Day 201, 202, 203, 204 - Bogota - Friday 4th, Saturday 5th, Sunday 6th, Monday 7th May 2012

We arrived in Bogota looking and feeling like the living dead. We've stupidly decided not to get a hotel in Miami the night before as we had to be at the airport at 4am for a 7am flight, and so it seemed like a waste of money; so instead we just sat at Miami airport all night - meaning no sleep for us!

After collecting our luggage, we walked out of Bogota's airport and found the taxi rank; "habla ingles?" (do you speak English?) we asked, to which the short answer was "no". Ummm maybe our pocket book of Spanish wasn't going to get us through……………

We arrived at our hostel and quickly checked in and got some shut eye. A few hours later we felt normal again and so ventured out onto the streets of La Candelaria - the historic part of Bogota and where we were staying. Pretty soon we came across loads of police and road closures and then a series of marching soldiers - it was great watching them all march along in time so we decided to follow them! We've never seen so many guns in our life! We wandered around the Plaza de Bolivia and the surrounding areas and then grabbed a snack - a tasty toasted muffin type thing with cheese in the middle, butter smeared on top and covered in salt, from a street vendor before venturing back to our hostel to eat (yes more) and sleep.

After our free breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs and coffee we headed back out again to explore Bogota. Bogota is freezing by the way - cold, raining and as its 2600m up (high altitude) you lose your breath quite quickly too. So wrapped in our hoodies and scarfs we ventured to our first stop of the day - Botero Museum. Fernando Botero Angulo is a famous Colombian artist who seems to paint normal day to day scenes of people and things but, how can I say it, seems to make them larger than life. Ad's comment was "so he just paints everything fat?!" - this about sums it up really! His work is beautiful though and has a touch of irony in it and so we spent an enjoyable hour walking around and checking out his artwork as well as some Picasso's and Dali's thrown in for good measure! It was also free to get in (bonus) - something to do with the museum celebrating its 200th year (well that was what we picked up from our limited listening Spanish skills and the coin we were given that was imprinted with "200 anos" on it!).

Come 1pm we went back to our hostel for our hour Spanish lesson - we'd decided it would be good to get some basic Spanish under our belt. The lesson was, let's say, interesting! We discovered that we know very little Spanish (poco espanyol!) but tried our best! The rest of the day was spent wandering around, testing our limited Spanish and tasting the various Bogota specialities - my favourite being chocolate santaferno; this is a cup of hot chocolate served with a piece of cheese (to dip in your chocolate) and two different types of bread - yummy, especially when it's cold and wet outside!

This morning we decided to not set the alarm and just see what time we woke up - ummm at 11.30am we finally woke from our slumber! We'd missed our free breakfast and had another Spanish lesson at 2pm so with our limited time we quickly dressed and headed for the Museo Del Oro (Gold Museum). It's Sunday and on Sunday's Bogota's main centre closes all of its roads so that everyone can come out and ride their bikes, skate etc. It's such a great idea and was great fun watching all the families out and about on the streets and kids running around everywhere without the worry of being run over! The Gold Museum was ummm full of gold; such a shame they don't let you take a bit away with you!

The afternoon came and we were even more confused after our Spanish lesson - to help we've been watching Mi Vida Loca on the BBC website. Ad's now favourite saying is "Yo soy espanyol perfecto!" - everyone he says it to replies "no!" and laughs at him!

With daylight fading we headed to the Cerro De Monserrate (basically a church on the side of the mountain overlooking Bogota); to get up to the dizzy height of 3200m we had to get in the little cable cart which was an event in itself! The guard issued his safety instructions - we understood nothing but just nodded and smiled at him (we think this might be a common occurrence over the next few months). At the top we took in the amazing view, snapped lots of pictures and wandered around and before we knew it the guards were laughing at us and hand signalling that it was time to go back down - they all seemed to find it highly amusing that we had no clue what they were saying!

Back down in Bogota we went in search of food and found a café off the main Plaza which looked nice; after looking at the menu and not understanding any of it we asked in our pigeon Spanish what he would recommend and to give us a local dish. The next minute we were presented with two dishes which turned out to be Ajiaco, soup with chicken and three different types of potato served with cream, corn, capers and an avocado, and Tamal, chicken with rice and vegetables folded in maize dough wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. They were both delicious! We followed this up with a white chocolate thing and a pot of sliced coconut in dulce sauce (like toffee sauce) - again delicious! Happy and full we headed back for bed.

Yep, it's raining again! We think it now may be time to invest in a paraguas (umbrella - see we are learning!). So armed with our paraguas we stopped at a little local restaurant and simply said "si" to the waitress. It turned out we'd agreed to a scrumptious three course set lunch of fresh juice, soup, lentil burgers with veggie lasagne and a mango sorbet thing - all for about £8!

Bogota is much better than we thought it would be, you can roam the streets without any worry of trouble and the people seem friendly. Plus there are police everywhere with very large guns - always helpful if you're feeling unsafe! The only thing we did find was a bit of a lack of things to do; after spending the last two days wandering around we thought we must have missed loads and so Ad got on the internet and looked up the top 20 things to do in Bogota. It seemed that we had actually done most of them (?!) but Ad found two things we hadn't done and decided he was leading the sightseeing for the day. The first stop was the Mirador Tree Colpatria, this is a 48 story skyscraper which has great views from the top floor. Unfortunately after walking all the way there in the rain we were told it was closed - I checked the guide book only to see that it is only open on the weekend and today was Monday! Well done Adam! Next up was the bull ring and again after walking around the whole of the outside of the building looking for a door, we discovered it was closed. Adam promptly decided I should be in charge of sightseeing from now on whilst he carries the bag……

We spent the rest of the day hiding from the rain in various coffee places merrily eating and drinking. We also discovered that the beggars seem to have a talent for speaking English! Can you believe it?! Of all the people in Bogota, it's the beggars who we can actually communicate with the best! One even spoke three languages - Spanish, English and Italian and all perfectly. So much so that we paid him to leave us alone in the end as he was getting all philosophical and talking about the dark side of the moon (I thought that was just a Pink Floyd album - I was told this was not the case!). Back at our hostel we packed our stuff ready for tomorrow's bus journey to San Gil.