Or deep-fried ants. They taste salty and spicy and are not at all bad except the bits get stuck in your teeth. In order to prepare these they drown the ants in salty water and then fry them. The bit on the left of the photo is the best bit, the arse of the ant really. The name means "big-ass ants".
Tuesday 29 July 2008
Hormigas Culonas
Or deep-fried ants. They taste salty and spicy and are not at all bad except the bits get stuck in your teeth. In order to prepare these they drown the ants in salty water and then fry them. The bit on the left of the photo is the best bit, the arse of the ant really. The name means "big-ass ants".
Colombian hospitality
Yesterday me and Gracie met up with her pal German, and we hung aboot for a while, went for some food, and then later on we went out with him and loads of his family. Everyone was so kind, the da even paid for our din dins and German and his bro said they'll meet me and show me around and give me a hand with getting settled in and that. What an excellent thing to happen on your first proper night in a city, crashing a family do and meeting loads of great people. Obviously Edgardo the taxista rat from the first night was a one-off since everyone else i've met have been absolute belters.
Case in point: this morning me a couple of other language assistants went out for a wander, dropped into shop for empanadas (tasty fillings folded inside a doughy half moon shape and then deep fried) and started talking to the woman beside us, by the time the empanadas were done she'd given us her daughter's number so that she could show us around, and given Steve (one of the assistants) the number of her friend who lives in the town he's going to live in. People are so polite and friendly here (bar Edgardo), hopefully i'll not find it too difficult getting a flat with all these folk offering to help me.
Today me, Gracie, Steve and Chantal the fellow language assistants tried to go to La Candelaria, the colonial centre of Bogota, unfortunately we didn't know where to get off the space-age bus and ended up climbing these windy potholed roads right up the side of the mountain into a kind of hilltop shanty town. What a view of the place you get from a great height, it's unbelievably big, and the air is very clear because of the altitude. At the top of the hill we just got on another bus and went down again, it costs 30p to take a space-age bus basically anywhere in the city and you just flag them down like taxis and then tell them where you want to get off.
After that detour we found La Candelaria and ate some fried ants (see previous post), and then had a giant plate of food in a diner where they were listening to Micaela by La Sonora Carruseles! (This song is a Poporopo favorito). This is La Candelaria:
Case in point: this morning me a couple of other language assistants went out for a wander, dropped into shop for empanadas (tasty fillings folded inside a doughy half moon shape and then deep fried) and started talking to the woman beside us, by the time the empanadas were done she'd given us her daughter's number so that she could show us around, and given Steve (one of the assistants) the number of her friend who lives in the town he's going to live in. People are so polite and friendly here (bar Edgardo), hopefully i'll not find it too difficult getting a flat with all these folk offering to help me.
Today me, Gracie, Steve and Chantal the fellow language assistants tried to go to La Candelaria, the colonial centre of Bogota, unfortunately we didn't know where to get off the space-age bus and ended up climbing these windy potholed roads right up the side of the mountain into a kind of hilltop shanty town. What a view of the place you get from a great height, it's unbelievably big, and the air is very clear because of the altitude. At the top of the hill we just got on another bus and went down again, it costs 30p to take a space-age bus basically anywhere in the city and you just flag them down like taxis and then tell them where you want to get off.
After that detour we found La Candelaria and ate some fried ants (see previous post), and then had a giant plate of food in a diner where they were listening to Micaela by La Sonora Carruseles! (This song is a Poporopo favorito). This is La Candelaria:
Monday 28 July 2008
Hasty
Man i really hated Colombia and everyone in it for a couple of hours there. However, now i´m all holed up in this belter hotel with a wee sunny patio and pure nice dude behind the desk with the unpleasant taxi business of last night behind me i feel a lot better about things. That impudent fellow had the temerity to leave me his card in case i wanted to hire him by the hour for tours of the city! Beat it, mate. I´ll post his number up later in case any of you fancy a spot of Trans-Atlantic prankie action. Bastard.
BUT i just went out for a walk round Bogota and it´s amazing. I went to Juan Valdez, which is a big coffee chain, and had a massive tinto (black coffee) and a donut for a quid! There are men in uniforms with guns hanging about everywhere, even at the coffee stands, but the hotel is right in the middle of the business district and there are loads of banks, so it must be becuase of that.
All the buses are clapped-out yet weirdly space-age looking van type things, painted lots of different colours with chrome trim and sometimes with the Virgin Mary on the side. They look like transport vehicles from a 1960´s sci-fi TV show (apart from the old V.M), and beside these are horses and carts, trundling along the streets beside millions of irate yellow taxis and kamikaze motorbike messagers. The houses are strange small cottages with terracotta tiles on the roofs, and all the gardens are full of flowers. Even the hedges are made of some plant that looks like normal hedge material but spattered with yellow flowers.
BUT i just went out for a walk round Bogota and it´s amazing. I went to Juan Valdez, which is a big coffee chain, and had a massive tinto (black coffee) and a donut for a quid! There are men in uniforms with guns hanging about everywhere, even at the coffee stands, but the hotel is right in the middle of the business district and there are loads of banks, so it must be becuase of that.
All the buses are clapped-out yet weirdly space-age looking van type things, painted lots of different colours with chrome trim and sometimes with the Virgin Mary on the side. They look like transport vehicles from a 1960´s sci-fi TV show (apart from the old V.M), and beside these are horses and carts, trundling along the streets beside millions of irate yellow taxis and kamikaze motorbike messagers. The houses are strange small cottages with terracotta tiles on the roofs, and all the gardens are full of flowers. Even the hedges are made of some plant that looks like normal hedge material but spattered with yellow flowers.
How not to arrive in a foreign country
In the midde of the night, 3 hours late due to electrical storms, not having slept in 24 hours and, crucially, with some faith in the reliability of the British Council. This last one was the real killer. Some shmuck was supposed to pick me up at the airport but obviously couldn´t be arsed to ahng around and wait on the flight so i had to get ripped off changing dollars at the airport, then jump in a taxi to the hotel the B.C told us to go to. Of course, the airport people gave me the worng address so the taxi driver says the B.C hotel doesn´t exist, and will he take me to another one? This is such a classic scam, but what are you supposed to do if you don´t even have the address of the place, so he takes me to some overpriced hotel where i was robbed of $100 for a pishy wee room, and THEN i couldn´t sleep at all last night from beating myself up about being such a tourist idiot and letting myself get ripped off. GAH!
However, it´s probably best to get this kind of thing out of the way at the start, at least things can only get better from here on in, although the stupid British Council people have probably conspired so that i´ll have to pay for last night at the other hotel too, even though i wasn´t there. Sigh.
And there weren´t even any Twinkies on sale in Newark! Though i did sit next to some charming hillbilly newlyweds from a tiny town outside Kansas City on the plane from London to Newark and discussed the best way to cook squirrels, what catfish tastes like and how much better stuff tastes when it´s been deep fried.
However, it´s probably best to get this kind of thing out of the way at the start, at least things can only get better from here on in, although the stupid British Council people have probably conspired so that i´ll have to pay for last night at the other hotel too, even though i wasn´t there. Sigh.
And there weren´t even any Twinkies on sale in Newark! Though i did sit next to some charming hillbilly newlyweds from a tiny town outside Kansas City on the plane from London to Newark and discussed the best way to cook squirrels, what catfish tastes like and how much better stuff tastes when it´s been deep fried.
Saturday 26 July 2008
Twinkies
Well pals, i'm in London now and the true wisdom of carrying life's essentials in a suitcase with no wheels has manifested itself in some nifty blisters on both hands. Dan and Jack have gone to his sister's engagement party and i'm sitting beside the window looking out over a fox-addled back garden and a belter of a terrace where we sat and had a beer earlier. London is rather sticky at the moment, and the bus journey down was a brutal 9 hours of being sunburnt on one side of my face only, but i'm on my way to Colombia now! All the goodbyes have been said, and all i can do from now on is send you all shite postcards and save up the crap patter for when i see you all again.
Yesterday i was thinking about my 4 hours hanging about Newark and how to spend them. Newark isn't even in New York you know, it's New Jersey. What a swindle. Anyway i think i'll devote those 4 hours to eating American things you always see in films but don't get in Europe. Like Twinkies. What is a Twinkie? Tomorrow we'll find out. 
On Monday i'm hopefully meeting Grace, a jammy fellow assistant who's going to hot, Caribbean, home-of-Shakira Baranquilla, and her Colombian pal for a spot of turismo and a few cups of Colombian coffee...
Thursday 24 July 2008
Life, luggage and leaving
Hello blog.
Another wee preliminary entry as the massive journey to Bogota draws rapidly closer. And i mean massive. The bus into the city centre on Saturday morning, then an 8 hour bus ride to London, some faffing around London with a giant suitcase til i arrive in Finsbury Park to stay with Danielle and Jack (charming pals). A wee doss in their flat and then it's away to Gatwick for a flight to New York, hang about Newark International Airport for a few hours then a final massive flight to Bogota, THEN a hike across town to this hotel i'm staying in. Erk.
I'm not enjoying leaving people, places, my job, my flat, all that kind of thing. I don't want to unleash some horrible tide of internet-borne sentimentality, but it's all pretty hellish.
Then again, it's not like i'll not speak to anybody for a year. I'll probably get sick of the incessant e-mails, pictures of fat animals, love letters and the like. Yeah! See you sad sacks later!
In other news, my noble brother Mike, previously a Royal Mail stalwart, recently packed in the postie racket and gave ME the bag as a going away present. What a gent. It's vast & i'm already shiting it about the baggage allowance but in one year's time NO-ONE's going to miss me when i'm on the bike, with this vast red & fluorescent yellow brute on the go. Superb.
Wednesday 9 July 2008
Things i will miss
These two, obviously. But i hadn't considered the cheese issue. Apparently it's not big in South America. What am i going to do? Obviously i knew there would be things that i eat all the time here that i'd have to go without (see above), but no different and lovely types of cheese? That's brutal!
Wednesday 2 July 2008
Setting the scene...
Background info:
I'm a Glaswegian heading to Bogota for a year. Theoretically i can speak Spanish but in practice i speak a grotesque amalgam of Madrid slang and extremely formal "To whom it may concern" letter-of-complaint type Spanish taught to me at university. I was a teacher in a primary school in Madrid for a year with the British Council, and i'm repeating the same job in Colombia. Thankfully i'm working in a university this time round. Primary teaching was rather unkind to me. I leave for Bogota in a month and i have no idea what i'm letting myself in for.
In terms of preparation, i have a large leather suitcase which my father bought me from the charity shop, a full house of unpleasant tropical vaccinations (Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Polio, Tetanus and Diptheria are already in the bag. Yellow Fever's up this Friday at 5pm, immediately before a gargantuan piss-up celebrating my last-ever DJ night in charming Woodlands institution the Halt Bar as one half of Poporopo Especial, Glasgow's finest/only purveyors of all things musically Latino. Hope i don't faint.), and a copy of Bogota Bizarra, a guite to all things weird and wonderful in the Colombian capital. Those Bogotanos won't know what's hit them.
I'm a Glaswegian heading to Bogota for a year. Theoretically i can speak Spanish but in practice i speak a grotesque amalgam of Madrid slang and extremely formal "To whom it may concern" letter-of-complaint type Spanish taught to me at university. I was a teacher in a primary school in Madrid for a year with the British Council, and i'm repeating the same job in Colombia. Thankfully i'm working in a university this time round. Primary teaching was rather unkind to me. I leave for Bogota in a month and i have no idea what i'm letting myself in for.
In terms of preparation, i have a large leather suitcase which my father bought me from the charity shop, a full house of unpleasant tropical vaccinations (Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Polio, Tetanus and Diptheria are already in the bag. Yellow Fever's up this Friday at 5pm, immediately before a gargantuan piss-up celebrating my last-ever DJ night in charming Woodlands institution the Halt Bar as one half of Poporopo Especial, Glasgow's finest/only purveyors of all things musically Latino. Hope i don't faint.), and a copy of Bogota Bizarra, a guite to all things weird and wonderful in the Colombian capital. Those Bogotanos won't know what's hit them.
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