Open Spaces / This place has REALLY open spaces

While there's still plenty of open space to discover in Fairfield, forgive me for wandering a bit. OK, make that wandering pretty far -- to South America.

We're fresh from a trip to Colombia, and, well, I'd like to tell you about it. There was an awful lot of open space to absorb in this big and diverse country, but the highlight was a visit to the Amazon River region.

"You can't get there from here" is no joke when it comes to the Amazon. A Colombia national road map shows a respectable network of roads in the western Andean regions, but as you move south and east toward the equatorial town of Leticia, the southernmost town of Colombia on the Amazon River, the roads shrivel up and disappear. There is no rail service. In other words, the only way you get to Leticia is to fly over the jungle or hack your way in with a machete. We chose the former, a two-hour flight from Bogotá.

Shabby by North American standards, Leticia's colorful and bustling personality wins you over immediately. We arrived in the middle of a cold snap, with temperatures plunging to the low 80s, so we were offered coffee to warm us up. The motorbike rules the streets, and responsibility for survival rests with the pedestrian.

My cousin and his Colombian wife (an anthropologist and expert on the indigenous Amazonian peoples) came along with us. In turn, they arranged for a masterful guide and a boat to take us to places of particular interest along the river. Leticia is at the meeting point of Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, so it's entirely possible to have three consecutive meals in three countries, which we did. You cannot get a bad meal anywhere, all served with great flair with varieties of fish, potatoes, and fruits you will never find at Stop & Shop. My favorite fish, because I finally learned the pronunciation, is the pirarucú -- pee-rah-roo-KOO -- an ancient river creature that can reach 200 pounds. After two days in Leticia, we moved camp to Amacayacu National Park, a few hours upriver.

In the Amazon, we of the Northern Hemisphere can recognize the general earthly features of "river," "vegetation," and "wildlife," but after that, from the smallest insects to the tallest trees, we were forced to reorient ourselves to a natural world that was beyond the limits of our experience. The river can only be described as huge. Indigenous peoples, speaking their own languages, live along the river in thatched-roof houses on stilts (the river will typically rise 15 to 20 feet to flood the banks), and fish from dugout canoes.

Then there were the psychedelic butterflies, and birds that resembled ours in form but had spectacular custom paint jobs. There were the monkeys examining us from the trees. There were the pink dolphins -- that's right, pink dolphins -- bobbing out of the river. The only plants we recognized among the uncountable shrubs, trees, and vines were those that are indoor house plants here. Tropical fruit grows wild, and you can stop on a trail and knock a papaya out of a tree for an instant snack. Of all the trees, we were most impressed by the otherworldly and magnificent ceiba, with its towering 150-foot canopy and the base of its trunk sending out fin-like buttresses in all directions. We were privileged to hear a Ticuna trail guide describe the ceiba first in Spanish and then in his own language.

We're back home now in our own lovely corner of the world, but we will not forget the cultural and biological treasure that is the Amazon. Especially the pink dolphins. You gotta be kidding.

Ron Blumenfeld is a retired pediatrician, a member of the Fairfield Board of Health and an experienced hiker. His "Open Spaces" appears every other Wednesday.