Essential Spanish phrases

'What's up?' with the old formal-affectionate 'sumercé' — a santandereano and boyacense courtesy you will hear from shopkeepers and taxi drivers. Using it back lands very well.

Santandereano exclamations of surprise or annoyance, delivered flat and fast. The regional stereotype is that people here are blunt to the point of rudeness; the reality is that they are direct and then extremely hospitable.

To be in a hurry. Useful because Bucaramanga is not — the pace here is markedly slower than Bogotá's, and saying it explicitly is how you get someone to move.

'The pretty city' — Bucaramanga's own nickname for itself, alongside 'la ciudad de los parques'. Both are used sincerely and both are earned; the parks really are the organising feature of the place.

The metropolitan area — Bucaramanga plus Floridablanca, Girón and Piedecuesta. Locals say 'vivo en el área' the way Londoners say a zone. It matters administratively: four separate town halls, four sets of local tax.

The near-vertical escarpment on the western edge of the meseta the city sits on. It defines the skyline, the sunset and the city's biggest civil-engineering problem, since the whole edge is slowly eroding.

A tremor — a word used casually here, because the Nido Sísmico de Bucaramanga under Los Santos produces small earthquakes almost daily. '¿Sentiste el temblor?' is a normal morning question, not an alarm.

The Sistema Integrado de Transporte Metropolitano — the integrated bus network Metrolínea now runs. Locals still say 'Metrolínea' for the articulated trunk buses and 'SITME' for the whole thing.

Literally 'big-bottomed ants' — roasted queen ants, salted, eaten by the handful in the weeks around Easter and sold in little bags everywhere. Genuinely a santandereano delicacy, not a tourist dare.

The region's heavy maize, pork and offal soup, eaten at lunch and capable of ending your afternoon. Along with cabro (kid goat) and pepitoria, it is what santandereano cooking actually means.

A small black coffee, offered constantly and refused rarely. In Bucaramanga's offices the tintico round is a genuine social institution and declining every time reads as standoffish.

Help! Dial 123 for any emergency nationwide; 119 reaches the fire brigade directly, 132 the Red Cross ambulance service and 144 the Defensa Civil.