Wanting to enjoy my mother’s first visit to Colombia to the fullest, my girlfriend Kary and I sent her a list of items we wanted to bring to Colombia for us.
The list included but was not limited to:
1) Size 13 Nike Dual Shock tennis shoes
2) Kindle Fire Tablet
3) My 2004 Compaq laptop computer
4) My dress shoes (There is only one place to get size 13 shoes in Colombia, that is Payless. Unfortunately they only have around three pairs of size 13 shoes at any one time.)
5) List of six books including “My Life Outside The Ring” by Hulk Hogan
6) Rubber spatula (I wanted to ask her to bring a cutting board and colander but figured I may be pushing my luck)
Kary also ordered a few things off Amazon to be brought down
7) Conair Ionic Conditioning Pro Style 1875-Watt Hair Dryer
8) Tree Hut Body Scrub, Lavender and Chamomile, 18 Ounce
9) LUXE Body Lotion SANGRIA SPLASH Chic Elegant Classic 8 Oz.
10)L’Oreal Professional Series Expert Absolut Repair Cellular with Lactic Acid, 6.7-Ounce
The initial plan was to start in Cartagena at Kary’s parents house and work our way down to Bogota where my mom would fly out. But, that plan got severely more complicated after Kary told me that there would be 10 people staying at her parents’ house in early January and only three bedrooms for the ten people. The ticket prices from Bogota to Cartagena would also be 4 times higher in January than the normal price. We decided that we would save Cartagena for another day. I broke the news to my mother via email a few weeks before her visit.
“Kary can go see her parents between Christmas and New Years and then all of us can visit in Bogota at the house in Bucaramanga you wrote about. That sounds great to me. If I do not go to Cartagena and am able to get a refund or certificate for that portion of ticket I will give it to you. If I do go to Cartagena, I would need to get a hotel room for me or us. Tell Kary I am very grateful for her parents invitation but I have been spending a lot of time in the bathroom lately and won’t be able to share with that many people,” wrote my mother in an email.
I responded to her that actually I preferred to avoid Cartagena during the Christmas and New Year’s season because of the rush of people who would be going to Cartagena and the 24 hours worth of buses we would need to take to get from Cartagena to Bogota. I decided to plan a vacation that would stay within 12 hours by bus of Bogota.
The itinerary will go as follows:
Raquira: nice ceramics factory and beautiful life sized nativity scene in the downtown and buying tagua seeds
Villa de Leyva: Horse riding, adobe house, infiernito (penis archeological observatory), swimming in special blue water pits
Bucaramanga: Rafting, huge grand canyon with 6.5 kilometer gondola, botanic garden, many old churches and a special house with a pool where we will be staying
Bogota: Salt Mines in Zapaquira, Andres Carne del Res for dancing and wine sampling, Botanical garden, Botero Museum, Montserrate (little church on 10,000 foot high mountain) and either hanging out with leading Colombian environmentalist Fernando Trujillo or we can have dinner with my barber who is named Charlie (he lived in NYC for 5 years, is a transvestite and cancer survivor).
I also advised my mom to bring her own coffee because I had already gone to the grocery store here in Bogota and asked several times, “Where do you get the good Colombian coffee?” The answer was always the same, “Japan.”
Knowing my mom had a little problem with digesting food, I wanted to be extra conservative in terms of which food we ate. Kary and I decided that for my mom’s first meal in Colombia we would buy some chicken breasts, spinach and make a nice lentil soup. We also went out and bought two bottles of white Chilean wine for my mom.
On the way to the airport, Kary wanted to stop and buy flowers for my mom. I agreed to it but after I realized the Transmilenio stop didn’t even stop at “Flores,” (Flowers District of Bogota) I became very nervous. It was nearly 6pm by that point and we were still over 30 miles away from the airport.
“Your mother arrives at 7pm, it will take her another 30 minutes to get her luggage and another 15 minutes to clear customs,” Kary said as we got off the Transmilenio at the stop after Flores.
“If I was my father, we would have been at the airport 3 hours ago,” I replied to Kary.
“If it makes you feel better we can go straight to the airport without picking up the flowers,” she added, trying to get me to stop worrying.
“Sounds like a plan,” I exclaimed. It was set, we jumped on the next Transmilenio towards the airport. On the trip there I reminded Kary that the Transmilenio didn’t actually go all the way to the airport, we’d still have to catch a feeder bus from the last Transmilenio to get to the airport.
We finally arrived to the airport a full 6 minutes before 7pm. We walked around the brand new El Dorado airport and then sat behind the glass of the six carousel. As we sat down, I felt like a heel for being so nervous on the way to the airport. We looked up at the arrivals board and saw that my mom’s Avianca flight from San Salvador, El Salvador had already landed.
A few minutes later I saw my mom walked towards the glass with three different bags over her shoulders. We stood up to greet her but realized that no sound could actually get through the glass. This of course didn’t stop my mom from kissing the glass twice, once for Kary and another for me. After our brief and muted exchanged my mom walked back to the carousel to wait for her bags. From time to time she’d turn around to look at us and make dolls poses with her shoulders and hands.
Waiting with her was a group of 25 adult Boy Scouts (fully decked out in shorts and bandanas tied around their necks) from El Salvador. They were also waiting for their luggage. They all got their bags before my mom. Just after 7.45pm, my mom finally cleared customs and was walking into the waiting area. Kary had stepped out to go to the bathroom so I had my mom to myself for a few minutes to talk about her flight.
“Everything was great, I watched movies and played Crossword on my Kindle the whole way down,” she responded. It sounded like she had a nice flight. When Kary came back my mom immediately gave her a big hug and started speaking her high school Spanish to Kary.
It seemed everything was in order. We got a taxi going back to Kary and I’s house. On the taxi ride back we discussed Bogota’ Mayor’ recent privatization of trash clean up in the city. The taxi driver was livid at the plan saying that of the 400 new trash collection trucks needed, only 25 had arrived. The trucks were so old and stinky they caused the citizens of Cartagena to complain of the stench they made while sitting in storage while they waited to be transported to Bogota. Well, at least we found a conversation that the taxi driver was passionate about.
By the time we finally got back to Kary and I’s apartment we were just in the mood to eat cake, wine and relax. So we opened a bottle of wine as my mom brought out the numerous gifts she had brought Kary and I. There were so many gifts, we also had plenty for Kary’s mother, father and daughter.
The next morning, our plan was to get a ride to a small town called Paipa (known for its natural thermal baths, cows walking through the downtown and local indigenous artisans) and with Kary’s boss Freddy. Freddy drove to our house with his daughter, planning to spend the weekend with her in a small town near Paipa.
My experience with Freddy to that point was pretty limited. I knew he was a big fan of the book, “The Secret.” The book is about using one’s positive thoughts as powerful magnets that attract wealth, health, happiness or regrowth of hair in my case. One of the stories from the book is of a man who took a photo of his dream house and stuck it up on a bulletin board in his small apartment. A few years later his daughter was going through an old box of her Dad’s stuff. When she found her Dad’s bulletin board in the box she showed it to him. He was astonished to see that the photo he had taken over five years ago was a picture of the house he had just recently moved in to.
After the book came out, as a testament to its popularity, a huge group of detractors formed who claim that reading the book is powerful enough to create terminal illness, poverty and even widespread disasters. Freddy was so enamored by the message of the book that he actually sent a copy of the DVD home with Kary one day for us both to watch.
Freddy arrived promptly at 10am. By the time he got to our house we already had all of our luggage packed and ready to load. We jumped in the car with Freddy’s daughter and set out for the five hour trip to Paipa. We hadn’t been in the car for more than half an hour before Freddy got his first call from work. His cell phone had blue tooth and was plugged into the radio, so we all got a chance to listen to the conversation.
“Hello Freddy, it’s Juan. There is a small inconveniente. The electric bill just arrived today and we have to pay it today,” reported Juan into our car.
“Why am I just hearing about this now?” asked Freddy.
“The electric bill was sitting in our neighbor’s mailbox for the last week. The neighbor just brought it over today,” said Juan, exuding a cool confidence.
“How much is the bill for?” asked Freddy.
“$80,200 pesos ($39USD).”
“Is there enough money in the safe to pay the bill?” asked Freddy.
“The safe only has $51,000 pesos ($25USD) in it,” said Juan.
“Juan, can you pay the bill with bill today with your money and I will pay you back on Monday?” asked Freddy.
“Sorry Freddy, I don’t have enough money.”
“Juan, this problem is very difficult for me to solve from my car. Can I trust that you, Omar and Federman can solve this problem without me?”
Freddy was having a tough month. Just a few weeks earlier his business partner Carlos left the company. After he left, Freddy checked the books and found out that Carlos had stolen over $11,000USD from the company before he left. To add insult to injury, Carlos owned all of the furniture in the office and Freddy was forced to buy all the furniture in cash from Carlos.
After Juan hung up, my mom turned to me and asked what the phone call was about. I explained it to her what had happened in English and then translated it back into Spanish for the rest of the car to hear.
An hour later, we got another call. This time from one of Freddy’s customers who had recently hired Freddy’s company (Gema Technologies), to install security cameras and monitoring software on his computers.
“Hello Freddy, its Jairo. The cameras you installed in my office aren’t working. Can you send Omar over to check them out?” asked Freddy’s customer Jairo.
“Jairo, Omar said he went there yesterday to check the cameras. He said someone sprayed water into them to disable them. He also found that all the cameras had been disconnected from the computer. When he asked the secretary why the cameras were unplugged, she said a duenda (leprechaun with wings) did it,” reported Freddy. “I will call Omar now,” said Freddy before hanging up.
Before translating this call to my mother, I asked Kary to confirm what I had just heard. “Kary, did the secretary really say a ghost unplugged the security cameras?”
“Yeah it true. We have gone over to this same business over 5 times to fix the cameras. The company is being run by Jairo’s son and girlfriend. They always disable the cameras after we fix them so they can continue robbing the company with the father finding out. We have told the father to confront the son about the problem, but he prefers to keep sending his son more money to fix the cameras.”
During the car ride over I tried to get Freddy to chime in to the conversation by telling him, “My mom wants to hear what you think about Hugo Chavez’s latest surgery. Do you think he will get better?” I asked in reference to Chavez’s getting his 5th surgery in the last year in a half and still being in a delicate state due to some pulmonary problems related to his most recent surgery.
“Nobody wants to hear about Chavez,” Freddy would reply.
In Colombia, the second worse insult you can say to someone is, “I heard you love Hugo Chavez.” This phrase is roughly the equivalent of saying, “I heard you love you to give your mother sponge baths.”
Also on the car ride over we explained the difference between “Tengo Calor,” and “Estoy caliente” to my mother. The first meaning, “I am hot” and the later meaning, “I am sexually excited.”
We also warned her about saying the following phrase, “Can I have perico, please?”
This phrase can be interpreted as meaning any of the following things:
“Can I have some scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions?”
“Can I have a coffee with milk?”
“Can I have a parakeet?”
or
“Can I have a line of cocaine?”
“And mommy, there is one last thing we must tell you about Colombia before we get to the hotel?” I advised.
“What is it?” asked my mother.
“Here is Colombia, we never flush toilet paper down the toilet. You have to put it in the trash?”
“Is that a local custom?” asked my mom.
“No, it is due to the fact that the pipes here are very narrow and the paper will get stuck in the pipes.”
By the time we got to Paipa, Freddy and his daughter had to turn right back around and go to Bogotá to bail out the company. My mom apologized to Freddy for making him miss work to drive us to Paipa. Before leaving, Freddy told us that he had stayed at the hotel we were about to stay in. When I asked how was it, he responded, “I can’t remember, it was a long time ago.” We could tell by Freddy’s face that his weekend was over before it started. I thought about mentioning the power of positive thinking to Freddy at that point but figured I should let sleeping dogs lie.
While checking into our hotel, called La Casa Blanca (The White House), the receptionist gave us a rundown of all the amenities. “The hotel offers a fitness center, free High-Speed Internet, a spa (which includes a sauna and seven aroma therapy rooms), breakfast and dinner are included, a pool table, a ping pong table and a swimming pool. The swimming pool is not heated.”
We got the feeling that the swimming pool was a hot button issue in the hotel. We figured the colder the pool, the more private it would be. This particular hotel was priced at $53USD a night.
“I can’t believe we get two meals a day, my own room, swimming pool and a spa for such a low price. This same hotel would be $150USD a night per person in California,” exclaimed my mom.
“Welcome to Colombia,” would have been my dream response from the receptionist. Instead she went with the standard “A la orden” (at your service).
After dashing to our rooms, we quickly got ready to have dinner. The hotel had a nice restaurant upstairs and we choose the table closest to the window facing the road. It was that point that we really felt like we had settled in. During the meal we discussed our families. Kary told my mom that her father was a very hard-worker, always has supported the family, he used to drink 15 cups of coffee a day but isn’t the kind of father who would take the whole family to the park on Sundays. My mother then discussed her experience with her parents getting a divorce when she was 16 and how her stepfather was mostly angry all the time and drank too much. It was the stuff of made for TV movies but I was pleased that the three of us, despite speaking different languages were able to have interesting dinner topics.
My mom also asked what the things each of us were attracted to in the other person. I made a list of 10 things.
1) I really admire the unity of Kary’s family
2) Kary is very pretty
3) She is a hard worker
4) She is in a good mood 99% of the time
5) She is interested in visiting and living in Korea
6) She went to a party for foreigners with me in Bogotá and was very nice to all the Germans and Irish there. She also had a lot of fun interacting with the different races
7) She cooks great and healthy meals
8) Her siblings all have very professional jobs
9) She thinks I am funny
10) She doesn’t mind watching movies in English with Spanish subtitles
Kary then gave a list of things she liked about me.
1) Brian is very noble
2) He always pampers me
3) He is a hard worker, always wakes up at 4am, I would prefer a little later but I am glad he is working
4) He helps with the house work
5) He isn’t a machista (male chauvinist)
6) He likes hanging out and doing things
7) He is good to his mother, add she added, “My grandmother says the most important thing about knowing how a person is inside is to see how they interact with their mother.”
After each of us submitted out lists we discussed our pet peeves we had with each other. The thing I do that makes Kary upset is not washing out the sink after I wash the dishes. The thing she does to make me upset is putting uncovered pasta into the refrigerator to be eaten later.
The following morning we were all up at 7am and back in the restaurant. My mom started off the conversation. “Do you want to hear about the dream I had last night?”
“Sure,” I replied.
“I was visiting funeral homes for some relatives who were very sick. I finally found one I really liked but I found out that this particular funeral parlor was contaminating the river behind the property so suddenly I wanted to chose another. Then for some reason there was a Japanese funeral going on in another room and I got up on stage and took the mic.”
The day was off to quite a start. My mother got served two cups of coffee and Kary and I drank hot chocolate with our eggs and beef soup. While having breakfast we were treated to a parade of cows commuting down the main street. After breakfast we went for a bike ride around the lake. The ride was a nice break from walking and driving every place. Most of the lake had a separate roads for cyclists and cars. After touring the lake we decided to bike over a hill to see if we could find any waterfalls. Since seeing a huge blowup of a photo of waterfalls in the hotel, we had become obsessed with the idea that there must be some waterfalls close by. We rode around for another hour, talking to anyone who would listen about the waterfalls. Out of five different people we talked to nobody knew anything about any waterfalls. We were all dressed in pants and sweatshirts at that point due to the cool morning, so instead of biking around during the heat of the day, we decided to return the bikes and then go back to the hotel.
Once we got back to the hotel it was nearly noon. We decided to all jump in the pool. Once again, there was nobody near the pool. After we jumped in we realized why. It was pretty brisk. I could only stand being in the pool for about 6 minutes. Kary on the other hand loved the temperature because for her it was great for “toning.”
So, my mom and I sat at a table by the pool as Kary swam a few laps. While we were talking, my mother asked when was the last time I played ping pong.
“Good question, the last time I played Ping Pong, I played the 5th ranked ping pong player under 13 in the USA.”
“Did you beat him?” asked my mom.
“Of course he had a broken arm at the time. I asked him how he got the broken arm. His response was, ‘My brother pushed me.’ Since the accident his brother was able to rise in the ranking to become the 3rd ranked player under 13. You want to know his name?”
“The name of the brother, or the guy you played?” asked my mom trying to follow the story.
“The guy I played in a ping pong tournament in Florida at Club Adriatic was named Adar Alguetti. He had a broken arm during the tournament which disabled hir right and dominant hand. He is actually from Israel and I believe he is the #1 player under 13 in Israel. And luckily for me he was using his non-dominant hand to play me, I am happy to say I beat him. Maybe you want to get a game now?”
So, I went to receptionist and grabbed a few racquets and a ball. We played a few games in bare feet and wet swimsuits. A few minutes later the poor receptionist came into the ping pong area and very apologetically asked, “Is it possible to wear sandals while playing, we don’t want to have an accident.”
“Everyone is so nice here,” remarked my mother as we went back to our table to put on some sandals. We played a few games until about 2pm. My mom asked to go back to her room for 2 hours to take a rest until they opened the spa at 4pm. Kary and I did the same and we agreed to meet back at my mom’s room at 4pm.
At 4pm we were back with my mom heading down to the spa area. In accordance with the rules we were all wearing blue swim caps. The spa area was very relaxing, they had tea out for the guests, nice music playing and padded lounge chairs. They also had seven different aroma-therapy steam rooms and a suana. I decided to take a quick shower before we first jumped into the sauna. As soon as we got into the sauna we all threw down our towels and sat on a bench. I leaned back on the bench and touched my to the wooden back rest. It was pretty toasty. After three minutes we went to the first aroma therapy area. This one had plastic chair which were a lot more comfortable. So we sat in our chair and breathed in the “Manzanilla” (little apple) scents.
“These aroma therapy scents are all natural?” explained Kary as she pulled a few twigs and leaves out of the box producing the steam.
“I can’t tell you how much I object to artificial manzanilla scents when I go to a steam room,” was what I wanted to say but was too relaxed, instead I just nodded as I inhaled the steam into my lungs.
The next morning we decided to get on a bus to Villa de Leyva where we were looking forward to showing my mom more livestock and more guys with no shirts on working on their tractors. So, we boarded the 9am bus to Villa de Leyva.
Related articles
- Cartagena: Beautiful ancient city with parties and locals that will make you never want to leave (partysouthamerica.com)
- Tentative Itinerary (kalaber.wordpress.com)
- Colombian Spanish and Colombian Expressions (bw3pt.wordpress.com)
- I Speak Colombian – Words And Phrases That Will Help You Better Understand Colombia (bw3pt.wordpress.com)
- All that glitters in Colombia (standard.co.uk)
- Deep Blue Wins “Best Boutique Hotel in Colombia 2013” Award from ACOPET (prweb.com)
- Colombia’s Farc frees kidnapped US tourist Kevin Scott Sutay (theguardian.com)
Wake Me Up When I Am Rich 
I think is cute that you say little apple to manzanilla, it’s chamomile in case you’re wondering. I enjoy your entries.