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This was my introduction to Latin America and my first real experience of a place where most of the people I would meet would not speak english.
It´s fair to say I had been farily blase about my lack of Spanish, as even on the plane over from Canada I had elected to watch 30 Rock in preference to learning any spanish. When I arrived at the airport this was something of a shock as non of the customs officials I spoke to knew any english and even the woman in the information desk was struggling. I also realised I was the only person still wearing shorts so quickly changed into a pair of jeans and jumper before getting into the Go Cart / Taxi to get me to the hostel. As Bogota is the third highest capital city in the world (around 2,500m) its pretty cold and in the session I went, it was quite wet too. It was the quietist taxi ride I had ever had and it was killing me not have any of the usual banter with the driver.
Bogota isn´t exactly much of a tourist destination in itself although it proved to be more of an experience for me with the streets lined with people selling crap and people selling time on their mobile phones, which they have chained to themselves. I when I was out on my own, knowing no Spanish made for an intersting time ordering at restarants and cafes. The first day I was there I went to cafe Azul and despite the fact I was just trying to order the set menu this took me a considerable amount of time. Partly due to the fact Colombians are so helpful they won´t give anything until they are certain its what you want. Anyway, for about $3 or something you get the soup a fresh juice, a main course with rice and beans and some kind of meat and then some fruit for desert. Colombian food is by no means the best in South America - in fact most of it is pretty aweful. But it is however cheap and filling if you go for the local stuff. You can get some western style fast food but this is exactly the same price and worse quality than back home. I found this out to another amusing trip to a local fried chicken establishment.
The Salt Mine
There is a salt mine with an underground Cathedral entirely made of Salt about 50km north of Bogota - I had foolisly hoped it would only take around an hour to get there but doing a lot of the way on a Collectivo (local bus that picks up and drops off people wherever they like) meant it was more like over 2 hours each way. The Cathedral itself was pretty good anyway, even if the museum that went with it was pretty simple.
It was quite a lesson in Colombian public transport though - as a brit I made the automatic and incorrect assumption that we had a better public transport system than anywhere in South America. In fact it is incredibly easy to get around Colombia without a car and the Transmilenio which is the main bus service through Bogota is incredibly well organised. Having said that me and a fellow english traveller managed to end up heading in the wrong direction after our trip to the salt mine and never understood how that happened.
Monserate
There´s a big hill near Bogota which is worth going up. As the guidebook had told me, if you walk up its hard work and you get mugged, so taking the cable car was a fairly obvious choice. You get a pretty good view of the city and you can see for miles beyond on a good day.
I went to a load of museums including the Museo del Oro (South Americans have something of a history with the stuff) but my favourite had to be the Botero Museum which mostly shows paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero. His paintings are famous for having fat people and fruit in. There´s also a few Picassos and some other good stuff.
Party Bus
The party bus leaves the Candelaria area of Bogota on Wednesday and Friday nights and involves paying about 10 pounds and going around to the propriator´s restaurant for free drinks - mostly rum and aguardiente (the local spirit that tastes a bit like sambuca). Then you get on the party bus (more drinks aboard the bus) and then head north to Zona Rosa, doing a few bars on the way. This was a complete riot as it was me and some irish, kiwis, ozzies and the girl organising it was Austrailian.
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