L'auberge Colombienne

Good news, y'all! We found an apartment! Almost everyone we've been talking to here in Bogotá has told us to live in the northern part of the city; east of the Ave. Caracas and at the very least north of Calle 60. These areas are much more affluent, and also contain the more upscale restaurant, shopping, and entertainment strips. One of the owners of the hostel that we're staying at told us to check out the area that he's living in, "La Macarena" (recently spotlighted by the NYT). We walked through the neighborhood a few days ago, and it was beautiful. Lots of small restaurants and cafés, lovely tree-lined streets, less traffic, friendly people, etc., etc. We spent that day calling and visiting apartments, wandering street after street looking at and following up on "For Rent" signs in apartment windows.

That night, I trolled compartoapto.com (the Colombian cragislist equivalent) for apartment listings, and came across an ad for a room in a 4 bedroom apartment in La Macarena. We went and visited the next morning, and we got the room. Renting a room instead of an apartment allows us to avoid the ridiculous situation of having to own in order to rent in Colombia. We would be living with 2 Frenchies, 1 Venezuelan, and 1 TBD, for half the price of the other apartments that we'd looked at. The apartment even has a rooftop deck! Even better, we move in Sept. 1, for now we can go travel around the country for a couple weeks.

In other news, yesterday we also visited with a Catholic Colombian NGO/service-oriented university, UNIMINUTO de Dios. The university works with a number of local Colombian NGOs in underprivileged parts of the city. Next Friday, we're going to work with one of the women who works for UNIMINUTO to visit a project in Ciudad Bolivar, in the southern fringe of Bogotá.

For those of you who have been clamoring for photos, I finally talked Robin into letting me carry our camera around. I'm hoping to visit our neighborhood in the next couple days to take some pictures, which will quickly find their way onto the blog.