Having slept reasonably well, we awoke early (thanks westward-going jet lag) with thankfully no altitude sickness of note. Once fresh and clean, we went down for breakfast. Decent hotel fair, good coffee, nice fruit and actual real scrambled eggs! Not that awful powdered stuff. They also seem to do various brothy soups which are very salty and savoury and kind of exactly the right thing somehow. We then ventured out to walk for about an hour to La Candelaria district (we did first check with the reception staff that it was safe to do so).

First impressions on our walk was that Bogotá feels much like any other capital city, no more or less dangerous. Could have been various areas of New York for all we knew! The closer we got to the touristy areas, the more tat was being sold on mats and from carts. Our first stop was the “Museo del Oro”, gold museum. Really interesting bits of history about the use of gold and other precious metals in pre-Spanish South America.

The level of detail and craftsmanship was insane! Apparently there are sadly very few examples of pre-colonisation work due to the economic importance placed on gold and the other precious metals; much was taken and melted down. Yay. History is fun and not at all depressing.

After an hour and a bit of good honest learning and dodging various school groups (there is nothing worse than being at a museum at the same time as a school group… I can say this as an ex-teacher) we (Alex) found a nice little coffee place called Matuca. The proprietor was very chatty and explained about various different coffees and filtration systems which definitely interested Alex more than me… we then chose our coffee and filtration system which were certainly interesting… no idea what impact it has on the flavour of the coffee mind you. What can I say, I’m a philistine.

Suitably caffeinated, we carried on to La Candelaria, the historic centre. It was indeed, generally aesthetic with nice ye olde buildings in different colours but it was also fairly chaotic. The classic tourist tat being sold, various vendors shouting their wares with varying levels of aggression. The most baffling to me were the “Aguacate carts”. There were loads of them, they only sold avocados and they all had the exact same pre-recorded sales pitch blaring out from a speaker, sort of like “3 avocados for 5 quid” type vibes. It was mad. I don’t understand the business model. Fruit carts had similar loud sales recordings. The most bizarre however was the prerecorded sales pitch for the medical weed and coca leaf vendor. At this point we did get a bit lost and wondered into a general comercial area which felt far more sketchy so we high tailed it back to the safety of tourist spots.

There were also various lunch vendors shouting out the menu del almuerzo, lunch menu, and trying to get you to come to their place. This is apparently quite a common thing in Bogotá; there is a substantial fixed price lunch situation that it pretty cheap and good. That said, we only had eyes for one location: La Puerta Falsa, the 200 year old restaurant that Anthony Bourdain visited on parts unknown.

The tamale was indeed, delicious and the restaurant itself tiny and charming.

After this we did a bit more wandering and found the beautiful church, Santuario Nuestra Señora del Carmen, which although incredibly ornate, was not gaudy like many Catholic Churches in predominantly Catholic countries. There was a huge natural world influence, green floor, blue walls and ceilings and the stained glass was full of floral motifs and grape vines.

We left and wandered back to Plaza de Bolivar, but by this point it was very drizzly and we were pretty overwhelmed and tired of being shouted at by people selling stuff, so we got an Uber back to the hotel for a quick nap. I had a feeling that we had been trapped in a specific loop of the area we had been in so endeavoured to do some research to check if there was anything we had missed.

After said nap, we went to a local craft ale bar incomprehensibly called “El Irish” with a little bit of lazy Irish branding like a green colour scheme and a couple of token shamrocks. Made no sense because the beer company was very much local. And delicious! We then went to another chain that had Brewdog vibes called BBC – Bogotá Brewing Company of course. We then went in search of food and found somewhere cheap n cheerful that strongly reminded me of TGI birthday parties from back in the day (they had a special birthday hat and song that they yelled at poor victims).

Full and knackered, we went back to the hotel to sleep. I was out like a light by 9pm.

¡Hasta luego!