Humedal de Córdoba

We caught an uber to our walking tour starting point in the Santa Fe area. We got some introductory facts about Bogotá. Our guide was very fun and engaging and impressively good at remembering names.

We tried Colombian coffee at a stand built into a Willy’s jeep. Traditionally it’s brewed black (“tinto”, which is confusing because that means red wine elsewhere) and you can choose to have it sweetened with brown sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. I usually dislike black coffee but it was so smooth and with the spices I loved it.

Then we walked around La Candelaria, which had a lot of beautiful street art. We sampled chica, a fermented alcohol mixed with fruit juices. It tasted similar to kombucha. Unfortunately it started to rain, which is typical for Bogotá to change suddenly.

We went to a restaurant recommended by our guide and had ajiaco, a chicken and potato soup with corn, capers, cream, and a side of avocado and rice. We stopped briefly in a cute souvenir shop on our way to the gold museum. It’s free on Sundays so unfortunately was super crowded. The collection is impressive and the pieces very intricate, I wish it provided more context.

It was still gloomy after the museum, but the rain paused long enough for us to try a couple of street food snacks recommended by the guide. We had aromatica, which is a hot tea brewed from a bunch of fruit and spices. You can add an anise liquor to it. We also had obleas from a stand Mick Jagger allegedly visited. Our guide said his favorite toppings are arequipe (Dulce de leche) and milk cream so that’s what we had, but you can get up to 16 toppings (which would combine savory and sweet and probably not taste nice). The woman let us sample a kiwi jam topping because I was curious about its neon green color.

We headed back to the Airbnb and worked on future travel plans. We were still full from lunch so we just had meat pastries from the convenience store for dinner.Read more