After some cumbersome trekking I arrived at the center of my artistic universe. On top of this post you find an artistic impression that I´ve titled The Front Yard of Eden (acrylic on canvas 46 x 25 cm).
To reach the front yard of Eden, the curious explorers will need to leave the beaten tourist trail and be willing to do a 200 km overland hike from the nearest by international airport, followed by a 40 minutes boat trip.
As the name and the image indicate, it’s a beautiful place, but also one that eats the careless ones. Cocaine and alcohol are cheap and abundant: the temptation is insane. I know many expats who’ve met an early grave because of substance abuse.
And then you have the do-gooders who arrive here with a soap box under their arms to preach Jesus, democracy, ecology, and fairness from the walls of their ivory towers. They´re tolerated as long they´re distributing money and other goodies, but ran-off by the locals as soon as they started to interfere with local politics, customs, or believes.
Another category consists of the sufferers of a midlife crisis, the retired blue collars, the disillusioned war veterans, etc…. They come here and pick up a young girl in the firm believe that she´s attracted to their manly maturity, to find out that in the end they were only perceived as a walking wallet, and end up as bar flies.
No paradise without snake, but for the ones who manage to avoid the obvious traps, this place can be a very rewarding experience. Its beauty is inspiring, the people friendly (as long you respect the previously mentioned boundaries), and the weather is yearlong agreeable when you disregard the rainy season with its occasional hurricane (the last big one was like 25 years ago: the people who’re old enough still talk about it, but 50 % of the population doesn’t qualify, and think it’s old people’s ranting).
Shaharee Vyaas 