The real danger of Colombia

When you mention the country of Colombia people automatically think "DANGEROUS!"....they think kidnapping, drug smuggling, FARC & theives.....and yes we have that here but it is not our minds. Sure we always think twice about what we leave the house with and usually we hide our money in different pockets...subconsciously preparing to be robbed. Sure we hear of News of the FARC and violence but really it is not as most people think....

Yet, with that said there IS something to be afraid of here.....MOVING VEHICHLES. Traffic is insane here and at one moment you are able to find all of the following on the road at the same time…..a ton of motorcycles and mopeds, bicycles & pedestrians, mini and large busses, cars, a ton of taxis, horse drawn carts, trucks, chivas (a party on a open aired bus complete with loud music and dancing) acrobatics playing with fire at traffic lights and people selling everything and anything you can ever imagine. All of these things and people only care about one thing….”themselves” , they follow no rules and do things you would never dear to dream about…and because of this there are a crazy amounts of accidents.
Being people with out a car we are at the mercy of the taxi driver or bus driver…who are more insane than the normal crazy driver. We are completely accustomed to our usual school taxi driver who is fast, a bit crazy but very well practiced. Yet, I cannot say the same for all…there are have been times when we beg them to chill out or when you are constantly bracing for a crash.

The worst of the worse are the mini-buses which are cheap, run-down and completely shameless…and in turn get you to where you want to be very quickly. I was inspired to write this blog as we were taking a buseta (mini-bus) home from school. We were flying, screeching to stops and getting air off of speed-bumps. Everyone was looking around at each other…and thinking this is more insane than usual right? When we finally exited our abs were sore from being engaged the whole time and the blood was slowly returning to our knuckles. And we didn’t think much of it…just…this is Colombia.