Well it seems again I have delayed writing my blog until there is just too much to tell you all!
I left Barranquilla pretty exhausted after the carnaval and so couldn't bring myself to join the other gringos in San Gil for any of the adventure sports offered there. I had a look round the small villages of Guane and Barichara, which were pretty but not all that interesting to be honest apart from the beautiful interior of the church in Barichara. A sleepless night with swollen glands in San Gill, waking myself and everyone else up making strange strangled noises, forced me to visit the doctor where I discovered that I am allergic to penicillin (luckily through a test, not the hard way!) and that I had pharyngitis. So it was a quick jab in the arse and then I was on my way to Villa de Leyva which is another stunning colonial town but with a lot more character than the last two.
I arrived in time for the Astronomic festival and the huge cobbled plaza was full of telescopes which was unfortunate as they ruined all my photos of the stunning wide open plaza and its church (this
turned out not to matter anyway but that comes later). I spent a lovely few days treating myself to luxury meals and glasses of wine after finishing my course of antibiotics, and shopping in the little boutiques around the village. Definitely a place I could have spent more time in. I took a short and very dull trip to Raquira which would have been pretty if it weren't for the streets lined with shops selling tourist tat, hammocks and baskets etc. On the last day I took a bus to some waterfalls nearby and escaped the other tourists to find a set of 3 more cascades all along the deep river gorge in beautiful peaceful surroundings with little fincas dotted about the hills and a view down the valley to Villa de Leyva. Waiting for the bus to get back I was chatting to an old guy when two lads on dirt bikes pulled up and offered me a lift back, so I had a thrilling and muddy ride back to round off a lovely day.
The bus ride from Villa to Bogota took me on a fascinating tour of Colombian rural industry. Each town we passed through specialised in
a different product...there was long sausage town, bocadillo village, milk and cheese hamlet... and around dusk we passed through a particularly atmospheric brick and tile making village with wisps of smoke from the little kilns dotted around the hills filling the valley with an eerie mist. Sometime later in the darkness we unexplainedly passed what appeared to be the Taj Mahal. I have no idea what they were making in that town, maybe curry?
In Bogota I had arranged to stay with Antonio from the apartment in Taganga who is studying there. He lives in a kind of student accommodation where a good catholic seņora cooks for them each day and lives with her family behind the apartment block.
At first I couldn’t see anything special in Bogota. It was any other big city, a grey climate and highrises. Spending time in the highlands cool atmosphere again had really started to make me homesick too, and I was dying for a rainy day curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea!
Hanging out with Antonio and his fashion student friends opened my eyes to a whole world of music and student life that I had pretty much forgotten
about (or maybe even missed most of the first time round although its been 10 yrs and things obviously change), I also l got to learn a whole new vocabulary here…phrases like “que mas paisa”, “Oi quieto” “parce” “olla/hueco” for a dodgy place or dive, “culear”, ĻlucasĻ meaning 1000 pesos and many more that I couldnīt remember 5 minutes later! They also use the odd English word here which throws me, for example they use īmanī a lot as in - estaba hablando con el man ayer.
The first day in Bogota I waited till Antonio got back from classes thinking we’d go out and explore the city but we ended up going to his mate Valery's’ flat because he had some work to do for the next day. Not a whole lot of work got done though and we ended up drinking neat gin (amazingly tasty why did we never try it in Swansea?) and dancing to drum and bass in an unfurnished front room with multiple stains on the carpet and drunken scrawls on the walls. Great fun.
The next day I caught the transmilenio (a fast and modern bus service) to the north of the city to
do some shopping (I save up a list of stuff every time I get near to a city which I cant find anywhere else) and walked around the posh Zona Rosa area. I had been looking for a new bikini for months and failing to find any in my size but here I walked straight into a shop where they made them to measure..any size and colour, any combination of top and bottom…ready for the next day, brilliant. The ladies in the shop were lovely and in a country where plastic surgery is so popular I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise when one asked me if my boobs were real or not!
On another day Antonio took me for lunch and a tour around the old part of town, we caught the teleferico up to the top of Monserrat which overlooks the city and had a delicious tinto (coffee) with herbal aguardiente while sitting in the drizzle at the top then ambled back down the long path down through shanty towns of shacks serving food to the brave people on their way up by foot.
I woke up on Valentines day and turned on the TV to find
Dirty Dancing on in Spanish. Brilliant …just like watching it new all over again and I tried to explain to Antonio why it was every girls favorite film (or at least those aged between 25 and 35). I spent the rest of the day while he was at college wandering round the old town again before getting ready to go out with Camilla, Andres and Valery to Bogotrax - Bogota's big Electronica music festival. There were various free venues where they were playing all types of electronic music possible with hilarious genre names such as dark core and schranz. We walked around a lot trying to find the first place but then it was very small and crowded with everyone sitting around waiting for the thing to kick off. We went to check out the other venue instead and hung out in the shop next door drinking aguardiente (ordered by the bottle) where Antonio nearly got taken off to the barracks because he didn’t have his get out of military service free card with him when the army boys turned up! We got bored of the music at this place after a while and so went back to the initial
shop/bar to find a great DnB DJ playing. We found ourselves a little spot at the top of some stairs to dance the rest of the night away and watch a scene unfold between a loved up girl and some blond guy while her very angry looking boyfriend looked on from below, before going back to Valerys to sleep on the floor. Antonio, Camilla and Andrés have to do this every time they go out because the Seņora doesn’t let them have keys to the front door of their apartment!
Friday night was another Bogotrax at a place called Edifrito, we went with a friend of Valerys called Hugo to meet up with my friend Kyla first in the back of a shop called Macarena then on to this hueco (translates fittingly as hole) packed full of people along corridors and in strange office type rooms which were hotter than a sauna. The music was good for about half an hour then turned into dark core or something. I stupidly left my camera on a table and lost it, then it just got far too hot so we left to look for another rumba but ended up back at Valerys
place listening to music till the early hours instead after a fruitless search.
After waiting out a spectacular thunderstorm over the city on Saturday, watching from Antonios top floor window, we helped Camilla with some photo story type scenes she had to submit for college then I made an abortive attempt to post some stuff home before getting ready to go out again, I was planning to have a quiet-ish night because I was catching the bus out the next day, but of course it turned into another big night out. Bogota was full of weird looking people that night I remember actually stopping in my tracks to ask Antonio if two blokes in purple spangly drainpipe trousers and glam rock haircuts were for real, I just couldnīt believe they weren’t on their way back from a fancy dress party.
So anyway I got about an hour or so’s sleep and then packed my stuff up in order to catch my bus.
Antonio waved me off and I left Bogota on a lovely sunny day, the bus passing alongside the cyclovia where everyone gets on their bikes and skates along closed city roads to enjoy themselves and socialize I guess…I
felt jealous that I wasn’t staying to be part of it, but happy to have experienced such a unique part of my trip here.
So unfortunately the photos with this blog are not mine but have all been kindly donated by Camilla, Valerie and her friend Thom.
Colombia's Flag
Map of Colombia