Bogotá Day 1-2

As I landed in Bogotá, Oliver was already waiting for me, and he got us a SIM card and some pesos. (The maximum amount at the ATM to withdraw were 300000 pesos, which are about 68€). We got to our hostel which was in the city center, but as we were advised not to really walk around at night, we stayed at the hostel and drank a beer in the garden.

The next day we did a free walking tour where we learned about the history of Bogotá, saw the most important corners of the city. One of the most interesting scenes were a square, where many elderly man were standing around and talking the whole day, and though it seemed that they were doing nothing, they were actually trading with emerald from they pockets, making thus the square the biggest informal emerald market. Besides the emerald, people are selling a great variety of things such as fruits, sweets, jewelry, drinks, origami and paintings made from Venezuelan bolivar (as it worth so little), and they offer to repair bikes, clean shoes and many other stuff.

During the tour we also got some recommendations on local food, of what we tried some for lunch. We ate tamal, which is made from corn, chickpeas, and chicken, cooked in banana leaves, and we also tried changua, which is a soup made of milk and eggs.
We were also told to try the local hot chocolate, which is served with cheese and bread. Though it sounded very weird, the melted cheese was super tasty in the chocolate.

We also visited the Botero Museum, which is a free museum, as Botero donated several paintings from his private collection to the government, with the condition to make it free and keep them in the museum forever. In the afternoon we went up to Monserrate hill by a cable car to check out the city from above. It got pretty late (and cold) and we were a bit concerned about walking back to the hostel in the dark, as we had an ATM with a higher limit, and got a huge bundle of money. It is crazy to walk around with millions of pesos, which still do not worth more than a few hundred Euros.Read more