COLOMBIA

Since early August, I have been traveling solo with most of my time being spent in Bogota. Although it may sound relaxing staying in one place for a while, it was still pretty hectic (in a good way!). Bogota, a city of 9 million people, is everything you’d expect of a city. Lots of noise, lots of traffic, and lots of confusing roads and directions! 

 

The clouds on the way to Bogota

I spent the first night in Bogota at Carl (distant cousins) and Phillipine’s apartment. The following nights they were having friends over so I found a hostel nearby to stay. The next morning I met up with Carl, Phillipine, and a few of their friends (including 2 that were also volunteers) to check out Montserrate, an observatory at 3000m with an impressive view of the whole city. It was an interesting feeling going from traveling solo to being in a group with 6 other people. It made for so many more opportunities for interacting and conversation.

The following day was spent doing some more networking to try to find volunteer work in the Bogota area, including a 1 hour roundtrip taxi ride to an non-profit’s office to realize they were closed that day. I also biked to the testing center of Nueva Lengua (Spanish school in Bogota) to take a Spanish placement test. I went into the test with a lot more confidence in my Spanish abilities than what my test answers showed…guessing on 35-40 of the 50 multiple choice questions. Coming out of that test, I could kiss goodbye being put in the “intermediate” level Spanish class even after 3 years of high school Spanish! That night with a few people from the hostel we went out to the Zona Rosa of Bogota, thinking it’d be some budget friendly area.  It ended up being some super bourgeois area of Bogota, which was a budget traveler’s worst nightmare in terms of beer/drink prices!

The rest of the weekend consisted of a graffiti tour of Bogota (lesson learned: graffiti is art, tagging is not!) and enjoying Ciclovia Sundays in Bogota. Bogota was recently voted the 8^th most bike friendly city in the world (partially due to its efforts to promote cycling).  Here is an article from CNN posted a few days ago describing how the main road in Bogota (Calle 7) closes most of Sunday to cars to promote cycling. They also have full on spin and fitness classes in the main park with podiums set up for the group leaders. Bogota has been a unique city from most of the others I have seen so far on this trip. It is very cosmopolitan, the people have very light skin color, and they dress really classy. Anyways I felt like I was  a big European city and it was a big contrast from Cartagena and some of the other Caribbean towns that we were in recently.

People have said Bogota is a dangerous city, but it wasn’t until the end of the weekend when I had met a total of 6 travelers from my hostel in 48 hours that had been mugged/robbed. The first traveler was in the Canadian air force back home and fought off the robber with a few cuts on his hand as a souvenir. The other 5 travelers had machetes pulled on them and didn’t have a choice to give up their wallets/cameras/phones/etc unless they wanted to get injured…In conclusion, I apologize for the lack of photos in Bogota, but the paranoia of thefts/robbery made me rarely take out my camera in the city during my almost 2 weeks here.

That Sunday night I met a few Americans that were in Bogota for the annual world cup roller derby championships. Apparently it’s the next up and coming sport in Colombia! After 1.5 hours of talking with them about the sport, I still wasn’t sure of the rules and how to win. I figured I’d resort to youtube or Wikipedia later on to answer those questions. 

My alarm went off at 6:30 AM on Monday morning to make it to my first day of Spanish class. It felt like I was getting ready for my first day of high school: Prepare some snacks, throw my pens/notebooks/dictionary into a backpack, and walk to school. I ended up being placed in the Beginner 2 class. Yes!! At least the teachers recognized I had a minimal amount of Spanish to not be placed in the Beginner 1 class. In my first sit down class since finishing college 3+ years ago, it felt good to be a student again. Nostalgia from my high school Spanish classes kicked in and it was like going back to Spanish 1 class with Senior Rojas (my HS teacher) in 2003. We were a total of 5 students in the class (each from a different country) and were sent off at the end of class with this so unfamiliar concept called “homework” to do before the next day.

That afternoon I met up with Andres, a friend of mine I met while I lived in Pennsylvania and him in Boston. He is originally from Colombia but had worked for a few years in the US.  He is now working a few hours north of Bogota but was in town in Bogota this week for his birthday. After my classes he showed me around the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he was a student there years ago. It was funny being able to see the similarities between a college like this in Colombia compared to universities in the US. The campus had tons of booths setup by student clubs/groups, there were students skating/biking to classes, and there was a band playing near the main part of campus. Later that night we celebrated Andres’ birthday with some of his friends at a restaurant called El Barrio. I usually carry my Spanish dictionary everywhere I go, but forgot it that night. The waitress recommended “asado de caballo”, which I got. I didn’t know it was BBQed horse until I got home that night and looked it up in the dictionary, quite a surprise! Anyways Andres’ friends were all Colombian and thus I got a ton more Spanish practice out of that dinner. 

The milk motorcycle

Hey Boss, i may be a little late to work today!

The next afternoon (following Spanish classes), a few of us from the classes went off to a “comedor”(cafeteria) in a poor part of Bogota to serve food to 200+ kids at a school there. There was a vast contrast between this very poor part of town and the upper class / privileged areas of Bogota only 20 minutes away. I also had a talk with Matt via skype about our future travel plans. After having sent him a lengthy email the previous day (see below), we discussed verbally the plans. I would leave my bike at Andres’ aunt’s apartment in Bogota and continue my travels using public transportation. Matt decided that he wanted to continue traveling via bike. Thus we would be traveling separately from now on with the potential to meet up again later in the trip.

Below is the email to Matt describing my decision to continue my travels in South America bike-free.

On Aug 13, 2014 2:23 PM, "Louie Bioche" <lbioche@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey matt, hope things are going well in northern colombia for you guys. I spent most of last weekend with some chill people i met in the hostel...checking out the city, going out, etc... I met up with a colombian friend of mine from the US earlier this week and we had lunch and celebrated his bday with a bunch of his colombian friends. I am also learning a ton from those spanish classes and definitely going to take some more in other cities. I've been hanging out with them after class too. I am now at my cousin's cousin's apartment for 2-3 days and its pretty sweet. For The NGO anna had mentioned near bogota, i contacted them and the help they needed was for something i was not exactly looking for, but i appreciate her help. I never heard back from the other NGOs i had contacted in the bogota area either.

I wanted to send you this email sooner than later to give you a heads up on my perspective on this trip and to be 100% honest with you on things.

Since I have been traveling in "backpacker" mode in Colombia, i have realized that I am just not stoked as much on biking anymore. I feel like im not excited about it like i was before the trip and feel like its not my purpose for this trip anymore. Things change, this trip has already had many unexpected things come up, and i do apologize for this latest curveball.

One thing I have enjoyed about not traveling by bike is being able to meet so many more travelers in hostels, buses, etc...I've been able to meet a ton of new people from all over the world, that have had really interesting stories/experiences to share. Being on the bike it has been alot tougher to meet other travelers.

Being able to take public transportation vs. biking has made the distances between worthwhile cities/places alot more feasible. Cartagena - Bogota was 24 hrs by bus but would have been at least 2-3 weeks by bike. South america is really big and with all this stuff worthwhile to see and do i just dont think we'll have enough time if I am biking from place to place.

On the other hand, there are disadvantages to the backpacking mentality of traveling, like the additional costs. If I decide to travel that way, (backpacking mode) then I just won't be able to stretch my dollar as much as on the bike. Meaning that instead of the goal to travel for 9 months based off my original budget, I may only be able to travel for like 6 months. But that's the consequence of traveling on a higher budget, which I am fine with.

 I know that you may share different viewpoints on this, which is 100% fine. It seems like you are stoked about the biking portion and that's awesome if that's exactly what you want to do on this trip! It seems like you are less into the backpacking mentality and that's fine as well! There is no right way or wrong way to travel. As long as its how you want to travel and you won't have regrets later once this trip is over.

I spoke alot by skype to Paul about this in the last few days. The reason i want to be 100% honest with you is that this is a once in a lifetime trip for me and a once in a lifetime trip for you. I don't know if I'll be able to take this much time off again without having baggage or important commitments at home or that i'd be leaving behind. So basically this is the time in my life (and yours) to be doing 100% what we each want to do. When we go back to "real life" we'll likely be doing things that we do not 100% want to do be doing all the time. I think we would be pretty bummed out and have some major regrets later down the road if we hadn't taken advantage of the free time we had on this trip to do exactly what we wanted to do.

Personally with this trip i've realized I want as much variety as possible. I want to meet some cool/interesting travelers, really improve my Spanish through classes, be in a city for several days/weeks at a time to really get to know it well, do a bunch of surfing and potentially travel with a surfboard for part of the trip, and be able to do some interesting volunteer work for several weeks/months if its really intriguing and legit. I think if I am biking its going to be way harder to squeeze all those things into the few months I have in South America. 

...

In terms of you and i traveling together, it will depend on what you want to do. Do you want to keep biking? Are you cool cycling solo? Or would you rather travel without the bike and join in on my travels? Or if there are things you want to do that i don't want to do, and other things that you want to do that i want to do, then we could meet up during different segments of the trip to do those things! I am way down to keep traveling with you, but i just don't want to pressure you into traveling my way if its not exactly how you want to travel! Remember this is a trip of a lifetime and if you aren't going to travel exactly how you want to travel on this trip, you'll have regrets after! So its up to you 100% on your plan!

Anyways lets talk by skype as soon as possible

Wednesday afternoon I moved all my stuff back to Carl’s apartment since his friends had left Bogota and they could host me again for a few nights. That night I wanted to go for a solid run but the streets of Bogota are not very runner friendly at night. Thus, I got to experience the concept of the Colombian gym, which is pretty similar to back home, except for 2x as much gym equipment in ½ the space. Since a gym day pass here is 18,000 Colombian Pesos (~$9), exercising indoors in Bogota is definitely for the well off Colombians. 

Loving the setup for that chess game

A usual site in Colombia. The military guarding a pharmacy.

Now that I was at Carl’s apartment, I was pretty far from my Spanish classes so I took the Transmilenio that morning to school. The Transmilenio is the main form of public transportation here in Bogota. It’s a bus, but kind of reminds me of the subway since it goes underground to reach certain stations. The station and bus was pretty crowded but it felt good to be commuting like a local in Bogota! That night Carl and I had dinner at another volunteer’s apartment. We had forgotten that the alcohol at high altitude is much more intense than at sea-level. In conclusion, 2 bottles of wine split by 3 people at 8,660 ft (2,640 meters) made for a rough Spanish class the next day! 

After following up with the volunteer organization for the 3^rd time that week, I concluded that there probably wouldn’t be any opportunities for humanitarian work for me in Bogota. Thus, I would network and look for more options in other cities during the trip. I bought a backpacking backpack in the main Bogota shopping center. The big outdoors brand here in Colombia equivalent to North Face / Patagonia (in the US) is called “Totto”. Having grown up in a French culture, it was a pretty funny name for a big outdoors brand. In France, Toto (one “t” but same pronunciation) is the main character in a lot of French jokes, and it’s explained better here. Friday night started off in a salsa bar where I got my first unofficial Colombian salsa dancing lessons. I quickly concluded some lessons might be necessary before I try to show off my dance “moves” next time in front of a bunch of Colombians! Later on that night I met up with a few other people to go see a band called Prince Rama (from Brooklyn, NY) play at a low key Colombian bar. 

Before catching my bus on Saturday, I decided to stop by the Totto store to exchange my backpack for a higher quality on. The one I had bought yesterday was already tearing at the straps in just 1 day. It was under warranty but took me to a solid 5 minutes to try to describe the word “exchange” (intercambio) in Spanish since I did not have my dictionary. After almost 2 weeks in Bogota, I was finally leaving this city I had planned to initially stay 1-2 days at. That’s the beauty of traveling, you can never plan too far ahead since plans can change with the snap of a finger. Being in big city like Bogota would have been unattractive for lots of travelers, but I did really enjoy my time here. It’s true there are lots of unappealing aspects like traffic, pollution, thieves, and noise. But there were also many things I liked about it, like the local cafes, the friendly people helping me with directions, the comfortable weather, the effective public transportation, the nice sights and buildings, and the variety of things to see and do in the city. I’ll have to see if the next major city I go to (Quito) will give me the same impressions. 

Since August 18^th is a big religious holiday in pre-dominantly Catholic Colombia (Assumption of Mary), most Colombians had that Monday off. Thus traffic was pretty crazy leaving the city, taking the bus 2 hours before it could finally hit 30+ mph. I arrived in a city called Neiva in the Colombian desert region around midnight. The next day I bought a bus ticket to a city called Mocoas thinking I’d be taking a bus. It ended up being a mini-van and I got the best seat in the house. Middle seat, back row, stuck between two massive Colombians. The 6 hour bus ride consisted of 4 hours of mountain roads with a driver that perceived the “no pass lane” we were driving on, as “you can pass, as long as you drive 2x the speed limit.” Anyways at the end of the van ride, I had flash backs to the boat crossing from Panama – Colombia in terms of sea (car) sickness! 

The main church in Mocoa

As artsy as I can get. Recognize that reflection?

Mocoas is not a very touristy town but due to the Assumption of Mary holiday on Monday, there was a bunch of festivities set up in the main square/park on Sunday afternoon when I arrived. There were a bunch of vendors selling stuff, BBQs set up, a big jumping castle, and music. I had an awesome dinner for 3000 Colombian Pesos ($1.50) consisting of soup, rice, lentils, salad, carne asada, potatos, and a drink. I have also been doing a ton of reading on my kindle. The latest reads have been the New York Times (Aug 15th edition) and The Very Hungry City: Urban Energy Efficiency and the Economic Fate of Cities. So by the end of this trip I hope to be a current events and energy efficiency of cities guru!

Mocoas...where the Amazon meets the Andes

 

A typical intersection in Colombia...no stop lights and no stop signs.

I decided to spend the next day in Mocoas since I like the small mountain town feel to it. Dinner the night before was so good, healthy, and cheap, I couldn’t resist having lunch there (chicken) and dinner there again (steak). 3 big meals for $4.50 total! What a steal!

A $1.50 meal

The next morning consisted of a 3 hr bus ride from Mocoas to Pasto on a dirt road with a 200 foot cliff a few feet away from the bus during the entire route. This route is nicknamed "The Trampoline of Death" (youtube it if you don't believe me!). Luckily a Colombian nun was sitting next to me on the bus, so I assumed we’d have the "big man upstairs" watching out for our safety. 

The road from Mocoas to Pasto

Pasto is a town at 2500m (8200 ft) and was super windy when I arrived. It’s a town surrounded by mountains so it got dark pretty quickly that night too (also since we are going south and approaching the equator, the days are getting shorter). After checking out the gold museum that morning, I stumbled on a cantina serving lunch (beef/rice/plantains/lentils/soup/drink) for 2600 Colombian Pesos ($1.36) ! It was 10:30 am but I had to give this lunch special a try. Definitely worth it even if it was a super early lunch and my cheapest yet! To follow up with the latest reads from a few paragraphs above, I have also been listening quite a bit to my iPod on long bus rides! Latest music includes Dexter Britain, Flic Flac, ODESZA, Ulrich Schnauss, Alt-J, and Kings of Convenience. Please send me good artists/songs if you have any so I can update my iPod! In addition to music I have been listening quite a bit to podcasts. My two favorite so far are NPR and TED talks. Definitely recommend!

Pedro (age 76, retired bus driver) gave me a solid lecture on why I should have gone with the tamale instead of the chocolate croissant for my afternoon snack...lesson learned.

Pasto

 The following afternoon I checked out the town of Ipiales. It’s the last major town in Colombia before hitting the Colombia/Ecuador border. There is a really famous church there called the Las Lajas sanctuary and you can read up more on it here. That night it got super chilly with temperatures hovering around 6°C (42°F). It was a big change from the Central American heat a few weeks ago. Border crossing tomorrow morning into Ecuador!