WE with Loca Family from Cali!! (and the hangover after...)

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Last week-end I spent in the pleasant company of Marcela's family who was here to visit from Cali. We visited the beautiful city and did all of the tourist things; going to the sea, visiting white beaches with crystal clear water, partying, dancing...

Sounds lovely, right? Like a dream!
And, for the rest of the week, I have been recovering from what you can see on the picture to the right.......
(I am sure my German friends are laughing when they see this, because they always tell me that everything that can happen happens to me... maybe that is true... hahaha. At least I know that the Colombian health system, too, works fine :o) And the doctor's are not at all as stressed as in Sweden...)
I also will pay a visit to the dentist this week as I lost a piece of my front tooth!!!

To cool down from Halloween, on Sunday night we took a Chiva - an awesome party-sightseeing bus (well, actually more party than sightseeing). These buses are old buses that were used to transport people from the villages and since now they are not used anymore, someone got the brilliant idea to turn them into partybuses! They are all open and have a live band playing (latino music of course) and singing and a live enterntainer and - free consumption of Aguardiente (yeah, after a few shots it is not THAT bad...)
The bus goes around the city to pick up people and while driving there are singing and dancing comptetitions and beleive me, dancing in a moving old bus without amortizers is a challenge!
Then the bus goes through the nice parts of town, including a guided tour, which I did not hear very much of, stops for a while in the city - where local people take the chance to rob some money off of you by performing traditional dancing, bringing strange animals that you can photograph etc... and then finally the bus dropped us off at a very popular club in town.
Awesome! And the Cali family is absolutely crazy!!! We were, of course ;o) mi hermana and her sisters, the queens of the dancefloor, once again ;o)
We have all agreed that I am, in reality, in my heart, Latina - otherwise I would not be able to dance latino like I do. "De verdad, en mi corazon, soy Latina"
And seriously, my Spanish is going forward really really fast! Yohooo!!!

The day after we went to the Islas del Rosario and then to beautiful Playa Blanca, a huge white sand beach with transparent, light blue water and tons of palm trees. Too nice to be true (where was the kite?!?!?!). We spent the afternoon swimming in the ocean and at the end of the trip someone got the great idea to take the banana boat...
Fun fun fun, until the last turn, when we asked the captain of the boat to go really really fast and make a really really tight turn... Of course he cannot resist four lovely girls begging him so he goes really really fast... Fun, until I fell on someones knee and got such a hard hit that I only saw black for a while and lost a piece of my teeth... Thank god for life vests!
So I spent the ride back trying to gently laugh at the cute black staff guy's jokes (I think he was trying to impress me and I did not have the heart to tell him that all I wanted was to sleep because my head was going into a thousand pieces and I did not understand his Spanish jokes anyway)

And, the rest of the week too.... I was quite bored, but fortunately Mariela and Arleth are at home almost all of the time and when I was getting better, Marcela took me to her house in Turbaco for a day to relax and get that last extra special treatment that makes you feel like a queen!
The house in Turbaco is huge, on the hill with a splendid view of Cartagena and the sea, has a pool, a huge garden and three parrots that will not stop talking (I got one of them to say Annica! At least I think he tried to...).

And this week-end I felt better, actually so much better that I had to run a race in Cartagena. Hot, but fun. And luckily I am feeling better now, because this whole coming week is a regional holiday, las Fiestas de Independencia (don't ask me how many red days they have in this country - but it is a lot...) and party and parades every day!
So I think I am off for some rumba this week! :o)

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Photos

Four Dancing Queens
with traditional hats!

Traditional Lunch
A whole (!) fish, rice, beans, fried platano, limona and limonade. Yummie!!!!