Bogotá, Saturday

Sat 1642 Been back at hotel maybe 10 mins. It's pissing it down; was intermittently very sunny and pleasantly-verging-on-too warm earlier, with a mildly pleasant cool breeze when sun when it. I seem to have two remarkably sharply delineated sunburnt strips of skin on my hands, which sucks but just one of those things. Seems a bit odd as IIRC I haven't had this before and virtually never apply sunblock to my hands.

Mixed feelings about things right now TBH. Going to slack off and watch some crap on YT for a bit before writing the day up.

1802 Wifi has started playing up. I will need to go speak to someone about arranging transport to airport soon; I may end up paying mildly over the odds but it will be OK.

I feel a bit damp and cold - I'm not damp enough to really want to use up a clean change of clothes. It's OK but not great. I suspect I should "enjoy" the relatively cold feeling as I anticipate feeling hot as hell in Cartagena until I've had a week or two to acclimatise.

So I slept really well and woke up feeling pretty relaxed at what was probably 8amish, though I didn't like to check time. I had nagging doubts the alarms hadn't gone off and it was actually gone 9 or 10, but as I say I didn't check, so drifted mostly enjoyably in and out of sleep with this nagging doubt (but I had no huge plans for today) I'd overslept. The alarms did go off and I eventually got up a bit unwillingly about 950. Went out and owner cooked me breakfast about 1015; same as yesterday. Came back to room, shaved, faffed around (eg sunblock), looked at Google Maps to see where to go. There's an aviation museum at airport but really wasn't in mood to trog over there again. Decided I'd go over to Atahualpa park (in part bearing in mind it's a weekend and thus more likely to be people about for safety, and GM comments did seem to imply it was safe). Left hotel maybe 1100-1115, but not too sure.

Diverting from today's story, I find myself wondering if I'm going to like Cartagena. I mean, I kind of expect to like it, but I'm wondering if it might be a bit like Antigua - beautiful but massively tourist-oriented and thus feeling a little "artificial" and perhaps excessively expensive. On the other hand, as today's story maybe shows, I am not currently feeling super comfortable being a tourist here as I perceive I'm quite a rare animal right here and thus I feel like I am marked out as a potential victim, whereas at least in Cartagena I can mingle with the herd of other tourists for safety. ;-)

1832 I tried the Movistar app over breakfast this morning and it just worked, so maybe I was too harsh on it. It looks like I have 1.3GB data, 60 mins of international calls, 650MB for WhatsApp and a virtually infinite number of local minutes and texts. (Having local call ability may be handy tomorrow if I have trouble getting into hotel.) I just made an 11 min voice calls on WhatsApp using the mobile data and my usage numbers haven't changed - I was hoping to see if this came out of the WhatsApp or normal allowance - but maybe 11 mins of voice uses next to no data or it takes a while to update. Not a problem, just making some notes. (Phone shows total WhatsApp use - which won't just be this call, but might be mostly it - on mobile data of 3.41MB. Small enough that it might not register on the 1.27GB remaining balance of my "general" mobile data. Or for all I know the "650MB" WhatsApp allowance is actually infinite and you never use any of it up, it just happens to show as "650MB" all the time.)

So I walked over to the park, getting moderately lost on the way and feeling a bit vulnerable (probably irrationally) at times. I did eventually make it (I followed my "no Google Maps on the street" rule all day), park wasn't as big as I expected and the centre was occupied with a running track and some football pitches, but I did a circuit of the raised track around the centre and then sat on a seat nearish the entrance half-watching some families playing basketball etc, there were also some late teen-ish youths skateboarding a bit off. I was probably sitting around for about half an hour, meditating mildly and not feeling too bad; sun kept coming in and out.

To start with there was a family sitting just off to my right, which made me feel a bit safer. An old woman came over at one point and spoke to them for ages, when they left she (I think) came over to me and started (fairly nicely) telling me about God and evil and the parable of the loaves and fishes and so forth, and I mostly managed to understand her and decided if it had come up I was already C of E but not all that devout in practice, but it didn't.

While she was talking to me (only a few mins) a youth who had been sitting over somewhere in the distance came over and sat on the seat nearish to me on my right where the family had been. I don't know if this was truly suspicious or my paranoia is on a hair-trigger, but I didn't like the look of that. There were a fair number of people about but I don't think you can expect help from them or for it to actually put off a robber. Of course he may just have preferred the view or sun/shade there compared to where he was sitting, or at worst he may have fancied begging some money off me. Anyway, I stood up and thanked the woman for talking me to and sort of jogged off, so as to get away with minimal fuss. Whether I avoided anything or was just being paranoid I don't know, I looked behind a bit to see if he was following me (and might have gone into a small restauranty place opposite the park if he was). The way I understand it is you're not supposed to resist or run away from someone once you're being robbed, but I don't see that you're not supposed to take steps if possible to change a possible robbery into a near miss.

Anyway, that put me a bit on edge although nothing happened on the walk back down to good old Carrera 100. I did get suspicious a mid-teens youth was coming deliberately towards me at one point but he didn't do anything. I also saw a black cat sat in a doorway at one point and was vaguely tempted to see if I could coax it over for a stroke but didn't really like to.

1857 Interpersing some more general commentary with the blow-by-blow account, I *think* (I haven't gone back to read old blog entries at this point) I had similar feelings eg when I first arrival in Guatemala. It's probably normal for me to feel like this at first.

I should say my feet (especially one of my little toes, or thereabouts) were killing me at times. I had done a bit of walking in these shoes before and this surprises me a bit but just have to see how it goes.

Anyway, I got (slightly) lost but went to that little coffee shop I was in yesterday afternoon and got a coffee and a long thin slice of some kind of cake and then (eventually) another coffee. With impeccable timing I left just as a few intermittent but pretty "heavy" drops of rain started to come down, and within a few minutes there was a respectable downpour going on. I had planned to force myself to walk round for another 30-60 mins - oh, it was maybe 3/4pm-ish when I left coffee shop - despite feeling a bit on edge because at least one beggar had come right inside the shop to ask me for money while I was in there, and another (with a tiny kid) had sort of tried to "remotely beg" from the street - before going for a meal and then back to hotel before sunset but with the increasingly heavy rain I was forced to dive into a slightly odd but large cafeteriay kind of place. I asked for the churrasco advertised on the wall (with no price shown for anything), but they didn't have it, so I got two pretty large and pretty decent empanadas (with some spicy sauce on the side which was very watery but with lots of stuff floating in it which I quite liked) and a bottle of water. I was feeling super uncomfortable and I was imagining the waitress resented me a bit (probably irrationally) but it was all OK really. At least the empanadas are sort of "regional" food rather than eating something a bit more "boring". I went up to counter to pay, it was 6k and I left a 1k note on counter as tip, fuck knows if this is OK but it's well over 10%. 6k feels a reasonable price for what I had anyway, and in absolute terms it's not a lot at all.

So I came back to hotel (rain had mostly stopped by this point but I was still damp from earlier and there were lots of puddles) and that about completes the story of today's touristing. I *did* at least accomplish my goal of going to Atahualpa park and I am doing my best to fight against this feeling of paranoia and vulnerability.

I can't help thinking that to some extent the right attitude to robbery might be "there is a small but non-zero chance of it happening, I should not worry about it, it's out of my control and if it happens it happens and it's not the end of the world and I shouldn't let it [ignoring the ease or otherwise of actually "not letting it", of course] prey on my mind all the time" . But then again (excuse random spaces, phone insists on putting them in and I'm not fighting it) there is also the "am I doing stupid things which increase my risk?" aspect. This gets fuzzy. Was it silly to go sit in the park? Should I avoid walking round on my own? But what the fuck am I supposed to do? I *am* here on my own, I'm not doing this at night, I have taken some local advice (from Nicolas, first night here) about safety, and ultimately doing anything except sitting in my room involves at least a tiny bit of risk of something happening. 

1957 I am *not* going to check in online for tomorrow's flight. The "itinerary" from expedia says I can check in at the airport, I plan to get there with plenty of time to spare and if I do check-in online they might expect me to print my own boarding pass, which I can't do.

2031 Couldn't find owner in person but have arranged breakfast for 9 and taxi to get to airport "about 10" tomorrow.

2235 Intermittently "packing" /preparing for tomorrow. Tiny bit nervy. As previously mentioned haven't paid to choose seat on flight so stretching comfort zone a smidge there. Will probably be fine but am feeling mainly apprehensive about taxi to hotel and checking in OK.

Forgot to say that during breakfast this morning got a photo via WhatsApp on new Colombian SIM with some sort of identification numbers on paper. Ignored it, paranoid thoughts occurred but had vaguely read about this before due to recycling of phone numbers. Got another text WA message from same contact while sitting having coffee and I decided to reply, to get rid of this nuisance. A little back and forth and I think they accepted I wasn't who they expected.

Somehow feel I "should" be having more fun, or at least be feeling more confident, but I guess that's just musturbation really. It's very early days, I deliberately chose this handy-for-airport hotel to give myself a couple of days to try to "bed in" and there's lots of time left to do fun and interesting things of course.

I am feeling mildly tired, yawning a bit. Except for the fact I have walked a lot this doesn't really make sense, given I had "as much" sleep as I wanted and then a bit more and it's not exactly late. This isn't a big deal but just noting it.

Did also occur to me earlier (prob not first time) that my brain is probably informally trying to determine the likelihood of being mugged by "how many days I have been in this new place before it happens?" and perhaps this makes me especially fearful now because a mugging doesn't just represent a mugging, it represents evidence that this is very likely to occur repeatedly ("I've only been here two days and it's happened already, so I can expect it to occur about that often"). I don't say this is rational, I just think this might be how my brain is working.

2305 Shower then bed I think. Not that tired but a bit, need to be up for breakfast at 9 and also ideally to do last minute packing/check round before breakfast in case things are rushed after. I am arguably asking to get to airport too early but do want to withdraw cash and want to allow for any fuckups to be resolved.