The weekend niece. from the book, Searching for treasures

     It didn’t matter if it was for lunch or breakfast, Dora would happily stop for a bite of something delicious at Los Gemelos, the roadside café at the halfway point of the trip. And for her, that moment represented much more than a mere stop for a meal.

     The spectacular view offered at that place! For a moment, she formed part of those open spaces and the summit’s view, the world, below, at her feet! Freedom! To not be the helpless child everyone treated as if she were made of glass and could break at any moment. The poor little thing that had lost her mother. Deliverance! To arrive at the farm when her uncle and aunt were home, not absent on their occasional trips, and so, share some wonderful time together! Hope! To reach her little room at Ines’ house: small and modest, but hers; no more and no less. Happiness! And who was the simple-minded person that said kids had it easy?

     In Barichara, her grandparents Abundio and Katalina Arango had a coffee farm. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, and leisurely at that, from the bus stop in the center of the town, where Dora got off the bus from San Gil.  

     Barichara es one of those picturesque towns of the country’s northeastern region, set in the mountains of the Santander Department. In fact, it could be considered one of Colombia’s most beautiful towns. Dora enjoyed it immensely since she was a child. Above everything else, she loved to walk its cobbled streets, beneath the fresh shades of the wide overhangs, their bright colors contrasting with the shingles of the red-tiled roofs.

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