Bogota Journal: I'm Done

Well, almost done.  Since yesterday's drama everything seems a bit anticlimactic.  There seems to be a full house right now in the pension  There was no room at the two tables for breakfast so I had it in my room.  I didn't much feel like breakfasting with strangers today, anyway, since I'm still a bit shakey from yesterday's encounter but definitely feeling better and I'm actually writing this post in the usual noisy as a classroom full of grade eight boys ciber cafe without earplugs and I don't feel like going postal on everyone.  I've complained enough elsewhere about Colombians' love for noise and I think I've become a bt used to it.  Likewise the wild drivers.

There are two things I dread about breakfast with strangers in a hotel: one, that we have to sit together and, two that we don't sit together.  Still, I like the idea of the communal breakfast table and I really wish more establishments would do this.  I remember some very fond breakfasts at the Red Tree House in Mexico City and the interesting conversations and the new friendships that were made there because we all happened to be seated together and I really think this is better, especially for the solitary traveller.  On the other hand we all seem to travel for different reasons and a lot of tourists seem to have the same idea: entertainment, sight seeing and museums.  Nothing wrong with this really, but it is a very consumerist approach to tourism and my style of travel is still a bit of a rarety.  (What to you mean, you were here for a month and didn't visit the Salt Cathedral?  Not even the gold musem?  What happened, were you sick or something?)  Well, not really.  I am working on painting number eight (even though they're drawings they are painterly) I've met and interacted with tonnes of interesting people, made new friends and I walked everywhere.  I got to improve my Spanish, I learned about Bogota, Colombia and the people who live here and in spite of the  insipid architecture there is about this city a certain rough and fleeting beauty.

Will I return?  Still not sure.  Yesterday's encounter with the thug-in-a-suit has put a damper on things, for now anyway.  I am very well practiced at trauma management, both through my own experience of recovery and through my professional practice so I'm not terribly worried about myself.  I do feel legitimately frightened but not terrified and I am going to enjoy this my final day in Bogota.  No promises that this is my last post but if it is then I will see a lot of you very soon in Vancouver: so, lunch, anyone?   Coffee, dinner, a walk? I am looking forward to some pleasant face contact with all of you.