Day 19. Thursday. Oct 22.

When have you used the word "incredible" twice in the same day and truly meant it?

Day 19. Totally feeling rested by now and looking forward to the field visit to producer Rosalba's farm in Subachoque. Subachoque is a 90 minutes cab ride from Bogota.
I met the PSF photographer and our translator, Virginie, in the hotel lobby and waited for Gerda, Michal and Francios (who was also joining us to the farm). Virginie is a freelancer photographer, contracted by PSF. She is French. Her husband works in the Oil industry and we traveled to Subachoque in his company car. It was a Toyota Prado with Bulletproof windows!
Look at the thickness of the windows:

The landscape, en route to Subachoque was amazing!

Rosalba's house/farm is more than 3300 meters above sea level and on top of a mountain, overlooking the entire valley spanning many villages, including Subachoque. The heavy bulletproof SUV barely made it up the mountain. At one point, we lost traction and started moving downhill in reverse in a particular section of the mountainous road. By the time we reached the top, the SUV was smelling of burnt rubber.

The weather was just perfect!
We were greeted by some not-so-friendly dogs.

We could already see the animals around the farm.

The view from inside of her house was truly spectacular!

Rosalba.
Rosalba is a producer of PSF Mercados. She is 70 years old and manages her farm on her own! She only produces organic products which include Yogurts, Bread, Cookies, etc. She produces 5000 yogurt cups and more than 100 breads per week. She was an attorney in Bogota and retired 10 years ago. Rosalba was extremely warm and friendly and was very happy to have us at her farm.

She made amazing Cappuccino with fresh cow's milk and some carrot-yogurt delicacy (this tasted like Carrot-halwa :)). She also gave us homemade cookies. All organic!

She gave us a tour of her farm and her "yogurt house".

We saw a horse being trained in a traditional walking technique (ambling).

This picture below reminds of the Gangnam style song :o) .

Francios, who is an agronomy engineer, inquired about a lot of topics to make sure that the products are indeed organic. It was a good learning experience. 

We thanked Rosalba and headed back to the PSF office. 

Gerda and Michal knocked out!

We met with Sindy in the afternoon and discussed her feedback on the first set of deliverables. We also tried to setup an Amazon page for her to sell her Creaciones COMParte products. 

In the evening, we planned a dinner at a Peruvian restaurant. This is the most upscale restaurant in Zona G and the most expensive restaurant in Bogota.

The food definitely lived up to it's expectations... and so did the bill :/ (69,000 pesos. definitely not the incredible experience I was refering to earlier)

Veggies and fruits in an Andean broth. Tasted like Navratan Kurma (Indian dish) .

As if I was not satisfied with the day, I decided to go with Steffen to Monserrate. It was 10 PM by now, so we were definitely taking a risk :) . We took a cab and then a funicular up the mountain. It was another 10 minute hike uphill to reach the highest point of the mountain. I was totally breathless by the time we reached the top. Another 3150 m above sea level! Just for reference, the tallest mountain in Austria is about 3700 m high.

The view of Bogota from the mountain, in the moonlight, was just incredible! 

Steffen.

Day 18. Wednesday. Oct 21.

Llamas
Llamas are native to South America. They are very intelligent animals. They are used as working animals, for meat and their wool.
Here is how they look:

---- I feel a bit like this llama because I'm feeling a bit under the weather and tired.

Day 18. We worked from the hotel meeting room today. It was a very productive day with a lot of progress on deliverables like web store, product BOMs, projections tool, strategy document, etc.

We picked Georg's brain on product launch processes and best practices. We had a team meeting at 6:30 PM and after that Orchids planned a potluck dinner.

I decided to skip the team potluck. So I don't have pictures to post :o). Nevetheless, I look forward to getting at least 9 hours of sleep ;) and hopefully feel rested.

Day 17. Tuesday. Oct 20.

Statistics

Here are some statistics of my blog. The audience spans 10 different countries in 4 continents! Overall, 1000+ views. That's really cool. Thank you all for your support!

Day 17. Another good day at work. Tracey confirmed that we will be doing another field visit. This time, we will be visiting a woman producer called Rosalba in Subachoque town, 1.5 hours from Bogota. Looking forward to this experience. 

Week 3: Day 16. Monday. Oct 19.

"Viva Colombia!"
.. is the perfect ice-breaker phrase which can be used anywhere in Colombia- pubs, hotel, restaurants, grocery stores, taxis, etc. Guaranteed way to make friends for life.

Day 16. Wow, week 3 already. Good thing is we are really cruising in terms of delivering the promised tools and enhancements for PSF. Today we planned to demo the first set of deliverables to Diego and Sindy. We spent the first half of the day demoing the first iteration of the tools and processes to Diego and Sindy. I feel they were very happy with the result but of course they wanted to test the tools.

We spent the afternoon with Mathieu demoing the other tools we built for him. We even worked with Mathieu to create and design a trial version webstore on Shopify. This was really cool as we could see the products on a fully functional live webstore, accessible online. Just to set the context, currently PSF receives orders from customers via telephones, emails or google forms. Payments are made through bank transfer or cash. We recognized, quite early, that these archaic methods need to be changed, especially if PSF wants to scale to other cities (and even countries)!

In the evening, we planned a PSF team potluck at Nico Apartments. We grabbed a few things from the supermarket and waited for our guests/clients.
Guess who showed up? Juan Forero! What a surprise! We were really happy that Juan decided to attend our potluck. We were meeting him for the first time. A very captivating gentleman with whom we connected instantly. We spoke for a long time about our involvement with PSF and our work so far. He was spellbound by our achievements ( :o) Juan, if you disagree, please leave a comment below :D ). We mentioned to Juan, how impressed we were with the PSF team's commitment and worth ethics.
Meanwhile, the PSF colleagues (youngsters) cooked some awesome crepes, guacamole and veggies. Sindy made some delicious fried plantain scoops.
We had a great time with the team.

Sindy and Francios.

Juan.

Day 15. Sunday. Oct 18.

Day 15. We decided to take it easy today. We did a local trip to a famous flea market in the center of Bogota.


Georg being helped by a vendor to wear a poncho.

Poncho Villa. 

Divi buying some local music cds. 

We enjoyed some corn on the street. Reminded me of Bangalore.

Michal bought some nice paintings. 

Back in the hotel, I spent a couple of hours working as I had lost some time on Friday. I spent another quiet evening in the room watching Colts Patriots game while enjoying an ice cream. Tomorrow we get to present the deliverables to Diego, Sindy and Mathieu for the first time. Also we have a potluck/dinner planned with the PSF team.
PSF team introduced themselves to us couple of weeks ago. All of them (except Sindy) said they have 2 hobbies: Cooking and Dancing. (So I really look forward to having these great cooks in my kitchen :) )..... Sindy has 1 additional one -  Smiling! (Never heard this before!). I don't blame her though.

Sindy and Theo.