Day 5 - Bogota

Traveling for business isn’t necessarily  all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes there is a lot of wasted time, and sometimes it can be a lot of fun. There are times where the adrenaline is flowing fast and furious such as when giving a presentation, and then not long afterwards there is the big letdown. And then there are those times where the trip just takes a lot out of you from all of the above, and being tired rules the day. And then there are the days where you just want to go home. So far I’ve had a bit of all of those. Today was a travel day, but we were scheduled to meet with some of my old friends for dinner.

Our flight from Buenos Aires to Bogota departed at 7:45 am, and so I was up and about at 4:15am. I think that Rich and Randy were up at about the same time. We grabbed a cab and pointed the driver to the airport.

When we arrived at the airport, we needed something to eat, and so we spied a table in an open cafe and sat down. One or two waitresses would fly by our table every now and again, nary giving us a glance. But after waiting about 10 minutes minutes when no one showed up to take our order, we decided to try another place. So off we went.

At the next café we had to order our own food, which was fine with me. At least we could control the timing. Yeah right. Don't assume anything down here.

We placed our order for a few cups of coffee; I ordered a Media Luna (half moon) Danish (I had this in Buenos Aires and they were absolutely awesome), and the guys had hot ham and cheese sandwiches I believe. It took forever. But at some point, we got our food, ate it, and headed over to the gate. From this time until we reached Bogota, nothing really interesting happened. I don’t know about those Argentines, they just made it too easy to leave the place. It was no fun at all.

After we picked up our bags at the airport in Bogota and headed out, we stopped to look for the taxi service and get our driver. The taxi was scheduled and paid for a few days before, so this made it easy – damn, again nothing really good to write about. It was about 12:30pm.

Rich and I went to convert some cash before we got in the taxi. Randy was outside first, then me, and after a minute or so, Rich comes out, empty handed. Randy calls out “Where’s your bags?” Rich looks up with a scrunched face only a mother  (make that "his mother”) and his kids could love (ok, and maybe his girlfriend – although I don’t know why,) turns around quickly, and hightails it back just before the doors slam closed. Randy tries to yell back at him “YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO GO BACK IN THAT WAY!” to no avail. But fortunately, no one noticed.  It sure would have been fun to write about the time Rich got caught at the airport heading in the out door and the police grabbed him and tortured him for at least an hour or so in BOGOTA of all places. They wouldn’t have needed to perform a rendition, primarily because we were ALREADY IN rendition territory. But no, I am afraid that didn’t happen. I am fortunate, however, that my wife did that at the airport in Frankfurt last year and set off the alarms. But once again, no one really noticed and she got off scott-free.

The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel in Bogota was a non-event. The roads and buildings looked like what you would expect in, well, a South American city such as Bogota. Somewhat run down, nothing too shiny, the sidewalks are all either under construction or need to be, and all the cars needed to be washed. But the weather was lovely, and we were looking forward to the empanadas.

After we checked in at the hotel, we caught up on some business (boring emails and the like) and rest, and I contacted my friend who was going to meet us for dinner. We agreed to meet at a restaurant at 8pm. All ok so far.

Los tres amigos decided to head out for lunch, and so Randy asked for some suggestions from the hotel that were within walking distance. Now back in 1996 when I was first here, one didn’t go out of the hotel without an escort. And at night, there would be a security guard in front of the hotel sporting a handy-looking shotgun. That’s pretty much changed, at least in this neighborhood.

We headed out, and crossed several streets where the drivers take sport in trying to knock over the pedestrians. It’s a little like the old computer game Frogger, where you try to cross the road before you become road kill. Now that was fun.

You have to understand something about the roads here. Most primary roads are about 3 cars wide, so I was very impressed in how they get at least 5 cars in the same width. There might be those white stripes painted on the blacktop, but the gov’t might as well try to save a few bucks and toss the paint and machinery and just let the road warriors go, because that’s what they do here anyway.  What’s a lane?

It was hysterical watching women cross the street in high heels. It’s not as if the street is flat across the road – at least in the area we were in. Only the stretches where the cars drive are flat. The rest of the street has its, well, ups and downs, so to speak, and is configured in really strange ways, and the places where concrete exists, I believe some of them are sidewalks, the stuff is severely broken up, so you are constantly stepping into holes, or stepping on piles of broken concrete or bricks. In one direction you might have a single service lane that the locals make into three lanes, then the geography rises at a fairly steep angle in-between the service and main roads, about 10 feet in length.  Some stretches of the rise are made of concrete, and some are grass. Not sure how they decided which needs to be which? So the women wearing high heels have a hard time when they actually reach the angled median, and appear to almost fall over trying to keep their balance. It’s dangerous and I feel bad, but it was pretty funny. I guess it takes experience and guts to not stumble into oncoming traffic.

We found a place for lunch on the wrong street that appeared to be just a tad upscale, and the food was very good. I had a chicken somethingorother, and I don’t recall what Rich and Randy had. But we were all satisfied with our find.

When we got back we rested for a bit and responded to emails and other frustrating business issues before meeting up with Carlos and Vivian for dinner.

Dinner

Carlos and Vivian are a great couple. I first met them during a business trip to Bogota in 1996. Carlos was my contact for some routers I was installing, He and Vivian are both electrical engineers. Not long after my first trip, I needed to return, and this time I scheduled an extra day for some sightseeing. They showed me around the city, and that night took me to their college reunion where we danced and just had a really cool time.  Over time, they had come to work in the US, and happily lived not too far from me, so Diane and I had a chance to visit with them.

At about 7:45 we grabbed a cab and went to the restaurant. When we arrived, Carlos and Vivian hadn’t yet arrived, so the hostess showed us to our table on the 4^th floor. The place is called Andres DC.  I haven’t a clue what the “DC” means, and I guess I’m not so certain about the Andres part either. However, this was a very cool, trendy place. Mood lighting, lots of music, some crazy people running around, etc. Interesting. The menu is posted inside a rectangular metal box with a window on one side so that you can read the menu.  It also contains two handles so that you can scroll down the menu. Really strange. Unfortunately, this was one of those places where you have to be under 30 in order to read the menu because the type was so small and the lighting so low that there was no way that someone of my advanced years could read it. Randy tried to help by breaking out his READING glasses, and even THEY wouldn’t help. So we decided to wait for my friends.

About 30 minutes late, Carlos and Vivian show up and we kiss and hug and introduce everyone and just begin yelling across the table at each other because the music was nice and loud. You know, it ain’t easy being in a foreign country where they speak a foreign language, or at least they try to please the foreigners by speaking the visitor’s foreign language with a really heavy local foreign accent, while one tries to interpret what they are saying while music is blaring so loud that not only can’t you hear what they are trying to say, but it affects the eyes as well so you can’t read their lips either. On the other hand, the benefit of all this is that you get to take out a lifetime of frustration by yelling at everyone, but they don’t realize that this is really a therapy session – something you can’t really do to your spouse at home. Ok, you can, but that’s not the point.

Since those of us over the age of death can’t read the menu, we leave it up to Carlos to order. The appetizers were great, and the conversation thrilling – it must have been because there was lots of smiling and nodding across the table. Rich was in love with the place and couldn’t stop commenting about how he was really excited to be there. At least I think that’s what he was saying. I dunno, maybe I was mistaken and he was saying something about his hair, not about being here? He does rub his shaved head a lot, so maybe I misinterpreted? I could hardly hear a thing.

Carlos and Vivian at the restaurant

In the middle of the floor was some strange entertainment of people dancing in costumes while bits of paper were being tossed into the air. I had no idea what they were doing, or why. One person would be dancing, while the others were surrounding him/her so that no one else could see. Great show - not. At one point, a group of them pulls up to the people at the table next to us, and a guy begins what appears to be magic tricks – really, really, really bad magic tricks. So bad that he messes them up constantly. But maybe that’s the way they do magic here and I’m just asking too much? At the beginning of one of his “tricks,” he asks everyone to hold hands and concentrate really hard. He appeared to ask us too, but since I don’t understand much Spanish, and I wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway, I can only imagine that he was asking us to pray that at least one trick would work. But Randy wasn’t having any of this hand-holding stuff. And I’m sure that’s why the trick failed so miserably. It’s all Randy’s fault.

Unfortunately, the main dish that Carlos ordered wasn’t at the higher end of the delicious list (pressed plantain in the shape of a pizza topped with cheese,) but we love him anyway for trying, and we were having a decent time. After a few hours we paid the tab and headed back to the hotel. Carlos and Vivian were really nice and drove us back, with me in the middle of the smallish back seat, in between two guys, one reasonably thin, and the other, well, he could have been a bit more reasonable. I was squashed as they will attest. But we made it back safely.  

And that about wraps up our first day in Bogota.