A country of contrasts

He likes to call me his little white one. Mi blanquita. My tall dark-skinned friend who calls things as they are. He makes distinctions but never judges. To him, calling a person black or white is no different than calling a car red or blue. Just like you'd need to check the inside of the car in order to evaluate its quality, you have to get to know a person before you can make any assumptions about their character. 

Ecuador and it's inhabitants form such a colorful kaleidoscope of contrasts. When it rains here, it pours. The streets flood, the umbrellas break and people hide inside their houses for days to escape the cold. On the contrary, when the sun comes out, it gets so hot your skin will fry in just a few minutes. I was trying to buy sunscreen the other day but for some reason I could only find SPF 6 or 100, nothing in between. Unable to choose one or the other, I ended up buying a bronzing cream with sun protection that seems to have no effect whatsoever. 

My new daily commute involves a 15-minute ride on the Ecovia, which is kind of like a metro-bus. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the bus is half-empty and it's actually possible to stand without having your inner organs squashed (finding an empty seat never happens). Other times, it's so crowded I don't know how any of us survive getting from one place to the next. People on the platform push like it's a matter of life and death but in fact, it would probably safer to stay there than it is to get on the bus. My fellow commuters are a funny bunch though. While I'm breathing through my nose and trying not to panic, the Ecuadorians around me happily snack on fried bananas, change dirty diapers or shower each other with public displays of affection. 

Once I arrive at my stop, the climb starts. The second part of my daily trip to work consists of a 15-minute walk uphill so by the time I reach the school, I'm panting and sweating. Not for long, however, as it's always absolutely freezing the inside the building. Even when it feels like it's a hundred degrees outside and people are sunbathing in the garden, you need three layers of clothes and a thick jacket to get through the day inside one of the classrooms.

This is the view that meets me when I leave work

Last weekend, I took a taxi to go meet my friends and somewhere along the way, the driver got lost. He stopped by the side of the road to ask for directions and called a man's attention by yelling: 

Oye, flaco! - Hey, skinny one!

The skinny man approached the car, told us how to get to my destination and when my driver thanked him, he responded with:

De nada, gordo. - You're welcome, fat one. 

Neither of them seemed the least bit offended. Meanwhile, I hid silently in the back of the taxi, hoping they wouldn't address me in any way. 

Actually, I don't know how much I would have minded. I may never get to a point where I feel comfortable commenting on other people's physical appearance in such a blunt way but I'm learning how to not find it offensive. In addition, practicing yoga on a daily basis has taught me how to love my own body and accept it exactly as it is. Sometimes I'm gorda, sometimes I'm flaca and both are fine. Both are beautiful. More important than what my body looks like is what it can do. It can move, it can dance, it can walk up hills and it can climb to the top of mountains for crying out loud. Right now, I'm going to wrap it up in a warm blanket and get ready for the chilly night. Just need to put some lotion on the sunburns first.

Happiness is...

- Starting a new job where you feel appreciated and welcome

- Finding a job that allows you to be creative

- Teaching students that come up to you after class to thank you for a fun lesson

- Receiving good luck wishes from people who remember that it's your first day at your new job

- Moving back to a place that feels and smells like home and where everything is nice and white  and clean

- Living in the same house as your best friend

- Having a best friend that will share anything with you, whether it's a doctor's appointment in a sketchy neighborhood or French fries with mayonnaise at three in the morning

- Having friends that will love and support you (and put up with you), as much on your sunny days as on your rainy days

- Inviting friends over for a small get-together that somehow turns into a huge fiesta where no one knows anyone but everyone is having a fabulous time

- Dancing salsa so wildly that you bump heads with another dancer and end up with a blue little horn on your forehead for a week as a reminder of that one fantastic night

- Dancing with people who show up

- Saying yes to adventure and no to people taking advantage of you

- Making decisions that make your head spin, your heart flip and your stomach fill with butterflies

- Chatting with your family every day to find out how they're feeling, how their day went and what they had for breakfast.

- Appreciating the little things

- Being grateful for everything you have, everything that you've been through and everything that is yet to come

- Believing that the best is yet to come

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Chilly coincidences and charming encounters

Why do you travel alone? 

The Colombian taxi driver seems concerned. He's a handsome young man in his early twenties and he doesn't understand why I've come all the way to Bogota by myself. 

Don't you have a partner? 

Ah, great. The same question that every taxi driver in Quito also loves to ask. Of course, they usually follow it up with the suggestion that I could marry an Ecuadorian. And then they chuckle, seemingly content with themselves for having found a solution to my "problem". 

The truth is that I LOVE to travel by myself, although I often forget that I do. Right before a trip I always get cold feet and wish that I could just stay home and watch Netflix instead. But once I'm on my way, I feel so happy and free. I can wander around for hours and take as many pictures as I want, without anyone sighing and hinting that maybe it's enough for now. I can have my lunch wherever and whenever I want, without anyone complaining about there being no rice and no meat. I like to eat my quinoa salad in peace, thank you very much.

This was my favorite cafe in Bogota - De Una Travel Bar

The best part, though, has to be meeting other travelers. I know that you also meet people when you're with a partner or a friend but somehow I think we're more open to it when we're traveling by ourselves. And with most people that you meet, there's an instant connection. Especially with those who are also traveling alone because they just get it. For example, on my first day in Bogota, I joined a bike tour and had a blast with five people that I'd never met before. We cycled around the city for about five hours and then decided to have lunch together. We invited our guide to join us and two people from the tour office came along as well. They were great company and we had so much fun trying local food, sharing our stories and chatting about cultural differences. Then we kissed each other on the cheek and parted ways.

Bike crew at Plaza Bolivar

Or take New Years Eve. Who wants to be alone on one of the most significant nights of the year? Yet this year, I hadn't made a single plan. If nothing else, I was just going to stay at the hostel and catch up on the many hours of sleep that I've lost over the past couple of months. As it turns out though, life had a different idea. On Friday, I got back late after a night out dancing salsa and when I arrived at the hostel, there was a fiesta going on in the reception as well. That's how I got to know the American guys that I would later spend New Years with. A friend of a friend also happened to be in Bogota that weekend and since she was staying at a hostel just around the corner, I invited her to join us on the 31st.

New Years crew at Explora Hostels 

Saturday night around 11 p.m., we all decided to walk down to Torre Colpatria to watch the fireworks and join the midnight countdown. The other girl and I were a bit late getting ready so the guys left without us, even though they had promised to be our guardians on the way (Colombian streets are rather unsafe to walk around on late at night). Since my new friend and I didn't know the way to the tower, we asked a Colombian couple on the street for directions. After initially bringing us to the wrong place (an empty plaza), they agreed to share a taxi with us and we reached the tower at about a quarter to midnight. There, we ran into our American friends again, which was a lucky coincidence in itself as the place was packed with people and we never would have found them otherwise. The timing of our arrival just happened to work out perfectly.

Anyway, the guys went on to tell us that somewhere along a dodgy street, a creepy man had come up to them and threatened them with a knife. They all claimed not to have been scared but they were clearly shook up and one of them even decided to leave the party early and return to the safe quarters of our hostel instead. When I turned around to thank the Colombian couple for bringing me and my friend to the tower, they were gone. They had disappeared in the crowd and we never saw them again. Perhaps they were the actual guardians whose job it was to get us there safely.

Bogota by night - the lit up tower is where we started the year 2017

So there we were, this odd little group of strangers suddenly turned into friends. While we were counting down the seconds to midnight, the whole tower lit up in a rainbow of colors and the fireworks sparked all over the black Bogota sky. We all hugged each other tightly, feeling chills running down our spines as we realized that this must be the best way to start a new year - by being thankful for being alive.

Now, it's a new day and a new year. A chance to start over and make things right. An opportunity to face the world with an open heart and say yes to adventure. To trust that when the time is right, life (and our guardian angels) will bring us where we need to be. Fortunately for me, that place right now happens to be a beautiful beach in Cartagena, far away from chilly Bogota. It's my first night here and I just had a lovely dinner down by the water, under the stars with a cool breeze caressing my skin. While slowly sipping a delicious coconut lemonade, I realized that maybe there are some moments that would be nice to share with someone. Then again, it is only day one - who knows where, what or with whom I'll be eating by the end of this week? And that, I  believe, is the real allure of traveling alone - the possibility that anything can happen.

Cartagena by night - view from my apartment