Tejo and the (little) cycle of life.

It seems odd that we travelled across the oceans and continents for thousands of miles to arrive in Bogota, yet we are spending practically all of our time here at home, in the park nearby and the two blocks in between. This is fine, since the park and home are quite comfortable to spend the time in. And so are the two blocks in between.
Sometimes a trip to the shopping centre, dentist or a barber breaks the routine, sometimes something unusual happens at the park (see previous post). And sometimes occasional gunpowder explosion, when you least expected it, scares the hell out of you.

I am talking about 'Tejo'.

Apparently it doesn't get any more Colombian than that. Nobody knows when the game started, wiki says it's pre–hispanic, but probably without the gunpowder part, who knows.
Usually played by 'considerably' older folks it entails throwing a 0.6 kg steel ring into the clay box with the aim of hitting small charges of gunpowder folded in pink triangular pieces of paper. The sound of the explosion? Between caliber .22 and .45 gunshot, if you ever heard those.

The running track at the Parque Ciudad Montes follows the boundaries of the park and you will pass two places where tejo is played. I guess it's all a matter of getting used to it, but still, the little explosion always spikes up your already unusually elevated heart rate.

There must be something fascinating about the gunpowder and a loud bang. Apparently the Chinese alchemists invented it looking for the elixir of immortality (!) in 9th century and Albert Nobel furthered the cause by discovering the dynamite some ten centuries later. If we were to believe the scientists it all started with a big bang and the way things are going it all may finish with one too, as this creation doesn't seem so intelligent after all.

Just before you run next to the first tejo area you will pass a small memorial on the right where few years ago stood a police station. The station was blown up by a powerful explosion set by the 'guerrillas' as a revenge for their action against the 'warriers'. The blast shattered the windows in all the houses around. Amazingly only one police officer got killed as he was sitting in a car under which the bomb was planted. Since then there's an increased police presence in the park and surrounding streets.

About 50m to the left of the memorial you will find a large traditional house, now a museum, that used to be the home of Antonio Narino, Colombian freedom fighter and liberator of many provinces from the colonial Spanish rule in 19th century.

It is a lovely house with a big courtyard, solid brick wall around and clay roof tiles on interesting timber support structure. I guess Prince Charles (yes, the same one) would be happy to see it as the house follows all the principles laid by him in a book "The Vision of Britain'. It is of human scale, contains a courtyard, water feature, incorporates art, is built from local materials and exhibits simple architectural language i.e. you know where the entry door is and the windows without thinking about it too much. Pity it stands empty, not many seem to be interested in history.



What is crowded though, is the big sandpit. Kids just love it and specially on weekends it explodes with life. Here they build their castles in the sand.



The older ones play soccer everywhere... There's not a piece of grass anywhere in the park on Sunday without someone kicking the ball in spite of the signs "No jugar futbol". You also get hit by one 9 out of 10 times you are in the park. Ok, maybe not so much, but it seems like a lot.


I guess at some point the kids stop playing games and do something real, like build a house (hopefully a nice one...). Then they run, looking for their elixir of immortality, before retiring to play tejo.