Monday, April 19, 2010

Colombia part III

Despite all the warnings we have heard about Colombia, it turned out to be very friendly, polite (and clean!). The people here, quite annoyed with the stigma attached to their country in the rest of the world (Colombia=drugs and gorrillas), are doing their best to prove the opposite. In fact, several people said to us ¨Thank you for visiting our country, now you can tell your friends that Colombia is not what it is said to be, come to my house...¨This family hailed us over from our hitching spot right across from their house. Senora´s son Christian, who is not on the photo, came over and talked to us at length, he brought out for us a local brew that tasted like cider, coffee, cookies and in the end ivited us to his home to have dinner and spend the night.
Hitch-hiking was not the easiest for us here, though. Waiting times ranged from a few hours hours to a few days! Like in Panama, there are way more buses and taxis on the road, and very few big trucks and we seldomly saw a private car. When we saw one, it was usualy brand new and very expensive. Unlike in Panama, there are lots of motorcycles everywhere, which transport everything from entire families (both parents and two kids) to wheelbarrows, shovels, small trees and even washing machines.
We were enchanted by the quality and variety of Colombian bread! Yellow dough, freshly baked practically on every other corner! Often we had our breakfast in bakeries, with a cup of black coffee.
Our most favourite ride from the whole country happened to be the very last one, in the back of truck, on top of sacks of corn. The road was good and the scenery beautiful.

4 comments:

  1. Good. I'm glad that reality appears to be better than a lot of us thought. :))

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  2. Вы уже в Перу едете? какие торопливые, хехе-) what's the rush?
    your blog is my favourite place on the web right now just so you know

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  3. Alex: Thank you, our camera is doing its best, albeit with half the buttons out of order.
    Rodgar: No, we are not on the way to Peru yet, but we just got a letter from the Thompson camp, they are going to Peru in May! So we will take off of our asses soon and head down. At the moment we are in Quito, afflicted by a mysterious tropical virus, that takes all your energy away and makes your stool liquid. A trip to the veg market and back is as much as we can manage in a day.
    Thank you, man :)

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