Bogotá
I arrived in Bogotá grateful for my flight having been delayed as it meant I landed at 5.30am instead of 4.30am. Unable to check in until 3pm I stored my bag at the hostel and went out for a walk around the local area. La Candelaria, the historic centre of Bogotá where I was staying, is beautiful, with it’s narrow cobbled streets and colourful buildings. Like most historic centres it’s fairly touristy, but somehow it still felt real rather than the film set that is Havana Vieja for example. I quickly stumbled on a cafe I’d had recommended to me by Lonely Planet, the hostel and my taxi driver from the airport, La Puerta Falsa. I had a chocolate completo, apparently a common breakfast in Bogotá of hot chocolate, bread and local cheese, and got some eggs in the side because I deserved it after 14 hours of plane food. I headed back to the hostel and found a huge hammock (maybe space for 10 people) and had a very satisfying nap.
Feeling a little more human, I headed out to a nice coffee place nearby. It was quite an experience - they gave me lots of beans samples to smell and lots of preparartion methods to choose from. It was excellent, and I’m starting to truly enjoy coffee when on adventures. In said coffee shop I met Lydia, a fellow Brit and we chatted about travel and diving (she loves it, I love the idea of it). It also turned out we were going to both be in Medellin for the Euros final and decided to find somewhere to watch it together once we arrived.
I headed to the Museu del Oro that I’d heard a lot about and afterwards stopped in a beautiful church, filled with a similar quantity of gold. I bought an arepa from a lady on the street, which was delicious, and stopped in another church (slightly less gold, but still impressive) on the way home. At this point it had just turned 3pm and I was able to check in and have a well deserved shower. All of that before checking in to my first hostel. Not bad for one morning. I played pool in the hostel and made some new friends. We went out for food and some drinks nearby and I was very grateful to finally sleep in a bed again, after around 55 hours without one.
A walking tour through the old town the next day was memorable for the in depth coffee workshop (in the same coffee shop I’d previously found) and new friends in Kari and Wouter, a dutch couple, and Paul, a German living in Spain. We tried chicha (local fermented drink) and some fruits I’d never seen before (tree tomato, which is like a fruitier tomato, and lolu, like a sour kiwi, to name two). Some of us then continued to a food market in more central Bogotá as recommended by Asha’s extensive knowledge of a relevant Netflix street food documentary. As a result we ate ajiaco (chicken and corn stew) that had won ‘best ajiaco in Bogota’ in 2022. It was delicious, but yet I still ended up with major food envy watching food come out to other people - the fresh fish in particular looked incredible.
After a visit to the Botero museum, filled with all kinds of oddly proportioned art, some drama insued when a new hostel guest fainted on arrival, right next to me. Luckily my decades old first aid training stuck with me, and the recovery position plus a bottle of Coca-Cola worked wonders. We sat and chatted for a while, and by chance ran in to each other in the same excellent coffee shop again. This is going to be expensive if the habit follows me back to London.
A group of us went out that night to a salsa club, which had a live charanga band on. Asha is a keen dancer and I spent the night trying to work out which of my forro skills were transferable to salsa. She did an excellent job of following me - a few dances with locals were slightly less successful but good fun. We had also said an almost tearful goodbye to Iseult, who Asha and I had been hanging out with for the last couple of days. It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to say goodbye to people I've only known for 48 hours, but the time you spend together travelling is of such quality, constantly sharing new experiences, that it’s hard to remember a time when that person wasn’t in your life.
On my final day in Bogotá I checked out of the hostel and with Paul headed up Monserrate, the huge mountain which overlooks the city with a beautiful white church sitting atop it. There’s a cable car and a furnicular you can take up it, but the hour walk up didn’t feel like it would be too much of a challenge. Having only spent 48 hours at Bogotá’s altitude and with the steps up being a relentless climb with no flatter sections to catch your breath, it was more difficult than expected and I had to take a few breathless breaks on the way up. It was never going to beat me though, and the views from the top were stunning. It’s fascinating to be able to see the layout of the city from above, and connect all the places we’d been to like a real world map.
A three course veggie meal at Quinua and Aramanto (there’s no menu, you just get whatever they’ve cooked that day) was particularly welcome that afternoon. I find it very easy while in South America to inadvertantly live on ham, cheese and bread, so a meal full of vegetables is always a good idea to prevent scurvy setting in. I packed and headed to the bus terminal for my night bus to Medellin. It’s so good to be back out in the world with my backpack.
