Colombia welcomed me with open arms and a bacterial infection. The two weeks I planned on the Caribbean coast – surfing, exploring the bodyboarding community – collapsed into days spent in a bamboo cabana, measuring progress by whether I could stand long enough to brush my teeth without feeling like I might empty my guts or fold into something unrecognizable. My diet narrowed to boiled eggs, vanilla ice cream, and Sprite.
After an accidental ibuprofen overdose, a misdiagnosis, an IV, a course of antibiotics, and about ten days of patience, I was upright enough to wait for and endure a twelve-hour bus to MedellÃn. MedellÃn felt like learning to walk again, it was baby steps, and with it came the realization that I didn’t need more rest. I needed a city.
So, Bogotá came at the perfect time. Despite the cold, cloudy nature of the city at this time of year, the sun peeked out for the couple of days I was there, and Colombia seemed to be apologizing. I am, by nature, a small coastal-town kind of girl – with the exception of a couple of weekends each month when I move through traffic, go to all my favourite bars and clubs, and let the world open up a little wider.
My days in Bogotá came close to the kind of weekend I’d usually spend in the city – minus the few crucial people who make it feel so healing. I spent my days drifting through museums and art galleries, the air cool and hushed, my footsteps softened by polished floors and the quiet reverence of other bodies moving slowly beside me. Paintings bled into one another in my head – oil and varnish, deep reds and tired blues – until I carried them back out with me into the street.
When the rain arrived – sudden, persistent – I took refuge in cafés, spreading my work across small, sticky tables, the smell of burnt coffee and damp coats clinging to the air. Outside, umbrellas bobbed past the window while the rain stitched the pavement darker and darker.
Once, lost in thought, I missed my bus stop. Before I could panic, a man stood up, pulled the emergency lever, and the bus hissed to a halt. He ripped the doors apart letting the noise and wet breath of the street in. For a brief, electric moment, everything felt suspended before I took the hand of this man and jumped down into the middle of the road.
Sometimes you just need the energy of people who have to hustle to live. Bogotá breathed some much-needed life and motivation back into me. For a second there, I was really feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes you just need a city to remind you what matters, what deserves your time, and where your focus should really be.
Bogotá isn’t beige. It doesn’t do neutral. It’s painted with emotion – thick, loud, unapologetic. The kind of colour that isn’t there to please you. People dress like punctuation marks: fishnets, chipped nail polish, coats so bright they feel argumentative. Nothing is tentative. Everyone looks assembled with intention or exhaustion, often both.
The walls are in constant conversation. First, they’re decorated then they’re tagged, interrupted, shouted over. Murals loom and lecture: saints, martyrs, clenched fists, watchful eyes. Paint drips. Messages overlap. You can see the impatience in the lines, the speed of a hand that needed to say something before it was too late. The city reads itself aloud, one wall correcting the last.
There’s a drumming everywhere, keeping Bogotá from slipping out of rhythm. Buckets, tabletops, bus doors, palms slapping thighs at red lights. Music bleeds from places it shouldn’t – phones, kiosks, passing cars – colliding rather than blending. It works anyway. The streets thrum with purpose.
Tiny cigarrerÃas spill onto the pavement, selling cheap beer and cigarettes with names you don’t recognise. Tables crowd the street, stools too small, knees knocking, elbows overlapping. Bottles sweat. Voices rise. Gossip becomes performance. You’re allowed – encouraged – to be loud, to lean in, to take up space. Bogotá doesn’t soothe you. It energises you. It dares you to feel something and keep up.
