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Published: August 21st 2008
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Hi all,
WOW, the first week here has been quite the adventure already. After going through customs at the airport and waiting about 45 minutes for our bags, finally we had arrived and received a warm welcome from my family members here in Bogota. Upon arriving at Abuelita’s we were pretty exhausted and overwhelmed. After some small chit chat with family we decided to call it a night as soon as they left.
We woke up Friday morning to the aroma of uncle Ivan’s home made muffins which he makes daily and sells them in the street. He has created quite the clientele, typically selling out of muffins within his first hour. Needless to say, his little business has become quite a hit with the locals. We unpacked, exchanged some dollars for Pesos, walked around the neighborhood, and acquainted ourselves with our new surroundings. Friday was relatively relaxing despite going to the Zona Rosa that night to meet up with a few of my cousins and danced late into the night at a ´discoteca´.
Saturday consisted of more unpacking and gift giving. Breakfast is so different than home, consisting of albohabanas, arepas, pan de yuca, and delicious fruit
from tierra caliente. Later that day we went out with my cousins and a few of there friends but decided to call it an early night cause we were leaving for Tenjo the next day.
Tenjo is a little colonial town about 30 minutes west of Bogota where my aunt Constanza and Uncle Herman, have rented a beautiful little home in the middle of the country side. We arrived there on Sunday afternoon and took a long walk with my little Cousin Nicolas who is also quite the guitar master as we learned that night after a game of Rubi Q. Tenjo is even colder than Bogota but the fire place kept us warm through the night.
Last Monday was a national Holiday here in Colombia so the whole family came to meet us in Tenjo for some Ajiaco. Ajiaco is a very typical dish in Colombia that contains corn, 3 different types of potatoes, chicken, avocado and some good ´Refajo´ which is the national Soda called ´Colombia´ combined with your Colombian brew of choice. We played games later with my cousins and some new friends who also have a ´finca´ in Tenjo.
Our new friends were
the son of Guti (a friend of the family), called Diego and his girlfriend Angelica. After a few games of Pictionary, and some good aguardiente, it was time to light fireworks called polvo which we bought earlier that day in the pueblo. These things are awesome!! Imagine a 5 foot bottle rocket where the stick is made of Bamboo. To light the thing you hold it in your right hand and light it with your left and away goes the rocket into the night finishing with three really loud explosions. After fire works, cousins and family needed to get back to Bogota for work and school. Diego, Angelica, and us had Tuesday off so we decided to go over to their place and spend the night in their gorgeous finca. They had many horses on their land and the house itself was very colonial.
Tuesday was a long day of travelling. Despite Tenjo only being 30 minutes away, we had to take a taxi from Diego´s house to the pueblo, from there we took a small bus to the main terminal where the transmilenio aka greyhound leaves and then needed to take a final taxi back to Abuelita´s. After
a long weekend and tiresome day of travel we opted to stay in and watch the Olympics with Abuelita and Ivan.
Finally, yesterday we visited ´La plaza de Bolivar´ where there are more pigeons than I have ever seen. For those of you who know Lara, she was in heaven feeding all those pigeons from her hand. She insists we need to go back and bring our own costco sized bag of corn to be sure all the pigeons are fed. We better wrap it up for now, this morning we went on a nice run around Abuelita´s place, which is no easy task considering Bogotá is about 8,600 ft. above sea level. We are at aunt Constanza´s now and are about to leave for a movie back in the zona rosa.
We miss all you of you and we’ll be updating this next week. We hope to be in a very warm city called Villeta early next week and hopefully make it to the most well preserved colonial town in the country, called Villa de Leyva, by the end of next week. Hasta Luego
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Fred
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Great Week one!
Matthew and Lara, This is a great update! It looks like you guys are having a great time. It is really neat how you picked the pictures to add color, they really help "paint the picture" of how your week has been. I specially like your choice of statue: "Jorge Eliecer Gaitan" about the Bird seed, I don't think Costco ships to Colombia..... :-) I look forward to next weeks update!