Wednesday
My first full day in Bogota was fairly uneventful, because I was giving myself some time to get adjusted to my new "home" and ease into the adventure a little. I got out of bed around 10:00, unable to sleep any longer due to the fact that the panes on the dorm windows and the room door were knocking around and making a lot of obnoxious noise from the winds outside. (I made sure to close them before going to bed the next night.) I had some toast and some coffee from the hostel, sat down with my computer and did my Duolingo placement test, wrote a blog post, completed the Brazil visa application online and printed the confirmation page, and chatted with people back home.
Finally, around 2:00pm, I decided I was ready to venture outside and find some food. I passed a shop right outside the hostel called Cacao y Cacao (translation: Chocolate & Chocolate), which I will obviously need to explore before I leave. A few more doors down, I found a cute cafe that had the Olympics playing on a couple TVs. Bingo. I had a steak and fries, and a corona -- nothing that felt inherently or authentically Colombian, but there's plenty of time for that.
After I'd eaten something, I realized I probably didn't have enough time to figure out the bus system and take a bus to the Brazilian embassy across town, so I decided to find a cafe and get a cup of good coffee (the stuff at the hostel was meh). I found a place, connected to wifi, did some Duolingo, and then wandered around the neighborhood for about an hour. I had to ask for directions three times on the way back to the hostel, but eventually I found my way there before it got too dark. I had told Antonio -- another guest at the hostel who I'd talked to the night before -- that I would join him for dinner around 7, so I made sure to be back by then.
La Gente de Hostel Martinik
Antonio: Antonio is a 50-something man from Portugal. He is divorced (was married for about 5 years), and has a 25 year old son who still lives in Portugal. He is in Colombia to invest in a restaurant, but has to wait six months before he can do that for whatever bureaucratic reason. In the meantime, he is just hanging out. He's in Bogota another couple weeks and then heading to Santa Marta (where the restaurant is) to wait the rest of the time. He is a helpful man, although I'm not sure all of his advice has to be followed. For example, he said I should never travel with a purse ("keep your phone, wallet, and passport on you always but never anything else"), and although that's probably fine advice, I definitely can't fit everything I need in my pockets, so I am just careful with my purse when i have it with me (there's a zipper and I keep it closed, I hold it with the strap across my torso so no one can swipe it off my shoulder, that kind of thing). Also, the hostel advised to NOT bring your actual passport with you around town, just a photocopy, but Antonio insists that the police will require the original if you get in trouble for whatever reason. He is definitely concerned for my safety as a woman traveling alone, which I understand, but I also don't want to absorb too much of that fear because I think I'll be safer if I can explore places confidently; if my energy is fearful, I will attract scary things, right? (At least that's what the Law of Attraction would assert, if you're into that kind of thing). He is also concerned about my traveling alone for another reason: when we went to dinner, I was explaining the Bonderman to him and how I have to travel by myself for eight months, he said "you will get so lonely. You won't be able to handle it." So.... 1) I don't really have a choice, so I WILL handle it, and I don't know what he means by 'not being able to handle it,' and 2) am I crazy, or does that sound like a really bizarre pickup line? In any case, Antonio never explicitly hit on me, so we're good. He does want to go dancing at some point, and I am totally down for that as long as we go with a group -- I don't want him getting the wrong idea.
Anton: Anton works at the hostel at the front desk. He is adorable (early 20s I'm guessing), speaks English well, and is super friendly. He studied engineering in college, but doesn't actually like it (he was pressured by his parents to study something practical); he much prefers working at the hostel and meeting people from around the world, although he is happy he can fall back on engineering if he ever NEEDS to.
Jonas & Inta: I stayed up pretty late Wednesday night working on my application for the Bolivian visa, and I went to the dorm room around 12:30, and then started a 20-minute Headspace meditation. At the very end of my meditation, two wonderfully intoxicated Germans -- Jonas and Inta (I'm not totally sure that's her name but you guys won't know the difference so I should probably just double down on it. It's totally Inta) -- came in, soaked from the heavy downpour that had been happening all night. They are on the tail end of their vacation. I think they went to Tayrona, Cartagena, and Medellin already (we were supposed to talk more about all that this morning but they have been nursing hangovers). They asked what I was doing in Bogota (people always want to know what brings a person so far from home, especially if they are alone), so I told them about the Bonderman, and Jonas replied with a laugh and the middle finger. I love them.
Thursday 8/18
Today I had one mission: Go to the Brazil embassy, and get that visa.
I packed up a copy of my passport, the confirmation letter of my online application, and a passport photo, and asked Anton for advice about navigating the bus system. After realizing how much work it would take, we decided it was better and safer to just use a cab. He called me a taxi, and off I went to the north end of Bogota.
When I got there, they told me they still needed printed copies of my financial solvency (i.e. bank statements), a printed copy of my ticket confirmations for getting into and departing from Brazil, my actual passport (I had just brought a copy), and 608,000 COP (which is about $200 USD) in cash.
I printed the documents from a computer they had at the embassy, accessing the files from Dropbox (THE BEST), but I still had to go back to the hostel for the passport and cash. I had enough money for a taxi back, but I needed to find an ATM in La Candeleria (the neighborhood where the hostel is) for the visa money.
I stepped outside the embassy and tried to hail a cab, but they were all occupied. So, I called Anton using the Hostel Martinik number, and he told me to download a taxi service app called Tappsi (like Taxi-app, get it?), but at first I though the said "Dabbsi" and since there's no Dabbsi app, I had to google "Bogota taxi app" to figure out which app to download. And before I could do any of this, I had to find someplace with wifi. And food, because hunger.
I went into a fast-food chain chicken restaurant across the street called Kikoroco, got lunch, got their wifi password, and somehow never actually got connected to wifi. So after lunch, I looked for another place to buy something cheap and use their wifi, and thankfully, I was able to get a coffee somewhere (which they gave me for free, yay!). I got the Tappsi, and got back to the hostel around 2:30. Then, I went looking for an ATM in the neighborhood, got my money, got back to the hostel, and called another taxi to head back to the embassy. (Each taxi ride is about 40 minutes and costs about 28,000 COP, or $8-9 USD, so it's definitely worth the convenience.) However, the first taxi I requested never got to me, and so by the time the second taxi arrived around 3:50, I had JUUUUST enough time to get to the embassy if we didn't hit too much traffic.
Alas, I arrived at the embassy at 4:33 and it had closed at 4:30.
But not to worry. I shall try again tomorrow and just keep fingers crossed that they can process the visa by the time I'm scheduled to leave Bogota on Tuesday...
I used Tappsi to request another cab back to the hostel, but at that point it was rush hour and it was taking forever to get someone to accept my request. So I figured, hey -- why don't I just wander around this neighborhood while I wait out rush hour and just get a taxi in a couple hours? I wanted a beer anyway, so that was going to work out well. The first compelling bar I found was called the Rock and Roll Dream, but they didn't open until 6:00, so I kept walking. Across the street, there it was: the Bogota Beer Company (henceforth referred to as BBC).
It was exactly what I needed -- it had the feel of a brewery pub, with plenty of bar seating and a menu full of microbrews. True to habit, I had an IPA with 6% ABV and 90 IBU. Yum. Also yum: the 25-year-old bartender, Francisco. And when I say "yum," I mean in a very sweet, young boyish way (not the "I would totally risk getting Zika for you" way). We talked for about two hours (90% English, 10% Spanish), comparing cost of living in Seattle vs. Bogota, about American politics, about how cool and smart Justin Trudeau is, about learning new languages, how hard it is for him to understand English from people with non-American accents, like when Irish, Scottish, or English people come to the bar (two Australians came in right as we were talking about that, but he understood their accents just fine), and I'm sure many other topics that I can't remember now. He was very encouraging and patient when I tested out my Spanish with him, but I get hung up on some word I can't remember with almost every sentence I attempt. Today I wandered around trying to remember how to say "thing" in Spanish ("not casa, that's 'house'... not cada, that's 'each'... not algo, that's 'something.'..."), and I finally just had to ask him.
Cosa. Of course! "Thing" is COSA! How embarrassing to not remember that, and what a relief to know it again.
Francisco's shift ended around 7 so he joined me at the bar for a few minutes, but then he had to go change out of his BBC shirt and head home. When he came back, he had two motorcycle helmets with him, and he offered to give me a ride back to the hostel.
I know what you're thinking:
1) "Don't do it Michelle!"
2) "Of course you did it. You did it, didn't you?"
Yes I did. And it was so much fun. And now I've had my first "I am living in a dream" experience so far on this trip. Meeting a cute, sweet boy while drinking delicious beer and then getting a free ride back to my hostel on his motorcycle during a beautiful Colombian night? Hell yeah.
However, even though my gut instinct told me that Francisco was kind and trustworthy (and he said he'd never been in an accident in his two years of riding a motorcycle so I felt reassured that I would be safe on his bike), I know that this was a risky thing to do. I do not intend on taking risks like that very often. On the ride back, Francisco even told me, "what you are doing? Letting me take you back home? Don't do that. I am safe, but other people are not safe." I know - I really do. And I'm not always the best judge of character, but I wasn't picking up on anything but genuine sweetness, generosity, and concern from him. I wish I could have taken a photo of his face -- if you saw it, you'd know what I mean. Just a wholesome delight. I'll probably visit him at BBC again tomorrow since I'll be back in the neighborhood for my (!@#$!) Brazilian visa. It's nice to have a friend, even though I can TOTALLY HANDLE BEING LONELY (you hear that, Antonio?? I got this.)
It's nearly 10pm now, and there's a karaoke night happening nearby that I don't want to miss, so..... hasta mañana :)