Colombia

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Dear all,

I wish I had something fascinating to report about my latest travel. I will say this, Bogota is far different than the last few places I've been, namely Maputo, Lilongwe, and Dar es Salam. For example, Bogota has electricity and water 24 hours a day, every day. And while there were a few similarities, such as men with guns, the difference in Bogota was this - I actually believe that these were loaded AKs and not left over from the Soviet Union. Let me back up first. After a terrible flight - spending the night in Atlanta (oh wait, that wasn't terrible, I had banana pudding with Nila wafers, sweet tea, collard greens, cabbage, heaven, sheer heaven), but the trouble came from Delta refusing to claim responsibility, as my ticket was through Continental, and so on and so forth. But after climbing over the ticket counter with a golf club, I managed to get it all sorted out. That was a test to see if you were reading, I practiced killing them with kindness, and when that didn't work, I repeatedly asked for the supervisor. This was a bad omen. Coupled with the fact that every time I said Bogota, they thought I was going to India.

In any case, a few days late and pounds lighter without luggage, I arrived in Bogota. I had made a friend on the plane that is in the US foreign service, but an area that I wasn't familiar with, the people that investigate if the people are doing their jobs correctly (i.e. not selling visas) and they search the Embassy to see if people have left out classified information. Okay, I was all over this. And if something bad happens, and I'll get to that later, they're on the scene. In any case, his Spanish was somewhat better than mine and he helped me sort out the lost luggage and trying to get through customs thing. Then, I got a ride in a bullet proof black suburban with a driver that had a gun. I'm sure that this other dude had a gun, too. He probably flew on the plane with it. It was me, a few Colombians, and a bunch of Blackwater Guns and Ammo type people. I kid you not, they were reading Guns and Ammo magazine. But I already felt better, I mean, I know when I hear a southern accent talking about guns I'm going to be safe. So we pull up to the hotel and a small platoon of Colombian soliders are patrolling the door to the hotel with the biggest guns I have ever seen with like bayonet things on the top. The driver unlocks the back of the Suburban, which has another door that looks like a bank vault, before you get to the luggage. He guards the Suburban and the other guy walks me up to check into the hotel.

Then I am in the safe room where the elevator is and up to my room I go. The next day is the start of the meeting. It began like this "blah blah blah" and ended like this "blah blah blah". But, since it was the XXX, there were lots of ministers from foreign countries in attendance, which is why we had Fort Bogota out in front of our hotel. Inside the hotel were plain old military police. They only had handguns. So, since Bogota is under Phase I security alert, the XX folks in attendance had to get special permission to come. The whole time I'm thinking, why did the XXX pick a place that people had to get special permission to come to and a place where we were all supposed to stay in the hotel and not leave. But, nobody asked me.

I ended up going out to dinner, once with a former (the people who sign my paycheck) colleague who runs a project in Colombia, and once with the cousin of a Colombian (XXX) colleague. And then, once I went out with L., my counterpart from Guatemala. We went to the nice part of town, over to the shopping center where they have bomb sniffing dogs walking around and ate dinner with the guy from the embassy. People that live in Bogota aren't concerned with it and it seems like a really nice city, it is super clean with lots of parks and what is known to be a great public transportation system, but I didn't get to try it out. So that's it, nothing cultural, no museums to report back on or anything like that. And this being me, unfortunately no pictures. I'm sorry. I know that's like 0 for 6.
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