In which Layla and Roz find themselves surprised by Bogota.

By Layla

We had been having far too many 'normal' holidays lately, so it was with some relief that when we announced we were off to Colombia for 2 weeks, we were met with the traditional alarm and warnings aplenty - mostly around kidnapping and crime and that sort of thing. In fact, Colombia has got much safer in recent years. Particularly in the cities. So we planned a city-based adventure and off we went!

On arrival, through a thick band of clouds and spitting rain into this high altitude mountain metropolis, we were rapidly transported by taxi to our Bogota Hilton Hotel in Zona G - by all accounts Bogota is the most dangerous of our locations so we decided to ease in gently. And sure enough the Hilton was delightfully gentle. We popped downstairs for a post-flight rejuvinating swim in their outdoor heated pool, before showering and heading out to a nearby street of restaurants where we settled in Gigi's Italian restaurant and wine market, looked around, and realized we were quite surprised by Bogota. Very different from most Latin American capital cities, Bogota is cool. It's hip. It's crammed full of fancy restaurants, great midrange restaurants, funky cafes, cool bars, and all sorts of arty stuff. The people look quite hip too. A lot of Bogota stuff could be mistaken for being in New York! Other than the fact that everyone we encounter is nice, jolly, helpful... Somehow, this was all a bit unexpected! 

After our pizza and posh salad and wine, we walked off to a cool gay bar/cafe in the Chapinero district, called Village Cafe. Again, it was cool and quirky and featured hip-looking gay folk, men and women, kissing over their Colombia Club beers. We had "gin cucumber" drinks and enjoyed the ambience, before heading home to sleep. Exhausted!

The next day, after a pleasant read in bed and a weird version of a yoghurt parfait in the hotel restaurant, we were charmed to find the busy road in front of our hotel had been transformed into a giant bike lane! Every Sunday til 2pm Bogota closes its main roads and half the city takes to their bikes. This isn't a few random enthusiasts - everyone seems to be there, of all ages and persuasions. Entire families cycle along together, with the family dog on a leash running beside them. Occasional skateboarders and roller skaters and joggers punctuate the scene. It is all very cheery indeed. 

In fact our own plan for the morning was bike-related: we were off for a Bogota Bike Tour. We took a secure taxi from the hotel downtown to Candelaria, the tourist core (which is apparently quite quiet and dangerous at night but cool during the day), and after checking in with the bike place, went up to a little nearby square in search of a coffee. The square we found, decorated by bunting, featured both a cheery church, with plenty of people inside, and a hip little bar type thing where we got a coffee and a sort of polenta and cheese snack apparently called something like an "arepa". Tasty! And a good idea, as we hadn't quite realized how long the bike tour would be!

All the tourists in the city seemed to gather for the bike tour, and off we went. A great way to see the city! We went through the main streets, past famous squares, various museums, the bull ring (which only operates in January and February and last winter was turned into an ice skating rink instead due to an anti-bull-fighting mayor), and to memorials to many politicians and journalists who had been assassinated. Being a politician in the second half of the 20th century in Colombia was invariably a fatal enterprise, it seemed, and every story our guide told ended in the words "and then he was assassinated". Not very cheery stuff! We went past lots of amazing graffiti - the city pays graffiti artists to decorate the walls, including memorials to, you guessed it, various assassinations. It was impressive to look at. We had fresh juice in the National Park which was full of cyclists, hockey players, capoeira practitioners, and crowds doing aerobics with the national police radio... then stopped in at a local coffee brewer (where we desperately ate cake, by now ravenous), toured the famous graveyard, listened to some young boys rapping about how they want peace in Colombia, cycled past the red light district where prostitutes (legal here) stood in every door awaiting customers, various churches, illegal abortion clinics (Colombia has some of the most progressive rights in Latin America but abortion is still only possible in a few situations), and a fruit market where we went in and tried a variety of tropical fruits amid much amusement over the bitter ones. We finished the tour by visiting a cafe where you can play Colombia's national sport, Tejo. This involves hurling 2kg metal things across the room and into a mud pit. There are various envelopes filled with gunpowder in the mud pit, and you get extra points for making them explode by hitting them. Bizarre but quite fun. Some people stayed to play but we decided to head back as it was now 4 1/2 hours since we set off. Unfortunately the heavens opened in quite a spectacular way. Our final couple of miles were completed in torrential, monsoon-like rain. When we finally reached the office we realized our plan to try out a cool Candelaria coffee shop was not to be. After a complicated process to order a secure taxi, we dripped home, shivering and feeling that had all gone very well until the last 15 minutes!

Showered and warmed, we headed out for a very, very late lunch - a falafel burger (and a cake!) in the fancy, celebrity chef-type restaurant Rausch Bistronomy. Roz then took a notion to go to a hipster type cafe she'd found on Google, down on the other side of Chapinero. Cue a 25 minute walk, in which we prayed the rain would stay off and predicted it would be either closed or terrifying. In fact it was neither - it was very funky and cool, in a bike-on-the-ceiling, music memorabilia, black and white TV playing something old and quirky sort of way. We had mint tea and read our books, and enjoyed some people-watching (lots of kissing in this city!) before heading back up the road and installing ourselves in a Bogota staple, Wok, where we had some pleasant Thai food before heading, exhausted, to sleep far too early. Hence this blog being authored at 6am. There is no excuse for jetlag - we're only one hour behind DC! Oh well... We leave Bogota today, and are already having some regrets about not staying for longer, and having listened to previous Colombia visitors who were unenthusiastic about it. There is a lot to explore here, and it's easy to imagine having a nice life living here too!