Colombia: Pre Trip and Bogota

Faced with the realization that I would soon be unable to put off the ‘real world’ any longer, I began to panic. I channeled this into my usual outlet for yearning and restlessness: travel.

I had one month for winter break, and I recognized that this would likely be one of my last opportunities to travel without much barrier before I graduated and spend the next xx years of my life focusing on my career.

I knew my friend Reid was making plans to travel over the break. I asked him about it during a Halloween party at school and mentioned that I would be interested in going on a trip. He told me he and his roommate Diego were in the process of making plans and to remind him about it later. I know Reid and Diego from my MPP program. They're my uber buddies and I have traveled with them to Japan and Las Vegas.

I showed up to my Qualitative Methods Research class a few days later and sat down in my usual seat next to Reid and Diego in the front row. Diego took my laptop from me and pulled up a roundtrip ticket to Colombia on google flights. "Buy it now!" Diego encouraged. So as our professor started lecturing about coding interviews, I typed in my credit card information and confirmed my flight. "I should probably tell my parents I'm going to Colombia," I whispered to Diego. 

When I got home I started researching Colombia. As I got deeper and deeper into obscure blog posts and State Department Travel warnings, I panicked about safety. The list of things you're not supposed to do in Colombia is very long. It included things like don't street hail taxis and don't use your phone out in public or in taxis. Further, Zika, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, and other diseases are endemic to Colombia. 

For example, here is an excerpt from an email I got from the State Department a few weeks before my trip: "The U.S. Embassy reminds U.S. citizens in Colombia of the risk of crime throughout Colombia, including violent crime.  Robbery and other violent crimes are common throughout Colombia.  Firearms are prevalent in Colombia, and muggings or robberies can quickly turn violent.  Criminal activity may increase during the holidays, especially in and around shopping areas."

Here is an excerpt from the US State Department Travel Warning: ""U.S. government officials and their families in Colombia normally are permitted to travel to major cities only by air. They may not use inter- or intra-city bus transportation, or travel by road outside urban areas at night."

And here are some of the warnings from Lonely Planet: 
"Be cautious when using ATMs after dark, avoid doing so entirely on deserted streets.

Carry a quickly accessible, rolled bundle of small notes in case of robbery.

Be very wary of drinks or cigarettes offered by strangers or new 'friends.'

Beware of criminals masquerading as plainclothes police.

Be wary in Taganga, where the security situation has worsened in recent years. In particular, do not walk to the beaches beyond the town, where robberies have occurred in broad daylight, but take the boat instead.

Avoid night travel between Popayán and San Agustín, as bus robberies are regular."

I talked through my concerns with my advisory team and got some of the recommended vaccines. We ended up doing most of the things we weren't supposed to do and had very few problems. We street hailed taxis, we took buses between cities, we accidentally walked through some unsafe neighborhoods, and we were fine. Also, there were very few places where we didn't feel comfortable drinking the tap water. I was actually surprised at how rarely I felt unsafe. We were very careful and we tried to be very smart, but on the whole given the aggressive warnings it was a lot safer than I was expecting.

Tourism is increasingly rapidly in Colombia. According to the World Bank, Colombia had fewer than 600,000 international tourists in 2000, almost 1.5 million in 2010, and just over 2.5 million in 2014. (For comparison, Argentina, which has a similar population had almost 6 million tourists in 2014. The US had 75 million in 2014.)

Some parts of the country are still not safe to travel to. While Colombia is still slightly off the beaten tourist trail, the places we went inside Colombia were not. We hit all the major backpacker destinations. Dubbed 'The Gringo Trail', a few times we would run into people who had stayed at the same hostel as us previously in a later city. Our walking tour guide in Medellín thanked us for being tourists in Colombia. He emphasized that the country is working very hard to turn around its reputation and they want people to come visit this country. "If people stare at you, it's because they're amazed that you're here," he told us. In some countries I feel like people get annoyed by tourists, but the impression the tour guide gave us was that people are grateful for tourists.

This was my first trip to South America, my fourth continent, and my 29th country. (I just need to go to one more country before I reach my goal of 30 countries before I turn 25!) Some of the challenges of the trip included the language barrier and some new bathroom experiences. No one spoke English which meant we relied almost entirely on poor Diego to translate everything. I tried my best to recall my four quarters of Spanish I took at UCSB. This meant that when we went to Subway, for example, I had to order vegetables by color. "Uh... las cosas verdes, y las cosas púrpuras por favor." I found it frustrating at times because I forget how heavily I rely on English and German. Particularly in Europe, those two languages get me really far. Although, I did surprisingly have a few opportunities to speak German on this trip. I was pleasantly surprised at how much Spanish I could understand, but when it came time for me to form sentences to reply I could usually only produce the German word for things. 

I have had lots of new bathroom experiences this year. Almost every toilet I peed in in Colombia did not have a toilet seat, which I guess is hygienic, but meant constant squatting. Also, no bathrooms came with toilet paper. Sometimes there were vending machines where you could buy a few sheets. But most required you to bring your own. I had kleenex with me for awhile. I ended up buying a roll of toilet paper and carrying it around with me when we were camping, which I lent out to the unprepared boys when necessary.

Consistently we were told not to street hail taxis. Out of necessity, we had to a few times. We did so very cautiously but essentially had no issues beyond the fact that no ubers, taxis, or public transit services we rode in ever had seatbelts. 

The trip was amazing and exceeded my expectations on almost every level. I loved Colombia. It was a stunning and beautiful county with so much to do. It's so geographically diverse. According to the CIA World Factbook Colombia has a population of just over 47 million and an area slightly less than two Texases. Colombia is currently in the process of working out a peace treaty with a main rebel group, Farc. We learned a lot about this, and Colombia's history throughout the trip. One of my many favorite things about travel is how much you learn. Not just life skills, but history and culture and language and more. I'd read articles on the Peace Deal. But I had so much more of a deeper understanding hearing about it from taxi drivers or actually visiting the cities affected by the violent history.

I also feel like traveling is good for my health. Travel forces me to remain present in every moment of the day. When I'm in LA I'm constantly thinking about work, school, errands, and day to day stresses. When I'm traveling, I'm not thinking about the million things 'I have to do' or worrying about jobs or classes or anything. I'm only focused on what I'm doing right then. I'm constantly paying attention to what I'm doing right then. It was such a welcome break from the stresses of grad school. It was so much fun and I love experiencing new things and new places. We finished off each day exhausted and slightly beat up but it meant we fully maximized every day. Today, for example, I lounged around my apartment in my pajamas for most of the day, did some work on my laptop, and microwaved some meals. I squandered most of the day. But we squeezed so much out of our time in Colombia. There was not a minute we weren't doing something or trying something new. To use two extremely cheesy but true platitudes traveling allows you to 'live in the moment' and 'make the most of every day'. Traveling only continues to ever further my desire to travel. 

We squeezed the trip in between finals and Christmas. We all had very hectic and stressful finals weeks. I finished all my work at 3:00 pm on Friday and then finished packing and got ready for our MPP Holiday Party. I fit everything into my 35L North Face backpack, weighing in at 20 pounds. 

We left the party at midnight and I was asleep on the boys' couch by 12:30. At 5:00 Diego came bursting out of his bedroom. "¡Vámonos a Colombia!" The boys showered and ate breakfast while I tried to get an extra five minutes of sleep. 

Our flight left LAX at 7:45 am. The three of us disagreed strongly over what time we should leave in order to make our international flight. Diego and I wanted to leave at 5:00 at the latest. Reid wanted to leave at 6:00. Our compromise was 5:30. We took bets on when we would be waiting at the gate. I said we would be at the gate at 7:15. Reid said we would be waiting over an hour. The uber ride took 20 minutes and there was absolutely no line at security. We were waiting at our gate at 6:00 am. "I am very impressed," I told Reid. "I was so completely wrong I delegate all airport authority to you for the rest of the trip." We didn't miss a single flight. 

Three hours and two movies later (Captain Fantastic and Finding Dory) we landed in Atlanta, Georgia, where we met up with Joe who had traveled from San Francisco. Joe is Reid's friend from childhood. Joe had sent out an extremely detailed google doc with stuff to do on the trip and our itinerary evolved out of that. Usually when I travel, I just wing it. Our trip ended up being planned very detailed ahead of time, which has its pros and cons. We saved a lot of time by not constantly having to make decisions or figure things out. But part of the fun of travel is figuring things out as you go. We did squeeze more than I would have imagined was possible. We traveled hard, fast, and ambitiously. Had I planned the trip, my instinct is to make it city centric. We almost avoided cities altogether on this trip and stuck to a lot of outdoorsy and hiking stuff and I loved that so much more. We did so much that I would not have thought to do on my own or had felt comfortable doing on my own. While I didn't dislike any place we went to, the cities were my 'least favorite' parts of the trip. Thank goodness I was not in charge of planning. 

Two more movies later we landed in Bogotá. Without Diego we literally would not have made it out the front door of the airport. Not only is Diego the only one of the four of us who speaks Spanish, but his phone was the only one with an international plan. Reid, Joe, and I tried to call ubers but we were tethered to the free wifi only available within the airport. Diego talked to our uber driver on the phone. "She asked me if there were lots of police around," Diego conveyed. "That was kind of a weird question." Uber is only about a year old in Colombia but we used it extensively the whole trip. We found out our last day that Uber is technically illegal in Colombia. Our driver's question made a lot more sense after that.

Reid got us a hotel 15 minutes from the airport with his points. We got there around 11:00 pm. We walked around the area in search of food, and even found a TGIFs, but everything was closed. We ordered room service, showered, and went to bed, ready to start our 12 day whirlwind trip.