With a fast growing amount of users, Colombias internet economy is also growing fast. I read last week that payments through the internet grew by about 50% from last year so it seems that also business over the internet is going to be a very normal thing here soon. Slowly people are getting more confidence and we are seeing better (Colombian) made and more secure pages arriving to the market. Especially the younger crowd (more than elsewhere in the world) is leading this developments and is putting its time and effort in developing sites, ideas and business without any big investors backing them up for the moment, but they should soon wake up and smell the coffee.

For me these developments are great as I live without the internet would be a little boring; the more internet the better!   Without internet I could not know how to write “guevón” (popular word among Colombians that is kind of offensive except when used with friends), how my friend in Holland is doing with his new baby, when there will be another family meeting or I would not have the cool watch that I found at www.mundounik.com, a Colombian webstore that sells some crazy watches.

Hopefully this development of the internet will continue for a long time as it is not only good for the economy (ie. it has created big opportunities for outsourcing in LA) but also the general education level of the Colombians must be rising fast with the increasing access to global news and resource information.

My refrigerator is sending me an email that we are out of tomatoes so got to order some from Carulla and make luch…

My big brother was traveling at the time from Mexico to the South of South America, but somehow a girl made him stop in Guatemala and interrupt his 6 month trip after only being on the road for two weeks!!!

Of course my parents wanted to see what was going on after my brother stayed in Guatemala the whole year and we made a trip together to visit. Driving around the country with his girl behind the wheel and in control of the radio, we heard the full CD of Bacilos maybe 200 times and this was one of the songs:

An interesting time and great memories. Last March we went again, but this time to see them get married . Little late bro! I beat you to it!

Even though Venezuela won the Miss Universe last time it is clear that Colombia should have won as Colombianas are a special treat. Before meeting any, my now brother in law (Guatemalan) told me that the Colombianas were something to look out for. He and his friends could not stop talking about them and not knowing any I could just nod my head in agreement. Little did I know that about a year later I would be studying in Barcelona in the mix of a very international crowd including; COLOMBIANAS. As happened with many nationalities, the Colombians found each other fast in the university and through the Colombians in my class I got introduced to my current wife. I had never met anyone like her. A graceful and fun girl, strong of character, difficult to figure out and with the most beautiful emerald green eyes that got me locked into her from day one. We only got together after a few months of game play, but when we finally did we got married within a year and this was now almost 4 years ago. Blond haired, green eyed babies will follow soon…;)

Colombianas (and the same I think goes for many other Latinas) take really good care of their appearance and they dress always as if there is a party that they might have to go to at some point of the day. I don’t think they even sell sweatpants for women here!! Walking on the streets or in the malls you will find that there are many exotic women walking around that will easily make your head spin and especially Medellin is known for harvesting beauty on a regular basis. The obsession with beauty actually seems to be somewhat extreme for outsiders as the amounts of beauty pageants is astounding. I think there are at least 300 Misses a year crowned, anywhere from Miss “Corn” to Miss “little village in the middle of the jungle” and plastic surgery is an amazingly booming business.

Anyway, I love the Colombian women and especially mine. Lindis, if you read this, please do not get mad for writing about other pretty women hehe. No need to be jealous ok? haha

On behalf of the male population of this country: Colombianas, please always stay feminine and keep dressing the way you do, we will be watching

To finish off some examples to show you what I mean;

If you want to see more: www.soho.com.co (famous Colombian site with many pinups)

Telemex´s owner, Mr. Slim, is one the richest people in the world, but you really must wonder why? I have never seen such an incompetent company and I have had some crazy experiences already before with Chinese!

First of all, the service was amazingly bad. Internet went out every other day because (according to their help desk) there was a line broken, they were doing updates, someone farted, anyway, it did not work. Besides that, they changed their tv system to a digital one, which also took out the option of changing channels to their original English version. So now you are stuck watching Lost in Spanish, which really is not the same.

So we decided to cancel the account and move to ETB. Luckily we had complaint many times and they had to accept our cancellation because of bad service (this is a new law in Colombia). But than the problems started.

The technician that was supposed to come (which is a department outsourced by Telmex), never showed up. So we kept calling and calling and finally they told us to go to their customer service office and hand in the decoder etc and pay a little fine. After paying I think about 6USD in fine, they gave us a letter that said that everything was in paz y salvo (basically we had followed all our obligations and were done, no more invoices, nothing).

So, so far not that bad, but than we received the next month another invoice from them. After again calling and again being sent to their office, they immediately realized they made a mistake and canceled the invoice. But they still did not completely close our account. So every month we are receiving a new invoice and people start calling us that we did not pay yet. Turns out that still that lazy technician from the beginning has to come and shut down the line (whatever that may mean). Each time we call Telmex, they say they will call us within72hours, but nobody every calls. So we are stuck in the machine that is called help desk and are already waiting for 2 months for someone to call. No other solutions are available according to their employees…

Tomorrow we are going to their office again and I will not leave before the solve this issue, but lets see, I might be there until the next year. My god what a shitty company and how unfortunate that companies have still so much power over consumers. Time to go into politics and straighten things out for good!!

So Mr. Slim if you read this, please be noted that your whole Colombia operation sucks gigantically and if you really want to put a decent company here,  send me an email. I will reply you within 72 hours hahahhahaha

By far the biggest star in this kind of music must be Daddy Yankee. He seems to have made at least the most commercially successful tracks like “Gasolina”:

and now I heard “Llamado de Emergencia” the whole weekend and it also seems to be a big one:

Sorry but the original video has an amazingly boring start, so I skipped to this one that starts right away.

In case you are now wondering how you dance to Reggaeton, check out the somewhat explicit instruction video:

It will not be my favorite kind of music anywhere soon, but once in a while it can be nice to go partying on.

After months of looking out to this nice break from work and life in the city, finally we put on our masks and took place in the Avianca plane that was going to leave us right at the beach (not exaggerating, the landing strip really is right next to a beach, far from the city though). As we were not exactly sure where the wedding was going to take place and we did not find anyone that really knew a lot about Santa Marta, we made a gamble and booked hotel Betoma in Rodadero (the specially developed tourist neighborhood of Santa Marta). The hotel was ok, nothing special. We decided that all we needed was a clean bed and a cold shower in the morning as the rest of the time would be spend with (new) friends and hanging on the beaches.

For 90.000COP (40USD) you really just get a clean room, very basic but with a good bed and from a corner even a view of the beach. The Rodadero seemed an alive area with many small restaurants and close access to the beach from anyone of the hotels around.

After meeting the couples friends from Spain (they used to live there) and a pretty intense party at a beach bar overlooking the sea, we had made new friends for life and left the next day with them for Parque Tayrona. The Madrilenos kind of stole the show though. Some of them had not slept at all, just got into the bus as 8 in the morning, made us stop at the first liquor store and buy 3 liters of Rum and another one of Aguardiente (Firewater) and forced the driver to play nothing more than Reggaeton (sort of a latin version of Hiphop). The whole way to the park our bus was shaking as people were literally dancing in the aisle and even the Colombians were stunned by this much partying.

Inside the park we made a stop at the Playa Siete Olas (Seven Waves Beach), which was a really nice sight. After consuming some more rum while counting the waves we headed on to the final destination: Playa Christal or also known as Playa de la Muerta (Death beach). The beach was really great, the weather perfect, nice cool water and great food served by the few small restaurants there. After a few hours of burning, we went back to Santa Marta for the next party.

In the next few days we visited some other beaches and the historic center passed by in one of these trips. From the bus it seemed nice but we did not have time to stop unfortunately so I can not really give my opinion about it. If you do decide to go, Taganga is a nice little fishers town to visit. There is a beach only a boat ride away and again some nice seafood for lunch.

Santa Marta by itself is nice, but not as nice as Cartagena. It has potential but seems to miss a strong mayor that makes especially Rodadero a little safer late at night. We had the pleasure of meeting some messed up drunk young kids and on another occasion a semi-crazy dude that told us he was going to attack us at 4 in the morning in front of our hotel and the overall feeling at night there was not the greatest. Santa Marta used to be in or at least very close to a dangerous area in Colombia. Now things have changed, but really there should be some investment from the government, more police on the streets and to the Samarios (inhabitants of Santa Marta) I would like to say: DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND START PICKING UP THE GARBAGE THAT YOU HAVE LEFT BEHIND EVERYWHERE!!! MAN THAT CITY IS REALLY PILED UP WITH PLASTIC CRAP!!

So all in all, Santa Marta was a super trip, but more because of all the nice foreigners (Bogotanians and Spanish) than because of Santa Marta. Side note: strange that in a beach town, people are so grumpy and not really happy to see people spending money in the low season……

Btw, almost forgot, my good friend Carlos Vives is from Santa Marta.

Ah and he got robbed there walking on the beach, if I should believe the taxi driver.

But they also found his stuff back somehow…

The first time this happened to me I did not think about it too much and gave them my information as it was a famous clothing store here (Arturo Calle) and did not worry too much about them using the information wrongly. The second time they asked me somewhere, I just asked them why they needed it and the reply was a simple: “I have no idea”.

The third time a store asked me for all these details, I actually wanted to see what happened if I would refuse to give it. Amazingly in that particular store, they said they could not sell anything to me if I did not give them any information!! I was probably “lucky” and had the only clerk in Colombia that would not just make up a name and address, but anyway, it happened and I left the store semi-mad. From then on I decide that I was going to have a fake name: Oscar Ortiz and my address, phone number and Cedula are very flexible.

Now I don’t want to scare anyone, but most know that in its history Colombia has had a big problem with kidnapping, which luckily has changed a lot in recent years. Besides this there are cases known where people try to find out as much information as they can and they get you involved in their scam. Actually everywhere in the world, people are getting more aware of things like identity and bank fraud, but here it seems nobody is really worried when it comes to this particular situation. In other situations (like over the phone, or when meeting new people) many people are actually extremely cousious here with giving information.

I am not particularly worried of being kidnapped, as I own no more than the couch I am sitting on and the bed I sleep in (which both are very comfortable by the way), but I find it amazing that people are so easy in giving all their information to what basically is a stranger. It even goes so far that on the receipt that you have to sign when you pay something with a debit or credit card, you have to add your ID number and leave your phone number! So now they have your credit card number, a magnetic copy of your card, your signature, your ID number, your name and everything else they would need to clone you or your cards (accept for a picture, but that should not be too hard to fake)

It says on the receipts that the DIAN (government) is obliging everyone to fill in the details correctly and that they might check these receipts to see if you have. Well if they ever want to visit Oscar Ortiz, they can give me a call and I will happily pass and explain to them my objections to this way of dealing with peoples privacy.

Ah no wait!! they don’t have my number!!!hehehe

This video comes with subtitles that I think are made with some online translating site as there are some mistakes, but you get the idea:

Regularly you will see one or more Toyota(s) or other brand of SUV with some blinking lights and/or a siren to warn you to get out of the way (or get run over hehe).  These cars are normally used by high police or military officers, politicians, diplomats or by rich people. For “normal” people  there really is no need (or money) for these cars but I imagine that if you have a lot in the bank or are important in some way, it might not be a bad idea to get some extra protection on the road. Even if it would be just to frighten that idiot driving in front of you that does not want to go out of the way. The added benefit is that you do not have the limitation of car use called pico y placa that everone else has!

So, now that our “fantastic” mayor Mr. Moreno has decided that we can not use our car two full days during the week, I was looking on how to get around this issue so I would actually be able to go places. A friend told me that me being a foreigner would probably make it relatively easy to get a license to armor my car, but at the same time it would damage my car due to the remodeling and the sheer weight of the special glass, it would make it hard to sell my car, my gasoline consumption would go steeply up and besides that I have the impression that I would actually draw more attention to myself than makes any sense. If you want to stay out of harms way, it might be a better idea to stay out of its sight first!

So no armored car for me and also no bodyguards. Besides not having the money for it, I simply do not need it and if I would feel that I would need special protection to be able to live here, I would leave right away. Ah and for getting around this pico placa nonsense, I have some other ideas that I am going to try out!

This day we decided to try something new and walked into ZOE, a fresh looking place with the kitchen in the middle of the guests. As it was a very beautifull day with blue skies and sunshine we took a table at the windows and enjoyed the view of the city while waiting for our limonada natural (lemonade).

ZOE serves salads, sandwiches, wraps and I think I remember some heavier plates also. We choose the smoked salmon wrap and a fallafel wrap, which both turned out excellent. After finishing with the fried yuka (kind of patato) that the plate came with, a waiter drove up with a little car with some deserts. We choose the capuchino flan which was nice and fluffy and good of taste. All in all we really were impressed with the place, the decoration is modern and of great style and the food was up to par with WOK, which means a lot in my book.

ZOE, calle 110, 9a-70, 3rd floor, tel: 6124581

Btw. the pictures are not the best as there are taken with my phone…

]]> http://lavidaesloca.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/zoe-restaurant-my-kind-of-eating/feed/ 0 OJ zoe-restaurant-2 limonada-natural http://lavidaesloca.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/full-80%c2%b4s-party-with-the-a-team-and-bon-jovi/ http://lavidaesloca.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/full-80%c2%b4s-party-with-the-a-team-and-bon-jovi/#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:32:12 +0000 lavidaesloca http://lavidaesloca.wordpress.com/?p=418 Continue reading →]]> Saturday night we went out with some friends to a bar called Full 80´s, which has two locations in Bogota. The theme of the bar is obviously the 80´s but also music and intros from famous series from the 70´s and 90´s is used to entertain the customers. We started the evening with some picadas (fingerfood) like empanadas and quesadillas combined with some mojitos and whiskey.

Seeing the intros in the background and hearing some of the tunes of our teen years, memories that were almost forgotten came up and we had a great laugh about all the stupid things we did and wore back than. One strange difference between me and the Colombians I have noticed is that I have NO clue who Chips is or are! Two guys on a motorcycle does not seem to be that big of a deal people!!

After a steady consumption of drinks we moved inside from the terrace to step up the party and it took off. Being not too sober anymore, we danced like it was 1999! Unfortunately the place has to close at 1am and we were politely kicked out. We decided to go to our place with a cousin and his friend we met in the bar and somehow the hours passed rapidly from there. With only 3 hours of sleep behind us we got a wakeup call to  go to San Victorino with my parents-in-law…

Full 80´s; Av 19 118-48 and we have seen it around Calle 13 with 96 (not 100% sure), tel: 2138066

Don Ernesto Ayarza and his wife Rosita sold their house to start sombrereria San Francisco in a time that most men in Bogota wore hats and have increased their store to almost an entire street of hats for sale ranging from 10.000COP (4USD) till 30.000.000COP(15.000USD). The last made of some rare snake skin with rubies and only available on special order. A good quality, well shaped cowboy hat costs somewhere around 150.000COP(60USD)

A lot of vaqueros (cowboys) come from far to buy their hats here but also city people use them, especially in their fincas (farmhouses) outside the city. In our family most men have one and for my birthday my parents-in-law gave me my way of fitting in on the farm.

This time we passed the store, as we were coming from San Victorino and my wife wanted to buy a hat. It kind of looks like a flying soucer in this picture I made but on her head it looks really fresh and modern.

San Francisco sells all kinds of hats (even baseball hats) and can be found at Calle 11, 8-28, tel: 3365623

Today for example you get about 2550COP for 1USD, last year august that was only 1800COP per USD. An increase of almost 50%!!!

Something that goes hand in hand with this, should be the exchange houses that give you more Pesos for your Dollar than any bank will give you. Also they give you more Dollars for your Peso…should be a business there no? I have not thought about it that deeply yet but maybe it would be a good idea to give it a closer look.

exchange house

So why do these two phenomenons occur? Supposedly it has to do with the difference in inflation between Colombia and other countries and the economic growth, but do not ask me to explain as it will require me some hours of study and boredom…

One good quote I found in a article about the predictions of the exchange rate:

A general once told his weather-forecasting team;

“I appreciate being informed that your forecasts are no better than random, but please keep sending
them on, as the army needs your predictions for planning purposes.”

Have you already noticed that most Colombian music is very positive, happy, uplifting? After my teenage years were over I started to dislike all the dramatic music & movies and other drama in whatever art form. Life really is too short to add artificial drama to it! Maybe that is also what attracts me to the life and lifestyle here. Of course people are not 100% happy all the time, but they prefer to forget about their worries and live life to the max.

In various studies over the recent years it has shown that Colombians are amongst the most happiest people in the world.  Surrounded by far wealthier countries like Denmark, Canada and my own birthplace The Netherlands, Colombia took the bronze medal in a research done by Businessweek:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/aug2008/gb20080820_874593.htm

An outtake: “Today it’s the world’s third happiest country, but “cocaine” and “cartel” are traditionally more easily associated with Colombia than “carefree” and “contented.” The change: Surging tourism and economic growth have accompanied the South American country’s efforts in recent years to reassert control over its decades-old rebel violence and lucrative drug operations. Even though per capita income is far lower than in the top 10 countries, Colombia’s literacy rate is 94%, well above the world average. And the ethnically tolerant country supports thriving coastal communities of Arabs, Jews, Italians, Germans, French, Portuguese, and Roma descendants.

In daily life I notice that people do not look that far ahead as in the Netherlands, they take things more per day and enjoy as long as it lasts. I read this afternoon a nice phrase: put two Colombians together and you have a party!

Btw. the song played is “Quiero verte sonreir” from Carlos Vives and translates to: “I want to see you smile”…enough said!

Leaving at home our phones, watches, bank cards and camera, just taking some money for the taxis and the things we wanted to buy, we decided to give it a try and see what we could find there. It started out properly as the taxi driver that took us there decided to “rob” us from some change and “forgot” to turn on the meter. Normally we are very keen on these sort of things, but it must have been the early hour that we missed it. So after negotiating with him the price to a reasonable one (about 5USD for 30 minutes) we arrived to busy streets filled with people, shops, merchandise, stray dogs and some bums/junkies. I am not sure if it is always the same but this day (Saturday) it was very busy and with all the people around we actually felt quite comfortable.

Walking towards the main square, we passed many different shops with all sorts of merchandise. It seems that besides clothing you can find here almost everything at a lot lower price than where we live. From office supplies, to suitcases, from washing machines to party utilities can be found, all new and normally grouped in a street together based on the kind of product. As we are planing a party for my suegra “mother in law”,  whom is turning 60, we were on the lookout for some Mexican looking party items, like sombreros, piñatas etc. 

One of the stores on a national holiday I imagine…

After about 2 hours of searching we found all we needed and just wandered around some more to see what else we could find. We were offered some good white T-shirts at 5000COP each, about 2USD. Jeans at 10USD each and so on. Cheap and reasonable quality but in some cases you have to buy the product in volume, a dozen for example.

After a successful and cheap shopping experience we decided to head back to the North. In Bogota normally it is not suggested to take a taxi on the street however. Instead you should call one, which will register your trip with the taxi company and they use a security code to make sure it is really the taxi of the company you called. Taking a bus with some of the larger stuff we bought (can not mention what as my suegra might read this) was not an option however as it would get crushed by the overload of people stuffed in the bus.

So we decided to walk a little out of the area and take a taxi there. That was the worst idea of the day! As soon as we left the masses of people, the neighborhood turned kind of ugly and we started to pass some people sniffing glue bags, smoking crack and others sleeping on the sidewalk. The police has done a great job at clearing the shopping area from most “problems” (or at least you don’t notice them with so many people around) but you really need to do an in-buy-out by taxi or bus to make sure you come home with the things you bought!

So, San Victorino is a very interesting place to go and we will definitely go back soon again, but you have to take care and watch your stuff!Ah and if you are interested in buying artesanias (the typical tourist memorabillia), you should go to Pasaje Rivas in this area which is a small warehouse filled with little stores full of this stuff. It is at 10th with 10th, or just ask a local.

Of course I should have written about this place a long time ago, but I always forget to take a camera so do not have any pictures. Luckily Google sometimes helps so thanks for the pics my friends!

WOK at Gran Estacion (have not been there)

WOK has a very extensive menu that is actually a small magazine nowadays. They have the best and most creative sushi I have eaten on any side of the world and if you go you need to try at least the spring rolls, gyozas, some of the rice paper wraps and the coco juice! For about 50.000COP (20USD) we always have a great meal and feel great when walking out again.

There are several WOK´s around town. The ones I know are at Parque 93 and Avenida 19 with about 120. Please try it out and let me know what you think!

WOK on poles at Av.19-120

The road down the mountain gives you some nice views of Colombian nature and you can make a stop in some great “Parilla” places where they serve the traditional Colombian plates with meat, patatos and platano (kind of banana).

Continuing from Anapoima, after a total of about 3 hours driving, you will arrive at Girardot. This is basically a hot and busy pueblo (town) and is not really attractive to stay at. Girardot and its surroundings (including Melgar) however have some of the nicer conjuntos you will find in Colombia. In Peñon for example you will be amazed by the humongous houses in which an interesting mix of the richer Colombian families (both on the good and bad side of the law) are  BBQ-ing by the pool, racing around with jet skis on the lake and driving around in their golf cars.

The whole place has a relaxed tropical atmosphere and when invited by friends we like to go for a few days to calm down from the big city with some extreme lazy behavior and if possible play some golf. As we do not have a handicap yet however, we are not allowed to play in the cool morning and the temperature, sun and mosquitoes in the afternoon make you desperate in hitting the little white ball as fast as you can to get back to the pool again. The heat in Girardot (30-35Celcius) sometimes is too much for me and as a gringo I burn far to easy. Besides that we get bored of not doing anything when staying too long, so more than 3 days I think we have not lasted yet.

If you have a chance to go there some day, let me know what you think. I am sure that most of the non-Colombians I know will not expect this kind of wealth in a “3rd world country”.

Btw. I forgot to mention my favorite part of the trip; this amazing ranch about 20-30 minutes before arriving to Girardot, make sure you don’t miss it: