Bogota (Colombia) - enterprise culture

After a few weeks wandering the streets of Bogota, you realise that enterprise culture is alive and well in this city, helped by a lack of overly-stringent rules and regulations.

Perhaps the most marked example is when you take a local bus journey (cramped, little mini-buses with drivers who handle the fares and their mobiles, whilst navigating the crazy streets) and are confronted by a myriad of entrepreneurs - a half dozen per trip. First they board, find a good place to stand and then they start their pitch: selling pens, books, sweets, tissues, cakes, bread and just about anything else. A common trick is to hand out a sample of product - to try or just to hold - and then to return to make the sale. Another is to offer no price, but rather ask for whatever you think is right. Both are pretty clever strategies when you think about it.

Everpresent in the streets are vendors selling all the day's necessities from their laps, pockets and bags. It is not uncommon to see someone stroll up and have a coffee (from a large thermos flask), make a mobile call, buy and smoke one cigarette and finish off with a couple of sweets. These stalls are even present on random, residential walls in the poshest of suburbs. I would love to try setting one up in Hampstead or Point Piper and see what happens. The thing is, they are bloody useful and do no harm at all.

Further evidence in my case was provided when, on a first date with a local, she described herself quite passionately as a 'capitalista'. She has grown up in a very working-class suburb, now has her own little jewellery stall and works 12 hours a day, six days a week. Impressive stuff.

Finally, you would be hard pushed to find a fan of Hugo Chavez in Colombia. He is universally hated and especially so when he popped over the Russia to buy a stack of medium range missiles. Go Hugo.

(Dedicated to Adam Meltz, capitalist extraordinaire and one of only three readers of this blog)

Villavicencio (Colombia) - long weekend

Unlike Sydney, where people escape to the mountains to cool down for a long weekend, in Bogota the populace seek to drop a few thousand feet to warm up. So off to Villavicencio for the long weekend I went with my pals; a short bus trip of two hours (though getting back took more like six).

Classic bank-holiday activities were undertook and much enjoyed: a trip to the outdoor pool with water slides, dancing the night away in cheesy discoteques, strolls around the park, watching the footie in a bar (Colombia 2, Chile 4) and, erm, riding a mechanical bull.

More unorthodox and the highlight of the trip was a visit to the local cowboy fair: 'El Coleo'. The centrepiece of this gathering is a bizarre spectator sport certainly not for animal lovers and definitely not for cow lovers. First, a non-suspecting white bull with a long tail is sent running down a 300m long sand pit, to the cheers from thousands watching from the grandstands either side. Then two horse-mounted cowboys chase the poor thing, with the aim of grabbing it by the tail and flipping it on its back. Points are awarded for how quickly you down the beast and the style in which you do so. Very, very odd. Needless to say, beer, music, bbq'd meat, dancing and promo girls (woah) were in plentiful supply and the whole event was hilarious.

Bogota (Colombia) - working 9-5 or not

It's been three weeks now working in this gigantic city (which I really must write about one day) and it is amazing what you can do by just speaking the language of your birth. People are crying out here for Engish classes, although unfortunately a network of good, bad and damnright ugly outfits take the lion share of the work.

Fees for classes range from 80,000 pesos an hour ($40) per person to almost nothing, depending on the set-up. Either way, the teacher usually gets only a small percentage of this fee. I am happy with the $10 an hour my main college offers, but one place tried to lure me into working full-time for just $100 a week teaching large groups. God knows how much they must make out of that. Needless to say, I am actively looking for private students to cut out the middleman (disintermediation I believe) with a shabby marketing plan of classified ads, posters on lamp-posts and good old word-of-mouth.

My line of work largely comprises visiting people in their luxury appartments, being greeted by an army of maids, drivers, security guards and cleaners, then chatting to them for a few hours. I make up a few exercises and print a few stories from the web to liven things up. But it really is a mug's game and a great way for me to drag out this journey into 2010.