On the Road to Find Out

For the past week I’ve been furiously trying to organise a party in Bogotá to celebrate the launch of the Sounds and Colours Colombia book. Finally everything has been confirmed and the line-up is looking pretty damn good.

There will be live music from both Andrés Gualdrón Y Los Animales Blancos (experimental pop) and Carmin Duo (folkloric sounds from the Caribbean coast), as well as La Blanquita Farm DJing what he calls “exquisite tropical tunes” all night. In addition, I’ll obviously be seeling a few copies of the Colombia book. I think it should be an interesting one.

If anyone reading this happens to be in Bogotá on Saturday 23rd March they should definitely come along. You can find more details on the Facebook event here: facebook.com/events/576888175662428

“We took them down. All the leaders, all their families. We took them down. Now, there’s just one leader left. We know where he is. He’s in the West now in the mountains. We assassinated his family, one by one we took them all down. He has no-one now. That’s why he’s trying to arrange a peace deal… But, I’m tired of helping other countries. I don’t know why we have to stick our nose in, solve other countries problems. It was the same in Afghanistan. They’re crazy there. There was this one guy, he had two RPGs, AK-47s, assault rifles. We took him down. Our entire unit swarmed in, assassinated 15 or 16 of them. They didn’t stand a chance. If you’re gonna pull that kind of shit on us then we’re gonna take you down… But, I don’t like America. I don’t want to go back there, it’s grimy. The people are grimy. When I retire maybe I’m gonna come and live in Colombia.”

Small talk with US army members can be a little intense.

This is the story of a plane crash that happened in Bogota, Colombia this Monday just gone. The plane was 80 metres from the ground, attempting to land during an electrical storm, when it got struck by lightning, split in half, later breaking again into three parts, yet managed to stay on the runway. There was only one casualty, a 68-year old, Amar Fernandez de Barreto, who had a heart attack as he was being taken to hospital. 119 people were taken to hospital but not one with a serious injury. This is the description of the landing from one of the newspapers:

The aircraft skidded on its belly with its fuselage fracturing, its landing gear and at least one engine ripping off after attempting to land in a severe thunderstorm.

And this is a quote from one of the passengers of the incident:

“The pilot informed us we were going to land in San Andres, we buckled our seat belts, settled in – and a second later, boom! A big bang. When my wife and I stood and looked behind us the back of the plane was missing.”

This is a picture of the plane following the crash:

The pilot has been deemed something of a hero for this, managing to keep the plane steady and on the right track despite the electrical storm, the supposedly high winds, the lightning strike and the fact that the plane was in three pieces on the runway. It’s the kind of plane crash you wouldn’t mind being involved in. It would definitely make a good story for the grandkids!

More from this story can be read at Mercopress here.