Cali es Cali

Cali is a city that people get stuck in.  It doesn't get all that many tourists coming through.  But of those that do it is surprising the number that will say they intended to stay for a few days but now have been here for weeks or months and aren't sure when they are leaving.  I don't really get it.  Colombia is a country of beauty beyond words and there are dozens of places that I would urge people to visit.  But Cali just is not one of them.  There's really not much here.  The city isn't particularly beautiful, there aren't any spectacular museums or parks, or really much of anything to do besides salsa dance.  I can't quite figure out what would hold people here.

And yet I think I'm about to be one of those people.

All year I've been planning to travel in July before I come home.  I really want to visit Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.  But I'm finding myself making excuses.  Its going to be winter there and I don't have any winter clothes here.  The visa is expensive.  Maybe I should just stay in Cali, this city I'm not even that crazy about.

I'm going to struggle to tear myself away from this city.  I know there is going to be tears when I have to leave.  It's absolutely inexplicable but I somehow seem to have fallen in love with this city that I don't even like very much. There is just something about it, even though I can't say what.

Know it all Americans, Drug Dealing Colombians and Lazy Mexicans

It has always driven me crazy when I hear people make rude stereotypical comments about other nationalities.  Whether it’s commenting on the laziness of a Mexican who has lived in the US for a few years and doesn’t speak as much English as you think they should (Have you ever lived in a foreign country? If not, don’t judge. It’s intimidating when your language skills mirror those of a child!) or asking a Colombian if they have cocaine (one of the fastest ways to offend them), the comments are simply ignorant and offensive.  Being a middle class white girl growing up in America I’ve been extremely fortunate that I haven’t had to deal with that sort of comment being directed at me.  So it was a bit shocking today to find out exactly how personal those comments can feel.

I’ve mentioned before the interesting laundry situation I've got going on in my apartment.  The washer and dryer are locked up in a cage and there is a man that will come to open the cage on Mondays or Thursdays if you call him to make an appointment.  So I’ve been having fun with that all year.  Then two weeks ago, a lady who works for the apartment building caught me as I was leaving and informed me that she had my laundry bill.  Since the school pays all my utilities and I had been living there for nine months without receiving a bill I assumed the school must have been paying that bill as well and told her she needed to talk with them.  Long story short, the school does not in fact pay my laundry bill, no one ever informed me there was a charge to use the washer and dryer, and they apparently do billing in nine month cycles.

So when I called the landlady today, in the politest Spanish I know (so as not to come off as a rude American. Fail.), I tried to explain to her why I thought it was unfair to be charging me for something that no one had ever told me there was a fee for.  And that if there was a charge why had the bill accumulated for nine months before being given to me?  Why hadn't I been informed of the charges after the first month like a normal bill?

Her response was that I was a typical American.  We always think we’re right and that I just think I shouldn’t have to pay the bill because I’m American and I’m right.  Still trying to remain polite I told her that this had nothing to do with my nationality.  She again responded that she was absolutely sure it DID have to do with my nationality.  She works for a multinational corporation and the Americans always think they right.  So she knew that’s why I thought I didn’t have to pay the bill.  When I told her that that was a rude thing to say, she said she was done talking to me and hung up on me.

Now mind you, nowhere in this conversation had I actually said to her that I wasn’t going to pay the bill.  I was going to try to see if I could work something out with her where I only paid part of it.  Because really, a nine month bill for something you never told me there was a fee for?  However, really I just wanted to be able to wash my laundry again and if she was insistent, I was ready to pay the whole bill.  But I hadn’t even gotten to any of that yet before she starting spewing ridiculousness.  She just assumed I wasn’t going to pay.

This woman’s comments are so off the wall ridiculous that hearing the story from anyone else I would laugh at the absurdity.  But it is surprising how personal and hard hitting the comments are when they are directed at you.  I have a lot of esteem for the many people who have to put up with such ignorance on a daily basis.

Because the fact of the matter is while you can find Mexican immigrants in the US who haven’t made an effort to learn English, most of them do learn, and there are American expatriates living the world over not speaking the language of the country they live in.  And while some Colombians certainly do use and sell cocaine, most of them don't and you could absolutely find many more Americans and Europeans that do.   And while there are Americans that think they know it all, it could certainly be argued that this Colombian woman also thought she knew it all.   Bottom line is these are character flaws (or sometimes sheer idiocy) of individuals that show up across nationalities, but they are not characteristics of nationalities.  

A Dream Vacation in Amazonas

I am feeling incredibly blessed right now!  Last week I had the opportunity to take a vacation that I've dreamed of since I was a little girl but never thought would actually happen until I moved here to Colombia.  I was able to spend a week in the Amazon!

I'm not sure life gets much more beautiful!

The list of things I got to see and do is long.  Writing it all down and looking back through the pictures I sort of can't believe this was my vacation!

We stayed in Leticia which is in the very southern, remote part of Colombia on the boarder with Brazil and Peru.  There are no roads into the city.  The only way to get there is by taking a boat down the river from Peru or to fly in.  We flew from Bogota (in the Northern Hemisphere) into Leticia (in the Southern Hemisphere) and on our first day visited Brazil and Peru.  So within 24 hours we had been in both hemispheres and visited three countries!

After a lot of hassle trying to find information about tours, we finally booked a three day tour of the flooded jungle.  This time of year the rivers are high and a good chunk of the jungle around the rivers is flooded.  It was picturesque, like something out of National Geographic, with all the houses on stilts and little kids, half the time naked, peeking out the doors.  As badly as I wanted to take pictures of all the houses and beautiful children, out of respect for the people who lived there I didn't take any except at the places where we stayed.

The house we stayed in the first night.  If you like open air the amazon is your place!  Doors and windows are merely holes in the walls.

We saw quite a bit of wildlife despite the fact that the jungle is relatively quiet during the day.  We were lucky to see both pink and grey river dolphins, although they're stealthy and I wasn't able to get any photos or video.  We also saw several different types of monkeys, a few sloths, a prehistoric looking turtle, parrots, a peacock, caiman, giant beautiful blue butterflies, frogs, a snake, tarantulas, and an anaconda.

We went caiman hunting one night and caught a couple little 1-2 foot ones that we got to hold.

Tarantula in our boat.  Mine and Lucy's roommate on the second night, carrying her eggs with her.  You can bet that shoe checks happened the next morning!

We also got to go pirana fishing.  Let it be known that Lucy and I were the only ones to catch any, while the three men on the trip left empty handed.  We got to take them home and eat them.

We visited a community in Peru that is in the process of building a lodge for tourists and also has a sort of Amazonian zoo of animals they've caught.  We didn't get to see any wild anacondas, but we did get to see this one at the "zoo".  We could have put it on our shoulders for pictures, but as it was rather angry about being taken out of its cage, I decided not to.  Oh, it also happened to have eaten the zoo's second anaconda a week earlier.  Yup, probably best to pass on that one.  They also had a super friendly monkey named Sheeko.  "Sheeko amigo de todos," the owner keep telling us.  (Sheeko is everyone's friend.)  He certainly was!  He's being feed fresh acai juice in the photo, which we also got to try.

We also got to try Brazil nuts.  Lucy and Patrick were brave enough to try cutting them open with a knife.  I didn't want to cut any fingers off.  Patrick eventually gave up on the knife and took to the hammer.  Lucy found out her teeth aren't as strong as a parrot's beak, but was quite successful with her swiss army knife.









The only mishap of the trip was with the tour agency we used.  They weren't exactly up front with information.  When we got back from our tour of the flooded forest I wanted to do a hike in the primary forest to try and find some frogs.  When I was little we used to get Ranger Rick magazine and one issue had an article with tons of pictures of brightly colored tropical frogs.  I've loved them ever since! I was assured, despite my skepticism, that I would be able to find and see colorful frogs on a day hike.  So the next day, we set out for a hike in primary forest.  What we thought was going to be a day long hike turned out to be a two hour chat by a Ticuna shaman about the group's religious beliefs and customs and an hour and a half long hike looking at medicinal plants.  When I asked about finding frogs he said the forest was full of them but they only come out at night.  Our chances of finding them during the day was about zero.

1.  Jungle beetle     2.  Starting our hike       3.  Patrick and I using our massive strength to pull down vines   
4.  a tiny butterfly    (down the right side):  5.  a bright, pretty plant     6.  a plant used as shampoo     7. We didn't quite understand what this was.  I think a home for some sort of insect.  But if you kick it over, superstition is that it will bring a lot of rain.  

 

Despite the tour company's misinformation, it ended up being a pretty good deal.  While a spiritual lecture and medicinal plant tour wasn't something I would have booked on my own it was interesting.  Especially because the two communities we stayed in during our flooded jungle tour had been communities of indigenous Ticuna.  The shaman also felt bad that the tour company had lied to us and didn't want me to leave without seeing frogs.  He was so incredibly kind as to offer to give us a second tour at night.  So we went back later that evening to go frog hunting.  We still didn't get to see any of the brightly colored frogs I was hoping for.  But we did get to see this cute little guy and a giant toad that is hard to find but eaten when it is found.

And last but not least I honed a few skills I've been practicing here in Colombia.  I think I can now be considered an expert at sleeping in hammocks and squat peeing.  After another night sleeping in a hammock, plus a couple naps in them (this after four nights in hammocks while hiking Ciudad Perdida and a night in Parque Tayrona) I think I've got it down.  The key is to lie at a diagonal.  You end up lying relatively flat that way rather than in a super uncomfortable V shape.  As for the second skill, the squat and pee method is something that's gotten a lot of practice here with the majority of toilets mysteriously missing their seats - something that even Colombians can't explain.  This skill was definitely perfected on this trip.  Our bathroom the first night was a little floating shack with chest height walls and a square cut out of the floor.  Squat and pee through the hole into the river.  This takes remarkable amounts of skill for girls!

Which is probably more than you cared to know about my trip to the Amazon! :)

Important Life Skills: How to Build an Ant Bridge

I've learned many things here in Colombia.  Perhaps one of the most important is ant management.  Well, learned might be too strong of a word here as I am sort of failing miserably at managing them.  But you know, working on it.

A few days ago I came home absolutely exhausted.  I had been up until midnight on the phone with a friend the night before, sharing sob stories about boys.  You know how everyone always says there are plenty of fish in the sea?  This is absolutely true.  However, I am amassing an Everest sized mountain of evidence that a large majority of the fish have mercury poisoning.  I need to find a biologist willing to look into this.  I'm fairly certain it is reaching epidemic proportions.

But I digress.  Back to the ants.

Exhausted, all I wanted to do was go to bed early.  It was nearing bedtime and I was sitting on my bed transferring some files from my old computer to my new one using an external hard drive.  I kept having to flick little ants off me.  This is certainly not an unusual occurrence here in Colombia, but they were particularly pesky that night.  I ran through the last couple days in my head.  Had I eaten anything in my bed?  Oh, right.  I had just finished eating ten mini Reeces Peanut Butter Cups.  But COME ON!!!  I had been really extremely careful not to drop a single crumb of chocolate or peanut buttery goodness onto my bed.  And even if I had, did they really swarm up to my bed that quickly!?  And then I saw it.  They were swarming out of my hard drive.

I quickly moved my computer and hard drive to my floor.  If I was about to have another ant fiasco it was not going to happen in my bed again!

A google search was educational.   There are certain types of ants that love electronics.  Scientists aren't sure why.  Maybe something about the electricity?  Or the heat?  One of these electronic loving types showed up in Texas a few years back and was responsible for nearly half of all calls for air conditioner repairs.  Russia even called NASA in Houston, concerned about the safety of the international space station if the ants got into NASA's electronics equipment.  These ants are the same kind that live in Costa Rica and of course Colombia. 

Further research turned up suggested solutions to computer ants.  Put your electronic devise into an airtight container and pump it full of carbon dioxide so the ants die. (Impractical)  Quit eating around your computer. (Improbable)  Or build an ant bridge.

How to build an ant bridge:

Fill a tray with water.  Put cups in the water as a stand.  Set your electronic devise on top of the cups.  Use a spoon as a bridge from your electronic devise to the floor.

Apparently, ants constantly scout around their home.  They will soon realize their home is surrounded by water with only one small path out, making it an unsuitable home.  So they will leave via the spoon bridge but will not return back up it as the home is no longer a good one.

As I surveyed my work, feeling quite pleased with my ant bridges, I couldn't help but laugh out loud.  What a ridiculous life!  I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep but here I was at 11:00 at night building ant bridges. 

I probably should have been an engineer!

In case you ever have to deal with computer ants, you can skip the ant bridge solution.  It didn't work.

Neon and Bling

I need to be rescued from Cali fashion!  Soon!

Walk down the streets of Cali and it is a challenge to find women who don't have rhinestones somewhere on them.  And if they don't, they probably have on at least one article of neon clothing.  There are exceptions of course.  But by and large the Calenas love their rhinestones and neon.

I went shoe shopping a few weeks ago and struggled to find sandals without rhinestones.

Window display of purses: hardly a thing that doesn't shine.

I had previously thought it was general knowledge that rhinestones don't belong on clothing articles of girls over the age of about 13.  But oh do things here shine.  Jeans are almost required to have rhinestones on the back pockets. (In case the butt job didn't draw your attention there already.)  Hair clips are most certainly covered in them.  And if your shirt has a pocket, you can rest assured that there will be a rhinestone to adorn it.

But, this situation gets worse.  There's a bigger problem.

When I first arrived here I would look at all the rhinestones and neon and think, "Oh that's so tacky!"  30 second pause.  "Damn! I sort of like it."  The space between those two thoughts is shrinking to a dangerously short length.

See, the thing is, I really like sparkly things.  Almost as much as I like sugar.  I blame it on all the glitter involved in synchronized swimming.  But really, chandeliers, shiny jewlery, christmas lights.  All good things.  I mean, I even like the Twins stadium because the floors sparkle.  Well that, and they have cotton candy.

So when I went shoe shopping, it was a struggle to turn down shiny pair after shiny pair.  Luckily, just as I was about to cave, I found a nice non-bedazzled pair and logic won out. 

But this situation is getting dangerous.  If I come home decked out in rhinestones and neon someone stage an intervention.

Please!