“Get out”

That was my sister, telling me via chat to get out of the cab I had just gotten in to. In her defense, I had screwed up her instructions, which was to go to the Imperial Cab counter at the airport, prepay for a ride to her apartment, and in no case was I to get directly into a cab.

Travel To Colombia

I was sleep deprived. The night before gave me about 2 hours of actual sleep. Anxiety about so many things kep me awake, including the 5 AM wakeup we needed in order to catch a car to Logan to make our flight. It was already cutting in close.

We had exit row seats on the plane. That was great for the extra leg room, but they did not recline, and sleeping was pretty close to impossible. Thus, once we landed and got through customs, I made the mistake of following someone with a sign for Imperial. I thought we were going to the counter, but we ended up outside, with a couple ladies loading our gear into a cab. It turned out fine, the cabbie took me right to my Sister’s building, and accepted payment in US dollars. I was not kidnapped, run all over the city, and forced to empty my bank account.

Bogatá has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous cities in the world, but it is also an amazing city. It has a new-feeling, upscale section around the offices of many of the Banks with Apartment buildings that would fit in any new metropolis in the world. It also aparently has one of the largest mega slums in the world: Ciudad Bolivar. We would not go any further south than the Candalaria district, except for two excursions out of the Bus station on Calle 6.

Sunday Biking

For the first day, though, we planned on taking advantage of the biking culture in the city. We arrived on Sunday, when many of the streets in Bogota had been closed to vehicular traffice, and bikes ruled many roads. Most notably, I was able to grab a tembici Bike less than 3 blocks from Carrera 7. With my sister on her own bike, my son on a borrow3d bike, and me on the admittiedly heavy rental, we took a tour down 7th, but turned off to a cross street before we hit the heavy crowds in the city center.

I forgot to track the route on my Garmin watch, but we got a pretty good tour of the safer part of the city, incuding a sight of the Botero Sculpture in the Parque el Renacimiento.

After our bike ride, my son retired to my sister’s apartment, while we two went out into a market up in the the Usaquen neighborhood. Lunch, coffee, and shopping was mixed with that feeling you get when you are once again mixed into a foreign culture. I have a decent grounding in Spanish, but it has been years since I practiced it regularly, and the accent in Colombia is very different from the Madrilleño accent I had learned when I was 16. Fortunately, I had a wonderful guide in my sister, who had lived in Latin America for 20+ years. She helped me pick out a hammock swing for our front porch that would later prove to make my trip home a bit more difficult.

Monserrat

On Monday we did the most touristy of outings: we took the cable car to the summit of Monserate. Bogotoá had been going through a dry spell for most of the previous year, but you would not be able to tell by the weather during our trip. I rained everyday, sometimes in torrents. We carried umbrellas, and, when I remembered, wore my waterproof hiking boots instead of my porous running shoes when out an about in town. The temperature was late summer/ earl fall for the most part, a very pleasant respite from the sub-zero New England winter we had left behind. While we did not get rained on during this outing, the visibility from the top was limited, with only brief breaks in the cloud providing glimpses of the expanse that is Bogotá.

We attempted then to go to the Gold or Botero museum, but made it down to the Candaleria district around 5, and the museums last allowed entry was at 4 PM. We got a brief tour of the neighborhood and then headed back north.

Gold

The National Museum and the Botero were closed on Tuesdays.Instead, my son and I performed an un-escorted outing, this time to the gold museum. I was expecting a series of demonstrations of how gold mining was perfromed in the countrym from ancient time to the strip mining performed in some unregulated portions of the country today. Instead, it was a huge collection of golden artifacts from indigenous cultures. While many displayes had top-level explanations in English, it was essential to read spanish in order to enuder stand that majority of the descriptions. Even still, most artifacts were unlabeled, at least as far as where they were from and where they had been procured, leading me to wonder how many had been rescued/bought off of treasure hunters. The museum was wonderfully ful of items, and very full of securtiy guards as one might well expect from a museum full of gold.

Bogotá has wonderful restaurants. We visited many during the week. Monday night was a French restaurant my sister had wanted to visit. Tuesday nights we had Crepes. Later in the week we visited an Italian restaurant, the favorite of my-soon-to-be-brother-in-law. The food was uniformly excellent, and the prices very acceptable by Boston standards. The coffee was superb, as expected.

Hiking the Bogs above Bogotá

On Wednesday we slipped the bonds of the city. After a car ride to the 6th Street station, we caught the bus to Choachi, accompanied by Carol, a tour guide my sister had worked with before. Halfway to Choachi, we got off the bus, and took a hike in a Hidden Valley.

The National Museum

Thursday, my son and I again took an unescorted museum trip, this time to the national museum.

I did not take a crazy number of photos, but did capture some of the wood working pieces that caught my attention.

We all enjoyed a dinner out that night.

Journey to the Sacred Laguna

Our flight left just past midnight on Saturday morning, giving us time for one last trip. Again, Carol was our guide, this time from the town of Choachi (or Chiguachi in the language of the native Muiscas) to the sacred lake one town over.

Return to the States

The rain returned to Bogatá for our trip back to the airport. Despite some flooding and the usual traffic, we made our flight on time and took the red-eye back to Boston.

My Duffel bag was not so lucky. It seemed to want to linger in Colombia, but caught a flight back the next day. According to Tile, it is locked up in an office somewhere in Terminal E of Logan Airport. It has a few things that I would like back. Including the chair.

Post Script: The Happy Ending