New Years & Choachi

For New Years we went to a small town called Choachi which is just over an hour from Bogota as Paulo´s cousin Diana lives there as well as all her in laws, ie, husbands family. The photo with the car and the army etc is on the way out of Bogota. Paulo`s uncle locked the keys in the car at an army post. No RACT but an army guy managed to get it unlocked with the shoelace from his army boot!!! `Que viva el ejercito` :P.

So we had finger food at Diana´s place while the people who were staying there (mainly her sisters and their kids) Then we went and sorted out our hotel then on the way to the actual party (at Diana´s sister in laws house in the centre of town on one ofthe main streets) the boys stopped at a pool place (to play pool with3 balls?!?) then we FINALLY got to the New Years Eve party at about 10:45. Mahli was cranky at the pool place so I spent about an hour rocking and walking in circles like a mental patient to put her to sleep and she slept through the whole party til we woke her up trying to walk her back in the pusher along the bumpy footpath to the hotel at about 2:30/3:00am or something. as you can see from the photos New Years Eve was spent, Dancing in the street (in Choachi :P).

The next day once we sorted out everyones mental and physical state we gradually made our way to `the farm´(another place owned by Diana`s in laws, brother or sister in law i think ?) where we have a type of BBQ I guess. Boiled, beautiful potatoes, Fried Pork Meat, Fat and crackling (they actually cut up the fat and fried it - totally normal here :P), fried Yuca (root plant), fried Platano (Maduro) or Plantane, a very big specie of banana and very green. eaten both green and ripe (cooked). YUM YUM YUM (expept the fried whole fat part, which is aparently yum but i`m fine thanks !). Mahli had a ball and then slept through half of the thing waking up just as we were leaving.

Choachi is so beautiful, I was so glad to be there as i´m a bit over the whole big city scene. It's a nice little town in the mountains (okok, well everything is in the mountains!!), typical Colombian small town. Bogota is quite a nice city as it´s surrounded by mountain (like everywhere!) but as well as Cali you just seem to get swallowed up by the city the mountains contain. Choachi was apparently nothing and surrounded by guerillas until Uribe, the current president was elected and ran them out of the area. According to Paulo´s dad the guerillas weren´t around here but choachi was full of thieves and so forth. It was probably a combination of both.

Once back in Bogota we all alyed around feeling sorry for ourselves and Hilda and her kids had to force themselves to pack suitcases etc as half the Molanos are going to Panama for Holidays (going for about a week). We have about 4 days left in Bogota til we head off to Brazil for 3 & a bit weeks.