Off-Limits Colombia

Stay out of the dark regions!

The U.S. government approves of its citizens visiting Colombia - but not all of it. Four departments, located on the Venezuelan border and Pacific Coast regions, are supposed to be off limits.

While the U.S. directive generated protests from some of the forbidden regions, it actually generated relief from many more Colombians, who were happy that most of the country was in the 'visit with caution' category. That certainly would not have been true a few years ago.

Of course, the reality is much more subtle and complex. Colombia's Pacific Coast does suffer lots of violence, so why are only two of its departments on the no-go list? The region has been attracting growing numbers of tourists in recent years thanks to its fishing, surfing and spectacular whale watching, and nobody's told me of having had any problems there. Why didn't the U.S. State Department instead advise potential travelers to go there only with an agency which knows the area? After all, you can just as easily fall victim to crime in Bogotá by wandering into the wrong neighborhood.

Even more radical are the rules controlling the movements of embassy employees, who are still prohibited from riding buses and from traveling without permission in all but a few parts of Colombia.

Times have changed, and it's high time that the U.S. government changed its attitudes to match.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The End of AirBnB?

A new law requiring (as I read it) every person who wants to offer a room on AirBnB to register as a tourist agency is an ill-designed attempt to benefit the hotel industry by prohibiting competition.

It's understandable that hotels and hostels, which undoubtedly pay lots of taxes and suffer under reams of regulations, see AirBnB as unfair competition. But the 'sharing economy', which also includes Uber, has become a big part of our culture and economy, enabling an untold number of Colombians to earn extra income while putting a vacant room to use. As a person who runs a tourism business myself and has to pay lots of taxes and comply with often unreasonable - and sometimes impossible - laws, I can assure you that nobody will suffer thru this bureacratic nightmare just to rent an extra bedroom. Instead, if the law is enforced, it will either shut the sharing economy down (as taxis are attempting to do to Uber) or push it into illegality.

The magic of the Internet has made it possible for people with excess resource - such as an empty

Rooms for rent: Should this home's owner
have to register as a tourism agency?

room or apartment - to hook up with others seeking that resource, such as travelers. In the Internet ages, this is not likely to go away, no matter what hoteliers and taxi drivers may wish. By banning AirBnB, Colombia would hurt itself by turning away travelers who don't like staying in hotels. Those people will instead go to Argentina, Mexico or some other jurisdiction which does permit room sharing, and Colombian travel agencies, handicraft makers, restaurants and bus companies will all lose out for the sake of defending the hotels' obsolete monopoly.

This is all particularly true of a nation like Colombia which is just establishing itself as a tourist destination. Eliminating a whole category of lodging won't help its case.

AirBnB-type services creat real concerns, such as a neighborhood losing its character, or becoming unaffordable to its traditional residents, altho these things can happen anyway. Ways to handle these concerns are to limit the number of days per year which a property can be rented out, or prohibiting an individual from renting out multiple properties. And taxes can much more easily be collected from the company than from each individjal property owner.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Frenchman's View of Old Colombia

A riverboat at a coffee plantation.

Bourgarel on horseback.

A lifelong diplomat, Ernest Bourgarel was France's consul general and chief minister in Colombia at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century. Between 1890 and 1902, Bourgarel traveled widely across Colombia, particularly along the Magdalena River, documenting in his notebooks and with his camera a nation which was growing economically and developing its coffee industry - but also suffering from repeated civil wars.

Bourgarel's are some of the earliest documentary photographs of Colombia.

A selection of Bourgarel's photos and notes are on display this month in the Museum of Bogotá, in its new building on Calle 10 between carreras 3 and 4.

A cargo train.

La Candelaria Church in Medellin.

Working on the Panama Canal.

A steam train crosses a bridge.

Mules and men cross a wood plank bridge.

Bolivar street in Medellin.

The exhibition in the Museo de Bogota.

An old map of the Magdalena River.

Interior patio of the Museo de Bogotá.

Ernest Bourgarel, a self-portrait.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Al Gore in Bogotá: Do as I Say, Not as I Do!

Al Gore in Bogotá

Al Gore, the former U.S. VP and campaigner against climate change, spoke in Bogotá yesterday at an environmental forum organized by the El Espectador newspaper. (See it here.)

The environmental problems "we've seen are nothing compared to what will happen if we don't stop using the atmosphere as an open-air landfill." - Al Gore in Bogotá.

After reading about the event, however, I felt like asking: 'Are these people really serious?'

Don't get me wrong: Al Gore is right, and has done a whole lot to gain attention for global warming, which has to be the world's most dire mid-term crisis. Gore is sincere, dedicated and deserves tremendous credit. And, in a few decades, as rising seas flood coastal cities, deserts spread and storms intensify, people all over the world will be crying 'Why didn't we listen to him?'

Al Gore's house - green?

However, Al Gore lives in an huge, energy-gobbling house and flies around the globe in pollution-spewing jet planes. Gore says he buys electricity from renewable sources and compensates for all of this environmental impact by financing anti-warming projects, such as tree planting, and I believe him. (Although many of these projects are questionable.) But, the larger point is that if he and other celebrity leaders of the environmental movement really want ordinary people to live more sustainably by driving less and wasting less, those leaders need to change their ways. That's particularly true for the middle class of developing nations like Colombia, who aspire to adopting Americans' exorbinant, wasteful lifestyles.

Bogotanos enthusiastically pump CO2 in the air. 

The statements by others at Gore's talks made me feel even worse. Bogotá Mayor Samuel Moreno, for example, promised that a planned subway would reduce global warming emissions.


Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Subways are great for moving lots of people around quickly and efficiently. But they do little or nothing to reduce driving. For proof of that, just look at cities like Medellin (Colombia), Caracas (Venezuela), Santiago (Chile), Mexico City and many others with efficient subways and tremendous traffic congestion. Moreno's scheme to build a network of urban freeways will only generate more automobile traffic.

In fact, the only way to reduce automobile use is to raise the cost of driving. Colombia has done that to some degree by raising fuel prices. But private car ownership continues booming in Bogotá, with March expected to show record car sales. Bogotá needs a London-style congestion charge, but neither the mayor nor any other Colombian is courageous enough to advocate one.

A Colombian coal mine. Carbon out of the ground, into the air.

Pres. Juan Manuel Santos also participated in the event, and expressed support for alternative energy and  Gore's idea of a carbon tax. A global carbon tax is a great, if political inviable, idea. But Santos' administration has worked hard to increase Colombia's coal, oil and natural gas production, while doing little to expand renewable energy.

This hypocrisy issue also applies to people like myself and my business, Bogotá Bike Tours. Bicycle tours are pretty 'green,' but our customers often arrive at our shop in taxis and almost always fly to Colombia in carbon spewing jet planes. Sustainable tourism is an oxymoron. Sustainable tourism means vacationing at or close to home. How many people fly to Colombia, whereas they could have had a great time in the mountains near home?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours