We arrived in Bogota at night, after a long (8-hour) layover in Lima. They have a great taxi system in Colombia:
- You go to an official kiosk
- Tell them the address you want
- They print you a receipt with the destination and the price
- You give that to the driver, and he takes you there
- You pay (him) the amount shown on the receipt
It worked that way for us in Bogota and in Cartagena.
After some navigational negotiating, we made it to our hotel, which was great. We were really comfortable there – and ate really well (best eggs, and according to Stef, best coffee in our travels) too!
Bogota is a really cool city – lots of fun to walk around, several really amazing places to see, and very friendly people (especially all the military guards around the Plaza Bolivar and presidential palace). The two coolest parts of our visit were the Plaza Bolivar and the Museo de Oro (gold museum). Here’s what we saw around the city:
The plaza is just their central plaza, but it’s huge, has a few great colonial buildings surrounding it, and some kind of protest or public event in the center every day. Oh, and don’t forget the pigeons! The cover half the plaza, and flock to whoever has a few breadcrumbs (of course, there are a couple of people on the plaza who sell bread so that you can feed the pigeons, and have them land and sit all over you. No, we didn’t do that). We were there on mostly overcast days, but that made the photos better in some ways:
The Museo De Oro is another Bogota highlight. It explores the history of gold and metallurgy, especially as it relates to the northwestern tip of South America (where Colombia is located). The exhibitions are truly breathtaking, and the information provided is great -we learned a lot about early jewelry-making practices in only an hour there. Check out the colors in the Museo de Oro:
After a couple of days walking around Bogota, seeing some things, and of course trying the coffee, we headed out to Cartagena to spend a few days on the beach…
