fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

Every step I took forward was a strain, my boots sticky with honey keeping me glued to this magnificent continent. Like a fly that's fallen into a pot of honey and feels the need to binge eat yet at the same time knows instinctively that this place could be its sugary grave: its wings grow sticky and useless and it dies of thirst as nothing can live on honey alone.
I had the luxury of taking a bus that plowed through the honey pot, relentlessly taking me where I was too weak to go on my own strength and masking the candy behind tinted windows and with a television playing action B-movies.
You shall know our velocity, I told myself and with momentum as my ally I arrived in Guyaquil, Ecuador, ready to ignore this Dollarised economy and step on the next flight to Bogota.
I was stopped dead in my tracks. The only flight left the next morning and could have paid for a royal lifestyle in Bolivia for a month.
I entered the impeccable airport bathroom, unshaven and laden with backpacks, to wash the travel weariness out of my face. A grey-haired, -faced and -bodied businessman stared at me as though lost in somnambulist trance. Then, for a fraction of a second, there was a look of confusion - maybe existential angst - on his face before he looked back at himself in the mirror, washed his hands and returned to his world that I should have had nothing to do with. I don't purport to know this man. But at that moment I did.
And so I sat amongst the overpriced airport fast-food restaurants, sipped on my coffee and decided I needed a dose of different. Asia may do. Until I'd get there I would be the anti-tourist. I picked up a book I'd meant to start for a long time and read the whole night through in the airport, aided by the bright lights and time that was only measured by the ebb and flow of people entering my realm.
The next morning travelling had disappeared out of my life. Instead of noticing mile after mile being ground up by a bus beneath me I passed out on the airplane and woke up an unknown amount of time later. It was like magic, like teleportation to me - I stepped into one airport that could be anywhere in the world with metal beams, glass and shiny floors and almost instantaneously ended up in another time-less and space-less teleportation chamber. I exited and found myself in Bogota, the city I would make into my anti-touristic home.
I had chosen a good place: one of the coolest cities in South America.
I started out experiencing the Israli side of Bogota by staying in a hostel that is a legend back in Israel. Being dropped into this world of no rules, endless supplies of drugs and readily available women after years of army forbearances may be called irresponsible. But who can blame them for partying so hard. In contrast I was partied out after two nights with them.
My sleeping patterns, however, would remain the same for my stay here - sunrise would remind me of bedtime and sunset would be my breakfast call.
Bogota is a lovely place to be. Amazing locals, great coffee and accompanying shops, readily accessible, quality nightlife and culture and plenty of time for reading and what goes with it - anti-touristically. And even though this country is practically in a civil war I have very rarely felt more secure in a city and the country as a whole is safer to visit than it has been in a long time.
So, how long will I stay here? I don't know. Will I even make it to other parts of Colombia? No clue. What will I do here until I leave? I have absolutely no idea. Every day just kind of comes along, I make no plans yet am always surprised by where it ends up going.
Be warned: anti-tourism wrecks your decision making ability. But it feels good.

[In true anti-tourist style I have uploaded no photos yet. Besides it is a public holiday and no fast internet cafes are open.
A few pictures now online at Albums Peru 3 - towards the bottom.]