Another Adam Arrives

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A 1.5 hour plane flight beats a 16 hour bus ride anytime!!

Adam Caplan and I arrived into Bogota and checked into our hostel for the next few days, the Cranky Croc. To anyone traveling to Bogota...stay here b/c it was seriously one of the nicest hostels I have ever stayed at! While we were waiting for the other Adam to arrive, Caplan and I partook in the hostel's friday night BBQ. Alex, the literal do-everything at the hostel, cooked up deliciously tender steaks that could easily hold up to any of the stuck-up steakhouses found in the states. Cohen stumbled into the hostel starving but we immediately ushered him onto the tequila party bus on an empty stomach.

Drinking tequila sober on a bumpy bus could be a recipe for disaster but surprisingly I made it out without being any projectile vomit on my body. The bus first stopped at a sort of make-out point for Rolos (term for Bogotenos) with a nice view of the city. Afterward, we headed to Cha Chas, a posh club on the 42nd floor of a building in La Zona Rosa. The music there was pretty decent and the views were breathtaking. Our final stop was a bar in the district where we were staying, La Candeleria. Nice place but the DJ had a slight obsession with Michael Jackson. I swear he must have cued a 30 minute MJ medley! The Adams and I eventually stumbled out of the bar at closing to the scene of police overlooking the street from balconies. I have no idea why they were there or what they were looking for but I wasn't to keen on finding out! Regardless, the Adams and I had a great time drinking, dancing, and carrying on throughout the night...

The next day, we hopped on a cable car up to Monserrate. Its basically the top this very steep mountain with a church and other tourist shops on top. The view of Bogota is unparalleled though. There are also several parillas serving up the same meat to unsuspecting tourists. Cohen and I were offered some grilled tripe and we (reluctantly) accepted. Note to self...tripe is NOT good!

After lunch, I headed out to a local bar with Alex, Ryan, Jason, and others from the hostel to watch the World Cup qualifier between Colombia and Ecuador. The bar was absolutely packed with Rolos, chearing their national team. The bar absolutely erupted when Colombia finally broke the deadlock in the 81st minute. I traded high fives with locals at the bar and basked in the pure ecstasy they felt for their team's country...

We decided to splurge a little for Adam Caplan´s last night in Colombia so the three of us and a hostel friend, Ryan, headed 45 min out of town to a restaurant called Andres Carnes des Res. It is a crazy mad house of meat. Lots of steak, drinking, dancing, and carrying on. The place itself was kind of like a Friday´s on LSD. Quite anitquey and mad. All that was missing was the flair. We got back to the hostel where Cohen and I stayed up singing and dancing to the Beatles, Zeppelin, Elton John, Talking Heads, etc with Juan and an Aussie girls whose name escapes me. All of a sudden, we walk into the sun room and realize the sun is up. No rest for the weary in Bogota!

So one Adam leaves but another remains (albeit barely)! On extremely little sleep, we decide to rent bikes to tool around the city. When we tell the woman our destination is the central market, she tells us not to stop along the way because its dangerous. I guess she thought we might be enticed by the sight of tranny hookers because that is pretty much all we saw along the way. Walking around the central food market is probably my favorite thing to do when traveling to a foreign city. We bought some fruit, ripped cheap shrimp ceviche, and took in the sights and smells of the market. The ride back uphill was not as much fun. Later, we stopped by the Botero museum (Colombia's most famous, and seemingly only, artist) and lost ourselves bar and cafe hopping in La Candeleria. We even got to sample some Chicha, a fermented corn beverage. It is actually A LOT better than it sounds!

Sunday nights are fairly dead in South America so we spent the night at the hostel preparing for the long journey to Salento in the morning...

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