Upon arriving at my hostel, the Musicology hostel-I'm in the reggae room, I wandered a bit around the old town and have so far found Bogotá to be an enchanting city.
I'm staying in the Candelaria district, with cobblestone streets, churches from the 1500s, and winding streets. The streets are cleaner than Santiago, brighter than Santiago, and overall just more livelier.
Bogotans are out and about on the streets, laughing and wandering. The people seem like they like living here, which is really demonstrative of the energy of the city. They even have streets closed off, whole streets that they've shut down 24/7 for foot and bike traffic. On Sundays, they have even more streets closed off, as allegedly the whole city takes to their bikes.
This city feels safe and livable. I like it so far.
Today, I took a run only to find that we are high up here. Altitude sickness is a problem. Truckee is a bit over 5,000 feet, but Bogotá is the third highest city in South America at 8,600 feet just for the normal part of the city. I did a bit over 3 miles and I was tired. Rough. For some dumb reason, I then decided to climb the mountain, Cerro Monserrate, an hour and a half and 1500 more elevation feet. I almost died. I had to take breaks every 30 steps of crazy intense stairs and had some serious low blood pressures issues as I made my way up, suffering with the other climbers. It became a personal goal to make it to the top, and it was probably the hardest "hike," if you can call a stone pathway full of stairs a hike, of my life.
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| the church at the top |
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| the view of Bogota |
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| More Bogota |
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| Mona Lisa Botero style |
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| Another famous Botero |
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