Getting to know Bogota July 10, 2006

Bogota is truly a beautiful city! A week has passed by quickly and Daniel and I have been dutifully walking everyday. On one occasion we even tried to run, but we only managed to run a mile and a half on “Three Mile Thursday.” --We blame the altitude. Since our run turned into a walk, we managed to tour some of the parks along the way. Bogota has just built its first public swimming complex. I say complex because the building has 4 pools! One of the pools is a double Olympic size pool and Daniel and I plan to fit a swim into our busy schedules. After the pool, we took a tour of the brand new (and another first for the city) public library. The library is designed with a moat going around most of the building and has fountains everywhere. –Very impressive. The city seems so much cleaner and the traffic is much more manageable since our last visit 6 years ago. The Tias say that this is due to the “Transmilenio.” –A recently built public transportation system that resembles the San Francisco Muni except it is with buses instead of trains (See photo 3). The Transmilenio costs 50 cents to ride and although Daniel and I have yet to take the “Transmi”for a spin, we have seen the sparkling red buses all around the city and are very impressed. I have also been impressed by the city’s nightlife and museums.

There are so many museums, cafes and bars in the city. We even saw a gay friendly café on our walk (See photo 2)! One evening, Daniel and I went for a stroll to check out the night life and could hear large groups of young people singing along to Vallenato (typical Colombian music from the coast) songs in the bars. I love that! Two of The Tias also took us to the National Museum to see 7 of the 7000 terracota soldiers discovered in China. When we first arrived at the museum, the line to enter the special exhibit wrapped around the building so we decided to go eat ice cream instead of seeing the exhibit. When we were finished with our icecream, we noticed that the line had shrunk to just a handful of people. The line was small because the museum staff began turning people away since the museum was about to close. But lucky for us, one of Daniel´s Tias is very clever at negotiating and she was able to beg and plead to not only get us in but also permit a group of others who were refused entrance. And as you can see from the first photo, the soldiers were beautiful.

The Tias and the rest of Daniel´s family have been very kind to us and we are eating very well. We typically eat rice, salad and meat. But because I won’t eat salad due to it being raw, the Tias have been so nice to cook vegetables for me. The Tias have a very enormous golden retriever that is also very well fed. Tonight the dog knocked over a vase in an effort to grab bread from the table. It was chaotic and very funny at the same time. Yesterday, Daniel’s Aunt and Uncle invited us over to watch the World Cup final and served a fantastic meal of rice, beans, fried plantains (patacon), sausage, arepas (thick corn meal patties), avocado, and ground meat. The meal was a typical Colombian meal from Medellin called “Bandeja Paisa.” Daniel tells me that the complete Bandeja Paisa is served with a fried egg but I was completely full without it. We ate before the terrible defeat of France in the World Cup. Did you see that head bunt during the game?