Bogotá

OK, I've obviously been good as I've been allowed another go at the blog... anyway the last entry was written while we were chilling out in Taganga, we spent a couple of nights on the Caribbean coast, firstly in Santa Marta which was nice enough, then in Barranquilla, a grotty huge port city which comes highly recommended as a party town if you know people, but when you get dropped off by the bus in the middle of some anonymous street, no map, everyone telling you that the city is 'closed' because it's a public holiday, and the only bar being the one on the corner blaring out ear-splittingly loud salsa, it didn't really hit the spot.

So it was with a bit of relief that we arrived in Bogotá, not least as the temperature was back to a nice 'British spring' level, as opposed to the heat of the Caribbean. Surprisingly, given that we were expecting a city which has a mix of slums and modern anonymous office type buildings, Bogotá was a pleasant surprise, a nice old colonial centre where the hostels are, and a modern swanky posh shops and lots of bars and clubs area 20 minutes away by cab. We found ourselves a nice hostel, run by very friendly people (bizarrely natalia, the main girl who works here, lived in Maidenhead for a while...)

Arriving on Saturday, we hit the bars on the first night, and had a great time checking out the happy hour cocktails, then a cuban live music bar. It was nice hanging with the trendy Bogotano crowd for a bit, even though we were the poor relations (the population here tends to divide into very poor / getting by / very well off... the area with the bars/shops is most definitely for the latter category).

We thought the Plaza Bolivar looked a bit like Trafalgar Square, what with all the pigeons there:

Although upon taking a closer look you do spot slight differences...

During the day, Bogotá doesn't really feel any different to any other big city in terms of safety, i.e. don't go to the dodgy areas, keep your wits about you etc. However at night it has a reputation which I think warrants a healthy respect... so rather than hail a cab on the streets, you get the hostel/bar/restaurant to phone you one, then when you get in the cab you give the driver the last two digits of the phone number to make sure it's the right one. The neighbourhood the hostel is in is described in the guidebook as not very safe to wander around at night, sure enough on Sunday night the dark streets did have an ominous feel to them. Normally I only get offered drugs on the street when I'm wandering around on my own, here they do it when we're out together. And when we went out to the bar/shops area (which feels very safe), we went in search of a music venue that had been recommended, but we only had to go a block or two outside the main area and suddenly we didn't feel very comfortable wandering the streets.

I remember watching one of those Michael Palin travel programmes before we left, where he went to Bogotá and got a local ex-pat to drive him down 'Bullet Alley' - essentially a road in the slums that's so dangerous, if a stranger drives down there the people assume they're undercover police or army, and start shooting at them! Might take Carine there for a treat on our last day...

Having said all that, the situation's clearly changed beyond all recognition here in the last few years - the Colombian government is currently massivly promoting tourism both here and in other South American countries, their slogan is 'Colombia - the only risk is that you'll stay'... which seems to me to rather underplay the other risk that you get kidnapped by FARC guerillas and held hostage in the Amazonian jungle for 4 years...

I'm pleased to report that we did a bit of 'culchah'... went to the Museo Del Oro (gold museum), which is described as one of the 'must sees' in South America. Either way, it's pretty impressive, it's basically a collection of all the pre-Spanish artefacts made of gold (and silver, platinum, copper etc) that have been discovered in the area. Some of them look pretty amazing, especially when you consider that a lot of them were buried with their owner when he died. I guess gold wasn't exactly growing on trees at that time, but it doesn't seem to have been exactly hard to find. Check out the pictures on Flickr, they look great... a couple below:


On Wednesday/Thursday this week we had a brief detour to a place called Zapaquirá, about an hour by bus from Bogotá. I'm sure the scenery on the bus ride was beautiful, however we couldn't see any of it as the window was covered in a picture of Jesus (in classic Robert Powell mode). The reason you go to Zapaquirá is to visit the Salt Cathedral - basically a huge salt mine in the mountainside, in which they've created a cathedral for tourists and religous types 130 metres underground. I can't remember who said that the Giant's Causeway was worth seeing, but not worth going a long way to see, the Salt Cathedral would probably fall into that category. Seemed rude not to while we're here though...

Anyway, we're now just about to head off to the airport to fly back to Quito, from where we'll head south to Cuenca (an old colonial city in the south of Ecuador) and then onto northern Peru. Lots of bus travel coming up over the next week or two.

Gary