Colombia

I don't know how I got onto this train of thought, but I'd like to explore it for a while.
I just got back from the coffeeshop where I was reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. For some reason, I started thinking about Love in the Time of Cholera, which I had read earlier in the summer, and especially about how vividly Garcia Marquez represented Colombia. He wrote so realistically that you could put an image in your head from the text, and I thought that I'd love to go back one day.
People may or may not be surprised when I mention how big a role Colombia has in my family, considering that most people associate me with Switzerland, and to a somewhat smaller (but no less important!) degree, Austria. My grandfather ran hotels there; my parents met there; my brother and my three sisters all were born in Colombia. Apparently, we still even have some land there, along the beach, although it has long been overrun by squatters. Any value we'd get out of it most likely all goes to lawyers at this point.
Some of my earliest memories are when my mom and I visited my grandparents there when I was 5. It was the first time I had strawberry jello and shrimp! I even remember the little matchbox car I whined to get at the grocery store. And while this might be a strange thing to be nostalgic about, whenever I'm at a port or dock/marina, the smell of the oil and diesel brings me right back to when I was 5. I think my grandfather had some shrimpin' boats at the time, so we visited the dock. Weird how the memory works.
None of us have gone back in decades, which is kind of sad, I suppose. I know my dad would love to go back one day and visit. Who knows how much it has all changed by now.