Activity Summary
Thursday 27th July - Day 296
Flight to Madrid
Bit of a squeaky bum time dash to our connection
Flight to Bogotá
‘Welcome Pickups’ private transfer to hotel
Immediately crashed out
Friday 28th July - Day 297
Breakfast at Origenes Cafe
Rest / research
Lunch at Pizza Candelaria
Free cash = Davidienda (NOT BBVA)
La Candelaria walking tour:
Plazoleta Chorro de Quevedo
Mercado de La Concordia
Parque de los Periodistas Gabriel García Márquez
Jorge Elicecer Gaitan memorial
Plaza de Bolívar
Santuario Nuestra Señora del Carmen
Coffee tasting
Cheap homemade dinner
Saturday 29th July - Day 298
Same morning ritual
Monserrate hike & viewpoint
Cable car down
Lunch at De Una Travel
Museo del Oro / Gold Museum
Museo De Bogotá - Casa de los siete balcones
Sunday 30th July - Day 299
Morning ritual
Cabify yellow taxi to the airport
Flight to Santa Marta
Summary
Bogotá
We spent our time specifically in the La Candelaria area as it was where all the tourist things in Bogotá were. It however is not the nicest place to be at night / even in the morning when nobody was about. So naturally we avoided being out after dark but given we were jet lagged and we don’t care about going out and boozing this was no problem.
During the day the city wasn’t too bad. Some nice walking streets and sights to see. Enjoyed the fact is was a fair amount colder.
We didn’t like feeling on edge but this is a feeling we would get pretty much everywhere we went in Colombia.
Transport
Bogotá airport (El Dorado)
The airport is actually really nice. Leaving it in a yellow taxi off the street had a nice risk of being robbed and marched from ATM to ATM so not fancying that we booked a private shuttle using ‘Welcome Pickups’. For $22 it was worth it.
Bogotá
Walking around during the day was plenty fine but not so much at night.
Cabs are the safest way but never flag one off the street. Uber is illegal but apparently used by everyone still (the company even still pays taxes apparently…).
Cabify seemed to be the best as it uses both yellow taxis and private cars so massively lowers the risk of being pulled over by police.
Accommodation
Bogotá - Hotel Dona Elisa
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £10
Not the greatest hotel but it was cheap, well located, had a warm shower and a room kitchen. Bogotá was pretty cold and the room had no heating so Nicola’s solution was to utilise the kitchen gas burners. Worked out all right for her.
Diary
Part 2 of the travel adventure begins!
The UK break was great fun seeing family, friends and being able to go to the Lewis, Bradshaw and Swain weddings. We flicked between London, Swinford, Nottingham and Cambridge continuously for a month never having any clue where our stuff we needed was and drinking more than we had done for the previous 10 months.
Part 1 of travelling seemed more relaxing than being back at home, but the factory reset was desperately needed. The access to high base levels of comfort wherever we went, the food we know and love and having conversations with people that extended past a regurgitated script with randos on the road can not be undervalued.
All in all, home you were a blast.
Now starting back on the road we had our first problem with London tube strikes. Getting across London to Gatwick for a 10am flight without access to the tube was a little stressful and although it is actually pretty easy now the trains run from Finny P to Gatwick it would take a while in the morning. The 5am start didn’t appeal so Mark and Tracy Parker were unbelievably kind enough to put us up for the night at their place in Croyden, feed us and drop us right back at South Croyden for 7am.
Tracy we are really sorry to get you out of bed so early. You are the best and made our life so much easier.
Once at South Croyden the train to Gatwick and subsequent check in processes were dead easy, all with the benefit of Nicola not being a tired wreck on day 1 of part 2.
It was going to be a long day of travelling to Bogotá so we stocked up on Pret, Boots meal deals plus packing homemade sausage bagels. Turns out with the one in flight meal it wasn’t enough food to keep us going all day and while Luke resisted the breakfast Nandos urge, it would seem it may have helped.
The first flight to Madrid all seemed hunky dorey in Luke’s opinion who on waking up from from an hour and half nap, had found the plane hadn’t moved. Eventually we got going but that 1hr 45mins connection time was looking mighty threatened.
We touched down with 30 minutes to go before our actual flight time and it seemed a lot of people were making various connections to Central and South America, clearly indicated from the people rushing to the front while the plane was still taxi’ing. We were right at the front for once so had little of this speedy plane exit worries but once out we made a pretty quick dash to the connections scanner.
It wasn’t far to go and being the first ones there meant we were through quickly. The gate to our flight was on final call so ended up being hurried straight through onto the plane.
We did wonder whether our luggage was going to be quite so fortunate but the plane didn’t take off for a while as masses of others also piled through far later than we arrived before we took off. Not a pleasant wait in a tin can subject to the intense Madrid summer sunshine without aircon.
Queue 10 hours of being largely uncomfortable (no luck with having a spare seat this time), multiple films and only 1 meal over 10 hours. By the time we landed at El Dorado airport, Nicola was well and truly beaten. It didn’t help that passport control took an age.
Having arrived at 7pm it was dark and Bogotá / taxis at the airport have a pretty terrible rep for robbing tourists. So having vast quantities of fear we booked a ‘Welcome Pickups’ private transfer to our hotel. Much more expensive but our guy held a sign up for us (although it took us 15 minutes to find him) and dropped us to the hotel door without stress. The guy was super nice and tried his best to give us a quick tour when driving in Spanish, of which we could understand very little but appreciated the effort.
Getting in to the hotel was a bit of a pain as we had to wait a short while for the dude to come back with his dinner but once in we almost immediately crashed out. Nothing wrong with an 8pm bed time when running at 2am UK time.
Unsurprisingly both of us were awake and up super early. Having not eaten vast quantities the day before we were pretty ravenous so Nicola found a decent cafe nearby that opened at 7am called Origenes Cafe.
It turned out to be an inspired choice. The food was quality and prices pretty cheap. We were stuffing our faces for about £3 each. The Avo toast with some sort of sour tomato like gem was incredible. So good it got a raving google review from Luke.
After eating we both started to feel pretty tired so ended up back at the room for a rest up and do some much needed immediate Colombia research. In a month back in the UK we had failed to find the inspiration to sit down and do this… but our North coast plan was built from there and Nicola had a little napsy noo.
Rated at 4.8 on Google, we had lunch at Pizza Candelaria which was a bit of a let down. Can’t get behind flat pizza pies but it was close and the owner was nice enough to come and introduce himself.
Before heading to the walking tour we tried our hand at getting a free cash withdrawal from BBVA bank, as Google claimed this was legit. However much like the atm in the airport we were charged an inordinate amount of money for small cash withdrawal (max 300k and commission of 18k = £60 + £3.60 charge). DO NOT GO TO BBVA.
We did however need the cash for the walking tour which started at 2pm at the Plazoleta Chorro de Quevedo. We had no issues booking and just signed up on the guys phone when he came round.
La Candelaria walking tour:
Plazoleta Chorro de Quevedo - square that is immensely popular with uni students due to the live music and other entertainment that performs. Has the oldest building in the city, being one of 6 of the original built.
Mercado de La Concordia - here we had a local fruit tasting followed by a short walk around the market. From memory there were 4 fruits we tried but could only remember 3.
Guanabana - giant green spikey fruit but with white fleshy edible innerds. Sour and a bit chewy and Nicola didn’t like at all so naturally spat it out like the sophisticated goddess she is.
Lulo - super sour orange fruit (the guides fave) and Luke agreed. Was banging.
Guayaba - green lime thing with skin that’s edible. Flesh tastes like calpol until eating with the skin and became much nicer.
Parque de los Periodistas Gabriel García Márquez - actually a bit of a shit hole, despite the views of the mountains.
Jorge Elicecer Gaitan memorial - place where the liberal / socialist opposition leader not favoured by the Americans & wealthy ruling elite who was killed which led to mass riots and seemingly threw the country into disarray for years to come.
Plaza de Bolívar - some grand governmental buildings around the square but the key takeaway seemed to be the mass of pigeons on peoples heads and arms from feeding. Fools clearly haven’t heard of avian flu. Again the square was a bit run down.
Santuario Nuestra Señora del Carmen - some jazzy looking church forced into the tour by some overzealous Americans. Guys were really annoying.
Ended with a Coffee tasting at a local place that neither of us could remember. It would have been a nice end if we had done a morning tour but the caffeine at 5.30pm wasn’t what we needed when wanting to be in bed in 2 hours. Nicola did say the lighter tasting coffee (more like tea) was far more palatable to her. Luke prefers the strong tasting dark stuff.
Overall the tour was really good. The guide was interesting and La Candelaria by tour was a much nicer way to see the area which hasn’t got a great rep. We had chosen to stay in La Candelaria because it was the place where large majority of the touristy things to do in Bogotá were and given we had no intention of being out after dark, this was absolutely fine. Chapinero is apparently the nicer and wealthier suburb of the city but quite a journey away from what we wanted to do.
Prior to calling it a night we frequented the local store (in the absence of any large supermarkets) and had the fun of trying to build a meal by looking at what the store had behind the counter. Not an easy task but Nicola made it work.
Our tuna spaghetti dinner turned out to be the most dramatic thing to happen to us in Bogotá. Nicola ended up throwing the spaghetti in the sink while trying to drain it, so required a quick re wash, and then didn’t eat half of it due to disliking it. Folks we had the first scream / grunt in frustration with a lovely pan in sink throwing to bring the rage home. Only took 3 days (obvo writing this for dramatic effect - we’re jet lagged and not particularly comfortable in Bogotá so wobbles are expected).
Luke thought it best it be an evening of headphones on to destress. Again we were both clocked out by 9pm.
The mornings in Bogotá became quite a nice routine. We had the same early rise and back over to our cafe for breakfast. Avo toast for Nicola that powered her through till 3pm and an egg bacon sandwich for Luke plus fruit platter for all.
Pretty much the only thing Luke had flagged as wanting to do was a short hike to the top of Monserrate. Nicola wasn’t 100% but citing ‘what else is there to do’ decided to partake in the climb.
Per AllTrails, it was a 2.5km hike with 500m of climbing. This was in effect just a steep hill with carved out steps all the way to the top with the occasional viewpoint.
Nicola did struggle with the altitude, jet lag and immediate uphill exercise post eating. The picture below definetely showcased respective moods in appropriate detail. But Luke confirmed early doors that Nicola would be in no mood to respond back to his happy hiking vibes and he was more than content with plugging in the cricket and trying to help her struggle up the hill to which she achieved.
The ‘maps’ along the route were less than helpful as motivational posters, giving the impression at half way (having done the majority of the climbing) there was still masses more to go. If Luke hadn’t of clarified Nicola would have 100% gone back home.
It did rain a bit as we approached the top but nothing substantial and we still had fairly decent views out over the city.
The church was aite too.
Given the rain the route down turned into quite a slippery mess so we decided on the cable car down. It actually turned out to be quite an entertaining ride and we didn’t have to queue for long either. That said we were infinitely warmer than others who were soaking wet in just a T shirt as we are not complete novices - the peak is just shy of 3,100m and will always be fairly cold, let alone when raining. Noobs honestly but it did give us a laugh.
Back in town we had a quick stop to an Oxxo for snacks (a half decent selection of food choices going forward) and 3rd time lucky at a bank.
Davivienda bank is the way to go. Managed to withdraw P1m (DECLINE the conversion) for free which was a surprise. Not a fan of the long large queues at ATMs however.
Back at the hotel it was Nicola nap time before going to lunch at De Una Travel. Tasty grilled chicken but overpriced and it took forever for anything to come out as they were clearly overrun.
Our big activity for the afternoon was the Museo del Oro / Gold Museum. Entry was a tidy £1 so no matter how unimpressed we may be, for that price we could not have cared less. It was amusing to have a bag check and an onion be the contents of said bag.
Overall the gold museum was alright. Had a few laughs and there was indeed a lot of gold. The vault doors on one of the floors made for an interesting touch.
On the way back we stopped by the free Museo De Bogotá - Casa de los siete balcones. This was all in Spanish and wasn’t very interesting so didn’t last long here.
We were back early for a super noodle dinner and bed, slightly delayed by a bit of a stress out when looking at the Colombia / Ecuador land border crossing. We would settle on trying to avoid at all costs.
Our morning ritual was sullied (in Nicola’s opinion) when she went bold and decided on the eggs benny. It never compares to Luke’s homemade version and this turned out to be one of the worst ever - overdone poached eggs and basically no sauce. But at least it was cheap.
Our flight to Santa Marta wasn’t until the afternoon so we chilled in the hostel until 11am and then went about trying to get back to the airport in Bogotá. From experience, Ubers hate driving to and from airports and especially when deemed illegal. Cabify however seemed to resolve any potential agro as this connected us to yellow taxis via the app so while ride sharing (we think) is illegal, there was little to no chance of the official taxi being pulled over by police plus having all the added security the app provides. No millionaires ride for us.
Everything should have been fine driving to the airport but a main road closure for a cycle event and a wrong turn by our driver put us through a rather rough ride. It took a much longer time getting to the airport, queuing in traffic and skirting around random neighbourhoods which ended up taking us through some properly rough areas. Doors were locked, windows rolled up and checked multiple times by the driver as we went through one particular area and Luke got a huff of approval when he put his phone back in his pocket.
We got there all safe and sound and have a tip for the privilege of not being robbed or ditched when she realised it was going to be a much harder journey.
Despite the longer journey we were still at the airport pretty early. We checked in our big bags, decompressed at the mcds outside of security and when good and ready sauntered through and onto our flight. Bogotá has a really nice airport, shame about the city really.
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