Moving on, settling down This week has been a whirlwind. After saying goodbye to friends in Salento, taking a couple days off in Armenia, and then embarking on the 9-hour bus ride to Bogota, I feel like the general trajectory of my time here has completely shifted. I initially didn’t want to go to Bogota. I had heard only the bad things, and that combined with a day-long bus ride in the opposite direction of where I was headed (southwards, to Ecuador), produced a real sense of dread in me. Finally, after putting it off for three mornings, I sucked it up, bought the bus ticket, and headed eastwards, thinking that through all my time in Colombia and all my raving about it, I should at least check out its capital.

I’ve been here since last Saturday, and since then I’ve found this city nothing but a delight. I love Medellin, and I know a of people who find it extremely livable, but it was lacking a certain je ne sais quois. I’m a sucker for hole in the wall coffee shops, finding the perfect set-meal lunch spot after wandering along cobblestone streets, or happening upon an interesting–and free–Museo del Oro or Museo de Botero without having even planned on it. I even found what has to be one of the biggest, shiniest Crossfit’s in existence. This all sounds supremely cheesy, but this is the sort of thing Bogota has and Medellin lacks. Medellin does have the wonderful Museo de Antioquioa, whose Botero collection may dwarf Bogota’s, but the point is that that was a very conscientious day trip that took effort and that I had planned on seeing and had heard about before. In Bogota, you can wander around without a plan and experience some of the city’s best parts without even meaning to, and without paying. Bogota is much bigger, and doesn’t feel as glossy or well-run as Medellin (Medellin really is a high-functioning, extremely clean city), but in a way I prefer the relative grittiness and the big-city feel of Bogota. Every day feels like a challenge that has the potential to reap enormous rewards, and so far it has. In that way, I think it feels more like New York than any place I’ve encountered down here so far. Of course I’m still in the honeymoon period, and this charm I experience at every corner could quickly devolve into something unbearable. After all, living here isn’t “easy” per se, in fact it feels actively hard, but I like that for now.

So, because right now I feel so good here, and because I am getting a little tired of moving around every week, constantly packing, meeting and saying goodbye to people I meet, I have decided to settle down here, at least for the time being, and create some semblance of a “real life,” however temporary it ends up being. For now it feels right.

So for Christmas I will be headed up to a little town called Guatavita about an hour outside of Bogota to spend the holiday. (I guess I’m not 100% done moving around quite yet). It’s situated on a really beautiful, perfectly round lake, and we’ll be staying at what seems to be a super-crunchy resort where we will enjoy communal dinners, yoga, connecting with nature, and massages! Much needed after lugging around a 20 kilo backpack for the past two months. Then, at last, I’ll be headed back to Bogota to settle down, and I couldn’t be more excited about my adventures to come.