Bogota

In the morning while hoping my bag would arrive I visited the Museo del Oro, known as one of the best museums in South America.  The highlight of my free guided tour (entry fee was about $1) was a tiny gold raft related to the legend of El Dorado, the lost city of gold.  I went to the top of Monseratte, the mountain viewpoint and spiritual retreat within the city.  You can hike to the top, although it’s not recommended since you are likely to be mugged according to the guidebooks.  It would have been fine during the day with lots of people doing it, but I was winded by the time I reached the bottom of the funicular!  Bogota sits at 2600 m above sea level, and some get altitude sickness here.  The height also means it can get very cool at night year round.  So I was happy when my bag and down-filled jacket arrived that night.

Next day in Bogota, I went on a bike tour.   It’s very popular, there were 40 or 50 of us that had to be split into groups so we could make our way through the traffic.  We went to the bullring (the current mayor has outlawed bullfighting), the trash museum (where a French speaking hoarder and his mom live), checked out some of the graffiti (it’s an art form here, with famous artists, and is one of the most painted cities in the world), went to a coffee factory, rode through the red light district with beautiful hookers full of silicone, and ended the five hour tour with a game of tejo.

This is one more thing I knew about from watching Anthony Bourdain in his Parts Unknown television series. The game combines three of Colombian men’s favourite things, mud, beer, and gunpowder. Triangles of gunpowder are stuck onto a clay target and you throw stone discs at them to blow them up, while drinking beer.  It was a busy Saturday at the tejo bar so we had to go upstairs to play a mini game, just smaller targets. This is where they leave their kids to play while they are downstairs playing the big game. The gunpowder blows up in the kids’ game too. You can’t make this stuff up!  In Parts Unknown, Anthony had played the game with an expert known as El Pollo Viejo, or “old chicken”.  He thought he should have some kind of bird name also, like maybe “enormous cock”.  Oh Tony.

Back at my hotel in the tourist district, I feel quite safe with a mini police station right in front of my hotel.  Police in neon green vests are everywhere during the day, some with big muzzled pit bulls, but they don’t carry guns.  And they seem to all be off duty after dark.

I met my group, from US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Belgium, Norway, and tour leader from Ecuador.