I started out the day by walking down to the exito for bandaids and aspirin, and on the way back, I bought some mango slices from a street vendor.
After breakfast, we walked a few blocks to a bus stop, and caught the first of three busses to a neighborhood at the north end of town called Suba, to visit some other people from Terry's Guide Dog group, Mauricio and Luisa:
There are a number of bus lines in Bogotá, but a major one is TransMilenio (w) . The TransMilenio buses generally run on dedicated lanes in the middle of major streets, and have large bus stations on elevated platforms, also in the middle of the streets:
It was a long ride, and along the way, I was interested to notice a succession of street vendors and entertainers that made their way through the bus. First there was a young man selling chocolates - we bought some, but they weren't very good. Then there was a lady selling pens. When she noticed me recording her sales pitch, she took off on a rant about invasion of privacy, so I quickly deleted the recording from my phone. She continued on with a rant about poverty and how the government wasn't doing anything to help the poor, etc., etc. We were relieved to see her go. Then another woman came by selling peanuts and trail mix - we bought some, they were good. And then a man came through with a microphone, and a small amplifier strapped to his chest, and proceeded to regale us with a song, in a slightly off key tenor. Quite a show.
Here's an audio of the chocolate vendor:
...and here's the singer:
We took TransMilenio all the way to the end of the line, and changed to a local bus:
...for the last leg of the trip. (Actually, that picture was taken in Medellín - but the Bogotá local buses looked the same.) Mauricio met us at the bus stop, and we made a quick stop to buy some fruit from a street vendor:
...and proceeded to their house, where we met Luisa and her guide dog, Asahi:
...and her father, Oswaldo
Not a good picture... sorry. We also met her cousin Nicolas, uncle Dario, brothers Andres and Juan David, and other assorted relatives whose names I didn't catch. The whole extended family live together in a row of small houses extending back from the street. Here's the view from the street:
The red circle shows the location of their front gate. Through the gate, you enter this alley/driveway:
...with a row of houses along the right hand side, one of which is Mauricio and Luisa's:
And there's a small yard and parking area in the back:
Stepping through their front door, we found ourselves in a hallway, actually a covered space between two houses:
...and then we went through the opening on the left into their house, where Oswaldo was cooking lunch.
Before lunch, I had an errand to run. The charger cable for Terry's iPhone had mysteriously died, so I had to go find a replacement. So Mauricio and I walked down the street looking for a place to get one, and I spotted a familiar sign... Office Depot!
Back at the house, while waiting for lunch, I spotted a guitar, and picked it up. So Terry told me to play "Cantares." And thereby hangs a tale. Allow me to digress briefly.
There's a Spanish singer, not well known in this country, but quite popular throughout Latin America, named Joan Manuel Serrat (w) . One of his earlier albums, released in 1969, is called "Dedicado a Antonio Machado, poeta," and consists of musical settings of poems by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (w) . And one of the songs on this album is "Cantares," whose lyrics combine some of Machado's shorter poems with some verses by Serrat in tribute to Machado.
Further digression: I first learned of Serrat from my friend Cathy Engel, whom I met when we were both students at UCLA. She was (and still is) a great admirer of Serrat, and Cantares was (and still is) one of her favorites of his songs. As a birthday present for her one year, I borrowed the album from her, and learned to play and sing Cantares. At that time, I knew far less Spanish than I do now (I hadn't even met Terry yet), so I learned the lyrics phonetically, by reading them from the album jacket and listening to the album.
And one last digression: The night I met Terry, we were both at a party given by Cathy and a friend of hers. I had my guitar that night, and I sang Cantares, and told the story of how I learned it. Terry told me later that was one of the first things that attracted her to me. So in a way, that song is partly responsible for my marriage.
Okay, back to Colombia. So I sang Cantares, and Terry told the story of how I learned it, and everyone was suitably impressed. Then I sang my version of Psalm 121, after reading it out loud from a Spanish Bible.
And then it was time for lunch:
The first course was soup, with a number of interesting ingredients. The yellow kernels you can see in the picture are choclo (w) , a kind of South American corn, with larger and starchier kernels than our corn. There were also yuca (w) and arracacha (w) , both of which are starchy tubers, with a taste and texture similar to potatoes, but... different.
Luisa, we discovered, makes and sells earrings. Before we left, Terry took a look at some of them:
...and bought the pair indicated by the arrow. You can't see them very well in the picture, but they're quite nice. The blue stone is in the shape of a flower, and the silver parts hanging down are in the shape of leaves.
After we took a taxi back to Graciela's apartment, Terry stayed and visited with her while I took a walk. I walked down to a large church called Santuario Del Divino Niño Jesús (Sanctuary of the Divine Child Jesus). This church is the home of a popular statue of the Divino Niño (w) . The information in the Wikipedia article is a bit sketchy; I found a more informative website here.
The church is in a neighborhood called Veinte de Julio (July 20th). That's an important day in Colombia, because it's their Independence Day (more on that later). It's also an important day to me, because it's my birthday!
There's a large plaza in front of the church, called Plaza 20 de Julio:
In the plaza, I found this statue:
...which at first I thought was the original statue, but it isn't.
Here in the U.S. we have pony rides. In Colombia, it appears, you can get llama rides:
When the couple in the picture put their little girl in the saddle, I just had to take a picture:
In one corner of the plaza, another entrepreneur had set up a place for kids to draw and paint:
Inside the church, a service was in progress, so I didn't take any pictures inside the main sanctuary. But I went through a side door into this room:
...with this altar to the Divino Niño on one side:
I went out the back and found a patio with this fountain:
And then I found this chapel, behind the main sanctuary, where I finally found the original statue:
On the walk down, I took this picture of some street vendors:
...but as I continued to walk, I discovered an entire street bazaar - several blocks crammed with street vendors of every description. So on the way back, I took out my phone and recorded some videos of the scene. I uploaded them to YouTube, and you can see the two videos here and here.
Actually, I saw a lot of street vendors all over the place, both in Bogotá and Medellín. Some of them even had loudspeakers to announce what they were selling, like this gentlemen hawking pineapples:
The speakers are hard to see, but they're there - they're both white, one in front of the white car, and one in front of the man in the motorcycle helmet. And if you look close, you can see that the vendor is holding a microphone.
Back at the apartment, I found that Piqui had arrived, and had brought some snacks - crackers and cheese, and chicharron, aka pork rinds. Then Graciela brought out a tiple (w) (pronounced "tea-play"), a musical instrument similar to a guitar, but with four courses of three strings, tuned like the upper four strings of a guitar. She proceeded to play and sing several songs, some of which were evidently rather racy, judging by the way Terry was laughing. I then borrowed the tiple and played "Cantares" again, and was somewhat surprised to discover that Piqui knew the song - although I shouldn't have been surprised, since as I said, Sr. Serrat is quite popular all over the Spanish speaking world.
Here's a sample of Graciela's singing:
We then had pizza for dinner again (there's a pizza parlor on the ground floor of Graciela's building), but this one was somewhat unusual - ground beef, mushrooms, onions, pimiento and corn.
Here's another look at the map, showing the locations of Graciela's house and Mauricio and Luisa's house... like I said, it was a long bus ride.
