monte samai and more futbol

we volunteered at a place called monte samai this past week.  to get there we traveled about 2 hours by  bus from bogota and had to then walk (unfortunately in the pouring rain) about a mile along train tracks.

this place is a collection of five colombians who bought a relatively small piece of land together, maybe 10 acres, and live together here.  they each have a little cabin like home, and a couple of them have kids.  it seems that most of the owners still have work or other duties that take them back to bogota nearly weekly.  it was interesting and inspiring to chat with them as the owners are all well educated (jenny for example is an environmental engineer) and are choosing to live an alternative lifestyle....sorta a practice what they preach thing.

juan's house

jenny's house

melissa and her kids

we stayed in one of the houses (the owner was gone when we were there) which felt a bit like a hobbit house tucked down by a stream.

again we found ourselves sleeping on the floor with thin narrow mattresses that we had to fit two people on (each adult slept with a kid).  it was not comfortable at all and i was a bit grumpy.  todd says i need to change my attitude and though he is probably right, i am finding my tolerance of sleeping on dirty sheets and blankets on the floor is getting pretty low.  todd didn't love the sleeping conditions either but he is able to suck it up better than i am.  that said, we left after four nights.

other than uncomfortable sleeping conditions we had a great visit.   on our first day there we didn't do any volunteer work but instead joined a woodworking workshop.  juan, one of the owners, was able to get a grant to build a shop and hold community workworking lessons twice a week.  this is free to the community members and lunch is provided.  we each made bowls and spoons. the kids loved it!

juan helping riley

lunchtime at the workshop

i find i don't have the patience for woodworking and todd ended up having to finish sanding my spoon for me, but they turned out great!!  the kids each made little bowls and then went back and made small spoons a couple days later....though somehow we failed to get a picture of them.  some of the woodworking projects the community members were working on were amazing!

in regards to work at monte samai i once again found myself in the garden weeding and mulching.  couldn't help but be a bit jealous of their year-round growing season.  todd built a compost bin, but we failed to get a picture.  there were two other volunteers there.  alex from france and robert from canada.

alex making a solar shower for jenny's house....robert is watching

the kids job was to play with the other kids which they were more than happy to do.....

fun little homemade foosball-like game

the volunteers cooked meals together in a little outdoor kitchen.  mostly it was alex who cooked and so we called him our french chef.

when we left on the last day instead of walking the tracks (no trains use the rails any longer) we rode on this make-shift car thing using motorcycle with the back-wheel on the tracks.....it was awesome and such a great example of the ingeniousness of the local people.

since we left the volunteer place a bit earlier than expected we found ourselves back in bogota for a night.  and as luck would have it todd saw a flier for a futbol match with a guy who offered transport to and from the game plus tickets.   so of course we called up our new friend carlos and went to a colombian futbol match!

this was a completely different experience from the game we went to in ecuador.  for one the game was at night in a large stadium.  the match featured two bogota teams and boy do these teams have fans!!  the game was held at the home stadium of the millionares team, and this was the first game the fans were allowed to see in a few months. apparently because the fans stormed the field after losing to a rival several months back the league punished them by banning their fans from games.  and let me also mention that no beer or alcohol of any kind is served in the stadium, so this kind of fan fever is sober!  needless to say we were happy to have a guide.

one end of the stadium contained the bare chested fans who are jumping and shouting to drums the entire game. in fact as we were standing in line to go in we could hear the drums and riley said 'it sounds like a timbers game!' and from behind us in line this guy says in english, 'did you just say a timbers game?'....turns out he was from portland and was in bogota teaching english for 6 months. super fun!


now we are spending the next week exploring the region of boyaca which is north of bogota.  so far the area proves to be very beautiful.
as of today we have one month of travel left....we are now in that limbo when we start to think of home more and more but still squeeze every last drop of wanderlust out of our adventures!
hasta luego!