In fourth or fifth grade, my family took a summer vacation to Hawaii where we stayed at a generic resort and visited all the tourist sites recommended in the free map at the airport. My brother and I wore the complimentary leis from the taxi driver until they began to resemble dying strands of potpourri. Yet from the trip, the only thing truly memorable for me at such an early age was passing a clothing-optional beach located about twenty minutes from our hotel.

I had read about nudist camps but never dreamt of seeing one in real life. This was before the internet, so my knowledge came mostly from a newspaper insert I once found on vacation in Maine. It was a glossy flyer displaying a lovely campground, pool, and lake, with several older folks sunbathing, their private parts censored by cartoons of tropical fruit: the woman’s breasts were covered by bananas and her hubby’s penis blocked by a watermelon. I remember this because the fruits should logically have been reversed.

It was passing this Hawaiian beach, that I’ll never forget watching, through the cracks of a roadside cliff, a naked woman riding a horse. It was fanciful and capricious, her bare breasts flopping up and down like a pair of knee socks with hockey pucks at the bottom. There was no concern for laws or police or safety equipment: it was human and beast at one on the beach in Hawaii. I cherished that image until I was old enough to buy Playboy magazine.

Ironically, the most entertaining thing about Pereira, Colombia is the statue of Simon Bolivar riding a horse in the nude. It’s a brass-looking statue in a plaza surrounded by dated buildings, palm trees, and Colombian payphones – something you don’t see much anymore in the States. Now, I’ve never particularly been an animal rights activist. I’ve never minded when mice are fed hormones or monkeys strapped with electrodes. That stuff doesn’t bother me. But naked horseback riding is now where I draw the line. There was the fantasy image from my youth and there was the vulgar opinion of today. I like to imagine Rodrigo Arenas Betancur, the guy who created the statue, sitting at his desk when his secretary comes in.

“Sir, Mr. Bolivar is ready for his portrait,” she’d say, “but sir, there’s something you should see first.” Betancur would then peer out his office window to find a naked Simon Bolivar posing in front of a mirror using the strands of an unemployed mop head as horse reins.

“Is a Pereira historical monument,” my Colombian friend Augusto once told me. “We adore these kinds of things.”

“Adore, that’s a good word,” I told him, “you should say it more often.”

If people from Pereira adore naked heroes riding horses, then their affection towards crossbreeding zoo animals could dabble into the category of worship. I’m not sure about the committee that decided to put Pereira on the map for this but they were certainly successful. They breed African lions and a Bengal tigers into what Napolean Dynamite fans know as liger cubs, bred for their skills in magic. At Pereira’s Zoo (the biggest in Colombia), trainers are quick to point out that the breeding did not happen naturally.

“The lions and the tigers. They no live in same place in the world,” a guide in a safari hat said with skillful English.

“In the wild is impossible,” I clarified in my best Spanish, as if I was his retarded stooge. “For this, you need man to help animal.”

“That’s correct sir,” he said. And with that, I was off to see the naked Bolivar statue one last time.