Wednesday, June 17, 2009

It's the Weekeeeeeend, Baby! (Part 1)

So, I was blind-sided by a ridiculous amount of paperwork and test grading over the last couple of weeks, which reduced my reading time to nil (my Google Reader account has hit 1,000 unread posts since I last checked it) and my writing time to even less. I'm finishing up four years in Colombia with a mixture of excitement, trepidation, anxiety, regret, relief, and pragmatism, but I'll explain all that in a later post.

This weekend, I jetted off to Bogotá and Caracas to see and say goodbye to friends that I've made in both cities, since it'll probably be a while before I'm in the region again. Having booked an award ticket on Avianca, I only had 23 hours to spend in Bogotá before popping over to Venezuela for two nights. I'd say out of 72 hours, I only slept about fifteen; had lots of whoring to catch up on.

Here's the run-down of last Friday:

The perpetual blanket of gray, rainy clouds lifted over the Colombian capital as soon as my plane touched down, as if I had brought the sun with me from the coast. Still, the high-altitude air was chilly to my thinned blood and I had to wrap up as the cab sailed past the new glass mid-rises popping up like mushrooms on the grassy savanna of Bogotá. The place is growing like mad and I was reminded that Colombia is not a poor country, it just has shit-loads of poor people. Still, Bogotá truly does get better each time around...y'all should visit.

I met up with Roberto, my ace boon in Colombia, for some shopping, and being some supastah soap opera actor and model, he was supposed to be hookin' a brother up with some style tips for my big trip. After a two hours, he had purchased three shirts; I, none. Anyway, after lunch at Gaira Cumbia House, a little bit of the Caribbean in Bogotá, owned by the brother of tropi-pop legend Carlos Vives, I met up with my friend Indira (actress/model) and her Venezuelan husband, Noé (not an actor/model), who just had a little teeny-tiny, expressive, very-well-mannered baby named Maximiliano a few months ago. The lil punkin, whom they said never approaches people, crawled over to me, sat on my lap, and started drinking water out of a cup I was holding, bless 'is lil ol hart. I was so proud.Then, after my last granizado de café at Juan Valdez for the foreseeable future, I met up with the whole gang at Gaira again for some kick-ass salsa and some kick-ass sandwiches til 2am.
A couple of restless hours later (the altitude plus the cold air and no heat killed any teensy iota of sleep that I may have liked to have obtained), I was headed back to the airport for my jaunt across the border into Chavezlandia, aka la República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

Gracias Róvel, Indira/Noé/Max/Bruno, PPCCS, Mike, Guillo, Kathy and John, and Super Ratón for helping to wrap up mi Colombian sueño 8500 feet up in the nosebleed section of the Andes.

Fly Brother
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1 comment:

Ana said...

The Republic of Colombia is a failed state. There is an ongoing civil war(FARC versus the government) going on for many years.
The Colombian people have never been able to mend the differences between the "Liberales" and "Conservadores" and foster a workable nation-state.

Corruption, an elite that is just far removed from the interests of the nation,along with "un sin número de poderosos carteles de droga" that are only interested in their illiicit business activities,in Colombia there is disorder,rampant crime and inequality "para rato".

The splendor of the capital city of Bogotá should not blind anyone as to the serious crisis that the Colombian people find themselves in.

Saludos,
Ana