Bogota

Summary

• Bogota is really cold
• Safer here than in Rio - weird!

Bogota overview
The first thing that I noticed about Bogota was the cold. Due to it's elevation the temperature hovers around 17 degrees year round. Couple that with pretty frequent showers and I got a shock to the system which resulted in a pretty bad throat infection. Boo hoo for me, yes - I know.

The original plan was to visit outside of Bogota but things didn't fall into place so all we saw was Bogota and a nearby village called Zipaquira where there is an underground church in a salt mine. The main square in the city is beautiful and surrounded by lovely Spanish architecture. Bogota is a blend of old world and modernisation.

Overlooking the city is the church of Monserrate which is perched high on a mountain. Luckily for us the cloud cleared while we were up there visiting and we got some amazing views of the city.

Monseratte church

 

Black Jesus statue at Monseratte church.
Thought to possess special powers. (Yeah thats right!! - MK)



The view of Bogota city from the church.
Note the jacket - it was freezing!

A typical Bogota street - very pretty!

Bolivar square

Security
Most people's first question about Colombia (as mine was) is about security. Is it safe? In our short time there we felt pretty safe. There is a lot of police everywhere and also special tourist police. They are incredibly helpful and friendly (helping us with directions when we got lost).
The one scuffle we saw (involving a kitchen knife) was quickly dealt with by police and army (unlike the first fight in Rio which the police watched with mild indifference). All in all, I felt safer in Bogota than in Rio.


Who needs pepper spray, when you can rock out an uzi submachine gun.

The people were also really friendly with a couple of random people coming up to help us in the street and saying "First time to Bogota? Welcome!". Given the history of the counrty, the people go out of their way to be friendly.

Accommodation challenges....
Most interestingly in Bogota we stayed in three different places. At first we were staying in a hostel because we had stayed in a budget hotel in Rio and wanted to get our budget back on track - big mistake! The hostel was noisy because the room we had was next to the common area (yes, we are party poopers). Also, during this stay we confirmed our earlier suspicion that shared bathrooms are really not for us anymore. There's something about having to wait in line to pee which irritates us (and tinea potential - MK). But the biggest concern we had was the security of our stuff in the room as the lock was, well, it looked like a padlock from Kmart on a door that could have easily been pushed in. Given we are flashpacking it, we thought it better to move on.

Paying a little extra to stay at a budget hotel was no biggy but a budget hotel in Bogota where tourism is truly in it's infancy didn't work out so well.
Advertisement:                                                        Actual
- Double room                                       Very spacious room with double bed (tick)  
- free wi-fi                                              Only on the first three floors of the hotel (they put us on the 6th)
- cable tv                                               Only in Spanish (not so good if you dropped out of school - MK)
- hot water                                             Only a trickle of hot water (so technically they didn't lie)
- all day american breakfast.                   Being forced hamburgers for dinner and declined breakfast on 
                                                                morning #1. On morning #2 we were given a refund of $10,000 
                                                                pesos to buy breakfast.

Poor customer service and no hot water moved us on.......luckily it was to a beautiful 4 star apartment as I had a pretty severe throat infection by this time and barely left the apartment.

Personally, I was pleased to leave Bogota and head back to the warmer weather.