BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

05. October - 08. October 2010

After more than three weeks in Ecuador it was time to fly to Bogota and meet Micha there to travel together for the next months.

Bogota is a huge, chaotic south-american city. There seemed to be a lot of construction going on and traffic was crazing. Traffic jams and buses everywhere. The bus system is pretty good though. There is no subway but certain buses have their own street lanes and are fairly fast. And always packed with people. It took me a few trips to places where I didn't wanted to go before I figured out how the system works. But taking the bus is always interesting and good for people viewing. Occasionally we were taking a taxi somewhere. There are a lot of taxis in Bogota but when we needed one they all seemed to be taken or the driver refused to drive to the place we wanted to go.

We stayed in a hostel in the old town, La Candelaria. The area has nice old and colorful buildings and lots of hostels, some bars and restaurants. We spent two days in Bogota and most of the time we were just walking around or taking the bus somewhere.
After a week on a boat on the Galapagos I had to do laundry. That ended up being more challenging than expected. It took over an hour and I had to ask several people to find a laundry. There the woman at the counter took ever piece of cloth out of my bag and counted how many shirts and bras there were to wash. When I went back to pick up my clothes a few hours later they weren't ready. While I was waiting there for quite a while the woman collected my clothes from all over the store. All my clothes had little blue bands sewn into them as a sign that it was my stuff.

We also went to Zipaquira, a small town north of Bogota. The town had a nice little plaza and houses, but the reason we went there was to visit the Salt Cathedral. The cathedral is underground and is build in a salt mine. Very impressive. Everything down in the mine is salt - walls, columns,... it looks like rock but it is salt.

On our last morning in Bogota we took the funicular up to Cerro de Monserrate – a small mountain with a church. The view from here over Bogota was great and we could see how big the city is. We happened to be there on “National Evacuation Day” an emergency test where all people had to go to a meeting area and wait there for a few minutes. Now we know where to go in case we happen to be there again and there will be an earthquake.

Click here for a few more pics