Quick update

I haven´t posted much recently because we´ve been too busy but here´s a very quick summary of what we´ve been up to, I´ll follow it up with some photos soon:

On Saturday night we went went out for Javier (Marcela´s uncle)´s 70th birthday for a meal and some drinks.

On Sunday we went to see Marcela´s brother Fer´s new house and then went to have lunch, we went to a place called Chia where there are loads of cabaña type restaurants on the side of the roads, one of these has become very famous and popular, built up from a man selling BBQ´d meat on the side of the road to an extremely popular restaurant. When we arrived we were given a place in queue and directed to a bar / small restaurant that´s been built just to serve as a holding bay for people waiting for a table in the restaurant. by this time it was getting quite late for lunch and we were told the queue for a table was still about an hour so we decided not to wait and to come back another day. We found another place just down the road where we ordered a parrillada, which is basically a barbecued mountain of meat and some arepas, quite possibly the most meat I´ve ever eaten in one go! On Sunday night we went around to Javier and Cecilia´s house to celebrate Cecilia´s birthday.

On Monday we went to the shopping centre with a plan to buy a few things we still need for Cartagena, in reality what happened was met Mary and then Monica, went for a beer and then went out for lunch at a BBQ cabaña place, where I had possibly the best steak I´ve ever had.

We then went to the top of the tallest building in Bogota with Orlando and Pilar, Marcela´s uncle and aunt to take some photos.

As you may have noticed there´s a lot of eating involved, especially lunch. Eating here is taken seriously and involves the whole family, for example at Javier´s meal there was about 30 of us and at the meal on this day there was about 20 of us! Every day so far lunch has either been a large meal at home with the family or a large meal at a restaurant with the family.

On Tuesday we went to Quinta De Bolivar, the house where Simon Bolivar lived (for a while anyway) and then went for lunch at a restaurant that doubled as antique shop, photos of this to follow! At night we went to the casino I mentioned and had a great night and ended up winning a fair amount at Blackjack.

That just about brings us up to now, the plan for today is to pop to the shopping centre and actually buy the things for Cartagena as we leave early tomorrow morning so this is the last chance, we´ll then meet up with Mary for dinner.

More words that are easily mixed up in Spanish

The first time I came to Colombia I made the classic mistake of telling Marcela´s dad that I was married, not a mistake in that it´s a hidden secret and your girlfriends dad is the last person you should tell but a mistake due to my poor Spanish. I said "estoy casado" instead of "estoy cansado "and I don´t think Marcela will ever tire of telling people this! Well I found another one yesterday and thought I´d write it down. I´d been to a clothes shop to exchange a suit and bought some shoes, trousers and a shirt and I was explaining this to a few people, what I meant to say was "Mis zapatos" meaning my shoes, what I actually said was "mis sapitas" my little frogs!

Earthquake!!!

I´ve just experienced my first earthquake, well that´s not strictly true as there was an earthquake felt in the UK a few months ago, but I was asleep and felt nothing, so that doesn´t count!

It measured 5.7 and for this one I was in a shopping centre in Bogota, I was on an upper floor overlooking the centre when the floor started to vibrate, it felt similar to when a large lorry drives past a building and you get that shudder, only this shudder lasted a lot longer and become a lot stronger. Everyone looked around wondering what´s going on, nobody really knowing what do. Quite a few people decided to leave via the nearest exit (there was no instruction and the security staff seemed just as confused as the shoppers). But by far the majority of people seemed to just look around and wait to see what happened. I have to say the next reaction a lot less Latin and was exactly as I´d expect in England, nothing started falling down or collapsing so everyone just carried on with a kind of, "Oh well I´ll leave when bits start falling off of the building". We went to pick up some ice cream for lunch at a restaurant in the shopping centre and thanks to the earthquake they´d just acquired a new indoor water feature due to a burst pipe, however instead of evacuating they just moved the people that the water was falling directly onto and cordoned off the area, as we left there was still a queue of about 20 people waiting for a table!

The news here is suggesting there were no deaths, a few houses have collapsed at the epicentre and a there have been a few injuries, at least one caused by landslides.

UPDATE: There were 6 people killed when a landslide hit the cars they were travelling in.

Ballet Nacional De Colombia

On Friday night we went to see a performance by the Ballet nacional de Colombia. It was split in to 2 parts, the first being just musical by a famous traditional Colombian group called Silva y Villalba. Their age and the way the audience loved them put me in mind of a group Cliff Richards!



The second part was the Ballet Nacional De Colombia, despite the name it´s not actually ballet and this perform ace was all about the history and origin of dance in Colombia. I preferred this second part, the dancing was amazing as was the costumes, in fact it was more like a Vegas show at times, but I´m afraid 3 hours and 10 minutes along with jet lag meant I was struggling to keep awake by the end. It was also the director´s last performance which I think encouraged at least some of the 4 of 5 standing ovations they received! The whole thing was so patriotic it ended with a song (Which I believe may have been maid up on the spot, in the heat of the moment) which just consisted of the lyric "Colombia" being sang 4 or 5 times, each time getting louder and longer, I think the "song" would have gone on longer but they seemed to sense that embarrassment was in danger of overtaking the pride in the audience.

Ant´s Arses!

On Friday we went in the the centre of Bogota to pick up our tickets for Cartagena amongst other things. We started off by walking to the new shopping centre a couple of blocks away from Marcela´s mum and dad´s house, on the way home from the airport I´d noticed a "casino" sign on the side of the building so we went to see if it was an actual casino or an arcade full of fruit machines. At first it looked just looked like an arcade but as we went in we saw a roulette wheel as well as a few poker and blackjack tables, all of which where maned with croupiers during the day so no doubt we´ll be making a return visit or 2 to there.

Whilst picking up the tickets we saw someone selling something that looked like raisins, I asked Marcela what "hormigas culonas" means, well it basically means big ants arse! Slightly sceptical but willing to try anything, we bought some. Having eaten insects before and seeing the size I asked what they were coated in, nothing they´re just roasted! I tried a couple and they´re not offensive, just a slightly salty snack, although you do tend to get bits stuck in your teeth.

We´re here!

Our cab picked us up at 6.00am on Thursday morning and just 27 hours later we arrived at Marcela´s parents house!

The first flight was great, it´s the first time I´ve flown with Virgin and even though the leg room´s just the same as most other airlines the service, entertainment and food was excellent, wine in a real glass, imagine that! After watching ratatouille and numerous episodes of Flight of the Conchords, Peep Show and the Little Britain special that I never got around to seeing the 9 hours went by in a flash.

We met up with Marcela´s uncle and aunt in Miami for a quick drink and a chat in between flights, they also has something they wanted to give to Marcela´s mum and dad and we had a little bit or room in our hand luggage so didn´t think it would be a problem. The things they wanted us to take turned out to be a big bag full of stuff so that made getting through the security check a little more interesting, luckily the woman doing the bag count on the way in was easily fooled by a rucksack on one shoulder and Blaine like angle.

The delay was caused at Miami where our plane was due to leave at 5.10pm local time, at about 6 we were told there was a problem with the plane and it was in a hanger being fixed but the mechanics would update us soon and they would confirm our departure time. From then on and about every half hour we were updated and delayed with slightly different versions of this story, mainly involving spare parts or testing. At about 8 they gave us a $10 voucher each to get some food so we headed off in search of something other than the pizza hut we´d had earlier sensing a long delay. We arrived back at pizza hut after a brief tour of our terminal having found no other place selling hot food, by then just about everyone else on the flight had either figured this out or had just headed straight there being the closest food outlet meaning there was now a queue of about 50 people. We grabbed another beer from the bar next door and waited for the queue to die down hoping we would have time to spend the voucher before our flight started boarding, as it turned out, this wasn´t going to be a problem! By this time the flight had re-scheduled for 9pm and people were starting to get annoyed, I think mainly because each time we were delayed it was half and hour or an hour and being told it´s looking good now for the next departure time. At this point we were told they´ve got another place for the flight and we just need a pilot and crew. The plane and pilot arrived and everything was looking good, in fact when they announced that the crew had arrived some people started to clap. 15 minutes later when they were told the crew had been assigned to another flight instead and we´d have to wait for another crew people were less happy, in fact the mob that had gathered around the gate desk were now not only argueing with the American Airline staff and the pilot but also the 2 armed policemen that had had to be called!

A lot of people has the same opinion, this wouldn´t have happened to a flight to London, but by the end of the night I started to share their opinion and at one point I think the pilot did, he walked away from the desk telling the desk staff that this is no way to treat people.

Eventually we boarded the plane and must have taken off about an hour later, I´m not exactly sure because we both fell asleep within minutes of sitting down.

The rest of the journey was pretty non-eventful, we were met at the airport by Marcela´s mum and dad. Them, us, two suitcases, two large rucksacks a camera bag, the bag from Marcela´s uncle and aunt and Marcela´s bag squeezed into their clio and we drove home, luckily they only live a few miles from the airport. A quick arepa and a coffee and it was off to bed.

Cancelled flight

We were informed by Opodo last week that there had been a change to our flight details, Air Comet had cancelled our flight from Madrid to Bogota. The alternative was to fly out on the 23rd instead of the 24th, but there wasn't a flight from London to Madrid on the 23rd so we'd have to fly from Gatwick to Madrid on the morning of the 22nd and stay overnight in Madrid, at our own expense! On top of that, Marcela hasn't got a shengen visa so couldn't leave the airport anyway. She contacted the Spanish embassy for an visa appointment but there's currently a 66 day wait! During this process I'd called Opodo a few times to check things and confirm what my options were and it took a few attempts just to get through to someone that was capable of answering the phone and speaking, I finally got through to someone yesterday with some intelligence and managed to change the flights. They were a bit more expensive and it still means I'll have to take an extra 2 days off of work but at least now we're now flying with Virgin via Miami so there'll be no Tom Hanks style living in Madrid airport for us!