The small, “touristic” backwater of Mompos is, I assure you, entirely NOT worth the seriously inhuman trip either from the west (boat-ride?) or east (threehour rocky mudroad sharing an extended-cab toyota truck, however luggage-racked, with 17 people including ourselves)— but at least we took some nice photos, since we were already there for a cumbia festival that the hostel-owner neglected to mention in his many emails in the days leading up had been canceled. bummer.

what you’re seeing: the ill-documented adobe-loving geckos literally numbered in the thousands, projecting from the 200 we saw in our strolls; the adobe riverport market building, featured crane-shottedly in Ciro Guerra’s aimless ethno-tourist “film” Los viajes del viento, was in a depressing state of half-repair, somewhere between Mompos’ overall backwaterhood and the big promises entailed by Uribe having a Momposina for a daughter-in-law. colonial churches iz colonial.