A SENSE OF PLACE

We arrived in Bogotá a few days ago but I must admit we didn’t do much more than stay home, sleep, and emotionally slow down after a very eventful month in Central America, hence we haven’t had much to document this week.

Well, that’s not entirely true, we moved in to a beautiful new AirBnb property in the Rosales neighborhood. Owned and designed by an architect, the apartment is spacious and really well appointed, from the Japanese screens on every window to the myriad objects telling the stories of her, we felt right at home upon entering, which is why we hunkered and didn’t move.

The only thing missing is… heat. See, coming from Costa Rica and Panama where the high temperature and humidity were near-suffocating, we assumed wrongly that going South-er would automatically be warm-er. What we didn’t account for, junior explorers that we are, was altitude. Bogotá is situated 2,640 meters above sea level (that’s 8,660 feet for my imperial friends in the USA) and everybody is wearing jackets, scarves and hats here! And that’s not even the worst of it… We were gently explained upon arrival that because Colombians are a tough people who don’t complain, THE ENTIRE CITY WAS BUILT WITHOUT A HEATING SYSTEM!!!! That’s right, as I type this, I am shivering at my keyboard while the sun shines brightly outside because buildings do not have heat. This is SO weird, a city SO modern, SO sophisticated, SO cosmopolitan, without a central heating system…

SO cosmopolitan, I say, because it reminds me of mid-nineties West Village in NYC, when the streets had a growing number of special little places, the ones you’d show your friends because they made olive oil Ice Cream or they sold organic Granola like no one else had. Those kinds of restaurants and stores are everywhere here in Rosales.

Our first lunch, cold and bleary eyed off the plane from Panama, was at Suna, a restaurant and small market that caters to our higher gustative functions quite beautifully…

The market even had jars of salad to bring home and flip over on your plate; see how the ingredients come out in the right order?…

As we walked around, taking in some architecture, we felt familiar in this place…

Food trucks? How about botanical trucks!…

Awesome. Also, their packaging for eggs…

Damn. And olive oil, sadly not that tasty…

We are here for 3 weeks and I think we’ll fit in just fine. Going to buy gloves now.