Bogota...Oooh Scary

Oh hi! Good lord we are in Bogota! If we had completely believed everything that we read on the pre-trip research (they all had some stern advice), the home office travel guidance website, some interesting documentaries and even to some extent the Lonely Planet, we would have probably given it a miss. Not that we haven't taken this into account, mind! But its brilliant here! Continuing our tour of capital cities this is right up there, fo-sho!

Flying in was a good move, this kept us out of the obvious border troubles. We booked ourselves into Hotel Aragon and got a lovely room in this really homely and welcoming small hotel in the historic suburb of La Candelaria. Looks a bit scary from the outside mind.


Here is Wiji in our first room, with twin beds! It was very 'our nan' in decor, not to mention the tightly tucked in layers and layers of blankets! Even with all the blankets it is cold here at night...Wiji is loving that! Our room had a view of the massive mountains that surround the city.


The light was quite amazing in our room, too. This often isn't the case!


When we explored we were pleasantly surprised. La Candelaria, the area we were staying in has lots of brightly painted colonial building in single lane streets.


Some beautiful mountain views combined with Bogota's skyscrapers.








The passageway has some original handmade bricks with Bogota embossed into them.






There are lots of lovely little cafe's including this one, called La Puerta Falsa dating from 1816. Here we sampled the traditional Bogotan fare of chocolate sanafereno, a hot chocolate where traditionally you put the piece of accompanying cheese in the hot chocolate and eat it out of the cup! This also comes with a cheesy roll (if there wasn't enough cheese), and some bread and butter. Wiji loved it! I am not a massive fan of cheese, thanks. I gave it a go and drank the choccy minus the cheese.


But they also served traditional sweets too. Here is the window display. I personally loved the whole glace fig. The owner found it very amusing when we came back for more and asked us to rate the food out of 10...oh go on then it's a 10!


We found a really good internet cafe to catch up on some emails, this had a third floor balcony were we got a bit of a view down the street. Bogota is cosmopolitan and lively, the economy seems to be booming despite the corruption. Lots of new office's and apartments were being built all over the place.


Some of the roads were 8 laners, we started to feel the pollution burn in our lungs pretty quickly, as well as taste it! Fortunately every sunday the centre of the city is closed off to traffic. This was a great improvement.

The neoclassical Cathedral Primada, on the east side of the square, was completed in1823 and is Bogota's largest cathedral. Check out the dramatic afternoon light, being at altitude meant the clouds and weather changed pretty quickly.


The Plaza de Bolivar, this massive stone building nods to the classical Greek style of architecture. In front is the bronze statue of Simon Bolivar, who achieved independance for most of south america from those dastardly Spaniards.


We were desperate to get our flights changed, especially after Guatemala city, where the LAN office no longer existed! So with a day to go before we were supposed to be catching a flight out of Santiago, Argentina, we headed for the world trade centre in Bogota. Here the uber pro-fesh lady at LAN changed our flights quick as a flash, no probs! Wow, you are spoiling us! I got told off by security for taking this..sorry, bygones? Cheer up love, its all sorted!


With that out the way we headed off to the Qantas office to change the whole of the south pacific air pass. LOL. We felt a bit sorry for lovely Claudia, who asked us to leave it with her...no kidding?! Two days later, she had it all changed! She had done a bit of a Blue Peter stylee with the paper tickets and stuck some new dates over the old, quality. Apparently its all on the web...whatever? Mission completed, without any tears we were free to enjoy a bit more of Bogota.

We celebrated by hooking up with Jo, Kev's sister who is working out here for a human rights organisation. We had a few beers around La Candelaria. Jo told us that Britain supplies Columbia with Military aid, but will not disclose how this is spent in Columbia, although these facts are made public knowledge for other countries that receive military aid from us. BP and other global giants all having a finger in the vastly lucrative coal and oil resources out here. We had a great night with Jo, it was a shame we couldn't see her for longer, but she was being sent out into the field again.

We visited the Donacion Botero. An art galllery that houses 208 pieces of art work, 123 being Botero's own.


Neither of us particularly liked Botero, but the Gallery did also have some works by major international artist too, which were stunning, and I had not seen before in the flesh.

We had a giggle at Botero's work...this isn't too offensive.


This pretty mutch captured the essence of his content and style. Jo said...'I hate it! Everything is just fat!' Well, true-dat!


This reminded me of the Jill Crowley sculptural clay hand project I did with year 8...whatever. We liked this, though.


This was the other piece we liked, lovely drawings.


Oh god, we could barely keep it together when we saw this. LOL. And yes it is a bronze!


After seeing this fruit all over Mexico, and never having time to really get a good look at it we spotted a man with a basket of them and went back and brought one. The grey part contains a cashew nut! The fruit part can only be eaten if boiled. How amazing is this!? No wonder cashew nuts are so expensive! Kate Malone fruiting bodies eat your heart out!


Whilst skipping about on various missions across the city, we checked out Restaurante Vegetariano Boulevard Sesamo. This proved to be a very good quality and cheap deal with brilliant set lunches. We used this every day. Well Bogota did mainly cater for the meat eater with places such as the one next door called 'Che Carne'. LoL. Often carne and pollo are one dish. This was a lot more healthy.

Ahh look at gorgeous boy, what a super gorgeous face! He can't wait to get stuck into his set meal! LoL xxx.


We couldn't resist giving this place a visit too, just down the road from us was La cafe Estacion. Yes it is an old train carriage!


And who should we find inside having a cheesy-chocolate...?


Aaaaah, we loved Bogota and spent 5 exciting days here. We really enjoyed a Skype sesh with Dandad, yummy mummy Lauren and baby Seren. Bloody missing having a laugh with you! xxxxxxxxxxxxx