Bogota or Bognor?

Is it Bogota? or Bognor Regis?

Nobody is travelling anywhere at the moment. So I though I would cheer you up with a little bit of armchair travelling! I don't want to talk about coronavirus or my troubles or your troubles or anyone else's troubles, we are all dealing with this in our own way and hopefully we will get through it soon! Back in February, in what now seems like a world away Amanda and I managed to squeeze in a fabulous trip before the world turned upside down. We went back to Colombia, a country you may be familiar with if you have followed my blog for a while as I wrote about it in 2015 in a blog titled 'Colombia: The only danger is wanting to stay.' Well I have a new title now and it reads Colombia: The only danger is wanting to return!

Our trip started and very nearly ended in the capital Bogota Santa Fe, I say ended because after 5 minutes of arriving at our 'hotel' I came within a whisker of falling down a very large hole behind the reception desk which had been deftly covered up by a wet floor sign. Not deftly enough for me, clearly! Maybe next time I should think twice before booking the 30 dollar bargain on the internet - the hotel looked brilliant in the pictures, honest! At least we were only staying there a couple of days! The next day we woke up and our vacation truly began in the Candelaria, Bogota's colourful old city where I had truly the breakfast of champions - a STEAK, patacones (fried plantains), yoghurt, fresh pineapple juice and a coffee all for $3.00!!! Now I do say 'I' had the breakfast of champions as this breakfast was sadly not to be repeated as Amanda reminds that she had 'a slice of bread' as they didn't really cater for vegetarians and so we had to make do with avocado toast for the rest of the trip! How Californian!

I guess the avocado toast is not so bad after all!

To help us adjust to the altitude we took it easy on the first day by visiting a couple of Bogota's finest cultural institutions with our first stop being the Botero museum. Fernando Botero is famous for his larger than life sculptures and paintings, I was particularly impressed with the uncanny accuracy and likeness with which he managed to recreate my torso with in this scultpure! 

Uncanny likeness!

In search of El Dorado

We then spent our afternoon in search of El Dorado at Bogota's famed gold museum, unfortunately we were not the only ones, as museums in Colombia are free on Sundays a lot of other folk were searching for their share of gold as well! Not to be deterred we did find a awesome collection of gold inside including this magnificent Musica raft. It is so rare as most Pre Columbian gold objects were melted down by the Spanish conquistadors and sent back to Spain to line the coffers of the catholic church. I was so excited when we found this Musica Raft as I had seen a documentary about it and delighted in telling Amanda all about it's history and how it was made - The insufferable know it all that I am! I won't bore you all with it now but did you know it is made from one solid long piece of gold? there is not a single break in it anywhere! whew it is truly very very beautiful, obviously my picture does not do it justice. 

Crowds at the gold museum

A nice poster from Poland when the gold museum took it's show on the road! It visited London, did any of you go?

Something that had been worrying us is that Bogota does not have a subway system and we knew that sooner or later we'd have to try our luck on the transmilleio bus system, Bogota has a massive network of billions of buses which just means that all those normal bus annoyances are also magnified by a billion as well! The fun starts with the map which is just just impossibly complicated, just like the underground there are different coloured routes , but unlike the underground because it is a bus and not stuck on a single line the bus can change colours mid route, so a pink bus can suddenly veer off on to the blue line or even more confusing it may become a express bus, which is where a whole load of incomprehensible numbers on the front potentially means your bus will fly past about 7 stops (including yours of course) leaving you way out in the sticks completely and utterly lost! Another little perk of the transmillenio buses is that you can only buy tickets at certain stops, so if you aren't lucky enough to have a transmillenio card you may have to walk many miles (along the bus route while buses are flying past you) to a main station in order to simply buy a ticket! This long walk is actually rather nice as you may find yourself 'stumbling' upon a cat cafe which will certainly help you de stress while your plot your next transmillenio move, here are some pictures of some cute cats in the cafe, nothing can beat great coffee combined with cute cats!

Luckily there is lots to see and do around the Candelaria in Bogota so we did not have to use the transmillenio much, the next morning after another hearty breakfast of avocado toast we strolled down to the old home of Simon Bolivar. You cannot move in Latin America without hearing Simon Bolivars name. Simon Bolivar was instrumental in helping Colombia achieve independence from Spain and as a result was gifted a Quinta Bolivar by the newly formed government of Colombia, The palace is surrounded by really pretty gardens where the air is thick with butterflies and hummingbirds which are well worth the modest entrance fee. For a couple of dollars more they will even throw in the worlds worst audio guide. In the interests of frugality Amanda and I decided to share a headset so Amanda could listen to the stories and then pass the information on to me. The Audioguide mentioned seemingly everything, like describing in detail Bolivars favorite breakfast, his exact height, how he liked to have his bed made but not the really interesting stuff, like how his golden jewel encrusted sword was stolen by the M-19 guerrilla gang in the 1970s! I'd love to tell you more about it but sadly this excitement was the only story the Audioguide did not elaborate on, in fact it glossed over it in order to get back to the really important stuff.... like how  Simon Bolivar liked to have his carrots cut up in a particular way!

A replica of Simon Bolivars sword

Quinta Bolivar

Well after a couple of days in out 'hotel' it was time to move on, we spent some days out in the mountains in the pretty hillside town of Villa De Leyva (in a blog to follow) and then came back to Bogota to stay somewhere new. Our new hotel was much nicer and had 3 Spanish courtyards full of flowers and hammocks as well as a great big garden at the rear full of hummingbirds!!

The garden in our hotel

A hummingbird in said garden

Despite it's 'Londonesque' climate Bogota is full of exotic plants, flowers and hummingbirds and although you don't have to go far to find them the best place to look at them is at the Botanical garden. Despite the billions of Transmillenio buses zipping around the city we could not locate any that seem to stop at the botanic garden so disappointed but unperturbed we embarked on a very long, hot and sweaty walk to reach the gardens, it helped that we passed this sweet cat along the way...

... The botanic gardens were well worth the walk, they are a huge oasis right in the heart of the city, just look at the size of some of these flowers and of course the place was full of hummingbirds and butterflies! We had a bit of a result in the coffee shop, we ordered 2 coffee mochas with our excellent Spanish and somehow ended up with two huge pieces of cake instead! We were feeling quite stuffed after our cake so needless to say we skipped the sweaty walk and got a taxi back to the hotel after that!

Colombian Street Food - Amanda and her Arepa! the perfect 10 cent breakfast!

an improvement?

 

I know lots of you are growing beards during this coronavirus time, well I challenge you to beat this one!

Lost in the botanic garden!

Enjoying our accidental cake!

Well it wasn't just the cake we got lucky with on our trip, completely by coincidence our stay in Bogota also happened to coincide with the 'Tour Colombia' bicycle race and a Millonarios football game so needless to say we went to both! The cycling was a ton of fun to watch, Bogota is located high in the Andes so thre are no shortage of hills for the cyclists to climb up, a top tip for you if you happen to ever find yourself watching a bike race it is always a good idea to find a spot on the hills to watch them whizz by as they tend to be going a little slower. Amanda and I did just that and having found a shady tree to sit under settled down to wait or the riders. You never know exactly when the riders will come by and so we were all waiting on tender hooks before finally the cyclists came whizzing by. The peloton was led by last years Tour de France winner Egan Bernal and the rest of the Colombian contingent with the Europeans huffing, puffing and struggling mightily while bringing up the rear. Gringos struggle so badly up there because of the altitude, Bogota is 2600 meters high leaving us gasping for air after just the smallest altitude gain so I can only imagine how it must be trying to cycle up a mountain. This is why the Tour Colombia is dominated by local riders who are better acclimatized to the high altitude and it was certainly the case this year as we watched usually excellent climbers like Bob Jungels and Julian Alaphilippe gasping their way up the mountain. The podium finishers were all Colombian!

Waiting for the riders!

Here they are! Team Ineos and Egan Bernal!

The Europeans bringin up the rear (Alaphilipe is the chap at the back in blue with the mustache!

The king of the mountains!

The cycling fans practicing social distancing while walking back down to the city.

Something similar happens in football where you may have noticed that Colombia's neighbor Ecuador seems to quailfy for a lot of world cups despite the fact it does not have the greatest players. This is because Ecuador play their home games in Quito, the worlds highest capital city. As a result Ecuador are almost unbeatable at home, leaving legends of the game like Neymar and Messi struggling to breath suffering altitude sickness while the Ecuador team are running around completely unphased!

We had amazing seats at the Millonarios game, the sightlines underneath the banner were fantastic!

We had a load of fun in Bogota, when everything gets back to normal it is well worth a visit! Speaking of getting back to normal Ihave some good news for you, I have seen a excellent meme that said soon the Vegas casinos will be open again but just for drive through only - you drive up and they just take your money straight out of the car, there is no need for you to even get out! I'll leave you with some pretty street scenes from Bogota and I shall write a blog about Villa de Leyva and our rather ominous sounding encounter with 'La Pared' or 'The Wall'!

A wall of cats!

 
    

A happy couple!

A Llama!

5 dollars for a luggage cart in Cleveland! Welcome Home!