We arrived in Bogota for our 37 day Colombian adventure on January 2nd. I had reservations for 3 days only and from there we would wing it! I chose the centro historico district known as "la candalaria" for our introduction to Colombia and Bogota. We arrived at 9 in the evening and by the time we were through customs, in the cab, and into la candalaria, it was past 10. Our cab driver somehow could not find our hotel and drove for at least 30 minutes within a half mile radius while we became more frustrated and concerned. Although this area is safe during the daytime, after 10 or 11 it is not. There is a large population of homeless who pick through all the bags of garbage, along with graffiti everywhere. It was not very welcoming to say the least. Finally we found Hotel Regina, were greeted warmly by the staff and found our way to our pillows.
The next day we wandered around without much of an agenda, just trying to get our bearings. Being a Sunday, the streets were full of bicyclists and walkers, many dogs also, to enjoy their weekly "cyclovia"...the traffic is cut off from some of the main avenues for the people to get out and enjoy their city up until 2pm. We headed toward the #1 attraction Monserrate, high on the hill. There are three ways to get there: on foot (our knees said "no"!), by a railway tram (periferico) or the aerial tram. We followed the crowds up to the ticket booth and discovered an incredibly long line and told ourselves to come back tomorrow.
I had read in the guidebook that the Christmas high season runs to the middle of January so I knew we were still in the thick of it, but I was hoping that midweek would calm down a bit. The transit system in bogota, known as transmilenio, was calling us, so after much consultation with our hotel staff, we gave it a try. Once in the terminal, there were helpers to keep us on the right track, literally! We evened transferred one time and ended up by Parque 93, a lovely and safe area with lots of restaurants. We found our way to the Bogota Beer Company for crafted beer and delicious pizza. A great first day!
We began our next day by gathering with others for a walking tour of local graffiti. It was a large group of maybe 40 with an enthusiast guide, Jeff, who is a local anthropologist. Tags, stencils, spray, murals, etc. were seen everywhere and he showed us identifiers from some of the more famous artists. Many come with a political message which gave us a good look at Colombia's interesting history. In the afternoon we finally made it up Monserrate, with a lovely small crowd of people. Beautiful views of the city were seen from many different viewpoints.
It was recommended that we visit the salt mine cathedral at the nearby town of Zipiquira, and in reading about it, we saw there was another salt mine at another town, Nemocon. A full day tour was offered through our hotel, so the next day we splurged and hired a driver to take us to both places. First was Nemocon, about 1.5 hours outside of Bogota, in a lovely pastoral puebla, in dairy country.
We donned our hard hats and joined the Spanish tour(which meant we understood maybe 25%...thankfully there were English speakers along to help us out). It was a beautiful series of tunnels with interesting displays. Just last year, the movie "Los 33" was filmed there, about the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped in a mining accident for some 60some days, and all made it out alive. Much of the movie set was still intact , including a display of letters written to the miners from their loved ones and sent down by narrow pipes. Antonio Banderas Stars in this film and I look forward to seeing it. On to Zipiqura with the underground salt cathedral. This was a large tourist attraction that turned us off a bit but of course we continued. Yes it was impressive but had more of a religious overtone than the previous mine and not as interesting to us. We were so glad we included Nemocon in this tour to be able to see both and compare. Our driver dropped us at a very touristy restaurant which was horribly expensive and disappointing. I had tried "ajiaco santandero" the previous day (a traditional thick soup of chicken, vegetables, rice and avocado) and on this day the price was double. A tourist trap! For the most part we were finding prices of both food and hotels very inexpensive.
Throughout our time here we were planning the next stage of our travels. We were discovering how cheap it was to fly domestically here. I had thought to head to Cartegena on the northern coast but plane prices were high (because it was still high holiday season) compared to prices to the town of Santa Marta, five hours to the east. I booked 2 tickets for $150US total and we packed our bags for the next leg of our travels. We will be returning for our final three days in Bogota in early February so will see and discover more of this interesting city at a later date.
