Two Weeks in Bogotá

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Colombia celebrated 200 years of independence while I was in Bogotá - with concerts, speeches and fireworks. The President opened a 100-year old time capsule. Bogotá, the guidebook assured me, had moved beyond its image of violence and drugs. But how to get to know a new city? Capitals are complex. They are extensive. They have long histories. They reflect the different regions and the politics inside their countries. All these things are true of Bogotá, a city about which I hardly knew even the clichés.

Bogotá has over 8.5 million people, and 10% of them earn 80 times more than the poorest 10%. Yes, eighty times! But this would be more confronting to the visitor if the poverty were not mainly confined to certain enclaves. Bogotá is a city of culture, with museums of history and the fine arts, a city where my hostess devotes her public holiday afternoon to reading poetry in one of the many fine bookshops, a city that has always valued education.

It is a city that moves between winter and spring several times a day, but never warms up.

It is crowded with people. There are many internal refugees as well as foreign migrants. A city with rambling colonial streets and modern areas translated directly from the most affluent parts of the US or Asia. A city which closes streets on Sundays to favour cyclists, which offers commuters the speedy Transmilenio service of highspeed, articulated buses, and which has created a lot of new parkland. It is a city the Lonely Planet considers a blueprint for congested Latin American capitals to follow.

When the Spaniards set foot on Latin American soil in 1499, it was on Colombia´s Carribean coast. The Spanish King appointed Bogotá a centre of control in 1550, and in 1717 it became the administrative centre of the land covered by modern Colombia, Panama, Venezuela,and Ecuador. By the end of that century the people were tired of Spanish rule, and their rebellions found sudden success in 1810 when Napoleon deposed the Spanish king in Europe. City after city in Latin America proclaimed independence that year. Even after the king was reinstated Spain was not able to retrieve all of its former colonies. Simón Bolívar was the hero who fought doggedly and thus brought permanent independence to the area in 1819. 2010 is being celetrated as the Bicentenary of Independence.

From the beginning of independence there were differences between centalists, who wanted to maintain Bolívar´s Gran Colombia, and federalists, who saw that such a large country was ungovernable. Venezuala and Ecuador split away in 1830. The differences between Conservative centralists and Liberal federalists became enshrined in the political architecture and at least eight civil wars occured during the nineteenth century. In 1903 the USA took advantage of a Liberal revolt in the northwest to secure the independence of Panama (and was thus able to build the canal.)

In the downsized Colombia political tensions remained. by the end of the 1960s, in addition to the Conservatives and Liberals, there were over a dozen guerrilla groups with different ideologies, aims and strategies. The culmination in Bogotá was, perhaps, the temporary occupation of the chief judical building by guerrillas in 1985. Some of these groups were major players in the drug trade. The current, but outgoing, president, Álvaro Uribe (2002-10) allowed many groups to trade their arms and involvement with drugs in exchange for official status as political parties. He also effected improvements in law and internal security. Many districts where it was not safe to go a dozen years ago are now safe for travellers. With US help areas that previously cultivated cocaine now raise other cash crops. Yet unknown quantities of cocaine are still produced in remote areas in the Amazon Baisin and national parks; it is still not safe to go to these places.

Even safe places have large numbers of security guards (a good way of channelling the testosertone of a disturbed generation) and these give a sense of safety to the traveller, although I could not get used to seeing soldiers with machine guns at the bottom of my street. Nor did the advice never to hail a taxi from the street reassure me. Ethnic minorities chose the day before Independence Day to march from different directions on the capital. School and university students held a demonstration the day after which brought out extra military and had the centre of the city at a standstill for the afternoon. I found it most disquieting to see the guard outside my language school increased from half a dozen to over two dozen armed police and soldiers with machine guns.

And yet Bogoteños are a gentle and friendly people, the majority of whom celebrated the Bicentenary of Independence walking quietly around their city enjoying the day out.

Travel information

We stayed for a couple of cheap nights at the Hotel Áragon, Cra 3 No14-13, La Candelaria C$25,000.00 (US$13.66) a night. Reviews for this place include, "Inexplicably still in business," and "Everyone we spoke to in Bogota had similar stories. Do not spend a peso in the Hotel Aragon, they really don't deserve it," but we, at least, could see its mid-twentieth century charm. However, when I decided to spend a couple of weeks dealing with a cracked tooth I moved to the much upmarket Anandamayi Hostal (C$80,000.00 or US43.70 a night for a single room). All praise to both, the first for providing clean and secure budget accommdation, the second for offering a tranquil garden environment in the city, breakfasts, hot water bottles and friendship. Both are in the old colonial, and mildly bohemian, area of La Candelaria. Besides being fun to live in, it provides easy access to the museums and galleries of El Centro. It also screened us from the fearsome poverty of the southern suburbs and the excessive wealth of the nothern areas. And it houses a language school of global repute, International House.

How I´ve Been

My tooth problem worked out well as Ali went to a party one Saturday night and met a dentist who referred me to an orthodontic friend with his office in the Sheraton Hotel. So, a few expensive taxi rides later, I had a new gold filling for half the Australian price. I filled in time between treatments doing a spot of pre-intermediate Spanish study at IH. It was fun. Ali and Steve meanwhile hiked to the glacier in Parque Nacional El Cucuy ... an experience I felt just fine about missing even if Steve´s photos are compelling. On the other hand, we all enjoyed a spot of Power Yoga with Australian teacher Martin Morris.

Steve's El arte de las armas is definitely worth viewing on Facebook.

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