Bogota, Colombia

Our bus arrived in Bogota at 8:00am and after a sleepless night we were struggling a bit. The Bogota bus terminal did not have a tourism office like the Medellin one did and we couldn't figure out what to do. The only way to leave the station was to take a taxi but there were five different taxi stops divided by different districts. We weren't sure what district the area of town we wanted to go to was in so we just guessed and waited in the very long line to be assigned a taxi. Taxis are very unsafe in Bogota so at the bus terminal you are assigned a taxi and they record your name and where the taxi is taking you. Apparently it is not unccommon for taxis to stop during your ride and pick up a friend who will rob you in the cab. It was at least a 30 minute ride to the Candelaria area where all of the hostels are located. Our taxi driver wanted to talk to us during the ride but he spoke no English so we tried our best in broken Spanish although our brains were barely working since we were so tired. We wanted to try out the "Cranky Croc" hostel first, so we gave him the address to that one. Of course he kept getting lost trying to find it and at one point he made an illegal left turn to try to get to it. A policeman saw him make the turn and pulled him over to give him a ticket with us in the cab. At this point we'd had enough and wanted to just walk but he made us wait in the cab while he paid the ticket and then let us out to walk. He charged us $20,000 pesos which we later learned was too much, but at that point we hardly cared. The Cranky Croc did not have any rooms available so they called over to a hostel down the street called "Candelario". They did have a private room available for $60,000/night so we headed over there to drop off our stuff. Unfortunately the room was located right above the main desk so it was always loud with music or talking and people were constantly walking by.
We walked around the city in search of a restaurant where we could get some breakfast or lunch (it was already 12:00 by this point). We walked quite a while but couldn't agree on anything so we stopped at a hotel restaurant and I got a smoked salmon wrap (which sounds weird but was delicious) and then Alyssa went to a bakery and got an almond croissant and a yogurt.
We decided that we would head to a shopping mall in search of a Forever 21 since Alyssa had lost her jacket and it was really cold in Bogota. I didn't even have a long sleeve shirt and was freezing as well. There is no metro in the city but there is a bus system that operates similarly. The busses have their own lanes and stop many times throughout the city. We realized that the mall was very far away and we would have to change busses a few times to get there. It was a very confusing hour ride out to the mall but it helped us learn how to ride these busses.

It's hilarious how happy we get when we see stores. Of course we can't afford to buy much and have absolutely no room left in our bags, but we like to browse anyways. We found the Forever 21 which was amazing because its so cheap. Alyssa got a new jacket and I bought a long sleeve shirt and some long pj pants since I only have little shorts and had been freezing at night.

We headed back into the city on the busses. As we rode, we looked out the windows and saw armed, riot policemen on every corner. We could not figure out what was going on or why in all parts of the city they were prepared for riots. We had been told that Bogota was not a safe place to walk around at night and were a little nervous as it was beginning to get dark and clearly the city was preparing for some kind of upheaval. We decided that we would make dinner at the hostel so that we would not need to venture back out. We stopped at the loal grocery store and bought pasta, green beans and croissants.

While we were making dinner we talked with Jason- he had been staying at our hostel in Medellin and ironically worked at this hostel in Bogota. Jason was playing guitar for us and making his own dinner. He leaned the guitar up against the wall at one point and it slid down the wall breaking the neck off the guitar. That's when we learned it wasn't his guitar, but his friend and the other guy who worked at the hostel Thor. Apparently the guitar had been given to Thor by his stepfather back in the UK and had a lot of sentiment behind it. This exchange got a little awkward so we headed up to our room to hang out and go to bed early since we were exhausted.

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