Hola, Amigos! Our trip in Cartagena continued with school and sight seeing. I learn more about Tony each day. He finally got grumpy one day after class when his teacher started going over irregular verb conjugations in the present tense. He wanted the rule for irregular verb conjugations. I tried to explain there was no rules, you just have to memorize which ones they are, that is why they are called irregular. He grumbled for a while but quickly got over it when we toured the Palace of the Inquisition where Roman Catholic tribunals executed witches and heretics and realized that [View Full Entry]

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When I went to meet the kids I was planning to volunteer with they were sitting quietly watching TV but I was immediately jumped on and hugged by 4 little monkeys called, Jhon, Yahaira, Nicole and Cristian Duane. I clearly wasn’t the first foreign volunteer they had seen and without any further questions or introductions I was dragged out to the patio area where they had all their toys to play with them. I had wanted to do some volunteering firstly to improve my Spanish and secondly to get to know one place from a different perspective. I thought that a [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Cali at the beginning of the month with exactly 31 days until I need to be back on the north coast for my lift out of here to central America. I wanted to work here for a while in order to improve my Spanish a bit more and to see a part of Colombia from a non backpacker point of view. I had chosen Cali as it is not really on the gringo trail but if I am honest the fact that it lists itself as the salsa capital of Colombia was also a big draw. Coincidentally all [View Full Entry]

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HOLA AMIGOS Now broadcasting from around the globe with bitesize clips is the new Dude Show called El Mundo and Its Peeps which you can watch on the following address www.youtube.com/salala1980 Once you go to the webpage you will see 6 videos that I have uploaded, they are towards the bottom of the page on the right hand side. Click on any one to watch it. Once you have watched it, go back to www.youtube.com/salala1980 and click on another video to watch it. More videos of China, Cambodia, Burma and around the globe to follow. Dude, Cali Colombia Over and Out. [View Full Entry]

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Daniela and I have now finally met in Cali. Today, together with a guy from Holland and a girl from New Zealand with whom Daniela had been travelling for the past couple of days, we went to the zoo, which is supposed to be one of the nicest ones of South America. Tonight we'll try out Cali nightlife which has a reputation for being wild. [View Full Entry]

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Hola de nuevo a todo el mundo, pues en fin, de Ecuador llegamos a Colombia hace casi una semana. El primer lugar de nuestro recorrido por este hermoso pais fue Cali, donde nos acogio Jose Francisco, el padre de Juan, un muy buen amigo de Ivan de la universidad. A pesar de su mala fama de antaño por el carter de cali las cosas han cambiado bastante en los ultimos años y es hoy en dia una ciudad muy agradable, aunque lo mas interesante de nuestra estancia en Cali fue nuestra estancia de un par de dias en la Finca [View Full Entry]

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After a relaxing few days around the Popayan area it was time to get on yet another bus and head north again to the city of Cali.....home of famously good looking women, salsa and apparantly the city is the world leader in plastic surgery. Luckily this trip was only a few hours on a paved road as my patience and enjoyment level of taking a bus ride is diminishing as the days go by. Cali itself I found was nothing to rave about and by the time I got there I was pretty much over concrete and buildings that you find [View Full Entry]

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Hello From The Salsa Capital of Sth America, Of course I am here with Claire. So much to catch up on. But i will just stick to the last few days and fill in the gaps some time later... Colombia is amazing like a spainsh speaking brazil... Perfect ey. Funny to the accent is a little different to the andean perivain, ecuasorean spanish that claire and i have been used to. But we are keen to conutine meeting locals to improve our understanding of the colombian twang. We took a 6am bus from Quito to the border town arriving at [View Full Entry]

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Cali has three museums, three big churches and according to “the book” not much else. It does have a very nice Mall, Chichi Chape, that can be reached on foot along a busy polluted main road. There are quite a few interesting shops that offer a wide variety of interior decorating designs. This is only from observing the show windows. One shop had very appealing furniture and figurines. A very powerful capuccino can be had at a Juan Valdez franchise. Did not buy a Juan Valdez t-shirt! Hope I don’t regret this. I have given away all the other t-shirts bought, [View Full Entry]

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Two hours from Cali on the heavily militarised Buenaventura road sit several uninspiring wooden shacks. Yet behind this seemingly dull facade lies the magical village of San Cipriano. Its just over the crystal clear river and down a set of disused train tracks. As we (Mark, Darragh and I) got off the bus we were greeted by the young athletic Oscar who led us over a rope bridge to a set of train tracks. But here the trains don't run anymore, in fact they don't run anywhere in Colombia, and the villagers of San Cipriano were plunged back into isolation in [View Full Entry]

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