Sights and sounds of Bogota: 4/20-4/24

I was in Bogota April 20-24, and I thought I’d torture Santa by telling him all about it….

I. Getting there
In the Miami airport I got off the airplane and walked past a magazine stand. Testosterone was the cover story for Time: what it does to men, and for them; its new availability. The cover had a final question: Is the edge worth it? Hey, that’s why I’m going to Colombia: to find out.
Step off the plane in Miami, on the way to Colombia, and you’re already in Latin America. Most of the staff has a Latin accent; the women have that look. There’s a little food stand at the head of concourse D with mango juice. Oh my God. Don’t pass it up. But when it comes to changing your money here, get the bare minimum, just enough to pay for those first couple of cab rides. Even the hotels have a better exchange rate than these guys.
I got on my plane—a big one--to Bogota. Most of the seats were empty; it was a Thursday before Easter, and there were just thirty of us. I didn’t care. I saw all those Latin faces and just started laughing with joy.

II. Ten+ things to hate about Colombia:

1. Nobody in this damned country ever has change. (At least that’s what they all say.)
2. As far as I can tell, the Colombian word for “pothole” seems to mean “street.”
3. You can find fifty electric outlets in the waiting room in the Bogota airport, but not a one of them has any juice.
4. A group of Colombian guys standing around and making animal noises at the women. (Does that ever ~work~ for these idiots?)
5. After listening to your girlfriend talk about her work, you catching yourself wondering if maybe the concept of sexual harassment isn't as damaging as you used to think.
6. Music everywhere: from a speaker outside your hotel room; in cheap restaurants; in the airport waiting room; in expensive restaurants; in cabs; in middling restaurants; in the elevator; in the streets, coming from the house on the corner; in the apartment of your girlfriend’s family, coming from the apartment on the next floor; in restaurants; and, oh yeah, in the freakin’ restaurants!
7. After having been burned by a few romantic, smooth Colombian guys, your girlfriend gets tense if you say she’s pretty. (She gets over it…)
8. Can you say rain?
9. The first few hours back in the States, lots of Americans strike you as comical… ridiculous, actually… big and goofy and physically awkward.
10. Stories your girlfriend tells you about other gringos. Example: the guy who sent her this slinky nightwear thing--a teddy? chemise? whatever it was, I was drooling--and he’s never even met her! She’s a conservative religious woman, very proper, very family-oriented—sexy as hell, but for her, sex is something that happens in the family. Then it’s great. Otherwise it’s a terrible thing. (This explains the existence of the longterm novio, the official boyfriend, who goes on picnics, goes to church, and does everything else with her family.)
11. Kids with automatic weapons. If either of the two guys on patrol wearing army uniforms and carrying the automatic weapons has reached the age of twenty, you couldn’t convince me.
12. I walk from the first to the third floor of the hotel. Now I do two flights of stairs twenty times a day at work, and exercise regularly, but in Bogota, without time to adjust, I’m breathing hard. If you live at sea level, expect a little of this.
13. That conversation in which you tell her all the things she needs to know about you that you never want to tell anybody.
14. The official meal when you meet the family (the job interview from hell).


III. Ten+ things to love about Colombia:

1. Comida tipica (real Colombian food): a decent sancocho, frijoles con arroz (beans and rice), arroz con pollo (chicken with rice-- imagine paella without the saffron or the seafood) , tejadas (ripe plaintain slices, fried in a pan with little butter), the fruit juices, the fruits you’ve never heard of, bananas they way they’re supposed to taste…
2. Those little suits the women under the age of 40 all seem to love, with the tight little jacket and short skirt.
3. Walking up the stairs ten feet behind two girls. (Oh boy… if I don’t watch it, I’m going to start making animal noises pretty soon myself.)
4. Colombian “dichos” (sayings): i) as punctual as the ugly girlfriend (hey, she’s afraid to make her boyfriend angry; after all, she’s ugly---cruel, but funny as hell); ii) as tiresome as the ugly girlfriend asking for kisses; iii) she’s so ugly she doesn’t inspire even one bad thought.
5. Jeans, a white blouse, boots with a two inch heel, and a soft black blazer on the women aged 35-60.
6. The homely English guy with the awful haircut and stringy hair you run across in Unicentro while he’s waiting for his doctor girlfriend to get out of the bathroom. He’s obviously working with one of the agencies but he doesn’t want to say so. When she comes out of the bathroom you see she’s nothing to look at but they’re both beaming, overflowing with joy, and life is good. God bless ‘em. May they have lots of ugly, happy little kids.
7. The little Catholic chapel in the Bogota airport: men, old ladies, women of every age, even young tough-looking guys, standing with heads bowed, on their knees, or sitting with eyes closed.
8. All the pet names Colombian women have for the people they love. Children: chicitica; chili-wili; princesa; gordo. Men: amor (love); mi vida (my life—think about that one for a while); corazon (heart).
9. A Colombian woman with her daughter—any age. This is where the magic begins.
10. She says you need to have a serious conversation, that she’s not sure she’s the kind of woman you need, so you sit down and ask her why. She’s sitting on the bed, you’re in a chair next to the bed. She asks, with disappointment, why you’re sitting so far away. You immediately feel better. (The continuing theme of her questions is, can I really count on you or are you just playing with me?)
11. The “California” brand of fruit juices (nectar de mango, nectar de pera). These juices are to the boring stuff back home as a beautiful, affectionate Latina is to a tough American woman lawyer. The words ‘rich” and “full” don’t begin to describe them.
12. She watches you pack to go home and notices that actually, you’re a little bit nuts. (Who isn’t?) She thinks it’s cute.
13. You notice, in that conversation in which you tell her all the things she needs to know about you that you never want to tell anybody, that although she’s grilling you like an experienced cop, she’s staying calm and polite. Then after a while you realize the two of you are actually working together on the relationship like, well, a man and woman should.
14. The official meal when you meet the family, and after a while you’re sitting around having a good time talking politics with Dad, who’s a Fujimori fan and thinks Pastrana is an idiot.
15. Laughing with your girlfriend’s Mom at lunch, who goes on a long tear about your need to have regular manicures and to apply cream to your face. She’s not impressed by the culture/identity problems since habits present for the Southern WASP: manicures and creams are still the ticket. Later you find out she does the manicures and the cream with her own husband. Sweet, in a way. Your girlfriend is amused.