Colombian Folklore

(updated 4th of July since apparently some text fell out of the blog)
The frequency of updating the blog is slightly going down but this is also indicating that we (especially me) are getting more and more used to our life here in Colombia. The teaching is going well and I am in the last week with the students. They now have to develop their own Earth system model (a simple one) after all the classes and practicals we had last couple of weeks. The more exercises we do with the students on these simple models, the more I see the added value of using some of these conceptual approaches to study the complex interactions in the Earth system. As said, we get more and more used to daily life here but also then suddenly strongly think about life in Wageningen once in a while being reminded what is all happening there. Today we received for example the nice pictures of the "Buurtfeest" that we missed but we also hear the stories about our garden. Fortunately, we have some good friends that seem take good care of it and where Ronald (van Lanen) even appeared to have made a GIS map of our garden to support to fight against the weeds and especially the "kweekgras". Dear friends, hope you at least enjoy well some of the products of garden!

Anyhow, so getting used to life here we still have each day our surprises here. Last weekend we went again with the car on a trip to Tenza now that the car got fixed (it appeared that one of the spark plugs was released from the cylinder explaining some of the engine issues on our previous trip). At some point we joined the traffic jam of all the people leaving Bogota for the weekend since it was apparently another national holidays. The traffic jam allowed me to take some pictures and as you can see on the picture on the left, the names of the bus companies that really bring you fast, faster, fastest to your destination (that's also why we are happy that we can go now with our own car) has not been really well updated!
In order to cope with the traffic jam,  the police sometimes decides to stop the traffic going in one direction (in this case south to Bogota) and then use the available two lanes to create a highway for the traffic leaving Bogota. Great idea if not the police was actually not stopping the southward traffic on all entrances to the road resulting in quite some ignorant "Spookrijders" (Ghostriders?) entering the road at some locations. But since we noticed this issue quickly we used only the right lane and all went OK. So also in that respect, we get very used to Colombian culture.

Now about the real Colombian Folklore; so this weekend was another holidays having a weekend full with all kind of cultural events. In Tenza they had the festival de Calbagata, festival of the horses, where they have a number of activities including a parade through the pueblo with many horses trained to make very frequent short steps (will later on try to upload an video on this) and where the horseback riders add their own dimension by drinking lost of aquardiente or whiskey. The parade with the horses,  was preceded by the local banda (fanfare) followed by the horse back riders and then a bunch of smoking large cars with people that just like to show off with their large trucks finally followed followed by the ambulance to pick up any crashed horseback riders (because of limited skills but think that more likely it would be because they are too borraches). Anyhow, another nice weekend with again some different flavors of Colombian culture.

Colombian camposinos checking their shooting
skills; is Marcela also going to try it?

The picture is not taken to demonstrate 
the cleavage (decollete)  of the only woman
participating in the Cabalgata but it  shows 
the little copa (under the cleavage) that 
is  continuously refilled with aquardiente

By the way, something that I never get used to and that somehow puts a reminder on some of the ongoing issues in this country; you see also then at such a festival suddenly some soldiers that wear big guns and that are apparently there to secure the safety of all present at such nice cultural events here in Colombia.