Colombia 1997
Bogotá Colombia
December 1997
November 2025 note: Colombia was a much different environment in 1997. The country was at the height of a drug war and Pablo Escobar and other drug lords were winning. All Escobar’s hippopotamuses were caged in his personal zoo and not destroying the ecosystem of the local rivers. For the last couple of decades, it has been a much safer country. Except maybe for the hippo invested rivers. My wife and I were in Cartagena just last month on a cruise from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale that went through the Panama Canal. The new part of the city looked like Miami and the old city was well worth exploring.
Colombia 1997 is directly responsible for one of my habits. No, not an illegal one. Prior to traveling to Bogotá for a two week work assignment, I had never drank coffee regularly. I would occasionally have a cup, usually a social drink in a business meeting. I really didn’t care for it. But during my two weeks in Bogotá, I tried the coffee and it was wonderful! I became a 3-4 cups a day coffee drinker up until my retirement last year when I dropped to one cup in the morning. (I no longer sit at a desk all day and am much to busy to keep chugging coffee!) I brought back about 20 pounds of various types of Colombian coffee from Cartagena last month. So if you’re in my hood, stop by for a cup!
Lastly, you youngsters and old non-travelers have no idea how difficult it was to access emails in the days of dial-up internet BWF (Before WiFi). I got the nickname McGyver on multiple occasions because I would do whatever was necessary to communicate with the outside world on my two to six week international assignments. I might unscrew the phone line wall outlet in the office or hotel (in some countries phones were wired directly into the line, no-plug) unwrap wires, insert bent staples, or a paper clip – whatever was needed to get my computer hooked into a phone line. My company’s IT department at this time made ineptitude an Olympic event. And they held all the gold medallions. I need to add some of my difficulties with a 220-110 volt converter to my Qatar 1997 write-up. Any questions? What was that - who is McGyver?! That’s all you got from this? You definitely have a future in IT!
And I didn’t have a camera on this trip, but bought some post cards of the sights. Remember those?
Bogotá Colombia
December 1997
Greetings from Bogota. Juan Valdez says "Bueno dias!" Well, I won't say it's rough down here, but there are bars on all the windows...and I'm referring to the cars! The hotel is very nice. They provide courtesy hostage packages in the business suites. In customs, a rough looking guard asked me if I'd had my shots, and when I said "yes", he asked to see the bullet wounds. These Colombians are quite the killers--oops, I mean kidders.
I've been polishing up on my Spanish. Evidently, I'm funnier in Spanish than in English, because whenever I try to anything in Spanish, everyone bursts out laughing. But they don't like my jokes: Do you know how many Colombians it takes to screw in a light bulb? Three. Two to take a hostage and one to demand the government change the light bulb. OK, it just takes one, but he has to manufacture the bulb in a secret lab and smuggle it out first.
At lunch Monday, we walked down the street to a Chinese restaurant. I ordered pepper beef, but I think my beef was about 2 foot tall and barked when it was among the living. Perhaps counseling could have helped him determine his true purpose. The deranged cook, not the "cow". Funniest tasting "beef" I've ever eaten. Or attempted to eat.
Ironically, while I'm typing this in the hotel room, Larry King is live on CNN with the President of Colombia, three spouses of kidnapped missionaries currently held in Colombia, and a former hostage in Colombia. The first caller was a former missionary in Yemen from 1990-1994, which encompassed my first trip there. Guerillas in our midst.
I've went out walking the shopping district several times alone. Of course, the first day a car backfired and I broke the four minute mile getting back to the hotel. I would have made it faster, but those cars on the freeway slowed me down. Wednesday I had to drive about 40 miles north of Bogota to a warehouse. The mountains are beautiful. Bogota is over 8000 feet. And on the top of one of the mountains at 10,000 feet overlooking the city is Cerro de Monserrate. We took a cable car up to the top our only day off. Monserrate is a religious site that worships tourists. There are alters of gift kiosks all around. Actually there is a beautiful monastery and church at the top. I guess it was so in ancient times before the cable car, people climbing to the top could offer praise that they made it. The monastery was started when people started accumulating at the top and refused to take the trek down.
Another stop on our only day off was the Gold Museum. This museum is very impressive. It is packed with Pre-Columbian artifacts found in Colombia. Note the spelling of Pre-Columbian with a “u” referring to before Columbus. Since Colombia is named after Columbus, it is a head-scratcher where the second “o” came from. Considering all the gold the Spanish took out of South America, and Colombia specifically, and melted down into doubloons and ingots, it is a miracle that anything survived. But there was so much gold, significant amounts survived. Most was buried adorning the dead and found by archeologists after the great pillage. The gold portion of the museum is through a giant vault door that made me hope no one accidentally closed it. Gold was precious to the Colombians because it was a metal that could be easily extracted from ore that was readily available and formed into artwork or jewelry. The other valuable natural resource is emeralds, with Colombia producing more than half the emeralds in the world.
I have no idea if, or when, you will receive this. I am having a devil of a time with the phone system down here. I called Dallas and left a message that 1) I was in Colombia and unable to access server USCOOPERS NMAIL 011. 2) I asked if they would call 1-800-KNOWHOW, my company’s technology support line since I can't call a 1-800 number outside of the states. (Remember this when you travel!) And, 3) I asked if they would leave a voice mail with the response on my office number in Dallas. I then called later to access my voice mail and had a message from a Craig telling me he needed the server name (See (1) above), and to call him at 1-800 KNOWHOW (See (2) above.) I hung up and called the airport to see if I could fly to New Jersey where Craig was to punch him out, but by the departure time, I had cooled off. I guess it's time to dust off the staples, tape, rubber bands, swiss army knife and play McGyver again. If you get this, the mission was successful.
Wish you were here....(and I was there!)
-Con-Keith-a-door