COLOMBIA: BOGOTA PART II (SHOPPING, PLAZA DE BOLIVAR, CITY STREETS, AND A SERENDIPITOUS MEET-UP)

 March 17, 2023

From the Botero Museum, we walked to an area where souvenir items are for sale on tables lining the street. This is the "Old Town," known in Bogotá as the Candelaria District, and it includes the foundation buildings of the city. Candelaria is Spanish for "Candlemas," a Christian holiday that commemorates the presentation of the baby Jesus at the temple.

On our way there, we passed this awesome three-wheeler that was selling, among other things, arroz con leche, or rice pudding.

The Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) is extremely popular in his home country of Colombia, as well he should be. There are many sites named for him, such as the cultural center in Bogotá that we walked by.

We also saw many artworks depicting "Gabo," as he is affectionately known in Colombia. He looks like someone I would want to know, at least in this painting!

There was a lot of art for sale, often copies of well-known works, such as Botero's Mona Lisa in the bottom right corner.

And guess who else was there? Frida!

Many of the merchandise is sold by indigenous people, and our guide encouraged us to bypass the first tables and shop at the tables further in that they operated. By the way, we did see this man in his wonderful native outfit walking in the area. 

My first purchase was a red version of Savannah's black mochila bag, which I love and which cost about $16. (We had paid $14 for hers in Cartagena.) Savannah also bought a smaller version of her purse for about $10.

The first stand that caught Savannah's eye was a place selling vinyl records that have been cut to represent what is on them. Obviously they can't be played, but each one has a QR Code that leads to information about or music by the person/people on the front. Savannah found a gift for a friend who loves the group Queen.

We bought a few beaded necklaces from these ladies who were keeping warm in their traditional ruanas, or ponchos,  then we asked them if we could take their picture. They agreed.

This man was an amazing salesman. While we were standing there looking at his jewelry, he twisted a piece of wire into a treble clef shape and clipped it to Sav's ear as a gift. Savannah ended up buying a twisted copper ring from him, and I think we bought some bracelets and earrings as well.

We loved this man's wares--items made out of no longer used currency from around the world. Sav bought a wallet made of money. How fun is that? 

In retrospect, I wish we had bought one of his clever animals.

Before our trip, we read about the amazing fruit of Colombia, and all of it was true. Fruit stands are everywhere and are doing a brisk business.

This is pink and yellow dragon fruit. The yellow fruit is also called pitaya.

We were supposed to have a fruit-tasting tour, but we were way behind because of the phone drama. Our guide made sure we tasted at least of few of what to us were exotic fruits, including our new favorite, mangosteens:

She showed us how to break off the leaves and stem before breaking open the shell to reveal pods of sweet, juicy fruit inside. By the way, if you look just below Bob's right wrist, you'll see an interesting photo on the fruit cart.

It is the prison mug shot and finger print of Pablo Escobar, the infamous drug lord and the reason most people are afraid to travel to Colombia (even though he was killed in 1993). We would learn more about him at our final stop in Medellin. I have no idea why this card was on the fruit cart. Maybe to celebrate his extermination?

My favorite juice comes from this large, spiky fruit--guanábana, also known as soursop. Note the placement of the accent over the second syllable.  We kept wanting to say gua-na-BA-na. Anyway, those are big bowls of  guanábana juice behind the fruit. Obviously, I'm not the only one who likes to drink it!

The shopping area ends in Plaza de Bolivar, a large square surrounded by historical buildings, including the National Capitol with a statue of Simón Bolivár out front. He looks a bit Greek from a distance, and all that graffiti on the base does not connote a lot of respect for his role in history.

Up close, the details of his uniform under his cloak look more like what I would expect.

The Primary Cathedral of Bogotá is a huge edifice built between 1807 and 1823 in the same place where three predecessors had stood, beginning in 1538. I was really disappointed that it was locked up and we couldn't go inside. In fact, we didn't see inside any of the major cathedrals in Colombia, just the two small churches on the top of the hills in Cartagena and Bogotá. I thought that was a little strange. At first I thought perhaps it was our guides not understanding that we really were interested in Catholic cathedrals, but I came to believe these major cathedrals are just not tourist sites.

It was difficult to get a decent photo of the full spread because of the market in front.

Forming one of the corners of the plaza is the College of St. Bartholomew, a private school that serves preschoolers through high school. Founded in 1604 (!), it is the oldest Colombian school in continuous operation.

The Palace of Justice, what I assume is the equivalent of our Supreme Court, is also on the square, but what everyone seems to be most interested in is the pigeons. The building in the background is Lievano Palace, built in 1907 and transformed into City Hall in 1974.

But the pigeons. OH MY. Women were selling tubes of seed for people to use to attract the pigeons to their hand, and there appeared to be a steady stream of buyers. In retrospect, I wish we had let Savannah do that!

However, time had flown by and our tour was just about over. We started the walk back to our hotel through the Candelaria neighborhood, passing this beautiful azulejo, a gift to the city from Portugal. I would have liked to stop at that red striped church in the distance, The National Shrine of Our Lady of Carmen, a relatively new church consecrated in 1938.

I was a little nervous about taking this picture of the guys in fatigues standing outside the Military Museum, but they either didn't see me or didn't mind.

Many of the Candelaria streets look a little European with their foot traffic-only, stone paving, colonial and art deco architecture, and outdoor restaurant seating.

But these colors can only be Central and South America.

Graffiti was decriminalized in Bogotá in 2011 after a 16-year-old street artist was killed by police, and since then there has been a colorful explosion in the capital city. Businesses now even commission graffiti artists to spiff up their outside walls. Both homegrown and world-renowned artists apply their brushstrokes here, and the most famous area for graffiti is the Candelaria neighborhood--the streets we walked between Old Town and our hotel.

I was intrigued by this work of a boy with four eyes and three nostrils. I've searched the internet for information, but I haven't been able to find any. Outdoor art like this gets painted over every few years as the paint chips and color fades, so it is much less searchable than regular art.

This is the outside of a ramen house. If you look through the door, you can see some Japanese anime on the inside wall.

Much of the art is political and/or references various indigenous peoples.

As evening approached, the streets got busier. This narrow street is full of trendy-looking bars and young people.

The poster on the left says, "Don't drink Coca Cola. Drink chicha." Chicha is an indigenous drink made from fermented corn. It was outlawed in 1949 for making people violent and stupid and for supposedly giving off poisonous gases during the brewing process. Although the ban is still in effect, it seems the government has thrown up their hands in defeat. It is sold all over the Candelaria district. According to the street art, even old ladies drink it.

Bullitas can mean either "bulls" or "bullies."  Not sure what it means here, but the chalkboard shows that chicha can have many different kinds of fruit as the base.

If I zoom in on this photo . . . 

. . . I see that Chica Tradicional is sold in this bar, and this guy on the right looks like he is holding a bottle of the home brew.

I would like to go back some day for one of the street art tours that are offered. (Next time I will keep my phone deep inside a zippered pocket.)

We saw an "umbrella alley" in Cartagena, and then this one in Bogotá. They match the one in the city where we live. The idea must be spreading around the world!

After being deposited at our hotel, Savannah and I climbed the four flights of stairs to wash up while Bob waited below, and at 5:30 we met Bob's brother David in the lobby of our hotel.  There is a good story behind this serendipitous connection.

About 2-3 weeks before this trip, Bob and David were talking about the possibility of meeting up in Utah to visit their mother, but Bob said it would have to be later because we were in going to be traveling in March. David said he was too--to Colombia. What??!! That's where we were going! It turned out that we would be in Bogotá on the same evening, and that our two hotels were just a 10-minute walk apart. Seriously? And then we would both be in Medellin on the same night--our last night there and David's first.  Bob was pretty excited about this amazing coincidence, and he pretty much told everyone on the trip about it--the tour guides, the hotel desk clerks, our drivers, etc.

It had started to rain, but the four of us walked to a nearby restaurant called T-Bone. 

The neighborhood it was in was pretty rough, but the restaurant was classy and relatively expensive. Bob and I had blackberry-topped beef slices. The sauce was good but the meat was dry. Sav had steak topped with mushroom sauce. Again, the sauce was better than the meat. I can't remember what David had. 

Photo from here

Sav had not met David before, but she slipped right in to the conversation. She is a great young woman, and I loved having her along. It wasn't a stellar meal, but it was an A+ for strengthening family ties. At one point David said something like "It is so impossible that this happened. It's almost like there was heavenly intervention." I agree.  We planned a second dinner together in Medellin at the end of our trip.

READING

Since I mentioned García  Márquez in this post, I figure this is a good time to talk about his books.  I've read and loved at least three.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is based on the author's grandparents' house, where he grew up. It tells the story of the Buendía family, who build an isolated town they call Macondo. As Macondo establishes ties with the outside world, however, things begin to fall apart. The novel is written in a style called "magical realism" in which the lines between reality and fantasy are often blurred. It is considered one of the greatest books in both Hispanic and world literature and is certainly García Márquez's magnum opus. If you are going to read just one of his books, this should be the one.

The novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) tells the story of a murder in a journalistic style. The narrator of the book gradually pieces together nonlinear events to discover the reason for what turns out to be an "honor killing" and the names of the murderers. The focus on the story is not the murder itself, but why the townspeople, who knew what was likely to occur, didn't stop it from happening or at least warn the victim.

Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) tells the stories of two couples, one young couple (which is based on the author's own parents) and one couple in their 70s. I had mixed feelings about this book. The writing is, of course, amazing, and the general story line is very intriguing, but I got sick of the counterfeit "love" that Garcia Marquez examines throughout the book. For me, this was an examination of what love ISN'T rather than what it is, and for most of the book I didn't really like any of the characters. This was my least favorite of the books I've read by García Márquez.