by Teresa Ringholz

Created on: August 26, 2009

In the summer of 1994, I traveled to Bogota, Colombia for 6 weeks to rehearse and perform Violetta in La Traviata...

What an exotic, wild and yet somehow cultivated this place is. The people are beautiful, a wonderful mix of indigenous folk and Spaniards. I wonder what the people of the United States might have looked like if they had intermarried with the natives instead of killing them off or banishing them to reservations. This intermarriage of peoples and cultures in Columbia gives the country its flair and personal stamp.

I am staying in a hotel located on a very busy main street where the constant whirr of traffic, horns screaming in desperation and fumes of diesel fuel fill the air. Thank goodness my room is on the backside of the building so I can sleep peacefully.

Crossing the main road in front of the hotel is like taking your life into your own hands. No one is obeying traffic signals and there is utter chaos. As I attempt to get to the other side of the street, a bus cuts me off in the cross walk and I am so frustrated, that I kick the vehicle as it blocks my path. My foot stings and of course the bus doesn't budge, but I somehow feel better.

Other traffic laws are also open for interpretation as I learn on the weekends when some colleagues take me out on the town. I feel my eyes widen and my body adhere to the back of my seat as we sail through the first red light at a fairly high speed. I ask the driver: "Don't you stop for red?" He tells me that in the evenings, it is safer to go through the red lights than to stop and be subjected to armed robbery and car jacking. I quickly weigh these options but is doesn't really put my mind to ease.

The twenty minute walk to the opera house, Teatro Colon, is always adventuresome too with armed machinegun-toting guards dotting the hilly street corners. I am at first alarmed to see this but then consider the consequences of crime and abduction, so I don't mind the guards after a fashion.

All along the way there are small make-shift stands where vendors are hardly seen amongst the clouds of smoke from fatty meats being seared on the grill. I never stop to try this fare being leery of the mystery meat and its freshness. The only food that I order from one of these stands is corn on the cob which is soaked in steel barrels and then grilled inside their husks. Once cooked and opened the corn is quickly passed over some butter which makes for a sweet, delicious unforgettable treat.

There is another specialty of

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>