Hello Colombia! It begins in Bogotá…

We spent our last two nights in Costa Rica in a little apartment close to Alajuela so that we were only a short drive from the airport. The apartment was tiny but well stocked and everything thought of by our considerate hosts. It was co-hosted by Adrian and his mother who lived downstairs with her two little dogs. Rosa was extremely happy to have some dogs to visit again!

Our final morning arrived and we set off in a taxi for the airport. We arrived with plenty of time and everything we needed to hand. A brief moment of tension when it came to checking in the baggage to see if we were within the weight limits and if our hand baggage would be permitted but all went smoothly.

At this point our girls have really become rather amazing where travel is concerned. Throughout the whole process they are calm and easy and really help to make it as stress-free as travelling can be with two young children. So check-in was done, security went smoothly and before we knew it we were waiting to board the flight to Colombia. The flight was only two hours and I remember part-way through Zia commenting that it was “easier than a long car journey because you have more space, can get up and walk around and go to the toilet if you need to and they bring you something to eat”!

Arriving in Bogotá we made our way to baggage reclaim and our bags were the first to appear on the conveyor belt just as we arrived there. That doesn’t happen often and couldn’t be easier! From there we had to go through immigration and thanks to the kids we got to join the fast-track queue. We reported where we were going and how long we would be in Colombia and that was done. Once again it had all been surprisingly easy and had gone as smoothly as we could have hoped for. So far our trip to Colombia was going extremely well and we were feeling both very organised and fortunate. Coming out of the airport it was busy with a large queue of people waiting for the official yellow taxis. A few minutes later we were in our taxi and on our way to the apartment. On the way we had a good conversation with our driver who was keen to practice his English with us once he realised where we were from.

After about 40 minutes making our way through the traffic we arrived at our apartment. Our host Miguel was there to greet us and to show us around the apartment which was on the third floor. It was just as we’d hoped it would be from the pictures and description – a lovely, comfortable family home. The girls, as always, were excited to run about and explore their new home and this was going to be the longest time we’d stayed in one place since we first arrived in Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica, back in January. There were various bits and pieces which Miguel needed to show us such as where the rubbish goes, introduce us to the porter and show us where their kitten Loli’s food and things were kept. With all of that out of the way he set off with his family and left us to settle in.

First stop once we had put our bags down and settled in was to head to the local shop to get some food. Our apartment was very close to Parque Virrey and about a 5 minute walk in the opposite direction there was a supermarket which Miguel had recommended. When I went in I was completely overwhelmed. There was so much choice that I was left utterly bewildered. Compared to most of the supermarkets that we’d visited in Costa Rica this was another world entirely. I don’t know if this was a difference between countries or simply the difference with being in such a large busy city but it felt like we would be drowning in choice here. I managed to exercise restraint, telling myself that we were only 5 minutes away and so I didn’t need to buy everything at once! I got enough for the evening and the following morning and went back to tell Rachael about this exciting new world that we had found ourselves in.

I’ll pause here just to also tell you how completely different Bogotá was to anything that we had experienced in Costa Rica. It is a busy city, full of life and has a totally different feel to San Jose. First thing to note is that Bogotá is simply a taller city: San Jose has very few tall buildings and is largely made up of houses whereas everything in Bogotá has a number of floors. This has the immediate effect of making you feel much smaller. Arriving in this big city also had me feeling a little more on edge to begin with. It’s not that the people are unfriendly or even some of the baggage that we can pick up in thinking of Colombia as a ‘dangerous country’ – none of that was part of my feeling. I think that more than anything it’s part of arriving in such a big city and also part of that natural trend that I’ve mentioned before of feeling unsettled and unsafe in a new place. Until you’ve spent a few days somewhere and nothing bad has happened I think that there is a natural survival instinct which puts you on edge. Nevertheless, there were certain other cues to add to this feeling. First thing I remember noticing was that a lot of people would wear their rucksack on their front which sends a message to you that bag snatching must be enough of a thing to make people adopt that behaviour. The second thing which quickly becomes clear is that like most large cities there is also a large amount of poverty. This was not something that we had seen a great deal of in Costa Rica. It’s always hard to know exactly how to deal with this. Part of being in a city seems to be that you have to harden yourself to the coexistence of those who are struggling with those who are not. I find this very hard. Obviously we have more than the people who are asking for help and yet we also can’t do anything to change the systemic problems which bring about that situation. Cities like this are a huge mixing pot. On the one hand you have successful business pursuing growth and profits and they are side by side with people struggling to feed their families. There is a richness of culture which sits right next to the inevitable sadness of huge inequalities.

I would never want to paint a bad picture of Bogotá and only mention these negative elements as an inescapable part of the mix. The richness of culture that I mentioned is the thing which more than anything, on a daily basis, would amaze and impress us. By the end of the two weeks that we spent in Colombia’s capital city I had transitioned from saying how hard I would find it living there to telling Rachael how I could see the appeal of it.

We spent those first couple of days settling in and allowing ourselves and the girls the time and space needed to feel at home in a new place – a lesson learned from our previous travels. We popped to select our meals from the bounty of riches at the local supermarket, bowled over by the fact that there was an organic produce section. We went for walks to the play areas in the local Parque Virrey. We basically made small trips out from our apartment to become familiar with the area. The girls enjoyed getting back and seeing Loli the kitten.

There is a bit of a backstory to our relationship with Bogotá that deserves telling. This was for Rachael a special part of our journey. Back when she was working in carbon markets and forestry projects (REDD+) before we had children she came to Colombia on a number of occasions for her work. Consequently, she had been to Bogotá many times before as they had an office based there. Her final trip to Colombia had been when she was pregnant with Zia and so in the lead-up to going there we all enjoyed having a little joke about the fact that both Rachael and Zia had been to Bogotá before. So this was a special trip for Rachael as she was now returning for the first time with Zia on the outside of her body and with both Rosa and myself as well.

Another thread to this story of connections concerns my friend Charlie who is one of my oldest friends from our schooldays and one of the few who I am in touch with still. The fact that I am in touch with Charlie is entirely to his credit. Sadly after years of being friends and later playing together in a local ska punk band we fell out of touch. I had settled in Canterbury and Charlie had gone off travelling. The reason for losing touch was a simple technicality. I had always been go at keeping in touch with old friends using email but one day the email address that I’d had since I was 12 years old got hacked. Hacked certainly seems to be the appropriate term to use in this case as it severed my connection with all of my old friends. At some point I had decided that I didn’t want to join facebook which as it turned out was a kind of social ex-communication. So a number of years passed where I was out of touch with Charlie. During this time he had started working as a journalist and was based in Bogotá. Using his journalistic skills he set about trying to reconnect with me: trying every possible contact on facebook and eventually emailing my elder brother’s stonemasonry company and even contacting my Dad. Through all of these efforts we were reconnected at last. I think that at this point Charlie had moved to Cambodia. So when we reconnected it was interesting to find out how during this same period in which he had been trying to track me down that both Rachael and he had been criss-crossing and near missing each other with both being in Bogotá and later Cambodia at the same time. So it was that the various stories in both mine and Rachael’s past had pointed towards this point in time in Bogotá.

After various stints back in the UK and later in the Netherlands, Charlie had found himself once again back in Bogotá having come here to do some field work and ending up stuck there throughout the pandemic. All of this back-story is really just setting the scene for the fact that having come halfway across the planet I was also really looking forward to getting some time to catch up with a good friend so far away from home.

Having settled in for the first couple of days I set off on the third day in Bogotá to meet up with him for lunch near to his workplace which was only about a 20 minute walk from where we were staying. Of course it’s surreal within our current context, so far away from home and everything that we know to see such a familiar face. It was great to catch up and we had a really good but very cheap lunch at a little local place that he knew. It probably cost about £6 for both of us to have a good lunch. Charlie told me that this was one of the more expensive places that he would sometimes eat at!

The next day Rachael and I took the girls to the Gold Museum. This was the first time that we’d had to get a taxi in Bogotá. Pointing back to what I have said previously about it feeling different to Costa Rica we were at least a little reluctant to get an Uber, favouring instead the official yellow taxi. Even getting into the official yellow cab the driver had to clear the front seat for me to sit on. One of the items he had to remove was a truncheon which he kept in the cab – another cue that made me at least a little more on edge. It is interesting for me at least to note how these visual cues added up much more for me than anything I might have read, heard or been told before travelling to Colombia. All of those for me fall into the category of information which whilst useful always claims second place to direct experience. No amount of information had given me any hesitation about our trip but these little observations certainly did. Once again, I don’t want to paint a bad picture of our trip but I also want to tell an accurate tale. In amongst lots of time spent feeling happy, safe and secure there were just a few instances where my guard was raised; along with my blood pressure too I expect.

We arrived at the Gold Museum perfectly safe and sound. Our driver was really helpful in telling us about lots of other places that we could visit in the area and he dropped us right at the entrance. There was a brief moment of panic at the entrance when we found out that the security guard was asking to see vaccination records and identification! Thanks to the wonders of modern technology we actually had copies of all of them available on our phones in spite of the fact that we hadn’t known beforehand that they would be required.

The Gold Museum was very good but it was a tall order for the girls to spend very long there. Zia would probably have lasted a little longer than Rosa as she is able to read the information signs and appreciate a little more of the significance. We managed a quick rush through about half of the exhibits and then decided to cut our losses and leave. We left and realised that we were already hungry so went in search of somewhere for lunch. At this point I will touch upon something that we found hugely interesting here and throughout our stay in Bogotá but not something that I should go into great detail. Before we had firmed up our plans to come to Colombia I had speaking to Charlie about writing: asking him if he missed his journalism and as I’d just started writing our blog discussing the good and bad of writing. I asked him if there was something that he was really interested in that he could just write about in a blog or similar without having to work it through an editorial process and think about readership etc. He told me that he was really fascinated with the informal economy in Colombia. So I’m just going to touch very briefly upon that subject now and hope that one day in the future he will perhaps get around to writing in more detail about it so that I can link from here to there!

For us coming from England this is certainly a fascinating subject and perhaps difficult to convey in writing. On exiting the museum and walking along the busy streets we got our first taste of this. The streets are lined with sellers of every description. Some are selling predictable wares; food, jewellery, clothing, hats and so on. Within these categories there is an indescribable amount of repetition and you’re left wondering how each of them could possibly make a viable living. However, beyond these rather mainstream items the pavements are covered in what could only be described as a random selection of stuff. Sheets are laid out and upon them is the kind of thing that we might find at a jumble sale or in a charity shop back home. One item that sticks in our memory especially was a very tired looking Buzz Lightyear doll. To our eyes it seemed that the vast majority of the people sitting and watching their stalls stood a very low chance of selling anything that day. Even if they did happen to sell a few items it could only be for pence at best. The cost of living in Colombia is low by our standards but even so it was hard to imagine how this could add up to a viable livelihood. We saw other things which were even stranger. One man passed us with about a dozen facemasks in his hand and he was walking the street selling those. Each one must have a value of a fraction of a penny and when you consider purchasing them in the first place it is really incomprehensible how a micro-business like that can possibly operate.

Throughout our time in Bogotá we saw one example after the next that left us wondering how this all fitted together. One other case in point was that you will regularly see people going around with carts that they pull by hand going through the bins in search of specific items of rubbish. As far as I’m aware this is not part of an official recycling scheme but it seems rather that market mechanics have been permitted to take control of the situation. I can only assume that there is somewhere that people are able to take glass, cardboard, plastic, metal and so on and exchange it for money.

The scales at which the economy is operating in this Latin American city are totally foreign to our eyes. There is so much which has not been legislated and it feels a little silly saying that but makes you realise just how much more time we have had in Europe to make laws and regulations about so many elements of the human situation. The positive side to this is that there is more freedom for someone to see the potential for a little side hustle and to give it a try. I imagine that this allows better to try out a business and see if it has organic growth: something which we pay lip service to in the UK (start small and grow organically) but the reality is that starting most businesses involves a great deal of speculation and a certain amount of investment to make sure that you comply with all the relevant regulations. I’m not going to say that one is better than the other. I don’t have a fixed opinion on that right now but merely aim to note the different situations that might arise from each.

We grabbed lunch at a little place where we had a Caldo de Costilla which Charlie had told me about at lunch the previous day. It was delicious. Again for us coming first from the UK and then via Costa Rica (where food is quite expensive) we couldn’t get over how little we were paying to eat out. From there we went back out into the streets to wander about and take it all in. On the way there in the morning we had passed Colpatria which is one of the tallest buildings in Bogotá. Our driver had mentioned that you can pay a few thousand pesos (a pound or so per person) to go to the top and have a panoramic view of the city. We set off for a look but unfortunately only when we arrived did we find out that it was only on certain days, and this wasn’t one of those days. So we went and sat in the park for a while and realised that we were right next to the Planetario so we made a quick decision to make the most of it and go in there.

It was a good decision. The main event was to sit in a huge dome with a projection of the various stars. It was all in Spanish which made it a bit harder to follow but I think that because of the visual nature of it all this didn’t detract too much from the enjoyment for the girls. As is often the case with that type of thing it really helped to shift our perspective and remind us about our small part in this very big thing.

It had been a long day and we ended up getting an Uber back home which took about 3 times as long as the journey there in the morning. Lesson learned; there are good and bad times to travel in Bogotá.

This particular post ends on a bit of a low note but makes for a neat break in our story. I had been hoping that I would get to catch up with Charlie, go for a few drinks and get together with the family. Unfortunately, by the following day I had woken up with a heavy cold that sent me to bed for all of that first weekend. I say bed but actually I was so full of sniffles that I was promptly ejected from the bed to sleep on the sofa where I spent most of the next few days.