Transmilenio
12 September 2005 (Monday) – Bogotá, Colombia
Felipe, Herman’s brother, offered to show me around today. Great! As Herman’s family lives quite a distance from the centre, I had to learn how to take the bus to the centre and back.
Bogotá has a spiffy means of transportation called ‘Transmilenio‘. There are stations with entrances and exits for the passengers, ticket booths to sell the tickets, and fixed routes on lanes that are free of other vehicles. It looks every way like a metro station, except they use buses and the buses sometimes have to stop for traffic at junctions or pedestrian crossings. It looks modern and is quite a quick way of travelling, if you do not want to be caught in the Bogotá’s traffic jam. However, it is very crowded all the time. There are many signs on the buses teaching people good manners while using the ‘Transmilenio’ system – “Do not inconvenience or disturb the fellow passengers”, “Please hold the hands of all children under the age of 7 and in the train, they should be kept seated”, “Do not travel with guns or other dangerous objects”…
Together with this high-tech-looking hybrid transportation system, I also noticed there are many overhead bridges and lanes created for cyclists. I was very surprised that this city actually catered a lot of infrastructure for bicycle-travelling. In fact, yesterday, a Sunday, several major avenues were closed or halved (4 lanes reduced to 2) for people to go cycling, roller-blading, jogging or walking their dogs. There was even a stage set up in the middle of the highway where people were doing aerobics. What a conscientious effort of the government to encourage healthy sports amongst the locals.
In the centre, Felipe took me for a quick spin around La Candelaria area. This is the most well-preserved part of colonial Bogotá. As it was raining now, I could not totally appreciate the place. I decided that I would have to come back here again.
To escape from the rain, we entered the huge Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango (a library) and I explored the various halls of different topics, seated with hardworking students mugging away.
Then, we ducked into Casa de la Moneda and Museo Botero, two museums that are luckily opened today, a Monday, and free as well, located right opposite the library. Both museums were very interesting, and were housed in a lovely colonial house. I could appreciate more of Botero’s surrealistic art of fat people in his paintings.
Everywhere in Colombia, there are security guards and police checking bags and sometimes, even frisking the bodies of the people. They are always on the lookout for guns and bombs and stuff. I had gotten almost used to being stopped in front of metro stations, shopping centres, museums and libraries, some of which had metal-detectors at the entrances. Many people are required to run the operations indeed. In Cartagena, there were about one or two at every corner in the centre. In Medellin, there were one or two at each platform of the metro stations. In Bogotá, just about every street… Truly, they are everywhere.
Felipe then took me to an Israeli restaurant. Really great shwarma, I must say. When it was time to pay, I wanted to try and pay with my 50,000 peso note which we had taped back together last night. Hmmm… Felipe suggested, not here. Israelis are known to be quite particular with money. So, perhaps, we should try at the ‘Transmilenio’ station which would be crowded with people.
Well, although they all did not think the note was fake, I was also afraid that the people might not want to accept it now that it was taped together. So, at the ‘Transmilenio’ station, when I handed the 50,000 pesos over, my heart was beating very fast. Crowd or no, the guy was serious about checking the note. He scraped at it with his finger, held it to the light, then did some other little tests and said nothing. Phew!
Tags: 06) Colombia Connection, Bogota
swesn
May 13th, 2006 at 1:47 am
Hey, I’m Bogotan, and it was nice to find these reflections from you about our city. Actually, I was looking for a blog or so where the Transmilenio’s recent probs were discussed. If it was crowded in sept05, man, you haven’t seen anything yet: Now in may06 it is really really crowded. There are more routes, true, but you have to wait for a long time before you can get the one that you need. Was it your first time in La Nevera (it means Da Freezer) ?