Bogota

The national shield of Colombia

Our plane from Dallas arrived in Bogota after midnight with a  short delay due to a disabled plane on one runway.  We heard later from friends who arrived a few days before that one runway was closed unbeknownst to the airline, so we’re not sure what the real story is!  We were asked no questions at customs and gathered our luggage and steeled ourselves for the scrum of drivers outside baggage claim heading right past them to an official taxi line.  Our taxi was a bit worse for wear and the driver took any bumps in the road with extreme care.  Then about 10 minutes into the ride he said he had a flat tire.  We were sure this was going to turn into a scam, but at the first open gas station he pulled right up to an air hose and filled two of the tires.  It still seemed pretty iffy that we were going to get to the hotel in his cab, but we made it.  The other odd feature of cabs is that the meter shows the distance, but not the fare.  The driver looks up the fare on a table based on the distance.  You can ask to see the table if you want to make sure you aren’t being overcharged.  We’ve also had trouble getting used to translating from pesos to dollars because the exchange rate is about 3300 pesos to the dollar. 

Our hotel is in the the Zona Rosa, one of the upscale parts of the city that features lots of fancy name brand stores, like the Kitchen Aid store and a BMW dealership.   The mall across the street from our hotel has private security people with dogs that sniff every bag being brought into the mall.  The friendlier looking golden retrievers get lots of pats from kids.  They seem to stay away from the muzzled rottweilers and German shepherds. The street in front of the hotel is torn up, but construction isn’t that loud because a lot of the work is being done by hand.  If all you saw was this part of Bogota you would think the whole city was undergoing a construction boom and very wealthy.  In fact the paper this morning had an article about how desirable Colombia is for foreign investment.

Zona Rosa

Plaza in front of the cathedral

Houses in Candelaria

Many of the people asking for money on the streets are from Venezuela.  They are often selling black plastic trash bags as a trade for your charity and most are families with children.  A couple women were selling pouches woven from now worthless Venezuelan currency.  The paper is very strong even if the bolivar is weak!

Our first morning we walked a few blocks before finding a place for coffee and a pastry. It was one of what turns out to be a local chain, Tostao, and was pretty good.  Nothing like starting out vacation with a Nutella filled croissant sitting outside in the sun!  Bogota is at 8900 feet and the sun is strong but the air is reasonably cool.  After breakfast we attempted to use our phones to get an Uber, but couldn’t get the app to work. Friends with iPhones have had no issues using Uber. The hotel had given us the number for their transportation coordinator, so we called her and she arranged a cab for us.  But when she tried to call us back to tell us the name of the driver and license number to watch for she couldn’t reach us.  She actually walked over from the hotel to the corner we were waiting on to let us know this and to call for another cab while she waited with us.  The hotel cabs are white instead of yellow and tend to be more comfortable cars in our limited experience.  The driver took a route along the hills bordering the eastern edge of the city.  This is the area where the politicians and upper level military officials live he said.  Tall apartment buildings with views over the city.  We wound our way down to the Candelaria district, one of the oldest parts of town.  He dropped us off at the gold museum with partial directions to a café a few blocks away and instructions to only ask security guards and police officers for directions. 

We decided we needed some lunch before visiting the museum but found a good looking Colombian -Caribbean place before the place our driver recommended.  It was on the early side for lunch and we were the first customers of the day.  The staff gave us recommendations for their best dishes and while our food was being prepared Jake had an expresso and I had a refreshing lemonade with ginger.  We shared a delicious plate of grilled vegetables and octopus and a sort of pot roast cooked in panela (sugar cane extract) and tamarind juice served with a slightly sweet coconut rice.  The restaurant was situated on a street where nearly every other business was a jewelry store selling emeralds.  Out of curiosity I asked the price of a gold ring set with a small emerald of a nice clear green color and was told it was about $1000.  Guess I’m not getting an emerald ring any time soon!

The gold museum had wonderful examples of gold figurines and ornaments from different eras and parts of Colombia as well as explanations of the metallurgy involved.  They did not discuss the after effects on the environment of mining unless I missed something.  They did have an interesting exhibit on the cultural importance of gold to different Colombian cultures.

We strolled around Candelaria some after taking in the museum and uneventfully caught a yellow cab from the Gold museum back to our hotel.   After a short nap we headed out again to meet friends from Santa Fe for dinner.  They are studying Spanish for a week and had rented a beautiful AirBnB apartment in the Zona G (the gourmet district) near one of the universities and a 20 minute walk to their school.  We got a tour of their apartment and caught up over appetizers before walking to dinner at an elegant Spanish restaurant.  The waiter was from Galicia and somewhat dismissive of Colombian seafood saying that they import nearly all their seafood from Spain to maintain quality!  Their octopus was no better than what we had at lunch but I didn’t ask where the lunch octopi were from.  The food we ordered was quite good though especially the grilled vegetables and marinated mussels.  This elegant dinner with two of us ordering wine set us back $80 for the four of us.  Our friends ordered an Uber for us to take back to our hotel as the busy day and lack of sleep the night before was catching up to us!  We hope to meet up with them again when we overlap in Cartagena.

On our walk to the Zona G the night before we came across the very pleasant Calle 9 and headed there for breakfast.  We chose a place called Masa that had a nice variety of breakfast options.  I went with an acai bowl with granola, strawberries, blueberries and chia seeds and we shared a chocolate croissant. Later in the afternoon we had lunch at the French restaurant Bagatelle, just a block from Masa.

We opted to let the hotel arrange transport for us to the botanical garden in the morning and one of the staff escorted us down the street to our taxi.  It turned out to be almost a half hour drive to the garden with the traffic.  We arranged to meet our driver where he dropped us off in two hours.  The garden is hosting a big light show with figures of endangered animals in Colombia.  The figures look good during the day too.  We started out in the part of the garden that wasn’t included in the light show and I got to know a few Colombian plants.  The part with the light show had roped off much of the garden, but we were at least able to walk through on the main paths.  The garden has some interesting projects like labeling all the urban trees in Bogota with an app so that you can look them up.  At the garden, and really all over Bogota, there seems to be a big effort to recycle and reduce use of disposable materials.  Carteros (people pulling carts) sort out recyclables to take to central locations.  There is very little trash on the streets.  The garden had a big composting and gasification facility for its green waste. 

Colombian fuschia

Huge yucca flower!

Herbarium building

giant hermit crabs

Id sign on a downtown tree

Dinner tonight was at the food court of the Andino mall up on the 4^th level.  We opted for Italian.  Perfectly adequate given that we were not particularly hungry and tired of walking!  It was like any food court in the US I would say.