Festival Iberomericano de Teatro de Bogota

The Bogota festival of Theatre is officially in full swing. What it is is a bi-yearly three week festival celebrating theatre all over the city, in all different shapes and forms, from all different countries all over the world. For example at the university where i work there is theatre performance for free in the auditorium, with acts from Portugal, France and Colombia just next week. The first night it was going on i went down to la Candelaria, the oldest neighborhood in Bogota, where the city actually started. Within the neighborhood you can find Calle 1 con Carrera 1 (the equivalent of 1st Street with 1st Avenue) the corner of the city, it literally sits up against the mountains like they where a gate. I came down primarily to shoot 8ball and eat pizza, but there was no shortage of street theatre. Most of the acts i didn't fully understand, i just clapped when other people clapped, and laughed when other people laughed... but i did understand some jokes! of which i laughed probably a little awkwardly loud because i felt like i deserved a bellowing laugh with the break through accomplishments in my Spanish. There was sooo many people out! The bus ride from the University where i study to La Candelaria was also kind of a trip. We went through the guts of what locals describe as "la mierda." There was hand craft stores, and other independently owned small business trying to make a dollar, restaurants, but every two blocks or so there was big time bordellos. The bordellos are on the second floor and when the hookers don't have a client they come down the stairs and stand in the hallways. I have seen hookers in other cities around the world, and in the US, but i have always seen them working a beat or a corner, this looked like a strip club but it even had the neon lights that said 24 hour service. After the bus ride past la mierda i arrived to the nicer part of the neighborhood, shot some pool, drank some Costeña, and than watched some street art. Than it was time to head to TransMilenio, i know you all know the bus by now. To get there i had to walk through Churo (sp?) i don't know if it is another neighborhood, or just a park in Candelaria, but the vibe there was totally different. They had the classic narrow old streets, with sidewalks chest high on the sides, and they were packed! Primarily with two different types of sub-cultures. The rock/metal culture and the reggae culture. Sprinkled in where Fubu gangsters and Punk Rockers, walked by a Reggae club that sounded awesome, but the area has a reputation for pick pockets and being dangerous when its time to leave the club, you got the vibe a lot of the kids where homeless. After the narrow streets you emerged in to this small little plaza where everybody was sitting on the ground with there legs crossed, passing Rum, Whiskey, Aguardiente and Joints. The smell of cheap crappy pot hung in the sky like a rain cloud that followed you. They where smoking weed like it was legal, and you had to walk like it was the part at the end of the third Indiana Jones where the ground was gonna break because their was so many people that just would not get out of the way. Right when i got out of the park this three kids where smoking a huge joint and one young girl hit it to hard and turned to her six o clock (where i happened to be standing) coughed and let out a mountain of weed smoke that consumed my face as it rolled by. Smoking weed is ILLEGAL in Colombia, but for two blocks it sure didn't feel like it. Finally through the young kids getting wasted and to Transmilenio to head north to the Zona Te and back down to Caracas for bar hopping. On the Transmilenio ride too there was a guy breaking down the art of street vending and talking about his different Colognes, very educational.