Bonus adventure: A trip to hell and back

             Bonus adventure: A trip to hell and back

This is not a book, this is not a short story, this is not meant to dramatize, nor to entertain... and this chapter is going to be very hard to write. 

I chose to write this down to help me process what happened in the past weeks. Unlike the past chapters, this one does not contain fun, jokes, or quirky word plays. It is a story about kidnapping, death, and despair, but also resilience and an unquantifiable amount of pure luck. 

I can't tell you all how lucky I feel to still be here and tell this story. From now on moving forward, every day feels like a gift. 

Friday, September 5th. The day started wonderfully with a trail run at an undesignated camp spot on a cow pasture located on a ridgeline overlooking a vast area of lush green hills. The smells, views, and sounds were amazing and led me to think that this could be that kind of place you'd want to be when you grow older, slow down, retire... focus on enjoying things rather than investing and building.

As it is so often in life, things happen when you least expect them. So I'm rolling down the street at 12:30pm; it's a rather poor area, roads are lacking the proper maintenance and probably have been for the past decades. I am 40 minutes from Cali, approaching from the south, direction of Jamundi. Forty minutes from meeting my buddy who planned a whole weekend around me being there. Forty minutes from safety...

A small-bore bike pulls up, two rather intimidating guys on it, one with indigenous features, the other black, huge, and jacked. Jacked guy yells at me to stop and go the other way, I give him a hand sign to go eat dirt. We get to a slow stop. He pulls out his gun and points it right in my face. Seconds turn into ages, my blood pressure rises, my thoughts accelerate, the adrenaline surge inevitable...

He gets off his bike and circles around me, screaming to hand over the bike key and get off the bike. He starts patting me down for weapons. A typical robbery, I thought, they saw me in town, liked what I had and BOOM it's his...but not that easy. My thoughts are racing — my pepper spray is out of reach, as are my brass knuckles. I have a knife on me, but that seems too risky. So instead I yell, "FUCK OFF, I'M NOT GIVING YOU MY BIKE!!!" Don't make it too easy for him, I'm thinking. If this bike goes and I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere, they're gonna eat me like dogs. I will lose everything, and it'll be over. "I'M NOT GIVING YOU MY BIKE!" I repeat, before I hear a click-click and the gun points directly between my eyes. 

What scares me now thinking about it was not the fact that I had a gun in my face, I didn't even look at the gun, all I focused on were his eyes and his body language. I could clearly tell that he was getting pissed off. His hips turned, his feet squared up towards me. If you don't give him the key now he'll take it on his own terms, I thought. I wouldn't like those terms, or possibly I wouldn't be around anymore to like those terms...

They put me on the back of the smaller bike, and we rode off, gun guy following me on my husky. I kept yelling to slow down as we lost sight of my bike. Desperation slowly took over as the initial adrenaline surge subsided. All I can do now is take it one step at a time, be rational, don't give them anything, don't make it too easy for them.

First, we stopped in the town of Timba that they had complete control over, noticeable by the fact that everyone around me had guns, collaborated, or just sort of looked away and went about their business if they weren't part of the goup. After all the yelling slowed down a bit, I came to find out that these guys were part of an organized guerilla group. I stopped and swallowed for a moment as I realized that this situation had just gotten a whole lot worse than I had originally anticipated. 

They then transferred me about 40 minutes up the hill. My bike is gone at this point, or at least I can't see it anymore. I'm pinched between two dudes now on the same bike, and it was tight before! 

The longer ride really gave me time to think in all the wrong ways. A week prior, I was riding up a similar hill where Escobar built his own prison in Medellin, where he executed friends and foes alike. Some of those people scheduled for the chopping block knew what was coming, they knew that was their last ride, their last thoughts, their last everything. I'm stressing, thinking that I am that person now, inching closer to my final minute. How will they do it? Will it hurt? 

Up on the hills, it looked sort of like a military camp. My eyes catch the bike; oh my god, it's still there! And they're going at it, pulling it apart looking for cameras, phones, and other electronics. They put me into a sort of interrogation scenario, with the big fat boss of whoever the hell these guys were sitting across from me, his teeth and chubby man tits sticking out like sore thumbs. He starts out talking about guerilla warfare and the costs of it. Yeah, money! Ok good sir, look I don't have much, 400k pesos in my pocket, $500 US in the bank, and the bike…max worth $8k USD. My mind was instinctively telling me to lie until the trees were bending over backwards. He didn't like my answers after his right hand guy pulled out a calculator and mumbled some gibberish back to him. 

Long times of silence, waiting, and staring into the clouds followed. In the meantime, they were heavily investigating my phones. My mind was of course spiraling as they checked every banking app and password I had saved on there, thinking that they would find out I lied, start sending money to themselves, and then torture my sorry ass for lying to them. Is this my first and last big mistake? 

Things started to get hectic again, something was happening. Deep down, I'm hoping they concluded me useless, poor, and too dumb to negotiate with or extort. Unfortunately, it was none of that. This time, they pulled me into one of their SUVs. Two guys next to me with machine guns, one of them just casually leaning against my shoulder, pointing right at my head. Two guys in the front, handguns strapped to their thighs. I think it would take two seconds to grab the gun, another two trying to unlock it, by then the two guys next to me would have me strangled and I'd be running out of air within the next five seconds. Just to come back to life 10 seconds later and find myself in worse conditions? Worth trying? Don't be stupid, brain! Think strategically, it's too early to be considering a last resort option. 

The consistent stress for the past 3 hours is now really hitting me, I'm in my suit still, sweating uncontrollably. I'm dehydrated. A migraine starts, my vision closing in on me... oh no, I know this situation, and I can't stop it once it starts. The panic is setting in, I can't see anything, I’m basically blind, stuck in a car with the worst people on this planet, transporting me to a place of ... who knows what... will I even see what they do to me? Will I just suddenly feel pain, blood everywhere, having difficulty breathing and just pass out? I never imagined the end to be this ugly, this stressful, surrounded by people filled with hate and the desire to see you suffer. 

I wanted to hold the hands of the people I loved and admired. I wanted my last words to be "I love you.”

The Camp

I can barely see the outline of the camp, is it a camp? I think I can tell there is a kitchen, animals, people in normal clothing. I’m panting heavily, my arms stretched forward to not run into anything or fall. “¡Agua! ¡Por favor, Agua!" A glass of water reaches my hands, who knows from where, but it doesn't matter. I don't hesitate. 

[The view from the camp cell, the camp's backyard in the      foreground, the coca hills in the back, a bad drawing by hand but unfortunately an artist's career wasn't meant to by my future.] 

Hours later, I think, I find myself in a room, on a couch, open mesh fencing on two sides, one side cinder blocks, vertical wood boards on the fourth side. My bike is right in front of me. Am I dreaming? 

Two important-looking people from most notorious guerilla group on the entire American continent - la FARC-EP - enter, paperwork and a tablet in their hands. They're setting up a little interrogation scenario. They use two plastic crates to sit on, I'm on the couch facing them. 

The questions at first seemed normal: names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, social media presence, occupation... Then, they became more pointed. Do I have any military connections? Do I talk to police? What groups am I part of? What ideology do I follow? What are the biggest scars on my body? Do I have chip implants? 

Guys, I grew up in a village of 800 people on the other side of the planet and played ping pong for 12 years. You may have never seen someone as innocent as me, but I'm telling you, these people exist! 

"We need accurate information to conduct a detailed investigation, Sir! If you're lucky, we could be done by tonight." OMG, I could be in Cali before dark? 

The hours are passing by and nothing is happening, I start talking to people trying to find out what's taking so long? Is there a problem, Sir? 

What if they found something they didn't like? What if their investigation contained an error? What if someone thought that even if I am innocent, there is value or leverage in my existence? 

They're setting up a hammock for me to sleep in, I couldn't believe it, talk to me you godforsaken people, PLEASEEE! 

The next morning felt like waking up from a nightmare into a new nightmare. My mind was off, my emotions derailed. I was not myself. Fear seemed to be the leading response for the first time in my life, and it's guiding every thought, every action. Every time I found the strength to loosen my gaze from the walls I have been staring at for hours now, my eyes would find an even more cheerless thing to look at, leading to similar or more bleak thoughts altogether.

I'm looking at the guards and the people tasked with running the camp. They're messed up — my guard only has one arm, others are limping, scars on their faces and limbs. When they lift their shirts to change or wash I can see their mangled bodies. I started feeling for them for the first time. They may be ugly on the outside, but if there was only one thing in life I learned, it's that everyone carries a heart and love inside. 

Some of them spoke fairly straightforward Spanish, others were impossible to understand. Later, I come to understand that they have their own slang, so even regular Colombians wouldn't understand what they were saying. 

“¿Comandante, que pena molestarte, hay noticias?" I ask. Nothing and nothing over and over again and not a single word from anyone. 

A countdown from 10 starts up out of nowhere, people are scrambling, the rallying call from the Comandante is getting everyone to line up in the backyard right outside my cell. To my surprise, not everyone was carrying an M16, but half of them had wood cutouts thereof to resemble the weapon and still be able to participate in the marching and carrying exercises. 

"Media!" ... "Vuelta!" ... "Izquierda!" ... "Retirarse!" 

"VIVA COLOMBIA!!!" 

The thoughts snapped back into gear after the entertaining display of discipline; what is so difficult about my investigation? There must be a problem! Anything else doesn't make sense. Fear, spiraling, uncontrollable thoughts racing through my head, crippling tension, and a hopeless despair took up a constant fight against the little bit of hope and rational thought that was left. If I keep going like this, I will lose this fight. The chances are crumbling and the growing thoughts of suicide are gaining a scary amount of power over my mind. 

Whatever happens, I have to stop this! Breathe. Look at the sky, listen to the birds and dumb yourself down. Be happy that you're alive and stop thinking about yourself.

Bad idea, as this was the key for my brain to open up the darkest of places.

Media stories of the Colombian guerillas would suddenly come to mind. Stories I barely remembered but quickly evolved as the centerpiece of my mental ruins. Will they not only ruin my life but also the lives of my loved ones? Will they strap me to the ground in a darkroom, shine a camera light in my face, and start rolling the film while slowly but determinedly chopping off one finger, one hand, one arm, one leg... then the rest... until all that's left is a lifeless torso? Would I scream into my perpetrators' faces? Or would I smile into the camera, saying "I love you all so deeply" to all my loved ones that would inevitably receive this horror tape in the mail? 

Yes, that has happened to others in the past. I wouldn't only be responsible for my own death in agony; no, I would be the reason my family and lovely girlfriend would never forget the images of my death. 

How much horror can people inflict in this world? We are always taught that there is a floor but no ceiling, a string of energy, absolute zero in terms of temperature... I'm not sure if I believe this is true for everything anymore. 

Sunday

Gringo, they're allowing you a phone call, come quick! 

Six guys from the camp are taking me a bit outside of the perimeter, overlooking the coca fields. I felt relieved, understanding that this is a new type of challenge I'm facing now. How do you tell your beloved one how much you love her, how much you love all your family and friends while explaining to her the greater situation, the status of your own health, where you are and who you're with, without overstepping any boundaries carefully defined by the comandante beforehand? And all that and much more within 10 minutes? 

ChatGPT was used to translate in real time what was being said over the phone. 

It was incredibly hard, to say the least. Did I say everything to her before I will die? Should I have spoken faster? Did I listen enough to make sure I eased her worst fears? 

I felt relieved that night, knowing we talked. Just so I could go to bed, wake up, and live the entire nightmare again the next day. 

The mental exhaustion started to work in my favor a little, thinking about my own death didn't evoke any grand emotions anymore. I was able to focus on little productive steps, like working out multiple times a day, taking naps, and talking to different FARC members. I had lots of questions, which they all answered differently based on their level of experience in the camp. One thing they all seemed to agree on was that the other prisoners and I are only here for investigation and will not be killed. How could I believe them? 

DIEZ, NEUEVE... ATENCION! 

Time for another training session. 

"MRRRRR!" ... and they would march in the same place for up to an hour while the Comandante was evaluating their form and posture.

"RETIRARSE!" - "VIVA COLOMBIA!" 

A never-before-felt instinct told me to not make friends with the other prisoners. There was one guy, isolated by himself, who apparently had assassinated one of the FARC members, and three others that were hanging out as a bunch, who were allegedly conspiring with the Colombian military. During some investigation they put the youngest of them in my cell. He talked about getting lost on the roads with his friends and that they knew nothing and wished they hadn't taken this route. He was visibly scared, and that's mostly what he talked about. Just like me, it was hard to hide the obvious. He was nice, fun to talk to, from Bogota, and outgoing. 

That night all three of them were executed.

I got up that night out of a half-sleep, walked to the front part of the camp with the mission to ask for another phone call or text, but instead saw all three in handcuffs getting pulled into the SUV of the comandante. The guy who I had spoken with earlier looked me right in the face one last time before getting in the vehicle. I'm sure I was the last friendly face he saw. Forever.

They got transported to a kill camp further into the hills, where they would experience a quick death, according to the Comandante. A bolt gun right to the brainstem on the back of their head. No suffering. 

That night, the pigs in the valley squealed like the devil was after them. It's a sound I want to forget but I can't. 

Monday comes. It’s a new week and hopefully a fresh outlook. Something has to change in my mind. Whether they keep me here for months or feed me to the pigs tomorrow, I can't keep living with this fear any longer…although the happenings from last night clearly didn't help my mindset.

I have been bugging the Comandante since Saturday for more phone calls and texts, and multiple times a day he would either give me the cold shoulder or deliver false hope, just to then come back and say there are more important matters to attend to. 

To me, there wasn't. The single most important thing in my life was to talk to Morgan. I felt horrible for her, is she crying all day? Are her friends with her? Does she have the support she needs? The 10-minute phone call on Sunday clearly wasn't enough to even relay the most important information. 

The workouts at this point have progressed to a rather ambitious everyday routine. They fed me 4 meals a day, providing a constant supply of fruit and water too. I was doing everything I could with the limited activities available to me in order to keep my mind occupied and focused on survival, or something like that.

The Shift

Monday night, things were calm. Most other prisoners were dead, and therefore there was a lot less commotion all around. The camp was eerily quiet as I lay alone in my hammock. Out of nowhere, the Comandante decided to sit down with me for dinner. It was dark, and we sat down on plastic crates outside the cell, overlooking the courtyard where most camp members were feasting and doing their little guerilla bad boy shenanigans. 

 [Fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejercito del Pueblo] 

For the next hour we sat, chatting and laughing about his and my stories. He showed me pictures of his family living in Spain, he shared war stories of the past against the government military, showed me his scars and talked a lot about the rules inside the FARC. Communism, his mentality and conviction that led him to pick up the fight against the suppressors stood clearly at the forefront. By the end of the night I called him "un verdadero luchador". He liked that a lot. 

It is hard to explain the uplifting emotions I felt as he sat with me and talked. Conversation was a simple thing that I had felt so depleted of in the past days. 

I learned a lot from the Comandante that night, and most importantly, I was feeling better about myself, telling myself that I was not going to die! With this newly gained information, I needed to get a phone call out to Morgan. AND ASAP! 

Wednesday afternoon around 8am, the Comandante snuck me a phone and told me to hurry up. We rushed out into the coca fields, and I was able to talk to Morgan for about 10 minutes. This call was everything I was hoping for in the past days. It was a good day for me, but the doubts of getting released remained. 

ATENCION! 

"MEDIA!"... "VUELTA!"... "RETIRARSE!" 

"VIVA COLOMBIA!" 

That day, a lot of soldiers had to do pushups and marching lunges. 

As my mind got used to the reality of being stuck here for a long time, my workouts got more ambitious every day. 

Every day started with a trail run through the hilly coca fields, sub-tropical forest, and along ridgelines overlooking the valleys on either side. Depending on who my guards were that morning, I had to pick another soldier because their war-torn bodies wouldn't allow them to run anymore. Things like metal plate implants, broken joints, and heart conditions were common among the FARC members. 

Sometimes they would sit around me or next to me in a circle, 5-10 people, and asked me all kinds of questions about Germany, the world in general, and different languages. They would especially enjoy a little Q&A in swearwords and insults in French, German, and English. Some of them couldn't read, and therefore asked me to read them sections of their communist newspaper. Others were very curious about the motorbike, gear, and equipment. Especially what dollar value it all had. As a communist living in a commune like this, they had no opportunity to earn money. On top of that, their service in the FARC was voluntary. Not even the highest-ranking officials earned a living. They believe the mind shall not be corrupted by greed or gain. Everyone was equally poor. But it didn't matter, the FARC provided for all of them. Food, shelter, clothing, hygiene, and some luxury articles like tablets and motorbikes are all within reach for anyone who asks. Even the tobacco, alcohol, and sex workers were all covered by the organization. 

The camp didn't want to cook that night but settled on pizza, so the Comandante ran into town and grabbed a couple dozen pizzas, no questions asked. 

On a random occasion, in this case backflips, I found out that one of the soldiers had skin issues on his feet, a light version of trench foot. He could pull the skin off between his toes almost down to the bone without it bleeding, pale white skin just falling off. As they were seeing me giving this guy tips on how to prevent this type of injury, one after the other came forth to ask about their health issues, so I whipped out my medical kit and started treating some of their infections with topical ointments and wound cleaning applications. 

One day, they let me tag along for a food delivery to the poor villagers nearby. We loaded up hundreds of store-bought fresh chickens packed in plastic crates, drooling of fresh chicken juices, and drove them out to a local soccer field. They also operated a coal mine located on the foothills of the camps. This was a cheap energy source and the popular way to either heat your home or keep the cooking fire going all day. 

By Monday/Tuesday, they let me walk around the camp unguarded, play with the animals, and set up my hammock wherever I wanted. A couple of rules were for everyone though, some of which were the following: 1) you sleep inside for protection, 2) 8pm is lights-out, 3) find cover whenever you hear a plane or helicopter overhead, 4) no disrespectful behavior in front of anyone.

Slowly, I had transformed my cell into a gym/playground. We were working out together, physically challenging each other with random activities, playing games, wrestling, and even fist-fighting. Two plastic crates acted as an arm wrestling station to find out if 15-year-old soldiers could beat 33-year-old gringos.

In a way, it was fun to see the dynamic of the camp change a little. I was told that having me here was good for the camp, but it wasn't clear if the Comandante thought the same. Regardless, it wasn't my life, and it would never be, no matter how long they planned to keep me there. I was just passing time in the best way I knew how for my own mental/physical health, while also trying to build rapport with the camp to ensure or expedite my safe release back to those I love. 

The last days of the capture went by slowly and were uneventful. The goal was to develop a routine day-in day-out to minimize the free time in which my mind could start spiraling. The best way to achieve that was to sleep as much as I could; by this time I was getting very good and peaceful sleep. Two naps a day and a full 8-9 hours each night, achieved by constant workouts, small meals, and lots of water intake. Stretching, doing laundry, bodily hygiene, working on the machine, and repairing gear/equipment was a good way to fill the gaps. 

The release

Thursday, 11am. Time for my first nap in the hammock under the Guanabana tree next to the camp. A white SUV rolls up and the Comandante of another camp walks straight towards me, leading with the words "¿Gringo, estas listo?" I didn't move. Many times before I was given false hope about my release, and every time it would wear me down, but I was out of that hammock in a second and a half after confirming the not-so-obvious. "Dame treinta, Comandante." 

They were gathering around me while I was euphorically packing up the bags, collecting my things from all over the cell. It was a light atmosphere, one of them joking to take him with me to Germany, another to give me his number so I can come back in the future. Very funny boys, very funny... 

The bulletproof vest I had acquired in the States for this trip assured me a bit of comfort on the way out, as I was worried something would go wrong. Well, something did go wrong, but not anything I expected. I got about 100m on the bike and ran out of gas, realizing they had ridden the entire tank empty during the times I wasn't with the machine. They were joking that the universe actually wants me to stick around for a while and maybe become a guerilla fighter as well, which in theory is possible as a non-colombian. 

They returned with gas, got my phones out of storage, escorted me back into town and let me ride off as if nothing happened. My eyes were glued to the rear mirror for the first hour of the ride. Yes, it felt good to be mobile again, but some of the emotions were just starting to bubble up, and I put in zero effort to contain any of them. I got to Santander de Quilichao, whipped out the phone and 2 seconds later, Morgan and I were letting the tears rip together like a flashflood. The emotions were undescribable. And pure. Cleansing.

My parents and the FBI were next on the list to call, which demanded some quick shift in composure. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to spend as I needed to leave Colombia on the quickest possible route. Plan B was catching a flight to Denver, paid for by the FBI. To the disliking of the people I was talking to, feeling the wind in my face and making my own progress on the route south felt like the better option. 

I still couldn't believe the FARC kept their word about the release and neither could the agent, who tried to make me understand the amount of luck I had experienced getting released as he had never seen a case like this one before. Almost always, these situations extend for far longer than my experience and involve more violence, ransoms, and lengthy negotiations prior to the release (if a release happens at all). 

When we spoke, Morgan recounted her side of things; she told me that she knew something was wrong on Friday. My phone was disconnected a little after noon MST, and by 5pm she had started to worry. Before I left for the trip, we had agreed that she would wait two days without contact before she'd escalate things, as I knew that service along my route may be spotty. However, she knew that I had plans to meet a friend in Cali that afternoon, and she found a way to get in contact with that friend to confirm I never arrived. Knowing this was unlike me, she decided to act quickly. Working together, my friend in Cali notified the local police and she filed a missing persons report with the Colombian prosecutor's office around midnight on Friday. The next morning, she also notified the American Embassy and asked my parents to reach out to the German Embassy. As the hours went by, her worries grew. She kept trying to tell herself that I was okay, that it was probably just bike troubles, but she also had a terrible feeling that I was hurt or had been taken hostage. She reached out to some of our close friends, who worked together with her to find translators, call hospitals, use AI to assess the route she thought I may have taken, and come up with ideas/plans to help find where I was and if I was okay. More than one person was prepared to book a flight to Colombia to come look for me in person. Saturday night, she received the text that I had been taken captive, and everything changed. She was relieved to know I was alive, but immediately became focused on how to help get me released. Within a few hours, she was on the phone with the FBI. Over the course of the week, she spoke with several different agents, received coaching on how to approach ransom negotiations, was advised how to push for contact and proof that I was okay, what special language to use to humanize me and show I was loved. She described how she was emotional throughout the week, but also remained focused on doing what she could - working with representatives from three countries, as well as keeping my family and friends updated on what she knew. She was constantly on the phone trying to facilitate my release or waiting by the phone for me/my captors to call. She was afraid to leave the house, to shower, to take out the trash, to do anything that could make her miss a phone call. When she saw an incoming call from my captors, she acted quickly, recording all audio and taking screenshots. 

Morgan shared details about how our friends and family really showed up during this ordeal. Her mom immediately booked a flight to Denver to support her in person. Friends dropped off food, brought over their pets, and worked together to take over her call shifts and cover her inbox in the clinic. People were constantly reaching out and checking on her, asking what more they could do. Our community reached out to any other contacts they may have that could help with my investigation/recovery, or who could offer support along my continued journey through South America. This experience not only made us thankful for each other and my safety, but also brought up an immense sense of gratitude towards our friends and the community that we have built. We are so lucky to be surrounded by such caring, generous, and amazing people.

By the end of this whole ordeal, I was stronger, had more endurance, was more flexible from all the stretching and learned a fair amount about the FARC-EP as an organization. 

It was hard, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and I wouldn't be surprised if it remains like this until I die. If and how much luck was involved in getting out alive may be a question that cannot be answered, but I do know that the people responsible for my kidnapping are not the animals they make them out to be in the media or by the Colombian government and police. What makes this situation complex to understand is the fact that all the reported atrocities have happened to people in the past and will continue to happen. There are hundreds of people in captivity at any given time, some of them will be released into safety, others used to extract value to continue the fight for their interests, and others again will encounter a horrible fate that one wouldn't even wish upon our enemies. Every day, I think of those left behind in distress. If you (who is reading this story) are close to your loved ones today, give them a kiss. Don't take any moment or action for granted. 

VIVA COLOMBIA! 

P.S.

I decided that despite this derailing experience, I will continue on my trip. I understand I was lucky and next time that might not blow by without long-term consequences, but adventure means to approach life with calculated risk AND NOT being fearful of risks you have no control over. Plus, South America generally gets safer the further south you go, away from the drug-torn jungles and common transportation routes north. Some cautious edits to the route will be made, while keeping in close contact with my assigned agent, who has trusted police in many countries in South America. 

Regarding myself, the high Andean air flowing through the helmet will be the healing force needed to sort through the messiness in my upper level. 

From home, my wonderful Morgan will continue to be the supportive partner she's always been to help me chase those two-wheeled dreams. 

Thank you!