Yesterday, I went to the Spanish Market in Santa Fe. I especially love the Contemporary Art of this Festival. I am so impressed at how friendly and talkative all the sculptors, woodworkers, jewelers, painters and craftspeople were with me. One artist told me a legend about the Alligator Man. His version of this Colombian legend is about a man who lives by a river to spy on beautiful women and decides to take a witch’s potion to become an alligator. I was curious about this legend so I researched the Alligator Man Festival and read another story about a storekeeper who fell in love with a woman who was the daughter of a rice seller. This rice seller prohibited the storekeeper from approaching his daughter. The daughter had a habit of bathing in a river. With the desire of kissing her, the storekeeper went into the river to search for her and turned into an alligator. For days, he repeated the same routine, turning into an alligator to be with his beloved. They finally fled together to the deep of the river to be together. How romantic! And how lovely that a country has turned this Alligator Man into an icon! To me, this legend is about a man who loves beauty, femininity, nature and creatures of the earth!
