It was early morning when I arrived in Bogotá. Actually, I was feeling a bit anxious considering what you hear about the security situation in Colombia. You are not supposed to walk alone in the night, take a taxi to go anywhere etc. So even when I stepped out of the airport to look for a taxi, I was watching left and right to see whether there were any suspicious people or not. Even standing in line and watch what kind of taxi comes next became a bit stressful.
But of course, I arrived at Reto’s without problems. The bricky building were fun to watch and the streets are not as bad as I imagined. Reto, with whom I worked with in CS quited his job after 2 years and came to Colombia to study. Not that the universities here are famous, but rather his amor is from Colombia. It is great to see that this worked out for him considering the distance.
So the interesting thing in Bogota is actually, that smaller blocks are categorized from 1-6. 1 basically means that it is a homeless area, starting from 3, things get better. Chapinero, where Reto stays, is a 4. We went after briefly to a square where you can pass by areas of 6. Actually 4s already came with security guards so I don’t really know what the standard for 6 is.
With 13 hours of difference, it is difficult for me to be awake around late evening. The first day I fell a sleep at 8 and couldn’t sleep after 3 or 4. So it is good that I got a place to adjust my jetlag.
In the end, I only met a few university friends from Reto on Saturday when they celebrated the end of the semester. They are mostly working part time already and are quite nice people. Reto’s girlfriend was telling cultural differences when she met Reto (at least I thought so) and we ended up doing drinking games. Before we left for the club, some were quite drunk already and the night turned out to be short for Reto (again).
It was fun to observe in the club. People are dancing mostly in pairs and I have heard already that dancing with strangers with very close body contact does not mean anything here. But nevertheless I was surprised to see someone just simply pull over a girl and danced with her for like half an hour.
Bogotá itself does not provide much things to see. I was on the monserrate hill, museo del oro, museo botero and did a graffiti tour which was recommended by a friend. The graffiti tour turned out to be really great. Bogotá is actually a place where doing graffiti is either legal nor illegal. You don’t have to go to jail if you get caught. But yea, do the tour yourself if you can, the artwork is beautiful.
Some pics to the end:
Some graffitis
Me, last night in Iquitos before heading to Lima，finishing up in cuzco, fucking cold here in the night
