Bogota, Colombia

The Colombia trip has begun. Two days ago I was sitting in a University of Texas classroom trying to answer a constitutional law exam question about whether congress could potentially act on Utah passing a hypothetical plural marriage statute. Having finished the mind bending ordeal that is law school finals. If you want to know what law school finals are like then watch the movie Old School and find the scene in which Will Ferrrel debates the guy from crossfire. If you want to know how I feel right now then watch Braveheart and find the scene in which Mel Gibson yells ¨freeeeedom!¨after being disemboweled.

I am not exactly sure where to start my new blog thread. It seems the blog is just another overlooked item on my list of, well, overlooked items. My pocketknife is sitting sharp somewhere in my room, the lighter I bring on every trip is partying with it, and my lucky vietnam-worn laundry bag that has been washed in many a latin american country is not full of my day´s worth of dirty clothes. This is my most impromptu trip. My mind has barely caught up with me and I am realizing that It would have been nice to have planned more.

Before I write briefly about today´s events I´ll add two other pieces of information that I have learned the hard way. The first is simple: Don´t take a UT fleece with you when you go backpacking. My instinct told me not to bring it, but my longhorns pride got the best of me. I am now a walking orange foreigner. Seriously, I think I am about to trade someone on the street.

Second, knowing your money is really important. This seems obvious, but again I´m pleading law school here. I arrived at the bustling Bogota airport at 8 last night and stood in an hour long line to get through immigration. Shortly thereafter I exchanged to Colombian currency. I half-heartedly counted the amount the teller gave me and basically took her word that she gave me the full 1,060,000 pesos ($500 USD) I was owed. I jumped in a cab. The cab driver and I struck up a good conversation, as I usually do with cab drivers. I handed him the 20,000 pesos for the ride and gave him four bills with ¨50¨printed on them. He looked at the money, asked me if it was a tip, and then gave me back 3 of the 50 bills back. He said it was too much. Intuition told me this was weird, but I figured he felt guilty that he had probably overcharged me for the ride to the hostel anyway. In my cold hostel room I took my money out, spread it on the bed, and counted it - I just didn´t feel right about not doing a proper job at the currency exchange. I was $250 USD short. I was ashamed and angry. I recounted and recounted for about 15 minutes. Finally, exasperated, I thought back to the cab driver and checked the ¨50¨s. Turns out the ¨50¨s are actually worth 50,000 pesos each. Basically I gave a cab driver with integrity a $25 USD tip and he in return taught me a huge travel lesson: Always learn your currency before you use it.

Today was a great start to the vacation. I use the word vacation for the first time in this blog because I hope to relax alot more than I did on the last trip. I woke up at a late 9:30am, drank coffee in a cafe, and did my typical city walk that I do on every first day. My first impression of Bogota is that it gives a feeling of desolation. Buildings are strangely very shuttered and many seem abandoned - abandoned in the sense that they are nice office spaces that seem as if they have never had occupants. Regardless, the people seem friendly and the Candeleria area that I am in is full of culture.

The event of the day was taking the ¨telefonica¨cable trolley to a gorgeous church and park on top of one of the moutains that surrounds the valley in which Bogota sits. I spent a good amount of time reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s ¨love in the time of cholera¨while up there. I am trying to read it in Spanish so I completed a solid 3 pages. I´m thinking tomorrow will be the museums but, as you can probably tell from this first post, improvisation will be the name of the game.

¨Freeeeeeeedom!!!¨