The hike up to Tres Cruces

One cool thing about Cali is that everywhere you go, you can see MOUNTAINS either to your right or left side. These mountains are very beautiful, very big, and very green. But, if you look closely at the top of the mountains (almost at any point in Cali), you can spot the 3 small crosses at the very top, aka TRES CRUCES. Tres Cruces is a popular hiking spot that gives a great overlook of the city of Cali. On a normal weekday and weekend, Calenos will hike up to Tres Cruces 6am and are sitting at work by about 9am. So hiking up Tres Cruces is a pretty typical part of life for Calenos here. Because I found out how popular Tres Cruces was for a good hike, I decided to go up with a few friends. Just to be safe, we also went up with 2 dogs which protected us the whole way through!

 Here are some pics of the way up to Tres Cruces and the way down from Tres Cruces:

 The picture above was taken when we first arrived to the site of Tres Cruces. Although not pictured here, there were plenty of fruit vendors at the site selling FRESH FRUIT DRINKS. It was exactly what I needed after a long hike. I particularly had a typical Colombian fruit drink called SALPICON (with real fruit chunks inside of pineapple, mango, melon, banana, papaya, etc. etc. etc.) It was absoultely DELICIOUS!

The pics here were taken on the way back down from Tres Cruces, where you could see Cali from afar. By this time, the sun had come out and gave us some good company...also making for nice and bright pictures with plenty of light :).

Starting our way up to Tres Cruces at 7am, and going for a 1.5 hour hike up to Tres Cruces and a 2.5 hour hike back down from Tres Cruces, we had finally finished the hike! Although the total hike should have averaged about 2 hours, we were just happy to have completed the Tres Cruces CHALLENGE.

A little town called Popayan

For a long time, people in Cali told me that I should go visit POPAYAN- a beautiful, calm little town about 2 hours outside of Cali that maintains a very colonial feel to it. After hearing this, I decided to take a day trip with a friend to check Popayan out. When arriving there, I was caught by the white colonial style buildings, the narrow streets of the town, the nice green gardens nearby, as well as the coffee shops that were found on every other corner of the town.

Here are a few of the pics I took when I arrived in Popayan:

After walking around Popayan for a while, we found out about a NEARBY HILL that supposedly had an excellent OVERLOOK of the town. So, as expected, my friend and I found exactly where this hill was and made our way right on up. When we found the hill and climbed up to the top, the view could not have been better, as there was a picture-perfect SUNSET setting over the town at that moment. Here are some pics:

In the end, I was so glad I was able to visit Popayan- a colonial Colombian town, where you could just walk around nice colonial streets, take great pics of the town at sunset, and drink coffee at one of the many coffee shops found at nearty every corner of the town. Would I repeat this trip? FOR SURE.

Mi cumpleanooos

So I had pretty much been counting down to my BIRTHDAY WEEKEND because it was the weekend I would be going to the capital city, BOGOTA, to visit my family. My birthday weekend just also happened to coincide with Mother's Day weekend. It could not have been a more perfect time to spend with mi familia!

Buuut before I left to Bogota, I had a few birthday surprises waiting for me here in Cali. For one, my research group had a little birthday lunch for me. I went with about half the group went to an awesome typical Colombian restaurant right across the street from the university. Here is PROOF lol.

<Me and tha research gang.

        < They called it a "PAISITA" (note: anything ending in "-ita" supposedly means small/little...cheers to Colombian expressions haha)

And if anything must be in my birthday celebration, its gotta be SALSA dancing. Coincidentally (or not) that weekend a few friends from my tennis group invited me to go salsa dancing at a place called TINTINDEO. I was told (and can confirm) that this is one of the places in Cali that plays salsa and ONLY SALSA.  It was a perfect way to begin my birthday festivities! The best part was, because there were mostly guys in the group, I always had someone to dance with :).

Out salsa dancing with the tennis kids  >

And before you knew it, I was already off to BOGOTA to continue my birthday festivities. When I arrived in Bogota and saw MI BEAUTIFUL FAMILIA, I was so glad to be celebrating my first birthday ever in Colombia with my familia. I some good quality time with my cousins, uncles/aunts, and most importantly mi ABUELITA (hence Mother's day celebration weekend). I enjoyed every minute with them! Here is the evidence hehe.






<Cousins to the left and cousins + friend to the right >

< Cousins + friends

^ Meet my adorable gradmother and cute little cousin  

                                                                           <My cake reminds me of my grandmother...short and sweet haha.

Lovelyyy Hernandez cousins >

< Lovelyyy Perez cousins

            

                                

            Meet awesome uncle and wife here    >












 Meet some more lovelyy Perez family >










And before you knew it, it was my time to say my goobyes, thank you, and love yous. I really had an awesome weekend, and could not have asked for a better weekend to celebrate with my family! All weekend I had been so happy that I almost did not want to return back to Cali. After all was said and done, I had arrived back in Cali.... BUT to my surprise, I had some more CAKE and PRESENTS waiting for me. As soon as I walked into the house, I saw that my sweet host family had cake and presents waiting on the table for me. All the family immediately came out when I walked in and gave me big hugs/kisses/congratulations for my birthday. I wanted to cry because I was not expecting such a sweet surprise! This was def that CHERRY ON TOP of my day (and there was literally a cherry on top of my cake so it works hahah).

< Check out my cake and that cheryy!

These are the bright shining faces I saw when I walked into the house  >

Working with HIV infected women at the foundation

 Part of the research I am doing at the university includes working with HIV infected women at a nearby foundation. My research group is particularly working on projects with two different foundations, one of which is a social support project for HIV-infected women at a foundation named VIDA, SALUD, y BIENESTAR (translated as LIFE, HEALTH, and WELLBEING) . The goal of this social support project is to provide women with different HIV-related topics of discussion, including sexual, psychological, biological, and social topics.

When I first was told about the social support group, one of the research members asked me to some sort of workshop/presentation. Because she knew that I was a Biology major (kinda cool to hear her call me an official "Biologist" hehe), she had asked me to organize a presentation about HIV from a biological perspective. The thought of me doing this was PRETTY EXCITING, considering it was something I had never been asked to do.

As I thought about what to discuss in the workshop, I ran into two main problems. First, because HIV is such a complex virus, I had to try to explain HIV from a VERY BASIC biological perspective. Second, considering that learned mostly all of my biological knowledge in ENGLISH, I also had to try to explain HIV in SPANISH.

After thinking about how I would go about organizing the presentation, I decided I would focus on the topic of the HIV STRUCTURE and LIFE CYCLE. I decided I would do an opening activity, a presentation of the actual discussion, and an ending activity.

In the first activity, I would give the women a poster board so that they could DRAW OUT what they knew about HIV structure/life cycle. These are a few pics from the first activity:



















In the last activity, I decided to create a GAME OF MEMORY, where the women would try to recall/match some technical HIV information with its defintion. For example, one pair of cards would say "THE CELLS THAT HIV INFECTS" and its match would say "CD4 CELLS". I individually created these cards, totalling about 15 different pairs of cards that the women were expected to match up.

As for my presentation, I decided to use an illustration of the HIV structure/life cycle that I had found on youtube. This was a great presentation, because it was very basic and clear. I was able to pause at different times during the illustration and talk about each phase of the life cycle. Here is a pic of me IN ACTION:

(Don't ask what my face was doing..)













Overall, I felt that the activities went well. The women had a fair understanding of HIV, had great questions to ask, and participated throughout the entire length of the workshop. They said that the workshop did help them understand, which was shocking considering my level of technical Spanish...

 This workshop could not have ended MORE PERFECTLY... to our surprise, one of the directors of the foundation had brought a big CAKE to celebrate several people's birthdays (belated and upcoming). To my surpise, my birthday was a only week away! I was sooon blowing that candle away, with the rest of the "CUMPLENERAS" (aka birthday celebraters hehe).

(Just in case you are wondering, the cake was delicious! It was a vanilla cake with a strawberry sauce. We topped it off with some Coca Cola :))

Climbing up Pico del Loro

Just by the title of this entry, you might be asking what exactly is "PICO DEL LORO"?

 Well my lovelies, Pico del Loro is a really high mountain peak that reaches 2,720 meters, which is almost 9,000 FEET. And yes I, Monica Hernandez, took on the challenge and climbed this Pico del Loro. Just to give you a little better idea of my climb, I went with a climbing group (called "SENDERISTAS" in Spanish...yay for new Spanish words!) which included a few professional climbers and of course us amatuer climbers.

After taking an hour bus ride to the foot of the mountain, we began climbing at about 8am. Together with dirt, mud, rocks, grass, puddles, streams, and more, the trip lasted a TOTAL OF 10 HOURS. We took 4 hours to get to the top, 2 hours at the top, and 4 hours to climb back down. Most of the time climbing went to our :"short" picture/water/snack/breather breaks... and yes you may be able to tell that there were many of these. To top things off, it had been raining that week and so everything was wayyyy more SLIPPERY than usual, so we had to slow down to avoid any accidents.  

Getting to the top was one of my highlights, not only because it was a nice long break (with good ole ham/cheese sandwhich lunch) but because of the view. Being up 9,000 feet I was well above Cali and pretty close to the clouds haha. It was an AWESOME feeling.

Here are some pics:







     < Going up PL >

                                           ^ This worm is real...as real as it gets people. Eww.

                                                                     FINALLY at the top of PL....

The "Senderistas" and I... 

After all was said and done, I can say that 10 hour hike up/down Pico del Loro was well worth the time, money, effort, and energy. I would DEF repeat it.