First of all, I love this country. I knew I did when I visited this place 1 year ago and I am glad to see that I picked wisely. Granted there are still some 193 countries I still need to visit. I am glad that I have decided to make my first offshore residency here. I have a friend who happens to be in town right now, a Mr. John Finch, who describes this place rather succinctly: “They have everything that we do, just not as good.” This is very accurate, but I am sure there are numerous things that can be traded back home.
Everything is ludicrously cheap compared to what we pay in the States, except for gas. Beer is cheaper than water. Wine is equally cheap. Medical supplies are a third of the cost. McDonald’s tends to be rather expensive from what I have seen, but I refuse to go there. It is marketed to the upper class here, I think, because it is the upper class who parties all night and emerges from a dance hall looking to scarf some bad-for-the-earth food. A nice meal out will cost you $20 (US) out of your pocket, with wine and apps and desserts.
Dinner is always after 11pm. And takes a long time. Clubs and bars do not really start their festivities until well after 2am. It is easy to find yourself coming home at 5-8am. The trick is to use naps and just go slow when you are out. No need to pound two Jäger Red Bulls and then a beer, and then move to the next bar because the first five hottest girls you saw didn’t hit on you, and then jump in a taxi to find a hotel where you could get that last nightcap before 2am. Just relax and enjoy the evening and just when you thought things were not going on tonight, you find a huge dance party in the middle of the street.
Cumbia and reggaeton suck in my opinion, but I cannot escape it. If you go out dancing with locals, you will need to dance to this. It is the most repetitive music I have ever come across.
At night, poor people from the suburbs come into the city and drag these carts that are 4 metres tall with recyclables. These people are called the cartoneros and they keep the streets clean. I hear the city is trying to create a proper task force for this job, but until they do, this is a good job for the poor people to do. They don’t cause trouble, just drag a whole shit load of trash out of the city and into somewhere else.
I saw a guy at the airport racing another guy in the little buggies they have hauling bags. A backpack fell off one and they didn’t even stop or notice. I wonder whatever happened to that person and their bag?
The buses here have these strange air hoses hooked up into their hubs. You can hear that these buses are using a lot of air for what seems to be the shocks. Picture to come. I can only gather that these hoses pump air into the axle and then into the shocks or something. Doesn’t seem efficient, but my guess is that there was some corruption at some point and a deal had been made to make this the popular way to build buses. The buses are also privately owned and you can see in some of them that the driver has really personalised each one with custom mirrors and ornaments and black lights. A bus costs 90 centavos, or roughly a quarter. Same with a subway ride. They are also pretty fun.
The city is documented in a small pocket book called the Guia T. Learn it, know it, love it.
They are incredibly good drivers here. They have four-way intersections with no lights or stop signs and traffic just works. It makes me confident as I haul ass on the streets on my bike. When you cross the road on foot, you try to be as close to the car as possible to make sure that you get in between that car and the one behind it.
I have noticed a lot of facial moles around here for some reason. Must be the weather.
The city provides free water to everyone and it must be drinkable. Lovely for someone sweating gallons on his bike who can only find bathrooms. No problems yet as far as I can tell, but I have a miraculously strong stomach.
For the most part, all young people live with their parents until they are in their mid to late 20s. Because of this, it is not easy to just go home with someone at the end of a night. So they have all these pay-by-the-hour motels, or telos, all over the place. Yet to try one out, but I did see a drive-in one in Santos, Brazil.
So there is this strange phenomenon regarding the one peso coin around here. They are in very short supply and if you buy something that requires that coin as change, they will ask for another way for you to pay. You say no, and then they scowl at you, yell in the back, some kid runs out and goes outside and does something to get a coin for you. That or they just won’t sell you the thing you want, or they might even give it to you for free — like the banana I got today. This is all because the buses run some sort of cartel that was in conjunction with the Koreans. The buses would take all the peso coins since a trip costs 90 centavos, and then hoard them and sell them to the Koreans, who would then melt them down and sell the metal for more than the actual peso was worth. Fucking ridiculous, I know. So there is this big question of why they don’t introduce a card system into the buses — how hard could it be, everyone asks. But it seems there is just too much corruption somewhere down the line and it never happens.
For such a large city, I can walk or take public transportation everywhere, and it is another great example of what we need to do more of in America. Fuck density issues — just raise car taxes and gas prices, and provide commuter buses and light rail and small hovercrafts.
Good times, great people…