Back up to Bogota

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Late April........

We were crossing the Bolivian, Peruvian border on a La Paz to Cusco bus. The bus took us by dry Lake Titicaca, and then along the mountains to the wet sacred valley and Cusco. So back we were for the 5th time in Cusco bus station, lovely Cusco bus station, with all the touts and taxis and general chaos. As we were used to the drill we walked out to the street to get a taxi for potentially what should´ve been 3 soles, but despite trying 4 or 5 taxis couldnt seem to get the price cheaper than double that. So we settled for a 6 sol taxi to our hostel, this time a different one, one of the chain hostels called Loki.

The hostel was very big and not too personal, but it was OK for 2 nights. It was full of young aussies and brits all there to party every night in the bar. Our main reason for returning to Cusco was to go on a trip to Macha Pichu, we'd decided we wanted to go on a jungle trek, which seemed to be the new most popular way of seeing Macha Pichu, so many people we met had done it and really liked it, plus it was much cheaper than the Inka trail or some of the other alternatives available. The trip includes mountain biking, hiking, crossing a river on a makeshift cable car, and of course the whole point of it, visiting Macha Pichu. So we booked the trip for the next day, and Jenny had to book a flight to Lima for the saturday as getting a saturday morning bus was cutting it too fine for making her flight out of Peru and back home.

Later that day we even managed to fit in T-shirt shopping, and cusco is full of joke T-shirts, all sorts, guinea pigs or llamas in funny situations, or common icons with Peruvian themes. For example, one T-shirt is the beatles, abbey Road cover but with them all wearing Peruvian hats, and underneath it say Peru Beatles. I liked the T-shirt but hated the slogan, I think the picture was enough to work out what the joke was but anyway. The one T-shirt that seemed to be missing was a play on the words Macha Pichu and Picachu, from the Pokeman characters. To me they need to make a new T-shirt entitled, Macha Picachu, with a picachu on the ruins. That would be great, and if they ever make it, I´m buying one.

The next day we were up early to start our trip, we had quite a big group in the end, but on the first day kept getting new people added to us. I think once we were complete, we had us 3, plus 2 lads from Burnley, 3 Danes, an Israeli guy, another English guy, an American girl, and a really young American couple from California. The guy was a bit like a stereotypical California dude, everything he saw was amazing and was shouted about in wonder with that kind of typical accent.... "Wow man look at this bush, it looks so cool!!" But that said he seemed to realise how funny this was and played up to it for laughs sometimes.

So the first day we went mountain biking, the minibus took us from Cusco up to the top of a mountain pass of about 4200 metres and then we were given our bikes and off we went down the hill. The scenery was pretty amazing and the weather kept changing, from rain, to sun to fog, etc..... The road zig zagged all over the place and we went through several different climatic regions, from highland, to cloud forest to tropical jungle near the bottom.

At the bottom we visited some inca ruins and had lunch, then we had to get back in the van to drive the last part of the journey to the first town we were going to stay the night in. This town was really small, and very isolated but had a number of shabby hotels and guesthouses, for all the tourists that came through on the Inka jungle trail.

The next day we started hiking, we walked along the side of a broad river valley and stopped for a mid morning break at an amazing little farm/cafe, which was full of other hikers on the same trip and included two pets, one small monkey who ran around like a mad... monkey trying to grab food from people. The other pet was a, well, a very strange looking rodent called a tapiwara, which constantly sniffed at people from its wooden pedestal, and when it was given a babys bottle of milk, it sat back on its hind legs and drank like a child, or something.

After our stop we set off continuing along the trail. Our guide, Jorge, explained to us that although there is the famous Inca trail to macha Pichu, which many people take and we arent following, there were in fact thousands of inca trails, all over the Andes, and the paths we were taking were also inca trails used as routes to send messages between the different areas of the empire. Unfortunately about half of our first days journey, we actually followed a modern road, but at points we headed up or down the mountainside on the real inca trails.

At the end of the day we arrived in a second small town, in many ways similar to the first. We were a little tired after the days walking, so were looking forward to a rest and a well earned beer. That night was actually one of the two lads from Burnley´s birthday, so we went out for a number of beers following our dinner.

The next morning it was raining, and it was obvious, our guide didn´t want to walk in the rain, for long, so he convinced us that we needed to take a minibus, which of course we had to pay a few soles for, to a little makeshift cable car across the river. The cable car was basicly a tray attached to a harness, and a large cable that ran across the ravine.

Two at a time we all crossed the ravine and continued our walking. This was the day we were going to arrive in Auga Calientes the small town at the foot of Macha Pichu. During the day our guide kept pointing out the mountain Macha Pichu was on and telling us that a small speck on the top was a part of the ruins. After lunch we came to the most tedious part of the trek, the railway line. For the last few hours we had to walk along the railway line into Aguas Calientes.

In Aguas Calientes we walked to our hotel, and were told we had the rest of the night free apart from dinner. At this point we were also told we were losing our guide. He would be going home in the morning and we would go up Macha Pichu by ourselves to meet a new guide who would show us around the site. We met the new guide that night at our dinner and he was very serious and different to our original guide, who we all agreed was one of the best guides we´d had during all our time in South America.

Before dinner we all went to the hot baths which Aguas Calientes is named after, for those that don´t know Aguas Calientes is spanish for hot waters. The baths were actually quite good, and werent expensive at all, considering the location.

The next morning we had to get up before 4am so we could walk up macha pichu and be one of the first people through the gates, so we could get a ticket to Wayna pichu. They only allow 200 people up Wayna Pichu each day, so you have to arrive early to get that extra ticket, which is free though.

But getting up at 4am proved difficult, as our guide who had been brilliant up to this point slept in and forgot to wake anyone up. So we all left late and were trying to virtually run to the foot of macha pichu and then up the steep path to the site. I was so hot, despite the early hour, I had to half run/walk up the mountain with my T-shirt off. Once at the top we joined the giant queue which was already forming, and slowly more and more of our group arrived at the top.

Most of us actually managed to get tickets to Wayna Pichu and the few that didnt werent very worried about it anyway. Once inside we met our new guide and he gave us a brief one hour tour. Unfortunately in this time we couldnt see much of the ruins as the place was in thick mist, but, as was proved later, our guide said its always misty in the morning, but will be clear in a few hours. And sure enough by 10 it was reasonably clear.

The rest of the day we were free to wander around and see as much of the site as we could fit in. In fact we managed to see loads, Jenny was on a mission to see everything she could and dragged me and Erik everywhere, from Wayna Pichu to the sun gate, to a side track near wayna pichu that goes steeply down, the mountain to some small ruins noone hardly ever goes to.

After probably 8 hours at the site we walked back down to Auga Calientes, ready for our wait all evening for the train that would take us back to Cusco. The train was a mess, due to the flooding from earlier in the year, we could only get the train for about an hour, then we had to transfer to a bus, and then a second bus, to take us back to Cusco for about 2am that night.

Macha Pichu was definately one of my highlights of this whole trip, the place has a combination of amazing ancient ruins, like Angkor Wat in cambodia, set on a steep mountain top, in amongest some fantastic scenery, that could rivel, NZs South Island.

The morning after our return to Cusco we had no time to stop, Jenny had a midday flight, and me and Erik had a potential midday bus, which turned out to be 4pm but thats how the buses work here. So we shared a taxi as far as the bus station, said our farewells to Jenny and she continued onto the airport. We got ourselves into the bus station and begun to shop around for the cheapest bus to Lima, well, we were told the bus was at 12 but, it turned out due to a religious holiday the next bus was at 4 so we had 4 hours to kill in the bus terminal, which I think we spent on the Internet. Then at 4 we got on a cheap crappy 20 hour bus to Lima. We ended up being one of the last people to get on and so were stuck at the back near the stinking toilet.

During the night we drove north through the Andean Highlands, before heading up across the western ridge and down towards Peru's desert coast. In the morning we were back near Nazca, with only 8 hours left before Lima. It was nice to be in the hot desert climate again after the last few weeks up in the highlands. Well, nice if your in a bus with open windows to act as air-conditioning. If we were actually in the desert walking or something, I don´t think Id have been so happy.

That afternoon, we arrived to Lima, now although Lima is a huge city, approximately 8 million they reckon, there is no bus station, all the bus companies have their own small terminals. Thankfully many were near each other but it still meant we had to do a lot of walkig to find a reasonably priced bus heading North to Mancora soonish. We'd decided not to stay in Lima as I really didnt like it much the first time plus both me and Erik were kind of in a rush back to Colombia for flights home and that. So after a couple of hours walking around in the heat with our packs looking for a bus we found a good option to take us north. We got on it, and had another 16ish hours on a bus ahead of us.

Most of that time we were asleep and it was a little better quality than the last one so we could watch reasonable films and got one meal included too. The next morning we arrived in Mancora, a popular beach resort, near to the Ecuador border. After finding out the bus times to Guayaquil in Ecuador we decided to stick together, spend just the day in Mancora then get the overnight bus, and head for the Ecuadorean beach town of Montenita.

Mancora was very small and looks on the verge of huge development, but it hasnt been hit by it yet. Its very popular with backpackers and because of that we thought it already might be really developed, but the town although definately used to tourists wasnt that built up at all, and still maintained a small town feel. We stored our bags at the bus company, and headed to the beach for the day, sunbathing, chilling in a couple of bars and such. The weather was as you'd expect, perfect, sunny, hot with a little sea breeze to cool you down.

Late that night we took the night bus to Guayaquil, crossed the Ecuadorean border (another border) and arrived at the huge behemoth that is Guayaquil bus station the next morning. We then found a 3 hour bus up the coast to Montenita. On the journey it started raining, and when we arrived it was raining so heavily that we had to run from hotel to hotel with our packs to find somewhere to stay. Why had we chosen to foresake a few days in sunny Mancora for this wet sodden place?

Erik and I spent just a couple of days there, Erik had been to Montenita before when I was rushing down the coast to Lima to meet Jenny. It was a lot quieter this time around, but the legendary fruit/cockatil bars that he'd told me about were still there, so every night we were able to sit by the beach drinking many cocktails and chating to the few other tourists that were around.

After 2 days Erik moved on, and I stayed one more night, I told Erik I was gonna get to Bogota for his last night before he flew home, so we could celebrate with a few beers. The last day the rain continued, although it hadnt rained solidly the whole time, it had rained a lot whilst I was there.

After Montenita, I spent the following day getting two buses up Ecuador to Quito. The bus as usual for Ecuador was pretty bad and completly packed, for half the journey I was squashed next to a woman breast feeding her baby all the time!

That evening I arrived in Quito and went to a new hostel I wanted to stay at called Revolution. Unfortunately as it was about 10pm it was full and I had to settle for a place called Chicago just down the street. The next day I managed to move to Revolution, I was supposed to saty there as it sounded good, and a Canadian friend that Id met in Bogota was going to be there the following day. When I checked in, there was an Irish guy also checking in, who'd had the same situation as me the night before and stayed in chicago.

I stayed 3 nights in Quito, as Id seen the city before there was only one touristy thing I wanted to do there, which was visit the Equator, which is only 20kms north of Quito. There are two Equator related tourist attractions near Quito, the first is the official looking one, which has a giant stone monolith to mark the equator, and a few aging atractions around it including a planetarium and several buildings with bizzare unrelated things inside. Firstly, there was a building with a model of Cuenca and Guayaquil, two Ecuadorean cities. There was a building with an insectarium inside, and finally the most interesting one was a small museam about the expeditions that came to Ecuador in the 19th century to measure all sorts of stuff related with the equator. This being the reason Ecuador took its name, as for those that dont know, Ecuador is simply Spanish for Equator.

This official site though is supposedly not the actual location of the equator, but the real one is a much smaller museam up the road. I looked into this and it appears there are multiple ways of measuring the equators location and the official one is a valid location but, a more old fashioned way. The second site is measured by military GPS and hence supposed to be the real, real, real one. I didnt visit it this time though as I couldnt find it, but that was OK, because it gave me something to visit 3 months later when I had to return to Quito to apply for my Colombian work permit.

After 3 days in Quito I set off on the long bus journey north to Bogota and Colombia. I took the first 5 hour bus to the border with the Irish guy, who had checked in to the hostel at the same time as me. On the journey we were stopped by some protests on the road although they were very quiet, when the bus drivers cleared the rocks they'd thrown on the road, off it. They waited for the bus to pass and then carefully put the rocks back on the road. Very nice of them I think!

When we got to Tulcan near the border we managed to get a taxi to the border with an Argentinian couple. I always seem to cross that border with other people, 4 times this year Ive crossed one way or the other across that border and I always meet other people going across too, to share a taxi or the like.

Once across the border I was back in Colombia, my favourite country here in SA, and little did I know then, my home for the next year. The Argentinian couple went to a hotel in Ipiales, David, the irish guy took a bus to Popayan, with a promise to meet in Bogota in a week. And I picked up the 22 hour bus direct to Bogota, for the last leg of my South American journey.

The bus journey had no major hiccups and I met a Colombian vet on the bus who spoke some English so we chatted for much of the journey. In the middle of the night we were in Cali, and in the morning we were crossing a ridge of the Andes towards Ibague and the Bogota side of the mountains.

Finally in the early afternoon, the bus started to pick up the Bogota traffic and we fought our way through the city to the bus terminal.

I picked up a local bus and returned to Musicology Hostel where I started my South America trip only 3 and a half months before. I was heading back to see, both Erik for his last night, and Estela the Colombian girl from Barranquilla who had showed us around that city when we visited.

Once back in bogota, I made the decision to stay for a few months, mainly because of Estela, who was now living at Musicology hostel, and working there too. The idea was I would try to look for work teaching english in the city as I met several people who were doing it, and said it was relevantly easy to find work. Through a friend of Estela´s I was put in touch with an English guy who worked for a school, called Raisbeck, that taught english to business people in their offices. The employment process was a little convoluted for what turned out to be quite a casual job, but after about a week, which included several trips to their office in the north of the city, they agreed to employ me.

In the first week, I was back in Bogota, Estela and I went away for a weekend to a small town called Melgar. Melgar, in reality has little unique to offer a tourist, but Bogotaños love the place, mainly because it is only 2 and a half hours drive from the city, but down in the Magdelena valley, and hence with hot humid, tropical heat. Melgar has no physical features its just full of hotels with swimming pools and bars and resteraunts. It was a nice place to go for a weekend, but I dont think it will be attracting many international tourists for a long time yet. The weekend we went was a national holiday, so the place was absolutely packed, and everywhere was charging more than normal. On the day we returned to the city, there were so many buses going back, but even more people so we had to pay double the price to go home than we had to, to get there.

The first two months, I was in Bogota, we lived in the hostel, and I slowly picked up more and more classes to help me pay my bills. Also, for those that can remember last June, the world cup was on, so there was lots of football to watch. The hostel had all the matches on, and for England matches, an english guy that lived in the city organised an event for the game, through couchsurfing. In fact that first England USA game was so popular, the pub he organised watching it in, was absolutely rammed with people, both English and Americans.

When I originally visited Bogota, I liked the city, but for that week, I only visted, centro and La Candelaria, the historic central district of the city that has been there for nearly 500 years. Now with my new teaching job I started to visit more and more areas of the city. And the perceived danger that people talked about originally, started to lessen. Originally I never went out at night alone, and was weary of some areas of the city even in the day, but with the teaching this stopped as I had to cover more parts of the city all times of the day, and evening. In reality, La Candelaria itself is one of the more dangerous parts of the city, and a lot of locals wont go there at night, where as other parts of the city are reasonably safe.

Colombians love to tell you scare stories, but in general I think Bogotas crime statistics are actually better than a lot of US cities, and so yes you need to be careful but dont let that scare you into not going where you want to go.

Its also a funny city compared to Europe or North America, the centre itself isnt very big, but further out, there are loads of shopping malls, and commercial areas. Most of these are north of the centre, as North Bogota is where the
rich and middle class live and South Bogota is where the poorer people live. Honestly once you get half hour north of the centre the streets could be any rich modern country, big appartment blocks, huge air-conditioned malls, and bars and resteraunts line the streets. Where as further south the city starts to look a bit more like shanty towns with poorly built homes and even homemade ones. This north south divide is not completely polarised though, there are poor neighbourhoods in the north and richer ones in the south, just generally, the north is richer.

Also as I found very useful, it is relatively easy to find addresses here as most streets are numbered. Calles run from the mountains westward and count upwards towards the north. Where as Carreras run parrallel to the mountains and count upwards westward away from the mountains. Although the whole city isnt in a gird quite they still use the numbers to help you find addresses, the only problem is it seems every now and then they renumber the streets and some buildings have 2 sets of numbers on them, the old address and the new one, which is definately confusing. Also further away from the centre, the numbering system can come a little aray. As they add A, B, C, D etc streets in. So you can think you only have one block to walk, but then find calle 62A, then 62B, then C and it ends up being 10 blocks.

The one other thing I really have to mention about Bogota, is... the weather. Its terrible, and the most changable place Ive ever been. Most days for the last 8 months, have rain showers followed by an hour of sun. I don´t think I´ve gone more than 2 days without rain. But also not more than 4 or 5 days without bright sunshine. The changability is truely amazing. You leave the house, sun out and its like 22 degrees, and then half an hour later the clouds have rolled in, and its pouring rain. The city´s weather is unique, because in reality its location is unique, set at 2600 metres above the sea, high in the Andes, and near the equator. The rain can come at any time, and the temperture never changes that much, the coldest is maybe plus 5 whilst the hottest recorded temperture ever is only 24 degrees. Of course as Bogota is basicly the coldest place in the country most Colombians complain about the cold a lot even though its generally 12 degrees at least in the middle of the day. Bear in mind though many people come from other cities and they are all a lot warmer!!

Bogotas traffic can get really bad too, because as you can imagine a city almost as big as London with no train service at all, is going to have transport problems. Sometimes it can take an hour and a half to two hours to get somewhere, when we lived in La Candalaria, many places I went to regularly were more than an hour away. The office at Raisbeck for instance was 90 minutes away, and as a result in those days many days in a week I would spend maybe 4 or 5 hours on buses, in just 1 day!

Most of the transport is city buses and collectivos, basicly minibuses, they are cheap and go everywhere, but are obviously pretty slow. The main benfits is they can get you near your destination, and they stop anywhere, not having designated stops like buses at home.

The other option is Transmilenio, a bus transit system that runs on its own roads and has stations rather like a metro, with turnstiles and free transfers. Transmilenio is generally faster than buses, as it doesnt get caught in Bogotas
horrendous traffic, but they still get held up by traffic lights, and their own traffic problems of too many transmilenio buses. Also it has only been around this decade and doesnt cover enough of the city yet, but they are currently
building several new lines including one to the airport.

The one other thing about Transmilienio is its really confusing. It has a huge aray of bus routes that stop at different stations, and miss others out, so almost always you have to change buses at one station or another, even though the whole system route map looks very simple. Also the routes change at peak hours and weekends, so quite regularly I´ll take a route I know, but before 9 say, and find when I go to transfer, the second bus I want doesnt run at that time. Really for the novice user it seems so complex.

I prefer buses, as they are 300 pesos (not much, 10p really) cheaper and on most routes you can sit down plus they get you nearer your destination, when I use the Transmilienio, half the time I have a 15 minute walk at one end, which means it takes the same time as the bus. Plus, the Transmilienio buses are always so packed that you have to stand squashed against people even in the middle of the day.

After two months in the hostel, we found an apartment, actually less than a block from the hostel, that was completely furnished, including plates, tv, dvd player, etc. So moved into there as we had almost none of these things between us. At this stage I still had a job in China to go to in september and the idea was to only stay in the apartment for 2 months.

But within a few weeks this would all change.....

The main catalyst being me responding to an English teaching advert in the local paper, I was still only looking for some extra classes until I left for China, because I thought it was very difficult to get a Colombian work permit, and so I would have to leave before the begining of october. This is because you are only allowed to stay in Colombia for 6 months in one year as a tourist. Well, the guy who placed the advert asked me to come for an interview one morning. In the interview he offered me a full time job, and a work permit. This was brilliant news, but I felt bad as I had accepted the job offer in China, and they had even gone as far as sending me their paperwork, for my chinese work permit application.

Well as you can expect, I accepted the job, and decided to stay in Bogota. Around this time we also found out that Estela was pregnant, and we were going to be a family, in early 2011. As you can imagine a lot had changed in just a few weeks!

So, at the end of August we had to take a brief trip to Quito, trip number 3 to Quito this year for me, to get my work permit. For various reasons we decided to take the bus, but of course it was a very long journey. 22 hours to the border, then 5 on the other side. On the way down in southern Colombia, we hit a huge traffic jam, which was caused by a non-fatal accident, between a car transporter and a bus. The road at this point is thin and the only way through so we were stuck for 5 hours waiting for it to be cleared.

Finally we got underway again, and managed to get to the border for about 9pm, and this was where the next trouble happened. Colombia´s relationship with Ecuador is a little delicate and at that time, Colombian citizens needed a certificate from the DAS (department for security administration) to prove they werent criminals. Now the paperwork was easy to get and cost hardly anything, but it was 9 at night and so the local DAS office wasn´t open until the next morning. This was one problem, the other was that I had already been stamped out of Colombia and wasnt allowed back in for 24hours, where as Estela wasnt allowed into Ecuador. So we had to spend the night, each side of the border in the nieghbouring border towns. And, in the morning it was all very easy, Estela got her certificate and was in Ecuador before 10 o´clock, and we continued on to Quito.

We stayed in Quito for 4 days, as I arrived a day later than I planned, and so I didnt get my work permit application in until the friday morning. The work permit application was amazingly easy, we waited about an hour to submit my papers to the vice counsular, and she was very nice and spoke English even. I was quite worried because I had to take so many documents and had heard lots of stories about people having their work permit refused, but all my docs were in order, she merely asked us to photocopy one other page in my passport then, go to a bank to pay the 200 USD fee. Return my passport and receipt and wait until monday to pick it up.

Once the important job was out of the way, we did a couple of trips around the city, walking around the old town and visiting the other equator, the supposedly real one which I hadnt visited before. Surprisingly although Ecuador is Colombias neighbour, Estela found the local food very different, she had actually been to Quito before, but then stayed in a hotel and ate at upmarket restaurants, so not really sampled real local food. We stayed in the same hostel I stayed at in May, and had a nice little holiday.

On the monday afternoon, we took the bus back, crossed the border at night, and continued on, arriving back in Bogota about 9pm the tuesday night.

After I got my work permit I had to go to the DAS the week I got back to apply for a cedula de extranajeria, basicly an ID card for foreigners. Every Colombian has to have a cedula, for ID purposes, and foreigners with work visas or student visas need one too. To get the cedula though, first I found out I needed a blood test, as my blood type goes on the card and they dont accept you just telling them, the test has to be done by a Colombian doctor. So I got that done the day after I got back to Bogota. Then the next day I went with my documents and everything to the DAS office, to find it was closed that thursday. I did confirm the price though which was just under 140000 pesos. (50 pounds) so the next day, I went back and had to queue for about 2 hours and finally handed my documents in, got fingerprinted, and told to come back the following wednesday to collect my cedula. So that was the first thing done.

Then the next wednesday I picked up my cedula and went to ILT (my new school) to find out what else I needed to do. I needed three more things, a basic health insurance, a certificate from the Colombian pensions organisation to confirm I wasnt paying a pension, and accident insurance. I had to do the things in that above order as each thing needed something from the previous thing. So a teacher from ILT, a Colombian who lived in London for the last five years, said he'd help me apply for my health insurnace. We went to the insurance place to find out I needed an extrajuicio to apply. So I then went home and me and Estela went out that afternoon to get the extrajuicio from a notaria (a kind of registery office) but we were stuck at the Notaria for 2 hours as it was busy. So it was too late to go back to the health place, so the next day on the thursday we went to the health place and signed up for health insurance.

After the health place, I went to the retirement place by myself, they were very helpful, because of my bad spanish they sent me to a special counter where a woman filled out the form for me. Once I had that form I went over to the accident insurnace place, only to find the address I had was wrong and I needed to be 20 blocks south. So I gave up for that day, as I had a class to go to.

The next day, I had no classes and just had to sign up for accident insurance and take the papers to ILT. Well it wasnt that simple. I went to the accident place, and I queued at the info desk they told me I needed copies for a couple of forms, I queued again, and they said i was OK, they gave me a number to wait for another desk. When I got to that desk she said I needed a new form as my passport number was on my form, but it had to be my cedula number. As the form had a signature from ILT I then had to go to ILT to get it signed. So I went to ILT ( bare in mind its an hour walk or a half hour bus between the two) I got the signature, returned to the accident place had to queue at the info desk again, to get a number, then got told the signature was in blue so I needed a new form again. By this time it was 2.30, so after all that I gave up again.

So the following monday I went to get a new signature, but there was a new problem, my copy of my retirement form, had to have a date stamp, so I had to return to them, before finally and successfully signing up for accident insurnace. The other funny thing about all these forms is that on, any legal document in Colombia, you have to sign and fingerprint the document. So that week, I had my finger prints taken a load of times. When we were in the notaria, someone was registering their baby even, and they had to take the baby´s footprints on the form, amazing!

Colombian bureaucracy can be so frustrating that and their endless queues. Banks are the worst, they all charge for any automatic transaction so you have to pay in cash for the transaction to be free. So as you can imagine paying anything is a long process. In La Candalaria, every bill was paid at a different bank so we spent half a day going to different banks to pay all the bills. And, if your not an account holder you have to stand in a special extra long queue that is only dealt with by one desk. Whilst account holders stand in a short queue and are dealt with by several desks.

So once I had everything done in september I started teaching more and more classes. One of our biggest customers is Bavaria, which is Colombia´s largest brewer. Bavaria is almost a monopoly in the Colombian beer market, it produces the only 5 main stream widely available beers in the country. Obviously there are foreign beers too, and some small local breweries, but the 5 bavaria beers are the cheapest beers in the country. There are several offices and sites around the city, sometimes I even teach at the main brewery site, it is so big, on my first day it took me 20 mins to find my class as no one knew where I was supposed to be.

We also teach classes at Merck, which is one of the world´s largest pharmacuteical companies, and Siemens, as well as other smaller companies, but the Bavaria contract is big because the company is owned by SAB Miller, a London based brewer, and asks many of their staff to learn English.

So Bogota life continued on, with its little idyosyncracies, one being the sales people on the buses. regularly when you are travelling around the city on buses, the bus driver stops to let a salesman on board. The salesmen stands on the road side with his, chocolate, or chewing gum, or incense sticks, or sweets, and waves the bus down and asks the driver if he can get on. Most of the time the driver lets him on, and he gives the driver one of his items for free. Then he says buenas dias to everyone on the bus and starts talking about what he has, he then hands out his goods to everyone on the bus who will take it. Then he talks for a few minutes more about how good a deal his sweets are or whatever hes selling, sometimes Im told they have a story about how poor they are and why. Although I cant understand it so that goes straight past me. Estela always feels guilty if they have that part of their story, and gives them some money even if she doesnt want the product. Then at the end they walk around the bus and either collect money, or the items back from every person that took something in the first place.

When I buy something from them I hear the price and pay it, but Ive noticed a lot of people buy the goods for less than the price he says. After all the transactions are complete, the seller rings the bell, the bus stops and he gets off to look for another bus.

Sometimes the seller is a busker or something else, a guy with a guitar is pretty common, one time two young guys got on the bus with a ghetto blaster, and proceeded to do a whole rap performance walking up and down the bus and shouting into microphones. It was fantastic just to see them doing almost a stage performance in a bus aisle.

Another common money making scheme is the traffic light acrobats, some are amazing, some are rubbish. When the lights turn red at a main junction, one or a few people walk out in front of the cars and put on a show, before then walking around the cars and collecting money just before the lights turn green. Some are terrible and just juggle a couple of balls, or balance something relatively easy on their nose. Whilst others are very talented, once, kind of recently, I saw three people, two guys throwing a young woman up into the sky and catching her, it was very impressive. Or sometimes they juggle fire even too.

Another part of life here, well obviously really, is Colombian food and some of the strange things they eat. Firstly, carbs, they love carbs, a meal isnt complete unless it has two carbs, normally rice AND potatoes. The idea of only having one or the other is strange to them. Estela is included in this, a standard meal we have if she cooks, is grilled beef, with rice, potatoes (chips or boiled), and salad. Another thing popular here is plantain, its like a large savoury banana, that they use it like potatoe. For instance I really like Plantain crisps, in fact better than potatoe crisps, some ways of cooking it Im not sure about. In restaurants they normally have a thick deep fried peice of plantain, and I dont like it too much, in the middle it tastes like a banana without the sweetness, and to me it doesnt fit with a main meal. A couple of times I´ve had plantain in a sweet sauce on my plate, and it was really good.... if it had been the desert and maybe with ice cream but on a plate next to rice and steak, Im not so sure.

Also we have a lot of fresh fruit juce here as our first flat had a blender, but thats not as good as it sounds because the amount of sugar that goes in the juice as standard is pretty big. One juice I really like is Maracuya, it is a relative of the pasion fruit, but bigger and yellow, I looked up its english name the other day, and its called passion fruit in english, but to me a passion fruit is smaller and black on the outside. We also have hot choclate a lot, but Colombians have a different way of making hot choclate, you buy it in a kind of choclate bar form. Then you have a metal jug at home which you heat the milk in (which is always UHT, NEVER fresh, we buy milk in huge packs of 6 1 litre bags and although we keep it in the fridge the supermarket keeps it on a shelf) then you add the bar of chocolate and with a long wooden implement with a star shape at the end you mix it, until the chocalate is melted and the milk is bubbling slightly.

Since weve lived in an apartment Ive found more to enjoy about Colombain food, as originally I thought it was very samey and boring. But Estela has introduced me to loads of different foods she makes a nice soup with ribs, and vegtables and potatoes and plantain, and rice on the side. But its really messy as you have to eat the meat off the bone with your fingers and there´s some corn on the cob in it which you too have to pick up with your fingers to eat. The one food I introduced her to which she loves is sunday roast chicken, we had it our first weekend in the flat and weve had it several times since. She loves the roast potatoes, gravey and chicken, and has never had it before.

So in october we started looking for a new flat, for a variety of reasons, including La Candalaria being expensive, and in a bad location for my job. Because it is popular with Gringos, rent prices are quite high in the area, even though sometimes the flat isnt that nice. Also the way the city is bulit with the mountains on one side any bus journey from La Candalaria includes a journey through the central area of the city, and so takes longer. When we did move most journeys I cut 30 minutes off my journey time, in almost all directions as, our new place is near a main road that can take you north or south in the city, quickly.

So in mid october we found a new flat that was basicly half the price of the old one, only slightly smaller and in what is really a much nicer neighbourhood, La Soledad, or basicly in english the loneliness. La Soledad is very near the centre but on the north west side of the city, so further from the mountains and the worst of the traffic. Also it has a very unique feature at its heart, the english named and spelled, Park way. Park way is a main road through the area which seperates the different directions of traffic with a long thin park making the road very open and green. It also popular with students as the universidad nacional is nearby, and in general much more suburban in feel.

It is even waking distance from Gallerias a small shopping mall and adjacent shopping district which Estela liked to visit even when we were in La candalaria.

The flat didn´t have any things apart from a table a sofa and a cooker, so we had to buy the essentials, the essentials being, a fridge, TV, plates and cutlery, a bed, which we got given, and a few other things, but it was good because now we had our own stuff, as opposed to using someone elses stuff.

So for the few months approaching the years end, my schedule slowly got busier, and life in Bogota continued and during all this time, my spanish has been improving a little, but still it has a long way to go. One thing I started doing out of pride from when I got back to Bogota, is stopping telling people I dont understand, and dont speak much spanish when they ask me questions in the street, now, if I dont understand, I tell them I dont know. But to be honest, because I know the city so well, I do end up giving directions to people on buses a lot (as long as I understand th question). Usefully the street names are numbers so they are easy to understand, they ask me if the bus goes there, and assuming I know, I tell them yes and when to get off etc.

Another strange local custom on the buses here, especially since the average Colombian is very wary of crime and security, is, sitting passengers often take the bags of standing passengers on their laps. This strikes me as strange because the way they all talk about crime, you would think they would be too scarred that their bag would be stolen. Or similar when the bus is very full, the driver lets people on the back, and because they cant get to the driver they pass the money down the row of standing passengers to the driver, but wouldnt they think the money would get stolen, I´m not sure I would pass my bus fare through lots of people on a crowded bus in England, so that they trust each other here, that much, is great.

Also supermarkets here are almost the same as home, apart from the hightened security at the doors. On the way in if you have any shopping already, then they tape a paper tag across the opening on the bag so you cant add supermarket goods to it. Then when you leave the shop you have to have your reciept checked and stamped, and sometimes all your bags checked to make sure you paid for everything you´re leaving with.

One of the most useful things that are everywhere here, and I´ve never really seen much anywhere else are, Llamadas, which basicly means, you call, or you phone. Almost every shop, plus street vendors and others, have several phones, one for each network so they can get the cheapest price. Plus a sign saying llamadas and the price, 200 a minute is the most common, but they can be as cheap as 150 or as expensive as 300. You can then make a phone call for the price, the two main advantages being almost everyone has pay as you go mobile phones here, so you can make a call without topping up. Plus they can be cheaper than your own phone, as all the mobile networks charge a lot more to phone other networks, than their own.

My biggest pet hate here though, is the door blockers on the transmilienio, and that is basicly everyone that uses the thing. They stand in the way of the doors to the buses when they dont want the bus and block you from getting on so you almost miss the damn bus.

So I´m really enjoying life in Colombia, I have my complaints about Bogota, but as usual with anywhere in the world there are good things and bad things. In general Colombian society is an open and friendly society that is hopefully on its way up. The news keeps reporting how there are less and less guerillas in the jungle. The country´s safety is always increasing. New infrastructure projects are being started all the time, and one of the few major things that still need to be tackled is government coruption, which is blamed for many things, including infrastructure not being as good as it could be.

The other problem is of course the drug cartels, they still operate here, although are much smaller than their 80s and 90s heyday. But for the vast majority of Colombians they have little effect on their lives, and the government continues to tackle them as part of their wider security and crime policies, which is the cornerstone of government policy.

This seems very important, as Colombia still gets short changed internationally, not only by tourists, as people deem it unsafe. For travelling anywhere in the world Colombians tend to get a harder time than their neighbours, all (apart from Brazil) noticably less affluent countries. Apparently Colombia has the largest middle class in Latin America, as the average Colombian falls into that category, where as Brazil is still stuck with many rich and many poor, but not so many in betweens.

To counter that though, Colombia has the highest unemployment in Latin America, at about 12%, bear in mind though Spain and South Africa are two notable countries with higher unemployment. The new government continues to build brigdes dimplomaticly, for a while Colombia was in a dimplomatic arguement with two of its neighbours, Venezuela and Ecuador, due to the accusations that Venezula was harbouring Farc guerillas in its jungle, and that the Colombian army bombed a Farc base that was in Ecuadorean territory. Both arguements are being solved at the moment with the new government.

And of course finally in december Colombia suffered some of the worst flooding in years as approximately 2million people were made homeless due to heavy rains and rivers breaking their banks. It was a real disaster for the country and of course it was the poorest people that were hit the worst, because of inadequate flood defences, and poorly built homes. Problems like this remind us that Colombia is still a struggling developing country, with inadequate infrastructure in place, where it is needed.

In December we started a 3 week holiday to the coast and Estela's family for christmas and, also visted some other parts of the country, but I´ll mention that next time..........

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