As many will be surprised to know, no doubt my parents, this weekend my
friend Lindsay and I went to Colombia. The reactions of our friends
varied from "I totally want to go with!" to looks of sheer terror,
while others claimed it may be the last time they'd be able to speak
with us what with all the rumored boarder-kidnappings; worries I
comforted with the fact that we'd be flying over the boarder and thus
avoiding this supposed danger. De todas maneras, we arrived in Bogotá
safe and sound Friday morning knowing little more than that we were
going to be in Colombia until Monday morning.
Day 1 (Friday):
Friday, then, we ended up buying a tour to go to the Catedral de Sal (a
cathedral in a salt mine) and Laguna de Guatavita (reputed site where
gold is supposedly at the bottom of the lake...the whole El Dorado
thing). This "tour" ended up being little more than an overpriced taxi
ride to get to these places about 2 hours out of Bogotá. It was here,
however, that we learned about "pico y placa".
Pico y placa is this strange traffic law in which the last number of
your license plate dictates whether or not you can be on the road
between 6:30-9:00am and 4:00-7:00pm on weekdays. The numbers rotate
with the day of the week, so you have to be aware what day it is to
avoid getting a fine. The idea is to reduce traffic during rush hour,
though it only seems to lead to a frenzy of cars looking for parking at
4pm and backed up traffic at 9am...basically an inconvenience all
around.
Despite our touristy travels on Friday, our true Colombian experience
began at 6pm that night. We had just finished stuffing ourselves with
our lunch/dinner, relieved to have survived our terrifying taxi ride
back from Guatavita, when we decided to wander about Bogotá by night.
The part in which we stayed is the old, colonial-style part (referred
to simply as "downtown Bogotá" or La Candelaria) and the night-life
consisted of roads being shut off to cars allowing street performers,
vendors, and thousands of people to mill around the streets. After
successfully escaping an insistent mime, we spotted a group of
orange-clad people parading down the street, dancing and singing and
handing out pamphlets, campaigning for a man running for some sort of
council position (translation for "consejo," anybody?). Intrigued by
the group's warmth and open-ness and apparent love for life, we joined
them, dancing and chanting away.
It is here I will mention three suggestions from our study abroad program:
1) do not go to Colombia
2) do not get near political events/marches even if you are just on the outside taking photos (much less join them...)
3) do not accept alcohol from people you do not know well.
Well, having already overridden the first two rules, our new,
delightfully-spirited friend Olga helped us right into breaking
suggestion #3 and we continued dancing and singing away down the
street, Lindsay continually drawn by the promise of getting the orange
political t-shirt and me continually drawn by this building that kept
changing colors that was far ahead of us (I have pictures!). An hour
and a half later, we had made a bunch of friends, gotten a picture with
the candidate, and had been "adopted" as the daughters of two of the
women in the campaign.
Meet Martha and Irma: 2 sisters who married 2 brothers. Both
mothers of two and full of energy, they claimed to be our mothers for
the night, with good-natured threats of giving us spankings and keeping
us in line. Lindsay and I would run off into the group then, laughing
away until cries for us to come back forced us to wait until "moms"
caught up. They both seemed quite intrigued with what we were studying,
how we ended up here, and we were invited to have a real Colombian
dinner at their house (the pasta and pizza we had eaten at a restaurant
not impressing them in the least..."you have to try REAL Colombian
food! You can't come to Colombia and just eat Italian food!!!")
[side note: Martha looks un-cannily similar to Lucia (Ecuadorian host-mom) and her name is Martha Lucia...weird.]
Anyway, we arrived at the political headquarters after marching the
night away where we finally got our t-shirts and partied with the whole
group. Email addresses were exchanged, photos were posed for and taken,
dances were danced, and finally "moms" took us to their house (just two
doors down..and they live right next to each other) to call a taxi as
we had strayed quite far from our hostel. A perfectly exhausting
evening.
Day 2 (Saturday):
Saturday, then, we decided some white-water rafting was in due course,
and we headed off to Tobia. Having read Tobia was 46 miles from Bogotá,
we were unhappily surprised to find out this meant 3 draining hours in
a packed bus with increasingly warmer temperatures as we plunged into
the lush valleys of Colombia. And these three hours didn't even get us
to Tobia. We were booted out at the entrance of a gravel road as the
bus continued on the paved highway, the driver claiming said gravel
road led to Tobia. We were assured by the road-side vendor that
"special cars" would come by to take us there, but after waiting an
hour for these "special cars", we flagged down a guy with a van, and he
kindly took us to Tobia. From the center of town, we were whisked away
to the rafting site where we were paired with a random couple to go
rafting. We had a good run, and the couple mentioned that they were
from Bogotá and would be driving back that night. Music to our ears.
With news of this quick and painless trip back, Lindsay and I
gratefully took them up on their offer to drive us back to Bogotá.
Again, our touristy adventure dulled in comparison with the amazing
warmness of our Colombian acquaintances. Even the rafting renters were
incredibly warm, but after our traumatic bus ride over, nothing was
going to stop us from accepting a car ride back. Our drive back was
filled with melodious singing (I was able to belt out the only song I
knew on the CD, Julieta Venegas's "Me Voy") and we got back in a
fraction of the time with none of the trauma. Another delightful end to
our night :).
Day 3 (Sunday):
Sometime in our travels, Lindsay managed to catch some sort of illness
and stayed in bed all day. Deciding I should still take full advantage
of this beautiful Sunday, I wandered quite happily around downtown
Bogotá, shopping at the artisan market, watching street magicians,
watching THE cutest 15-year old boy play two pianos at once, peeking
into churches and cathedrals, visiting museums (free on Sundays and
thus huge lines) and, best of all, spending an hour and a half watching
a capoeira group in the street.
[side observation: if Colombia has any say in upcoming hair fashion, mullets will be making a come back...]
Capoeira, for those unacquainted, is the martial art/dance believed to
have its origins in the 16th century when slaves were brought from
Angola to Brazil. Capoeira was practiced in free time as training for
mind and body, though because martial art was prohibited, it was
disguised as a dance. The end result is fantastic compilation of
maneuvering and kicks and chops with much music and passionate singing
accompanying the whole affair. The capoeira group was amazing,
everybody having complete command of every muscle in their body, and I
stood there in awe taking pictures and video recording. I'll have to
let my pictures tell the rest of the story.
So was my time in Colombia. It's Sunday night here and downtown Bogotá
is completely dead...so much so that in looking for a place to eat
dinner I was only able to find McDonalds and two chicken/burger places
amongst the hundreds of restaurants usually open on the popular Carrera
7. I ended up having what I can only describe as Colombian-style
chicken fried rice.
But I'm glad I came to Colombia; to not only dispel untrue rumors to
others, but to open my own mind to what Colombia is. It is interesting
that because our program told us not to come, or because people have
told us that Colombia was this outrageously dangerous country, we felt
the need to come to see what all the hype was about. And I'm still
looking for an answer as to why people label it such a horribly
dangerous place. As all the Colombians I've talked to about this issue
point out, every country has its bad areas, and as long as you keep
your wits about you and don't go jumping into the midst of a dangerous
area, you'll be fine. I'll keep that simple fact in mind from now on...
And random update on the volcano climbs from last weekend. Basically
the day before I was to go to Pichincha, a group doing the same trip
got into some troubles involving an accident, running a woman over (who
unfortunately died) because of slippery roads, the townspeople forming
a mob and barricading the remaining 4 jeeps full of students in the
town and throwing rocks at the jeeps...huge fiasco. So no more
Pichincha trips and my other two volcano trips were pretty chill. I'll
have to send the photos of my muddy time there. But I have to get
going...5:45am tomorrow morning I have to be up to catch the flight
back to mi lindo Ecuador :).
buenas noches
[photos:
http://wisc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2291485&l=8c870&id=8628451]
annemary
