A spry elderly man scythed emerald green grass into stooks in a tiny field.
Travelling with donkeys, you trek over several high passes and camp in emerald green meadows beside glacial lakes surrounded by snow-capped peaks.
Travelling from the vibrant salsa capital of Cali to the whitewashed colonial jewel of Popayán, and then south through emerald green scenery towards the Ecuadorean border, I began imagining myself on a journey ever closer to paradise.
The panoramic views were awe-inspiring: hazy blue skies, emerald summits stretching endlessly into the distance.
I've seen fresh footprints of Bengal tigers where they crossed in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, proboscis monkeys peering from trees in Malaysia, and immense sea crocodiles launching themselves from primordial shores towards our boat in emerald enclaves of India's Bhitarakanika sanctuary.
He had survived three wars for control of the emerald business in Colombia, and at least two attempts to kill him.
Out of his mine at Muzo, and straight into his bank vault in Bogotá, came two famous emeralds: Fura, the world's biggest, at 11,000 carats, and Tena, smaller but brighter, butterfly-green, the most valuable emerald in the world.Bling and UzisEmeralds put bread on the table.
Besides, he had brokered a sort of peace in 1991 between his army and the others, and the sheer power of his personality imposed relative tranquillity on the emerald zone.Some thought him one of Colombia's worst criminals.
The same men fought rival families all through the 1980s for control of the emerald mines, and when this "green war" ended in 1991, with perhaps 6,000 dead, they were not disbanded.
Lucky to find his first tiny fragments of emerald when he was eight years old, washed down in the streams flowing out of the mines in the mountain forests of Boyacá.
Down one country road you pass a creek, a meadow dappled in sunshine, then you go on into dense emerald forest.
