"It was the worst thing I've ever seen," she said, "and I work as an ER nurse."

I'm directly across the street from the Hostel Sue, visiting friends. We hear the commotion out the window – a cop on a dirt bike, an ambulance, muted panic among a posse of foreigners - so we go outside to look. A stretcher wheels out the door, a person's head unrecognizable beneath the blood, and more blood than seems reasonable trailing behind in thick spatters and smears.

It was Simon from England, says someone, and my head swims. Simon, long-term resident 40-year-old madman at the hostel, friend of mine… fuck me, Gramps has finally gone too far. Surely no cocaine nosebleed bleeds like this.

But no, different Simon. Young guy, early 20s, backpacker, I don't know him. Normal enough by all accounts. He's on a multi-day coke bender, they say, and then he gets into the mushrooms, takes too much, way, way too much. He's in the hostel lounge, the other tourists talking about taking him to a hospital, and then he seems to chill. And then, out of nowhere, he picks up an empty tequila bottle, breaks it, and before anyone can react he uses the jagged edge to tear open his own throat.

They get him to the ground, gather up towels, try to stop the blood. The American ER nurse hears the screaming from her dorm room and runs into the lounge, but there's nothing to be done for it. "Too much damage," she said. "Horrible." Simon's dead by the time the ambulance shows up.

A hostel worker with a mop scrubs the hallway.

-----

Colombia always attracted the most dedicated freaks. Get a couple of old heads together and listen to the stories, the alcoholics and addicts, drifters and mental cases, aid workers, journalists, no one ended up here without a story already. Too strange to die, most of them.

Jason Howe, for example, he fell in love with a paramilitary assassin. Everyone at the Platypus told him, look, never tell that story. And here he is a few years later, unable to resist, and notice the caliber of his own freak on display: "I Fell in Love with a Female Assassin."

But the tourism boom brings the unprepared. Witness the difference: "The Rise of the Cocaine Tourist."

I built the Platypus Hotel's website, and it's kind of gratifying to see my carefully crafted argument against cocaine quoted in The Guardian. Despite the cruise ships and Midwesterners and tourism marketing, and despite my claim of Colombia as Disneyland for adults or Vegas for grownups, once the frat boys and amateurs flood in, the people who never would've come here before and probably shouldn't now, I expect the horror stories will continue to get weirder.

The military contractors are some of the goofiest tourists. They've always been here, but they rotate through in short intervals, normally speaking little to no Spanish, lacking any knowledge of the country, and acting as if they're all overly-tall, overly-muscled James Bonds. They're instructed in the ways of stealth through military Force Protection manuals, and they're hilariously clueless.

Ten gringos, all six foot plus, crew cuts, square jaws, built, dressed basically alike, they roll into an afterhours club. No one doesn't know who and what they are. One of them singles me out.

"What are you guys doing here?" I ask.

 "Um," he says, "we work for 3M."

"Really," I say. "3M hiring a lot of mercenaries these days?"

3M. Please. Verbatim from the Force Protection manual. At least make up your own damn multinational to pretend to work for.

The guy keeps circling back to me, using ridiculous code phrases to pick my brain for advice. He's not drinking tonight because he's "the shepard watching over his flock." Yeah, ten-four, buddy.

He asks me if the club is safe. I look around. Seems like the narcos have taken one look at them and cleared the fuck out, which probably lowers the number of handguns on the premises to single digits. "Oh sure," I tell him as his flock try to pick up what are basically undercover hookers, "this place is safe as any Hooter's."

One of the herd grabs me by the shoulder. "Y'know, the only Spanish I know is what this guy taught me," he says, pointing to the Shepard. The Shepard speaks rough Mexican Spanish.

"You don't say."

"Yeah, he taught me how to say 'you have nice tits' – tienes buenas chi-chis."  

"Well, thanks, but…"

I start to laugh. Chi-chis may mean tits in Mexico, but here chichi means "pee." The Shepard gives me a stern look.

"OH, yeah, that's very good. Go try that out," I tell him.

He does.

He comes back twenty minutes later. "Hey, man, how do you say 'do you want to dance?'"

I walk him through it slowly. "Quieres orinar conmigo?"

He repeats it precisely and walks away, excited. He has no idea, on any level, he's about to tell a prostitute she has nice pee, and would she care to urinate with him?

You call it mean, I call it mercy.

The Shepard asks for my phone number, maybe we could sit down for a beer and he could ask me more questions, get some advice on this dangerous country. "Sure," I tell him. "What's your name, anyway?"

He looks at me and squints in concentration. I know what he's thinking. Force Protection. I've had enough of his spy-vs-spy BS.

"Look, tell me any name you want, just so I'll know who it is if you call."

"Dan," he says.

"OK, 'Dan.' Cool."

"No, wait… Bill."

"Bill. Right. Fine work there."

Months later, I'm back at the same club. I'm outside, on the sidewalk, snuggling with a girl who's ridiculously, silly hot, like a tall sexed-up caricature of Halle Berry – me with her is like a 16-year-old with a Ferrari – while a wild-eyed Colombian Harley Davidson mechanic asks me questions about Linux. Twenty yards away, across the street, two groups of feuding narcos pull out handguns and square off. People clear the sidewalks and give them room. I don't move. I'm swimming in waters perfectly weird - too-hot girl, looming gun battle, Linux, all in the same moment. I mean, how bizarre is this place?

I'm actually in the process of thinking about going back to the US when a friend stops by to see me. He's got two tourists in tow, black guys from central LA - never seen that here before. They're animated and hilarious. They find out I've been here for years and their eyes go wide. "What?!? Man, you're livin' the fuckin' dream. Hey hey hey, how many girls you got on tap, right now?"

"Who the fuck keeps count?" I'm not being cute. Seriously. Who would keep a running tally, and how would you score it, and why? I understand the question, and I also understand they don't yet understand here.

"Oooo, see, goddamn! Three years! Man! Look at this guy!"

I don't have the heart to tell them I'm thinking about leaving.

"Alright, we gotta go. Game's on, and we're gonna go smoke some dope and drink some Hennessy, 'cause that's what niggers do: smoke dope and drink Hennessy."

On one hand, it's a pleasure to see them, a little comfortable fresh air, refreshing among all the Brits, Aussies and Scandinavians. On the other, it's just weird - these guys? Here? What next, Christians?

One night at the Hostel Sue I meet a girl from Finland who's my age but looks fifteen years younger. She's been at the Sue for a few months, and it's her second or third time around. We hit off a conversation about the complexities of the local culture, and she's obviously bright, kind and warm. After a half-hour of spirited talk, she excuses herself. I start talking with Richard, a drunk cinematographer from Hollywood, guy who's shot some big-budget stuff, and he lapses into a Christopher Walken impersonation which, well, I'll always be a sucker for a good Walken. We're laughing like old friends when the girl from Finland returns. She looks at me in surprise and suddenly bows down on one knee in front of me, chin against chest, holding her left arm straight out and up to the side, fingers splayed.

I look at Richard. He looks at me.

"Foya!" the girl says quietly, breathlessly, sounding exasperated. She doesn't move.

Richard and I are deeply impressed by this display. We've never seen anything remotely like it and are unsure of protocol. We try to carry on with our Walken conversation, but the occasional "foya!" and the plain deep oddity at our feet is distracting.

After a good ten minutes, the girl stands up, stretches, grins apologetically and looks at me like, "so, where were we?"

Um…

Turns out, the girl from Finland is a missionary who is regularly assaulted by the holy spirit, and – on one level this is surprising, and on another not at all – when she approached me, she had a spontaneous attack of the holy ghosts.

I never did work out the "foya" and raised arm deal. It always looked and sounded like she was trying to keep the spirits at bay, so "foya" could mean "hallelujah" or "back the fuck off, Jack," and I hated to ruin the mystery by asking. This girl had these episodes throughout the day, and apparently more when I was around. Although not one to normally suffer Christians, I like anyone this far balls-out committed, crazy or both. She's the nearest to a "schizophrenic or prophet?" case as I've ever seen. She spent much of her time wandering the streets praising Jesus in Finnish, English or, I swear, tongues, which sounded like a scat singer warming up.

She asked me if she could pray for me one day. I said I'd welcome any and all divine intervention. She told god she thought I was split between light and dark, and she was worried that Colombia, being so dark, would corrupt my soul towards darkness. Crazy or no, no dummy, this girl. The next day she went back to Finland, hoping god wouldn't call her back here again.