when you pass a river or even better a waterfall next to a country road here, there is often a bus stopped getting a free wash in!
Never in Ireland did someone shout 1,2,3, modelling your legs (it does rhyme in Spanish)! at me as I ran by them, or looked dangerously close to falling off their bike as they cycled by!
...is much worse here! This is the Bogotá river after it has passed through Bogotá and it is completely black except for the white froth from detergent!
They use different grammar here to address people formally, so you would think all strangers would fall into this category, but they can be very informal sometimes, once someone shouted 'skinny' at me repeatedly to get my attention, and this morning in a taxi the driver said 'how cute' when I suggested he go a different way to avoid traffic!
On some roads here they block traffic leaving the city on Sunday evenings so more lanes are available for people coming back after the weekend, so they spend less time in traffic!
On the busses here there are colour coded seats near the doors, so you know to give them up for people who need them more, logically these are the last to fill up, but sometimes even when the bus is packed, no one sits in them, very different from Dublin!
A few weeks ago I got a phone call from the organisers of a race I did last year, asking why they hadn't received my sign up for this year's race. And just now in the dentist waiting room I was approached by a woman with a form, which I assumed was something to do with my impending surgery, but it turns out there is a dermatological clinic on the same floor and she was trying to sign me up for some kind of facial.
You often see these on plots of land here. And sometimes like this one they have a phone number. I really don't get this!
Sometimes you are listening to a song you recognise on the radio (in a taxi or what have you) and then suddenly you notice the words are actually in Spanish!)
Obviously this would not be called gringo Thursdays in Dublin! But even so I am pretty sure a similar discount would not exist!
Want to bring an open beer can into the supermarket? No problem, they'll just put a sold sticker on it, so no one will think you stole it!
Buildings here often have the start of the next floor built in advance, so that another floor can be added cheaply and quickly, you don't notice from street level, but they can be very ugly from above!
...are very popular here. So much so that they have become problem shoes on the escalators in this shopping centre!
Lots of different places do home deliveries here, pharmacies, off-licences...this bag is from a stationary shop offering the service!
Like Ireland there is a national sport, although Tejo (a game where you throw rocks at an exploding clay target) seems to be less formal and involve more beer drinking.
Here they have hung on to their past, with guards in old style uniforms stationed outside the presidential palace. These ones are having their uniform brushed down by a normally dressed guard. I have seen this before in countries with monarchies but it is surprising in a post colonial country
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