Bogotá's simple pleasures

It should come as no surprise to you that we’re far from high-maintenance here at Wrong Way. It’s the simple, small things in life that we tend to derive most pleasure from.

Keep it simple, stupid

That’s why, for example, we like to do our grocery shopping in Bogotá at La 14 – the supermarket that feeds you for ‘free’ while you stock up. 

It is said that you should never shop on an empty stomach but having something to eat before you hit for La 14 (on weekend afternoons anyway) will only spoil your experience. Between the various complimentary servings on offer – meat, pasta, biscuits, cereal, fruit, ice-cream, you name it – you generally leave there quite satisfied. 

We’d nearly (nearly that is) pay a little bit more for such customer service. But get this, it’s about the best value supermarket around – as close to a win-win scenario you’ll get in these parts.

'Me regalas 'una grande' Servio, por favor.' Quality service with a smile.

When it comes to our favourite vice of alcohol we’re more than happy out knocking down a few 750 ml bottles of the national brews Aguila or Poker in a local tienda (‘old man’s bar’, as we’d refer to them in Ireland) for the very agreeable price of 2,300 pesos (about €1 or so). 

Go to the more upmarket Bogotá Beer Company (BBC) chains or the "Irish" Pubs and you’ll pay at least four times more for just three-quarters the quantity of booze. 

 

Plus, in those places you tend to be just another number. In our local tiendas, we’re greeted with a handshake and a smile each time we visit. It’s nice to feel welcomed (the fact we tend to polish off a nice few bottles plays its part in our being gleefully greeted. We do, after all, have to play up to the Irish stereotype).

The same goes for our regular café visits – we find the simple, rough-and-ready local ones far more agreeable in price, atmosphere and customer service (the latter we refer to in Latin American terms – the standards are pretty low on that front. See ‘Doing Business in SA’ http://bit.ly/LVpK8p for more). 

What’s more, we don’t tend to see a major difference in the quality compared to a "fancy" Juan Valdez or an Oma coffee house.

Simple, cheap & very satisfying - the local café.

For many Bogotanos, though, it’s not hip to be seen in your bog-standard café – the same goes for drinking in the tiendas. Such an approach is usually fine for the women because they don’t expect to pay anyway. 

You would think, then, that they’d allow the men choose the location, but no. We, however, are quite principled on this one, usually. 

Forking out greater-than-European prices to drink in places where, firstly, you're treated no better than dirt and, secondly, the clientèle and environment are generally very fake is not our thing. We can happily live without the people who frequent such places.

The above simple pleasures are ones we now know and expect. They still, of course, do the trick but it’s always nice to get treated from an unexpected source every now and again. 

However, such unplanned random experiences can be hard to come by in this city. We had one, though, on a recent buseta/colectivo journey.

OK, we have expressed before (see ‘Bogotá’s Transport Truths’ http://bit.ly/N68gKL and ‘Dulling Down Bogotá’ http://bit.ly/XdUg5U) our preference for these old-school city transport buses but that was more because we felt they were the least-bad option, not because we found taking them overly pleasurable.

What made this particular commute to one of our classes a stand-out experience was the conduct of our conductor or bus driver, if you will. 

As it was initially unclear from the colourful but confusing route display (nothing unusual there) if this bus we’d flagged down was going in the direction we needed, we had to ask the driver to make sure. 

Once Señor Conductor realised we were native English speakers, he immediately ushered us into his screened-off zone – a place usually reserved for family members or very, very good friends. 

This is the business class/VIP section of Bogotá public transport. A front-row seat right next to the driver, out of view from the "commoners" in the back. How privileged we felt.

The 'special' bus seat next to the driver - usually only reserved for family.

The reason he invited us in to his sanctuary was because he has a desire to learn English (although, our conversation was all in Spanish). We’ll let the fact slide that he has so far failed to follow up on his offer of inviting us to dinner – sure you can’t win them all. 

In any case, the special bus journey was enough to put is in a positive mood for the rest of the morning.

So as you can see we tend to be easily pleased here - very much subscribers to the 'keep it simple, stupid' principle. Alas, it can be hard to get the ladies to sign up to the same programme. We'll keep trying, though.