Oct 16, 2009
San Gil, Colombia
Elevation 1100m
The market here at San Gil is the first market that I have been to in Colombia that is of interest. The markets in Cartagena were difficult and challenging and not in a good way. It has taken me a while to finally get to another town and start to move through Colombia, but that is another story for another time.
I usually relie a bit on the fact that the vendors would be busy doing their thing while I am at the market. There is a certain annoymous factor involved here that enables me to walk about and shoot as I do. However, this morning at San Gil, all the vendors takes a note of me, wants to say hello, wants to know where I am from, wants to tell me that I am pretty, wants to know what I think of Colombia. I could not walk about unnoticed. As I wonder through, I repeated hear the words, “China,” “Californina,” shouted through out the market in addition to whatever else is being said in Spanish. I must say that the Colombian´s friendliness is unparalled in any Latin America country that I have traveled through so far. However, this amount of attention is a huge change from the norm and I can´t help but wonder how that will effect the shooting and the images I will be able to get from Colombia.
