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Travelling In Bogota, Colombia

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Jun 30, 2011
in Retirement/Living
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Things To Do In Bogota, Colombia
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Medellin Versus Bogota

We slept beneath a heavy blanket last night and donned jackets to walk across the courtyard to breakfast this morning.

Bogota sits at 8,600 feet altitude. The climate in Medellin is pleasant, almost never too hot or too cold. Here in Bogota, there’s a chill in the air evenings and mornings. You’d want central heat in your home, I’d imagine.

Pleasant change for us coming from Panama City.

Everyone we spoke with in Medellin about this visit to Bogota cautioned us. “The people in Bogota are not like the people in Medellin,” they warned us. “They’re not polite. They’re not respectful. They’re not helpful.”

Too soon for us to make a determination on this one way or another–though the scene at the taxi queue outside the airport when we arrived last night was chaos, a pack of folks with suitcases pushing each other out of the way to get to the nearest cab. So maybe our friends in Medellin have a point.

As much as anything, two things have struck us during our time in Medellin–first, the character of the people and, second, the standard of the service. It’s surprisingly, sometimes shockingly high.

The standard of service in Panama City is non-existent. Hotel and restaurant owners complain about the challenge of finding trained and serious staff who understand what it means to take good care of a customer. We customers complain, too, because no one (it seems) ever cares a wit about taking care of us.

Good service is hard to find in much of the world. In Medellin, waiting tables is a profession, as it is in France, for example. Medellin taxi drivers are not only polite, but courteous and eager to help. Shop keepers, bank tellers, the girl behind the counter in the pharmacy, even street vendors…they’re all formally polite. We stopped the other day to buy a package of peanuts from a man on a street corner in downtown Medellin. He was more polite and courteous than shop keepers I’ve encountered the world over.

People in Medellin are mannered in a way that might seem old-fashioned. But it’s sincere. The French have a term for this. They call folks who know how to use their “hello’s,” “good-bye’s,” “thank you’s,” and “please’s” bien élevé. The gentle people of Medellin are bien élevé.

Medellin has a population of about 3.8 million. I think that’s about the right size for a city–not too big but not too small.

Bogota, on the other hand, home to more than 8 million people, feels crowded and congested. Not as congested as Panama City, but traffic here is a problem, a popular topic of conversation. Bogota has a plan for alleviating the traffic jams, but it’s run into a snafu. The mayor, the contractors, etc., siphoned off the better part of the funds set aside for the work. Road crews were out at 8 p.m. last night when we drove through the city from the airport. Still, the work is a year-and-a-half behind schedule, and the money to finish it, we’re told, was last seen on its way to the mayor’s Swiss bank account. At least that’s the story going around.

More from Bogota mañana…

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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