NOVEMBER 2019
Bogota initially was not included on my must visit list in Colombia, but because the south border of Colombia currently is quite unsafe to visit, we ended up having to take an airplane to Ecuador from Bogota. We therefore decided to spend one day in Bogota. We took a collectivo from Villavieja to Neiva, and from Neiva we had a direct bus to Bogota (about € 12 per person). This was supposed to take 5 hours, but took us over 7 hours, including the bus breaking down once.. but in the end we did make it safely to Bogota! We found one day in Bogota the perfect amount of time. Lots of travelers arrive in Bogota for their travels in Colombia and it is a fine place to adjust to the time difference.
Where we stayed
We decided to stay two nights at the HOBU hostel in the Chapinero neighborhood (€ 15 per night for a private room including breakfast). After doing some research we discovered that Chapinero is the safest area to stay in, if you like to walk around freely at night. Chapinero also has a nice offering of cool restaurants, so it seemed like the ideal place to stay. My expectations were a little bit too high, as I expected Chapinero to look like Poblado in Medellin and that was definitely not the case. Chapinero is less cleaned up than Medellin; there are holes in the roads everywhere, the architecture is chaotic and you will find bags of dirt everywhere on the streets. I tried to take some pictures to show you how chaotic it looked, but it didn’t transfer to the screen. After my initial shock I did like staying in this area; it has a nice variety of restaurants and you will find many cool, industrial looking bars and food markets. From Chapinero you can take an uber/taxi to the historic district La Candelaria, this will take about 20 minutes. We discovered that taxi drivers are likely to rip you off in Bogota, we got into a heated discussion while getting to our hostel from the busstation. The remainder of our time we traveled with Uber, which is much cheaper and hassle free.
La Candelaria
La Candelaria is the historical district of Bogota. It features many colorful houses and street art so we decided to spend our full day in Bogota in La Candelaria. We started off by doing a free walking tour by Gran Colombia tours, but we would not recommend doing this tour as you don’t get to see a lot from the area with this tour. Our guide touched upon some interesting topics, but left us with more questions than answers. The historical district of Bogota had been destroyed in the not too far history and a large part of it has been rebuilt, so parts of it look like Germany, with a bit of a South American touch…
Luckily, one of my favorite bloggers (History in High Heels), had a nice map on her website which highlighted all the beautiful streets of La Candelaria, so with that map we discovered a lot of beautiful spots of La Candelaria. La Candelaria is less impressive than the historical center of Cartagena, but some streets have amazing views of the surrounding mountains. Don’t be fooled by my pictures, because not all streets are this pretty!
In La Candelaria you will find the beautiful church of “Nuestra Señora del Carmen” which is definitely worth a visit:
We had a delicious ceviche at a newly opened restaurant “Mai” and I was super happy that I finally was able to have a nice glass of wine! Mai also features an art gallery is raising money to create awareness for human trafficking, so you will be supporting that with having food at the restaurant.
Another thing you can do near the city center of Bogota is taking a cable car up to the Montserrat monastery. We decided not to visit the monastery, but apparently it has beautiful views of Bogota.