Friday, March 26, 2010

leaving the Country...

As soon as we realized we were not going to be able to arrive in Leticia in time for Amadeus to leave the country. We decided to go to Ecuador. We traveled from Puerto Asis to Mocoa and there we couldn't get a connection. We stayed in a 7.000 pesos residencia (for both of us), and we woke up at 4:30 am. The beds where hard enough to make the process of leaving very easy. We took a pick up truck heading to Pasto that shaked ourselves for 3 hours in the worst road I could imagine, linking two capitals in Colombia. We stopped in Sibundoy for breakfast and after 2 more hours we arrived in Pasto thinking that we could leave the city the same day... but... oh surprise! Amadeus' bank card wasn't sent by then. How could that have happened? In Bogotá nobody thought it was really important for us to have it as soon as possible so everything ended in us staying for a long week in the city.
The morning we arrived in Pasto I broke my tooth eating chicharrones for the second breakfast of the day, so the first day I fixed my tooth at a local dentist and went to get the pasado judicial at the DAS office.  The first day I discovered everywhere beautiful people willing to help. We decided to enjoy the city, walked around, went to the movies, visited all the malls, went to San Andresito, got lovely dinner in a nice cozy restaurant, and due the fact that Amadeus had been in the city before, I visited a lot of churches and attended a few services, we got drunk drinking aguardiente with some young locals on the street and on our last day we visited Marietta, an old friend that lives in England but arrived to the city to visit her parents. A great coincidence ! Amadeus and I had heated discussions, made it up again and at the end agreed that we will stay together to make sure we will make Tesla-Intergalactic as real as the idea is unreal. Cheers to Tesla !!! ;)



Saturday, March 13, 2010

On the way... again

Although I was thinking about staying in Bogotá for a while, things changed fast and the Belgium guy, again, made me think of walking another path. This time Amadeus invited me to join him in his adventure which is:"getting to Leticia in the Amazonas by boat". We decided to go from Bogotá over Mocoa to Puerto Asis, close to the Putumayo River and to find a boat from there. So, here we are.
Getting to Puerto Asis took us 17 hours and 3 different means of transportation but time well spent because the landscapes are amazing.
For me it is great to be in the south part of the country, I wasn't here before and I have a lovely feeling being close to the jungle. The city is a big town, full of motorcycles and neon signs. To my surprise there are a lot of clothing stores and hotels, and as a sign of luxury there is at least one new barbershop to be seen every two blocks.  

On the other side, people are nice. They seem to eat very well because it is difficult to find skinny people, or maybe it is because they all use motorcycles to move around. Anyway, in this scenario the things that I have enjoyed the most are the trees, especially the Pomarosos that are all full of flowers that make beautiful pink carpets on the floor when falling down, and the image of the sun setting down at the end of the river. The Putumayo River is big and the place they call La Playa is the most lovely neighborhood I have seen in a looong time.
Leticia seems to be very far from here now, but while we find the way to get there, no rush, I am enjoying an overwhelming environment with marvelous company.
Happiness....
MaR