My last stop in Colombia was in Leticia, a small town lost in the middle of the jungle. It can only be accessed by plane or by the river Amazon from Brazil.
I'm here to experience the jungle and engage for a 5days jungle tour with a french guy, Gael. We will suffer for 5 days and we pay quite a lot for it...:)
I take one set of cloth for the day and one for the night, a toothbrush and oof we go for the adventure.


Beautiful sky of Leticia

I really liked Bogota a lot and spent a few more days in this capital before flying to the jungle.
Street life in Bogota: beautiful churches and dirty buildings, colourful tiny houses and sky scrappers, enormous trucks and horse carriages, juicy fruits and full fat fried meat, and the modern phone booth...

After my misadventures in Cali I needed to rest a bit and heal my skin. Then I decided to head back to Bogota to get a cooler weather. Over there I found a yoga monastry at one hour from the city. Yoga, calm, country side, perfect for me.
I enrolled in their voluntary program: 4 hours of communautary work per day and 10US$ for full accomodation. I arrived a tuesday noon by a cloudy and cold day. Gopal, a soft and bright colombian girl dressed in Saree, was in charge of volunteers and was waiting for me. At this moment, I discovered that this place was more than a yoga monastry, it was a "Hare Krishna" temple... One could feel as if in India, divinities covered with jasmin collars, typical indian music playing in the speakers of the garden, smell of encens everywhere. And when I carefully listened to the music I notice there was only 3 words in the lyrics:"Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Hare Krishna Krishna". Wow..where am I?..
Gopal explains me about the phylosophy of the place (vegetarianism, detachment from material things, austerity and inconditional love for Krishna and the german guru who built up this place 30 years ago). She details the program, her life past and present and much more. She doesn't stop talking for 2 hours. Ok I got the idea, it's really a monastry not a resort... I confirm that, and the word "austerity", when they bring me to my room, 2 m square with blank walls and 2 wooden beds as sole furniture. The attached bathroom consist of a basic metallic hose pipe integrated in the wall, a dirty sink and a leaking toilet. The shower water comes directly from a rain accumulator at the roof top and is damn cold. The external temperature is around 12°C and the water should not exceed the  8°C.. And I was complaining of the cold when it was less than 25°C... I don't know how I will manage!
It's time for lunch. We head to the cafeteria, the other members of the community are here. Men, called "Prabus", eat on one side, most of them wear the traditional orange pagne and a hair tail at the top of the head (meant originally to help Krishna pull them out of the "ocean of materiality"...). The women, called "Madre" (mother) are on the other side. No mix, no temptation...
This segregation makes me inconfortable but everybody is very nice and welcome me. I'm the only volunteer here. Most of the Prabus are not married and seem to be looking for their wife. The Madre are mostly older and are married with children. One rule of the community says that one can have sex only for reproduction purpose.. No wonder why they seem so frustrated...
Life is peaceful here. Everybody wakes up very early for prayers and singing, and fill up the day with communautary work. I start the day with a session of yoga and spend all my time with Gopal, we go walking in the mountains, do some art painting, talk about philosophy and culture. She is a lovely person, very caring and open minded.
I meet slowly the communauty members, many of them are artists and quite interesting persons. They don't force their beliefs on me which I appreciate greatly.
On the 3rd day, I start to smell pretty bad and resign myself to taking a cold shower. My hairs could be used to make french fries but never mind, cannot do it yet.
Apart from the wet and cold weather that freeze me up to my bones day and night, I manage to rest a bit and learn a great deal on ecological gardening, Krishna, making sweet pop corns (a product they manufacture in the temple and sell in markets), and cooking vegetarian food.
After one week, my hatred against the cold wins and I decide to leave this place. The good byes are very emotional, it was a great cultural exchange. I leave with a lot of small gifts from everybody. An old renunciating Prabu comes to meet me at the gate, he kiss me on the cheek while handing me a beautiful white rose. Very cute!

After Bogota I went to Cali, as planned, to help my friend in setting up a new hostel and taking yoga classes. Good program in theory. And we started to put the web site and all in place.

But my body decided otherwise, as soon as I stepped in my new "settling" place my eczema started again. Rashes got worst and worst. And I end up loosing my sleep and my good mood...
At first I thought it was an allergy to something here, water, a flower or whatever. I went to see the doctor, took many medicines, homeopathy, nothing helped. Then completly tired and almost depressed, I decided two days ago to leave this place. And since then my eczema is better...
My body has decided that it's not time for me to stop moving and he won... :)

So I'm on the road again...

Bogota, capital of Colombia, Bogota, from its 2600m above sea level, Bogota, with its 8millions inhabitants, is a very large but very beautiful city.

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth are so obvious here. Hundreds of homeless people wander in the center of the city looking for food, or selling anything to earn a few dimes (snail slime as skin cream, weighting service, home-made herbal tea, a key sawed at your name, handphone minutes, one cigarette, hooks, ...). When I was walking in the streets of the Candelaria, the historical center of Bogota, I happen to have my lunch on the go and eat some bread when walking around. In 10min, more than 5 people had asked me to get a piece of it, and when at last I was tired and gave it to a skinny young woman, she ran with it with a contented face, as if it was the most precious thing!! It's so difficult to see that.
After this experience, I was buying bread at the supermarket and distributing it to anybody begging for food, a very small thing but what else can we do?...

The "rolos", that's how people of Bogota are nicknamed, are the nicest of all. I had the chance to meet a few of them and discover the city with my own guide, Fabian. A univesity student speaking good french and good english, friend of my friend's cousin... We walked in the streets of Bogota during hours and he showed me very beautiful and lively districts as well as a wonderful old and tiny art cinema where the ticket cost 1US$. I went back a few times to this one.

The main bus system here is brand new and has very nice automatic stations similar to metro ones. But it's the most complicated I have ever seen in my life. I think you have to have a damn twisted mind to understand the logic of it.
It's called the Transmilenio. The touristic information give you a map of 9 routes with nine colors and 9 letters (A to J, I is missing dunno why...).
Ok, till here, it's easy. But the color doesn't correspond to a bus or anything. For exampe, to go to a point on route D you need to take bus number F34 or J67, where do they stop, no clue, why D, no clue and why F34 and not F35, no clue either....And be careful, if you happen to know your way by practice, they can still trick you! The numbers and places change completely on week ends!
Finally even for local people it's impossible to determine which bus to take and where. So in each station a few people are posted with a 30pages book and guide you to the route you should take... Colombian way...

The secondary bus system is as complicated... Hundreds of small buses cover the whole city. They are more than 50years old and I don't know how they manage to have them still on the road. The only information available for these ones are a few names written at the window. They stop anywhere on the street as long as somebody needs it.
I experienced also these ones. The bus name was given to me by a local person and as soon as I got up I asked the driver to stop me at a certain street and tell me where to get down. But as the time passed he didn't tell me anything. Then, just wondering if it was sooo far, I ask him if it's still a long way to go. He replies "Oups, we passed it a long time ago"... Nooo..
Then the colombian magic happen! All the persons of the bus pity me and give me advice where to get another bus. I ask the driver for my money back to pay the other bus, he gives it to me without any problem and says he will help me. Then he stops the bus, get down, ask me to follow him, and we run to a near-by street together, while the passengers of his bus watch us and node in approbation... Here he stops a bus and ask the driver to bring the "gringa" to her destination... I felt a bit like a stupid tourist but it was sooo nice! Colombian way...

After so much sport in San Gil, I went relaxing in a small traditional village called Barichara.
It seems this village has been preserved from new world developments and its inhabitants, still dressed with traditional shoes and hat, were really simple and friendly. Beautiful place!