Amigos Colombianos

Everyone says the main attraction here in Colombia is the people, so I figured I should post a little about some of the Colombianos I've met so far.

This is my friend Jorge. He's from Bogotá but he went to film school in L.A. and is fluent in English so I've been practicing Spanish with him. He looks all thugged out in this picture but usually he dresses like a hipster. I took this picture in a bar underneath the call center he works for. He's also a DJ by night, and I went with some of his friends from work who also all speak English to hear him spin.

These are the friends, both of whom lived in the U.S. and are fluent in English. The one on the right, Claudia, is actually the boss, which is unusual in patriarchical Colombia. They sell extremely expensive memberships for an airplane parts locator website to businessmen in North America and Europe. Business has been bad lately due to the rise in gas prices though.

I met this guy one night at the hostal and nicknamed him DJ. He's a DJ too and has apparently played all over the world, so I asked him for a picture in case he gets famous. He promised me he wouldn't. I'll never find out either way because I only know him as DJ, which is definitely not his real name.

This is Vadir, he's probably my favorite. Everywhere we go he seems to know the people there already. He's endlessly patient with my terrible Spanish and I've met a lot of interesting people through him. I've also gotten a lot of good travel advice from him, as he's an experienced backpacker and well aquainted with Colombia and a lot of Latin America as well. We took this picture outside a show in Parque Poblado. Neither of us look too hot in this picture, probably thanks to the fact that drinking in public is quite legal in Medellín and beer is quite cheap in Parque Poblado.

There are more people who I'd like to write about but I don't have pictures of them yet. Perhaps when I get more photos I'll post a part two.