Capital City


In Bogota for the weekend, and it's never entirely pleasant. There's something about this city I love, but also something that really gets me down. It rains almost every day, it's chilly (maybe 60F), and the people have that big-city attitude that doesn't exist along the coast. So I wasn't really thrilled about coming here, but Saturday night I had probably my best time ever in Bogota. A little past ten I met up with my friend Sebastian at a place in the north called Full 80's, which, as you might have guessed, played a lot of 80s music. Not entirely my thing. But we drank a lot of aguardiente (colombian liquor that takes some getting used to but is really a treat), and towards 2 a.m. a small group of us decided that the night couldn't end anytime soon. And so we went to an after-hours salsa club in the Zona Rosa, which is a party district also in the north of the city. The place was in the second story of a building, had a full live salsa band, and maybe 12 tables. I danced and danced, and I didn't want to leave when my group started heading out. But when we pushed open the door, we were met with pure morning--it was almost 7 a.m. Sunday, predictably, was pretty difficult to get through.

I did manage to get to the movies Sunday night with Andres and Maria Paula, and we sawa Chilean film called Machuca, a movie about two boys, one rich and one poor, growing up in Chile in the early 1970s. It was really well done, all props to the filmmakers for making an effort to tell a balanced story about such a political story.

Today marked a return to work, and I'm not really crazy about how the day went. I had another sponsorship meeting that went very well, but once again the guy I talked to said he had to get permission from somebody else. Sounds to me (and Tom said this, too) like the guy just punted. I understand that people are hesitant to sponsor an event that's never happened before, but the amount we're asking for is so small (for a multinational company) that I think it should be well worth the risk. I'm sorry, I'm actually feeling really down about things right now; maybe it's just Bogota getting to me, but I could really use a shot in the arm sometime soon.

Another treat tonight, though: had dinner in the Macarena, which is Bogota's equivalent of the East Village. Almost definitely where I'd want to live if I had to stay here. Went to a rustic restaurant, half the time we were serenaded by Massive Attack, the other half by Barry White. This I can handle.