8 Bogota briefly. 12/26/2015

Short note…

 Left wonderful Medellin (really would have stayed longer if we could).. 45 minute drive to the airport — climbing high into the lush green hills… Fairly new airport but the design enables the sun to stream through all the floor to soaring ceiling glass, heating the space up into a steam room! Nearly missed the plane since they changed the gate and we didn’t really pay attention to all the announcements on the speaker system since it was sort of a Spanish blur. Suddenly we found ourselves almost alone in the gate area and jumped up realizing something must have happened.. But all is well; made the plane; arrived safely in Bogota after the extremely short flight.

After landing we set out to find the Lost and Found (for United Airlines) since Mike had left his electronic pouch on the plane when we flew from Houston to Bogota a week ago… He received an email from United saying they located the “object” and that he can get it at the Bogota Airport. Well this turned out to be a wild goose chase… with us finally locating a United “office” that is only open from 9 am until noon. So now, Mike is attempting to have someone from the hotel go to the airport to pick up the package. We shall see.

Taxied to the hotel, for the 30 minute ride — (about $20/maybe less) — just imagine taxi fares in NY or SF to and from airports. We are staying at a rather wonderful hotel called Casa Medina, built in the 1940s using salvaged pieces from two colonial convents that  were being demolished at the time. So there are stone columns and original wood floors and hand carved doors.

The downside of staying at an upscale hotel is always that they are trained to assume that because you chose that hotel (which we really picked because it is located close to someone we are visiting during our stay in Bogota), you want all your services to be above the norm. Once we settled in and freshened up and grabbed a quick lunch here at the hotel, we set out for the Candelaria neighborhood (oldest area in Bogota). We were about to hail a cab (the normal yellow ones that are everywhere) when the hotel said to wait a moment they had called a cab for us.. Up drives a big white four-wheel drive with a driver wearing a suit and tie. I didn’t want to go in, begging off saying we wanted the taxi amarillo (yellow)… but Mike said that was insulting so we went with the big car. The driver took some circuitous route that took us above the city to get spectacular views but his “route” doubled the 15 minute distance we knew it should take… A bit of a disagreement in the car.. as we said we wanted him to take us “directly” to the Calendaria… and he said his route was better because it was out of traffic. We explained in Spanish that we were fine with traffic as it gives us a chance to see the city… But his sense of a tourist seeing the city and our sense were clearly opposite…

Finally arrived at Candelaria area, which is like the “old city” in other cities… buildings are mostly Spanish Colonial, baroque, and some art deco…  Lots of museums are located around this area and there’s the old, large cathedral with a huge plaza out front. People were milling about, vendors were hawking various things to buy.. kids were chasing pigeons. Weather is picture perfect… cooler than Medellin and now as I sit typing this note, it’s actually quite cool… probably about 60 degrees..

In my few hours here, I can tell you that it feels like the huge city it is… 8 million people… seems to go on forever. Going to be complicated to decide what to do and where to go.

Heading out to dinner soon; Peruvian restaurant called Nazca.

By the way on nearly every corner in every city, you can find a Juan Valdez cafe — their equivalent to Starbucks.

Best –

Fern