After One Week in Colombia

       I decided to take the bus from the Bogota airport without any knowledge of how the bus system worked: the best App of all in a country where blond hair sticks out like a sore thumb is to stand in front of the large Transmilenio bus map and change your expression back and forth between scrutinizing and confused/scared while precariously balancing a backpack made to look heavier than it actually is. Within a minute and a half a kind airline worker gave me detailed instructions on how to reach El Chapinero district and my hostel, which I had decided on after intense research consisting of searching "Bogota Hostels" and choosing the one with the most agreeable pictures. As always there was no plan, but if there had been one everything would have gone according to it.
       My hostel in Bogota was the accommodation I always wanted without knowing it existed; a newspaper article written recently described it as a "flash-packer" hostel: those of us who are willing to spend $14 per night instead of $8 to stay in a chic building with clean and some bedding. It appeals to travelers who would rather clink a glass of wine over a fine (but modest) dinner than throw back seven cheap, local beers washed down with street food of questionable origin and preparation. I still eat more than my fair share of arepas and drink licuados on the street every chance I get: average cost is about $1.50 US, and that gets you one liter of any assortment of tropical fruits you can point to or name on the cart. I like to make a new mixture every time, even though I may never know what lulo or maracuya actually taste like standing alone because of this.
     I told Paul that I would start packing, and so I will. We leave today from Santa Marta, headed to Minca for the day, then hopefully to Aracataca: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's childhood town, and the basis for his fantastic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. For those who haven't read the work, the first line is often enough to stir the reader's imagination:

Many years later, as he faced the firing line,

Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember

that distant afternoon when his father took him

to discover ice.