Bogota: Watch where you breathe

Arriving in Colombia's capital city by night didn't bring anything too out of the ordinary in comparison to other large Latin American cities; a long ride from the airport with a chatty taxidriver through mostly deserted streets and neighborhoods. I'd be lying if I said I didn't contemplate my course of action if i determined that I was being taken advantage of. But have no fear my beloved readers, the tension and anxiety was all in my mind. I arrived safely at my destination in the city's Chapineiro Alto district.

I awoke the next morning ready to get started on the city. There is no real method to my madness; my philosophy, which seems to make sense (and is partially adopted from cousin Tito), is that (especially for the cities in which I will only be spending a short period of time) I see as much of the city as I possibly can. Rest and relaxation? Not on this trip. I must give a special shout out to my good friend and host Brittney, who was not only nice enough to house me while in Bogota, but also give me the rundown of the city so I would have a sense of where my time would be best spent.

Having run my daily gameplan by my gracious hostess, I was on my way, ready to see all of what Bogota's downtown (Centro) had to offer. As I turned the corner of Britt's side street onto Carreira Septima, the street that would take me directly to Bogota's downtown and the Plaza Simon Bolivar, I walked directly into a thick fog. As my eyes adjusted and I oriented myself I saw it was not fog, but more appopriately, "smog." Seemingly every vehicle that passed me down the street (especially the "busetta's") were emitting not grey, but BLACK fumes from their exhaust pipes. In my experience, this was a type of discharge I saw rarely, usually when someone was having car trouble. As I stood in awe, I was almost knocked into the street by a group Bogota natives (I assumed), all with scarves covering their noses and mouths.

I got my bearings and began to walk. The walk down Septima was long--the best part of 3 hours and around 5 on the roundtrip. The combination of the city's altitude--8,660 ft.--and the hanging layer of smog left me short of breath on a nubmer of occassions and I'm guessing shaved 3-5 years off of my life. Fantastic!

While the reason for this may be obvious to you, intelligent friends and family, it took passing several gas stations for me to piece together what seemed to be a good explanation as to the existence of this perpetual black cloud. While the gas stations in Bogota sell several types of gas (Premium, Super Unleaded, Regular, Diesel) the cheapest, by far, is Diesel gas. Whether that is intentional or simply a response to the current oil situation, it gives greater incentive to use cars that consume diesel gasoline. And while I may be getting my causation and correlation mixed up, in nearly every gas station I passed, there were lines for the Diesel pump, while oftentimes the other pumps were vacant. And as we all know, the resulting discharge from Diesel gas is a lot more harmful to the environment that most other fuels
(see http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=51).

I'd be interested to hear what you all think.

And so the moral of the story boys and girls: If you're coming to Bogota, make sure you've got a scarf or two, for the sake of your respiratory system.