Flashpacker

Having seen the best that Cali had to offer (not a lot), the next day we caught another bus (the two guys Im travelling with - Tom and Kieran - have taken to calling me flashpacker instead of backpacker due to the amount of flights Id taken so Ill spare myself more mocking by not complaining here about taking another bus...) to Bogotá which is the capital city of Colombia. This bus journey was actually fairly pleasant, I even managed to sleep which was pretty amazing although I woke up with my ears aching as Id put my ear plugs in not realising that we were climbing in altitude - 2460 metres above sea level - and as a result my ears couldn't equalize :( 

The city itself is HUGE, it goes on for miles. Apparently it is one of the largest in South America and is amongst the thirty largest in the world. Getting to our hostel in the La Candelaria district therefore took a while but it was worth the drive. The area is in the old part of town which is pretty and colonial compared to rest of Bogotá which interestingly is a mixture of 1970s architecture (not the good kind) mixed in with some Neoclassical and Tudor style. There were times when we honestly thought we were back in England - the good (Tudor) and bad (1970s) of London architecture spring to mind!

Ugly building...

Pretty building...

Random painted building...

Weather wise it had dropped a good 10 degrees so it was back on with the jumpers and trousers. On our first day we visited the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá which is roughly an hour and thirty minutes bus ride north of Bogotá. It is an underground Roman Catholic Church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 meters underground - very random! The church itself was interesting despite there being a severe lack of tourist information and it smelling of sulphur...

One of the many chapels in the mine

Flags of the World light display as you walked through the tunnel down into the mine

That evening we went to a restaurant called Andres Carne de Res which had been highly recommended to me by several friends who had visited Colombia. It turned out there were two restaurants by the same owner – one in the centre of Bogotá and another pretty near to the Salt Cathedral we had visited earlier that day. We ended up visiting the one in the centre as we couldn’t face the long journey to the other – Ill just have to come back and visit that one!

Arriving at the restaurant we were faced with a long queue to get in (it was Saturday night) which wasn’t helped by the fact that we were all ravenously hungry. Thankfully it moved pretty quickly and we were soon sat at the bar in the restaurant waiting for our table. The building itself is split into three levels. There is the restaurant on the ground floor, the bar with a restaurant on the second (where we were) and then the club upstairs. The atmosphere was electric, you couldn’t hear yourself think for the amount of people talking, eating and drinking. Every now and then a transvestite would come up and dance for the table and then leave. This, in addition to the décor being straight out of Baz Lurrmans film of Romeo & Juliet just accentuated the campness of it all. The food was delicious, as were the drinks although my fruit punch did need a top up of rum!

The menu was so comprehensive it was like a book!

The ice bucket for our beers : D

The bar / restaurant area where we were sat 

Check out the heart shaped toilet flush chain!

One of the trannies walking down the stairs - those butt cheeks aren't real...

My jug of fruit punch 

Dinner! nom nom nom