The Final Test

This is the final blog post covering our adventures in Colombia. Just as the tempo of those final days, this post seems to tumble through our last adventure and leave you wondering if you really want to visit Colombia. Believe me, you do, just avoid Bogota like the Plague.

Like the back breaking trek into Rio Claro Nature Preserve, getting out was equally, if not more difficult. Piling all our luggage onto our desperately aching bodies, including our son's since the heat and humidity made walking a workout for him, we started down the road to exit the park. With incredible luck, a truck had mercy on us and agreed to toss our bags up onto their load and take them out to the gate, we however had to continue to walk. You know you are under extreme physical strain when giving all your possessions to a stranger sounds like a good idea. But, amazingly, we arrived at the gate at the same time our bags were being dropped. Now it would be the hard part; there at the side of the highway, we were given the task to "wave down" a bus.

Colombia's bus system went on strike the day we left the jungle. This meant we needed to hurry to catch a bus still en-route because when the bus got to it's destination, that would be where it would stay until the strike was over. Finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere, there was no ticket office and the nearest town was too far to walk. In order to get to Bogota, where we would be flying home from, we needed some serious luck. On the other hand, we were reticent to leave so we teasingly said that if we were stuck in Colombia, we were stuck in Colombia! Maybe that relaxed attitude is what made things seem easy.

Standing on the side of the road, the blazing heat covered our bodies in a slick coat of sweat and the humidity kept it there. Hardly any traffic was on this quite highway making the idea of snagging a bus seem unlikely. We started to toss around ideas of paying a person with a car to give us a ride, or maybe we could send my husband to the next town where he could contract a taxi and come get us. All of the options sounded faintly like the plot of a horror movie. Then suddenly, my husband stepped into the road and a bus, barreling down on him, came to a screeching halt! Quickly we grabbed our 3 huge duffel bags and 3 heavy backpacks and jumped on board. A little travel tip here, it is seriously difficult to be nimble when your bags are stupidly heavy. Thankfully we had drank all the wine we had packed into Rio Claro so we were less 36lbs now.

The buses in Colombia are really pretty nice and they get nicer as they get bigger. It is also very inexpensive so when we got to the bus station in the nearby town and transferred to the Cadillac double level bus to take us the 8 hours to Bogota, we didn't much mind where we sat. Well, some of us didn't mind where we sat. One of us (who shall remain nameless), a man that attacked every one of our insane adventure sports and experiences over the 2 months we were traveling through Colombia with ease and delight, was terrified of being on the top level of the bus as it swayed along the curvy steep roads. An additional $5 each bought us safety in the downstairs 1st class. And some amusement to me since finally I was not the one that was scared to death.

1st class on this cross-country bus was kinda like 1st class on an airplane. Huge lounge chair seats with leg rests and private TVs. I had never been on a bus like this and it made the journey through ever changing, gorgeous terrain fantastic! I started to get excited, I dreamed that our time in Bogota would be like a poem; easy and elegant with a hint of mystery. Then we drove into the outskirts of the city and my fantasy was challenged.

Many times through our travels we had seen poverty, serious slums and hardship, yet the people and areas had a glow of humanity to them. The tiny areas that one could call their own, were clean and well presented even in a falling down shack town, but as we came into Bogota, the streets looked mean. Garbage was piled everywhere and the people had hard faces. It looked like the kind of area that you don't want to go to during the day, much less at night...and it was coming into night. We pulled into the ghetto bus station and pushed past people that looked at us like fresh meat. We found a taxi and directed him to our hotel. The taxi ricocheted through the streets into the "cool old town area", the lights of downtown brightening as darkness set in. Each turn and weave gave us a new vantage point of garbage, homelessness and mass graffiti. There had been plenty of graffiti in other areas of Colombia, but always as art, something charming about it, but this graffiti was absolutely not. Care for the buildings and the city in general seemed to have long been forgotten and drug use was out in the open. Not cute marijuana joints or bottles of booze, I'm talking needles and crack pipes. I realized THIS is what people think of as 'Colombia', this chaos. That is when we sped through a crisscross of highway and there in the middle of the road, was a huge blazing fire and a homeless man ineffectively trying to put it out with his foot as two police men stood and watched.

"If you have to visit this crap city, this is the best hotel in this shit place", the memory of the Bogota hotel review I had read slapped me in the face.

A series of issues lead us to wake up in a fairly modern room in a construction site of a hotel that was NOT the hotel we had booked, but by the time we were laying our heads down, we didn't care. We woke refreshed and ready to give the city a second chance with high hopes we would find that cool place we had pictured in our minds. The guide books are very clear in cautioning you to crime and danger in Bogota, unlike any other places in Colombia, so we decided to try out the best of the safe recommendations before getting wild with the "hidden gems".

The University campus was neat with fantastic cafes and restaurants lining the edges. The rumor of Bogota having great food was definitely true so we started to perk up! Maybe it was just being tired that had given us a bad intro to the city last night? We strolled down to what is considered the shopping/ restaurant district, it was literally packed with people. The noise was at rocket launch level as street vendor's music competed with the music blaring from the permanent stores and guys wanting you to eat at their restaurants literally chased you for blocks yelling about how great the food was. Among the things being sold were various oddities laid out on blankets in the street. It started out benign enough, books and dvds, then quickly books, children's dvds and porn. Then a hodge-podge of kitchen items and baby toys, then socks and socks and sock and shoelaces EVERYWHERE! I mean really, what is the deal with so many shopping carts full of shoelaces for sale? My husband remarked that back at home he can't seem to find shoelaces. He decided it was because the entire world's inventory was there, in Bogota.

The day had taken a turn for the worse and we were tired and disappointed. That was when we literally took a turn for the worse and found the streets were filled with trash being sold on these "vendor blankets". Broken toys, used household items, and even...prepare yourself...used old underpants. At that moment, just as I was about to scream over the noise of the crowd that I was done for the day, we watched a dirty (from head to bare foot) man climb out of a dumpster with an item of clothing and lay it on his blanket to sell. It was clear none of us needed to say anything, we all knew this nightmare needed to end.

Close to our ramshackle hotel was a grocery store with a great selection of wine and a strip of great take out food places. We stocked up, went to our room and hid from the crap day in that shit city. Tucked away in our homemade oasis, the 3 of us curled up on the bed and streamed movies while sipping a glass of wine. The beauty wasn't in the city, but it was certainly in our ability to make those most out of any situation.

-Cheers from the Vivác Winery Family!
www.VivacWinery.com