First things first, yesterday I forgot to mention a highlight of the flight down here: the lunchbox museum at the Atlanta airport. What a lovely little walk down memory lane! I must say, whoever does the firearms training at U.N.C.L.E. is terrible at trigger discipline. If you’re gonna be a super-spy, don’t do it for those guys. Your teammate might blow your head off through sheer lack of attention.

My birthday is coming up if you’re looking for gift ideas.

Okay, now back to Colombia.

It’s been six years since I spent any time in South America, and I have managed to forget almost all of mi Español. I’m getting by, but I should’ve done a better job of brushing up before I left. One of these days I’ll have to find a way to spend some serious time down here, because I just love the language and the only way I really learn is through immersion. That said, I do remember coming back from living in Japan. I flew through San Diego, where my oldest friend Liz lives. (She’s not old; she’s the friend I’ve had the longest. But “my longest friend Liz” makes her sound like an anaconda.) Liz has friends in Tijuana so we spent the weekend down there, and coming off of two years in Japan I remember thinking I could learn Spanish in about a month. For one thing, I could read all the signs on day one. I could even figure out about half of them. Wild guess: the fruteria sells fruit, the carneceria sells meat.

Sorry Nihongo, there’s something to be said for a finite alphabet.

Bogota is absolutely gorgeous. Two mountains overlook the city center, and the eyes of various graffitied characters keep watch too. I’ve never seen a city so heavily (and beautifully) tattooed. I’ll let the artists speak for themselves:

I can’t decide which is my favorite, Inca R2-D2 or Cigar Lady I Wish Was My Aunt.

I saw all these characters on a walking tour of the city with the other philosophers at the conference I’m here for. Plenty of good conversation along the way. We also had an exotic fruit tasting and a guided tour of the Gold Museum — or rather, a Gold Museum, since Colombians really have a thing for gold museums. They have six.

Here’s a weird thing about gold: everyone thinks it’s pretty, but only Western Europeans seem to feel the need to go to war for it. In East Asia, the most prized metal was silver. In South America, it was never used for money. Mostly it was for art. The original myth of El Dorado, the City of Gold, traces back to a story of an Inca chieftain covering his body in sticky goop, then gold dust. When the dawn’s first light strikes him he shines like the sun. For a minute or two he is The Man of Gold (that’s El Dorado en Español), and then he goes for a swim. He smears off all the gold and goop, thereby fertilizing the womb of the earth — aka the the bottom of the lake — with his golden seed.

The conquistadors get word of this and think there’s a city out there so chock-full of gold that the leaders can fill a lake with it. They go tromping across the land in search of this magical place, draining lakes as they go. As you know, they weren’t exactly pacifists about this. So basically they were bad at playing Telephone, mistook the man for a city, and in looking for him they killed a shitload of people.

Growing up, I just assumed gold was something people naturally obsessed over. King Midas, Yukon Cornelius, all those D&D treasure hoards: they seemed normal. It never occurred to me that a culture could have gold aplenty and not turn it into money. No doubt the Incas and Mayas paid a pretty penny for it. Gold is shiny and rare, and that makes it expensive everywhere. But when Spaniards and Germans came in search of Colombian gold, they didn’t raid vaults of gold bars; they melted down artwork to turn it into bars.

Weird, right? Or is this something my grade school and high school teachers just forgot to teach me? Is this common knowledge?

Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest, and I don’t know how many pretty pictures I get after that. Philosophers reading papers to each other isn’t what you’d call must-see photography. But I will find time to visit a bike shop or two. I have a hot tip on where to rent bikepacking gear for a future ride down here.

Philosofiction

The Bikepacking Trip That Wasn't: Day Two