Colombian Jungle Fever

Deep in the South American jungle, growers are using Dutch genetics to produce the best pot on the continent.

Story & photos by Jorge Cervantes

• ‘It’s a real cannabis college! Everybody selects and grows their own plants and takes care of them from beginning to end—then they smoke it!’
• ‘About 80 percent of young Colombians use cannabis and ecstasy as the drugs of choice after alcohol and tobacco. Coke is out of fashion, for export only!’
• The monos (buds) are packaged in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes, taken to Colombian cities and sold for $300-400 per pound.

Deep in the tropics at 5 degrees north latitude near Medellin, Colombia, pot protégées have given new life to Colombian cannabis. They’ve traveled deep into the foothills, hired land from the paramilitaries—the group that controls the land—and set up several ganja greenhouses. My Colombian friend Nick suggested I come check them out.

We jump in a stainless steel Land Rover and drive about four hours from Medellin. The roads become progressively worse, filled with holes and washouts and slow moving traffic. In a small village we have a tinto con pandequeso (coffee and cheese pastry) at the local bar after sorting out our transportation. A parco (short for paramilitary) keeps an eye on us to make sure we’re safe and don’t make any unauthorized side deals with locals. Parcos are usually ex-policeman, soldiers or thieves who work for rich capos. “He may be in charge but we employ him,” says Nick. “We understand one another, but you can’t forget we’re on their land.”

We mount small, skinny horses and enter a dense tropical rainforest at 5,000-foot elevation; we soon climb another 1,000 feet into a low canopy. The flora—palos de mango, mananeras, platanillos, bongas and algarobos trees and plenty of elechos (ferns) and the rich humid smell of musgo (moss)—keeps me engaged as we climb ever higher into a zone of low-growing pine trees in the Antioquenas (the local mountain range). We see few animals because locals and parcos kill them for food. There’s an occasional village and the odd house, but mostly it’s la selva (the jungle). Two hours into our trek, we round a hill and see a faint shimmering of white. It’s the plastic roof of one of the greenhouses.

“Welcome to la tomatera [the tomato farm],” says Nick. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you la casa estudio [the school house].”

Before us are a total of six greenhouses on a south facing flat nestled in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Constructed from guadua (giant bamboo) and plastic, four of the greenhouses measure 115 x 36 ft (4,000 sq ft) and the fifth is 165 x 20 feet (3,300 sq ft). The agricultural plastic Agrolene allows light to penetrate the garden and shades it from the daily tropical rain. We get there just before noon, and the temperature has climbed to 80 degrees F. They’ve already rolled up the plastic walls to promote airflow under the Agrolene canopy. All we can see are the roofs and plants below. To maintain temperature and facilitate humidity control, they unfurl the wall flaps when the sun goes down.

We can see the silhouette of several people around the perimeter of the greenhouses. As we get closer, their AK-47s become visible. “Why are those guys carrying automatic weapons?” I ask Nick with a nervous twitch.

“We rent the land from the parcos. They give us 15 guards to protect our investment. In return, we support them. It’s a tax, Colombian style,” he says with a big smile. “There are 15 parcos who keep us safe with their AK-47s.”

“Don’t all these guys with guns scare the shit out of you?” I wonder.

“I always try to travel with a lot of people around me,” Nick concedes, squirming in the saddle a bit. “The worst time is when we’re traveling through la selva. That’s when we could have problems like ambushes or kidnappings. I’ve always been lucky. I figure that they will hit one of the other guys first! Once we get to the greenhouses, we’re safe.”

Once on safe turf, Nick lays out the details of growing 118 different varieties from 14 Dutch seed breeders: Dutch Passion, Flying Dutchmen, Greenhouse, Homegrown Fantaseeds, KC Brains, Magus Genetics, Mr Nice, Nirvana, Paradise, Sagarmatha, Sensi, Serious, Soma and THSeeds.

After Nick bought his first copy of HIGH TIMES in Miami in 1992, he started growing. His first crop, however, was a disaster. He grew indoors and moved it outdoors, where bugs devoured the supple foliage. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” Nick recalls. “In Miami, we did some indoor grow rooms, small stuff, one or two kilos. I took the idea to Colombia in 1993 when I had legal problems and couldn’t return to the US.” By 1996, he was slinging greenhouse nugs in Medellin, Bogota and Cali.

To build the greenhouses, giant bamboo is cut during a quarter moon. This is when the bamboo has the lowest moisture content and doesn’t rot when set in the ground. It takes about three days with a crew of 10 people to construct a 4,000-sq ft greenhouse framed with bamboo and covered with Agrolene. The construction time includes setting up all intake, exhaust and circulation fans. The tools needed are very basic—saws, nails, hammers, wrenches, drills and irrigation supplies. Lamps with 100-watt bulbs were installed before planting. The lamps extend the photoperiod from 12 to 18 hours, which promote vegetative growth.

Huge Thai buds on healthy plants. This is what Jungle Feaver is all about!

Resin-squirting Thai-tanic bud from Flying Dutchmen was a real favorite. The buds grow thick and compact under the Equatorial sun.

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