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Day 113 -115
Catch quick flight to Bogota and meet our friendly hostel owner Antonio (from Spain) who explains his car is new and then proceeds to get lost several times in Bogota before we finally reach our hostel. We call Rigo and we meet up and he shows us the Zona Rosa area that we are staying in, which is basically full of shopping malls and posh bars and restaurants. We spend most of the late afternoon/evening in a bar which does fantastic martinis and amazing food, having a lovely time chatting away.
We are keen to do the bike tour which everyone has raved about, and so we set the alarm early with a plan to leave the hostel by 9.15 to make the tour at 10.30. A series of mishaps including, being told the bus takes 20 minutes (it takes 1 hour), being told the wrong number, Simon not looking up where the place is on a map means that at 11.30 we are still wandering round trying to find the place... I am so cross and frustrated I feel like steam is coming out of my ears. We eventually give in, go to the tourist
information office and armed with a map and clear directions, we finally find the place and book onto the 1.30 tour. After a lunch in a workmen’s cafe, we get our bikes, meet our guide Juan, and we are off! The tour highlights include the local market, where we get to try weird and wonderful fruits, the university where we get to see the protest graffiti and the small coffee factory we stop at. Oh, and whilst cycling round an industrial area (to avoid the busy traffic), Si spots a guy pulling his pants down and squatting... and not immediately realising what the guy is doing has a good old stare (luckily I am oblivious to this) (Si – I feel sorry for the poor guy – he finds what he thinks is a quiet spot... and then a bike tour cycles past!)... Anyway after nearly 5 hours of cycling round, we are bushed, and head back on the horribly cramped bus to our hostel. We meet up with Rigo (and his friend Fabien) and have a few drinks and a slice of pizza.
We brave the awful bus system and go to the gold museum, which is cool,
although we both agree, a bit same/same after a while. I have managed to persuade Si to do some shopping with me (2 pairs of my trousers have disintegrated) and after just 30 mins we find a perfect pair... result. I suggest we go to see a film, and after arguing about whether to see Thor and Arthur Millionaire, I win and we go to see Arthur (I argue that a bad comedy is not as bad as a bad action film... how wrong I am). The film is truly, truly terrible and after 30 nauseating and uncomfortable minutes we leave. Life is just too short.
We chill at the hostel for the evening as we have to be up at 5am and feel sad to be leaving Colombia. This was a place that we didn’t even plan to visit, and it unexpectedly took our hearts... we’ll be back.
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