[First a note: I’ve largely stopped posting family photos to this blog because AI is scraping and stealing everything, and then allowing it to be used by anybody in any way.]

We had not planned at all to come to Victoria until the summer of 2026, but a family member needed some urgent help so we went to Ontario to spend some time with her, then brought her to Victoria.

Part of the trip was visiting my rather frail 88-year-old mother. We didn’t want to bring her any illnesses, so we masked all the way and we did not get anything. Same for the trips from Ontario to Victoria and from Victoria back to Cali.

Ontario

First, Ontario. It was frosty but fun, as we haven’t seen snow in a while, and of course Victoria never gets much. Ontario gets lots!

The day before this photo was taken, we went for a walk so Adriana could see and get photos of the fall colours, which we’d never been in Ontario at the right time to see. And due to the weather, exercise moved indoors:

(Note the speed of the treadmill.)

Starting to smell like Christmas….

On To Victoria

Some things we missed, and some we did not!

One thing we did not miss was the climate. My sister finds that this fall has been the rainiest she can remember, and I certainly found Victoria very grey. In the 20 years I lived there, I don’t ever remember the cloudiness being so gloomy and long-lasting. The sky was shades of grey seeming to come almost to the ground.

And, to be fair, we had acclimated to Cali, so going from shorts-and-T-shirt weather to near-freezing temperatures was a shock! We were basically cold all the time, indoors or out and our skin got dry – but, that fresh ocean air was wonderful.

Time with family and friends was wonderful, but as mentioned there won’t be many photos of other people.

Here’s Adriana playing Twister with Hattie Jr in my sister Julie’s house:

Hattie Sr. is my mother, or Hattie Jr’s great-grandmother.

Victoria has lots of great restaurants and we had some favourites we wanted to return to, including:

• The Village in Gordon Head (featuring Yulia – go see her, she’s awesome!)
• The Hidden Gem in Oak Bay for vegan breakfasts and awesome treats
• We ordered pizza from Famoso and Thai food from Baan Thai
• The whole family went out to Spinnakers
• Pagliacci’s for atmosphere and pasta
• Rebar for a healthy lunch
• Charlotte and the Quail for good food and inspiration – it would do well in Cali

Buenos Días

Years ago, before I met Adriana but when I lived in Victoria, I was planning a trip to ‘somewhere.’ I wasn’t sure where, but I wanted it to be not a tourist destination. I was seriously looking into Russia or Ukraine, even considering going there for a year to teach English. At that time I lived in a house consisting of three apartments, one per floor. (One thermostat for all three apartments – not a good idea.)

One day I bumped into my downstairs neighbour, Liliana, who is Colombian. She had married a Canadian man, and I ended up visiting them once or twice. She was eager to talk, because she didn’t know many people and found Canadians ‘cold.’ (I prefer ‘reserved.’) She was used to chatting with people she encountered, or at least saying Hi to your neighbours!

And that was something we noticed this time. When you walk in a park in Cali, for example, everyone you pass says Buenos Días (or Tardes depending whether it’s the morning or afternoon). When you see your neighbours that you know from your apartment building or community, you say Hi and it is common to chat a little bit, In Canada, people walk right by you as if you don’t exist, and I have to say it does feel cold.

I’m very glad Liliana did talk to me, because when I told her of my plans to go to Russia, she convinced me to go to Colombia. ‘The weather is warm and the people are warm,’ she said. She was right, and of course that’s where I met Adriana.

It was wonderful to see the people we were able to, and to spend time with the grandchildren and my sister. We hope to see anyone we missed next visit.

Our House and Home

And…our house is moving forward so soon people will be able to visit us! By ‘soon,’ I mean sometime late next year, but progress is happening. We finally have an approved design! The drawing below is it. (The original image is from the architect is almost 50M, so this is a screenshot. I would have thought that editing photos on a Mac would be easier than on a Windows computer, but no.)

It’s hard to see, so from left to right:

• First building: Guest suite and laundry
• Outdoor courtyard and exercise area
• Middle building: Master Bedroom suite, Studio (possible future bedroom), and office area
• Rightmost building: Social area with open concept Kitchen, dining, and living rooms, social bathroom, pantry, and entry
• Pool with jacuzzi – pending budget

We’re now in the permitting stage, with construction starting after that!

Sanji

Finally, upon popular request for the Sanji fans!

Sanji is utterly fearless about some things. Would you stick your nose down this hole in the ground? Or any hole in the ground?

Here’s Sanji in his apartment in Switzerland letting that horse know who’s boss. Note the spectacular mountains in the background…every photo Natalia and Davide send features that.

And finally, here is the Sanji-under-the-tree photo. It turned out too well not to share the whole photo – it looks like a Christmas card.

Books and Writin’ and Such

My sister had an article published in Macleans! It is a (very personal) memoir and is here: My Secret Addiction. (Not so secret now.)

I continue to blog about sociopaths in society. Here’s the latest, not really that current as I’ve been dealing with family stuff. When the Bubbles Burst. I’ll have another post this week.

And thanks to everyone who read my book! It is available on Kindle, Amazon, and many other places! With the United States checking everyone’s social media (not even China and Russia do that), careful what you read that the American border guards can see. I did say that Donald Trump was a pooh-pooh head, or words to that effect (I accurately described him as a narcissistic psychopath) and apparently any uncomplimentary words about Dear Leader are enough to get you banned for 5 years.

You’re Not Crazy, the World Is: How Narcissistic Leaders Have Corrupted Morals and Countries

Kobo

Amazon — Kindle, paperback, hardcover

Apple Books (Search the title)

Smashwords

Everand

Vivlio

Fable

Palace Marketplace

Climate

Cali is hot, but not Cartagena or Puerto Viejo (Costa Rica) hot. Those places can be brutal and the heat can grind you down. It’s fine if you’re there on vacation and are spending the day on the beach or in air conditioned restaurants, but to live in it was too much. Cali is only several degrees cooler and it makes all the difference.

The temperature in the morning is glorious, for example. You can go for a walk in shorts and a t-shirt and be comfortable. Evenings are warmer but still very pleasant. It gets hot in the afternoon, typically 28-31C, which is fine if you’re not doing anything strenuous outside or not in the sun. We are hoping that our lot is even a bit cooler plus we’ll have a passive solar house that should stay at a nice temperature all the time. Nighttime temperatures are typically 18-22C, which is perfect for cooling everything, including the house, down. (I’ll write more about our house later!)

Like Victoria, Cali has dry spells when it goes for two or three months with little to no rain. Like Victoria, the grass goes brown, some trees wilt, things get dusty. Then the rains start up again and everything gets green. Same as summer in Victoria. A key difference here is that even when it rains every day, it’s typically a thunderstorm that lasts for 30-90 minutes and then it’s over. There is sun almost every day.

Getting Around

The general assumption is that driving in Cali is horrific, but it’s actually not that bad and something you get used to pretty quickly, or at least Davide and I did. I am told it is nowhere near as nutty as some Asian countries like Thailand, for example. The main problems are too many cars, too many motorcycles (motos), and inadequate mass transit. I could say the same, except for the motos, about almost every North American city I’ve experienced or heard about.

The motos here are small, typically 125cc. These are not Harleys. There are currently about 350,000 motos in Cali and the forecast is for 800,000 by 2030!! The number of cars is also expected to increase, though not as dramatically. The reasons so many people use motos here are that they are much cheaper than a car and they are faster.

Here’s Uber showing a Flash option – it’s less than half the cost of a car. That means a motorcycle shows up and you hop on the back. Natalia used that service once or twice, but the rest us….

Home delivery services for meals, groceries, etc, pretty much exclusively use motos. Why are motos faster? Because they don’t follow any traffic laws, mainly. Imagine two lanes of traffic headed north, with a bike lane and a sidewalk on one side. Motos do not stay in their lane. Notice in the photo below that the motos are between the lanes of cars. They will zip by your car on the left or the right, and between lanes. If that is too slow, they use the bike lane and sidewalk.

Predictably, thousands of moto-driving young men are killed each year in traffic accidents. I’ve even witnessed some. The same situation exists in Costa Rica with the same results. While there, we drove by one moto-truck accident where the ambulance was on-scene working on injured people. I noticed one moto driver sprawled face down on the road, not moving, nobody working on him, so I’m pretty sure he was dead.

In Cali, I saw a moto drive right into the side of a taxi. Remember I said that motos go down all sides of cars, forget about lanes? Well, we were in some slow-moving traffic and a taxi in front of us and a moto behind us decided at the same time to turn right down a street to get out of it. The taxi turned right just as the moto scooted out to the right and gunned it…right into the taxi. The moto driver looked shaken up but uninjured, but I imagine his moto took some damage. The taxi definitely did.

The second accident in Cali was worse, with the moto driver left rolling on the ground in agony. We didn’t see the impact but saw the man get thrown into the curb. Probably he cut in front of the car at the wrong time. Obviously you feel bad for injured people, but at the same time, they did it to themselves – many of these guys are pretty reckless. It is very common to see someone driving his moto with his face in his phone.

Security

I covered this previously, so I’ll summarize here. Cali has an atrocious murder rate – almost 1,000 people per year. That is almost all in certain neighbourhoods and related to crime, meaning it’s mostly criminals shooting each other. Is Cali safe to live and visit? Definitely, if you stay out of the bad areas and are not involved in criminal activity. I remember when New York was considered quite dangerous, but again, that was concentrated in certain areas like Harlem. Stay out of there and you’re okay. Same here, and the various levels of government are attacking the problem.

The current president has been a big disappointment in this regard. He’s an ex-M19 guerrilla and he came to office promising to negotiate Total Peace with the remaining guerrillas and other criminal groups. Turns out they weren’t interested in negotiations, they wanted to carry on as they were: making their money from narco-trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, and extortion of businesses and people (protection rackets). They don’t want to negotiate an end to these highly lucrative businesses.

At one time there were left-wing guerrillas attempting to establish a Marxist state, but that was years ago and all these groups have long since morphed into mafias. Sometimes they fight for territory, as is happening in the recent upheavals in Catatumbo, where thousands have been displaced in a turf war between two rival gangs. This seems to have finally woken the president up and he has vowed to go to war against them. It’s about time and the only way to deal with them. Unless they’re under pressure of death, they will never quit. Anyway, seems like the government has finally accepted reality and is deploying significant forces to stomp out the gangs.

Unfortunately, once gangs get established, they are hard to eliminate because crime does pay pretty well, at least until caught or killed. Davide told me a story about the mafia in southern Italy that illustrates this. There was a personality, known for pushing boundaries on his show, and one day he decided to see how far he could go in a town in southern Italy, where the mafia is still strong. He set up a table of oranges for sale by a roundabout to see what would happen.

Well, fifteen minutes later a black car pulls up and a man tells him ‘You can’t do that here..’ Our protagonist said he’d stay, thanks. Fifteen minutes after that, another black car stops and two guys say, harder this time, ‘You can’t do that here.’ Again our hero waved them off. Shortly after, another big black car pulls up, two big, tough guys get out and dump his table upside down, give him a look, get back in the car and leave.

Our hero packed up and left. It was pretty clear what the next visit would involve.

Colombia has that level of mafia in some rural areas, but not in the big cities. As a local newspaper put it, it’s like there are two Colombias, the city one and the rural one where gangs still dominate in certain regions.

People

Colombians like to think of themselves as among the happiest people in the world, and they may well be. One thing I like here is the music – every grocery store, every taxi is playing salsa or something else upbeat. People are constantly dancing or singing along to the songs. It makes it hard to be down!

So far, they have largely avoided the polarization that has afflicted many countries, where hard-right leaders are trying to divide and conquer.

Things to Do

Cali is a city of approximately 2.2 million people, and that means there’s lots to do and see. Cali is big on salsa, so there are parades and demos and schools galore. The Feria de Cali involves a very long parade, many of whose members are salsa schools.

Biodiversity and the climate are also big and growing rapidly here. COP16 – Biodiversity was just here, for example, and there have been a number of follow-on events. There are also eco-parks – one just opened near us.

There’s food galore – Cali has some great restaurants. No Indian restaurants and pretty scant on the Thai food front, too, but there’s tons of sushi and Asian fusion places. If you want traditional Colombian food, you can have a large lunch or breakfast for 15.000 COP, or $5 CAD. It includes soup, a big piece of some kind of meat, rice, salad, and beans or lentils, plus a juice.

A favourite place to go for Caleños on Sundays is the Río Pance. There are public and private parks alongside the river, and people go for picnics and to go in the (cool) water. Here’s the public Ecoparque de Río Pance. This river actually passes somewhat close to our house and there are spots to enjoy it nearby.

There are concerts, soccer/futból, shows, farmer’s markets, a butterfly garden, an eco-walk, viewpoints, and so on. There’s no shortage of things to do!

Update on Us!

Adriana stopped working at a job a few months ago, but she’s not calling herself retired as she’s looking for the next adventure! One thing we noticed here is that we see lots of opportunities for small businesses. They are mostly enterprises that exist in Canada but not here, and that we think would be successful here. Adriana wanted to explore this future while we….

Build the house. We’re still in design but almost done. It’s been a long haul, starting in April; 7 months! we spent 2-3 months trying to design the house at a different spot on the lot, and finally realised that was not the house we wanted. It would have been a very cool house – up on posts and looking into the treetops. But we wanted a grounded house that was largely connected to the Earth, so we scrapped that design and started over at a different, lower location. The views are not as expansive, but to us it feels more homey. We wanted to be able to walk out to our gardens, for example. Here’s how it currently looks, but not 100% final yet.

From left-to-right: social area, master bedroom, guest bedroom.

Finally, Brian published his book! It’s called You’re Not Crazy, the World Is: How Narcissistic Leaders Have Perverted Morals and Countries. It’s not particularly complimentary of the current US leadership, so I’m not even transiting through the US these days. It wasn’t that nice about other leaders, either but only the USA is currently jailing people for pointing out what the government is doing. (What they are doing is attempting to speed-run to fascism. They’ve recently lost a bit of momentum, fortunately. They have severely damaged the US economy for at least a generation. What country would buy weapons from them now, for example?)

I also started blogging about the dangers of narcissists in power. Did you know 21% of CEOs are pathological sociopaths now? My first blog post is here, introducing the book: You’re not Crazy, the World Is.

You’re Not Crazy, the World Is: How Narcissistic Leaders Have Corrupted Morals and Countries is widely available:

Kobo

Amazon — Kindle, paperback, hardcover

Apple Books (Search the title)

Smashwords

Everand

Vivlio

Fable

Palace Marketplace

There are some downsides – no place is perfect. Our lot is great for walking…in nature and by farms. There are no stores or restaurants within walking distance. On the other hand, we can design and build our own home, and are hoping to use passive and active solar to eliminate any need for air conditioning and any electricity bills. Here’s a short video showing a view from the lot as if you were standing in the future house.

The lot is 9,000 square metres (2.2 acres), so we can have fruit trees, a garden and so on! It’s in a gated complex, so perhaps I should explain that.

Security in Cali

There are two ways that people live in Cali and in most cities in Colombia: In gated complexes or in barrios. Gated complexes include places like ours and Wilmer and Islena’s, where everyone has a big lot. There is typically a big fence around the whole complex and a gate with 24-hour guards for entry and exit. They also include the apartment where we currently live in a five-storey building, part of a complex of 4 buildings, 70 apartments in all. It has a big fence and a gate with 24-hour security. Elvia lives on the second floor of a seventeen storey building, one of two towers in her complex.

Most complexes come with additional social features like swimming pools and gyms, a social room you can borrow, and so on.

The alternative is a barrio. If you have negative connotations about barrios from American movies, barrio just means neighbourhood. It’s like Gordon Head in Victoria or Rosedale in Toronto. Some are better than others, obviously, but they all work roughly the same way. Barrios consist of rows of adjacent houses – row houses but each one is unique. Most have a small front yard, many have tree-lined streets.

Here’s a street in the Prados del Norte barrio in the north of Cali. (We’re in the south). Apologies for the quality, I wasn’t expecting to post this one. Close to the end, note the little white hut. That is for a vigilante, which does not have the same meaning in Spanish! Each street has a man with a heavy-duty billy club who patrols the area day and night. (Obviously not the same man.)

You can sort-of see that the houses have some sort of bars in front for security. I have noticed that the height and extent of these bars has been declining since I first came in 2004. As more people accept that security has improved, they don’t bother as much with bars and fences. Our property has a gated entry, but anybody could walk across the fields and into the complex. The only thing between our lot and the neighbouring field is a standard barbed wire fence to keep the cows in.

Lomas del Viento

Our complex is called Lomas del Viento. The people who owned the land are farmers developing some of it. They created two complexes, ours and Lomas del Rio, each with 50 lots. It looks like our area will remain forever rural, but who knows.

One reason we purchased this lot was because the regulations stipulate that nature is to be respected. For example, even though lots range from 6,000 – 12,000 square metres, there can be only one house with a maximum footprint of 300 square metres, two stories maximum. The water comes from a river that runs through the property. You must capture rainwater from your house to use for irrigation, washing cars, and so on. While a garden is fine, native plants are to populate the rest of the lot. That sort of thing.

The image below is a low-resolution (all I have) shot of Lomas del Viento – we are #4. You can see Lomas del Rio indicated in the upper right, but not even yet planned out when this brochure was made – it has been created now. The owners had big plans, but I have a feeling many of them are not going to happen. The orange rectangle was meant to be a polo field – apparently people still do that down here. I don’t believe it exists yet. The red rectangle labelled Amatista was intended to be a day-use facility for 100 seniors. There’s a hard-to-see red rectangle on the left that indicates a mini-mall, but I can’t imagine how it could survive. There are only ~100 houses nearby. I’m not optimistic these will ever get built, but they don’t really matter to us, either. Though we might want to use the senior facility one day…

That’s about it, folks. We will start working with an architect soon to design the house, and with luck we could be in it for Christmas! We don’t know much about the house yet beyond the usual – it will have three bedrooms, etc. One bedroom is for us, one will double for an office, and one is for you to come and visit!

If you do visit after the house is built, you should know that we decided against a swimming pool. They are very common here because it’s hot, but we found we hardly use the ones we have access to. We haven’t used the one in our apartment complex yet. Also, we are hoping Lomas del Viento is slightly cooler than Cali, and the passively-cooled solar house definitely should be comfortable. There usually seems to be a breeze – hence the name, which means ‘hills of the wind,’ according to Google translate.

We’re really looking forward to designing our own house. That’s definitely a dream come true. There are also 9,000 square metres to do something with, so we’ll be consulting local experts to figure out what trees and shrubs we want. We should be able to surround ourselves with beautiful tropical plants. I’ll post more when we know more! The architect figures the design phase will take 2-3 months, so there should be good stuff soon!

In the meantime, here’s some Sanji. Here he was as a puppy.

And here is starting to play again post-surgery. He had The operation. His parents hoped it would make him less aggressive towards certain dogs, but no luck. With most dogs, he’s fine, but some dogs….

And finally his usual resting pose.

Some people came from far away! Cousin Miguel came from Cyprus, sister-in-law Luz Karime came from Puerto Rico, and Natalia was here from Switzerland. She is here to pick up Sanji and take him to his new home in Switzerland. ;-(

December 24th

This was quite the event, as you can see from the photos and videos. Many family members attended. There were two groups. The first one was Julian Del Valle, a mariachi band fronted by a singer who had been a contestant on a talent show, and boy did he have a great voice. This video does not do his singing justice:

A really interesting thing (to me) happened: the singer basically proposed to his boyfriend who was there helping with the band. It would not have been okay to be openly gay in Colombia 20 years ago, so that he felt safe to do so is great progress. There were also some gay family members there with their same-sex partner – again, in the past that would have been hidden. Good to see Colombia becoming a more tolerant society.

Wilmer’s cousins are part of the second band: Julian Basto D HIJO – the guy playing the accordion plus some cousins providing support, e.g. setup and takedown, etc. They were very different and a lot of fun – they had lots of people dancing. The first group was to listen to, the second group was to listen and dance to!

December 24th – 31st is party week in Cali. In addition to parties at home, there are all kinds of concerts by big name Latino artists. The clubs are also full and have some wild and fun stuff going on. I don’t go out to anywhere enclosed now, but others did and had a great time!

New Year’s Eve

This was another great time at Wilmer and Islena’s. No bands, but good music, food, and company. Wilmer also gets fireworks every year – here is one box from this year.

[For those concerned about dogs terrified of fireworks, Sanji’s vet told Natalia a trick that worked. She took Sanji in the room and put fireworks on her computer, plenty of volume. Sanji was confused at first, but once he realised Natalia wasn’t fazed, he wasn’t either, and this transferred over to the actual fireworks.]

Dapa

After all the holiday events, we went to Dapa again to enjoy some cooler weather and music. This is El Estación, which has a singer and everyone is invited to sing along. Here’s us!

Dapa is one of the areas we want to check out to potentially live. The climate is cooler and there are great views of mountains and the city. We’re not sure if there’s enough of a community. There are three areas to Dapa: Lower, Middle, and Upper as you go up the mountain. The top Dapa is right in the clouds and is always cold. The restaurant pictured is about mid-Dapa.

Salento

We visited Salento at a good/bad time! We arrived just before their annual feria, and boy was the town crowded. Population is normally ~10,000, but there were countless tourists there. It took us 1.5 hours to get into town, and we were incredibly lucky to find parking as all lots were full. The AirBNB we rented did not have any parking, as it was built before there were cars!

Salento is a tourist hotspot because it is a very pretty town. Here are Natalia and Sanji walking up one of the streets.

The house we stayed in was actually a hostel but they gave us the whole place. It is a wooden house built in 1842! It had two bathrooms inside and one outside, all three-piece. The bathrooms are additions – the original owner probably had an outhouse back in the day. Here we are outside the house:

And here is a video of the interior:

While it was really special to visit Salento, it also enabled us to rule it out as a place to live. It’s too cold and too far from the family and friends in the Cali area. The house had no heat – built in 1842, remember – and it would be impossible to retrofit heating without ruining the house. It happened to be unusually cold while we were there, but even the regular climate is chilly at night.

Salento has a week-long feria that starts on a Sunday. We arrived on Thursday and the town was already packed. The tents you see in the town square are the start of setup for the feria. It was impossible to get a clear video because of the tents and people, but here’s a part of the town square at night.

La Carbonera

We also went on a day trip from Salento to a giant farm called La Carbonera. It is huge – it looked like it included several mountains. It is remarkable for the extremely tall palm trees that grow there – they are the national tree of Colombia.

To get there, you have to take a Jeep Willys. They seat eight uncomfortably in the back and two more plus driver in the front. There is also a guide who stands on the back bumper. The trip is two hours each way, and I still have a bruise on my spine from that Willys. If you zoom in on the tires, they don’t have a lot of tread….

There were several stops, including the first and main one to check out the palm trees and the vista, which A and I are doing here.

Another stop was at a small but beautiful waterfall.

It’s a beautiful (and safe) place, but for visits, not living. We will certainly go again!

Here’s a final, short video of us on the hike. Yes, I am carrying Wilmer’s dog. He was in Cartagena on the beach, so we took care of Copi and Copi doesn’t like to walk. Natalia recorded this video; see if you can guess what Sanji did to make her cut it short.

Until next time!

Cali looks to me to be transforming into a world-class city. Hosting COP16 was a showcase, but there is so much more in the works. The current mayor, Alexander Eder, comes from a wealthy family but nonetheless seems to have a strong sense of duty and a vision for Cali. But he’s not imposing his vision, he’s including many groups and trying to be fair to everyone. It’s remarkable to see in this age.

Cali’s roads are awful – potholes galore, ranging from a few centimetres deep to enough to break an axle if hit at speed. Eder has the funds and plan to repair 700km of roads in Cali, and that also puts a lot of people to work at relatively simple jobs – he does some badly needed roadwork and reduces unemployment. His administration had already reduced unemployment and crime to levels not seen in some time, if ever.

Part of Eder’s vision is to rejuvenate downtown Cali, which hasn’t had much love for 50 years. But if Cali is to be a world-class city, downtown has to be special and safe. Right now it’s packed with all kinds of vendors, many without permits or paying taxes. It’s challenging to get through in a car. It’s not that safe, mainly because of the cars. So they’re going to make several streets pedestrian-only. As usual, businesses are protesting even after shown evidence that revenue goes up once the street is pedestrianised. I no longer believe businessmen have much in the way of vision.

Anyway, it will happen because when surveyed, 70-80% of people felt very unsafe because of cars speeding by, so there’s lots of popular support. Car-free areas open up many more possibilities, too – think all the cafes and restaurants in European cities.

It’s good to see progressive, sensible leadership at work. Eder is using the government to make Cali better. Many politicians in Canada and the US seem to spend all their time demonising government, so it’s refreshing to see.

In addition, I subscribe to the local paper, El País. It’s owned by a rich guy and has been since its founding in 1950. Except for the usual rabid talking heads on the Opinion pages, the paper is remarkably sensible. (Rich people buy media specifically to employ propagandists on the opinion pages. See: Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, or Patrick Soon-Shiong of the LA Times: both have openly suppressed content critical of Trump or themselves, or supportive of Democrats.)

Finally for the update, we bought a car. It’s a Mazda CX-9, which is a large SUV (seats 7). Why, you may well ask, would people who want to support regenerative agriculture, who would prefer not to need or have a car, one of whom presented An Inconvenient Truth many times and who is well aware of climate change, buy a gas guzzler? Basically:

• We would prefer an electric car but have nowhere to plug it in.
• Electric car prices are expected to drop significantly due to advances in battery tech in the next few years.
• We need something reliable and versatile until we know where we’ll be and what kind of car we need – if we do.
• The Mazda was a good price because it’s a gas guzzler. Smaller vehicles were the same price but had 150,000km+. The Mazda has less than 100,000km. It’s a 2011 but it looks near new (if you don’t look too closely).
• We don’t drive that much, so the gas consumption / wastage is not too bad. If we commuted, no way.
• Mazdas are reliable, solid cars. We can drive it for a few years until we know what we need, and then sell it.
• It has already been used to transport up to eight of us at a time!

Bye Bye USA and maybe Canada

The rest of this post has to deal with what has happened in the US election, as this will affect our retirement and much more. If you can’t stand hearing about that any more, I don’t blame you and feel free to skip it. I’ll write a less depressing post about all the Christmas stuff going on here later – there’s lots!

I’ll leave you with this Crazy Christmas video from Colombia – the rest of this one and more are here if you have Instagram. (I no longer do.)

Thanks Americans

Thanks to Trump, the Canadian dollar is sliding fast and we’ve lost thousands of dollars in the last few days. Here’s CAD to COP: the last month:

My pension and Adriana’s pay are now worth substantially less because Trump is threatening tariffs. In reality, if Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs, prices in the US would shoot up. But what’s going on is that Trump is basically a mob boss running a protection racket. Pay up and exemptions will be granted, as long as Trump’s narcissism is not triggered. Co-President Elon Musk has called Trudeau an “insufferable tool.” (Some projection going on there, methinks.)

I wrote the above paragraph a few weeks ago and have delayed publishing this post so I can purge any bitterness from it. Since then, Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada, and that guy doesn’t joke. (Laughing at people with disabilities is not a sense of humour.) Some silly people think he’ll never make Canada the 51st state because we’d almost all vote for the Democratic Party. Obviously that won’t happen. If the US does take Canada, it will be as a territory like Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are US citizens but cannot vote if they live in Puerto Rico – see how that works? We moved the proceeds from the sale of our house into a US Dollar fund.

Trump is a narcissistic psychopath, also known as a Malignant Narcissist. All the people he’s surrounding himself with are also sociopaths of one sort of another. That means they have Dark Triad traits:

• They are pathological liars
• They are capable of caring only about themselves
• There is no honour among thieves, so expect lots of backstabbing
• They are sadistic; they enjoy manipulating and hurting other people
• They do not care at all about climate change, pollution, racism, biodiversity collapse, democracy…
• They have no mercy

Given this, why did Americans vote for him? Lots of people are calling them stupid, and certainly many Americans are dimwits. This is the result of home schooling and demonising education and experts. But the real reason is that most Americans are morally corrupt.

Even stupid or uneducated people would know not to vote for an evil person…except that many Americans are also morally corrupt. They have no wisdom. They are fools. Capitalism’s highest virtue is greed, which also happens to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins for excellent reasons. Americans voted for greed. I have heard more than one American say they voted for Trump even though they know he’s evil, because they believe they had more money in their pocket when he was President. They have been corrupted by greed and are fundamentally selfish individuals.

And now they – and we – are going to find out what it means to elect a Malignant Narcissist. The fools thought, Sure, he’s a Hitler (one man said as much) but they think he’s their Hitler and will take care of them. Trump and his billionaire buddies don’t give a damn about Americans or the USA. They’re sociopaths and their only loyalty is to themselves. They are literally incapable of being loyal to other people or a country. Some of these people are already finding out as the Trump team plans to go after Social Security and Medicare to fund another massive billionaire tax gift.

America = Oligarchy

The US is now an oligarchy. “The chart here shows how much political influence different groups have in America today. Not only do the wealthy have the most influence; ordinary voters have basically none.”

The American oligarchs are going to do what oligarchs all around the world do: loot the country while setting themselves up as the new aristocracy.

Death and disease are coming

In addition to gutting or eliminating all kinds of protective government agencies, it looks like the Yanks may be so insane as to eliminate vaccines. (It’s worth noting that the people eliminating vaccines are themselves vaccinated.) This springs from a belief that was pushed during Covid – that if your immune system is in the ‘right’ condition, you don’t need vaccines. This is so obviously wrong that it’s not surprising Americans are being called morons.

There is a pernicious and very wrong belief that your immune system will protect you from new diseases. When you ask these people what kind of condition your immune system needs to be in, they generally respond that we need to eat more naturally: organic, unprocessed foods, for example. We need fresh air and sunshine, exercise, community, etc.

What these cretins can’t seem to grasp is that there used to be tens of millions of such people living in the Americas who lived exactly like that – and almost all of them died from smallpox and measles. (Maybe they don’t ‘get it’ because most Trumpers are racists and see everyone else as inferior.) 90-95% of all the indigenous people in the Americas died when Europeans brought these diseases. Their immune systems were in far better shape than the Europeans who had just survived a long sea voyage, but it didn’t help them. Now a Trump government is talking about eliminating vaccines, including for polio. Enjoy death, disease, and travel restrictions, Americanos – you’re headed back to Victorian times, when many, many children died of preventable diseases.

Native Americans looked this this, pre-contact with Europeans. Slim, muscular, shiny and healthy hair, lived into their seventies, etc. Being in great shape and living in harmony with nature did not prevent measles and smallpox from killing almost all of them.

Idiocracy Incoming

The long and the short:

• Idiocracy is where the stupid are the majority and rule.
• The US is an oligarchy and will be looted.
• Canada may also be looted by the American oligarchs drooling over privatising our healthcare, or Poilievre’s Conservatives. That guy also displays many Dark Triad traits and he doesn’t care about Canada.
• Many people will be deported. One man had been in the US for 20 years but not documented. He has a wife and four children, a house, etc. His wife voted for Trump and he supported that. Now he’s gone from the US. Lost his family, his house, everything. The Trump administration response: If the rest of the family wants to leave too, good riddance. (The rest of the family is legal.) Some people voted for Trump thinking other people would be deported, not them.
• People who are gay or trans are in deep trouble. Almost certainly gay marriage will be outlawed again and no doubt Trumper thugs will terrorise anyone ‘different.’
• There will be lots of this: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
• Women’s ‘rights’ are being erased. Already in several states there are no abortion options even for victims of incest and rape. That means if your wife gets raped and pregnant, you and she will be raising the rapist’s baby. 64,000 Pregnancies Caused by Rape Have Occurred in States with a Total Abortion Ban.

How Low Could Things Go?

Trump asked repeatedly about using nuclear weapons in his first term. Most people refuse to understand what a sociopath is. Trump would nuke a US city if he felt like it, maybe to send a message that protest will be punished, maybe for kicks. (Reminder: sociopaths have no conscience and are cruel – they enjoy hurting others.)

We are back to the days when the US will overthrow any government that is not sufficiently ‘friendly’ to US corporations, i.e. US oligarchs. Again, here’s Musk talking about overthrowing the Bolivian government so he can get Bolivia’s lithium:

Elon Musk: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.“

Would they do the same to Canada? Of course, though Finlandization is more likely: “the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former’s foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system.” This has already started.

Conclusions – Random Thoughts

I ain’t travelling to the USA any time soon, maybe ever again. I will book travel to avoid the US if at all possible.

The US will decline as the looting commences. Smart and decent people are already leaving. Tariffs will increase prices for average people. There will be lots of bankruptcies, which means great deals for rich people to snap up properties and businesses.

American allies will stop sharing intelligence with the US. Europe is realising that the Americans are not trustworthy partners in NATO, trade, climate change deals, or anything else. The US gave security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons in 1994. Nobody will trust such ‘guarantees’ ever again. Europe is rearming as a result. More countries will seek nuclear weapons as it’s the only known way to keep the big powers of Russia, China, and the USA from invading.

The US standard of living will decline. It is already significantly lower than Canada or Europe, but it will get much worse. The purpose of any conservative political party is to funnel money from the public to rich people.

Some climate change tipping points have already been passed, The Americans will make sure many more are, which means mass migrations, trillions of dollars lost, entire areas abandoned. Miami, for example, is toast. And where will the millions who live in Miami go once they’ve lost their homes and have no money?

Tough times are ahead. When I used to give the An Inconvenient Truth presentation in 2004, I said that on our current course I expected major social collapse by 2030. That looks ever more likely now, sadly. I really wanted to be wrong on that one.

Most Trumpers will never admit that they were wrong. How do I know? That’s what Germans did post-Nazism. They could not look in the mirror and admit they had done something so horrific. Americans will do the same.

It is very possible that the US will not recover from this. Trump and many of his cronies are Russian tools and Putin is actively attempting to destroy the US as a world power. Trump will sell US secrets to whoever wants them – he has already done so, getting many agents murdered. Trump himself is quite stupid, but the people waiting for him to die – JD Vance and crew – are smarter and utterly ruthless.

Bye bye Miss American Pie. I hope you don’t take the rest of us with you.

Here are some comparisons based our 6 Cs. They don’t include health care but should. Canada’s health care system is in trouble. Adriana lost her doctor years ago and there are simply not enough. The government is attempting to revise the health care system in Colombia, but we’ve found it good in its current state, too. Back to the 6 Cs:

1. Climate

Pleasant year-round and likely to remain so. 

Climate is getting hard to predict because it is, well, changing. Worse, it’s changing much faster than the majority of climate scientists predicted. Wildfires, floods, hurricanes, rising seas. Not enough rain in some areas and too much in others. Rain at the wrong time. Diseases of all kinds spreading, from malaria (kills 2.7 million per year, mostly children) to Covid (~2.2 million per year). Crop failures. Etc. All that stuff that Al Gore said would happen in the Inconvenient Truth is now happening.

When it comes to our changing climate, ultimately no place is safe. Victoria and Vancouver Island were thought to be stable, but BC now has a ‘smoke season,’ and that smoke is very toxic. There was a deadly heat dome a couple of years ago. There were floods that washed out every highway connecting BC to Canada. Presumably all that will get worse as time goes by.

I noticed that Costa Rica was starting to get hit, too, though apparently the El Niño on top made things worse last year. It was 1-2C hotter all across Costa Rica last year, in a place that is already hot. They are also having water problems – lots of building happening but not enough water for everyone. Regular outages to save water were becoming common in some areas. And wildfires were becoming more common and larger.

The areas we’re checking out in Colombia do not have these problems. The climate has been disrupted. People who have lived here for decades comment on it – it’s a bit hotter, the rains have changed and are now sometimes very heavy. So far, though, nothing like the changes experienced in BC. Scientists have said that northern latitudes will warm more quickly, and therefore change more quickly.

The Coffee Axis is not subject to hurricanes or tornadoes. It gets plenty of rain so everything has evolved to handle it. Same as everywhere, temperatures and temperature extremes are increasing, but the change is much less here than in Canada. Wildfires are a growing problem, but not the areas we’re looking.

The climate in the Coffee Axis is typically high teens at night, high twenties in the day, plus or minus. (Some parts are much cooler and have cloud forests, but we’re not going there.) That sounds pretty good to us.

On Climate, the areas we’re lookng in Colombia have a year-round comfortable climate that is unlikely to change significantly in the near and medium terms, e.g. during Brian and Adriana’s lifetimes and we hope during our children’s lives.

2. Crime

Reasonably safe and likely to remain so.

Colombia is obviously more dangerous than Canada, though to be fair, most of the danger is to certain people in certain neighbourhoods who are involved in crime. And, to be realistic, crime rates here are lower than many US cities where we feel perfectly safe. As you can see from the table below, Cali has 35 times the murder rate of Victoria…but that is still less than New Orleans.

{Looking at the table, you may wonder why Trump and the Republicans go on about the violence in ‘Democrat cities.’ They’re lying. I looked at other cities and actually cities in Republican areas are more violent.]

We are looking at places in the Coffee Axis. This area has historically been the safest in Colombia and apparently continues to be so. At the top end of the Coffee Axis is Medellin, a top-ten retirement destination for many years now, partly because it’s safe for a big city – safer than many US cities. The smaller cities that we’re looking near are even safer. More on them in future posts!

3. Cost

We can afford property and housing, and to create a business.

I’ve discussed this in other posts – it’s the main reason we’re retiring outside Canada. Costs of most things in Colombia are significantly less, including the most expensive necessities like housing and food. You can rent a very nice three-bedroom apartment in a Strata 6 barrio in Cali for under $1000 CAD per month. You can rent a perfectly decent one in a safe Strata 4 neighbourhood for half that: $500.

Of course, we want to buy a country property suitable for a retreat and also something in a walkable community, close to healthcare, etc. (We’re not getting any younger.) We spent years looking in or near Victoria and halfway up Vancouver Island looking for a family/retreat property, and there was simply nothing we could afford.

Land prices vary widely in Colombia, but we have found places in the Coffee Axis that we can afford, for example 5 hectares with a small but nice house for COP 540,000,000 (CAD $186,000). There’s a much larger ~18 hectare farm with house for COP 380M (CAD $131,000). Price per square metre seems to vary with how close to town the place is.

Prices in the Coffee Axis cities and towns can be quite reasonable, too. They can also be quite pricey, but there are very nice apartments and houses for far less than are available in BC! Here are some examples:

• Modest 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house, 160m2 (1700 square feet), asking COP 140M ($48,000 CAD)
• Up/down duplex with a total of 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, 159m2 each (1700ft2), asking COP 290M ($99,600 CAD)
• Most expensive home for sale in Armenia: Luxury 10 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 1500m2 (16,000ft2!) asking COP 7.5B ($2.600,000 CAD)
• Very average 3-BR/1-BA condo, 62m2 (667ft2). Asking COP 110M ($38,000 CAD)
• Nice 3-BR/2-BA condo with some views, 116m2 (1250ft2). Asking COP 300M ($103,000 CAD)
• Most expensive condo in Armenia: Views, 4BR/5BA, 305m2 (3300ft2). Asking COP 2.65B ($911,000 CAD)

For comparison, condos in Victoria start around $400,ooo for a shoebox. Modest houses sell for close to $1 million.

4. Community

There is an existing, like-minded community that we can join and help. Like-minded means tolerant of all but the intolerant.

This is a big gap. We have some family in Colombia. In Victoria we had family and friends close by. We would have to rebuild a community from scratch, and that is no small thing. It’s not normally something you want to do at our age, when you already had a great community.

5. Contribution

We can create a business that supports everyone and contributes to making the world better in the way we want.

The retreat was the original plan, but with Navide not interested we’re refining how that would look. Because Colombia is a developing country, there are many opportunities.

6. Close as possible to family

This is a tough one. Family in Victoria is a long way away. Family here would be a five-hour drive away if we end up in Manizales. Navide are in Switzerland. We’re definitely up in the air on this category.

7. City nearby

Similar in size (350,000) and character as Victoria was when Adriana and Natalia arrived would be nice, and must also have progressive institutions like a university or seat of government  – they bring progressive culture and good food and walkable. Big business will not do that. Cali is too big for us.

8. COVID, Pandemics, Wars, Oh My

Covid is going to be with us until someone develops a permanent vaccine or one that can block transmission. Nasal sprays that stop you from even getting Covid if you inhale the virus are currently being tested. Because Covid got into the animal population, we will never eradicate it. And sadly some people cannot get vaccinated due to reactions, infirmities, simply too young, or they’ve been brainwashed by the anti-vaxxers.

I (Brian) don’t really want Covid again. It gives you respiratory symptoms but “It seems most likely that it is what we call a vascular and neurologic infection, affecting both nerve endings and our cardiovascular system.” And Long Covid is no joke and can lead to permanent disability. What that CDC article does not mention is that the odds are roughly 1 in 10 of getting Long Covid each time you get Covid. So, I really don’t want to get it again. Covid roulette is not a fun game.

It’s much easier to avoid Covid and all airborne diseases in a place with a pleasant year-round climate. Most restaurants have patios, for example, which are often more pleasant than the air-conditioned dining room anyway. Malls tend to be very open, meaning lots of ventilation. Everywhere else you can take your chances or slap on a mask. There will be more pandemics before my time on this Earth is through, assuming I last another 20 years.

There are other things that could again disrupt world trade and tourism, like another pandemic or Covid getting more lethal, trade or military wars, and so on. For all these and other reasons, we want a property where we can have some space and grow some food, and probably run some trainings or retreats one day. Things grow in the tropics year-round, things like avocados, mangos, papaya, corn, coffee, and so on.

Links to sources:

Homicide rate per country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Homicide rate for Cali: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate

Homicide rate for Victoria: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=3510007101

Homicide rate for NYC and Atlanta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#:~:text=As%20of%202023%2C%20New%20York,violent%20cities%20such%20as%20St.

Homicide rate for Medellin: https://www.medellinadvisors.com/crime-in-medellin-data-update-2023-mid-year/#:~:text=Homicides%20are%20a%20crime%20of,per%20100%2C000%20inhabitants%20in%20Medell%C3%ADn.

Biodiversity is actually considered a bigger deal than climate change. The changing climate causes biodiversity loss, and so do deforestation, pesticides used in farming, etc. Humans are causing the sixth great extinction while thinking we’ll live through it. This conference is a big deal and has not been captured by powerful interests the way the COP – Climate Change conferences have.

Back to more positive news!

All levels of government have cooperated to make sure everything goes smoothly, and so far it has gone brilliantly. There is a Blue Zone where the negotiations take place, and Cali decided to create a huge Green Zone for regular people. It’s a first for COPs and I’m sure will become a feature given its success here. I visited one area where there where dozens of vendors from all over the department [i.e. province or state] had booths to show their wares. That was Tuesday daytime and it was busy. Then Adriana and I went to a different area (Bulevar del Rio) on Saturday and my god it was packed. The video below is from a less-crowded area.

Every year for Christmas, the Bulevar del Rio gets decorated with lights, music, and displays, and there are many street vendors selling everything from food to bracelets. It gets really packed as Caleños come out and walk up and down the boulevards that flank the river. COP16 – Biodiversity was. more crowded than that. It was crazy. We did not take Sanji and thank goodness we did not. We would have had to carry him. Some areas we shuffled through, shoulder-to-shoulder with masses of other people.

Here’s a video of the Bulevar del Rio. You can see vendors have booths here, including Meta trying to look green. The river is behind the vendor booths, and there are more on the other side of the river as the Bulevar goes on both sides. Check out the shrubs and vents in the middle: the road for cars is underneath.

Talk about successful! The vendors in the area are ecstatic, Hotels are at 100%. (One important thing the governments did was talk to the major hotels and ensure they would charge their normal rates – no price gouging.) 12-15,000 conference-related people were expected and it is estimated 23,000 are actually here. The hotels are full, but Cali has… Romance Hotels that are normally booked for fours hours. Those are now being used for UN delegates.

Nobody seems to be complaining:

“We are enjoying ourselves here, it’s a nice hotel,” he said, with colleagues commenting that the rooms are “more comfortable” than many traditional hotels.

You could easily spend days wandering the exhibits, public lectures and forums, vendors, and entertainment, and it appears many Caleños are doing that. As far as we could tell, the masses of people wandering around were locals. Pretty amazing support from the people of Cali. If I were an organiser of eco-conferences, Cali would now be on my map.

The other reason for Cali to host the COP – Biodiversity is because Cali is very biodiverse, among the most in the world. Many people are hoping this will lead to an increase in tourism as people realise that Colombia is much safer now and has a lot to offer in terms of culture and climate. We are hoping it doesn’t cause an immediate influx of foreigners buying property, at least until we have ours!

That’s all until next time….

And the Sanji fix:

(That’s us with curious foal who was born earlier that day.)

We were in Canada but returned ahead of schedule due to family issues in Colombia. We spent a week with Brian’s mother and a week in Victoria seeing the grandkids, then rushed back. We were supposed to spend a second week in Victoria and had grand plans to see all our friends, but…life intervened.

Back in Colombia, we decided to get looking at lots in the Eje Cafetero, or Coffee Axis (region). This area of Colombia has a similar climate to the inland areas of Costa Rica, like Grecia, or Victoria in the summer. It includes the cities of Armenia, Pereira, and Manizales, plus many smaller places. It is the safest area of Colombia, and generally has been problem-free that way.

Navide and I checked out a several lots last weekend and then Adriana and I returned this weekend to look at one in particular. It was perfect for the planned retreat: 6 hectares of land that mostly gently slopes down to a river. It has four springs, so is independent of water. Across the river is a forest reserve, so permanently peaceful. Price is fair. It has an existing simple house. It is currently rented out to curious and friendly cows, and there are friendly neighbourhood dogs.

And then…Navide had a rethink. They wanted a retreat in Costa Rica, not Colombia, and may return to Switzerland – they are not sure yet. That land, perfect as it may be, is simply too big a project for Gordanza to take on given that Adriana is still working full-time at a demanding job and the retreat was never Brian’s dream. So, with some tears, we passed on the lot.

We’re back to the drawing board. Brian and Adriana will continue exploring the Coffee Area. Land is going up in price in some areas of Colombia, too, and our nest egg is not getting any bigger, so we can’t dilly-dally. The lot mentioned above was less than most lots, and in fact I have not been able to find a lower-priced lot of any size.

The search continues but with one change: We are looking now only for Gordanza, not a family property. We tried for years to find one on Vancouver Island, but everything was so expensive. With both sides of the family now far away and not interested, we have the freedom to think only about ourselves.

I have another post half-done that covers security in Colombia, so I won’t go into depth here, It is, in fact, pretty safe here depending where you live. Medellin has been a top ex-pat retirement destination for many years, for example. The Coffee Area is safer than many areas of the USA. There have been mass protests here but unlike the protests in Canada and the USA, the Colombian protests were peaceful and not an attempt to overthrow the elected government.

We are even considering a return to Canada, though I’m not sure how that could even be possible – it’s too expensive. Also, Canada is a declining nation while Colombia is a developing nation. Examples of Canada’s decline:

• Health care crisis. A lost her doctor and will never have another one, as there’s a huge shortage. Emergency Room wait times are very long even for serious problems like heart attacks. Emergency rooms are frequently closed. Most provincial governments in Canada are actively making it worse, and it sure looks to me like the plan is to privatise big chunks of Canadian health care a la the USA’s awful system. Pretending COVID is a cold is not helping.
• Housing crisis. The easy and obvious solution is to go back to building social and co-op housing, but federal and provincial Canadian governments have been captured by the rich and their corporations, so instead ‘the market’ is supposed to magically provide. The market is building million-dollar shoebox condos and jacking up rents. At the same time, the Liberal’s immigration plan is aiming to create a population of 100 million by 2100 (triple the current level), while the Conservatives are aiming for 70 million or so (double). This will obviously drive house prices up.
• Opioid crisis. The self-proclaimed left-wing party in power in BC has made this and every other problem in BC worse. If a conservative party gets back in power, it will be even worse because they’ll cut, cut, cut.
• Rise of right-wing extremism. They came damn close to overthrowing a democratically elected government in the USA and they’re still trying. The Canadian division, supported by the leader of the federal Conservatives, is eager to do the same in Canada. These are sadistic fools who won’t wear a mask to protect themselves or others. They won’t vaccinate their children against Covid and are now starting to be against all vaccines. Their stupidity and selfishness puts everyone at risk, but Canadian governments pander to them.
• My parents bought a house in Toronto in the early 1960s for $30,000. My father had just started his first job and my mother had been teaching a couple of years – pre-union days. Today that same house is ‘worth’ more than $2,000,000. As all Canadians know, this has happened across the country. We all tend to think ‘it is what it is,’ but in reality the massive increase in housing costs in Canada represents an equally large decrease in standard of living. Our house in Canada had a mortgage that consumed one entire paycheque of Brian’s each month, not counting insurance, utilities, maintenance, etc.

Next post will cover the city of Armenia in the Coffee Area – hopefully a little brighter outlook! For the Sanji fans, here he was when small and in Costa Rica. If Navide return to Switzerland, Sanji will go, too.

Cali

We were just settling into our apartment and Cali…and it was time for our trip to Canada and Florida. We were really enjoying the walkability of our place – everything from groceries to a major shopping mall are within a safe twenty-minute walk. If we lived here, it’s debatable whether we’d need a car. Family is a bit far to walk, though, but still close by car at less than 15 minutes away.

We were walking a few days each week in the park that runs for several blocks beside our building, ending in the duck pond I mentioned in the prior post. I was, believe it or not, using the open-air gym in the complex three days per week. Adriana found a Pilates class she wanted to sign up for. And we discovered that there are otters here!

On our second last weekend, we did some in-depth exploring of San Antonio, a barrio (neighbourhood) in Cali. It is slightly higher so slightly cooler. The big attraction is that it is the only neighbourhood deemed Patrimonio, meaning heritage, meaning there are many attractive older buildings. We looked at four attached houses, asking prices COP ~1,000,000,000 to 1,600,000,000 (CAD $334-534K). The one in this video is an older building with tons of character – there are indoor courtyards full of plants. It was attached to three other houses like it.

The real estate agent loves the area and insisted on taking us through some local places that showed the character of the area. The 30-second video below is of Casa Alebrije. The same owner also owns the very beautiful Antigua Contemporanea Cafe across the street.

On our last weekend we went exploring near Dapa with Navide. We didn’t find ‘the’ property, but we did learn more about where we want to be. It was pouring that day and at one point we were starving, so we stopped at what is best described as a roadside dive.

Canada

But…we were also dying to see the grandchildren while they were off for summer vacation! We were also missing other family and friends, and this looked like the last chance to return that we’ll have for awhile, so here we are.

We spent a week in Ontario with Brian’s mom – A was working, Brian did some cooking in order to freeze leftovers. The weather was up and down: one day sunny and hot, the next cool and rainy. Brian’s mother took us out to David’s restaurant in Port Dover, which has a nice view over the lake.

Off to Victoria!

We flew Toronto > Calgary > Victoria. The first flight was delayed twice, the second one cancelled and we were rebooked on a much later flight. Not impressed with WestJet….. Our AirBNB was not available for the first night so we stayed with Julie and then spent Saturday with her.

Sunday was beach day with the grandkids! Here are Julie and Hattie being paddled around by Hal:

And Abuela helping build sandcastles:

We’ve only been here the weekend so far. Still to come: visiting with friends and more time with Julie and the grandkids!

For the Sanji addicts, here are photos and a video! You can see some of our apartment in the video.

And when he was very young.

We’re going to use Cali as our base to explore regions of Colombia suitable for living and the retreat.

Colombia is moving up the world rankings of places to visit, and is now #50. That’s up 6 from last year. Colombia ranks very high globally on competitive pricing (#8), natural resources (#10), and cultural resources (#16). Security and tourist infrastructure are the main things holding Colombia back from going up in the ranking.

The United Nations COP16 Biodiversity conference is being held in Cali in October, and that is getting lots of attention from the government here. Colombia is the most biodiverse country in the world per square kilometre!

The bigger events include, in chronological order:

Navide in Medellin

Natalia and Davide spent a bit over a week checking out Medellin and the nearby town of San Rafael for suitability for the retreat. Their thinking going in was that Medellin is already a popular tourist destination, so there are lots of flights from faraway places each day. While they really enjoyed their time, they ultimately concluded that it would not be the greatest area for a retreat.

For one thing, there are already a lot of them! The area seems saturated. It’s also getting more expensive as more foreigners retire and vacation there. And some of the downtown areas seem full of drunken partygoers on weekends….

The mayor recently shut down all AirBNBs in the city to try and combat the child sexual exploitation that Medellin is unfortunately developing a name for.

Elvia, Gordanza, and Navide in Sevilla

The five of us went to Sevilla for a four-day weekend and had a wonderful time hosted by Adriana’s cousin Luz Adriana and her fiancé Gustavo. He owns the Sol Naciente Cafe and Bar just away from the main town square. It’s doing a great business, and it’s amazing to see how many people he and Luz Adriana know. Sitting outside at the cafe, pretty much every car driver, bike rider, and pedestrian stopped to say hello to one or both of them.

Gustavo is big on local, so the coffee in the picture is grown, roasted, and obviously sold locally. Having tried some of them, I have to agree that the local coffee we tried tastes better than the big brands.

Sevilla is called the balcony of the Valle (Valley) de Cauca, because it has beautiful valley vistas.

Check out the views from the mirador in Sevilla. Everywhere we went it was like that. As we left Cali and started to rise in the mountains, we could clearly see the Valle de Cauca.

Because Sevilla is in the mountains, the temperatures are milder – high twenties in the day, you will want a light jacket at night. Pretty nice, really.

The next video below the group photo (I can resize the photos but not the videos in WordPress, so please scroll down….) is of Cafe Casablanca on the main town square.

If you look closely, behind the bar you will see racks of LPs, even some 45s and 78s, I believe. Cafe Casablanca is famous for tango, and if they cannot find your tango request on electronic media, they pull out the actual disc. [Sadly, more and more old songs and movies are disappearing as their owners don’t want to pay to host electronic versions and there are no hard copies.]

We polished off a few bottles of aguadiente there one night while singing along to old tango.

Dapa

Dapa is a nice little town near Cali where we visited a hilltop restaurant that had a singer. It’s just one example of countless places like this in or near Cali. See the video below – watch to the end to see Gordanza dancing!

Gordanza’s apto

Brian and Adriana moved into the place we’ll stay while exploring the area. It’s a 3-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a five-storey building, in a complex of four similar buildings called Jardin de Pance 1. (Garden of Pance, which is an area of Cali.) We re-bought much of what we practically gave away in Canada at yard sales, from furniture to kitchen stuff. If you want to see what it looks like, you have to come and visit.

We decided to splurge on having some biweekly to clean. Houseworkers here expect to be paid for a day’s work, not by the hour, so you can’t really get some to come for a few hours. As a result, there is lots to do. Some houseworkers also cook meals, walk the dog, and so on to fill the day. For a cost of COP 90,000 – 150,000 (CAD $32 – 53) this houseworker will spend the day cooking, cleaning, and generally helping out around the house. Well worth it.

We’re really happy with our apartment. There’s a blocks-long park just behind which is great for walks. Keep going a bit further and there are a pond and stream – and birds galore. You can see the trees below are full of white birds. The trees are on an island in the pond.

The apartment is also within walking distance of the main attractions. There’s a large shopping mall about 20 minutes walk away. Same for grocery stores, a number of restaurants, our dentist….

Speaking of the dentist, I (Brian) had to have root scaling. I have had some painful experiences at the dentist in the past. Very painful. I sit in the dentist’s chair and start sweating instantly. It’s a conditioned reaction at this point. So, the thought of root scaling was extremely, very, is-there-any-other-possible-way unappealing.

But, it had to be done, so I got it done. I’d tell you all about it, but I don’t remember a thing. I opted for the ‘conscious sedation’ which I had many years ago when I had some lipomas (harmless fatty globules) cut out of my arms. I watched the doctor do it, and felt no pain. I thought this time would be like that but worse, because it’s my mouth and teeth and the root thereof. Don’t worry, no before and after photos.

The sedation cost an additional COP 1,250,000,000 (CAD $439) and was worth every penny. I experienced nothing, which under the circumstances could only be good. I have no recollection of the procedure, nor of my mother-in-law and the dental clinic owner giving me a ride home. I am writing this the following day and there’s almost no pain. I can’t eat solids until things heal, but no pain. That’s remarkable. If you need a good dentist or periodontist, let me know….

Navide in Cartagena

Islena asked Natalia and Davide if they’d create some Instagrams and TikToks and whatnot to showcase the apartments she rents in Cartagena. They created an Instagram page and some of the videos also show Cartagena and the beach. Sanji is also featured, of course.

Next Steps

Gordanza are settling into the new apartment. Adriana is still working long hours, so the plan is still to use weekends to explore more local areas like we did with Sevilla and Dapa. Close by are San Antonio, Santa Rita, and Santa Teresita (do you think Catholics settled this region?), which are on the outer edges of (Santiago de) Cali. These areas are the sorts of places we’re more likely to have our house.

Further afield we want to check out Armenia, the closest coffee region city to Cali. Sevilla is before Armenia but is a town. Armenia is a three-hour drive from Cali, so it would be some place we’d look at for retreat potential. Adriana wants to look at the Santander region, too. Finlandia, Salento, Pijao (South America’s first designated “slow town”), etc.

Despite this, we’ve definitely narrowed things down! We’re focused on areas in Colombia with moderate temperatures and scenic views. Obviously it has to be safe and accessible. A sense of community like we saw a hint of in Sevilla. The coffee region seems to meet this ‘on paper,’ but we need to see it, feel it.

Gordanza coming to Canada and Florida

Brian and Adriana will be there for the month of July, more or less. First stop: Ontario to visit Brian’s mother, then Victoria to see sister, kids, grandkids, and friends, and finally Florida to help care for the nephews so Dinar and Jenifer can take a break! [Trying to persuade the grandkids to come visit us in Colombia when Julie visits. ;-)]

Here’s your parting Sanji: filthy and happy on the beach in Cartagena.