home again home again jiggity jig

I've been home for a little over a week now and haven't gathered up enough strength and/or interest in picking up my computer to write about my trip. Shame on me. I not only sucked at blogging from Colombia, I'm evidently just as lazy here at home.

I thought I would be better at blogging while I was on my trip... but obviously the R & R was also from my computer. I barely checked my email and only signed onto fb once to apologize to my girlfriend for leaving her a message that I was stuck in a Bogota jail and needed her help. She didn't find that as funny as I did at the time... 

So... what can I say about Colombia. What a melange of experiences. I kept taking notes about the various oddities so that I would remember to talk about them. Now I just have to incorporate them somehow...

I was talking in my last blog about the craziness that is Bogota. Well much of that is the traffic. There are no rules. There are as many lanes in the road as there can be made by the sizes of vehicles that are driving at any given moment. At a red light people walk up & down the street trying to sell you anything from fruit to fly swatters, trees, flowers or umbrellas. Forget squidgy punks... here at the red lights you get knife jugglers, fire throwers & acrobats. Anything to make a peso. And people also randomly decide that they will help you park your car on the street somewhere & open your door for you in hopes of getting something. It is quite funny to see.

I also mentioned a little something about Bogota's ecological thinking. Another thing I find interesting is that not everyone can drive, everyday. They have a system they call "pico & placa" which doesn't really translate but refers to peak times for driving & license plate. Your license plate dictates which days you are allowed to drive, so that there are not too many cars on the road everyday. You'd think that was nonsense given the amount of traffic everywhere everyday but it's true. Unless of course you have a bullet proof car... then you can drive anytime you want. I have yet to figured that one out.

Telephones. Or rather, cellphones. Instead of using public pay phones most Colombians looking to make a phone call will do so with anyone holding up a sign that says "$200 minutos" or whatever the price may be. 

People buy cell phones and then sell the airtime to other people as if it were a pay phone... in this case for 200 pesos per minute. So, as strange as it may be, you often see a group of people standing under this type of sign talking on a cell phone that is chained to someone or to someone's 'buggy' if they happen to be selling other goods and/or services. I can only assume that 200 pesos per minute is cheaper than a regular pay phone and that using someone else's cellphone is cheaper than buying your own. Why else would you do it? it's definitely a strange sight.

Let's talk about yoga. I took a few yoga classes while I was here, which were fantastic. The teacher, Orlando, was amazing. He invited us up to his land in the country where he is planting an organic garden. We seized the opportunity to get out of the mad city and drove out into the country for a day. BEAUTIFUL. What a difference from the mayhem of the city. The only way to get near Orlando's land is via a muddy road littered with little casitas, donkey's, goats, chickens & people walking their angry cows. The road doesn't even get you all the way there.... you have to hike up the mountain to arrive at his 2 acres or so of tranquility...

We had a yummy picnic, did some wandering & enjoyed the view.

The little hut on the property was built out of mud & sticks in 1949. It measures about 2 x 2 meters and it is amazing that it is still standing, especially with an area that gets so much rain!!!


It was a great adventure and I was happy to get out of the city and see some of the Colombian country side. It's way more my kind of pace.


After our lovely day we stopped in a small town called Chia to eat at the the world famous Andres Carne de Res. Um..... don't really know how to describe it. C R A Z Y! This places has the capacity to seat 3000 people. It is packed full of eye candy like you wouldn't believe... and the party goes on day & night. Loud music... dancing on tables... you name it. Even the bathrooms are fantastic. Although the menu is NOT vegetarian friendly I did manage to find something. But I was there more for the experience, not the food. And what an experience. My mojitos came in a huge bowl and after my first I quickly forgot how the altitude affects alcohol consumption. 

 
Lucky for me I do remember most of the night so it wasn't a complete write-off. But I couldn't get out of bed until 2PM the next day, missing my only chance to take a balance yoga class... NOT impressed. My party at Carne de Res was memorable (mostly) and fun fun fun, but I lost a day in recovery. I could include some pictures I took but it may be easier to just Google image "Andres Carne de Res". I would go back just to go there again.

We spent an afternoon in La Candelaria... which is a historical neighbourhood downtown Bogota. The architecture of the old buildings & churches is spectacular and you really feel like you are in South America. It's a definite to-do on the must-see list for the city. The Plaza Bolivar was full of activity as usual. Lots of people selling their treasures & walking their llamas and of course, the pigeons out number the people 2 to 1. There was also some sort of a demonstration going on so as a result there were a few extra police officers...

That afternoon we went to the Police Museum which was very informative. Colombia has produced to police chiefs that have won the title of world's best police officer... who knew? I didn't even know that existed. It's like the Oscars of law enforcement. Who judges them? They also have an entire area dedicated to the infamous Pablo Escobar, complete with his Harley, guns, Ray Bans, cell phone, video camera and a roof tile covered in his blood from the day they finally caught and killed him. That too was very informative. Crazy man that Escobar...

We spent a lot of time walking around different neighbourhoods in the city and took lots of pictures. Even without my camera strapped around my neck I stuck out as being a tourist from a mile away... I never figured out why. Given the diversity of Colombians I thought for sure I'd blend in... must be the freckles. 

Oh I almost forgot to mention the party bus. Yep. The party bus. It's exactly what it sounds like... actually it's probably better. It looks like this...

It drives around all night from bar to bar. You can get on & off with your drinks at will and don't have to stop the party or the dancing in between stops! It's a club on wheels minus the actual sale of alcohol. Duh-Winning! Ummmm... perhaps we should start a bus like this in Montreal...

So I'm getting lazy again so I'll leave the rest of the story up to the pictures I took which you can see here, and if you have any questions you can just ask. Comments and praise are welcomed too... :D

In my next entry I will fill you in on all the gory details of my trip home. Saying it was horrendous is putting it lightly... 

Ciao. 

Buenas Dias from Colombia!!

So here I am... in Colombia. It's been 3 days and I still have to remind myself that I am in South America. It's very different here but also very much like everywhere else. It's almost like Colombia doesn't have it's very own feel. We are in a more rich area... and you sometimes feel like you're downtown Montreal. Aside from the crazy traffic, horrific drivers and the very South American looking buses you could easily be in Montreal. The drivers here are WAY crazier than in Montreal and pedestrians have even less right of way. It's mayhem. But the restaurant scene is very North American, except for the fact that lychee martinis are only $8!!! WOO HOO! And the altitude makes for very cheap drinking cuz you only need 1 or 2 to feel a buzz. Fantastic. The public parks are fantastic too. I'd have to say they are much nicer than in Montreal. It's quite rich here... thanks perhaps to the drug trade that once ruled the country more so than now... and Colombia as a nation is quite eco-friendly. Taxi cabs are as abundant as in NYC and are all the same little mark of Hyundai... all of which run on propane. I thought that was pretty cool. Unfortunately they export all of their 'good' diesel and keep the bad stuff for here so the pollution from the buses is quite extreme... but it's the idea of the propane cabs that counts. It's a step in the right direction. They are also avid recyclers and you get money for bringing recyclable materials to the recycling plants... so you often see people rummaging through the garbage looking for paper & recyclable plastics to bring in for money. perhaps we should do the same at home and not only give money back for cans & bottles.

So... 4 days in. I've done more walking in the past 3 days than I did in all of 2010. My legs, especially my calves, ache like you wouldn't believe... and as if that wasn't enough I took a vinyasa yoga class yesterday and now my upper back & ribs are aching too. It's a 20-25 minute FAST PACED walk to yoga so once you get there you're already burnt out. The vinyasa/ashtanga styles are much more aerobic than the sivananda I am used to... so I worked up a sweat. Luckily I haven't been effected by the altitude, unless a sore throat in the mornings counts as a side effect to high altitude. My head is a bit heavy too... but I otherwise feel fine. My mom has been walking me ragged all over the area they live in and I've been trying to take as many pictures as I can despite a few obstacles. Apparently photographing flowers in some areas is a breach of security... and photography near anything military is a big no-no. So much so as I had to show the soldier that ran after us down the street with his big machine gun the pictures I was taking, along with our identification. Lucky for me I hadn't taken any pics of the soldiers and he didn't mind the shot of the hibiscus tree or the VW beetle...

So I'm waiting for my mom to get back from her tennis lesson. I opted out of the 15 minute speed walk to go watch her so as to give my muscles a rest. But I'll leave you know with a brief summary of the things I have learned so far about Bogota...

1. As mentioned, photography in certain areas is a breach of security, even tho all I was shooting was this..

2. No park is safe enough without it's own private security... the focus here is on the weapon of this measly security guard.. not police, security guard. In a park. Where kids play. Sorry about the distance, but I had to be stealth. Geez... if taking pictures of the flora was a no-no, imagine what taking a picture of the security is...

3. Altitude is a bonus for cheaper drinking.



4. If you want to make a living here... sell umbrellas. NO ONE leaves home without one because the weather here changes from sun to rain and back to sun again with the blink of an eye. If you're caught in the rain without an umbrella, you'll find these on every other corner...

5. People make a living in various ways, from umbrella salesmen to...

6. Eucalyptus trees grow on every block.. AWESOMMMME!

7. I mentioned the recycling... here's one of the recycling 'trucks'

So there is more to add to this list. And I have taken some nice photos that I will upload later. Mom is home so we're off on another adventure... much to the dismay of my leg muscles.