Big up Bogota 💛 Home from home?

It’s got Brummie vibes 💪

7/3/23

Today was moving day once more. I got up early to go for my hostel breakfast in the nearby guest house and then went back to get my big rucksack before heading to the bus station. I was meeting Luna there, but I arrived first and it seemed we would not take the same bus as Luna could go direct to Medellin whereas I needed to change for Bogota. It would’ve made more sense to go to Medellin really, but I had agreed to meet Paolo, the guy I had met in Nepal and who I have travelled with a few times since there so that was that. I said goodbye to Luna and off I went.

The bus took almost the whole day, although I was lucky that we I arrived in the first bus station where I needed to change and find the bus for Bogota, one was going within ten minutes. The bus journey was uneventful and I had prepared another avocado sandwich for the journey, which I ate well before lunchtime (of course) along with a tinto (black and very sweet coffee)!

I arrived in Bogota around 18.30 and for the last half hour or so of the journey, got chatting to the guy next to me, who was from Leicester, but lived down south somewhere. He was going to more or less the same area as me so asked to share my Uber, to which I agreed. I put his hostel in first and gave the taxi driver the address. It was pouring with rain. We went to the road intersection and neither the taxi driver nor the guy could ‘find’ the hostel. I looked on Google maps and pointed at the building it was meant to be in. Granted, there was no sign. The taxi driver rang the guest house and the guest house told them an address. The taxi driver said this was a completely new address and drove far away, far away from my hostel too. I asked where he was going and he said it was somewhere else, but after a lot of driving we arrived back outside the very same building as before! I had had enough (I was hungry and tired) and told them this is the same place as before. The taxi driver said it was the place I had said it was all along. Eventually the guy got out and the taxi driver shouted for someone to come and let him in. Ten minutes later, I arrived at my very cute and colourful hostel. Thank goodness! I went out for food right away. I wanted to find something tasty but the rain was so bad that after looking in one street, I just went to the place closest to the hostel and got a lasagna. It arrived cold and I had to ask them to reheat it, but second time round it was acceptable and of course, there was garlic bread which was glorious! Then I made a coffee and chilled with my book and waited for a phone call from Clare. I caught up with Clare and then waited for Paolo to arrive. His flight was late and when he arrived we caught up a little before sleep called.

8/3/23

Today we had a slow morning. After a hostel breakfast of an egg bap with a strong coffee, I had a nice catch up call with Jess, and Paolo had a work call from Mexico. After this, we headed out for a mooch before we went to join a food tour. We wandered through a market which reminded me of Timeout market in Porto, got a snack and then headed to the food tour. The food tour consisted of us, a British couple, a Dutch couple, a German girl, an American guy and a Swiss guy (all the classics really!).

We walked through the streets of Bogota, stopping to eat many things including empanadas (Colombian Greggs), although sadly they use maize flour and not wheat flour here so for me the pastry is vastly inferior to Greggs, arepas huevos, which is maize flour fried with a fried egg in the middle, some strange tomatoey-potatoey fruit served with honey and salt, which most people didn’t like and I found bizarre, some barbequed kochabuura (a giant rodent apparently) and veal, which of course was tasty! After this, we moved on to sweets and had obleas, which consists of two thin wafers with cream, fresh berry compote and dulce de leche in between, often served also with cheese in Colombia, because Colombians are mad for cheese it seems and they serve it with everything. I tried the oblea with everything, and it was tasty but sadly the cheese was just too weird so I had to leave most of that! Apparently, Mick Jagger once ate an oblea on the streets of Bogota and since then nearly all the stalls were decorated with his face! The only one without was the best friend of the vender who originally sold the oblea to Mick Jagger out of loyalty for her friend. Of course, this is the stall we tried the obleas from, and they were great! While we munched on obleas, an old, well dressed man was dancing salsa alone to his music blasting from a speaker. A random woman went to join him and they danced beautifully. Another two people went to join them and it became a party. At the end, one of the other dancers went round the audience with the old man’s hat took money for him. Then they all danced again and a small boy went round with the hat. After this, we moved onto a place for drinks, which we had to walk through a jewellery shop to reach! I had hot chocolate with cheese (another Colombian classic) and others had some kind of sugar cane shot flavoured with liquorice. Anything like sbuxa could do one as far as I was concerned! The American headed off for a hot date and we headed to the final stop, for coffee of course! I was happy to see, it was a cafe I had been eyeing up since I had spotted it that morning. I ordered a medium one (since Colombian coffee seemed to mess with my head) and it was prepared through a drip filter. Paolo ordered a strong one and it came served in an old school chemistry set, the same one we have at home, inherited from my dad’s grandma. I was so surprised to find it here, all the way in Colombia. What a nice piece of home!

After the tour, we wandered around the city centre a little more, stopping in a beautiful square for a fruit tea with honey. We sat on some steps and looked out at beautiful government buildings, and behind us, there were riot police dressed like robocops, ready incase the International Women’s Day protests got out of hand. Apparently, they had before in previous years and the police had used a lot of unnecessary violence. Sometimes it seems the world is the same over. International Women’s Day the year before had also been filled with AK-47s since I had crossed from Israel to Palestine and had visited Hebron a place completely divided and ruined by the ongoing conflict in Palestine. Anyway, after a tea and a further mooch, we headed back to the hostel to chill a bit. We didn’t feel we needed dinner after the food tour!

9/3/23

I woke up feeling better. We had the hostel breakfast, before we had to hot step over to the square to start the street art tour that we wanted to do. The weather was shite but we had decided we would do it anyway and go prepared. We both wore walking boots, jumpers, hats and raincoats. The rain wouldn’t touch us!! When we arrived, it was just us and a different guy from the US, this time a New York banker. We began the tour and then a German girl and an Israeli girl joined us along with a Colombian helper. Luiz, the guide was super passionate and told us loads of history about Colombia, because of course street art is nearly always political and so you need to know the context to understand the art. I was excited to see works by Stinkfish, an artist I had already seen in Bristol and who is known internationally in the graffiti world. We walked around for three hours in the on/off rain before we escaped to a coffee shop for the final chat. Afterwards, we went for lunch with the American guy in the market local to our hostel. We had another delicious menu del dia before heading back to the hostel.

We chilled for an hour or so and then headed back out to an art gallery belonging to a Colombian artist Botero. There were many (maybe too many, since I wasn’t too much of a fan!) of his own works in their, but also works owned by him, painted by Freud, Bacon, Matisse, Miro, Picasso, Pisarro, Monet, Dali and many others. It was an impressive collection and I really liked some of Botero’s own works although some just seemed bizarre. He is known for painting or modelling things to appears very short and squat which makes for interesting viewing. His horses for example looked so bizarre! Afterwards, we had hot drinks in the hostel and rested a little.

In the evening, we went to a cool arty square with the vibe of Covent Garden with lots of street art and a spot for street performers to showcase their talents and sat in a bar restaurant. We had cocktails and Paolo had a thick fish soup. Afterwards, we went back to chill, since I wasn’t feeling so good. An early night would surely do me some good!

10/3/23

Today, we wanted to go to one of two Salt Cathedrals in the world, the other being in Poland. It was meant to be a day trip from Bogota so after breakfast, we headed off, first by taxi and then by bus to the town with the Salt Cathedral. By the time we arrived there, it was more or less lunchtime (or it would be halfway through our tour of the cathedral), so we headed in search of lunch before we began our tour. We found a place above a car park to eat. It didn’t look fancy but it smelt great! We ordered and ate, the usual yummy soup followed by meat, rice and plantain. Then we headed on to the Salt Cathedral.

We went upang a stair before paying £20 entry (a lot if you ask me!) to enter. To be fair, a lot of time and effort had gone into the construction and design of the cathedral and it had also been voted Colombia’s First Wonder of the World. There were various stations inside representing different parts of Jesus’ life with a focus on when he died and rose. Each separate piece was very carefully curated and with the audioguide, you could clearly see what the artist had imagined. After the story/art was done, there was a maze of stairs and corridors to a cathedral hall, a chapel, and some other room for peasants like me that haven’t been baptised!There was also a baptism font made from rock salt and therefore using salt water too. Outside the cathedral hall, there were many pictures of Mary and just along from here was the commercial area with churros, hot dogs, a museum on natural stones that quickly turned into a gift shop selling emeralds and best of all, a museum on the Egyptians. We were in stitches!! Brilliant! We watched a video on the construction of the salt mine and how it was converted into a cathedral and how they still mine sat from the rock now using a more stable method. Then we headed back and I got an obleas, the wafer thing, along the way. We stopped for a coffee in a cute square, went upto a viewpoint over the town and then got the bus back to Bogota.

The bus back took some considerable time! Sadly we hit rush hour around 16.30 and were stuck in traffic for a good hour or so. We eventually made it back to the sto we had got on at, only to find we could not get out of the bus station without paying for a new ticket. We bought new tickets and figured we may as well use them instead of take an Uber back to the centre, but the bus took ages to come! We made it back to the hostel around 8pm after getting off the bus and walking the final bit through to La Candelaria, stopping only to get some street food on route (I had a grilled corn on the cob with lashings of butter, salt and chilli, so much that it stung my already burnt lips)! We chilled in the hostel after that with a hot tea (from the square with the Covent Garden vibe, which was absolutely buzzing since it was Friday), until it was time to head to a different bus station to take the night bus to Medellin.

We got the bus no problem and since Holly had advised me that I would need my wooly hat and gloves for the bus, I had come well prepared and managed to sleep the whole way. Paolo woke me up on the outskirts of Medellin as we were about to arrive. What a winner.