23/11/18 I rushed through the airport in Havana and I had to ask people to let me pass them in the queue at the customs to be on time at the boarding gate. The flight to Bogota went fine and I found Lori at the baggage reclaim. We took some cash out and took a taxi to the Graffiti hostel in the historic centre.
We arrived late and were hungry but didn’t want to explore the city by night to find some food so we ate some of the cereals I had with me (thanks Charlotte ?).
We shared a room with Nancy, a girl from Texas who came back really late at night.
24/11/18 While we were having a basic breakfast at the hostel, 2 guides came to recruit visitors for their free walking tour of the city, and one girl at the table recommended one to us so we had 10 min to decide whether we wanted to join the 10 am tour.
We met the group on a local plaza and Alejandro our guide took us to a few local experiences. We tried local fruits, Colombian coffee (and learned how to pour water properly to free the aromas), coca leaf tea and chicha, a local fermented drink made of pineapple skin, corn and sugar cane.
Typical Colombian coffee is arabica, the smoothest apparently. And similarly to the vines, the coffee takes its properties from its ground and surroundings( lemons, peaches, ginger, berries). If the coffee does not make bubbles when you pour hot water, it means the coffee is not fresh. I also learned that espresso is the lightest coffee as the beans don’t get in contact with water for long.
Colombia has a great variety of fruits (43 native fruits) thanks to the fact that there are no seasons here. Some of them are 4 varieties of passion fruit (grenadidja, maracuja, pachita and gulupa (common in Europe)), dragon fruit, 3 tomatoes, lulo, kiwi, guanavana and guavas.
Colombia was conquered by the Spanjards who converted the aboriginals to catholicism. They gave new names to the local people and built the first church in 1538.
I also learned that the word ‘salary’ comes from ‘salt’, as salt used to be used as money.
In the afternoon, we crossed the currency museum, which looks a lot like Zorro’s house and we entered El Museo del Oro, the gold museum which was great. They have 35000 golden items and 25000 pieces of pottery, beautifully displayed.
It suddenly started to rain and it was fun to watch all the locals rushing to find shelter in a matter of seconds. We soon realised that they are used to the quickly changing weather and that we’d better hurry too. Soon a storm was pouring heavy rain and in a few seconds there was nobody left outside. They know how to deal with the changing weather!
We went to La Puerta Falta for dinner where we had nice Colombian food.
25/11/18 We joined the free graffiti tour in the morning. Our guide, Jay was raised in the US but born in Colombia, and came back 15 years ago. He gave us a tour of many tags and murals in the historic centre.
We went back to the same spot for lunch (Abuela) and chilled back at the hostel.
The restaurant recommended by the hostel for dinner was closed so we went to Selina for local tapas, a fancy hostel that also has a restaurant and it was really good!
26/11/18 We took the funicular to get to Monserrate. The view from there is beautiful (3150m) and I didn’t realise how big Bogota was before I got up there. More than 8 million people live in the city, and from the top every single square meter is used, even though we can see miles and miles away. The church at the top had nothing special but the mini market was fun.
We went back to our favourite lunch spot where we had meatballs with rice, pasta and veggies for less than $3.
We took an Uber to get to the airport and the driver dropped us at the earliest parking spot to avoid being fined, as Uber is still controversial here. Our flight to Armenia was just 1h, and a taxi drove us to our hotel.
