Boy am I shocked!

[This message has been edited by kidwonder]

I am a newbie to this thread and just planned a trip to Barranquilla in June. I however am not new to travel to Colombia. I traveled in July of 1999 to Cali, Colombia using Latin-Internet. I stayed at the Villa. Now you are probably wondering what my surprise is. I was reviewing old posts as many of the regulars on this board recommended and found posts about Ruby and what a scammer she is. She was the girl I hooked up with down there for my ten days in Colombia. She came to a weekend party and approached me with her sister at her side. She said she wasn't with Latin-Internet but decided to check out the party. She was very pretty and she had her own Toyota truck and asked me to come with her. I thought what the heck and went along. We spent the whole ten days together and I had a great time. We went dancing, to the zoo, to parks and shopping out to various restaurants we even went fishing. She wanted me to buy her small things but I kept it at a minimum. I bougt her a pair of pants and a couple of small items that was about it maybe $40 total. I bought her gas once but she drove me all over the place. We went to meet her parents up in a village outside of Cali up in the hills. I was scared to death about going out of town. Her friend was visiting from the US with her gringo husband. She was a knock out and he was not the friendliest but okay. He didn't want to go because they were leaving town so that made me even more nervous. I met her dad and mom and they killed a chicken right there and cooked it for a nice dinner. They had a small store in a little town that was like someting out of a movie. The people came into the store were all great to me. We then went on all these back roads to go swimming. I didn't speak much spanish and Ruby spoke no english. They took me to some mansion that had all these peacocks in cages and the inside of the house was huge but only had furniture in the living room with a big screen TV. It was a round house with numerous bedrooms and they all had bunkbeds but no mattresses or anything. It had an awesome pool with a swim up bar and a disco inside a room off the pool. They cooked a wonderful barbeque dinner and I had a great time. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I thought to myself it might be a drug dealers house.
Ruby was very nice to me and I really liked her sister also. Her parents were wonderful.
I was a little concerned about her asking for stuff when shopping but I didn't realize this was a red flag. Maritza also seemed to be pushing me to meet others but I told her I was happy. Maybe that should have been a flag too.
I never saw any sign of a boyfriend that has been mentioned on the board. I gave her $100 dollars when I was leaving to start english lessons. She was really talking about coming to the US and I called her and wrote to her when I returned home for a couple of months. I finally stopped writing to her because I really didn't think she was the one for me. She tried to reach me and had her relative in New Jersey call me and her friend that I had met when down there. I told them I just wasn't interested anymore. I was totally shocked to see her listed here as a total scam. I think maybe I was lucky that I didn't spend more on her. I am not a very good judge of womens character.....I hope I can do better on my trip to Barranquilla. Also I am not slamming Ruby with this post. I generally liked her but was probably lucky I wasn't scammed bigtime. I didn't find a wife but wasn't really sure I wanted to then. I feel like whatever her situation was then I enjoyed my time with her and what I spent on her she more than made up by driving everywhere and making two dinners for me.