Colombian TV

Well, it´s official - I'm an international film star. It happened on Wednesday. I had been in Bogota for two days - I found it very much to my liking, despite the surprising cold - but hadn't done many tourist activities, so I decided to join some people from my hostel on a free tour of the city´s historic center.

There were four of us - a German girl, Julianna, a Frenchman, and Tom from England. We met at the information center on the corner of Plaza de Bolivar at 2pm. A member of the tourist police dressed to the teeth in formality addressed us and explained that two TV crews would be filming the tour for a local broadcast. Apart from our group, there was only one other tourist - the TV men had us man for man.

It was unnerving. I was having a rough time understanding as it was - the tour was conducted in espanol - without the additional distraction of cameraman number one zooming in for my close-up. Luckily, our entire group spoke English and the tour, for the most part, covered the area our hostel was in, familiar ground, so we soon took to making fun of our predicament. There was lots of time to - the tour lasted two hours. Tom adopted shades and a movie star strut and the Frenchman played it cool, but Julianna and I never really made it through the laughing stage. Just when we through we had it under control we passed a school yard and little boys, thinking we were foreign film stars, started running up and proposing - we lost it.

My interview was also pretty comical. Poor Julianna. I thought I was off the hook - I´m not lying when I say I speak very little Spanish, but the crewmen soon saw that Julianna spoke both Spanish and English. She acted as my interpreter. We almost made it through without laughing - almost. Apparently we air on Saturday morning, neither of us will be around to watch it.