A little adventure in Bogota.

Wednesday (July 4)

Beautiful view aside the President's house.

Today I just got to Colombia.  Philly International is probably ugliest airport I've ever seen, and since we had to wait at least a half hour on the runway to take off, it really doesn't get my vote as a nice airport.  The flight to Miami was uneventful, but it was a pretty crappy plane.  Of course, as soon as we landed in Miami, we were stuck on the plane for 2 hours waiting to get off the plane since there wasn't a gate for the plane to pull-up to.  When we arrived in Miaimi there was some bad thunderstorms and rain, so I guess that had something to do with it.  When I got to the airport I ran to get my bags and get food before the last place that sold food (burger king) closed its doors. After waiting in the line for almost an hour, I finally go to order, but all they had left was chicken sandwiches...great.  So after that I sat in the airport for the next 10 hrs until my flight.  I kind of made a game of walking across all of the empty moving sidewalks, so that kept me entertained.  My flight to Bogota on LAN airlines was superb.  The airplane was so nice inside, and each seat had it's own entertainment center/remote/headphones/monitor.  It was also the cheapest flight to Bogota and there was absolutely no wait to get into the Bogota airport. Bogota airport is really easy to get through.  There aren't any English signs for where you get off the plane, but there is arrows about where to walk, and customs is so easy.  From there I got my bag, and then waited outside for a few minutes until Ana got there.  It only took about 10-15 minutes to get off the plane, go through customs, and get my bag; It was probably my best landing experience ever.

Demonstration in Bogota.

Thursday July 5

We (me, Ana, and her aunt Alice) went to this  rally/demonstration/parade that the president of Colombia invited people to come to in order to voice their opinion against the recent killing kidnapped goverment officials (well it's a long story really, they were kidnapped quite a few years ago from a government building in Cali, Colombia).  I stayed away from where there was the most "action," as did her aunt who is also not a citizen of Colombia, but just a resident, but it was really interesting to see all of the different opinions voiced regarding how the negotiations with the FARC guerilla organization should be handled.  Ana's dad, who is part of a human rights organization, was one of the people yelling, as was Ana, but me and her aunt stayed on the sidelines.  After that we ate some very good Bogotanian lunch, and then went to this meeting of a few human rights organizations where they were talking about how poorly the rural communities are being treated and exploited by the government.  It was a long day, but it was great to get such a good understanding of what's going on in the country right now.

Empty Miaimi Dade

Friday we did very little.  We were all extremely tired from walking all around the city all day, and standing in the sun for so long at the demonstration, so we just sat around for the good part of the day.  I did get my cell phone activated and loaded a good amount of minutes on it so anyone can call me now.  Email me for my #.

Flying into Bogota

Military building without the sniper shooters!

Sitting on the plane.