I love my new camera!
Time flies when you’re not doing much. I can’t believe I’ve been in Bogotá for three and a half weeks already. To start at the beginning…
Rolling into Bogotá on the bus, I felt like a country bumpkin visiting the city for the first time. Although Panama City was a large metropolis, that was a long time ago; and, it’s very stratified – not much middle class or infrastructure that I saw. Bogotá, on the other hand, is a modern, cosmopolitan city, with all the attendant trappings. Back to that bus ride.. I was overjoyed to see separate bike paths, universities, sidewalks, landscaping, modern architecture.. it almost felt like Europe, oddly enough.
Geographically, the city is laid out mostly along a North-South axis, with a mountain range hemming it in on the East (which makes it easy to get your bearings). Generally speaking, the rich live in the North, and the poor live in the South. The affordable hotels are all in the center particularly around the oldest part of the city, called La Candelaria. This neighborhood boasts beautiful colonial architecture, many museums, the Congress, Presidential Palace, and other governmental buildings. La Candelaria is also home to many universities, so the streets are full of vibrant student life – replete with clove cigarettes, patchouli, bohemian coffee shops, and buskers.
The 80′s are alive and well here too – tight jeans tucked into boots, feathered hair, bangs (all of the above for both men and women), punks (when is the last time you saw an actual punk rocker?!) Professionals dress up in smart pant suits, double-breasted blazers, and generally fashion-conscious outfits. All of which you would expect in a cosmopolitan city, but this was such a welcome breath to me after having been away from it for so long.
My first week in town I splurged a bit for a fabulous hotel room with a balcony from which I could overlook all the goings-on. The homeless here are really destitute.. and much more aggressive than in other countries. They try to direct cars into parking spots or open doors of taxis, all in an effort for a tip. Or they’ll randomly yell or throw up from whatever they’ve been ingesting.
One of my first orders of business was to renew my visa. For some reason when I landed in Cartagena, they would only give me a two-month entry stamp even though three months is the norm. This was about to expire, so I went uptown to go through the rigamarole of extending it. Bureaucracies befuddle me. You provide them with a photo exactly to their specifications, but they still make you buy one from the guy outside. You fill out multiple forms in triplicate, but they ask you the same damn questions all over again. And why on earth do they need to know my blood type, religion (discrimination?), parent’s names, profession, or height? What possible use could all this data have? Truth be told, it was actually fairly easy and efficient. Although oddly, they don’t take the money there – you have to go and deposit it into their account at a bank down the street.
Every Friday night and Sunday day one of the main boulevards through the city is closed to traffic. This opens it up to bicycles, joggers, street performers, strollers, crafts and food vendors. It’s wonderful – every city should adopt this idea. It’s very organized, too – police at every intersection directing traffic, even bike mechanics spaced out every 20 blocks along the route to give you air or fix that loose chain.
Bogotá is the third-highest metropolis in the world (after La Paz and Quito, both of which I will be visiting within the next few months). Because of the thin air and mountainous proximity, the weather is wacky. You leave your hotel in the morning wearing everything you own because it’s freezing out. Two hours later the sun has come out, causing the temperature to shoot up 20 degrees, so you strip down to just a t-shirt. But as soon as the sun goes behind a cloud (massive clouds roll in quite suddenly), it’s cold again because there is no atmosphere to trap the heat. Then it starts pouring and you realize you’ve forgotten your umbrella along with all the jackets and sweaters you’re already carrying. It’s a bit of a pain having to carry all this stuff throughout the day. I’ve found that the weather plays a big part in my mood and attitude. For example, although in my head I want to dress up and go out on the town on a given Friday evening, my body really just wants to curl up under the covers and watch a movie. I suppose one would get used to it if one lived here, but it’s trying for a visitor.
One of my first nights in town Colombia was playing Bolivia in a soccer match. Although I didn’t get to see it in the stadium, it was on every television in every bar and home I passed. People were crowding around the entrance of any open doorway, peering in – I was virtually the only person actually walking the street. Will tells the story of being on tour in Brazil during the World Cup – he ran out to buy more beer and while he was walking back to the party, Brazil scored a goal. He describes hearing the entire city erupt in screaming, shouting applause. This felt similar.
Despite all of the modernity, there are certain reminders that I’m still in a somewhat developing country: horse-drawn carts in the middle of downtown traffic; cows put out for pasture in one of the city parks; sewage-filled canals.
At the turn of this century the city built a forward-looking, modern bus network called TransMilenio. The buses in this system are large, modern articulated buses that are in addition to the smaller buses which continue to ply everywhere the new system doesn’t reach. The TransMilenio is like an above-ground subway. Rather than stopping on every corner, it has dedicated elevated stations where you transfer to other lines; completely dedicated bus lanes, so they can avoid the gridlocked traffic; and express lines, to further increase efficiency. Unfortunately the system is massively overcrowded (a good sign, I suppose) and way too difficult to figure out – many times I went flying past my stop by a mile because I didn’t know I had gotten on an express. They’re also some of the worst polluters in an already smoggy city. But it’s definitely a good start – they’re clean, efficient, and years ahead of many countries.
In an effort to combat the traffic and polution, the city has insituted a strict policy of alternate driving days – if your license plate ends in a “2″, for example, you can only drive it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Very progressive. Of course, people get around this by buying a second car, making things even worse!
continue reading the rest of this post (and view the photos)…
