When does a goat roll on four wheels and an old Ford chassis? When it’s a Colombian chiva! Since publishing our April news post, we’ve gotten lots of comments and questions about the vehicle in the highlight photo: This colorful contraption is known as a chiva (Spanish for female goat), so named because of its ability to take on even the most treacherous Colombian mountain roads. In the rural towns, chivas are just about as common as arepas (the corn tortilla-like disks that are served with every meal). Chivas provide rustic but important and low-cost transportation for the people, their livestock, and just about any other goods you can imagine. They’re Colombia’s answer to “chicken buses.” We spotted the above chiva in San Carlos, a small town about two hours’ drive west of Medellín. (Just before the pandemic hit last year, we made a very cool road trip to San Rafael…
Yesterday was a big day: John got his second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination from SURA, our Colombian healthcare provider. “So tell us,…
Where did April go?? With our weekend quarantines now a fact of life and Colombia’s devastating third COVID wave showing no real signs of…
Barrio La Sierra: Building a Hopeful Future How do you get to the essence of a city, in a culture that’s foreign to your…
Did you know that Colombia has the world’s highest bird diversity? By some estimates, there are over 1,900 species here, comprising 20 percent of…
Here are some interesting Colombia stories that got our attention over this past month. Colombia is making some inroads in alternative energy. Colombia has…
Everyone remembers their first trip to Paris. Mine was in August of 2019, just a few months before the COVID sky started to fall.…
(Note: Re-posting after some technical issues yesterday. Sorry, everyone!) News junkies that we are, we subscribe to several online publications and scan the internet…
We’ve adjusted our latitude again! But only about a quarter of a degree south this time. In our last post, we announced that we…
Happy New Year! And how is it possible that it’s already January 11?? At the end of every year, we like to look back…