Buscando la rumba

As far as I could tell from my internet research, there was nothing interesting about Neiva. Nor did there appear to be any reason anyone would ever travel there, save on the way to somewhere else in Huila, such as the Desierto de Tatacoa or the archaeological park in San Agustín. Except one thing – for three weeks in June and July, Neiva holds a folkloric festival, and people from all over the country swarm to the department capital to celebrate. And this festival coincidentally overlapped with my scheduled route from the Desierto to San Agustín. ¡Fiesta!

I could sense the buzz as I pulled into town. The bars pumped vallenata and salsa. I rode past five musicians stuffed into a car wearing identical hats and traditional suits on their way to play. A passerby saw me on my bike and gave me a big high five. When I got to my hotel, the manager, Norma, was wearing a brightly colored traditional gown and headdress and drunkenly demanded that I sit next to her in the lobby to talk, despite the fact that I couldn’t understand her slurred Spanish at all. Neiva was bumping.

But I was exhausted. The day before, I had biked 115 miles then slept on the ground, camping in the desert. I didn’t have any clean clothes left. It’s a three-week festival, I told myself. Rest first, party tomorrow.

The next day, I woke up excited. The lobby was packed full of families in town for the festival eating breakfast. Norma, now dressed in her hangover clothes of a T-shirt and athletic shorts, served me a big cup of chocolate caliente.

“¿Dónde debo ir para ver el festival?” I asked Norma for directions. She gave me a funny look and, for a moment, I thought maybe I was a bit too excited to party for eight in the morning.

“Terminó anoche,” she said apologetically.

It was done. I missed the festival by a day. I was devastated.

As the families in the hotel packed their bags into their cars, I set out anyway to see the city. Neiva was a ghost town. Everything was closed. Workers were dismantling stages. Lots of stages. Beer cans and other trash covered the street. Instead of arriving in Neiva at the perfect time of the year, as anticipated, I had arrived on the absolute worst day of the year – its annual hangover. 

I began to feel a hangover by association. I had to get out of there. I googled, “what to do in Neiva,” and found a popular hot springs, Termales de Rivera, about thirty minutes away. Far, but these were desperate times. I hailed a taxi because I was too impatient to take a bus.

We pulled up to the termales in a row of traffic. A line of people spilled out of the entrance and into the road. Kids were running circles around their patient parents, who were waiting to buy admission.

I panicked. I thought I was going to be able to relax in peace. All the families who were leaving the festival were now at the hot springs. Chaos! 

But as I walked into the termales, which appeared more like a water park than a spa, I felt a strange sense of peace in the chaos. This is what I was looking for in Neiva, after all – the party. After spending so many hours alone with my thoughts on the bicycle, it felt comfortable to be surrounded by people swimming, splashing, running, eating, drinking, and being merry. I bought a cerveza and a mandatory swim cap and wiggled my way in, to relax in the chaos. 

2 comments