Sunday 27th – 28th December, Bogota, Colombia

Thank god we left when we did last night. Not a great day to travel with a nasty hangover. It took over 8 hours to cover 250km over of impossibly windy roads. Ascending and descending the first mountain range from Manizales was spectacular but within an hour of being on the bus we both had motion sickness to add to our hangover! After 4 hours of travelling down the picturesque mountainside (mostly wearing an eye mask on to avoid being sick), we arrived at a small town in a very broad, fertile valley with a tropical microclimate. We ordered a simple lunch of soup and fried pork, only to discover tubular intestine floating in our soup! At that point we stopped eating and bought a bag of mangostines (delicious tropical fruit) and continued our journey up into another mountain range to reach the high plateau that Bogota sits on!
When we arrived in Bogota, the city certainly had a more edgy feel to it than other parts of Colombia which we had visited but it was still much safer than we expected it to be. There was no shortage of taxis (look for the photo) and we made our way to the old town through cobblestoned streets overlooked by a wall of mountains (did we mention that Colombia is very mountainous?). The hotel was only a couple of months old and the staff were really friendly giving us great recommendations on what to do and see during our short stay. The fact that the hotel owner was also an Italian emerald trader also helped keep Sav’s attention.
Our first night was spent at a crazy Colombian steak house for dinner... but this was no ordinary restaurant...there was salsa, juggling, dancing, singing, clowns, things falling from the ceiling...
The next day we ended up on a 6 hour bike tour where we got to see a lot of the city and met a bunch of other fellow travellers. Later that night we met up with Alba (from Santa Marta) and her friend Richard. After dinner and drinks Richard took us out to what can only be described as a shopping centre of bars where we met more of their friends and drunk more rum!
Colombia has been one of the easiest places to meet locals on our entire trip. The people we met were very aware of Colombia’s poor international reputation and were prepared to go out of their way to show us there is much more to the people and culture than we see in the media. We were also pleasantly surprised at the openness with which they are willing to discuss the issues the country faces. It certainly gave us far greater insight into Colombia and made our time there really enjoyable.