We Head Straight Back to Colombia, and Discover Bogota.

After a month in Ecuador, we sat down and came to the realization that we had one month left in our trip. Rather than continue on the Ecuador agenda which we had sketched out earlier, we decided that we'd rather head back to Colombia to finish off some of the things we wanted to do but ran out of time. The top two things on the agenda: Bogota and the northern peninsula of La Guajira.

From Tena, we spent two days on buses getting back across the Colombian border to the town of Popayan (where we had been for the Easter Holiday) to catch a flight to Bogota. These two days went as expected; sitting on buses, eating crappy food and generally feeling kind of grimy, but after these and a quick flight in a little two prop plane we landed in Bogota, happy to be back in Colombia.

While Bogota is a huge city, most backpackers tend to stay in one neighborhood. This is both for safety, and because of the clustering of hip bars and resturants. For this reason, it gets mixed reviews from most travelers we met; a great city, but with a very significant tourist bubble. After one night, we found a great, quiet hostel with ponds, garden courtyards and a giant wood burning stove just on the outside of this area. While all of Bogota is a bit more expensive than the rest of the country, I justified the expense of this hotel by enjoying Playoff Basketball on our in-room TV whenever possible.

We spent our first day in Bogota wandering around, visiting museums and getting a feel for the city. Besides the fantastic Museo de Oro (a museum of gold artwork predominantly from pre-Colombus indigenous tribes) there is also a maze of free public museums containing paintings and a history of Colombian money. The general layout and feel of the old part of the city was almost European, particularly in the large Plaza de Bolivar, so we contented ourselves with wandering around snapping photos and taking it in.

For our second day we made the trip out to the Salt Cathedral outside Bogota in the town of Zipaguira. While we were warned that it was a bit of a tourist trap, it seemed like it had potential to be interesting so we took the hour or so journey out there. While the tourist trap reputation is warranted (food court, climbing wall, playgrounds) the underground cathedral carved into salt is pretty interesting to walk around in. Unfortunately, they went a little overboard with all the neon lighting though...

Finally, for our last day in Bogota we went out on an excellent, and affordable bike tour of Bogota. The tour was run by a retired American journalist who was happy to talk politics, history and all things Colombian. Our fellow tourists were a nice British man and a cook taking his vacation from working in Afghanistan contracting with the US Armed Forces. While we had been to some of the visited sights days earlier, the tour was really informative and gave us the best understanding of Bogota one could possibly get in 5 hours of biking around.

After a few days of activities in Bogota we bid farewell and caught another evening plane back to the heat of the Colombian Carribbean in Santa Marta. While we could have easily spent a few more days floating around Bogota, we kept our time there short, as we are eager to try and figure out a trip to the Northern most point in South America, the wild desertlands of La Guajira.