Of bikes and water

Bogotá
Sunday, Jan. 29

One of the purposes of this trip was for Avi to learn more about photography from Diego. Diego Samper (you can google him), husband of Marlen, our Spanish teacher, has been a photographer, painter and installation artist with works on display nationally in Canada and in various Colombian museums.

So Friday found us exploring La Candelaria, the original colonial part of Bogota, with eyes and cameras aimed everywhere. There is supposed to be a way to upload pictures to accompany these blogs, but I can't seem to do it. So I have to rely on telling you that old Bogota contains an abundance of hidden art work - some great political wall graffiti, random metal figures climbing up walls and rooftops throughout the area, and the greatest assortment of metal sewer covers. Bogota also has a huge university population, streets and streets of busy pedestrian shoppers, glittering stores and fancy restaurants to keep them spending, a wealth of museums and galleries (all free and subsequently quite busy) and all the traffic congestion of a modern cosmopolitan metropolis.
It also has a massive section of poverty - people who have moved here from the countryside or were born to poverty and remain trapped in substandard housing. At least, that's what I've read - our gracious hosts are not showing us that face of their city, and The Lonely Planet frankly recommends that, for personal safety, we not go looking. The busy streets are also lined with the marginal and the underemployed. When we were here in '73, the sidewalks held people trying to sell you gum and shoelaces. Today we see bedraggled folks trying to sell you cell phone minutes. It's a strange commentary on our technological advancement and our social stagnation.

Vehicle traffic, mentioned above, has certainly been a concern of ours, even though we aren't driving. On our first day dropped off in Bogota, we desperately tried to hail a cab to get us to our hotel. There were lots of them, but few were vacant and even those that were seemed to have other plans that didn't include picking us up. After 20 minutes of frantic waving, at three different intersections, we gave up and walked the 28 blocks, our backpacks gaining weight as we went. And again on Friday, when trying to get back to our hotel from La Candelaria, we ( including Marlen, our Colombian teacher and rabid Bogota booster) could not get a cab out, forcing Diego, who had gone to rent a van, to work his way through the congestion to come rescue us.
An interesting aspect of Bogota is its mass transit solution. They rejected subways and have built a massive infrastructure of high volume buses traveling on dedicated lanes with a host of overhead pedestrian access walkways to get you to the pickup points. And the buses are packed. This is in conjunction with driving restrictions that limit the days of travel according to the final digit on your license plate. As well, sidewalks on important streets have a bike lane running along them to encourage folks to get out of cars. But what really caught my attention was their Sunday street closures for cycling. This is not a totally new idea. Winnipeg, for example, closes Wellington Crescent to car traffic on Sundays so that cyclists have two or three uninterrupted kilometers. I think Vancouver, aiming to be The Greenest City On Earth, restricts cars in Stanley Park. Whoopie! Bogotá closes streets, or forbids traffic to half the lanes on some streets, to create over 170 kilometers of cyclist/pedestrian/skateboarder dedicated road. 170! Wake up, Gregor Robertson, we've got a long way to go.


On Saturday we went to a nature sanctuary within a cloud forest outside of Bogotá. For four hours we were guided among massive ferns, towering local oaks and flowering orchids. The area had been largely cleared for farming and cattle by a previous owner, but for several years his grandson, a Bogotá architect, has been restoring a massive valley to indigenous plants - and watched as the animal population recovers in the process. It was a wonderful experience - to marvel at the size of the trees which have regrown so massively in so short a time, to gaze in all directions as hummingbirds came to the trumpet flowers of the vines, as butterflies ( some with transparent wings) lit on the low flowering shrubs, as mists rolled in over the dense forest and we made our way down to cascading waterfalls to eat our lunch, and to stand in stillness again as the mists rolled away, unfolding the undulations of distant green that held us in stillness and and awe. And of course, through it all, my stumbling attempts at photography, trying to see it all in new ways and to find visual expression for both the overwhelming and the overlooked.
Colombia truly is a beautiful country. We've had several experiences with the lands and the waters. In Villa de Leyva one day we hiked up a rocky hill to the statue of Jesus that overlooks the town, and carried on down to a small valley with a running stream where I (but not Ruth) waded in for a "refreshing" soak and escape from the heat. Another day we took a taxi to a trailhead and hiked into a series of waterfalls, again allowing me the chance for a "refreshing" dip beneath the falls. Though again, this fabulous opportunity was not seized upon by Ruth - she seems to have not learned the motto on the Canadian Coat of Arms " A Mare Usque Ad Mare" which any Canadian can translate as "the water's fine once you get used to it!" But that night Ruth had no problem at all as we went out to a series of thermal pools (not quite "hot" springs, but still quite nice) outside of town where stone pools illuminated only by a few candles held less than a dozen locals and visitors who soaked leisurely and whispered quietly under the open stars.

But it is late on Sunday night, and I must get to bed. Tomorrow morning is our flight to Leticia, the major city of the Colombian jungle. And on Tuesday, we leave Leticia by boat, going four hours upstream on the Amazon, to get to Marlen and Diego's own little sanctuary where we'll be for a week. No internet there, and scarcely any electricity or cell connection, so you won't be hearing from us ( or we from you ).

Que vayan todos muy bien y que tengan buen salud. ¡Hasta que nos vemos!

AR