The Incident.

Apologies for the delay in this blogpost. The problem is, whenever I begin to relate the story, I relive the horrible events in my mind and it causes me to momentarily freeze up. But here goes nothing…


The bus to Tunja started smoothly. I had the window seat, which looked out onto spectacular views of a canyon. We twisted and turned down the narrow road passing mountains and river valleys. It was truly breathtaking!


Somewhere in the middle of Rush Hour 3, I decided that I had to go to the bathroom. Mom stood up to let me pass and in a blink of an eye, everything changed. The driver slammed the brakes and broke mom’s grip on the seat. She flew to the front of the bus and fell just shy of the driver’s seat. I leaped out of my seat to see if she was ok. She looked a little dazed, but said she was fine. I started to help her up when I saw blood coming from her head. I found the wound and by that time there was blood everywhere. It wouldn’t stop and there was so much of it. Concerned passengers handed us tissues and I applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

I write this as though I was cool and calm as a cucumber, but in reality I was in hysterics. We were in the middle of nowhere Colombia and the blood wouldn’t stop pouring from my mom’s head. As I pleaded with the bus driver to find a hospital, I could hear the sobs rising in my voice. My eyes swelled with tears as my thoughts ran through every possible terrible conclusion to this story. And it was all my fault, if I hadn’t had to go to the bathroom just then…

I cradled mom’s head in my hands and tried to gain composure; nothing constructive would result from freaking out. The bus bounced along.

There was a doctor on the bus and he took a look at my mom’s wound and declared that she would need stitches. He put gauze on the wound and wrapped her head in an ace bandage to hold it in place. I held my breath all the way to the nearest village clinic, seeing everything happen over and over again in slow motion.

We got to the clinic, which was a little run-down building. The doctor was calm and inspected the wound. She laid mom down and put her head on a metal platter to begin stitching. Once the gauze was off, the bleeding began once again and the procedure was put on hold until they could tame it. Meanwhile, mom is being calm and occasionally cracking jokes (especially when I was asked if she was my sister!).

After looking at the wound and blood, I begin to feel a little dizzy. The right side of my vision blurs and I can’t see. I take a seat so that I don’t faint.

The stitches take a while. They put between 8 and 12 of them in. Mom doesn’t complain, she just lays there calmly. After childbirth, she says, nothing hurts. Brave brave woman.



The doctor finishes up, wraps mom’s head in a bandage and gauze, washes her off, and we’re all set to go. We thank them for their work!


Meanwhile, the bus (and all the passengers) is waiting for us. So we hop on board and continue the journey. I’m still on edge, even when mom assures me that she’s fine and that it doesn’t hurt.

At one point we stop and the bus driver motions me out of the bus. I’m practically still shaking. He pressures me to sign a document that we won’t sue the bus company. I make him promise that when we get to Tunja or Bogotá, that he’ll arrange to bring us to a doctor for a concussion check. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have signed it because anything that wasn’t on that paper was soon forgotten. I was fingerprinted and then allowed to get back on the bus.

We finally arrived in Tunja and I’m ready to walk the two blocks to the hotel. A woman warns us that we shouldn’t walk this late at night (it’s about 8pm or so), so we take a cab. When we’re finally in our room, I set my bags down and let out a huge sigh. I couldn’t believe what had happened. What a ridiculous day!

We wandered around the darkened streets and found a restaurant that was open. We shared a meal and they gave us a bag of ice when I explained our situation. It gets cold in Tunja and we curled up under the warm blankets and fell asleep.

The next morning, the noise from the street woke us up. Mom said that she felt fine, which is ridiculous because she had rejected all of the pain meds that were offered to her. We had a delicious breakfast and then wandered around the main plaza and narrow cobble stone streets. I liked Tunja, not quite as much as Bucaramanga, but more than Mompós. You could see the mountains rising up over the city, it was beautiful.



I wanted to spend more time in Tunja, but getting to Bogotá was my top priority. Once we got to Bogotá, I thought we could relax until mom’s flight. But Bogotá ended up being more than just a resting place. It was a vibrant lively wonderful city.

Food Highlights:


Huevos al gusto: Breakfasts these days have been scrambled eggs with onion and tomato. It comes with an arepa and a cup of something hot. It gives us the energy we need for the day!