Don’t get attached to plans. That’s what I said this time last year (mas o menos) when we landed in Guatemala City to find that Avianca had canceled our flight to Flores. In that instance it was because “the plane needed parts,” to which our reply was, “No problem. You get those parts. We can wait.”
This time we expected to fly Avianca direct from Salvador, Brazil to Bogotá, Colombia. What we weren’t aware of, until Lea didn’t receive an email reminding us to check in, was that Avianca Brazil had gone bankrupt. Our plan had been to spend our last day in Brazil lounging at our hotel’s poolside bar until late afternoon. When we discovered that our flight may no longer exist, we decided to get to the airport now.
Sure enough, our flight had been canceled twenty days prior and we hadn’t been notified. The frazzled Avianca employees (who someone told us hadn’t been paid in a month) did everything they could to get us and another couple in the same predicament to our destination as quickly as possible.
After an hour of searching their own flights and those of other airlines, the wonderful Avianca attendant came up with a way to get us into Bogotá a mere fourteen hours after our original scheduled landing – but we had to get on a plane that very minute. She ran us through the security express line and before you could say “obrigado” we were flying south to São Paulo, a city we’d completely bypassed on our way through the country. Once there we rushed to catch a flight farther south to Porto Alegre, our very first port of call in Brazil. The whole time, a voice in the back of my head was screaming, “We’re going the wrong way!” It was as if all our hard work traveling north through Brazil had been undone in a single afternoon.
But wait. There’s more!
To their credit, in addition to finding new flights, Avianca put us up at the airport Ibis Hotel in Porto Alegre, where we arrived in ample time to get dinner and go to bed early. Our alarm was at 02:30, breakfast at 04:00, then off we were on the 04:30 shuttle for a cross-continental flight to (drum roll please) Lima, Peru!
We never meant to go back to Porto Alegre. We especially never meant to go back to Lima. Ever. Our return to Peru wasn’t long, though – just enough to go back through security and grab duty-free chocolate before the last leg of our journey, landing us in Bogotá at 2:00 in the afternoon. We came west two time zones, but that’s still four flights in under 24 hours for those keeping score. Here’s a map of our original flight plan and the route we actually took:
Despite the unexpected hassle, I’d still like to thank the kind employees at Avianca who kept their cool and worked this out for us during what must have been the latest in a series of very bad days.
So We’re in Bogotá – Now What?
Our itinerary for Colombia was vague to the point of nonexistence. People online had told us that Bogotá was nothing special. Having spent a few days there ourselves, Lea and I would disagree. Granted it’s not the prettiest of cities, but we got sick of “colonial architecture” a long time ago. There are still plenty of things in and around Bogotá to do. In fact, we’re going to pass back through Bogotá and spend two more days, giving us a chance to visit a few places we missed the first time ‘round.
So what is there? Museums aplenty, a big produce market, and a long pedestrian walkway through the downtown business district thronging with street vendors. There’s a Hooters for cryin’ out loud. There is also Monserrate, a mountain that looms over the city with a church on top. There’s no climbing this one unless you’re crazy, so we rode the funicular up (the teleférico is out of service at this time). Once we established the lack of oxygen at the top of the mountain (and since we still hadn’t adjusted to being back in the Andes) we took a few pictures and came right back down.
Bogotá’s transportation system isn’t the most fun to navigate. Like other big cities in South America you have to have a metro card which you load with money – that’s no problem in Bogotá. The public transport here is only buses, but there are some bus lines that act as a de facto subway system, running in dedicated lanes down the middle of the city’s larger freeways and only accessible via subway-style stations in the center of the road.
The problem with the transit system is much like it was in Quito, where despite the presence of buses everywhere, there are some places they simply don’t go. To make things worse, one of these places is the main inter-city bus terminal that connects Bogotá to the rest of the country.
Let me say that again: The city buses do not stop anywhere near the city’s main bus terminal. The closest you can hope to get without taking a taxi or Uber is a ten minute walk away.
Back to the Salt Mines
One of the most enticing attractions we came across while going through information on the Bogotá area (and something that fell into the ever-important category of “we haven’t seen this before”) was the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquirá, an elaborate underground church in an old salt mine. Before going, though, we discovered from another travel blog that there was a better, less touristed salt mine experience in the town of Nemocón twenty minutes farther down the road. This blog indicated that Zipaquirá was overrun with tourists, and to get there you had to travel all the way to Bogotá’s Terminal Norte, whereas you could get a direct bus to Nemocón from Terminal Salitre in the center of town.
Here’s the problem with old blog articles. Things change, they go out of date, and sooner or later everything they say becomes wrong. For instance, there is no longer a direct bus line from Salitre to Nemocón. We picked up the bus to Zipaquirá, which took nearly two hours just to get out of Bogotá because it stopped every two blocks to pick up more passengers. (It would have been faster if we’d taken the city bus system to Terminal Norte to begin with.) Once we got to Zipaquirá we quickly found a bus to Nemocón and the salt mine, and while it wasn’t overrun it has certainly been built up to handle a larger tourist crowd.
The salt mine was still impressive. The tiny chapel inside, not so much – the statuary wasn’t carved out of salt, it had simply been brought in from outside and placed in a vaguely chapel-shaped chamber. The tour also made a big deal of the fact that this was where the Antonio Banderas movie The 33 was filmed. Part of the set was still in place, which was cool I guess. However, the most impressive features of the mine were the perfectly reflective brine pools. These pools of saline water are only a few inches deep, yet they are such incredible natural mirrors that they make the mine’s chambers appear twice as grand as they actually are.
Getting back to Bogotá was another adventure. There is no bus station in Nemocón, so we walked halfway across the little town, asking directions as we went, until we finally found a bus stop. We didn’t wait too long for one that advertised “Zipa” in its front window, but because of roadwork and rush hour, what had been a twenty minute trip on the way out became forty minutes on the way back. Once in Zipaquirá we quickly found a bus heading back to Bogotá, but we probably should have waited for the next one as it felt like the driver had been snorting cocaine. He drove like an absolute madman, flooring the accelerator, slamming the brakes, continuously honking at and tailgating cars in front of him as if he was going to run them over.
None of this madness helped us get to Bogotá any faster, of course, due to a half hour of backups on the edge of town. When the bus arrived at Terminal Norte we were all “LET US OFF NOW.” From there we were took the more sane, though no less crowded, city bus the rest of the way. What we’d thought would be a half-day excursion had turned into a full-day, exhausting slog. Nevertheless, we were still enjoying Bogotá. We had one day left before riding the night bus south into the wild. We didn’t expect that last day to be as exciting as it turned out.
Crime Fighting!
After dropping our luggage at the bus station, we still had plenty of daylight left to visit museums in the Candelaria district. We’d been told this area was sketchy at night. We found that the same holds true during the day. The only museum we made it to was the Museo del Oro, with its mind-blowing collection of gold artifacts and handiwork. There were others in the area, such as the Emerald Museum and a photography exhibition, but before checking those out we set off down the main pedestrian street in search of hot dogs.
And that’s when it happened.
I was waiting at an intersection when something hot and wet splashed all the way down my right arm. Confused, I turned to see what had happened when an old lady rushed up and started pawing at my sleeve, babbling in Spanish, and pointing upward at something – an umbrella, a tree, a bird that might have crapped on me. Whatever it was, I tried to tell the lady I was all right when my left front pocket, where I keep my cell phone, suddenly felt very much lighter. I turned around and caught a glimpse of a man, probably in his late thirties, hiding my phone under a bit of newspaper as he walked away.
I shouted, ripped the paper out of his hands, grabbed my phone, and punched the bastard (rather weakly) in the middle of his back. The guy did the smart thing and kept walking. Lea, who’d been several yards away, realized what was going on and started shouting “thief” in Spanish, but the two of them had vanished.
It was a classic distract-and-grab ploy. The old lady splashed me with either warm milk or soapy water, then made sure my attention was firmly on her while her partner came in from the other side and picked my pocket. I’d like to attribute the recovery of my phone to my lightning-fast reflexes and acute situational awareness, but really I think the thief was simply off his game, waiting too long after the original distraction by the old woman. If he’d moved in quicker while I was still utterly confused he would have made off with my phone with no problem. Instead he gave me time to realize that something was out of place.
I won’t lie. I wish I’d punched the guy harder and somewhere more vital. However, I’m sure that cops would have shown up at that point and I’d be writing this entry from the American embassy while waiting on a flight back to the States. As it was, Lea and I released the emotional tension by walking away and finding a fast food joint where I could enjoy that hot dog I’d been after to begin with.
Now if you read this and come away with the feeling that Bogotá or South America in general is a dangerous place, I think you’re jumping the gun. Consider: we’ve been in South America since August 1, 2018 – that’s nine months and counting – and this is the first instance in all that time that someone tried to rob us. Also consider: at no point was I ever in danger. The worst that would have happened was that I’d have lost a phone. If they’d have gone for my wallet, I’d have lost my Georgia driver’s license, a fake credit card (a Visa gift card with $0 balance), my health insurance card (I can always print another) and about $100 USD in Colombian pesos.
I’m not happy it happened, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did. We’ll go back to see those museums that we missed – and I’m not going to worry about it. I will be a little more paranoid about my belongings, but that’s better than giving up on enjoying myself.
As for danger, let me tell you about a boat ride down the Rio Guaviare. That post will be coming sooner than you think!
