Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

I woke up Sunday to the neighborhood not having water, and thus, I was unable to take a shower. Also, some sonofabitch at the hostel stole my gallon of water that I was going to load up the Camelbak with and stay hydrated (it takes a lot of effort to keep my skin looking ah-maze-ing!)

I had thought about going up to see the Salt Cathedral, but everyone I talked to said it sucked, and wasn’t worth going to. The country itself was at a standstill, so not much happened, except for wandering around with friends from the hostel. It was fun to parade around the neighborhood, and with all the fanfare around the elections, it was neat to see supporters out and about.

I also did find out the problem with postcards: I wasn’t going to be able to send any. Colombia lacks a proper national postal system and all international post, if you want it to actually make it to your destination, needs to go via a third party. That means for me, sending a postcard would have started at $5 per card. So after much consternation, I decided – fuck it, I’m sending them when I get back to Chicago.

After a few hours, we headed back to the hostel where we polished off what was left of the beer supply. I spent my last night talking with the hostelmates, and had a good time and called it a night since my flight back was at 7:30 am, and I wanted to be there early because I didn’t know what sort of formalities lay ahead of me the next morning. The plan was to be out the door by 4:30am.

Naturally, I overslept, and woke up from a powernap at 5am. Fuck. Try to go take a shower, and alas, no water again. Fuckity fuck. That’s two days without smelling pretty.

On arrival at the airport, I found where AA was ticketing passengers, and then found out that I needed a tax stamp to leave the country (presumably to pay some sort of exit tax if you’ve stayed longer than me), then through passport control on the way out, giving me three pretty Colombian passport stamps.

Flight back to Miami was uneventful. I got some brief work done in Lightroom and made smalltalk with a Marine Sgt. Major who sat next to me. I forgot people in coach actually talk to each other, and it’s been far too long since I’ve had the chance to talk and say hi.

Sadly, I wasn’t detained by Immigration in Miami. I had all the red flags – short trip to Colombia, carry-on bags, a fully-stamped passport… c’mon, I was begging for it. I flew through both Immigration and Customs and was a little perplexed how, it being Miami Intl, somehow fortune smiled and everything just worked and was efficient. Seriously – wtf?

I grabbed some Burger King for lunch, in the spirit of “when on a trip, eat something you never eat at home,” and headed towards the Admirals Club instead of the Flagship Lounge. I got a shower in, and relaxed and had some Presidente beer. So good.

The trip home from Miami was not direct – short layover in Orlando that turned into a long layover. It sucked for a few reasons: First, I have no clue as to why it was cheaper to throw a stop in, but I went with it. Second, all the cool restaurants/shopping were past security, so I would have had to exit and then go through again and I was far too lazy to do it for a third time today. Third, since there was no lounge to crash in, I actually had to sit with people and interact with them. Horrible!

Orlando’s airport’s saving grace is that it has free WiFi, albeit slow. That meant I couldn’t upload photos nor torrent tv shows to watch, but I did have ample enough time to harass and annoy people via IM.

Finally we boarded and I napped for about 20 minutes on the flight home and threw myself into a taxi home. I picked the wrong time to visit, but would love to go back providing I know *some* Spanish next time…

I’m not that familiar with Fernando Botero, other than he likes to draw fat people. And that he’s THE Colombian painter. That and he went to a school to be a matador when he was 12. That makes the nerd camps I went to as a kid just downright lame in comparison (in addition to that them being a “gifted and talented” camp.)

So he paints still lifes – so do most painters. I like his style. It’s artistic and yet accessible, because they look like a Gary Larson cartoon. The museum itself also had works by Picasso and Chagall, which was interesting because they have drastically different styles. The museum rocked. It was free, and well worth spending time there.

The next stop was the Museo del Oro. It’s an impressive amount of gold and it was amazing to go through. I liked that the pieces were well preserved, and despite my misconceptions about Bogota and thinking that this place would have been gutted and robbed – but… it was amazing. It was nice to look at the Americas before Europeans discovered the New World.

It was fun paling around with a nice girl from the hostel, despite her being taken. It wasn’t like *that*, it was interesting to talk to someone who’s traveling for months on end with her boyfriend. I like hearing other travelers’ stories, and keeping love going on the road and the stress of traveling and how they can somehow stick together without wanting to kill each other and end up richer for the experience. There’s a lesson in those conversations with strangers whose names you forget.

Dinner was at a place aptly named Crepes and Waffles, which, as you guessed – serves sushi and thai. The crepes were good, and it was a total date place that had free wifi – and gladly catered to the student population.

Since it was Saturday night, I expected to go out and do something – but sadly most of the bars were closed due to the election, so I sat and drank beer and swapped travel stories and had a good evening. It could have been worse.

While it sounded like a great idea at the time, I started to regret the idea to spend a weekend in Bogota. My Spanish is horrible, it doesn’t have the best of reputations with regards to crime and drugs – and figured that hey, what is life if not worth living?

Flights down were uneventful. Chicago to Miami was your standard boring flight. Side note: Travel writers LOVE to talk about their flights, injecting wordy prose into a typical event. It’s a flight. You sit down, you read, you take off, you fly, you land, and then you get off. There’s nothing remarkable about the flight.

Once in Miami, I realized how much I hate this airport. It seems like the airport is spread out over 3 countries due to the walking required. For a 3 hour layover, we naturally landed at the most furthest gate in Terminal D. In order to kill off time, I walked 20 minutes to the the Flagship Lounge and had orange juice and hot chocolate. My connecting flight to Bogota was two gates over from my arrival flight, so I had to walk another 20 minutes.

I got the exit row on the way down, and sat next to an older and slightly creepy man who was bringing his equally creepy girlfriend down next to me. The creepy man then told me about his second house in Colombia, and how “back in the day” when he dated a Colombian girl, he got into a knifefight with a cabbie and fought off several attackers. Great, I thought. I’m fucked. But then again, that’s what I’ve heard about Chicago and most other cities.

Landing in Bogota was ok – deplaned from stairs, bused over to the main terminal and waited 45 minutes for passport control. No ATMs in the arrival hall, so I asked around and found one upstairs after some help. Then, it’s off to the taxi booth where you tell the area where you’re going, and then pay that amount. I figured, not too bad – flat rate to your destination.

Then it hit me: the altitude. Bogota stands 2600 meters ASL, which compared to Chicago’s 200 meters, is an asskicker. It felt like a hangover and that I was short of breath and that my activities were labored. Even sitting in a taxi felt like I was exerting to breathe. Without drinking at all, I felt like I was fighting a mild hangover. Awesome.

I got to the hostel and tossed my stuff in the room and since it was too late to go out, I ended up drinking a beer with the hostelmates, all of which seemed to be on these multi-month expeditions around South America. A bit of jealousy, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.