Category: colombia

after medellin, i had a layover in bogota for about 24 hours on my way to the amazon, and i’d like to think i made the most of it! bogota is a sprawling city of 10 million people pretty high up in the andean foothills. when i was there it was overcast and chilly, which was rather refreshing. i learned as i went that uber is available in bogota, but illegal. so the meetups have to happen under the radar. my drivers kept calling me and trying to explain things in espanol, and then cancelling when they found out i couldn’t communicate. finally found out they were calling to a arrange a clandestine meetup point in a parking lot or somewhere else than the curbside. when a nice driver who spoke english finally explained this to me, things got a lot easier, lol. she said the police impound the car on the spot if they find out someone is ubering. if we were to be pulled over, i am a friend, not a customer. for this reason they insist you sit in the front seat too. i’m cool with being a friend!

i stayed in a nice area called usaquen, which used to be its own town but has been swallowed up in the bogota sprawl. there were cobblestoned streets along which i got a nice dinner and walked around. in the morning i headed downtown, which took over an hour in the very slow-moving traffic. i went to the main central bolivar square, which is surrounded by government buildings, and is famous as the site of a siege of the colombian government by m-19 guerilla tanks in the 1980s. nearby is the most famous museum in colombia, the museo de oro, which is all about pre-colonial gold and metallurgy, a topic which inspired the mythical city of el dorado. the museum only cost $1 to visit and was actually very impressive – one could easily spend a few hours there. bogota is in a valley overlooked by a mountain viewpoint called monserrat which can be reached by a cable car which i tried to take up, but ran out of time.

the whole reason i was trying to stick with uber is that taxis in bogota sadly have a terrible reputation. in the past they have been some of the most dangerous taxis in the world, with famous “million dollar rides” around to atms at gunpoint, and druggings of passengers for amnesia. at minimum, one could expect to be ripped off. even today, the taxi fare is not metered, but the meter has a number which corresponds arbitrarily with the rate the driver wants to charge, which may or may not be on a laminated piece of paper in the back seat, which the driver may have just switched out for you when he saw you weren’t a local. apparently the taxi cartels have lynched uber drivers to protect their turf, and of course they are the lobby behind uber being illegal. anyway, i got in a taxi out of necessity to make it to the airport on time, and it went all right. whew!

solid day in bogota!

i got to go on a great little trip for one week to south america – first to medellin and bogota in colombia, and then into the amazon! of note, colombia was the 100th country i have visited!

i started with 2.5 days in medellin, which was very relaxing. this city in the andean foothills is called the city of eternal spring due to its constant spring-like perfect weather. it is also famous for being the home of the world’s most famous drug boss pablo escobar and his medellin cartel, which controlled the streets of the city until the mid-90s, and gave it the highest murder rate in the world during the 1980s. pablo developed an estimated net worth of over 30 billion us dollars smuggling cocaine to america before he was gunned down and buried in medellin, and the sites of his demise and burial have now – perhaps questionably on an ethical basis – become tourist pilgrimage sites. i started watching the tv series narcos on the plane ride down, which is a great show if you haven’t seen it. the city, along with others in colombia, is also now home to many people displaced by the colombian civil war over the past half century, between the leftist revolutionary farc and eln and the government and other paramilitary groups. the war killed over 200,000 and displaced over five million people. thankfully now a peace agreement has been agreed to by the involved parties, and members of the farc are being integrated back into society peacefully. obviously, the drug wars and the civil war were horrible for regular people in colombia, and they are trying to put this violent history behind them, and generally doing an amazing job of it. now, medellin is known as a city where expats love to live and start tech companies as there are all the amenities one could want, it is safe, has perfect weather, and very friendly people.

i stayed where all the tourists stay, in an upscale neighborhood along a hillside called el poblado. really nice hotel for excellent value – about 25% of what one would pay for a similar room in the usa. there are multiple huge, very nice malls, which of course made me happy! the most glamorous is called el tesoro, and is perched on the side of the hill with amazing views over the city in the valley below. one very cool thing about medellin these days is that the city is doing tremendous work to provide top-notch transportation, libraries, and other services to the socioeconomically disadvantaged people who live in the hillside suburbs. in addition to its very impressive metro system (the only one in colombia and a great source of pride), the city has built cable cars to various suburbs to make commuting easier for the locals, which cost a very small amount to ride. i took two of them up the surrounding hillsides for excellent views. there is also a famous series of outdoor escalators which has been built in a once very rough neighborhood called communa 13. now the city has sanctioned a lot of colorful graffiti in the area, and built free escalators. definitely a cool place to check out.

downtown there is a nice museum called the museo de antioquia, which contains many sculptures by botero, medellin’s most famous artist. he had a unique style of sculpting globular, almost spherical people and animals. i also visited a museum devoted to the memory of those lost to the colombian civil war, which, while heartfelt in its intention, was a bit of a disappointment from the tourist/education perspective. i ate a ton of street food, most notably numerous empanadas and cups of freshly cut mango slices covered in lime juice and spicy salt. overall a really great time in medellin!