Blogs from Cali, Colombia, South America - page 4

Travel to Colombia!! First flight of the day was from MNSP to Houston. Took off at 4 and arrived at about 7 to a five hour layover. The next flight was to Bogota. This was about a five hour flight, and upon arriving at the airport, I went through customs. Immediately after re-checking my bags, I got seperated from my travel partner Abby Valinski, another youth exchange student spending the year in Cucuta, Colombia. I flew in to Cali and was met by the awesomest host family one could ask for!!!!!... read more

Geo: 3.45686, -76.5224... read more

We are due to catch our flight to Peru in a few hours, but thought we should write a short entry on general life in Colombia. Food: Colombians enjoy their carbs, with fried eggs, rice and a platana (another fruit close family of the banana, smashed and deep fried) for breakfast. Lunch is the main meal, normally consisting of chicken or fish (or trout in the mountains), with pasta, rice and potatoes. Their salads are miserable - nothing more than lettuce, tomato and onion. Their fruits, however, need special mention. We have never seen so many wierd and wonderful fruits in one country before and tried them all out for our breakfast smoothies. They even have tomato fruits (a cross between a tomato and a raspberry)! Fresh fruit juice is available everywhere. People: Colombians are friendly ... read more

Oh! It´s been 10 days since I´ve left Chicago. Village visited: Palmira Nashira -(eco-village started by 48 women). Candeleria Project: It was amazing to visit Nashira, a village that was started by a group of women who wanted a sustainable eco-community that has a lot going for itself. So, our goal in visiting Nashira was to ask the community what they needed most, and they came to the conclusion that they wanted a recycling center; the communities here will pay the people for bringing in recyclables and they can make a decent amount. However, the center needed to be big enough that it would be worth it for a truck from the near larger city to come and collect the recyclables. So, there it is! Some pictures of us building the recycling center, it was finished ... read more

What did I know about Cali? Not much apart from its reputation for drug-related violence. So, when we were invited to Cali for Jeff's former coworker's wedding, we scratched our heads a little, and thought why not, and then booked a short weekend trip thinking: (a) there isn't much to see/do; and (b) it probably wasn't safe anyway. And so this is how I touched foot on my fifth continent. In 2011, I was splitting my time between my homes in the Washington DC Metro Area and Honolulu, and so I booked a ticket for Honolulu-Washington-Cali-Honolulu. Interestingly, two sectors (Cali-Miami and Miami-LAX) were booked in Business and First Class respectively even though I paid an economy class fare. Leaving my Washington home on a pleasant Good Friday morning, we first took a flight to Miami where ... read more