I went to Barranquilla (North) Colombia for two weeks to visit Jamie's agency, which is one of the best in South America if not the world in my opinion. (
http://www.latin-wife.com) On the agency's website the byline reads "The American Man's Alternative to American Women", and indeed, during my stay, not even I expected the men I saw. A doctor from Canada. A software engineer from California. A journalist from Texas. None were fat, the journalist was old, the software engineer from California was the best looking I saw.
The airpline trip over and back sucked the most. I am tall (6'6") and was not able to sleep at all in the airline seats, despite bringing ear plugs, a visor and travel pillow. When I arrived in Bogota to connect to Barranquilla I met a nice older Colombian man who was married to a Colombian woman. Since I was rather nervous they helped me get to where I needed at the airport and were very nice. On the way back I chatted with a loud obnoxious American Woman in her 40s-50s from New York who was divorced to a Colombiano. Getting through security in Bogota on the way back was also a pain in the ass (2.5-3 hours).
Prior to visiting the agency I selected 5 girls and chatted with them (1 did not reply at all, 1 was not interested, the others replied). Of those I selected the most sincere, intelligent & good looking girl who also spoke some English.
I had a translator the first 3 days. She picked me up at the airport and helped to adjust to Barranquilla, select restaurants, etc. The only problem with the Hotel for the agency (which I stayed at) is that it is 20-30 mins from Barranquilla at the beach, which created a problem one night when I was going to the hotel late and the cab was stopped by Colombia MP. I kept a photocopy of my passport with me at all times so was not a problem.
My fiancée is nice, has a good personality, cute, and smart. Her family made me lunch one day (Colombian food) and my fiancée also cooked me lunch on the last day, was very good, patagonias, fried chicken, rice, juice, salad etc. Her aunt and cousin were there during the trip. She lives with and is close to her family. We ate out many times at nice restaurants at the malls, and around the city. Colombian food tastes good but is not too healthy (fatty, big portions, greasy, fried foods). Some parts of Barranquilla looked very nice and modern (such as the malls, some suburbs & condos, some buildings and projects, lots of nice cars on the roads) some looked very run down; shanty towns; no windows; limited A/C; clothes out on clothes lines; etc. The malls are comparable to U.S. malls and were built recently. The house where I stayed was very nice; had DirecTV (English with Spanish subtitles TV, most major channels including several HBO) a nice pool; great house manager; A/C in my room; private / public bath; washer/dryer; kitchen; etc. I had a translator (Maria) who helped me for the first few days. She was funny and very helpful, showing me what to buy in stores, what ATMs to use, how to be safe, which restaurants are good, how to be safe etc. Some things we did were go dancing at 2 different clubs, go to Barranquilla Zoo (nice zoo, some animals from South America / Colombia), the Caribbean Museum (very nice, lots of features and stuff from Colombia and the Caribbean), Santa Marta beach (fairly crowded, lots of sellers, but nice) , Barranquilla beach, the mall, saw a movie, and restaurants. I understood more Spanish and was able to have some conversations in Spanish although my Spanish is still not fluent.
Also, the women from Barranquilla are very attractive and have good attitudes. When I got back to the states, much like Jtest said, it felt different (mind you I'm living in South Texas). The TV was on in the airport on CNN (when I got back) was reporting "the new feminism....wives cheating on their husbands" I kid you not. also seeing chicks with attitudes, chicks with tattoos and attitudes (didn't see many tats in Colombia), nasty fat chicks in the airport. Now I feel like I truly don't care about the AW.
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