Part of the reason for deciding to spend our last month
cycle touring in Columbia was we wanted something different from Patagonia and
fall was well on its way down there. Columbia
is different alright, at least Bogota.
The big thing we noticed right away is the variety and abundance of
tropical fruit, a fair amount of which we have never seen or heard of. Laurie
is very willing to dive right in and try the new fruits out. So far we have
liked what we tried. In the old historic district of La Candeleria, which is a
common place for tourists to go, there are vendors in carts selling all kinds
of exotic fruits and fruit juice that is cheap.
Yesterday I had a big cupful of
mango slices and a slice of raw coconut plus some sugar coated cooked coconut
sliced like French fries all for only a couple of dollars. The pineapple and
mango is to die for. Laurie noticed that
there are quite a few natural and vegetarian restaurants as well for those that can
afford it. The guide books say there are quite a few health conscious people in Bogota.
We were also pleasantly surprised to find out that Bogota
has more kilometers of bike paths and bike lanes than any town in South America
due in large part to an eccentric mayor who was a bike enthusiast. There are some three hundred kilometers of
bikeways. They also shut down a bunch of streets all over town on Sundays and
holidays for bikes.
But before you get to thinking this is some sort of tropical
version of San Francisco we are seeing huge numbers of homeless people and many
of them look about as pathetic as you possibly could. In the Candelaria district you get approached
by beggars and people hawking stuff all the time but you get used to it. On the first day we saw two homeless people
taking a crap on the street. One was a thirty something woman right on the
sidewalk on a narrow street frequented by tourists. The street vendors line the
sidewalks of most of the major streets and are selling everything under the sun,
or clouds in the case of Bogota. There are tourists here but nothing like the
number in the popular destinations of Patagonia. Given the well-known violent
history of the nation and with the population of Bogota at around nine million,
the percentage of tourists is very tiny. It also appears that the common thing
to do is fly to Bogota take in the attractions there and then fly to the Caribbean
coast. So like in Patagonia we will be out on the road in places where tourists
don’t always frequent.
We happened to arrive during Easter week and Catholicism is
a very big part of the culture. In a fairly upscale apartment area we road
through they were re-enacting Christ on the cross with an actual guy on a
cross. In the La Candelaria district on Good Friday they had a big procession
with a big life size Christ layed out in a casket being carried down the street
followed by a military looking band playing depressingly sombre music. Laurie
is Catholic and knew all the names for the rituals they were performing, such
as the 12 stations of the cross and the burning of frankincense and myrrh. Many blocks were closed down for this and
they were packed with people. There are also lots of ornate churches here from
Spanish colonial times. Columbia was a prize for the Spanish with all the gold
and other resources here and you can see they invested heavily. All the homeless people around the grand old
churches and government buildings are quite a contrast.
Although Columbia is supposed to be changing rapidly and
becoming safer, there are areas that nearly everyone agrees that you should not
visit to sight see like the jungles to the south where they grow coca. We are
going to gather as much info as we can in the next few days about where it
might be possible to ride safely. It
appears that from Bogota to the Caribbean coast it is very beautiful and there
are a lot of historic colonial towns. The US embassy is open again on Monday
and they are supposed to be helpful. I
don’t have my hopes up too high on that as the US embassy in Santiago would not
return any emails. They will not be our
only source of info however and we are asking around for what we hope will be
first-hand information.
On a day when things were open Easter week, we managed to
find some good road maps that we were told did not exist. Even the guide books
say there are no good road maps. The best one is called Mapas de Ruta by
IGAC with fold out pages for the main segments. It is perfect for what we need and a big
confidence booster. We found it at the
Panamerica Liberia (book store and office supplies) in the La Candelaria
district. The next thing we did was go down to the area where all the bike shops are on Calle 13. The idea was to see if anyone knew about touring conditions in the country. We had the good fortune to run into Javier Guerrero the owner (?) of CicloSports who spoke good English and was very friendly. He said that there was a Danish guy coming in at a specific time that afternoon to pick up a bike he was buying from them. Eric, the guy from Denmark had toured in the country the previous year. We came back to talk to him and he had lots of good encouraging information. Eric who appeared to be about 65 was opting to take a bus to the north to San Gil from Bogota to skip the rain in the high mountains. It is about three hundred kilometers to San Gill with most of it above eight thousand feet. We are debating whether to do the same. He says the buses are different here than in Chile and Argentina and you need to have your bike in a bag or case. We will check that out but we are leaning toward riding as we are seeing a pattern where it rains every day but usually in the mid afternoon for whatever reason. So if we get an early start it might be tolerable.
CicloSports also had a nearly identical replacement 36 spoke
26” wheel that we needed because Laurie’s was badly damaged when she was hit by
a car. Those wheels are special order items in the US. Javier knew we were touring and had his
mechanic build the wheel that afternoon while we walked around a big market
area nearby. The price for the wheel and
the labor to build it using the other parts from the old wheel was about 100
USD which was not a bad deal. We were
totally stoked about the good fortune happening at CicloSports. We also picked
up some nice Columbia souvenir jerseys at other stores on the block.
Speaking of jerseys as today is Easter Sunday and the only
real big objective we have left is to visit the US embassy on Monday. We
decided to do a big ride using the cyclovia roads and bike paths. There were a
lot of people out for an Easter Sunday. It was kind of funny to see and pass
all these old guys with sponsored jerseys often on not exactly race caliber
bikes. We did get passed by some fit looking young racers on a hilly section being
escorted by a guy on a motorcycle even.
Bogota runs into some steep mountains to the east and it was
interesting to see all the remaining third world looking shacks being replaced
by modern high rise apartments. From up
high Bogota spreads out as far as you can see and looks like some rapidly
spreading organism gobbling up the hilly country side. If we elect to ride out of town we will be riding through the
north end which is well-to-do end, so that is encouraging.
Pictures from Bogota which may not have accurate gps locations as i am still getting to know the camera.I forgot to blog about LAN airlines and bikes.....
From
Satiago to Bogota we flew on LAN air lines. Other than the fact that LAN
charges two different prices one for locals and one for foreigners we were very
impressed with LAN. The baggage
allowances listed on their web page are a bit convoluted and we had heard about
how they possibly combine weights for an oversize item. There are also some
rules about your baggage allowances if your flight originated on another airline.
After reading over the rules a number of times to try to make sense of them we
decided to just show up and see what they charged. In order to not look too
overwhelming we tried to put everything but the bikes in a grain sack under
fifty pounds and carry on a couple of panniers each. The ticket agent did not
make any fuss about it and the bikes went free.
Boarding the plane went smoothly as well. They actually load the
plane from the back to the front with rows at the gate where you line up
according to a range of numbers. It went very smoothly. There were none of the dozens of special
privilege categories that that US airlines call out to board first.
Once on the plane they had about a couple of
dozen free movies and other options to choose from like games. We were served a nice free meal with wine including refills on the wine. The
flight attendants were about as professional as you could get as well. All in
all it put all of the US airlines that I have ridden on to shame. Rumor has it that the US airlines will be
charging to use the lavatories soon. "The lavatory is now available for gold elite members." In coach you will have to bring your own bag to pee in.
