Blogs from Bogota, Colombia, South America - page 5

Before committing to date #4 I apply the litmus test: I need to feel “Fuck Yes!” else the answer is “No, let’s be friends.” That rule works great when you’re living in a town and attempting to establish a long term local relationship; however, what is the right answer if you’re in town for 2 months? I met Margarita my 4thday in Bogota. She was sweet, kind, cute, and wanted to show me the town. The first date in the park was filled with jokes, the second date was more laughs in a bar with friends but if friends weren’t there we may have run out of topics to discuss. By date #3 it was a lot of empty stares. Decision point: Should I do date #4? I’m only going to be in town for another ... read more

Suzanne here... We landed in Bogota 12 hours later than expected, at about 11.15pm. Our only choice was to get a taxi. We'd been warned about just flagging one down, but the general consensus seemed to be the airport taxi rank was safe enough. In the end I think he overcharged us a bit, but nothing too outrageous and he did take a direct route. We were just glad to be at our hotel. Hotel Casona del Patio was basic but quite charming, and cheap. It was also in the area we wanted to be in, Chaperino. However for once we were not tempted to explore. It was quick showers and bedtime. Of course we felt lots better after some sleep. We were in South America! Despite the travelling we've done, including most of Central America, ... read more

The start of our whistle-stop tour of Colombia was a bit traumatic - our flight arrived late, it took us 90 minutes to get through immigration and our pre-booked hotel transfer did not bother to wait for us. As you can imagine, we were a bit stressed out when we finally arrived at our hotel at 2am. Welcome to Colombia! After a few hours sleep we toured Bogotá's highlights before meeting the rest of our tour group in the evening. Although Bogotá is a huge, sprawling place it didn't take us too long! We took the cable car up Monserrate, a 3,172m mountain that dominates the city centre, stopping to ask the handsome local policemen for directions to the cable car station. The high elevation made us quite breathless (or was it the policemen?). Once back ... read more

Well, two weeks in and I am settled into life in Bogota. Sorry about the lack of accents but I use a Spanish keyboard for email but can't easily switch in Chrome with other apps. Anyway, I like Chapinero and it's ease to move around the city. I will have to get some more photos but I never take my phone since it doesn't work without local cell service so I always forget to take it for just photos. Anyway, some of the things I like are the local feel of residents here, reasonable food and stores. There is a lot of graffiti, but interestingly, the shop owners hire artists to paint over this. Most of the storefronts are just metal security frontages, so painting them actually makes sense. From what I see, good art won't ... read more

Quite a few years ago myself and a friend travelled the vast majority of Central and South America independently, with minimal planning and the folly of youth on our side we survived intact and I gave myself much mental back slapping on a job well done. But nagging doubts gnawed away at the back of my mind that I knew one day I had to rectify-I had consciously bottled going to Colombia and Venezuela as I wasn't brave enough. It was too dangerous I convinced myself; a land of drug cartels flooding the streets with cocaine, Pablo Escobar country, ultra right paramilitary groups and FARC kidnapping tourists, a hatred of all Westerners from the Spanish colonisers to the meddling United States and surely even a Brit. Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick to Machu Picchu and ... read more