come close to navigating. it is and always has been a fiercely, fiercely proud country, and its people yearn to see international coverage of something other than cocaine and violence, but that isn't a legacy that's easy to ignore. its decades of civil unrest have left vast swaths of colombia relatively unknown, even to its own citizens. to reach a place previously considered a no-go area, i'll fly out of an airport in villavicencio, 45 miles southeast of the capital bogota. on first inspection, this is an airplane boneyard, where unwanted props from "romancing the stone" corrode artfully. but in reality, this sleepy hangar is an important gateway to the more impenetrable parts of the country. the remote settlements in the amazon basin are cut off from the country, with neither rail nor roads connecting them.