Bogotá
COLOMBIA
Awesometown, South America
By AARON
Thursday, September 4, 2008
So after spending the night in the sketch hotel in Manizales where teenagers show up at 3am to get their “heavy petting” on and hope to score, Lyndi and I woke up grumpy, tired, and ready to kick some teenage ass. We purchased our tickets for Bogotá, and boarded our 6am bus to the capital of Colombia.
As our taxi driver took us to the La Candeleria district of Bogotá (near central), he bestowed his vast knowledge upon us about purchasing tickets for tomorrow’s futbol match between Colombia and Uruguay. Unfortunately the stadium offices closed at 6pm, so we arrived at Hostal Sue (number 3), dumped our bags, and took the Transmilenio to the stadium. The Transmilenio is a bus transit system that has it’s own lanes and serves as a great public transportation system for the city. $0.75US and 30min later, we were at the Colombia National Stadium buying our tickets for Saturday’s match. I couldn’t wait.
Saturday went by in a blur as we waited impatiently for the 6:20 World Cup Qualifier match between Colombia and Uruguay. At our hostel, we ran into Sergio, a fellow traveler from Detroit that we had met in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Per my instructions via e-mail, he purchased the same section tickets so that we could all go together to the game. Doors opened at the stadium at 12:30, but we arrived around 4pm to an already packed stadium. Splitting up so that we could get some good seats, Lyndi (wearing her new Colombia soccer jersey she bought outside the stadium) and I sat amongst rabid fans, aging from early teens to seasoned adults. Lyndi had bought some Colombian face paint earlier that day as well (I think she was more excited than me…) and after applying a flag to her cheek, we proceeded to pass the paint around our section until everyone in a 10 foot radius was sporting the Colombian colors on their face. It was greatness.
Now I had only seen matches like these on T.V. You know, the ones where the flares are going off, streamers are being thrown on the field, and tens of thousands of screaming fans are proudly showing their colors, flags, and goofy hats and scarves. And let’s not forget the hundreds of security guards, decked out in full riot gear like something you’d read about in a Tom Clancy novel. We were obviously rooting for Colombia, which was good, considering 98% of the stadium was pro-Colombia. When the Uruguay fans did come in, the chants started. Now my Spanish isn’t that good, but from the chants I could tell that they were saying some not too nice things about the Uruguay fans and their mothers. Ahh, competition. Once the game started, we got into the groove of things, we even learned a couple of chants to yell at the goalkeeper of the opposing team. Unfortunately Colombia lost 1-0 in a heartbreaker, but the experience was priceless.
That night, Lyndi, Sergio and I left the stadium and headed back to our neck of the woods for a couple of beers. We went to a great little pub called Cafe y Coffee, and knocked back a couple of cold ones, while Lyndi received compliments on her jersey.
The next day, Lyndi and I decided to climb Monseratte, which is a hill on the east side of Bogotá, with a church on top that overlooks the city. Unfortunately Lyndi wasn’t feeling too well, so instead of taking the grueling hike, we bought 2 round-trip tickets on the train that takes you up the mountain in 5 minutes. Arriving at the top, we realized that it was Sunday, which means that Monseratte turns into a madhouse full of tourists, and churchgoers alike. The view was incredible, all these cities in Colombia are settled in the valley of the Andes Mountains, so from a bird’s eye view, you can see a huge sprawling city below, surrounded by mountains on all sides. The church was packed and loud, considering all the non-churchgoers just there to check out the view, which made Lyndi and I both agree that it would be tough to attend this church on a weekly basis from a worship standpoint. After some time up on the hill, we headed back down the mountain, and walked around the city to get some site seeing in. We happened to come upon a great area of town that had an uncanny resemblance to Venice’s St. Mark’s Plaza, a huge square surrounded by a government building, cathedrals, and an art museum. The square itself had thousands of pigeons (or rat birds as I like to call them), locals, and entertainers working for tips. They even had a couple of llamas that young kids could ride while wearing a cowboy hat.
Later that afternoon, being Sunday and all, we found the Hooters in Bogotá and went to watch some good ol’ NFL football. Hooters didn’t disappoint as we watched the Cowboys slaughter the Cleveland Browns, and between halves watched as the Hooters girls danced for the customers, something I had never seen before in the States. After a couple pitchers of beer and some hot wings, we called it a day and headed back to the hostel.
The next day, Lyndi and I, still high on getting so much accomplished in our 2 days here, decided to visit the Cathedral de Sal (Salt Cathedral), located in the small town of Zipaquirá, about 1 hour outside of Bogotá. We went with Zach, a guy from Portland who we met at our hostel, and got there around 1pm. The tour costs $15,000 pesos and includes a guide, and I must say it was money well spent. The original Cathedral was deemed unsafe around 15 years ago after numerous cave-ins, and the new one was constructed using now state-of-the-art equipment and new-found knowledge of salt mining. In addition to being a beautiful underground Cathedral made entirely of salt, it is also a working salt mine that excavates about 40 tons of salt per day. Inside are also the 13 stages of Christ, which are 13 different altars that each represents Christ, from crucifix to his resurrection, all carved entirely out of salt. The actual Cathedral is breathtaking, with the ceiling as high as 20 meters, and acoustics so good that they hold choir and symphony concerts there whenever they can. All this was done over 100 meters deep inside the mountain. The church holds weekly services, with a capacity of 1,000 persons, but on a weekly basis takes in almost 2,000. It is definitely a must see if you are in Bogotá.
Our final day had us scheduled for a 9:30pm bus heading to San Augustin, so we took one last walk of the city with Sergio, noticing a man sewing his jeans around his ankles on a park bench in central. Modesty is not in his vocabulary.
We went to the post office to mail off some postcards, 7 to be exact, which cost about $35 US. I tell you this because any of you who receive postcards from us, consider this our last one as we can’t afford to spend $6 per postcard. We’ll call from now on.
So before we called it a day, Sergio, Lyndi and I decided to head to the factory of Miguel Caballero, who is known around the world as the “Armani of Bulletproof”. Starting with only $10 American dollars, his company pulls in over $4 million in sales every year with his lines of bulletproof clothing. He makes a lot for police and special forces all over the world, but what sets him apart is his Platinum (soon to be called “Black”) line of everyday clothing. He has everything from short sleeve polo shirts to Italian leather jackets. All bulletproof. These shirts will stop a 9mm bullet at point blank range, and that’s just with the standard. You can upgrade to level IV and it will stop a mini uzi as well as other calibers. The amazing thing while we were there, was that the clothes were actually reasonably priced. The Italian leather jacket was $1500.00US, which was actually less than a Hugo Boss Italian leather jacket of the same quality, only ol’ Hugo can’t stop a Sig Sauer 9mm. The staff was amazingly receptive and nice, for 3 grungy Americans walking into their factory unannounced, but the head of sales explained that they get a lot of backpackers in there. He told us that no less than a month ago, he got 10 rowdy, obnoxious British guys in there (his words) who wanted to pay him $20US each for him to shoot them (wearing one of the articles of clothing). He could only shoot 3, but told us he would have done it for free…
Feeling like we left Bogotá on the constant high note we had been riding since we got there, Lyndi and I packed things up and headed toward San Augustin.
