Andes, Amazon, and Herpetology: Bogotá and a Few More Frogs

This could easily have been divided into two posts. Instead I chose to combine my final two adventures to conclude my travel blog for this trip in South America.

Because it sits first in the title, I will tackle Bogotá before the frogs. I spent more than a week in Bogotá, spread out over two separate visits, the first being 7 days and the second being just one full day. Despite me being more of a small town person and Bogotá being an absolutely massive city of more than 7 million people, I found it to be lots of fun - possibly the most fun of any city I went to on my entire trip. The city is cold, sometimes rainy, and located high up in the Andes, much like Quito. It features a bustling historic area known as La Candelaria, which is where I chose to stay. I spent a fair amount of time doing indoor sightseeing in places such as the famous Museo del Oro (Gold Museum), Museo Botero (art by Botero and others), and the Septimazo and Ciclovía street gatherings. The Museo del Oro had a fantastic collection of sacred gold objects from many virtually unknown yet important Colombian civilizations. The collection of solid gold frogs was easily my favorite, followed by a golden musical instrument that somewhat resembled a clarinet. The Botero art collection was surprisingly fun for me as well. I did not necessarily love all the pieces by Botero (I get it dude, you make every living thing look fat), but the additional pieces by Monet, Picasso, and a great many others really caught my eye. As good as those museums were, the Septimazo and Ciclovía street festivals were probably my favorite experiences in the big city overall. Both occurred on Calle 7 (7th Street) and had all kinds of fanfare, from live vallenato music to delicious snacks. Ciclovía was especially cool because it featured a game where a guy lines up guinea pigs in the street. Maybe 5 meters (sorry, I do not think in feet anymore) from the fuzzballs there are 20 overturned bowls, each with a portion cut out so a guinea pig can sneak in to hide. The point of the game is to guess where a guinea pig will go by placing a wager in the form of a stack of coins on that particular bowl. Only one guinea pig goes at a time, making it pretty tough to guess right. After watching a few times I gave it a shot. I technically lost because the stupid animal only went halfway under my bowl before freezing in place and eventually being disqualified. In my mind I won, and that is all that matters, right? The other neat thing about Ciclovía is that it occurs every Sunday, and a huge stretch of the street is closed to vehicles and opened to bicycles for much of the day, partly as a fitness initiative. Bogotá impressed me with that.

My other main activity in Bogotá was to wander around the streets of La Candelaria whilst eating whatever caught my eye. I saw plenty of nice old churches and other historic buildings while enjoying more than my fair share of cocadas (sugary coconut sweets), cakes, arepas (like tortillas except thicker and better), natural fruit juices, and empanadas. It was the perfect way to enjoy myself for a day or two without spending too much money or getting stressed about travel plans. At my hostel I made some awesome friends, whom I went out with for some fun evenings. Fredy, a costeño from Valledupar now working at Hostel Sue, was especially welcoming and became a good friend of mine.

After that first week in Bogotá I joined another pair of costeños (people from the Caribbean coast) for my last volunteer experience in the field. Myself and José of the Universidad de Cordoba came along to help graduate student Faidith on her final trip to collect frogs for her Master's research at the Universidad de los Andes. We went by bus to the nearby Tolima department first. The three of us stayed in a hotel in the quaint little town of Coello. Our work was split between processing specimens by day and catching more by night at a nearby "tropical dry forest" area. We really did not find that much, yet it was still a great time. There were some toads as well as one of my favorite frogs, Dendrobates truncatus. The habitat was exactly as it sounds: a dry forest. It was especially dry when we were there, which explains why we found so little.

In our off time the three of us spent a lot of time getting to know one another and sharing silly Spanish and English slang. They were very patient with me, and looking back I think I improved my Spanish a lot in our 6 days together. I learned that policía muerta is their name for speed bump, and it literally translates to "dead police" for reasons that are unbeknownst to me. We also became regulars at a local restaurant run by Doña Chela, who always had something great for us to chow down on with an accompanying fruit juice. Coello was incredibly hot at most hours, which made us extra grateful for the pool and air conditioning at our hotel. Not a shabby place to stay during fieldwork!

From Coello we headed down to the city of Neiva, in the Huila department. Much like Coello, Neiva was very hot. I only got one night out in Neiva, but I am glad I did because I found a fat little frog called Elachistocles pearsi, of the family Microhylidae, for you nerds out there. Unfortunately I have no picture to show. It was cool though, I promise. It looked like a stout, stony-colored arrowhead with stubby legs, the back two being splattered with yellow. Not much else to say about Neiva, for lack of time spent there. The following day I had to leave the other two, and that was sad. Faidith and José were hilarious, knowledgeable, and extremely easy to work with. We became good friends in our brief time together. I will definitely make an effort to see them again in the future!

I came back to Bogotá with just one full day to spare on my entire trip in South America. That is when I finally elected to hike up to the viewpoint at Monserrate with Fredy and Andrea, another traveler. You can see from the photo that we got a pretty good view of the big city, surrounded on all sides by green mountains. For my final night I went out and enjoyed some of Colombia's anise-flavored aguardiente while dancing salsa with friends at a fun Cuban salsa bar. Even though my dancing skills are still incredibly limited I had a great time in the friendly atmosphere. A particularly hilarious additive to the night was an old man that kept yelling out "LA SEMANA!!" (the week) at the top of his lungs while doing goofy dance moves. It was a great way to finish up my trip.

I think I alluded to this being my final blog entry earlier in this post. Well, I actually plan to do a recap in a few days, mostly because I have been working on a cool map that shows my travel route. I also plan to create a list of my favorite places to visit, and some general thoughts I have about traveling in South America. Stay tuned.