I climbed into an aeroplane and flew low and wobbly over green mountains to El Charco, a river settlement in the rainforest on the Pacific coast of Colombia. I was there at the invitation of the president, making a film about coca farmers for Panorama.
Children chased the aeroplane as it taxied along the landing strip. They helped us carry our bags to a launch and then we were zooming along the river at full tilt for an hour or more. Huts lined the banks and everyone waved. Eye-catchingly fit young women in towelling hot pants were at the water's edge washing clothes while their children swam. There are no roads that lead to El Charco. It's about as remote as anywhere can be in the 21st century. We were off the beaten track and up a river and it was all achingly beautiful. The shacks were made of planks and tin and had no plumbing or electricity, but I wanted to stay forever.
The river reminded me of Miami, but it was nicer than Miami. I suppose if these houses were in Miami, they'd cost 50 million dollars plus and someone would be saying, 'Lenny Kravitz lives over there', and boring me with a second-rate art collection. It was much nicer than that.
We put ashore at the farmer's house. Chickens ran around. I kept thinking of Miami, because it was the opposite of this: all money and no soul. Everyone in Miami is a trillionaire and all the nice houses have Michelin-starred private chefs fiddling around with filets mignons. It's very nice, but somehow it takes food away from what it actually is and I never feel that hungry in Miami. Here, there was a pile of sugar cane on the floor of the hut and some of the men were chewing on foot-long lengths of it and sucking down a kind of jungle cola made from malt extract. The farmer showed me how to hack the husk from the cane with a machete, then he passed me a piece. His fingers were grubby and so was the machete, not to mention the floor, but there was no way I wasn't going to try it. I figured it was well worth a couple of days in bed if it came to it. That piece of cane, which was as pure and simple as the morning, was a more tempting prospect than anything I've eaten for along time. I was parched and famished. Forget foam and teaspoons. This was primal. I suppose you could call it commando cuisine. I was like a dog with a big bone and I gnawed away with my eyes closed, sticky juice running down my throat and my chin.
If we were all just a bit hungrier, we'd think about food more than sex, and think it was better. The machete was never far from the farmer's side. He used it to beat a path through the trees as we made our way to his crops. He paused to chop down a wild coconut. There was no going back now and soon I was gorging on the fresh and wild menu degustation du jour. I saw only one scary spider and I munched my way around the jungle like a huge hungry happy caterpillar. Papaya is one of those things like New York pizza or Dublin Guinness that can be enjoyed elsewhere but in situ is transcendental. I was keen to try some cocoa but it was disappointing. It was all seeds and slime. I didn't recognise a fraction of the stuff that was growing there. The farmer told me that there is a fruit for every day of the year in Colombia. The best one was a vanilla-flavoured banana pod called guanabana.
It's better than chocolate when it's mixed with milk. It's actually better than drugs. But, he said, no one would buy his guanabana and that was why his main crop was coca, for cocaine. Cocaine is an appetite suppressant. It didn't make sense. Eighty per cent of the world's cocaine comes from Colombia and it's all grown on little farms like this one because the farmers can't sell their magic bananas. Shame.
