Los contrastes entre la vida en Bogota y Tenza

Despite the fact that I indicated that I would ask Marcela to post this time a blog on here experiences I am eager again to first put a lot of pictures and some movies on our adventures of last days. We actually left last friday with the bus to Tenza, a small pueblo about 100km north of Bogota where the Pappi of Marcela and his wife, Sarita, live in a beautiful old house.



We left on friday because there was no teaching since I allow the students (now have six....) to use fridays to study (asked how many indeed used this day off to study, apparently not many of them did study). Anyhow, not having our own car yet it was up again to go to Exito (big mall in Bogota North) to catch one of the buses to bring us to Tenza. Was quite a ride but we get already more or less used to this. It takes about three hours but then you are down to something like 1700m in contrast to the 2700m altitude of Bogota, so being warmer and more with more oxygen. 

Sarita's Finca in Tenza with the platano (bananen) trees and many nice flowers

Unfortunately it is now in terms of weather the inverno (winter), although I am teaching classes de verano (summer course). It means that it is raining a lot but we still had a good time going to the Finca (the boerderij) where they have some cows and where we cooked a great potato soop on the wood fire. Being a vegetarian is not easy here in Colombia but as you can see from the picture we were consuming an organic maize-fed chicken. It is good to escape the hectic city life for some days to see that a large number of people in the campo (platteland) have a complete different life, less hectic, much more basic, less pollution, very friendly but also sometimes staring at that weird "mono" (blue-eyed and tall) foreigner coming to their village. 

This morning it was back to business after we returned yesterday to Bogota with about half the city after this long weekend (monday was apparently a holiday here). It appears that a lot of people all leave for the weekend to enjoy this rather different life apparently to get out of the hectic mega-city life in Bogota. 
Anyhow I noticed this morning again then some funny things of life here in Bogota and, especially at the University; check for example the picture on the indicated amount of calories you loose by climbing all the stairs at the campus which is being built against the eastern mountains bordering Bogota. In that way, also being here at 2700m altitude, I am doing my sports here! Or what about this nice little restaurants here around the campus where you get good food (I know, much of the life here and also the blog is about food) for about 9000 pesos (3 euros). They give you this fancy alarm that goes off when your food is ready to be picked up. These are some of those striking features of an up to now enjoyable life here in Bogota and at the university. But am aware that we appreciate this even more also because we actually visit pueblos like Tenza. It makes you wonder where you are better off; in the campo like in Tenza or in Bogota? Or, like what we do, enjoy both, these rather contrasting lives here in Colombia!
Saludos, Laurens