Shoe Capital of Colombia (Bucaramanga) - 17th April 2009

I slept all evening as God brought me into to this world. What heat!!! And its not even the coast my gatita keeps sniggering jejejeje were the heat is apprantly unbearable. "Thank God" I keep telling her and I also tell her she should have warned me about the climate change.

We had a light breakfast in town, a buñelo (madelana) similar to a muffin just slightly heavier. I had this with my first coffee in 2 days as the opportunity simply was not available with all the travelling.

As I am a smoker and as I don’t think I have mentioned it before Colombia has become non smoking. Not too sure on the law as my gatita is a non smoker herself but I know that most places (nearly all) do not allow smoking not even in the patio of restaurants. Not sure if the same applies to nightclubs as we have not ben in any yet. It however doesn’t bother me much but I’d thought it deserved a mention. This of course is nothing new in Europe but it seems to have been adopted much better over here here as no one appears to create a fuss about it. It could also be that not many people appear to smoke as well.

Anyways we decide to have a relaxing day in the centre of town before we head down that afternoon to my gatita’s house. We browse different places and my gatita shows me around and highlights some personal landmarks for example the 1st internet café she was at when we met online at games.yahoo.com and others were she bought me things etc etc.

Bucaramanga is the shoe capital of Colombia (70% of shoes are manufactured here) and most probably other South American countries as there are literally hundreds of shoe shops. There are also the equivalent clothes shops around. I keep telling my gatita that my sister would fall in love with the place and would definitely take back suitcases full of clothes and shoes which most do not exceed the price tag of £10.00 - £30.00 (highstreet quality) which is very cheap in comparison to high street stores in Gibraltar or London.

I have also noticed that the streets are full of merchants who station themselves just outside shops which is quite different to the capital Bogota. They offer food, clothes, sun glasses, watches, bags, shoes of course and all sorts of other stuff.

Afternoon arrived and we head down to my gatita’s house were I was expecting to meet the family but as things turned out after a phone call to her mum, most of the family are out so I will just meet the youngest sister.

On our way there and at walking distance to her house my gatita spots her father so we stop the taxi and I got out to greet her father. He was on his way to work but he politely accompanied us back to the house and we have a brief but welcoming 15 minute chat. I also met the younger sister and the older sister was outside with some friends.

After doing a few personal things on my gatita’s PC, I also installed a bluetooth device and a hands free headset on her PC which will make things easier when we depart albeit for a short while as we await the visa arrangements after the marriage but it will make it more comfortable for her this way instead of using a cabled headset which binds her to the PC when we speak over the Internet using Skype. The testing of the equipment woke up my mum in Gibraltar as I was dialing home jejejeje. It was 2am in the morning in Gibraltar oops!!!. My mum was awake as she is a night person and quickly called me on my mobile so I explained and apologised. Seeing she was awake however I called her again to get the configuration of the headset working and this made things a lot easier for me to get the thing sorted.

It was getting late so we decided to head back to the hotel and on our way back, my gatita caught sight of her mum at the hairdressers so we walked in for me to greet her. She had a towel on her head so I am sure at that moment she could have killed her daughter for having presented me to her for the first time not in a lady like state jejejeje but anyways I was glad that I got to meet the whole family as the prospects of this looked grim this morning.

That evening we went out and I had steak again. I am growing quite fond of steak here in Colombia as it's of a rather good quality.

Needless to say I slept naked again (and after a cold shower) as I have not yet acclimatised. Our hotel room and its single fan is not doing much to help. My gatita reserved this hotel and she booked the cheapest one in Bucaramanga but she is concerned I have been spending too much recently. She is right but I told her that for a few extra pesos we could have had a better hotel with more amenities such as an aircon for the dreaded heat. She of course is used to it so its only something that is bothering me. Anyways as a place to crash for a few days I suppose its OK.