Bogota is empty and tranquil during the holidays.  The septima, the main thoroughfare outside 
of my apartment is the quiet and the air is cleaner than usual.  Andrea and her dad walked to 
my apartment and woke me up to go walking this morning.  Probably half of the Bogotanos
 have left and today is Sunday, which mean there is Ciclovia.  

Ciclovia closes down one side of the main city roads for bicyclists and walkers to have the streets.  This happens on Sunday's from 7 am-2 pm. It is another change in Bogota that has occured in the last 10 years. I hadn't really seen it til today, but it was extremely refreshing to walk outside and see bicylists and walkers passing my block.   

Bogota is progressing quickly and it is exciting to be witness to these changes.  Ciclovia, Transmilenio, Pico y Placa, and the drastic decrease a violence are the key ingredients to Bogota's 
renaisance.  Transmilenio is the new bus system which include enormous efficient red buses that stop at modern elevated platforms on main roads in the city.  It's service will soon include the Septima (7th) so that could be good for me.  Pico y Place is a new system which limits each car to five days of driving, similar to what Mexico does.

The modern transmilenio stations can seem almost too modern for this city.  The image I have is a big clean quiet bus purring by streets with stray dogs, beggars, and sometimes a stench of who knows what.  On the other hand, this modern bus system serves as kind of a shining example and a goal where this city hopes to go.  

It wouldn't be Bogota without the contrasts.  I walk into the Centro Comercial Andino, and it blows away any mall I have seen in the states.  Marble escalators, world cuisine, and designers 
off all kinds of pretty modern things.  Though when I walk outside Andino, there is the pollution, the potholes, the litter, and the things that feel a little more expected.  It is exciting if it keeps improving and I am lucky to watch it happen.  I have discovered an hidden gem before the rest of travellers do.  A fellow traveller said something like "Give it 20 years of this kind of safety, and people will come."  In 20 years I'll sit around and talk about how it used to be, and make up all kinds of stories.

Right now, my room has a nice glow and I am resting up for my first Colombian New Years.
I thoroughly enjoyed Bucaramanga's weather but it's nice not to be sweating for once. Tonight, I am expecting lots of fireworks and dancing with Andrea, and her aunts, til I am sore.  
I haven't mastered the art of partying til seven so tonight could end with me slumped over on a sofa with all Andrea's cousins and aunts partying around me.

I was just reading other blogs  from people who are travelling overland across countries and 
continents.  It is interesting reading their impressions of Bogota, this place 
I am starting to call home.  

One of the blogs said something like "South America has a habit for putting it's capitals on big mountains."  Another 
blog commented on the bohemian parts, the poor parts, and the wealthy parts.  

I have alot of things setup here already, let alone having my girlfriend and her family.
Reading the blog removed me from of my mind set and reminded me of life on the move. I wasn't envious, just refreshed by the new perspective.  Bogota is my South American big capital city home.  For a traveller, 
it is just another city.

 Really, it made me want to go explore Bogota alot more and made me feel happy to have settled there.  Now, with my apartment, I can actually think of my own cozy bed waiting for me. 

Extreme sports in a non-libelous country 

After high school, I went to New Zealand to backpack, party, and do various extreme sports. Queenstown, on New Zealand's south island, was said to be the adrenalin capital of the world.   Heath, my travel partner, and I quickly found that it was the adrenalin capital for people on a $200 a day budget.  Much of New Zealand was like this.  We quickly concluded we would rather have a warm hostel bed for a week than 15 minutes of skydiving, helibiking, or even Zorbing.  The relative joy to money ratio was much 
higher secretly sipping out of hip flask in a bar(drinks were too expensive also) than to pay any extreme outfitter.

The other day, here in Bucaramanga, Colombia, maybe I found my kind of adrenalin capital.  The Santander Department of Colombia offers river rafting, biking, and tandem paragliding in the hillside for 13 bucks.

My adventurous day began with another relaxed day in Andrea's parents house, Villa Andrea.  Within the walls of the Villa Andrea are banana and mango trees, a horse, a pool, 
and two dogs.  One dog is really fat and one is really skinny, so I am beginning 
to suspect foul play.  Anita, Andrea's nanny, made my breakfast with steak and eggs and fresh Mora juice.  I later found the Mora berry on Wikipedia and found it is in the the same family
as a blackberry.  After I ate, I studied my distance teaching course in a rope hammoch chair for the first hours of the day.  Eventually, I decided to go for a swim.  I was the second one to 
get in the pool, after a 2 inch spider working on his backstroke.
Eventually, I decided that I needed to put some effort out and get out of the resort for at least a 
little bit.
During travel, I have found that I often get out of it what I put into it. There have been different times in different countries when I could have lounged 
around but putting forth effort later proved worth it.  Two of those rewarding times were body boarding in New Zealand and seeing a Volcano in Nicaragua.  Being sluggish makes for fewer memories.

My guide, translator, and companion Felipe (Andrea's brother) and I caught a taxi to the mountain road.

The countryside around Bucaramanga embodies an idyllic South American countryside, especially now that the guerillas and paramilitaries have been pushed back.  The temperature was a perfect 76F with a slight breeze.  Amongst the creeks and banana trees were small family farms and the occasional neighborhood or mansion.  "If it weren't for the war, most Colombians would choose to live like this," Felipe said.  

We arrived a turnoff where three 20-somethings were getting off the bus. They each had big pillowy backpacks which told us we were at the right spot. They seemed just alot like 
the extreme types in the US: relaxed, friendly, and alternative looking clothing, especially for Colombia.  We gave the girl a ride in the taxi and the guys followed behind down the dirt road.  

Their setup was pretty basic and minimalist: two meager bamboo tents and a big sloped field.  If I were in the States then I would have been sitting down to begin signing numerous form saying that I will hold no one liable if I got dropped, skewered, strung up.  On the contrary, I stood there in this open field and cluelessly waited for my paperwork and eventual tutorial.  
One of the young guys walked up to me and introduced himself.  He said something in Spanish which I mentally paraphrased to "follow me".
 
"Ok," I was thinking ",Time to go see the equipment, maybe a general explanation of the flight path?"  In front of me a guy was casually putting on a backpack which was attached to the big parachute behind him on the ground.  A chair was being clipped in front of the guy.  My ego was telling me to play it cool, don't be a pussy.  But survival instincts told me to get help.  I called over Felipe and said something that probably meant "I need explain me".  He raised his eye brows and gestured towards the seat.  
I am not going to over dramatize it but things became sort of surreal at that point.  I didn't think I was so easily led.  Oh... it's a chair, I get it...ok, I'll just move my leg so you can strap me in.  Suddenly...Whooosh! The parachute rose off the ground and bulged with the breeze coming up the mountain face.  I gazed at the instructors and the subtropical landscape patiently 
and knowingly waiting for my tutorial.  

I don't know if it was the language or my ego that stopped me from protesting.  As we ascended, I was still denying what had just happened.  We must have ascended 75 feet in about 10 seconds.  The family picnicking below soon became smaller.  It felt as though we reached 200 feet about 4 seconds later.  I gripped a support rope as if there were no legs straps or achair.  I was elated but also still in shock of what I was doing. I knew I had just let myself get a couple hundred feet in the air without any paper work or instruction.   The instructor urged "tranquila" and eventually I scooted back into the chair.  
We passed brand new houses on the along a ridgeline, farm workers, and a 15 foot waterfall which looked tiny from above.  I then thought of a quote I heard a hang gliding instructor say ",one can see the earth breath."  It was true, I could see the wild forests and the farmland, overgrown foundations, freshly painted mansions, Bucaramanga, Florida(a city), and the mountains of Santander.  I could see the flows of people, flows of water, flow of electricity, 
and the bends and twists caused by plates below the earth.

The height offered a private view into things I wouldn't otherwise see: backyards, mountain trails, cascades, people working, and a guy yelling at his dog to name a few.  My normal thoughts and
ego disappeared and I momentarily transformed in a person simply looking at his planet below.  It was hardly like looking out a plane window.  There was no noise or anything in the way.
I was merely sitting in a chair, discovering everything around me.  

Eventually the instructor did a few tricks like a corkscrew manuever, in which we barrelled sideways going down.  I did parapenting twice that day, for about a quarter of the cost in a first world country.  I walked away satisfied and enlightened.  I kept rambleing on that I couldn't believe I had just done it.  It reminded me of all that is around, new and old, the character of Colombia and the world that is difficult to see otherwise.  

The taxi had dropped us there earlier, so we were luckily stranded.  I say luckily because it was an oppurtunity to walk through this lush mountain farmland back down to the city.

As I was walking around the city yesterday, it is interesting to notice all the security techniques in this country, or at least this city. Most apartments, at least in the North part of Bogota that I am familiar with have doormen. These guys just sit at a desk and let people in and out of the door and occasionally open up the garages and parkades. They are usually nice enough guys, likely from the lower-middle class. There are many jobs like this in Colombia, very monotonous in comparison to what I, as an American, deem "good" work.
One thing I admire about Andrea is her kindness to the lower and middle class workers. One night we had extra spaghetti from a meal and she came up with the idea of giving some to Wilber, the doorman, who was surprised and flattered at the offer. One time in the past, Karma caught up with Andrea when she was living in a Bogota apartment. Some things were stolen from different apartments in her complex and her apartment was untouched. When she got some stuff stolen from her passenger seat when she was driving, the front desk ladies (also lower-middle class) were all to happy to help her and take care of her right after the incident. Andrea's treatment of the worker class is quite different from people who ignore them and sometimes humiliate them. I have heard stories of people who shop at different grocery stores for their maids and make them wear silly outfits. Classism is often more apparent here than in the states.
A common security measure here are the numerous different types of barbed wire around gates and buildings. Concertina coiled razor wire is probably the most popular type on fences. Some fences even go as far as electric. They all look particularly foreboding and painful to me. It is my first experience with real security measures. The closest my home town can come are the "rent-a-cops" who drive Rav4s around the parking lots of malls and grocery stores.
The barbed wire that I remember most had to be that around the Spanish embassy. A stylishly foreboding fence circled the compound on the busy thoroughfare. On the bottom of the fence were elegant little spikes. The middle had ornate little metal swirls, also with spikes. The top was embellished with a row of metal leaves pointing inside and outside the gate. The metalsmith had put specific minute detail into each of those razor leaves.
Even though I really enjoy Bogota, it's hard sometimes to get used to the security here. The Spanish embassy left an odd impression with me. Some kind of odd allegory like do what you can with what you have and where you are: making art and beauty out of the cold hard reality that you need protection.

There is something refreshing about walking in a sea of faces of people who you can't understand . It's refreshing if I think about it the right way, I am physically there, but none of the weight of people's idiotic conversations is on me. I just float through the crowds without having to listen to anybody talk. I breathe in the pollution of the city but the bantering and yammering doesn't pollute my mind, I can't process it yet.
One morning when I was in New Zealand, a German friend told me about the same experience. "You're lucky sometimes you can't understand German, those people over there kept talking about some bird that woke them up." I remember New Zealand's german travellers well, particularly those who spoke little English. I would ask them something about the where they had been or what type of food they liked. Whenever you got an answer like "yes" with a smile, you knew they had missed it. I am starting to master that here in Bogota: the art of pretending to understand. I thank my predecessers for my technique. I am putting finishing touches on the subtle nod, the pressed lips, the long "Si" or "que bien"!(Great!)
In reality, the language barrier is rarely liberating. Why would one ask a question if they aren't going to understand the answer? That's the comedy of foreign language phrase books.
¿Adónde puedo comprar un cellular de movistar? Where can I buy a movistar cellphone ? The answer would be mixture of "sigas, dereches, alla, al lado" likely mixed with various articles, prepositions, and places that make up sentences. Ok...subtle, appreciative smile, pressed lips, "que bien" and try to walk towards where the person first pointed.
Today, when I was walking in the sea of people downtown I passed a fellow gringo. The anglo features and the skateboard suddenly set off my radar. He's not from here either. We caught eachothers glances, and exchanged an understanding nod. I thought his nod said to me "Ah, you're not supposed to be here either," or at least that's what I wanted my nod to say.