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| Me between my two national flags in Guatavita |
So this past weekend, my friends and I (Jeni, Casey, Mariane, Alejandra) made the trek out to Guatavita to meet up with our friends Mike and his girlfriend Adry and her 4 year-old daughter Luna. Mike has been working weekends at this restaurant called El Gringo Dorado, which is on the way to the famous El Dorado legendary lake (Guatavita). I had been to the lake back during Semana Santa with my friend Juliana and her family, but this was a chance to spend the night in the countryside with my close friends from Montessori. The restaurant is quaint--it's not fancy or anything but has just enough to feed a decent group of people coming down the road from the lake. And there's a small room with a couple of beds for people like us who are willing to put up with the cold temperatures to enjoy a day or so away from the hustle and bustle of city life. So after leaving Bogota around 11am on Saturday morning, we made the 1 1/2 hour or so trip to Guatavita but not knowing exactly where to go to get to the restaurant. The bus dropped us off in the center of Guatavita where transit to other places was quite scarce. After nearly an hour of hanging out and asking around how to get to the Gringo Dorado (which no one had heard of), a guy offered to help us try to find the place. Thirty minutes later we were there! Mike, dressed in his little chef's gear had a fire going and some food cooking for any potential customers and served us a lovely trout or chicken breast lunch. Then around 4:30-5ish he could close out for the day and we proceeded to hang out and chat, have a few drinks, and just enjoy being in the fresh air. But after the sun went down, the battle with the cold commenced. Guatavita is about 1,000 meters higher than Bogota (which is at roughly 8,600 meters) so the weather is just like Bogota's but times like 20. Cloudy, drizzly/moist, and just plain COLD. I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, and a down jacket. Most of us were wearing at least 3 layers and still shivering. It felt like being back in Boston! And Colombia is supposed to be in the tropics??? It felt very similar to the weather I experienced in the Quiché mountains of Guatemala, especially in the town of Uspantan. We spent the better part of the evening inside trying to keep alive a fire in the chimney that would either die out quickly because the wood was very moist or burn too quickly because of the twigs and leaves we fed it. Despite the cold, it was really nice to breathe fresh air again and be connected with nature (we spent a good while marveling at a magnificent spider web outside the restaurant, watching the spider wrap up it's prey and carry it out of sight). We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking, laughing, listening to music, having some beer, and trying to keep warm. I think for the longest time we all dreaded going to sleep because we knew it was not going to be easy because of the cold. But we finally did go to bed.
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| Mike cooking in El Gringo Dorado |
Sunday morning we all woke up to help Mike clean up the place and get him ready for the day's customers. Around 10 a group of us (Jeni, Aleja, Casey, Marianne, Adry and Luna) headed up to the park to go on the tour of the Lake. It was even colder up there, since according to the tour guide, we were ascending to about the same height as Monserate, so about 3,000 more meters above sea level. Although I had been on the tour before, the hike was still difficult. The elevation in Bogota alone has killed me since Day 1 (I think it's taken the better part of this last year to not get winded going up stairs anymore) and to go up even higher where the air is even thinner is a challenge. But the hike is only about an hour or so and we stopped a lot to hear the history of the Lake and the Muisca peoples of the region. And the views from the top are just spectacular (check out my first Guatavita album on Facebook to see the pictures from my trip during Semana Santa).
After our hike it was nap-time for pretty much everyone, except for Mike who had to help out in the kitchen. He got pretty slammed in the afternoon with the Sunday lake visitors, which was good since he had very few customers the day before. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to soak up the intermittent moments of sunshine while still wearing all our layers. Even though a finca in the mountains would be awesome, I seriously don't think I could handle that kind of cold for long. My finca, as mentioned before, will definitely be in a WARM climate. Anywho, so around 5:30 we caught the last bus back into Sesquile, a neighboring town, and from there got on a flota back to Bogota. I never though I'd say it but I was quite happy to be going back to the "warmth" of Bogota. I put warmth in quotes because ya'll who know these Andean countries, know that these great cities are anything but warm. The average year-long temperature in Bogota is probably around 55 degrees or 60. Jeni and I marvel all the time about how you can have four seasons in one day: the morning is usually bright and sunny. By 10am it's usually cloudy. By 1pm it's raining and by evening you better not leave your house without a good coat and gloves. So returning to Bogota yesterday was surprisingly a god-send from the cold of Guatevita because at least I could have a hot shower and turn on my electric blanket.
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| Casey, Adry, Luna and Marianne at the restaurant |
But before getting back to Whack-gota (our nickname for Bogota...which I will explain in a subsquent post) I had to survive probably one of the most, if not THE most, miserable bus trips I think I've ever had (can't believe I'm saying this because I had some pretty awful ones in Guatemala too). For starters when we got on the bus in Sesquile there were no more seats so we all pretty much had to stand. Not bad, you might think, but the buses here are tiny and often times I cannot stand up straight because my head hits the ceiling. About 10 minutes into the trip a guy gets off and the other guy standing near that seat offers it to me (the seat was the first one behind the front door). Okay, I sit down thinking it will probably be better this way. WRONG! The ayudante proceeds to jam-pack the bus but since people here don't really care about personal space and don't seem to be considerate of others, all the newly boarded people tended to mill around by the front of the bus instead of moving back to make room for more people to board. During the nearly 2 hour trip I had to put up with a teenage girl loudly chatting away on her cell phone and popping gum in my ear, a couple making out and blowing their hot breathe and spit into my face, two overweight women jabbing their elbows and purses in to my neck and mid-section, a guy repeatedly stepping on my foot, people getting off and slamming their bags in to my head, and no air circulating in the stuffy, oven-like bus. What is it with Latinos (it was the same in Guatemala) and not wanting to open a window??????!!!!! Jesus Christ I thought I was gonna suffocate (and you know I was still wearing nearly all my layers from Guatavita). I seriously almost had a panic attack. I think I'm becoming more and more claustrophobic as I'm getting older. You'd think after all the stuffiness of the microbuses and camionetas in Guatemala I'd be over this but I swear, the bus situation here is worse. At least in Guatemala people would say "Perdon" if they accidently hit you or stepped on you or "Disculpa" if they wanted to get by. Nope. Here they don't say a word. That is why I prefer to take taxi's everywhere in Bogota. I cannot handle the busetas or the Transmilenio here. It's insanity. And they say Bogota is going to double it's population within the next 25 years (it's pop. is currently about the same as NYC's)? How on earth is it going to support that many more people without bettering it's transportation? I would like to say I'd rather get on a Quiche bus in Guatemala then ever having to board another buseta or flota here...but...that may be pushing it. They're both about equally ridiculous in my mind, only the former has speed issues and the latter has congestion issues. Oh Latin American buses...how I love thee.
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| Warming our feet in the fire at the restaurant |
Anyways, so that was my fourth of July week/weekend. Next Friday I believe Jeni and I will be heading off to my birthtown and then to Medellin to finish up our "summer" of traveling. Hope everyone is well!!
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