Bogota Journal: Routine

Now that i'm in my third week in Bogota I would say that I feel quite at home.  I rise early in the mornings, at around 5:30 or 6, make my bed, shower, wash clothes by hand, clean the toilet and relax on my bed doing artwork, sometimes with Spanish CNN on.  At 8 I have breakfast, always  the same thing, fruit, scrambled eggs and  toast, coffee every other day.  Then I walk about a kilometre and a half to the cybercafe where I go online to write my lovely blog.  Then I often stop for coffee and a pastry in the area where I sit and work on a drawing.  Sometimes I stop at my pension on the way back, if I have bought some fruit at one of the local supermarkets, then I walk further south through the fashionable districts, stop in another cafe to do more artwork, then I make my way to a supermarket where I buy things at the salad bar to take back to my room for dinner, sometimes stopping in another cafe on the way back, usually if it's raining really hard, where I do more art work.  I usually return to my hotel room between 4:30 and 6, do my accounting to make sure I am within budget, eat, clean up my mess and then do more artwork while wathcing CNN (Spanish) or another news station, El Tiempo.  Some days I arrange to have coffee and a walk with one of my friends in Bogota.

I avoid the buses because they are generally crowded and uncomfortable and it is hard to find the proper card for other lines.  It also gets to be rather expensive after a while.  I think I already mentioned that my hosts in Bogota ambushed me with some unexpected expenses so that I have to pay extra each day for breakfast and internet.  Add to this the airport tax for Canadians only, likely revenge for when the Harper Conservative government enacted visas for Colombian visitors to Canada, and the soaring American dollar (the owners of my pension asked that I pay them in American dollars so at the end the cost of my stay soared by almost two hundred dollars.  Adding everything together I am spending five hundred dollars more than I anticipated for this trip, so, instead of taking cabs or the bus I walk everywhere.  It wears the crap out of me because of the lack of oxygen at this altitude but it's good exercise and I see actually a lot more, though I don't get to travel extensively across Bogota.  Less is more.

This might all seem frightfully boring to many of my readers but really I am having the time of my life.  I am makng new  friends here, have found a great Christian community in the local Anglican Church and I'm getting tonnes of artwork done.  On top of that I am resting well and enjoying opening my window and door to the beautiful garden every morning.  The opportunity of using my Spanish every day is also a plus.

I am not particularly bothered that my room is haunted, and yes, now I am absolutely certain of this.  The ghost appears to be friendly. Last night I noticed several peso coins falling out the right leg of my jeans.  There are no holes in my pockets, I checked and double checked.  Then when I recounted my coins since earlier doing my cash balance for the day I discovered fourteen hundred pesos extra, or around eighty cents Canadian.  This has never happened to me before anywhere and on top of the other odd happenings in my room since arriving here this is the only conclusion I can arrive at. I am living with a ghost.

Yesterday I splurged and bought a beautifully illustrated, and heavy as hell, book of birds of Colombia.  It was pricey, around eighty five bucks Canadian, but fully worth it and I already have ideas for future drawings.  This is my reward for saving money by walking everywhere.  Today I might buy some other books at a second had store in the Chapinero area.  Yesterday I stopped again at the snooty French bakery cafe, Michel Patisserie that my friend in Vancouver recommended to me.  The manager lady who seemed aloof and hostile the day before was this time very warm and friuendly and very interested in my art.  I guess you could say I've become a regular there.