Bogota, Colombia, Sept 9-17

 SS

Main Plaza

From Monserrate above Bogota

Typical street in the Colonial section.

Bogota reminds me a lot of Lima, Peru or La Paz, Bolivia.  Simply huge!  But now that we´ve been here a few days it´s not so overwhelming.  We´ve learned where tourists belong and don´t belong.  There was the fact that we had to watch our pennies the first two days since we couldn´t get money out of the ATMs.  But we did find out that it was happening to other people, too.  It worked out - the visa card came in handy and by the third day the ATMs were back in order.

We are staying in the old colonial part of Bogota.  It is the historical and tourist center.  Quaint old houses in the Spanish style with courtyards and balconies.  Our hostal is a 6 room affair with a kitchen, two patios and a common lounge area.  There are lots of familiar sights and sounds -- the narrow streets, the non-ADA compliant sidewalks, multiple shops with the same goods, packed buses, tiny cars, diesel smell, crazy driving....  But some things are different here than what I expected.  It is not all that noisy.  Which has been great, because we´re catching up on sleep!  There are not very many street dogs - and the ones we have seen are not pitiful looking!  We´ve only seen one cat - not sure what that means.  People are not agro about trying to sell you something.  That is nice.  There really aren´t many tourists and it seems people aren´t living based on tourism, which I prefer.

This city is a really fascinating mix of the history and progressiveness.  You may not think of graffiti as progressive, but there is a LOT of seriously nicely done graffiti/street art.  Some of it has a message and some of it is just cool.  The contrasts of conservative and liberal seem stronger here than in the U.S.  We are in the section of town which is home to 10+ private universities which tend to be very progressive.  This is also the part of town with the very conservative congress building and presidential palace.  The liberal mayor´s building is right next to that very conservative congress.  Course, the mayor is suspended right now on charges of involvement in a scandel having to do with Bogota´s very progressive (seriously) bus transit system.












There have been a couple real highlights.  One was the bike tour with a gringo guide who has now lived in SA for 12 years.  It was  a 4+ hour tour around the city.  He is/was an journalist and had great info on Colombia´s history, present situation and social issues.  We went to the main market and tasted a bunch of crazy fruit, walked through the huge city cemetery, saw the inside of a coffee production facility, went inside the bull fighting stadium and saw young looking guys learning to be bull fighters. He took pictures and sent us the link - I haven´t seen them as it requires something not on this computer...  But you might want to take a look.  It was pretty crazy, 10 people biking on sidewalks with pedestrians or going against the car traffic.  Don´t worry, we had helmets on. ;-)

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=797674724311%3A1397736826

Another real highlight was going to a futbol match between the Bogota and Medellin teams.  We were patted down before entering the stadium (thankfully for me, there are women police).  We sat in what was one of the calmer sections of Bogota fans.  But, the constant singing, whistling, and gesturing of the Bogota Millionarios fans make the Portland Timber´s army look they are singing nursery rhymes under a willow tree on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.  Emotions get high here when it comes to futbol.  The Medellin fans were flanked by two rows of police.  A section of seats were left empty on either side of the Medellin fans.  At some point we realized it would be a good thing to leave before the game was over.  The score was Medellin 1, Bogota 0 at minute 80 our designated escape time.  Just as we were walking toward our exit, Bogota scored.  Since that exit faced the Medellin fans, we suddenly were flanked by a host of Bogota fans coming over to get as close as possible to the Medellin fans to give them a piece of their mind along with a few choice gestures.  For a minute, there, it was ¨exciting¨.  But it all dissolved within only a minute or less and we exited, thankful that we weren´t there at the end of the game.

There is interesting museum going for sure.  The Museo de Oro (gold), the Museo de Fernando Botero (columbian artist whose subjects whether human or inanimate are always chubby) and the Museo de la Policia.  Here you see what most of the police museum was boasting about -- all that they captured that related to Pablo Escobar, the big drug lord.    Here Duane is with our 21 year old guide, Fabian, in front of the gold studded Harley that Pablo had given his cousin.

Northern Bogota - a big difference!

Northern Bogota - a shopping mall.

One day we went to the north part of Bogota.  It is where the ¨have´s¨ live, while the south is where the 7 or so million ¨have nots¨ live.  Tourists, interestingly, are encouraged to visit the north and discouraged (for safety reasons) to stay away from the south.  The historic district we have been staying in is in the middle.  It certainly was a noticeable difference!  While it was nice to walk around feeling completely safe, there´s a rub.  The knowledge that well over half the people in this large city are living at, or below the poverty level.  And, the crispy clean restaurant resulted in half as much food for twice as much, along with an obligatory tip. Those who know Duane, know that that in itself is a rub.  We also went to the north part of town to find the airline ticket office where we needed to return that fully refundable ticket we ended up purchasing to get out of the U.S.  After accomplishing that we proceeded to the maze of 3 stories of "El Centro the Alta Tecnologia", jam packed full of tiny stores all selling anything computer or camera related.  Again, multiple vendors for the same goods.  But that´s how it is done here!  We are thinking about buying a netbook.  But we´re going to spend a month without and see how it is just using the ubiguitous internet cafes.  

Centro de Alta Tecnologia

 
Then there was the Friday night gathering and concert in the Plaza of the Journalist - very close to our hostal.  We noticed they were setting up for something Friday afternoon so made a point to go back.  Turns out it was the culmination of a congress of South American university students.  I was amazed with how openly they talked about the "Segunda Independencia" of Colombia -- straight up saying that as students they are fighting for education free from private interests and government control.  It´s simply mind boggling to sense the complexity of the social-political situation here.  It is a democracy - so there is the freedom to speak out like they were doing.  But  the level of central government control is nothing that we experience.  Not to mention private interests...  As a bit of icing on the cake - when they made note of the Puerto Rican students that had attended the congress, they invited the audience to join in a chant that basically pointed out that they are sick and tired of being controlled by the U.S. "imperialists".  It wasn´t malicious, but they didn´t mince words.  After all the formalities & talking, the salsa was fun!


There are plenty of things I´m leaving out, but I think I have to mention the apparently homeless man with 8 dogs.  When we first saw him, the dogs were all lieing down. We didn´t think the dogs belonged to him, but then he got up to walk away and they all got up and went with him.  We´ve seen him twice now.  With all 8 dogs.  And they all look well fed.

So, in case you didn´t know, yes, I shaved all my hair off.  But this picture is about Duane.  Or, our camera.  For those of you who don´t know, Duane found a $20 sony camera on craig´s list before we came.  It apparently has a really great quality swiss made lens.  Only problem -- the button to take pictures was gone.  We´re still dealing with Duane´s prototype of a solution to that problem.  Thus his express - evidence for how much effort has to go into taking a picture!



Duane has changed my nickname:  from Verna Meister to Verna Monk.

So, until the next time.

VMonk

That contraption at the top is how they crank concrete from ground level up to, in this case, a 4th floor. 

Duane´s an attempt to capture how they fill the intersection even when they will clearly not make it before the light changes.  Then there´s the requisite honking & cars trying to make it through the stopped traffic.