Duuude!!!!

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.