Welcome to our last land trip and destination. There will be one more post after this one summarising the BEST and WORST of our epic journey. Stay tuned.
Last night was not great for sleep. It was an unusually warm evening making it hard to sleep. Add the extremely noisy traffic and people shouting at each other at 3am and that is the perfect formula for an unsettled sleep despite the Blu-Tac in my ears !!!
We were glad to wake up for our final 7.5hr drive from the coffee capital of Manizales to the Columbian capital of Bogota. Caught a busted up formula one taxi to the bus station – driver did a great job getting us there by 650am for our 8am departure. Plenty of time for a coffee and pastry. The drive was entirely based in the Andes rising to a record 3590m for our trip. Parts were fields, parts pine forest, parts bush but all very green. Constant twists and curves. Our bus was huge so the driver did a great job manoeuvring the tight curves. We also spent a lot of time in fog and cloud given the altitude. Most of the journey was above 2100m. It was a surreal trip for me in that it felt I was back in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia in 2011 – much of the landscape and cliffside-hugging roads is what I remember. Memories. These Andes are massive. Huge deep valleys, sometimes on both sides of the road !!! Our journey actually crosses from one Andean range to another with a huge valley in between. We started out at 2160m in Manizales on the west range, rose to 3590m then down the west range into the valley bottoming out at 327m. We then climbed out of the valley onto the east range topping 2705m with a final descent into Bogota at 2640m. The last part of the drive was amazing – the sheer size of the cliffs is a sight to behold. It is like this part of Colombia is just a sea of mountains.
This was easily the best drive of our whole trip.
Bogotá (Pop 11,658,211) is the capital and largest city of Colombia, and one of the largest cities in the world. It was founded as the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada on 6 August 1538 by Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada after a harsh expedition into the Andes conquering the Muisca, the indigenous inhabitants of the Antiplano. After the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819, Bogotá became the capital of the independent nation of Gran Colombia. It was Simón Bolívar who rebaptised the city with the name of Bogotá, as a way of honouring the Muisca people and as an emancipation act towards the Spanish crown.
Bogotá is on an antiplano plateau in the Andes and is the third-highest capital in South America and in the world after Quito EQUADOR and La Paz BOLIVIA, at an average of 2,640 meters (8,660 ft) above sea level.
We pulled into the Bogota National Bus Station at 6pm, exactly 10hrs after we left Manizales. The delay was due to a huge semi-trailer carrying glass tipping over and blocking the entire road only 50km out of Bogota. Our first impressions of this big city were good. It was modern and spread out. It is built on a huge flat plateau but surrounded by distant peaks. We would get a better idea tomorrow after our daylong tour. We were glad to get to the hotel and the drill was the usual. Dump our gear and head to the supermarket to stock up on snacks and drinks and maybe takeaway hot dishes. No hot dishes this time. It was 7pm Sunday and they had run out. The only things we could find were burgers, hot dogs and fried chicken. No matter – it was good to be indoors since it was quite cool outside. We ate and watched a 3-episode documentary on Woodstock 1999 called TRAINWRECK. It was incredible to think that this happened.
Our private tour guide, Natalie, was only 19 but very knowledgeable and very professional. She scooped us up in a private car and took us to the bottom of the Funicular that goes up to Cerro Monserrate that sits 512m above Bogota at 3152m. The ride up takes only 3min and it is terrific. Lucky I got to the back of the cabin with open views out to the city. This funicular can carry 80 people and was built in 1933. Amazing. The view from the top is easily the best view I have ever seen of a major capital city on my world journey so far. You think you are seeing the entire Bogota but Natalie soon fixed that telling us that we only see 25% of the city. Wow. What a colossal city !!! The top also contains a walkway containing very realistic and moving life-size statues of the 12 stations of Christ ending up in a church in honour of His Suffering. The top also contains ample space for the myriads of tourists that come here – most of them from Latin America. From here we walked to many places, most of them in the Candelaria District which is the older part of the city full of street art, cafes, restaurants, bars and street side vendors that make all their own costume jewellery, artwork and sculptures. Natalie did a fine job introducing us the many varieties of fruit and chocolate that Colombia produces. The film will explain everything. All I will say now is that many of the fruits here are also found in equatorial Asia because both are the same distance from the Earth’s Equator with similar climate and geography. We ended up seeing the following places: Cerro Monserrate (Lookout with Church on top), Plaza de Mercado de la Concordia (Fruit & Chocolate Tastings), Candelaria District (Street Art & Old Town), Chorro de Quevedo (First Spanish Settlement), Varietale Café (Coffee Tasting), Coca Tea, Old Monastery, Plaza Simon Bolivar (Cathedral Metropolitan Basilica of Bogota, Palacio Cardenalicio, Palacio de Justica, Palacio Lievano or City Hall, Capitolio Nacional or Parliament), Centro Commercial Artesanal Plaza Bolivar. The highlight was definitely Cerro Monserrate but Plaza Simon Bolivar was a close second with its Basilica and classical colonial Spanish buildings.
On our way back to the hotel – high drama. There we are walking on the main boulevard and out of the blue Antonia screams. I look around a big caramel colour muscle built pit ball is jumping all around Antonia. I arm myself with my Galaxy since it has a head-smashing heavy case but before I could anything this local-looking pedestrian rushes to Antonia and shouts “dale tu agua” = “give him your water” !!! Antonia understands and drops her 1L bottle of water. The dog bolts towards it, picks it up in its huge mouth and races off. WTF. By now Antonia is yellow and in a state of meltdown. Natalie does a great job calming her down and after talking to the strange saviour explains to us that this dog is a stray that loves water bottles to play with. This was not an attack but a playful play for Antonia’s water bottle !!! A good ending. Especially a day before our homecoming !!! We both hugged Natalie at our hotel – she had done a fine job showing us her birth city.
For me, Bogota was like Melbourne or Boston – civilised, artistic, foodie versus Medellin which is Sydney or New York – brash, headstrong, in your face. Bogota is much more laid back and spread out. My favourite Capital City on this trip.
The next day (Tue 19MAR) was our last day and night on Ai Cultura. Amazing. We were here. I capped my personal running journey off with a 10km run at 2670m. Much easier than I thought. I was nervous waking for this. Busy city. High altitude. I did not want to get run over on our last day. But things went surprisingly well. Lots of footpaths next to the major freeways I ran – albeit broken but doable. I was elated to run this city – the third highest Capital city in the world. The elation came from the fact that I had now run the top 3 Capitals in the world = Quito EQUADOR, La Paz BOLIVIA and Bogota COLOMBIA !!! Gold, Silver and Bronze for the pool room !!!
As promised, I took Antonia back to the Varietale Café to enjoy her favourite Coconut-Vanilla filtered coffee with a cheese infused croissant !!! Delicious. This equipped both if us for some relentless shopping which followed all over the Candelaria District starting at Plaza Simon Bolivar and ending up in Chorro de Quevedo where a lovely couple sold her their last two bracelets. Antonia was very please with her spoils so we headed back to the hotel for a well-earned rest and pres but not until I sent Mini 3 (my drone) above this photogenic city. On my return, I prepared this post and we geared up for our final evening in Bogota, Colombia, Central America and Ai Cultura 2024 !!!
And what an evening. Drinkies at Chorro de Quevedo where Bogota started by the Spanish in 1538 followed by dinner next to the Basilica at Plaza Simon Bolivar. What a night of celebration. 74 days together. 74 days of constant adventure. No sickness. No food poisoning. And only 2 days of rain. Thank you God. See you at our last post of BEST and WORST where we sum up our epic trip...
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