Chapter Three
I had a wonderful childhood. My father was a coffee grower in the province of Vaupes. The mountains of Colombia are lush with an untouched natural beauty rarely seen in the twenty-first century. The richness of the verdant mountains, the blue skies, the waters rushing to form the sss River all seem to touch the people of the region with a singular graciousness, for though poor and uneducated they are happy. Coffee grows to the sky there. Prices always seem to be highest just when the beans of Vaupes ripen.
Both having been born to privileged families in Spain, Mother and Father were well educated. Since money was never a concern both endeavored to assure that I was too. As a toddler my nanny, Monique, was French and I learned her language. When it came time for formal educ
