Duuude!!!!

It was like coming out of a coma. Small knocks in my dreams brough me out of a slumber that made me feel like a brick on valium, buried under the sand at the bottom of the ocean. Cata was at the door, and behind her was the familiar looking face of a person i did not know.

“Hola, como estas?”

The words came almost automatically out of my mouth, as if I had been meditating on them in my sleep.

“Baby, it’s 2pm. Do you want to get up?”

“Unngghh….2 pee emm…unngghh….”

“My mum is cooking a Colombian lun-…”

“I’m up.”

“OK, baby, see you downstairs.”

With the familiar face giggling down the stairs, I got myself up, feeling like snow white, took a slash and headed downstairs.

Whatever cata’s mum was cooking, it smelled damn good. When I got down to the kitchen/dining area Consuelo greeted me with a big, friendly “buenas tardes!!” and proceeded to show me what was on the menu, with the help of a kind translation from Cata. It was a dish called Ajiacu, a creamy stew/soup made with corn, coriander, chicken, vegies and three types of potatoes. The idea is that soft an hard potatoes ore used so that the soft ones melt away to thicken the broth and the hard ones are left to munch on.

This shit looked so good and my stomach felt like it was collapsing on itself. All I could do was drool and respond to Consuelos spanish with a couple of feeble “muy rico”s.

After I had mopped up the drool puddle, I was introduced to Cata’s cousin Adri, the familiar face that had been giggling at me in the stairs. Adri was lovely, as I was coming to expect from from members of Cata’s family, except that she was a complete piss taker. We sat down to lunch and began to chat. Whenever I asker her to repeat somthing more slowly she would respond by doing that exaggerated slow-talking-to-a-retard thing that people love to do. Cata and Consuelo thought this was hilarious, so all I could do was suck it up.

We finished our delicious lunch with at least a bit of my dignity in tact, and set out around the corner to get me a haircut and cata her hair done and nails did. Yeah. The Hairdressers was only around the corner but, fuck, I’ve seen less interesting things in a whole week in Melbourne. First off there is a dude cruising around with a megaphone selling books to anyone who’s keen, then there’s a FUCKING HORSE DRAWN CART, in the posh area of bogota mind you, collecting cardboard and aluminium cans and, finally, the PSYCHOTIC TAXI’S. FUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!!!

I felt like I was on mars and I had’nt even left their street yet. But, seriously, the drivers here, not just the taxi’s, are completely out to lunch. Nobody slows down at intersections and pedestrians are just an annoying obstacle. Road rules seem to be just a rough guide to go buy and, really, noone gives a shit about them. Unless you have lived here your whole life, do not attempt to drive here. The roads are fucked as well and full of pot-holes and street signs dont exist, so it’s very possible that you will crash and die or get lost and end up in some fucked up Barrio and get car-jacked.

For me, this was the first culture shock, we-aint-in-kansa-anymore moment. Not that it was bad, on the contrary, it was fucking cool. You have to get a fucking permit and spend a week in OH&S training before you can even jack-off in Australia without getting fined for it, so it was cool to be in a place where the idea of regimented protocol is a joke.

When we got to the hairdressers, Cata was in the chair in a fucking instant. It’s crazy expensive, especially for an international student, to get the full treatment at a beauticians in Australia, and Cata had been hanging for this something stupid. As i sat on the couch next to Adri and watched Cata get pampered, it was easy to tell that for her this was the definition of bliss. Cata is only about 4 foot something, but in Oz she worked like a Ox on speed and often came home completely knackered and fed up, so to see her here with one person doing her nails, another her hair and one more serving her hot tea, gave me big ol’ case of the warm and fuzzies.

I was up next, and just a little worried about what the outcome would be. I very rarely get my hair cut by a professional, preferring to do it at home myself with a pair of clippers then letting it grow out til I cant stand it anymore. So here, out of my element and not speaking the language I had to leave it up the Gods.

“Largo aqui,” I said pointing to the top of my head.

“y menos aqui, aqui y aqui. Gracias.”

Then it was over to the Maestro.

All in all he did a pretty sweet job, gesticulating and pointing when my spanish skills failed, which was most of the time, and I came out of there looking pretty fucking sexy if I do say so myself.

As Cata was still gettting the princess treatment, Adri and I decided to head back home where, apparently, Cata’s Aunty Mona and Uncle Fernando were waiting. Cata’s Dad answered the door, greeted me and commented on my new hair do (something about mierde?) and then introduced me to Mona and Fernando.

Again, they were super fucking nice, and were extremely patient with my slippery grasp of the spanish language. This was my first conversation without the safety net of Catalina there to bail me out, and I think i did pretty well considering I have never had a formal lesson. My advice is that when in doubt gesticulate, point and draw pictures in the air with your fingers.

Pretty soon Cata arraived home and we all sat down to finish off the rest of the Ajiacu for dinner. During dinner cata informed me that the whole works at the hairdressers: my haircut, cata’s too, plus her finger and toenails; had only cost us about AU$30!

Fuck Yeah!!

The jet lag and lack of sleep was beginning to work away on me again and so shortly after Gabriella got home from uni (colombians study like the chinese gamble) we had a small chat and some more cheese and chocolate and I then went to bed and drifted off into another drug-like slumber, ready for a new day of dodging cars and eating.

So, we got through immigration at 3:50am without any real hassles besides having to make small talk for twenty minutes with some old lady. No probs. Easy. The immigration dude even forgot to charge me for my visa, although thats probably gonna come back and bit me in the arse later. We collected our luggage: all there. Awesome, that’s another golden star next to our names.

We got outside and the first thing that surprised me was how fucking cold it was. It seven degrees outside and here I am in trackies and a t-shirt. Aren’t we suppopsed to be right next to the fucking equator? It should be warm here right. Nope. Wrong fuckface. Bogota is located at about 2600m above sea level, which is really fucking high, so no, it wont be warm. The average temperature here is about fourteen degrees, a little facet of information I completely overlooked when I was sussing out how not to get robbed and where I could get the best roasted pig bits.

The second thing that surprised me was the absence of Cata’s parents.

“Aren’t your folks supposed to be here, baby?”

“Taxi Senor?”

“No, Gracias”

“Yeah. I don’t know what happened.”

“Senor, Taxi?”

“No, Gracias.”

“We’ll, should we look for ’em? They might be waiting somewhere else.”

“Taxi, Senor?”

“No, Gracias.”

“No, Zack, this is the only place. They know to be here.”

“Senor, Taxi?”

“NO! FOR FUCKS SAKE I DONT WANT A FUCKEN’ TAXI!! FUUUCCKKK!!!!”

And so, with that, we sat and waited in the cold, getting asked if we wanted a taxi every thirty seconds for twenty minutes until a car horn drew our thoughts away from pipe-bombing a taxi rank. A few minutes late, a tiny, little lady came running around the corner, which started cata running, and then they were hugging and crying. Then another tiny, little girl came around the corner and joined in the hugging and crying, followed by a slightly taller man.

The man and I stood there watching this commotion in silence for a moment or two, probably thinking the same thing: women. Then, after it became a bit awkward, I decided I should probably introduce myself to my future father-in-law.

“Hola Felix, como estas?”

“Muy bein, Zack. Mucho gusto. ….(unintelligable spanish)…..?”

“Umm….Si. Bueno.”

“Ah. Muy bien.”

Then more awkward silence. Finally, sometime after new years, the girls stopped their hugging and wailing and I was more formally introduced to Cata’s family. Cata’s mother, Consuelo, and father, Felix, are both very nice. Her dad is very serious and quiet, just as I had been told to expect. Her mother is the complete opposite: very talkative and silly. Catalina also has two sisters, Marce, who is older and lives in France with her husband, Diego, and Gabriella, who is twenty and equally as tiny and lovely as cata.

The warmth of the greeting I got was something totally unexpected to me. It was like a old friend was coming home and, even after the initial awkwardness in introducing  myself to her Dad, i never felt weird or uncomfortable barging into their family unit. Even at 4am in the morning and obviously completely buggered, they went out of their way on the trip home to point out things of interest and try to decipher my bastardised version of spanish. They even brought a little tupperware container of fried banana for us to munch on!

At this point it, it is hard for me to give an accurate description on my first impressions of Bogota, as it was completely covered in darkness and I couldn’t really gain any points of reference. The only thing that did make itself clear to me was that Bogota was big. Very fucking big.

When we arraived at Cata’s parents place, a beautiful 3 story joint in Cedrito’s, in the North of Bogota, her mum fixed us some hot chocolate and cheese (weird, I know, but it works) and we chatted a bit more then gave her family the presents we had got for them from Oz. I scored total brownie points with her Dad by giving him a sweet bottle of aged whisky from Tasmania. It’s always pays to get onside when you meet new people, especially when your shagging their daughter. Sorry, cata, could resist putting that in there.

I was shown around the house, which was beautiful, and shortly after made my way to my room to crash out. 40 hours of travel plus the (completely unneccessary) nervous anxiety of meeting her folks for the firs time had taken its toll on me and I hit that mattress like Chris did Rhianna. Sorry. Couldn’t resist that one either.

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