Bogota again....

With great difficulty I have finally left Bogota for the second time, where once again instead of initially planned 4 days I´ve stayed for nearly 2 weeks. Starting from the beginning, why did I come back there in the first place? For the two reasons, the first one is that air ticket price was nearly the same as for the bus which would take me about 24 hours, and second, and honestly a stronger reason is that I wanted to see people I knew, whom I could call my friends and whom I did not have to tell the story of my travelling once agian. I was tired of meeting new people all the time, and so I flew back to Bogota.

Because my sister was expecting a baby, nearly everyday I was expecting a message from home and though it was still a weak early, I quickly poped into the net before the flight and found an email from my dad congratulating me on becoming an aunt! It is a girl, 3kg 100. She was named Vera (meaning Faith in Russia)! Now Vera is all the time next to my sister and everytime I talk to her (to my sister, Verz still can´t talk), I can hear her crying and making some sounds (in this case Vera, not my sister). I was really happy, I wanted to celebrate. So after I´ve landed to Bogota in the evening, nearly straight away I went to one of the milongas where all my friends were. I was really happy to see them, as well as they were sincerely happy to see me back, though after a break I was pretty bad at keeping my balance while dancing. And because it was such a great day we all went to celebrate the birth of Vera. Of cource since Vera was Russia we could only celebrate with vodka ))) Luckily there was one bottle in a bar, afterwards we continued with aguardient (this is a Colombian strong alcohol drink, about 29% with anis, but honestly vodka is much more easy to drink). By the end the night I could not dance at all )))

Everyday I was dancing tango, some days salsa (even though I have never taken any classes of salsa, I can dance it pretty well now). There was not a single day in those 10 days when I came home before 2 in the night appart from Mondays, when I came at about 12. So after a long weekend so many people were telling me not to leave since we would go dancing more tango and more salsa, so I´ve stayed. I really love Colombian people. They are so friendly. Some nights we were just talking discussing everythin: life, love, friendship, the other nights we were dancing till four in the morning. And nearly half of my Colombian tango friends are either tango teachers or professional dancers, and the truth is they don´t really have too much money, so I have not visited any fancy place in Bogota, but I still loved it. I love milongas, with not so many people, but with people I know and who know me, love the small salsa place with hot music and black guys. The truth is that even after 10 days I did not want to leave, but I had to move on. I would love to thank my Colombian friends: Alex for being my tango teacher, Douglas for being a great friend I could always talk to and dance with, Jeniffer for being such a great dancer and for me bringing to salsa bar, Willy for sharing his house with me, Javier for becoming my parsero, Manuel, Johanna, Laura and Edwin for always being happy to see me, and all rest Juan Javier, Nacho, Freddy and others. And thank you to every partner I have danced with, it was a real pleasure and it is a real pleasure to know you all.

Now I am in Popayan and tomorrow I am moving close to Ecuadorian border. Popayan is also called a white city, because all the buildings in the historic center are white. I am now so used to busses that I have slepped all the 14 hours of the trip. Since I have been already travelling for more than three month and staying in cheap hotels and hostels, once in a while I wanted to stay in a good hotel. So now in POpayan for one night I am staying in a only 5 star hotel in the city, with hot water, clean towels, cable TV, 24 hour service and everyone running around me. One night of luxury and tomorrow back to normal backpackers travelling. And tomorrow will be the new day.