(The road to) Bogota

You´ve all heard about the road to perdition, well this is not about that. This is about the road to Bogota. The road to perdition is nothing new, I´ve been on it for years:) It is almost 1000 kilometers to Bogota. The people I talked to said that the only safe places to camp in Colombia were campgrounds. I looked at the maps I have and 1) I didn´t see any campgrounds between Santa Marta and Bogota and 2) The number of towns between Santa Marta and Bogota seemed pretty thin. It did not look good for finding a town within my daily cycling distance and even if I found one there would be no guarantee that there would be a motel there. And 3) I´ve gotten out of shape and lazy. So for these reasons I decided to take a bus. The bus was scheduled to leave at 2:00 so to be sure I got there about one an a half hours early. I got my ticket and was shown where to wait. It wasn´t so bad there was a little store in the terminal that sold beer so I amused myself with a number of beers while I was waiting. Central and South America have a more relaxed attitude toward beer than the puritan U.S. It is amazing that almost anywhere you can buy and drink beer down here, including in the bus terminal. No you don´t have to hide it in a brown paper bag either. AT ANY RATE I got on the bus and settled in for the 16 hour bus ride. I had a book, sandwiches, snacks, and a bottle of rum, what more could anyone ask for? For the first few hours I alternated between reading my book and looking out the window. Also once in a while I would try to strike up a conversation with the young cute large breasted woman sitting next to me but that wasn´t working out so well. So the sun went down and the scenery disappeared the light for my seat wasn´t sufficient for reading and miss big boobs wasn´t talking. What to do, what to do? The answer was obvious, start drinking, which I did. For the 16 hour trip the bus company supplied a snack, about a one and a half ounce bag of peanuts and about a 4 ounce bottle of orange drink. So I drank a little out of the fake orange juice and filled it back up with rum. And every time I got enough room to add more rum I did. Obviously after a while I just ended up drinking it straight, which wasn´t so bad, it is pretty good rum. I got about half way through the bottle this way and decided maybe it would be a good idea to get some sleep. I have never been one of those people who could sleep on a plane or a bus but with about half a liter of rum in my belly I thought I would give it a try. I was starting to relax when it started. I don´t what caused it but all of a sudden there was a huge jolt to the bus that made it feel like it swayed to the side. Then there was another jolt that made it bounce. Know that this is not one of those recycled school busses that are so common down here. No, this is a fairly new Mercedes, you know the kind with the airplane style seats the whole bit. Now you are probably thinking ok but that was it right? NO it wasn´t it. It was only the beginning of it. Some times were worse than others but it never ended, and people were sleeping through this. Of course to top it off the little kid on the other side of the aisle(maybe 18 months old) let out the most god awful, stinkiest fart that has ever been smelled on god´s green earth. Fortunately the assistant driver also smelled it and went and got a can of Glade air freshener (I guess they keep it on the bus for just such occurrences) and sprayed it into the ventilation system. Catastrophe solved. Of course this did nothing to straighten out the road. So you have probably figured out by now that this is a long way of explaining that I didn´t get any sleep that night. The bus arrived in Bogota at 6 am.

Bogota

I got a taxi into town. It was about a half hour trip. After all I understand that there are about 6000000 people in Bogota. I made a reservation at a hostel named Anandamayi. The reviews I read said that if you want a relaxed peaceful place to stay in Bogota this is the place. Boy were they right. This place has more of an atmosphere of a buddhist meditation retreat than a hostel. But that´s ok I was ready for a little kicking back and relaxing. Besides it is close to all the tourist stuff. This place is staffed by angels, seriously. On my first night here my socks smelled so bad that I put them outside so as not to offend the other people in the room. The next day I forgot about them and put on a different pair. When I came back later on that afternoon the socks had been washed, dried, folded and put on my bed. Wow had I known that I would have put all my laundry outside:)
Impressions of Bogota
This city is fabulous. I am staying in the centro historico, funny it seems I usually end up in the historic center of the city. The first thing you need to know about Bogota is that it is very hilly. And steep. They have planned it well, at least this part of town. A large section of the town has been converted into pedestrian walkways, no cars. I love it. They have a couple of different bus systems here. One is the local which run all over the different parts of the city and surrounding area. The other is the Tecmilenio. From what I understand the rush hour traffic runs north-south. This is the direction that the tecmilenio goes. Well it may very well go other ways too but I am not knowledgeable about that yet. These are the caterpillar busses that you may have seen in some cities in the U.S. and cities outside of it. They are the length of 2 busses and have a flexible portion between the 2 halves. They have their own dedicated lane so they are moving while people in cars and other busses are stuck in traffic. I hear everyone thinking "Ok great Charlie, but what have you seen so far?" I am wirting this on the evening of my third day here. A few hours ago I just got back from the Salt Cathedral. This place is incredible. It is underground and it is carved ENTIRELY OUT OF ROCK SALT! On the way in are 14 stations of the cross, each individually carved by a different Colombian sculptor. There are naves off to the side, the main sanctuary can hold 8,400 people, as I said this place is huge. I can´t do it justice describing it if you want to know more about it just google Salt Cathedral Colombia and I´m sure you´ll get a lot of hits. But yes that is what it took to get me back in a Catholic church. The first day I got here I obviously had a lot of time on my hands as I checked in at about 7 am. The first thing I did was take a nap. But obviously when I got up a couple of hours later I still had a lot of time on my hands. There is a church on top of a mountain here in town it´s name is Monserrate. Yeah just like Montserrat in France. The church is nice but nothing spectacular but what is spectacular is the view from the top. You take a train car up a very long steep hill to get there and a cable car to get down. No I don´t know why, it´s just a catholic thing I guess. (I can hear some of you thinking "God Charlie, 2 catholic churches in less than a week what has got into you?) Well to those of you thinking that relax, after today I intend to go back to ignoring them the same way I have for years. I was done at Monserrate at about noon so I went back down and that I would check out the Gold Museum. It is a museum dedicated to pre colombian gold. Sounded interesting so I got a cab and went. I get there and find out it is closed for the months of sept. and oct. However there is a place across the street that is bunch of small stalls inside a building that sell art and handicrafts. I went and checked it out and I bought a beautiful painting. It is about3 ft. long and 18 inches high. The material it is painted on is a combination of palm and yucca fibers or something like that. It is not framed. I figured I could just roll it up in a tube and I could squeeze it in one of my panniers. WRONG! It rolls up but not small enough to fit in a tube that will fit in my panniers. So then I have a brilliant idea, I think to myself "Self why don´t you just send it back to Mazatlan?" So I go to DHL and ask how much it would cost to send. I am informed that in order to do that, since it is a painting, I have to get a permit from the ministry of culture. WELL AIN´T THAT JUST SPECIAL!? So I get there and am given the information I need and the forms and am told to come back on friday between 8:30 and 12:30. Now keep in mind that if I had been bringing this back on a plane I wouldn´t have had to do any of this. So friday comes and I go jump through all the hoops and they say no problems your permit will be ready in 8DAYS. And that brings me to today which I´ve already told you about. So that´s all for now.
The road goes on forever and the party never ends.
hasta la vista baby
Charlie