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hello first timer; lurker for a couple years!

i do not understand all these people on here asking about safety and crime in colombia. or about racial stuff. i went to barranquilla twice in the last year. i paid no attention to the things that friends and family or the news said. i got on a plane and went. SOLO! of course the plane broke down and i got to baQ AT 1AM INSTEAD OF 4:30PM. got to where i was staying puttered around the next day getting settled in. i forget the address but the house i rented was strata 2 or 3. that night i went out to change some money and got stuck in the middle of a shoot out between police and robbers. the girl working there got shot, i was sorry for that but glad my taxi was late or it might have been me the only old fat balding american cashing in a grand. i would try to set out on my front porch and drink my beer and ron, listen to my vallenato. neighbors and friends would come by and try to get me to go in and lock up because it was getting dark.WTF??? i told them that i did not come there to sit behind bars. if i wanted that i would have just got thrown in jail back home. everyone thought i was crazy when i said i never lock up at home and had come to quilla for 3 weeks and left everything unlocked. i told them that i did not want my place tore up if they were gonna come steal my stuff. anyway i love colombia, the people the culture; quilla andcartagena are great!!!! can not wait to get back. so do not whine and worry just go and live it. if i remember my history there has been good and bad people and good and bad things happen man made and natural. in every culture and to every race, color, and shade of people. p.s. baq, elmo hope to meet you sometime in barranqilla!!!

By chazzmot on Jan 2, 2006, 15:32 in Friendly Talkzone.

haji says on Jan 2, 2006, 17:26:

Well Said Well said,--------

0 funny, 0 helpful.

litost says on Jan 3, 2006, 04:01:

All hail GIB... the brave Tarzan of the colombian jungle!

How you manage to survive in the midst of so much danger and terror in Colombia, it's just beyond me. I hope you'll write a book soon, for all the more infinitely cowardly gringos and maybe even for those 44 million colombians so naive as to think we live in a - for the most part - safe country.

0 funny, 0 helpful.