JJ's Travelogue

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!

I’ve been hanging out with several friends of friends, which has been wonderful. First, Arnie’s ex-roommate (Kevin)’s ex-fiancé Lina (got that?) is Colombian and grew up in Bogotá. Lina and I got to be friends from always being over at The Apartment, so she gave me the contact info for her mother (Maria) and other friends. Fortunately Maria is on a sabbatical this year, so she has time (and inclination) to hang out. We’ve had fun, although the time we spend together is a bit trying – her English is about as good as my Spanish, which is challenging to fluid conversation. Maria is an accomplished artist and teaches painting at one of the universities. She kindly gave me a tour of her studio and art collective that she runs. Lina’s father (whom I have yet to meet) is a famous actor – a true man of the Theatre, although most people know him for the television and commercial work he does to pay the bills. He’s been a regular on the telenovelas forever. No wonder Lina turned out to be such a great artist (photographer, filmmaker, etc) in her own right, with such interesting parents.
Lina and I had a great moment of technology – I emailed her from my iPhone telling her I was in her old neighborhood, and where should I eat. She immediately received the message on her Crackberry and wrote me back straight away with a dozen places. It’s the type of thing that normally happens on Twitter, and made me fall in love all over again with my iPhone.

I’ve also hung out with Lina’s psychiatrist friend Richi and his squeeze Santiago a few times. One night we all went clubbing to a fantastic converted theatre with burlesque kitch décor. All the clubs in Bogotá are required to close at 3am (which comes sooner than you think!), because the mayor’s son was shot at a club one late night. Another night the boys treated me to a wonderful tapas dinner with one of the finest bottles of wine I’ve had in recent memory. Santiago also insisted on showing me Monserrate, a church and fantastic lookout over the city that is only accessible by funicular or cable-car. There amongst the layout of the entire city below us was one of the tallest buildings in South America, which they have inexplicably ringed with LED lights that are on a constant rainbow chase as if it’s a rave. Lighting 101: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Marissa’s friend Eloisa lives here as well. Elo (for short) has lived in Amsterdam, Peru, New York (ironically, at the same time as me), went to U-Mass Amherst, and is originally from Barranquilla. When we finally met, we immediately hit it off. We’ve been spending a fair amount of time together, and it’s been wonderful seeing the city and country through her eyes. For example, the mainstream media and upper-class people I talk with tell me how wonderful the current president (Uribe) is, while Elo clues me in to all the terrible consequences of his take-no-prisoners approach to increasing security in the country, like the thousands of displaced people as a result of his increasing militarization in the countryside.

Elo has degrees in both environmental science and anthropology, and is interested in indigenous cultures. She’s spent a good deal of time living and working with indigenous groups in the Amazon, and wrote a provocative and well-reviewed thesis that was critical of NGO’s. She now works for the Colombian government on indigenous issues, particularly in relation to cross-national affairs with Ecuador and Peru. One day last week Elo told me that Wade Davis, one of the foremost ethnobotanists in the world, was giving a talk at the university library. I am so glad I went – his slides of indigenous cultures around the world were incredible, and the stories he told, particularly about Richard Shultes, were fantastic. He also spoke about the rich history of coca, used by indigenous people for 4,000 years with zero toxicity, long before it was used to produce cocaine. Apparently it contains the most calcium of any plant, perfect for regions with no dairy. It also contains enzymes that break down carbohydrates at high altitudes, again perfect for people living in the Andes.

Davis also introduced me to a concept that must be so basic to anthropology, yet having never studied it, was new to me. The idea that since all cultures have had the same amount of time to evolve since coming out of the African savanna, all cultures are equally experienced and intelligent. This discredits the Western concept of sociological hierarchy – that some cultures are more advanced than others. While Western cultures spent their time on science and technology, Eastern cultures spent theirs on spirituality and mythology. Neither one is more correct nor advanced than the other.

Another quote that stuck in my mind was when was talking about visiting a mountain that one group considered sacred. He said, “it doesn’t matter whether you believe that the mountain is a deity or simply a big rock. What matters is how you relate to it internally – you will have a completely different experience during the ascent depending on how you relate to it.”

Speaking of Shultes, an opportunity arose, and then fell through, to participate in an Ayahuasca ceremony. I’ve heard from several friends that it is a powerful teacher, and look forward to the next time the opportunity arises.

To replace my broken camera, I decided to upgrade to the best model one can get before moving up to an SLR, which are too bulky and expensive for me. I couldn’t find the model I was looking for at any of the normal camera shops, so Lina recommended going to San Andrecito, an area of mass commercialism that I fell in love with. You can find anything you want here – any kind of consumer electronics, home appliance, fancy car parts, designer clothes, watches, sunglasses, you name it – and only some of them are knock-offs! It reminded me of Hong Kong – one building was nothing but hundreds of tiny booths of cell phone shops, selling not only the phones and accessories but repairing and modding them too. I found a replacement battery for my Treo for 1/4 the price than they wanted in an upscale mall in the North. I learned a lot and also taught them some things about the iPhone.
Maria tells me that a few years ago the police tried to close this area down under pressure from the legit industries for all the knock-offs that were being manufactured and sold. Apparently rebellion, protests, and rioting ensued (“We want our MTV!!”), the police gave up, and now they patrol the area, effectively sanctioning the piracy and forgery. Maria’s opinion is, why not? Better the money should go into the local economy than to a multi-national corporation of fat cats. She had a student who designed and built a hidden workshop in this area, and offered to make her any kind of designer jeans she wanted. Genius.
Speaking of knock-offs and piracy, every streetcorner in the city has someone selling bootlegged DVD’s of current movies – some that haven’t even been theatrically released yet! As you would expect, they’re unbelievably cheap – Elo picked up 5 movies for about 50 cents each, and they’re good quality, with all the DVD extras.

The night that Elo and I met I had just been telling her how safe Bogotá felt, how all the warnings I’d received from middle-class people were analogous to Upper East Siders warning me not to walk around the Lower East Side at night… whereupon we got mugged! Well, sort-of. A lame attempt at a mugging.
We were in La Candelaria, which is normally fairly safe when the students are around – but it was Easter week, so the streets were deserted. Up hill from La Candelaria is a poor, destitute neighborhood, so robbers come down from there to prey. This bum starts asking us for change but Elo immediately sensed something was up, and took off in the other direction. It wasn’t until he grabbed my jacket that I realized what was going on. We were facing each other, and he had the right shoulder of my jacket held tightly with his left hand while his right hand was cocked over his shoulder in a classic “Psycho” pose with a knife in his hand. But here’s the laughable part – the “knife” was plastic! You know, the kind of clear plastic knife you get with your bagel and cream cheese in the airport. So I’m standing there looking at him, looking at the knife, trying to think of how to say in Spanish “you’re kidding, right?” I knew I wasn’t in any danger, although the wild, crazy look in his eyes did give me pause.

I’ve often thought of what I would do in this situation, and a swift kick in the nuts always seemed like a good first step. Of course I neglected to do this, much to my chagrin – it just all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think. [I had even been prepared for this moment by Juan Andrés, one of the friends I made at Carnaval, who is a black belt. But of course I forgot to use the moves he taught me!] The amateur thief kept saying “rapido, rapido!”, I guess meaning, “give me some money fast”. I had a wad of bills in my right pocket along with my iPhone, so I knew I wasn’t going to give that up. But in my left pocket I had a bunch of change. So I held out the change and started dropping it. Naturally he had to let go of either me or the “knife” in order to catch the change, at which point I took off in the other direction to catch up with Elo. Last thing I saw he was scrambling on the ground for all the loose change.
We hid out in a bar for a few minutes catching our breath before asking them to help us catch a cab out of there. Of course, we passed some cops about 3 blocks away.

The next night I was walking a few blocks further along the same street, and the same prick tried to pull the same shit on me! It was the exact same move, only this time it wasn’t even a fake knife, it was just a rounded piece of square plastic, like those key chains you get with a gas card. I guess this scare/intimidation tactic consistently works for him without an actual weapon. But come on, have some self-respect – get a butter knife or something that at least looks threatening! Anyway, I recognized him straight away and didn’t flinch, in fact I immediately pulled away from his grasp and started taunting him, yelling at the top of my lungs, trying to get him to bring it on. I was thinking I could attract the police in this manner, again knowing that I had the upper hand. But as soon as he recognized that I wasn’t going to play his game, he started backing away in fear, walking, then running down the street away from me.

Since that night I’ve been carrying a menacing knife with me, fully intending to cut his face open the next time he messes with me. I was thinking that ultimately a taser or other type of stun-gun would probably be a good investment for this type of situation (although I haven’t seen any for sale here). However, Elo (channeling MLK) reminded me that fighting fire with fire only leads to the forest being burnt down. This guy might have mafioso friends who would exact revenge, for example (although I doubt it, this guy seemed pretty sad and lonely). It just enrages me that this guy is terrorizing the neighborhood, and something within me wants to “fix” that. I never was a very good pacifist. Later, a friend of Elo’s who has lived in rough neighborhoods for most of his life explained his technique – he actually befriends the local ruffians, even paying them off a bit so they’ll stay on his side and look out for him. Kinda like how Carroll Gardens was one of the safest neighborhoods in NYC when the mob was in power (that’s where all the Mafia families lived).

In hindsight, it was probably a good warning to have. It’s not that I’ve been cavalier; on the contrary, I always watch my back – but this has given me that extra bit of cautiousness. Of course, that can easily cross over into uncontrolled fear and paranoia, which is a terrible feeling to have when traveling – it makes one stay in rather than venture out, which is the whole point of traveling.

Speaking of bad experiences, I normally leave my money belt (which contains my passport, credit cards, and cash in U.S. dollars for emergency) locked in my backpack in my locked (single) hotel room. Well a few days ago I returned to my room and noticed that my door was not double-locked the way I leave it. But I didn’t think anything of it – even though the maid had already cleaned, maybe she had to come back for something. It wasn’t until the next morning that I needed something out of my pack and noticed that the zipper had been forced open. Sinking pit in stomach.. sure enough, all $450 that was in the moneybelt was gone. Amazingly, nothing else was stolen – not the credit cards, passport, iPod, nada. They either took pity on me or were afraid of being caught with the goods. I thought it must have been a fellow guest at the hotel who had swiped the key from the front desk, since I think that’s fairly easy to do. But the hotel later informed me they think it was the maid – she was fairly new, and although she cried and denied it under questioning, they fired her anyway. The hotel owner felt terrible, said nothing like this has ever happened, and although they can’t take responsibility, she did offer to let me stay 10 days for free. They’re also installing 8 surveillance cameras to cover all the areas in order to discourage this from happening again.
I’m bummed about the $450, since that would have been two more weeks of traveling, plus now I don’t have any emergency dollars. But ultimately I’m relieved. It could have been so much worse. I guess my time had come, and again, I’m taking this as a warning. From now on I’m locking the moneybelt in the front desk safe. I’ll still have to rely on that backpack lock, though, for the electronics. But now I realize how easily zippers can be forced open. I just don’t know how thieves like that can look themselves in the mirror. But I guess we all have ways of justifying unethical actions to ourselves.

I’ve been trying to find a bicycle to borrow or rent ever since I got here, and it’s turned into a big drama. You would think with a population of 8 million people there would be a half-dozen bike rental shops, right? Nope. There is one place that offers bike tours, and none that simply rent bikes. Maybe it has to do with liability, although it doesn’t seem to be a litigous country, what with all the open manholes about. Maria was very kind in borrowing a bike for me from her neighbors, although then she had to track down a helmet for me, which is mandatory here. The bike also had two flat tires, which ended up taking me an entire day of walking around trying to find a damn bike shop. Although mechanics are all along the cyclorouta on Sundays, they’re quite scarce the rest of the week. But after getting it all fixed, I realized the frame was way too small and my knees were practically up to my chest with every stroke. So another friend of Lina’s (a famous record producer named Felipe.. she knows the most interesting people) came to my rescue with a different bike. But this bike had worse problems. Pretty much everything that could be wrong with it was, and I spent several days fighting with it, ultimately walking most of the time with it. I don’t understand – bikes are easy to maintain, and really cheap if you don’t want to do it yourself. But when they’re in bad shape, they’re incredibly frustrating.

A friend of Elo’s who is from Colombia but has been living in Williamsburg (NYC) for the last few years is a language teacher, so I’ve been taking classes with her every morning for almost two weeks. I’m glad to get back into it, since I can’t seem to gather up the discipline to study on my own. I made a bit of progress, touching on conjugations of past and future tenses, but mostly just confronted how much I have yet to learn. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Diana (my Spanish teacher) tells me there are three things no house or store in Colombia ever has – ice, small change, and sharp knives. I can’t speak to the first one, but the last two are totally true. How people can prepare food with those dull knives is beyond me, and try breaking the equivalent of a $20 bill – which the ATM machines only give, by the way. It’s easy to run a business, people – you go to the bank each day and get change for the day! Sheesh!

One afternoon I walked around Parque Simon Bolivar, the largest park in the city. It was pretty, with a large lake, lots of grass and trees… and fences! You have to go through a gate to enter and leave the park, you can’t just stroll in anytime. Excuse me, but parks are public – they should be open to anyone, anytime.
Another day I was walking home from a different park when the police picked me up. Apparently I was about to walk through a sketchy neighborhood, and they wanted to avert a bad situation. It was really kind of them, although to be honest it was just families out barbecuing, it really didn’t look dangerous. But I had fun in the back of their van while we went and visited other cops on patrol before eventually being dropped off in La Candelaria. As I was getting out one of them asked me, “Do you have a camera on you?” “Yes.” “Cash?” “Yes.” (at this point I’m thinking, is he going to rob me??) But all he said was, “Then what were you doing walking in that neighborhood??”

There are an amazing number of digital plotting companies here, I have no idea why. You know, shops for printing out CAD drawings.
Another thing I’ve noticed is how shops selling similar things clump together into areas, rather than being spread throughout the city. I guess this helps the consumer, since they know the one block in the city to go to to buy a washing machine, but I would think it would be bad for business, with your competitors right next door. The walk to San Andrecito passes through an industrial area where each block was like a different page of the Grainger catalog.

Things that died out in the 70′s in the States live on here in force: jugglers, mimes, unicycles, marionettes.
I’ve seen some good performing arts here, but not terribly good visual art. Although I will say there is a fantastic array of graffiti art, much of which is sanctioned, even paid for, by the city. What a concept – let the kids do what they’re good at, instead of criminalizing them for it!
There is a good museum dedicated to Botero and other modern artists, but the contemporary art museum was a disappointment. It was craft, not art. To my mind to be called art, a piece should say something new about the human condition, not simply be a pretty artifact.

Elo and I attended an excellent Butoh performance, a performative style that I usually have trouble getting into. But this performer, and the entire design of the show, was sublime. She’s based out of Brooklyn.
A European film festival is on this month, so one night we went to a Romanian film subtitled in Spanish. I knew I wouldn’t understand the dialog, so I chose to view it as performance art – but understood a surprising amount based solely on facial expressions and other physical cues.
Another night we saw an excellent physical theatre show performed by a genius comic actor that didn’t require the understanding of any spoken language.

A small modern dance festival has also been playing, and I saw an evening with one so-so work that suffered the curse of so much modern dance, namely being self-referential and indulgent. Like most dancers who choreograph or appear in their own work, she needed an objective outside director. I used to work with an artistic director who could watch a piece in rehearsal once and discuss it with the group for an hour afterwards what worked and what didn’t, giving them concrete ideas of what to cut, tighten, or restructure. Genius.
Fortunately the second half of the evening was much better. It was a great piece that won some awards overseas. Just to mention two sections that particularly struck me – one, a dancer stands downstage center totally nude, facing the audience. A video projection that is masked exactly to fit only her body (tricky!) projects a stylised beating heart, jewelry, and tons of other imagery fit to her form, all moving in time to the music. Then there was the surreal scary mask dance that made me feel like I was in a David Lynch dream.
I was surprised that the movement vocabulary was basically the same as what one finds in the States – I would have thought it might be different down here.
It was thrilling to see good performance after so long in the hinterlands. Central America just isn’t developed enough to support this kind of thing.

Bogotá has an impressive number of theatres, and the city seems to provide funding for a lot of them, even publishing a monthly booklet of all the shows going on in the theatres they fund. One theatre that I saw two different shows at seemed to be like the PS122 of Bogotá. I was surprised, however, by the crappy (read: minimal) lighting, while the whole rest of the place looked newly renovated.
People also have some strange ideas of what’s acceptable during live performance – on two separate nights, some one’s cell phone went off, and instead of being embarrassed and quickly turning it off, they answered the calls! This is a small theatre, where the performers could clearly hear the person whispering away. Good grief, where are the manners.

You’ll never believe it – I ran into German and Yesi, the sweet couple that I met in Carnaval who took me out to all those great gay clubs in Barranquilla. Apparently they were house hunting, for they’re moving here. It was great to see them again.

Overall I would say that Bogotá is a nice city, definitely worth visiting, but I wouldn’t want to live here. It’s not particularly cheap, at least compared to the rest of the country or to Central America. The people are nice, although a bit more reserved than on the coast – not as outwardly friendly. The weather brings things down, and the undercurrent of danger is certainly not relaxing. But I’ve had a nice time and made some good friends.