Traces of Hungarians in Bogota

I have learnt with great surprise that there is a college in Bogota that has the name of a Hungarian princess Elisabeth.
// Bogotaban jartunkkor kaptam lencsevegre egy helyi foiskolai tanar igazolvanyat. Az iskola nevet Szent Erzsebetrol kapta, aki mellesleg II. Andras magyar kiralyunk leanya volt. Tyuuha!

Caribbean–English dictionary

After spending a few weeks examining the behavior of the Caribbean mankind, and observing that truth here is almost always half-truth, we hereby make the first steps to create a comprehensive Caribbean-English dictionary for the benefit of the visitors to this area. Following you will find commonly used expressions and their most likely explanations.

pickup service at your hotel at 9am – if you call the agency at 8.30, they will be surprised that you exist, but if you call again later, they will send someone at 9.40 to lead you to the main street a couple of blocks away and push you on a bus

drop-off service at your hotel – …they will bring you back to the same city

rapid boat service – normally it is rapid, but to fix the engine they have to make a 30 minute stop, nevertheless it is a good opportunity to make new friends with your fellow travellers

lunch included – …there will be rice

there is internet – …if you search for it in the McDonalds right next to the hotel

twin beds – this can be any number of beds from 1 to 8

hot water – …on a first come, first serve basis

bilingual guide – speaks Spanish and Castellano

Volunteering at Fundacion Mariposas Amarillas

This was the very first volunteering mission of our trip, and happened to be in Santa Marta, a city located in the north part of Colombia. The whole project is run by Oscar, a Colombian guy from Cali, taking care of two schools alone, with the help of some volunteers coming and leaving…
Our school was located in an unfavoured district called “Los Fundadores”. A district considered so dangerous that five out of six taxi drivers flatly refused to take us there. Some children being at the public school in the morning, we welcomed them each afternoon in the frame of the project. We took care of children from 6 up to 10 years old, unfortunately mixed in the same classroom, which made it quite difficult due to the level difference between them.
 
During our stay, we asked them to draw up a story, taught them English, and geography (having 2 maps for 20 children…).
 
Other striking thing… the teaching conditions… During rainy days, the water is infiltrating the roof, spilling on some tables and on the whiteboard (which had to be constantly dried to be able to write on it…). There was a small locked cupboard to put the pencils and the books (in Spanish and English, given by some friends or associations). It was incredible to see at which point a child was asking to bring home a book or a pencil, for himself or to give to a sibling… Such a simple thing would have made them so happy, but due to the limited quantity, it had to remain in the cupboard for the use of everybody.
   
Oscar and his project need the help of everybody, through volunteering or donations. If you want to help, you’ll find below all the necessary links:
http://fmacolombia.weebly.com
http://fmacolombia.weebly.com/donations.html
Thank you for your support !

Cartagena: back to the eighties

On October 12th, Aires flight number 8174 with Captain Jose Escobar safely touched down onboard with us on the runway of Cartagena. If you ever take a flight to Cartagena, sit at the left window. As the city emerges from the surrounding estuaries, the tall and white hotels on the thin strip of Boca Grande give the impression of Miami. As the plane continues its descent, you will see favela-like districts without paved roads, often covered by waters, where little rafts are used instead of cars.
The flooding is a problem in the whole city: half of the day the streets of the hotel zone are covered by the waters of high tide and as a pedestrian you need acrobatic skills to get from one street to the other.

The hotel zone itself is funny. There are a number of hotels built in the seventies or eighties and still operating with the same technology. We had the luck to stay in Costa del Sol, which is a brilliant example of such hotels. The whole building is covered with single layer windows and large gaps between them. The air conditioning is solved in a per floor level and besides being inefficient it breaks down in an average twice a day. Since there is no way to control it, you either freeze or sweat your heart out since the outside temperature is hot and 110% humid. The hotel offers two pools, both of them suspiciously yellow in color as there is no system to circulate and clean the water. Internet theoretically exists in the lobby, but they are always working on it to get it fixed by the next day. Best part though is the number of paintings and mosaic art found all over in the hotel, depicting Colombian supermodels from the eighties or simply a woman in bikinis.

The historical city center is charming and colorful and even has some cool bars on top of the city walls. At all times there are couples hiding in the holes where once cannons were set to protect the city from pirates. Apart from the historical center there is a more or less interesting castle with a huge Colombian flag, and you can make a number of organized daytrips to one of the islands nearby. Beware though: nothing can be more disorganized than an organized trip in the Caribbean. Pack plenty of water and patience with you when you embark on such trips:)

One of the most popular daytrips take you to Playa Blanca. The beach is not that bad, if you move away from the heaps of tourists, just a few meters, you already reduced the number of handicraft sellers and masseuse candidates by a factor of 10.

Bogotá

Probably all first-time visitors to Bogota arrive with a lump in their throats and so did we. The city has (the locals like to believe it used to have) a bad reputation and it didn’t help much that on the very first night we ended up disputing with our taxi driver and finished walking some unknown streets at midnight with all our luggage:) Nevertheless we found a really good hostel, and were ready to embrace the city.

The good news is that Bogota is not that dangerous as one might think. If you don’t go to places where they don’t recommend to go, you can have a pretty decent experience. We had the luck though to be at places they don’t recommend at times they don’t recommend: the Candelaria district on a Sunday night can be quite deserted except for the drugged bums hanging around to ask for you change. If you don’t give any, some of them might yell at you using an inventive combination of “gringo” and your family members, but if you speed up your steps, you should get into a safer zone easily:)

The bad news is that most part of the city is dirty and polluted. Much of the pollution is coming from the thousands of minibuses, called corrientes that provide the standard bus service. These buses cruise along the main avenues, and you can hail them down at any place. They are painted in eye catching colors, usually have a fake brand of a Mustang or a Cadillac or similar, and they are super uncomfortable. Once you hop on, you walk past a mini turnstile and pay your fare. There is a night price and a day price although most of the time the passengers don’t care much about paying extra for the night. If short on money, it is even possible to signal the driver that you get on in the back (thus avoiding the turnstile counter) and pay less than the regular fare. Pretty often some musicians or other kind of bums get on the bus and ask for your change. The oddest though are the ones who sell you candies per piece and explain the long list of health benefits the given candy can offer.
An alternative way of transportation is the Transmilenio. It is a supposedly fast-lane bus service constructed a couple of years ago, and most of the times it works well. However the sheer size of the city can turn a single Transmilenio ride into a one and a half hour journey. At peak times it is also super crowded and takes long even to get off from the bus.

Another remarkable feature of the city is the so called minutos. It took us some time till we figured out what it was:) On practically every corner you will find “minutos” vendors, who will hand out a cellphone for you on a chain, you call whoever you want, then you pay for the minutes you phoned. Pretty useful when you want to call a local number, since most foreigner simcards will fail to deliver calls or text messages to local numbers, a phenomenon that we experience a lot in South America.

Architecturally speaking Bogota has an interesting mix of architecture, but it is easy to get disillusioned between the ugly concrete buildings. The city center has some nice churches and palacios and a nice mirador on the top of the hill and also on top of the Colpatria building. The two major sights are the Museo del Oro and the Zipaquira salt mines. There is a lot of gold in the former and a lot of salt in the latter:)

The nightlife is surprisingly vibrant in the discos and bars of the zona rosa, and all across the city a number of salsa discos cater for the dancers. The atmosphere is so relaxed that it can even happen that a girl asks you for dancing. A thing that hasn’t happened to me since my timid high school years:)

Ajiaco and some local dishes are pleasant and fulfilling, The coffee is soft and tasty, the Colombian beer however is a turnoff and when I desperately tried to ask for a Mexican Corona, they brought a warm bottle without lime or lemon, no comments:)

We have met a number of friendly people in Bogota and I admire their passion for their city.

Music: latest and greatest from Colombia