Bogotá, Colombia (December 2022/January 2023)

[savantsav]

19 hours ago, BSR said:

Sometimes you have to accept that a destination just isn’t going to work out for you.  While I don’t regret going, I can’t say I much enjoyed Bogotá.

First, an odd experience:  a couple with a baby approached me in the street, asking if I could help them out because they really needed food for the baby.  When I told them I had no Colombian pesos, they asked if I could buy them food for the baby at the pharmacy, where I could pay with a card.  I agreed, we set off to the Farmatodo, where the husband grabbed 8 huge boxes of baby food & formula.  When it came time to pay, 2,195,000 COP sounded like a heckuva lot of money, but I just went with it.  Imagine my dismay when I converted it later, $578!  But I was OK with it because it was all food for their baby, who frankly didn’t look all that well-fed.  I was touched that they didn’t buy a single item for themselves; I saw with my own 2 eyes that it was all for the baby.  They were Venezuelan migrants who tried to go to the US but got kicked out of Mexico for lacking a visa and were now just headed back to Venezuela.  

Unfortunately, the story has a sad ending.  I saw them again my last full day in Bogotá.  They told me they were stopped by a cop when he saw they were carrying around so much baby food/formula.  When the couple couldn’t show a receipt (although everything was in the pharmacy’s bags, which you have to pay extra for and are kept behind the counter), the cop confiscated everything!  They asked to go back to the pharmacy, where the clerk or management could verify that everything was legit paid for, but nope.  I was happy to help the couple out, but I sure as hell didn’t want my $578 purchase going to a corrupt cop.

Anyway, back on topic … I hired another guy.  Unfortunately, he didn’t work out either.  From the moment we met, it was all D-R-A-M-A with this guy.  I had to listen to all his dramas of the day, and as if that weren’t enough, he took a call from a friend (yes, he left his cell on and was responding to texts during the session) who got kicked out of her place.  Cut the session short (although only 15 minutes out of the 2 hours), grabbed his money, and off he went.  By the way, he charged double the fee of the first guy, 600K (still just $160, so not complaining!).

Oh well, the 2 stars I met in Barcelona more than balance out the 2 duds I got in Bogotá.  Not a bad track record given that I didn’t have a site like CoM to get client reviews.  When I think of the cost of 2 hours in the US, it’s easy to write off the less-than-stellar hires.  I was sick in bed the whole first day in Bogotá, lacked energy and felt tired all week, didn’t get used to the altitude until my last day there, the sad story of the Venezuelan family, no great hires … all add up to a meh visit.  On top of all that, I actually struggled to understand Colombians, which surprised me because at least from TV, the Colombian accent/pronunciation is one of the easier ones outside of Spain for me to understand.  I easily understood my 2 working guys (no background noise helped) but struggled a bit while out & about in restaurants, stores, etc.

On the plus side, the Museum of Gold more than lived up to its billing, a spectacular collection of centuries- and some millennia-old works of gold.  And the coffee is even better than I expected.  I went every day to a café around the corner from the Airbnb, where I sampled a few of their single-origin coffees, ranging from very good to the best coffee I’ve ever had.  So there you have it, my Bogotá trip report.  Hopefully other forum members have better luck than I did.

I'm Venezuelan.

These guys scammed you. Completely. After you graciously bought for them tons of baby food and formula... they turned around and sold them. Then when they saw you again they told you that SOB story to see if you could buy them some more because you're an easy mark.

[+ SirBillybob]

Ouch, $580. Now that’s attitude at altitude.