Quebrada La Pilama

I'm wearing a jumper...and pants! At least I've discovered what was taking up all that room in my bag!

Colombia's capital is situated in the highlands, some 3200m above sea level. Geographically speaking it's actually in the northern most fingers of the Andes mountains. It's not quite snowing but certainly cool and if you ask my compatriot, she'll be sure to inform you that by cool, I mean cold. That is if she can be heard through the layers of clothes under which she hides her thermally unstable self. It's a shock for us and a welcome reminder we need to get serious about finding some warm clothes for Patagonia and the onset of the approaching southern hemisphere winter. Shorts and singlets are going deep in our bags, at least for now; the cold is here.

Our first day in Bogotá was long. It started at 3am when we were booted off our bus (see last footprint) and played out similarly to our first day in Medellín - save for the fact that nothing was open at 6am when we began exploring and nothing would open until 8am. We discovered Bogotá's café secret: hot drinks come with bread and cheese - nearly a meals worth of food. Our five hour wait for breakfast well worth it, in quantity if not anything else. Being Sunday, the day before all museums close we decided to tick off the Gold museum and Police museum, neither of which offered enough to hold our concentration or engage our brains - probably not a great choice of activity after all. That culminated with one of many shopping attempts for warm clothes, a quick home cooked meal and an early bed.

Monday's bicycle tour was probably our best tour to date. A group of ten or so of us were let loose on the crazy streets of Bogotá, trailing our guide and a very smiley spanish speaking mechanic. We visited fresh fruit markets where we got really stuck in to trying many of Colombia's seemingly infinite number of tropical fruit. So many delightful treats have been sitting under our noses for far too long! Next up was Tejo - a Colombian game which involves beer, petanque-eske motions, hunks of steel, clay, and gunpowder. I shant explain the rules but from what you can imagine it can be loud and rowdy. Stop three was the coffee factory which we've seen way too much of but were quick to jump at the chance to lap up a cappuccino.

One of the most interesting parts of the tour was the graffiti. Bogotá is covered in it from head to toe but on the most part it's not graffiti - it's street art. Not too long ago the city was plagued with graffiti. The government had an idea to allow street artists to decorate its infrastructure by holding a competition in which artists could select a space and propose their work. The winners were granted the space, the materials and some cash to decorate their part of the city. In doing so, other 'artists' respected their work (more so than a blank wall) and took their graffiti elsewhere. The idea took off and before they knew it Colombians were paying artists to paint their walls with all kinds of works. It's turned a problem into an intriguing part of the city's culture.

We summoned the courage to take multiple buses to the very distant and rather expensive salt cathedral, buried in the salt mines. It was nice to get out of town and meet some smiley locals and we were grateful to have missed Santa Semaña at the cathedral...it sounded chaotic! The salt cathedral is buried in a disused salt mine (the new mine operated below the cathedral) and hosts numerous places of prayer including three large churches, numerous gift shops, a reflection room, a theatre, a light show and of course a cafe and bathrooms. It's huge. But no huger than you would expect for a mine. Highlight of the day: watching Cat lick the wall to see if salt really did taste like salt.

After what seemed like an eternity of shopping in Bogotá, we finally managed to acquire boots and thermals and a fleece for Cat. We visited three malls and dozens of shops to do so. Not recommended...probably should have just waited until Patagonia. Ah well, we'll be there soon enough!Read more