Good bye Bogotá , Hallo Cali

When I arrived to Bogotá, I could not get a room at the Platypus, and had to stay for the first three nights in another hostel, but during the day I would go and hang out at the Platypus. The first morning in Bogotá, I went to visit the Platypus where I spotted a familiar face in the living room, it was Marc. I had met Marc exactly one year ago, on my first day in Bogotá, then we went out and had a great time, I encountered him again, a couple of month later, in Taganga, and now one more time in Platypus a year after our first encounter, exactly at the same place. He also had arrived the day before to Bogotá, this time on a volunteer mission to help and orphanage in Bogota, he invited me to visit the orphanage, and I accepted the invitation. I went there the next day, met Marc and the other people working there, they gave me a tour of the place, I got to play for a couple of hours with a lot of kids desperate for attention and affection. I made another visit to the place before leaving Bogotá. The place is quite well run, the manger and the founder of the place is a women. It provides home for children who has no family, abused by family, have mental problems, sexually abused, pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers. They are short on money, and that's what is Marc trying to do, help them with their budget and fund raising, but they also could use some volunteers that would just spent time with the kids. The name of the place is Fundacion niña Maria, and is located in the suburb town of Chia close to Bogota. The Orphanage will feature in a fictional story I am writing now, and takes place in Bogota. I hope to publish it in the next few days.

The Platypus hostel in Bogota, is a great place to meet interesting people, musicians, artists, writers, or maybe I should say people aspiring to be one of those things. I have met quite a few Lawyers, and other people coming to work for Human Right and other None governmental organizations. One night in the hostel I asked a guy from Manchester named Ben to recommend a book for me, Ben who aspires to be a writer and apparently had an extensive reading history, he said it was too difficult to recommend just one and offered to give me a list of five books, we were sitting with a group of other people around a table, and turned out that most of them were avid readers, and they all wanted to have a say in the matter, they started a discussion that took about two hour, at the end of it of it they had generated a list, that I would best describe as ¨must read books for anyone who wants to claim knowledge of world literature¨, the list included books by English, French, Russian, Latin and other authors.

I am currently reading a book by Stephen King, a very popular writer who is not so well regarded by Academics, which is understandable, as he likes to write horror and science fiction books, never the less his style and story telling abilities is up there with the best of them. The book I am reading now is called Dreamcatcher, a 700 page novel, yet it does not feel too big, every page is enjoyable to read, and if I am reading it too slowly it is only because I am afraid I won´t´t have something as good to read after I finish it. I like to keep the book with me at all time, for the occasion that I have some time with nothing to do. I have this bottle holder with me, which I had bought back in Bolivia during my previous trip, one of those colorful ones made by indigenous people for tourists, and nicely fits a bottle of water, handy for treks. But I also realized that my Stephen King book fits nicely in this bag, so I am going around all the time with my book, hanging inside the bottle holder, a lot of people found this quite cool and asked me where I got the holder from.


After 10 days in Bogota I decided that was enough, and headed for the warmer Cali. I was joined by a group of friends from the Platypus, they were heading for the Pacific cost, going through Cali. It was a 10 hour trip to Cali, around the evening we stopped for dinner on the way, and as we sat down to eat the TV in the restaurant was showing the news, a terror attack had taken place in Buena Ventura, 6 people killed, 15 injured, the FARC was blamed. My friend´s plan was to take a boat from Buena Ventura to get to the pacific town, where they were going to stay, the news did not dissuade them from their plans, but they were a little worried that they might not be allowed to get to Buena Ventura.

In Cali we stayed at a hostel called Calidad House, nice hostel run by English guy married to a Colombian, hell most good hostels here are run by gringos married to Colombian women. Nice clean place, but I found the Iguana to have more character, and soon as there was space in the Iguana I moved there. I like the hot climate of Cali, but it is also humid here, and sometimes in can rain for a couple of days non stop, then it is not so nice anymore. Cali has big modern shopping center, called Chip Chapi, which is damn expensive place, there the Cali chicks go to display there silicon enlarged tits, and were the gringos go to pick up Calenias with silicon enlarged tits, though one can still see naturally beautiful young Calenias, with naturally small breasts. Calenias are regarded by some to be the most beautiful in Colombia, though others prefer Paisans (women of Medellin), either way Bogota is not in the same league.