Schrimpff Residence - Tuesday, January 14th

Bogota isn’t a city rich in colonial architecture. It’s more a city of stark contrasts. Traditional tiled houses, reinforced with wood, shoulder modern concrete monsters. Most of the accommodation in the city is made of a dusty red brick. These towers dominate the landscape, varying enormously in build quality and size.

The jade hills of the lower Andes play host to the most well heeled tower blocks in the city. 5 minutes down the road, those same hills support the displaced. People from all over the country who have been forcibly removed from their homes by guerillas. They flock to Bogota in the hope of getting work only to end up living in squalor. According to Laura the Favelas in Rio were luxurious in comparison.

As the weather was decent I decided to head up to Monteserrat, a monastery 3125metres above sea level with panoramic views over the whole of the city. In the queue I met three gringo travelers, Tim, Chris and Deborah. All had been doing separate trips and were hanging out together for the day.

It transpired that Tim, a bespectacled Canadian with ADD, was doing my dream trip. He had bought a motorbike in Mexico City and was making his merry way down to Argentina. Apparently it’s incredibly easy to get hold of a bike in Colombia… Watch this space.

We walked to the very top of the hill to catch the best view of the city. This was even more breathtaking than the cliff diner from Sunday night. Below lay a sea of brick homes, neatly patterned gently melting into cloud covered mountains in the distance.

As we were admiring the view we were joined by man with no arms who was partially blind. As far as I could tell, he was making a pilgrimage there with a sect which worshipped the sun. I was impressed at how dexterous he was, retrieving all manner of detritus from his shoulder bag while simultaneously recounting the details of his pilgrimage.

Afterwards we went to the backpacker district where we were joined by a German called Mathias, who looked and sounded exactly like every other German travellar I’d encountered.

He was a project manager at BMW. Unlike many other Germans I had met before however, he had been a regular user of a drug called ayahuasca. According to Mathias it made LSD feel like sniffing paint.

The three of us listened in stony silence as Mathis explained how he spent his week ends. You had to be invited to take it by a Shamen (at this point I was trying my best and failing to imagine a German shamen). A group of about 60 would go to the forest and drink a rancid liquid made from a plant imported from the Amazon.
“You veally have to vork at it.” Said Mathias, face creasing in recollection.
“Sometimes it’s like ze living hell. I died tvice. And alzo had my second birzday.”

While we ate, a man with dyed blonde dreadlocks began interviewing people in front of a TV camera. It transpired that he was Colombia’s answer to Bruno and was asking people about their kinkiest fantasies. Sadly my lack of Spanish prevented me from becoming a Colombian celebrity.

Having said goodbye to my fairweather friends I headed east to the national museum. On my way I stopped off at a church in mid service. I noticed that a number of people were carrying full water bottles. As soon as the priest bagan to speak the crowd immediately thrust them into the air for a blessing. I suppose it made sense. Why splash a bit of holy water on you when you can drink a bottle of it on your way home. The service changed pace as a woman playing a keyboard began to sing, many candles were hurriedly lit and waved in time with the music. I was now at a Colombian Christian rock concert. It was all a bit too much so I made my way to the museum.

The museum was in a former prison designed by a British architect Thomas Reed in 1874. Most of the information was in Spanish but they had giant laminated placards with English information you could borrow. Unfortunately the artefacts and paintings had since been moved thus turning the experience into an incredibly long-winded game of hide and seek.

A French couple were taking perspective shots with each painting in the gallery. I thought that asking them to do one of me would make them aware of how ridiculous they looked. Fourty five minutes later I walked by and they were still at it. Clearly I’d just encouraged them.