Bogota

We got to Bogota late on a Friday or Saturday night. When trying to get a taxi to our hostel we were stopped, or the taxi driver trying to take us was stopped by the police. Apparently he wasn't certified to take us and since we were tourists the police were simply not going to allow it. The man seemed fairly old and harmless, he protested, clearly he just wanted our business, I don't think he was going to hand us over to any terrorists or drug dealers. I have to say it's not exactly the welcome we were anticipating from the capital city of a country like Colombia. over-cautious police presence and gentle looking taxi drivers being denied our business. I could tell the friends I was travelling with were slightly nervous about arriving in Bogota, they were more than a little bit on edge. I've arrived completely blindly and completely alone in enough places by this point that I have a finely tuned talent for putting all fear out of my mind and not responsibly considering the dangers I could be facing at all. It seemed simple enough to me, get a taxi to a hostel, have a shower and then sleep. 

This is exactly what we did. I was more than mildly tempted to go out and see what a weekend in Bogota serves up, particularly after the jungle isolation, it seemed fitting to go out and get a bit drunk. The others weren't so into the idea.

It was cold at night in Bogota and not really that much warmer during the day, quite a shock after the sweaty heat and humidity of the jungle. It was bizarre to be in a city. The drive to get across from the airport to our chosen hostel seemed endless. Parts of Bogota seemed to look slightly war torn and very crumbly. As we neared the hostel street we saw groups of young locals out drinking. It was like Buenos Aires they were a bit hippy punk looking. Drunk. The streets were not particularly well lit and we over-shot the hostel and ended up on a really dodgy street which we were later told by a hostel owner should remain strictly off limits. It's where the poor people live, he said. The ghetto. It did look quite rough, but I'm always fascinated by crumbling buildings and battered parts of town that may or may not bear signs of more prosperous times. The old looking houses here were indeed battered, looked like they could tell a few stories and guarded many secrets.

We made our beds and slept for the night, resisting the draw of the weekend festivities a stones throw away from us, more than slightly deterred by all the armed policemen we had seen from the taxi driver's window. Heavily armed and wrapped up in balaclavas they were acting as barriers to certain streets, their guns were huge and they looked generally threatening like shooting was sport and not for the purpose of civil protection. Seen too many silly films? Perhaps. But you can't help your imagination running away with you a little bit.

We had landed ourselves in a colonial looking, mexican feeling part of the capital and I really liked it. Our hostel, though rather empty, was a cool old building with hammocks stung out in the courtyard areas and a pet black labrador. A very attractive man with south american dark curly hair checked us in. Send more hot colombian males my way, please. Sensibly we got an early night so that we could get up bright and early(ish) to take a look at some of the sights the next day.