tell me about BOGOTA

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what's it like? will i be greeted by cocaine cartels bearing bottomless cups of mild yet rich coffee?

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:35 (nineteen years ago)

coffee's bad, they export all the good stuff, though there's a good cafe on the square where men in trenchcoats trade emeralds (can't remember details)

El Goce Pagano, great bar run by Argentine woman playing dusty son records

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:41 (nineteen years ago)

um i am jealous

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:44 (nineteen years ago)

I seriously thought this might have been a Gareth thread.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:47 (nineteen years ago)

i have an opportunity to go there for a few weeks in july and study the transmilenio transit system. i'd love to, but it's expensive and i'm not sure i'll be able to fit it in with my other summer plans.

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:50 (nineteen years ago)

(Said plans include space rocket rides to the moon and the inaugural festival of Kaliningradstock.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:54 (nineteen years ago)

well, yeah.

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:54 (nineteen years ago)

One should always dream big.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:55 (nineteen years ago)

i was born there, my sister lives there, my biological mom lives there. dumb americans pronounce it boh-GATT-a, to rhyme with 'frittata' and that pisses me off. you should totally go: it's hot, cheap, and the coffee is not bad.

― remybean (bean), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:06 (nineteen years ago)

i tell ya, coming from venezuela where you can get a decent espresso almost anywhere, Colombian coffee in general tends to the thin and watery. but los colombianos son muy educados, otherwise. and ajiaco, yum.

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:10 (nineteen years ago)

wait - hot?

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

There's that equator thing nearby.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

and the Andes, check the elevation. weather feels like London, a lot of the time.

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:12 (nineteen years ago)

Hey, Remy's been to Bogota and if he says it's hot, who am I to gainsay him? Maybe even the Andes have heatwaves.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:13 (nineteen years ago)

perhaps remy means it in the other sense of the world. berlin, buenos aires, they're "hot", right now...why not bogota?

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:19 (nineteen years ago)

boyant (or remy), have you been to the maloka museum?

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:26 (nineteen years ago)

Lonely Planet recently ran a podcast series on Bogota and it actually sounded pretty nifty. In reality it sounds like you're in much greater danger from errant taxi cabs and speeding buses than you are from the FARC.

Risks go up the farther you are from the major cities, but that potentially applies to anywhere in South America.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:28 (nineteen years ago)

this could be a cheaper trip:

http://www.postmarks.org/pop/1200/1283.jpg

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:30 (nineteen years ago)

"bogota, new jersey" sounds like the name of a bad indie film

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:32 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/images/covers/posters/196514.jpg

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:33 (nineteen years ago)

http://comebackalive.com/site3.php?page_id=9&sub_section_id=Colombia

and alternatively

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/co.html

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:34 (nineteen years ago)

The Pelton link is admittedly out of date though.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:35 (nineteen years ago)

Temperatures are fairly high throughout the year.

REMY WAS RIGHT

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:36 (nineteen years ago)

are those lonely planet podcasts still online?

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:40 (nineteen years ago)

Also: http://www.poorbuthappy.com/colombia/

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:41 (nineteen years ago)

Important preparation: http://www.elcafecolombia.com/

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:42 (nineteen years ago)

are those lonely planet podcasts still online?

I found one of them on this page:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/podcasts/archive.cfm

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:44 (nineteen years ago)

http://l.b5z.net/i/u/6044887/i/lunch_special_ezr.JPG

― passiflora incarnata (get bent), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:45 (nineteen years ago)

The transit system looks pretty interesting:
http://www.globalurban.org/Issue1PIMag05/Montezuma%20article.htm

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:46 (nineteen years ago)

Also: http://newsroom.wri.org/wrifeatures_text.cfm?ContentID=880

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:46 (nineteen years ago)

no, jbr i haven't been to maloka but it looks very progressive!

i guess i was thinking he meant steamy hot, like caribbean style, like barranquilla on the coast which it didn't seem at all. i remember it raining a lot and i wore lots of sweaters when i was there.

― boyant (Boyant), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 02:47 (nineteen years ago)

EMO oh wait.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 03:14 (nineteen years ago)

Andrew Loog Oldham to thread! He uploads his Sirius shows from his home there, so we know there's decent broadband.

― Jeff Wright (JeffW1858), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 03:41 (nineteen years ago)

Bogota's great, as is my folks' hometown of Medellin and neighboring Cali. Too bad flights to Colombia (from NYC/NJ) tend toward the $$$ side, otherwise I'd be visiting much more often.

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 03:53 (nineteen years ago)

(for those who care: ) Kind of a happening techno scene at the moment in Bogota, too - no? Or so I've heard.

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 03:54 (nineteen years ago)

Is Colombia as safe as the U.S.? Poll says yes By Hugh Bronstein
Thu Jan 4, 1:29 PM ET

Cities in Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine exporter infamous for crimes related to its four-decade-old guerrilla war, have become as safe as those in the United States, according to a poll by a Bogota think tank.

Urban crime has fallen as part of President Alvaro Uribe's popular crackdown on Marxist rebels who still control wide rural areas. He has stepped up patrols to reduced kidnappings on the highways.

From October 2005 through the same month last year, 15 of every 100 Colombians said they had been the victim of some type of crime compared with 17 out of every 100 in the United States, said the poll published on Thursday by the Security and Democracy foundation.

"Colombians have developed sophisticated techniques of survival, such as refusing to give out personal information and women driving with their bags in the trunk of their cars rather than in the passenger seat. This helps," said Pablo Casas, who prepared the poll.

The survey, held in Colombia's six biggest cities, also showed the Andean country compares well with Great Britain, which registers 24 crime victims out of every 100 citizens.

The think tank said the poll is 95.5 percent reliable and more accurate than official figures as many crimes go unreported here.

It did not take into account the thousands who are killed or displaced in the war every year, or the average three Colombians per day who step on land mines.

Despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid aimed in part at fighting Colombia's insurgency, the guerrillas still rule wide swathes of countryside with an iron fist. Their operations are funded by cocaine trade, and to a lesser extent by kidnappings.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, dragged four civilians out of their village homes and executed them on January 1 in northern province of Antioquia, local officials said.

"The government has a lot to do before it can claim to have taken control of the whole country," Casas said. "Illegal groups are still fighting for control of rural cocaine-producing land, and that accounts for Colombia's overall high murder rate."

Twenty six Colombians out of every 100,000 are murdered with firearms each year compared to the world average of three to four out of every 100,000, according to the United Nations.

― timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 03:57 (nineteen years ago)

two weeks pass...

i actually can't do the bogota trip (for boring degree-requirement administrivia reasons), but i am about to put down a deposit for a 2-week summer lab in...

rio de janeiro!

where i will be working with a local agency on a client project relating to sustainable water resource management. and our hotel is on the beach. yeah!

― the car, the hole, and the peekskill meteorite (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 27 January 2007 00:48 (nineteen years ago)

besides obvious envy of sand/beach/fun in sun(tho ain't it "wintertime" there during our summer), i envy your record buying opportunites. also, brazilian food is yummy and caipirinhas rock!!

― timmy tannin (pompous), Saturday, 27 January 2007 03:33 (nineteen years ago)

correct. also, the guy who led the tour last summer said it was in the 70s the whole time.

― tom mix-a-lot (get bent), Saturday, 27 January 2007 04:48 (nineteen years ago)

twelve years pass...

I’ll probably be there next month. What’s the best way to spend a Sunday?

― ShariVari, Friday, 19 July 2019 16:03 (six years ago)

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