An Upgrade and an Odd Guide

An Upgrade and an Odd Guide
Bogota, Colombia

Bogota, Colombia

After our travels around South America we had soon discovered that some hotel booking websites were better than others. Booking.com is often a little cheaper, Agoda is usually pretty poor and Hotels.com may have seemed a little more expensive but it had better choice and you could earn 1 free night for every 10 nights you stayed which was equivalent to an average of the price paid for the 10 nights so this quickly became our preferred website.

We also had one other useful tool in our hotel booking arsenal, a free $50 voucher from when our hotel in Jeri in Brazil was cancelled and we were upgraded and given free money for the inconvenience. So we decided to take advantage of the free money and free nights that we had accumulated to stay somewhere nice in Bogota. We searched and searched and final found the perfect place. It was clean, modern and central and had a Juan Valdez coffee shop in the foyer so we were sold and to book for 3 nights would cost us exactly $30 if we made 2 reservations and used our free money and free nights. It was a no brainer so we booked it.

Sadly things went a little awry and we received a message from the hotel to tell us that there had been a power cut and our hotel was closed for the night so they would upgrade us for one night to a sister hotel then move us back to our original hotel for the next 2 nights. We told them that we had a walking tour booked early the next morning and lo and behold they agreed to pick us up early enough to bring us to the hotel to store our luggage whilst we were on the tour.

So as always the Currie luck really shone through here, aside from being in a strange neighbourhood where no tourist would find anything to do, the hotel that we were sent to was amazing. It was a suite hotel, so we had a full kitchen and lounge and even had posh toiletries and bathrobes. There was a supermarket nearby so we took full advantage of our facilities and had a home cooked dinner.

After breakfast as promised our same driver from the airport was at the hotel ready to take us to the city and on our arrival we were given our room straight away. It was absolute bliss, Colombian hospitality is just awesome. Our room was huge with floor to ceiling glass windows overlooking a city park and as promised Juan Valdez was waiting for us down stairs with a fresh brewed coffee.

To get our bearings we joined the morning walking tour and set off to explore the city, it was really easy to navigate and had so much to see. We had a great guide who showed us so many sights many of which were the scene of political unrest, murder and madness. We heard a ghost story about a young girl who drowned in the rain and now knocks on the doors of the various city hostels, we saw graffiti and drank Chicha (an alcoholic drink originally made by elders chewing and spitting corn and leaving it to ferment, thankfully the chicha we tried was not made in the traditional method, but still tasted terrible). We were taken to an amazing museum complex which is entirely free to visit and one entire section is made up of paintings by the famous Colombian artist Botero, you could literally spend days here there was so much to see.

The final part of the tour led us to Bolivar square. Good old Simon Bolivar standing proud in yet another South American plaza. However this plaza is less renowned for Simon Bolivar aside from being named after him and is more renowned for being the site of the 1985 Palace of Justice siege. It is alleged to have been another masterplan of Pablo Escobar but it has seemingly never been proven. At 11:35am on the 6^th November 1985 35 guerrillas who were members of the group M-19 stormed the Supreme Court of Colombia. Hostages were taken, people were fired at with machine guns and bombs were detonated before the military took back control. More than 100 people died in the assault including 12 magistrates. It is unknown exactly why the siege took place but it is alleged that 6000 documents including case files against members of M-19 and Pablo Escobar which could lead to their extradition to the USA were destroyed in a fire that burned for 2 days.

Bogota really was fantastic and we were more than happy at the end of the tour to make a short video for the guide to say how much we had enjoyed the tour and that there was so much to see in this great city. What neither Tim or I realised when we agreed to do this was that apparently Tim ‘super cool’ Currie suffers from extreme stage fright. He agreed that I should go first so with the camera rolling I said what a great time we had had, we had seen so much of the city and had picked up so many hints and tips of more places to visit on our own, I then looked over to Tim for him to add his praise, to which he just froze, shouted I concur and darted as far as he possibly could away from the camera. Of all things I knew about my husband I never knew that he was camera shy. I am still awaiting the bloopers real to come out to share this fine moment with you all.

As I had said to camera we did indeed leave our tour with a whole array of information of things to see, eat and do before we left the city in just two short days and number one on the list was to visit the Police Museum which contains a whole host of Pablo Escobar evidence from his reign of terror over the country. Little did we realise that the museum was actually in the Police station and our tour guide was an active police officer turned tour guide. Our guide didn’t speak the best English but we got the gist of what he was saying and really already knew what we were there to see so didn’t need any explanation. The most annoying part of this tour is that whilst it is free you have to endure a full hour of the full history of the Colombian police force, from the development of the uniform, every type of gun ever used, we had a full explanation of the walls and walls of paintings of every police chief ever, even sections containing awards for the bravery of police dogs, then at the very end there is a room dedicated to the narcos which is full of Pablo Escobar paraphernalia. The highlights being the glassed and coat he was wearing when he was shot, the phone he was using at the time and the bloody roof tile that he landed on. There was furniture designed to hide drugs and cash and even one of the many money counting machines that he used. It was by far the strangest tour we have taken in a long time and sadly didn’t quite live up to expectations, but the sheer madness of it made for an entertaining afternoon and our guide seemed proud as punch to have shown us around and shared his vast knowledge even if we did only understand about 30% and got about a 10% accuracy rate on any question we asked. It seems he went to the tour guide school that teaches you if you don’t understand the question just give them another random fact that takes 5 minutes and leaves them confused and baffled. Lol.

We had one last Colombian delicacy that we needed to try whilst in Bogota; our walking tour guide had directed us to a café which sells hot chocolate. This is no ordinary hot chocolate though; it is filled with lumps of cheese. Yeah it sounds awful doesn’t it? I would love to tell you that it is one of those things that you have to try to believe how good it is, but I would be lying. It was just odd and not unpleasant but not pleasant either, just odd. The cheese is like a firm mozzarella so it doesn’t really melt it just softens and you are left just chewing and chewing and chewing until you have to either admit defeat and swallow dry lumpy cheese washed down with hot chocolate or subtly spit said offending cheese into a napkin to dispose of at your earliest convenience.

So that was it, we had one last afternoon to fill and we tried to join the free graffiti walking tour but it was so busy we left after about 10 minutes and instead headed to Waffles and Crepes one of our favourite dessert restaurants before we packed and made our way to the airport for our final flight home.

South America
, you have been amazing, you have been cold, you have been educational, you have been expensive but you have been worth it. We still need to return to finish the places we missed and we definitely cannot declare Colombia done just yet as there is so much more to see and do, but for now we need new passports and we need a break from the travelling life before we forget why we are doing it and we need to appreciate every place we visit that bit more.

Next stop: that little rock in the English Channel that we call “Home”!!