From Jungle to City: Bogota, Day 1

Bogota is cold 12c. Coming from the humid Amazon it quite a change for a person like me who gets cold easily. The city is not what it is cracked up to be. Paranoid people saying its not safe. First impressions are that it resembles Quito, La Paz (Bolivia) and Antigua (Guatemala). The hilly aspect of the city, that is. This Monday is a public holiday and people are camped out at Plaza Bolivar lying under umbrellas waiting to protest at the first chance they get. Military police are everywhere. One street parallel to the Plaza has barricades for 3-4 blocks. I got bag checked 4 times yesterday when I walked through. Motor cyclists around all wear a yellow or orange jacket with some alpha numeric identifier clearly marked across the front and back. I couldn't figure it out. When I asked the owner of the hostel where I was staying at, I was told that motorcyclists have to wear the bike's registration as well as have the plate stuck on their bike. Supposedly it is to identify the biker in the event of any ride by shooting. The authorities figured that this should fix the identification problem. Interesting. 2 streets further down from the plaza have shops which sell guns and magazines. I walked into one and looked. Yeap, real guns. Not toy guns. The mosquito bites I picked up in the Urubu River camp in the Amazon have all appeared today. Mossie bites all appear in cooler weather after the fact and I have been scratching non stop for 12 hours. There is a good group of travelers at the hostel. We went out for dinner and drinks and mingled with some locals on my 1st night. Tonight we will continue the tradition but I will have to watch my shots intake ;) I have cut short my stay in Bogota by 2 days. The cooler weather has me packing my frozen but to the warm Caribbean coast where I will try and squeeze in a week of activities. There is no heating at the hostel and I am well beyond frozen now.