I am about to conclude my first 3 months on my “bittrail” and with that my stay in Colombia. The last month I spent here in Bogota, a 7 million Metropolis up 2700m in the Mountains. There is a huge amount of traffic in the city and indeed I had the impression that the air was very bad. The climate here is a lot colder then on the coast, only about 15 degrees Celsius. It is raining right now and it was raining a lot the past weeks, so I had enough time to do my work without worrying that I’d miss something.Since this marks the end of my stay in Colombia, here are some tips if you have doubts about traveling to Colombia. First, the media may be right about what is going on in certain parts of this country (fortunately I didn’t have to witness that), but they don’t show the whole truth. This is not all of Colombia. Don’t be afraid to travel to this country, just be careful. Although the situation may change with time, I think you are always safe in the bigger Cities (as safe as in any other South American city). If you are paranoid, don’t leave the cities and take airplanes from one city to another. If you are a little more adventurous (this has nothing to do with being suicidal) and want to travel by bus, then I can only give you this advice: Ask some local people there if the route that you want to go is safe, if there have been any incidents lately. Ask people from the middle class, people that are using busses as their means of transportation, don’t ask people from the upper class because for them, everything is dangerous. And the last tip is not for Colombia in particular but for every country that has problems with poverty and criminality. Keep a low profile. Don’t walk around in your newest pair of Nikes, don’t show off your expensive digital camera, even if it is very hot, don’t walk around in shorts; try to dress like the locals, that makes you look like a foreigner that has been in the country for a while and not like the tourist that is here his first day. Of course these are just tips and there is no guaranty that if you follow them nothing will happen, but I think they mitigate the risk.

Just one quick note on the last entry, there was some confusion about the picture. What you see there is Santa Marta, not Bogota.
Since my time here was pretty much all about work and since work is a big part of this “lifestyle”, I write this paragraph about it, so people get an idea how this works and so they don’t think that all my time here is about traveling and having fun. As of now I am working 50% (21 hours/week) for the company that I was working before I started this. Everything that comes out of my work is digital data, so it can be transferred from where ever I have access to the Internet. A couple of times a week I connect via Internet and VPN (OpenVPN for all that like to know exactly) to the office in Switzerland to check mails and to see if there is any new work to be done. I download the newest release of the source code and once I am done implementing a feature or correcting a bug I upload the new source files. If there is anything that needs to be discussed then I call the office using Internet Telephony (Skype in particular). Thinking about it, it is really amazing to do work like this, I can do this only thanks to a very liberal and open employer (if any of you need a LIMS go to www.infotray.ch) and the development and wide availability of the Internet. Only 10 years ago, none of this would have been possible because of the lack of technology and infrastructure. Even now, sometimes all I have is a slow analog modem connection and I have to be very patient to complete my tasks. I think this is still the beginning of the “global office”. If you are always in the same location then you can get the infrastructure to work quite efficient and well, but if you are on the road, in a different place every time, I think it’s still pioneers work.But this is not all. Beside this paid work, I am working on my own Open Source project. I have to admit that so far I haven’t been able to do much work on it, only about 5 hours a week, this is not enough. I will have to find a solution for that, but I also want to avoid traveling this world without seeing anything of it, so I am not willing to increase the total amount of time that I spend working (which is about 25 – 30 hours/week). This seems right and leaves me with enough time to explore.

I left Cartagena and I am in Bogota now. Strange, I spent just 2 months there but it felt like home and I miss it now. The people I got to know and the people in the hotel were very nice (Hotel Internacional, if you ever go there). Before I left I went to visit Santa Marta, a town about 4 hours away. I feel more confident now traveling by bus in that region of Colombia, even at night. I didn’t know much about the place only that it is the other tourist town on the north cost besides Cartagena. It is famous for its natural parks. One is the Sierra Nevada, with mountains up to 5000m high covered with snow. I didn’t visit it because it is a multi day trip; instead I visited the park closer to the town. On the way we passed the soccer stadium with a statue of Valderama, who comes from here. We visited one of the many beaches in the park. The water was crystal clear and there were hardly tourists, very quiet and relaxing, what a change from the beaches in Cartagena or Santa Marta. We also went snorkeling, although I have seen better snorkeling in Egypt it was still interesting. For the first time I saw a ball fish, I am no diving expert, so it was special for me. I didn’t have any shoes to go into the water with, so I went without. I think I was lucky I didn’t step on one of those black animals with spines; still I got some nasty cuts on one of my feet.
As I said, I flew to Bogota two days ago. I would have liked to make the trip by bus, but since I already bought the tickets in Switzerland it was a 1 hour trip instead of an 18 hour one. Now I am here and believe it or not, but today for the first time since I left Switzerland 2 months ago, I saw rain again. I didn’t miss it much and I have the feeling that I will get to see it more often here in Bogota.

My laptop that I use to work turned out to be like a Swiss Army Knife for me. It’s the tool that I need to do my work, but besides that it is my diary, my TV, my stereo system, my photo album, my telephone and in the few blackouts it served me as emergency lighting, since without it, it would have been completely dark in the hotel room. As I learned in Miami, a laptop seems to become standard with world travelers, even with backpackers.

One day at the beach, for the first time in my life I saw somebody fighting for his life. It was a little boy that was overwhelmed buy the tall waves and was drowning. Fortunately there were people close to him in the water and they grabbed him very fast. It is amazing how many people here at the beach don’t know how to swim, and I bet the lifeguards here don’t get bored.

Today the whole city blacked out for about 2 hours. First there was a rumor that the guerilla planted some bombs way outside the city to disrupt the power supply.I talked to one of the guys from the restaurant about it. He told me that he never went voting in an election before, but that he will vote for the current president next time, because he can really see improvement since he became president. He told me that 3 years ago there were almost no tourist here and daily blackouts. I also heard from other people that a few years ago the mayor auto routes were not safe, but now with the new president they are. That is really good news for this country, if people can see such dramatic improvements.