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Bogotá Meets the World
By ROBERT REID | The New York Times
Surfacing — The Macarena Neighborhood of Bogotá
A few years ago, Macarena — a neighborhood in central Bogotá backed against lush Andean mountains and wedged between office buildings and a bullring — was a run-down area mostly avoided by tourists. Largely thanks to an influx of arty locals and expats chasing cheap rents, though, it's been cleaned up, nicknamed Zona M, and now hosts a buzzing scene, mostly centered on the side street of Carrera 4A.
This is welcome news for many Bogotanos. A short walk from the busy Centro Internacional, the Macarena is easily accessible to this city of over six million, yet, as locals like to put it, it still lives "like a village." And if it is a village, it’s certainly a global one.
"The people here have mundo," said Peter Hoogeveen, a Dutch-born resident who runs Tapas Macarena with his Colombian wife, Maria Pinzón. He says Bogotanos "travel a lot, know a lot, are more open." Open since November 2007, the restaurant is decorated with racks of wine, stacked watermelons and a hanging jamón Ibérico. It's not uncommon to see Oxford graduate students, American classical guitarists and local social workers with Che Guevara beards sharing tables and nibbling on skewered beef with Indonesian-style peanut sauce. >>>Go to Full Story >>>