Colombia - Bogotá
- kmanhartsberger
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Carrying on south, our next stay was Bogotá. This capital city has a lot of stories around it, and quite recently yet another political case of violence happened. We knew we had to be careful, and the best way to find out where to go and not to go is to talk to the locals. But first we had to get there!
The drive through the Andes was beautiful. We like the mountains best, so it is such a treat to spend time on the road when we get to go there. We stopped at Hacienda Nápoles for a coffee, since the hotel in the park is open only at weekends in low season. The night was spent in Villeta, sharing with the truck drivers who stopped for the night. Basic, of course!
Bogotá seemed like a terrible mess when we first entered. Traffic was all over the place, and we learned that it was worse than usual as we arrived on a Friday before a long weekend. This suited us as we could do our touristy things over the weekend when the locals left the city. Bogotá is huge, people live mainly in a house with a garden, and with a population of some 8 million, it spreads out. There is no public transport to speak of, although it is being built, so very long red buses are taking people around using the streets fighting with cars.
Our first tour went to a salt mine, Catedral de Sal. This is a very deep mine, which is a real attraction for both locals and tourists. We spent several hours there, and ended the day in a local restaurant with a typical meal - meat, meat and more meat. And live music.
Bogotá is at 2,582m above sea level, and the climate is (now with climate change) steady around +17C or +18C high all year around. For us this is a nice change from the very hot weather on the coast. It is changeable though, and the day we were going to see the city, it was raining and the fog hung low on the mountain tops. We managed to get a photo of the pump in the square in the old town where Bogotá was founded.
