Gata, gata!

“I love her, and she loves me.  But we are not a couple.  And it is SO cool.” – Cristian

This is how Cristian described our relationship, and I couldn’t agree more.  Our time in Colombia was very different than anything thus far on the trip because it wasn’t like we were tourists in Bogota, it was like we were just hanging out with friends for a long weekend and happened to be in Bogota.

When Yenny and I planned this trip, she mentioned that she had two friends in Colombia.  I imagined that we would try to meet up with them sometime during our stay and have lunch or go out or something.  Boy, was I wrong.  It began when Cristian and Felipe met us at the airport proudly holding a sign made with computer paper, masking tape, and yellow highlighter: "Jenny | Lori | Welcome to Colombia"

Not entirely legible.

I won’t be able to remember Colombia without thinking of Cristian and Felipe.  They took care of us in every regard and come to think of it, there was not a moment when they left us alone.

We were planning on staying at Cristian and Felipe’s friend’s apartment that was currently vacant.  It wasn’t exactly Buckingham (Boeckingham) Palace, but we sure weren’t complaining because it was FO FREE.  Incidentally, we never even slept there because the next two nights, we all stayed at Felipe’s aunt’s apartment, which I fell in love with.

Every single surface was covered with knick knacks and every wall covered in art or photos.  It reminded me of my grandparents’ house.  We got to explore her life through her belongings.  We looked through photo albums of Felipe and his cousins and other people we didn’t know.  Her library contained books on almost every subject.  Her apartment showed this fascinating life full of travel, adventures, and loved ones.  I want my house to be exactly like that when I’m older.

We found a book about Colombia so Cristian proceeded to lecture us for 45 minutes about the culture, history, and politics of Colombia (complete with Cristian's commentary).  With each photo of an indigenous person, he would exclaim, "Look at the tradition; look at the culture."

Love. This. Place.

Truly fascinating

Cristian and Felipe were dedicated to showing us the real Bogota.  They complained that tourists come to Bogota and only see the nicer part of the city, but not us.  No, we were going to experience the essence of Bogota.  And you can’t know the real Bogota without a visit to La Piscina…

In a taxi, on our way to downtown, Cristian, the ever faithful tour guide points to the right and says, “That’s La Piscina, it’s a very well known whore house.  It’s one of the classier ones.”  What makes a Colombian brothel classy, I still don’t know, but I politely smiled and nodded and quietly stored that information away in case it ever came up on Jeopardy or La Luna trivia.  I thought that would be the end of my La Piscina exposure.  The taxi driver quickly interjected, and said, “No, La Piscina is in the other direction.”  It really didn’t matter to me in which direction was La Piscina, until it was decided that we take a tour of the district in our taxi with our new taxi driver friend.  You see, he is very familiar with the area… from experience.  For the next 20 minutes, we creeped along prostitute (and transvestite) lined streets while being regaled with outlandish tales by the taxi driver about his gallivants with various hookers.  Now these stories were so crude and rude that I have made an executive decision not to repeat them here.  Each of these stories went the same way: Cristian and Felipe laughing hysterically; Yenny and I with eyes wide, hands over our mouths in looks of total disbelief (and asking for translations quite often... this wasn't the kind of vocabulary you learn in SPAN 3073).

As we neared La Piscina, the purpose of our tour, the taxi driver slowed the car down, rolled down the window, whistled and yelled, “Gata! Gata!”  A woman walked over to greet him through the open window with an, “Hola, mi amor.”  She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and then they started making out (Note: we had to explain to Felipe and Cristian the subtleties of the English language when it comes to “making out” and “making love”).  As this was happening, the four of us were just silent and blatantly staring (wouldn’t you??)  And just as quickly as it happened, it was over.  The taxi driver dismissed his lover and sped off.  I was a little baffled by the whole situations so I asked…

Lori:  “How does he know her?”

Felipe: “How do you think?”

Oh dear.

This paints a rather sordid picture of an otherwise delightful city.  We saw many interesting things, met lovely people, took a side trip to Felipe’s hometown, and even went to two (we are so hardcore) discotecas; all of which I will discuss in the next and final post.

A few pictures of our entertaining outings in Colombia:

A photo representation of the overall superiority of the Mario pillow versus the airline provided pillow.

I think I have had more ice cream in South America than I have had in my entire life.

True to Colombian nature - we washed out our ice cream cups and then drank soda out of them.

 Buying clothes in Bogota because I still don't have my suitcase.

 My two favorite people in the whole country.

 Cristian's homemade juice (jews).

 Breakfast spread prepared by our very own Pipe and Cristian.

 Taking the laundry for a walk.

 Eating (FREE) empanadas at Cristian's uncle store.

So yes, just one more post until it's all over.  "Don't cry, don't cry."