Bogota: Guns and Gangs or Coffee and Cartier??

---

When you hear the word Colombia, what are the first things that spring to mind?!...Cocaine, drug lords (namely Mr Escobar), crime and general lawlessness?! From what we had heard from hoards of other travellers, the aforementioned are all a thing of the past, with the new Colombia offering vibrant cities, stunning beaches, beautiful countryside and the friendliest of people. It was now time to find out for ourselves.

We arrived at Bogota's clean and modern international airport early in the afternoon, hopped in a taxi and made our way to our hostel. Having shared the taxi with an English couple we had just met at the airport, the taxi dropped them off first at the city centre area of La Candelaria. The area is still pretty notorious for crime, especially at night. Despite this, it still didn't seem to bad from within the confines of our taxi. 20 minutes or so after dropping the others off in La Candelaria, we had arrived in the almost suburban like district of Carrera. We checked into the most modern and clean hostel we had stayed in yet, dumped our bags and took a stroll down to the local supermarket and shopping/restaurant area.

Our first stop was the incredibly up market 'Waitrose', supermarket to by some basic supplies and artisan bread from the bakers within. It was then onto the main shopping area. With expectations of tacky shops full of nothing worth buying, we soon realised this wasn't going to be the case. We were instead greeted with shop fronts adorning the names of Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Burberry; the list goes on. Instead of being nothing we wanted to buy, it soon became obvious that there was nothing we could afford to buy! It was at this point where every image of 'Old Colombia' was well and truly thrown out the window.

Realising it was a pretty nice area, Rich took the opportunity to try and find some swanky hair dressers to tidy up the messy mop he had once again accrued and attempted to cut with bandage scissors. A few asks about and we found a half decent salon. Next thing you know, hair was chopped, smothered in gel and he was looking like a member of a 90's boy-band with a big slick quiff. Looking super cool, we made our way back to the hostel, had a nice cheap dinner and headed to bed.

Next morning and we were up and about with our day planned as usual. First stop of the day was to take a taxi to the foot of the mountains overlooking the city, where we would catch a funicular and take a walk along the top where there would be great views of the city. Great views there were too! As far as city views points go, we've had our fair share since we've been away, however this one ranked pretty highly. With beautiful views of forests one way and the huge city the other way, we were quite impressed. With no time to hang around, it was soon onto our next stop of the day...back to La Candelaria for a wander round to see what the city centre had to offer. We took a taxi as close to the centre as we could, secured our valuables and set off. It didn't take long until we were pestered pretty heavily by some dubious looking guys trying to sell us whatever they had to offer. Despite trying to turn a blind eye to it, their persistence broke us pretty quick and we decided to walk off. With machine gun armed police on almost each and every corner, it did help to settle any butterflies we might have had. We continued to wander around streets which are lined with numerous colonial buildings before heading along the main drag to the other end of the city centre, stopping off to buy a slightly dodgy looking Colombian football replica shirt from a guy who was cleared off his face on cocaine (at 11am).

Our next stop was an apparently renowned coffee shop, which uses locally sourced coffee beans to serve amazing coffee's. With only 50% of team Wellance being coffee drinkers it was one latte and one hot chocolate. Yummy though it was, we were soon done and dusted, so made our way back to our posh little hostel.

We decided to splash out and go for a meal, so off we went to the main restaurant and bar area. Having checked our dwindling budget, it wasn't going to be too much of a splash out, more of a ripple out. Once we had thoroughly examined all the menus in the restaurant area of one of the shopping malls, we decided on steak. It was a fast food like steakhouse; the fanciest fast food we'd ever had. We ordered a 450g fillet steak for the two of us and devoured every last scrap like a couple of starving hyenas.

With an afternoon flight the following day up to the north Colombian Coast, we still had time in the morning to explore the city a little bit more. We decided to go and have a look around the Museo del Oro (gold museum). With thousands of various gold artefacts from throughout South America it was pretty impressive. Having said that, once you seen one gold mask, you have pretty much seen them all, so we didn't hang around for too long. With our museum trip taking less time than anticipated, we now had time to get back to the hostel grab a bite to eat and make our way to the airport, still with time to spare for gem to get boozy.

Having only spent two nights in Colombia so far, our initial impressions were so different to what we had both expected. With this in mind, it built even more excitement to see what else Colombia had in store for us.

It was time to say hello to the Caribbean for the first time. Next stop...Santa Marta

---