Skydiving in Colombia
When people ask me what my favorite places in the world are, Colombia is at the top of the list. The warm and friendly people, the music and the dancing made for an exceptional stay. On our first day at the office, my 3 colleagues and I were given a one hour business plan presentation and a THREE hour security briefing. We were explicitly told a list of things not to do, such as travel by car to the countryside, for risk of running into guerilla checkpoints. We were told that the company policy was NOT to pay ransom if we get kidnapped. My father said the he also had the same policy. I had been duly warned, but corporate security didn't have any prohibition against skydiving!
Free falling! You can see the airplane we left in the top right corner...
On how I got on TV...
My local colleague Milton and I were chatting one day at the office about his weekend hobby, and he invited me to tag along. We met at 6am on a Saturday morning at a small airport in Bogota, and boarded an unpressurized aircraft. After a 40-minute flight to nearby Flandes, Milton and his friends departed by jumping out of a hole/door cut in the side of the plane. They each did between 4-6 jumps that afternoon. I landed with the plane to meet my tandem instructor.
My instructor didn't speak any English, and my Spanish was pretty basic. Oh well! Gravity works in all languages.
This was my 2nd skydiving experience, so I knew what to expect and I wasn't scared. The view of the green countryside was spectacular. All of the skydivers re-packed their own chutes between jumps. I kept in touch with a woman, Sandra from the club, whose wedding ceremony years later included a skydive with her husband. For some reason, the local TV station was doing a piece on the jump club that day, and I ended up in footage on the news. My colleagues saw the footage and got me a copy. This wasn't even the riskest thing that I did during my stay.
On another weekend, Monica from the office asked if I wanted to go to her house in the countryside. Without a moment's thought, I said "Sure, I'd love to!" Her mother drove us in a hatchback, full of supplies. Along the way, we picked up a hitchhiker, who had on a cowboy hat, and a giant scythe used to cut vegetation. The country house was idyllic, and in my memory, I can still taste the citrus-y orangeade/limeade that the weekend house staff squeezed for us from fruit grown on their land. On the way back, we did indeed encounter a checkpoint, but we passed through without incident.
Bogota is at a very high elevation, and I had a constant headache and didn't sleep much my entire stay. For some relief, I flew one weekend by myself to Cartagena to be at sea level. I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Of Love and Other Demons" and staying at the convent of Santa Clara where the story took place (it had been turned into a hotel by the Sofitel group). I somehow got on a tour, which included getting on a boat that looked loaded way past security regulations, but was rewarded by seeing an amazing dolphin show. Some kind guys on the tour saw that I was travelling by myself and shared their aguardiente with me.
Colombian people are amongst the friendliest i have met. They are quick to invite you to their homes for dinner, and friends are family welcome you warmly. I loved the salsa, merengue and cumbia music and dancing, and especially seeing men who could dance so well! I bought a hand held video recorder just to try to capture the party atmosphere.
To get to and from the office, we were taken by unmarked car with armed guards on a different route every day. It was not uncommon to see security detail with machine guns standing outside of banks and diplomatic offices. While were were there, a local colleague had a one-day kidnapping where she was driven around by a "taxi driver" to various ATMs before being released. It was not common for our company cars to get ambushed and stolen on the road to the airport. In spite of all that, Aziz would ditch his company driver and we went to the Gold museum and other places on our own.
In 2017, I was glad to see that that half a century of fighting between the FARC and the Colombian government came to an end in a historic peace deal.