Almost bogged in Bogota

Bogota is the capital of Columbia and sitting at 2600m above sea level it is a rather cool and rainy place. Though I need to edit that by saying that we are visiting the country in the peak of the rainy season! At around midday each day the heaviest downpours occurred that often continued through the night. As I write this, we are hearing on the news that half of the city is underwater and that this is one of the wettest rainy seasons on record.




Trekking through the streets looking for accommodation at 6am after an overnight bus ride fun times!


Students partying in the streets and stopping traffic

We stayed in the old town of Bogota, by far the nicest and most happening part of town that we saw. Along with eating lots of cheap cheap pizza by the slice and the boys continual search for the best meat & egg rice ball they could find, we did our fair share of cultural activities in the city. We checked out the gold museum, Botero's gallery and the Police museum - an interesting place run by the Police to show tourists 'their' view of history (word of advice - just don't ask any questions as they don't appear to like that!)


Lots of political graffiti on political buildings in protest against the introduction of student fees - it seemed to work as the law was dissolved


A Botero classic - he's famous for drawing voluptuous rounded characters!

We also joined a bike tour for one of the days, led by a rather nutty American guy. It was a fascinating way to see the city - we visited the market and sampled an array of Columbian tropical fruits, we rode through the red light district, the bull ring, fed a llama with the worst teeth I've ever seen! Visited the cemetery where many of the old leaders of Columbia are buried and we saw the location where the body of the FARC leader is held after being murdered by the Police just one week ago before our arrival in the city. Unfortunately we got caught in a huge rain storm half way through the ride, but we did as the locals do and continued to cycle for another 3 hours in the torrential rain looking lovely in our multi-coloured ponchos!




yum yum - love tree tomatoes, a little acidic and sweet




Spending time with the military - these guys are on every corner with their finger gently resting on the trigger ready for anything!