Colombia Travel Report 1: Bogotá

Back to tiny Cholula. Finally time to catch up with the reports about my recent (or well, not so recent anymore) travels to Colombia and in Mexico.

Great weather and view at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá

 Proceeding chronologically, I'll start with my arrival in Bogotá. But to consolidate a bit, this post also includes the pictures of my last days in Colombia, when I spent some more time in the capital.

Reviewing the photos, I have a better impression than when I arrived. With virtually no sleep and at the point of becoming sick, Bogotá didn't seem very beautiful to me. In fact, the first 3 days I slept around 15 hours each. Somehow, I "always" (ok, it was the second time) get sick when arriving in a South American country.

Luckily, the sickness didn't influence my appetite, so there was plenty of food to try.

Deep-fried buñuelo, a dough consisting of flour, yuca, egg, and who knows what else. Amazingly tasteless...

Pandebono became one of my favourites. Thanks to the fermented dough made of yuca flour, the bread has a funny gooey, rubbery consistency. Like almost all the bread in Colombia, it has a strong cheese flavour, which many times is combined with a sweet guava filling.

Arepas are flatbreads made of ground maize dough. Sometimes, in small villages, I found them flame-grilled, which I enjoyed. But as in the photo, most of the arepas was mass produced standard fare and fried in oil, what made them extremely heavy to digest. Even my Lonely Planet travel guide wrote, that the Venezuelan arepas are tastier.

Chontaduro, aka Peach Palm, is a starchy "fruit", which is cooked for a long time and then eaten with honey and salt. Another client told me, that you have to get used to the taste first. But actually, I enjoyed it from the first bite on.

Smaller arepa, supposedly with more finely ground maize, but I didn't taste too much of a difference.

And some more arepa, this time stuffed with fried egg and once again deep-fried. Not my favourite...

I quickly learned that in Colombia you'd better stick to the fruits rather than the prepared meals. It was the first time that I ate feijoa aka pineapple guava and I really liked it, although apparently it is more often used in juices.

"Goodbye" arepa. Won't miss you too much... This one was fried, filled with cheese and topped with around one block of butter. Soooo heavy....

 Although it was not very difficult to maintain a vegetarian diet (much easier than in Mexico, where most of the stews are already pre-cooked with many chunks of meat), it quickly became obvious that Colombian cuisine is not exactly one of the most refined and diverse ones. Somehow, every day my meal looked more or less the same (and this would also have been the case if I ate meat).

The waitress told me that  the dish would come with a salad. Erm... you mean these sad two slices of tomato?!

This was in one of the "better" restaurants - and still standard fare.

Somehow reminded me of Portuguese cuisine...

 But well, even Lonely Planet states that you don't go to Colombia for the food... True.



When I returned to Bogotá at the end of my trip - not being sick anymore - I could enjoy the city a bit more. I recognized the pretty colonial style of the houses.

Yet, only the very historical centre was that well-preserved. After only very few streets, the "true and ugly" part of the capital become more than apparent. Nevertheless, even in these rougher parts I found some gems, like the great MAMBO Museum of Contemporary Art. Not only did I like the exhibitions much more than the ones in Medellín's counterpart MAMM, but also the architecture was impressive - open spaces and lots of sunlight.

Open spaces and sunlight

Bogotá as seen from the museum.

Colombia is that close to the equator, that you can easily calculate the distance to the horizon, supposing that the earth is perfectly round.

Proving wrong each of the meanings of Colombia's national coat of arms... and somehow true.

Beforehand, I was told that Colombian Spanish was one of the clearest and most comprehensible ones. Well, as for me, it sometimes didn't sound like Spanish at all. And I really got annoyed by the permanent "ah sí, claaaaaro". Interestingly, I also found Colombians a bit reserved compared to Mexicans. Man, who bad will be my reverse culture shock back in Germany, when I already find Colombians "reserved"?! But in fact, you don't use as many set phrases in Colombia like as you in Mexico. You don't say goodbye when leaving a shop, you don't say "enjoy your meal" to the other guests when leaving a restaurant, etc. Perhaps already because of the lack of these "empty phrases" it felt like a more reserved atmosphere...

I was surprised that Colombians use "Ciao" instead of "Hasta luego" or "Bye" and that they do use the verb "coger" like in Spain, namely with the meaning of "to take (a bus etc.)". Generally, in Latin America, "coger" is used as a swearword for "reproductive activities".

Bogotá is also known as the "culture capital" of Colombia (although some Colombians opined that Medellín has much more to offer). One of the "must see" museums here is the Gold Museum. It was impressive, but unfortunately I was too sick to really enjoy it and just rushed through.

As always, one of the things I enjoyed most was the busy atmosphere on local markets.

The omnipresent coffee vendors (which you should avoid, because the taste of this cheap muck is really... not recommendable.

The ever-present cell phone rentals, which are very popular because they can buy "minutes" in large scale and therefore offer better conditions than most individuals have in their own contract. Therefore, many Colombians only have a cell phone to receive calls, but use these "street phones" to make them.

Fresh fruit and (mostly fried) snacks everywhere....

Colombians love fresh fruit juices. With many meals I got a fresh blackberry juice which was really good - and with free refill (portions in Colombia are not as over-sized as in Mexico - and most people are much leaner - so you can enjoy a second helping).

I would have loved to buy some souvenirs, but with limited luggage space... Next time.

In one of my last days in Colombia, I saw a nice lightshow in the central plaza (Plaza de Armas).

I also made a half-day trip to the world's largest cross made out of salt and located in a former salt mine (but then again, how many are there).

Slightly too "ripped" Jesus...

The return trip back from the Cathedral was a hustle, because when you got off the bus, you found yourself in a fenced off area and in order to exit you had to first enter the public transport system's area - and to pay for it. So, actually you had to pay to leave... What a rip-off is this?!

As I said,  the street vendors' coffee is only cheap, but nothing else. Yet, coffee shops like "Colombia's Starbucks" Juan Valdez are really good. Stayed there several hours and finished my great travel literature I had bought before leaving Mexico.

Next destination after Bogotá was Villa de Leyva - really nice, but with a very very unpleasant occurence. More about it in my next post.