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Sundays in Bogota mean three things: Bikes, Dogs and Fruit.
Every Sunday, the main Carreterra 7 which runs through the city is closed to autotraffic. From dawn till dusk, the large road is covered in a flow of gently moving cyclists and rollerbladers, none rushing anywhere, just moving down for some exercise, normally with a dog in tow.Dogs, in Bogota, seem to be some sort of favoured creature. I have yet to see one, stray or otherwise, that isn't a shining example of a healthy pedigree, and always with its own hoody or bandana to keep it snug and warm in the chill winter air. The dogs and owners mill around the road, surrounded by uncountable carts, each piled improbably high with a certain type of fruit, refreshing the travellers with cups of chopped fruit or glasses of fresh squeezed juice. There's the more expected orange and mango, as well as some stranger ones.Fruit is something that Colombia doesn't skimp on. Spikey green Guanábana the size of your head yield a sweet, white milk, while tubs of pulp from the granadilla (a small pomegranate with juicier grey seeds) looks shockingly like alien spawn. The nispero is about the size of your fist, round, and unappetizingly bark-coloured, but inside has a flesh that tastes just like chocolate... All these fruits and more vie with fried plantains, candy floss and snowcone stalls for space to sell to the cyclists, come rain or shine.
Sunday, however, also means markets. Several flea markets (normally up and down the cycling road) are only open that day, and yesterday we took it upon ourselves to explore some. Starting at the Mercado de Pulgas in a pretty unsavoury neighbourhood around Calle 24, I was not disappointed. At first it looked like a cross between the vintage clothes markets in Brighton, with their dusty fur coats and genuine seventies tat, and the brighter, tarpaulin-wrapped markets of Camden, selling cheap, mass produced hats and bags to teenagers. However, the things I saw there were of a variety that would put any market in England to shame. Beside the stolen cinema posters and bootleg DVDs was a stall selling only mini-gramaphones, and beside that one selling saxophones made of bamboo. Stalls selling tea made from the coca leaf expound its health benefits: "Slimming! Lowers your Appetite! Gives you Energy!", while cups of sweet cream and salpicon (a red fruit punch that looks unfortunately like baked beans in a plastic cup) are passed around to shoppers. Table after table, or just rugs on the ground, are covered in genuine junk from the twenties. Red velvet chairs stolen from old cinemas, tarnished brass by the tonne, seventies hairdryers, a box of loose tv remotes, a box of individual shoes, a tub of the plastic tubing from hoovers, a box of dirty watch straps, typewriters that are 80 years old if they're a day... all this mingles around with the more normal incense, candle and bong sellers. How some of those things have survived this long is a mystery. I saw one table covered in small toys, many of which I recognise came with Disney-themed Happy Meals in the early nineties.
The selection can only be described as overwhelming. I wouldn't have been shocked to see anything else sold, fossils possibly or gypsy curses... After an hour of wandering around, we worked our way towards the cactus stall that marked the exit and saw someone with an old-timey camera from the 1800s taking cowboy portraits. That one will have to be tried on the next trip, I'm not leaving here without my own cowboy portrait!
Sadly the area around the market is less than affluent. We made our way down the K7, passing mostly fast food restaurants and a shocking amount of socially aware, communist and Marxist-inspired graffiti.But after a few more streets, the area suddenly, instantly changes, and we were in La Candelaria, the historic centre of Bogota. Supposedly the sight of the city's founding, La Candelaria is all cobbled streets and winding back alleys, interspersed with enormous, beautiful colonial churches and plazas. The most famous plaza in the city is here, the Plaza de Bolivar; a gaping wide space framed by a hulking cathedral on one side and beautiful government buildings on the others, filled in the middle by llamas, more fruit sellers, and more pigeons than Trafalgar Square. If you walk down the hill on the eastern corner of the square, on the right there is small, Moroccan-looking alleyway leading to an artisan's market.It starts off with mostly baskets and hand-carved tableware, then opens up onto stalls selling woven bags, little hand carvings, beautiful ruanas (Colombian wraparound ponchos), chunks of raw emerald and anything else carved from wood or bamboo that you could desire.
Tragically, I spent all my money on all the different kinds of fruit that were tantalizing me, and didn't have enough cash to get the hope chest that I came for. Yes, this is a desperate effort to furnish my barren room... But all that means is that next Sunday, we'll have to go back.This time I might be a cactus. Or a hoover tube.Or a puppy! Who knows. I genuinely think that the possibilities are pretty endless...
x Erin x
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marie rely enjoy your escapades