Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hola Bogota
We spent another night on a bus. it has been a while since we had a night bus, crossing from Argentina to Bolivia on my birthday it might be and on a semi cama i have to say i have not missed it. In this lovely trip during the corse of the night, we picked up many people. Every time we did naturally they had to turn on all the lights the bus had. This is only the minor inconvenience as Columbians don't try to avoid you when you are sleeping, they don't even try to move their backpack that they put over one shoulder. Person after person was hit in the head on the way, it's just their style not to care.
On this trip felt I really needed to protect my bag after my recent incident, so I went to extreme measures. First I wore it on my front, waist strap tied round my back. second i had it padlocked and i had a blanket wrapped around the bag and my chest and finally i had my hands over the whole lot. Try get me.... There was good reasons for this, it was holding all my documents, my hard drive, the DSLR Camera, and my tablet.... Most things of value to a thief which we had.
After many patches of sleep in between the flashlight awakenings and the slaps in the face from backpacks we arrived into Bogota early in the morning, around 5am. We waited in a long line for a taxi, entertained by watching people pushing trollies of poorly packed boxes and tartan pattern bags stacked higher than them. I'm sure if you stopped Bogota bus terminal and stacked bags in one tower and people in another, the bags would be higher.
We organized our taxi at a booth and got in. As we pulled away we searched the ticket for a price, name: extrangero (gringo) and no price. As I looked around the taxi and found the meter, this is odd. We were distracted by the events outside, we passed two very strangely 'parked' taxi's in an intersection. We hadn't made it a kilometer and we had passed a duel taxi accident in an intersection where a taxi almost made another accident by running a red looking at the carnage. I'm not feeling as safe as I was before.
I found a meter and it read 37. Sarah and I talked about what this could mean as it is about $1 to 2000 pesos. Is 37 actually 3700? A question was answered but it took till the meter read 51. A card on the back of the seat with the taxi license showed an odd chart. On this it illustrated the unit values, where the meter value equaled a cost, I'm not sure why it doesn't show the cost. We arrived at 131 and I'm sure everyone would know that 131 on a sunday equals 12,000. it would be only 9,800 if you didn't book it through a booth and it wasn't a Sunday. It's just so clear.
We arrived at our hotel, we think as we looked at the house, then the writing on a posit note calle 12b #1-05 and then the house again. finally we rang the bell fingers crossed, hoping for Mr Cesar to come to the door. A young approximately 20 year old Latin American man came to the door in his pajama pants, looking slightly puzzled. He left again to return to the door jingling a set of keys. He read the address and heard a bit of broken Spanish when he must have remembered.... it was a hotel. He moved aside and let us in; the early hour was rattling him too. Finally after some broken conversation we found out we were at the right place, we paid our taxi and were given choice of a room.
I would tell you were we were but its half the fun of it, there was no sign, there is no cards and there is no website. This is all because there is no name yet! Sarah and I are the very first guests at this hotel.
A very welcoming Cesar comes down the spiral staircase to greet us and offered us coffee. As we accept he introduced us to the pajama clad Ricardo. Ricardo bought some coffee but we offered to supply the tea so he wouldn't have to get more. He explained we are the first guests, they were not open yet and he didn't know people would want tea.
We had entered a place removed from a book, a design book or a travellers home, owned by someone who has feelings for South America too. There are many photos on the blog of the decor, it was fantastic. While I write this in our room, acroos from me there is an old cabinet or two on the wall. On top of the cabinet, a large model sailing boat sits in front of a framed old map and a clock made from stone stone. Beside these are two bronze bookends with old worn brown and greenish grey books, complete with gold shiny titles and other lines over the spine. To the other side are two matching suits of armour, one Indian and the other Spanish, and around the corner towards me are three copy's of Moche ceramics. On closer inspection, there was a type of nautical theme that you only notice if you looked for it.
Enough for now on the decor, after our chat we quickly checked our emails, sent Lucy a birthday message, a quick shower and headed for a kip.
Four-five hours later we rose again to face the day, Andrew healthy, Sarah sick, it's not just hay fever after all.
After a persuasive tea in bed Sarah rose and we got ready for lunch. Ricardo heard us getting ready and offered to take us to a market for lunch. A Columbian special, lentil and vegetable soup, then beef with rice, plantain, salad etc as the main corse and a juice, well a sweet flavored ice tea this time. We thanked him and left to see the city. We headed down many different streets to see the city, aiming for central plaza where there were Sunday festivities. We walked past two of the many bronze men on the building roves, sitting, standing, they are like Santa clauses on the roves in Australia around Christmas time. These guys are all over the city and we tried to make a game out of it.
As we headed into the city, the rain started and it got heavier and heavier. We took some cover under the small veranda and we waited it out for a while near the cathedral people watching. In the end we had to return home as it got too hard and we were not ready for it.
A movie or two later we picked up a couple of slices of pizza for dinner and had a night in.
We hope that tomorrow we can go to the fat museum and the museo de oro, the museum of gold
- comments