Reid and I travel every other year for the holidays, and this year we will be spending them in Colombia, South America. I am recapping our visit to the capital, Bogotá, below, while we head to Salento, a more rural town with vast valleys.

Overall Impressions

Bogotá was pleasantly surprising (for the most part, more on that in a sec). It’s a bustling city with a lot of history and even more eating establishments. We were there on a Sunday, which happens to be when the main street is shut down for bikes and pedestrians. It was a miles-long street market with tons of vendors all the way to the main Plaza de Bolivar. The infrastructure is better than I expected and locals are generally well-dressed. We’ve been to a handful of very poor Latin American countries, so we were glad to see this.

What We Did in Bogotá

For the most part, we wandered around La Candelaria district. The Gold Museum was free on Sunday and had, as you might imagine, a lot of gold artifacts. Reid doesn’t care for museums but I’m glad we took a quick lap. We also stumbled upon what we called Jeweler’s Row (not sure what street it was) and admired all the gold and emerald pieces from the windows.

The last area we explored was near the Plaza del Chorro del Quevedo, which we joked was where all the cool kids hang out. This was where we tried the local drink called Chicha and watched some street entertainers. Not far from there, we played Colombia’s national game Tejo at a bar. The objective is to throw a stone and get as close to the target as possible, with some added excitement from gun powder pops. Kind of like bags and bocce ball mixed.

Our Sour Experience

Our only bad experience was at the central Christmas show in Bogotá, ‘Constellations,’ which was a sort of light show in the main plaza at night. For starters, the show was underwhelming, but worse than that, it was PACKED. I started to feel panicked as we were exiting the plaza because people were pushing and shoving and squeezing so badly. Not fun. Reid was also pick pocketed before the show. Someone swiped his phone right out of his front jeans pocket and disappeared into the crowd. Thankfully I had thought to wear my (fully zipped) crossbody under my windbreaker, so I wasn’t a target, but that’s a mistake we won’t make again. We were glad they didn’t take his wallet. These things happen, and the important thing is that we were completely unharmed. Bummer to start the trip, but we move on!

Outskirts of Town

The second day we went to Monserrate, the mountain. We opted to hike up and take the cable car down. The hike consisted of stone steps, pretty much straight up, and my heart was pounding with the added elevation. We read that it would take 1.5-2 hours but we made it to the top in one hour. There was mass happening at the church and pretty incredible views of the whole city. We noticed a few helicopters and rescue teams up there and later learned that a group of 10 local teen hikers had gotten lost off the path. They were found (alive) the next day but had suffered from hypothermia with the rains at night. Wild! The cable car was about a 5 minute ride back down, super steep and a cool experience.

The churches of course were magnificent. We checked out a more residential area to visit a wine bar. Overall, we liked getting to know some of the city. Next stop, the coffee region.

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