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Published: January 5th 2014
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3 January 2014 – Friday – Bogota, Colombia
Walkabout Bogota. Our apartment is on 22
nd Street, just off 7
th Avenue, which is the ‘Main Street’ in Downtown Bogota. We walked north for a bit until we saw another western couple studying a map. I approached them and asked where they got their map. They were German and staying at the IBIS Hotel nearby, and the hotel provided them each with a map. So we went there and asked for a map too! Colombia has next to none typical visitor amenities like visitor centres or maps so the hotels produce their own for their guests (and any else that asks for one). They are very accommodating. We were looking for a 472 office to send another small parcel to Louise in France and found it nearby, but they didn’t provide jiffy bags. After consulting the map, we discovered that the area we first wanted to visit, La Candelaria, was south on 7
th Avenue, so we turned around and walked its length.
7
th Avenue is the main commercial thoroughfare in this part of this vast city. (In excess of 8 million people live here in Bogota. Bogota is 8,700 feet above
sea level and the air is very thin. I felt it in my chest; it is as though I cannot get enough oxygen into my lungs and I am trying to breath more deeply to compensate.)
7
th Avenue is lined with shops and restaurants and is closed to vehicular traffic. There are shoe shops and sun glass stores, mobile phone stores and mobile phone kiosks in the entryways of grocery stores. There are many lottery kiosks. There are many clothes stores. There are also a few Western franchises dotted between the local stores: Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Subway and Timberland. There are cosmetic stores selling 100,000 colours and shades of nail polish! There is security everywhere. It reminds us of when we used to travel for work into Northern Ireland during the troubles when handbags and backpacks were searched before being allowed to enter any shop or premises. And the security personal here also inspect your receipt against your purchases as you depart. We even saw one man patted down as he left a store.
There were a few Barcelona-like street statue artists, and a man balancing and bouncing on a rubber tightrope. There were many booksellers with
their wares spread out on the sidewalk. The street was very crowded with people, but it was more spacious than the similar commercial streets in downtown Medellin. The people here are neither as stylish nor beautiful as those in Medellin. (We found some of the women in Medellin very striking and exotic.). We found two cd shops on 7
th Avenue and inquired about Colombian jazz. In the first shop I was shown a boxed collection of Louis Armstrong and a couple cds by Michael Buble. In the second shop, however, I found the first volume of Jazz Colombiana and was again immediately pleased.
7
th Avenue is a longish shopping street. There is a square near its southern end celebrating Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America, and by most (western) accounts a violent and ruthless man set on killing as many Spaniards in one lifetime as possible. Here they venerate him with statues and squares and streets and a country named after him! His strategy was similar to that of Cromwell’s military campaign in Ireland in that his orders were to kill every Spanish person: man, woman and child. On the square there was what looked like an ‘occupation’
settlement of young people with political signs and anti-government slogans (even the statue of Bolivar was wearing a slogan t-shirt). There was also a few Colombians in traditional costume offering rides on llamas to children. The buildings on this square are magisterial in their architecture; it is very like a major Spanish square, and was designed and built during their occupancy of the country.
We turned up the hill in the area of La Candelaria. It is an historic neighbourhood, similar to the ‘old city’ of most European cities, with old houses, churches and buildings in the Spanish Colonial and Baroque styles of architecture. This is the area where most of the westerners who are visiting Bogota stay and hang out. There are an abundance of hostels, quaint cafes and small restaurants and shops selling typical and traditional and very colourful Colombian crafts. We even found a jazz burger joint, La Hamburgueseria, in which to have our lunch (that’s right – a jazz hamburger restaurant – imagine what a very happy boy I was!). After inspecting the menu and glancing at the kitchen, while I was perusing the very important jazz posters on the walls and jazz album covers
under glass on the dining tables, Joan decided it was a serious hamburger kitchen and we stayed. The background music was lively Latin Jazz and the service very friendly and efficient. I had a bunch of mini-burgers with a variety of sauces and Joan had a falafel burger with more sauces. It was all excellent, and washed down with a lager from the Bogota Beer Company. This restaurant also has a function room where live jazz is performed, but it is not starting up again until the middle of January, and they also host a local 5-day jazz festival in August. Not only that – they have an enlarged poster of Thelonious Monk in their bar! (Other posters of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Dave Brubeck decorate the walls.) And they have a very appealing original jazz-theme painting the width of the bar’s back wall.
After lunch we walked around the Candeleria area some more. Some of the original cobblestone pavements remain and they reminded us of the streets of Pompeii. We passed more small shops selling alternative clothing in bright colours. There remain many of the original two-story pastel-painted houses throughout the neighbourhood. We
met a couple of young women in the entrance to one of the many hostals and we exchanged chat about our respective travels. Both of the women’s father’s were originally from Drogheda. We walked up and down the hilly streets of this area for a couple of hours, just people watching and browsing and taking photos. There is a lot of security everywhere; men (nearly always men) with holstered pistols and some with what look like sawn-off shotguns. We wandered back down the hill and slowly walked back up 7
th Avenue to our funky apartment in 22
nd Street.
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