Back to Bogota.....our time is running out

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We spent 2 spells in Bogota once before we flew off to San Andres Island, and again after the Caribbean Coast and Ciudad Perdida but for brevity of blog entries we have decided to condense the two into one!

Bogota the First Time - 8 July to 11 July

We made it! Thankfully this bus ride wasn't so dramatic as our ride into Manizales....it was however just as travel sick inducing.....there is something odd at trying to watch a movie on a bus going through winding hills and having to read Spanish subtitles. We made it though and soon we were whizzing though the Bogota streets on our way to another hostel! First impressions of Bogota are that its actually quite a nice city. It lacks the overcrowded feeling you get in BA and the sense of safety consciousness you get in Quito. The other thing you notice about Bogota is that its cold. Now given that Gordon had decided in Quito that we wouldn't be having any other cold weather, and sent most of his warm clothes home with Lucy the chilly temperature wasn't what we were expecting.

We had 2 full days in Bogota before we headed out to San Andres and so we decided to make the most of it. We read the Lonely Planet and decided that their walking tour sounded pretty good......the usual collection of museums, churches and Plaza's. So first stop was to walk from the hostel to Plaza Bolivar, the starting point from our day of walking. Plaza Bolivar is a pretty impressive square with Government buildings at either end, the obligatory statue of Simon Bolivar in the centre and a couple of churches.....and of course the local pigeons....hundreds of them! One of the Government buildings is the Courts of Justice. Its a little newer than the other buildings mainly on account of the fact it was blown up by those FARC/Narcotics guys during the civil war from which Colombia has only recently emerged. Despite the fact that for a long period Colombians lived under the spectre of terrorist attacks or kidnappings, its amazing that you just don't get a sense of a generation who have lived in fear.

Leaving Plaza Bolivar we headed towards Calle Jiminez and the Plaza de Oro, for the famous Gold Museum. Now if there is one constant in Colombia its that just about every city you visit lists as one of its tourist attractions the gold museum. The one in Bogota is the most comprehensive with amazing sculptures and lithographic histories of the many different indigenous groups that inhabited the country before the dark days of colonialism. There is so much gold in the gold museum and some of the pieces are so immaculately crafted that it is amazing to think that it was all done with basic tools and techniques. Little wonder the Spanish were so amazed and crazed by the lustre of the yellow metal! Imagine their horror when ritual burials of important indigenous people involved casting into deep lakes gold and emeralds and other precious items.

Now Lonely Planet reckons you need an hour for the Gold Museum.....yeah if you basically walk through without looking or admiring the many pieces they have on display. About 3 hours after entering we walked out and decided that in order to continue the tour of Bogota we ought to get some extra energy. We headed up Calle 7 and towards the Colombian Moneda and Botero Museum and on the way found Jaun Valdez.....pretty much Colombia's answer to Starbucks, except the coffee actually tastes like coffee! A refreshing coffee and it was onto the Moneda, the colombian mint where were received an introduction to how coinage and currency was developed in the new world! From there we headed into the Botero museum which was connected to the Moneda.

Who or what is Botero you ask??? Well there are pretty much 2 famous artists/writers in Colombia. In literary terms the one everyone refers to is Gabriel García Márquez.....why I personally am not so certain and if someone has deciphered his novel "100 Years of Solitude" yet then we'd appreciate spending the odd couple of hours discussing it with them. The other famous person is Botero. Botero started out like any other artist painting ordinary pictures which pretty much looked like run of the mill painters. Botero though was a little smarter than your average painter and figured that in good marketing terms you have to have a hook. His was to paint his subjects are grotesquely fat, out of proportion, with simplistic facial features. From the late 70's onwards he adopted this style which became distinctive and recognisable and one which one doesn't have to have a Masters in Art to appreciate!

That evening we hung out at the hostel for a bit and meat a great bunch of people with whom we drank beer, swapped stories and had a laugh with! The next day we decided that we wanted to see La Quinta, Bolivar's house on the edge of the Candelaria District of Bogota and then take the cable car up Montserrat to take in the amazing views over the city. Both of these were easy walking distance from the hostel, which was good, because that evening was to be a pretty big one. The guys we'd been socialising with the night before had suggested we all head out for the evening....it was Saturday night after all. Their suggestion was the tourist bus around Bogota which stopped at a series of bars entry included in the price and of course the obligatory shots of Vodka and Tequila en route. Now all in all the trip was aimed at stopping at 3 bars and one lookout point. From a hazy memory the lookout was pretty, though I think that our hosts on the bus were a little liberal with the proportion of vodka to coke in the glass. Have vague recollections of the first club we went to.......even vaguer recollection of the cab ride home......and we weren't sure how the half eaten pizza ended up in our room! Oh well something to contemplate on the flight to San Andres!

Bogota the Second Time - 30 July to 4 August

Well given that having a fractured arm and not being able to swim and enjoy the Caribbean Coast put paid to our plans to relax in a hammock on a beach in Tayrona National Park, we decided to fly back to Bogota as part of our journey south to Lima.....our exit point from South America. Our equation was pretty simple. We fly out of Lima on the 14th of August, which means that we realistically need to be there a day before. To get from Santa Martha to Lima overland would probably take 5 maybe 6 days on buses.........not a pleasant way to end 7 months travelling through South America. Hence or decision to fly to Lima, then fly to the Amazon, boat into Peru and finally fly to Lima......I think the thought of another bus trip has left us with no end of dread.

We arrived back on Bogota and having been there before in many ways it was like coming home. We went back to our previous hostel, the Platypus and met up with Wendy who had opted to bus down to Bogota....officially a 15 hour bus ride that apparently took 21 hours vindicating our decision to fly. This time we were in Bogota a little longer, 4 full days in all and we had a couple of things on our list which we really wanted to do, namely the Police Museum (complete with the Pablo Escobar exhibit), the National Museum and we had to pay a little visit to our friendly jeweller to collect the special item he was making for us, well for one of us anyway!

First stop was to the jeweller's (via the bank of course!). Where XXXXXX the jeweller let us know that the special item we were having made wasn't quite ready yet, but that it would be ready by the Monday before we were due fly out. With that in mind we decided to start our sightseeing. First we wandered down to the Police Museum. As indicated previously, they have a pretty detailed and somewhat graphic display of the the downfall of the drug cartel's and in particular the Medellin cartel run by one Pablo Escobar. The display shows various personal items including the jacket Pablo was wearing when he was shot and killed whilst trying to escape from the Colombian Police. The display also shows various mug shots of cartel members, some of who it was their last picture, because it actually shows their death shot. There is also a great photo with the police responsible for killing Pablo, posing over the body as if it was some trophy kill.....well in some ways it probably was. For all that has been written about whether the Medellin cartel, both the accounts that depict Pablo as a monster and those that depict him as a South American version of Robin Hood, what is indisputable is that the trafficking of cocaine through Colombia comes at a pretty high cost, especially from an environmental perspective. 1 gram of cocaine requires 1 tonne of coco leaves. It produces around 12 times as much effluent by-product from the various chemicals required to catalyse the coco leaves into a marketable drug.

From the Police Museum we headed for that other famous Colombian product......coffee. Where else in Colombia do you go for coffee than their answer to Starbucks.....Juan Valdez! Mmmmmmm.......great way to recharge the batteries. After coffee we wandered through the main square and down towards the Presidential Palace where unfortunately the guidebook let us down and the changing of the guards was an hour earlier than they had suggested......hmmmmm....never trust the guidebook, we should have known this after 6 months of travelling!

The next day we headed out of Bogota to the nearby town of Zipaquira, to visit the famous Salt Cathedral. The salt Cathedral is a cathedral built in the hollowed remains of a salt mine. The salt mine is still in operation, but it is now down to level three, with levels 1 and 2 given over to tourism. The Cathedral, once you finally get passed the 14 stages of the cross is pretty impressive. It is HUGE and mass is held there every Sunday. It was hewn from the Rock Salt of the mine and it is possible to take a further tour into the mine shaft itself and get a feel for how they created these HUGE caverns. The day though was a pretty long day and Zipaquira is about an hour and a half from Bogota, so by the time we got back, none of us were looking for a massive night out clubbing, so we opted for the safety of the "Hard Rock" bar not far from the hostel where we drank reasonably priced local beers and took a nostalgia trip back to all those wonderful hits and misses of the 90's, 80's and 70's!

So our final day in Bogota was a dual process of making sure we got that little special thing from the jeweller and then some final sightseeing. First to the jewellers and sure enough it was ready. It was also pretty much as we had hoped it would look. A sigh of relief from Gordon and a gleeful giggle from Ann. Well with that out of the way at least we could get on with the day's sightseeing. First stop was the scenic tower, where we took the lift up 25 or so stories and were treated to a wonderful vista of the city of Bogota. The building is near the University district and the vantage point gives you a real feel for just how big Bogota is and how wide it has sprawled. From there we headed out to the Colombian National Museum where we spent 2 or 3 hours wandering through the pre and post Colonial history of Colombia. Funnily though the museum's take on history seems to end in 1948, just after the assassination of the politician Jorge Gaitan.

Our last night in Bogota, was again spent having a few drinks at the Hard Rock Bar......we managed to get a few people from the hostel out with us including Michael who was on our Ciudad Perdida trek. Great way to end our time in a truly wonderful city.

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