Tallest buildings and mariachis

Hiya!

Well since we last had this little electronic chat i´ve been quite busy, running around Bogotá seeing interesting things and spending all my money on tarting up the flat. Yesterday Cherie bought a dog bed for use as a sort of scatter cushion, hysterical. It´s ok if you turn it over so you can´t see the wee doggy paw print pattern. Incidentally here´s Cherie and me in the Plaza Che at the Universidad Nacional:

We went there to see a tango concert which was cracking, some old geezers in tuxedos crooning away while pairs of dancers in swanky dresses prowled up and down the stage swinging each other around, all in the middle of this huge university campus with loads of people sitting on the grass around bonfires with cartons of wine and bottles of aguardiente. I wish i worked at that university, although Minuto de Dios is a total riot. I´ve got a rep at work (and probably outside of work too) for being obsessed with mariachi music and in particular this man:

This is Vicente Fernandez and his best song is "Estos Celos", a song so good i was once reprimanded by a member of the language centre management team at uni for singing it too loudly in the staffroom. No, really.

So in between going to see live mariachis and getting stuck on the Transmilenio for TWO HOURS by getting on the wrong bus i also went up the Colpatria tower, the tallest building in Colombia. This is now perhaps one of my favourite things to do in Bogotá, you take a super speedy lift up to the 5o somethingth floor and then there´s a platform running around the outside of the whole building, so you get an amazing 360 degree view of the whole city, AND you can have a tinto up there too! Magic.

After going up that bad boy i inexplicably ended up in the Bogotá Country Club tanning gin and tonics in a marquee, i had a really weird meal of pollo Maryland which was a chicken which came with half a peach, two fried bananas and some crispy strand of bacon balanced on it. The whole experience was rather surreal, after din dins we went and sat beside an enormous swimming pool and continued to abuse the gin, before trying to go to the bowling alley which was closed so we went to the pub where i recall arguing about the pointlessness of the royal family. Life in Bogotá is never boring.

In other news i´m in the planning stages of doing a cheeky wee podcast about Colombian music with a friend - Poporopo lives on both in Glasgow and Bogotá!