Archive for May, 2009

A lazy Sunday morning this morning, although not too lazy with a baby demanding attention at early hours.

Today being Sunday, Enrique organised a trip for the families somewhere for lunch. This time it was to a restaurant up on the Pance River, a favourite area for the people of Cali to go and relax on the weekend and cool down in the cold waters of the river. This is one of the few non-poluted rivers in the area which makes it popular for swimming.

Driving into the Colombian countryside

This trip it was just us and the Italian family with their adopted sibling group (two girls and a boy – quite a challenge for them!), plus Enrique and his girlfriend and their dog … plus one of Enrique’s usual drivers.

Andres near the Rio Pance

Andres near the Rio Pance

The restaurant was a private and fairly exclusive affair, well away from the crowds and noise on other parts of the river. It also had a swimming pool and lots of trees providing shaded seating areas which made for a very relaxed atmosphere.

Andres near the Rio Pance

We sat around and drank fresh lemonade and ate fried banana. The kids went for a swim in the pool, and we went for a wade in the river – the water was freezing cold, which was quite refreshing, but not exactly pleasant. Our Teva’s worked well, this is exactly the type of environment they were designed for – they don’t mind getting wet at all.

The Italian family enjoying the wading pool

Leanne and Andres near the Rio Pance

Lunch was a huge pork schnitzel with rice and chips and an avocado salad on the side. We finished with some huge bananas – I love their bananas here, very tasty.

Simon and Andres

Simon and Andres near the Rio Pance

We also discovered something that Andres likes to eat! We’ve been trying to get him to eat rice cereal and corn cereal, but he hasn’t really been interested. We think they were feeding him fruit juice in addition to his formula at the orphanage, so we don’t think he has had much experience with eating “solid” food or with bland food. He did like a little bit of the pureed mango from a jar we tried at one point, but we haven’t had much success with anything else. While sitting around letting lunch digest with a huge plate of large bananas in front of us, we decided to try a little bit of one mashed up into a paste to see if he would eat that. After some patience we had some success – he did seem to enjoy the banana and was starting to get the eating action right! We did make quite a mess, but we were happy that we’ve made a little bit of progress.

House for sale on the Rio Pance

Leanne and Andres at the Rio Pance

After lunch we sat around for a while relaxing and enjoying the countryside – before finally heading back down to the city. It was fascinating seeing all the little restaurants along the road and the people perched on rocks in the river – thousands of them. There are regular bus services shuttling people to and from the area, so it’s relatively easy for the locals to get here.

Locals enjoying the cold clean waters of the Rio Pance

Tweets from today

Just back from spending the day near the Pance River, enjoying the Colombian countryside. 6 years ago this place was guerrilla territory.

31st May, 2009 6:45 PM from web

A quiet day today, we walked down to the small shopping mall near the hotel and spent some time looking through the bookstore. We had been told there was a nice book there talking about the history of Colombia, but written for children – and they had an English version too.

We bought that book and a couple of others and then wandered back to the hotel.

Didn’t do much else – sat around on the front porch enjoying the day and I took advantage of the sunny weather to get some photos of the local birdlife, and we all slept most of the afternoon.

It’s a bit quiet around here at the moment – the Finnish family who adopted from Chiquitines the same day we did have gone on a short trip to San Andres for a few days. That just leaves us, the other Australian couple, the Canadians and the Italians. Apparently there is a new family arriving today sometime and another on Tuesday, so once they visit the orphanage we hope it will be a bit more lively around here.

We spent some time after breakfast sitting on the front porch enjoying the cooler morning air. It was overcast and dull, but the birds were out in force around the gardens, so I grabbed the camera to try and get some photos. I loved the hummingbirds hovering around the flowers – fascinating birds.

Hummingbird hovering

Bird on a flower (species unknown)

Every Friday, Enrique goes to the fresh fruit and vegetable markets in Cali to shop for supplies for the kitchen. He takes families staying at the hotel and gives them a tour of the markets, explaining all the exotic fruits and vegetables. It is a wonderful place, full of unique sights, sounds and smells – and a tour is quite educational too. Did you know they grow seven different types of banana in Colombia? We have had cooked banana several times in dishes, including soups. We also had deep fried banana at one point – kind of looked like potato wedges and tasted okay too.

Families waiting for Enrique to take us to the markets

Andres makes another friend - the women all love him "tan bonito"

Fruit and vegetable markets

Leanne tries some exotic fruits

The meat section of the markets

Enrique picks out some Colombian cheese

Leanne and Andres hang out around some hanging meat

Enrique treats us to a drink at the markets

Flowers at the markets

The fresh poulty section (including a goose - top right corner)

Across the road from the markets was a little art and craft store where we bought some souvenirs of our stay in Cali. We aren’t just buying stuff for ourselves, we want to have a collection of items from Cali for Andres.

Later in the afternoon we spent some time in the formal loungeroom where there is some carpet on the floor so we could give Andres a bit of “tummy time”. He’s not crawling yet, can’t quite get the legs going right and hasn’t worked out how to use his arms to move himself around.

Andres gets some "tummy time"

I was up earlier than everyone else this morning with a splitting headache – I must have slept the wrong way and my neck muscles seized up. I was not feeling well all morning, and I was having difficulty keeping any pain relief drugs down, so we were worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it to our appointment at the orphanage this morning.

However, by the time Magnolia came to pick us up at 10am, I was feeling a bit better, so we headed off in her little car for the long drive down to the southern end of Cali where Chiquitines is located.

Chiquitines - central courtyard

The meeting was with the social worker who looked after Andres’s case from before he was born until placement with us, with Agatha the director of Chiquitines acting as interpreter for us. It was an interesting meeting as they were able to give us full details about the circumstances of Andres’s arrival at the orphanage after he was born and how the process worked. They also provided us with more details about his birth mother – which we will keep for Andres.

Central courtyard

After the meeting, we were taken of a tour of the orphanage by Magnolia (who knows the place well). It is a very clean and well set up place – and it is obvious that the staff and volunteers care very much for the children they look after.

The main part of Chiquitines is set up around a central courtyard with a large tree in the middle, around the outside are the administrative and medical offices, the kitchen, and all of the rooms for the children. There were some very young babies there only several weeks old, still in small cribs, plus the slightly older infants who had cots. We saw the cot where Andres slept before we collected him and where he was changed and washed.

The cot where Andres slept

When we were there, the infants were being fed out next to the courtyard, sitting in bouncers waiting to be fed by the volunteer staff – a bit of a production line. Further along, some toddlers in highchairs were being fed what looked like soup. Each room had three cots or beds, with the older kids sleeping in bunk beds.

Grassed play area

Creek running through the orphanage

Classroom for pre-school kids

Out the back of the orphanage, they had a swimming pool (fully fenced) and apparently all the kids learn how to swim when old enough. There was also a small classroom area where the pre-school aged kids were sitting colouring and doing other activities. There is a playground and plenty of grassed area for the kids to run around – even a small creek running through the yard for the kids to explore if they want. Given the orphanage is right on the outskirts of the city (there are cows in the paddock across the road), it is relatively quiet and not as polluted here as it would be closer to the centre of town. It really is a lovely place.

Sitting in the courtyard with the other infants

Andres chats up one of the girls

A colourful bird comes to visit the courtyard

We brought over quite a bit of stuff with us as donations for the orphanage – including a couple of large bags of clothes made by ladies all over South Australia who make clothes especially for orphanages. The clothing was organized by Kathie Montagu – she sorts the clothing and packs it to send to various places around the world. Apparently she has a world map with pins marking the places where the clothing has gone so she will add on Cali, Colombia. With nearly 70 kids to look after, the orphanage would go through quite a lot of stuff on a daily basis – even the basics like shampoo, toothpaste, and such – so we took some of that along too, as well paper, pencils and other useful things for kids.

Agatha the Director of Chiquitines accepts a donation of clothing sent from South Australia

After driving back in time for lunch, we spent the afternoon relaxing around the hotel. We’re really enjoying our time with Andres, but is really quite tiring – even though we get three meals a day prepared for us and have nothing much else to do other than eat, sleep, and change dirty nappies … and of course play with our son who gets more active and interesting every day!

Another early start from Andres, but after sitting up for a while, he did go back to sleep. After breakfast we were collected by our interpreter who would be our guide for the day – Magnolia arranged for a driver with a nice big airconditioned people-mover and took us and the other Australian family out for the morning.

Cristo Rey monument

Northern part of Cali seen from the Cristo Rey monument - most of the city is to the south and east.

We started off driving up to the monument of Cristo Rey, a 42m high Christ statue which stands on top of a hill offering some of the best views out over the city of Cali. It was a bit hazy, so we couldn’t really see the edges of the city that well, but it did still give us an idea of the size and scope of this modern city.

Cali as seen from Cristo Rey monument - looking south-east

Our interpreter and guide, Magnolia

After winding our way back down the mountain, we stopped at a shopping centre to get some passport photos taken of the kids – needed for their Colombian passports and Australian visas.

Australian mothers

Cristo Rey monument

We were back in time for lunch, and we had a snooze after lunch before Magnolia came back and picked Leanne up to take her to some local art and craft markets while I stayed in the room looking after Andres (he slept all afternoon).

One of the guys staying at the hotel had really wanted to see a Futbol (soccer) match with his eldest son while here in Cali – and he managed to arrange tickets and a driver (who would also be our escort) to a match tonight. They invited me and George along as well and so we stopped for an early dinner (pizza organised by Enrique), before heading off just before 7pm.

It took us quite a while to get a park – I thought traffic in Cali was bad during peak hour, but that’s got nothing on game night! In the end we managed to find a park quite close to the stadium, and made our way in through the crowds of locals in their green and white tops – the local team Deportivo Cali’s colours. There was a little bit of confusion at first as to where we had to go -  the taxi driver wasn’t used to sitting in the good seats, so wasn’t aware that we could bypass the long queues waiting to get in to the main area. Eventually we found our way in and got seats at the front of the first balcony, near one corner of the pitch.

Even though the stadium was only about half full – the atmosphere was great, with the local cheer squad singing and chanting pretty much non-stop in the stand opposite us. The weather was fantastic too, with a lovely cool breeze blowing through the stands keeping it very pleasant after a hot and humid day.

It wasn’t that long before Cali scored the first goal of the match, and the crowd erupted with excitement, with the kids sitting down in the main section below us jumping up onto the fence and cheering, waving and chanting. Unfortunately, things got a bit more subdued later in the first half when the visiting team, Cucuta, scored to equalise – and then when they scored again in the second half to take the lead, the crowd seemed to get a bit desponden. The cheer squad kept singing and chanting, just a bit less enthusiastically.

Deportive Cali scores and the crowd goes wild

I was amused with the four girls in full riot gear with shields standing at each of the four corners of the pitch, with the words “No Violencia” (No Violence) written across their shields  – I thought they were just there for show, until there was a corner kick near us and I noticed that they were actually shielding the player taking the kick, as they were within bottle throwing range of the stands! The crowd was quite well behaved tonight, and there was plenty of security around anyway.

Deportivo Cali vs Cucuta

When we left the match after a 2-1 defeat, the crowds were quite subdued – and even the security guard back at the front gates of the hotel commiserated with us – he is a strong Cali fan. It was a great night – very interesting seeing the locals out and about enjoying the match.