@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] In an email newsletter earlier this year from the conservative Colombian journalist, Ricardo Galán, in customary reproachful fashion, he berated Bogotá’s cyclists for daring to use roads, as he put it,...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] A Venezuelan friend once told me of a saying in her country: ‘The Colombian can never lose.’ This seems to have come, for the most part, from the days when Venezuela was the ostensibly richer, more...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] One has to admire an individual who realises that he/she has a personal problem and takes corrective action. As a species, we are often quick to see the faults of others yet are blind to our own shortcomings....
@wwaycorrigan The sign at the entrance to Hoyo del Aire (literally ‘Air Hole’ in English) near the small town of La Paz in Colombia’s Santander department, says that it is the second-biggest hole in the world. One assumes this means naturally formed and on land...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] When one thinks of Colombia’s Boyacá department, if one thinks of it at all, it tends to conjure up images of the awe-inspiring Andes, clean, cool country air and the odd superstar cyclist. It’s...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] A few years ago — in my more petulant days (they are behind me now, of course) — I shamefully caused a bit of commotion in a Bogotá nightclub. Tainted vision The casus belli? Well, none other than the...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] With the great industrial and technological advancements over the last number of generations, humanity can get much more done in a much shorter period of time compared to just a few decades ago. As most of us are well aware, tasks that had once […]
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] ‘Wow, your Spanish is very good.’ ‘Well, I’ve been based here for over ten years.’ ‘Oh.’ That’s how the conversation generally goes when I meet a new...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] I do sometimes feel a bit torn after getaways to Colombian pueblos — pueblo pick-me-ups as I like to call them — due to my desire or at least perceived need to blog about them. It’s because, as...
@wwaycorrigan [Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.] Sitting unhidden in one of my barrio tiendas sipping on a litre of Poker beer, it dawned on me that less than a year ago such behaviour was officially prohibited and had been for the guts of 12 months. I’m...
