So we got the Lonely Planet and Bradt guides to Colombia. I just read that Lonely Planet's USA headquarters is based out of Oakland California. Pretty fucking cool. I never heard of Bradt but just found out that it's British. Just a different way of looking at the same thing.
The one thing that I am a bit apprehensive about in Colombia is being a vegetarian. I'm actually lucky because I think it will be ok in Bogota. It won't be great like the Bay Area but it will be pretty damn good for Latin America. On www.happycow.net you can find vegetarian restaurants all over the world. Bogota has 26 locations for veggie/vegans restaurants or stuff like dat. I have made a vow to myself to visit each and every one of them. I've always had this dream of being an international food critic and when I went vegetarian it changed to international vegetarian food critic. Bourdain got a bad ass life of travel. But I'm going to go to every location and then review it on happy cow. Then through the magic of the internets, I will be living the dream. Live the dream baby. <insert turntable scratch>
But you know people the world over use some lard to cook shit. And I know that when I ask, some people will just lie to me because they will. People do shit like that. It is what it is. Oh yeah fyi, I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I just don't have the will to go vegan. Shit is too damn hard.
So in my devouring of all things related to Bogota, I learned about this former mayor of Bogota named Antanas Mockus. This guy is rapidly becoming one of my cultural heroes. He helped to change the culture of Bogota. I'm really interested in hearing what people say on the ground.
Check out this Danish documentary about Antanas Mockus and Enrique Penalosa. It tells an interesting story about a cultural change of a city. I think a lot about how to change culture in my school and Oakland. It's a hard fucking thing. Mockus and Penalosa were leaders in the culture change of Bogota. It's inspiring like Tunisia and Egypt.
