Bogota (Columbia) - Week 45

19th - 21st July

We arrived in Bogota at about 9pm and checked in to Hostel Internacional, carefully selected from the travel guide. This has got to be the worst recommendation yet. I mean, the bible is often wrong but this place was awful. After a terrible night's sleep, we went on a mission to find a new hostel. Easier than it sounds! All the places recommended in the book were awful and in the end we plumped for Hotel Dorantes, once we had knocked the price down. Still overpriced and not good but at least it had a mattress thicker than 5mm!

We walked up to the main street and saw that it had all been blocked off. We assumed another demonstration - the south americans just love'em! - but then we realised that we had arrived on independence day and the grand procession was about to start. It went on for ages and there were some really good bands. This was also James's first proper look at the famously beautiful Columbian women and he wasn't disappointed! We then walked up to the main square in the old town to try and get a look at the soldiers marching but we all got herded away down the side streets so no-one could see anything!

As it was Independence Day, all the museums were free so we took advantage and first went to test our Spanish in the National Museum (not good enough, incidentally) which had a lot of paintings from Colonial times and quite a bit of pottery (more arrowheads, getting a bit bored of them to be honest...!).

In the afternoon we went to the Gold Museum which was amazing. Gold has been used extensively all through Columbian history and the museum had huge quantities of beautifully preserved pieces:

Gold was used for ceremonial dress, as decoration in temples and there was even a fancy dress kit that the shamans used to pretend to be bats!

Most of the pieces were amazing quality and really detailed:

This little raft above is the prize of the collection as it holds great significance. Many of you may have heard of "El Dorado, The Gilded Man", possibly from the excellant childrens cartoon, The Mysterious Cities of Gold!! One of the main reasons the Spanish came to South America was to search for this mythical place with endless gold. Well apparently it may have not been so mythical. There is a crater lake in Northern Colombia called Lake Guatavita. Here each new king covered himself in gold powder, went out on his raft onto the lake (see above) and jumped in till all the gold washed off, followed up by gold offerings thrown into the lake - they are crazy these old civilizations! This got back to Europe, and with Chinese whispers became a city of gold. The Spaniards found the crater, cut a large v-section on one side of the crater to try and drain the lake, then find the gold. For some reason this never worked and so as far as we know all the gold still lies at the bottom of the lake!!

A mask placed over the face of a king when he was buried, in the shape of a puma as with all things South American!:

They have so much gold in this museum that I think someone got bored and made a muriel covering the walls of a whole room out of a few spare nose rings! It was stunning:

That night we decided to take a taxi to the party zone (Zona Rosa) of Bogota to see how the young and beautiful do things in Columbia! Basically, there were lots of bars selling very good pints (not seen proper pints of ale for a long time) at extortionate prices, two pounds fifty!! We were hoping for a mega-party as it was independence day but apparently a lot of people celebrate at home so it wasn't any busier than usual. Good fun though.

On Saturday we tried again to find some decent food to eat (in vain, Katie had a revolting breakfast) and having decided that Bogota was really a bit rubbish (crap food, crap hotels, crap weather) and that we didn't want to take an overnight bus, that we would do our final bit of flashpacking and book return flights to Cartagena!!! (Call ourselves 'travellers'!).

Flights booked, we walked up to the former house of Simon Bolivar who was the main man in the liberation of South America. The house is very pretty with lovely gardens. See typical flower of Latin America:

Next, we took the cable car up Monserrate which is one of the peaks (3210m) to the east of the city. There was a great view from up there and various little walk ways to have a wander round.

After another rubbish meal, we headed to another area of Bogota with plenty of little bars and pubs. We forgave Bogota when we got there, it was great! Two little narrow streets packed with cosy makeshift bars and cheap beer. Every bar was packed with students and playing great music. We even had a delicious pizza!

The next morning we were even more taken with Bogota when we found a wicked french cafe with croissants to rival france and the best coffee we have had in six months. And then it was time to catch our flight, but we will be back and this time we'll know where to go!

Books we read: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - tragic but great