Bogota

It was impossible to avoid and would have been wrong not to visit the capital of Colombia but we did so with some aprehension as the city has had a reputation for being very dangerous. But things have changed and Bogota was nothing like we expected. We loved it, and even started to wonder if we could live there! We stayed in the north of the city which is relatively affluent with lots of shopping malls, restaurants, bars, little ‘villages’ within the city, in a really lovely B&B.

Christmas tree in the center of the old town

The first night we went to a local restaurant to try some typical Medellin cuisine – ajiaco de pollo and a patacone both were delicioius. Gio’s was a chicken soup that comes with a plate of capers and sour cream to add to taste. My patacone was a plate size taco with half an avocado, shredded pork, salad etc. The meal was enhanced by some phenomenal singing by two traditionally dressed musicians, unfortunately their voices were so powerful we couldn’t actually hear each other talk, but hey ho!

The traffic in Bogota is constant and crazy, at each intersection jugglers and various entertainers walk in to the road and entertain everyone while you wait for a green light! Luckily there is a great bus system called the TransMilenio with it’s own lane and ‘stations’ that make it easy to get anywhere. Well I say easy, it took Gio and I about twenty minutes of staring at the map and walking up and down the platform jostled around by commuters before we figured it out – but turns out that wasn’t due to the complexity of the system so much....

Our first day in the city we took the TransMilenio down town and did the mini walking tour in the Lonely Planet.

One of many beautiful churches

One of the first stops of course was food orientated – a traditional Santafereno which is hot chocolate served with cheese and bread that you dunk in it! Denise is the only person I know who I thought might actually like that (something about chocolate digestives and cheese)!

Chocolate Santafereno

Next stop was the Botero museum – the artist who makes everything fat! Which we really liked.

Generously proportioned Mona Lisa

There was a slightly embarrassing moment when I got a bit too close with my enthusiasm and set the alarms off.

How Gio and I are starting to look:

At the exhibition we bumped in to the Ozzy girls that were on the catamaran with us from panama which was a bit of a coincidence – doing the same walking tour as us! Next stop was the gold museum which was also really interesting but vast and so we were ready for more cheese and chocolate afterwards!

Crazy gold tribal figures

Day two in the city was going to be sightseeing but we ended up in an amazing shopping mall, the food court was phenomenal – every food you could imagine and amazing quality. Then we headed in to ‘Zona T’ for the evening and ate lovely food and ended up in a little Salsa bar with a live band, not quite brave enough to join in but we both loved watching and wondering.... “why can everyone in Colombia dance so well? Why do we have two left feet?!”