Stilll in Bogota 23-27 de agosto

Still in Bogota from Thursday Aug 23 through Monday Aug 27

The flu hangs on for  a few more days, and so does my coughing. When I meet with Felipe (the source of the flu for several of us) on Wednesday, he still is not totally over it, which is not a good sign. I have never taken so much medicine for a cold in my life. A fellow traveler gives me something. I take the antibiotics that I have for malaria (but am not using) after checking out the dosage for a throat infection on the internet. The son of the hostel owner who is a doctor suggests another over the counter medicine. The local pharmacist sells me a plant-based expectorant and another antibiotic. Another friend, Miguel, cooks me up a honey and herb concoction. In the end, it takes about 8 days for the cough to go and for me to feel normal again. Could have been worse. In the meantime, I visit the city but always head home when I start to feel tired (less each day).

                                         A mountain stream passing through Bogota

I have another small issue at the hostel where I am staying. When I got back from the Yage ceremony, I switched rooms. And, after the second night, I knew I also had the dreaded Chinches de Cama (bed bugs) in my room. This is based on the fact that I wake up about 3 AM each morning with several new itchy bumps on my torso that turn alarmingly red. I ask Maria, the owner, to do something about it. She has Mary, the woman who cleans the place, clean the room. Mary also leaves some herbs (looks like Tansy to me) that are insect-repellent on the table and under the bed. That night, I am attacked again. Had another talk with Maria in the morning. She buys some insecticide spray (pyrethroids) and I spray everything (not a lot to spray as the room is about 6 x8) twice and keep the door closed. Seems to do the trick, which is a relief.

I visit the Police Museum. I get a tour by a guide who is doing this instead of military service which is compulsory in Colombia. Mostly guns and uniforms although the view of the city is tremendous from the top floor. The only reason I went was to see the basement exhibit about the year long effort to capture Pablo Escobar, the famous Colombian drug baron, in the 1990s. Unfortunately that exhibit is closed for renovations. My Spanish is not good but the guide’s English is worse so we stick to Spanish. I speak French to a Frenchmen who is on the tour with me.

                                                       A peaceful protest in downtown Bogota

                                                    Police response to peaceful protest

I visit the Museo de Oro (Gold Museum, which is all about Inca era gold artifacts). It is spread over 3 floors and is very impressive. The door to some parts of the museum are actually bank vault doors. Not surprising considering what is on exhibit. Many examples of gold adornments worn by upper class Incas, gold instruments of various kinds including for lime (calcium carbonate not the fruit) to be taken with coca leaves. A lot of gold went into upper class tombs. Very beautiful artifacts. An explanation of some of the gold working techniques including one in which moulds were made of clay and then reverse moulds of wax, which were melted away after the gold was poured. Since the Incas worshiped  the Sun, and gold resembled the Sun in colour, it was revered in many ways, but certainly not hoarded the way the 16^th century Spaniards did, destroying much of a civilization in their lust for it.

                                                         Inca gold ornament

I visit the Botero museum. This is the personal collection of the deceased 20^th century Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. He left behind an extensive collection of other artists’ work, including a painting by Picasso. It is well worth the visit although half of the collection is Botero’s own work (mostly paintings with some sculptures) which is all of people and animals portrayed as obese. Very strange style which I did not really appreciate.

There is one building I pass a number of times which is an Emerald Exchange. In that area, there are many men with little envelopes of emeralds on the street trading with each other and of course trying to sell to passers-by. It seems kind of surreal.

There are some very beautiful colonial buildings in Bogota which tend to be around major squares which are often used to set up outdoor markets. But the squares themselves and the inevitable statues including the statue of the greatest South American hero, Simon Bolivar, who led the successful efforts to oust the Spanish, are all run-down, with graffiti , dirt, and plants growing on/in them.

Prices in the streets tend to be inexpensive but buying on the street has its share of trickery too. I buy a USB flash drive on the street to replace one I lost, and when I open the package the drive is not the same make as on the package nor the same number of Gigabytes, and it looks used and I am sure it is.

I need to buy some warm clothing. I did not realize how much of Colombia is in the Andes and it is cold at 2000-4000 m. I purchase a couple pairs of long underwear at an outdoor store a long way from the Old City. Long bus ride and the bus service is really good. The main bus system is easy to understand and is cheap but there are several other smaller systems which take time to figure out. I also need a jacket and a warm hat and end up buying them at an outdoor market where they are much cheaper. The jacket is a fake North Face jacket but it is cheap and warm enough. I also buy a small fleece blanket which will come in handy for travel and when I am sleeping outside. A couple from Australia, Henry and Lotus, that I had been hanging out with, were also scrambling to buy warm clothes. They had spent the winter in Vancouver and had left lots of warm clothes there. Henry is really tall, and I wear mostly XL clothing sizes in Colombia, so it is not surprising that Henry was having trouble finding a jacket that fit.

On Saturday night, I go to a little bar in Candelaria (old city) on Saturday run by Manuel, one of the musicians who was in the Amazon with us, and his father. This night Manuel is playing (the string bass) with two other musicians including Brandon, a Nicaraguan-Canadian drummer who was also in the Amazon. Brandon did a really fine drum solo later in the evening after he and Manuel had gone off to smoke some pot during a break. Manuel’s dad makes me up some herb tea for my still persistent cough. Somehow the subject of the Mojojo’s, the grubs we ate in the Amazon, comes up. Apparently, he loves them (although prefers them cooked).  A number of other people show up from our Amazon group, and their friends, as well as the brother of Beatriz, the Colombian-Canadian who runs a theatre company in Toronto and who really got this Colombian-Canadian exchange going.  Between my broken Spanish and my coughing, I only speak to people for a few minutes at a time but the music is great!

 On Sunday, I get together with Felipe and Miguel to discuss the video project (A comparison between the Tar sands projects in Alberta and the El Quimbo dam project on the Rio Magdalena in Colombia, biggest ever in that country: both requiring governments to re-write environmental regulations to smooth things over). Afterwards we go out for lunch to a popular local restaurant,  Asadero Capachos. It serves thick slices of roast beef and pork, roasted on a spit in huge chunks. It had a Mexican cowboy atmosphere and has a family of musicians performing live. Great place to go if you like roast beef/pork.

                                                 After a big meal with Felipe and Miguel

One more observation about urban life in Colombia. It seems to be a society obsessed with breasts. It is very common for women to wear low cut tops as every day wear. There are many magazine ads for cosmetic surgery including breast surgery, and even the store mannequins frequently have unnaturally big breasts. Women also tend to wear high heels a lot and it often seems like every second store sells shoes, mostly women’s. On the positive side, Colombian couples are extremely affectionate to one another, and there does seem to be equality of the sexes in most things.  Of course, things are very different in the countryside: fashion is not an obsession and the sexes have much more defined roles.

One thing I won’t forget is a poster I saw on the wall of a food stand in a small town north of Bogota. It was of a small child, maybe 2 years old, standing between his mother’s legs and clinging to them. The caption read, ‘No los disparen’ (Don’t shoot them).