Whirlwind Tour of Bogotá

I headed alone over to Bogotá, excited to have the evening to myself. Solo travel is always nice—there’s nobody else to consult, you can do things when you want, where you want, how you want. It’s just sometimes harder to stay safe and keep track of your things. Maybe I would have been scared if I hadn’t spent the last day in Medellín, but I was going into Bogotá with just as much confidence as I would have going into any European city. That is to say, I wasn’t scared, but I for sure I knew I had to watch my things and my back.

The drive into Bogotá from the airport is less exciting than the drive into Medellín for sure, as it’s all city, though you do get quite a nice view of the mountains surrounding the city. Bogotá is much higher up than Medellín, though it’s situated in a much larger basin than Medellín is, making the city not feel as mountainous. Maybe it’s more like Denver then, with the mountains off in the distance. But the difference between Denver and here is that the center of the city is at the foot of these mountains, climbing up as you get into the older districts.

Now, one of the things I was most curious about would be how Bogotá felt. I’d heard a lot, and every local in Medellín insists that Bogotá is a pretty lame place compared to their self-described City of Eternal Spring, with much worse weather, much colder locals, and much uglier of a cityscape. I was on the lookout for how those comparisons shaped up to my previously unbiased opinion, but also for if and how the city shaped up post-Escobar. Remember, much of the city was blown up by Escobar.

My taxi dropped me off at our apartment in Egipto: a neighborhood marked by steep, hilly streets running down the mountain into the basin, where the center of the city was only a 10-minute walk away. This neighborhood was just beautiful. Each building was a different color, the rooves were clearly noticeable and rustically beautiful, the streets were paved with two colors of bricks, and cafes and local restaurants accompanied the assortment of apartment buildings. Inside, our apartment reminded me somewhat of something out of southern Spain, being an unassuming wall on the outside, yet a beautiful, colorful, green courtyard inside with well-maintained plants, a nice place to sit, and even a fountain. Everything in the apartment was rustic, complete with a wood-burning fireplace for heating, low ceilings, a stunning lack of electric lights, and a satisfying squeak on the wooden floorboards when you walk around.

This place was so neat, and I would for sure stay in this neighborhood, if not this very same place, were I to visit Bogotá again. It reminded me of a mix of the Centro Historico of Cusco or even Santa Cruz in Seville—hilly with the same kind of architecture as Cusco, but with the colors of Seville—and that mix was something that I was just not expecting, given all that I’d heard about Bogotá’s heartlessness and lack of vibrancy. And yes, it’s possible I’d describe it as not “vibrant” per se—these colors didn’t pop, they didn’t exude life, they didn’t energize me—rather, they provided a pensive, beautiful backdrop to inspire my thoughts while all alone. And these thoughts centered around that one thing: Colombia’s underrated, over-stereotyped, and misunderstood.

I found my way pretty easily downtown, to the Plaza Bolivar, where a large concert was taking place with a group known as Disorden Publico—public disorder in Spanish. I knew I’d hit downtown when I started seeing food stalls all over: something I’d heard about Bogotá in particular. I’d heard, also, that generally, you don’t need to be careful eating street food in Bogotá. It’s safe, and tourists rarely get sick from eating it. Locals get street food very often as well. Well, by this point, I’d been dying to try an arepa, and I found just the place to get one. I got myself a chicken arepa for $10,000, about $2.50 USD, which I soon learned was an outrageously large price. And this arepa was seriously nasty. Despite coming right off the griddle, it was lukewarm at best, and definitely not the hot, gooey, fresh-baked arepa I’d been hoping for. The chicken had no flavor, the arepa hardly tasted like anything, let alone that strong, distinctive corn flour taste, and the texture was terrible. Several times, I found myself spitting out things that were likely unground bits of either corn or chicken, but had the texture of an entire fingernail. They were hard, unchewable, and hurt a little to bite. I was convinced I was going to get food poisoning, but as of now, I don’t feel sick, and I’ve learned that food poisoning sets in usually about 4-5 hours after eating. So I think I’m safe. It was just an incredibly unpleasant experience, and frankly, was the final nail in the coffin I needed to cement that I don’t like arepas. I’ve never been a fan of corn flour—I don’t like corn tortillas nor any other arepa I’ve ever tried—but after this experience, I was pretty happy giving up arepas for good.

I entered into Plaza Bolivar to see what was going on in there, and it made me comfortable knowing that to enter, you needed to go through a security screening to ensure you weren’t carrying in a gun or drugs. In fact, they wouldn’t even let me in with my arepa they saw me buy right there. So again, this is Colombia moving on from its past, and ensuring that it never repeats it. The plaza was pretty, though the buildings were very monotone and European in style. It lacked that interesting flare that much else of Colombia had up until that point, and some of the buildings were clearly new. For example, the Palace of Justice (state court, maybe?) was built in a clearly modern way. Otherwise, it was your typical downtown city square that you’d expect in any other major capital city in the world, though I should note, it was much larger than I was expecting it to be.

The concert wasn’t my speed, and I quickly moved on, but what I was most surprised about was the crowd. This was my first introduction to what would be the surprisingly large presence of antisemitism and pro-Palestine keffiyeh-clad new-agey hipsters in Bogotá. Looking to my left, I saw a massive Palestinian flag. I mean, probably over 100 feet long, draped over the congress building, with the words “Against Genocide” written over it. Another banner in front of the basilica read something to the tune of “Down with the Zionist state, down with the murderers and oppressors,” though I didn’t grab a picture of it, so I can’t remember exactly. To be honest, when everyone says that Colombia is unsafe, and you should be careful, I wasn’t expecting antisemitism to be the thing making me feel most uncomfortable. What’s interesting is that this was nowhere to be found in Medellín, so maybe it’s a capital sort of thing. Walking around the city later on, I spotted much antisemitic graffiti. Here’s an assortment of just some I took a picture of, but there was much more around.

Exiting the Plaza Bolivar, I walked down the main drag of Bogotá. This was a purely pedestrian area, filled with street vendors, street food, and larger, name-brand shops on the sides. I’d bought a Colombia jersey yesterday in Comuna 13, though I walked into the Adidas store to see how much the non-knock off version would be. It was around $350,000, or $90. Let’s just say, I’m more than happy with my $40,000 jersey I bought. I also got a hamburger from the street, which, seems odd, but I suppose one of the most common street foods you can get here is a hamburger. The lady prepared me a burger, as her daughter took my order, and after it was done, she covered it in crispy onions, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and onion. It wasn’t the best burger I’ve ever gotten, but for $6,000, it was a pretty good dinner. And seeing that I got that okay burger, which was much more of a meal, for almost half the price of that nasty arepa, I became even more disappointed with my formerly just nasty, but now both nasty and rip-off arepa.

I walked down the street for a little longer, stopping to get some street-brewed aromatic tea, aromatica. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture, but as you walk by, there are dozens of stalls selling tea, brewed in a large pot with plenty of herbs, spices, and even vegetables. They have an array of different syrups and even liquors you can add to your tea, but I opted to go with just honey, as the hamburger lady told me honey is the most traditional flavor. It tasted like a tea, yes, but more of a flavorful, interesting tea “experience” rather than just a cup of tea. I’d for sure recommend an aromatica or two to your Bogotá visitor. But in general, the public, “out and about” nightlife of Bogotá is really fun, and I had a great, safe, and comfortable time by myself on this street.

With this, I returned home and headed to bed, so I could enjoy my last day in Colombia. Lachlan and Cata were on a flight arriving at around 8 AM, and we’d go explore from there!

In the morning, I woke up to them arriving in the apartment. We headed out quickly to breakfast, stopping at a café in Egipto. Now, I’m not a coffee person, but I figured that as I was in the coffee country (besides Yemen, but I don’t think I’ll be heading there anytime soon. But stay tuned for updates on that front?) I had to get myself something. I got a vanilla latte, and boy do I see what people mean when they talk about lattes being good. Of course, I’m not the one to talk about whether the coffee was good coffee or not, but I can say I really enjoyed the milky, creamy, just lightly coffee-tasting cup that was so beautifully prepared and served to us on the loft of a traditional Egipto building, teeming with plants, popping with color, and made mostly of wood. I also got some empanadas along with it, though not your Argentinian empanada. These empanadas were more like little pouches with a top tied by a string of rosemary or something like that, and baked to retain that shape. They were a little juicy, which normally would be weird, but the spices of the meat inside was worth the weird juiciness, I guess.

From there, we headed to our first stop of the day, Monserrate, while taking our good old time exploring the old city on our walk over there. Monserrate is a very nice area of the town, though certainly not a neighborhood. Like Montmartre in Paris, it’s a church on top of a hill, and all the hustle and bustle that surrounds that. But unlike Paris, there’s nobody who actually lives there. It’s all tourists and visitors to the church. There was a cable car and a funicular that both went to the top, so we took the cable car up and the funicular down. The area itself is super beautiful, and all the buildings around are quite rustic and have a lot of character. Though that’s true of most of the old town of Bogota.

We went into the church, and mass had just started. The father came out singing what can only be described as a pop song, but it had some religious connotations. The whole church was clapping along, newcomers like us were laughing and dancing, and everyone had a smile on their face. It’s interesting, because usually, you think Latin America would have a very traditional approach to Christianity. Especially in this historic church that gathers as many tourists that it does (the line to get up was about an hour, but we bought fast passes for $30,000 a piece). But it’s fun, potentially disappointing, to see religion being modernized in this way. I suppose that, as long as the option for those who wish a more traditional mass in that church remains, it’s probably harmless.

We walked around Monserrate for a while longer, exploring the handicrafts and tourist market. I tried this street food, which, to this day, I have no idea what it was. Imagine a little piece of brain inside of a cut piece of intestine. You then fry the two together, and the intestine becomes crunchy, and the brain stays chewy. That’s something like what I ate. But in the end, I have no clue. It was only a small bite, served to me on a toothpick free of charge, but I was gagging as it went down. I convulsed a few times, and bought a bottle of water to help get rid of the taste. All was good, and I never got food poisoning from it, so whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?

Usually, I’m pretty good about foreign food, but something about the food in Colombia has been just utterly meh, if not bad. Really, I only enjoyed my first meal.

We then headed to Parque 93, a spot in local Bogotá that was recommended to us. There was really nothing there, and in the end, we probably shouldn’t have gone. It was half an hour in the wrong direction, and with all the traffic, we couldn’t get to a bar fast enough to watch the Colombia Panama game in the Copa America.

We eventually found a bar downtown, on the street I was at last night, to watch the game, after missing the first two goals, putting Colombia up 2-0 in the first 15 minutes. We didn’t miss much, though, as Colombia put up another goal in the first half. We then took a taxi to another bar to watch with Cata’s cousin and her cousin’s family. This area, though Cata described it as “muy peligroso,” very dangerous, did not feel dangerous at all.  The buildings were all nice, there wasn’t any homelessness to be seen, and everyone was just there to watch the game, friendly, and energized. In the second half, two more goals were scored, and then a penalty kick in the last second of the game put Colombia up 5-0 against Panama. The city went wild. The atmosphere in both bars was wild, and it was truly a treat to watch the game with locals in this off-the-beaten-path area of Bogotá. 

With that, that’s the end of my trip to Colombia! I hope I did my part to shed some light on this chronically misunderstood country. Back for more later!