Avoiding Thieves In Bogotá
I arrived in Bogotá in the last week of May 2006, when the country was about to go to the polls. When studying the CELTA course at British Council in Bogotá, I was preoccupied with safety for a long while. It was 2006 and I was broke. The CELTA course was my ticket to finding a job in Colombia in order to extend my stay, but until I completed it I was without income. In the beginning I took the odd taxi but but I learned quickly - well, reasonably quickly - that taxistas knew a foreigner when they saw one. I’ll never know what gave me away, as I made sure to pepper my Spanish - though admittedly intermediate by that stage - with Colombian courtesies such as ‘Con mucho gusto’ and ‘A la orden’, while my complexion was still holding on to the tan I’d acquired in Cancun, so I could easily have passed for a Latino. Either way, the taxi drivers would inevitably take long detours to push up the fare, and I was soon an expert in detecting fake 2000 peso notes.[1] I gave up the taxis in favour of el Transmilenio - Bogotá’s version of rapid transport: essentially a bendy bus with its own dedicated lane and stations. But soon even that was beyond my budget. And so I began walking everywhere I went.
A Brazilian friend once described to me the difference between robberies in his country to robberies in the UK or Australia. He said in Brazil there was less chance of being hurt because, over there, the robber simply pulls out a gun and you give him the money or the phone. Only the brave or dead refuse. In the UK or Australia, meanwhile, the robbers assault you first and then steal your possessions. He told me this days after I’d been mugged in the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont, having suffered lacerations to the scalp.[2] I think this was his way of trying to make me feel better, and while it failed in that regard I did bear it mind when I was in South America.
During the day I studied at the British Council near parque 93, leaving at about 9 or 10pm. At night I was still staying at Gilberto’s house in Ciudad Salitre. A distance of 10 kilometres separated the two places and in between was a whole heap of sketchy. Not wanting to spend any more money I opted to catch the Transmilenio from Parque 93 until el Estadio el Campín - home of Bogotá football clubs Millonarios and Santa Fe. From there I walked south on Avenida NQS (Avenida 30) as far as Avenida de las Americas (Calle 23). It was here the fun began. I chose las Americas based on its size as I reasoned, having glimpsed a map of the city, that it would be safer walking along a major artery rather than walk a faster route through smaller, darker streets and have my arteries slashed open.[3]
Heading west, I’d walk as far as Calle 13, then north-west a few block until Carrera 68, which I’d walk as far as Canal San Francisco. From there the sight of Guillermo’s apartment block beckoned in Ciudad Salitre - the obstacle then was to identify the correct building from the hundreds of other red-brick tower apartment blocks which typify Bogotá.
It wasn’t a nice route to walk in the day time, let alone at night, but poverty drives people to do amazing things. I wouldn’t say I was scared of walking Bogotá’s streets at night because I grew up walking over Beastleigh railway bridge after a night out at Martine’s nightclub and that was dicey. I’ll admit, however, that the walk left me on edge. And so it was I invented one of the all-time great anti-mugging techniques now used by backpackers around the world.
The idea wasn’t borne in Bogotá, but it was there I put it to practice. My reasoning was simple. What puts people on edge? The answer: crazy people. Think about it. Imagine you’re on a quiet train trying to read, say, Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love. The gentle lurch of the the carriage is the perfect setting to read of Bond’s escape from Turkey on board the Orient Express. Just as it dawns on you that this is the second Bond novel in which Bond falls in love with a woman described as a man,[4] the train pulls into a station on gets a crazy person. You know the type: they’re clutching a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag; they shout obscenities down the carriage and mutter conspiracy theories to themselves. In an instant the whole carriage is on edge. And only when that person alights does everyone breath a huge sigh of relief. No one tells them to shut up because we all know we’ll be stabbed if we do.
Observing this, I theorised that even crazy people are put on edge by other unpredictable disturbed people and, therefore, would-be muggers would be too. In other countries I would have walked the streets with my trusted Sanyo portable CD player clipped to the wide of my belt, listening to the Best of Dire Straits, but Colombia was too risky for that.[5] I had to stay alert. I could still sing though and I could still run, and having scrutinised the crazy people on public transport around the world I’d noticed that singing and sudden movements was key in their ability to unsettle people. And so it was that I settled on singing as the key to my anti-mugging strategy - the louder I was - the more I drew attention to myself - the more I reasoned Bogotá’s degenerates would stay away. Add short burst sprinting into the mix when passing a particularly dark street or group of shady people, and not a single person would mess with me.
And so it was, for two whole months, I followed the same route at night, through unlit streets, past gloomy warehouses, and over the rubbish-strewn train tracks of the Savannah Railway where homeless people would gather and light fires on the grass reservations. The fires were kept fuelled by polystyrene and other rubbish collected from the streets during the day, and thick toxic black smoke would curl into the night sky and look like a porthole to another world. I’d pass the vagabundos singing, say, a Beatles medley, Stevie Wonder’s Living For the City, or, it being 2006, the appropriately titled Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. Even through the noxious fumes of their fires I could see the anxious looks on their weathered faces. Occasionally I’d stumble on a person sleeping in a hump in the reservation, hidden from the world, and I’d very nearly soil myself. Luckily, the constant hit of adrenelin would keep me moving until I reached Gilberto’s apartment, after which I’d crash from my chemical high into a deep sleep that not even his and Ana Lucia’s porno-watching could wake me from.
[1] The genuine ones have a smooth waxy feels; the fake ones are noticeably thicker and drier to the touch.
[2] Sadly, my Nokia 3310 was never recovered as it was probably used by the local gang to organise their re-ups.
[3] When I look a a map now it makes no sense I opted for this route as it is much much longer than taking Avenida el Dorado. Take it I did though and even consulting my much talked about journal from the time does not reveal my reasoning.
[4] In Dr. No Honey Ryder, the character played in the movie by Urself Andress, is described as having the body of a teenage boy. Meanwhile, Tatiana Romanova, in From Russia With Love, has an arse that ‘had lost the downward feminine sweep’ and now ‘jutted out like a man’s’.
[5] Mark Knopfler has that effect on all cultures.