Colombia Pt. 1 - Bogota

Let me start by saying that I'm about two weeks behind here. I haven't had the greatest of connections to my gmail or blogger while in Peru. I'm currently in Arequipa, Peru and finally have a decent connection. That coupled with my altitude sickness has given me the opportunity to sit and write.

I've been in Peru for the past week and My trek seems to be heading towards Cusco & Maccu Piccu, down through Lake Titicaca into Bolivia, and into La Paz where I'll fly to Buenos Aires. From there I'll have about two weeks before flying to Rio for Carnaval.

Anyways - on to Colombia - I spent four days in Bogota and about five on the Caribbean coast. First, Bogota...

Saturday January 7^th was the first real day of my nine-month adventure. My ten days in Costa Rica were fantastic, but everything had been planned well in advance and I was with people I already knew. Not once was I ever on my own. Today I took the plunge.

Let me preface the start of this trek with a couple of things:

-My first stop was Colombia, a country notorious for its history of narco-terrorism. Needless to say, my mother was not happy about that decision and it took some serious convincing as to why I was fine doing it. Especially since I wasn’t changing my mind.

-The morning of my flight, I didn’t even get to say goodbye to the person who gave me a launching pad for my trip. Steph, I have no idea how this happened.

Having been dropped off at the airport, I spend a couple hours grabbing coffee and a new point and shoot camera from the duty free shop. On the plane I sat next to a nice older Colombian couple who couldn’t help themselves from striking up a conversation with the gringo sitting next to them. The whole situation was very amusing. The husband was so eager to talk with me and suggest places to see in Bogota. His English was good, but he’d often stop to search for the right word. It was at this moment that his wife would chime in and correct him or fill in his thought process. She would always look at me when doing this and roll her eyes. The relationship between man and woman clearly doesn’t change all that much when crossing cultures.

When I arrived in Bogota, I checked into my hostel in La Candelaria, the historical district next to downtown. I set my stuff down and wandered around to check out the area. My first impressions were that this area of town is quite vibrant. The architecture is an old colonial style painted in an array of different colors. While no two buildings are exactly the same, they all share one thing in common. Graffiti.

Graffiti is everywhere in Bogota. But, it’s not like a bunch of hoodlums went around to every building and tagged it with their name. Most buildings are covered in graffiti that took vast amounts of time and skill. The street art ranges from tagging, stencil style etching, social/political statements, liberation phrases and plenty of full-fledged murals. In many ways, it gives Bogota a degree of charm that most modern metropolis’ lack.

Back at the hostel a group of guys bonded over beers and American football. After the game we all went out to experience the notorious Bogota nightlife. Except we were uninformed about the Colombian holiday that weekend (I still don’t know what the hell they were celebrating – probably some religious thing), and our night became more or less uneventful.

We still managed to have a good time though (and no we did not get a bag of coke).

The next morning I woke up with the urge to walk up to the top of Monserrate, which is a mountain about 1000-1500 feet above Central Bogota. Again I ran into issues with it being a holiday weekend. I also had forgotten it was Sunday (days blur together when you’re travelling). The whole area was absolutely packed with locals trying to get to the church at the summit.

Instead I went to the Gold Museum, which has all sorts of artifacts from pre-colonial times. It’s actually so much gold that you become bored of it by the end. I didn’t think that was possible, but it definitely is. By now it was around 4pm and all the museums and tourist attractions were closing. Sunday in religious countries is almost a waste of a day.

Back at the hostel, there was a Colombian guy looking for people to perform as extras in a Colombian soap opera. We had nothing better to do…and it paid…so we signed up. The rest of the day was spent watching more American football.

(Look – I may be in a different country, but I’m still watching football. Can’t wait to watch the Super Bowl in Buenos Aires.)

My third day in Bogota was extremely productive. Well, in that travel sort of way. The four of us: Me, Sam, Jon and Trevor all woke up at 630 to meet our supervisor for the shoot. We took the bus way out into the industrial part of town where the TV station was located. However before we got there, we were given fake names and passport numbers that we had to memorize and use as our identities. If questioned, we all stayed at the same hostel but our passports were stolen. It was completely sketch…I know. And for publishing purposes, I won’t mention exactly who I was.

The show was set in New York with all Colombian actors, so they needed American looking people to be on camera. Hence why they chose gringos from a hostel. Most of our job consisted of walking back and forth behind a door as it opened to make the street look busy. The highlight of my day was when I actually got to walk in front of camera…with a red Ed Hardy hat on. Apparently this is what Colombians think gringos look like.

On set there was a lot of down time so the guys and our supervisor, Maria, got to know each other. In reality, Maria is a student in Bogota who helps out the hostel with local tours. When all was said and done, she offered to take us to a local market that’s only open on holidays. With nothing better to do, we went.

This was out in the north, and very affluent, part of town. Affluent being a condo in one of the exclusive high rises costs about $450k to buy. More importantly, Tejo was brought into the conversation.

What’s Tejo? Oh, it’s only the national game of Colombia. And, naturally, it’s a drinking game. Us being the stupid drunk Americans, plus one Brit, we were highly intrigued and convinced Maria to show us. We went back to the hostel so she could grab a few friends and we went to a local shack where they play.

TEJO:

The object of the game:

Play until you score 21 or everyone’s falling down drunk.

Setup:

You have a room with two clay pits (roughly 3’x4’) that face each other and are angled from the ground to the wall. These pits are anywhere from 20 to 30 feet apart from each other. Each pit has a large metal can buried into it so the top rim is flush with the clay. On top of this cylinder sit four folded triangular pieces of paper filled with gunpowder.

Each team throws a series of lead discs weighing anywhere from 3 to 5 lbs across the room at these pits. Every team member throws once. Once everyone has thrown, you tally the score and switch sides.

Scoring:

            Only one team scores per round and there are three ways to score.

1.     If one of your team’s discs sticks into the clay in the middle of the cylinder – 6 pts

2.     If one of your team’s discs hits the gunpowder and it explodes (which it does) – 3pts

3.     If no one does either of the previous two, the team with the disc that’s stuck in the clay closest to the cylinder – 1 pt

Assuming you’re still with me here, you’ve lasted through all that for the best part. THE GAME IS FREE! … Well, as long as the members of both teams are willing to buy a case of 24 beers for about $22 USD.

Basically a night of drinking – and you will get drunk – is built around a game of explosions.

Sound awesome? It is.

Back to MY actual night, we all played and got drunk with some of Maria’s friends. One of which I found fascinating. He was born in Colombia but raised in Los Angeles for the better part of 44 years and had spent much of his time in the Surenos. He had recently moved back to his home country because he was tired of always looking over his shoulder. Why? He’d murdered several people. What I found so fascinating was that he was open and honest about it and you could see how ashamed he was of what he’d done. He was nothing but friendly with me and one of those people that as long as you don’t get on their bad side, there’s no reason for any harm to come to you.

The rest of the night was spent drinking at a local Colombian bar. I won’t bore you with the details, but lets just say when I got back to watch the BCS Championship game my drunkenness hit me like a Mack truck.

My last day in Bogota was a bit of a breeze. I got up early to ride the Funicular all the way up to Monseratte. Sam and I got to the top around 830am and got some tremendous views of the entire plateau that Bogota sits on. The city is so big that it stretched as far as the vanishing point on the horizon.

By this day I was over Bogota and ready to move on to the next city. But my flight wasn’t until the following day so I mostly just hung out with the guys watching futbol and writing. The only exciting part was taking a stroll through La Candelaria to get some more photographs.