other words, you must know how many dollars you need to live, both now and in the future, and how many potential dollars a farm operation can expect. It is obviously not possible to come up with exact numbers, but you must have some realistic figures in mind. You began evaluating your capital and skills in chapter 1, in the Self-Evaluation section, but let's consider them more closely now.\n\n# Resource List\n\nFor each point, consider what you have available and what you will need to achieve your goals.\n\n  * Capital (money)\n\n  * Skills\n\n  * Labor available (time, people)\n\n  * Land\n\n  * Soils\n\n  * Water\n\n  * Location\/access\n\n  * Climate\n\n  * Equipment\n\n  * Marketing needs of the area\n\n#### Capital\n\nIn chapter 1, you evaluated what income level would be comfortable for you and your family. You also began to consider how much money you would need to start farming, or to change your operation. Now let's think about the amount of money you currently have. Ask yourself these questions:\n\n  * Do I have any savings?\n\n  * How much am I willing to risk on this new farming project?\n\n  * How much can I borrow\u2014and how much am I willing to borrow?\n\n  * Can I rent land with or without the option to buy later to maximize my limited capital? Should I rent or should I buy?\n\n  * Do neighbors or nearby equipment dealers have machinery I can rent, rather than buy?\n\n  * Can I buy a cheap \"fixer-upper\" and use my knowledge and time to multiply some sweat into cash?\n\nThese options all arise from the direct monies you have available. Consider other means to gain what you need as well, such as barter. Barter can be expressed in many ways. You could farm a piece of land on shares\u2014two-thirds to the owner, one-third to you. You can trade crops and livestock back and forth between nearby farms, or offer them in trade for a fence, or hay baling, or some plywood for a sheep shelter. Your skills\u2014or just some honest sweat helping another farmer\u2014are also tradable. Only your imagination limits the capital you can get.\n\n#### Skills\n\nIn chapter 1, you began a list of your personal resources, including the skills you have available. By listing the skills you have, then evaluating those you will need for your farming operation, you can determine what you will need to learn, or what you need someone else to do in your place.\n\nThe only way to acquire all the basic skills you need to be a farmer is to farm. Although you can (and should) read a book to learn the theory of how to plow a field, in reality there are far too many variables to explain. If you are completely new to farming, it may be wise to work for another farmer for a while, helping him in return for being taught some basic how-tos. Workshops, seminars, classes, and conferences are other places to learn at least the rudiments of many skills. If you cannot find anyone to learn from, read about it, then just jump in and do it. If you're patient, eventually you'll get it right\u2014as they say, \"Experience is what we learn from our mistakes.\"\n\nKeep in mind that agriculture can be dangerous, especially when lacking basic livestock- and machinery-handling skills. Don't get injured before you really get going just because of pride. Make sure you have a good idea of what you are doing, and make sure you have the proper tools to do it.\n\nMany old farmers would be glad to teach you their skills. Talk to them about volunteering in exchange for instruction, at sale barns, at feed and supply stores, or at their farms.\n\n# Skills a Farmer Needs\n\nFollowing are lists of skills that are needed for some basic types of farming. Of course, you might research what is needed for the operation you are planning. For example, elk farming, although similar to cattle farming, has very different requirements for each skill, and knowledge of collecting velvet (a product of the antlers) will also be necessary.\n\nSome of these may not be as simple as they appear. Moving cattle, for example, requires knowledge of the best places to stand to appear in the animals' fields of vision without alarming them, and what types of motion and movement work best.\n\nField-crop skills\n\nSoils\n\nPlowing, disking, harrowing\n\nPlanting, cultivation, harvesting\n\nSkills for each piece of equipment used\n\nWeather\/season knowledge\n\nCrop knowledge\n\nPest control, weed control, fertilization\n\nSeed saving\/preparation\n\nIrrigation\n\nMarketing\n\nVegetable-crop skills\n\nSoils\n\nCrop knowledge\n\nField preparation\n\nPlanting, seeds, transplants\n\nVertical growing, trellis (e.g., peas), cages (e.g., tomatoes)\n\nRaised-bed growing\n\nFlat-field growing\n\nMulching, cultivation\n\nHarvesting\n\n\u2022 Hand\n\n\u2022 Mechanical\n\nWeather\/season knowledge\n\nUse of season extenders\n\nPest control, weed control, fertilization\n\nSeed saving\/preparation\n\nIrrigation\n\nMarketing\n\nVine- and bramble-crop skills\n\nSoils\n\nPlanting\n\nPropagation\n\nIdentifying new wood, pruning, trellising\n\nCultivation\n\nHarvesting\n\n\u2022 Hand\n\n\u2022 Mechanical\n\nAdding value\n\nWinter preparation\n\nWeather\/season knowledge\n\nCrop knowledge\n\nPest control, weed control, fertilization\n\nIrrigation\n\nMarketing\n\nCattle skills\n\nApplying Id tags\n\nCastration\n\nBreed knowledge, breeding\n\nDehorning (removal of horns), hoof trimming\n\nMedication application, shots with needle, worming\n\nDelivering calves\n\nMilking cows\n\nHandling\/moving cattle\n\nRestraining large animals\n\nBehavioral knowledge\/control for:\n\n\u2022 Aggression\n\n\u2022 Birthing\n\n\u2022 Sickness\n\nShelter needs\n\nFeeding\/water\n\nManure handling\n\nFencing\n\nMarketing\n\nHog skills\n\nBreed knowledge, breeding\n\nFlushing\n\nApplying Id tags\n\nCastration, ringing\n\nRestraint for health care\n\nBirthing of litters\n\nHandling\/moving hogs\n\nRestraining large animals\n\nBehavioral knowledge\/control for:\n\n\u2022 Aggression (boars and sows)\n\n\u2022 Birthing\n\n\u2022 Sickness Shelter needs Feeding\/water\n\nManure handling\n\nFencing\n\nMarketing\n\nSheep skills\n\nBreed knowledge, breeding\n\nFlushing\n\nApplying Id tags\n\nTagging (removal of wool around udder), docking (removal of tails)\n\nMedication application\n\n\u2022 Shots with needle\n\n\u2022 Worming\n\nDelivering multiple lambs\n\nShearing\n\nHandling\/moving sheep\n\nBehavioral knowledge\/control for:\n\n\u2022 Aggression (rams)\n\n\u2022 Birthing\n\n\u2022 Sickness\n\nShelter needs\n\nFeeding\/water\n\nManure handling\n\nFencing\n\nMarketing\n\nUseful hand-tool skills\n\nWoodworking\n\nConcrete working\n\nFencing\n\nElectrical\n\nChain-saw operation\n\nRototiller usage\n\nHand mowers\n\n#### Labor\n\nYou must assess your available labor, in terms both of yourself and of your family. Will it be just you working, or will you have some combination of family members? If you have an idea of what combination of crops and livestock you plan to raise, figure out whether you have enough labor to take care of these enterprises. Remember, as we discussed in chapter 1, your financial goals must be your whole family's goals in order to be successful.\n\nFarm labor is generally measured by the number of 10-hour work days required under average conditions to take care of a certain number of acres or so many head of livestock (see labor charts, pages 26 and 27). Six 10-hour days per week for 50 weeks allows about 3,000 hours of labor available per year for one full-time farmer. In general, increasing the number of labor hours means increasing income, but in the case of a thinking agripreneur, this is not always so.\n\n# Family Labor\n\nFamily labor makes use of each family member's skills in a way that yields the greatest benefit to the farm. Each of us is better at some things than others, and tasks should be divided accordingly. Try to avoid strict rules and stereotypes: If a woman is better at lambing ewes, and a man is better at keeping books, do it that way. Even small children\u2014with patience, instruction, and careful supervision on your part\u2014can be helpful. Small children can handle baby chicks, fill feeders or water pans (a little at a time), pull weeds, or pick small fruits once you show them how. Give older children more responsibility, and listen to their ideas. If you want children to develop a strong work ethic while learning useful skills, they must first enjoy their work. You must teach them how. (See chapter 10 for more on family labor.)\n\nUsing the amount of hours listed in the labor charts, it seems that one person could therefore take care of 428 beef cattle (7 hours per cow), 750 sheep (4 hours per ewe), or 7,500 laying chickens (40 hours per 100 hens)\u2014although this would not allow time for building or equipment maintenance or marketing. A better time allowance (though still far from ideal) on a diversified family farm might be 20 acres of corn (152 hours), 20 acres of grass\/legume hay (218 hours), 420 acres of pasture (29.4 hours), 100 beef cattle (700 hours per year), 100 sheep (400 hours per year), and 2,000 laying hens (800 hours per year). This would total 2,300 hours per year, leaving 700 hours to use on maintenance, making hay, marketing, or a part-time job.\n\nWhen allotting time for labor, remember to allow for the proper distribution of labor throughout the year, so that you are not crowded for time during critical months. Field corn, for instance, requires 7.6 hours per acre per year\u2014but 1.1 hours of that are in December to March, 3 hours (planting) are in April and May, 1 hour (cultivation) is in June and July, 0.8 hour is in August and September, and 1.7 hours (harvest) are in October and November. The heaviest months are April through May and October through November. In contrast, in a two-litter-per-sow Butcher Hog system, with litters farrowed on March 1 and September 1, 16 hours are required in December to March, 8 hours in April to July, 4 hours in August, 8 hours in September, and 4 hours in October and November. Note the increased labor hours at farrowing time.\n\nBecause your goals should be your family's goals, it is important to set aside time for family in your farming life. Don't let your work schedule get so full that you neglect other obligations, such as time for church, vacations, or children's sports events. Remember, too, that labor is not accomplished solely on the farm. Allow time for education: Attend seminars and conferences. Nonfarm activities give you personal contacts with different viewpoints and may inspire ideas about how to improve the management of your own business.\n\n# Labor Charts\n\nThese charts give an estimate of time required for all direct labor involved in the normal care of crops and livestock: planting and harvesting, feeding, milking, cleaning stalls and pens, castration, docking, assisting in birth, and normal health care such as shots and vaccinations. They do not include establishment of a product (start-up times), machinery and building maintenance, cleaning bins and other general farm chores, adding value, or marketing of the product. The labor hours are based on the types of equipment a small farmer could be expected to own (a three-plow tractor, for example). These times are approximate and should be used only as guidelines in comparison to your actual records.\n\n###### Total Hours Of Labor Per Year To Produce The Crop At Average Efficiency From Field Preparation To Harvest\n\nData from _Farm Business Planning Guide for Organization_ #6500, University of Missouri Cooperative Extension, Columbia, Mo, 1965; _Selected Fruit and Vegetable Planning Budgets_ , Ec 959, by Charles D. DeCourley and Kevin C. Moore, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri\u2014Columbia, 1987; and _Enterprise Budgets: Northeast Oklahoma 1985_ , prepared by Bill Burton, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension, Claremore, Ok, 1985.\n\n# Total Hours Of Labor Per Year To Raise Animals At Average Efficiency\n\nAnimal Unit | Hours\/Animal Unit  \n---|---  \nButcher hogs: 1 sow (2 litters\/year) | 40  \nFeeder pigs: 1 sow (2 litters\/year) | 22  \nFeeder pig finishing: 100 pigs | 80  \nSheep: 1 ewe | 4.0  \nHoneybees: 1 hive | 6.2  \nDairy goats: 1 doe | 1.2  \nChickens: 100 laying hens | 40  \nChickens: 500 broilers | 9  \nTurkeys: 100 birds | 10  \nDairy cattle: 1 cow  \nFluid milk market | 80  \nManufacturing milk market | 85  \nReplacement heifer to 2 years old | 20  \nBeef cattle: 1 cow and calf  \nStocker calf | 7  \nSteer calf |   \nWintered only | 3.5  \nWintered and grazed | 4  \nFinished immediately | 5  \nWintered and finished | 6  \nWintered, grazed, and finished | 8  \nHeifer calf  \nFinished immediately | 4  \nWintered and finished | 6  \nYearling steer  \nFinished immediately | 5  \nWintered and finished | 6  \nPlain wintered and short fed | 5\n\nData from _Farm Business Planning Guide for Organization_ #6500, University of Missouri Cooperative Extension, Columbia, Mo, 1965, and _Enterprise Budgets: Northeast Oklahoma 1985_ , prepared by Bill Burton, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension, Claremore, Ok, 1985.\n\n# Terms\n\n**_Finished immediately_** Fed only grain after weaning\n\n**_Heifer calf_** Female who has not yet given birth\n\n**_Steer calf_** Castrated bull calf\n\n**_Stocker calf_** Calf sold at weaning (6 to 7 months of age)\n\n**_Wintered only_** Weaned from mother and fed hay or grain over winter\n\n**_Wintered and finished_** Fed hay and grain until spring, then given all the grain the animal desires to finish\n\n**_Wintered and grazed_** Fed hay or grain over winter, then grazed on spring grass until sold (usually in autumn)\n\n**_Wintered, grazed, and finished_** Fed hay and grain after weaning, grazed from spring to autumn, then finished on more grain until marketed\n\n**_Yearling steer_** Steer about 1 year old; a \"short\" yearling is just under a year, a \"long\" yearling is just over a year.\n\n#### Land\n\nQuestions to begin assessment of the property include:\n\n  * What size is my farm?\n\n  * How much of the land is producing timber or brush?\n\n  * How much is suitable only for pasture and how much is suitable for grain crops?\n\nThis can be further divided into small-grain-crop (wheat, oats) and large-grain-crop (corn, soybeans) suitability, based on soil types. Large grains usually require more fertile soils.\n\nWhen buying property, remember that real estate is a piece of land with a set of rights that may or may not be included. Make sure you have water rights and mineral rights, and are aware of easements and any other intrusions on the property. Check at the Abstract Office or Title Company in your town to see what rights have been sold.\n\nCondition of land, soil type, and climate are the main factors in determining what crops will grow on an area of land. Although it is possible, in fact, to grow almost any crop anywhere, the cost to grow some crops in some areas may not be acceptable. Grain and vegetable crops do best in deep, fertile soils and level fields. Fruit crops do best where there are no extremes of temperature. They need well-drained soil, but do not require a level topography. The condition of a land is also known as its capability.\n\n#### Classifying Land\n\nLand is generally classified into eight Capability Classes. Each class allows for certain types of usage and treatment. Classes are based on slope of land, available water capacity, and soil drainage. Classes I to Iv are suited for cultivation. Classes V to Viii may be pasture, woodland, or wildlife areas. These are general conditions, and the land may be capable of alternative uses with proper treatment. For example, a hillside may be used for crops if water is prevented from running straight down the slope and eroding the soil. Terracing (a series of steps or ridges made from soil running at right angles to the direction of slope), contour strip-cropping (alternating strips of six to twelve rows of two different crops, forming bands following the contours of the land), and crop rotation (alternating crops by year or season to provide better soil and more ground cover) can make a hillside viable for crops. Your Soil Conservation Department can provide you with maps of land capability. Check with your university extension office or your state Department of Agriculture.\n\n**Class I land** , the best possible, generally has a slope of 0 to 2 percent, with deep, fertile soil that does not erode easily. It holds water well, has a good supply of plant nutrients, and is free of rocks. It is good for any use, from cultivated crops to pasture, from woodland to wildlife.\n\n**Class Ii land**, usually with a slope of 2 to 5 percent, is almost as good, but some conservation practices may be necessary to keep it productive, due to erosion, wetness, or lack of water retention.\n\n**Class Iii land**, with a 5 to 10 percent slope, may require intensive erosion control if regularly cultivated. It may be excessively wet in spring or poorly aerated.\n\n**Class Iv land** is still suitable for cultivation, but only for limited periods, and may be better used as pasture. It usually has a slope of 10 to 15 percent.\n\nThe other four classes are not generally suitable for cultivation. **Class V land** , with a slope of 15 to 20 percent, is limited to plants that can cope with extremely wet, poorly aerated, rocky soils. **Class Vi land** is suitable for pastureland or woodland, with limited conservation practices. It may have shallow soil, steep slopes, high erosion, or lots of rocks. **Class Vii land** is good for wildlife, but may have severe limits for pasture or woods. **Class Viii land** won't grow much of anything.\n\n#### Soils\n\nPrinciple: _Natural fertility and slope of land are critical on small acreages_.\n\nThere are more than 18,000 different soils in the United States. They vary from shallow to deep, from clay to sand to loam, from well drained to wet. Each type of soil is suitable for particular kinds of crops or land usage. For example, the Clinton-Boone-Lindley areas in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri vary from gentle to sharply rolling hills. Most of this region is uncleared woodland or pastureland. Cultivated areas are small, and crops depend on slope. This is not a good soil type on which to plant 400 acres of corn, but it might make excellent orchard land.\n\nThere will be more on soils in chapter 4, but you need to know the natural fertility of your farm soils and roughly what condition they are in currently. For any farm of less than 10 acres, the natural fertility of the farm is very important, because the physical size of the land will restrict the choice of enterprises. For instance, a cow-calf operation, which takes 3 acres to run a cow-calf pair, will not allow for much volume of income. The poorer the soils, the more area it would take; in some areas of the West, it takes 10 acres to run a cow-calf unit. Ten acres of vegetables or U-pick berries, however, would produce a large volume of income\u2014but these require adequate water. Each enterprise must be evaluated in the light of the current resources and conditions.\n\nA good place to start your soil research is with soil maps of your area. Contact your university extension office or state Department of Agriculture to find the nearest map source, or consult the appendix for the national offices.\n\n#### Water\n\nBecause just one cow drinks 50 to 90 gallons of water a day, you can see how important water is to the farm. If you're going to raise crops and livestock, you need lots of water. We will cover this in more detail in chapter 5, but when you are thinking about buying your farm, find out what water resources you can expect to have. And be sure to ask these questions:\n\nOne cow drinks 50 to 90 gallons of water per day.\n\n  * Does the property have a creek or river running through it?\n\n  * Is this water source unpolluted?\n\n  * Where does the water come from?\n\n  * Does it start on my farm?\n\n  * Does the property have any ponds (or \"tanks,\" as they are called in Texas)?\n\n  * Can cattle, sheep, or horses water from these ponds, or are they too shallow, with too much mud and vegetation around the edge?\n\nWater plays a definite role in what crops can be grown. Small-grain crops like wheat are generally grown in areas of 15 to 25 inches of rainfall per year. Large-seed grains, like corn, are grown in areas having at least 20 inches of rain from April to September and a 150-day growing season with hot days and nights.\n\n###### Water Requirements Of Crops\n\nCrop | Lb Water per Lb Dry Matter (average)  \n---|---  \nAlfalfa | 831  \nBarley | 534  \nClover, red | 789  \nClover, sweet | 770  \nCorn | 368  \nCotton | 646  \nMilo | 328  \nOats | 597  \nPotatoes | 636  \nRye | 685  \nSorghum | 322  \nWheat | 513\n\nData was gathered in Colorado. This table is for general comparisons only; measurements vary by region and climatological conditions. One Eastern U.S. study, for example, found that corn required only 271 pounds of water per pound of dry matter.\n\nLook into how water is supplied by the county, too. Many rural areas have what is known as _rural water_ , which means a large number of rural residents are served by one drilled well with treated water. Check your water rights (the rights to access water flowing across and underneath your land) at the county courthouse. Out West in arid regions, if you do not secure your water rights with the property, you may not even have drinking water. Don't just assume you can use the water on your land because it was that way where you grew up.\n\nIf the property has a well, find out all you can about the amount of water the previous owners used\u2014and how they used it. Will it fit your needs? Check with the State Geological Survey for information on the well's water flow and quantity (gallons per minute). Ask about reliability during drought or normal dry weather. Water quality is also important. Have the water tested for mineral content and pollution. Taste the water. Is it high in iron or sulfur, or otherwise unpleasant to taste or smell?\n\nWells must reach a permeable stratum where water flows freely, allowing easy access from the surface. The stratum can vary widely in depth in different regions.\n\n#### Location\/Access\n\nDifferent areas of the United States are noted for different crops and livestock due to their topography (mountains, rivers, plains, for example), soil types, and climate. Kansas is known for wheat production, and Texas and Missouri for cattle. (Texas and Missouri have the largest number of small farms in the United States.)\n\nChoosing the part of the country where you want to live will influence the type of farming you can do. You need to match the type of farming you are interested in with the soils and climate of the area. Look at the growing conditions of each crop and animal you are interested in, and determine if they are suitable for an area.\n\nOther factors, such as livestock availability, must also be planned for; if you want to raise hogs in the western mountains, for instance, breeding stock will be many, many miles away. Distance from markets must also be considered. To direct-market your produce, you should be within 40 miles of a fairly large population. This is also important if you plan to sell some of your products through restaurants and grocery stores, for example.\n\nAre you considering a U-pick operation or some form of agritourism? In order to sell produce on-farm or through a roadside stand, you need to be near some well-traveled roads, perhaps on the way to a tourist site, such as a boating lake. Ask yourself how many roads lead to your farm. Are they blacktop? Are you on the blacktop or a major highway or are you back in the \"boonies\"?\n\nEasy access is important for hauling your crops and livestock to town, even if you don't have a U-pick operation. How close are you to a large-population town where you can purchase all the products and input items you need on the farm? Access to the farm is important both for visitors and for your family. (See chapter 7 for more information.)\n\n#### Climate\n\nClimate relates to your farm location. The Usda has issued a map of climate zones for growing plants. Zone designations are based on the minimum weather temperatures in that region, which determine the general hardiness of plants able to grow there. There are eleven zones for the United States.\n\nIn general, the lower the zone number, the hardier your plants must be to do well. In Zone 3, the first zone in the forty-eight contiguous states, plants must be able to endure \u201340 degrees Fahrenheit\n\nHardiness zones in the United States\n\nin order to survive year-round, while in Zone 6, in the Midwest and West, the mercury never goes below \u201310 degrees Fahrenheit. Plants in Zone 9 (Florida, southern Texas, southern Arizona, and California) never have to deal with temperatures lower than 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Many plants are rated by zone or hardiness level. To be safe, choose plants that are rated one zone below the one in which you live.\n\nNo matter where you live, microclimates can enable you to grow plants that do not normally live in the area, making a successful niche market for your produce. Microclimates can be created through the use of trees or other windbreaks, from natural depressions or rises in the land, or from man-made weather breaks, such as buildings. You can always create your own artificial microclimate through such means as greenhouses and indoor plant farming. We will discuss this more in chapter 5.\n\n##### Equipment\n\nOnce you have assessed your land, consider the equipment needed for your various crop and livestock enterprises. Machinery and high-quality hand tools are expensive to buy and costly to maintain and repair.\n\nMachinery is a tool to help you do more work faster than you could by hand. If you don't use the time saved to do more profitable things on your farm (like planning or marketing), your machinery is just an expense you don't really need. Machinery should enable you to produce the volume of business necessary to make a profit with as little labor as possible.\n\nRemember that the farm has many free energy and power sources, starting with the sun, which can be utilized to reduce your machinery, labor, and resource needs. For example, crop rotations\u2014using plants themselves to nourish the soil\u2014improve your yields without requiring purchase of energy-consuming commercial fertilizers, and thus make your operation more sustainable.\n\nIn addition to machinery, equipment includes the physical plant of the property\u2014buildings and fencing. With careful placement of\n\n# Free Energy Sources\n\n## Sun\n\n  * Photosynthesis from the sun produces crops and forages.\n\n  * Sunshine generates heat, which may be stored by greenhouses or mulches.\n\n  * Sunshine may be used for water collection through condensation.\n\n  * Sunlight can sanitize soil, killing microorganisms such as bacteria and molds.\n\n  * The sun provides essential nutrients like vitamin D.\n\n## Water\n\n  * Running water may generate power.\n\n  * Rain (and snow) provides free water for crops and livestock. Collect it for future use.\n\n## Soil Enhancers\n\n  * Nitrogen fixation from leguminous plants eliminates adding nitrogen.\n\n  * Crop rotations provide elements to other crops, replacing applications of fertilizer.\n\n  * Organic matter from plants (green manure, pasture, crop waste) is fuel for microbial activity in your soil, which helps plants get the nutrients they need.\n\n  * Worms and various fungi\/bacteria will migrate to and breed in healthy soil. These help aerate the land and provide essential minerals to the plants.\n\n  * Azotobacters are a form of free-living bacteria that can fix the nitrogen of the air into the soil. They will also be found in soil with a high organic content.\n\n## Energy from Livestock\n\n  * Livestock will naturally plow a pasture or garden as they graze (especially hogs).\n\n  * Manure from animals in either raw or compost form can be used to enrich the soil.\n\n## Other Free Energy Sources\n\n  * Wind may be used to generate power.\n\n  * Trees can cool livestock in their shade.\n\n  * Windbreaks prevent water and heat loss.\n\n  * Trees may provide a fuel or building source.\n\n  * Pasture and crop stubble can be used to feed animals.\n\npasture fencing, you can give different nutritional levels of forage to different-size animals or animals in different phases of production\u2014like nursing cows or bred ewes. (It takes a higher level of nutrition for a female nursing and raising offspring than it does to maintain a pregnant animal.) For example, in general, legumes (clover, lespedeza, alfalfa) have a higher protein content and relative feed value (Rfv) than grasses. To flush ewes (increasing ovulation), place them on lespedeza or alfalfa pasture. You can also get similar results with a 5- to 6-inch-tall grass pasture; even though the grass has a lower Rfv, quantity can balance its lower quality. In the same vein, multiple-birth animals (sheep, hogs) benefit from weight gain from an increasing level of nutrition, which makes them ovulate more to produce more offspring. The right type of fencing allows animals to be easily moved to where they need to be according to their nutritional needs.\n\nHow do you determine your machinery needs and costs? Again, analyze your crop and livestock needs. We cover equipment and machinery in more detail in chapter 9.\n\nThe females of multiple-birth animals such as sheep and hogs should graze in areas with high-quality forage to satisfy the nutritional needs of pregnancy and lactation.\n\n### Getting Help\n\nIf you are new to farming, you may not be able to answer all of the questions that arise from your farm plan. By the time you finish reading this book, you will be able to answer more of them, but it is important for you to learn from a variety of sources. Go to your local library and do some research on enterprises that interest you. Talk to farmers you know, or go to a farmers' market in the area you want to move to and talk to the vendors there about what they grow and what works for them. Visit your local university extension office and get advice on crops and livestock that will work in your area. If they have a expert on direct marketing or adding value, plan on frequent consultations with him or her.\n\nAs you learn from all of these people, remember that everyone has answers, but they are not always the right answers for you or your farm\u2014always get second, third, and fourth opinions. If someone says you can't do \"X\" on your farm, you will have to decide how important it is to you to do \"X,\" and if it is important, research further to find out whether there is a way. I will speak more about resources for learning later on.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nBefore you decide what to farm, read all that you can on as many different topics of interest as possible. Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting there. Starting a farm may seem like an impossible task, but if you have faith in yourself and your family and you do your research carefully, you will succeed in getting the farm\u2014and lifestyle\u2014you want.\n\n###### Part Ii\n\n## Farming\n\n###### Chapter Three\n\n## Some Principles of Good Farming\n\nIn addition to deciding where and what to farm, you'll need some basic guidelines on farming itself. Although how-to methods will be discussed later, you must learn basic principles to apply to your farm. We have already covered some principles. I would like to repeat them, just so you will be able to look at them as a group:\n\n  * Plan your farm and your goals carefully.\n\n  * Farm goals should be family goals.\n\n  * Look at the whole picture.\n\n  * A farmer should learn and grow through reading and meetings.\n\n  * Read, research, and experiment.\n\n  * Think.\n\n  * Old is not always obsolete. New is not always better.\n\n  * Natural fertility and slope of land are critical.\n\n  * To be sustainable, a farm must be profitable.\n\n  * A farm _must_ be profitable.\n\nNow, let's continue with some other important principles.\n\n_Farm goals should be family goals. Your children learn responsibility by being involved in the farm goals_.\n\n**Principle :** _To be sustainable, a farm must be environmentally sound and socially acceptable_.\n\nFor your farm to be sustainable, you must develop cropping and livestock systems that are environmentally sound and socially acceptable. For instance, plowing up and down the hill so your soil washes out onto a public road is not environmentally sound, because you lose a lot of healthy soil. Nor is it socially acceptable, because everybody pays for the cost of cleanup. As another example, huge feedlots of large numbers of concentrated animals are encountering more and more opposition today, some even from neighboring farmers. Lack of social acceptance will prevent this type of farm from being sustainable.\n\n**Principle :** _Avoid debt_.\n\nDealing with bankers is like selling through a middleman. The farmer makes less profit because he has to pay interest and principal. Start-up debt is okay if you can pay at least 20 percent (preferably 50 percent) on the land and stretch the payments out as low and as long as possible with no prepayment penalty when you have a good year. For all other projects, _grow_ into the enterprise rather than _borrowing_ into it. The principle is to avoid debt as much as you can and to make payments in line with farm production ups and downs.\n\n**Principle :** _Keep costs down_.\n\nWhenever you try something new in the way of crops or livestock, do it on a small scale and grow into it while learning. It could save you lots of money.\n\n**Principle :** _Try for low inputs_.\n\nLow inputs may improve your soil and make your operation more sustainable, in addition to saving money. Of course, the less money you spend, the more you have to work with.\n\n**Principle :** _Do things on time_.\n\nAccomplishing tasks on time is an important principle of farming that requires your labor and machinery requirements to match. Fields are best sized to what you can do in one day. You can drive only one tractor or tiller at a time. Timing is important because of the seasonal and cyclical nature of farming. If you want your cows to calve close together, the bull must be with your cows for only 60 days, or two heat cycles. Close calving means more attention on your part, and a more uniform-sized calf crop for selling purposes.\n\n**Principle :** _Plan your farm to minimize your work_.\n\nWork can be minimized by planning your farm layout wisely. Run a travel lane with access to crop fields and pastures down the middle of your farm, to allow for efficient movement of livestock and machinery; create square or rectangular fields to maximize the efficiency of your machinery; and plan placement of sheds and gardens for best access from the house and fields to save time and energy.\n\nIf you are raising herd-type animals (for example, cattle, sheep, elk), maintain several animals whenever possible. Herds of animals are more content than are one or two animals, who are always wanting to rejoin the main herd. Uniform bunches of animals enable you to creep-feed calves on higher-quality forage than is needed for the mother cows. Remember that culling is important.\n\n**Principle :** _Develop a system of production that balances farm resources and available labor_.\n\nSmall acreages lend themselves to good timing. Due to their small size, you can reach locations quickly. With low numbers of livestock, tasks do not take long to perform. This often allows you to beat the weather or use it to your advantage.\n\n**Principle :** _Keep good records_.\n\nIt's essential to keep careful financial and performance records and a diary. One of the most important things you need to know is the cost of production for each enterprise. It is nice to know ewe #29 had triplets for the last three years. It is nicer to know that it cost \"X\" dollars of feed for the ewe and \"Y\" dollars for the lambs, and the cost of the pasture, hay, equipment, and so on, allotted to her was so many cents per pound, because now you know what price you need to sell at to gain a profit.\n\n**Principle :** _Learn basic veterinary skills and tasks_.\n\nWhether new to the farm or established, good how-to skills are important. Vet calls today are easily $25 just for the trip, plus labor and medicine, so it pays to learn how to dock sheep tails, castrate calves, and deliver babies, for example.\n\n**Principle :** _Learn carpentry, electrical, and machinery repair skills_.\n\nCarpentry, electrical, and machinery skills all reduce costs. If you do not have these skills, some courses could be helpful.\n\n**Principle :** _Learn stockman skills, and keep gentle livestock._\n\nStockman skills are also important, but you may not be able to learn them in school. Talk to someone in the business and see what he knows, or read books and magazines. A basic example is knowing where to stand when herding cattle\u2014standing in a place in their field of view saves time in herding and reduces the animals' stress level.\n\nResearch has shown that gentle livestock reproduce and grow faster and better than do wild, nervous animals. But there are other reasons that gentle livestock are important. If you have a pet cow or ewe, for instance, one that will always come to a feed bucket when you call, that animal will help you move your livestock from one pasture to the next or into the working corral area with a minimum of trouble. The pet will also bring the herd in for a close visual inspection for new babies, bad eyes, sickness, or other problems. Being around your animals, patting and scratching the pets, and observing the others all help keep them gentle. Using a treat like cattle cubes or an ear of corn also speeds along the process.\n\n**Principle :** _Take good care of your buildings, machinery, and livestock_.\n\nBuildings and machinery that are taken care of will always cost less to maintain and will rarely need replacement. Obey your engine care instructions on machinery, and frequently inspect your buildings and machinery for wear, weather damage, and general condition.\n\nLivestock also respond to better treatment. Healthy, stress-free livestock will gain weight more quickly, stay in better condition, and have better performance in birthing and raising young. Learn everything you can to keep your livestock healthy and unstressed, and make sure they have adequate shelter, feed, and water.\n\n**Principle :** _Have a good water system, and save every drop of water that falls on your farm_.\n\nA good water system for livestock is essential. Again, it is better if your livestock can go to the water, instead of you hauling it to them. I have found it tiring to dip water out of a pond and haul it to the hog water tank on another part of the farm. Your own pond or lake with a submersible pump and plastic pipe makes life more pleasant for you and your livestock.\n\nWater can be stored in ponds and in the soil itself. For instance, if your soil is 4 to 5 percent organic matter, it can absorb 4 to 6 inches of rain per hour without erosion, which would cause runoff. If your organic matter is only about 2 percent, your soil can absorb only \u00bd to 1\u00bd inches of rain per hour. (See chapter 5 for more on water.)\n\n**Principle :** _Maintain or improve the soil fertility_.\n\nMaintaining soil fertility is a process of thinking about the \"why\" of the way you do things on your farm. Several processes improve and help fertility, like composting on either large or small scale, animal manures, and green manures for cover crops.\n\nAnimal manures can be good for the soil. One of the best ways to spread manure is to let the animals do it. Hauling piles of manure from animals standing in a muddy barn lot requires that you spend time and labor forking out the manure, plus fuel and expensive machinery (the manure spreader) to spread it. If you keep your animals on pasture instead, they will spread it across the field as they defecate while they graze. This natural method lets your animals do the work for you.\n\n**Principle :** _Let the animals do as much feed harvesting on their own as possible_.\n\nIt is much easier to stockpile fields of grass for winter feed and drive the livestock to that field one time than to haul hay daily. To put up hay for winter forage requires time, money, and equipment. You may not be able to avoid hay altogether, but the cost savings when you can are money in your pocket.\n\n**Principle :** _Use crop rotations._\n\nCrop rotations are vital to a sustainable farming system. They enhance soil fertility and help control plant diseases, weeds, and erosion. Soil fertility in a rotation is maintained by the growing of a legume (like clover) or sod crop (grass) to provide nitrogen fixing and buildup of humus. Crop rotations also lend themselves to livestock usage; the legumes and sod crops in the rotations may be used for grazing and for hay.\n\n**Principle :** _Have 2 years' worth of hay and grain in storage_.\n\nThis is a goal you should try to achieve for a number of reasons. The obvious one is weather. You never know when the winter will be longer, or the summer hotter and dryer, and you will need extra feed to supplement your livestock on pasture. If you are having a weather problem, chances are your neighbors are too, and feed prices will be high. When you have your own feed, you are more likely make it through to rain. If not, you will be selling your livestock on a depressed market. Fortunately, droughts and bad winters do not happen too often, but it is always best to be prepared.\n\nHere are some principles we will cover in future chapters:\n\n  * To be sustainable, a farm must be diversified.\n\n  * A farmer must be skilled at buying and marketing.\n\n  * Plan to have products to sell year-round.\n\n  * Plan to have produce available when others do not, or have unique products.\n\nThese will be covered in more detail in chapters 8 and , but the basic idea is to learn to market, and to have something to sell at all times. Your bills are monthly, not seasonal, so you should have something to sell year-round. A diversified farm is protected from weather conditions or price variabilities that hit one crop or animal but not another. Markets vary at different times: When hog prices are low, sheep prices may be high. You should also diversify your marketing methods, so you are not dependent on only one type of income. You also need to set and control your prices, rather than just taking the price someone offers.\n\nAnd finally, some advice for you to practice on yourself:\n\n  * Be disciplined.\n\n  * Don't procrastinate.\n\n  * Practice scheduled, efficient, and productive work habits.\n\n  * Keep a positive attitude.\n\n  * Be happy.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nLearning the basic principles of farming will provide you with the tools needed to run a successful operation. Though all of the principles in this chapter are important, the most important ones are the last few mentioned. A positive, happy attitude and a disciplined approach to problem solving will make your goals easier to obtain.\n\n###### Chapter Four\n\n## A Living, Healthy Soil\n\nMost farmers of any type will say it takes 5 years to learn how to farm a specific piece of ground on a particular farm. Most business people will tell you the learning curve for a new start-up business is 10 to 12 years. To be organically certified, your land must not have had chemical fertilizers or weed and pest sprays used on it for 3 years or more, to give the soil a chance to renew itself and return to life.\n\nAll these statistics are based on the assumption that you can survive in your business long enough to reach a mature level. All businesses, farming included, need to be least-cost producers in order to survive the ups and downs of the marketplace. To work at least cost, to get the most out of your land, to be sustainable and profitable, you must have good soil.\n\n_A living, healthy soil is the foundation for your farm's productivity and success_.\n\nIt is best, of course, if your farm begins with good soil. If it does not, though, don't be discouraged. There are techniques that will increase your soil's fertility, including crop rotation, application of organic matter, and careful choice of crops. The 4-acre Student Garden in Santa Cruz, California, started as a hillside with a clay soil that would barely grow weeds. Within 3 years, using organic methods, the students created an excellent fertile soil. Note, though, that improving soil is not a quick fix. You can count on a minimum of two years, and probably more, before your soil is what you want it to be.\n\n**Principle** : _The foundation of your farm and your most important production tool is a living, healthy soil_.\n\nHere we will go into some technical detail, because good soil is the foundation of a good farm\u2014and to attain good soil, you must understand the basics of soil fertility. Even experienced farmers may not have a good grasp of soil mechanics, because they have only learned to add N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) at the right time to make their corn and soybean rotation work. Good soil has a much greater complexity than that, an interaction among your plants and livestock, insects and worms, microorganisms, and soil types.\n\n### The Physical Nature of Soil\n\nSoil is formed by water and wind erosion, and temperature variances, which crack large rocks into smaller rocks (in Missouri, sometimes not small enough), then down into particles that combine with decomposing organic matter (dead and decaying plants and animals).\n\nNature forms soil in layers. The top layer is the highest in organic matter and, hence, the most fertile. The top layer is usually 6 to 7 inches in depth. This layer is what is normally plowed for planting. The next layer is the subsoil and is obviously weathered. It has little organic matter. The third layer, the substratum, is more or less the parent rock\/material from which the particles for soil are formed.\n\n#### Soil Types\n\nBecause soils contain particles of varying size and materials, and organic content also varies in different areas, there is a wide range of soils. Three principle types are recognized: sandy, clay, and loam soils.\n\nAs mentioned earlier, there are more than 18,000 different soils in the United States. Every state (and every farm) contains many different soils. These soils are members of eighteen different orders of soil. Orders that cover a broad range of the United States include the ultisols, the mollisols, and the alfisols. _Ultisols_ are a southeastern soil, highly weathered, with subsurface clay. The clay stores water and nutrients for plants to use. _Mollisols_ are primarily a midwestern soil, with a fertile surface layer of high organic content. They are excellent for corn, soybeans, and wheat. _Alfisols_ are productive soils of the mideastern states. They require careful management.\n\n#### Soil Content\n\nThe orders and suborders define the soil types, but what you really need to know is what your soil contains. Soil types are classified according to content: sand, clay, loam, and organic matter.\n\n##### Sandy Soils\n\nSandy soils are up to 70 percent sand by weight. They are known as \"light\" soils, or soils that drain readily, because sand particles are fairly large and irregular in shape, and do not press together tightly, thus allowing water to make its way among the particles. Sandy soils are usually lower in nutrient content than the other soil types, as the water washes the nutrients out. Organic matter can do wonders for sandy soils, but they still require special management, as we will discuss later. Sandy soils come in different classes, such as _sand_ and _loamy sand_.\n\n##### Clay Soils\n\nClay soils contain at least 35 percent clay, and usually 40 percent or above. Class names are _clay_ and _sandy clay_. Clay soils are made up of flat particles that can pack tightly together, making for poor drainage and aeration. Clay soils are sticky when wet and hard when dry, and if cultivated at the wrong time will give you a summer of hard, lumpy soil to work with. If you plow clay soils when they are too wet, they will puddle or run together and be like brick when dry.\n\n##### Loam Soils\n\nLoam soils are a mixture of 45 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 15 percent clay particles. When sand is the dominant particle, it is called _sandy loam_ ; likewise with silt loam and clay loams.\n\nLoamy soils are what you want, because they combine the best characteristics of clay and sand soils. They have good aeration and drainage, but retain good water-holding capacity, which preserves nutrients and prevents nutrient leaching.\n\nSee the resource list in the appendix for contacts for aerial photos and topographic and soil maps for your area.\n\n### Working the Soil\n\nLike animals, plants, and other living organisms, soils respond to good care and suffer under bad handling.\n\nWorking soil when too wet destroys structure tilth and harms beneficial microbial life. Test your soil before you work it.\n\nTo test your soil to see whether it is of the right moisture to work with, make a loose ball of dirt and drop it from about waist high. If it breaks apart, your soil is ready to work. If it does not break, then wait a half day or a day with no rain before you start working the ground.\n\nIf you are working your ground with a tractor and there is water in the plow sole, _stop_ \u2014it is too wet. If the plow furrows glisten in the sun, or look slick rather than crumbly, the ground is too wet\u2014stop plowing. When turning over the furrow slice, it should be crumbly and falling apart.\n\n### Our Living Soil\n\nLiving soil is much more than just the different kinds of mineral particles that hold the plants upright. It is teeming with life throughout its strata, from bacteria to worms. Most of your soil's organisms inhabit the top 6 or 7 inches, the topsoil. These organisms include insects and other \"bugs,\" earthworms, bacteria, and fungi.\n\nBillions of soil organisms exist in your soil, and many will work to improve soil fertility.\n\n#### Earthworms\n\nThe earthworm is the largest of the soil's creatures, and performs a multitude of tasks. Burrowing lets air into the soil, as well as water. Worms move surface organic matter underground into their burrows. This is one way they fertilize your soil. The other way is a special talent of worms: When they eat organic matter and it passes through their body, the result is worm manure\u2014worm castings\u2014which contain 5 times more nitrogen, 7 times more phosphorus, 3 times more magnesium, 11 times more potassium, and 1\u00bd times more calcium than the surrounding soil.\n\nNight crawlers ( _Lumbricus terrestris_ ) are not native to the United States, but they have adapted to life in cultivated fields better than have native earthworms.\n\nUsda researcher Henry Hopp conducted many extensive studies on worms in the 1940s, and noted that worms move the soil by two methods. In loose soils, they slip through the holes; in tight soils, they simply eat their way through. While worms deposit some of their castings on the surface, they mainly deposit them underground, which fertilizes your soil. In Australia and New Zealand, in areas where worms were not natural to the soils, pasture production increased 30 to 50 percent with the introduction of earthworms.\n\nThe best way to maintain a high adult worm population is with mulch or a cover crop. Worms are most active in the spring and fall and go into a kind of hibernation when it is too dry or too cold. A cover crop growing in the fall keeps the ground temperature from dropping quickly and killing your worms. The cover crop lets the soil freeze slowly, allowing the worms to move deeper and thus survive. The larger the adult worm population you can maintain, the more young you will have and the more fertility your soil will have.\n\n#### Bacteria\n\nThe earthworm is one of the largest inhabitants of the soil community, but there are billions of organisms in each gram of healthy topsoil. You may have up to 2 tons of bacteria per acre. Bacteria are either aerobic (they need air to live; these are the most beneficial ones) or anaerobic (these do not need air to live).\n\nBacteria in your soil make nitrogen and sulfur compounds into a form usable by plants. This is important because nitrogen is often the limiting factor in plant growth. Soil may contain only small amounts of nitrogen in forms that plants can utilize, and some plants are heavy feeders of nitrogen. There are several bacteria that can make soil minerals available for plants.\n\n_Azotobacter_ is a free-living microorganism that fixes nitrogen from the soil and air into its body tissue. Found naturally in soils, azotobacters can be encouraged to multiply by the addition of organic matter, humus, and humic acids to the soil.\n\nA nitrogen-fixing bacterium called _Rhizobium_ occurs naturally on leguminous plants like peas, beans, and clover. This bacterium takes nitrogen from the air and converts it to a form that plants can utilize. The population of _Rhizobia_ increases as the amount of organic matter and humus in the soil increases. It is also possible to buy _Rhizobia_ in small packets from many companies in order to inoculate seeds. This may be necessary if you have no _Rhizobia_ in your soil, which is possible if no nitrogen-fixing crops have ever grown there. We'll discuss nitrogen fixing later in this chapter.\n\nAnother important bacterium is the _actinomycete_. Even though actinomycetes are bacteria, they also share some similarities with fungi. They act as decomposers of organic matter and facilitators in humus formation. Actinomycetes can be found everywhere, but are particularly rich in sod soils and compost. To be most effective, they need a neutral pH of 6.0 to 7.5.\n\n#### Fungi\n\nThese organisms include mold, yeasts, and mushrooms. They get their nutrients from decomposing organic material or live organic material. Although some fungi are harmful, what we are concerned with here are beneficial fungi, such as _mycorrhiza_ , a mycelium fungus that has a mutually beneficial relationship with plant roots. Plant roots provide carbohydrates to sustain mycorrhiza, and the fungus helps the plant absorb nutrients and water. About 80 percent of the agricultural plants grown have a mycorrhizal root association. Mycorrhiza can be enhanced with increased organic matter and minimal disturbance of the soil.\n\n### Soil and Plant Roots\n\nAs we have seen, your soil is both a physical structure and a group of living organisms. Like livestock, your soil needs food, water, and air to reproduce and function.\n\nPlant roots help supply your living soil's needs, and connect the plant to it. They remove nutrients and water from the soil to feed the plant, but they also feed the soil. Plant roots are always getting rid of dead tissue, which makes excellent food for soil microorganisms. Many food transactions occur right around the plant roots; this area is known as the _rhizosphere_.\n\nPlant roots can be up to three times the mass of the aboveground plant.\n\nThe roots of plants are typically two to three times the mass of the aboveground plant yield and cover a large area. H. Dittmer, writing in the _American Journal of Botany_ , 1937\u201338, found that a single rye plant had a root length of 377 miles. The root hairs numbered 14.5 billion. The surface area was more than   of an acre. Combined, the roots and root hairs had a length of 6,990 miles, with a combined surface area of 63,784 square feet\u2014close to 1.5 acres.\n\nAs already mentioned, most of your soil's organisms are found in the upper 6 or 7 inches\u2014the plow layer, or topsoil. Although most of the plant's roots are in this layer, many plants send roots 5 or 6 feet deep in search of nutrients. These deep roots help provide a structure to the soil, preventing erosion and increasing the soil's capacity to hold water. To achieve deep roots, the soil must contain good amounts of nitrogen.\n\nA loose soil with good tilth or structure lets air reach to the roots, which are then able to work better. Tight, waterlogged soils have no air, and plants in them soon yellow and die.\n\nSoil is a loosely connected body of particles of irregular shapes and sizes. The spaces between these particles form cavities, some large and some too small to be seen by the naked eye. Small spaces allow for capillary action by the soil, similar to a paper towel soaking up water. The various cavities, or pores, are filled with water and air, both of which are essential to plant growth. We will talk more about water in chapter 5.\n\nContinuous cropping results in rapid loss of soil organic matter. Alternating shallow- and deep-rooted plants like clover and alfalfa provides better drainage from channels left by dead roots. Deep-rooted plants bring up minerals from the subsoil. A rotation with a sod crop maintains the organic matter supply and furnishes the raw food for soil bacteria. By keeping a crop on the land, most of the toxic nutrient leaching is minimized. Crop rotation improves yields as well as crop quality.\n\n### Crop Rotation\n\nCrop rotation is the process of planting a different crop after each previous crop, which allows the different plants to take advantage of nutrients the previous plants didn't use, and to put different nutrients into the soil to avoid depletion of overall nutrients. For example, corn uses nitrogen; soybeans replace it. Following corn with soybeans avoids nitrogen depletion.\n\nCrop rotation dates back to Roman times. Farmers in those days began rotations to replenish the land instead of using up its fertility and abandoning the field.\n\nA rotation should be planned so that you have the greatest possible value of salable or usable crop material during a period of years. When planning a rotation, also consider labor needs and soil fertility. Ideally, a rotation will help spread out your labor needs, because you have a diversity of crops ready to harvest at different times of the year.\n\nCrops are divided into three classes: grain crops, like wheat and barley; grass crops, including sods and legumes used for pasture\/hay; and cultivated crops, like corn and soybeans. You can substitute crops within types, depending on weather conditions and year. For instance, you can plant barley instead of wheat; both are small grains. Ideally, farm fields would be square, but this often does not happen in real life, so just try to keep plots all the same size\u2014that is, if you plant 10 acres of corn, follow it with a full 10 acres of soybeans, then 10 acres of hay, and so on.\n\n#### Advantages of Rotation\n\nThere are many advantages to crop rotation. The biggest one is building and maintaining organic matter and putting nitrogen back in your soil by plowing under immature forage crops, primarily legumes. (Legumes are plants that fix nitrogen in the soil.) Crop rotation lets you grow a soil crop or legume crop on all the fields of your farm.\n\nHere are some other advantages:\n\n  * Rotations of different crops provide varying root systems, some deep, some shallow, which bring different crop nutrients to the plow layer for use by the next planting.\n\n  * Rotations improve drainage tilth and water-holding capacity of the soil, which also reduces erosion.\n\n  * By alternating crops on the same fields, you use a natural method of breaking up insect pest and disease cycles, and this also helps in eliminating weed species.\n\n  * Rotation hosts beneficial microbiological life, which discourages disease; improves microbiological activity, which helps plants absorb nutrients better; and creates an inhospitable soil environment for many soilborne diseases.\n\n  * By rotating crops, a farmer's labor load is spread throughout the season, making for more timely operations.\n\n  * Rotation or diversification of your crops provides protection against total crop and economic failure, and provides year-round distribution of labor.\n\n  * Rotations cut costs and time by reducing purchased fertilizer and allowing easier tillage because of improved tilth.\n\n  * On the average, rotating your crops will give you a 10 percent increase in yields; continual planting of the same crop results in mineral depletion. Crop rotation allows you to make money while you build your soil.\n\n#### Short-Term Rotation\n\nRotation can be either short term or long term. A short-term rotation will take place in 1 year or less. An example is fall-planted wheat overseeded in spring with red clover. To protect the wheat, the clover should be overseeded on a snow cover or on frozen ground, preferably both. This can be done by hand, by powered seeders mounted on tractors, pickup trucks, or all-terrain vehicles, and even by plane! After the grain is harvested in July, the clover grows through the wheat stubble and can be grazed in the fall or incorporated by plowing or disking before another fall grain crop is planted.\n\n# Seven Advantages Of Crop Rotation\n\n  1. Keeps soil in suitable physical condition\n\n  2. Helps maintain the supply of organic matter and nitrogen in the soil\n\n  3. Is a practical means of using farm manure\n\n  4. Keeps soil occupied with crops\n\n  5. Changes location of feeding range of roots\n\n  6. Counteracts possible development of toxic substances\n\n  7. Improves crop quality\n\nFrom Clyde E. Leighty, \"Soils and Men,\" _Usda y earbook of Agriculture, 1938_ (Washington, Dc: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1938), 410.\n\nAnother short-term rotation might be rye and hairy vetch seeded in standing corn. After the corn is picked, the rye and vetch grow through the winter and are then plowed under in the spring for a green-manure crop, after which corn, beans, or milo may be planted. A short rotation for vegetables might be broccoli followed by buckwheat, then perhaps rye or turnips.\n\nMinor rotations are another type of short-term rotation. (Both major and minor rotations can be used on the same farm.) A minor rotation is when a small area is set aside for a short-term use\u2014a truck garden, a hog pasture, a lambing area, for example. The minor rotation can be part of the major rotation, or it can be temporarily or permanently set aside and fenced. A more permanent setup of a minor rotation allows you to add feeding and watering systems.\n\nAn example of a minor rotation might be hog pasture, potatoes, then truck garden or alfalfa. The hogs turn up the soil for potato planting and contribute manure to the soil fertility, as does a legume like alfalfa. A late summer\/fall garden of crops such as beets, cabbage, collards, lettuce, and spinach will allow you some late sales, along with extra greens at the table.\n\nIn this example of short-term crop rotation, corn is followed by rye and hairy vetch, which are then plowed under before corn is planted again.\n\nMinor crop rotation in this example includes hogs in early spring, potatoes in spring and summer, and vegetables and alfalfa in fall.\n\n# Factors In The Maintenance Of Soil Fertility\n\n  * Cover crop\n\n  * Crop residues\n\n  * Crop rotation\n\n  * Drainage\n\n  * Farm manures\n\n  * Fertilization\n\n  * Irrigation\n\n  * Liming\n\n  * Organic matter\n\n  * Tillage\n\nFrom Clyde E. Leighty, \"Soils and Men,\" _Usda y earbook of Agriculture, 1938_ (Washington, Dc: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1938), 409.\n\n#### Long-Term Crop Rotations\n\nLong-term rotations are usually 2 to 5 years. They are more complicated than short-term rotations, but usually not more difficult. They often include hay and sod crops, which are utilized by livestock. A popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rotation was the Norfolk rotation: root crop\/barley\/legume\/wheat. The legume allowed introduction of livestock such as sheep or cattle into the rotation, by using the legume for grazing or hay.\n\nSome common 3-year rotations are corn\/rye\/clover or corn\/barley\/clover. An example of a 5-year rotation is:\n\nA common 5-year rotation in the southern United States is given below (left), with a variation at right.\n\n#### Planning a Rotation\n\nEvery farm has its own set of management and climatic constraints to deal with, but there are some basic rules of thumb to rotations, as mentioned by Nicolas Lampkin in _Organic Farming_. The following ideas are adapted from his rotation designs for England, but are applied to circumstances in the United States:\n\n  * Alternate deep-rooted plants (e.g., corn) with shallow-rooted plants (e.g., cabbage) to improve soil structure and thus drainage.\n\n  * Alternate between plants having a high biomass of roots (legumes such as red clover and orchard grass) with crops with a low biomass root system, like corn and soybeans.\n\n  * Nitrogen-fixing crops like soybeans should be followed by nitrogen-using crops like corn.\n\n  * Keep the soil covered with crops as much of the time as possible to prevent erosion and reduce weeds (see box).\n\n  * Some crops grow extremely fast, like sun hemp, buckwheat, radishes, and corn. They should be alternated with crops that grow slowly, such as winter wheat and red clover. Slow-growing crops are more susceptible to weed pressure and should follow weed-suppressing crops like winter rye, which has an _alleopathic effect_ , that is, an ability to suppress weed germination and growth.\n\n# Keep It Covered\n\nI sow rye and hairy vetch in the standing corn in August. When the corn is harvested, there is a ground cover until spring plowing. The soil is uncovered only about 30 days in the spring after the corn is planted and between then and when it is about knee-high in mid-June. The corn planted in mid-May will be shading out weeds, slowing rainfall with its leaves, and holding the soil with its roots. The rye that was plowed under just before planting the corn sops up any leftover nitrogen from the previous year's crop and makes it available to the next crop. The hairy vetch, a legume, puts up to 100 pounds of nitrogen back into the soil. The rye and vetch together make a huge amount of biomass to turn under, improving the soil tilth and increasing microbiological activity of the soils.\n\n  * Alternate from leaf to straw crops to help with weed suppression. Mechanical cultivation reduces weeds in row crops, while straw crops shade out and steal nutrients and water from weeds, thereby stunting the weeds' growth.\n\n  * Alternate between fall and spring plantings of crops. This spreads out your workload, reduces weather risk, and helps suppress weeds that germinate at different times of the year.\n\n  * Balance your rotation between the cash and non\u2013immediate cash crops, because, as I've said before, it has to be profitable to be sustainable. This system makes it more profitable because it spreads risk and allows for cash crops (corn, wheat) and crops that build the soil (legumes, grasses, cover crops).\n\n### Cover Crops and Green Manure\n\nCover crops are used to prevent erosion, shade out weeds, and protect the soil from freezing and thawing. They also may reduce use of herbicides and pesticides by providing a haven for beneficial insects, as well as breaking the disease cycles of a monoculture system. By improving the health and microbiological activity of the soil, they also improve crop yield.\n\nCover crops are not necessarily incorporated into the soil, although they may be used as green manure (see below). Using a legume like red clover or hairy vetch in your field-crop or market-garden rotations gives you a plant useful for animal grazing or as hay, plus the benefits to the rotation of soil cover and nitrogen fixation. Red clover provides 2 to 3 tons of dry matter (the weight of forage after drying) and 70 to 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Hairy vetch supplies 3 to 6 tons of dry matter and 40 to 150 pounds of nitrogen.\n\n#### Green Manure\n\nA green-manure crop is a cover crop that is incorporated into the soil, even if it was not planted for that purpose, such as weeds growing on a flooded bottom field. Green-manure crops are turned under for the purpose of adding organic matter and\/or nitrogen to the soil. This reduces your fertilizer costs, as the cover crop will furnish enough nitrogen for the following crop.\n\nFor every foot of green-manure crop you turn under, you put about 1 ton of organic matter back into your soil. This is because your green manure is just as big below the ground (roots) as it is above. About half\u20141,000 pounds\u2014of this tonnage is lost almost immediately through evaporation. Thus, green manuring is used to maintain rather than increase organic matter.\n\n#### Legumes or Non-Legumes?\n\nGreen-manure crops and cover crops can be legumes (see next section) or non-legumes. As green manure, legumes add organic matter and nitrogen. Non-legumes add only organic matter. Volume or bulk is the most important goal in supplying organic matter to the soil and is more easily achieved by crops such as rye. If the crop is too mature when turned under, much of the available nitrogen may be used up in allowing bacteria to decay the crop. But with legumes, there is enough nitrogen to decay the crop and have nitrogen available for the next crop.\n\n### Nitrogen and Legumes\n\nNutrients move slowly in the soil. Roots usually grow toward the nutrients when they are activated by nitrogen and phosphorus (nutrients) already present in the soil. This makes nitrogen a necessary component of plant growth.\n\nLegumes are crops, such as soybeans and hairy vetch, that \"fix\" nitrogen (that is, move nitrogen from the air or the soil to storage nodules in the plant), allowing increased plant growth and deeper roots. They have a _Rhizobia-_ bacteria connection that allows legumes to take nitrogen from the air and store it in nodules on the plant root. This nitrogen is then released when the crop is plowed under and decomposes. You may need to supply the initial _Rhizobia_ by applying an inoculant consisting of _Rhizobia_ bacteria to the seeds to start the process.\n\nThe nitrogen in the legumes you turn under comes from both the nitrogen they drew up from the soil and the nitrogen they fixed from the air. Roughly one-third of the nitrogen comes from the soil and two-thirds comes from the air. If you sow a combination, say a (non-legume) rye and hairy vetch (a legume), the rye helps capture what nitrogen the vetch missed in the soil and uses it to grow lots of organic matter. While the rye uses the free nitrogen, the vetch continues to fix more nitrogen from the soil into a plant-usable form. The rye will hold the nitrogen inside its slender green stems until both the leguminous and non-leguminous plants are turned under, furnishing enough nitrogen for the next crop.\n\nLegumes take nitrogen from the air and store it in their roots. When the plant is plowed under and begins to decompose, the nitrogen is released into the soil.\n\nThe amount of nitrogen is determined by the time of cutting\u2014the more time a plant has to gather nitrogen in an unstressed growth period, the greater the yield. Dr. C. J. Willard, an Ohio expert on legumes, noted that sweet clover in the Midwest cut the final week of April contained 124 pounds of nitrogen, while that turned under the last week in May contained 160 pounds.\n\nThe best time to incorporate (plow under) a legume is in early bloom, when it is most succulent. Controlling the growth stages of legumes and non-legumes to keep them consistent can be accomplished by mowing or grazing.\n\nIn southern areas of the United States, where a green manure is plowed under, it may have to be followed by a fall crop like rye to hold the nutrients until the new crop is ready to be planted in spring. This is because milder winters promote continued soil activity, which uses up the available nutrients. Also, many regions of the South suffer more soil leaching, allowing rain to drain away the necessary nutrients. The rye will prevent this leaching and reduce erosion.\n\n# Nitrogen Fixation\n\n  1. Use the correct rhizobial inoculant for the legume you are growing. Ask your local seed dealer for the correct inoculant.\n\n  2. Soils need iron, sulfur, and molybdenum for nitrogen fixation to function properly.\n\n  3. A green-manure crop plowed under causes a large increase in microbiological activity. Soil bacteria reproduce themselves and double their population in as few as 7 days.\n\n  4. Weather affects the nitrogen release from green-manure crops. Warmer temperatures and field capacity of soil water at approximately 60 percent work the best for nitrogen release.\n\n  5. Most soil bacteria need a pH between 6.0 and 8.0 to perform well.\n\n# Best Cover Crops\n\nLeguminous cover crops take nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil. They will also often attract beneficial insects.\n\n  * Clover, Berseem _(Trifolium alexandrinum)_\n\n  * Clover, crimson _(Trifolium incarnatum)_\n\n  * Clover, red _(Trifolium pratense)_\n\n  * Clover, subterranean _(T. subterraneum)_\n\n  * Clover, sweet (white and yellow) _(Melilotus alba; M. officinalis)_\n\n  * Clover, white _(Trifolium repens)_ Ladino ( _T. repens_ forma _lodigense_ )\n\n  * Cowpeas _(Vigna unguiculata)_\n\n  * Field peas ( _Pisum sativum_ var. _arvense_ )\n\n  * Medic _(Medicago)_\n\n  * Vetch, hairy _(Vicia villosa)_\n\n  * Vetch, woolly-pod _(Vicia dasycarpa)_\n\nHere are some non-leguminous crops that are compatible with legumes. These furnish large amounts of biomass and increase nutrient-holding capacity when planted as a mix with legumes.\n\n  * Barley _(Hordeum)_\n\n  * Buckwheat _(Fagopyrum esculentum)_\n\n  * Oats _(Avena)_\n\n  * Rye, winter _(Secale cereale)_\n\n  * Ryegrass, annual _(Lolium multiflorum)_\n\n  * Sorghum\/Sudangrass hybrids _(Sorghum bicolor_ x _S. bicolor_ var. _sudanese)_\n\n  * Wheat _(Triticum)_\n\n### Feeding Livestock in Rotations\n\nA crop rotation with legumes and non-legumes provides your farm with the opportunity to increase organic matter and soil fertility. The main purpose of pasture is for livestock feed\u2014either by grazing animals directly on the pasture or by cutting and storing it for later feeding. Some of your fields will probably be in permanent pasture and some will be mowed for hay.\n\nMowing or grazing a plant causes some roots to die. Roots continually grow and die throughout the season. As stated earlier, the root tonnage per acre often exceeds the plant yield threefold, returning organic matter back to the soil.\n\nThe time needed for a pasture to recover after mowing or grazing depends on several factors, like fertility, soil, and moisture, but mostly on the degree of defoliation (what percentage of the plant was removed). The higher the percent removed, the longer the recovery or regrowth period. Mowing removes plant growth uniformly; grazing does not.\n\n#### Mowing\n\nIf pasture grass reaches 12 inches or taller, it should be harvested for hay. At early bloom, non-legume plants have reached their maximum growth. For legumes, the point where they have the most nitrogen is early bloom. This also produces the highest-quality hay, if you intend to mow it. With legumes, yield goes up but quality goes down after this stage of growth.\n\n#### Grazing\n\nJim Gerrish, an intensive-grazing expert at the University of Missouri, says that in general, animals should be turned into pastures when grasses are 6 to 10 inches in height and grazed to about half the current height. This avoids cropping the lower, growing stage of the grass. In other words, \"Graze half and leave half.\"\n\n#### Management-Intensive Grazing\n\nThere are several types of grazing methods you can use, but management-intensive grazing seems to be the best method now available. Basically, management-intensive grazing is having a minimum of sixteen grazing paddocks on which cattle are moved every one or two days, with each paddock receiving as long a rest period as possible.\n\nIn this system, grass is a crop and cattle, sheep, or goats are your combines. You \"harvest\" your grass when ready, just as you would corn or beans. With a standard rotation, you use only 35 to 40 percent of the forage available. Management-intensive grazing uses 80 to 85 percent of the available forage.\n\nIn New Zealand, farmers using this system are getting 700 pounds of beef per acre without irrigation or fertilization. On irrigated alfalfa, close to 2,000 pounds of beef per acre has been attained. The upper limits of this method of grazing will be determined by forage varieties, weather, and your management, combined with cattle genetics.\n\nA good rule of thumb is not to have any cattle on any paddock more than 4 days. You may have to shift your livestock at different rates, depending on the time of year. In Missouri, fescue needs 60 to 90 days rest in July and August, but 30 days would be too much in May, when grass is growing rapidly.\n\nIn a standard four-pasture rotation, the forage is used 25 percent of the time and rested 75 percent of the time. In a sixteen-paddock management-intensive grazing system, the forage is used only 6 percent of the time and rested 94 percent of the time.\n\n#### Pastures for Erosion Control\n\nPastures will do more than provide food for your livestock. Sod pastures, which provide a thick, even sod covering with the grasses interlocked, are important in controlling erosion. Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass grow into sod pastures. In contrast, many forages (e.g., alfalfa and warm-season grasses) grow in bunches. The better the sod, the more erosion is controlled\u2014which keeps the soil and nutrients you want to have on your land.\n\nWeaver and Noll, in 1935, tested an upland silt loam soil with a 10 percent slope and grass 2 inches high. Under those conditions, excellent sod in a 1-inch rain in 30 minutes had only 12 percent runoff and no erosion. Fair pasture had 55 percent runoff with some erosion. Poor pasture had 75 percent runoff\u2014a soil loss of 4.6 tons per acre, with the only difference being the sod under the grass!\n\nIn _Quality Pasture_ , Allan Nation notes, \"Usda studies in 1930 showed that rotating cropland through sod-farming pastures for three to five years increased usable rainfall in Iowa by 6.4 inches a year over continuous corn. Grass crops absorb 87.4 percent of the rainfall versus 69.4 percent for a field of corn.\" In other words, good pasture increases the amount of water you can save for your farm\u2014which leads us to the next chapter.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nThe soil is the foundation for your farm. Good soil allows you to create an abundance of nutritious crops and healthy livestock. Take care when choosing crops and livestock, and apply management practices that will allow your farm to maintain or increase its soil fertility.\n\n## Chapter Five  \nWeatherproofing Your Farm\n\nThe climate and weather of your particular region are natural resources. Although we seldom think about it, our soils and their fertility are a direct result of climate, because climate determines which plants will grow and which animals will inhabit the area. Weathering of rock, combined with the dead plants and animals, makes up the nutritional basis or fertility of your soil.\n\n### The Effects of Climate\n\nIt is important to match the climate with the type of farming you wish to do. Although you can grow just about anything you want wherever and whenever you want, it may not be cost-effective. For instance, growing catfish in Alaska would be too expensive because water temperature needs to be 65 degrees Fahrenheit for the catfish to begin eating and at least 80 degrees for quick, efficient growth. The cost of constantly heating a catfish tank or pond would be prohibitive.\n\n_Planting a shelter of trees for your farm will provide microclimates that enable your crops and livestock to be more productive and protected from weather extremes_.\n\nLook for crops and livestock that thrive in the climate and weather of your region. Consider the crop's or livestock's home climate. If a breed of cattle or sheep has been raised in an arid region of the country, it may not do well if it is raised in a humid, wet area, which might cause parasite problems. Consider what is already being raised in your area. If you are new to farming, ask older farmers in the region what crops they grow now and what crops used to be grown in the area.\n\n#### Temperature\n\nVarying temperatures determine what plants grow best in what region, inspiring nicknames such as the Corn Belt and the Cotton Belt.\n\nLow temperatures are not necessarily bad; many plants, bulbs, and seeds need a period of exposure to cold in order for them to germinate and grow properly. Snow is an excellent insulator and is very important in producing a good wheat crop.\n\nPlants' life cycles are tied to the seasons and to temperature changes. Annual plants live only 1 year, producing seed, then dying when the temperature drops. Perennials die back to the ground after a hard freeze and survive over winter to grow again next year.\n\n### Water\n\nWater (or the lack of it) affects everything on your farm\u2014you, your livestock, your plants, and your soil. Living creatures need water for digestion and secretion, to regulate body temperature and feed tissues, to serve as a lubricant for joints and muscles, and to protect embryos in the womb.\n\n#### Water and Livestock\n\nAn embryo is 90 percent water. A newborn calf is 75 to 80 percent water. An adult cow is 50 to 60 percent water. Animals can lose all their fat and half their protein and still survive, but the loss of one-tenth of their body's water means death. You can quickly see how important water is to your farm.\n\nCatch every drop of water that falls on your farm through cropping and tillage methods that slow down evaporation and water flow.\n\nAnimals may need large quantities of water. An adult human normally requires 5 to 6 pints of water daily. A mature cow requires 50 to 90 gallons per day. This does not mean you need a lake for each animal. Adequate forage reduces the need for free-standing water. Sheep can go weeks without drinking and may thrive without freestanding water if they have good pasture. The nutrient value of crops is also affected by the amount of moisture available to them.\n\n#### Water and Plants\n\nIf soil is low in water, plants will find it difficult to grow or to perform all the functions that water facilitates, like transfer of nutrients through roots to other plant parts. Minerals in the soil can be absorbed by plants only when the minerals are in solution. Water is necessary for photosynthesis, the process by which plants extract energy from the sun. Without water there would be no microorganisms in the soil. Some of these organisms are good, like teramycin (used as antibiotics), and some are bad, like apple scab fungus, whose spores are loosened by large raindrops, but they all require water.\n\nWater Needs Vary\n\nThe amount of rainfall is a major factor in determining which plants grow best in your region. Xerophytes are plants that can grow with limited water. Xerophytes may be succulent or nonsucculent. Succulents are plants such as cactus and milkweed that contain water storage cells to sustain them.\n\nWestern regions of the United States are known for their grass production, as many grasses can tolerate low natural rainfall. Gama grasses, curly mesquite, saltbush, and shrub oak all have xero-graphic (arid-tolerant) modifications. These plants grow quickly in the spring or following a rainy season. The shoots mature and then die, but the roots may survive for a year with no rain. The dried tops will furnish food for livestock. In southwestern Texas, sheep and cattle are grazed year-round on these grasses, which cure on the stem. We cannot change the weather, but we _can_ take advantage of it.\n\nHydrophytes, in contrast to xerophytes, are plants that grow in or near water, such as water lilies. Mesophytes fit between the two extremes, and they include most crops commonly grown. They also include both warm-season grasses (big bluestem, for example) and cool-season grasses, such as fescue.\n\nLike most plants, corn needs water most when it is growing rapidly, such as when the silk is being fertilized to form the corn seed (kernels).\n\nPlants lose immense amounts of water through transpiration (evaporation). The rate of transpiration increases with temperature and light intensity. In addition, as plants grow they gain more leaf surface, which increases their rate of transpiration. Actively growing plants contain more water than they do solids. For every pound of plant dry matter, there are 5 to 10 pounds of water\u2014but to produce that pound of dry matter requires several hundred pounds of water. The most efficient plants (pineapple, cactus, milo, gama grass, for example) use 250 to 300 pounds of water to produce 1 pound of dry matter. Less efficient plants (pumpkin, squash, cucumber, for example) may use 1,000 pounds of water to produce 1 pound of dry matter. Corn may transpire up to 2 quarts of water per plant per day, or 300,000 gallons of water per acre. Aquatic plants merely need to absorb the water\u2014about 10 pounds per pound of growth. Which plants you choose will depend on your climate.\n\n# Climate And Livestock\n\nClimate and weather affect livestock both directly and indirectly:\n\n  1. The climate can cause species to evolve with specific adaptations to that temperature. Some breeds of cattle, like Santa Gertrudis, were developed for hot-weather areas and have shaker muscles that help them get rid of flies, which are more numerous in hot areas. Some woolly animals, like alpacas, will find it difficult to cope with high temperatures, but do well in colder regions.\n\n  2. Indirectly, weather affects the vegetative growth in a region, which in turn makes some breeds more adaptive to that region. Irish Dexter cattle, for instance, were developed in mountainous areas having short growing seasons and sparse vegetation; they are a small animal with a dual purpose for meat and milk. Just as there is an inherent fertility in soils, livestock has an inherent capacity to produce the best under whatever are their optimal climate conditions.\n\nMost plants need water when their growth is rapid. For instance, corn needs water when the corn is silking the ear and being fertilized by the tassel (the male part of the plant) to form the corn seed (the kernels). Insufficient water at this time will cause ears to fill unevenly with kernels. Tree fruits and berries are another example: their water requirements are highest just before maturity, when they increase greatly in size. This means that you must keep track not only of how much rain falls in your area, but also of when it falls.\n\n#### Climate and Parasites\n\nParasites and diseases thrive in warm, humid weather. Tomato blight, for instance, can attack tomatoes if the weather is hot and humid, causing leaves to yellow and fall off, reducing the plant to survival mode or death\u2014and this leads to a decrease in production.\n\nWheat harvest in the Midwest is associated with the hot, dry days of July and August, but if the weather is hot and humid, a disease called rust may cut yield in half. The wind can carry rust spores from mature wheat in Canada all the way to Texas, affecting plants along the way. When it rains, spores are deposited on newly sprouted small grains.\n\nWeather and climate also influence the degree of parasites in livestock. Roundworms, for instance, need moisture and rainfall for the larvae to be able to infect hogs and turkeys.\n\nRain is the main cause of worm problems in sheep and goats, particularly when combined with warm temperatures. Worms are not as much of a problem in the drier western regions and the cold northern regions as they are in the South. There, the warm, humid weather allows worm parasites in sheep to flourish.\n\n### Altering Your Farm Environment\n\nSo far, we have looked at principles of weather and climate and how they affect our crops and livestock and the choices we might make regarding what we will raise. We know that we cannot control the weather, so it is important to find ways to adapt to our conditions by protecting against the elements and conserving water. Cooperating with seasonal weather cycles will also reduce the need for purchased feedstuffs and eliminate birthing in bad weather. For example, I plan all my calves to birth in April and May, when the weather is settling and the grass is growing.\n\n#### Providing Shelter\n\nAnimals on pasture will use shelter only when needed, but it is good to have in rough weather\u2014particularly for young livestock.\n\nIf you are on a small acreage and have no access to land with previously built shelters or naturally occurring livestock protection, you will have to build some sort of shelter. In my opinion, the best animal shelters are three-sided, open to the south, well bedded with straw, and portable. Some people even build shelters from hay bales. Smaller, portable shelters allow for multiple uses for crops and livestock, and will change as your farming operation evolves. A shelter under 40 inches high is best for small livestock\u2014sheep, hogs, and poultry\u2014to prevent rain and snow blow-in.\n\nMultiuse barns should be avoided. They are harder to adapt, are fixed in place, and with multiple livestock types in one building, can increase disease problems. If your building cannot be portable or you already have one in place, and you use the building for birthing animals, do not use it again for birthing for 6 months or more. This will help to prevent disease.\n\nDifferent animals need different kinds of shelter at different times of production. For instance, a thick cedar grove is excellent for calving or lambing. Cedars have vast amounts of fallen needles for bedding, and usually do not have low-hanging branches in a thick stand. They shed snow and rain in all but the heaviest downpours, and sheep like to be underneath them. I rotate pastures so that when it is time to lamb, the pasture with my cedar grove has grass that has not been grazed to the ground when I need it for nursing mothers.\n\n# The Best Shelters\n\nThe best animal shelters are:\n\n  * Three-sided\n\n  * Open to the south\n\n  * Well bedded with straw\n\n  * Portable\n\n  * For small livestock, less than 40 inches high\n\nThe best animal shelters are portable, three-sided, open to the south, and well bedded with straw.\n\nMost livestock are pretty good mothers and do better on their own, rather than being confined to a small farm lot with a high potential for disease. They do especially well birthing on grass pastures when the grass is really growing (April\/May for the Midwest) or whenever the temperature is in the 60s in your area. Sunlight and fresh air go a long way toward keeping your livestock healthy.\n\n##### Predator-Proof Poultry Shelters\n\nIf you have predator problems, a fenced-in shelter to which you lead the livestock at night is essential. Poultry, in particular, need a place where they will be protected from coyotes, owls, raccoons, opossums, cats, and other predators. This may be a large poultry house to which chickens are returned each night, or a small portable coop such as a Smedley unit (normally for hogs).\n\nA popular idea today is the chicken tractor, where poultry are kept in a portable 10-by-12-foot cage covered with chicken wire, with half of it covered in aluminum roofing. These open-bottomed shelters allow you to move your chickens daily through your garden or fields to eat insects, forage for weeds, and incorporate their droppings in the soil without damaging your plants.\n\n##### Sheds\n\nYou will also need shelter for machinery. If your machinery is left out in the rain and sun, you are just throwing your money away. Rust and weather wear shorten the life of tools more quickly than does anything else. A machine shed where you can keep your tools and machinery dry, store repair equipment, and have a place to work on your tools will enhance your machinery, save you money, and improve your quality of life.\n\nFinally, I also have a shed with a raised floor where I store my feeds, conveniently located near my livestock. It is carefully sealed to keep out rodents\u2014and it does so most of the time.\n\nA chicken tractor is a win-win situation. It lets you move your chickens to a different spot in your gardens or fields every day, where they can devour insects and weeds and add their droppings to the soil.\n\n#### Conserving Water\n\nThere are two ways to provide water for your farm. The first is irrigation (drip or standard), which waters crops when they need it. Irrigation facilitates practices such as foliar feeding (spraying a liquid fertilizer on the plant leaves) and incorporating fertilizer into the water. The drawback is the expense\u2014the cost of irrigation equipment and the cost of the water. To provide water 12 inches deep on 1 acre (43,560 square feet) requires 325,850 gallons of water (this is called 1 acre foot of water). One acre inch of water equals 27,154 gallons.\n\nThe other method of providing water for your farm is simply to conserve every drop of rain that falls on it. This has the advantage of being sustainable and cheap. Even if you plan to do some irrigation, conserve water to keep your costs to a minimum. Here are some management strategies to save water:\n\n  * Make sure your soil is worm-friendly (see Earthworms on page 56), which helps hold water in the soil.\n\n  * Make sure your land has crops (including pasture and cover crops) on it during rainy seasons, to prevent runoff and to hold water.\n\n  * Plan your field rows to retain water rather than lose it\u2014this means that if you plant on hillsides, for example, always terrace your rows to prevent runoff.\n\n  * Always provide a place for water flow to accumulate, rather than leaving your farm.\n\n##### Ponds\n\nEven farms with the best soil will have rainfall that causes runoff. Ponds are an effective method of storing water for later use. Ponds\u2014or tanks, as they are called in the western states\u2014can be used for many purposes: crop irrigation, watering livestock, home water supply, fire safety, erosion prevention, wildlife habitat, swimming, and fishing. A pond should be fenced to water livestock below the dam and keep the water pure and clean for human use.\n\nIf stocked with fish, the pond can add income to your farm through fee fishing. You can also consider aquaculture in on-farm ponds. Freshwater shrimp can be raised in ponds as far north as Kentucky, and crayfish even farther north. I raised cat-fish for many years, with an on-farm fish-processing plant (consisting of a room with two sinks and a freezer). I sold the fish to local grocery stores.\n\n##### Cover Crops\n\nWe briefly discussed growing cover crops in chapter 4, but I would like to focus on the weatherproofing benefits of this practice. Cover crops slow down both wind and water erosion, as the thickly sown plants form many little surface dams to slow water and soil movement. The root systems do the same below the surface. With slower movement, the water has a chance to soak in, allowing plants to have an increased supply of water later in the season. Cover crops also stop nutrient leaking. Winter rye, for instance, sops up excess nitrogen in the soil, while hairy vetch is good at hanging onto phosphorus. The plants release these nutrients when they are plowed or disked under as green manure.\n\n##### Timing\n\nWhen you plant your crops is critical in regard to saving moisture. Every time you work the soil for planting or cultivation, you do two things. First, you lose some moisture from the soil. Second, stirring the soil increases the microbial action within it, burning up nutrients and organic matter.\n\nThis means that green-manure crops need to be turned under and left to rot for about 2 weeks before you plant corn. The green-manure crop from last fall is a storage base that holds plant nutrients in place over the winter. They become available to your new crop when you turn them under. However, turning them under does cause loss of moisture. It is important to turn under fall crops early in the spring to keep them from using the moisture needed for your new crop year.\n\n#### Creating a Microclimate\n\nYou cannot change the weather, but you can modify its effects by creating microclimates. A beneficial microclimate is an area that is protected from the worst effects of wind, weather, and temperature. It often tends to stay frost-free when surrounding areas are not, or it may offer protection from a hot sun in July.\n\nExamine your farmland to see if you have any natural microclimates. These will be sheltered areas, possibly in a depression where the wind does not blow (although depressions often suffer from frost problems) or on a low hillside that is not as affected by wind or frost. If possible, walk over your property on a frosty morning in late fall or early spring and see if any areas are less affected\u2014or not affected at all. These will be good places to utilize. You may wish to modify them further, to enhance the effect.\n\nA little record keeping goes a long way. Buy a soil thermometer and test soil daily. Common plants such as lilac enter the first leaf and first flower stages of growth at specific temperatures and weather conditions. Checking temperatures and dates, and comparing these over the years, will make your farm more successful.\n\nIf there are no natural microclimates, create your own. In planning a microclimate, the best place to start is with a wind-break, which I will discuss in more detail in the following section. The windbreak controls a large microclimate, which sets the stage for a more subtle microclimate in your garden or planting area. Keep the ground protected, for example, with plastic or straw, to create a warmer environment for seedlings, hold extra water, and reduce weeds. (I tend to avoid plastic because it creates a mess when it breaks down; straw, on the other hand, breaks down into extra organic matter.)\n\nAir flows just like water and settles in low spots. A raised bed might be just high enough to keep plants away from frost. Raised beds also provide warmer soil temperatures in the spring, sometimes by as much as 5 to 10 degrees.\n\nIt is also possible to create a microclimate for an individual plant by use of season extenders or similar tools. Research by D. R. Paterson and D. R. Earhart at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station reported that when tomatoes were grown in black plastic with cages and then the bottoms of the cages were wrapped with common roofing paper, losses due to wind and hail decreased by 46 percent. After 5 weeks, there was a 62 percent increase in growth, with 86 percent more marketable fruit and a 49 percent increase in total yield. This data may not apply to all tomato varieties, but the method is worth a try if you have a wind problem early in the season.\n\n#### Windbreaks and Sustainability\n\n**Principle :** _Plant or create windbreaks to prevent heat and moisture loss_.\n\nWind can be a problem, as it leaches heat and moisture from crops and livestock. Therefore, crops and livestock protected from wind use moisture and nutrients more efficiently. One way to remove wind as a problem is through a windbreak.\n\nWindbreaks reduce wind velocity, slow wind erosion, and create microclimates. Soil particles move when wind speeds are 13 miles per hour, 1 foot above the ground. When wind flow removes fine soil particles from one field, organic matter and nutrients go with it, so you have to increase fertilizer input or accept lower economic production in your crops.\n\nDecide where to plant your windbreaks based on the direction of the prevailing winds. In most areas of the United States, you'll need to plant windbreaks to the north and west of the area you want to protect. There is more information on height, length, and density of windbreaks in the section that follows. In general, though, windbreaks should be at least 100 feet longer than the area you want to protect, to prevent wind from whipping around the windbreak edges. For home protection, windbreaks should be 100 to 150 feet long, located no more than 300 feet away from the house, yard, and outbuildings.\n\nA wind velocity of 5 miles per hour is slowed to \u00bd mile per hour in the lee of a windbreak\u2014a 90 percent decrease. A 30-mile-per-hour wind will be reduced by 50 percent, to 15 miles per hour, by a windbreak. The lee can be a distance of up to thirty times the height of the trees (see next section).\n\nUniversity research shows that heat energy savings of up to 40 percent are possible when you use windbreaks. One study showed that a house with a constant temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit protected by a windbreak requires 23 percent less fuel than a house exposed to the full sweep of the wind. Permanent windbreaks on 40-acre fields at the University of Nebraska's Mead Research Station increased soybean yields by 18 percent, corn yields by 20 percent, and wheat yields by 22 percent.\n\nWindbreaks are a worthwhile investment. James R. Brandle, Bruce B. Johnson, and Terry Akeson, in a University of Nebraska study, found that \"a full windbreak occupying 5 percent of the field is economically viable\" and will \"more than compensate for the cost of establishing the windbreak and the loss of output from acres taken out of production.\"\n\nWindbreaks slow wind erosion, reduce water evaporation, and moderate temperatures to protect your crops and livestock.\n\n# Thirteen Benefits Of Windbreaks\n\n  1. Increase crop yields as well as hay and pasture yields\n\n  2. Reduce soil erosion\n\n  3. Trap winter moisture for spring crops\n\n  4. Reduce water and nutrients needed by crops\n\n  5. Moderate temperature and humidity\n\n  6. Reduce crop input costs\n\n  7. Provide valuable wildlife habitat, such as nesting places for birds, which feed on insects in the fields\n\n  8. Reduce heating costs 10 to 40 percent when placed around the farmstead\n\n  9. Provide tree products, nut products, and suitable areas to grow high-dollar medicinal herbs like goldenseal, ginseng, and brambles (e.g., blackberries and raspberries)\n\n  10. Produce firewood and fenceposts\n\n  11. Provide as much as 50 percent savings in feed costs for livestock\n\n  12. Reduce wind damage to crop plants\n\n  13. Spread snow evenly in a field\n\n##### Kinds of Windbreaks\n\nTo determine the best kinds of trees for windbreaks, consult your local university extension office or state Department of Agriculture. You will choose trees based on their lifespan, density, growth patterns (for example, evergreens do not shed needles, and thus provide more protection later in the year), and height. Trees or shrubs can be planted in single rows or in mixed groups.\n\n**Height**. The height of a windbreak determines the protected area. A rough formula predicts wind speed reductions in an area of 2 to 5 times the height of the windbreak on the windward side and up to 30 times the height on the leeward side. This means that with 30-foot trees, the protected zone spans 60 to 150 feet on the side the wind is coming from and up to 900 feet on the side away from the wind.\n\n**Length**. The length of the windbreak determines the amount of area receiving protection. According to windbreak expert James Brandle, the maximum efficiency for windbreaks requires that the length be 10 times the height.\n\n**Density**. Varying the density of the windbreak can influence what you do with it. For instance, 25 to 35 percent density is best for even spreading of snow across a wheat field but will not control soil erosion as well as a 40 to 60 percent density. Evergreen trees, among them Eastern Red Cedar, are fairly dense. They are good choices for windbreaks because they don't lose their needles in wintertime, unlike deciduous trees (broadleafs) such as oak.\n\nThe main advantages of tree windbreaks are their height (30 to 50 feet) and longevity (50 years). Trees are not the only wind-break materials, however. Perennial grasses and legumes can also be planted in strips. As well, small grains like rye, wheat, and oats can be planted in strips to slow wind erosion, conserve moisture, and provide a suitable microclimate for vegetables that need more wind protection, such as onions and early-planted cole crops. Corn rows planted in a field of soybeans or wheat grass in wheat fields are also beneficial. Two rows of corn are usually alternated with sixteen rows of soybeans or four to sixteen rows of corn and soybeans are planted in alternate strips.\n\nWheat grass is planted in double rows spaced 36 inches apart, every 48 feet across the wheat field; wheat grass grows about 5 feet tall. Annual plant windbreaks can be placed around an area perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction, just as with trees. In most areas of the United States, this means placing the windbreak on the north and west sides of the area to be protected. If there is no predominant wind direction, Laurie Hodges and James R. Brandle recommend planting annual windbreaks with the rows closer together, following the land contours or in a serpentine pattern, to slow the winds and protect the other plants.\n\nWindbreaks are not made solely of trees. For example, you can use corn as a windbreak to provide a beneficial microclimate for your soybeans, increasing their yield.\n\nStrips of small grains can also be used as lures to keep insects away from your cash crop. Insects prefer the small grains and will remain in them, rather than eating other crops. It is suggested that the strips of small grains be 45 to 60 feet apart in your field and of a width appropriate for your equipment.\n\n### Extending the Season\n\nSeason extenders are a way to get crops growing early or to lengthen their growing period late in the year, to allow you to have crops when other farmers do not. This is an easy way to reduce competition and increase your profits. Greenhouses, cloches, tunnels, and floating row covers can all be used to extend your growing season.\n\n# Solar Growing\n\nAccording to Shane Smith, author of the _Bountiful Solar Greenhouse_ , food production in greenhouses actually had its beginnings in a medical prescription for the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar. He was told by his doctor to eat a fresh cucumber each day\u2014even in winter\u2014so his workers created a pit in the earth and covered it with a transparent stone. Manure may also have been used for its heat-producing qualities.\n\nShane Smith is a founder of the Cheyenne Community Greenhouse in Wyoming. Cheyenne is a cold place to live, and it ranks fourth highest in the nation for yearly average wind speed. The Greenhouse, a community project, is 5,000 square feet and is 100 percent passive solar heated. Two hundred 55-gallon black-painted drums containing water store solar heat for the greenhouse. The north, east, west, and roof are heavily insulated. The Greenhouse has never required back-up heating, even during the coldest weather.\n\nAnna Edey's year-round solar greenhouse, Solviva (Swedish for \"sun life\"), is located in Martha's Vineyard, a small island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Solviva houses both crops and livestock, and uses only the sun and animals' body heat for warmth. Anna has 100 chickens laying eggs in the greenhouse to supplement the 80 to 100 pounds of salad greens that are produced every week. She grosses $70,000 to $100,000 per year; the 104-by-28-foot structure cost only $30,000 to build in 1983.\n\nYou can grow lots of bedding plants in a small greenhouse\u2014up to 5,000 plants have been grown in a 16-by-16-foot space. These two examples of permanent freestanding greenhouses have production figures of 3 to 4 pounds of food crops per square foot. Your efficiency will improve as you learn, so don't be afraid to start.\n\nIf these examples have you interested in greenhouses, but you're not sure about the investment, there are lots of ways to extend your growing season cheaply, and to get a feel for solar growing:\n\n  * If you have a south-facing house, barn, or shed, just lean a window, a sliding glass door, or a piece of plexiglass against the building. Cover the ends with plastic or straw bales, and you have a miniature greenhouse for early greens or starting plants for transplanting.\n\n  * Lay out several straw bales in parallel rows. Cover the rows with window panes, or 2-by-2- or 2-by-4-inch wood frames covered with plastic. Placing milk jugs painted black and filled with water between the bales will help dispense heat at night when things cool down. Bales placed crossways at the ends of the two rows of bales will hold in even more heat at night, and provide excellent protection against the wind.\n\n  * A cold frame is simply a wood frame covered with a window pane. These mini-greenhouses are easily transportable.\n\n  * Milk jugs make great tiny greenhouses to start plants in the field early in the season. You can start sweet potato slips in April under milk jugs. Just cut off the bottom of the jug and place it over the plant, pushing it far enough into the soil to hold against winds.\n\n  * Raised-bed gardens with hoops of Pvc pipe covered with plastic make good season extenders. Raised beds are large frames of wood (or tire rubber), usually placed with rebar rods driven beside them for structure, then filled with soil. A typical raised bed might measure 5 by 30 feet. The hoops and plastic can also be used on flat-ground gardens.\n\nI have a closed room in my machine barn in which I start tomatoes, peppers, melons, and herbs early. I set hooks in the ceiling and string fluorescent lights about 4 inches above a series of folding tables. ( _Note:_ Fluorescent lights must be replaced at least every other year, as their intensity does fade.) I plan planting dates to allow seeds to sprout and grow to about \u00bd to 1 inch 2 weeks before frost-free dates in spring. Once they are growing well, I move them outside during the day, placing them in a ring of square hay bales to protect them from the sun. This hardens them off (adjusts them to outdoor temperatures) and prepares them for planting. On the first frost-free date, I transplant them.\n\n# Growing Potatoes\n\nPlant potatoes as early as possible in the spring. Hill them when they are 3 or 4 inches tall. (To hill a potato, mound the earth around it until the hill is 8 or 9 inches high and 12 inches wide at the base.) Then spread straw heavily on top, which not only conserves moisture already in the ground, but also soaks up any new rain and virtually eliminates weed problems.\n\nSeason extenders will also save moisture. Covering garden beds with black plastic or mulch early in spring will hold in moisture enough for you to grow a good tomato crop with little or no added water. Mulch such as straw keeps the ground moist through the hottest summer months.\n\n### Caring for Livestock in Winter\n\n**Principle :** _Let your animals learn to cope with winter_.\n\nYour livestock may need better shelter in winter to protect them from the wind. Overall, though, the best thing you can do for your animals is to let them learn to cope. In northern areas, cattle will learn to graze through snow and can use the snow as a water source.\n\nWe are apt to do too many things for our animals that are not conducive to developing good, hardy breeding stock. Stock that can survive on the land on its own will minimize our input in time and supplies\u2014allowing our labor to be used elsewhere and saving money.\n\n#### Providing Water\n\nSheep obviously need some water, but can usually do quite well on range or pasture with what nature provides. I have seen my own Katahdin Hair sheep go without water for up to a week in the winter, even though it was available to them.\n\nCattle, hogs, rabbits, poultry, and horses require a source of freestanding water to drink. This means that you must check your water source each morning and break any surface ice so the water can be reached.\n\nIf you have only a few head of livestock, the best way to water them in winter is with buckets of warm water. If your livestock numbers are large and spread out, an automatic energy-free waterer saves both time and water. You still need to visit your livestock every day, though, to check that the device is working.\n\nHealthy livestock can easily withstand subzero temperatures if they are relatively dry and protected from the wind. In this example, the hills serve as a windbreak.\n\n#### Providing Feed\n\nLivestock require more feed in winter, as pasture grasses decline and their nutritive value decreases. Plan to store crops such as ear corn and hay for your winter feeding. You might also investigate cold-hardy forage crops that will allow your stock to graze into late winter\u2014or all winter, in the South.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nSustainable agriculture is an ongoing discovery of how things work and interact on your farm. Saving every drop of water that falls on your land involves using tillage methods like fall-sown cover crops, windbreaks to slow moisture depletion, and terraces and dense wind-breaks to distribute water and snow. By seeing the interconnectedness of how one thing affects another, we can put together a series of practices that will make a farm sustainable and successful.\n\n###### Part Iii\n\n## Planning and Marketing\n\n###### Chapter Six\n\n## Your Goals and Farm Planning\n\nWhy do you need goals for your life and your business? The answer is simple: If you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? The more goals you write down, the better your chances of success.\n\nGoals vary. There are short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. There are personal goals, family goals, business goals, and farm goals. A family goal might be to develop a system of farming that allows you to spend more time with your children. A personal goal might be to have enough farm income to quit your town job and farm full time. A business goal might be to achieve a 20 percent return on your total investment. A farm goal might be to develop a system of farming that is economically viable, socially acceptable, and environmentally sound.\n\nAs you can see, goals can overlap, and different goal aspects can be present in a single goal. The important thing is to figure out what your goals are, so you can plan your farm.\n\n_Diversified crops give you a multitude of markets\u2014and marketing options\u2014throughout the year_.\n\n### Planning\n\nA young couple, Earnie and Martha Bohner of Persimmon Hill Berry Farm, spent 3 years accumulating budgets and information on various crops and livestock before they chose the enterprises they thought suited their soils, location, and monetary goals.\n\nAfter determining what they wanted to grow, they established a 10-year plan, a 5-year plan, a 3-year plan, and a 1-year plan, broken down into what to do every 2 weeks.\n\nIn the process of studying various enterprises, they attended conferences and seminars, bought books, and talked to farmers. This intense study of the crops they were interested in exposed them to different tillage methods, irrigation methods, and marketing methods. Some of the knowledge that they gained from farmers, instead of from a book, changed their goals or the order in which they chose to accomplish their goals\u2014some would take longer and some could be achieved more quickly. The Bohners eventually decided to start with U-pick berries and shiitake mushrooms. (More information on their operation can be found in chapter 7.)\n\nEarnie and Martha worked full-time jobs while accumulating their information. Will you need 3 years of study to put together a perfect plan? That will depend on your available time and persistence for the project. You might need only 6 months to a year\u2014but remember, \"Nobody plans to fail, but many fail to plan.\"\n\n**Principle :** _Planning and flexibility are two keys to farm success_.\n\nIn addition to planning, you must be willing to be flexible and shrewd. Take advantage of new ideas, new markets, and any opportunities that arise. Right after college I was a foreman on a sod-laying crew, and the bluegrass sod we were cutting belonged to an elderly farmer who used to tell me about the Depression. He said fat hogs were selling for 3 cents per pound. One day there was a really bad ice storm. He loaded his hogs carefully and hauled them 125 miles to the St. Louis market. Because of the storm, there were too few hogs there to satisfy the buyers that day, so his hogs brought 5 cents a pound. He took advantage of the weather to increase his profits.\n\nMonetary cycles and cash-flow shortages can make any enterprise\u2014no matter how much you love it\u2014into a living hell, draining both your enthusiasm and your pocketbook. A sustainable, diversified farming operation gives you the best chance of earning a living from the farm and still having a life. Yes, I said the best chance\u2014no guarantees. The best and most frugal farmer in the world cannot survive unless he or she can pay the bills, good weather or bad. Planning and flexibility will allow for a steady cash flow.\n\n#### A Planning Example\n\nLet's take some space on your farm for a planning example, without considering budgets or marketing. You have decided to plant some vegetables.\n\n**Slope**. First, consider the land itself. Most vegetables need a warm environment in order to prosper. A gentle slope is a good place to plant. Why? Well, the sun is the primary source of heat for soil. The heat is greater in the summer when the sun's rays hit the soil directly; in wintertime, the sun's rays hit the soil at a slant, because the sun is lower in the sky as a result of the tilt of the earth. But on a slope, the sun is able to make direct contact with the soil for a longer period of time due to the angle of the land. This means it will warm up and dry out sooner in the spring, and thus can be planted earlier.\n\nIn general, in the northern hemisphere, trees grow on northern slopes and grasses on southern slopes. Southern slopes tend to be warmer and drier than northern slopes.\n\n**Moisture**. The angle of slope of a piece of property can modify the climatic conditions on that land. On steep slopes, more rain runs off instead of penetrating the soil. Thus, the soil is drier and provides less water for your crops. On sloping ground, there is more moisture toward the bottom of the slope. Your choice of vegetables or field crops should take advantage of this moisture.\n\n**Soil**. You will also need to consider the soil of the slope. Sandy soils are porous and warm up quickly in spring. Clay and clay loam soils hold water and dry slowly in spring. Evaporation of water from the soil also reduces the direct effect of the sun's rays.\n\n**Planting**. Now consider how you will plant your early-vegetable crop. If this slope is more than 2 percent, you want to run your vegetable rows perpendicular to and around the slope, each row of plants forming a dam to catch water and slow the erosion of soil. If the slope is greater than 5 percent, different growing methods must be applied, such as strip-cropping (see box).\n\n**Management**. You'll also need to consider the effects of your other farm operations. For example, running livestock on the slope the year before you plant, or feeding hay to stock and concentrating the manure on the slope, may furnish all the fertilizer you need\u2014virtually free of charge.\n\nThis may seem like a lot of decisions to make just to plant some vegetables, but things will get easier. Once it becomes a habit for you to consider all your options, some decisions become almost instinctive.\n\n# Strip-Cropping\n\nStrip-cropping is used on land that is moderately sloping. Crops are planted in alternating strips, each strip being from 4 to 12 rows wide, horizontally across the slope. The idea of alternating strips is to allow for a thicker crop (hay, for example) to prevent water flow from eroding the slope, while still utilizing the slope for more high-value crops.\n\nVegetables, for instance, are surrounded by bare ground or mulch, so they need a thick crop alternating with them. The alternating strips might be corn and soybeans on a gentler slope, corn and hay on a steeper slope. Crops are rotated in the strips: for example, 2 years of corn, then the corn strip is sown to a hay crop, then the hay strip is plowed under, furnishing organic matter and soil fertility for the next corn crop. The hay strips may be grazed, using electric fence to keep sheep or cattle out of the corn. (See chapter 4 for more on crop rotations.)\n\n### Setting Goals\n\nFollowing is a list of sample goals. If these goals do not seem to fit your plan, make your own. For instance, the goals for a fee-hunting ranch would certainly different from those I have presented here. Your own list may be much longer or shorter, but the more effort you put into it, the greater your chances of success.\n\n#### Long-Term Goals\n\nLong-term goals, 10 years or more, should be written down and reviewed monthly to see whether you are proceeding in the right direction or if you have veered off track. As time goes on and your experiences or markets alter your plans, you may change your goals. Be sure to write down your altered goals and spend some time planning how accomplishing the new goal will differ from what you had previously planned.\n\nWrite down broad-scope goals as long-term goals. Some examples:\n\n**_Goal 1_. We want to farm**. This is a good broad goal, but if it is your starting point, you have a lot of research to do.\n\n**_Goal 2_. We want a sustainable, diversified, profitable farm because it gives us the best chance for success**. All of these are necessary for success, but the research still needs to be done.\n\n**_Goal 3_. We want a pasture-based farm; or we want a diversified crop and livestock farm; or we want to raise purebred animals**. Your research and needs will help you choose a direction before you decide on specific crops or livestock. The process of establishing a successful, respected farm takes several years.\n\n**_Goal 4_. We are from the city, so I will work part time for a farmer, maybe on weekends, to learn basic skills and ask questions, questions, questions, so that I can gather an idea of what I want to do. I will work for free if necessary to achieve this goal**. Everyone should have some method(s) of gaining knowledge as a long-term goal. You\n\nshould be learning about farming from your farm for the rest of your life. Sustainable agriculture is an ongoing process of discovery.\n\n**_Goal 5_. We\u2014the family unit, wife and children, my brother and I, my neighbor and I\u2014will be in total agreement about our monetary and labor goals**. It is great to say, \"Let's raise blueberries.\" But who does the planting, the pruning, the marketing? Will these chores be split? How? If the unit cannot agree at the outset, the project is doomed to failure. This is a long-term goal because it is broad in scope. Saying \"Sheila will plant the blueberries this spring\" is a short-term goal, but planning the family's overall direction for an operation is long term.\n\n**_Goal 6_. We will reduce input costs. We want a type of farming where crops and livestock complement one another, and return a greater profit to us while improving our soil, our net worth, and giving us a higher quality of life**. Reducing input costs probably involves either improving soil fertility (healthier soil requires fewer inputs) or increasing diversity. Soil fertility is a long-term goal (see Goal 16). Using diversity\u2014a combination of crops and livestock that complement each other\u2014can, with careful planning, reduce costs. For example, hogs eating your own homegrown corn reduces feed expenditures. Improving soil and net worth and improving quality of life should be separate goals. As individual goals, some of these might be achievable in a shorter time frame.\n\n_Goal 7_. We want to sell products that fit the organic market niche.\n\nThis is a more specific goal that may be achievable in a shorter time\u2014but until you know what you are doing, treat it as a long-term goal. What does it take to be certified organic? Will crop yields be lower, the same, or higher? Remember that being organic does not make your farm sustainable, and vice versa.\n\n**_Goal 8._ We will try any new project on a limited basis and keep good records. I will not bet the farm on hearsay or hype from universities, newspapers, magazines, and so on. I will first test it on my farm and also talk to other farmers who have done it**. Once again, the breadth of scope makes this a long-term goal. Any individual project to which you apply this principle will be a short- or intermediate-term goal. If the project works, it may revert again to a long-term goal. Often, it is worthwhile to write down what may seem like plain common sense as a goal. This allows you to come back to it and think about it periodically.\n\n**_Goal 9_. We will buy only that machinery that we absolutely need**. Machinery depreciates from the day you buy it, and when it gets rusty it really goes down in value. However, if you have good tool skills, used machinery and tools can be a really good buy.\n\n**_Goal 10_. We will keep good records and know our cost of production per bushel, per plant, per animal, per acre**. Records are a dayto-day short-term goal, an intermediate goal, and a long-term goal. To be really valuable, records must be kept on a long-term basis and evaluated periodically. Eventually, they will allow you to make profitable long-term decisions, based on the production capability of your farm. If you do not know your cost of production and you market directly to the consumer, how will you know what to charge?\n\n**_Goal 11_. We will use 5-year averages for budgets with a cash flow of 120 percent**. Say you are selling fresh brown eggs to neighbors, market customers, and a local restaurant. If your expenses are averaging $100 per week (you will average out your expenses over a 5-year period, adjusting for any unforeseen long-term changes, such as switching from grain-fed to range-fed), then according to your goal, your projected revenues should be $120 per week (120 percent of $100). The extra $20 is your profit, to apply to living expenses, savings, farm upgrades, and so on.\n\n**_Goal 12_. We will reduce or eliminate as many risks as possible in our operation**. Agriculture has major problems or risks that affect profitability, such as weather, prices, government regulations, disease (plant and animal), weeds, and poor soil fertility. If 20 percent of your income derives from overcoming these obstacles and 80 percent comes from your value-added direct marketing efforts, you have reduced your risk in farming. Value adding is important.\n\n**_Goal 13_. We will continue to educate ourselves every year**. Make an effort to attend and participate in conferences and seminars every year. Read as much as possible on research for your particular crops and livestock. Use this new information to update, change, or eliminate some goals after test trials on your farm.\n\n**_Goal 14_. We will direct-market as much farm production as possible**. Selling retail brings higher profits and more customer contact. Selling direct also gives you the chance to sell other products you raise to customers.\n\n**_Goal 15_. We will have a marketing plan with sales every month of the year**. Sales are essential every month, because you have bills every month. This is a short-term, intermediate, and long-term goal. Even if it is ultimately achieved, periodic reevaluation is required.\n\n**_Goal 16_. I will ceaselessly strive to build soil fertility by using cover crops, green manures, livestock, strip-cropping, and other soil-conserving tillage methods**. This is a lifetime goal. Improving soil fertility is a long, slow process, because every crop you raise on the land uses soil nutrients. You must carefully balance your choices of crops, livestock, and management techniques to improve soil fertility. You will probably need a lot of trial and error to learn how your soil reacts over the years.\n\n#### Medium or Intermediate-Term Goals\n\nThese goals are what you will seek to accomplish in 3 to 5 years. They must be specific tasks, and will often be broken down from long-term goals. Some medium goals:\n\n**_Goal 1_. I will purchase breeding stock, machinery, buildings, and so on as low-interest loans with 3- to 5-year terms**. Operating loans and lines of credit are for items to be used up and paid for in 1 year, such as seed, fertilizer, and veterinary supplies. A good ratio for the bank is 2:1\u2014in other words, $2 worth of assets for every $1 of liabilities (debt). Of course, it is always better to avoid any debt (see Goal 3).\n\n**_Goal 2_. I want to plant blueberries and sell them at the farmers' market and to local stores**. Keep in mind that it will take at least 3 years for any production and 5 to 6 years for full production. It would be wise to consider single-season vegetable and\/or field crops to give you income while your blueberries are maturing. This will also allow you to develop some loyal customers at farmers' markets and stores in advance, so you will have a developed market for your berries.\n\nAlways confirm market interest for a crop before you plant. Because there are no immediate returns on your planting, these types of crops will need 3- to 5-year loans, not operating loans, unless you can get a revolving line of credit. Revolving credit pays up and pays down, usually for a specific amount, say $10,000 to $40,000.\n\n**_Goal 3_. I will avoid short-term debt like the plague**. With a good ratio of 2:1, you can weather some tough financial storms. If you do whatever it takes to make the payment on your long-term loan at the ratio of 2:1, you usually have about 50 percent equity in your operation. When short-term debt piles up, it gets harder and harder to get out from under. This is also a long-term goal, because you will always want to avoid debt.\n\n**_Goal 4_. As I add new enterprises to my goal planning in the next couple of years, I will compare \"apples\" to \"apples\" by taking a look at the gross income per acre minus the direct cash costs per acre, which equals the gross margin on profit per acre or per head of livestock**. By leaving out fixed costs and mortgage payments, for example, you analyze the direct profitability of the enterprise on its own merits\u2014or lack thereof. Looking at income and expenses for 3 to 5 years will give you a good idea of what you can do and how much it will cost.\n\n**_Goal 5_. I will set in operation some risk management for my farm**. What kind of risks will you have in, say, a U-pick operation or a breeding-stock operation? What happens if you get sick and cannot work? Do you have a reserve in case of drought or flood? Can you buy crop or livestock insurance?\n\nUse life and health insurance to your advantage. In 1999, the government began gross revenue insurance, which covers almost all crops and livestock. If things go awry, you are guaranteed a certain gross revenue per acre or a certain yield (bushels per acre), all for a 20 percent higher premium.\n\nYou can control costs and increase output for increased gross income, but you have no control over the government and politicians and the laws they might pass that will affect your bottom line. Make a plan to deal with unexpected changes.\n\n**_Goal 6_. We want to convert our cattle operation to a management-intensive grazing operation**. You've estimated that it will require 2 years to build fence and lay water lines. How will this affect the cash flow? Will it generate more income the first year or second?\n\n#### Short-Term Goals\n\nYou will seek to achieve short-term goals within 1 to 2 years' time:\n\n**_Goal 1_. We have existing portable hog houses and will purchase feeder pigs to sell as whole-hog sausage in the fall**. Any short-term goal will probably spawn other short-term goals. In this case, for instance, decisions need to be made on numbers and types of pigs, feed, and marketing. Other goals prompted by this one might include \"We will buy 4 crossbred (Yorkshire x Hampshire) feeder pigs from Bob Smith in late August,\" or \"We will mix the sausage at 80 percent lean and 20 percent fat, and sell at a retail price of $2.50 per pound (120 percent of expenses, from the long-term goals).\"\n\n**_Goal 2_. We will build two portable chicken tractors and raise about 200 birds for sale as meat in about 8 weeks**. Chicken tractors are portable cages that allow chickens to graze in your garden between the rows and fertilize it, without eating your plants (see page 83).\n\n**_Goal 3_. We will buy ready-to-lay pullets and start an egg-laying operation**. Long-term and intermediate goals are often loosely defined or even philosophical, but short-term goals require that specific decisions be made immediately. How many pullets? What feed? What production level will be managed for? (Seventy to 80 percent is a good starting level.) What will we charge for a dozen eggs?\n\n**_Goal 4_. We will figure in time for rest and recreation this fall**. Vacations, entertainment, and rest are necessary to renew your body and spirit; they also allow some family time away from the concerns of the farm. Make sure that rest and recreation are always on your list of goals.\n\n#### Achieving Your Goals\n\nSetting your long-term, intermediate, and short-term goals is like using a map, and the goals are your destination, depending on where you are at on the road. You must have a plan. Some people say, \"I have a plan in my head\" or \"Planning is boring. I want to raise ostrich now!\" These people will fail without an excessive amount of luck. Planning is the easiest and least risky way to make your small farm successful and profitable.\n\nI cannot count the number of times we at _Small Farm Today_ have received calls from farmers who say something like, \"Well, I just finished growing my specialty popcorn. How do I market it?\" We try to suggest possible marketing avenues, but if they have not been planned in advance, the farmer's family will likely be eating a lot of popcorn, or whatever else they raised without planning on how to dispose of it.\n\nSuccessful farmers write down their goals. They will know how to raise their product, what their cost of production is, and, with careful planning, where they are going and how to get there.\n\n### Developing Your Farm Plan\n\nYour farm plan should be like a small business plan. Consult with a local Small Business Development office for information on forming a business plan. You will need this both for loans and for your own planning purposes.\n\nA business plan explains how you will achieve revenues from sales and how you will spend expense money. In particular, it demonstrates how you will repay loans and interest. It also shows how your business fits into the marketplace, examines who your customers are, how you will price your product, and what future developments may occur. A good plan accounts for variables that may affect income. Farms have some variables to consider that are not typical of other businesses:\n\n**Weather**. Weather will always be your first and biggest problem, but with cover crops, buildup of organic matter, and some limited drip irrigation or other limited water usage, you have eliminated all but the temperature aspects and catastrophic problems like floods and tornadoes. Although you may not have specifics on weather in your plan, you need to consider its effects and devise ways to counter them (add-on value, for example).\n\n**Weed, disease, and insect problems**. These are the target of the production strategy of your business plan. You should employ a production method that lowers purchased inputs, such as chemical pesticides. Weed, disease, and insect problems can best be handled by building the organic matter and fertility of your soil. Building soil fertility must be one of your broad, long-term goals. The healthier your soil, the fewer problems you will have with weeds, disease, and insects. Any problem that can be cured with a \"spray-to-death\" program can be cured in another way that is less expensive and less harmful to the farmer and the environment. And if you plan to be organic, another cure _must_ be found.\n\n**Management**. Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka calls his technique the do-nothing method. What he really means is to manage your farm in a manner that reduces costs, making it sustainable because it becomes profitable. Jim Gerrish, grassman, and Allan Nation, editor of the _Stockman Grass Farmer_ newspaper, changed the term \"intensive grazing\" to Mig\u2014management-intensive grazing. They were underscoring the importance of management and the thinking process in farm success.\n\nFancy equipment or high-priced show livestock does not necessarily make your farm profitable. On my own farm of 80 acres, I have one old tractor, a tiller, and a few implements. I grow about 5 acres of open-pollinated corn as feed for my sausage hogs (bought cheap as feeder pigs) and poultry. This is primarily because these animals are not as good at converting pasture to profits as are my Katahdin Hair sheep, which I have more of and which use more grass\u2014an annual renewal source. These are not show sheep, but sheep bred for my farm conditions. Pasturing poultry and hogs can certainly reduce your feed costs and give you a better, healthier product to sell, but poultry and hogs are simple, one-stomach animals. Sheep and cattle, in contrast, are ruminants (they have four stomachs), with the ability to consume larger amounts of roughage. They can be raised to a marketable weight on forage alone. Low inputs, efficient livestock, and direct sales keep my operation profitable.\n\n**Government regulations**. Like it or not, you must be involved in meetings about legislation. The general population is four to five generations removed from the farm and this includes our legislators, yet they pass laws about an industry with which they are unfamiliar. It is very important that legislation that affects direct marketing be addressed so the small farmer has a chance to compete with the big boys.\n\nFarmers are less than 2 percent of the total population. We feed the other 98 percent. Every farmer must be a spokesperson for our industry. You cannot live in the woods doing your own thing, so to speak, because you can be legislated out of business if you are not aware of what is going on.\n\n**Adding value**. Value-added products include jams, cuts of meat, sausage, rubs, shampoos, craft projects, and much more.\n\n# True Story\n\nMasanobu Fukuoka is a Japanese farmer famous for his natural farming methods, which he described in his books _One Straw Revolution_ and _Natural Farming_. He grows rice and winter grain on a d-acre field, and has harvested 22 bushels each of grain and rice from that field\u2014without any inputs at all. Fukuoka's philosophy translates into a thinking-type agriculture. American agriculture is steeped in tradition, but not in thinking about _how_ and _why_ we do the things we do.\n\nFukuoka, born in 1914, categorizes farming into three basic types:\n\n**_Mahayana_ natural farming** is perfection\u2014the farming of Nature. Natural farming follows the Buddhist philosophy of _mu_ , or nothingness, by obeying a \"do-nothing nature.\" Fukuoka says Nature has everything; no matter how man struggles, he will never be more than a small, imperfect part of its totality. This notion of farming is more of a philosophical ideal than a farming method attainable by man.\n\n**_Hinayana_ natural farming** tries to remove human knowledge and action and utilizes the pure forces of Nature. It is the natural farming method that results when man works with Nature; this is the method that Fukuoka uses. This farming method takes advantage of natural occurrences. It is a \"do-nothing\" philosophy still, but with allowances for the necessary intrusions of man, such as planting. A typical application of _hinayana_ in the United States is overseeding red clover in winter wheat. The clover sprouts in the spring, but its growth is held back by the shade of the faster-growing wheat. When the wheat is harvested in July, the clover is exposed to the sun and grows rapidly, providing a cover crop. Nature determines the interaction of the crops; man assists.\n\nFukuoka's natural farming has five major principles: no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, and no pruning.\n\n**Scientific farming** uses human knowledge and action in an effort to establish a superior way of farming. Fukuoka believes scientific farming is limited to short-term goals; its achievements may be better in some ways (e.g., yields) but are far inferior in all other ways, and will lead eventually to failure. In comparison, natural farming is total and comprehensive. Fukuoka describes American organic farming as just another type of scientific farming. He says scientific farming is judged on a scientific basis; natural farming should be judged on philosophical grounds.\n\nNot all of Fukuoka's ideas are applicable to American farming, but he is always thought-provoking.\n\nAdding value reduces risk by turning a basic product into a product with additional profit and a longer shelf life. Weather, price, government regulations, and weed, disease, and insect problems are the main obstacles to small farm profits. If the majority of your income comes from a value-added product, you have eliminated most of the farming risk.\n\nValue-added products allow for a drastic reduction in volume, with little change in gross revenues. Most people with value-added products have excess field production (more crops than can be turned into product), which can be sacrificed without loss to the product. The add-on price also protects the gross revenues. It only takes 5 bushels of corn sold as cornmeal to equal the gross revenues of 100 bushels of corn sold at the elevator. (See chapter 7 for more on add-on value.)\n\n**Marketing**. When success and profit are your broad, long-term goals, direct marketing becomes very important. I will discuss marketing and adding value in the next chapter.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nIt is my hope that as you read this book, you will commit the basic truths of each chapter to memory to be used every time you make a farm decision or define or redefine your goals. The most fundamental of these practices are to clarify and prioritize your goals, keep them uppermost in your mind, and plan your enterprise with them in mind.\n\n###### Chapter Seven\n\n## Marketing\n\nWhat are some differences between the marketing strategies used in traditional agriculture and those used in alternative agriculture?\n\nTraditional agriculture grows the crop or livestock and then looks for someone to buy it. Alternative agriculture looks for the market first and then grows what the market wants. By combining this with added value and direct marketing at retail prices, farmers move upward in the marketing process, for much greater profits.\n\nTraditional agriculture depends on \"wholesale\" prices at elevators and sale barns. However, a farm that sells surplus products above what the family eats is a small business, and small businesses succeed by practicing retail rather than wholesale marketing. Direct marketing is the profit equalizer for family farms.\n\nTraditional agriculture simply sells the commodity that is grown. Alternative agriculture will seek to add value to the product by turning it into a retail consumer item such as jam, sausage, or a wool sweater. By adding value-added products to direct marketing, farmers gain additional profit. It is important to remember that in direct marketing, you are marketing yourself as well as your product.\n\n**Principle :** _A farmer must be skilled at buying and marketing_.\n\n_Marketing begins by reaching the consumer. Each fall this roadside display of pumpkins attracts the eye of tourists, photographers, and pumpkin buyers as they travel U.S. Route 7 in southwestern Vermont_.\n\n### Eight Steps to Identifying the Market\n\nHow do we determine what the market or consumers want?\n\n**Step 1**. Obtain maps of your state and county.\n\n**Step 2**. Locate your farm on the maps and draw circles with your farm at the center with a radius of 25, 50, and 100 miles.\n\n**Step 3**. Count how many towns, cities, or population centers are within those ranges. Most of your farm's customers will be in the 25- to 50-mile range.\n\nWith your farm at the center, draw circles at a radius of 25, 50, and 100 miles.\n\n**Step 4**. Using your maps, add up the number of people present in your area. Your local agriculture statistics office (check with your local extension office or State Department of Agriculture) may help you compile these numbers.\n\n**Step 5**. Find out how many alternative agriculture farmers are in the circled areas of the maps, what they are growing, and what they are doing with their produce. If there are already ten strawberry farmers with 10 acres each, the market is probably already saturated for U-pick strawberries\u2014but it may not be if you are willing to process the berries into jams, jellies, or pies. Remember, too, that there will never be an oversupply of the \"best\"\u2014successful marketing is selling quality. You may have to do some driving and checking of local newspapers, farmers' markets, and your local Extension and agriculture statistics office to get this information.\n\n**Step 6**. Go to your local grocery store or visit several of them in the population centers. What vegetables and meat products are already available in these stores? Can the stores purchase these items locally or do they import them?\n\n**Step 7**. After gathering the information, determine what crops and livestock are missing that might have sales potential. Check which products are imported from other states and ask yourself why. Hardly any states are self-sufficient in food production; most grow around 30 percent of what they eat. Growing produce locally helps improve the regional rural economy and is desired by consumers. The market is there for the taking.\n\n**Principle :** _Plan to have produce available when others do not, or offer unique products_.\n\n# True Story\n\nDwight James, a banker-turned-farmer from Alabama, discovered that his state was a pumpkin-deficient one. In other words, the pumpkins being purchased in Alabama (population: 4.3 million) were coming from Tennessee and New Mexico. The market was there, but Alabama farmers were not taking advantage of it. By competing with imported pumpkins, Dwight could save transportation costs and damages, and rely on \"homegrown\" civic pride to increase sales. Since this discovery, Dwight is now the president of a sixty-member pumpkin association. Their promotions in the state of Alabama have resulted in the marketing of many varieties of pumpkins for different uses. Because many of these people had never grown pumpkins before, it is clear they are risk takers and price makers\u2014not price takers\u2014which is what agripreneurship is all about.\n\n**Step 8**. Find out who your customers are. If you have any ethnic groups in your area, investigate growing specialty produce and marketing methods that appeal to them. For instance, certain Vietnamese ethnic groups prefer live black chickens. There are certainly a wide variety of oriental vegetables to grow\u2014or Russian, Amerind, French, Arabic, Mexican.... Check farmers' markets and local ethnic stores or associations to talk to people about what they are interested in. Get specific ideas of how they want the product to appear. A satisfied customer is a return customer.\n\n### Niche Marketing\n\n**Principle :** _Raise crops and livestock for niche markets_.\n\nSmall farmers should raise crops and livestock only for niche markets. This means relying on alternative crops and livestock, or alternative marketing, rather than the traditional types the universities promote. While universities will claim their research is size-neutral, in the real world, that simply is not true. For example, if your university or seed dealer comes up with a new variety of corn that yields an additional 10 bushels to the acre, who benefits the most? The farmer with 50 acres of corn or the farmer with 2,000 acres of corn? The man growing 50 acres of corn gets a 500-bushel increase in his crop. The man with 2,000 acres gets a 20,000-bushel increase, which enables him to purchase new technology at a faster rate than can the 50-acre farmer. The 2,000-acre farmer also has a lower per-unit cost of production and more acres to spread his equipment over.\n\nYou might well say, \"I have only five acres. I cannot compete, why do it?\" Well, you _can_ compete, but you need to raise different crops, or the same crops for different reasons. Here's an example.\n\nSelling corn will ordinarily bring you about $2 per bushel. A bushel of shelled corn is 56 pounds, so this amounts to about 3.6 cents per pound. On the other hand, say you take the same corn and add value to it by processing it into cornmeal. You will make $82.88\n\n# True Story\n\nCurtis Bennett, in Mexico, Missouri, had no land and no machinery. He had been working for other farmers, but wanted an operation of his own. He wished to continue growing the crops he was familiar with, but to make more money and improve his quality of life. He met a farmer with land to lend at the 1994 National Small Farm Trade Show and Conference. Once he had the land, Curtis decided the organic market had excellent potential, and started growing organic corn and tofu soybeans.\n\nHe spends about $18 per acre for organic fish emulsion foliar fertilizer for his corn and $12 per acre on his soybeans. He plants the corn following the soybeans so he does not have to buy nitrogen for the corn. He sows about 25 pounds per acre of hairy vetch between August 15 and September 15, which provides an additional 100 pounds of nitrogen for the following year. Sowing in annual rye also helps as a green-manure crop and as a method of weed control.\n\nYields on the Bennett farm have varied from 33 to 50 bushels for soybeans and been about 115 bushels for corn. These are very respectable yields for low inputs. Curtis's methods have resulted in soybeans that tested at 44 percent protein, a very high-quality bean. The organic industry requires a minimum of 38 percent protein, and pays a premium price for higher-quality beans. Quality tofu soybeans sell for about four times the price of regular soybeans.\n\nLike many farmers, Curtis is always busy. He is a member of the Heartland Organic Marketing Cooperative in Iowa, and has served on its board of directors. The cooperative direct-markets its soybeans, bypassing distributors. About 90 percent of Curtis's beans are sold domestically, and about 10 percent go overseas to Japanese buyers. Most of his corn goes to California for taco chips, burrito wraps, and other natural foods.\n\nCurtis started with nothing but an idea and his own motivation, and now is well on his way to success. Finding the right alternative market and growing the product for it provided him with the key to increased profit.\n\nper bushel ($1.48 per pound) in gross profit. You will have to cover the cost of bags to put the cornmeal in\u2014about 15 cents each for a plastic-lined cloth bag. This means 56 one-pound bags would cost $8.40. This $8.40 will have to be subtracted from the amount you make from selling the cornmeal. Subtracting the $8.40 for bags and the $2.00 opportunity cost ( _opportunity cost_ is the price of the original opportunity) by selling corn by the bushel leaves a profit of $72.48, which will pay your labor, management, and marketing costs. A good goal is to have 50 percent of your income as net profit\u2014in this case, about $36.25 per bushel.\n\nIf each acre yields 100 bushels, selling corn at $2 per bushel will net you $50. Selling it as cornmeal will produce a net income of about $3,625 per acre\u2014including payment for labor and management. By selling the corn as cornmeal\u2014or growing high-dollar, high-yield varieties, or selling \"Indian corn\" for decorative purposes, or any other number of alternative marketing methods\u2014you can vastly increase your level of profit. Of course, selling 5,600 bags of cornmeal will require much more marketing effort than would hauling the corn to the nearest elevator and unloading it.\n\n#### Farming Methods and Marketing\n\nHow you choose to raise your crops and livestock can influence your marketing choices. Obviously, planting standard commodity crops on a large scale does not lend itself to direct marketing. Even variations of commodity crops (popcorn, white corn, tofu soybeans, for example) usually require contracting with someone to buy the product, rather than direct marketing. This is also true of large-scale operations involving vegetables, medicinal herbs, and industrial crops. Many farming methods, however, lead directly to niche markets. For example, choosing to raise purebred livestock, show-ring livestock, ethnic produce, or your own strains of open-pollinated plants creates a market niche for you. Some varieties of alternative livestock have built-in markets, such as velvet from elk or deer.\n\nIf you raise your products by organic or natural means, you will have an excellent marketing approach for consumers. Many people nowadays want to know that their food was raised outdoors in humane conditions, without herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, or other chemicals. So consider how you will raise your crops and livestock when you are choosing your niche markets.\n\n### All About Niche Markets\n\nSo exactly what is a niche market? Niche markets are of two types. Sometimes a niche market means a different type of crop or livestock than the two traditional triumvirates of corn, wheat, and beans and cattle, hogs, and sheep. Cut flowers, for example, are a different type of crop that can net as much as $15,000 per acre. Or it can mean produce is marketed differently from the way traditional crops and livestock are, such as at farmers' markets or at a U-pick farm.\n\nHere are some other characteristics of niche markets.\n\n**1. Small size**. A niche market is small and may be easily saturated. Careful research is required before you choose what to raise. You must assess both the current and potential demand for your product. Because of limited demand, you may choose to raise small quantities of several different crops.\n\n# Farming By The Square Foot\n\nIf you are a traditional farmer with a large acreage, you need to set aside a small area to practice intensive growing for direct marketing. Forget about bushels, acres, or thousands of livestock. Instead, think of your farm in terms of square feet. There are 43,560 square feet in 1 acre. If you get 20 cents per pound for the product and produce 1 pound per square foot, the result is $8,712 per acre. The potential of netting $1 per square foot or $43,560 net profit from 1 acre is very real (remember, you are selling direct). The catch is that 1 pound of produce per square foot equals 21.7 tons of produce per acre; you'll need 400 to 1,000 customers to consume that much produce.\n\n**2. Add-on value**. Niche markets are high-yield, high-dollar, high add-on-value types of crops and livestock. You add on value to a raw commodity by turning it into a different product for a different market, such as selling painted gourds, or marketing freezer beef or whole hog sausage instead of delivering livestock to the sale barn. Niche markets frequently lend themselves to processing-manufacturing, which supplies jobs for the rural community as well as for the farmers. For example, many farmers who started U-pick berry operations find themselves making jams and jellies out of surplus berries or berries not good enough for U-pick sales.\n\n# True Story\n\nEarnie Bohner's U-pick blueberry operation in Lampe, Missouri, yields about 10,000 pounds per acre and he sells them for $1.35 per pound, or $13,500 per acre. Earnie and his wife, Martha, joined forces with a chef and his wife to develop new products, such as blueberry barbecue sauce, shiitake mushroom sauce, dried shiitakes, and blazons. (Blazons are dried blueberries that sell for $10 per pound\u2014which considerably increases the gross profit on the same per-acre yield.) By putting his berries into small jars as jam, featuring his Persimmon Hill Berry Farm label, for $3.50 per jar, the same 10,000 pounds per acre yields $98,000 in gross revenues.\n\n  1. **Lack of mechanization**. Niche crops are not easily mechanized. The \"Suits,\" otherwise known as speculators and Corporate America, need absolute control of their crops, with mechanization potential for planting on large areas. Consistent production is hard to maintain without mechanization, and unmechanized crops require large numbers of hired help for large scales of production. If a crop takes lots of stoop labor, Corporate America will be less likely to invest in it. A warning: If you see corporations become interested in a particular crop or livestock, get out of it and take your lumps before you are wiped out in the market crash. On a positive note, if you market your production in a way that Corporate America cannot, such as by processing or manufacturing a homemade recipe, you can prosper even with corporate competition.\n\n  2. **Limited interest**. Niche markets are markets often overlooked by mainstream and Corporate America. They may be too small, or require too much labor or management, or they may have been abandoned due to market crashes or lack of profit. You can succeed by finding a different way to market a product that others believe to have limited potential. It is also possible to enter a market during a \"crash\" period and acquire your stock at a low price. For example, hogs were selling for as low as 18 cents per pound in 1998. Anyone wanting to acquire breeding stock for a hog sausage niche market operation could have bought several hogs, started a breeding operation, and turned some of them into sausage at a selling price of $2.50 per pound (which equals a gross profit of about $2.00 per pound).\n\n  3. **Controlled volume**. A niche market can start with small sales and grow into the volume that you desire. In contrast, corporations like high-volume marketing of products, which yields a lower return but is justified by the volume of sales.\n\n  4. **Low capital risk**. A niche market can usually be gotten into and out of without a large amount of capital expenditures at risk. Niche markets can be long lasting or short lived, which is why you need to be able to get in and out of production. As an example, let's say your niche market is raising purebred hogs on pasture with low-cost farrowing huts to sell to other breeders. If the bottom were to drop out of the hog market, it would be fairly easy to cull your herd to a minimum and convert the rest of the pasture to crops or some other livestock. If you raise confinement hogs in expensive facilities, you are stuck with raising hogs whether or not you profit. These expensive facilities are practically impossible to convert to anything else.\n\n  5. **Diversification**. Niche markets, because of their small size and short duration, almost require that you be diversified. When you sell one animal or one plant, you are not diversified and therefore not sustainable. If you raise small amounts of different produce, it will be easier to sell. For instance, selling 25 pounds of artichokes to a customer is difficult. But you might be able to sell that customer 3 pounds of artichokes, 10 pounds of tomatoes, a 6-pound roast from your Dexter cattle, two dozen eggs, and 5 pounds of apples.\n\n# True Story\n\nChuck DeCourley, of Columbia, Missouri, was promotions director for _Small Farm Today_ magazine. He wanted to start farming but didn't want to spend tremendous amounts of money. After surveying the market, he found that ratite (ostrich, emu, and rhea) prices had dropped following the speculator boom. According to newspaper articles, many farmers, particularly in Texas and Oklahoma, had given up when the \"breeder's market\" collapsed. Some farmers released their stock into the wild, some sold it at dirt-cheap prices, and a few just killed all their birds. But, as they say, one man's misfortune is another man's fortune.\n\nChuck purchased emus at low prices and started breeding them. Once he and a friend had enough birds, they started culling them for slaughter. They have marketed emu meat sticks ($1.39), emu sausage ($6.00 for 1 pound), and seven kinds of emu oil products, including a pain rub ($7.00 for 4 ounces). They also sell carved eggs for $150 and up. Chuck is successfully making money off livestock that are being turned loose in some states just to get rid of them. He has since left his magazine career to pursue farming full time.\n\n**8. Direct contact with consumers**. To be a niche product marketer, you must become a salesperson. If you do not believe in your product 100 percent, your customers won't believe in it. If you do not want to deal with the public, you might be better off joining a cooperative marketing effort with other farmers.\n\n### Add-on Value\n\n**Principle :** _Add-on value can increase both gross income and net profit_.\n\nAdd-on value is a simple concept. It means that you have processed a raw commodity to create a new product.\n\n**Example 1**. Berries can be sold as jams and jellies. The jams and jellies add value because they sell at a higher price per unit, but from the same acreage and same yield. Because they can be stored and sold throughout the year, they will produce a larger gross income over a longer period than will fresh berries, which can only be sold in-season.\n\n**Example 2**. When you sell hogs to the packers, you are selling hogs as a raw commodity. If you turn them into sausage, you are selling a finished product\u2014an add-on value\u2014direct to the consumer.\n\nFresh berries are perishable, but jams and jellies can be sold throughout the year.\n\n**Example 3**. Elk are a good add-on value animal. Their antlers are harvested yearly for velvet or craft projects, their meat is sold at a premium, and their hides are turned into handbags, boots, and wallets.\n\n**Example 4**. Ratites are used for meat, emu oil products, carved eggs, \"leather\" (from the legs and hides), and feather craft projects.\n\n# More Add-On Value Ideas\n\n  * **Fruits**. Jams, jellies, barbecue sauces, vinegars, dried fruits, chocolate-dipped fruits, wines, pies, juices, ice cream, crushed ice drinks.\n\n  * **Meats**. Cuts of meat, sausage, hams, meat sticks, prepared meals (e.g,. chicken cordon bleu, enchiladas, turkey, and stuffing).\n\n  * **Grains**. Flour, breads, doughnuts, recipe kits, soy nuts.\n\n  * **Fiber**. Yarns, clothing, felted products, small figures, stuffed animals.\n\n  * **Decorative crafts**. Christmas or autumn wreaths or swags, dried flower arrangements, cornhusk dolls, painted gourds, gourd birdhouses, painted or carved eggs, scarecrows, feather arrangements, potpourri, herbal gift baskets, pressed flower pictures.\n\n  * **Vegetables\/mushrooms\/herbs**. Garlic braids, mushroom logs, potted plants, dried herbs, pepper wreaths, seed packets and grow-it-yourself kits, recipes with appropriate accompanying dried herbs and mushrooms, herbal dips, seasoning mixtures, relishes, mustards, canned vegetables, salsas, popcorn.\n\n  * **Health and beauty products**. Shampoos, soaps, lotions, foot baths, herbal teas.\n\n  * **Other ideas**. Oils, leather products, honey, candles, T-shirts with farm logo.\n\nTo add value, processing or manufacturing is usually, but not always, necessary. Craft projects, for instance, are generally done by hand at a table, rather than in a Usda kitchen. Processing can be something as simple as cracking and removing the shells of walnuts or pecans so the \"meat\" is exposed. Each step in processing adds time or effort, but will result in a higher-value end product. For example, whole walnuts sell for only 10 to 50 cents per pound, while walnut meats sell for $7 per pound. Specific varieties of hand-cracked walnuts yield 25 to 30 percent nut meats. There are machines to crack walnuts, which decrease time and labor, but they also decrease quality. Machine-cracked walnuts yield only about 7 percent nut meats.\n\nProcessing changes the form of a raw commodity. There are several reasons for processing, as follows.\n\n  1. **Ease of storage**. It is much easier, for example, to fit packages of sausage and pork chops into a freezer than a whole hog carcass.\n\n  2. **Convenience**. Most consumers would rather buy shelled pecans or boneless chicken than go to the effort of shelling or boning on their own\u2014if the price is right.\n\n  3. **Longevity**. Canned fruits and vegetables will easily outlast their fresh counterparts, as do jams, jellies, and dried fruits. Most meats can be stored safely for 3 to 6 months in the freezer, but meat begins to lose quality after that. Cured meats can be frozen for only 1 or 2 months.\n\n**Principle :** _Plan to have products to sell year-round_.\n\n#### Processing Food\n\nYou need no special permits for craft projects, and will not normally require much processing equipment. If you sell value-added food, however, you are probably going to need an approved kitchen with appropriate permits to manufacture it in. You must check health regulations\u2014local, state, and Usda. call your local health inspector and Department of Agriculture for more information. University extension offices often have information on adding value and kitchen requirements.\n\nIf you need a processing kitchen, your first step should be to find out what is available in your area. When starting, it is usually better to rent a facility from someone else, both to save money and to get an idea of what you will need. Check out churches, schools, restaurants, and nearby value-added farm businesses for a kitchen you could rent that will fulfill your needs. Your local Health Department or extension service may be able to give you some leads.\n\nYou will also need information on how to do the processing and labeling. The state agriculture department or extension may have a value-added program to help with labels. If you sell across state lines, there will also be federal guidelines that must be satisfied. Talk to other added-value farmers and call businesses that have similar products in grocery stores to get information on companies that supply labels, cans, bottles, shipping packages, and other processing supplies.\n\nWith meat, processing often runs afoul of Usda regulations. There are practically no small-scale processing plants for chickens, for example. One way around this is to sell the animal \"live,\" then slaughter it for the customer. Check with your state's Department of Agriculture for rules and maximum numbers allowed. (In Missouri, each farm is allowed to sell 20,000 live chickens per year without a Usda inspection.)\n\nIn general, you can butcher fish, chickens, and rabbits at home. To sell pork, beef, lamb, or cabrito (goat), the meat must go through a state-inspected or Usda plant, but you can still sell direct if you sell the animals live.\n\nProcessing equipment for meat animals can be purchased from a variety of sources. Processing equipment might include fruit and wine presses, grinding mills for grain, poultry shears, knives, food choppers, and sausage stuffers, plus bags, egg cartons, and shrink wrappers. A number of companies carry rabbit- and poultry-processing equipment. (See the appendix for more information.)\n\nFarmers today are lucky to make a 5 percent return on their farms when selling raw products like corn. Food processors consistently receive a 20 to 25 percent return on their investment. If you have done your research and priced your products correctly, addon value will increase not just gross income, but net profits as well.\n\n### Twelve Ways to Sell Your Products\n\n**Principle :** _Direct marketing is the profit equalizer for small family farms_.\n\nThere are a multitude of methods by which you can sell what your farm produces. Let's take a quick look at some of these. The first eight listed here are direct-marketing opportunities; the others may involve selling to retail outlets.\n\n#### Selling to Friends and Neighbors\n\nThis is the best place for farmers new to direct marketing to start. You and your spouse should compile a list of about 100 people you know through work, clubs, church, and so on. Include people like your banker, your barber, your letter carrier, and relatives. You will use this list for contacts, and, if you continue to sell this way, as a mailing list to let people know when your products will be available.\n\nThis is an easy way to start direct sales, but it does have some drawbacks. It requires a lot of work to contact people to sell your products. Also, because these are your friends and neighbors, they may expect to get a lower price as a friendly bonus. They may also be slow to pay. You must remind them that for you to stay in business and your farm to be sustainable, you must make a profit. A good business deal is good for both parties.\n\nFriends and neighbors may be more critical of your product. You must explain exactly what they are getting. Customers not familiar with farming frequently assume a 250-pound hog will produce 250 pounds of edible meat. Instead, a 250-pound hog will probably produce 150 to 170 pounds of cut and wrapped meat, including chops, hams, and sausage. If you explain to your customers what to expect before they buy the meat, it is more likely that you will keep a satisfied customer. Remember, an unsatisfied friend or neighbor can cause a lot of problems.\n\nOn my farm, I sell hogs at 80 cents a pound liveweight, which means about $100 for half of a hog, with the customer paying for the processing. Processing costs run between $35 and $45, depending on how the customer wants his meat cut and whether he wants any cured meat. Alternatively, I sell 80 percent lean sausage at a flat $2.50 per pound, and get about 100 pounds of sausage from a 225-to 250-pound hog. I sold all my pork this year in the midst of 10-cent hog prices at the local sale barn. Customers were willing to pay premium prices for quality meat. My pork is fresher and leaner, and my hogs were raised on pasture and not given any antibiotics or growth hormones. My pork comes from happy hogs\u2014and my customers know it.\n\nFarmers' markets provide a lot of customers in one place, which works well if you have a product they want.\n\n#### Farmers' Markets\n\nFarmers' markets are perfect for direct marketing. Consider selling at any farmers' markets within 1 hour's driving time. Your state Department of Agriculture should have a list of markets.\n\nThe biggest advantage of selling at a farmers' market is that you'll find lots of consumers in one place. It is much easier to sell a little bit of produce to a lot of customers than a lot of produce to a few customers. If you have something new and different from the rest of the market, provide taste samples to the customers. Recipes featuring your produce are also a good marketing strategy.\n\nThe major disadvantages to farmers' markets are cost and time. Time spent at the market is time not spent on the farm. When you figure all your expenses\u2014production costs, booth fees, labor, and transportation\u2014selling here may not be cost-effective. Count your pennies carefully.\n\nCheck out the market the season before you intend to sell there. See what the farmers are raising, and what they are not. Is there anything missing\u2014yellow or purple snap beans, or heirloom tomatoes such as 'Brandywine'? Talk to the farmers and customers to see what is needed that you could raise. This is a good place to start.\n\nIf there is no farmers' market in your area, consider starting one. Evaluate the customer potential, determine the exhibitor (farmer) potential, and design a charter\u2014all these are very important. Decide fees, dates, and hours, and investigate insurance and location. This entails a lot of work and requires community support. If you do start a farmer's market, holding special events at it\u2014bake sales, festivals, concerts\u2014can be an additional way to draw revenue. Finally, a farmers' market will require the same thing you do\u2014advertising to let people know it is there.\n\n#### Roadside Stands\n\nThese will usually be on or near your farm and can vary from a pickup bed, to a temporary shelter, to a shop. If your own property is off the beaten track, inquire at area businesses such as discount stores and gas stations about setting up a temporary stand on their property, or pool your produce with a farmer on a good road. Make your stand attractive, with bright signs and clear information.\n\nRoadside stands bring customers to you at little expense. If you do well, you can develop this into a tidy little on-farm shop. With some advertising, it could attract people from miles away. Unfortunately, time is again a negative factor. Time spent in the stand may be worth less than at a farmers' market (think in terms of customer dollars per hour), unless you are on a well-traveled road with an easy exit. You will have to decide what the stand's hours will be. Will it be open daily, three times a week, or only on weekends? Will it be open all day, or just around rush hour, when customers are heading home? In some areas, the farmer leaves a can for money and lets customers help themselves. I'm not trusting enough for this approach, although it might be a good way of disposing of excess produce. Check insurance requirements to operate a roadside stand.\n\n#### Community-Supported Agriculture (Csa)\n\nThis is a subscription service where the farmer signs up customers for a monthly or seasonal fee and agrees to deliver to them a percentage of the farm output for a season. Csas are more than just a way to sell your produce: You form a definite relationship with your customer, and your customer shares in the production risk of your farm. By receiving the yearly fees up front, the farmer avoids borrowing money and paying interest, and has a paid market before he or she plants anything. The customers know how and where their food is grown, and receive fresh produce at a good price. Customers will also get a good lesson in the vagaries of weather!\n\nWorking a Csa is relatively simple. Most Csas have a starting base of about thirty customers. The customer will pay, say, $300 for 7 months, and in turn receives a weekly delivery of his percentage of the produce\u2014probably about 10 pounds per week. Customers may be allowed to work on the farm in peak labor times to reduce their cost. Some farms have customers pick up their produce on-farm, with a \"rollover\" table where a customer can remove produce he or she does not want and substitute something else. Some farms provide a yearly list of what they are planting; others seek input from the customers as to their preferences.\n\nThe main disadvantages of a Csa are determining a fair price and finding customers to sign up for it. Many people are afraid to commit money before getting any product. Most (but not all) successful Csas are near metropolitan areas with a large customer base. You don't want to start a Csa until you have a good knowledge of what you can raise each year, and what it costs to raise it.\n\n# True Story\n\nSam and Elizabeth Smith grew organic produce for local markets and restaurants for many years on their Williamstown, Massachusetts, farm. They decided to turn their farm into a Csa because they wanted a closer tie with the local community. Csa members actually become part of the farm. The Smiths have apprentices from all over the country who live on the farm from spring until harvest to learn about organic farming and the Csa experience. The apprentices not only help tend the crops and animals but they also help pick the vegetables when members come to do their pickup. Members choose certain crops, such as strawberries, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, snap peas, string beans, kale, herbs, and flowers.\n\nAs separate items, the Smiths' Caretaker Farm raises organic lamb, pork, and beef. Honey and eggs are available for sale. A local baker has joined the operation and provides fresh healthy breads, rolls, and special desserts, as well as baking classes. The Smiths don't grow corn, but it's available to members thanks to a participating neighboring farm.\n\nCaretaker Farm has become a thriving community of members who value local, fresh, organic produce and enjoy their weekly visits to the farm to pick up their share. A steering committee helps manage the membership administration. There are seasonal festivals, such as planting and harvesting potatoes and harvesting pumpkins, with square dances and potluck dinners. There is a pond where members can swim; there is a children's garden and classes for children in making various craft projects.\n\n#### Catalog Sales\n\nValue-added products are required for catalog sales, which can be a natural outgrowth from a mailing list of customers. Starting a catalog requires a lot of thought and careful market research. Printing, packaging, and mailing the catalog\u2014that's the easy part. The hard part is juggling supply and demand, making sure you have the necessary supplies on hand without spending too much money or creating a surplus. If you don't have what the customer wants when he wants it, you have lost a sale and possibly a customer. If you have thousands of unsold jelly jars, you have lost a business.\n\nI recommend catalog sales only for those with several years of experience in both farming and direct marketing of value-added products. A catalog requires a large volume of production. Factoring in the weather, amounts of production, and projected customer returns calls for knowledge and experience. It might be wise to have another farmer close by who can supply you with extra produce if you run short\u2014but it must be of a quality comparable to yours.\n\n#### Shows and Fairs\n\nA booth at trade shows and community events can promote your farm and increase your sales. These booths are a good way to tap into local markets, appealing both to brand-new customers and to people who have already heard about your Aunt Sally's Special Mustard Recipe but have never tried it. You might consider offering some kind of exhibition in trade for the booth\u2014cooking, milking a goat, or demonstrating a craft (soapmaking, spinning, felting, for example). Have cards or flyers available with maps to show interested people how to find your farm.\n\nCheck with the chambers of commerce in nearby communities, and also with your local extension office, to see what events are available to you. Don't look just at traditional farm and craft shows. Consider everything, from ballooning events to food fairs, from music festivals to church gatherings, from association conferences to Living History events. If no such events exist in your area, consider hosting one yourself.\n\nThe next step up from local events is a booth at a major farm and craft show or a state fair. You must be careful about costs. Remember that you have to recover the booth fee (usually $50 for small shows and $250 or more for larger shows) before you make a profit. If you are in another city, you may have to recover transportation, lodging, and meal costs as well. I recommend attending a major show the year before you exhibit at it to assess the customer potential. Talk to entrepreneurs marketing similar products and ask what they think of the show. In the end, though, finding out if you will have enough customers to justify the expense can be done only by trying a show or two and keeping good records. Be warned that some shows will be great, outdoing all expectations\u2014but some will be duds.\n\nThe \"major leagues\" of shows are the food festivals and gourmet food fairs, where booths can cost $2,000 or more, plus fines if you don't do exactly as instructed. These are not for faint-of-heart, low-volume producers, or those without a good cash reserve. You must be professional, knowledgeable, competent, and know your costs of production to the tenth of a cent. If a buyer asks what it costs you to deliver 100 six-packs of jam to 20 different stores, you have to be able to say, \"Yes, I can do that for Xx dollars and cents per case.\"\n\n#### U-Pick Farms\n\nU-picks are definitely a \"people-person\" business. All sizes, shapes, and ages of people will come to your farm, full of all kinds of problems, stories, and misconceptions about farmers. They will gladly share their experiences while you try to deal with five customers waiting to check out, a small child trampling plants in the field, and cars blocking the parking lot. If you are a \"people person,\" though, and believe you can sell your visitors products that are wholesome while providing them a fun experience, this can be a good way to market.\n\nSome families make it an annual event to pick their own produce.\n\nU-picks do away with the expense and time of harvesting your crop and hauling the produce to town. (Some farms pick part of their crop and sell it to hurried visitors at a higher price.) Once customers are on the farm, you have a great opportunity to sell them other products, too.\n\nThere are many other cost considerations, however. You need to check into the requirements for U-picks before you start: insurance, parking, bathroom facilities, a shady rest area, and so on. For information, talk to insurance companies, other U-pick farmers, and your local extension office. Check county regulations, as well.\n\nThink, too, about the problems inherent in letting large numbers of people onto your farm\u2014consider fence placement and security, for starters. Once again, it is helpful to do your research, and consult with other U-pick farmers and your extension service. You'll need to offer pointers to inexperienced pickers to reduce damage to your crops. There will always be some free \"field tastings,\" but discourage massive consumption. Require parental supervision of children\u2014you are not a baby-sitter (unless you want to set this up as an extra perk for a fee). Some farms require phone-in appointments, while others just have drive-bys. Phoning allows control of customer numbers with production, but requires more advertising until you acquire a regular clientele.\n\nU-picks used to sell only by the container, but most now choose to sell by weight. Thus, accurate scales are essential.\n\nIt is best to have a large population center within 45 minutes' driving time, unless you have some innovative ways to draw people to your property. Earnie Bohner, at Persimmon Hill Farm in Lampe, Missouri, operates a U-pick that is well over an hour away from any major city. He's on a road that leads to a camp, however, and many parents driving down to see their kids stop by. He offers homemade muffins and fresh berry smoothies, plus his unique addon-value berry and mushroom products (dried berries, mushroom sauce, and berry barbecue sauces). His special products and fun farm serve as a tourist magnet. He even has tour buses come. There is more information on attracting customers in the advertising section later in this chapter.\n\n#### Food Circles\n\nA food circle is sort of a cross between a Csa subscription farm and a cooperative. A limited group of farmers and others in town pool their produce\u2014usually 1 farmer for each 10 nonfarm families is a good ratio. Members may pay a fee to join, and some circles require a deposit. A tightly structured food circle will have a distribution site (perhaps more than one) where produce is delivered weekly. Members buy the produce at the distribution site. A member who does not buy enough during a certain period (monthly or seasonally) may have to pay a fine. A loosely structured food circle may just have people get together on an informal basis to trade or barter their goods.\n\nThe major disadvantage of a food circle is that lots of people must participate in starting it up and keeping it going. A farmer will find a lot of his or her time spent on organizational matters. It does have an advantage over cooperatives in that a set volume of produce is not needed from a farmer, and an advantage over Csas in that the customer does not have to contribute as much money up front; this makes it easier to attract customers. Farmers may not be free to set the price on their produce, however. Most food circles set a consistent price for all like produce, combine it, and return the farmer a percentage of money equal to the percentage he contributed.\n\n#### Grocery and Health-Food Stores\n\nThese can be good outlets for your products, but you will be selling them wholesale, so you must move more product to make up for your reduced income and increased time and travel. While helpful, any wholesale selling should be a small portion of your total sales volume.\n\n# True Story\n\nI was interested in getting into an alternative agriculture venture that would give me more return on my dollar than cattle. I decided to investigate raising catfish. I did my research carefully on raising them, then looked into marketing. I inquired at grocery stores in the nearest large city (about 30 minutes away) to see if they would have an interest in purchasing catfish. They did. I then checked with the Health Department to find out how I would have to arrange the fish for sale. I was told to take them to the stores in a cooler with a layer of ice, then a layer of fish.\n\nWhen I finally had fish to market, I took them to town, arranged as the Health Department specified. I visited the first three stores that had indicated interest and every one of them turned me down. When the fourth store said no, I asked the manager why he did not want the fish. He said he could not use fish in ice\u2014they had to be in bags. I checked with the Health Department again and was told that bags were fine, as long as they had a hole in the bottom and ice around them. Once I changed to this, all of the stores bought my fish. The lesson here is, ask questions to find out what the customer wants.\n\nStores may be hard to break into if they do not already carry local produce. Try to guarantee them certain amounts, packed the way they prefer\u2014they may be more amenable. Of course, make sure you will be able to supply the amounts you promise. Consignment sales may be a way to get your products into the store. These also have the advantage of giving you a higher profit, but you will have to spend more time in arranging displays and accounting.\n\n#### Restaurants\n\nThis again is not a retail market, but you may get prices slightly better than wholesale. Target specialty restaurants with staff chefs: They will be more interested in buying fresh produce. They also tend to be very particular. It is best to talk to the chefs before you grow, to find out what they want and what quantities they will need. Bring complimentary samples so they can experiment. Some chefs can be a bit temperamental. Tactfully encourage their purchases with one-sheet newsletters of information and quotes from food fairs and gourmet magazines. If you find a chef receptive to trying your produce, grow one or two new herbs or vegetables each season and give them as samples.\n\nSome more tips on selling to restaurants:\n\n  * Make sure anything you supply to a restaurant is clean and attractive. Dirty produce is a quick way to lose a sale.\n\n  * Restaurants should be in a tourist area or close to a large population, or their volume may not be worth your time and effort.\n\n  * Try to have several restaurants as customers, and have produce that is used in a wide variety of dishes. If your sales are based on produce used only in the chef's house special, or in a single salad, you will be in trouble if that dish changes.\n\n  * Arrange delivery dates. If the chef can't make his specialty when he wants to, you may lose him as a customer. Leave your number with the restaurant for rush orders.\n\n  * Above all, make sure to supply the quantities a restaurant requests. If the chef asked for ten cases, don't bring six. Never promise what you can't deliver.\n\nIt is important to evaluate the volume of business available for each of your products. When I started my aquaculture business, I was selling trout and catfish to restaurants. I found though, that I was selling ten catfish for every trout, because there were only enough upscale restaurants in my area to use 25 pounds of trout per week. In contrast, I sold 50 to 100 pounds of catfish per week to several \"home-style\" restaurants, plus these fish sold much better in the grocery stores. I soon dropped the trout and raised only catfish.\n\n#### Market Pools and Groups\n\nMarket pools are often retail. They are simply a group of farmers in an area who agree to refer sales to each other and promote each other's businesses. A farmer may refer a customer to someone else in the pool if he or she is currently out of what the customer wants or if the customer is looking for something just a little bit different. This system also allows the customer to have more choice. To go a step farther, the farmers may band together to sell their stock as a group at the sale barn, or to a company looking for larger numbers than a single farmer can provide. If this is done on a regular basis, it would be better to form a cooperative.\n\nMarket groups are usually regional or national associations that try to put together buyers and farmers. There are a number of these groups, particularly in the herb and flower businesses. The advantage is that the farmer does not have to do sales. The disadvantage is the commission that most of these groups charge. To find these groups, start by talking to some of the herb and flower associations and magazines listed in the appendix.\n\n#### Cooperatives\n\nCooperatives are another way of getting someone else to do the marketing. These are especially good for farmers who dislike the effort of direct marketing or who have no \"people skills.\" Cooperatives work by gathering together a group of small producers who are all raising the same product(s). They pool their produce to provide the volume required by major buyers. The selling is done by a co-op salesperson, freeing up the farmers for more production time. The disadvantage is that farmers will not get the retail price for their produce (although they may get a small premium for quality), and part of their profits are eaten up by co-op fees (including the salary of the salesperson). A member may also be in trouble if the co-op has contracts for X amount of produce and his or her yield is poor that year. Depending on co-op rules, there may be fines or other penalties.\n\nThere are all types of cooperatives. A co-op may be as small as eight to ten ranchers pooling calves to get a bunch of 100 for sale as first-time calvers, or it could be a group of farmers specializing in heirloom tomatoes for delis. Co-ops can also be quite big, such as the sugar beet cooperatives in the Dakotas, where farmers who join sign strict production contracts.\n\nInvestigate cooperatives carefully before joining. If you want to start one, do your research first, and talk to lots of other cooperatives. Even loose cooperatives need rules and regulations for members to abide by. It must be determined what percentage of sales goes to co-op salespeople and advertising, how administrative duties will be carried out, and how many growers will be allowed in the co-op. The new \"New Generation\" cooperatives set strict limits for numbers of members, differentiating them from older co-op models such as the Missouri Farmers' Association and rural electric co-ops. In a small co-op, make sure the other members are all people you trust and are willing to do business with.\n\n### Pricing Your Product\n\nThe price you put on your crops, livestock, and value-added products is what determines your income. People new to direct marketing often underprice their products and thus cheat themselves. You must keep in mind that you have a quality product (if you don't, you need to work on it until you do) and that you deserve compensation for it. You should be reimbursed for your direct expenses in raising it, the cost of your land and tools, your time in labor and management, and any costs involved in adding value and marketing it.\n\nAccurate farm records are essential. You must know your costs of production before you can be reimbursed for them. If you do not know your costs of production, including labor, you cannot know the profit margin necessary to stay in business. As someone new to farming, your production records will not be as accurate as they will after 5 years of recording expenses, experiencing weather variations, and selling. Remember to adjust your prices as you gain experience.\n\nCosts of production for crops include:\n\n  * Seed or plants\n\n  * Purchased fertilizers (including the costs of transportation for driving back and forth from your local horse stable with \"free\" fertilizer)\n\n  * Any additional equipment you need for the garden and plants (pots, starter soil, fluorescent lights, cloches)\n\n  * Gasoline\n\n  * Depreciation of machinery\n\n  * Labor\n\nIf you grow four major crops, split the dollars spent on fuel, repairs, and maintenance among them.\n\nCosts of production for livestock include:\n\n  * Purchasing the stock\n\n  * Feed\n\n  * Veterinarian visits\n\n  * Medicine\n\n  * Fencing and shelter\n\n  * Labor\n\nA meticulous accounting will include such things as the miles you drive to and from the sale barn. Time spent selling door to door or at farmers' markets should be included, as well as any advertising dollars you spend.\n\nOnce you have allowed for expenses, decide what profit to allow yourself. This is where you need to check your competitor's prices. What are similar products selling for at farmers' markets? in grocery stores? at nearby roadside stands? Is your product different\u2014perhaps of more quality, all natural, or an heirloom variety? If so, price it accordingly. The customer will not think it is quality if you price it too cheaply. If you're not sure people will pay a high price for your product, give out samples to encourage interest. I used to sell 'Red Cup', an heirloom stuffing tomato, at a premium price to a small deli. The deli, in turn, sold it as a special, stuffed with tuna salad. Any variety of produce not found in stores should be sold at a higher price due to its rarity. This applies to meat and value-added products as well.\n\nYou may be tempted to underprice your produce to make some quick cash. This is a mistake. If, for example, you were to undercut your fellow farmers at a farmers' market, you would make them angry. Also, new customers will expect to see these prices every time, and you will get a reputation for low prices rather than for quality. Finally, it will cost you money in the long run. A drop in price requires a much greater increase in sales volume for the same net profit. By the way, if you have extra produce at the end of the day, take it home\u2014your chickens and hogs will appreciate the treat.\n\nAs time goes by, you may want to consider raising your prices. In general, for a moderate price increase, determine if the total dollar increase in gross revenues is higher than losing the gross income of 10 percent of your customers (at least in the short term). Remember, it is better to raise the price in small increments over a long period of time than to have a big jump in a short period.\n\n# Increasing Prices\n\nLet's say you are selling shares in a garden Csa for $100 and have ten regular customers, giving you $1,000 in gross income. If you raised your prices to $125, you can count on losing 10 percent of your customers\u2014in this case, one customer. This would leave you with nine customers, each paying $125, or $1,125\u2014worth the price increase.\n\n### Advertising\n\n**Principle :** _Advertising is necessary to help your customers find you_.\n\nAdvertising is a great way to gather customers and increase profit at your farm, and it doesn't have to cost buckets of money. The first and best way to advertise is word of mouth. Tell your friends and neighbors to spread the word. Tell your barber or banker about your produce. Give out free samples at association, community, and church events. Make sure you include directions to your farm via business cards, brochures, maps, and recipe cards with your address included. Pool your resources with fellow farmers, and offer directions to each other's operations. Give talks or slide shows about your operation to local business associations, garden societies, 4-H and other children's clubs, churches, and schools\u2014this is an excellent way to get free publicity. By creating a network of friends, relatives, neighbors, businesses, clubs, and community, you will enhance your business and your relationships.\n\nThe next step in advertising is flyers and notices. Place them on community bulletin boards, such as at hardware and grocery stores and local restaurants, and at service places such as barber-shops and dentists' and doctors' offices. Local motels may place your literature on their display rack to show their lodgers things to do while in town. If you have seasonal or one-time events at your farm, you can always submit these as calendar items to your chamber of commerce, plus to local newspapers, magazines, and radio stations. Remember to allow lead time for publications before an event\u2014some magazines may require two or more months' notice. Check with your extension office and state Department of Agriculture about any advertising opportunities they offer.\n\n# Keep Signs Simple\n\nWith roadside stands and farmers' markets, your advertising is often just words on posters or a wipe-off board. Make your signs attractive and colorful.\n\nRoadside signs must be simple. A rule of thumb is to have 1 inch of letters for every 10 miles per hour a car will be traveling. On a 40-mile-per-hour road, make your letters 4 inches tall. Put the signs far enough before the turnoff that cars can slow down in order to turn. I recommend placing a sign on roads approaching your farm from each direction and another sign at the turnoff. Put the signs about g mile from your farm, clearly indicating the remaining distance.\n\nMake signs in colors that stand out (yellow is not a good choice). On a colored background (such as neon pink), use only black lettering. The more professional and attractive the sign, the more business you will get.\n\nMake sure your roadside signs are visible and easy to read.\n\nBuying classified and display advertisements in ad gazettes, newspapers, and magazines may be useful, but it can also be expensive. This is even more true of radio and television. Instead, consider trying to get them to do a feature story on you. It is great publicity at no cost. Kelly Klober, direct marketer and author of _A Guide to Raising Pigs_ , recommends sending a box of samples to local radio or television personalities to promote your farm.\n\nKlober also recommends maintaining a mailing list of customers and sending them word of developments on your farm: new produce or livestock, baby animals, start of the season, special opportunities. When you have 200 names, investigate acquiring a bulk mailing permit at the post office. Make sure all the local media are on your mailing list. Send them regular press releases or a newsletter, or even just a postcard. Press releases should be limited to a single page, double-spaced.\n\n# Getting The Most From Your Ad\n\nWhen you buy advertising in newspapers and magazines, there are some rules to consider. A classified ad should have a catchy headline (Fresh Wholesome Vegetables, or Lean Tasty Beef) and contact information. If you are providing a service such as delivery, list it.\n\nDisplay advertising should have a catchy headline, a brief description of the product, contact information, and a picture\u2014either a photograph or a line drawing\u2014to get the customer's attention. Don't overload your ad with words or fill all the available space: White space will also draw the customer's eye.\n\nGood placement also enhances an ad's sales potential. The right-hand outer column is the best place to be. Talk to the publication's salesperson about preferred placement. There may be a charge for the best position, or you may get it free as a bonus if you buy multiple ads.\n\nTalk about prepayment and multiple-time discounts, and anything else you can do to bring the price down. Newspapers have fairly set prices, but magazines and ad gazettes may have some bargaining room.\n\nWeb sites are an up-and-coming sales technique. You may be able to arrange for notice on your community's site, or you may want your own Web page. Check out different companies for prices and services. It is best not to be buried too far in another company's Web site (e.g., _http:\/\/www.freshlamb.com\/_ is a better site choice than _http:\/\/www.somecompanies\/htolg\/findit\/services\/farms\/freshlamb.com_ ). Do not spend too much money on this method until you are sure of its effectiveness. On-line catalog sales may be something to consider as you expand.\n\n### Your Farm as a Destination\n\nThere are other ways to attract people to your farm, either by offering additional activities on the grounds or by providing services that keep customers interested in coming back. Activities might include fee hunting or fishing, swimming and boating, a bed-and-breakfast, ice skating, a petting zoo, a restaurant or caf\u00e9, a craft shop or art gallery (featuring works of local\/regional artists), and a children's play area (hay-bale mazes are popular).\n\nYou can encourage community and farm associations to hold events at your farm. This is another opportunity to sell your products and develop more names for your mailing list. Anything from a balloon race start (but consider the effect on your livestock) to a conservation wildlife day may help draw customers. You might sponsor your own Farm Day with fun activities to attract townsfolk, or a Field Day with an explanation of your profitable farming methods to attract fellow farmers. You may want to have a value-added workshop or class, where you charge people to come to your farm. This allows you to market your skills as well as your product. If you develop a farm kitchen, rent it to other value-added agripreneurs.\n\nTalk to schools, daycare centers, senior citizens' homes, travel agencies (touring companies), and clubs about doing tours of your farm. You can either conduct these free as promotional events or charge a fee per person or busload. Senior citizens enjoy visiting farms for reasons of nostalgia. They will all have a \"snakes in the blackberries\" story and a \"Remember when....\" A few busloads of senior citizens at a flat fee per person (say $2), plus additional sales, will enhance your profit margin. Visitors will also be ripe for future sales such as Christmas gift packs, and will share their great experience with their friends and relatives. Make sure they leave the farm with a brochure or catalog.\n\nSeasonal attractions such as hayrides and bonfires are another way to get people to come out. Decorate your farm for Halloween or Christmas. Sponsor a School Day through local elementary schools, where children get a small pumpkin free. (They'll encourage their parents to bring them back to the farm to buy bigger pumpkins and other sale items.) Have a pumpkin-carving contest (entry fee: just the cost of the pumpkin), with space donated for advertising through the local paper. Emphasizing a family farm experience helps make these visits an annual event, at the least. Sponsor a pumpkin or Christmas tree fund-raiser through a children's organization (4-H, Boy or Girl Scouts, for example) or a church or service group. Sell value-added holiday corn decorations or wreaths. Have an egg hunt at Easter, with sales of value-added decorated eggs or rabbits as pets. While you have the visitors on the farm, tell them about other opportunities they will have, such as buying fresh sweet corn in the spring. Keep a sign-up sheet on hand to expand your mailing list. You can also acquire addresses off checks.\n\nA welcoming farm on a well-traveled road will be popular with locals and tourists alike.\n\nOf course, to get people to come back, you will have to offer attractive services. A graveled parking lot and either gravel or concrete walkways are a big plus. If your fields are not close to the parking, offer wagon or cart rides out and back. Put straw between rows on a U-pick farm, or even plant grass for a nice walkway. Strategically located trash cans are essential for your own benefit. Shaded rest or picnic areas, hot or chilled food and drinks (pies, bread, muffins, cider, fruit shakes, hot chocolate), nice rest rooms, soda machines, shopping bags, all increase your customer base and profit. Your operation needs to have an attractive appearance.\n\nHere are a few more tips to keep in mind:\n\n  * Anyone manning the cashbox should be friendly, knowledgeable, and clean.\n\n  * Your produce should be attractive and clearly labeled with prices and types.\n\n  * Free samples always boost your sales, but be careful not to give away too many if you have large numbers of visitors.\n\n  * Accepting credit cards will almost always increase sales.\n\n  * Consider an 800 number for value-added sales.\n\n  * Always keep an eye out for what attracts you when you visit other operations and events. Innovation and an attractive operation will bring in customers\u2014and keep them coming back.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nMany people consider marketing to be the hardest part of their operation. It's not easy\u2014but direct marketing is what will improve your profit margin. Start planning your marketing approach now, including market identification, niche development, add-on value, and advertising, and your operation will prosper.\n\n###### Chapter Eight\n\n## Selecting Your Enterprise\n\nOnce you have set your goals, it is time to select your enterprise or enterprises. To do this, you'll have to research your farm and the enterprises you're interested in, then determine what you'll do and how you'll do it. Let's look at the factors you should consider:\n\n  * **What can your farm support?** Soil test your farm soil to determine what crops will grow best with its natural inherent fertility. Blueberries, for instance, like acid soil. Legumes such as clover and alfalfa prefer sweeter soils. Consider slopes and types of growth already present. A hilly area is usually more suited to livestock than to crops. Wooded areas might be left for tree crops.\n\n_Heirloom apples are in high demand today due to their superior flavor. They are just one of many possible enterprises you can choose to pursue_.\n\n  * **How will you water your crops and livestock?** You can plan flood irrigation, soaker hoses, drip irrigation, sprinklers, or a bucket. Consider your water sources in terms of access and cost. If you choose the bucket, your water source had better be close to the crop or a water trough. You may have a well, a spring, ponds, a rural water district, or heavy rains. Make sure you save all the water that falls on the farm. (See chapter 5 for more on water.)\n\n  * **What are the costs and returns of your enterprise?** Before you begin, plot a cash-flow budget for the season, including harvest and storage costs. Make both short- and long-term projections. Consider legal requirements, equipment and labor, transportation, facilities, and start-up costs to acquire seed and livestock. Returns will depend on your production levels and marketing methods. Consider how much of a particular crop to grow, and whether you will keep it on a small scale or expand in the future.\n\n  * **Are there permits required or special regulations for your product?** Many states have special requirements for shipping nursery plants or reptiles in and out of the state. Others require a permit for certain operations, such as a release from the Conservation Department to raise deer or a permit for fee hunting for game birds. Processing kitchens must require fulfilling regulations of city and\/or county health codes. Remember to add to your start-up costs fees for permits and money for equipment to satisfy regulations.\n\n  * **You will need to keep records**. Keep track of expenditures, livestock breeding schedules, crop yields, weather, and other markers you can use to improve your farm and choose future enterprises. Will you need any special records, like sales tax records and bloodline papers? Consider the time and cost of these records. To keep purebred stock, for example, you will probably want it registered, and may have to pay both for registration and to be a member of the registration association.\n\n  * **Can you plan in some quick returns for start-up?** Start-up capital is important. Once you know how much capital you need or can afford, determine how soon you can get a return on your investment. As I have said before, it is important to look at not just what you can raise, but how you will market it. Radishes are the fastest crop I know of. It takes 10 to 20 pounds of seed per acre to yield 900 to 2,000 pounds of radishes in only 21 days. This is all good, but can you market this many radishes from 1 acre\u2014much less 5 acres or more? Ready-to-lay chicken pullets can be laying inside of a week of delivery. Snap beans take 50 to 60 days, while blueberries take 3 to 5 years before in full production. You need to consider a mix of short-and long-term investments.\n\n  * **Must you have general farm liability?** Will the enterprise need liability insurance? U-picks and roadside stands require insurance for injury to customers. You may want to check into crop protection insurance, although it is usually harder to secure at a reasonable cost for alternative crops.\n\n  * **When will you start?** Start-up time is extremely important. In traditional agriculture, you can look at data from the starting year forward and determine whether the farm will make it, depending on how many good years of livestock and crop prices followed the start-up year, and the debt involved. The wrong year to start or expand caused great financial stress to farmers in the drought years of 1953 and 1954, and during the rural crises of the 1980s, for example. Although alternative agriculture is not quite as tied to the climate as is traditional farming, choosing when to start is still important (see box, page 154). This is as true of farmers changing their operation as it is of those new to farming.\n\nA new farmer I knew tried to start a vegetable operation in July. That particular year the weather was drier than normal, and with no practical way to get water, the start-up operation faltered. He become discouraged and quit farming. Patience goes a long way in any business\u2014it is important not to rush your start. Research carefully and choose your time, when the season and weather are appropriate.\n\n# Starting Out\n\nWhen should you start farming? The best time to start is the late summer\u2014say, August or September before the growing season you want to be producing income in. If you cannot do this for some reason, grow something in your backyard or in a vacant lot, but gain experience. Working on someone else's farm is a good idea.\n\nAssuming you can start in late fall of the season before you want or need the income, what do you do?\n\n  * Lay out a work plan for everything you have to do.\n\n  * You should already have the basic tools necessary for the coming year. Get them to your farm, and grease, oil, and otherwise prepare them for use now and storage over the winter. Buy whatever equipment you still need in the fall or before the spring season, when it costs more and you don't have time.\n\n  * Plan your marketing program. How much will you have to sell? How many customers will you need? Will you have to develop a market? Is the market already there?\n\n  * Lay out fields and buildings.\n\n  * Build whatever fencing and buildings you will need.\n\n  * Take soil tests.\n\n  * Gather as much free fertilizer as you can: Clean out barns, gather leaves and manure, start a compost heap, and spread it on crop ground.\n\n  * Plant fall cover crops so you have green-manure crops to turn under in the spring.\n\n  * Buy livestock as needed. Breed your animals to give birth in early spring.\n\n  * Order seeds and plants in January.\n\n  * Thirty days before the frost-free date (usually in April), start crops that require extra germination time (peppers, tomatoes, gourds, melons) under fluorescents lighting in a warm building. After about 2 weeks, take these transplants outside to a sheltered spot to harden them off, returning them inside at night.\n\n  * Plant everything on or after the frost-free date.\n\n  * Think about the big picture all the time.\n\n  * **How does the new enterprise fit with the rest of your farm projects?** You must consider what your enterprise will bring to the mix of crops and livestock that you already grow or want to grow. Rotating crops and livestock on your land will keep it healthy and rich. If customers will drive up to 50 miles for fresh berries, but will travel only 2 miles for snap beans, you may need berries on your farm in order to sell snap beans. Crops like pumpkins and Indian corn provide seasonal income, but are heavy feeders and will deplete soil nutrients. Season extenders like greenhouses enable you to have early and late crops, but they take up space and money. Tunnels or cloches may be an inexpensive alternative, but may also require more labor and management.\n\nChoose crops and livestock that support each other and reduce the costs of their partner. A simple example is hogs and corn. Train the hogs to graze the cornstalks during late growth and turn the animals onto the field after harvest. Feed the corn to the hogs throughout the year, and the hogs will turn under the pasture and fertilize it.\n\n  * **What type of production method works best and is most profitable for this enterprise?** Consider conventional, sustainable, natural, and organic methods. Crops can be grown in greenhouses, raised beds, rows, or trellises. Livestock can be raised on feedlots or pastures. You may want to practice management-intensive grazing (see chapter 4). Carefully examine the costs of production, labor, yield, and market potential to determine how to proceed.\n\n  * **Will the enterprise provide seasonal or monthly income or some combination of the two?** If it provides a short-term income during the year, combine it with other enterprises whose incomes mature at different times. Consider adding value to extend your enterprise's income period.\n\n# Farming Methods\n\n  * _Conventional farming:_ High-volume farming with a low margin of profit; uses any means possible to increase yields.\n\n  * _Sustainable farming:_ Low-input farming aimed at direct markets. Sustainable farming is environmentally sound, socially acceptable, and economically viable.\n\n  * _Natural farming:_ Natural farming avoids artificial inputs (antibiotics, chemical pesticides) and may be aimed at either commodity or direct markets; may be sustainable.\n\n  * _Organic farming:_ Certified organic farmers tend to have a low volume of production to be sold at premium prices to direct or niche markets. They avoid all synthetic pesticides and additives; may be sustainable.\n\n###### Comparison of Farming Types\n\n  * **What are the labor requirements of your new enterprise?** For example, berries require large amounts of hand labor. If the enterprise is constructed as a U-pick operation, though, with the customer doing the majority of the harvest labor, or as a Csa (community-supported agriculture; see pages 132\u2013134), where shareholders share the risk and provide some labor on the farm, your labor will be reduced. Consider all of the labor for all of your crops and livestock, and leave some time for yourself and your family.\n\n  * **Who will furnish the labor for your enterprise?** It may be you alone, your family, or hired labor, seasonal or full time. Labor costs in time and money must be considered for planting, harvesting, and marketing, to determine how many people are needed for a particular crop or livestock.\n\n  * **What will be the machinery requirement for this enterprise?** Consider your alternatives in terms of both time saved and investment costs. Will a $500 rototiller do the job or will it take a $3,000 to $5,000 used tractor? Consider renting, leasing, and buying options. Check with your neighbors to see what they have available and what you can barter for. If you need specialized planting equipment or harvesting equipment, like a potato digger or a cherry tree shaker, make sure you can get it. There is harvest machinery for just about anything you want, but do you have the volume necessary to make machine-harvest a viable option?\n\n  * **What kind of industry support is available?** How accessible are the plants, seeds, and breeding stock for your enterprises? You may also need research or management support. Look for production budgets, and check for university or extension personnel with knowledge of your crop or animal. Check with area farmers and associations for expert consultants. If no research has been done on an alternative crop, start small and grow into it.\n\n  * **How will you market your products?** You can sell wholesale, at a lower profit, or retail at a higher profit. You can add on value to a raw commodity to increase your profit and market time, at the cost of more work and investment. Contract selling locks in sales price, but many clauses for grades and quality are subject to discount. For the most part, you are better off doing it all on your own, and carrying all the risk but taking all the profit. Nobody can watch all the eggs in your basket better than you.\n\n  * **Where will you market your products?** Much as your farm risk is reduced by having a variety of crops and livestock, your profit risk is reduced by having a variety of markets. A farmers' market is a great place to sell produce, but you have to haul it to town. U-picks get the customers to provide part of the labor but require good liability insurance. Roadside stands provide good sales if they are located on a well-traveled hardtop road with room for parking. Route sales work well if you can combine the trip with some other project to lower your costs. At one time, when I had 200 laying hens, I delivered eggs to businesses along the road on the way to get feed every Friday morning. (See chapter 7 for more marketing information.)\n\n  * **Is there a market already established or will you have to create your own?** Even if there is a farmers' market in your area, it may not allow sales of your product. Some markets do not permit meat products or craft projects to be sold. Local stores may be able to buy from local farmers or their buying may be tied to an out-of-state headquarters.\n\n  * **How will you advertise?** You must advertise to let people know who you are and what you have for sale. You can use word of mouth, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, or direct mail. (See chapter 7 for more information on advertising.)\n\n  * **What level of experience do you have for this enterprise?** Are you willing to learn? Raising elk is similar to raising cattle, and could be an easy change. If you have never planted a crop, it is better to start with a garden than with 5 acres. If you have not practiced direct marketing, consider how much you like dealing with the public, and how good you could be as a salesperson. Which family members are best suited to deal with the public? The key is to be always friendly, be willing to learn from your customers, and never be afraid to ask questions.\n\n  * **How will you price your product?** You can sell by volume, by weight, by the head, or by the pound. The final price must include the percentage of profit you need plus all of your costs, including labor. Consider what the market will stand when planning your price. Can you sell your product above, below, or the same as store price? Do you have any special features to raise the price, such as organically grown, higher quality, or uniqueness? If you are the only person in your area with Christmas trees, you have a mini-monopoly and can sell at a premium price. As the only person selling okra, you can sell it at a premium price if there is a demand for it. If no one is familiar with okra, you will have to create a market before it will sell well.\n\n  * **How much competition is there for sales of your product?** Look at other farms engaged in your enterprise within 25, 50, and 100 miles. Look at how they are marketing it and what volume of sales they have. Can you offer something they don't? If you and forty other farmers are selling a standard breed of tomato at midseason at a local farmers' market, count on prices no better than wholesale.\n\n  * **How do you feel about your enterprise?** There's an old saying among cattle buyers: \"Bought right is half sold.\" The same is true in picking a business enterprise. Never choose an enterprise just because it will be profitable. You have to like what you're doing; you'll be more successful if you enjoy your work.\n\nThe items I have listed here are all questions you must ask yourself about any new enterprise. However, they are not the only questions. In researching your choice, ask yourself whatever questions arise from its unique circumstances. Keep in mind its requirements for planting, growing, harvesting, and marketing. By approaching the planning in a systematic way, you will find out not just about this one enterprise but also how it compares to other enterprises. This way, you'll be able to have the most profitable mix on your farm.\n\n### Types of Enterprises\n\nWhat you can raise makes an almost infinite list. It expands even more when you factor in how you are marketing your enterprise. I want to cover a few enterprise choices, along with some of their advantages and disadvantages and their potential markets.\n\n  * **Cattle**. Cattle are normally raised for beef or dairy. Both require large volume, unless you can develop direct markets. _Consider_ small breeds such as Dexter cattle and Miniature Herefords, less common breeds such as Murray Grey and Belted Galloways, intensive grazing, raising organically or naturally, selling beef halves or quarters.\n\n  * **Hogs**. To be successful, aim for the purebred or value-added markets. _Consider_ rare breeds such as Mulefoot and Tamworth, raising on pasture, organic or natural, selling meat cuts or sausage.\n\n  * **Sheep**. Traditionally, sheep have been raised for wool, but there are increasing meat and dairy markets. The wool market is not profitable unless you add value through spinning or weaving. Some sheep are being raised exclusively for meat, such as Katahdin Hair sheep. There is some trophy hunting being done with breeds like Barbados Blackbelly. Dairy sheep like East Friesian are being used for cheesemaking. _Consider_ rare breeds such as Navajo-Churro and Miniature Babydoll Southdowns, \"new\" breeds such as Dorper (a meat sheep), intensive grazing, selling meat cuts or sausage, seasonal lamb markets.\n\n  * **Goats**. Meat and dairy goats are common. Some fiber goats, such as angora, are prized for spinning and weaving. _Consider_ ethnic markets for cabrito (goat meat), crossbreeding with Boer goats (a prized but expensive meat goat from South Africa), goat soaps, miniature breeds such as Nigerian Dwarf.\n\nDairy goat\n\n  * **Rabbits**. Rabbits are raised for meat and pelts. Small and dwarf breeds are sold as pets. Some breeds, such as angora, are raised for fiber for yarns. Deborah Lemmer, a canny marketer from Shaggy Shagbark Acres in Michigan, likes to demonstrate spinning directly from a rabbit sitting quietly in her lap. _Consider_ rabbit jerky and sausage, restaurant sales.\n\nDucks\n\n  * **Poultry**. Poultry includes chickens, turkeys, ducks, guineas, geese, and peafowl. There is a large chicken fancier market. You can sell purebred poultry, chicks, eggs, or meat. One farmer in Canada raises chickens bred exclusively for fly-tying feathers. _Consider_ rare breeds such as Dominique chickens and Khaki Campbell ducks, pastured poultry, egg ornaments, ethnic markets for black-feathered breeds, organic eggs.\n\nTurkey\n\n  * **Elk, deer, and bison**. These are gaining acceptance in the meat market for being low in fat and high in protein. All require a large initial investment in fencing and permits. Elk are now considered livestock in many states. Velvet from elk and deer antlers is a high-ticket item used for medicinal purposes. The purebred market is doing well selling breeding stock. Hides are also a good seller. _Consider_ jerky and sausage, restaurant sales, trophy hunting.\n\n  * **Ratites**. The bottom dropped out of the speculation market on ostriches, emus, and rheas a few years ago, but they still have sales potential. Meat on all of them is low in fat and high in nutrients. Hides and eggs have value-added potential; ostrich feathers and emu oil are also possible products. Initial investment is fairly low, but it takes effort to build a market. _Consider_ sales to gourmet restaurants, emu oil pain rub, decorations with hide and feathers, carved or painted eggs.\n\n  * **Game birds**. Pheasants and quail can be raised for breeding, meat, or hunting. Initial investment is fairly low, but permits are needed and markets must be sought. _Consider_ sales to restaurants and upscale grocery stores, selling birds to hunters or providing hunts on your property, catalog sales of chicks.\n\nLlama\n\n  * **Camelids**. Llamas and alpacas are used primarily for fiber and breeding markets. Llamas are gaining acceptance as pack animals and guard animals for sheep flocks. There is really no meat market for camelids. Alpacas can be a fairly hefty investment, but items made from alpaca wool sell at a premium. Heat can be a problem. _Consider_ Alpaca yarn, llama sweaters, blankets, guided trips in National Forests with llamas.\n\nAlpaca\n\n  * **Small mammals and reptiles**. Small mammals include African Pygmy hedgehogs, Sugar gliders, chinchillas, and gerbils for the pet market. Costs are low and space requirements are few, but permits may be required. Locating a market is the hardest part. _Consider_ pet shows and sales, pet stores, local fairs.\n\n# A Fish Story\n\nThere are twenty-eight major fish-producing countries. On a worldwide basis, at least ninety species of fish, thirteen species of shrimp, prawns, and crayfish, and a wide variety of shellfish and marine plants are produced using aquaculture techniques. Many developing countries are turning to fish farming to satisfy their protein needs, increase their self-dependence, and reduce risks from the dwindling ocean fish supply.\n\nAccording to the Global Aquaculture Association, as reported in the January\/February 1998 issue of _Fish Farming News,_ trade in seafood products now generates $50 billion annually. There is an increasing demand among Americans for fish products. Shrimp accounts for about 25 percent of the fresh and frozen seafood consumed in the United States\u2014and farm-raised shrimp makes up nearly one-third of the total shrimp supply. Population growth is expected to increase shrimp demand by about 2 to 3 percent per year. Currently, the Usda spends only about   as many dollars on aquaculture as it does on crop research, but that is increasing.\n\nThe potential of aquaculture for a farming enterprise or home consumption is tremendous. I raised catfish in the 1980s in cages 36 inches in diameter by 4 feet deep. My already existing ponds were too deep to seine; the cages made them usable. It was fairly easy to produce 400 to 600 pounds of catfish in one of these cages in just 20 or 21 weeks, with feed efficiency of 1\u00bd to 2 pounds of feed per pound of gain. A 5 percent death loss and a 55 percent dress-out (the percentage of usable meat after the removal of skin and viscera) grosses about $500 per cage, or could furnish about 210 pounds of fresh fish for your freezer. I experimented the first year, then built a 10-foot by 6-foot fish-processing plant complete with a used 6-foot by 6-foot walk-in cooler, and butchered my own fish as well as neighboring farmers' fish.\n\n  * **Aquaculture**. Catfish, trout, and bass can be raised for breeding stock, meat, or fee fishing. Meat fish such as tilapia are used in recirculating systems. Exotic small fish can be raised for the pet market. Costs can range from very low to extremely high. Farm-raised catfish and trout have good grocery and restaurant sales potential, although a small processing kitchen will be necessary. _Consider_ restaurant and grocery store sales, fee fishing, sales at farmers' markets\u2014live (if allowed) or packed in ice\u2014sales through Csas (see chapter 7).\n\n  * **Vermiculture (worms)**. Selling worms for bait or for farm fields has a lucrative market. Some are grown and sold in compost kits for city dwellers. Low cost, but it takes work to keep selling them. _Consider_ selling with \"compost kits\" at environmental shows and Earth Day fairs. Sell kits to local schools.\n\n  * **Bees, butterflies, and other insects**. Bees can be sold for breeding or rented for pollinating crops. Their primary market is value-added products from pollen, wax, and honey. Butterflies for pollinating and release at events such as weddings are gaining in popularity. Beneficial insects are also gaining acceptance as chemical use declines. These are all management-intensive, and market potential may be small. _Consider_ grocery store honey sales through a grocery store or Csa (see chapter 7), trading pollination for a crop share.\n\n  * **Dogs**. Dogs are raised for pets, breeding stock, livestock guarding, herding, and hunting. The market is well established and steady. There are hundreds of breeds to choose from, and investment cost is low. If training is required, dogs are obviously management-intensive. _Consider_ training dogs, stock dog clinics and shows, dog shows.\n\n  * **Equines**. Horses, donkeys, and mules are not inexpensive. Draft breeds are gaining in interest, but require a lot of time and effort to raise and train. Riding stock will not sell easily unless you are well known, although you might consider trail riding or establishing a stable. Donkeys are being used as livestock guardians. _Consider_ breeding, racing, draft animal schools, Plow Days (a field day of draft-animal demonstrations to gather customers).\n\n  * **Pasture, hay, and cover crops**. These are the perfect way to combine crops and livestock. Except for baled hay, their market potential is not high, but they are necessary components in the interaction of different enterprises on your farm. _Consider_ hay trade to neighbors for crops, hay-bale mazes at a U-pick, miniature bales (6 inches long) for sale at country craft events.\n\n  * **Traditional grains**. It is hard to profit from field corn, wheat, and soybeans without adding value. There is excellent potential for open-pollinated corn and unique soybeans, such as tofu. Open-pollinated corn is desired for its high feed value (usually more nutritious than hybrid corn) and its open-pollinated qualities, specifically, the ability to save seed from it for replanting. Some breeds also have sales potential for decorative purposes (\"Indian\" corns and Cherokee Blue, for example). Less traditional grains such as barley, oats, and sunflowers may have market potential, but should be considered mostly for on-farm use. _Consider_ cornstalks and miniature corn for Halloween, chocolate-covered soybeans, organic markets, seed sales, cornhusk- and wheat-weaving craft projects, flours, and breads.\n\n  * **Vegetables and melons**. The traditional crops for direct marketing. A huge variety of both open-pollinated and hybrid varieties are available. Invest the effort to have them available before or after the regular season to increase sales. _Consider_ rare and exotic varieties with a unique appearance or flavor, ethnic specialties, \"baby\" vegetables, pepper sauces and wreaths, tomato sauces.\n\n  * **Herbs and medicinal herbs**. Herbs are intensive crops with increasing market potential. Find buyers for medicinal herbs before raising them. High-dollar herbs, such as ginseng and echinacea, require a big investment in care. Herbs' best potential is probably on a small scale, as accompaniment to value-added items and farmers' market sales. _Consider_ value-added soup mixes, vinegars, essential oils, and soaps, or sell fresh specialty herbs like lemongrass to specialty restaurants.\n\n  * **Mushrooms**. Mushrooms are easy to raise but require a few years before realizing much income. To raise them on a large scale may require special facilities and a good source of wood. Sales of specialty varieties to restaurants, grocery stores, and consumers is lucrative, as is selling mushroom-growing kits\u2014prepared logs inoculated with mushroom spawn. _Consider_ value-added items like dried mushrooms and soup mixes.\n\n  * **Gourds and pumpkins**. These are good seasonal items. It is best to add value to them for marketing. _Consider_ carved pumpkins, specialty miniature and white pumpkins, painted gourds, pumpkin pie (usually made from butternut squash), specialty gourds such as luffa and dipper gourds.\n\n  * **Industrial crops**. Crops such as crambe, meadowfoam, guayule, and jojoba are used for nonfood industrial applications, such as lubricants and plastics. These often have excellent potential for profits, but require an enormous investment in time, labor, and learning, without an obvious market readily available. I do not consider them sustainable at the current time, in that you cannot use them on your own farm, and you are at the mercy of a very small number of buyers for market price and availability. (If only one company will buy a crop and it goes belly-up, you could be in trouble.)\n\n  * **Small fruits**. Strawberries, brambles (e.g., raspberries), ribes (e.g., gooseberries), and other berries have great potential for U-pick and value-added markets. Planting varieties that mature at different times of the season will ensure a steady flow of customers. Grapes have value-added potential as juice, wines, and flavoring. Unusual varieties can attract interested customers. _Consider_ : U-picks, farmers' markets, grocery stores, health stores, syrups, dried berries, chocolate-covered berries, jams and jellies, fruit drinks.\n\n  * **Fruit and nut trees**. Orchard fruits like apples, pears, peaches, and cherries, and nuts such as hazelnuts, walnuts, and pecans do well at U-pick farms and farmers' markets, and may have grocery potential. For fruits, particularly apples, try to have varieties with different flavors and that mature at different times. _Consider_ value-added potential, or a \"fruit and nut subscription service,\" where a basket is mailed to the customer two or three times a year.\n\n  * **Flowers, cut and dried**. The cut-flower market is growing (pardon the pun), and there are certainly a multitude of varieties. With a greenhouse and a careful mix of maturity times and types, sales can continue year-round. Combine it with a nursery tree operation. There are good value-added markets (get-well baskets, dried arrangements) and also seasonal potential (Valentine's Day, Easter). _Consider_ craft show sales, grocery stores and farmers' markets, flower shops, providing arrangements to upscale banquet halls.\n\n  * **Timber**. Tree crops can be raised for timber, firewood, or nursery stock. Sell nursery stock for windbreaks or wildlife shelter. When planted carefully and allowed to grow to maximum potential, tree crops can be highly profitable. One good choice is a quick-growing variety, such as _Pawlonia_ or bamboo. Christmas trees also have excellent seasonal sales potential. Think before you clear an area of trees\u2014you may want to call your extension service or Forestry Department to get an evaluation.\n\nChristmas trees can provide income outside the traditional growing season. Note, too, that not all farm crops need to be edible.\n\n  * **Other alternatives**. There are many other alternative crops, from fava beans to shrimp, and from lions to sweet sorghum. The rarer it is, the harder it may be to locate a market\u2014but then competition is reduced, too. Try to pick crops and livestock that will be easy to raise, can be marketed in two or three different ways, and support each other.\n\n### Enterprise Cost Analysis\n\nFollowing are a list of budgets compiled from university, government, and private sources. These budgets are intended to help you in the process of selecting an enterprise. Keep in mind that you need to select those enterprises that match your sales, labor, and capital resources.\n\nThese budgets are good for planning, and for comparing \"apples to apples\" as to which enterprises are the highest grossing or most labor intensive. They also allow you to get a basic feel for investment and the labor involved. Let's analyze the budget below for a sow and sixteen pigs, direct-market as sausage, to see what information we can gather.\n\n# Warning!\n\nThe following budgets are not complete and may not even be accurate in your area of the country. Feed costs, for instance, may be 20 to 30 percent higher in some parts of the nation. Demand for machinery may be different in one region from another. Some of the vegetables and livestock I mention may not be prevalent enough for you to buy breeding stock in your area or purchase seed to plant. Start-up depreciation, interest, and tax costs are not included, and labor costs are not removed from the net profit. These budgets do not usually take alternative or added-value marketing methods into account. Thus, it is possible to get much more money out of an enterprise than is shown.\n\nFirst, consider feed costs. The $1,116.00 feed costs divided by the gross income of the fed hogs, $4,687.50, means your feed costs are 24 percent of the gross income. Can you grow the feed or will you have to buy it? Will changing feed prices affect your project? In this case, prices will not have much effect, because the percentage of feed costs to gross income is relatively low and your profit margin is high.\n\nWhat about labor? Half the labor, 20 hours, went to producing the product (hogs for sausage) and half the labor went to marketing the product (sausage). If we divide the net profit, $4039.50, by 40 hours, we find you have an income of $100.99 per hour for your labor expended on hogs.\n\nLeaving out weekends and holidays, farmers need about 300 ten-hour days of labor to be fully employed, or 3,000 hours per year. (Yes, I know it's not fair that farmers have to work 10-hour days instead of 8, but that's part of the joy of being a farmer.) So using these figures, you would know that if you had six sows, ninety market hogs, and six cull sows, they would take 240 hours (6 sows \u00d7 40 hours) of labor for your hog project per year, leaving 2,760 hours for crops or other livestock projects. Dollars earned per hour is one way to measure profitability.\n\nAnother way to look at and compare profitability is net profit divided by gross income. In this budget, that equals 78 percent. A high percentage like this means that operating costs are low, as compared to projects like beef cows and stock calves, where the percentage is 61 percent.\n\nRemember always that profitability depends on how well you market your product. Just selling retail instead of wholesale can make some projects profitable. In this hog example, it was profitable even with hogs selling for 10 cents per pound on the commodity market, because the product was not sold as a hog, but instead was direct-marketed straight to the consumer as a different product, whole hog sausage.\n\n### Profitability Comparison of Enterprises\n\n#### Livestock\n\nBeef cow\/stocker calf  \n---  \nIncome  \n500-lb. calf \u00d7 .95 (calf crop) \u00d7 .84 \u00d7 $0.80 | $319.20  \nOne cull cow: 1000 lbs. \u00d7 .16 $0.40 | $64.00  \nTotal gross income: | $383.20  \nExpenses  \nFeed: hay 1.5 tons | $75.00  \nPasture 3 tons | $38.00  \nProtein and salt | $5.00  \nOther var. costs | $30.00  \nNet Profit | $235.20  \nLabor | 7 Hours  \nBison (1 cow)  \n---  \nBased on 15 cows and 1 bull  \nGross income | $1,686.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $486.00  \nOther var. costs | $155.00  \nNet profit | $1,045.00  \nLabor | 10 hours  \nBobwhite quail (meat birds)  \n---  \nPurchased as day old, sold at 13 weeks, 3 groups of 1,000 birds, 15% death loss  \nGross income 2,550 birds x $2.80 | $6,757.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed 9,112 lbs. | $1,457.00  \nOther var. costs | $1,680.00  \nNet profit | $3,620.00  \nLabor | 220 hours  \nChickens, broilers  \n---  \n1000 chicks, 10% mortality, 8\u20139 weeks to market. 900 chicks after mortality \u00d7 4 lbs = 3,600 lbs.  \nIncome  \n3600 lbs. \u00d7 $2 | $7,200.00>  \nExpenses  \nFeed: 10,800 lbs. (3 lbs. per lb. sold) @ $0.14 | $1,512.00  \nOther var. costs | $1,000.00  \nNet profit | $4,688.00  \nLabor | 500 hours  \nChickens, purebred  \n---  \n20 hens with production 60% (220 eggs per hen)  \n220 eggs \u00d7 .60 (hatching rate) | 132 eggs per hen  \n132 eggs \u00d7 20 hens | 2,640 chicks  \nIncome  \n2640 chicks \u00d7 $3 | $7,920.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | 280.00  \nOther var. costs | 200.00  \nNet profit | $7,440.00  \nLabor | 40 hours  \nDairy goat  \n---  \nDoes averaging two kids  \nIncome  \nMilk sales, culls, and replacements | $586.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $234.00  \nOther var. costs | $127.50  \nNet profit | $224.50  \nLabor | 22 hours  \nEarthworms  \n---  \nProduction 4 pounds per square foot of worm bed  \nIncome  \n840 pints (100 worms to a pint) | $840.00  \nExpenses  \nVariable costs | $80.00  \nNet profit | $760.00  \nLabor | 112 hours  \nElk  \n---  \nBased on 25 cows and 2 bulls in the breeding herd  \nIncome  \nBreeding stock and velvet | $4,144.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $429.00  \nOther var. cost | $149.00  \nNet profit | $3,566.00  \nLabor | 9 hours  \nFallow deer (1 doe)  \n---  \nBased on 100 does and 5 bucks  \nIncome  \nVenison, breeding stock, hides | $253.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $59.00  \nOther var. costs | $63.00  \nNet profit | $131.00  \nLabor | 3 hours  \nHogs, feeder pig purchased  \n---  \n40-lb. pig fed to 250 pounds. Direct market as sausage ($2.50\/lb.)  \nIncome  \n100 pounds sausage \u00d7 $2.50 | $250.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $48.00  \nPig cost | $32.00  \nNet profit | $170.00  \nLabor | 8 hours  \nHogs, sow and 16 pigs raised (2 litters per year)  \n---  \nDirect Market as Half Carcasses  \nIncome  \n15 market hogs \u00d7 250 lbs. \u00d7 $0.80 | $3,000.00  \n1 cull sow (400 lbs. \u00d7 .50 \u00d7 $2.50) | $500.00  \nTotal gross income | $3,500.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $1,116.00  \nOther var. costs | 32.00  \nNet profit | $2,352.00  \nLabor | 20 hours  \nHogs, sow and 16 pigs raised (2 litters per year)  \n---  \nDirect Market as Sausage ($2.50 per pound)  \nIncome  \n15 market hogs \u00d7 250 lbs. \u00d7 .50 \u00d7 $2.50 | $4,687.50  \n1 cull sow (400 lbs. \u00d7 .50 \u00d7 $2.50) | $500.00  \nTotal gross income | $5,187.50  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $1,116.00  \nOther var. costs | 32.00  \nNet profit | $4,039.50  \nLabor | 20 hours  \nMarket labor | 20 hours  \nHoneybees  \n---  \nIncome  \n60 pounds honey per hive \u00d7 $ | $180.00  \nExpenses  \nVariable costs | $90.00  \nNet profit | $90.00  \nLabor 11 | hours  \nPheasant  \n---  \nPurchased 200 day-olds, sold at 20 weeks for flight birds  \nIncome  \n80 roasters\/80 hens | $1,120.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $423.00  \nChick ($0.90) | $180.00  \nOther var. costs | $205.00  \nNet profit | $312.00  \nLabor | 120 hours  \nRabbits (fryers)  \n---  \n20 does, 2 bucks, 5 litters per year. Sell 5 lbs. at 10 weeks  \nGross income 3,500 lbs. \u00d7 $0.80 | $2,800.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed 5 tons | $1,400.00  \nOther var. costs | $129.00  \nNet profit | $1,271.00  \nLabor | 200 hours  \nSheep  \n---  \nOne ewe spring lamb born March, April, and May. Lambs 150% lamb crop, 20% replacements  \nIncome  \n1.50 \u00d7 120 lbs. \u00d7 $0.80 | $144.00  \n150 lbs. cull ewe \u00d7 $0.20 = 30 lbs. \u00d7 $0.20 | $6.00  \nWool: 10 lbs. \u00d7 $1.50 (added-value wool) | $15.00  \nGross income | $165.00  \nExpenses  \nFeed 500 lbs. hay \u00d7 $.05\/lb. | $25.00  \nGrain 100 lbs. ewe and lamb \u00d7 $.035\/lb. | $3.50  \nFair pasture .75 acres | $11.25  \nWormers, salt, minerals | $5.00  \nOther var. costs | $30.00  \nNet profit | $90.25  \nLabor | 6 hours  \nSheep, feeder lamb  \n---  \nBought 70 pounds, fattened to 120 pounds  \nIncome  \nLamb 120 lbs. \u00d7 $0.75 | $90.00  \nExpenses  \nFeeder lamb 70 lbs. \u00d7 $0.78 | $54.60  \nFeed | $14.00  \nVariable costs | $7.38  \nNet profit | $14.02  \nLabor | 1 hour  \nSheep, meat type  \n---  \nOne ewe spring lamb born March, April, May, 20% replacements  \nIncome  \nLambs 1.75 lamb crop \u00d7 120 \u00d7 $0.70 | $147.00  \nExpenses  \n150 \u00d7 .20 = 30 lbs. \u00d7 $0.20 | $6.00  \nFeed | $44.75  \nOther var. costs | $30.00  \nNet profit | $66.25  \nLabor | 6 hours  \nSheep, milk  \n---  \nMilking 160 days\/year (lambing 1.5 times\/year) 1.65 lambs per ewe  \nIncome  \n160 lbs. milk | $104.00  \n95 lbs. lamb | $128.25  \nWool and hides | $10.00  \nCull ewes and ram | $7.50  \nGross income | $249.75  \nExpenses  \nFeed | $85.45  \nOther var. costs | $20.86  \nNet profit | $143.44  \nLabor | 15 hours per ewe\n\n#### Crops\n\nAsparagus  \n---  \nAverage production 1, 2, and 3 years  \nGross income\/acre | $3,333.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,210.00  \nNet profit | $2,123.00  \nLabor | 24 hours  \nBell pepper  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (9,960 lbs.) | $3,357.00  \nTotal var. costs | $2,334.00  \nNet profit | $1,023.00  \nLabor | 185 hours  \nBlackberries  \n---  \nYears 2\u201315  \nGross income\/acre (8,400 lbs.) | $6,300.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,454.00  \nNet profit | $4,846.00  \nLabor | 210 hours  \nBlueberries  \n---  \nYears 3\u201315  \nGross income\/acre (4,000 lbs.) | $6,400.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,200.00  \nNet profit | $5,200.00  \nLabor | 200 hours  \nBroccoli  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (8,250 lbs.) | $4,169.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,002.00  \nNet profit | $2,136.00  \nLabor | 136 hours  \nCabbage  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (16,250 lbs.) | $1,746.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,897.00  \nNet profit | $\u2013151.00  \nLabor | 115 hours  \nCantaloupe  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (10,000 lbs.) | $1,955.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,056.00  \nNet profit | $896.00  \nLabor | 108 hours  \nCucumber  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (12,500 lbs.) | $2,150.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,255.00  \nNet profit | $895.00  \nLabor | 153 hours  \nEggplant  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (16,500 lbs.) | $3,973.00  \nTotal var. costs | $2,118.00  \nNet profit | $1,855.00  \nLabor | 207 hours  \nLima beans  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (3,200 lbs.) | $1,600.00  \nTotal var. costs | $985.00  \nNet profit | $615.00  \nLabor | 128 hours  \nOkra  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (9,000 lbs.) | $6,160.00  \nTotal var. costs | $2,197.00  \nNet profit | $3,963.00  \nLabor | 301 hours  \nOnion  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (1,500 sacks 50 lbs. apiece) | $10,500.00  \nTotal var. costs | $5,992.00  \nNet profit | $4,508.00  \nLabor | 20 hours  \nPotatoes  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (15,000 lbs.) | $2,150.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,086.00  \nNet profit | $1,064.00  \nLabor | 105 hours  \nPumpkin  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (28,000 lbs.) | $2,800.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,419.00  \nNet profit | $1,381.00  \nLabor | 25 hours  \nRaspberries (Red Heritage fall berries)  \n---  \nYears 2\u201315  \nGross income\/acre (7,500 lbs.) | $6,375.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,192.00  \nNet profit | $5,183.00  \nLabor | 111 hours  \nSnap beans  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (4,200 lbs.) | $2,163.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,002.00  \nNet profit | $1,162.00  \nLabor | 109 hours  \nSpinach  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (6,000 lbs.) | $2,220.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,031.00  \nNet profit | $1,189.00  \nLabor | 103 hours  \nStrawberries  \n---  \nYears 2\u20134  \nGross income\/acre (6,900 lbs.) | $4,116.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,466.00  \nNet profit | $2,650.00  \nLabor | 96 hours  \nSummer squash  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (13,860 lbs.) | $3,811.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,311.00  \nNet profit | $2,500.00  \nLabor | 140 hours  \nSweet corn  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (900 dozen) | $1,363.00  \nTotal var. costs | $705.00  \nNet profit | $658.00  \nLabor | 71 hours  \nSweet potatoes  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (15,000 lbs.) | $3,350.00  \nTotal var. costs | $1,570.00  \nNet profit | $1,780.00  \nLabor | 115 hours  \nTomatoes  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (17,000 lbs.) | $1,360.00  \nTotal var. costs | $623.00  \nNet profit | $737.00  \nLabor | 76 hours  \nWatermelon  \n---  \nGross income\/acre (20,000 lbs.) | $7,686.00  \nTotal var. costs | $3,101.00  \nNet profit | $4,585.00  \nLabor | 306 hours\n\n### Diversity\n\n**Principle :** _A diversified farm has the best chance of success_.\n\nDiversity in enterprises provides you with economic stability. By diversity I mean raising both crops and livestock, and more than one kind of each. If you have crops and livestock that you can sell at different times of the year, and have something else to sell when the market for any particular product drops, you will have a steadier income.\n\nEnterprises that feed into one another strengthen this bond. Use rabbit waste to raise worms, or set up a recirculating water system to feed fish waste to plants. Running and feeding livestock on a plot that you will raise vegetables on next year can provide all or part of the fertility needed for your vegetable crops. Rotating your crops and using cover crops in between can also provide some grazing and possibly hay for your livestock. By using crop ground or vegetable ground for livestock in winter and crops in spring and summer, you can triple your gross per square foot.\n\nThis same multiplication factor works if you can graze cattle, sheep, and goats on the same pasture. This, however, is highly management-intensive and should be done only after you have gained some experience in intensively grazing one species.\n\nA diversified, sustainable farm will give you the best chance to succeed in agriculture. Keep diversity in mind when choosing your enterprises.\n\n### Sustainability\n\n**Principle :** _To be sustainable, farm enterprises must be profitable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable_.\n\nSustainability on the farm means that it is profitable\u2014an unprofitable farm cannot sustain its financial operations. If it is unprofitable, it must be subsidized with off-farm income. This is fine for getting started, and certainly cheaper than a bank loan. In the future, however, it should stand on its own\u2014if the farm is not profitable, you will not be able to realize your lifestyle or monetary goals.\n\nThe enterprises that make up your farm must be environmentally sound and socially acceptable to be sustainable. Sustainable crops and livestock can adjust to and thrive on a low-input-type system. My Katahdin Hair sheep are a breed noted for their natural parasite resistance (lower worming expense). I lamb them on pasture in May when grass is up and growing. Katahdins have few lambing problems, and are good mothers and milkers. Under my feeding and grazing system\u2014all grass, except when breeding them or during lambing season\u2014I have little management or cost inputs. They provide me with steady income, year after year, at little cost to me, my farm, or the environment.\n\nI believe free-range poultry and pasture hogs will once again become the norm in agricultural production due to their sustainable properties\u2014low inputs, easy management, and environmental soundness. The other reason that they will do well is that today's consumer wants to know that his or her food is safe. Consumers are interested in who grows their food and how it is grown. Last, they are interested in quality. Consider the sustainability of any enterprises you choose, and how you can increase your sustainability over time.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nNow that you have this chapter under your belt, you should be able to pick the combination of livestock and crop enterprises that matches your farm, labor, and capital resources. If you choose carefully, you are on the road to success.\n\n###### Part Iv\n\n## Management\n\n###### Chapter Nine\n\n## Machinery\n\nPrinciple: _Machinery and tools should save time or reduce the need for additional labor. Otherwise, they are a waste of money_.\n\nMachinery, by my definition, is any piece of equipment or tool\u2014including hand tools\u2014that makes the job easier, faster, and better. A hoe, a wheelhoe, a two-wheel tiller, and a tractor are all machinery, each with advantages and disadvantages.\n\nThe purpose of any tool or piece of machinery is to save time by reducing labor. This increases the work that can be accomplished and decreases the cost of doing the job. To decide if a tool or piece of machinery is worthwhile, its cost must be balanced against the time saved and what you can do with that time. If a piece of machinery will not save you time or reduce the need for additional labor, don't buy it. If a tool saves time, but you don't use the time on other projects, that tool is unnecessary.\n\nAs I am a four-shot-a-day diabetic with three congestive heart failures, I use machinery because it saves the parts of my body that still work. I am also interested in producing a surplus of my crops and livestock so I have plenty to sell to my customers in a timely manner.\n\n_Small farmers should not dismiss buying a larger used tractor if it will fit their operation and if the price fits their budget_.\n\n# Good Health\n\nI am talking about myself, so let me pursue a tangent for a moment and make you aware of the good physical wellness you need to farm, whether or not you use machinery. Many people come into farming after years of sitting at a desk and getting little exercise. This is especially true of people just moving to the country as retirees, but may be valid even for young people who have simply tired of city life. (A recent study of the _Small Farm Today_ readership found that 47 percent had been farming less than 5 years.) The equipment recommendations I make are for younger, reasonably physically fit adults. If you are not younger or physically fit, don't give up, though. Go on a diet, work into things slowly, and use equipment to enhance the physical strength you do have.\n\nRemember, \"Where there's a will, there's a way.\" I farmed full time for 30 years, and even with the challenges I mentioned above, I still farm 80 acres, and still do 80 percent of my own farming chores. (I hire out the rest.) I have sheep, hogs, and poultry for livestock, raise open-pollinated corn, and grow a market garden. The point is, if you want to do it, go for it\u2014just use your common sense and, if need be, hire neighbors or young people for the really heavy work. I know an elderly retired farmer who farms stock tanks full of soil about waist high. He makes them accessible to his golf cart so he can travel about and tend the plants himself. This is healthy for him and healthy for his community. You can do it if you want to.\n\n### Acquiring Machinery\n\nThe first decision to make about machinery is the level of use for which you need it. People who are growing their own food on a small scale, for instance, can get by with very little equipment\u2014there are many ways to prepare the ground with hand tools for planting, rather than by using a tractor or a big rototiller. Mulching the ground the year before it is needed (softening the soil, killing the vegetation) and then opening furrows in the mulch was a technique practiced by the writer Ruth Stout in her no-work gardens, and she successfully produced large harvests of vegetables. Those who advocate raised-bed gardening may use a spade or a special tine tool to loosen the beds. Before you can make choices, you must know what your options are. Let's discuss the varieties of machinery available, starting with the original supplier of horsepower.\n\n#### Draft Animals\n\nDraft animals were the original \"machinery\" used on farms to save time and effort. Although most farmers have replaced them with tractors and combines, they are still a viable tool today. Sustainable agriculture is very broad in its definition, and there is more than one model for farming success. The Amish, for example, are a successful agrarian society who use draft animals. Draft horses and other draft animals can be very useful on a small farm and may be more economical for some jobs than a tractor. The primary argument for tractors is that they do the work faster and at less cost. A tractor can plow 12 acres in a day, while four horses would take 3 days. But if you only have 2 acres of fields, two horses can plow the entire plot in a single day, and a tractor will not save that much time.\n\nCosts for draft horses have remained relatively fixed as time goes by\u2014feed costs have increased some, but not exponentially; horse-drawn equipment is rare, but relatively cheap (although it is increasing in cost as more farmers shift to draft animals); and horses are much cheaper than new tractors and similar machinery. Horses also reproduce themselves, ensuring a continuation of available equipment.\n\nDraft animals may provide an economic power source for your small farm if you are willing to take the time to learn how to use them from an experienced teamster.\n\nHowever, if you decide on draft animals as your power source, there is a definite learning curve. Here are some tips to get you started:\n\n  * Read all you can about the subject.\n\n  * Enlist the help of an experienced horseman or oxen handler (drover) to help you pick out your animals and equipment.\n\n  * Get older, experienced animals until you develop your skills.\n\nIt is not easy to drive a 2,000-pound horse with 12-inch dinner-plate hoofs in a straight line 40 inches wide between two rows of corn\u2014and plowing is even harder on you and the horse than is cultivating.\n\nDraft animals must be approached just as other methods of power are\u2014by evaluating cost of the power source (draft animals) and cost of the equipment. When choosing between a tractor and a draft animal, considerations include size of operation, ease of use, whether the animals will be bred and sold, and relative costs. For 200 acres of crops, I recommend a tractor. For 2 to 80 acres, draft animals are an option. There is one other thing to consider: Do you enjoy being around draft animals, working with them, and raising them? If not, a tractor is better for you. If you do, some of the other considerations become less important, and you can find a way to make it work.\n\n#### Tractors\n\nA tractor is considered the usual indispensable tool for farms today. Tractors are used for tilling, planting, harvesting, hauling manure and supplies, plowing snow, and leveling roads. They replaced draft animals on most farms, and are the obvious choice for those without the time or temperament to deal with living creatures as tools. Tractors range from little more than lawn mowers, to garden tractors (up to about 20 horsepower), to behemoths of more than 100 horsepower. There are also specialty tractors, with narrow bodies or high clearance for use in orchard or vegetable beds.\n\n# The Amish\n\nThe Amish society is more than 300 years old, according to Donald B. Kraybill in his book _The Riddle of the Amish Culture_. He notes that from a small group of 5,000 in 1900, they have blossomed to more than 100,000 in North America today. The question Kraybill asks is, How do they manage to flourish in the midst of industrialization?\n\nThe typical Amish farm family has one or two driving horses and six to eight horses or mules for fieldwork. Families who no longer live on the farm have one or two horses for transportation. Amish are not required to own a horse but it is the assumed mode of transportation, as cars are forbidden.\n\nThe horse, according to Kraybill, represents key values involving tradition, time, nature, and sacrifice. Horses make for a slower pace that conforms to nature: Horses don't have headlights, for example, so they can't be used in the fields at night. Daily travel is limited to about 25 miles, and the size of Amish farms is typically about 50 acres. The horse also links the Amish with the natural rhythm of the seasons. And the horse keeps the Amish out of cities.\n\nThe Amish succeed by having low input costs, minimal needs, and a strong support network of family, friends, and neighbors. They produce quality goods in traditional ways, and avoid many of the costs of an industrial society. They maintain high soil fertility by mostly natural means, and often utilize the crops themselves or use direct markets. They believe in planning crops to have work throughout the year. The Amish have proved that horses can be cost-competitive with modern machinery, but it takes knowledge, understanding, and a love of animals to succeed.\n\nThe key to choosing a tractor for your property is to decide what you can afford for the time saved, what you will be doing with it, and what implements will be attached. On most small farms, there will be only one tractor, so it must be suited for everything from plowing to hauling a wagonload of firewood.\n\n#### What Will You Do with It?\n\nConsider the size of your fields and the turning radius of the tractor. If you have 5 acres, a 60-horsepower tractor is unnecessary. If you have 40 acres of vegetables, you will probably want a fairly substantial tractor. Most small farms could use a 30- to 50-horsepower tractor with a three-point hitch. Don't overlook a high-horsepower used tractor, though, if the price is right. Jobs come up for which you would be glad to have the extra power. For safety's sake, get a wide-front-end tractor. They are much more stable and safer for all types of farm jobs.\n\n##### Implements\n\nTractor implements are rated by category. Category I (20 \u2013 45 horsepower) are usually best for small operations, although Category Ii (50\u2013100 horsepower) are sometimes appropriate. Those in Category Ii are usually too expensive and too unwieldy. Tillage tools include moldboard plows, chisel plows, disks, harrows, and mulchers. Planting implements include drills, corn planters, and broadcast seeders. Cultivation tools include cultivators and rotary hoes. Flame weeders, blades, loaders, rakes, balers, mowers\u2014such as brush hogs\u2014sleds, bale carriers, manure spreaders, and trailers are other specialized implements. There are also pull-type combines and corn pickers. If you buy a tractor, make sure you get the best use from it by adding appropriate implements.\n\n#### Hand Tools\n\nBefore you consider a tractor (or a draft animal), look at less expensive alternatives. The first option for farming is hand tools, including hoes, shovels and spades, trowels, transplanters, seeders, drills, rakes, forks, scythes and sickles, shears, calf hooks, field knives, wheel hoes, wheel cultivators and blades, flame weeders, spreaders, wheelbarrows, and wagons. Steve Salt, a vegetable farmer and frequent contributor to _Small Farm Today_ magazine, praises hand tools for their low cost, durability, minimal environmental\n\n###### Implements and Performance\n\nimpact, maneuverability, and precision. They give farmers a closer perspective on their crops and soil, too, he says.\n\nExamine hand tools in terms of the amount of soil they will work and how much time it will take. A wheel hoe may break the soil faster than will a hand-held hoe, but it may not work in some tough, heavy clay soils. Choose tools carefully. Some hoes are sturdier, and a wide variety of them have specialized functions. A sharp-bladed heavy field hoe allows you to clean a field of weeds much quicker and for less effort than does a dull sheet-metal garden hoe. If\n\n# True Story\n\nSteve Salt lives near Yarrow in northern Missouri. Steve, his wife, and children own 147 acres of land and produce vegetables, herbs, and small fruits on about 7 acres and also produce four or five acres of sweet sorghum. Steve trades labor on a neighbor's crop for the use of the neighbor's processing equipment and boiling pans for the sorghum. The neighbor and he both sell the sorghum when it's ready.\n\nSteve is a diversified market gardener, using mostly hand tools (and some small powered tools) to manage produce for a myriad of niche markets. His main crops are sweet sorghum and ethnic and heirloom vegetables. Steve's sorghum is picked by hand or cut with cane knives by family and crews of neighbors, who receive sorghum syrup in trade. He grows about 300 varieties of vegetables and about 150 species of plants. He sells most of his crops at farmers' markets. Sixty different kinds of tomatoes and sixty kinds of peppers are popular with his Hispanic customers, as well as Mexican herbs and plain old head cabbage. Chinese greens are favorites with his Asian customers. His small fruits are enjoyed by everyone.\n\nAn interesting sideline for Steve is that he boards about eighty head of rodeo stock (horses) on the rest of his farm. He feeds and cares for them and calls the owners for any vet care or illness problems. He is also finishing a two-volume book on ethnic vegetables.\n\nyou only have a small garden though, you may not wish to invest $40 in a quality field hoe. Most of the time, you will want quality and durability in your tools, so examine them carefully before you buy. Look in the resource listings in the appendix for suggestions.\n\n#### Small Motors\n\nThe next step up from hand tools is a two-wheeled tractor and a walk-behind tiller. These hand-guided machines usually range from 5 to 20 horsepower. They start at about $250 for tilling; most are $600 to $800. At higher prices, they allow power take-off-driven additions such as snowblowers and mowers. These are usually an excellent investment for a small-scale market gardener.\n\n#### Processing Equipment\n\nProcessing equipment requires careful consideration before you invest in it. Most added-value processing will involve large stock, poultry and rabbits, or crops. For large stock\u2014beef, hogs, sheep, goats, bison, elk\u2014processing must be done in a county-inspected or Usda- inspected plant if you plan to sell the meat to the general public. Processing at home is not possible. Crop processing (jams, jellies, bread, for example) involves establishing a Usda-approved kitchen, as discussed in chapter 7.\n\nProcessing of poultry\u2014chickens, turkeys, ducks, emus\u2014as well as game birds and rabbits, can be done at home. The amounts allowed and sale conditions vary from state to state, but usually several thousand animals may be slaughtered\u2014call your county and state health departments for more information. For poultry butchering, you will usually need:\n\n  * a killing cone to hold the chicken down while you cut its throat to prevent wing flapping from bruising meat;\n\n  * a rack on which to hang killed birds to drain blood;\n\n  * a stainless-steel table on which to eviscerate birds;\n\n  * a scalder to loosen feathers;\n\n  * a plucker to remove feathers;\n\n  * tanks full of ice water to cool off birds; and\n\n  * a cooler in which to store birds.\n\nMost home operations stop here; customers will pick up the birds in coolers of ice to take them home for freezing or eating fresh. If you start selling to stores, you will probably need a wrapping machine and appropriate containers. Rabbits and fish will require some, but not all, of the equipment listed for poultry. Some suppliers for this home equipment are listed in the back of this book.\n\nProcessing may or may not increase your profits. If you add value to your product, but you increase your labor costs 10 times, or your container costs increase fivefold, you may not actually increase profits. The cost of buying processing equipment or establishing a kitchen will also reduce your profits for a time. The question is whether you will process enough units of volume to increase your profits. Establish break-even costs before investing in the equipment. Will you be able to sell the processed product at a price that will cover your processing costs, or does that put you out of the competitive market? My best suggestion is to start by helping someone do his processing. Decide the best way to do it, then buy your equipment.\n\n#### Fencing\n\nYou may not think of fencing as machinery, but netting and fencing in the right places will certainly ease your burden of labor. Fencing requires careful thought about placement, along with quality materials, correctly used. Poorly constructed fences call for constant repair and livestock roundups. Good fences will pay for themselves in time saved in protecting, managing, and moving livestock, and in allowing the best use of every acre of the farm. Good fences demonstrate pride of ownership, aid land steward-ship, and increase the overall value of your farm.\n\nWhen doing initial planning, make sure your perimeter fence (on the property lines) is able to hold any type of livestock, from hogs to cattle. You need to keep your livestock in and your adjoining neighbors' livestock out. As the old saying goes, \"Good fences make good neighbors.\"\n\nInside your property, make use of lanes to ease movement of livestock from one end of the farm to the other and from field to field. Lanes should be big enough to graze and drive equipment through, rather than narrow, eroded dirt trails. Build a fence wherever possible in such a way that you can mow with a tractor on both sides of it. This allows easy access for maintenance and care of the fence. Make use of temporary inside fencing for seasonal pastures and crop rotations. Electrical fencing, especially the new high-tensile wire and fast-pulse chargers, is economical and more valuable as temporary fencing around grain crops or for intensive grazing.\n\nGet the best fencing and materials you can for durability and economy. At most farms, this will usually mean woven wire or three or four strands of barbed wire on the perimeter, and barbed wire fences on the interior. Elk farms require heavy, 8-foot-tall fencing. Horse farms often use wood or vinyl fencing. For small stock, fences built with hog panels are good. Chicken wire may be necessary to contain poultry.\n\n#### Other Machinery\n\nAdditional machinery for specialized uses includes hay balers, hay wrappers, and combines. There are specialized tools as well, ranging from sawmills, to tree shakers, to cotton gins. Most of these are too expensive and too specialized to justify purchase for a small operation. Rent or borrow from a neighbor if you can.\n\nKeep in mind that some types of structures cross the line into tools and machinery. Loading chutes greatly ease the task of transferring livestock. Squeezes, headgates, catch crates, and corrals serve the same purpose. To decrease your labor and costs, examine each type of livestock and crop, and consider what will work best to increase their quality and decrease your time invested.\n\n# Building a Barbed Wire Fence\n\n  1. Mow or clean the area where the fence is to be built.\n\n  2. Set a corner post at each end of the fence.\n\n  3. Stretch one barbed wire between these two corner posts to establish and line up your fence line. Leave in place; it helps keep out dogs and coyotes. Staple 2 inches above the ground line.\n\n  4. Make a common post-brace assembly at each end of the fence.\n\n  5. Install a line brace each 660 feet on flat terrain, or more if you have hilly terrain to work with.\n\n  6. Mark and set or drive line posts 12 to 16 feet apart.\n\n  7. Stretch the top barbed wire and staple the wire snugly, but do not drive staples so tight that staples cut into the wire.\n\n  8. Stretch three to six lower wires to proper tension and staple.\n\n## Materials for a Double-Span End Brace\n\n## Installing Braces\n\n  1. Attach braces using the dowel-pin method as shown below.\n\n    1. Notch the post to fit the brace.\n\n    2. Drill \u215c-inch holes 2 inches deep in post and brace.\n\n    3. Drive a \u215c-inch steel pin in the ends of each brace.\n\n  2. Wrap the ends of braces with several strands of No. 11 galvanized wire and twist tight. This adds strength and keeps the brace from splitting.\n\n  3. Insert brace pins in holes and assemble the braces.\n\n  4. Fasten tension wires.\n\n    1. Use four strands (2 loops) of No. 9 smooth galvanized wire.\n\n    2. Tie wire 4 inches from top and bottom of posts.\n\n    3. Staple wire to each post with three 1g-inch staples.\n\n    4. Twist wire tight with a short stick or board; leave stick in place for later tightening.\n\n## Wire Stretching and Stapling\n\n  1. Stretch woven wire with a fence stretcher or tractor until tension curve is half its original depth.\n\n  2. Use fence clamps (two 2 \u00d7 6s bolted together) on all woven wire fences. Attach parallel to and between two wire stays.\n\n  3. Attach stretcher chains so there is an equal number of line wires below and above line of pull. One stretcher is sufficient on 26- to 32-inch fences; higher fences require two stretchers.\n\n  4. Staple fence to posts on ridges and depressions before the stretcher is released.\n\n  5. Cut wire, remove the two vertical or stay wires, then tie and staple to end or corner posts.\n\n  6. Use 1-in. staples for hardwood, 1g-in. staples for softwood.\n\n  7. Drive staples in line posts diagonally with the grain\u2014loose enough to allow wire to slip through staples. Staple wire securely to corner, end, and brace posts.\n\nFrom Carl Scheneman and Albert Hagan, _Good Fences for Your Farm_ , University of Missouri Extension Circular 667, 1956.\n\n#### Computers\n\nThe last piece of machinery I would like to discuss is the newest tool for farms\u2014the computer. I recommend investing in this tool for a variety of reasons. A computer is excellent for storing budgets and income data, figuring taxes, and managing records. There are also farm programs for specific purposes, from keeping track of field yields to managing ostrich operations. E-mail can be a great way to communicate with other farmers and gather information from bulletin boards, such as Sheep-L and Graze-L. Last, with Internet access, you can download all sorts of useful information, from grazing tips, to okra recipes, to site plans.\n\nComputers do not have to be expensive. For most farm uses, you won't need a top-of-the-line model with snazzy graphics. A simple computer that can handle a word processor and an income program will do most of the functions you need. Look at used computers, or low-end models. As always, consider cost and benefits carefully before making a purchase.\n\n### Determining Equipment Size\n\nThe old adage \"Make it yourself, wear it out, use it up, or make it do\" is a principle that applies to any small farmer, and to the tools and equipment on his farm. The small farmer's most limiting factors for success are time and capital. Machinery frequently requires large amounts of both. Fixed costs on equipment that is used infrequently is an expense that small farmers do not need and cannot afford if their operations are to be economically viable and thus sustainable. So the question you must ask is not \"What do I want?\" but, instead, \"What do I actually need?\"\n\nFarmer Steve Salt offers these guidelines for tool and equipment usage. Human-powered tools\u2014hand hoes, wheel hoes, push plows\u2014are inexpensive and reliable for use on up to about a half acre of crops. Five- to 20-horsepower two-wheel walk-behind tractors can handle from \u00bd to 2 acres. These could handle even 10 acres, if you custom-hire the heavy jobs like plowing, or you could rent a tractor and plow for the time you need it. If you go beyond the \u00bd- to 10-acre market-garden range and get into 10 to 80 acres or more, a combination of a two-wheel walk-behind tractor and a four-wheel ride-on tractor can be justified, especially on livestock and crop farms. You simply cannot move a 1,500-pound round bale with a two-wheel tractor, nor can you plow, cultivate, and harvest 40 acres of field crops in a timely and profitable manner.\n\nOn my own 80-acre farm, I use a combination of one 8-horsepower Bcs tiller and one 23.5-horsepower Ford tractor, and have a neighbor haul my share of big round bales, which he bales. Another neighbor picks my corn with his harvester, although I hand-pick some of it early in the season for my hogs.\n\n### Variables to Consider\n\nBefore pondering costs and ownership, carefully consider these issues:\n\n  * **Rental or leasing**. Is this possible when we need the machinery, or is there a high demand at that time? How far do you have to move the machinery to get to your farm? Is delivery included in rental?\n\n  * **Neighbors**. Can you exchange machines with a neighbor, or barter for the use of what you need? This could be as simple as, \"I will bale your hay if you combine my corn.\" Transportation costs must be figured if you are trading with someone other than a neighbor whose land adjoins yours.\n\n  * **Hiring**. Is there someone in the area who has the machinery needed whom you can hire? My neighbor bales my hay in trade for a percentage of the hay crop. If you hire people you are unfamiliar with, get references\u2014are they reliable and available for your crop?\n\n  * **Business potential**. If you do not have the acres necessary to justify the cost of the machine, but there is a need for it in your area, can you buy it to do custom work for your neighbors (and yourself)? Some farmers purchase machinery together, but to avoid problems, I recommend avoiding this unless it is done as a cooperative, with all arrangements among parties worked out on paper in advance.\n\n  * **Used equipment**. Compare new prices and used prices for the same piece of machinery. Is new necessary? If the machinery you need is a low-usage item, used equipment might be your best buy. Many farmers today are using tractors 30 and 40 years old, and some tools that are even older\u2014perhaps adapted from horse-drawn implements. You might question how tractors can even last 20 years. They can because they are tough and well made. If they are well cared for and maintained properly, your machinery should last your lifetime and more. If you buy used, examine the equipment carefully, and, if possible, operate it to get a feel for it. For a tractor, consider its horsepower and the types of equipment you will be hooking up to it.\n\n  * **Scale of use**. This is really a part of your thinking process about what crops to grow. Look at machine costs as a percentage of the total costs and net profit, according to the crop grown. If you only have one cherry tree and 5 acres of tomatoes, consider machinery for your tomatoes before you worry about the cherry tree.\n\n  * **Time**. Don't forget the importance of time invested. How does it affect the price you get for your crop?\n\n### Economics of Machinery\n\nPrinciple: _Buy the machinery you need at the best price possible, and make it last by faithful maintenance_.\n\nThere is a simple key to buying machinery: Buy only what you absolutely need at the best price possible, and make it last by cleaning, adjusting, and using it properly\u2014and storing it away from the effects of weather. If you do not know how, acquire an operator's manual or consult other farmers who are using the same type of equipment you are interested in.\n\nMachinery cost is a fixed cost of production, and according to _Used Farm Equipment_ , Northeast Regional Agricultural Engineering Services at Cornell University, its cost makes it important to \"minimize machinery costs for a level of productivity and efficiency that will maximize profits.\"\n\n#### Machinery Costs\n\nMachinery costs are of two types: ownership and operating costs. You may own a combine, but perhaps you use it three months of the year, at harvest, because it is no good for any other jobs on the farm. A tractor, in comparison, may be used every day, especially if you have a diversified livestock and crop farm.\n\n##### Ownership Costs\n\nOwnership costs (also called fixed costs), which are about the same amount every year, include the following:\n\n  * **Depreciation**. The machinery decreases in value no matter how much or little you use it. (This amount also needs to be set aside each year to buy new machinery when the one you have wears out.)\n\n  * **Taxes**. Fees imposed by the government include property tax (personal and real estate), sales tax, income tax, Social Security, and possibly others.\n\n  * **Insurance on facilities and equipment**. Insurance is a form of risk management. The risks of fire, theft, flood, and so on could put you out of business if you're not insured.\n\n  * **Interest** , if you take out a loan to buy the machinery. Interest costs must be evaluated carefully before purchase\u2014does the benefit of the equipment justify the added expense?\n\n  * **Storage facilities**. If do not already have a shed to store your machinery, you may have to build one. Caring for your tools by keeping them out of the weather is one of the best ways to save on future costs.\n\n_Note_ : These ownership costs will accrue even if your equipment never leaves the machine shed!\n\n# Tips For Storing Equipment\n\nHere are some tips from Harold Tucker, the lubricants technical director at Phillips 66 Company, a division of Phillips Petroleum (Bartlesville, Ok), on the proper methods of winterizing machinery.\n\nPostseason Shut-Down\n\n  * Clean the engine compartment and the outside of the machinery using high-pressure washing equipment, if necessary. When mixed with oil, corrosive material in dirt, such as acids and ash from fertilizer and pesticides, can damage an engine.\n\n  * Remove residual crops from all farm equipment. Stray pieces of corn or wheat, for example, contain moisture that can corrode metal components.\n\n  * Overhaul, change oil, and lubricate all machinery as soon as possible after the harvest. Drain the oil to remove contaminants, then refill with new oil for long-term storage. Change all filters.\n\n  * Observe used oil carefully. Note unusual colors or thickness (viscosity). This could mean a cross-contamination of fluids.\n\n  * Grease press wheels and clutch parts on planters and fittings on tractors and combines.\n\n  * Remove rust, and repaint equipment. Keep machinery rust-free.\n\n  * Remove batteries, clean contact points with baking soda, and reinstall the batteries. Then apply a coating of grease on the terminals to prevent corrosion.\n\nThe Northeast Regional Agricultural Engineering Service predicts ownership costs of a new tractor at about 13 percent of its cost and 16 percent of the cost for used tractors, based on 8 percent interest. Ownership cost increases one-half of 1 percent for every 1 percent increase in the interest rate. Other machinery such as a plow or a planter has an ownership cost of about 14 percent for new equipment and 17 percent for used equipment.\n\n##### Operating Costs\n\nThe other machinery cost is operating costs. Operating costs\u2014also known as variable costs\u2014are the cost of using a piece of machinery. Variable costs include fuel, oil, lubrication, filters, repairs, and maintenance. For hand tools, this might be as simple as repairing a handle or sharpening the tool. Sharpening qualifies as maintenance because it makes the tool work efficiently and it lengthens the tool's useful life. Fuel, either gas or diesel, is a cost every time you turn the key and use the tractor. The same can be said for oil, filters, grease, belts, and other machine parts.\n\nWhen considering the economics of machinery, consider the costs in various ways. First, the actual purchase price: How will you pay for it? (Will you need a loan?) Then consider the fixed and variable costs. Use them to figure your costs per hour and costs peracre. The fewer the acres, the higher will be the cost per acre. Smaller acreage usually means adjusting to less expensive tools to maximize profitability.\n\nUsing the figures from the Equipment Costs chart for a $13,000 tractor used for 600 hours per year, the cost per acre on an 80-acre farm is $60.68. This is before taxes ($120) and labor ($10 per hour \u00d7 600 hours = $6,000) are added in; these increase the final figure to $137.18 per acre! This is obviously very high. However, if you had a down payment or a trade-in, this figure might realistically drop to $50 to $60 per acre. Also, most tractors will run way beyond the 10-year life expectancy most people use for their figuring. My first tractor was a 1948 8N Ford with a 7-foot sicklebar mower, purchased for $800 in 1965. It was 17 years old when I bought it, and I used it until 1975, at which time I sold it for $1,000, without the mower. It is still being used by its third owner.\n\nAnother good way to compare costs is to get a custom rate sheet from your local extension office. For instance, in Missouri we have a custom rate for moldboard plowing ranging from $7 to $15 per acre. Disking runs from $4 to $10 per acre. Cultivating is $3.50 to $7 per acre. Rotary hoe rates are $3 to $5.50 per acre. Corn planting is $5 to $12 per acre. Picking corn in the ear is $17 to $25 per acre. Once you have the custom rate sheet and can compare costs, it is relatively easy to make an economic decision based just on cost.\n\nOf course, more than just cost is involved if you rent or get your farming done on a custom basis. How timely are the custom operations in your area? Can you get references? Some co-ops have small windows of opportunity for harvests such as sweet corn. Weather delays and breakdowns can make ownership seem cheap in comparison to losing your crop. Finally, like everything else in this book, it is up to you to weigh the pros and cons and make the best decision you can live with, labor-wise and money-wise.\n\n  * Run each piece of equipment at low speed for up to 30 minutes periodically throughout the winter to lubricate gears and internal components, unless the equipment has been thoroughly winterized.\n\n  * Use quality lubricants from a reputable supplier.\n\nPreseason Start-Up\n\n  * Check hoses and connections for leaks before operating equipment. The most common areas for leaks include oil pan seals, transmission connections, and the rear and front main seals.\n\n  * Visually inspect engine oil paths by looking for wet spots on the hoses. Do not run your hands along the hoses during inspection. Engine fluids are under high pressure and a leak may force oil under the skin. With the eyes alone, look at the bottoms of fittings and hoses where fluid will accumulate and drip. In addition, machinery that has been sitting in the same place for a long time can leave easy-to-identify oil spots on the ground.\n\n  * Drain winter oil and change filters. Change the transmission fluid and antifreeze, if needed.\n\n  * Invest in a scheduled equipment preventive maintenance program. Set regular cycles to change oil and filters. During the growing season, preventive maintenance is one element of farming that operators can control.\n\n  * Use oil and hydraulic fluid analyses to help prolong equipment life through early detection of abnormal wear.\n\n# Equipment Costs\n\nHere are some formulas to help you figure your costs for machinery. They do not include property taxes or labor of the operator.\n\n## Fixed Costs\n\n  1. Annual depreciation = new cost \u00f7 years of useful life\n\n  2. Average annual insurance = new cost x g x insurance rate\n\nInsurance rate: nonmotorized at .012 ($12\/$100 valuation)\n\nmotorized at 0.010 ($10\/$1000 valuation)\n\n  3. Annual housing = square feet storage \u00d7 cost per square foot\n\nCost per square foot = new cost per square foot \u00f7 years of life + repairs as percent of new cost per square foot\n\nRepairs as percent of new cost per square foot = 1.5 percent\n\n  4. Average annual interest rate = new cost \u00d7 \u00bd \u00d7 interest rate\n\n  5. Hourly fixed costs = (A + B + C + D) \u00f7 hours per year\n\n## Variable Costs\n\n  6. Hourly repair costs = new cost \u00d7 repairs as percent of new cost \u00f7 hours of service life\n\n  7. Hourly fuel costs = gallons fuel per hour \u00d7 cost per gallon fuel\n\n  8. Hourly lube costs = hourly fuel costs \u00d7 10 percent\n\n  9. Hourly variable costs = F + G + H\n\n  10. Total hourly costs = E + I\n\n## Costs per Acre\n\n  11. Yearly variable costs = I \u00d7 hours per year\n\n  12. Yearly fixed costs = A + B + C + D\n\n  13. Costs per acre = (K + L) \u00f7 acres used\n\nIn the following example, a tractor costs $13,000 new, with a life expectancy of 6,000 hours and 600 hours annual use on an 80-acre farm. It requires 100 square feet of storage space. The storage space costs $3 per square foot new and is depreciated over 30 years. The annual interest rate is 12 percent. Repairs are 90 percent of new cost. Fuel consumption is 2.31 gallons\/hour and costs $1 gallon.\n\n  1. Annual depreciation = 13,000 \u00f7 10 = $1,300.00\n\n  2. Average annual insurance = (13,000 \u00f7 2) \u00d7 0.01 = $65.00\n\n  3. Annual housing = 100 \u00d7 0.145 = $14.50 Cost per square foot = (3 \u00f7 30) + (3 \u00d7 0.015)\n\n  4. Average annual interest = (13,000 \u00f7 2) \u00d7 0.12 = $780.00\n\n  5. Hourly fixed costs = (1,300.00 + 65.00 + 14.50 + 780.00) \u00f7 600 = $3.60\n\n  6. Repairs = 13,000 \u00d7 (0.90 \u00f7 6000) = $1.95\n\n  7. Fuel = 2.31 \u00d7 1.00 = $2.31\n\n  8. Lube = 2.31 \u00d7 0.10 = $0.23\n\n  9. Hourly variable costs = 1.95 + 2.31 + 0.23 = $4.49\n\n  10. Total cost hour = 3.60 + 4.49 = $8.09\n\n  11. Yearly variable costs = 4.49 \u00d7 600 = $2,694.00\n\n  12. Yearly fixed costs = A + B + C + D = $2,160.00\n\n  13. Costs per acre = (2,694 + 2,160) \u00f7 80 = $60.68\n\nAdapted from Charles DeCourley and Kevin Moore, Ec 959: _Selected Fruit and Vegetable Planning Budgets_ (University of Missouri\u2014Columbia, Department of Agricultural Economics, 1987).\n\n# What Kind Of Equipment Do i Need?\n\nDepending on the size of your operation, you may need only some of this equipment. There may also be specialized pieces necessary for particular crops or livestock. These lists are merely to give you an idea of what you'll need.\n\nTruck Farm (Small-Scale Vegetable Farm)\n\nCrop and Livestock Farm Hay Farm\n\nHay Farm\n\n### Buying Equipment\n\nTo buy equipment, you must first know where to find it. Tractor dealerships usually have both new and used equipment and may or may not have some type of warranty period. The second place to look is in your local newspapers or farm magazines for equipment for sale by owner. Auctions are another good place to look, although the enthusiasm of competitive bidders may drive the price beyond its real worth. Know ballpark values before you go to an auction.\n\nBuying used machinery is one way to keep your costs down, though you must be sure you are making a wise investment. First, consider the equipment's age and usage. A tractor's useful life is about 12,000 hours. If you use a tractor 600 hours per year, the useful life is 20 years. Wendell Bower, in his book _Modern Concepts of Farm Machinery Management_ , says that the first year of life for a new tractor is the most expensive; each year, operational costs get less until wear and tear causes repair costs to increase. At this time, Bower suggests trading tractors, because your average use-per-hour costs will increase. This normally occurs at about 10 years of age, or 6,000 to 7,000 hours of use.\n\nNext, figure the costs per hour and the costs per acre to see if this is a good investment. You should be able to figure these out quickly with a pocket calculator. It's not a bargain if it costs too much to use!\n\nHere are some tips on purchasing:\n\n  * Do not get hung up on a particular brand. Do consider, however, local availability of parts, or you may have a long wait while hard-to-find parts are shipped to your farm.\n\n  * Talk to fellow farmers to find reputable dealers and auctioneers with a good reputation. When buying, investigate why the equipment is being sold, and see if there are any maintenance records.\n\n  * Check out the equipment carefully for rust and signs of major accidents. Look for added welds or fresh paint that might disguise these problems. On tractors, examine the tires for wear. Inspect engines carefully, and examine filter condition. You may be able to have analysis of oils and lubricants done at a local lab\u2014check with your extension office.\n\n  * Consider comfort and safety. How comfortable are the seat and shocks? How easy are the controls to reach and operate? On a tractor, does it have a rollover bar?\n\n  * If possible, try out the implement or drive a tractor around before buying it. Make sure everything is working.\n\n# Author's Note\n\nThe following tables are outdated, inaccurate, and price varies from one region to another. So why include them? It is extremely difficult to find comparison data for different equipment. These tables will help you begin to compare the costs, usage rates, and lifespan of equipment you might consider for your farm. I have always found these tables useful; I believe you will, too.\n\n###### Estimated Machinery Costs\n\n###### Estimated Variable Costs of Equipment (per acre)\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nAs you seek out and decide on tools and machinery, remember that the best tool is your own mind. Without it, all of your machinery is just lumps of metal and wood.\n\n###### Chapter Ten\n\n## Farm Management\n\nAll of the previous chapters have been about management in one way or another. Now I want you to think of management not as how it applies to any individual part of your operation but as a tool in its own right. Management is what will ultimately provide you with profit\u2014and success.\n\nSuccessful farm management is two things:\n\n  1. Farming is taking all you can from the soil so you can sell the surplus to make a profit.\n\n  2. Farming is also putting back into the soil all you can so you can maintain and increase its fertility.\n\nThis give and take must be in balance for your farm to be sustainable in the long run\u2014and management is what determines the balance.\n\n_Dairy farms are labor intensive and require astute observation of animal behavior. Grass-based dairies and seasonal dairying reduce labor requirements tremendously while still providing adequate income_.\n\nFor instance, I have a small, 900-square-foot hog lot on a very gentle south slope (great for my early garden). There is a portable hog house at one end of the lot. The first time I used the lot, it was solid, tough fescue pasture, where domesticated vegetables would quickly be cornered and disposed of by weeds. The three 40-pound feeder pigs I bought plowed up the fescue free of charge, ate lots of grubs and weeds, and generally made the land ready for the vegetable crop that followed.\n\nI have continued this program because it works well. Each pig furnishes an average of 8 pounds of manure per day, from its 40-pound beginning weight to its 225-pound butchering weight, according to the _Swine Handbook of Housing and Equipment_. Hog manure on a per-ton basis contains 13.8 pounds of nitrogen, 4.6 pounds of phosphorus, and 9 pounds of potassium. Eight pounds of manure per day times three pigs equals 24 pounds of manure a day times a 120-day feeding period equals 2,880 pounds of manure, or about 39 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus, and 25 pounds of potassium for my vegetable crop. To help with this fertility program, I sow annual ryegrass and hairy vetch in the lot after the pigs are sold as whole hog sausage for $2.50 per pound. This green-manure crop is then tilled under about two weeks before I want to plant vegetables. Every foot of growth I plow down contributes about 2,000 pounds of organic matter.\n\nNutrient and usage cycles can be repeated over and over. The hogs could also be run back on cornfields if you wish, or you might substitute poultry or sheep for the livestock portion of this cycle. The only limit is your imagination.\n\nLivestock that is sold off the farm will take with it some of the farm's nutrients, but in my example above, because I purchased the pigs, I also brought in nutrients. If you sell all your hay and do not feed it to livestock on your farm, you are depleting your soil fertility. The best program is to bale your hay and feed it back to sheep and cattle on your hay field and let these animals recycle their nutrients in the form of manure. None of these cycles is ever 100 percent effective, or at least is not practical to be so, but you should strive for 100 percent. If you do not reach this lofty goal, regroup, plan, and go forward again. As they say, \"Practice makes perfect.\"\n\n### Recipe for Success\n\nAll through this book I have talked about the principles of good farming. These principles are the same whether you live in New Mexico, Missouri, or Alaska. Principles of good farming work anywhere in the world.\n\nSpecifics of farming are a different matter\u2014what works for your neighbor may not work for you. Everybody seems to want a recipe for success\u2014Do steps 1, 2, and 3, and Bingo! Success! In farming however, there is no single recipe, because sustainable agriculture is site-specific. In other words, it is what works on your farm with your soil types, your management techniques, your capital, and your monetary requirements. You are the best person to put together the package of principles that works for you. For instance, using farming or tillage practices that conserve soil and improve fertility through the use of cover crops is an important principle. In the north-central sections of the United States, rye and hairy vetch might be your cover crops; in the South, cowpeas might be a better choice. The principle is the same, but the crops change\u2014and, of course, your management of these different crops will be different.\n\nThe most important management principle is, \"Look at the big picture.\" How does everything on your farm fit together to make your operation smooth-running and profitable?\n\n#### Take Stock of Resources\n\nTo get a handle on the big picture on your particular farm, you will need to look at specifics. In chapter 1 you asked yourself, \"How many acres of tillable ground do I have? How many acres of pasture or timber ground? What farming skills do I have? What equipment do I have?\"\n\nIn other words, take stock of all your existing resources. In the early 1940s, the Missouri Extension Service had a program called Balanced Farming that expressed just the idea I'm trying to get across here. Unfortunately, \"progress\" caused the service to drop the program. It was solid farming principle then\u2014and it is still appropriate today. In fact, it is what sustainable farm management is all about. Each resource should be managed to maximize its best use and best profit.\n\n#### Practice Balanced Farming\n\nBalanced farming is a process of planning and putting together a combination of measures to give optimum (not necessarily maximum) net farm income, to provide conservation and improvement of soil fertility, and other resources. The resources to be combined are land, labor, capital, and management.\n\nThe key word is \"balanced.\" One full-time person expends 300 ten-hour days in labor or 3,000 hours per year. If you lay out a farm plan that requires 4,000 hours of labor to accomplish, your labor requirements will be unbalanced if you have only one full-time worker (yourself). When your labor requirements are too high, your production rates (bushels\/acre, pigs\/litter, and so on) are frequently so low that the additional acres or numbers of livestock won't give you any substantial income growth. On the other hand, if your farm plan requires only 2,000 hours of labor, you will probably get a higher rate of production, because things will be done in a timely manner. The total production possible will be reduced, however, because you will not be fully employed. A combination of crops and livestock keeps you fully employed because the livestock fills the seasonal (wintertime) lull in the crop-production cycles.\n\nIf your farming operation is balanced, you will have time for field days, reading research papers, attending workshops, and learning from other resources that can give you the knowledge to improve your operational procedures and your net income at virtually no cost. For example, make sure your labor time is fully employed through the combined use of crops and livestock. Maybe you have discovered through the reading of research papers that side-dressing corn at 12 to 18 inches tall with nitrogen is more efficient, costs less, and is better for plant growth than applying nitrogen at planting time, which risks loosing the nitrogen through leaching before the corn plant is big enough to use it. Knowledge is an on-farm resource supplied by you, the operator.\n\n#### Optimize Resources\n\nBesides land, labor, capital, and management balancing, balanced farming optimizes the use of your land resources. If you have rolling, steep timber ground, it can be competitive with other crops like corn if it furnishes lumber for building or fence posts and uses the natural inherent fertility of the soils present to do so. Good, level, well-drained soils are optimized by growing field crops like corn, soybeans, vegetables, and herbs. Rolling pasture ground might best be kept in pasture most of the time and rotated with other crops so you might grow 1 year of corn, 2 years of hay, and 2 years of pasture, or it might be in permanent pasture. The balance comes from using the natural inherent soil type already there.\n\nJust because a farm is in timber does not mean it is necessary to bulldoze the trees and plant it in corn, or spray it to death and plant in fescue, like much of the timber ground in Missouri was treated in the 1960s. Timber can produce posts, firewood, wildlife, light grazing, and lumber for building and pens. In my area, taking trees off the steep hills exposes them to erosion, and the hills are difficult to work on with machinery. The best management practice may be to leave the ground in timber\u2014its best use\u2014and, if managed correctly, its best profit. Returns per acre can compare favorably with crops and pasture. If the trees are already there, management is all that is needed to have a resource that is capable of producing a nice income with little start-up capital.\n\nAs another management example, I once bought a little creek-bottom farm that had been timbered for logs, but the woodsmen left all the treetops lying on the ground. I could have complained about the expense of clearing it, or tried to work around it, but instead I viewed it as a resource. It made perfect firewood. I cut and sold 100 cords of firewood from those tops at $75 a cord, and only lacked $600 to make the first year's payment of $8,100 on the property.\n\n### Knowledge Is Power\n\nPrinciple: _Knowledge is your most important resource_.\n\nKnowledge is your best on-farm resource. What you have in your head and what you can do with your hands is what will direct your management decisions\u2014and no banker or government directive can take it from you. The more you know, the better your decision making will be.\n\nTo utilize knowledge, however, you must have information. I cannot emphasize this enough\u2014you must read, read, Read! Attend seminars and workshops, and talk to other farmers, especially those trying new ideas. Profit from the mistakes others have made. There is no point in reinventing the wheel.\n\nFrequent used-book stores (and look in the agriculture, nature, and gardening sections). Check your local library. Look through university libraries for research papers and books from 1910 to 1960. Extension bulletins from this period cover diversified family farms, where cover crops, rotations, and multiple livestock species were once common. Get catalogs from used-book sources advertised in farming magazines. Subscribe to those magazines that cover topics you are interested in. Look for book publishers (such as Storey Books) that put out useful materials. (See the listings in the appendix for more sources.)\n\nThe most productive use of any farmer's time is spent in planning, figuring costs, and marketing. You are not lazy when you are planning\u2014you are working smarter, rather than harder. A little modern management applied to time-tested information will help make your farm a success.\n\n### Making Choices\n\nYou must always make choices. Pastures mowed in June and July remove the majority of early and late weeds before they go to seed. Multiple-species grazing\u2014say cattle, sheep, and goats\u2014is not easy, but will accomplish the same purpose as mowing, minus the fuel and labor costs. Sheep will eat 90 percent of the common weeds, which generally are high in trace minerals important for animal health and reproduction.\n\nOnce you have chosen your crops and livestock, marketing decisions must be made (if they were not made first). The ability to sell yourself and your farm is what will provide financial security.\n\n### Management Tools\n\nLet me now take a couple of topics from earlier chapters, and explain how they fit into farm management.\n\n#### Crop Diversity as a Management Tool\n\nTraditional agriculture, as they say, is the only business in the world that buys retail, sells wholesale, and pays the freight both ways. This is not the way to succeed. Today's farmer must be a producer, a marketer, and a salesperson. Part of management is finding a successful balance between production and marketing, and also allotting time for family life, so you do not become bogged down with work, feel discouraged, and quit farming.\n\nSustainable agriculture and direct marketing are both tools of management. Sustainable small-farm management is based on diversification. Many modern farms are monocultures (all corn, all hogs, all soybeans). They are usually that way because producers find out what crop they can grow best on their land with the least management. Switching this type of thinking to an alternative crop does not improve it. When exotic animals came on the farm scene and farmers started raising emu and elk, for instance, they claimed they were diversified. They were not. When all you raise is one animal, you are not diversified, even if the animal is exotic. When you raise only one animal on your farm, you are extremely vulnerable to price fluctuations and labor extremes.\n\nMonocultures cause other problems, too. Continued use of one crop, especially if it is a heavy feeder (using large amounts of N-P-K) like corn, depletes soil fertility. Just changing crops is not a rotation. A true crop rotation alternates heavy- and light-feeding crops to complement their nutrient requirements and increase soil fertility.\n\n#### Crop Rotations as a Management Tool\n\nRotations increase the total yield of crops over the years of the rotation. Rotations improve soil by the use of soil-building legume crops; they also help even out the distribution of both labor and machinery use. For instance, a small-grain crop (wheat, oats) eliminates the need for plowing if it follows a row crop like corn or soybeans. Legume hays or pasture seeding following small grains eliminates plowing and sometimes even disking. Normal rotations of 3 to 5 years usually consist of a row crop, a small-grain crop, and a sod crop. Different parts of the farm may require managing more than one type of rotation because of different soil types or varied terrain. Rotations, according to Nicolas Lampkin in _Organic Farming_ , have to maintain soil fertility, organic matter levels, and structure, while ensuring that sufficient nutrients, especially nitrogen, are available and that nutrient losses are minimized. Rotations are the main means of reducing weed, disease, and pest problems by achieving crop diversity both in space and in time.\n\n# A Sample Rotation\n\nVegetables can also be combined with traditional field crops. For instance, you might plant corn, followed by potatoes, followed by a small grain, followed by a hay crop. I plant corn in early May (in Missouri). In early August, I sow winter rye and hairy vetch, so the corn ground is partially exposed for only about 75 days, from May 15 to August 1, to keep down erosion and reduce nutrient leaching. The rye and vetch cover the ground the same year the corn is planted and can furnish hay, seed, grain crop, or green manure plowed under in the second year. I will also have legume grasses and hay available for livestock grazing, which contributes fertility and income to the rotation plan. The rye sops up any nitrogen left from the corn crop and holds it in the rye plant to be used the next year. The hairy vetch, a legume, furnishes nitrogen, which is useful for, say, a tomato crop that follows the corn crop. On or before May 10, I will mow the rye and vetch and plant caged tomatoes in the resulting mulch. The mulch helps control weeds, and the alleopathic tendencies (that is, the ability to prevent germination or growth of another plant) of winter rye also help with weed suppression. The rye and vetch mulch holds soil moisture and slows erosion.\n\nAlthough I have mainly discussed traditional crops and livestock in rotations in chapter 4, the principle of rotation works equally well with vegetables and livestock. In general, potatoes, sweet corn, broccoli, and strawberries are big feeders of nitrogen, while beans, peas, pumpkins, and lettuce are low users of nitrogen. Of course, big feeders will have to be followed in the rotation by a legume, while low users can be followed by a non-leguminous crop. ( _The Knotts Handbook for Vegetable Growers_ , by Oscar Lorenz and Donald Maynard, is the old standby for complete lists of all sorts on the vegetables I talk about here.)\n\nIn this simple rotation, peas and beans provide nitrogen for the following year's sweet corn, while the ryegrass protects the soil from erosion and provides green manure (organic matter).\n\nDick Raymond, author of _Joy of Gardening_ , has a 2-year rotation that tills under only crops grown on the plot. He uses no leaves, no mulch, no compost, no manure, and no fertilizer. The first year he grows a green-manure crop of peas followed by snap beans followed by annual ryegrass. The second year, he plants a crop of sweet corn (a heavy nitrogen feeder) followed by annual ryegrass.\n\nThis rotation alternates nitrogen-fixing crops (peas and beans) with a nitrogen-demanding crop, sweet corn. The annual ryegrass keeps the soil covered most of the time, thereby reducing erosion and nutrient leaching, especially in winter. The winter cover also preserves the earthworm population. The alternating depth of root systems\u20146 feet deep for sweet corn and 2 feet deep for peas and beans\u2014brings different soil nutrients into the system. The different root biomasses (ryegrass is dense; peas, beans, and sweet corn are lighter) furnish earthworms and other soil organisms with material to live on. The peas are a spring crop, the beans and corn summer crops, and the annual ryegrass is a fall crop. This spreads out the workload, and the different germination times help with weed control. Last, three of the four crops involved in this rotation can be used as edible or cash crops.\n\nLivestock are needed in a balanced rotation of crops and are important in maintaining soil fertility. Cattle, sheep, and goats in particular can convert low-grade roughage like weeds or cornstalks into salable meat products, while contributing to soil fertility\u2014and they do all the work of spreading the manure. Cattle, sheep, and goats also utilize rough ground that is too erosion-prone to be anything but pasture.\n\n### Managing Labor\n\nLivestock spreads your labor into use for the entire year, making you fully employed on your farm. There will be some overlap of crop and livestock chores, but having livestock helps even out the  peaks and valleys of labor use. This is just as important for good management as is practicing value-added methods to spread your marketing throughout the year.\n\nFor example, on my farm I maintain a Katahdin Hair sheep flock that I lamb on the grass pastures in May and June. Not lambing in cold weather saves me labor and vet bills, while using hair sheep allows me to avoid shearing and other labor normally associated with wool. Although there is some overlap with corn planting, the sheep pretty much do their thing at a time of year when weather and grass conditions are good. I usually buy feeder pigs to be sold as sausage in August or September to utilize early corn and surplus corn. This eliminates the labor of marketing the corn. If I let the pigs graze in part of the cornfield, I eliminate the harvesting of that area. The pigs are slaughtered in December or January, to eliminate feeding during the worst of the winter. Sales of their sausage and ear corn for seed give me some winter income. The lambs are sold for breeding stock or meat from August through April, and their cycle starts over. Basically, this schedule allows me to avoid major labor in the cold winter months, while still getting some winter income through value-added sales. Also, by choosing and breeding for animals that can care for themselves, I eliminate unnecessary labor involved in livestock health care.\n\nLabor is a limiting factor in farm management. No matter how much you love it, you can be efficient at only so much. All your own family's labor should be utilized fully before you think about hiring help, because this labor does not require a cash outlay, as an employee would. In raising vegetables, however, peak harvest labor may require hired help in order to have the best-quality product for sale.\n\n#### Using Family Labor\n\nIf you want your children to love the farm and maybe even go into business with you, the farm has to be a positive experience for them. This means thinking carefully before exposing them to some animals or equipment. Integrating your children into the farm chores, though, will help them to learn responsibility, timeliness, and a work ethic. Unlike many \"in-town\" responsibilities, the animals must be fed\/watered\/milked on time, or serious consequences occur.\n\nTeach your children safety in everything they do on the farm whether it is working with livestock, machinery, or around the house and garden. Whenever you give a child a chore, explain not only how to do it but also why he or she is doing it. Emphasize doing a chore correctly, rather than demanding speed.\n\nThe Amish do not have central heat. Because the heat is in just one room, the family congregates to that room except at bedtime. This brings the family together, and children learn many things by listening and seeing the interaction and relationship of their parents and siblings. I don't advocate turning off the heat in your house\u2014but allowing full family discussions on the farm at dinnertime, or afterward, in the living room, is certainly beneficial. Children learn by example. You are the example. If you get angry and beat on your livestock, they probably will also. If you drive your machinery fast and do not regularly grease and oil it, they will probably do the same.\n\nYoung children, age 5 or 6, can do simple chores like collecting chicken eggs. Children this age need adult supervision at all times, and their size in relationship to the animals' size must be taken into account. An old hen will sit on her eggs to protect them, especially if she is broody. A nest box is at about eyeball level with a young child and the hen can threaten eyes by pecking. One way of protecting your child is to give her a small trash can lid, held up like a shield. The child can then push the hen aside and get the eggs and, at most, will get a harmless peck on the hand. Of course, you need to show the child how to do this, explaining why the hen does what she does, so your child will not only understand that the hen is just protecting her property (the eggs), but will also build confidence to do this.\n\nChildren's muscles are developed enough to carry, say, a 5-gallon water bucket that is half full when they are 9 or 10 years old. Do not expect them to work as hard as you do, nor as long. Adult supervision is necessary until they have the confidence and judgment to do the chore on their own. Be sure to praise your children every chance you get. It builds self-esteem and confidence. It makes them want to do more.\n\nExtra care must be taken with larger animals. Small children look like dogs or predators to animals like sheep and, again, the mothers will always want to protect their young. I didn't allow my children around hogs and cattle until they were in their teens. This should also be true of any engine-powered farm equipment. Too many accidents have happened to children on and near tractors and mowers. Wait until they are old enough to understand the dangers.\n\nMake sure to teach older children the full spectrum of farming activities. Take them to the farmers' market and let them run the cash register. Take them to the processing plant to hear the instructions you give. Your children need to learn that successful farming includes marketing as well as growing. Let them have a small plot to develop their own crop or raise an animal, then sell it along with yours. The 4-H program encourages this, although it usually works with more traditional crops and livestock. While I disapprove of some of the overly competitive aspects of some programs, it is an excellent way for your children to interact with other farm families. If your child does his or her research carefully, you may end up with a new profitable crop for your farm.\n\n#### Hired Labor\n\nHiring labor for the farm is often difficult. Employ outside help only when you have to, and then get the best available. You must be prepared to pay as much as a job of comparable responsibility in town would pay\u2014unless it is an apprenticeship, where the person is working for experience. When hiring, make sure you see a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and interview a person carefully about experience, initiative, and responsibility. Establish a written contract, so both people know what they are getting.\n\nIf you must hire outside labor, you'll have to consult a tax accountant, because you may need to withhold taxes and Social Security from their paychecks. You may also have to pay unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance. Document employee work with performance reviews. If you need to fire a bad employee, you will need documentation of his infractions to avoid complaints or a lawsuit.\n\nTo find hired help, first talk to fellow farmers, who may have suggestions based on whom they have worked with. Older children from nearby families who are looking for some extra cash may be willing to do jobs on a part-time or seasonal basis. Check community bulletin boards at local restaurants or stores for specialized help, such as baling hay. A classified ad in the local paper may also be an option.\n\nOnce you have good employees, you want to make sure they'll stay. Your interaction with any employee is important for a good working relationship. Your job is to make the person proud and happy to work for you. Do not treat people as just another expense. Be clear with your directions, and show them what to do. Be fair and honest all the time. Incentives or bonus plans for certain levels of production instill pride of ownership in hired help. Extra money may help on the employees' home front when they have to work late for some reason\u2014an employee's family has to be happy with the job, too, or you will not have an employee for long.\n\n### Planning for Farm Efficiency\n\nFarmstead arrangement is very important to efficient labor use, especially for building locations. According to _The Farm Management Handbook_ , every 100 feet of unnecessary distance between the house and farm adds up to 14 miles of travel a year for each daily round trip. If you have a barn about 1,000 feet from your house and can move it 500 feet closer, you will save about 700 miles of walking each year.\n\nEvery step you don't take is time that can be used productively elsewhere on your farm.\n\nThe size and shape of your fields also affect labor. The smaller the field, the more times you have to turn the tractor when tilling the field, and the less time you spend doing productive labor. The larger the field, however, the less important this savings becomes. Obviously, a garden plot would be better to till by hand or with a two-wheel tractor rather than with your 45-horsepower tractor. You also have to consider leaving enough \"waste\" space between your plot and the fences to allow for turning your equipment. There is no optimal size or shape, except what will work best on your farm. So when planning your fields and pastures, look at your maps carefully, and plot the best placements of access lanes, buildings, pastures, gardens, and fields. Keep walking distances and future uses (rotations, new crops, for example) in mind while planning. No matter how carefully you plan, some new circumstance will change it\u2014but if you have a good plan, adjustments will be less costly in time, labor, and money.\n\n#### Building Reserves\n\nReserves are another method of securing financial safety: They will help you through unsteady markets or shaky financial periods. To build reserves requires careful management.\n\n#### Money\n\nThe most obvious reserve to build is that of money. I assume most of you have discovered that money not put in a savings account is usually spent. Setting aside a small amount each month for savings will be a great help. Also, when you buy machinery, it will depreciate each year. _Depreciation_ is the cost spread over the life of the equipment. For example, consider a tiller that costs $1,000 and has an expected lifespan of 10 years. The depreciation equals cost divided by expected lifespan ($1,000 \u00f7 10), in this case $100 per year. Set aside an amount equal to the depreciation, so you will have most of the cash needed to replace it when it wears out. If your markets are uneven throughout the year, you will need reserves for slower periods. It is always better to skimp a bit in summer than to have to do without in winter.\n\nHaving extra monies reserved will also let you take advantage of sales or advertising opportunities without interrupting your present cash flow. It can get you through droughts and floods, and allow vacations and seminar attendance. A small fund to increase your knowledge through book purchases, magazine subscriptions, and conference attendance will help ensure your continued success.\n\n#### Crops and Livestock\n\nThe most obvious resource to reserve other than cash is your crops and livestock. Finding a way to preserve your crops for winter feed will save you money. By saving ear corn, baling hay, and storing potatoes, you are making your crops work through additional seasons. A good hay year should result in extra hay in the barn for a reserve against a bad hay year. Adding value is another way to build reserves, by ensuring that you have products to sell throughout the year.\n\nYou can build reserves in livestock by saving back females, which reduces your replacement costs. You save back females by keeping your best young ewe stock each year, while culling the rest for sale. All ram lambs must be sold. Rams should be purchased every year or alternated to prevent inbred genetic problems. This practice will ultimately improve the quality and reproductive performance of the livestock, as you select for the best stock for your farm and management methods. This is another kind of reserve, a reserve of quality.\n\nQuality reserves are also possible with other aspects of your farm. Build your soils with cover crops and careful rotation of crops and livestock\u2014this will result in a reserve of nutrients for future crops. Quality soil is the reserve that forms the basis of farm sustainability.\n\nReserves can also involve how you plan the use of your farm, with resources both large and small. Timber growing on your farm will always be a good resource for the future, whether in sales or in firewood. Salvaging equipment and structures for other uses is an excellent way to save money. Wire can always be conserved. On my farm, I tie small bits of wire to fencing so I always have a supply on hand. I use it for tying together fences, fixing machinery, tying down water troughs, closing gates, and a multitude of other uses. Lumber and fencing can always be used for repairing similar structures, or save them for future projects.\n\nMake a list of how many different ways you can build reserves on your farm. Examine each crop and type of livestock, your land, your machinery, and structures. Decide what is best to do, and plan how to do it. With careful management, you will weather any storm.\n\n###### Food For Thought\n\nDiversity, rotations, and reserves are all different aspects of farm management, as is the information throughout all of these chapters. Management covers production cost, production expenses, labor, machinery labor and use, land use, soil maintenance, crops, livestock, budgets, diminishing physical output, increasing mental effort, and maximizing economic returns. To sum up farm management is to say that it is all about how you think about the various aspects of farming in relationship to one another. Your management will determine your success.\n\n###### Chapter Eleven\n\n## Where We Are Going\n\nMy grandmother always used to say, \"If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there?\" To really know where we are going, first we must know where we have been. The history of agriculture does much to explain how we got to where we are today, and from this, we can determine where we want to be.\n\n### Land and Farms\n\nIn the early days of agriculture in this country, it was common practice just to move to a different farm when the soil got poor on the land you were farming. Land had little monetary value and was used to encourage people to homestead various areas where railroads and other businesses wished to have customers.\n\nThen dust storms and the Depression hit; Americans became concerned about their food supply and the conservation of our soil. \"Land\u2014they're not making any more of it!\" was a common quote.\n\n_Direct marketing whole-hog sausage enables you to capture a niche market that is far more profitable than hauling your hogs to the sale barn and saying, \"What will you give me for them?\"_\n\nWith the increasing use of the automobile after World War Ii, rapid movement became available from cities to the country, and vice versa. People were interested in independence, self-sufficiency, and the good life. A little piece of land and a house outside the city was the American dream. Factories and businesses followed this path to give their employees a taste of country life, and farmland started disappearing. Later, as land prices rose and the best return on money was from developments, ranging from housing to shopping malls to recreation centers, farmland began vanishing, to be replaced by concrete and asphalt. Today, during every single minute of every single day, we lose 2 acres of farmland to development.\n\nThroughout the 1940s and 1950s, a number of writers came forth and exposed various agricultural policies and practices. Around 1943, Louis Bromfield, author of _Malabar Farm_ , was warning of future hunger caused by disappearance of farmers. A New York City newspaper headline read, \"City Facing First Famine in Our History.\" Edward Faulkner's _Plowman's Folly_ questioned the use of the plow due to its destruction of the soil. Arthur Moore, in _The Farmer and the Rest of Us_ , noted that of the 6 million farms in the United States in 1945, one-third of them averaged 20 acres in size and sent about $100 worth of food to the marketplace in a year. They produced about 3 percent of the production. The 3 million top-producing farms grew 90 percent of our farm commodities. I include these comments and figures for two reasons: First, many of the ideas from the 1940s and 1950s have become the sustainable agriculture ideas of the 1990s and the new millennium. Second, we must recognize that farmers and agriculture are disappearing from the American countryside and mind. But there is good news! Though the number of farms has decreased in recent years, the number of small farmers is increasing and will likely continue to do so. In the 1990s, we have about 1.9 million farms; 75 percent of them are small farmers, with 178 acres or fewer, who produce 20 percent of our farm commodities.\n\nGiven society's choice of where its food is grown and how it is grown, this could well be more than 50 percent in a few short years. Local farm production leads to stable local communities and citizen participation in local government. Small farms furnish a set of children with a work ethic and a good set of values. Isn't this the kind of nation we want to live in? We need more farmers growing more crops for different reasons, not fewer farmers going to town for more financially successful jobs.\n\nHistorical geographer Paul B. Frederic notes that situation is of critical importance in terms of farm characteristics, as relative location determines how the use of a particular site changes through time. Changing proximity to markets leads to change in farm functions. According to _Farming in the Midwest 1840\u20131900_ , edited by James Whitaker, in most cases, farms that retain their pioneer atmosphere are those most remote from population centers. This is still true today, as cattle is ranched in the traditional manner in the ranges of the West, and Appalachian farmers continue their traditional subsistence farming. Population centers tend to support smaller farms with direct-marketed products\u2014the antithesis of the modern \"traditional\" farm. Small farm agripreneurs need to be located within 40 to 50 miles of a city for the best marketing results.\n\n### Industrialization of Agriculture\n\nOriginally, farms were small, and mostly fed just the families who lived on them. With the growth of cities, some farms started producing food and fiber for urban dwellers. As time went by, farms grew large and mechanization came on the scene in the form of reapers, binders, corn pickers, and so on, up to the modern-day combine. John Deere developed the first steel plows, and tractors eventually replaced the horse on farms as the main power source.\n\nBy the 1950s, agriculture had become fully mechanized. Hybrid corn was the rage, and farmers began to use chemicals to reduce labor costs. Farms became more specialized, and diversification and its benefits gave way to new agricultural thinking. \"Fencerow to fencerow\" and \"Bigger is better\" became the watchwords of the young tigers of the 1970s.\n\nThe rural crisis of the 1980s brought the agricultural dream crashing down. Out-of-control land prices, combined with a drop in commodity prices, killed a lot of farms. Suicides increased, along with divorces; dreams were destroyed and families were torn apart. The rural crisis brought about a change in agriculture. Farmers began to question the land-grant institutions and they began to question the way they farmed and why. Farmers began to really study farming, and, in particular, marketing. The survivors of the '80s made it either because of excellent equity positions or because they were diversified farms that developed niche markets for traditional or nontraditional crops and livestock, or a combination of both.\n\nThe rural crisis was followed by the consolidation of agricultural processing\u2014now, for example, four companies process 87 percent of all the beef in the United States. And other commodities have similar numbers. The same consolidation has happened with the chemical companies, which bought out the seed companies, giving them virtually complete control of major crops like corn, wheat, and beans, from production through processing and marketing. Also, in the 1990s, seed companies began charging a technology fee in addition to the cost of the seed. Recently, the Usda and Delta Land and Pine Company developed a \"terminator\" gene that makes saving seed impossible, because it is genetically programmed not to germinate the second year. This has received so much bad publicity that Monsanto (which bought out Delta Land and Pine) chose not to proceed with it, but they have continued to develop other varieties of terminator genes. Other companies are also developing terminator technology. The problem with terminator technology (other than the risk of genetic contamination of your open-pollinated crops) is that it forces you to buy from the seed companies every year, rather than being able to save your own seed.\n\nAgain, the good news is that even as farm numbers shrink and major companies take over more of the market, the number of small farms is increasing. Small farms of 178 acres or fewer continue to gain in numbers at the rate of 2 percent a year and will continue to do so for at least the next 10 years. I firmly believe that this rate of increase will become even higher as more farmers opt out of traditional marketing and into direct marketing, either by themselves or as part of a cooperative.\n\n### Farms and People\n\nTo begin with, everyone was a farmer. Many of our early politicians were farmers, and some, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, had extensive landholdings in which they experimented with crops and practiced growing legumes for cover crops and soil improvement. As people moved to the cities, the percentage of farmers started to shrink. The average person today is four or five generations removed from the farm, and the people making agriculture decisions have little or no experience with farming.\n\nIf we want agriculture to evolve into a more sustainable pattern, the four major groups of importance to agriculture\u2014farmers, lenders, consumers, and institutions\u2014must be convinced at the same time that these changes are beneficial. This will require educating these people as to what farming is about, and why sustainable practices will ultimately benefit everyone\u2014and make them more money.\n\n### Success on Sustainable Farms\n\nDespite the somewhat gloomy note struck by my brief history of agriculture, there are more opportunities to start and succeed on a farm today than ever before. Common sense, along with appropriate technology and direct marketing, has put the small-farm dream in reach of anyone who wants to try to achieve it. It can even be done without first going into debt up to your ears to get started.\n\nThe whole purpose of this book is to give the principles of good farming, which will work on any type of farm and in any state. The way you picture your farm and its goals and relationships is the Big Picture principle, the balance between your crops and livestock, both locally and globally. The smaller the acreage you have, the more important your level of soil fertility, so that you can produce the necessary volume to be profitable.\n\nEstablishing your goals and working to achieve them will create a successful small farm. The most important thing to remember is that the goals must be the entire family's goals. Direct marketing is mandatory for success. To gain the volume needed for success in your monetary goals, you must receive retail prices for most, if not all, of your production. As I write this sentence (November 1998), I will make $100 to $130 per head in net profit on my hogs by selling them as sausage rather than the current market price of 18 cents per pound from the packers. You can do the same.\n\nFarm planning is a road map of how to reach your destination. Farm planning is a principle. Selecting your enterprise correctly to match your farm, your resources, and your management level are important to success. Spend your time analyzing budgets and profit potential.\n\nMachinery and hand tools are labor-saving devices to enable you to do more in less time or to do it in a timely manner. Sweet corn, for instance, has a one- to two-day window of harvest for the picture-perfect ear. Planting every 2 weeks spreads your marketing and marketing risk of timeliness.\n\nFarm management is the process of taking all the principles in all the chapters and making them work together. When you do that, your farming operation will run smoothly, like a well-oiled machine.\n\nI'm sure that as you go along, you will find more principles that are specific to your farm and soil type, but what we have discussed are the basics; with these few, you can start and you can succeed!\n\n#### First Steps\n\nI have met many people during my years as publisher of _Small Farm Today_ magazine who say they want to farm, but it seems they never start. Starting a project like farming, especially if you have no experience, can be quite frightening, but also challenging. You must see yourself as an agripreneur.\n\n**Experiment**. If you are already farming, but want to move to more-profitable alternatives, set aside a small area to work with and start experimenting. If you are new to farming, start your new farm now, even if it is in the backyard of your subdivision. Start researching, start plotting a business plan, start visiting farmers' markets and talking to fellow farmers. Grow into farming, but do not borrow yourself into farming.\n\n**Rent land**. There are lots of ways to start\u2014if you don't have any land, rent some. Apprenticing on a working farm is another way to gain experience, with part of your salary being used to save for some land. Use of a vacant lot in the city can often be had merely for clearing it. You can then grow produce on it rent-free.\n\n**Learn as you grow**. You can grow enough to feed one adult for one year on 1,000 square feet. Do it yourself\u2014it's good practice. Sell some of your produce to your neighbors. Keep records, look at your soil, and examine how it works. You can accumulate tools and equipment, paying cash and storing them until you get your land if you have a plan.\n\n**Always watch your bottom line**. If you cannot make a profit on 1 acre, having 10 acres or 80 will only make the project 10 to 80 times worse. Thinking equals profits. The more you think about farming and study farming, the more opportunities you will see for reducing your costs, increasing your profits, and becoming sustainable. If you simply reduce your expenses 10 percent, you increase your net profit 40 percent. Food for thought: If your produce or meat is fresher and better than store-bought, why should you sell it for 20 percent less than a store? If you work hard to produce a high-quality, \"best-of-the-best\" product, you deserve to get paid for it. Price your products at what they are worth.\n\nWhen should you start farming? If you are talking about traditional agriculture\u2014corn, wheat, and soybeans, or cattle, hogs and sheep\u2014the anwer is to start at the bottom of the price cycle or seasonal low. All commodities prices run in cycles between low supply\/high demand\/high prices and high supply\/low demand\/low prices. Crop cycles depend on whether there are any surplus or deficits in previous years. Cattle cycles are normally long, whereas hogs and sheep\u2014multibirth animals with short gestation periods\u2014are normally shorter. It should be noted, however, that environmentally controlled housing, especially for poultry and hogs, has played havoc with seasonal cycles for livestock. Further consolidation of agriculture has essentially caused the marketing system for commodities to fail because there is in effect no supply and demand essential for price discovery. Do not embark on this type of farming (traditional agriculture with conventional markets) unless you want to be a contract grower making no management decisions and shouldering a large portion of the financial risk of farming, which is Land, Labor, and Machinery. However, I would encourage you to start farming using the methods I talked about in this book!\n\n#### Be a Spokesperson\n\nMuch as I would like to see us have 6.5 million farmers again, we have only 1.9 million. Two percent of the population feeds the other 98 percent. To make the changes I have talked about, to keep your farm on an even keel, you must communicate your needs to others. Because the politicians who make the laws and the people who vote on them are four or five generations removed from the farm, it is up to you to educate them. Every  man, woman, and child involved in agriculture must be a spokesperson for the agriculture industry. In that role you can reaffirm the farm and food connection, and at the same time build relationships with your customers.\n\n### My Vision\n\nThroughout this book I have talked about the contributions that small sustainable farms make to the community and to our society. I also believe we must have a sustainable society to have a sustainable agriculture. Just reading the words seems to give me roots in something permanent\u2014roots in a better place to live and grow.\n\nWe easily have room for many more small farms in the United States. This is one of the few bright places in American agriculture because small farms are increasing. In the future, I see small sustainable farms as being the predominant type of localized agriculture. More small farms will be involved in processing their own products, and there will be many regional products like Ozark wines, and Boone County hams, and Washington apples. The regionality will be significant as we shift to a more seasonal diet that goes along with a decentralized agriculture. With more people connected to agriculture, we will have a better understanding of our world, and will understand that what we do today has consequences for our children and their children.\n\nSmall farms provide more time for interaction with family and neighbors. The neighborhood will be very broad, as computers and the Internet help small farmers share and gain knowledge with each other around the world. In the future, I believe we will spend much more time thinking, rather than doing, and as a result, we will become more at peace with one another and the world in general.\n\nEverything in life is dependent on our soils, the sun, and water. When larger numbers of people are involved with the soil and the basics of life, food, shelter, and clothing, the world will become a better place, because more people will appreciate and understand how we get these basic tenets and how important they are. In today's world, this is easy to forget, because we are a mobile society that can move away from the consequences of our actions; if the soil is poor, plow up another field, or sell the farm and get another. In the future, we will not have that luxury; we must improve what we have. A small farm must be fertile to provide for the family's lifestyle and livelihood.\n\nSmall farms hold the key to reconnect people with the land and the food they must have to sustain life. Small farms are an ongoing process of discovery about life and people. Small farms are the wave of the future, leading to a better world.\n\nIt is now your chance to join this movement. You now have all the building blocks\u2014the principles of a successful small farm. All you have to do is start.\n\n###### Happy and profitable farming!\n\n_Note_ : If you have comments or questions, I invite you to contact me in care of the publisher, Storey Publishing.\n\n###### Appendix a\n\n## Metric Conversions Chart\n\n###### Appendix b\n\n## Resource Lists\n\nIn this appendix, I have provided a list of resources that I have found valuable in small farming endeavors. First, though, I wish to promote two resources without which you would not be holding this book:\n\n  * Storey Publishing, 800-793-9396, www.storey.com. Storey publishes a wide variety of farming books, including this one. I particularly recommend the Storey's Guide to Raising farm animals series.\n\n  * Small Farm Today magazine, 800-633-2535, www.smallfarmtoday.com. Bimonthly. I started this how-to magazine of alternative and traditional crops, livestock, and direct marketing in 1984 to provide information to small farmers and small acreage landowners. It led eventually to this book.\n\n### Books\n\nThere are a multitude of useful books; those listed here are ones I use frequently. The catch is that many of them are out of print. Check with your local bookstore to see if you can order them. And check your local and university libraries, and visit lots of used bookstores\u2014you may come across a treasure.\n\n#### Alternative Livestock\n\nBenyon, Peter H., and John E. Cooper, et al., Manual of Exotic Pets (Ames, Ia: Iowa State University Press, 1991).\n\nGuide to exotic pets\u2014mammals, birds, and reptiles.\n\nBirutta, Gale, Storey's Guide to Raising Llamas (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1997).\n\nIn-depth llama guide.\n\nJohnson, Jim, James Harvey Johnson, and Stanley T. Weiner, Husbandry and Medical Management of Ostriches, Emus, and Rheas (College Station, Tx: Wildlife and Exotic Animal Consultants, 1992).\n\nShort but detailed guide to ratites.\n\nKyle, Russell, A Feast in the Wild (Oxford, Uk: Kudu Publishing, 1987). A look at the potential food use of several exotic species. von Kerckerinck, Josef, Deer Farming in North America (Rhinebeck, Ny: Phanter Press, 1987).\n\nExcellent guide to raising fallow deer.\n\nYerex, David, and Ian Spiers, Modern Deer Farm Management (Carterton, New Zealand: Ampersand Publishing, 1987).\n\nGood deer farming guide.\n\n#### Aquaculture\n\nBrown, E.E., and J.B. Gratzek, Fish Farming Handbook (Westport, Ct: Avi Publishing, 1980).\n\nRaising food, bait, and tropical fish.\n\nHuner, Jay V., and E. Evan Brown, eds., Crustacean and Mollusk Aquaculture in the United States (Westport, Ct: Avi Publishing, 1985).\n\nRaising crawfish, shrimp, clams, and more.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, ed., Freshwater Crayfish Aquaculture (Binghamton, Ny: Food Products Press, 1998).\n\n#### Cattle\n\nMorrison, Frank B., Feeds and Feeding, 22nd ed. (Morrison, Ia: The Morrison Publishing, 1959).\n\nThe bible of livestock feed.\n\nSalatin, Joel, Salad Bar Beef (Swoope, Va: Polyface Farms, 1995).\n\nHow to profit from a small beef cattle operation.\n\nSmith Thomas, Heather, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1998).\n\nHandling, breeding and care of beef cattle.\n\nvan Loon, Dirk, The Family Cow (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1976). The basics of a family cow.\n\n#### Draft Animals\n\nMiller, Lynn R., Work Horse Handbook (Sisters, Or: Farmers Book Service, 1985).\n\nGuide to using draft horses.\n\nTelleen, Maurice, The Draft Horse Primer (Waverly, Ia: Draft Horse Journal, 1977).\n\nSelection, care, and use of work horses and mules.\n\n#### Earthworms\n\nBarrett, Thomas J., Harnessing the Earthworm (Eagle River, Wi: Shields Publications, 1947).\n\nThe original book on earthworm culture.\n\nErnst, David, The Farmer's Earthworm Handbook (Brookfield, Wi: Lessiter Publications, 1995).\n\nManaging earthworms to improve soils.\n\nGaddie, Ronald E. Sr., and Donald E. Douglas, Earthworms for Ecology and Profit, Vol. 1 (Ontario, Ca: Bookworm, 1976).\n\nEarthworm farming.\n\nLee, K.E., Earthworms: Their Ecology and Relationships with Soil and Land Use (Orlando, Fl: Academic Press, 1985).\n\nA technical guide to worms and soils.\n\nMinnich, Jerry, The Earthworm Book (Emmaus, Pa: Rodale, 1977).\n\nHow to raise and use earthworms.\n\n#### Field Crops\n\nAlternative Field Crops Manual (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Extension, Madison\/University of Minnesota Center for Alternative Plant and Animal Products, 1992).\n\nA collection of papers on alternative crops, from adzuki beans to wild rice.\n\nLampkin, Nicolas, Organic Farming (Ipswich, Uk: Farming Press Books, 1990).\n\nOrganic farming in Europe.\n\nMartin, John H., Warren H. Leonard, and David L. Stamp, Principles of Field Crop Production, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1976).\n\nBasics of crop production.\n\nRobinson, Raoul A., Return to Resistance (Davis, Ca: agAccess, 1996).\n\nBreeding crops to reduce pesticide dependence.\n\nSpecialty and Minor Crops Handbook, 2nd ed. (Oakland: University of California Danr, 1997).\n\nProfiles of 63 specialty and minor crops.\n\n#### Gamebirds\n\nMullin, John, Game Bird Propagation 5th ed. (Goose Lake, Ia: Wildlife Harvest Publications, inc., 1994).\n\nBreeding gamebirds.\n\nWoodard, Allen, Pran Vohra, and Vern Denton, Game Bird Breeders Handbook (Blaine, Wa: Hancock House, 1993).\n\nRaising pheasant, partridge, and quail.\n\n#### Gardening\n\nBartholomew, Mel, Cash from Square Foot Gardening (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1985).\n\nMore information on square foot gardening.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, Square Foot Gardening (Emmaus, Pa: Rodale Press, 1981).\n\nPlanning a garden in square feet.\n\nColeman, Elliot, The New Organic Grower, 2nd ed. (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green, 1995).\n\nOrganic tools and techniques for home and market gardeners.\n\nPoincelot, Raymond P., No-Dig, No-Weed Gardening (Emmaus, Pa: Rodale Press, 1986).\n\nOrganic gardening without tilling.\n\n#### Greenhouses and Solar Gardening\n\nEdey, Anna, Solviva (Martha's Vineyard, Ma: Trailblazer Press, 1985).\n\nUsing a biodynamic solar greenhouse for saving money on crops and livestock.\n\nPoisson, Leandre, and Gretchen Vogel Poisson, Solar Gardening (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1994).\n\nGrow vegetables year-round with \"mini-greenhouses.\"\n\nSmith, Shane, The Bountiful Solar Greenhouse (Santa Fe, Nm: John Muir Publications, 1982).\n\nGrowing food year-round with solar greenhouses.\n\n#### Herbs and Flowers\n\nByczynski, Lynn, The Flower Farmer (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1997).\n\nGuide to raising and selling organic cut flowers.\n\nMiller, Richard Alan, The Potential of Herbs as a Cash Crop, 2nd ed. (Metairie, La: Acres Usa, 1985).\n\nThe classic guide to the herb business.\n\nShores, Sandy, Growing and Selling Fresh-Cut Herbs (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1999).\n\nExcellent handbook for herbal agripreneurs.\n\nStevens, Alan, Field-Grown Cut Flowers (Edgerton, Wi: Avatar's World, 1997).\n\nProduction guide for fresh and dried cut flowers.\n\nSturdivant, Lee, Herbs for Sale (Friday Harbor, Wa: San Juan Naturals, 1994).\n\nGrowing and marketing herbs.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, and Tim Blakley, Medicinal Herbs in the Garden, Field, and Marketplace (Friday Harbor, Wa: San Juan Naturals, 1998).\n\nGuide to establishing a medicinal herb business.\n\n#### History\n\nCochrane, Willard W., The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).\n\nA look at how we got to where we are in agriculture.\n\n#### Homesteading\n\nEmery, Carla, The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 9th ed. (Seattle, Wa: Sasquatch Books, 1994).\n\nThe best general information book I have found, from winemaking to meat drying.\n\nWigginton, Eliot, The Foxfire Book, vol. 1 (Garden City, Ny: Anchor Press, 1972).\n\nHomecraft how-to. Nine other volumes followed this one.\n\n#### Honeybees\n\nBonney, Richard E., Beekeeping: A Practical Guide (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1993).\n\nAcquiring and managing bees.\n\nMorse, Roger A., The New Complete Guide to Beekeeping (Woodstock, Vt: Countryman Press, 1994).\n\nStarting and maintaining bees.\n\n#### Inspirational\n\nBerry, Wendell, The Gift of Good Land (Sisters, Or: Farmer's Book Service, 1981).\n\nMore cultural and agricultural essays.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, The Unsettling of America (New York: Avon Books, 1978).\n\nEssays on the importance of sustainable agriculture.\n\nLogsdon, Gene, You Can Go Home Again (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green, 1998).\n\nMore wonderful inspiration.\n\n#### Machinery and Computers\n\nBowman, Greg, ed., Steel in the Field (Burlington, Vt: Sustainable Agriculture Network, 1997).\n\nAn excellent guide to weed management tools.\n\nCampidonica, Mark, How to Find Agricultural Information on the Internet (Oakland: University of California Danr, 1997).\n\nGood introduction to finding farming resources on the Net.\n\nFarm Conveniences and How to Use Them (New York: Lyons Press, 1999).\n\nLabor-saving devices from the 1800s.\n\n#### Marketing Methods\n\nAbleman, Michael, On Good Land (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998).\n\nStory of a small community farm in California.\n\nCopeland, John D., Recreational Access to Private Lands, 2nd ed. (Fayetteville, Ar: National Center for Agricultural Law Research and Information, 1998).\n\nLegal advice on establishing on-farm activities.\n\nDoane, D. Howard, Vertical Farm Diversification (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950).\n\nTaking farms beyond raw material production.\n\nGroh, Trauger, and Steven McFadden, Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1997).\n\nA blueprint for Community Supported Agriculture farms.\n\nRogak, Lisa, The Complete Country Business Guide (Grafton, Nh: William Hills Publishing, 1998).\n\nIntroduction to starting a rural business.\n\n#### Pastures and Cover Crops\n\nHughes, H.D., Maurice E. Heath, and Darrel S. Metcalfe, Forages, 2nd ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1962).\n\nExcellent guide to forages. The 5th edition (1995) is a two-volume set.\n\nManaging Cover Crops Profitably, 2nd ed. (Burlington, Vt: Sustainable Agriculture Network, 1998).\n\nAn excellent guide to choosing and growing cover crops.\n\nMurphy, Bill, Greener Pastures on Your Side of the Fence (Colchester, Vt: Arriba Publishing, 1987).\n\nUsing the Voisin system of grazing management to improve pasture productivity.\n\nNation, Allan, Quality Pasture (Jackson, Ms: Green Park Press, 1995).\n\nCreating, managing, and profiting from quality pasture.\n\nSmith, Burt, Pingsun Leung, and George Love, Intensive Grazing Management (Kamuela, Hi: The Graziers Hui, 1986).\n\nManaging forage and animals for profit.\n\n#### Poultry\n\nThe American Standard of Perfection (Troy, Ny: American Poultry Association, Inc., 1993).\n\nA complete description of all recognized breeds and varieties of domestic poultry, periodically revised.\n\nDamerow, Gail, Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1995).\n\nAn in-depth guide.\n\nHastings Belshaw, R.H., Guinea Fowl of the World (Northamptonshire, Uk: Nimrod Book Services, 1985).\n\nGuide to breeding guineas.\n\nLee, Andy, and Pat Foreman, Chicken Tractor, Straw Bale Edition (Columbus, Nc: Good Earth Publications, 1998).\n\nPortable chicken pens in the garden.\n\nLevi, Wendell Mitchell, The Pigeon (Sumter, Sc: Levi Publishing Co., Inc., 1957).\n\nComplete information on raising pigeons.\n\nSalatin, Joel, Pastured Poultry Profits (Swoope, Va: Polyface Farms, 1993).\n\nRotational grazing chickens in portable cages.\n\nSchwanz, Lee, ed., The Family Poultry Flock (Brookfield, Wi: Farmer's Digest, Inc., 1981).\n\nBasics of choosing and raising poultry.\n\nThear, Katie, Free-range Poultry (Ipswich, Uk: Farming Press Books, 1990).\n\nGuide to grazing chickens free-range.\n\n#### Shelter and Fencing\n\nBurch, Monte, How to Build Small Barns and Outbuildings (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1992).\n\nFundamentals of general construction.\n\nDamerow, Gail, Fences for Pasture and Garden (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1992).\n\nSelecting, planning, and building fences.\n\nMerrilees, Dong, Ralph Wolfe, and E. Loveday, Low-Cost Pole Building Construction (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1980).\n\nHow to build a small home, barn or other pole structure.\n\nSmall-Acreage Farming\n\nAngier, Bradford, One Acre and Security (New York: Random House, 1972).\n\nGeneral information on starting a farm.\n\nBromfield, Louis, From My Experience (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955).\n\nMore about Malabar.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, Malabar Farm (New York: Ballantine, 1947, 1970).\n\nThe author returns to organic farming and tells about it.\n\nLogsdon, Gene, The Contrary Farmer (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green, 1993).\n\nGreat inspiration and useful advice.\n\nMiller, Ralph C. and Lynn R. Miller, eds. Ten Acres Enough: The Small Farm Dream Is Possible (Sisters, Or: Farmer's Book Service, 1981).\n\nA reprint of the 1864 classic, with updated essays. Part inspiration, part useful advice.\n\nOlson, Michael, MetroFarm (Santa Cruz, Ca: Ts books, 1994).\n\nAnother good guide to small parcel success.\n\nSalatin, Joel, You Can Farm (Swoope, Va: Polyface Farms, 1998).\n\nThe author explains his system for success.\n\nSmart, Charles Allen, Rfd (athens: Ohio University Press, 1998).\n\nCity dweller turns farmer during the Depression.\n\nSmith, Miranda, ed., The Real Dirt (Burlington, Vt: Northeast Region Sare, 1994).\n\nOrganic and low-input practices in the Northeast.\n\nWhateley, Booker T., How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres (Chillicothe, Il: American Botanist, 1996).\n\nThe classic on small farm success.\n\nThe Yearbooks of Agriculture, 1910\u20131962, 1976. (Washington, Dc: Us Department of Agriculture).\n\nThese books have all sorts of useful information. In particular, I recommend 1938: Soils and Men; 1941: Climate and Man; 1948: Grass; 1949: Trees; 1955: Water; 1957: Soil; and 1976: Living on a Few Acres.\n\n#### Small Fruits and Tree Crops\n\nHarlan, Michael, and Linda Harlan, Growing Profits (Citrus Heights, Ca: Moneta Publications, 1997).\n\nStarting and operating a backyard nursery.\n\nOtto, Stella, The Backyard Berry Book (Maple City, Mi: OttoGraphics, 1995).\n\nHow to grow berries.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, The Backyard Orchardist (Maple City, Mi: OttoGraphics, 1993).\n\nGrowing fruit trees in the home garden.\n\nWampler, Ralph L., and James E. Motes, Pick-Your-Own Farming (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).\n\nGrowing crops for U-pick farms.\n\n#### Small Stock\n\nCheeke, Peter R., Nephi M. Patton, and George S. Templeton, Rabbit Production, 5th ed. (Danville, Il: Interstate Printers and Publishers, Inc., 1982).\n\nExcellent guide to raising rabbits.\n\nDrummond, Susan Black, Angora Goats the Northern Way (Freeport, Mi: Stoney Lonesone Farm, 1985).\n\nRaising and utilizing angora goats.\n\nKlober, Kelly, Storey's Guide to Raising Pigs (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1997).\n\nAn excellent source for small-scale pig raising.\n\nKruesi, William K., The Sheep Raiser's Manual (Charlotte, Vt: Williamson Publishing, 1985).\n\nGood guide to raising sheep.\n\nMacKenzie, David, Goat Husbandry, 4th ed. (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1980).\n\nGuide to raising goats.\n\nThornton, Keith, Outdoor Pig Production (Ipswich, Uk: Farming Press Books, 1990).\n\nBasics of raising pigs.\n\n#### Soils\n\nAlbrecht, William A., The Albrecht Papers, Vol. 1, (Metairie, La: Acres Usa, 1975).\n\nClassic research on sustainable soils and their importance. Three more volumes follow.\n\nBuckman, Harry O., and Nyle C. Brady, The Nature and Properties of Soils, 7th ed. (New York: Macmillan Company, 1969).\n\nAn excellent guide to soils and soil management.\n\nFaulkner, Edward H., Plowman's Folly (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943).\n\nAlternative cultivation methods.\n\nGershuny, Grace, Start with the Soil (Emmaus, Pa: Rodale, 1993).\n\nOrganic gardener's guide to improving soil.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, and Joseph Smillie. The Soul of Soil, 3rd ed. (White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green, 1996).\n\nA guide to ecological soil management.\n\nKinsey, Neal, and Charles Walters, Hands-On Agronomy (Metairie, La: Acres Usa, 1993).\n\nBuilding and maintaining the soil.\n\nWalters, Charles Jr., and C.J. Fenzau, An Acres Usa primer (Metairie, La: Acres Usa, 1979).\n\nPrinciples of soil care from an unusual perspective.\n\n#### Sustainable Practices\n\nAltieri, Miguel A., Agroecology (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1987).\n\nA scientific justification of alternative agriculture.\n\nAvory, Allan, Holistic Resource Management (Covelo, Ca: Island Press, 1988).\n\nComprehensive system planning.\n\nEdwards, Clive, et al., eds. Sustainable Agricultural Systems (Ankeny, Ia: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1990).\n\nPractical research on sustainable agriculture.\n\nFukuoka, Masanobu, The Natural Way of Farming (New York: Japan Publications, Inc., 1985).\n\n\"Do-nothing\" organic farming in Japan.\n\nJackson, Wes, et al., eds., Meeting the Expectations of the Land (Berkeley, Ca: North Point Press, 1984).\n\nEssays on sustainable agriculture.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, New Roots for Agriculture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).\n\nReasons for sustainable agriculture and how to practice it.\n\nNational Research Council, Alternative Agriculture (Washington, Dc: National Academy Press, 1989)\n\nAlternative farming benefits and case studies.\n\n#### Vegetables\n\nDamerow, Gail, The Perfect Pumpkin (North Adams, Ma: Storey Publishing, 1997).\n\nGrowing and using pumpkins.\n\nDeppe, Carol, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993).\n\nPlant breeding for the home gardener.\n\nDeWitt, Dave, and Paul W. Bosland, The Pepper Garden (Berkeley, Ca: Ten Speed Press, 1993).\n\nHow to grow peppers.\n\nJeavons, John, How to Grow More Vegetables 5th ed. (Berkeley, Ca: Ten Speed Press, 1995).\n\nSustainable biointensive organic horticulture.\n\nLorenz, Oscar A., and Donald N. Maynard, Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers, 3rd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988).\n\nThe essential authority on production of vegetables.\n\nStamets, Paul, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Berkeley, Ca: Ten Speed Press, 1993).\n\nA bible of mushrooms.\n\nWeaver, William Woys, Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997).\n\nPlanting, growing, and saving seeds.\n\nWilbur, Charles W., How to Grow World Record Tomatoes (Metairie, La: Acres Usa, 1998).\n\nGrowing huge organic tomato plants.\n\n### Book Sources\n\n###### Acres Usa\n\n800-355-5313\n\nwww.acresusa.com\n\nPublishes and carries a variety of farming books.\n\n###### Chelsea Green Publishing Company\n\n800-639-4099\n\nwww.chelseagreen.com\n\nPublishes and carries a variety of farming books.\n\n###### Country Store Books\n\n800-633-2535\n\nwww.smallfarmtoday.com\/countrystorebks.html\n\nCarries a variety of farming books.\n\n###### Countryman Press\n\n800-245-4151\n\nwww.countrymanpress.com\n\nFocuses on the outdoors and gardening.\n\n###### Hancock House Publishers\n\n800-938-1114\n\nwww.hancockhouse.com\n\nPublishes aviculture (bird) books.\n\n###### Storey Publishing\n\n800-793-9396\n\nwww.storey.com\n\nPublishes a wide variety of farming books.\n\n###### Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education\n\n202-720-5384\n\nwww.sare.org\n\nPublishes several sustainable farming and gardening books.\n\n###### Ten Speed Press\n\n800-841-2665\n\nwww.tenspeedpress.com\n\nPublishes a variety of garden books.\n\n### Periodicals\n\n#### Magazines and Newspapers\n\nMagazines about specific crops or animals offer the best opportunity to further your knowledge. They not only have up-to-date information on what you wish to raise, but they also contain display advertisements and breeder's directories that list places to buy what you need and information contacts.\n\n###### Acres Usa\n\n800-355-5313\n\nwww.acresusa.com\n\nEco-agriculture information, ranging from standard to extreme; monthly\n\n###### Alpacas Magazine\n\nAlpaca Owners & Breeders Association\n\n615-834-4195\n\nwww.alpacainfo.com\n\nInformation on alpacas; quarterly\n\n###### American Bee Journal\n\n217-847-3324\n\nwww.americanbeejournal.com\n\nInformation on honeybees\n\n###### Animal Finders' Guide\n\n812-898-2678\n\nwww.animalfindersguide.com\n\nListings of rare and exotic animals for sale; 18 issues per year\n\n###### Back Home\n\n800-992-2546\n\nwww.backhomemagazine.com\n\nSustainable living\n\n###### Bee Culture\n\n800-289-7668\n\nwww.beeculture.com\n\nAmerican beekeeping; monthly\n\n###### Biodynamics\n\nBiodynamic Farming and Gardening Association\n\n888-516-7797\n\nwww.biodynamics.com\n\nInformation on the biodynamic (organic) method of agriculture; quarterly\n\n###### The Brayer\n\nAmerican Donkey & Mule Society, Inc.\n\n972-219-0781\n\nwww.lovelongears.com\/brayer\n\nDonkey and mule information; bimonthly\n\n###### Country Smallholding\n\n+44-18-5843-8839\n\nwww.countrysmallholding.com\n\nSmall farming in England; monthly\n\n###### Countryside & Small Stock Journal\n\n800-551-5691\n\nwww.countrysidemag.com\n\nHomesteading; bimonthly\n\n###### Domestic Rabbits\n\nAmerican Rabbit Breeders Association, Inc.\n\n309-664-7500\n\nwww.arba.net\n\nNews from the American Rabbit Breeders Association; bimonthly\n\n###### Draft Horse Journal\n\n319-352-4046\n\nwww.drafthorsejournal.net\n\nDraft horse news. Quarterly.\n\n###### Fish Farming News\n\n800-989-5253\n\nwww.fish-news.com\/ffn.htm\n\nInformation on the aquaculture business; 7 issues a year\n\n###### Goat Rancher\n\n888-562-9529\n\nwww.goatrancher.com\n\nInformation on meat goats; monthly\n\n###### The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener\n\nMaine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association\n\n207-568-4142\n\nwww.mofga.org\n\nOrganic agriculture; quarterly\n\n###### Mother Earth News\n\nOgden Publications\n\n800-234-3368\n\nwww.motherearthnews.com\n\nI am actually recommending the old issues, pre-1986, for useful information on small farm homesteading. The later issues are more environmentally focused and have less information applicable to farmers.\n\n###### Mules and More\n\n573-646-3934\n\nwww.mulesandmore.com\n\nInformation on mules; monthly\n\n###### The Natural Farmer\n\nNortheast Organic Farmers Association\n\nwww.nofa.org\/tnf\/index.php\n\nOrganic farming information; quarterly\n\n###### North American Elk\n\nNorth American Elk Breeders Association\n\n402-756-3355\n\nwww.naelk.org\n\nElk information; bimonthly\n\n###### Organic Gardening\n\nwww.organicgardening.com\n\nGrowing chemical-free food and flowers; bimonthly\n\n###### Poultry Press\n\n765-827-0932\n\nwww.poultrypress.com\n\nPromotes standardbred poultry; monthly\n\n###### Ranch & Rural Living\n\n325-655-4434\n\nwww.ranchmagazine.com\n\nFocuses on sheep and goats\n\n###### Rare Breeds Journal\n\n308-665-1431\n\nwww.rarebreedsjournal.com\n\nExotic and minor breeds of animals for the pet industry\n\n###### Rural Heritage\n\n319-362-3027\n\nwww.ruralheritage.com\n\nFocuses on farming and logging with draft animals; bimonthly\n\n###### Rural Property Bulletin\n\n888-327-6289\n\nwww.landandfarm.com\n\nRural property sale listings\n\n###### Small Farmer's Journal\n\n800-876-2893\n\nwww.smallfarmersjournal.com\n\nSmall farming, focusing on draft animals; quarterly\n\n###### Small Farm Today\n\n800-633-2535\n\nwww.smallfarmtoday.com\n\nHow-to information on alternative and traditional crops, livestock, and direct marketing; bimonthly\n\n###### The Stockman Grass Farmer\n\n800-748-9808\n\nwww.stockmangrassfarmer.net\n\nInformation on intensive rotational grazing; monthly\n\n###### Western Mule\n\n417-859-6853\n\nwww.westernmulemagazine.com\n\nInformation on mules; monthly\n\n#### Newsletters\n\nNewsletters are another source of information, ranging from the magazine-like Growing for Market to the university-published Sustainable Agriculture.\n\n###### Ag News & Views\n\nThe Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation\n\n580-223-5810\n\nwww.noble.org\/Ag\/news_views\n\nGeneral farm information; monthly\n\n###### American Livestock Breeds Conservancy News\n\n919-542-5704\n\nwww.albc-usa.org\n\nInformation on rare breeds; bimonthly\n\n###### Center for Rural Affairs\n\n402-687-2100\n\nwww.cfra.org\n\n###### The Cut Flower Quarterly\n\nAssociation of Specialty Cut Flower Growers\n\n440-774-2887\n\nwww.ascfg.org\n\nField and greenhouse cut-flower information; quarterly\n\n###### Growing for Market\n\n800-307-8949\n\nwww.growingformarket.com\n\nNews and ideas for market gardeners; monthly\n\n###### HortIdeas\n\n<http:\/\/users.mikrotec.com\/~gwill\/index.html>\n\nReports the latest research and tools for gardeners; bimonthly\n\n###### Leopold Letter\n\nLeopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture\n\n515-294-3711\n\nwww.leopold.iastate.edu\n\nNews and Research on sustainable agriculture; quarterly\n\n###### Sustainable Agriculture\n\nMinnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture\n\n800-909-6472\n\nwww.misa.umn.edu\n\nSustainable agriculture news; bimonthly\n\n### Web Sites\n\nBesides those listed below, there are many more Web sites that have good information, so do some keyword searches using topics of interest (e.g., sustainable, buffalo, organic, small farm). Use links from the sites you find to explore more options.\n\n###### Department of Animal Science\n\nOklahoma State University\n\nwww.ansi.okstate.edu\n\n###### Urban Agriculture Notes\n\nCity Farmer\n\nwww.cityfarmer.org\n\nUrban farming information\n\n###### The CyberFarm\n\nOhio State University Extension\n\n<http:\/\/extension.osu.edu>\n\nSmall farm information\n\n###### Forage Information System\n\n<http:\/\/forages.oregonstate.edu>\n\nForage information\n\n###### Greenweb\n\n<http:\/\/boldweb.com\/gw>\n\nGardening information\n\n###### Research & Extension\n\nLangston University\n\nwww.luresext.edu\n\nAquaculture and goat information\n\n###### MachineFinder\n\nwww.machinefinder.com\n\nSearch for used equipment on-line\n\n###### Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture\n\nwww.misa.umn.edu\n\nSustainable agriculture information\n\n###### Educational Materials\n\nNorth Dakota State University Cooperative Extension\n\nwww.ag.ndsu.edu\/pubs\n\nFarming information\n\n###### Openair Market Network\n\nwww.openair.org\n\nFarmers' market information\n\n###### Ostriches On Line\n\nwww.ostrich.com\n\nIncludes on-line newsletter\n\nIn addition to the Internet, there are also newsgroups and mailing lists. Newsgroup availability varies from server to server, so I recommend just looking at your available list for farm-related groups. Mailing lists are basically digests of messages sent to you via e-mail.\n\n### University Sources\n\nConsult your local extension office and university agriculture department and ask about any sustainable, value-added, or small farm programs it has available. Check if there are any extension specialists in topics you are investigating. My list here is of universities and departments that I feel are promoting small farm issues or have useful small farm information.\n\n###### California Small Farm Center\n\nUniversity of California, Davis\n\n530-752-8136\n\nwww.sfc.ucdavis.edu\n\nAgriculture and Natural Resources\n\n###### University of California\n\n510-987-0107\n\nwww.ucanr.org\n\nColorado Cooperative Extension\n\n###### Colorado State University\n\n970-491-6281\n\nwww.ext.colostate.edu\n\nIdaho College of Agricultural Life Sciences\n\n###### University of Idaho\n\n208-885-6681\n\nwww.ag.uidaho.edu\n\nNew-farmer packets\n\n###### Indiana Media Distribution Center\n\nPurdue University\n\n888-398-4636\n\nwww.ag.purdue.edu\/agcomm\n\nIowa Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture\n\n###### Iowa State University\n\n515-294-3711\n\nwww.leopold.iastate.edu\n\nLouisiana AgCenter Publications\n\n###### Louisiana State University\n\n225-578-4161\n\nwww.lsvagcenter.com\n\nMaryland Cooperative Extension Publications\n\n###### University of Maryland\n\n301-405-2436\n\n<http:\/\/pubs.agnr.umd.edu>\n\nMichigan Educational Materials Distribution Center\n\n###### Michigan State University Extension\n\n517-353-6740\n\nwww.emdc.msue.msu.edu\n\nMissouri Missouri Alternative Center\n\n###### University of Missouri\n\n573-882-1905\n\n<http:\/\/agebb.missouri.edu\/mac>\n\nInformation packets\n\n###### Montana Extension Publications\n\nMontana State University\n\n406-994-1750\n\nwww.msuextension.org\n\nPennsylvania Agricultural Alternative Publications\n\n###### Penn State Cooperative Extension\n\n<http:\/\/agalternatives.aers.psu.edu>\n\nFact sheets with budgets\n\n###### West Virginia Extension Service\n\nWest Virginia University\n\n304-293-5691\n\n<http:\/\/www.wvu.edu\/>~exten\/\n\nWisconsin University of Wisconsin Extension\n\n608-262-4387\n\nwww.uwex.edu\/topics\/publications\n\n### Federal Agencies\n\nIn addition to the agencies below, I recommend contacting your state Department of Agriculture to find out what offices and grants could aid your farm. For example, in Missouri we have the AgriMissouri program for adding value and labeling. Your State Department of Agriculture is also your best source for legal information.\n\n###### Alternative Farming Systems Information Center\n\nNational Agricultural Library Room\n\n301-504-6559\n\n<http:\/\/afsic.nal.usda.gov>\n\nPublishes information on farming alternatives\n\n###### Family & Small Farms\n\nNational Institute of Food and Agriculture\n\n202-720-4423\n\nwww.nifa.usda.gov\/familysmall farms.cfm\n\nPublications, fact sheets\n\n###### National Sustainable Agriculture Information Services\u2014Attra\n\nAppropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (Attra)\n\n800-346-9140\n\nwww.attra.org\n\nProvides free information on sustainable agriculture topics.\n\n###### Small Business Center\n\nU.S. Chamber of Commerce\n\nwww.uschamber.com\/sb\n\nHas addresses of Small Business Development Centers and other programs.\n\n###### Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (Sare)\n\n202-720-5384\n\nwww.sare.org\n\nResearch and grants on sustainable agriculture; four regional U.S. offices\n\n### Map Sources\n\nThere are several sources for maps of your property. Cartographic maps and platte books may be purchased from your local Usda natural Resources Conservation Service (Nrcs) agency or may be found commercially. Aerial photographic maps may be purchased from your local Farm Service Agency. Soil maps may be found at a local or state soil survey office. If you cannot find where these are located, here are national offices:\n\n###### Aerial Photography Field Office\n\nFarm Service Agency\n\n801-844-2900\n\nwww.fsa.usda.gov\n\nNational Cartography and Geospatial Center Library National Resource Conservation Service\n\n817-509-3200\n\nwww.ncgc.nrcs.usda.gov\n\nNational Soil Survey Center\n\n###### Natural Resources Conservation Service\n\n402-437-5499\n\n<http:\/\/soils.usda.gov\/about\/nssc>\n\n### Resource Lists\n\n###### The Herbal Green Pages\n\nHerb Growing and Marketing Network\n\n717-393-3295\n\nwww.herbworld.com\n\nMore than 6,000 herb-related businesses, associations, and suppliers listed\n\n###### Organic Pages Online\n\nOrganic Trade Association\n\n413-376-1213\n\nwww.theorganicpages.com\n\nMore than 1,000 organic growers, associations, suppliers, and certification groups listed\n\n###### Family & Small Farms\n\nNational Institute of Food and Agriculture\n\n202-720-4423\n\nwww.nifa.usda.gov\/familysmallfarms.cfm\n\nUseful lists of small farm programs and resources by state\n\n### Seed and Plant Catalogs\n\nThere are hundreds of seed companies. These are some I like.\n\n###### Abundant Life Seed Foundation\n\nSaginaw, Oregon\n\n541-767-9606\n\nwww.abundantlifeseeds.com\n\nOpen-pollinated, rare, and heirloom seeds\n\n###### Albert Lea Seed House\n\nAlbert Lea, Minnesota\n\n800-352-5247\n\nwww.alseed.com\n\nField crop and pasture seed\n\n###### Bountiful Gardens\n\nWillits, California\n\n707-459-6410\n\nwww.bountifulgardens.org\n\nOrganic vegetables, cover crops, and information\n\n###### E & R Seed\n\nMonroe, Indiana\n\n260-692-6827\n\nVegetables, flowers, and supplies\n\n###### Fedco Seeds\n\nWaterville, Maine\n\n207-873-7333\n\nwww.fedcoseeds.com\n\nVegetables, herbs, flowers, cover crops; tree and bulb catalog also available\n\n###### Filaree Farm\n\nOkanogan, Washington\n\n509-422-6940\n\nwww.filareefarm.com\n\nGarlic and supplies\n\n###### Fungi Perfecti Llc\n\nOlympia, Washington\n\n800-780-9126\n\nwww.fungi.com\n\nGourmet and medicinal mushrooms and supplies\n\n###### Irish Eyes\u2014Garden City Seeds\n\nThorp, Washington\n\n509-933-7150\n\nwww.irisheyesgardenseeds.com\n\nVegetables and supplies\n\n###### Harris Seeds\n\nRochester, New York\n\n800-544-7938\n\nwww.harrisseeds.com\n\nVegetables and flowers\n\n###### Johnny's Selected Seeds\n\nWinslow, Maine\n\n877-564-6697\n\nwww.johnnyseeds.com\n\nVegetables for market growers\n\n###### Jordan Seeds Inc.\n\nWoodbury, Minnesota\n\n651-738-3422\n\nwww.jordanseeds.com\n\nVegetables\n\n###### J.W. Jung Seed Co.\n\nRandolph, Wisconsin\n\n800-297-3123\n\nwww.jungseed.com\n\nVegetables, flowers, and berries\n\n###### Otis Twilley Seed Company\n\nHodges, South Carolina\n\n800-622-7333\n\nwww.twilleyseed.com\n\nVegetables and flowers\n\n###### Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply\n\nGrass Valley, California\n\n888-784-1722\n\nwww.groworganic.com\n\nOrganic farming tools and supplies\n\nRenee's Garden\n\nFelton, California\n\n888-880-7228\n\nwww.reneesgarden.com\n\nFlowers, herbs, and vegetables\n\n###### R.H. Shumway's\n\nRandolph, Wisconsin\n\n800-342-9461\n\nwww.rhshumway.com\n\nVegetables and more\n\n###### Richters Herbs\n\nGoodwood, Ontario\n\n905-640-6677\n\nwww.richters.com\n\nHerbs and books\n\n###### Ronniger's Potato Farm\n\nAustin, Colorado\n\n877-204-8704\n\nwww.ronnigers.com\n\nRupp Seed\n\n###### Wauseon, Ohio\n\n800-700-1199\n\nwww.ruppseeds.com\n\nVegetables, pumpkins, and watermelons\n\n###### Sandhill Preservation Center\n\nCalamus, Iowa\n\n563-246-2299\n\nwww.sandhillpreservation.com\n\nAll heirloom, untreated; farmer owned, heirloom vegetables and poultry\n\n###### Seed Savers Exchange\n\nDecorah, Iowa\n\n563-382-5990\n\nwww.seedsavers.org\n\nFarmer seed exchange catalogs and yearbook\n\n###### Seeds of Change\n\nEl Guique, New Mexico\n\n888-762-7333\n\nwww.seedsofchange.com\n\nOrganic vegetables, herbs, and supplies\n\n###### Southern Exposure Seed Exchange\n\nMineral, Virginia\n\n540-894-9480\n\nwww.southernexposure.com\n\nFarmer owned; vegetables\n\n###### Stark Brothers\n\nLouisiana, Missouri\n\n800-325-4180\n\nwww.starkbros.com\n\nFruit trees and peppers only\n\n###### Territorial Seed Co.\n\nCottage Grove, Oregon\n\n800-626-0866\n\nwww.territorial-seed.com\n\nTomato Growers Supply Co.\n\n###### Fort Myers, Florida\n\n888-478-7333\n\nwww.tomatogrowers.com\n\nTomatoes and peppers only\n\n###### Totally Tomatoes\n\nRandolph, Wisconsin\n\n800-345-5977\n\nwww.totallytomato.com\n\nTomatoes and peppers only\n\n### Supplies\n\n###### A.M. Leonard, Inc.\n\nPiqua, Ohio\n\n800-543-8955\n\nwww.amleo.com\n\nGarden supplies\n\n###### Agronics\n\nAlbuquerque, New Mexico\n\n866-510-5795\n\nwww.agronicsinc.com\n\nSoil mineralization supplies\n\n###### CropKing Inc.\n\nWadsworth, Ohio\n\n800-321-5656\n\nwww.cropking.com\n\nCumberland General Store\n\n###### Alpharetta, Georgia\n\n800-334-4640\n\nwww.cumberlandgeneral.com\n\nHomesteading equipment\n\n###### Gardens Alive!\n\nLawrenceburg, Indiana\n\n513-354-1482\n\nwww.gardensalive.com\n\nOrganic fertilizers and supplies\n\n###### Gardener's Supply Company\n\nBurlington, Vermont\n\n888-833-1412\n\nwww.gardeners.com\n\nGarden supplies\n\n###### Gempler's\n\nMadison, Wisconsin\n\n800-382-8473\n\nwww.gemplers.com\n\nSupplies of all sorts, including Ipm\n\n###### Harmony Farm Supply & Nursery\n\nSebastopol, California\n\n707-823-9125\n\nwww.harmonyfarm.com\n\nOrganic crop and garden supplies\n\n###### Hummert International\n\nEarth City, Missouri\n\n800-325-3055\n\nwww.hummerts.com\n\nHorticulture supplies\n\n###### Lehman's\n\nKidron, Ohio\n\n888-438-5346\n\nwww.lehmans.com\n\nHomesteading equipment\n\n###### MidWest Plan Service\n\nIowa State University\n\nAmes, Iowa\n\n800-562-3618\n\nwww.mwps.org\n\nNasco\n\n###### Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin\n\n800-558-9595\n\nwww.enasco.com\/farmandranch\n\nFarm and ranch supplies\n\n###### Ohio Earth Foods, Inc.\n\nHartville, Ohio\n\n330-877-9356\n\nwww.ohioearthfood.com\n\nNatural fertilizer and supplies\n\n###### Peaceful Valley Farm Supply\n\nGrass Valley, California\n\n888-784-1722\n\nwww.groworganic.com\n\nNatural supplies, including irrigation\n\n###### Planet Natural\n\nBozeman, Montana\n\n800-289-6656\n\nwww.planetnatural.com\n\nOrganic and natural garden supplies\n\n###### Prohoe\n\nMunden, Kansas\n\n800-536-5450\n\nwww.prohoe.com\n\nQuality hoes\n\n###### Smith & Hawken Ltd.\n\nPueblo, Colorado\n\n800-940-1170\n\nwww.smithandhawken.com\n\nGarden supplies\n\n###### Veldsma & Sons, Inc.\n\nStockbridge, Georgia\n\n800-458-7919\n\nwww.veldsma.com\n\nSupplies for Christmas-tree growers and pumpkin marketers\n\n###### Wood-Mizer\n\nIndianapolis, Indiana\n\n800-553-0182\n\nwww.woodmizer.com\n\nPortable sawmills\n\n###### Worm's Way\n\nBloomington, Indiana\n\n800-247-9676\n\nwww.wormsway.com\n\nGarden supplies for urban farming\n\n### Associations and Organizations\n\nI am not listing very many associations, as there is one for every breed of animals and variety of crop under the sun. I have mostly picked generalized organizations that apply nationwide. For more information on associations and organizations in your area, talk to fellow farmers and the staff at your local extension office. Attend meetings and shows of local groups to increase your knowledge.\n\n###### American Farmland Trust\n\n202-331-7300\n\nwww.farmland.org\n\nOrganization dedicated to saving farmland\n\n###### American Herb Association\n\n530-265-9552\n\nwww.ahaherb.com\n\nHerb information\n\n###### American Livestock Breeds Conservancy\n\n919-542-5704\n\nwww.albc-usa.org\n\nInformation on rare and endangered breeds of livestock\n\n###### American Pastured Poultry Producers Association\n\n888-662-7772\n\nwww.apppa.org\n\nInformation on pastured poultry\n\n###### Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association\n\n888-516-7797\n\nwww.biodynamics.com\n\nEcological farm management\n\n###### Center for Rural Affairs\n\n402-687-2100\n\nwww.cfra.org\n\nInformation on national events affecting family farmers\n\n###### Herb Growing and Marketing Network\n\n717-393-3295\n\nwww.herbworld.com\n\nHerb information\n\n###### Herb Research Foundation\n\n303-449-2265\n\nwww.herbs.org\n\nHerb research information\n\n###### Kansas Rural Center\n\n785-873-3431\n\nwww.kansasruralcenter.org\n\nSustainable farming information\n\n###### Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture\n\n918-647-9123\n\nwww.kerrcenter.com\n\nInformation and packets on sustainable agriculture topics\n\n###### Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association\n\n207-568-4142\n\nwww.mofga.org\n\nOrganic information and factsheets\n\n###### Michael Fields Agricultural Institute\n\n262-642-3303\n\nwww.michaelfieldsaginst.org\n\nSustainable farm promotion\n\n###### Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Systems\n\n517-432-0712\n\nwww.miffs.org\n\nFarmer support\n\n###### National Christmas Tree Association\n\n636-449-5070\n\nwww.christmastree.org\n\nRepresents both farmers and retailers of Christmas trees\n\n###### Northeast Organic Farming Association\n\n203-888-5146\n\nwww.nofa.org\/tnf\/index.php\n\nOrganic information\n\n###### Practical Farmers of Iowa\n\n515-232-5661\n\nwww.practicalfarmers.org\n\nResearch for family farmers\n\n###### Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation\n\n580-223-5810\n\nwww.noble.org\n\nGeneral farm information\n\n###### Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group\n\n479-422-5831\n\nwww.ssawg.org\n\nSustainable Farming Association of Minnesota\n\n866-760-8732\n\nwww.sfa-mn.org\n\nSustainable farm information and newsletter\n\n###### Virginia Biological Farmers Association\n\n540-463-6363\n\nwww.vabf.org\n\nInformation on organic farming and newsletter\n\n## Index\n\nNote: Page numbers in _italic_ indicate illustrations; those in **boldface** indicate charts.\n\n**A**\n\nAccess, to farm, 34\u201335\n\nActinomycete,\n\nAdvertising, 144\u201347, _, _,\n\nAgripreneurship\n\ndefined, xi\n\npersonal qualities for,\n\nprinciples of, 13\u201315, 43\u201349, 213\u201315\n\nself-evaluation for, 9\u201311\n\nAlfisols,\n\nAmish farmers,\n\nAquaculture, , 163\u201364\n\nAssociations, for farmers, 267\u201368\n\n_Azotobacter_ ,\n\n**B**\n\nBacteria, in soil, __ ,\n\nBalance, in farming, 216\u201318\n\nBarns,\n\nBarter,\n\nBig picture principle, , 215\u201316\n\nBison,\n\nBooks, recommended, 244\u201354\n\nBudgets, sample, 168\u201370, **170\u201380**\n\nBuildings, care of,\n\nBusiness plan, 110\u201313\n\n**C**\n\nCamelids, , __\n\nCapability classes, 29\u201330\n\nCapital, , 20\u201321\n\nCatalog sales, ,\n\nCattle\n\ndefinitions for,\n\ntypes of,\n\nwater requirements for, , __ , ,\n\nClimate\n\neffects on farm type, 75\u201376\n\nevaluating, 35\u201337, __\n\nlivestock and,\n\nparasites and,\n\nCold frames,\n\nCommunity events, as markets, 134\u201335\n\nCommunity-Supported Agriculture (CSA), 132\u201334,\n\nCompetition,\n\nComputers,\n\nCooperatives,\n\nCorn\n\nwater requirements for, __ , 79\u201380\n\nas windbreak, , __\n\nCost analysis, 168\u201370, **170\u201380**\n\nCosts\n\ncontrolling,\n\nof equipment, 201\u20137, **209\u201311**\n\nplanning and, 152\u201353\n\npricing products and, 142\u201344\n\nCover crops, 66\u201370, ,\n\nCrop rotation\n\nadvantages of, , 60\u201362\n\ndefined, ,\n\nlong-term, 64\u201365, **, **\n\nas management tool, 220\u201323, __\n\nnecessity of,\n\nfor pasture, 70\u201372, __ ,\n\nplanning, 65\u201366,\n\nshort-term, 61\u201362, __\n\nCrops. _See also specific types_\n\nchoosing, , 151\u201360\n\nclasses of,\n\nproduction costs for,\n\nprofitability, **176\u201380**\n\nreserves of,\n\ntemperature and,\n\ntypes of, 165\u201368\n\nwater for, **** , 77\u201380, 150\u201351\n\nCSA, 132\u201334,\n\n**D**\n\nDebt, , 106\u20137\n\nDeer,\n\nDiseases\n\nfarm plan and,\n\nwater and,\n\nDiversity, in farming\n\nas management tool, 219\u201320\n\nniche marketing and, 123\u201324\n\nprofitability and, , , 180\u201381\n\nDogs, as enterprise,\n\n**E**\n\nEarthworms, __ ,\n\nEfficiency, , 227\u201329, __\n\nElk,\n\nEnergy sources,\n\nEnvironment, protecting, , 181\u201382\n\nEquines,\n\nEquipment. _See_ Machinery and equipment\n\nErosion control, pastures for,\n\nExperience, . _See also_ Knowledge\n\n**F**\n\nFairs, as markets, 134\u201335\n\nFamily\n\nlabor from, , 224\u201326\n\nlifestyle of, 11\u201313\n\nFarmers. _See also_ Agripreneurship\n\ndefined, 6\u20138\n\nnumber of,\n\nFarmers' markets, __ ,\n\nFarming. _See also_ Agripreneurship\n\nbalanced, , 216\u201318\n\nfuture of, 241\u201342\n\nhistory of, 233\u201337\n\nlifestyle, 11\u201313\n\nproduction types, , 155\u201356\n\nFarm plan, 17\u201319, 110\u201313\n\nFarms\n\nfamily, defined,\n\nnumber of, **** , ,\n\nreasons for owning, 4\u20135\n\nsmall, defined, 4\u20136\n\nas tourist destinations, 147\u201349, __\n\ntypes of, **** , 135\u201337, __\n\nFeed. _See also_ Pastures\n\nharvesting,\n\nstoring, 48\u201349,\n\nwinter,\n\nFences, 194\u201397, _, _\n\nFlexibility, need for, 100\u2013101\n\nFlowers,\n\nFood circles, 137\u201338\n\nFood processing, 127\u201329\n\nFruits, ,\n\nFukuoka, Masanobu,\n\nFungi, in soil, __ , 57\u201358\n\n**G**\n\nGame birds,\n\nGoals\n\nachieving,\n\nlong-term, 103\u20136\n\nmedium, 106\u20138\n\nneed for,\n\nshort-term, 108\u20139\n\nGoats, , __\n\nGovernment agencies, 261\u201362\n\nGovernment regulations, ,\n\nGrains,\n\nGrasses, perennial,\n\nGrazing, 71\u201372, __\n\nGreenhouses, 92\u201393\n\nGreen manure, 66\u201370,\n\nGroceries, as markets, 138\u201339\n\n**H**\n\nHairy vetch, , ,\n\nHand tools, 190\u201393\n\nHardiness zones, , __\n\nHealth, farming and,\n\nHealth-food stores, as markets, 138\u201339\n\nHerbs,\n\nHogs,\n\nHydrophytes,\n\n**I**\n\nInsects\n\ndeterring, with wind break,\n\nas enterprise,\n\nfarm plan and,\n\nInsurance, ,\n\nIrrigation,\n\n**K**\n\nKnowledge, gaining\n\nas goal, 103\u20134,\n\nimportance of, ,\n\nas resource, 218\u201319\n\n**L**\n\nLabor\n\nfamily, , 224\u201326\n\nmanaging, 223\u201327\n\nrequirements for, 24\u201325, **\u2013**,\n\nLand, evaluating, 28\u201330\n\nLegumes\n\ndefined,\n\nas green manure or cover crops, 67\u201369, __\n\nmowing,\n\nnitrogen and, 68\u201369, __\n\nas windbreaks,\n\nLifestyle, farming, 11\u201313\n\nLivestock. _See also specific types_\n\ncare of, , 94\u201396, __\n\nchoosing, 151\u201360\n\nclimate and,\n\nas energy source, , 187\u201388, __ , , ****\n\nfeed for, 48\u201349,\n\nfeeding in rotations, 70\u201372, __\n\ngentle, 46\u201347\n\nparasites in,\n\nproduction costs for,\n\nprofitability of, **170\u201376**\n\nreserves of,\n\nshelter for, 81\u201383, _, _\n\ntypes of, 160\u201365\n\nwater for, 76\u201377, , 150\u201351\n\nLocation, of farm, 34\u201335\n\nLow inputs, 44\u201345\n\n**M**\n\nMachinery and equipment\n\nacquisition options, 199\u2013200\n\nbuying, 207\u20138\n\ncare of,\n\ncosts of, 201\u20137, **209\u201311**\n\ndefined,\n\ngoals for,\n\nrequirements for, 37\u201339, , 186\u201387, 198\u201399,\n\nshelters for, ,\n\ntypes of, 187\u201398, __ , ****\n\nwinterizing, 202\u20133\n\nMammals, small,\n\nManagement\n\nfarm plan and, 110\u201311\n\nof labor, 223\u201327\n\nprinciples of, 213\u201315,\n\ntools for, 219\u201323\n\nManure, , 66\u201370, ,\n\nMaps, sources for,\n\nMarket groups,\n\nMarketing strategies\n\ndirect sales, 129\u201338\n\nmarket identification, 116\u201318, __\n\nniche marketing, 118\u201324\n\nplanning, ,\n\nretail sales, 140\u201341\n\ntraditional vs. alternative,\n\nwholesale sales, 138\u201340\n\nMesophytes,\n\nMetric converstion chart, ****\n\nMicroclimates, creating, , 86\u201387\n\nMollisols,\n\nMoney, reserves of,\n\nMotors, small,\n\nMowing, pasture,\n\nMycorrhiza,\n\n**N**\n\nNight crawlers _(Lumbricus terrestris),_\n\nNitrogen, 68\u201369\n\n**O**\n\nOpportunity cost, defined,\n\nOrganic certification, ,\n\nOrganizations, for farmers, 267\u201368\n\n**P**\n\nParasites, water and,\n\nPastures\n\nas enterprise,\n\nfor erosion control,\n\nrotations of, 70\u201372, __ ,\n\nPeriodicals, recommended, 254\u201358\n\nPermits,\n\nPlanning. _See also_ Farm plan; Resource evaluation\n\ncrop rotation, 65\u201366\n\nenterprises, 151\u201360\n\nexamples of, 100\u2013102\n\nfarm type, 17\u201319, ****\n\nneed for,\n\nas principle of agripreneurship,\n\nPonds, 84\u201385\n\nPotatoes,\n\nPoultry\n\nshelters for, 82\u201383, __\n\ntypes of, , __\n\nPredators, shelters from, 82\u201383, __\n\nPricing, 142\u201344,\n\nProduction methods, , , 155\u201356\n\nProfitability\n\nattaining, 239\u201340\n\nas goal, 104\u20138\n\nplanning and, , 152\u201353,\n\nas principle of agripreneurship, 13\u201314\n\nsample budgets for, 168\u201370, **170\u201380**\n\nsustainability and,\n\nProperty, evaluating, 28\u201330\n\n**R**\n\nRabbits,\n\nRainfall. _See also_ Water\n\namount of, , __\n\nconserving, 84\u201385\n\nRaised beds, ,\n\nRatites,\n\nRecord keeping\n\nas goal,\n\nmicroclimates and,\n\nplanning and,\n\npricing products and, 142\u201343\n\nas principle of agripreneurship, 45\u201346\n\nRed clover,\n\nReptiles, as enterprise,\n\nResearch, , ,\n\nReserves, building, 229\u201331\n\nResource evaluation\n\ncapital, , 20\u201321\n\nclimate, 35\u201337, __\n\nequipment, 37\u201339,\n\nlabor, 24\u201325, **26\u201327**\n\nland, 28\u201330\n\nlocation\/access, 34\u201335\n\nskills, 9\u201310, , **22\u201323**\n\nsoil, 30\u201331\n\nwater, 32\u201333, _, _\n\nResource lists, 262\u201363\n\nResource management, 215\u201318\n\nRestaurants, as markets, 139\u201340\n\n_Rhizobia_ , ,\n\nRisk management, 105\u20136,\n\nRoadside stands, 131\u201332, ,\n\nRoute sales,\n\nRye, , ,\n\n**S**\n\nSeasons, extending, 92\u201394\n\nSeed catalogs, 263\u201365\n\nSheep\n\ntypes of,\n\nwater requirements for,\n\nShelters\n\nfor livestock, 81\u201383, _, _\n\nfor machinery and equipment, ,\n\nSigns, roadside, , __\n\nSkills\n\nevaluating, 9\u201310, , **22\u201323**\n\nnecessary, 46\u201347\n\nSocial acceptance, of farming, , 181\u201382\n\nSoil\n\nevaluating, 30\u201331, ,\n\norganisms in, 55\u201358, _, _,\n\nphysical nature of, 52\u201354\n\nplant roots and, 58\u201359, __\n\nworking with, 54\u201355, __\n\nSoil enhancers,\n\nSoil fertility\n\nas goal, , ,\n\nmaintaining,\n\nas principle of agripreneurship, 47\u201348\n\nSolar energy,\n\nSpecial events, as advertising, 147\u201349\n\nStrip-cropping,\n\nSupply sources, 265\u201367\n\nSustainable agriculture\n\ndefined, xi\u2013xii, ,\n\nvs. other methods,\n\nprinciples of, , , , 181\u201382, 213\u201315\n\n**T**\n\nTanks, 84\u201385\n\nTemperature, crop choices and,\n\nTimber,\n\nTiming, , , 153\u201354,\n\nTools. _See_ Machinery and equipment\n\nTractors, 188\u201390,\n\nTrade shows, as markets, 134\u201335\n\nTrees, as windbreaks, 89\u201390\n\n**U**\n\nUltisols,\n\nUniversity sources, 260\u201361\n\nU-pick farms, 135\u201337, __ , ,\n\n**V**\n\nValue-added products\n\nbenefits of,\n\ndefined,\n\nequipment for, 193\u201394\n\nin farm plan, 111\u201313\n\nmarketing, , ,\n\nproducing, 127\u201329\n\ntypes of, 125\u201326, __\n\nVegetables, 165\u201366\n\nVermiculture,\n\nVeterinarians,\n\n**W**\n\nWater\n\nconserving, , 84\u201385, ,\n\nas energy source,\n\nevaluating, 31\u201333, **** , _, _, 151\u201352\n\nfor livestock, 76\u201377,\n\nfor plants, 77\u201380\n\nWeather, farm plan and, . _See also_ Climate\n\nWeb sites\n\nadvertising with,\n\nas resources, 258\u201359\n\nWeeds, farm plan and,\n\nWindbreaks\n\nbenefits of, , 87\u201389, __\n\ntypes of, 89\u201391\n\nWinter\n\nlivestock in, 94\u201396, __\n\nmachinery and equipment in, 202\u20133\n\nWorms\n\nas enterprise,\n\nin soil, , __\n\n**X**\n\nXerophytes, \n\n## Other Storey Titles You Will Enjoy\n\nChicken Coops, by Judy Pangman.\n\nA collection of hen hideaways to spark your imagination and inspire you to begin building.\n\n180 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-627-9. Hardcover. Isbn 978-1-58017-631-6.\n\nEquipping Your Horse Farm, by Cherry Hill and Richard Klimesh.\n\nA guide to every aspect of selecting, maintaining, and operating essential equipment for your horse operation.\n\n192 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-843-3. Hardcover. Isbn 978-1-58017-844-0.\n\nThe Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food, by Tanya L. K. Denckla.\n\nAn invaluable resource about growing, harvesting, and storing for 765 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and nuts.\n\n496 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-370-4.\n\nGrass-Fed Cattle, by Julius Ruechel.\n\nThe first complete manual in raising, caring for, and marketing grass-fed cattle.\n\n384 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-605-7.\n\nSmall-Scale Livestock Farming, by Carol Ekarius.\n\nA natural, organic approach to livestock management to produce healthier animals, reduce feed and health care costs, and maximize profit.\n\n224 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-162-5.\n\nStarting & Running Your Own Small Farm Business, by Sarah Beth Aubrey.\n\nA business-savvy reference that covers everything from writing a business plan and applying for loans to marketing your farm-fresh goods.\n\n176 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-697-2.\n\nStorey's Barn Guide to Sheep.\n\nStep-by-step visuals for all aspects of sheep care in a handy, hanging format.\n\n96 pages. Paper with concealed wire-o binding. Isbn 978-1-58017-849-5.\n\nThe Vegetable Gardener's Bible, by Edward C. Smith.\n\nA reinvention of vegetable gardening that shows how to have your most successful garden ever.\n\n320 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-212-7.\n\nThe Weather-Resilient Garden, by Charles W. G. Smith.\n\nA defensive approach to landscaping, plus emergency and long-term solutions for reviving weather-damaged landscapes.\n\n416 pages. Paper. Isbn 978-1-58017-516-6.\n\nThese and other books from Storey Publishing are available wherever quality books are sold or by calling 1-800-441-5700. Visit us at www.storey.com.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n# **COLOMBIA**\n\nANDREW DIER\n\n## **Contents**\n\n**Index**\n\n**List of Maps**\n\n**Discover Colombia**\n\n**Bogot\u00e1**\n\n**Cartagena and the Caribbean Coast**\n\n**Boyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes**\n\n**Medell\u00edn and the Coffee Region**\n\n**Cali and Southwest Colombia**\n\n**The Pacific Coast**\n\n**San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia**\n\n**The Amazon and Los Llanos**\n\n**Background**\n\n**Essentials**\n\n**Resources**\n\n  |    \n---|---\n\n## [**DISCOVER  \nColombia**](toc.html#ch_00)\n\nPlanning Your Trip\n\nIF YOU HAVE...\n\nThe Best of Colombia\n\nJET-SETTING\n\nMUSIC AND DANCE FESTIVALS\n\nMOUNTAIN HIGHS\n\nThe Wild Coasts\n\nColonial Towns and Countryside\n\nIdyllic colonial towns, fast-paced cities, stunning archaeological sites, jaw-dropping scenery, and secluded beaches should be enough to put Colombia on your must-see list. But what really seals the deal is the contagious _alegr\u00eda_ (happiness) of the people you will meet along the way.\n\nBogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn offer all the architecture, culture, restaurants, and nightlife that you would expect in any major world city. For urbanites, these are destinations in their own right. But they are also excellent bases to enjoy creature comforts while organizing trips throughout the country.\n\n  |    \n---|---\n\nCartagena and the towns of Villa de Leyva and Barichara will transport you back to the 18th century, when citizens were ruled by a king in Madrid. Cartagena never fails to seduce those who stroll along its narrow, cobblestone streets adorned by bougainvillea cascading from balconies above.\n\nThe Andes Mountains combined with Colombia's tropical location mean that every possible natural setting is within reach. The Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, virtually unknown outside of Colombia, offers incredible trekking amid glaciers and snowcapped peaks. Coffee farms are nestled in verdant valleys abundant with orchids. Los Llanos, Colombia's eastern plains, and the Amazon basin are tropical wonderlands, with innumerable opportunities for nature and wildlife viewing.\n\nEven the beaches here are varied. The Caribbean Coast features gems like Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, where glacier-fed streams flow from snowcapped mountains into the Caribbean Sea. The Pacific Coast offers solitude and a chance to spot humpback whales breaching. And, far from the mainland in the Caribbean, the islands of San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia are a sultry respite from the rush of city living.\n\nColombia is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. Its people are just as diverse. Beyond differences in language, dialects, and accents, you can tell where someone is from by the songs that they sing, the instruments that they play, and the dances to which they move. In Cali, salsa, with its the fancy footwork, color, and brass instruments, is nothing less than an obsession. In the Llanos, _joropo_ is a tribute to Colombian cowboy tradition.\n\nA remarkable transformation has occurred in this corner of South America. And now is a great time to experience this change. Colombia has laid out its welcome mat and beckons: _\u00a1Bienvenidos!_\n\n  |    \n---|---\n\n### **Planning Your Trip**\n\n#### **Where to Go**\n\n##### **Bogot\u00e1**\n\nAgainst the backdrop of the Andes Mountains, the country's cool capital is a **cosmopolitan melting pot.** It's a city of stunning colonial and modern **architecture,** art and culture, **glitzy shopping, five-star dining,** and **euphoric nightlife.**\n\n##### **Cartagena and the Caribbean Coast**\n\nThe Caribbean coastline runs the gamut from the eerie **desert landscapes** of **La Guajira** in the far north to the **untamed jungles** near **Capurgan\u00e1** along the Panamanian border. In between are the tropical jungles and mystical **Ciudad Perdida** of the **Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,** as well as Cartagena, the seductive **colonial jewel** of the Caribbean.\n\n##### **Boyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes**\n\nCradle of Colombian independence, the departments of Santander and Boyac\u00e1 are graced with **stunning countryside,** from the awe-inspiring **Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha** to the snowcapped peaks of the **Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. San Gil** is the outdoor adventure capital, while nearby **Barichara** is one of the most beautiful **colonial pueblos** in the country. The sacred **Laguna Iguaque** and the nearby town of **Villa de Leyva,** with its serene whitewashed buildings and cobblestone streets, are truly picturesque.\n\n**IF YOU HAVE...**\n\n\u2022 **ONE WEEK:** Visit Medell\u00edn, stay at a coffee farm, and fly to Cartagena.\n\n\u2022 **TWO WEEKS:** Add the Caribbean Coast, then Bogot\u00e1 and Villa de Leyva.\n\n\u2022 **THREE WEEKS:** Add Cali, Popay\u00e1n, and Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona.\n\n\u2022 **FOUR WEEKS:** Add an excursion to the Amazon or Los Llanos.\n\n##### **Medell\u00edn and the Coffee Region**\n\nAmbitious Medell\u00edn is known for its **temperate climate** and **fun nightlife.** For a break from the city, the **Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro** makes a fantastic midweek distraction. Photogenic Paisa pueblos abound, with **Jard\u00edn, Jeric\u00f3, Salamina,** and **Salento** some of the most colorful. Stay at one of countless **coffee haciendas** in the lush rolling hills. The landscape is dotted with towering wax palms and brightly colored _barranquero_ birds. The snow-covered volcanic peaks of **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados** beckon mountain climbers.\n\n##### **Cali and Southwest Colombia**\n\nColombia's third-largest city is a joyous one of music and dance. When the sun goes down it's hard to resist Cali's hypnotic salsa rhythms. To the west, beyond the **endless sugarcane fields** of the **Valle de Cauca,** stands the White City of **Popay\u00e1n,** a **historic colonial city** of presidents and poets. It makes a great base from which to explore the _p\u00e1ramos_ of the **Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9** and, beyond that, the mysterious archaeological sites of **Tierradentro** and **San Agust\u00edn.** Under the looming shadow of **Volc\u00e1n Galeras, Pasto** is known for its raucous Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in January. In the **bucolic countryside** south toward Ecuador are **mountains** and **emerald-green lakes.**\n\nIglesia La Ermita, Cali\n\n##### **The Pacific Coast**\n\nThe Pacific is Colombia's wild coast, where the thick jungles of **Choc\u00f3** meet the beaches and endless ocean at wonderfully remote **Bah\u00eda Solano** and **Nuqu\u00ed.** Warm Pacific waters are a playground for **humpback whales** that spend August through October here. Sea turtles are return visitors, too. **Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona** is simply spectacular, an island home to endemic species such as the blue anole lizard. Serious divers will want to make the journey to **Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo,** where schools of hammerhead sharks slowly circle.\n\n##### **San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia**\n\nThe paradises of English-speaking San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia offer everything you'd expect from a Caribbean island vacation. **Fantastic diving** will keep you occupied for days off of sunny San Andr\u00e9s. The daily routine of lounging on **remote beaches,** eating fresh seafood, lazing in hammocks, and **stargazing** on the beach in perfect Providencia will have you hooked.\n\n##### **The Amazon and Los Llanos**\n\nThe Amazon **rainforest** is the lungs of the world. Visit an eco-lodge on the **R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed,** where you can take canoe rides above the treetops in the flooded jungle. Observe birds and pink dolphins by day and look for alligators as darkness falls. Spend a couple of days in the Ticuna village of **San Mart\u00edn** and enjoy the blissfully car-free hamlet of **Puerto Nari\u00f1o.** In Los Llanos, take in the astonishing wildlife at **Hacienda La Aurora.** Bathe in the **multicolored waters** of natural wonder Ca\u00f1o Cristales.\n\nthe Colombian Amazon\n\n#### **When to Go**\n\nBecause Colombia straddles the equator, the temperatures and length of days are nearly constant year-round. There are, however, distinct dry and rainy seasons. Throughout most of the country, **December through February** and **July through August** are considered **_verano_ (dry season). _Invierno_ (rainy season)** is usually between **April and May** and again between **September and November.**\n\nIn San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia, June through November is rainy and from February through April it's drier. In the Amazon the drier months are between June and September and the rainy season is December through May. It's worth a visit during either season. In the Pacific coast region, it rains year-round.\n\n**High tourist seasons** run from **mid-December through mid-January,** during **Easter week (Semana Santa)** and, to a lesser extent, school vacations from **June to August.** During high season, hotel rates and airline ticket prices soar. Colombians from the interior flock to the Caribbean coast during the New Year's holidays, creating a party atmosphere. In contrast, Bogot\u00e1 becomes a ghost town during the major holidays. Hotels and flights can also get booked up on the 10 or so _puentes_ (long weekends) of the year.\n\nMany of the major **festivals and celebrations** take place between December and February: the Feria de Cali, the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in Pasto, Hay Festival in Cartagena, and the Carnaval de Barranquilla. **Easter week** celebrations are big in colonial cities such as Popay\u00e1n, Momp\u00f3x, Pamplona, and Tunja, while during that time every two years Bogot\u00e1 puts on the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro. **Humpback whales** make their appearance off the Pacific coast from **July to October.**\n\nCa\u00f1o Cristales in Los Llanos\n\n#### **Before You Go**\n\n##### **Passports and Visas**\n\nTravelers to Colombia who intend to visit as tourists for a period of under 90 days will need only to present a **valid passport** upon entry in the country. You may be asked to show **proof of a return ticket.** Tell the immigration officer if you intend to stay up to 90 days, otherwise they will probably give you a stamp permitting a stay of 60 days. Language schools and universities will be able to assist those who may require a year-long **student visa.**\n\n##### **Vaccinations**\n\nThere are **no obligatory vaccination requirements** for visiting Colombia. However, proof of the **yellow fever vaccine** may be requested upon arrival at the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona or at the Leticia airport in the Amazon. This vaccination can be obtained at Red Cross clinics throughout the country. If you are traveling onward to countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, or Peru, you may have to provide proof of the vaccine upon entry to those countries.\n\nThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends travelers to have all of the **basic vaccinations** updated. In addition, for most travelers to Colombia, the CDC recommends the **hepatitis A** and **typhoid** vaccinations. **Hepatitis B, rabies,** and **yellow fever** vaccinations are recommended for some travelers. If you plan to go to the Amazon region, **antimalarial drugs** may be recommended.\n\n##### **Transportation**\n\nMost travelers arrive by plane to Colombia, with the vast majority arriving at the **Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado** in Bogot\u00e1. There are numerous nonstop international flights into Bogot\u00e1 from the eastern seaboard of the United States and one flight from Toronto. From Florida and New York there are **nonstop flights** to **Cartagena** and **Barranquilla.** There are flights from Florida to **Medell\u00edn, Armenia,** and **Cali.**\n\nThere are **overland border entries** from **Venezuela** (into C\u00facuta) and **Ecuador** (to Ipiales) and **by boat** from **Peru** or **Brazil** to the Amazonian port of Leticia and from **Panama** to Capurgan\u00e1 or Cartagena.\n\n**Intra-country flights** are easy, safe, increasingly more economical, and, above all, quick. Taking the **bus** to just about anywhere in the country is an inexpensive, popular, and slower option. **Renting a car** is a viable option in the **coffee region** where roads are good. In the **major cities,** there are extensive **rapid bus networks,** and in **Medell\u00edn** there is a clean and efficient **Metro. Private buses** and **taxis** are ubiquitous in cities, although cabs should be ordered by phone. The best way to see the sights of most cities is usually **on foot.**\n\n##### **What to Take**\n\nFor those interested in jungle exploration, **waterproof hiking boots** and possibly some **collapsible trekking poles** are musts. If going to the Amazon, Capurgan\u00e1, or to the Pacific coast, a **waterproof camera bag** and **silica gel** may prevent the heartache of a ruined camera. For caving, visiting the tombs of Tierradentro, and for finding your way at night, a **small flashlight** will be of great use and comfort. To spot humpbacks, anacondas, and birds, **binoculars** will be great to have. If you plan on spending much time on the coast, bringing your own **snorkeling gear** is a good idea.\n\nsunset in Puerto Nari\u00f1o, the Amazon\n\nTo protect against the sun, pack a **wide-brimmed hat** ; against the rain, a **lightweight rain jacket** and **compact umbrella** ; against the cold, a sweatshirt and lightweight sweaters; against mosquitoes, lightweight and light-colored long-sleeved shirts and some strong repellent. For long bus rides, earplugs, eye masks, and **luggage locks** will make the trip more relaxing. Finally, a **Latin American Spanish dictionary** will help you get your point across and make friends.\n\nCasual attire is fine at most restaurants, theaters, and religious venues. Some restaurants in Bogot\u00e1 and Cartagena may expect more of an effort. In large cities, you'll want to dress to impress in bars and clubs. Shorts are generally frowned upon in interior cities.\n\n### **The Best of Colombia**\n\nThere's not one clear-cut, common way to visit uncommon Colombia. For a first-time visit, a tour of the coffee region and Cartagena on the Caribbean coast will be a beautiful and easy week-long introduction to this fascinating country. In two weeks, you can squeeze in Medell\u00edn, a Paisa pueblo or two, the sublime colonial town of Villa de Leyva in Boyac\u00e1, and cap it all off with a weekend in fast-paced Bogot\u00e1. With a third week, you can explore southwest Colombia and salsa the night away in Cali.\n\n##### **Medell\u00edn and the Coffee Region**\n\n###### **DAY 1**\n\nArrive in the evening at the Aeropuerto Internacional Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda C\u00f3rdova in Rionegro, outside of Medell\u00edn. Make the one-hour trip via cab or bus into town. Get settled at the no-nonsense **Hotel Ibis,** across from the **Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn,** or at the friendly **Urban Buddha** hostel in the leafy Laureles neighborhood.\n\nHead to the always-lively Parque Lleras area of the Poblado neighborhood. Familiarize yourself with Colombian cuisine at **Mondongo's,** then have a beer at the coolest corner store in town, **El Social Tienda Mixta.**\n\nMedell\u00edn at night\n\n###### **DAY 2**\n\nDiscover downtown Medell\u00edn by taking a ride on the Metro. Here you can check out the finest art museum in the region, the **Museo de Antioquia,** and have your picture taken in front of your favorite rotund Fernando Botero sculpture in the adjacent plaza.\n\nHop on the Metro again to see symbols of the new Medell\u00edn: the Metrocable gondola network and the **Biblioteca Espa\u00f1a,** a boldly designed public library built on the side of a mountain. From there, transfer once more to another Metrocable line to the **Parque Arv\u00ed,** a huge recreational area.\n\nHead back to your hotel and freshen up before checking out a salsa or tango bar after dinner.\n\n###### **DAY 3**\n\nTake the three-hour bus ride through the southern Antioquian countryside to the picture-perfect Paisa town of **Jard\u00edn.** Hang out with the locals in the sublime **Parque Principal,** a park bursting with flowers. Explore the neo-gothic **Bas\u00edlica Menor de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n.** Nurse a beer or sip a hot _tinto_ at one of the park's _tiendas_ (shops).\n\nRelax at the low-key hostel **Casa Selva y Caf\u00e9,** a pleasant walk away from the town center. Birding and nature enthusiasts will want to stay at **La Esperanza.**\n\n###### **DAY 4**\n\nSet off for the coffee region by heading to **Manizales** in the morning on a five-hour bus ride. Once in town, have a coffee under the shadow of the remarkable **El Cable** tower, a gondola system that once transported coffee over the mountains to the R\u00edo Magdalena.\n\nCheck in to a **coffee farm** in the valleys near Chinchin\u00e1 in the late afternoon. The folks from **Hacienda Venecia** or **Hacienda Guayabal,** only about a half hour away, can pick you up in town.\n\nverdant valleys in the coffee region\n\n###### **DAY 5**\n\nTake a tour of a coffee farm today, and admire the orderly rows of deep green coffee plants adorned with bright red beans. Cap it off with a cup of 100 percent Colombian\u2014served black. It's called _tinto._ In the afternoon, take a bus to one of the region's cutest pueblos, **Salento,** a five-hour trip.\n\nStay at the bright orange **Tralala** hostel and have dinner at wonderful **La Eliana.**\n\n###### **DAY 6**\n\nWalk through pasture land and tropical forest of the Valle de Cocora to the **Reserva Acaime,** where you can watch the hummingbirds flit about at the feeders while you warm up with a _tinto_ (coffee). Then head back down through a wonderland of 60-meter-high (200-foot-high) wax palms, Colombia's national tree, in the Valle de Cocora.\n\nSpend the night again in Salento. Before you retire for the night, stroll the atmospheric **Calle Real.**\n\n**Jet-Setting**\n\nParque Nacional Natural Tayrona\n\nIf you don't have the time for a long overland trip, consider flying to these destinations from the major cities.\n\nGetaways close to airports in larger cities such as Santa Marta, Neiva, Monter\u00eda, and Yopal are served by various major airlines. Check smaller airlines such as **Satena** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com) or **Aerol\u00ednea de Antioquia** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232, www.ada-aero.com) for the smaller destinations.\n\n**FROM BOGOT\u00c1**\n\n\u2022 **Hacienda La Aurora:** See wildlife like never before at this cattle ranch and nature reserve in the Llanos. (Airport: Yopal)\n\n\u2022 **Ca\u00f1o Cristales:** Discover the secret of the multicolored waters at this serene national park in the southern Llanos. (Airport: La Macarena)\n\n\u2022 **San Agust\u00edn:** You'll be blown away by Colombia's best-preserved archaeological site, nestled in the rolling mountains south of Neiva. (Airport: Neiva)\n\n\u2022 **Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona:** Enjoy a quick beach break at the spectacular PNN Tayrona. Be sure to save some time for a jungle hike to **El Pueblito,** remnants of a former Tayrona settlement high in the mountains. (Airport: Santa Marta)\n\n**FROM MEDELL\u00cdN**\n\n\u2022 **Pacific Coast:** Breathtaking sunsets, remote beaches, and the chance to see visiting humpback whales make for a memorable getaway from Medell\u00edn. (Airport: Bah\u00eda Solano or Nuqu\u00ed)\n\n\u2022 **Capurgan\u00e1:** On the Panamanian border, Capurgan\u00e1 is a Darien Gap outpost, home to tropical rainforest and wild beach landscapes. (Airport: Acand\u00ed or Capurgan\u00e1)\n\n\u2022 **Reserva Natural Viento Solar:** Rejuvenate at this nature reserve set in tropical dry forest along a strip of forgotten coast north of Monter\u00eda. (Airport: Monter\u00eda or Tol\u00fa)\n\n**FROM CALI**\n\n\u2022 **Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona:** Colombia's version of the Galapagos Islands was also once its Alcatraz. You'll have this incredible island park almost all to yourself. (Airport: Guapi)\n\n##### **Cartagena and the Caribbean Coast**\n\n###### **DAY 1**\n\nFrom nearby Pereira, fly to **Cartagena,** 1.5 hours away. Once you land and change into the airy attire standard for the sultry city, get to know the area by taking a stroll on the massive ramparts protecting the city.\n\nHave dinner at **La Vitrola,** a Cartagena classic. Spend the night at the **Hotel Sofitel Legend Santa Clara** or the **Blue House** hostel, a good budget option.\n\n###### **DAY 2**\n\nWalk the Old City streets, getting lost and found again as you amble from the divine **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** to the **Plaza Santo Domingo** to **Las Murallas,** the city's walls. Be sure to check out the impressive **Castillo de San Felipe** in the late afternoon.\n\nBougainvillea spills onto the streets of Cartagena's Old City.\n\nDon't miss out on the old-style fun at **Caf\u00e9 Havana,** and be sure to try one of their famous rum drinks. Go for pizza afterward at nearby **Pavia** before returning to your hotel for the night.\n\n###### **DAY 3**\n\nFor a change of pace, take a cab or bus to **Bocagrande,** Cartagena's version of Miami Beach. A walk along the bay in the Castillo Grande district is a fine way to pass the day.\n\nSpend some time in the hip and happening area of **Getseman\u00ed,** a neighborhood of tapas bars and watering holes. For inventive local cuisine, try **La Cocina de Pepina.**\n\n###### **DAYS 4-6**\n\nFrom the Muelle Tur\u00edstico in town, take a boat to the beaches of **Islas del Rosario,** the area's finest beaches, and spend a couple of nights at an island hotel. It's worth splurging for the **Coralina Isla Boutique.**\n\nReturn to Cartagena in the late afternoon and take one last walk on the walls, enjoying a cocktail at **Caf\u00e9 del Mar** and dinner at **La Cevicher\u00eda.**\n\n###### **EXCURSION TO LA GUAJIRA**\n\nIf you have 4-5 extra days, consider taking a trip to **La Guajira,** a desert peninsula that is home to the Way\u00fau people.\n\nStart at the beach in **Palomino** or in **Riohacha,** the departmental capital of La Guajira, and join up with an organized tour group. After a dusty ride past countless cacti and lonely goats, you'll arrive at **Cabo de la Vela,** where you can take a dip in the Caribbean Sea or try your luck wind- or kite-surfing.\n\nThe next stop is **Punta Gallinas,** the northernmost point of South America. Spend a day or two on a photo safari of the unusual landscape of desert dunes that drop dramatically into the sea.\n\nTake a canoe trip to explore the mangroves, then share a huge, freshly prepared lobster with a friend. If there's time, check out the **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos** to the southwest for an early morning or late afternoon canoe ride in search of flamingos.\n\n##### **Bogot\u00e1 and Boyac\u00e1**\n\n###### **DAY 1**\n\nFly into **Bogot\u00e1.** Set in the Andes at an elevation of 2,625 meters (8,612 feet), the Colombian capital city can be especially cool, so pack some layers and an umbrella. In the late afternoon, wander the historic **Candelaria** district and visit the world-famous **Museo del Oro.** Stay at the **Casa Platypus** downtown.\n\nthe Plaza de Bol\u00edvar in Bogot\u00e1\n\n###### **DAY 2**\n\nTake a bus or hire a car for the 3.5-hour trip to the low-key pueblo of **Villa de Leyva,** one of Colombia's best preserved colonial towns, in the department of Boyac\u00e1.\n\nEnjoy the unique atmosphere in Villa de Leyva by walking its stone streets. Check out the woolen _ruanas_ (ponchos) at **Alieth Tejido Artesanal,** and if you have time, check out the **Convento del Santo Ecce Homo** in the desert nearby.\n\nStay at the **Casa Viena Hostel** or splurge at the **Hotel Plaza Mayor,** where the views are great.\n\n###### **DAY 3**\n\nVisit the **Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque** just outside of town and hike to the mist-shrouded **Laguna Iguaque** for some morning exhilaration. Relax in Villa de Leyva for the evening.\n\n###### **DAYS 4-5**\n\nReturn to Bogot\u00e1 and, if it's a weekend day, go to the top of the **Torre Colpatria** for an incredible 360-degree view of the massive city. Spend a night in the **Zona Rosa** and splurge on a meal at **Andr\u00e9s Carne de Res,** Colombia's most famous restaurant. Here, the line between dining and rumba gets blurred at around 8 o'clock.\n\n**Music And Dance Festivals**\n\ndancers getting ready for Carnaval in Barranquilla\n\nGet your groove on at these colorful music and dance festivals.\n\n**CALI**\n\nCale\u00f1os boast that their city is the world capital of salsa, and there's no denying that it's an integral part of daily life in Cali. The last week of the year is the **Feria de Cali,** a week-long event of salsa concerts, parties, and pageantry that takes over the city.\n\nOther festivals worth checking out are August's **Festival Mundial de Salsa,** which showcases the glitz and frenetic footwork of the dance, and the **Festival Petronio \u00c1lvarez,** a September celebration of Pacific Coast music and culture.\n\n**VILLAVICENCIO**\n\nOn the Llanos, the great eastern plains of Colombia, cowhands work on cattle ranches during the day. At night, they get out their harps and jam a Llanero form of waltz called _joropo._ During the **Torneo Internacional del Joropo** in June, musicians and dancers from across the Llanos converge on Villavicencio, participating in open-air concerts and competitions. Cowboys show their stuff in Llanero rodeos during the week-long festival.\n\n**MEDELL\u00cdN**\n\nTango has a long history in Medell\u00edn. The **Festival Internacional de Tango** is held each year in June, offering four days of free concerts and dance performances across the city.\n\n**BARRANQUILLA**\n\nColombia's favorite festival is the **Carnaval de Barranquilla,** held each year in February. _Cumbia_ , an intriguing mix of indigenous, African, and Spanish musical styles, takes center stage at this multi-day event of parades, concerts, and parties.\n\n**BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nTypical of the way this metropolis rolls, Bogot\u00e1 doesn't have just one music celebration. From July to November, the action takes place in the city's largest park, the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, during the **Festivales al Parque** series of festivals: Salsa al Parque, Jazz al Parque, Opera al Parque, and the thumping Rock al Parque. Best of all, it's free.\n\nIf the next morning is a Sunday, enjoy the city's **Ciclov\u00eda** by renting a bike and joining the thousands of Bogotanos hitting the streets for a little exercise. If it's not a Sunday, you can still stroll the streets.\n\n##### **San Agust\u00edn, Popay\u00e1n, and Cali**\n\n###### **DAYS 1-2**\n\nFly into Neiva and immediately head south to **San Agust\u00edn,** the most important archaeological site in Colombia. It's the country's version of Easter Island, set amid lush countryside in the Cordillera Central of the Andes. Take your time visiting the park: Two days should do it.\n\npre-Columbian statue in San Agust\u00edn\n\nStay within walking distance of the park at one of the cute hotels dotting the countryside.\n\n###### **DAY 3**\n\nFlag down a bus headed westward and check out the country's other archaeological site. **Tierradentro** is a series of underground burial tombs spread atop hills in the lush Valle de Cauca countryside. It's a scenic place, and you should take your time and walk the sites at a leisurely pace.\n\nStay in the village of San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1 at the **La Portada** hotel.\n\n###### **DAY 4**\n\nTake the four-hour scenic bus ride to the historic White City of **Popay\u00e1n.** Wander the streets and linger in the beautiful **Parque Caldas.**\n\nStay at the **Hostel Caracol,** where friendly staff will let you take the hostel dog for a late-afternoon walk around town. Before retiring, settle into a booth at **El Sotare\u00f1o** and listen to some tango music over a cold beer.\n\n###### **DAY 5**\n\nTake the easy two-hour bus ride to Cali. In the late afternoon, enjoy the atmosphere of the **Parque San Antonio,** the best place for people-watching or enjoying the sunset.\n\nHave dinner in one of the cozy restaurants in the sloping San Antonio neighborhood, and stay there, too, at the **Ruta Sur** hostel or the **San Antonio Hotel Boutique.** Later, check out a _salsateca_ (dance club) for a truly authentic Cali experience. Get a good night's rest to prepare for your flight home tomorrow.\n\n##### **Excursions and Side Trips**\n\n###### **SAN ANDR\u00c9S AND PROVIDENCIA**\n\nIf you're looking to get away from it all, go to the island of Providencia, part of the San Andr\u00e9s Archipelago, off the coast of Nicaragua. Allot at least four days for some solid beach relaxation time.\n\nFly into San Andr\u00e9s. To get to Providencia from there, it's just a short flight. Once in Providencia, stay at the **Hotel Sirius,** where dive experts can take you to the reefs for a few underwater adventures. Add 1-2 days in San Andr\u00e9s if you're into snorkeling, diving, and drinking coco locos.\n\niguana in San Andr\u00e9s\n\n###### **THE AMAZON**\n\nThis quick but meaningful Amazon adventure will require at least four days. Leticia is the gateway to the Colombian Amazon. It's a two-hour flight from Bogot\u00e1. At the **Reserva Natural Tanimboca,** you can stay in a treehouse in the jungle, just minutes from town.\n\nFor the next couple of days, take a boat up the world's most powerful river and visit the Ticuna community of **San Mart\u00edn.** Continue onward to the decidedly eco-friendly **Puerto Nari\u00f1o.**\n\nAlternatively, you can head straight to the eco-lodges along the **R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed,** in Brazil, where you can take day and nighttime safaris, discovering the abundant life of the Amazonian rainforest and river.\n\n**Mountain Highs**\n\nColombia is a great place to conquer the longest continental mountain range in the world, the famed **Andes Mountains.** Extending from Chile and Argentina northward to Colombia and Venezuela, the Andes split into three chains at the Colombia-Ecuador border.\n\nThe highest mountains in Colombia are within about 40 kilometers of the palm-lined beaches of the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona. This is the **Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,** a mountain chain independent of the Andes, which comprises the world's highest coastal mountains.\n\n\u2022 **Ciudad Perdida:** Take the famed multi-day jungle hike to archeological site Ciudad Perdida (Lost City), high in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.\n\n\u2022 **Sierra Nevada del Cocuy:** Dramatic snowcapped mountains, valleys filled with armies of _frailej\u00f3n_ plants, and crystalline mountain lakes await at the stunning Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. You can spend two or three days day-hiking through the Parque Nacional Natural Cocuy, or the more adventurous can organize a six-day tour.\n\n\u2022 **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados:** Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados, in the Cordillera Central, offers hikers of all abilities the opportunity to explore misty cloud forests and get glimpses of snow-covered volcanoes. Take a day tour to the park from Manizales, a one- or three-day trek toward Laguna del Ot\u00fan from Pereira, or a challenging multi-day trek from Salento to the Nevado del Tolima. Keep your eyes peeled for the iconic Andean condor.\n\n\u2022 **Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9:** In Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9, ambitious hikers can get up at dawn, hike through the tropical forest to the top of Volc\u00e1n del Purac\u00e9, and be back in Popay\u00e1n for dinner.\n\n\u2022 **Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael and Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1:** In the Cordillera Occidental, check out the lesser-visited Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael, a former cattle ranch that has been converted into a nature reserve. Beyond that, there's Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1, where you can see the Pacific Ocean beyond the carpet of green of the Choc\u00f3 rainforest.\n\nthe Ciudad Perdida, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta\n\n\u2022 **Parque Natural Chicaque and Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza:** Within minutes of busy Bogot\u00e1 are various mountain adventures fit for day trips. Parque Natural Chicaque is a private park south of the city. Start your hike in the cold cloud forest, and within minutes the climate and natural surroundings have morphed into tropical hot country. PNN Chingaza is a serene national park of _p\u00e1ramos_ and mountain lakes, and is the source of water for eight million thirsty Bogotanos.\n\n### **The Wild Coasts**\n\nIf you have the time and an adventurous spirit, check out some of Colombia's wildest stretches of coastline, from the rocky Pacific to the Darien to the dry tropical forests of C\u00f3rdoba. Try this itinerary in September or October when the whales are frolicking in the Pacific, the waters are calm in the Caribbean, and the tourists have gone back to work and school.\n\n##### **Caribbean Coast**\n\nThis week-long itinerary takes you to lesser known points along the Caribbean coast. Be prepared to take several modes of transportation in order to get around. If you don't have a full week to spend here, prioritize a visit to Capurgan\u00e1 or Reserva Natural Viento Solar.\n\n###### **DAY 1**\n\nFrom Medell\u00edn, take the hour-long flight to the Darien Gap community of **Capurgan\u00e1.** On the Caribbean side of the isthmus, a horse-drawn taxi will take you to your jungle lodge. Stay at friendly **Caba\u00f1as Darius** or at the honeymoon-worthy **Bah\u00eda Lodge.**\n\n###### **DAY 2**\n\nWalk through the jungle, over the mountain, to the sleepy community of **Sapzurro,** paying no attention to the cacophony of annoyed howler monkeys. Continue on to Panama if you'd like: It's just a 20-minute hike away, on the other side of a steep and muddy hill. At **La Miel** on the Panama side of the border, take a dip in the calm waters.\n\npoison dart frog, Capurgan\u00e1\n\n###### **DAY 3**\n\nSpend the day diving or snorkeling around the reefs off the coastline of Capurgan\u00e1. Enjoy dinner on the beach at **Donde Josefina.**\n\nIf you have more time, contact **Posada del Gecko** to arrange a side trip to Panama's San Blas islands, where you can visit a Guna indigenous village.\n\n###### **DAY 4**\n\nTake a boat to the port of Turbo (or fly to Monter\u00eda) and hop on a bus to **Reserva Natural Viento Solar.** It's a long day of interesting traveling from the Darien, usually involving several modes of transportation. Expect to be on the road and sea for about eight hours.\n\nThis nature reserve is in **tropical dry forest** on the C\u00f3rdoba coast. Take a relaxing walk on the beach in the afternoon.\n\n###### **DAY 5**\n\nWalk through the forest surrounding Reserva Natural Viento Solar and look for impossibly cute _osos perezosos_ (sloths). Snooze in a hammock, then **kayak** in the calm waters before the sun goes down. Spend your last night at the reserve in an open-air **thatched roof hut,** lulled to sleep by the gentle breeze and rolling waves in the distance.\n\n###### **DAY 6**\n\nMake your way to the beach community of **Tol\u00fa,** with a detour to **San Antero.** Have a spectacular meal at **Pesecar,** with an even more spectacular view of Bah\u00eda de Cispat\u00e1 and the mangroves beyond.\n\nTake a mangrove cruise and visit the **Asocaiman** turtle and alligator nature refuge run by local fishers. Continue onwards to Tol\u00fa, where you can take an evening _bici-taxi_ (pedicab) tour of this charming fishing town.\n\n###### **DAY 7**\n\nIf you have more time, set sail to the **Islas de San Bernardo** and spend a night or two at a rustic or extremely swank hotel\u2014your choice! If you're there during the week, you might have your own private island. Otherwise, catch a flight at the Aeropuerto Golfo de Morrosquillo back to Medell\u00edn.\n\n##### **Pacific Coast**\n\nThe Pacific coast is different from the Caribbean side. There are few roads, and the main mode of transportation is by boat. The best way to visit the Pacific is to pick a spot and limit your time to that area. If you make your accommodations arrangements beforehand, your hostel or lodge will pick you up from the airport. Your lodge can also arrange **humpback whale-watching** trips from July to October. Seeing these great creatures is a highlight of any visit to the Pacific.\n\n###### **BAH\u00cdA SOLANO**\n\nThis town at the fringe of the jungle is a great base for any activity. Go diving or sport-fishing, or hike in the jungle or along the beach to crystal-clear swimming holes and waterfalls like the **Cascada Chocolatal.** Or hang out in orderly and walkable Bah\u00eda Solano and experience city life, Pacific style.\n\nSpend a few nights at one of Bah\u00eda Solano's hotels, like **Posada Tur\u00edstica Rocas de Cabo Marzo** or **Posada Tur\u00edstica Hostal del Mar.** The flight to Bah\u00eda Solano from Medell\u00edn takes one hour. You can even walk from the airport to your hotel.\n\n###### **EL VALLE**\n\nEl Valle boasts broad beaches and the fantastic **Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery,** where newborn sea turtles are born and released into the turbulent waters of the Pacific Ocean, as well as unforgettable sunsets over **Playa Almejal.**\n\nsunset on Playa Almejal, El Valle\n\nStay the night at one of the several fantastic beachside lodges and hostels of El Valle, or get to know the cultural life of the people of the Pacific by staying at one of the _posadas nativas_ (guesthouses owned and operated by locals) here, such as **Villa Maga** or **El Nativo.**\n\nGet to El Valle by flying into the Bah\u00eda Solano airport. El Valle is home to one of the few roads in this area, so you can hop on a _colectivo_ to reach your lodge.\n\n###### **NUQU\u00cd**\n\nFive-star eco-lodges, as well as a few economical options, abound on the coastline near Nuqu\u00ed. If you stay at one of the eco-lodges, like **El Cant\u00edl, Morromico,** or **Luna de Miel,** you'll quickly become accustomed to being pampered. Their all-inclusive packages include great seafood dinners, access to remote beaches, guided nature hikes (in search of poisonous frogs!), and day trips to Afro-Colombian villages.\n\nThe flight into Nuqu\u00ed from Medell\u00edn takes 45 minutes.\n\n###### **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL UTR\u00cdA**\n\nThis beautiful **national park** between Nuqu\u00ed and Bah\u00eda Solano is the perfect option for those who want to be surrounded by nature. Take a hike, discover a remote beach, or go swimming. At night, you can hunt for glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, then fall asleep to the sounds of the rainforest.\n\nParque Nacional Utr\u00eda on the Pacific coast\n\nYou can reach PNN Utr\u00eda from either the Bah\u00eda Solano or Nuqu\u00ed airport. Park staff will pick you up.\n\n### **Colonial Towns and Countryside**\n\nGorgeous countryside, historic pueblos and cities, and outdoor adventures: Get a taste of what Bogot\u00e1, Boyac\u00e1, and Santander have to offer.\n\n##### **Days 1-3**\n\nSpend a couple of days in **Bogot\u00e1** wandering the **Candelaria,** the capital city's _centro hist\u00f3rico,_ then visit the **Quinta de Bol\u00edvar,** Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar's old country home. Don't miss the **Cerro de Monserrate,** a pilgrimage site with unsurpassed views of the metropolis. Hike up, then take a ride on the gondola or tram back down.\n\nLearn about Colombia's past from the time of the Muiscas to its shaky years as an independent nation in the city's excellent museums, like the extensive art galleries of the **Colecci\u00f3n de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** and the mesmerizing **Museo del Oro.**\n\nCatedral Primada, La Candelaria district of Bogot\u00e1\n\n##### **Days 4-5**\n\nAfter setting off from Bogot\u00e1, make your way to **Tunja,** a three-hour bus ride. Tunja is a city of spectacular **colonial churches.** Spend a few hours checking them out, then head on to the nearby colonial town of **Villa de Leyva,** one of the country's most beautiful and well-preserved pueblos, just 45 minutes away.\n\nVilla de Leyva's charm is in its quiet atmosphere and lovely whitewashed colonial architecture. The **Plaza Mayor** is the top place to experience both. In the countryside nearby, check out the **Santuario Fauna y Flora Iguaque** for a half-day hike to Laguna Iguaque, which was sacred to the Muiscas. In the adjacent arid deserts, visit the lovely **Convento del Santo Ecce Homo.**\n\n##### **Day 6**\n\nTake a bus to **R\u00e1quira** and spend the day visiting the **Convento de la Candelaria,** just outside of town. Tour the complex, then head back to town to shop for handicrafts, like the city's famous clay pots.\n\n##### **Day 7**\n\nToday is a travel day. Return to Tunja to catch a bus bound for **Barichara,** which is Villa de Leyva's rival for most beautiful pueblo. Judge for yourself as you walk the stone streets of this old tobacco town in the department of Santander.\n\nStroll the famous **Camino Real** to the indigenous village of **Guane** and return to Barichara in time for the spectacular sunset. Stay at the **Color de Hormiga Hostel** and wake up to the chirping of cheerful, amazingly colorful birds.\n\n##### **Day 8**\n\nBarichara makes a great base for all sorts of outdoor adventures in and around San Gil. Spend a day hiking to waterfalls, rafting, splashing in swimming holes, or caving. Have dinner at **Gringo Mike's** in San Gil. Stay in Barichara unless you want to be in the middle of the action of San Gil.\n\n##### **Days 9-11**\n\nHead north to **Bucaramanga.** On the way there, visit the **Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha** and be blown away by the views. It's a 1.5-hour trip to the canyon.\n\nvivid green hills near Bucaramanga\n\nOnce you make it to Bucaramanga, chat up other world travelers in town at the **Kasa Guane.** If charm is what you seek, head to the colonial district of nearby Gir\u00f3n, checking in at the **Gir\u00f3n Chill Out Hotel Boutique** and strolling the town's old streets in the evening.\n\nOn your last morning in the area, cap things off by paragliding at **Mesa de Ruitoque** outside of Bucaramanga. If soaring above the green valleys is too much action, visit the beautiful **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Eloy Valenzuela** in **Floridablanca** and munch on a sweet _oblea_ (wafer) in the town center afterward.\n\nFrom the Bucaramanga airport, catch a flight back to Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **Excursion to El Cocuy**\n\nGot more time and need some mountains to conquer? You can get to the **Sierra Nevada del Cocuy** by land directly from Tunja or from Bucaramanga, going through the highland university town of **Pamplona.** Add at least four more days for this option.\n\n## **BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nHISTORY\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nSAFETY\n\nORIENTATION\n\nSights\n\nLA CANDELARIA\n\nAVENIDA JIM\u00c9NEZ\n\nCENTRO INTERNACIONAL\n\nWESTERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nNORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nSOUTHERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nEntertainment and Events\n\nNIGHTLIFE\n\nPERFORMING ARTS\n\nFESTIVALS AND EVENTS\n\nShopping\n\nHANDICRAFTS\n\nCLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES\n\nANTIQUES\n\nFLOWERS AND MARKETS\n\nJEWELRY\n\nBOOKS\n\nSHOPPING MALLS\n\nSports and Recreation\n\nBIKING\n\nRUNNING\n\nHIKING\n\nSOCCER\n\nTOURS\n\nAccommodations\n\nLA CANDELARIA\n\nCENTRO INTERNACIONAL\n\nWESTERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nCHAPINERO\n\nNORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nFood\n\nLA CANDELARIA\n\nAVENIDA JIM\u00c9NEZ\n\nCENTRO INTERNATIONAL\n\nCHAPINERO\n\nNORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1\n\nInformation and Services\n\nVISITOR INFORMATION\n\nTELEPHONES\n\nPOST OFFICES AND COURIER SERVICES\n\nINTERNET CAF\u00c9S\n\nNEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES\n\nSPANISH LANGUAGE COURSES\n\nMONEY\n\nVISAS AND OFFICIALDOM\n\nHEALTH\n\nLAUNDRY\n\nGetting There\n\nBY AIR\n\nBY BUS\n\nGetting Around\n\nTRANSMILENIO\n\nPRIVATE BUSES\n\nTAXIS\n\nWALKING\n\nBIKING\n\nCAR RENTAL\n\nVicinity of Bogot\u00e1\n\nTENJO\n\nZIPAQUIR\u00c1 AND VICINITY\n\nLAGUNA DE GUATAVITA AND VICINITY\n\nPARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL CHINGAZA\n\nSUESCA\n\nSOUTH AND WEST OF BOGOT\u00c1\n\nBusy Bogot\u00e1 is Colombia's cool capital\u2014and not just in terms of its famously chilly nights. A few years ago, visitors would arrive at the El Dorado airport and spend two days maximum in the Andean metropolis before taking the next flight to Cartagena. Now people are staying awhile, and it's easy to see why.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar:** Colombia's most important and most photographed plaza is named for Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, the man who gave the country independence (click here).\n\nM **Iglesia Museo Santa Clara:** This stunning colonial-era church is decorated in the Mudejar style (click here).\n\nM **Manzana Cultural:** Colombia's tumultuous history has given rise to some noteworthy creative expression that is on display in the art museums of the city's cultural block (click here).\n\nM **Museo del Oro:** Anthropology, history, and art combine in this extraordinary presentation of pre-Columbian gold artifacts (click here).\n\nM **Cerro de Monserrate:** The views atop this hill are incredible both by day and by night (click here).\n\nM **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico:** Countless shades of green are on display in this lovely park minutes from downtown (click here).\n\nM **Ciclov\u00eda:** When a city can get a quarter of its population to get out and ride a bike on a Sunday, you know it's doing something right (click here).\n\nM **Nemoc\u00f3n:** The plaza and streets of this little-visited salt-mining town are full of charm (click here).\n\nM **Laguna de Guatavita:** This sacred lake is the source of the El Dorado myth (click here).\n\nM **Parque Natural Chicaque:** Minutes from La Candelaria, the cloud forests of this park seem miles away from everything (click here).\n\nThere is the Museo del Oro, of course, undoubtedly one of the best museums in Latin America. There are precious few reminders of the Muisca settlement of Bacat\u00e1 in this vast concrete jungle of today, but this museum is a stellar tribute to a people who all but disappeared within decades of the Spanish conquest.\n\nThen there is the living museum that is the historic district, La Candelaria. Every street block has its unique story to tell: the flower vase that changed history, the loyal companion who saved the Liberator's neck, the generosity of a famous painter. Colonial churches surprise with their quiet, steadfast beauty, and grandiose buildings along the Avenida Jim\u00e9nez stand as testament to the aspirations of the \"Athens of South America.\" Red buses, glitzy shopping areas, and stunning libraries set in manicured parks are proof that Bogot\u00e1 can, with a little investment and good government, overcome the formidable challenges of its recent past.\n\nA melting pot of nearly eight million, Bogot\u00e1 is home to Colombians from every corner of the country who come to study, seek opportunity, or crave the freedom and anonymity that this sprawling city of eight million offers. It shouldn't come as a surprise that it is the country's culinary and cultural capital as well. This is the place to enjoy nouvelle Colombian cuisine, with flavors from the two coasts at a host of innovative restaurants. It's the place where there is always something going on\u2014a massive theater festival, a symphony concert, a dance marathon courtesy of a big-name DJ, a gallery opening\u2014it's just a matter of finding out when and where. Bogotanos' reputation for being gloomy and cerebral is unfair. You only need to experience the sheer _alegr\u00eda_ (joyfulness) of Andr\u00e9s Carne de Res one weekend night for proof.\n\nWhen the sensory overload and intensity of this over-caffeinated city becomes too much, the _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors), cloud forests, and mountain lakes of extraordinary natural parks beckon. Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza, Parque Natural Chicaque, and Laguna de Guatavita are all only about an hour away.\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nAs early as AD 300, the Muisca people settled along the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Mountain Range) of the Andes Mountains, forming a loose confederation. Bacat\u00e1 (now Bogot\u00e1) was the seat of the Zipa, head of the southern confederation. The Muiscas had an agricultural economy but also extracted salt and emeralds, wove fine textiles, and actively traded for cotton, shells, and gold with other indigenous peoples. The names of many of their settlements\u2014Ch\u00eda, Suba, Engativ\u00e1\u2014survive, though no physical traces remain.\n\nLured by tales of riches, three European armies converged on Muisca territory in 1538. An army headed by Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada arrived from Santa Marta. Another army, headed by Spaniard Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar, arrived from the south. A third army, led by German expeditionary Nikolaus Federmann, arrived from present-day Venezuela.\n\nBy the time Federmann and Belalc\u00e1zar arrived, Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada had plundered the Muisca lands and had founded, in August 1538, a settlement that he named Santa Fe de Bogot\u00e1 del Nuevo Reino de Granada de las Indias del Mar. In the late 17th century, the population was less than 15,000 inhabitants. European diseases had almost completely wiped out the Muisca population. Marriages between Muiscas and the Spanish formed the _mestizo_ base of the city.\n\nThe city was the seat of the first provisional government established after Colombia's declaration of independence in 1810. In 1819, the name of the city was changed to Bogot\u00e1, and it became capital of the newly formed Gran Colombia. The city was not connected by railroad to the outside world until the end of the 19th century\u2014and then only to Girardot, a port on the R\u00edo Magdalena.\n\nThe early decades of the 20th century were a period of growth and prosperity. The post-war period was a time of rapid, haphazard development that saw the establishment of many new industries. Much of the growth was unplanned, and sprawling slums developed, especially in the south of the city.\n\nBy the 1990s, Bogot\u00e1 had become synonymous with poverty, crime, and urban sprawl. A series of mayors, including Enrique Pe\u00f1alosa and Antanas Mockus, transformed the city. Pe\u00f1alosa undertook large projects such as the TransMilenio rapid bus system, reclaimed public space, and invested heavily in education and basic services. Mockus worked to improve security and increase civic consciousness. Between 1995 and 2003, the city transformed itself.\n\nDespite all its challenges Bogot\u00e1 continues to be the economic, cultural, and educational powerhouse of Colombia. The city is a magnet for people from all over Colombia and, in recent years, even from abroad. Today Bogot\u00e1 ranks as the fifth largest city in South America.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nAt the minimum, give Bogot\u00e1 two days. In that short time span, you can cover La Candelaria, head up to Monserrate, discover the Museo del Oro, and enjoy some good meals in the Zona T, Zona G, or the Macarena.\n\nWith about five days you can explore neighborhoods like the Macarena, check out the botanical gardens, or make a day trip to the Parque Natural Chicaque or to the Laguna de Guatavita. If you're here over a Sunday, you'll absolutely have to head out to the Ciclov\u00eda.\n\nIf you are staying in Colombia for 10 days, you can try a city-country combo by adding Villa de Leyva. Or make it a city-coast combo, adding a Caribbean Coast destination such as Cartagena or Santa Marta.\n\nMany museums are closed on either Monday or Tuesday. The Museo del Oro is closed Mondays and the art museums of the Manzana Cultural are closed Tuesdays. During the end-of-year holidays and Holy Week (Semana Santa), Bogot\u00e1 becomes a ghost town as locals head for the countryside, the coast, or abroad. There is very little traffic at those times, but many restaurants are closed and nightspots are empty, especially around Christmas. Bogot\u00e1 is a particularly dull place to be on New Year's Eve. Semana Santa is perhaps less lonely and can be a good time to visit, especially when the biennial theater festival is on. On long weekends, many Bogotanos skip town; those from the provinces come for a visit.\n\n#### **SAFETY**\n\nBogot\u00e1 is much safer than it once was, but it is no Copenhagen. The best advice is to, as Colombians would say, _\"no dar papaya.\"_ Literally, that translates to \"don't give any papayas.\" Don't hand someone the opportunity to take advantage of you.\n\nWhile strolling in La Candelaria, keep a watchful eye on cameras and other gadgets. Better yet, leave valuables\u2014including passports\u2014locked away in the hotel safe if possible. Private security guards and police now regularly patrol La Candelaria at night, although it may feel a little spooky after 10 or 11 at night.\n\nYou will often come across homeless people or those who claim to be displaced. Most\u2014but not all\u2014of these people are harmless. While ample social services do exist in the city, many of the city's destitute do not have the wherewithal to access them. When street people ask for money, you may want to have some spare change, a bottle of water, or leftover food to give out (but only if you do not feel threatened in any way).\n\nTraveling by the city's SITP buses is safe and comfortable. The red TransMilenio buses can get crowded, so be aware of pickpockets. Private buses and _colectivos_ are less safe and drivers can be reckless.\n\nBogot\u00e1 has had a serious problem with taxi crime, commonly known as _paseo milonario._ But recent technological advances have made a noticeable dent in these crimes. Tappsi, a popular and free smartphone app, is indispensable. With this app, you can request a cab, find out the name of the driver, and have your trip tracked by a friend. Alternatively, you can order a cab over the phone. Avoid hailing cabs off the street, particularly when you are alone, when it is late at night, and near nightclubs and upscale dining areas.\n\nIf you are heading out for a night on the town, do not accept drinks from strangers. Leave credit\/debit cards, your passport, and expensive cell phones at home.\n\nDuring an emergency, call 123 from any phone.\n\n#### **ORIENTATION**\n\nSprawling Bogot\u00e1 covers some 1,776 square kilometers (686 square miles), filling a large part of the _altiplano_ (high plateau) or savannah of Bogot\u00e1. In all likelihood, much of your time will be spent along the corridor that is the **Carrera** or **Avenida 7** (most often called the **S\u00e9ptima** ). The S\u00e9ptima extends, parallel to the eastern mountains, from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar in La Candelaria through the Centro Internacional, Chapinero, and northern neighborhoods to Usaqu\u00e9n and beyond.\n\n**La Candelaria** is the oldest part of town, dating to the 16th century. With the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar at its heart, it is a neighborhood full of historic buildings, interesting museums, and hostels.\n\nAdjacent to La Candelaria is **Avenida Jim\u00e9nez,** also known as the \"Eje Ambiental.\" This is a pedestrian street that is shared with TransMilenio. In addition to being the home of the Museo del Oro, colonial churches, the Quinta de Bol\u00edvar, and Monserrate, the area is also known for its grand early-20th-century architecture.\n\nnorthern Bogot\u00e1\n\nFarther north is the **Centro Internacional.** Major banks have their headquarters in this part of town, and two major museums\u2014the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogot\u00e1 and the Museo Nacional\u2014are two of the major tourist attractions in the neighborhood.\n\nJust above the bullfighting ring and the iconic Torres del Parque complex is the quirky neighborhood of the **Macarena,** full of art galleries and cozy restaurants. The popular Parque Nacional marks the end of this area that is often considered **downtown.**\n\nThe Distrito Capital of Bogot\u00e1 comprises 20 _localidades_ (official neighborhoods), each with its own local mayor and neighborhood council. **Chapinero** is one of the largest ones along the Carrera 7 (S\u00e9ptima) corridor. It extends to Calle 100, but most people consider Chapinero to include the neighborhoods from around Calle 45 to about Calle 72. Below the S\u00e9ptima is a gritty commerce center that is also considered the center of gay nightlife. There are no major sights of interest in Chapinero.\n\nChauffeured SUVs whizzing by and bodyguards lingering about on the street are tell-tale signs that you have arrived in the swanky northern neighborhoods. The **Zona G,** between Calles 69 and 70 above the S\u00e9ptima; the **Zona Rosa,** between Calles 81 and 85 and Carreras 11 and 15; and the **Parque de la 93** area, between Calles 91 and 94 and also between Carreras 11 and 15, are home to excellent restaurants, famous nightspots, glitzy malls, and fancy hotels. It is the center of hedonism in Bogot\u00e1. Finally, above the S\u00e9ptima between Calles 120 and 125 is **Usaqu\u00e9n,** a sleepy pueblo that has been swallowed by big Bogot\u00e1. Usaqu\u00e9n is becoming a trendy restaurant area and is also known for its Sunday flea market.\n\nIf you look at a map of Bogot\u00e1 you will realize that this corridor from La Candelaria to Usaqu\u00e9n is a tiny sliver of this massive city. West of the S\u00e9ptima and in the center of Bogot\u00e1 is the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, along with the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico and the Biblioteca Virgilio Barco. These are wonderful green spaces worth checking out on sunny days. These sights are not far from the Avenida El Dorado (Calle 26), which connects the El Dorado airport with downtown. In addition to its new TransMilenio line, this nicely designed thoroughfare is lined with hotels, shopping centers, and the fortress-like U.S. Embassy.\n\n**Southern Bogot\u00e1** includes massive working-class and poor neighborhoods. Sights are few and far between. The Santuario del 20 de Julio and Paloqueamo market are worth visiting and are just a few minutes south of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. In the huge _localidad_ of Kennedy (named in honor of President John F. Kennedy, who visited the area while announcing infrastructure aid in 1961) is the fantastic Biblioteca Tintal public library. The Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo is in the _localidad_ of Suba in the northwest of the city. Its stunning theater hosts concerts and dance performances from internationally renowned artists.\n\nBogot\u00e1 street addresses are generally easy to figure out. _Calles_ (streets) run east-west (perpendicular to the mountains), while _carreras_ go north-south (parallel to the mountains). For example, the Museo del Oro address is Calle 16 No. 5-41. This means it is on Calle 16, 41 meters from Carrera 5. The Centro Andino shopping mall is at Carrera 11 No. 82-71, or on Carrera 11, 71 meters from Calle 82. The higher the number of the _calle_ goes, the farther north you are. Similarly, the higher the number of the _carrera_ , the farther west you go.\n\nPerhaps because the _calle_ and _carrera_ system was a little too logical, the city planners have also created _avenidas_ (avenues), _diagonales,_ and _transversales._ Both _diagonales_ and _transversales_ are streets on the diagonal. To add to the fun, some _calles_ are also called _avenida calles,_ and likewise there are some called _avenida carrera._ Just ignore the _avenida_ part of the name. Avenida Calle 26 is also known as the Avenida El Dorado. Carrera 30 (which goes past the Estadio El Camp\u00edn) is also known as the Avenida Quito or NQS. Lastly, there are some streets that are called _bis,_ as in Calle 70A _bis_ or Carrera 13 _bis_. It's like an extra little street. Finally, addresses in the south of Bogot\u00e1 have _sur_ (south) in their address. The address for the 20 de Julio shrine is Calle 27 Sur No. 5A-27.\n\n### **Sights**\n\nEverything you need to see in Bogot\u00e1 is downtown, from La Candelaria to the Centro Internacional. Most museums have at least limited English explanations, and some have English-language tours. Photography is allowed at most sights, although the military police guarding the Casa de Nari\u00f1o are sensitive about photography. Some churches and shopping centers may prohibit you from taking photos.\n\n#### **LA CANDELARIA**\n\nLa Candelaria is a living museum. It is a reminder of Spanish power and ambition in the New World; a tribute to the yearning for freedom embodied by Colombia's founding fathers; and a reflection on the tenacity of the independent Colombian republic to persevere in the face of adversity. La Candelaria is a bustling place and has been for centuries. These days, university students, government bureaucrats, tourists, and old-timers who have lived in the area for decades pass each other along the narrow streets and frequent the same caf\u00e9s.\n\nYou could spend a couple of days admiring the colonial churches and exploring the many museums in the area, but if you don't have that much time, three or four hours will give you a good sense of the area and its significance. All of the sights in La Candelaria are easily and best visited on foot. Areas above the Chorro de Quevedo (toward the eastern mountains), as well as some parts to the west, bordering the Avenida Caracas, can be a little sketchy and should be avoided.\n\n##### M **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar**\n\nEvery respectable Colombian city has a Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, but none have quite the history as this one. Between Carreras 7-8 and Calles 10-11, the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** is the natural starting point for any tour of La Candelaria. Originally known as the Plaza Mayor, the plaza has had several reincarnations during its history. In colonial times, it was where the Friday market took place. It was also the setting for executions, including that of independence heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta (whose picture graces the $10,000 peso bill). Following the death of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, Congress renamed the plaza in his honor in 1846. A diminutive statue of the \"Liberator,\" the first of many Bol\u00edvar statues in the world, stands in the middle of the plaza. Today the plaza is home to political demonstrations, inauguration ceremonies for the Bogot\u00e1 mayor, and concerts.\n\n###### **CATEDRAL PRIMADA AND CAPILLA SAGRARIO**\n\nThe neoclassical facade of the **Catedral Primada** (mass noon Tues.-Sat., 10:30am, noon, and 1:30pm Sun.) dominates the plaza. It was built in 1807, and this is the fourth cathedral built on that same site. The tombs of Gonzalo Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada, founder of Bogot\u00e1, and independence figure Antonio Nari\u00f1o are in a side chapel on the right.\n\nNext door to the cathedral is the **Capilla El Sagrario** (Cra. 7 No. 10-40, mass 7:30am and 5pm Mon.-Fri., 5pm Sun.). This chapel was built much earlier than the cathedral, in the 1600s, and is considered to be an excellent example of Santa Fe (as Bogot\u00e1 was known) architecture. The interior is decorated with a Mudejar or Moorish-style vaulted wooden ceiling. Along the sides of the cross-shaped chapel are several large works depicting biblical scenes by Colombian baroque painter Gregorio V\u00e1squez de Arce y Ceballos. A ceremony was held here to honor the army and Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar following their decisive victory over the Spaniards at the Battle of Boyac\u00e1 in 1819.\n\nthe Presidential Guard\n\n###### **CASA DEL FLORERO**\n\nAcross Calle 10 on the northeast corner of the plaza is the **Casa del Florero** (Cra. 7 No. 11-28, tel. 1\/334-4150, 9am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-4pm Sat.-Sun, COP$3,000), also known as the **Museo del 20 de Julio** or **Museo de la Independencia.** This small house used to be a general store run by a Spaniard, Jos\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez-Llorente. The story goes that his refusal to lend a vase to a pair of Creoles sparked the ire of either incredibly sensitive or cunning locals, who launched a protest during the busy market day against Spanish rule. Historians today dispute much of the tale, but the shattered remains of that colorful vase are exhibited today in the museum. Maybe the most interesting exhibit in the museum is a room that shows the transformation of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar over time, with raw footage of two of the most traumatic events in recent Colombian history: the Bogotazo riots following the assassination of Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n in 1948 and the siege of the Palacio de Justicia following a takeover by the M-19 guerrilla group in 1985. A free guided tour in English is given every Wednesday at 3pm.\n\n###### **GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS**\n\nThe newest building on the plaza, completed in 1991, is the **Palacio de Justicia** on the north side. Housing the Supreme Court and other high courts, this building replaced the previous one, which was destroyed following the tragic events of 1985. (That building had replaced a previous justice building that was burned to the ground during the Bogotazo.) On November 6, 1985, M-19 guerrillas stormed the building, perhaps in cahoots with infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, killing several justices and holding some 350 people in the building hostage. After hours of stand-off, the military counterattacked, coordinating their assault from the Casa del Florero. The fight concluded the next day with the building engulfed in flames, result of a military rocket. More than 100 people were killed. Controversy remains even today about the tragedy and the government's actions. Several victims\u2014mostly workers in the cafeteria\u2014were seen being escorted to safety, never to be found again. Five years later the M-19 demobilized, becoming a political movement. Today, it is telling that there is not even a plaque mentioning the tragedy. Nevertheless, clearly some wounds have healed: former M-19 guerrilla Gustavo Petro was elected mayor in 2011, with his office ( _alcald\u00eda_ ) in the **Palacio Li\u00e9viano** on the west side of the plaza.\n\nOn the south side of the square is the neoclassical **Capitolio Nacional,** home of the bicameral Colombian Congress. Designed by architect Thomas Reed, the Capitolio took over 70 years to build, finally being completed in 1926. Gargoyles keep watch atop the building behind the Ionic columns of the front. For about two months in 2009 the entire facade was covered with 1,300 massive ants, a project of Colombian artist Rafael G\u00f3mezbarros. The work was a commentary on forced displacement resulting from Colombia's armed conflict.\n\n##### **West of the Plaza**\n\n###### **ESCUELA DE ARTES Y OFICIOS DE SANTO DOMINGO**\n\nOne of the best trade schools in Latin America for woodworking, embroidery, silversmithing, and leatherworking is the **Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Santo Domingo** (Cl. 10 No. 8-73, tel. 1\/282-0534, www.eaosd.org, 9am-5pm Mon.-Fri., free). Attracting students and teachers from around the world, this school is supported by the Fundaci\u00f3n Mario Santo Domingo. A brief tour of the school is possible (call ahead to arrange). You will notice a warm and collegial atmosphere at the school, where some 600 students are enrolled. If you are staying in Bogot\u00e1 for a while, you can inquire about taking a class. The school is housed in two lovely colonial buildings from the 1600s that are connected by a courtyard. A store\u2014which could be mistaken for a small design museum\u2014sells a limited number of items made by students. Many more are sold at the annual Feria de Artesan\u00edas in December.\n\n###### **IGLESIA DE LA CONCEPCI\u00d3N**\n\nThe **Iglesia de la Concepci\u00f3n** (Cl.10 No. 9-50, 7am-5pm daily) was completed in 1595, making it the second oldest church in the city. Along with a convent, it used to take up an entire block of old Santa Fe. The convent (which no longer exists) was built for the daughters and granddaughters of the conquistadors. The spectacular geometric designs on the ceiling and the polychromatic presbytery are among the most striking aspects of the church. If you pop in, you will no doubt see many faithful\u2014most of humble means\u2014in the pews, in silent meditation. This city block is called the Calle del Divorcio. This refers to a nearby residence for separated or single women who were not allowed into convents and could not live in their family's home.\n\nFarther down the street beyond the Iglesia de la Concepci\u00f3n is the historic labyrinthine artisans market known as the **Pasaje Rivas.**\n\n###### **MUSEO DE LA POLIC\u00cdA NACIONAL**\n\nThe grandiose Palacio de la Polic\u00eda, built in the early 20th century, was once the headquarters for the national police and today is home to the **Museo de la Polic\u00eda Nacional** (Cl. 9 No. 9-27, tel. 1\/233-5911, 8am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sun., free). Obligatory tours are given by knowledgeable and friendly cadets who are fulfilling their one-year public service obligation. The museum does have its fair share of guns, but there are also exhibits on different technologies employed by police in pursuit of the bad guys, along with tributes to police dogs. If you go up to the rooftop, you can get a unique view of the city. In the streets around the museum are dozens of shops selling police and military uniforms. Here you can pick up an official \"Polic\u00eda\" baseball cap, but it wouldn't be a good idea to wear it while in Colombia.\n\n###### M **IGLESIA MUSEO SANTA CLARA**\n\nIt is easy to pass by the stone exterior of the **Iglesia Museo Santa Clara** (Cra. 8 No. 8-91, tel. 1\/337-6262, www.museoiglesiasantaclara.gov.co, 9am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-4pm Sat.-Sun., adults COP$3,000), but that would be a shame, as this is one of the most beautiful sights in Bogot\u00e1. Once part of a convent, the little church is an extraordinary example of Mudejar style in Santa Fe. This convent for barefoot Franciscan nuns known as the Clarisas was completed in 1647. It originally housed 12 nuns, who were descendants of conquistadors, and 12 Creole maidens. Perhaps the most stunning aspect design-wise can be admired by craning your neck and looking up: The single nave is beautifully illuminated by hundreds of golden floral motifs. The church is now strictly a museum; it often hosts edgy contemporary art exhibitions. Admission is free on Sundays.\n\nGolden floral motifs adorn the nave at the Iglesia Museo Santa Clara.\n\n##### **South of the Plaza**\n\n###### **CASA DE NARI\u00d1O**\n\nYou can have your picture taken with members of the Presidential Guard (they don't mind) at the gates of the neoclassical **Casa de Nari\u00f1o** (Cra. 8 No. 6-26, www.presidencia.gov.co), home to Colombia's presidents. As is suggested by its name, the presidential palace stands on the site of the birth house of Antonio Nari\u00f1o, who was one of the early voices for independence in New Granada, which was how the Spaniards named the territory. In 1906 Nari\u00f1o's house was razed to make way for the first presidential palace, which was designed by the same French architect who designed the Palacio Li\u00e9vano on the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. The palace has served as home for Colombian presidents off and on since 1886. Minutes after the 2002 inauguration of President \u00c1lvaro Uribe, the exterior of the palace was slightly damaged by missiles fired from FARC guerrillas. Several missiles landed on humble homes in slums nearby, killing 13.\n\nTours are given of the Casa de Nari\u00f1o, but you must make a reservation several days in advance. For more information on taking the tour visit the website. Even if you don't visit the interior of the palace, you can watch the changing of the Presidential Guard on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday at 4pm.\n\nAlso on the grounds of the Casa de Nari\u00f1o is the oldest **astronomical observatory** in the New World. This was the initiative of famed botanist and scientist Jos\u00e9 Celestino Mutis. It was completed in 1803. You can inquire about tours conducted by the Universidad Nacional at the Claustro de San Agust\u00edn.\n\n###### **IGLESIA AND CLAUSTRO DE SAN AGUST\u00cdN**\n\nFacing the palace, the **Iglesia de San Agust\u00edn** (Cra. 7 No. 7-13, 9am-5pm Mon.-Sun.) was part of the first Augustinian monastery in the Spanish New World, completed in 1668. The Franciscans and Dominicans beat the Augustinians to the punch in Santa Fe, relegating them to the far extremes of Santa Fe. It is a three-nave temple, which distinguished it from other churches at the time. San Agust\u00edn has seen its share of drama over the years. An earthquake destroyed the two towers in 1785 (they rebuilt just one). In 1861 in the midst of liberal reforms, the government took control of the church from the Augustinians. The next year the church was the scene of a presidential coup attempt during the Battle of San Agust\u00edn, as Conservatives attacked Liberals who were holed up in the church and adjacent monastery (which no longer stands). The church suffered damage yet again during the Bogotazo riots. The **Claustro de San Agust\u00edn** (Cra. 8 No. 7-21, tel. 1\/342-2340, 9am-5pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-4pm Sun., free) didn't serve long as a seminary, and in fact was used as a garrison in which Antonio Nari\u00f1o was imprisoned. During the Bogotazo rampage in 1948, international delegates in town for the 9th Pan-American Conference sought shelter from the mayhem there. Today this beautiful cloister is run by the Universidad Nacional, which puts on temporary art exhibits and hosts educational activities.\n\n###### **MUSEO ARQUEOL\u00d3GICO**\n\nThe **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico** (Cra. 6 No. 7-43, tel. 1\/243-0465, www.musarq.org.co, 8:30am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-4pm Sat., COP$3,000) holds an extensive and nicely presented collection of ceramic work of pre-Columbian indigenous peoples. In addition there is a room on colonial-era decorative arts, in acknowledgement of the history of this 17th-century home of a Spanish marquis. A small caf\u00e9 adjoins the museum.\n\n##### **East of the Plaza**\n\n###### **MANZANA JESU\u00cdTICA**\n\nThree important colonial buildings make up the **Manzana Jesu\u00edtica** (Jesuit Block). In the early 17th century, the Compa\u00f1\u00eda de Jes\u00fas, a group of Jesuit priests arriving from Cartagena, was given permission by the Spanish ruling authority to build a church and school on the southeastern side of the Plaza Mayor (later to become the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar). As part of its commitment to social justice and to education, the cloister of the **Colegio Mayor de San Bartolom\u00e9** (Cra. 7 No. 9-96, tel. 1\/44-2530, closed to the public) was founded in 1604. The facade of the school was completed in the early 20th century and is considered an excellent example of Republican architecture. It has been in operation continuously since that year and is the oldest school in Colombia. Important figures in the Colombian independence struggle, such as Antonio Nari\u00f1o and Francisco de Paula Santander were students at the school. **Iglesia de San Ignacio,** a church dedicated to the founder of the Jesuit order, was completed in 1643. The church has undergone a massive renovation for years, with the large cupola being restored, the roof above the nave being redone (it was on the verge of collapse), and meticulous restoration of the baroque interior, which includes paintings by many famous painters from the colonial era.\n\nWell worth a visit, the **Museo Colonial** (Cra. 6 No. 9-77, tel. 1\/341-6017, www.museocolonial.gov.co, 9am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-4pm Sat.-Sun., COP$3,000) showcases a fine collection of art and religious artifacts from the colonial era, including the largest collection of works by Gregorio V\u00e1squez de Arce y Ceballos. On the bottom floor is an exhibit that explores life in colonial times. The museum courtyard is quiet and green. Admission is free on Sundays.\n\n###### **TEATRO COL\u00d3N**\n\nInspired by the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, the **Teatro Col\u00f3n** (Cl. 10 No. 5-62, tel. 1\/284-7420) was designed by Pietro Cantini to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the New World. Tours of the theater have not been offered during the long restoration of the theater, but you can call or stop by and inquire about these. The best way of visiting the theater, of course, is to see a performance there.\n\n###### **PALACIO DE SAN CARLOS**\n\nToday housing the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the colonial-era **Palacio de San Carlos** (Cl. 10 No. 5-51, closed to the public) was the home of Colombian presidents from 1825 until 1908. During the Bol\u00edvar dictatorship and the turbulent Gran Colombia period, Bol\u00edvar's companion Manuela S\u00e1enz earned the nickname \"Liberator of the Liberator\" for helping him escape through a palace window\u2014saving him from an 1828 assassination attempt. A plaque marking the exact spot draws the curiosity of passersby today.\n\n###### **MUSEUMS**\n\nThe **Museo de Trajes Regionales** (Cl. 10 No. 6-18, tel. 1\/341-0403, www.museodetrajesregionales.com, 9am-4pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-2pm Sat., COP$3,000), which showcases traditional costumes from the different regions of Colombia, is best known for being the home of Manuela S\u00e1enz, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar's companion. The museum is next door to the **Plaza de Cuervo,** a tropical patio in the middle of historic Bogot\u00e1. Behind the elegant palm trees is the house where Antonio Nari\u00f1o is said to have translated the Declaration of the Rights of Man from French into Spanish in 1793. After making about 100 copies of it for distribution to rouse the masses, he became nervous and started to furiously destroy them. (He got busted by the Spanish authorities anyway.)\n\nThe **Museo Militar** (Cl. 10 No. 4-92, tel. 1\/281-3086, 9am-4pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-4pm Sat.-Sun., free, must present identification) is in a 17th-century house that was home to independence hero Capt. Antonio Ricaurte. Dozens of mannequins dressed in Colombian military uniforms keep you company as you wander the corridors of this museum. One room is dedicated to Colombia's participation in the Korean War. Over 4,300 Colombians fought in the war waged nearly 15,000 kilometers away, with 163 losing their lives. Colombia was the only country in Latin America to send troops in support of the United Nations\/United States coalition. Two patios are filled with cannons, tanks, and fighter jets.\n\nThe **Museo de Bogot\u00e1** (Cra. 4 No. 10-18, tel. 1\/352-1864, www.museodebogota.gov.co, 9am-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-4:30pm Sat.-Sun., free) may be of special interest to city planner types. A permanent exhibition examines the development of Bogot\u00e1 through the years, and temporary shows have highlighted photography, historic figures in the city, and profiles of neighborhoods in the metropolis.\n\n##### M **Manzana Cultural**\n\nThe **Manzana Cultural** (Cl. 11 No. 4-41) of the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica is a \"Cultural Block\" (not Cultural Apple) that comprises the Biblioteca Luis \u00c1ngel Arango, the library's concert hall, the Museo Botero, the Museo de Arte, the Colecci\u00f3n de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica, and the Casa de la Moneda. Without a doubt it is one of the most important addresses for visual arts in Colombia\u2014and a required stop on any visit to Bogot\u00e1.\n\n###### **BIBLIOTECA LUIS \u00c1NGEL ARANGO**\n\nThe **Biblioteca Luis \u00c1ngel Arango** (Cl. 11 No. 4-14, tel. 1\/343-1224, www.banrepcultural.org, 8am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 8am-4pm Sun.) is reportedly one of the busiest libraries in the world, with over 5,000 visitors each day. Part of the same complex and located behind the library, the **Casa Republicana** (8am-8pm Mon.-Sat. and 8am-4pm Sun., free) often hosts temporary art exhibits. There is also a beautiful chamber music concert hall in the large complex.\n\n###### **COLECCI\u00d3N DE ARTE DEL BANCO DE LA REP\u00daBLICA**\n\nWith 14 galleries highlighting Colombian art from the 17th century to present day, the **Colecci\u00f3n de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cl. 11 No. 4-41, tel. 1\/343-1316, www.banrepcultural.org, 9am-7pm Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., free) is an excellent opportunity to discover Colombian art. Look for the series of \"dead nuns.\" It was customary to paint nuns twice in their lifetimes: once when they entered the convent and once more moments after passing away. The nuns from this particular series lived at the nearby convent of the Iglesia de la Concepci\u00f3n.\n\nAnother highlight is the spectacular\u2014if a tad on the gaudy side\u2014 _La Lechuga_ monstrance (a monstrance is a receptacle to hold the Host). It's called _La Lechuga,_ meaning lettuce, because of its 1,486 sparkling emeralds, but it is also adorned by hundreds of diamonds, rubies, amethysts, and pearls. The Spaniard who created this extraordinary piece charged the Jesuits the equivalent of a cool US$2 million when he finished it in 1707. Hidden away in a vault for over 200 years, it was acquired by the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica in 1987 for US$3.5 million.\n\ncourtyard at the Casa de la Moneda\n\nNineteenth-century landscapes, portraits by impressionist and Bogot\u00e1 native Andr\u00e9s Santa Mar\u00eda, and works from an array of well-known Colombian artists from the 20th century (including Alejandro Obreg\u00f3n, Eduardo Ram\u00edrez, Guillermo Wiedemann, and Luis Caballero) are other museum highlights. Free guided tours in Spanish are offered several times a day.\n\n###### **MUSEO DE ARTE DEL BANCO DE LA REP\u00daBLICA**\n\nBehind the Colecci\u00f3n de Arte, in a sleek modern \"white box,\" is the **Museo de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cl. 11 No. 4-21, tel. 1\/343-1212, www.banrepcultural.org, 9am-7pm Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., free), which hosts temporary exhibits and has one floor dedicated to 20th-century Latin American and European art from the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica collection. On the bottom floor is the **Parqueadero** (2pm-7pm Wed.-Mon.)\u2014the \"Parking Lot\"\u2014a sort of laboratory on contemporary art.\n\n###### **MUSEO BOTERO**\n\nIn the **Museo Botero** (Cl. 11 No. 4-41, tel. 1\/343-1212, www.banrepcultural.org, 9am-7pm Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., free) there are still lifes, portrayals of everyday life in Colombian pueblos, and social commentaries by the most accomplished Colombian artist, Medell\u00edn-born Fernando Botero. In addition to paintings of corpulent Colombians, there are bronze and marble sculptures of chubby cats and pudgy birds. One side of the lovely colonial house, which surrounds a sublime courtyard, displays the artist's exceptional personal collection of European and American art, including works by Picasso and Dali. All of these were donated by the _maestro_ to the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica so that Colombians of all backgrounds could appreciate and enjoy them without paying a peso\u2014an extraordinary opportunity. Once the home of archbishops during the colonial era, the building was set ablaze during the 1948 disturbances of the Bogotazo. It has been painstakingly recreated.\n\n###### **CASA DE LA MONEDA**\n\nConnected to the Museo Botero and the Colecci\u00f3n de Arte by patios and a Botero gift shop, the **Casa de la Moneda** (Cl. 11 No. 4-93, tel. 1\/343-1212, www.banrepcultural.org, 9am-7pm Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., free) was where the New World's first gold coins were produced starting in the early 17th century. The museum's **Colecci\u00f3n Numism\u00e1tica** shows the history of the Nueva Granada mint.\n\n###### **CENTRO CULTURAL GABRIEL GARC\u00cdA M\u00c1RQUEZ**\n\nDesigned by Rogelio Salmona, the **Centro Cultural Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez** (Cl. 11 No. 5-60, tel. 1\/283-2200, www.fce.com.co, 9am-7pm Mon.-Sat., 10:30am-5pm Sun., free) was a gift from the Mexican government in honor of the 1982 Nobel Prize winner for literature, Colombian Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. Gabo, as he is called, has lived in Mexico since the 1960s. On the main level, where you can enjoy a nice sunset view of the cathedral, is a bookstore with an ample selection of books on Colombia. Next to the Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9 below is a space where photography and art exhibits are often shown.\n\n#### **AVENIDA JIM\u00c9NEZ**\n\nThe Avenida Jim\u00e9nez used to be the R\u00edo San Francisco and the extreme northern boundary of Santa Fe. For the architectural enthusiast, there are several gems on this street that stand in tribute of the city's inflated view of itself during the first half of the 20th century. Most of these historic buildings can only be enjoyed from the exterior. In 2000, in an effort to reinvent the historic Avenida Jim\u00e9nez, architect Rogelio Salmona created the **Eje Ambiental** (Environmental Corridor), which extends from the Universidad de los Andes campus to the Avenida Caracas. Vehicular traffic is banned from the street except for the red buses of the TransMilenio. Ample pedestrian space has made this a pleasant place for a stroll.\n\nIn 2012, the city created a pedestrian zone from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar to the Calle 26. This busy commercial area is now a fun way to check out the city's core, do a little shopping, sightseeing, and people-watching.\n\n##### **Historic Architecture**\n\nYou don't have to be an expert on architecture to appreciate the many impressive buildings lining the entire length of the Avenida Jim\u00e9nez. Most of these gems were built in the early 20th century. To the west side of the S\u00e9ptima (Carrera 7) are: the neoclassical **Palacio de San Francisco** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 7-56), prior home to the Cundinamarca departmental government; the **Edificio L\u00f3pez** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 7-65), which was built by the same construction firm that built the Chrysler building in New York; and the modernist **Edificio Camacho,** farther down and on the right.\n\nIt was on the southwest corner of the S\u00e9ptima and Avenida Jim\u00e9nez that populist Liberal Party presidential candidate Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n was assassinated on April 9, 1948, which sparked the tragic Bogotazo riots. Up to 3,000 were killed. This precipitated the bloody period of La Violencia that swept the country. At McDonald's, a plaque and flowers mark the spot where the tragedy took place. A young Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, then a law student at the Universidad Nacional, lived near the Palacio de San Francisco at that time, and with his building in flames, he and his brother rushed back\u2014to save his typewriter.\n\nOn the eastern side of the S\u00e9ptima, notable buildings include the modernist **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cra. 7 No. 14-78); the **Universidad de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Rosario** (Cl. 12C No. 6-25), founded in 1653, which is housed in a colonial building that was originally a monastery; the **Edificio Monserrate** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 4-49), which was home to _El Espectador_ newspaper; the fabulous restored **Hotel Continental** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 4-19), once the most exclusive hotel in town; the neoclassical **Academia Colombiana de Historia** (Cl. 10 No. 9-95); the 17th-century **Iglesia and Convento de las Aguas** (Cra. 2 No. 18A-58), where Artesan\u00edas de Colombia has a store; and finally (at the end of the Eje Ambiental) the campus of the **Universidad de Los Andes,** one of the top universities in Latin America, with several stunning new buildings. Los Andes has around 25,000 students.\n\n##### **Churches**\n\nTypical of most all colonial-era churches, the **Iglesia de San Francisco** (Cl. 16 No. 7-35, 6:30am-8pm Mon.-Fri., 6:30am-12:40pm and 4:30pm-8pm Sat.-Sun.) looks somber from the outside, but inside it's decorated by a fantastic golden altar, considered a masterwork of American baroque. This is the oldest of all the churches in the city, built by the Franciscans in 1557. The church is often full of working-class faithful. Adjacent to the San Francisco is the **Iglesia de Veracruz** (Cl. 16 No. 7-19), which is where several independence figures, executed by the Spaniards, are laid to rest.\n\nThe third church in this row is called **Iglesia La Tercera** (Cl. 16 No. 7-35, 7am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 11am-1pm Sat.-Sun.), and it is one of the jewels of colonial churches in Bogot\u00e1. It was built in the late 18th century, about 50 years before Colombian independence. Architecturally, the main highlight is its barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with geometric designs and altarpieces made of cedar and walnut. Unlike other churches, the interior is not covered with gold leaf.\n\n##### M **Museo del Oro**\n\nSome visitors come to Bogot\u00e1 specifically to see the world-renowned **Museo del Oro** (Cra. 6 No. 15-88, tel. 1\/343-2233, www.banrep.gov.co, 9am-6pm Tues.-Sat., 10am-4pm Sun., COP$3,000). During your museum experience, you will see just a fraction of the thousands of treasures of the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica, Colombia's central bank, since its first acquisition in 1939. The museum tells the story of how\u2014and why\u2014the native peoples of Colombia created such incredibly detailed and surprisingly modern designs of gold jewelry and religious objects.\n\nWhat is astonishing about the collection is the sophistication of the work. It is almost all smelted, with Muisca and Sin\u00fa peoples employing a \"lost wax\" technique, with various metals being purposefully alloyed. Here, rather than large, hammered pieces, as in countries like Peru, you will see intricately crafted and designed jewelry.\n\nOne of the highlights, without a doubt, is the golden raft created by local Muisca people. The raft portrays the ritual of El Dorado, \"the Golden One.\" Another piece to look for is the collection's first acquisition, the Quimbaya P\u00f3poro. This was used during religious ceremonies. The unforgettable offering room is filled with golden treasures. English explanations are good throughout the museum (so is the audio tour). Just beyond the gift shop is a very popular restaurant that specializes in Colombian and Mediterranean cuisine. If possible try to avoid visiting the museum on weekends, when crowds soar, especially on Sunday, when admission is free.\n\n##### **Museo de la Esmeralda**\n\nOn the 23rd floor of the Avianca building is the **Museo de la Esmeralda** (Cl. 16 No. 6-66, tel. 1\/286-4259, www.museodelaesmeralda.com.co, 10am-6pm Mon.-Sat., COP$5,000). The museum has an impressive recreation of an emerald mine and then several examples of different emeralds from Colombia and elsewhere. Guides, fluent in Spanish and English, will make sure you know that the best emeralds do\u2014without a doubt\u2014come from Colombia, primarily from the Muzo mines in the Boyac\u00e1 department. Although there is no pressure to do so, you can purchase all different classes of emeralds, and their jewelers can transform the emeralds you choose into rings or earrings within a day. Even if you are not interested in purchasing an emerald it is fun to check out the gems under a magnifying glass, as you learn why some emeralds are much more precious than others. The museum also has a small store on the main floor of the building that sometimes has discounted coupons for museum entry. Security at the Avianca building is stringent, and you will need to bring a photocopy of your passport and produce a telephone number of your hotel for entry.\n\n##### **Quinta de Bol\u00edvar**\n\nThe **Quinta de Bol\u00edvar** (Cl. 20 No. 2-91 Este, tel. 1\/336-6410\/19, 9am-5pm Tues.-Sat., 10am-4pm Sun., COP$3,000) is a lovely country estate that was presented by Francisco de Paula Santander, Vice President of the Rep\u00fablica de Gran Colombia, as a gift to Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar in 1820. El Libertador was president of Colombia from 1819 to 1830. Bol\u00edvar stayed there during his brief and sporadic visits to Bogot\u00e1, a city he did not like. He spent approximately 432 nights there, give or take. Built in 1800, it is a beautiful example of a late colonial-era house. Furnished with period pieces and set in a beautiful garden under cypress and walnut trees, it is one of the most popular touristic sights in the city. On Wednesdays there are guided tours in English at 11am (if there is a group of at least three). Reserve your spot the day before. Each day there are Spanish-language tours at 11am and 2pm, if you'd like to practice your _espa\u00f1ol._ An audio tour is available for just COP$1,000, but the narrators are a bit long-winded. Admission is free on Sundays. It is just a five-minute walk uphill from the Quinta to Monserrate.\n\n##### M **Cerro de Monserrate**\n\nRiding or hiking up to the top of this mountain, the **Cerro de Monserrate,** and taking in the views of the city by day or by night is a memorable one. To get to the top, take a funicular tramway (7:45am-11:45am Mon.-Sat., 6am-6pm Sun., daytime round-trip COP$15,400, nighttime round-trip COP$17,000) or the _telef\u00e9rico_ (cable car, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., 9:30am-6:30pm Sun., daytime round-trip COP$15,400, nighttime round-trip COP$17,000).\n\nYou can also hike to the top, which, due to large crowds on weekends and holidays, is a good plan for a weekday morning. The path is open 5am-4pm Wednesday-Monday. There is no charge to make the somewhat challenging ascent on foot. Those over 75 years old, under a meter tall, or very pregnant are supposedly prohibited from making the climb, but this doesn't appear to be enforced. Going at a fast clip, the walk will take under 45 minutes. If you do decide to walk up, bring plenty of sun protection.\n\nCerro de Monserrate, as seen from the Quinta de Bol\u00edvar\n\nIn the past there have been reports of bandits lingering in the woods along the path, but the security situation has vastly improved. Bored police cadets are stationed at three or four points along the trail until 4pm, and when there are no police there are plenty of vendors selling refreshments or several others huffing and puffing going up or leisurely coming down. If you feel as if you have done your exercise for the day, you can purchase a one-way ticket at the top to ride the funicular or tramway back down for under COP$8,000.\n\nFor the faithful, the white chapel atop, the **Santuario de Monserrate,** may be the goal of this hike. It is not of interest architecturally speaking, and it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times since the 1600s, but it is the highest church around, at about 3,152 (10,341 feet) above sea level. Inside, a 17th-century sculpture of the Fallen Christ of Monserrate attracts many believers. Some pilgrims climb the hill on their knees during Holy Week, believing that the Fallen Christ grants miracles to those who do so.\n\nThere are two pricey restaurants on the top of the mountain\u2014a romantic setting for marriage proposals and a favorite spot for locals to bring visitors. These are French-Colombian **Restaurante Casa San Isidro** (tel. 1\/281-9270, www.restaurantecasasanisidro.com, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) and **Restaurante Casa Santa Clara** (tel. 1\/281-9309, www.restaurantecasasantaclara.com, noon-6pm Tues.-Sat., COP$25,000), which serves mostly Colombian fare.\n\nTo the south of Monserrate rises the **Cerro de Guadalupe,** with a large statue of the virgin. It can only be accessed by road and was, until recently, unsafe to visit. If you would like to visit (the views are about the same as from Monserrate), take a microbus on Sunday from the intersection of Calle 6 and Avenida Caracas. As you enter the ticket office at the base of Monserrate, you may see an old photograph of a tightrope walker crossing the 890 meters from Monserrate to Guadalupe blindfolded. This stunt was performed by Canadian daredevil Harry Warner in 1895.\n\n#### **CENTRO INTERNACIONAL**\n\n##### **Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogot\u00e1**\n\nAcross from the Parque de la Independencia on Avenida 26 is the **Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogot\u00e1** (Cl. 24 No. 6-00, tel. 1\/286-0466, www.mambogota.com, 10am-6pm Tues.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun., COP$4,000). It often puts on interesting exhibitions highlighting Colombian and Latin American artists. The cinema shows independent films and documentaries. Nicknamed MAMBO, it is another creation by the late architect Rogelio Salmona.\n\n##### **Torre Colpatria Observation Deck**\n\nThe **Torre Colpatria Observation Deck** (Cra. 7 No. 24-82, tel. 1\/283-6665, 6pm-8pm Fri., 11am-8pm Sat., 11am-5pm Sun., COP$4,000) offers unparalleled 360-degree views of Bogot\u00e1. The vista of the city from the Colpatria bank tower is arguably superior to that of Monserrate. At 48 floors, the building remains Colombia's tallest. At night the tower goes into disco mode, as it decks out in colorful lights.\n\n##### **Parque de la Independencia**\n\nThe **Parque de la Independencia,** long a favorite for young lovers and those seeking a pleasant stroll under the towering eucalyptus and wax palm trees, was created in 1910 in celebration of Colombia's 100-year anniversary of independence from Spain. The Quiosco de la Luz houses a tourist information center (Punto de Informaci\u00f3n Tur\u00edstica, or PIT). The park is undergoing a major expansion with the construction of a **Parque del Bicentenario** (it originally was to be completed in 2010). This exciting project will bring greenspace above the TransMilenio line on Calle 26.\n\n###### **PLANETARIO DE BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nOn the north side of the park is the modernist **Planetario de Bogot\u00e1** (Cl. 26B No. 5-93, tel. 1\/281-4150, www.idartes.gov.co, 10am-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$3,000-10,000), which was built in the late 1960s and houses an air and space museum, **Museo del Espacio.** A statue of Copernicus stands outside.\n\n###### **PLAZA DE SANTAMAR\u00cdA**\n\nNext to the planetarium is the former Plaza de Toros de Santamar\u00eda, now renamed **Plaza de Santamar\u00eda.** The neo-Mudejar brick arena was built in the 1930s by a Spanish architect and was modeled after bullfighting rings in Madrid. Less messy events such as meditation sessions and even diving exhibitions have taken plaza in the plaza since Mayor Gustavo Petro banned bullfighting in 2012.\n\n###### **TORRES DEL PARQUE**\n\nAbout 100 steps up from the bullfighting ring and planetarium are the iconic **Torres del Parque.** These three brick apartment buildings, running parallel to the eastern mountains, were designed in the 1960s by Rogelio Salmona, the most accomplished architect from Bogot\u00e1 during the late 20th century. The buildings are perfectly integrated with the Parque de la Independencia and the Plaza de Santamar\u00eda. French-born Salmona studied with Le Corbusier and was awarded the Alvar Aalto Prize in 2003 for his lifetime achievements. Public space takes up almost three-fourths of the area in the towers complex, and art galleries, caf\u00e9s, and bodegas are nice places to linger on a chilly day.\n\nThe Torres del Parque were designed by Rogelio Salmona.\n\n##### **The Macarena**\n\nJust above the Torres del Parque, the laid-back **Macarena neighborhood** (also known as Zona M) is known for its art galleries and cozy restaurants. The adjective \"bohemian\" is frequently thrown about to characterize the barrio, which steeply slopes up from the Carrera 5 to the Circunvalar ring road. It is indeed an \"artsy\" place\u2014that is most evident by the handful of galleries lining the east side of Carrera 5. While you may have to ring a doorbell to enter, gallery staff are more than happy for you to come in and check out what's on. The gallery **Valenzuela Kennler** (Cra. 5 No. 26-28, tel. 1\/243-7752, www.vkgaleria.com, 10am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 11am-5pm Sat.) features experimental artists and, often, video art. **Alonso Garc\u00e9s** (Cra. 5 No. 26-92, tel. 1\/337-5827, www.alonsogarcesgaleria.com, 10am-1pm and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-2pm Sat.) features work by major contemporary Colombian artists. It also has a nice bookstore. **NC Arte** (Cra. 5 No. 26-76, tel. 1\/282-1474, www.ncearte.org, 10am-6pm Tues.-Sat.) is a newcomer with cool installations. The mix of intellectuals, artists, students, leftists, hipsters, and foreigners makes this neighborhood like no other in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **Museo Nacional**\n\nThe **Museo Nacional** (Cra. 7 No. 28-66, tel. 1\/381-6470, www.museonacional.gov.co, 10am-6pm Tues.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., free) was designed by English architect Thomas Reed (who also designed the Capitolio Nacional) in the late 1800s to serve as the penitentiary for Cundinamarca, which was at that time one of nine states of the United States of Colombia. This prison was a cross-shaped panopticon, with a central tower from which guards could monitor prisoners housed in the three wings. It was in the late 1940s that the prison was converted into a museum. The permanent collection examines the history of Colombia from pre-Columbian cultures to the 20th century. On the top floor is a nice introduction to Colombian art. The museum often holds temporary exhibits on the ground floor. There is a pretty good museum store, and Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9 brews coffee in the lovely courtyard.\n\n##### **Parque Central Bavaria**\n\nBelow Carrera 13 is **Parque Central Bavaria** (Cra. 13 No. 28A-21), a large urban renovation project on the first site of the Bavaria brewery. The Bavaria Kopp's Deutsche Bierbrauerei was founded by German immigrant Leo Kopp and his four brothers. Bavaria is one of the few surviving\u2014and thriving\u2014businesses from the 19th century in Colombia. Its beers include \u00c1guila, Club Colombia, Coste\u00f1a, P\u00f3ker, and Pilsen. The brewery moved from this location in the 1980s and only two of the original brewery's buildings remain today, now home to several restaurants.\n\n##### **Parque Nacional**\n\nA center of activity on the weekends, the **Parque Nacional** (between Cras. 5-7 and Clls. 35-39) is the largest park in downtown Bogot\u00e1 and is the second oldest one in the city. The park is set between a lovely English Tudor-style neighborhood called La Merced and, to the north, the Universidad Javeriana, which was founded by the Jesuits. On Sundays and holidays when there is Ciclov\u00eda, free aerobics classes draw huge crowds in the park. In addition there are numerous fields and courts to practice sports, including several clay tennis courts. On the northwest corner of the park is a whimsical sculpture by Enrique Grau called _Rita 5:30._\n\n##### **Cementerio Central**\n\nThe most important cemetery in Colombia is the **Cementerio Central** (Cra. 20 No. 24-80, tel. 1\/269-3141, 9am-4pm daily), where prominent political, cultural, and business figures rest. Before the cemetery was built in 1830, distinguished persons were buried in churches following Spanish tradition. Francisco de Paula Santander, who is known as Colombia's Thomas Jefferson; Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, a military dictator from the 1950s; Luis Carlos Gal\u00e1n, a liberal presidential candidate who was assassinated under orders of Pablo Escobar in 1989; and Leo Kopp, the German founder of the Bavaria brewery, are all buried here. Some people pray at Kopp's tomb, asking for wishes. There is also a part of the cemetery where thousands of victims from the Bogotazo riots from April 1948 are buried, many of them chillingly listed as \"N. N.\" (\"no name\").\n\nImmediately west of the cemetery is a remarkable art installation called _Auras Anonimas_ by Colombian artist Beatriz Gonz\u00e1lez. An abandoned columbarium (structure to keep ashes) is covered with around 9,000 primitive black and white paintings of people carrying away the dead. It is a powerful reflection on the violence and death in Colombia.\n\n###### **CENTRO DE MEMORIA, PAZ Y RECONCILIACI\u00d3N**\n\nA memorial to victims of violence associated with the armed conflict is adjacent to the Cementerio Central. The **Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliaci\u00f3n** (Cra. 19B No. 24-86, <http:\/\/centromemoria.gov.co>, 11am-1pm and 2pm-4pm Mon., 8am-10am, 11am-1pm, and 2pm-4pm Tues.-Fri., free) is one of the first memorials to victims of violence in Colombia\u2014an important milestone.\n\n###### **CEMENTERIO BRIT\u00c1NICO**\n\nNeighboring Cementerio Central is the **Cementerio Brit\u00e1nico** (English Cemetery, Cl. 26 No. 22-75, tel. 1\/334-0057), which was donated by the city to the British government in 1829 in recognition of help provided by the British Foreign Legion during the war of independence. Since then it has been the main burial ground for the city's Protestants. A fence at the back of the cemetery was made with the barrels of the legionnaires' bayonets. It is a green, peaceful place\u2014just knock at the door and the family of caretakers will show you in.\n\n###### **PARQUE RENACAMIENTO**\n\nThe **Parque Renacamiento,** just west of the cemeteries, opened in 2000 and is noteworthy for its bronze sculpture _Man on a Horse,_ donated by Fernando Botero.\n\nsoaring wax palms at the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico\n\n#### **WESTERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\n##### **Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar**\n\nNicknamed the city's lungs, when it was built in the late 1960s the **Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar** (between Clls. 53-63 and Cras. 48-68, 6am-6pm daily) was in the countryside. Now, it's almost exactly in the middle of the city. Two popes have celebrated mass there: Pope Paul VI in 1968 and Pope John Paul II in 1986. The park is an excellent place for watching ordinary Bogotanos at play, especially on the weekends. Numerous festivals and concerts take place here. There are more than 16 kilometers of trails in the park. In August, traditionally the windiest month, thousands of families try their luck catching a breeze for their colorful kites.\n\n##### **Biblioteca Virgilio Barco**\n\nOpen since 2001, the stunning **Biblioteca Virgilio Barco** (Av. Cra. 60 No. 57-60, tel. 1\/315-8890, 2pm-8pm Mon., 8am-8pm Tues.-Sat., 9:30am-5:30pm Sun.), across the street from the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, is yet another project designed by Rogelio Salmona and is one of four fantastic library-parks in the city created by Mayor Enrique Pe\u00f1alosa. The purpose of these mega libraries is to provide citizens access to books, Internet, and cultural\/educational opportunities in a peaceful environment. While relatively plentiful in northern neighborhoods, green spaces\u2014even trees\u2014are few and far between in the massive lower-income neighborhoods. A bike path ( _cicloruta_ ) surrounds the park and is popular with young inline skaters. The well-maintained grounds are a playground for the young, the old, and the canine.\n\n##### M **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico**\n\nColombia is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet, and the **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico** (Av. Cl. 63 No. 68-95, tel. 1\/437-7060, 8am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.-Sun., COP$2,700) does an excellent job of showing off that diversity. It won't be hard to find the Colombian national tree, the towering wax palm. And inside the greenhouse, be on the lookout for the Bogot\u00e1 orchid\u2014yes, Bogot\u00e1 has its own official orchid! The gardens take you on a tour of the many different climates in the country\u2014from the _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors) to cloud forests to tropical jungles. Feel free to stray from the paths and get closer. The garden has its own farm and composting station that you can wander about as well. One of the perks of working there is getting fresh organic vegetables! Run by the city, the botanical garden also runs a community garden project in neighborhoods and carries out educational projects across the city.\n\n##### **Other Nearby Attractions**\n\nFor the romantic ones, a stroll around the **Parque de los Novios** (Lovers Park, Cl. 63 No. 45-10, 6am-6pm daily) might be just the thing for a sunny afternoon. In addition to renting an aquatic bicycle you can also check out the motocross track. The highlight at the **Museo de los Ni\u00f1os Colsubsidio** (Av. Cra. 60 No. 63-27, tel. 1\/225-7587, 9am-4pm Mon.-Sat., COP$5,500) is an old Avianca Boeing 727 jet that kids can explore. Also for the kids is the **Salitre M\u00e1gico** (www.salitremagico.com.co, 10am-6pm Wed.-Sun., COP$20,000-50,000) amusement park. There you can ride the _rueda de Chicago_ (Ferris wheel) or the _monta\u00f1a rusa_ (roller coaster).\n\n#### **NORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nNorthern Bogot\u00e1 does not have many tourist sights. But the shopping and restaurant areas might be nice to stroll around on an afternoon.\n\nThe **Zona Rosa** (between Clls. 81-85 and Cras. 11-15), an area of shopping, dining, and nightlife, is a tribute to hedonism. Well-known Colombian designers, such as Sylvia Tcherassi, Lina Cantillo, and Ricardo Pava, have boutiques here, catering to the Colombian jet-set. The **Centro Andino, Atlantis Plaza,** and **El Retiro** \u2014the holy trinity of shopping malls\u2014never seem to go out of fashion. On weekend evenings the entire area buzzes with activity and anticipation. Calle 82 and Carrera 13 form a T\u2014hence the moniker **Zona T** \u2014and are pedestrian streets lined with restaurants and happening watering holes. This is where Bogot\u00e1 comes alive at night.\n\nThe **Parque de la 93** (between Cras. 11A-13 and Clls. 93A-B) is a manicured park surrounded by restaurants. Workers from the area stroll the park on their lunch hour. Sometimes there are big screens set up with bean bags strewn about for people to watch soccer matches. At night it is a popular dining area, but not nearly as rowdy as the Zona T.\n\nThe **Parque Chic\u00f3** (Cra. 7 No. 93-01) is a quiet spot in the north on an old hacienda from the colonial era. The **Museo** (10am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat., COP$2,500) has a small collection of pre-Columbian art, religious art, and decorative objects from around the world.\n\nOnce upon a time, charming **Usaqu\u00e9n** was its own distinct pueblo. Now, not even at the fringes of big Bogot\u00e1, miraculously somehow Usaqu\u00e9n has retained much of its colonial charm. It has become a dining and drinking hot spot with many restaurants and bars around the main square. On Sundays the neighborhood comes alive during its popular **flea market** (Cra. 5 at Cl. 119B).\n\n#### **SOUTHERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nIf you mention going to southern Bogot\u00e1 for sightseeing, Bogotanos may give you a baffled look. El Sur, the South, is synonymous with poverty and violence for many. Barrios lack green spaces, and neighborhoods are almost across the board ugly. This is where the housekeepers and the drivers for wealthy families in the north live. They can earn in a month a little more than what some from Bogot\u00e1 society spend on a dinner in the Zona G on a Friday night.\n\nBut it is not necessarily a place full of despair. The middle class is growing; young people are earning college decrees; the city government is investing in TransMilenio lines, parks, and libraries; and the private sector is building malls. This is evident in all the massive _localidades_ (official neighborhoods) in the south: Bosa, Ciudad Bol\u00edvar, Kennedy, Los M\u00e1rtires, and Soacha, which is its own municipality.\n\n##### **Divino Ni\u00f1o**\n\nThe **Templo del 20 de Julio** (Cl. 27 Sur No. 5A-27, tel. 1\/372-5555) is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Colombia, set in the working class neighborhood of 20 de Julio, just a couple of blocks from the new TransMilenio Portal del 20 de Julio station. July 20, 1810, is the day celebrated as Colombia's independence day. On Sundays and religious holidays, hundreds of thousands of faithful come to pray to the **Divino Ni\u00f1o,** a small statue of a smiling young Jesus in his pink robe, which is kept in a chapel behind the church. Around 30 masses are held between 5am and 7pm on Sundays to meet the extraordinary demand. It is indeed a colorful sight. Built by Salesian priests in 1942, the church provides groceries to poor families in the neighborhood who sign up for it. Nearby the church and plaza are shops selling Divino Ni\u00f1o statues and keychains.\n\n##### **Biblioteca Tintal**\n\nThe **Biblioteca Tintal** (Av. Ciudad de Cali No. 6C-09, 2pm-8pm Mon., 8am-8pm Tues.-Sat., 9:30am-5:30pm Sun.) is a beautiful, modern public library built on the site of an unused trash recycling facility. Inaugurated in 2001, it was one of many projects conceived and built by Mayor Pe\u00f1alosa. The library is easily accessed by TransMilenio (Biblioteca Tintal station). The trip there will take you through the large southwestern _localidad_ of Kennedy.\n\n### **Entertainment and Events**\n\nBogot\u00e1 is, without a doubt, the cultural capital of Colombia. In 2012, the city was named a UNESCO City of Music. Because it's the Colombian melting pot, all regions of Colombia are represented in their musical traditions here. Merengue, salsa, _cumbia_ (traditional Caribbean music), _vallenato_ (love ballads accompanied by accordion): You name it, you can hear it.\n\nThe city also attracts international artists, who perform at some of the city's spectacular theaters, such as the gorgeous **Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo** in Suba, the architectural gem of the Sala de Conciertos Luis \u00c1ngel Arango for chamber music, and the iconic Teatro Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n downtown. Pop icons such as Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga perform before the masses at the Estadio El Camp\u00edn soccer stadium, and nearby in the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, the city puts on several \"al Parque\" free music festivals each year. Rock al Parque is the best known, but there is also Jazz al Parque, Opera al Parque, and even Gospel al Parque.\n\nthe stunning Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo\n\n#### **NIGHTLIFE**\n\nThe capital city is also Colombia's nightlife capital. The Zona Rosa may still dominate the nightlife landscape, but downtown hasn't completely surrendered. La Candelaria has its share of long-standing smaller bars, catering to Bogotanos and visitors alike; the non-SUV crowd hangs out in Macarena hideaways; while the party till dawn crowd throngs the nearby nightclub Radio Berl\u00edn. Gay bars and caf\u00e9s thrive in Chapinero, with massive Theatr\u00f3n, as it has for over a decade, reigning as the club with something for everyone.\n\nMost of the nightspots are, like everything else, located along the Carrera 7. To get the latest on nightlife, and find out about parties, check out Vive In (www.vive.in) or Plan B (www.planb.com.co). Many electronic music parties, attracting big name DJs, take place outside of the city towards Ch\u00eda, and often the best way to find out about them is by stumbling upon posters on streetlight posts.\n\n##### **Bars and Clubs**\n\nThanks to **Bogota Beer Company** (tel. 1\/742-9292, www.bogotabeercompany.com), a successful chain of pubs with several locations throughout the city, sipping on a Candelaria artisan beer has become trendy in Bogot\u00e1. They also serve decent burgers. Try one of the northern locations (Cl. 85 No. 13-06 or Cra. 11A No. 93A-94). Sitting on the terrace and listening to rock at the always-packed **Pub Bogot\u00e1** (Cra. 12A No. 83-48, tel. 1\/691-8711, www.thepub.com.co, noon-close daily, no cover), you're in a strategic position to watch people cruising the Zona T.\n\nMost clubs have a cover between COP$10,000 and 30,000 (rarely). Covers usually include a _consumible_ (complimentary drink). You can usually try to negotiate with the bouncer on the cover, especially if you're with a group. Finally, it's always a good idea to head out on the town with lots of smaller bills. Sometimes bartenders suffer from forgetfulness and fail to return your change. Tips are not expected at bars.\n\nIt doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside **El Coq** (Cl. 84 No. 14-02, tel. 1\/611-2496, hours vary Wed.-Sat., cover COP$20,000), a relaxed and groovy bar in the Zona Rosa, it is pretty stylish. Also in the Zona Rosa, **Armando Records** (Cl. 85 No. 14-46, www.armandorecords.org, hours vary Tues.-Sat., cover COP$15,000) attracts a slightly grungy but cool crowd. The terrace is a fun (but sometimes cold) spot. Live bands and well-known international DJs regularly play at Armando. **La Villa** (Cra. 14A No. 83-56, hours vary Tues.-Sat., cover COP$15,000) hosts the popular Gringo Tuesdays parties, but has all kinds of themed parties catering to locals and visitors alike.\n\nFor fans of _vallenato_ (love ballads accompanied by accordion), the old-school **Rinc\u00f3n Rafael Ricardo** (Cl. 85 No. 14-55, tel. 1\/530-2118, hours vary Thurs.-Sat., no cover) and flashy **Matildelina** (Cl. 81 No. 11-34, tel. 1\/805-2933, 9pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., COP$20,000 cover) are the places to go in the Zona Rosa. Live bands from the Caribbean Coast perform regularly on the big stage at Matildelina, warming up the crowd. **Salom\u00e9 Pagana** (Cra. 14A No. 82-16, tel. 1\/221-1895 or 1\/218-4076, 6pm-2:30am Tues. and Thurs.-Sat., cover COP$15,000) is a Zona Rosa staple that is your salsa and _cubana_ headquarters, often hosting well-known singers and bands.\n\n**C\u00e9ntrico** (Cra. 7 No. 32-16, 41 floor, hours vary Wed.-Sat., cover COP$20,000) is a hot bar-restaurant where you can sip your cocktails while overlooking the city from the 41st floor. It is pretty fancy, so dress to impress.\n\n**Trampa de Vallenato Galer\u00edas** (Cl. 53 No. 27A-31, no phone, 5pm-3am Thurs.-Sat.) may have the warm authenticity that you have been craving. This _vallenato_ club is regularly voted as the top in the city. To hear _cubana_ and salsa music, you can pop into the charming little downtown bar **Son Salom\u00e9** (Cra. 7 No. 40-31, 2nd floor, tel. 1\/285-0547, hours vary daily) for a drink or two to unwind.\n\nOn Fridays it's often rock that the students, hipsters, and visiting foreigners groove to at classic **Candelario Bar** (Cra. 5 No. 3-14, tel. 1\/342-3742, 9pm-3am Fri.-Sat.), but don't be surprised to hear electronic, reggae, or Latin beats. It also serves lunch during the week. **Quiebra de Canto** (Cra. 5 No. 17-76, tel. 1\/243-1630, 6:30pm-3am Wed.-Sat., cover COP$10,000) is a classic haunt where jazz, funk, and salsa are often the order of the night. Wednesdays are especially popular in the two-floor joint. A different vibe can be found at the **Viejo Almac\u00e9n** (Cl. 15 No. 4-30, 6pm-2am Wed.-Sun.), a tango bar named after the famous Viejo Almac\u00e9n in Buenos Aires.\n\nSo, it's 6am and you still need to dance? Near the bullfighting ring and in a basement, **Radio Berl\u00edn** (Cra. 6 No. 26-57, 9pm-5am Fri.-Sat., COP$20,000 cover) is almost too cool for school. It's occasionally open on Thursdays. If you're looking for a late-night groove, often featuring international DJs, this is your place.\n\nIn the Macarena, cool **Baum** (Cl. 33 No. 6-24, cell tel. 316\/494-3799, 10pm-5am Fri.-Sat., COP$15,000) attracts a fun crowd and often hosts international DJs.\n\n##### **LGBT**\n\nBogot\u00e1 is not lacking in gay nightlife spots. At last count there were over 100 gay establishments in the city. This is the place, after all, where many gay Colombians gravitate to so that they can escape endless questions from relatives about when they are going to get married. This isn't a gay bar town, as most people skip that step and head straight to the clubs.\n\nOn Wednesday nights the place to go is **Cav\u00fa Club** (Cra. 15 No. 88-71, tel. 1\/249-9987, www.cavuclub.com, 9pm-3am Wed. and some weekend nights, cover COP$15,000). Here the music is _m\u00fasica pa' planchar_ (music to iron by), and there is usually a performance by a drag queen, such as regular La Lupe. At reliable **Blues Bar** (Cl. 86A No. 13A-30, tel. 1\/616-7126, 9pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., cover COP$15,000) you can drink and listen to cool music as you warm up around the bonfire in the patio.\n\nAs far as clubbing goes, **Theatr\u00f3n** (Cl. 58 No. 10-32, tel. 1\/235-6879, www.theatrondepelicula.com, 9pm-3am Fri.-Sat., cover COP$20,000) is a humongous disco in Chapinero. Theatr\u00f3n is one-stop shopping for the gay crowd. It has no fewer than nine dance floors, featuring different types of music, including reggaet\u00f3n, _vallenato_ , pop, house, and trance. In the main room there is usually a drag show or contest at around midnight on Saturdays. There are few bars and clubs specifically for women, although at Theatr\u00f3n they won't feel like second-class citizens. Theatr\u00f3n occasionally puts on special parties for women. All the major electronic music clubs are gay-friendly. Salsa and _vallenato_ clubs\u2014not so much.\n\n#### **PERFORMING ARTS**\n\n##### **Classical Music and Opera**\n\nYou may not think of classical music when you think Bogot\u00e1, or South America for that matter, but the city is home to two excellent orchestras and an opera, and hosts talented performers year round. As is the case for most concerts and events in Bogot\u00e1, purchasing tickets in advance from Tu Boleta (tel. 1\/593-6300, www.tuboleta.com) is the most convenient option.\n\nThe publicly financed **Orquesta Filarm\u00f3nica de Bogot\u00e1** (www.filarmonicabogota.gov.co) and the **Sinf\u00f3nica Nacional de Colombia** (www.asociacion-sinfonica.org) are the two main orchestras in town and the most important ones in the country. The _filarm\u00f3nica_ performs on the Universidad Nacional campus at the **Auditorio Leon de Greiff** (Cra. 45 No. 26-85, www.divulgacion.unal.edu.co); the **Auditorio Fabio Lozano** (Cra. 4 No. 22-61, tel. 1\/242-7030, ext. 1905) at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo; and occasionally at the **Teatro Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n** (Cra. 7 No. 22-47, tel. 1\/379-5750, www.teatrojorgeeliecer.gov.co). The Auditorio Le\u00f3n de Greiff is hard to miss: There is a huge iconic stencil of revolutionary Che Guevara on its exterior. There is often an international guest soloist at these concerts. Although tickets are available at the _taquillas_ (ticket offices) at these theaters a few hours before performance time, it is recommended to purchase tickets, which are usually embarrassingly inexpensive (usually COP$20,000-40,000), in advance at a Tu Boleta outlet (such as in Centro Andino or El Retiro).\n\nThe _sinf\u00f3nica_ performs at the same theaters, as well as the **Colsubisidio Auditorium** (Cl. 26 No. 25-40, tel. 1\/343-2673) and at the spectacular **Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo** (Av. Cl. 170 No. 67-51, tel. 1\/377-9840, www.teatromayor.com), which has two concert halls. This theater, public library, and cultural center in the working class _localidad_ of Suba is worth a visit regardless of whether there is a performance on. The prominent Santo Domingo family donated nearly US$31 million for the construction of this beautiful center.\n\nAt the **Sala de Conciertos Luis \u00c1ngel Arango** (Cl. 11 No. 4-14, tel. 1\/381-2929, www.banrepcultural.org\/musica, ticket office 1pm-8pm Mon.-Fri.) in La Candelaria, chamber music concerts featuring acclaimed international artists are regularly held in its spectacular, modernist theater in the Biblioteca Luis \u00c1ngel Arango. An added bonus: free _tinto_ or _arom\u00e1tica_ (herbal tea) at intermission.\n\nThe **\u00d3pera de Colombia** (tel. 1\/608-8752 or 1\/608-2860, www.operadecolombia.com), one of few opera companies in South America, is highly regarded. They perform classic operas during their season, which usually extends from August to October. The **Teatro Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n** (Cra. 7 No. 22-47, tel. 1\/379-5750, ext. 213, www.teatrojorgeeliecer.gov.co) and the **Teatro Cafam de Bellas Artes** (Av. Cra. 68 No. 90-88, tel. 1\/644-4900, www.teatrodebellasartesdebogota.com) host the soirees.\n\n##### **Theater**\n\nThe largest theater company, the **Teatro Nacional** (Cl. 71 No. 10-25, tel. 1\/217-4577, www.teatronacional.com.co), has three different theaters and performances take place just about every day. Their main theater is named in honor of Fanny Mikey, an Argentinian actress who moved to Bogot\u00e1 and started its famed theater festival.\n\n**Teatro Libre** (Cl. 62 No. 9A-65, tel. 1\/542-1559, www.teatrolibre.org) has its main location in Chapinero and another in Candelaria (Cl. 12B No. 2-44, tel. 1\/281-3516). In its 40-plus years of existence, its repertoire has included mostly classic theater as well as works by Colombian playwrights. **Casa Ensamble** (Cra. 24 No. 41-69, tel. 1\/368-9268, www.casaensamble.com), in the cute neighborhood of La Soledad, is an alternative performance space, with avant-garde plays such as _T\u00edteres Pornos (Porno Puppets)_. The theater, which sometimes feels more like a cabaret, is a project of well-known Colombian actress Alejandra Borerro. Source of neighborhood pride, the **Fundaci\u00f3n Gilberto Alzate Avenda\u00f1o** (Cl. 10 No. 3-16, tel. 1\/282-9491, www.fgaa.gov.co), in La Candelaria, puts on theater and music performances featuring local talent year round in addition to art exhibits. Many of their events are free of charge.\n\n##### **Film**\n\nMost movie theaters in Bogot\u00e1, as in the rest of the country, are located inside big shopping malls. In the north that means Centro Andino, Atlantis Plaza, and Centro Comercial Granahorrar, the latter also showing more independent flicks and hosting film festivals. A couple of small cinemas in the north specialize in independent films: **Cineman\u00eda** (Cra. 14 No. 93A-85, tel. 1\/621-0122, www.cinemania.com.co), near the Parque de la 93, and **Cinema Para\u00edso Caf\u00e9 + Bar** (Cra. 6 No. 120A-56, tel. 1\/215-5316, www.cinemaparaiso.com.co). Downtown, go to Calle 24 at the **Cine Colombia Embajador** (Cl. 24 No. 6-01, tel. 1\/404-2463, www.cinecolombia.com) for the usual Hollywood releases. It's across from the **Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogot\u00e1** (MAMBO, Cl. 24 No. 6-00, tel. 1\/286-0466, www.mambogota.com). The museum often shows foreign, classic, and art films. It's best to go in person to get the schedule.\n\n#### **FESTIVALS AND EVENTS**\n\nWhile Bogot\u00e1 lacks celebrations that unite the whole city, such as the Carnaval de Barranquilla or the Feria de Cali, a number of annual festivals and events have their followers.\n\n##### **Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro**\n\nEvery two years during Easter week, theater and dance take over the city during the **Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro** (www.festivaldeteatro.com.co). Attracting more than 100 prestigious international troupes and companies and over 170 representing Colombia, this festival is a living tribute to Fanny Mikey, an Argentinian actress who adopted Colombia as her home. She started the biennial affair in 1988. Known for her bright red hair and distinctive smile, she passed away in 2008. With over 800 performances in the span of two weeks, it is one of the largest such theater festivals in the world. There are always theater groups from English-speaking countries, and there are typically many circus and dance performances. To take a break from the show, you can always hang out at the Carpa Cabaret at night, where you can drink and dance alongside actors from across the globe. Besides performances in theaters, there is an impressive series of free performances in parks and plazas in neighborhoods across the city and workshops for acting students.\n\n##### **ArtBo**\n\nMore than 50 art galleries representing 400 artists from the Americas converge on Bogot\u00e1 each November during **ArtBo** (www.artboonline.com), the **Feria Internacional de Arte de Bogot\u00e1,** one of the top contemporary art fairs in Latin America. It is held each year at the Corferias fairground (Cra. 40 No. 22C-67, www.corferias.com). One space is dedicated to young, emerging artists.\n\n##### **Feria de Artesan\u00edas**\n\nIn December, and just in time for Christmas, the Corferias fairground (Cra. 40 No. 22C-67, www.corferias.com) is the setting for the fantastic\u2014if overwhelming\u2014 **Feria de Artesan\u00edas** (www.expoartesanias.com). During two weeks, artisans come from across Colombia to showcase and sell their handicrafts. Many artisans, particularly indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians from rural areas, have their trip to Bogot\u00e1 sponsored by Artesan\u00edas de Colombia, the event's organizer. You will find that one day will not be enough to see\u2014and buy\u2014everything. The fair is also a great place for yummy Colombian snacks like _patacones_ (fried plantains).\n\n##### **Music Festivals**\n\nIn this city of music, free music festivals take place at the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar during the latter half of the year. The series began in the mid-1990s and has grown in popularity ever since. The most famous outdoor music festival is by far the festival **Rock al Parque** (www.rockalparque.gov.co, July), the largest free outdoor rock festival in Latin America. The 2012 edition attracted 120,000 rockers. Variation include **Salsa al Parque** (Aug.), **\u00d3pera al Parque** (Aug.), **Jazz al Parque** (Sept.), **Hip Hop al Parque** (Oct.) and **Colombia al Parque** (Nov.). Find schedule information online (www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co).\n\nInternational and national jazz and Latin jazz artists perform annually at the long-running **Festival Internacional de Jazz de Bogot\u00e1.** Most concerts are held at the **Teatro Libre** (Cl. 62 No. 9-65, tel. 1\/217-1988, www.teatrolibre.org) in Chapinero. This usually takes place in early September, with tickets available at all Tu Boleta stands.\n\n##### **Races**\n\nIf the altitude doesn't make you huff and puff along the streets of La Candelaria, maybe you would be up for the challenge of a running race in Bogot\u00e1. The **Media Marat\u00f3n** is the city's biggest race, attracting runners from around the world. It usually takes place in August, starting at the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar and ending in the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar. Nike sponsors its **We Run 10K** each year in October. The most unusual race of all takes place in December during the **Ascenso Torre Colpatria** race. That's when runners ascend a stairwell 48 floors to the top of the Colpatria building downtown.\n\n### **Shopping**\n\n#### **HANDICRAFTS**\n\nMarkets selling Colombian handicrafts will likely find you before you find them. The **Pasaje Rivas** (between Cras. 9-10 and Clls. 10-11) dates to the late 19th century. This traditional shopping corridor\u2014one of the few remaining\u2014makes for a fun detour. The passages are so narrow that it is impossible to not interact with the carpenters selling their furniture and women peddling their hand-woven baskets and curios.\n\nThe Pasaje Rivas is great for atmosphere, but if you are looking for high quality, visit one of the **Artesan\u00edas de Colombia** (www.artesaniasdecolombia.com.co) stores. The same people who put on the amazing Feria de Artesan\u00edas every December have two stores in Bogot\u00e1. The most picturesque, by far, is at a stunningly white colonial church, the **Iglesia Las Aguas** (Cra. 2 No. 18A-58, tel. 1\/284-3095, 9am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-noon Sat.). You can also visit the Chic\u00f3 location (Cl. 86A No. 13A-10, tel. 1\/691-7149, 10am-7pm Mon.-Sat.).\n\nPasaje Rivas is a traditional shopping corridor.\n\n**El Balay** (Cra. 15 No. 75-75, tel. 1\/347-1462, 9:30am-7pm Mon.-Sat.) is another option in northern Bogot\u00e1. While they have their share of trinkets, you might find a nice hammock or _chamba_ (casserole dish).\n\n#### **CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES**\n\nLooking for a cool T-shirt? Check out **America del Sur** (Cl. 85 No. 12-83, www.americadelsur.com.co, 11am-7:30pm Mon.-Sat.), which has mostly Colombia-themed shirts, or **BrincaBrinca** (Cra. 14 No. 85-26, tel. 1\/530-1136, www.brincabrinca.com, 10am-7pm Mon.-Sat.). **Cyclus** (Cra. 7 with Cl. 54, east side, tel. 1\/249-720, www.cyclus.com.co, 10am-7pm Mon.-Sat.) is a unique store that makes all sorts of messenger bags, backpacks, and wallets out of recycled tires. The slogan of this environmentally friendly boutique is appropriately \"It's a round trip.\"\n\n#### **ANTIQUES**\n\nOne street near the Zona Rosa is dedicated almost exclusively to antiques. Nicknamed the **Calle de los Anticuarios** (Cl. 79A between Cras. 7-9), this pleasant one-way street, nice for a mid-morning stroll, is lined by a handful of antique shops as well as some restaurants and, at its top, the Iglesia Santa Mar\u00eda de los \u00c1ngeles, a popular choice for weekend weddings.\n\nProminent on the street are: **Cinco en Punto** (Cl. 79B No. 8-31, tel. 1\/248-9798, 10am-6pm Mon.-Sat.), offering a range of curios from vases to furniture; **Anticuario Novecento** (Cl. 79B No. 7-60, tel. 1\/606-8616, www.anticuarionovecento.com, 10am-6:30pm Mon.-Sat.), with a wide collection that includes religious art from colonial Colombia along with Baccarat crystal from the 1930s; and **Bol\u00edvar Old Prints** (Cl. 79B No. 7-46, tel. 1\/695-5006, www.bolivaroldprints.com, 10:30am-6pm Mon.-Sat.), which specializes in old maps from Latin America and is owned by a French expat. The website of **Asociaci\u00f3n de Anticuarios de Colombia** (Cl. 79B No. 8-49, tel. 1\/248-5756, www.asociacionanticuariosdecolombia.com) has a more complete listing of shops as well as an interesting page regarding Colombian heritage pieces that are in peril of disappearing through illegal sales and transport abroad.\n\nA smaller antique area is in Chapinero on the Carrera 9 from Calle 60 to Calle 63. Check out **Librer\u00eda Errata** (Cra. 9 No. 61-16, tel. 1\/249-6234, www.libreriaerrata.com, 10am-6:30pm Mon.-Sat.) for old books and **Ayer & Co.** (Cl. 62 No. 9-11, tel. 1\/219-9789, 10am-1:30pm and 2:30pm-6:30pm Mon.-Sat.), which sells _de todo un poco_ (a little of everything).\n\n#### **FLOWERS AND MARKETS**\n\nThe flower market at the **Parque El Virrey** (Cl. 86 at Cra. 15, daily) is always colorful, and, if you are the bargaining type, you might enjoy purchasing some flowers, if only to enjoy for a couple of days. A nearby florist, **Flor Expres** (Cra. 13A No. 86A-49, tel. 1\/691-7335, 9am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.), is also good, with many unusual varieties and orchids, but there's no haggling involved. The king of all flower markets remains **Paloquemao** (Av. 19 No. 25-02, 3am-noon Mon.-Fri.) downtown, but to see it at its most vibrant, you have to get there really early. Best days: Friday and Sunday. Worst day: Monday. There is much more to Paloquemao, with all those exotic Colombian fruits, vegetables, meats, and more. There is a TransMilenio station nearby (Paloquemao station), but it's best to cab it if you go early in the morning.\n\nTwo popular flea markets take place every Sunday. The **Mercado de Pulgas San Alejo** (Cra. 7 No. 24-70, 9am-5pm Sun.) takes place in front of the Torre Colpatria. Uptown in Usaqu\u00e9n is the **Mercado De Las Pulgas Toldos De San Pelayo** (Cra. 7B No. 124-77, 8am-5pm Sun.). The crowds that go to these are worlds apart!\n\n#### **JEWELRY**\n\nColombia is one of the top emerald-producing countries in the world, boasting three major mining areas, mostly located in the Boyac\u00e1 department. Bogot\u00e1 is probably the best place in the country to pick up one of those gems, but it would be wise to walk into jewelry stores armed with knowledge about how you can tell what is a good gem, an idea about prices, etc. Downtown, check out the **Museo Internacional de la Esmeralda** (Cl. 16 No. 6-66, tel. 1\/286-4268, 10am-6pm Mon.-Sat.); **Joyeria Relojeria Museum** (Emerald Trade Center, tel. 1\/342-2957, 9am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.); or the many stores on the block of Carrera 6 between Calles 10 and 13. You can also try your luck wheeling and dealing with the men milling about on the Jim\u00e9nez just below the S\u00e9ptima. But there, you're on your own.\n\nTwo top-end jewelers at the Centro Andino are **Li\u00e9vano** (Centro Andino Local 157, tel. 1\/616-8608, 10:45am-7:45pm Mon.-Sat.) and **Bauer** (Centro Andino, tel. 1\/478-5454, 11am-7pm Mon.-Sat.).\n\nSpecializing in Colombian gold is internationally recognized **Galeria & Museo Cano** (Cra. 13 No. 27-97, Torre B, Int. 1-19, tel. 1\/336-3255, www.galeriacano.com.co, 9am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.).\n\n#### **BOOKS**\n\nFor English books, travel guides, newspapers, and magazines, **Author's** (Cl. 70 No. 5-23, tel. 1\/217-7788, 10am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-6pm Sun.) is the best and perhaps only place in town. Author's also has a large selection of children's books. In the north, try **Librer\u00eda Lerner** (Cl. 92 No. 15-23, tel. 1\/636-4295, www.librerialerner.com.co, 9am-7pm Mon.-Sat.), a great place to find Colombian literature, or **Librer\u00eda Central** (Cl. 94 No. 13-92, tel. 1\/622-7423, 10am-6pm Mon.-Sat.), which also has some English- and German-language books.\n\n#### **SHOPPING MALLS**\n\nColombia is mall crazy, and Bogot\u00e1, with over 20 of them, is the capital of this infatuation. Symbolic of its growing middle class, glitzy shopping malls have popped up literally all across the city. The latest and largest is **Tit\u00e1n Plaza** (Cra. 72 No. 80-94, Cl. 80 at Av. Boyac\u00e1, www.titanplaza.com), proudly home of Colombia's first Gap.\n\nIn northern Bogot\u00e1, **Centro Andino** (Cra. 11 No. 82-71, hours vary daily, www.centroandino.com.co) was a big deal when it opened in 1993, being the first high-end shopping center. The German school, the longstanding Colegio Andino, was razed to make way for it. Colombian men's clothes brand **Arturo Calle, Bosi** for shoes and leather, high-end jeweler **Bauer,** and **L.A. Cano** (specializing in handicrafts) are a few of the many stores in the mall. There is a **Cine Colombia** movie theater as well. The food court on the top floor provides an unusual vista of the Zona Rosa, and caf\u00e9s on the terrace below are popular for late afternoon _onces_ (tea time).\n\nNext door to Andino is glitzy **El Retiro** (Cl. 81 No. 11-94, www.elretirobogota.com, hours vary daily), home of the **Plaza de Andr\u00e9s** restaurant; **Mercedes Salazar,** with whimsical jewelry; and **Mundo \u00danico,** which sells skimpy men's underwear. The TurisBog sightseeing bus stops in front of the mall on Calle 81.\n\nFinally, the **Atlantis Plaza** (Cl. 81 No. 13-05, www.atlantisplaza.com, hours vary daily) has a **Cinemark** movie theater, the swimwear shop **Onda de Mar,** and restaurants such as **Crepes & Waffles** and **Hard Rock Caf\u00e9.**\n\n### **Sports and Recreation**\n\n#### **BIKING**\n\n##### M **Ciclov\u00eda**\n\nThe **Ciclov\u00eda** is one of the best things about Bogot\u00e1. No wonder it has been copied in cities around the world\u2014from all across Colombia to New York to Brussels. Every Sunday and on holidays (two times at night, even) about 121 kilometers of Bogot\u00e1 streets are closed to vehicular traffic so that cyclists, joggers, dog walkers, skaters, and people-watchers can claim the streets. The Ciclov\u00eda started small in the 1970s as a neighborhood initiative. Today it is an institution, and really one of the few spaces in which people of all classes in Bogot\u00e1 mix. On particularly sunny days, over two million people have been estimated to have participated in the Ciclov\u00eda. That's the equivalent of the entire population of Houston, Texas, out on a bike! Always be prepared for sun, cold, and rain.\n\nWhile popular with joggers and others, it may be more enjoyable on a bike, especially because you can cover a lot more of the city pedaling rather than walking. The Ciclov\u00eda on the Avenida S\u00e9ptima and on the Carrera 15 are two of the most popular routes, but those are just a fraction of the possibilities. You can go for miles and miles. In fact, this may be a chance to explore parts of the city that you would have never considered before.\n\nThere is no need to take a guided group tour, as the Ciclov\u00eda is easy to figure out. If you ever get lost, you can always ask the helpful Ciclov\u00eda staff, patrolling the routes. Or just ask one of the hundreds of thousands of others out for some fresh air which way to go. Bring money with you so you can grab a freshly squeezed orange juice along the way. Bike repair stations are located on all routes. Keep an eye on the time, as you don't want to be far from your hotel when the cars come roaring back at the strike of 2pm.\n\n##### **Ciclopaseo de los Mi\u00e9rcoles**\n\nFast becoming an in-the-know institution is this group of over a hundred cyclists of all ages and abilities that gets together every other Wednesday night for a nighttime ride along the _ciclorutas_ (bike paths) and streets of Bogot\u00e1. The **Ciclopaseo de los Mi\u00e9rcoles** has been going strong for about seven years. The group meets at bike shop **Welcome** (Cl. 96 No. 10-57, tel. 1\/256-0915) at 7pm. Find out about the next ride on Twitter (@elciclopaseo) or on Facebook. There is no charge.\n\nThe Sunday Ciclov\u00eda is a Bogot\u00e1 institution.\n\n##### **Bike Rentals**\n\nMany bike shops have begun to rent bikes specifically for the Ciclov\u00eda. Try **Pure Bike Shop** (Cra. 13 No. 78-47, tel. 1\/476-5058, www.purebikeshop.com, daily rental COP$45,000), **Eco Byke** (cell tel. 311\/519-2332), or **Bogot\u00e1 Bike Tours** (Cra. 3 No. 12-72, tel. 1\/281-9924, www.bogotabiketours.com). Many shops offer group bike tours.\n\n#### **RUNNING**\n\nTraffic in the city makes it tough to find pleasant places to run, but there are a few. The **Parque Nacional** (between Clls. 36-39 and Cras. 7-5), along with the cute English-style Merced neighborhood next to it, is not a bad place for a short morning jog downtown. The **Parkway** (Av. 24 between Clls. 45 and 34) is another option. This is a lovely strip of green in a quiet part of the Teusaquillo neighborhood. Of course the **Parque Bol\u00edvar** is also very popular, as is the park of the **Biblioteca Virgilio Barco.** In the north try the **Parque El Virrey** (Cras. 8-15 near Cl. 87). One side of the canal has a bike path, the other a foot path. In this _play_ (fashionable) area, you may want to make sure your workout outfit is perfectly color-coordinated. Be careful crossing Carrera 11.\n\n#### **HIKING**\n\nThe mountains surrounding the city are just too inviting to not explore. There are more mountain paths to conquer besides the one to the top of the **Cerro de Monserrate.**\n\nAnother hike in the north that is wildly popular is at the **Quebrada La Vieja,** a path that is operated by the Acueducto. It is open Monday through Saturday 5am-9:30am. On Sundays and holidays it is closed. It may be tricky to find the path at first. It is on the east (mountain side) of the Circunvalar at Calle 71. Most people walk up along the right side of Calle 72 and go through the tunnel under the Circunvalar to reach the path. The hike takes about two hours total.\n\n**Amigos de la Monta\u00f1a** (www.amigosdelamontana.org) helps to maintain the Quebrada La Vieja. They also arrange group walks. Another group, **Camino Bogot\u00e1** (www.caminobogota.wordpress.com), regularly organizes hikes in the mountains around the city. Most of these excursions are accompanied by police officers. A third organization, **Caminar Colombia** (tel. 1\/366-3059 or 1\/241-0065, www.caminarcolombia.com), offers \"ecological walks,\" usually on Sunday. These are usually outside of, but not far from, Bogot\u00e1. These walks cost around COP$40,000 including transportation. On the day of the hike, the group usually meets at 6:30am at the Los Heroes shopping center (Cra. 19A No. 78-85). The TransMilenio station there is called Los Heroes.\n\nflying kites at the Biblioteca Virgilio Barco\n\n#### **SOCCER**\n\nThere are three professional _f\u00fatbol_ clubs in Bogot\u00e1. **Santa Fe** (www.independientesantafe.com) is known as \"Expreso Rojo\" (the Red Express). **Millonarios** (www.millonarios.com.co) has, along with Am\u00e9rica of Cali, won the most national titles. Their color is blue. Both compete at the **Estadio El Camp\u00edn** (Cra. 30 at Cl. 57). There is a TransMilenio station in front of the stadium (Camp\u00edn station). The big match in town is Santa Fe versus Millonarios, and it can get quite heated in the stands. Note that you're not allowed to bring in belts or sharp objects to the matches.\n\nThe green team, **La Equidad** (www.equidadclubdeportivo.com), is the third club in the city. They are affiliated with La Equidad insurance company. Their modern, covered stadium is in the south of the city.\n\nTickets for all matches can be purchased at Tu Boleta (www.tuboleta.com, tel. 1\/593-6300) or Ticket Express (www.ticketexpress.com, tel. 1\/609-1111) outlets. You can also go to each team's ticket offices: **La Tienda Roja** (Cl. 64A No. 50B-08) for Santa Fe or **La Tienda Azul** (Centro Comercial Gran Estaci\u00f3n, Local 2-50, Av. Cl. 26 No. 62-47) for Millonarios. The most sought-after seats in the house at the Estadio El Camp\u00edn are _platea occidental alta_ and _baja._ Ticket prices range between COP$20,000 and COP$70,000.\n\nThere are two soccer seasons each year. One goes from February to June and the second from June to December. Almost all the matches are on Wednesdays and on weekends.\n\nColombia hosted the Under 20 Soccer World Cup in 2011, which was a source of pride for the country, with the championship match (Brazil defeated Portugal) played in Bogot\u00e1. When the Colombian national team is playing a match, traffic magically disappears on the city's streets!\n\n#### **TOURS**\n\n##### **Walking Tours**\n\nA free walking tour of La Candelaria is given, in English, every Tuesday and Thursday at 10am and 2pm starting at the tourist information office on the southwest corner of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. Spanish tours are offered every day. Stop by or call (tel. 1\/283-7115) a day before to reserve your place.\n\nArchitecture buffs might be interested in taking a Rogelio Salmona walking tour, exploring some of the architect's most celebrated works. These are organized by the **Fundaci\u00f3n Rogelio Salmona** (Cra. 6 No. 26-85, Piso 20, tel. 1\/283-6413, www.fundacionrogeliosalmona.org). There are three different tours: Centro Hist\u00f3rico, the Centro Internacional, and the Biblioteca Virgilio Barco area. Tours last about three hours, each with an expert guide. English-speaking guides can be arranged. The tours are quite pricey, at COP$180,000 for two people. Prices lower substantially if you latch onto a group of at least 12 (COP$45,000).\n\n##### **Bus Tours**\n\n**TurisBog** (Parque Central Bavaria, Local 120, Manzana 2, tel. 1\/336-8805, www.turisbog.com, adults COP$63,000) is a hop-on, hop-off bus tour that began operation in late 2012. The green double-decker bus makes seven stops: the Maloka science museum in Salitre, the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico, the Parque de la 93, El Retiro mall, Monserrate, the Parque Central Bavaria in the Centro Internacional, and the Corferias fairgrounds near the Calle 26. Included with the purchase of your ticket is a GPS-activated audio guide in both Spanish and English, a guided walking tour of La Candelaria, and discounts to several restaurants and attractions.\n\n##### **Bike Tours**\n\nIf you'd like the camaraderie of a group of other visitors as you get to know the city and get in a little exercise, try one of the many excursions offered by **Bogot\u00e1 Bike Tours** (Cra. 3 No. 12-72, tel. 1\/281-9924, www.bogotabiketours.com). They offer bike tours around the city and also many other walking tours, such as an unusual graffiti tour.\n\n##### **Tours Outside of Bogot\u00e1**\n\nMany hotels can arrange tours to attractions such as Zipaquir\u00e1 and Laguna de Guatavita, or visits to these can be made via public transportation or by hiring a driver for the day. An agency that specializes in daily Catedral de Sal tours is www.tourcatedraldesal.com. These cost COP$96,000 per person.\n\nThere are some extraordinary national natural parks ( _parques nacional natural,_ or PNN) quite close to Bogot\u00e1, making for excellent day hikes. Sometimes these are a bit more difficult to organize without transportation and not being familiar with the area. **Aventureros** (Cra. 15 No.79-70, tel. 1\/467-3837, www.aventureros.co) organizes mountain bike trips outside of Bogot\u00e1, for instance to the Desierto de Tatacoita near Nemoc\u00f3n. **Ecoglobal Expeditions** (tel. 1\/579-3402, www.ecoglobalexpeditions.com) organizes excursions to multiple destinations throughout Colombia, including the famous Ca\u00f1o Cristales and hikes in El Cocuy. They also can organize day trips to parks nearby Bogot\u00e1, such as the Parque Natural Nacional Sumapaz, containing the world's largest _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor), and the PNN Chingaza. **Colombia Oculta** (tel. 1\/630-3172, ext. 112, cell tel. 311\/239-7809, www.colombiaoculta.org) is a similar organization, with similar destinations.\n\n### **Accommodations**\n\nAs tourism has grown in Bogot\u00e1, so too have the number of accommodations options. This is evident in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico, with dozens of hostels catering to backpackers, and also in the north, with five-star hotels changing the landscape in upscale shopping and dining areas. Thus room rates tend to climb as you go from south to north, with Chapinero appropriately offering the most in-between options. Weekend rates are often less expensive in the larger hotels that cater to business people.\n\nWhile it is probably more desirable to stay along the Carrera 7 corridor, other parts of town may be more convenient depending on your length of visit or budget. If you want to be close to the airport, many hotels, several quite new, line Calle 26 (Avenida El Dorado) in western Bogot\u00e1. This part of town is known for steel and glass, not colonial charm. There are few interesting restaurant options within walking distance at night; however, it is quite accessible to downtown during the day thanks to the new TransMilenio line (15-20 minutes) and at night by taxi. Besides being close to the airport, hotels in this area are close to the Corferias fairgrounds, the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar area, and the U.S. Embassy.\n\nNorth of Calle 100 there are many hotel options in what feels like suburbia. You might find some good deals online there, but you will be quite far from downtown attractions.\n\nHotel rates sometimes automatically include sales tax of 10 percent (IVA). Most hotels include free wireless Internet and breakfast (although the quality of breakfast will vary). While all the fancy hotels and backpacker places have English speaking staff\u2014at least at the front desk\u2014smaller hotels may not. Note that room rates usually depend on the number of persons, not necessarily on the size of the room.\n\nExcept for some international chains and upper-end hotels, most hotels will not have heating or air conditioning in their rooms. You'll have to make do with extra blankets and body heat on those chilly Bogot\u00e1 nights.\n\nA final word: _Moteles_ are always, _residencias_ are usually, and _hospedajes_ are sometimes Colombian love hotels.\n\n#### **LA CANDELARIA**\n\nTravelers on a budget will find plentiful, friendly options in La Canderlaria close to all the important sights. Yet it still might feel a little desolate late at night, especially on holidays when the university students are gone and Bogotanos skip town.\n\n##### **Under COP$70,000**\n\nSleek **Explora Hostels** (Cl. 12C No. 3-19, tel. 1\/282-9320, www.explorahostels.com, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$50,000 d) is small with minimalist decor. There is not much common space, so you might need earplugs at night if your neighbors are in party mode (unless you join them). **Cranky Croc** (Cl. 12D No. 3-46, tel. 1\/342-2438, www.crankycroc.com, COP$23,000 dorms, COP$70,000 d) is big and airy with wood floors throughout, and always has excursions and activities on offer for its guests. Private security guards make this street feel safe after dark.\n\n**La Vieja Suiza** (Cl. 12 No. 3-07, tel. 1\/286-9695, www.laviejasuiza.com, COP$60,000 d) is a cozy and quiet place, run by two Swiss guys, that is connected to their bakery. It's nice to be awoken by the aroma of freshly baked (Swiss) bread.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\n**Platypus Hostel** (Cl. 12F No. 2-43, tel. 1\/352-0127, www.platypusbogota.com, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$100,000 d) is the pioneer backpacker lodge in La Candelaria. Although somewhat worn, it is a welcoming place, where you can mix with other travelers. There are three houses in the Platypus kingdom, all on the same street. The main one, where you check in, is livelier. Platypus is just off the Eje Ambiental (Av. Jim\u00e9nez).\n\nThe folks at Platypus now have gone upscale with the newish M **Casa Platypus** (Cra. 3 No. 12F-28, tel. 1\/281-1801, www.casaplatypus.com, COP$40,000 dorm, COP$150,000 d). It is comfortable, sparkling clean, and friendly. The rooftop terrace is an excellent place to unwind with a glass of wine after a day hitting the streets.\n\nM **Masaya Intercultural** (Cra. 2 No. 12-48, tel. 1\/747-1848, www.masaya-experience.com, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$100,000 d) near LaSalle University offers different accommodation options depending on your budget or style, from luxurious private rooms to bunk beds. Tourists stay at this newish hostel range from backpackers to budget travelers. Staff are super friendly. Guests and students conglomerate by the bar\/restaurant area in front.\n\nThe **Abad\u00eda Colonial** (Cl. 11 No. 2-32, tel. 1\/341-1884, www.abadiacolonial.com, COP$145,000 s, COP$200,000 d), an Italian-run midrange option, is surprisingly quiet in back around the interior patio. The restaurant specializes in\u2014surprise\u2014Italian cuisine.\n\n##### **Over COP$200,000**\n\nM **Hotel de la \u00d3pera** (Cl. 10 No. 5-72, tel. 1\/336-2066, www.hotelopera.com.co, COP$330,000 d) still reigns as the luxury place to stay in La Candelaria. One republican-style house and one colonial house have been converted into this hotel. There are two restaurants, including one on the rooftop that has one of the best views downtown. The hotel also offers a spa.\n\n**Casa Deco** (Cl. 12C No. 2-36 tel. 1\/283-7032, www.hotelcasadeco.com, COP$230,000 d) is a nicely refurbished art deco building with 21 well-appointed although somewhat chilly rooms (all named by the color of their interior). The terrace is an excellent place for relaxing on a late afternoon.\n\n#### **CENTRO INTERNACIONAL**\n\nThis part of town, once a modern and upscale commercial district, is on the rebound. The new TransMilenio line that has opened on the S\u00e9ptima has been a major factor in transforming the area into a walkable and well-situated place to stay while discovering the city. There are, however, still few hotel options.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nIn the heart of the Centro Internacional, few surprises are in store at **Ibis Museo** (Transversal 6 No. 27-85, tel. 1\/381-4666, www.ibishotel.com, COP$120,000). Across from the Museo Nacional, the hotel has 200 smallish rooms and a 24-hour restaurant (breakfast not included). Right on the S\u00e9ptima, this French economy hotel chain is a nice place to be on Ciclov\u00eda Sundays.\n\nThe 850-room **Crown Plaza Tequendama** (Cra. 10 No. 27-51, tel. 1\/382-0300, www.cptequendama.com.co, COP$180,000 d) was the most exclusive address in Bogot\u00e1 for many years. Charles de Gaulle even stayed there. It retains its elegance of yesteryear, with shoe-shiners in the lobby, several restaurants and caf\u00e9s on-site, and smartly dressed bellboys. Rooms are comfortable, and the location is agreeable to taking in the sights downtown. Security is tight here.\n\n#### **WESTERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nIf you are only passing through and would like to be close to the airport, you may consider staying in one of the many hotels along the Avenida Calle 26 (Avenida El Dorado). With the new TransMilenio line on the El Dorado, it is easy to hop on one of the red buses and spend the day visiting the major sights in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico. There's not much in the way of charm in this part of town. There is, however, a mall: **Gran Estaci\u00f3n** (Av. El Dorado No. 62-47). Plus, along the Avenida and the TransMilenio line is a nice bike route and jogging path.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\n**Aloft Hotel** (Av. Cl. 26 No. 9-32, tel. 1\/741-7070, www.starwoodhotels.com\/aloft hotels, COP$169,999 d), a member of the Starwood Hotel Group, is smartly decorated, modern, and within five minutes of the airport. There are 142 rooms in this property. It is also within about a five-minute walk of the Portal El Dorado TransMilenio station.\n\n##### **Over COP$200,000**\n\nThe **Marriott** (Av. Cl. 26 No. 69B-53, tel. 1\/485-1111, www.marriott.com, COP$400,000) is luxurious and is close to the Salitre business and shopping area. The two restaurants\u2014one a cool sushi bar and the other serving Italian fare\u2014are excellent. The hotel is within walking distance of a TransMilenio station, and it takes under 12 minutes to get to the airports. Open since in 2009, it is one of the first luxury international hotels to arrive in Bogot\u00e1 in recent years.\n\n#### **CHAPINERO**\n\nHalfway between downtown and the Zona Rosa, the area of Chapinero between Calle 53 and Calle 72 offers quite a few midrange accommodation options. Chapinero Alto, to the east of the Avenida S\u00e9ptima, is a quiet and leafy middle-class neighborhood. Below the S\u00e9ptima (to the west), it's gritty. During weekdays Chapinero bustles with merchants and students, and on weekend nights the area is transformed into a mostly gay nightlife area. Hotels in Chapinero are about a 10-minute cab ride from the upscale restaurant areas in the north.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nThe Viaggio chain has nine reasonably priced, furnished apartment buildings in Bogot\u00e1. **Viaggio 6.1.7.** (Cl. 61 No. 7-18, tel. 1\/744-9999, www.viaggio.com.co, COP$163,000 d) is a high-rise centrally located on the S\u00e9ptima. Rooms have tiny kitchenettes, but breakfast is included in the price. You can rent rooms on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.\n\nClassical music fills **6 Suites** (Cra. 3B No. 64A-06, tel. 1\/752-9484, www.6suiteshotel.com, COP$150,000 d), which has exactly that in a small house. Some packages include dinner. There is a Saturday vegetable and fruit market in a small park next to the house, as well as a round-the-clock police station.\n\nModerately priced, clean, and centrally located, the **Abitare 56 Hotel** (Cl. 56 No. 7-79, tel. 1\/248-0600, www.abitare56.com, COP$113,000 d) has 28 rooms and is a great deal.\n\n**Casona del Patio** (Cra. 8 No. 69-24, tel. 1\/212-8805, www.lacasonadelpatio.net, COP$135,000 d) is in an English Tudor-style home, and its 24 rooms are reasonably priced despite its location near the Zona G. It has all wood floors, and there is private security on the street at night. With 10 rooms, the **Matisse Hotel** (Cl. 67 No. 6-55, tel. 1\/212-0177, www.matissehotel.com, COP$180,000 d) is just minutes away from the Zona G in an English Tudor-style house above the S\u00e9ptima.\n\nTwo hotels in Chapinero exclusively market to gay and lesbian clientele. **High Park Suites** (Cra. 4 No. 58-58, tel. 1\/249-5149, contacto@highparksuites.com, COP$191,000 d) has four spacious rooms and is in Chapinero Alto. If you are planning on taking taxis everywhere you go, the location is perfectly fine. However, if you'd like to walk, it is on the east side of the Carrera 5 speedway\u2014crossing the street there can be like crossing the Indianapolis 500. Warhol-mad **San Sebastian** (Cl. 62 No. 9-49, tel. 1\/540-4643, www.hbsansebastian.com, COP$180,000 d) is on the other side of the S\u00e9ptima, not far from gay mecca Theatr\u00f3n and the gay-friendly gym and supermarket.\n\n##### **Over COP$200,000**\n\nIn the leafy Chapinero Alto neighborhood, **The Book Hotel** (Cra. 5 No. 57-79, tel. 1\/704-2454, www.thebookhotel.co, COP$273,000 d), which markets itself as gay-friendly, offers very comfortable and modern rooms, and the moderately priced adjacent restaurant with a terrace is popular with locals on their lunch hour.\n\n#### **NORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\nUptown is a good option if comfort trumps budget and you want to be close to loads of excellent restaurants.\n\n##### **Under COP$70,000**\n\nA good deal within easy walking distance of all the restaurants and stores of the Zona Rosa is **Chapinorte Bogot\u00e1 Guesthouse** (Cl. 79 No. 14-59, tel. 1\/256-2152, www.chapinortehostelbogota.com, COP$64,000 s with shared bath). It's a real bargain for the north.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nOn a quiet street in a wealthy neighborhood minutes from the Zona Rosa, **Retiro 84** (Cl. 84 No. 9-95, tel. 1\/616-1501 www.retiro84.com, COP$173,000 d) has 16 rooms. The breakfast area is not very happening, but the hotel is comfortable and is reasonably priced for this high-rent part of town. It's popular with business travelers in town for longer stays. Near the Atlantis Plaza shopping mall in the Zona Rosa, **Hotel Saint Simon** (Cra. 14 No. 81-34, tel. 1\/621-8188, www.hotelsaintsimonbogota.com, COP$180,000 d) is a good value. It is a fairly nondescript brick hotel with about 60 carpeted but well-maintained rooms.\n\n##### **Over COP$200,000**\n\n**BH** (www.bhhoteles.com) is a relatively new Colombian chain of hotels, mostly catering to business travelers. All are comfortable with minimalist design. They operate several hotels in Bogot\u00e1. **BH Tempo** (Cra. 7 No. 65-01, tel. 1\/742-4095, COP$220,000 d) has 63 rooms and is close to the Zona G. **BH Quinta** (Cra. 5 No. 74-52, tel. 1\/742-4908, COP$280,000 d) is in an English Tudor-style house on the busy Carrera Quinta. The most expensive of their hotels is the **BH Retiro** (Cl. 80 No. 10-11, tel. 1\/756-3177, COP$370,000), overlooking a park. It's a five-minute walk to the Centro Andino. Farther north still is **BH Parque 93** (Cra. 14 No. 93A-69, tel. 1\/743-2820, COP$220,000).\n\nIf you'd like to be in the middle of the action in the Zona Rosa, a few comfortable options are around or below the US$150 per night range. Near the Atlantis Plaza shopping mall is the **GHL Hotel Hamilton** (Cra. 14 No. 81-20, tel. 1\/621-5455, www.ghlhoteles.com, COP$290,000 d) of the GHL hotel chain. Cool M **84 DC** (Cl. 84 No. 9-67, tel. 1\/487-0909, www.84dc.com.co, COP$248,000 d) blends in well in this upscale neighborhood. It has 24 spacious, modern rooms. Guests have some privileges at the nearby Bodytech gym.\n\n**B3** (Cra. 15 No. 88-36, tel. 1\/593-4490, www.hotelesb3.com, COP$200,000 d) is one of the most striking hotels in town, due to its wonderful living facade of plants. The lobby area is a lively place in the early evening, when guests munch on tapas and sip cocktails at the bar.\n\nSpanish midrange hotel chain M **NH Bogot\u00e1 93** (Cl. 93 No. 12-41, tel. 1\/589-7744, COP$240,000) is an unpretentious entry in Bogot\u00e1. It offers 137 smart rooms, a nice rooftop terrace, and a small gym.\n\nFinally, the **Hilton** (Cra. 7 No. 72-41, tel. 1\/600-6100, www.hilton.com, COP$250,000 d) is back in Bogot\u00e1, after having abandoned its location downtown during harsher times. This time the Hilton is in a slick black high-rise on the S\u00e9ptima near Calle 72. If you book early enough, you can get a good deal on rooms.\n\nAlthough it's right next door to Andr\u00e9s D.C. and the rest of the Zona Rosa revelry, you'd never know it in your quiet, comfortable room at the **Boh\u00e8me Royal** (Cl. 82 No. 12-35, tel. 1\/618-0168, www.hotelesroyal.com, COP$310,000 d). You can use the gym at its partner hotel, the Andino Royal on Calle 85. Stately **Hotel Morrison** (Cl. 84 Bis No. 13-54, tel. 1\/622-3111, www.morrisonhotel.com, COP$300,000) overlooks a nicely manicured park in the Zona Rosa. It offers spacious rooms and has a \"New York style\" restaurant. Guests enjoy privileges at the Spinning Center gym across the street. You may want to avoid rooms on the south side of the hotel, where you might feel the pulsating beats from nearby discos.\n\nAt **B.O.G.** (Cra. 11 No. 86-74, tel. 1\/639-9999, www.boghotel.com, COP$420,000 d), every detail of the hotel has been thought out. An extraordinary giant photograph of an emerald in the gym area downstairs will inspire you to buy one. The most widely heralded chef in Colombia, Leonor Espinosa, has a nouvelle Colombian cuisine restaurant, and the rooftop pool is luxurious. Just a few blocks away, M **Cit\u00e9** (Cra. 15 No. 88-10, tel. 1\/646-7777, www.citehotel.com, COP$400,000 d) may lack some of the finer touches of B.O.G., but its location right on the El Virrey park could not be better. The terrace of the restaurant is a popular place for Sunday brunch. They have a rooftop pool and provide bikes for guests to use on the Ciclov\u00eda, which passes by in front every Sunday and holiday.\n\n**Estelar** (Cl. 93 No. 11-19, tel. 1\/511-1555, www.hotelesestelar.com, COP$430,000 d) has a fabulous rooftop bar and pool, and you will be sure to get a good night's sleep thanks in part to the soundproof windows. It's close to the Parque de la 93. The discreet **Hotel Port\u00f3n Bogot\u00e1** (Cl. 84 No. 7-55, tel. 1\/616-6611, www.hotelportonbogota.com.co, COP$400,000 d) prides itself on its tight security, making it a favorite of visiting diplomats. It has an elegant old-school feel, especially in the restaurant and lounge area, where they light the three fireplaces every evening at 7. Port\u00f3n guests have unlimited access to the very close Bodytech gym.\n\nIf you have real money to burn, try the **JW Marriott Hotel Bogot\u00e1** (Cl. 73 No. 8-60, tel. 1\/481-6000, www.marriott.com\/bogjw, COP$600,000 d). The bar at this 245-room hotel can make more than 70 types of martinis\u2014enough said. Of course, you don't have to shell out 600,000 pesos to saddle up at the bar and sip one of those martinis.\n\n### **Food**\n\nBogot\u00e1 is the best city in the country when it comes to dining, with more than its fair share of excellent restaurants. Unfortunately many of these places charge Manhattan prices.\n\nA 10 percent tip is usually included in the price, but it is a requirement for the server to ask you if you'd like the _servicio incluido._ You can say no, but that would be considered harsh. If you are truly impressed with the service, you can always leave a little additional on the table.\n\nThe Bogot\u00e1 dish par excellence is _ajiaco._ This is a hearty potato and chicken soup, seasoned with the secret herb _guascas._ (Oops\u2014there goes the secret.) On some dreary days, there can be nothing better. Heated debate can arise about what else to include in the soup. A small piece of corn on the cob usually goes in, as does a dollop of cream, but capers and avocado slices are controversial additions.\n\nReservations are helpful on weekend evenings, especially in the Zona G. Restaurant staff will be more than happy to order a cab for you by phone. That is a very good idea, especially at night.\n\nTap water in Bogot\u00e1\u2014 _de la llave_ \u2014is perfectly fine and good tasting. Besides, if you ever order a fresh lemonade or fruit juice, you're getting _agua de Bogot\u00e1_ anyhow.\n\n#### **LA CANDELARIA**\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s, Bakeries, and Quick Bites**\n\nHere in coffee country, there is no shortage of tucked away caf\u00e9s where you can sip a _tinto,_ but if you want something more, it's best to stick to the pros. That means **Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9** (Centro Cultural Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez) and **Oma** (Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico). These chains are all over Bogot\u00e1 and indeed Colombia, and have a strong following. Their success is one reason perhaps that Starbucks has not yet ventured into Colombia.\n\nIf you'd like to stay away from the chains, check out the M **Caf\u00e9 de la Pe\u00f1a\/Pasteler\u00eda Francesa** (Cra. 3 No. 9-66, tel. 1\/336-7488, www.cafepasteleria.com, 8am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-6pm Sun.). This bakery\/caf\u00e9 is where locals pick up their daily baguette. They serve quiches and light lunches with a few Colombian touches as well. Inside it has a quiet, homey feeling.\n\nThe classic place for a _tamal_ and a hot chocolate, the **Puerta Falsa** (Cl. 11 No. 6-50, tel. 1\/286-5091, 7am-10pm daily) claims to be one of the oldest operating restaurants in Bogot\u00e1, having opened in 1816.\n\n##### **Colombian and Fusion**\n\n**Capital Cocina y Caf\u00e9** (Cl. 10 No. 2-99, tel. 1\/342-0426, 9:30am-9pm Mon.-Fri., 2pm-9pm Sat., COP$17,000) is your hip little spot on the corner. Hearty lunches are reasonably priced, and the restaurant is vegetarian-friendly. Breakfast is served until noon (just on weekdays), and it's a cozy place for a nightcap. Using Andean ingredients, such as healthy quinoa, one block over is the tiny M **Quinoa y Amaranto** (Cl. 11 No. 2-95, tel. 1\/565-9982, 8am-4pm Mon., 8am-9pm Tues.-Fri., 8am-5pm Sat.), a warm little place that is a haven for vegetarians downtown. With lunches for around COP$11,000 it's an herbivore bang for your buck.\n\nAn always popular Colombian seafood joint specializing in fried fish and _cazuelas_ (seafood stews) is **Pescadero la Subienda** (Cra. 6 No. 10-27, tel. 1\/284-9816, noon-6pm Mon.-Sat., COP$20,000). **El Olivar** (Cra. 6 No. 10-40, tel. 1\/283-2847, 7:30am-5pm Mon.-Thurs., 7:30am-10pm Fri., 11am-4pm Sat., COP$25,000), across the street, is a more upscale fusion place\u2014and the prices reflect that. Popular at lunchtime with bureaucrats, it serves hearty soups, such as _cazuelas_ based in coconut milk, and also Mediterranean cuisine. Finally, **Mar\u00eda Tomasa Caribbean Cuisine** (Cra. 6 No. 10-82, tel. 1\/744-9097, 9am-4:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000) is a cheerful place with a Coste\u00f1o feel. Seafood dishes abound, but there are also the customary _arepa de huevo_ (egg fried in corn meal) and juices that you can only get on the coast\u2014like _n\u00edspero_ (sapodilla) juice.\n\n##### **International**\n\n**La Manzana** (Cl. 11 No. 4-93, tel. 1\/284-5335, 9am-7pm Mon. and Wed.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun.) is inside the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica art complex. It's a quiet environment, overlooking a modern fountain and magnolia trees in the courtyard between the museums. This restaurant specializes in Mediterranean cuisine and pastas. They have some pretty good desserts, too.\n\nIf mushrooms are your thing, head to **Merlin Caf\u00e9 Galer\u00eda Restaurante** (Cra. 2 No. 12-84, tel. 1\/284-9707, noon-1am Mon.-Sat., COP$20,000). They promise the best mushrooms in Bogot\u00e1. It's a funky place. Just across the way is candlelit **El Gato Gris** (Cra. 1 No. 13-12, tel. 1\/342-1716, www.gatogris.com, 9am-midnight Mon.-Thurs., 9am-3am Fri.-Sat.). The menu has a wide range of fare, including steaks and pastas, and they are proud of their cr\u00eapes as well. Both of these are close to the Chorro de Quevedo.\n\nTwo classy international cuisine restaurants have been a part of the Candelaria scene for many years now\u2014meaning they are doing something right. **Bonaparte** (Cra. 8 No. 11-19, tel. 1\/283-8788, noon-4:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) is an authentic French bistro. It's known for its cr\u00eapes as well as heartier dishes such as beef Roquefort. Bonaparte remains popular with gossiping politicians and court justices. **Mi Viejo** (Cl. 11 No. 5-41, tel. 1\/566-6128, noon-5pm Mon.-Sun., COP$30,000) was the first Argentinian restaurant in La Candelaria, and it has a loyal following. Paradise for beef-eaters, this friendly spot has, as would be expected, an extensive Argentinian wine selection.\n\nCajun food is the thing at **La Condesa Irina Lazaar** (Cra. 6 No. 10-19, tel. 1\/283-1573, lunch Mon.-Sat., COP$35,000). This American-run spot is very easy to miss, but if you are in the mood for pork chops or perhaps crab cakes, this is the place. There are only six tables, so it is best to reserve in advance. If you persuade him, the friendly owner might consider opening the restaurant for you for dinner.\n\nNear loads of backpacker hostels, the **Crazy Mongolian** (Cl. 12D No. 3-77, 12:30pm-9:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000) lets you choose the ingredients in generous portions of Mongolian barbecue.\n\nThe food at the **Mirador** restaurant (Cl. 10 No. 5-22, tel. 1\/336-2066, noon-10 pm daily, COP$35,000) on the top of the Hotel de la \u00d3pera may get mixed reviews, but the views? Above the red roofs and church steeples of La Candelaria, they are incredible.\n\n#### **AVENIDA JIM\u00c9NEZ**\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s, Bakeries, and Snacks**\n\nFor a sandwich or coffee on the go check out tiny **La Jamoner\u00eda Sandwich Gourmet** (Cl. 12C No. 6A-36, tel. 1\/283-0361, 7am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 7am-2pm Sat.). If you're in one of those moods, you can order a \"Cheese Lonely\" sandwich for about COP$7,000.\n\nBrush shoulders with the locals at **La Gran Parilla Santa Fe** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 5-65, tel. 1\/334-4745, 11:30am-5:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$15,000), a no-surprises and budget-friendly Colombian restaurant downtown. They do the _comida t\u00edpica_ (Colombian fare) thing specializing in grilled meats. **Pasteler\u00eda La Florida** (Cra. 7 No. 21-46, 8:30am-9pm daily, COP$10,000) is a Cachaco institution, sort of a Colombian greasy spoon diner.\n\n##### **Colombian and Fusion**\n\nFor a hearty meal of _mamona_ (grilled meat), run, don't walk, to M **Capachos Asadero** (Cl. 18 No. 4-68, tel. 1\/243-4607, www.asaderocapachos.com, 11:30am-3:30pm Tues.-Thurs., 11:30am-5pm Fri.-Sun.), an authentic _llanero_ (cowboy) restaurant. For under COP$20,000 you get a healthy portion of grilled meat tenderly cooked for several hours, fried yucca, and a _maduro_ (fried plaintain). Goes down well with a beer. On weekends they have live music and dance performances. It's open every day at lunch.\n\nFor a taste of the Colombian Pacific, you can't beat the seafood lunch places on Carrera 4 at Calle 20. There are several of them, all serving about the same thing. Try **Sabores del Mar** (corner of Cl. 20 and Cra. 4, lunch Mon.-Sat., COP$15,000) or **Sabores del Pac\u00edfico** (Cr. 4 No. 20-29, lunch Mon.-Sat, COP$15,000). If you're looking for cheap fried fish or other typical dishes in a place oozing with character, try the **Mercado de las Nieves** (Cl. 19 No. 8-62, no phone, lunch Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000). The passage that connects Calle 19 with Calle 20 is filled with mom-and-pop restaurants serving mostly fish dishes. (A sign marks the place as Pasaje La Macarena, but few call it that.)\n\nIs it time for a chain? You can't beat always-reliable M **Crepes & Waffles** (Av. Jim\u00e9nez No. 4-55, tel. 1\/676-7600, www.crepesywaffles.com.co, noon-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun.), found all over Colombia. Fill up on a _cr\u00eape de sal_ (savory cr\u00eape) for around COP$15,000, but save room for the scrumptious deserts (such as a mini-waffle with Nutella and vanilla ice cream). Also, if you have been searching the world over for a cr\u00eape with tofu in it, the cr\u00eape Gandhi awaits. This particular location is in the easy-on-the-eyes Monserrate building on the Eje Ambiental. Other popular locations are on the Zona T, Parque de la 93, and at the airport, where you can get a healthy breakfast before that morning flight.\n\n#### **CENTRO INTERNATIONAL**\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s and Snacks**\n\n**Andante Ma Non Troppo** (Cra. 5 No. 15-21, tel. 1\/341-7658, COP$12,000) is a long-running caf\u00e9 that also serves breakfast, sandwiches, and salads.\n\n##### **Colombian and Fusion**\n\nIn the Centro Tequendama, a popular spot for Cali food is **Fulanitos** (Cra. 13 No. 27-00, Local 101, tel. 1\/281-7913, noon-5pm Mon.-Fri, COP$15,000). Another inviting place with a set lunch menu of Colombian favorites is **Ruta** (Cl. 37 No. 13A-26, tel. 1\/751-9239, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000). At **Los Cauchos** (Cl. 26B No. 3A-20, tel. 1\/243-4059, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000), preparing excellent Colombian food is a family affair. They have been around in the Macarena since 1976. Check out their plate of the day: Monday it's _ajiaco_ (chicken and potato soup) and on Friday it's _puchero,_ a hearty plate of chicken, pork, beef, potatoes, yuca, and corn in a tomato-onion sauce.\n\n**Leo Cocina y Cava** (Cl. 27B No. 6-75, tel. 1\/286-7091, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., COP$45,000), by internationally acclaimed chef Leonora Espinosa, has been featured by _Cond\u00e9 Nast_ magazine as one of the tops\u2014in the world. Her empire has expanded northward with her new sleek and savvy restaurant, **La Leo** (Cra. 11 No. 86-74 at the B.O.G. hotel, tel. 1\/639-9999, 6am-10am, noon-3pm, and 7pm-11:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$40,000), which some say is more style than substance.\n\n##### **International**\n\nThe Macarena is a veritable United Nations of cuisine. On a quiet street behind the Museo Nacional, M **Donostia** (Cl. 29 Bis No. 5-84, tel. 1\/287-3943, noon-4pm Mon., noon-4 and 7pm-11pm Tues.-Sat., COP$30,000) is a swanky place for Spanish-Colombian cuisine. You'll want to linger on the colorful sofas. **Al\u00f4 Brasil** (Cra. 4 No. 26B-88, tel. 1\/337-6015, noon-3pm and 6-10pm Tues.-Wed., noon-3pm and 6pm-midnight Thurs.-Fri., noon-midnight Sat., 1pm-5pm Sun., COP$22,000) serves the famous _feijoada brasileira,_ a stew of beans with beef and pork. The ladies at **Agave Azul** (Cra. 3A No. 26B-52, tel. 1\/560-2702, www.restauranteagaveazul.blogspot.com, 1pm-10pm Sat., noon-3pm Sun., COP$70,000 set menu) have a passion for Mexican food. Tequila is an important part of the equation at this creative place\u2014you were warned. Reservations are necessary.\n\nIn the Parque Bavaria the Mexican place **San Lorenzo** (Cra. 13 No. 28A-21, tel. 1\/288-8731, noon.-4pm Mon.-Fri., COP$23,000) packs in the banking crowd at lunchtime on the fourth floor of the old Bavaria brewery.\n\n#### **CHAPINERO**\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s and Snacks**\n\n**Pan de Nobles** (Cra. 9 No. 60-82, tel. 1\/606-7262, 7am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-6pm Sun., COP$10,000) started out as a whole-wheat bread bakery. Today it has expanded into a healthy and vegetarian empire. There is a sit-down restaurant upstairs with a set menu. Downstairs on the corner is a \"vegetarian express\" popular with university students, who chow down on veggie burgers between classes. And the bakery still sells unusual breads, such as feijoa bread and soy arepas (cornmeal cakes).\n\nA typical bakery\/caf\u00e9 that has packed them in for breakfast and lunchtime since 1943 is **San Marcos** (Cra. 13 No. 40-36, 6am-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., 7:30am-7pm Sun.). They specialize in lasagnas and pastas.\n\n##### **Colombian**\n\nIt is hard to find a seat, especially on the terrace, at **Canela y Candil** (Cra. 8 No. 56-32, tel. 1\/479-3245, lunch Mon.-Fri., COP$12,000). **Las Margaritas** (Cl. 62 No. 7-77, tel. 1\/249-9468, noon-4:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-6:30pm Sat.-Sun.) has been around for over a century. Try the _puchero,_ a meaty stew, on Thursday. The _ajiaco_ (chicken and potato soup) is also good. For the best of original coastal cuisine, try friendly M **MiniMal** (Cra. 4A No. 57-52, tel. 1\/347-5464, www.mini-mal.org, 12:30pm-10pm Mon.-Wed., 12:30pm-11pm Thurs.-Sat., COP$25,000). The stingray _cazuela_ (stew) is one of the more exotic items on the menu. There's also a funky gift shop where you can get one-of-a-kind, 100 percent Colombian handicrafts.\n\n##### **International**\n\nHipster-ish **Salvo Patria** (Cra. 54 No. 4A-13, tel. 1\/702-6367, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$22,000) is a happening place. There's a variety of interesting appetizers, sandwiches, meaty main courses, and vegetarian options. You'll be tempted to try a carafe of gin _lulada_ (a drink made with the juice of a _lulo_ , a type of orange).\n\nTo go old school in Chapinero Alto, there are two options. First, **Giuseppe Verdi** (Cl. 58 No. 5-35, tel. 1\/211-5508, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat., noon-9pm Sun., COP$20,000) has been around forever, serving typical Italian dishes. They have added a small terrace caf\u00e9 for more informal meals or a glass of wine. **La Poularde** (Cra. 4 No. 54-56, tel. 1\/249-6156, noon-3pm and 7pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., 12:30pm-4pm Sun., COP$25,000) serves very traditional French dishes, such as escargot and cr\u00eapes suzette. There's a 60 percent chance of Edith Piaf songs being played while you're here.\n\n#### **NORTHERN BOGOT\u00c1**\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s and Quick Bites**\n\nWhen it comes to _onces_ (Colombian tea time), M **Myriam Camhi** (Cl. 81 No. 8-08, tel. 1\/345-1819, 7am-8pm Mon.-Sun.) takes the cake. Just take a look at the decadent desserts on display. The Napoleon de Arequipe and chocolate flan are favorites. While it is known for sweet indulgence, the extensive lunch menu is also nice, with many lighter dishes such as wraps and a pretty good salad bar. On Fridays Myriam serves _ajiaco_ (chicken and potato soup). With a more local feel, **Brot Caf\u00e9** (Cl. 81 No. 7-93, tel. 1\/347-6916, 7:30am-7pm daily) has a fiercely loyal following for breakfast and during afternoon _onces._ They are famous for their freshly baked chocolate baguettes. It's also open for lunch. Surrounded by green on their terrace it's easy to forget the chaos of the city.\n\nM **Siuka** (Cl. 79A No. 8-82, tel. 1\/248-3765, 9am-7pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-5pm Sun.) has got it all. Well, according to its name at least. _Siuka_ means \"everything\" in Chibcha, the language of the Muiscas. It's hard to find any fault at all with this airy, friendly, and minimalist newcomer. Suika adjoins the good **Los S\u00e1nduches de Sr. Ostia** high-class sandwich joint (Cl. 79A No. 8-82, tel. 1\/248-3311). Instead of french fries, you can get spicy carrots! (It's by the same people as Donostia downtown.)\n\n**Nick's** (Cra. 9 No. 79A-28, tel. 1\/321-4108, 11am-10pm Mon.-Sat.) is a quaint place specializing in sandwiches that is popular with hipsters and advertising types. If you arrive on bike, Nick will give you a discount. **Do\u00f1a Dicha** (Cra. 11 No. 78-78, tel. 1\/629-7452, 10am-7pm Mon.-Sat.) bakes delicious bread and is a nice place for a cappuccino (always served with a spoon dipped in chocolate). Best to go there during non-rush hour, as the traffic on the Carrera 11 might spoil the mood. M **Brown** (Calle 77A No. 12-26, tel. 1\/248-0409, www.brownesunareposteria.com, 11am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 11am-4pm Sat.) is cute as a button and has a light lunch menu (half a sandwich, soup, salad, and drink for COP$16,500) and pretty good brownies. It's a nice place to get stuck during the rain. Remember to request your coffee to be strong if that's the way you like it.\n\n**Diletto Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 9 No. 80-45, tel. 1\/317-7383, 7:30am-8:30pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-8pm Sat., 11am-7pm Sun.) often seems to host caffeinated business meetings\u2014and they also can fry eggs. For under COP$10,000 you can have scrambled eggs, a croissant, and a cappuccino for breakfast. **Pan Pa' Ya** (Cl. 82 No. 8-85, www.panpaya.com.co, 7am-9pm daily) is an inexpensive bakery that everyone loves. There are many other locations, even in Weston, Florida! Plan your visit strategically: _Almojabanas_ (cheese rolls) come out of the oven at 8:30am and 6:30pm; _palitos de queso_ (cheese sticks) at 9:30am and 4:30pm.\n\n##### **Colombian**\n\nAt M **Fulanitos 81** (Cl. 81 No. 10-56, tel. 1\/622-2175, lunch daily, COP$20,000) there is always a line at lunchtime. This is Cali cuisine at its best. Try the _chuletas de cerdo_ (pork chops) or _sancocho_ (soup), and have a refreshing _lulada_ (a drink made with the juice of a _lulo_ , a type of orange), of course.\n\nIf you want a good introduction to Colombian delicacies in an elegant atmosphere that doesn't feel like the Carnaval de Barranquilla, the **Casa Club Colombia** (Cl. 82 No. 9-11, tel. 1\/744-9077, 8am-1am, COP$25,000) is an excellent choice. In a lovely house where the fireplace is always lit, _bandeja paisa_ (dish of beans, various meats, yuca, and potatoes) and all your favorites from all corners of the country are on the menu.\n\n**Andr\u00e9s Carne de Res** is the required stop for all visitors to Colombia. It's sort of like a shrine, but one where you can have mojitos, _patacones_ (fried plantains), and a menu full of other typical Colombian dishes. This is one of the first places around that embraced Colombian culture and cuisine with gusto, convinced that it is something to be proud of. And it has worked. The food is good and the atmosphere fantastic. The original, and to many, the best M **Andr\u00e9s** (Cl. 3 No. 11A-56, tel. 1\/863-7880, noon-3am Thurs.-Sat., noon-11pm Sun., COP$30,000) is in Ch\u00eda, about 45 minutes away. This house seems to go on forever, and on weekend nights the slide from dinner to rumba is a slow but definitive one. **Andr\u00e9s D.C.** (tel. 1\/863-7880, noon-midnight Sun.-Wed., noon-3am Thurs.-Sat., COP$35,000) is for an urban Andr\u00e9s experience\u2014for you and about 1,199 others. Look for the windmills next to the El Retiro mall. M **La Plaza de Andr\u00e9s** is in the mall itself (8am-10pm daily, COP$25,000). The colorful Plaza is more reasonably priced and is not the full-on rumba experience, although it does have its personality.\n\nWelcome to Santa Marta\u2014in Bogot\u00e1, that is. The M **Gaira Cumbia Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 13 No. 96-11A, tel. 1\/746-2696, www.gairacafe.com, 9am-10pm Mon.-Wed., 9am-2am Thurs., 9am-3am Fri.-Sat., 9am-6pm Sun., COP$25,000) specializes in Caribbean cuisine. This is a special place, a tribute to music and family. It is run by Guillermo Vives and his mom. Guillo, as he is known, is a talented musician, and is the brother of Carlos Vives, the multiple Grammy Award-winning _vallenato_ singer. The food is quite good, and it is popular at lunchtime. At night, Guillo and other musicians regularly perform, to the delight of the whiskey-drinking crowd. On weekends they have special activities for children in the morning. Some just go for the rumba on weekend nights, for which there is a cover.\n\n##### **International**\n\n**Bagatelle** (Cl. 82 No. 9-09, tel. 1\/621-2614, 7am-10pm Mon.-Sat., 8am-5pm Sun., COP$20,000) is a long-standing French p\u00e2tisserie and restaurant. Their terrace, under the trees, is a nice place for lunch or to sip on a caf\u00e9 au lait and nibble at a delicious bread pudding.\n\nFrench restaurant **Criteri\u00f3n** (Cl. 69A No. 5-75, tel. 1\/310-1377, noon-4pm and 7pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-1pm and 7pm-11pm Sun., COP$40,000) is the standard bearer when it comes to haute cuisine in Bogot\u00e1. It is the creation of the Rausch brothers, who are among the top chefs in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Harry's Bakery** (Cra. 6 No. 69A-24, tel. 1\/321-3940, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat., noon-6pm Sun., COP$20,000) is headed by another highly regarded chef, Harry Sass\u00f3n. It serves sandwiches, burgers, popcorn shrimp, and other diner fare. Harry's mom is in charge of the decadent desserts.\n\nClassy **Astrid & Gaston** (Cra. 7 No. 67-64, tel. 1\/211-1400, www.astridygastonbogota.com, 12:30pm-3:30pm and 7:30pm-11:30pm Mon.-Sat., bar open until 3am Fri.-Sat., COP$35,000), direct from Lima, and stylish **Rafael** (Cl. 70 No. 4-65, tel. 1\/255-4138, 12:30pm-3pm and 7:30pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) are rivals for the top Peruvian food in town. At Astrid, try an only-in-Colombia coca pisco sour.\n\nThe little block of restaurants on Carrera 13 between Calles 85 and 86 has some great options. The vast menu of generous designer burgers at M **Agad\u00f3n Burger Bar** (Cra. 13 No. 85-75, tel. 1\/255-4138, noon-10pm Mon.-Wed., noon-midnight Thurs.-Sat., noon-4:30pm Sun., COP$20,000) will leave you satisfied. It's run by a pair of Israelis, and they even have a couple of vegetarian burgers on the menu. **Casa** (Cra. 13 No. 85-24, tel. 1\/236-3755, noon-midnight daily, COP$22,000), in a cozy house with fireplaces and cool artwork on the walls, serves food meant to be shared. You're surrounded by _palma bobas_ and other tropical plants in their patio. Across the street is elegant **La Brasserie** (Cra. 13 No. 85-35, tel. 1\/257-6402, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., noon-6pm Sun., COP$32,000). Oh, yes, and the Clintons have dined here.\n\n**Opa** (Cra. 14 No. 90-80, tel. 1\/218-9682, noon-8pm daily, COP$12,000) is a cheap and good gyros joint popular with the work crowd on dull Calle 90. **Gyros y Kebabs** (Cra. 13 No. 82-28, tel. 1\/635-9324, noon-11pm daily, COP$15,000) does standard Lebanese food very well. It's cozy to sit by the bread oven and watch the bread guy slide pita bread in and back out, piping hot. Yes, they have an afternoon happy hour.\n\nIn Usaqu\u00e9n try **Abasto** (Cra. 6 No. 119B-52, tel. 1\/215-1286, <http:\/\/abasto.com.co>, 7am-10pm Mon.-Thurs., 7am-11pm Fri., 9am-10:30pm Sat., 9am-5pm Sun., COP$22,000), where they use only the freshest and often organic ingredients.\n\n##### **Asian**\n\nHaving had just a tiny Asian immigration, unlike Peru, Panama, and Brazil, Colombia doesn't have dazzling Asian cuisine, but you'll probably be pleasantly surprised at the offer in Bogot\u00e1. The pan-Asian cuisine chain M **Wok** (Quinta Camacho, Cra. 9 No. 69A-63, tel. 1\/212-0167, www.wok.com.co, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat., noon-8pm Sun., COP$23,000) is hard to beat. A second location is in the Museo Nacional (Cra. 6 Bis No. 29-07, tel. 1\/287-3194). The menu is astoundingly extensive, inventive, and fresh. Hearty fish soups and curries based in coconut milk will warm you up, and there are numerous vegetarian dishes, such as a Vietnamese-inspired grilled tofu sandwich. The quality of their sushi is also good. Wok is an environmentally and socially responsible company, working with family farmers and fishers in small communities throughout Colombia. Don't let the fact that it is a chain dissuade you.\n\nExcellent service awaits at sleek **Watakushi** (Cra. 12 No. 83-17, tel. 1\/744-9097, noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-11pm Fri.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun., COP$35,000), one of the many restaurants operated by local restaurant wizard Leo Katz. It is on the Zona T. **Sushi Gozen** (Cl. 94 No. 14-11, tel. 1\/257-0282, noon-3pm and 6:30pm-midnight Mon.-Fri., noon-midnight Sat., COP$25,000) is a Colombian-Japanese restaurant popular with Japanese business people (a good sign) that has much more than just sushi. Finally, **Arigato** (Cl. 76 No. 12-22, tel. 1\/248-0764, 11am-9pm Mon.-Sat., COP$20,000) is a family-run Japanese restaurant. The fresh fish is flown in regularly from the Pacific Coast.\n\nThere are few Indian restaurants in Bogot\u00e1, but of those, **Flor de Loto** (Cl. 90 No. 17-31, tel. 1\/617-0142, noon-3 p.m. and 6pm-9pm Mon.-Sat., COP$24,000) is probably the best. The head chef is originally from the Punjab. The restaurant surrounds a peaceful garden. It's cash-only here.\n\n##### **Italian**\n\nItalian restaurants are in abundance in Bogot\u00e1. At M **La Divina Comedia** (Cl. 71 No. 5-93, tel. 1\/317-6987, noon-4pm and 7pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000) go for the divine _tortellata_ (a mix of stuffed pastas). At unpretentious **Trattor\u00eda San Giorgio** (Cl. 81 No. 8-81, tel. 1\/212-3962, noon-10:30pm Mon.-Sat., noon-6pm Sun., COP$22,000), Italian regulars are often found sipping wine and enjoying a multi-course meal. M **DiLucca** (Cra.13 No. 85-32, tel. 1\/257-4269, noon-midnight daily, COP$25,000) is consistently good, with both pastas and pizzas, and they deliver. The atmosphere is rather lively inside.\n\nM **Julia** (Cra. 5 No. 69A-19, tel. 1\/348-2835, noon-11pm daily, COP$25,000) serves the best pizza in town. Theirs is the irregular-shaped and paper-thin Roman crust. They also have a couple of non-cheese pizzas, which is unusual for Bogot\u00e1. It is astounding to see what the chefs manage to come up with in such a tiny\u2014and infernally hot\u2014kitchen. As no reservations are accepted in this tiny restaurant, it's best to get there on the early side. Second best pizza in town? That would be **Archie's** (Cl. 82 No. 13-07, tel. 1\/610-9162, www.archiespizza.com, breakfast to late night daily, COP$22,000). This chain is all over Bogot\u00e1 and in many cities countrywide. Archie's delivers.\n\n### **Information and Services**\n\n#### **VISITOR INFORMATION**\n\nFor information on all things Bogot\u00e1, go to the **Punto de Informaci\u00f3n Tur\u00edstica** (PIT). In La Candelaria there is a PIT on the southwest corner of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar (tel. 1\/283-7115, daily). Other locations include the Quiosco de la Luz in the Parque de la Independencia (Cra. 7 at Cl. 26, tel. 1\/284-2664, 9am-5pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-4pm Sun.), both airport terminals, both main and south bus terminals, and in the north at the Centro Comercial Granahorrar on Calle 72. The attendants will bend over backwards to help you out any way they can, providing maps and tips.\n\n#### **TELEPHONES**\n\nThe telephone code for Bogot\u00e1 and many surrounding towns is 1. From abroad, dial 57 for Colombia, then 1 for Bogot\u00e1, followed by the 7-digit number. To call a cell phone from a landline, first dial 03 and then the 10-digit number. To do the reverse, call 03-1 (the 1 for Bogot\u00e1). Prepaid cell phones or SIM cards can be purchased at any Claro or Movistar store. When in the city, there is no need to dial the 1 before the landline number.\n\n##### **Emergency Numbers**\n\nFor emergencies, just remember 1-2-3. The single emergency hotline is 123. While some operators may speak English, that is probably unlikely. You should provide the neighborhood you are in and a precise street number.\n\nU.S. citizens who have health, safety, or legal emergencies can contact the **U.S. Embassy** at 1\/275-2000.\n\n#### **POST OFFICES AND COURIER SERVICES**\n\nHere are some of the main offices of 4-72, the national post office, in Bogot\u00e1: Centro Internacional (Cra. 7 No. 27-54, tel. 1\/245-4015), Chapinero (Cl. 67 No. 8-39, tel. 1\/248-7810), and Chic\u00f3 (Car. 15 No. 85-61, tel. 1\/621-9508). The office hours are the same at all locations (8am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.). Private courier services are the way most people send correspondence domestically. Two major companies are Servientrega and Deprisa. **Servientrega** is in the Centro Internacional (Mailboxes Cra. 13 No. 32-16) and in Chapinero (Mailboxes Cl. 67 No. 7-28). **Deprisa** is operated by Avianca. There are many offices throughout the city, including in the north at the Centro Comercial Granahorrar (Cl. 73 No. 9-42), near Andino (Cr. 11 No. 81-17), and near the Parque El Virrey (Cra. 15 No. 88-53). Downtown they can be found at Calle 13 No. 7-09. Hours of these offices are typically 8am-5pm Monday-Friday and 9am-1pm Saturday.\n\n#### **INTERNET CAF\u00c9S**\n\nInternet caf\u00e9s are plentiful, especially in La Candelaria area and Chapinero, although you may have some difficulty locating caf\u00e9s in the wealthier residential neighborhoods of Chic\u00f3 and Rosales.\n\n#### **NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES**\n\nThe **_City Paper_** is a free monthly newspaper in English with information on events, interesting profiles, and essays. It is generally distributed to hotels, restaurants, and caf\u00e9s during the first two weeks of the month. Two other freebies, **_ADN_** and **_Metro,_** both in Spanish, are newspapers that are distributed on street corners in the mornings. Another fun publication is the hip and free bimonthly **_Cartel Urbano,_** which examines Bogot\u00e1 cultural life. **_GO_** is a monthly publication on things going on in the city. **_El Tiempo_** and **_El Espectador_** are the two main newspapers in town, and are good sources for information. **_Semana_** is considered the best news magazine, and is published weekly.\n\n#### **SPANISH LANGUAGE COURSES**\n\nThe Spanish spoken in Bogot\u00e1 is considered neutral and clear, compared to accents you may have heard in the Caribbean, Spain, or Argentina. Therefore Bogot\u00e1 is an excellent place to study Spanish, if you have some time to invest. The best schools are operated by the major universities in town. These include the **Universidad Externado** (Centro de Espa\u00f1ol para Extranjeros, CEPEX, Cra. 1A No. 12-53, tel. 1\/353-7000 or 1\/342-0288, www.uexternado.edu.co\/cepex), the **Universidad Nacional** (Edificio 229, Torre Sur, Primer Nivel, tel. 1\/316-5000), and the **Universidad Javeriana Centro Latinoamericano** (Transv. 4 No. 42-00 Piso 6, tel. 1\/320-8320, www.javeriana.edu.co\/centrolatino).\n\n#### **MONEY**\n\nATMs are everywhere throughout the city, and this is probably your best option to get Colombian pesos. Transaction fees vary. Some ATMs on the streets are closed at night. Be discreet and cautious when taking out money.\n\nTo change money, try **New York Money** at the Centro Andino mall (tel. 1\/616-8946), Atlantis Plaza (tel. 1\/530-7432), or at the Centro Comercial Granahorrar shopping center (tel. 1\/212-2123). They are open also on Sundays and holidays. Note that you'll need to show your passport to change money.\n\n#### **VISAS AND OFFICIALDOM**\n\nIf you need to stay beyond the 60 or 90 days allowed to visitors from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most European countries, you will need to go to **Migraci\u00f3n Colombia** (Cl. 100 No. 11B-27, tel. 1\/595-4331). It is best to go there a few days before your current visa expires.\n\n#### **HEALTH**\n\n##### **Altitude**\n\nAt 2,580 meters, Bogot\u00e1 is the third highest capital city in the world (behind La Paz, Bolivia, and Quito, Ecuador). It is common to feel short of breath and fatigued during the first two days at the higher altitude. Other symptoms of altitude sickness include headache and nausea. Take it easy for those first few days in Bogot\u00e1 and avoid caffeine and alcohol. If you are sensitive to high altitude, see a doctor, who can prescribe medication to mitigate the effects of high altitude, before your trip. If you feel symptoms such as fever or gradual loss of consciousness, see a doctor immediately.\n\nAlso, keep in mind that, being so high up, you are also that much closer to the sun. When it is sunny those rays are deceivingly potent.\n\n##### **Hospitals, Clinics, and Pharmacies**\n\nBogot\u00e1 has excellent physicians and hospitals. Two of the best hospitals are the **Fundaci\u00f3n Santa Fe** (Cl. 119 No. 7-75, www.fsfb.org.co, emergency tel. 1\/629-0477, tel. 1\/603-0303) and the **Cl\u00ednica del Country** (Cra. 16 No. 82-57, tel. 1\/530-1350, www.clinicadelcountry.com). The **Fundaci\u00f3n Shaio** (Diag. 110 No. 53-67, emergency tel. 271-4050, tel. 1\/624-3211) hospital specializes in cardiology. For sexual and reproductive health matters, **Profamilia** (Cl. 34 No. 14-52, tel. 1\/339-0900, www.profamilia.org.co), a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, offers clinical services. It is steps away from the Profamilia TransMilenio station on the Avenida Caracas.\n\nMom-and-pop pharmacies are all over the city, and sometimes these can be less stringent about requiring physical prescriptions. The Supermarket chain **Carulla** (www.carulla.com) usually has an in-store pharmacy, and the Venezuelan chain **Farmatodo** (tel. 1\/743-2100, www.farmatodo.com.co) has around 30 stores in Bogot\u00e1; some of them are open 24 hours a day.\n\n##### **Dental Services**\n\nDental care is excellent in Bogot\u00e1. Americans are known to come to Colombia specifically for dental treatments and surgeries. **Marl\u00f3n Becerra** (Cl. 91 No. 15-15, tel. 1\/746-1111) has several offices in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n#### **LAUNDRY**\n\nWash and dry services that charge by the pound or kilo are plentiful in La Candelaria and in Chapinero. This service is often called _lavander\u00eda,_ as opposed to dry cleaning ( _lavado en seco_ ). In La Candelaria two such services are: **Limpia Seco Sarita** (Cra. 3 No. 10-69, tel. 1\/233-9980) and **Extra-R\u00e1pido** (Cl. 12 No. 2-62, tel. 1\/282-1002). In Chapinero there is **Lava Seco** (Cra. 9 No. 61-03, tel. 1\/255-2582), another **Lava Seco** (Cl. 66 No. 8-20, tel. 1\/249-7072), and **Lavander\u00eda San \u00c1ngel** (Cl. 69 No. 11A-47, tel. 1\/255-8116). A good dry cleaning service is **Classic** (Cra. 13A No. 86A-13, tel. 1\/622-8759).\n\n### **Getting There**\n\n#### **BY AIR**\n\nThe **Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado** (BOG, Cl. 26 No. 103-09. tel. 1\/266-2000, www.elnuevodorado.com) is undergoing a massive expansion. The international terminal will finally be connected with the Puente Aereo (Avianca domestic terminal).\n\nYou will need to show your luggage receipts before passing through customs. A customs agent will take one copy of the customs declaration and then you may be required to put both checked and carry-on bags through a scanner. They are mostly looking for weapons, cash, and fruits and vegetables.\n\nThere are money exchange offices and ATMs just outside of the customs area.\n\nIf you are not being picked up by a hotel shuttle or friend, it is imperative to use the official taxi services available outside the arrivals area.\n\n#### **BY BUS**\n\nBogot\u00e1 has three bus terminals. These are the **Terminal del Sur,** the **Portal del Norte,** and the main bus station, the **Terminal de Transportes** (Diagonal 23 No. 69-60, tel. 1\/423-3630, www.terminaldetransporte.gov.co) in Salitre.\n\nYou can catch a bus to just about anywhere at the Terminal de Transportes. The terminal is well organized and clean and is divided into three \"modules,\" each generally corresponding to a different direction: Module 1 is south, Module 2 is east\/west, and Module 3 is north.\n\nThere are two other modules, 4 and 5, corresponding to long-distance taxi services and to arrivals. All modules are located in the same building. Each module has an information booth at the entrance with an attendant who can point you in the right direction.\n\nThe terminal has plenty of fast food restaurants, ATMs, a pharmacy, and a Dunkin' Donuts every 50 meters. You can stow your bags in a locker or check them in a storage area. Wireless Internet is available in some areas of the building, and if not, there are Internet and telephone services. To pass the time, you can win big at the many casinos in the terminal or enjoy some peace at the second-floor chapel.\n\nIn the arrivals module, there is a tourist information office (PIT), where the helpful attendants can give you a map of the city and assist you in getting to your hotel. There is also an organized and safe taxi service and plenty of public transportation options available.\n\nDuring the Christmas and Easter holidays, the bus terminal is a busy place with crowds and packed buses. This is also true on _puentes_ (long weekends).\n\nThe terminal website is not bad, with a map of the modules, information on bus companies with links to their websites, timetables, and price information. Prices listed online are comparable to the prices found at the terminal.\n\nCheck prices with a couple of companies, as levels of comfort can vary. Some companies even offer Wi-Fi in their buses, and most show loud, violent movies for your enjoyment.\n\nThe **Portal del Norte** (Autopista Norte with Cl. 174), part of the TransMilenio station of the same name, may be more convenient if you are traveling to nearby destinations. As you exit northbound TransMilenio buses, there are well-marked exits to platforms for different nearby destinations. The area for Zipaquir\u00e1 (shortened to Zipa on signage) and Ch\u00eda is at the far left of the platform. Destinations such as Laguna de Guatavita (COP$7,400), Sesquil\u00e9 (COP$5,500), Suesca (COP$6,000), and Tenjo (COP$3,600) are straight ahead. You pay the bus driver directly for these trips.\n\nTransMilenio bus along Avenida Jim\u00e9nez\n\nMeanwhile, in front of the \u00c9xito supermarket\/store on the east side of the Autopista is where buses going a little farther on to places such as Nemoc\u00f3n, Villa de Leyva, Tunja, and Bucaramanga pick up passengers. It is not nearly as organized as at the main terminal, but it all somehow manages to work out. It's best to catch these buses during the daytime.\n\nThe **Terminal del Sur** (Autopista Sur with Cra. 72D) is near the Portal Sur of TransMilenio. This station serves locations in the south of Cundinamarca, such as Tequendama, and farther south to Girardot, Ibagu\u00e9, Neiva, Popay\u00e1n, Armenia, Cali, and all the way to Mocoa in Putumayo.\n\n### **Getting Around**\n\n#### **TRANSMILENIO**\n\nWhile it has become the public transport system that Bogotanos seem to love to hate, the red buses of TransMilenio have clearly transformed the city. This dedicated mass transit system began rolling along the Avenida Caracas in 2000 near the end of the Enrique Pe\u00f1alosa mayorship. Today, the Caracas line moves more passengers than most subway lines. One of the great characteristics of the TransMilenio project is that, in addition to buses, a requirement has been made to create wide sidewalks, pedestrian bridges, and bike lanes alongside the bus lines. The system has been lauded internationally and copied by several cities as a very cost effective mass transit system. However, lack of investment in new stations and buses has meant that the buses are overcrowded.\n\nHow do you determine which bus to take? It's not that easy at first. The stations are divided into 12 zones. For example, the Museo del Oro is classified as Zona J and Calle 85 is Zona B. The first step may be to figure out the zone you are going to and the zone you are starting out from. Because there are many express lines, or lines that skip certain stations, figuring out the system map may give you a migraine. If you are not up for the challenge, just ask one of the attendants at the station.\n\nYou are most likely to use the Caracas line to go north and south, with buses that spur off to the Las Aguas station as a convenient way of getting to Centro Hist\u00f3rico attractions. In the opposite direction, that same line\u2014bound for the Portal del Norte\u2014will get you close to the Zona Rosa (Calle 85). The line that goes along the Avenida 30 stops near the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, the Estadio El Camp\u00edn, the Universidad Nacional, and Paloquemao. The new line that goes to the Portal Eldorado stops at the cemeteries (Centro Memoria), the fairgrounds (Corferias), and close to the U.S. Embassy (Gobernaci\u00f3n). Unfortunately, TransMilenio is not an option to reach the airport.\n\nThe system operates 5am-midnight Monday through Saturday and 6am-11pm on Sunday and holidays. Fares are a little more expensive during rush hours (COP$1,700 as opposed to COP$1,400). Also, Bogotanos are usually in a hurry to get where they're going. So the \"local\" routes\u2014often called \"Ruta F\u00e1cil\"\u2014may be less crowded. Keep your wallet in your front pocket and watch your things, especially during rush hour.\n\nIn 2012, Bogot\u00e1 began replacing private buses with the city SITP buses (www.sitp.gov.co). SITP buses stop only at designated stops. You must purchase a refillable card to ride, which can be found at numerous locations. This is the best way to travel between La Candelaria and the north.\n\n#### **PRIVATE BUSES**\n\nThey are intimidating at first, but sometimes private buses are the only way to go. The good (and bad) thing about buses is that, although they are not supposed to, they will stop just about anywhere, even in the middle of the street. In both big buses and _colectivos_ (minivans), you pay the driver upon entry. It's best to have small bills and change. Exit buses at the back door. You can use the button to alert the driver to stop. Sometimes buses don't come to a complete stop (especially for young men)\u2014they just slow down. Take precautions when exiting any bus that hasn't stopped completely. Heading downtown from the Zona Rosa or Chapinero areas, look for buses that say Normand\u00eda on them.\n\n#### **TAXIS**\n\nIt's estimated that over a million people take a cab each day in the city. There are around 50,000 taxis (mostly yellow Hyundai vehicles) circulating the streets of Bogot\u00e1, so you will rarely have a hard time locating one. However, it's important to always order cabs by phone or the smartphone app Tappsi for safety.\n\nA trip from the Zona Rosa area to La Candelaria costs around COP$15,000. A _taximetro_ calculates units, which determine the price. The rates are listed on a _tarjet\u00f3n_ (large card) with the driver's information. That card is always supposed to be visible. There are special surcharges for cab services ordered by phone, for nighttime, and for going to the airport. Taxi drivers do not expect tips, but you can always round up the fare if you'd like. During the end-of-year holidays, drivers may ask for a holiday tip.\n\n#### **WALKING**\n\nYou get a real feeling for the city\u2014the good, the bad, and the ugly\u2014by walking its streets. All areas from the historic district through to the Centro Internacional and Macarena are accessible on foot, and walking is often the best way to get around. The same is true for upscale shopping and residential areas to the north. All of these areas are safe to walk around, but it's never a good idea to advertise your tourist status with bulky cameras and backpacks. Old, leafy neighborhoods like Teusaquillo-La Soledad are nice to wander around during the daytime as well. The worst thing about walking in the city is dealing with drivers. Generally speaking, they have very little respect for pedestrians or cyclists. Look for stoplights at intersections to help you safely cross streets. Also, note that when traffic lights turn yellow, that means green. Finally, keep in mind that, when there is no traffic, there are apparently also no speed limits.\n\n#### **BIKING**\n\nBogot\u00e1 has a huge bike path network, one of the most extensive in Latin America. These are called the _ciclorutas_. For those tired of getting stuck in traffic or dealing with buses, biking it to work has become a nice alternative. But you really have to keep your wits about you. Crossing the street can be tricky, as drivers don't hold a lot of respect for bikers, unfortunately. In addition, most bike paths follow alongside busy thoroughfares like the Carrera 11, so, during rush hours especially, you could be inhaling polluted air. It's nicer on weekends or late at night. If in town for just a limited time, you may prefer to make your bike experience a stress-free Ciclov\u00eda one (Sundays and holidays), rather than having to deal with the bike paths. A map of the 344-kilometer bike lane network is available at www.movilidadbogota.gov.co. As part of the public spaces along TransMilenio routes there are always _ciclorutas_ , such as along Calle 26 (Avenida El Dorado). Another long stretch from downtown to the World Trade Center on Calle 100 goes along the Carrera 11. It's strongly recommended to wear a helmet, and using a bike lock is a good idea.\n\n#### **CAR RENTAL**\n\nWith more than a million aggressive drivers on the clogged streets of Bogot\u00e1, renting a vehicle is a horrible idea for visitors. However, if you are planning to travel to places nearby Bogot\u00e1 like Villa de Leyva or would like to take your time touring parks or villages, it might be an option. **National** (Cra. 7 No. 145-71, www.nationalcolombia.com), **Avis** (Av. 19 No. 123-52 Local 2, tel. 1\/629-1722, www.avis.com), and **Hertz** (Av. Caracas No. 28A-17, tel. 1\/327-6700, www.rentacarcolombia.co) have offices in Bogot\u00e1. Your driver's license is accepted here in Colombia.\n\n### **Vicinity of Bogot\u00e1**\n\n#### **TENJO**\n\nThe town of Tenjo is charming. If you would like to visit a pueblo in the green pastureland outside of Bogot\u00e1, this makes a fine day trip. The plaza is shady and compact with a colonial church on one side. People keep warm wrapped in their heavy woolen _ruanas_ (ponchos) as they relax on park benches, and people sell _obleas_ (wafers) and _almojabanas_ (cheese rolls) to passersby.\n\nJust outside of town are two recommended restaurants: **La Granja** (Km. 12 V\u00eda Siberia-Tenjo, tel. 1\/864-6148, www.lagranjatenjo.com, COP$25,000), which has a petting farm, and nearby **Viveros Tirr\u00e1** (Km. 11 V\u00eda Siberia-Tenjo, cell tel. 312\/397-9940, www.restauranteviverostirra.com, COP$25,000). Both of these are popular with families on the weekends.\n\n#### **ZIPAQUIR\u00c1 AND VICINITY**\n\nA favorite day trip for visitors to Bogot\u00e1 is the city of **Zipaquir\u00e1** (pop. 112,000). About an hour's drive from Bogot\u00e1, Zipaquir\u00e1 is known for its Catedral de Sal\u2014a cathedral built in a salt mine. Zipaquir\u00e1 is named for the Muisca leader of the Bacat\u00e1 confederation\u2014the Zipa. The Muisca settlement was very close to the mines, and they traded salt for other commodities with other indigenous groups.\n\nThe **Catedral de Sal** (tel. 1\/852-3010, www.catedraldesal.gov.co, 9am-5:30pm daily, COP$20,000) is part of the Parque del Sal and the top \"Wonders of Colombia\" as voted by Colombians. The original cathedral was built by miners in 1951, but due to safety concerns, a new and larger cathedral was built and opened in 1995. The cathedral is indeed an impressive feat of engineering. Tours are obligatory, but you can stray from your group. The tours go past the Stations of the Cross and finally there is a massive cross in the cavernous sanctuary. Masses actually do take place here in the depths on Sundays, and they attract many faithful. Other features include a museum, a rock-climbing wall, and a children's 3-D film, which you could probably skip.\n\nThe picturesque main plaza in Zipaquir\u00e1, with palm trees rising against a backdrop of green mountains, is always the center of activity in town. Here locals gather to gossip, get their shoes shined, or munch on an _oblea_ (wafer) oozing with caramel. Dominating the plaza is a cathedral designed by Friar Domingo de Petr\u00e9s, who also designed the Bogot\u00e1 and Santa Fe de Antioquia cathedrals. Construction began in 1805; 111 years later, in 1916, it was completed and dedicated.\n\nOn the main road into town from Bogot\u00e1, there are several grilled meat-type restaurants, with teenage boys furiously waving red flags to attract customers. A local favorite for a hearty lunch of grilled fish, chicken, or vegetables is **Casa Nnova** (Cra. 10 at Cl. 3), across from the fancy La Cascada restaurant. A good option for overnight accommodations is **Hotel Cacique Real** (Cl. 6 No. 2-36, tel. 1\/851-0209, www.hotelcaciquereal.com, COP$88,000 d).\n\nZipaquir\u00e1 is an easy day trip. On weekends, families and tourists alike take the Turistren from the Usaqu\u00e9n station. Bands play Colombian _papayera_ music as you slowly chug through the savannah of Bogot\u00e1 on this three-hour trip. The train leaves in the morning and returns in the late afternoon, giving you more than enough time to visit the salt mines. You could also (and probably will want to) just take the train one way, returning by bus or taxi back to Bogot\u00e1. Otherwise, buses depart the Portal del Norte TransMilenio station every 10 minutes or so, all day long, and the fare is inexpensive. If arriving via TransMilenio, when exiting the bus take a left and you will see signs pointing the way for \"Zipa\" buses. The attendants can also direct you. You'll pay the bus driver directly. The trip takes about 45 minutes. You can either walk or take a short taxi ride to the Parque del Sal.\n\n##### M **Nemoc\u00f3n**\n\nWith only 10,000 residents, the sleepy pueblo of **Nemoc\u00f3n** (www.nemocon-cundinamarca.gov.co) is 15 kilometers from Zipaquir\u00e1 and just 65 kilometers from Bogot\u00e1. It is a cute, compact colonial-era town, also home to salt mines, but it does not attract nearly the same number of visitors that Zipaquir\u00e1 does. That's part of its allure. In pre-Columbian times, this was also a Muisca settlement devoted to salt extraction.\n\nOn the plaza, the church is set against a backdrop of eucalyptus-covered hills, obviously some sort of reforestation effort. There is a small salt museum on the corner, and students will be happy to give you a tour in Spanish. About a 10-minute walk toward the hills are the **mines** (9am-5pm daily, COP$17,000). Tours take about 90 minutes. The beautifully renovated section of the mines that you visit is no longer used for salt extraction. In the depths of the mines you will see all types of stalactites and stalagmites. The pools where salt and water were mixed to pump out the salt are a highlight. The reflection of the illuminated vaults on the surface of the pools, combined with the cool lighting, is amazing. You can take some fun photos inside. Once you get back out into daylight, there are simple restaurants with names like the **Venado de Oro** (the Golden Deer) on the plaza or **La Casa de la Gallina** (the Hen House) on Calle 2 (No. 4-24). There's not much in the way of accommodations in Nemoc\u00f3n, but most visitors make it a day trip. Not far from Nemoc\u00f3n is a desert microclimate called the **Desierto de Tatacoita.** It's a popular mountain-biking area.\n\nthe sleepy pueblo of Nemoc\u00f3n\n\n#### **LAGUNA DE GUATAVITA AND VICINITY**\n\n##### M **Laguna de Guatavita**\n\nThe El Dorado myth, which became an obsession for gold-thirsty Europeans in the New World, is based on a Muisca Indian ritual that took place here in this perfectly round mountain lake.\n\nFollowing the death of the Muisca _cacique_ (chief), a nephew would be chosen to succeed him. The day of the ceremony, the nephew would be sequestered in a cave. Then, stripped naked and covered with mud and gold dust, he would be rowed to the center of the sacred lake with incense and music filling the air. Once there, gold, silver, emeralds, and other tributes were tossed into the cold waters, and the cacique would dive in. Incidentally, the gold used in these ceremonies mostly came from outside Muisca territories. This was an area rich in emeralds, salt, and corn\u2014gold, not so much.\n\nPart of what historians know about the ceremony was confirmed with the finding in 1856 of the miniature golden raft depicting the ceremony. This piece was not found in Guatavita, but rather in a cave close to Bogot\u00e1. That raft, of course, is one of the main displays at the Museo del Oro.\n\nFrom the European perspective, there must have been a profound sense of disappointment once they realized that the \"city of gold\" just didn't exist. It was the promise of wealth beyond their wildest dreams that had sustained them as they made their arduous trek through the swamps of the muggy R\u00edo Magdalena valley, swatting away mosquitoes night after night as they desperately tried to get some rest. When they arrived in Guatavita, they drained the lake, at least three times, to see what could be found at the bottom. A giant cut in the lake can be still seen today.\n\nLaguna de Guatavita\n\nAfter years of neglect, today **Laguna de Guatavita** (9am-4pm Tues.-Sat., COP$13,600) is being given the respect it deserves. An environmental agency maintains the park and, in order to preserve it, has forbidden direct access to the lake. The lake is much better appreciated from above on the well-maintained path along the top of the crater. To reduce the impact on the fragile environment, the path does not go all the way around. On the weekends, you must join a tour group to see the lake. These leave every half hour. Guides are knowledgeable and passionate about their work. English tours are possible, especially for larger groups, but those should be reserved in advance. During the week you can amble along the path at your own pace.\n\nWhile much of the brick path is flat, there is a fairly steep climb, making it difficult for those with physical limitations. The entire tour takes less than an hour. At the end of the walk, you can walk or hop on a minibus to the entrance of the park. When Monday is a holiday, the park is open Wednesday-Monday.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nGetting to the Laguna de Guatavita via public transportation is a little tricky, but doable. At the TransMilenio Portal del Norte station, take a bus bound for the town of Sesquil\u00e9. On the main square in front of the church you can usually find taxis that will take you to the Laguna de Guatavita and back (one way around COP$25,000). One (and just one) _colectivo_ (minivan) by Cootranscovadonga leaves at 8:45am on weekends and holidays for the park, returning at around 4pm, making for a very long day. In addition, several _colectivos_ leave all day long from Sesquil\u00e9 bound for El Hato\/Rancher\u00eda\/El Uval that can drop you off about a two-kilometer hike to the park.\n\nMany visitors opt to hire a driver for the day to make the trip to Guatavita and back. This varies in price and it would be wise to check with a few drivers and bargain. Make sure to specify if there will be additional stops (for a coffee break or for a lakeside lunch). Hotels, hostels and travel agencies in Bogot\u00e1 can also arrange this trip for you.\n\nAnother option is driving. Once you get out of Bogot\u00e1, it is fairly stress-free for Colombian standards, as the road is good (mostly four-lane) and with decent signage. Take the Autopista Norte towards Tunja and take the exit to Sesquil\u00e9. Past the town a dirt road leads up to the park. If you get lost, locals along the road will help you find your way. You can park right at the park entrance.\n\nAn excellent place on the way for a mid-morning coffee and arepa is **Carajillo Restaurante** (Km. 41).\n\n##### **Nueva Guatavita**\n\nThe actual town of Guatavita no longer exists. Back in the 1960s, when this kind of thing could be done without cries from environmentalists or community activists, the town was flooded in order to build the **Emblase de Tomin\u00e9,** a large reservoir. They moved the town a little bit inland, calling it Nueva Guatavita. All the buildings here are painted white, as if they were built in the colonial period, but the streets are California-wide. There are two small museums by the water. The **Museo de Arte Religioso de Guatavita La Antigua** (COP$1,000) displays some of the relics from the church salvaged before the great flood. There is a short presentation about the flood and some photos of the submerged town. You used to be able to see the top of an obelisk from the town cemetery, but either a boat ran over it or it just crumbled into the depths. Nearby is a small indigenous culture museum. A few restaurants in town serve fried trout and other local specialties.\n\n##### **Emblase de Tomin\u00e9**\n\nBetween Nueva Guatavita and the Laguna de Guatavita alongside the Tomin\u00e9 reservoir are a handful of restaurants, hotels, and marinas.\n\n**La Juanita** (cell tel. 310\/213-5793, felipespath@gmail.com, www.lajuanitaguatavita.com\/place) is wonderfully crunchy-granola, in a quiet place within walking distance of the reservoir and about halfway between the Laguna de Guatavita and Nueva Guatavita. They grow their own vegetables, have yoga classes, and offer pottery making and horseback-riding excursions. You can even walk from there to the Laguna de Guatavita.\n\nOverlooking the water, family-run **Los Pinos** (Km. 11 V\u00eda Sesquil\u00e9-Guatavita, cell tel. 310\/777-6631, www.lospinos.com.co, weekends and holidays only) is a fine place for an afternoon lunch after a day at the lake. Grilled fish and barbecued pork ribs are their specialties, although they can accommodate vegetarians. You can rent a Sunfish sailboat for excursions on the water.\n\nLiterally next door to the restaurant, the **Club Marina de Guatavita** (cell tel. 312\/592-7468) rents sailboats (Sunfish COP$60,000 per day). You can also rent windsurfing equipment and take classes. You can water-ski for about COP$40,000 for a half-hour trip (including wetsuit). Canoes can be rented for only COP$10,000 per hour. There is also camping available next to the water, which costs COP$25,000. There are five very basic cabins for rent.\n\n#### **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL CHINGAZA**\n\nThe **Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza** extends over 76,000 hectares (188,000 acres) in Cundinamarca and Meta and makes for an excellent day trip of hiking among armies of _frailejones_ plants through the melancholy and misty _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor). One of the better hikes is a 3.5-hour one that takes you to the **Lagunas de Siecha,** which include the three mountain lakes: Suram\u00e9rica, Siecha, and Guasca. Along with Laguna de Guatavita, these were also sacred Muisca lakes.\n\nThe park limits the number of visitors, so it is best to request an entry permit in advance. Hire an experienced guide (COP$50,000\/day), as trails are often not obvious. The guides are generally very knowledgeable and friendly. However, they may not speak English. To arrange a visit, call **Parques Nacionales** (tel. 1\/353-2400, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co) and request permission to visit PNN Chingaza. They will ask you to send the names of the members of your group in an email and confirm the reservation. They will also provide contact information for the local association of guides. You can save a lot of money, and help the local economy, if you do it this way rather than through an organized private tour.\n\n_frailejones_ at the Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza\n\nPacking rubber boots is a must, as you will be hiking along really muddy paths. Sneakers just won't do. A light raincoat or windbreaker and sweatshirt are essential, as well as a packed lunch, snacks, and water. The hike to the _lagunas_ takes about 3.5 hours.\n\nOther excursions within the Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza can be made from different entry points.\n\nIn the town of **Guasca** you can relax, eat, and stay at the **Posada Caf\u00e9 La Huerta** (cell tel. 315\/742-0999, www.cafelahuerta.com). They make great American cornbread. If you decide to stay with them for a weekend, they can arrange your transportation and visit to PNN Chingaza.\n\nDown the road a ways from Posada Caf\u00e9 La Huerta is the abandoned colonial-era **Capilla de Siecha,** a picturesque white chapel in the middle of farmland. It is guarded by many sheep and some tiny dogs, and you can buy a ticket for entrance from an elderly farmer.\n\nFrom Bogot\u00e1, take a bus to Guasca and from there take a _buseta_ (minivan) towards Paso Hondo. The _buseta_ will leave you at the intersection of the road that leads to the park. It is about a 90-minute walk to the park entrance from there. These leave at 6:30am, 7:30am, and 9:30am and so forth. You should leave Bogot\u00e1 by around 7am to make the 9:30am _buseta_. Buses to Guasca leave from the Portal del Norte bus terminal as well as from an informal bus pickup area between Calles 72 and 73 at Carrera 14. It may sound iffy, but if you go there, you can ask any taxi or bus driver where to find the right bus.\n\nIf you travel with private transportation, it is possible to drive closer to the park, but only if you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle.\n\n#### **SUESCA**\n\nIt's all about rock climbing in Suesca. On the weekends, Bogotanos converge on this little Cundinamarca town and head to the _rocas._ Most climbing takes place along cliffs just behind the town\u2014some up to 250 meters high\u2014parallel to some old train tracks and the R\u00edo Bogot\u00e1. It's a beautiful setting, and the fresh smell of eucalyptus trees and mountain mist add to the feeling of the place.\n\nSeveral outdoors shops in Suesca rent equipment and organize rock-climbing classes and excursions. **Explora Suesca** (cell tel. 311\/249-3491 or 317\/516-2414, www.explorasuesca.com) rents out bikes in addition to rock-climbing gear and classes. **Monodedo** (Cra. 16 No. 82-22, tel. 1\/616-3467, cell tel. 316\/266-9399, www.mondodedo.com) has an office in Bogot\u00e1. Expect to pay around COP$60,000 for a three-hour rock-climbing excursion with a guide.\n\nMany folks like making Suesca a camping weekend. The most popular place for this is **Campo Base** (cell tel. 320\/241-9976 or 321\/415-3930), right across from the rocks. They've got hot water, a place for cooking, and they rent out tents.\n\nAt the other end\u2014way other end\u2014of the spectrum is **Casa Lila** (cell tel. 320\/204-8262 or 300\/835-9472, patriciavalenciaturismo@gmail.com, COP$220,000). This luxurious bed-and-breakfast with nine rooms is so cozy, with fireplaces all around and its own restaurant, that it may be hard to leave. It's right next to an old train station at kilometer 3. In between those two is **El Hostal Vivac** (cell tel. 312\/539-5408, www.elvivachostal.com, shared room COP$25,000, private room COP$65,000).\n\nAfter all that rock climbing, it's time for some Thai food. Check out **Restaurante Vamonos Pa'l Monte** for Phuket vegetables or pad Thai. It's right at the entrance of the _rocas_. The other really popular place is **Rica Pizza** (cell tel. 312\/379-3610), on the main road, also near the entrance to the park. They serve more than pizza.\n\nBuses from Bogot\u00e1 regularly serve Suesca from the Portal del Norte station. You can also contact one of the tour companies based in Bogot\u00e1 that specialize in rock climbing, who can arrange for transportation for a day trip.\n\n#### **SOUTH AND WEST OF BOGOT\u00c1**\n\n##### M **Parque Natural Chicaque**\n\nIt's hard to believe that such natural beauty is so close and accessible to Bogot\u00e1. You can basically take TransMilenio to this natural, private park and be walking amid the cloud forest within an hour.\n\n**Parque Natural Chicaque** (tel. 1\/368-3114\/18, www.chicaque.com) is a little-known and underappreciated gem in Bogot\u00e1. This private park offers 18 kilometers of excellent paths that meander through virgin cloud forest. It's more than likely that it is only silence that you hear as you explore the park, save for the occasional bird or rustle of leaves. It's got a pretty good website with detailed information on prices and services (in English as well).\n\nHorseback riding is possible, and you can climb a towering oak tree (and spend the night there for COP$110,000). There are two good restaurants, one at the entrance of the park and one below in the lodge. Rooms at the lodge are very simple, designed for families (one adult COP$86,000 including all meals). There are a few cabins with fireplaces for more privacy (COP$250,000 for two people and all meals), and camping (COP$50,000 including all meals) is also available.\n\nGetting to the park is fairly easy. You can take the TransMilenio to the Portal del Sur station and take a park bus from there. This bus leaves at 8am, 10am, 1:30pm, and 4:30pm. There is a fee of COP$6,000 for this trip. The rendezvous point is the fast food **Restaurante Choribroaster** (Cra. 72D No. 57J-03). It is near a large Jumbo store.\n\n##### **Salto del Tequendama**\n\nWest of Chicaque, on the road towards Mesitas del Colegio, is the **Salto del Tequendama** (Tequendama Waterfall). Back in the early part of the 20th century, this was a lovely place to visit, and the falls are certainly dramatic. What was once an elegant hotel overlooks the falls. It has very recently opened its doors once again, this time serving as an exhibition space. The problem with any visit to Tequendama is the horrible stench coming from the R\u00edo Bogot\u00e1, which you must drive along, into which much of the city's waste is poured. It is a shame.\n\nvista from the Parque Natural Chicaque\n\n##### **Parque de Orquideas del Tequendama**\n\nThe **Parque de Orquideas del Tequendama** (Km. 19 V\u00eda Bogot\u00e1-Mesitas del Colegio, cell tel. 300\/464-5960, www.orquideasdeltequendama.com, 10am-5pm Sat.-Sun., COP$7,000) has been described as _\"un jard\u00edn de los dioses\"_ (\"a garden of the gods\"). Within minutes of chilly Salto de Tequendama, you descend toward the R\u00edo Magdalena valley and it is suddenly\u2014and violently\u2014hot. At this farm, Omar Chaparro has around 6,000 varieties of orchids on display, including delicate miniature orchids, fragrant orchids, and many orchids that are nearly extinct. You'll see the official orchids of Bogot\u00e1 and Colombia there, too. A true expert and enthusiast on orchids, Omar has a seed bank with the ultimate goal of propagating orchid species and planting them in their natural habitats throughout Colombia so that they will survive for another generation. Guided tours, unfortunately only in Spanish, are interesting, as Omar and his staff educate guests on the flowers. There is a little open-air restaurant that serves lunch on Sundays, with, of course, colorful views. You can visit during the week if you make a reservation in advance.\n\nMidway between the falls and the orchid farm is the **Zool\u00f3gico Santa Cruz,** a zoo in which jaguars native to Colombia are sadly confined to small pens.\n\nPublic transportation is available from the Portal del Sur bus station to both the Salto del Tequendama and the orchid farm.\n\n##### **Bogot\u00e1 to Melgar**\n\nHeading from Bogot\u00e1 towards the R\u00edo Magdalena valley, you'll pass several _tierra caliente_ (hot country) resort towns, such as **Anapoima, Girardot,** and\u2014just across the border into the Tolima department\u2014 **Melgar** and **Carmen de Apical\u00e1.** Many wealthy Bogotano families have second homes in this part of Cundinamarca, while Melgar, the \"city of swimming pools,\" caters to a more middle-class clientele. These towns are easily reached by bus from Bogot\u00e1.\n\nParque de Orqu\u00eddeas del Tequendama\n\nSeveral websites (www.fincasenarriendo.com or www.alquilerdefincasenmelgar.net) rent houses in this part of the country. Searching under _alquilar_ (to rent) _, fincas_ (farms), and _casas_ (houses) will provide you with several options.\n\nDuring World War II, **Fusagasug\u00e1,** between Bogot\u00e1 and Melgar, had an internment facility for Germans, Japanese, and Italians at the Hotel La Sabaneta. Most of the more than 400 people there had moved to Colombia decades prior to the war and were forced to leave their families and stay in the hotel under the watchful eyes of the Colombian police. There is but a faint reminder of the facility, with just a part of the hotel facade still standing.\n\nA landmark just before Melgar that is an obsession of Colombian kids is the **Nariz del Diablo** (Devil's Nose), a rock formation that juts out along that windy road.\n\n##### **Bogot\u00e1 to Honda**\n\n**Guaduas** is home to one of the few heroines in the Colombian independence movement, Policarpa (endearingly known as La Pola) Salavarrieta. A thatched roof house, the **Casa de la Pola,** is now a small museum dedicated to her life and is located just off the main plaza. Near a statue of La Pola, vendors at a small outdoor market sell things like hammocks and goat's milk. The surrounding blocks of the town have several colonial buildings set along cobblestone streets. A popular place for pastries is **Nectar,** right on the square, and **La Pesebrera Gourmet** restaurant, in a colonial house nearby the plaza, is a fun place for a hearty lunch; it doubles as a tourist information center.\n\nThere is not much in the way of tourist attractions in this hot country town; however, its plaza is a divine place for a cool beer under the shade of massive ceiba trees. In the town of Villeta, the old two-lane road (through Facatativ\u00e1) and the newer road (which leads to Calle 80 in Bogot\u00e1) meet. Buses from Villeta to Bogot\u00e1 are frequent and cost around COP$12,500.\n\nPuente Navarro, Honda\n\nIn **Sasaima** , towards Facatativ\u00e1, is a lovely old country farm\/vacation home built by a Swiss architect in the 1940s that has been converted into a hotel\/spa. It's called **El Refugio** (tel. 1\/243-3620\/25, www.elrefugiohotelspa.com), and a refuge in the lush Colombian countryside it certainly is. Rooms are comfortable and the restaurant serves nice meals. It's a popular place for city slickers to get away from the honking horns of Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **Honda**\n\nThe steamy town of Honda, known as the City of Bridges, rests on the banks of the R\u00edo Magdalena, almost exactly halfway between Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn. It was the country's first and most important interior port city. The R\u00edo Magdalena has shaped its history, and was the reason for its rise to importance. From the 16th century until the mid-20th century, the R\u00edo Magdalena was the main transportation route connecting Bogot\u00e1 to the Caribbean coast and the rest of the world.\n\nHonda was founded in 1539. As a port, Honda was a place where quinine, coffee, lumber, and slaves were loaded and unloaded along the banks of the river.\n\nFrom this city of 29 bridges, steamships would ply the route toward the coast. In 1919, the Barranquilla-based SCADTA airlines became the very first airline of the Americas, bringing seaplane service to Honda. The river served as an airstrip. It must have been quite a sight to see these planes on the muddy Magdalena. SCADTA would later become Avianca Airlines.\n\nThe steamships and seaplanes no longer make their appearances in Honda today. But if you head down to the river's edge, you can ask a local angler to give you a quick jaunt along the river in his boat. Be sure to walk across the bright yellow **Puente Navarro,** a pedestrian bridge built by the San Francisco Bridge Company in 1898. Check out the **Museo del R\u00edo Magdalena** (Cl. 10 No. 9-01, tel. 8\/251-0129) on the way.\n\nHonda and its sleepy streets makes for a nice stopover en route between Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn. A popular weekend destination for Bogotanos in need of _tierra caliente_ (hot country) relaxation, the town has some good hotel options. For pampering try the **Posada Las Trampas** (Cra. 10A No. 11-05, tel. 8\/251-7415, www.posadalastrampas.com). For a friendly welcome, stay at the **Casa Belle Epoque** (Cl. 12 No. 12A-21, tel. 8\/251-1176, www.casabelleepoque.com), a moderately priced hotel popular with international travelers.\n\n##### **Tobia**\n\nThe one and only game in town in Tobia, about 2.5 hours from Bogot\u00e1, is adventure sports. Specifically that includes white-water rafting on the **R\u00edo Negro,** ziplines, rock climbing, and horseback riding. The scenery is quite beautiful as you enter town through a valley surrounded by cliffs. The town itself is nothing special.\n\nIt will not be hard to find tour companies to help you organize your adventures. Touts are everywhere selling packages. Here are some of the prices: rafting (COP$30,000), horseback riding (COP$30,000), and canopy tours (COP$40,000). **EcoAndes** (tel. 1\/803-1130 or 1\/252-6529, www.ecoandes.net) is a good option for a tour operator. **Los Tobianos** (cell tel. 314\/397-0360, www.lostobianos.com) and **Dosis Verde** (tel. 1\/232-3735 or 1\/492-9329, www.dosisverde.com) are others.\n\nThe largest of the basic hotels in town is **La Gaitana** (tel. 1\/631-0461, cell tel. 313\/466-9092, www.lagaitana.com). On the other side of the river is **Hotel San Juanito.**\n\nTobia is easily reached by public transportation, costing around COP$16,000 from the Terminal de Buses. It is also a pretty easy drive if you have your own car. There are some expensive tolls, however.\n\nAn excellent stop-off between El Vino and La Vega is **La Vara** restaurant, overlooking a verdant valley. You can enjoy an arepa (cornmeal cake) and chocolate or a heartier, meatier lunch.\n\nBuses depart all day long for both of these \"hot country\" destinations. It takes 2.5-3 hours to get there from the Terminal de Transporte.\n\n## **CARTAGENA AND THE CARIBBEAN COAST**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nCartagena\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nSHOPPING\n\nSPORTS AND RECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE\n\nGETTING AROUND\n\nBOCACHICA\n\nPLAYA BLANCA AND ISLAS DEL ROSARIO\n\nMOMPOX\n\nBarranquilla\n\nSIGHTS\n\nFESTIVALS AND EVENTS\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nGETTING THERE\n\nGETTING AROUND\n\nPUERTO COLOMBIA\n\nSanta Marta\n\nORIENTATION\n\nSIGHTS\n\nSHOPPING\n\nRECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nTAGANGA\n\nM MINCA\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL TAYRONA\n\nPNN TAYRONA TO PALOMINO\n\nPALOMINO\n\nPARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA\n\nLa Guajira\n\nRIOHACHA\n\nSANTUARIO DE FAUNA Y FLORA LOS FLAMENCOS\n\nM ALTA GUAJIRA\n\nCABO DE LA VELA\n\nPUNTA GALLINAS\n\nPARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL MACUIRA\n\nWestern Caribbean Coast\n\nGOLFO DE MORROSQUILLO\n\nSAN ANTERO\n\nMONTER\u00cdA\n\nM CAPURGAN\u00c1 AND SAPZURRO\n\nColombia's Caribbean coast extends 1,760 kilometers (1,095 miles), from Venezuela to Panama, and is longer than California's coastline. The coastal area varies dramatically, with an astonishing array of landscapes: desolate deserts, snowcapped mountains, lowland swamps, dry savannahs, and rainforest. This region has so much to offer, it could easily be your only destination in Colombia.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Cartagena's Old City:** Lose yourself in the romance of Cartagena's narrow streets and plazas, and cap off your day sipping a mojito atop the massive fortified walls (click here).\n\nM **Carnaval de Barranquilla:** Madcap and euphoric, this is Colombia's most famous celebration. Put on a costume and dance your way down the parade route (click here).\n\nM **Minca:** Take a break from the beach and chill in this refreshing town set in the foothills of the spectacular Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona:** Mountains meet jungles meet beaches at this popular national park near Santa Marta (click here).\n\nM **Ciudad Perdida Trek:** Climb the thousand-plus stone steps through the cloud forest to the mystical Lost City, the most important settlement of the Tayrona civilization (click here).\n\nM **Alta Guajira:** Be mesmerized by the stark beauty of desert landscapes, get to know Way\u00fau culture, and dine on fresh lobster at the top of South America (click here).\n\nM **Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro:** Walk barefoot along deserted beaches, trek through dense rainforest among colorful frogs and howling monkeys, or cool off in a crystalline brook (click here).\n\nCartagena is a majestic walled city full of magnificent churches and palaces, picturesque balcony-lined streets, and romantic plazas. Colombia's colonial past lives on in Mompox, a once-thriving port on the R\u00edo Magdalena where it feels as if time has stopped. The old city of Santa Marta has positioned itself as a great base from which to explore the beaches and mountains of the north-central coast.\n\nBeach options abound here. The most famous are at Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona: glimmering golden sand beaches with the jungle backdrop of the Sierra Nevada. Islands in the Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo, between Tol\u00fa and Cartagena, beckon visitors with their white sandy beaches and five-star hotels.\n\nThere are many options for nature lovers. Minca, a small town located on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada not far from Santa Marta, offers unparalleled bird-watching opportunities. In the jungles that envelop Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro, you can go bird-watching, listen to the cries of howler monkeys, and count the colorful frogs you encounter along the many jungle paths in the area. Offshore, dive with the occasional sea turtle and observe myriad marine life in nearby waters.\n\nAdventurous types can hike up to Ciudad Perdida in the Sierra Nevada. The views of the Lost City, with its eerie, beautiful terraces set atop the mountain, are simply unforgettable. Travel up the Guajira Peninsula, home of the Way\u00fau, Colombia's largest indigenous community. Here you'll find Cabo de la Vela, where the desert meets the sea, and stark, magnificent Punta Gallinas, the northernmost point in South America, where windswept dunes drop dramatically into Caribbean waters.\n\nThe Caribbean coast is vibrant with music and dance. It is the birthplace of _vallenato_ (love ballads accompanied by accordion), which has European, African, and Amerindian roots. The coast is also home to many musical strains and dances with strong African rhythms, such as _cumbia,_ a melodious traditional music once danced by African slaves, and _mapal\u00e9_ and _champeta,_ a more recent urban music born in Cartagena. The Carnaval de Baranquilla, declared a Masterpiece of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, offers an unparalleled introduction to Caribbean music and folklore. Any time of year, Barranquilla's modern, interactive Museo del Caribe is an excellent overview of the people of the Caribbean and their very vibrant culture.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nThere are a lot of sights to see in Cartagena. Take some time to wander the streets of the Old City and soak up the beauty and atmosphere. Two days will suffice, but three days is ideal. The coastal island of Bar\u00fa or the Islas del Rosario archipelago can be done in an easy day or overnight trip.\n\nFrom Cartagena, there are many possible excursions. Getting to the riverside town of Mompox involves five hours of travel by road and river, so staying two nights there is necessary. The seaside towns of Cove\u00f1as and Tol\u00fa are easy excursions with direct bus links from Cartagena. Barranquilla is an easy day or overnight trip.\n\nSanta Marta is an excellent base for exploring the northern coast. If you prefer to be on the sea, the laid-back seaside village of Taganga, only a short ride from Santa Marta, could also be your base for exploration of the north.\n\nSanta Marta offers many excursions. Spending a few days in the tranquil Sierra Nevada town of Minca is a welcome escape from the heat and an excellent base to explore the nearby mountains. The Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona is a possible day trip from Santa Marta or Taganga, but you will probably want to stay at least two nights to explore its beaches and jungles. The seaside resort of Palomino is just a 1.5-hour ride from Santa Marta. All of these towns make fine starting points for the four- to five-day trek to Ciudad Perdida, a must for any backpacker.\n\nMost visitors to the Guajira Peninsula join an organized tour from Riohacha. From Riohacha it is possible to visit Cabo de la Vela via a bus to Uribia and then a ride in the back of a local passenger truck, but it will take several hours. Most tourists visit Cabo de la Vela as part of a tour of La Guajira. There is no transportation north of Cabo de la Vela, so you will need to join a tour to get to magnificent Punta Gallinas or to Parque Nacional Natural Macuira. Do not drive though the Guajira Peninsula without a guide: It is dangerous.\n\nTo the southwest of Cartagena, you'll find coastal communities Tol\u00fa and Cove\u00f1as and the untamed coastline of C\u00f3rdoba, all easily accessed by bus from Cartagena or Monter\u00eda. Medell\u00edn is the best gateway to the villages of Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro on the Darien Gap. You could happily spend up to five days in this area.\n\n### **Cartagena**\n\nCartagena is unforgettable and magical, a highlight of any trip to Colombia. The main attraction is the Old City (Cartagena's _centro hist\u00f3rico_ ), which includes two districts: the Walled City (Ciudad Amurallada) and burgeoning Getseman\u00ed. The magnificent walls of Ciudad Amurallada enclose narrow streets lined with magnificent _casas altas_ (two-story houses that were home to wealthy merchants) with bougainvillea spilling out over their balconies. Getseman\u00ed is an old working-class colonial neighborhood (also once enclosed by a wall) that today lures visitors with its many lodging, dining, and nightlife options. Near the Old City is the magnificent Castillo de San Felipe, one of the most impressive Spanish fortifications in the New World.\n\nOutside the Old City, Cartagena is a large, poor, and sprawling city of almost one million people. If you want to get a sense of how big it is, visit La Popa for incredible views of the city and the bay. To get to know the real Cartagena first-hand, visit the frenetic Mercado de Bazurto and then, for contrast, take a stroll through high-end Bocagrande.\n\nIf you're looking to play at the beach, escape to the Islas del Rosario, as the beaches of Cartagena are unappealing.\n\n##### **History**\n\nCartagena de Indias was founded in 1533 by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Heredia on a small Carib indigenous settlement. The city owes its glory to its strategic geographic position and easily defended harbor. Heavily armed convoys of galleons sailed once a year from Spain to the New World, transporting agricultural and manufactured goods; on the way back they took on silver and gold from Peru and Mexico. The convoy's treasures were stored in Cartagena until the sail back to Spain.\n\nCartagena's Old City\n\nThe city proper was constructed at the north end of the large harbor, on a marshy island separated from the mainland. During the 16th century, the city was sacked by pirates numerous times, most notably by Sir Francis Drake in 1568. With the construction of fortifications, the city was spared major attacks. Castillo de San Felipe was built on the mainland to protect from an overland invasion. Pairs of forts were constructed at various passage points in the harbor to stop intruders. The construction of the fortifications took almost two centuries and was completed by mid-18th century.\n\nWith the construction of the Canal del Dique connecting Cartagena to the R\u00edo Magdalena in 1650, the city became the main entry port to Nueva Granada. The city also prospered as one of the main slave ports in Spanish America. It is estimated that more than one million slaves passed through the city. The Spanish crown forbade the enslavement of indigenous people, so plantation and mine owners bought African slaves, transported from Santo Domingo or West Africa. Conditions on and after the trip were horrendous. Slaves often escaped and created free communities known as _palenques,_ such as the town of San Basilio, south of Cartagena.\n\nDuring the fight for independence from Spain, Cartagena sided with the revolutionary movement. After Caracas, it was the second city in Nueva Granada to set up an independent junta, and it formally declared independence in 1812. In 1815, it was recaptured by the Spanish under the command of Pablo Murillo, after a siege that lasted more than three months. Cartagena was retaken by revolutionaries in 1821.\n\nDuring the 19th century, Cartagena no longer enjoyed the activity and status it had as one of Spain's main ports. In the last decades of the century, Barranquilla eclipsed Cartagena as the main center of economic activity on the Caribbean coast. The economic decline had one good side effect: preserving the colonial past. The Old City remained largely intact through the 20th century, prompting UNESCO to declare it a World Heritage Site.\n\nDuring the 20th century, Cartagena became a major industrial center and domestic tourist destination. In the past two decades, the city has received an estimated 100,000 displaced people, most fleeing violence in the Atlantic coast. The city has been unable to cope with this influx, and the result is a vast belt of shantytowns.\n\nCartagena remained relatively peaceful even during the worst periods of violence in the 1980s and 1990s, attracting tourists from across Colombia. In the past decade, Cartagena has become a major international tourist destination, with a proliferation of chic hotels in the Old City, glitzy Miami-style condominiums and hotels in Bocagrande, and new resorts along the coast north of the city. It boasts the Hay literary festival, a classical music festival, and an acclaimed film festival that attracts visitors from the world over.\n\n##### **Safety**\n\nAll in all, the city is a safe place; however, the general precautions for all Colombian cities apply to Cartagena as well. Be careful while walking on the walls after dark. Police have an iffy reputation here, and have been known to stop and frisk young non-Colombian men in the evening, purportedly out of suspicion of drug possession, but in actuality they are looking for money. Some of the poor fishing villages on the islands nearby Cartagena are not safe to visit, at least not alone.\n\n##### **Orientation**\n\nCartagena is located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Barranquilla and over 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) north of Bogot\u00e1. The city is at the north end of a large bay with the same name.\n\nThe focal point of Cartagena is the **Old City,** known as the **_centro hist\u00f3rico,_** or simply El Centro. The Old City is the original Spanish settlement completely enclosed by a massive stone wall. The Walled City is set out in a fairly regular grid with numerous plazas. The streets here have names that change from block to block; no one really knows them or uses them. Find your way by identifying the main squares\u2014Torre de los Coches, Plaza de la Aduana, Plaza de Santo Domingo, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, and Plaza Fernandez de Madrid\u2014and making your way from one to the other. It takes some practice, but walking the charming streets of the Old City is a pleasure.\n\nHistorically, the main entrance to the Walled City was the gate where the Torre del Reloj (clock tower) now stands. Just south is the Bah\u00eda de las \u00c1nimas and the Muelle de los Pegasos, from which point tourist boats to the Islas del Rosario depart.\n\nDuring colonial times, the poorer district of **Getseman\u00ed** was a separate island connected by bridge to the Old City. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mangroves and marshes were filled in.\n\nSoutheast of Getseman\u00ed is **La Matuna,** a busy commercial center full of 20th-century high-rises. To the east is the massive Castillo de San Felipe and farther on is La Popa, the only significant hill in Cartagena. East of La Popa is Mercado de Bazurto, Cartagena's huge central market, which is on Avenida Pedro de Heredia, the main road that leads to the bus terminal and out of the city.\n\nJust north of the Old City is the 19th-century district of **El Cabrero,** where the villa of former president Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez, today the Casa Museo Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez, is located. Farther north are the residential neighborhoods of Marbella and Crespo, where the airport is. About two kilometers farther north, next to the fishing village of La Boquilla, is the seaside development of Las Am\u00e9ricas.\n\nSouth of the Old City is **Bocagrande,** with its many high-rise hotels and residential buildings. It was first developed in the 1960s and 1970s as a domestic tourist destination. It is the stomping ground of Cartagena's rich residents. Since around 2005, however, there has been a spurt of construction of high-end, Miami Beach-inspired white residential skyscrapers. The main attractions here are the beaches. They are very popular on weekends. (There's even a gay-ish beach at the very end known as Hollywood.) But they're just OK. The sand is gray, and there's a constant stream of persistent vendors and masseuses.\n\ntypical street in Cartagena\n\nThe peninsula of Castillo Grande on the bay side of Bocagrande is an upscale residential neighborhood. The sidewalk that wraps around it makes for a pleasant stroll or place to jog.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\n##### M **Old City**\n\n###### **LAS MURALLAS**\n\nReferring to Cartagena's **_murallas_** (walls), Colombians endearingly call the city \"El Corralito de Piedra\" (little stone corral). These walls are one of the most salient features of the city. After Drake sacked the city in 1568, the Spanish started fortifying access to the bay and the perimeter wall around the city. The effort took almost two centuries to complete. The walls that can be seen today are mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries.\n\nThe most impressive part of the wall is the stretch that runs parallel to the sea. This includes three _baluartes_ (bulwarks, or ramparts) where Spaniards stood ready to defend the city from attack. The massive **Baluartes de San Lucas y de Santa Catalina,** built in the very north of the city to repel attacks from land, are known as Las Tenazas because they are shaped like pincers. When the sea started depositing sediments and expanding the seashore, thus enabling the enemy to maneuver south along the wall, the Spanish built a spike to halt them. This defensive structure, known as El Espig\u00f3n de la Tenaza, is now home to the **Museo de las Fortificaciones** (Baluarte de Santa Catalina, tel. 5\/656-0591, www.fortificacionesdecartagena.com, 8am-6pm daily, COP$7,000). At the westernmost tip of the walls, facing the sea, is the equally impressive **Baluarte Santo Domingo,** now home to Caf\u00e9 del Mar. At the southern tip of the segment of walls facing the sea, next to the Plaza Santa Teresa, are the **Baluartes de San Ignacio y de San Francisco Javier,** also home to a pleasant outdoor bar.\n\nA _paseo_ (walk) on the walls is the quintessential Cartagena late-afternoon experience, enjoyed by international visitors, Colombian honeymooners, and Cartagenan high school students still in their school uniforms. The best time for this promenade is around 5pm. In the evenings, vacationers head to the handful of bars for a pre- or post-dinner drink. Avoid strolling the wall late at night, especially alone.\n\n###### **CLAUSTRO AND IGLESIA SAN PEDRO CLAVER**\n\nThe **Claustro San Pedro Claver** (Plaza de San Pedro Claver No. 30-01, tel. 5\/664-4991, 8am-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-4:30pm Sat.-Sun., COP$9,000) is an old Jesuit monastery, now museum, where Pedro Claver served as a priest. He is known for his compassion towards newly arrived African slaves, and is said to have baptized thousands of them. For his dedication to slaves, the priest was the first person to be canonized in the New World. The museum has relics and art from the colonial era and sometimes hosts temporary exhibitions. You can visit the small quarters where San Pedro Claver lived and climb up to the choir balcony of the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver. The cloister has a three-story courtyard brimming with flowers and trees.\n\nAdjacent to the monastery is the **Iglesia de San Pedro Claver** (Plaza de San Pedro Claver No. 30-01, tel. 5\/664-4991, masses 6:45am and 6pm Mon.-Sat., 7am, 10am, noon, and 6pm Sun.), which is adorned by a beautiful marble altar and is the final resting place for San Pedro Claver.\n\n###### **MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO DE CARTAGENA DE INDIAS**\n\nCartagena's main art museum, the **Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena de Indias** (Cl. 30 No. 4-08, Plaza de San Pedro Claver, tel. 5\/664-5815, 9am-noon and 3pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-1pm Sat., COP$5,000, Tues. free) is on the square in front of the San Pedro Claver plaza, which is filled with several metallic sculptures by Cartagenero Edgardo Carmona that depict quotidian scenes of Cartagena life. The museum has a small permanent collection of works from 20th-century Colombian artists, including native sons Alejandro Obreg\u00f3n and Enrique Grau. The museum is in the old Customs House.\n\n###### **MUSEO NAVAL DEL CARIBE**\n\nAdjoining the rear of the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver is the **Museo Naval del Caribe** (Cl. 31 No. 3-62, Cl. San Juan de Dios, tel. 5\/664-2440, www.museonavaldelcaribe.com, 10am-5:30pm daily, COP$7,000). This museum provides a history lesson of the earliest indigenous dwellers who lived in the area, continuing through the Spanish conquest and including a bit about the many (mostly English) pirates who tried to steal the Spaniards' gold loot, which they had absconded with from all across South America. The second floor has a lot of replicas of grand ships from the period and a history of the Colombian navy (you may be surprised to learn of its participation in the Korean War). There are few explanations in English. Part of the building dates to the 17th century and was a Jesuit convent; after they were expelled by the king, it was converted into a hospital.\n\n###### **PLAZA DE BOL\u00cdVAR**\n\nOne of the city's most pleasant squares is the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar,** once used for bullfights. It was transformed into a park in the late 19th century. With a statue of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar in the center, nearly always with a disrespectful pigeon resting upon his head, this shady spot is very inviting.\n\n###### **CATEDRAL BAS\u00cdLICA MENOR**\n\nDiagonal to the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar is the built-to-last **Catedral Bas\u00edlica Menor** (tel. 5\/664-7283, masses 10am-noon Mon.-Sat., 8am, noon, and 7pm Sun., COP$13,000, free during masses). It was built in the 16th century and doubled as a fortress. It was attacked by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. The facade, along with most of the interior, has been stripped of the Italianate stucco exterior that was added in the 20th century and restored to its former austere stone look. The cathedral's pale orange belltower, which dates to the early 20th century, can be seen across the Old City. Stroll the ornate cathedral during or before a mass to visit for free. Audio guides are available 8am-6pm daily.\n\n###### **PALACIO DE LA INQUISICI\u00d3N**\n\nOn the south side of the plaza is the **Palacio de la Inquisici\u00f3n** (Cl. 34 No. 3-11, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 5\/664-4570, 9am-6pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-4pm Sun., COP$15,000). This remarkable 18th-century construction, one of the finest examples of colonial architecture in Cartagena standing today, was the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition in Cartagena. In this building was housed the Tribunal del Santo Oficio, whose purpose was to exert control over the Indians, mestizos, and African slaves not only in Nueva Granada but also in New World colonies in Central America, the Caribbean, and Venezuela. The tribunal was active from 1610 until the late 17th century. There were two other tribunals in the New World: one in Lima and another in Mexico City.\n\nThe first floor of the building is a museum displaying the weapons of torture employed by authorities as part of the Inquisition. In Cartagena as elsewhere, the most common punishable crime was \"witchcraft,\" and hundreds of supposed heretics (indigenous people were excluded from punishment) were condemned here. On the second floor are exhibition spaces dedicated to the restoration of the building and to the history of Cartagena. Most explanations are written in Spanish; you may decide to hire one of the English-speaking guides (COP$35,000 for a group up to five persons). On your way out, take a right and then another right onto the Calle de la Inquisici\u00f3n and look for a small window on the palace wall. This was a secret spot where citizens of colonial Cartagena could anonymously report others for various and sundry heresies.\n\n###### **MUSEO DEL ORO ZEN\u00da**\n\nThe **Museo del Oro Zen\u00fa** (Cra. 4 No. 33-26, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 5\/660-0778, 10am-1pm and 3pm-7pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm Sat., 11am-4pm Sun., free), on the north side of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, exhibits gold jewelry and funerary objects from the Zen\u00fa indigenous people, who were the original dwellers of the R\u00edo Magdalena area and R\u00edo Sin\u00fa valley, to the southwest of Cartagena. It has excellent Spanish and English explanations. A smaller version of the Museo del Oro in Bogot\u00e1, this museum has a regional focus and is one of the few tributes to indigenous culture today in Cartagena.\n\n###### **CASA MUSEO RAFAEL N\u00da\u00d1EZ**\n\nJust beyond the wall in the Cabrero neighborhood is the **Casa Museo Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez** (Calle Real del Cabrero, tel. 5\/664-5305, 9am-5:30pm Tues.-Sun., COP$10,000). This is the house of Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez, the four-time former president of Colombia, author of the 1886 Colombian constitution, and author of the 11 verses of Colombia's national anthem. N\u00fa\u00f1ez governed Colombia from this, his coastal home. The museum, which underwent a renovation in 2013, has memorabilia from his political life and is a beautiful example of 19th-century Cartagena architecture. N\u00fa\u00f1ez was born and died in Cartagena, and he lies at rest in the Ermita de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Mercedes across the street.\n\n##### **Castillo de San Felipe**\n\nThe largest Spanish fort in the New World, the magnificent **Castillo de San Felipe** (Cerro de San L\u00e1zaro, east of Old City, 8am-6pm daily, COP$17,000) must have given pirates pause as they contemplated an attack on the city. It was built atop the Cerro de San L\u00e1zaro outside of the Walled City to repel attacks by land. Construction was begun in 1639 and completed over a century later. It was never captured. Tunnels enabled soldiers to quickly move about without being noticed, and cells housed the occasional unlucky prisoner.\n\nToday, visitors ramble through tunnels and secret passageways (a flashlight will come in quite handy), and views from the highest points of the fort are magnificent.\n\nThe monolithic Castillo de San Felipe is one of the most impressive Spanish forts in the New World.\n\nThe best time to visit the fort is in the late afternoon, when the intense sun abates. Audio tours (COP$10,000) are available. For many, the view of the fort from a distance suffices, especially at nighttime when it is lit up. If you want to do things up for a special celebration, you can rent out the entire _castillo_ (fireworks are an additional charge!). Contact the Sociedad de Mejoras P\u00fablicas de Cartagena (Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, tel. 5\/656-0590, www.fortificacionesdecartagena.com) for more information.\n\nTo get there, take a bus from Avenida Santander (COP$1,500). You can also walk from the Old City, though maneuvering through and around traffic is not fun. A taxi will cost COP$5,000.\n\n##### **La Popa**\n\n**La Popa** is a 150-meter-high (500-foot-high) hill east of the Castillo de San Felipe, so named because of its resemblance to a ship's stern ( _popa_ in Spanish). La Popa is home to the **Convento Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria** (Cra. 20A 29D-16, tel. 5\/666-0976, 9am-5:30pm daily, COP$5,000), which was built by Augustinian monks, reportedly on a pagan site of worship. The monastery has a lovely courtyard, a small chapel where faithful pray to the Virgen de la Candelaria, and memorabilia from Pope John Paul II's visit to the monastery in 1986. Most tourists come here for the views over Cartagena and out to the sea. You can take a taxi there from the Old City for COP$50,000-60,000 round-trip. Arrange the price in advance and make sure the driver will wait for you there.\n\n##### **Sightseeing Tours**\n\nThe folks at **This Is Cartagena** (Av. Centenario No. 30-42, tel. 5\/660-0969, www.ticartagena.com, 9am-6pm Mon.-Fri., COP$115,000) offer two tours of the city. One is a full city tour (about four hours) that hits all the major sights, from La Popa to the beaches of Bocagrande. It's the comfortable way to see the city: in an air-conditioned vehicle. Entries to all the sights are included in the tour price. The second tour is a walking tour of the Old City, in which you'll learn a lot about this fascinating city, its history, architecture, and people. This Is Cartagena offers several other tours, including day trips to the Islas de Rosario, a photography tour, and even a \"historic drinking tour.\"\n\n**Plaza to Plaza Walking Tour**\n\nthe Iglesia Santo Toribio, one of Cartagena's beautiful colonial churches\n\nThe best way to get to know Cartagena is to go for a morning stroll, finding your way from plaza to plaza, and even getting lost a couple of times.\n\nStart at the **Plaza de los Coches** (opposite Getseman\u00ed), once the main entry point to the city. It is easily identifiable by the iconic 19th-century **Torre del Reloj** (clock tower) that tops the entrance though the wall. Inside stands a statue of Cartagena's founder Pedro de Heredia. During the colonial period, this plaza was the site of the city's slave market. During much of the 20th century it bustled with commercial activity. Today, the plaza is filled with watering holes catering to visitors.\n\nImmediately to the southwest is the large triangular **Plaza de la Aduana,** once the seat of power in colonial Cartagena. It is surrounded by stately colonial mansions. A statue of Christopher Columbus presides in the center. It's also got a fair share of ATMs and is where the main tourist office is located.\n\nAdjacent to the southeast is the **Plaza de San Pedro,** a small square located in front of the towering **Iglesia de San Pedro Claver** and attached convent where Saint Peter Claver, a Jesuit monk dedicated to succoring African slaves, ministered.\n\nWalking two blocks north on Calle de San Pedro you'll arrive at the city's heart, the leafy **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar,** a shady park with benches, fountains, and a statue of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar in the middle. It is surrounded by some of the most important buildings of the city, including the **Catedral Bas\u00edlica Menor** and the **Palacio de la Inquisici\u00f3n.**\n\nOn Calle de los Santos de Piedra and Calle de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Rosario is the **Plaza de Santo Domingo,** heart of the former upper class quarter. You will notice many superb two-story _casas altas_ built by rich merchants. The plaza is dominated by the austere Iglesia de Santo Domingo. A rotund nude bronze sculpture by Fernando Botero, live musical performances, and many outdoor caf\u00e9s liven up the popular plaza.\n\nNext is the large, green **Plaza Fern\u00e1ndez de Madrid** in the historic working class San Diego district. On one side is the charming **Iglesia Santo Toribio** with its magnificent wooden ceiling and cannonball damage (compliments of English pirate Edward Vernon).\n\nOn Calle Cochera del Hobo is the tiny **Plaza San Diego,** which is surrounded by inviting restaurants. It's also where you can join the locals who gather around Do\u00f1a Dora's food stall. This is the place to sample a _carima\u00f1ola_ and _arepa de huevo,_ two deep-fried and totally delicious treats.\n\nEnd your roaming at the **Plaza de las B\u00f3vedas** at the extreme northwest of the city. Once the location of a military storehouse, this is where you can load up on handicrafts at the Galer\u00eda de las B\u00f3vedas.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\n**La Esquina Sandiegana** (corner of Cl. del Sant\u00edsimo and Cl. de los P\u00fantales, 5pm-2am Sun.-Thurs., 5pm-3am Fri.-Sat., no cover) is a locals' place, where the music is salsa and the drink is beer. Its walls are decorated with salsa posters, album covers, and photographs of salsa greats. It's a hole-in-the-wall bar in the San Diego neighborhood.\n\n**Bazurto Social Club** (Av. del Centenario Cra. 9 No. 30-42, tel. 5\/664-3124, www.bazurtosocialclub.com, 7pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., cover varies) is an always-lively restaurant-bar, popular with Colombians and international visitors alike. Get a taste for Afro-Colombian _champeta_ beats, as live acts, including the Bazurto All Stars, often perform here. They also serve food, such as shrimp empanadas and paella. The house drink is the fruity rum _machacos._\n\nThe former site of a convent, **El Coro** (Cl. del Torno No. 39-29, tel. 5\/650-4700, 5pm-2am Sun.-Thurs., 5pm-3am Fri.-Sat., no cover), at the Hotel Santa Clara, is an inviting, if posh, spot for an after-dinner drink. From Wednesday to Sunday, live music, with a nod to Havana, is on offer until late. How many places can you enjoy Latin jazz while downing mojitos in a former convent?\n\n**Caf\u00e9 Havana** (intersection of Cl. de la Media Luna and Cl. del Guerrero, cell tel. 314\/556-3905 or 310\/610-2324, www.cafehavanacartagena.com, 8:30pm-4am Thurs.-Sat., cover varies) famously got the endorsement of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her trip to Colombia in 2012. It's a place for rum drinks and dancing. Caf\u00e9 Havana is open Sundays when the following Monday is a holiday.\n\n**Donde Fidel** (Plaza de los Coches, tel. 5\/664-3127, noon-2am Sun.-Thurs., noon-3am Fri.-Sat., no cover) is a tiny salsa-lovers' spot where the action spills out onto the plaza in front. Good times and cold beer can be found here.\n\nYou've walked atop the massive walls of the Old City, and now it's time for some drinks. A sundown drink, with the Caribbean breeze kissing your face on the _murallas_ (walls), is a Cartagena experience that shouldn't be missed. There are three options. First, the **Baluarte Tasca-Bar** (Cl. San Juan de Dios, tel. 5\/660-0468, www.baluartesanfranciscojavier.com, 5:30pm-2am daily, no cover) is an open-air restaurant-bar at the northwesternmost corner of the wall, across from the Plaza de Santa Teresa. It's chilled out here, not trendy (but the drink prices are on the steep side: COP$24,000 for a margarita). The most happening spot would be, without a doubt, the **Caf\u00e9 del Mar** (tel. 5\/664-6513, 5pm-3am daily, no cover), on the wall near the Plaza de Santo Domingo entrance. Here the music is loungey and electronic, and it stays busy until late. It's spread out atop the wall, making it hard to mingle with others or even to carry on much of a conversation. But the drinks will quench your thirst and the music is seductive. The third wall option is to go rogue: hang out on the wall, drink an \u00c1guila beer sold by a roaming vendor, and listen to the music emanating from Caf\u00e9 del Mar.\n\nWednesdays are the new Saturdays in Cartagena. In Getseman\u00ed, **Visa por un Sue\u00f1o** (Media Luna Hostel, Cl. de la Media Luna No. 10-46, tel. 5\/664-0639, 9pm-3am Wed., COP$10,000) is a weekly party held on the rooftop of the Media Luna Hostel that has become Cartagena's most famous soiree, when backpackers mix it up with Colombians. Get there early\u2014this party gets packed.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nCartagena feels like a celebration all the time, but especially November to February, when an array of cultural events are featured.\n\n###### **HAY FESTIVAL**\n\n**Hay Festival** (www.hayfestival.com) is an important international festival that began in Wales nearly 30 years ago. It celebrates literature, music, environmental awareness, and community and is held in various cities across the world, including in Cartagena in late January. Bill Clinton has called it the \"Woodstock of the mind.\" In addition to talks and concerts, the festival holds educational programs for youth in the neighborhoods of Cartagena. It also provides free or discounted tickets to students. Most of the events take place in the **Teatro Heredia** (Cl. de la Chicher\u00eda No. 38-10, tel. 5\/664-6023 or 5\/664-9631). While the festival's name is pronounced as the English \"hay,\" in Colombia it's often pronounced as the Spanish _\"hay\"_ (\"ai\"). Hay Festival is thus a double entendre: _hay festival_ in Spanish means yes, there is a festival!\n\n###### **FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE M\u00daSICA**\n\nOver the course of a week in early to mid-January, the churches, plazas, and theaters of the Walled City become the setting for classical music concerts by musicians from all over the world during the **Festival Internacional de M\u00fasica** (International Music Festival, www.cartagenamusicfestival.com, tickets www.tuboleta.com). Most concerts sell out far in advance, but if you can't get tickets, you might be able to catch a free performance in one of the churches or plazas in the Old City.\n\n###### **FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE CARTAGENA DE INDIAS**\n\nIf you're in town during late February and are looking for an excuse to escape the heat, here it is: the **Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias** (International Film Festival, tel. 5\/664-2345, www.ficcifestival.com). A tradition since the 1960s, this week-long film festival has an interesting program of documentaries, Colombian films, and shorts; a series of roundtable discussions with prominent actors and directors; and educational activities in neighborhoods throughout the city. The venues include historic buildings and plazas.\n\n###### **CONCURSO NACIONAL DE BELLEZA**\n\nBeauty contests, and especially the **Concurso Nacional de Belleza** (Miss Colombia Pageant, tel. 5\/660-0779, www.srtacolombia.org), are a big deal in Colombia. The coronation of Se\u00f1orita Colombia takes place every November and is the highlight of Cartagena's Independence Day celebrations. Aspirers for the title represent each of the departments of the country, in addition to some cities. Ladies from the Valle del Cauca and Atl\u00e1ntico have won the most titles (10 each) since the pageant began in the 1930s. In 2001, the first Miss Colombia of Afro-Colombian heritage was chosen: Vanessa Mendoza, who represented the Choc\u00f3 department. Tickets to the main events\u2014the swimsuit competition at the Cartagena Hilton and the coronation at the Centro de Convenciones\u2014are hard to come by but not impossible to purchase.\n\n###### **ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVALS**\n\nIn early January every year, especially on the first weekend after New Year's Day, one or two big beachside electronic music festivals take place. The most well-known and regular festival is **Ultra Mar,** but there are others. These parties are often the main reason the under-35 crowd from Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, and Cali converges on the city during the New Year's holidays. Tickets and information can be found at Tu Boleta (www.tuboleta.com). Double-check before heading out to one of these events, as sometimes the location changes at the last minute.\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\n##### **Shopping Centers and Malls**\n\nThe bazaar-like **Centro Comercial Getseman\u00ed** (Cl. 30 No. 8B-74, tel. 5\/664-2508, hours vary daily) shopping center doesn't really cater to tourists. It's made up of hundreds of small mom-and-pop kiosks that sell just about anything: computer supplies, notebooks, beauty supplies, handicrafts, and knickknacks. You can probably get your nails done here as well.\n\n**Centro Comercial Caribe Plaza** (Pie de la Popa, Cl. 29D No. 22-108, tel. 5\/669-2332, 10am-8pm Mon.-Thurs., 10am-9pm Fri.-Sun.) is an upscale modern mall near the Castillo de San Felipe with numerous clothing and shoe stores, movie theaters, and a food court.\n\nfresh fish at the Mercado de Bazurto\n\n###### **MERCADO DE BAZURTO**\n\nDefinitely not for the faint of heart, a visit to the sprawling, grimy **Mercado de Bazurto** (Av. Pedro Heredia, 5am-4pm daily) is the best way to connect with the real Cartagena. On the periphery of the market be sure to peruse the seafood area, where women sell the catch of the day to restaurant owners. Be amazed at all the different kinds of fruit on offer. To get to the market, take a bus from Avenida Santander (COP$1,500) or a taxi (COP$7,000 from the Old City).\n\nAnother way of visiting the market is the **Mercado de Bazurto Tour** (tel. 5\/660-1492, cell tel. 315\/655-4120, cevicheria@hotmail.com, COP$250,000 pp), organized by Jorge Escand\u00f3n, the owner of La Cevicher\u00eda and Bazurto Social Club. On the tour, you'll learn about the ingredients that make Caribbean cuisine special, particularly the seafood and exotic fruits. You'll also meet the vendors who have worked their entire lives behind a stall at the market. Afterwards you'll head to a beach house and have a gourmet lunch featuring lobster and other delicacies prepared by Jorge and his staff.\n\n##### **Handicrafts**\n\nThe most historic place to pick up some Colombian handicrafts is at **Las B\u00f3vedas** (extreme northeastern corner of the wall, 9am-6pm daily). Once a military storehouse, today it's the place to buy multicolored hammocks and all kinds of Colombian _artesan\u00edas_ of varying quality.\n\nFor high quality handicrafts you're better off going to **Artesan\u00edas de Colombia** (Centro de Convenciones, Local 5, tel. 5\/660-9615, 10am-7pm Mon.-Sat.). This is a government entity whose mission it is to promote Colombian handicrafts and craftspeople. This store sells handicrafts from across the country but specializes in masks from the Carnaval de Barranquilla, woven _mochilas_ (handbags) from indigenous groups in the Sierra Nevada, and the colorful embroidery of _molas_ from indigenous groups in the Darien Gap region near Panama.\n\n##### **Jewelry**\n\nColombian emeralds are considered to be some of the finest in the world. Many jewelers in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico sell emerald jewelry and can custom make jewelry for you. One of the most highly regarded jewelers is **Galer\u00eda Cano** (Plaza Bol\u00edvar No. 33-20, Local 679, tel. 5\/664-7078, www.galeriacano.com.co, 9am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-7pm Sat.). They specialize in gold, silver, and emerald jewelry. Cano has other locations in the airport and at the Hotel Santa Clara, as well as in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **Cigars**\n\nIn Cartagena, touches of Cuba are found everywhere: mojitos, music, and, too, the cigars. At **La Cava del Puro** (Cl. de las Damas No. 3-106, tel. 5\/664-9482, www.lacavadelpuro.com, 9am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-8pm Sun.) they don't sell just any old stogie; here the cigars come from Havana and are of the best quality. Smoking is not only permitted here, but in fact promoted. Sometimes a little whiskey is even served to perusing clients. Note that cigars with labels that say \"Hecho in Cuba\" may be confiscated by customs agents upon arrival in the United States. Cigars that come from the Barichara area in the Colombian department of Santander are quite good and much cheaper, and you can take them across borders with no questions asked.\n\n##### **Clothing**\n\nAlong Calle Santo Domingo there are several boutiques of top Colombian designers. Bogotana **Bettina Spitz** (Cl. de la Mantilla No. 3-37, tel. 5\/660-2160, www.bettinaspitz.com, 11am-1pm and 2pm-8pm daily) sells casual, beach, and formal clothes for women, as well as an array of accessories, shoes, and some men's items. **Jon Sonen** (Cl. Ricaurte No. 31-56, tel. 5\/664-1092 or 5\/660-4682, www.jonsonen.com, 10am-8pm Sun.-Thurs., 10am-9pm Fri.-Sat.) is a Colombian label specializing in menswear, with stores throughout the country.\n\nYou'll notice that guayabera shirts are what men wear around Cartagena, to restaurants and events. It's possible to spend a fortune on them, but if you want to blend in without busting your budget, go to **Arte y Creaciones** (Cl. Don Sancho No. 36-94, cell tel. 320\/583-9091, noon-8pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-8pm Sat.-Sun.), where a cotton guayabera will run you about COP$55,000. Another option for cheap guayaberas is **Centro de Artesan\u00edas de San Jacinto** (Cl. de la Iglesia No. 35-59, tel. 5\/660-1574, 9am-8:30pm daily).\n\n##### **Books**\n\n**Abaco Libros** (Cl. 36 No. 3-86, Cl. de la Mantilla, tel. 5\/664-8290, 9am-9pm Mon.-Sat., 3pm-9pm Sun.) is a small book shop\/caf\u00e9 with a variety of books on Cartagena, top Colombian novels, and a selection of magazines, classics, and best sellers in English. **Librer\u00eda Nacional** (Cl. Segunda de Badillo No. 36-27, tel. 5\/664-1448, 8:30am-12:30pm and 2pm-6:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8:30am-5pm Sat.) is a chain bookstore with shelves full of Colombian and Spanish-language books, but not much in the way of books in English.\n\n#### **SPORTS AND RECREATION**\n\nIf you're looking for a place to jog or stroll, the bayside path along the peninsula of **Castillo Grande** (Cra. 5 from Clls. 6-10 and along Cl. 6 from Cras. 6-14) in the Bocagrande sector is very nice, particularly in the late afternoon. From here you'll have great views of the Cartagena port and La Popa in the far distance. Forming an L shape, the path is about two kilometers long.\n\n##### **Biking**\n\nThe best time to explore Cartagena by bike is early on a Sunday morning or on a Sunday or Monday evening when there is little activity and no traffic in the Old City. **Pato Bikes** (Cl. de la Media Luna, Cra. 8B No. 25-110, tel. 5\/664-0639, cell tel. 301\/423-9996, 9pm-9pm daily, COP$20,000) and **Bike Route** (Callej\u00f3n de los Estribos No. 2-78, cell tel. 318\/456-1392, 10am-11pm daily, COP$5,000\/hour, COP$30,000\/day) are both located in Getseman\u00ed and rent bikes. In addition to bike rental, **Bicitour Getseman\u00ed** (Cl. Carretero, Getseman\u00ed, cell tel. 300\/357-1825, COP$5,000\/2-hour rental) offers guided tours of the Old City on two wheels. Many hostels and some hotels also have bicycles for hire.\n\n##### **Diving**\n\n**Diving Planet** (Cl. Estanco del Aguardiente No. 5-94, tel. 5\/664-2171, www.divingplanet.org, 8am-7pm Mon.-Sat.) offers classes and diving excursions to some 25 locations throughout the Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo. A one-day mini-course with two immersions costs COP$305,000. A day trip with two immersions for those who are certified divers costs COP$290,000. If you pay in advance on their webpage or pay in cash once in Cartagena you'll receive a discount. Multiple day PADI certification courses are also available. Some of these plans include an overnight on the white beaches of the Islas del Rosario. Snorkeling excursions are also available (COP$190,000).\n\n##### **Yoga**\n\n**Santuario del Yoga** (Cl. El Estanco del Aguardiente No. 5, tel. 5\/668-5338, cell tel. 313\/649-3133, 8:30am-5pm daily, COP$15,000 per class) offers yoga classes in a small studio in the Walled City and also classes on the beach on occasion. Some instructors are bilingual.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nCartagena remains the top tourist destination in Colombia (and is second only to Bogot\u00e1 in terms of international arrivals), and the crowds keep coming. Hotel options have flourished since 2000. The Old City and Getseman\u00ed have become a favorite location for high-end boutique hotels. At the other end of the spectrum, hostels have begun to appear in these same neighborhoods. Finding a good midrange option, however, is a challenge.\n\nA short bus or taxi ride away from colonial Cartagena is its version of Miami Beach: Bocagrande. Large high-rise hotels facing the waters of the Caribbean are the norm. This area is popular with Colombian tourists. There are some midrange and budget options here, though not with a view to the sea.\n\nFor those interested in beaches, the Las Am\u00e9ricas area two kilometers past the airport is home to many new, large high-rise hotels. Finally, there are lodging options in the Islas de Rosario. Spending a night there may be more satisfying, albeit much more expensive, than a day trip.\n\nPeak tourist seasons in Cartagena are during the last week of November (which is when the city celebrates its independence from Spain and hosts the Miss Colombia beauty pageant), from mid-December to mid-January, Semana Santa (Holy Week) in March or April, June-July during school vacations, and during any of the long weekends when Monday is a holiday (check a Colombian calendar). Cartagena is at its liveliest (and more fun) when the out-of-towners converge on it, particularly during the end-of-year holidays when it's two to three weeks of celebration. But finding a place to stay may be difficult, as room rates spike.\n\n##### **Old City and Getseman\u00ed**\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nThe Shangri-La of backpacker hostels in Cartagena is the famous **Media Luna** (Cl. de la Media Luna No. 10-46, tel. 5\/664-3423, www.medialunahostel.com, COP$37,000 dorm). Located on the edge of Getseman\u00ed, it's a high-energy kind of place with multicultural socializing (and flirting) centered on the small pool in the courtyard. If you're looking to break out of your shell, this may be the place. It has a capacity of over 100 with just a couple of private rooms (book early for those). There's a burrito place attached to the Luna, they organize lots of activities, and bikes are available to rent. Then there's the bar: On Wednesday nights, turn up on the early side (around 9pm) to squeeze in at their famous Visa por un Sue\u00f1o party. This hostel isn't the best place for travelers over the age of 28.\n\nIn the Old City, the Uruguayan hostel chain **El Viajero** (Cl. Siete Infantes No. 9-45, tel. 5\/660-2598, www.elviajerohostels.com, COP$30,000 dorm, COP$75,000 pp d) has air-conditioned dorm rooms of various sizes and a handful of private rooms, which are located across the street in a more subdued environment. A decent breakfast is included in the room rate.\n\nLow-key hostel option M **Blue House** (Plaza Fern\u00e1ndez Madrid, corner of Cl. del Curato and Cra. 7 No. 38-08, tel. 5\/668-6501, www.bluehouseht.com, COP$35,000 dorm, COP$150,000 d) is within the Walled City on a relatively quiet side street just a few blocks from the Plaza Santo Domingo. It's got just one dorm room and two private rooms. You'll have no problem finding the hostel\u2014it's true blue.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nThe two classic upmarket hotels in the Walled City are the Santa Teresa and the Santa Clara. The **Hotel Charleston Santa Teresa** (Cra. 3A No. 31-23, tel. 5\/664-9494, www.hotelcharlestonsantateresa.com, COP$718,000 d) was originally built as a convent for Clarisa nuns. Post-independence it served many different purposes: headquarters for the police, a jail, a pasta factory. In the 1980s it was finally converted into a hotel. There are two wings to this historic hotel, a colonial one and a modern wing. The two inner courtyards are lovely, and you'll be astounded by the floral displays. Concierges will help arrange any excursion you'd like. Amenities such as four restaurants, a rooftop pool, a spa, and gym ensure a relaxing stay. It's steps away from the wall.\n\nThe other old city classic is in San Diego. The **Hotel Sofitel Legend Santa Clara** (Cl. del Torno 39-29, tel. 5\/650-4700, www.sofitel.com, COP$747,000 d) is a 122-room hotel synonymous with class and luxury. The stunning colonial courtyard alone is worth taking a peek, even if you're not a guest. The Santa Clara originally served as a convent.\n\nFrom the rooftop terrace of M **Hotel LM** (Cl. de la Mantilla No. 3-56, tel. 5\/664-9100, www.hotel-lm.com, COP$800,000 d) guests enjoy spectacular views of the rooftops of old Cartagena, including the Iglesia San Pedro Claver. This luxury hotel has seven spacious rooms and an \"interactive\" kitchen where guests order in advance and can even participate in food preparation.\n\n**Casa Lola** (Cl. del Guerrero No. 29-108, tel. 5\/664-1538, www.casalola.com.co, COP$374,000 d) is designed and managed by a Spanish couple who were some of the first hoteliers to take a chance on Getseman\u00ed. The hotel, spread over two buildings (one colonial and one republican-era), has 10 smartly designed rooms.\n\nIt's not hard to determine how the owners decided on **Makondo Hotel Boutique** (Cl. del Curato No. 38-161, tel. 5\/660-0823, www.hotelmakondo.com, COP$210,000 d) as the name for their small hotel: It's next door to Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez's house and named for the fictitious Colombian pueblo portrayed in the author's _One Hundred Years of Solitude._ This small hotel is boutique-lite, with less exorbitant prices. It's got 10 rooms, some rather small. It's within a stone's throw of several good restaurants.\n\n##### **Bocagrande**\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nSeveral mediocre hotels along Carrera 3 in Bocagrande fit in the category of economy hotels. For a little more, but for less than most hotels in Cartagena, the **Hotel San Pietro** (Cra. 3 No. 4-101, tel. 5\/665-2369, www.pietro.com, COP$228,000 d), located on the same stretch, is more comfortable than its neighbors. It has 35 rooms of different sizes, a cute reading room with books you can check out, and a rooftop terrace with a hot tub (though it can only be used during the day, under the blazing sun). The owners also have an adjacent Italian restaurant.\n\nThe old classic in town is the **Hotel Caribe** (Cra. 1 No. 2-87, Bocagrande, tel. 5\/650-1160, www.hotelcaribe.com, COP$350,000 d). These swanky digs, comprising three large buildings, are next to the beach (they have a beach club exclusively for guests). Most visitors, however, seem to prefer to lounge by the pools and drink a fruity cocktail.\n\nFor a no-surprises brand-name hotel experience, the **Hilton Cartagena** (Av. Almirante Brion, El Laguito, tel. 5\/665-0660, www.hilton.com, COP$411,000 d) won't fail you. It's at the tip of Bocagrande, isolated from the crowds, and has multiple pools and restaurants as well as a gym. Guests have to pay extra for wireless Internet access, though.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nSeafood reigns supreme in Cartagena cuisine. Popular fish are _pargo rojo_ (red snapper), _corvina_ (sea bass), _dorado_ (mahi mahi), and _sierra_ (swordfish). Avoid _mero_ (grouper) as it is threatened in the Caribbean waters. Shellfish include _langosta_ (lobster), _langostinos_ (prawns), and _chipi chipis_ (tiny clams). These main dishes are often accompanied with delicious coconut rice and _patacones_ (fried plantains).\n\nThough many restaurants in the Walled City sport Manhattan prices, an inexpensive meal is not impossible to find. There are still a few mom-and-pop restaurants featuring set (cheap!) lunches for locals who would balk at paying over COP$10,000 for their midday meal.\n\n##### **Old City**\n\nTransport yourself to the Havana of yesteryear at M **La Vitrola** (Cl. Baloco No. 2-01, tel. 5\/664-8243, noon-3pm and 7pm-midnight daily, COP$35,000), an always elegant, always packed restaurant that specializes in Caribbean seafood, such as their popular tuna steak with avocado and mango, as well as pasta dishes. Immaculately dressed bartenders are a blur of constant motion as they perform their nightly mojito ritual: plucking mint leaves, crushing them with sugar in tall glasses, pouring in soda and rum, squeezing in some fresh lime juice, then giving the concoction a few vigorous shakes. La Vitrola is pricey, but the atmosphere, with live Cuban music in the evenings, makes it worthwhile.\n\nServing up the best, freshest ceviche in town is **La Cevicher\u00eda** (Cl. Stuart No. 7-14, tel. 5\/660-1492, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat., noon-10pm Sun., COP$28,000). It's got a creative menu, featuring ceviche with mango and ceviche with coconut and lime juice, and outdoor seating on a quiet street.\n\nTastefully decorated with a lovely garden area, upper-crust **Restaurante FM** (Cl. 2 de Badillo No. 36-151, tel. 5\/664-7973, noon-3pm and 7pm-11:30pm daily, COP$38,000) is named for its owner, Francisco Montoya, who has created a menu that features Caribbean and Mediterranean dishes.\n\n**El Balc\u00f3n** (Cl. Tumbamuertos No. 38-85, cell tel. 300\/336-3876, www.elbalconcartagena.com, noon-midnight daily, COP$22,000) is a friendly place with a view in Plaza San Diego. Get here in the early evening and enjoy a sundowner cocktail as you listen to lounge music or have a light meal like a refreshing gazpacho or their shrimp \"sexviche.\" Casual and cute, **Collage Charladero** (Cl. Roman No. 5-47, tel. 5\/660-7626, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., COP$22,000) serves sandwiches, burgers, falafels, fresh juices (watermelon with lime and mint), and refreshing sangria in a clean and cool environment close to all the historic sights.\n\nThe **Enoteca** (Cl. San Juan de Dios No. 3-39, tel. 5\/664-3806, www.enoteca.com.co, noon-11:30pm daily, COP$30,000) never seems to lose its popularity. This institution is best known for its pizzas, professional service, and nice atmosphere, although its pastas are overpriced. While the interior patio decorated with fountains and twinkling lights is certainly atmospheric, you can also dine in their wine cellar room near the front, where the air conditioner always hums.\n\nFor a little curry with your shrimp, try **Ganesha** (Cl. de las Bovedas No. 39-91, tel. 5\/660-9165, www.ganesharestaurante.com, noon-3pm and 6:30pm-11pm Tues.-Sun., COP$24,000), an authentic Indian restaurant with an extensive menu with many vegetarian options.\n\n**La Cocina de Carmela** (across from Librer\u00eda Nacional, Cl. Segunda de Badillo No. 36-50, cell tel. 301\/348-7881, 11:30am-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000) is an unpretentious bargain spot where Colombian and international dishes (served buffet style) are on offer at lunchtime. At night it's \u00e0 la carte, specializing in seafood and pasta dishes.\n\n**Crepes & Waffles** (Cl. Baloco Edificio Pi\u00f1eres, Local 1, tel. 5\/664-6062, www.crepesywaffles.com.co, noon-10:30pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-11:30pm Fri.-Sat., 8am-10:30pm Sun.) is a wildly successful and reliable Colombian family-style chain that specializes in savory and sweet cr\u00eapes and just sweet waffles. With restaurants as far away as Spain, the restaurant has a progressive policy of hiring women who are heads of their households. Besides healthy and quick meals, Crepes is a good place for an ice cream break on a muggy Cartagena afternoon.\n\nIn 1965, Dora Gav\u00edria starting selling her _fritos_ (fried snacks) to locals and students in order to support her family of five children. Today she stays in the kitchen mostly, letting her adult children run her stand, but everyone still calls it **Do\u00f1a Dora** (Plaza San Diego, 4pm-10pm daily). There's always a crowd gathered around the small food stall taking turns dabbing a little more hot sauce on their _arepa de huevo_ (egg fried in corn meal) _, carima\u00f1olas_ (meat-stuffed yuca fritters), and empanadas. Beer is the perfect companion for her _fritos._ As you are strolling the narrow streets of the Old City, look for street corner vendors of _agua de coco_ (coconut water). This natural sports drink is sold in the actual coconut\u2014just add a straw. It's an unbeatable thirst quencher on hot days. The going price for coconut water is COP$2,000.\n\n##### **Getseman\u00ed and Manga**\n\nThe Plaza de la Trinidad in Getseman\u00ed is the heart of the neighborhood. It's home to some swanky spots perfect for a couple of drinks or a meal. A little bit of Barcelona can be found there at the **Champagner\u00eda del Mediterraneo** (Plaza de la Trinidad, tel. 5\/646-3576, 11am-midnight Wed.-Mon., COP$24,000), where Spanish wines accompany Serrano ham sandwiches. **Demente** (Plaza de la Trinidad, cell tel. 311\/831-9839, www.demente.com.co, 4pm-2am Mon.-Sat., COP$22,000) is an ultra-cool tapas bar on a competing corner across the plaza that also specializes in cocktails and tapas. It's an open-air spot with a retractable roof, where the music is funky, the cocktails are fine, and the cigars are Cuban. It's a fun place for an evening of tapas and drinks.\n\nCheck out **Di Silvio** (Cl. de la Sierpe No. 9A-08, tel. 5\/660-2205, 6:30pm-11:30pm Tues.-Sun., COP$24,000), an upscale Italian restaurant just off of the Plaza de la Trinidad. M **Pavia** (Cl. Guerrero 29-75, tel. 5\/664-3308, 6pm-midnight Mon.-Sun., COP$15,000) is a funky little pizza and pasta joint that is run by a musician and artist from Italy.\n\nVIPs such as President Santos have been known to sample the authentic Italian dishes at **I Balconi** (Cl. del Guerrero No. 29-146, cell tel. 311\/392-0936, www.ibalconi.com, noon-10pm Sun.-Thurs., noon-midnight Fri.-Sat., COP$18,000). It gets boisterous here as the evenings wear on and the wine flows. It's above Caf\u00e9 Havana. Ask for a table on one of the balconies so you can enjoy the street life from on high.\n\nAt M **La Cocina de Pepina** (Callej\u00f3n Vargas, Cl. 25 No. 9A-06, Local 2, tel. 5\/664-2944, noon-4pm and 6pm-10pm Tues.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun.-Mon., COP$25,000), typical dishes from across the Caribbean coast are thoughtfully reinvented. It's a cozy place in an alleyway near the Calle del Arsenal. Make a reservation for dinner.\n\n**Marea by Rausch** (Centro de Convenciones, Cra. 8, tel. 5\/654-4205, www.mareabyrausch.com, noon-3pm and 7pm-10pm Tues.-Sat., 4pm-10pm Sun., COP$45,000) is an ultra-chic seafood restaurant that is the brainchild of the Rausches, two brother chefs from Bogot\u00e1. Specialties include a tuna tartar and prawns in a coconut and saffron sauce. This restaurant has excellent views of the bay and the Torre del Reloj.\n\nThe food at the **Club de Pesca** (Fuerte San Sebasti\u00e1n del Pastelilo, Manga, tel. 5\/660-4594, noon-11pm daily, COP$55,000) is overpriced and overrated, but the view is unsurpassable. This Cartagena classic is in the old San Sebasti\u00e1n del Pastelillo fort with magnificent views to the bay. It's a favorite spot for wedding banquets, and some guests arrive at the fort in yachts. On the menu try the _jaiba gratinada,_ which is a crab au gratin.\n\n##### **Bocagrande**\n\nElegant **Arabe Internacional** (Cra. 3 No. 8-83, tel. 5\/665-4365, www.restaurantearabeinternacional.com, noon-3:30pm and 7pm-10pm Mon.-Fri., noon-10pm Sat.-Sun., COP$25,000) has been serving authentic Middle Eastern cuisine since 1965. It's a popular place for the Cartagena business crowd.\n\nIf you just want a hearty, authentic Colombian meal without the bells and whistles, head to **Mac Dugan's** (Av. San Mart\u00edn No. 9-42, tel. 5\/665-5101, 11am-9pm daily, COP$12,000), a family-run restaurant in Bocagrande.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nIn addition to locations at the airport and at the cruise ship port, there are city-run **tourist information kiosks** near the Torre del Reloj (no phone, 9am-noon and 1pm-6pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-5pm Sun.) and an air-conditioned main office in the historic **Casa de Marquez Plaza de la Aduana** (tel. 5\/660-1583, 9am-noon and 1pm-6pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-5pm Sun.). The website for the **Cartagena Tourism Board** is www.cartagenadeindias.travel.\n\nIn case of an **emergency** , call the police at 123, 112, or 5\/628-4748. For medical emergencies call tel. 5\/667-5244.\n\nAlthough postcards are relatively easy to purchase, sending them is a different matter. Mailing postcards and letters is not common here and not that easy. The post office, **4-72,** has a branch in the Walled City (Cl. de la Moneda No. 7-94, tel. 5\/670-0102, 8am-noon and 2pm-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-12:30pm Sat.). It costs COP$2,000 for postage to the United States and Canada. This branch has a small exhibition space with old postage stamps on display.\n\n##### **Volunteering**\n\nThe **Fundaci\u00f3n Juan Felipe G\u00f3mez** (Cl. 31 No. 91-80, Ternera, tel. 5\/661-0937, www.juanfe.org) was the inspiration of Catalina Escobar, a Colombian businesswoman. As a volunteer in a maternity clinic in Cartagena, she was holding a tiny infant, born to a teenage mother, who died in her arms, all because the mother didn't have the most basic financial resources to get proper care for her son. Within days, Escobar's own son died in a tragic death. Driven by grief and the desire to help young women to lead healthy and happy lives, she founded this organization. At the Fundaci\u00f3n Juan Felipe G\u00f3mez, named for the child she lost, young women (often pregnant or new mothers) take classes designed to provide them with workforce skills. Because of Escobar's efforts, she was nominated a CNN Hero of the Year in 2012. Anybody with skill or interest in nutrition, computers, fashion, or teaching English can get involved. Both short- and long-term volunteers are welcomed. If you'd like to visit the center, call in advance to arrange a tour. You can take a public bus or a 20-minute taxi to the _fundaci\u00f3n_.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE**\n\nCartagena's **Aeropuerto Internacional Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez** (CTG, tel. 5\/656-9202, www.sacsa.com.co) is located to the east of the city, about a 12-minute cab ride from Cartagena.\n\n**JetBlue** (www.jetblue.com) operates three flights a week between New York-JFK and Cartagena. Nonstop from Florida, **Spirit Airlines** (www.spirit.com) has a flight from Fort Lauderdale, and **Avianca** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-095-3434, www.avianca.com) has one out of Miami. **Copa** (tel. 5\/665-8495, www.copaair.com) serves Cartagena from its hub in Panama City, Panama. The main national carriers, Avianca and **LAN Colombia** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com), operate many flights each day to Cartagena from various Colombian cities. **Viva Colombia** (tel. 5\/642-4989, www.vivacolombia.co) often offers inexpensive fares between Cartagena and Medell\u00edn, Bogot\u00e1, Cali, and Pereira. **ADA** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232, www.ada-aero.com) serves the city with flights from Medell\u00edn, Monter\u00eda, and C\u00facuta. **Easy Fly** (tel. 5\/693-0400, www.easyfly.co) has a nonstop from Bucaramanga.\n\nRegular bus service connects Cartagena with all major cities and all coastal cities. The **Terminal de Transportes** (Diag. 56N. 57-236, tel. 5\/663-0454) is a long 20- to 30-minute cab ride from the _centro hist\u00f3rico._ Expect to pay about COP$20,000 for the trip.\n\n#### **GETTING AROUND**\n\nThe Old City, Getseman\u00ed, and Bocagrande are very walkable. For short hops, there are cabs. Taxis here do not have meters, so it's quite possible you won't get the local rate. Before hopping in a cab, ask a local or two how much you should pay. From the Old City to Bocagrande, expect to pay around COP$6,000. A ride to the airport will cost COP$10,000, and a trip to Las Am\u00e9ricas will go for COP$12,000. Tipping is not customary for cabbies. Although an additional cost is added if you use a phone service for a cab, added costs for night pickups, air conditioning, and traveling on holidays are not permitted, and you can protest those.\n\nIt may seem overwhelming at first, but taking a public bus is a cheap way to get from point A to point B\u2014and you'll hardly ever be overcharged. To hop on a bus to Bocagrande from the Old City, walk down to Avenida Santander along the sea and flag down just about any bus you see (or look for a sign in the window that reads \"Bocagrande\"). The ride will set you back COP$1,500. When you want out, yell _\"\u00a1Parada!\"_ On the main road just to the east of the walls, you'll see a nonstop parade of buses loading and unloading. From here you can go to the Castillo de San Felipe, to the Mercado de Bazurto, or to the bus terminal, for the same low price of COP$1,500.\n\n#### **BOCACHICA**\n\nBocachica, which means \"Small Mouth,\" is one of two entrances to the Bah\u00eda de Cartagena. It is at the southern end of the bay. The other, much wider entrance, is Bocagrande (\"Big Mouth\"), in the northern part of the bay near Cartagena. In 1640, when three galleons sank at Bocagrande and blocked that passage, the Spaniards decided to fortify the more easily defensible Bocachica.\n\nThe **Fuerte de San Fernando** and **Bater\u00eda de San Jos\u00e9** are two forts constructed at either side of Bocachica that were the first line of defense of the bay. The Fuerte de San Fernando, at the southern tip of the island of Tierrabomba, is a particularly impressive example of 18th-century military architecture. It is very well preserved and you can still see the barracks, kitchen, storerooms, and chapel enclosed within the massive fortifications. The low-lying Bater\u00eda de San Jos\u00e9 is a much more modest affair. The only way to get to Bocachica is by _lanchas_ that depart from the Muelle de los Pegasos, the tourist port in Cartagena near the Torre del Reloj (COP$7,000). The 45-minute trip through the bay provides interesting views of Cartagena and the port. In Bocachica, there are a few small restaurants where you can eat fried fish, coconut rice, and _patacones_ (fried plantains) and drink a cold beer.\n\n#### **PLAYA BLANCA AND ISLAS DEL ROSARIO**\n\nSouth of Cartagena is the elongated island of **Bar\u00fa** , which is separated from the mainland by the Canal del Dique, a manmade waterway built in 1650 to connect Cartagena with the R\u00edo Magdalena. On Bar\u00fa lies **Playa Blanca,** a Caribbean paradise of idyllic, white-sand beaches bordering warm waters of dozens of shades of blue. West of Bar\u00fa, and about 25 kilometers southwest of Cartagena, is the archipelago **Islas del Rosario,** part of the much larger **Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo**. On Bar\u00fa and the Islas del Rosario, traditional Afro-Colombian communities with rich cultural heritages coexist with the vacation houses of Colombia's rich and famous.\n\nBar\u00fa is home to several beautiful beaches. With the exception of Playa Blanca, most of these are inaccessible to the general public. The 25 small coral islands of the Islas del Rosario are a marine wonderland. The once-spectacular coral reefs off of Bar\u00fa and surrounding the archipelago have been badly damaged by the increased flow of fresh water from the Canal del Dique, which has been dredged in recent years.\n\nA trip to Playa Blanca and the Islas del Rosario affords the chance to blissfully bask in the sun and splash about in the ocean. However, be aware that the standard tours, such as those operated by **Optitours** (Av. Santander No. 46-94, Cartagena, tel. 5\/666-5957, cell tel. 300\/394-4848, www.opitours.com, COP$50,000-70,000) can often be crowded on weekends. Most tours involve cruising down the Bah\u00eda de Cartagena, passing through the Strait of Bocachica, and heading to the **Oceanario Islas del Rosario** (www.oceanariocolombia.com, 10am-3pm Tues.-Sun., COP$25,000) on the island of San Mart\u00edn de Pajarales, part of the Islas del Rosario. Very popular with Colombian families on vacation, the aquarium features a dolphin show. You can swim in the water and rest in the shade if you decide not to patronize the aquarium. Then the boats head off to Playa Blanca, where you can buy lunch. The insistent vendors at Playa Blanca can make for an unpleasant experience, but you can try telling them _\"no, gracias.\"_\n\nIf you are willing to pay more, there are more upscale day tours to the _islas_. One is a day trip (COP$173,000) to the luxurious beachside **Hotel San Pedro de Majagua** (Cartagena office: Cl. del Torno No. 39-29, tel. 5\/650-4460, <http:\/\/nuevo.hotelmajagua.com>, COP$400,000 d) on Isla Grande. They take care of transportation from the Muelle de Marina Santa Cruz in Manga (boats leave at 9am daily). The price also includes a seafood lunch and a visit to the Oceanario Islas del Rosario, whether you want to go there or not. You can also spend the night at this comfortable hotel (COP$350,000 d including transportation).\n\nAnother recommended day tour is the **This Is Cartagena** (Av. Centenario No. 30-42, tel. 5\/660-0969, cell tel. 317\/259-3773, www.thisiscartagena.com, 9am-6pm Mon.-Fri., yacht tour COP$200,000) tour to the islands. It's a more relaxed experience, as groups are rarely larger than eight persons.\n\nIf you are willing to splurge on an overnight stay, upscale hotel options include **Coralina Isla Boutique** (cell tel. 310\/764-8835, COP$577,000 d) or **Agua Azul Beach Resort** (cell tel. 320\/680-2134 or 314\/504-3540, COP$1,300,000 d high season, COP$700,000 d low season). For a special occasion, you can rent the luxurious houseboat run by the travel agency Aviatur. Their **Casa Navegante** (tel. 1\/587-5181, www.aviaturecoturismo.com, COP$1,200,000) is moored on the beautiful Bah\u00eda Chol\u00f3n in the Islas de Rosario.\n\n#### **MOMPOX**\n\nThis town, founded in 1540 on the eastern edge of a large island between two branches of the R\u00edo Magdalena (the Brazo de Loba and the Brazo Mompox), was an opulent center of trade, connecting the interior of the country with Cartagena during the colonial era. But then the mighty river changed its course in the late 18th century. Mompox's importance steadily declined, never to return.\n\nMompox is what Cartagena looked like before it became a tourist destination, and it's hard to deny the melancholic charm this oppressively hot town retains even today. The attraction here is strolling the wide streets, admiring the magnificent whitewashed houses decorated with intricate iron latticework, and watching the river flow by. In 1995, because of its architectural importance, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\n\nThe R\u00edo Magdalena runs through Mompox.\n\nThe town is spread out along the river. It does not have a central plaza, but three squares, each with a church, facing the river. It is believed that each of these squares is on the location of a former indigenous settlement. From south to north these are: **Plaza de Santa B\u00e1rbara, Plaza de la Concepci\u00f3n** (also known as Plaza Mayor), and **Plaza de San Francisco.** Three main streets run parallel to the river: Calle de la Albarrada (which corresponds to Carrera 1) facing the river; the Calle Real del Medio, Mompox's main street, one block west of the river; and the Calle de Atr\u00e1s (literally, the \"street behind\").\n\nThere are two historical churches worth visiting in Mompox. However, they are only regularly open during mass times. Nonetheless, the Casa Amarilla can call the church to request that someone open up the doors so that you can take a quick peek. The **Iglesia de Santa B\u00e1rbara** (Cl. de la Albarrada and Cl. 14, mass 4pm Sun.), built in 1630, is well worth a visit. The facade is painted a striking yellow, with colorful floral decorations. It has an unusual baroque octagonal tower with a balcony wrapping around it. Inside, it has a magnificent gilded altar. Another noteworthy church is the **Iglesia de San Agust\u00edn** (Cl. Real del Medio and Cl. 17, masses 7pm daily, with additional 9am mass on Sun.), which houses the Santo Sepulcro, a gilded reproduction of Christ's tomb, which is carried through the streets during Semana Santa. The only museum in town is the **Museo Cultural de Arte Religioso** (Cl. Real del Medio No. 17-07, tel. 5\/685-6074, 9am-noon and 3pm-4pm Tues. and Thurs.-Fri., 9am-noon Sat.-Mon., COP$2,000), which has displays of gold- and silverwork from the colonial era. Mompox silver- and goldsmiths made a name for themselves with their intricate filigree jewelry. Another interesting sight is the **Piedra de Bol\u00edvar** (Cl. de la Albarrada and Cl. 17), a monument facing the river with a stone slab that lists all the visits Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar made to Mompox. Finally, Mompox's atmospheric 19th-century **Cementerio Municipal** (Cl. 18 and Cra. 4, 8am-noon and 2-5pm daily, free) is well worth a detour.\n\nthe ornate Iglesia de Santa B\u00e1rbara, Momp\u00f3x\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\n**Semana Santa,** or Holy Week (Easter), which is held during late March or April, is the most important celebration in Mompox, when visitors from all over Colombia converge on the town to watch its religious processions and attend concerts. You'll have to book months in advance to get a hotel room during that time.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nMompox is famous for its intricate gold filigree jewelry. Look for the **Joyer\u00eda Filimompox** (Cl. 23 No. 3-23, tel. 5\/685-6604 or 313\/548-2322), where the staff will explain their craft to you during your visit to their workshop. They accept credit cards. At the **Escuela Taller de Artes y Oficios de Santa Cruz de Mompox** (Claustro de San Agust\u00edn, Cl. 16 No. 1A-57, tel. 5\/685-5204), young people learn traditional handicrafts. Visitors are welcome to drop by and watch these artisans at work. Inside, there's an interior courtyard, an inviting place to linger for a while.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\n**Bioma Hotel Boutique** (Cl. Real del Medio No. 18-59, tel. 5\/685-6733, cell tel. 315\/308-6365, www.bioma.co, COP$190,000 d) may be one of the most comfortable options in town, as it offers 12 air-conditioned rooms, a dipping pool, and good food. The M **Casa Amarilla** (Cl. de la Albarrada No. 13-59, tel. 5\/685-6326, cell tel. 301\/362-7065, www.lacasaamaraillamompos.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$100,000 d), owned by a British travel writer, is another excellent choice, with accommodations for the backpacker as well as private rooms for those seeking more comfort. After a careful restoration, the Casa Amarilla opened a luxury colonial house called the **Casa de la Concepci\u00f3n** (Cl. de la Albarrada No. 13-59, tel. 5\/685-6326, cell tel. 301\/362-7065, www.lacasaamaraillamompos.com, COP$1,500,000 house rental) in 2013. It has four bedrooms and two interior patio gardens, and the second story balcony has a fine view to the plaza below.\n\nHotels in Mompox are the best options food-wise, but be sure to confirm with them before arriving. During off-season many do not have cooks on call. Otherwise, the **Comedor Coste\u00f1o** (Cl. de la Albarrada No. 18-45, tel. 5\/685-5263, 7am-5pm daily) is a restaurant that serves _comida t\u00edpica_ (Colombian fare) overlooking the Magdalena. On the renovated Plaza de la Concepci\u00f3n there are some open-air caf\u00e9s that serve snacks and drinks. This is a nice weekend night gathering area. Plaza Santo Domingo (Cl. 18 and Cra. 3) has **food stalls** serving pizza and other fast food.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nMost visitors arrive in Mompox from Cartagena, and there are several ways to make the journey.\n\nThere is one direct bus that leaves from the Terminal de Transportes in Cartagena (Diagonal 57 No. 24-236, tel. 5\/663-0454) at 6:30am. The ride takes eight hours and costs COP$50,000. More comfortable is a door-to-door service (COP$75,000) with a company like **Toto Express** (cell tel. 310\/707-0838), which takes six hours. The fastest way involves a van, a boat, and a taxi: take a van (COP$40,000 pp, 3.5 hours) from outside the Terminal de Transportes in Cartagena to Magangu\u00e9, a port on the Magdalena; there hop on a _chalupa_ boat that will take you to a spot called Bodega de Mompox (COP$7,000, 30 mins.); and from there take a shared taxi or _mototaxi_ (COP$15,000, 30 minutes) to Mompox.\n\n### **Barranquilla**\n\nColombia's fourth largest city (pop. 1.6 million) is known for its busy port and for the bacchanalian Carnaval de Barranquilla, designated a World Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. This, the most famous celebration in Colombia, is a time of music, dancing in the streets, and revelry. It lasts only about four days, but the city starts readying for it days (if not weeks) in advance.\n\nDuring the rest of the year there's not a whole lot to lure the visitor to Barranquilla. It is not a colonial city, but vestiges of its early 20th century importance can be seen in its El Prado district.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\nTwo museums give the visitor a good insight into Barranquilla's people and culture. The first, **Casa del Carnaval** (Cra. 54 No. 49B-39, tel. 5\/370-5437 or 5\/379-6621, 9am-5pm Tues.-Thurs., 9am-6pm Sat.-Sun., COP$5,000), is _carnaval_ headquarters, and its Sala Carnaval Elsa Caridi provides an interactive introduction to the annual event. After a visit here, you'll come to understand the many different components of the celebration, like the different musical styles: _cumbia, mapal\u00e9, chand\u00e9,_ and _son_. While at first blush it may seem that the Carnaval de Baranquilla is just a big party, there is more to it than meets the eye. Behind every costume, parade, and dance there is a story. Knowledgeable guides will share this story and their genuine enthusiasm for the festival at this well-done museum.\n\nThe second of Barranquilla's top two museums is **Museo del Caribe** (Cl. 36 No. 46-66, tel. 5\/372-0582, www.culturacaribe.org, 8am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 9am-6pm Sat.-Sun., COP$10,000), one of the finest museums in the country, with a focus on Coste\u00f1o (Caribbean coast) culture. There is a room dedicated to Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, which may be hard to understand if you are not familiar with many of his works or if your Spanish isn't perfect; slide shows on ecosystems from the Caribbean region; and exhibits on the people of the Caribbean, including the many different indigenous tribes who live there. Of particular interest is a room that examines immigration to the region, from African slaves to \"Turcos,\" meaning those mostly coming from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The museum has a restaurant with reasonably priced meals and a cute, tiny caf\u00e9 on the plaza in front. Both of these keep regular museum hours.\n\nThe old downtown of the city is very real, in its rundown and dirty state. The **Paseo Bol\u00edvar** (Cl. 34 between Cras. 38-45) is the main drag downtown. It's lined with discount shops and charming used-book stands, where you can often find some Colombian classics\u2014even in English\u2014if you look hard enough. There's always a crowd at the newspaper kiosks, which seems like a scene from a different era. On the restored **Plaza San Nicol\u00e1s** (between Clls. 32-33 and Cras. 41-42) is the neo-gothic **Iglesia San Nicol\u00e1s Tolentino** (Cra. 42 No. 33-45, tel. 5\/340-2247), which took about 300 years to build.\n\nNot about roses and chocolates, the **Museo Rom\u00e1ntico** (Cra. 54 No. 59-199, tel. 5\/344-4591, 9am-11:30am and 2:30pm-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., COP$5,000) is really a history museum of Barranquilla with artwork, old _carnaval_ costumes, missives signed by Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, and a typewriter used by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. It was once the majestic home of Jewish immigrants who arrived in Colombia at the turn of the 20th century. It is run by an elderly historian and his wife.\n\nPop singer Shakira has won two Grammys and countless other awards, and is Barranquilla's favorite daughter. To honor her, the people of the city put a statue of her stroking a guitar in a prominent place: in front of the **Estadio Metropolitano Roberto Mel\u00e9ndez** (Aves. Circunvalar Alberto Pumarejo and Murillo).\n\n#### **FESTIVALS AND EVENTS**\n\n##### M **Carnaval de Barranquilla**\n\nFor most Colombians, Barranquilla is synonymous with _carnaval_ , and they boast that the Carnaval de Barranquilla is the world's biggest after Rio, although folks from New Orleans may balk at this claim. In Colombia, this is really the only place where the bacchanal is celebrated, although some Caribbean cities and even Bogot\u00e1 make an effort.\n\nDuring the four days prior to Ash Wednesday, in late February or early March, the **Carnaval de Barranquilla** (www.carnavaldebarranquilla.org) is full of Coste\u00f1o pageantry: costumes, music, dance, parades, and whiskey.\n\nOfficially, Carnaval gets going on Saturday, but on the Friday night before, **La Guacherna** is held. One event of the night is the Desfile Gay, which is when outrageously costumed men dressed in drag parade down a street to the hoots and hollers of thousands of bystanders.\n\nSaturday is the main event. That's the day of the **Batalla de las Flores** (Battle of the Flowers) parade. It's when floats carrying beauty queens and dancers and thousands in _comparsas_ (groups) in elaborate costumes make their way down the Calle 40 under the sizzling Barranquilla sun. This event dates back to 1903, when the celebration was begun as a celebration of the end of the Guerra de Mil D\u00edas (Thousand Days' War). Participation in the parades is serious business here, involving planning, practice, money, and, sometimes, connections. However, there is one _comparsa_ during the Batalla de las Flores in which just about anyone can participate, and it's one of the most popular. That's the _comparsa_ of \"Disfrazate como Quieras\"\u2014go however you like. Anybody in a costume, from the silly to the sexy, can join. To participate, visit the web page (www.disfrazatecomoquieras.com).\n\nOn Sunday, during the Gran Parada de Tradici\u00f3n y Folclor, groups of dancers perform on the Calle 40 to the typical, hypnotic music of _carnaval_ \u2014a mix of African, indigenous, and European sounds. On Monday there is another parade, the Gran Parade de Comparsas, and, starting in the late afternoon, a massive concert attracting more than 30 musical groups. These compete for the award of Congo del Oro. On Tuesday, after four days of music and dancing, things wind down with the parade Joselito Se Va con las Cenizas. This is when Joselito, a fictitious Barranquillero, dies after four days of rumba, and his body is carried through the streets as bystanders weep. On Wednesday, Barranquilleros call in sick.\n\nYou can watch all the action of the parades from the _palcos_ (bleachers) that line Calle 40. Keep in mind that the parades take place in the middle of the day, meaning lots of sun and heat. Tickets for the _palcos_ can be ordered online at Tu Boleta (www.tuboleta.com).\n\nWith regard to _carnaval_ , it's said that _\"quien lo vive, es quien lo goza\"_ (\"whoever experiences it is who enjoys it\"). But to do that, it's crucial to get those hotel and flight reservations early.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nAs a business destination, Barranquilla has a number of hotel options, although hostels are almost nonexistent. Rates significantly drop on weekends.\n\n**Meeting Point Hostel** (Cra. 61 No. 68-100, tel. 5\/318-2599, www.themeetingpoint.hostel.com, COP$60,000 d, COP$25,000 dorm) is the only hostel catering to international backpackers in Barranquilla. It's run by an Italian-Colombian family. If it feels like you're staying in their house, that's because it is their house, down to kids on the sofa playing video games. The neighborhood is quiet and green, and about a 15-minute walk from the El Prado area.\n\n**Country International Hotel** (Cra. 52 No. 75-30, tel. 5\/369-5900, ext. 120, www.countryinthotel.com, COP$238,000 d) has a nice pool and comfortable rooms. It's located in a good area. **Hotel Estelar Alto Prado** (Cl. 76 No. 56-29, tel. 5\/336-0000, COP$292,000 d) is a modern, ultra comfortable, and stylish address in Barranquilla.\n\nM **Hotel El Prado** (Cra. 54 No. 70-10, tel. 5\/369-7777, www.hotelelpradosa.com, COP$236,000 d) debuted in 1930, and for decades, before the relatively recent boom in luxury cookie-cutter hotels, it was the luxury address in town. It's got 200 rooms, a massive boiler room, and a fab pool to lounge around drinking a cocktail. Non-guests can spend an afternoon getting pampered here for only COP$38,000, a price that includes lunch and all the poolside lounging you need.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\n**El Huerto** (Cra. 52 No. 70-139, tel. 5\/368-7171, 8am-7:30pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-3pm Sun., COP$12,000) has been serving the vegetarian minority of Barranquilla since 1986. They have a set lunch menu every day and sell baked goods to go as well.\n\nBarranquilla's many residents of Lebanese and Syrian descent have a few Middle Eastern restaurants to choose from. One of the best is **Arabe Gourmet** (Cra. 49C No. 76-181, tel. 5\/360-5930, 11am-10pm daily, COP$25,000).\n\nThe M **Restaurante Bar La Cueva** (Cra. 43 No. 59-03, tel. 5\/340-9813, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-3pm and 6pm-1am Fri.-Sat., COP$25,000) has history and lots of character. It was the hangout of Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez and artists such as Alejandro Obreg\u00f3n in the 1960s. Elephant tracks, memorabilia, and photos make it seem like a museum, but it is still a restaurant, and a popular one at that. The specialty here is seafood. There's live music on Friday and Saturday evenings. Be sure to check out the Obreg\u00f3n work _La Mulata de Obreg\u00f3n,_ complete with a bullet hole thanks to a drunken friend of the artist.\n\nFor steak lovers, the top two options in Barranquilla are **La Bonga del Sinu** (Cra. 53 No. 82-10, tel. 5\/358-5035, 11:30am-10pm Mon.-Wed., 11:30am-11pm Thurs.-Sat., 11:30am-9pm Sun., COP$25,000) and **Buffalo Grill** (Cra. 51B No. 79-97, Local 2, tel. 5\/378-6519, noon-11pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-midnight Fri.-Sat., noon-10pm Sun., COP$25,000).\n\nThanks to its location in a strip mall, you may not have soaring expectations for **Restaurante Plaza 52** (Cra. 52 No. 72-114, Local C9, tel. 5\/358-1806, 10am-8pm daily, COP$6,500 set lunch). But the lunchtime crowds (and lines) give it away. They serve great down-home food at rock-bottom prices.\n\nBarranquilla's version of street food can be found at the popular, competing **food stands** at the intersection of Carrera 52 and Calle 71. There's always a crowd composed of construction workers and office types hanging out here.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE**\n\nFrom Barranquilla's **Aeropuerto Internacional Ernesto Cortissoz** (Soledad, www.baq.aero), there is excellent air connection with all major cities in Colombia and a handful of nonstop international flights as well. The airport is south of the city in Soledad. Taxis cost about COP$20,000 from downtown to the airport.\n\n**Avianca** (Centro Comercial Gran Centro Cra. 53 No. 68-242, tel. 5\/360-7007, www.avianca.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-12:30pm Sat.) flies nonstop from Miami, Bogot\u00e1, Cali, and Medell\u00edn. **LAN** (Centro Comercial Buenavista Cra. 53 No. 98-99, Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, 10am-8pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-noon and 1pm-7pm Sat., 10am-noon and 1pm-5pm Sun.) has flights to Bogot\u00e1. On **Copa** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-011-2600, www.copair.com) there are nonstop flights to San Andr\u00e9s and to Panama City.\n\n**Viva Colombia** (tel. 5\/319-7989, www.vivacolombia.com.co) flies from Medell\u00edn, **Easy Fly** (tel. 5\/385-0676, www.easyfly.com.co) has nonstop flights from Bucaramanga and Valledupar, and **ADA** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232, www.ada-aero.com) flies from Monter\u00eda.\n\nThere is regular bus service to all points in Colombia from the **Terminal Metropolitana de Transportes** (Km. 1.5 Prolongaci\u00f3n Cl. Murillo, tel. 5\/323-0034, www.ttbag.com.co). Fast van service is also available to Cartagena (COP$17,000) and Santa Marta (COP$17,000) from the **Berlinastur terminal** in town (Cl. 96 No. 46-36, tel. 5\/385-0030, www.berlinastur.com).\n\n#### **GETTING AROUND**\n\nBarranquilla is not much of a walking city, with taxi cabs the most convenient way to get around. Unfortunately the cabs are not metered, so you might be charged a little more than locals if you're unfamiliar with rates. In town, you should never pay more than COP$13,000 to get from point A to point B. For those with smartphones, the app **Tappsi** enables you to order a cab from anywhere in the city, receive the license plate number and name of the driver, and send this information to a friend, for security purposes.\n\n**Transmetro** (www.transmetro.gov.co, 5am-11pm Mon.-Sat., 6am-10pm Sun., COP$1,400) is the Barranquilla version of the TransMilenio rapid bus system in Bogot\u00e1, and it runs along two main avenues: Avenida Murillo (also known as Calle 45) and Avenida Olaya Herrera (also known as Carrera 46). There are stations in front of the Museo del Caribe, the cathedral, and the stadium, and you can take the bus downtown from there.\n\n#### **PUERTO COLOMBIA**\n\nAbout a 40-minute bus ride (COP$2,000) outside of Barranquilla is Puerto Colombia, which was once Colombia's most important port.\n\nThe pier, the main attraction in town, was built at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, it was one of the longest piers in the world. The pier was severely damaged in major storms in 2009 and 2013, and there are huge gaps in the pier today. Today you can walk the pier and ask local fishers about their catch. Military personnel stand guard, meanwhile, in order to prohibit smuggling of illegal contraband. There are plans to refurbish the pier and to create an artificial beach, in hope of attracting weekend day-trippers and bringing back some of the town's former glory. Part of that effort included the construction of a boardwalk along the water.\n\nThe old train station has been converted into a cultural center by the **Fundaci\u00f3n Puerto Colombia** (town center, tel. 5\/309-6120, fundacionpuertocoombia@gmail.com, 8:30am-12:30pm and 3pm-7pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., 4pm-6pm Sun., free), and there is often an art exhibit going on here.\n\nThere are several seafood restaurants around the pier area. The most famous, perhaps, is **Mi Viejo Muelle** (Cl. 2 No. 3-175, tel. 5\/309-6727, noon-8pm daily, COP$22,000). It's got a nice large deck with a view, and old photos of Puerto Colombia decorate the walls.\n\n### **Santa Marta**\n\nSanta Marta is coming into its own as a major tourist destination on the Caribbean coast. In addition to its charming historic district, great hotel options, and restaurants, Santa Marta offers an excellent base from which to explore the Sierra Nevada and the deserts of La Guajira.\n\nSanta Marta was the first permanent Spanish settlement in colonial Colombia, and remained relatively rural until the second half of the 20th century, when it became a major domestic tourist destination. In the mid-1970s, treasure hunters discovered Ciudad Perdida high in the Sierra. Ciudad Perdida was one of the most important settlements of the Tayrona indigenous people. The National Institute of Anthropology carefully excavated the site, opening it to tourism in the 1980s.\n\nIn recent years, the old historic downtown, long neglected as development had moved to the Rodadero district, has seen a renaissance. It has become a destination of its own and a staging point for visits to the unspoiled beaches of Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona and hiking trips to Ciudad Perdida.\n\n#### **ORIENTATION**\n\nThe _centro hist\u00f3rico_ extends from the busy Calle 22 (Avenida Santa Rita) in the west to the Avenida del Ferrocarril in the east, toward the seaside village of Taganga. And from south to north, the borders are the same Avenida del Ferrocarril in the south to the _malec\u00f3n_ (Carrera 1C\/Avenida Rodrigo de Bastidas). The focal point of the Centro is the Parque de los Novios (Carreras 2A-3 and Calles 19-20). This is a lovely park with pedestrian streets (Calle 19 and Carrera 3) intersecting on its eastern side. Most sights are within a smaller range of streets from Carrera 5 (Camp Serrano) to the water and between Calles 20 and 14.\n\nThe Rodadero district is a mini-Miami with condos and hotels lining the beach. It's west of downtown Santa Marta, just around the bend on the main highway. There are constant bus links all day between the two.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\n##### **Centro Hist\u00f3rico**\n\nThe compact _centro hist\u00f3rico_ in Santa Marta in itself feels like a living museum, with its mix of colonial and republican-era architecture. All major sights, save for the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, are located here and can be visited in one day.\n\nThe **Parque de los Novios** (Cras. 2A-3 and Clls. 19-20) is a symbol of the city's rejuvenation. The pedestrian streets (except for one) around the plaza have a lot to do with it. Today it's a most pleasant place for a stroll and a meal. Restaurants have cropped up along the park's periphery. On the Calle 20 side of the park is the grandiose neoclassical **Palacio de Justicia.** Visitors can only admire it from the outside, as the building is not open to the public.\n\nThe **Catedral de Santa Marta** or **Bas\u00edlica Menor** (Cr. 5 No. 16-30, tel. 5\/421-2434, masses at noon and 6pm Mon.-Sat., 7am, 10am, noon, and 6pm Sun.) took around 30 years to build and was completed in 1794, toward the end of Spanish reign in Nueva Granada, as colonial Colombia was called. It is one of the oldest cathedrals in Latin America. The city's founder, Rodrigo de Bastidas, is buried there, and Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar laid in rest there before his body was moved to Caracas.\n\nThe **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (Cras. 1-2 and Clls. 14-15) has a statue of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar on horseback, ready to destroy the oppressors. The **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cl. 14 No. 1C-37, tel. 5\/421-0251, www.banrep.gov.co, 8:30am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., free) often has art exhibits and also has a public library on the third floor (a quiet place to read or work).\n\nThe **Museo de Oro Tairona** (Cl. 14 No. 1C-37, tel. 5\/421-0251, www.banrepcultural.org, 8:30am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., free) is in the historic **Casa de la Aduana,** perhaps the oldest customs house in the Americas, dating back to 1531. A smaller version of the famous Museo del Oro in Bogot\u00e1, this focuses on the Tayrona people, who were the native settlers of the region and forebears of the Kogis, Arhuacos, Kankuamos, and Wiwas who live in the Sierra Nevada. There are ceramic and gold artifacts on display, and a description of the Ciudad Perdida archaeological site. A visit to this museum may enrich your hike up to the Lost City, as you'll have a better understanding of the people who once inhabited it.\n\nAlong the waterfront is the **Paseo de Bastidas** (Cra. 1) boardwalk. A sunset walk along the pier that extends from the boardwalk is a daily Santa Marta ritual. Great views are to be had here of the port on the right, the Isla Morro in the sea, and the gorgeous sailboats on the left docked at the Marina Santa Marta.\n\n##### **Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino**\n\nThe Liberator, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, spent his final days in Santa Marta, passing away at the age of 47 at the **Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino** (Mamatoco, tel. 5\/433-2995, www.museobolivariano.org.co, 9am-6pm daily, COP$12,000). This country estate is now a museum where visitors can see the bedroom in which Bol\u00edvar died in 1830. A modern wing houses two art galleries. Young guides will offer to take you around the complex for a small tip of about COP$2,000, but you're probably better off on your own. The _quinta_ is set in a manicured botanical garden. There is a small snack bar and gift shop on the grounds.\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\nThe shop **Santa Marca** (Cl. 17 No. 2-45, tel. 5\/423-5862, www.santamarca.co, 8am-8pm Mon.-Sat.) has gifts and souvenirs made by local creative types. The **Centro Comercial Arrecife** (Cra. 4 No. 11A-119, tel. 5\/422-8873, 9am-9pm daily) is a large shopping mall in the Rodadero area; it has a food court, a Carulla supermarket, a movie theater, and a selection of mostly Colombian brand clothing shops.\n\nLocals converge on Santa Marta's Paseo de Bastidas to enjoy the sunset.\n\n#### **RECREATION**\n\n**Deva Yoga Studio** (Cra. 21 No. 15-18, tel. 5\/431-0354, www.newfuturesociety.org, classes at 9am and 6:30pm Mon.-Fri., 9am Sat., COP$20,000\/class) offers hatha and Tibetan yoga classes and meditation classes. It is affiliated with the New Future Society International, an international yoga organization.\n\nThe tour agency **Aventura Sierra Nevada** (Restaurante Marisol, Cra. 3A No. 16-30, cell tel. 311\/216-5419, www.aventurasierranevada.com, 10am-9pm daily) organizes activities along the Caribbean coast, from kite surfing courses to bike tours of various lengths, hikes to Tayronaka, a trip to the Yumake nature reserve, and inner tube trips down the R\u00edo Don Diego.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nThe Centro Hist\u00f3rico of Santa Marta was considered to be crumbling, desolate, and even dangerous before the early 2000s, but gentrification has taken hold and today it's gone boutique. In addition to posh boutique hotels, there are comfortable hostels. The Rodadero has plenty of high-rise hotels, most of which are all-inclusive. The village of Taganga is also very close to the city, and some prefer to stay at this relaxed beach village and visit Santa Marta for the day or head to restaurants in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico in the evenings.\n\n##### **Under COP$70,000**\n\nM **Aluna** (Cl. 21 No. 5-27, tel. 5\/432-4916, www.alunahotel.com, COP$30,000 dorm with fan, COP$100,000 d with a\/c) gets just about everything right. This hostel has a mix of dorm rooms and private rooms, all immaculate, each with private bath. There's plenty of space to hang out over the three floors of the hostel. There is a small shaded interior courtyard and an excellent top floor terrace that provides vantage points over the city and to the Sierra Nevada in the distance. The hostel restaurant serves gazpacho, falafel, and, for breakfast, those banana pancakes that every traveler craves. It's run by a friendly Dubliner, Patrick.\n\nThe Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino is where Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar spent his final days.\n\nFun and high energy: That's **La Brisa Loca** (Cl. 14 No. 3-58, tel. 5\/431-6121, www.labrisaloca.com, COP$28,000 dorm, COP$90,000 d), a revamped mansion turned hostel that has earned its spot as a backpacker favorite. There's a small pool in the main courtyard with private rooms and dormitories surrounding it over three floors. On the top floor is an excellent bar that, thanks to its daily drink specials, gets jammed with backpackers and locals alike. On match days, it's soccer enthusiasts who cram the bar. In addition to on-site parties, the hostel organizes a wide array of outdoor adventures to the Sierra Nevada and rents out paddleboards for days at the beach.\n\n**Drop Bear Hostel** (Cra. 21 No. 20-36, tel. 5\/435-8034, www.dropbearhostel.com, COP$18,000 hammock, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$65,000 d) is a funky newcomer to the Santa Marta hostel scene. It's in a huge house that was built by a drug trafficker in the 1980s. Each night the Australian and New Zealander owners give tours of the house, including secret tunnels and nooks where money was stashed away. The bar is aptly named the Cartel Bar. Rooms are massive, and perhaps the nicest feature at Drop Bear is the big pool, which is the main gathering area at this sociable place.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nThe M **Hotel del Parque** (Cl. 19 No. 4-45, tel. 5\/420-7508, COP$90,000 d) on the pleasant pedestrian Calle 19 is a gem of a find. Supremely low-key, this hotel has got just a handful of air-conditioned rooms, is very well maintained, and, best of all, it's fairly priced. There's complimentary coffee, but no free breakfast; however, there are many options within walking distance nearby.\n\n##### **Over COP$200,000**\n\nA Spanish couple has developed a small empire of boutique lodging and dining options in old Santa Marta. **La Casa del Farol** (Cl. 18 No. 3-115, tel. 5\/423-1572, www.lacasadelfarol.com, COP$317,000 d) was their first, and one of the first boutique hotels in the city. It's in an 18th-century house and has six rooms that are named for different cities of the world. From the tiny wading pool on the rooftop you get a nice view of the city.\n\n**La Casa del Agua** (Cl. 18 No. 4-09, tel. 5\/423-1572, www.lacasadelagua.com.co, COP$225,000 d) is across the street from La Casa del Farol. It has four rooms of varying sizes and styles. Try for one with a balcony. The small pool downstairs is a welcome sight after a day out and about in the heat.\n\nFor some boutique pampering, try the 10-room **Casa de Isabella** (Callej\u00f3n del R\u00edo, Cra. 2 No. 19-20, tel. 5\/431-2082, cell tel. 301\/466-5656, www.casaisabella.com, COP$250,000 d). It's a tastefully revamped republican-era house with nods to both colonial and republican styles, and it surrounds a tamarind tree that's over 200 years old. The suites on top have fantastic private terraces and hot tubs.\n\nIf you're more interested in a beach holiday, consider the beachfront **Tamac\u00e1 Beach Resort Hotel** (Cra. 2 No. 11A-98, tel. 5\/422-7015, www.tamaca.com.co, COP$315,000 d) in Rodadero. It has 81 rooms with all the usual amenities and a fantastic pool area that overlooks the water. The hotel has two towers, with the beachside tower preferred by most.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nFoodies from Europe and North America have converged on Santa Marta, making their dreams of opening up a restaurant become reality. And Samarians and travelers alike thank them.\n\nThere ought to be more restaurants like M **Marisol** (Cl. 19 No. 3-56, tel. 5\/420-6511, www.marisolsantamarta.com, 8am-11pm daily, COP$18,000), an unpretentious spot that serves up healthy meals that are not too expensive, as well as deliciously fresh juices. It's run by a man from Cali who ran a successful restaurant in Berlin for many years. The location on the pedestrian Calle 19 is particularly peaceful, and you can grab a seat outside at night if you want. Sandwiches, pastas, and salads appear on the lunch and dinner menus. You can also grab a late breakfast here and chat with the servers if they're not busy.\n\nFor pizza the Sicilian way, look no further than **La Pizzeria Italia Gourmet** (Cra. 3A No. 16-24, tel. 5\/422-7329, 5pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) on the cute pedestrian alley, the Callej\u00f3n del Correo. It's next door to the excellent **Donde L'Italiano** (Cra. 3A No. 16-26, cell tel. 316\/429-1131, 5pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) a cheerful restaurant where even the wallflower _pasta arrabiata_ tastes exquisite. Go for a table in the courtyard in back.\n\nAn American-run place that delivers quality meals and drinks that will remind you of home is **El Frescanjero** (Cra. 7A No. 19-63, tel. 5\/422-0379, 11am-2:30pm and 5:30pm-10:30pm Tues.-Sat., COP$20,000). They've got the most eclectic menu on the coast with Japanese chicken with ginger, vegetarian tacos, po'boys, and a platter of German sausage that automatically comes with a beer. And oh, the cocktail specials!\n\nA locally run spot for a non-fussy, home-cooked meal is **Mandragora** (Cl. 20 No. 6-54, tel. 5\/421-9392, cell tel. 301\/400-3442, 11:30am-3pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000). Each day there is a set menu with fresh fish or typical Colombian dishes, such as _bandeja paisa_ (dish of beans, various meats, yuca, and potatoes) on the menu.\n\nFor North Americans who've been on the road for a while, it's a treat to stumble upon M **Agave Azul** (Cl. 14 No. 3-58, tel. 5\/431-6121, noon-10pm Tues.-Fri., 5pm-11pm Sat., COP$25,000). It's a Tex-Mex place, complete with margaritas, burritos, and nachos, in a space awash in warm colors. It's run by the same two American brothers who have M **Ouzo** (Cra. 3 No. 19-29, tel. 5\/423-0658, 6pm-11pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000). Specializing in Mediterranean fare, Ouzo has brought some class to the park. Sizzling seafood or pasta accompanied by a glass of white wine will work out just fine for you. You can dine alfresco by candlelight if you wish, although you may be bothered by street vendors or beggars. It's not uncommon for visitors to hit both of these excellent restaurants in the same day.\n\nThe fab **Restaurante Panamerican** (Cl. 18 No. 1C-10, tel. 5\/421-2901, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$25,000) hasn't changed in decades\u2014and why should it? While its heyday is long past, the Panamerican has an enormous menu specializing in steaks and seafood, but you can also just order a martini and enjoy the retro-chic atmosphere.\n\nThe way Samarios talk, it would seem that M **Donde Chucho** (Cl. 6 at Cra. 3, tel. 5\/422-1752, 11:30am-10:30pm daily, COP$25,000) is the only restaurant in Santa Marta and that it has been serving its mixed seafood platters since Bol\u00edvar was in town. It's in fast-moving Rodadero, and the open-air place is filled with photos of Chucho, the owner and chef, posing with Colombian beauty queens, sports stars, and the odd politician. It's hard to believe that Chucho began this seafood empire (he owns four restaurants now) with a humble wooden ceviche stand in Rodadero in the 1990s.\n\nThe terrace of **Pepe Mar** (Cra. 1 No. 6-05, Rodadero, tel. 5\/422-2503, noon-10pm Tues.-Thurs. and Sun., until midnight Fri.-Sat., COP$26,000) is the best place for people-watching in all of Rodadero. Try the fried red snapper with coconut rice and, of course, a _patac\u00f3n_ (fried plantain) or two.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nIn addition to a stand at the airport, there is a **PIT** (Punto de Informaci\u00f3n Tur\u00edstica, Cra. 1 No. 10A-12, tel. 5\/438-2587, 9am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) tourist information booth along the waterfront.\n\n**Lavanderia Para\u00edso** (Cl. 22 No. 2A-46, tel. 5\/431-2466, cell tel. 315\/681-1651, 9am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) will wash your clothes and have them ready for you to pick up by the next day. With a little charm, you might be able to persuade them to have your things ready before 5pm the same day.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nSanta Marta is easily accessed by air and by land from all major cities in Colombia.\n\nThe **Aeropuerto Internacional Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar** (tel. 5\/422-4604 or 5\/422-4490) is 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of the _centro hist\u00f3rico._ Domestic carriers **Avianca** (www.avianca.com), **LAN Colombia** (www.lan.com), **Viva Colombia** (www.vivacolombia.com.co), and **Easy Fly** (www.easyfly.com.co) connect Santa Marta with the major cities of Colombia. Copa has nonstop flights to its hub in Panama City, Panama.\n\nThere is hourly bus service to Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Riohacha. Many buses to nearby coastal destinations leave from the market area in the _centro hist\u00f3rico._ Long-haul buses for destinations such as Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, and Bucaramanga depart from the Terminal de Transportes (Cl. 41 No. 31-17, tel. 5\/430-2040) outside of town.\n\nTaxis to Taganga cost around COP$8,000, and _colectivo_ buses are around COP$1,200. These can be found on the waterfront near the Parque Bol\u00edvar, along Carrera 5, or at the market at Carrera 11 and Calle 11.\n\nThe best way to get around the _centro hist\u00f3rico_ is on foot.\n\n#### **TAGANGA**\n\nThis popular beachside community is only about a 20-minute ride through the desert to the northeast from Santa Marta and is actually considered part of the city. In the 1970s, this sleepy fishing village was discovered by hippie-types looking for an escape from urban life, and Taganga evolved into a mecca for backpackers. On any given Saturday along the bayside promenade, you'll brush shoulders with a truly mixed lot of humanity: Colombian families, diving fanatics, traveling musicians, and general sunseekers of all ages and nationalities. It's as close as Colombia gets to Venice Beach.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **DIVING AND SNORKELING**\n\nThe warm waters (24-28\u00b0C\/75-82\u00b0F) off of Taganga provide some good diving and snorkeling opportunities. Diving excursions take you into the waters off of the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona to the northeast, the Isla Morro off the coast of Santa Marta, or to a shipwreck near the beaches of Rodadero. The best months for diving here are between July and September.\n\nRun by a Paisa couple, **Tayrona Dive Center** (Cra. 1C No. 18A-22, tel. 5\/421-5349, cell tel. 318\/305-9589, www.tayronadivecenter.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily) is a very organized agency that offers PADI certification courses (COP$650,000) over a period of three days with six dives each day, a one-day mini-course (COP$160,000), and diving excursions for those with experience. They also have a hotel (Cra. 1C No. 18A-22, tel. 5\/421-5349, cell tel. 318\/305-9589, www.tayronadivecenter.com, COP$40,000 pp) with eight rooms, five with views of the water. Rooms have a safe deposit box and big refrigerators. The hotel is exclusively for divers during high season.\n\n**Oceano Scuba** (Cra. 2 No. 17-46, tel. 5\/421-9004, cell tel. 316\/534-1834, www.oceanoscuba.com.co, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily) offers the whole array of diving activities, from one-day dives for certified divers (COP$110,000) to a one-day beginner's course (COP$180,000) to an Open Water PADI certification course (COP$600,000) that lasts three days. Night dives (COP$80,000), during which you might come across eels hunting the waters, and snorkeling (COP$50,000) are also on offer.\n\n###### **BIKING AND TREKKING**\n\nBiking and hiking trips are the specialty of **Elemento Outdoor Adventure** (Cl. 18 No. 3-31, tel. 5\/421-0870, cell tel. 310\/605-0929, www.elementooutdoor.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-4pm Sat.-Sun.). Elemento offers a range of mountain bike adventures, including a one-day downhill trip from Los Pinos to Minca (COP$140,000) with swimming hole stops along the way. There are also multi-day adventures in the area. For less adrenaline-pumping days, Elemento also offers visits to eco-farms, nature reserves, and indigenous communities.\n\nThe fishing village of Taganga has become a backpacker mecca.\n\n###### **BEACHES**\n\nThere is a popular beach in front of the La Ballena Azul hotel, but the best beaches are a quick boat ride away. Beaches along the coast from Taganga to the **Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona** can be visited by boat. It costs about COP$40,000 round-trip to go to Tayrona from Taganga, but you can negotiate that price, especially if you are in a group. Although all visitors to the park are supposed to pay an entrance fee (and it is steep for non-Colombians), some boat captains will take you to beaches where no park employees will charge you for park entrance, which park officials rightly do not condone. During the windy months of December-February, boat transportation can be rough and dangerous.\n\n**Playa Grande** is probably the best beach to visit, and it is one of the closest to Taganga. It costs COP$10,000 round-trip to get there by boat. To arrange for boat transportation to any of these beaches, just head to the beach in front of the promenade or at the La Ballena Azul. There are always boaters hanging about waiting for customers.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nOwned by Olga from Bogot\u00e1, **Hostal Pelikan** (Cra. 2 No. 17-04, tel. 5\/421-9057, cell tel. 316\/756-1312, www.hostalpelikan.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$65,000 d) is a decent place to stay, with a nice terrace area for your morning coffee. Breakfast (with fruit!) is an additional fee.\n\nThe wooden cabins at **La Casa del Profe** (Cl. 21 No. 5A-36, cell tel. 311\/882-8912, COP$50,000 pp) dot a mountain's edge and offer great views of the bay. There are eight rooms here, and guests may use the kitchen. It's about a 15-minute hike to the action in Taganga.\n\nM **La Ballena Azul** (Cra. 1 at Cl. 18, tel. 5\/421-9009, www.hotelballenaazul.com, COP$173,000 d) is a Taganga classic, started by a Frenchwoman years ago. It's still in the family, and they still serve cr\u00eapes in their restaurant. Ballena Azul is on the beach, with the best location in town\u2014in the center of activity.\n\nProbably the most luxurious option in Taganga is the **Hotel Bah\u00eda Taganga** (Cl. 4 No. 1B-35, tel. 5\/421-0653, cell tel. 310\/216-9120, www.hotelbahiataganga.com, COP$235,000 d). It's on the eastern side of the bay. Head to the pool in the late afternoon and watch the sun slip behind the mountains.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nOn the outdoor terrace of M **Bitacora** (Cra. 1 No. 17-13, tel. 5\/421-9482, 9am-11:30pm, COP$18,000) diners get front seat views to the boardwalk. Bitacora specializes in fresh, Taganga seafood, but there are also many vegetarian options as well as pastas. If you want to cool off with a coconut lemonade, this is the spot.\n\nM **Babaganoush Restaurante y Bar** (Cra. 1C No. 18-22, 3rd floor above Taganga Dive Center, cell tel. 318\/868-1476, 1pm-11:30pm Wed.-Mon., COP$20,000) is an excellent Dutch-run restaurant and bar with amazing views. It's a true crowd pleaser with a diverse menu of falafels, seafood, steak, and even a shout-out to Southeast Asia. But surprisingly, you won't find any babaganoush! Go in the evening for the atmosphere, drinks, and sunsets. The daily happy hour is hard to pass up.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nTaganga is easily reached from Santa Marta and from points east, such as the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona and Palomino. Minibuses and buses ply that route daily. Minibuses from the _centro hist\u00f3rico_ of Santa Marta depart from the market area on Carrera 5 and also from Carrera 1 near the Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar. The trip costs about COP$1,500. Taxis from Santa Marta cost around COP$12,000, more from the bus terminal or airport. Once in Taganga you can walk everywhere you need to go.\n\n#### M **MINCA**\n\nIf you've had your fill of beaches or the seductive Caribbean cities, maybe it's time for an altitude adjustment. Artists, nature lovers, coffee farmers, and transplanted urbanites in the village of Minca (pop. 500) look down upon their neighbors in nearby Santa Marta\u2014literally. At elevation of 660 meters, midway up the Sierra, you get a bird's-eye view of Santa Marta, just 45 minutes away. You also get a great bird's-eye view of birds, especially higher up at the edge of the Parque Nacional Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The blissful routine of mountain hikes, dips in invigorating swimming holes, and sunset ogling may make you want to linger here.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nMinca is a paradise for those with a pair of hiking boots and a backpack slung over their shoulder. Hostels and hotels can point you in the right direction to several gentle hikes along tranquil mountain roads and paths to swimming holes of either freezing cold or wonderfully refreshing pure water, depending on the thickness of your skin. Three popular walks with swimming holes are within easy walking distance from Minca: Balneario Las Piedras (45 mins.), Pozo Azul (1 hr.), and the Cascadas Marinka (1 hr.).\n\nPeaceful and cool Minca is a nice break from the beach.\n\nFor a challenge, try the three-hour hike (one way) to the Los Pinos hostel at an elevation of 1,600 meters (5,250 feet). From there, or nearby, you can often get a fanastic glimpse of the snowcovered Pico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n and Pico Bol\u00edvar, the highest mountain peaks in the country.\n\nThe Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a renowned coffee-growing region. The **Finca La Victoria** (no phone, 9am-4pm daily, COP$5,000) is a family-run coffee farm that you can visit for a small fee. It is between Pozo Azul and Los Pinos, about a one-hour walk from town.\n\nIn and around Minca there are no safety issues, and you can set off and up the mountain on your own without a guide.\n\n###### **BIRD-WATCHING**\n\nHigh into the Sierra Nevada, at an elevation of around 2,400 meters (7,875 feet), the **Reserva El Dorado** (www.proaves.org) is one of the finest bird-watching reserves in the country. For reservations (COP$569,000 3 nights all incl.), contact **EcoTurs** in Bogot\u00e1 (Cra. 20 No. 36-61, tel. 1\/287-6592, info@ecoturs.org) or **Aviatur** (tel. 1\/587-5181, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) in Bogot\u00e1. The accommodations are excellent, with 10 spacious rooms, great food, and, crucially, hot showers. The area is home to 19 endemic species, including the Santa Marta antpitta, Santa Marta parakeet, Santa Marta bush tyrant, blossom crown, and screech owls. Anybody can stay at El Dorado, even the non-birding crowd.\n\n##### **Acccommodations**\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nM **Oscar's Hostal Finca La Fortuna** (400 m from town entrance near casino area, cell tel. 313\/534-4500, <http:\/\/hotelfincalafortuna.blogspot.com>, COP$20,000 hammock, dorm COP$25,000, COP$40,000 d) consists of simple and naturally luxurious cabins for a small capacity of guests dramatically set on a bluff with extraordinary views of Santa Marta and the surrounding countryside. Oscar's is completely off-grid, with solar panels providing electricity and rainwater collection and a well for all water use. Much of the land that you see from here (some 70 acres that is now a sea of trees) is owned by a man named Oscar, who is on a mission to undo some of the damage humans have done to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada through cattle ranching. The sunsets here, particularly from mid-June until mid-December, are \"living art,\" as Oscar puts it. One- to two-day mule tours in the Sierra Nevada, with Oscar, can be arranged for COP$90,000 per day, per person. Reasonably priced breakfasts include homemade granola (COP$4,000), and other meals can be arranged as well.\n\nM **Rancho de la Luna** (300 m from town entrance near casino area, tel. 5\/422-3160, cell tel. 317\/249-7127, www.ranchodelalunaenminca.com, COP$70,000), in the countryside outside of Minca near Oscar's Hostal, is a guesthouse with two lodges with basic but very comfortable facilities (and great views of Santa Marta). But the real selling point is their wellness program: healthy food, massages, and yoga classes. These have additional costs, although there are packages that include yoga, a massage, meals, and two nights' accommodations for COP$200,000 pp.\n\nM **El Mirador Hotel** (200 m from town entrance, cell tel. 311\/671-3456 or 318\/368-1611, www.miradorminca.wordpress.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$45,000 d) is an enchanting hostel with a great view, warm hosts, and delicious meals. The hostel has three rooms, two private rooms and a dorm room with three beds. It's set in a lush garden, and the lovely dining area is open air. The restaurant is open to the public nightly and meals cost around COP$20,000.\n\nMany travelers head up the mountain to spend some time at sociable **Hostal Los Pinos** (near Campano, cell tel. 313\/587-7677 or 321\/898-0641, lospinoshostal@yahoo.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d). Hostal Los Pinos is on a mountain ridge (1,400 meters\/4,600 feet) where the views are unbelievable. When it's clear, you can glimpse the snowcapped mountains of the Sierra Nevada. This is a fun spot, with lots of hanging around. There are some nice walks you can take from here, as well as high-adrenaline downhill bike rides, and hikes to waterfalls hidden in the mountains. And occasional paintball duels on-site.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nOperated by ProAves, the **Hotel Minca** (near town entrance, tel. 5\/421-9958, cell tel. 317\/437-3078, www.hotelminca.com, COP$135,000 d), once a convent, is one of the first hotels in Minca. There are 13 spacious rooms in this old-fashioned building with broad verandas with hammocks. There's a nature path on the grounds, and numerous hummingbird feeders along the open-air dining area ensure that you'll have a breakfast-time show.\n\n**Hostal Casa Loma** (50 m uphill from the church, cell tel. 313\/808-6134 or 321\/224-6632, www.casalomaminca.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$80,000 d) is on a hilltop with a truly amazing vantage point over Santa Marta. It's a friendly place, where delicious food (often vegetarian) is served, and you mix and mingle with other travelers. Cabins farther on the hillside are quieter than the rooms near the main social area. Camping (COP$15,000) is also available. To get to Hostal Casa Loma, you must climb up a winding path just behind the town church. Casa Loma offers yoga classes (COP$20,000) on their forest terrace, massages (COP$55,000), and shows two films a week in their outdoor forest cinema.\n\n**Hostal Palo Alto** (near Reserva El Dorado, cell tel. 300\/642-1741 or 312\/677-1403, www.tangaratours.co, tangaratours@gmail.com, COP$80,000 pp) is a mountain paradise, up high at an elevation of 1,700 meters, where you don't have to be a bird enthusiast to enjoy the crisp mountain air and natural beauty of the sierra\u2014but if you are, this a great place to be. It's near the El Dorado bird-watching reserve. Accommodations here are basic, but comfortable.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nThere are a handful of good eateries in Minca, mostly catering to international travelers. Hotels and hostels are always a reliable and reasonably priced option for guests and non-guests alike. They are open every day with lunch hours generally noon-3pm and dinner 6pm-10pm. Main dishes rarely cost more than COP$20,000. Standouts include **Hostal Casa Loma** (50 m above the church, cell tel. 313\/808-6134 or 321\/224-6632, www.casalomaminca.com), **El Mirador Hotel** (200 m from town entrance, cell tel. 311\/671-3456 or 318\/368-1611, www.miradorminca.wordpress.com), and **Rancho de la Luna** (300 m from town entrance near casino area, tel. 5\/422-3160, cell tel. 317\/249-7127, www.ranchodelalunaenminca.com).\n\nTowards the church from the town entrance is **Hola from La Sierra Caf\u00e9** (town center, cell tel. 310\/703-2870, holafromlasierracafe@gmail.com, 9am-9pm Wed.-Sun.). This friendly hippie-ish spot serves light and healthy meals, including breakfasts (pancakes!). They bake bread daily and also sell locally produced organic coffee and other products.\n\n**Bururake Fusion** (town center, noon-3pm and 7pm-10pm Wed.-Sun., COP$18,000) has a daily menu and offers a little of everything: hamburgers, pastas, vegetarian dishes, and refreshing fruit juices. If you have the munchies after that morning hike, look for **Empanadas Don Luis** (no phone, 9am-7pm daily). They're the best.\n\nDining at M **Ei Mox Muica** (300 m from town entrance, cell tel. 311\/699-6718, 10am-9pm daily, COP$18,000) is like being invited to a friend's house. They only have two tables, candlelit at night, and these overlook a lush garden. The menu includes a variety of pastas, salads, cr\u00eapes, and wines. Andrea's specialty is cooking while Andr\u00e9s is a woodcarver. With his father, accomplished painter and sculptor Manuel Bohorquez, he organizes woodcarving and ceramics workshops for visiting artists. Contact Andr\u00e9s in advance for information at andresescultor@hotmail.com.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nBring plenty of cash with you to Minca: There are no ATMs here. There is a small **tourist information stand** (near police station, cell tel. 317\/308-5270, 10am-6pm daily). It's run by the tour agency **Jungle Joe's** (www.junglejoeminca.com).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nMinca is easily reached from Santa Marta. _Taxis colectivos_ (shared taxis) depart on a regular basis from the market at Calle 11 and Carrera 12. These cost COP$7,000. Private taxis from the airport cost around COP$50,000 and taxis from the Centro cost COP$40,000.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL TAYRONA**\n\nPerhaps the best known national park in Colombia, the **Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona** (PNN Tayrona, 34 km northeast of Santa Marta on the Troncal del Caribe highway, tel. 5\/421-1732, www.aviaturecoturismo.com or www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-5pm daily, COP$37,500 non-Colombian, COP$14,000 Colombian resident, COP$7,500 children, COP$7,500 students under age 25 with a valid ID) encompasses gorgeous beaches, tropical rainforests, and archaeological sites.\n\nThe park extends over 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of land from the edge of Taganga to the southwest to the R\u00edo Piedras on the east. The southern border of the park is the Troncal del Caribe highway and to the north is the Caribbean Sea. To the east and south of the PNN Tayrona is the PNN Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a much larger national park.\n\nThe frequently tempestuous waters of the PNN Tayrona provide dramatic scenery, with palms growing atop massive island boulders, waves crashing up against them. There are more than 30 golden sand beaches in the park that are set dramatically against a seemingly vertical wall of jungle. Although you can't see them from the park, the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains are only 42 kilometers from the coast.\n\nwild horses on the beach at the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona\n\nThe park includes significant extensions of highly endangered dry tropical forests, mostly in the western section of the park. You will notice that these forests are much less dense than the humid tropical forests. At higher elevations you will see magnificent cloud forests. In addition to beaches, the coast includes marine estuaries and mangroves. The park includes streams with chilly waters that flow from high in the sierra: In the western part of the park, many of these run dry during the dry season, while in the eastern sector they have water year-round.\n\nThe forest in Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona is alive with plant and animal life. Over 1,300 plant, 396 bird, and 99 mammal species have been identified here. Four species of monkeys live in the park, and they can often be spotted. Five species of wild cats have been identified in the park. These are the margay, jaguar, ocelot, panther, and jaguarundi. Their numbers are few and these great cats are expert at hiding in the jungle: Don't count on stumbling across them during your visit! Other mammals include sloths, anteaters, armadillos, deer, and 40 types of bats. Birds include migratory and resident species, including the rare blue-billed curassow (locally called El Paujil), a threatened bird that lives in the cloud forest.\n\n###### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nThere are two rainy seasons: April-June and September-November, with the latter more intense. During these times, trails can be extremely muddy. If at all possible, avoid visiting the PNN Tayrona during the high seasons mid-December through mid-January and Semana Santa, and to a lesser extent during the Colombian summer school holidays from mid-June until mid-July. During holidays the park is swarmed with visitors. Long holiday weekends ( _puentes_ ) are also quite busy here, regular weekends less so, but during the week is by far the best. While many visit the park on day-trips from Santa Marta, spending one or two nights in the park is recommended, even though accommodations and food are expensive.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **BEACHES**\n\nThe beaches in Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona are spectacular, but while the water may appear inviting, currents are deceivingly strong, and, despite the warnings posted on the beach, many people have drowned here. Of the park's 34 beaches, there are only 6 where you are allowed to swim. There are no lifeguards on duty in the park, and no specific hours for swimming. The best swimming beach is **La Piscina,** which is between the beaches of Arrecifes and Cabo San Juan (where you can also take a dip). To the west of Cabo San Juan is a clothing-optional beach. La Piscina is an inviting cove with crystal-clear waters. A natural rock barrier in the water keeps the waters always calm. It's a 20-minute walk west from Arrecifes.\n\nSome of the other beaches open to swimming are in the less-visited western part of the park. **Playa Neguanje** is accessed by car or taxi (COP$15,000 from Santa Marta) through the Zalangana entrance (12 km northeast of Santa Marta). **Playa del Muerto** (Playa Cristal) is another recommended beach in the same area. It is over 20 kilometers from the entrance to the beach. You can visit some of the beaches on the western end of the park all the way to Cabo San Juan by boat from Taganga, but park staff prefer for visitors to enter the park by land. The waters can also be quite rough, especially between December and February.\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nA highlight of any visit to the PNN Tayrona is the trek up to **El Pueblito** (also called Chairama, 3 km, 1.5 hrs. one way), which consists of ruins of what was an important Tayrona settlement. (Unless, that is, you have already visited the more impressive Ciudad Perdida site.) Here there are well-preserved remnants of terraces, and a small Kogi community still lives near the site. The somewhat challenging path through the tropical jungle is steep and the stone steps can be slippery, but it's well worth it. Hikers can go up to El Pueblito without a guide. El Pueblito is usually accessed from within Tayrona by walking west along the beach from the Arrecifes area. It can also be accessed from the main highway, the Troncal del Caribe.\n\nAt about 24 kilometers northeast of Santa Marta, ask to be let off at the Calabazo entrance to the park. It's about a 2.5-hour trek from there. It's not necessary, but if you'd like you can hire a guide to lead you to El Pueblito. Inquire about this when you check in.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nThere are numerous lodging options in the PNN Tayrona for every budget, from the high-end Ecohabs to camping. The travel agency **Aviatur** (Bogot\u00e1 office Av. 19 No. 4-62, tel. 1\/587-5181 or 1\/587-5182, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) manages most all lodging facilities in the park. Neither the Ecohabs nor the cabanas could be considered a bargain, but the Ecohabs, where you can awake to a beautiful view of the sea, are indeed special, and worth one or two nights. The cabanas are set back from the beach but are quite comfortable too.\n\nThe **Ecohabs** (COP$448,000 pp all meals incl.), in the Ca\u00f1averal sector, consist of 14 private _boh\u00edos_ (thatched-roof cabins) that, from a distance, look like giant nests amidst the trees. Really they are modeled after the thatched-roof houses of the Tayrona people. They sleep 2-4 persons. There are two floors to the Ecohabs. On the first floor is the bathroom and an open-air social area. On the second floor is the bedroom. A flashlight is necessary if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as you have to go outside and downstairs. This is inconvenient for some.\n\nIn nearby Arrecifes, there are six two-story **cabanas** (12 rooms, COP$365,650 pp all meals incl.) with a capacity of four persons each. These are like jungle duplexes. The two units are divided by thin walls. There is also a **hammock area** (COP$23,000 pp) in Arrecifes with a capacity of 60 hammocks. For those choosing this option, there are lockers and you can lock things in the safety box at the lobby area.\n\nThere are **campgrounds** (COP$15,000 pp) in both Ca\u00f1averal and Arrecifes and also at Cabo San Juan, which is a 15-minute walk to the west from the beach at La Piscina. It tends to get very crowded, bordering on unpleasant, during long weekends and holidays.\n\nSafety boxes are included in all rooms, and can be provided to campers as well. That said, some prefer to leave a bag or valuables at a trusted hotel in Santa Marta.\n\nThe park has two restaurants in Ca\u00f1averal, close to the Ecohabs, and in Arrecifes near the cabanas. They are open every day 7am-9pm, and the specialty here is fresh seafood. Expect to pay around COP$30,000 for a lunch or dinner entr\u00e9e. There are some snack bars in the park as well.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nFrom Santa Marta you can take any bus eastbound along the Troncal del Caribe to the main entrance (Zaino Gate). _Colectivo_ buses can be caught at the intersection of Carrera 11 and Calle 11 (the market) in Santa Marta, and the trip takes about an hour and costs under COP$5,000. You can also take a cab for about COP$60,000.\n\nThere is usually an extremely thorough inspection of backpacks and bags upon entering the park. Visitors are not allowed to bring in plastic bags (to protect sea turtles) and no alcohol (although it is served at restaurants and snack bars in the park). Be sure to bring bug repellent, a flashlight, and good hiking boots.\n\nAt the administrative offices, visitors pay entrance fees. These fees are not included in the Aviatur package prices. Although technically park visitors are supposed to carry proof of a yellow fever vaccination, this is rarely, if ever, checked.\n\nIt's about four kilometers from the offices to Ca\u00f1averal, and vans make this route on an ongoing basis (COP$2,000). From there it is a sweaty 45 more minutes on foot through the jungle to Arrecifes. Mules can be hired to carry your bags, or you can rent a horse for COP$20,000.\n\n#### **PNN TAYRONA TO PALOMINO**\n\nIf you prefer less civilization and more tranquility, the coast between PNN Tayrona and Palomino has some interesting places to hang your _sombrero vueltiao_ (Colombian hat) for a few days. Between these two very popular tourist destinations, there are beaches that are rather overlooked by the masses. Day trips to PNN Tayrona can be easily coordinated from this area.\n\nImpossibly placed upon giant beach boulders, the guesthouse **Finca Barlovento** (Playa Los Naranjos to the east of PNN Tayrona, Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/325-6998, www.fincabarloventosantamarta.com, COP$400,000 d incl. 2 meals) is located between the sea and the R\u00edo Piedras. It's an amazing place to stay, and the food's good, too. There are just three rooms and one more luxurious cabin here. Jungle excursions can be arranged by the hotel, but you'll want to enjoy some beachside afternoons. You'll have the beach to yourself.\n\nSelf-described as \"chilled out,\" **Coste\u00f1o Beach Surf Camp and Ecolodge** (Playa Los Naranjos, cell tel. 310\/368-1191, www.costenosurf.com, COP$30,000 dorm, COP$80,000 d) gets exceptionally high marks from its guests for its laid-backness. And while you don't have to be a surfer or skater to fit in here, it doesn't hurt either. Boards are rented for COP$30,000 per day, and classes cost COP$25,000. Coste\u00f1o Beach has both dorm and private accommodations on this former coconut farm. It's also solar powered.\n\n**Playa Koralia** (48 km east of Santa Marta, cell tel. 310\/642-2574 or cell tel. 317\/510-2289, www.koralia.com, COP$209,000 d) is a beach-chic hotel on the beach just east of the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona. It's rustic: There is no electricity. Candlelit meals (always vegetarian-friendly), star-gazing, an evening drink by the bonfire, and a little spa time are Playa Koralia's recipe for peace.\n\n#### **PALOMINO**\n\nSwaying coconut palms and uncrowded beaches: That's what the Caribbean is all about, isn't it? And at Palomino that's exactly what you get. This town on the Troncal del Caribe is just across the border in the La Guajira department. And it's become quite a popular destination, particularly with backpackers. Caribbean currents can be frustratingly strong here, but the cool waters of the nearby R\u00edo Palomino flowing down from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are always refreshing and much more hospitable towards visitors. Palomino is a good stop to make between Santa Marta and desert adventures in the Alta Guajira.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nRecreational activities in and around Palomino include easy day trip walks to the R\u00edo Palomino, about an hour away, where there is also tubing. This river forms the eastern border of the town. Also in the area are the fantastic jungle waterfalls at **Quebrada Valencia** (between PNN Tayrona and Palomino). All hotels and hostels organize these easy excursions. Samarian families visit these swimming holes to cool off on the weekends.\n\n**Chajaka** (office on the south side of the main coastal highway, cell tel. 313\/583-3288) offers interesting day trips or multi-day hiking trips (COP$120,000) into the Sierra Nevada to visit Kogui communities and experience the jungle.\n\n**Shivalila Yoga** (La Sirena hostel, cell tel. 321\/450-7359, yogashivalila@gmail.com, COP$15,000 class) offers yoga classes at the crunchy La Sirena hostel on the beach. Inquire at the hostel for the weekly schedule.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nPalomino is well on its way to dethroning Taganga as the deluxe backpacker resort. That's thanks largely to one famous hostel: **The Dreamer** (Palomino, cell tel. 300\/609-7229, www.thedreamerhostel.com, COP$29,000 dorm, COP$110,000 d). This is by far the most social option this side of Santa Marta. Dorm and private accommodations are in _malokas_ (cabins) surrounding an always-happening pool area and outdoor snack bar.\n\nNext door to The Dreamer is **Caba\u00f1as San Sebasti\u00e1n** (Palomino, cell tel. 300\/432-7170 or cell tell. 310\/775-4630, www.sansebastianpalomino.com.co, COP$30,000 pp). It consists of two cabins and three rooms for rent, just a few meters from the beach.\n\nDon't miss the excellent juice stand at the beach in front of The Dreamer, where friendly Alejandro even has his own organic chocolate for sale.\n\nAt the **Hotel Hukumeizi** (Palomino, cell tel. 315\/354-7871 or 317\/566-7922, www.turismoguajira.com, info@hukumeizi.com, COP$250,000 pp all meals) there are 16 cute, round _boh\u00edos_ (bungalows) with a restaurant in the center. If you go during the week, you'll probably have the place to yourselves, but service may be less attentive. From here it's about a 15-minute walk along the beach to the R\u00edo San Salvador and about an hour from the R\u00edo Palomino.\n\nM **El Matuy (Donde Tuchi)** (Palomino, cell tel. 315\/751-8456, www.elmatuy.com, COP$180,000 pp including meals) is a privately owned nature reserve with 10 cabins amid the palms and no electricity (this means candlelight evenings and no credit card machine). Hotel staff can help organize horseback riding or other activities. Food is varied, yet portions are not extremely generous.\n\nOn the Troncal del Caribe, the **Hostal Mochileros Culturart** (Cl. 1B No. 4-25, cell tel. 312\/626-6934) is a cultural center for Palomino, where there are often musical performances and other events in the evenings. There is a restaurant here with fine veggie burgers and refreshing juices, and, as the name suggests, there are rooms available at this hostel.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is regular bus transportation along the Troncal del Caribe between Santa Marta and Riohacha. Take a bus bound for Palomino from Santa Marta at the market on Carrera 11 and Calle 11. It's about a two-hour trip. It costs COP$10,000. On the highway where the bus drops you off, there are young men on motorbikes who will take you to your hotel (COP$3,000) on the beach.\n\n#### **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA**\n\nEncompassing almost the entire Sierra Nevada mountain range is the **Parque Nacional Natural Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co). This park has a total area of 383,000 hectares (945,000 acres), making it one of the larger parks in Colombia.\n\nThe main attraction is the **Ciudad Perdida (Lost City)** , the most important archaeological site of the Tayrona, the pre-Columbian civilization that inhabited the Sierra Nevada. The Tayrona had a highly urbanized society, with towns that included temples and ceremonial plazas built on stone terraces. There are an estimated 200 Tayrona sites, but Ciudad Perdida is the largest and best known. Many of these towns, including Pueblito (in the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona), were occupied at the time of the Spanish conquest. Today, an estimated 30,000 indigenous people who are descendants of the Tayronas, including the Kogis, Arhuacos, Kankuamos, and Wiwas, live on the slopes and valleys of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. These people believe that the Sierra Nevada is the center of the universe and that the mountain's health controls the entire Earth's well-being. Many areas of the sierra are sacred sites to these people and are barred to outsiders.\n\nThe Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range is best described as a giant pyramid, which is bordered on the north by the Caribbean and on the southeast and southwest by the plains of northern Colombia. Although some believe that the range is a distant extension of the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Mountain Range) of the Andes, most geologists believe it is a completely independent mountain system.\n\nIt is the world's highest coastal mountain range, with the twin peaks of **Pico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n** and **Pico Bol\u00edvar** (the two are called **Chinund\u00faa** by indigenous groups in the area) reaching 5,776 meters (18,950 feet; Col\u00f3n is said to be slightly higher than Bol\u00edvar) but located only 42 kilometers from the sea. Pico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n is the world's fifth most prominent mountain after Mount Everest (Nepal\/Tibet, China), Mount Aconcagua (Argentina), Mount McKinley (U.S.), and Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania). In addition, there are seven other snow-covered peaks that surpass 5,000 meters: Simonds, La Reina, Ojeda, Los Nevaditos, El Guardi\u00e1n, Tulio Ospina, and Codazzi. Treks to these peaks used to be possible from the northern side of the mountains, starting at the Arhuaco indigenous village of Nabusimake (Cesar), but are no longer permitted by the indigenous communities.\n\nThe PNN Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta encompasses the entire mountain range above 600 meters (16,400 feet). In addition, a small segment of the park east of the PNN Tayrona, from the R\u00edo Don Diego to the R\u00edo Palomino, extends to sea level. This means that the park encompasses the entire range of tropical ecosystems in Colombia, from low-lying tropical forests (sea level to 1,000 meters), cloud forests (1,000-2,300 meters), high mountain Andean forest (2,300-3,500 meters), _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor, 3,500-4,500 meters), super _p\u00e1ramo_ (4,500-5,000 meters), and glaciers (above 5,000 meters). However, because access to the upper reaches of the park is limited, what visitors will most be able to appreciate is low-lying tropical and cloud forest.\n\nThe isolation of the range has made it an island of biodiversity, with many plant and animal species found nowhere else. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is home to 187 mammal species, including giant anteaters, spider monkeys, peccaries, tree rats, jaguars, and pumas. There are 46 species of amphibians and reptiles, including several that live above 3,000 meters that are found nowhere else on the planet. There are an astonishing 628 bird species, including the Andean condor, blue-knobbed curassow, sapphire-bellied hummingbird, and black-solitary eagle, as well as many endemic species. There are at least 71 species of migratory birds that travel between Colombia and North America.\n\nthe mystical Ciudad Perdida\n\n##### M **Ciudad Perdida Trek**\n\nA highlight for many visitors to Colombia is the four- to six-day, 52-kilometer (32-mile) round-trip trek to the **Ciudad Perdida (Lost City)** in the Sierra Nevada mountains of the Caribbean coast. The Ciudad Perdida is within the confines of the Parque Nacional Natural Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.\n\nThe Ciudad Perdida, called Teyuna by local indigenous tribes and Buritaca 200 by archaeologists, was a settlement of the Tayrona, forebears of the people who inhabit the Sierra Nevada today. It was probably built starting around AD 700, at least 600 years before Machu Picchu. There is some disagreement as to when it was abandoned: There is evidence of human settlement until the 16th century. The site was visited in the early 1970s by _guaqueros_ (treasure hunters) who pillaged the site. News of its discovery in 1976 marked one of the most important archaeological events of recent years. From 1976 to 1982, archaeologists from the Colombian National Institute of History and Anthropology painstakingly restored the site.\n\nSpread over some 35 hectares (86 acres), the settlement consists of 169 circular terraces atop a mountain in the middle of dense cloud forest. Archaeologists believe that this sophisticated terrace system was created in part to control the flow of water in this area known for torrential rainfall for much of the year.\n\nPlazas, temples, and dwellings for tribal leaders were built on the terraces in addition to an estimated 1,000 _boh\u00edos_ (traditional thatched roof huts), which housed between 1,400 and 3,000 people. A fire was always at the center of the _boh\u00edo,_ and there was a domestic area where food and water were stored and cooking took place, as well as an artisan area for goldsmithing.\n\nSurrounding the Ciudad Perdida were farms of coca, tobacco, pumpkin, and fruit trees. The city was connected to other settlements via an intricate system of mostly stone paths.\n\nThe hike is, by and large, uphill, as you reach an elevation of 1,100 meters (3,600 feet). There are nearly 20 river crossings to be made. Towards the end of the third day, you will climb about 1,200 often treacherously slippery stone steps until you reach the spectacular terraces of Ciudad Perdida. For many this sight makes all the sweat, fatigue, and mosquito bites worthwhile.\n\nThere is one set fee (COP$600,000) for the trek. This does not change, no matter if you're making the trek in three, four, or five days. If you are in very good shape and prefer taking the Ciudad Perdida express route, the trek can be done in three nights and four days. This requires six hours hiking per day and rising early. For some, the long nights of card playing at campsites can get old quick; others enjoy the camaraderie with hikers from all over the world. In case of an emergency on the mountain, a burro or helicopter will be sent to retrieve the hiker, for a fee.\n\nIt's important to only go with a reputable tour company, such as **Magic Tour** (Cl. 16 No. 4-41, Santa Marta, tel. 5\/421-5820; Cl. 14 No. 1B-50, Taganga, tel. 5\/421-9429; www.magictourcolombia.com) or **TurCol** (Cl. 13 No. 3-13, Centro Comercial San Francisco Plaza, Local 115, Santa Marta; Cl. 19 No. 5-40, Taganga, tel. 5\/421-2556; www.turcol.com or www.buritaca200.com). A third option is **Baquianos Tour** (Cl. 10C No. 1C-59, Santa Marta, tel. 5\/431-9667, www.lostcitybaquianos.com). Your tour company will provide food (advise in advance if you have special dietary needs or wants), hammocks or cots with mosquito netting, and mules to carry up supplies.\n\nYou'll need to bring a small to medium-sized backpack, enough to carry a few days of clothes, good hiking boots with strong ankle support, sandals for stream crossings (keeping your boots dry), long pants, mosquito repellent, water purifying tablets, sunscreen, cash for refreshments to purchase along the way, a small towel, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, flashlight, sealable bags to keep things dry, light rain jacket, and a water container. If you have them, trekking poles may be a nice addition. Sleeping bags may provide more comfort at night but aren't necessary.\n\nFrom mid-December through mid-January you'll have plenty of company along the way: It's high tourist season. Other high seasons are during Semana Santa and June-July. The wettest months tend to be April-May and September-November. Expect a daily downpour and doable, but sometimes rather treacherous, river crossings during those times of the year. When it's raining or has been raining, the trek is more challenging. On the plus side, there are usually fewer crowds on the mountain at that time.\n\nCampsites along the way turn into backpacker villages during high seasons, but they never turn in to rowdy scenes by any means. Upon arrival the routine is fairly standard. You'll often be able to cool off in the pristine waters of nearby swimming holes, have dinner, and hit the hammocks. Sleeping in hammocks can be uncomfortable for those not used to them. Earplugs come in handy for light sleepers.\n\nThe trek begins at the settlement of Mamey on the R\u00edo Buritaca. Along the way you will no doubt come in contact with Kogi people who live in the Sierra Nevada, and will pass through the village of Mutanyi. These lands are theirs and visitors are encouraged to refrain from taking photographs of them without prior permission. One of the most popular tourist activities in Colombia, the trek is considered quite safe.\n\n##### **Estaci\u00f3n San Lorenzo**\n\nDeeper and higher into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from the town of Minca and set amid pristine cloud forest is the **Estaci\u00f3n San Lorenzo** (Santa Marta parks office, Cl. 17 No. 4-06, tel. 5\/423-0752 or 5\/421-3805, sierranevada@parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.; Bogot\u00e1 parks office, tel. 1\/353-2400, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co), part of the Parque Nacional Natural Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. At this spot at 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) in the Sierra Nevada, visitors can make guided walks through the cloud forest to see birds and enjoy views of the snow-covered peaks in the park. The two cabins (COP$25,000-35,000 pp) of San Lorenzo are wonderfully isolated amid the forest.\n\nA stay here can be an inexpensive way to get to know the Sierra Nevada, but there are many hoops you must go through to arrange it. First you must contact the parks office, preferably in Santa Marta, to inquire about availability. Then you will be required to make a _consignaci\u00f3n_ (deposit) to their bank account to cover the cost of your stay. This involves filling out a deposit form and standing in line at their bank (Banco de Bogot\u00e1).\n\nThe easiest way to get to San Lorenzo is by _mototaxi_ from Minca, and this can cost around COP$50,000. Alternatively, and if you are traveling in a small group, it may make sense to arrange transportation with an SUV, which can cost up to COP$250,000.\n\nAccommodations are basic here, and there are just two cabins, each with three rooms holding six beds each, for a total capacity of 36. No meals are provided here, but there is a rustic kitchen facility with basic utensils and cooking implements. You will have to provide your own propane gas canister (readily available in Santa Marta) and all your food for cooking. The temperature drops significantly in the evening, thus it is important to bring warm clothes. There is a fireplace in both cabins.\n\n### **La Guajira**\n\nThe vast Guajira Peninsula has some of the most rugged, beautiful landscapes in Colombia. It is home to the Way\u00fau indigenous people, who have maintained their independent way of life through centuries. Though many Way\u00fau now live in cities and towns, their traditional _rancher\u00edas_ (settlements) dot the desert. With the growth of tourism, many have set up lodging using traditional _rancher\u00eda_ houses made out of _yotojoro,_ the dried hearts of cactus plants.\n\nThe Colombian side of the peninsula (Venezuela shares the other part) can be divided into three sections. The Baja Guajira (Lower Guajira), near the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is fertile agricultural and cattle-ranching land. The much more arid middle swath, with the departmental capital of Riohacha and the unlovely towns of Uribia and Maicao, is home to the majority of the population. The Alta Guajira (Upper Guajira), from Cabo de la Vela to Punta Gallinas, is sparsely populated and has some truly otherworldly landscapes. Focus your visit on this last part.\n\nLack of infrastructure, especially in the north, makes visiting the Guajira a challenge, so most people opt for organized tours. Though it is possible to get to Cabo de la Vela on public transportation, do not travel elsewhere in the Alta Guajira without a dependable local guide. The roads are unmarked tracks in the sand, and getting lost is inevitable. More urgently, in this somewhat lawless place, where the Colombian government has limited authority, there are unscrupulous people ready to prey on unsuspecting visitors.\n\nDuring the rainy months September to November, it can be difficult to travel through the desert, which can become muddy to the point of impassable.\n\n##### **History**\n\nSpanish navigator Juan de la Cosa, who was a member of Columbus's first three voyages, disembarked in Cabo de la Vela in 1499, making the Guajira Peninsula one of the first places visited by Europeans in South America. It was not until 1535 that explorer Fernando de Enciso founded a settlement near Cabo de la Vela, which became a center of pearl extraction. This early settlement was relocated to Riohacha, which was founded in 1544. The traditional Way\u00fau inhabitants of the peninsula put up strong resistance to Spanish advances. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the peninsula was used primarily as a smuggling route.\n\nFor better or for worse, the fortunes of the Guajira changed in 1975 when the Colombian government entered into an agreement with oil giant Exxon to develop the Cerrej\u00f3n open-pit coal mine 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Riohacha. This project involved the construction of Puerto Bol\u00edvar, a coal port located in Bah\u00eda Portete, and of a railway to transport the coal. Production started in 1985. Coal has since become one of Colombia's main exports. The mine has generated more than US$2 billion in royalties for the Colombian government. Little of this wealth has trickled down to the people of La Guajira. It is the fourth poorest department in Colombia.\n\n#### **RIOHACHA**\n\nCalled S\u00fcchiimma in the Way\u00fau language, meaning \"city of the river,\" Riohacha (pop. 231,000) is La Guajira's slow-paced departmental capital. It is one of the oldest cities in Colombia. Not a tourist destination itself, Riohacha is an excellent base from which to launch tours of Alta Guajira.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nAlong Calle 1, also known as Avenida Marina, is the **Paseo de la Playa** boardwalk, where locals and tourists take their evening strolls and take in the sea air. Along the way are kiosks where vendors sell ceviches and Way\u00fau women set up their brightly colored _mochilas_ (traditional woven handbags) on the sidewalk, nonchalantly waiting for customers. The kilometer-long pier known as the **Muelle Tur\u00edstico** is another favorite place for a walk. There are no railings, so maybe those who have had a couple of drinks should sit this one out.\n\n**Parque Padilla** (Cl. 2 and Cra. 7), Riohacha's shady main plaza, is named after favorite son Admiral Jos\u00e9 Prudencio Padilla, who was the most prominent Afro-Colombian commander in the revolutionary wars. To one side of the plaza is the only remnant of colonial Riohacha, the heavily reconstructed **Catedral de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de los Remedios** (Cl. 2 No. 7-13, tel. 5\/727-2442, masses 6:30am and 7pm Mon.-Sat., 7am, 11am, and 7pm Sun.), originally erected in the 16th century. The remains of Padilla repose there.\n\nthe endless deserts of La Guajira\n\nOn the Riohacha-Maicao road just outside of town is the **Sendero Eco-Cultural El Ri\u00edto** (no phone, 7am-6pm daily), a pleasant nature walk where you can observe birds that was completed in 2013. This is a great place to stretch your legs before or after a long and bumpy ride through the desert.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nRiohacha isn't known for fantastic lodging or dining, but then again you will probably be spending limited time here.\n\nThe **Hotel Castillo del Mar** (Cra. 9A No. 15-352, tel. 5\/727-5043, cell tel. 316\/525-1295, hotelcastillodelmar@gmail.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$100,000 d) is about a 10-minute walk from the boardwalk in a quiet residential area. It's the choice of backpackers. There are 11 rooms, some with air conditioning, some without. It could be more comfortable, but for the price it's a bargain.\n\nCloser to downtown, the **Hotel Arimaca** (Cl. 1 Av. La Marina No. 8-75, tel. 5\/727-3515, www.hotelarimaca.com, COP$130,000 d) will do for a night. It has 50 rooms and caters to the business crowd during the week. **Oceano** (Cra. 15 No. 9-21, tel. 5\/728-1108, www.oceanohotel.co, COP$140,000 d) has 15 rooms and is a couple of blocks from the boardwalk.\n\n**Taroa Lifestyle Hotel** (Cl. 1 No. 4-77, tel. 5\/729-1122, www.taroahotel.com, COP$200,000) is the first so-called \"Way\u00fau lifestyle hotel\" in Colombia, and it opened in July 2013. It is only about half an hour to the northeast. It's on the beach and has 46 rooms.\n\nThere are several seafood restaurants along Avenida Marina. Try the **Casa del Marisco** (Cl. 1 4-43, tel. 5\/728-3445, 10am-10pm daily, COP$25,000), a restaurant that serves an array of fresh seafood dishes and pastas.\n\nFor for a wider range of dishes, try **Saz\u00f3n Internacional** (Cl. 1 No. 3-57, tel. 5\/728-0415, noon-10pm Tues.-Sun.). For something quick go to the food court of the modern **Centro Comercial Suchiimma** (Cl. 15 No. 8-56, 10am-9pm daily). There are some vegetarian options available here, and at the Jumbo store, you can pick up all the provisions you need for a long ride through the desert.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\n**Aeropuerto Almirante Padilla** (Cl. 29B No. 15-217, tel. 5\/727-3854) is five minutes north of town. There are only one or two flights per day from Bogot\u00e1 to Riohacha on **Avianca** (ticket office Cl. 7 No. 7-04, tel. 5\/727-3624, www.avianca.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.). On Tuesdays and Saturdays, **Tiara Air Aruba** (Cl. 2 No. 6-64, Local 2, tel. 5\/727-3737, www.tiara-air.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.) operates flights between Riohacha and Aruba, with connections to and from Fort Lauderdale.\n\nThe **bus station** (Av. El Progreso and Cl. 11) has frequent services to Maicao, Santa Marta, and Barranquilla. There are also services to Valledupar, Cartagena, and Bogot\u00e1. Shared taxis to Uribia, where you can pick up trucks to Cabo de la Vela, leave from Calle 15 and Carrera 1.\n\nThe center of town, along the boardwalk, is easily walkable.\n\n###### **BORDER CROSSING**\n\nFor stays under 90 days, U.S., Canadian, and most European citizens do not require a visa to enter Venezuela. You may be required to show proof of a hotel reservation and proof of an air ticket departing from Venezuela, and your passport must not expire within six months of entry into Venezuela. There is a Venezuelan consulate in Riohacha for further queries: **Consulado de Venezuela** (Cra. 7 No. 3-08, Edificio El Ejecutivo, Piso 2, tel. 5\/727-4076, 8am-noon and 2pm-5pm Mon.-Thurs., 8am-1pm Fri.). There is an entry point to Venezuela at the town of Maicao.\n\n#### **SANTUARIO DE FAUNA Y FLORA LOS FLAMENCOS**\n\nAny day you see a pink flamingo is a good day. That's enough of a reason to visit the **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos** (Camarones, cell tel. 301\/675-3862 or 313\/514-0366, ecoturismosantuario@gmail.com, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, free). This park is 25 kilometers southwest of Riohacha and is home to thousands of _Phoenicopterus ruber ruber_ or American flamingos. The 700-hectare sanctuary, which is part of the national park system, encompasses a magnificent coastal estuary where the flamingo fish for shrimp in the shallow waters.\n\nTo get there, you can take a bus from Riohacha going towards Camarones or points southwest. From Camarones take a _mototaxi_ to the entrance of the park (COP$2,000). To see the flamingos up close, take a _chalupa_ (wooden boat) onto the lagoon (COP$15,000 for two people). To avoid the glaring sun, visit the park early in the morning or late in the afternoon.\n\nAt the **Centro de Visitantes Los Mangles** (cell tel. 301\/675-3862 or 313\/514-0366, ecoturismosantuario@gmail.com, COP$100,000 meals and tours) there are five tiny yet spic and span cabins that can be rented, and there is an area for sleeping in _chinchoros_ (large hammocks; COP$20,000). These are located between the bay and the sea. In addition to the flamingos, the beach at the park is quite nice and you can take an excursion through the mangroves. It's a charming place, and is a good option if you'd prefer not to stay in Riohacha.\n\n#### M **ALTA GUAJIRA**\n\nThe **Alta Guajira** (Upper Guajira) comprises the entire peninsula east of Cabo de la Vela and Uribia. It is very sparsely populated: The three largest settlements, where most of the tourism infrastructure is located, are Cabo de la Vela, Punta Gallinas at the very northern tip, and Nazareth, in the northeast. The terrain has a striking ochre color, with rocky and sandy patches. The vegetation is mostly shrubs and cacti. The Caribbean coast here is broken by three large bays with stunning turquoise and aquamarine waters: Bah\u00eda Portete, Bah\u00eda Honda, and Bah\u00eda Hondita. The last of these is easily accessible to tourists in day trips from Punta Gallinas. There are a few low mountain ranges, including the Serran\u00eda de la Macuira (864 meters\/2,835 feet), located in the extreme northeastern corner of the peninsula, but overall the terrain is low and slightly undulated.\n\nThe only destination in the Alta Guajira that is accessible by public transportation is Cabo de la Vela. Though it is possible to contract transportation by land or sea to Punta Gallinas, most visitors opt to visit the region in an easily organized tour.\n\nThe sands of Alta Guajira are a favorite location for raucous 4x4 races and competitions. A large annual event is the **Rally Aventura Guajira** (www.ruedalibrexcolombia.net), which takes place in August, when more than 200 vehicles trek across the desert from Riohacha to Cabo de la Vela. If this isn't your bag you may want to double-check your dates of travel to make sure they don't coincide with the event.\n\n##### **Tours**\n\nThe standard Alta Guajira tour involves going to Cabo de la Vela on day one, with a stop at the now-abandoned salt mines of the Salinas de Manaure (not worth a visit), spending the night at Cabo de la Vela, continuing on the next day to Punta Gallinas, and returning to Riohacha on day three (COP$340,000-380,000 per person, including food and lodging). A longer tour involves two additional nights in Nazareth to visit the Parque Natural Nacional Macuira (COP$800,000-880,000 per person, including food and lodging).\n\nMake sure to check how many people are in your SUV, as there have been reports of tour operators who cram seven people into a vehicle, making for an uncomfortable ride. Tour guides generally have a limited grasp of English.\n\nThe most comfortable option by far is to rent an SUV with a driver for your own party. This costs around COP$400,000 per day, not including food and lodging.\n\nThe desert countryside seems endless and is beautiful in its own desolate way. You'll be amazed at how these drivers know which way to go, as there are no road signs, only cacti and occasional goats. Every once in a while, you will have to pay \"tolls\" to Way\u00fau children who have set up quasi road blocks. To gain their permission to cross, drivers hand over crackers, cookies, or candy.\n\n###### **TOUR COMPANIES**\n\nTour companies offer package tours or private vehicles. A highly recommended tour company is **Expedici\u00f3n Guajira** (Cl. 2 No. 5-06, tel. 5\/727-2336, cell tel. 311\/439-4677 or 301\/464-2758, franklin_penalver@yahoo.com), managed by Franklin Penalver. His guides, of Way\u00fau origin, know the area like the back of their hands.\n\n**Solera Travels** (Cra. 9A No. 15-352, cell tel. 316\/525-1295, gerenciacomercial@soleratravels.com) has an office at the Castillo de Mar hostel and sells all the regular tour packages. **Kaishi** (Plaza Principal, Uribia, cell tel. 311\/429-6315, www.kaishitravel.com) is another agency that has a good reputation.\n\n#### **CABO DE LA VELA**\n\n**Cabo de la Vela** (known as Jepira in the Way\u00fau language), 180 kilometers north of Riohacha, is a small Way\u00fau fishing village spread along the Caribbean Sea. It comes as a shock\u2014a pleasant one\u2014after several hours driving through the arid landscape to finally arrive at the waters of the Caribbean. Here the beaches are nice, the views otherworldly, and the atmosphere peaceful. The smooth waters and ample winds provide near perfect conditions for windsurfing and kite surfing, and Cabo de la Vela has become a destination for these sports.\n\nThere are several pleasant excursions near town, and if you take an organized package tour, all of these should be included in the price. One is to **El Faro,** a lighthouse on a high promontory with spectacular nearly 360-degree views of the surrounding ocean. Another is to the **Ojo del Agua,** a small but pleasant beach near a freshwater spring. Farther afield is the **Pil\u00f3n de Az\u00facar,** a high hill that affords incredible views to the surrounding region. Nearby is the **Playa de Pil\u00f3n,** a beautiful ochre-colored beach. To the west is the **Jepirachi Wind Farm,** the first of its kind of Colombia; the turbines make for a somewhat surreal sight in the midst of this barren territory. Organized tours include stops at these spots. If you are on your own, hotels can organize these excursions for you. Trips to these sights in SUVs cost around COP$15,000 per person, round-trip, with a minimum of two persons.\n\nCabo de la Vela, La Guajira\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nCabo de la Vela is an excellent place to practice or learn how to kite or windsurf. **Eoletto** (Rancher\u00eda Utta, cell tel. 321\/468-0105 or 314\/851-6216, www.windsurfingcolombia.com) is a **windsurfing and kitesurfing** school run by Etto from Germany. An eight-hour windsurfing course costs COP$380,000; kitesurfing is COP$900,000. Rentals are available for COP$50,000 per hour.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nFamily-run guesthouses are plentiful in Cabo de la Vela, and are quite rudimentary. Freshwater is always scarce here in the desert, so long showers are not an option. Floors are usually sandy, and electricity is limited. The street in Cabo de la Vela along the sea is lined with about 15 guesthouses. There are a few lodgings outside of town towards El Faro, such as Rancheria Utta.\n\nThe M **Rancheria Utta** (300 m northwest of town, V\u00eda al Faro, cell tel. 312\/687-8237 or 313\/817-8076, www.rancheriautta.com, COP$15,000 hammock, COP$35,000 bed pp) is a nice place to stay. It is just far enough from the village of Cabo de la Vela that you can experience the magical ambience of being far away from civilization. Cabins are simple with walls made from the hearts of _yotojoro_ (cacti). That is a traditional form of construction in the desert. There are 11 _caba\u00f1as_ with a total of 35 beds and plenty of inviting _chinchorros_ (hammocks) for lazing about. Being on the beach at night, looking up at the stars and listening to the sound of gentle waves breaking nearby, is unforgettable. A pleasant restaurant at the hotel serves breakfast (COP$6,000), lunch (COP$15,000), and dinner (COP$15,000). The fare is mostly seafood (lobster is a favorite but will cost extra), but they can accommodate vegetarians.\n\nThe **Hospedaje Jarrinapi** (cell tel. 310\/366-4245 or 311\/683-4281, www.jarrinapi.com, COP$12,000 hammock, COP$35,000 pp) is a large hotel with 19 _yotojoro_ cabins for a total capacity of 60 people. This hotel has electricity 24 hours a day and has a nice, orderly kitchen and restaurant. **Posada Pujur\u00fa** (cell tel. 300\/279-5048, <http:\/\/posadapujuru.blogspot.com>, COP$20,000 hammock, COP$50,000 bed) has 14 rooms and a space for hammocks. Pujur\u00fa is next to a kite-surfing school.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nFrom Riohacha, shared taxis ply the route to Uribia (COP$15,000, 1 hr.). Catch these at the intersection of Calle 15 and Carrera 5. Ask the driver to drop you off at the spot where passenger trucks depart for Cabo de la Vela and intermediate _rancher\u00edas_. Trucks make this route, from Uribia to Cabo de la Vela (COP$15,000, 2 hrs. or more). These trucks depart until 2pm every day. The uncomfortable ride on a bench in the back of the truck can take several hours, depending on how many stops are made, but this is the Guajira way to go.\n\n#### **PUNTA GALLINAS**\n\n**Punta Gallinas** is a settlement on a small peninsula jutting into the Caribbean at the very northernmost tip of the South American continent. It is home to about 100 Way\u00fau who claim this beautiful spot as their ancestral land. The landscape here is a symphony of oranges, ochres, and browns, dotted with cactus and shrubs. The peninsula is hemmed in to the south by Bah\u00eda Hondita, a large bay with bright aquamarine waters and thin clusters of mangroves, and to the north by the deep blue Caribbean.\n\nActivities in and around Punta Gallinas include a visit to the _faro_ (lighthouse), which is the northernmost tip of South America; canoe rides in Bah\u00eda Hondita to see flamingos and mangroves; or visits to two spectacular beaches. These are the remote and unspoiled beaches at **Dunas de Taroa** (Taroa dunes), where windswept and towering sand dunes drop abruptly some 30 meters into the sea, and at **Punta Aguja,** at the southwest tip of the peninsula of Punta Gallinas. These excursions are included in tour prices. If you are on your own, hotels charge around COP$20,000 per person to see the dunes (five-person minimum), COP$150,000 for a group boat ride on the Bah\u00eda Hondita to spy on flamingos, and COP$20,000 per person to go to Punta Aguja (five-person minimum).\n\nThere are two good lodging options in Punta Gallinas, both with splendid views of the Bah\u00eda Hondita. M **Hospedaje Luzmila** (Punta Gallinas, cell tel. 312\/626-8121 or 312\/647-9881, COP$20,000 hammock, COP$30,000 bed pp) has 10 _caba\u00f1as_ with 20 beds and is spread out alongside the bay. Breakfast (COP$5,000), lunch (COP$15,000), and dinner (COP$15,000) are served in the restaurant. Lobster dishes cost extra.\n\nM **Donde Alexandra** (Punta Gallinas, cell tel. 313\/512-7830 or 318\/760-8501, COP$12,000-20,000 hammock, COP$30,000 bed pp) has 10 rooms and 25 beds. Meals are not included in the prices but are usually around COP$6,000 for breakfast, COP$15,000 for lunch, and COP$15,000 for dinner, unless you order lobster (COP$45,000). Donde Alexandra has sweeping vistas of the bay and beyond from the restaurant area.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nAlthough most travelers visit Punta Gallinas on an organized tour, it is possible to travel on your own from the Puerto de Pescadores at Puerto Bol\u00edvar on a _lancha_ (boat) arranged by Hospedaje Luzmilla or Donde Alexandra (COP$100,000 pp round-trip, minimum 5 passengers). In the rainy season, from September to November, this may be the only option.\n\n#### **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL MACUIRA**\n\nThe remote **Parque Nacional Natural Macuira** (PNN Macuira, 260 km northeast of Riohacha, cell tel. 311\/688-2362, macuira@parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-6pm, free) covers an area of 25,000 hectares and encompasses the entire Serran\u00eda de la Macuira (Macuira Mountain Range), an isolated mountainous outcrop at the northeastern tip of the Guajira Peninsula. These mountains are a biological island in the middle of the surrounding desert. The Macuira range, which is 35 kilometers (22 miles) long and 864 meters (2,835 feet) at its highest point (Cerro Palua), captures moisture-laden winds from the sea that nourish a unique low-elevation tropical cloud forest teeming with ferns, orchids, bromeliads, and moss. At lower elevations, there are tropical dry forests. The park includes 350 species of plants, 140 species of birds (17 endemic), and more than 20 species of mammals. The park is within the large Alta Guajira Way\u00fau Reservation. In the lower parts of the range, within the park, live many Way\u00fau families who raise goats and grow corn and other subsistence crops.\n\nThe northernmost point in South America is Punta Gallinas.\n\nThe gateway to the park is the Way\u00fau town of **Nazareth**. Visitors are required to register at the PNN Macuira Park Office, where they must hire an authorized guide (a good idea anyhow, since the trails are not marked). There are various hikes varying 1.5-6 hours, and the cost of a guided walk per group of eight ranges COP$35,000-45,000. Day hikes meander along river beds through tropical dry forest, leading to different destinations. One leads to the **Arewol\u00fc Sand Dunes,** which are, surprisingly, located in the midst of the forest. Another takes you to the **Shipano\u00fc pools**. A third hike goes to **Cerro Tojoro,** which affords beautiful views of the coast and the mountain range. There is also a hike along the entire length of the range. If you can, plan to hike early in the morning to increase your chances of seeing birds and other wildlife. Unfortunately for visitors, hiking to the Macuira's unusual cloud forest is not permitted by the Way\u00fau.\n\nThere are bare-bones lodging options in town. One suitable option is **Hospedaje V\u00eda Manaure** (entrance to town, cell tel. 314\/552-5513, COP$15,000 hammock), which has a capacity of 50.\n\nThere is no public transportation to Nazareth.\n\n### **Western Caribbean Coast**\n\nThe portion of the Caribbean coast that stretches west from Cartagena, down to the Golfo de Urab\u00e1, and then juts north through the Darien Gap and the border with Panama is less visited and less familiar than the coastal region to the east. That may be just the ticket for those yearning to explore the undiscovered and escape the crowds.\n\nThe Golfo de Morrosquillo is home to the beach towns of Tol\u00fa and Cove\u00f1as, which have long been popular family getaways. Just north of the gulf, the Islas de San Bernardo are where you'll find the world's most densely populated island, tiny Santa Cruz del Islote. Other nearby attractions include the inland town of San Antero, known throughout Colombia for its Festival del Burro, and, farther southwest, the quiet and peaceful retreat Reserva Natural Viento Solar in the community of R\u00edo Cedro. This is a place to truly disconnect from the world, and it's only accessible by motorbike via a dirt path.\n\nAcross the Golfo de Urab\u00e1, the tropical rainforests of the Darien provide an exuberant backdrop to the seaside towns of Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro, which are accessible only by boat or plane. The diving sites off the coast and toward Panama's San Blas Islands is superb.\n\nHowever, what most visitors remember and cherish about a visit to this remote part of Colombia is being submerged in truly wild nature.\n\n#### **GOLFO DE MORROSQUILLO**\n\nLargely unknown to international visitors, the twin beach communities of **Tol\u00fa** and **Cove\u00f1as** on the Golfo de Morrosquillo are popular with vacationing Colombian families from Medell\u00edn and Monter\u00eda. If you can afford it, there are several resort islands off the Caribbean coast, such as Tintip\u00e1n and M\u00facura, where you can practically have the beach to yourself, especially during the week.\n\nWhile Cove\u00f1as is mostly a long line of beachfront hotels (and an important Ecopetrol oil pipeline), neighboring Tol\u00fa to the east has an easy if run-down charm to it. Here you can get around on foot or by _bici-taxi_ (bicycle cabs). On weekend evenings, action is centered in the main plaza, but on the weekend, it shifts to the boardwalk, where vendors sell ceviche, bars blast music, and kids play in the water.\n\nOne of the main weekend activities here is to take a day-trip tour of the **Islas de San Bernardo**. These always include a look at **Santa Cruz del Islote,** the most densely populated island in the world, with one person for every 10 square meters, and a stop at **Isla Murica** or **Isla Palma** for lunch and a swim. At Isla Palma, a resort run by all-inclusive operator Decameron, international tourists may be put off by the confined dolphins and other animals. Contact **Mundo Mar** (Av. 1 No. 14-40, tel. 5\/288-4431, www.mundomar.com.co). Tour operators sell this package for around COP$57,000. They are located in the hotels along the boardwalk. They can also arrange trips to the Islas del Rosario closer to Cartagena.\n\nBeaches in Tol\u00fa aren't great; beaches at Playa El Franc\u00e9s or to the west of Cove\u00f1as Punta Bol\u00edvar are nicer. Before a weekday visit, ask at your hotel about the security situation at these beaches. They are somewhat remote.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nM **Villa Babilla** (Cl. 20 No. 3-40, Tol\u00fa, tel. 5\/288-6124, www.villababillahostel.com, COP$70,000) is the best place to stay in Tol\u00fa by a long shot. Rooms have no TV or air conditioning. You can cook your own meals here. There is an Olimpica grocery store a couple blocks away.\n\nThe **Camino Verde** (tel. 5\/288-5132, www.vacacionescaminoverde.com, COP$160,000 d, COP$240,000 d w\/meals) hotel is on the Playa El Franc\u00e9s, a few kilometers east of Tol\u00fa, and is a peaceful spot to relax, especially during the week.\n\nM **Punta Norte** (Tintip\u00e1n, cell tel. 310\/655-4851, www.hotelpuntanorte.com, COP$220,000 pp) is run by a friendly Uruguayan (Punta Norte is most often referred to as Donde El Uruguayo, or \"Where's the Uruguayan?\") and his artist wife. This all-inclusive hotel is on the tiny island of Tintip\u00e1n. Rooms are simple and the lobsters are huge! Days are spent lounging on beaches or discovering nearby islands. Bring plenty of insect repellent should you decide to go to this remote island paradise.\n\nFor white sandy beaches, warm aquamarine waters, and the occasional calorie-loaded cocktail, go to the luxury resort of **Punta Faro** (Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/616-3136, www.puntafaro.com, COP$535,000 pp high season), an island resort in the Islas de San Bernardo. High season prices are almost double that of off season rates. There are 45 rooms on the island, ensuring that, while you won't have the island all to yourself, you won't be packed in like sardines. Most guests take a hotel boat from Cartagena, but you can also arrive via Tol\u00fa.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is frequent bus service from both Tol\u00fa and Cove\u00f1as to Cartagena (3 hrs., COP$30,000) and Monter\u00eda (2.5 hrs., COP$25,000). In addition, the airline **ADA** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232, www.ada-aero.com) flies from Medell\u00edn to Tol\u00fa, making this a quick, easy, and often inexpensive beach destination. Getting around Tol\u00fa? Take a _bici-taxi_ (bicycle cab).\n\n#### **SAN ANTERO**\n\nThis seaside town's claim to fame is the annual **Festival del Burro,** one of those many only-in-Colombia celebrations. There are burro races, burro costume contests (in 2013 the winning burro was dressed as the newly announced pope, who beat out a Shakira burro and a Transmiburro, a four-legged version of Bogot\u00e1's TransMilenio bus system), and parades. They even have a modern arena that hosts all the fun. The origin of the festival is a religious one. During Semana Santa, an effigy of Judas would ride into town on a burro, and would afterwards be burned for having betrayed Christ. The festival evolved over time to be more about burros and less about Judas.\n\nAn unexpected find of undisturbed mangroves and forest awaits at the **Bah\u00eda Cispat\u00e1** nearby. An interesting project by **Asocaiman** (caimanmiranda@hotmail.com) helps in the protection and propagation of alligators and turtles. These creatures were once hunted for their meat and eggs, but today, former local hunters have been trained on the importance of protecting these species. They now work for the animals' protection. You can visit the refuge (tips are encouraged) and take a short tour led by one of the former hunters. They offer different boat tours of the mangroves, which range in cost COP$15,000-45,000. A locally run and quite friendly hotel, the **Mangle Colora'o** (Vereda Amaya, tel. 4\/811-0722, cell tel. 301\/203-7071, COP$35,000 pp), is just across the street.\n\nSan Antero borders the water and has some nice beaches at Playa Blanca. Here there is a long string of waterfront hotels popular with weekenders from Monter\u00eda and Medell\u00edn. During the week, it's very quiet. The **Cispat\u00e1 Marina Hotel** (tel. 4\/811-0197 or 4\/811-0887, www.cispata.com, COP$123,000 pp) has an enviable location overlooking the the Bah\u00eda Cispat\u00e1 and, on the other side, the beaches of Playa Blanca. The hotel comprises 16 cute, red-roofed _caba\u00f1as_ as well as smaller apartments. In addition to the bay and the sea, the hotel also has a large pool.\n\nGo eat at M **Pesecar** (Bah\u00eda Cispat\u00e1, cell tel. 312\/651-2651, 7am-9pm daily). It's worth the trip to San Antero just for lunch\u2014fresh, very fresh, seafood, at this restaurant with an unbeatable bayside location.\n\nNo trip to the Caribbean coast is complete without a visit to a mud volcano. In San Antero there is a large one, where you'll be able to enjoy the therapeutic properties of the mud without bumping up against anyone. Laugh therapy is one of the many treatments available.\n\nalligators at the Asocaiman conservation center, Bah\u00eda Cispat\u00e1\n\n##### **Reserva Natural Viento Solar**\n\nIt's hard to find a place more peaceful than **Reserva Natural Viento Solar** (village of R\u00edo Cedro, cell tel. 311\/312-2473, www.vientosolar.org, students and backpackers COP$20,000 no meals, COP$130,000 pp all meals incl.). This private natural reserve composed of tropical dry forest is on a mostly undeveloped C\u00f3rdoba coastline near the settlement of R\u00edo Cedro, southwest of San Antero.\n\nAt this reserve extending over 200 hectares (500 acres) along the Caribbean coast, activities include kayaking, nature walks, bird-watching, swimming, and yoga. Gentle _osos perezosos_ (sloths) reside in this undisturbed reserve, and you may also see howler monkeys, boa constrictors, and iguanas, as well as many species of birds. The reserve is run by a charismatic Paisa woman, Elena Posada, who is affectionately known as La Mona.\n\nReserva Natural Viento Solar is accessed through the town of Lorica, a fishing town on the banks of the R\u00edo Sin\u00fa. It's famous for its waterfront market. From the Tol\u00fa-Monter\u00eda highway, you can catch a shared taxi (COP$15,000) that will take you to the coastal hamlet of San Bernardo del Viento. From there, Viento Solar will arrange for a _mototaxi_ (COP$10,000) to take you the rest of the way to the reserve.\n\n#### **MONTER\u00cdA**\n\nThe center of Monter\u00eda, Colombia's cattle-ranching capital (pop. 409,000), has recently been given a facelift, and in the late afternoon or early evening, it's a pleasant place for a stroll. The Plaza de Bol\u00edvar is gorgeous and the spectacularly white **Catedral de San Jeronimo** stands prominently facing it. The **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cra. 3 No. 28-59, tel. 4\/782-3382) may have an art exhibit to check out. For a pleasant walk or jog, head to the **Parque Lineal Ronda del Sin\u00fa** between the muddy R\u00edo Sin\u00fa and the Avenida Primera. This lovely park under the shade of tall trees and with a view to the river has bike and jogging paths, playgrounds, workout stations, an amphitheater, and juice stalls. This is one of the nicest urban parks in the country.\n\nReserva Natural Viento Solar\n\nThe coolest thing about Monter\u00eda is the ingenious (and eco-friendly) system to cross the R\u00edo Sin\u00fa: the **_planchones._** These are small ferries attached to a cable that crosses the river as the captain rows passengers across. It only costs COP$400, making it one of the top cheap thrills in all of Colombia. Even though it takes under five minutes to cross, and there's not much need to get to the other side, the _planchones_ themselves almost make Monter\u00eda worth a trip.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nHotels tend to be overpriced in Monter\u00eda. The **Hotel Casa Real** (Cl. 29 No. 6-26, tel. 4\/782-4004, www.hotelcasarealmonteria.net, COP$173,000 d) is a few blocks from the Avenida Primera and is also close to a police station. Many rooms are tiny with no windows.\n\nWhen in Monter\u00eda, one eats beef. The famous restaurants are on the outskirts of town and are large outdoor cowboy-ish places. While you could order grilled chicken, when in Monter\u00eda, order a thick, juicy steak. **Bonga del Sin\u00fa** (Km. 5 V\u00eda Ceret\u00e9, tel. 5\/786-0085, www.labongadelsinu.com, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat. and noon-9pm Sun., COP$22,000) doesn't disappoint its hungry patrons. Along the Avenida Primera are several bars and outdoor restaurants, and the volume kicks up a notch or two on Saturday nights. In a nod to the significant Arab immigration in the area, Monter\u00eda has a couple of spots where kibbe trumps steaks. Try **Farah Delicias Arabes** (Cra. 6 No. 60-42, tel. 4\/789-9680, www.farahdeliciasarabes.com, 4:30pm-10:30pm daily, COP$15,000), an authentic Lebanese restaurant. There is also a **Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9** (Cl. 44 No. 10-139, tel. 4\/785-1607) at the Alamedas del Sin\u00fa shopping mall. Get your macchiato fix here because you're a long way from another decent cup of joe!\n\n#### M **CAPURGAN\u00c1 AND SAPZURRO**\n\nThe sparsely populated **Darien Gap** , a 160-kilometer-long (100-mile-long) and 50-kilometer-wide (30-mile-wide) stretch of mountainous jungle and swamp extending from Panama to Colombia, has long captured the imagination of adventurers. The two crescent-shaped villages of Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro, built between the sea and the interior mountains of the small and low Darien Mountain Range, are within howling distance of the Panamanian border, but they seem far, far away from anything else. Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro are on the eastern edges of the Darien Gap, a stretch of land that connects Central America (via Panama) with South America (via Colombia). The stretch of tropical rainforest here is the only interruption in the famous Pan-American Highway, which extends from Alaska to Patagonia.\n\nWith its absence of roads and the cover provided by the jungle's canopy, the entire Darien region has been a major corridor for the trafficking of illegal drugs from Colombia into Central America, which has also meant that there has been a heavy presence of both guerrillas and paramilitaries. Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro suffered greatly from drug-related violence during the 1990s and early 2000s. Thanks in part to a strong military presence, safety in the area has vastly improved. Though drug trafficking continues deep in the jungle, kidnappings and violent skirmishes don't affect locals or visitors.\n\nthe wild, rocky coast of Carpurgan\u00e1\n\nWhile much of the Colombian Darien is lowland and swamp, as it is part of the R\u00edo Atrato basin, near the border with Panama, the terrain is mountainous and covered in tropical jungle. Within minutes of leaving your hotel you'll be surrounded by the sounds of the jungle, accompanied only by the occasional bright green and black speckled toad and maybe a band of howler monkeys.\n\nHere in the Colombian Darien, the majority of the population is Afro-Colombian. Capurgan\u00e1 is the larger village of the two, though both are tiny. There are no cars in either village. Get around on foot, by bike, or by boat.\n\nTo get here, you have to either take a flight from Medell\u00edn (to either the Capurgan\u00e1 or Acand\u00ed airport) or take a _lancha_ (from Turbo or Acand\u00ed). Should the seas be too rough or if a general strike shuts down everything (as when we were there), you may just be stuck in the jungle for a couple days more.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nThere are several jungle walks to make around Capurgan\u00e1. These take you through dense jungle overflowing with tropical vegetation and home to howler monkeys, birds, colorful frogs, and snakes. While the walks are short and fairly straightforward, you may want to ask at your hotel or hostel for a guide, especially for the walk between Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro. Guides cost about COP$10,000. Wear hiking boots (waterproof if possible) and a swimsuit underneath your clothes for dips in the water off of Sapzurro or in freshwater swimming holes, and set off in the morning hours to avoid trying to navigate your way in the late afternoon.\n\nAn easy walk to make, without the need of a guide, is to **La Coquerita** (20-minute walk north from town, cell tel. 311\/824-8022, COP$2,000), a delightfully ramshackle waterside hangout where you can have a refreshing coco-lemonade, maybe some guacamole and _patacones_ (fried plantains), and take a dip in the refreshing freshwater or saltwater pools. There are also some handicrafts on sale here. To get there, walk along the Playa Caleta beach just north of the port, passing in front of the Hotel Almar. Continue along the jungle path that hugs the coastline. La Coquerita is under a kilometer from town, and the path is well-marked. Look out for the black and fluorescent green frogs along the way, but don't touch them; they're poisonous.\n\nThere are two ways to go to the idyllic hamlet of **Sapzurro:** by boat or on foot. The path to Sapzurro leads you through the exuberant rainforest to a lookout point and then down directly to the Sapzurro beach. The hike takes two hours.\n\nTo set off for Sapzurro, start at the soccer field, on the southern end of town, and ask the way. Midway up the uphill path is a shack that is the home of a man who claims to protect the jungle, Once you find him, you know you're on the right track. He expects those who pass through to pay him about COP$1,000. At the top of the mountain there is a nice overlook with views of Capurgan\u00e1 and the coastline. The hike is not difficult, but the path can get muddy and slippery in places. Wear hiking boots and pick up a walking stick along the way to help you manage on the steep parts.\n\na frog on the path to Sapzurro\n\nOnce in Sapzurro, you're a short hike (15 minutes) up to the border with **Panama** and the village of **La Miel.** This easy walk begins on the same street as Caba\u00f1as Uvali and the Reserva Natural Tacarcun\u00e1. The border crossing is at the top of a steep hill with embedded steps. You'll need to show a passport to cross over to Panama. There is not much to the community of La Miel. It has a small military outpost, many young children running around, and a pleasant beach where you can swim and have a seafood lunch or drink.\n\nAnother walk to make is to the **El Cielo** waterfall **,** a 50-minute walk (about 3 km) through the jungle. It's easy to make and is flat, although you'll have to make around a dozen shallow stream crossings. Bring a bathing suit to cool off in the swimming holes you'll encounter. To get to heavenly El Cielo, set out on the road that runs parallel to the airstrip. Ask locals for directions.\n\nIt is possible to walk between Capurgan\u00e1 and El Aguacate, but the path, along the shore, is rocky and a bit treacherous.\n\n###### **DIVING AND SNORKELING**\n\nAs you'd expect, the warm, turquoise waters off the coast of Capurgan\u00e1 and all the way up to San Blas in Panama make for fantastic diving, and there are over 30 diving sites to choose from. The best time for underwater exploration is from May to November. During those months, visibility is exceptional with hardly any waves around the diving spots. There are coral walls, reef rocks, and caves to explore close to the coastline.\n\n**Dive and Green Diving Center** (facing the port, cell tel. 311\/578-4021 or 316\/781-6255, www.diveandgreen.com, 7:30am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm daily) is the best place to organize a diving trip (for certified divers an excursion costs COP$190,000) or to take a PADI certification course (5 days, COP$820,000) with a bilingual instructor. For these packages it is best to pay in cash. Credit card transactions will have an additional fee. For those interested in snorkeling, they can help make arrangements for you, though they don't themselves lead snorkeling trips. Dive and Green offers all the equipment you need. If you are on the fence about whether diving is for you, they offer a Discover Scuba Diving day for COP$150,000. Dive and Green has accommodations: four rooms in a house adjacent to their offices. These cost COP$25,000 per person. Although in town, it's facing the water, guaranteeing a pleasant evening breeze.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThere are a surprising number of excellent and inexpensive accommodations options in both Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro. While there are a few large, all-inclusive hotels with welcome drinks and the works, the most interesting and comfortable options are the smaller guesthouses and hostels. Nearly all hotels are owned and operated by out-of-towners.\n\n###### **CAPURGAN\u00c1**\n\nMany hotels and hostels are near the _muelle_ (port) in Capurgan\u00e1. Here you have the advantage of being in or near the hub of activity. Many visitors stay at one of the few all-inclusive hotels in Capurgan\u00e1, but those options have zero charm.\n\nThe M **Posada del Gecko** (Centro, cell tel. 314\/525-6037, www.posadadelgecko.com, posadadelgecko@hotmail.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$35,000 d) is the best place to stay in town. It's run by an Italian-Colombian couple and offers both dorm and private rooms spread over two houses, with a capacity of 28 persons. In between is a spacious open-air garden ideal for lounging in a hammock or the hot tub. Enjoy a good Italian dinner by candlelight from the restaurant (7:30pm-11pm daily). It's open to non-guests as well, but it's best to go by in advance and make a reservation. The hotel organizes three-day excursions to the San Blas Islands (Panama), in which you visit a Guna indigenous community, frolic on pristine white-sand beaches, and snorkel.\n\nAlthough there are no sandy beaches there, outside of the center of Capurgan\u00e1 in the Playa Roca area, about a 15-minute walk or horse ride away, are several excellent guesthouses amid the trees. At night you'll need no air conditioner, and in the morning you may awake to birdsong.\n\nOne of the perks of staying at welcoming **Caba\u00f1as El Tuc\u00e1n** (Playa Roca, www.cabanatucancapurgana.com, COP$65,000), run by a friendly Bogotana-Italian couple, is that they make their own pasta and are good cooks. This house in the jungle is clean and comfortable, and the prices of their two spacious rooms are reasonable. Right across the path from El Tuc\u00e1n is M **Caba\u00f1as Darius** (Playa Roca, cell tel. 314\/622-5638, www.cdarius.blogspot.com, capurga05@gmail.com, COP$85,000 pp incl. 2 meals), another Colombian-international endeavor. It's a very nice guesthouse in the trees. Rooms are spacious and clean, and it's cool enough at night that you won't miss air conditioning. Balconies and hammocks provide lounging space, but the top selling point is the warm hospitality and Nery's unbelievable cooking. A third option in the same area is **Hotel Los Robles** (Playa Roca, cell tel. 314\/632-8408 or 314\/632-8428, www.capurganalosrobles.es.tl, COP$85,000 d, COP$70,000 pp). This lodge has quite the entrance\u2014a winding path lined by bright fuchsia ginger flowers. _Caracol\u00ed_ and _higuer\u00f3n_ trees provide shade and a home for birds. There are 12 rooms in two houses.\n\nThe most low-key place to stay in the area is Playa Aguacate. A German has carved a little paradise out of the jungle, and, once there, you won't want to leave. It's popular with honeymooners and those celebrating special occasions. Simple and comfortable cabins, each with a sea view, make up the M **Bah\u00eda Lodge** (Playa Aguacate, cell tel. 314\/812-2727, www.bahia-lodge.com, COP$190,000 pp 2 meals per day). Over the hill from is the lodge is **Hotel Las Ceibas** (Bah\u00eda Aguacate, cell tel. 313\/695-6392, Medell\u00edn tel. 4\/331-7440, www.hotellasceibas.com.co). It has three rooms in two houses set amid gardens, and the rooms have pleasant balconies with hammocks for late afternoon relaxation.\n\n###### **SAPZURRO**\n\nIn Sapzurro, there are also quite a few options. The only drawback is that there are fewer restaurant options. Most hotels offer meals, though, and are usually the best bet at any rate. **Caba\u00f1as Uvali** (cell tel. 314\/624-1325, COP$40,000 pp) is a friendly, clean, and straightforward little place in town. It's about a five-minute walk to the beach. **La Posada Hostal & Camping** (www.sapzurrolaposada.com, cell tel. 312\/662-7599 or 310\/410-2245, COP$65,000 pp d) has one luxury apartment, with a view, a dorm-style room, and a large space for camping under the big mango tree. They have a little tiki bar over the water, which can be set up for your romantic Sapzurro dinner.\n\nThe M **Resort Para\u00edso Sapzurro** (cell tel. 313\/685-9862, www.paraiso-sapzurro-colombia.com, COP$10,000 dorm, COP$50,000 pp d) has basic beachfront cabins. Free avocadoes and mangoes is not a bad perk. This hostel is more commonly known as \"Donde El Chileno,\" after the Chilean owner. The hostel can organize oversea journeys directly to Cartagena.\n\nThe M **Sapzurro Reserva Natural Tacarcuna** (on the path to La Miel, cell tel. 314\/622-3149, COP$40,000 pp) is a special place for anyone interested in the flora and fauna of the region. Owners Martha and Fabio completed a botanical garden of native species with nature trails and a butterfly farm in 2013, and their other passion is birds. Behind their house up the mountain into the jungle, you can grab your binoculars and wait and watch for birds to make their appearances. Four different types of toucans, cuckoos, parakeets, owls, antipittas, tanagers, and many other species can be seen here. Throngs of migratory birds arrive between August and November each year. The two cabins available are cute, spic-and-span, and of course surrounded by nature. Don't confuse this natural reserve with the all-inclusive Tacurcuna Hotel near the Capurgan\u00e1 airport. They can organize a number of nature hikes in the area and near Acand\u00ed.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nHotels are usually the best options for food in the villages. M **Donde Josefina** (Playa Caleta, cell tel. 316\/779-7760, COP$30,000, noon-9pm daily) remains the top restaurant for a delicious, gourmet seafood dinner, right on the beach in the heart of Capurgan\u00e1. Dining on lobster in a coconut and garlic sauce under the swaying branches of a palm tree: That sounds like a vacation! A decent bakery overlooking the soccer field in Capurgan\u00e1 serves breakfast. In Sapzurro, the best place for a meal is at **Do\u00f1a Triny** (Hostal Do\u00f1a Triny, cell tel. 312\/751-8626 or 313\/725-8362, noon-10pm daily).\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nBring extra cash to Capurgan\u00e1: There are no ATMs, and credit cards are not accepted in most establishments. To avoid bringing wads of pesos, many hotels will allow (or require) you to make a _consignaci\u00f3n_ (deposit) to their bank account in advance. That can usually be done from any city in Colombia. The nearest bank, **Banco Agrario** (Cl. Las Flores with Cl. Consistorial, tel. 4\/682-8229, 8am-11:30am and 2pm-4:30pm Mon.-Fri.) is in Acand\u00ed, a half-hour boat ride away to the south from Capurgan\u00e1. To be on the safe side, bring along some extra cash.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\n**Aerol\u00ednea de Antioquia** (ADA, tel. 4\/444-4232, www.ada.com.co) serves both Capurgan\u00e1 and Acand\u00ed from the Aeropuerto Olaya Herera in Medell\u00edn. Acand\u00ed is the municipality to which the village of Capurgan\u00e1 is linked. It is south of Capurgan\u00e1 on the Darien. There is one flight per day on ADA Monday through Saturday to Acand\u00ed. Direct flights to Capurgan\u00e1 were temporarily suspended at the time of writing.\n\nBoats are a good way to get around Carpurgan\u00e1.\n\nTo get from Acand\u00ed to Capurgan\u00e1, you'll have to take a horse from the airport (seriously) to the docks (a 15-minute trip), at which point you'll take a 30-minute long _lancha_ (boat) ride onwards to Capurgan\u00e1 (COP$17,000). There is always a _lancha_ at 1pm daily. The seas can be rough at times, so, always try to get a seat in back. You may want to keep your camera or other electronics in their cases so they won't be exposed to seawater. Demand a life vest. The return trip from Capurgan\u00e1 to Acand\u00ed leaves at 7:30am daily.\n\nAll boats arrive at the _muelle_ (docks) in Capurgan\u00e1, which are in the middle of town. Most hotels are within walking distance, although some, like Caba\u00f1as Darius, are a bit of a walk. Try to find someone with a horse to take you there (about COP$10,000). Hotels in Aguacate and Sapzurro are reachable only by taking another _lancha_ from the docks in Capurgan\u00e1, about a 20-minute ride. Those hotels will arrange your transportation from Capurgan\u00e1 in advance.\n\nThere are bus links from Medell\u00edn (8 hours), Monter\u00eda (4 hours), and from cities across the Caribbean coast to the rough and tumble coastal port city of Turbo on the Golfo de Urab\u00e1. As an alternative to taking a flight to either Capurgan\u00e1 or to Acand\u00ed, you can take a 2.5- to 3-hour boat ride from Turbo. These usually depart at 8am, costing about COP$60,000. The early morning departure means that you will probably have to spend the previous night in Turbo. That's not ideal, but if you must, most tourists agree that **Residencias La Florida** (Cra. 13 No. 99A-56, tel. 4\/827-3531, COP$30,000 d) is an all right accommodations option, close to the port, and the hotel staff is quite helpful arranging your onward transportation.\n\nDo not plan to take a boat from Turbo to Capurgan\u00e1 from December to March. The 2.5-hour journey can be awful during this time of high winds, and the waves can be unrelenting. If you are unlucky enough to be in the front of the boat, you will step off the boat with, at the very least, a painfully sore back. This is likewise true for the trip from Acand\u00ed to Capurgan\u00e1, although it is a much shorter ride.\n\nReturning to the mainland from Capurgan\u00e1, it's always best to reserve a day in advance for _lanchas_ bound for Acand\u00ed or Turbo, especially during peak tourist times. Your hotel should be able to do this for you, but just in case, you can call Sara at the _muelle_ (314\/614-0704).\n\nFrom Panama, you can take a flight from Panama City to Puerto Obald\u00eda. From there, boats frequently make the journey onward to Capurgan\u00e1. It's just a 30-45 minute ride and costs about US$15. You may be required to show proof of yellow fever vaccination to enter Colombia.\n\nIf traveling onward to Panama, you must go to the Colombian **Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores** (Cl. del Comercio, cell tel. 311\/746-6234, 8am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-4pm Sat.) the day before for an exit stamp.\n\n## **BOYAC\u00c1 AND THE SANTANDERES**\n\nHISTORY\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nBoyac\u00e1\n\nM VILLA DE LEYVA\n\nR\u00c1QUIRA\n\nTUNJA\n\nTUNJA TO LAGO TOTA\n\nSIERRA NEVADA DEL COCUY\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL EL COCUY\n\nSantander\n\nBUCARAMANGA\n\nM CA\u00d1\u00d3N DEL CHICAMOCHA\n\nSAN GIL\n\nM BARICHARA\n\nNorte de Santander\n\nPAMPLONA\n\nC\u00daCUTA\n\nLocated north of Bogot\u00e1, the mountainous departments of Boyac\u00e1, Santander, and Norte de Santander (these last two are known collectively as the Santanderes) are rich in history, natural beauty, and outdoor activities. The countryside is dotted with historic colonial towns, including two of the most beautiful and well-preserved in Colombia: Villa de Leyva and Barichara. The scenery of the region runs the gamut from the desert landscape near Villa de Leyva to the bucolic rolling hills and pastures of agriculturally rich Boyac\u00e1, and from the awe-inspiring R\u00edo Chicamocha canyon to the dramatic snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy (Cocuy Range).\n\nOutdoor activities are the draw here, like trekking in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy and white-water rafting, caving, and paragliding near San Gil. Except for the frenetic and modern Bucaramanga, stoic Tunja, and the border city of C\u00facuta, a refreshingly slow pace prevails. The pueblos of Boyac\u00e1 are easily accessed from Bogot\u00e1 and can even be visited on a long weekend. It will take a little more time to discover Santander, located between Bogot\u00e1 and the Caribbean coast. Although most people only stop in the sultry city of C\u00facuta on their way to Venezuela or on a visa run, it is a pleasant surprise. The historic pueblo of Pamplona is the most chilled-out place in all of Norte de Santander.\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nBefore the Spanish conquest, Boyac\u00e1 was part of the Muisca heartland. Hunza, where present day Tunja is located, was the seat of the Zaque, one of the Muisca leaders. The Sun Temple, one of the Muiscas' sacred sites, was in Sogamoso, northeast of Tunja.\n\nBoyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes played a major role in the struggle for independence. In 1811, Boyac\u00e1 became the seat of the Provincias Unidas de la Nueva Granada (United Provinces of New Granada), the first republican independent government. It was in Boyac\u00e1 in 1819 that the two decisive battles of independence were fought: the Batalla del Pantano de Vargas (Battle of the Vargas Swamp) and the Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1 (Battle of the Bridge of Boyac\u00e1). These battles marked the end of Spanish domination in Colombia.\n\nSantander was one of the more dynamic regions in 19th-century Colombia, with an export economy based on the cultivation of quinine, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco. In the early 20th century, Norte de Santander became the first major coffee-producing region in Colombia.\n\nThe mid-20th-century fighting between Liberals and Conservatives was particularly acute in Santander and Norte de Santander. In 1960, the Ejercito de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional (National Liberation Army) or ELN guerrilla group was born in rural Santander.\n\nThe region has experienced steady economic growth since the early 2000s. Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander, has become a prosperous center of manufacturing and services. C\u00facuta, in the neighboring Norte de Santander department, is a center of commerce whose fortunes are linked to Venezuela's.\n\nWhile poverty is widespread in the Boyac\u00e1 countryside, the area is an important agricultural center and supplies Bogot\u00e1 with much of its food. The departmental capital of Tunja has also become a major center of learning: It is home to 10 universities.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nThere are three main draws in Boyac\u00e1 and Santander: the lovely colonial town of Villa de Leyva, the snowcapped wonderland of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, and, in Santander, the action-packed area around San Gil, including the nearby town of Barichara.\n\nVilla de Leyva can be visited in a short two-day excursion from Bogot\u00e1, but you could easily spend a couple more relaxing days seeing all the sights, including a hike to Laguna Iguaque. Add on a day to visit the churches of Tunja, but be sure to confirm hours beforehand. To further explore Boyac\u00e1, extend your visit for a couple of days to the area around Sogamoso, particularly the postcard-perfect towns of Iza and Mongu\u00ed and Lago de Tota. There are good public transportation links throughout Boyac\u00e1, but this is also a fairly easy place to drive.\n\nGetting to the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy is a schlep (11 hours by bus from Bogot\u00e1), so a trip there requires a minimum of 4-5 days to make it worthwhile. To just do day hikes into the park, base yourself in either G\u00fcic\u00e1n or El Cocuy, or nearer to the park in one of several lodges. To do the six-day circuit around the park, plan on 10 days so as to include a day or two of acclimatization before you embark. This is a remote area and there are fewer public transportation options. Buses depart for the area from Tunja. Roads are for the most part in good shape.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Villa de Leyva:** One of Colombia's most visited and beloved colonial pueblos, relaxed Villa de Leyva is just a couple of hours away from Bogot\u00e1 (click here).\n\nM **Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque:** Hike through Andean forest and mysterious _p\u00e1ramo_ to a sacred Muisca lake (click here).\n\nM **Tunja's Historic Churches:** Glimpse the splendor of Tunja's colonial past in its beautiful churches (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy:** Stunning scenery greets you at every turn in this remote park of snowcapped peaks (click here).\n\nM **Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha:** Experience the blue skies and deep canyons at this photogenic park not far from Bucaramanga and San Gil (click here).\n\nM **Paragliding near San Gil:** Soar through the air with the greatest of ease in Colombia's recreational capital (click here).\n\nM **Barichara:** Decompress and rejuvenate in one of the most beautiful pueblos in the country (click here).\n\nM **Camino Real:** Follow in the footsteps of native Guane indigenous traders and Spanish colonists on this meandering path through the Santander countryside (click here).\n\nSan Gil and Barichara have a lot to offer, so plan on spending at least three days. Barichara is a much more beautiful base for exploring the region, but San Gil is home to the main adventure sport tour operators.\n\nThere are good public transportation links between Bucaramanga and San Gil and between San Gil and Barichara. However, getting from Bucaramanga and San Gil to Tunja or Villa de Leyva is not fun, as the highway is often saturated with big trucks and buses. On holidays it can be difficult to get a seat on a bus out of or to San Gil, an intermediary stop between Bucaramanga and Bogot\u00e1.\n\nBetween Villa de Leyva and San Gil it is 6-7 hours, with a change of bus in Barbosa and\/or Tunja. Even though San Gil and the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy are only 75 kilometers as the crow flies, to get from one to the other, you must transfer buses in Tunja, requiring more than 15 hours on various buses.\n\nThere's frequent bus service between Bucaramanga and Pamplona\/C\u00facuta.\n\n### **Boyac\u00e1**\n\nTo the northeast of Bogot\u00e1 and the department of Cundinamarca, the Boyac\u00e1 department is a mostly rural agriculture-oriented area of bucolic highlands, home to campesinos (peasants) often dressed in their warm woolen _ruanas_ (capes) as they tend to their dairy cows and potato crops. Boyac\u00e1 is also known for its role in Colombian history: The capital city of Tunja was effectively the runner-up to Bogot\u00e1 when the Spaniards sought a capital city for their New World territory of Nueva Granada. Its colonial-era importance can be seen today in the number of impressive churches that stand in its historic center. Nearby, Villa de Leyva has the perfect combination of colonial charm, good hotels and restaurants, attractions, and fantastic weather. Boyacenses are known for their politeness, shyness, and honesty, and will often address you not with the formal _usted_ but rather with the super-deferential _sumerc\u00e9,_ a term that is derived from the old Spanish _su merced_ (literally, \"your mercy\").\n\n#### M **VILLA DE LEYVA**\n\nThis enchanting colonial pueblo is set in an arid valley (Valle de Saquencip\u00e1) and has been a major tourist destination for decades. The population triples on weekends, when city folk from Bogot\u00e1 converge on the town. The surrounding desert scenery, a palette of ever-changing pastels, is gorgeous, the typically sunny weather is never too hot nor too cool, and the town's architecture of preserved whitewashed houses along stone streets is charming.\n\nThe influx of visitors every weekend doesn't diminish the appeal of VDL, as it's known. A surprising number of activities and attractions are in reach, including paleontological and archaeological sites and outdoor activities such as biking and hiking. The nearby Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque is one of the most accessible national parks in the country, and you need only a decent pair of boots to hike to its sacred lakes. Villa de Leyva is also a good base from which to explore the Boyac\u00e1 countryside and towns such as R\u00e1quira.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\n###### **PLAZA MAYOR**\n\nVilla de Leyva's **Plaza Mayor** is one of the most photographed locations in Colombia. The town's main square, the largest plaza in the country, is indeed photogenic, but it can be a frustrating task capturing it all in one take: At 14,000 square meters (3.5 acres), it's big. In the middle of the square is a Mudejar-style well, the Ara Sagrada, that was the source of water for the townspeople in colonial times. On the western side of the square is the **Iglesia Parroquial** (Cra. 9 No. 12-68, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Tues.-Sat., 8am-noon Sun.), made out of stone, adobe, and wood, which was built in the 17th century. It features a large golden _retablo_ altar.\n\nOn the western side of the plaza is the quirky **Casa Museo Luis Alberto Acu\u00f1a** (Cra. 10 No. 12-83, tel. 8\/732-0422, www.museoacuna.com.co, 9am-6pm daily). In addition to cubist-influenced paintings of pre-Hispanic indigenous culture, rooms are filled with the artists' private art collection and antiques. The courtyard holds some wood sculptures of the artists. The museum also has a pint-sized gift shop. Acu\u00f1a was instrumental in the restoration of and preservation of colonial architecture in Villa de Leyva.\n\nOne of the oldest houses in Villa de Leyva, and best preserved, is the **Casa Juan de Castellanos** (Cra. 9 No. 13-11) on the northeast corner of the Plaza Mayor. It is so well preserved, in fact, that it today serves as the main office of the city government. The house is not officially open to the public, but you can take a peek. The house belonged to Spaniard Juan de Castellanos, who came to the New World as a soldier. He was an important chronicler of the time.\n\nAcross from the Casa Juan de Castellanos is the historic **Casa del Primer Congreso de lasProvincias Unidas de la Nueva Granada** (Cra. 9 No. 13-04). Restored by artist Luis Alberto Acu\u00f1a in the 1950s, this is where the era of the Patria Boba, as it would later (and derisively) be known, was begun. The **Casa Real F\u00e1brica de Licores** (Cl. 13 No. 8-03) was the first official distillery in Nueva Granada. After standing in ruins for decades, the house was restored in the 1950s.\n\na charming cobblestone street in Villa de Leyva\n\nThe **Museo El Carmen de Arte Religioso** (Cl. 14 No. 10-04, 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm Sat., Sun., and holidays, COP$2,500) presents paintings, crucifixes, manuscripts, and religious figures from the colonial era. The museum is on the southwest corner of the grassy **Plazoleta de la Carmen.** The complex (which dates to around 1850) also includes a monastery and convent.\n\nThe **Casa Museo Antonio Nari\u00f1o** (Cra. 9 No. 10-25, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Thurs.-Tues., tel. 8\/732-0342, free) is a house in which independence figure Antonio Nari\u00f1o lived and died. It was built in the 17th century, and the museum displays some of his manuscripts as well as items from everyday life in the 19th century, such as a giant mortar used to mill corn. The short and sweet museum often puts on temporary art exhibits, which may have a small admission charge.\n\n###### **OTHER SIGHTS**\n\nOn the **Plaza Ricaurte,** the 19th-century **Convento de San Agust\u00edn** today houses the highly respected **Instituto Humboldt** (Cra. 8 No. 15-98, tel. 8\/732-0791, www.humboldt.org.co, free), a research institute dedicated to conservation and environmental education. A small room on threatened animal species in Colombia is open to the public, and a tour is given on Fridays (3pm-5pm). The Humboldt occasionally hosts cultural events.\n\nThe **Casa Museo Capit\u00e1n Antonio Ricaurte** (Cl. 15 No. 8-17, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sun., no phone, free) is in the small house where this independence figure was born in 1786. He is a hero of the Colombian air force, and one room is filled with uniforms and memorabilia of that military branch. He died heroically, sacrificing his life by blowing himself up with a cache of gunpowder so that it would not land in the hands of Spaniards.\n\n##### **Entertainment and Events**\n\nThe most popular place to hang out in the evenings is on the Plaza Mayor, where the thing to do is buy a couple of beers and watch the world go by. But there are other watering holes in town. **La Cava de Don Fernando** (Cra. 10 No. 12-03, tel. 8\/732-0073) is a spot for a cocktail where the music is generally, but not always, rock.\n\nFor a movie night, head to the **Cine Club Casa Quintero** (Casa Quintero, 2nd fl., tel. 8\/732-1801, Thurs.-Sun. evenings).\n\nThe dark, crystal-clear skies above Villa de Leyva make for great stargazing. In February each year the town hosts the **Festival de Astron\u00f3mica de Villa de Leyva** (www.astroasasac.com), during which all are invited to view the stars from powerful telescopes in the Plaza Mayor.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nIn Villa de Leyva as in the rest of Boyac\u00e1, the special handicraft is woolen goods. But the town is home to many creative types, and small jewelers, galleries, and handicraft shops are found on every street.\n\n**Alieth Tejido Artesanal** (Cl. 13 No. 7-89, tel. 8\/732-1672, www.alieth.8m.com) is an association of about 35 women who weave woolen sweaters, _ruanas_ (ponchos), _mochilas_ (backpacks), gloves, scarves, and some colorful, slightly psychedelic bags. A tour, the \"Ruta de la Lana,\" can be taken to nearby farms to learn about the process from sheep to sweater. It costs COP$48,000 per person, lasts for about five hours, and snacks and a souvenir are included. Alieth Ort\u00edz, the head of this interesting program, requests reservations be made a few days in advance so that they can organize things with the artisans. Another excellent store to browse wool items is **Creaciones Dora** (Cra. 10 No. 10-02, 9am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-9pm Sat.).\n\nBoyac\u00e1 is known for its woven woolen scarves and _ruanas._\n\n**La Libelula** (Cra. 9 No. 14-35, tel. 8\/732-0040, 10am-7pm daily) specializes in leather: handbags, belts, and accessories. The mysterious shop **Misterio** (Cl. 14 No. 9-85, tel. 8\/732-0418, 10am-8pm daily) sells colorful scarves, handmade jewelry, and semiprecious stones like quartz, amethyst, and emeralds. Coal mining is a major industry in rugged Boyac\u00e1; **Arte al Carb\u00f3n** (Cl. 15 No. 9-46, www.artealcarbon.galeon.com, 9am-7pm Mon.-Sat.) sells jewelry made out of coal by women from mining communities.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nClose to town, sporty locals regularly take a brisk morning hike up to the **Santo,** a statue on the eastern side of Villa de Leyva. The walk takes about an hour in total, and it is a steep climb. From the statue of the saint you can get a good view of the town and will better appreciate the scale of the fantastic Plaza Mayor. To get to the path, walk east along Calle 11 to the tennis court and track\/soccer field. This is to the north of the Hotel Duruelo. The path entrance is marked and it practically leads straight up. The rocks are covered, unfortunately, with religious graffiti. It's best to make the climb early in the morning, before the midday heat envelops the valley. Although the view is nice, you'll be better off leaving your camera at your hotel, not necessarily due to safety reasons, but rather because you may not want to be loaded down with things as you climb. At parts you may be on all fours!\n\n###### **TOURS**\n\nTour companies in Villa de Leyva mostly specialize in adventure activities nearby. The best outfit is **Colombian Highlands** (Renacer, Av. Cra. 10 No. 21, tel. 8\/732-1201, www.colombianhighlands.com), the same folks running the Renacer hostel. **Armonita Tours** (Av. Perimetral No. 8-08, tel. 1\/643-3883, www.amonitatour.com) can take you to the Santa Sof\u00eda area for waterfall rappelling (COP$85,000), caving (COP$75,000), and the Paso de \u00c1ngel hike (COP$75,000). They also can arrange horseback riding trips to the Pozos Azules, and they rent bikes. In addition, they have day-trip packages to places like Museo El F\u00f3sil de Monquir\u00e1 and the Convento del Santo Ecce Homo. These cost about COP$60,000 and include transportation and entry to the attractions.\n\n###### **BIKE RENTAL**\n\nYou'll need plenty of sunscreen and water, but renting a bike to see the sights in the valley near Villa de Leyva is a great way to spend a day and get some good exercise as you huff and puff up that hill to the Convento del Santo Ecce Homo.\n\nMountain bikes, not necessarily of the highest quality, are readily available for rent in Villa de Leyva. These usually all go for about COP$20,000 for a half day (until 1 or 2pm). **Sentimiento Natura** (Cl. 8 No. 9-47, cell tel. 321\/217-2455) rents bikes, usually from a house that is conveniently located near the road through the valley. **Bici Motos** (Transversal 10 No. 7A-10, Barrio Los Olivos, cell tel. 321\/225-5769) is also on the way, and the friendly owner lives above the bike shop. That means you can get there on the early side (6am-7am) if you want to pick up a bike. (He doesn't mind.) He charges only COP$10,000 for a five-hour rental.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nVilla de Leyva gets hopping on weekends and on holidays, and hotel rates bump up accordingly. Rates are even higher during the Christmas holidays through the second week of January and during Holy Week. During the week you will have your choice of hotels and ought to try to negotiate a better price. Many will provide additional discounts if you pay in cash.\n\nThere aren't many midrange hotel options in town, as most hotels target the luxury hotel market. A number of hotels that call themselves boutique have sprung up in recent years just outside of the town or farther in the valley. They may be comfortable but they may lack in the charm department. Hostels in Villa de Leyva are reliably friendly options, and staff are chock full of knowledge and tips on where to go and what to do.\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nM **Renacer** (Av. Cra. 10 No. 21, tel. 8\/732-1201, www.colombianhighlands.com, COP$35,000 shared room, COP$65,000 d) is the best-known hostel in town and is popular for good reasons. Its location is a hike away from town (about a 15-minute walk), but guests will be reimbursed for their taxi ride upon arrival. It is set amidst green at the foot of a mountain. Facilities are well kept and there is ample open-air common space. There are seven rooms and cabanas for varying numbers of guests, some with private bathrooms. There is also a place for those arriving in campers or vans. The on-site restaurant, **Pekish,** is excellent, with options to please anyone, such as falafels (COP$12,000) and Vietnamese spring rolls (COP$10,000). In addition to the hostel, Renacer, through **Colombian Highlands** (www.colombianhighlands.com), arranges outdoor expeditions to nearby attractions and can even assist in excursions outside of the Villa de Leyva area. They have very good information on how to hike or bike the area solo. This is an excellent place to swap travel tips with backpackers from around the world.\n\nRun by an Austrian-Colombian couple, the M **Casa Viena Hostel** (Cra. 10 No. 19-114, Sector de la Banadera, tel. 8\/732-0711, www.hostel-villadeleyva.com, COP$17,000 s, COP$40,000 d) is a quiet and relaxed guesthouse on the same road as Renacer (just before it). It has just three rooms and the owners live in the same house. You may bump into them going to the shared bathrooms. They opened a new farmhouse in 2013 called **Casa Puente Piedra** (COP$25,000 pp) that is even more tranquil. It is within walking distance of the Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque. They have excellent mountain bikes for rental. These cost COP$25,000 for a half day.\n\nA low-key and lesser-known hostel option is **Hostal Rana** (Cl. 10A No. 10-31, tel. 8\/732-0330, www.hostalrana.com or www.learnspanishinvilladeleyva.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$40,000 d). It opened in 2010 and has one dorm room and four private rooms. Rooms are clean and beds are firm. There is a small kitchen for use. One problem is that the tiny camping area in the courtyard area is sort of icky. They can arrange for Spanish lessons here.\n\nThe no-frills **Hospedaje Los Balcones de la Plaza** (Cl. 13 No. 9-94, cell tel. 314\/360-8568, COP$45,000 pp w\/shared bath) has about four rooms and occupies a corner of real estate overlooking the Plaza Mayor. The views from your balcony can't be beat. They don't provide wireless Internet, but the town government does on the Plaza Mayor. Here there is no common area, but the plaza is as common as it gets.\n\nIf you ask locals for a less expensive hotel option, many will tell you to check out **Hospeder\u00eda Don Paulino** (Cl. 14 No. 7-46, tel. 8\/732-1227, COP$35,000 s, COP$65,000 d). It's not a fancy place by any means, but the price can't be beat! The 16 rooms all have wireless Internet and TV, but the ones on the first floor are a little on the stuffy and small side. From the second floor balcony overlooking the outdoor patio you can enjoy the sunset. There's no breakfast included but each morning they do provide coffee.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nFamily-run **Hospeder\u00eda La Roca** (Cl. 13 No. 9-54, COP$160,000 d) has been a cheapie quietly overlooking the Plaza Mayor for years, but it's no longer a budget option. More than 20 rooms with high ceilings surround two interior courtyards that are filled with greenery. Try for one on the second floor with a squint of a view of the mountains. Around the corner is the welcoming **Posada de Los \u00c1ngeles** (Cra. 10 No. 13-94, tel. 8\/732-0562, COP$110,000 d), a lovely option overlooking the Plazoleta de Carmen. Some rooms have balconies overlooking the church. Take your American-style breakfast in the cheerfully painted patio filled with potted plants and flowers. No wireless Internet.\n\nFriendly and colorful **Sol de la Villa** (Cra. 8A No. 12-28, tel. 8\/732-0224, COP$120,000) has 30-some comfortable rooms and an excellent \"in town\" location. Walls are a little on the thin side, as are curtains. Rooms towards the back and upstairs are best. A nice service they provide, one that all environmentally aware hotels ought to offer, is free filtered water, so there's no need to buy plastic bottles of water each day. The inviting M **Hospeder\u00eda El Marqu\u00e9s de San Jorge** (Cl. 14 No. 9-20, tel. 8\/732-0240, www.hospederiaelmarquesdesanjorge.com, COP$130,000-200,000 d) is just a block from the Plaza Mayor, has two interior patios that are filled with greenery, and has clean and comfortable modern rooms (despite having been around since 1972). It's a bargain compared to other luxury hotels in town.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nThe location of the M **Hotel Plaza Mayor** (Cra. 10 No. 12-31, tel. 8\/732-0425, www.hotelplazamayor.com.co, COP$306,000 d), with a bird's-eye view of the Plaza Mayor from its western side, is unrivaled. The hotel's terrace is a great place to watch goings-on in the plaza and to take a photo of the cathedral bathed in a golden light in late afternoon. Rooms are spacious, some have a fireplace, and all are tastefully decorated. Breakfast is served in the pleasant courtyard.\n\nTwo other upscale options face parks. On the cute Parque Nari\u00f1o, the elegant **Hotel La Posada de San Antonio** (Cra. 8 No. 11-80, tel. 8\/732-0538, www.hotellaposadadesanantonio.com, COP$295,000 d) is lavishly decorated and has a pleasant restaurant area, a cozy reading room, a pool, an art gallery, a billiards room, and even a small chapel. It was originally a wealthy family's home built in 1845. On the Plaza de Ricaurte, the **Hotel Plazuela de San Agust\u00edn** (Cl. 15 No. 8-65, Plaza de Ricaurte, tel. 8\/732-2175, www.hotelplazuela.com, COP$300,000 d) is a cozy hotel with enormous (yet carpeted) rooms. Mornings get off to a nice start with breakfast in the courtyard, near a fountain. The hotel is two blocks from the Plaza Mayor. They have another hotel in the countryside towards Santa Sof\u00eda.\n\n##### **Food**\n\n###### **CAF\u00c9S, BAKERIES, AND QUICK BITES**\n\nThe many caf\u00e9s and bakeries in town have fiercely loyal clienteles. Bakery **Pan T\u00edpica** (Cl. 11 No. 11A-64) is an old local favorite and specializes in _mogolla batida_ (whipped bread). **Panader\u00eda San Francisco** (Cl. 10, 8am-7pm) is famous for its _galletas de maiz_ (corn cookies). The owners of **Pasteler\u00eda Francesa** (Cl. 10 No. 6-05, 9am-7pm Thurs.-Mon.), a French bakery, often skip town, so don't be disappointed if it is closed, foiling your plan to sip a caf\u00e9 au lait accompanied by a _pain au chocolat_ (chocolate croissant). **Panader\u00eda Do\u00f1a Aleja** (Cl. 14 No. 9-21, 8am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-4pm Sun.) is known for its _mogollas_ (rolls).\n\nAt **Sybarita Caffe** (Cra. 9 No. 11-88, cell tel. 316\/481-1872, 8am-8pm daily) the owners are on a mission to bring coffee appreciation to the masses. Even if you are one of those \"coffee is coffee\" people, once you try one of their coffees (from the southern Colombian highland departments of Cauca or Nari\u00f1o), you may just be jolted out of your slumber. That's some good coffee! If you want your coffee from the Coffee Region, Quind\u00edo to be specific, then **Caf\u00e9 Los Gallos** (Cra. 8 No. 12-96, cell tel. 300\/659-9511, 9am-8pm daily) is your place. This sweet place is filled with rooster paraphernalia; it's named after the family name.\n\n**Gelateria Pizzer\u00eda Santa Lucia** (Cra. 10 No. 10-27, cell tel. 314\/305-8150, 11am-9:30pm) serves homemade ice cream and yogurts. It's all natural, and the pizza's not bad either. If you just want a thin crust pizza without a big production and expense try **Crepes Pizza y Algo M\u00e1s** (Cra. 9 11-80, cell tel. 313\/854-2051, www.crepespizza.blogspot.com, 6pm-10pm Mon.-Thurs., 1pm-10pm Fri.-Sun., COP$12,000).\n\n**Merengues y Besitos** (Cra. 9 No. 11-84, cell tel. 312\/394-3601, 10am-7pm daily) has very sweet sweets wrapped in colorful packaging.\n\n###### **COLOMBIAN**\n\nThe **Albahaca Restaurante-Bar Viejoteca** (Cra. 8A No. 13-46, cell tel. 313\/844-6613, 10am-9pm daily) is a favorite for visitors for two reasons: the lovely ambience, especially in the evening, and for its non-outrageous prices! Their top dishes include _cuchuco de trigo con espinazo de cerdo_ (buckwheat soup with pork back, COP$17,000) and grilled trout in _uchuva_ (Peruvian groundcherry) sauce (COP$18,000). Ask for a table in the garden or by the fireplace. The word _viejoteca_ is in the name because the owners like oldies music.\n\n**MiCocina** (Cl. 13 No. 8-45, tel. 8\/732-1676, www.restaurantemicocina.com, noon-10pm daily, COP$25,000), where there is a cooking school within the restaurant, has earned a name for itself as an ever-so-slightly upscale restaurant serving the best of Colombian cuisine. After a _calentado bogotano,_ a beloved hangover cure made with fried eggs and potatoes, save room for the cheese ice cream from Paipa. It's mostly Colombian meat-based dishes here, but they offer a few vegetarian plates.\n\nLocals tend to steer clear of the overpriced restaurants on the Plaza Mayor. When it comes to _comida,_ it's got to be _buena, mucha, y barrata_ (good, plentiful, and cheap). Close to the Terminal de Transportes, but not too close, **Los Kioscos de los Caciques** (Cra. 9 No. 9-05, cell tel. 311\/475-8681, noon-3pm and 6pm-8pm daily, COP$6,000) specializes in filling local dishes such as _mazamorra chiquita_ (beef stew with potatoes, corn, and other vegetables) and _cuchuco con espinazo_ (stew with a base of pork spine and potatoes). You can also order from the menu. It's an atmospheric place, where you dine in thatched kiosks. At the Saturday market, those in the know go to **Donde Salvador** (between Clls. 12-13 and Cras. 5-6, Plaza de Mercado) for _mute rostro de cordero,_ a hearty corn-based soup with lamb. You can also, of course, pick up plenty of cheap and fresh fruit. **La Parilla** (Cra. 9 No. 9-17, 7am-9pm daily, set lunch COP$5,000) is an everyman kind of place. At the plaza, **Estar de la Villa** (Cl. 13 No. 8-58, tel. 8\/732-0251, 10am-9pm daily, COP$8,000) is always packed, often with employees from some of the fancier restaurants nearby.\n\n**Traveling Taste Buds**\n\nHot, sweet, and gooey\u2014the arepas of Tinjac\u00e1 are worth both the calories and the trip.\n\nForget about counting calories as you try these local specialties near Villa de Leyva.\n\n**WINE**\n\nVilla de Leyva is one of a handful of areas in Colombia where wine is produced. Take a tour of **Vi\u00f1edo Aim Karim** (Km. 10 V\u00eda Santa Sof\u00eda, cell tel. 317\/518-2746, www.marquesvl.com, 10am-5pm, COP$5,000) and try their Marqu\u00e9s de la Villa wine. Their sauvignon blanc won an award in Brussels in 2011.\n\n**SAUSAGE**\n\nAbout 25 kilometers west of Villa de Leyva, the town of Sutamarch\u00e1n is famous for its spicy _longaniza_ sausage. The best place to sample this is at **La Fogata** (tel. 8\/725-1249, www.longanizasutamarchan.com). It's on the main road on the left as you go toward R\u00e1quira.\n\n**AREPAS**\n\nMost visitors to Colombia develop a love or hate relationship with arepas, corn-based pancakes that accompany just about every meal. Every region has their own distinct type of arepa, and every Colombian believes that theirs is superior to the rest. It would be hard to find anyone who could resist the famed _arepa quesuda_ from the town of **Tinjac\u00e1** about 18 kilometers southwest of Villa de Leyva. Meaning \"sweating arepa,\" _arepa quesudas_ are two small arepas with sweet, melted cheese in the middle. They're a big mess to eat, but they're so good.\n\n**JAM**\n\nTinjac\u00e1 is also known for its delicious jams made by **El Robledal** (Vereda Santa B\u00e1rbara, cell tel. 310\/226-5299, www.elrobledal.co). Check out their exotic fruit jams such as _uchuva, lulo,_ and rhubarb. Their products can also be found in Villa de Leyva at the Savia restaurant in the Casa Quintero on the Plaza Mayor.\n\n**BROILED HEN**\n\nS\u00e1chica is an orderly, quiet town just outside of Villa de Leyva on the way toward Tunja. Here, the local specialty is broiled hen. Try it at **La Candelaria** (Cl. 3 No. 2-48, cell tel. 311\/845-7786).\n\n###### **INTERNATIONAL**\n\n**Mercado Municipal** (Cra. 8 No. 12-25, tel. 8\/732-0229, noon-3pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-3pm and 8-midnight Fri.-Sun. and holidays, COP$22,000) has without a doubt one of the coolest settings in VDL. It is in a courtyard (which was once the third patio of a parsonage) filled with herb gardens in which a traditional Mexican barbecue wood-burning oven is built into the ground. In it they cook their famous barbecued goat. International dishes on the menu include pastas and several vegetarian offerings. It's open for breakfast on the weekends and there is a nice bakery in front. The set lunch special is a very good deal.\n\nAuthentic French food can be found in Villa de Leyva! That would be at **Chez Remy** (Cra. 9 No. 13-25, tel. 311\/848-5000, noon-10pm Fri.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$24,000). The French-inspired dishes include a _quenelle de mar_ (COP$28,000) that combines a myriad of tastes from the faraway sea: salmon, hake, shrimp, and lobster. But on chilly nights, the French onion soup (COP$9,000) really hits the spot.\n\nThe **Casa Quintero** on the corner of the Plaza Mayor has several restaurants in a sort of fancy food court setting. There is a little something for everyone here, including a Lebanese restaurant, a surprisingly filling arepa joint, and a pizza place. If you are in the mood for Mexican, try **La Bonita,** run by the same people as the Mercado Municipal, where you can sample delicious dishes such as _lomo a la tampiquena_ (COP$33,000), which includes grilled baby beef, a chicken flauta, a quesadilla, and rice with beans. Or go for a barbecued pork taco (COP$26,000).\n\nWhile you await your rosemary, veggie, _higo_ (fig), or barbecue burger (COP$8,500) and refreshing basil lemonade at **Vastago** (Cl. 13 No. 8-43, 9am-8pm daily, COP$17,000), you can check out the little shops and stands in a sort of arcade that has several small shops (ceramics, jewelry) and vendors (old Colombian magazines, antiques). There's a cupcake caf\u00e9 in back if you want something sweet afterwards.\n\n**La Ricotta** (Cra. 10 No. 11-49, tel. 8\/732-1042, noon-10pm Fri.-Sun., COP$16,000) makes its own pastas and is a reasonably priced Italian cuisine option.\n\n###### **VEGETARIAN**\n\n**Casa Salud Natural** (Cl. 12 No. 10-74, no phone, noon-9pm daily, COP$14,000) is a mostly lunch place where you get a set meal of a soup and a vegetable protein. A pricey vegetarian\/organic restaurant, **Savia** (Casa Quintero, Plaza Mayor, tel. 8\/732-1778, noon-9pm Thurs.-Mon., COP$25,000) has an extensive menu and also sells locally produced jams and other items for sale in their _tienda_ (store).\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThe Villa de Leyva **tourist office** (corner Cra. 9 and Cl. 13, off of Plaza Mayor, tel. 8\/732-0232, 8am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-1pm and 3pm-6pm Sun.) has free tourist maps and brochures. There are several ATMs in Villa de Leyva, particularly along the southern end of the Plaza Mayor. Internet caf\u00e9s are also numerous.\n\nAn efficient and inexpensive laundry service in town near the bus terminal is **Lava Express** (Cra. 8 No. 8-21, cell tel. 320\/856-1865, 8am-noon and 2pm-7pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-7pm Sat.). They can provide rush service and pick up and return your items to your hotel.\n\nIn case of an emergency contact the **Polic\u00eda Nacional** (tel. 8\/732-1412 or 8\/732-0391) or the **Hospital San Francisco** (tel. 8\/732-0516 or 8\/732-0244).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nWith a recently expanded four-lane highway that bypasses Tunja, Villa de Leyva is easily accessible by private car or by public bus from Bogot\u00e1, as well as from Tunja. It isn't a crazy idea to rent a car in Bogot\u00e1 and drive to Villa de Leyva. That gives you a lot of flexibility to be able to drive around the countryside and visit enchanting pueblos to your heart's content! Nearly all hotels have parking lots.\n\nThere are a few direct buses to Villa de Leyva from Bogot\u00e1 (COP$20,000); however, often it is quicker and easier to take a bus from the Terminal Norte to Tunja and then transfer to a _buseta_ (small bus) onward towards Villa de Leyva. These leave around every 15 minutes from the Terminal Villa de Leyva, not the main bus terminal. The last bus leaves Tunja at 7pm. This trip costs just COP$6,000.\n\nVice versa, the last bus bound for Tunja departs the **Terminal de Transportes** (Cra. 9 between Clls. 11-12) in Villa de Leyva at 6pm. It takes about 45 minutes.\n\nReturning to Bogot\u00e1, several companies offer two daily buses that depart between 5 and 6am and again at around 1pm. There are many more options on Saturdays, Sundays, and Monday holidays. These tend to leave in the late afternoon at around 3pm.\n\nTo get to Villa de Leyva from Bucaramanga or San Gil in Santander, you'll have to hop on a bus to Tunja. This highway that extends from Bogot\u00e1 to Venezuela is a busy one, and the journey can take five or six hours.\n\nOnce in Villa de Leyva, it is easy (and more importantly, a pleasure) to walk everywhere. A few streets around the Plaza Mayor, including the main drag, the Calle 13, are pedestrian only. Even on non-pedestrian streets it's hard for vehicles to zoom along.\n\n##### **Vicinity of Villa de Leyva**\n\n###### M **SANTUARIO FLORA Y FAUNA IGUAQUE**\n\nOne of the country's most accessible national parks is about 13 kilometers from Villa de Leyva. The **Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, COP$37,500 non-Colombians, COP$14,000 residents in Colombia, COP$7,500 children and students) is an excellent place to experience the unique landscape of the Andean _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor) as well as dry tropical forest. The protected area extends for some 6,750 hectares. It is also a park of several _lagunas_ (mountain lakes). The Laguna Iguaque in particular is known as a sacred lake for the Muisca Indians who predominated in the area. According to their beliefs, the goddess Bachu\u00e9 was born out of the blue-green waters of this lake, giving birth to humanity.\n\nMost day-trippers based in Villa de Leyva visit the park to make the climb up to the Laguna Iguaque. The climb, which takes you through three ecosystems\u2014Andean forest, sub- _p\u00e1ramo_ , and _p\u00e1ramo_ \u2014begins at the Centro Administrativo Carrizal at an elevation of 2,800 meters (9,185 feet) and ends 4.6 kilometers (2.6 miles) later at the Laguna Iguaque (3,650 meters\/11,975 feet). The enjoyable hike takes about 3-4 hours to make. Along the way you may be able to spot different species of birds and perhaps some deer or foxes. At the mist-shrouded Laguna Iguaque, you'll be surrounded by hundreds of _frailejones,_ an unusual cactus-like plant found only in this special ecosystem.\n\nIt is best to make the hike during the week, as the trails get crowded on weekends. You do not need a guide for the hike to the Laguna Iguaque. During particularly dry spells the threat of forest fires forces the park to forbid entry to visitors. That is most likely to occur in January or August. Ask beforehand at your hostel or hotel to find out if the park is open to visitors.\n\nIf you are interested in exploring other paths in the park, consider overnighting at the **Centro de Visitantes Furachiogua,** the park's basic accommodations facilities (catering mostly to student groups). Seven rooms have 6-8 beds each (COP$38,000 pp), and the restaurant is open to day-trippers as well. This is about 700 meters beyond the Centro Administrativo Carrizal. There are camping facilities near the cabins (COP$10,000 pp). To inquire about accommodations or to make a reservation contact the community organization **Naturar-Iguaque** (cell tel. 312\/585-9892 or 318\/595-5643, naturariguaque@yahoo.es). A guided walk to the Laguna Iguaque costs COP$80,000 for a group of 1-6.\n\nBuses serving the town of Arcabuco from the bus station in Villa de Leyva can stop at the Casa de Piedra (8 km from Villa de Leyva). The first bus leaves at 6am with another departing at 10am. From there it's about three kilometers\/two miles (about an hour's walk) to the east to the Centro Administrativo Carrizal visitors center.\n\n###### **PALEONTOLOGICAL SITES**\n\nDuring the Cretaceous period (66-145 million years ago), the area around Villa de Leyva was submerged in an inland sea. Some of the marine species that lived in the area included the pliosaurus, plesiosaurus, and ichthyosaurus.\n\nTowards the end of this period, many species became extinct. Simultaneously the Andes mountains were created when the earth shifted. As the waters gave way to mountains, the bones of these species became imbedded in rock, guaranteeing their preservation. Today there are a handful of paleontological sites worth visiting, where you can view fossils of parts of massive dinosaurs to small ammonites, of which there are thousands. Excavations continue throughout the valley.\n\nIn 1977, locals made a fantastic discovery: a distant relative of carnivorous marine reptiles from the pliosaurus family, to be classified as a _Kronosaurus boyacensis Hampe._ It roamed this part of the earth some 110 million years ago. The first ever find of this species in the world can be seen, imbedded in the earth extending for about 10 meters, in the location of its discovery at the **Museo El F\u00f3sil de Monquir\u00e1** (Km. 4 V\u00eda Santa Sof\u00eda, Vereda Monquir\u00e1, www.museoelfosil.com, COP$6,000). Guides give a brief tour of the museum, which has hundreds of other animal and plant fossils on display. This is a major tourist sight, and there are souvenir shops and juice stands nearby.\n\nAcross the street from Museo El F\u00f3sil de Monquir\u00e1 is the **Centro de Investigaciones Paleontol\u00f3gicas** (cell tel. 314\/219-2904, www.centropaleo.com, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Mon., Wed., and Thurs., 8am-5pm Fri.-Sun., COP$8,000), which opened in late 2012. On view here are parts of a _Platypterygius boyacensis,_ as well as a _Callawayasaurus colombiensis,_ which were all found nearby. While the center is a museum as well, the main focus of this nonprofit organization is research. Technicians in lab coats and white gloves carefully work behind the glass preparing and preserving fossils (Fri.-Sun.). An informative 20-minute tour of the center in Spanish is included.\n\n**Gondava** (Km. 6 V\u00eda Santa Sof\u00eda, www.granvalle.com, 9am-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$13,000) is more about fun than paleontology. This park is geared toward kids, taking visitors back in time, around 100 million years ago, when Earth was the domain of giant dinosaurs. This park has to-scale replicas of dozens of terrestrial and aquatic dinosaurs. The largest is the _brachiosaurus,_ which stands 14 meters (46 feet) high. Other park attractions include a playground, labyrinth, and a 3-D movie theater.\n\nOn the northeastern edge of town is the **Museo Paleontol\u00f3gico de Villa de Leyva** (Cra. 9 No. 11-42, tel. 8\/732-0466, www.paleontologico.unal.edu.co, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sat., 9am-3pm Sun., COP$3,000). Run by the Universidad Nacional, this museum provides an introduction to the fossils that have been found in the area, which date back 110-130 millions of years ago. On display are ammonites, which have become a symbol for the area, and other prehistoric animals that roamed the area. In addition, the museum has an arboretum with gardens of palms, oaks, and an Andean forest. This is behind the museum. It is about a 15-minute walk from the Plaza Mayor to the museum. On weekday mornings it can be a zoo with school groups being herded through.\n\n###### **CONVENTO DEL SANTO ECCE HOMO**\n\nSet idyllically atop a hill overlooking the town, the **Convento del Santo Ecce Homo** monastery (Cra. 6A No. 51A-78, tel. 1\/288-6373, 9am-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$5,000) was founded by the Dominicans on Palm Sunday in 1620. The monks were evicted on several occasions from this, their beautiful home. During the struggle for independence it was taken over by rebel troops under the command of a French general in 1816. In a matter of weeks the Spaniards seized it. Following definitive independence, President Santander, not a huge fan of the church, annexed the convent and ordered it to be used as a school. It was finally recuperated by the Dominicans in 1868.\n\nThe monastery is a delight to visit. Believers may find inspiration here; non-believers will appreciate the quiet beauty of its setting. In addition to the church, there are two striking small baroque chapels, plus a museum. Part of the museum is dedicated to indigenous cultures in the area. A monk's cell, library, and dining hall area provide a glimpse into monastery life. Surrounded by stone columns, the courtyard is awash in a rainbow of colors, with flowers always in bloom. Across the street from the monastery is a guesthouse and camping area open to the public.\n\nFor those feeling energetic, the trip up to the monastery makes for a great bike ride from Villa de Leyva. Be sure to get an early start and stop off at the **Cabanita Roja** (Vereda Barbilla, 1 km before the monastery, cell tel. 321\/211-9653) for a pick-me-up snack to give you the stamina to conquer that last long hill.\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nA popular hike for those seeking a thrill is the **Paso de \u00c1ngel** near the town of **Santa Sof\u00eda.** It's about six kilometers from town. The thrill comes when you walk along a narrow precipice between two canyons. You can take public transportation to Santa Sof\u00eda and walk to the Paso de Angel. **Colombian Highlands** (Renacer, Av. Cra. 10 No. 21, tel. 8\/732-1201, cell tel. 311\/308-3739, www.colombiahighlands.com) offers tours to the area and has maps if you'd like to do this on your own. You can take public transportation to Santa Sof\u00eda and walk to the Paso de Angel.\n\nThe popular **La Periquera Waterfalls** can be reached by taking a _colectivo_ (small bus) bound for Gachantiva and getting off at El Uvalito. There are several falls, but the most impressive has a drop of 15 meters. The entrance to the falls is about 11 kilometers (7 miles) from town. This trip can be easily made on bike as well. A restaurant at the entrance serves snacks.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nThe environs of Villa de Leyva can be visited on bike, by taxi, or by public transportation. **CoomultransVilla** has hourly buses in the mornings, more or less, from the Terminal de Transportes in Villa de Leyva to Santa Sof\u00eda (COP$2,500) departing at 6:45am, 8am, 9am, and 10am. They can let you off within easy walking distance of all the sights (Museo El F\u00f3sil de Monquir\u00e1, Convento del Santo Ecce Homo, etc.), as well as Santa Sof\u00eda if you are interested in the Paso de \u00c1ngel walk. Check the opening hours of the sights you'd like to visit so that you won't have to wait around to enter. There are also buses in the afternoon. The last bus departing Santa Sof\u00eda bound for Villa de Leyva leaves at around 4. You'll have to be on the lookout for it and flag it down. This company also can take you to the Periquera waterfalls (take the Gachantiva bus), fairly close to Iguaque (Arcabuco bus), and to R\u00e1quira. It's easy and cheap. It's best to confirm all the bus schedules in advance.\n\n#### **R\u00c1QUIRA**\n\nThis town, 28 kilometers (17 miles) away from Villa de Leyva, is synonymous with _artesan\u00edas_ (handicrafts). The main drag is lined with colorful shops, where in a one-stop shopping frenzy you can pick up **handicrafts** of every size and shape and from all across the country (and even from China): hammocks, _mochilas_ (hats or handbags), and row after row of trinkets.\n\nIt's easy to be turned off by the trinket shopping scene, but there is some authenticity to be found in this little town. R\u00e1quira is the capital of Colombian **ceramics** and has been since before the arrival of the Spaniards. In fact, it is said that the name R\u00e1quira means \"city of clay pots\" in the Chibcha language of the Muiscas, who lived in the area. All of those reddish flower pots and planters you may have seen throughout the country most likely came from here.\n\nSeveral shops in town specialize in pottery, and behind the shops you will often see trucks being carefully loaded up with pottery as they fulfill orders from across Colombia and beyond. One big shop within two blocks of the pleasant Parque Principal (Cras. 3-4 and Clls. 3-4) where you can peruse aisles upon aisles of the pottery is **Todo R\u00e1quira** (Cra. 5 No. 3A-05, tel. 8\/735-7000, www.todoraquira.com, 9am-6pm daily). The front of the store is filled with a variety of handicrafts, but if you meander to the back, you'll see their pottery factory and can check out bowls, flowerpots, and other items. Many designs are elegant in their simplicity, like the many square planters. It is said that some 500 families in the area make their living harvesting the clay in nearby areas or firing the pottery in their own workshops. A dwindling number of women in the area do things the old-fashioned way\u2014with their hands. They make mostly decorative items like candlestick holders and clay hen piggybanks. These aren't perfect, but they have so much character.\n\nR\u00e1quira is Colombia's ceramics capital.\n\nIf you'd like to observe the ceramic-making process you can visit the _taller_ (workshop) of **Isaias Valero** (cell tel. 310\/774-5287, COP$5,000 suggested donation). You can watch him at work, and he can show you the multi-day steps that go into to the process. If he is there, Isaias will gladly welcome your visit. To get to the workshop, walk up about 68 steps on the right just before the Casa de la Cultura.\n\n##### **Convento de la Candelaria**\n\nOne of the oldest monasteries in Latin America, and one that is still in use today, is the **Convento de la Candelaria** near R\u00e1quira. A pair of Augustinian missionaries arrived in this desert area in 1588 with the mission of bringing Christianity to the native Muisca people. They lived in caves (which you can visit) until the monastery was constructed.\n\nThe complex includes two cloisters, which hold a chapel and a museum. The museum is a hodgepodge of religious art and objects, examples of technological advances through the years\u2014from a _reloj borracho_ (drunken clock) to an early Apple computer\u2014and a display on the Colombian saint Ezequiel Moreno y D\u00edaz, who is said to have healed cancer victims.\n\nYou may see a handful of young soon-to-be priests doing upkeep, often softly singing, in one of the colorful courtyards. They live in one part of the monastery with older monks in another.\n\nAdjacent to the monastery is a modern hotel, **Posada San Agust\u00edn** (vocaciones@agustinosrecoletos.com.co, COP$168,000 d), which often hosts yoga and meditation retreats. Rooms are immaculately clean and completely free from clutter. Some even have hot tubs. At nighttime you can sit around a fire in the common area and sip hot, spiced wine. Meals are served in the restaurant, and they can also prepare vegetarian food. It's a quiet and peaceful place and there are some walks you can do nearby, one leading to a waterfall (a 1.5-hour walk).\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nBuses from Villa de Leyva to R\u00e1quira depart from the Terminal de Transportes, leaving between 7am and 8:30am. You may, however, prefer to hire a cab for the day, especially if you're traveling in a small group. Cab drivers typically charge COP$80,000 (for the car) to visit the Convento de la Candelaria and R\u00e1quira, for example, with a couple of stops along the way. They will _esperar_ (wait) for you to visit each stop. Be specific about where you want to go and the price at the beginning (put things in writing) to avoid unpleasant surprises later. If you are in a group you may want to upgrade to a minivan. Contact **Transportes G &J** (cell tel. 313\/259-0589 or 311\/746-8434) for a minivan.\n\nIf you'd like to visit the monastery, you can rent a taxi from R\u00e1quira, which will cost about COP$20,000-30,000 round-trip. The trip takes about 15 minutes each way to make. (The taxi driver will wait for you while you visit it.) You can also take public transportation from the Parque Principal, and the bus can leave you at the intersection with a dirt road that leads to the monastery. Buses (COP$2,000) are infrequent, however. You can also walk to the monastery from town. It's a pretty seven-kilometer (four-mile) walk through the hilly countryside to reach the monastery from there.\n\n#### **TUNJA**\n\nThis university town (pop. 178,000), home to the Universidad de Boyac\u00e1, boasts some spectacular churches. Make sure you arrive during church visiting hours, as the city does not have much else to offer. As there are frequent bus connections with Bogot\u00e1 and Santander, Tunja is a good base from which to explore Boyac\u00e1.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nEverything you need to see in Tunja is located in its _centro hist\u00f3rico._\n\n###### M **HISTORIC CHURCHES**\n\nTunja is a city of churches, with over a dozen that date to colonial times. Hours of visitation can be irregular, but they are always open for mass, which is a good time to take a look. Most churches celebrate mass at about 7am and 6pm daily, with more frequent masses on Sundays. There tend to be more churches open for visitation in the mornings (8am-11:30am) than in the afternoons.\n\nOn the eastern side of the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (Cl. 19 at Cra. 9), **Catedral Santiago de Tunja** (Cra. 9 at Cl. 19) is a 16th-century construction, originally built out of wood and earthen _tapia pisada,_ which is an adobe technique. It was the first cathedral to be built in Nueva Granada. It has three naves, four side chapels, and two front chapels.\n\n**Santa Clara La Real** (Cra. 7 No. 19-58, Cl. 21 No. 11-31, tel. 8\/742-5659 or 8\/742-3194, 8am-11:30am and 3pm-4:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-11:30am Sat., masses 7am and 5pm Mon.-Sat., 7am, 11am, and 5pm Sun.) was built between 1571 and 1574 and was the first Clarisa convent in Nueva Granada. It has one nave with spectacular gold decorations adoring its presbytery with golden garlands, grapes, pineapples (which were a sacred indigenous symbol), pelicans, an anthropomorphic sun, and other symbols of nature. Also look for the seal of Tunja, the double-headed eagle, modeled on the seal of Emperor Charles V, who gave the city its charter. In the choir is the tiny cell where Madre Josefa del Castillo lived for over 50 years in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. From there she wrote two books and several poems, with themes of sexual repression and mystical descriptions of heaven and hell. Near her cell are some frescoes made with coal, an abundant resource in the area. The adjacent Convento Santa Clara La Real was undergoing a painstakingly careful restoration at the time of writing.\n\nThe sky-blue interior of the **Iglesia de Santa B\u00e1rbara** (Cra. 11 No. 16-62, between Clls. 16-17, tel. 8\/742-3021, 8:30am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm daily, masses 5:30pm and 6pm Mon.-Fri., 7am, 9am, 10am, and 11am Sat., noon, 5pm, 6pm, and 7pm Sun.) and Mudejar ceiling designs make this one of the prettiest churches in Tunja. The single-nave structure, with two chapels making the form of a cross, was completed in 1599. When it was built, it was raised at the edge of Tunja, near an indigenous settlement.\n\nBuilt in the 1570s, the **Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzm\u00e1n** (Cra. 11 No. 19-55, tel. 8\/742-4725, 8am-11:30am Mon.-Fri., 7am and 6pm masses Mon.-Fri., 7am and 6pm masses Sat., 7am, 10am, noon, and 6pm masses Sun.) is one of the most elaborately decorated churches in Colombia. Visitors have been known to audibly gasp at their first sight of the spectacular Capilla del Rosario, a chapel constructed of wood painted in red and gold-plated floral designs. It's often dubbed the Sistine Chapel of baroque art in Latin America. Figures of El Nazareno and El Jud\u00edo Errante are part of the collection of paintings and woodcarvings in this church with several chapels. If you have time to visit just one church in Tunja, make it this one.\n\nThe **Claustro de San Agust\u00edn** (Cra. 8 No. 23-08, tel. 8\/742-2311, ext. 8306, www.banrepcultural.org\/tunja, 8:30am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., free) dates to the late 16th century. It served as an Augustinian convent until 1821, when it was taken over by the government. The friars were sent to another convent, and the building would become the home of the Colegio de Boyac\u00e1 and later transferred to the Universidad de Boyac\u00e1. Adorning the corridors around the patio are several murals dating back to the colonial era. The _claustro_ (cloister) is administered by the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica, and they often hold cultural events here. You can settle down with a book or work on your computer in the pleasant reading rooms.\n\nOther religious sights worth visiting include the 17th-century **Iglesia San Ignacio** (Cra. 10 No. 18-41, tel. 8\/742-6611, 8am-noon and 2pm-5pm Wed.-Sat.), which now serves as a theater, and the **Templo y Convento San Francisco** (Cra. 10 No. 22-32, tel. 8\/742-3194, 10:30am-12:30pm and 3pm-5:30pm daily, 7am, 11am, noon, and 7pm mass Mon.-Fri., 11am, noon, 6pm, and 7pm mass Sat., 8am, 10am, 11am, noon, 5pm, 6pm, and 7pm mass Sun.), one of the oldest churches and monasteries in Tunja. It was an important base for evangelization of nearby indigenous communities.\n\na decorative church ceiling\n\n###### **MUSEUMS**\n\nThe Mudejar-Andalusian style **Casa del Fundador Gonzalo Su\u00e1rez Rend\u00f3n** (Cra. 9 No. 19-68, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 8\/742-3272, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily, COP$3,000) was built in the middle of the 16th century. The most remarkable aspects of the house are the frescoes of mythological creatures, human figures, exotic animals, and plants. These whimsical paintings date from the 17th century, although not much else is known about them.\n\n**Casa del Escribano del Rey Don Juan de Vargas** (Cl. 20 No. 8-52, tel. 8\/74-26611, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Fri., 9am-noon and 2pm-4pm Sat.-Sun., COP$2,000) was owned by an important person in colonial Tunja, the scribe to the king. The scribe's jurisdiction covered all of present-day Boyac\u00e1, Santander, Norte de Santander, and parts of Venezuela and Cundinamarca. Student guides will give you a thorough tour of the museum. The house showcases furniture and other examples of colonial life, but the highlight of this Andalusian-style house has to be the unusual painted ceilings portraying exotic animals and mythological creatures, similar to the frescoes that can be found in the Casa del Fundador.\n\nThe childhood home of former president Gustavo Rojas Pinilla is now a museum: **Museo Hist\u00f3rico Casa Cultural Gustavo Rojas Pinilla** (Cl. 17 No. 10-63, tel. 8\/742-6814, 8:30am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.). Rojas, after seizing power in 1953, became the only dictator that Colombia has ever had. Upstairs are two exhibition spaces, one with memorabilia of Rojas and the other with portraits of 12 presidents that hailed from Boyac\u00e1. Despite his anti-democratic credentials, Rojas is revered in Tunja as the man who brought the mid-20th-century violence between Liberals and Conservatives to an end.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nSmall **7 Kuero's** (Cl. 23 No. 9-90, tel. 8\/743-7328, josekueros@hotmail.com, 9am-5pm Mon.-Sat.) is a shop specializing in leather goods. Next to the cathedral, the **Sombrer\u00eda Richard** (Cr. 9 No. 19-06, tel. 8\/747-1276, daily) is an old-school hat shop selling hats that seem to be from the 1950s.\n\n**Unicentro** (Av. Universitaria No. 39-77, tel. 8\/745-4108, 8am-11pm daily) is Tunja's mall, holding a movie theater, food court, and a _plazoleta de caf\u00e9s,_ an area with many different caf\u00e9s. It is located in the modern neighborhood of La Pradera, to the north of downtown.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nMost overnight visitors to Tunja stay in the decent hotels in the _centro hist\u00f3rico_ within easy walking distance of the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar and sights of interest.\n\nTwo blocks from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar is M **Hotel Casa Real** (Cl. 19 No. 7-65, tel. 8\/743-1764, www.hotelcasarealtunja.com, COP$58,000 s, COP$72,000 d), which is a colonial-style house with 10 rooms surrounding a divine courtyard. That's where a very nice breakfast is served for an additional cost in the morning. You can order your breakfast the night before and even request it to be delivered to your room. Rooms are tastefully decorated and comfortable. Prices here are astoundingly low. The courtyard walls are decorated with lovely tile paintings depicting Boyac\u00e1 country scenes. The artist, **Adriano Guio** (cell tel. 314\/319-0822, aguio1@hotmail.com), has a studio near the town of Nobsa.\n\nAcross the street from Hotel Casa Real is the **Hotel Ocet\u00e1** (Cl. 19 No. 7-64, tel. 8\/742-2886, www.hotelocetatunja.com, COP$90,000 d). It opened in 2012 and is clean and functional; beds are firm.\n\nWith the same owners as Hotel Casa Real, **Hotel Alicante** (Cra. 8 No. 19-15, tel. 8\/744-9967, www.hotelalicantetunja.com, COP$72,000 d) caters to business clientele. This small hotel may not have the charm of Casa Real, but it is clean and matter of fact.\n\nThe fancy hotel in town is, as it has been for decades, the **Hotel Hunza** (Cl. 21A No. 10-66, tel. 8\/742-4111, www.hotelhunza.com, COP$228,000 d). It's got luxurious king-size beds and card keys to get in. Amenities include a decent sized indoor pool and a steam room. Its neighbor is the Iglesia Santo Domingo, which makes for a strange view. The hotel is a popular place for wedding banquets. There is a lively bar near the entrance, but it shouldn't keep you up at night.\n\n##### **Food**\n\n_Comida t\u00edpica_ (Colombian fare) rules the day in this city lacking in restaurant options. For a really local, greasy-spoon-type experience, try **Restaurante Maizal** (Cra. 9 No. 20-30, tel. 8\/742-5876, 7am-8:45pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-4:45pm Sun., COP$12,000). It has been serving _sancocho_ (beef stews), _mondongo_ (tripe stew), and _ajiaco_ (chicken and potato soup) to Tunja for over 50 years. Another old-timer is **El Bodeg\u00f3n Express** (Cra. 10 No. 18-45, cell tel. 321\/221-4460, 8am-4pm Mon.-Sat., COP$10,000). It's next to the Iglesia San Ignacio. It specializes in trout dishes and _cocido boyacense_ (COP$6,000), which has a variety of meats and some of the unusual tubers from the area, such as _cubios, ibias,_ and _rubas._\n\nM **Empanadas de Mi Tierra** (Cra. 10 No. 17-67, cell tel. 320\/414-0857, 10am-7pm daily) is a fast food joint that has 15 types of empanadas, with varieties such as Mexican, Asian, vegetarian, and cheese with quail's eggs. And you can douse them with many types of sauces. The empanadas go down well with a cool _avena cubana,_ a creamy and cold oatmeal drink.\n\n**Pizza Nostra** (Cl. 19 No. 10-63, tel. 8\/740-2040, 11am-8pm daily, COP$18,000) has a few locations in and around town. The most famous one is at the Pozo de Donado (tel. 8\/740-4200, 11am-11pm daily), a small park and Muisca archaeological site surrounding a lake.\n\nIt's a tradition in Tunja to while away the hours in caf\u00e9s. It must be the chilly weather. While the actual coffee around town may disappoint, the atmosphere, with groups of retirees dressed in suits brushing shoulders with bevies of college students, does not. Put some _aguardiente_ (anise-flavored liquor) in your coffee and enjoy the great view from the second floor of **Caf\u00e9 Tabore** (Cl. 19 No. 9-57, tel. 8\/742-2048, 7am-8pm daily), overlooking the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. The lively Pasaje Vargas on the west side of the plaza is lined with several caf\u00e9s. Try **Capital Caf\u00e9** (7am-7pm daily), which is at the entrance of the _pasaje_ (passage) close to the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. **Caf\u00e9 San Rafael** (Cra. 11 No. 18-35, no phone, 8:30am-8pm Mon.-Sat.) is a tad more elegant than the rest.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nSituated 150 kilometers northeast of Bogot\u00e1 and 21 kilometers southeast of Villa de Leyva, Tunja is easy to get to by car or by bus. Buses to Bogot\u00e1, other towns in Boyac\u00e1, and to all major cities in Colombia depart from the **Terminal de Transportes** (Cra. 7 No. 16-40). Buses from Bogot\u00e1 cost about COP$18,000 and from Villa de Leyva are COP$6,000. The best way to get around the _centro hist\u00f3rico_ is on foot.\n\n##### **Puente de Boyac\u00e1**\n\nThis war memorial on the road between Bogot\u00e1 and Tunja celebrates a decisive battle, the **Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1,** that effectively ended Spanish control of Nueva Granada. At this site today there are several memorials and statues, including the Plaza de Banderas, where flags from all the departments of Colombia fly. There is also a sculpture of Gen. Francisco Paula de Santander and a large sculpture of Gen. Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar surrounded by angels representing the South American countries that he liberated (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela). There is a small bridge on the memorial grounds, but this is from the 1930s; the original Puente de Boyac\u00e1 long gone.\n\nSantander and Bol\u00edvar achieved immortality as heroes of Colombian independence for their victory here. After defeating the Spaniards at the Batalla del Pantano de Vargas on July 25, 1819, revolutionary troops under their command marched toward Bogot\u00e1. South of Tunja, they engaged with the main Spanish army, defeating it decisively on August 7 at the Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1. The engagement was a small affair with fewer than 3,000 men on each side, with about 100 royalists and only 13 rebels losing their lives. Bol\u00edvar marched onward to Bogot\u00e1, which he took without a fight, ushering in independence.\n\nAt 6pm every day there is a short flag-lowering ceremony. You can have your picture taken with Colombian soldiers. Buses passing through between Bogot\u00e1 and Tunja can drop you off here, or you can contract a taxi from Tunja.\n\n#### **TUNJA TO LAGO TOTA**\n\n##### **Paipa**\n\nThe town of Paipa (pop. 32,000) is known for two things: its thermal baths and the Lanceros monument.\n\n###### **COMPLEJO TERMAL**\n\nThe **Complejo Termal** (Km. 4 V\u00eda Pantano de Vargas, tel. 8\/785-0068, www.termalespaipa.co, 6am-10pm daily), the hot springs, is the biggest attraction in town. There are two parts to the hot springs complex; the **Parque Acu\u00e1tico** (COP$13,000) has three thermal water pools and pools for kids, and the **Centro de Hidroterapia** (COP$41,000) offers six activities for 20 minutes each, including hydro-massage, saunas, and mudbaths. On the weekends the park is packed, especially the Parque Acu\u00e1tico, which teems with families, so it's highly recommended to go on a much calmer weekday. To do the Centro de Hidroterapia circuit, call in advance to make a reservation. Slots are available daily at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and 7pm. A limited number of people, around 16, are allowed during each session.\n\nBetween Paipa and the Complejo Termal is the manmade **Lago Sochagota.** The pedestrian path around the lake attracts locals and visitors alike, especially in the late afternoon. This is a nice thing to do after a good soak at the baths.\n\n###### **LOS LANCEROS**\n\nOn the site of the **Batalla del Pantano de Vargas** (Battle of the Vargas Swamp) stands Colombia's largest sculpture, **_Los Lanceros_** (9 km south of Paipa on Paipa-Pantano de Vargas road, free). The massive monument was designed by Colombian sculptor Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt and built in commemoration of 150 years of Colombian independence. Bronze sculptures show the 14 _lanceros_ (lancers on horseback) charging into battle, fists clenched in the air, with fear and defiance depicted on their faces. Above them is an odd triangular concrete slab that points into the heavens. It is 36 steps up to the platform of the monument, the age of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar on that fateful day. The monument generates strong opinions, and there is little gray area: You either love it or detest it.\n\nThe Batalla del Pantano de Vargas was a decisive battle during Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar's independence march on Bogot\u00e1 in 1819. After crossing the Llanos from Venezuela and climbing up the Andes via the P\u00e1ramo de Pisba, the revolutionary army under Bol\u00edvar engaged with a contingent of Spanish troops at the Pantano de Vargas on July 25, 1819. Exhausted after their long slog over the Cordillera Oriental mountains, the revolutionary troops were nearly defeated. However, a charge by 14 armed horsemen led by Juan Jos\u00e9 Rend\u00f3n saved the day. Soldiers from the British Foreign Legion, under the command of Irishman James Rooke, also played a decisive role in this battle. The royalists lost 500 men in the battle, while 350 revolutionaries perished.\n\nAcross from the monument is the **Casa Museo Comunitario Juan Vargas** (COP$1,000), a small museum mostly about the military campaigns of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar. It was in this house that Juan Vargas, his wife, and their 12 children were executed by the Spaniards for supporting the rebel troops. Oddly, there is not much information on the battle that occurred in the swamp across the street, but it's worth a quick look anyhow.\n\nthe memorial of the Batalla del Pantano de Vargas, _Los Lanceros_\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD**\n\nWhile there are some inexpensive hotels in town, it's much more pleasant to stay outside of town near the Complejo Termal, even if it means splurging somewhat. Midweek rates at these fancy hotels drop substantially.\n\nThe M **Hacienda El Salitre** (Km. 3 V\u00eda Paipa-Toca, tel. 8\/785-1510, www.haciendadelsalitre.com, COP$350,000 d) is set in the countryside under towering eucalyptus trees, and you'll pass grazing cows to get there. At the hotel, go for one of the rooms with a thermal bathtub. Each day you'll be treated to a thermal bath three times (staff come in and change the water each time). Rooms are cozy, warm, and spacious, but not quite luxurious. The hotel has a very nice restaurant with outdoor seating, plus a caf\u00e9 and a bar. Even if you are just passing through, the restaurant, with its lovely setting, is the best around. Here you can get a massage, and can take a horse out for a trot to a nearby lake. From Sunday to Friday there is a 30 percent discount. It's a big wedding banquet and honeymoon location on the weekends. The hacienda served as a barracks during the Pantano de Vargas battle in 1819.\n\nOverlooking Lago Sochagota is the **Estelar Paipa Hotel y Centro de Convenciones** (tel. 8\/785-0944, www.hotelesestelar.com, COP$286,000 d). This upmarket chain hotel is modern, service oriented, and well maintained. On site is a spa with thermal baths, the main attraction, and there are other activities on-site to keep you busy, such as a pool, tennis court, golf course, and horseback riding. With over 100 rooms, it is a popular place for large groups. Rates here don't substantially drop during the week, but it may be worth asking.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nPaipa is 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Tunja, and frequent buses make this route. The half-hour journey from Tunja costs COP$5,000. From Paipa, taxis to the Complejo Termal area cost about COP$7,500. Buses from Sogamoso depart from the intersection of Carrera 14 and Calle 16 and cost about COP$4,000. The trip takes about 45 minutes.\n\n##### **Sogamoso**\n\nThis city of over 100,000 habitants is about 75 kilometers (46 miles) east of Tunja and is known for being an important pre-Hispanic Muisca center. It was known as Suamoxi. It's a city of little charm; however, the Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico de Sogamoso is worth a stop.\n\n###### **SIGHTS**\n\nRun by the Universidad Pedag\u00f3gica y Tecnol\u00f3gica de Colombia (UPTC) university in Tunja, the **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico de Sogamoso** (Cl. 9A No. 6-45, tel. 8\/770-3122, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-3pm Sun. and holidays, COP$5,000) has an extensive collection of artifacts of the Muisca civilization, the main indigenous group of Colombia. Muiscas lived in the area that is today the departments Boyac\u00e1, Santander, and Cundinamarca. Suamoxi was the seat of power for a confederation led by the Iraca. The Bacat\u00e1 confederation (near Bogot\u00e1) and the Hunza (Tunja) confederation, led by the Zaque, were the most powerful of the Muisca confederations. The most memorable sight on the museum grounds is the fantastic Templo del Sol, a re-creation of a Muisca temple that was burnt to the ground by the Spaniards in the late 16th century. The museum is worth visiting, even though the exhibition spaces are drab and the sequence of exhibits does not flow very lucidly. That is a shame because there is an interesting history to tell and the collection is impressive. If you have the time and speak Spanish, hire a guide. Inquire at the ticket office. Look for the exhibit on _ocarinas,_ which are whistles, usually ceramic, that are often zoomorphic in form. Also see the stunning black-and-white geometric designs of _torteros,_ which are spindles used in spinning yarn, as well as remarkably well-preserved red-and-white ceramic vessels and urns.\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD**\n\nThe M **Hotel Finca San Pedro** (Km. 2 V\u00eda Aquitania, tel. 8\/770-4222, www.fincasanpedro.galeon.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$80,000 d) is a lush hostel set among lovely gardens with fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. (It's odd that there's no fruit at breakfast!) It's a popular place with international backpackers visiting Boyac\u00e1. The owner's son gives yoga classes on occasion. This friendly spot, a five-minute cab ride from Sogamoso (COP$4,000), is the best option in the area.\n\nIt is said that Bol\u00edvar stayed at the **Hacienda Suescun** (Km. 4 V\u00eda Sogamoso-Tibasosa, tel. 8\/779-3333, cell tel. 312\/596-4506, www.haciendasuescunhotel.com, COP$164,000 d) before he headed off to face the Spaniards at the decisive Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1. This _hacienda,_ surrounded by tall trees covered with Spanish moss dangling towards the ground, has 18 rooms. It's north of Sogamoso. They have horses that can be taken out for a ride in the countryside.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nThere are easy bus connections between both Bogot\u00e1 (3 hrs., COP$23,000) and Tunja to Sogamoso (1 hr., COP$15,000). The **Terminal de Transportes** (Cra. 17 between Clls. 11-11A, tel. 8\/770-330) is downtown. Many buses connect Sogamoso with Paipa, Iza, Mongu\u00ed, and Aquitania. Sogamoso is also a gateway to Los Llanos, with frequent bus service between Sogamoso and Yopal. This is a good, less expensive option for traveling to the Hacienda La Aurora south of Yopal. The trip between Sogamoso and Yopal takes about four hours to make and costs about COP$25,000.\n\n##### **Mongu\u00ed**\n\nThe chilly (average temperature is 13\u00b0C\/55\u00b0F) highland colonial town of Mongu\u00ed was founded in 1601 and was a strategic town for the Spaniards, as it was located between Tunja and the vast Llanos, the eastern plains. It has been designated as one of the most beautiful towns in Boyac\u00e1. Its narrow cobblestone streets are lined with white and green houses, many well over a couple of centuries old. It's in a valley below the highland moor of **P\u00e1ramo de Ocet\u00e1,** dubbed the most beautiful _p\u00e1ramo_ in the world. You can decide for yourself by hiking among its armies of _frailej\u00f3n_ plants, mountain lakes, and enormous boulders. Hotel staff can contact a knowledgeable local guide (around COP$50,000) to accompany you through this unusual landscape.\n\n###### **SIGHTS**\n\nThree colonial constructions in Mongu\u00ed have been declared national monuments. The stone **Bas\u00edlica y Convento de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Mongu\u00ed** stand on the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. The Franciscan convent today houses a Museo de Arte Religioso highlighting the work of the famous 17th-century Colombian baroque painter Gregorio V\u00e1squez de Arce y Ceballos. Other historic buildings are the **Capilla de San Antonio de Padua,** which was the town's first church, and the photogenic stone bridge, the **Puente de Calicanto.**\n\nToday Mongu\u00ed is almost as famous for its soccer ball-making industry as for its colonial beauty. Around 70 percent of the town works in about 20 small factories in this industry, which has been around since the 1950s. They churn out some 30,000 balls each month. (More balls are produced during World Cup years as demand tends to spike.) You can pick up a \"Made in Mongu\u00ed\" soccer ball at the shop **Balones Hurtado** (Cl. 7 No. 3-60, tel. 8\/778-2021, www.baloneshurtado.com). Their slogan is \"more than a ball...inspiration for your feet!\"\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD**\n\nThere are not many accommodations options in and around town, but one of the best is **La Casona de San Francisco de Asis** (Cra. 4A No. 3-41, tel. 8\/778-2498, COP$40,000 pp d). Rooms have a view over the R\u00edo Morro canyon, and the hotel is quite tidy. The restaurant, which has been in service for over two decades, is also one of the best in town. The restaurant specializes in _cocido boyacense,_ which has a variety of meats and some of the unusual tubers from the area, such as _cubios, ibias,_ and _rubas._\n\nThe **Calicanto Real** (cell tel. 311\/811-1519, juliosaenz66@hotmail.com, COP$25,000 pp) is an old house with five rooms located on the other side of the Puente de Calicanto. It was once owned by a wealthy emerald miner, was abandoned for several years, and now it is has been refurbished as a hotel. Rooms are spacious with nice views and have a lot of character, but the beds are soft. Adjacent to the hotel is a tavern filled with decorations like cowboy hats, animal heads, and an homage to Mongu\u00ed's most famous poet: Mora S\u00e1enz R\u00f3mulo, also known as \"El Indio Romulo.\" Born in the 1930s, the charismatic poet became famous nationwide for defining a genre of campesino poetry, commenting on social ills using the language of rural folk. He recorded several albums of poetry, was awarded dozens of medals for his contributions to cultural life, and even served as mayor of his hometown.\n\nThe **Hospedaje el Rinc\u00f3n de Duzgua** (Vereda Duzgua, tel. 8\/778-2130) is a cabin outside of town, and it's a good place for exploring the P\u00e1ramo de Ocet\u00e1.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nThere are two roads between Sogamoso and Mongu\u00ed. The old but scenic route is partly unpaved and winds through eucalyptus forests and the pueblo of Morca. It's about 20 kilometers (12 miles) and makes an excellent bike ride. On the new road, a bus ride to Mongu\u00ed costs about COP$4,000 and takes about 45 minutes. The bus leaves from the intersection of Carrera 14 and Calle 16.\n\n##### **Iza**\n\nSerene and sleepy Iza (pop. 2,081), 14 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of Sogamoso on the way to Lago Tota, is a charming pueblo. There are not heaps of activities to do here, and there is no huge attraction except for possibly the nearby hot springs. This well-preserved town, originally a Muisca settlement before the conquest, is nestled in a valley of green pastures and is surrounded by low mountains. Iza's a good place to walk about, take in some fresh air, exchange pleasantries with locals (and cows) surprised by your presence, and escape from the tourist trail.\n\ntraffic in Iza\n\nThe thermal baths are just outside of town (you can even walk there) at **Termales Erika** (Vereda Aguacaliente, tel. 8\/779-0038, 7am-6pm daily, COP$8,000). They are closed on Mondays for cleaning, thus Tuesday is the best day for a soak!\n\nIn Iza, the local specialty is cakes, pies, and other sugary sweets. Bakers constantly swat away bees at their stands on the shady Parque Principal as they await customers on the weekends. A good place to eat something other than sweets is **La Casona Parrilla Bar** (cell tel. 320\/222-6293, 1pm-10pm Sat.-Sun., COP$12,000). It specializes in grilled meats.\n\nTo get to Iza from Sogamoso, take a bus (COP$3,000) that leaves from the intersection of Carrera 11 with Calle 8. This is known as the Puente de Pesca.\n\n##### **Lago Tota**\n\nOne of the most popular destinations in Boyac\u00e1 is the Lago Tota, Colombia's largest lake. The views are spectacular here with mountains, valleys, and fields surrounding the lake. It measures 47 kilometers (29 miles) in perimeter. The main town on the lake is Aquitania; however, most visitors choose to stay at one of the cozy lakeside lodges nearby. A day trip from Sogamoso to Playa Blanca, a chilly lakeside beach, can also be arranged. But to truly relax, plan to stay the night so that you can enjoy watching the sun slowly slip away in the distance at sunset and relax by the fireplace with a glass of wine (bring your own) as the night wears on. Biking, walks, and boat rides to one of the handful of uninhabited islands on the lake are other activities you may enjoy. If you have a mountain bike, a nice ride is along the western side of the lake, along a mostly dirt road.\n\nThe lake and surrounding countryside, a patchwork of fields of green onions and potatoes, is beautiful, without a doubt. However, the lake is in peril. The dumping of fertilizers and pesticides from lakeside farms has been the primary reason that the Lago de Tota, a lake that provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people, has been declared one of the top five most threatened wetlands in the world by the World Wetlands Network. There are other culprits as well: large caged trout farms, the use of lake water at a nearby steel plant, and the most recent threat, oil exploration in the area by a large French oil company.\n\n###### **RECREATION**\n\n**Playa Blanca** (COP$3,500 entry) is the lake's beach, and a strange scene often awaits you there. Boys playing soccer on the white sand, university students from Bogot\u00e1 hanging out drinking beer, and teenage boys in swimsuits alongside _abuelas_ (grandmothers) bundled up in their wool _ruanas_ (ponchos) watching the proceedings. Besides sampling one of 16 fresh trout dishes on offer at the restaurant (open 8am-5pm daily), other activities at the beach include taking a tour of the lake (COP$6,000) and horseback riding.\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nA handful of inviting lodge-type hotels are around the lake to the north and west of the lakeside town of **Aquitania.** Bargains can be had during the week, when you will have the lodge (if not the lake) blissfully to yourself. The area caters to weekenders from Bogot\u00e1.\n\nThe Decameron all-inclusive hotel chain has agreements with three hotels in the area. The M **Decameron Refugio Santa In\u00e9s** (Km. 29 V\u00eda Sogamoso-Aquitania, tel. 8\/772-8860, cell tel. 313\/261-2429, santaineshotel@gmail.com, COP$99,000 pp d) is a comfortable lodge-type hotel with 13 rooms and two cabins. Wood ceilings and floors add to the atmosphere. Set on the eastern side of the lake, the hotel's terrace is an ideal vantage point to watch the sunset. Beds are very comfortable, there is wireless Internet access, and breakfast is included. The restaurant offers other meals as well. Hotel staff can arrange for walks to a _p\u00e1ramo,_ and horseback riding and taking a boat around the lake are other activities on offer. This is the nicest Decameron option. **Hotel El Camino Real** (Km. 20 V\u00eda Sogamoso-Aquitania, tel. 8\/770-0684, mauriciofigueroa@yahoo.com, www.decameron.com, COP$84,000 pp d) and **Refugio Rancho Tota** (Km. 21 V\u00eda Sogamoso-Aquitania, tel. 8\/770-8083, www.hotelranchotota.com, COP$80,000 pp d) are the other two. These have similar pricing and similar facilities, and both have small spas.\n\nserene countryside around Colombia's largest lake, Lago Tota\n\nFor charm, and a room with a view, there are two longstanding stone lodge options. **Rocas Lindas** (cell tel. 310\/349-1107, www.hotelrocaslindas.wordpress.com, COP$85,000 pp d) is a cozy lodge with 10 rooms and one cabin. There's no wireless Internet here, and this hotel could use some upgrading. M **Pozo Azul** (Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/620-6257, cell tel. 320\/384-1000, www.hotelrefugiopozoazul.com, COP$196,000 d) was one of the first nice hotels on the lake, and it still oozes charm. When you walk in you'll often see guests gathered by a circular fireplace in the lobby area. The hotel has 15 rooms and two _caba\u00f1as_. It is on an inlet of the lake. Some beds are on the soft side, and you have to descend 80 steep steps to get from the parking lot to the lodge. That could be difficult for those with physical limitations, and it will leave all but Olympic athletes out of breath when they finally reach the hotel.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nBuses that go directly to Playa Blanca, via Iza, depart Sogamoso from the intersection of Carrera 11 with Calle 8 (Puente de Pesca). Otherwise, take any bus bound for the town of Aquitania (Plaza Principal). From the market, four blocks away, take another bus to Playa Blanca. It takes about an hour to get to the lake, and the bus costs about COP$4,000. Taxis are also available.\n\n#### **SIERRA NEVADA DEL COCUY**\n\nThe Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, the highest mountains within the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Range) of the Andes mountain chain, is 260 kilometers (162 miles) northeast of Bogot\u00e1 in northern Boyac\u00e1. The entire mountain range is contained within and protected by the **Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy,** the country's fifth largest national park. With its 11 jagged snowcapped peaks, massive glacier-formed valleys, extensive _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors) studded with exotic _frailej\u00f3n_ plants, and stunning crystalline mountain lakes, streams, and waterfalls, it is one of the most beautiful places in Colombia. The sierra appeals to serious mountaineers and rock climbers, but it is also a place that nature-lovers with little experience and no gear can explore by doing easily organized day hikes.\n\nthe beach at Playa Blanca on Lago Tota\n\n###### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nGetting to the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy entails a long, grueling trip, albeit through the beautiful, verdant countryside of Boyac\u00e1. Ideally you would want to spend at least four days there, taking in the spectacular mountain landscapes.\n\nThe park has three sectors: the Northern, Central and Southern Sectors, each with many options for day hikes, more strenuous ascents to the snowcapped peaks, or highly technical rock-climbing expeditions. There is also a spectacular six-day trek along a valley between the two main ridges of the sierra. It is not a highly technical trek but requires good high-altitude conditioning. For many visitors, this is the main reason to visit the sierra.\n\nThe towns of El Cocuy and G\u00fcic\u00e1n are convenient arrival and departure points to visit the area. In both you can find basic tourist services, tour operators and guides, and stores to stock up on food, though not trekking equipment (though this can be rented from local tour operators). Both have a few interesting sights and are departure points for day hikes. El Cocuy is better located to access the Southern Sector of the park and G\u00fcic\u00e1n the Northern Sector. However, since both of these towns are around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the park and there is limited public transportation, a good option is to base yourself nearer to the park edge in one of several pleasant lodges or campsites. You could easily spend a few days in each one of the three sectors, setting off on beautiful day hikes.\n\nThe only way to do the six-day hike around the park is with an organized tour, as the trails are not marked. If you are planning to do this trek, you may want to arrive a few days earlier to do some high altitude acclimatization hikes. Many peaks are above 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) high.\n\nThe only dependable time to visit the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy is from December to March, during the _verano_ (main dry season) in the Cordillera Oriental. At other times, there may be permanent cloud cover and much rain. High season, when Colombian visitors flock to the mountains, is from mid-December to mid-January, and again in Holy Week (late March or April). So, if you have the flexibility, visit in early December or from late January through early March.\n\nThe best available topographical maps of the Sierra Nevada de Cocuy, which might be helpful in planning your visit, can be viewed and downloaded online (www.nevados.org).\n\n##### **El Cocuy**\n\nEl Cocuy is a charming colonial town nestled in the lower folds of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy at an altitude of 2,750 meters. The town is meticulously kept up, with whitewashed houses painted with a band of aquamarine blue. The only real sight to check out is in the Parque Principal, where there is a large diorama of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. This will allow you to understand the broken mountain geography, with its multitude of snowcapped peaks, lakes, and valleys. In the town there are decent accommodations, a few tour operators, and some stores to stock up for a visit to the park, though no specialized mountaineering stores.\n\n###### **RECREATION**\n\nFor a spectacular panoramic view of the entire sierra, take a hike to **Cerro Mahoma** (Mahoma Hill), to the west of the town of El Cocuy. It is a strenuous six- to seven-hour excursion often used by people who are acclimatizing to high altitude before trekking in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. The trailhead is outside of town on the road that leads to the town of Chita. As the trail is not marked and splits several times, it is better to go with a guide. For an experienced local guide, contact the local guide association, **ASEGUICOC** (Asociaci\u00f3n de Prestadores de Servicios Ecotur\u00edsticos de G\u00fcic\u00e1n y El Cocuy, cell tel. 311\/557-7893, aseguicoc@gmail.com).\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD**\n\n**Hotel la Posada del Molino** (Cra. 3 No. 7-51, tel. 8\/789-0377, www.elcocuycasamuseo.blogspot.com, COP$20,000 pp d) is a friendly guesthouse. Rooms in this old house are set around two colorful interior patios. The house has a little history to it, as well. Apparently during the deadly feuds between G\u00fcic\u00e1n and El Cocuy (G\u00fcic\u00e1n was conservative and El Cocuy was liberal), the famous Virgen Morenita image was taken from its shrine in G\u00fcic\u00e1n and hidden away in the house where the hotel is located. You can see the room that hid this secret.\n\n**Casa Mu\u00f1oz** (Cra. 5 No. 7-28, tel. 8\/789-0328, www.hotelcasamunoz.com, COP$20,000 pp d) has a great location overlooking the main plaza in town. It offers a restaurant in the patio on the main floor. Rooms are fine, though somewhat small, with firm beds and wooden floors.\n\nHotels, like the Casa Mu\u00f1oz, generally offer the best food, but don't expect to be gobsmacked come dinnertime. Vegetarians may want to travel with a can of emergency lentils to hand over to kitchen staff to warm up for you.\n\n###### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nAt the offices of the **Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy** (Cl. 5 No. 4-22, tel. 8\/789-0359, 7am-noon and 1pm-4:45pm daily, cocuy@parquesnacionales.gov.co, COP$37,500 non-Colombians, COP$14,000 residents, COP$7,500 children\/students), you can obtain a park entry permit and general information.\n\nThere is an **ATM** at the Banco Agrario at Carrera 4 and Calle 8.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nThe towns of El Cocuy and G\u00fcic\u00e1n are served from Bogot\u00e1 by three bus companies. The trip takes 11 hours, stops at El Cocuy, and terminates at G\u00fcic\u00e1n. The most comfortable option is with the bus company **Libertadores** (COP$50,000), which operates a big bus, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 8:30pm. The return trip departs El Cocuy at 7:30pm. Bus line **Fundadores** (COP$45,000) has two buses, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 5am and 4:30pm, returning from El Cocuy at 7:30am and 8:30pm. **Concord** (COP$45,000) also has two services, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 3am and 5pm and leaving El Cocuy for Bogot\u00e1 at 5:30am and 7:30pm.\n\n##### **G\u00fcic\u00e1n**\n\nLong before its foundation in 1822, G\u00fcic\u00e1n was a place of significance for the U'wa indigenous people. The U'wa fiercely resisted the Spanish conquest, and, rather than submit to domination, their chief G\u00fcic\u00e1ny led the people to mass suicide off a nearby cliff known as El Pe\u00f1\u00f3n de los Muertos. This little-known act of defiance is the New World's equivalent of the Masada mass suicide in ancient Judea.\n\nThe town, damaged by fires and civil war, is a mix of modern and old buildings, without much charm. However, it is a convenient starting point to visit the Northern Sector of the park. It has good accommodations, several tour operators, and some interesting sights and is the starting point for numerous beautiful day hikes.\n\nFolks in G\u00fcic\u00e1n resent that the national park carries the \"El Cocuy\" name. They feel that this natural wonder is just as much theirs as it is their rivals in the town of El Cocuy. You can score points with them by referring to the park as Parque Nacional Natural El G\u00fcic\u00e1n.\n\n###### **SIGHTS**\n\nThe main sight in town is the image of the Virgen Morenita de G\u00fcic\u00e1n, located in the **Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria** (Parque Principal). This image of the virgin, with strong indigenous traits, appeared to the survivors of the U'wa mass suicide and ushered in their conversion to Christianity.\n\nAt the entrance to the town on the road from El Cocuy is the **Monumento a la Dignidad de la Raza U'wa** (Monument to U'Wa Dignity), a large statue that depicts the culture and history of the U'Wa people. It was designed by a local artist with input from the community.\n\n###### **RECREATION**\n\nThere are several pleasant day hikes to be done from G\u00fcic\u00e1n. A mildly strenuous three-kilometer (two-mile), two-hour round-trip hike takes you to the base of the **Pe\u00f1\u00f3n de los Muertos** (3,800 meters\/12,500 feet), site of the U'wa mass suicide. The 300-meter cliff is imposing, and the thought of hundreds of people jumping off in defiance will send shivers through your body. From the Parque Principal, follow the road east towards the Vereda San Juan. Several signs indicate the way, so you will not need a guide.\n\nA longer and more strenuous 11-kilometer (7-mile), six-hour hike leads northeast along the **Sendero del Mosco** (Mosco Trail) up the R\u00edo Cardenillo, passing sheer cliffs to a spot called Parada de Romero, which is the initial (or ending, depending on which way you go) segment of the six-day circuit around the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. The hike ends at an altitude of 3,800 meters and is a good acclimatization walk. The trailhead is off the road that leads from El G\u00fcic\u00e1n to the Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy. As the trail is not marked, it is better to take a guide. Contact the association of local guides, **ASEGUICOC** (Asociaci\u00f3n de Prestadores de Servicios Ecotur\u00edsticos de G\u00fcic\u00e1n y El Cocuy, cell tel. 311\/557-7893, aseguicoc@gmail.com).\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nThe **Brisas del Nevado** (Cra. 5 No. 4-57, cell tel. 310\/629-9001, <http:\/\/brisasdelnevado.com>, COP$35,000 pp) has the best accommodations and restaurant in town. Four rooms in the original house sleep 2-4 persons each. Outside is a nicer cabin with two rooms. The only problem is it is located next to a _tejo_ bar. _Tejo_ is a Colombian sport heavily associated with drinking.\n\n**El Eden** (Tr. 2 No. 9-58 Urbanizaci\u00f3n Villa Nevada, cell tel. 311\/808-8334, luishernandonc@hotmail.com, COP$30,000 pp) is in a residential neighborhood about 10 minutes up from the main plaza. It's a friendly place with lots of rooms, and you can use their kitchen. Rabbits and parakeets are caged in the garden below.\n\n**Hotel Guaicani** (Cl. 5 No. 6-20, cell tel. 312\/524-3449, guaicany@hotmail.com, COP$20,000 pp d) is not wonderful, but it does offer trekking services and equipment rental.\n\nJust outside of town is the **Hotel Ecol\u00f3gico El Nevado** (road to El Cocuy, cell tel. 320\/808-5256 or 310\/806-2149, www.hoteleconevado.jimdo.com, COP$60,000 d), in a spacious and green setting. There are two parts to the hotel: the original quaint farmhouse with an interior patio and a modern wing. The farmhouse has loads more character, but the modern wing is, well, modern.\n\n###### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nAt the offices of the **Parque Natural Nacional El Cocuy** (Tr. 4 No. 6-60, 7am-noon and 1pm-4:45pm daily) you can obtain a park entry permit and general information.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nG\u00fcic\u00e1n is served from Bogot\u00e1 by three bus companies. The trip takes 11 hours and terminates at G\u00fcic\u00e1n, with a stop at El Cocuy. The most comfortable option is with company **Libertadores** (COP$50,000), which operates a big bus, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 8:30pm and returning from G\u00fcic\u00e1n at 7pm. **Fundadores** (COP$45,000) has two buses, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 5am and 4:30pm and departing G\u00fcic\u00e1n at 7am and 8pm. **Concord** (COP$45,000) also has two services, leaving Bogot\u00e1 at 3am and 5pm and returning to Bogot\u00e1 from G\u00fcic\u00e1n at 5am and 7pm. If you are in a hurry, you can take **Cootransdatil** to Soat\u00e1 (COP$15,000) at 7am, 11am, or 2pm. From Soat\u00e1 there are frequent departures for Duitama and Bogot\u00e1.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL EL COCUY**\n\nLocated about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the towns of El Cocuy and G\u00fcic\u00e1n, the **Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy** (tel. 8\/789-0359, cocuy@parquesnacionales.gov.co, COP$37,500 for non-Colombian visitors, COP$14,000 Colombians and residents, COP$7,500 children\/students) covers an area of 306,000 hectares (760,000 acres) spanning the departments of Boyac\u00e1, Arauca, and Casanare.\n\nThe Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, consisting of two parallel ranges 30 kilometers long with 11 peaks higher than 5,000 meters, is the centerpiece of the park. However, the park extends far north and east from the sierra and includes extensive tracts of temperate and tropical forests. It also includes 92,000 hectares (230,000 acres) of U'wa indigenous _resguardos_ (reservations), which are not open to tourism.\n\nThe Sierra Nevada del Cocuy is home to the largest expanse of glaciers in Colombia, extending 16 square kilometers (6 square miles). What are usually referred to as _nevados_ (snowcapped mountains) are in fact glacier-capped mountains. The highest peak is **Ritacuba Blanco** (5,380 meters\/17,650 feet). Other notable glacier-capped peaks are **Ritacuba Negro** (5,350 meters, 17,550 feet), **San Pabl\u00edn Norte** (5,200 meters, 17,060 feet), **C\u00f3ncavo** (5,200 meters\/17,060 feet), and **Pan de Az\u00facar** (5,100 meters, 16,730 feet). One of the most striking peaks in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy is the **P\u00falpito del Diablo** or Devil's Pulpit (5,100 meters, 16,730 feet), a massive rectangular flat-top rock formation. (A side note: Be sure to refer to it as the P\u00falpito del Diablo (Devil's Pulpit) and not Pulp\u00edto del Diablo, which means the Devil's Little Octopus.) Of these, Ritacuba Blanco, C\u00f3ncavo, and Pan de Az\u00facar can be ascended by anyone in good physical shape and do not require mountain climbing skills.\n\nUnfortunately, all the glaciers in Colombia, including those of the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, are rapidly melting due to global warming. A 2013 report by the Colombian Hydrological, Meteorological, and Environmental Studies Institute (IDEAM) forecasts that, by 2030, all the glaciers in Colombia will have disappeared.\n\nAt the base of the peaks are numerous glacier-formed valleys supporting _p\u00e1ramos,_ unique tropical high altitude ecosystems of the Andes. The _p\u00e1ramos_ are covered with beautiful _frailejones,_ plants that have imposing tall trunks and thick yellow-greenish leaves. Other _p\u00e1ramo_ vegetation includes shrubs, grasses and _cojines_ (cushion plants).\n\nErwin Krauss, a Colombian of German descent was the first modern explorer of the sierra in the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Colombian and European expeditions climbed most of the peaks. During the 1980s and 1990s, there was significant ELN and FARC presence and tourism all but disappeared.\n\nIn the past decade, the army has reestablished control of the area around the Sierra Nevada de Cocuy, and tourists have started to come back. In the 2012-2013 season, there were an estimated 9,000 visitors. The Colombian Park Service has been scrambling to deal with the influx of visitors.\n\nEntry permits (which include entry fees) are required and can be easily obtained at the park offices in El Cocuy or G\u00fcic\u00e1n. In peak season from mid-December to mid-January and during Easter week, it is better to obtain the permit several weeks in advance through the Park Service in Bogot\u00e1. Call (tel. 1\/353-2400) or email (ecoturismo@parquesnacionales.gov.co) with the names of visitors, passport numbers, and expected dates of your arrival. The Park Service will provide instructions for paying and will send the permit by email.\n\nParque Nacional Natural El Cocuy\n\n##### **Hiking**\n\nThere are three separate sectors where you can do spectacular one- to two-day hikes into the park. Each of these sectors has lodges and camping grounds that serve food and make convenient starting points for these hikes. You can get to any of these lodges on the morning _lechero_ (milk truck). Every morning the milk man collects fresh milk from family dairy farms throughout the countryside.\n\n###### **SOUTHERN SECTOR**\n\nThis sector is accessed by a road from the **Alto de la Cueva,** a stop on the _lechero_ route. There are two good lodging options in this area, and they serve as points of reference: **Caba\u00f1as Guicany,** a lodge at Alto de la Cueva outside the park, and **Caba\u00f1a Sisuma,** a lodge 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Alto de la Cueva inside the park.\n\nOne popular day hike in the Southern Sector is up to **Lagunillas** through a wide glacier-formed valley strewn with different types of _frailejones_ and passing four large lakes. From Alto de la Cueva it is a six- to seven-hour round-trip hike to an altitude of 4,300 meters (14,100 feet). From the Caba\u00f1a Sisuma lodge within the park, it is a four- to five-hour round-trip hike. You do not need a guide to do this excursion.\n\nA strenuous hike takes you to the **Pan de Az\u00facar.** From the Caba\u00f1a Sisuma lodge it is a six-hour round trip hike to the border of the glacier that covers Pan de Az\u00facar or 10 hours round-trip to the top of the glacier. Along the way you will pass the **P\u00falpito del Diablo** (Devil's Pulpit), a stunning, huge rectangular flat-topped rock formation. From the top of Pan de Az\u00facar there are spectacular views of the Laguna Grande de la Sierra, P\u00falpito del Diablo, and C\u00f3ncavo peaks. A guide is required for this hike.\n\n###### **CENTRAL SECTOR**\n\nThe starting point for visits to the Central Sector is **Hacienda La Esperanza,** which is a stop on the daily _lechero._ From there, it is a strenuous six-hour round-trip hike to **the Laguna Grande de la Sierra,** a beautiful lake nestled between the C\u00f3ncavo and P\u00falpito del Diablo peaks. A guide is not necessary for this hike. By camping at the lake, it is possible to ascend to the **C\u00f3ncavo** (5,200 meters\/17,060 feet), **Concavito** (5,100 meters, 16,730 feet), or **Toti** (4,900 meters\/16,075 feet) peak. Each ascent involves a strenuous four- to five-hour round-trip hike and should be done with a guide. From the Laguna Grande de la Sierra, it is also possible to reach Caba\u00f1a Sisuma, in the Southern Sector, in nine hours. A guide is necessary as this trail is not well marked.\n\n###### **NORTHERN SECTOR**\n\nThe starting point for hikes in the Northern Sector is **Caba\u00f1as Kanwara.** A short and mildly strenuous three- to four-hour round-trip hike takes you to the **Alto Cimiento del Padre,** a mountain pass at 4,200 meters (13,800 feet). This hike offers spectacular views of Ritacuba Negro peak. This hike does not require a guide.\n\nCaba\u00f1as Kanwara is also the starting point for hikes to the gently sloping **Ritacuba Blanco,** the highest peak in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. The ascent to the top can be done in one grueling 9- to 10-hour excursion, leaving at 2am or 3am in order to reach the peak in the morning when conditions are best for climbing on the glacier. Most people, however, split the trek into two, camping at the Playitas camp spot halfway up. A guide is necessary for this trek.\n\n###### **SIX-DAY CIRCUIT**\n\nAn unforgettable experience is to do the six-day trek through the glacier-formed valleys lying between the two north-south ranges of mountains. Along the whole trip you will have glacier-capped mountains on both sides. There are a few mountain passes, but generally the altitude is 4,000-4,500 meters (13,100-14,800 feet). You do not need to be an expert mountaineer, but in addition to being in good physical condition, you need to be acclimatized to the altitude. A few days of day treks before doing the circuit may be required. Do not attempt this trek without a knowledgeable guide, as it's easy to get lost in this treacherous landscape. The basic tour, which involves carrying all your own gear, will cost on average COP$700,000 per person. Don't pay less than that because it means the operator is skimping on the guide's salary. High-end tours, with porters and a cook, will cost COP$1,500,000 per person.\n\n###### **TOUR OPERATORS AND GUIDES**\n\nWhether you decide to do a couple of day hikes or the six-day trek, securing a reliable, professional guide will greatly increase your enjoyment. For day hikes, contact the local guide association **Asociaci\u00f3n de Prestadores de Servicios Ecotur\u00edsticos de G\u00fcic\u00e1n y El Cocuy** (ASEGUICOC, cell tel. 311\/557-7893, aseguicoc@gmail.com). For day hikes, expect to pay about COP$80,000-100,000. If you ascend to the top of a glacier, the daily rate goes up to COP$130,000-150,000 and includes necessary gear. One highly knowledgeable guide is **Julio Su\u00e1rez** (cell tel. 311\/509-4413, ucumary13@gmail.com).\n\nOne of the leading trekking operators in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy is **Colombia Trek** (Cra. 4 No. 6-50, G\u00fcic\u00e1n, cell tel. 320\/339-3839, www.colombiatrek.com), run by knowledgeable veteran Rodrigo Arias. It is one of the few operators offering English-speaking guides, and it is highly recommended.\n\nAnother tour company based in El Cocuy is **Servicios Ecotur\u00edsticos G\u00fcic\u00e1ny** (Cra. 5 at Cl. 9, El Cocuy, cell tel. 310\/566-7554), run by Juan Carlos Carre\u00f1o, son of the owner of Caba\u00f1as G\u00fcic\u00e1ny.\n\nAvoid horseback rides through the park. Horses and cattle have caused significant damage to the flora of the park, and both are officially illegal. Unfortunately, many lodge owners do not agree with this environmental policy and refuse to adhere to it.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nWhile not luxurious by any means, the lodging options in and around the park are just what you'd expect and want in this mountain environment. And the owners are all quite attentive and extremely friendly. Plan to spend some time hanging out in and around your hotel. It's nice to explore the countryside and meet locals.\n\n###### **SOUTHERN SECTOR**\n\nThe best located accommodation in the Southern Sector is M **Caba\u00f1a Sisuma** (cell tel. 311\/236-4275 or 311\/255-1034, aseguicoc@gmail.com, COP$35,000 pp), a cozy cabin inside the park in the Lagunillas sector run by the local tour guide association ASEGUICOC. It has six rooms, good food, and fireplaces to keep one warm. It is a two-hour hike into the park from the Alto de la Cueva, a stop on the daily _lechero._\n\nAnother pleasant and comfortable option is M **Caba\u00f1as G\u00fcic\u00e1ny** (Alto de la Cueva, cell tel. 310\/566-7554, cab_guaicany@yahoo.es or guaicany@hotmail.com, COP$50,000 pp with meals, COP$30,000 without meals, COP$10,000 pp camping), owned by old timer Eudoro Carre\u00f1o. The _lechero_ can drop you off at the lodge. It's rustic and the owner is a delight to chat with over a hot _tinto_ in his rustic kitchen.\n\n###### **CENTRAL SECTOR**\n\nM **Hacienda La Esperanza** (cell tel. 310\/209-9812, haciendalaesperanza@gmail.com, COP$50,000 d), a working farm on the edge of the park, provides accommodations in a rustic farmhouse oozing with character. The family running the hotel is very hospitable, and the host is a trained chef who enjoys pampering his guests. Nothing beats hanging out by the fireplace in the late afternoon drinking something hot after a day of mountain climbing. The _lechero_ makes a stop at this hacienda.\n\n###### **NORTHERN SECTOR**\n\nThe most conveniently located place to stay in this sector is M **Caba\u00f1as Kanwara** (cell tel. 311\/231-6004 or 311\/237-2260, infokanwara@gmail.com, COP$35,000 pp). This lodge of cute wooden A-frame houses has a great location and serves good food, too. To get there, you must get off the _lechero_ at Hacienda Ritacuba and walk 90 minutes towards the park.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nFrom El Cocuy and G\u00fcic\u00e1n to the three park sectors there are three transportation possibilities: hiking 4-5 hours uphill from these towns to the park, taking an express service costing COP$80,000-100,000 (ouch!), or riding an early morning _lechero_ (milk truck). This is a working truck that picks up milk along a predetermined route. Merchandise and passengers share the back of the truck, which is covered with canvas. Don't expect any comforts, but expect to have some good tales to tell. The _lechero_ leaves G\u00fcic\u00e1n from Carrera 5 and Calle 6 every morning at 5:30am and stops at El Cocuy around 6am. Around 7:30am it arrives at Alto de la Cueva, where you can get off to visit the Southern Sector. Around 9am it pulls right up to Hacienda La Esperanza in the Central Sector. Around 10:30am it reaches Hacienda Ritacuba, from where you can walk up to Caba\u00f1as Kanwara in the Northern Sector.\n\n### **Santander**\n\nBeautiful, lush scenery, a delightful climate, well-preserved colonial pueblos, and friendly, outgoing people\u2014this is the Santander department. Located in northeast Colombia, Santander lies to the north of Boyac\u00e1 and southwest of Norte de Santander. Bucaramanga is the modern capital city, but you'll probably be drawn to the countryside. San Gil and the Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha will keep you busy with a smorgasbord of outdoor adventures, while nearby Barichara will seduce you with its tranquil ambiance.\n\n#### **BUCARAMANGA**\n\nThe Ciudad Bonita (Beautiful City) is the capital of the department of Santander. Bucaramanga is a busy and growing city with a young and vibrant population and an agreeable climate where the flowers are always in bloom. Its central location makes for a strategic launching point for visits to the Santander countryside and is a midway point between Bogot\u00e1 and Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast as well as C\u00facuta in the far east. Including neighborhoods that are an extension of Bucaramanga (Floridablanca, Gir\u00f3n, and Piedecuesta), the population exceeds a million.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nMost of your time will probably be spent in Cabecera (the upscale shopping and residential area), in the city center (between Cras. 9-17 and Cl. 45 and Av. Quebrada Seca), and in nearby municipalities such as Gir\u00f3n and Floridablanca.\n\n_Carreras_ (avenues) run north to south, increasing in number from west to east. The main _carreras_ are 15, 27, and 33. _Calles_ (streets) run east to west and increase in number from north to south.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nBucaramanga's main sights are contained within the walkable city center. If you're staying in the Cabecera neighborhood it's a long, hot walk to the city center, so you're better off taking a cab.\n\nBucaramanga prides itself on its parks, and one of the most famous is the **Parque Garc\u00eda Rovira** (Cras. 10-11 and Clls. 36-37). Filled with towering palms, it doesn't provide much shade, but with the pale yellow and white 19th-century **Catedral San Laureano** (Cra. 12 No. 36-08) standing prominently on the park's eastern side, it is rather photogenic. On the west side of the park is Bucaramanga's oldest church, the **Capilla de los Dolores** (Cra. 10 No. 36-08). This unassuming, white-washed structure dates back to 1748 and no longer has a religious mission. It's generally not open to the public. Across from it is **La Casa del Libro Total** (Cl. 35 No. 9-81, tel. 7\/630-3389, www.lacasadellibrotal.com, 8am-10pm Mon.-Fri.), a newish cultural center that (oddly) has a number of bank offices and at the same time exhibition spaces (air-conditioned) for interesting art exhibits. There is also a small library, and a caf\u00e9 serves free coffee.\n\nThe Libertador, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar, stayed in his friend Juan Eloy Valenzuela's house, now known as the **Museo Casa de Bol\u00edvar** (Cl. 37 No. 12-15, tel. 7\/630-4258, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat., COP$2,000) for about 70 days in 1828 while he awaited news from the Convenci\u00f3n de Oca\u00f1a. (Things went badly at that convention, with a rift between Bol\u00edvar and Santander growing wider, and the end result was Bol\u00edvar's self-declaration as dictator.) The museum has personal belongs of the Liberator, an original diary from the first Expedici\u00f3n Bot\u00e1nica led by Jos\u00e9 Celestino Mutis, an original shield of the Estados Unidos de Colombia, and an exhibit on the Guane indigenous people from the area.\n\nAcross the street from the Museo Casa de Bol\u00edvar, the **Casa de la Cultura** (Cl. 37 No. 12-46, hours vary) hosts occasional art exhibitions and other events. The restaurant on the first floor is packed at lunchtime.\n\nFive or six blocks to the east is the **Parque Santander** (Cras. 19-20 and Clls. 35-36). It's a lively park in the middle of the hustle and bustle of modern Bucaramanga. Hare Krishnas beat drums, unimpressed skateboarders show off, and dozens others look on. The Romanesque Revival **Catedral de la Sagrada Familia** (Cl. 36 No. 19-56) took over a hundred years to complete. It was finished in 1865. Some of the most striking features inside include the many stained glass windows. The church, with twin towers and statues of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus, and Joseph in between, looks particularly grandiose at night when it is lit.\n\nThe **Museo de Arte Moderno de Bucaramanga** (Cl. 37 No. 26-16, tel. 7\/645-0483, www.museodeartemodernodebucaramanga.blogspot.com, 8:30am-noon and 2pm-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat., COP$2,000) is worth checking out, but it's only open when there is an exhibit. The **Centro Cultural Posada Tres Culturas** (Cl. 37 No. 24-62, tel. 7\/683-9142, www.librostresculturas.com, 9am-noon and 2pm-7pm Mon.-Sat.) is near the museum and often has events going on. It has a nice art bookstore.\n\nThe **Parque San P\u00edo** (between Cras. 33-35 and Clls. 45-46) is a vibrant greenspace near the Cabecera neighborhood. At the western end stands the Fernando Botero sculpture _Mujer de Pies Desnuda._ On the opposite end is the modern **Iglesia San P\u00edo** (Cra. 36 No. 45-51), where there are paintings on permanent display by local artist Oscar Rodr\u00edguez Naranjo. Farther up is the **Museo Guane** at the **Universidad Aut\u00f3noma de Bucaramanga** (UNAB, Av. 42 No. 48-11, tel. 7\/643-6111), which has a collection of over 600 ceramic pieces (figures, ceremonial and daily vessels, shell necklaces, stone utensils, and ceramic spindle whorls) found near Bucaramanga. Some 90 pieces are on display in a small lobby area. Nobody seems to know where the exhibition space is, and you'll have to ask around. You may have to climb around lounging students to even get a look at the collection.\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nThe nightlife scene in Bucaramanga? Maybe exuberant is the right word to describe it. Most bars and clubs are open Thursday through Saturday, closing at 2am or 3am.\n\n**Caf\u00e9 Con Verso** (Cl. 44 No. 28-63, tel. 7\/647-1486, 4:30pm-late Mon.-Sat.) is a pleasant caf\u00e9 with occasional live music and film nights. **La Birrer\u00eda Pub & Grill** (Cra. 36 No. 43-46, tel. 7\/657-7675, noon-midnight Sun.-Thurs., Fri.-Sat. noon-2am) serves sports bar-type food (although there are some healthy selections) and beer. It's open-air and waitstaff are very attentive. This is the place to watch big _f\u00fatbol_ matches. **El Garaje** (Cl. 48 No. 33-39, tel. 7\/657-4768) is more about burgers and beer.\n\n**La Esquinita de los Recuerdos** (Cl. 22 No. 25-55, tel. 7\/632-0640 or 7\/645-6861, hours vary Tues.-Sat.) is a beloved bar and a good place to have a beer while listening to old (Latino style) favorites. The bar itself is an oldie, more or less, having been around since 1965. **Cali Son** (Cl. 33 No. 31-33, no phone) is one of the top salsa bars in Bucaramanga.\n\nAs you might imagine from its name, **Dash** (Cl. 52 No. 34-27, cell tel. 315\/624-6905) is a high-energy club popular with the college crowd.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nBucaramanga is well known in Colombia for its leather shoes, handbags, and wallets. **Nora Lozza First Class** (Centro Comercial El Cacique, Tr. 93 No. 34-99, Local 113, 10am-8pm daily) is a well-known designer of leather bags and accessories made in Bucaramanga. There are stores in El Cacique and several other shopping malls.\n\n**Latin Lover** (Cra. 35 No. 44-41, tel. 7\/695-1369, 9am-noon and 2pm-8pm Mon.-Sat.), created by a pair of Bucaramanga hipsters, sells groovy and original Latino-chic T-shirts. They cost around COP$60,000.\n\nFor handicrafts, check out the woven items, including handicrafts made from leaves of the _fique_ palm tree, and other accessories at **Luz y Vida** (Centro Comercial Cuarta Etapa, 4th floor, Local 402\/9, tel. 7\/673-0680, cell tel. 317\/316-4487, www.artesaniasluzyvida.webnode.com.co, 10am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-5pm Sun.). This is an association of women heads of household who have been forcibly displaced from their homes.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nIt's not just backpackers who flock to the M **Kasa Guane** (Cl. 49 No. 28-1, tel. 7\/657-6960, www.kasaguane.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$80,000 d). This busy yet friendly place with both dorms and private rooms hosts activities, provides tons of insider information and tips, and is in a great location in Cabecera. The guys here will get you hooked up with paragliding and give you expert insider tips on all the Bucaramanga party spots. On weekends the top floor bar gets lively.\n\n**Nest Fly Site Hostel** (Km. 2 V\u00eda Mesa de Ruitoque, cell tel. 312\/0432-6266, www.colombiaparagliding.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is the place to stay if you're interested in paragliding. It's right next door to the fly site. It's a quiet and cute place, 20 minutes away from the bustle of Buca. Nest is run by the same people as Colombia Paragliding and the Kasa Guane hostel. It is near the Ruitoque town next to the Las \u00c1guilas launching pad for most paragliding flights near Bucaramanga.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\n**Antigua Bel\u00e9n Bed and Breakfast** (Cra. 31 No. 17-22, tel. 7\/634-9860, www.hotelantiquabelen.com, COP$133,000 d with a\/c) has 13 rooms in a modern house full of antiques. It's located in a rather dull part of town not terribly close to nor too far from anything. Breakfast is served in a pleasant patio in the back.\n\nThe **Hostal UNAB** (Av. 42 No. 48-160, tel. 7\/643-6111, ext. 652, COP$154,000 d) has just four comfortable rooms and a restaurant on-site. Right across the street from the university, it might be an odd place to be for a visit to Buca. But it is extremely low-key. It's about a 15-minute walk down to the Parque San P\u00edo from here.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\n**Hotel Guane** (Cl. 34 No. 22-72, tel. 7\/634-7014, www.hotelguane.com, COP$206,000 d) is a mid-sized hotel with 40 air-conditioned rooms, a pool, and two restaurants. Cheesy decor. **La Serran\u00eda** (Cl. 33 No. 30-26, tel. 7\/691-7535, www.laserraniahotel.com, COP$250,000 d) has about 50 new and minimalist-style rooms along with a rooftop pool and restaurant. It's overpriced. **Ciudad Bonita** (Cl. 35 No. 22-01, tel. 7\/635-0101, www.hotelciudadbonita.com.co, COP$260,000 d) is the fancy hotel in town. It has 70 rooms, two restaurants, a caf\u00e9, a pool, gym, sauna, and there's live music Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. The area it's in is not a pleasant place to walk around day or night.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nWant to eat like a local? Look for these Santanderean specialties: _cabrito con pepitoria_ (goat fricassee), _carne oreada_ (dried meat), and _mute santandereano_ (a corn-based meaty stew). And don't forget the ants: fried big bottom ants or _hormigas culonas._ These queen ants are harvested throughout Santander, typically after Semana Santa. After months of hibernation, on one prickly hot day, the queens leave their colony. That's when they are caught. They are later toasted. Eating ants has always been popular and dates back hundreds of years to the Guane culture. Wealthy Santandereanos used to be embarrassed to admit any fondness for the creepy-crawlers, but that's changed, and in fact the ants are showing up more and more on the plates of diners on a quest for the exotic.\n\nM **Santanero Colonial** (Cl. 41 No. 10-54, tel. 7\/696-0538, 7:30am-4pm Mon.-Thurs., 7:30am-late Fri., COP$15,000) is one of the top choices for government bureaucrats on lunch break. There is always a set lunch menu (plus \u00e0 la carte), and frequently you'll have to wait a bit to be seated. Tables are set up around a pleasant sunny patio. It is behind the Gobernaci\u00f3n building. **La Aldaba** (Cl. 37 No. 12-32, tel. 7\/642-4062, noon-3pm Mon.-Sat.) is a popular place for an inexpensive lunch. They always have a lunch special that features trout, chicken, or beef for under COP$12,000.\n\nOne of Bucaramanga's favorite restaurants is M **El Viejo Chiflas** (Cra. 33 No. 34-10, tel. 7\/632-0640, 9am-midnight Mon.-Wed., Thurs.-Sun. 24 hours, COP$23,000). The atmosphere here is cowboy style with wooden tables and interiors, and the menu features local specialties, such as goat and the Santander classic _carne oreada._ And there's always an arepa (cornmeal cake) with your meal. Portions can be huge. **Los Tejaditos** (Cl. 34 No. 27-82, tel. 7\/634-6028, www.restaurantelostejaditos.com, 11am-10pm Tues.-Sat., 11am-5pm Sun., COP$23,000) is an old-style restaurant with a popular special menu at lunchtime. **Mercag\u00e1n** (Cra. 33 No. 42-12, tel. 7\/632-4949, www.mercaganparrilla.com, 11am-6pm Mon. and Thurs., 11am-11pm Tues.-Wed. and Fri.-Sat., 11am-4pm Sun., COP$25,000) is a legendary steakhouse in Bucaramanga that has multiple locations, including in many shopping malls.\n\nFor a break from the _comida t\u00edpica_ (Colombian fare) thing, there are a few options in Buca. **Radha Govinda's** (Cra. 34 No. 51-95, tel. 7\/643-3382, lunch Mon.-Sat.) is a vegetarian option. It's Hare Krishna-run and is on a quiet street in Cabecera. The **Embajada China** (Cl. 49 No. 32-27, tel. 7\/647-1931, 10am-10pm daily, COP$15,000) is run by a Chinese family, and they serve generous portions. It's in Cabecera near the Kasa Guane. Stir-fries, salads, and pastas are on the menu at **Tavolo Gourmet** (Cra. 35 No. 48-84, tel. 7\/643-7461, www.tavologourmet.com, 11am-10pm Tues.-Sun., COP$18,000). It's a bright and airy place in a fancy neighborhood. The wildly popular Colombian chain **Crepes & Waffles** (Centro Comercial La Florida, Cl. 31 No. 26A-19, 3rd floor, Local 3090, tel. 7\/632-1345, 11:45am-9:30pm Mon.-Sat., 11:45am-8:30pm Sun., COP$17,000) is a welcome sight.\n\nWe'll admit that the cr\u00eapes at M **Cr\u00eapes D'Or** (Cl. 46 No. 34-28, tel. 7\/657-4770, 3:30pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$13,000) are nothing to write home about, although they're fine and fairly priced. What makes this unpretentious family-run spot a delight is its setting overlooking the Parque San P\u00edo. Imagine an outdoor terrace where you look out onto park goers, dogwalkers, and joggers and not onto a steady stream of traffic!\n\n**Kirama** (Cl. 49 No. 33-37, tel. 7\/657-6989, 6am-9pm daily) is a wildly popular spot for breakfast on the run, like an _arepa boyacense_ (cornmeal cake stuffed with cheese). Do not be confused by Karima, which is immediately next to it. Kirama says Karima came later. **Pan Pa Ya** (Cl. 49 No. 28-38, tel. 7\/685-2001, 8am-10pm Mon.-Sat, 9am-noon and 5pm-8pm Sun.) is in all the major cities of Colombia, and it's always a reliable place for a decent cup of coffee, pastries, and inexpensive breakfasts (eggs, fresh fruit).\n\nThe **Mercado P\u00fablico** (between Cras. 15-16 and Clls. 33-34, daily) downtown is a great place to wander about. On multiple floors, you can do some cheap shopping, walking swiftly past the meat section, get a cheap meal on the fourth floor, and enjoy some pretty nice views of the city as well. On the top floor they sell loads of Piedecuesta cigars for cheap as well as baskets, herbs, and _artesan\u00edas_ (handicrafts). Several stands sell juices and lunches. Some stalls even sell bull's eyes, if you're feeling adventurous.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThe **tourist office** (Cl. 30 No. 26-117, tel. 7\/634-1132) is parkside at the Parque de los Ni\u00f1os. Police can be reached by dialing 123, the **Hospital Universitario Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia** (Cra. 33 No. 28-126) by calling tel. 7\/634-6110.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThe **Aeropuerto Internacional de Palo Negro** (V\u00eda Lebrija), Bucaramanga's airport, is 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of town. **Avianca** (Cl. 52 No. 35A-10, tel. 7\/657-3888, www.avianca.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-1pm Sat.), **EasyFly** (tel. 7\/697-0333, www.easyfly.com.co), **VivaColombia** (tel. 1\/489-7989, www.vivacolombia.com.co), and **LAN** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com) all serve the city. Taxis to and from the airport to Bucaramanga cost COP$32,000.\n\nFrequent bus service is offered between Bucaramanga and all major cities nationwide as well as small locales in Santander. The **Terminal de Transportes** (Km. 2 Tr. Metropolitana, tel. 7\/637-1000, www.terminalbucaramanga.com) is modern, clean, and open-air. It is off of Calle 70 on the way towards Gir\u00f3n.\n\nThe **MetroL\u00ednea** (www.metrolinea.gov.co) is the Bucaramanga version of the Bogot\u00e1 TransMilenio. These green buses are clean and efficient, and the system covers just about the entire city, although it can be difficult to figure out. Maps of the system are hard to come by, obligating you to ask fellow travelers for information. You can purchase cards for the regular buses (ones that do not have dedicated lanes) at kiosks on the streets.\n\nTaxis are plentiful in Bucaramanga. To order one call **Radio Taxis Libres** (tel. 7\/634-8888) or **Taxmovil** (tel. 7\/633-9090).\n\nThe city center area is easily visited on foot, although there is a lot of traffic. The Cabecera area is also more or less walkable, especially in the evenings when traffic calms down.\n\n##### **Mesa de Ruitoque**\n\nA surprisingly quiet and rural area to the southeast of Bucaramanga and Floridablanca, Mesa de Ruitoque sits on a plateau and is perfect for paragliding.\n\n###### **PARAGLIDING**\n\nThe Bucaramanga area is a great place to get over that fear and fly your first tandem paragliding flight, or to take a 10-day course, and the plateau of Mesa de Ruitoque, just 10 minutes from downtown, is where to go.\n\nThe area is blessed with 350 flyable days per year, meaning more air time and less waiting around. **Colombia Paragliding** (www.colombiaparagliding.com) offers tandem flights of different durations from the **Voladero Las \u00c1guilas** (Km. 2 V\u00eda Ruitoque, tel. 7\/678-6257, www.voladerolasaguilas.com.co) launch point just outside of town near Ruitoque. The Kasa Guane hostel can arrange transportation for you in their van. Instructors are all certified.\n\nA 10-minute flight costs COP$50,000, 20 minutes is $90,000, and a 30-minute flight costs $120,000. Winds are best at this fly site in the afternoon, from noon until 4pm, and the site itself opens each day at 10am. A 10-day certification course is offered by Colombia Paragliding at the \u00c1guilas site with additional flight time in Chicamocha. It costs COP$2,300,000 including transportation, meals, and lodging.\n\nThe views are quite spectacular from above Bucaramanga. (Bring your camera!) The best way for pilots to judge the winds is by observing the _chulos_ (black vultures) as they fly and glide high above. At the fly site there is also a snack bar. The place gets crazy crowded on weekends and on holidays. For a fee of COP$25,000 you can get a DVD of your flight.\n\n##### **Floridablanca**\n\nThere aren't loads of reasons to make a special trip to Floridablanca, which has evolved to become essentially a southeastern suburb of Bucaramanga, five kilometers away, but a good one is to take a bite out of one of their famous _obleas,_ crisp paper-thin wafers filled with gooey and delicious _arequipe_ (caramel spread). **Obleas Floridablanca** (Cra. 7 No. 5-54, tel. 7\/648-5819, 10am-8pm daily) is the most famous _oblea_ factory of them all. They've been around since 1949 and as you can imagine have their share of loyal customers. There are around 30 types of _obleas_ you can order, although there really is no need to go beyond the classic _oblea_ with just _arequipe._ The names of the _obleas_ are whimsical. Two of the more popular ones are the _amor eterno_ (eternal love), which has _arequipe,_ cheese, and blackberry jam, and the _noviazgo_ (courtship), which has _arequipe_ and cheese. They also have do-it-yourself _oblea_ kits that you can take back home with you.\n\na resident yellow-footed tortoise at the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Eloy Valenzuela\n\nThe **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico Regional Guane** (Casa de la Cultura, Cra. 7 No. 4-35, tel. 7\/619-8181, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., COP$1,000) is in need of some love, but the collection of ceramics on display is impressive and extensive. In the courtyard are some pre-Hispanic designs that were found on a large boulder.\n\nAlong the manicured lawns of the **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Eloy Valenzuela** (tel. 7\/634-6100, 8am-5pm daily, COP$4,000) you can wander along paths (sharing them with turtles) and view enormous ceibas and other trees. If you look closely in the tops of trees you might even see some sloths. The R\u00edo Fr\u00edo (it's a stream, really) flows through the gardens. The gardens were revamped and reloaded in 2012. Security is present in the park, and there are always visitors, but be on your guard at some of the far reaches of the gardens. It's not terribly easy, but you can get to the gardens by way of MetroL\u00ednea from Bucaramanga.\n\n##### **Gir\u00f3n**\n\nWhile Bucaramanga is a pulsating tribute to the economic growth of modern Colombia, nearby Gir\u00f3n, under 15 minutes and 12 kilometers (7 miles) away to the west, is a living reminder of the colonial past, at least in the town's historic center: The population of Gir\u00f3n is around 150,000 today! It's somewhat surprising to see, in this age of television, Internet, and shopping malls, how the plaza is still the main meeting place in Gir\u00f3n, as it has been since the 17th century. Locals take pride in their town, and winners of the best facades, doors, and windows contest proudly display their plaques in front of their white-washed _tapia pisada_ (adobe) homes.\n\nWhile it is easy to visit at any time, on weekends Gir\u00f3n has a festive air to it as city folk from Bucaramanga and other day-trip visitors stroll the town's cobblestone streets. There isn't much in the way of tourist sights here, but be sure to visit **Bas\u00edlica Menor San Juan Bautista** and the **Parque las Nieves,** and walk along the _malec\u00f3n_ (wharf).\n\nYou might want to consider making Gir\u00f3n your base, instead of Bucaramanga. It's got charm, it's quiet, and traveling back and forth to the metropolis is not an issue. The trip takes under 15 minutes, and taxis will cost only around COP$10,000. You can also get to Gir\u00f3n on the MetroL\u00ednea system.\n\nM **Gir\u00f3n Chill Out Hotel Boutique** (Cra. 25 No. 32-06, tel. 7\/646-1119, www.gironnchillout.com, COP$144,000 d) is run by an Italian couple (hence the Italian flag), and while the name suggests an Ibiza atmosphere, the hotel is in a remodeled colonial house. It's quiet, cute, and homey, and they serve authentic Italian food. **Las Nieves** (Cl. 30 No. 25-71, tel. 7\/681-2951, www.hotellasnievesgiron.com, COP$116,000 d with a\/c, COP$82,000 d with fan) is right on the plaza, and the best rooms, although at the same time the most used rooms, are the six that have a balcony overlooking the plaza. The interior of the hotel is full of palm trees and greenery, and the owner's dog will let you pet him\/her. There are about 30 rooms, many full of twin beds. It's OK.\n\n**La Casona** (Cl. 28 No. 28-09, tel. 7\/646-7195, www.lacasona-restaurante.com, noon-8pm Tues.-Sun., COP$16,000) is a spiffy old place, and they have a fun _onces_ (tea time) menu for late afternoon tea, Colombian style: You get a _tamal_ (tamale), cheese, breads, and hot chocolate.\n\n#### M **CA\u00d1\u00d3N DEL CHICAMOCHA**\n\nWith an absolutely spectacular location above the Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha, the privately run **Parque Nacional del Chicamocha** (PANACHI, 54 km\/34 mi south of Bucaramanga, tel. 7\/639-4444, www.parquenacionaldelchicamocha.com, 9am-6pm Tues. and Thurs., 9am-7pm Fri.-Sun., COP$40,000 admission plus round-trip gondola ride) is a mostly cheesy amusement park geared towards Colombian families, but the views? Insert your favorite superlative here. This privately run park has several attractions, like an ostrich farm, areas that celebrate Santander culture and traditions, extreme sports, and soon a water park, but most people opt for the cable car ride (6.3 kilometers\/3.9 miles) across the canyon over the R\u00edo Chicamocha. For locals and for tourists who are opposed to backtracking, this is not just a nice excursion, it's a means of transportation. On weekends, holidays, and during the Christmas and Easter holidays, from Bucaramanga you can take a PANACHI bus (cell tel. 316\/696-3780) to the park, as a day trip. To get there using public transportation, buses leaving from the Bucaramanga bus terminal bound for San Gil can drop you off at the park. (There are always buses passing the park between San Gil and Bucaramanga, and you can flag them down and hop on.) If you happen to be in that part of town, buses also depart for San Gil from the Papi Quiero Pi\u00f1a store in Floridablanca. By the way, the vistas from the road that hugs the canyon high above the R\u00edo Chicamocha make that right-hand side window seat from Bucaramanga worth fighting for.\n\na gondola ride across the Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha\n\n##### **Mesa de los Santos**\n\nThe village of Los Santos is on the other side of the canyon from the PANACHI. In this area, known as Mesa de los Santos, there are a number of country homes for weekenders from Bogot\u00e1, a few places to stay, and numerous outdoorsy things to do, like visit El Duende waterfall. It ranks second in the world for annual number of tremors at 390 per month (a rate of about one every two hours).\n\nThe **Refugio La Roca** (Km. 22 in La Mojarra, cell tel. 312\/333-1480, www.refugiolaroca.blogspot.com, COP$60,000 d shared bath) is a kind of hippy-ish pad for \"rock climbers, walkers, artists, and other dreamers.\" Their specialty is rock climbing and it's got quite a jaw-dropping view, overlooking the Chicamocha canyon. Here you can camp for COP$10,000 per night (they also have tents and sleeping bags for rent). There is also one dorm room with four beds for COP$80,000.\n\nAt the other end of the spectrum is **El Roble** hotel (after La Mesa toll booth, Mesa de los Santos, tel. 1\/232-8595, www.cafemesa.com, COP$398,000 d). The rate includes a tour of the on-site coffee plantation. This lovely getaway is on a large certified organic coffee farm, set underneath towering oak trees, and teeming with over 100 species of birds. **Ecoposada Vina de Aldana** (cell tel. 317\/270-5077 or 300\/438-5522, ecoposada.dealdana@gmail.com, COP$80,000 d) is a guesthouse with 20 rooms at a vineyard, where you can take walks, view birds, and take a tour of the vineyard.\n\n#### **SAN GIL**\n\nRafting, paragliding, caving, mountain biking, canyoning, hiking, birding, and rappelling are all within reach in San Gil, Colombia's outdoor adventure capital. This spry city (pop. 43,000) on the steep banks of the R\u00edo Fonce is 95 kilometers (59 miles) southwest of Bucaramanga. It caters to international tourists. Even if your idea of \"adventurous\" is merely being in Colombia, the breathtaking Santander scenery of canyons, rivers, waterfalls, and mountains is more than enough reason to warrant a visit.\n\nDuring the late 19th and early 20th centuries, San Gil and nearby towns built their prosperity on quinine, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco cultivation. Today, old tile-roofed hangars to dry tobacco, known as _caneys,_ still dot the landscape. Today it is a peaceful place to visit and a top tourist destination. San Gil can feel claustrophobic, but accommodations in San Gil are plentiful, comfortable, and inexpensive, and it's got Gringo Mike's.\n\nThere's no need to stay in bustling San Gil in order to enjoy the many outdoor activities that the area offers. You can easily organize rafting trips or paragliding adventures from quieter and more charming towns such as Barichara (20 kilometers\/12 miles north).\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nOn the R\u00edo Fonce about a 15-minute walk from town is the **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico El Gallineral** (8am-5pm daily, COP$8,000). This used to be just a park, but it has been given a fussy makeover to apparently make it more appealing to tourists, and now it is a botanical garden. There are cute stalls selling handicrafts, sweets, and coffee along the park's orderly paths. It is a pretty place, and a late-afternoon walk among the towering trees is a nice plan. A restaurant on-site is open for lunch.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nThe best place in San Gil to browse handicrafts is at **Corporaci\u00f3n Patrimonio Guane, Agata y Yarigui** (Cra. 10 No. 9-67, cell tel. 313\/892-9681).\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **RAFTING AND KAYAKING**\n\nThree rivers near San Gil offer some excellent rafting adventures. The **R\u00edo Fonce,** whose banks the town stands on, is the closest and one of the best suited for rafting. It's a category II-III. It's fine year-round, although in March and April the water level is higher. A rafting trip on the Fonce costs about COP$30,000 for a 90-minute trip. The **R\u00edo Su\u00e1rez** is a category III-V river. The starting point is about an hour's drive towards Bogot\u00e1. You'll definitely get wet on this one. The trip leaves at 10am, returning at 4pm, and costs COP$125,000. You're on the water for about 2.5 hours. The third river is the **R\u00edo Chicamocha,** but many consider the previous rivers to be the best.\n\nThe R\u00edo Fonce flows through San Gil.\n\n**Colombia Rafting Expeditions** (Cra. 10 No. 7-83, tel. 7\/724-5800, www.colombiarafting.com) is considered the best rafting company in town. They focus exclusively on river activities. The walls of their small office are covered with diplomas and certificates earned by their team of experienced guides. They can organize trips down all the rivers, determining which one is right for you based upon on skill level, your sense of adventure, and water levels. They also do kayak trips. This company takes safety concerns very seriously and conducts safety training exercises in English.\n\nThree-day kayaking courses (four hours per day starting at 8am) are offered by Colombia Rafting. These cost COP$400,000 and take place on the R\u00edo Fonce. They can also arrange for kayaking on the R\u00edo Chicamocha. They also rent out kayaks to those who can demonstrate their level of experience. You can also try your hydrospeeding (riverboarding) skills on the R\u00edo Fonce. That costs COP$45,000.\n\n###### M **PARAGLIDING**\n\nThere are two main paragliding areas near San Gil. One is the spectacular **Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha** and the other is 16 kilometers (10 miles) away at **Las Vueltas** in Curit\u00ed. Tandem paragliding trips over the Chicamocha, of about a 45-minute duration, cost around COP$170,000. That price includes transportation to and from the landing and pickup sites. Chicamocha paragliding flights take place in the mornings. At the windy Las Vueltas location, it will cost you about COP$60,000. Those flights are held in the afternoon. As far as courses go, **Colombian Paragliding** (cell tel. 312\/432-6266, www.colombiaparagliding.com) has the best reputation. They are based near Bucaramanga.\n\n###### **WATERFALLS AND RAPPELLING**\n\nThe **Cascadas de Juan Cur\u00ed** (road to Charal\u00e1, COP$7,000) are quite close to San Gil and easily reached on public transportation or by bike. These falls, about 18 meters high, are privately owned by two neighbors who are fierce rivals! For a more rustic climb through the jungle to reach your refreshing goal, go to the second entrance (Donde Efigenia). It's about a 15-minute hike, and it can be treacherous at points. Wear some shoes you don't mind getting muddy and wet. And bring a bathing suit to cool off in one of the pools. You can camp there as well. It's a nice excursion. If you don't want to sweat and struggle at all, take the first entrance. To test your rappelling skills here, contact **P\u00e1ramo Extremo** (Cra. 4 No. 4-57, tel. 7\/725-8944, www.paramosantanderextremo.com). They can organize an excursion, with all the safety equipment and an experienced guide, for COP$45,000.\n\n###### **CAVING**\n\nSeveral caves around San Gil make for good exploring. The **Cueva Indio** is one of the most popular. It's filled with bats, and you don't really have to do much bending over to explore. It is near the town of P\u00e1ramo, just beyond the Cascadas de Juan Cur\u00ed. An excursion including equipment and a guide costs COP$25,000, but that doesn't include transportation. Contact **P\u00e1ramo Extremo** (Cra. 4 No. 4-57, tel. 7\/725-8944, www.paramosantanderextremo.com) in the town of P\u00e1ramo.\n\nThe **Cueva Vaca,** near Curit\u00ed, is the most challenging of the caves in the area. You will be in water and mud the entire time you are underground, and at one point you'll have to swim underwater to get through to the next cave. It's action packed and there are some tight squeezes as well, but the adventure is worth it. There are lots of stalactites and stalagmites and bats to see. It costs COP$25,000 plus about COP$3,000 in bus transportation. **Colombia Rafting** (Cra. 10 No. 7-83, cell tel. 311\/283-8647, www.colombiarafting.com) or other outfitters can organize a trip here.\n\nThe Cascadas de Juan Cur\u00ed are a great day trip from San Gil.\n\nThe **La Antigua** cave is on the road towards Barichara. **El Dorado Hostel** (Cl. 2 No. 8-55, tel. 7\/723-7588, www.eldoradohostel.com) organizes an extreme trip that includes the cave plus canyoning, rappelling, and two waterfall descents. All that adventure during just five hours! This trip costs COP$80,000 including transportation.\n\nThe Medell\u00edn-based outfit **Expedici\u00f3n Adventure** (cell tel. 314\/258-9499, www.expedicionadventure.blogspot.com, expedicionadventure@gmail.com) specializes in unique 3- to 20-day caving trips to mostly unexplored and unspoiled areas in Santander. The starting point is usually in Barbosa, a town between Tunja and Barichara.\n\n###### **BIKING**\n\n**Colombian Bike Junkies** (Cl. 12, No. 8-35, cell tel. 316\/327-6101 or 313\/411-5332, www.colombianbikejunkies.com), run by a pair from Seattle, Washington, and the United Kingdom, organizes downhill day-trip rides, crazy canyon adventures, multi-activity combos, and multi-day adventures. One day trip starts at 2,000 meters on the top of the Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha, going, down, down, down through beautiful countryside to the ghost town of Jordan. After a swim and lunch, there is yet one more downhill trip near Curit\u00ed. Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) of downhill riding! All on top-of-the-line mountain bikes. If you want to rent a cheap-o bike for the day, go to **Bicicleter\u00eda El Ring** (Cl. 7 No. 10-14, tel. 7\/724-3189).\n\n###### **SWIMMING**\n\nOn weekends and on holidays, families head to swimming holes to splash about. The atmosphere is joyous, and there's usually music and plenty of food and drink as well. (A little trash, too, unfortunately.) **Pozo Azul** is about five minutes by bus or taxi from San Gil (or a 20-minute walk). **Pescaderito** is in Curit\u00ed, about a 40-minute bus ride away, and there are five swimming holes in which to cool off. During the week it's quieter.\n\n###### **TOURS**\n\nYour hostel or hotel can organize any activity you are interested in doing, but in case you'd like to shop around, contact the following companies. **Planeta Azul** (Parque El Gallineral, tel. 7\/724-0000, www.planetaazulcolombia.com) is an agency that organizes rafting trips as well as a whole host of other activities, like bungee jumping (COP$46,000), caving (COP$40,000), rappelling (COP$40,000), paragliding (COP$60,000), and horseback riding (COP$95,000) to keep you stimulated. **Aventura Total** (Cl. 7 No. 10-27, tel. 7\/723-8888, www.aventuratotal.com.co) has a good reputation as well. They offer all-inclusive packages that include rafting, caving, and other activities as well as hotel accommodations. Aventura Total often organizes activities for large school groups. **Nativox** (Cra. 11 No. 7-14 Malec\u00f3n, tel. 7\/723-9999, www.nativoxsangil.com) is similar to the previous two.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nGood and affordable lodging options are plentiful in San Gil. However, for more space, fresh air, or for more luxury, consider staying in Barichara, Mesa de los Santos, or Pinchote, all close by.\n\nOne of the first hostels in town catering to international backpackers, **Macondo Hostal** (Cra. 8 No. 10-35, tel. 7\/724-8001, www.macondohostel.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$55,000 d w\/bath) remains an excellent choice. Clean dorm rooms, popular with backpackers, and private rooms, popular with older travelers, quickly fill up\u2014make a reservation in advance! They have a hot tub, small garden, and hammocks for post-adventure relaxing. Staff are extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and great at organizing rafting, paragliding, and all other outdoor activities in the region. On the corner next door is the **Hostal Colombo Ingl\u00e9s** (Cra. 8 No. 9-133, tel. 7\/724-3787, www.hostelcolomboingles.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$70,000 d), which opened in late 2013. It's small and the staff are friendly. There is no English connection here; it's just a name.\n\nWelcome to _Sam_ Gil. Native entrepreneur Sam has two lodging options in the center of town. Super-clean **Sam's VIP Hotel** (Cr. 10 No. 12-33, tel. 7\/724-2746, www.samshostel.com, COP$17,000 dorm, COP$70,000 d) has a great location overlooking the plaza. The terrace is a great place for hanging out in the evenings. Plus there's a teeny pool and a sauna. His second place, with 11 rooms, is **La Mansion de Sam Hotel Boutique** (Cl. 12 No. 8-71, tel. 7\/724-6044, <http:\/\/hotelmansionsangil.com>, COP$70,000-100,000 d) which is set in an old house just a block from the main plaza. Sam has an inviting pub that specializes in steaks, ribs, and beer. Colorful artwork by local artist \"Rosenkranz\" adorns the walls of the rooms. La Mansion has a lot of character, cool decoration, and big rooms, some with balconies. The only drawback is that cars sometimes park in the interior patio.\n\nThe multi-story **Hostel Santander Alem\u00e1n** (Cra. 10 No. 15-07, tel. 7\/724-0329, www.hostelsantanderalemantv.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is half a block from the local bus station. It's very clean. Friendly folks, but there's nothing German about it.\n\nIf you'd like to get away from the backpacker scene but still pay close to backpacker prices, there are three clean cheapies that may fit the bill. If you stay at the **Hotel Capri** (Cl. 10 No. 9-31, tel. 7\/724-4218, hotelcaprisangil@yahoo.es, COP$40,000), get a room on the third floor overlooking the street. **The Hotel Abril** (Cl. 8 at Cra. 10, tel. 7\/724-8795, hotelabrilsangilss@yahoo.es, COP$45,000 pp) has 28 rooms, good fans, wireless Internet, and hot water. With just six rooms, M **Posada Familiar** (Cra. 10 No. 8-55, tel. 7\/724-8136, COP$45,000 pp high season) makes you feel at home. The patio is filled with flowers and plants, you can cook in the kitchen, and the owner is extremely nice.\n\nTo enjoy the peace of the countryside and charm of a colonial town but still be within easy striking distance of San Gil restaurants and activities, consider staying in the hamlet of **Pinchote**. M **Hotel Boutique Wassiki** (Km. 3 V\u00eda San Gil-Bogot\u00e1, tel. 7\/724-8386, www.wassiki.com, COP$164,000-227,000 d) is an excellent upscale hotel and offers well-appointed and airy rooms, comfortable common areas, a beautiful dining room, lots of hammocks, and a pool. It's got a fine view of the valley below and is within walking distance of the idyllic Plaza Principal of Pinchote.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nMostly Tex-Mex M **Gringo Mike's** (Cl. 12 No. 8-35, tel. 7\/724-1695, 8am-11:45am and 5pm-10pm daily, COP$18,000) is paradise for Americans who have been on the road a while. Guac and chips, barbecue burgers, black bean burgers, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, burritos, and even breakfast burritos. It's a bummer it isn't open for lunch, though. Wait staff are on the nonchalant side, and the place is full of tourists, but who cares? The margaritas are perfect!\n\nTo brush elbows with the locals try **Rogelia** (Cra. 10 No. 8-09, tel. 7\/724-0823, 7am-7:30pm daily, COP$12,000) or **Man\u00e1** (Cra. 10 No. 9-42, lunch daily, COP$12,000), which is a popular place for lunch, and inexpensive, too. Try the grilled chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, but don't expect gourmet nor charm.\n\nThe best aspect about the **Gallineral Restaurante** (Parque Gallineral, cell tel. 300\/565-2653, 8am-5pm daily, COP$20,000) is its lush setting.\n\nOn a second-floor open-air terrace, **La Terraza de Sevilla Video-Bar** (Cl. 10 No. 9-09, tel. 7\/724-3422, 8am-2am Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000) specializes in grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. It's the place to drink beer and watch soccer. For a coffee or drink and a friendly atmosphere, **La Habana** (Cra. 9 No. 11-68, tel. 7\/724-6279, 9am-midnight Mon.-Thurs., 9am-2am Fri.-Sat., 4pm-midnight Sun.) is a good choice.\n\nThe market is small, and the atmosphere is peaceful. As you walk through the stalls, you may only hear the hushed tones of the vendors. For a huge fresh fruit juice or just plain fruit in the morning, this is the place to go.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThe main **Terminal de Transportes** (V\u00eda al Socorro, tel. 7\/724-5858) for buses to the major cities, such as Bucaramanga, Tunja, and Bogot\u00e1, is five minutes out of town, on the other side of the river. The journey to Bucaramanga by bus takes 2.5 hours and costs COP$15,000. Traveling to Tunja by bus will take 3-5 hours, to Bogot\u00e1 7, and to Santa Marta or Medell\u00edn about 12 (v\u00eda Bucaramanga). Taxis to and from the main bus terminal to the town center cost COP$3,200.\n\nA smaller bus terminal for nearby towns is on Carrera 15 at Calle 11. It serves towns such as Barichara, Charal\u00e1, Curit\u00ed, and Pescadero. It doesn't have an official name, but some refer to it as the Mini Terminal. Buses to Barichara depart every half hour 6am-6:30pm and cost COP$3,800.\n\n#### M **BARICHARA**\n\nIn 1975, when it was declared a national monument, Barichara (pop. 8,000) was named the most beautiful pueblo in Colombia. Despite its popularity with weekenders and a steady stream of international visitors, it hasn't lost its charm. This old tobacco town of sloping cobblestoned streets and white-washed colonial-era homes is permanently blessed with bright blue skies and warm temperatures. Located 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of San Gil, the town is on a plateau that overlooks the R\u00edo Su\u00e1rez. Don't skimp on your time here.\n\nBarichara is one of the country's most beautiful pueblos.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nOn the serene Parque Principal is the **Templo de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n,** with two grandiose towers that soar 22 meters into the air. When lit up at night, the sandstone church is particularly striking. The church was completed around 1780. On the west side of the park is the mayor's office. Next to it is the Casa de Cultura.\n\nUp the picturesque Calle 6, at the top of the hill is the **Capilla de Santa B\u00e1rbara,** a Romanesque-style church that is a popular place for weddings. There is a cheesy sculpture garden, **Parque de las Artes,** at the edge of the R\u00edo Su\u00e1rez canyon.\n\nThere are two other colonial churches to see, the **Capilla de Jes\u00fas** (Cra. 7 at Cl. 3), next to the cemetery, and the **Capilla de San Antonio** (Cra. 4 at Cl. 5). All around town you'll see houses and walls that utilize the _tapia pisada_ adobe technique, and often, on these brilliantly white walls you'll see a small patch of the mud interior left exposed on purpose, to show passersby that it's not just a modern brick construction but real _tapia pisada._\n\nBarichara is the birthplace of Pres. Aquileo Parra G\u00f3mez, who was the 11th president of the Estados Unidos de Colombia. His childhood home, **Casa Aquileo Parra G\u00f3mez** (Cl. 6 at Cra. 2), has been extremely well preserved and is an excellent example of typical 19th-century Barichara architecture. The site is also a handicraft workshop for the elderly, who make woven bags and other items out of the natural fiber _fique,_ which are sold for a pittance. It is an excellent social program, and they seem to have a good time. They are there Monday through Thursday.\n\nthe Camino Real between Barichara and Guane\n\n###### M **CAMINO REAL**\n\nA must-do activity in Barichara is to take the 5.3-kilometer (3.3-mile) Camino Real path to the pueblo of Guane. It's a lovely path that zigzags down from the plateau of Barichara through farmland, affording nice views of the countryside and an excellent opportunity to burn off a few vacation calories. Parts of the path are lined with stone walls that have been there for centuries.\n\nBefore the conquest, indigenous tribes throughout what is now Colombia traded crops and goods with each other utilizing an extensive network of footpaths. These trails meandered through the countryside of present-day Santander, Boyac\u00e1, Norte de Santander, Cundinamarca, and beyond. During Spanish rule, the paths continued to be a major means of communication between colonial towns, and the networks became known as Caminos Reales.\n\nIn the late 19th century, a German, Geo von Legerke, restored the Barichara-Guane Camino Real and built a stone bridge across the R\u00edo Su\u00e1rez in order to improve transportation to the mighty R\u00edo Magdalena.\n\nThe hike down takes two hours, and you don't need a guide: It's well marked, well trodden, and safe. To get to the trailhead, walk east along Carrera 10 to the Piedra de Bol\u00edvar, where you'll see the stone path leading down towards the valley.\n\nIn Guane you can check out the small **Museo Isaias Ardila D\u00edaz** (Parque Principal, hours vary), which has three rooms, one on paleontology (fossils), the next on archaeology (mummy), and a third on colonial life in rural Santander. _Sabaj\u00f3n,_ which is the Colombian version of eggnog, is the sweet specialty in Guane, and it is sold in various shops around the park.\n\nIf you are not up for the hike a (cute) bus departs the Parque Principal in Barichara at 6am, 9:30am, 11:30am, 2:30pm, and 5:30pm (it returns 30 minutes later from Guane).\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nLittle Barichara proudly hosts two annual film festivals. The **Festival Internacional de Cine de Barichara** (www.ficba.com.co) takes place in June, and the **Festival de Cine Verde** (www.festiver.org), an environmentally themed festival, is held every September.\n\nCobblestone streets in the colonial village of Guane\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nBarichara has always been a magnet for artists and craftspeople, and many have shops in town.\n\nThe **Fundaci\u00f3n Escuela Taller Barichara** (Cra. 5 No. 4-26, tel. 7\/726-7577, www.tallerdeoficiosbarichara.com, 8am-7pm Mon.-Thurs., 8am-10pm Fri.-Sat., 8am-4pm Sun.) is a gallery, museum, school, shop, and restaurant, all wrapped up in one. Occasional photography and painting exhibitions are held at this lovely cultural center, decorative objectives traditional from the area are always on display, ceramics and other items made by students are for sale, and anyone can take a month-long or longer course here. They offer dozens for free, and the Cruces restaurant is the best restaurant in town (it's open on weekends and holidays).\n\nAn interesting stop to make is at the **Taller de Papel de Fique** (Cl. 6 No. 2-68, no phone, 8am-3pm Mon.-Thurs.). At this workshop, craftspeople make beautiful paper out of the natural fiber of _fique._ On sale in their small store are cards, stationery, and handicrafts, all produced using that natural fiber. They are also now experimenting with other paper made from pineapple leaves. Short tours explaining the paper-making process are given, and for this there is a small charge.\n\nOne of the best-known ceramic artists in town is **Jimena Rueda** (Cra. 5 No. 2-01, cell tel. 314\/400-5071). In addition to browsing her work, ask about the famous rustic handmade pottery of the Guane people. There is only one person who knows and uses this technique: **Ana Felisa Alquichire.** Do\u00f1a Ana Felisa has been declared a living national cultural treasure by the Colombian presidency.\n\n**Galer\u00eda Anil** (Cl. 6 No. 10-46, cell tel. 311\/470-1175) is the studio for local artists Jasm\u00edn and Carlos.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nWith its growth in popularity, accommodations options to fit all budgets and styles have popped up in Barichara.\n\nBackpackers and budget travelers have several options in Barichara. The M **Color de Hormiga Hostel** (Cl. 6 No. 5-35, cell tel. 315\/297-1621, <http:\/\/colordehormiga.com\/hostel.html>, COP$45,000 d) used to house teachers from a neighboring school. It's decorated with institutional furniture that was left behind and kept the groovy tiled floors as they are. Funky! There are seven small rooms for one or two people, each with its own private bath. The kitchen is open for use by guests. The M **Reserva Natural** (Vereda San Jos\u00e9 Alto, cell tel. 315\/297-1621, COP$70,000 pp d), from the same owner as the Color de Hormiga Hostel, is a step up, with more luxury, more solitude, and a crazy bird show every morning while you have a healthy breakfast. Birds representing all colors of the rainbow appear like clockwork every morning to munch on pieces of banana and papaya to the delight of guests enjoying their breakfasts. This is about a 10-minute walk from town. The staff is incredibly friendly.\n\nThe **Tinto Hostel** (Cl. 6 No. 2-61, Bloque E Casa 1, tel. 7\/726-7725, www.hosteltintobarichara.com) is a friendly hostel. It's in a weird, mostly residential cul de sac, about a 10-minute downhill walk from town. It seems farther away than it actually is. They are helpful with organizing outdoor adventures in the San Gil area. The funky hostel award in Barichara goes to **Casa Bak\u00fa** (Cl. 5 No. 9-69, cell tel. 301\/419-2136, bakuhostal@hotmail.com). Baku, as in the capital of Azerbaijan. Like it or not, it's a social place. It's tiny. The common area, with a little homage to Bob Marley, is basically a garden with a bar and chairs. That's where they serve breakfast, which is included.\n\nOn the edge of town past the hospital, **Artepolis** (Cra. 2 at Cl. 2, cell tel. 300\/203-4531) was getting going when we arrived. It is a Frenchman's idea of creating a space for creative people to come and find creative inspiration in the marvelous setting of Barichara. Its formal and serious sounding name is the Centro Internacional de Encuentro y Formaci\u00f3n para el Arte y Cultura.\n\nAhh, the boutique hotel. Barichara didn't have them before; now it does! **La Nube** (Cl. 7 No. 7-39, tel. 7\/726-7161, www.lanubeposada.com, COP$330,000 d) was boutique before that word entered the Colombian hotel lexicon. It's still a comfortable choice. It has seven rooms and a good restaurant (breakfast not included), and the patio is a nice place for relaxing to the soothing sound of a fountain. **Achiotte Hotel Boutique** (Cl. 5 No. 3-52, tel. 7\/726-7512, COP$220,000 d) is a well-done, quiet hotel, with large rooms and common spaces filled with bamboo, flowers, and trees. You can shower here in the open air (nobody will see you!). At present the hotel has about nine rooms, which makes it really feel boutique. Along with a pool, there are plans to add several more rooms, which may change the feeling.\n\nM **El Cogollo** (Cra. 11 No. 7-37, cell tel. 311\/202-4391, www.baricharacogollo.com, COP$280,000) is a very comfortable boutique-type hotel with eight rooms. The hotel uses construction materials and techniques from the earth, such as _tapia pisada, bahreque, adobe,_ and stone. They operate the travel agency **Barichara Travel** (www.baricharaguanecito.com).\n\nFinally, there is the peaceful **Posada Sue\u00f1os de Antonio** (Cra. 9 No. 4-25, tel. 7\/726-7793, www.suenosdeantonio.com, COP$120,000 d), with five spacious rooms surrounding an interior patio.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nThe **Restaurante y Caf\u00e9 Las Cruces** (Cra. 5 No. 4-26, tel. 7\/726-7577, www.tallerdeoficiosbarichara.com, Fri.-Sun. and daily during high season, COP$28,000) is considered the top restaurant in Barichara. It's in the patio of the Fundaci\u00f3n Escuela Taller Barichara. **Plenilunio Caf\u00e9** (Cl. 6 No. 7-74, tel. 7\/726-7485, 6:30pm-10pm daily, COP$22,000) serves mostly Italian food but also has backpacker favorites like veggie burgers. There are just a handful of tables in this cozy spot, and most all of them are occupied by content foreign visitors on balmy Barichara evenings.\n\n**La Puerta** (Cl. 6 No. 8-51, tel. 7\/726-7649, www.baricharalapuerta.com, lunch and dinner daily high season, COP$22,000) is a beautiful place, candlelit at night. They serve tasty pastas and use local, organic ingredients when possible. **Casta\u00f1etos** (Cl. 6 No. 10-43, tel. 7\/726-7765, 6:30pm-10pm daily high season, COP$24,000) is the best pizzeria in town.\n\nAt the other end of town, near the canyon, is **Al Cuoco** (Cra. 4 No. 3B-15, cell tel. 312\/527-3628, noon-9pm or 10pm daily, COP$22,000), an Italian place run by a Roman. They make their own pasta.\n\nLocals throng to **El Balc\u00f3n de Mi Pueblo** (Cl. 7 No. 5-62, cell tel. 318\/280-2980, noon-5pm daily, COP$12,000) because they serve good, meaty Colombian food ( _cabro, carne oreada, churrasco_ ) without serving up Bogot\u00e1 prices! It's a cute place, up on the second floor. Another favorite is the lunch-only option **Misif\u00fa** (Cra. 6 No. 6 31, tel. 7\/726-7321, noon-6pm daily, COP$12,000). Their specialty is the local specialty _carne oreada,_ a dry and toothsome steak, reminiscent of beef jerky.\n\nFor a coffee or some of their world-famous (or at least pueblo-famous) _galletas de cuajada_ (cheese cookies), head to **Panader\u00eda Barichara** (Cl. 5 No. 5-33, tel. 7\/726-7688, 7am-1pm and 2pm-8pm daily). They've been around since 1954.\n\nThe best nightlife in town? Head to the **Mirador** bar on the west side of town overlooking the R\u00edo Su\u00e1rez at around 5:30pm. Free sunsets are included with the price of your \u00c1guila beer!\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nMost visitors arrive either in their own transportation or by bus to Barichara. Buses from Bogot\u00e1 depart from the Autopista Norte Station. The journey to San Gil takes six hours or more, and you'll have to transfer in San Gil. It costs COP$30,000. From Bucaramanga, from the Piedecuesta terminal, a bus leaves at 4:45pm Monday-Friday. On Saturday the bus departs at 9am and on Sunday at 7:30pm. It takes three hours and costs COP$15,000. _Busetas_ leave San Gil every half hour from the Terminal de Transportes Monday-Sunday starting at 6:10am, with the last bus departing at 8:15pm. The 20-kilometer (12-mile) journey takes 45 minutes.\n\n### **Norte de Santander**\n\nThis department in the northeast of the country borders Venezuela to the east and Santander to the south. The two main places of interest are Pamplona and C\u00facuta, two very different cities. Pamplona is a charming and cool highland town that was important during the colonial era, though much of its colonial architecture has disappeared due to earthquakes and the march toward progress. To the north, the departmental capital of C\u00facuta is a large, boiling hot commercial city and gateway to Venezuela. Both cities are easily accessed by road from Bucaramanga. The southernmost area of Norte de Santander and the northernmost area of Catatumbo have been plagued with guerrilla and paramilitary activity in recent years and are best avoided.\n\n#### **PAMPLONA**\n\nThis historic and charming colonial town is a refreshing change from the _calor_ (heat) of C\u00facuta and Bucaramanga, set in a lush, agriculturally rich valley at 2,300 meters (7,500 feet). In addition to colonial remnants like the Casa de las Tres Mar\u00edas (now Museo de Arte Moderno Eduardo Ram\u00edrez Villamizar), Pamplona is known for being the home of abstract expressionist artist Eduardo Ram\u00edrez, and for being a surprisingly lively college town, home to the Universidad de Pamplona and thousands of students.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nPamplona has its share of museums, and they are all easily visited in a day on foot. The best museum here is the **Museo de Arte Moderno Eduardo Ram\u00edrez Villamizar** (Cl. 5 No. 5-75, tel. 7\/568-2999, www.mamramirezvillamizar.com, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$3,000), prominently located on the Parque Agueda Gallardo. This museum, in a lovingly restored 16th-century house, features the work of this modernist sculptor and painter and also puts on temporary shows of modern and contemporary Colombian artists. In the courtyard, surrounding a magnolia tree, are many Ram\u00edrez sculptures. Born in Pamplona in 1922, Ram\u00edrez passed away in Bogot\u00e1 in 2004.\n\nAround the corner is the **Museo Arquidiocesano de Arte Religioso** (Cra. 5 No. 4-87, tel. 7\/568-2816, 10am-noon and 3pm-5pm Wed.-Mon., COP$2,000). It houses oil paintings from masters such as Gregorio Arce y Ceballos and others, wood carvings dating back to the 17th century, and silver and gold ceremonial items.\n\nThe most interesting churches to check out include the imposing **Catedral Santa Clara** (Cl. 6 between Cras. 5-6), which dates back to 1584, and the **Ermita del Se\u00f1or del Humilladero** (Cl. 2 between Cras. 7-8), which is next to the cemetery, filled with above-ground tombs. It is famous for its realistic carving Cristo del Humilladero.\n\nThe **Casa Mercado** (Cl. 6 between Cras. 4-5) stands on the previous location of a Jesuit college; this covered market was built in 1920. The **Museo Casa Colonial** (Cl. 6 No. 2-56, tel. 7\/568-2043, www.casacolonialpamplona.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., free) packs quite a punch in its 17th-century abode. It includes exhibits on some of the native cultures from the area, touches on the independence movement and struggles of the early Colombian republic, and takes the visitor through to the 20th century.\n\nFinally, the small **Museo Casa Anzo\u00e1tegui** (Cra. 6 No. 7-48, 9am-noon and 2pm-5:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$1,000) examines the life of General Jos\u00e9 Antonio Anzo\u00e1tgui and the fight for independence from Spain. It was in this house that this war hero died in 1819. He was the head of Bol\u00edvar's honor guard and was promoted to general following the Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nM **Hostal 1549** (Cl. 8B No. 8-64, Calle los Miserables, tel. 7\/568-0451, www.1549hostal.com, COP$130,000) has a big problem: Your room is so cozy that it will take an effort to get out and explore the town. Seven spacious rooms have big, comfortable beds, and many have fireplaces. The hotel has an adjacent restaurant where breakfast is served. At night locals gather to drink, but they are usually shown the door by 11pm.\n\nSomewhat quirky, the **Hotel Ursua** (Cl. 5 No. 5-67, tel. 7\/568-2470, COP$40,000 d) has a fantastic location right on the main park, and rooms, with beds that will do, come in all shapes and sizes. The restaurant serves inexpensive breakfasts and lunches.\n\nOnce home to a scribe to the Spanish authorities in the 18th century, **El Solar** (Cl. 5 No. 8-10, tel. 7\/568-2010, www.elsolarhotel.com, COP$110,000 d) is one of the most popular accommodation and restaurant options in Pamplona. It has 10 rooms, and 21 beds. Breakfast at their restaurant is included, as is wireless Internet.\n\n**Pierro's Pizza** (Cra. 5 No. 8B-67, tel. 7\/568-0160, 5pm-11pm daily, COP$20,000) is the most popular place for pizza (as well as a whole host of other favorites), and it's run by an Italian. Other favorites include **Sal y Pimienta** (Cra. 5A No. 8B-66, cell tel. 301\/496-2464, 5pm-10pm daily, COP$18,000), and **Restaurante P\u00edoko** (Cl. 5 No. 5-49 tel. 7\/568-3031, 7am-9pm, COP$18,000) specializes in trout dishes.\n\nVegetarians will want to hunt for the hard-to-find Hare Krishna-run **Majesvara** (Cra. 3B No. 1C-26, cell 310\/267-9307, 11am-2pm and 6pm-9pm Mon.-Sat., COP$8,000). If you find it try their set lunch or dinner menu.\n\nEvery town should have a place like **Stanco La Rokola** (Cl. 9 No. 5-23 Plazuela Almeida). It's a tiny nook on the Plazuela Almeida, where for about COP$2,000 you can order a shot of tequila, vodka, or rum, and then be on your merry way.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nPamplona is reached by bus from C\u00facuta. These leave on an hourly basis, and the two-hour trip costs about COP$10,000. You can also take a bus to Pamplona from Bucaramanga. It costs about COP$28,000 and takes under five hours. Pamplona's bus station is the spic and span **Terminal de Transportes** (Barrio El Camell\u00f3n), about a 10-minute walk from the town center.\n\n#### **C\u00daCUTA**\n\nMidway between Bogot\u00e1 and Caracas, the sizzling capital (pop. 637,000) of the Norte de Santander department straddles the border with Venezuela. Streets are lined with vendors selling cheap Venezuelan gasoline. A favorite and cheap beer served in restaurants and bars is Polar, straight from Venezuela. There is a constant stream of traffic crossing the border on the Puente Internacional in both directions. Venezuelans used to come to C\u00facuta for shopping, but now it is the Colombians who are going east to load up on goods. Nonetheless, there is always a Venezuelan presence in C\u00facuta, especially on weekends and holidays.\n\nIn recent years, the city has seen a large influx of persons fleeing violence in other parts of Norte de Santander and Arauca. During the 1990s, there was a bloody turf war between paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas. In 2008, in response to months of simmering tension, pop singer Juanes organized _Paz sin Fronteras_ (Peace Without Borders), a concert on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, to the delight of nearly 300,000 fans. Today the city is considered a safe place to visit.\n\nMany foreign travelers in C\u00facuta are there either to cross over into Venezuela so that they can extend their visit in Colombia on their tourist visa, or they are on their way to Caracas. Despite its reputation as a hot, uninteresting city, C\u00facuta is a pleasant place to explore for a couple of days.\n\nThe downtown area of the City of Trees is quite walkable, with trees lining its broad streets. There are a handful of republican period churches and buildings worth a look. And at night, particularly on weekends, restaurants, caf\u00e9s, and bars in the Caobos district are pleasant gathering places for Cucute\u00f1os of all ages.\n\nThe main tourist attraction is just outside of the city in Villa del Rosario, on the way toward Venezuela. That's where Colombia's Thomas Jefferson, General Francisco de Paula Santander was born, and also is where the first constitution for Gran Colombia was drafted. Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar officially became the country's president here.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nThe western boundary of C\u00facuta is basically the parched R\u00edo Pamplonita and, before that, the Avenida Libertadores. A lot of the big restaurants and nightlife spots are located here, and this is where the Ciclov\u00eda is held on Sundays. The Diagonal Santander represents the boundary of the downtown towards the north. It links the Terminal de Transportes in the northwest of the city to the stadium and finally merges into the Autopista Internacional (the road that leads to San Antonio, Venezuela) in the east. All the decent hotels and most sights of interest in C\u00facuta are located in the downtown area between Avenida 0 to the east and Avenida 6 to the west and Calle 8 to the north and Calle 13 to the south. Ventura Plaza Centro Comercial is a good landmark to remember. It is between Avenida 0 and the Diagonal Santander. The Aeropuerto Camilo Daza is in the northwest of the city.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\n###### **CITY CENTER**\n\nAll the sights in downtown C\u00facuta can easily be visited on foot. There is not a tourism culture here, so obtaining basic information such as opening hours and telephone numbers is not always easy. At the beautifully restored **Biblioteca P\u00fablica Julio P\u00e9rez Ferrero** (Av. 1 No. 12-35, Barrio La Playa, tel. 7\/595-5384, www.bibliocucuta.org, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-noon Sat.) there is always something going on: photography exhibits on old C\u00facuta, classes and workshops, concerts. The library building, declared a national monument, originally served as a hospital in the late 18th century. The library also operates the **Museo Centenario** (Cl. 14 No. 1-03, tel. 7\/595-5384, www.museocentenario.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-noon Sat.), which is often the host of art exhibitions and events. It is a newish addition to the cultural scene. It is open only when there is something going on.\n\nThe **Palacio de Gobierno Departamental** (Clls. 13-14 and Avs. 4-5, not open to the public) is noteworthy for its republican, neoclassical architecture. **Torre del Reloj** (Cl. 13 and Avs. 3-4) houses a clock that plays the national anthem on its bells at noon each day. The bells came from Italy in the early 19th century. You can ask to check it out. From the top, if you can squeeze past the bells you can get a nice view of the city with the **Monumento Cristo Rey** (Av. 4 at Cl. 19) in the distance. The Torre del Reloj is part of the **Casa de la Cultura** complex. It also hosts art exhibitions. The neoclassical **Catedral San Jos\u00e9** (Av. 5 No. 10-53) faces the shady **Parque Santander** (Avs. 5-6 and Clls. 10-11). Finally, be sure to walk along Calle 10 or Calle 11. Canned music blares from loudspeakers on the streets all day long.\n\nThe **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Diagonal Santander No. 3E-38, tel. 7\/575-0131, www.banrepcultural.org\/cucuta, 8am-11:30am, 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.) always has an art exhibition on view, usually featuring a Colombian artist. Concerts are also held at their theater. It is just outside of the city center.\n\nParque Gran Colombiano\n\n###### **PARQUE GRAN COLOMBIANO**\n\nThe major historical site in C\u00facuta is actually seven kilometers away in **Villa del Rosario** on the road towards San Antonio del T\u00e1chira, Venezuela. The **Parque Gran Colombiano** is in the middle of the busy highway that leads to the Venezuelan border. Although much of the park is green space where couples kiss under palm trees and others jog or walk their dogs, the most important historical sites within the park are the **Casa Natal del General Santander** (Km. 6 Autopista Internacional, tel. 7\/570-0265, 8am-11am and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sat., 9am-5pm Sun. and holidays, free) and the ruins of the **Templo del Congreso.** The museum tells the story of General Francisco de Paula Santander and is set in his childhood home. The Templo del Congreso is where Gran Colombia's Constitution of 1821 was drafted and where Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar was sworn in as president (and Santander as vice president). The church was badly damaged in the C\u00facuta Earthquake of 1875, and only the dome, in a different style altogether, was rebuilt. It's unavoidable that there is a bronze statue of Bol\u00edvar inside the ruins. The congress met for over a month to draft the constitution, and on their breaks, they would rest under the shade of a huge tamarind tree. It's still there, right in front of the church.\n\nAcross the highway is the **Casa de la Bagatela,** which was the seat of the executive branch of Gran Colombia. It was named La Bagatela in honor of independence figure Antonio Nari\u00f1o, who penned a revolutionary paper in Bogot\u00e1 by that same name. Don't bother scurrying across the highway to the Casa de la Bagatela, as there's nothing much to see.\n\nYou can take a shared taxi or a _buseta_ (small bus) bound for San Antonio del T\u00e1chira at the Ventura Plaza mall. These cost around COP$2,500. Ask to be dropped off at the Parque Gran Colombiano. Private taxis cost about COP$7,500 from downtown C\u00facuta.\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nThere are three trendy nightlife areas: the lovely and leafy Caobos neighborhood, the _malec\u00f3n_ (wharf) along the R\u00edo Pamplonita, and in the Centro Comercial Bol\u00edvar.\n\nIn Caobos, in the newly branded Zona E (because many spots are along the Avenida 1E) there are dozens of pub-like places where you can have a bite and\/or have a brew outside on the terrace. It's not a bad atmosphere. Pubs are all more or less the same, but be on the lookout for these popular spots: **American Pub Radio** (Av. 1E No. 16-20, tel. 7\/594-8398, www.americanpubradio.com); **Saxo Pub** (Cl. 16 No. 1E-13 tel. 7\/571-4270, www.saxopub.com, 4pm-2am daily); and **British Pub** (Cl. 17 No. 1E-05, 5:30pm-2am Tues.-Thurs., 5:30pm-3am Fri. and Sat.).\n\nTo the east and along the banks of the R\u00edo Pamplonita, many of the restaurants in town evolve into party places as the night wears on. Another very C\u00facute\u00f1o way to party is to grab your friends and pick up some booze, drive down to the Avenida de los Libertadores and park, and pump up the _vallenatos_ (ballads accompanied by accordions) or, occasionally, electronica. To the north the nearby **Centro Comercial Bol\u00edvar** has a number of bars, including a couple of gay clubs, as well as clubs catering to salsa aficionados.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nOn Sunday morning, head to the Avenida de los Libertadores\/Paseo de los Proceres\/ _malec\u00f3n_ along the R\u00edo Pamplonita. You can work up a sweat with the locals here as they ride their bikes and jog during their mini **Ciclov\u00eda** (7am-1pm). Bike rentals aren't available, but you can always jog or people-watch.\n\nTo arrange an organized tour of points of interest in Norte de Santander contact **Crischarol Tours** (Cl. 13 No. 5-60, tel. 7\/572-0407, www.crischaroltours.blogspot.com). They offer day-trip tours to Pamplona.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nAstonishingly, C\u00facuta, the sixth largest city in Colombia, did not have any international or even national chain hotels until Holiday Inn announced its arrival in late 2014. With 98 rooms, and located across from the Ventura Plaza mall, it is a much needed addition. Most downtown hotels have seemingly been around forever, the kind where you are handed the remote control in its plastic cover when you check in, and staff are dressed in outdated uniforms.\n\nOutside of town, in Villa del Rosario, there are other hotel options. These are popular places on the weekends. Continuing onward into San Antonio, hotel options are abysmal. They are cheap, but abysmal.\n\nIt once probably seemed very flashy, but retro **Hotel Tonchal\u00e1** (Av. 0 at Cl. 10, tel. 7\/575-6444, www.hoteltonchala.com, COP$209,0900 d) has kept up with the times by updating the rooms (there are about 100 of them). The hotel has a pool, gym, and sauna. It's within easy walking distance of Ventura Plaza Centro Comercial.\n\nStaff dressed in bright pink uniforms at the **Hotel Arizona Suites** (Av. 0 No. 7-62, tel. 7\/573-1884, www.hotelarizonasuites.com, COP$245,000) are so exceptionally friendly, even the most persnickety of guests will find it hard to lodge any complaint. Rooms are fine, a little on the small side, and definitely overpriced. The restaurant overlooks a small pool, and the spa area was renovated in 2012. The location is OK, not great, near two busy streets and about a 10-minute walk to sights downtown.\n\nIf you would rather be surrounded by greenery than concrete you might want to consider the **Hotel Villa Antigua** (Autopista San Antonio-Villa del Rosario, tel. 7\/570-0399, www.hotelvillantigua.amawebs.com, COP$120,000 d). It is geared mostly towards Colombian families and groups as a weekend place to kick back and drink by the large pool. During the week you'll likely have the place to yourself. They have cabanas of several sizes and then spacious regular hotel rooms. Breakfast is served in an outdoor restaurant overlooking the pool, but it smells like either gas or strong floor wax. Wireless Internet is available in the lobby. The Parque Gran Colombiano is just across the street, but you must be very careful crossing the street. This is the main drag to San Antonio, and cars and buses absolutely zoom by. At the park you can go for a morning or late afternoon walk. If you want to go into town during the day or at night, it is not an issue: Taxis are cheap and it takes about 15 minutes.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nThe most typical food from C\u00facuta includes _hayacas cucutenas,_ similar to tamales; _mute,_ a meaty stew; and _pastel de garbanzo_ (a fried garbanzo bean pastry).\n\nThe M **Embajada Antioque\u00f1a** (Cl. 6 No. 3-48, tel. 7\/571-7673, 8am-10pm daily, COP$20,000) has hearty breakfasts (meaty _caldos_ or broths), lunches, and dinners. It's been around for about 40 years, and the atmosphere, with tango music and Colombian classics, is quite nice. Try the baby beef or their _t\u00edpica_ plate with ground beef chorizo, _chichar\u00f3n_ (sausage), rice, and arepa, or at lunchtime the COP$8,000 set lunch. **La Mazorca** (Av. 4 No. 9-23, tel. 7\/571-1800, 7am-8pm daily, COP$18,000) is a popular chain restaurant serving the gamut of Colombian fare.\n\nFor a welcome break from meat eating, try M **Champi\u00f1on** (Cl. 10 No. 0-05, tel. 7\/571-1561, 8am-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000). This, C\u00facuta's best and biggest vegetarian restaurant, opens in the morning for coffee and pastries, then offers a generous set lunch. Off the menu you can order veggie burgers, salads, and pastas. **Aceituna** (Av. 0 No. 13-135, tel. 7\/583-7464, 10:30am-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$18,000) is a long-standing Lebanese food restaurant run by a Lebanese-Colombian family.\n\nVegetarians, almost always prohibited from the joys of Colombian street food delights, will rejoice at the sight of _pasteles de garbanzo_ purveyor **100% Garbanzo** (Cl. 11 No. 2-83, cell tel. 313\/498-1712, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.). This snack bar is a great place to sample the bean pastry.\n\nWhen darkness falls in C\u00facuta, especially on the weekends, the energy shifts to the _malec\u00f3n_ area, about a 10-minute cab ride from downtown. That's where many of the big restaurants are located. **Londeros Sur** (Av. Libertadores No. 0E-60B, tel. 7\/583-3335, www.restaurantelonderos.com, COP$25,000) is famous around town for its Argentinian steaks; **Rodizio** (Av. Libertadores No. 10-121, tel. 7\/575-1719, www.rodizio.com.co, COP$30,000) for its Brazilian-style grilled meats; and **Rodeo** (Av. Libertadores No. 16-38, www.rodeogourmet.com, COP$25,000) is another very popular carnivorous option. **Balc\u00f3n Paisa** (Av. Los Libertadores No. 6-40, tel. 7\/575-0244, COP$22,000) is one of the most popular restaurants on the _malec\u00f3n_ and is huge. In addition to a vast menu of Colombian dishes, they often feature live shows. Late at night it becomes more rumba than restaurant. And for a departure, **La Gran Muralla** (Av. Libertadores No. 10-84, tel. 7\/575-3946, COP$18,000) is one of the best-known Chinese places in town.\n\nThe mall, the **Ventura Plaza Centro Comercial** (between Clls. 10 and 11 at Diagonal Santander, www.venturaplaza.com.co) is usually a safe bet for a bite of fast food, if you have run out of ideas. The food court area is open until 10:30pm.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThe **tourist office** (Cl. 10 No. 0-30, no phone, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat.) has lots of brochures and maps for not only C\u00facuta but also the rest of the Norte de Santander department. Staff can provide some good tips on visiting natural attractions in the area.\n\nIn case of an emergency, contact the **Polic\u00eda Nacional** (tel. 7\/576-0622, or 123). A major hospital in town is the **Hospital Erasmo Meoz** (Av. 11E with Cl. 4N Guaimaral, tel. 7\/574-6888).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThe **Terminal de Transportes** (Avs. 7-8 between Clls. 1-2) in C\u00facuta is dirty, chaotic, and generally unpleasant, and is probably the main reason so many arrive in C\u00facuta with a poor impression of the city. Try to get your ticket in advance or at least find out the schedule so you don't have to be there longer than necessary. If you are waiting for a bus, it's best to wait outside on the curb, far from the claustrophobic station. There are numerous buses to Pamplona and other towns near C\u00facuta. The bus to Bogot\u00e1 costs around COP$70,000 and the trip takes 14 hours. To Bucaramanga it costs COP$30,000 and takes six hours, and to San Gil it costs about COP$45,000 and takes eight hours.\n\nThe airport, **Aeropuerto Camilo Daza** (Km. 5 Autopista Panamericana), is a 15-minute cab ride from downtown. **Avianca** (Cl. 13 No. 5-22, tel. 7\/571-3877, www.avianca.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat.) flies nonstop between C\u00facuta and Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn; **EasyFly** (tel. 7\/595-5005, www.easyfly.com.co) connects C\u00facuta with Bucaramanga and Medell\u00edn; and **LAN** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com.co) flies to Bogot\u00e1.\n\nIf you are staying downtown, all attractions are within relatively easy walking distance. It's always a good policy to call a cab beforehand, and always after dark. Two reputable services are **Taxis Radio Taxi Cone** (tel. 7\/582-1666) and **Radio Taxi Radio** (tel. 7\/583-6828).\n\n###### **CROSSING INTO VENEZUELA**\n\nCrossing the border from C\u00facuta into San Antonio del T\u00e1chira on the Venezuelan side is easy. _Busetas_ (shared taxis) depart from in front of the Ventura Plaza mall. Expect to pay about COP$2,500 for a bus ticket. Taxis will cost upwards of COP$20,000. Be sure to get off before the bridge so you can get your passport stamped by immigration officials. Visas are not required for North Americans or European Union citizens. Hotels in San Antonio del T\u00e1chira are absolutely dismal, so it's far better to either stay in C\u00facuta or continue onwards to Caracas immediately. For more information on visas you can visit the **Consulado Venezuelano** (Av. Aeropuerto Camilo Daza, Sector Corral de Piedra, Zona Industrial, Cl. 17 Esquina, tel. 7\/579-1954 or 7\/579-1951, 8am-10am and 2pm-3pm Mon.-Thurs., 8am-10am Fri.).\n\n## **MEDELL\u00cdN AND THE COFFEE REGION**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nHISTORY\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nMedell\u00edn\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nSPORTS AND RECREATION\n\nSHOPPING\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nNorthern and Eastern Antioquia\n\nSANTA FE DE ANTIOQUIA\n\nMAGDALENA MEDIO\n\nGUATAPE\n\nSouthern Antioquia\n\nM JARD\u00cdN\n\nJERIC\u00d3\n\nThe Coffee Region\n\nMANIZALES\n\nCOFFEE FARMS\n\nM SALAMINA\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL LOS NEVADOS\n\nARMENIA\n\nVICINITY OF ARMENIA\n\nSALENTO\n\nM VALLE DE COCORA\n\nFILANDIA\n\nPEREIRA AND VICINITY\n\nVALLE DEL R\u00cdO OT\u00daN\n\nSANTA ROSA DE CABAL\n\nBELALC\u00c1ZAR\n\nSANTUARIO\n\nPARQUE MUNICIPAL NATURAL PLANES DE SAN RAFAEL\n\nIBAGU\u00c9\n\nMedell\u00edn is one of the most dynamic cities of Colombia, with a vibrant cultural scene and nightlife. However, the hallmarks of this region are the coffee plantations and tiny Paisa pueblos. This verdant countryside, with its exuberant vegetation and many shades of green, is simply spectacular.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Museo de Antioquia:** The galleries of this art museum, a fabulous art deco building from the early 20th century, are filled with works from the best Colombian artists spanning nearly four centuries. And the terrace caf\u00e9 is the best place for people-watching in the Centro (click here).\n\nM **Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro:** A jungle paradise in the Magdalena Medio is set along a canyon that was only relatively recently discovered. This private natural reserve offers caving, river rafting, and a surplus of peace (click here).\n\nM **Jard\u00edn:** Just a few hours south of busy Medell\u00edn, the pace of life slows to a crawl in this picture-perfect coffee town of brightly colored Paisa homes. Jard\u00edn is surrounded by lush green mountains full of recreational opportunities (click here).\n\nM **Salamina:** Life goes on much as it always has in this rather remote Paisa town known for its superb architecture and warm hospitality of its people (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados:** Dozens of hikes leading through tropical jungles afford fantastic views of snowcapped volcanoes and mountain lakes in this easily accessed national park (click here).\n\nM **Museo del Oro Quimbaya:** This fantastic gold museum pays tribute to the original settlers of what is now the fertile coffee region: the indigenous Quimbaya people (click here).\n\nM **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo:** This is the best botanical garden in the region. You take a guided tour through a tropical forest full of _guadua_ forests and dozens of species of birds. (click here).\n\nM **Valle de Cocora:** One of the most dramatic and photographed scenes in Colombia is this valley filled with towering wax palms, Colombia's national tree. Nearby Salento offers coffee plantations and a typical Paisa pueblo experience (click here).\n\nJard\u00edn, a town in southern Antioquia\n\nMedell\u00edn, the surrounding department of Antioquia, and the coffee region departments of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quind\u00edo comprise the central, mountainous section of Colombia, covering the Cordillera Central (Central Range) and Cordillera Occidental (Western Range) north of Cali. The mountains then flatten out into the Caribbean coastal lowlands. Antioquia and the coffee region lie on some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes in Colombia.\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nDespite its inaccessible terrain, Antioquia was an important province of colonial Nueva Granada due to its abundant gold deposits. It attracted settlers who panned the rivers or cultivated food for the mining camps. Santa Fe de Antioquia, founded in 1541, was the main colonial settlement.\n\nAfter independence, the province continued to prosper, even attracting foreign investment in gold mining. Demographic pressure triggered a southward migration known as the _colonizaci\u00f3n antioque\u00f1a._ Waves of settlement brought Paisa families to unoccupied lands in the south of Antioquia, the coffee region, and the northern part of the Valle del Cauca.\n\nDuring the early part of the 20th century, coffee was a major source of prosperity in Antioquia. Medell\u00edn grew rapidly and became the industrial powerhouse of Colombia. The last decades of the 20th century were difficult times for Antioquia, with the triple scourge of drug trafficking, paramilitary armies, and guerrillas. In the past decade, the government has made huge strides in bringing back the rule of law, and today Antioquia is one of the safest and most prosperous regions in Colombia.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nWeather-wise, anytime of the year is a good time to visit Medell\u00edn and the coffee region. There's a reason why they call Medell\u00edn the \"City of Eternal Spring\": The entire region has a temperate climate.\n\nMedell\u00edn completely empties during the end of the year holidays, from December 15 to January 15, and also during Semana Santa (Easter week). This is peak time for pueblos and coffee region haciendas. During school vacations (June-July), natural parks and reserves and coffee haciendas get busy again.\n\nGive Medell\u00edn three days. During that amount of time, you can experience \"old Medell\u00edn\" sights in the Centro, such as the Museo de Antioquia, as well as check out the modern Medell\u00edn icons that are the subject of great pride: the Metrocable, Biblioteca Espa\u00f1a, the caf\u00e9 culture of cool El Poblado, and the Parque Explora. Consider spending a weekend in Medell\u00edn, when hotel rates drop, and especially if you're interested in checking out the city's nightlife scene. In a week you can add one or two other destinations in Antioquia, such as the Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro or one of the picture-perfect Paisa pueblos, such as Jard\u00edn or Jeric\u00f3. These are within about a three-hour bus ride from the Antioquian capital of Medell\u00edn.\n\nMany visitors visit the gorgeous colonial town of Santa Fe de Antioquia to the north of Medell\u00edn as a day trip, but it's better to spend one night there, in order to enjoy strolling its quaint streets after the sun has gone down. On the banks of the mighty R\u00edo Cauca, Santa Fe is one of the hottest towns in the region. Guatape, with its famous rock, El Pe\u00f1ol, makes for a nice overnight on the way to or back from the R\u00edo Claro reserve, where two nights are necessary. These three destinations are popular on weekends and holidays. The stunning natural beauty of R\u00edo Claro is best enjoyed during the week.\n\nTo the south of Medell\u00edn are two picture-perfect Paisa pueblos: Jard\u00edn and Jeric\u00f3. A couple of days in one of those should be enough. You can continue from there southward into the coffee region on winding country roads.\n\nMedell\u00edn is not a base for visiting the coffee region: The cities of Armenia, Manizales, and Pereira are. Pereira has good air connections, while the Manizales airport is often shrouded in fog.\n\nOne of the joys of this region is to book a few days at a coffee hacienda. Many tour operators will pack your days with day-trip activities. Resist! As it gets dark at 6pm every day, it would be a shame to miss spending some daylight hours strolling the grounds of the _finca_ (farm), lazing in a hammock or rocking chair, or doing nothing at all.\n\nYou'll need a week or more to decompress on the coffee farm and see the region's top sights: the Valle de Cocora, the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo, and Museo del Oro Quimbaya near Armenia, and one or two of the national and regional parks. There are very good transportation links between the three major cities and Salento. Roads are generally excellent. While renting a car in Colombia is not often the best option, here it makes sense.\n\nThough you can enjoy this magnificent region just by taking a bus ride from one place to the next, there are a few spots that warrant special attention. East of Medell\u00edn toward the R\u00edo Magdalena lays the Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro, a lush, deep canyon. The Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados and surrounding regional parks (such as Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed) offer innumerable opportunities for day hikes and longer treks. A bit off the beaten track, Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael offers beautiful hikes in the less-visited Cordillera Occidental.\n\n### **Medell\u00edn**\n\nWhile Medell\u00edn is the country's second in terms of population and importance, perpetually behind Bogot\u00e1, this city of around 2.7 million is the only Colombian metropolis with an urban train system. It's the first city with a cable car transportation system.\n\nThe first settlement in the region, near the present-day Poblado sector, was established in 1616. Medell\u00edn proper was founded in 1675, and was designated the capital of Antioquia in 1826.\n\nIn the 1980s, Pablo Escobar, born in nearby Rionegro, established a cocaine-trafficking empire based Medell\u00edn. In its heyday, the Medell\u00edn Cartel controlled 80 percent of the world's cocaine trade. When President Virgilio Barco cracked down on the cartel in the late 1980s, Escobar declared war on the government. He assassinated judges and political leaders, set off car bombs to intimidate public opinion, and paid a bounty for every policeman that was murdered in Medell\u00edn\u2014a total of 657. In 1991, Medell\u00edn had a homicide rate of 380 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest such rate on record anywhere in the world. In 1993, Escobar was killed while on the run from the law.\n\nDuring the 1990s, leftist guerrillas gained strength in the poor _comunas,_ or sectors, of Medell\u00edn, waging a vicious turf war with paramilitaries. At the turn of the century, the homicide rate was 160 per 100,000 inhabitants, making Medell\u00edn still one of the most dangerous places on Earth.\n\nShortly after assuming power in 2002, President \u00c1lvaro Uribe launched Operaci\u00f3n Orion to wrest the poor _comunas_ of Medell\u00edn from the leftist guerrillas, and violence decreased notably. By 2005, homicides were still high by international standards but a fraction of what they had been a decade before. Under the leadership of Mayor Sergio Fajardo, elected in 2004, and his successors Alonso Salazar and An\u00edbal Gaviria, Medell\u00edn has undergone an extraordinary transformation. In partnership with the private sector, the city has invested heavily in public works, including a new cable car transportation system, museums, and libraries. In recent years, the city has become a major tourist destination and has attracted significant foreign investment.\n\nMedell\u00edn boasts a network of spectacular public libraries, greenspaces and plazas, and its train and cable car system. Beyond the Centro, the neighborhood of Laureles and the municipality of Envigado have their own distinct identity and atmosphere.\n\n##### **Orientation**\n\nMedell\u00edn is in the Valle de Aburr\u00e1, with the trickling and polluted R\u00edo Medell\u00edn dividing the city into east and west. Both the Metro (Line A) and the Avenida Regional or Autopista Sur, a busy expressway, run parallel to the river.\n\nThe main neighborhoods are **El Poblado,** including the mini-hood of Provenza, the **Centro,** and the **Carabobo Norte** area (often referred to as **Universidades** ).\n\nThe El Poblado area is full of great restaurants, bars, hostels, hotels, and glitzy shopping malls. It is also full of tall brick high-rise apartment buildings, home to the well-to-do. If you arrive in Medell\u00edn from the Rionegro airport, you will descend the hill into the valley and land more or less in El Poblado. Luxury hotels and malls line the Avenida El Poblado. The Parque Lleras is the center of the Provenza neighborhood, a small, leafy, and very hip part of El Poblado. It is on the eastern side of the Avenida El Poblado. To the west, down the Calle 10, is the Parque del Poblado, and a few blocks farther is the El Poblado Metro station.\n\nAcross the river from El Poblado is the Terminal del Sur bus station and the Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera. The Cerro Nutibara (Pueblito Paisa) is north of the airport. Northwest of the Cerro Nutibara is the quiet neighborhood of Laureles, and farther west is the stadium area. The B line of the Metro connects the Centro with the stadium area.\n\nBetween El Poblado and the Centro is the Barrio Colombia and an industrial area known appropriately enough as Industriales. This is an up-and-coming area with new hotels and high-rises being built in what is known as the Ciudad del R\u00edo, where the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn is located. Barrio Colombia is also home to many nightspots.\n\nThe heart of the Centro is the Plaza Botero and Parque Berr\u00edo Metro station area. The Centro is between El Poblado to the south and Carabobo Norte to the north. The Avenida El Poblado, also known as Carrera 43A, connects El Poblado with El Centro. The Metro does as well.\n\nThe northern neighborhoods of Medell\u00edn are massive. To the west of the R\u00edo Medell\u00edn there are few places of interest. The Cerro Volador is a hill and landmark in the northwest of the city. To the east of the river is the Aranjuez neighborhood. The Acevedo Metro station is where you can pick up the Metrocable to the Biblioteca Espa\u00f1a and Parque Arv\u00ed.\n\nOn the other side of town, in the far south, are the municipalities of Envigado and Itag\u00fci. Envigado has some great restaurants, a busy main plaza, and the Parque El Salado. The Avenida El Poblado connects El Poblado with Envigado. Itag\u00fci is an industrial town with little of interest for the tourist except for bars and clubs, many open until the wee hours.\n\n##### **Safety**\n\nAs in other cities in Colombia, it is best to avoid hailing taxis on the street, particularly at night. Instead, have your hotel, or the restaurant or shop you're at, call a taxi for you. Be careful at clubs and bars, and don't accept drinks from strangers.\n\nNeighborhoods such as La Provenza and Laureles are safe to walk about day or night. The Centro should be avoided after dark. It is not a good idea to take a carefree stroll in the northern or western neighborhoods or, especially, in the _comunas_ (city sectors) on the surrounding hills, but specific sights mentioned can be visited. Not only are they clean and efficient, but the Metro, Metrocable, and Metropl\u00fas are safe.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\nTo see Medell\u00edn in full motion, visit the Centro during the week. On Saturdays, it's quieter, although the Peatonal Carabobo bustles with activity. On Sundays downtown is almost deserted except for tourists and street people. Most visits to the Centro start from the Parque Berr\u00edo Metro station. The main sights can easily be seen on foot and in a few hours.\n\n##### **Centro**\n\n###### M **MUSEO DE ANTIOQUIA**\n\nThe **Museo de Antioquia** (Cra. 52 No. 52-43, tel. 4\/251-3636, www.museoantioquia.org.co, 10am-5:30pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-4:30pm Sun., COP$10,000) is one of the top art museums in the country, with an extensive permanent collection of works from Colombian artists from the 19th century to modern times. Look for the iconic painting _Horizontes_ ( _Horizons_ ) by Francisco A. Cano. It's a painting that depicts the _colonizaci\u00f3n antioque\u00f1a,_ when, for a variety of reasons, families from Antioquia headed south to settle in what is now known as the coffee region. In the contemporary art rooms, you'll see _Horizontes_ (1997) by Carlos Uribe. This painting presents the same bucolic scene, except this time, 84 years later, in the background, a plane is seen spraying pesticides over the countryside, in an attempt to kill coca and marijuana crops. Native son Fernando Botero has donated several of his works, over 100 of them, to the museum. There is also a small room on a series of works by Luis Caballero. The museum is in an architectural gem, an art deco-style building from the 1930s. It originally served as the Palacio Municipal. There is a free guided tour at 2pm every day.\n\n##### **Carabobo Norte**\n\nOne of the country's top universities is the **Universidad de Antioquia** (Cl. 67 No. 53-108, tel. 4\/263-0011, www.udea.edu.co). The university was founded in 1803; however, it has only been at its current location in the Ciudad Universitaria, a few blocks west of the Centro, since 1968. There are over 37,000 students enrolled here, and the campus, full of plazas and public art, has a vibrant student energy In addition to a busy calendar of cultural events, the university has an excellent museum, **MUA** (Cl. 67 No. 53-108, Bloque 15, tel. 4\/219-5180, www.udea.edu.co, 8am-5:45pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-12:45pm Sat., free), that features changing contemporary art exhibits and a permanent natural history exhibit. Access to the campus for all visitors is at the Porter\u00eda del Ferrocarril entrance. Visitors must present a photo ID.\n\nAdjacent to the university near the Metro station, the **Parque Explora** (Cra. 52 No. 73-75, tel. 4\/516-8300, www.parqueexplora.org, 8:30am-5:30pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-6:30pm Sat.-Sun, COP$18,000) is one of the most iconic buildings of modern Medell\u00edn. It's a series of four futuristic red boxes. The ticket office closes 90 minutes before closing time. The **aquarium** (9am-5pm Tues.-Fri., included in admission cost) is the highlight of Explora. This is one of the largest aquariums in Latin America. Check out the tanks of Colombian marine creatures, including life in Colombian rivers such as the Amazon and Orinoco. Look for the giant piraruc\u00fa, an endangered fish that lives in the Amazon River and in its tributaries. The **Planetario Medell\u00edn** (Cra. 52 No. 71-117, tel. 4\/516-8300, www.planetariomedellin.org, 8am-5pm Tues.-Wed., 8am-7pm Thurs.-Fri., 10am-6pm Sat.-Sun., COP$12,000) is across the street from the Parque Explora.\n\nIf you feel like a walk in the park, the **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico de Medell\u00edn** (Cra. 52 No. 73-298, tel. 4\/444-5500, www.jbmed.org, 9am-5pm daily, free) is the place for you. It is across the street from Parque Explora. The highlight here is the Orquiderama, an open-air wood lattice-like structure where events are held. The botanical gardens are more akin to a tropical city park. It's a popular hangout for students, who will giggle as they say hello to you in English. In addition to the fantastic setting and good food of **In Situ** (inside the gardens, tel. 4\/460-7007, www.botanicomedellin.org, noon-3pm Mon., noon-3pm and 7pm-10pm Tues.-Sat., COP$25,000), there are caf\u00e9s and a nice gift shop.\n\nBehind the botanical gardens is the **Esquina de las Mujeres** (Cra. 51 at Cl. 73), a small public space with busts of accomplished women from Medell\u00edn and Antioquia from the colonial era to the present day. They represent many walks of life: indigenous women, activists, social workers, and artists who all made a contribution to society. Not many locals know about this homage, which was unveiled in 2007.\n\nPresidents, artists, and writers rest in the **Museo Cementerio de San Pedro** (Cra. 51 No. 68-68, tel. 4\/516-7650, www.cementeriosanpedro.org.co, 8am-5:30pm daily, free). Marble statues and elaborate tombs pay tribute to influential Antioque\u00f1os from the 19th century onward, but the reminders of the city's recent turbulent past may strike you as more interesting. One plot, near the tomb of Fidel Cano, founder of the once influential _El Espectador_ newspaper, contains the tombs of several members of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's associates and guards. (He is buried in a cemetery in the neighboring town of Itag\u00fci.) Some tombs have stickers identifying allegiance to one of Medell\u00edn's soccer clubs, others have touching handwritten notes from wives and children left behind. There is a free tour of the cemetery on Sundays (2pm). To see the cemetery in a different light, check it out on a full moon evening (7pm-9pm). It's open to the public then and there are usually free concerts and other cultural activities going on. Check the cemetery's up-to-date webpage for a complete schedule of activities.\n\n##### **Cerro Nutibara**\n\nTo see an authentic Paisa pueblo, go to Jard\u00edn, Jeric\u00f3, or Salamina. They're just a couple of hours away and are as real as you can get. Can't do that? Then go to the **Pueblito Paisa** (Cl. 30A No. 55-64, tel. 4\/235-6476, 5am-midnight daily, free), atop the Cerro de Nutibara, one of two hills that interrupt the flat landscape of the Valle de Aburr\u00ed. Here, at this rather cheesy celebration of Paisa culture, you'll be greeted by smiling folks decked out in traditional costume. There is also a small **Museo de la Ciudad.** Plenty of food and handicrafts are on sale here. Also on the hill are a sculpture park and an amphitheater. You could go just for the views: From this high point there's a good view of Colombia's second city. The hill is also a popular place for an early morning jog. The Pueblito Paisa is lit with thousands of multi-colored lights at Christmastime.\n\n##### **Northern Medell\u00edn**\n\nThe **Casa Gardeliana** (Cra. 45 No. 76-50, tel. 4\/213-5965, Barrio Manrique, 9am-5pm Mon.-Sat. 10am-4pm Sun., free) has wall-to-wall tango memorabilia and some cool souvenirs. Plus a seat from the ill-fated airplane that crashed in the city and killed tango icon Carlos Gardel. Unfortunately, the museum does not tell the story of tango in Medell\u00edn in a clear manner, but it is just steps from the Metropl\u00fas Manrique station. If you are visiting downtown or the Cementerio de San Pedro, from there you can easily hitch a ride on the Metropl\u00fas.\n\nIn the neighboring barrio of Aranjuez is the **Casa Museo Pedro Nel G\u00f3mez** (Cra. 51B No. 85-24, Barrio Aranjuez, tel. 4\/233-2633, free). This delightful museum houses an extensive collection of the painter's works, including several murals for which he is best known. Much of his work portrays the plight of campesinos (rural peasants), workers, and indigenous people. His house, now the museum, was designed by G\u00f3mez, and the location of it was chosen by his Italian-born wife. The hills overlooking the city here reminded her of Florence, somehow. In the new wing of the museum there is a small public library. The courtyard holds a snack bar-caf\u00e9. The museum is not easy to get to, and you will probably have to take a cab there. Many visitors combine this visit with a trip to the nearby Casa Gardeliana.\n\n###### **BIBLIOTECA ESPA\u00d1A**\n\nWhen this public library was opened in the low-income neighborhood of Santo Domingo, King Juan Carlos came from Madrid for the ceremony. Spain, after all, helped to fund the project. It's one of many newly created _biblioteca parques_ (public library parks) in Medell\u00edn. More than a place for books, these library parks have become community centers and sources of pride in neighborhoods that continue to struggle with poverty and violence. The **Biblioteca Espa\u00f1a** (Cra. 33B No.107A-100, tel. 4\/385-7531, www.reddebibliotecas.org, 8am-7pm Mon.-Sat. and 11am-5pm Sun.) is the most famous and most visited of the 24 public libraries in the city, and, like each of them, it is stunning. The library resembles giant boulders clinging to the edge of the mountainside. It was designed by architect and Barranquilla native Giancarlo Mazzanti, who won a prize for this work at the VI Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo in Lisbon in 2008.\n\n**Downtown Medell\u00edn Walking Tour**\n\n**PLAZA BOTERO TO THE PLAZA DE LOS PIES DESCALZOS**\n\nMedell\u00edn's brash downtown is a compact history tour comprising stoic remnants from the colonial era, brick and mortar evidence of Medell\u00edn's rising as Colombia's most important industrial center in the early 20th century, and the vibrant public spaces, modern transportation systems, and futuristic architecture showing this proud city's 21st-century optimism.\n\nBegin the tour at the Parque Berr\u00edo Metro station and walk five minutes north to the Plaza Botero.\n\n**PLAZA BOTERO**\n\nMost visits downtown begin under the shadows of the **Palacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe** (Cra. 51 No. 52-03, 8am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-2pm Sat., free), an occasional host of art exhibits. The **Plaza Botero** (in front of the Museo de Antioquia, Cra. 52 No. 52-43) gets its name for its 23 corpulent bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero. Passersby often pose in front of the sculptures, such as _La Mano (The Hand)_ and _Eva (Eve)_ for a quick snapshot. One of the most prolific, and by far the best known, of contemporary Colombian artists, Botero donated these sculptures to his hometown of Medell\u00edn. His paintings and sculptures of rotund people often portray campesino (rural) life, but many of them are also commentaries on the violence in Colombia.\n\n**PEATONAL CARABOBO**\n\nTo the south, the **Peatonal Carabobo** is a pedestrian walkway that extends for eight blocks. Lined with shoe shops, five-and-dime stores, and snack bars, it's busy, loud, and colorful. (Although there is usually a police presence, be sure to watch your stuff!)\n\nOn the right-hand side is Medell\u00edn's oldest church, the brilliantly white **Iglesia de la Vera Cruz** (Cl. 51 No. 52-38, tel. 4\/512-5095), which dates back to 1682. It is often filled with working-class faithful, sitting or standing in meditation and prayer. It's a refuge of quiet in this busy commercial area. The only other living testament to Spanish rule in Medell\u00edn is the white-washed **Bas\u00edlica Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria** on the Parque Berr\u00edo a few blocks away.\n\nThe Belgian architect who designed the grandiose **Palacio Nacional** (Cra. 52 No. 48-45, tel. 4\/513-4422) in the 1920s probably never expected that it would, over time, become the domain of around 400 tennis shoes and jeans vendors. It was originally built to house governmental offices, and today, when you walk through the corridors of this historic building, all you'll hear is the chorus of _\"a la orden\"_ (\"at your service!\") from hopeful shop attendants. Towards the end of Peatonal Carabobo is **Donde Ram\u00f3n,** a small kiosk in the middle of the walkway, jam-packed with antique objects like brass horse stirrups or old _carrieles_ (leather handbags) from Jeric\u00f3.\n\n**PARQUE DE LAS LUCES**\n\nAfter years of abandonment and urban decay, in 2005 the artificial forest of the **Parque de las Luces** or **Plaza Cisneros** (Cl. 44 at Cra. 52) was opened in an effort to rejuvenate the area. The park, consisting of 300 illuminated posts, looks somewhat odd during the day but is spectacular at night when it shines. Check it out by car at night as it is not safe to roam about after dark. On the east side of the plaza are two historic early-20th-century brick buildings: the **Edificio Carr\u00e9** and **Edificio V\u00e1squez** (Cl. 44B No. 52-17, tel. 4\/514-8200). When they were built they were the tallest buildings in Medell\u00edn. These buildings were once important warehouse facilities during the industrial boom of the early 20th century. The plaza used to be the home of the main marketplace. On the western side of the plaza is the **Biblioteca EPM** (Cra. 54 No. 44-48, tel. 4\/380-7516, 8:30am-5:30pm Mon.-Sat.), a stunning public library sponsored by the electric company EPM (Empresas P\u00fablicas de Medell\u00edn), built in 2005. In addition to reading rooms, there are occasional exhibitions and cultural events held at the library.\n\nAcross from the Parque de las Luces on the southern side of Calle 44 is the **Estaci\u00f3n Ferrocarril** (Cra. 52 No. 43-31, tel. 4\/381-0733), the old main train station. There's not much to see here, except for a train engine and forgotten old tracks.\n\n**PLAZA MAYOR**\n\nTo the west of the Estaci\u00f3n Ferrocarril is the **Centro Administrativo La Alpujarra** (Cl. 44 No. 52-165), which houses the Departamento de Antioquia government offices. The sculpture **_Homenaje a la Raza,_** by Rodrigo Arenas Betancur, stands in the middle of the large intermediary plaza. Just beyond is the **Plaza de la Libertad** (Cra. 55 between Clls. 42-44), a complex of modern office space and interesting public space complete with urban gardens.\n\nCross the pedestrian bridge over the lanes of the Metropl\u00fas bus station. Metropl\u00fas is the latest addition to Medell\u00edn's transportation network. It debuted in 2013. Here is the **Plaza Mayor** (Cl. 41 No. 55-80, www.plazamayor.com.co), the city's preeminent convention and event venue; it has a fair share of nice restaurants. The **Teatro Metropolitano** (Cl. 41 No. 57-30, tel. 4\/232-2858, www.teatrometropolitano.com), built from 20th-century brick, hosts concerts.\n\nFinally, the **Plaza de los Pies Descalzos** (Cra. 58 No. 42-125) is a plaza filled with a _guadua_ (Colombian bamboo) forest and fountains, where you can take off your shoes and play. It's surrounded by eateries on one side and the massive **Museo del Agua** (Cra. 57 No. 42-139, tel. 4\/380-6954, 8am-6pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-7pm Sat.-Sun., COP$4,000) on the other. In the distance is a long-standing Medell\u00edn architectural icon: the **Edificio Inteligente** (Cra. 58 No. 42-125, tel. 4\/380-4411). Built in the late 1950s, it has served as the headquarters of EPM, the utility company. To find out what's so smart about it, you can take a free tour of the building. They are offered Monday-Friday. Call in advance to reserve.\n\nGetting to Santo Domingo is an attraction in itself. The neighborhood is connected to the metropolis by the Metrocable cable car system. Take the Metro towards Niqu\u00eda station and transfer to the Metrocable at Acevedo. The Santo Domingo station is the third and final stop.\n\nWhen the Metrocable K line was opened in 2004, it was the first of its kind in the world: a gondola-like public transport system with a socio-economic purpose, connected to a metro. The system, consisting of gondolas, has eliminated eternal climbs up and down the mountain for low-income residents.\n\n###### **PARQUE ARV\u00cd**\n\nFor some fresh, and oftentimes crisp, country air, a visit to the **Parque Arv\u00ed** (Santa Elena, tel. 4\/444-2979, www.parquearvi.org, 9am-5pm Tues.-Sun., free), covering 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of nature, hits the spot after a few days of urban exploring.\n\nHighlights in the park include the seven well-marked nature paths, which meander through cloud forests thick with pine and eucalyptus trees, over brooks, along ancient indigenous paths, to mountain lakes and lookout points with spectacular views of the Valle de Aburra and Medell\u00edn below. Most paths, with a distance of under three kilometers (two miles), are not strenuous whatsoever. There is a longer path of over 10 kilometers (six miles) that is excellent for biking. Ask at the information booth upon arrival at the Arv\u00ed Metrocable station for suggestions on walks to make. There are often free guided nature walks as well.\n\n**Getting Up the Hill**\n\nDuring the late 1990s to 2000s, thousands of families from rural areas in Antioquia, C\u00f3rdoba, and Choc\u00f3 were forced to leave their homes due to violence. Moving to Medell\u00edn to start a new life, many arrived in the low-income neighborhoods along the steep slopes of the mountains surrounding the city. But here, where many live in meager brick homes covered with corrugated zinc roofs secured only by large stones, horrific violence has followed them. First it was turf wars between guerrillas and paramilitaries in the early 2000s. Today the violence is caused by drug-trafficking gangs with links to former paramilitaries. This wave of violence has given birth to a new phenomenon: intra-urban displacement, during which families have been displaced within the city due to urban violence. For many, this is the second displacement that their families have had to endure.\n\nCity leaders have sought to improve the quality of life in the _comunas_ in a variety of innovative ways. Two lines of the Metrocable gondola system have made a huge difference in allowing residents to travel to work or school in the city without having to walk up and down the mountainside. Spectacular modern public libraries have been built in many low-income communities, providing a safe and pleasant space to study, read, and connect to the Internet. These have developed into important cultural centers, with an active schedule of films, children's activities, and other cultural activities. New homes have been built and donated to 200-300 displaced families in the neighborhood, with funds from the national government under President Juan Manuel Santos.\n\nIn 2012, the city debuted its latest project, this time aimed at improving life in the Comuna 13, the most notorious of the _comunas_ in the entire city. This time the project involved the creation of open-air escalators in this neighborhood. These are a series of six dual, interconnected escalators that extend down the slopes for some 384 meters (1,260 feet). The system operates from early in the morning until about 10 at night. They are monitored by city employees, and their use is free. It is the first time in the world escalators have been used in order to improve the lives of the less fortunate.\n\nThe escalators have made a difference in the lives of Comuna 13 residents, although there are some who believe that the money spent on the project (around US$6 million) could have been better used otherwise. There have been alarming reports as well that some gangs have been intimidating residents by charging them to use the escalators, under the threat of dire consequences.\n\nDespite the high levels of violence affecting residents (never foreign tourists), the escalators have become a tourist attraction, and even appear in the city's tourism promotional materials. Celebrities and dignitaries from President Juan Manuel Santos to French fashion designer Francois Girbaud have taken a ride on the escalators.\n\nIt is indeed a strange kind of tourism, with which some may feel uncomfortable. However, if you would like to see this escalator project, you certainly can. Go during the day, and you must not wander the streets of the Comuna 13. Never remain in the neighborhood after dark. To get there, take the Metro L\u00ednea B to San Javier station. As you depart the station, in front are _colectivos_ (small buses) that regularly transport passengers to the Comuna 13. It's about a 15-minute trip and costs under COP$1,500. Ask anyone which bus to take, and let the bus driver know that you'd like to go to the _escaleras el\u00e9ctricas._\n\nFrom San Javier, there is also a Metrocable line (L\u00ednea J) that has three stops and travels to the top at La Aurora.\n\nA trip to the Parque Arv\u00ed in northern Medell\u00edn is an excellent break from the city.\n\nOther recreational activities are on offer in the different _nucleos_ (nuclei) of the park. Understanding the nuclei and layout of the park can be confusing. Staff at the information booth at the entrance will provide you with a map and assist you in planning your visit. At the Nucleo Comfenalco, you can rent a paddleboat on the Piedras Blancas reservoir, and there is a small hotel, as well as a butterfly pavilion. In the Nucleo Mazo there is a market.\n\nTo explore the park on bike, you can rent a bike for free with the city's Encicla program by showing an ID card. These can be rented at any of the several Encicla stations in the park, but you will be required to renew the rental at any station if you have been cycling for more than an hour. Encicla staff can provide you with a map and recommendations.\n\nThe park is a nice day trip to make, and you might consider the getting there the best part about the excursion. To get there from the city, take the Metro to the Acevedo station in the north of the city (L\u00ednea A towards Niqu\u00eda). From there, transfer to the Metrocable (L\u00ednea K) to the Santo Domingo station. From there you must transfer to the Parque Arv\u00ed line (L\u00ednea L, COP$4,200 one way), which has an additional cost.\n\nThe temperature can drop substantially and abruptly in the park. Pack along a light sweater and a lightweight rainproof jacket. Try to get an early start so that you can enjoy the park without rushing. There are various snack bars and restaurants throughout the park.\n\n##### **Southern Medell\u00edn**\n\nThe Ciudad del R\u00edo area, between downtown and El Poblado near a Metro line, has developed into an up-and-coming neighborhood largely due to the arrival of the **Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn** (MAMM, Cra. 44 No. 19A-100, tel. 4\/444-2622, www.elmamm.org, 9am-5:30pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-5:30pm Sat., 10am-5pm Sun., COP$8,000). The coolest part about the MAMM is its location in an old warehouse, typical of the Barrio Colombia area. This was the home of Talleres Robledo, a steel mill that began operations in the 1930s. Exhibitions (usually two at a time) are hit or miss. The museum store, the _tienda,_ is an excellent place to pick up a whimsical Medell\u00edn souvenir. Many items, like T-shirts, notepads, or cute doo-dads, are the product of local creative minds.\n\nThe **Parque El Salado** (Vereda El Vallano, Envigado, tel. 4\/270-3132, www.parqueelsalado.gov.co, 9am-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$3,000), a municipal park covering 17 hectares (42 acres) in Envigado, has trails and activities, such as a zipline, and is a good place to get some fresh air. On weekends it gets packed with families on a _paseo de olla._ Literally a soup-pot excursion, _paseo de olla_ usually means _sancocho,_ a hearty beef stew. Essential gear for a day out at the park includes giant aluminum pots for slowly heating a _sancocho_ over a campfire. There is plenty of fresh air at this park, but from afar it may appear that there is a forest fire in the picnic area with all of the campfires. Getting to the park is easy using public transportation. From the Envigado Metro station look for a green bus with a sign that says Parque El Salado. It's about a 20-minute ride up towards the mountains.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nSince 1969, **El Social Tienda Mixta** (Cra. 35 No. 8A-8, tel. 4\/311-5567) has been selling the basics to local residents (soap, sugar, coffee); it's only been a recent phenomenon that it's now the hippest place to be seen at night, when it is converted into the most popular bar in Provenza! It's so popular on weekend evenings, you can forget about finding a vacant plastic chair.\n\nWant to check out the nightlife with other party people? That's the idea behind the **Pub Crawl Medell\u00edn** (cell tel. 300\/764-6145, pubcrawlmed@gmail.com, Sat. evenings, COP$30,000). In this night of shenanigans, revelers (groups of about 12) get together, then hit several bars (enjoying courtesy shots along the way), and then wind up the night dancing to the beats at a popular dance club. Each Saturday the group explores different nightspots.\n\nEvery Thursday evening, the Medell\u00edn microbrewery **3 Cordilleras** (Cl. 30 No. 44-176, tel. 4\/444-2337, www.3cordilleras.com, 5:30pm-9pm Thurs., COP$20,000) offers a tour of their brewery, during which you learn about the beer-making process. At the end of the tour, the grand finale is tasting several of their artisan beers and friendly socializing. On the final Thursday of each month, after the tour there is live music and beer.\n\n**Calle Nueve** (Cl. 9 No. 43B-75, tel. 4\/266-4852, 6pm-2am Mon.-Sat., no cover), in a nondescript white house, is a hipster's paradise in El Poblado. Music varies wildly from salsa to house to folk. The dim lighting and well-worn couches provide the perfect chilled-out atmosphere.\n\n###### **SALSA, TANGO, AND JAZZ**\n\nMedell\u00edn is no Cali, but salsa has its aficionados here. If the musical genres _son, la charanga, el guaguanco,_ and _la timba_ don't mean anything to you now, they might after a night at **Son Havana** (Cra. 73 No. 44-56, tel. 4\/412-9644, www.sonhavana.com, 8pm-3am Wed.-Sat., cover Sat. COP$8,000) often has live performances. Nearby is **El T\u00edbiri** (Cra. 70 at Cl. 44B, hours vary Wed.-Sat.), an underground salsa joint on Carrera 70, which is hugely popular on the weekends. They say the walls sweat here, as after 10pm it gets packed with revelers, many of whom are university students. Friday nights are big at El T\u00edbiri.\n\nThe downtown **Sal\u00f3n M\u00e1laga** (Cra. 51 No. 45-80, tel. 4\/231-2658, www.salonmalaga.com, 9am-11pm daily, no cover)\u2014boy, has it got character. It's filled with old jukeboxes and memorabilia, and has its clientele who come in for a _tinto_ (coffee) or beer during the day. The Saturday tango show at 5:30pm and oldies event on Sunday afternoons are especially popular with locals and travelers alike, but a stop here is a fine idea anytime.\n\nNear the Parque de la Periodista, a major weekend hangout for the grungy set, there are some small bars big on personality. Tuesday nights are bordering on legendary at **Eslab\u00f3n Prendido** (Cl. 53 No. 42-55, tel. 4\/239-3400, 3pm-11pm Tues.-Sat., cover varies), a hole-in-the-wall salsa place that really packs them in! **El Acontista** (Cl. 53 No. 43-81, tel. 4\/512-3052, noon-10pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-midnight Fri.-Sat.) is an excellent jazz club downtown. It's got a bookstore on the second floor and live music on Monday and Saturday evenings. They've got great food, too, making it an excellent stop after a day visiting the Centro.\n\nAn authentic tango spot in Envigado is **Bar Atlenal** (Cl. 38 Sur No. 37-3, tel. 4\/276-5971, 3pm-2am daily). Friday night is the best time to go to see a tango performance, but to listen to some tango music from the juke box and have a beer, go any day of the week. It's an institution, with more than six decades of history. Allegiance to the soccer club Atl\u00e9tico Nacional is evident on the walls of the bar. Included is an homage to star player Andr\u00e9s Escobar. Also in Envigado is **La Venta de Dulcinea Caf\u00e9 Cultural** (Cl. 35 Sur No. 43-36, tel. 4\/276-0208, www.laventadedulcinea.jimdo.com, 2pm-11pm Mon.-Sat.), where salsa, _milonga,_ and tango nights are often held. Check the webpage for a schedule.\n\n###### **DANCE CLUBS**\n\nFamous **Mango's** (Cra. 42 No. 67A-151, tel. 4\/277-6123, 5pm-6am daily, no cover), decked out like a Wild West saloon, is a festive club popular with foreigners and locals alike, and gets going late. **Jes\u00fas Dulce M\u00edo\u2014Mil Juguetes** (Cra. 38 No. 19-255, Km. 2 V\u00eda Las Palmas, tel. 4\/266-6020, www.fondadulcejesusmio.com, 7pm-3am Tues.-Sat., COP$10,000 cover) is a popular club near El Poblado. Wednesday is karaoke night.\n\nIf you go to **Fahrenheit** (Cra. 42 No. 79-125, Itag\u00fci, tel. 4\/354-6203 www.discotecafahrenheit.com, 10pm-6am Thurs.-Sat., cover varies) you should dress to impress. It's a late-night place in the neighboring town of Itag\u00fci. Thursdays are electronica nights, while Saturdays are for crossover, a mix of popular music with Latin tunes. Guys should expect to pay around COP$25,000 for cover, ladies _nada._\n\n###### **GAY BARS AND CLUBS**\n\nThere is a lively gay and youthful nightlife scene in Medell\u00edn. **Donde Aquellos** (Cra. 38 No. 9A-26, tel. 4\/312-2041, cell tel. 313\/624-1485, 4:30pm-2am daily) is an easy-going kind of place near the Parque Lleras in El Poblado. This friendly bar is a good place for a terrace drink. **Culture Club** (Cra. 43F No. 18-158, hours vary Thurs.-Sat., cover varies) is the hottest dance club and gets hopping at around midnight on weekends. It's a fashionable place, with chandeliers and red velvet.\n\n##### **Cinema and Theaters**\n\n**Otraparte** (Cra. 43A No. 27A Sur-11, tel. 4\/448-2404, www.otraparte.org, 8am-8pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.-Sun.) is a cultural center that offers a dynamic program of free concerts, films, book launches, and even free yoga classes in Envigado.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\n**Festicamara** (www.festicamara.com), an international chamber music festival, is held in March or April each year, with concerts across the city at venues like the fabulous **Orquiderama** in the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico.\n\nThe **Festival Internacional de Tango** (www.festivaldetangomedellin.com) takes place each year during the last week of June, commemorating the anniversary of the death of Carlos Gardel. This festival, and in fact the perseverance of tango culture in Medell\u00edn, is largely due to one man's passion and efforts. Argentine Leonardo Nieto visited Medell\u00edn in the 1960s, primarily to get to know this city where tango icon Carlos Gardel died in an airplane crash. He fell in love with the city, stayed, and created the Casa Gardelina and the Festival Internacional de Tango. During this festival, tango concerts and events take place across the city, in nightclubs, theaters, parks, and on street blocks.\n\n**International Day of Laziness**\n\nPaisas are known throughout Colombia to be some of the most hard-working and driven people in the country. The Medell\u00edn Metro, routine 7am business meetings, the orderly pueblos in the Antioquian countryside, and even former president \u00c1lvaro Uribe, a native Paisa, are examples of this industriousness. Uribe's famous words upon taking office in 2002 were _\"trabajar, trabajar, trabajar\"_ (\"work, work, work\"). Laziness is quiet simply anathema to Paisas.\n\nBut you can't be productive _all_ the time. The people of **Itag\u00fci,** an industrial town bordering Medell\u00edn, have taken that to heart. In fact, on one day each year they not only take it easy, they embrace and celebrate the virtues of slothfulness during their **D\u00eda Internacional de la Pereza** (International Day of Laziness) celebrations. On that day in August, residents rise at the leisurely hour of 10am, put out their hammocks and beds in front of their houses, and laze the day away, sometimes still in their pajamas. The day's events include a bed (on wheels) race and general goofing off. Ironically, most of the action (or inaction) of that day takes place in the Itag\u00fci Parque del Obrero (Worker's Park).\n\nSince 1991, Medell\u00edn has hosted an impressive **Festival Internacional de Poes\u00eda de Medell\u00edn** (www.festivaldepoesiademedellin.org), which routinely attracts poets from dozens of countries, who share their work in more than 100 venues across the city. It's held in early July.\n\nAs the leading textile manufacturing center in Colombia, Medell\u00edn is the obvious choice for the most important fashion event in the country: **Colombiamoda** (<http:\/\/colombiamoda.inexmoda.org.co>). It attracts designers and fashionistas from across the globe, and during this week, the Plaza Mayor becomes a fabulous model-fest.\n\nThe **Feria de las Flores** (www.feriadelasfloresmedellin.gov.co) is the most important festival of the year in Medell\u00edn, and is when the city is at its most colorful. It's a week-long celebration of Paisa culture, with horseback parades, concerts, and the highlight, the Desfile de los Silleteros. That is when flower farmers from Santa Elena show off incredibly elaborate flower arrangements in a parade through the city streets. The festival takes place in July or August each year, and it's a great time to visit the city.\n\nAt Christmastime, Medell\u00edn sparkles with light, every night. It all begins at midnight on December 1, during the **Alborada.** That's when the sights and sounds of fireworks and firecrackers envelop the entire Valle de Aburr\u00e1. On December 7, the **Alumbrado Navide\u00f1o,** the city's Christmas light display, begins. The Cerro de Nutibara and the R\u00edo Medell\u00edn, along with other city sites, are illuminated with 14.5 million multi-colored lights. Sponsored by the electric company, it's an incredible sight to behold.\n\n#### **SPORTS AND RECREATION**\n\n##### **Biking**\n\nThe Medell\u00edn **Ciclov\u00eda** (8am-1pm Sun.) has many routes, including along the Avenida El Poblado and along the R\u00edo Medell\u00edn. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings there is a **Ciclov\u00eda Nocturna** (8pm-10pm) on two routes: along the river and around the stadium area. Not to be outdone by their neighbor, the cities of Envigado and Itag\u00fci also have a Ciclov\u00eda on Sundays.\n\n**Encicla** (office in \u00c9xito Colombia store, Cl. 48D No. 66-61, tel. 4\/436-6271, cell tel. 310\/390-9314, 8am-6pm daily, www.encicla.gov.co) is Medell\u00edn's bike share program. It's free to use for those over the age of 18. Nice routes are along the Carrera 70 and around the universities. Visitors must register in person at the Encicla office, and must show their passport. Encicla bike paths follow Carreras 65 and 70, connecting with the Estadio and Universidad Metro stations. In **Parque Arv\u00ed** (Santa Elena, www.parquearvi.org) there are six **Encicla en el Parque stations.** At this park, the registration procedure is less involved.\n\n**Bike Rent** (Cra. 35 No. 7-14, cell tel. 310\/448-3731, www.bikerent.com.co, 9am-7pm Mon., Wed., and Fri.-Sat., 9am-10pm Tues. and Thurs., 8am-1pm Sun., COP$25,000 half day, COP$35,000 full day) rents good bikes cheaply, and the prices decrease as the number of hours you rent them increases. They also have information on routes and suggestions at this convenient Provenza location.\n\n**Ciclo Barranquero** (tel. 4\/538-0699, cell tel. 314\/806-5892, ciclobarranquero@gmail.com, COP$70,000-90,000 pp) organizes interesting day-trip bike rides for all levels of cyclists in the city and beyond, such as in the nearby pueblo of Santa Elena and in Guatape. Bikes and necessary equipment are included in the price, but transportation to the meeting point is not. **Ecoturismo Arewaro** (Cra. 72A No. 30A-21, tel. 4\/444-2573, cell tel. 300\/652-4327, www.ecoturismoarewaro.com, COP$46,000 pp) organizes day-trip walks and bike trips in parks and pueblos near Medell\u00edn. _Arewaro_ means \"gathering of friends\" in the Way\u00fau language.\n\n##### **Yoga and Gyms**\n\n**Atman Yoga** (Tr. 37 No. 72-84, tel. 4\/311-1132, www.atman-yoga.org, donations requested) holds free yoga classes every day at its main location in Laureles. They are quite popular, especially in the evenings. There are also classes at the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30pm and at other times during the week. In El Poblado there are several yoga studios, such as **108 Yoga** (Cl. 5 Sur No. 30-72, tel. 4\/266-7232) and **Sati Yoga Y Meditaci\u00f3n** (Cl. 10 No. 36-14, 2nd floor, tel. 4\/352-4143, cell tel. 315\/499-6625).\n\nThe gym **El Molino** (Cra. 79 No. 37-55, tel. 4\/411-2714, 5am-10pm Mon.-Thurs., 5am-8pm Fri., 8am-3pm Sat., 9am-2pm Sun., COP$35,000 weekly pass) in Laureles has a large weight room, cardio machines, and a pool and sauna, and holds various classes. You may not think of schlepping all the way to Envigado to get in a workout, but at multi-level **Dinamo Fitness** (Tr. 29S No. 32B-126, tel. 4\/334-1512, www.dinamofitness.com, 5am-10pm Mon.-Thurs., 5am-2pm Sat., 8am-2pm Sun.) the price is right. A two-day pass costs COP$22,000, a ticket for six entries is COP$60,000, and a ticket for 12 entries is COP$120,000.\n\nMany parks in Medell\u00edn have **outdoor gyms** where you can get in a free workout. These are especially popular with young men who work out on the _barras_ (pull-up bars). One such gym is in the Provenza barrio (Cra. 37 at Cl. 8); another is in the Ciudad del R\u00edo behind the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn (Cl. 20 at Cra. 45).\n\n##### **Paragliding**\n\nFor incredible views of both the verdant Antioquian countryside and the metropolis in the distance, check out a paragliding adventure organized by the **Aeroclub San Felix** (Km. 6 V\u00eda San Pedro de los Milagros, tel. 4\/388-1077, www.parapenteencolombia.com, 20-min. flight COP$80,000, complete course COP$1,600,000). Bus transportation to the town of San Felix is available from the Portal del Norte bus station, and the Aeroclub San Felix can also arrange transportation from El Poblado for an additional cost.\n\n##### **Centro Deportivo Atanasio Girardot**\n\nAt the **Centro Deportivo Atanasio Girardot** (Cras. 70-74 and Clls. 48-50, tel. 4\/369-9000, pool tel. 4\/430-1330, ext. 146), in addition to soccer matches and the occasional big-name concert, there are running tracks, basketball courts, and swimming pools free of charge and open to the public, including visitors. To use the pools all you need is to present an ID and bring a bathing cap. They sell them on-site for under COP$20,000. The Olympic-sized pool is only open to those with a membership in the swimming league, but there are four others available to the public. The nice blue track is often packed with Paisas getting in their morning sweat. It's open to the public during the morning hours, and usually on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings it is also open 8pm-10pm. There are also jazzercise, yoga, rumba, and aerobics classes given several times a day starting at 6am. Just show up and join the fun. Call (tel. 4\/369-9000, ext. 118) for class schedule information. The complex is accessible from the Estadio Metro station.\n\nthe Estadio Atanasio Girardot complex\n\n##### **Soccer**\n\nMedell\u00edn has two professional teams, and Envigado has one. By far the most famous team, with followers across the country, is **Atl\u00edtico Nacional** (www.atlnacional.com.co). Nacional, wearing the green and white of the Antioquian flag, has been playing since 1947. It's one of the most successful teams in Colombia and has won the top division 11 times. Nacional defeated Santa Fe from Bogot\u00e1 for the 2013 Liga Postob\u00f3n championship, which was a very big deal. Nacional is wildly popular with young men and boys in Medell\u00edn, Antioquia, and beyond. The cheap seats at Nacional games are always packed with kids from the barrios. The other team in town is **Deportivo Independiente Medell\u00edn** (www.dalerojo.net). This is the oldest club in Colombia and was originally called Medell\u00edn Foot Ball Club when it was established in 1913. Their colors are red and blue. Both teams play at the **Estadio Atanasio Girardot** (Cl. 48 No. 73-10, www.inder.gov.co). Tickets can be purchased at **Ticket Factory Express** (tel. 4\/444-4446, www.ticketexpress.com.co).\n\n##### **Tours**\n\n**Turibus** (www.turibuscolombia.com, 9am-7:40pm daily, COP$28,000 24-hour pass) operates a hop-on, hop-off service that has seven stops in the city, including the Plaza Botero and the Cerro Nutibara\/Pueblito Paisa. They also offer tours to other parts of the Antioquia department, such as to Jeric\u00f3 and Guatape.\n\nWhile some may find it unseemly to go on a tour of Pablo Escobar's Medell\u00edn, others find it fascinating. During the three-hour **Pablo Escobar Tour** (cell tel. 317\/489-2629, www.paisaroad.com, 10am daily, COP$35,000) offered by Paisa Road, you'll see where the world's most notorious drug baron grew up, learn about the violent world of the cartels, and visit his tomb. The meeting point for the tours (offered in English) is at the Black Sheep and Casa Kiwi hostels in the Provenza area of El Poblado. If you'd like to visit Escobar's grave independently, you can take the Metro to the Sabaneta station. The **Parque Jardines Montesacro** (Cra. 42 No. 25-51, Autopista Sur Itag\u00fci, tel. 4\/374-1111, 9am-5pm daily, free) is within walking distance from there.\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\nThe Provenza neighborhood and the area around Parque Lleras are home to several boutique clothing and accessories shops. **Santa Fe** (Cl. 43 No. 7 Sur-107, www.centrocomercialsantafe.com) is the largest and flashiest of Medell\u00edn's malls. It's on the Avenida El Poblado.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nAccommodation options to fit every budget and taste are plentiful in Medell\u00edn. El Poblado has the most options, with luxury hotels along the Avenida El Poblado and hostels and boutiques in the walkable Provenza area, close to a smorgasbord of restaurants and bars and close-ish to the El Poblado Metro station. Laureles is a quiet and green residential area with a growing number of fine options for those wanting an escape from the madding crowd. There aren't many reasons anyone would want to stay in the Centro, an area of town that feels unsafe at night. As is the case in cities in the interior of the country, on weekends Medell\u00edn empties somewhat, hotel prices fall, and vacancies increase.\n\n##### **Under COP$70,000**\n\nDozens of hostels cater to more than the traditional twenty-something backpacker. Today these economical options offer comfortable private rooms for those who are looking for a friendly environment and keeping an eye on their expenses.\n\nThe **Casa Kiwi** (Cra. 36 No. 7-10, tel. 4\/268-2668, www.casakiwihostel.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is a backpacker's institution in El Poblado. A cold and _\u00fcber_ -cool atmosphere pervades the place at times, though, and it does have the reputation of being a party pad (loud). It's got a capacity of 60, with an array of private rooms and dorm options, plus a nice sundeck above. Nonguests can visit on Friday evenings, when there's live music on the deck.\n\nWith just one dorm room and two private rooms (with a shared bath), **La Miscelanea Hostel** (Cra. 35 No. 7-86, tel. 4\/311-8635, www.lamiscelanea.co, COP$20,000 pp) is a low-key and relaxed option run by a friendly Paisa couple. This hostel in Provenza started as a restaurant\/bar, and they still have occasional live music performances in their bar area. There's lots of vegetarian fare on offer, and it's open to the public. The _tienda_ (store) has funky things made by Medell\u00edn's creative folk.\n\nM **Urban Buddha** (Circular 73A No. 38-55, tel. 4\/413-9322, www.buddhahostel.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is a friendly place to stay in the leafy neighborhood of Laureles. The garden out back is a peaceful urban refuge and nice place to study one's Spanish or chat with other world travelers. The Spanish owners of this hostel also run the **Secret Buddha Hostel** (Cl. 94 B Sur No. 51-121, La Estrella, tel. 4\/279-5152, cell tel. 312\/892-6521, www.buddhahostel.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$65,000 d) in the Estrella municipality, outside of Medell\u00edn. It's green and quiet out there, but you can still head into town easily on the Metro.\n\n##### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nIn contrast to many Colombian cities, Medell\u00edn has a fair variety of midrange hotels. Chain hotels tend to be best, holding few surprises.\n\nThe M **Casa Hotel Asturias Medell\u00edn** (Circular 4 No. 73-124, tel. 4\/260-2872, COP$89,000 d) is on a delightful corner of the tree-lined and quiet Laureles neighborhood. That's the big selling point for this small hotel. Rooms are modern and comfortable, although not terribly huge. It's a good deal.\n\nWell located in the Provenza neighborhood, **Acqua Hotel Express** (Cra. 35 No. 7-47, tel. 4\/448-0482, cell tel. 320\/788-4424, www.hotelacqua.com, COP$131,000 d) is a good value. Its 43 rooms are spic and span and comfortable.\n\nFrench budget chain M **Hotel Ibis** (Cl. 20 No. 44-16, tel.4\/444-1554, www.ibis.com, COP$99,000 d) has modern rooms with comfortable beds at great rates, and is located in an interesting area in the Ciudad del R\u00edo, across the street from the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn. There's no gym, but the neighborhood is quiet, making it a decent place for a morning jog. The best views are on the hotel's south side. The hotel restaurant offers buffet meals for an additional price. On the weekends it's very quiet, and room rates drop to an unbelievable COP$79,000.\n\nLocated across from the Atanasio Girardot sports complex, the **Hotel Tryp Medell\u00edn** (Cl. 50 No. 70-24, tel. 4\/604-0686, www.tryphotels.com, COP$146,000 d) has 140 large, comfortable (if spartan) rooms and an excellent rooftop terrace with a whirlpool and steam room. Guests have access to an extremely loud gym on the lobby floor. Restaurants are nonexistent in this area, except for street food, and hotel room service is iffy.\n\nThe **Hotel BH El Poblado** (Cra. 43 No. 9 Sur 35, tel. 4\/604-3534, www.bhhoteles.com, COP$170,000 d) is across from the enormous Centro Comercial Santa Fe. This Colombian chain hotel with 70 rooms has huge, comfortable beds and modern rooms, and despite its location on a major street (Av. El Poblado), it's not that noisy. An included breakfast buffet is served in a pleasant open-air terrace. It's also got the world's tiniest hotel gym with about three cardio machines.\n\nIt's got a boring and frankly ugly location, but the standard-to-the-core **GHL Comfort Hotel San Diego** (Cl. 31, No. 43-90, www.ghlhoteles.com, COP$124,000 d) offers good prices and the staff is attentive. A mediocre breakfast is served on the top-floor terrace (featuring an excellent view), and amenities include a sauna and small gym. It's close to a couple of malls and is between the Centro and El Poblado on a main road. The Ciclov\u00eda passes by in front on Sundays, making it a snap to get out and move.\n\nHard-core city people will be the ones interested in staying in the Centro. The **Hotel Nutibara Conference Center** (Cl. 52A No. 50-46, tel. 4\/511-5111, www.hotelnutibara.com, COP$132,000 d) is the best choice. It's a faded, grand old hotel located steps from the Museo de Antioquia. With wide corridors and huge rooms with parquet floors, it retains mid-20th-century elegance and personality.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nThe revitalization and resurgence of Medell\u00edn that began in the early 2000s has also led to culinary revolution, with countless new dining options popping up throughout the city. The best neighborhoods for dining are Provenza and El Poblado and the Zona M in Envigado.\n\n##### **Colombian**\n\n**Mondongo's** (Cra. 70 No. C3-43, tel. 4\/411-3434, www.mondongos.com.co, 11:30am-9:30pm daily, COP$20,000) is a well-known and popular place for typical Colombian food and for drinks with friends. _Mondongo_ is a tripe stew, a Colombian comfort food, In addition to the Carrera 70 location there is another Mondongo's on the busy Calle 10 in El Poblado (Cl. 10 No. 38-38, tel. 4\/312-2346) that is a popular drinking hole as well. They've even got a location in Miami.\n\nAnother popular place on the Carrera 70 strip is **La Tienda** (Cra. 70 Circular 3-28, tel. 4\/260-6783, 10am-2am daily). It's a festive restaurant that morphs into a late-night drinking place as Medell\u00edn evenings wear on. Their _bandeja paisa_ is famous. It's a signature Antioquian dish that includes beans, rice, sausages, and pork rinds.\n\nAlong the Avenida Las Palmas above El Poblado are several large and famous grilled meat and _comida t\u00edpica_ restaurants. They are especially popular on weekend afternoons. **Hato Viejo** (Cl. 16 No. 28-60, Av. Las Plamas, tel. 4\/268-5412 or 4\/268-6811, noon-11pm daily, COP$25,000) is a popular place for a weekend lunch with the gang. On Friday nights they have live music. **San Carb\u00f3n** (Cl. 15A No. 30-80, tel. 4\/311-7602, www.sancarbon.com.co, noon-10pm weekdays, noon-2am on weekends, COP$29,000) often has live music Wednesday-Sunday. Specialties include barbecue pork ribs and pepper steak.\n\nThe Provenza area has a number of cute and original Colombian specialty restaurants. **Cazuelas de Mi Tierra** (Cra. 37 No. 8A-116, tel. 4\/448-6810, www.cazuelasdemitierra.com, 8am-5pm Mon.-Wed., 8am-7pm Thurs.-Sat., 10am-4pm Sun., COP$20,000) has a special each day and always plenty of hangover-combating creamy _cazuelas_ (stews).\n\n**Mi Bu\u00f1uelo** (Cl. 8 No. 35-33, tel. 4\/311-5370, 6:30am-8pm Mon.-Sat., 6:30am-3pm Sun.), meanwhile, is a tribute to those unassuming, perfectly round, fried balls of dough, _bu\u00f1uelos._ **Arepitas Pa' Papa** (Cra. 34 No. 7-73, tel. 4\/352-2455, 11am-2:30pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$15,000) lets you create an arepa (cornmeal cake) with your favorite toppings.\n\nM **Queareparaenamorarte** (tel. 4\/542-0011, cell tel. 316\/741-4458, 12:30pm-8:30pm Mon.-Wed., 12:30pm-10:30pm Thurs.-Sat., 12:30pm-7pm Sun., COP$25,000) is not your typical _comida t\u00edpica_ restaurant. Juilian, owner, chef, and expert on Colombian cuisine, has traveled the country over and has brought the secrets back from grandmothers' kitchens from the Amazon to Santa Marta.\n\n##### **Fusion**\n\nM **In Situ** (Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico, tel. 4\/460-7007, www.botanicomedellin.org, noon-3pm Mon., noon-3pm and 7pm-10pm Tues.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$30,000) may have the nicest view of any eatery in Medell\u00edn. It's surrounded by a million shades of green on the grounds of the Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico. It's an elegant place for a lunch, but if you've been sweating it visiting the city, you may feel out of place among the sharply dressed business and society crowds. In Situ has an interesting menu with items such as apple sea bass (COP$30,000) and beef medallions in a coffee sauce with a plantain puree (COP$29,000).\n\nNext to the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn is hip **Bonuar** (Cra. 44 No. 19A-100, tel. 4\/235 3577, www.bonuar.com, 10am-7pm Tues.-Fri., 11am-6pm Sat., noon-4pm Sun. holidays, COP$22,000), where the burgers (including a Portobello and lentil version) are famous, but so is the brunch. It's a cool place with a nice outdoor seating area. During weekdays go in the evening when it's livelier.\n\nA classic, old-school restaurant is **La Provincia** (Cl. 4 Sur No. 43A-179, tel. 4\/311-9630, www.restaurantelaprovincia.com, noon-3pm and 7pm-midnight Mon.-Sat., COP$28,000). It is a fusion of Mediterranean cuisine (lots of seafood) with Colombian flair. Reserve a table on the romantic patio out back if you can. Try the exotic grilled fish fillet in a peanut sauce with green papaya strips.\n\n**El Herbario** (Cra. 43D No. 10-30, tel. 4\/311-2537, www.elherbario.com, noon-3pm and 7pm-11pm daily, COP$24,000) has an inventive menu with items such as lemongrass tuna, turmeric prawns, and artichoke risotto. Spacious and minimalistic, it can feel a little like eating in a warehouse, though. The attached store sells exotic jams and chutneys and the like.\n\n##### **American**\n\nChef Ricardo Ram\u00edrez studied culinary arts in New Orleans, came back to Colombia, and immediately went to work designing the menu for the Cajun restaurant **Stella** (Cra. 44A No. 30 Sur-7, tel. 4\/448-4640, 11am-11pm Tues.-Sat., 11am-3pm Sun., COP$22,000). He's got things right\u2014there are po'boys, muffaletta sandwiches, catfish, jambalaya, and even alligator sausage. (They get the alligators from a farm near Monter\u00eda.) The non-reptile crowd can try the vegetarian \u00e9touff\u00e9e. Sunday brunches are often accompanied by live jazz music.\n\nThe most innovative restaurant to come Medell\u00edn's way in a long time is M **Aloha Bar & BBQ** (Cra. 37A No. 8A-70, tel. 4\/444-1148, 11am-11pm Mon.-Thurs., 11am-4am Fri.-Sat., 10am-9pm Sun., COP$25,000). Run by a Hawaiian couple, this is the place for pork sliders, teriyaki ribs, and cole slaw. It's open way late on the weekends, great for a late night nosh after hitting the Parque Lleras bars.\n\n##### **Spanish**\n\nCozy and chic Spanish restaurant **El Barral** (Cl. 30 Sur No. 43A-38, tel. 4\/276-1212, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) specializes in paella, tapas, and sangria, and does them well.\n\n##### **Steak**\n\nWith Colombian newspapers plastered on the walls displaying headlines of yesteryear, the Argentinian steakhouse **Lucio Carb\u00f3n y Vino** (Cra. 44A No. 30 Sur-40, Envigado, tel. 4\/334-4003, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., COP$32,000) specializes in grilled steak, paired with a nice Malbec.\n\n##### **British**\n\n**Cockers Greasy Spoon** (Cl. 7 No. 35-56, Provenza, cell tel. 301\/520-2668, 9am-2:30pm Tues.-Sat.) knows how to fry up an authentic British breakfast, like baked beans and bacon on toast. They make their own sausage, as well as most everything else on the menu, but the blokes who run the place admit that they don't lay the eggs. For lunch, try the fish and chips. It's a house specialty.\n\n##### **Thai**\n\nAuthentic Asian restaurants are few and far between. **Royal Thai** (Cra. 8A No. 37A-05, tel. 4\/354-2843, www.royalthaicolombia.com, COP$27,000) gets mixed reviews, and it's expensive, but hey, it's Thai.\n\n##### **Indian**\n\n**Naan** (Cra. 35 No. 7-75, tel. 4\/312-6285, COP$22,000) is a small and trendy Indian place in the Provenza area.\n\n##### **Middle Eastern**\n\nThere are a few good Lebanese and Arab food options in El Poblado and in Laureles. At **Tabun** (Cra. 33 No. 7-99, tel. 4\/311-8209, www.eltabun.com, noon-10pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-11pm Fri.-Sat., noon-9pm Sun., COP$22,000), in addition to usual Arab fare, they also have a few Indian dishes. Plus belly dancers on weekends!\n\n**Fenicia** (Cra. 73 No. C2-41, Av. Jard\u00edn, tel. 4\/413-8566, www.feniciacomidaarabe.com, noon-8pm Mon. Thurs., noon-9pm Fri.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$15,000) is an authentic Lebanese restaurant run by a family who immigrated to Colombia years ago.\n\n##### **Italian**\n\nAt **Crispino** (Circular 1A No. 74-04, Laureles, tel. 4\/413-3266, noon-11pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-midnight Fri.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun., COP$20,000), owner Salvatore, direct from Naples, offers authentic Italian cuisine.\n\nWhereas most restaurants in El Poblado face rather busy and noisy streets, **Toscano** (Cl. 8A No. 34-20, tel. 4\/311-3094, cell tel. 314\/739-6316, 10:30am-11pm Tues.-Sun., COP$13,000 lunch set menu, COP$20,000) is on a quiet street largely isolated from the neighboring riffraff. It's a delight to sit outside and have a pasta dish with a glass of wine.\n\n##### **Vegetarian**\n\nMost restaurants except the hard-core Colombian _parilla_ -type places now offer at least one lonely vegetarian dish on their menu. No need to pity the herbivore any longer. In Provenza, make a beeline for the cool atmosphere and fantastic vegetarian food at two-story M **Verdeo** (Cra. 35 No. 8A-3, tel. 4\/444-0934, www.ricoverdeo.com, noon-10pm Mon.-Wed., noon-11pm Thurs.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$18,000). This vegetarian haven discreetly set at the end of a street in the Provenza neighborhood could be the best vegetarian restaurant in Colombia. Veggie burgers go down well with an artisanal beer, but there are also Asian and Italian inspired \u00e0 la carte options. Lunch menus are inventive, and are a bargain. Downstairs is more atmospheric, but if you dine upstairs, you can look out over an urban _guadua_ (bamboo) forest. An organic market, **Ceres** (Cra. 35 No. 8A-3, www.ceresmercadoorganico.com) is on the second floor of Verdeo.\n\n**Lenteja Express** (Cra. 35 No. 8A-76, tel. 4\/311-0186, cell tel. 310\/879-9136, 11am-9pm Mon.-Sat.) specializes in veggie burgers: chickpea burgers, lentil burgers, Mexican burgers.\n\nIn the Laureles area, **Pan y Vida Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 51D No. 67-30 Policlinica, tel. 4\/583-8386, 7am-7pm Mon.-Wed., 7am-10pm Thurs.-Fri., 7am-4pm Sat., COP$12,000) serves healthy meals, often featuring the Andean super grain quinoa and organic vegetables. At lunchtime they offer a choice of two set meals. Outdoor seating is a fine idea on a pretty day. Pan y Vida is open in the mornings for coffee, juices, and pastries.\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s and Quick Bites**\n\n**Fellini** (Plaza Mayor, Cl. 41 No. 55-80, Local 105, tel. 4\/444-5064, www.fellini.com.co, noon-8pm Mon.-Fri., noon-4pm Sat., COP$15,000) specializes in burgers, but they also serve sandwiches, salads, and pastas. Plan to eat here after your long day of sightseeing downtown.\n\nThe **Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 37A No. 8A-74, 10am-9pm daily), atop the Parque Lleras, is a point of reference for the area and the place to meet up with someone for a cappuccino. It's popular with travelers and locals alike.\n\nIf you're feeling decadent, as in you'd like your latte in an actual coffee cup and served to you at a table, try **Pergamino Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 37 No. 8A-37, tel. 4\/268-6444, 10am-9pm Mon.-Fri., 11am-9pm Sat). It's on a quietish street in the Provenza area.\n\n**Manzzino** (Circular 72 No. 38-44, tel. 4\/580-7000, 10am-9pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-6pm Sun.) will quickly become your fave Uruguayan neighborhood bakery caf\u00e9 in all of Medell\u00edn, hands down. They've got apple pies, scrumptious almond cakes, quiches, and sandwiches, and you can enjoy them on a delightful terrace as you watch neighborhood folks go about their business in _tranquilo_ (peaceful) and delightful Laureles.\n\nFour in the morning and you've got the munchies? Join the legion of taxi drivers, college kids, and miscellaneous night owls at **Trigo Laurel** (Circula 1A No. 70-06, tel. 4\/250-4943, 24 hours daily). It never closes, not on New Year's not on the 20 de Julio, when Colombians celebrate their independence. They specialize in baked goods, but they also serve cheap lunches. It's on a quiet corner of Carrera 70.\n\nFresh juices are the specialty at **Cosechas Express** (Cl. 10 No. 35-25, tel. 4\/266-9139, 8am-6:30pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-4pm Sat.). There's an infinite number of possibilities here, as you can mix and match.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\n##### **Spanish-Language Courses**\n\n**Universidad EAFIT Centro de Idiomas** (Cra. 49 No. 7S-50, Edificio 31, Oficina 201, tel. 4\/261-9500, ext. 9439 or ext. 9669, COP$880,000 38-hr. course) offers intensive (20 hours per week) and semi-intensive (10 hours per week) Spanish classes. Their courses are certified by the Spanish Cervantes Institute. The **Universidad de Antioquia** (Cra. 52 No. 50-13, Edificio Suramericana, tel. 4\/219-8332, ext. 9003, www.idiomasudea.net) offers personal language instruction at a price of COP$40,000 per hour. Group classes can also be arranged.\n\nA language exchange called \"The Lab\" takes place every Wednesday at **Buena Vista Bar** (Cra. 37 No. 8A-83, cell tel. 313\/788-7440, 7pm-1:30am Wed.). At this friendly gathering of Colombians, travelers, and expats, you can mingle with others and brush up on (or show off) your Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, or English skills. Afterwards, enjoy an international fiesta featuring salsa music on the bottom floor and international beats on the upstairs terrace of this cool space in the Parque Lleras area.\n\n##### **Tourist Information**\n\nMedell\u00edn produces the most comprehensive tourist information of any city in Colombia. In addition to tourist information booths at the bus terminals and airports, there is a large office at the **Plaza Mayor** (Cl. 41 No. 55-80, tel. 4\/261-7277, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.). The tourism office webpage (www.medellin.travel) is up to date with information on what's going on in the city.\n\nThe main newspaper in Medell\u00edn is **_El Colombiano_** (www.elcolombiano.com). Other online resources for events and activities in Medell\u00edn and in the area are **Medell\u00edn Living** (www.medellinliving.com), a blog site run by expats; **Medell\u00edn Style** (www.medellinstyle.com), which has information on DJ events in town; **Plan B** (www.planb.com.co); ticket outlet **Tu Boleta** (www.tuboleta.com); and **Guia Gay Colombia** (www.guiagaycolombia.com), for information on gay and lesbian nightlife.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nIt's a snap getting to centrally located Medell\u00edn from just about anywhere in Colombia, and from Florida. And once in the Antioquian capital, getting around is pretty easy, too.\n\n##### **By Air**\n\nThere are nonstop flights from Medell\u00edn's **Aeropuerto Internacional Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda C\u00f3rdova** (MDE, Rionegro, tel. 4\/402-5110 or 4\/562-2885) to all major cities in Colombia. The airport is simply referred to as \"Rionegro.\" Avianca, LAN, and Viva Colombia operate domestic flights. Internationally, Avianca serves Miami, Panama City, Lima, and Madrid; American Airlines has a nonstop flight to Miami; Spirit and JetBlue to Fort Lauderdale; AeroGal and LAN to Quito; Copa to Caracas and Panama City; and Insel Air to Cura\u00e7ao.\n\nThe Rionegro airport is about 45 minutes (35 km\/22 miles) from downtown, depending on traffic. Taxis cost around COP$60,000 between the city and the airport.\n\nAlternatively, there are _busetas,_ small buses, that leave the airport bound for the San Diego neighborhood, which is convenient to El Poblado. These can be found as you exit the terminal towards the right. Upon arrival in Medell\u00edn, there are taxis on standby. An organized and legitimate group of young people will help place your bags in the cab, even though you may not want or need this service. They expect a COP$1,000-2,000 tip.\n\nTraveling to the airport, there are buses (Conbuses, tel. 4\/231-9681) that depart from a side street just behind the Hotel Nutibara (Cl. 52A No. 50-46, tel. 4\/511-5111) in the Centro. These depart from about 4:30am until 7:20pm every day, and the trip costs COP$8,000. The buses are hard to miss: They're green and white with the word _aeropuerto_ printed in all caps on the front window.\n\n**Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera** (AOH, Cra. 65A No. 13-157, tel. 4\/403-6781, www.aeropuertoolayaherrera.gov.co) is the super-convenient in-town airport. **EasyFly** serves Monter\u00eda, C\u00facuta, Bucaramanga, Apartad\u00f3, and Quibd\u00f3; **Satena** serves Bogot\u00e1, Quibd\u00f3, Apartad\u00f3, Bah\u00eda Solano, and Nuqui. **ADA** (Aerol\u00edneas Antioque\u00f1as) serves a whole slew of cities throughout Colombia, especially western Colombia. The Olaya Herrera terminal was built in the 1930s and is an architectural gem.\n\n##### **Intercity Buses**\n\nMedell\u00edn has two bus terminals: the Sur and the Norte. The **Terminal del Sur** (Cra. 65 No. 8B-91, tel. 4\/444-8020 or 4\/361-1186) is across from the Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera, and it serves destinations in southern Antioquia and the coffee region. The **Terminal del Norte** (Cra. 64C No. 78-580, tel. 4\/444-8020 or 4\/230-9595) is connected to the Caribe Metro station. It serves Santa Fe de Antioquia and Guatape, the Caribbean Coast, and Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **Metro**\n\nMedell\u00edn's **Metro** (tel. 4\/444-9598, www.metrodemedellin.gov.co) is the only urban train system in the country. It's a safe and super-clean system of two lines: L\u00ednea A, which runs from Niqu\u00eda (north) to La Estrella (south), and L\u00ednea B, from San Antonio in the Centro west to San Javier. The Metro line A is useful for traveling between El Centro, El Poblado, and Envigado. Metro line B has a stop at the stadium. The current Metro fare is COP$1,800; however if you think you may use the Metro, Metrocable, and Metropl\u00fas system on a regular basis, consider purchasing a refillable Tarjeta C\u00edvica card that is valid on all three transportation networks. The cost per ride with the Tarjeta C\u00edvica modestly drops to COP$1,600. The card can be purchased at Metro ticket booths.\n\nthe Medell\u00edn Metro\n\n##### **Metrocable**\n\nThe Metrocable public transportation system, consisting of gondola _(telef\u00e9rico)_ lines, was inaugurated in 2004 and consists of three lines, with two under construction. It has been internationally lauded as an innovative approach to solving the particular transportation needs of the isolated and poor _comunas_ (residential sectors), built on mountainsides of the city. The three Metrocable lines are: L\u00ednea J from the San Javier Metro station to La Aurora in the west, L\u00ednea K from the Acevedo Metro station in the north to Santo Domingo, and L\u00ednea L from Santo Domingo to the Parque Arv\u00ed. The Metrocable runs 9am-10pm daily. The Metrocable L\u00ednea L from Santo Domingo to the Parque Arv\u00ed operates 9am-6pm Tuesday-Sunday. When Monday is a holiday, the L\u00ednea L runs that day and does not operate the next day, Tuesday.\n\n##### **Metropl\u00fas Rapid Bus**\n\nThe first line of the **Metropl\u00fas** (www.metroplus.gov.co) rapid bus system, with dedicated bus stops similar to those of the TransMilenio in Bogot\u00e1, debuted in 2013. There are two Metropl\u00fas lines: L\u00ednea 1 and L\u00ednea 2. L\u00ednea 1 connects the working-class neighborhood of Arjuanez in the north with the Universidad de Medell\u00edn in the southwest. L\u00ednea 2 connects the same two sectors but passes through the Centro and Plaza Mayor area. To access the system, you have to use the Tarjeta C\u00edvica, which can be purchased at any Metro station.\n\n##### **Taxis**\n\nTaxis are plentiful in Medell\u00edn. Order them over the phone when possible. A few taxi companies have easy-to-remember numbers: tel. 4\/444-4444, tel. 4\/335-3535, and tel. 4\/211-1111. Friendly **Miguel Espinosa** (cell tel. 311\/378-3565) is a cabbie based around the Laureles area. You can also order reliable cabs using the smartphone app Tappsi.\n\n### **Northern and Eastern Antioquia**\n\n#### **SANTA FE DE ANTIOQUIA**\n\nLiving and breathing colonial charm, this pueblo 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Medell\u00edn is the best of Antioquia. The historic center of the town is compact, with landmarks of plazas, parks, and churches. Santa Fe was founded in 1541 by Jorge Robledo, a ruthless conquistador. An important center for gold mining, Santa Fe was capital of Antioquia until 1823, when it lost that title to Medell\u00edn. On the banks of the R\u00edo Cauca, its proximity to Medell\u00edn makes it an easy trip for those interested in seeing a colonial-era jewel of a pueblo.\n\nWith the average temperature a sizzling 27\u00b0C (81\u00b0F), it can be a challenge to fully enjoy strolling the lovely streets of the pueblo during the heat of the day. If you can, plan to go for the night (one weekday night will do), arriving in late afternoon. That's the nicest time to stroll the streets.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe town's narrow stone streets are adorned with charming plazas and parks and five historic churches. It's a delight to stroll the town in the late afternoon, after the heat of the day has subsided. Churches and historic buildings in Santa Fe are often built in the typical _calicanto_ style, a mix of brick and stone construction materials. Historic colonial churches, with majestic facades, often face parks and are illuminated at night.\n\nThe \"grandmother\" of churches in Antioquia, the **Templo de Santa B\u00e1rbara** (Cl. 8 at Cra. 8, masses 7am and 6pm Mon.-Sat. 6am and 6pm Sun.), with its many baroque elements, was built towards the end of the 18th century. Next to it, in what was a Jesuit college, is the **Museo de Arte Religioso** (Cl. 11 No. 8-12, tel. 4\/311-3808, 9am-5pm Sat.-Sun., COP$2,000), a museum that highlights paintings, sculptures, and gold and silver pieces from the Spanish New World colonies.\n\nA nicely presented museum housed in a colonial-style house, the **Museo Juan del Corral** (Cl. 11 No. 9-77, tel. 4\/853-4605, www.museojuandelcorral.com, 9am-noon and 2pm-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-5pm Sat.-Sun., free) has exhibits on the history of Santa Fe, including historical items from 1813 when Antioquia was declared free. The museum also puts on temporary exhibits of contemporary Colombian artists, and other cultural events are held here.\n\nSix kilometers (four miles) outside of town, on an old road that leads to the town of Sopetr\u00e1n on the other side of the R\u00edo Cauca, is an architectural wonder, the **Puente de Occidente,** a suspension bridge made of iron and steel. It was built towards the end of the 19th century by Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Villa, an engineer who studied in New Jersey and worked on the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a narrow bridge and has been closed to vehicular traffic, for the most part. _Mototaxis_ can take you there from town, across the bridge, and back for COP$15,000. The bridge is easily reached by bike as well.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThe big event in Santa Fe is the week-long **Festival de Cine de Antioquia** (www.festicineantioquia.com), a film festival held each year in early December. There is usually an international director or actor who is the guest of honor. Some free showings are held outdoors in the town's plazas and parks.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nMedell\u00edn families converge on Santa Fe en masse on weekends, and for many the draw is to lounge by the pool at one of the hotels lining the main road leading into town. Hotels in town, however, have more charm. Hotel prices can drop substantially during the week.\n\nThe historic town of Santa Fe de Antioquia makes for a pleasant overnight trip from Medell\u00edn.\n\nIn town, the M **Hotel Mariscal Robledo** (Cl. 10 No. 9-70, tel. 4\/853-1111, cell tel. 313\/760-0099, www.hotelmariscalrobledo.com, COP$120,000-170,000 d) is far and away the most comfortable hotel, and one oozing with personality. Antiques, especially with a cinematic theme, decorate the lobby and common areas. Rooms on the second floor, which have not been given a 21st-century makeover, are nonetheless comfortable, and have far more character. The pool area is luxurious.\n\nOn the boutique side, the **Hotel Casa Tenerife** (Cra. 8 No. 9-50, tel. 4\/853-2261, www.hotelcasatenerife.com, COP$162,000 d) has 12 rooms, is tastefully decorated, and has a nice pool and courtyard area. It often caters to couples celebrating romantic getaways, with such details as rose petals on the bed.\n\nOn the Plaza Mayor are two options. The family-run **Hotel Caser\u00f3n Plaza** (Cl. 9-41, Plaza Mayor, tel. 4\/853-2040, www.hotelcaseronplaza.com.co, COP$145,000-208,000 d) has an excellent location but is overpriced for what you get. Some of the 33 rooms have air conditioning, which is a plus in Santa Fe. There is also a small pool in back, another plus. **Hostal de la Plaza Mayor** (Cra. 9 No. 9-59, tel. 4\/255-7427, cell tel. 311\/396-5628, <http:\/\/hostalplazamayorsantafedeantioquia.blogspot.com>, COP$50,000 d) is the budget option in town. Staff are friendly, but it's a little run down.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nThere are few places in Colombia where one can dine to the soft tones of classical or jazz music. The **Restaurante Bar La Comedia** (Parque Santa Barbara, tel. 4\/853-1243, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Wed.-Sun., COP$18,000) is one such place. Light dishes, sandwiches, and cr\u00eapes dominate the small menu, and this is also an option for late afternoon _onces,_ tea time. It's diagonal to the Santa B\u00e1rbara church. **Restaurante Port\u00f3n del Parque** (Cl. 10 No. 11-03, tel. 4\/853-3207, noon-8pm Sun.-Thurs., noon-9:30pm Sat.-Sun., COP$20,000) is lavishly decorated with portraits and paintings by owner Olga Cecilia. In addition to typical Paisa specialties (lunch specials during the week go for under COP$10,000), the extensive menu offers seafood and international cuisine. Finally, the restaurant at the **Hotel Mariscal Robledo** (Cl. 10 No. 9-70, tel. 4\/853-1111, cell tel. 313\/760-0099, www.hotelmariscalrobledo.com, 8am-3pm and 7pm-10pm daily, COP$25,000) is always a good choice.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n**Naturaventura** (Hotel Mariscal Robledo, Cl. 10 No. 9-70, tel. 4\/853-1946, naturaventura1@hotmail.com) organizes nature walks, bike trips, horseback riding, and rafting excursions. For horseback riding, contact **Gu\u00edas Turantioquia** (tel. 4\/853-1148), which organizes day-trip horseback riding tours in and around Santa Fe.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nSpaniards were once attracted to Santa Fe because of its gold. Today it is famous for its intricate filigree jewelry. To peruse some, visit **ORFOA** (Cl. 9 No. 6-02, tel. 4\/853-2880, 9am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily) or **Dulces & Artesan\u00edas Clavellina** (Hotel Mariscal Robledo, Cl. 10 No. 9-70, tel. 4\/853-2195, 9am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily). Clavellina is the symbolic flower of Santa Fe.\n\n**Guarnieler\u00eda y Marroquiner\u00eda** (Cl. 10 No. 7-66, cell tel. 314\/847-8354, noon-7pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-7pm Sat.-Sun.) sells authentic Jeric\u00f3 _carrieles_ (shoulder bags used by Paisa cowhands) and other locally made leather handicrafts. **La Casa Solariega** (Cl. de la Amargura No. 8-09, tel. 4\/853-1530, 9am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily) has an eclectic collection of handicrafts, paintings, and antiques in a typical Santa Fe house.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nA **tourist information office** on the Plaza Mayor (Cra. 9 and Cl. 9, tel. 4\/853-1022) has maps and hotel information.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is regular bus service, several times a day, from the **Terminal de Transportes del Norte** (Cra. 64 No. 78-344, tel. 4\/267-7075, www.terminalesmmedellin.com) in Medell\u00edn to Santa Fe. The journey takes two hours and takes you through a feat of modern engineering: the **T\u00fanel Fernando G\u00f3mez Mart\u00ednez,** the longest tunnel in South America. To return, walk a couple of blocks to the Medell\u00edn-Turbo highway near the market at Carrera 10 and flag down passing buses. Most of them are going to Medell\u00edn. The trip costs under COP$10,000.\n\n#### **MAGDALENA MEDIO**\n\n##### M **Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro**\n\nA visit to the spectacular, privately run **Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro** (Medell\u00edn office tel. 4\/268-8855, cell tel. 311\/354-0119, www.rioclaroelrefugio.com) is a highlight for anyone visiting Colombia. In the steamy and remote Magdalena Medio region of Antioquia, the reserve encompasses 450 hectares (1,100 acres) along the R\u00edo Claro canyon, a babbling, crystal-clear river. This reserve is a place to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of the river and its jungle and to disconnect from the hectic pace of urban life.\n\nThe story behind the park begins with an oft-repeated tale about a pesky jaguar. It seems that the cat was blamed for killing some livestock of a campesino in the area. In a quest to track down the guilty party (the jaguar got away unharmed), the farmer followed its tracks through the jungle, over several days, and to a spectacular canyon. When Juan Guillermo Garc\u00e9s heard about the astonishing discovery, he had to see this undiscovered territory for himself. Garc\u00e9s immediately knew that this was a special place, and he made a commitment to purchase the land to protect it from development, including a highway that was to pass through this pristine land.\n\nOn weekends, R\u00edo Claro receives many visitors. In addition to those staying at the reserve, many day visitors spend the afternoon at R\u00edo Claro. Don't go on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday if you seek a peaceful commune with nature. If you visit the reserve midweek, you'll most likely have the place practically to yourself, which is heavenly.\n\n###### **RECREATION**\n\nGuides don't speak English, generally. There are two must-do activities at the reserve. The first is an easy rafting trip down the river (COP$20,000), during which you can see the karstic jungle, in which trees grow atop rocks. This excursion takes about two hours. The second must-do activity is a combination swim\/hike trip to the **Caverna de los Gu\u00e1charos** (COP$15,000 pp). This guided walk has its challenging moments: wading across the swiftly flowing river, making your way through the dark, dark cavern, climbing out of the cavern, and then making your way back across the river. _Gu\u00e1charo_ birds (oilbirds), living inside the cavern, act like they own the place (the cavern is, after all, named for them). They don't like it when human intruders invade their space, and they'll let you know that with their screeching. The cavern is made of marble; its stalactites and stalagmites are impressive. Waterproof shoes with good traction are recommended, as you'll be wading in water most of the time. Also, it's nice to have a headlamp so that you'll have hands free. You can take your camera, but at a certain point it will need to be kept in a water repellent bag, which the guide will have. If you're up for both trips, go on the cavern tour in the morning and go rafting in the late afternoon.\n\nReserva Natural R\u00edo Claro\n\nOther activities at the reserve include rock-climbing, a zip line, hanging out on the marble beach, self-guided nature walks, and tubing. These are all arranged by R\u00edo Claro staff.\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nThe reserve has a variety of accommodations options. Contact the R\u00edo Claro office (tel. 4\/268-8855, cell tel. 311\/354-0119, www.rioclaroelrefugio.com) for all reservations and information. The **Hotel El Refugio** (COP$80,000) is above the reception and dining area, and is a comfortable all-wooden lodge construction. The best and most isolated is at the far end near the canyon, a 15-minute walk from the main reception area in the **Caba\u00f1as El Refugio** (COP$95,000-140,000 pp), where rooms are quite spectacular and open-air. You'll sleep well here with the sounds of the rushing water to lull you asleep. Rooms are completely open, but there are no problems with mosquitoes.\n\nThe **Hotel R\u00edo Claro** (COP$95,000 pp) is across the highway from the rest of the reserve but still along the river, and it has a big pool. These are small concrete bungalows. The hotel is popular with student groups. All meals are included in the room rates. Tell staff when you make your reservation if you have any dietary needs or special requests, like fresh fruit.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE**\n\nThe reserve is easily reached by bus from Medell\u00edn. All buses between Medell\u00edn and Bogot\u00e1 pass in front of the R\u00edo Claro entrance, where there is a small security booth. From Medell\u00edn, it takes around three hours, costing around COP$20,000. Be sure to tell the driver you'd like to be dropped off at the _\"entrada de la Reserva R\u00edo Claro.\"_ (\"the entrance to the R\u00edo Claro Reserve\").\n\n##### **Hacienda Napoles**\n\nThe **Hacienda Napoles** (Puerto Triunfo, cell tel. 314\/892-2307, www.haciendanapoles.com, 9am-6pm Tues.-Sun., COP$32,000) was a vacation home for Pablo Escobar, complete with an airstrip and exotic animals, including quite a few hippos, who apparently adapted nicely to the muggy climes of the R\u00edo Magdalena area. Today Hacienda Napoles is a theme park with giant dinosaur sculptures, some of which were built by Escobar for his children; two water parks (additional fees); hippopotami, zebras, and ostriches; an Africa museum; the remnants of Pablo Escobar's country house (now a museum); a collection of old cars that were destroyed following his death; and his private airplane landing strip.\n\nAvoid the oppressive heat and intense sun of midday (and the crowds on weekends) by visiting early on a weekday morning. The park can easily be visited from R\u00edo Claro, which is about an hour away. When Monday is a holiday, the park closes on Tuesday rather than on Monday.\n\n#### **GUATAPE**\n\nThe stone monolith La Piedra dominates the landscape here, but the Guatape area is more than just a big rock: It's a weekend playground chock full of recreational activities that keep the crowds from Medell\u00edn busy.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nGuatape is a resort town. Aside from La Piedra, it's known for its _z\u00f3calos,_ colorful designs of the friezes on the lower part of houses. Many of these honor the traditions of townspeople, such as farming and fishing, others have sheep or other animals, and still others hot rods or Pink Panther. A particularly colorful street is the **Calle del Recuerdos** near the Parque Principal.\n\nOn a serene mountainside near Guatape, beyond El Encuentro hostel on the same road is the **Monasterio Santa Mar\u00eda de la Epifan\u00eda** (www.monjesbenedictinosguatape.org), home to around 30 Benedictine monks. Guests, up to eight at a time, are welcome to stay. Every day of the week at the 5:15pm _visperas_ (vespers) service, the public is invited to hear the monks sing Gregorian chants.\n\nCheck out the **Iglesia de Piedra** in the town of El Pe\u00f1ol, a modern construction that resembles La Piedra, which is quite a strange sight.\n\n##### **La Piedra Pe\u00f1ol**\n\nKnown simply as La Piedra, **La Piedra Pe\u00f1ol** (8am-6pm daily, COP$10,000) is a giant rock monolith that soars 200 meters (650 feet) into the sky from the scenic and meandering Embalse Pe\u00f1ol-Guatape, an important reservoir covering some 64 square kilometers (25 square miles) that is an important producer of hydro-electric energy for the country. There's been quite a rivalry between the towns of El Pe\u00f1ol and Guatape over the years, over which town can claim La Piedra for their own. It is located between the two, a tad closer to the Guatape side. Things digressed to a point where folks from Guatape began to paint their town's name in large letters on one prominent side of the rock. People from El Pe\u00f1ol were not amused, and this giant marking of territory was halted by authorities. Today all that remains of that brouhaha is what appear to be the letters \"GI.\"\n\nThe 360-degree views from the top of La Piedra over the Guatape reservoir and Antioqiuan countryside are worth the toil of climbing up over 600 steps, in a ramshackle brick and concrete stairwell that is stuck to the rock, to the top. To celebrate your feat, you can have a drink at one of the snack bars there.\n\nIn front of La Piedra, there is a statue of the man who first climbed the monolith in 1954. Inspired by a priest, Luis Villegas L\u00f3pez and two friends took five days to slowly climb up cracks in the rock. They had to deal with a beehive and a rainstorm along the way, adding to the challenge. It's one of the top tourist attractions in Antioquia. From the bottom of the rock, look up and notice the hundreds of bromeliads growing along the sides of it.\n\nLa Piedra can be visited several ways. You can walk from Guatape, which takes 45 minutes. (Sunscreen and water are essential.) You can bike it, although the road that winds its way up to the rock entrance is quite steep. You can take a _mototaxi_ from your hotel (COP$10,000), or you can hop on a Jeep from the Parque Principal (between Cras. 28-29 and Clls. 31-32) in Guatape. It's best to make your visit during the early morning hours or late in the afternoon due to potent sun rays.\n\nThe town is surrounded by a large reservoir operated by EPM, the Medell\u00edn utility company. The reservoir was built in phases during the 1970s and was not without controversy, as the flooding of the area began without the full consent of the inhabitants. Finally all families were resettled by EPM by 1979, and the town of El Pe\u00f1ol gradually became covered with rising waters, with only a church steeple remaining as a reminder of the town's past.\n\n##### **Tours**\n\nA popular excursion is to take a **boat tour** with brothers Luis and Rodolfo Londo\u00f1o (cell tel. 312\/794-7150 or 312\/236-5783, COP$50,000-100,000 per boat) to some of the islands of the reservoir. A standard stop on the tour is to (or rather, above) the submerged town of Viejo Pe\u00f1ol. It was flooded on purpose during the construction of the reservoir and nearby dam in 1978. The only real remnant of the town is a large cross rising out of the water. A small historical museum displays old photos and historical memorabilia from the old town on the waterside. These tours typically last 45 minutes to 1.5 hours.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nDuring the week, prices drop significantly at most hotels, especially if you pay in cash.\n\nM **El Encuentro** (tel. 4\/861-1374, cell tel. 311\/619-6199, www.hostalelencuentro.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$65,000 d), a 12-minute walk up from town, remains one of the best options in Guatape. Run by a friendly Californian named Greg, the hostel is on the Guatape-Pe\u00f1ol reservoir, and rooms are spread throughout two houses, with about 10 rooms in total. Most of these are private rooms, and some have a shared bath. A larger apartment and two dorms are available here, as well as a place for tents down by the lake. The staff at El Encuentro can organize a plethora of outdoorsy things to do: downhill mountain bike rides on their excellent bikes, hikes, and jumping off of bridges. Spanish classes can be arranged, and you can study your verbs on the nice deck.\n\nIn town is the newer **Tomate Caf\u00e9 Hostel** (Cl. 30 No. 28-120, tel. 4\/861-1100, cell tel. 312\/216-1199, www.tomatecafehostel.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$40,000 d). It's run by a Paisa family and has four small private rooms and two dorm rooms. A strong cup of coffee is always on offer here, as well as healthy and vegetarian food in their restaurant. It's next to a disco, so on weekend nights it can get thumping. You were warned!\n\nAt M **Mi Casa Guatape** (tel. 4\/861-0632, cell tel. 301\/457-5726, www.micasaguatape.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) guests wake up, step outside with a cup of coffee in hand, and greet their neighbor, La Piedra, with a warm _Buenos d\u00edas._ You can't get much closer to that big rock than from this small English-Colombian hostel. The hostel has five private rooms and one four-bed dorm as well as two kitchens for use. When not outdoors climbing La Piedra or taking out their kayak for a spin, guests can laze in hammocks on the deck, watch movies, or bond with the owners' sweet dog. Mi Casa works closely with **Adventure Activities** (cell tel. 301\/411-4442), just next door, a group that organizes an intense-rock climbing excursion up one of dozens of routes up La Piedra (COP$60,000, 7 hours), as well as other outings. Owner Sean takes guests on a waterfall hike (6 km\/4 miles round-trip, COP$15,000, 4 hours). It's easy to go into town from the hostel by catching a ride with a passing Jeep or with Mi Casa's preferred _mototaxi_ driver. Mi Casa is about three kilometers before Guatape on the main road (25-min. walk or COP$1,500 taxi ride) and is across the street from landmark El Estadero La Mona.\n\nThere are a couple of upscale hotels in town. **Hotel Portobello** (Cl. 32 No. 28-29, tel. 4\/861-0016, cell tel. 312\/783-4050, www.hotelportobeloguatape.com, COP$215,000 d) has 16 rooms, and most of them have a view of the lake. You can obtain a 25 percent discount during the week if you pay in cash.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nFish like massive carp and trout from the reservoir are the specialty in Guatape. Reliable fish and Colombian cuisine restaurants include **La Fogata** (Cra. 30 No. 31-32, tel. 4\/861-1040, cell tel. 314\/740-7282, 8am-8pm daily), on the waterfront.\n\nPizza and pasta are on the menu at **Rafaelos** (below Hotel Portobello on the waterfront, tel. 4\/861-0016, cell tel. 310\/200-9020, 11am-11pm Wed.-Sun.).\n\nCraving a curry? M **Donde Sam** (El Pe\u00f1ol, near church, tel. 4\/851-5401, cell tel. 320\/667-5870, 11am-11pm daily, COP$15,000) is worth the trip. Owner and chef Sam, from Agra, and his Colombian wife, Lina, serve up authentic Indian dishes (as well as other international cuisine). Lunches, like curry vegetables or chicken, are accompanied by a soup and salad. It's livelier at night, and sometimes they put on mood-setting music in an attempt to transport the crowd to Asia.\n\nSometimes exceptional hospitality can give one a sugar headache. That's what happens at Gloria Elena's generous candy tastings at **Dulces de Guatape** (Cl. 29 No. 23C-32, Barrio Villa del Carmen, tel. 4\/861-0724, 7am-6pm). At this small candy factory, they make all kinds of sweets, many with _arequipe_ (caramel) and some with fruits like the tart _uchuva_ and guava as well as some chocolate bonbons that have peanuts and almonds.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is frequent bus service from Medell\u00edn's north terminal to Guatape. The trip takes about two hours and costs COP$12,000. Buses depart Guatape at a bus terminal that was completed in 2013 on the waterfront. It's just one block from the main plaza. Buses returning to Medell\u00edn often fill up in a hurry on Sundays, especially during holidays. If you are relying on public transportation, book your return bus trip early. The last bus for Medell\u00edn departs at 6pm. The return fare is also COP$12,000.\n\n### **Southern Antioquia**\n\n#### M **JARD\u00cdN**\n\nSometimes place names fit perfectly. Such is the case in the picture-perfect Antioquian town of Jard\u00edn. The main park gushes year-round with trees and flowers always in bloom, and the streets are corridors of color as well, with brightly painted houses one after another.\n\nFor many years this town has been a favorite country getaway for Paisas from Medell\u00edn. It's becoming popular with international travelers, too, but still, if you arrive during the week, you'll feel like you've stumbled upon something special. On weekends, and especially on holidays, a festive atmosphere fills the air, and the Plaza Principal buzzes with activity.\n\nWhile the main selling points of Jard\u00edn are its good looks, nearby tropical forests and cloud forests, home to natural attractions such as the Caverna El Esplendor and the ProAves bird-watching reserve, provide good excuses for lacing up those hiking boots.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe **Parque Principal** is the center of life in Jard\u00edn. It's full of colorful wooden chairs, eight flower gardens, a handful of tall trees that provide welcome shade, and a constant cast of characters passing through, hanging out, or sipping a coffee. Prominent on the east side of the park is the neo-gothic cathedral the **Bas\u00edlicaMenor de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n** (Cra. 3 No. 10-71, mass daily 11am), a 20th-century construction, the striking interior of which is painted shades of turquoise.\n\nthe Parque Principal in pretty Jard\u00edn\n\nThe **Museo Clara Rojas** (Cra. 5 No. 9-31, tel. 6\/845-5652, <http:\/\/mcrpjardin.blogspot.com>, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm, COP$2,000) has 19th-century period furniture and relics from the _colonizaci\u00f3n antioque\u00f1a,_ as well as a small collection of religious art, including a painting of Jesus as a child surrounded by lambs with medals hanging around their necks. The town's tourism office is behind the museum, operating the same hours as the museum.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nWalking around Jard\u00edn is a pleasant way to get to know the town and surrounding mountains. Setting out for a walk towards the surrounding western mountains, to the Alto de las Flores or Salto del \u00c1ngel, makes for a great morning. If you lose your way, ask for directions. On the east side of town, there is a charming path, the **Camino Herrera,** which leads to the Casa de los Fundadores. In that area are several coffee plantations.\n\nJard\u00edn has not one, but two mini chairlifts in town. The **Cable Aereo** (8am-6pm daily, COP$5,000 round-trip) goes up to the Cristo Rey hill. The other, more rustic **La Garrucha** (8am-6pm daily, COP$4,000), goes across town. Although these are popular with tourists, they were built with a purpose in mind: so that rural farmers would have an easier way to bring their coffee and other crops to market.\n\n**Condor de los Andes** (tel. 4\/845-5374, cell tel. 311\/746-1985, condordelosandes@colombia.com) is a tourism operator that organizes walks, paragliding, and waterfall rappelling. Their most popular activity is a day-long **rappelling** adventure to the **Caverna El Esplendor.** This cavern in the jungle outside of town is reached on foot (about a 1.5-hour walk). Once there you rappel down a 50-meter-high (164-foot-high) waterfall into the cavern. Transportation and lunch are included in the price (COP$95,000 pp), and they usually depart Jard\u00edn at around 8am, returning by 4pm. The group also offers paragliding (COP$75,000, 25 mins.) and rappelling at the 53-meter-high (174-foot-high) **Cascada Escalera** (COP$55,000). Condor de los Andes has a small hostel (COP$35,000 pp) five blocks from the Parque Principal.\n\nThose with an inner cowboy may want to take a horseback tour to the **Salto del \u00c1ngel** waterfall. Contact **John Jairo** (cell tel. 312\/825-4524) to reserve your spot.\n\nThe mountains that envelop most of Jard\u00edn are protected lands encompassing some 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres). This area is called the **Reserva Cuchilla Jard\u00edn Tamesis.** Within the reserve are caverns, waterfalls, caves, and nature paths. The **park office** (Alcald\u00eda building, 2nd floor, Cra. 3 No. 10-10, tel. 4\/845-5668, cell tel. 321\/758-7534, dmicuchilla@corantioquia.gov.co) offers free guided walks to these natural attractions.\n\n###### **BIRDING**\n\nColombia's premier bird-watching and conservation group, **ProAves** (www.proaves.org), operates a bird-watching park, the **Reserva Natural de las Loro Orejiamarillo,** within Reserva Cuchilla Jard\u00edn Tamesis. This is where the yellow ear parrot _(Ognorhynchus icterotis)_ can be seen, an endangered species in Colombia. They make their nests in the majestic _palma de cera_ (wax palm) trees. Another exotic bird to look for is the _colibr\u00ed de frontino (Coeligena orina),_ a species of hummingbird. In addition to birdlife, there have been spottings of pumas, the _oso de anteojos_ (an Andean bear), and deer.\n\nIt is ideal to get an early start to view the parrots\u2014as early as 5am. As the elevation is fairly high, the temperatures dip as low as 4\u00b0C (39\u00b0F). Rubber boots and warm clothing are essential.\n\nTo coordinate a visit to the bird-watching park, contact **EcoTurs** (Cra. 20 No. 36-61, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/287-6592, www.ecoturs.org) in advance as staff are not always at the site. This tour agency manages visits to this and all of the other ProAves reserves across the country. In Jard\u00edn, contact Joana Villa (cell tel. 312\/867-1740), or contact Angela G\u00f3mez in Bogot\u00e1 (cell tel. 313\/852-9158) for more information about this park in Antioquia. There is a COP$15,000 entrance fee per person for Reserva Natural de las Loro Orejiamarillo; a guide service costs COP$50,000 per group; and round-trip jeep transportation along rugged mountain roads to the reserve is a whopping COP$240,000.\n\n**Devils of Riosucio**\n\nEvery two years in January, in the sleepy coffee- and plantain-growing town Riosucio in northern Caldas near the Antioquian town of Jard\u00edn, residents (and a growing number of visitors) go to the devil during the revelry of the **Carnaval de Riosucio**. This festival, one of the most beloved in the region, has an interesting story. It began out of a plea made by local priests for two feuding pueblos of Riosucio\u2014the gold-mining village of Quiebralomo and La Monta\u00f1a, home to a large indigenous population\u2014to get along. In 1847 both communities were nudged to participate in that year's Three Kings Day commemoration and to set aside their differences, temporarily at least. If they didn't come together that year in peace, they would invite the wrath of the devil.\n\nOver time, it was that last bit that resonated with the townspeople. From that year onward, groups of families, friends, and neighbors would get together and create elaborate floats and costumes, seemingly in homage to the devil over this five-day celebration. The festival is run by the Rep\u00fablica del Carnaval, which reigns over the town during that time, and the culmination of the event is the ceremonial burning of an effigy of the devil. The festival gets going on the first Friday of January with the most colorful activities taking place on Sunday.\n\n**La Esperanza** (cell tel. 312\/837-0782, COP$180,000 pp all meals incl.) is a private nature reserve run by an American, Doug Knapp, set on a mountain ridge 15 minutes from town. Sunrises, with a view to Jard\u00edn, and sunsets, looking out towards the mountains of Los Farallones del Citar\u00f3, can't be beat. A Jack of many trades, birder Knapp built three comfortable cabins complete with siesta-friendly decks and natural light pouring through the windows. He's also carved out some forest paths that meander through the property. Oh, and he cooks, too.\n\nAt La Esperanza, you don't have to go far to catch a glimpse of some spectacular birds. Knapp's colleagues have documented the presence of eight endemic birds, including the Parker's antbird, the whiskered wren, the Colombian chacalaca, and the yellow-headed manakin. More than 365 species are estimated to live in the Jard\u00edn area.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nIf you are planning to visit Jard\u00edn on a _puente_ (long weekend) or during holidays, you will need to make a reservation at a hotel well in advance. On regular weekends, there is usually no problem in finding a hotel, although the best options do tend to fill up. During the week, the town is yours, and prices drop substantially (especially if you plan to pay in cash).\n\nAlthough Jard\u00edn has plenty of reasonably priced hotel options, there is just one hostel. M **Casa Selva y Caf\u00e9** (Casa del Lago Vereda La Salada, tel. 4\/845-5430, cell tel. 318\/518-7171, www.hostalselvaycafe.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$50,000-90,000 d) is a cozy countryside spot, about a 12-minute walk away from the hustle and bustle of Jard\u00edn city life. Back behind a little pond surrounded with flowers and fruit trees with pastureland and mountains behind, it is pure peace here. Alexandra, the owner, is a yoga teacher and gives classes on-site every Tuesday and Thursday, which are free for hostel guests. For nonguests the classes cost COP$20,000. The two private rooms and two dorms are spacious and clean with high ceilings and hardwood floors.\n\n**Hotel Casa Grande** (Cl. 8 No. 4-33, tel. 4\/845-5487, cell tel. 311\/340-2207, www.hotelcasagrande.co, COP$30,000 pp) features 12 rooms, which have a capacity of 2-5 persons each. Most rooms have 2-4 beds to accommodate families. Breakfast is included in the price, and dinner can be arranged at the hotel as well. The friendly owner, a Jard\u00edn native, can supply tourist information for the area.\n\n**Hotel Valdivia Plaza** (Parque Principal, next to the Museo Clara Rojas, tel. 4\/845-5055, cell tel. 316\/528-1047, COP$58,000 d) has 20 rooms and is clean, but isn't bursting with personality. Splurge for a room with a private balcony overlooking the park.\n\n**Hotel Jard\u00edn** (Cra. 3 No. 9-14, cell tel. 310\/380-6724, COP$40,000 pp) has 11 spacious and modern apartments with a capacity of 4-8 persons each. It's a bargain. This is the most colorful house in a most colorful town, with orange, yellow, red, and blue balconies, doors, and trim. The house was restored in 2012.\n\nA comfortable, if conservative, choice is **Comfenalco Hotel Hacienda Baland\u00fa** (Km. 1 V\u00eda Jard\u00edn Riosucio, tel. 4\/845-5561, COP$158,000 d), a hotel with all the extras: restaurant, sauna, and swimming pool. It's a tranquil 15- to 20-minute walk from town.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nThe soft glow of candlelight at M **Caf\u00e9 Europa** (Cl. 8 No. 4-02, cell tel. 312\/230-2842, 11am-3pm and 6pm-10pm Wed.-Mon.) is hard to resist for weekenders. This corner restaurant run by a German photographer and travel writer serves nice pizzas. Order a bottle of French wine (COP$35,000) and settle in. There's no rush in Jard\u00edn. The menu at **Pastelatte** (Cra. 4 No. 8-45, cell tel. 301\/482-3908, noon-8:30pm Wed.-Mon., COP$14,000) features cr\u00eapes, cheesecakes, coffee, sandwiches, and pastas, and service is speedy and always with a smile. **Zodiaco** (off the main plaza in front of the Hotel El Dorado, tel. 4\/845-5615, 8am-11pm daily, COP$15,000) is a _comida t\u00edpica_ (Colombian fare) restaurant, but it's a couple of notches fancier than most restaurants in town.\n\nAt **Las Margaritas** (Cra. 3 No. 9-68, tel. 4\/845-6651, 7am-9pm daily, COP$15,000), the specialty is _pollo a la Margarita_ (chicken fried with a Parmesan cheese breading). This back-to-Paisa-basics place is good for a hearty breakfast. Vegetarians will appreciate a generous morning serving of _calentado_ (beans and rice). If you want to add some juice (not a part of the typical Paisa breakfast), there is a juice stall two doors down from Las Margaritas, as well as fruit vendors in the park. The _tienda_ (store) next door often has fresh Colombian pastries, such as _almojabanas_ (cheese rolls) and _pandebonos_ (delicious pastries made of yuca flour and cheese).\n\nIt's a weekend ritual in Jard\u00edn: spend the afternoon with family and friends at one of the _trucheras_ (trout farms). One of the largest and best known of these is **La Trucher\u00eda** (Km. 5 V\u00eda Riosucio, tel. 4\/845-5159, noon-6pm daily, COP$18,000). Trout is served infinite ways here: _a la mostaza_ (mustard), with fine herbs, and stuffed with vegetables, to name a few. And what better way to round out the day than with a rousing paintball game!\n\nThe **Caf\u00e9 de los Andes** (Parque Principal, Cra. 5 No. 9-73, tel. 4\/845-6239, 8:30am-9pm Thurs.-Mon., 9:30am-8pm Tues.-Wed.) is the brew of choice from Jard\u00edn, and their caf\u00e9 on the terrace of the Casa del Caf\u00e9 is the finest spot in Jard\u00edn for a caffeine jolt. Go for an espresso; other coffee drinks are disappointingly weak. It's in the Casa del Caf\u00e9; if you go upstairs you might see the bean-to-bag process in action.\n\n**Dulces del Jard\u00edn** (Cl. 13 No. 5-47, tel. 4\/845-6584, www.dulcesdejardin.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Sat.) is the candy-maker in town. In addition to _arequipe_ (caramel) sweets, they make all-natural jams and fruit spreads (COP$6,000) from pineapple, coconut, and papaya.\n\n**Siglo XXI** (Cra. 6 No. 9-18, no phone, noon-8pm daily) is a hole in the wall where you can have a beer and brush shoulders with locals. The walls of this pub are decorated with faded photos of the town and of local _futbolistas_ (soccer players).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThe bus company **Transportes Suroeste Antioque\u00f1o** (tel. 4\/352-9049, COP$18,000) leaves Medell\u00edn each day bound for Jard\u00edn, leaving from the Terminal de Transportes Sur.\n\nThere is also one bus at 6:30am that leaves for Manizales to the south in the coffee region from Jard\u00edn. This route goes through the town of Riosucio.\n\n#### **JERIC\u00d3**\n\nJeric\u00f3 and Jard\u00edn are two (colorfully painted) peas in the same pod. Both are fiercely traditional Paisa pueblos, and they won't change for anybody. Although it is the closer of the two to Medell\u00edn, Jeric\u00f3 feels more remote, and less visited, and therein lies its charm. Set on a gentle slope of a mountain overlooking a valley dotted with cattle ranches and farms of coffee, tomato, plantain, and, cardamom, Jeric\u00f3 still is very much a Paisa cowboy outpost. Colombians know Jeric\u00f3 for two very different reasons. The first is its unique handicraft, the _carriel,_ a shoulder bag made out of leather and cowhide that is a symbol of Paisa cowboy culture. The second is its homegrown saint, Laura Montoya, who was canonized in 2013.\n\nJeric\u00f3 is a pleasant place to hang one's (cowboy) hat for a night, and its sleepy streets lined with brightly colored wooden balconies and doors are a playground for shutterbugs.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe **Catedral de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Mercedes** (Cl. 7 No. 4-34, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 4\/852-3494) is a brick construction that towers over the Parque Reyes. The cathedral is where Laura Montoya was officially declared a saint (Colombia's first) during a ceremony in May 2013. Born into poverty in 1874, Montoya was raised by her grandmother. She began her adulthood as a teacher but later decided to enter religious service. Montoya set out on a lengthy missionary mission into the jungle to witness to indigenous people. She later started a religious order that focused on marginalized peoples that has since spread to many countries. Two miracles are attributed to Montoya. At the entrance to the cathedral, there is a bronze statue of the saint alongside an indigenous child, representing Montoya's devotion to assisting impoverished communities in remote areas.\n\nBelow the cathedral is the **Museo de Arte Religioso** (Cl. 7 No. 4-34, Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 4\/852-3494, 8:30am-noon and 1:30pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8:30am-6pm Sat., 9am-noon and 1:30pm-5:30pm Sun., COP$2,000), in which religious art and ceremonial items from the colonial period onwards are on display. Often the museum hosts temporary art exhibitions.\n\nthe colorful Paisa town of Jeric\u00f3\n\nThe best museum in town, and probably the best outside of Medell\u00edn, is the **Museo de Jeric\u00f3 Antioquia** (Cl. 7 between Cras. 5-6, tel. 4\/852-4045, cell tel. 311\/628-8325, 8am-noon and 1:30pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-5pm Sat.-Sun., COP$2,000). This museum has several rooms, with some dedicated to archaeology (ceramics and other items from the Ember\u00e1 indigenous group of western Colombia) and the rest to contemporary art from Antioquian artists. The museum also shows films during the week, and concerts featuring a range of musical genres are held on the last weekend of each month.\n\nOn the Morro El Salvador, or Cerro de Cristo Rey (called this because of the white statue of Christ on a pedestal), four blocks from the plaza, is the **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Los Balsos,** a small botanical garden. For COP$8,000 round-trip you can take a _telef\u00e9rico_ (gondola) to the **Parque Las Nubes,** a park on a hill overlooking Jeric\u00f3. The park is also known as the Parque Los Venados (Deer Park) for its many four-legged residents. Some short paths lead to a waterfall and to a grotto, and the views of the town and Antioquian countryside are sweeping. Neither the garden nor the park has an entry fee, and they are open to the public daily from sunrise to sunset.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nTo find your very own _carriel_ shoulder bag or other leather souvenir from Jeric\u00f3, walk down Carrera 5. On the righthand side of the street are a couple of classic shops like **Guarnieleria Jeric\u00f3** (Cra. 5 No. 5-35, tel. 4\/852-3370, 9am-6pm daily) and **Taller de Guarnieler\u00eda & Talabarter\u00eda** (Cra. 5 No. 5-03, tel. 4\/852-3128, cell tel. 311\/716-9895, 9am-6pm daily). The classic _carriel_ goes for about COP$130,000. Oddly, you probably won't see many people other than tourists actually using these unique handbags. _Carrieles_ were used by _arrieros_ (Paisa cowboys) for their horseback trips around Tierra Paisa. These bags are accordion-like, with several divisions in them for carrying items like money, a lock of hair, a knife, or a candle. Some suspect that the name _carriel_ is derived from the English \"carry all,\" while others say it comes from the French _cartier,_ or handbag.\n\nOn the same street is a sweets store, **Delicias del Cardamomo** (Cra. 5 No. 2-128, tel. 4\/852-5289, 9am-6pm daily) that sells cardamom candies, cardamom cookies, and plain old cardamom seeds. Cardamom is a relatively important crop in Jeric\u00f3.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nAs in all Colombian pueblos, room rates drop during the week.\n\nThe best value in town is the **Casa Grande** (Cl. 7 No. 5-54, tel. 4\/852-3229, cell tel. 311\/329-2144, www.hotelcasagrande.freshcreator.com, COP$40,000 pp). It's a nicely renovated old house with 15 simple rooms. Rooms facing the street are preferable. **Hotel Port\u00f3n Plaza** (Cl. 7 No. 3-25, tel. 4\/852-3009, www.hotelportonplaza.com, COP$35,000 pp) runs a close second, although it's much larger. It is just off of the plaza. Ask for room 209 for a good view, or a second-floor room with a view over the street.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nOn the Parque Principal there are quite a few restaurant and caf\u00e9 options along its east side. On late afternoons, the entire length of one side of the plaza is full of folks enjoying a _tinto_ (coffee) and watching the comings and goings of townspeople milling about the plaza. A meal with a view is the selling point of **El Balc\u00f3n Restaurante** (Parque Principal, Cra. 4 No. 6-26, tel. 4\/852-3191, cell tel. 311\/784-4419, 8am-9pm daily, COP$15,000). From its perch on a balcony, you have front row seats to the action below in the plaza and a nice vista of the mountains in the distance. The Colombian dishes are filling.\n\n**Mandala** (Cl. 7 No. 5-55, tel. 4\/852-3331, 7am-10pm daily, COP$15,000) is as funky as it gets in Jerico. This restaurant, which serves everything from paella to Colombian comfort food, is also a hangout spot where live music is sometimes on offer. **Casa Gourmet** (Cl. 7 No. 3-16, tel. 4\/852-4323, 11am-10pm daily, COP$15,000), across from the Hotel Port\u00f3n Plaza, serves fast food like pizza, burgers, and cr\u00eapes. \"Gourmet\" is a bit of a stretch, but if you're looking for a quick meal that strays from the rigid _comida t\u00edpica_ fare, this will do.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThere is a small **tourist booth** (tel. 4\/852-852-3101, cell tel. 321\/612-3743, www.jericoturistico.com, 9am-6pm Thurs.-Tues.) across from the Catedral de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Mercedes. You can get information on hotels, restaurants, and things to do. They also sell sweets, like _crema de solteras,_ a typical sweet from Jeric\u00f3, and cardamom candies, as well as handicrafts. The tourist office organizes walking tours of the town in Spanish on weekends. Inquire at the office or contact guide Maribel (cell tel. 313\/672-0199).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is regular bus service to Jeric\u00f3 from the Terminal del Sur in Medell\u00edn (COP$20,000), starting at 5am and going until 6pm. Buses arrive and depart from the **Parque Principal.** To get to Jard\u00edn from Jeric\u00f3, you must take a _chiva_ (rural bus) to the town of Andes or to the town of Pe\u00f1alisa and transfer there to Jard\u00edn.\n\n### **The Coffee Region**\n\nBlessed by lush, tropical vegetation, meticulously manicured countryside dotted with beautiful haciendas and towns, spring-like weather, and a backdrop of massive, snowcapped mountains, Colombia's coffee region is almost Eden. Nature here is a thousand shades of green: bright green bamboo groves, emerald colored forests with spots of white _yarumo_ trees, dark green coffee groves, and green-blue mountains in the distance punctuated by brightly colored flowers and polychromatic butterflies and birds.\n\nThough the main cities and many towns lack charm, dozens of well-preserved villages offer colorful balcony-clad buildings. Life in most of these towns remains untouched by tourism. A visit on market day, with bustling streets jammed with Jeeps, burdened people, and goods, is a memorable one.\n\nAnd then there is coffee. It is true that Brazil and Vietnam are the world's top coffee producers, but arabica beans are grown throughout Colombia. Coffee grown in some parts of the country (such as Cauca and Nari\u00f1o) is considered superior to that from this region, but here, more than anywhere else, coffee is an inseparable part of Paisa identity. While the extent of land devoted to coffee farming is diminishing, the numbers are still impressive: The department of Caldas contains over 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of coffee farms; Risaralda, 52,000 hectares (128,000 acres); and Quind\u00edo, 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres). Visit a coffee farm to understand the laborious production process or\u2014even better\u2014stay overnight.\n\n##### **History**\n\nIn pre-Columbian times, this region was inhabited by the Quimbaya people. In 1537, Spanish conquistador Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar conquered the region as he moved north from Ecuador towards the central Muisca region. Due to the sparse indigenous population and lack of precious metals, the region, which was governed from faraway Popay\u00e1n, was largely uninhabited during most of the colonial period.\n\n**The Birth of the Coffee Economy**\n\nDuring the 19th century, demographic pressures spurred settlers from the northwestern province of Antioquia to migrate south, giving origin to what is known as the _colonizaci\u00f3n antioque\u00f1a._ For this reason, the coffee region is akin to Antioquia, with similar dialect, cuisine, and architecture. As the settlers made their way south, they founded towns and started farms: Salamina was established in 1825, Manizales in 1849, Filandia in 1878, and Armenia in 1889.\n\nThe region prospered enormously throughout the 20th century due to ideal conditions for producing coffee. The Colombian National Coffee Federation, owner of the Juan Valdez brand, provided technical assistance, developed infrastructure, and helped stabilize prices. High international coffee prices during the 1980s and 1990s made the region one of the most prosperous areas in the country.\n\nThe fall of global coffee prices in the past decade has forced the region to reinvent itself. Rather than produce a low-value commodity, many farmers have invested in producing high-quality strains that fetch much higher prices. Growers have also diversified, planting other crops, such as plantains, often interspersed through coffee plantations. Finally, agro- and eco-tourism has provided a much-needed new source of revenue.\n\n##### **Planning Your Time**\n\nIt's hard to go wrong as a tourist in the coffee region. No matter your starting point or home base, an immersion in coffee culture is easy, nearby, and rewarding. If you can, plan to spend about five days in this most pleasant part of Colombia. In that time you can stay at a coffee hacienda, visit a natural park, and tour a picture-perfect pueblo.\n\nHowever, if time is short, a quick visit can be equally as rewarding. With easy transportation links to the major cities of the region and excellent tourism infrastructure to meet all budget needs, Salento has the trifecta of coffee region attractions: It's a cute pueblo, coffee farms are within minutes of the main plaza, and jungle hikes that lead through tropical forest to the Valle de Cocora are easy to organize. The town gets packed with visitors on weekends and during holidays, resulting in a more festive atmosphere, but also traffic jams.\n\nAnother option is to stay a couple of days at a hacienda. You can leisurely explore the farms and countryside, relax, and possibly go for a day trip or two to a nearby attraction. Many haciendas are high-end, like Hacienda Bambusa, Finca Villa Nora, and Hacienda San Jos\u00e9. However, budget travelers can also enjoy the unique atmosphere of hacienda life at Hacienda Guayabal outside of Manizales, Villa Martha near Pereira, and Finca El Ocaso in Salento. Meanwhile, Hacienda Venecia has something for travelers of all budgets.\n\nFor bird-watchers, the lush region offers many parks and gardens to marvel at the hundreds of species in the area. The Reserva del R\u00edo Blanco near Manizales, Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo near Armenia, and the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya near Pereira are within minutes of the city, guided walks are regularly offered, and birdlife is abundant. Outside of metropolitan areas, the Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael, which adjoins the Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1, is less known, but is a natural paradise.\n\nDay trips to natural parks, including the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados, are easily organized. PNN Los Nevados is home to _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors), lunar landscapes, and snowcapped volcanoes. It can be accessed from many points, and it can even be visited by car. Multiple day treks offer challenges.\n\nIf there were a Cute Pueblo Region of Colombia, this might be it. While you'll have more flexibility driving your own vehicle, it's easy to check out a pueblo or two from the region's major cities traveling by public transportation. A night or two is enough to experience the village life.\n\n#### **MANIZALES**\n\nThe capital of the Caldas department, Manizales (pop. 393,200) is the region's mountain city. Instead of developing in a lowland valley like Armenia or Pereira, Manizales is set atop meandering mountain ridges. This location means that getting around town involves huffing and puffing up and down hills on foot, enduring rollercoaster-like bus or taxi rides along curvy roads, or taking the scenic route on the city's expanding Cable Aereo cable car network.\n\nAbove the coffee farms below at a higher altitude of 2,160 meters (7,085 feet), in Manizales good views abound. And any self-respecting sight around town has got to have a _mirador_ (scenic lookout). On a clear day you can see the peaks of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados in the distance, and this city serves as an excellent base to discover that rugged park of snowcapped volcanoes.\n\nVisitors will keep busy here with many easily organized day-trip possibilities to coffee farms and natural parks. While in other cities dusk is a down time, when visitors return to their hotels or go online, in Manizales this is a good time to head out: to soak in a hot spring, to stroll the promenade along the Avenida 12 de Octubre and await a sunset, or to hang out in the Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9 by the Torre del Cable.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nThe two main drags in Manizales\u2014Avenida Santander (Carrera 23) and the Paralela (Carrera 25)\u2014will take you to where you want to go in town. They connect the Zona Rosa\/El Cable area with downtown and with the Avenida 12 de October, which leads to Chipre and the Monumento a los Colonizadores.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nAs in all the major cities in the region, the real sights are in the tropical jungles. Manizale\u00f1os can be envied for having tropical forests at their backdoor. Here you can visit a park, feel like you're far away in the jungles of Colombia, but still be within the city limits. Birds, such as the colorful _barranquero_ (blue-crowned motmot; the unofficial bird of Manizales) and many varieties of trees and flowers abound. Just outside of Manizales are coffee haciendas, parks, and gardens, all easily visited from the city. In town, one day should suffice to see the urban attractions.\n\n###### **CENTRO**\n\nDowntown Manizales is bustling with activity during weekdays but vacates in a hurry in the evenings. There aren't many sights of interest, save for some republican period architecture and some noteworthy churches. Go on a weekend day if you can.\n\nThe **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (Cras. 21-22) holds an odd sculpture to honor Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar created by Antioque\u00f1o Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt. It's known as the _Condor-Bol\u00edvar,_ portraying the Liberator with a body of a condor, the national bird.\n\nFacing the plaza, the neo-gothic **Catedral Bas\u00edlica de Manizales** (Cra. 22 No. 22-15, tel. 6\/883-1880, open until 6:30pm daily) is imposing. Construction began in the late 1920s and was completed in 1936. It replaced the previous cathedral on the same spot, which had been damaged by earthquakes and had to be demolished. For 360-degree views of Manizales and beyond, climb around 500 steps up the spiral Corredor Polaco (the Polish corridor) in Colombia's tallest church tower. To climb the tower, you'll need a guide (COP$7,000). The tower is open 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Thursday-Sunday.\n\nManizales is Colombia's coffee capital.\n\nNot as grandiose as the cathedral a couple of blocks away, the interior of the **Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n** (Cl. 30 at Cra. 22, in the Parque Caldas, tel. 6\/883-5474, 7am-noon and 2pm-6:30pm daily) is much more beautiful. The neo-gothic-style church, completed in 1909, was built with _bahareque_ and _guadua,_ natural materials used in construction across Colombia. The wooden rib vaulted ceiling is made of cedar, as are the columns and pews.\n\n###### **CHIPRE**\n\nThis neighborhood to the west of downtown is known for its views and sunsets. Manizale\u00f1os like to boast how Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, when strolling on the promenade in Chipre along the Avenida 12 de Octubre, marveled at this \"sunset factory.\" Atop the futuristic lookout tower, **La Torre al Cielo** (10am-7pm Tues.-Sun., COP$2,000) you're guaranteed a nice vista.\n\nAt the far end of the walkway is the **Monumento a los Colonizadores** (Av. 12 de Octubre and Cra. 9, tel. 6\/872-0420, ext. 22, 10am-6pm daily, free), designed by Luis Guillermo Vallejo. This monument honors the courage and sacrifice of Antioquian colonizers who settled the city, and it depicts an Antioquian family on horseback and on foot forging ahead, with cattle in tow, to this part of Colombia during the _colonizaci\u00f3n antioque\u00f1a,_ when hundreds of families migrated from Medell\u00edn to settle farms in the coffee region area. Manizales residents played a role in building the monument by donating keys and the like to be melted and used in its construction. The sculpture stands atop 20 tons of _piedra de mani_ (peanut stone), the namesake for the city. It was inaugurated in 2001. To get to this part of the city, look for a bus with a \"Chipre\" sign along Avenida Santander (Cra. 23).\n\nEl Cable is a remnant of a gondola system that transported coffee over the Central Cordillera Mountains.\n\n###### **EL CABLE**\n\nOne of the city's icons is a soaring wooden tower known as **El Cable** (52 meters\/171 feet tall) that once supported the unusual gondola system that transported coffee (10 tons per hour!), other materials, and sometimes people from Manizales over the Central Cordillera. The system reached elevations of 3,700 meters (12,100 feet) and descended to the town of Mariquita (495 meters\/1,625 feet). From there the coffee would be transported overland to Honda on the banks of the R\u00edo Magdalena. The rest of the journey in Colombia would take the coffee north to the port city of Barranquilla, where it would be transferred to big boats bound for North America and Europe. This system was developed in the 1920s and would last until the early 1960s.\n\nOf the 376 towers that supported the line, this particular tower, which was in the town of Herveo, was the only one built out of wood (all the others were made of iron). They were all supposed to be made of iron, but the boat carrying one of them from Europe to Colombia was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic Ocean during World War I. An English engineer in Colombia, who also designed the neat **Estaci\u00f3n del Cable,** the adjacent station for the cable transport system, designed this tower using wood found locally. The Estaci\u00f3n del Cable, a historic building, appropriately today houses the architecture department for the Universidad Nacional.\n\n###### **RESERVA DEL R\u00cdO BLANCO**\n\nAn array of birds, some found only in Colombia, can be spotted during an excursion to the **Reserva del R\u00edo Blanco** (Vereda Las Palomas, tel. 6\/870-3810, cell tel. 310\/422-1883, www.fundegar.com, 6am-6pm daily), only three kilometers (two miles) outside of Manizales. Most hostels can arrange this day trip, charging COP$20,000 per person for a guided group hike to strategic places in the jungle apt for spotting birds. Toucans and antpittas can often be seen, but over 362 species have been identified throughout the reserve. From August until March the area receives many migratory birds from North America. Private and longer bird-watching tours are also possible.\n\nAn _oso andino_ (Andean bear) that lived in captivity for most of his life was adopted and now lives in an enclosed field in the reserve near the cabins. It was decided that he would not be able to be released back into the wild.\n\nThere are comfortable lodging options available in the park in two **cabins** (tel. 6\/870-3810, cell tel. 310\/422-1883, US$55 pp all meals) that have a total of eight rooms. These are specifically for bird-watchers. Birding guides are offered for the additional cost of US$60 for a Spanish-speaking guide and US$90 for a guide who speaks English. The porch of the lodge is an excellent place to commune with hummingbirds, who are regular customers at the hummingbird feeders.\n\nTaxi transportation to the reserve costs COP$25,000 from Manizales.\n\n###### **RECINTO DEL PENSAMIENTO**\n\nFor a walk in the park, the **Recinto del Pensamiento** (Km. 11 V\u00eda al Magdalena, tel. 6\/874-4157, www.recintodelpensamiento.com, COP$3,000) is a tranquil green space with guided nature walks, a chair lift (COP$17,000), a two-hectare orchid forest with 12,000 orchids, and a butterfly farm. The centerpiece of the park is the **Pabell\u00f3n de Madera,** a large open-air event space made of _guadua_ (a type of bamboo) built by a renowned Colombian architect, Sim\u00f3n V\u00e9lez.\n\n###### **ECOPARQUE LOS YARUMOS**\n\nOn undisturbed mountainsides throughout Colombia, you have undoubtedly noticed the silvery-white leaves of the _yarumo blanco_ tree. Should you get a closer look, you'll see that the leaves of this tree are actually green; it's a fuzzy layer on them that makes them appear white. The **Ecoparque Los Yarumos** (Cl. 61B No. 15A-01, Barrio Toscana, tel. 6\/872-0420 ext. 22, 9am-6pm Tues.-Sun., free) is named for those deceptive trees. A few _yarumos_ can be seen in the more than 50 hectares (125 acres) of cloud forest jungle that makes up this park. The park has nature paths, a lookout tower, and activities such as jungle zip lines. To get to the park on public transportation, you can take a bus from the Manizales city center bound for Minitas. It's about a 7- to 10-minute walk from the bus stop to the park entrance. Taxis are also cheap, costing under COP$4,000 from the El Cable area.\n\n###### **HOT SPRINGS**\n\nNear Manizales are two popular _termales_ (hot springs). Bring your own towel and sandals for both, and visit on a weekday if you want to avoid the crowds.\n\nNear a river, **Tierra Viva** (Km. 2 V\u00eda Enea-Gallinazo, tel. 6\/874-3089, www.termalestierraviva.com, 9am-midnight Mon.-Thurs., 9am-1am Fri.-Sun., COP$12,000-14,000) is closest to Manizales and less expensive. It consists of one pool, some bare-bones changing rooms, and a snack bar.\n\nConsidered the better and hotter of the springs, **Termales Oto\u00f1o** (Km. 5 V\u00eda Antigua El Nevado del Ruiz, tel. 6\/874-0280, <http:\/\/termaleselotono.com>, 7am-midnight daily, day pass COP$25,000, COP$107,000-356,000 d) is a hot spring hotel complex a 25-minute ride to the southeast of the city. It's larger, with four pools (though two of these are reserved exclusively for hotel guests).\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThe **Plaza de Toros** (Cra. 27 10A-07, tel. 6\/883-8124, www.cormanizales.com), or bullfighting ring, takes center stage every year at Manizales's biggest bacchanal, the **Feria de Manizales** (www.feriademanizales.gov.co), a celebration of the city's founding. During the festivities there are also concerts, a ballad festival (Festival de Trova), and a Miss Coffee beauty pageant. This citywide party is held in early January.\n\nThe theater festival in Bogot\u00e1, held every two years, is the most important theatrical event in Colombia. In second place is the annual **Festival Internacional de Teatro de Manizales** (www.festivaldemanizales.com). It's always held during the first week of September and attracts theater troupes primarily from the Americas. In addition to performances in theaters throughout the city, free performances are given in parks and plazas, and an educational program for aspiring young actors takes place in schools.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nTwo popular shopping malls with inexpensive food options, movie theaters, and numerous clothing and other shops are **Fundadores** (Cl. 33B No. 20-03, tel. 6\/889-4318, www.centrocomercialfundadores.com, 9am-9pm daily) and **Cable Plaza** (Cra. 23 No. 65-11, tel. 6\/875-6595, 9am-9pm daily).\n\nFor handicrafts, peruse the locally made wares such as woodcarvings and woven items at the **Artesan\u00edas de Caldas** (Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, Gobernaci\u00f3n de Caldas, Cra. 21 and Clls. 22-23, tel. 6\/873-5001, www.artesaniasdecaldas.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.) downtown.\n\n##### **Sports and Recreation**\n\nThe **Ciclov\u00eda** in Manizales takes place every Sunday from 8am to noon along the Avenida Santander (Carrera 23) and other main streets. The last Thursday of each month a **Ciclov\u00eda Nocturna** (7pm-10pm) is held. It's the nighttime version of the Ciclov\u00eda.\n\n**Once Caldas** (www.oncecaldas.com.co) is the Manizales soccer club, and their stadium, the **Estadio Palogrande** (Cra. 25 No. 65-00) is in the Zona Rosa, within walking distance from many hostels and hotels. Once Caldas won the Copa Libertadores de America in 2004, defeating Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires, which was a big deal around these parts. Tickets can be purchased in the Cable Plaza Mall (Cra. 23 No. 65-11, tel. 6\/875-6595, 9am-9pm daily).\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThe El Cable area in Manizales is the best place to stay, due to a large number of lodging options and its proximity to restaurants and shopping centers. It's a quiet neighborhood, bustling with international visitors, particularly on Calle 66. There is little traffic on streets here, which is nice; however, that often means that vehicles of all sorts zoom by at high speeds.\n\nOne of the long-standing budget accommodations in Manizales is **Mountain Hostels** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-91, tel. 6\/887-4736, cell tel. 300\/521-6120, www.mountainhostels.com.co, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d). Spread over two houses, it has a variety of room types and a small restaurant where you can order a healthy breakfast. Rooms aren't fancy, however.\n\n**Hostal Kumanday** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-40, tel. 6\/887-2682, cell tel. 315\/590-7294, www.kumanday.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$40,000 pp d) is a quiet and clean option on the same street as Mountain Hostels. There are 10 rooms and one small dorm room, and all options include breakfast (but no fruit). Staff are a little shy. Kumanday has its own, highly recommended, tour agency that specializes in hiking in and around the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados. They also offer a downhill mountain-bike trip (COP$125,000 day trip, 3-person minimum) in the park.\n\n**Casa Lassio Hostal** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-56, tel. 6\/887-6056, cell tel. 310\/443-8917, COP$23,000 dorm, COP$35,000 private room pp) has six rooms, and they also organize bike tours.\n\nThe Colombian chain Estelar (www.hotelesestelar.com) has three hotels in the Manizales area. They are among the top hotels in the city, and all have spacious and clean rooms, as well as at least one room that is accessible for people with disabilities. Weekend rates tend to be significantly lower than during the week. There are few reasons for wanting to stay in downtown Manizales, but if you do, **Hotel Estelar Las Colinas** (Cra. 22 No. 20-20, tel. 6\/884-2009, COP$188,080 d) is the best option (but only on weekends, when traffic, noise, and general urban stress is manageable). The hotel's 60-some rooms are large and clean, but the restaurant and bar area is a little gloomy. A breakfast buffet is available for an additional cost.\n\nThe M **Estelar El Cable** (Cra. 23C No. 64A-60, tel. 6\/887-9690, COP$294,000 d) has 46 rooms over nine floors and is the upscale option in the El Cable\/Zona Rosa area. Breakfast and a light dinner are often included in room rates. Rooms are spacious and clean, with pressed wood floors. A small gym offers modern cardio machines.\n\nIf you prefer birds and trees, check out Estelar's 32-room hotel at the **Recinto del Pensamiento** (Km. 11 V\u00eda al Magdalena, tel. 6\/889-7077, COP$210,000 d). Outside the city, surrounded by nature, this hotel feels a little isolated. It's a popular place for business conferences and events during the week. Rooms are spacious.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nFor excellent down-home, regional cuisine, head to **Don Juaco** (Cl. 65 No. 23A-44, tel. 6\/885-0610, cell tel. 310\/830-2218, noon-10pm daily, COP$15,000), which has been serving contented diners for decades. Try the Paisa hamburger: a hamburger sandwiched in between two arepas (cornmeal cakes). Enjoy it or the popular set lunch meals on the pleasant terrace.\n\nFor delectable grilled meat dishes, **Palogrande** (Cra. 23C No. 64-18, tel. 6\/885-3177, 11am-10pm daily, COP$25,000) is the place you want. Located on a quiet street, it's a rather elegant, open-air place with a nice atmosphere.\n\nFor Italian fare, there are two decent options. Try **Spago** (Cl. 59 No. 24A-10, Local 1, tel. 6\/885-3328, cell tel. 321\/712-3860, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., noon-3pm Sun., COP$25,000), which is one of the upmarket restaurants in town, with tasty thin-crust pizzas. **Il Forno** (Cra. 23 No. 73-86, tel. 6\/886-8515, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., noon-3pm Sun., COP$22,000) is a family-style chain restaurant with a great view of the city.\n\nVegetarian restaurants exist in Manizales, but it's difficult to track them down. **Orellana** (Cl. 50 No. 26-40, tel. 6\/885-3907, noon-3pm Mon.-Sat., COP$10,000) serves healthy set lunches and is located in the Versalles neighborhood. It's near the supermarket Confamiliares de la 50. **Rushi** (Cra. 23C No. 62-73, tel. 6\/881-0326, cell tel. 310\/538-8387, 11am-9pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-3pm Sun., COP$12,000) is a vegetarian restaurant close to the Zona Rosa area. It offers set lunches and \u00e1 la carte dishes such as paella and vegetarian fried rice.\n\nIn Colombia, you are never far from a bakery selling sweets. In Manizales there is one bakery where you can have your sweets without the guilt. At **Cero Az\u00facar** (Cra. 23C No. 62-42, tel. 6\/881-0625, 8:30am-8pm daily), all their cakes, cookies, and ice creams are made with the natural sweetener stevia.\n\nA fantastic place for a late afternoon cappuccino and snack is M **Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 23B No. 64-55, tel. 6\/885-9172, 10am-9pm daily). Yes, it's a chain, and there's one in any self-respecting mall in Colombia. But this one is different: Locals proudly boast that it is the largest Juan Valdez on the planet. But what truly sets this one apart is its great location, under the shadow of the huge wooden tower that once supported the coffee cable car line that ran from Manizales to Mariquita.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nA **Punto de Informaci\u00f3n Tur\u00edstica** (Cra. 22 at Cl. 31, tel. 6\/873-3901, 7am-7pm daily) can be of assistance in organizing excursions to parks and coffee farms throughout Caldas. The staff are eager to help. A small **tourist office** is also located in the main hall of the Terminal de Transportes (Cra. 43 No. 65-100).\n\nIn case of an emergency, Manizales has a single emergency line: 123. To speak directly with the police, call 112.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\n**Avianca** (Cra. 23 No. 62-16, Local 110, tel. 6\/886-3137, www.avianca.com, 8am-6:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-1pm Sat.) and **ADA** (airport tel. 6\/874-6332, 5:45am-5:45pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-5:30pm Sat., 3pm-5:30pm Sun.) serve **Aeropuerto La Nubia** (tel. 6\/874-5451), about 10 kilometers (six miles) southeast of downtown. But the runway is often shrouded in clouds. Because of this, the airport is closed 35 percent of the time and always at night.\n\nThere is regular and speedy **bus service** to both Armenia (COP$17,500, 2 hours) and Pereira (COP$11,000, 70 mins.). **Arauca** (www.empresaarauca.com.co) runs buses to Pereira every 15 minutes and is considered a good company. Buses bound for Cali and Medell\u00edn cost around COP$35,000-40,000 and take five hours each. Buses to Bogot\u00e1 cost COP$47,000 and take about nine hours.\n\nThe **Terminal de Transportes** (Cra. 43 No. 65-100, tel. 6\/878-5641, www.terminaldemanizales.com) is spacious, orderly, and clean. From there it is about a 15-minute taxi ride to the Zona Rosa area. The terminal adjoins the cable car **Cable Aereo** station. The cable car route transports passengers from the terminal (Estaci\u00f3n Cambulos) to the Fundadores station (Cra. 23 between Clls. 31-32) in the Centro.\n\nPublic transportation is not the most organized in Manizales. Private buses are easy to use, but you'll probably have to ask someone for help to determine which bus to flag down. To get downtown from the Zona Rosa, take a bus bound for Chipre.\n\nTaxicabs are also plentiful. **Guillermo Ort\u00edz** (cell tel. 313\/766-8376) is highly recommended. Reliable cab companies include **Taxi La Feria** (tel. 6\/884-8888), **Taxi Ya** (tel. 6\/878-0000), and **Taxi Express** (tel. 6\/880-2000). Many hotels and hostels routinely work with one or two specific taxi drivers, but if not, they will always order a cab for you.\n\nWalking from the Zona Rosa area, along the Avenida Santander, to downtown will take about 45 minutes.\n\n#### **COFFEE FARMS**\n\nThe Caldas countryside is home to coffee haciendas, large and small. Hacienda Venecia and Hacienda Guayabal are two of the most highly recommended for coffee tours, as well as overnight stays. They are located near Chinchin\u00e1, only a 30-minute drive from Manizales.\n\n##### **Hacienda Venecia**\n\nOne of the most well-known, organized, and most visited coffee farms is **Hacienda Venecia** (Vereda El Rosario, V\u00eda a Chinchin\u00e1, cell tel. 320\/636-5719, www.haciendavenecia.com, coffee tour COP$35,000, COP$70,000-250,000 d). This large working coffee plantation has been in the same family for four generations, and their coffee was the first in Colombia to receive UTZ certification for sustainable farming, in 2002. The farm is set far from the highway, providing a peaceful atmosphere. When you're there, you're surrounded by coffee plants growing everywhere you look.\n\nIf you are day-tripping, organizing an excursion to the farm for a coffee tour is easy from Manizales. In fact, you won't have to do much at all except inform the hostel or hotel where you are staying that you'd like to go. The Hacienda Venecia makes a daily pickup at the main hostels in town at around 9am.\n\nTours are given at 9:30am with an additional tour offered at 2:30pm, depending on demand. The 2.5-hour tour begins with a comprehensive presentation of coffee-growing in Colombia and in the world, the many different aromas of coffee, and how to differentiate between a good bean and a bad bean. (And you'll be offered a knock-your-socks-off espresso to boot.) Later, the tour heads outside through the plantation, where you'll see coffee plants at all stages in the growing process. You'll also be able to observe the soaking and drying process. At the end, in the lovely original hacienda house, it's time to roast some beans and drink another freshly roasted cup of Venecia coffee. A typical lunch, such as _ajiaco_ (chicken and potato soup), is offered as well (COP$10,000) at the end of the tour. A farm tour by Jeep and private tours (both COP$50,000) can also be arranged.\n\nThere are lodging options suitable for all budgets at Venecia. In the hostel, often a lively center of activity, accommodations are basic (and bathrooms are shared) but comfortable. For more luxury and seclusion, you may want to stay at the old hacienda house.\n\nOther activities at the farm include horseback riding (for an additional fee) or walks around the plantation on your own. This is particularly pleasant to do early in the morning, when birds (more than 116 species!) are chirping.\n\n##### **Hacienda Guayabal**\n\nNear Venecia, **Hacienda Guayabal** (Km. 3 V\u00eda Chinchin\u00e1-Pereira, cell tel. 314\/772-4895, www.haciendaguayabal.com, tour COP$30,000, COP$95,000 pp all meals) has a dramatic setting, with mountains and valleys covered in coffee crops and _guadua_ (bamboo) completely enveloping the hacienda. This is indeed a coffee farm, and one of the pioneers in coffee farm tourism, but equally interesting is to take a nature walk through the _guaduales_ (forests of Colombia's bamboo) that always spring up along water sources. This hacienda has been in Do\u00f1a Mar\u00eda Teresa's family for around 50 years.\n\nIf you come, you might as well stay, so that you can enjoy the peace and warm hospitality of this special place. While accommodations in the six rooms are not luxurious, they are more than adequate. Meals are delicious, one of the things for which Guayabal is known. Tours around the _finca_ (farm) take about two hours, and you learn about the coffee process as you maneuver along the rows of orderly coffee plants. In addition, you can hike up to a spectacular lookout on a mountainside for breathtaking views of the hills, the valleys, the forests, and the farms all around. Near the guesthouse is a hut made from _guadua_ with recycled floor tiles that has a small coffee bar where you can have a cup of coffee and wait for birds of every color and shape to fly up to nibble on a piece of banana. Tranquility is the watchword here; it's no wonder Guayabal is occasionally host to meditation retreats.\n\n#### M **SALAMINA**\n\nDesignated as one of Colombia's most beautiful pueblos, Salamina features history, beauty, personality, and spectacular countryside; yet, for the most part, it remains off of most tourists' radar. When you visit this historic town, you'll feel as if you have stumbled upon a hidden gem. The historic center of Salamina is marked by colorful and well-preserved two-story houses with their stunning woodwork, doors, and balconies. Salamina is often called the _pueblo madre_ (mother town), as it was one of the first settlements of the Antioquian colonization. It's older than Manizales.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (Clls. 4-5 between Cras. 6-7) is the center of activity in Salamina. It's an attractive plaza with a gazebo and large fountain brought over from Germany. Carried by mules over the mountains from the coast, it took a year to arrive, in several pieces, to its final destination. The **Bas\u00edlica Menor La Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n** (Cl. 4 between Cras. 6-7) has an unusual architecture. The single nave worship hall is rectangular and flat with wooden beams and no columns. The church was designed by an English architect, who is said to have modeled it on the First Temple in ancient Jerusalem.\n\nThe **Casa Rodrigo Jim\u00e9nez Mej\u00eda** (Cl. 4 and Cra. 6) is the most photographed house in Salamina. The colors of this exceptionally preserved house were chosen in an interesting way. An owner of the house called kids from the town to gather in the plaza and to give the owner their proposal on what colors to use for the house's exterior. The winner was a four-year-old girl, who chose bright orange, yellow, and green.\n\nThe **Casa de la Cultura** (Cra. 6 No. 6-06, tel. 6\/859-5016, 8am-noon and 2pm-5pm Mon.-Fri., free) displays photos of old Salamina. It's often a hub of activity. It's also known as the Casa del Diablo, and a jovial devil wood-carving above the door greets visitors as they enter.\n\nFor decades, the **Cementerio San Esteban** (Cra. 3 between Clls. 2-4, no phone), the town cemetery, was divided into three sections: one for the rich, one for the poor, and another for so-called \"N.N.\" bodies (non-identified corpses, or \"no names\"). A wall was built to divide the rich from the poor, but it was knocked down at the behest of a priest in 1976. A skull and crossbones is displayed over the cemetery entrance. There is a small neo-gothic style chapel (open occasionally) on the grounds.\n\nIn the village of **San F\u00e9lix,** 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Salamina, you can hike through serene countryside and admire a forest of _palmas de cera_ (wax palms) from the hills above. Afterwards, on the village plaza, ask at the stores for a refreshing _helado de salpic\u00f3n_ (ice cream made from chunks of fresh fruit in frozen watermelon juice). A bus makes the round-trip (COP$10,000 each way) to San Felix twice a day, once in the early morning and again in the afternoon. It leaves from the plaza.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nSalamina's **Semana Santa** (Holy Week) celebrations, which fall in either March or April, are not that well known, but it is, nonetheless, a great time to get to know this cute town. Orchids and other flowers adorn the balconies of houses, adding even more color. In addition, free classical, religious, and jazz music concerts are held in churches, plazas, and even the cemetery.\n\na friendly devil in Salamina\n\nSan Felix is known for its **Exposici\u00f3n de Ganado Normando** in July, when local farmers show off their best Norman cows, with various competitions. It's an important event for ranchers throughout the region, and also a chance to see an authentic display of Paisa culture.\n\nHalloween is a big deal in Salamina. Here it's called the **Tarde de Mar\u00eda La Parda,** named after a local woman who is said to have sold her soul to the devil in order to obtain riches. Her ghost supposedly causes mischief in the countryside every now and then. Events for Tarde de Mar\u00eda La Parda take place in Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, and there are costume parties at night on that day.\n\nDecember 7 is a special day\u2014or rather, night\u2014to be in Salamina. That's when the lights are turned off in Salamina, and the streets and balconies are illuminated with handmade lanterns made by locals. This beautiful celebration is called the **Noche de las Luces,** a night to stroll the streets and enjoy the special atmosphere. Locals greet each other serving sweets, snacks, or drinks. Music fills the air and the evening culminates in a fireworks show.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThe best place to stay in Salamina by a long shot is the M **Casa de Lola Garcia** (Cl. 6 No. 7-54, tel. 6\/859-5919, www.lacasadelolagarcia.com, COP$120,000 d), which opened its doors in 2012. The dream of a native Salamine\u00f1o, musician Mauricio Cardona Garc\u00eda, the carefully restored house was once the home of his grandmother, Lola Garc\u00eda. Rooms are spacious and comfortable. If you provide Mauricio with some notice, meals at the hotel can be arranged.\n\nTwo other hotels in town, while not fancy, will do the trick if you're sticking to a budget. **Hospedaje Casa Real** (Cra. 6A No. 5-33, tel. 6\/859-6355, cell tel. 311\/784-2364, www.hospedajecasareal.wix.com, COP$50,000-80,000 d) has 24 rooms and is around the corner from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. The owners also have a _finca_ with lodging facilities in the countryside. **Hotel Colonial** (Cl. 5 No. 6-74, tel. 6\/859-5078, cell tel. 314\/627-9124, hotelcolonial2011@hotmail.com, COP$35,000-50,000 d) is right on the square and has a variety of room options. In both of these hotels, ask to see the rooms before you check in, as their characteristics vary.\n\na campesino near Salamina\n\nBased in Manizales, the travel agency **Rosa de los Vientos** (Centro Comercial Parque Caldas Nivel 2, Local PB45, tel. 6\/883-5940, www.turismorosadelosvientos.com) can arrange a home stay (COP$25,000-35,000 pp) in one of the many historic homes in Salamina. The owner, Jackeline Rend\u00f3n, is from Salamina, knows the owners well, and will match you with a good fit.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nPopular and atmospheric **Tierra Paisa** (no phone, 8am-9pm daily, COP$7,000), below the Hotel Colonial on the park, serves typical Colombian food, like _bandeja paisa_ (a quintessential Paisa dish of beans, various meats, yuca, and potatoes), at incredibly low prices.\n\nYou can't leave Salamina without trying their specialties. One is _macana,_ a hot drink made of milk, ground up cookies, cinnamon, and sugar. The other is _huevos al vapor,_ a boiled egg that is methodically steamed using giant coffee urns and served in a coffee cup. For the quintessential Salamina breakfast, go for both.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is frequent **shared taxi service** to Salamina from Manizales, costing (COP$11,000). These depart from the Terminal de Transportes (Cra. 43 No. 65-100) in Manizales.\n\nOne **bus** leaves Medell\u00edn at 7am daily bound for Salamina and other communities in the area. It departs from the **Terminal del Sur** (Cra. 65 No. 8B-91, tel. 4\/444-8020 or 4\/361-1186). The trip takes 4-6 hours on rural roads.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL LOS NEVADOS**\n\nThis national park covers 583 square kilometers (225 miles) of rugged terrain along the Central Cordillera between the cities of Manizales to the north, Ibagu\u00e9 to the southeast, and Pereira to the northwest. Whether you do a day trip or a multi-day trek, a visit to **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co) allows you to enjoy first-hand the stark beauty of the upper reaches of the Andes, far above the forest line, with its intriguing vegetation and fauna. Within the park are three snowcapped volcanoes, **Nevado del Ruiz** (5,325 meters\/17,470 feet), **Nevado del Tolima** (5,215 meters\/17,110 feet), and **Nevado Santa Isabel** (4,950 meters\/16,240 feet), as well as myriad lakes, such as the **Laguna del Ot\u00fan.**\n\nThis rugged landscape was formed by volcanic activity and later sculpted by huge masses of glaciers. At their maximum extension, these glaciers covered an area of 860 square kilometers (332 square miles). They began to recede 14,000 years ago and, according to a 2013 study by the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), will completely disappear by 2030.\n\nMost of the park consists of _p\u00e1ramo,_ a unique tropical high altitude ecosystem, and super _p\u00e1ramo,_ rocky terrain above the _p\u00e1ramo_ and below the snow line. _P\u00e1ramo_ is a highland tropical ecosystem that thrives where UV radiation is higher, oxygen is scarcer, and where temperatures vary considerably from daytime to nighttime, when the mercury falls below freezing. It is the kingdom of the eerily beautiful _frailejones,_ plants with statuesque tall trunks and thick yellow-greenish leaves. Other _p\u00e1ramo_ vegetation includes shrubs, grasses, and cushion plants ( _cojines_ ). The super _p\u00e1ramo_ has a stark, moonlike landscape, with occasional dunes of volcanic ash. Though it's largely denuded of vegetation, bright yellow plants called _litamo real_ and orange moss provide splashes of color. On a clear day, the views from the _p\u00e1ramo_ or super _p\u00e1ramo_ of the snowcapped volcanoes and lakes are simply stunning.\n\nThe black and white Andean condor, _vultur gryphus,_ with its wingspan of up to three meters (10 feet), can sometimes be spotted gliding along the high cliffs in the park. While it is estimated that there are over 10,000 of the birds on the continent (mostly in Argentina), there are few remaining in Colombia. Some estimates report that by the mid-1980s, there were no more than 15 left in Colombia, due in large part to poaching by cattle ranchers. In an effort to boost their numbers in Colombia, a reintroduction program was initiated in the park (and in other parts of the country) in the 1990s in conjunction with the San Diego Zoo, where newborns were hatched. Today it is estimated that there are 200-300 condors soaring above Colombia's Andean highlands. Numbers of the endangered birds in Los Nevados range 8-15. Other fauna includes spectacled bears _(oso de anteojos),_ tapirs, weasels, squirrels, bats, and many species of birds.\n\nThe Nevado del Tolima and Nevado del Ruiz volcanoes are considered active, with the Ruiz presenting more activity. In 1986 it erupted, melting the glacier, which in turn created a massive mudslide that engulfed the town of Armero, burying an estimated 20,000 of the town's 29,000 residents.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nThe Northern Sector of the park includes the Nevado del Ruiz, with its three craters (Arenales, La Pira\u00f1a, and La Olleta), and extends south to the extinct Cisne volcano and Laguna Verde. This part can be accessed by vehicle.\n\nThe Southern Sector includes everything from the Nevado Santa Isabel south to the Quind\u00edo peak, as well as Nevado del Tolima. This area has fewer visitors as access is only by foot or by horse, from Manizales, Pereira, Salento, or Ibagu\u00e9.\n\n##### **The Northern Sector**\n\nThe **Northern Sector** (turnoff to Las Brisas entry point at Km. 43 V\u00eda Manizales-Honda, tel. 6\/887-1611, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-2pm daily high season, COP$43,500 for nonresidents, COP$28,500 for residents, COP$24,500 for students with valid student ID, COP$5,000 per vehicle) is the most visited part of the park. Until recently, day trippers could drive from Manizales right up to El Refugio, a camp at the base of the Ruiz, and climb up to the main Arenales crater (5,325 meters\/17,470 feet) in a strenuous three-hour hike. The Cisne visitors center provided lodging in this sector of the park and allowed easy access to the Nevado Santa Isabel and Laguna Verde.\n\nthe lunar-like landscape of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados\n\nDue to increased activity at Ruiz, the entire Northern Sector was closed from March 2012 through early 2013. In January 2013 a small area, from the Las Brisas entry station to the Valle de las Tumbas (also known as Valle del Silencio) was reopened to visitors in organized tours and private vehicles. El Refugio at the base of the Ruiz, the Chalet Arenales camping site, and the Cisne visitors center are off limits. At the time of writing, there were no plans to reopen these facilities.\n\nIf you don't have a vehicle, the only way to visit this part of the park is on an organized day tour from Manizales. These tours leave at 6am, drive to Las Brisas park entry station, and continue on to the Valle de las Tumbas, making stops along the way to gaze at the landscape, particularly the Nevado del Ruiz and La Olleta crater (weather permitting), and to view birds and vegetation. On the way back to Manizales, the tour stops for an hour at the rundown Termales de Ruiz outside the park for a quick soak in warm sulfur-laden waters. The tours return to Manizales by 5pm. This experience will be unsatisfying for people who want to move their legs. **Ecosistemas** (Cra. 21 No. 23-21, Manizales, tel. 6\/880-8300, www.ecosistemastravel.com) offers this day tour for COP$100,000 for residents and COP$120,000 for nonresidents.\n\nIf you have a vehicle (a car with 4WD is not necessary) you can drive the Brisas-Valle de las Tumbas segment but you will be required to take a guide (included in the entry price) in your vehicle.\n\nAnother possibility to view Nevado del Ruiz without entering the park is to take an early morning milk truck _(lechero)_ leaving Manizales at 5am to El Sif\u00f3n, northeast of the park. The trip affords beautiful views of the _p\u00e1ramo_ and the Ruiz in the distance and a chance to share a ride with farmers from the region. At El Sif\u00f3n you can catch breakfast and walk back along the road to be picked up by the truck as it returns to Manizales, where you will arrive around noon. All the major hostels in Manizales know about how to organize this excursion.\n\n##### **The Southern Sector**\n\nThe **Southern Sector** offers numerous trekking opportunities, several of which can be done without a guide. There are no official entry stations and permits are not required, but be prepared to pay an entry fee if you bump into a ranger. If you want to be meticulous, you can pay in advance by contacting the Parques Nacionales office in Bogot\u00e1 (tel. 1\/353-2400, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co), sending the names of the visitors to the park, depositing the entry fee at a bank, and receiving a permit by email. However, this is a huge hassle and very few people do it.\n\n##### **Nevado Santa Isabel Trek**\n\nA spectacular day trek from Manizales is up to the snow line of the **Nevado Santa Isabel.** It is a long day trip, starting with a bumpy 50-kilometer (31-mile) drive to the border of the park at Conejeras and then a three-hour (5.5-kilometer\/3.4-mile) hike up the canyon of the R\u00edo Campo Alegre and then to the snow line. This hike requires good physical condition as it takes you from an elevation of 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) up to 4,750 meters (15,600 feet) through _p\u00e1ramo_ and super _p\u00e1ramo_. More serious mountaineers can extend the trek to the summit of the Nevado Santa Isabel (4,950 meters\/16,240 feet) by camping past Conejeras and doing an early morning ascent to the top. At sunrise, the views onto the surrounding high mountain landscape, with the Nevado del Ruiz and Nevado del Tolima in the background, are magnificent. The ascent to the top requires specialized gear.\n\nThere is no public transportation to Conejeras and the trails are not clearly marked, so an organized tour from Manizales is the way to go. A recommended tour operator is **Kumanday** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-40, Manizales, tel. 6\/887-2682, cell tel. 315\/590-7294, kumandaycolombia@gmail.com, www.kumanday.com). The folks at **Mountain Hostels** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-137, Manizales, tel. 6\/887-4736, www.mountainhostels.com.co) can also help you organize this trek.\n\n##### **Laguna del Ot\u00fan Trek**\n\nA popular three-day trek from Pereira is to the **Laguna del Ot\u00fan.** The starting point is El Cedral, a _vereda_ (village) 21 kilometers (13 miles) east of Pereira at an altitude of 2,100 meters (6,900 feet). The end point of the trek at the lake is at 3,950 meters (13,000 feet). This 19-kilometer (12-mile) hike provides an incredible close-up view of the transitions from humid tropical forest to higher altitude tropical forests and the _p\u00e1ramo._ The trek follows the valley of the crystalline R\u00edo Ot\u00fan, first through the Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed and then into the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados. It's not too strenuous. Most trekkers split the climb into two segments, camping at El Bosque or Jord\u00edn on the way up and spending one night at the Laguna del Ot\u00fan. The return hike can be done in one day. The path is easy to follow, though quite rocky and muddy. A guide is not necessary.\n\nThe only accommodation along this route is at the **Centro de Visitantes La Pastora** (6 km\/4 mi from El Cedral toward Laguna del Ot\u00fan, no phone, cell tel. 312\/200-7711, COP$22,000 pp) in the Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed. The dormitory-style rooms are clean and comfortable in this cozy lodge. Meals (COP$6,000-9,000) by the fireplace are excellent. It is possible to buy snacks along the way, but there is no food at the _laguna,_ so bring cooking equipment and food along with tents and sleeping bags.\n\nTo get to El Cedral from Pereira, take a _chiva_ (rural bus) offered by **Transportes Florida** (tel. 6\/331-0488, COP$5,000, 2 hrs.), which departs from Calle 12 and Carrera 9 in Pereira. On weekdays, the bus departs at 7am, 9am, and 3pm. On weekends there is an additional bus at noon. The buses return from El Cedral approximately at 11am, 2pm, and 5pm.\n\nThe Laguna del Ot\u00fan can also be visited on an organized tour in a long day trip from Pereira. This involves leaving Pereira at 5am and driving 88 kilometers (55 miles) to Potos\u00ed (3,930 meters\/12,895 feet) near the park border and then hiking two hours to the lake. This is not a strenuous walk. A recommended tour operator in Pereira for this excursion is **Cattleya Ser** (Cl. 99 No. 14-78, La Florida, cell tel. 314\/642-6691 or 311\/380-8126, www.cattleyaser.com.co). The **Kolibr\u00ed Hostel** (tel. 6\/331-3955, cell tel. 321\/646-9275, www.kolibrihostel.com) in Pereira also offers guided treks to the laguna.\n\n##### **Nevado del Tolima and Paramillo del Quind\u00edo Treks**\n\nThere are two ways to reach the classically cone-shaped Nevado del Tolima (5,215 meters\/17,110 feet). The somewhat easier and more scenic route is from Vereda del Cocora near Salento, which takes four days. A more strenuous route is up from El Silencio, near Ibagu\u00e9, which can be done in two days.\n\nFrom **Vereda del Cocora** (2,200 meters\/7,215 feet), you hike 7-8 hours (13.5 kilometers\/8.4 miles) through the Valle del Cocora, up the R\u00edo Quind\u00edo canyon, through the P\u00e1ramo Romerales to the Finca La Primavera at 3,680 meters (12,075 feet). There you spend the night (COP$10,000 pp) and take a simple meal. On the second day you hike 6-7 hours (12 kilometers\/7.5 miles) to a campsite at 4,400 meters (14,450 feet) near the edge of the super _p\u00e1ramo_. On the third day, you depart the campsite at 2am and climb a further 8 kilometers (5 miles) to reach the rim of the Tolima crater at 7 or 8am, when there are incredible views to the Quind\u00edo, Santa Isabel, Cisne, and Ruiz peaks. That evening you sleep again at the Finca La Primavera and return to Vereda del Cocora on the following day. The path is not clearly marked and it is easy to lose your way (there's a reason why one part is called the Valle de los Perdidos or Valley of the Lost!), so it is best go with a guide. The ascent to the glacier requires specialized gear.\n\nFrom Ibagu\u00e9 the starting point for the trek to Nevado del Tolima is **El Silencio,** a small _vereda_ (settlement) 28 kilometers (17 miles) north of the city at the end of the beautiful R\u00edo Combeima river canyon. From El Silencio, you'll walk 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) along a mountain path to **El Rancho Tolima Termales** (tel. 8\/266-2152, cell tel. 310\/817-2526, www.ranchotolimatermales.com, 24 hours daily, COP$5,000) hot springs. From there, there are several routes up to the top of Tolima. The most direct route is via La Cueva. It is a strenuous six- to eight-hour (15-kilometer\/9-mile) hike up dense tropical forest, _p\u00e1ramo,_ and super _p\u00e1ramo_ to **Latas,** an unmarked camp spot near some large rusting metal sheets. Water is available nearby.\n\nFrom Latas, the ascent up the glacier to the rim of the volcano takes 3-4 hours and requires crampons and an ice axe. The return trip takes 5-6 hours, not including a soothing dip at the _termales._ Unless you are an experienced mountaineer, a guide is necessary.\n\nAnother less traveled but beautiful hike is to the **Paramillo del Quind\u00edo** (4,750 meters\/15,585 feet), an extinct volcano that once was covered by a glacier. The 17-kilometer (10.5-mile) ascent from La Primavera Farm takes eight hours and can be done in one long day. Alternatively, you can split the hike in two, camping so as to arrive at the top of the crater in the early morning when visibility is best. There are spectacular views of the Tolima, Santa Isabel, and Ruiz volcanoes. This is a strenuous but not technically difficult climb.\n\nRecommended guides for the Tolima and Quind\u00edo treks are **P\u00e1ramo Trek** in Salento (cell tel. 311\/745-3761, paramotrek@gmail.com) and **Truman David Alfonso Bejarano** in Ibagu\u00e9 (cell tel. 315\/292-7395, trumandavid01@gmail.com), who can organize excursions from Salento or Ibagu\u00e9. His blog (www.truman-adventure.blogspot.com) has detailed information about the various possible routes up to Nevado del Tolima.\n\n##### **Mountain Biking**\n\nThere are many possible mountain-bike trips through the park, ranging from the easy (all downhill) to the fairly strenuous. **Kumanday** (Cl. 66 No. 23B-40, Manizales, tel. 6\/887-2682, cell tel. 315\/590-7294, kumandaycolombia@gmail.com, www.kumanday.com) offers several excursions.\n\n#### **ARMENIA**\n\nThe defining moment for Colombia's Ciudad Milagro (Miracle City) arrived uninvited on the afternoon of January 25, 1999, when an earthquake registering 6.4 on the Richter scale shook the city. One thousand people lost their lives, nearly half the city became instantly displaced, and thousands of nearby coffee farms were destroyed. The miracle of this coffee region city can be seen in how it rapidly rebuilt and began to thrive once more.\n\nAs is the case with sister cities Pereira and Manizales, Armenia was settled in the late 19th century by Antioquian colonizers. The city is not a tourist destination itself, but you'll be astonished to see, within just a few blocks of the city center, a sea of green coffee farms. That lush countryside is the real attraction.\n\nThe city was founded in 1889 and initially named Villa Holgu\u00edn to honor then-president Carlos Holgu\u00edn Mallarino. It is widely believed that the city was renamed Armenia to honor victims of the 1894-1896 Hamidian massacres of ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nArmenia is a small city by Colombian standards, home to 294,000 residents. Although there is not much to see or do downtown, it is a compact area, and it's easy to get around on foot. The northern areas of the city are where the hotels, malls, and restaurants are to be found. That part of town, around the Hotel Armenia, is also walkable.\n\n_Carreras_ run north-south and _calles_ east-west. Main drags include Carreras 14 (Avenida Bol\u00edvar), 18, and 19, as well as the Avenida Centenario, which runs parallel to the R\u00edo Quind\u00edo on the eastern side of the city. Carrera 14 is pedestrian-only downtown.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nStanding in downtown Armenia's **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (between Cras. 12-13 and Clls. 20-21) is a sculpture of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar (northern side of the plaza) and the love-it-or-hate-it **Monumento al Esfuerzo,** by Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, built in the 1960s. This sculpture stands in remembrance of the sacrifices made and hardships faced by Antioquian settlers who arrived in the area seeking opportunity. The modern **Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n** (Cra. 12 between Clls. 20-21, hours vary), completed in 1972, is a concrete, triangular-shaped building that replaced the previous cathedral, which had stood since 1927. The plaza is on the stark side.\n\nA stroll down the **pedestrian street** from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar to the Parque Sucre is a pleasant way to see the modern downtown at its busiest.\n\n###### M **MUSEO DEL ORO QUIMBAYA**\n\nEven if you have visited the world-famous Museo del Oro in Bogot\u00e1, it is worth the trek to Armenia just to visit the **Museo del Oro Quimbaya** (Av. Bol\u00edvar No. 40N-80, tel. 6\/749-8433, www.banrepcultural.org, 10am-5pm Tues.-Sun., free) on the outskirts of town. In contrast to the Gold Museum in Bogot\u00e1, this museum, designed by famed architect Rogelio Salmona, focuses exclusively on the Quimbaya nation, which predominated in the coffee region before the Spanish conquest. Much of the museum is devoted to ceramic and gold decorative and ceremonial items that were found in the area. Excellent explanations in English provide interesting background information on the history, ways of life, and traditions of the Quimbaya people.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nArmenios celebrate their city's founding in October with their **Fiestas Cuyabras** or Fiestas de Armenia. (People from Armenia are also called Cuyabras, after a bush that produced pumpkin-like fruit that was once widespread in the region.) City parks and plazas are the stages for cultural events, a beauty pageant, and a fun Yipao (Jeep) parade. These U.S. military Jeeps (called Jeep Willys), a symbol of the region, began arriving in Colombia around 1946, after World War II.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nSeveral city parks and plazas are great places to enjoy the delicious Armenia climate. These include the **Parque de la Vida** (Cra. 13 at Cl. 8N) and the **Parque Sucre** (Cra. 13 at Cl. 13) downtown, which is adjacent to a delightful pedestrian street. Locals and visitors gather in the late afternoon at the **Caf\u00e9 Quind\u00edo** in the park for _onces_ (tea time).\n\nThe **Parque El Bosque** (Cl. 21 No. 22-23) is a green space that has a bust of Abraham Lincoln that was donated to the city by the Armenian community of Fresno, California, as a way of expressing their gratitude for naming the city in solidarity with the decimated Armenian nation in the early 20th century. The bullfighting ring is in this park.\n\n**Globos Colombia** (cell tel. 320\/667-7818, www.globoscolombia.com, COP$390,000) offers commanding views of the Zona Cafetera from a hot-air balloon. Flights usually depart 6am-6:30am and last 45 minutes. A hearty Paisa breakfast is included in the tour. Flights depart from nearby Armenia as well as near Pereira, about an hour's drive away.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nThe **Centro Comercial Unicentro** (Cra. 14 No. 6-02, tel. 6\/731-2667, 8am-9pm daily) along the Avenida Bol\u00edvar has the usual array of Colombian mall stores, fast food joints, an \u00c9xito department store, a movie theater, several ATMs, and food and coffee courts (with spectacular views of the bucolic valley). **El Portal del Quind\u00edo** (Av. Bol\u00edvar 19N No. 46-057, www.elportaldelquindio.com, 8am-9pm daily) is down the road from Unicentro and offers similar shops.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThe **Casa Quimbaya** (Cl. 16N No. 14-92, tel. 6\/732-3086, cell tel. 312\/590-0066, www.casaquimbaya.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is the budget hostel option in Armenia. It is near the Universidad del Quind\u00edo. There are two dorm rooms and four private rooms. It's in an ordinary-looking house on a quiet street, very close to the action of Carrera 14.\n\nA midrange option downtown is **Casa Hotel del Parque** (Cra. 14 No. 12-26, tel. 6\/731-3166, www.casahoteldelparque.com, COP$99,000 d). It has five rooms and a great location on the Parque Sucre and the pedestrian street.\n\nThe **Armenia Hotel** (Av. Bol\u00edvar and Cl. 8N, tel. 6\/746-0099, cell tel. 320\/696-9111, www.armeniahotel.com.co, COP$220,000 d) has long been considered the most elegant place to stay in town. However, it has lost some of its panache over the years. It's got 129 rooms on nine floors, and a big atrium smells of eucalyptus emanating from the steam room. Rooms and bathrooms are spacious, the beds are fine, and you could go to town raiding the mini-bar. A spa, pool, and small gym are available on the premises, and guests also have privileges at a gym four blocks away.\n\nThe first U.S. hotel chain will soon be arriving in Armenia in the form of **Best Western Plus Mocawa.** It will have 97 rooms over 16 floors, a gym and spa, and a coffee bar in the lobby. Its location on the Avenida Bol\u00edvar is close to malls. It is scheduled to open in late 2013.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nArmenia's gastronomic center is uptown along Avenida Bol\u00edvar.\n\nIn the Centro, **Lucerna** (Cl. 20 No. 14-40, tel. 6\/741-1005, 9am-7:30pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-6:30pm Sun.) is a classic. This retro-looking _sal\u00f3n de t\u00e9_ (tearoom) is always packed; you can order a meal or snack.\n\nIf you've got an appetite, head to **La Fogata** (Av. Bol\u00edvar No. 14N-39, tel. 6\/749-5980, www.lafogata.com.co, noon-midnight daily, COP$28,000), a classic in Armenia. Their filet mignon is known as the best in town. Several Peruvian dishes make the menu interesting, and the loungey Caf\u00e9 La Fogata is a popular place for a cocktail after work or before a night out dancing. Nearby, the **Caf\u00e9 Quind\u00edo Gourmet** (Parque de la Vida, Cra. 14\/Av. Bol\u00edvar 7N, tel. 6\/745-4478, www.cafequindio.com.co, 11am-9:30pm Mon.-Sat., noon-4:30pm Sun.) serves coffee drinks from Armenia's preferred coffee brand, Caf\u00e9 Quind\u00edo, and more substantial meals such as pastas and sandwiches.\n\nPractically hidden behind a residential complex near the Armenia Hotel, **Zaki** (Cra. 13 No. 8N-39, Edificio Bamb\u00fa, Local 104, tel. 6\/745-1220, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Thurs., noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm Fri.-Sat., COP$20,000) is a sushi joint that also serves a mish-mash of other Asian-inspired dishes. It is one of a handful of restaurants and bars in this part of town that cater to Armenia yuppies.\n\n**Natural Food Plaza** (Cra. 14 No. 4-51, tel. 6\/745-1597, 7:30am-6pm Mon.-Thurs., 7:30am-4pm Fri. and Sun., COP$10,000) always has a set lunch, but you can also order Paisa dishes, like tamales and _bandeja paisa_ \u2014the quintessential Paisa dish of beans, various meats, yuca, and potatoes\u2014reinvented vegetarian-style, all to the soothing sounds of elevator music.\n\nMany of the best-known restaurants in Armenia are on the outskirts of town, like **El Roble** (Km. 12 V\u00eda Armenia Pereira, tel. 6\/740-5120, 6:30am-9pm daily, COP$15,000), which is a sprawling 100 percent Colombian cuisine family-style restaurant.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\n**Tourist offices** are located at the bus station (Cl. 35 No. 20-68) and in the **Edificio de la Gobernaci\u00f3n** (Plaza de Bol\u00edvar, tel. 6\/741-7700, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nMajor airlines **Avianca** (Centro Comercial Portal del Quind\u00edo, Av. Bol\u00edvar No. 19N-46, 2nd floor, tel. 6\/734-5205, www.avianca.com, 10:30am-1:30pm and 2:30pm-7:30pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-1:30pm and 2:30pm-7pm Sun.) and **LAN** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com) as well as smaller Colombian carriers **EasyFly** (tel. 6\/747-9031, www.easyfly.com.co) and **Aerol\u00edneas de Antioquia** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232 www.ada-aero.com) serve the **Aeropuerto Internacional El Eden** (Km. 10 V\u00eda La Tebaida, tel. 6\/747-9400). **Spirit Air** (www.spirit.com) has two weekly nonstop flights from Fort Lauderdale.\n\nThe bus terminal, the **Terminal de Transportes** (Cl. 35 No. 20-68, tel. 6\/747-3355, www.terminalarmenia.com) is just south of downtown, about 13 blocks from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar. There is frequent service to Pereira (1 hour, COP$8,000), Salento (1 hour, COP$4,000), and Manizales (4 hours, COP$17,000). Buses bound for Medell\u00edn (6.5 hours, COP$38,000) leave all day from before dawn to around midnight. While short-distance buses depart until about 10pm or later, it's better to travel earlier if possible out of safety reasons and in order to enjoy the scenery along the way.\n\nThe rapid bus system in Armenia is called the **Tinto** (www.tinto.com.co), after the ubiquitous little coffees. A line on Avenida Bol\u00edvar connects the northern part of the city with downtown. The website can be confusing, so it's best to ask someone how to get around.\n\n#### **VICINITY OF ARMENIA**\n\n##### M **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo**\n\nJust 10 minutes outside of town, the well-run **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo** (Km. 3 V\u00eda al Valle, tel. 6\/742-7254, cell tel. 310\/835-0236, www.jardinbotanicoquindio.org, 9am-4pm daily, English tour COP$30,000) is home to hundreds of tree and plant species, many of which are threatened. Knowledgeable volunteer guides, who are usually college students, lead visitors on a mandatory 2.5-hour tour along jungle paths, stopping every so often to point out flora that you would have overlooked had you walked through on your own. That might strike you as a major time commitment, but it really doesn't seem like it. In addition to palms (which aren't technically trees) and _guadua_ (which is actually related to grass), look out for _matapalos,_ a tree that wraps itself around other trees, strangling them as they fight for sunlight. It's been lovingly nicknamed the _abrazo de la suegra_ (mother-in-law's hug).\n\nIn Colombia where there is tropical forest, there will be birds. The gardens are no exception, and they are home to at least 119 species. The birds are at their most active early in the morning. Some of the commonly seen species include tanagers, toucans, owls, woodpeckers, the multi-colored _torito cabecirrojo_ (red-headed barbet), and iconic _barranqueros_ or _barranquillos_ (blue-crowned motmots). These birds make their nests in the earth. Rodent residents who frequently make cameo appearances are _ardillas_ (squirrels) and cute _guatines_ (Central American agoutis). By far the most photographed sector of the park is the _mariposario_ (enclosed butterfly garden) in the shape of a giant butterfly, home to thousands. This is an interactive experience, in which visitors are encouraged to coax the insects to light on their fingers, arms, and shoulders. Butterflies are livelier when the sun is out.\n\nJard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo\n\nGuides are volunteers, and although the entry price is steep, it's good form to tip the guides after the tour. Call in advance to inquire about English-speaking tours.\n\nIt's easy to get to the park using public transportation from Armenia. Just look for a bus from the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar or along Avenida Bol\u00edvar that says \"Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico.\"\n\n##### **Theme Parks**\n\nThese parks are always mobbed with Colombian families on weekends and holidays.\n\n**RECUCA** (Km. 5 V\u00eda La Y-Barcelona, Vereda Callelarga, tel. 6\/749-8525, www.recuca.com, 9am-3pm daily, tour with lunch COP$30,000) is a theme park, but one without rollercoasters or water rides. RECUCA stands for Recorrido de la Cultura Cafetera (Coffee Culture Experience). Upon arrival at the _finca_ (farm), you'll be greeted by smiling employees dressed in traditional bean-picking garb. Then you'll explore a coffee farm, lend a hand by picking some ripe beans, and learn about the whole process. After that, you'll enjoy a big Paisa lunch (beans and rice for herbivores). If you prefer, you can just take part in a coffee-tasting session (COP$11,000). You can get to RECUCA by taking a bus bound for Barcelona from the Terminal de Transportes in Armenia (Cl. 35 No. 20-68). The bus drops you off at the park entrance. From there it is a 30-minute walk, or the guard at the entrance can order a Jeep for you (COP$5,000).\n\nThe **Parque Nacional del Caf\u00e9** (Km. 6 V\u00eda Montenegro-Pueblo Tapao, tel. 6\/741-7417, www.parquenacionaldelcafe.com, 9am-6pm daily, COP$22,000-55,000) is near the town of **Montenegro,** 12.5 kilometers (8 miles) west of Armenia. While part of the park is devoted to telling the story of coffee production in Colombia, it's mostly an amusement park with rollercoasters, a chair-lift ride, horseback rides, a coffee show, a water park, and other attractions.\n\n**PANACA** (Km. 7 V\u00eda Vereda Kerman, tel. 6\/758-2830, cell tel. 313\/721-9211, www.panaca.com.co, 9am-6pm daily, COP$30,000-60,000) is an agricultural-themed amusement park near the town of **Quimbaya,** where visitors can see and interact with all types of farm animals and watch the occasional pig race.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nIn June or sometimes July, **Calarc\u00e1** puts on an event to honor what made the coffee region what it is today. A number of the usual festival events take place during the **Fiesta Nacional del Caf\u00e9** (www.calarca.net), but it's the **Desfile de Yipao** that steals the show. That's when Jeep Willys\u2014U.S. military Jeeps from World War II and the Korean War that were sold to farmers in the coffee region\u2014are laden down with people, animals, and furniture, and go on parade. There are competitions (essentially Willy beauty pageants) and a contest in which the Jeep Willys are loaded down with 1,800 kilos of cargo and race forward on two wheels only. The ubiquitous Jeep Willy has become a symbol of the region.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nWith more than a century's experience growing coffee, the **Hacienda Combia** (Km. 4 V\u00eda al Valle-Vereda La Bella, tel. 6\/746-8472, cell tel. 314\/682-5395, www.combia.com.co, COP$153,000 d) produces Caf\u00e9 Inspiraci\u00f3n, their brand of high-quality coffee. It is operated by the same owners as the Hacienda San Jos\u00e9 near Pereira. It has around 30 rooms and an infinity pool that has a fantastic view, and there are coffee tours available through the nearby fields. This hotel is not far from a highway, but you can easily block out reminders of suburbia by focusing on the fertile lands that surround you and are home to colorful birds. Its proximity to the airport (airport pickups can be arranged) and easy access make it popular for events with Colombian businesses. It also attracts foreign embassy staff living in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Bakkho** (Cl. 41 No. 27-56, Calarc\u00e1, tel. 6\/743-3331, www.bakkho.com, noon-9pm Tues., noon-10pm Wed.-Sun., COP$35,000) is considered to be the top restaurant in Quind\u00edo. Here, presentation and ambience is everything, and it's no surprise that this is where locals come to celebrate special occasions. Fare is international with many seafood dishes. Bakkho has various locations in the area, but the Calarc\u00e1 location is the original.\n\nSurrounded by 160 hectares of pineapple, cacao, banana, and citrus crops, it's hard to imagine a more relaxing place than sublime M **Hacienda Bambusa** (off V\u00eda Calarc\u00e1-Caicedonia south of Armenia, tel. 6\/740-4935, cell tel. 321\/313-7315, www.haciendabambusa.com, COP$160,000 pp). Its isolation is a selling point, as you feel far from everything, providing the perfect environment to disconnect. The house and much of the furniture are made of _guadua_ and other traditional materials, and rooms are luxurious and tastefully decorated. There are only seven rooms, each with a private balcony or terrace. The views from those balconies are spectacular, with endless farms punctuated by _guadua_ forests and mountains in the distance. Meals are prepared by the acclaimed Bakkho restaurant. It is isolated here, and it would be a shame to spend the day rushing around the area sightseeing. Here at the farm there are cacao tours to take, horses to ride, birds to watch, and massages to be enjoyed. The Armenia airport is about 40 minutes away, and taking a cab from there costs COP$45,000, although the hotel can arrange all your transportation. Bambusa offers a range of packages, some including activities and excursions, transportation to and from the airport, and all meals. They do not bump up prices during high season (nor reduce prices during low season).\n\nNear the town of Quimbaya and off the road 800 meters past some ordinary looking houses and apartments, a spectacularly well-maintained red-and-white-painted hacienda awaits: M **Finca Villa Nora** (tel. 6\/741-5472, cell tel. 310\/422-6335, www.quindiofincavillanora.com, COP$180,000 d with 2 meals). It's a 120-year-old house that is charming and full of character. It's built in the typical Paisa style. Amid fruit trees, flowers, coffee fields, and a huge ficus tree, at Villa Nora the air is pure, sunsets lovely, and drinks on the verandah not a bad idea. There are only seven rooms at this quiet refuge.\n\n#### **SALENTO**\n\nOn the western edge of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados, the pueblo of Salento (pop. 7,000) is one-stop shopping for those seeking a quintessential coffee region experience. The town, an enchanting pueblo, home to coffee growers and cowboys, is adorned with the trademark colorful balconies and facades of Paisa architecture. It was one of the first settlements in the region during the 19th-century Antioquian colonization. In the nearby countryside, coffee farms dominate the landscape. Here you can be a Juan Valdez, the iconic personification of Colombian coffee, during a coffee tour in which you harvest coffee beans, learn about the bean-to-bag process, and sip the freshest coffee you've ever tasted.\n\nWithin minutes of town is the Valle de Cocora, where you can play tree tag in forests of _palma de cera_ (wax palm, the Colombian national tree), the skyscrapers of the palm family. Some of these can reach up to 60 meters (200 feet) high. For a more challenging hike continue on to the Reserva Acaime, a private nature reserve of tropical forest, babbling brooks, and not a few hummingbirds. From here adventurers can ascend into the _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors) and, eventually, the snowcapped mountains of the Parque Natural Nacional Los Nevados.\n\nSalento is easily accessed from between both Armenia and Pereira, and in the town and nearby countryside there are hostels, hotels, and good restaurants. It is a popular tourist destination, so if you'd like to experience Salento without the crowds, go during the week.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** or **Plaza Principal** is the center of town and center of activity. The festive pedestrian **Calle Real** (between Cl. 1 and Cl. 5) is the most photogenic street in Salento. It is lined with restaurants and souvenir shops painted in a rainbow of colors. It starts at the Plaza Principal and leads up to the **Alto de la Cruz Mirador** (scenic lookout atop the Calle Real). At the cross you can get a great bird's-eye view of the Calle Real and Salento. Farther on is another lookout with views over the surrounding jungles and valleys. But it's really about atmosphere in this Quind\u00edo town.\n\n##### **Coffee Tours**\n\nIn the outskirts of Salento, an excellent place to learn about the coffee process from seed to cup is the **Finca El Ocaso** (V\u00eda Salento-Vereda Palestina, cell tel. 310\/451-7329, cafeelocaso@hotmail.com, www.fincaelocasosalento.com, 8:30am-4:30pm daily, tour COP$8,000). This family-run farm with some 12 hectares (30 acres) of coffee crops produces coffee that has several international certifications, such as the German UTZ and the Rainforest Alliance. Elevation here is around 1,780 meters, a good altitude to grow coffee. Gregarious Don Elias and his wife, Gloria Luz, run the farm, and they enjoy showing their farm to visitors. It's a fairly interactive tour, lasting around 40 minutes, in which you plant a coffee seed, strap a basket to your hip to harvest some ripe, red beans, and grind the coffee pulp. Then, of course, you get to try a freshly roasted cup at the end. The _finca_ (farm) also has three cozy rooms (COP$35,000-100,000), decorated with period furniture, available for rent in the traditional coffee plantation house. You can also rent the whole house (COP$420,000). If you'd like a tour in English, it's best to give the owners some advance notice. It's about an hour-long walk from town, or you can hire a Jeep Willy.\n\nYou can also check out the **Finca Don Eduardo coffee tour** (Plantation House, Alto de Coronel, Cl. 7 No. 1-04, cell tel. 316\/285-2603, COP$20,000). There are two daily, at 9am and 3pm. This organic _finca_ is run by the folks from Plantation House.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nFor the real Paisa experience, **horseback riding** is a good way to enjoy the countryside around Salento. In the Plaza Principal there are usually horses at the ready, especially on weekends. One popular excursion is to some nearby waterfalls. **Don \u00c1lvaro** (cell tel. 311\/375-1534, 3-hr. trip COP$40,000 pp) treats his horses well and is considered the best guide for this activity.\n\nSalento, along with the neighboring countryside, is a nice place for a **bike ride.** Most hostels can arrange bike rental. Additionally, **CicloSalento** (near Plantation Hostel, Alto de Coronel, Cl. 7 No. 1-04, cell tel. 318\/872-9714, COP$10,000\/hr., COP$35,000\/day) rents out good quality mountain bikes with helmets. Caution: The winding road leading into town from the Valle de Cocora does not have a shoulder for bikes. Vehicles tend to speed along this road, making this a dangerous stretch for cyclists and pedestrians.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nAs Salento has grown in popularity, with Paisa weekenders and international travelers, excellent accommodations options (from backpacker lodges to coffee plantations and camping options) to fit all budget types have similarly grown. Although the number of higher-end hotels in town is growing, it is often the case that small hostels and nearby coffee farms will suit your needs just fine.\n\nOne of the best hostels in the area is M **Tralala** (Cra. 7 No. 6-45, cell tel. 314\/850-5543, www.hostaltralalasalento.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$45,000 d). It's hard to miss this in-town option: It's a two-story white house with bright orange wooden trim. At Tralala there are only seven rooms, including a dormitory that sleeps six, making for a chilled-out environment for the guests. Run by a Dutchman, the hostel is spic and span and tastefully decorated. Its minimalist style provides a nice vacation for the eyes. Staff are friendly and knowledgeable, and the kitchen area is a pleasant area to hang out and chitchat with others. There's a sun deck and garden area in case relaxation is needed.\n\nLondoner Tim was one of the first to help transform Salento from a sleepy Paisa pueblo into one of Colombia's top tourist destinations. His **Plantation House** (Alto de Coronel, Cl. 7 No. 1-04, cell tel. 316\/285-2603, www.theplantationhousesalento.com, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$55,000 d), with 24 rooms total, remains one of the top places to get to know Salento and the surrounding areas. Catering to international visitors, this hostel has two houses, one of which is over 100 years old. It's quiet and green around the hostel, and, though you'll be bound to meet other travelers like yourself, there is plenty of space to find a little solitude. Plantation House can organize bike excursions, horseback riding, and hikes to the Valle de Cocora. The owners of the Plantation House have their own organic coffee farm, **Finca Don Eduardo** (Alto de Coronel, Cl. 7 No. 1-04, cell tel. 316\/285-2603, COP$15,000 dorm, COP$35,000 d), about 15 minutes outside of town, which has one private room and one dormitory. This coffee plantation is over 80 years old and set amid lush, rolling hills. It is an environmentally friendly hostel: Solar panels enable guests to have a hot shower, and a rainwater collection system provides that water.\n\nAnother excellent hostel-type option is **La Serrana Eco-farm and Hostel** (Km. 1.5 V\u00eda Palestina Finca, cell tel. 316\/296-1890, www.laserrana.com.co, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$55,000 d). It's situated on a bluff with lovely views of coffee farms in every direction. The nine rooms, of various types and sizes, are comfortable, and there is also a women-only dorm room. Camping is also available for COP$12,000. It's a peaceful place where you can enjoy sunrises and sunsets, go for a walk into town, or just hang out. La Serrana is best known for its delicious (and nutritious) family-style dinners and other meals. Vegetarians always have options, and the cooks make an effort to buy local, fresh food. La Serrana has another, smaller, lodging option, M **Las Camelias** (Km. 1.5 V\u00eda Palestina Finca, cell tel. 316\/296-1890, www.laserrana.com.co, COP$70,000 d), a colonial-style house you can see from the hostel. This is geared for couples who want a little more privacy\u2014there are only three rooms. Rooms, drenched with natural light, are spacious, with hardwood floors and fireplaces. Common space is ample with large windows, and there is a kitchen for guest use. From La Serrana it is a short distance to the Finca Ocasa coffee farm.\n\nCentrally located M **Hostal Ciudad de Segorbe** (Cl. 5 No. 4-06, tel. 6\/759-3794, www.hostalciudaddesegorbe.com, COP$85,000 d) is a bed and breakfast run by a Colombian and Spanish pair. The renovated house is over 100 years old and is built in the traditional Paisa style. The hostel's eight rooms have high wooden ceilings with gorgeous original geometric designs and small balconies. One room is equipped for guests with disabilities. Pictures of Spanish towns like Segorbe, the hometown of one of the owners, decorate the walls. Excellent service is provided to guests, such as transportation assistance and help with organizing sightseeing activities. There are plans to add more rooms to the hotel in the adjacent lot, which may make it less of an intimate stay, but it's still a good bet.\n\n###### **CAMPING**\n\nFour kilometers outside of Salento, on the banks of the R\u00edo Quind\u00edo, is **Camping Monteroca** (Valle del R\u00edo Quind\u00edo, cell tel. 315\/413-6862, www.campingmonteroca.com, COP$70,000 cabin, COP$15,000 tent), a sprawling campground catering mostly to Colombian weekenders. The camp has 11 cabins, one of which is called the Hippie Hilton, and several of them have awesome waterbeds. There is a lot of space for tents here, as well. Monteroca has a restaurant and two bars. Recreational activities such as horseback riding (COP$12,000 per hour), a three-hour hike to nearby waterfalls (COP$25,000), and yoga classes are on offer as well. To get there from Salento, take a Jeep bound for Las Veredas. They leave every 15 minutes from the Plaza Principal during weekends.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nSalento offers varied restaurant options, not just the standard _comida t\u00edpica_ fare.\n\n**Mojiter\u00eda** (Cl. 4 No. 5-54, cell tel. 310\/409-2331, 2pm-11pm daily, COP$18,000) is a lively spot where you can grab a quick bite (appetizers, salads, soups, and pastas) or try one or two of the many mojitos on offer. At night it takes on a bar atmosphere.\n\nIt's a real treat to discover a restaurant like M **La Eliana** (Cra. 2 No. 6-45, cell tel. 314\/660-5987, 10am-9pm daily, COP$20,000), where great service, a cozy atmosphere, and fantastic food are the norm. This Spanish-run spot a few blocks from the center of town is the only place in this part of the woods where you can find curry dishes and gourmet pizzas on the menu. And try as they might, the friendly cocker spaniels aren't allowed to mingle with diners.\n\nOne of the best regional food restaurants is **Camino Real Parrilla Bar** (Cra. 6A No. 1-35, cell tel. 314\/864-2587, 10am-midnight Sun.-Thurs., 10am-2am Fri.-Sat., COP$18,000). After a grueling climb to the Mirador, this popular place at the top of Calle Real makes for a great stop. The restaurant has outdoor seating and a huge, fairly varied menu with grilled meats, a few salads, and lots of _trucha_ (trout). At night it's an _aguardiente_ **,** a popular local drinking hangout.\n\n**Alegra** (Cra. 6 No. 2-52, cell tel. 301\/462-4458, 2pm-8:20pm Mon., Tues., Thurs., and Fri., 12:30pm-8:20pm Sat.-Sun., COP$18,000) is a cute place about a block from the ruckus of Calle Real. Here you can enjoy cilantro pesto pasta, a veggie burger, and a glass of wine as you listen to jazz in the background. It's run by a friendly woman from Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Brunch** (Cl. 6 No. 3-25, cell tel. 311\/757-8082, 6:30am-9:30pm daily, COP$15,000), a hip little joint with graffiti and messages from hundreds of visitors from around the globe decorating the walls, is another restaurant with the international traveler in mind. They do serve brunch, but also breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The menu seems aimed squarely at Americans: Buffalo wings, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, black bean burgers, and peanut butter brownies. Menu items are assigned whimsical names like Wax Palm Pancakes. **Beta Town** (Cl. 7 No. 3-45, cell tel. 321\/218-7043, 6pm-midnight daily) is a popular place for burgers, beer, and hanging out. They've even got a _tejo_ field, where you can try your luck at this only-in-Colombia sport.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nHostels usually provide the best tourist information, but there is a city-run tourist kiosk, the **Punto de Informaci\u00f3n Tur\u00edstica** (10am-5pm Wed.-Mon.), in front of the Alcald\u00eda (city offices) in the Plaza Principal.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere is frequent bus service from Pereira, Armenia, and other cities to Salento. The last bus from Armenia leaves at 8pm (under COP$4,000). From Pereira, there are four direct buses each weekday, costing under COP$6,000. There is more frequent service on weekends. As Salento is well established on the tourist route, thieves are known to prey on foreigners on late-evening buses traveling from Pereira to Salento. Keep a vigilant eye on your possessions.\n\nBuses to Armenia (every 20 mins., COP$4,000) and Pereira (COP$6,000) depart from the the intersection of Carrera 2 at Calle 5, with the last bus departure at 6pm daily. For Filandia you have to first go to Armenia.\n\n#### M **VALLE DE COCORA**\n\nThe main attraction for most visitors to Salento is seeing the _palmas de cera_ (wax palms) that shoot up towards the sky in the Valle de Cocora. These are some of the tallest palms in the world, reaching 50-60 meters high (200 feet), and they can live over 100 years. They have beautiful, smooth, cylindrical trunks with dark rings. In 1985, they were declared to be the national tree of Colombia.\n\nThe Valle de Cocora is a 15-kilometer (9-mile) section of the lower R\u00edo Quind\u00edo valley. Much of it has been turned into pastureland, but, thankfully, the palms have been preserved. The palms look particularly stunning in the denuded pastureland.\n\nthe picturesque Valle de Cocora and its famous wax palms\n\nThe gateway to the valley is the **Vereda de Cocora** , a stretch of restaurants specializing in trout. This _vereda_ (settlement) is a major domestic tourist destination and can get incredibly crowded during holidays and weekends. Most Colombian tourists come for a late lunch and take a stroll along the main road behind the _vereda_ to view the palms. However, there are two much more rewarding excursions: a leisurely 90-minute walk to **La Monta\u00f1a,** a ranger station for the local environmental agency, or a more intense five-hour loop through the valley and up the R\u00edo Quind\u00edo and back via La Monta\u00f1a.\n\nFor the La Monta\u00f1a hike, continue down the main road beyond the Vereda de Cocoa and pass through the gate of a private farm on the right where a signpost reads \"FCA. EL BOSQUE 7.6 KM.\" Follow a path that meanders six kilometers (four miles) up hills converted to pastureland and then along a ridge on one side of the Valle de Cocora to the ranger station. The views from the path onto the wax palms in the valley and mountainside are stunning. If you opt for the longer hike, that same spectacular scenery comes at the end of a walk that saves the valley of the palms for last, like a delicious dessert.\n\nFor the longer hike, take a right through a gate painted blue after the last building in the Vereda de Cocora. After walking about four kilometers (2.5 miles) through pasture, you'll enter the dense forest. The path crisscrosses the trickling R\u00edo Quind\u00edo. After three kilometers (two miles) you reach the **Reserva Acaime** (cell tel. 321\/636-2818 or 320\/788-1981, COP$4,000), a private reserve created to preserve the surrounding cloud forest. With the entrance fee, you can enjoy a complimentary cup of hot chocolate, _agua de panela_ (a hot sugary drink), or coffee and watch throngs of hummingbirds of several varieties fly up to feeders. It's quite a show. You can also stay at Acaime, either in private rooms or a large dormitory (COP$40,000 pp including all meals).\n\nFrom Reserva Acaime, you backtrack a kilometer and then climb a steep path to La Monta\u00f1a. The last leg of the hike, back from La Monta\u00f1a to Vereda del Cocora, provides the best and most memorable photo opportunities of the valley and hundreds upon hundreds of wax palms. Make sure your camera batteries are charged, as you'll want to take many pictures. The entire loop takes 4-5 hours. You may want to wear rubber or waterproof boots, as the path along the R\u00edo Quind\u00edo is muddy. There is no need for a guide.\n\nTo get to Vereda del Cocora from Salento, take a Jeep Willy (COP$3,500), which leave the Plaza Pincipal at 6am, 7:30am, 9:30am, and 11:30am each day.\n\n##### **Trek to Finca La Primavera**\n\nIf you would like to do a longer expedition, you can extend the Valle de Cocora hike beyond Reserva Acaime to the **P\u00e1ramo de Romerales** on the border of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados and to **Finca La Primavera,** a working farm located at an altitude of 3,680 meters (12,075 feet). This excursion allows you to enjoy the transition from cloud forest to _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor) but requires two days. The path from Acaime continues to **Estrella de Agua,** a research station, through the P\u00e1ramo de Romerales and finally Finca Primavera, where you can bunk for COP$10,000 per person and arrange for meals. The entire hike from Vereda de Cocora to Primavera is 13.5 kilometers (8.5 miles) and takes 7-8 hours. This trek does not require camping gear; all you need is food for snacking. However, it is quite cold at Finca La Primavera, and a sleeping bag makes a difference. Hiring a guide is a good idea as the trail is poorly marked.\n\nFrom Finca La Primavera, you can continue into the **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados,** hiking to the Nevado del Tolima (5,215 meters\/17,110 feet) or the less traveled Paramillo del Quind\u00edo (4,750 meters\/15,585 feet).\n\nRecommended guides are **P\u00e1ramo Trek** (cell tel. 311\/745-3761, paramotrek@gmail.com) in Salento and **Truman David Alfonso Bejarano** (cell tel. 315\/292-7395, trumandavid01@gmail.com) in Ibagu\u00e9, who can organize excursions from Salento or Ibagu\u00e9.\n\n#### **FILANDIA**\n\nTo visit an authentic coffee town without the tourists, head to Filandia (pop. 12,000), a cute pueblo between Armenia and Pereira. Sights are few; this town is about atmosphere. The name Filandia has nothing to do with the Nordic country of Finland (which in Spanish is Finlandia).\n\nThe focal point on the **Parque Central** (between Cras. 4-5 and Clls. 6-7) is the church, the **Templo Mar\u00eda Inmaculada** (Cra. 7), which was built in the early 20th century. From the plaza explore the charming streets of the town, including the **Calle del Tiempo Detenido** (Cl. 7 between Cras. 5-6) and the **Calle del Empedrado,** two streets of two-story houses made of _bahareque_ (a natural material) adorned by colorful doors and windows. Stop by the town's oldest construction, the **Droguer\u00eda Bristol** (Cra. 6 No. 5-63) along the way. A nice view of the countryside can be had near the _cl\u00ednica mental_ (mental hospital; Cra. 8 No. 7-55). On the street pick up one of Filandia's famous reed baskets.\n\nOn the road towards Quimbaya, just outside of town, is the wooden **Ecoparque Mirador de las Colinas Iluminadas** (10am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-9pm Sat.-Sun., COP$3,000), which looks like a wooden spaceship. From the top are nice views of the countryside, and inside, looking down, is a strange mosaic of a giant blue butterfly. On the way towards the _mirador_ , pop into one of the many handicraft shops, where you can browse baskets until the cows come home.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nAccommodations and restaurants in Filandia are limited. In a traditional Paisa house, the **Hostal La Posada del Compadre** (Cra. 6 No. 8-06, tel. 6\/758-3054, cell tel. 313\/335-9771, www.laposadadelcompadre.com, COP$60,000 d) offers a handful of rooms and ample outdoor hangout space. Rooms are large, beds are adequate, breakfast is included, and the prices are reasonable.\n\nWith a prime location on the main square, the **Hostal Tibouchina** (Cl. 6A No. 5-05, tel. 6\/758-2646, COP$40,000 pp d) has seven rooms and pleasant common areas, including a large kitchen. It's on the second floor above a caf\u00e9\/bar. The interior rooms, which lack windows, are on the stuffy side. On the other hand, if you get one of the rooms facing the street, you may hear music and the goings-on in the plaza until the wee hours on weekends.\n\nThe M **Hostal Colina de Lluvia** (Cra. 4 No. 5-15, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d private) opened in mid-2013 and is easily the best place to stay in Filandia. Tastefully decorated rooms are spic and span with comfortable beds, and there is a small garden patio.\n\nCandlelit tables, lounge music, and art on the walls\u2014you won't believe your eyes when you see M **Helena Adentro** (Cra. 7 No. 8-01, cell tel. 312\/873-9825, noon-2am weekends). Started by a New Zealander and a Paisa, it's by far the coolest spot in Filandia, Quind\u00edo, and perhaps this side of Medell\u00edn. Cured meats and goat cheeses come from local farmers, along with the coffee. They have their own brand of coffee but also serve coffee from other regions of Colombia, using different brewing techniques. Locals keep coming back for the inventive libations here, such as the house cocktail, the Adentro Helena (aguardiente, _lulo_ juice, and lime).\n\nThe popular place for a cappuccino is **Jahn Caf\u00e9** (Cl. 6 No. 5-45, 7:30am-midnight Mon.-Fri., 7:30am-2am Sat.-Sun.).\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThe Filandia tourist office is in the **Casa del Artesano** (Cra. 5 at Cl. 7, 2nd floor, tel. 6\/758-2172, 7am-noon and 1:30pm-4:30pm Mon.-Fri.).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nBuses to Filandia leave from Armenia (COP$4,000, every 20 minutes) and Pereira (COP$5,000, hourly) all day long until around 8pm. These circulate the town picking up passengers, especially on Carrera 7.\n\n#### **PEREIRA AND VICINITY**\n\nIn Pereira (pop. 465,000), the capital of the Risaralda department, you can get your boots muddy, see exotic birds, and experience the tropical Andean forest during the day, then later enjoy a good meal out or hit the town until late. Pereira is perfectly situated for day trips to the countryside, be it elegant haciendas or natural parks such as Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya. In town, you can easily see the major sights of interest in one day: the spectacular cathedral, the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar with its statue of a nude Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar on horseback charging ahead, and the Museo de Arte de Pereira. Manizales, Armenia, and Salento are within one hour driving or riding of Pereira.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nDowntown, in the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (Clls. 19-20 and Cras. 7-8) stands a bronze sculpture by Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt depicting the Liberator Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar on horseback charging ahead to fight the Spaniards\u2014naked. Facing the plaza is the **Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Pobreza Catedral** (Cl. 20 No. 7-30, tel. 6\/335-6545, masses every hour 6am-noon and 5pm Mon.-Sat., 6am-noon and 5pm-8pm Sun.). The cathedral was originally built in 1890, using industrial-era building techniques, and was damaged by an earthquake, needing to be almost completely reconstructed. It was rebuilt with a wooden ceiling and supports made from cumin laurel, a tree native to Colombia that is now endangered.\n\nThe **Museo de Arte de Pereira** (Av. Las Am\u00e9ricas No. 19-88, tel. 6\/317-2828, www.museodeartedepereira.com, 9am-noon and 2pm-6pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-5pm Sat.-Sun., free) is one of the best art museums in the region, and deserving of a visit. It features temporary exhibitions of contemporary Latin American artists. It's south of downtown.\n\nIn the **Parque Olaya Herrera** (between Cras. 13-14 and Clls. 19-23) is the well-preserved **Antigua Estaci\u00f3n del Tren,** a photogenic old train station. There is a Megabus station in the park, and the park is a nice place for a morning jog.\n\nThe **Zool\u00f3gico Mateca\u00f1a** (Av. 30 de Agosto, tel. 6\/314-2636, www.zoopereira.org, 9am-6pm daily, COP$15,000), located within screeching, howling, and roaring distance of the airport, has an extensive section on Colombian animals. It's better than many zoos in Colombia; however, big cats, including Colombian jaguars, have little space to move about.\n\nThe **Viaducto C\u00e9sar Gav\u00edria Trujillo** is a modern cable bridge that connects Pereira with its industrial neighbor of Dosquebradas. It's a point of reference and source of city pride. It is named for former president C\u00e9sar Gav\u00edria, who is from Pereira and who served as president during the early 1990s.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nFor bike tours and rentals, contact **Retro Ciclas** (cell tel. 310\/540-7327 or 312\/437-4882, www.mtbtourscolombia.com). One of the more popular tours is a trip to the village of Estaci\u00f3n Pereira (COP$86,000), where in the town you'll take two different and exciting means of transportation: a _brujita,_ a motorcycle-powered cart that zooms along old train tracks, and later a _garrucha,_ which is a gondola-like metallic basket that transports passengers over the R\u00edo Cauca. Another trip on offer is along the R\u00edo Ot\u00fan (COP$80,000) to the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nIn town, it's best to stay in the Circunvalar area. The Centro has options, but prices are comparable to hotels on the Circunvalar, where you can walk without much concern at night and there are plenty of restaurants and nightlife spots nearby.\n\nThe M **Kolibr\u00ed Hostel** (Cl. No. 16-35, tel. 6\/331-3955, cell tel. 321\/646-9275, www.kolibrihostel.com, COP$22,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d) is a welcome newcomer to Pereira, filling a void of budget accommodations for international clientele near the Circunvalar. In addition to a mix of private rooms and dorms, Kolibr\u00ed has two long-stay apartments. It's run by a Dutch-Colombian couple who have traveled extensively in the area to some off-the-map places, and they offer tours, such as to the village of Estaci\u00f3n Pereira, to the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya, and an interesting orchid tour. Bars, restaurants, and malls are within walking distance from the hostel. Great breakfasts are offered on the deck, where they also have a barbecue grill.\n\nThe **Hotel Movich** (Cra. 13 No. 15-73, tel. 6\/311-3300, COP$249,000 d) is a good option if you like comfort, don't want any surprises, and want the conveniences that the Circunvalar offers. It's across the street from the Iglesia de Carmen. The pool (usually open until 9pm) and gym (open 24 hours) are quite nice. A massive breakfast buffet is included in the room rate.\n\nA restful sleep is assured at the **Hotel Don Alfonso** (Cra. 13 No. 12-37, tel. 6\/333-0909, www.donalfonsohotel.com, COP$240,000 d), a small boutique-style hotel on the main nightlife and shopping drag of the Avenida Circunvalar. It has 11 comfortable air-conditioned rooms, each with inviting beds covered by quilts.\n\n###### **HACIENDAS**\n\nWithin minutes of the Pereira's bright lights are some gorgeous and luxurious hacienda hotels. Some of them are popular places for special events, such as weddings on the weekend and corporate seminars during the week.\n\n**Hacienda Malabar** (Km. 7 V\u00eda a Cerritos, Entrada 6, tel. 6\/337-9206, www.hotelmalabar.com, COP$257,500 d) is an authentic hacienda with seven rooms, ample gardens to wander, and a pool. The wooden ceilings with their geometric designs and tile floors with Spanish Mudejar designs throughout the house are spectacular.\n\nM **Villa Martha** (Km. 9 V\u00eda a Marsella, 1 km from the main road, tel. 6\/322-9994, cell tel. 310\/421-5920, www.fincavillamartha.com, COP$75,000 pp with meals) offers the most affordable coffee farm experience. Here you can kick back and relax, take a dip in a pool that has \"Villa Martha\" written on the bottom, stroll the countryside, and take a tour of the coffee plantation. It's not luxurious, but the warm hospitality of the _finca_ (farm) owners, Martha and her husband, Rafael, more than compensates. Rooms by the pool are nicer. Villa Martha doesn't allow non-guests to visit for the day.\n\nM **Castilla Casa de Huespedes** (Km. 10 V\u00eda a Cerritos, tel. 6\/337-9045, cell tel. 315\/499-9545, www.haciendacastilla.com, COP$281,000 d), built in the 19th century, is set amid fruit trees and has a pool to boot. The nine rooms are lovely, and staff are friendly. Once there, at this serene spot in the countryside, you'll probably not even be aware of the fact that a fried chicken restaurant is just around the corner along the highway! They make their own jam here, and a majestic cedar tree near the pool area looks even more regal when illuminated at night.\n\nThe **Hacienda San Jos\u00e9** (Km. 4 V\u00eda Pereira-Cerritos, Entrada 16, Cadena El Tigre, tel. 6\/313-2612, www.haciendahotelsanjose.com, COP$275,000-310,000 d) was built in 1888 and has been in the Jaramillo family for generations. It's in the countryside, and the entrance to it, lined with palms, is a dramatic one. The home is spectacular, and the lovely wooden floors make a satisfying creak when you step on the planks. Service is impeccable and the restaurant, excellent. The grounds make for a nice late afternoon stroll, and you can admire an enormous and regal old _sam\u00e1n_ tree, well into its second century of life, as you dine alfresco. Living Trips (www.livingtrips.com) manages this hotel, and they can arrange day trip excursions for you. The restaurant is open to the public, and members of the public can also come for the day and enjoy the pool. It is almost always booked on weekends and during holidays. This gorgeous hacienda is a particularly popular place for weddings on weekends. The Mateca\u00f1a airport is only 10 minutes away.\n\nLuxury hotel **Sazagua** (Km. 7 V\u00eda Cerritos, Entrada 4, tel. 6\/337-9895, www.sazagua.com, COP$446,000 d) is not technically a hacienda, as it is located in a country club type environment. Here attention to detail reigns. The 10 rooms are impeccable, the common space is inviting, the gardens are perfectly manicured (surrounded by elegant heliconia flowers, birds, and the occasional iguana), and you can lounge by the pool or enjoy a massage at the spa. Nonguests can enjoy the spa facilities for a separate charge. It's not a traditional hacienda, but it sure feels good there.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nPereira makes it easy for visitors, gastronomically speaking. All the top restaurants are in more or less the same area, along and nearby the Avenida Circunvalar.\n\n**Mama Flor** (Cl. 11 No. 15-12, tel. 6\/335-4713, noon-10pm Mon.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun., COP$15,000) is a cute joint catering to meat-lovers with mostly open-air seating and old photographs of Pereira decorating the walls. It's mostly a lunch place. Grilled beef options like tri-tip (in Colombia called _punta de anca_ ) are menu favorites.\n\nThe specialty at somewhat swanky **Mediterraneo** (Av. Circunvalar No. 4-47, tel. 6\/331-0397, noon-2am Mon.-Thurs., noon-3am Sat., noon-1am Sun., COP$25,000) is seafood, but the menu is varied. The lighting is a little on the dark side, but the restaurant is all open-air.\n\n**Ambar Diego Panesso** (Cra. 17 No. 9-50, tel. 6\/344-7444, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000) serves up elaborate dishes like portobello mushrooms stuffed with apple puree and bacon bits to the Pereira elite. While vegetarian dishes are mostly nonexistent on the menu, the kitchen will gladly take on the challenge and whip up a pasta dish for you. It's in the upscale Pinares neighborhood. Another restaurant on the elegant side is **El Mirador** (Av. Circunvalar at Cl. 4, Colina, tel. 6\/331-2141, noon-2am Mon.-Sat., COP$30,000), a steakhouse that has an incredible view of the city. There's an extensive list of Argentinian wines.\n\nThe menu at **El Meson Espa\u00f1ol** (Cl. 14 No. 25-57, tel. 6\/321-5636, noon-3pm and 7pm-midnight daily, COP$22,000) runs the gamut from paellas (the house specialty) to pad Thai.\n\nDine under a giant Italian flag at the open-air **Portobello** (Cra. 15 No. 11-55, tel. 6\/325-0802, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Wed., noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm Thurs.-Sat., noon-9pm Sun., COP$25,000), the top address for pasta and other Italian favorites, where pizzas are cooked in a wood-burning oven.\n\n**Diego Parrilla** (Cl. 10B No. 15-09, tel. 6\/333-8503, cell tel. 317\/402-1980, noon-11pm Mon.-Sat daily, COP$30,000) is a popular steakhouse. It's in the pleasant Los Alpes area, not far from the Circunvalar.\n\nFor a hearty Colombian meal, like a big bowl of _ajiaco_ (a filling potato-based stew), or to hang out and have a couple of beers at night, **La Ruana** (Av. Circunvalar No. 12-08, tel. 6\/325-0115, 8am-2am Mon.-Sat., 8am-10pm Sun., COP$20,000) is the place to go on the Avenida Circunvalar.\n\n**Bermeo** (tel. 6\/333-0909, noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm daily, COP$25,000), which specializes in international cuisine, adjoins Hotel Don Alfonso. While they don't have much in the way of veggie options, they can accommodate vegetarians.\n\nTwo always reliable and reasonably priced Colombian chain restaurants that have healthy options on their menus hold prime space in the **Centro Comercial Parque Arboleda** (Circunvalar No. 5-20, www.parquearboleda.com). **Archie's** (tel. 6\/317-0600, www.archiespizza.com, 8am-11pm daily, COP$22,000) has great pizzas (try the thin-crust _pizzas r\u00fasticas_ ) and salads. Its location on the top floor, with a breezy terrace, is a cool one. They also deliver. Directly below on the ground floor, meals at **Crepes & Waffles** (tel. 6\/331-5189, www.crepesywaffles.com.co, noon-9pm Sun.-Wed., noon-10pm Thurs.-Sat., COP$25,000) serves both savory and sweet cr\u00eapes, including many vegetarian options. Desserts, such as mini-waffles with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream, are hard to resist.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nIn Pereira, you can call 123 for any type of emergency.\n\nThere is a small **tourist information booth** in the lobby of the Centro Cultural Lucy Tejada (Cl. 10 No. 16-60, tel. 6\/311-6544, www.pereiraculturayturismo.gov.co, 8am-noon and 2pm-6:30pm Mon.-Fri.).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nExcellent bus connections are available between Pereira and most major cities. The **Terminal de Transportes de Pereira** (Cl. 17 No. 23-157, tel. 6\/315-2323, www.terminaldepereira.com) is relatively close to the Avenida Circunvalar area. It is clean.\n\nThe articulated bus rapid transit system, the **Megabus** (tel. 6\/335-1010), has three routes and connects with 28 intra-city buses. It's not terribly convenient for those staying near the Avenida Circunvalar, unfortunately.\n\nThe **Aeropuerto Mateca\u00f1a** (Av. 30 de Agosto, tel. 6\/314-2765) is pint-sized, and about a 10-minute ride east from the city. It's quite convenient for those planning on staying at one of the several haciendas in that area. The two largest Colombian airliners, **Avianca** (Av. Circunvalar No. 8B-23, tel. 6\/333-0990, www.avianca.com, 8am-1pm and 2:30pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat.) and **LAN** (Cl. 19 No. 8-34, Local 102, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) serve Pereira. Panamanian-based **Copa** (Av. Circunvalar No. 8B-51, Edificio Bancafe, Local 103, Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-011-2600, www.copaair.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-noon Sat.) has nonstop flights to Panama City five days a week. Budget **Viva Colombia** (www.vivacolombia.co) flies nonstop between Pereira and the Caribbean cities of Cartagena (4 weekly flights) and Santa Marta (3 weekly flights).\n\nFor those looking to rent a car, **Hertz** (airport tel. 6\/314-2678, www.hertz.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat.) has an office at the airport.\n\n#### **VALLE DEL R\u00cdO OT\u00daN**\n\nA visit to the Valle del R\u00edo Ot\u00fan (R\u00edo Ot\u00fan Valley) between Pereira and the Laguna del Ot\u00fan is an interesting, highly enjoyable, and easy to organize introduction to Andean cloud forests. There are many possibilities for visiting the valley, from day trips out of Pereira to multi-day excursions, with very pleasant lodging facilities in the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya and Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed.\n\nThe R\u00edo Ot\u00fan flows 78 kilometers (48 miles) from the Laguna del Ot\u00fan to the R\u00edo Cauca and is the main source of water for Pereira. The conservation of the upper segment of the river, from Pereira to the Laguna del Ot\u00fan, has been a success story, thanks to reforestation land protection efforts.\n\n###### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nThe Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya is 14.4 kilometers (9 miles) southeast of Pereira along the R\u00edo Ot\u00fan. The Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed is 6.6 kilometers (4 miles) upriver.\n\nYou can do day trips out of Pereira to either, but don't try to do both in one day. Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya is easily accessible by public transportation, and the main nature trails can be visited in one day. However, getting to Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed involves public transportation and a two-hour hike. It can be visited on a long day trip but it is much preferable to spend a night or two at the comfortable Pastora visitor center in the midst of the Andean forest. You can combine a visit to both, visiting Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya and then spending a day or two in Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed.\n\nDecember and July-August are drier months, and considered the best time for a hike to the Laguna del Ot\u00fan. However, during mid-December through mid-January and Semana Santa (Holy Week) in March or April the trails can be packed with hikers, as this is high season for Colombians. The hike through Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed to the Laguna del Ot\u00fan is very popular then, and there can be over a hundred hikers camping each night at that mountain lake.\n\nthe R\u00edo Ot\u00fan\n\n##### **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya**\n\nThe **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya** (Km. 4.5 V\u00eda Florida-El Cedral, Vereda La Suiza, cell tel. 313\/695-4305, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, COP$5,000) covers 489 hectares (1,208 acres) of highly biodiverse Andean tropical forest at altitudes between 1,750 and 2,250 meters (5,740 and 7,380 feet). The vegetation is exuberant, and there are animal-viewing opportunities. The park is home to more than 200 species of birds, including endangered multicolored tanagers and the large _pava caucana_ (Cauca guan). And, although you may not see them, you'll definitely hear the _mono aulladores_ (howler monkeys). They make quite a brouhaha.\n\nThe main activities at the park are guided walks along three nature paths led by knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides from a local community ecotourism organization, the **Asociaci\u00f3n Comunitaria Yarumo Blanco** (cell tel. 312\/200-7711, yarumoblanco2009@hotmail.com). The tours cost COP$35,000 for one path, COP$70,000 for two, and COP$80,000 for all three (per group of any size). Visitors can also rent mountain bikes (COP$10,000 all day) and ride along the main road bordering the crystalline R\u00edo Ot\u00fan.\n\nThe visitors center, also run by the association, offers simple but comfortable lodging (COP$32,000-42,000 pp) and meals (COP$6,000-9,000).\n\nTo get to Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya from Pereira, take a bus operated by **Transportes Florida** (tel. 6\/331-0488, COP$4,000, 90 mins.) from Calle 12 and Carrera 9 in Pereira. On weekdays, the bus departs at 7am, 9am, and 3pm. On weekends there is an additional bus at noon. The buses return from Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya at approximately 9:30am, 11:30am, and 5:30pm.\n\n##### **Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed**\n\nThe **Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed** is 6.6 kilometers (4 miles) southwest of Santuario Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya. This regional park covers an area of 3,986 hectares (9,850 acres) of Andean tropical forest at altitudes between 1,800 and 2,600 meters (5,900 and 8,500 feet). The main path follows the R\u00edo Ot\u00fan through lush cloud forests, with waterfalls feeding into the river. The park is a wonderful place to view nature, with more than 185 species of birds.\n\nThe starting point of the main path is **El Cedral,** a small _vereda_ (settlement) southwest of Santuario Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya. The path is a well-trod one (by humans and horses) and is often muddy and rocky. It is best to take rubber or waterproof boots. It takes about 2.5 hours to climb to the main La Pastora visitors center, six kilometers from El Cedral.\n\nIf you are on a day trip from Pereira, you can have lunch at the visitors center (COP$9,000 pp) and set off on one of three nature hikes before returning to El Cedral to catch the last bus at 5pm. Even better, you can spend a night or two in the clean and very cozy dormitory-style rooms (COP$22,000 pp). As the temperature begins to drop in the late afternoon, you can sit by the lodge's fireplace and sip hot chocolate and eat cheese (as is the custom in Colombia). There is no electricity, making a stay at La Pastora truly restful. To make a reservation, contact the ecotourism organization **Fecomar** (cell tel. 312\/200-7711, fecomar.anp@hotmail.com, www.fecomar.com.co). They can arrange horses, if you would rather ride than hike up.\n\nPast La Pastora, the path continues 13 kilometers to the **Laguna del Ot\u00fan** in the **Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados.**\n\nTo get to El Cedral take the **Transportes Florida** bus (tel. 6\/331-0488, COP$5,000, 2 hrs.) from Calle 12 and Carrera 9 in Pereira. On weekdays, the bus departs at 7am, 9am, and 3pm. On weekends there is an additional bus at noon. The buses return from Santuario Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya at approximately at 9am, 11am, and 5pm.\n\n#### **SANTA ROSA DE CABAL**\n\nThe dusty town of Santa Rosa de Cabal means one thing to most Colombians: _termales_ (hot springs). To get to the most well-known springs you'll have to pass through Santa Rosa de Cabal. In town, at the **Parque las Araucarias** (between Cras. 14-15 and Clls. 12-13), the main square, there are juices to be drank, _chorizo santarosano_ sausages to be eaten (a specialty here), handicrafts to be bought, and people to be watched. The other point of interest is the **Santuario La Milagrosa** (Cl. 7 at Cra. 14, tel. 6\/368-5201 or 6\/368-5168), a generally drab modern church with a fantastic stained glass window.\n\n##### **Hot Springs**\n\nThere are two _termales_ (hot springs) near Santa Rosa de Cabal: **Termales de Santa Rosa de Cabal** (Km. 9 V\u00eda Termales, tel. 6\/364-5500, www.termales.com.co, 9am-11:30pm daily, COP$14,000-31,000) and **Termales San Vicente** (18 km east of Santa Rosa de Cabal, tel. 6\/333-3433, www.sanvicente.com.co, 8am-midnight daily, COP$19,000-60,000). Both are wildly popular with Colombian families on weekends and holidays, and are quieter during the week. Both springs offer transportation from Pereira, and entry fees drop during the week.\n\nBuilt in 1945, the Termales de Santa Rosa de Cabal hot springs are closer to Santa Rosa de Cabal. There are two areas in the complex. The first area, on the left as you enter the park, was recently built and is called the **Termales Balneario.** These consist of three large pools for adults and one for children. This area is the most popular for day-trip visitors.\n\nThe oldest part of the complex, called **Termales de Hotel** (hours vary Mon.-Fri., COP$24,000), is farther on at the base of some spectacular waterfalls of cool and pure mountain waters. The highest waterfall drops some 175 meters (575 feet). If you choose to stay the night, there are three options. **La Caba\u00f1a** (COP$183,000 pp, meals incl.) is the newest and most comfortable place to stay and has 17 rooms. La Caba\u00f1a guests are allowed entry to the Termales Balneario, the Termales de Hotel, and their own small private pool. The advantage of staying at one of the hotels is that you can enjoy full use of the pools from 6am on, before the day-trip crowd begins arriving at 9am.\n\nAt both Termales Balneario and Termales de Hotel, there are additional activities on offer, such as a guided nature walk (COP$14,000) to some waterfalls\u2014wear shoes with traction for this, the path is slippery\u2014and spa treatments such as massages (COP$60,000, 45 mins.) and other services in a shabby-looking spa area.\n\nThe San Vicente hot springs are more remote, but the scenery of rolling hills, mountains in the distance, and farms is enchanting. Particularly scenic are the _pozos de amor,_ small natural pools the size of whirlpools that perfectly fit two. The all-inclusive _pasadia_ (day pass) option with transportation costs COP$60,000. Buses leave Pereira at 8am, returning at 5pm. San Vicente also offers accommodations, with cabins and a small hotel. A cabin for two people costs COP$173,000 per person without meals.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nThe bucolic countryside outside of Santa Rosa is home to many roadside, family-style restaurants. The best two are run by the same owner. On the road towards the Termales de Santa Rosa, **Mamatina** (Km. 1 V\u00eda Termales, La Leona, tel. 6\/363-4899, 9am-10pm daily, COP$18,000) specializes in trout covered with sausage, _sancocho_ (a meaty stew), and grilled meats. They can also accommodate vegetarians, usually a nutritious meal of beans and rice. Next door to the restaurant is their hotel by the same name (tel. 6\/363-4899), which offers clean and comfortable rooms ranging in price from COP$40,000 per person to COP$140,000 for the suite with a hot tub. Horseback riding and walks through the countryside can be arranged here.\n\nOn the way towards Termales de San Vicente is their other, newer hotel. The M **Hospedaje Don Lolo** (Km. 5 V\u00eda Termales San Vicente, cell tel. 316\/698-6797, hospedajedonlol@gmail.com, COP$50,000 pp d) is a hotel on a farm with cows, pigs, fish, horses, and dogs. If you're interested, you can lend a hand milking a cow or two. Some walks through the countryside are options as well, such as to an old Indian cemetery, to a big waterfall, and through jungle to see birds and butterflies. The countryside views and fresh air are delightful. If you're lucky, you may be able to see the Nevado del Ruiz in the distance in the early morning. The **Don Lolo** (Km. 5 V\u00eda Termales San Vicente, cell tel. 316\/698-6797) restaurant just down the road has a lot of personality and is a popular stopping off point going to or returning from the Termales de San Vicente.\n\n#### **BELALC\u00c1ZAR**\n\nThe coffee and plantain town of Belalc\u00e1zar rests impossibly on a ridge, with fantastic views of the Valle de Cauca on one side and the Valle del R\u00edo Risaralda on the other. Besides the incredible views, Belalc\u00e1zar, an agricultural town off the tourist map, offers the visitor pure coffee region authenticity. Belalc\u00e1zar has a distinct architecture, with its houses covered with colorful zinc sheets to protect against strong winds.\n\nsunny street in Belalc\u00e1zar\n\nBuilt in 1954 in hopes of preventing further bloodshed during the bloody Violencia period, the 45.5-meter-high (149-foot-high) **Monumento a Cristo Rey** (Km. 1 V\u00eda Pereira-Belalc\u00e1zar, COP$3,000) has become the symbol of this town. To get to the top of the statue of Jesus, you'll have to climb 154 steps. From atop, on a clear day, you can see six Colombian departments: Caldas, Risaralda, Quind\u00edo, Valle del Cauca, Tolima, and Choc\u00f3; and both Central and Occidental mountain ranges. The other attraction in town is the **Eco Parque La Estampilla hike** (1.5 km, open daylight hours, free). It's on the northeast side of town, a 10-minute walk from the **Parque Bol\u00edvar** (Clls. 15-16 and Cras. 4-5), in which you can wander a winding path through forests of _guadua_ (bamboo).\n\nThe best time to check out Belalc\u00e1zar life at its most vibrant is on market day\u2014Saturday\u2014when farmers from the countryside converge into town to sell coffee beans, plantains, pineapples, and other crops. On this day the Parque Bol\u00edvar buzzes with activity as Jeep Willys, packed with farmers and market-goers, come and go all day long. It's quite a carnival atmosphere.\n\nThe best hotel in town is the **Hotel Balc\u00f3n Colonial** (Cra. 4A No. 12-10, tel. 6\/860-2433, COP$35,000 d). It's clean, cool, and basic, having just nine rooms.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nIt is 45 kilometers (29 miles) from Pereira to Belalc\u00e1zar. Buses leave from the Pereira Terminal de Transportes (Cl. 17 No. 23-157, Pereira, tel. 6\/315-2323). **Flota Occidental** (tel. 6\/321-1655) is the bus company that serves Belalc\u00e1zar (COP$6,000, 1.5 hrs.).\n\n#### **SANTUARIO**\n\nIt's worth the arduous journey to this remote village on a mountaintop in the Cordillera Occidental (Western Mountains) just to take a photo of its famous **Calle Real,** dotted with stately Paisa houses that have been done up in a rainbow of colors. Calle Real is one of the most photographed streets in Colombia.\n\nOn Saturdays, campesinos come into town to sell their coffee, cacao, sugarcane, and other crops. There is so much activity on market day in the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (between Clls. 6-7 and Cras. 5-6) that you'll be tempted to find a front row seat in a caf\u00e9 and take it all in: produce and coffee being unloaded and loaded, Jeep Willys filled with standing-room-only passengers arriving and departing, farmers drinking beer in taverns, women selling sweets in the park, and children being children. Many farmers, money in hand, whoop it up in town and stay the night.\n\nAlthough Santuario is indeed picture-perfect, it's far better to continue on to the **Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1** than to spend the night in Santuario, even if you are not interested in doing any hiking or trekking. Hotels in town are not recommended.\n\nThere is regular bus transportation from the Terminal de Transportes de Pereira (Cl. 17 No. 23-157, Pereira, tel. 6\/315-2323) to Santuario. **Flota Occidental** (tel. 6\/321-1655) makes this two-hour trip (COP$6,000) three times a day: 6:45am, noon, and 5:20pm.\n\n#### **PARQUE MUNICIPAL NATURAL PLANES DE SAN RAFAEL**\n\nLocated in the remote, little visited Cordillera Occidental (Western Mountains), the Tatam\u00e1 Massif contains one of the world's few remaining pristine _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors). The topography of the mountain range is very broken, especially the jagged **Cerro Tatam\u00e1** (4,250 meters\/13,945 feet), which is the highest point in the Cordillera Occidental. The range is highly biodiverse, with an estimated 564 species of orchids and 402 species of birds. It is also home to pumas, jaguars, and _osos anteojos,_ the only breed of bear in Colombia. The central part of the massif is protected by the 15,900-hectare (39,300-acre) Parque Natural Nacional Tatam\u00e1.\n\nAccess to Tatam\u00e1 is through the Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael, which acts as a buffer zone on the eastern side of Tatam\u00e1 near the town of Santuario, but which is an attraction in itself.\n\nThe **Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael** (10 km from Santuario, cell tel 311\/719-1717, <http:\/\/planesdesanrafael.blogspot.com>) covers an area of 11,796 hectares (29,149 acres) of cloud forest between the altitudes of 2,000 and 2,600 meters, with significant patches of primary growth. The main activities are nature walks conducted by friendly and knowledgeable guides of a local community organization, the **Asociaci\u00f3n de Gu\u00edas e Interpretes Ambientales (GAIA),** many of whom got their start through participation in groups of youth bird-watchers.\n\nWithin the park there are four main paths. The shortest, called the **Lluvia de Semillas** (Rainfall of Seeds), allows visitors to see a forest in recuperation. It is a one-kilometer (0.6-mile) loop through land that was once used for cattle grazing and, over the past 15 years, has been slowly returning to a forest. The 9.6-kilometer (6-mile) round-trip **Cascadas** trail is a strenuous path to the border of the Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1 at an elevation of 2,600 meters. It crisscrosses the R\u00edo San Rafael and culminates at a group of waterfalls. Along the way you can see a great variety of birds and large patches of primary forest. The hike takes 3.5 hours up and 2.5 hours down. The 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) **Quebrada Risaralda** hike takes six hours and can be combined into a loop with the Cascadas hike. Finally, the **Laguna Encantada** path is a nine-kilometer (5.5-mile) circuit that takes five hours and is especially good for bird-watching, with the possibility of viewing many hummingbirds. The best time for these hikes is early in the morning. Costs for these excursions are COP$25,000-35,000 per group of any size.\n\n##### **Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1**\n\nFrom Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael it is also possible to organize excursions into the **Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1** (tel. 6\/368-7964, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co), located at the highest point of the Cordillera Occidental between the departments of Choc\u00f3, Risaralda, and Valle del Cauca. Though it is not officially open to ecotourism, the folks at GAIA can organize an excursion that requires at least two nights of camping. The first day involves a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile), eight-hour hike to a campground at 3,200 meters. The following day you explore the upper reaches of the Tatam\u00e1, with the unusual shrub-covered _p\u00e1ramo_ (high tropical mountain ecosystem), craggy outcrops, and deep gorges. From the top you can see the Choc\u00f3 lowlands. You return by nightfall to camp and return to Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael on the following day.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThe clean, comfortable, and quite cozy lodge (COP$20,000 pp) at the Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael visitors center accommodates 40 people. Meals (COP$6,000-9,000) are nothing short of delicious. To reserve lodging, contact the ecotourism organization **FECOMAR** (cell tel. 312\/200-7711, fecomar.anp@hotmail.com, www.fecomar.com.co) or call the park administrator (cell tel. 311\/719-1717).\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nTo get to the Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael visitors center and lodge, pick up one of the Jeeps that leave from the main square in Santuario each day at 7am and 3pm. A taxi can also take you for COP$20,000.\n\n#### **IBAGU\u00c9**\n\nIbagu\u00e9 (pop. 593,000) is the capital city of the Tolima department. It is a hot city of traffic jams that does not seduce many travelers. It is, however, a city of music and hosts several music festivals each year. It's hard to believe, but just to the west of Ibagu\u00e9, a city in one of the most important tropical-fruit-producing regions in Colombia, looms the Nevado del Tolima, a snowcapped volcano in the eastern side of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados. Ibagu\u00e9 is a great launch pad for the challenge of ascending to that mountain.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nShould you have some time to spend in Ibagu\u00e9, a handful of sights are worth taking a look. Shade is not an issue at the **Plaza de Bol\u00edvar** (between Cras. 2-3 and Clls. 9-10): It's full of huge, centuries-old trees.\n\nStaff at the tourist kiosk in the plaza in front of the **Catedral Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n** (Cl. 10 No. 1-129, tel. 8\/263-3451, 7am-noon and 2:30pm-7:30pm daily) can suggest hiking excursions and tips on trekking up to the Nevado del Tolima. The **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cra. 3A No. 11-26, tel. 8\/263-0721, 8:30am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8:30am-1pm Sat., free) always has an exhibit in its one exhibition hall on the second floor. It's just off of **Calle Peatonal** (Cra. 3 between Clls. 10-15), which is refreshingly free from cars and motorbikes.\n\nThe **Conservatorio del Tolima** (Cra. 1 between Clls. 9-10, tel. 8\/826-1852, www.conservatoriodeltolima.edu.co, open only for concerts) is perhaps Ibagu\u00e9's claim to fame and the reason it calls itself the \"Capital Musical de Colombia.\" A few bars from the Colombian national anthem are painted on the exterior of the yellow republican-era building.\n\nMusic festivals take place in the city year-round, including the **Festival Nacional de la Musica Colombiana** (www.fundacionmusicaldecolombia.com, Mar.), the **Festival de Jazz** (May), and the **Festival Folcl\u00f3rico Colombiano** (www.festivalfolclorico.com, June or July).\n\nThe **Museo de Arte del Tolima** (Cra. 7 No. 5-93, tel. 8\/273-2840, www.museodeartedeltolima.org, 10am-6pm daily, COP$3,000) is a small museum with a permanent collection and temporary exhibition space dedicated to contemporary Colombian artists. A leafy park in this pleasant part of town is the **Parque Centenario** (Cra. 6 between Clls. 8-10). Along with usual park goings-on, cultural events are often held in an amphitheater.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nThe **Hotel Ambeima** (Cra. 3 No. 13-32, tel. 8\/263-4300, www.hotelambeima.com, COP$89,000 d) is downtown on the Calle Peatonal and is a decent midrange choice. The best hotel in town is the **Hotel Estelar Altamira** (Cra. 1A No. 45-50, tel. 8\/266-6111, COP$203,000 d). There are no hostels that cater to international backpackers.\n\nThe trendy dining and drinking spot in Ibagu\u00e9 is 15 stories high, with a superb bird's-eye view of the city and the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados. **Altavista** (Cra. 2 at Cl. 11, tel. 8\/277-1381, noon-midnight Mon.-Wed., noon-3am Thurs.-Sat., noon-4pm Sun., COP$25,000) has a little bit of everything: Asian-inspired dishes, tapas, and even several vegetarian options. The decor and atmosphere are all South Beach. As the sun slips behind the mountains in the distance, bartenders swing into full motion as Altavista turns into a _play_ (fashionable) nightclub scene.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThe **Terminal de Transportes** (Cra. 2 No. 20-86, tel. 8\/261-8122, www.terminalibague.com) is in a rough part of town, so you should take a cab to and from the bus station. For the most part, Ibagu\u00e9 is not a walkable city, except in the center of town. From the Ibagu\u00e9 airport, **Aeropuerto Nacional Perales** (V\u00eda al Aeropuerto, tel. 8\/267-6096), there are nonstop flights to Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn.\n\n## **CALI AND SOUTHWEST COLOMBIA**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nCali\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nSHOPPING\n\nSPORTS AND RECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE\n\nGETTING AROUND\n\nRESERVA NATURAL ANAHUAC\n\nHACIENDA PARA\u00cdSO AND MUSEO DE LA CA\u00d1A DE AZ\u00daCAR\n\nBuga\n\nSIGHTS\n\nACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD\n\nGETTING THERE\n\nVICINITY OF BUGA\n\nROLDANILLO\n\nPasto\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nSHOPPING\n\nRECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nM LAGUNA LA COCHA\n\nM LAGUNA VERDE\n\nVOLC\u00c1N CUMBAL\n\nCAF\u00c9 DE ALB\u00c1N\n\nIPIALES\n\nPopay\u00e1n\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nRECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nVICINITY OF POPAY\u00c1N\n\nM TIERRADENTRO\n\nM SAN AGUST\u00cdN\n\nThe distances between the cities in the southwest of Colombia are not great as the crow (or in this case, the condor) flies. However, Cali, Popay\u00e1n, Pasto, and their environs are worlds apart. Cali is a city that melds its colonial past with visions of a modern future. In Pasto, the largest city in the Nari\u00f1o department, Volc\u00e1n Galeras looms in the distance. Popay\u00e1n is the White City, historic home of presidents and poets.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Salsa in Cali:** There is no better place to practice your moves than at one of Cali's countless _salsatecas_ (salsa clubs). But even if you have two left feet, you can still get into the spirit by taking in a salsa show, going to Salsa al Parque, or enjoying the one-of-a-kind atmosphere at an old-school salsa bar (click here).\n\nM **Laguna La Cocha:** Take a boat ride from the colorful fishing village of Encano to the tiny tropical rainforest Isla de la Corota, home to Colombia's smallest national park (click here).\n\nM **Laguna Verde:** The emerald-green waters of this crater lake in the Nudo de los Pastos mountains on the border with Ecuador are a fantastic sight to behold (click here).\n\nM **_Centro Hist\u00f3rico_ in Popay\u00e1n:** Explore volcanoes, coffee farms, indigenous markets, or hot springs by day, but save some energy and time to amble the streets of the White City's beautiful historic center after the sun goes down (click here).\n\nM **Tierradentro:** Dozens of elaborate burial chambers lie beneath the hilltops in this important archaeological site in Cauca (click here).\n\nM **San Agust\u00edn:** A visit to this incredible archaeological site, coupled with nature hikes or rafting adventures, is a highlight of any visit to Colombia. This is Colombia's Easter Island (click here).\n\nIn Cali, Colombia's third largest city, vestiges of the colonial past endure in the historic center. Its centerpiece is the superbly maintained 16th-century Iglesia La Merced. But Cali is best known for its warm people and its hot salsa dancing. Across the city, visitors will see Cale\u00f1os at play: hanging out in the Parque San Antonio, strolling along La Loma de la Cruz artisan market, and dancing at Salsa al Parque, a free outdoor salsa party that's held once a month. This is the place to take a salsa lesson or two, practice your fancy footwork on the dance floor, or settle back in a booth at a popular _salsateca,_ enjoying the music and one-of-a-kind atmosphere.\n\nThe Valle de Cauca, just a couple hours' ride from the departmental capital, offers some unsung destinations. As you set off from the city, the flat countryside is dominated by fields of sugarcane, interrupted only by occasional _sam\u00e1n_ trees, which look like they belong in Africa. Every once in a while, a verdant island stands out in the middle of the cane fields\u2014a hacienda, or country estate. Buga, a Catholic pilgrimage site, is perfectly situated near the weekend playground of Lagos Calima. In the north of the department is the sleepy town of Roldanillo, which was put on the map thanks to its famous son, abstract expressionist artist Omar Rayo. For adventurous types, this cute town is about a different art: the art of flying. Each year hundreds catch a breeze as they paraglide over the valley.\n\nAlthough many travelers make a quick detour on their way to or from Ecuador to admire the neo-gothic gem of Las Lajas church, set impossibly in a narrow canyon near Ipiales, few spend the time to get to know the department of Nari\u00f1o. Yet it is here that every mountain you ascend, every river you traverse, and every turn you make reveals even more jaw-dropping scenery. Jagged mountains, turquoise lakes, and sleeping volcanoes provide dramatic backdrops to the neat patchwork of potato crops that sustain many families in this agricultural region. Volc\u00e1n Galeras is a sometimes ominous presence in Pasto's skyline, it doesn't stop revelers from living it up during the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in January. Not far from the city is Laguna La Cocha, with fishing communities of brightly colored clapboard houses and wooden fishing boats.\n\nUpstream along the R\u00edo Cauca from the Valle de Cauca is the \"White City\" of Popay\u00e1n, home to the Universidad del Cauca. Students fill the city's caf\u00e9s, bars, and its stately main plaza, the Parque Caldas. Nearby are several interesting day trips, from organic coffee farms to hot springs to indigenous markets. In the national park of Purac\u00e9, intrepid hikers trek to the rim of a snow-covered active volcano. Farther on are two of Colombia's most important and beautiful archaeological sites: Tierradentro, where dozens of ancient underground burial chambers are preserved, and San Agust\u00edn, where hundreds of well-preserved stone statues of deities and animals stand in silence.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nThree days is just enough time to get a feel for the Cali way. Try visiting the city over part of the weekend so that you can check out a salsa show or visit a _salsateca_ (salsa club). Other sights of interest in Valle de Cauca can be visited out of Cali or perhaps from Buga. Roldanillo makes a nice side trip between Cali and the Coffee Region near Armenia.\n\nIt's an easy trip between Cali and Popay\u00e1n, about three hours by minivan on a good road. If you'd like to check out sights near Popay\u00e1n, such as the Guambiano town of Silvia, or hike to the Purac\u00e9 volcano, plan for at least 3-4 days in the capital of Cauca. A circuit tour of the sights of Tierradentro, the Tatacoa desert, and San Agust\u00edn can be done out of Popay\u00e1n. For that you'll need five days.\n\nIt is often slow going on the Pan-American Highway between Ipiales, through Pasto, to Popay\u00e1n. (But the scenery? Simply incredible.) While Ipiales is not a great base for sightseeing, the larger city of Pasto is. You can happily spend a few days seeing the city and taking some day trips such as La Cocha or the Laguna Verde. The strenuous climb up Volc\u00e1n Cumbal takes planning but is worth it.\n\nSome of the big goings in the region are the Semana Santa processions in Popay\u00e1n (Easter week), the Feria de Cali (last week of December), and the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos (January 4-7) in Pasto.\n\n### **Cali**\n\nCali's relaxed place is evident everywhere you go in this diverse city of three million. It may be the infernal heat slowing everyone down, without regard to _tinto_ (coffee) intake. Here in the Valle del Cauca, where sugarcane fields go on forever, you're far removed from uptight Bogot\u00e1 and over-ambitious Medell\u00edn. In a swipe at those two cities, locals like to say that, _\"Cali es Cali y lo dem\u00e1s es loma_ \" (\"Cali is Cali but those other cities are just hills\").\n\nWhile the colonial churches of La Merced and San Antonio are some of the loveliest you will see in Colombia, Cali is not a city packed with must-see sights. Yet tourists keep falling in love with the \"Sultan of the Valley.\" Is it that late refreshing afternoon breeze? The people? Or is it the salsa?\n\nCali is, indeed, all about salsa. That's pretty clear once you hop in any cab in the city. The music is turned on, and there's an 80 percent chance you'll hear the driver singing along to the hypnotic rhythms of conga drums, bongos, and timbales. At the bus terminal, _muchachos_ working for the bus companie break into some fancy footwork as they wait for customers. In hotels, housekeeping staff walk the corridors cheerfully singing.\n\nCali is the world's salsa capital. Incorporating a little salsa into your visit to Cali is a necessity if you want to get to know this seductive city, its people, and their ways.\n\n##### **History**\n\nPresent-day Valle del Cauca was settled by the Calima people as early as 1200 BC. The first Europeans to arrive were soldiers under the command of Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar. This Spanish conquistador served under Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, but then decided to seek his own fame by conquering most of present-day Ecuador and southwestern Colombia. In 1536, he founded Santiago de Cali, slightly north of its current location. During the colonial period and most of the 19th century, Cali was a small agricultural settlement, surrounded by haciendas, with a significant slave population.\n\nThe construction of railway links spurred economic development and in the 20th century, Valle de Cauca became sugarcane country. Cali developed rapidly, becoming a center of manufacturing. In 1971, the city hosted the Pan-American Games. That was probably Cali's heyday, before it started a long process of decay.\n\nDuring the 1980s and 1990s, Cali became a global drug trafficking center and seat of the eponymous drug cartel. It is widely believed that Cali Cartel kingpins Gilberto and Miguel Rodr\u00edguez Orejuela provided key support to government authorities in their war against the Medell\u00edn Cartel, which ultimately resulted in the assassination of Pablo Escobar and breakup of his empire. For a time in the 1990s, the Cali Cartel ruled the global cocaine business unchallenged.\n\nAs a result of drug-related violence, Cali's civic leaders fled, taking investment and business elsewhere. During the 1990s and early 21st century, the city had a double scourge of urban violence and guerrilla intimidation. The FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) occupied much of the surrounding mountainous areas.\n\nCurrently Cali is living a renaissance of sorts, undertaking major infrastructure projects, such as the MIO mass transit system, and is beginning to attract new investments. And in 2013, Cali was the proud host of the World Games, an international sports competition.\n\n##### **Orientation**\n\nNearly all of the city's tourist attractions are located in the **Centro,** in three areas in particular: **La Merced, La Ermita,** and **Plaza Cayzedo\/Iglesia San Francisco.** You can visit all these areas on foot in one day. The Centro is brimming with activity during weekdays. Avoid the midday heat by planning your visit in the morning or late afternoon. Avoid lingering downtown after dark.\n\nthe towering palms of the Plaza Cayzedo\n\nInviting neighborhoods such as **San Antonio, Granada,** and **El Pe\u00f1on** may lack attractions but are a delight to get to know. Within a 10- to 15-minute cab ride from the Centro, these tree-lined barrios are filled with restaurants, shops, and hotels. Late-night activity on weekends tends to shift to northern areas (not far from Granada) such as Menga and Yumbo.\n\nYou may have difficulty figuring out the lay of the land in Cali, as it is not as straightforward as other cities in Colombia. The R\u00edo Cali (actually more of a stream), the Tres Cruces hill, the Torre de Cali, and the Intercontinental Cali are well-known points of reference.\n\n##### **Climate**\n\nThe average temperature in _caliente_ Cali is about 24\u00b0C (75\u00b0F); however, the average daily high is a sizzling 30\u00b0C (86\u00b0F). But 4:30pm-6:30pm, when the sun begins its descent over the western Cordillera and into the Pacific, the drop in temperature (to around 19\u00b0C\/66\u00b0F), softening of the sun's rays, and a gentle breeze combine to make the weather absolutely _delicioso._ In residential areas like San Antonio, the perfect temps are a magnet drawing people outside. Plan your day accordingly: Do all your necessary emailing and online time-wasting during the heat of the day or later at night, and make that late afternoon stroll an event.\n\n##### **Safety**\n\nIf you ask a taxi driver in Cali if a certain barrio (neighborhood) is _seguro_ (safe), you may get a response along the lines of, _\"\u00a1Es seguro que te roban!\"_ (\"It's sure that you'll be robbed!\"). But don't worry\u2014that's a common joke. Follow the general precautions of any large Colombian city, especially regarding the use of taxis and precautions to take in nightspots, and you'll be fine.\n\nEven though pickpockets are about, walking by day is fine in Centro (downtown), as it is always bustling with people. But be alert near sights such as Iglesia La Ermita. Walking within neighborhoods is generally safer than walking between them, such as between the Centro and Granada or San Antonio. MIO (the bus system) is a safe option.\n\nThere are community police stations (Centros de Atenci\u00f3n Inmediata or CAI) in every neighborhood and often in parks. There is a CAI in the Parque de San Antonio, not far from the church. The national toll-free hotline for any emergency is 123. The police have an additional number, 112.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\nAll the major historical and tourist sights in Cali are found in the Centro, or downtown. The best time to visit churches is during mass; otherwise there is a good chance they'll be closed.\n\n##### **La Merced Complex**\n\nOn June 25, 1536, the city of Santiago de Cali was founded by Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar. He changed his mind and moved the city shortly thereafter to its present location, and a mass was held to celebrate the foundation of the city. It was on this site that the **Iglesia La Merced** (Cra. 4 at Cl. 7, tel. 2\/889-2309, 6:30am-10am and 4pm-7pm daily, masses at 7am and 6pm Mon.-Sat., 9am and 6pm Sun.) was built, sometime around 1545. The oldest church in Cali, it is a lovely example of typical colonial construction of the time, with its thick, whitewashed walls. The church, in the shape of a cross, has a single nave with red wooden beams. The only extravagance to be seen is the golden baroque altar with a statue of the Virgen de las Mercedes, who is the patron saint of Cali. It stands out against the austerity of this house of worship.\n\nAdjacent to the church is the **Museo de Arte Colonial y Religioso La Merced** (Cra. 4 No. 6-117, tel. 2\/888-0646, cell tel. 312\/731-5948, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-2pm Sat., museocolonial.lamerced@gmail.com, COP$4,000 adults, COP$3,000 students, COP$2,000 children), a small museum containing Quite\u00f1o school paintings, silver objects, statues, and religious items from the colonial period. Guides, usually college students, will be happy to show you around for a small fee. The museum is located in the church's chapels of the Virgen de la Merced and Virgen de los Remedios.\n\nThe well-done **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico La Merced** (Cra. 4 No. 6-59, tel. 2\/885-4665, 9am-1pm and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat., museolamerced@une.net.co, COP$4,000 adults, COP$2,000 children) is housed in part of the Augustinian convent and has two exhibition rooms highlighting ceramics from native cultures of the region: Tolima, Quimbaya, Calima, Tierradentro, San Agust\u00edn, Tumaco, and Nari\u00f1o.\n\n###### **MUSEO DEL ORO CALIMA**\n\nWithin the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica building across the street from Iglesia La Merced is the **Museo del Oro Calima** (Cl. 7 No. 4-69, tel. 2\/684-7754, www.banrepcultural.org\/cali\/museodelorocalima, 9am-5pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-5pm Sat., free). Cali's gold museum has a collection of more than 600 ornamental gold and utilitarian ceramics, attributed to the ancient Calima people, that have been unearthed northwest of present-day Cali.\n\nThe **Sala de Exposiciones de la Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** (Cl. 7 No. 4-69, tel. 2\/684-7751, 9am-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., free) is in the same building as the Museo del Oro, and it often hosts traveling exhibits from the bank's art collection as well as special exhibits by regional artists. It's worth a peek.\n\n###### **IGLESIA LA ERMITA**\n\nNear the R\u00edo Cali is one of the city's most iconic landmarks: the mini, neo-gothic **Iglesia La Ermita** (Cra. 13 at Cl. 1, no phone, masses at 7am and 5pm Mon.-Fri., 10am and 5pm Sat.-Sun.). Originally built in the 16th century, the church was destroyed by earthquakes in 1787 and in 1925. There was not much left after the 18th-century tremor, except for the painting of the Se\u00f1or de la Ca\u00f1a, another demonstration of how important sugarcane has been to the people of the Valle del Cauca. Its survival was attributed to a miracle. The three-nave church has an Italian marble altar and many stained-glass windows. The current building was completed in the 1940s, and its design is said to have been modeled after the towering Ulm Minster in Germany.\n\n###### **PLAZOLETA JAIRO VARELA AND BULEVAR DEL R\u00cdO**\n\nMegaprojects to revitalize the deteriorating downtown began in 2010. In 2013 the **Plazoleta Jairo Varela** and **Bulevar del R\u00edo** were completed. The Plazoleta Jairo Varela pays homage to a beloved salsa singer and founder of the Grupo Niche. Jairo Varela passed away in Cali in 2012. It is a large outdoor cultural space to be used for concerts and other cultural activities, located near the CAM office tower (Av. 2N between Clls. 10 and 11), which is the main municipal government building. Along the river, the pedestrian walkway Bulevar del R\u00edo was also unveiled. It extends from Calle 5 to La Ermita, and within weeks of its opening became an instant hit with weekend joggers. These new projects provide an exciting contrast to some of the grandiose relics of the 19th century, such as the **Teatro Jorge Isaacs** (Cra. 3 at Cl. 12) and **Puente Ortiz** (Cra. 1 at Cl. 12).\n\n###### **PLAZA CAYZEDO AND AROUND**\n\nThe dozens of majestic wax palms in the **Plaza Cayzedo** (Cras. 4-5 between Clls. 11-12) create a green oasis in the middle of gritty downtown Cali. Like the Plaza de Bol\u00edvar in Bogot\u00e1, Plaza Cayzedo was known as the Plaza Mayor during the colonial era, and was often the scene of lively markets that were held after mass at the San Pedro cathedral. It was also a place of open-air concerts by military bands and the occasional bullfight. In 1913, about a century following his execution, it was renamed to honor the most famous independence figure from Cali, Joaqu\u00edn de Cayzedo y Cuero. Passing through the park on the brick walkways you'll encounter a colorful cross-section of Cale\u00f1os, from university students to shoe-shiners to dapper older men watching the world go by from the comfort of a park bench.\n\nDating to the turn of the 19th century, the brilliantly white neoclassical-style **Catedral San Pedro** (Cl. 11 No. 5-35, tel. 2\/881-1378, masses at 9am, 10am, 11am, and noon Mon.-Fri., 9am and 5pm Sun.) on the southern corner of the Plaza Cayzedo has been rebuilt several times due to destruction caused by earthquakes. The most stunning building on the plaza, however, is the French neoclassical gem the **Palacio Nacional** (Cra. 4 No. 12-04), also known as the Palacio de Justicia, on the eastern side of the Plaza de Cayzedo. Completed in the early 1930s, it houses various judicial bodies of the Valle de Cauca departmental government. The Palacio Nacional is not open to the public.\n\nThe distinctive red-brick church complex of the **Iglesia San Francisco** (Cl. 10 No. 6-00, tel. 2\/884-2457, masses at 7am and 5pm Mon.-Sat., 9am and 6pm Sun.) includes the **Capilla de la Inmaculada,** the **Convento de San Joaqu\u00edn,** and the **Torre Mud\u00e9jar,** all built between the 17th and 19th centuries by Franciscans. The architectural star here is the Torre Mud\u00e9jar, a four-story bell tower 23 meters (75 feet) high. It is divided into four red-brick sections, each level with a different geometric design. It is considered one of the best examples of neo-Mudejar design in the Americas. The architect of the tower was supposedly a Moor who had fled Spanish authorities, seeking refuge in the convent. In return for the free lodging, he designed the bell tower.\n\n##### **Outside the Centro**\n\n###### **MUSEO LA TERTULIA**\n\nOne of the best art museums in the country is Cali's **Museo La Tertulia** (Av. Colombia No. 5 Oeste-105, tel. 2\/893-2939, www.museolatertulia.com, 10am-6pm Tues.-Sat., 2pm-6pm Sun., COP$4,000 adults, COP$2,000 students, free Sun.). Museum galleries highlight contemporary Colombian artists such as Beatriz Gonz\u00e1lez, Hugo Zapata, Omar Rayo, and many more. Built in the 1960s, Museo La Tertulia is perhaps the most important cultural center in Cali. The word _tertulia_ refers to a social gathering for talking and sharing ideas about culture, art, and other themes. A cinema (showings usually 7pm and 9:15pm Tues. and Sat., 4pm and 7pm Sun., COP$5,000) shows art films and hosts festivals such as EuroCine. A concert hall offers chamber music concerts and poetry readings, and the lush grounds house an amphitheater. The museum caf\u00e9 on the terrace is a popular meeting place in the evenings.\n\nthe Torre Mud\u00e9jar in downtown Cali\n\n###### **ZOOL\u00d3GICO DE CALI**\n\nThe **Zool\u00f3gico de Cali** (Cra. 2 Oeste and Cl. 14, tel. 2\/488-0888, 9am-4:30pm daily, COP$14,000 adults, COP$9,000 children) is, by far, the best zoo in the country, although that may not say very much. The landscape itself would make a lovely and tranquil botanical garden. Its location straddling the R\u00edo Cali and the great diversity in flora (providing welcome shade) make it a pleasant place to spend a few hours in the morning or late afternoon. Most of the zoo is dedicated to Colombian species. The condor exhibit may be disturbing to some visitors, as these large birds are confined in relatively small cages. American flamingos frolic nearby. Beware of swarms of families on weekends. The zoo is accessible by MIO by taking the A02 bus from the San Bosco station.\n\n###### **IGLESIA AND PARQUE DE SAN ANTONIO**\n\nThe small white **Iglesia de San Antonio** (Cl. 1 Oeste at Cra. 10, tel. 2\/893-7185), similar to Iglesia La Merced in the Centro, is beautiful in its simplicity. Its adobe walls are white, accented by the wooden beams above. The brick entrance and bell tower are also striking. The church was built in the mid-18th century, because the residents in the growing area of San Antonio wanted to worship in their own neighborhood instead of having to schlep down the hill to pray at another church. If the main doors are closed (which is often the case as the church is only open for mass), head to the back left of the church and ring (once) at the door. Clarisa nuns from the convent there may give you a quick tour. A cautionary note: Do not express any disappointment to them that this church is _just_ from 1747, unlike Iglesia La Merced (which was built about two hundred years before). They are sensitive about that! On weekends couples exchange vows at this picturesque spot.\n\nOnce you've made it to the top of the hill, plan to stick around awhile: **Parque San Antonio** is the place to experience San Antonio life. You'll see hipsters with their dogs mingling with other canine lovers, couples sipping a cold beer and enjoying the view as the sun goes down, and intellectual types engrossed in books. On one side of the park are small unpretentious restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops.\n\n###### **LA LOMA DE LA CRUZ**\n\nWhile technically it's known as an _artesan\u00edas_ (handicrafts) market, **La Loma de la Cruz** (Cl. 5 between Cras. 14-16, 9am-10pm daily) has such a pleasant atmosphere, especially in the early evening from Thursday through Sunday, that it is more of a tourist attraction than a shopping experience\u2014plus, it's free. The entrance at the bottom of the _loma,_ or hill, is hard to miss with the man-made waterfall cascading down and a sign that reads \"Loma de la Cruz.\" More than 20 kiosks sell typical Colombian handicrafts, such as hand-woven handbags and the like. After perusing the handicrafts and other items for sale, you can often enjoy concerts featuring Andean music, poetry readings, dance performances, or open-air films in the small amphitheater. You can walk to the hill from the San Antonio area.\n\n###### **EL CERRO DE CRISTO REY**\n\nThe statue of Christ on **El Cerro de Cristo Rey** (south of the Cerro de las Tres Cruces in the Los Andes neighborhood) stands 26 meters (85 feet). It was created by an Italian sculptor to celebrate 50 years of peace following the Guerra de Mil D\u00edas (the Thousand Days' War) over the turn of the 20th century. That civil war claimed around 100,000 lives in Colombia and Panama. While there is a path to the top, it is best to take a taxi (COP$45,000). Along the way you can check out the sculpture on the side of the mountain called _El Lamento de la Pacha Mama,_ which is a tribute to indigenous peoples, and munch on an _empanada_ at a roadside stall. Don't make the Cristo Rey excursion after dark.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### M **Salsa**\n\nIn Cali, there are many ways you can get a taste of (and very likely get hooked on) salsa.\n\n###### **SALSA SHOWS**\n\nA good way to observe the incredibly intricate and fast footwork of Cale\u00f1o salsa dancers is to go to a performance of one of the big salsa shows in town. In this cabaret-style environment, you'll be amazed at the talent and exhausted by the high energy of these dancers, often ranging in age from 4 to 40.\n\nThe most famous show of them all is **Delirio** (Parque del Amor, Cl. 69 No. 4N-88, tel. 2\/893-7610, www.delirio.com.co, COP$120,00), a sort of Cirque du Soleil\u2014\u00e0 la Cali. This group, combining dance, music, and circus, has delighted audiences all over the world. Performances go from about 8pm to well after midnight. The group is constantly updating their shows, creating segments on different themes that inspire them, such as La Mar\u00eda and even Michael Jackson tributes. During intermission, spectators are invited to dance on the stage, but there's no pressure. Performances are usually held the last Friday of every month, and at other times during the Feria de Cali. Minors under the age of 18 are not allowed inside the big tent.\n\nOther popular ongoing shows include **Ens\u00e1lsate** (cell tel. 316\/480-7822, www.ensalsate.co, COP$90,000) which takes place the second week of each month and during the Feria de Cali at the Sal\u00f3n Ritz of the Hotel Dann Carlton (Cra. 2 No. 1-60, tel. 2\/893-3000). It's a three-act show with a mix of music and dance with salsa, music from the Caribbean, tango, and even some hip-hop added to the mix. Tickets can be obtained at Tu Boleta (www.tuboleta.com).\n\n###### **SALSA AL PARQUE**\n\nOn the last Saturday night of the month, go to **Salsa al Parque** (Parque de los Estudiantes), also called the Parque de Santa Librada or, most commonly, the **Parque de Jovita** (Cl. 5 at Cra. 22, fculturalatina@gmail.com, 4pm-midnight, free). This friendly and open-air freebie is known as an _audici\u00f3n,_ which is a chance for salsa enthusiasts called _coleccionistas,_ who collect salsa albums, to play their favorites for the crowd. Young and old alike, from all walks of life, gather at the park for these events, with the common denominator being a love of salsa. The event is organized by the Fundaci\u00f3n Cultural Nuestra Cosa Latina. They usually sell CDs to defray their costs. There's nothing like it!\n\n###### **SALSATECAS**\n\nNo matter where you go on a Saturday night, there's a good chance that you'll hear some salsa. But there are some places\u2014 _salsatecas_ \u2014where it's all about salsa and nothing more. Most are open from Wednesday until Sunday, closing at around 2am. Big _salsatecas,_ like Tin Tin Deo, will have a cover.\n\nSurrounding the Parque de la Alameda are a handful of _salsatecas,_ many of them quite old-school. These are excellent places to soak up the atmosphere, enjoy the music, nurse your drink, and watch the locals dance. **El Habanero Club** (Cl. 7A No. 23A-01, tel. 2\/557-5829, www.bolerohabanero.co, hours vary Wed.-Sat.) is one such place. At this fabulous small club specializing in _musica Antillana_ (music from the Caribbean), you may feel like you've stepped into 1940s Cuba when you open the door. International visitors are welcome here, but plan on staying awhile: the owners don't like it when gringos nurse one beer and leave. **Libaniel** (Cl. 7A No. 23-68, tel. 2\/557-5157), on the opposite corner from El Habanero, is one of those established clubs where the \"new\" waiters have only been working there for 10 years. On Fridays and Saturdays it's \"Salsa y m\u00e1s,\" and a good time to check it out. They even serve tamales to satisfy your midnight cravings. A third club on the park is another famous name, the **Port\u00f3n Caldense** (Cra. 23B No. 7-32, tel. 2\/557-7616, www.portoncaldense.com). It's larger than the other places previously mentioned, and similarly full of atmosphere. On Thursdays they switch gears with a tango night.\n\nThe **Casa Latina** (Cl. 7 No. 27-38, tel. 2\/556-6549, garylatina1@gmail.com, no cover) is a welcoming bar with tons of personality that draws in the salsa aficionados of Cali. Owner Gary Dom\u00ednguez has theme nights, usually on Saturdays, celebrating a star salsa performer. Salsa memorabilia cover the walls, and the DJ booth that Gary mans while drinking a beer is jam-packed with records. How he knows what is where is a mystery\u2014he must have a system. You may want to contact the bar in advance to see if they have any special events coming up.\n\nIn the San Fernando neighborhood along Calle 5 are some of the best-known big salsa clubs in Cali. **Tin Tin Deo** (Cl. 5 No. 38-71B, tel. 2\/514-1537, www.tintindeo.com, 7:30pm-1am Thurs., 7:30pm-3am Fri.-Sat., cover COP$10,000-COP$15,000) is a requirement on a Thursday night. At Tin Tin Deo they also dance _chichoky,_ which is a new style of Cali salsa that incorporates African rhythms. Saturday night is also big here, when the music is _pachanguero,_ which is sort of \"party music,\" Cali style. Tin Tin Deo is the new _chico_ on the block\u2014it's only been around since 1985, started by some friends from the Universidad del Valle. It's always a good bet.\n\n**Conga** (Cl. 5 No. 30-17, tel. 2\/556-5608, 9pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., cover COP$15,000) is more of an insider's place. Fridays and Saturdays are _viejoteca_ nights, which are oldies nights, with Sundays geared more toward younger folk. Finally **Zaperoco Bar** (Av. 5N No. 16-46, tel. 2\/661-2040, www.zaperocobar.com, 8pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., cover COP$20,000) confidently calls itself the best rumba in Cali. It regularly hosts live acts featuring salsa, music from the Pacific, and Cuban _son_ music. The long lineup of _orquestas_ (bands), is planned far in advance. The service isn't as friendly as at other bars.\n\n##### **Other Nightlife**\n\n**La Topa Tolondra** (Cl. 5 No. 13-27, cell tel. 314\/664-1470, 6pm-1am Wed.-Thurs., 6pm-3am Fri.-Sat.) is a cool little spot near La Loma de la Cruz, where you can have a beer with local bohemians. On the cusp between El Pe\u00f1on and San Antonio is the extremely mysterious and too cool **Greco Bar** (Cra. 4 No. 2-116, cell tel. 312\/854-0151, greco613-@hotmail.com, 5pm-midnight Wed.-Sat). It's in an old house, where the lighting is way dim\u2014if you don't watch your step you'll twist your ankle fumbling down the stairs. From the outside it looks sort of abandoned, but the hipsters shooting the breeze in the hammocks out front give it away. Overlooking the park in San Antonio is **Atahualpa** (Cra. 10 No. 1-15 Oeste, tel. 2\/893-7206, 1pm-midnight Thurs.-Sat.). On the first floor they sell handicrafts and on the terrace you can have a beer or two. This is a fantastic perch from which to watch San Antonio come alive as night falls. Meanwhile, the jet-setters of Cali hang out in El Pe\u00f1on on Avenida 2 Oeste, a strip of fashionable restaurant\/bars popular with the after-work crowd. Terrace seating is hard to come by on Thursday and Friday evenings.\n\n###### **ELECTRONIC**\n\nCali has a fairly heavy electronic music scene. Clubs are not huge draws in town, but parties or raves are. Usually between June and August each year, the **Black and White Sensation Party** (www.blackandwhitesensation.com), with a big-time international and national DJ lineup, has grown to become one of the most famous rave-type parties in the country. To find out about upcoming parties, visit www.tuboleta.com or consult the Cali section of www.planb.com.co. Also be on the lookout for flyers in trendy places in Granada.\n\nBig-time electronic music clubs, the places that stay open late, tend to congregate in the Yumbo and Menga areas to the north of Granada. **El\u00edptica** (Cra. 38 No. 7-161, cell tel. 311\/342-2294, 10pm-4am Thurs., 10pm-6am Fri.-Sat., COP$20,000) is an electronic music club that occasionally hosts international DJs.\n\n###### **LGBT**\n\nGay clubs in Cali are friendly and mixed with women and men. They tend to get hopping at around 11pm and stay open until 3am. **Queens Bar** (Av. 9A No. 15-07, tel. 2\/396-5338, www.queensbarcali.com, cover COP$15,000) is one of the hottest gay clubs of the moment, with three different dance floors each with its own type of music. It's located in Granada.\n\n**Lulu Latino** (Km. 2 V\u00eda Yumbo, cover COP$15,000) is the old standard as far as gay clubs go. There are often _barra libre_ (open bar) promotions. Go for the rum instead of poor quality vodka.\n\n###### **JAZZ AND ROCK**\n\nNear the R\u00edo Cali, **Duke's Bar** (Av. 4 Oeste No. 1-66, cell tel. 301\/418-6618, 6pm-1am Wed.-Thurs., 6pm-2am Fri.-Sat.) is the place for a change of rhythm. Here it's Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane who rule. Duke's also serves meals. For all your rock needs\u2014hard rock, glam rock, Spanish rock, you name it\u2014head to **Rock City Bar** (Cl. 5 No. 12-57, 4pm-3am Wed.-Sat., COP$6,000 cover weekends).\n\n###### **TANGO**\n\nTango lovers (of which there are many in Colombia) may feel outnumbered in this salsa town, but not at **La Matraca** (Cra. 11 No. 22-80, tel. 2\/885-7113, www.lamatracacali.com, 6pm-2:30am Fri.-Sat., 3pm-11pm Sun.). On the Parque Obrero, La Matraca used to be a corner shop where you could buy staples like rice and potatoes and hear tango from the owner's collection. No more potatoes here; it's just music, dancing, and drinks. It tends to be happening on Sundays after 3pm. This neighborhood is a little rough around the edges, so it's recommended to order a cab there and back.\n\n###### **LOUNGES**\n\nThe jet-set crowd of Cali hangs out in El Pe\u00f1on on Avenida 2 Oeste, a strip of fashionable restaurant\/bars popular with the after-work crowd. Terrace seating is hard to come by on Thursday and Friday evenings. In the same area but with a totally different, much more relaxed atmosphere is **Malec\u00f3n Cubar** (Cl. 1 Oeste No. 1-32, tel. 2\/892-2977, 3pm-2am Tues.-Sat.). Here you can groove to Caribbean sounds, drink a mojito or two, and have a meal. Drinks are a little pricey.\n\n##### **Cinema**\n\nAll the major malls have movie theaters. **Cine Colombia** operates several of those cinemas, including the one at Chipchape (Av. 6N No. 37N-25, tel. 2\/644-2463, www.cinecolombia.com). **Museo La Tertulia** (Cra. 1 Oeste No. 5-105, tel. 2\/893-2941, www.museolatertulia.com) shows artsy flicks. Alternative cultural space **Lugar a Dudas** (Cl. 15 N No. 8N-41, www.lugaradudas.org, tel. 2\/668-2335) also shows independent films, usually on Tuesdays and Saturdays at 7pm.\n\nThere are two beautiful historic theaters built in the early 20th century in the Centro: **Teatro Jorge Isaacs** (Cra. 3 No. 12-28, tel. 2\/880-9027) and the **Teatro Municipal Enrique Buenaventura** (Cra. 5 No. 6-64, tel. 2\/81-3131, www.teatromunicipal.gov.co.) Contact the theaters directly or visit www.tuboleta.com for information on upcoming performances.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThe **Festival Petronio \u00c1lvarez** (www.festivalpetronioalvarez.com, mid-Aug.) is a series of outdoor concerts that celebrates Afro-Colombian music and culture. The vibrations of the drums and good vibe of the crowd at this annual festival may intoxicate you! It's named for a famous musician from the Buenaventura area on the Pacific Coast.\n\nThe **Festival Mundial de Salsa** (www.cali.gov.co, mid-Sept.) began in 2006. It is a fiercely competitive dance competition, attracting thousands of salsa dancers of all ages from around the world. The finals are usually held in the Plaza de Toros. For tickets go to www.colboletos.com.\n\nCale\u00f1os love their _feria_ (fair). During the last week of the year when other cities become virtual ghost towns, the opposite occurs in Cali: It becomes Colombia's party central during the beloved **Feria de Cali** (www.feriadecali.com). Occurring between Christmas and New Year's, the _feria_ is a celebration that crosses barriers of class and age, with parades, concerts, beauty pageants, _cabalgatas_ (horseback processions), and plenty of dancing and drinking. In addition to official activities, parties and other events take over the entire city during this week.\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\nIf you are hunting for some Colombian handicrafts to take back home, try **La Cale\u00f1ita** (Cra. 24 No. 8-53, tel. 2\/556-1172, www.lacalenita.com, 9am-6pm Mon.-Sat.). This store is all of Colombia under one roof, and it has a range of merchandise, from high-quality jewelry and woven items to general Colombian kitsch.\n\nMalls and more malls: That's how Cali shops. There's open-air **Chipichape** (Cl. 38N 6N-35, tel. 2\/659-2199, www.chipichape.com.co, 6am-midnight daily), not far from Granada, as well as smaller **Centenario** (Av. 4N No. 7N-46, tel. 2\/683-9604, www.centenariocc.com, 8am-11:45pm daily), which has glorious air conditioning. To the south are newer malls like **Jard\u00edn Plaza** (Cra. 98 No. 16-200, tel. 2\/324-7222, www.jardinplaza.com, 8am-11:30pm daily), which is also open-air. It's near the Universidades MIO station. Each of these _centro comerciales_ (malls), or CCs, has all the big-name Colombian brands (for example, Velez shoes, La Riviera cosmetics, Totto backpacks, and Arturo Calle menswear) and expensive international stores such as Adidas, Esprit, and Lacoste. Each also has small handicrafts stores or kiosks. Food courts have a variety of options, including fast food places with fun names like Mr. Arepa and Patacontodo, serving up Colombian delights.\n\n#### **SPORTS AND RECREATION**\n\n##### **El Cerro de las Tres Cruces**\n\nA weekend ritual for many Cale\u00f1os is to hike up **El Cerro de las Tres Cruces** (Three Cross Hill), west of the Santa Monica neighborhood. The climb will get your blood pumping, and at the top and along the way, you'll have some good views of Cali, especially early in the day. The ascent will take about an hour. At the top, if you still feel energetic, you can join Cali's fit and fabulous as they work out in the makeshift outdoor gym next to the crosses. It's quite a scene up there. Bring a little cash with you to enjoy a freshly squeezed orange juice.\n\nmaking the hike to the top of El Cerro de las Tres Cruces\n\nThere is a story behind the hill's namesake crosses. According to legend, in 1837 two friars decided that they had had enough of the prostitution, plagues, fires, dengue fever, and famine in Cali, and placed the blame squarely on the Buziraco, a demon who, after having been expelled from Cartagena, made his way to Cali to this hilltop. The first cross that was set on the hill was destroyed by an earthquake (Buziraco's fault), so in 1938 it was decided to build three concrete crosses. They have withstood the test of time so far, and there have been no further reports of Buziraco's antics.\n\nThe hardest part about the walk is figuring out where to start it. Various paths lead to the top\u2014not far from Granada\u2014in the Altos de Normand\u00eda neighborhood or in Juanamb\u00fa. If you can find your way to Avenida 10 Oeste at Calle 12N, you will be close to the path and can ask anyone you come across for directions. If you're not going with someone who knows how to get there, take a cab and request to be dropped off close to the _sendero al Cerro de las Tres Cruces_ (path to Three Crosses Hill).\n\nIt's recommended to take this popular hike on weekend mornings only, when you are assured of being in good company (hundreds of others), although there is usually always a police presence along the well-marked and well-trodden path. Parts of the path are quite steep, and you may need to climb up on all fours at some points. Therefore, don't bring items that you don't need, so you can have your hands free. And bring water.\n\n##### **Tours**\n\n**TOVYT Tours** (Av. 8N No. 15A Norte-40, tel. 2\/370-6800, www.tovyt.com), with an office in Granada, can organize private tours and outings if you have a minimum of four people in your group. These include trips to the Hacienda El Para\u00edso, bird-watching tours to the Kilometer 18 area west of the city, and excursions to San Cipriano.\n\n**The Little Witches of San Cipriano**\n\nA popular day trip from Cali is to take a ride on the _brujitas,_ literally \"little witches,\" of San Cipriano. Train tracks run through the two villages of C\u00f3rdoba and San Cipriano, although trains rarely pass by. Local entrepreneurs saw an opportunity here in providing a quick transportation alternative to walking the train tracks for residents to get from one village to the other. They created a wooden cart transportation system that was set upon the rails. It was originally propelled manually using long sticks. The drivers resembled witches on broomsticks flying by, hence the name _brujitas._ Nowadays, passengers\u2014up to about 10\u2014zip by, as the _brujitas_ are powered by motorbikes (less charming but more adventurous). The teenage drivers like to go fast, so hold on and, if you see a train coming towards you, get ready to jump off. It's about a 30-minute journey from C\u00f3rdoba to San Cipriano.\n\nUpon arrival in San Cipriano, you can have a hearty seafood lunch or continue on just beyond the village to a protected area (admission COP$2,000), where you can wander down a path that leads to a refreshing swimming hole in the R\u00edo San Cipriano. Inner tubes can be rented, and you can opt to float back to C\u00f3rdoba.\n\nA spin on the _brujita_ costs about COP$8,500 round-trip for tourists, less for locals. However, touts may try to charge you up to COP$80,000 for the ride. Pay for the trip only after you have returned to C\u00f3rdoba.\n\nThe experience is best enjoyed in a group. These are often organized by hostels in Cali. If you would like to go on your own, though, you can take any bus bound for Buenaventura and ask the driver to let you off at C\u00f3rdoba. Buses depart Cali from the Terminal para Buenaventura in the southwest of the city. Look for the metallic black sculpture of the _mariamulata_ bird (the local name for a great-tailed grackle) by renowned artist Enrique Grau (Cl. 7 Oeste No. 3-03). The ride costs about COP$18,000. Be sure to make a pineapple pit stop at **Pi\u00f1as del 44.** It's at kilometer 44 on the highway, and buses will often take a break here.\n\nSan Cipriano isn't the only place in Colombia with _brujitas._ Visitors to the Coffee Region can take a ride in the village of Estaci\u00f3n Pereira along the R\u00edo Cauca near Pereira.\n\n**Rioja Travel** (tel. 2\/660-7092, www.riojatravel.com) offers many of the same day trips as TOVYT Tours. The agency can arrange an outing for a minimum of two people. A day trip of six hours to Lago Calima costs COP$206,000 per person; a horseback tour along the R\u00edo Pance costs COP$84,000 per person.\n\n**FHURE Travel** (Cra. 94A No. 45-90, tel. 2\/372-4092, www.fhuretravel.com) offers day trips to the Parque Nacional Natural Los Farallones near the town of Pance in the south of the city. This excursion costs about COP$56,000 per person.\n\n##### **Bird-Watching**\n\nColombia is home to over 1,900 species of birds, 76 of which are endemic. To get a glimpse of this celebrated diversity in the Cali area, check out a bird-watching excursion offered by the organization **Mapalina** (cell tel. 318\/627-7062 or 316\/805-2117, www.mapalina.com, from US$100). Associated with the American Birding Association, Mapalina is a birding organization led by the nonprofit Asociaci\u00f3n R\u00edo Cali, and it organizes birding field trips year-round to a half dozen locations near Cali, from tropical San Cipriano to the west to the Laguna Sonso in the northeast near Buga. Some of the birds you might see include the multicolored tanager, gold-ringed tanager, banded ground-cuckoo, long-wattled umbrellabird, and the unusual Andean cock-of-the-rock. Trips, almost always with an English-speaking guide, are tailor-made according to the wishes of the visitors, and can be arranged for groups of 1-10 persons. From October to April there are usually more birds in the area, as many migratory species arrive from the north. Each year in December the organization participates in a day-long bird census in a cloud forest area near Kilometer 18, west of Cali, in collaboration with the Red Nacional de Observadores de Aves de Colombia bird-watching network. Anyone is invited to participate in the census.\n\n##### **Gyms, Spas, and Pools**\n\nFor a day of health and pampering, head to the **Intercontinental Cali** (Av. Colombia No. 2-72, tel. 2\/882-3225, COP$50,000 day pass), where you can work out at the hotel's gym, splash about in the big pool, and rejuvenate at the spa. If you're in San Antonio and would like to spin, go to the minuscule **Centro de Acondicionamiento F\u00edsico Fernando Ben\u00edtez** (Cl. 3 No. 5-22, cell tel. 316\/281-4143, www.acondicionamientofisicofb.com, 6am-8pm Mon.-Sat., COP$15,000 day pass), which allows visitors to drop in and take a spinning class.\n\n**Acuaparque de la Ca\u00f1a** (Cra. 8 No. 39-01, tel. 2\/438-4812, www.acuaparquecali.com, 9am-6pm daily, COP$12,500 adults, COP$10,000 children) is an insanely popular place to get wet on the weekends. It's quieter during the week. It's not really a place for serious training, more of a place to cool off and people-watch. It's also got several big water flume rides. You can take MIO buses P52C, P40A, or P24B to the park.\n\n##### **Biking**\n\nSunday is bike day. In Cali this recreation initiative is called **Ciclovida** (8am-1pm Sun.). Vehicular traffic is closed for some 30 kilometers with a main route extending from Calle 9 at Carretera 66 Sur to Calle 70 at Carretera 1N. It's next to impossible to find bikes to rent, but you can always jog!\n\n##### **Spectator Sports**\n\nThere are two professional soccer teams in Cali: **Deportivo** (www.deportivocali.com.co) and **Am\u00e9rica** (www.america.com.co). Deportivo, whose colors are green and white, is one of the most successful teams in the country. It is also the only team with its own stadium, the **Estadio Deportivo Cali** (Km. 8 V\u00eda Cali-Palmira, tel. 2\/688-0808). It's the largest soccer stadium in the country, with a capacity of over 50,000.\n\nAm\u00e9rica was linked to the Cali Cartel through the now extradited brothers, who were affiliated with the club for some 15 years, Gilberto and Miguel Rodr\u00edguez Orejuela. The fact that their mascot is a red devil with pitchfork in hand is coincidental, although fits with Am\u00e9rica's reputation! Am\u00e9rica plays at the **Pascual Guerrero Stadium** (Cra. 36 No. 5B-32, tel. 2\/556-6678), which is where the 1971 Panamerican Games were held. It got a big facelift just in time for the 2011 Under-20 World Cup.\n\nThe big match in town is the Clasico del Valle de Cauca between Deportivo and Am\u00e9rica. Although Deportivo leads that series, Am\u00e9rica holds the most national titles, with 13, while Deportivo has 8. Go to www.tuboleta.com for tickets and information on soccer matches.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nGranada, El Pe\u00f1on, and San Antonio are considered the best places to stay in Cali. These neighborhoods are safe, walkable, and offer diverse dining options. There are numerous hotels in the Centro within a few blocks of all the main tourist sights, but it's not a desirable place to be at night. The top-end hotels all provide air conditioning in their rooms; budget accommodations probably will not.\n\n##### **Granada**\n\nLeafy streets and proximity to restaurants and nightspots make the trendy barrio (neighborhood) of Granada a nice place to stay while in Cali. There are options for all budgets and styles. New sidewalks, refurbished streets, and speed humps began to appear in much of the area in 2013, making the area more pedestrian-friendly. The area is fine to walk about in the evening hours, but on weekday nights it feels deserted.\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nThe hostel scene in Granada offers several options, and Granada runs neck and neck with San Antonio for backpacker business.\n\nAfter a few days at the M **Iguana Hostel** (Av.\/Cl. 9N No. 22N-22, tel. 2\/660-8937, www.iguana.com.co, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$45,000 d w\/bath) you'll think of the staff as new friends, such is the hospitality at this long-running hostel. Free salsa classes take place just about every evening, and the staff are full of nuggets of information, from ideas for day-trip excursions, to where to go to hear music on a Monday night, to what pizza place delivers late. The hostel is located on a steep, quiet street within easy walking distance to restaurants. There are a couple of patios to hang out in, and a fierce black and white cat guards the front gate at night. Iguana is one of the oldest hostels in Cali, but the accommodations are still fresh.\n\n**Pelican Larry's** (Cl. 20N No. 6AN-44, tel. 2\/420-3955, www.hostelpelicanlarry.com, COP$18,000 dorms, COP$50,000 d) has dorm rooms, private rooms with shared bath, and one private room with its own bathroom. This crash pad is close to the action of Calle Sexta.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nFrom the terrace on the 10th floor at **Aqua Hotel** (Av. 8N No. 10-91, tel. 2\/667-2388, www.aquagranada.com, COP$120,000 d), you get a great view. On one side, the Iglesia Ermita peeks through two nondescript towers. You can also see the Torre de Cali skyscraper. On the other side look for Tres Cruces, Granada, and the shenanigans taking place atop the NOW Hotel. Breakfast is served in your spacious room, which has a functional kitchenette and enormous refrigerator. Aqua is on the always-busy Avenida Octava, but traffic noise does not seem to be an issue.\n\nGranada is full of restaurants and watering holes, but the Calle Novena is not a main thoroughfare, making it a pleasant and mostly peaceful place to stay. The **Hotel Plaza Mayor** (Av. 9AN No. 14-70, tel. 2\/667-0303, www.hotelplazamayorcali.com, COP$140,000 d low season, COP$175,000 d high season) is your basic nothing-special hotel, but it's a good value for Granada. Many of the rooms have kitchenettes.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nOpened in January 2014, **Marriott Cali** (Av. 8N 9-64, tel. 1\/485-1111, www.marriott.com) is the latest luxury international hotel chain to arrive in Cali, on a busy thoroughfare near the Granada neighborhood. It offers 170 rooms, a pool, restaurants, and a gym.\n\nCatering mostly to the Bogot\u00e1 jet-set, **NOW Hotel** (Av. 9AN No. 10N-74, tel. 2\/488-9797, www.nowhotel.com.co, COP$297,000 d) is an island of South Beach in the middle of Granada. It has 19 luxurious rooms with interiors decorated by Bo Concept. Large beds, balconies, and DirecTV are some of the perks here. There are two restaurants in the hotel, and there are certainly worse places to be at sunset than the rooftop terrace bar. The hotel bar is a popular place for a drink, and sometimes there are parties here, especially on weekends. If you need peace and quiet for a good night's sleep, this isn't the best option.\n\nThe Torre de Cali, the tallest skyscraper in the city, is a classic point of reference, and is home to the **Hotel Plaza Torre de Cali** (Av. de las Am\u00e9ricas No. 18N-26, tel. 2\/683-3535, www.hoteltorredecali.com, COP$246,000 d), with rooms on floors 11-20. The views from the southeast side of the hotel towards the valley are unbeatable. The hotel has spruced itself up, hoping to compete with the top hotels in the city. It is in the Versailles area, about a 15-minute walk to the Zona Rosa area of Granada. Avoid walking around this part of town late at night.\n\n##### **El Pe\u00f1on**\n\nThis tidy, upscale, and somewhat boring neighborhood is home to upscale restaurants and hotels. It is sort of an island between San Antonio and (across the R\u00edo Cali) Centenario and Granada. Unfortunately, crossing the river is a frightful experience, with pedestrian crosswalks nonexistent; you'll probably want to take a cab. To hike up the hill to San Antonio, you will also have to scamper across the Carrera 4, where cars zoom by at high speeds.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nIf you can name your favorite salsa singer with no hesitation, the place for you might be the **Posada Salsa Boutique** (Cl. 4 Oeste No. 3A-39, tel. 2\/376-0866, www.posadasalsa.com, COP$70,000 s, COP$110,000 d). Each of the six small rooms in this hotel that opened in 2010 has a different theme in homage to the great salsa stars, like the Cecilia Cruz room and the H\u00e9ctor Lavoe room. You can request your favorite one. Salsa classes are offered, as you'd expect, but the best part about this hotel is its location on a quiet, tree-lined street.\n\nAlso on Calle 4 Oeste, **Aloja** (Cl. 4 Oeste No. 3A-50, tel. 2\/557-0933, www.aloja.com.co, COP$120,000 apt.) has only three furnished apartments for rent, but if one is available, it's a great bargain. The three-story building is above an excellent ice cream shop, which sweetens the deal, and is a two-minute walk from a variety of neighborhood restaurants. Apartments are equipped with everything you'll probably need and come with a high-tech security system.\n\n**El Pe\u00f1on Hotel** (Cl. 1 Oeste No. 2-61, tel. 2\/893-3625, hotelelpenon@hotmail.com, COP$156,000 d) offers rooms large enough for two people to do jumping jacks in and is reasonably priced, especially for this part of town. Rooms are carpeted.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nMaybe it doesn't have the same cachet as it once did during its 60-odd years in Cali, but the M **Intercontinental Cali** (Av. Colombia No. 2-72, tel. 2\/882-3225, www.ihg.com, COP$385,000 d), run by the Colombian Estelar group, retains its old-school elegance with all the amenities you'd expect: huge comfortable beds, a spa, multiple restaurants and bars, and a check-in counter that must be 20 meters long. You can walk from the Intercontinental Cali to restaurants in El Pe\u00f1on, but most guests prefer to cab it.\n\n##### **San Antonio**\n\nThis neighborhood of artists and hipsters has options for all budgets, with tons of hotel and restaurant options, and also has that charm you might be seeking. All the action is centered on the Parque San Antonio, which is one of the best places to be when the sun sets. You can walk from San Antonio to the historic center in the daytime, about a 20-minute walk, if you're up for it.\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nIn an old house with lots of charm, M **La Casa Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 6 No. 2-13, tel. 2\/893-7011, www.lacasacafecali.blogspot.com, COP$15,000 dorm, COP$30,000 d) is a friendly spot with an ideal location on a quiet street in San Antonio. Upstairs there are four rooms\u2014one dormitory and three private rooms with shared bathrooms\u2014and there is a small kitchen for guest use. Downstairs is a caf\u00e9 and reading area where local bands play sometimes.\n\nThe Uruguayan hostel chain **El Viajero** (Cra. 5 No. 4-56, tel. 2\/893-8342, www.hostelsincali.com, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$37,000 d) arrived in Cali in mid-2013. This location offers the backpacking crowd a pool, a bar, free salsa classes in their dance studio, a basic breakfast, and the occasional circus performance.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\nThe M **San Antonio Hotel Boutique** (Cra. 6 No. 2-51, tel. 2\/524-6364, www.hotelboutiquesanantonio.com, COP$179,000 d) is the best option in San Antonio if personalized attention and comfort are your priorities. Two of the hotel's 10 rooms have their own terrace, but anyone can enjoy the rooftop terrace. Rooms have air conditioning and comfortable beds. Guests can make free calls to the United States and Canada.\n\nOpen since October 2012, comfy M **Ruta Sur** (Cra. 9 No. 2-41, tel. 2\/893-6946, www.hostalrutasurcali.blogspot.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$85,000 private d) offers two small dormitory rooms with triple bunkbeds (!), along with four rather luxurious private rooms (with bathrooms) where weary flashpackers (backpackers who like their comfort every once in a while) can get a sound rest 1after days on the road. At night you can laze in a hammock under the stars in an open-air interior patio. Here there are no salsa classes or bar tours on offer: It's all about comfort and rest.\n\nSan Antonio is Cali's most charming neighborhood.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nCali lacks the international cuisine options that are found in Bogot\u00e1, but a handful of creative fusion restaurants help to fill in that void. Cali society frequents the most highly regarded restaurants in the posh neighborhoods of El Pe\u00f1on and Granada. Prices for a night out are on the uptick in San Antonio, as yuppies and visitors alike crowd restaurants after soaking in the scene at the park. It's rather lonesome after dark in the Centro, but there are numerous options for a typical _valledecaucana_ lunch following a morning hitting the pavement as you visit Cali's historical sights. Nothing accompanies a hearty meal in the hot city like a cool _lulada_ drink made from the _lulo_ fruit (a variety of orange). Tap water is fine to drink in Cali.\n\n##### **Centro**\n\n###### **CAF\u00c9S, BAKERIES, AND QUICK BITES**\n\nVegetarians may be surprised to stumble across vegetarian options downtown. For a pastry and a coffee, or for a vegetarian buffet lunch, check out **Nutricentro** (Cra. 5 No. 7-40, tel. 2\/895-9777, 10am-6pm Mon.-Sat.). It's a cheerful place near the Merced sights.\n\n###### **COLOMBIAN AND FUSION**\n\nReasonable lunch options abound in the Centro. On weekends and evenings, options are fewer and less popular.\n\nJust across the street from Iglesia La Merced is the colonial building that houses the Sociedad de Mejoras\u00fablicas de Cali, an organization in support of public works. Discreetly facing an interior patio is M **Mi Valle del Cauca** (Sociedad de Mejoras P\u00fablicas, Cra. 4 No. 6-76, tel. 2\/883-6309, 11am-3pm Mon.-Fri., set lunch COP$12,000), an excellent lunch spot. It's popular with professionals on their lunch break. Try the tortilla soup and fish dishes.\n\nThere's no need to feel embarrassed about dining in a parking lot. Despite its less-than-picturesque location, **DA'gusto** (Cra. 4 No. 9-49, tel. 2\/881-8697, 6am-5pm Mon.-Sun., COP$8,000) packs in the crowds day in and day out at lunchtime. Service is quick and the action in the kitchen is fast, yet friendly. _Sancocho,_ a meaty stew, is a favorite, as is fried fish. Set lunches are served with juice, salad, and lots of carbs: potatoes, yuca, plantains, and rice. You can also order dishes such as beans and rice off the menu.\n\nAt the lunch counter of tiny and tidy **Rikus** (Cra. 4 No. 12-56, tel. 2\/896-0795, 10am-5pm Mon.-Sat., COP$6,000) you can eat cheap Colombian fare and watch the staff furiously stir, mix, pour, and serve.\n\n##### **Granada**\n\n###### **CAF\u00c9S, BAKERIES, AND QUICK BITES**\n\nA top contender in the city for the crown of best _pandebono,_ a delicious pastry made of yuca flour and cheese, is **Kuty Panader\u00eda** (Av. 6N No. 27N-03, tel. 2\/661-1465, www.panaderiakuty.com, 6am-9pm daily). Kuty also serves other fast food fare all day long. For heaps of old-style character, nothing beats M **Miami** (Av. 6 No. 16N-98, tel. 2\/396-5998, 7am-8pm daily). Here, right on Avenida Sexta, you can fuel up on freshly baked croissants and a _caf\u00e9 con leche_ (coffee with milk) and be endlessly entertained by the hustle and bustle of one of Cali's busiest streets. Miami even has Wi-Fi.\n\nIf you're looking to get your coffee _fuerte_ (strong), go to **Juan Valdez** (Av. 9N No. 17-11, tel. 2\/660-7337, www.juanvaldezcoffee.com, 10am-9pm Mon.-Thurs., 10am-midnight Fri.-Sat., 11am-9pm Sun.). This shop, the Colombian version of Starbucks, is on a fancy corner in Granada and has a wonderful terrace under the shade of acacia trees, providing the perfect setting for writing in that journal of yours or browsing on your tablet.\n\n###### **COLOMBIAN AND FUSION**\n\n**Ringlete** (Cl. 15AN No. 9N-31, tel. 2\/660-1540, www.ringlete.com, noon-3pm and 6:30pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., noon-4:30pm Sun., COP$24,000) features _nueva cocina Vallecaucana_ (new Valle de Cauca cuisine) in a brightly decorated restaurant in Granada. Check out the pork chops, shrimp ceviche, or seafood _cazuela_ (stew).\n\nM **Carambolo** (Cl. 14N No. 9N-18, tel. 2\/667-5656, noon-midnight Mon.-Sat., noon-5pm Sun., COP$30,000) has a creative menu combining Mediterranean and Colombian flavors. Many dishes in this restaurant are whimsically named, such as the Shakira (stuffed eggplant combining Middle Eastern and Caribbean flavors) and the Celia Cruz\u2014shrimp coated in coconut and _chontaduro_ (fruit from a type of palm tree) and served in a _maracuya_ (passion fruit) sauce. It's a popular place with Cali society and out-of-towners.\n\n**Platillos Voladores** (Av. 3N No. 7-19, tel. 2\/668-7750, www.platillosvoladores.com, COP$35,000, noon-3pm and 7pm-11pm Mon.-Sat.), run by chef Vicky Acosta, is consistently rated as one of Cali's top restaurants. Fusion is the watchword here: Thailand, Lebanon, Italy, France, and the Colombian Pacific are among the cuisines that Acosta works with. Menu favorites include a fresh fillet of fish from the Pacific in a caramelized _chontaduro_ (a starchy fruit that grows on a variety of palm) and garlic sauce (COP$43,000), quinoa stir-fry (COP$26,000), and an exotic and spicy ostrich carpaccio (COP$23,000). Reservations are recommended.\n\n###### **TEX-MEX**\n\n**D'Toluca** (Cl. 17N No. 8N-46, tel. 2\/668-9372, 11:30am-3pm and 5:30pm-11:30pm Mon.-Thurs. and Sun., 11:30am-3pm and 5:30pm-1am Fri.-Sat., COP$15,000) serves up reliable Tex-Mex cuisine and often has lunch or drink specials.\n\n###### **CR\u00caPES**\n\nAlthough it's a chain present in all big malls in Colombia, **Crepes & Waffles** (Av. 6AN No. 24N-70, tel. 2\/485-4474, www.crepesywaffles.com.co, noon-10pm Sun.-Thurs., noon-11pm Fri.-Sat., COP$20,000) is a reliable friend. There are dozens of savory cr\u00eapes, all consistently good. What's important is to save room for dessert. This particular location on the Avenida Sexta is big and breezy and is between Granada and Chipichape.\n\ncaf\u00e9 in Granada\n\n##### **El Pe\u00f1on**\n\n###### **CAF\u00c9S, BAKERIES, AND QUICK BITES**\n\nDelicious homemade ice cream awaits you at **Calathea** (Cl. 4 Oeste No. 3A-50, tel. 2\/371-0188, 11am-7pm Mon.-Sat., noon-6pm Sun.). Exotic flavors you can't get back home are constantly being invented. There's coconut-lemon, strawberries with red wine, and the native fruit _araz\u00e1_ with mint.\n\n###### **COLOMBIAN AND FUSION**\n\nOpen-air M **Panero** (Cl. 3 Oeste No. 3A-18, tel. 2\/892-3333, 9:30am-7pm Mon.-Sat., COP$12,000) serves delicious vegetarian lunches from a set menu. If you miss lunch, grab a veggie burger or try one of the many tempting desserts. Panero is located on a sublime tree-lined street and its terrace is an agreeable place to be for lunch or for a late afternoon tea.\n\n###### **INTERNATIONAL**\n\nAlain from Alsace came to Cali, loved it, and opened **Petite France** (Cra. 3A Oeste No. 3-53, tel. 2\/893-3079, noon-2:30pm and 6:30pm-10:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$24,000). This French restaurant in El Pe\u00f1on is highly recommended by locals. Save room for the delicious tarte flamb\u00e9.\n\nThe terrace at **La Pizzeria** (Intercontinental Hotel, Av. Colombia No. 2-72, tel. 2\/886-1010, noon-11:30pm Mon.-Sun., COP$25,000) at the Intercontinental Hotel is almost always full at night, which is a good sign. The pizza is deemed by many to be the best in town. If you want to enjoy your pie and the pleasing temps of a Cali evening by dining alfresco, get there early.\n\n##### **San Antonio**\n\n###### **CAF\u00c9S, BAKERIES, AND QUICK BITES**\n\nWeary travelers and San Antonians alike flock to M **Macondo Postres y Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 6 No. 3-03, tel. 2\/893-1570, www.macondocafe.blogspot.com, 11:30am-11pm Mon.-Thurs., 11:30am-midnight Fri.-Sat., 4:30pm-11pm Sun.) at all hours of the day. It's one of the best places to hang out in San Antonio when you're in no rush to run to the Centro. If you're in the mood for an artisan beer or a decent coffee while you depart to Wi-Fi land, or you want a hearty meal, including the much sought-after veggie burger, Macondo is your neighborhood place. At night they show artsy movies, and there are often live jazz and blues bands performing on Saturday evenings.\n\n###### **COLOMBIAN AND FUSION**\n\nIn a city with a surprising number of vegetarian restaurants, or at least veg-friendly options, M **El Buen Alimento** (Cra. 2 No. 4-53, tel. 2\/375-5738, 11:30am-10pm Tues.-Thurs., 11:30am-11pm Fri.-Sat., 11:30am-9pm Sun., COP$15,000) gives Panero in El Pe\u00f1on a run for its money for the title of veggie champion. There's always a set menu option for lunch, including fresh juice, soup, and the main course, but you can also order \u00e0 la carte. Veggie burgers, pastas, and vegetarian tamales\u2014an unimaginable option for most Colombians\u2014are plentiful. This cheerful spot in San Antonio with bright decor is even popular with devout meat-eaters.\n\nThe inspiration for **Ojo de Perro Azul** (Cra. 9 No. 1-27, tel. 2\/893-6956, 5pm-10pm Tues.-Thurs., 5pm-2am Fri.-Sat., 3pm-9pm Sun., COP$15,000) was a street dog named Juancho, who had one blue eye. Ojo de Perro Azul is a laid-back place that oozes San Antonio style. The food is OK here, but the ambiance is what makes it enjoyable. It's a good place to go later in the evening, have a nibble, and have cocktails while you enjoy the music. If you're asking yourself, \"Shouldn't it be Perro de Ojo Azul?,\" you'd be correct. The owners have a sense of humor. Sticking with the color theme, there is M **El Pargo Rojo** (Cr. 9 No. 2-09, tel. 2\/893-6087, 8am-3pm Mon.-Sun., COP$18,000), or The Red Snapper. Fresh fried sea bass and _cazuelas_ (seafood stews) from the waters of the Pacific are specialties at this San Antonio favorite. In the morning you can try an _arepa de huevo_ (egg fried in corn meal), if you are feeling low on cholesterol. El Pargo Rojo is not open for dinner.\n\nGoing back to blue, **Azul** (Cra. 9 No. 4-02B, tel. 2\/893-6057, noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm Mon.-Fri., 6pm-11pm Sat., COP$25,000) is a fusion-style restaurant, with Mediterranean, Colombian, Middle Eastern, and Asian flavors represented on the menu by chef Martha Izquierdo. Ask for the _clandestinos_ \u2014dishes that don't appear on the menu. With colorful decor, Azul is a good choice for dinner.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\n##### **Tourist Information**\n\nThe **Oficina de Turismo Municipal de Cali** (Cra. 5 No. 6-05, Oficina 102, tel. 2\/885-8855, ext. 122, 8am-noon and 1:30pm-5pm Mon.-Sat.) has maps and brochures on Cali and environs. Friendly young police cadets work the booth, but their English skills are minimal.\n\nThe online entertainment and events guide **Plan B** (www.planb.com.co) has a section on Cali. Ticket companies **Tu Boleta** (www.tuboleta.com) and **Colboletos** (www.colboletos.com) are also good resources.\n\n##### **Money**\n\nATMs are not as easy to come by in San Antonio compared to other neighborhoods in the city, but you can always count on them in shopping malls. To receive a wire transfer, **Western Union** (www.westernunion.com) has several offices in Cali. Check the website for locations. **Titan Intercontinental** (Cl. 11 No. 4-48, tel. 2\/898-0898, www.titan.com.co, 8am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.), a currency exchange office, is located in the Centro. Banks do not normally change money.\n\n##### **Spanish-Language Classes**\n\nAll the major universities in Cali offer Spanish programs for foreigners. Check the **Universidad Javeriana Programa de Espa\u00f1ol Funcional para Extranjeros** (Cl. 18 No. 118-250, tel. 2\/321-8200, ext. 510, www.javierianacali.edu.co) and **Universidad Santiago de Cali Programa de Lenguas Extranjeras** (Cl. 5 at Cra. 62, tel. 2\/518-3000, ext. 411, www.usc.edu.co\/idiomas).\n\n##### **Communications**\n\n###### **INTERNET ACCESS**\n\nWireless Internet availability is more the norm than the exception at restaurants, caf\u00e9s, and big shopping malls. **Juan Valdez** (Av. 9N No. 17-11, tel. 2\/660-7337, www.juanvaldezcoffee.com, 10am-9pm Mon.-Thurs., 10am-midnight Fri.-Sat., 11am-9pm Sun.) in Granada is a good place to get connected. Small Internet caf\u00e9s, open until about 8pm, are plentiful too. There you can surf the Internet for hours and pay next to nothing.\n\n###### **MAIL SERVICES**\n\nThe post office, **4-72,** has an office at the Chipichape shopping center (Av. 6 No. 35-47, Bodega 4, Local 426, tel. 2\/379-7164, www.4-72.com.co, 9am-1pm and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.). Other courier services such as **Servientrega** (Av. 8N No. 14N-10, Local 3, tel. 2\/660-3384, 8:30am-12:30pm and 1:30pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.) have many locations in the city.\n\n###### **TELEPHONE**\n\nThe city telephone code for Cali is 2, but you'll only need to use it if you're calling Cali from a different part of the country, or from abroad. It's generally easy to find people selling use of their cell phones, called _minutos_ (minutes), for cheap on the street downtown and in _tiendas_ (stores) elsewhere. Cell phone numbers must have ten digits. To report any emergency, dial 123.\n\n###### **NEWSPAPERS**\n\nThe main daily newspaper in town is **_El Pa\u00eds_** (www.elpais.com.co), although **_El Tiempo_** is also frequently available in drugstores, bookstores, and malls. The free monthly **_Cali Cultural_** (www.calicultural.net) has an extensive listing of cultural events in the city.\n\n##### **Health Services**\n\nCali has excellent medical facilities. The **Fundaci\u00f3n Valle del Lili** (Av. Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar Cra. 98 No. 18-49, tel. 2\/331-9090, appointment hotline tel. 2\/680-5757, www.valledellili.org) and the **Centro M\u00e9dico Imbanaco** (Cra. 38A No. 5A-100, tel. 2\/682-1000, appointment hotline tel. 2\/685-1000, www.imbanaco.com) are two of the top hospitals in the country.\n\nA recommended dental office is **Orthofami** (Cl. 19 No. 4-55, tel. 2\/373-4447, www.orthofami.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.). The **PROFAMILIA Clinic** (Cl. 23N No. 3N-40, tel. 2\/661-8032, 7am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-noon Sat.), in the Versailles neighborhood, offers a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services and products at low cost for women and men.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE**\n\n##### **By Air**\n\nThe Cali airport, the **Aeropuerto Internacional Alfonso Bonilla Aragon** (Palmira, tel. 2\/280-1515, www.aerocali.com.co) is under an hour's drive away. A taxi ride from San Antonio to the airport will cost around COP$50,000. Minibuses from the airport to the city are usually at the ready just outside of the departure hall. They cost about COP$12,000 and take you to the Terminal de Transportes de Cali, the Cali bus station (Cl. 30N 2AN-29).\n\nThere is free wireless Internet in some areas of the airport departure hall. In the terminal, restaurants serve the usual breakfast fare; you can also get refreshed before your flight with your last _lulada_ (a drink made with the juice of a _lulo_ , a type of orange).\n\nAll major Colombian airlines and some international carriers serve Cali. **Avianca** (Av. 6A No. 31N-11, Local 3, tel. 2\/660-7028, www.avianca.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) has numerous flights between Cali, Bogot\u00e1, and Medell\u00edn throughout the day. It also operates nonstop flights to Cartagena, Barranquilla, Pasto, and Tumaco. Internationally, Avianca flies nonstop between Cali and Madrid and Cali and Miami, and through Medell\u00edn to New York's JFK airport.\n\nOwned by the military, **Satena** (Centro Comercial Paseo de la Quinta, Cl. 5 No. 46-83, Local 213, tel. 2\/554-6919, www.satena.com) serves more exotic destinations, such as Guapi, the gateway to the island of Gorgona; Puerto Asis, bordering Ecuador in the Putumayo department; and Quibd\u00f3, the capital city of the Choc\u00f3 department.\n\n**Copa Airlines** (Centro Comercial Chipichape, Cl. 3N No. 6N-35, Local 318, Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-011-2600, www.copaair.com, 8am-7pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-5pm Sat., 9am-4pm Sun.) flies from Cali to Panama City, Panama, as well as to Bogot\u00e1 and to the island of San Andr\u00e9s in the Caribbean. **LAN Colombia** (Cl. 25N No. 6B-36, Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) flies nonstop to Bogot\u00e1 and Quito, Ecuador. Discount airliner **Viva Colombia** (Cali call center tel. 2\/380-8989, www.vivacolombia.co) offers daily flights between Cali and Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, Cartagena, and Santa Marta. **American Airlines** (Intercontinental Cali Hotel, Av. Colombia No. 2-72, Local 6, tel. 9\/800-052-2555, www.aa.com, 8am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.) is the only U.S.-based airline with service to Cali. They operate daily flights out of Miami. Charter flights are offered on **TAC** (Centro Comercial Colon Plaza, Cra. 1 No. 61A-30, Local 6, tel. 2\/439-4084) from Cali to Guapi, El Charco, and Timbiqu\u00ed.\n\nEcuadorean carrier **TAME** (Cra. 4A 12-41, Oficina 118, Edificio Seguros Bol\u00edvar, tel. 2\/888-9101, www.tame.com.ec, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-noon Sat.-Sun.) flies between popular vacation spot Esmeraldas on the Pacific Coast and Cali. **Aerogal** (www.aerogal.com.co) flies to Guayaquil.\n\n##### **By Bus**\n\nThe organized and bustling **Terminal de Transportes** (Cl. 30N No. 2AN-29, tel. 2\/668-3655, www.terminalcali.com) in Cali is a relatively quick taxi ride away from Granada. A small information booth is located in the center of it all. Attendants will be able to give you a rough idea of bus fare prices, help you organize day-trip travel, and even provide you with a Cali tourist map if you are just arriving. There is an efficient taxi stand at the main entrance (Puerta 3). If you are taking MIO to the terminal, the nearest station is Las Am\u00e9ricas, about two blocks away.\n\n#### **GETTING AROUND**\n\n##### **By Taxi**\n\nYellow taxis are plentiful in Cali, and you will need to travel by cab often to get around, especially at night. Taxi drivers are generally helpful, chatty, and honest. However, it is always advisable to order a cab over the phone or using the smartphone app Tappsi. Staff at hotels, restaurants, and (sometimes) clubs should be happy to do this for you. **Taxi Express** (tel. 2\/555-5555) has a phone number you won't forget. Another service is **Taxis y Autos de Cali** (tel. 2\/664-0000). Make sure they turn on the _taximetro_ (meter) when you get started, and note that there may be small nighttime travel or telephone surcharges added on. _Taxistas_ (cab drivers) don't expect tips. And they rarely have change for large bills.\n\nA cab from Cali to the airport will cost around COP$50,000 and take under an hour. From Granada expect to pay about COP$5,000 to get to the bus terminal or to Chipichape and about COP$6,500 to get to San Antonio.\n\n##### **By Bus**\n\nWith 82 routes and a total of 711 buses at last count, the Masivo Integrado de Occidente or **MIO** (www.mio.com.co or www.metrocali.gov.co) is Cali's public transport system. It comprises several dedicated bus lanes with stations (similar to that of the TransMilenio network in Bogot\u00e1), as well as _alimentadores_ \u2014feeder buses that connect with the articulated MIO network at various points. MIO can take you just about anywhere in the city, but the system map is not easy to figure out.\n\nMIO is useful if you are staying in or near Granada or plan to visit the Centro or sights in the south such as shopping malls or the Universidad del Valle campus, or if you plan on going to Pance. The bright blue buses are immaculately maintained and quite safe, too. Note that if you would like to ride one of the _alimentadores_ you will have to present a MIO card on-board. Those have to be bought at the MIO stations. MIO runs 5am-11pm Monday-Saturday and 6am-10pm Sundays and holidays. The current fare for a single trip to any point in the city is COP$1,600.\n\nThe first MIO buses began to operate in 2008, but private bus companies, often using old and polluting buses, were still in operation. In a noble effort to provide some order to the transportation chaos in the city, in late 2012 Cali mayor Rodrigo Guerrero implemented a gradual elimination of those private bus companies, replacing them with city-run MIO buses in order to create a single public bus system. Powerful bus company owners fought him every step of the way. The mayor faced bus strikes, hunger strikes, roadblocks, lawsuits, and threats, but he persevered. It got so nasty at one point, the mayor's transportation secretary had to seek refuge abroad due to threats. If Guerrero is successful, Cali will be the first city in Colombia with a single bus system covering almost the entire city and even extending it to the airport in Palmira. They are getting there: MIO coverage has reached 87 percent.\n\n##### **By Car and Motorcycle**\n\nThe roads in the Valle de Cauca region are generally of high quality and the terrain is flat. So, while it's not a fantastic idea in the city, renting a car or motorbike for excursions outside of Cali (to Valle haciendas, Buga, Lago Calima, and Roldanillo) may be an option. It is not difficult, even, to drive from Cali to Armenia, for example, if you are ready to move on to the Coffee Region. Driving to Popay\u00e1n or to Pasto along the Pan-American Highway is more taxing because of winding, two-lane roads. The same goes for travel westward to Buenaventura.\n\n**Hertz** (Av. Colombia No. 1-14, El Pe\u00f1on, tel. 2\/892-0437, www.rentacarcolombia.co, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-3pm Sat.; airport tel. 2\/666-3283, 7am-5pm Mon.-Sat.) has two offices in Cali. For motorcycle rental and tours, get in touch with Mike, the Danish owner of **Motolombia** (tel. 2\/396-3949, www.motolombia.com). Though it's based in Cali, Motolombia can also hook you up with bikes in Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn.\n\n#### **RESERVA NATURAL ANAHUAC**\n\nOn lazy weekend days, Cale\u00f1os descend en masse on the R\u00edo Pance, south of the city, to splash around in the cool water. Near the town of Pance, at the edge of the Parque Nacional Natural los Farallones, is **Reserva Natural Anahuac** (1 km before Pance on the Cali-Pance road, tel. 2\/331-4828, www.reservanaturalanahuac.com.co, 7:30am-9:30pm daily, COP$5,000), a well-maintained private nature reserve along the R\u00edo Pance that is very accessible. It has a pleasant path that meanders through _guadua_ (a type of bamboo) forests, a fishing pond, a restaurant, and, if you would like to stay the night, some cabins (COP$22,000 pp) and a camping area. There is no need for a guide to make this excursion and it may be just the ticket on a hot day.\n\nTo get to the park, you can take MIO to the Universidades station in the south of Cali and transfer to an _alimentador_ (feeder) MIO bus, the A-19, towards Pance. This ride on MIO is relaxing and pleasant as you pass through Cali suburbia and gawk at the astonishingly fierce-looking Cordillera Occidental mountains in the distance. At the intersection of the Autopista Sur with the V\u00eda Pance is the huge, open-air **La Boquer\u00eda Restaurant** (Cl. 18 No. 122-100, tel. 2\/555-2199, 8am-9pm daily, COP$25,000), which serves hearty Colombian fare. Upon arrival at Anahuac, take care crossing the street: Cars and buses have little regard for pedestrians. Try to beat the crowds by returning to Cali during the early afternoon. Otherwise, finding transportation can be difficult.\n\n#### **HACIENDA PARA\u00cdSO AND MUSEO DE LA CA\u00d1A DE AZ\u00daCAR**\n\nThe **Hacienda Para\u00edso** (14 km from the Pan-American Highway, El Cerrito, tel. 2\/514-6848, ext. 105, haciendaparaiso@inciva.gov.co, www.inciva.org, 9:30am-4:30pm Tues.-Sun., COP$5,000) is an estate near the town of Cerrito that is famous for being the home of famed Colombian poet Jorge Isaacs. His romantic novel _La Mar\u00eda_ is a love story about two adolescents\u2014Efra\u00edn and Mar\u00eda\u2014set against the backdrop of an idyllic hacienda in the Valle de Cauca during the 19th century. The house is frankly rather underwhelming, but the setting amid sugarcane plantations is beautiful. The museum has period furniture and objects and some background on the famous book.\n\nNearby is the **Hacienda Piedechinche and Museo de la Ca\u00f1a de Az\u00facar** (El Cerrito, tel. 2\/550-6076, www.museocanadeazucar.com, 9am-4pm daily, COP$5,000). This hacienda is owned by the Providencia sugar company. Here you amble through some lush and immaculately maintained grounds, seeing different examples of sugarcane mills from sugar-producing regions in Colombia. You can also visit the 18th-century house where the hacienda owners lived.\n\nHacienda Para\u00edso\n\nIf you'd like to spend the night in the country, you can stay at the **Hotel Piedemonte** (cell tel. 316\/555-1462, haciendaparaiso@inciva.gov.co, COP$50,000 pp d). It's on the Hacienda Para\u00edso grounds and has 20 chalets as well as a restaurant. During the week when there are fewer crowds at the hacienda, it is a peaceful place, and guests can lounge by natural pools and perhaps read _La Mar\u00eda,_ or go for a horseback ride.\n\nIf you do not have your own transportation, you can hire a cab for the day from Cali to the area and back, although the cost-benefit ratio may not work out. Another option is to take a bus from the Cali bus terminal (Cl. 30N No. 2AN-29) to the village of Amaime for about COP$5,000. The bus company **COODETRANS Palmira** can take you there. There are always taxis waiting at the bus stop for the arrival of buses. From here take a cab to visit both haciendas. You can negotiate with the driver to take you to both haciendas and then return you to catch a minibus back to Cali from Palmira (COP$50,000) or take you directly back to Cali (COP$80,000). The driver can drop you off in Palmira, about an hour from Cali, where transportation to Cali is easy to acquire. Buses from Buga toward Palmira can also drop you off at the roadside in the village of Amaime, a few kilometers from the sights.\n\n### **Buga**\n\nThe city of Guadalajara de Buga (pop. 115,000), founded in 1555, was one of the first cities established by the Spaniards in New Granada. It is best known as a place of pilgrimage. More than a million Colombian faithful come each year to pray at the Bas\u00edlica Se\u00f1or de los Milagros. Buga may not be chock full of attractions, but it is an excellent launching point from which to discover many lesser-known sights and breathe the fresh air of the Valle de Cauca. Plus, it's a friendly kind of place.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\nThe star attraction in town for religious pilgrims is the **Bas\u00edlica Se\u00f1or de los Milagros** (Cra. 14 No. 3-62, tel. 2\/228-2823, www.milagrosdebuga.com, 5:30am-7:30pm daily). Built in the early 20th century, this pink church is not of architectural significance: It's known for its \"Cristo Negro\" or Se\u00f1or de los Milagros\u2014a charred woodcarving of Christ that is displayed in a chapel behind the altar.\n\nPraying to the \"Black Christ\" is believed to provide miracles, and the story behind this icon is one of generosity, devotion, and miracles. In colonial times an indigenous woman who had converted to Christianity saved for years to purchase a crucifix. One day a man crossed her path crying because he'd go to jail if he didn't pay a debt. The woman showed her generosity to by giving him all the money she had saved. Months later, she noticed a small crucifix floating down the river towards her. She picked it up and made an altar to pray to it. The crucifix grew in size, prompting her and others to believe it had miraculous powers. After years of deterioration, the church decided to burn it and replace it with another, but it never burned, remaining charred and black\u2014another miracle.\n\nThe shops lining the Avenida del Milagroso, a pedestrian walkway leading to the church, sell all manner of basilica-related trinkets. Each September 14 there is a large procession in and around town featuring the Se\u00f1or de los Milagros. It's accompanied by special masses and ceremonies in the church.\n\nBuga is a major pilgrimage destination.\n\nThe **Parque Cabal** (between Clls. 6-7 and Cras. 14-15) is the center of this slow-paced city. Old-timers drink their _tinto_ (small cups of black coffee) in corner caf\u00e9s in the late afternoon, engrossed in political conversations with their friends, while lottery vendors circulate among the tables hoping to sell a couple of tickets. On the corner of Calle 6 and Carrera 15 is the **Catedral de San Pedro** (8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.), a beautifully preserved, three-nave church that was originally built in the 16th century. It is a couple of blocks west of the park.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS AND FOOD**\n\nThe best part about the small M **Buga Hostel** (Cra. 13 No. 4-83, tel. 2\/236-7752, www.bugahostel.com, COP$16,000 dorm, COP$35,000-COP$45,000 d), aside from its friendly owners, is its **Holy Water Ale Caf\u00e9,** where you can saddle up to the bar, try one of their home brews on tap, and chow down on sourdough pizza or the best black-bean burger this side of Austin. It's open daily for lunch and dinner. The hostel has one large dorm room and two private rooms. The hostel has a guide on staff who organizes excursions to the Sonso and Yotoco natural reserves and other sights in the Valle de Cauca. These nature hikes are open to anyone and are reasonably priced.\n\nThe **Hotel Guadalajara** (Cl. 1 No. 13-33, tel. 2\/236-2611, www.hotelguadalajara.com.co, COP$200,000 d) is retro without trying to be. It's just three blocks away from Bas\u00edlica Se\u00f1or de los Milagros and has been around for 50 years. The pool is a good place to cool off. The hotel often has special weekend rates.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE**\n\nBuses depart Cali for Buga all day long. Tickets cost around COP$8,000, and the journey through the sugarcane plantations of the Valle takes under two hours. Buses will often leave you at the main highway, and from there you'll have to walk about 20 minutes or take a cab into town. Cabs are always at the ready to meet arriving buses, and this is easy to do. The pleasant open-air Buga bus station, modern and clean, is a straightforward 15-minute walk from the Buga Hostel.\n\n#### **VICINITY OF BUGA**\n\n##### **Natural Reserves**\n\nThere are three natural parks close to Buga where you can enjoy a day of hiking, canoeing, and bird-watching. Run by **INCIVA** (tel. 2\/514-6848, www.inciva.org), an agency that promotes cultural and ecological points of interest in the Valle de Cauca department, the **Parque Natural Regional El V\u00ednculo** (El V\u00ednculo, cell tel. 321\/831-4775, pnrelvinculo@insciva.gov.co, 8am-noon and 1pm-5pm Mon.-Fri., COP$3,000) is a center for natural exploration and education. Here you can take a short guided nature walk through the dry tropical forest for a small fee. Contact INCIVA in advance to set this up. Previously a cattle ranch, the land was donated to INCIVA by its owner in 1969 to help preserve and protect threatened wildlife and ecological diversity. You can also visit the park on weekends with a prior reservation. Parque Natural Regional El V\u00ednculo is to the south of Buga towards Palmira, only about three kilometers away.\n\nAt the **Reserva Natural Laguna de Sonso** (tel. 2\/228-1922, www.lagunasonso.tripod.com, COP$5,000) you may see many different species of waterfowl and other animals in this wetland reserve on the eastern banks of the R\u00edo Cauca to the southwest of Buga. It is a mostly marshy park, and a walk through it takes about an hour. Buses from the Buga bus station (Cl. 4 before the main highway) going towards Darien or Cali can take you there for around COP$2,000, although you will need to walk one kilometer to get to the park entrance. If you see a fisherman once you arrive at the lake, you can ask him to take you around in his canoe, for a small fee.\n\nMuseo Rayo\n\nA third option is the **Reserva Natural Bosque de Yotoco** (Km. 18 Carretera Buga-Madronal, tel. 2\/228-1922, 7:30am-6pm daily, COP$5,000), where a couple of hour-long guided walks\u2014El Corb\u00f3n and El Cedro\u2014along the R\u00edo Yotoco can be organized. This is the only way to visit the park. Contact expert guide Valent\u00edn (cell tel. 315\/471-4758) to set up a tour. You can get a good view of Lago Calima from the park. This park is also accessible by bus (COP$5,000). Take one headed to Darien and ask the bus driver to let you off at Yotoco.\n\n##### **Lago Calima**\n\nThe **Lago Calima** is the largest artificial lake in Colombia and is a favorite spot for Cale\u00f1os seeking weekend rejuvenation. With winds reaching 43 knots (46 mph), it's a great place for kite-surfing and windsurfing. But other sports, such as waterskiing, boating, and swimming, are also popular. Colombian weekenders often stay in lake houses with their friends and family, but there are a handful of standard hotels if you don't have the option of renting a house. If you are planning a weekend jaunt to this area, you may want to have your own transportation.\n\nDarien is the \"town\" around Lake Calima. It is a cute pueblo with a few restaurants, stores, and other services. Its **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico Calima** (Cl. 10 No. 12-50, tel. 2\/253-3121, www.calimadarien.com, 8am-noon and 1pm-5pm Tues.-Fri., 10am-6pm Sat.-Sun., COP$3,000) has a collection of ceramics dating to 8,000 BC, and it includes artifacts from the Ilama, Yotoco, and Sonso cultures.\n\nOne of the main draws of Lago Calima is its wind- and kite-surfing opportunities. **Kite Colombia** (cell tel. 317\/821-4889, www.kitecolombia.com, US$500 for a 5-day course including lodging, or US$55 for a 1-day introduction course) offers a range of kite-surfing courses and can also arrange accommodations in its lakeside hostel (US$15 dorm, US$22 d). In the mornings, try some Spanish lessons (US$200 for 20 hours).\n\n#### **ROLDANILLO**\n\nAgainst a backdrop of mountains and the vast valley to its east, Roldanillo (pop. 35,000) is on the map for two reasons: It was the home of modernist artist Omar Rayo, and it's the undisputed paragliding capital of Colombia. This town is just two hours from Buga by bus, far away from the well-trodden tourist route.\n\nThe **Museo Rayo** (Cl. 8 No. 8-53, tel. 2\/229-8623, www.museorayo.co, 9am-6pm daily, COP$5,000) is the only real sight in town, and it is well worth a visit. Omar Rayo, who was part of the Op Art, or Optical Art, movement, is known for bold and abstract paintings that often appear three-dimensional. Dedicated mostly to Rayo's paintings, drawings, and sculptures, the museum comprises five octagonal exhibition spaces, each one with a different theme. Temporary exhibits showcase other renowned Colombian artists. Rayo passed away in Roldanillo in 2010.\n\nIf you have always wanted to feel what it's like to be a condor soaring over the sugarcane fields below, **Cloud Base Colombia** (Cra. 9 No. 8-71, tel. 2\/229-9106, www.cloudbasecolombia.com) has a solution for you. This tourist agency, started in 2011 by a pair of German and Swiss paragliding fanatics, can arrange for paragliding and hang gliding lessons and excursions. If the idea of leaping off a cliff into the bright blue skies of the valley doesn't appeal to you, they can come up with some other ideas for you to pass the time. You can think of them as the Roldanillo tourist information center.\n\nThe optimal time to fly is between late December and late March, although anytime is fine. Roldanillo regularly hosts big-time paragliding competitions, such as the Paragliding World Cup Semifinal in January 2013.\n\nThe best option in town is **Casa Vieja** (Cra. 9 No. 8-71, tel. 2\/229-9106, cell tel. 312\/808-8841, COP$35,000 s, COP$50,000 d). It's a small hostel with a cute garden run by the guys at Cloud Base Colombia. They have 12 rooms and they know how to grill. **Balcones del Parque** (Cl. 8 No. 6-86, tel. 2\/259-5151, celdosman@hotmail.com, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$70,000 d) could be very nice, as its location, overlooking the park, is fantastic.\n\n### **Pasto**\n\nMany people overlook unassuming Pasto, a city of more than 400,000 people. It's seen by backpackers as a place to spend the night on the way between Ecuador and Popay\u00e1n, not a destination in its own right. But Pasto, along with the stunning Nari\u00f1o countryside, deserves your time and attention.\n\nWith church steeples rising out of its colonial center, Pasto is set in the verdant Valle de Atriz with the deceivingly gentle, sloping Volc\u00e1n Galeras watching over it. The valley is a rich agricultural region where potatoes are king. This city even has a potato named after it\u2014the _papa pastusa_ \u2014which is sold in every supermarket in Colombia. Pasto, the \"Ciudad Sorpresa,\" indeed may surprise you with a number of museums and sights that will keep you intellectually stimulated for more than a couple days. Of particular interest is the extraordinary handicraft technique called _barniz de Pasto,_ as well as some incredible wood carvings, an influence of Quite\u00f1o culture.\n\nWonderful day trips can be made from the city to La Cocha and to Laguna Verde to the south, and an overnight trip to climb Volc\u00e1n Cumbal is a good plan for the adventurous.\n\nDue to its rugged terrain and poorly patrolled border with Ecuador, Nari\u00f1o, the department of which Pasto is capital, became a major corridor for drug and guerrilla activity. The areas described in this guide are safe, however.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\n##### **Historic Churches**\n\nThe most important and only colonial-era church in the city is the **Iglesia de San Juan Bautista** (Cl. 18A No. 25-17, tel. 2\/723-5440, 7:30am-11am Sun.-Fri., 3:30pm-6:30pm Sat.), in the heart of the Centro on the **Plaza Nari\u00f1o.** The original construction was built in the 16th century, but an earthquake demolished that, and in 1669 the current church was built. The interior has outstanding geometric Mudejar designs on the ceiling and around the presbytery.\n\nStatues of angels set atop the twin towers of the **Iglesia de Cristo Rey** (corner Cl. 20 and Cra. 24) beckon from blocks away. This is a stunning gothic revival church. The sanctuary is lined by 19 woodcarvings created by famous local sculptor Alfonso Zambrano and Ecuadorian woodcarvers. Above, light streams through enormous stained glass windows, creating a mystical environment.\n\nThe **Catedral de Pasto** (Cra. 26 No. 17-23, tel. 2\/723-3328, 7am-11am Sun.-Fri., 3pm-7pm Sat.) was being renovated at the time of the writing of this guide. It was built in 1920. The stately red-brick church is composed of three naves.\n\n##### **Museo Taller Alfonso Zambrano Pay\u00e1n**\n\nIn a colonial-style house built in the 1960s, the **Museo Taller Alfonso Zambrano Pay\u00e1n** (Cl. 20 No. 29-78, tel. 2\/731-2837, hernandozambrano@gmail.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-4pm Mon.-Sat., free) is a tribute to Alfonso Zambrano, one of Pasto's most famous sons. Zambrano is best known in Pasto for having carved extraordinary designs for carnival floats. Each year an award was given for the best design, and he won it over and over again. Zambrano won so often that he was prohibited at a certain point from participating in the competition due to his extraordinary skill. Woodcarving and painting continue to take place at this combination workshop\/museum. And it remains a family affair: It is now operated by Zambrano's daughter, and the artist's grandsons can regularly be found at work carving designs out of cedar. The museum's small collection of pre-Columbian ceramics and Quite\u00f1o school paintings is impressive.\n\n##### **Museo Taminango de Artes y Tradiciones Populares de Nari\u00f1o**\n\nSet in a colonial house built in the early 17th century (said to be the oldest house still standing in Pasto), the **Museo Taminango de Artes y Tradiciones Populares de Nari\u00f1o** (Cl. 13 No. 27-67, tel. 2\/723-5539, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., COP$2,000) is a museum dedicated to handicrafts. An American missionary, Catalina Morgan, who arrived in Pasto in 1934, set out to preserve the house, which had fallen into disrepair. She raised enough money to restore it and to convert it, eventually, into a cultural center. It was opened as a museum in 1989. The museum presents traditional handicrafts from Nari\u00f1o, including explanations of the _barniz de Pasto_ technique. This technique, developed by indigenous groups, uses the leaves and fruits of the _mopa mopa_ bush, from which a resin is extracted. It is dyed in different colors using vegetables dyes, and thin sheets of it are applied to decorate wooden boxes and other objects. Adjacent to the museum is a small handicrafts store.\n\nPlaza Nari\u00f1o, Pasto's main plaza\n\n##### **Museo del Oro Nari\u00f1o**\n\nThe **Museo del Oro Nari\u00f1o** (Cl. 19 No. 21-27, tel. 2\/721-9100, ext. 2624, www.banrepcultural.org, 10am-5pm Tues.-Sat., free), in the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica building facing the Plaza Carnaval, is a small but good collection of pre-Columbian ceramics from the Nari\u00f1o altiplano (high plains) and Pacific coast. The Pasto indigenous group populated the area around Pasto and Ipiales (south of Pasto) and parts of Ecuador. The predominant group in the area was the Quillacingas, who had arrived from the Caribbean region and who were fierce warriors.\n\nOf particular interest in the museum are the stunning _discos giratorios_ (metallic discs plated with gold and copper designs) that were presumed to have been used\u2014specifically, spun\u2014in hypnotic religious ceremonies. In the same building you can often find temporary exhibits featuring Colombian artists.\n\n##### **Museo del Carnaval**\n\nTo learn all about the city's _carneval_ celebration, go to the **Museo del Carnaval** (Cl. 19 at Cra. 42, 8am-11:30am and 2pm-5:30pm Mon.-Fri., free). This museum, located in a former slaughterhouse, shows off what Pastuosos are most proud of: their famous Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in early January. A guide will show you the colorful floats, costumes, and masks from the annual celebration and can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about it. Visiting the museum is the next best thing to being a part of the craziness in January.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nPasto is a party town during the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos, but you can still find good times if you're not visiting in January. Thanks to its being home to the Universidad de Nari\u00f1o, there are a few bars and _pe\u00f1as_ (Andean music bars) that you might want to check out.\n\nTry some _hervidos_ (hot alcoholic fruit drinks) at **Mestizo Pe\u00f1a Bar** (Cl. 18 No. 27-67, tel. 2\/723-7754, 6pm-1am Thurs.-Sat.) and **Embrujo Andino Pe\u00f1a Bar** (Cra. 23 No. 19-58, cell tel. 313\/604-4935, www.embrujoandinobar.tk). Both are popular _pe\u00f1as,_ often showcasing live music.\n\nAs far as bars go, **Volcaf\u00e9** (Cl. 18 No. 24-29, tel. 2\/722-4301, 8am-1am Mon.-Sat.) on the Plaza Nari\u00f1o is a good place for a drink in the late afternoon as you overlook the goings-on the plaza. **Cola de Gallo** (Cl. 18 No. 27-47, tel. 2\/722-6194, 3pm-1am Mon.-Sat.) serves its own _caf\u00e9_ (coffee), which is distributed nationally by Juan Valdez, and is a relaxed place for a drink later on in the evening.\n\n##### **Cinema**\n\nTwo shopping centers have movie theaters that show mostly Hollywood blockbusters. **Royal Films** is in the \u00c9xito shopping center (Cra. 22D No. 2-56), and **Valle de Autriz** is in the shopping mall of the same name (Cra. 42 No. 18A-94, tel. 2\/731-6129, www.cinemasvalledeatriz.com.co). Movies cost around COP$5,000.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\n###### **CARNAVAL DE NEGROS Y BLANCOS**\n\nJanuary 2-6 every year, the population of sleepy Pasto explodes as up to 300,000 visitors from Colombia and beyond converge on the city during the **Carnaval de Negros y Blancos** (www.carnavaldepasto.org, Jan.), which is recognized as a world heritage tradition by UNESCO. The celebration actually gets going on December 28, the \"day of the innocents.\" That's a day of purification and celebration of the natural beauty of the area; many hop on their bikes on this day, cruising down the main parade route. On December 31 a parade pokes fun at politicians and other unpopular figures from the previous year (and sometimes effigies of them are burned).\n\nOn January 2 the parade of the colonies takes place, a celebration of cultures from the Nari\u00f1o department, which includes a horseback procession. January 3 is a day of celebration just for children.\n\nJanuary 4 celebrates the arrival of the Castaneda family, who arrived in Pasto (from the Putumayo department), were welcomed with open arms, and worked to help it grow. This marks the symbolic beginning of the _negros y blancos_. January 5 is the day of the _negros,_ when revelers paint themselves or others black. This day is a celebration of diversity. Finally the festival concludes with the day of the _blancos,_ when fantastic floats slowly make their way along the city streets, and hundreds of thousands of onlookers are busy pelting others with white powder (a Colombian version of Holi, the Indian festival of colors).\n\nIn addition to the parades, there are concerts featuring Andean and other styles of music, and presentations of elaborately costumed stilt walkers and dancers. The _carnaval_ spills over one more day to January 7, when the Cuy Festival is held, but you have to be fond of roasted guinea pig to truly enjoy this event!. The main parade route departs the stadium and ends in the Plaza de Carnaval in the Centro.\n\nFor the _carnaval_ , locals strategically seek out the best spot to watch the parades, with some getting out as early as 6am. The parades\u2014and the drinking\u2014start at 9am on the dot. Airlines add dozens of flights during this time to Pasto, but it's still best to make plans several months in advance if you want to be a part of the fun.\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\nFine handicrafts from the region can be picked up at **Obando Barniz de Pasto** (Cra. 25 No. 13-4, tel. 2\/722-0363, 9am-6pm Mon.-Fri.), a business that has been in existence since the 1850s, which specializes in _barniz de Pasto._ **Artesan\u00edas de Colombia** (Cra. 27 No. 12-89, tel. 2\/729-9433, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.), adjacent to the Museo Taminango, has a wide range of local handicrafts, of the highest quality, including wooden jewelry boxes employing the _enchapado en tamo_ (straw marquetry) technique, in which they are decorated with thin strands of barley and wheat stems. Artesan\u00edas de Colombia is much more than a store, as it conducts numerous training programs for local artisans. On the main plaza is the combination casino\/handicraft store **Shirakaba** (Cl. 18 No. 24-69, tel. 2\/723-9890, 8am-6pm Mon.-Sat).\n\n#### **RECREATION**\n\n##### **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Galeras**\n\nThe Quillacinga people called it Urcunina, the Mountain of Fire, and when the Spaniards arrived, they renamed it **Volc\u00e1n Galeras,** because the gently sloping volcano resembled the sails of ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Today, Pasto residents call it a menace, as this volcano sits right above the city, only eight kilometers away on its western side. Galeras has been one of the most active volcanoes in Colombia, and indeed the world, in recent years. There have been minor eruptions almost every year over the past decade, with the last reported in 2013. In 1993, during an international meeting of volcanologists, six scientists in the crater of the volcano were killed when it erupted.\n\nThe **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Galeras** (tel. 2\/732-0493, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co) is part of the national park system, but much of the park has been closed for many years due to the volcano's activity.\n\nTwo hikes can be done, one outside the park and one inside. One hike is from the neighborhood of Anganoy to the park ranger's station, the Caba\u00f1a de Control\u2014Urcunina. This is a leisurely walk along a slowly sloping road and takes about an hour, and it requires no guide. It starts from the neighborhood of Anganoy (Nido de Aguilas). Once there, look for the road that leads up to the park. To get to Anganoy, either take a cab (COP$4,000) or take the C7 SIT bus.\n\nThe second hike, which takes you into the park, is the 5.7-kilometer-long (3.5-mile-long) San Felipe-Laguna Telpis hike up the northern side of the volcano to the Laguna Telpis, a mountain lake. The hike begins in the village of San Felipe near the town of Yacuanquer. This hike takes three hours to the top, and at the Telpis ranger station you must pay the park entrance fee of COP$2,000. To get to the starting point you can take a taxi (COP$4,000) from Pasto.\n\nBefore setting off on any hike near Galeras, call the ranger's station (tel. 2\/732-0493) to ask about the status of the trails.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nM **La Maison del Ejecutivo** (Cl. 19 No. 37-16B, tel. 2\/731-0043, www.lamaisondelejecutivo.com, COP$120,000 d) is a cozy place to stay in a peaceful neighborhood a short taxi ride from the Plaza Nari\u00f1o. Rooms are quite comfortable. What sets this place apart, though, is the excellent service. The French owner, Patrice, has lived in Pasto with his Colombian wife for many years. He is quite knowledgeable about tourist attractions and can give some expert travel tips. Breakfasts are generous and healthy, a rarity for hotels in Colombia. In fact, you may want to call ahead and see if you can go there for breakfast even if you're not staying there. Dinner is also served for those who wish, and given the options in town, that might be a good idea.\n\nThe **Juan Sebasti\u00e1n Hotel** (Cra. 29 No. 20-18, tel. 2\/731-0983, COP$100,000 d) opened in 2011, is centrally located, and is a good value. It has 35 rooms, offers wireless Internet, and includes a very basic breakfast.\n\n**Fernando Plaza** (Cl. 20 No. 21B-16, tel. 2\/729-1432, www.hotelfernandoplaza.com, COP$124,000 d) is a business hotel in a somewhat quieter part of the Centro a few blocks from the Iglesia de Cristo Rey. It offers immaculate and comfortable rooms.\n\nStarted by an Australian many years ago but having been under other management for quite some time, the **Koala Inn** (Cl. 18 No. 22-37, tel. 2\/722-1101, COP$28,000 s, COP$45,000 d) remains the only backpacker lodge in Pasto, and, although staff are pleasant, this dingy hostel just barely cuts it.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nPasto is Colombia's _cuy_ capital. _Cuy_ is guinea pig meat, which is prepared by slowly barbecuing the meat for about an hour. The delicacy appears on many menus around town, but it's more of a weekend or special occasion dish, so you may have to seek it out.\n\nEateries popular with locals in the Centro include **Restaurante Chipichape** (Cra. 28 No. 18-78, tel. 2\/722-8992, 8am-10pm Mon.-Sat., 8am-5pm Sun., COP$6,500) and **Picanter\u00eda Ipiales** (Cl. 19 No. 23-37, tel. 2\/723-0393, 9:30am-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-6pm Sun., COP$7,000). Similar to each other, both specialize in _lapingacho_ plates. _Lapingachos_ are a type of cheese-filled potato cake, made from _papa pastusa (a local potato variety),_ and the meals usually contain beef, pork, or chicken surrounded by about five of these cakes. There is always some roasted _capia_ (corn) on the side.\n\nCafeteria, bakery, and pizzeria **La Merced** (Cra. 22 No. 17-37, tel. 2\/723-8830, 7am-10pm daily) has something for everyone, from typical Colombian fare to seafood to pizzas. It also has an array of sweets and baked goods.\n\nThe only strictly vegetarian restaurant is **Pan Integral** (Cra. 29 No. 20-34, no phone, 9am-6pm Mon.-Sat., COP$4,500), where a set lunch menu goes for only COP$4,500, but a nicer option is **Huerta del Chef** (Cra. 36 No. 18-114, cell tel. 301\/447-0350, 7am-2:30pm Mon.-Fri., 7am-1pm Sun., COP$12,000).\n\nThe best pizza place in town is **Alina Pizza Gourmet** (Cl. 20 No. 38-07, tel. 2\/731-3565, 6pm-10pm daily, COP$25,000), a hip and overpriced joint on the Avenida Los Estudiantes. It serves only pizza\u2014including many vegetarian options\u2014and drinks. The walls are decorated with thousands of photos and the atmosphere is friendly.\n\nFor hanging out, try **Caf\u00e9 La Catedral** (Cra. 26 No. 16-37, tel. 2\/729-8584, www.cafelacatedral.com, 8:30am-12:30pm and 3pm-8:30pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-12:30pm and 3pm-8:30pm Sat.), where you can have a coffee or light meal and watch the action in the plaza. It's a shame it isn't open on Sunday morning, though, as it's nearly impossible to find a decent cup of coffee at that time.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nThe **Pasto tourist office** (Cl. 18 No. 25-25, tel. 2\/723-4962, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat.) is right off the Plaza Nari\u00f1o and across from the Iglesia de San Juan Bautista. Here you can purchase a city map (COP$2,000), pick up materials on nearby attractions, and purchase some _artesan\u00edas._ The timid staff may not volunteer information, so you may have to be persistent.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nThe **bus terminal** (Cra. 6 No. 16D-50, tel. 2\/730-8955, www.terminaldepasto.com.co), about a 10-minute taxi ride from the Centro, is well-organized, with shops, cafeterias, and ATMs. From the bus terminal, _colectivos_ (small, fast buses) make the journey to and from Ipiales all day long and cost around COP$7,000. Get a window seat if you make this trip along the Pan-American Highway: The scenery is breathtaking and the hairpin curves thrilling. It is a two-lane road, so accidents and road construction can cause delays. Buses going to Bogot\u00e1 take around 20 hours and cost COP$80,000, while buses from Popay\u00e1n take about six hours, costing COP$30,000.\n\n**Avianca** (Cl. 19 No. 25-77, tel. 2\/723-2320, www.avianca.com, 8am-6:30pm Mon.-Fri., 8am-1pm Sat.) serves the **Aeropuerto Antonio Nari\u00f1o** (Chachagui, tel. 2\/232-8141 or 2\/732-8064), which is about 35 kilometers north of the city. The landing strip is dramatically set upon a plateau 50 meters above rich agricultural land, with mountains all around. Landing here in August when the winds blow can be alternately exciting and terrifying. There is regular flight service to Bogot\u00e1 and Cali on Avianca and **Satena** (Cl. 18 No. 27-74, tel. 2\/722-0623 or 2\/733-4266, www.satena.com). A taxi into town will cost around COP$20,000. Shared _colectivos_ can sometimes be found for less.\n\nIn Pasto, transportation alternatives are pretty straightforward and organized. Taxis cost COP$3,500 to anywhere in the city. As a matter of precaution, after dark order taxis by phone.\n\nThe bus system is quite good, as private bus companies have been by and large replaced by the public **SIT** network (www.ciudadsorpresa.com.co). Bus fares currently stand at COP$1,100. Unfortunately there are few signs pointing out bus stops, so you will need to ask which bus to take and from where to catch it. The vast majority of tourist sights are in the Centro, and are best visited on foot if possible.\n\n#### M **LAGUNA LA COCHA**\n\nOnly about 45 minutes outside of Pasto is **Laguna La Cocha** and the smallest park in the national park system, the **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Isla de la Corota.** This excursion is a delight. Minibuses from Pasto will take you to the lakeside fishing village of Encano, on the shores of La Cocha, and is home to about 200 families. The cheerfully painted wooden A-frames, the flowerboxes, and the colorful _lanchas_ (wooden boats) waiting at the ready will remind you of someplace\u2014but probably not Colombia! There are maybe a dozen restaurants in the Encano, all serving La Cocha trout, dozens of different ways.\n\nFrom the village you can hire a boat to take you to the sanctuary on tiny **Isla de la Corota** , not far away (about a 10-minute ride). This excursion costs about COP$20,000 per boat, as the boat's owner will wait for you and take you back to the mainland. On the island, you'll have to pay an entry fee (COP$1,000) and sign in at the ranger's office. From there you'll walk through the virgin rainforest on a wooden walkway. Although the vegetation is tropical with 500 species of plants, including ferns, bromeliads, orchids, lichen, and _siete cueros_ trees, the climate is actually quite cool. It's about 2,800 meters (9,200 feet) above sea level. The highest points on the island have similar vegetation to that of _p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors). It's nice to go on a weekday when there are few visitors, so that you can enjoy the wonderful peace that the island brings. It's a lovely excursion, one that won't take long: the island covers only about 16 hectares (40 acres) of land.\n\nSurrounding the lake are more than 50 private natural reserves managed by local farmers through the Asociaci\u00f3n de Desarollo Campesino (www.adc.org.co). Many of these offer accommodations for visitors. One such reserve is **El Encanto Andino** (Vereda Santa Teresita, cell tel. 321\/263-2663, www.lagunacocha.blogspot.com, COP$100,000 d incl. all meals, transportation COP$25,000 pp). Here you can take walks through the jungle, visit an orchid farm, and do some bird-watching, among other activities. Food is produced at the reserve, and it is all organic. It is difficult to get there, but the pristine environment and unique experience may make it worth the trouble. Contact the hotel for transportation assistance.\n\nEasier to get to and more luxurious is the Swiss chalet-like **Hotel Sindamonoy** (tel. 2\/721-8222, cell tel. 314\/863-5186, www.hotelsindamanoy.com, COP$176,000 d) overlooking the lake. It has 23 large rooms, most with a lake view. If you are just coming for the day, you can take a boat to the hotel and have lunch at the restaurant, the best on the lake.\n\nTo get to Encano, take a _colectivo_ (a small minivan) from Pasto. They leave from in front of the hospital (along Avenida Colombia) facing the big Alkosto store (not from the bus terminal). Expect to wait about 20 minutes for the car to fill up with passengers. It is a 45-minute drive and costs COP$4,000.\n\n#### M **LAGUNA VERDE**\n\nThe hike up to the sulfurous **Laguna Verde** (3,800 meters\/12,500 feet), a dazzling, emerald green crater lake on the north side of the dormant **Volc\u00e1n Azufral,** is easy to make from Pasto. Laguna Negra is a smaller neighboring lake. A sacred site for the Pasto indigenous people, the volcano is part of the Nudo de los Pastos mountain range, which serves as a natural border between Colombia and Ecuador. The vegetation in the _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor) is sparse, with low shrubs, wildflowers, moss, and lichen. There is little fauna to be seen, except for the occasional _gavilan_ (vulture) gliding through the air. From here on a clear day you can see as far as the Galeras volcano in Pasto.\n\nfishing community at Laguna La Cocha\n\nThe Nudo de los Pastos is where the great Andes mountain range coming north from Ecuador splits into two ranges in Colombia: the Cordillera Central (Central Mountain Range) and the Cordillera Occidental (Western Mountain Range). The Cordillera Central continues northwards through Pasto, Cali, much of the Coffee Region, Medell\u00edn, and eventually into the Bol\u00edvar department (province) near the Caribbean. The Cordillera Occidental rises between the Pacific Ocean and the R\u00edo Cauca and continues through the departments of Choc\u00f3 and Antioquia to the Gulf of Urab\u00e1 on the Caribbean coast.\n\nThe **Reserva Natural Azufral** is managed by a community organization, the **Asociaci\u00f3n Azufral los Andariegos T\u00faquerres** (Cra. 6A No. 16D-50, tel. 2\/730-8955, cell tel. 316\/713-3823). From the park ranger's cabin, it is a six-kilometer hike to Laguna Verde and Laguna Negra. Hikers are requested to register at the cabin and pay a small entry fee (COP$2,000). It is an easy, gradual ascent as it follows a dirt road all the way up the mountain. This can take 3-5 hours. It is hard to get lost, especially on weekends and holidays when there are many fellow hikers.\n\nWeather can change on a dime, temperatures can dramatically drop, and the winds can be fierce. Wear warm clothing, bring along a waterproof windbreaker and drinking water, and pick up some fruit from the T\u00faquerres market to keep you going. Economical breakfasts, lunches, and a hot _agua de panela_ (hot drink made from raw brown sugar) or _tinto_ (black coffee) can be had at the ranger's cabin. Call in advance (cell tel. 316\/713-3823) to arrange for meals. The best time to make the trek is July-October or January-April when the weather is drier.\n\nview from the path to Laguna Verde\n\n**T\u00faquerres** , the nearest town to the hike's starting point, is not beautiful, but if you make the hike on a Thursday, be sure to catch the open-air **Santamar\u00eda Market** (6am-2pm). There's the usual cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, including some crazy-looking potatoes. Stray dogs hang out in the freshly slaughtered meat section. The call of _\"a mil, a mil, a mil\"_ (\"for one thousand, for one thousand\") rings across the market, as increasingly anxious vendors try to sell their vegetables (and rabbits and chickens) to a dwindling number of potential customers.\n\n##### **Guides and Tour Agencies**\n\nContracting a guide is not necessary for this hike, especially on weekends when there are many making the climb. Nevertheless, knowledgeable guides are available from the community-based **Asociaci\u00f3n Azufral los Andariegos T\u00faquerres** (T\u00faquerres office: Cra. 13 No. 19-26, tel. 2\/728-0586), the group that manages the park. You can request a guide in advance by calling Jorge Noguera, head of the association (cell tel. 316\/713-3823, COP$30,000 group). If you'd prefer an organized tour from Pasto and would like to avoid having to deal with public transportation, contact Jaime L\u00f3pez at **Viajes Cielo & Tierra** (cell tel. 317\/437-7436, www.turismopasto.com, COP$140,000-COP$200,000). This group can provide a bilingual guide for the excursion, which leaves Pasto (they can pick you up at your hotel) bright and early at 5am. Viajes Cielo & Tierra offers many other outdoor adventures and multi-day tours in the Nari\u00f1o department.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nIf you are making this trip independently, there is regular _colectivo_ service from the Pasto bus terminal (Cra. 6A No.16D-50, tel. 2\/730-8955) bound for T\u00faquerres starting at 5am. The trip will cost about COP$8,000 and takes two hours to make. Plan to leave Pasto no later than 8am, however.\n\nFrom T\u00faquerres it is about 15 kilometers to the hike's starting point (the park ranger's cabin), just past the San Roque village. _Colectivos_ (COP$1,000) leave from the Parque Bol\u00edvar in the morning to San Roque. (The park ranger cabin is 500 meters from there.) This is the cheapest option. However, this service is infrequent (ask a local about the bus upon arrival). Private taxis (COP$20,000-COP$40,000 round-trip) can be contracted from T\u00faquerres to take you all the way to the park ranger's cabin and pick you up at a designated time afterwards, but it is recommended to contact Jorge Noguera, from the **Asociaci\u00f3n Azufral los Andariegos T\u00faquerres** (cell tel. 316\/713-3823, COP$30,000), in advance to coordinate this transportation, as the association is always an honest broker. The trip up takes you past idyllic farmhouses and fields of potato crops.\n\nbuckets of potatoes at the Santamar\u00eda Market in T\u00faquerres\n\n#### **VOLC\u00c1N CUMBAL**\n\nAt 4,764 meters (15,630 feet) high, the snow-dusted **Volc\u00e1n Cumbal** is the highest volcano in the Nudo de los Pastos mountain range in southern Colombia. It is 15 kilometers northwest of Cumbal (pop. 20,000), a laid-back and orderly town of broad streets.\n\nThe volcano has not seen any activity since 1930, but the Colombian Geological Service upped its level of threat from green to yellow in 2012. Indigenous people used to extract sulphur rock and snow and ice for sale in the market at Ipiales, and to make _helado de paila,_ an ice cream made in large copper bowls.\n\nTo hike to the top of Volc\u00e1n Cumbal, you must spend the night in the town of Cumbal and get an early morning start. It is a strenuous hike: five to six hours up and three back. The volcano has two peaks; most visitors climb the southern one. From the top, there are spectacular views of the mountainous surrounding countryside extending into Ecuador.\n\nThe path to the volcano begins in the settlement called La Origa, which is 20 minutes from town. From there it is a tough hike up. The path is not clearly marked, and it could be easy to get lost, particularly when fog rolls in over the mountains, so be sure to get a guide. A recommended guide is Fidencio Cuaical of **Turicumbes** (cell tel. 310\/513-7234, turicumbes@hotmail.com, COP$60,000), a group of young, rural guides, based out of Cumbal.\n\nIf you prefer an organized excursion with transportation from Pasto, you can arrange it with **Viajes Cielo & Tierra** (tel. 2\/731-3314, cell tel. 317\/437-7436, www.turismopasto.com, turismocieloytierra@hotmail.com).\n\nThe best time of year to make the climb is during the dry months between July and September.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThe **Hotel Para\u00edso Real** (Cl. 17 at Cra. 9, cell tel. 314\/640-6046, COP$25,000 d) is really the only lodging available in Cumbal. Rooms are clean but quite basic. Surprisingly, there is wireless Internet, and the hotel adjoins a small bakery. Adjacent to the hotel is a basic restaurant where they serve trout fished from the sacred Laguna Cumbal, about six kilometers from town.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nTo get to Cumbal from Pasto, you must take a bus to Ipiales first. This costs around COP$10,000, and the trip takes two hours. At the Ipiales terminal, transfer to a minivan bound for Cumbal; the trip takes about an hour (COP$6,000).\n\n#### **CAF\u00c9 DE ALB\u00c1N**\n\nFor an unforgettable experience in a Nari\u00f1o coffee town, you can't beat the homestay program of **Caf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n** (cell tel. 314\/632-3765, cafealban@gmail.com or edgarivanpa@gmail.com, www.cafealban.org, COP$60,000 pp per day) in the town of San Jos\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n, which is 68 kilometers northeast of Pasto, an agro-tourism project started by an American. For a few days you can live with a local family and learn the ins and outs of the coffee growing, harvesting, and roasting process. Near the town are markets to visit, hikes to hike, and opportunities to learn about handicrafts from the region. You can also volunteer by teaching English at Caf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n's school.\n\n#### **IPIALES**\n\nBorder towns are rarely beauties, and Ipiales, on the Pan-American Highway on the other side of Ecuador, is no exception. However, Ipiales is home to the stunning neo-gothic Santuario Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Lajas, a major pilgrimage site that is worth a look.\n\nFor meals and accommodations, the area around the Plaza La Pola is where to look. With hookahs on the tables and dishes such as prawn fettuccini on the menu, **La Terraza** (Cra. 6 No. 13-17, tel. 2\/775-7677, 10am-9pm Mon.-Sat., 10am-3pm Sun., COP$18,000) might seem a little ambitious for Ipiales. It is on the second floor overlooking the Plaza La Pola. Also on the menu are shwarmas and burritos. **Los Andes** (Cra. 5 No. 14-44, tel. 2\/773-4338, www.hotellosandes.com, COP$90,000 d) is one of the few good hotel options in town. Carpeted rooms are fine (there are 33) and they even have a gym.\n\n##### **Las Lajas**\n\nThe most famous neo-gothic construction in all of Colombia, and one of the most visited pilgrimage sites for Catholics, is the **Santuario Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Lajas** (tel. 2\/775-4462, 7am-6pm daily), seven kilometers from the city. It is truly a photogenic church built impossibly in the middle of a gorge and over a river. The basilica is packed with Colombian and Ecuadorean tourists on Sundays and religious holidays and, to a lesser extent, on Saturdays. Minivans head towards the basilica all day long from the bus terminal, and it costs about COP$2,000. You will need to walk down a long walkway to the cathedral. It's lined with knickknack shops and diners where you can grab a _quimbolito_ pastry and a sweet, weak coffee to warm up, usually served by a lady in a _ruana_ (poncho). Along the walkway you'll notice thousands plaques of prayers and thanksgiving. The pews are always packed for masses at the cathedral, and a museum (entry COP$2,000) has old photographs of prior cathedral constructions. Families often bring picnic lunches and watch their kids run around by the river, the trickling R\u00edo Gu\u00e1itara. Hungry street dogs wait for scraps. The bridge leading to the cathedral is a favorite spot for photos.\n\nFor much of its history, the cathedral has been under construction. First built as a small chapel in the 18th century, its latest and stunning neo-gothic incarnation took about 33 years (until 1949) to complete. It was designed by an architect from Pasto and built by an Ecuadorean.\n\nThe sanctuary is a place of miracles, according to believers. An indigenous girl and her mother were traveling home and, during a storm, sought refuge from the rain under the protection of rocks. The girl, Rosa, who was deaf and dumb, discovered the illuminated image of Mary on the side of the canyon after a lightning bolt struck, and she astonished her mother by later uttering the words _\"Mamita, la mestiza me llama\"_ (\"Mommy, she is calling me\").\n\nAfter seeing the cathedral, the walk back up is steep. There are plans to build a cable car transportation system to make it all easier and make this a bigger tourism draw.\n\nllama at Las Lajas\n\n##### **Crossing the Border**\n\nThe border with Ecuador is at the town of Rumichaca about three kilometers south of the center of Ipiales. Minibuses depart from the center all day long and from the bus terminal as well. These cost about COP$1,500, or you can take a cab, which will cost COP$6,000. Leaving Colombia, you will need to fill out an entry form at the Ecuadorean side of the bridge and request either a 30- or 90-day-long permission. The border is open 5am-10pm.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nThere is frequent _colectivo_ (small bus) service between Pasto and Ipiales along the Pan-American Highway. It's a beautiful, if slow-going, ride, but remember that you'll have to stay awake to enjoy the awe-inspiring scenery of mountains, valleys, and rivers. The road is two-lane and traffic is heavy, especially with big trucks. If there is a wreck on it, this 2.5-hour journey can take much longer. The trip costs about COP$8,000.\n\nBuses to Popay\u00e1n take about eight hours and cost COP$32,000; to Cali the journey takes 11 hours and costs COP$46,000. You can take a 23-hour bus ride to Bogot\u00e1 for COP$107,000, but airliner **Satena** (Cra. 7 No. 16-49, tel. 2\/725-6085, www.satena.com, 9am-6pm Mon.-Sat.) has a morning flight to the capital a few times a week from the tiny Ipiales airport.\n\n### **Popay\u00e1n**\n\nThe temperate capital of the Cauca department, Popay\u00e1n is the White City along the banks of the R\u00edo Cauca between the Cordilleras Central and Occidental (Central and Western Mountain Ranges). It is a dignified city, proud of its place in history as the home of presidents, poets, and priests. It retains its colonial charm despite earthquakes and modernization. Religion retains its importance in the lives of its people; during the annual Holy Week celebrations the entire city takes part in solemn processions through the streets. Idyllic churches and museums are the main places of interest in Popay\u00e1n, but lingering in the Parque Caldas on a sunny afternoon or strolling the lonely streets on a Sunday evening may be what you remember most.\n\nPopay\u00e1n is also a great base from which to explore sights nearby. Just outside of town is the Guambarino indigenous town of Silvia, famous for its colorful Tuesday market. In Coconuco, you can take a dip in the hot springs, and Parque Nacional Purac\u00e9 is a nearby national park where you can hike to the rim of a volcano, the Volc\u00e1n Purac\u00e9.\n\nFarther afield in Cauca is the archaeological site of Tierradentro, and beyond that, in the Huila department, is San Agust\u00edn. These two sights can be combined in a circuit trip in three or four days from Popay\u00e1n, although many tourists choose one or the other.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\n##### M **Centro Hist\u00f3rico**\n\nThe **Parque Caldas** (Clls. 4-5 and Cras. 6-7) in the center of Popay\u00e1n is a lovely pedestrian square and the city's main point of reference. It's a fantastic place to have a coffee (there's a Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9 on the square) or just hang out, day or night. Your discovery of Popay\u00e1n begins here.\n\n###### **MUSEUMS**\n\nThe **Casa Museo Edgar Negret and Museo Iberoamericano de Arte Moderno de Popay\u00e1n** (MIAMP, Cl. 5 No. 10-23, tel. 2\/824-4546, www.museonegret.wordpress.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Wed.-Mon., COP$2,500) is in the home of Edgar Negret, a Colombian artist best known for massive abstract iron sculptures that adorn public spaces in cities throughout Colombia and in museums throughout the world. Negret donated this 18th-century house to the city in an effort to promote its rebirth following the devastating 1983 quake.\n\nAn oft-talked-about piece at the museum is a model of Negret's proposal for a monument to Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar in Bogot\u00e1 that ended up being too abstract for the Bogotanos.\n\nThe museum was the scene of excitement when, in 2011, an etching by Pablo Picasso was stolen from Negret's private collection. Worth over US$65,000, it was recovered when the thief tried to sell it a few months later. Negret passed away in Bogot\u00e1 in 2012 on his 92nd birthday.\n\nThe **Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad del Cauca** (Cra. 2 No. 1A-25, tel. 2\/820-9861, 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm daily, COP$3,000) was founded in 1936. This expansive museum on the edge of the historic center is considered the best natural history museum in Colombia and highlights the astounding variety of species, both plant and animal, that are found in Colombia. A guide will show you through.\n\n**Museo Nacional Guillermo Valencia** (Cra. 6 No. 2-69, tel. 2\/820-6160, 10am-noon and 2pm-5pm Tues.-Sun., COP$2,000) is an 18th-century house near the Puente del Humilladero that was the home of Popay\u00e1n poet Guillermo Valencia. His son, Guillermo Leon Valencia, was president in the 1960s. The museum may not be of great interest to foreign visitors, but the house is undeniably a beauty. The **Puente Humilladero** and **Puente de la Custodia** are historic bridges next to the Museo Casa Valencia. The Puente de la Custodia dates to the 18th century.\n\nThe **Museo de Arte Religioso** (Cl. 4 No. 4-56, tel. 2\/824-2759, 9am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri, 9am-2pm Sat., COP$5,000), run by the Arquidiocesis de Popay\u00e1n, has 10 rooms of religious art from the colonial era in an 18th-century neoclassical house covering Quite\u00f1o, Popay\u00e1n, and Spanish styles. You'll probably be guided through by a police cadet.\n\n###### **CHURCHES**\n\nThere are several colonial churches dating from the 17th to 18th centuries to visit in Popay\u00e1n. Most of them have been restored following earthquakes over the years. The **Iglesia San Francisco** (Cl. 4 and Cra. 9, tel. 2\/824-0160) is one of the most beautiful churches and dates to the late 18th century. You can ask at the church to see the mummies that were found here following the earthquake. The **Iglesia La Ermita** (Cl. 5 and Cra. 2, tel. 2\/820-9725) is older, dating to the 16th century. It has some fine woodcarvings and paintings. The **Iglesia Santo Domingo** (Cl. 4 and Cra. 5, tel. 2\/824-0536) is where the Good Friday procession begins every year. The neoclassical **cathedral** (Cl. 5 and Cra. 6, tel. 2\/824-1710) on the Parque Caldas was completed in the early 20th century. The cathedral's official name is **Catedral Bas\u00edlica de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Asunci\u00f3n de Popay\u00e1n,** but it is always referred to as _\"la catedral.\"_\n\n##### **Cerro El Morro del Tulc\u00e1n**\n\nFor a quick early morning or afternoon walk and some nice views of the city, check out the **Cerro El Morro del Tulc\u00e1n,** a hill to the northeast of Popay\u00e1n. A statue of the city's founder, Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar, stands on horseback on top of the hill. It is thought that this hill is actually a man-made pyramid built by pre-Columbian peoples. There have been reports of bandits at the hill, so do not go very late in the afternoon.\n\nA corny handicraft market, the **Pueblito Patojo** (9am-6pm daily), adjoins the Cerro el Morro. Also nearby is the **Cerro de las Tres Cruces**.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nFor unsurpassed old-school, Popay\u00e1n-style atmosphere, **El Sotare\u00f1o** (Cra. 6 No.8-05, no phone, 8pm-midnight daily) can't be beat. It's a cozy mom-and-pop place where the pop plays old vinyl tunes (lots of tango) from his collection and patrons of all ages fill in the booths. For nightlife of a different sort, head to the drinking hall alongside university students at the **Campanario** shopping mall (Cra. 9 No. 24AN-21, 5pm-9pm daily), on the outskirts of town.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThe most important religious site in Colombia during **Semana Santa** (Holy Week) is Popay\u00e1n. During Easter week, solemn processions take place on the streets of the center, a tradition that has been fulfilled every year in the White City since 1566. This is the only time of the year that mummies discovered in the Iglesia San Francisco are displayed.\n\nthe White City of Popay\u00e1n\n\n**Congreso Nacional Gastron\u00f3mico** (www.gastronomicopopayan.org) is an annual food festival held in early September each year, mostly at the Hotel Dann Monasterio. You may be surprised to learn that Popay\u00e1n is one of UNESCO's Cities of Gastronomy, along with Cheng Du, China; Ostersund, Sweden; and Jeonju, North Korea.\n\n#### **RECREATION**\n\n##### **Guided Tours**\n\nMarcela from **Finca Alas y Raices** (cell tel. 320\/742-3470, www.alasyraices.org) conducts walking tours of Popay\u00e1n (COP$60,000) as well as day trips to Silvia and multi-day trips to San Agust\u00edn. Lorena Torres of **Kolumbien Linda Tours** (Cl. 3 No. 25-35, cell tel. 314\/892-6699, www.kolumbien-linda-tours.com) specializes in German and English tours to San Agust\u00edn from Popay\u00e1n (COP$250,000). **Luna Paz Tour** (Cra. 11 No. 4-85, tel. 2\/821-9595, www.lunapaztour.jimdo.com) organizes many interesting tours, such as to Tierradentro (COP$354,000 pp) and to Purac\u00e9 (COP$120,000 pp).\n\nThe staff at **Hosteltrail** (Cra. 11 No. 4-16, tel. 2\/831-7871, www.hosteltrailpopayan.com) and **Hostel Caracol** (Cl. 4 No. 2-21, tel. 2\/820-7335, www.hostelcaracol.com) can arrange outings, such as a day trip to the Coconuco hot springs with an exhilarating bike ride back; a trip to the Silvia market on Tuesday; tours of the Finca Alas y Raices coffee farm; and trips to **Mam\u00e1 Lombriz** (cell tel. 316\/482-8655, www.mamalombriz.com), a farm on the outskirts of town where worms work!\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nPopay\u00e1n has a fair number of accommodations options, and hostels are some of the better ones. Rooms are in short supply during Holy Week and during the Congreso Nacional Gastron\u00f3mico.\n\n###### **UNDER COP$70,000**\n\nRelaxed is the best word to describe the M **Hostel Caracol** (Cl. 4 No. 2-21, tel. 2\/820-7335, www.hostelcaracol.com, COP$48,000 d shared bath). That atmosphere has a lot to do with its easy-going staff. They are full of great suggestions on how to make the most of your visit, including how to do their \"Circuito Sur,\" a trip that includes San Agust\u00edn, Tatacoa desert, and Tierradentro. There is free use of computers and wireless Internet. If you feel like mingling with other travelers or locals, check out their small caf\u00e9. M **Hosteltrail** (Cra. 11 No. 4-16, tel. 2\/831-7871, www.hosteltrailpopayan.com, COP$45,000 d shared bath, COP$55,000 d private bath), on the other side of the park and owned by the same Scottish couple, is a sociable place. Hosteltrail is about a 15-minute walk from the bus station.\n\n**Parklife** (Cl. 5 No. 6-19, cell tel. 300\/249-6240, www.parklifehostel.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$45,000 d) has the nicest location in Popay\u00e1n. Literally right next to the _catedral_ and overlooking the Parque Caldas, it can't get much better. This is a lively and bright Spanish-Romanian-Irish-run hostel, with a pair of private \"rooms with a view\" that overlook the park and two dorm rooms with 8-10 beds each.\n\n###### **COP$70,000-200,000**\n\n**La Casa de Mina** (Cl. 3 No. 2-37, cell tel. 310\/494-4082, www.lacasademima.com, COP$150,000 d) is a quiet and cozy bed and breakfast a few blocks from the Parque Caldas. Seven rooms overlook three courtyards. The owner, Do\u00f1a Olga, lives here as well, and will make you feel right at home. **Hotel La Plazuela** (Cl. 5 No. 8-13, tel. 2\/824-1084, www.hotellaplazuela.com.co, COP$110,000 d) is a colonial-style house with a lovely large interior courtyard. The rooms are not as great as the setting, which is hard to beat. The hotel restaurant is popular with city government and university employees on their lunch break.\n\n###### **OVER COP$200,000**\n\nThe finest option in town, although falling short of five stars, is the classic M **Hotel Dann Monasterio** (Cl. 4 No. 10-14, tel. 2\/824-2191, www.hotelesdann.com, COP$362,000 d). It's housed in an old monastery overlooking a serene interior courtyard where you can have a coffee. It has a pool out back amid spacious, well-kept grounds.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nFive-course meals are standard at the **Restaurante del Hotel Camino Real** (Cl. 5 No. 5-59, tel. 2\/824-3595, www.hotelcaminoreal.com.co, noon-3pm and 6pm-9:30pm, COP$25,000). The cuisine here is mostly French, but also on the menu are the empanadas that made Popay\u00e1n famous: potato- and peanut-filled _empanadas de pipi\u00e1n._ It can get busy here around lunchtime.\n\n**La Semilla Escondida** (Cl. 5 No. 2-28, tel. 2\/820-6437, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat.) serves healthy lunches and an economical set lunch for just COP$8,000 in a peaceful corner of town. Go for the cr\u00eapes\u2014the owner is French, after all.\n\n**Wipala** (Cra. 2 No. 2-38, tel. 2\/823-3141, wipalacolectivocultural@gmail.com, 10am-9pm daily, COP$15,000) is a live music venue\/gallery\/restaurant surrounding a verdant patio. In the evenings it's a cool place to visit and mingle with locals as well as visitors and expats. Wipala serves some unique juices, some with coca leaf. There's also a veggie burger made out of beets, which tastes much better than it sounds. Wednesday nights are curry nights, a tradition started by the folks at Hosteltrail.\n\nIf you want Mexican food, go to a restaurant owned by a Mexican. **Tequila's** (Cl. 5 No. 9-25, tel. 2\/822-2150, 5pm-9pm Wed.-Sun., COP$15,000) is a great little cantina where you can delight in the dynamic duo of enchiladas and micheladas (beer cocktail). The owners are a Popay\u00e1nensa-Mexican couple who lived in Long Island for many years.\n\nAbove all, the M **Restaurante Italiano** (Cl. 4 No. 8-83, tel. 2\/824-0607, 11am-10pm daily, COP$20,000) is consistent. Run by a Swiss woman, it's been in Popay\u00e1n for years, stays open late, and serves mega portions of pasta dishes and also pizzas. Load up on your carbs here before your Purac\u00e9 hike. During the day the set lunch\u2014usually Colombian fare\u2014is hard to beat.\n\n**Capriccio Caf\u00e9 & Te** (Cl. 5 No. 5-63, tel. 2\/832-3053) looks and feels like a caf\u00e9 should. It's a nice place to hang out, maybe have a pastry, but you may want to stick with the pros at **Juan Valdez** (Parque Caldas, Cra. 7 No. 4-36, tel. 2\/839-5332) if you want a good brew. Se\u00f1or Valdez has quite the location on the western side of the park.\n\n**Cuarsenor Caf\u00e9** (Cra. 6 No. 3-85, tel. 2\/834-4040, COP$6,000) is hopping all day long, packed mainly with local workers. It's a bargain breakfast spot, but it also serves hearty lunches with trout or grilled chicken. There's an adjoining bakery. **Fruti Jugos** (Cl. 5 No. 7-66, tel. 2\/839-5826) serves gigantic, fresh Colombian juices out of plastic pitchers. So refreshing. You can even order aphrodisiac juices.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nThere are frequent buses to Cali (COP$15,000, 4 hours) and Pasto (5 hours, COP$25,000) from the **Terminal de Transportes** (Tr. 9 No. 4N-125, Oficina 201, tel. 2\/823-1817, www.terminalpopayan.com), a modern bus station about a 15-minute walk from downtown. The **Aeropuerto Guillermo Leon Valencia** is nearby, and Popay\u00e1n is served by **Avianca** (Cra. 5 No. 3-85, tel. 2\/824-4505, www.avianca.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat.).\n\n#### **VICINITY OF POPAY\u00c1N**\n\n##### **Finca Alas y Raices**\n\n**Finca Alas y Raices** (Timbio, cell tel. 320\/742-3470, www.alasyraices.org, COP$50,000 tour and lunch pp) is an organic coffee farm run by a Colombian and Swiss pair. They welcome visitors for tours of their farm and explanations of the coffee-producing process.\n\n##### **Market at Silvia**\n\nThe **Market at Silvia** (Silvia, Tues. 5am-2pm) is a popular day trip destination from Popay\u00e1n. It is about an hour's bus ride (COP$6,000) away. On market days starting at dawn, Guambiano indigenous people converge on the market from nearby communities to buy and sell fruits, vegetables, and textiles. There are few handicrafts to purchase. The market and the people are photogenic; however, if you would like to take close-up photos of people, it's imperative to ask for permission first. The market occurs rain or shine. To get to the market, take a bus bound for Silvia from the Terminal de Transportes. They leave every 20 minutes or so, and the trip takes about an hour.\n\n##### **Termales de Coconuco**\n\nFor a dip in some _termales_ (hot springs), **Coconuco** (cell tel. 310\/543-7172, www.termalesaguatibia.com) is the place. Nestled among the hills are two springs, one _tibia_ (cool-ish) and one _herviendo_ (boiling hot), if sulfurous. Most of the action, especially on the weekend, takes place at the latter, as Colombian families while away the day (into evening) there. It's a gregarious scene and inevitably someone will share a box of _aguardiente,_ the anise-flavored liquor of choice here. But it's a calm environment during the week. The _tibia_ spring is more natural with a mud pool and an awesome water slide. It costs COP$10,000 to enter and the hot springs cost COP$4,000. The town of Coconuco is an indigenous community about 30 kilometers outside of Popay\u00e1n, and a bus ride there from the terminal (Trans. 9 No. 4N-125) to town takes about one hour, costing COP$4,000. From the town you have to walk about four kilometers along a well-marked road. On clear days you can get some good views of the Purac\u00e9 volcano.\n\n##### **Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9**\n\nThe **Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9** (COP$20,000 non-Colombians, COP$8,500 Colombian residents, COP$4,000 children) is a national park covering some 83,000 hectares (205,100 acres) that includes two important mountainous formations within the Cordillera Central (Central Mountain Range): the Serran\u00eda de los Coconucos (Coconucos Range) and the Masizo Colombiano (Colombian Massif). It is a region of immense environmental importance that was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1979.\n\nThe Serran\u00eda is a six-kilometer-long chain of volcanoes, including the snow-covered Pan de Az\u00facar (5,000 meters\/16,400 feet), Coconuco (4,600 meters\/15,100 feet), Purac\u00e9 (4,580 meters\/15,000 feet), and Sotar\u00e1 (4,400 meters\/14,400 feet). Purac\u00e9 and Sotar\u00e1 are currently active. The Masizo Colombiano is a mountainous formation where five major Colombian rivers are born: R\u00edo Magdalena and R\u00edo Cauca, which flow into the Caribbean; the R\u00edo Pat\u00eda, which flows into the Pacific; and the R\u00edo Caquet\u00e1 and R\u00edo Putumayo, which are tributaries of the Amazon.\n\nThe park includes over 30 _lagunas_ (mountain lakes), including the Laguna del Magdalena, which is the source of the R\u00edo Magdalena. Most of the park lies at an altitude greater than 2,600 meters (8,500 feet).\n\nThe primary attraction at this park is the fairly strenuous climb to the summit of the **Volc\u00e1n Purac\u00e9** (7 km) in the northern part of the park. The ascent, which requires about five hours up and three down, takes you through high mountain tropical jungle and then _p\u00e1ramo,_ a unique high mountain Andean ecosystem.\n\nGuides are available at the Pilimbal\u00e1 office, and it's a good idea to hire one. Call the Popay\u00e1n parks office (tel. 2\/823-1223) or the Pilimbal\u00e1 office in the park (tel. 8\/521-2578 or 8\/521-2579) in advance to arrange for a guide. Guides usually charge around COP$35,000 for the hike up to the crater.\n\nHigh season is from mid-December to mid-January, as well as during Semana Santa (Easter week) and school vacations from mid-June to mid-July. There are cabins in the park (COP$25,500-COP$35,000 pp high season), and camping is also available (COP$9,500 pp). To inquire about a reservation, contact the Pilimbal\u00e1 station (tel. 8\/521-2578 or 8\/521-2579). A restaurant here serves all three meals for under COP$5,000 each. If you would like to request a vegetarian meal or have other dietary needs, phone the restaurant in advance (tel. 8\/521-2577); ask for Se\u00f1ora Feliza.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nThe main Pilimbal\u00e1 park ranger's station is 44 kilometers east of Popay\u00e1n. From Popay\u00e1n, buses depart the Terminal de Transportes (COP$5,000) bound for the community of La Plata. Buses generally leave at 6:30am, but there are often delays. The trip takes approximately 1.5 hours. Get off at the Cruce de la Mina, also known as El Crucero, and from there walk about 800 meters towards the left to the ranger's station. There are return buses coming from the opposite direction until around 5:30pm.\n\n#### M **TIERRADENTRO**\n\nFrom AD 500 to 900, the area of Tierradentro was settled by an agricultural society that dug magnificent decorated underground tombs, produced large stone statues, and built oval buildings on artificial terraces. As in the case of San Agust\u00edn, these people disappeared without a trace. We do not even know what they called themselves. By the time of the Spanish conquest, the area was inhabited by the Paez, a Chibcha-speaking people who still inhabit the area and who are organized in _cabildos_ (indigenous ruling bodies) that are recognized by the Colombian government.\n\nthe well-preserved burial chambers of Tierradentro Archeological Park\n\n**Tierradentro** is the site of a major indigenous necropolis that includes monumental funeral statues and hypogea (underground burial chambers). These chambers, some 12 meters wide, are decorated with intricate red and black anthropomorphic and zoomorphic geometric designs, some of which are in relief. This archaeological park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.\n\nThese awe-inspiring burial chambers reveal the existence of a rich and complex society that devoted significant time and effort to preparing the way to the afterlife. There is also an intriguing symmetry to be found between these ornate underground chambers and the houses of the living above ground. Though there are some similarities between the statues and tombs of San Agust\u00edn, it is believed that these were two distinct cultures.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\n###### **TIERRADENTRO ARCHEOLOGICAL PARK**\n\n**Tierradentro Archeological Park** (Inza, 91 km east of Popay\u00e1n, www.tierradentro.info, 8am-4pm daily, COP$20,000) is a circuit of five sites set on four hills _(altos)_. If you are staying at La Portada in San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1, you can avoid the walk down to the main entrance of the park (30 minutes) and take the path that leads straight from the hostel to the Alto de San Andr\u00e9s, one of the five sites, and continue onward towards Alto de Aguacate and the museum and park office.\n\nIt's better to start at the museum, so you can get a good introduction to the park before you tackle the sites. The sites are best visited in a counterclockwise manner. There are two museums across the street from each other. On the Aguacate side is the archaeological museum, and on the other side across from the ticket booth is the ethnographic museum. After checking out the museums and purchasing your ticket, you can continue to **Alto de Segovia,** which has some of the most impressive burial chambers. They are all very well preserved. Beyond **Alto del Duende** is **El Tabl\u00f3n,** which has large stone statues similar to those of San Agust\u00edn. You will follow the road to get there.\n\nstone carving at Tierradentro Archeological Park\n\nAfter crossing through the town, just next to La Portada is the path to the **Alto de San Andr\u00e9s.** Parts of the trail\u2014especially between Alto de San Andr\u00e9s and Alto de Aguacate\u2014are poorly marked. When in doubt, keep going left and upwards\u2014and don't panic. You will eventually reach the top of the mountain ridge. Along the way you may run across _campesinos_ (farmers) tending to their coffee and banana plantations who can point you in the right direction. Getting to the **Alto de Aguacate** is a steep climb, but the views of the countryside are breathtaking. The entire circuit can be done in a day\u2014a very long day. Your admission ticket is good for two days, so you could go at a slower pace and visit half the first day and the remaining half on the second day. If you are in a hurry, check out the most impressive site, the Alto de Segovia. You can also inquire about a horseback tour of the park. La Portada hotel can arrange that for you.\n\nA good flashlight is a must to be able to get a good look at the interior paintings of the tombs and some of the elaborate artwork decorating them. Rubber boots could be useful if you are there during the rainy months of March-June or September-November. Also, be sure to bring water and snacks. It's a tough six-hour walk from La Portada to Alto de San Andr\u00e9s, Alto del Aguacate, and down to the museum and park entrance. And that's just a little more than halfway. Near the museums you can get refreshed with a juice, water, or homemade ice cream at one of the little stores or nearby hostels.\n\nIn Alto de Segovia and Alto del Duende, a park guard will open up some of the tombs and let you in and back out. The steps can be quite steep and obviously on the dark side.\n\n###### **BIBLIOTECA P\u00daBLICA LA CASA DEL PUEBLO DE GUANACAS**\n\nAfter Tierradentro, you can visit the **Biblioteca P\u00fablica La Casa del Pueblo de Guanacas** (8am-6pm daily), an award-winning public library in the town of Guanacas. It's made of _guadua,_ a native species of bamboo, and was the idea of a couple of young locals, who presented the idea of a community library to the architecture department of the Universidad Javeriana in Bogot\u00e1. Sim\u00f3n Hosie, an award-winning architect who involves local communities intensely in the design process, took on the project, the Japanese Embassy provided funding, and residents of the village, both young and old, participated in its construction. The library opened in 2004.\n\nTo get there, take a bus toward Popay\u00e1n from the Tierradentro site and ask to get off at Guanacas. It's an easy walk down to the library.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nBasic accommodations are plentiful near the official park entrance and museum, and are all located on the same road. **Hospedaje Pisimbal\u00e1** (cell tel. 311\/605-4835 or 321\/263-2334, COP$20,000 pp) is a neat and comfortable option, with a cool thatched roof gazebo in front. There's a good restaurant as well. **Lucerno** (no tel., COP$15,000 pp) is bare-bones, and the water may be cold, but the owners of this hostel, Secundino and Carmelita, are extremely friendly. It was one of the first such hostels around, and was given its name by a Swiss visitor from Lucerne. It has nine rooms. **El Refugio** (tel. 2\/825-2904, hotelalbergueelrefugio@gmail.com, COP$60,000 d) is the largest and most luxurious option. It's even got a pool.\n\nM **La Portada** (cell tel. 311\/601-7884, laportadatierradentro@hotmail.com, www.laportadahotel.com, COP$30,000 d w\/private bath, COP$20,000 s) is the best option. In the town of San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1, it is very well-run and orderly, and it's made out of _guadua,_ a type of bamboo (even the shower curtain rods). Leonardo, the owner, is friendly and full of good information. His wife is an excellent cook, too.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nThe trip to Tierradentro from Popay\u00e1n will take you through gorgeous countryside of farms, villages, and gentle mountains shrouded in mist.\n\nOne bus a day leaves from Popay\u00e1n directly to San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1. It leaves at 10:30am and takes four hours. From San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1 to Popay\u00e1n there is one direct bus that departs at 6am.\n\nAnother option is to take one of the buses bound for Inz\u00e1 and get off at El Cruce, which is a short walk from the museum area. These leave at 5:30am, 8:30am, 10:30am, 1pm, and 3pm. It is a five-hour trip and costs COP$20,000.\n\nFrom San Agust\u00edn you can take the 6am bus bound for Bogot\u00e1, then transfer in Garz\u00f3n to the bus towards La Plata. From there you can take the 10:30am bus to San Andr\u00e9s de Pisimbal\u00e1. That trip takes about three hours. Going from Pisimbal\u00e1 to San Agust\u00edn you can take a bus at 6am. It arrives in the early afternoon. Public transportation between San Agust\u00edn and Tierradentro will require various transfers.\n\n#### M **SAN AGUST\u00cdN**\n\nThe small colonial town of San Agust\u00edn, nestled within the folds of the southern Colombian Andes, would probably be an attractive destination in its own right. At an elevation of 1,800 meters (5,900 feet), it is set in a place of enormous natural beauty and has wonderful spring-like weather. However, its fame comes from its location near the largest pre-Columbian archaeological site south of Central America and north of Per\u00fa. From approximately AD 100-800, this region was home to an indigenous culture that produced spectacular monumental funeral statues hewn out of volcanic rock. Researchers do not know what these people called themselves, and so, lacking a better name, they have been labeled the San Agust\u00edn Culture.\n\nTo visit the main archaeological sites near San Agust\u00edn, you will need about two days. However, it makes no sense to rush your stay here, as it is an incredibly pleasant and peaceful place to visit, with several options for hiking and rafting amidst spectacular mountain landscapes.\n\n###### **HISTORY**\n\nThe area around San Agust\u00edn was occupied as early as 3300 BC. Starting in the 1st century AD, the people of San Agust\u00edn created hundreds of monumental funeral stone statues set on large platforms. Very little is known about these people, except that they lived from agriculture and formed fairly compact settlements. By AD 800, this society had mysteriously vanished and other indigenous peoples coming from the Amazon basin occupied the area. Today, the inhabitants are predominantly mestizo.\n\nSpanish chroniclers of the 16th century mention the statues, as did Colombian naturalist Francisco Jos\u00e9 de Caldas in the early 19th century. However, it was not until 1913 that German ethnographer Konrad Theodor Preuss conducted the first systematic excavation. When he was finished, he carted off (probably illegally) 35 large statues that are now at the Ethnographic Museum in Dahlem on the outskirts of Berlin. Dav\u00edd Dellenback, American-born researcher and long-time resident of San Agust\u00edn, discovered on a 1992 trip to Berlin that only three of these statues are on exhibit, while the rest were piled away haphazardly in a storehouse. He found no trace of the numerous ceramic pieces that Preuss took and which were probably destroyed during the Allied bombings of World War II. Dellenback and his wife, Martha Gil, have promoted a petition, signed by more than 1,800 residents of San Agust\u00edn and nearby towns, for the German authorities to return the statues to their rightful home. Dellenback and Gil coauthored a comprehensive guide to San Agust\u00edn called _The Statues of the Pueblo Escultor,_ which is available in shops in San Agust\u00edn.\n\nSan Agust\u00edn is Colombia's most important archaeological site.\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nThe extremely well-maintained **Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico de San Agust\u00edn** (8am-4pm daily, COP$20,000) covers 80 hectares (200 acres) of what was one of the most important ritual areas of the San Agust\u00edn Culture. It was first established in 1937 and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The park contains over 130 statues with striking human and animal-like features, as well as carved tombs and monumental stone tables or dolmens. Your ticket also valid for Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de los \u00cddolos.\n\nNear the entrance to the park is the **Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico** , which contains smaller statues, pottery, tools, and jewelry, as well as explanations on the San Agust\u00edn culture. At the time of writing, the museum was undergoing renovations. Most of the monumental stone objects are concentrated on four funeral hills designated Mesitas A, B, C, and D. The pleasant **Bosque de las Estatuas** contains a path that meanders among statues relocated from other locations in the San Agust\u00edn area. The unusual **Fuente de Lavapi\u00e9s** contains bas-reliefs of human and animal figures sculpted on the rocky bed of a stream. This is the only non-funeral site in the park. On a hill behind the _fuente_ is the Alto de Lavapi\u00e9s, where excavations have shown human presence dating back to 3300 BC. The park is easy to navigate: plan on a couple of hours to stroll leisurely and absorb the beauty. The park is two kilometers (1.2 miles) west of town and can be reached on foot or by bus.\n\nThere are four smaller, yet definitely worthwhile sights, near the town of San Agust\u00edn: **La Chaquira** , a large bas-relief sculpted in a rock face overlooking the spectacular R\u00edo Magdalena gorge; **El Purutal,** which contains two magnificent, very well-conserved statues with original bright pigment covering; and **La Pelota** and **El Tabl\u00f3n** , each with additional funeral monuments.\n\nEight kilometers (five miles) southwest of the town of Isnos on the other side of the Magdalena, the **Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de los \u00cddolos** (8am-5pm daily, COP$20,000) is the second largest archaeological park. It includes an anthropomorphic statue that measures 4.3 meters (14 feet), along with large sarcophagi. A ticket here is also valid for Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Nacional de San Agust\u00edn. The much smaller **Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de Las Piedras** (8am-5pm daily, free), six kilometers (four miles) north of Isnos on the road that leads to the Salto de Borodones waterfall, has statues and tombs with original pigments.\n\nAlso in the vicinity of San Agust\u00edn are several natural sights. The entire upper gorge of the **R\u00edo Magdalena** is majestic. At **El Estrecho,** the river spurts thought a 2.2-meter (7-foot) rocky funnel. On the Isnos side are two waterfalls, the 400-meter (1,300-foot) **Salto de Borodones** and 200-meter (650-foot) **Salto de Morti\u00f1o**.\n\nArmed with a map and a willingness to ask directions, it is possible to visit all the sights on the San Agust\u00edn side by foot. This can make for a wonderful escape. However, many tourists opt for half-day or full-day horseback tours, which can cover several of these sights, including the Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de \u00cddolos. Make sure to book reliable guides that take good care of their horses through your hotel. Rates depend on the length of ride and number of people. Visiting the sites on the Isnos side by public transportation can be difficult; most people opt for day-long jeep tours that cover the Parque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de los \u00cddolos, Parque Alto de Las Piedras, El Estrecho, and the waterfalls.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nThe upper R\u00edo Magdalena offers some of the best white-water river rafting in Colombia, set within spectacular mountain landscapes. **Magdalena Rafting** (www.magdalenarafting.com) offers numerous options, both for novices and experienced rafters, starting from short 90-minute to day-long trips.\n\nUntil recently, hiking in the Masizo Colombiano was no-go because of security. Now it is possible to ascend to the spectacular upper reaches of these mountains. One easily organized trip is to the **Laguna del Magdalena,** birthplace of the R\u00edo Magdalena, located in the P\u00e1ramo de la Papas at 3,327 meters (10,915 feet). The trip takes 3-4 days and can be done on foot or by horse.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nThere are several cute and friendly accommodations options in San Agust\u00edn, and they can each provide expert advice on the area, arrange recreational activities such as horseback riding and rafting, and assist with travel needs.\n\nM **El Maco** (tel. 8\/837-3437, cell tel. 320\/375-5982, www.elmaco.ch, COP$16,000-COP$50,000 pp) is set among the hills about a 20-minute walk from town. Accommodations consist of seven small cabins, a tipi, a chalet, and an indigenous-style _maloka_ (cabin) distributed throughout some pleasant gardens, home to dogs and chickens. They can organize some great horseback riding trips to archaeological spots. El Maco is run by Rene, who moved to the area from Switzerland in 1994. **La Casa de Francois** (tel. 8\/837-3847, cell tel. 314\/358-2930, www.lacasadefrancois.com, COP$18,000 dorm, COP$50,000 d) offers cabins, two dorm rooms with 10 beds total, and lots of hammocks to laze about after a hard day's work of archaeological exploration. The restaurant is quite good here, and reasonably priced, and they bake their own bread. It's 10 minutes from town.\n\nColombian-run **Huaka Yo** (Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/489-9269, cell tel. 320\/846-9763, www.huakayo.com, COP$116,000 d high season) is just 200 meters from the archaeological park. It consists of a large house that has 12 rooms and six loft spaces, each with its own private bath. Huaka Yo is a five-minute bus ride from town or a 20-minute walk. They prefer that you make a deposit to their bank account to hold reservations, which means less cash you have to carry with you. The **Casa del Japones** (Cl. 8 No. 12-83, cell tel. 312\/525-9552, COP$12,000 pp) is a quiet and small hostel (only eight rooms) in a cozy country house outside of town. It's an economical option, and vegetarian food is on offer. The banana pancakes exceed one's expectations.\n\nhorses at the ready, San Agust\u00edn\n\n**Alto de los Andaquies Hostal** (cell tel. 312\/444-7368 or 316\/635-6006, www.andaquies.com, COP$30,000 pp) has 15 rooms with hot water spread over three rustic houses just one kilometer from both the town and archaeological park. They produce coffee on this lush farm and other crops such as plantains, bananas, and yucca. They organize two- to four-day tours of all the major sights (COP$250,000 pp d all-inclusive).\n\n##### **Food**\n\nMost restaurants are on the main drag in town, the Calle 5. **Donde Richar** (Cl. 5 No. 23-45, cell tel. 312\/432-6399, noon-7pm daily, COP$23,000) is famous for its grilled meats. **Tomate** (Cl. 5 No. 16-04, cell tel. 314\/265-5527, 8am-3pm Thurs.-Mon., COP$8,000) is San Agust\u00edn's veggie headquarters, serving breakfast and a daily special. For pastas and pizzas go to Ugo's place, **Restaurante Italiano** (Vereda El Tabl\u00f3n, cell tel. 314\/375-8086, 6pm-9:30pm Thurs.-Sun., COP$15,000). It's a bit outside of town, but worth the trip.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nBuses from Bogot\u00e1 go through Neiva. Buses from Neiva usually stop in the town of Pitalito, 138 km south, and from there you have to take a shared taxi to San Agust\u00edn (COP$5,000), about 45 minutes away.\n\nFrom Popay\u00e1n there are about four buses per day to Pitalito, and you'll have to get off beforehand at San Agust\u00edn (COP$35,000, 7 hours). This journey takes you through the spectacular scenery of Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9.\n\nFrom Tierradentro, take a bus to La Plata (COP$12,000, 2.5 hours) and change there for Pitalito (COP$22,000, 2.5 hours), where you can hop on a shared taxi for San Agust\u00edn (COP$5,000, 45 mins.).\n\nUpon arrival in Tierradentro, you may be left at El Cruce. From there it's about a COP$5,000 truck ride into town. Once you step off in El Cruce, you may be swarmed by insistent touts who earn a commission at hotels for scoring some guests.\n\nBus and taxi companies have their offices at the corner of Calle 3 and Carrera 10 in the town of Tierradentro. In town, buses shuttle folks about town on a regular basis, although you can usually get where you want to go by walking.\n\n**The False Indian Ambassador**\n\nIn December 1962, the high society of the dusty provincial capital of Neiva was delighted by the unannounced visit of the Indian ambassador to Colombia, Shari Lacshama Dharhamdhah. He was on a private visit to Neiva, planning to travel onward to see the archaeological sites of San Agust\u00edn. But some things about him were odd. For example, he arrived by train and without clothes befitting a high ranking diplomat. He explained that his limousine had broken down on the trip from Bogot\u00e1 and that his luggage would be forwarded to Neiva. Yet, he looked Indian, spoke garbled Spanish, practiced yoga, and was a vegetarian.\n\nNews of his arrival was conveyed by a passenger sitting next to him on the train and spread like wildfire throughout Neiva, a city where nothing eventful ever happened. He was lodged in the presidential suite of Hotel Neiva Plaza (the city's most elegant hotel), presented with new clothes from Neiva's finest haberdashery, and wined and dined by leading politicians, business people, and socialites for five days.\n\nAlas, it turned out that the ambassador was not really an international diplomat. Colombia did not even have diplomatic relations with India at that time. The man's real name was Jaime Torres and he was a high school teacher in the nearby city of Ibagu\u00e9. A former schoolmate identified him and gave away his secret. He was briefly detained, but, as he had not committed any crime, he was freed. Not much is known about Torres's whereabouts after this incident, except that he eventually moved to New Haven, Connecticut.\n\nThe crazy story was made into a comedic film, _El Embajador de la India,_ in 1987.\n\n##### **Desierto de Tatacoa**\n\nLocated next to the R\u00edo Magdalena and within view of the snowcapped Nevado del Huila, the 330-square-kilometer (127-square-mile) **Desierto de Tatacoa** makes for an unusual day trip. Technically it's not a desert, just a semi-arid zone with dry tropical forest, but it feels and looks like one.\n\nA visit to Tatacoa includes a stop at the historic town of **Villavieja,** with its 17th-century **Capilla de Santa Barbara** (Plaza Principal Villavieja, restricted hours), a church founded by the Jesuits in honor of the indigenous cacique Tocaya, who was killed by the Spaniards. The **Museo Paleontol\u00f3gico** (Cl. 3 No. 3-05, 7:30am-1pm Mon.-Fri., 7am-6pm Sat.-Sun., COP$2,000) provides a sample of the many fossils, dating from 3.8 million years ago, that have been found in the desert.\n\nThe dry conditions at Tatacoa make for ideal stargazing. The **Observatorio Astron\u00f3mico Tatacoa** (Vereda El Cuzco, tel. 8\/879-7584, cell tel. 310\/465-6765, www.tatacoa-astronomia.com, 6:30am-9pm, COP$5,000), near town, provides telescopes for visitors to scan the sky in the evening hours. Camping is permitted next to the observatory. Each year in June-July, usually over a long weekend, hard-core and novice astronomers head to the desert for the annual Star Party event. There is a restaurant next to the observatory that serves mostly grilled goat or mutton.\n\n###### **TOURS**\n\n**Chaska Tours** (Hostal El Maco, Neiva, tel. 8\/837-3437, cell tel. 311\/271-4802, info@chaskatours.net, COP$100,000 pp) organizes day trip tours from San Agust\u00edn to Tatacoa. There is an option to spend the night in the desert.\n\n##### **Neiva**\n\nThe extremely hot (average highs 32-35\u00b0C\/90-95\u00b0F) capital of the Huila department (province), Neiva (pop. 340,000) has few attractions for tourists. However, if you do happen to stop here, a nice place for a stroll and sitting in an outdoor caf\u00e9 is the **Malec\u00f3n R\u00edo Magdalena** (Av. Circunvalar from Cacica Gaitana monument to the Caracoli docks). This is the boardwalk along the R\u00edo Magdalena.\n\nNeiva really gets going during the **Fiestas de San Juan y San Pablo** (June 15-June 30). The highlight is the Reinado del Bambuco, a beauty queen pageant named after _bambuco,_ a traditional music of the Colombian Andes. Entrants, in flowery and frilly costumes, must dance the Sanjuanero, a famous _bambuco,_ and other folk songs.\n\n###### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nCatering to business clientele, the **Hotel Neiva Plaza** (Cl. 7 No. 4-62, tel. 8\/871-0806, www.hotelneivaplaza.com, COP$189,000 s, COP$243,000 d) is in front of the Parque Santander. It has 86 spacious rooms, a gym, and a pool. It's the reliable (and overpriced) choice in Neiva.\n\nIn the Tatacoa desert, and within walking distance of the Observatorio Astron\u00f3mico Tatacoa, **Posada Elvira Clever** (Vereda El Cusco, cell tel. 312\/559-8576, COP$20,000 pp) has two rooms available in her small and simple zinc-roof house. There is no electricity here. In Villavieja, **La Casona** (Cl. 3 No. 3-60, tel. 8\/879-7636, cell tel. 320\/243-9705, <http:\/\/hotellacasonavillavieja.blogspot.com>, COP$50,000 d) is a small hotel in an old house located on the main park, with friendly owners. Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar is said to have stayed here.\n\n###### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nIn addition to connections with the major cities of Colombia, from the **Terminal de Transportes de Neiva** (Tr. 5 No. 53-12, tel. 8\/873-1232) in the south of the city, you can catch a minibus to Villavieja (COP$7,000, 1 hr.) and to San Agust\u00edn (COP$25,000, 4 hrs.). The **Aeropuerto Benito Salas** (Cra. 6 No. 32-45, tel. 8\/875-8198) is in the north on the road towards Tatacoa. If you'd like to explore the region with your own wheels you can rent a vehicle at **ANT Rent A Car** (Av. 26 No. 5-12, tel. 8\/872-2859, ant.rentacar@hotmail.com). It also has chauffeured cars available.\n\nIn Villavieja, _mototaxis_ regularly transport visitors to the desert sights. These cost about COP$15,000 per person.\n\n## **THE PACIFIC COAST**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nHISTORY\n\nSAFETY\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nChoc\u00f3\n\nBAH\u00cdA SOLANO\n\nEL VALLE\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL UTR\u00cdA\n\nNUQU\u00cd\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nSouth Pacific Coast\n\nBUENAVENTURA\n\nTUMACO\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL ISLA GORGONA\n\nM SANTUARIO DE FLORA Y FAUNA MALPELO\n\nColombia is the only country in South America with coastline on both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. While the Caribbean coast is developed and populated, Colombia's Pacific coast is wild, remote, and mysterious. For the few who venture to this little-visited area, the beaches, jungles, and people are simply unforgettable.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery and Release Program:** Witnessing a release of valiant baby sea turtles fearlessly scampering across the sands into the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean is an unforgettable experience (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda:** Jungle walks, swimming, and whale-watching are the order of the day when you stay at this beautiful national park near Nuqu\u00ed (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona:** Nature has reclaimed this island, which was once Colombia's Alcatraz. Walk through the jungle to Isla Gorgona's beautiful secluded beaches (click here).\n\nM **Santuario de Fauna y Flora Malpelo:** There's incredible diving among hammerhead sharks around this tiny rocky island almost 500 kilometers from the Colombian coast (click here).\n\nThe Pacific coast of Colombia extends for 1,392 kilometers (865 miles), just under the length of the California coast. The departments of Choc\u00f3, Valle de Cauca, Cauca, and Nari\u00f1o each share real estate on the Pacific, with Choc\u00f3 boasting the largest stretch of coast. The tiny islands of Gorgona and Malpelo, both national parks, are 35 kilometers (22 miles) off the coast of Guapi and 490 kilometers (305 miles) from Buenaventura, respectively.\n\nThe Pacific coast is populated by indigenous peoples, primarily the Ember\u00e1, who live mainly in small riverside settlements in the interior of Choc\u00f3; _colonos_ or \"colonists\" who have arrived from Antioquia for generations; and Afro-Colombians, descendants of African slaves who make up the majority of the population (over 80 percent).\n\nIt is a sparsely populated region, but there are three major cities: Buenaventura (pop. 363,000), Colombia's most important port; Tumaco (pop. 188,000), bordering Ecuador; and Quibd\u00f3 (pop. 162,000), the interior capital of the department of Choc\u00f3. Those cities are of far less interest to tourists than the coastal towns of Nuqu\u00ed and Bah\u00eda Solano, where both sea and land provide countless opportunities to appreciate the natural world.\n\nThere are four national parks or protected areas on the Pacific coast. These include the Parque Nacional Natural (PNN) Utr\u00eda, halfway between Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed; the less visited PNN Sanquianga near Tumaco; the PNN Isla Gorgona, a spectacular island park that was once a prison; and the Santuario de Fauna y Flora (SFF) Malpelo, an internationally known wildlife preserve that offers superb diving.\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nIn pre-Columbian times, the region was inhabited by indigenous groups, notably the Tumaco-La Tolita people, who produced stunning goldwork. During the colonial era and into the early 20th century, the entire Pacific coast corridor was governed (or rather, not governed at all) from the city of Popay\u00e1n. The main economic activity was gold mining, mostly in the Pat\u00eda river valley in Nari\u00f1o and the Choc\u00f3 region. Afro-Colombian people, now more than 80 percent of the region's population, are descendants of slaves who were forced to work in these mines and in the haciendas of the Cauca river valley.\n\nThese slaves began arriving in New Granada from different parts of Africa starting in the 17th century. Most arrived in Cartagena and were immediately separated from their families, sold, and transported across the colony. Some slaves revolted or escaped from their owners and established communities in inaccessible areas. After the abolition of slavery in 1851, many former slaves migrated and settled along the rivers and coast of the Pacific. These communities survived intact through the 20th century but, in recent years, have been severely affected by the internal conflict. Many displaced Afro-Colombians from the Pacific have resettled in cities such as Cali.\n\nDue to a lack of transportation links, the Pacific region has always been isolated from the rest of Colombia. While rich in biodiversity and cultural identity, cities such as Buenaventura, Quibd\u00f3, and Tumaco are underdeveloped; plagued with inadequate government services, poor infrastructure, and lack of economic opportunity. Poverty rates in urban areas often exceed 70 percent. Outside the cities, inhabitants subsist on small scale farming, fishing, and illegal gold mining and forestry.\n\nOne emerging bright spot is ecotourism, especially around Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed, where many enterprising Paisas from Antioquia have started tourist-related businesses. A more recent development has been the strengthening of local organizations, which are making strides in sharing the tourism peso with the broader community. The government has been promoting the region, especially for whale-watching.\n\n#### **SAFETY**\n\nThough most of the coastal settlements of interest to tourists are quite safe, parts of the Pacific, especially in the Nari\u00f1o department bordering Ecuador and the Choc\u00f3 department bordering Panama, remain major drug-trafficking corridors. The abrupt geography, dense jungle, easy water transportation routes, and lack of government border control have attracted drug traffickers, paramilitaries, and FARC guerrillas alike. With a strong and visible police and military presence, the Bah\u00eda Solano-Nuqu\u00ed area is considered safe. Those towns are OK to walk around at night. The interior jungles of the Pacific provide cover for drug traffickers and illegal groups. Ask hotel staff for updated security tips.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nIt requires more effort (and more money) to visit the Pacific coast than other parts of Colombia, so it would be a shame to just spend just a couple of days there. Plan for about five days, split across two locations. Visit between July and October, when humpback whales travel 8,000 kilometers from Antarctica to give birth to their young in the warm waters off of the Colombian coast.\n\nFy into Bah\u00eda Solano and fly out of Nuqu\u00ed, spending two or three days in each area, and staying within the Choc\u00f3 department. Time here can be complete beach relaxation, filled with activities such as jungle hikes and canoe trips, or a combination of both.\n\nThere is not much activity at night, save for some excellent stargazing on the beach, at least in northern coastal communities. This might us the perfect place to decompress and catch up on sleep.\n\nThree full days are sufficient to visit Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona. If plan on diving or lessons, spend a full week.\n\nTourism picks up during humpback whale-watching season, especially during Colombian school vacations in August. The end-of-year holiday season is also a popular time, especially for Colombian families. Reserve far in advance to stay at some of the higher-end hotels during the holidays. Other times of the year are fairly quiet.\n\nRegardless of where you go, it will rain during your stay, maybe once or twice a day. Choc\u00f3 is one of the rainiest places on the planet.\n\n##### **What to Take**\n\nHot and humid weather the norm (the average temperature is 28\u00b0C\/82\u00b0F), so plan on getting wet each day\u2014either on purpose or by accident. Daytime activities nearly always involve water. For walks along rivers, sandals with traction or rubber boots are very useful (flip-flops not so much). Clothes and towels take days to dry, sometimes refusing to dry altogether. Bring only lightweight clothing, packing a few more T-shirts than you usually would. And have them ready to throw in the nearest washing machine when you arrive in the city.\n\nBug repellent is a good idea, although, thanks to a pleasant breeze most evenings, mosquitoes are not usually a problem. There's no need to take malaria pills or any extraordinary precautions. All hotels provide mosquito netting, usually covering all windows in addition to a mosquito net over your bed.\n\nWaste management is an issue for towns, hotels, and restaurants along the coast. Beer and soda in bottles is preferable to aluminum cans, as the glass is returnable. However, hydration is very important. Tap water isn't safe; hotels all provide filtered or boiled drinking water for guests. Bring a heavy-duty water bottle that can be refilled again and again. If you don't see filtered water readily available for guest use, don't be shy to ask kitchen staff to refill your bottle with _agua filtrada_ (filtered water). Bags _(bolsas)_ of water are usually sold in corner stores and are preferable to plastic bottles. There is an expanding landfill in the jungle between El Valle and Bah\u00eda Solano; however, you may want to spare the rainforest by taking accumulated plastic back with you for recycling in Medell\u00edn or another large city. This is a requirement on the pristine island of Gorgona.\n\nBinoculars are good for jungle outings and excellent for whale-watching. Take along only the most necessary electronics with you to the jungle. Extreme humidity, river crossings, sudden rain showers, and bumpy boat rides are not kind to laptops and cameras. Waterproof bags for cameras are essential, as well as sachets of silica gel to throw in camera cases.\n\nHere on the Equator, it gets dark at around 6pm every evening year-round. There is limited electricity in this part of Colombia, with generators usually cranking on for only a few hours at night. A flashlight is good for strolls on the beach or about town. A lack of nighttime entertainment makes this a great time for reading. Pack books and magazines rather than relying on electronic gadgets. A deck of cards can also provide some evening entertainment.\n\nBring cash. Credit cards are not accepted at hotels. At some of the top-end places, you can make a deposit into the hotel's bank account before arriving, limiting the amount of cash you carry.\n\n### **Choc\u00f3**\n\nYou fly into Choc\u00f3 over green mountains, part of the Cordillera Occidental, punctuated by orderly Antioquian pueblos and pastureland. But then, the jungle begins: thick, impenetrable tropical forest, of a thousand shades of green. This lowland tropical forest, with vegetation not unlike that found in the Amazon, begins to rise with undulating forested hills as you pass over the smaller Serran\u00eda del Baud\u00f3 mountain range, one of the rainiest places on Earth. If you look down you will notice the tops of these low mountains shrouded in clouds. Every once in a while a milk-chocolate brown river meanders its way through the jungle westward, and tiny Afro-Colombian and Ember\u00e1 communities of thatched or zinc-topped roofs spring up alongside them. Here rivers and streams are the only means of transportation, just as it has been for centuries. Just after the captain announces your \"initial descent,\" you suddenly find yourself above the turquoise coastal waters of the Pacific. Get a window seat.\n\nAlong the Pacific coast of the Choc\u00f3 department, there are four general areas that have decent tourism infrastructure: Bah\u00eda Solano, El Valle, the Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda, and Nuqu\u00ed.\n\n#### **BAH\u00cdA SOLANO**\n\nWhen many visitors arrive at the tiny Bah\u00eda Solano airport, after they collect their bags they head straight to the village of El Valle about 22 kilometers (14 miles) away and to the hotels on the beaches of Playa Almejal. But Ciudad Mutis, as Bah\u00eda Solano is officially named (after the famed botanist), is actually a good base for your visit\u2014there's no need to rush off. It is one of Colombia's sport-fishing capitals, and excellent diving and whale-watching excursions can be arranged from here. The town, although the largest one in the Choc\u00f3 Pacific coast, is small, and everywhere is accessible on foot.\n\nNice jungle walks to swimming holes fed by crystalline freshwater waterfalls are within walking distance from the town, and depending on the tides, you can also walk to the beaches of **Punta Hu\u00edna** and **Playa Mecana**. These can also be easily reached by boat. During low tide, the bay becomes a soccer field; when the tide comes in, it's a place to cool off.\n\nBah\u00eda Solano\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nThere are three easily done walks in or around Bah\u00eda Solano. **Punta Hu\u00edna, Playa Mecana,** and the **Cascadas Cocacola** can also be reached on foot, and are all under two hours walking from town. You may want to go with a guide (hotels can arrange this) at least the first time, and find out the day's tide information before heading out. If the tide has come in, you'll have to take a boat back to the town.\n\nThe **Virgen de la Loma** path is an easy, 30-minute climb up through lush vegetation to the top of a hill with a nice view of the bay. The entrance to the trail is well-marked and is only 20 meters from the Hostal del Mar. For this you'll need no guide. About two blocks from there on the west side of town is the trail to the **Cascada Choc\u00f3latal,** which takes you along a river to a roaring waterfall. Taking about 40 minutes or so, this hike may not necessarily require a local guide, but it may be helpful, especially so you'll have someone with trained eyes to point out the occasional colorful frog, lizard, bird, or humongous spider to you. Otherwise they are quite tricky to spot. You will have to crisscross the narrow, shallow creek several times, and it can be treacherous as the rocks are slippery. You'll need to have both hands free. Wear a bathing suit so you can frolic in the cool waters of the swimming hole at the five-meter waterfall. That's your refreshing reward!\n\nThe third hike is called the **Cascada del Aeropuerto.** This hike is right across the street from the airport and leads to a towering jungle waterfall. You probably won't need a guide, but it is not impossible to become lost. Follow the stream and note that it will eventually veer to the left. It's about a half hour walk. All of these paths are maintained by a group of community members with the help of high school students who have posted signs to point the way.\n\n###### **SPORT-FISHING**\n\nThe waters off of the Choc\u00f3 coast are excellent for sport fishing. The **Posada Tur\u00edstica Rocas de Cabo Marzo** (tel. 4\/682-7525, cell tel. 313\/681-4001, bahiatebada@hotmail.com, www.posadaturisticarocasdecabomarzo.com) regularly organizes fishing adventures in the area. Species that can be found in the waters here include marlins (blue, black, and striped) and sailfish. These are considered endangered and are caught and then released. Yellowfin tuna, red snapper, wahoo, and sierra are other fish that are caught and eaten. The best time of the year for fishing is March-June. Between October and December is also a good time to fish (catch and release) for marlin and sailfish, but this is a rainy season and the waters are rough. Rental of a boat and an eight-hour day excursion costs around COP$1,600,000, with a maximum of four fishers.\n\nRocas de Cabo Marzo organizes catch-and-release tournaments like the **Torneo Internacional de Pesca Deportiva.** The tournament takes place far from the coastline, as much of the Choc\u00f3 coast, especially around the Cabo Marzo area, is protected as a Zona Exclusiva de Pesca Artesanal del Choc\u00f3 (ZEPA). That means it is limited to only local fishers using their traditional fishing methods. This initiative is supported by Conservation International (www.conservation.org.co).\n\n###### **DIVING**\n\nDiving in the Pacific is much different from diving in the Caribbean. First of all, it's more expensive, due to the high price of gasoline. Secondly, the variety of fish is different: While in the Caribbean it is common to see colorful tropical fish, in the Pacific the fish are much larger. Both **Posada Tur\u00edstica Hostal del Mar** (tel. 4\/682-7415, cell tel. 314\/630-6723, hostaldelmarbahiasolano@yahoo.com) and **Posada Tur\u00edstica Rocas de Cabo Marzo** (tel. 4\/682-7525, cell tel. 313\/681-4001, bahiatebada@hotmail.com, www.posadaturisticarocasdecabomarzo.com) offer diving excursions. A popular trip is to the shipwrecked _Sebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar_ just to the northeast of Bah\u00eda Solano. Another good place to dive is around Cabo Marzo to the north near the Panamanian border. Rocas de Cabo Marzo charges COP$120,000 per person (without equipment) for a diving trip to that location. Double-check on the security situation before going to Cabo Marzo, as drug traffickers operate in the area.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nThere are a handful of quite good accommodations options located near the bay. They can each help organize whale-watching and other excursions for you. M **Posada Tur\u00edstica Hostal del Mar** (tel. 4\/682-7415, cell tel. 314\/630-6723, hostaldelmarbahiasolano@yahoo.com, COP$50,000 pp) is run by Rodrigo Fajardo and Estrella Rojas. They are pioneers in the area in terms of community organizing and ecotourism. There are four comfortable cabins tucked in their gardens filled with orchids, vegetation, chickens, and a lazy cat, Julia. Meals, often served with their homemade _aj\u00ed_ (hot sauce), are taken on a picnic table in the middle of this miniature tropical paradise. Rodrigo is a certified diving instructor, and you can learn that sport in the waters of the Pacific with him or go out for a trip if you already know what you're doing. A nearby shipwreck is a popular place for underwater exploration. Both he and Estrella know the area exceptionally well and can give you pointers on how to make the most of your stay and can coordinate day trips. Estrella has a small _tienda_ in the arrivals area of the airport, where she sells handicrafts made by locals.\n\nthe port of Bah\u00eda Solano\n\n**Biodiversity in Choc\u00f3**\n\nThis region is part of the **Choc\u00f3 Biogeogr\u00e1fico,** one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. It comprises a wide swath of rainforest extending from Panama to Ecuador, hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean to the west and by the Andes to the east. The Colombian part of this region includes an amazing 8,000 plant species, of which 2,000 are endemic. (In comparison, all of Canada, which is hundreds of times larger, has 3,270 plant species, of which 140 are endemic.) In addition there are 838 bird species, 261 amphibian species, 188 reptile species, and 180 mammal species. The relative isolation of this region has resulted in a high level of endemism of about 25 percent. It is one of the wettest places on Earth, with annual rainfall of 10,000 millimeters (33 feet!), with some places registering up to 20,000 millimeters (66 feet). Due to the high rainfall, this biodiversity hotspot boasts one of the most dense river networks in the world, with dozens of major arteries, such as the Baud\u00f3, San Juan, and Pat\u00eda. The Colombia Pacific is quite well preserved: An estimated 75 percent of the region is still covered with rainforest, and there are significant areas of mangroves.\n\nM **Posada Tur\u00edstica Rocas de Cabo Marzo** (tel. 4\/682-7525, cell tel. 313\/681-4001, bahiatebada@hotmail.com, www.posadaturisticarocasdecabomarzo.com, COP$110,000 pp d, all meals incl.) is a cozy lodge-like guesthouse with five rooms. Room rates include airport pickup and drop-off, all meals, and excursions such as jungle hikes and walks to nearby beaches. Their small hotel restaurant might just be the only place in the jungle where you'll find homemade pizza. It's open daily, but just for guests. In addition to fishing and diving expeditions, Rocas de Cabo Marzo organizes visits to the Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre turtle hatchery program (COP$60,000), a walk to the Playa and R\u00edo Mecana (COP$100,000 for 2 people), and a specialized expedition to see poisonous frogs (as well as howler monkeys and sloths) in the jungle with an indigenous guide.\n\nLess ecologically minded, but quite comfortable, is the **Hotel Yubarta** (tel. 4\/682-7509, cell tel. 314\/773-5066, COP$90,000 d). It is a multi-story building that offers 11 spacious air-conditioned rooms, a pleasant garden, and free _tinto_ (coffee) all day long. Meals can be taken at the rather swanky adjacent restaurant, **Do\u00f1a Aida** (7:30am-10am, noon-3pm, and 5:30pm-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., COP$18,000), which has a pleasant deck. The restaurant is open to the public.\n\n**El Mara\u00f1on** (Playa Mecana, cell tel. 320\/671-6163, COP$35,000 pp) is a locally owned beachside lodge with just five _caba\u00f1as_. It's a five-minute boat ride here from Bah\u00eda Solano (and you can walk there during low tide). It's easy to take a hike to the R\u00edo Mecana, and they organize fishing expeditions and whale-watching trips. **Choiban\u00e1 Casa** (cell tel. 310\/878-1214 or 312\/548-2969, www.choibana.com, COP$120,000 pp incl. meals and transportation) is a cute and colorfully painted wooden house on the beach past rowdy Playa Hu\u00edna. There are just five rooms, including one spectacular hut majestically set atop a rock. It's a 20-minute boat ride from Bah\u00eda Solano.\n\n#### **EL VALLE**\n\nThis fishing community to the south of Bah\u00eda Solano is authentic if grubby, with wooden houses lining dirt (often muddy) streets. However, just outside of town, about a 15-minute walk north is the **Playa Almejal,** a broad beach with hotels set back against the jungle. The beach is home to thousands of nervous little _cangrejos fantasmas_ (ghost crabs) scurrying about. The gray sandy beaches are often covered with driftwood and other debris. But during the nearly always spectacular sunsets, the pastels of the sky are perfectly reflected on the wet sands. It's a magical scene. The water is great for swimming, jumping in the waves, and surfing.\n\nPlaya Almejal\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nThere are some pleasant excursions to make nearby Playa Almejal. The **Cascada El Tigre** can be reached by boat or by walking (4 hrs. one way, COP$40,000 guide), and this waterfall of cool water right on a secluded cove makes for an unforgettable shower\/massage. The **R\u00edo Tund\u00f3** just outside of El Valle is a great place for a jungle canoe or kayak trip. This excursion, which usually includes a two-hour hike in the verdant jungle, costs about COP$40,000 per person.\n\nPersuasive local guides regularly make the rounds at hotels offering day-trip excursions, but don't feel pressured to sign on to any trip immediately. Excursions can by pricey due to high gasoline prices. It may be worth comparing quotes with other guests first, and negotiating a better deal.\n\n##### M **Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery and Release Program**\n\nFrom August until December, female olive Ridley sea turtles return to the beaches of the area (to the same spot where they were born) to lay up to 80 eggs. Around 40-60 days later, these eggs hatch, and baby turtles are born. At the **Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery and Release Program** (Playa La Cuevita, 5 km south of El Valle, cell tel. 314\/677-2488 or 314\/675-3353), turtle eggs are collected from the beaches and protected from stray dogs, birds, and from humans. They remain in the sand until baby turtles are born. Then they are released into the ocean.\n\nThis program is run by the Fundaci\u00f3n Natura and administered by the community-based organization the **Fundaci\u00f3n Caguama.** ( _Caguama_ means sea turtle in the Ember\u00e1 language.)\n\nThere are two ways to see this important work at the Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre. You can visit for the day. (It's best to contact them in advance so they can coordinate your visit.) They request a small donation of perhaps COP$5,000. Or you can stay at one of the three simple rooms at the Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre (Fundaci\u00f3n Natura in Bogot\u00e1, Cra. 21 No. 39-43, tel. 1\/245-5700, COP$60,000 pp all meals incl.).\n\nA highlight of your visit to the Pacific coast might be witnessing a release of fearless newborn turtles as they scamper their way into the water. These take place at the Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre, especially during the month of September.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThere are two big annual events in Valle. During one week in July the entire community parties it up during the **Fiesta de la Virgen Carmen.** It's a week of street dances and carnival. In September is the **Festival de Viajeros Sin Maletas** (Travelers Without Luggage Festival), an environmental and conservation awareness-generation event supported by various community groups, nonprofit organizations, and international donors in celebration of the many migrating animals who visit the area each year. In addition to educational activities with children, there are theater and musical performances.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nOn Playa Almejal, the **Posada Don Ai** (Playa Almejal, cell tel. 314\/651-1160, COP$120,000 pp incl. meals) is a relaxed place with nine small cabins each with a porch and requisite hammock. Meals, usually fried fish, _patacones,_ rice, and salad, are included in the price of your stay and are served under a breezy thatched roof dining area overlooking the Pacific. It's quite a good value. Even if you are not staying there, you can stop by for a meal. Just beyond Don Ai's on the beach is M **El Almejal** (tel. 4\/412-5050, COP$170,000 pp). This eco-conscious lodge, with tastefully done and airy cabins, is a consistent favorite for those who want a little more comfort. Above in the jungle are the very top-end cabins. These are situated along a bird-watching trail (they organize early morning bird-watching walks here). El Amejal has its own organic garden and sea turtle hatchery program.\n\nThe third option is the most economical, and by far the funkiest. When you first walk up from the beach, barefoot and backpack on, you'll pass through several enormous boulders, and then the M **Humpback Turtle** (Playa Almejal, cell tel. 312\/756-3439, www.humpbackturtle.com, COP$15,000 camping pp, COP$25,000 dorm bed, COP$80,000 d) suddenly appears. Nestled at the edge of the jungle, this very colorful and rather primitive hostel, often called Donde Tyler, Donde Taylor, or Donde el Gringo Ese after the American owner Tyler, has a dorm room with six beds and four private rooms as well as a campsite. With an organic garden, composting, water conservation measures such as the use of dry toilets, and using plastic water bottles for construction materials, this is by far the most environmentally minded option in the area.\n\nBetween Playa Almejal and the town of El Valle are other options, including Villa Maga and El Nativo. Just across from the Almejal beach, these are both run by _nativos,_ as local Afro-Colombians identify themselves. **El Nativo** (cell tel. 311\/639-1015, nativo58@hotmail.com, COP$60,000 d incl. meals) has two simple cabins (four rooms in total) made from natural materials such as _guadua_ (bamboo) and palm leaves. They can organize day-trip excursions for you. Nearby is M **Villa Maga** (cell tel. 320\/777-4767, www.villamaga.net, COP$45,000 pp), with a similar setup as El Nativo, although with more natural light in the A-framed cabins and little more comfortable.\n\nHang loose and kick back at the Humpback Turtle hostel.\n\n**Do\u00f1a Rosal\u00eda** (El Valle, past Internet caf\u00e9, no phone) is the only real restaurant in El Valle, and it's a good one. Here you are served in the dining room of Do\u00f1a Rosal\u00eda's small, but immaculate, house. If you can't find it, just ask anybody around. Everybody knows Rosal\u00eda! If you have a special request\u2014if you'd like lentils or beans instead of fish, for instance\u2014let her know by dropping by beforehand. The hotels on Playa Almejal (Caba\u00f1as Punta Roca\/Do\u00f1a Betty, Don Ai, and El Almejal) all serve good seafood meals.\n\n_Tiendas_ (shops) in El Valle sell snacks and usually have seating if you want a cold drink or beer. A couple of bakeries offer freshly baked bread.\n\nAs for drinking spots, besides _tiendas_ in El Valle where you can drink beer with the locals, the best option by far is **El Mirador.** Hard to miss, it's the only multicolored bar set on a boulder on the beach. It's between Humpback Turtle and El Almejal. It's only open on Sunday afternoons, when it gets packed with mostly locals, but visitors are more than welcome.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL UTR\u00cdA**\n\nHalfway between Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed, the **Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-5pm daily, park entrance COP$37,500 non-Colombians, COP$14,000 Colombians and residents, COP$7,500 students with ID) has a spectacular location on the edge of the jungle but close to some great beaches. It encompasses over 54,000 hectares (135,000 acres) of tropical forest, mangroves, and waters. Several nature paths await exploration, including a wooden bridge walkway over mangroves, and you can also walk to a nearby secluded beach with a guide and arrange to be picked up later. A well-marked path through the jungle leads to El Valle in about two hours. During whale-watching season, humpbacks have been known to swim into the narrow lagoon in front of the park cabins, providing exclusive shows for park guests.\n\nMost of the excursions require a guide. However, there are some short walks you can make near the Centro de Visitantes. One of the more unusual activities at the park is searching for glow-in-the-dark mushrooms in the evening along the nature trail, which you can do on your own. Another is a walk above the mangroves on an elevated wooden walkway.\n\nPark facilities are managed by the local community organization Mano Cambiada. The park has three beautiful wooden cabins (separated into three inviting private rooms, each with its own bathroom), with a total capacity of over 30, and there's an open-air restaurant near the cabins. Private rooms go for about COP$192,000 per person including all meals. There is one cabin with dormitory-style accommodations. A few days at this park during the week (or off-season) when it isn't crowded with groups could be wonderfully relaxing. If the park is crowded, however, it could become quite a social scene, especially during the long evenings. Round-trip transportation from either the Bah\u00eda Solano or Nuqu\u00ed airports costs COP$300,000 per person.\n\nOther excursions include whale-watching, from June until October (COP$87,000), a two-hour jungle hike to Playa Cocalito (COP$32,000), a boat trip to Playa Blanca for snorkeling (COP$32,000), and a boat ride to the Jurubir\u00e1 community, where residents live in simple wooden houses on stilts, including a walk to some hot springs (COP$93,000). Kayaks are available for free to those staying at the park.\n\nIf you are not staying at the park, it can be visited on a day trip from El Valle, Bah\u00eda Solano, or Nuqu\u00ed. But that excursion gets a failing grade from many, due to its high cost (upwards of COP$125,000 per person). The standard park visit includes a chat about the national park system, a short walk, snorkeling in the lagoon in front of the Centro de Visitantes, and a boat ride to Playa Blanca (part of the park), where you can snorkel and have a greasy lunch. Playa Blanca is a party place for locals on weekends and holidays.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nIt is far better to stay at the park, preferably during the week (and not during high season). Travel agency **Aviatur** (Av. 19 No. 4-62, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/587-5181 or 1\/587-5182, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) offers package tours to PNN Utr\u00eda including two nights accommodations, all meals, and transportation to and from the Nuqu\u00ed airport. This costs COP$816,000 per person based on double accommodation. You can also contact **Mano Cambiada** (cell tel. 313\/759-6270 or 310\/348-6055, www.nuquipacifico.com).\n\n#### **NUQU\u00cd**\n\nThere is not much to the town of Nuqu\u00ed, except for some basic services and the airport. However, surrounding beaches and ecolodges are wonderful. Here you can head off to the jungle for hikes in search of colorful frogs, go on a whale-watching expedition, try your luck surfing, and row in dugout canoes along serpentine rivers that serve as highways between communities. Or you can blissfully relax in a hammock and while away the hours to the sound of crashing waves in the background. All hotels listed can keep you as busy or lazy as you want.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nFrom locally owned accommodations in typical wooden Choc\u00f3 houses to cabins on the beach to luxurious secluded resorts, the beaches near Nuqu\u00ed have options for every budget. All hotels can organize hikes, whale-watching trips, diving excursions, and other activities. **El Cant\u00edl** (tel. 4\/448-0767, www.elcantil.com, COP$717,000 pp, 2 nights, all meals and transportation incl.) is perhaps the most widely known ecolodge in the area. Run by a couple from Medell\u00edn, El Cant\u00edl is composed of small but comfortable cabins nestled on the edge of the jungle\u2014view of the ocean included. It is about a 35-minute boat ride from Nuqu\u00ed. Whale-watching, diving, and surfing can also be arranged. Behind El Cant\u00edl, you can take a jungle hike and go on an exotic frog safari. Beautiful nearby beaches can be explored on your own, and you'll likely be alone on the sand. The fresh seafood at the hotel restaurant is both abundant and delicious. Electricity is powered by their own hydroelectric plant.\n\nIn solitary splendor, M **Morromico** (45 mins. north of Nuqu\u00ed, tel. 8\/521-4172 or 8\/522-4653, www.morromico.com, COP$200,000 pp incl. meals) is another upper-end resort, with only four rooms, a private beach, free sunsets, and freshly caught red snapper cooked in fresh coconut milk for lunch. What more could you ask for? This hotel is close to the Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda.\n\n**Guachalito** is another favorite beach near Nuqu\u00ed. One of the better lodging options there is M **Luna de Miel** (tel. 4\/683-6152, cell tel. 314\/431-2125, lunademiel@hotmail.com, COP$150,000 pp incl. meals), a simple but very comfortable lodge of two cabins. It's a peaceful place.\n\nThere are more economical and authentic locally owned options in some of the villages. **Mano Cambiada** (cell tel. 313\/759-6270 or 310\/348-6055, www.nuquipacifico.com) can help organize a stay.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nIn Bah\u00eda Solano there is an **ATM** at the **Banco Agrario.** (There is no ATM in El Valle, Utr\u00eda, or Nuqu\u00ed.) At the Banco Agrario (tel. 4\/682-7522, 8am-2pm Mon.-Fri.) in Bah\u00eda Solano, you can have money wired ( _giro_ ) to you or deposited directly into a hotel account ( _consignaci\u00f3n_ ). In Nuqu\u00ed, at **Super Giros** (tel. 4\/683-6067) you can also have money wired to you. In Nuqu\u00ed there are two banks: Banco Agrario and Bancolombia.\n\nOver 3,000 majestic humpback whales make their way to Colombia's Pacific coast from August until October each year.\n\nDo not expect wireless Internet, regular cell phone service, or 24-hour electricity at your hotel along the coast. There are Internet caf\u00e9s in the towns, such as Bah\u00eda Net in Bah\u00eda Solano, but connection speed is very slow.\n\nThere are **hospitals** in Bah\u00eda Solano (tel. 4\/682-7016 or 4\/682-7884) and in Nuqu\u00ed (tel. 4\/683-6003), as well as **pharmacies** in El Valle, Bah\u00eda Solano, and Nuqu\u00ed. There is a significant police and military presence in these places as well. If you have access to a phone, emergencies can be reported by calling 112.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nTwo airports serve the central Choc\u00f3 coast: Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed. Military-owned **Satena** (tel. 1\/423-8530, www.satena.com), **ADA** (tel. 4\/444-4232, www.ada-aero.com), and charter carrier **TAC** (tel. 4\/361-0945, www.taccolombia.com) serve both Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed out of the Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera in Medell\u00edn. There are also flights out of the departmental capital of Quibd\u00f3. The trip takes under an hour. Another option is with the charter airline **Selvazul** (tel. 4\/362-2590, www.selvazul.net). From the Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera in Medell\u00edn this airline serves both Bah\u00eda Solano and Quibd\u00f3.\n\nWhen you arrive at the Bah\u00eda Solano or Nuqu\u00ed airport, most hotels will have arranged to pick you up at the airport if you have a reservation. This is the worry-free, recommended way to go. If you have not made a reservation, there are always some folks affiliated with hotels from the area at the airport to persuade visitors to stay with them.\n\nTo get to El Valle and Playa Almejal on your own from the Bah\u00eda Solano airport you can take a _mototaxi_ or truck for COP$10,000-20,000 per person depending on your negotiating skills. Much of the road to El Valle, through the jungle, has been paved. It costs much less (COP$2,000 on _mototaxi_ ) to get to Bah\u00eda Solano from the airport, since it's only two kilometers away.\n\nBoats leave Bah\u00eda Solano and El Valle for PNN Utr\u00eda, Nuqu\u00ed, and beaches beyond. As gasoline costs about three times as much as it does in the rest of Colombia, boat trips will seem expensive: at least COP$60,000 to PNN Utr\u00eda, COP$80,000 to Nuqu\u00ed. You can try to negotiate a better price, especially if you have a group going with you.\n\nIf comfort is an overrated commodity for you, travel between Buenaventura and Bah\u00eda Solano by boat can be arranged by hitching a ride on a cargo boat. These often depart on Fridays. Basic accommodations (bunk bed) and food are provided. The journey will take around 20 hours, costing COP$120,000. In Bah\u00eda Solano, head to the docks to inquire about these, or call Capitan C\u00e9sar (cell tel. 314\/686-3232) or the harbormaster (tel. 4\/682-7064).\n\nIf you want to go to the southern coastal city of Tumaco by sea, you will probably have to hop on a boat headed to Buenaventura first. Best to contact the harbormaster or go to the Bah\u00eda Solano port in person to find out about ship departures.\n\nVessels bound for Panama from Bah\u00eda Solano depart weekly. To find out about the next boat, go to Bah\u00eda Solano and ask around for El Profesor Justino; everyone knows who he is. The trip usually costs about COP$100,000 and takes about four hours. If leaving the country by boat, you will need to get an exit stamp at **Migraci\u00f3n Colombia** (www.migracioncolombia.gov.co). Request assistance from one of the local hotels in getting to Migraci\u00f3n Colombia.\n\n### **South Pacific Coast**\n\nThe beaches of the South Pacific coast of Colombia in and around the port cities of Buenaventura and Tumaco have not been on the radar screen of many international visitors, but they have drawn Colombian tourists for decades. Off the coast, you'll find the island oases of Parque National Natural Isla Gorgona and the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo, where nature rules the day.\n\n##### **Safety**\n\nBoth Buenaventura and Tumaco have been severely affected by turf battles involving rival drug trafficking gangs over the past few years. The beaches, however, are secluded and safe, and tourists are always welcomed with open arms. But do avoid the interior of the cities.\n\n#### **BUENAVENTURA**\n\nBuenaventura is the largest city on the coast, with a population of over 300,000, and it is Colombia's busiest port. The golden years of Buenaventura are long gone, but one of the remnants of its heydays is the elegant **Hotel Estelar Estaci\u00f3n** (Cl. 2 No. 6-8, tel. 2\/241-9512, www.sht.com.co, COP$250,000 d). It's near the Muelle Tur\u00edstico, the tourist port where you can have a generous seafood meal at restaurants like **Le\u00f1os y Mariscos** (Cl. 1 No. 5-08, tel. 2\/241-7000) and catch a boat to the nearby beaches of Juanchaco and Ladrilleros.\n\nThe gray sandy beaches of **Juanchaco** and **Ladrilleros** have their charm, and the surf's often up in Ladrilleros. From the beachside bluffs, during whale-watching season (June-November) you can spot the humpbacks frolicking in the waters.\n\n_Lanchas_ (boats) make the trip to Ladrilleros from the Muelle Tur\u00edstico in Buenaventura several times a day. **Astur\u00edas** (Muelle Tur\u00edstico Local No. 2, tel. 2\/240-4048, www.buceaencolombia.com) is one company that provides this service with boats at 10am, 1pm, and 4pm. Round-trip fares are around COP$55,000. It's a 45-minute ride to Juanchaco. Ladrilleros is a half-hour walk from Juanchaco. A 45-minute walk farther from Ladrilleros is the quiet La Barra beach. A popular hotel here, with a great view of the infinite Pacific, is the **Reserva Aguamarina** (tel. 2\/246-0285, www.reservaaguamarina.com). From here you can take a walk to waterfalls and discover other remote beaches.\n\n#### **TUMACO**\n\nIn the Nari\u00f1o department, Tumaco is the second largest port on the Pacific coast. It has a population of around 170,000 and sits on the coastline border with Ecuador. Tumaco is famous for its incredibly photogenic natural stone archway on El Morro beach. It's about 10 minutes from downtown, on the same island where the airport is located. A good place to stay is **Hotel Los Corales** (tel. 2\/727-2779, cell tel. 312\/841-1949, www.hotelloscorales.com, COP$100,000 d), a beach hotel that boasts it has hosted not one but two Colombian superstar singers: Juanes and Carlos Vives.\n\n**Bocagrande** island, home to a handful of hotels and restaurants and bars just outside of the city, is popular with local holidaymakers. A good place to stay is in one of the 25 _caba\u00f1as_ at **Hotel Las Lilianas** (cell tel. 310\/396-0906, COP$55,000 pp, meals included). For an extra charge of COP$20,000 the hotel arranges _lancha_ transportation from and to Tumaco. The trip takes about 25 minutes. The Bocagrande island inspired a famous Colombian _bolero_ song from the 1960s, _Noches de Bocagrande._ Pretty much every Colombian of a certain age knows that tune, although many mistakenly believe it is named for the Bocagrande area of Cartagena.\n\nTumaco is known for its excellent, fresh seafood, like _pescado sudado_ (fish stew) _, langostinos al coco_ (coconut shrimp), and ceviche. _Piangua_ (mangrove cockle), which grows in the mangroves, is a local delicacy, and is also threatened. A classic restaurant is **El Muelle** (Viaducto al Morro, tel. 2\/727-2383, COP$10,000-40,000).\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nFrom Cali there are regular buses that take you to Buenaventura. This three-hour trip costs about COP$20,000. **Satena** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com) flies to Buenaventura from Bogot\u00e1. While it is possible to take public transportation from Pasto (4 hrs.), that road has had security problems in the past. It's best to fly. **Avianca** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-0953-3434, www.avianca.com) serves Tumaco from Bogot\u00e1 and Cali. Cargo boats can take you from Tumaco to San Lorenzo in Ecuador. Schedules vary, so it is best to go to the port directly and inquire about this option.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL ISLA GORGONA**\n\nA visit to the **Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co) is an unforgettable one, no matter the time of year. This 9- by 2.6-kilometer (5.6- by 1.6-mile) island about 60 kilometers (37 miles) off the coast was thought to have been originally settled by Guna indigenous peoples who lived near present-day Panama. It was named by the Spaniards after the mythical female Greek monster, Gorgon, who, among other things, wore a belt made of snakes and even had them coming out of her hair. Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro landed on the island in 1527. He and his men were unhappy guests on the island. They didn't stay long: too many men were getting bitten by snakes. Following that, the island was mostly uninhabited.\n\nParque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona\n\nCapuchin monkeys are cute\u2014from a distance.\n\nSurrounded by sharks and crawling with snakes, it served as a prison starting in 1959, primarily for those accused of atrocities during La Violencia, when Liberals and Conservatives fought each other in cities and towns across Colombia. Many say that the prison was modeled after the Alcatraz Penitentiary in California. Once the prison was closed in 1984, the island was converted into a national park.\n\nWater\u2014in the form of babbling brooks, trickling streams, roaring waterfalls, dewdrops on leaves, crashing waves, and gentle rain storms\u2014is the proof that this island is very much alive. Because of the 90 percent humidity, mist is often seen rising from the thick tropical jungle. It has its own permanent cloud lingering above its highest points.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nHiking excursions are included in the price of package tours with travel agency Aviatur. You are not allowed to stray far from the hotel area on your own, and all hikes must be made with a guide. Excursions can also be paid for \u00e0 la carte. They cost COP$10,000-30,000 each per person.\n\nA popular hike is a half-day trek around the edge of the island and through the jungle to Playa Palmeras, a beautiful beach on the southwestern side of the island that overlooks the smaller Isla Gorgonilla. On the way you'll have the possibility of seeing a variety of birds, snakes, monkeys, and amphibians. If you are very lucky, along the way may spot the stunning blue anole lizard, the only all-blue lizard in the world and one that exists only on this particular island. It has become threatened due to the presence of non-native iguanas. The beach is gorgeous and would be perfect except for all the flip-flops and plastic bottles\u2014flotsam that has made its way to the island shore from all around the world. On this hike a lunch is provided and the return is via boat.\n\nAnother walk takes you to Yundigua, an area of the park with excellent snorkeling. Return from this two-hour excursion is also by boat.\n\nYou can also take a two-hour walking tour to the site of the old prison, which is an eerie experience. Nature has all but reclaimed the prison, but you can almost sense the presence of ghosts lingering on. A small museum examines the brutal conditions of prison life on the island. It is open daily and is free.\n\n###### **DIVING AND WHALE-WATCHING**\n\nIsla Gorgona is an excellent place for diving. There is a dive center on the island, and courses for beginners are available. You can arrange for diving classes during a week spent at Isla Gorgona. Five excursions can be arranged to one of the seven main dive sites near the island. **Aviatur** (Av. 19 No. 4-62, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/587-5181 or 1\/587-5182, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) offers a diving package that includes six dives and just one excursion on land that costs around COP$1,500,000 per person. A PADI certification course costs about COP$1,600,000 per person. Two extra dives cost COP$215,000.\n\nAnother option can be to contract a diving trip from an independent dive company. These depart from either Buenaventura or Guapi. **Arrecifes de Pac\u00edfico** (Cra. 38 No. 8A-17, Cali, tel. 2\/514-1691, cell tel. 321\/642-6015) organizes four-day\/three-night trips to Gorgona throughout the year. These typically depart by boat from Buenaventura. It's about an 11-hour trip to Isla Gorgona from there, and accommodations are on board the boat, which has a capacity of about 25 passengers. This trip, including six dives and one night dive with transportation, meals, and accommodations, costs around COP$1,390,000 per person (not including equipment). Diving spots include Tiburonera, Plaza de Toros, Monta\u00f1ita 1, Cazuelam, Parguera, El Viudo, and Remanso de la Parguera. For beginners, they recommend a short course in Cali before departing to Gorgona, where certification can be offered.\n\nGorgona is an excellent place for humpback whale-watching from July to October. If diving is too deep for you, within only about 20 meters of the island shore you can swim among thousands of colorful tropical fish and the occasional sea turtle. Sometimes you can hear humpback whales singing in the far-off distance.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nTravel agency **Aviatur** (Av. 19 No. 4-62, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/587-5181 or 1\/587-5182, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) currently has a contract to operate ecotourism activities on the island. While you can visit Isla Gorgona for the day, the only way to stay on the island is to book a tour with Aviatur. A stay of three nights, including transportation from Guapi, all meals, and three excursions, costs COP$850,000 per person for two persons. During whale-watching season from mid-July through August, the package includes two whale-watching excursions and three on-land excursions and costs COP$1,002,162 per person based on double accommodations.\n\nOne area of the island has the park offices, a dozen comfortable cabins, and the pleasant open-air restaurant. All accommodations and meals (mostly seafood) are included in the package price. Call in advance if you have special dietary needs. At lunch, if it is sunny, you might be able to see dolphins frolic nearby. A band of white-headed temperamental capuchin monkeys hangs out near the settlement.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThere is a nurse's office equipped with vials of snake bite antivenin, should it come to that. But, since the park's opening, they have never had to administer those. (A worker was once bitten by a non-poisonous snake, however.) There is also a small store with handicrafts, souvenirs, and snacks. In the evenings there is even Internet service, but you may have to wait for one of the computers. Tap water is pure coming from the freshwater of the island, and it is then filtered. You can drink it from the tap in your cabin with no worries.\n\n**Handicrafts**\n\nThe main reason visitors pass through **Guapi,** an impoverished town of 30,000 and the largest town on the department of Cauca's coastline, is to catch a boat to Isla Gorgona.\n\nIf, on your way to or from Gorgona, you have some time in Guapi, be sure to check out the fantastic basketry and handicrafts at the **COOPMUJERES** handicraft store (Cra. 2 No. 10-39, cell tel. 311\/385-1014, guapicoopmujeres@yahoo.es, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Sat., 8am-noon Sun.), across the street from the Hotel R\u00edo Guapi. This enterprise is completely run by Afro-Colombian women artisans, many of whom are heads of their households. They specialize in woven items such as hats and basketry, using natural fibers commonly found in surrounding jungles, such as _paja tetera, chocolatillo,_ and others. When the cooperative was started in 1992, the idea was met with much skepticism by men in Guapi, who doubted the women's ability to successfully run a business. Over 20 years later, it looks like they've proven the naysayers wrong.\n\nThis is one of the most ecological resorts you may ever visit. All electricity is provided by a small hydroelectric plant. For hot water, each cabin has solar power cells on its rooftop.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nThe easiest and best way to get to Isla Gorgona is to organize a _lancha_ (boat) with **Aviatur** (Av. 19 No. 4-62, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/587-5181 or 1\/587-5182, www.aviaturecoturismo.com) from the coastal town of Guapi. These boats leave every Friday and Monday morning at around 11, about an hour after the arrival of the morning **Satena** (tel. 1\/423-8530, www.satena.com) flight from Cali. An Aviatur representative will meet you at the Guapi airport and take you over to their office\/embarkation point on a _mototaxi._ The trip to the island takes just under two hours, sometimes over rough seas. It costs COP$150,000 round-trip. If you are not able to take the Aviatur _lancha_ (if you arrive on a different day, for example), you will have to rent an entire _lancha_ from Guapi for about COP$500,000, which may not be so bad if you have others to share the cost.\n\nFrom Buenaventura, boats heading to Bocas de Satinga can drop you off at Isla Gorgona (COP$120,000 one way). If there are four or five passengers, the boat will detour and drop you off at the island. If there are fewer passengers, the boat will radio Gorgona and rendezvous with an Aviatur speedboat, which is an adventure in its own right. Contact Aviatur about this option.\n\n#### M **SANTUARIO DE FLORA Y FAUNA MALPELO**\n\nCovering around 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of protected Pacific Ocean waters and the tiny **Isla Malpelo,** the **Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo** (www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, COP$85,000-159,000) was established in 1995. The area was declared a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area by the International Maritime Organization in 2002 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. The steep volcanic rock of Isla Malpelo is nearly 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the coast of Colombia. It is administered by **Parques Nacionales** (tel. 1\/353-2400, ext. 138, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co).\n\nIt is the largest no-fishing zone in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, thus making it one of the top places for diving in the world. There are 11 main dive sites, including the most important site, **La Nevera,** where it is common to see scores of hammerhead sharks. The deep waters surrounding the island are home to some of the most important coral formations in the Colombian Pacific. Mollusks and crustaceans, fish such as snapper, endangered _mero_ (grouper), large populations of hammerhead sharks, whale sharks, sun ray sharks, and manta rays are found in abundance in the sanctuary. It is one of the few places in the world where the short-nosed ragged-toothed shark, a deepwater shark, has been spotted. Inhospitable to much animal life, the island is home to crabs, lizards, and geckos. Among birds, the largest colony in the world of the Nazca booby is found on Malpelo.\n\nEven experienced divers will be blown away by the diversity of sea life in the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo.\n\nMalpelo is for experienced divers only. To get there you must coordinate with one of the following authorized diving tour groups:\n\n\u2022 Out of Buenaventura: **Embarcaciones Astur\u00edas** (tel. 2\/242-4620, cell tel. 313\/767-2864, barcoasturias@yahoo.com)\n\n\u2022 From Cali: **Pacific Diving** (tel. 2\/558-3903, info@cascoantiguocolombia.com, seawolfaboard@gmail.com) and **Arrecifes del Pac\u00edfico** (tel. 2\/514-1691, cell tel. 321\/642-6015, www.arrecifesdelpacifico.com)\n\n\u2022 Out of Panama City: **Coiba Dive Expeditions** (tel. 507\/232-0216, www.coibadiveexpeditions.com) and the German group **Inula UAA Adventures** (tel. 507\/667-95620, inuladiving@gmail.com, www.inula-diving.de)\n\nThe **Fundaci\u00f3n Malpelo** (www.fundacionmalpelo.org) is a nonprofit organization working to protect this sanctuary. The island is under constant threat from illegal fishing, particularly of hammerhead sharks. In 2012 it was estimated that 200 tons of fish were illegally caught in the Colombian Pacific, mostly by boats hailing from Costa Rica, Ecuador, and from Asian countries. During Holy Week, shark fin stew is sold in Buenaventura.\n\n## **SAN ANDR\u00c9S AND PROVIDENCIA**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nHISTORY\n\nTHE LAND\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s\n\nSIGHTS\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nRECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nProvidencia and Santa Catalina\n\nM PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL OLD PROVIDENCE MCBEAN LAGOON\n\nENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS\n\nRECREATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nINFORMATION AND SERVICES\n\nGETTING THERE AND AROUND\n\nThe San Andr\u00e9s Archipelago is made up of seven atolls and three major islands: San Andr\u00e9s, Providencia, and Santa Catalina. San Andr\u00e9s is 775 kilometers (492 miles) northeast of the Colombian mainland and only 191 kilometers (119 miles) east of Nicaragua. The islands are fairly small: San Andr\u00e9s, the largest island, has an area of 26 square kilometers (10 square miles), Providencia just 17 square kilometers (6.5 square miles), and Santa Catalina, attached to Providencia by a photogenic pedestrian bridge, is 1 square kilometer (247 acres) in size.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **Spratt Bight Pathway:** Epicenter of all goings on in San Andr\u00e9s and against a backdrop of the idyllic Johnny Cay in the distance, this beachside promenade is part boardwalk\u2014and part catwalk (click here).\n\nM **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico:** This well-tended botanical garden sits on a bluff overlooking the turquoise sea. A walk among the native trees, plants, and flowers provides a pleasant break from the beach (click here).\n\nM **Snorkeling and Diving off of San Andr\u00e9s:** The dozens of dive sites among thriving coral formations and steep ocean walls off of San Andr\u00e9s can keep divers blissfully busy for days (click here).\n\nM **Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon:** Paddle through the mangrove lagoons and snorkel offshore among tropical fish at this small national park (click here).\n\nM **Beaches on Providencia:** Undertake the tough field work of determining your favorite palm-lined Providencia beach. Your investigations could take several days (click here).\n\nM **The Peak:** From The Peak, the highest point on Providencia, hikers enjoy fantastic peeks from the jungle toward the deep blue sea (click here).\n\nOnce serving as a base for notorious English pirate Henry Morgan, Providencia\u2014or Old Providence, as English-speaking locals call it\u2014and its tiny tag-along neighbor of Santa Catalina are places to experience how the Caribbean used to be before tourism developed. Here visitors enjoy small bungalow-style hotels and home-cooked Creole food. The beaches are pristine and secluded and the waters are an inviting turquoise. Seafood, particularly fresh crab, is always on the menu, accompanied by cold beer.\n\nMore developed San Andr\u00e9s is popular with rowdy Colombian vacationers escaping the chilly climes of the Andes. However, it has many of the same charms as Providencia. Sunbathing, snorkeling, diving, and relaxing are always the order of the day.\n\nOn both islands English and a Creole patois are spoken, in addition to Spanish.\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nLittle is known of the early history of San Andr\u00e9s, Providencia, and Santa Catalina. In pre-Columbian times, the Miskito people of Central America visited the islands but never settled there. In 1628, English privateers brought back information to England about the islands that led to the foundation, in 1631, of a Puritan colony on Providence Island, the English name for Providencia. This project was backed by the Providence Island Company, a joint stock company formed by prominent English Puritans who were also involved in establishing settlements in New England. The Providence settlement was contemporaneous with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At the time, it was expected that this lush tropical Eden would be far more successful than the New England settlements. It was hoped that tobacco and cotton could be easily grown there. In 1631, 100 settlers arrived from England on the _Seaflower._\n\nThe project was short-lived. Providence Island Company denied the settlers land ownership and required significant contribution of manpower to build the island's defenses. Rather than establishing a self-sustaining agricultural community, the colonists imported slaves and established a plantation-based economy. Correspondence from that time reveals decidedly un-Puritanical activity, such as drinking and gambling. The death knell of the colony was the decision of Providence Island Company to obtain a privateering patent and engage in outright piracy. This enraged and provoked the Spanish, the dominant power in that part of the Americas.\n\nWary of having their New World gold stolen from them, the Spaniards cracked down, and an attack on the islands in 1641 put an end to the Puritan experiment. During the following half century, the island was fought over by Spain and England. Pirates such as Edward Mansvelt and Henry Morgan used Providencia as a base. Nominally under the Spanish crown, the island welcomed a small number of settlers from Britain and other Caribbean islands during the late 17th and 18th centuries. In 1821, the archipelago became part of the newly independent Republic of Gran Colombia.\n\nDuring the 19th century, another influx of immigrants from the British Caribbean included many former slaves, which led to the creation of the Raizal community. One settler who lived on Providence, Phillip Beekman Livingston, traveled to the United States and was ordained a Baptist minister, and he introduced that faith to the islands. He was also instrumental in freeing the islands' slaves, starting with his own, 17 years before Colombia abolished slavery in 1853. As a result of his work, the Baptist faith became a distinctive part the islands' culture.\n\nColombia exerted greater power over the islands in the early 20th century, delegating educational instruction to the Catholic Church and forbidding the use of English on official business. In 1953, dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla declared San Andr\u00e9s a free port. This led to a massive influx of outsiders, mostly Colombian duty-free tourists and settlers, but also a contingent of Middle Eastern merchants, who altered the face of San Andr\u00e9s forever. A dense shopping district sprouted up on the North End of San Andr\u00e9s after the declaration of free port. The English-speaking Raizal people became a minority on their own island and lost control of much land. Providence, which was not declared a free trade zone, was spared this onslaught.\n\nThe 1991 Colombian constitution gave the islands some autonomy and put an end to immigration from the mainland. Providencia enacted strict zoning and land ownership regulations that have preserved the island's Raizal identity. Both the Colombian and Nicaraguan governments have declared interest in opening these waters to oil exploration, prompting a grass roots \"Old Providence, not Oil Providence\" campaign.\n\nIn recent decades, Nicaragua has contested Colombian jurisdiction over the islands, renouncing the 1928 Esguerra-Barcenas treaty and filing a suit at the International Court of Justice. In 2001, the court reaffirmed Colombian sovereignty over the islands and atolls but left the maritime border up in the air. In 2012, the court decided that roughly 70,000 square kilometers of sea north and south of San Andr\u00e9s, which had previously been Colombian, were in fact Nicaraguan. Colombians and islanders were shocked, especially because of the loss of traditional fishing areas. Two large atolls became enclaves in the Nicaraguan maritime area. The court decision cannot be appealed, but Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has declared that it will not abide by the decision until Nicaragua ensures the Raizal fishers have access to their traditional fishing areas.\n\niguana in San Andr\u00e9s\n\n#### **THE LAND**\n\nThe archipelago covers 280,000 square kilometers of marine area (it was 350,000 before the 2012 International Court decision). It includes three major islands and seven atolls, and well-preserved coral reefs, particularly the barrier reef surrounding Providence and Santa Catalina, home to more than 80 species of corals and 200 species of fish.\n\nThe islands were once covered by forest. Though much has been cleared, especially in San Andr\u00e9s, significant tracts of forest remain, with cedars, cotton trees, stinking toes, birch gums, and other indigenous trees. The abundance of fruit-bearing trees and plants includes breadfruit, tamarind, mango, and guava, though much of the fruit that is consumed on the islands is imported from Colombia and Central America. There are several large, well-preserved mangrove lagoons, notably the McBean Lagoon in Providencia.\n\nThe islands support a wide range of reptiles, including snakes, iguanas, geckos, and lizards, including the blue or green lizard. Other land animals include crabs, especially the black and shankey crabs, which effect massive migrations to and from the sea to spawn. Coralina (www.coralina.gov.co), the archipelago's environmental agency, recruits army personnel to block traffic on Providencia's roads to protect these migrating crabs. Four species of protected sea turtles nest here. Approximately 100 bird species have been identified on the islands, but only 18 are resident. The island's only non-human land mammals are bats. Dolphins and whales are sighted occasionally.\n\nDespite obvious environmental degradation, especially in San Andr\u00e9s, the archipelago remains one of the best preserved corners of the Caribbean. In 2000, the 300,000 square kilometers of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve became part of UNESCO's \"Man and the Biosphere\" program, which aims to preserve both biological and ethnic diversity, combining conservation with sustainable use by local communities. The 2012 International Court decision transferred about 45 percent of the biosphere to Nicaragua. Islanders hope that Nicaragua will continue to preserve this priceless marine nature reserve.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nHigh tourist seasons on both islands are during the Christmas and New Year's holidays. It may be hard to find a hotel from mid-December until mid-January. During this time, as throngs of Colombian families and a growing number of Brazilians and Argentinians take over San Andr\u00e9s. Also popular are Easter week and school vacations, between mid-June and August. May and September are quiet. Because it's more difficult to reach, Providencia never feels crowded.\n\nThe average temperature is 27\u00b0C (81\u00b0F). During the dry season between January and April, water rationing can be necessary, especially in Providencia, where it rains as little as five days per month. The rainy season extends from June until November, when it can rain 20-24 days per month. October is the rainiest month and is also when hurricanes occasionally churn up the warm Caribbean waters. March and April are some of the best months for snorkeling and diving because the waters are calm. December and January are windy, making snorkeling and diving challenging. Strong winds can prompt airlines to cancel flights into and out of Providencia.\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s is a possible long weekend getaway from mainland Colombia. However, most opt to stay 5-7 days. Week-long all-inclusive plans are popular. A visit to Providencia from San Andr\u00e9s can be a budget buster, but it is well worth the expense if you are interested in getting away from it all. A jaunt to Providencia involves an extra flight, and hotels and restaurants are generally more expensive than in San Andr\u00e9s, which itself is already more expensive than the mainland. If you want to do some serious diving, plan for at least a week, say three days in San Andr\u00e9s and four days in Providencia.\n\n### **San Andr\u00e9s**\n\nSurrounded by a large barrier reef, San Andr\u00e9s is Colombia's Caribbean playground. Here the waters are of seven shades of blue, the sandy beaches are white, and coco locos, the official island cocktail, are always served. Days here are spent lazing on the beach, island hopping, snorkeling and diving, and enjoying fresh seafood. For many Colombians, the deals at the many duty-free stores are too good to pass up\u2014that's one reason why they visit the island in the first place.\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s has a population of about 75,000, about two-thirds of which are of mainland Colombian origin. The rest are English- and Creole-speaking Raizales, many of whom have origins as Jamaican slaves. There is also a community of \"Turcos\" or \"Arabes,\" whose roots can be traced to mostly Lebanon and Syria. Their presence on the island is not an insignificant one, as demonstrated by a brilliantly white modern mosque that stands prominently in the commercial center.\n\n##### **Orientation**\n\nThe island of San Andr\u00e9s resembles a seahorse floating gently eastward in the western Caribbean Sea. It is only about 13 kilometers (8 miles) long from top to bottom and 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide, and has a total area of 26 square kilometers (10 square miles). The Circunvalar ring road more or less circles the entire island.\n\nThe beach at Spratt Bight is full of activity.\n\nThe \"town\" of San Andr\u00e9s is usually called the Centro or the North End. It is in the snout of the seahorse, in the northeast. This is the center of activity and where the majority of the island's restaurants, hotels, and shops (nearly all of which are owned and operated by mainland Colombians) are found. About 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) of the main drag here, Avenida Colombia, is the _paseo peatonal_ or _malec\u00f3n,_ the Spratt Bight Pathway, a delightful pedestrian promenade along the Spratt Bight beach. About two kilometers northwest of the Centro is the airport. The west side is quieter, with a handful of points of interest, hotels, and restaurants. The coastline on the west side is all coral; there are no beaches. At the southernmost point of the island is the Hoyo Soplador blow hole. Continuing counterclockwise, the town of San Luis extends along the southeastern edge of the island. This area has some good beaches, hotels, and restaurants, and is much more laid-back than the Centro.\n\nThe middle part of the island, called **La Loma** (The Hill), is the highest point on the island. The main point of reference here is the stately white First Baptist Church. This is home to the largest community of Raizal people.\n\n#### **SIGHTS**\n\n##### M **Spratt Bight Pathway**\n\nFor many, their first stop in San Andr\u00e9s after checking in to their hotel is the **Spratt Bight Pathway** (Centro). This pedestrian walkway is the liveliest stretch on the island, lined with restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops on one side. On the ocean side of the pathway is the island's most popular beach, **Spratt Bight,** which looks out toward the enticing Johnny Cay in the distance.\n\n##### **Casa Museo Isle\u00f1a**\n\n**Casa Museo Isle\u00f1a** (Km. 5 Av. Circunvalar, tel. 8\/512-3419, 8:30am-5pm daily, COP$8,000) is a reconstruction of a typical island wooden house that provides a glimpse into island life in the 19th century. After a required guided tour (15 minutes), your cheerful young guide will tell you \"now let's dance!\" Reggae dancing is a rather strange component of the museum experience, but then again, it's hard to say no. Those smiling guides are a persuasive lot.\n\n##### **Cueva de Morgan (Morgan's Cave)**\n\nIt would seem that all caves hidden along the coasts of San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia are reputed to hold hidden treasures stashed away by notorious pirates. On the western side of San Andr\u00e9s is **Cueva de Morgan** (Morgan's Cave, tel. 8\/513-2946, 9am-6pm daily, COP$10,000), a sort of theme park where Welsh privateer\/pirate Captain Henry Morgan allegedly stored some of his loot (but there's no evidence to prove this). There isn't much to see at the cave itself. That's why the park owners added on some reconstructions of traditional wooden island cabins that serve as mini-musuems on island culture and ways of life. You visit these on a guided tour that is included in the cost. One is an art gallery where local dancers often perform to calypso beats. All in all, it's a tourist trap.\n\n##### **Hoyo Soplador**\n\nAt the **Hoyo Soplador** on the island's southern tip, the attraction is a hole in the coral where, when the tide and winds are right, water sprays up, reaching heights of more than 10 meters. It can't compare to Old Faithful, but then again, can you order a coco loco in Yellowstone?\n\n##### M **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico**\n\nThe **Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico** (V\u00eda Harmony Hill in front of Hotel Sol Caribe Campo, tel. 8\/513-3390, www.caribe.unal.edu.co, 8:30am-5pm Mon.-Fri., 10am-4pm Sat.-Sun., COP$5,000) is easily the most peaceful place on San Andr\u00e9s. In this lovely botanical garden run by the Universidad Nacional, you can stroll along several paths and view trees and plants that grow in San Andr\u00e9s. From the five-story lookout tower, you can take in an impressive view of the island and its barrier reefs. Guided tours, included in the price of admission, are technically required, but if you are in a hurry or arrive in the late afternoon, you can request to amble the trails unaccompanied.\n\n##### **First Baptist Church**\n\nThe white, clapboard **First Baptist Church** (La Loma, no phone, services 7:30pm Thurs. and 10:30am Sun., COP$3,000 donation requested) was built in 1844 and rebuilt before the turn of the 20th century using wood imported from Alabama. It was the first Baptist church established on the island. A guide will give you a little history of the church and allow you to climb up to the bell tower for a commanding view of the island. The Sunday worship service can last several hours. Church members dress up for services, and you'll often see a smattering of tourists in the balcony on Sundays. The church is an excellent place to hear gospel music.\n\n##### **Paradise Farm**\n\nJob Saas, a local Raizal man, operates **Paradise Farm** (Cove Seaside, Km. 11 Polly Higgs Rd., tel. 8\/513-0798, cell tel. 315\/770-3904, donations accepted). Saas decided to transform the former standard family farm into one with a focus on conservation and the environment. Here you can see animals, such as iguanas and turtles, and plants that are threatened due to overdevelopment on San Andr\u00e9s. Saas uses the same farming techniques that his family has used for decades. It is a great initiative on this island where environmental awareness is lacking. He welcomes visitors to the farm, and, if you are lucky, you can hear his band play.\n\nbreadfruit at Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico\n\n##### **Big Pond**\n\nManaged by a Rastafarian community, the **Big Pond** (La Loma, no phone, no set visiting hours, donations requested) is a pond on the top of La Loma, home to a few domesticated alligators. When called, they will swim close to the shore, where they are fed a diet of white bread. The alligators live in harmony with turtles, and herons watch the action from a tree nearby. Upon arrival, ask for Fernando. There is no set entry fee.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nThe nightlife scene on San Andr\u00e9s is big and brash. The most famous nightspots are near Spratt Bight. Clubs generally open from Thursday to Saturday during off-season but every night during high season. Things get cranking around 10pm. The perennial top discos are **Coco Loco** (Av. Colombia, tel. 8\/513-1047), **Extasis** (Hotel Sol Caribe, tel. 8\/512-3043), and **Blue Deep** (Sunrise Hotel). **Aquarius** (Av. Colombia between Bah\u00eda Sardina and Hotel Ton\u00e9, tel. 8\/512-5933) is more of a bar scene during the afternoon and early evening, turning into a dancing spot later on. You'll feel like you're in Ibiza at the **Majia Restaurante Italiano y Cocktail Bar** (Av. Colombia, cell tel. 318\/860-5234, www.majiasanandres.com), where chill-out music and mojitos go along with a beachside view. Guest DJs usually spin on weekends.\n\n#### **RECREATION**\n\n##### **Beaches**\n\nSome of the best beaches on the island include **Spratt Bight,** near the Centro in front of the pedestrian walkway; **San Luis,** near Chammey Marina; **Cocoplum** ; **Bah\u00eda Sonora** (near Rocky Cay) beaches; and the **Parque Regional Johnny Cay.**\n\nOut of all of these, the Johnny Cay beaches are probably the best. **Johnny Cay** is the island that beckons off the Spratt Bight beach. During peak tourist seasons, on weekends, and on holidays, though, it gets crazy packed.\n\nTo get to Johnny Cay, you must take a boat, called a _lancha_ in Spanish, from Spratt Bight, It is a quick 15-minute ride there. There are always boats owned by individuals (not organized tour companies) at the ready at the Spratt Bight beach. To arrange a trip, your negotiating skills will be put to the test. Hiring an individual boat can cost up to COP$200,000. The inexpensive option is to take a day tour (COP$20,000). These leave from Spratt Bight by 9:30am every day of the year, and the boats return at around 4pm.\n\nIn the late afternoon, the island clears out, but you can stay until almost 6 when the last boats leave. It's nice to be one of the last visitors on the island as the sun begins its descent. There are no accommodations options on the island. While there, take a walk around the entire island, where flocks of birds are likely the only company you'll have. It takes about 15 minutes.\n\n##### M **Snorkeling and Diving**\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s is surrounded by a well-preserved coral reef teeming with marine life that makes it a diver's and snorkeler's paradise. On the eastern edge is the windward barrier, 15 kilometers long and 60-80 meters wide, with significant live coral communities. Beyond the reef, the shelf ends abruptly with a vertical wall that drops hundreds of meters. To the west, the windward barrier protects a large marine lagoon that has seagrass cover. The reef on the western, leeward side is a bit less well preserved due to tourism and boat traffic, but it also has beautiful patches of coral and significant marine life. In all, the waters surrounding San Andr\u00e9s include more than 40 species of corals and 131 species of fish. It is common to see large schools of brightly colored jacks, tangs, grunts, and snapper, as well as barracudas, groupers, and parrotfish. Other marine creatures include turtles, stingrays, moray eels, octopus, squid, and lobster.\n\na diving lesson\n\nA unique feature of San Andr\u00e9s is that the dives are very close to shore, which means a 10- to 30-minute boat ride maximum. The water is warm and has excellent visibility year round. The best conditions for diving are January to May, with stronger winds in June and July. Popular dive sites are: The Pyramids, a shallow 4-meter dive with striking anemones and fish; Nirvana, a reef at about 15 meters, teeming with marine life; Trampa Tortuga, a reef at about 15 meters with great visibility; and Blue Wall, on the eastern edge of the windward barrier, which starts at 6 meters and drops to 300 meters with magnificent corals and large tube sponges.\n\nMost dive operators also offer short (three hours) introductory courses for beginners, costing around COP$155,000 per person, which allow you to do an easy dive without being certified. There are also many opportunities to do full introductory and advanced courses with certification. A three-day Open Water Diver certification course typically costs around COP$800,000.\n\nRecommended diving operators on San Andr\u00e9s include **Banda** (Hotel Lord Pierre, tel. 8\/513-1080, www.bandadiveshop.com), **Blue Life** (Hotel Sunrise Beach, Local 112\/113, tel. 8\/512-5318, www.bluelifedive.com), **Sharky's Surf Shop** (Sunset Hotel, Km. 13 Carretera Circunvalar, tel. 8\/512-0651, www.sharkydiveshop.com), and **Karibik** (Av. Newball 1-248, Edificio Galeon, tel. 8\/512-0101, www.karibikdiver.com). Diving excursions typically include two dives and cost COP$170,000. Night diving trips can be arranged by most dive shops.\n\n##### **Other Water Sports**\n\nSamuel Raigosa, better known as Chamey, is the **kite-surfing** guru of San Andr\u00e9s, and those at **Chamey's N\u00e1utica** (Km. 4 V\u00eda San Luis, tel. 8\/513-2077, cell tel. 317\/752-4965) are experts on kite-surfing. A one-hour class costs COP$70,000.\n\nkite-boarding in San Andr\u00e9s\n\nThe group **Ecofiwi Turismo Ecol\u00f3gico** (V\u00eda San Luis, Mango Tree sector, tel. 8\/513-0565, cell tel. 316\/567-4988 or 316\/624-3396, 9am-4pm daily) offers **kayak tours** of the mangroves in the Old Point Regional Mangrove Park led by local guides. The kayaks are completely transparent, providing kayakers with up-close views of sea life such as upside down jellyfish, sea cucumbers, seagrass beds, and also birds such as frigatebirds, pelicans, herons, and migratory birds. Snorkeling is also part of the tour (equipment included). The two-hour tour costs COP$50,000, and that cost includes a snack of a crab empanada and a juice or something of the like, plus a CD of photos from the trip. There are no additional costs. The group also offers **artisanal fishing tours,** during which the visitor goes fishing with local Raizal fishers. A half-day fishing tour costs COP$200,000 and an entire day is COP$300,000.\n\nThe **West View** (tel. 8\/513-0341, cell tel. 312\/308-8942, 9am-6pm daily, COP$8,000) is a park with two components: on the water side there is a restaurant and features include a waterslide, a trampoline, snorkeling, and Aquanaut suits that you can rent to walk on the floor of the ocean. Across the road are some houses made entirely of coconuts, fruit orchards, dozens of lizards and turtles to gawk at, and a cave to enter. South of the West View is **La Piscina Natural** (cell tel. 318\/363-6014, COP$5,000), a low-key spot for snorkeling that attracts fewer crowds.\n\n##### **Tours**\n\nThe locally run **Coonative Brothers** (Spratt Bight Beach, tel. 8\/512-1923) company offers tours to some of the best known beaches and swimming spots. A standard day tour costs COP$20,000 and leaves at 9:30 every morning. That includes a 1.5-hour stop at **El Acuario\/La Piscina\/Haynes Cay,** where you can wade and swim in waters labeled \"seven shades of blue.\" Animal lovers may find the attraction of \"swimming with the manta rays\" to be disturbing. On busy tourist days, the manta rays are handled over and over again, being lifted out of the water for snapshots with smiling tourists. They are fed a steady diet of white sandwich bread. For the sake of the rays, it's best to avoid participating in this activity. The rest of the day is spent on **Johnny Cay,** where you can buy lunch and drinks, and rent snorkeling equipment. (If you go to Johnny Cay, don't pay for a guide. There is no need.). You can just show up at the beach at around 9am to join the tour.\n\nLocal boaters affiliated with Coonative Brothers also offer full-day tours with more stops, including a visit to the San Andr\u00e9s mangroves for COP$60,000 per person. There is a minimum of 10 passengers for these tours. If you would like to go out on a private trip to one of those locations, that can cost up to COP$200,000, depending on your negotiating skills. Inquire at the Coonative Brothers' beach kiosk.\n\nAnother option to get out on the water is to take a glass-bottom boat tour. During this tour, you make several stops to coral reefs, to sunken ships, and to exotic islands. You'll be able to get in the water and snorkel several times to observe sealife. For information regarding these tours contact **San Andr\u00e9s Unlimited** (Tom Hooker Road No. 8-75, South End, tel. 8\/513-0035, tel. 8\/513-0129, cell tel. 316\/889-8701, or 310\/625-2938). A 1-hour 45-minute tour costs around COP$45,000 per person.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nOn this island where tourism is king, lodging options are plentiful, except during high season (mid-December to mid-January, Holy Week, and, to a lesser extent, during school vacations from June to July). Top-end hotels and low-end hostels are not as common as mid- to upper-range all-inclusive hotels. Colombian chain Decameron has five properties on the island and is building its largest hotel yet near the airport, expected to be ready in 2015. There are no familiar international hotel chains on the island.\n\nYou will probably want to stay on or near the beach on the eastern side of the island, including in quiet San Luis. From here, you can hop on public transportation or hail a cab if you want to go to town, or rent a motorbike, golf cart, jeep ( _mulita_ ), or bicycle. The busy downtown (North End) of San Andr\u00e9s can feel claustrophobic, but you'll always be within walking distance of restaurants and services, and you can often find some good deals in this area. Waterfront hotels here have pools, not beaches. Stay near the airport if you prefer more seclusion but still want to be close to the action in the city center.\n\nThe western side of the island has coral coastline instead of beaches, and the few hotels cater mostly to divers, so this side feels more isolated.\n\nIn the interior of the island are some _posadas nativas,_ guesthouses owned and operated by locals, many with deep roots on the island. Staying at a _posada nativa_ is the best way to get to know the local culture. For a list of guesthouse options, you can visit the webpage of the program of _posadas nativas_ sponsored by the Colombian Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Rural Affairs: www.posadasturisticasdecolombia.com.\n\nIn the North End, boutique hotel M **Casa Harb** (Cl. 11 No. 10-83, tel. 8\/512-6348, www.casaharb.com, COP$800,000 d) is by far the most luxurious place to stay in San Andr\u00e9s. The five suites, the lobby, dining area, and spa area are thoughtfully decorated with fantastic art and furniture from Morocco to Malaysia, personally chosen by owner Jak Harb. The **Hostal Mar y Mar** (Av. Colombia No. 1-32, cell tel. 317\/401-6906, COP$150,000 d), in the same part of the island, is a squeaky clean and friendly little place that opened in 2012. There are only four rooms and meals are not included. It's two blocks from the beach. Noise from airplane take-offs may be a nuisance in the mornings for some.\n\nAlthough it may look retro-Miami Beach, brilliantly white **Casablanca** (Av. Colombia No. 3-59, tel. 8\/512-4115, www.hotelcasablancasanandres.com, COP$391,000 d low season, COP$659,000 d high season) is an upscale option facing the beachfront pedestrian walkway. Of the 91 spacious rooms it offers, 10 of them are _caba\u00f1as._ There is a small pool and, more importantly, a pool bar, **Coco's.** The hotel has three on-site restaurants.\n\nThe Decameron chain seems to be on a mission to take over San Andr\u00e9s. They currently operate five hotels on San Andr\u00e9s. Close to town is their boutique hotel, **Decameron Los Delfines** (Av. Colombia No. 1B-86, tel. 8\/512-7816, Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/628-0000, www.decameron.co, COP$310,000 d). It has 39 very comfortable rooms and a pool. As is the case with all Decameron hotels, all meals are included. Fortunately, you are permitted to dine at other Decameron hotels on the island. This hotel does not have a beach.\n\nThe small hotels in the busy downtown are far more reasonably priced than those with a view to the sea and are just a few blocks away. The most popular choice for backpackers is the five-floor **El Viajero** (Av. 20 de Julio No. 3A-122, tel. 8\/512-7497, www.elviajerohostels.com, COP$52,000 dorm, COP$132,000-200,000 d), which is part of a Uruguayan chain. It has several air-conditioned gender-separated dorms, as well as private rooms. The top floor bar serves cold beer and assorted rum drinks, and there are several common areas with wireless Internet and computers. A paltry breakfast is included, and a kitchen is provided for guests' use. Staff aren't overly friendly, but they can arrange excursions.\n\nIt's surprising just how peaceful the **Posada Mary May** (Av. 20 de Julio No. 3-74, tel. 8\/512-5669, COP$60,000-110,000 d) is. Every morning you can pick up a cup of coffee in the lovely courtyard that is shaded by a huge avocado tree. On the downside, beds (usually three per room) are on the soft side in the spacious rooms, wireless Internet is sporadic, and in general the place could use an update. Around the corner, **Cli's Place** (Av. 20 de Julio No. 3-47, tel. 8\/512-0591, luciamhj@hotmail.com, COP$160,000 d), owned by Cletotilde Henry, has four double rooms in the main house as well as a _caba\u00f1a_ that accommodates seven people. You will feel at home here, although the price is high. **Casa D'Lul\u00fa** (Av. Antioquia No. 2-18, tel. 8\/512-2919, laposadadelulu.sanandresyprovidencia@hotmail.com, COP$150,000 d) has 10 rooms and three large studio apartments.\n\nBrightly colored **Cocoplum Hotel** (V\u00eda San Luis No. 43-49, tel. 8\/513-2121, www.cocoplumhotel.com, COP$240,000-420,000 d) in the San Luis area has the most important feature for a beach hotel: It is actually on the beach, with rooms that are steps from the water. Rooms are comfortable and spacious with kitchens. The restaurant and bar face the water, and quite often the only thing you hear is the palm branches rustling in the wind. Food is not fantastic, so don't go for the all-meals-included plan.\n\n**Ground Road Native Place** (Circunvalar No. 54-88, before the health clinic, San Luis, tel. 8\/513-3887, cell tel. 313\/776-6036, edupeterson1@hotmail.com, COP$50,000 pp) is a small, comfortable _posada nativa_ with five spacious rooms with air conditioning and wireless Internet in San Luis. It's in the home of Edula and George Peterson and is just a three-minute walk to the beach.\n\nAn option in La Loma is **Coconut Paradise Lodge** (Claymount No. 50-05, La Loma, tel. 8\/513-2926, oldm26@hotmail.com, COP$50,000 pp with breakfast), a beautiful turn-of-the-20th century wooden home with six rooms. It's a great place to stay if you are interested in learning about Raizal culture. It's close to the botanical gardens and the San Luis beaches. Try for the top floor room, which has great views and a delicious breeze.\n\nOn the quiet west side of the island, for those interested in diving, M **Sunset Hotel** (Km. 13 Circunvalar, tel. 8\/513-0433, 0420, www.sunsethotelspa.com, COP$196,000 low season, COP$320,000 d high season) is a great option. It has 16 bright and basic rooms that surround a small pool. While there is no beach, the hotel's dive shop, Sharky's, offers diving lessons and organizes diving excursions. You can go snorkeling in the waters across the street. Week-long diving packages may be a good option. And as its name indicates, great sunsets are included at no extra cost. You can also rent bikes here.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nSeafood is on every menu in every restaurant in San Andr\u00e9s. Fish, lobster, crab, and conch are likely to come from the waters off of San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia. However, _langostinos_ (prawns) and _camarones_ (shrimp) often come from either the Pacific or from the Cartagena area on the mainland. A Caribbean specialty you'll likely find only on San Andr\u00e9s, Providencia, and Jamaica is the rundown or _rond\u00f3n._ It is a filling to-the-max stew that has fish or conch, pig's tail, dumplings, yuca, and other ingredients slowly cooked in coconut milk. All restaurants are beach casual, and most of the larger ones accept credit cards.\n\n##### **Caf\u00e9s, Bakeries, and Quick Bites**\n\nPart of the Casablanca Hotel, the groovy turquoise **Sea Watch Caf\u00e9** (Av. Colombia, 6am-11pm daily, COP$18,000) is as close as it comes in Colombia to a New York-style coffee shop. Here you can have a leisurely breakfast as you watch the tourists file by on the walkway out front. They also offer pizza, hamburgers, ceviche, pasta, and desserts.\n\nFrom the outside, M **Coffee Break** (Av. Colombia No. 3-59, in front of Parque de la Barracuda, tel. 8\/512-1275, www.coffeebreak.com.co, 7am-11pm daily) often appears empty or even closed. But when you go inside, it's almost always packed with visitors and locals alike sipping on Vietnamese coffee, munching on nachos, or smearing cream cheese on their toasted bagels. Customers here take their time (likely because of the air conditioning!). A bakery\/caf\u00e9 popular with locals is **Bread Fruit** (Av. Francisco Newball No. 4-169, outside the Sunrise Hotel, tel. 8\/512-6044, 7:30am-8:30pm Mon.-Sat.). It's named after the breadfruit tree, which is typical to the area. (There is no breadfruit on the menu.)\n\nFinally, Miss Carmen is a familiar face on the Spratt Bight walkway, where she has been selling her homemade empanadas, ceviche, and cakes for years. Her stand doesn't really have a name, but you can call it **La Mesa Grande de Carmen** (Av. Colombia pathway).\n\n##### **Seafood**\n\nNorth of downtown, the M **Fisherman's Place** (Cra. 9 No. 1-10 Spratt Bight, tel. 8\/512-2774, noon-4pm daily, COP$20,000) is a restaurant run by a cooperative of local fishers. It overlooks the water and is near the airport, and is always packed. Try the Rond\u00f3n T\u00edpico Especial. Ask anyone in town what's the best seafood place on the island and a solid majority will mention **La Regatta** (tel. 8\/512-0437, www.restaurantelaregatta.com, noon-11pm daily, COP$40,000) next to the Club N\u00e1utico. It is open-air and juts out onto the water. For a sampling of the finest of San Andr\u00e9s seafood, try their Fiesta N\u00e1utica, which has lobster tails, prawns, and crab. Just far enough for a little peace and quiet from the Centro, **Niko's Seafood Restaurant** (Av. Colombia No. 1-93, tel. 8\/512-7535, 11am-11pm daily, COP$30,000) is what a family-run seafood place should be: over the water, not fancy-schmancy, and no lounge music. Lobster is the house specialty.\n\n**Seafood, Sustainably**\n\nTo protect their sustainability, some seafood should be avoided during certain times of the year, and some should be avoided completely.\n\n_Langosta_ (lobster), _pargo_ (snapper), and _caracol pala_ (conch) are the three most fished species around San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia, and are very often found on restaurant menus. It is recommended to avoid ordering conch from June to October (but due to overfishing it's wise to avoid conch entirely), lobster from April until June, and _cangrejo negro_ (black crab) from April to July.\n\nOther threatened species include Atlantic blue fin tuna, tarpon, lebranche mullet, _robalo blanco_ (white sea bass), _mero guasa_ (goliath grouper), _cherna_ (Nassau grouper), and the masked hamlet, which is only found in the waters off Providencia.\n\nAlthough the namesake for M **Miss Celia** (Av. Newball and Av. Raizal, tel. 8\/513-1062, restaurantemisscelia@gmail.com, noon-10pm daily, COP$30,000) passed away not too long ago, the restaurant continues the Raizal cuisine tradition in this cute, colorful, and authentic spot. Located in front of the Club Na\u00fatico, Miss Celia is surrounded by gardens and flowers, and the sounds of reggae and other local music add to the atmosphere. They recommend to their foreign guests to only order _rond\u00f3n_ at lunchtime, as they may not be able to handle it at night (it's a heavy dish).\n\nM **Donde Francesca** (El Pirata Beach, San Luis, tel. 8\/513-0163, cell tel. 315\/770-1315, restaurantedondefrancesca@gmail.com, 7:30am-8:30pm daily, COP$35,000) is colorful and has great food. The menu includes _langosta tempura_ (tempura lobster, COP$50,000) and _pulpo reducci\u00f3n al bals\u00e1mico_ (balsamic octopus, COP$34,000). In-the-know locals make a weekly visit to M **Restaurante Lidia** (Ground Rd. No. 64-65, San Luis, tel. 8\/513-2192) a ritual. It's only open on Sundays and on holiday Mondays. This place gets great reviews from local foodies. Lidia's crab empanadas are recommended.\n\nThe **Restaurante Punta Sur** (Km. 15.8, South End, tel. 8\/513-0003, 10am-6pm daily, COP$30,000) is close to the Hoyo Soplador. Sitting on the terrace when the waves come crashing in, it feels like you might be taken out to sea. With a small pool and deck area, it's a nice place to enjoy an afternoon. This family restaurant is a great place for some fresh seafood or drinks. _Arroz con camarones_ (rice with shrimp) and grilled lobster are a couple of the more popular menu items.\n\n##### **International**\n\n**Margherita e Carbonara** (Av. Colombia No. 1-93, tel. 8\/512-1050, 11am-11pm daily, COP$30,000) gets packed at night during high season due to its prized location near the big hotels. It's a boisterous family-style place where the pastas aren't bad.\n\n**Majia Restaurante Italiano y Cocktail Bar** (Av. Colombia, cell tel. 318\/860-52344, www.majia.co, COP$25,000) is a good choice for some authentic Italian pastas. It's run by a couple from Florence. **Mr. Panino** (Edificio Bread Fruit Local 106-7, tel. 8\/512-3481, www.misterpaninosanandres.com, 10:30am-10pm Mon.-Sat., 11am-4pm Sun., COP$30,000) is a reliable, somewhat upscale Italian restaurant, popular at both lunch and dinner. It's nice to sit on the high wooden tables in the back. Try their _risotto con langostinos,_ a prawn risotto that's a generous plate to share.\n\nAlthough there is a strong Lebanese influence on the island, Middle Eastern food is hard to come by in San Andr\u00e9s. **Hansa Pier** (Av. Colombia next to Tres Casitas hotel, cell tel. 313\/758-4604, noon-10pm daily, COP$20,000) has a great waterfront location in town, but the falafels and shwarma are nothing to write home about.\n\nIt may have an unfortunate name, but the **Gourmet Shop Assho** (Av. Newball in front of Parque de la Barracuda, tel. 8\/512-9843, 12:30pm-midnight Mon.-Sat., 6pm-11:30pm Sun., COP$30,000) is an excellent choice for a break from the seafood platter. The salads, pasta, and other dishes are good, and on every table there is a big bottle of imported spicy Asian chili sauce. With gourmet food items and wine for sale along the walls, and thousands of empty wine bottles decorating the ceiling, it's a cozy place. For something quick, you can try the hole in the wall (literally) **Gourmet Shop To Go** (Av. Newball in front of Parque de la Barracuda, tel. 8\/512-9843, 11am-3pm daily, COP$15,000) in the same building.\n\n##### **Markets**\n\n**Super Todo** (Av. 20 de Julio No. 3-41, tel. 8\/512-6366, 8am-8pm daily) is the largest supermarket on San Andr\u00e9s. It's in the Centro.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nA humongous **tourist office** (Av. Newball, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm daily) was opened in 2012. It's located between downtown and San Luis, across from Club N\u00e1utico. Tourism bureau staff are on hand at a tourist information kiosk where Avenida Colombia intersects with Avenida 20 de Julio (8am-7pm daily).\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s is served by all the major Colombian airlines. In addition to their counters at the airport, most of them have ticket offices in the Centro. Copa has nonstop flights to Panama City. Air Transat (www.airtransat.com) operates charter flights between Canada and San Andr\u00e9s. The **Aeropuerto Gustavo Rojas Pinillas** (Centro, tel. 8\/512-3415) is very close to many hotels. Cabs to the airport cost COP$10,000. Satena operates flights to Providencia from San Andr\u00e9s.\n\nPublic buses serve the entire island. These cost about COP$2,000 each way. To get to San Luis, you can take the bus from the Parque de la Barracuda just south of the Centro.\n\nRenting a car is possible, but it's not recommended because parking is scarce, distances are not far, and, more importantly, there are more fun options. Most visitors rent heavy-duty, gas-powered golf carts referred to as _mulas_ (literally, mules) for the day instead. **Millennium Rent A Car** (Av. Newball, in front of the Parque La Barracuda, tel. 8\/512-3114) rents golf carts (COP$70,000 day) and _mulas_ (COP$150,000 day). **Rent A Car Esmeralda** (Av. Colombia, in front of Buxo del Caribe, tel. 8\/512-8116 or 8\/512-1934) offers the same prices. Although you can rent both golf carts and _mulas_ for multiple days, their use is prohibited after 6pm.\n\nTo take a day tour of the entire island, you can rent a van with the professional and knowledgeable driver **Jos\u00e9 Figueroa** (cell tel. 316\/317-2020). Taxis are plentiful in the Centro.\n\nBikes can be rented at **Bicycle Rental Shop** (Cra. 1B, Sector Punta Hansa, in front of Edificio Hansa Reef, cell tel. 318\/328-1790 or 321\/242-9328, 8am-6pm daily, COP$45,000\/day).\n\n### **Providencia and Santa Catalina**\n\nSecluded palm-lined beaches, gorgeous turquoise Caribbean waters, mellow locals, fresh seafood, and rum drinks make it easy to become smitten with Providencia and tough to leave.\n\nLocated about 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of San Andr\u00e9s, these islands are the easygoing cousins of hyperactive San Andr\u00e9s. Of volcanic origin, Providencia and Santa Catalina are older islands than San Andr\u00e9s, and are smaller in area and population than it, having a total area of about 18 square kilometers (7 square miles) and a population of only 5,000. Only 300 people live on minuscule Santa Catalina, an island known as the \"Island of Treasures,\" which was once home to an English fort.\n\n##### **Orientation**\n\nThe two islands of Providencia and Santa Catalina combined are about seven kilometers long and four kilometers wide (four miles by 2.5 miles). The harbor area of Providencia is called Santa Isabel and is the center of island activity. Other settlements on the island are usually referred to by the names of their beaches or bays. The main ones are on the western side of the island: Manchineel Bay (Bah\u00eda Manzanillo), on the southern end, which has some excellent beaches; Southwest Bay (Bah\u00eda Suroeste); and Freshwater Bay (Aguadulce), home to many hotels and restaurants. A ring road encircles the entire island of Providencia.\n\n#### M **PARQUE NACIONAL NATURAL OLD PROVIDENCE MCBEAN LAGOON**\n\nThe **Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon** (office Jones Point, east of airport, tel. 8\/514-8885 or 8\/514-9003, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm daily, COP$14,000 non-Colombians, COP$8,500 Colombians, COP$4,000 students) is a small national park on the northeast coast of the island. It occupies about 1,485 hectares\/3,670 acres (1,390 hectares\/3,435 acres of that is in the sea). Here you can observe five different ecosystems: coral reefs, sea grass beds, mangroves, dry tropical forests, and volcanic keys.\n\n**Crab Cay** (Cayo Cangrejo) is one of the main attractions of the park, and it's an easy place for some splashing about in the incredibly clear, warm waters. This is a great place for some easy snorkeling, and, in addition to tropical fish, you may see manta rays or sea turtles. A short five-minute nature path on this minuscule island takes you to the top of the island. A snack bar on Crab Cay sells water, soft drinks, beer, coco locos, and snacks like ceviche. They are there every day until around 1pm.\n\nBoat tours, organized by all hotels and dive shops, motor around the coast of Providencia, stopping at beaches and at Crab Cay for snorkeling or swimming. These tours depart the hotels at around 9am each morning and cost about COP$35,000 per person. Once you disembark at Crab Cay, you'll have to pay the park entry fee of COP$14,000. Following the stop at Crab Cay, the boats go to Southwest Bay for a seafood lunch, not included in the price of the tour.\n\nsailing race in Providencia\n\nOtherwise you can hire a boat for yourself at around COP$350,000 total. Upon arrival at the island, you'll be required to pay the park entry fee. All hotels can arrange this more exclusive option.\n\nThe park's **Iron Wood Hill Trail** is a three-kilometer (1.8-mile) round-trip nature trail along which you can explore the tropical dry forest landscape, and will see different types of lizards, birds, and flora. There are nice views from here of the coastline. You are required to go with a local guide arranged by the parks office (Jones Point, east of airport, tel. 8\/514-8885 or 8\/514-9003, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co, 8am-12:30pm and 2pm-6pm daily, COP$25,000 pp plus park entry fee).\n\nAn additional activity is to hire a **kayak** and row to Crab Cay or through the park's McBean Lagoon mangroves. Passing through the mangroves you'll enter the **Oyster's Creek Lagoon,** where you'll see several species of birds, like blue and white herons and pelicans, as well as crabs, fish, and some unusual jellyfish. This is an interesting trip. Try to go early in the morning or late in the afternoon, as the sun can be brutal. Kayaks can be rented at the Posada Coco Bay (Maracaibo sector on the northeastern side of the island, tel. 8\/514-8226, cell tel. 311\/804-0373, www.posadacocobay.com, COP$30,000). A kayak with a guide costs COP$50,000, and for snorkeling equipment tack on another COP$10,000.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS**\n\n##### **Nightlife**\n\nIn Manchineel Bay, follow the reggae music down the beach and you'll discover **Roland Roots Bar** (Manchineel Bay, tel. 8\/514-8417, hours vary), which will easily become one of your favorites. It is set back among coconut palms and is the perfect place to spend a lazy, sunny day in Providencia. Or go at night, when you can order your rum drink to go and walk to the beach and stargaze, or hang out by a bonfire. Roland's competition is **Richard's Place** on the beach in Southwest Bay. Both of these spots often light up bonfires on the beach on weekend nights. Both also serve food, like fried fish.\n\n##### **Festival del Chub**\n\nIn early January of each year, the Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean organizes the **Festival del Chub** (tel. 8\/514-8885 or 8\/514-9003). Chub is a plentiful but not very popular fish for consumption. The purpose of the festival is to encourage fishers and consumers to choose chub instead of other fish like red snapper, the stocks of which have been depleted throughout the Caribbean. There is one area of the island, Rocky Point (Punta Rocosa), where chub is widely eaten, and that is where the festival is held. In addition to an all-chub seafood festival, where you can try chub burgers and chub ceviche, there is also a sailing race from Southwest Bay to Manzanillo. It's fun to hang out at **Roland Roots Bar** (Manchineel Bay, tel. 8\/514-8417) in the morning to watch the sailors ready their boats for the race. This colorful festival usually takes place on a Saturday.\n\n#### **RECREATION**\n\n##### M **Beaches**\n\nThe best beaches on Providencia can be found generally on the western side of the island. From Manchineel Bay (Bah\u00eda Manzanillo) on the southern end to Allan or Almond Bay in the northwest, they are each worth exploring, if you have the time. On these beaches, the waters are calm, the sand golden, and there's always a refreshing breeze.\n\n**Manchineel Bay,** home to Roland Roots Bar, is an exotic beach where you can relax under the shade of a palm tree. Be careful of falling coconuts. In **Southwest Bay (Suroeste),** there are a couple of hotels and restaurants nearby, and you can sometimes see horses cooling off in the water or people riding them along the shoreline. The beaches of **Freshwater Bay** are very convenient to several hotels and restaurants.\n\nbeach in Providencia\n\nThe beach at **Allan Bay** (or **Almond Bay** ) is more remote. It's notable for its large octopus sculpture on the side of the road (can't miss it) and nicely done walkway down to the beach from the ring road. The beach area is a public park, and there is a snack bar and stand where you can purchase handicrafts. You'll have to either drive to this beach or hitch a ride on a taxi.\n\nA couple of coves on Santa Catalina have some secluded beaches on the path to Morgan's Head, and there is decent snorkeling nearby.\n\n##### **Snorkeling and Diving**\n\nProvidencia, which is surrounded by a 32-kilometer-long large barrier reef, is a fantastic place to dive or to learn to dive. The water temperature is always warm, and water visibility is usually 25-35 meters (82-115 feet).\n\nPopular diving sites are **Felipe's Place,** made up of several ledges with significant coral and marine life; **Turtle Rock,** a large rock at 20 meters covered with black coral; **Tete's Place,** teeming with fish; **Confusion,** with corals and sponges at 20-40 meters; and **Nick's Place,** a deep crack in the island's shelf that starts at 18 meters and drops to 40 meters. Good snorkeling can be done near **Cayo Cangrejo,** at the small islands of **Basalt** and **Palm Cays,** and around **Morgan's Head** in Santa Catalina, among other places.\n\n**Enjoy the Reef** (Southwest Bay, cell tel. 312\/325-8207) has snorkeling and diving tours for very small groups, and snorkeling tours for children.\n\nThe **Hotel Sirius** (Southwest Bay, tel. 8\/514-8213, www.siriushotel.net) is serious about diving and offers a PADI certification (COP$850,000) that includes four immersions over open water during a period of five days. They also offer a mini-course (COP$185,000), which includes a double immersion excursion. Hotel Sirius's diving courses have an excellent reputation.\n\n##### **Hiking**\n\n###### M **THE PEAK**\n\n**The Peak** (El Pico) is the highest point (360 meters\/1,181 feet) on Providencia, and from this mountaintop the 360-degree views are stunning. This hike takes about 1.5 hours to the top and under an hour down. The path to The Peak begins in the middle of the island and meanders along relatively well-marked trails through tropical rainforest and tropical dry forest. You'll likely come across lizards, cotton trees, and maybe a friendly dog who will follow you up to the top and back.\n\nFrom the top you'll be able to see the barrier reef that extends for 32 kilometers off of the east coast of the island. This reef is the second longest in the Caribbean and is part of the Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon.\n\nTo get to the starting point, go to the Bottom House (Casa Baja) neighborhood in the southeastern corner of the island just to the east of Manchineel Bay. Although you may come across a sign pointing towards The Peak, roads are not marked very well, so you will probably have to ask for directions to get to the starting point.\n\nAt the beginning of the walk, follow a path straight ahead, veering towards the right, and five minutes later go towards the right before a two-story house. You'll then go left (not to the right of the concrete well). From here on, you will pass a small garden, then follow a rocky creek straight on, fording it back and forth several times. You'll go through a gate and eventually veer to the left as you begin climbing up the hill. After you cross over a wooden bridge the path becomes steep; hold on to the wooden handrails. Occasional signs identify some of the trees or fauna you might see along the way.\n\nDuring rainy seasons, the path can become muddy and slippery. Make sure to bring a bottle of water with you. Guides are not necessary for this walk, but it's not impossible to get lost. All hotels can contract a guide for you, and this usually costs around COP$50,000.\n\n###### **SANTA CATALINA**\n\nFrom atop Santa Catalina island, English colonists and privateers once ruled, keeping their eyes peeled for potential enemies\u2014usually the Spanish Armada or competing Dutch pirates. Today you can see some remains from 17th-century English rule at **Fort Warwick.** It is adjacent to a big rock called **Morgan's Head.** If you look hard enough, it resembles the head of Henry Morgan, the notorious Welsh pirate and admiral of the English Royal Navy who marauded the Spanish New World colonies during the mid-17th century Morgan captured Santa Catalina from the Spaniards in 1670. Morgan's Head is next to **Morgan's Cave,** where the pirate supposedly hid his loot. You can go snorkeling inside the cave along with the occasional shark. Crossing the bridge, particularly at night, you may be able to spot manta rays gracefully swimming about. Start this hike at the colorful pedestrian bridge that connects Providencia with Santa Catalina in the Santa Isabel area. Once on Santa Catalina, take a left and follow the path.\n\n##### **Tours**\n\n**Paradise Tours** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8283, cell tel. 311\/605-0750, paradisetourscontact@gmail.com) is your one-stop shop, offering tours around the island, snorkeling excursions, diving excursions, and fishing excursions. One of their popular tours is the **Reefs and Snorkeling Tour** (3-4 hours, min. 4 people, COP$85,000), during which you boat to coral reefs around the island, exploring the underwater cities that exist just below the surface. Snorkeling equipment on this tour is extra.\n\nA double immersion diving excursion offered by the same agency costs COP$140,000, not including diving equipment, and lasts four hours. A full-day trip to El Faro reef, nine kilometers off of the island, costs COP$110,000. It's an excellent place for snorkeling in warm, crystalline waters.\n\nOn land, Paradise Tours offers several hiking options, such as to The Peak, where you can see coral reefs in the not so far distance; to Manchineel Hill, where you might see wild orchids on your way; and to the Iron Wood Hill in the Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon. These cost COP$85,000.\n\nA popular excursion is to take a boat tour around the island. The tours, departing at around 9am and returning at 3pm, make several stops, including Crab Cay and Santa Catalina. Any hotel can assist you in arranging one, and the boats make the rounds to pick up tourists at various hotels. These tours cost around COP$35,000 per person and usually leave from Freshwater Bay. If you prefer, you can rent a boat for just yourself and your crew, but that will cost more, up to COP$350,000. But in this option, you can decide when and where to go.\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nLocated directly over the lapping waters on the eastern side of Providencia, M **Posada Coco Bay** (Maracaibo, tel. 8\/514-8903 or 8\/514-8226, posadacocobay@gmail.com, www.posadacocobay.com, COP$180,000 d) is a small guesthouse with five comfortable rooms, three of which are on the water side. The other two (more spacious) options are across the street. You can go snorkeling just outside the hotel, and you can rent kayaks here, but there is no beach. You will have to rent a golf cart or _mula_ to get to island restaurants and beaches.\n\nBy far the most luxurious option on Providencia is at **Deep Blue** (Maracaibo Bay, tel. 8\/514-8423, www.hoteldeepblue.com, COP$600,000 d). It has 13 luxurious rooms sloping up a hill. A deck with a small pool provides spectacular views of the water. There is no beach, and unless you plan on dining exclusively at their elegant restaurant, you will need to find transportation to get to other restaurants and beaches on the island.\n\nThe **Hotel Old Providence** (Santa Isabel, tel. 8\/514-8691 or 8\/514-8094, COP$100,000 d) is the only option in the \"town\" area of Santa Isabel. It's close to Santa Catalina and offers basic comfortable rooms with air conditioning. Breakfast is not provided.\n\nIf you'd like to stay in Santa Catalina, close to the colorful pedestrian bridge is the guesthouse **Posada Villa Santa Catalina** (Santa Catalina, tel. 8\/514-8398, cell tel. 311\/257-3054, villasdesantacatalina@yahoo.com, www.villasantacatalina.com, COP$50,000 pp d). It's a comfortable and clean option and has air conditioning in the room. A small beach is about a 10-minute walk away.\n\nSomewhat far from everything is the M **Posada Refugio de la Luna** (Bluff, eastern side, tel. 8\/514-8460, providenciarefugiodelaluna@gmail.com, COP$170,000 d), a guesthouse with just one very comfortable and spacious room. Carmeni, the owner, is a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 artist and has her studio upstairs in the house.\n\nThe Colombian all-inclusive chain **Decameron** (Bogot\u00e1 office tel. 1\/219-3030, www.decameron.co) has an affiliation with four locally owned and operated guesthouses in Providencia. These are all about the same high quality: clean, comfortable, and with air conditioning. Decameron requires that you make all of your travel arrangements with them in a tourist package. In exchange for getting the rights to make reservations at these hotels Decameron helped rebuild these family-run guesthouses after Hurricane Beta damaged them and the island in 2005.\n\nThere are three Decameron affiliated hotels in Freshwater Bay. The least expensive option is simply called **Relax** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8087, COP$80,000 pp). It has a small pool, hot water, and eight rooms, and is near a couple of restaurants and stores. It is across the road from the beach. **Miss Elma** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8229, COP$180,000 d) has just four rooms and a restaurant on the beach, with each room overlooking the sea. **Hotel Posada del Mar** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8052, posadadelmar@latinmail.com, www.posadadelmarprovidencia.com, COP$190,000 pp d) is a 24-room hotel with air conditioning and a pool. Oddly, instead of a beach, a grassy lawn overlooks the water. Not all rooms have a sea view.\n\n**Caba\u00f1as Miss Mary** (Southwest Bay, tel. 8\/514-8454, hotelmissmary@yahoo.com, COP$180,000 d) is beachside in the southwest with five beach-view rooms and three others. The restaurant is pretty good.\n\nM **Hotel Sirius** (Southwest Bay, tel. 8\/514-8213, www.siriushotel.net, COP$250,000 d) is a beachside hotel that specializes in diving and snorkeling excursions. (But you don't have to be a diver to enjoy your stay here.) It offers some huge rooms, and the friendly manager will make every effort to ensure you have a pleasant stay in Providencia.\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\nProvidencia is practically synonymous with fresh Caribbean seafood. A Providencia specialty is black crab. These fast-moving crabs live on the interior mountains and descend to the sea en masse once a year to lay their eggs in April or May. Many restaurants in Providencia do not accept credit cards. Hotel restaurants are open every day, while others often close on Sundays.\n\nThe **Deep Blue Hotel Restaurant** (Maracaibo Bay, tel. 8\/514-8423, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm daily, COP$35,000) is the most elegant and pricey restaurant on the island. However, menu items are innovative and beautifully presented, and the service is excellent. It's a perfect place for a romantic \"last night in Providencia\" meal, particularly under the stars on the dock. M **Caribbean Place** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8698, noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000) is one of the best seafood places in Providencia. Try the delicious fish in ginger butter sauce or coconut shrimp, and for dessert, the coconut pie. Cheerfully decorated, it is a great choice for both lunch and dinner.\n\nThe Canadian owner of M **Caf\u00e9 Studio** (Southwest Bay on ring road, tel. 8\/514-9076, 11am-10pm Mon.-Sat., COP$25,000) is likely to be found in this excellent restaurant's busy kitchen. It is a favorite not only for lunch and dinner, but also for afternoon coffee and their trademark cappuccino pie. Caf\u00e9 Studio has a varied menu, with pastas, interesting seafood dishes, and salads.\n\nM **Old Providence Taste** (Old Town Bay, to the west of Santa Isabel, tel. 8\/514-9028, 11:30am-3pm Mon.-Sat., COP$18,000), on the beach to the west of Santa Isabel, is run by a local sustainable seafood and farming co-op. Each day they offer a different menu, depending on what fishers and farmers bring in. It's the best deal on the island. They can also organize visits to farms and excursions with local fishers.\n\nThe **Miss Mary Hotel** (Southwest Bay, tel. 8\/514-8454, noon-3pm and 6pm-9pm daily, COP$20,000) has an open-air restaurant overlooking the beach. It's a nice place for lunch.\n\nFor a pizza night, try **Blue Coral** (Freshwater Bay, tel. 8\/514-8718, 11am-3pm and 6pm-9pm Mon.-Sat., COP$20,000). Though not out of this world, the pizzas and pastas here can taste exotic after several days of seafood.\n\nFor a midafternoon ice cream fix head to **Donde Puchi** (Santa Isabel, hours vary). **Miss Lucy's** (Southwest Bay, on the ring road, no phone, open daily) is a general store, but they also serve inexpensive meals, including _rond\u00f3n._ It's a friendly, local hangout.\n\n**Kalaloo Point Caf\u00e9-Boutique** (near Halley View lookout, eastern side of the island, tel. 8\/514-8592) is a cute caf\u00e9 and shop in a wooden house where you can have a cup of coffee or cool off with a Frenchy's frozen fruit bar. In the store they sell tropical dresses by a Colombian designer and various knick-knacks. There's also a small library.\n\nA small **grocery store** (open-11pm daily) is in Freshwater Bay below the Hotel Pirata Morgan.\n\n#### **INFORMATION AND SERVICES**\n\nThere is a **tourist office** (Santa Isabel, tel. 8\/514-8054, ext. 12, www.providencia.gov.co, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.) in the town area near the port. They may be able to assist with accommodations, including _posadas nativas_ (guesthouses owned and operated by locals), and give you some maps. A bank, ATM, and Internet caf\u00e9 are in the town. Since 2013, there is free wireless Internet on the island.\n\nIn case of an emergency the police can be reached at 112 or 8\/514-8000. For medical emergencies, call 125.\n\n#### **GETTING THERE AND AROUND**\n\nThere are two ways to travel to Providencia: by plane or by fast catamaran boat service from San Andr\u00e9s. There are three daily flights on **Satena** (Centro Comercial New Point, Local 206, San Andr\u00e9s, tel. 8\/512-1403; Aeropuerto El Embrujo, Providencia, tel. 8\/514-9257, www.satena.com). Charter flights are usually organized by Decameron (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-0765, www.decameron.co) from San Andr\u00e9s to Providencia. All flights are on small propeller planes, and there are strict weight limitations. Passengers are only allowed 10 kilograms (22 pounds) in their checked baggage, and each passenger is required to be weighed upon check in along with their carry-on bag, which makes for an amusing photo op. The average weight per passenger cannot exceed 80 kilograms (176 pounds), including luggage. The flight takes about 25 minutes. The airport in Providencia is called **Aeropuerto El Embrujo** (tel. 8\/514-8176, ext. 6528). It is on the northeast side of the island near the Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon.\n\nThe **Catamaran Sensation** (tel. 8\/512-5124, www.elsensation.com, COP$65,000 one-way) provides fast boat service (three hours) between San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia. It provides service on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday during low season. There is greater frecuency during high season. Boats leave San Andr\u00e9s at 7:30am from the Casa de la Cultura near the Hotel Arena Blanca and leave Providencia from the docks in Santa Isabel at 3:30pm. The catamaran service, while cheaper than air travel, often gets ghastly reviews due to the rough seas and resulting seasickness among the passengers. When the winds are strong and the waters are choppy between the two islands, especially between June and July and again in December and January, the ride can be extremely rough, requiring boat attendants to constantly circulate among the passengers to distribute sea sickness bags. This is especially true on the San Andr\u00e9s to Providencia leg. Waters are normally calmer the other way around.\n\nTaxis are expensive in Providencia, costing around COP$20,000 no matter where you go. _Mototaxis_ (motorcycle taxis) are much cheaper and you can find them almost anywhere. You can also flag down passing vehicles and hitchhike (paying a small fee). As in San Andr\u00e9s, you can rent golf carts and _mulas_ (gasoline-powered golf carts) in Providencia. All hotels can arrange this for you. They cost around COP$120,000 for one day.\n\n## **THE AMAZON AND LOS LLANOS**\n\nHIGHLIGHTS\n\nPLANNING YOUR TIME\n\nThe Amazon\n\nLETICIA\n\nALONG THE R\u00cdO AMAZONAS\n\nM PUERTO NARI\u00d1O\n\nM R\u00cdO YAVAR\u00cd\n\nLos Llanos\n\nVILLAVICENCIO\n\nM CA\u00d1O CRISTALES\n\nM HACIENDA LA AURORA\n\nThe Amazon and Los Llanos cover the eastern two-thirds of the country, a vast territory with very little population. Topographically they are the same: low-lying undulating terrain that is periodically flooded. But because of soil and climate, they have evolved different vegetation: dense rainforest in the Amazon and lush tropical savannahs in Los Llanos. The main draw in both the Amazon and Los Llanos is the unique natural landscapes and the magnificent wildlife inhabiting them.\n\n**HIGHLIGHTS**\n\nLOOK FOR M TO FIND RECOMMENDED SIGHTS, ACTIVITIES, DINING, AND LODGING.\n\nM **San Mart\u00edn de Amacayacu:** Experience life in this Ticuna village in the brimming-with-vitality Parque National Natural Amacayacu (click here).\n\nM **Puerto Nari\u00f1o:** No freeways, no traffic jams, no honking horns: In this eco-minded indigenous town overlooking the R\u00edo Loretoyaco, life is peaceful and the air is always pure (click here).\n\nM **Lago Tarapoto:** Pink dolphins perform for you in their natural habitat, and you can finally overcome your long-held piranha-phobia by taking a dip in this serene lake surrounded by lush jungle near Puerto Nari\u00f1o (click here).\n\nM **R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed:** Spend a few days under the immense Amazon rainforest canopy at a spectacular eco-lodge (click here).\n\nM **Ca\u00f1o Cristales:** Nature shows its psychedelic side at this stream of vibrant colors in the vast Llanos (click here).\n\nM **Hacienda La Aurora:** Take a safari on horseback through this enormous cattle ranch cum nature reserve in the heart of the Llanos and be astounded by the abundant wildlife. If you're lucky(!), you may even come across an anaconda (click here).\n\nA trip to the Amazon is a highlight not only to any visit to Colombia, but a highlight in any person's life. The survival of this vast ecosystem, the preservation of which is by no means assured, is of great importance to humanity. Learning about its variety of plants and animals, how it acts to stabilize the world's climate, how indigenous people managed to make a home there for thousands of years without disturbing its balance, and how modern civilization is threatening to destroy it is fascinating. Long after an introduction to Amazonia, one can't help reflecting on its significance for all of humanity.\n\nThis vast terrain of undulating hills and savannahs, with large patches of forest, abounds with wildlife: _chig\u00fciros_ (capybaras), deer, armadillos, sloths, anteaters, monkeys, anacondas, and an infinity of birds. Sadly, advancing human settlement and hunting have decimated much of it, but at places like Hacienda La Aurora you can view this wondrous wildlife in all its glory.\n\nThe Llanos is synonymous with cattle ranching and the cowboy way of life. If you are not squeamish, viewing traditional cattle-ranching activities, such as herding and branding calves, as they have been done for centuries by _llaneros_ (plainsmen), is an essential Llanos experience. Finally, the Llanos is home to a natural wonder not to be found anywhere else in the world: the vivid red, purple, yellow, and green streams of Ca\u00f1o Cristales in the southern extreme of the remote Serran\u00eda de la Macarena.\n\n#### **PLANNING YOUR TIME**\n\nTraveling in the Amazon and Los Llanos entails long-distance travel, mostly point to point from Bogot\u00e1 by airplane, and is therefore more expensive. To visit the Amazon, at least five days are required, and more if you want to spend some time in a nature reserve in the rainforest. The destinations in Los Llanos\u2014Ca\u00f1o Cristales and Hacienda La Aurora\u2014could be done in three days, though ideally you would want to spend more time there.\n\nThough the Amazon rainforest covers about one-third of the country east of the Andes and south of the R\u00edo Guaviare, the only real option to visit it is from the Amazon port city of Leticia, which has a multitude of options and ecotourism operators. The rest of the Colombian Amazon simply does not have even the minimum infrastructure to accommodate an independent traveler, and the region may be unsafe.\n\nThe great eastern plains of Colombia, Los Llanos, which comprise a further third of the country east of the Andes and north of the R\u00edo Guaviare, are the least explored region of the country. The reason is simply a lack of infrastructure, along with, until recently, security concerns.\n\n### **The Amazon**\n\nCovering an expanse of 8.2 million square kilometers (3.2 million square miles), the Amazon rainforest is the largest humid tropical forest in the world. Rainforests are important because of the enormous biodiversity that they sustain. And among rainforests, the New World rainforests are the most biodiverse. In fact, the Amazon jungle is home to one-tenth of all species on Earth, though it occupies only 1.6 percent of the world's surface. It holds more than 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish species, 1,300 bird species, 428 mammal species, and 380 reptile species. By contrast, all of Canada, which occupies a surface larger than the Amazon rainforest, has 3,270 plant species, 1,100 fish species, 838 bird species, 188 reptile species, and 180 mammal species. Rainforests are also important as the world's main \"lungs,\" sucking in vast amounts of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Their ongoing destruction means the loss of invaluable biodiversity and increased warming.\n\nThe formation of the Amazon basin started about 180 million years ago, in the Jurassic era, when the westerly drifting American Continental Plate (South America) collided with the Nazca Plate (under the Pacific Ocean), forming the Andes. Water flowing eastward down the mountains accumulated in a vast freshwater lake that was hemmed in on the east by old mountainous formations (now the Guyana and Brazilian highlands). Large amounts of sediments were deposited, forming the basis for the Amazon's undulated topography. Around 28 million years ago, the water broke through the eastern mountain barrier and started flowing east into the Atlantic, forming the Amazon drainage basin.\n\nThe Amazon River (R\u00edo Amazonas), which measures about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) in length, is fed by more than 1,000 tributaries. Though Colombia only has 180 kilometers (112 miles) on the Amazon river itself, several of its major rivers originate and flow through the Colombian Amazon region into the mighty river, including the Putumayo and the Caquet\u00e1. It is estimated that one-fifth of all the water that runs off the Earth's surface flows through this basin. The gradient is very slight: Leticia, which is more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the mouth of the river, stands at an elevation of 96 meters (315 feet). During the annual flood, lasting from November to April, the river can rise up to 50 meters (165 feet), submerging large sections of the jungle. Average river velocity is 1.5 kilometers per hour (0.9 miles per hour), though it increases slightly with the flooding.\n\na rainy trip on the Amazon\n\nThe topography of the Amazon consists of two distinct but intermingled areas: _terra firme,_ the undulated lands that are above the highest flood point (which comprise two-thirds of the surface of the basin), and _varzea,_ floodplains along the main rivers, which can extend up to 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the river. _Varzea,_ rich in sediments transported by the rivers, is where most human activity is concentrated.\n\nThere are two distinct types of rivers in the Amazon region: the predominant white rivers, which carry sediments down from the Andes, and the black rivers, which originate in the Guyanese and Brazilian highlands that were long ago denuded of soil due to erosion. As these waters travel through the flooded forest, they pick up pigments that give them their characteristic black color. _Igap\u00f3_ is the name given to jungles flooded by black-water rivers. The largest of the black rivers, and the largest tributary of the Amazon, is the R\u00edo Negro, called R\u00edo Guain\u00eda in Colombia. It flows into the Amazon at Manaus, creating the extraordinary _encontro das aguas,_ where white and black waters flow side by side for several kilometers until they mix.\n\nThe forest itself has a complex, layered structure. Towering trees, held up by complex buttresses at the base of the trunks, soar 40 meters (130 feet) high, forming the jungle's canopy. Occasionally, trees known as _emergentes_ rise above the canopy to a height of 60 meters (200 feet). According to a Ticuna myth, a giant fallen ceiba tree is the origin of the Amazon River. The canopy, flooded by sunlight, is full of plant and animal life. If you don't suffer from vertigo, a climb up to the canopy is an unforgettable experience. Below the canopy, shade tolerant species of trees and plants comprise the underbrush ( _sotobosque_ ) and support many epiphytes (plants that live on others), such as orchids and bromeliads. Large networks of vines entangle the growth.\n\n**Explorers in the Amazon**\n\nThe first Europeans to travel to the Amazon were Spanish conquistadors Gonzalo Pizarro (half brother of Francisco Pizarro, the infamous conqueror of Peru) and Francisco de Orellana, who, in 1541, headed down the R\u00edo Napo in present-day Ecuador to search for the mythical \"Land of Cinnamon.\" Pizarro, frustrated, turned back after one year. Orellana followed the course of the Napo, eventually floating down the entire course of the Amazon to its mouth in the Atlantic. Reportedly, he was attacked by women warriors and hence the region came to be named after the Amazons of Greek mythology.\n\nDuring the colonial period, the Spaniards largely ignored the region as there were no ready sources of riches. French naturalist Charles Marie de la Condamine was the first European scientific explorer to visit the region. In 1743, he traversed the entire basin, discovering, among other things, quinine and latex (for rubber). Another notable explorer was Alexander von Humboldt, who visited the Casiquiare Canal, which links the R\u00edo Orinoco and R\u00edo Negro, in 1800. It is located in southern Venezuela.\n\nThe waters of the Amazon are home to more than 1,500 species of fish, including the endangered piraruc\u00fa, one of the largest freshwater fishes on Earth, and notorious meat-eating piranha. They are also home to dolphins, both pink and gray. Pink dolphins evolved separately and have horizontal neck mobility that allows them to navigate the flooded forest easily, while gray dolphins are distant relations of the seafaring kind. Other aquatic mammals include manatees and _nutrias_ (otters). There are dozens of species of turtles, alligators, lizards, snakes, and frogs. Land-faring mammals include deer, anteaters, armadillos, tapirs, jaguars, ocelots, and pumas, though sighting of these large cats is quite rare. The trees support sloths, squirrels, and many species of moneys and bats. With more than 3,000 species of birds, the Amazon is truly a bird-watcher's paradise. During the floods, a canoe ride through the partially submerged trees will allow you to spot a variety of birds, including herons, kingfishers, ducks, woodpeckers, oropendulas, kiskadees, and hawks. Finally, there are innumerable insects, including giant leaf-cutting ants, as well as centipedes and scorpions.\n\nTo truly get a sense of the place, you need to get into the jungle, either by doing a trek or taking canoe rides in the flooded jungle. Then, the small details that make up this wonderland will come into focus: a ray of sun shining through the canopy; a massive, 40-meter-high ceiba tree; a vine that has wound itself around a tree like a boa constrictor; an orange mushroom popping up from a fallen tree, accelerating its final stage of decay; a single bright blue butterfly that crosses your path momentarily and then flutters away; a leaf as big as your head floating down to the ground; a whimsical song from a bird somewhere above in the canopy.\n\n##### **History**\n\nDuring the 20th century, settlement has been mostly limited to a swath of jungle in the Caquet\u00e1 and Putumayo departments near the Andes. There, oil and plentiful land have attracted settlers from the interior of the country. However, the sheer inaccessibility of most of the Colombian jungle has spared the type of development seen in Brazil. During the drug wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, coca cultivation spread deeper into the jungle in the departments of Caquet\u00e1, Putumayo, Guaviare, and Vaup\u00e9s, bringing along the FARC, and Leticia became a center for drug trafficking. At present much of the Amazonian drug business appears to have shifted to the Peruvian side of the river.\n\n##### **Climate**\n\nIt is always muggy in the Amazon, and rarely is there a breeze to provide some relief to the heat. The border town of Leticia reports an average 85 percent humidity year-round with an average temperature of 25.8\u00b0C (78.4\u00b0F). The region has one dry season, between June and August, and one rainy season, between January and May. In August it can rain as little as 10 days per month. During the dry season, rivers shrink, creating beaches, and trees and shrubs appear in parts of the jungle that during the rainy season are hidden under water.\n\nDuring the rainy season, water falls from the skies and pours down from the Andes into the mighty river, and canoes become the only means of getting from point A to point B in the jungle. You can glide in canoes through the treetops, an unforgettable experience. Ponchos, rubber boots, and insect repellent are especially critical during the rainy season.\n\n##### **Environmental Threats**\n\nUnfortunately, this diverse ecosystem is under severe threat. Over the past 40 years, 20 percent of the Amazon jungle has been destroyed. If strong measures are not taken, half of what remains could be destroyed within the next few decades. The main causes of the destruction (in order of importance) are cattle ranching, agriculture, dams, and illegal mining. The main means for its destruction are roads. Without these, human encroachment is limited to the borders of navigable rivers. Voracious, short-sighted development in Brazil, where road development has been greatest, is the main cause of the destruction of this wonderland. Though the Brazilian authorities tout decreasing levels of deforestation, the roads crisscrossing the jungle have made irreparable damage inevitable. Significant deforestation has also occurred along the Andes piedmont, especially in the headwaters of the Caquet\u00e1 and Putumayo rivers in Colombia, where illegal coca cultivation has been one of the main culprits.\n\nThere is alarming evidence that, as deforestation progresses, the Amazon ecosystem is breaking down and will be unable to sustain itself. With deforestation comes lower evaporation and rainfall. As the forest dries up, it may become prone to fires (which it is not currently), changing the overall dynamics. The Amazon has not yet reached that scary \"tipping point\" after which it cannot sustain itself, but vastly reduced measured rainfall points in that direction.\n\nThough the Colombian section of the Amazon rainforest represents only 10 percent of the total, it is the best preserved, due to a dearth of roads, and also the most likely to be preserved thanks to enlightened policies. From 1986 to 1990, President Virgilio Barco transferred 163,000 square kilometers (63,000 square miles\u2014twice the surface of Austria or 15 percent of Colombia) to national parks and indigenous _resguardos_ (land collectively owned by indigenous groups) and protected areas. Predio Putumayo, the largest _resguardo,_ measures 59,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles), the size of Costa Rica. Subsequent governments have continued to expand the protected areas, and now at least 65 percent of all the Colombia Amazon is a protected area, either through the system of national parks or through indigenous _resguardos._\n\nThe 1991 constitution enshrined significant rights for Colombia's indigenous peoples, adding further protections. Though the threat of illegal logging and mining is ever present, particularly due to the presence of valuable rare earth minerals, Colombia seems to have taken successful steps to preserve a large section of one of the world's most important ecosystems.\n\nIn 2013, the Colombian government took a positive step by more than doubling the size of its Parque Nacional Natural Serran\u00eda de Chiribiquete, in the Amazon departments of Caquet\u00e1 and Guaviare, to over 28,000 square kilometers (11,000 square miles). It is the largest national park in Colombia.\n\n**The Peruvian Amazon Company**\n\nThe Colombian section of the Amazon was largely untouched until the mid-19th century, when quinine and then rubber extraction attracted Colombian and Peruvian adventurers. Vast tracts of land with rubber trees and plentiful indigenous labor seemed like a perfect combination to make a fortune. In 1901, Julio C\u00e9sar Arana, a Peruvian _cauchero_ (rubber baron), founded the Casa Arana, a company that operated a ruthless system of rubber extraction based on torture and slavery. The company, later known as the Peruvian Amazon Company headquartered in London, operated out of La Chorrera on the R\u00edo Putumayo. A visiting American, W. E. Hardenburg, witnessed the horrors and in 1909 published a damning article in the British magazine _Truth._ This prompted the British government to order an inquiry, which uncovered the terrible conditions. In 1912, Parliament opened an investigation, which cleared the British Board of Directors of all responsibility in the atrocities. At the same time they determined that over 32,000 Huitoto people had been murdered or worked to death during a five-year period. Huitoto leaders estimate that over 80,000 were killed between 1912 and 1929.\n\nThe Peruvian Amazon Company was liquidated in 1916, but, incredibly, Arana continued operations through the 1930s. It was not until 2012 that the Colombian government formally apologized to the indigenous people for these atrocities in a letter by President Santos at a ceremony in La Chorrera commemorating the 100th anniversary of the genocide.\n\n#### **LETICIA**\n\nVisitors come to Leticia to experience the jungle. This border town of 40,000 doesn't have much in the way of charm, and it's clogged with buzzing motorbikes, but, alas, all is not lost here. It has improved since the 1970s and 1980s when it was synonymous with cocaine and exotic animal trafficking. During that anything-goes time, poor native villagers would catch monkeys (to be sent to labs and zoos) in exchange for clothes, and unknown and fierce-looking men would routinely zoom up and down the river in speedboats to unknown destinations.\n\nToday, without a doubt, ecotourism is the future for Leticia, and more and more Colombians and visitors from abroad are discovering the area, for better or for worse. There was a 300 percent increase in visitors to Leticia between 2002 and 2006.\n\nA handful of sights worth checking out in town and along the Kilometers road will keep you occupied for a couple of days, and there are comfortable accommodations options. But best of all, it is close to the jungle and the R\u00edo Amazonas is always at the ready to take you there.\n\nIt is possible to book package tours that include all the sights and take care of your accommodations. However, a growing number of visitors explore the jungle independently. Leticia is an excellent base for that.\n\n###### **ORIENTATION**\n\nLeticia, the capital city of the Amazonas department of Colombia, is the southernmost city in the country, and it sits on the northern side of the R\u00edo Amazonas at the convergence of Colombia with Brazil and Peru. It is 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) southeast of Bogot\u00e1. It borders the grubby Brazilian town of Tabatinga to the east, and Isla de Santa Rosa (Peru) is an island in the river to Leticia's south. Just to the north of the city the town abruptly ends and the rainforest takes over\u2014no suburbs here. The closest Colombian town of any significance is Puerto Nari\u00f1o, 87 kilometers (54 miles) to the northwest.\n\nLeticia is laid out on a grid that is easy to figure out. The airport is north of town on the Avenida V\u00e1squez Cobo, which turns into Carrera 10, one of the main drags in town. _Carreras_ run north-south with _calles_ going from east to west. The _malec\u00f3n,_ from where all boats depart, is on the eastern side of town at the end of Calle 8. Carretera Los Kil\u00f3metros, also called V\u00eda a Tarapaca, leads to Mundo Amaz\u00f3nico and the Reserva Natural Tanimboca. There are some Huitoto settlements beyond those attractions, and then the road abruptly stops, surrendering to the jungle.\n\nbreakdancers in Leticia\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nOccupying just one (air-conditioned!) room in the red **Banco de la Rep\u00fablica** building, the **Museo Etnogr\u00e1fico de Leticia** (Cra. 11 No. 9-43, tel. 8\/592-7783, 8:30am-6pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., www.banrepcultural.org\/leticia, free) provides a good introduction to the traditions and ways of life of some of the main indigenous people who live in the Colombian Amazon region, including the Ticunas, the Huitotos, and the Yukunas. Colorful feather crowns made of _guacamaya_ (macaw) feathers and descriptions of _chagras_ (islands of small vegetable plots in the middle of the jungle) and _malocas_ (community houses) are part of the exhibit. Explanations are provided in both Spanish and English. Sometimes art exhibits and other events are held in the building as well.\n\nThe **Parque Santander** (between Cras. 10-11 and Clls. 10-11) is a quiet place where unoccupied locals go for a brief reprieve from the intense midday sun. That is, it's quiet until around 5:30 each evening, when thousands of _loros_ (parrots) gather in the trees. It's a cacophonous racket. At 6pm on the dot, the Colombian national anthem blares from the loudspeakers from the military base facing the park. People stop what they are doing and stand at attention. The birds, however, have no such respect. They won't quiet down for anyone! The _loros_ have not always been here and are not native to the area. Some say that eccentric American hotel owner, anaconda wrestler, and convicted drug trafficker Mike Tsalickis released them in the park during his final days in Leticia in the 1980s.\n\nThe **Muelle Tur\u00edstico** (Cra. 11 at Cl. 8), also known as the _malec\u00f3n,_ is a busy bus station on water. It once faced a broad channel into the Amazon, but the current has brought sediments, creating a new island in front called, paradoxically, Isla de la Fantas\u00eda (it's a grubby neighborhood). During dry season, the channel closes for navigation and passengers must tramp across the island to embark. The port is seedy and grimy but 100 percent authentic. It's a real clash of cultures here, as tourists await their river tours while villagers, hailing from the very places the tourists will visit, arrive in the city to stock up on supplies. For any trip along the Amazon, including to the Peruvian town of Santa Rosa, you'll leave from here.\n\nIf you are interested in learning more about some of the medicinal plants, fruits, and trees you will see in the Amazon, a visit to the **Mundo Amaz\u00f3nico** (Km. 7.7 V\u00eda a Tarapac\u00e1, tel. 8\/592-6087, www.mundoamazonico.com, 8am-2pm daily, four-trail tour COP$36,000, one-trail tour COP$10,000) is a must. In the park you can take a walk among exotic fruit trees (like _copoaz\u00fa_ ) found in the area, learn about indigenous farming techniques, see some medicinal plants found in the rainforest, and see unusual fish, reptiles, and amphibians in the aquarium and terrarium area. On this last tour you can observe the prehistoric-looking _mata-mata_ turtle. Each guided tour takes 30-45 minutes. However, if you are in a hurry, you can request to take just one tour or do a fast trek around the park. Rafael Clavijo, the owner of the park, is a dedicated environmentalist, is knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the Amazon, and speaks English. It is easy to take public transportation to the park. Look for a green Kilometer 11 bus (not towards Lagos) departing from the Parque Orellana (Cra. 11 between Clls. 7-8) across from the Hotel Anaconda. The bus costs only COP$2,000. (The trip costs COP$15,000 by _moto-taxi._ ) Tell the bus driver you'd like to be dropped off at Mundo Amaz\u00f3nico. It is a pleasant 10- to 15-minute walk from the road to the park entrance. You can inquire about day-trip excursions on offer.\n\nThe **Reserva Natural Tanimboca** (Carretera Los Kil\u00f3metros\/V\u00eda a Tarapaca, office Cra. 10 No. 11-69, tel. 8\/592-7679, www.tanimboca.com) is a nature reserve and lodge and is the best place close to Leticia where you can gain a real appreciation for the Amazonian jungle. Once there you can marvel at the stunning _maloca_ (community house) that they have built, check out the serpentarium, take a jungle walk, kayak, and experience the jungle from above by canopying. They also have some truly spectacular accommodations options. Spend the night 12 meters (40 feet) high in one of their three treehouses in the _dosel_ (canopy). Up above it's just you in the canopy, and thousands upon thousands of chatty jungle creatures. Although you may not be interested in long-term rental, these small thatched houses are comfortable and come equipped with a toilet. (You can also sleep in a hammock in the _maloca._ ) Included in your treehouse stay is a nocturnal jungle walk. Local cuisine, mostly grilled fish, is served at their restaurant. Tanimboca also organizes excellent multi-day tours of the Amazon region. The reserve is on the Kilometers road, about 15 minutes from town. It is accessible by the Kilometers public bus, which leaves from across the Hotel Anaconda.\n\n**Border Disputes**\n\nDuring the 19th and early 20th centuries, the border between Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia was a matter of dispute. In 1922, Colombia and Peru signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty, settling their common border at the expense of Ecuador. In 1932, a group of Peruvian civilians and some soldiers occupied Leticia. It is not clear whether the Peruvian government supported this attack. The occupation of Leticia led to a war in which both countries scrambled to get troops to this remote area. In 1932, Peru took the remote town of Tarapac\u00e1. In 1933, Colombia sent a fleet up the Amazon (including two new warships purchased from France), retook Tarapac\u00e1, and captured the Peruvian town of G\u00fceppi. As troops from both countries were preparing for a major confrontation, the League of Nations brokered a truce on May 24, 1932. This was the first time that the League, precursor to the United Nations, actively intervened in a dispute between two countries. On June 19, Peru returned Leticia to Colombia.\n\nAcross the Peruvian border is privately owned **Reserva Natural Marash\u00e1** (Cra. 10 No. 7-55, tel. 8\/592-5622, www.reservamarasha.com, COP$225,000 pp, all meals and activities included). It offers a range of ecotourism activities and is 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Leticia, so it can be easily visited as a day trip. The standard day trip includes excursions in kayaks or canoes and various nature walks. Lunch and transportation from Leticia and back is also included. Seven cabins can lodge 2-15 people. Conveniently located near Leticia, Marash\u00e1 is a good alternative to more remote reserves in the R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed area.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nFrom around the 15th of July to the 20th, the **Festival de Confraternidad Amaz\u00f3nica** has been going strong since 1987 and is a celebration of Amazonian culture and friendship between the three neighboring countries of Colombia, Brazil, and Peru.\n\nYou have to like events that celebrate fish, especially ugly three-meter-long ones! The **Festival Piraruc\u00fa de Oro** takes place over three days at the end of November and beginning of December. It is more formally known as the **Festival Internacional de M\u00fasica Popular Amazonense.** Named in honor of the enormous piraruc\u00fa river fish, this is actually a cultural festival with numerous musical and dance performances.\n\n##### **Shopping**\n\nThe **Mercado Municipal** (Cl. 8 at Cra. 12, 7am-3pm daily) is a good place to pick up rubber boots or other gear for any jungle trip. (Many reserves and travel agencies can either rent or loan you a pair, so find out beforehand.) As you're trying on rubber boots, make sure they are easy to take off. Always shake out your socks, shoes, and boots before putting them on in the jungle. In the food section of the market, you can pick up some fruit or a dirt cheap meal.\n\nThe **Museo Uirapuru** (Cl. 8 No. 10-35, tel. 8\/592-7056, 9am-noon and 3pm-7pm Mon.-Sat., 9am-noon Sun.) is more a handicraft store than museum, although you can take a look at various river creatures in aquariums and snakes in jars in the back. Traditional medicines are also sold here.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **TOURS**\n\nTour companies based in Leticia or Bogot\u00e1 offer a wide range of tour packages, from day trips to week-long packages. Hotels and hostels can organize these packages as well, or at least refer you to a tour agency.\n\nOne-day tours leaving from Leticia are a popular option for exploring the Amazon. These tours hit all the major sights: Victoria Regia, Isla de los Micos, Macedonia, Puerto Alegr\u00eda, and Lago Tarapoto along the river from Leticia to Puerto Nari\u00f1o. These cost around COP$170,000 each, depending on how many people are in the tour group. Tours leave Leticia at about 7am, returning at 5:30pm. You can also do a half-day tour, which does not include Puerto Nari\u00f1o. This will cost around COP$60,000-80,000 depending on your negotiating skills.\n\nA three-day tour may be a good option if you have limited time and would rather not have to worry about organizing things on your own. Before booking a package tour, find out where you'll be overnighting. Some tours may have you spending several nights in Leticia. It's OK to spend a night or two in dusty Leticia, but to get a real taste of the Amazon you really need to get to the jungle!\n\n**Ecodestinos** (Cl. 8 No. 7-99, Local 2, Leticia, tel. 8\/592-4816; Cra. 70H No. 127A-72, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/608-8031, www.ecodestinos.com.co) is affiliated with Aviatur, one of the top travel agencies in Colombia, popular with Colombian tourists. They offer various package tours of the Amazon. Their \"Amazonas Selva y R\u00edo\" tour starts at COP$598,000 per person and includes two nights accommodations in Leticia, all meals, and tours to Puerto Nari\u00f1o, Lago Tarapoto, Parque Amacayacu, and Ticuna villages. The Ecodestinos website has an extensive listing of their offers, and these can be booked online. There are also some day-trip excursions, such as kayak tours (COP$75,000 pp) near Leticia, for those who are traveling independently.\n\n**Yurupary Amazonastours** (Cl. 8 No. 7-26, tel. 8\/592-4743, www.hotelyurupary.com) is affiliated with the Hotel Yurupary. A four-day, three-night package including a stay at their lodge on the Peru side of the R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed starts at COP$640,000 per person. In addition, they offer full-day tours on the river that cost about COP$117,000 (for groups of four or more) and half-day tours (COP$99,000) by land to a Huitoto community that include a nature walk.\n\n**Tanimboca** (www.tanimboca.org, tel. 8\/592-7679) is affiliated with the Reserva Natural Tanimboca in the jungle just outside of Leticia. Package tours with Tanimboca include jungle walks, a couple of nights in their fabulous treehouses at their reserve, and overnight visits to Puerto Nari\u00f1o and to the Marash\u00e1 reserve in Peru. They offer mostly private or small group tours. For a stay of five days and four nights, including activities, expect to pay around COP$1,300,000 per person. They can also arrange private one-day tours on the river. Tanimboca is a highly recommended and reputable agency.\n\n##### **Accommodations**\n\nSurprisingly, there are very good accommodations options, for all budgets, in Leticia. All of these are owned and managed by Colombians from other parts of the country or by Europeans.\n\n**Apaporis Hostel** (Cra. 10 No. 6-17, cell tel. 312\/522-0446 or 311\/886-5996, COP$20,000 dorm, COP$35,000 d) is a small, sparkling clean hostel on a quiet street. It has one dormitory room, two private rooms, a kitchen, and a garden (including a small organic vegetable garden) out back. It's owned by Elizabeth, a young Colombian entrepreneur. The largest hostel you probably ever have seen just might be M **Mahatu Jungle Guesthouse** (Cl. 7 No. 1-40, tel. 8\/592-7384, cell tel. 311\/539-1265, www.mahatu.org, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$60,000 d), literally straddling the Brazilian border. It's run by the affable Gustavo Alvarado, and you feel like you're in the country here. It is a peaceful, green place with dorm accommodations and private rooms spread out on a huge property that has a pool and two lakes! You can even take out a paddleboat for a quick spin. There's no shortage of hammocks around here. It's about a 15-minute walk into town from the hostel.\n\nRun by a Swiss-Colombian couple, **La Jangada Hospedaje** (Cra. 9 No. 8-106, cell tel. 311\/498-5447, <http:\/\/la-jangada-hostel.minihostels.com>, COP$25,000 dorm, COP$70,000 d) is a friendly hostel option in town. They have an extensive program of day trips from which to choose.\n\n**Waira** (Cra. 10 No. 7-36, tel. 8\/592-4428, www.wairahotel.com.co, COP$148,000 d) is a midrange option that caters to Colombian tourists. It looks swanky from the outside, but its 41 rooms are on the small side. Wireless Internet and air conditioning are available. The **Hotel Anaconda** (Cra. 15 No. 93-75, tel. 8\/218-0125, www.hotelanaconda.com.co, COP$160,000 pp) was one of the first hotels in Leticia and has been in operation for years. The 50 air-conditioned rooms are large, there is wireless Internet in the lobby, and a restaurant is on-site. It's no longer the swank hotel it may have once been, but it's in the heart of town and they have a big pool and a poolside bar! If you're not staying here and want to cool off you can get a day pass that costs COP$12,000. Note that per person room rates decrease as the number of guests increases.\n\nAn excellent choice in Leticia is the friendly and professionally run M **Amazon B &B** (Cl. 12 No. 9-30, tel. 8\/592-4981, www.theamazonbb.com, COP$216,000 d). It's on a quiet street away from the bustle of the city but within easy walking distance to restaurants and services at the same time. It's a popular place for a good rest before and\/or after a few days in the jungle. There's no air conditioning in the six _caba\u00f1as_ (they have fans), but they are modern and tastefully decorated. Breakfast is included. They also offer Spanish classes and can arrange all sorts of excursions for you. **Hospedaje Los Delfines** (Cra. 9 No. 12-81, tel. 8\/592-7488, COP$70,000 d) has wireless Internet, but there's no air conditioning, and breakfast is not included.\n\nThe cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of hotels in Leticia is the all-inclusive **Decameron Decalodge Tikuna** (Cra. 11 No. 6-11, tel. 8\/592-6600, www.decameron.com, COP$520,000 d). It's a spacious place with a very good open-air restaurant (open to non-guests) where you dine under a gigantic green anaconda-like snake. There's even a vegetarian menu. Facilities are nice here: a swimming pool, a _maloca_ (community house), and tastefully done _caba\u00f1as_ complete with comfy beds and hammocks. The hotel organizes excursions and activities, so you don't have to plan anything! Internet is expensive here.\n\nThe **Omshanty Jungle Lodge** (Km. 11 V\u00eda Leticia-Tarapac\u00e1, cell tel. 311\/489-8985, www.omshanty.com, COP$15,000 dorm, COP$55,000 d) is north of Leticia and offers clean dorm-style accommodations as well as private rooms. It's really in the jungle! You can cook meals in their kitchen, and there are some small mom-and-pop restaurants across the street. Efficient and inexpensive public transportation is available. The lodge can also organize stays in nearby indigenous communities. The lodge is just before the Reserva Natural Tanimboca.\n\n##### **Food**\n\nLeticia is not a culinary capital, but it is the place to sample some unusual Amazonian dishes. The standard Amazon meal includes fried fish, cassava, rice, _patacones_ (fried plantains), and perhaps a small salad. Piraruc\u00fa is the king of fish around here. It is one of the largest fish in the world, reaching up to three meters (10 feet) long and 350 kilograms (770 pounds). This fish is threatened, and regional governments have banned its fishing and consumption from November to March. You may not see it in the wild, although it does pop up to the surface to breathe every 15 minutes. You have a reasonably good chance, however, of hearing it. It makes a deep bellowing sound that echoes across the river. A particular dish popular here is the _patarasca,_ which is two types of fish, usually _dorado_ and _pintado,_ grilled with herbs and vegetables in banana leaves. This is accompanied by a juice such as _copoaz\u00fa_ or the ever-popular Brazilian beer.\n\nM **El Cielo** (Cl. 7 No. 6-50, cell tel. 312\/351-0427, 4pm-11pm Mon., Wed., and Fri., 11am-5pm Sun., COP$20,000) has the most interesting menu in town: Amazon fusion. They make pizza dough out of cassava flour, and Amazonian ants and _mojojoy_ (worms) may appear as ingredients in some dishes on the menu. There are vegetarian dishes like cr\u00eapes and lasagnas as well, and the cocktails are fine.\n\nWith dusty handicrafts from the Amazon adorning its walls, **Tierras Amaz\u00f3nicas** (Cl. 8 No. 7-50, hours vary Tues.-Sun., COP$20,000) strives to be Leticia's version of the famous Andr\u00e9s Carne de Res in Bogot\u00e1. Some of the unusual dishes you can order here include _chicharr\u00f3n de piraruc\u00fa,_ which are sort of like fish nuggets, and piraruc\u00fa steamed in banana leaf. Big lemonades (to complement the big food portions) here hit the spot. There's not much for vegetarians here. Sometimes they have live music to satisfy both Brazilian and Colombian tastes.\n\n**El Abuelo** (Cra. 11 at Cl. 7, no phone, set lunches COP$12,000) is a popular place with locals. It serves up the usual seafood dishes. **El Sabor** (Cl. 8 No. 9-25, tel. 8\/592-4774, set lunch COP$12,000) has inexpensive and tasty set lunches.\n\nThe only place in town where you'll find burritos, cheesy cr\u00eapes, and other fast food is **Amektiar** (Cl. 9 No. 8-15, tel. 8\/592-6094, 4pm-midnight). Across from Parque Santander, **Casa del Pan** (Cl. 11 No. 10-20, 6:30am-11pm Mon.-Sat.) is Leticia's version of Starbucks, a place for breakfast and a carb fix after a day in the jungle. It also serves refreshing lemonades and juices. At **Barbacoas** (Cra. 10 No. 8-28, daily) you can pick up a coffee and light breakfast in the morning, and at night have a beer and watch locals play pool.\n\n**Supermercado Hiper Kosto** (Cl. 8 No. 9-31, tel. 8\/592-8067) is a very basic grocery store where you can stock up on jungle provisions.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\n###### **VISAS AND OFFICIALDOM**\n\nTo travel to Tabatinga, Brazil, or Santa Rosa, Peru, for the day, or for stops at Peruvian villages on the way to Puerto Nari\u00f1o, there is no need for immigration formalities, but it's a good idea to carry your passport with you just in case.\n\nIf you are traveling on to destinations in the interior of Brazil or Peru from Leticia, you must obtain an exit stamp at the Migraci\u00f3n Colombia office at Aeropuerto Internacional V\u00e1squez Cobo (3 km north of town, tel. 8\/592-4562). There is a **Migraci\u00f3n Colombia** (Cl. 9 No. 9-62, tel. 8\/592-6001) office in town, but it does not provide entry or exit stamps for visitors. This office mainly provides services for Colombian citizens or non-Colombian residents.\n\nOnce you get your passport stamped at the airport, if you're continuing on to Manaus, Brazil, you will need to present your papers at the Brazilian **Polic\u00eda Federal** (650 Av. Da Amizade, Tabatinga, 7am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri.), near the Tabatinga hospital. If continuing to Peru, get your Peruvian entry stamp at the police office in Isla de Santa Rosa, which is on the main path through town.\n\nAt the **Brazilian Consulate** (Cra. 10 No. 10-10, Piso 2, Leticia, 8am-2pm Mon.-Fri., tel. 8\/592-7530), you can obtain a visa for Brazil, which is necessary for U.S. and Canadian citizens. Again, this is only necessary if you are planning to stay overnight in Brazil. You must have a yellow fever vaccination card and an onward airline ticket ready to present. Processing time is two to three 2-3 days. For U.S. citizens, the visa costs a hefty COP$430,000.\n\nNo visa is required to visit Peru for under 90 days. The **Peruvian Consulate** (Cl. 11 No. 5-32, Leticia, tel. 8\/592-3947, www.embajadadelperu.org.co, 8am-2pm Mon.-Fri.) can assist with further information.\n\n###### **HEALTH AND MEDICAL SERVICES**\n\nThe Colombian health authorities recommend getting a yellow fever vaccination 10 days before arriving in the area. The World Health Organization yellow health card, nonetheless, is not regularly checked at the airport. Malaria is very rare, but to be on the safe side, consider taking anti-malarial pills starting before your visit and up until four weeks after departure from the Amazon area. These can easily be purchased in pharmacies across Colombia without prescription.\n\nThe major hospital in town is the **Hospital San Rafael** (Cra. 10 No. 13-78, tel. 8\/592-7074). The **Cl\u00ednica Amazonas** (Cra. 6 No. 6-05, tel. 8\/592-5579) is open 24 hours a day, as is the **IPS Ind\u00edgena Trapecio Amaz\u00f3nico** (Cra. 9 No. 9-62). A dental clinic in town is the **Centro Odontol\u00f3gico del Amazonas** (Cra. 10 No. 12-109, tel. 8\/592-5953).\n\nFor whatever ails you, go to **Productos Naturales del Trapecio Amaz\u00f3nico** (Cl. 8 No. 9-87, tel. 8\/592-4796, 9am-6pm Mon.-Sat.) and you're bound to find a remedy. Traditional remedies to cure a laundry list of maladies, from impotence to arthritis and obesity, are available, and the knowledgeable staff can suggest certain medicinal therapies for you.\n\n###### **EMERGENCIES**\n\nReport emergencies to the local **Polic\u00eda Nacional** (Cra. 11 No. 12-30, emergency line 112 or 8\/892-5060).\n\n###### **TOURIST INFORMATION**\n\nFor information on the area, the **Fondo de Promoci\u00f3n Ecotur\u00edstica del Amazonas** (Cl. 8 No. 9-75, tel. 8\/592-4162, www.fondodepromocionamazonas.com) may be of help. It is near the Museo Uirapuru.\n\n###### **MONEY**\n\nThere are several Colombian banks in Leticia with ATMs. These include: **Banco de Bogot\u00e1** (Cra. 10 No. 10-108), **BBVA** (Cl. 7 No. 10-12, tel. 8\/592-4975), **Banco Agrario** (Cl. 8 No. 10-66, tel. 8\/100-0000), and **Bancolombia** (Cra. 11 No. 9-52, tel. 8\/592-6067). Generally, banking hours are 8am-11:30am and 2pm-4pm on weekdays. Each of these has ATMs. This is the best (if not only) place in the region to get cash. As you venture further afield from Leticia, credit cards are rarely accepted and ATMs are nonexistent. Colombian currency is accepted in the entire Amazon region near Leticia, including in Brazil and Peru.\n\n###### **INTERNET ACCESS**\n\nLeticia has a few Internet cafes, but don't expect rapid connections. **Amazon Technology** (Cra. 10 No. 7-85, 8:30am-noon and 3pm-9pm Mon.-Sat., 3pm-9pm Sun.) is a comfortable place to check email.\n\n###### **LAUNDRY**\n\nThere is a **laundry service** (Cra. 10 No. 9-32) that will have your clothes ready (and dry!) within one day.\n\n##### **Getting There And Around**\n\nAll major national carriers serve the Leticia airport, **Aeropuerto Internacional General Alfredo V\u00e1squez Cobo** (3 km north of town). **Avianca** resumed service in November 2013 with flights from Bogot\u00e1. **Copa** (Cl. 7 No. 10-36, tel. 8\/592-7838, 8am-12:30pm Mon.-Fri., 9am-1pm Sat., www.copaair.com) and **LAN** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com) offer daily flights from Bogot\u00e1. **Satena** (Cra. 11 No. 9-42, Local 1, cell tel. 312\/457-6291, Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com) flies from Leticia to La Chorrera (with connections to Araracuara and San Vincente del Cagu\u00e1n), La Pedrera, and Tarapaca. Flights to those supremely exotic destinations are usually once a week. Viva Colombia will launch flights to Leticia (out of Medell\u00edn) in the near future. There are no international flights from Leticia. Taxis to and from the airport should cost under COP$10,000.\n\nAll river transportation to **Puerto Nari\u00f1o, Caballococha** (Peru), and to points in between departs from the **Muelle Tur\u00edstico** (Tourist Wharf) in Leticia. To Puerto Nari\u00f1o there are daily boats at 6am, 8am, 10am, and 2pm. The trip takes two hours and costs COP$29,000 per person. By paying extra, it is possible to arrange for these boats to leave you off at stops along the way to Puerto Nari\u00f1o, such as Isla de los Micos, and be picked up by a later boat. Tickets for these boats can be obtained at the port in the Malec\u00f3n Plaza Local 101. This little shopping area is on the lefthand side when facing the port. There are three agencies with offices there: **Transportes Amaz\u00f3nicos** (tel. 8\/592-5999, cell tel. 313\/347-8091), **L\u00edneas Amazonas II** (tel. 8\/592-6711, cell tel. 311\/532-0633), and **Expreso Unidos Tres Fronteras** (tel. 8\/592-4687, cell tel. 311\/452-6809). It's best to go in person to the offices. It's organized and straightforward.\n\nThe boats to and from **Manaus** depart from the main port in **Tabatinga**. Slow cargo boats depart frequently, take three days, and cost COP$210,000 if you sleep in a hammock or COP$1,100,000 for a two-person cabin with air conditioning. These usually leave on Wednesdays and Saturdays at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. These prices include food on board. If you plan to sleep in a hammock (which you must purchase in town beforehand), try to get on board early (up to four hours) to stake out a good place. In fact, you can board the boat as soon as you buy a ticket, even a day before departure. Stock up on snacks and water, as the food, which is included in the price, is not that great. A good book and a deck of cards will come in handy. There aren't any mosquitoes to bother you while snoozing in your hammock at night, but every once in a while a flying beetle may annoy you. You will be searched, presumably for drugs, once you board the boat. The reverse journey can also be made (from Manaus to Leticia), but it will take six days.\n\nWeekly fast boats (30 hours) depart on Friday and cost COP$430,000. So as not to miss your boat, remember that Tabatinga is one hour later than Leticia. Be sure to get your departure stamp at the Leticia airport! You can also take a flight from Tabatinga to Manaus.\n\nTo Iquitos, **Transtur** (Rua Marechal Mallet No. 349, tel. 97\/8113-5239, iquitostours@hotmail.com) and **Golfinho** (Av. Marechal Mallet No. 306, tel. 97\/3412-3186) have offices in Tabatinga. Boats leave six days a week from Tabatinga, stopping at the Peruvian town of Santa Rosa, across from Leticia, for immigration purposes. The trip takes nine hours and costs COP$140,000. Departure time is 3:30am or 5:30am, depending on the boat company. There are also boats, usually twice in the afternoon, to the Peruvian town of **Caballococha,** where you can catch a flight to Iquitos.\n\nLeticia is a small town; you can walk everywhere you'd like to go. Some hotels have bikes you can rent to explore the town and beyond. _Moto-taxis_ (motorcycle taxis) and _motocarros_ (three-wheeled _moto-taxis_ ) are plentiful. Sights along Kilometer 11 can be reached by public bus or _moto-taxi._ Sights down the river can be reached by taking a _lancha_ from the port.\n\n#### **ALONG THE R\u00cdO AMAZONAS**\n\nSeveral sights provide excellent photo ops along the R\u00edo Amazonas westward from Leticia to the Parque Amacayacu. These are usually visited as part of a package one-day tour offered by all hotels and travel agencies. Most of these tours continue past Amacayacu to Puerto Nari\u00f1o and the Lago Tarapoto. That is the easiest way to visit them, but it's a rather \"touristy\" proposition.\n\nFor greater flexibility and to avoid feeling part of the herd you can also charter your own boat for around COP$300,000, but you'll have to be specific about where you want to go in order to negotiate a good price. Head to the _malec\u00f3n_ (wharf) and ask any of the boat captains lingering about for this option.\n\nWhen on the water, keep your eyes peeled for dolphins, both gray and pink, and pelicans above. Every once in a while, you'll pass a fisherman in a _peque peque_ dugout canoe, just barely above water. When it rains you'll see them furiously scooping out water with their hands so as not to sink!\n\n##### **Victoria Regia**\n\nSeven kilometers (four miles) and about a 15-minute boat ride west from Leticia, **Victoria Regia** (COP$5,000 admission) is a private reserve that is usually the first stop on the river. You can view large circular _Victoria amazonica_ lily pads and their lovely white lotus flowers floating atop the water. These are some of the largest water plants in the world, and the leaves can measure up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) in diameter, with roots extending 7 meters (23 feet) below the water's surface. They say that these plants are so strong they can support the weight of a one-year old child. It's not recommended, however, to test this theory on your offspring. You can also marvel at a magnificent old ceiba tree farther along on the park walkway. Ceibas are some of the tallest trees in the world. This is also your chance to get that quintessential Amazon photo with a colorful _guacamaya_ (macaw) or two on your shoulders.\n\n##### **Puerto Alegr\u00eda**\n\nOn the Peruvian side of the river farther along is the community of **Puerto Alegr\u00eda.** Here the attraction is exotic animals. When tourist boats show up at the community dozens of times each day, local women and children greet the tourists with all sorts of animals in hand: alligators, sloths, turtles. For a contribution you can be photographed holding several of the animals. Tourists are told that the animals are released into the wild after a period of time, but that seems hard to believe. Even if that is the case, they must have a hard time adjusting to their natural habitat after years in captivity, being held by humans day in and day out. You may find it disturbing how these creatures are used for human entertainment here.\n\n##### **Isla de los Micos**\n\nThe **Isla de los Micos** (Monkey Island) is the most popular tourist attraction on the river. It's about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Leticia. At this island, owned by the Colombian hotel chain Decameron, elevated walkways meander through the jungle, and with just a morsel of fruit in your hand, you'll make the monkeys go bananas. They'll proceed to climb all over you in hopes of a snack, as if you were a tree. The monkeys are not native to the island, rather they were brought there by controversial hotel owner and entrepreneur Mike Tsalickis in the 1970s. Up to 12,000 supposedly lived there at one point. Some even were used for medical experiments. It is a tourist trap, but it's hard to deny that kids love it.\n\nlily pads at Victoria Regia\n\n##### **Macedonia**\n\nThe Ticuna village of **Macedonia** is a regular stop for tourist boats. When visitors arrive, they are invited in to the _maloca_ (community house), where an authentic ceremonial dance is performed. Tourists are led onto the middle of the dance floor to the beat of a turtle shell drum. Around the _maloca_ you can peruse an array of handicrafts at stalls set up by local women. A specialty is _palo de sangre_ wood carvings. Although touristy, it is nice that the community manages all the activities here, and all the income goes directly to them.\n\n##### **Reserva Calanoa**\n\nTucked away on the bank of the Amazon, west of the Macedonia community and just before the community of Makagua and the Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu, is M **Reserva Calanoa** (R\u00edo Amazonas, 60 km\/37 miles west of Leticia, cell tel. 311\/842-4392, www.calanoaamazonas.com, COP$230,000 pp). Most people speeding by in their boats do not notice it. That's OK, because here the emphasis is on appreciation of the natural surroundings, of indigenous cultures, and learning: about art, photography, cooking, and flora and fauna. Activities offered (most are included in the overall price) include day and nighttime canoe trips, bird- and dolphin-watching, and canoe trips, by day and by night. It is a project of a Canadian-Colombian couple, Diego and Marlene Samper. Diego is an accomplished photographer. Calanoa offers one-of-a-kind tours, for example an annual workshop on natural fibers in February. During that week, participants learn the art of weaving _palma de caran\u00e1_ leaves that form the stunning _maloca_ rooftops that you have seen at every stop in the Amazon.\n\nReserva Calanoa has four beautifully done cabins made of all natural materials, and a lovely dining and relaxing area overlooks the river. The lodgings are called the Hotel de Selva. There is a strong emphasis here on working with and supporting neighboring indigenous communities, such as in the settlement of Mocagua, where Calanoa is undertaking a mural painting project in order to preserve and celebrate indigenous culture.\n\nLife abounds in the Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu.\n\n##### **Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu**\n\nThe prime, unspoiled plot of land known as Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu covers some 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres). It has its southern border on the banks of the Amazon between the R\u00edo Amacayacu (\"River of Hammocks\") and the R\u00edo Matamata and extends northward to the R\u00edo Cotuhe. It was declared a national park in 1975. The park is characterized by undulating hills, swamps, and an intricate network of streams. The highest point in the park reaches 200 meters (650 feet) above sea level. It is estimated that in the park there are more than 5,000 plant species, 150 mammal species (including pink dolphins, tapirs, jaguars, manatees, nutrias, and numerous primates), 500 species of birds, about 100 species of fish, and the list goes on. Resident animals such as squirrel monkeys, sloths, wild boars, and jaguars are hard to spot in the park, and in the jungle in general.\n\nEach year much of the park is flooded during the rainy months of April and May. In 2012 it was a particularly wet wet season, resulting in extensive damage to park structures. The park has since been closed to tourism, although the Ticuna settlement of San Mart\u00edn can be visited.\n\nIf you are traveling by boat up the spectacular and serpentine Amacayacu (this can apply to any jungle cruise you take in the region), insist that the captain completely cut the engine at least once or twice during the journey, so that you can enjoy the incredible sounds of the jungle. When you float along in silence, hearing nothing but the calls of distant monkeys, shrieks of birds, or the constant hum of legions of frogs and insects, it is a magical experience. It makes you think, that, despite the tsunami of evidence to the contrary, just maybe we can, for the first time in the history of humanity, turn things around and save this remarkable ecosystem. Boat drivers are usually in a hurry, so you'll have to ask them something like: _\"Podemos parar aqu\u00ed sin motor un minutico por favor?\"_ (\"Would it be possible to stop here without the motor for a moment, please?\").\n\nDeep within the Parque Amacayacu, a dedicated team of animal lovers is rehabilitating monkeys that have been rescued from poor conditions in captivity. **Fundaci\u00f3n Maikuchiga** (Leoncio S\u00e1nchez, cell tel. 313\/397-1981, www.maikuchiga.org) is a group that rescues and cares for dozens of primates, like woolly monkeys, red howlers, and brown capuchins, who have been injured, orphaned, or rescued from poor conditions in captivity in the Colombian Amazon. Dr. Sara Bennett is the \"mother of the monkeys\" and runs the show here. She has been in Colombia for many years, originally arriving to conduct research on Amazonian trees. One of her greatest accomplishments has been in convincing local tribes to no longer hunt woolly monkeys, in order to protect their survival. Her aim is to promote the protection and awareness of these species, and generally to promote conservation efforts. You can visit the foundation to get to know their work, and they are always in need of financial support. Maikuchiga can be reached on foot from San Mart\u00edn during dry months.\n\n###### M **SAN MART\u00cdN DE AMACAYACU**\n\nUp the R\u00edo Amacayacu, within the PNN Amacayacu, is the Ticuna community of **San Mart\u00edn.** The community has organized itself to receive tourists and offers walks, canoe rides, and other activities. Friendly and knowledgeable community elder Victor \u00c1ngel Pereira (cell tel. 310\/769-7305) will receive you and get you organized. Entrance to the community costs COP$5,000, and this is an interesting day-trip excursion from either Leticia or Puerto Nari\u00f1o. There is a handicrafts store where local girls sell beautiful handwoven _mochilas_ (handbags), bark scrolls from the _yanchama_ tree on which scenes of jungle animals are painted using all natural dyes, and jewelry. You can also do a homestay with a local family for only about COP$10,000 per night in a hammock.\n\nThe M **Casa de Gregorio** (cell tel. 310\/279-8147, heike_van_gils@hotmail.com) is a lodge run by a Ticuna-Dutch couple, Heike and Jos\u00e9 Gregorio. She arrived in San Mart\u00edn as a doctoral student in agriculture sciences at the Universidad Nacional in 2004, and he is a Ticuna community leader. Through their **Small World Foundation** (www.smallworldfoundation.org), they work to improve the lives of the residents of this indigenous community, by installing toilets, starting a kindergarten, and purchasing rainwater tanks. A stay at the Casa de Gregorio provides visitors with a unique opportunity to discover the jungle and get to know Ticuna culture. A new, deluxe cabin was finished in 2013, and that costs COP$120,000 for a double in a luxurious king bed. There are two other simple double rooms and a small cabin, with a total capacity of 10. Lodging for two costs COP$80,000, and there are additional costs for meals, the community entry fee of COP$5,000, and for guides. Although it is possible to come for a day trip, this is not a recommended option. To get a taste of village life, it's best to not rush things and stay at least three or four days. To get there, you can take a boat for about 1.5 hours from Leticia for COP$24,000. These depart at 8am, 10am, and 2pm. Ask to be dropped off at Bocana Amacayacu (not the Parque Amacayacu). The return trip costs COP$29,000. You will need to arrange with Casa de Gregorio transportation from Bocana Amacayacu to San Mart\u00edn. That costs COP$30,000. You can also take a _peque-peque_ canoe from Puerto Nari\u00f1o or walk from there to San Mart\u00edn. You can also walk from Puerto Nari\u00f1o in tours organized by various hotels and agencies there. That expedition (you'll need a guide; ask Heike) takes three hours.\n\n#### M **PUERTO NARI\u00d1O**\n\nWhen you disembark at the village of Puerto Nari\u00f1o, atop a sloping hill overlooking the R\u00edo Loretoyac\u00fa, you'll wonder: Where are the motorbikes? Here in idyllic Puerto Nari\u00f1o, there are no roads and no motorized vehicles whatsoever. Environmentally minded and forward-thinking town council members decided many years ago that they wanted Puerto Nari\u00f1o to chart a different path than almost all other towns in Colombia (and for that matter in the world), and for their efforts, this town was named the first tourism sustainable town in the country. Here \"roads\" are actually palm-lined sidewalks that connect all the neighborhoods of this community together. Puerto Nari\u00f1o is so peaceful, you'll probably want to linger a while.\n\nan artisan at the Ticuna community of San Mart\u00edn\n\n##### **Sights**\n\nTo get a bird's-eye view of Puerto Nari\u00f1o and the rivers and jungle beyond, climb up the steps to the **Mirador Nai-pata** (COP$7,000, closes at 6pm). You pick up an entry ticket in the adjacent house. The tall treehouse (which is what _nai-pata_ means in Ticuna) is the perfect place to be at dusk.\n\nThe **Centro de Interpretaci\u00f3n Ambiental Nat\u00fctama** (cell tel. 312\/410-1925, www.natutama.org, 8am-12:30pm and 2pm-5pm, donations encouraged) is run by the conservation and education nonprofit Nat\u00fctama. At their center, you can watch some excellent videos about two important river species: the pink dolphin and the manatee. While the pink dolphin is celebrated in indigenous mythology, the unfortunate manatee is not. Thus it has been hunted to the brink of extinction. The focus of this organization is conservation awareness among the community, and in large part due to their educational outreach activities, the number of manatees in the Puerto Nari\u00f1o area has grown from 11 in 2002 to 24 in 2012. They also sell handicrafts and T-shirts, the proceeds of which help them carry out their activities. Nat\u00fctama means, in Ticuna, the \"world below the water.\"\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### M **LAGO TARAPOTO**\n\n**Lago El Correo** and **Lago Tarapoto** are about a 20-minute boat ride from Puerto Nari\u00f1o, and this area is a good place for dolphin spotting (both pink and gray), swimming, piranha fishing, and nature hikes. Lago Tarapoto is connected with the Amazon, so by swimming in its serene waters you can truthfully say that you swam in the Amazon. The Lago Tarapoto at 37 square kilometers (14 square miles) is much larger than the adjacent Lago El Correo, which is closer to Puerto Nari\u00f1o. There are several spots in this area where you can see _renacos,_ also known as _el arbol que camina_ (the tree that walks), a tree with a jumble of above-ground roots. To get to the lake you'll have to go with a guide on a boat. The tourist office in Puerto Nari\u00f1o or any hotel can help organize a visit to these lakes and surrounding flooded jungles. This excursion, pleasant to make in the late afternoon, will cost COP$50,000 per person.\n\na bird's-eye view of Puerto Nari\u00f1o\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\nThe **Festival Aut\u00f3ctono de Danza, Murga y Cuento** takes place at the end of December through early January each year, and is a celebration of indigenous culture and identity. Each night the town gathers around the basketball court for evenings of storytelling, dance, and the requisite beauty pageant. Interestingly, an important component of the pageant is a demonstration of the girls' knowledge of their native tongue.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\n**Hospedaje Wone** (Cra. 1 No. 4-14, cell tel. 314\/266-5496 or 320\/878-5785, wonenemico@hotmail.com, COP$20,000 d) is a pleasant, locally owned place, with potted plants and flowers throughout, that has three rooms. It's near the port. A bathroom is outside in the back. They lost everything recently during the disastrous 2012 rainy season. After rebuilding, they are crossing their fingers that nature will be on their side for a while.\n\nA cozy and inexpensive option in Puerto Nari\u00f1o is M **Malocas Napu** (Cl. 4 No. 5-72, cell. tel. 314\/437-6075 or 313\/800-2771, www.malocanapu.com, COP$35,000 d, pp). There are eight rooms here in two _malocas_ (community houses). Bathrooms are separate. They can take you on fun excursions to Lago Tarapoto, including a little piranha fishing on a dugout canoe, if you are so inclined, and also show you the flooded jungle. Napu works closely with the travel agency Ecodestinos.\n\nFriendly **Hotel Lomas del Paiy\u00fc** (Cl. 7 No. 2-26, cell tel. 313\/268-4400, www.hotellomasdelpaiyu.turismo.co, COP$50,000-70,000 d) offers 22 clean, if a little stuffy, rooms. The top end option in town is the **Hotel Casa Selva** (Cra. 2 No. 6-72, cell tel. 311\/280-7319, Bogot\u00e1 tel. 1\/657-1468, www.casaselvahotel.com, COP$150,000 d). The rooms are immaculate and it is undeniably comfortable, but the atmosphere is rather businesslike.\n\nIf you'd like to get away from the hustle and bustle of Puerto Nari\u00f1o but still be within walking distance of it, the M **Alto del \u00c1guila Caba\u00f1as del Fraile** (cell tel. 314\/234-7292, 314\/201-3154, or 311\/502-8592, altodelaguila@hotmail.com, COP$25,000 pp with private bath) is your best bet. It's actually quite fun, too, with resident monkeys monkeying about always making things interesting. Cabins are clean and cheerful, the kitchen area is a comfortable place to have a _tinto_ and read, and you can take a kayak out for a spin on the river for free. The owner is indeed a Franciscan missionary, a straight-talking one at that, and he's a joy to meet.\n\nThe best restaurant in town is the **Restaurante Las Margaritas.** They specialize in the usual fish dishes but can also whip up vegetarian fare. Another friendly spot is **Delicias Amaz\u00f3nicas Metane** (Cra. 2 between Clls. 6-7). Set lunches go down well with a _copoaz\u00fa_ juice as you watch everybody walk by on the pathway in front. The small grocery store **Mercaselva** (Cra. 2 and Cl. 5, 6:30am-8:30pm daily) also makes OK pizzas. Order yours a few hours in advance.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThe helpful **tourist office** (Cra. 1 at Cl. 5, Palacio Municipal, no phone, 7am-noon and 2pm-5:45pm Mon.-Fri.) can help you organize excursions with official tour guides. There are no ATMs in Puerto Nari\u00f1o. There are a couple of Internet caf\u00e9s, but the connections are very slow.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nIt takes just under two hours on a public boat to make the 87-kilometer (54-mile) river journey from Leticia to Puerto Nari\u00f1o without stopping. Tickets (COP$24,000 one way) for this trip can be purchased at the Leticia _malec\u00f3n_. Look for the office at Malec\u00f3n Plaza Local 101, to the left of the _malec\u00f3n_. Three companies provide this service: **Transportes Amaz\u00f3nicos** (tel. 8\/592-5999), **L\u00edneas Amazonas II** (tel. 8\/592-6711), and **Expresos Unidos Tres Fronteras** (tel. 8\/592-4687). There are usually three boats per day starting at 8am, 10am, and 2pm.\n\nWhen leaving Puerto Nari\u00f1o bound for Leticia, make sure you reserve your spot a day or so in advance. You can do this at the office on stilts along the walkway to the docks. Boats leave Puerto Nari\u00f1o at 7:30am, 11am, 2pm, and 4pm. You can also take a boat to Caballococha, Peru, from Puerto Nari\u00f1o. Ask at the office about this option.\n\n#### M **R\u00cdO YAVAR\u00cd**\n\nThe **R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed** (Rio Javari in Brazil) begins in Peru and serves as a border between Brazil and Peru. Its waters flow some 1,050 kilometers (650 miles) before it meets the Amazon in Brazil. About a six-hour journey from Leticia by boat (three hours when the jungle is flooded), this part of the Amazon basin is unspoiled, isolated, and is home to two excellent private natural reserves where you will be immersed in the jungle. Spend at least three days or up to a week at one of the Yavar\u00ed nature reserves (they are both excellent) to gain a real appreciation for jungle life. The longer you stay the more wildlife you are apt to see: pink dolphins, alligators, snakes, and dozens of birds. Although this region is technically in Brazil, it very well may be one of the highlights of your trip to Colombia.\n\n##### **Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed**\n\nLocated on a bluff overlooking the river, the **Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed** (office Cra. 10 No. 93-72, Apt. 602, Bogot\u00e1, tel. 1\/610-3514, www.palmari.org or www.travesiassas.com, COP$256,000) is a pioneer in ecotourism in this part of the Amazon. Once you arrive, you will be paired with a guide who will accompany you throughout your stay. You won't be grouped together with others. Activities offered include jungle walks (including nighttime), treks, canopying, kayaking, canoe rides, and visits to nearby indigenous communities. Usually guests spend one night in the jungle. Near Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed you can admire massive ceiba trees, also called _lupuna_ trees. These noble giants reach up to 70 meters (230 feet) high and have witnessed a lot in their over 400 years of life! Ticuna Indians believe that these trees are what started life and created the river.\n\nbeautiful mushroom in the jungle\n\nThe reserve, first and foremost, has a strong commitment to the environment and to the community. The rooftops are made from a durable, recycled material imported from Canada. That is because of the growing scarcity of the native palm trees. Palmar\u00ed works together on sustainable agriculture and ecotourism projects as well as environmental education with local communities, and has been instrumental in the construction of schools in several villages. _Mucho_ credit is due to gregarious Axel, the German-Colombian owner of the reserve, for being a forward-thinking eco-example.\n\nPalmar\u00ed has a range of accommodations options, and if you are traveling in a group, this is an excellent choice. Palmar\u00ed is a favorite for Colombian school field trips, but you'll be warned about that possibility when you make a reservation. You can sleep in a hammock, in a communal lodge, or in private rooms. Food is delicious and varied, and, yes, there is cold beer. You can also get online as well, although this might be the perfect time for an Internet diet. There are two great places at Palmar\u00ed to spend the late afternoon hours as you watch the sun go down: the lookout tower and the swing set. Although it is possible (and adventurous) to get to Palmar\u00ed on your own, they will arrange your transportation directly from Leticia.\n\nTo get to Palmari from Leticia, you can take public transportation along the river, which will require multiple transfers, or you can let Palmar\u00ed take care of everything and go direct (COP$150,000 pp one way).\n\nview from the lookout tower at the Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed\n\n##### **Reserva Natural Heliconia**\n\nIn Brazil, 109 kilometers (68 miles) southeast of Leticia, the **Reserva Natural Heliconia** (office Cl. 13 No. 11-74, Leticia, tel. 8\/592-5773, cell tel. 311\/508-5666, www.amazonheliconia.com, COP$1,600,000 pp d for 4 days\/3 nights incl. transportation) is a fantastic lodge and nature reserve hidden in the dense Amazonian jungle on a tributary of the R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed, which flows into the R\u00edo Amazonas. And that makes it all the more exotic, like a bird of paradise flower (for which it is named) growing in the middle of a sea of green in the jungle. Ideally, plan on spending at least three nights here, as anything less than that will feel rushed.\n\nActivities here (included in the price except for canopying) include nature walks, bird-watching, pink dolphin-watching, canoeing above the inundated forest, fishing, and canopying. You'll usually have two outings each day, and sometimes in the evenings you can explore the jungle at night, panning the darkness with your flashlight as you look for red eyes of jungle beasts looking back at you. It's an unsettling feeling to be immersed in the pitch black jungle against a backdrop of chirping insects, frogs, and birds. Another nocturnal activity is to take a canoe ride in search of alligators (or, if there are no gators, simply enjoying the sounds of the jungle and the millions of stars above).\n\nThe comfortable cabins at this reserve are made of all natural materials. Cabins come in different sizes, such as for two guests or families, and they have an area for larger groups. At night you don't even realize there are others around, such is the privacy.\n\nA hospitable local Brazilian family takes care of all the day-to-day details. There's no Internet access or cell phone coverage, and electricity comes on only for a few hours in the evening. Meals are taken in an open-air thatched roof _maloca_ in the center. Food is basic and does not vary much, usually fried fish, rice, and plantains. The friendly kitchen staff can, however, accommodate vegetarians if provided with some advance notice.\n\n### **Los Llanos**\n\nThe vast plains of eastern Colombia known as Los Llanos or Llanos Orientales (Eastern Plains) are lush tropical grasslands teeming with wildlife. They comprise the lands west of the Andes and north of the Amazon rainforest, and extend well into Venezuela. While this part of Colombia comprises around 25 percent of the total area in the country, it is home to only about 3 percent of the population. The border between the Amazon and the Llanos is roughly at the R\u00edo Guaviare, a tributary of the R\u00edo Orinoco, but the transition is gradual.\n\nElevations in the Llanos rarely exceed 300 meters (1,000 feet), and the land gradually descends from the Andes piedmont in the west towards the R\u00edo Orinoco to the east. The plains are drained by a multitude of large rivers, such as the Guaviare, Vichada, and Meta Rivers, that flow down from the Andes. The savannahs are covered with long-stemmed and carpet grasses in the drier areas and swamp grasses in low-lying humid areas. There are also thick patches of forest throughout the plains and along the rivers (known as gallery forests).\n\nThe climate is marked by two clear seasons: the _invierno,_ or rainy season, which lasts from April to November, and the _verano,_ or dry season, from December to March. During the rainy season, the rivers overflow and large parts of the Llanos are flooded. During the dry season, the land becomes parched.\n\nThe Llanos are literally full of wildlife, with more than 100 species of mammals and 1,300 species of birds, including many migratory birds. Mammals include several species of deer and rabbit, anteaters, armadillos, tapirs, otters, jaguars, pumas, and _chig\u00fciros_ (capybaras), the world's largest rodent. The plains are also home to the giant anaconda and to one of the most endangered species on earth, the Orinoco crocodile, which reaches up to seven meters (23 feet) long. Unfortunately, human settlement and hunting have vastly decreased the wildlife.\n\n##### **History**\n\nAt the time of the Spanish conquest, the Llanos were inhabited by several indigenous people, including the Guahibos, Achaguas, and Jiraras. The first European to explore the region was German conquistador Nikolaus Federmann, who set off in 1538 from Venezuela and crossed these plains on his way to the Muisca highlands of El Dorado in the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Range of the Andes). Gonzalo Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada, the founder of Bogot\u00e1, was granted dominion over a large part of the Llanos but took little interest due to the apparent lack of treasures and sparse population. Starting in the second half of the 16th century, Jesuits set up missions to convert the indigenous people and established large cattle ranches. During the wars of independence, Venezuelan _llaneros_ (plainsmen) were an important element in Bol\u00edvar's army and played a key role in the expedition that crossed the plains, climbed the Andes, and finally defeated the Spanish army at the Batalla de Puente de Boyac\u00e1 on August 7, 1819.\n\nThanks to its lush grasslands, historically the Llanos have been an important cattle-ranching region in Colombia. To this day, the Llanos are synonymous with cowboy culture. Most of human habitation takes place along a narrow fringe of land bordering the Andes, in cities such as Villavicencio and Yopal.\n\nIn the 1980s oil was discovered, first in the far eastern department of Arauca and then in Casanare, and today, the area is Colombia's most important oil-producing region, with several pipelines linking the oil fields to the Caribbean port of Cove\u00f1as, from where it is exported. The lucrative oil industry became a tempting target for guerrilla insurgencies operating in the area. In the 1980s, the guerrilla group ELN (the National Liberation Army) extorted large amounts of money from the oil companies and their contractors and launched a bombing campaign of the pipelines. The 780-kilometer (485-mile) Ca\u00f1o Lim\u00f3n-Cove\u00f1as pipeline, which transports oil from oil fields in Arauca owned by California-based Occidental Oil, was bombed an incredible 170 times in 2001 alone. With Plan Colombia came money to defend this infrastructure, and bombings had dropped to only 17 by 2004.\n\n_chig\u00fciros_ (capybaras)\n\nThe FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has been present in the region since the 1960s. From 1998 to 2002 their position was strengthened when President Pastrana granted them as part of a peace process a large demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland in the Meta and Caquet\u00e1 departments. The FARC managed this zone like a mini-state, using it to grow and process coca, smuggle arms, and hold kidnap victims. They even built roads and a recreation center for FARC commanders.\n\nAs a result of the guerrilla presence, agricultural output from the Llanos was depressed for many years. With increased security in the mid-2000s, the Llanos emerged as an important region for big agriculture, with large multinationals such as Cargill setting up massive plantations of African palm, soy, maize, and rubber, especially in the northeast Vichada region. A source of concern to environmentalists is the fact that the Llanos, unlike the Amazon, does not have many protected areas and could succumb to unchecked development.\n\nToday the region is still suffering sporadic violence caused by illegal groups, especially in Arauca and parts of Caquet\u00e1. The current governor of Meta, elected in 2011, is Alan Jara, who was kidnapped by the FARC in 2001 and was held for nearly eight years.\n\n#### **VILLAVICENCIO**\n\nThe capital of the department of Meta is only 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Bogot\u00e1 and is a gateway to the vast Llanos. Villavicencio does not have much in the way of tourist attractions; it does, however, attract Bogotanos en masse in search of sun and a swimming pool. It's also a base from which to visit Ca\u00f1o Cristales.\n\nCenters of activity (aside from shopping malls) in Villavicencio are parks like **Parque los Fundadores** (Av. 40 and V\u00eda a Bogot\u00e1), which has an enormous sculpture by Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, and the **Plaza Los Libertadores** (Cl. 39 between Cras. 32-33), over which the cathedral, the late-19th-century **Catedral Metropolitana Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Carmen,** stands. Near the Plaza Los Libertadores are some pleasant pedestrian side streets, the result of an urban renewal project.\n\n##### **Festivals and Events**\n\n_Joropo_ is the music and dance of the Llanos. With European origins (it is said that it is related to Spanish flamenco), it's a dance of fast and fancy footwork, accompanied by folk music that utilizes the harp and guitar and other instruments. The **Torneo Internacional del Joropo** is a showcase of this particularly Llanos art form, and the festival has taken place in Villavicencio since 1960. Over a thousand dance pairs bedecked in traditional costume, including many children, participate. In addition to the dancing, there are rodeo events and, of course, a beauty pageant. It's held over four days in late June.\n\n**Los Llanos for Beginners**\n\nFor a taste of the Llanos, head eastward from Villavicencio to **Lagos de Menegua** (17 km east of Puerto L\u00f3pez, cell tel. 315\/326-6068, tel. 1\/616-0439, www.lagosdemenegua.com, COP$154,000 pp d). This family-friendly resort set in the grassy hills of the Llanos has 24 rooms and a large swimming pool. Here you can take a horseback ride through the ranch, take a jungle walk, and see some of the wildlife that is abundant here: alligators, cute _chig\u00fciros_ (capybaras), monkeys, and many varieties of birds. While there are some walks you can make on your own, the resort offers guided walks on horseback (COP$35,000 pp), Jeep tours of the savannah (COP$25,000), and nighttime excursions to see alligators (COP$50,000 pp). _Colectivos_ bound for Puerto Gait\u00e1n leave from the bus stations in both Bogot\u00e1 (COP$37,000) and Villavicencio (COP$15,000). Tell the driver you'd like to be dropped off at kilometer 17 between Puerto L\u00f3pez and Puerto Gait\u00e1n. It's just past Puerto L\u00f3pez, where an obelisk marks the geographic center of Colombia, and the R\u00edo Meta.\n\nCowboy culture in the Llanos is not limited to men. Proof of that is the **Concurso Mundial de la Mujer Vaquera** (www.mundialmujervaquera.com), a competition in which cowgirls show their skills in a series of events held at the Parque Las Malocas in Villavicencio in late March every year. _Llaneras_ are well represented and get the support of the hometown crowd, but it is an international event: The 2013 winner hailed from Mexico.\n\nThe **Encuentro Mundial del Coleo** (www.mundialcoleo.com.co) is for men, and they demonstrate their _coleo_ skills. _Coleo_ is a _llanero_ cowboy technique to recapture stray bulls so that they can be branded. The cowboys do this by galloping on horseback and thrusting the bulls to the ground by pulling their tails. Animal rights sympathizers should skip this event! The competition takes place at the Parque Las Malocas in October of every year.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nThose en route to Ca\u00f1o Cristales in La Macarena may need to spend a night in Villavo, as locals call it. One of the best hotels in town is the M **GHL Hotel Villavicencio** (Cra. 39C No. 19C-15, www.ghlhoteles.com, COP$240,000 d). It is on the backside of a small shopping mall (Villa Centro) that has a Yumbo supermarket. Rooms are spacious, the restaurant is pretty good, and on the top floor is a pool, with a fantastic view of the Llanos.\n\nA budget option is **Mochilero's Hostel** (www.mochileroshostel.com, COP$24,000 dorm, COP$50,000 d), which opened in 2012 and has six rooms (with fan). It's close to shopping malls and restaurants.\n\nWhen it comes to local cuisine, _llaneros_ like their beef, and open-air steakhouses are, have always been, and always will be the rage in Villavo. The specialty here is _mamona,_ which is grilled veal. Ingredients of this dish aren't complex: a one-year-old calf, salt, and beer.\n\n**El Amarradero del Mico** (V\u00eda Vanguardia Restrepo, cell tel. 313\/829-6228, noon-midnight daily, COP$22,000) is a popular open-air restaurant on the outskirts of town featuring something for all manner of carnivores. For a departure from the local specialties, try **Pizza Nostra** (Av. 40 No. 25A-47, tel. 8\/668-4000, noon-11pm daily, COP$18,000) for pizzas, pastas, and hamburgers.\n\nAt the Unicentro mall there is a food court with a decent Italian restaurant and a Juan Valdez Caf\u00e9. **Oliva Mediterranea** (Unicentro shopping mall, Av. 40 No. 26C-10, 3rd floor, tel. 8\/668-2020, noon-9pm daily, COP$18,000) makes a noble effort to make you think you're not in a food court. On the menu are Italian dishes, pizzas, and salads.\n\n**La Estaca Club** (Cra. 40 No. 57, no phone, 6pm-2am Mon.-Wed., 6pm-3am Thurs.-Sat., 6pm-10pm Sun., COP$15,000) is a popular pub-like gathering place with a pleasant terrace where you can eat soul food such as buffalo wings and have a couple of beers.\n\n##### **Information and Services**\n\nThere are **tourist information stands** at the airport (Vereda Vanguardia v\u00eda Restrepo) and at the bus terminal (Cra. 1 No. 15-05) and one at Llanocentro shopping mall. They generally keep the hours of 8am-5pm daily.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nThere's really no need to fly to Villavicencio from Bogot\u00e1, unless you seek comfort, are averse to the assertive motoring style of Colombian bus drivers, or are in a hurry, as there are **buses** (Flota la Macarena, tel. 1\/421-5556, www.flotalamacarena.com, 2 hrs., COP$20,000) between the two cities practically 24 hours a day. From Villavicencio's **Terminal de Transportes de Villavicencio** (Cra. 1 No. 15-05, Anillo Vial, no phone) there's no shortage of _colectivo_ (smaller bus) service to Bogot\u00e1, but expect at least another frustrating hour in the Bogot\u00e1 traffic during much of the day. _Colectivos_ going to Puerto L\u00f3pez cost about COP$14,000. It's a good road.\n\nAirlines **LAN** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com) and **Satena** (Cra. 31 No. 39-37, 2nd floor, tel. 8\/662-1260, www.satena.com) operate flights to the **Aeropuerto Vanguardia** (Vereda Vanguardia V\u00eda Restrepo, tel. 8\/670-9610) in Villavicencio from Bogot\u00e1. It's about a 45-minute long flight. There are connection flights to La Macarena, usually via small charter planes.\n\n#### M **CA\u00d1O CRISTALES**\n\nTaking a flight (or two) to a remote corner of Colombia with a troubled past just to see some river algae may not, on the surface, sound like a wise investment of precious vacation time. But, here in the remote Llanos, you'll be rewarded as you trek through the stark lowland hills of the Serran\u00eda de la Macarena, with its unusual dry tropical vegetation, and behold the vibrant purple, fuchsia, goldenrod, and green _Macarenia clavigera_ plants swaying in the gushing streams of **Ca\u00f1o Cristales.**\n\nthe colorful pools of Ca\u00f1o Cristales\n\nThe Serran\u00eda de la Macarena (Macarena Range) is a 120-kilometer-long, 30-kilometer-wide (75-mile-long, 19-mile wide) mountain range 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Villavicencio and 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of the Andes. The range, which is entirely contained within the 629,280-hectare (1.6 million-acre) **Parque Nacional Natural Sierra de la Macarena,** is the highly eroded remnant of mountains that once towered on the supercontinent of Panagea, before the South American plate separated from the African plate and drifted westward to its present location, crashing into the Nazca plate and creating the Andes. These ancient outcrops, which form the Guyana Shield, dot the northwest Amazon basin in Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana.\n\nThe Macarena is also unique in that it is at the confluence of three highly distinct ecosystems: the Amazon to the south, the Llanos to the north, and the Andes mountain rainforests to the west. A large number of endemic plants evolved in this isolated mountain range, including the striking _Macarenia clavigera,_ which draws tourists from all over Colombia and from abroad.\n\nCa\u00f1o Cristales is a stream that flows from west to east in the very southern part of the sierra and flows into the R\u00edo Guayabero, a tributary of the R\u00edo Guaviare. In its upper reaches, it has three branches that join to form the Ca\u00f1o Cristales stream proper. The surrounding landscape is quite dry and rocky, covered with unusual _Vellozia macarenensis_ plants, which have evolved to survive the dry climate and bush fires. These plants produce beautiful white flowers that add to the beauty of the stark environs.\n\nThe small town of **La Macarena** on the R\u00edo Guayabero is the gateway to Ca\u00f1o Cristales. It was part of the demilitarized zone granted to the FARC as part of the 1998-2002 peace process. Evincing little respect for nature, the FARC destroyed the park facilities, chased away the staff, and built a road right through the park, sparking squatters to take illegal possession of lands within the park. The town of La Macarena is now home to a 4,000-strong army base, one of the largest in Colombia. The areas in the vicinity of the town, including all the sights described in this section, are safe to visit. Tourism has given this isolated community new life. A highly successful nature guide training program for high school students has given youths in the town the opportunity to gain a living through ecotourism. Six thousand visitors came to Ca\u00f1o Cristales in 2012, and each year more and more are coming.\n\nTo visit Ca\u00f1o Cristales, you need a minimum of one full day and two nights, but staying a day or two longer is definitely worthwhile. The best time of the year to visit is during the rainy season, from May until November, when you can marvel at the _Macarenia clavigera_ in bloom.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\n###### **HIKING**\n\nAll excursions require a guide. Visitors are asked to avoid using sunscreen or mosquito repellent, as it can damage the _Macarenia clavigera._ Therefore, make sure to bring a wide-brimmed sun hat and wear lightweight, long-sleeve shirts and pants to protect your skin. Wear shoes that have good traction on slippery rocks and that you don't mind getting wet.\n\nThe most popular trek is a half-day excursion that involves a pleasant 20-minute boat ride up the R\u00edo Guayabero from the town of La Macarena, a six-kilometer (3.7-mile) truck ride, and a two-kilometer (1.2 mile) hike to Ca\u00f1o Cristales. There, you'll admire the multicolored stream as it gushes through pools and waterfalls. At the end you get to cool off in the Piscina del Turista, a natural pool, and have a waterside lunch.\n\nAnother longer, all-day excursion takes you to the upper part of Ca\u00f1o Cristales, where you'll visit the three different branches of the river. The vegetation here is much denser, and the _Macarenia clavigera_ also take on yellow and green hues. This excursion involves wading across the stream numerous times. If it has been raining, the level and force of the water increases considerably, making for an exhilarating experience. Depending on the level of the water and physical conditions of the trip, you may visit one, two, or all three of the branches.\n\nTwo other half-day excursions also involve a ride up the R\u00edo Guayabero to visit **Cristalitos,** a smaller stream that is Ca\u00f1o Cristales in miniature, or to **El Mirador,** a hike to the top of a hill that offers sweeping views of the R\u00edo Guayabero and surrounding countryside.\n\nAnother excursion, which can only be done in the dry months of December through April, is 20 kilometers (12 miles) up to the **Raudal del Guayabero** to admire the white-water rapids, ancient indigenous petroglyphs, and interesting rock formations known as **Ciudad de Piedra.**\n\n###### **TOURS**\n\nThe easiest way to visit Ca\u00f1o Cristales is to buy a packaged tour. Two well-reputed local operators, **Ecotur\u00edsmo Sierra de la Macarena** (Av. Alfonso L\u00f3pez No. 40-28, Villavicencio, tel. 8\/664-3364, cell tel. 314\/325-3522, www.ecoturismomacarena.com) and **Cristales Aventura Tours** (La Macarena, cell tel. 313\/294-9452, cristalesaventuratours@hotmail.com) offer two- to five-night packages from Villavicencio. Expect to pay around COP$1,300,000 per person for a four-day trip. This includes air transportation out of Villavicencio, accomodations in La Macarena, and tours to Ca\u00f1o Cristales. The tours include transportation from Villavicencio in small charter planes, local transportation, food, and accommodations. These operators hire guides from UNIGMA, an association of young, local guides that have received specialized training since high school. You can also buy these tours from tourist operators elsewhere in the country, but these will simply take a margin and send you with the two local operators.\n\nIt is quite feasible, and cheaper, to organize your Ca\u00f1o Cristales trip on your own by arranging air transportation, local transportation, accommodations, and food. For all hikes in and around Ca\u00f1o Cristales you are required to hire a guide from **UNIGMA** (cell tel. 320\/856-7571, guiasunigma@hotmail.com, <http:\/\/canocristalesguiasdeturismo.wordpress.com>, COP$100,000 per day for a group of up to 7 people).\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nHotels and restaurants in La Macarena, all economically priced, are nothing special. M **Centro Vacacional Punto Verde** (Parque Principal, cell tel. 310\/341-8899, cvpuntoverde@hotmail.com, COP$40,000 pp incl. all meals) is the best option by far, with nine rooms spread out behind an ample and leafy common area, including a small pool. Breakfast is included, and the restaurant, the Punta Verde, is the best in town. It's open to hotel guests and non-guests. Let them know ahead of time if you require vegetarian meals.\n\n**Casa Hotel** (Parque Principal, cell tel. 313\/292-9925 or 314\/279-2764, COP$35,000 pp) has 21 rooms, some with air conditioning. **La Cascada** (Cl. 5 No. 7-35, tel. 8\/560-3132, cell tel. 313\/294-9452, cristalesaventuratours@hotmail.com, COP$80,000 d) has 32 smallish rooms over two floors.\n\n##### **Information**\n\nThe group of local guides, UNIGMA, operates a **tourist information office** at the tiny Aeropuerto Javier Nore\u00f1a Valencia (5-min. walk from Parque Principal). It's the most buzzing place in La Macarena and is open daily 8am-5pm.\n\n##### **Getting There and Around**\n\nTo **Aeropuerto Javier Nore\u00f1a Valencia** in La Macarena, there are flights from Bogot\u00e1 via **Satena** (tel. 1\/423-8530, Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com) Sundays at 2:11pm and on Fridays at 10:54am. There are charter flights from Villavicencio on small charter planes (and, on occasion, old DC-3s). Contact **Ecoturismo Sierra de la Macarena** (Av. Alfonso L\u00f3pez No. 40-28, Villavicencio, tel. 8\/664-3364, www.ecoturismomacarena.com) or **Cristales Aventura Tours** to buy a seat on these flights. Travel by land to La Macarena, while theoretically possible, is not advisable due to safety concerns.\n\nLa Macarena is a small town and you can get everywhere on foot. Boats up the R\u00edo Guayabero to Ca\u00f1o Cristales, Cristalitos, and El Mirador will cost COP$60,000-70,000 per group of up to 10 people and COP$250,000 to the Raudal del Guayabero.\n\n#### M **HACIENDA LA AURORA**\n\n**Hacienda La Aurora** (near the town of Paz de Ariporo, Casanare, cell tel. 310\/580-5395, www.juansolito.com), 180 kilometers (112 miles) northwest of Yopal in the department of Casanare and about double that from Villavicencio, is in many ways a typical extensive cattle-ranching farm of the Llanos. It was once part of the immense 430,000-hectare (1.1 million-acre) Jesuit hacienda that was subdivided over time. The hacienda measures 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) and has 6,000 head of cattle. However, in one aspect it differs radically from other haciendas in the Llanos: Since the Barrag\u00e1n family, the current owners, purchased it in the 1970s, they have not allowed any hunting of animals, even if that means if jaguars and pumas attack and eat their cattle. This prohibition on hunting comes from the family's deep-seated conviction that cattle ranching must be a sustainable activity and that it must coexist peaceful with the Llanos' abundant biodiversity.\n\nAs a result, the hacienda abounds with wildlife that mixes with cattle herds and is not afraid of humans. As you travel through the farm, on the back of a specially outfitted safari truck, on horseback, or on foot, there is wildlife everywhere you look: herds of absurdly cute looking _chig\u00fciros_ (the world's largest rodents, also known as capybaras), deer, foxes, anteaters, armadillos, sloths, monkeys, tortoises, and caimans. Even non-bird-watchers will be amazed by what they see: huge ungainly _garz\u00f3n soldados_ (jabirus), bright red ibises, families of borrowing owls, incredibly exotic plumed hoatzins, parakeets, macaws, and toucans. In the dry season, it is not unusual to see anacondas on the banks of the R\u00edo Ariporo or in watering holes. There are also water buffalo and herds of wild horses roaming about. Finally, pumas and jaguars can also be spotted (albeit through wildlife cameras installed in strategic points on the farm). There is most definitely nowhere in Colombia where you can see this much wildlife in its natural setting.\n\nHacienda La Aurora is also very much a working cattle farm. The herds are spread out throughout the hacienda. There is a main hacienda house, which is the center of operations. When cattle-ranching activities need to be done, such as taming horses, branding calves, or rounding up cattle for sale, _vaqueros_ (cowboys) move to one of several smaller peripheral camps called _fundos_ to do these activities. Viewing the traditional cattle-ranching ways of the Llanos is a fascinating part of a visit to La Aurora.\n\nHaciendas such as this used to be the norm in the Llanos. However, many have been subdivided into smaller, more modern ranches with fenced pastures. Others have been converted into large African palm, corn, soy, or rubber plantations. La Aurora's administrators complain that it is increasingly difficult to find personnel willing to do what they call the \"work of the Llano\"\u2014cattle ranching the traditional way\u2014as wages in the oil industry are much better and the work is less taxing.\n\ndouble-striped thick knee bird\n\nTo fully enjoy a visit to Hacienda La Aurora, stay at least two full days. Accommodations at La Aurora are at the Ecolodge Juan Solito, which borders the ranch. Visits are easier in the dry season (Nov.-Mar.), when getting around the farm is not difficult and wildlife congregates around the water holes. However, a visit in the rainy season is also interesting. The ground often gets drenched, but is not impossible to visit the ranch and spot animals. Also, in the rainy season it is possible to do boat excursions.\n\n##### **Recreation**\n\nAll visitors pay a fixed price of COP$120,000 per person per day for all activities on the ranch. In return, all activities are tailored to your wishes and you are accompanied by a dedicated guide. Easily arranged activities include photo safaris on the back of a truck specially outfitted with benches, visits to view the traditional cattle-ranching activities of the hacienda, excursions on horseback, nature hikes, and canoe trips up the R\u00edo Ariporo (only in the rainy season). You can also swim in the Ariparo, though you must be careful of stingrays, electric eels, piranhas (a minor threat), and anacondas, but they are on the riverbank. Maybe just skip the swimming!\n\nIf you have a particular interest, such as specialized bird-watching or photographing specific wildlife, these activities can be arranged at no additional cost.\n\n##### **Accommodations and Food**\n\nLodging and food is provided at the **Ecolodge Juan Solito** (near Paz de Ariporo, Casanare, cell tel. 320\/342-6409, www.juansolito.com, COP$180,000 pp including all meals) just across the R\u00edo Ariporo on the south side of the Hacienda La Aurora. Juan Solito is owned by incredibly friendly and attentive Nelson Barrag\u00e1n, of the family that owns the hacienda. There are seven simple and comfortable rooms at the lodge. Meals are taken with the lodge staff on long benches in a thatched-roof dining room overlooking the river. Vegetarian fare can be arranged with advance notice. Sometimes, when there is a large group of guests, local musicians and dancers perform traditional _joropo_ music and dance, with Nelson playing the harp.\n\n##### **Getting There**\n\nThis Llanos adventure begins in **Yopal** , the orderly and pleasant capital city of Casanare. Due to the presence of large multinational oil companies in the area, there are several flights every day between Bogot\u00e1 and the Yopal airport, **Aeropuerto Alcaravan-EYP** (Cl. 40 No. 19-20, tel. 8\/635-8352). **LAN** (tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com) and **Avianca** (Cl. 10 No. 22-22, tel. 8\/634-8406, www.avianca.com, 8am-noon and 2pm-6pm Mon.-Fri., 8:30am-12:30pm Sat.) offer various nonstops between the two cities. **EasyFly** (Col. toll-free tel. 01\/800-012-3279, www.easyfly.com.co) serves both Bogot\u00e1 and Bucaramanga from Yopal.\n\nFrom Yopal, the easiest way to get to La Aurora is by contracting transportation directly with them. For COP$380,000 (each way) they will pick you up (maximum four passengers) at the Yopal airport or bus station and take you directly to the farm.\n\nIf you'd like to save some money and don't mind a little adventure, you can take public transportation to the farm entrance. From the **Terminal de Transportes de Yopal** (Cra. 23 between Clls. 25-26) take a bus to Paz de Ariparo (COP$17,000, 1.25 hours; frequent departures). From there, take a slow bus to Monta\u00f1as de Totumo (COP$22,000; 6am, 12:30pm, and 3pm). The 12:30 bus continues on along a road that passes in front of the entrance of Ecolodge Juan Solito. Tell the bus driver to leave you at \"Finca La Vigia,\" where there is a sign that says \"Reserva Casanare.\" Confirm with the ecolodge for a pickup at Monta\u00f1as de Totumo (the 6am and 3pm buses) or at the entrance to the farm (12:30pm bus).\n\n## **BACKGROUND**\n\nThe Land\n\nGEOGRAPHY\n\nCLIMATE\n\nFlora and Fauna\n\nRAINFOREST\n\nCLOUD FOREST\n\n_P\u00c1RAMOS_\n\nTROPICAL DRY FORESTS\n\nTROPICAL GRASSLANDS\n\nHistory\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS\n\nTHE SPANISH CONQUEST (1499-1550)\n\nCOLONIAL NUEVA GRANADA (1550-1810)\n\nTHE STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE (1810-1821)\n\nGRAN COLOMBIA: A FLAWED UNION (1821-1830)\n\nCIVIL WARS AND CONSTITUTIONS (1830-1902)\n\nPEACE AND REFORM (1902-1946)\n\nLA VIOLENCIA (1946-1953)\n\nDICTATORSHIP (1953-1957)\n\nTHE NATIONAL FRONT (1957-1974)\n\nUNDER SIEGE (1974-1991)\n\nCOLOMBIA ON THE BRINK (1992-2002)\n\nREGAINING ITS FOOTING (2002-PRESENT)\n\nGovernment and Economy\n\nGOVERNMENT\n\nECONOMY\n\nPeople and Culture\n\nDEMOGRAPHY\n\nRELIGION\n\nLANGUAGE\n\n### **The Land**\n\nColombia covers a land area of 1.14 million square kilometers (440,000 square miles), roughly the size of Texas and California combined, making it the fourth largest South American country in area after Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. It is located in the northwest corner of South America, with seacoast on both the Pacific and the Atlantic, and bordering Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama. The Amazonian departments of Putumayo, Caquet\u00e1, Amazonas, and Vaup\u00e1s in the south of the country straddle the Equator.\n\nFor a country of its size, it has an astonishing variety of landscapes, including the dense rainforests of the Amazon and the Pacific Coast, the vast grassland plains of the Llanos, the lofty Andes Mountains, and the Caribbean islands of San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia. Colombia's mountainous regions themselves hold a succession of vertically layered landscapes: tropical rainforests at their base, followed by cloud forests at higher elevations, topped by the unique tropical high mountain _p\u00e1ramo_ (highland moor) above 3,500 meters. The country boasts several peaks higher than 5,000 meters, including Nevado del Ruiz (5,325 meters\/17,470 feet) and Pico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n (5,776 meters\/18,950 feet).\n\n#### **GEOGRAPHY**\n\n##### **Regi\u00f3n Andina**\n\nThis central part of Colombia is dominated by the Andes mountain range. This region, which is referred to as the Regi\u00f3n Andina or simply _el interior_ (the interior) is the heartland of the country. It covers roughly 25 percent of the surface of the country and is home to 60 percent of the Colombian population.\n\nThe Andes mountain range, 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) long, runs the entire length of South America. The Andes are relatively young mountains, and some of the loftiest in the world after the Himalayas, resulting from the collision of the westward-moving South American plate with the Nazca and Antarctic plates starting 145 million years ago. The heavier Nazca and Antarctic plates to the west subducted under the lighter and more rigid South American plate, propelling it upwards and forming the Andes. In Colombia, as a result of a complex pattern of tectonic collisions, three parallel ranges were formed. At the Masizo Colombiano (Colombian Massif), a mountain range 175 kilometers north of the border with Ecuador, the Andes split into the Cordillera Occidental (Western Range), Cordillera Central (Central Range), and Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Range).\n\nThe Cordillera Occidental is the lowest and least populated of the three ranges. It runs roughly 750 kilometers parallel to the Pacific Coast and ends 150 kilometers from the Caribbean Sea. Its highest point is the Cerro de Tatam\u00e1 (4,250 meters\/13,945 feet). Of Colombia's three ranges, it has the least human intervention and is home to some of the world's only pristine high mountain _p\u00e1ramos_ ecosystems, notably that covering the Cerro de Tatam\u00e1.\n\nThe Central Cordillera is the highest of the three ranges and is the continuation in Colombia of the main Andes range. It runs roughly 800 kilometers and tapers off in the northern Caribbean plains, 200 kilometers form the Caribbean coast. Like the Andes in Ecuador, it is dotted with volcanoes. North of the Masizo Colombiano is the Serran\u00eda de los Coconucos (Coconucos Range), a range of 15 volcanoes including the Volc\u00e1n del Purac\u00e9 (Purac\u00e9 Volcano, 4,580 meters\/15,025 feet). Farther north, the Cordillera Central reaches its maximum elevation at the massive Nevado del Huila (5,750 meters\/15,585 feet). Farther north is a large complex formed by the Nevado del Tolima (5,215 meters\/17,110 feet), Nevado Santa Isabel (4,950 meters\/16,240 feet), and Nevado del Ruiz (5,325 meters\/17,470 feet). In its northern part, the Cordillera Central broadens to form the uneven highland that comprises the mountainous heartland of Antioquia with Medell\u00edn as its capital.\n\nSeveral of the volcanoes of the Cordillera Central have seen recent activity, notably Volc\u00e1n Galeras (4,276 meters\/14,029 feet), near the southern city of Pasto, which last erupted in 2005, forcing evacuation of nearby settlements. Volc\u00e1n Galeras is currently closed to visitors because of the threat of volcanic activity. In 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz erupted unexpectedly, creating a landslide that engulfed the town of Armero, killing more than 20,000 people. Since 2012, the Nevado del Ruiz has seen some activity, which has restricted access to the northern part of the Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados.\n\nThe Cordillera Oriental, which like the Cordillera Occidental is non-volcanic, extends more than 1,100 kilometers to the border with Venezuela. The range broadens to form a broad high plateau called the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, which extends 200 kilometers north of Bogot\u00e1. This is an area of broad valleys with the extremely rich soil of sedimentary deposits. It is not one continuous plane, but rather a series of valleys. The Sabana de Bogot\u00e1, or Bogot\u00e1 High Plateau, where Bogot\u00e1 is located, is one particularly broad valley. North of the altiplano is the soaring Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, a mountain range with 11 glacier-covered peaks, including Ritacuba Blanco (5,380 meters\/17,650 feet). North of El Cocuy, the Cordillera Oriental loses altitude and splits in two: A smaller western segment forms the Serran\u00eda de Perij\u00e1 on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, and a larger branch continues into Venezuela to form the Venezuelan Andes.\n\nColombia is a mountainous country.\n\nThe 1,500-kilometer-long R\u00edo Magdalena flows along a broad valley that separates the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera Oriental, making it the main commercial waterway of Colombia. Due to heavy sedimentation, it is now only navigable when waters rise during the rainy seasons in the central part of the country (Apr.-May and Oct.-Nov.). The R\u00edo Cauca, which flows parallel to the Magdalena along the much narrower valley between the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera Occidental, is the main tributary of the Magdalena. They join in northern Colombia and flow into the Caribbean.\n\nAndean Colombia is a seismically volatile area, and the country has suffered some major earthquakes in the past. The most deadly measured 7.5 on the Richter Scale and occurred in C\u00facuta in 1875. It killed 10,000 and completely destroyed the city. In recent years, around 600 were killed in the Pacific port city of Tumaco during a quake and tsunami in 1979; 300 perished in the 1983 Holy Week earthquake in Pop\u00e1yan; and over 1,100 died in the Armenia quake of 1999.\n\n##### **Caribe**\n\nColombia's Caribbean Coast runs 1,760 kilometers from the border of Panama to Venezuela, just longer than the California coast. However, the term Caribe or Regi\u00f3n Caribe refers to much more than the narrow strip of coast; it encompasses basically all of Colombia north of the Andes, including a vast area of plains. This region covers 15 percent of the surface of Colombia and is home to 20 percent of the population.\n\nThe terrain is mostly low-lying and undulating. Near the border with Panama, the land is covered by dense tropical forests, similar to those of the Pacific Coast. Farther east is the Golfo de Urab\u00e1 (Gulf of Urab\u00e1), a large, shallow bay. Between the Golfo de Urab\u00e1 and Cartagena is the Golfo de Morrosquillo, a broad inlet that is 50 kilometers wide. Off the shore of the Golfo de Morrosquillo are two small archipelagos, the Islas de San Bernardo (San Bernardo Islands) and the Islas del Rosario (Rosario Islands), with beautiful coral reefs. Inland to the south is a large area of savannahs in the departments of C\u00f3rdoba and Sucre largely devoted to cattle ranching. This area was once covered by dry tropical forests, which have been largely felled.\n\nThe bay of Cartagena, farther east, is a magnificent deep bay that caught the attention of the Spaniards early on. To the southeast of Cartagena is the lower valley of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers, a vast expanse of low-lying lagoons and lands prone to seasonal flooding. The R\u00edo Magdalena flows into the Caribbean east of Cartagena at the port city of Barranquilla. Farther to the east along the coast is a major mountain range, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It was formed by the collision of the South American plate and the Caribbean plate to the north and is entirely independent of the Andes. This mountain is home to Colombia's two highest peaks, the twin Pico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n and Pico Bol\u00edvar (5,776 meters\/18,950 feet), and is considered the highest coastal mountain range in the world. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta contains the same range of vertically layered landscapes as the Andes, from low-lying tropical forest through cloud forest, Andean forests, _p\u00e1ramo,_ and glaciers. There are eight peaks with elevations greater than 5,000 meters.\n\nNortheast of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is La Guajira peninsula, an arid peninsula jutting into the Caribbean. Punta Gallinas, at the tip of La Guajira, is the northernmost point in South America. There are a few low-lying mountain ranges in La Guajira, such as the Serran\u00eda de la Macuira (864 meters\/2,835 feet), which is covered with rainforest. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Serran\u00eda de la Macuira are biological islands, and their upper reaches are home to numerous endemic species that evolved in isolation.\n\n##### **Pac\u00edfico**\n\nThe Pacific Coast of Colombia extends 1,329 kilometers from Ecuador to Panama, about the same length as the coast of California. The term Pac\u00edfico, as it relates to Colombia, designates all the land\u2014jungle to be more accurate\u2014that lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Cordillera Occidental. This region covers 6 percent of Colombia and is home to about 2 percent of the population.\n\nThe topography of this region is mostly flat, with the low-lying coastal Serran\u00eda del Baud\u00f3 (1,810 meters\/5,940 feet) providing a mountainous backdrop to the coastal plain and forming an inland basin that is drained by the mighty R\u00edo Atrato, which flows northwards into the Caribbean Sea. The coast has a number of bays and inlets, notably the Ensenada de Utr\u00eda (Utr\u00eda Inlet), visited by humpback whales traveling every winter from the Antarctic Sea to give birth in the warm waters of the Colombian Pacific. South of Buenaventura, the coast has extensive mangroves, much of which are well-preserved. Offshore are two islands: Isla Gorgona is 35 kilometers off the coast on the continental shelf, and tiny Malpelo is 490 kilometers off the coast. Both of these islands are likely of volcanic origin.\n\nThe Colombian Pacific region is one of the wettest places on Earth, with average annual rainfall of 10,000 millimeters (33 feet). Due to the enormous amount of precipitation, the region has a dense river network with dozens of major arteries, such as the R\u00edo Baud\u00f3, R\u00edo San Juan, and R\u00edo Pat\u00eda.\n\n##### **Los Llanos**\n\nThe Llanos, Colombia's vast eastern plains, cover an area of 250,000 square kilometers, roughly 25 percent of Colombia's territory. The plains are hemmed in to the west by Cordillera Oriental and to the south by the Amazon rainforest, and extend far into Venezuela. Though the transition between the Amazon and the Llanos is gradual, the R\u00edo Guaviare, which flows from west to east at a longitude that is roughly midway between the northern and southern tips of Colombia, is considered the demarcation line between these two areas. The Llanos are home to about 1.5 million inhabitants, or about 3 percent of the population, making it the region with the second lowest population density\u2014after the Amazon region\u2014in the country.\n\nAfter the genesis of the Andes, water flowing eastward down the mountains accumulated in a vast freshwater lake that was confined on the east by old mountainous formations (now the Guyana and Brazilian highlands). Large amounts of sediments were deposited, forming the basis for the Llanos' undulating topography. Near the Andes, elevations can reach 300 meters and, moving east, slowly decrease in altitude until they reach the north-flowing R\u00edo Orinoco, which forms the border between Colombia and Venezuela.\n\nThe only significant mountain range in Los Llanos is the Serran\u00eda de la Macarena (Macarena Range), a 120-kilometer-long, 30-kilometer-wide range that is 45 kilometers east of the Andes just of the R\u00edo Guayabero, a tributary of the R\u00edo Guaviare. This range is part of the Guyana Shield complex of ancient, highly eroded remnants of mountains that existed long before the formation of the Andes.\n\nThe Llanos are drained by a multitude of large rivers, such as the R\u00edo Guaviare, R\u00edo Vichada, and R\u00edo Meta, which flow down from the Andes and meander towards the east. All the rivers of the Llanos are tributaries of the Orinoco\u2014for this reason, this region is also often called La Orinoqu\u00eda.\n\n##### **Amazon**\n\nThe Amazon region of Colombia comprises 400,000 million kilometers, or roughly 35 percent of Colombia's territory, including all the territory east of the Andes and south of the R\u00edo Guaviare. The Colombian portion covers only 10 percent of the entire Amazon drainage basin. Total population in the Amazon region is 1.1 million, or 2 percent of the country's population. It is the most sparsely populated area in the country.\n\nLike the Llanos, the Amazon has an undulating terrain, interrupted occasionally with ancient, low-lying mountainous formations of the Guyana Shield, such as the Serran\u00eda de Chiribiquete, a series of highly eroded tabletop mountains. The Amazon consists of two distinct but intermingled areas: _terra firme_ , the undulated lands that are above the highest flood point, and _varzea_ , floodplains along the main rivers, which can extend 50 kilometers from the river.\n\nThere are two types of rivers in the Amazon: the predominant white rivers, which carry sediments down from the Andes; and the black rivers, which originate within the rainforest in the Guyana Shield formations that were long ago denuded of soil due to erosion. As these waters travel though the flooded forest, they pick up pigments that give them their characteristic black color. _Igapo_ is the name given to jungles flooded by black water rivers. Most of the rivers of the Colombian Amazon are white, such as the massive R\u00edo Putumayo, R\u00edo Caquet\u00e1, R\u00edo Apaporis, and R\u00edo Vaup\u00e9s, all of which are more than 1,000 kilometers long. The main black river in Colombia is the R\u00edo Guain\u00eda, which does originate in the Andes, and which is the headwater of the largest black river of the Amazon\u2014the R\u00edo Negro\u2014which flows into the milky Amazon at Manaus, in Brazil.\n\n#### **CLIMATE**\n\nColombia has a typically tropical climate, with no change of seasons. Climate is related primarily to elevation, and there are defined annual precipitation patterns.\n\nIn the mountainous areas, temperature decreases approximately six degrees Celsius per every 1,000 meters of elevation (three degrees Fahrenheit per every 1,000 feet). The common designations for the altitudinal zones are as follows: _tierra caliente_ (hot lands) is anywhere below 1,000 meters of elevation; _tierra templada_ (temperate lands) is anywhere between 1,000 and 2000 meters; and _tierra fr\u00eda_ (cold land) is anywhere above 2,000 meters. Roughly 80 percent of the country is _tierra caliente_ , 10 percent is _tierra templada,_ and 7 percent is _tierra fr\u00eda_.\n\nCartagena, which is at sea level, has an average temperature of 27.5\u00b0C (81.5\u00b0F); Medell\u00edn, which is at 1,600 meters (5,250 feet), has an average temperature of 22\u00b0C (71.5\u00b0F); and the capital city of Bogot\u00e1, which is built at 2,625 meters (8,612 feet), has an average temperature of 13.5\u00b0C (56\u00b0F).\n\nPrecipitation patterns vary throughout the country. In the Andean region, there are generally two periods of _verano_ (dry season, literally \"summer\"), from December to March and from June to September, and two periods of _invierno_ (rainy season, literally \"winter\"), in April and May and from October to November. In the Caribbean Coast, the dry period is from December to April and the rainy season is from May to November. In the Pacific it rains almost the entire year, but there is a slight dry spell from December to March. In the Llanos, there are two very marked seasons: a very dry _verano_ from November to March and a very wet _invierno_ from April to October. In the Amazon, it rains almost the entire year, but there is a slight dry spell from August to October.\n\nExtreme weather in Colombia is rare, but the country is susceptible to weather phenomena such as El Ni\u00f1o or La Ni\u00f1a, when temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise or fall, respectively. More than 400 people died during devastating flooding and mudslides that occurred throughout much of the country during a particularly strong Ni\u00f1a in 2010-2011.\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s and Providencia are occasionally, and the Caribbean mainland of Colombia rarely, in the path of Atlantic hurricanes August through October. The last storm of significance was Hurricane Beta in 2005. It caused considerable damage in Providencia.\n\n### **Flora and Fauna**\n\nWhen it comes to biodiversity, Colombia is a place of superlatives. Though representing only 0.2 percent of the Earth's surface, it is home to about 10 percent of all the species in the world. The country has an estimated 55,000 plant species, including 3,500 species of orchids. Only Brazil, with seven times the land surface, has as many plant species. Colombia is the country with the greatest number of bird species in the world\u2014about 1,800. It's also home to about 3,200 fish, 750 amphibian species, 500 reptile, and 450 mammal species. No wonder Colombia was designated as one of 17 so-called megadiverse countries, a select club of countries that are home to an outsized proportion of the world's biodiversity. Other megadiverse countries include Australia, Brazil, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, the United States, and South Africa.\n\nThis enormous biodiversity is the result of Colombia's location in the tropics, where year-round sunlight and high precipitation are conducive to plant growth, plus the country's mountainous topography with numerous climatic zones and microclimates that have created biological islands where species have evolved in relative isolation. Furthermore, the recent Ice Ages were not as severe in this part of the world and as a result many ancient species were preserved. Finally, Colombia's location on the crossroads between Central and South America has further enriched the country's biodiversity.\n\n#### **RAINFOREST**\n\nRainforests are among the most complex ecosystems on Earth. They have a layered structure with towering trees that soar 30-40 meters high to form the forest's canopy. Some of the most common rainforest trees are the ceiba, mahogany, myrtle, laurel, acacia, and rubber trees. Occasionally, particularly high trees known as _emergentes_ pierce the canopy, reaching as high up as 60 meters (200 feet). Below the canopy is the _sotobosque_ , a middle layer of smaller trees and palms that vie for the sunlight filtering in through the canopy. In the canopy and _sotobosque_ there are many epiphytes (plants such as orchids and bromeliads) that have adapted to live on top of trees so as to be nearer to the sunlight. Near the ground live plants that require little sunlight, including ferns, grasses, and many types of fungi. The two main rainforests in Colombia, the Amazon and the Choc\u00f3, have the same layered structure, though they have some differences in their flora and fauna.\n\n**Colombian Fruits**\n\nColombia is a land bursting with exotic fruit. Sold from the back of pickup trucks by farmers on the roadside, overflowing at stalls in colorful markets in every town and village, lined up in neat rows in the produce section at fancy grocery stores and at juice stands\u2014just about anywhere you go, delicious fruit is in reach.\n\nYou know pineapple, papaya, mangos, and bananas, but be sure to try these tropical delights that you may not have encountered outside of Colombia.\n\n\u2022 **_Pitahaya_** (dragon fruit): Looking like a yellow grenade, _pitahayas_ have a sweet white meat inside.\n\n\u2022 **_Guan\u00e1bana_** (soursop): By far the most weird-looking fruit, soursop resemble prehistoric dinosaur eggs. Inside the large green spiky fruit is a milky and slimy flesh. _Guan\u00e1bana_ is great in juices and desserts.\n\n\u2022 **_Granadilla:_** Crack open this orangey-yellow fruit and slurp down the slimy gray contents, seeds and all. It's delicious.\n\n\u2022 **_Higo_** (prickly pear): This green fruit comes from cactus plants and has sweet, if tough, orange-colored meat.\n\n\u2022 **_Chirimoya_** (cherimoya): This green fruit that resembles a smooth artichoke is covered with a smooth, silky skin and filled with delectable, sweet pulp.\n\n\u2022 **_N\u00edspero_** (sapodilla): A fruit with a deep brown color that tastes like a prepared sweet.\n\n\u2022 **_Mangostino_** (mangosteen): Crack open a deep purple mangosteen and enjoy the sweet segments inside. They're full of antioxidants.\n\n\u2022 **_Uchuva_** (Cape gooseberry): Known in English as Cape gooseberries, these tart yellow berries are a cousin of the tomato and are tasty on their own or in salads, but are often used in jams and sweets.\n\n\u2022 **_Mamoncillo:_** Tough-skinned grapes (don't eat the skin), mamoncillos are usually only sold at street markets.\n\nThe Amazon Rainforest is home to a large number of vertebrates. Over millennia, a large number of canopy-dwelling species evolved. Monkeys, such as the large and extremely agile spider monkey, the woolly monkey, and the howler monkey, evolved prehensile tails that allowed them to move easily from branch to branch. Anteaters, such as the tamandua and the _oso mielero_ (giant anteater), and the incredibly cute _kinkaj\u00fa_ (kinkajou) also developed prehensile tails. Other inhabitants of the canopy include sloths, such as the adorable-looking three-toed sloth, whose strategy is not agility but passivity: It eats tree vegetation and is covered with algae which gradually turn it green to allow for good camouflage. The canopy is also home to myriad bats and many birds, including exotic eagles, curassows, toucans, woodpeckers, cotingas, and macaws.\n\nNotable is the majestic harpy eagle, with powerful claws and the ability to fly unencumbered through the canopy. It preys on monkeys and sloths, which it kills with the force of its claws. The _tigrillo_ (tiger cat) is a small and extremely endangered species. It has a long tail that helps with its balance as it moves from tree to tree.\n\nOn the ground, large vertebrates include the extremely endangered tapir, an ancient mammal species that can grow two meters long (over six feet) and weigh 300 kilograms (660 pounds). It is equally at ease on land as in the water. Other land mammals include the giant armadillo, giant anteater, deer, and boars, such as the _sa\u00edno_ and _pecar\u00ed._ Smaller mammals include the _guat\u00edn_ and _borugo,_ both rodents. These animals are often prey to the puma and jaguar, both of which inhabit the Amazon but are difficult to observe in the wild.\n\nThe rivers of the Amazon are home to more than 1,500 species of fish, including endangered _piraruc\u00fa,_ one of the largest freshwater fishes on Earth. There are also dolphins, both pink and gray. The former evolved separately from the ocean-going dolphins when the Amazon was an inland sea. The Amazonian gray dolphins are sea dolphins that adapted to living in freshwater. Other aquatic mammals include the highly endangered manatee and otters.\n\nThe Choc\u00f3 Rainforest is particularly rich in palms, of which 120 species have been identified. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as the \"Land of the Palms.\" The forest also abounds in cycads, ancient plants that have a stout trunk and crowns of hard, stiff leaves. Choc\u00f3 is also notable for more than 40 species of brightly colored poisonous frogs, known locally as _ranas kokois._ These small frogs are covered with a deadly poison and have evolved stunning coloring, from bright orange to red, gold, and blue. They are active in the day and therefore relatively easy to spot. Of Colombia's 1,800 species of birds, more than 1,000 have been identified in the Choc\u00f3, including a large number of hummingbirds. Offshore, the Pacific welcomes the annual migration of Antarctic humpback whales. The beaches of the Pacific Coast are popular nesting areas for sea turtles, in particular the _tortuga golfina_ (olive ridley) and _tortuga carey_ (hawksbill) sea turtles. On the island of Gorgona 35 kilometers from the mainland, an unusual\u2014and quite stunning\u2014species of lizard is the blue anole lizard. Highly threatened, it is found only on Gorgona.\n\n#### **CLOUD FOREST**\n\nRainforests that grow at higher altitudes on the flanks of the Andes are known as montane rainforests or cloud forests because they are often enveloped in mist that results from the condensation of warm air against chillier mountain currents. Unlike the lowland rainforest, cloud forests only have two layers, the canopy and ground layer. Generally, the vegetation is less dense than the lowland rainforest. However, it is home to many palms, ferns, and epiphytes, particularly orchids.\n\nThe type of cloud forest vegetation is dictated by altitude. _Selva subandina_ (sub-Andean forest) vegetation grows between the altitudes of 1,000-2,300 meters (3,300-7,500 feet), where temperature varies 16-23\u00b0C (61-73\u00b0F). Plant species include the distinctive Dr. Seuss-like white _yarumo_ with its oversized leaves, as well as cedar, oak, and mahogany trees. Many palms grow here, including the svelte wax palm and _tagua_ , which produces a nut that resembles ivory. Ferns include the striking _palma boba_ or tree fern. Colombia's premier crop, coffee, is grown at this elevation.\n\nAt elevations between 2,300-3,600 meters (7,500-12,000 feet), the vegetation is described as _selva Andina_ (Andean forest). This vegetation is even less dense and at higher elevations the trees are smaller. The vegetation bears some resemblance to landscapes in the northern and southern hemispheres. _Selva Andina_ includes many oak, _encenillo, sietecuero_ (glory bush), and pine trees.\n\nMammals include the spectacled or Andean bear, the only species of bear in South America, the mountain (or woolly) tapir, anteaters, armadillos, sloths, boars, foxes, and _olingos,_ a small arboreal carnivore of the raccoon family. In 2013, the _olinguito_ (small _olingo_ ), an incredibly cute-looking animal, was declared a new species. Other unusual animals include the slow-moving _guagua loba_ and _guat\u00edn,_ both of which are rodents. In addition, numerous species of monkeys inhabit the cloud forest, including noisy troops of howler monkeys. Birds include many types of _barranqueros_ (motmots), including the spectacular blue-crowned motmot. Other common birds include _t\u00e1ngaras_ (tanagers), woodpeckers, warblers, parrots, owls, and ducks, including the beautiful white and black torrent duck.\n\n#### **P\u00c1RAMOS**\n\n_P\u00e1ramos_ are a unique tropical highland ecosystem that thrives above 3,500 meters (11,500 feet), where UV radiation is higher, oxygen is scarcer, and where temperatures vary from minus 2 to 10 degrees Celsius (28-50\u00b0F). Due to frequent mist and precipitation, _p\u00e1ramos_ are often saturated with water and have many lakes. They are true \"water factories\" that provide water to many of Colombia's cities, notably Bogot\u00e1. Though _p\u00e1ramos_ exist throughout the New World tropics, most are located in Colombia. The Parque Nacional Natural Sumapaz, south of Bogot\u00e1, is the world's largest _p\u00e1ramo_.\n\n_P\u00e1ramo_ vegetation includes more than 50 species of _frailej\u00f3n_ (genus _Espeletia_ ), eerily beautiful plants that have imposing tall trunks and thick yellow-greenish leaves. Other _p\u00e1ramo_ vegetation includes shrubs, grasses, and _cojines_ (cushion plants). Mammals include the spectacled bear, _p\u00e1ramo_ tapir, weasels, squirrels, and bats. The _p\u00e1ramo_ is the realm of the majestic black and white Andean condor, which has a wingspan of up to three meters (10 feet). The condor, whose numbers had declined to the point of extinction, are found in the national parks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, and Los Nevados. The _p\u00e1ramo_ lakes welcome many types of ducks, including the Andean duck, as well as smaller birds.\n\n#### **TROPICAL DRY FORESTS**\n\nTropical dry forests exist in areas where there is a prolonged dry season. The vegetation includes deciduous trees that lose their leaves during the dry season, allowing them to conserve water. Trees on moister sites and those with access to ground water tend to be evergreen. Before Columbus, this ecosystem covered much of the Colombian Caribbean coast. However, much of it was cut down for cattle ranching. Pockets still exist east of the Golfo de Morrosquillo and at the base of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Tropical dry forests are the most endangered tropical ecosystem in the world.\n\nThis unusual _frailej\u00f3n,_ a type of cactus, grows in Colombia's _p\u00e1ramos._\n\nhawk\n\nThough less biologically diverse than rainforests, tropical dry forests are home to a wide variety of wildlife. They were once the stomping ground of the now highly endangered _marimonda_ , or white-fronted spider monkey.\n\n#### **TROPICAL GRASSLANDS**\n\nLos Llanos (The Plains) of Colombia are covered with lush tropical grasslands. Vegetation includes long-stemmed and carpet grasses in the drier areas and swamp grasses in low-lying humid areas. There are also thick patches of forest throughout the plains and along the rivers (known as gallery forests). These plains are teeming with wildlife, including deer, anteaters, armadillos, tapirs, otters, jaguars, pumas, and _chig\u00fciros_ (also known as capybaras), the world's largest rodent. The Llanos are also home to the giant anaconda and to one of the most endangered species on Earth, the Orinoco crocodile, which reaches up to seven meters (23 feet) long.\n\n### **History**\n\n#### **BEFORE COLUMBUS**\n\nLocated at the juncture between Central and South America, what is now Colombia was a necessary transit point for the migration of people who settled South America. However, as these peoples left few physical traces of their passage, little is known of them. The oldest human objects found in Colombia, utensils discovered near Bogot\u00e1, are dated from 14,000 BC. With the expansion of agriculture and sedentary life throughout the territory of present-day Colombia around 1000 BC, various indigenous cultures started producing stunning ceramic and gold work, as well as some monumental remains. These remains provide rich material evidence of their development. Nonetheless, there are significant gaps in the understanding of the history of these early peoples.\n\nFrom around 700 BC, the area of San Agust\u00edn, near the origin of the R\u00edo Magdalena in southern Colombia, was settled by people who practiced agriculture and produced pottery. Starting in the 1st century AD, the people of San Agust\u00edn created hundreds of monumental stone statues set on large platforms, which comprise the largest pre-Columbian archaeological site extant between Mesoamerica and Peru. By AD 800, this society had disappeared.\n\nIn the northwestern plains of Colombia, south of present-day Cartagena, starting in the 1st century AD, the Sin\u00fa people constructed a large complex of mounds in the shape of fish bones that regulated flooding, allowing cultivation in flooded and dry seasons. During rainy seasons, the water flooded the lower cavities, allowing for cultivation on the mounds; during dry season, cultivation took place in the cavities that had been enriched by the flood waters. These monumental formations are still visible from the sky. By the time of the Spanish conquest, these people no longer inhabited the area.\n\nFrom AD 500 to 900, the area of Tierradentro, west of San Agust\u00edn, was settled by an agricultural society that dug magnificent decorated underground tombs, produced large stone statues, and built oval-shaped buildings on artificial terraces. As in the case of the San Agust\u00edn and the Sin\u00fa people, it is not known what happened to these people.\n\nAt the time of the conquest, present-day Colombia was populated by a large number of distinct agricultural societies that often maintained peaceful trading relations among themselves. The two largest groups were the Muisca people, who lived in the altiplano (highlands) of the Cordillera Oriental, and the Tayrona, who lived on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Other groups included the Quimbaya, who settled the area of the present-day Coffee Region; the Calima, in present-day Valle del Cauca; and the Nari\u00f1os, in the mountainous areas of southwest Colombia.\n\nThese indigenous societies were mostly organized at the village level with loose association with other villages. Only the Muisca and the Tayrona had a more developed political organization. Though these were all agricultural societies, they also engaged in hunting, fishing, and mining and produced sophisticated ceramics and gold work. Each group specialized in what their environment had to offer and engaged in overland trade. For example, the Muiscas produced textiles and salt, which they traded for gold, cotton, tobacco, and shells with other groups.\n\nThe Muiscas, a Chibcha-speaking people, were the largest group, with an estimated 600,000 inhabitants at the time of the Spanish conquest. They settled the Cordillera Oriental in AD 300 and occupied a large territory that comprises most of the highland areas of the present-day departments of Cundinamarca and Boyac\u00e1. At the time of the conquest, they were organized into two large confederations: one in the south headed by the Zipa, whose capital was Bacat\u00e1 near present-day Bogot\u00e1; and another headed by the Zaque, whose capital was at Hunza, the location of present-day Tunja. The Muiscas had a highly homogeneous culture, skilled in weaving, ceramics, and gold work. Their cosmography placed significant importance on high Andean lakes, several of which were sacred, including Guatavita, Siecha, and Iguaque.\n\nThe Tayrona, who settled the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, were also a Chibcha-speaking people. They had a more urban society, with towns that included temples and ceremonial plazas built on stone terraces, and practiced farming on terraces carved out of the mountains. There are an estimated 200 Tayrona sites, of which Ciudad Perdida (Lost City), built at 1,100 meters in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is the largest and best known. Many of these towns, including El Pueblito in the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, were occupied at the time of the Spanish conquest. The Kogis, Arhuacos, Kankuamos, and Wiwas, current inhabitants of the sierra, are their descendants and consider many places in the sierra sacred.\n\n#### **THE SPANISH CONQUEST (1499-1550)**\n\nAs elsewhere in the New World, the arrival of Europeans was an unmitigated disaster for the Native American societies. Though there were pockets of resistance, on the whole the indigenous people were unable to push back the small number of armed Spanish conquistadors. Harsh conditions after the conquest and the spread of European diseases, such as measles and smallpox, to which the indigenous people had no immunity, killed off millions of indigenous people. The Spanish conquest of present-day Colombia took about 50 years and was largely completed by the 1550s.\n\nIn 1499, the first European set foot on present-day Colombia in the northern Guajira peninsula. In 1510, a first, unsuccessful colony was established in the Gulf of Urab\u00e1 near the current border with Panama. In 1526, the Spanish established Santa Marta, their first permanent foothold, from where they tried, unsuccessfully, to subdue the Tayronas. In 1533, they established Cartagena, which was to become a major colonial port.\n\nIn 1536, Gonzalo Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada set off south from Santa Marta to conquer the fabled lands of El Dorado in the Andean heartland. After a year of grueling travel up the swampy R\u00edo Magdalena valley, 200 surviving members of Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada's 800 original troops arrived in the Muisca lands near present-day Bogot\u00e1. After a short interlude of courteous relations, the Spaniards' greed led them to obliterate the Muisca towns and temples. They found significant amounts of gold, especially in the town of Hunza, but they were, by and large, disappointed. In 1538, Jim\u00e9nez de Quesada founded Santa Fe de Bogot\u00e1 as the capital of this new territory, which he called Nueva Granada\u2014New Granada\u2014after his birthplace.\n\nSebasti\u00e1n de Belalc\u00e1zar, a lieutenant of Francisco Pizarro, led a second major expedition that arrived in the Muisca lands from the south. Having conquered the Inca city of Quito, Belalc\u00e1zar and his army traveled north, conquering a vast swath of land from present-day Ecuador to the _s\u00e1bana_ (high plateau) of Bogot\u00e1. Along the way, he founded several cities, including Popay\u00e1n and Cali in 1536. He arrived shortly after Quesada had founded Bogot\u00e1. Incredibly, a third conquistador, the German Nikolaus Federmann, arrived in Bogot\u00e1 at the same time, having traveled from Venezuela via the Llanos. Rather than fight for supremacy, the three conquistadors decided to take their rival claims to arbitration at the Spanish Court. In an unexpected turn of events, none of the three obtained title to the Muisca lands. When Bogot\u00e1 became the administrative capital of New Granada, they came under the sway of the Spanish Crown. Other expeditions swept across the Caribbean coast, through current-day Antioquia and the Santanderes.\n\n#### **COLONIAL NUEVA GRANADA (1550-1810)**\n\nFor most of its colonial history, Nueva Granada, as colonial Colombia was called, was an appendage of the Viceroyalty of Peru. In 1717, Spain decided to establish a viceroyalty in Nueva Granada but changed its mind six years later because the benefits did not justify the cost. In 1739, the viceroyalty was reestablished, with Santa Fe de Bogot\u00e1 as its capital. It was an unwieldy territory, encompassing present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. To make it more manageable, Venezuela and Panama were ruled by captain-generals and Ecuador by a president. At the local level, the viceroyalty was divided into _provincias_ (provinces), each with a local assembly called a _cabildo_.\n\nSettlement in Nueva Granada occurred primarily in three areas: where there were significant indigenous populations to exploit, as in the case of Tunja in the former Muisca territory; where there were gold deposits, as in Cauca, Antioquia, and Santander; and along trade routes, for example at Honda and Momp\u00f3x on the R\u00edo Magdalena. Cartagena was the main port of call for the biennial convoys of gold and silver sent to Spain. Bogot\u00e1 lived off of the official bureaucracy and sustained a fair number of artisans. Present-day Antioquia and Santander supported small-scale farming to provide provisions to the gold mining camps. Nueva Granada was one of the least economically dynamic of Spain's New World possessions. The mountainous topography and high transportation costs meant that agricultural production was primarily for local consumption and gold was the only significant export.\n\nColonial society was composed of a small Spanish and Creole (descendants of Spanish settlers) elite governing a large mestizo (mixed indigenous-white) population. The Spanish had initially preserved indigenous communal lands known as _resguardos_ , but the demographic collapse of the native population and intermarriage meant that, unlike in Peru or Mexico, there were relatively few people who were fully indigenous. There were also black slaves who were forced mostly to work in the mines and haciendas (plantations). Society was overwhelmingly Catholic and Spanish-speaking.\n\nCulturally, Nueva Granada was also somewhat of a backwater. Though there was a modest flourishing of the arts, Bogot\u00e1 could not compete with the magnificent architectural and artistic production of Quito, Lima, or Mexico City. The only truly notable event of learning that took place was the late 18th-century Expedici\u00f3n Bot\u00e1nica (Botanical Expedition), headed by Spanish naturalist Jos\u00e9 Celestino Mutis, the personal doctor to one of the viceroys. The aim of the expedition was to survey all the species of Nueva Granada\u2014that was a rather tall order given that Colombia is home to 10 percent of the world's species! However, the expedition did some remarkable research and produced beautiful prints of the fauna and flora.\n\n**Colombia's National Parks**\n\nFrom undisturbed coral reefs to the Amazonian jungle to snow-covered mountain ranges, Colombia's national park system is indeed a treasure and making the effort to visit them is worthwhile for any visitor. The country's system of natural parks and protected areas covers more than 14 million hectares: around 13.4 percent of the country! It includes 42 Parques Nacionales Naturales (National Natural Parks), which are major areas of ecological interest that have remained largely untouched by human intervention; and 10 Santuarios de Flora y Fauna (Flora and Fauna Sanctuaries), areas that are devoted to the preservation of specific ecosystems. Of the 42 parks, 24 are open for tourism. The rest are officially off limits, mostly due to security reasons or in order to respect the territory of indigenous communities.\n\nIn 1960, PNN Cueva de los Gu\u00e1charos, in the southwest, was the first park to be established. The number of parks steadily increased, especially from 1986 to 1990 when President Virgilio Barco doubled the extension of parks from roughly 5 million hectares to 10 million hectares. In the past few years, the government has again been increasing the number and extension of parks. In 2013 President Juan Manuel Santos doubled the size of the PNN Serran\u00eda de Chiribiquete to its present 2.8 million hectares, or three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.\n\nCharged with the considerable task of administering this huge system are a mere 430 rangers: roughly one person for every 33,000 hectares. Rangers face a great challenge in protecting the parks against threats related to human encroachment, particularly cattle ranching and the planting of illicit crops. There are other threats as well, such as illegal mining and logging. Paradoxically, what has preserved many of the parks until now has been the lack of security due to Colombia's internal conflict. As security conditions improve, there will be increasing pressure on these natural habitats. The Parks Service is actively engaging with the communities that live near the parks and is transferring the operation of much of the ecotourism infrastructure to community-based organizations as part of an effort to enlist local communities in the preservation of the land.\n\nEntry permits and entry fees are only required in a handful of highly visited parks, such as PNN Tayrona, PNN Gorgona, PNN Cocuy, and PNN Los Nevados. At these, you will automatically be charged if you book lodging in advance, or if not, upon arrival. If you want to be meticulous, you can obtain the entry permit and pay entry fees in advance by contacting the **Parques Nacionales** (tel. 1\/353-2400, www.parquesnacionales.gov.co) in Bogot\u00e1.\n\nThe late colonial period saw unrest in Nueva Granada. Starting in 1781, a revolt known as the Rebeli\u00f3n de los Comuneros took place in the province of Socorro (north of Bogot\u00e1) in present-day Santander as a result of an attempt by colonial authorities to levy higher taxes. It was not an anti-royalist movement, however, as its slogan indicates: _\u00a1Viva el Rey, Muera el Mal Gobierno!_ (\"Long live the king, down with bad government!\"). Rather it was a protest against unfair taxes, not much different from the Boston Tea Party. However, it gave the Spanish government a fright. A rebel army, led by Jos\u00e9 Antonio Gal\u00e1n, marched on Bogot\u00e1. Negotiations put an end to the assault, and later the authorities ruthlessly persecuted the leaders of the revolt.\n\n#### **THE STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE (1810-1821)**\n\nThough there was some ill feeling against the colonial government, as the Rebeli\u00f3n de los Comuneros attests, as well as rivalry between the Spanish- and American-born elites, it was an external event, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, that set off the chain of events that led to independence of Nueva Granada and the rest of the Spanish dominion in the New World.\n\nIn 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain, took King Ferdinand VII prisoner, and tried to impose his own brother, Joseph, as king of Spain. The Spaniards revolted, establishing a Central Junta in Seville to govern during the king's temporary absence from power. Faced with the issue of whether to recognize the new Central Junta in Spain, the colonial elites decided to take matters in their own hands and establish juntas of their own. The first such junta in Nueva Granada was established in Caracas in April 1810. Cartagena followed suit in May and Bogot\u00e1 on July 20, 1810. According to popular myth, the revolt in Bogot\u00e1 was the result of the failure of a prominent Spaniard merchant to lend a flower vase to a pair of Creoles.\n\nThough they pledged alliance to Ferdinand VII, once the local elites had tasted power, there was no going back. Spanish authorities were expelled, and in 1811, a government of sorts, under the loose mantle of the Provincias Unidas de Nueva Granada (United Provinces of New Granada), was established with its capital at Tunja. Bogot\u00e1 and the adjoining province of Cundinamarca stayed aloof from the confederation, arguing that it was too weak to resist the Spanish. Subsequently, various provinces of Nueva Granada declared outright independence, starting with Venezuela and Cartagena in 1811 and Cundinamarca in 1813.\n\nSeveral cities remained loyal to the crown, namely Santa Marta and deeply conservative Pasto in the south. From 1812-1814 there was a senseless civil war between the Provincias Unidas and Cundinamarca\u2014that is why this period is called the Patria Boba, or Foolish Fatherland. Ultimately, the Provincias Unidas prevailed with the help of a young Venezuelan captain by the name of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar.\n\nAfter the restoration of Ferdinand VII, Spain attempted to retake its wayward colonies, with a military expedition and reign of terror known as the Reconquista\u2014the Reconquest. The Spanish forces took Cartagena by siege in 1815 and took control of Bogot\u00e1 in May 1816. However, in 1819, a revolutionary army composed of Venezuelans, Nueva Granadans, and European mercenaries headed by Bol\u00edvar arrived across the Llanos from Venezuela and decisively defeated the Spanish army in the Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1\u2014the Battle of the Boyac\u00e1 Bridge\u2014on August 7, near Tunja. The rest of the country fell quickly to the revolutionary army. With support from Nueva Granada, Bol\u00edvar defeated the Spanish in Venezuela in 1821. Panama, which had remained under Spanish control, declared independence in 1821. Finally, Bol\u00edvar dispatched Antonio Jos\u00e9 de Sucre to take Quito in 1822, bringing an end to the Spanish rule of Nueva Granada.\n\n#### **GRAN COLOMBIA: A FLAWED UNION (1821-1830)**\n\nShortly after the Battle of Boyac\u00e1, the Congress of Angostura, a city on the R\u00edo Orinoco in Venezuela, proclaimed the union of Nueva Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador under the name of the Rep\u00fablica de Colombia. Historians refer to this entity as Gran Colombia. In 1821, while the fight for independence was still raging in parts of Venezuela and Ecuador, a constitutional congress met in C\u00facuta. An ongoing debate about whether a centralist or federalist scheme was preferable resulted in a curious compromise: the Rep\u00fablica de Colombia assumed a highly centralist form, considered necessary to finish the battle for independence, but left the issue of federalism open to review after 10 years. The document was generally liberal, enshrining individual liberties and providing for the manumission of slaves, meaning that the children of slaves were born free.\n\nBol\u00edvar, who was born in Venezuela, was named president. Francisco de Paula Santander, who was born near C\u00facuta in Nueva Granada, was named vice president. Santander had fought alongside Bol\u00edvar in the battles for independence of Nueva Granada and was seen as an able administrator. While Bol\u00edvar continued south to liberate Ecuador and Peru, Santander assumed the reins of power in Bogot\u00e1. He charted a generally liberal course, instituting public education and a curriculum that included avant garde thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham. However, the highly centralist structure was unsavory to elites in Venezuela and Ecuador, who disliked rule from Bogot\u00e1. Shortly after the Congress of C\u00facuta, revolt broke out in Venezuela and Ecuador. In 1826, Bol\u00edvar returned from Bolivia and Peru, hoping for the adoption in Gran Colombia of the Bolivian Constitution, an unusual document he drafted that called for a presidency for life.\n\nThere had been a growing distance between Bol\u00edvar and Santander: Bol\u00edvar saw Santander as an overzealous Liberal reformer while Santander disliked Bol\u00edvar's authoritarian tendencies. In 1828, after a failed constitutional congress that met in Oca\u00f1a in eastern Colombia, Bol\u00edvar assumed dictatorial powers. He rolled back many of Santander's liberal reforms. In September 1828 there was an attempt on Bol\u00edvar's life in Bogot\u00e1. This was famously foiled by his companion, Manuela S\u00e1enz. The last years of Gran Colombia were marked by revolts in various parts of the country and a war with Peru. In 1830, a further constitutional assembly was convened in Bogot\u00e1, but by that point Gran Colombia had ceased to exist: Venezuela and Ecuador had seceded. In March 1830, a physically ill Bol\u00edvar decided to leave for voluntary exile in Europe and died on his way in Santa Marta.\n\n#### **CIVIL WARS AND CONSTITUTIONS (1830-1902)**\n\nAfter the separation of Venezuela and Ecuador, what is now Colombia adopted the name Rep\u00fablica de Nueva Granada. In 1832, it adopted a new constitution that corrected many of the errors of the excessively centralist constitution of Gran Colombia. There was a semblance of stability with the orderly succession of elected presidents. The elimination of some monasteries in Pasto sparked a short civil conflict known as the Guerra de los Supremos, which lasted 1839-1842. During this war, Conservative and Liberal factions coalesced for the first time, establishing the foundation of Colombia's two-party system. Generally, the Conservative Party supported the Catholic church, favored centralization, and followed the ideas of Bol\u00edvar. The Liberal Party supported federalism and free trade and identified with the ideas of Santander.\n\nThe country's rugged topography meant that Nueva Granada was not very integrated into the world economy. Gold, extracted mostly in Antioquia, was the main export. Most of the country eked out its subsistence from agriculture, with trade restricted within regions. This period saw some economic development, such as steam navigation on the Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and a contract for the construction of the trans-isthmanian railroad in Panama, which had yet to secede.\n\nMid-century saw the rise of a new class of leaders who had grown up wholly under republican governments. They ushered in a period of liberal reform. In 1851, Congress abolished slavery. In 1853, a new constitution established universal male suffrage, religious tolerance, and direct election of provincial governors. The government reduced tariffs and Nueva Granada experienced a short export-oriented tobacco boom.\n\nConflicts between radical reformers within the Liberal Party, moderates, and Conservatives led to unrest in various provinces. In 1859, discontented Liberals under Tom\u00e1s Cipriano de Mosquera revolted, leading to generalized civil war in which the Liberals were ultimately victorious. Once in power, they pushed radical reform. Mosquera expropriated all non-religious church property, partly in vengeance against church support of the Conservatives in the previous civil war.\n\nThe 1863 constitution was one of the world's most audacious federalist experiments. The country was renamed the Estados Unidos de Colombia (United States of Colombia), comprising nine states. The president had a two-year term and was not immediately re-electable. All powers that were not explicitly assigned to the central government were the responsibility of the states. Many of the states engaged in true progressive policies, such as establishing public education and promoting the construction of railroads. This period coincided with agricultural booms in quinine, cotton, and indigo that, for the first time, brought limited prosperity. This period saw the establishment of the Universidad Nacional (National University) and the country's first bank.\n\na plaque in Momp\u00f3x, denoting Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar's presence\n\nIn 1880 and then in 1884, a coalition of Conservatives and moderate Liberals, who were dissatisfied with the radical policies, elected Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez as president. N\u00fa\u00f1ez tried to strengthen the power of the central government, sparking a Liberal revolt. The Conservatives were ultimately victorious and, in 1886, enacted a new centralist constitution that lasted through most of the 20th century. The country was rechristened Rep\u00fablica de Colombia, the name it has conserved since then. During the period 1886 through 1904, known as the Regeneraci\u00f3n, the Conservative Party held sway, rolling back many of the previous reforms, especially anticlerical measures and unrestricted male suffrage. The Liberal Party, excluded from power, revolted in 1899. The ensuing Guerra de los Mil D\u00edas (Thousand Days' War), which raged through 1902, was a terribly bloody conflict. It is not clear how many died in the war, but some historians put the figure as high as 100,000, or an incredible 2.5 percent of the country's population of four million at the time.\n\nOne year after the end of the war, Panama seceded. During the late 19th century, there had been resentment in Panama about the distribution of revenues from the transit trade that mostly were sent to Bogot\u00e1. However, in 1902 the local Panamanian elites had become alarmed at the lackadaisical attitude of the government in Bogot\u00e1 regarding the construction of an interoceanic canal. After the failure of the French to build a canal, Colombia had entered into negotiations with the United States. In the closing days of the Guerra de los Mil D\u00edas, Colombia and the United States signed the Hay-Terran Treaty, which called for the construction of the canal, surrendering control over a strip of land on either side of the canal to the United States. The Americans threatened that if the treaty were not ratified, they would dig the canal in Nicaragua. Arguing that the treaty undermined Colombian sovereignty, the congress in Bogot\u00e1 unanimously rejected the treaty with the United States in August 1903. That was a big mistake: A few months later, Panama seceded with the support of the United States.\n\n#### **PEACE AND REFORM (1902-1946)**\n\nUnder the leadership of moderate Conservative Rafael Reyes, who was president 1904-1909, Colombia entered a period of peace and stability. Reyes focused on creating a professional, nonpartisan army. He gave representation to Liberals in government, enacted a protective tariff to spur domestic industry, and pushed public works. During his administration, Bogot\u00e1 was finally connected by railway to the R\u00edo Magdalena. He reestablished relations with the United States, signing a treaty that provided Colombia with an indemnity for the loss of Panama. During the 1920s and 1930s, Colombia was governed by a succession of Conservative Party presidents. Though there was often electoral fraud, constitutional reform that guaranteed minority representation ensured peace.\n\nExpanding world demand for coffee spurred production across Colombia, especially in southern Antioquia and what is now known as the Coffee Region, creating a new class of independent farmers. Improved transportation, especially the completion of the railways from Cali to Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast and from Medell\u00edn to the R\u00edo Magdalena, was key to the growth of coffee exports. In the Magdalena Medio region and in Norte de Santander, U.S. companies explored and started producing petroleum. Medell\u00edn became a center of textile manufacturing. With its broken geography, air transportation developed rapidly. The Sociedad Colombo Alemana de Transportes A\u00e9reos (Colombian German Air Transportation Society) or SCADTA, the predecessor of Avianca, was founded in Barranquilla in 1919, and is reputedly the second oldest commercial aviation company in the world (the oldest is KLM).\n\nIn 1930, a split Conservative ticket allowed the Liberals to win the elections. After being out of power for 50 years, the Liberal Party was happy to regain control of the state apparatus. This led to strife with Conservatives long accustomed to power\u2014presaging the intense interparty violence that was to erupt 14 years later.\n\nFrom 1932-1933, Colombia and Peru fought a brief war in the Amazon over the control of the port city of Leticia. The League of Nations brokered a truce, the first time that this body, which was a precursor to the United Nations, actively intervened in a dispute between two countries.\n\nStarting in 1934, Liberal president Alfonso L\u00f3pez Pumarejo undertook major social and labor reforms, with some similarities to Roosevelt's New Deal. His policies included agrarian reform, encouragement and protection of labor unions, and increased spending on education. He reduced the Catholic church's sway over education and eliminated the literacy requirement for male voters. Many of these reforms simply returned the country to policies that had been enacted by Liberals in the 1850s, 80 years prior. In opposition to these policies, a new radical right, with a confrontational style and strains of fascism and anti-Semitism, arose under the leadership of Laureano G\u00f3mez.\n\nDuring World War II, Colombia closely allied itself with the United States and eventually declared war on the Axis powers in retaliation for German attacks on Colombian merchant ships in the Caribbean Sea. The government concentrated those of German-descent in a hotel in Fusagasug\u00e1 near Bogot\u00e1 and removed all German influence from SCADTA.\n\n#### **LA VIOLENCIA (1946-1953)**\n\nIn the 1946 elections, the Liberal Party split its ticket between establishment-backed Gabriel Turbay and newcomer Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n. Gait\u00e1n was a self-made man who had scaled the ladders of power within the Liberal Party despite the opposition of the traditional Liberal elite. He had a vaguely populist platform and much charisma. The moderate Conservative Mariano Ospina won a plurality of votes and was elected to the presidency. As in 1930, the transfer of power from Liberals to Conservatives and bureaucratic re-accommodation led to outbursts of violence.\n\nOn April 9, 1948, a deranged youth killed former presidential candidate Gait\u00e1n as he left his office in downtown Bogot\u00e1. His assassination sparked riots and bloodshed throughout the country, with severe destruction in the capital. The disturbance in Bogot\u00e1, known as El Bogotazo, occurred during the 9th Inter-American Conference, which had brought together leaders from all over the hemisphere. Young Fidel Castro happened to be in Bogot\u00e1 that day, though he had no part in the upheaval.\n\nThe assassination of Gait\u00e1n fueled the violence that had started in 1946. Over the course of 10 years, an estimated 100,000-200,000 people died in what was laconically labeled La Violencia (The Violence). This conflict was comparable in destruction of human life with the Guerra de los Mil D\u00edas, the last civil war of the 19th century. The killing took place throughout the country, often in small towns and rural areas. Mostly it involved loyalists of the predominant party settling scores or intimidating members of the opposite party to extract land or economic gain. In some cases, the violence was sheer banditry. Numerous, horrific mass murders took place. The police often took sides with the Conservatives or simply turned a blind eye. In response, some Liberals resorted to armed resistance, giving birth to Colombia's first guerrilla armies. The Liberal Party boycotted the 1950 elections, and radical Conservative Laureano G\u00f3mez was elected president. His government pursued authoritarian and highly partisan policies, further exacerbating the violence.\n\n#### **DICTATORSHIP (1953-1957)**\n\nIn 1953, with the purported aim of bringing an end to fighting between Liberals and Conservatives, the Colombian army, under the command of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, staged a coup. Rojas was able to reduce, but not halt, the violence, by curtailing police support of the Conservatives and by negotiating an amnesty with Liberal guerrillas. In 1954, Rojas was elected for a four-term period by a hand-picked assembly. Incidentally, it was this, non-democratically elected assembly that finally got around to extending suffrage to women, making Colombia one of the last countries in Latin America to do so. Rojas tried to build a populist regime with the support of organized labor, modeled after Per\u00f3n in Argentina. His daughter, Mar\u00eda Eugenia Rojas, though no Evita, was put in charge of social welfare programs. Though a majority of Colombians supported him at first, his repressive policies and press censorship ended up alienating the political elites.\n\n#### **THE NATIONAL FRONT (1957-1974)**\n\nIn May 1957, under the leadership of Liberals and Conservatives, the country went on an extended general strike to oppose the dictatorship. Remarkably, Rojas voluntarily surrendered power and went into exile in Spain. As a way to put an end to La Violencia, Liberal and Conservative Party leaders proposed alternating presidential power for four consecutive terms while divvying up the bureaucracy on a 50-50 basis. The proposal, labeled the National Front, was ratified by a nationwide referendum and was in effect 1958-1974.\n\nThe National Front dramatically reduced the level of violence. After years of fighting, both factions were ready to give up their arms. During this period, thanks to competent economic management, the economy prospered and incomes rose. The government adopted import substitution policies that gave rise to a number of new industries, including automobiles.\n\nBy institutionalizing the power of the two traditional parties, the National Front had the unintended consequence of squeezing out other political movements, especially from the left. As a result, during the 1960s a number of leftist guerrilla groups appeared. Some were simply the continuation, under a new name, of the Liberal guerrillas formed during La Violencia. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) was a rural, peasant-based group espousing Soviet Marxism. The Ej\u00e9rcito de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional (ELN) was a smaller group inspired by the Cuban revolution. The even smaller Ej\u00e9rcito Popular de Liberaci\u00f3n (EPL) was a Maoist-inspired group. The Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) was a more urban group formed by middle-class intellectuals after alleged electoral fraud deprived the populist ANAPO Party (Alianza Nacional Popular; created by ex-dictator Rojas) of power. During the 1970s and 1980s, the M-19 staged flashy coups, such as stealing Bol\u00edvar's sword (and promising to return it once the revolution had been achieved) in 1974 and seizing control of the Dominican Republic Embassy in Bogot\u00e1 in 1980.\n\n#### **UNDER SIEGE (1974-1991)**\n\n##### **The Drug Trade and the Rise of Illegal Armed Groups**\n\nDue to its relative proximity to the United States, treacherous geography, and weak government institutions, Colombia has been an ideal place for cultivation, production, and shipment of illegal drugs, primarily to the United States. During the 1970s, Colombia experienced a short-lived marijuana boom centered around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Eradication efforts by Colombian authorities and competition from homegrown marijuana produced in the U.S. quickly brought this boom to an end.\n\nDuring the late 1970s, cocaine replaced marijuana as the main illegal drug. Though most of the coca cultivation at the time was in Peru and Bolivia, Colombian drug dealers based in Medell\u00edn started the business of picking up coca paste in Peru and Bolivia, processing it into cocaine in Colombia, and exporting the drug to the United States, where they even controlled some distribution at the local level. At its heyday in the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar's Medell\u00edn Cartel controlled 80 percent of the world's cocaine trade. The rival Cali Cartel, controlled by the Rodr\u00edguez brothers, emerged in the 1980s and started to contest the supremacy of the Medell\u00edn Cartel, leading to a bloody feud.\n\nDuring the 1980s and 1990s, coca cultivation shifted from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia, mainly to the Amazon regions of Putumayo, Caquet\u00e1, Meta, and Guaviare. Initially, leftist guerrillas such as the FARC protected the fields from the authorities in return for payment from the cartels. Eventually, they started processing and trafficking the drugs themselves. Though the guerrillas had other sources of income, such as kidnapping and extortion, especially of oil companies operating in the Llanos, the drug trade was a key factor in their growth. With these sources of income, they no longer needed popular support and morphed into criminal organizations. By the mid-1980s, the FARC had grown into a 4,000-strong army that controlled large portions of territory, especially in the south of the country.\n\nDuring the 1980s and 1990s, the price of land was depressed as a result of the threat from the guerrillas. Using their vast wealth and power of intimidation, drug traffickers purchased vast swaths of land, mostly in the Caribbean coast of Colombia, at bargain prices. To defend their properties from extortion, they allied themselves with traditional landowners to create paramilitary groups. These groups often operated with the direct or tacit support of the army.\n\nColombian campesinos (small farmers), caught in the middle of the conflict between guerrillas and paramilitaries, suffered disproportionately. They were accused by both guerrillas and paramilitaries of sympathizing with the enemy, and the government was not there to protect them. The paramilitaries were particularly ruthless, often ordering entire villages to abandon their lands or massacring them. The conflict between guerrillas and paramilitaries is at the source of the mass displacement of people in Colombia. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of displaced people in Colombia ranges 3.9-5.3 million, making it the country with the most internal refugees in the world.\n\n##### **Peace Negotiations with the FARC and M-19**\n\nIn 1982, President Belisario Betancur was elected with the promise of negotiating peace with the guerrillas. The negotiations with the guerrillas got nowhere, but the FARC did establish a political party, the Uni\u00f3n Patri\u00f3tica (UP), which successfully participated in the 1986 presidential elections and 1988 local elections, managing to win some mayoralties. The paramilitaries and local elites did not want the political arm of the FARC to wield local power. As a result, the UP was subjected to a brutal persecution by the paramilitaries, who killed more than 1,000 party members. In the midst of this violence, Colombia suffered one of its worst natural disasters: the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in November 1985, which produced a massive mudslide that engulfed the town of Armero, killing more than 20,000 people.\n\nIn 1985, the M-19 brazenly seized the Palacio de Justicia in Bogot\u00e1. The Colombian army responded with a heavy hand, and in the ensuing battle, half of Colombia's Supreme Court justices had been killed. Many people, including many cafeteria employees, disappeared in the army take-over, and there is speculation that they were executed and buried in a mass grave in the south of Bogot\u00e1. Weakened by this fiasco, leaders of the M-19 took up President Virgilio Barco's offer to negotiate peace. The government set down clear rules, including a ceasefire on the part of the M-19, before talks could proceed. Unlike the FARC, the M-19 was still an ideological movement. The leaders of the M-19 saw that by participating in civil life they could probably gain more than by fighting. And they were right: In 2011 the people of Bogot\u00e1 elected Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, as their mayor. On March 19, 1990, Barco and the M-19's young leader, Carlos Pizarro, signed a peace agreement, the only major successful peace agreement to date between the authorities and a major guerrilla group.\n\n##### **The Rise and Fall of the Medell\u00edn Cartel**\n\nInitially, the Colombian establishment turned a blind eye to the rise of the drug cartels and even took a favorable view of the paramilitaries, who were seen as an antidote to the scourge of the guerrillas. For a time, Escobar was active in politics and cultivated a Robin Hood image, funding public works such as parks and housing projects. Rather than stick to his business, as the Cali Cartel did, Escobar started to threaten any official who tried to check his power. In 1984, he had Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Minister of Justice, assassinated. When the government subsequently cracked down, Escobar declared outright war. He assassinated judges and political leaders, set off car bombs to intimidate public opinion, and paid a reward for every policeman that was murdered in Medell\u00edn\u2014a total of 657. To kill an enemy, he planted a bomb in an Avianca flight from Bogot\u00e1 to Cali, killing all passengers on board. The Medell\u00edn Cartel planted dozens of massive bombs in Bogot\u00e1 and throughout the country, terrorizing the country's population. The cartel is allegedly responsible for the assassination of three presidential candidates in 1990: Luis Carlos Gal\u00e1n, the staunchly anti-mafia candidate of the Liberal Party; Carlos Pizarro, the candidate of the newly demobilized M-19; and Bernardo Jaramillo, candidate of the Uni\u00f3n Patri\u00f3tica.\n\nThere was really only one thing that Escobar feared\u2014extradition to the United States. Through bribery and intimidation, he managed to get extradition outlawed, and he negotiated a lopsided deal with the government of C\u00e9sar Gaviria: In return for his surrender, he was allowed to control the jail where he was locked up. From the luxurious confines of La Catedral, as the prison was named, he continued to run his empire. In 1992 there was an outcry when it became known that he had interrogated and executed enemies within the jail. When he got wind that the government planned to transfer him to another prison, he fled. In December 1993, government intelligence intercepted a phone call he made to this family, located him in Medell\u00edn, and killed him on a rooftop as he attempted to flee. It is widely believed that the Cali Cartel actively aided the authorities in the manhunt.\n\n##### **A New Constitution**\n\nThe 1990s started on a positive footing with the enactment of a new constitution in 1991. The Constitutional Assembly that drafted the charter was drawn from all segments of the political spectrum, including the recently demobilized M-19. The new constitution was very progressive, devolving considerable power to local communities and recognizing the rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities to govern their communities and ancestral lands. The charter created a powerful new Constitutional Court, which has become a stalwart defender of basic rights, as well as an independent accusatory justice system, headed by a powerful attorney general, which was created to reduce impunity.\n\n#### **COLOMBIA ON THE BRINK (1992-2002)**\n\n##### **The Unchecked Growth of New Cartels, Paramilitaries, and Guerrillas**\n\nDrug cultivation and production increased significantly during the 1990s. The overall land dedicated to coca cultivation rose from 60,000 hectares in 1992 to 165,000 hectares in 2002. As a result of the government's successful crackdown first on the Medell\u00edn Cartel and then on the Cali Cartel, drug production split into smaller, more nimble criminal organizations. During the 1990s, the paramilitaries became stand-alone organizations that engaged in drug trafficking, expanding to more than 30,000 men in 2002. They created a national structure called the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, under the leadership of Carlos Casta\u00f1o. The AUC coordinated activities with local military commanders and committed atrocious crimes, often massacring scores of so-called sympathizers of guerrillas.\n\nAt the same time, the guerrillas expanded significantly during the 1990s. Strengthened by hefty revenues from kidnapping, extortion, and drug trafficking, they grew to more than 50,000 mostly peasant fighters in 2002. Their strategy was dictated primarily by military and economic considerations and they had little to no public support. At their heyday, the FARC covered the entire country, attacking military garrisons and even threatening major urban centers such as Cali. They performed increasingly large operations, such as attacking Mit\u00fa, the capital of the department of Vaup\u00e9s, in 1998 or kidnapping 12 members of the Assembly of Valle del Cauca in Cali in 2002. The FARC commanders moved around the countryside unchecked. In the territories they controlled, they ruled over civilians, often committing heinous crimes. In 2002, they attacked a church in the town of Bojay\u00e1 in Choc\u00f3, killing more than 100 unarmed civilians, including many children, who had sought refuge there.\n\n##### **Plan Colombia**\n\nThe increasing growth of drug exports from Colombia to the United States in the 1990s became a source of concern for the U.S. government. From 1994 to 1998, the U.S. was reluctant to provide support to Colombia because the president at the time, Ernesto Samper, was tainted by accusations of having received campaign money from drug traffickers, and because of evidence about human rights abuses by the Colombian army. When Andr\u00e9s Pastrana was elected president in 1998, the Colombian and U.S. administrations designed a strategy to curb drug production and counteract the insurgency called Plan Colombia. This strategy had both military and social components, and was to be financed jointly by the U.S. and Colombia. Ultimately, the United States provided Colombia, which was becoming one of its strongest and most loyal of allies in Latin America, with more than US$7 billion, heavily weighted towards military aid, especially for training and for providing aerial mobility to Colombian troops. While the impact of Plan Colombia was not immediately visible, over time it changed the balance of power in favor of the government, allowing the Colombian army to regain the upper arm in the following years.\n\n##### **Flawed Peace Negotiations with the FARC**\n\nPresident Pastrana embarked on what is now widely believed to have been an ill-conceived, hurried peace process with the FARC. He had met Manuel Marulanda, the head of the FARC, before his inauguration in 1998 and was convinced that he could bring about a quick peace. Without a clear framework, in November 1998 he acceded to the FARC's request to grant them a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland in the eastern departments of Meta and Caquet\u00e1. In hindsight, it seems clear that the FARC had no interest or need to negotiate as they were at the peak of their military power. Rather, the FARC commanders saw the grant of the demilitarized zone as an opportunity to strengthen their organization.\n\nFrom the beginning, it became clear that the FARC did not take the peace process seriously. Marulanda failed to show up at the inaugural ceremony of the peace process, leaving a forlorn Pastrana sitting alone on the stage next to a now famous _silla vacilla_ (empty seat). They ran the demilitarized zone as a mini-state, nicknamed Farclandia, using it to smuggle arms, hold kidnap prisoners, and process cocaine. During the peace negotiations, the FARC continued their attacks on the military and civilians. In February 2002, after the FARC kidnapped Eduardo Gechem, senator and president of the Senate Peace Commission, Pastrana declared the end of this ill-advised demilitarized zone and sent in the Colombian Army.\n\nprotest for peace in Bogot\u00e1\n\n##### **A Failed State?**\n\nIn 2002, the Colombian Army was battling more than 50,000 guerrillas and 30,000 paramilitaries, with an estimated 6,000 child soldiers. The insurgents controlled approximately 75 percent of the country's territory. An estimated 100,000 antipersonnel mines covered 30 of 32 departments. More than 2.5 million people had been internally displaced between 1985 and 2003, with 300,000 people displaced in 2002 alone. Not surprisingly, prestigious publications such as _Foreign Policy_ described Colombia at the time as failed state.\n\n#### **REGAINING ITS FOOTING (2002-PRESENT)**\n\n##### **\u00c1lvaro Uribe's Assault on the Guerrillas**\n\nIn the 2002 elections, fed-up Colombians overwhelmingly elected \u00c1lvaro Uribe, a former governor of Antioquia who promised to take the fight to the guerrillas. Uribe had a real grudge against the FARC, who had assassinated his father. The FARC were not fans of his, either. In a brazen show of defiance, during Uribe's inauguration ceremony in Bogot\u00e1 on August 7, 2002, the guerrilla group fired various rockets aimed at the presidential palace, during a post-swearing in reception. Several rockets struck the exterior of the palace, causing minor damage (attendees were unaware of the attack), but many more fell on the humble dwellings in barrios nearby, killing 21.\n\nDuring his first term, Uribe embarked on a policy of Seguridad Democr\u00e1tica, or Democratic Security, based on strengthening the army, eradicating illicit crops to deprive the guerrillas of revenues, and creating a controversial network of civilian collaborators who were paid for providing tips that led to successful operations against the insurgents. The government increased military expenditure and decreed taxes on the rich totaling US$4 billion to finance the cost of the war. Colombian military personnel grew from 300,000 in 2002 to 400,000 in 2007.\n\nFrom 2002 to 2003, the army evicted the FARC from the central part of the country around Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn, although that did not prevent them from causing terror in the cities. In February 2003, a car bomb attributed to the FARC exploded in the parking lot of the exclusive social club El Nogal, killing more than 30 people\u2014mostly employees. From 2004 to 2006, the army pressed the FARC in its stronghold in the southern part of the country. Aerial spraying of coca crops brought down cultivated areas from 165,000 hectares in 2002 to 76,000 in 2006.\n\nIn 2006, Uribe was reelected by a landslide, after Congress amended the constitution to allow for immediate presidential reelection. There is clear evidence that the government effectively bribed two congressmen whose vote was necessary for passage of the measure. Uribe interpreted the election results as a mandate to continue single-mindedly pursuing the guerrillas. The FARC came under severe stress, with thousands of guerrillas deserting and, for the first time, subjected to effective strikes against top commanders. No longer safe in their traditional jungle strongholds in Colombia, many FARC operatives crossed the border into Venezuela and Ecuador, causing tension between Colombia and the governments of those countries.\n\nIn early 2008, the Colombian military bombed and killed leading FARC commander Ra\u00fal Reyes in a camp in Ecuador, causing a diplomatic crisis with that country. Later that year, the military executed Operaci\u00f3n Jaque (Operation Checkmate), a dramatic rescue operation in which they duped the FARC into handing over their most important hostages. The hostages released included three U.S. defense contractors and Ingrid Betancur, a French-Colombian independent presidential candidate who was kidnapped by the FARC during the 2002 presidential election as she proceeded by land, against the advice of the military, towards the capital of the former FARC demilitarized zone. In 2008, Manuel Marulanda, founder of the FARC, died a natural death. At that time, it was estimated that the FARC forces had plummeted to about 9,000 fighters, half of what they had been eight years before.\n\nThe Colombian army has been implicated in serious human rights abuses. Pressure from top brass to show results in the war against the guerrillas and the possibility of obtaining extended vacation time led several garrisons to execute civilians and present them as guerrillas killed in combat. In 2008, it was discovered that numerous young poor men from the city of Soacha, duped by false promises of work, had been taken to rural areas, assassinated by the army, and presented as guerrillas killed in anti-insurgency operations. This macabre episode\u2014referred to as the scandal of _falsos positives_ (false positives)\u2014was done under the watch of Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, who was later elected president of Colombia.\n\n##### **Peace Process with the AUC**\n\nFrom 2003 to 2008, the Uribe government pursued a controversial peace process with the right wing paramilitaries, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. As part of that process, an estimated 28,000 paramilitary fighters demobilized, including most of the high level commanders. In 2005, the Colombian Congress passed a Justice and Peace Law to provide a legal framework for the process. Unlike previous peace laws that simply granted an amnesty to the insurgents, this law provided for reduced sentences for paramilitaries who had committed serious crimes in exchange for full confessions and reparation of victims. Domestic and international observers were extremely skeptical about the process, worrying that the paramilitaries would use their power to pressure for lenient terms. These misgivings were justified by evidence that they used their power of coercion to influence the results of the 2006 parliamentary elections, a scandal referred to as _parapol\u00edtica_. Many congresspersons, including a first cousin of Uribe, ended up in prison.\n\nIt soon became clear that the paramilitary commanders were not sincere in their commitment to peace. Many refused to confess crimes and transferred their assets to front men. Covertly, they continued their drug-trafficking operations. The government placed scant importance on the truth and reparation elements of the Justice and Peace Law, severely underfunding the effort to redress crimes committed against more than 150,000 victims who had signed up as part of the process. Through 2008, the paramilitaries had confessed to a mere 2,700 crimes, a fraction of the estimated total, and refused to hand over assets. Fed up with their lack of cooperation, in 2008 Uribe extradited 14 top ranking paramilitary commanders to the United States, where they were likely to face long sentences. However, the extradition severely hampered the effort to obtain truth and reparation for the victims of their crimes.\n\nThe difficulty in redressing the crimes against victims has been further hampered by the growth of the dozens of small _bacrim (bandas criminals,_ or illegal armed groups) who have taken territorial control of former paramilitary areas, intimidating victims who have returned to their rightful lands under the peace process. Many of these _bacrim_ inherited the structures of the former AUC groups and employed former paramilitaries.\n\n##### **Social and Economic Transformation**\n\nDuring the past decade, Colombia has made some remarkable strides in improving social and economic conditions. Due to improved security conditions, investment, both domestic and international has boomed, totaling almost US$80 billion from 2003 to 2012. Economic growth has averaged 4.7 percent 2002-2012, a significant increase over the prior decades. The number of people below poverty, as measured by the ability to buy a wide basket of basic goods and services, has declined from 59.7 percent in 2002 to 32.7 percent in 2012. In Colombia's 13 largest cities, which represent 45 percent of the population, poverty has fallen to 18.9 percent. In terms of basic needs, most urban areas are well served in terms of education, health, electricity, water, and sewage. However, there is a wide gap between the cities and rural areas, where 30 percent of the country's population lives. As of 2012, rural poverty stood at 46.8 percent. Though income inequality has been slowly falling, Colombia still has one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world.\n\n##### **Peace with the FARC?**\n\nIn the 2010 elections, Uribe's former minister of defense, Juan Manuel Santos, was elected by a large majority. Santos continued to pursue an aggressive strategy against the FARC. Army operations killed Alfonso Cano, the new leader of the FARC, as well as V\u00edctor Julio Su\u00e1rez Rojas, the guerrillas' military strategist. As evidenced in the diary of Dutch FARC member Tanya Nijmeijer, found by the Colombian Army after an attack on a rebel camp, morale within the FARC had sunk to an all-time low.\n\nAt the same time, Santos recognized the need to address non-military facets of the violence. In 2011, Congress passed a comprehensive Victims and Land Restitutions Law, to redress the weaknesses of Uribe's Justice and Peace Law. This law provides a comprehensive framework to redress the crimes committed against all victims of violence since 1985.\n\nAfter a year of secret negotiations, Santos announced the start of peace dialogues with the FARC in October 2012 in Cuba. These have proceeded at a slow pace, surprisingly without any halt to military actions. Former president Uribe and his allies have been very vocal against this initiative, claiming that a military defeat of the FARC is the only sensible path forward. At the time of writing, it was not clear whether the guerrillas were sincere in their desire for peace.\n\n### **Government and Economy**\n\n#### **GOVERNMENT**\n\nUnder the 1991 constitution, Colombia is organized as a republic, with three branches of power\u2014the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The country is divided into 32 _departamentos_ (departments or provinces) and the Distrito Capital (Capital District), where Bogot\u00e1 is located. The departments are in turn divided into _municipios_ (municipalities). These _municipios_ include towns and rural areas.\n\nThe president of the republic, who is both head of state and head of government, is elected for a four-year term. With the exception of the military dictatorship of Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla 1953-1957, presidents has been elected by the people since 1914. In 2005, then-president \u00c1lvaro Uribe succeeded in changing the constitution to allow for one immediate presidential re-election. In 2009, he attempted to get the constitution changed once more to allow for a second reelection but was thwarted by the powerful Constitutional Court, which decreed that this change would break the necessary checks and balances of the constitutional framework.\n\nPresidential elections will be held in May 2014 and 2018. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes, there will be a run-off election. Inauguration of the president takes place on August 7, the anniversary of the Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1, which sealed Colombia's independence from Spain.\n\nThe legislative branch is made up of a bicameral legislature: the Senado (102 members) and the C\u00e1mara de Representantes (162 members). These representatives are elected every four years. Senators are voted for on a nationwide basis, while representatives are chosen for each department and the Distrito Capital. In addition, two seats in the Senate are reserved for indigenous representation. In the C\u00e1mara de Representantes, there are seats reserved for indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities as well as for Colombians who live abroad.\n\nAll Colombians over the age of 18\u2014with the exception of active duty military and police as well as those who are incarcerated\u2014have the right to vote in all elections. Women only gained the right to vote in 1954.\n\n##### **Political Parties**\n\nHistorically Colombia has had a two-party system: the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party has traditionally been aligned with the Catholic Church and has favored a more centralized government, and followed the ideas of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar. The Liberal Party favored a federal system of governing, has opposed church intervention in government affairs, and was aligned with the ideas of Gen. Francisco Paula Santander.\n\nThe hegemony of the two largest political parties came to a halt in the 2002 presidential election of rightist candidate \u00c1lvaro Uribe, who registered his own independent movement and then established a new party called El Partido de la Unidad. Since then, traditional parties have lost some influence. A third party, the Polo Democr\u00e1tico, became a relatively strong force in the early 2000s, capturing the mayorship of Bogot\u00e1, but has since faded, leaving no clear representative of the left.\n\nColombia is known for its coffee production.\n\nThe Partido Verde (Green Party) ran strong in the 2010 elections, with former mayor Antanas Mockus becoming the main rival against eventual winner Juan Manuel Santos. This party has little to do with the global Green Party movement. Political parties today have become personality oriented, and many candidates have been known to shop around for a party\u2014or create their own\u2014rather than adhere to the traditional parties.\n\n#### **ECONOMY**\n\nColombia has a thriving market economy based primarily on oil, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing. The country's GDP in 2013 was US$226 billion and per capita GDP was US$10,100, placing it as a middle-income country. Growth over the past decade has been a robust 4.7 percent. Inflation has averaged 3.8 percent in the past five years and unemployment has hovered around 10 percent.\n\nDuring the colonial period and up until the early 20th century, small-scale gold mining and subsistence agriculture were the mainstays of Colombia's economy. Starting in the 1920s, coffee production spread throughout the country and rapidly became Colombia's major export good. Coffee production is of the mild arabica variety and is produced at elevations of 1,000 to 1,900 meters, mostly by small farmers. During most of the 20th century, Colombia emphasized increasing the volume of production, using the Caf\u00e9 de Colombia name and mythical coffee farmer Juan Valdez and his donkey Paquita to brand it. A severe global slump in coffee prices during the past decade has led to a reassessment of this strategy and an increasing focus on specialty coffees. Today, coffee represents only 3 percent of all Colombian exports.\n\nColombia's wide range of climates, from hot on the coast to temperate in the mountains, means that the country produces a wide range of products. Until recently, sugar cane production, fresh flowers, and bananas were the only major export-driven agribusiness. However, improvements in security in recent years have resulted in a boom in large scale agricultural projects in palm oil, rubber, and soy. Cattle ranching occupies an estimated 25 percent of the country's land. Commercial forestry is relatively underdeveloped, though there is considerable illegal logging, especially on the Pacific Coast.\n\nIn recent decades, oil production and mining have become major economic activities. The main center of oil production is the Llanos, the eastern plains of Colombia, with oil pipelines extending from there over the Cordillera Oriental to Caribbean ports. Oil currently represents roughly half of all Colombian exports. There is also significant natural gas, which is used mostly for residential use. Large-scale mining has been focused on coal and nickel, with large deposits in the Caribbean coastal region. With the improvement of security conditions in the past decade, many international firms, such as Anglogold Ashanti, have requested concessions for large-scale gold mining, often with opposition from the community. Illegal gold mining, often conducted with large machinery, is a severe threat to fragile ecosystems, especially in the Pacific Coast rainforest.\n\nDuring the post-war period, Colombia pursued an import substitution policy, fostering the growth of domestic industries such as automobiles, appliances and petrochemical goods. Since the early 1990s, the government has been gradually opening the economy to foreign competition and tearing down tariffs. In recent years, the country has signed free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. Today, the country has a fairly diversified industrial sector. The country is self-sufficient in energy, with hydropower supplying the bulk of electricity needs.\n\nUntil recently, tourism was minimal because of widespread insecurity and a negative image. Things started to change in the mid-2000s, and the annual number of international visitors has increased almost threefold from 600,000 in 2000 to 1.7 million in 2012. While Bogot\u00e1 and Cartagena still receive the bulk of visitors, almost the entire country has opened up for tourism, though there are still pockets of no-go zones. This boom in tourism has fostered a growth of community and ecotourism options, often with the support from government. The network of _posadas nativas_ (guesthouses owned and operated by locals) is one initiative to foment tourism at the community level, particularly among Afro-Colombians. In recent years, Parques Nacionales has transferred local operation of ecotourism facilities in the parks to community-based associations.\n\n### **People and Culture**\n\n#### **DEMOGRAPHY**\n\nColombia was estimated to have had a population of a little over 47 million in 2013 and has the third highest population in Latin America, behind Brazil and Mexico and slightly higher than Argentina. Around four million Colombians live outside of Colombia, mostly in the United States, Venezuela, Spain, and Ecuador. The population growth rate has fallen significantly in the past two decades and is now 1.1 percent. The population of the country is relatively young, with a median age of 28.6 years. Average life expectancy is 75 years.\n\nSixty percent of the Colombian population lives in the highland Andean interior of the country, where the three largest cities are located: Bogot\u00e1 (7.7 million), Medell\u00edn (3.4 million), and Cali (3.1 million).\n\nIt is increasingly an urban country, with around 75 percent of the population living in urban areas. This trend began during La Violencia and accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s. At least 3.9 million persons have been internally displaced due to the armed conflict in Colombia, leaving their homes in rural areas and seeking safety and economic opportunity in large cities.\n\nMost of the population (over 86 percent) is either mestizo (having both Amerindian and white ancestry) or white. People of African (10.4 percent) and indigenous or Amerindian (over 3.4 percent) origin make up the rest of the Colombian population. There is a tiny Romani or Roma population of well under 1 percent of the population, but nonetheless they are a protected group in the constitution.\n\n**Gay Rights in Colombia**\n\nIn a country still struggling with armed conflict and basic human rights, it might come as a surprise that gay and lesbian rights have not been pushed aside. Colombia has some of the most progressive laws regarding the rights of LGBT people in the western hemisphere. Since 2007, same-sex partners have enjoyed full civil union rights with a wide range of benefits, such as immigration, inheritance, and social security rights.\n\nHowever, when it comes to marriage, it's a little more complicated. In 2011, the top judicial body, the Colombian Constitutional Court, ordered Congress to regulate marriage rights by mid-2013. Congress dithered, leaving the issue up in the air. Since then, scores of same-sex couples have gotten married despite the vehement opposition of the country's Procurador (inspector general), although the country's powerful attorney general has sided with same-sex couples in this legal battle. This limbo has left a bad taste in the mouths of just about everyone: gay rights advocates, the Catholic Church, and powerful conservative politicians.\n\nThere are more than 80 indigenous groups, with some of the largest being the Way\u00fau, who make up the majority in the La Guajira department; the Nasa, from Cauca; the Ember\u00e1, who live in the isolated jungles of the Choc\u00f3 department, and the Pastos, in Nari\u00f1o. Departments in the Amazon region have the highest percentages of indigenous residents. In Vaup\u00e9s, for example, 66 percent of the population is of indigenous background. Many indigenous people live on _resguardos_ , areas that are collectively owned and administered by the communities.\n\nAfro-Colombians, descendants of slaves who arrived primarily via Spanish slave trade centers in the Caribbean, mostly live along both Pacific and Caribbean coasts and in the San Andr\u00e9s Archipelago. Choc\u00f3 has the highest percentage of Afro-Colombians (83 percent), followed by San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia (57 percent), Bol\u00edvar (28 percent), Valle del Cauca (22 percent), and Cauca (22 percent). Cali, Cartagena, and Buenaventura have particularly large Afro-Colombian populations. In the Americas, Colombia has the third highest number of citizens of African origin, behind Brazil and the United States.\n\nWhile Colombia has not attracted large numbers of immigrants, there have been periods in which the country opened its doors to newcomers. In the early 20th century, immigrants from the Middle East, specifically from Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine arrived, settling mostly along the Caribbean Coast, especially in the cities of Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Cartagena, and Maicao in La Guajira. From 1920 to 1950, a sizable number of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews immigrated. Colombia has not had a large immigration from Asia, although in the early 20th century there was a small immigration of Japanese to the Cali area.\n\n#### **RELIGION**\n\nOver 90 percent of Colombians identify as Roman Catholics, and it has been the dominant religion since the arrival of the Spaniards. The numbers of evangelical Christians, called simply _cristianos_ , continue to grow, and there are other Christian congregations, including Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, but their numbers are small. In San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia, the native Raizal population\u2014of African descent\u2014is mostly Baptist.\n\nThe Jewish community\u2014estimated at around 5,000 families\u2014is concentrated in the large cities, such as Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, Cali, and Barranquilla. There are significant Muslim communities, especially along the Caribbean Coast, and there are mosques in Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Valledupar, Maicao (La Guajira), San Andr\u00e9s, and Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Happy Monday!**\n\nColombians enjoy a long list of holidays (over 20). With a few exceptions, such as the Independence celebrations on July 20 and August 7, Christmas, and New Year's Day, holidays are celebrated on the following Monday, creating a _puente_ (literally bridge, or three-day weekend).\n\nDuring Easter week and between Christmas Day and New Year's, interior cities such as Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn become ghost towns as locals head to the nearest beach or to the countryside. Conversely, beach resorts, natural reserves and parks, and pueblos fill up. Along with that, room rates and air tickets can increase substantially.\n\nThe following is a list of Colombian holidays, but be sure to check a Colombian calendar for precise dates. Holidays marked with an asterisk are always celebrated on the Monday following the date of the holiday.\n\n\u2022 A\u00f1o Nuevo (New Year's Day): January 1\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de los Reyes Magos (Epiphany)*: January 6\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de San Jos\u00e9 (Saint Joseph's Day)*: March 19\n\n\u2022 Jueves Santo (Maundy Thursday): Thursday before Easter Sunday\n\n\u2022 Viernes Santo (Good Friday): Friday before Easter Sunday\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de Trabajo (International Workers' Day): May 1\n\n\u2022 Ascensi\u00f3n (Ascension)*: Six weeks and one day after Easter Sunday\n\n\u2022 Corpus Christi*: Nine weeks and one day after Easter Sunday\n\n\u2022 Sagrado Coraz\u00f3n (Sacred Heart)*: Ten weeks and one day after Easter Sunday\n\n\u2022 San Pedro y San Pablo (Saint Peter and Saint Paul)*: June 29\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de la Independencia (Independence Day): July 20\n\n\u2022 Batalla de Boyac\u00e1 (Battle of Boyac\u00e1): August 7\n\n\u2022 La Asunci\u00f3n (Assumption of Mary)*: August 15\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de la Raza (equivalent of Columbus Day)*: October 12\n\n\u2022 Todos Los Santos (All Saint's Day)*: November 1\n\n\u2022 D\u00eda de la Independencia de Cartagena (Cartagena Independence Day)*: November 11\n\n\u2022 La Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n (Immaculate Conception): December 8\n\n\u2022 Navidad (Christmas): December 25\n\nSemana Santa\u2014Holy or Easter Week\u2014is the most important religious festival in the country, and Catholics in every village, town, and city commemorate the week with a series of processions and masses. The colonial cities of Popay\u00e1n, Mompox, Tunja, and Pamplona are known for their elaborate Semana Santa processions. Popay\u00e1n and Mompox in particular attract pilgrims and tourists from Colombia and beyond. In cities such as Bogot\u00e1, Cali, and Cartagena, there are multitudinous processions to mountaintop religious sites, such as Monserrate, the Cerro de la Cruz, and El Monasterio de la Popa, respectively.\n\n#### **LANGUAGE**\n\nSpanish is the official language in Colombia. In the San Andr\u00e9s Archipelago, English is spoken by Raizal natives who arrived from former English colonies after the abolition of slavery.\n\nAccording to the Ministry of Culture, there are at least 68 native languages, which are spoken by around 850,000 people. These include 65 indigenous languages, two Afro-Colombian languages, and Romani, which is spoken by the small Roma population.\n\nThree indigenous languages have over 50,000 speakers: Way\u00fau, primarily spoken in La Guajira; P\u00e1ez, primarily spoken in Cauca; and Ember\u00e1, primarily spoken in Choc\u00f3.\n\n## **ESSENTIALS**\n\nGetting There\n\nBY AIR\n\nBY CAR OR MOTORCYCLE\n\nBY BUS\n\nBY BOAT\n\nGetting Around\n\nBY AIR\n\nBY BUS\n\nBY CAR, MOTORCYCLE, OR BICYCLE\n\nBY BOAT\n\nVisas and Officialdom\n\nPASSPORTS AND VISAS\n\nCUSTOMS\n\nEMBASSIES AND CONSULATES\n\nTips for Travelers\n\nACCESS FOR TRAVELERS WITH DISABILITIES\n\nWOMEN TRAVELING ALONE\n\nGAY AND LESBIAN TRAVELERS\n\nHealth and Safety\n\nVACCINATIONS\n\nMEDICAL SERVICES\n\nDISEASES AND ILLNESSES\n\nCRIME\n\nInformation and Services\n\nMONEY\n\n### **Getting There**\n\n#### **BY AIR**\n\nMost visitors to Colombia arrive by air at the **Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado** in Bogot\u00e1, with some carrying on from there to other destinations in the country. There are also nonstop international flights to the **Aeropuerto Internacional Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda C\u00f3rdova** in Medell\u00edn and to the airports in Cali, Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Armenia.\n\n##### **From North America**\n\n**Avianca** (www.avianca.com) has nonstop flights between Bogot\u00e1 and Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Washington, and New York-JFK. From Miami there are also nonstops to Medell\u00edn, Cali, Barranquilla, and Cartagena.\n\n**American** (www.american.com) flies between Miami and Dallas and Bogot\u00e1; Miami and Medell\u00edn; and Cali and Medell\u00edn. **Delta** (www.delta.com) flies from Atlanta and New York-JFK to Bogot\u00e1. **United** (www.united.com) has flights from Newark and Houston to Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Jet Blue** (www.jetblue.com) has service between Orlando and Fort Lauderdale and Bogot\u00e1, Cartagena and New York, and Medell\u00edn and Fort Lauderdale. **Spirit** (www.spirit.com) has flights from Fort Lauderdale to Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, Cartagena, and Armenia.\n\nthe airport shuttle in Acand\u00ed\n\n**Air Canada** (www.aircanada.com) operates nonstops from Toronto to Bogot\u00e1.\n\n##### **From Europe**\n\n**Avianca** (www.avianca.com) has service to Bogot\u00e1 and Medell\u00edn from Madrid and Barcelona. **Air France** (www.airfrance.com) flies from Paris to Bogot\u00e1. **Iberia** (www.iberia.com) serves Bogot\u00e1 from Madrid. **Lufthansa** (www.lufthansa.com) offers service between Bogot\u00e1 and Frankfurt.\n\n##### **From Latin America**\n\n**Avianca** (www.avianca.com) flies to many capitals in Latin America, including Buenos Aires, S\u00e3o Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Valencia, Caracas, Lima, Santiago, and La Paz in South America; Canc\u00fan, Guatemala City, Mexico City, San Jos\u00e9, San Juan, San Salvador, and Panama City in Central America; and Havana, Santo Domingo, Punta Cana, Aruba, and Cura\u00e7ao in the Caribbean. Aerol\u00edneas Argentinas, AeroGal, Aeromexico, Air Insel, Conviasa, Copa, Cubana, LAN, Gol TAM, TACA, and Tiara Air Aruba also have connections to Colombia.\n\n#### **BY CAR OR MOTORCYCLE**\n\nA growing number of travelers drive into Colombia in their own car or with a rented vehicle. The most common point of entry is at the city of Ipiales on the Pan-American Highway: the Rumichaca border crossing with Ecuador at Ipiales (Tulc\u00e1n on the Ecuador side). This entry point is open 5am-10pm daily.\n\nOn the Venezuelan side, the border at C\u00facuta and San Antonio del T\u00e1chira is open 24 hours a day. Although there are other border crossings with Venezuela, this is the recommended overland point of entry.\n\n#### **BY BUS**\n\nFrequent buses that depart Quito bound for Cali (20 hours) or Bogot\u00e1 (30 hours). You can also take a taxi from the town of Tulc\u00e1n to the border at Ipiales and from there take an onward bus to Pasto, Popay\u00e1n, Cali, or beyond. In Quito contact **L\u00edneas de los Andes** (www.lineasdelosandes.com.co).\n\n#### **BY BOAT**\n\nIt is possible to enter the country from Panama, usually via the San Blas islands. **Blue Sailing** (U.S. tel. 203\/660-8654, www.bluesailing.net) offers sailboat trips between various points in Panama to Cartagena. The trip usually takes about 45 hours and costs around US$500. Sometimes, particularly during the windy season between November and March, boats stop in Sapzurro, Colombia, near the border. **San Blas Adventures** (contact@sanblasadventures.com, www.sanblasadventures.com) offers multi-day sailboat tours to the San Blas islands that usually depart from Cart\u00ed and end up in the Panamanian border village of La Miel. From there you can walk over the border to Sapzurro and take a _lancha_ (boat) from there on to Capurgan\u00e1. There are regular morning boats from Capurgan\u00e1 to both Acand\u00ed and Turbo. During the windy season, especially between December and February, this trip can be quite rough.\n\nIt is also possible to hitch a ride on a cargo boat from Ecuador to Tumaco or Buenaventura; however, service is irregular.\n\n### **Getting Around**\n\n#### **BY AIR**\n\nAir travel is an excellent, quick, and, thanks to the arrival of discount airliners such as VivaColombia, an often economical way to travel within Colombia. Flying is, without a doubt, the best option for those for whom the idea of 16 hours in a bus is not very appealing. Airlines have generally excellent track records and maintain modern fleets.\n\nBogot\u00e1 is the major hub in the country, with domestic **Avianca** (tel. 1\/401-3434, www.avianca.com) flights departing from the Puente Aereo (not from the main terminal of the adjacent international airport). All other domestic carriers: **LAN Colombia** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-094-9490, www.lan.com), **Viva Colombia** (tel. 1\/489-7989, www.vivacolombia.com.co), **EasyFly** (tel. 1\/414-8111, www.easyfly.com.co), **Satena** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com), and **Copa** (tel. 01\/800-011-0808, www.copaair.com) do depart from the new domestic wing of the international airport.\n\nFor some destinations (namely Leticia in Amazonia), the Pacific Coast destinations of Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed, La Macarena (Ca\u00f1o Cristales) in Los Llanos, and San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia in the Caribbean, the only viable way to get there is by air.\n\nIf you plan to fly to Caribbean destinations such as Cartagena, San Andr\u00e9s, Providencia, and Santa Marta during high tourist season, be sure to purchase your ticket well in advance, as seats quickly sell out and prices go through the roof. If your destination is Cartagena or Santa Marta, be sure to check fares to Barranquilla. These may be less expensive, and that city is only about an hour away. Similarly, if you plan to go to the Carnaval de Barranquilla in February, check fares to both Cartagena and Santa Marta. If you are flying to the Coffee Region, inquire about flights to Pereira, Armenia, and Manizales, as the distances between these cities are short. The Manizales airport, however, is often closed due to inclement weather.\n\nMedell\u00edn has two airports: **Aeropuerto Internacional Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda C\u00f3rdova** (in Rionegro) and **Aeropuerto Olaya Herrera.** All international flights and most large airplane flights depart from Rionegro, a town about an hour away from Medell\u00edn. The airport is simply referred to as \"Rionegro.\" **Satena** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-091-2034, www.satena.com) and **Aerol\u00edneas Antioque\u00f1as-ADA** (Colombian toll-free tel. 01\/800-051-4232, www.ada-aero.com) use the Olaya Herrera airport, which is conveniently located in town. This is a hub for flights to remote communities in the western and Pacific Region, including Acand\u00ed and Capurgan\u00e1 near the Panamanian border.\n\nThere are often strict weight restrictions for flights to Providencia from San Andr\u00e9s and generally on small planes, such as on the military-owned Satena airline.\n\n#### **BY BUS**\n\nThe vast majority of Colombians travel by bus. This is the money-saving choice and often the only option for getting to smaller communities. There are different types of buses, from large coaches for long-distance travel to _colectivos_ for shorter distances. _Colectivos_ (minivans) are often much quicker, although you won't have much leg room. There are also shared taxi options between many towns.\n\nWhen you arrive at a bus station with guidebook in hand and backpack on, you will be swarmed by touts barking out city names to you, desperately seeking your business on their bus. You can go with the flow and follow them, or, if you prefer a little more control and calm, you can instead walk past them to the ticket booths. Forge ahead and shake your head while saying _\"gracias.\"_\n\nBe alert and aware of your surroundings and of your possessions when you arrive at bus stations, are waiting in the bus terminal, and are onboard buses. Try to avoid flashing around expensive gadgets and cameras while onboard. During pit stops along the way, be sure to keep your valuables with you at all times. Don't feel obliged to tell anyone your life story, where you are off to, or where you are staying. At the same time, most Colombians are extremely friendly and are simply just curious about foreigners visiting their country.\n\nDuring most bus rides of more than a few hours' length, you will be subjected to violent films that the bus companies apparently find appropriate to be shown to small children. Earplugs, eyemasks, and even sleeping pills available at most pharmacies for those super-long journeys may come in handy, but make sure your possessions are well-guarded.\n\nBus drivers like to drive as fast as possible, and generally have few qualms about overtaking cars even on hairpin curves. You're better off not paying too much attention to the driving\u2014it will do you no good! Large buses tend to be safer than smaller ones, although they may not go as fast.\n\nDuring major holidays, purchase bus tickets in advance if you can, as buses can quickly fill up.\n\nBuses may be stopped by police, and you may be required to show or temporarily hand over your passport (keep it handy). Sometimes all the passengers may be asked to disembark from the bus so that the police can search it for illegal drugs or other contraband. Young males may be given a pat-down. Even if it annoys you, it is always best to keep one's cool and remain courteous with police officers who are just doing their job.\n\nWithin cities, traveling by bus is often the easiest way to get around. Many cities, such as Medell\u00edn, Cali, Armenia, Bucaramanga, Pereira, Barranquilla, and (soon) Cartagena, have adopted the Bogot\u00e1 rapid bus system model of the TransMilenio.\n\n#### **BY CAR, MOTORCYCLE, OR BICYCLE**\n\nDriving in Colombia is generally a poor idea for tourists. Roads are often in a poor state and are almost always just two lanes, speed limits and basic driving norms are not respected, driving through large towns and cities can be supremely stressful, signage is poor, sudden mudslides can close roads for hours on end during rainy seasons, and roads can be unsafe at night.\n\nOne exception is the Coffee Region. Here the roads are excellent, often four lanes, distances are short, and traffic is manageable. If you are planning on spending some time visiting coffee farms and idyllic towns, this might be a good option.\n\nAnother region where renting a car may make sense is in Boyac\u00e1. Here the countryside is beautiful and traffic is manageable.\n\nThere are car rental offices in all the major airports in the country. **Hertz** (tel. 1\/756-0600, www.rentacarcolombia.co) and the national **Colombia Car Rental** (U.S. tel. 913\/368-0091, www.colombiacarsrental.com) are two with various offices nationwide.\n\nTouring Colombia on motorcycle is an increasingly popular option. One of the best motorcycle travel agencies in the country is **Motolombia** (tel. 2\/392-9172, www.motolombia.com), based in Cali. Many motorcyclists take the Pan-American Highway through Colombia to Ecuador to continue on a once-in-a-lifetime South American bike tour.\n\nBicyclists will not get much respect on Colombian roads, and there are rarely any bike lanes of significance. In Santander and in Boyac\u00e1 the scenery is absolutely spectacular, but, especially in Santander, it is often quite mountainous. In the Valle de Cauca, around Buga and towards Roldanillo, the roads are good and flat! Staff at **Colombian Bike Junkies** (cell tel. 316\/327-6101, www.colombianbikejunkies.com), based in San Gil, are experts on biking throughout the country.\n\nEvery Sunday in cities across Colombia thousands of cyclists (joggers, skaters, and dog walkers, too) head to the city streets for some fresh air and exercise. This is the **Ciclov\u00eda** , an initiative that began in Bogot\u00e1, when city streets are closed to traffic. Except in Bogot\u00e1, it may be difficult to find a bike rental place, but you can still head out for a jog. _Ciclorutas_ (bike paths) are being built in the major cities as well, and Bogot\u00e1 has an extensive _cicloruta_ network. Again, cyclists don't get much respect from motorists, so be careful!\n\n#### **BY BOAT**\n\nIn some remote locations in Colombia the most common way to get around is by _lancha_ or boat. Many of the isolated villages and beaches and the Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda along the Pacific Coast are accessed only by boat from either Bah\u00eda Solano or Nuqu\u00ed. The same goes for Isla Gorgona. To get to this island park, you normally have to take a boat from Guapi or from Buenaventura. All hotels or travel agencies can organize these trips for you.\n\nAlthough there are some flights from Medell\u00edn to the Darien Gap village of Capurgan\u00e1, it is often more convenient to either fly to the town of Acand\u00ed and take a boat onward to Capurgan\u00e1 or take a boat from the grubby town of Turbo. Waters can be rough, especially from November to March.\n\nIn the Amazon region, the only way to get from Leticia to attractions nearby, including Puerto Nari\u00f1o and the ecolodges on the R\u00edo Yavar\u00ed, is by a boat on the Amazon, which is a memorable experience. All boats leave from the _malec\u00f3n_ (wharf) in Leticia.\n\nThe island resorts off of the coast of Cartagena are accessed only by boat from the Muelle Tur\u00edstico near the Old City. If visiting Mompox from Cartagena, you'll need to take a ferry from the town of Magangu\u00e9 along the mighty R\u00edo Magdalena.\n\n### **Visas and Officialdom**\n\n#### **PASSPORTS AND VISAS**\n\nU.S. and Canadian citizens do not need a passport for visits to Colombia of under 90 days. Upon arrival, specify if you plan to spend more than 60 days in the country, as immigration officials may automatically stamp a 60-day permission (instead of 90). You could be asked to show a return ticket.\n\nThere is an exit tax of about US$66, divided into two categories (the Tasa Aeroportuaria and the Timbre Aeroportuario), that must be paid in cash in Colombian pesos or U.S. dollars upon departure from Colombian airports. Those who stay fewer than 30 days may be eligible for an exemption of one of the taxes. If you are exempt from one of the taxes, you may be sent at the airport to the airport authority office for an exemption stamp. Sometimes the taxes are included in the price of the airline ticket.\n\nTo renew a tourist visa, you must go to an office of **Migraci\u00f3n Colombia** (www.migracioncolombia.gov.co) to request an extension of another 90 days. Some travelers prefer to make a \"visa run\" to C\u00facuta, get their Colombian exit stamp, cross into Venezuela, and return the same day.\n\n#### **CUSTOMS**\n\nUpon arrival in Colombia, bags will be spot checked by customs authorities. Duty-free items up to a value of US$1,500 can be brought in to Colombia. Firearms are not allowed into the country, and many animal and vegetable products are not allowed. If you are carrying over US$10,000 in cash you must declare it.\n\nDeparting Colombia, expect thorough security checks with police looking for illegal drugs. They also may look for pre-Columbian art and exotic animals.\n\n#### **EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES**\n\nThe **United States Embassy** (Cl. 24 Bis No. 48-50, Gate One, tel. 1\/275-4900, <http:\/\/bogota.usembassy.gov>) is in Bogot\u00e1. In case of an emergency, contact the U.S. Citizen Services Hotline (tel. 1\/275-2000). Non-emergency calls are answered at the American Citizen Services Section from Monday through Thursday 2pm-4pm. To be informed of security developments or emergencies during your visit, you can enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) on the U.S. Embassy website. In Barranquilla, there is a **Consular Agency Office** (Cl. 77B No. 57-141, Suite 511, tel. 5\/369-0419, 8am-noon Mon.-Fri.).\n\nThe **Canadian Embassy** (Cra. 7 No. 114-33, Piso 14, tel. (57-1) 657-9800, www.canadainternational.gc.ca\/colombia-colombie) is in Bogot\u00e1. There is a **Canadian Consular Office** (Bocagrande Edificio Centro Ejecutivo Oficina 1103, Cra. 3, No. 8-129, tel. 5\/665-5838) in Cartagena. For emergencies, Canadian citizens can call the emergency hotline in Canada collect (Can. tel. 613\/996-8885).\n\n### **Tips for Travelers**\n\n#### **ACCESS FOR TRAVELERS WITH DISABILITIES**\n\nOnly international and some national hotel chains offer rooms (usually just one or two) that are wheelchair accessible. Hostels and small hotels in secondary cities or towns will not. Airport and airline staff will usually bend over backwards to help those with disabilities, if you ask.\n\nGetting around cities and towns is complicated, as good sidewalks and ramps are the exception, not the rule. Motorists do not stop\u2014or even slow down\u2014for pedestrians.\n\n#### **WOMEN TRAVELING ALONE**\n\nAlong the Caribbean and Pacific coasts especially, women traveling alone should expect to be on the receiving end of flirts and various friendly offers by men and curiosity by everyone. In other parts of the country this is not as prevalent. Women should be extra cautious in taxis and buses. Always order taxis by phone and avoid taking them alone at night. While incidents are unlikely, it is not a fantastic idea to go out for a jog, a walk on a remote beach, or a hike through the jungle on your own. Walking about small towns at night alone may elicit looks or comments. Don't feel obliged to reveal your life story, where you are staying, or where you are going to inquisitive strangers. There have been incidents in the past with single women travelers in remote areas of La Guajira.\n\ngay pride flag in Bogot\u00e1's Plaza de Bol\u00edvar\n\n#### **GAY AND LESBIAN TRAVELERS**\n\nIn urban areas, especially in Bogot\u00e1, there is wide acceptance (or at least tolerance) of gays and lesbians, except for perhaps some of the poor neighborhoods. But public displays of affection between same-sex couples will generally get stares everywhere.\n\nThere is a huge gay community in Bogot\u00e1 (with the epicenter of gay life the Chapinero area) and gay nightlife scenes in all the other major cities. Bars and clubs are usually quite mixed with gay men and lesbians.\n\nIt may be more of an annoyance than anything else, but cab drivers will routinely ask foreign men what they think of Colombian women and will suggest that they should \"get\" one. (Some will offer to help.) A word or two about the beauty of women from Medell\u00edn or Cali is usually a good response.\n\nGay men should be cautious in nightclubs and on online dating service sites, as persuasive thieves may use their seduction skills to get the chance to steal stuff back at your hotel room! Always keep an eye on your drinks at nightclubs, don't accept drinks or sips from strangers, and don't take cabs off the street, especially in front of clubs late at night.\n\nSame-sex couples should not hesitate to insist on _matrimonial_ (double) beds at hotels. Most hotels in the cities and even in smaller towns and rural areas are becoming more clued in on this.\n\n### **Health and Safety**\n\n#### **VACCINATIONS**\n\nThere are no vaccination requirements for travel to Colombia. However, for certain regions, such as Amazonia and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, it is officially recommended to carry proof of vaccination against yellow fever. You may be required to show this upon entry to the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona. If traveling onwards to Brazil, you may be required to present proof of yellow fever vaccination. The yellow fever vaccination may not be recommended for persons who are HIV positive, for pregnant women, for children, or for others with weakened immune systems.\n\nThe Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that travelers to Colombia get up-to-date on the following vaccines: measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, varicella (chickenpox), polio, and the yearly flu shot.\n\n#### **MEDICAL SERVICES**\n\nColombia has excellent hospitals in its major cities. Sixteen hospitals in Colombia (in Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, Bucaramanga, and Cali) were listed in the _Am\u00e9rica Econom\u00eda_ magazine listing of the top 40 hospitals of Latin America. Four hospitals were in the top 10. Those were the **Fundaci\u00f3n Santa Fe de Bogot\u00e1** (www.fsfb.org.co), the **Fundaci\u00f3n Valle del Lili** (www.valledellili.org) in Cali, the **Fundaci\u00f3n Cardioinfantil** (www.cardioinfantil.org) in Bogot\u00e1, and the **Fundaci\u00f3n Cardiovascular de Colombia** (www.fcv.org) in Floridablanca, near Bucaramanga. For sexual and reproductive health issues, **Profamilia** (www.profamilia.org.co) has a large network of clinics that provide walk-in and low-cost services throughout the country.\n\n**Aerosanidad SAS** (tel. 1\/439-7080, 24-hour hotline tel. 1\/266-2247 or tel. 1\/439-7080, www.aerosanidadsas.com) provides transportation services for ill or injured persons in remote locations of Colombia to medical facilities in the large cities.\n\nTravel insurance is a good idea to purchase before arriving in Colombia, especially if you plan on doing a lot of outdoor adventures. One recommended provider of travel insurance is **Assist Card** (www.assist-card.com). Before taking a paragliding ride or white-water rafting trip inquire to see whether insurance is included in the price of the trip\u2014it should be.\n\n#### **DISEASES AND ILLNESSES**\n\n##### **Malaria, Yellow Fever, and Dengue Fever**\n\nIn low-lying, tropical areas of Colombia, mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever are not uncommon.\n\nMalaria is a concern in the entire Amazon region and in lowland areas of Antioquia, Choc\u00f3, C\u00f3rdoba, Nari\u00f1o, and Bol\u00edvar. There is low to no malarial risk in Cartagena and in areas above 1,600 meters. The Colombian Ministry of Health estimates that there are around 63,000 annual cases of malaria in the country, 20 of which result in death. Most at risk are children under the age of 15. Malaria symptoms include fever, headache, chills, vomiting, fatigue, and difficulty breathing. Treatment involves the administration of various antimalarial drugs.\n\nYellow fever is another disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes. Early symptoms of yellow fever are similar to those of malaria and dengue fever: fever and chills, flu-like symptoms, and yellow-colored skin and eyes (jaundice). Every year there are around 20 cases of yellow fever reported in Colombia. It is most commonly contracted in low-lying areas, such as around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, along the R\u00edo Magdalena, and in the Amazon region. There's no specific treatment for yellow fever, but it could involve blood transfusions, dialysis for kidney failure, and intravenous fluids.\n\nThe number of cases of dengue fever in Colombia has grown from 5.2 cases per 100,000 residents in the 1990s to around 18.1 cases per 100,000 in the 2000s. It is another mosquito-borne illness. The most common symptoms of dengue fever are fever; headaches; muscle, bone, and joint pain; and pain behind the eyes. It is fatal in less than 1 percent of the cases. Treatment usually involves rest and hydration and the administration of pain relievers for headache and muscle pain.\n\n###### **PREVENTION**\n\nUse mosquito nets over beds when visiting tropical areas of Colombia. Examine them well before using, and if you notice large holes in the nets request another one. Mosquitos tend to be at their worst at dawn, dusk, and in the evenings. Wear lightweight, long-sleeved, and light-colored shirts, long pants, and socks and keep some insect repellent handy.\n\nDEET is considered effective in preventing mosquito bites, but there are other, less-toxic alternatives.\n\nIf you go to the Amazon region, especially during rainy seasons, take an antimalarial prophylaxis starting 15 days before arrival, continuing 15 days after departing the region. According to the CDC, the recommended chemo prophylaxis for visitors to malarial regions of Colombia is atovaquone-proguanil, doxycycline, or mefloquine. These drugs are available at most pharmacies in Colombia with no prescription necessary.\n\n##### **Altitude Sickness**\n\nThe high altitudes of the Andes, including in Bogot\u00e1 (2,625 meters\/8,612 feet), can be a problem for some. If arriving directly in Bogot\u00e1, or if you are embarking on treks in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy or in Los Nevados, where the highest peaks reach 5,300 meters (over 17,000 feet), for the first couple of days take it easy and avoid drinking alcohol. Make mountain ascents gradually if possible. You can also take the drug acetazolamide to help speed up your acclimatization. Drinking coca tea or chewing on coca leaves may help prevent _soroche,_ as altitude sickness is called in Colombia.\n\n##### **Traveler's Diarrhea**\n\nStomach flu or traveler's diarrhea is a common malady when traveling through Colombia. These are usually caused by food contamination resulting from the presence of E. coli bacteria. Undercooked meats, raw vegetables, dairy products, and ice are some of the main culprits. If you get a case of traveler's diarrhea, be sure to drink lots of clear liquids and perhaps an oral rehydration solution of salt, sugar, and water.\n\n##### **Tap Water**\n\nTap water is fine to drink in Colombia's major cities, but you should drink bottled, purified, or boiled water in the Amazon, in the Pacific coast, in the Darien Gap region, in La Guajira, and in San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia. If the idea of buying plastic bottles of water upsets you, look for _bolsitas_ (bags) of water. They come in a variety of sizes and use less plastic.\n\n#### **CRIME**\n\nColombia is safe to visit, and the majority of visitors have a wonderful experience in the country. But these remain uncertain times as guerrilla groups continue to fight the military, smaller groups of former paramilitaries ( _bacrim_ ) operate in cities and towns across the country as small drug lords, and dangerous gangs rule many urban areas. It isn't always safe all the time.\n\nThe threat of kidnapping no longer terrorizes Colombians as it did in the 1990s when Colombia earned the unwanted distinction of kidnapping capital of the world, but it continues to be a source of income for illegal armed groups.\n\nWhile kidnapping of foreigners has decreased dramatically, it still happens. In June 2013, a former U.S. Navy Seal, Kevin Scott Sutay, was kidnapped by the FARC as he was trekking (against the advice of the Colombian police and others) through the Amazonian rainforest towards Ecuador. In 2012, a pair of German brothers who were driving across Colombia in their four-wheel-drive vehicle were kidnapped in the Catatumbo region in the eastern department of Cesar by the ELN guerrilla group, who accused them of being spies. A Norwegian was kidnapped in 2013 as he was attempting to cross through the Darien Gap into Panama on foot. A Spanish couple, touring the deserts of La Guajira in their own vehicle, were kidnapped by common criminals near Cabo de la Vela in May 2013 and rescued by the police about a month later.\n\nColombian police\n\nThe areas where these foreigners were kidnapped, with the exception of Cabo de la Vela, are known to be volatile regions where tourists would be wise to contract local drivers. While it is a good idea to get informed on the security situation of areas in Colombia before traveling by checking the U.S. Embassy website (<http:\/\/bogota.usembassy.gov>), some areas are widely known to be iffy for visitors due to the presence of illegal and armed groups. These areas include much of the Amazon region, including the departments of Putumayo, Caquet\u00e1, Guaviare, Vaup\u00e9s, and Amazonas except for around Leticia and Puerto Nari\u00f1o; the southern Llanos (visiting Ca\u00f1o Cristales by plane is OK); the department of Arauca; the Catatumbo region of Cesar and Norte de Santander; most of the Choc\u00f3 department, with the exceptions of Quibd\u00f3 and the coastal tourist areas of Bah\u00eda Solano and Nuqu\u00ed; the Darien Gap region, including the Los Katios park (Capurgan\u00e1 and Sapzurro are considered safe); and parts of Cauca near Santander de Quilichao.\n\nAround tourist attractions in large cities, there is a strong police presence. This is especially true in the Old City of Cartagena and in the Centro Hist\u00f3rico of Bogot\u00e1. Street crime and homelessness are problems in poor neighborhoods and downtown areas of all the major cities after dark.\n\nParticularly in Bogot\u00e1, but in other large cities as well, countless locals and visitors alike have been victims of the taxi crime of _paseo milonario_ (the millionaire's ride). This occurs when you take a cab off the street, and within minutes the driver makes a sudden turn or invents an excuse that he needs to stop. At that point, usually two others will jump into the cab on either side of the victim and will threaten him or her at knife or gunpoint. The victim will then be driven to several ATMs in the city and forced to withdraw large amounts of cash. This crime tragically claimed the life of an American Drug Enforcement Agency agent in 2013 in Bogot\u00e1. Largely due to this crime, which soiled Colombia's reputation abroad, authorities have redoubled their efforts to prevent this crime and prosecute the perpetrators.\n\nPrevention is the key to avoiding becoming a victim. Always order a cab by phone or by the popular and free smartphone application Tappsi (available in most cities). When you order a cab, or have one ordered for you, be sure to jot down the _placas_ (license plate numbers). The operator will give these to you. When the cab arrives, confirm the _placas._ It is especially important to order a cab at night and when leaving upscale restaurants, shopping areas, and nightclubs.\n\nAnother crime to be aware of is poisoning. Poisoning most often occurs in nightclubs, when someone will either poison your drink or offer you a drink that has been poisoned. They will then easily persuade the victim to leave the club with them, and will force him or her to withdraw large sums of money from ATMs or will rob the victim of possessions. Although this is commonly called _burundanga_ poisoning, after a flower called the _borrachero_ whose seeds, when consumed, can render one helpless and in a zombie-like trance, the drug used by most criminals is not from the flower but a potent cocktail of drugs including the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam.\n\n### **Information and Services**\n\n#### **MONEY**\n\n##### **Currency**\n\nColombia's official currency is the peso, which is abbreviated as COP. Prices in Colombia are marked with a dollar sign, but remember that you're seeing the price in Colombian pesos. COP$1,000,000 isn't enough to buy a house in Colombia, but it will usually cover a few nights in a nice hotel!\n\nBills in Colombia are in denominations of $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, and $100,000. Coins in Colombia got a makeover in 2012, so you may see two different versions of the same coin amount. Coins in Colombia are in denominations of $50, $100, $200, $500, and $1,000. The equivalent of cents is _centavos_ in Colombian Spanish.\n\nThe exchange rate for Colombian pesos fluctuates. The best way to make a quick (though imprecise) conversion to U.S. dollars is to take half of the amount and move the decimal three places to the left. Thus, think of COP$10,000 to be around US$5, and COP$20,000 to be US$10.\n\nMost banks in Colombia do not exchange money. For that, you'll have to go to a exchange bank, located in all major cities. There are money changers on the streets of Cartagena, but the street is not the best place for safe and honest transactions!\n\nTravelers checks are not worth the hassle of carrying around anymore, as they are hard to cash. Dollars are rarely accepted, save for high-end hotels or in San Andr\u00e9s. To have cash wired to you from abroad, look for a Western Union office. These are located only in major cities.\n\nCounterfeit bills are a problem in Colombia, and unsuspecting international visitors are often the recipient of them. Bar staff, taxi drivers, and street vendors are the most common culprits of this. It's good to always have a stash of small bills as a preventative measure. Tattered and torn bills will also be passed off to you, which could pose a problem. Try not to accept those.\n\n##### **Consignaciones**\n\n_Consignaciones_ (bank transfers) are a common way to pay for hotel reservations (especially in remote areas such as in Amazonia or in Choc\u00f3), tour packages or guides, or entry to national parks. Frankly it's usually a pain to make these deposits in person, as the world of banking can be confusing for non-Colombians. On the plus side, making a deposit directly into the hotel's bank account provides some peace of mind as it will diminish the need to carry with you large amounts of cash. To make a _consignaci\u00f3n_ you will need to know the recipient's bank account and whether that is a _corriente_ (checking) or _ahorros_ (savings) account, and you will need to show some identification and probably have to provide a fingerprint. Be sure to hold on to the receipt to be able to notify the recipient of your deposit.\n\n##### **ATMs**\n\nThe best way to get cash is to use your bank ATM card. These are almost universally accepted at _cajeros autom\u00e1ticos_ (ATMs) in the country. _Cajeros_ are almost everywhere except in the smallest of towns or in remote areas. Withdrawal fees are relatively expensive, although they vary. You can usually take out up to around COP$300,000-500,000 (the equivalent of around US$150-250) per transaction. Many banks place limits on how much one can withdraw in a day (COP$1,000,000).\n\n##### **Credit and Debit Cards**\n\nCredit and debit card use is becoming more and more prevalent in Colombia; however, online credit card transactions are still not so common except for the major airlines and some of the event ticket companies, such as www.tuboleta.com or www.colboletos.com. When you use your plastic, you will be asked if it's _credito_ (credit) or _debito_ (debit). If using a _tarjeta de credito_ (credit card) you will be asked something like, _\"\u00bfCuantas cuotas?\"_ or _\"\u00bfNumero de cuotas?\"_ (\"How many installments?\"). Most visitors prefer one _cuota_ ( _\"Una, por favor\"_ ). But you can have even your dinner bill paid in up to 24 installments! If using a _tarjeta de debito,_ you'll be asked if it is a _corriente_ (checking) or _ahorros_ (savings) account.\n\n##### **Tipping**\n\nIn most sit-down restaurants, a 10 percent service charge is automatically included in the bill. Wait staff are required to ask you, _\"\u00bfDesea incluir el servicio?\"_ (\"Would you like to include the service in the bill?\"). Many times restaurant staff neglect to ask tourists about the service inclusion. Of course if you find the service to be exceptional, you can leave a little extra in cash. Tipping is not expected in bars, nor is it expected at caf\u00e9s, although tip jars are becoming more common in larger cities.\n\nIt is not customary to tip taxi drivers. But if you feel the driver was a good one, driving safely and was honest, or if he or she made an additional stop for you, waited for you, or was just pleasant, you can always round up the bill (instead of COP$6,200 give the driver COP$7,000 and say _\"Qu\u00e9dese con las vueltas por favor\"_ (\"Keep the change\"). Note that sometimes a tip is already included in the fare for non-Colombian visitors!\n\nIn hotels, usually a tip of COP$5,000 will suffice for porters who help with luggage, unless you have lots of stuff. Tips are not expected, but are certainly welcome, for housekeeping staff.\n\n## **RESOURCES**\n\nSpanish Phrasebook\n\nPRONUNCIATION\n\nBASIC AND COURTEOUS EXPRESSIONS\n\nTERMS OF ADDRESS\n\nTRANSPORTATION\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nFOOD\n\nSHOPPING\n\nHEALTH\n\nCOMMUNICATIONS\n\nAT THE BORDER\n\nAT THE GAS STATION\n\nVERBS\n\nNUMBERS\n\nTIME\n\nDAYS AND MONTHS\n\nSuggested Reading\n\nHISTORY\n\nTHE DRUG WAR AND ARMED CONFLICTS\n\nNATURAL HISTORY\n\nETHNOGRAPHY\n\nARCHITECTURE\n\nTRAVEL\n\nPHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATED BOOKS\n\nFICTION\n\nInternet and Digital Resources\n\nACCOMMODATIONS\n\nBIRDING\n\nCARTAGENA\n\nECO-TOURISM\n\nEMBASSIES AND VISAS\n\nENTERTAINMENT, CULTURE, AND EVENTS\n\nHISTORY AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES\n\nLANGUAGE COURSES\n\nMEDELL\u00cdN\n\nNEWS AND MEDIA\n\nTRANSPORTATION\n\nTRAVEL INFORMATION\n\nVOLUNTEERING\n\n### **Spanish Phrasebook**\n\nKnowing some Spanish is essential to visit Colombia, as relatively few people outside the major cities speak English. Colombian Spanish is said to be one of the clearest in Latin America. However, there are many regional differences.\n\nSpanish commonly uses 30 letters\u2014the familiar English 26, plus four straightforward additions: ch, ll, \u00f1, and rr, which are explained in \"Consonants,\" below.\n\n#### **PRONUNCIATION**\n\nOnce you learn them, Spanish pronunciation rules\u2014in contrast to English\u2014don't change. Spanish vowels generally sound softer than in English. ( _Note:_ The capitalized syllables below receive stronger accents.)\n\n##### **Vowels**\n\n**a** like ah, as in \"hah\": _agua_ AH-gooah (water), _pan_ PAHN (bread), and _casa_ CAH-sah (house)\n\n**e** like ay, as in \"may:\" _mesa_ MAY-sah (table), _tela_ TAY-lah (cloth), and _de_ DAY (of, from)\n\n**i** like ee, as in \"need\": _diez_ dee-AYZ (ten), _comida_ ko-MEE-dah (meal), and _fin_ FEEN (end)\n\n**o** like oh, as in \"go\": _peso_ PAY-soh (weight), _ocho_ OH-choh (eight), and _poco_ POH-koh (a bit)\n\n**u** like oo, as in \"cool\": _uno_ OO-noh (one), _cuarto_ KOOAHR-toh (room), and _usted_ oos-TAYD (you); when it follows a \"q\" the **u** is silent; when it follows an \"h\" or has an umlaut, it's pronounced like \"w\"\n\n##### **Consonants**\n\n**b, d, f, k, l, m, n, p, q, s, t, v, w, x, y, z, and ch** pronounced almost as in English; **h** occurs, but is silent\u2014not pronounced at all\n\n**c** like k as in \"keep\": _cuarto_ KOOAR-toh (room), casa KAH-sah (house); when it precedes \"e\" or \"i,\" pronounce **c** like s, as in \"sit\": _cerveza_ sayr-VAY-sah (beer), _encima_ ayn-SEE-mah (atop)\n\n**g** like g as in \"gift\" when it precedes \"a,\" \"o,\" \"u,\" or a consonant: _gato_ GAH-toh (cat), _hago_ AH-goh (I do, make); otherwise, pronounce **g** like h as in \"hat\": _giro_ HEE-roh (money order), _gente_ HAYN-tay (people)\n\n**j** like h, as in \"has\": _Jueves_ HOOAY-vays (Thursday), _mejor_ may-HOR (better)\n\n**ll** like y, as in \"yes\": _toalla_ toh-AH-yah (towel), _ellos_ AY-yohs (they, them)\n\n**\u00f1** like ny, as in \"canyon\": _a\u00f1o_ AH-nyo (year), _se\u00f1or_ SAY-nyor (Mr., sir)\n\n**r** is lightly trilled, with tongue at the roof of your mouth like a very light English d, as in \"ready\": _pero_ PAY-roh (but), _tres_ TRAYS (three), _cuatro_ KOOAH-troh (four)\n\n**rr** like a Spanish r, but with much more emphasis and trill. Let your tongue flap. Practice with _burro_ (donkey), _carretera_ (highway), and Carrillo (proper name), then really let go with _ferrocarril_ (railroad)\n\n_Note:_ The single small but common exception to all of the above is the pronunciation of Spanish **y** when it's being used as the Spanish word for \"and,\" as in \"Ron y Kathy.\" In such case, pronounce it like the English ee, as in \"keep\": Ron \"ee\" Kathy (Ron and Kathy).\n\n##### **Accent**\n\nThe rule for accents, the relative stress given to syllables within a given word, is straightforward. If a word ends in a vowel, an n, or an s, accent the next-to-last syllable; if not, accent the last syllable.\n\nPronounce _gracias_ GRAH-seeahs (thank you), _orden_ OHR-dayn (order), and _carretera_ kah-ray-TAY-rah (highway) with stress on the next-to-last syllable.\n\nOtherwise, accent the last syllable: _venir_ vay-NEER (to come), _ferrocarril_ fay-roh-cah-REEL (railroad), and _edad_ ay-DAHD (age).\n\n**Exceptions** to the accent rule are always marked with an accent sign: (\u00e1, \u00e9, \u00ed, \u00f3, or \u00fa), such as _tel\u00e9fono_ tay-LAY-foh-noh (telephone), _jab\u00f3n_ hah-BON (soap), and _r\u00e1pido_ RAH-pee-doh (rapid).\n\n#### **BASIC AND COURTEOUS EXPRESSIONS**\n\nColombians use many courteous formalities. Whenever approaching anyone for information or some other reason, do not forget the appropriate salutation\u2014good morning, good evening, etc. Standing alone, the greeting _hola_ (hello) can sound brusque.\n\n**Hello.** _Hola._\n\n**Good morning.** _Buenos d\u00edas._\n\n**Good afternoon.** _Buenas tardes._\n\n**Good evening.** _Buenas noches._\n\n**How are you?** Colombians have many ways of saying this: _\u00bfC\u00f3mo est\u00e1s\/como est\u00e1? \u00bfQu\u00e9 hubo\/Qu'hubo? \u00bfC\u00f3mo va\/vas? \u00bfQue tal?_\n\n**Very well, thank you.** _Muy bien, gracias._\n\n**Okay; good.** _Bien._\n\n**Not okay; bad.** _Mal._\n\n**So-so.** _M\u00e1s o menos._\n\n**And you?** _\u00bfY Usted?_\n\n**Thank you.** _Gracias._\n\n**Thank you very much.** _Muchas gracias._\n\n**You're very kind.** _Muy amable._\n\n**You're welcome.** _De nada._\n\n**Goodbye.** _Adi\u00f3s._\n\n**See you later.** _Hasta luego. Chao._\n\n**please** _por favor;_ (slang) _por fa_\n\n**yes** _s\u00ed_\n\n**no** _no_\n\n**I don't know.** _No s\u00e9._\n\n**Just a moment, please.** _Un momento, por favor._\n\n**Excuse me, please (when you're trying to get attention).** _Disculpe._\n\n**Excuse me (when you've made a mistake).** _Perd\u00f3n. Que pena._\n\n**I'm sorry.** _Lo siento._\n\n**Pleased to meet you.** _Mucho gusto._\n\n**How do you say . . . in Spanish?** _\u00bfC\u00f3mo se dice . . . en espa\u00f1ol?_\n\n**What is your name?** _\u00bfC\u00f3mo se llama (Usted)? \u00bfC\u00f3mo te llamas?_\n\n**Do you speak English?** _\u00bfHabla (Usted) ingl\u00e9s? \u00bfHablas ingl\u00e9s?_\n\n**Does anyone here speak English?** _\u00bfHay alguien que hable ingl\u00e9s?_\n\n**I don't speak Spanish well.** _No hablo bien el espa\u00f1ol._\n\n**Please speak more slowly.** _Por favor hable m\u00e1s despacio._\n\n**I don't understand.** _No entiendo._\n\n**Please write it down.** _Por favor escr\u00edbalo._\n\n**My name is . . .** _Me llamo . . . Mi nombre es..._\n\n**I would like . . .** _Quisiera . . . Quiero . . ._\n\n**Let's go to . . .** _Vamos a . . ._\n\n**That's fine.** _Est\u00e1 bien._\n\n**All right.** _Listo._\n\n**cool, awesome** _ch\u00e9vere, rico, super_\n\n**Oh my god!** _\u00a1Dios m\u00edo!_\n\n**That's crazy!** _\u00a1Qu\u00e9 locura!_\n\n**You're crazy!** _\u00a1Est\u00e1s loca\/o!_\n\n#### **TERMS OF ADDRESS**\n\nWhen in doubt, use the formal _Usted_ (you) as a form of address.\n\n**I** _yo_\n\n**you (formal)** _Usted_\n\n**you (familiar)** _t\u00fa_\n\n**he\/him** _\u00e9l_\n\n**she\/her** _ella_\n\n**we\/us** _nosotros_\n\n**you (plural)** _Ustedes_\n\n**they\/them** _ellas_ (all females); _ellos_ (all males or mixed gender)\n\n**Mr., sir** _se\u00f1or_\n\n**Mrs., madam** _se\u00f1ora_\n\n**miss, young lady** _se\u00f1orita_\n\n**wife** _esposa_\n\n**husband** _esposo_\n\n**friend** _amigo\/a_\n\n**girlfriend\/boyfriend** _novia_ (female); _novio_ (male)\n\n**partner** _pareja_\n\n**daughter; son** _hija; hijo_\n\n**brother; sister** _hermano; hermana_\n\n**mother; father** _madre; padre_\n\n**grandfather; grandmother** _abuelo; abuela_\n\n#### **TRANSPORTATION**\n\n**Where is . . . ?** _\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 . . . ?_\n\n**How far is it to . . . ?** _\u00bfA cu\u00e1nto queda . . . ?_\n\n**from . . . to . . .** _de . . . a . . ._\n\n**How many blocks?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1ntas cuadras?_\n\n**Where (Which) is the way to . . . ?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1l es el camino a . . . ? \u00bfPor d\u00f3nde es...?_\n\n**bus station** _la terminal de buses\/terminal de transporte_\n\n**bus stop** _la parada_\n\n**Where is this bus going?** _\u00bfA d\u00f3nde va este b\u00fas?_\n\n**boat** _el barco, la lancha_\n\n**dock** _el muelle_\n\n**airport** _el aeropuerto_\n\n**I'd like a ticket to . . .** _Quisiera un pasaje a . . ._\n\n**roundtrip** _ida y vuelta_\n\n**reservation** _reserva_\n\n**baggage** _equipaje_\n\n**next flight** _el pr\u00f3ximo vuelo_\n\n**Stop here, please.** _Pare aqu\u00ed, por favor._\n\n**the entrance** _la entrada_\n\n**the exit** _la salida_\n\n**(very) near; far** _(muy) cerca; lejos_\n\n**to; toward** _a_\n\n**by; through** _por_\n\n**from** _de_\n\n**right** _la derecha_\n\n**left** _la izquierda_\n\n**straight ahead** _derecho_\n\n**in front** _en frente_\n\n**beside** _al lado_\n\n**behind** _atr\u00e1s_\n\n**corner** _la esquina_\n\n**stoplight** _la sem\u00e1foro_\n\n**turn** _una vuelta_\n\n**here** _aqu\u00ed_\n\n**somewhere around here** _por aqu\u00ed_\n\n**there** _all\u00ed_\n\n**somewhere around there** _por all\u00e1_\n\n**road** _camino_\n\n**street** _calle, carrera_\n\n**avenue** _avenida_\n\n**block** _la cuadra_\n\n**highway** _carretera_\n\n**kilometer** _kil\u00f3metro_\n\n**bridge; toll** _puente; peaje_\n\n**address** _direcci\u00f3n_\n\n**north; south** _norte; sur_\n\n**east; west** _oriente (este); occidente (oeste)_\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\n**hotel** _hotel_\n\n**Is there a room available?** _\u00bfHay un cuarto disponible?_\n\n**May I (may we) see it?** _\u00bfPuedo (podemos) verlo?_\n\n**How much is it?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1nto cuesta?_\n\n**Is there something cheaper?** _\u00bfHay algo m\u00e1s econ\u00f3mico?_\n\n**single room** _un cuarto sencillo_\n\n**double room** _un cuarto doble_\n\n**double bed** _cama matrimonial_\n\n**single bed** _cama sencilla_\n\n**with private bath** _con ba\u00f1o propio_\n\n**television** _televisor_\n\n**window** _ventana_\n\n**view** _vista_\n\n**hot water** _agua caliente_\n\n**shower** _ducha_\n\n**towels** _toallas_\n\n**soap** _jab\u00f3n_\n\n**toilet paper** _papel higi\u00e9nico_\n\n**pillow** _almohada_\n\n**blanket** _cobija_\n\n**sheets** _s\u00e1banas_\n\n**air-conditioned** _aire acondicionado_\n\n**fan** _ventilador_\n\n**swimming pool** _piscina_\n\n**gym** _gimnasio_\n\n**bike** _bicicleta_\n\n**key** _llave_\n\n**suitcase** _maleta_\n\n**backpack** _mochila_\n\n**lock** _candado_\n\n**safe** _caja de seguridad_\n\n**manager** _gerente_\n\n**maid** _empleada_\n\n**clean** _limpio_\n\n**dirty** _sucio_\n\n**broken** _roto_\n\n**(not) included** _(no) incluido_\n\n#### **FOOD**\n\n**I'm hungry.** _Tengo hambre._\n\n**I'm thirsty.** _Tengo sed._\n\n**Table for two, please.** _Una mesa para dos, por favor._\n\n**menu** _carta_\n\n**order** _orden_\n\n**glass** _vaso_\n\n**glass of water** _vaso con agua_\n\n**fork** _tenedor_\n\n**knife** _cuchillo_\n\n**spoon** _cuchara_\n\n**napkin** _servilleta_\n\n**soft drink** _gaseosa_\n\n**coffee** _caf\u00e9, tinto_\n\n**tea** _t\u00e9_\n\n**drinking water** _agua potable_\n\n**bottled carbonated water** _agua con gas_\n\n**bottled uncarbonated water** _agua sin gas_\n\n**beer** _cerveza_\n\n**wine** _vino_\n\n**glass of wine** _copa de vino_\n\n**red wine** _vino tinto_\n\n**white wine** _vino blanco_\n\n**milk** _leche_\n\n**juice** _jugo_\n\n**cream** _crema_\n\n**sugar** _az\u00facar_\n\n**cheese** _queso_\n\n**breakfast** _desayuno_\n\n**lunch** _almuerzo_\n\n**daily lunch special** _men\u00fa del d\u00eda_\n\n**dinner** _comida_\n\n**the check** _la cuenta_\n\n**eggs** _huevos_\n\n**bread** _pan_\n\n**salad** _ensalada_\n\n**lettuce** _lechuga_\n\n**tomato** _tomate_\n\n**onion** _cebolla_\n\n**garlic** _ajo_\n\n**hot sauce** _aj\u00ed_\n\n**fruit** _fruta_\n\n**mango** _mango_\n\n**watermelon** _patilla_\n\n**papaya** _papaya_\n\n**banana** _banano_\n\n**apple** _manzana_\n\n**orange** _naranja_\n\n**lime** _lim\u00f3n_\n\n**passionfruit** _maracuy\u00e1_\n\n**guava** _guayaba_\n\n**grape** _uva_\n\n**fish** _pescado_\n\n**shellfish** _mariscos_\n\n**shrimp** _camarones_\n\n**(without) meat** _(sin) carne_\n\n**chicken** _pollo_\n\n**pork** _cerdo_\n\n**beef** _carne de res_\n\n**bacon; ham** _tocino; jam\u00f3n_\n\n**fried** _frito_\n\n**roasted** _asado_\n\n**Do you have vegetarian options?** _\u00bfTienen opciones vegetarianas?_\n\n**I'm vegetarian.** _Soy vegetarian(o)._\n\n**I don't eat . . .** _No como_ . . .\n\n**to share** para compartir\n\n**Check, please.** _La cuenta, por favor._\n\n**Is the service included?** _\u00bfEst\u00e1 incluido el servicio?_\n\n**tip** _propina_\n\n**large** _grande_\n\n**small** _peque\u00f1o_\n\n#### **SHOPPING**\n\n**cash** _efectivo_\n\n**money** _dinero_\n\n**credit card** _tarjeta de cr\u00e9dito_\n\n**debit card** _tarjeta de d\u00e9bito_\n\n**money exchange office** _casa de cambio_\n\n**What is the exchange rate?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1l es la tasa de cambio?_\n\n**How much is the commission?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1nto es la comisi\u00f3n?_\n\n**Do you accept credit cards?** _\u00bfAceptan tarjetas de cr\u00e9dito?_\n\n**credit card installments** _cuotas_\n\n**money order** _giro_\n\n**How much does it cost?** _\u00bfCu\u00e1nto cuesta?_\n\n**expensive** _caro_\n\n**cheap** _barato; econ\u00f3mico_\n\n**more** _m\u00e1s_\n\n**less** _menos_\n\n**a little** _un poco_\n\n**too much** _demasiado_\n\n**value added tax** _IVA_\n\n**discount** _descuento_\n\n#### **HEALTH**\n\n**Help me please.** _Ay\u00fademe por favor._\n\n**I am ill.** _Estoy enferma\/o._\n\n**Call a doctor.** _Llame un doctor._\n\n**Take me to . . .** _Ll\u00e9veme a . . ._\n\n**hospital** _hospital, cl\u00ednica_\n\n**drugstore** _farmacia_\n\n**pain** _dolor_\n\n**fever** _fiebre_\n\n**headache** _dolor de cabeza_\n\n**stomach ache** _dolor de est\u00f3mago_\n\n**burn** _quemadura_\n\n**cramp** _calambre_\n\n**nausea** _n\u00e1usea_\n\n**vomiting** _vomitar_\n\n**medicine** _medicina_\n\n**antibiotic** _antibi\u00f3tico_\n\n**pill** _pastilla, pepa_\n\n**aspirin** _aspirina_\n\n**ointment; cream** _ung\u00fcento; crema_\n\n**bandage (big)** _venda_\n\n**bandage (small)** _cura_\n\n**cotton** _algod\u00f3n_\n\n**sanitary napkin** _toalla sanitaria_\n\n**birth control pills** _pastillas anticonceptivas_\n\n**condoms** _condones_\n\n**toothbrush** _cepillo de dientes_\n\n**dental floss** _hilo dental_\n\n**toothpaste** _crema dental_\n\n**dentist** _dentista_\n\n**toothache** _dolor de muelas_\n\n**vaccination** _vacuna_\n\n#### **COMMUNICATIONS**\n\n**Wi-fi** _wifi_\n\n**cell phone** _celular_\n\n**username** _usuario_\n\n**password** _contrase\u00f1a_\n\n**laptop computer** _port\u00e1til_\n\n**prepaid cellphone** _celular prepago_\n\n**post office** _4-72_\n\n**phone call** _llamada_\n\n**letter** _carta_\n\n**stamp** _estampilla_\n\n**postcard** _postal_\n\n**package; box** _paquete; caja_\n\n#### **AT THE BORDER**\n\n**border** _frontera_\n\n**customs** _aduana_\n\n**immigration** _migraci\u00f3n_\n\n**inspection** _inspecci\u00f3n_\n\n**ID card** _c\u00e9dula_\n\n**passport** _pasaporte_\n\n**profession** _profesi\u00f3n_\n\n**vacation** _vacaciones_\n\n**I'm a tourist.** _Soy turista._\n\n**student** _estudiante_\n\n**marital status** _estado civil_\n\n**single** _soltero_\n\n**married; divorced** _casado; divorciado_\n\n**widowed** _viudado_\n\n**insurance** _seguro_\n\n**title** _t\u00edtulo_\n\n**driver's license** _pase de conducir_\n\n#### **AT THE GAS STATION**\n\n**gas station** _estaci\u00f3n de gasolina_\n\n**gasoline** _gasolina_\n\n**full, please** _lleno, por favor_\n\n**tire** _llanta_\n\n**air** _aire_\n\n**water** _agua_\n\n**oil (change)** _(cambio de) aceite_\n\n**My . . . doesn't work.** _Mi . . . no funciona._\n\n**battery** _bater\u00eda_\n\n**tow truck** _gr\u00faa_\n\n**repair shop** _taller_\n\n#### **VERBS**\n\nVerbs are the key to getting along in Spanish. They employ mostly predictable forms and come in three classes, which end in _ar, er,_ and _ir,_ respectively:\n\n**to buy** _comprar_\n\n**I buy, you (he, she, it) buys** _compro, compra_\n\n**we buy, you (they) buy** _compramos, compran_\n\n**to eat** _comer_\n\n**I eat, you (he, she, it) eats** _como, come_\n\n**we eat, you (they) eat** _comemos, comen_\n\n**to climb** _subir_\n\n**I climb, you (he, she, it) climbs** _subo, sube_\n\n**we climb, you (they) climb** _subimos, suben_\n\nHere are more (with irregularities indicated):\n\n**to do or make** _hacer_ (regular except for _hago,_ I do or make)\n\n**to go** _ir_ (very irregular: _voy, va, vamos, van_ )\n\n**to walk** _caminar_\n\n**to wait** _esperar_\n\n**to love** _amar_\n\n**to work** _trabajar_\n\n**to want** _querer_ (irregular: _quiero, quiere, queremos, quieren_ )\n\n**to need** _necesitar_\n\n**to read** _leer_\n\n**to write** _escribir_\n\n**to send** _enviar_\n\n**to repair** _reparar_\n\n**to wash** _lavar_\n\n**to stop** _parar_\n\n**to get off (the bus)** _bajar_\n\n**to arrive** _llegar_\n\n**to stay (remain)** _quedar_\n\n**to stay (lodge)** _hospedar_\n\n**to rent alquilar**\n\n**to leave** _salir_ (regular except for _salgo,_ I leave)\n\n**to look at** _mirar_\n\n**to look for** _buscar_\n\n**to give** _dar_ (regular except for _doy,_ I give)\n\n**to give (as a present or to order something)** _regalar_\n\n**to carry** _llevar_\n\n**to have** _tener_ (irregular: _tengo, tiene, tenemos, tienen_ )\n\n**to come** _venir_ (irregular: _vengo, viene, venimos, vienen_ )\n\nSpanish has two forms of \"to be\":\n\n**to be** _estar_ (regular except for _estoy,_ I am)\n\n**to be** _ser_ (very irregular: _soy, es, somos, son_ )\n\nUse _estar_ when speaking of location or a temporary state of being: \"I am at home.\" _\"Estoy en casa.\"_ \"I'm happy.\" _\"Estoy contenta\/o.\"_ Use _ser_ for a permanent state of being: \"I am a lawyer.\" _\"Soy abogada\/o.\"_\n\n#### **NUMBERS**\n\n**zero** _cero_\n\n**one** _uno_\n\n**two** _dos_\n\n**three** _tres_\n\n**four** _cuatro_\n\n**five** _cinco_\n\n**six** _seis_\n\n**seven** _siete_\n\n**eight** _ocho_\n\n**nine** _nueve_\n\n**10** _diez_\n\n**11** _once_\n\n**12** _doce_\n\n**13** _trece_\n\n**14** _catorce_\n\n**15** _quince_\n\n**16** _dieciseis_\n\n**17** _diecisiete_\n\n**18** _dieciocho_\n\n**19** _diecinueve_\n\n**20** _veinte_\n\n**21** _veinte y uno_ or _veintiuno_\n\n**30** _treinta_\n\n**40** _cuarenta_\n\n**50** _cincuenta_\n\n**60** _sesenta_\n\n**70** _setenta_\n\n**80** _ochenta_\n\n**90** _noventa_\n\n**100** _cien_\n\n**101** _ciento y uno_\n\n**200** _doscientos_\n\n**500** _quinientos_\n\n**1,000** _mil_\n\n**10,000** _diez mil_\n\n**100,000** _cien mil_\n\n**1,000,000** _mill\u00f3n_\n\n**one half** _medio_\n\n**one third** _un tercio_\n\n**one fourth** _un cuarto_\n\n#### **TIME**\n\n**What time is it?** _\u00bfQu\u00e9 hora es?_\n\n**It's one o'clock.** _Es la una._\n\n**It's three in the afternoon.** _Son las tres de la tarde._\n\n**It's 4 a.m.** _Son las cuatro de la ma\u00f1ana._\n\n**six-thirty** _seis y media_\n\n**quarter till eleven** _un cuarto para las once_\n\n**quarter past five** _las cinco y cuarto_\n\n**hour** _una hora_\n\n**late** _tarde_\n\n#### **DAYS AND MONTHS**\n\n**Monday** _lunes_\n\n**Tuesday** _martes_\n\n**Wednesday** _mi\u00e9rcoles_\n\n**Thursday** _jueves_\n\n**Friday** _viernes_\n\n**Saturday** _s\u00e1bado_\n\n**Sunday** _domingo_\n\n**today** _hoy_\n\n**tomorrow** _ma\u00f1ana_\n\n**yesterday** _ayer_\n\n**day before yesterday** _antier_\n\n**January** _enero_\n\n**February** _febrero_\n\n**March** _marzo_\n\n**April** _abril_\n\n**May** _mayo_\n\n**June** _junio_\n\n**July** _julio_\n\n**August** _agosto_\n\n**September** _septiembre_\n\n**October** _octubre_\n\n**November** _noviembre_\n\n**December** _diciembre_\n\n**week** _una semana_\n\n**month** _un mes_\n\n**after** _despu\u00e9s_\n\n**before** _antes_\n\n**holiday** _festivo_\n\n**long weekend** _puente_\n\n### **Suggested Reading**\n\n#### **HISTORY**\n\nBushnell, David. _The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself._ Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Mandatory reading for students of Colombian history. Bushnell, an American, is considered the \"Father of the Colombianists\".\n\nHemming, John. _The Search for El Dorado._ London: Joseph, 1978. Written by a former director of the Royal Geographical Society, this book explores the Spanish gold obsession in the New World. It's a great companion to any visit to the Gold Museum in Bogot\u00e1.\n\nLynch, John. _Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar: A Life._ New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. This biography of the Liberator is considered one of the best ever written in English, and is the result of a lifetime of research by renowned English historian John Lynch.\n\nPalacios, Marco. _Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875-2002._ Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2006. Written by a Bogotano academic who was a former head of the Universidad Nacional, this book covers Colombia's economic, political, cultural, and social history from the late 19th century to the complexities of the late 20th century, and drug-related violence.\n\n#### **THE DRUG WAR AND ARMED CONFLICTS**\n\nBowden, Mark. _Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw._ New York: Grove Press, 2001. This account of U.S. and Colombian efforts to halt drug trafficking and terrorism committed by drug lord Pablo Escobar was originally reported in a 31-part series in _The Philadelphia Inquirer._\n\nDudley, Steven. _Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia._ New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the modern Colombian conflict, this book is written by an expert on investigating organized crime in the Americas.\n\nGonsalves, Marc, Tom Howes, Keith Stansell, and Gary Brozek. _Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle._ New York: Harper Collins, 2009. Accounts of three American military contractors who were held, along with former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, by FARC guerrillas for over five years in the Colombian jungle.\n\nLeech, Garry. _Beyond Bogot\u00e1: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia._ Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. The basis for this book is the author's 11 hours spent as a hostage of the FARC.\n\nOtis, John. _Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages, and Buried Treasure._ New York: Harper, 2010. This is a thrilling account of the operation to rescue Ingrid Betancourt and American government contractors held by the FARC. It's been called a flip-side to _Out of Captivity._\n\n#### **NATURAL HISTORY**\n\nHilty, Steven L., William L. Brown, and Guy Tudor. _A Guide to the Birds of Colombia._ Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. This massive 996-page field guide to bird-rich Colombia is a must for any serious bird-watcher.\n\nMcMullan, Miles, Thomas M. Donegan, and Alonso Quevedo. _Field Guide to the Birds of Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Fundaci\u00f3n ProAves, 2010. This pocket-sized field guide published by ProAves, a respected bird conservation society, is a more manageable alternative to Hilty's guide.\n\n#### **ETHNOGRAPHY**\n\nDavis, Wade. _One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest._ New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. From the author of _The Serpent and the Rainbow,_ this is a rich description of the peoples of the Amazonian rain forest, and the result of Davis' time in the country alongside famed explorer Richard Evan Schultes.\n\nReichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. _Colombia: Ancient Peoples & Places._ London: Thames and Hudson, 1965. A thorough anthropological investigation of the indigenous cultures across Colombia by an Austrian-born anthropologist who emigrated to Colombia during World War II.\n\n\\----. _The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia._ Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975. An examination of shamanic drug culture in Colombia, particularly among indigenous tribes from the Amazon jungle region.\n\n#### **ARCHITECTURE**\n\nEscovar, Alberto, Diego Obreg\u00f3n, and Rodolfo Segovia. _Gu\u00edas Elarqa de Arquitectura._ Bogot\u00e1: Ediciones Gamma, 2005. Useful guides for anyone wishing to learn more about the architecture of Bogot\u00e1, Cartagena, and Medell\u00edn.\n\n#### **TRAVEL**\n\nLamus, Mar\u00eda Cristina. _333 Sitios de Colombia Que Ver Antes de Morir._ Bogot\u00e1: Editorial Planeta Colombiana, 2010. Colombian version of _1,000 Places to See Before You Die_ (only available in Spanish).\n\nMann, Mark. _The Gringo Trail._ West Sussex: Summersdale Publishers, 2010. A darkly comic tale of backpacking around South America.\n\nNicholl, Charles. _The Fruit Palace._ New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. A wild romp that follows the seedy cocaine trail from Bogot\u00e1 bars to Medill\u00edn to the Sierra Nevada and a fruit stand called the Fruit Palace during the wild 1980s. The English author was jailed in Colombia for drug smuggling as he conducted research for the book.\n\n#### **PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATED BOOKS**\n\nOften only available in Colombia, coffee table books by Colombian publishers Villegas Editores and the Banco de Occidente are gorgeous, well-done, and often in English. Save room in your suitcase for one or two.\n\nCobo Borda, Juan Gustavo, Gustavo Morales Lizcano, and C\u00e9sar David Mart\u00ednez. _Colombia en Flor._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2009. This book features fantastic photographs of flowers you will see in Colombia.\n\nDavis, Wade and Richard Evans Schultes. _The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2009. A fantastic journey deep into the Amazonian jungle by famed explorer Richard Evans Schultes.\n\nD\u00edaz, Hern\u00e1n. _Cartagena Forever._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2002. A tiny little book of stunning black-and-white images of the Cartagena of yesteryear, by one of Colombia's most accomplished photographers.\n\nD\u00edaz, Merlano, Juan Manuel and Fernando Gast Harders. _El Choc\u00f3 Biogeogr\u00e1fico de Colombia._ Banco de Occidente Credencial Cali, 2009. A spectacular trip through the unique and biodiverse Choc\u00f3 region.\n\nFreeman, Benjamin and Murray Cooper. _Birds in Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2011. Dazzling photographs of native bird species found in Colombia, a veritable birding paradise.\n\nHurtado Garc\u00eda, Andr\u00e9s. _Unseen Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2004. Photos and descriptions of the many off-the-beaten-track destinations in the country.\n\nMonta\u00f1a, Antonio and Hans Doering. _The Taste of Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 1994. A thorough survey of Colombian cuisine by region, with recipes included.\n\nOrtiz Valdivieso, Pedro and C\u00e9sar David Mart\u00ednez. _Orqu\u00eddeas Especies de Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2010. Jaw-dropping photos of orchids, from the unusual to the sublime, found in the forests of Colombia.\n\nRivera Ospina, David. _La Amazon\u00eda de Colombia._ Cali: Banco de Occidente Credencial, 2008. An excellent souvenir of your visit to the Amazon region.\n\n\\----. _La Orinoqu\u00eda de Colombia._ Cali: Banco de Occidente Credencial, 2005. One of the least visited areas of Colombia is the R\u00edo Orinoco basin in the Llanos and Amazon regions.\n\nVarious. _Colombia Natural Parks._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2006. Gorgeous photos from all of Colombia's spectacular national parks.\n\nVillegas, Liliana. _Coffees of Colombia._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2012. Everything you'd like to know about Colombian coffee in one charming and compact book.\n\nVillegas, Marcelo. _Guadua Arquitectura y Dise\u00f1o._ Bogot\u00e1: Villegas Editores, 2003. Profiles of minimalistic and modern constructions throughout Colombia all made from guadua.\n\n#### **FICTION**\n\nCaballero, Antonio. _Sin Remedio._ Bogot\u00e1: Alfaguara, 2006. A novel about a struggling poet in 1970s Bogot\u00e1 by one of Colombia's best-known columnists.\n\nEspinosa, Germ\u00e1n. _La Tejedora de Coronas._ Bogot\u00e1: Alfaguara, 2002. This novel contains the remembrances of Genovevea Alcocer, who, during the 18th century, leaves her native Cartagena to travel the world. Considered one of the most beautiful books of Latin American literature from the 20th century.\n\nFranco, Jorge. _Rosario Tijeras._ New York: Siete Cuentos, 1999. An acclaimed suspense novel that takes place in violent Medell\u00edn in the 1980s.\n\nGarc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, Gabriel. _Innocent Er\u00e9ndira and Other Stories._ New York: Harper, 2005. A collection of short stories, including a memorable tale of poor Er\u00e9ndira and her awful grandmother.\n\n\\----. _Love in the Time of Cholera._ New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. A Colombian love and lovesickness story set in a fictitious version of Cartagena.\n\n\\----. _One Hundred Years of Solitude._ New York: Harper, 2006. One of the Nobel Prize-winning author's classic novels, this book tells the story of the Buend\u00eda family from the fictitious town of Macondo.\n\nIsaacs, Jorge. _Mar\u00eda._ Rockville, Wildside Press, 2007. Considered one of the most important Latin American romantic novels of the 19th century, this love story takes place among the sugar cane fields near Cali.\n\nS\u00e1nchez Baute, Alonso. _L\u00edbranos del Bien._ Bogot\u00e1: Alfaguara, 2008. The incredible account of how two friends from the Caribbean coastal city of Valledupar became powerful adversaries.\n\nVallejo, Fernando. _Our Lady of the Assassins._ London: Serpent's Tail, 2001. A novel that takes place in Medell\u00edn, about a gay writer who returns to his violent hometown, where he falls in love with a young contract killer.\n\n### **Internet and Digital Resources**\n\n#### **ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\n**Hostel Trail**\n\n**www.hosteltrail.com**\n\nRun by a Scottish couple living in Popay\u00e1n, this is an excellent resource on hostels throughout South America.\n\n**Posadas Tur\u00edsticas de Colombia**\n\n**www.posadasturisticasdecolombia.gov.co**\n\nFind information on interesting accommodations alternatives, like home stays.\n\n#### **BIRDING**\n\n**ProAves**\n\n**www.proaves.org**\n\nExcellent website for the largest birding organization in the country.\n\n#### **CARTAGENA**\n\n**This is Cartagena**\n\n**www.tic.com**\n\nExperience Cartagena like a local.\n\n#### **ECO-TOURISM**\n\n**Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia**\n\n**www.parquesnacionales.gov.co**\n\nColombia's national parks website has information on all of the natural parks and protected areas in the country.\n\n**Aviatur Ecoturismo**\n\n**www.aviaturecoturismo.com**\n\nPackage tours of the Amazon, PNN Tayrona, PNN Isla Gorgona, and more are available from one of Colombia's most respected travel agencies.\n\n**Fundaci\u00f3n Malpelo**\n\n**www.fundacionmalpelo.org**\n\nThis nonprofit organization works to protect Colombia's vast maritime territory, including the Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo.\n\n**Fundaci\u00f3n Natura**\n\n**www.natura.org.co**\n\nThe Fundaci\u00f3n Natura operates several interesting eco-tourism reserves in the country.\n\n#### **EMBASSIES AND VISAS**\n\n**U.S. Embassy in Colombia**\n\n**<http:\/\/bogota.usembassy.gov>**\n\nThe Citizen Services page often has security information for visitors, and is where you can register your visit in case of an emergency.\n\n**Colombian Ministry of Foreign Relations**\n\n**www.cancilleria.gov.co**\n\nOffers information on visas and other travel information.\n\n#### **ENTERTAINMENT, CULTURE, AND EVENTS**\n\n**Vive In**\n\n**www.vive.in**\n\nUpdated information on restaurants, entertainment, and cultural events in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Plan B**\n\n**www.planb.com.co**\n\nCompetitor of Vive In, Plan B offers information on what's going on in Bogot\u00e1, Medell\u00edn, and Cali.\n\n**Tu Boleta**\n\n**www.tuboleta.com**\n\nThe top event ticket distributor in the country, Tu Boleta is a good way to learn about concerts, theater, parties, and sporting events throughout Colombia.\n\n**Banco de la Rep\u00fablica**\n\n**www.banrepcultural.org**\n\nInformation on upcoming cultural activities sponsored by the Banco de la Rep\u00fablica in 28 cities in the country.\n\n#### **HISTORY AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES**\n\n**CIA World Factbook Colombia**\n\n**www.cia.gov**\n\nBackground information on Colombia from those in the know.\n\n**Centro de Memoria Hist\u00f3rica**\n\n**www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co**\n\nExcellent website on the human toll of the Colombian conflict.\n\n**International Crisis Group**\n\n**www.crisisgroup.org**\n\nIn-depth analysis of the human rights situation in Colombia.\n\n**Colombia Diversa**\n\n**www.colombiadiversa.org**\n\nCovers LGBT rights in Colombia.\n\n#### **LANGUAGE COURSES**\n\n**Spanish in Colombia**\n\n**www.spanishincolombia.gov.co**\n\nOfficial government website on places to study Spanish in Colombia.\n\n#### **MEDELL\u00cdN**\n\n**Medell\u00edn Living**\n\n**www.medellinliving.com**\n\nThis website run by expats is an excellent purveyor of insider information on the City of Eternal Spring.\n\n#### **NEWS AND MEDIA**\n\n**_El Tiempo_**\n\n**www.eltiempo.com**\n\nEl Tiempo is the country's leading newspaper.\n\n**_El Espectador_**\n\n**www.elespectador.com.co**\n\nThis is Colombia's second national newspaper.\n\n**_Revista Semana_**\n\n**www.semana.com**\n\nSemana is the top news magazine in Colombia.\n\n**La Silla Vacia**\n\n**www.sillavacia.com**\n\nPolitical insiders dish about current events.\n\n**Colombia Reports**\n\n**<http:\/\/colombiareports.co>**\n\nColombian news in English.\n\n**_The City Paper Bogot\u00e1_**\n\n**www.thecitypaperbogota.com**\n\nWebsite of the capital city's English-language monthly.\n\n**Colombia Calling**\n\n**www.richardmccoll.com\/colombia-calling**\n\nWeekly online radio program on all things Colombia from an expat perspective.\n\n#### **TRANSPORTATION**\n\n**Moovit**\n\nThis app will help you figure out public transportation in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n**Tappsi**\n\nTo order a safe taxi in Colombia's large cities, first upload this excellent app.\n\n**SITP**\n\n**www.sitp.gov.co**\n\nThis is the official website of the ever-improving (yet confusing) public bus transportation system in Bogot\u00e1.\n\n#### **TRAVEL INFORMATION**\n\n**Colombia Travel**\n\n**www.colombia.travel**\n\nThis is the official travel information website of Proexport, Colombia's tourism and investment promotion agency.\n\n**Pueblos Patrimoniales**\n\n**www.pueblospatrimoniodecolombia.travel**\n\nFind a pueblo that suits your needs at this informative website.\n\n#### **VOLUNTEERING**\n\n**Conexi\u00f3n Colombia**\n\n**www.conexioncolombia.com**\n\nThis website is one-stop shopping for the nonprofit sector in Colombia. Find out how you can help, here.\n\n## **Index**\n\n### **A**\n\nAcademia Colombiana de Historia:\n\nAcu\u00f1a, Luis Alberto:\n\nAerol\u00ednea de Antioquia: ,\n\nAeropuerto Internacional El Dorado:\n\nAfro-Colombian community: , , , ,\n\nagricultural fairs:\n\nair travel: 457-458,\n\nAlborada:\n\nAlfonso Bejarano, Truman David: ,\n\nAlieth Tejido Artesanal: ,\n\nAllan Bay:\n\nalligators:\n\nAlmond Bay:\n\nAlonso Garc\u00e9s:\n\nAlta Guajira: ,\n\naltitude sickness:\n\nAlto Cimiento del Padre:\n\nAlto de Aguacate:\n\nAlto de la Cruz Mirador:\n\nAlto de la Cueva:\n\nAlto del Duende:\n\nAlto de San Andr\u00e9s:\n\nAlto de Segovia:\n\nAlumbrado Navide\u00f1o:\n\n\u00c1lvarez, Petronio:\n\n\u00c1lvaro, Don:\n\nAmazon rainforest: , , 399-419,\n\nAm\u00e9rica:\n\nAmigos de la Monta\u00f1a:\n\namusement parks:\n\nAnapoima:\n\nAndes Mountains: ,\n\nAndr\u00e9s Carne de Res: ,\n\nanimals: 433-437\n\nAntigua Estaci\u00f3n del Tren:\n\nantiques:\n\nAnzo\u00e1tgui, General Jos\u00e9 Antonio Anzo\u00e1tgui:\n\naquariums: ,\n\nArana, Julio C\u00e9sar:\n\narchaeological sights: Camino Real ; Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico (Bogot\u00e1) ; Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico Calima ; Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico de Sogamoso ; Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico La Merced ; Museo Arqueol\u00f3gico Regional Guane ; Museo de Jeric\u00f3 Antioquia ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona ; Raudal del Guayabero ; San Agust\u00edn , ; Tierradentro 345-348\n\narepas:\n\nArewol\u00fc Sand Dunes:\n\nArmenia: , 275-279\n\nArtBo:\n\nart galleries: ArtBo ; Banco de la Rep\u00fablica ; Casa Museo Luis Alberto Acu\u00f1a ; Macarena ; Manzana Cultural ; Museo Arquidiocesano de Arte Religioso ; Museo de Antioquia ; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogot\u00e1 ; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bucaramanga ; Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena de Indias ; Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn ; Museo de Arte Moderno Eduardo Ram\u00edrez Villamizar ; Museo de Arte Religioso de Guatavita La Antigua ; Museo de Arte Religioso (Jeric\u00f3) ; Museo de Arte Religioso (Popay\u00e1n) ; Museo de Arte Religioso (Santa Fe de Antiqua) ; Museo El Carmen de Arte Religioso\n\nAscenso Torre Colpatria:\n\nASEGUICOC: , ,\n\nAsocaiman: ,\n\nAsociaci\u00f3n Azufral los Andariegos T\u00faquerres: , ,\n\nAsociaci\u00f3n Comunitaria Yarumo Blanco:\n\nAsociaci\u00f3n de Gu\u00edas e Interpretes Ambientales (GAIA):\n\nastronomy: , ,\n\nAstur\u00edas:\n\nAtlantis Plaza:\n\nAtl\u00edtico Nacional:\n\nATMs:\n\nATVs:\n\nAutodefensas Unidas de Colombia:\n\nAvenida Jim\u00e9nez: , 44-47\n\n### **B**\n\nbackpacking: _see_ trekking\n\nBah\u00eda Cispat\u00e1:\n\nBah\u00eda de Cartagena:\n\nBah\u00eda Lodge: ,\n\nBah\u00eda Solano: , ,\n\nBah\u00eda Sonora:\n\nBalones Hurtado:\n\nBaluarte Santo Domingo:\n\nBaluartes de San Ignacio y de San Francisco Javier:\n\nBaluartes de San Lucas y de Santa Catalina:\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (Bogot\u00e1):\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (C\u00facuta):\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (Ibagu\u00e9):\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (Leticia):\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (Monter\u00eda):\n\nBanco de la Rep\u00fablica (Santa Marta):\n\nBanda:\n\nbanking: ,\n\nBarichara: , , , 207-212\n\nBarranquilla: , , 119-123\n\nBar\u00fa:\n\nBasalt:\n\nBatalla de las Flores:\n\nBatalla del Pantano de Vargas:\n\nBatalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1:\n\nBater\u00eda de San Jos\u00e9:\n\nbaths, thermal: , , ,\n\nBavaria brewery:\n\nbeaches: Bah\u00eda Solano ; Cabo de la Vela ; Centro de Visitantes Los Mangles ; Darien Gap ; Dunas de Taroa ; Golfo de Morrosquillo ; Islas de Rosario , ; La Miel ; Nuqu\u00ed ; Ojo del Agua ; Palomino , ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona , , ; Playa Almejal ; Playa Blanca (Bar\u00fa) ; Playa Blanca (Lago Tota) ; Playa Blanca (Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda) ; Playa de Pil\u00f3n ; Providencia , , , 390-391; Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro ; San Andr\u00e9s , , , ; San Antero ; Santa Marta , , ; Sapzurro , ; South Pacific Coast , , ; Spratt Bight , ; Taganga ,\n\nbeauty contests:\n\nBelalc\u00e1zar:\n\nBennett, Dr. Sara:\n\nbest-of itinerary: 15-22\n\nBiblioteca EPM:\n\nBiblioteca Espa\u00f1a: ,\n\nBiblioteca Luis \u00c1ngel Arango:\n\nBiblioteca P\u00fablica La Casa del Pueblo de Guanacas:\n\nBiblioteca P\u00fablica Julio P\u00e9rez Ferrero:\n\nBiblioteca Tintal:\n\nBiblioteca Virgilio Barco: ,\n\nBig Pond:\n\nbiking: Bogot\u00e1 61-62; Cali ; Cartagena ; Cerro de Monserrate ; Convento del Santo Ecce Homo ; C\u00facuta ; Desierto de Tatacoita ; Manizales ; Medell\u00edn ; Parque Arv\u00ed ; Pereira ; Salento ; Santa Marta ; transportation ; Villa de Leyva\n\nbiodiversity:\n\nbird-watching: Amazon rainforest ; Buga preserves ; Cali ; coffee region ; El Encanto Andino ; El Roble ; Estaci\u00f3n San Lorenzo ; Hacienda Venecia ; Jard\u00edn ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo ; Lagos de Menegua ; Manizales ; Minca ; Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael ; Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu ; Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados ; Parque Nacional Natural Macuira ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona ; Reserva Calanoa ; Reserva del R\u00edo Blanco ; Reserva Natural Heliconia ; San Gil ; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo ; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya ; Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque ; Sapzurro Reserva Natural Tacarcuna ; Sendero Eco-Cultural El Ri\u00edto ; Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta\n\nBlack Christ:\n\nblowholes:\n\nBlue House: ,\n\nBlue Life:\n\nboating: ,\n\nBocachica:\n\nBocagrande: , , , ,\n\nBogot\u00e1: 29-92; accommodations 65-69; city layout 33-36; entertainment and events 54-58; fly-in destinations from ; food 69-75; highlights ; history ; information and services 76-78; itineraries , ; maps ; music and dance festivals , ; planning tips , ; safety ; shopping 58-61; sights 36-54; sports and recreation 61-65; tours 63-64; transportation 78-81; vicinity of Bogot\u00e1 82-92\n\nBogotazo riots: ,\n\nBol\u00edvar, Sim\u00f3n: independence movement ; _Los Lanceros_ ; Museo Casa de Bol\u00edvar ; Quinta de Bol\u00edvar ; Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino\n\nborder disputes:\n\nBosque de las Estatuas:\n\nbotanical gardens: _see_ gardens\n\nBoyac\u00e1: , , 164-194\n\nBoyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes: , 160-219; Boyac\u00e1 164-194; highlights ; map ; Norte de Santander 212-219; planning tips ; Santander 194-212\n\nBrazil: ,\n\nbroiled hen:\n\nBucaramanga: ,\n\nBuenaventura: 367-368\n\nBuga: 325-328\n\nBulevar del R\u00edo:\n\nbullfighting:\n\nburro festival:\n\nbus travel: , ; _see also specific place_\n\nbutterflies:\n\n### **C**\n\nCaba\u00f1as Darius: ,\n\nCaba\u00f1as Guicany: ,\n\nCaba\u00f1a Sisuma: ,\n\nCaba\u00f1as Kanwara: ,\n\nCabanita Roja:\n\nCable Aereo:\n\nCabo de la Vela: ,\n\nCaf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n:\n\nCaf\u00e9 del Mar: ,\n\nCaf\u00e9 Havana: ,\n\nCaf\u00e9 Quind\u00edo:\n\nCalarc\u00e1:\n\nCali: , 302-323; accommodations 314-317; entertainment and events 308-311; fly-in destinations from ; food 317-320; itinerary ; map ; music and dance festivals , ; sights 305-308; sports and recreation 311-314\n\nCali and Southwest Colombia: , 298-353; Buga 325-328; Cali 302-323; highlights ; map ; Pasto 328-339; planning tips ; Popay\u00e1n 340-353\n\nCali Cartel:\n\nCalle del Empedrado:\n\nCalle del Recuerdos:\n\nCalle del Tiempo Detenido:\n\nCalle Peatonal:\n\nCalle Real (Salento): ,\n\nCalle Real (Santuario):\n\nCaminar Colombia:\n\nCamino Bogot\u00e1:\n\nCamino Herrera:\n\nCamino Real: , ,\n\nCampo Base:\n\nCandelaria district: , ,\n\nCa\u00f1o Cristales: , , 423-425\n\ncanoeing\/kayaking: Buga preserves ; Hacienda La Aurora ; Oyster's Creek Lagoon ; Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda ; Reserva Calanoa ; Reserva Natural Heliconia ; Reserva Natural Marash\u00e1 ; Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed ; Reserva Natural Viento Solar , ; R\u00edo Tund\u00f3 ; San Andr\u00e9s ; San Gil\n\nCa\u00f1\u00f3n del Chicamocha: , , , ,\n\ncanopy tours: Amazon rainforest ; Reserva Natural Heliconia ; Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed ; Reserva Natural Tanimboca\n\nCapitolio Nacional:\n\nCapurgan\u00e1: , , , , , ,\n\nCarabobo Norte: ,\n\nCarmen de Apical\u00e1:\n\nCarnaval de Barranquilla: , , ,\n\nCarnaval de Negros y Blancos: ,\n\nCarnaval de Riosucio:\n\n_carriel_ bags:\n\nCartagena: , 97-119\n\nCartagena and the Caribbean Coast: ; Barranquilla 119-123; Cartagena 97-119; geography ; highlights ; itinerary , 24-25; La Guajira 142-149; map ; planning tips , ; Santa Marta 124-142; western Caribbean coast 150-159\n\nCartagena's Old City:\n\ncar travel: ,\n\nCasa Aquileo Parra G\u00f3mez:\n\nCasa de Gregorio:\n\nCasa de la Aduana:\n\nCasa de la Bagatela:\n\nCasa de la Cultura: , ,\n\nCasa de la Moneda:\n\nCasa de la Pola:\n\nCasa del Carnaval:\n\nCasa del Escribano del Rey Don Juan de Vargas:\n\nCasa del Florero:\n\nCasa del Fundador Gonzalo Su\u00e1rez Rend\u00f3n:\n\nCasa del Primer Congreso de las Provincias Unidas de la Nueva Granada: 164-165\n\nCasa de Nari\u00f1o:\n\nCasa Gardeliana:\n\nCasa Juan de Castellanos:\n\nCasa Lila:\n\nCasa Mercado:\n\nCasa Museo Antonio Nari\u00f1o:\n\nCasa Museo Capit\u00e1n Antonio Ricaurte:\n\nCasa Museo Comunitario Juan Vargas:\n\nCasa Museo Edgar Negret and Museo Iberoamericano de Arte Moderno de Popay\u00e1n\u2014MIAMP:\n\nCasa Museo Isle\u00f1a:\n\nCasa Museo Luis Alberto Acu\u00f1a:\n\nCasa Museo Pedro Nel G\u00f3mez:\n\nCasa Museo Rafael N\u00fa\u00f1ez:\n\nCasa Natal del General Santander:\n\nCasa Platypus: ,\n\nCasa Real F\u00e1brica de Licores:\n\nCasa Republicana:\n\nCasa Rodrigo Jim\u00e9nez Mej\u00eda:\n\nCasa Selva y Caf\u00e9: ,\n\nCasa Viena Hostel: ,\n\nCascada Choc\u00f3latal: ,\n\nCascada del Aeropuerto:\n\nCascada El Tigre:\n\nCascada Escalera:\n\nCascadas:\n\nCascadas Cocacola:\n\nCastillo de San Felipe: ,\n\nCastillo Grande:\n\ncattle ranching: , ,\n\nCattleya Ser:\n\nCaverna de los Gu\u00e1charos:\n\nCaverna El Esplendor:\n\ncaves: , , ,\n\nCayo Cangrejo:\n\nCementerio Brit\u00e1nico:\n\nCementerio Central:\n\nCementerio Municipal:\n\nCementerio San Esteban:\n\nCentral Sector, Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy: ,\n\nCentro Administrativo La Alpujarra:\n\nCentro Andino:\n\nCentro, Cali:\n\nCentro Cultural Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez:\n\nCentro Cultural Posada Tres Culturas:\n\nCentro de Hidroterapia:\n\nCentro de Interpretaci\u00f3n Ambiental Nat\u00fctama:\n\nCentro de Investigaciones Paleontol\u00f3gicas:\n\nCentro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliaci\u00f3n:\n\nCentro Deportivo Atanasio Girardot:\n\nCentro de Visitantes Furachiogua:\n\nCentro de Visitantes La Pastora:\n\nCentro de Visitantes Los Mangles:\n\n_centro hist\u00f3rico_ (Popay\u00e1n): ,\n\n_centro hist\u00f3rico_ (Santa Marta):\n\nCentro Internacional: 47-51\n\nCentro, Manizales:\n\nCentro, Medell\u00edn:\n\nceramics:\n\nCerro de Guadalupe:\n\nCerro de las Tres Cruces:\n\nCerro de Monserrate: , , ,\n\nCerro El Morro del Tulc\u00e1n:\n\nCerro Mahoma:\n\nCerro Nutibara:\n\nCerro Tatam\u00e1:\n\nCerro Tojoro:\n\nChapinero:\n\nChapparo, Omar:\n\nChaska Tours:\n\nchildren's activities: Carnaval de Negros y Blancos ; coffee region theme parks ; Gondava ; Hacienda Napoles ; Monkey Island 411-412; Museo de los Ni\u00f1os Colsubsidio ; Parque Nacional del Chicamocha ; Puerto Alegr\u00eda ; Salitre M\u00e1gico ; Zool\u00f3gico de Cali ; Zool\u00f3gico Mateca\u00f1a\n\nChinund\u00faa:\n\nChipre:\n\nChoc\u00f3: , 358-367\n\nChoc\u00f3 Biogeogr\u00e1fico:\n\nchub fish:\n\nchurches: Barichara ; Bas\u00edlica Menor de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n ; Bas\u00edlica Menor La Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n ; Bas\u00edlica Menor San Juan Bautista ; Bas\u00edlica Menor, Santa Marta ; Bas\u00edlica Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria ; Bas\u00edlica Se\u00f1or de los Milagros ; Bas\u00edlica y Convento de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Mongu\u00ed ; Capilla de Jes\u00fas ; Capilla de la Inmaculada ; Capilla de los Dolores ; Capilla de San Antonio ; Capilla de San Antonio de Padua ; Capilla de Santa Barbara ; Capilla de Siecha ; Capilla El Sagrario ; Catedral Bas\u00edlica de Manizales ; Catedral Bas\u00edlica de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Asunci\u00f3n de Popay\u00e1n ; Catedral Bas\u00edlica Menor ; Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n ; Catedral de la Sagrada Familia ; Catedral de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Mercedes ; Catedral de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de los Remedios ; Catedral de Pasto ; Catedral de Sal ; Catedral de San Jeronimo ; Catedral de San Pedro ; Catedral de Santa Marta ; Catedral Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n ; Catedral Metropolitana Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Carmen ; Catedral Primada ; Catedral San Jos\u00e9 ; Catedral San Laureano ; Catedral San Pedro ; Catedral Santa Clara ; Catedral Santiago de Tunja ; Convento de la Candelaria ; Convento del Santo Ecce Homo ; First Baptist Church ; Iglesia and Convento de las Aguas ; Iglesia de Cristo Rey ; Iglesia de la Concepci\u00f3n ; Iglesia de la Vera Cruz ; Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria ; Iglesia de Piedra ; Iglesia de San Agust\u00edn , ; Iglesia de San Antonio ; Iglesia de San Francisco ; Iglesia de San Ignacio ; Iglesia de San Juan Bautista ; Iglesia de San Pedro Claver , ; Iglesia de Santa B\u00e1rbara (Mompox) ; Iglesia de Santa B\u00e1rbara (Tunja) ; Iglesia de Veracruz ; Iglesia La Ermita (Cali) ; Iglesia La Ermita (Popay\u00e1n) ; Iglesia La Merced ; Iglesia La Tercera ; Iglesia Museo Santa Clara , ; Iglesia Parroquial ; Iglesia San Francisco , ; Iglesia San Ignacio ; Iglesia San Nicol\u00e1s Tolentino ; Iglesia San P\u00edo ; Iglesia Santo Domingo ; Iglesia Santo Toribio ; Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n ; Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Pobreza Catedral ; Parque Acu\u00e1tico ; Pasto ; Plaza Cayzedo ; Popay\u00e1n ; Santuario La Milagrosa ; Santuario Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Lajas ; Templo de Santa B\u00e1rbara ; Templo Mar\u00eda Inmaculada ; Tunja ,\n\nCiclopaseo de los Mi\u00e9rcoles:\n\nCicloSalento:\n\nCiclov\u00eda Bogot\u00e1: , ,\n\nCiclov\u00eda Cali:\n\nCiclov\u00eda Manizales:\n\nCiclov\u00eda Medell\u00edn:\n\ncigars:\n\nCity Center, C\u00facuta:\n\nCiudad de Piedra:\n\nCiudad Perdida: , ,\n\ncivil wars:\n\nClaustro de San Agust\u00edn: ,\n\nClaustro San Pedro Claver:\n\nClaver, Pedro:\n\nclimate: , 432-433\n\nclock tower:\n\nclothing:\n\nclothing-optional beaches:\n\nCloud Base Colombia:\n\ncloud forests: , , , 435-436\n\nClub Marina de Guatavita:\n\ncoal:\n\ncoastal itineraries: 24-26\n\ncocaine trafficking: ,\n\nCocoplum:\n\ncoffee farms: Belalc\u00e1zar ; Caf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n ; coffee region ; El Roble ; Finca Alas y Raices , ; Finca Don Eduardo , ; Finca La Victoria ; Hacienda Guayabal ; Hacienda Venecia ; industry statistics ; Manizales ; planning tips , ; RECUCA ; Salento ; Villa Martha\n\nColecci\u00f3n de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica: ,\n\nColecci\u00f3n Numism\u00e1tica:\n\nColegio Mayor de San Bartolom\u00e9:\n\nColombia al Parque:\n\nColombiamoda:\n\nColombian Highlands:\n\nColombia Paragliding: ,\n\nColombia Trek:\n\ncolonial history: 439-441\n\ncolonial towns: 27-28\n\nColor de Hormiga Hostel: ,\n\nComuna 13:\n\nConcavito:\n\nC\u00f3ncavo: ,\n\nConcurso Mundial de la Mujer Vaquera:\n\nConcurso Nacional de Belleza:\n\nCondor de los Andes:\n\ncondors:\n\nConfusion:\n\nCongreso Nacional Gastron\u00f3mico:\n\nConservatorio del Tolima:\n\n_consignaciones_ (bank transfers):\n\nconstitutional history: ,\n\nconsulates:\n\nConvento de la Candelaria: ,\n\nConvento del Santo Ecce Homo: , ,\n\nConvento de San Agust\u00edn:\n\nConvento de San Joaqu\u00edn:\n\nConvento Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Candelaria:\n\nCOODETRANS Palmira:\n\nCoonative Brothers:\n\nCOOPMUJERES:\n\nCoralina Isla Boutique: ,\n\nCordillera Central: ,\n\nCordillera Occidental: ,\n\nCove\u00f1as:\n\ncowgirls:\n\ncows, Norman:\n\nCrab Cay:\n\ncrafts: Barichara ; Bogot\u00e1 ; Bucaramanga ; Caf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n ; Cali ; _carriel_ bags , ; Cartagena ; Casa Aquileo Parra G\u00f3mez ; Ecoparque Mirador de las Colinas Iluminadas ; Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Santo Domingo ; Festival Aut\u00f3ctono de Danza, Murga y Cuento ; fiber art ; Guapi ; La Loma de la Cruz ; Macedonia ; Manizales ; Market at Silvia ; Museo de Trajes Regionales ; Museo Taminango de Artes y Tradiciones Populares de Nari\u00f1o ; Pasto ; Pueblito Paisa ; Pueblito Patojo ; R\u00e1quira ; San Gil ; San Mart\u00edn de Amacayacu ; Villa de Leyva\n\ncredit cards:\n\ncrime: 465-467\n\nCristales Aventura Tours:\n\nCristalitos:\n\nCristo Negro:\n\ncrocodiles:\n\nC\u00facuta: ,\n\nCueva de Morgan (Morgan's Cave): ,\n\nCueva Indio:\n\nCueva Vaca:\n\nculture: 454-456\n\ncurrency exchange:\n\ncustoms (immigration):\n\n### **D**\n\ndance festivals: general discussion ; Bogot\u00e1 57-58; Carnaval de Barranquilla , ; Festival Aut\u00f3ctono de Danza, Murga y Cuento ; Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro ; Festival Internacional de M\u00fasica Popular Amazonense ; Fiesta de la Virgen Carmen ; Torneo Internacional del Joropo\n\nDarien:\n\nDarien Gap:\n\ndebit cards:\n\ndemographics: 454-455\n\nDengue fever:\n\nDeportivo Cali:\n\nDeportivo Independiente Medell\u00edn:\n\ndeserts: ,\n\nDesfile de Yipao:\n\nDesierto de Tatacoa:\n\nDesierto de Tatacoita:\n\nD\u00eda Internacional de la Pereza:\n\ndictatorship:\n\ndisabilities, access for travelers with:\n\ndiseases:\n\ndiving: Bah\u00eda Solano , ; Capurgan\u00e1 ; Cartagena ; Isla Gorgona ; Providencia , , ; San Andr\u00e9s , , , ; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo ; Taganga\n\nDivino Ni\u00f1o:\n\ndolphins, river: ,\n\ndomestic flights:\n\nDominican monasteries:\n\nDonde Josefina: ,\n\nDonde Ram\u00f3n:\n\ndress, regional:\n\nDroguer\u00eda Bristol:\n\ndrug trafficking: , , , , ,\n\ndry tropical forests:\n\nDunas de Taroa:\n\n### **E**\n\nearthquakes:\n\nEaster week:\n\nEcodestinos:\n\nEcofiwi Turismo Ecol\u00f3gico:\n\neconomy: , 453-454\n\nEco Parque La Estampilla hike:\n\nEcoparque Los Yarumos:\n\nEcoparque Mirador de las Colinas Iluminadas:\n\nEcoposada Vina de Aldana:\n\nEcosistemas:\n\necotourism: ,\n\nEcotur\u00edsmo Sierra de la Macarena:\n\nEcuador: ,\n\nEdificio Camacho:\n\nEdificio Carr\u00e9:\n\nEdificio Inteligente:\n\nEdificio L\u00f3pez:\n\nEdificio Monserrate:\n\nEdificio V\u00e1squez:\n\nEje Ambiental:\n\nEl Acuario\/La Piscina\/Haynes Cay:\n\nEl Cable: ,\n\nEl Cabrero:\n\nEl Cant\u00edl: ,\n\nEl Cedral:\n\nEl Centro:\n\nEl Cerro de Cristo Rey:\n\nEl Cerro de las Tres Cruces:\n\nEl Cielo: ,\n\nEl Cocuy: ,\n\nEl Dorado myth:\n\nEl Encanto Andino:\n\nEl Estrecho:\n\nEl Faro:\n\nEl Mirador:\n\nEl Museo del Espacio:\n\nEl Nativo: ,\n\nEl Pe\u00f1on: ,\n\nEl Poblado:\n\nEl Pueblito: ,\n\nEl Purutal:\n\nEl Rancho Tolima Termales:\n\nEl Retiro:\n\nEl Roble:\n\nEl Robledal:\n\nEl Silencio:\n\nEl Social Tienda Mixta: ,\n\nEl Sotare\u00f1o: ,\n\nEl Tabl\u00f3n: ,\n\nEl Valle: , 361-364\n\nembassies:\n\nEmblase de Tomin\u00e9:\n\nemeralds: , , ,\n\nEncuentro Mundial del Coleo:\n\nEnjoy the Reef:\n\nenvironmental issues: Amazon deforestation , ; Centro de Interpretaci\u00f3n Ambiental Nat\u00fctama ; Festival de Cine Verde ; Festival de Viajeros Sin Maletas ; Fundaci\u00f3n Maikuchiga ; Hay Festival ; Instituto Humboldt ; Los Llanos ; Paradise Farm ; Puerto Nari\u00f1o ; Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed ; sustainable seafood ,\n\nErmita del Se\u00f1or del Humilladero:\n\nescalators, Comuna 13:\n\nEscobar, Pablo: , ,\n\nEscuela de Artes y Oficios de Santo Domingo:\n\nEsquina de las Mujeres:\n\nEstaci\u00f3n del Cable:\n\nEstaci\u00f3n Ferrocarril:\n\nEstaci\u00f3n San Lorenzo:\n\nEstaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery and Release Program: , ,\n\nEstadio Atanasio Girardot:\n\nEstadio Deportivo Cali:\n\nEstadio El Camp\u00edn:\n\nEstadio Metropolitano Roberto Mel\u00e9ndez:\n\nEstadio Palogrande:\n\nEstrella de Agua:\n\nEuropean explorers:\n\nExplora Suesca:\n\nExposici\u00f3n de Ganado Normando:\n\n### **F**\n\nFARC Revolutionaries: Ca\u00f1o Cristales ; growth ; Los Llanos ; peace process , ,\n\nfauna: 433-437\n\nFecomar:\n\nFelipe's Place:\n\nFeria de Artesan\u00edas:\n\nFeria de Cali: ,\n\nFeria de las Flores:\n\nFeria de Manizales:\n\nFeria Internacional de Arte de Bogot\u00e1:\n\nFesticamara:\n\nFestival Aut\u00f3ctono de Danza, Murga y Cuento:\n\nFestival de Astron\u00f3mica de Villa de Leyva:\n\nFestival de Cine de Antioquia:\n\nFestival de Cine Verde:\n\nFestival de Confraternidad Amaz\u00f3nica:\n\nFestival de Jazz:\n\nFestival del Burro:\n\nFestival del Chub:\n\nFestival de Viajeros Sin Maletas:\n\nFestivales al Parque: ,\n\nFestival Folcl\u00f3rico Colombiano:\n\nFestival Iberoamericano de Teatro:\n\nFestival Internacional de Cine de Barichara:\n\nFestival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias:\n\nFestival Internacional de Jazz de Bogot\u00e1:\n\nFestival Internacional de M\u00fasica:\n\nFestival Internacional de M\u00fasica Popular Amazonense:\n\nFestival Internacional de Poes\u00eda de Medell\u00edn:\n\nFestival Internacional de Tango: ,\n\nFestival Mundial de Salsa: ,\n\nFestival Nacional de la Musica Colombiana:\n\nFestival Petronio \u00c1lvarez: ,\n\nFestival Piraruc\u00fa de Oro:\n\nfestivals: ; _see also specific place_\n\nFHURE Travel:\n\nFiesta de la Virgen Carmen:\n\nFiesta Nacional del Caf\u00e9:\n\nFiestas Cuyabras:\n\nFiestas de San Juan y San Pablo:\n\nFilandia: 286-287\n\nfilm festivals: , ,\n\nFinca Alas y Raices: ,\n\nFinca Don Eduardo coffee tour:\n\nFinca El Ocaso:\n\nFinca La Primavera:\n\nFinca La Victoria:\n\nfireworks:\n\nfish:\n\nfishing: Bah\u00eda Solano ,  Choc\u00f3 ; Lago Tarapoto ; Laguna La Cocha , ; Providencia ; Puerto Colombia ; Reserva Natural Heliconia ; San Andr\u00e9s ; Taganga\n\nfitness:\n\nflea markets:\n\nflora: 433-437\n\nFloridablanca: ,\n\nflower festival:\n\nflower markets:\n\nfolk festivals:\n\nfood: , ,\n\nfootwear:\n\nFort Warwick:\n\nfossils:\n\nFreshwater Bay: 390-391\n\nfruit:\n\nFuente de Lavapi\u00e9s:\n\nFuerte de San Fernando:\n\nFundaci\u00f3n Caguama:\n\nFundaci\u00f3n Maikuchiga:\n\nFundaci\u00f3n Malpelo:\n\nFundaci\u00f3n Puerto Colombia:\n\nFusagasug\u00e1:\n\n### **G**\n\nGardel, Carlos:\n\ngardens: Convento del Santo Ecce Homo ; Hacienda Piedechinche ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico (Bogot\u00e1) , ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Quind\u00edo , 279-280; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico de Medell\u00edn ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico El Gallineral ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Eloy Valenzuela , ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico Los Balsos ; Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico San Andr\u00e9s , ; Mundo Amaz\u00f3nico ; Parque de Orquideas del Tequendama\n\ngay nightlife: , ,\n\ngay rights:\n\ngay travelers, tips for:\n\ngeography: 428-432\n\nGetseman\u00ed: , , ,\n\nGirardot:\n\nGir\u00f3n:\n\nGir\u00f3n Chill Out Hotel Boutique: ,\n\nglaciers: ,\n\nGlobos Colombia:\n\ngold: Mompox ; Museo Cultural de Arte Religioso ; Museo del Oro (Bogot\u00e1) ; Museo del Oro Calima ; Museo del Oro Nari\u00f1o ; Museo del Oro Quimbaya ; Museo del Oro Zen\u00fa ; Museo de Oro Tairona\n\nGolfo de Morrosquillo:\n\nGolfo de Urab\u00e1:\n\nGondava:\n\ngovernment: 452-453\n\ngovernment buildings:\n\nGranada: ,\n\nGran Colombia:\n\ngrasslands, tropical:\n\ngratuities:\n\nGringo Mike's: ,\n\nGuaduas:\n\nGuajira Peninsula:\n\nGuane: ,\n\nGuapi:\n\nGuasca:\n\nGuatape: 250-252\n\nguerilla activity: \u00c1lvaro Uribe ; Ca\u00f1o Cristales ; late 20th century ; Los Llanos ; Medell\u00edn , ; modern day 448-450; Norte de Santander\n\nG\u00fcic\u00e1n:\n\ngyms:\n\n### **H**\n\nHacienda Guayabal: ,\n\nHacienda La Aurora: , , , 425-427\n\nHacienda La Esperanza: ,\n\nHacienda Napoles:\n\nHacienda Para\u00edso:\n\nHacienda Piedechinche and Museo de la Ca\u00f1a de Az\u00facar:\n\nHacienda Venecia: ,\n\nHalloween:\n\nhammerhead sharks:\n\nhang gliding:\n\nHay Festival:\n\nhealthcare: , , , 464-465\n\nhens, broiled:\n\nhighland moors: ,\n\nhigh tourist season:\n\nhiking: Bah\u00eda Solano ; Bogot\u00e1 ; Buga preserves ; Caf\u00e9 de Alb\u00e1n ; Cali 311-312; Camino Real ; Ca\u00f1o Cristales ; Caverna de los Gu\u00e1charos ; Cerro de Monserrate ; Cerro El Morro del Tulc\u00e1n ; Ciudad Perdida Trek ; Darien Gap ; Eco Parque La Estampilla ; G\u00fcic\u00e1n ; Hacienda Guayabal ; Hacienda La Aurora ; Lago Tarapoto ; Laguna de Guatavita ; Laguna del Magdalena ; Laguna Verde ; Minca ; Nuqu\u00ed ; Palomino ; P\u00e1ramo de Ocet\u00e1 ; Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael 295-296; Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza ; Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy , , 192-193; Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona ; Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados , , , ; Parque Nacional Natural Macuira ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona ; Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda ; Providencia ; Reserva Natural Azufral ; Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed ; Reserva Natural Viento Solar ; San F\u00e9lix ; San Gil ; Santa Catalina ; Santa Marta ; Santuario de Fauna y Flora Galeras ; Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque ; Sapzurro 154-155; Taganga ; Valle de Cocora ; Valle del R\u00edo Ot\u00fan 291-292; Villa de Leyva , ; Volc\u00e1n Cumbal\n\nHip Hop al Parque:\n\nhistory: , 437-452\n\nholidays:\n\n_Homenaje a la Raza:_\n\nhomicides:\n\nHonda: ,\n\nhorseback riding: Cali area ; El Matuy ; Emblase de Tomin\u00e9 ; Hacienda La Aurora ; Hacienda Venecia ; Lagos de Menegua ; Parque Natural Chicaque ; Playa Blanca ; Popay\u00e1n ; Pozo Azul ; Salento , ; San Agust\u00edn ; Santa Fe de Antiqua ; Tobia\n\nhorses, wild:\n\nHostel Caracol: ,\n\nhot-air ballooning:\n\nHotel Continental:\n\nHotel Estelar Estaci\u00f3n:\n\nHotel Ibis: ,\n\nHotel Plaza Mayor: ,\n\nHotel Sirius: , ,\n\nHotel Sofitel Legend Santa Clara: ,\n\nhot springs: Coconuco , ; Complejo Termal ; Santa Rosa de Cabal ; Termales Balneario ; Termales de Coconuco ; Termales de Hotel ; Termales de Santa Rosa de Cabal ; Termales Erika ; Termales Oto\u00f1o ; Termales San Vicente\n\nHoyo Soplador:\n\nhumpback whales: , , ,\n\n### **I**\n\nIbagu\u00e9: 296-297\n\nIguaque: ,\n\nillness:\n\nimmigration: ,\n\nINCIVA:\n\nindependence movement: general discussion ; Batalla del Puente de Boyac\u00e1 ; Cartagena ; Casa de la Pola ; _Los Lanceros_\n\nIndian ambassador:\n\nindigenous communities: history 437-438; Macedonia ; Museo Etnogr\u00e1fico de Leticia ; Peruvian Amazon Company ; Puerto Nari\u00f1o 414-416; Reserva Calanoa ; San Mart\u00edn de Amacayacu ; Taganga ; _see also specific place_\n\nInquisition:\n\nIn Situ: ,\n\nInstituto Humboldt:\n\nIpiales:\n\nIron Wood Hill Trail:\n\nIsaacs, Jorge:\n\nIsla de la Corota:\n\nIsla de los Micos:\n\nIsla Gorgona:\n\nIsla Malpelo:\n\nIsla Murica:\n\nIsla Palma:\n\nIslas del Rosario: , ,\n\nIslas de San Bernardo: ,\n\nItag\u00fci:\n\nitineraries: , 15-28\n\nIza:\n\n### **J**\n\njaguars:\n\nJairo, John:\n\njam:\n\nJard\u00edn: , , , 252-256\n\njazz: ,\n\nJazz al Parque:\n\nJeep tours:\n\nJepirachi Wind Farm:\n\nJeric\u00f3: , 256-258\n\nJesuit Block:\n\nJohnny Cay: ,\n\njoropo dance: ,\n\nJuanchaco:\n\njungle tours:\n\n### **KL**\n\nKaribik:\n\nKasa Guane: ,\n\nKite Colombia:\n\nkite surfing: Cabo de la Vela ; Lago Calima ; San Andr\u00e9s ; Santa Marta\n\nKumanday:\n\nLa Antigua:\n\nLa Caba\u00f1a:\n\nLa Candelaria: 36-44\n\nLa Casa del Libro Total:\n\nLa Cevicher\u00eda: ,\n\nLa Chaquira:\n\nLa Cocina de Pepina: ,\n\nLa Coquerita:\n\nLadrilleros:\n\nLa Eliana: ,\n\nLa Equidad:\n\nLa Esperanza: ,\n\nLa Fogata:\n\nLa Garrucha:\n\nLago Calima:\n\nLago El Correo:\n\nLagos de Menegua:\n\nLago Sochagota:\n\nLago Tarapoto: ,\n\nLago Tota:\n\nLa Guacherna:\n\nLa Guajira: , , 142-149\n\nLaguna de Guatavita: ,\n\nLaguna del Magdalena:\n\nLaguna del Ot\u00fan: , ,\n\nLaguna Encantada:\n\nLaguna Grande de la Sierra:\n\nLaguna Iguaque: , ,\n\nLaguna La Cocha: ,\n\nLagunas de Siecha:\n\nLaguna Verde: ,\n\nLagunillas:\n\nLa Juanita:\n\nLa Loma:\n\nLa Loma de la Cruz:\n\nLa Macarena:\n\nLa Matuna:\n\nLa Merced Complex:\n\nLa Miel: ,\n\nLa Monta\u00f1a:\n\nLa Nevera:\n\nlanguage:\n\nLa Pelota:\n\nLa Piedra Pe\u00f1ol:\n\nLa Piscina:\n\nLa Piscina Natural:\n\nLa Popa:\n\nLa Portada: ,\n\nLas Lajas:\n\n_Las Muralles_ (Cartagena city walls): ,\n\nLas Vueltas:\n\nLatas:\n\nLa Torre al Cielo:\n\nLa Violencia:\n\nLa Vitrola: ,\n\nLaziness Day, International:\n\nlegends: , ,\n\nLe\u00f1os y Mariscos:\n\nLeticia: 403-411\n\nLGBT nightlife: , ,\n\nLGBT rights:\n\nLGBT travelers, tips for:\n\nlibraries: Biblioteca EPM ; Biblioteca Espa\u00f1a ; Biblioteca P\u00fablica Julio P\u00e9rez Ferrero ; Biblioteca P\u00fablica La Casa del Pueblo de Guanacas ; Biblioteca Tintal ; Biblioteca Virgilio Barco ; Bogot\u00e1\n\nliterature: Hay Festival ; M\u00e1rquez, Gabriel Garc\u00eda ,\n\nLlanos Orientales:\n\nLluvia de Semillas:\n\n_Los Lanceros:_\n\nLos Llanos: , 420-427,\n\nLos Pinos:\n\nLost City (Ciudad Perdida):\n\nLuna de Miel: ,\n\n### **M**\n\nMacarena, Sierra de la:\n\nMacarena neighborhood:\n\nMacedonia:\n\nMagdalena Medio: 248-250\n\nmalaria:\n\nMalec\u00f3n R\u00edo Magdalena:\n\nMalpelo: 371-372\n\nMam\u00e1 Lombriz:\n\nmanatees:\n\nManchineel Bay:\n\nManga:\n\nmangroves: , ,\n\nManizales: , 260-267\n\nManzana Cultural: ,\n\nManzana Jesu\u00edtica:\n\nMapalina:\n\nmarijuana cultivation:\n\nMarket at Silvia:\n\nM\u00e1rquez, Gabriel Garc\u00eda: ,\n\nMedell\u00edn: , , , 225-246\n\nMedell\u00edn and the coffee region: , 220-297; coffee region 259-297; highlights ; history ; itinerary 15-16; maps ; Medell\u00edn 225-246; northern and eastern Antioqua 246-252; planning tips , ; southern Antioquia 252-258\n\nMedell\u00edn Cartel: ,\n\nMedia Marat\u00f3n:\n\nmedical care: , , , 464-465\n\nMelgar:\n\nMesa de los Santos:\n\nMesa de Ruitoque: ,\n\nMikey, Fanny:\n\nMillonarios:\n\nMinca: , 132-134\n\nmining: emeralds ; Nemoc\u00f3n ; salt\n\nMirador Nai-pata:\n\nMompox: 117-119\n\nMonasterio Santa Mar\u00eda de la Epifan\u00eda:\n\nMondongo's: ,\n\nmoney: ,\n\nMongu\u00ed:\n\nMonkey Island:\n\nMonodedo:\n\nmonstrance, _La Lechuga:_\n\nMontenegro:\n\nMonter\u00eda:\n\nMontoya, Laura:\n\nMonumento a Cristo Rey, Belalc\u00e1zar:\n\nMonumento a la Dignidad de la Raza U'wa:\n\nMonumento al Esfuerzo:\n\nMonumento a los Colonizadores:\n\nMonumento Cristo Rey, C\u00facuta:\n\nMorgan, Captain Henry:\n\nMorgan's Cave: ,\n\nMorgan's Head: ,\n\nMorromico: ,\n\nmotorcycling: ,\n\nmountain adventures:\n\nmountain biking: Desierto de Tatacoita ; Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados ; San Gil , ; Taganga\n\nMountain Hostels:\n\nMUA:\n\nMuelle Tur\u00edstico: ,\n\nMuisca people: ,\n\nMundo Mar:\n\nmuseums: Armenia ; Barranquilla 119-120; Bogot\u00e1 , 39-40, , , 43-44, , , 49-50; Bucaramanga ; Cali , ; Cartagena , ; Colecci\u00f3n de Arte del Banco de la Rep\u00fablica , ; Guaduas ; Ibagu\u00e9 ; Medell\u00edn , , ; Jard\u00edn ; Jeric\u00f3 256-257; Mompox ; Museo de Antioquia , , ; Museo de Arte Moderno de Medell\u00edn , ; Museo del Oro (Bogot\u00e1) , , , ; Nueva Guatavita ; Paipa ; Pamplona ; Pasto 329-331; Pereira ; Popay\u00e1n ; Roldanillo ; San Agust\u00edn ; San Andr\u00e9s ; Santa Fe de Antioquia ; Santa Marta ; Sogamoso ; Tunja 178-179; Villa de Leyva , ,\n\n### **N**\n\nnational parks: general discussion ; Parque Nacional del Chicamocha ; Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu ; Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza , ; Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo ; Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy , 186-188, 190-194; Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona , , ; Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados , , ; Parque Nacional Natural Macuira ; Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon , ; Parque Nacional Natural Purac\u00e9 , , ; Parque Nacional Natural Sierra de la Macarena ; Parque Nacional Natural Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta ; Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1 , ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona , , , 134-137; Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda , 364-365; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo\n\nNaturar-Iguaque:\n\nnaval museums:\n\nNazareth:\n\nNC Arte:\n\nNegret, Edgar:\n\nNeiva:\n\nNemoc\u00f3n: ,\n\nNevado del Ruiz:\n\nNevado del Tolima: ,\n\nNevado Santa Isabel: ,\n\nNick's Place:\n\nNoche de las Luces:\n\nNorman cows:\n\nNorte de Santander: 212-219\n\nnorthern and eastern Antioqua: 246-252\n\nnorthern Bogot\u00e1: ,\n\nNorthern Medell\u00edn:\n\nNudo de los Pastos: ,\n\nNueva Granada:\n\nNueva Guatavita:\n\nN\u00fa\u00f1ez, Rafael:\n\nNuqu\u00ed: , ,\n\n### **O**\n\n_obleas_ (wafers):\n\nObleas Floridablanca:\n\nobservatories: ,\n\nObservatorio Astron\u00f3mico Tatacoa:\n\nOceanario Islas del Rosario:\n\noff-road vehicles:\n\nOjo del Agua:\n\nOld City Cartagena: , , , ,\n\nOnce Caldas:\n\nopera:\n\n\u00f3pera al Parque:\n\norchids: , ,\n\nOrquiderama:\n\nOyster's Creek Lagoon:\n\n### **P**\n\nPacific coast: , 354-372; Choc\u00f3 358-367; geography ; highlights ; history ; itinerary 25-26; maps ; planning tips , 356-358; South Pacific coast 367-372\n\npacking tips:\n\nPaipa:\n\nPaisa culture: ,\n\nPalacio de Gobierno Departamental:\n\nPalacio de Justicia: ,\n\nPalacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe:\n\nPalacio de la Inquisici\u00f3n: ,\n\nPalacio de San Carlos:\n\nPalacio de San Francisco:\n\nPalacio Li\u00e9viano:\n\nPalacio Nacional: ,\n\npaleontological sights: ,\n\n_palmas de cera_ (wax palms): , ,\n\nPalm Cays:\n\nPalomino: , 137-138\n\nPamplona: ,\n\nPANACA:\n\nPanama: ,\n\nPanama border crossing:\n\nPan de Az\u00facar: ,\n\nParadise Farm:\n\nparagliding: Condor de los Andes ; Medell\u00edn ; Roldanillo ; San Gil , ; Santander\n\nparamilitary activity: late 20th century ; Medell\u00edn ; modern day ; Norte de Santander ; Uribe's peace process\n\nParamillo del Quind\u00edo: ,\n\nP\u00e1ramo de Ocet\u00e1:\n\nP\u00e1ramo de Romerales:\n\nP\u00e1ramo Extremo:\n\n_p\u00e1ramos_ (highland moors): ,\n\nP\u00e1ramo Trek: ,\n\nparks: Ecoparque Los Yarumos ; Parque Arv\u00ed , , ; Parque Bol\u00edvar , ; Parque Cabal ; Parque Caldas , ; Parque Centenario ; Parque Central (Filandia) ; Parque Central Bavaria ; Parque Chic\u00f3 ; Parque de Jovita ; Parque de la  ; Parque de la Independencia ; Parque de las Luces 230-231; Parque de la Vida ; Parque del Bicentenario ; Parque de los Novios (Bogot\u00e1) ; Parque de los Novios (Santa Marta) ; Parque de Orquideas del Tequendama ; Parque El Bosque ; Parque El Salado ; Parque El Virrey ; Parque Explora ; Parque Garc\u00eda Rovira ; Parque Gran Colombiano ; Parque las Araucarias ; Parque las Nieves ; Parque Las Nubes ; Parque Lineal Ronda del Sin\u00fa ; Parque los Fundadores ; Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael , ; Parque Nacional: , ; Parque Nacional del Caf\u00e9 ; Parque Natural Chicaque , , ; Parque Natural Regional El V\u00ednculo ; Parque Olaya Herrera ; Parque Padilla ; Parque Principal, Jard\u00edn , ; Parque Regional Johnny Cay: ; Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed ; Parque Renacamiento ; Parque San Antonio , ; Parque San P\u00edo ; Parque Santander , , ; Parque Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar ; Parque Sucre ; Recinto del Pensamiento ; Santuario de Fauna y Flora Isla de la Corota ; West View\n\nParkway:\n\nParque Acu\u00e1tico:\n\nParqueadero:\n\nParque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de Las Piedras:\n\nParque Arqueol\u00f3gico Alto de los \u00cddolos:\n\nParque Arqueol\u00f3gico de San Agust\u00edn:\n\nParque de las Artes:\n\nParques Nacionales: general information , ; _see also specific national park_\n\nparrots:\n\nPasaje Rivas: ,\n\nPascual Guerrero Stadium:\n\nPaseo Bol\u00edvar:\n\nPaseo de Bastidas:\n\nPaseo de la Playa:\n\nPaso de \u00c1ngel:\n\npassports: ,\n\nPasto: , 328-339\n\nPavia: ,\n\nPay\u00e1n, Zambrano:\n\nPeak, The: ,\n\nPeatonal Carabobo:\n\nPe\u00f1\u00f3n de los Muertos:\n\nPereira: 287-291\n\nperforming arts: Bogot\u00e1 ; Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro ; Festival Internacional de Teatro de Manizales\n\nPeruvian Amazon Company:\n\nPescaderito:\n\nPesecar: ,\n\nPico Bol\u00edvar:\n\nPico Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n:\n\nPiedra de Bol\u00edvar:\n\npilgrimage sites: , ,\n\nPil\u00f3n de Az\u00facar:\n\nPi\u00f1as del 44:\n\npiracy: ,\n\n_planchones_ ferries:\n\nPlanetario de Bogot\u00e1:\n\nPlanetario Medell\u00edn:\n\nplane travel: 457-458,\n\nplanning tips: 10-12\n\nplants: 433-437\n\nPlaya Almejal: ,\n\nPlaya Blanca (Bar\u00fa):\n\nPlaya Blanca (Lago Tota):\n\nPlaya Blanca (Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda):\n\nPlaya Cocalito:\n\nPlaya del Muerto:\n\nPlaya de Pil\u00f3n:\n\nPlaya Grande:\n\nPlaya Mecana: ,\n\nPlaya Neguanje:\n\nPlaza Botero:\n\nPlaza Cayzedo:\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Armenia):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Bogot\u00e1): , ,\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Cartagena): ,\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Ibagu\u00e9):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Manizales):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Pereira):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Salamina):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Salento):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Santa Marta):\n\nPlaza de Bol\u00edvar (Tunja):\n\nPlaza de Cuervo:\n\nPlaza de la Aduana:\n\nPlaza de la Concepci\u00f3n:\n\nPlaza de la Libertad:\n\nPlaza de las B\u00f3vedas:\n\nPlaza de los Coches:\n\nPlaza de los Pies Descalzos: ,\n\nPlaza de San Francisco:\n\nPlaza de San Pedro:\n\nPlaza de Santa B\u00e1rbara:\n\nPlaza de Santamar\u00eda:\n\nPlaza de Santo Domingo:\n\nPlaza de Toros:\n\nPlaza Fern\u00e1ndez de Madrid:\n\nPlaza Los Libertadores:\n\nPlaza Mayor: , ,\n\nPlaza Nari\u00f1o:\n\nPlaza Ricaurte:\n\nPlaza San Diego:\n\nPlaza San Nicol\u00e1s:\n\nPlaza Santo Domingo: ,\n\nPlazoleta de la Carmen:\n\nPlazoleta Jairo Varela:\n\npoets: ,\n\npolice, national: ,\n\npolitics: 452-453\n\nPopay\u00e1n: , , 340-353\n\nPosada del Gecko: ,\n\nPosada San Agust\u00edn:\n\nPosada Tur\u00edstica Hostal del Mar: ,\n\nPosada Tur\u00edstica Rocas de Cabo Marzo: , , ,\n\nPozo Azul:\n\nprecipitation:\n\npre-Columbian history: 437-438\n\npresidential palace:\n\nprevention, disease:\n\nprisons:\n\nProAves:\n\nProvidencia: , , 388-395; beaches\n\nPueblito Paisa:\n\nPueblito Patojo:\n\nPuente de Boyac\u00e1:\n\nPuente de Calicanto:\n\nPuente de la Custodia:\n\nPuente de Occidente:\n\nPuente Humilladero:\n\nPuente Navarro:\n\nPuente Ortiz:\n\nPuerto Alegr\u00eda:\n\nPuerto Colombia:\n\nPuerto Nari\u00f1o: , , , 414-417\n\nP\u00falpito del Diablo: ,\n\nPunta Aguja:\n\nPunta Gallinas: ,\n\nPunta Hu\u00edna: ,\n\nPurac\u00e9 volcano:\n\n### **QR**\n\nQuebrada La Vieja:\n\nQuebrada Risaralda:\n\nQuebrada Valencia:\n\nQuimbaya nation:\n\nQuimbaya (town):\n\nQuinta de Bol\u00edvar: ,\n\nQuinta de San Pedro Alejandrino:\n\nrafting:\n\nrainfall:\n\nrainforests: , 433-435; _see also_ Amazon rainforest\n\nRally Aventura Guajira:\n\nrappelling: Caverna El Esplendor ; San Gil ,\n\nR\u00e1quira: ,\n\nRastafarian community:\n\nRaudal del Guayabero:\n\nRayo, Omar:\n\nRecinto del Pensamiento:\n\nRECUCA:\n\nRefugio la Roca:\n\nreggae dancing:\n\nRegi\u00f3n Andina:\n\nreligion:\n\nReserva Acaime: ,\n\nReserva Aguamarina:\n\nReserva Calanoa:\n\nReserva Cuchilla Jard\u00edn Tamesis:\n\nReserva del R\u00edo Blanco:\n\nReserva El Dorado:\n\nReserva Natural Anahuac:\n\nReserva Natural Azufral:\n\nReserva Natural Bosque de Yotoco:\n\nReserva Natural de las Loro Orejiamarillo:\n\nReserva Natural Heliconia:\n\nReserva Natural Laguna de Sonso:\n\nReserva Natural Marash\u00e1:\n\nReserva Natural Palmar\u00ed:\n\nReserva Natural R\u00edo Claro: , ,\n\nReserva Natural Tanimboca: ,\n\nReserva Natural Viento Solar: , ,\n\nRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia: _see_ FARC Revolutionaries\n\nRicaurte, Capit\u00e1n Antonio:\n\nR\u00edo Amazonas:\n\nR\u00edo Chicamocha:\n\nR\u00edo Claro canyon:\n\nR\u00edo Fonce:\n\nRiohacha: ,\n\nRioja Travel:\n\nR\u00edo Magdalena:\n\nR\u00edo Negro:\n\nR\u00edo Ot\u00fan Valley:\n\nR\u00edo Pance:\n\nR\u00edo Su\u00e1rez:\n\nRiosucio:\n\nR\u00edo Tund\u00f3:\n\nR\u00edo Yavar\u00ed: , , , 417-419\n\nRitacuba Blanco: ,\n\nRock al Parque:\n\nrock climbing: Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy ; Refugio La Roca ; Suesca ; Tobia\n\nRojas Pinilla, Gustavo:\n\nRoldanillo:\n\nrubber industry:\n\nRuta Sur: ,\n\n### **S**\n\nSala de Exposiciones de la Banco de la Rep\u00fablica:\n\nSalamina: , , 268-270\n\nSalento: , , 281-284\n\nSalitre M\u00e1gico:\n\nSalmona, Rogelio:\n\nSalom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty:\n\nSalsa al Parque: ,\n\nsalsa dancing: Cali , , 308-309, ; festivals ; Medell\u00edn\n\nsalt mining:\n\nSalto de Borodones:\n\nSalto del \u00c1ngel:\n\nSalto del Tequendama:\n\nSalto de Morti\u00f1o:\n\nSan Agust\u00edn: , , , , 348-352\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s: 378-388\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s and Providencia: , 373-395; geography ; highlights ; history 374-377; itinerary ; map ; planning tips ; Providencia and Santa Catalina 388-395; San Andr\u00e9s 378-388\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s Unlimited:\n\nSan Antero: ,\n\nSan Antonio: ,\n\nSan Antonio Hotel Boutique: ,\n\nSan Cipriano:\n\nSan F\u00e9lix:\n\nSan Gil: , ,\n\nSan Luis:\n\nSan Mart\u00edn de Amacayacu: , , ,\n\nSan Pabl\u00edn Norte:\n\nSanta Catalina: 388-395\n\nSanta Clara La Real:\n\nSanta Cruz del Islote:\n\nSanta Fe:\n\nSanta Fe de Antiqua:\n\nSantamar\u00eda Market:\n\nSanta Marta: 124-142\n\nSantanderes, the: , 194-219\n\nSanta Rosa de Cabal:\n\nSanta Sof\u00eda:\n\nSantuario:\n\nSantuario de Fauna y Flora Galeras:\n\nSantuario de Fauna y Flora Isla de la Corota:\n\nSantuario de Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos: ,\n\nSantuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo: , ,\n\nSantuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya: ,\n\nSantuario de Monserrate:\n\nSantuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque: , , ,\n\nSantuario La Milagrosa:\n\nSantuario Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de las Lajas:\n\nSapzurro: , , ,\n\nSapzurro Reserva Natural Tacarcuna:\n\nSatena: , ,\n\nseafood: ,\n\nseasons, best travel:\n\nsea turtles:\n\nSemana Santa (Mompox):\n\nSemana Santa (Popay\u00e1n):\n\nSemana Santa (San F\u00e9lix):\n\nSendero del Mosco:\n\nSendero Eco-Cultural El Ri\u00edto:\n\nSe\u00f1or de los Milagro:\n\nServicios Ecotur\u00edsticos G\u00fcic\u00e1ny:\n\nShakira:\n\nSharky's Surf Shop:\n\nShipano\u00fc pools:\n\nSierra de la Macarena:\n\nSierra Nevada del Cocuy: , , , 186-188,\n\nSierra Nevada de Santa Marta: , ,\n\nSmall World Foundation:\n\nsnorkeling: Capurgan\u00e1 ; La Piscina Natural ; Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda ; Providencia ; San Andr\u00e9s , ; Santa Catalina ; Taganga\n\nsoccer: , , ,\n\nSogamoso:\n\nsouthern Antioquia: 252-258\n\nsouthern Bogot\u00e1: 52-54\n\nsouthern Medell\u00edn:\n\nsouth Pacific coast: 367-372\n\nSouthwest Bay (Suroeste):\n\nSouthwest Colombia: _see_ Cali and Southwest Colombia\n\nspace museum:\n\nSpanish conquest: 438-439\n\nSpanish language:\n\nSpanish language courses: ,\n\nspas: ; _see also specific place_\n\nsport-fishing: ; _see also specific place_\n\nSpratt Bight: ,\n\nSpratt Bight Pathway: ,\n\nstargazing: , , ,\n\nSu\u00e1rez, Julio:\n\nSuesca:\n\nsugar industry:\n\nsurfing: , ,\n\nswimming: , ,\n\n### **T**\n\nTaganga:\n\ntango: , , , ,\n\nTanimboca:\n\nTarde de Mar\u00eda La Parda:\n\ntaxi crime:\n\nTayrona: , 134-137\n\nTayrona people:\n\nTeatro Col\u00f3n:\n\nTeatro Heredia:\n\nTeatro Jorge Isaacs:\n\nTeatro Libre:\n\nTeatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo:\n\nTeatro Metropolitano:\n\ntemperatures: , 432-433\n\nTemplo del 20 de Julio:\n\nTemplo de la Inmaculada Concepci\u00f3n:\n\nTemplo del Congreso:\n\nTemplo de Santa B\u00e1rbara:\n\nTemplo de Santo Domingo de Guzm\u00e1n:\n\nTemplo Mar\u00eda Inmaculada:\n\nTemplo y Convento San Francisco:\n\nTenjo:\n\nTete's Place:\n\ntheme parks:\n\nthermal baths: , ,\n\nThis Is Cartagena:\n\nTicuna villages: ,\n\nTierradentro: , , , 345-348\n\nTierradentro Archeological Park:\n\nTierra Viva:\n\nTinjac\u00e1:\n\ntipping:\n\nTobia:\n\nTodo R\u00e1quira:\n\nTol\u00fa: ,\n\nTorneo Internacional del Joropo: ,\n\nTorneo Internacional de Pesca Deportiva:\n\nTorre Colpatria: ,\n\nTorre Colpatria Observation Deck:\n\nTorre del Reloj: ,\n\nTorre Mud\u00e9jar:\n\nTorres, Jaime:\n\nTorres del Parque:\n\nToti:\n\nTOVYT Tours:\n\ntrain rides:\n\nTralala: ,\n\ntransportation: , 457-461\n\nTransportes Florida: , ,\n\ntraveler's diarrhea:\n\ntrekking: Ciudad Perdida Trek ; Finca La Primavera ; Laguna del Magdalena ; Laguna del Ot\u00fan ; Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy , , ; Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados , ; Parque Nacional Natural Tatam\u00e1 ; Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque\n\ntropical dry forests: , , ,\n\ntropical grasslands:\n\nTsalickis, Mike:\n\nTumaco:\n\nTunja: , , 176-180\n\nT\u00faquerres:\n\nTuricumbes:\n\nTurtle Rock:\n\nturtles, sea:\n\n### **U**\n\nUltra Mar:\n\nUNESCO Biosphere Reserves:\n\nUNESCO City of Gastronomy:\n\nUNESCO City of Music:\n\nUNESCO World Heritage Sites: , ,\n\nUNESCO World Heritage traditions:\n\nUNIGMA:\n\nUniversidad Aut\u00f3noma de Bucaramanga:\n\nUniversidad de Antioquia:\n\nUniversidad de Los Andes:\n\nUniversidad de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Rosario:\n\nUniversidades:\n\nUrban Buddha: ,\n\nUribe, \u00c1lvaro:\n\nUsaqu\u00e9n:\n\nU'wa people:\n\n### **V**\n\nvaccinations: ,\n\nValenzuela Kennler:\n\nValero, Isaias:\n\nValle de Cauca: ,\n\nValle de Cocora: , 284-286\n\nValle del R\u00edo Ot\u00fan:\n\nVargas, Juan:\n\nvegetation: 433-437\n\nVenezuela border crossing: , ,\n\nVereda de Cocora: ,\n\nViaducto C\u00e9sar Gav\u00edria Trujillo:\n\nViajes Cielo & Tierra: ,\n\nVictoria Regia:\n\nVilla de Leyva: , , , , 164-172\n\nVilla del Rosario:\n\nVilla Maga: ,\n\nVillavicencio: , 421-423\n\nVillavieja:\n\nVi\u00f1edo Aim Karim:\n\nviolence, drug-related: ,\n\nVirgen de la Loma:\n\nvisas: ,\n\nvolcanoes: Parque Nacional Natural Los Nevados ; Voladero Las \u00c1guilas ; Volc\u00e1n Azufral ; Volc\u00e1n Cumbal ; Volc\u00e1n Galeras , ; Volc\u00e1n Purac\u00e9\n\nvolunteering:\n\n### **W**\n\nwaterfalls: Bah\u00eda Solano ; Cascada El Tigre ; Cascadas de Juan Cur\u00ed ; El Cielo ; El Duende ; Jard\u00edn , ; La Periquera ; Parque Las Nubes ; Parque Municipal Natural Planes de San Rafael ; Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy ; Parque Nacional Natural Isla Gorgona ; Quebrada Valencia ; Villa de Leyva ; Reserva Aguamarina ; Reserva Cuchilla Jard\u00edn Tamesis ; R\u00edo Magdalena ; Termales de Hotel\n\nwater safety:\n\nwax palms: , ,\n\nWay\u00fau people:\n\nweather: ,\n\nwestern Bogot\u00e1: 51-52\n\nwestern Caribbean coast: 150-159\n\nWest View:\n\nwhale-watching: general discussion ; Bah\u00eda Solano ; best season ; Buenaventura ; Isla Gorgona ; Nuqu\u00ed ; Pacific Coast ; Parque Nacional Natural Utr\u00eda\n\nWhite City:\n\nwhite-water rafting: R\u00edo Magdalena ; San Gil ; Tobia\n\nwildlife: 433-437\n\nwildlife: Amazon rainforest ; Asocaiman ; Buga preserves ; Choc\u00f3 Biogeogr\u00e1fico ; Estaci\u00f3n Septiembre Sea Turtle Hatchery and Release Program ; Fundaci\u00f3n Maikuchiga ; Hacienda La Aurora ; La Esperanza ; Lagos de Menegua ; Los Llanos ; Parque Nacional Natural Amacayacu ; Parque Nacional Natural Macuira ; Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona ; Parque Regional Natural Ucumar\u00ed ; Reserva Acaime ; Reserva Calanoa ; Reserva del R\u00edo Blanco ; Reserva Natural de las Loro Orejiamarillo ; Reserva Natural Heliconia ; Reserva Natural Palmar\u00ed ; Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro ; Reserva Natural Viento Solar ; Santuario de Fauna y Flora Galeras ; Santuario de Fauna y Flora Isla de la Corota ; Santuario de Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos ; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Malpelo 371-372; Santuario de Flora y Fauna Ot\u00fan-Quimbaya , ; Santuario Flora y Fauna Iguaque ; Sapzurro Reserva Natural Tacarcuna ; Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta ; Victoria Regia\n\nwindsurfing: ,\n\nwineries: ,\n\nwinter:\n\nwomen's crafts:\n\nwomen travelers:\n\n### **XYZ**\n\nyellow fever:\n\nyoga: Cartagena ; Medell\u00edn ; Palomino ; Reserva Natural Viento Solar ; Santa Marta\n\nYurupary Amazonastours:\n\nZipaquir\u00e1:\n\nZona G:\n\nZona M:\n\nZona Rosa: ,\n\nZona T:\n\nZool\u00f3gico de Cali:\n\nZool\u00f3gico Mateca\u00f1a:\n\nZool\u00f3gico Santa Cruz: \n\n## **List of Maps**\n\n**Front color map**\n\nColombia: 2-3\n\n**Discover Colombia**\n\nchapter divisions map:\n\n**Bogot\u00e1**\n\nBogot\u00e1:\n\nChapinero and Zona G:\n\nAvenida Jim\u00e9nez:\n\nCentro Internacional:\n\nNorthern Bogot\u00e1:\n\nVicinity of Bogot\u00e1:\n\n**Cartagena and the Caribbean Coast**\n\nCartagena and the Caribbean Coast:\n\nCartagena:\n\nOld City: 102-103\n\nBarranquilla:\n\nSanta Marta:\n\nLa Guajira:\n\n**Boyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes**\n\nBoyac\u00e1 and the Santanderes:\n\nTunja:\n\nParque Nacional Natural El Cocuy:\n\nBucaramanga:\n\nSan Gil and Vicinity:\n\nC\u00facuta:\n\n**Medell\u00edn and the Coffee Region**\n\nMedell\u00edn and the Coffee Region:\n\nEl Poblado:\n\nCentro:\n\nManizales:\n\nParque Nacional Natural Los Nevados:\n\nArmenia:\n\nPereira:\n\n**Cali and Southwest Colombia**\n\nCali and Southwest Colombia:\n\nCali:\n\nPasto:\n\nPopay\u00e1n:\n\n**The Pacific Coast**\n\nThe Pacific Coast:\n\n**San Andr\u00e9s and Providencia**\n\nSan Andr\u00e9s:\n\nProvidencia:\n\n**The Amazon and Los Llanos**\n\nThe Amazon and Los Llanos: \n\n## **Acknowledgments**\n\n_Mil gracias_ to: Dylan Misrachi, Alejandro Maldonado, Camilo Polo, Marcela Manrique, Marco Chiandetti, Alberto Dante, Eric S\u00e1nchez, Nery Luz Hoyos, Martha Rubio and Fabio Jim\u00e9nez, Rainbow Nelson, Elena Posada, Marcela S\u00e1nchez, Jay Speller, Alex Zuluaga, Jorge Barbosa, Paola Lenis, Johana Granados, Matthew Freiberg, everyone at Iguana Hostel in Cali, Los Pinos folks in Minca, Claudia of Hostal Ruta Sur in Cali, Heike van Gils, Victor Sepulveda, Jade Gosling, Felipe Escobar, Rodrigo Andr\u00e9s Fajardo, Tyler Stacy, Stefan Schnur, Tim Harbour, Tony Clark and Kim Macphee, Richard Emblin and Mar\u00eda Claudia Pe\u00f1a, Richard McColl, Diego Duarte, Alexa and Daniel from Kolibr\u00ed in Pereira, Don Ai in El Valle, Ryan H. from Medell\u00edn, Javier Gamba, Patrice Chambragne, Carolina, Julia, and Diana Barco, Paulino Gamboa, Martin Climent, Mauricio Quintero, Juan Guillermo Garc\u00e9s, Ximena Arosemena and everyone at the Reserva Natural R\u00edo Claro, Julio Su\u00e1rez, Greg Shiffer, Alexandra G\u00f3mez, Guillermo Valderrama, Luzlilian G\u00f3mez, Juanita Saenz, Marta Royo, Shaun from Macondo in San Gil, Douglass Knapp, Max Hartshorne, Mary Luz Parra, Diana and Pepe G\u00f3mez, Juan Pablo Echeverri of Hacienda Venecia, Irene Torres, Jorge Torres and the staff of Hacienda Guayabal, Daniel Maxian, Karla Miliani, Finca Villa Martha, Jackeline Rend\u00f3n, Mauricio Cardona, H\u00e9ctor Buitrago, Hemmo Misker, Fibas Jard\u00edn Bot\u00e1nico del Desierto--Villa de Leyva, Jorge Raul D\u00edaz, Nelson Barrag\u00e1n and everyone at Hacienda La Aurora, Goran Mihajlovic, Rafael Clavijo, Axel H. Antoine-Feill S., Kelly Brooks, Yaneth Caballero, Chris Hardyment, Alonso S\u00e1nchez, Gustavo Osorio, and Jorge Navas.\n\nThanks to everyone at Avalon Travel, especially Leah Gordon, Domini Dragoone, Mike Morgenfeld, and Grace Fujimoto. For their moral support, canines Tiga and Lumi, and finally, and most of all, to my partner Vio for his good sense, good humor, and incredible patience.\n\n**MOON COLOMBIA**\n\nAvalon Travel\n\na member of the Perseus Books Group\n\n1700 Fourth Street\n\nBerkeley, CA 94710, USA\n\nwww.moon.com\n\nEditor: Leah Gordon\n\nSeries Manager: Kathryn Ettinger\n\nCopy Editor: Deana Shields\n\nGraphics and Production Coordinator: Domini Dragoone\n\nCover Design: Faceout Studios, Charles Brock\n\nMoon Logo: Tim McGrath\n\nMap Editor: Mike Morgenfeld\n\nCartographer: Stephanie Poulain\n\nIndexer: Rachel Kuhn\n\neISBN-13: 978-1-61238-628-7  \nISBN-13: 978-1-61238-627-0\n\nISSN: 2334-0533\n\nPrinting History\n\n1st Edition \u2013 August 2014\n\n5 4 3 2 1\n\nText \u00a9 2014 by Andrew Dier.\n\nMaps \u00a9 2014 by Avalon Travel.\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nSome photos and illustrations are used by permission and are the property of the original copyright owners.\n\nFront cover photo: bell tower of the Cathedral of Cartagena, \u00a9 Alfredo Maiquez\/Getty Images.\n\nTitle page photo: aerial view of Guatape Lake, \u00a9 Daniel Alvarez\/123RF.\n\nFront color photos: click here \u00a9 Jannis Werner\/123RF; click here, click here (top), click here, click here (top, bottom left), click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here \u00a9 Andrew Dier; click here (top left), click here (bottom left) \u00a9 Mariusz Prusaczyk\/123RF; click here (top right) \u00a9 Gregory Hills; click here (bottom), click here (bottom right), click here (bottom right), click here, click here, click here \u00a9 Jesse Kraft\/123RF; click here \u00a9 Lakasz Janyst\/123RF; click here, click here \u00a9 Rafcha\/123RF; click here \u00a9 Flaperval\/123RF; click here \u00a9 Alejandra Triana Munoz\/123RF.\n\nMoon Handbooks and the Moon logo are the property of Avalon Travel. All other marks and logos depicted are the property of the original owners. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, except brief extracts by a reviewer for the purpose of a review, without written permission of the copyright owner.\n\nAll recommendations, including those for sights, activities, hotels, restaurants, and shops, are based on each author's individual judgment. 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