We flew from Guatemala city to Bogota as there isn’t a road way or sea route (public) connecting central America to South America.

Once in Bogota, we were left stranded near our Airbnb as the person was stuck in a traffic jam. There were at least three different people asking us if we were okay and if we needed any help. We were staying in the Candelaria area with a view of the Andes mountains.

We decided to go on a city walking tour and learnt a lot about its violent past, political unrest and the ongoing transformation. We also met a bunch of lovely single female travellers.
Bogota is a huge city and we were mainly in Candelaria and the Chapinero areas. We also managed to take a quick dekko at other areas entirely by accident. We wanted to book our bus tickets to Medellin and managed to go to the wrong bus terminus which was at the northern end of the city! So we took a bus to get to the right bus terminal but we couldn’t get on it without a metro card which we obviously didn’t have. The driver allowed us to take the ride for free! Another example of Colombian kind heartedness. Except that it was the day where some of the main roads were blocked for the annual event for cyclists. It took us hours to get back but we managed to have a look at other parts of Bogota.

We tried different exotic fruits and the famous chicha (a fermented drink). Apparently, in the old days, the drink was fermented by the saliva of the wise old women in the Muisca community. It was a German who pushed the beer culture in Colombia by way of vicious ad campaigns against the traditional Chicha (Prisons are full of people who drink chicha, Chicha makes people daft etc.). This didn’t work initially but he gradually managed to make the Bavarian beverage immensely popular here with a lot of backing by the powerful people in the city. A beer roughly costs one Euro here!

We also went to a library dedicated to the exiled Colombian writer, intellectual Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to the opera and to the Botero museum (Botero gifted his works on condition that the museum should be free and hence accessible to all).

The city has a unique vibe and is very cultured and resilient.