O’DAY’S TRAVEL WOES #41: Harrison Ford, Good Luck With Your Car Chase

May, 1995 (Continued):

My first impression of Colombia was at the airport in Bogotá.

Take-offs and landings at Bogotá, by the way, often were delayed…because at the time this international airport had only one runway.

Traversing the corridor leading from my airplane to Customs was like walking through a fine museum, along sparkling floors, with displays of Colombian culture on the walls. A very nice welcome.

Ah, but what about Bogotá? What about the image North Americans have of Colombia? Drug lords, bombs, etc.?

The people I came into contact with in Colombia — everyone: the Radio Caracol folks, hotel staffs, etc. — were very nice and quite friendly. Most of them do not speak English. For the first time in my life, I actually found myself speaking Spanish (in my own limited, not-so-competent way).

The country itself was as safe as any I’ve visited. The Colombia of Tom Clancy novels is fiction.

Harrison Ford Enjoys A Typical Day As A Tourist in Bogotá

If you saw the film, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, you might recall that they were afraid to open the car window when driving through the streets of Bogotá because the pollution was so bad — ridiculous.

In that same scene, Harrison Ford’s character explained that you cannot drink the water there. Actually, the drinking water in Bogotá is among the finest in the world — certainly cleaner than that of any major U.S. city. In some other parts of the country, however, tourists were advised to use bottled water.

From my brief visit, it appeared that Colombians were sensitive about their image in the U.S. They definitely seemed to feel it’s undeserved. And from what I observed, they are correct.

So there’s no crime, violence or danger? Sure there is. All large cities have crime, including Bogotá. But at the time the only real, systemic violence in Colombia was the result of its age-old guerrilla warfare, waged by rebels in remote jungle and mountain locations.

(The drug violence, of course, has gotten much worse since this 1996 visit. And the guerrilla warfare has broadened its geographic reach.)

What I did see a lot of in Colombia was soldiers.

At the airport (with machine guns).

In the city…especially surrounding an army base, where they had young soldiers with machine guns every ten feet, surrounding the base from two blocks away.

The soldiers themselves did not act threatening; they all looked like they were maybe 17 years old. Silently standing guard all day can’t be very pleasant duty.

Good Luck With Your Car Chase, Harrison

Speaking of CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, probably the most laughable part of the movie was the car chase along the streets of Bogotá. In reality, traffic in Bogotá is terribly congested. It takes forever to get anywhere by car. Walking literally is faster.

Next: More Colombia adventures, including an incredibly embarrassing seminar moment.