On the 4th of January we woke up around
9am and had the last breakfast with Luz and her family. Luz's cousin ordered a
taxi to the airport for us with the app Beat, which is cheaper than Uber. Once in
the airport we went through the security check, where they threw our shampoo and body milk away as we were
boarding to an international flight to Bogotá. In the boarding gate they were
calling all the passengers that did the check-in online to check the size of
the luggage, so we went there one by one just with the small day packs to get a
blue tag which allowed the bags to go in the cabin.
When we arrived at Bogota
we got an Uber to Angelica's home, a Couchsurfing host who offered to
accommodate us during our stay in Bogota. She was waiting for us at home with a
friend of her, Elisabeth. They were chatting and drinking wine so we joined them and ate a
chicken wrap each for dinner. We were offered a private room but, as there was
no bed in there, we preferred to sleep in the couch in the living room.
Next morning we went to the
city centre by Transmilenio, a bus with a dedicated lane similar to the
Metropolitano we saw in Lima. It was a bank holiday weekend so the city was
fairly empty. We got off the bus at Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and entered it.
The entrance ticket was just 4k pesos each and it included a guide which we enjoyed
privately as no one else joined the group. The museum was very interesting, it
showed many gold ornamental pieces mainly from the Muiscas, the original
inhabitants of the area where now lies Bogota.
After the museum we walked
around la Candelaria looking for a restaurant to have lunch. We finally found a nice one called Balcones de la Candelaria, where Ari had huevos rancheros and I had picada, a
mix of different meats and fried potatoes. When we were finishing our meal it started to rain heavily. We wanted to go up to the Cerro Montserrate but as we had to
wait more than an hour for the rain to stop we didn't had time for it. We
decided to visited Museo Botero and Casa de la Moneda, which were free to
enter. We stayed there until they closed at 19h. After the museums we walked to
Plaza Bolivar and back to the Transmilenio station to get the bus to Angelica's
home.
On the 6th we woke up around
7am and got ready for our day trip to Guatavita lagoon with Angelica and her
friends (Elisabeth, her husband Armando and her son, and another couple). We
met them at a petrol station in the outskirts of Bogota and started our journey
to Guatavita. It was a two hours drive, which was even longer as we got lost a
couple of times. We finally arrived there around 11.30am. The entrance was 12500
pesos for Colombians and 17500 for foreigners, so they bought our entrances for
us so we got them cheaper. It was just allowed around 50 people with one guide
every 15 minutes, so we had to wait for around 1 hour to get in.
When we
finally started the tour, we learnt about the original people that used to
live there, the Muiscas. They used to train the chosen young men to become new
leaders of the community and the last test before that was to cover him
completely with gold and take him with a raft to the middle of the lagoon,
where they jumped into the water and dropped all the gold. When Spaniards
arrived and heard those stories they tried to find the gold destroying one of
the sides of the lagoon and draining the water. After the tour in the lagoon we
walked back to the car and drove to Guatavita village. We walked around the
village, which was full of Christmas lights and stopped at a restaurant for
lunch. Ari and myself just had some mandarins as we were not really hungry.
Back to Bogota, Angelica drove through la Calera, from were there was nice views
over the city by night.
Next morning we woke up around
8am, had breakfast and got the Transmilenio to las Aguas, from where we walked
up to the base of the funicular to Montserrate hill. The cable car wasn't
working so that was the only way to go up (besides walking for around one
hour). When we got to the top we enjoyed the amazing views over Bogota. We were
surprised to see a replica of the Verge de Montserrat in a room inside the
temple.
After a walk around the hill we went down again with the funicular. We walked around the city centre looking
for a place to print our flight tickets. It was very hard to find one as it was
bank holidays and everything was closed. We finally found one and went back to Angelica's home around 3pm. She kindly drove us to the airport to get the flight to our next destination,
Pereira. The flight was less than an hour long.
Once in Pereira we got a bus to the
city centre and from there we walked for 15 minutes to the bus terminal. The
last bus to Salento was supposed to depart at 6.30pm. We arrived like 20
minutes before that but they said that it already had departed, so we had to get a
bus to Armenia first and from there wait for another one to Salento. We
finally arrived there around 11pm, and there was a big party in the main square of the village. We walked to the hostel and when we got
there they told us that they rented the room that we booked to someone else and
they didn't have any other room available. The guy offered us a tent but when
we told him that this was not what we expected he said that he didn't want us
to stay. We left very furious with that stupid guy and went around the village
looking for another accommodation. After looking around for long (as most of
the places were full or closed) we found a comfortable hotel when it was later
than 12, which was more expensive but much better than the other one.
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