Winter mornings are bleak. Almost always you wake up to a gray sky and a good country breakfast: fried sausage or ham, fried eggs, fried potatoes, and a plate of biscuits with butter and apple jelly. Then, after a pot of coffee, you move on.

No matter which way you go you'll drive thru a lot of cold, barren country to get there. North, thru the heart of the Bluegrass, west toward Louisville, east into the mountains, or south to Tennessee.

Not much speed on those narrow highways, plenty of time to look off across the white fences and wonder how the cows find anything to eat in the frozen fields. Time to listen to the sermons on the radio or the lonely thump of a shotgun somewhere back from the road.

Not much to hurry about in the Bluegrass, specially in the winter when the trees are bare and the barns are white with frost and most folks are inside by the stove.

The Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1962

A Footloose American in a Smugglers' Den

In Puerto Estrella, Colombia, there is little to do but talk. It is difficult to say just what the villagers are talking about, however, because they speak their own language -- a tongue called Guajiro, a bit like Arabic, which doesn't ring well in a white man's ear.

Usually they are talking about smuggling, because this tiny village with thatched roof huts and a total population of about 100 South American Indians is a very important port of entry. Not for humans, but for items like whisky and tobacco and jewelry. It is not possible for a man to get there by licensed carrier, because there are no immigration officials and no customs. There is no law at all, in fact, which is precisely why Puerto Estrella is such an important port.

It is far out at the northern tip of a dry and rocky peninsula called La Guajira, on which there are no roads and a great deal of overland truck traffic. The trucks carry contraband, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it, bound for the interiors of Colombia and Venezuela. Most of it comes from Aruba, brought over at night on fast trawlers and put ashore at Puerto Estrella for distribution down the peninsula on the trucks.

I arrived at dusk on a fishing sloop from Aruba. And since there is no harbor I was put ashore in a tiny rowboat. Above us, on a sharp cliff, stood the entire population of the village, staring grimly and without much obvious hospitality at Puerto Estrella's first tourist in history.