Bogotá, baby!

Well, the official countdown begins. I am in my last week in South America, which I will be spending in Colombia. My hopes of going to Machu Picchu were brutally dashed when I went to buy the tickets from Santiago to Peru and then on to Bogota. I don't know what the difference is because flying to and within Chile/Argentina was relatively inexpensive but the flights to Peru and Colombia were EXORBITANT. Like, 5 times the price exorbitant. It was a maaaaaajor disappointment and took me a few days to stop being bitter about but let's just say that, for a girl with no current job to speak of, it would have been a pretty foolish decision to spend the money. It was a tough one to make as that was one of my big things I was planning but, at some point, reality has to come into play. It became a matter of either going to Machu Picchu for 3 days or eating for the first 3 months after getting home. So here I am in Bogota. Machu Picchu will have to wait til the next time.

I am visiting my friend Lina here. She came to the US through AHLI in 2000 to spend 5 months learning English. Since she spoke almost no English back then and I was the only staff member at the time who spoke Spanish, we spent a fair amount of time together and became good friends. We stayed in contact and she has been gracious enough to have me stay with her both when I came here for the first time in December 2006 and again now. So I will spend my last week in South America with her and her aunt, with whom she lives. My last week... yikes!

After getting just 3 hours of sleep the night before, I made it up in time for my flight yesterday morning and got to Bogota in the afternoon. When I stepped off the plane it was grey and there were intermittent raindrops. I almost started to cry. It is going to be one hard adjustment for me to go back to a life that isn't sunny every day. But since I've been here it's been off and on grey and then sunny and then raining for 5 minutes and then sunny again. So maybe this is just the right thing for me... to ease me back in to yukky weather slooowly. I can handle 5 minutes at a time of grey skies!

Anyhow, Lina and her aunt Beatriz (Betty) picked me up at the airport and the first question they asked me was of course if I was hungry. I said I wasn't, just a little thirsty.... so we went immediately for dinner. Because that's what you do here; you feed your guests. And in the end I was cool with it because we went to a yummy crepe place. And then on the way home Betty needed to stop into the salon for "just a minute"... and Lina and I ended up waiting for about an hour, just hanging out. That is also what they do here, lots of waiting (this morning we waited at a doctor's office for Betty for 3 hours!).

For lunch we went to a restaurant that was in a humongous transformed warehouse type of building and which I can only describe as a restaurant full of meat. Lots of meat, big huge helpings of it coming out on steaming metal plates. Mmmmm.

And then we went to the salon because, I'll be honest, after walking around for nearly 2 months in sandals every day, I needed a pedicure. Bad. Lina recommended the place, the really upscale one that she goes to, and the charge for my hour-long pedicure was the equivalent of $7. Seven dollars. So then of course, what the heck, why not throw in the $5 manicure? Which only also inevitably leads to the.... ready?.... $6 haircut!! And keep in mind this was the EXPENSIVE place. She said most places charge around $3 for a pedicure. Do you know how much *I* would charge to touch someone else's feet???

So, yeah, Colombia is unbelievably cheaper than Chile. But of course I would have had to choose the MOST expensive South American country to spend the majority of my time. Not that I have any regrets, mind you, I would just have a lot more money left!

Oh, and one random side note: because there is so much traffic congestion here they have implemented a system whereby each person has certain days a week (2-3 per person, I think) where they can not drive between the hours of 6-9 am and then again from 4-7 pm. So this morning Betty needed to leave for something around 8 am but forgot that it was her day to not drive, so had to wait an hour. Isn't that wild? Although, if you think about it, it's pretty smart as it causes people to carpool, take public transportation or ride bikes. Although, there still seem to be a billion cars on the road!

P.S. This picture is of homemade hot chocolate Lina made tonight. Made from REAL chocolate squares boiled in milk. Oh. My. Gosh. It was to die for but the real reason I took the picture was to point out the other ingredient... see those little yellow squares floating in there? That's cheese! Yep, hot chocolate with cheese thrown in. Which of course gets all melty and gooey. Try it, you might just be surprised!