La cultura de Colombia

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So, I haven´t written for a while and I have about a billion things to catch up on, but first!!! A few notes on life in Colombia....

1. I had expected tons of smokers here, because that´s what I was used to in Spain, but no... there are very few smokers here. Most people I see smoking are tourists. However, there are tons of guys on the streets who sell snacks and cigarettes, not by the pack but individual cigarettes. Haven´t asked how much they´re charging for those but it would be interesting to find out.

2. On the public buses, both inner city and intercity buses, whenever the bus stops it´s likely that someone is going to come onto the bus to sell food. Sometimes it´s just someone with a giant trash bag full of small bags of chips, other times it´s a person with baked goods, and other times it´s people with arepas or sandwiches or meat products. Sometimes the person just walks down the middle aisle calling out their wares and selling to who ever is interested and then leaves the bus. Other times the person gets on the bus, hands out their item to every single person on the bus (if you don´t take it, they will put it in your lap), goes back to the front of the bus, and gives a long speech about their product. Then they go back up the aisle and take their product back from you if you don´t want to buy it. Quite the sales gimmick if you ask me. Some people we met in San Gil got fooled by this ploy when they were handed chocolates on a bus. They thought they were free and ate them, then the guy gave his sales pitch. Of course, once they had eaten them, they had to pay for it. Tricky!!! At first we thought these bus sales were annoying, but now we have learned to appreciate them. It can be really convenient, actually, if you´re hungry for a snack but you´re stuck on an 8 hour bus trip and voila!!! Someone appears to sell you some grub! Can you imagine this going down in the States? The salesperson would get kicked off the bus so quick they wouldn´t see it coming!

3. Taxis - ALWAYS negotiate a price with taxi drivers before you get in the car. They do not run on meters and we´re pretty certain they don´t really work for a company either. We think they must purchase their own taxi cab and then they can run the business however they want. You often see taxis that look like they´ve been on ¨Pimp My Ride¨because they are all blinged out, lowered, have bass stereo systems installed, etc. Some taxis are really new, clean, and lovely to ride in. Others are just like the crappy taxis you might take from Manhattan to Brooklyn. There is no light system to tell you if the cab is occupied or not, but the unoccupied taxis almost always slow down or honk at you to let you know they´ve got their eye on you, just in case you should decide you need a lift somewhere.

4. Prices - I read several outdated guidebooks about Colombia. The most current one being Lonely Planet´s 2008 book. It listed hostels at around $6 USD a night and food at around $2. Cheap, right? WRONG! In the past couple years, tourism in Colombia has gone up by 300% (so we´ve been told, and I´m apt to believe it). Therefore, prices have gone up drastically. Hostel - try $20-$30 a night. Food - try $3-$10, depending on where and what you eat. It´s the price you must pay to travel in a safer country, I guess. But I sure hope Colombia doesn´t turn into a tourist trap in the next 10 years, as it´s still a relatively unspoiled and amazing place to visit.

4.5 Another note on money... The currency exchange in Colombia is about 2000 pesos to the U.S. dollar. This makes you feel like you are spending a lot of money on everything. Water= $1500, Dinner = $14,000, Hostel= $60,000... yikes! But it really equates to: Water= $0.75, Dinner= $7, Hostel= $30.

5. Cats are really small here. Is it because they have a shorter life span and therefore are all younger than the cats in the U.S.? Is it because they are fed less or are homeless, and therefore eat less? Or are they just a smaller breed of Colombian cat? Maybe we´ll never know.

6. When you order fruit juice in a restaurant here, or when you buy it from a street vendor, it is ALWAYS fresh squeezed, blended, and strained into your cup... AWESOME! And they have more different kinds of fruit than you can imagine.

7. Tight clothes - Girls and women here wear the tightest jeans in the universe. It must take them at least 30 minutes to get on and off... no joke.

That´s enough culture for one day.

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