Colombia: first impressions

First impressions of Colombia.

The biggest impression is how nice everyone is; people have been very kind to us. We've been offered rides, given thumbs up as we pass. The restaurant staff take excellent care of us. We've been bought cold drinks by people, given directions. They are patient with us and our Spanish. Friendly, in that happily-friendly way, not the filling-a-requirement way. A little boy bringing me my bicycle helmet when I dropped it. A gentleman warning me that my cellphone was going to fall out of my pocket (it actually was fine but I appreciated his gesture).

Fresh fruit and vegetables available even in the smallest tiendas. There may not be a huge selection, but we've always found at least carrots and passionfruits.

Cash only in all stores, restaurants, and hotels. Almost exclusively I think.

Dogs. Tan colored and bone thin, lazing or trotting everywhere. These are not mean dogs, thank the lord, unlike my harried encounter with dogs in Thailand and the states.

LOUD salsa or merengue music everywhere, in the cities. Playing in shops, blasting out of homes (making it sound like every house may be hosting a birthday party), coming out of cars.

Variety of colors of people, brown and dark brown and light and very dark. As far as I can tell so far there doesn't seem to be any color-based segregation.

Fried food. The little glass aquariums of yellow crescents, circles, and tubes along the highway. Fried road snacks.

Don't flush the toilet paper. There's little waste baskets in the banyos for this purpose.

Don't drink the water. You can buy it in chilled plastic bottles (por turismo), or in 5 liter jugs, or in PLASTIC BAGS. I bought a 5.5L bag of water today, chilled gloriously, and carried it home aslosh on my shoulder. Cutting an edge off the blugging thing and aiming into another jug was a supreme test of focus and confidence: don't let a drop go to waste!

The shopkeepers and venders are much less in your face than in southeast Asia (my only other comparable experience)...they'll mostly let you look without dragging you over to something or breathing on your arm. Of course you'll be paying the white tourist price, and bartering is expected.

Trash, trash, trash. In small piles outside shops, in large piles being picked through by those who have to, collecting in troves in the mangrove roots by the river, flapping off bony trees in the wind.

My short hair is definitely a stand-out; although this culture seems to be daily egalitarian between men and women, the women definitely prize their long locks. I can imagine how ODD I appear here in comparison with the richly chocolate, curvy, long-haired women; I'm pale as pastry (as yet), inarguably tall, flat chested and muscly like the boys....The staring is not nearly as blatant as it was in southeast Asia, though. Thankfully.

The honking. Unlike the states, horn noises do not translate into "you ass-hole", or "out of my way you idiot", instead they translate into "hey everybody! Coming through!", or  "I'm kinda big, watch out."

The hostel cats sound--as ridiculous as this is--remarkably like my cell phone text indicator (for those of you unfortunate enough to know what that sounds like). Yowl-like and piercing and needy and unabashed. Definitely unlike the complacent US housecats I'm accustomed to.

No English or excellent English. People in shops or restaurants so far have had no English vocabulary to offer us but the few people we meet that have speak English speak it very well. In comparison, other places I've traveled the shop keepers have a few basics in English, but here we are left to sonic forth in our mangled Spanish. People are incredibly patient with this though, since I especially sound like a caveman with a brain injury.

Elise put it this way, if you had to make it very simple, Colombia is as if "Puerto Rico and Cambodia mated."

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