Week 2 - Goodbye Santiago, Chile & Hello Bogota, Colombia!

WEEK 2:

If you’re planning on reading all of this then sit down with a good cup of tea (insert cultural equivalent) and enjoy.

Leaving Santiago:

As mentioned in my last post, Santiago felt like a familiar home to me from day one, and having spent most of the 5 days here with friends and OT colleagues, it was always going to be difficult to bring this visit to an end.  I’d spent my final day dragging my bags to the airport via taxi (2000 pesos) and a local cheap bus (1,500 pesos) so I could return to the city 'bag free' to meet friends later that night. Whilst I was unable to meet two Chilean OT friends, I did get to meet two different OT  friends (Maca & Coni), who made an appearance on the original South America Blog www.otdaninchile.blogspot.com.

catching up with Coni & Maca

A night of fun and interesting chat in between beers followed, as I was fascinated to hear the journey of these former OT students from 5 years ago. Their professional journeys, hopes and aspirations are just as interesting as their personal ones, and this has been symptomatic of many of the Chilean OT student’s / Occupational Therapists I have met and developed friendships with over the past 5 years. Their individual passion and their wish to address social injustices in their world make them awesome OT’s, and amazing people. Though I have to say the passion for life is matched by their passion for fun too, making them brilliant people to spend time with!

In true Chilean style there was no rush shown by my hosts (even at 22:00), for us to start making or way to the metro so I could get the LAST bus to the airport at 22:30. My English / personal preference for always giving myself extra time to get to the airport / bus / train station with plenty of time was being well and truly tested. Having dashed for the bus, I made it with a whole 3 minutes to spare (this equates to about 20 Chilean minutes), and did this by accidentally jumping a queue of people waiting to get on the bus. After spending every last peso on a late night meal at the airport (23:30), as my flight was at 02:18, I made my way to the small looking queue at the ‘Avianca’ check-in desk. It was more than 2 hours to the flight leaving, however Avianca Airlines had just 2 check-in staff, including Business Check-in. So over one hour later I finally had a boarding pass in my hand and just about enough time to find a toilet before getting on the plane!

One final thing about Chile (and something I should have remembered from my last attempt at leaving the country at the desert border with Bolivia), is that on arrival they give you a little slip of white paper, no bigger than a typical shop receipt. It’s a small, non-specific bit of paper, and no one tells you, “hey – keep that piece of paper, as you need it to leave the country”. So just as I’d accepted the check-in farce, a frantic search began for my exit paper – which I’d fortuitously kept in my wallet. Anyone visiting Chile, keep this bit of paper!

COLOMBIA & A NEW LIFE:

I touched down on Saturday 28^th March at 06:10. Half an-hour and not a single custom issue later, (despite the essay I was requested to write on my arrival card), I was reunited with Vibi, my wife-to-be. She did not seem to mind I was not exactly at my best: half asleep and a little bit smelly. I was too tired to protest at having a photo, and was just glad to have finally arrived in Bogota, Colombia. Whilst this was not going to be the main stay, I was excited to be spending time with Vibi's family. 

I was not however looking forward to the ridiculous number of appointments we hoped to get through in the next 7 days or getting back onto Bogota's infamous Transmilenio bus system. The system itself is pretty amazing. A central bus only 2 lane road through the main streets of the city. In such a traffic heavy city, this sounds brilliant, and is. Unfortunately, it is simply overcrowded. if you can not avoid rush hour (past 7/8pm), then be prepared to sniff any part of your fellow passenger's body parts. It makes the London tube look like a private taxi service. Still, when in Rome.....

Life in Bogota was pretty much split into 3 activities: Wedding venues, meeting with priests, & spending time with the family & friends.

Lunch with Ruth & Marly

1) Wedding Planning: I won't go on too much about this as it's better to let the pictures do the talking. What I will say is that this was my kind of wedding planning. Done quickly, (3 venues in 3 days) and done efficiently. This was quite remarkable as my experience of life in Bogota is of a city that lacks organisation - specifically when driving! So to get through appointments so quickly and then with just one or two calls be able to view places, and meet a coordinator within a couple of days was pretty amazing. I think Vibi may have had a little influence over this too.  Here's a photo from Sopo, one of the places we looked at.

Free wedding pets! - Sopo

More free wedding animals - humming bird.... can you spot it?

2) Meeting Priests: There were a number of reasons for meeting priests including the fact I am not particularly religious, but Vibi is, so we decided to meet a catholic priest just to chat about any things that I as the non-catholic person, would be expected to do in a mixed marriage, and of course practical things in a wedding ceremony. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, maybe some ancient man throwing holy water and telling me I was a sinner.... so I was pleasantly surprised to find a young (ish) bi-lingual priest who spoke openly and freely, and without embarrassment about the main view points on marriage. He was funny too, unfortunately he was not free to be the priest at the wedding.

The second priest - a high up priest of the area who we needed to give us permission to marry, was another really funny guy, who somewhat bizarrely happened to have been in Germany a few times and was happy to chat away about why not enough people go on holiday there. He was so progressive he even made a great effort to tell us about an on-line wedding course you could complete, instead of doing a face to face thing - just 8 hours too, (brilliant)! He too was bi-lingual, and also unavailable for the wedding! I was staring to change my unfounded doubts about Catholic priests, after meeting these two really nice guys. 

The new family....

3) Family Time:  For anyone who has watched the show 'Modern Family' and seen the portrayal of the Colombian character 'Gloria', you'll understand what the stereotype of Colombian families are like. Lots of people, lots of time at home together, lots of laughter, and as I found out to my delight lots of eating too! Whilst staying with Vibi's entertaining and welcoming parents, (who speak about 10 words of English between them), I was treated to a vast array of facial expressions, mime, and more often than not a constant stream of what sounded like Spanish words, followed by a pause to see if I had understood what had been said. Across the road was Vibi's brother, wife and two kids, who welcome me like a long lost son. Vibi's brother even woke up at 06:45 one morning to watch the Arsenal vs Liverpool game with me. A new form of 'Spanglish' (sentences of both Spanish & English words put together in any random order) broke out between me and Vibi's brother, especially after a couple of glasses of whisky. Just as I was getting used to these folks, more cousins arrived, two more sisters, including a niece living in Spain...

Lunch with Vibi and soon to be father in law....

not a place for vegetarians!

I found my brain usually turned to mush by about 8 pm most evenings as I had no more mental strength to concentrate enough when people were speaking. It definitely helped me sleep lots! I have however sat through countless movies in Spanish, dodgy soap operas and much more besides, and surprisingly I can have a reasonable idea about what is going on. I am sure I am still speaking Spanish like a 7 year old child....  

Bogota; So goodbye to Bogota for now. We'll be back in a month to have more meetings with the priest, and to complete arrangements for everything else too. I'm looking forward to getting away from the noise of big city living and the polluted air.  I did want to share that the city does it's part to promote healthy living by closing one side of many main roads on a Sunday and public holiday morning, leaving the lanes free for runners and cyclists. They also have restrictions for hours that cars with either an 'even' or 'odd' numbered registration plate, can access certain parts of the city... not too bad at all really!

Quiter days in Bogota - roads for exercise....

Healthy living in the city - Sunday & Holiday mornings....

Now it's time to head to Cerrejón, and a new kind of life living in a mining community, albeit a large one!
Regards from Colombia!