sebanddee

We have now been in Colombia for three weeks and the genuine friendliness and warmth of the place has enchanted us just as much as the poverty and violence has confronted us.  We have been invited to house parties and to people´s houses in little villages, partied at the back of buses with the locals feeding us Aguardiente (aniseed flavoured spirit), been given lifts, had numerous offerings of assistance should we ever get in trouble while we are in the country and had fantastic conversations with people we have met along the way.  More than anything though, is the real interest that people show in you here and the willingness to break down barriers that may exist.  We have wondered how a country with six decades of gruesome civilwar and a merciless drug trade can maintain such warmth and friendliness.  Maybe it is through this that they have maintained their humanity and sanity whilst tragedy is occuring all around them.  In a conversation today, both Dee and I concluded that neither of us had ever travelled to a country where we felt so welcome and such warmth.  It is quite ironic when you think about many of the preconceived ideas we had before we arrived.