Good bye Bogotá , Hallo Cali

When I arrived to Bogotá, I could not get a room at the Platypus, and had to stay for the first three nights in another hostel, but during the day I would go and hang out at the Platypus. The first morning in Bogotá, I went to visit the Platypus where I spotted a familiar face in the living room, it was Marc. I had met Marc exactly one year ago, on my first day in Bogotá, then we went out and had a great time, I encountered him again, a couple of month later, in Taganga, and now one more time in Platypus a year after our first encounter, exactly at the same place. He also had arrived the day before to Bogotá, this time on a volunteer mission to help and orphanage in Bogota, he invited me to visit the orphanage, and I accepted the invitation. I went there the next day, met Marc and the other people working there, they gave me a tour of the place, I got to play for a couple of hours with a lot of kids desperate for attention and affection. I made another visit to the place before leaving Bogotá. The place is quite well run, the manger and the founder of the place is a women. It provides home for children who has no family, abused by family, have mental problems, sexually abused, pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers. They are short on money, and that's what is Marc trying to do, help them with their budget and fund raising, but they also could use some volunteers that would just spent time with the kids. The name of the place is Fundacion niña Maria, and is located in the suburb town of Chia close to Bogota. The Orphanage will feature in a fictional story I am writing now, and takes place in Bogota. I hope to publish it in the next few days.

The Platypus hostel in Bogota, is a great place to meet interesting people, musicians, artists, writers, or maybe I should say people aspiring to be one of those things. I have met quite a few Lawyers, and other people coming to work for Human Right and other None governmental organizations. One night in the hostel I asked a guy from Manchester named Ben to recommend a book for me, Ben who aspires to be a writer and apparently had an extensive reading history, he said it was too difficult to recommend just one and offered to give me a list of five books, we were sitting with a group of other people around a table, and turned out that most of them were avid readers, and they all wanted to have a say in the matter, they started a discussion that took about two hour, at the end of it of it they had generated a list, that I would best describe as ¨must read books for anyone who wants to claim knowledge of world literature¨, the list included books by English, French, Russian, Latin and other authors.

I am currently reading a book by Stephen King, a very popular writer who is not so well regarded by Academics, which is understandable, as he likes to write horror and science fiction books, never the less his style and story telling abilities is up there with the best of them. The book I am reading now is called Dreamcatcher, a 700 page novel, yet it does not feel too big, every page is enjoyable to read, and if I am reading it too slowly it is only because I am afraid I won´t´t have something as good to read after I finish it. I like to keep the book with me at all time, for the occasion that I have some time with nothing to do. I have this bottle holder with me, which I had bought back in Bolivia during my previous trip, one of those colorful ones made by indigenous people for tourists, and nicely fits a bottle of water, handy for treks. But I also realized that my Stephen King book fits nicely in this bag, so I am going around all the time with my book, hanging inside the bottle holder, a lot of people found this quite cool and asked me where I got the holder from.


After 10 days in Bogota I decided that was enough, and headed for the warmer Cali. I was joined by a group of friends from the Platypus, they were heading for the Pacific cost, going through Cali. It was a 10 hour trip to Cali, around the evening we stopped for dinner on the way, and as we sat down to eat the TV in the restaurant was showing the news, a terror attack had taken place in Buena Ventura, 6 people killed, 15 injured, the FARC was blamed. My friend´s plan was to take a boat from Buena Ventura to get to the pacific town, where they were going to stay, the news did not dissuade them from their plans, but they were a little worried that they might not be allowed to get to Buena Ventura.

In Cali we stayed at a hostel called Calidad House, nice hostel run by English guy married to a Colombian, hell most good hostels here are run by gringos married to Colombian women. Nice clean place, but I found the Iguana to have more character, and soon as there was space in the Iguana I moved there. I like the hot climate of Cali, but it is also humid here, and sometimes in can rain for a couple of days non stop, then it is not so nice anymore. Cali has big modern shopping center, called Chip Chapi, which is damn expensive place, there the Cali chicks go to display there silicon enlarged tits, and were the gringos go to pick up Calenias with silicon enlarged tits, though one can still see naturally beautiful young Calenias, with naturally small breasts. Calenias are regarded by some to be the most beautiful in Colombia, though others prefer Paisans (women of Medellin), either way Bogota is not in the same league.

Bogotá

I Arrived to Bogotá last Thursday, and tried to get a place at the Platyups, but I found it was full and booked for the foreseeable future. So they directed to the only close by hostel with space available, the Plaza hotel. It turned out to be a Jewish hostel, the workers wore T shirts with the David star on them, Hebrew writings decorated the walls and all doors had Mizuzas on them. Anyway it provided me with a bed and good shower, and I could still go and hang out at the Platypus, where I could socialize with the other travelers.

The Plaza hotel seems to be a kind of meeting place for some of Bogotá Jewish community, the hotel has a Kosher restaurant, and on Saturdays there is a Shabat ceremony, that included dinner, and religious chanting, I wasn't bothered really, as I just used the place to sleep and shower, and spend the rest my day at the Platypus.

The Playtups is where all travelers to Colombia pass at some point, and where all backpackers try to stay, owned by a German (or is it Swiss?) friendly guy, located in the Candelaria area. The travelers one get to meet here, tend to be more interesting people than in the rest of south America, they are people who are not immediately put off but the outside image of Colombia, being a dangerous and unsecure place. Some are long term travelers, traveling from a few month to a few years, some are working for aid or other non governmental organizations, some found jobs here teaching English, taking Spanish classes, or doing both at the same time.

Most people here have a very interesting background, and one is almost always rewarded with an fascinating story when making the effort to start a conversation. A partial list of the people I met : Marc and Australian Jewish lawyer who spent two month in a Kibutz not far from where I live, Katheryn a law graduate doing her fellowship working for a human rights organization, helping internally displaced people in Colombia, Shiva a half English half Indian, lawyer from England. Emily a photographer and a graduate in International relationships from New York, who traveled around Africa. Shayne a Cambridge graduate who then went on to start his construction company, then left it in the safe hands of his partners, to travel around the world. Troy a ship builder from Australia, who traveled all around the middle east and north Africa, including countries like Yemen and Sudan. Troy is also a great guitar player, with an unorthodox playing style using only three fingers, and he plays lovely music he makes up himself. Justen is another talented guitarist from Colorado, playing country and classical music. I am always in the mode for a good live guitar performance, I always find the sound so much richer than anything coming out of any speaker system. And if thats not enough this place also has free WiFi.

Drugs are quite cheap and readily available in Bogotá, and all around Colombia, especially coke. Some travelers do the drugs for the experience, others already have experience with it back in their country, and can't resist the temptation of the low price, so do loads of it, knowing that they will not be able to have it so cheap back in their countries. I found that Coke generally makes people more aggressive and obnoxious, I guess its like being sober with a group of very drunk people, it does not work out well. Some don't know when to stop and take too much of this stuff, they mess up their nose and feel bad all the next day, I have seen it again and again going out with young lads, especially from England. In the Playtpus though there are no drugs, and generally people do itin the toilets of the clubs, sometimes even on the bar, without even bothering to hide what they're doing.

I am trying to take advantage of the time I am traveling to look for a job for after my trip. I had a phone interview scheduled for Friday morning, and was supposed to arrive in Colombia on Thursday afternoon, my plan was to buy a mobile phone as soon as I arrive, and use it to for the interview, the delay in the flight endangered my plans, but I decided not to give up, I woke up early Friday morning, and went looking for a phone to buy, but it was too early, as shops don't open until nine, then the first shop I went to did not have any prepaid modules immediately available for sale, and they directed me to the main office of one of the cell phone companies ,there I quickly picked a phone that looked alright, and had a reasonable price, and tried to buy it, alas they wouldn't sell it to me, I did not have my passport for me, and I was told I could not buy a cell phone in this country without an ID. As the interview time was approaching and I still did not have a phone, I decided on a new course of action, I found an internet cafe with Skype , and I just called them myself, and it worked perfectly fine. I did not give up on the phone though, I had more job interviews coming, with a couple of companies in the UK, and I needed to be reachable. So I went back to buy the same phone, this time with my Passport with me, but they were not completely satisfied yet, they wanted a Colombian resident ID card, or some other ID which has finger prints on it, I told them I was on a tourist visa here, and that we don't have IDs with finger prints where I come from, they ended up giving me the phone but after taking my finger prints themselves, and a photo as well. The phone cost me 92,000 pesos, which is a about 40 US Dollars, the display price was 79,000, but it turns out that they quote the prices without VAT in this country, anyway 40 US Dollars is still damn cheap, and that comes with 20,000 pesos of airtime included.

Bolivia

My next destination after Tarija, was Cochabamba, I decided not to take the 20+ hour hellish bus ride, flying instead, which took only 45 minutes, not even enough time to serve drinks. In Cochabamba I suffered an acute case of altitude sickness, it started with a feeling of sickness and lack of appetite, followed by a headache. Cochabamba lies at an altitude of 2600, at the threshold where altitude sickness starts to take effect. It caught me by surprise since I never suffered from altitude sickness in Cochabamba before, and I though that if I just rest in my bed, I'll get better, but I just kept feeling worst, finally I got myself to get out of bed (with some encouragement), and I found the remedy to my illness, 'mate de coca', coca tea, this stuff works like magic, five minutes after I drank it, all the symptoms of altitude sickness disappeared.

My last few days in Bolivia I spent in Coroico, a small town in the valleys of the Yungas, with a temperate climate. Set at the slope of one of the mountains, it provides a beautiful scenic view of the surrounding mountains and valleys, a view that I found both gripping and disquieting, the mountains are massive, and the drops to the valleys are very steep, probably 1500-2000 meter from the bottom of the valleys to the top of the mountains. The sky was generally overcast, and sometimes we got shrouded by fog, but sometimes it would clear up, but not completely, leaving a thin layer of haze, that blocked some of the sun light, mitigating the intensity of the burning sun rays, to a gentle warm level. Sometimes it rained too, this area generally gets a lot of rain, a fact supported by the view of ever green sub tropical vegetation. The old road to Coroico is a dangerous route, with several hundred meter cliff drops at the edge of the road, looking out the the window of the small bus made me ask my self: how did I willingly agreed to go on this road for a third time? But after hundreds of people died of accidents on this road, the government of Bolivia decided to build a new road, a safer paved road, that cuts about an hour of the travel time between Coroico and La Paz. Still the tourists want to go on the old road, for the experience, so most buses go to Coroico using the old road, and go back using the new road, at least the trucks no longer use the old road, reducing the risk of accidents.


While I was relaxing in Coroico, troubles had erupted in Cochabamba, which I had left only a couple of days earlier, the marches against the governor of Cochabamba by Coca farmers, had already stared when I was in Cochabamba, but they seemed to be peaceful marches, when I was in Cochabamba, but a few days later, when the peaceful protests did not persuade the governor to drop his plans for a referendums on an autonomy from the central government, the protests turned violent, the protesters surrounded the governors office in the main plaza, set it on fire, rampaged and sacked stores, the police had to escort out the governor to safety disguised in a police uniform. Things turned from bad to worst when supporters of the governor flocked to the streets in a demonstration of support, both protester groups were armed and fighting broke out, that left a few people dead and hundreds injured, and turned the center of the city into scene of chaos and destruction. Things seem to have calmed down a bit now, a big military force was sent to the city to bring order. But this was just one round in the larger conflict between the pro and anti Evo Morales camps, and it is no surprise this clash took place in Cochabamba, the city lying midway between La Paz, the center of power of Morales, and the east and south regions calling for independence from the central government. This round might decide which side Cochabamba joins in the general conflict, or it might just leave Cochabamba bitterly divided.

From La Paz I was going to fly Bogoto Colombia, my girlfriend on the other hand is from Cochabamba, and she needed to travel back home, but the road to Cochabamba was blocked by protesters, and she decided to fly back there. It was really her only choice, that or stay in La Paz until the roads gets opened. One of the first things I did in La Paz was to drink some mate, and it helped fend off the altitude sickness for the day, although the next morning in the airport, it hit me hard, headache and severe feeling of sickness, again I turned to the 'mate de coca' for a remedy, and wallah in five minutes the symptoms disappeared. This time I flew with Taca airline, the Peruvian airline, going through Lima, which proved no more reliable than LAB, as my flight from Lima to Bogotá, was delayed by five hours, arriving in the evening, instead of the morning, which interfered with some plans I had, and made things a bit more interesting the next day...

Sucre & Tarija

Traveling is not all fun, part of traveling is that things do go wrong sometimes, I did not plan to spend a night in Madrid, but my flight was delayed for the next day (the airline excuse was that the pilot got sick), but the latest mishap was rather more interesting, it is not unusual that buses break down, or road get blocked because of weather or some human related activity, but how about getting stuck on a bus in the middle of a river, now that's special.

Bolivia is a large country with a low population density, it is about the size of France, with a population of only 9 million people, concentrated in a few cities, with vast empty landscapes in between. This makes investment in roads relatively expensive for this poor country, and in the south of the country the situation is further exaggerated, as the population density is even lower, and the landscape is very steep, this results in a situation where the even the major cities in the south are connected only by a dirt road, and traveling between them means a long, bumpy and almost unbearable ride.


Starting my trip in Santa Cruz, my next destination was Sucre, a 16 hour bumpy bus ride away from Santa Cruz. Sucre is a small tranquil city, that used to be the capital of Bolivia, but is now only the home of the supreme court, a city of lawyers and bankers. At the central plaza lies the 'Museum de Libertad' telling the very interesting story of how Bolivia became independent from the Spanish, and paying tribute to the heroes of the revolution. In 1993 a rich archaeological site was discovered next to the city, with thousands of dinosaur tracks preserved on a wall of rock, taking advantage of this they build a dinosaur park close to the site, with real size dinosaur module, including a giant 40 meter long herbivore, and dozen other smaller modules, all the modules are well crafted and impressive. From a view point in the park one can also see the rock wall were the dinosaur tracks were exposed.


Our next stop was Tarija, a 16 hour bus ride from Sucre, going through the city of Potosi, or maybe I should rephrase this: It was supposed to be a 16 hour bus ride, but it ended being 26 hours long, and a bit more interesting than I expected. At about 4 am our bus stopped, ahead was a river, because of the rain the water level had risen, and the bus driver decided it is too dangerous to cross the river, near by there is a bridge, but it is too weak and too small for buses and trucks to cross, and there is no other way to cross other than through the river. The bus driver decided to wait for the water level to drop before crossing. But for some reason at 6 am our incompetent bus driver decided that he was going to try to cross anyway, I was not awake then, after not sleeping for most of the night, because of the bumpy trip, I needed to catch up on some sleep, I could hear all the bustle around me, and could feel the buss was not moving, I had feeling something was wrong, but I just couldn't be bothered, I needed to catch up on some sleep first. When I finally woke up, it was already full day light, and the situation we were in was revealed to me: Our bus was stuck in the middle of a 25 meter wide river, engine dead, water gushing against the bus, probably entering the luggage cabin and soaking my backpack (we couldn't know for sure because without air pressure it was not possible to open the luggage cabin), half of the bus passengers had left, crossed the river on foot, and hitched another ride to Tarija. I called our driver incompetent for a good reason, about ten other buses passed by while we where stuck, and none of them got stuck, apparently there is a point were the water level is low and the buses and trucks passed with no trouble, but our driver crossed where the water was deeper, another small truck made the same mistake as well, and both got stuck. Most of the buses did not even stop to offer us help, either because they did not want to or maybe they just couldn't.


I find it astonishing that a road between two major cities in this country gets cut by a river flow when ever there is rain, and still no body feels urged to build a proper bridge there, sure Bolivia is the poorest country in south America, but my opinion is that an investment in good roads is one of the first things this country should consider, not just for the comfort of its citizens or for it's image in the eyes of tourists, but I think that such an investment repays it self. They buy brand new buses in this country, but they get worn down in a few years riding on these terrible roads, and then they have to buy new ones. Besides that a good transport system increases effeciency and helps spur economical growth.


Anyway after being stuck a few hours in the bus, our bus driver managed to find a truck to tow us out of the river, but the engine would start, and after a couple more hours of waiting, the bus was still not moving, and the bus company still did not bother to send a new transport to pick us up, this is one other things about transport in this country, they will sell you a ticket, but if the bus can't make for some reason, well tough luck, the company will not take responsibility, although some of the passengers were talking about trying to claim a refund from the company, once they made it to Tarija. by then most of the passengers had given up and hitched a ride on any moving vehicle willing to transport them, we decided to leave the bus as well, along with the last group of passengers, by then they had managed to open the luggage cabin, by bumping air from the rescue truck, luckily my back pack was on the upper level and did not get wet, other passengers were less lucky. Anyway we hitched a ride on a small truck, that took us to a nearby shanty town, a town lying on a road cross, with a figure of Jesus watching over the town from a nearby hill. From there we took another truck to Tarija, it was a long bumpy windy and dusty ride, alternating between chilly wind and burning sun, depending on our altitude at that moment, as we scaled up an scaled down the steep landscape. On the way we got reunited with some more of the bus passengers, who's ride apparently failed to get them all the way to Tarija, but we finally made it after 26 hours of traveling, covered with dust and completely exhausted, but never the less relieved to finally make it.

Tarija lies a 1800 meters, a tranquil town with great weather, the best in Bolivia I think, it does not have the extreme changes in temperature one encounters at higher altitudes, and its heat is not as intolerable as the plains of Santa Cruz. The chicks here are also the most beautiful I have seen in Bolivia, although they don't seem to age well, it was hard to see a women in her 30 still looking good, they probably get married and have kids young. The people of this city seem to be doing well financially, one does not see as much poverty as in the rest of Bolivia, sure there are still beggars in the streets, but most of the people seem to have it well. The main source of income seems to be cattle, and wine, and they do make good wines in around here, 'Campos de Solano' and Kolberg seem to be the best two brands. Good weather, beautiful woman, lovely wine, no wonder the Tarijans are not so enthusiastic about building good roads to connect them to the rest of Bolivia, they probably have little desire to visit the rest of Bolivia, I would have if I was living in such a lovely city. Tarija just shows that being in Bolivia does not have to mean being poor, it all depends on having a mentality of taking initiative and taking responsibility.

One of the things that travelers find most disappoint about South America is the cuisine, in a place with such diverse and strong cultures, one would not be blamed to have high expectations of the cuisine, but there is no rich cousin similar to India, Thailand or China. Never the less if one looks a little bit more under the surface, one finds a few special dishes in each country, my favorite dish in Bolivia is 'Picante de Lengua', beef tong cooked in a spicy sauce with vegetables, and serviced with maize on the side. We decided to try out the local food of this region, for that we headed to a small town near Tarija, where they serve local dishes, my first dish as a peanut soup with a chicken leg in it, the chicken leg caught me a bit by surprise, it was a full chicken leg with claws an all, I felt uncomfortable eating my soap while looking at it, so I decided to remove before continuing with my soap, the second dish was a crispy fried mix of tiny fish and tiny lobsters, each a few centimeters long, one just eats it in one bite, and eats it whole, it actually tastes good.

After my little adventure coming by bus here, I decided that I was not going through that trip again, actually I decided that already before that incident, after my first trip 16 hour trip to Sucre, but that getting stuck in a river for a few hours, sealed the matter for good; I am going to fly to Cochabamba, a two hour flight, instead of a 20 plus hours bus trip from hell.