Bogota, Colombia

We made it to Colombia! Our first week is in the capitol city of Bogota which sits at at 8500ft elevation. We had been around 5000 feet for most of our Guatemala adventures, but this new elevation still takes a bit of getting used to walking up the hills. We stayed at a $50 per night Airbnb on the edge of the Candelaria district which is the old town and a center for a lot of the museums and tourist restaurants. Our place had an amazing view and it was so clear to see across this sprawling city. Although that was just the first day. They had a bunch of uncommon forest fires for the rest of the week which gave the city a haze that is common for big cities. We decided not to take the cable car to the 10,000ft lookout of Monserrate because of the haze and we had a pretty good view just from our house. The smoke wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the recent Augusts we have had in Seattle during forest fire season.

Yes, we are in Colombia which is still the origin of much of the drugs that get sent to North America, but just like Mexico, the cartels rarely cause a problem for tourists. The city does have a problem with street crime, so we are always on guard against theft. We carried old phones and fake wallets in case we were robbed, but it still gave us an uneasy feeling a lot of the time. We were told to stay off the streets after dark but that wasn’t much of a problem because most of the restaurants closed at 8pm. The big meal for Colombians is at lunchtime and we took full advantage of that. We had some fantastic food and it was even more affordable that Guatemala. Local lunches, called almuerzos, came with soup, a meat cutlet, potatoes or rice, salad, and a lemonade for less than $3. We like those but we mostly went to the nicer restaurants in our neighborhood that had amazing Colombian, International or fusion food for $10 or less. M had some fantastic steaks and the chicken cutlets were always seasoned well and never overcooked. We also tried a lot of the street foods which were even cheaper but also very flavorful.

We took a walking tour of the Candelaria neighborhood the first day to give us an idea of the layout and vibe of our neighborhood at its attractions. During the week we visited several of the museums. We really liked the Gold museum which was really more like an anthropology or archeology museum, especially when you attended the free tour with one of the scientists like we did. The gold artifacts were cool but the stories behind the culture that developed them made it worthwhile. We also visited the Fernando Botero museum with his famous paintings and statues of rather rotund people. A lot of Seattle people like us are aware of Botero because of the large statue of Adam on 2nd & Madison. The Botero museum also had Botero’s collection of European art. He seemed to buy one of all the famous artists from Monet to Picasso. There was also lots of other good art in the interconnected museum complex. We also checked out the main plaza and several of the cathedrals. In many ways it reminded us of a European city. The last house of Simon Bolivar was also interesting to see including his famous sword.

On our last day in town we took the painfully slow Tourist Tren to the salt mining town of Zipaquira (aka Zipa). The train was slllooooowwww and the first hour of the 2.5 hour journey we watched a guy on a single speed BMX bike keep pace with us. I think we never exceeded 30 mph, and most of the ride we were going ~20mph. The train was filled with a lot of locals that were very happy to be on their first train ride. Many people along the route were taking videos of this slow old train going by. Everybody loves trains – even rickety old trains from many decades ago. At first we couldn’t figure out exactly why everyone was just this excited to see or be on this train, then we realized this train is one of only 2 passenger trains in the entire country, and it was a huge attraction for many Colombians. We went to Zipa to see the Salt Cathedral. They have created a tourist attraction by building an entire cathedral 500 feet underground in the old salt mine tunnels. A real unique experience. The pictures I took can’t really explain what we saw. Each of the mining tunnels were dedicated to something that happened on the day of Jesus death. But we just saw different types of crosses in each tunnel…. When we finally made it to the main cathedral, we sat down to watch a musical light show. We then found a 3D movie in another salt mine tunnel that explained the history and what we had just witnessed while exploring the Jesus salt tunnels. Afterwards we found another beautiful cathedral and had lunch next to another town square before boarding the train for the long slow ride back to Bogota.

We are now excited to leave the highlands and head to the town Cartagena at sea level. We need some beach time and also are interested to seeing one of the original Caribbean cities of South America.