Graffiti, an airplane ride and heavy rain

Day 6 Sunday February 4, 2018

Our flight out of Bogotá wasn’t until 6 p.m. so we had most of the day in town. Bogota is know for it’s graffiti so we decided to go on a Graffiti tour. On Sundays 500 km of roadways are closed to traffic and opened to bicycles and pedestrians. This made getting to the Historic District by cab a bit challenging. Our driver took us up the hill through some of Bogota’s more affluent neighbourhoods that were built around the turn of the last century in a very British style. We wondered for a bit if we were on a Tijuana taxi ride but eventually he dropped down to the park area where the tour was to start. It’s nice to be able to look at Googlemaps and see that we’re heading in the right direction.

Our guide was a Colombian who grew up in the US and decided to move back to Bogota 12 years ago. He explained to us a bit about the international culture of street art and the difference between street art and tagging and took us off on a 2.5 hour tour of the Old Town of Bogota up the windy, cobblestone streets and past a variety of different artists. The wall art is quite political not only in content but in it’s existence. The current mayor does not like street art and has increased the fines for those caught doing it without a permit. 7 years ago a 16 year old was shot by police who then covered up the murder. The officer has been recharged after the time limit for a court appearance ran out. The judge was convicted of corruption and is serving 8 years of house arrest. The city wants to get heritage designation for the area that we were walking in which means the art has to go. As a result of the corruption there seems to be a strong resistance to the laws about the work. The city is now trying to commission art in some areas to passive the artists but there seems to be some skepticism as to whether that will work on the taggers.

Bogota, a city of 8.5 million has a garbage strike. We’d been wondering about the piles of garbage. It’s only been 5 days and there is a lot of garbage on the streets.

After the tour we decided to head to a large flea market. The streets were very crowded with pedestrians and bicycles and street vendors. The market itself had all manner of goods, lots of old goods, but alas not Fred’s camera.

Time to find a taxi and head home. Turned out not to be an easy task as most streets were closed and there was a heavy police presence. Our guide thinks it may have been because there was a bull fight and likely to be a protest. It was an hours walk back to our hotel so off we went but eventually found a cab. s

Now we’re waiting at a very noisy airport waiting to fly out our next destination on the other side of the mountains.