MEDELLIN, Colombia (TC) -- The words are music to my ears from the geologist who would take my photographer and me to a pock-marked mountain some three hours' jeep jaunt from this world-class city of orchids and emeralds. The words are: "When we get there, do you want to go underground?"

I was in Antioquia, fresh from Miami, for the first time in more than 20 years. I was back in Colombia, where I taught English as a lad. I was back in Medellin for a reason: to see a patchwork of gold mines in El Marmato, a stunning countryside decked with the fincas of the rich and the shacks of the poor.

I was headed underground, 2,000-plus meters from sea level. What I learned this week stirred me.

Good morning, volditos mios! Over the next several weeks, I will be reporting as best I can what I saw on the mountain. And what I saw in the city. I think the images will help all of us see why Colombia – and  the equatorial city of Medellin in particular – are ripe with charm and filled with beautiful people. Hard working folks. And the food: some of the best platanos and mango and passion fruit that ever have passed through my lips. Terrific gorgonzola pizza, too, at 1969 Pizza in the luscious El Poblado neighborhood, plus blood-drenched tripe, chorizo and frijoles (over easy on zee lard, por favor), plumed with streaks of Latino sour cream to die for.

Above all else, I was there to see how this poor country, fabulously rich in coal, emeralds, coffee beans and flowers, will deja vu itself, transform back into the South American nation that once produced more gold than any other. More oro, that is, before the violence and the politics and the shadow of narcotics distributors allowed other countries, Argentina and Peru and Chile, to post yearly gold totals that leave Colombia in the dust.

As my voldy morts know, I was in Medellin and Andean points beyond to don the rubber boots and tramp in the mud and donkey poop, to rest my trekking rump for a moment on a vat or two of cyanide and see whether I was loco to have purchased a stock position ($45,000 USA or so at current Nasdaq prices; in my haste, I paid $65,000 for the shares several months ago) in the Canadian company that controls a Medellin subsidiary that is drilling holes into EL Marmato.

And yes, mis amigos y amigas, this junior explorer, like nearly all of the Canadian variety, hopes to launch numerized, mineralized, magnified press releases into orbit above its piece of the Colombian rock.

I hope you join me as I recover from voldy moldy jet lag and assemble the words and images of a region, and one mountain especially: El Marmato. The story, like Medellin's El Tiene Todo billboards, has it all. We have the wildcat campesino mills and the landslides. We see the river literally, Rio Cauca, the country's second in size, and figuratively in the torrents of brown sweat pouring from legal and illegal underground and above ground scavengers and miners, heaving potato sacks of stone to their chosen mill for pay day. Most of us can imagine the hopes and material dreams of the poorest paisans in this story, some having worked so long heaving and chipping and sifting stone, their backs are bent and their hands as spiky as a native Colombian pine tree.

Oh yeh, hombres ... and it goes with saying, in this story we sense, can almost smell in the mineralized dust at our feet, the lust of silk suited executives several nations removed. This story of mine includes the harried geologist, a PhD. from America, who is building a team of young geos, and who’s looking, he says, to mentor and improve the lives of 900 or so Colombians who live at El Marmato.

Our story has sluices and huecos and especially, voldy morts, the lure of gold.

I think we'll see -- I know I have -- what it might take to ratchet a promising string of properties in these Andes into a resource of millions, and perhaps tens of millions of ounces of gold. The almost impossible odds. The ridiculous hurdles thrown up by trade pacts and rocky one-lane roads, bureaucrats and public perception.

That's it for Part I, friends. Please refrain from any selling or buying regarding this project until you have viewed all of the pieces of the mountain, so to speak, all of the parts of this report to come ... and the images shot by my photographer and friend, Jim Marx.

Finalmente, as a matter of disclosure, allow me to say I will not be buying or selling any more shares in the company whose rather grand and entirely true story will follow. Not even if my existing shares triple or quadruple in value. Which is entirely possible, given the scope of the Colombian project under way and the talent and experience level of the geology and executive team. At the same time, I won't be selling the shares, or buying any more, if the opposite happens: if the mine and related Colombian properties are as washed out as the wildcat landslides that already have wiped out the village's City Hall and Hospital.

Voldy morts have my word that any liquefying sale of my (and my family's) $45,000 worth of shares, which we paid for entirely, or additional purchases for this oro loco mio, will not happen at least for three months after this multi-part series on El Marmato is completed.

Entonces ...

Later, mios volditos. 'Sta luego.

-- Thom Calandra in Medellin (and back to Tiburon prontissimo)

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