The foolish plan was to sleep on the 6.5 hour flight to Bogota. I made sense at the time, but in practise it never works like that. I think I may have dosed off for
about an hour or two, so I was awfully tired when I arrived in Bogota airport.
After clearing passport control and customs, I managed to lose the piece of
paper I had written down the address of the hostel I had booked. I knew the
street it was on and part of the name, so when I was approached by the taxi
driver at the airport he said we’ll figure it out.

Along the way he called some people to see whether they knew it, but no dice. It wasn’t until we were driving along the street, a very long main street, that he
started asking people if they knew of the hostel – and thankfully they did and
pointed us in the correct direction. But it didn’t end there, I had changed the
Argentinian peso I had on me to Colombian pesos, and I thought I had the 40,000
pesos he quoted me on when I got in the taxi. Alas no, I only had about 20,000
pesos. The driver laughed and we were off again to find an ATM. Finally with
cash in hand we returned to the hostel with cash in hand, and I tipped him an
extra 10,000 pesos for the trouble. He was a good guy and would point out tourist sights along the way.

After checking in I had to wait 20 minutes for the room to be ready, so the girl at
reception gave me a beer. It was good. It had flavour! After spending the last
5 months in Chile and Argentina where their beer is without taste, it was
almost a shock when the ale poured over my taste buds! The other surprise with
the beer is the size – it’s all 320ml! After being so accustomed to 1 litre
beers it felt awkward hold a tiny sized bottle again! And to be honest, it’s
probably for the better to start weening myself off 1 litre beers!

I slept the rest of the day and night. With the 2 hour time difference and lack of sleep, I just wasn’t up for exploring the city and couldn’t even bring myself to go out for dinner. I did have two meals on the flight, so at least I did eat something
for the day. The next morning I was awake bright and early, and sitting down
for some bread and coffee I almost had a heart attack as I tasted strong
delicious coffee once again. I could even feel my heart racing at the caffeine
hit.  

It was time to check out the city of Bogota, a place that not all that long ago would fill a traveller with dread with stories of kidnappings and robbery. This, however, is not the Bogota of today. It is now a bustling city filled with colourful
buildings, colonial architecture, and wonderfully friendly people. It is a
welcome return to a Latin American country, and while Chile and Argentina are
beautiful countries, they are thoroughly European and very little is South
American. Walking through Bogota I felt I was returning home to a real South
American city.

Another truly South American sight in cities are the presence of armed police. Military police wander the streets armed with machine guns, and while it’s odd to a westerner, it’s perfectly normal here and I kinda feel a bit safer with the
heavy security to fend off the criminal element. I did ask a police officer on
the Police Museum if there was any particular reason why there was such a
strong police presence, he just shrugged and didn’t know if anything specific
was happening. It’s just normal.

Outside of Lima, Bogota has the most impressive collection of museums I’ve seen in South America. Their art museum has an impressive display of paintings, including works by Dali and Picasso. Adjoining the art museum is the money museum, documenting all the changes to the Colombian currency and some excellent displays of old school minting machines that look like they’d be worth more than they coins they’re pressing!

The archaeological museum is just fantastic. Room after room of pre-Spanish
artefacts from this region, and I was the only one in the museum for the couple
of hours I was in there strolling around eagerly taking in all the relics of
civilisations long gone. When I entered the security guard enthusiastically
ushered me inside to the ticket counter, where a lady so happy to see me there
she had to shake my hand! This happiness to see foreigners was just the first
of many experiences of the same welcoming nature that made me really feel happy to be in Colombia.

By far the best museum in Bogota is the Museo de Oro – the Gold Museum. This is an impressive building, 3 floors packed with indigenous gold art stretching over
two thousand years. It’s astonishing the skill level of metal work they had;
small golden statues of animals are adorned in tiny lattice work that artisans
of our day would struggle with, beautiful burial masks decked out in jewellery,
and possibly the most unique thing I have seen here, small thin golden statues
of men and warriors that they would place inside of jar. It reminded me of an
ancient version of Monkeys in a Barrel.

The food in Bogota, and I’m assuming Colombia in general, is damn good. It’s similar to Ecuador in many ways, you can get a good set lunch of soup, a main meat dish and a glass of juice. The main difference is it just isn’t chicken, but you can choose between good ol’ chicken, beef or pork. And just like the welcoming
nature of the museums, the staff in the restaurants were happy to see me come
in. In one place I even had an eager owner hand me some fliers to hand out to
people in the hostel after I told her how delicious the meal was, and in a
really tasty pizzeria the owner chatted to me afterwards and wishing I had
enjoyed the meal and she hoped I would return (which I did with some people
from the hostel the next night).

In another café I returned twice to check out some local dishes. The best, and ridiculously filling, was a chicken soup called Ajiaco. I had seen some people order it and it looked amazing, what I didn’t realise that it was a potato based soup, so it was incredibly thick and filled with chicken, rice and corn. I could barely finish it off and it wasn’t until I had nearly finished it that I tried added
some chilli sauce to give it some needed spice.

The final few days in Bogota I spent just chilling in the hostel. It was a great place to hang out in, with a disturbing number of Aussie tourist that were quite jarring
at first since I hadn’t really run into many of my countrymen in South America.
There were of course a couple of German guys, one had the thickest accent
imaginable; just think of the most stereotypical German accent and this was the
way he talked. The other German, Georg, was great fun to chat with and drink
until the early hours of the morning. There are people you meet when travelling
that you get along with so we you’d consider travelling with them for a while,
and Georg was one of those guys – totally crazy German that was into adventure
travel. Unfortunately he was heading south to brave the national parks and my
plans were to head north towards the Caribbean and the heat.

There were two older ladies that were friends with the hostel owners and would come to the hostel each night. It was pretty clear one of them had a huge crush on Georg, and one night when we all decided it was too late to stay up any longer, Georg went kissed he good night and she tried slipping the tongue in. He wasn’t interested, or in his own words he wasn’t drunk enough, and strangely enough after Georg left the hostel the next day the two ladies never returned. However one night there were two Danish guys that had only arrived that day, and one had a beard and longish hair – one of these ladies was convinced he was Jesus and had some photos taken with her sitting on his lap!

On my second last day I had decided to booked flight to the city of Cali. One of the girls staying in the hostel, Anna, had recommended to check out flights instead of buses because of how cheap they were. And she wasn’t wrong. Domestic flights in Colombia are insanely cheap, and if you booked enough in advance they’re cheaper than a bus, so rather than a 14 hour bus ride to Cali it was only a 1 hour flight for an extra $10. Really a no brainer, but it is certainly weird to start flying to get from city to city instead of the bus!

My last night was spent doing some writing, chatting to a crazy American guy that was a conspiracy nutjob (but not as insane as John from Buenos Aires) and being pulled into a free Salsa class in the hostel. It was the receptionist that wouldn’t take no for an answer, so up I went to dance some salsa and while the rest of the group where doing the basic steps she was making me do more complicated moves like twirling her around. I think I do have a nature knack for the dance, and even the dance instructor demanded I return the next week.

The next morning I packed up and caught a taxi out to the airport. Leaving the overcast weather of Bogota I boarded the excellent plane that was fitted out with the kind of inflight entertainment you’d get on an expensive international flight,
and soon enough I arrived in Cali and 30 degree heat.