Bogotá has a reputation for being a relatively dangerous city, and even the locals will give you unsolicited advice on how to best stay safe. We definitely took way more precautions during our stay in the city than we have everywhere else we’ve been, but we were really surprised at how safe the city felt. If we hadn’t been warned so many times we would have no idea it’s any more dangerous than a typical big city!
When we landed at the Bogotá airport we ordered an Uber because we had read grabbing a taxi off the street could result in a “paseo millonario” (where they rob you, unlikely but happens enough there’s a name for it). However while we were waiting for it a lady came up to warn us that Ubers aren’t totally welcome in Bogotá, so one of us should sit in the front seat so it looks like a friend is picking us up. It was a good tip and is true in most of Colombia, so we’ve been riding front seat everywhere we’ve gone! It seems to also lead to more conversations with our drivers, almost all of them try talking to us with our limited Spanish (or trying to practice their English) and giving us recommendations and tips for where to go.
We stayed in the Candelaria neighborhood, which is the most touristy neighborhood but is also close to a university and has a lot of young people and bars all around. We were warned to never walk anywhere at night so we ended up Ubering even short distances once it got dark, which felt silly and kind of defeated the purpose of staying within walking distance to things but we trusted the advice!
Bike Tour
On our first full day in Bogotá, we took a bike tour around the city. Our tour guide was a full-time street artist who runs these tours on the side for fun. He gave the tour a unique perspective and had a lot of insight on the street art around the city, which is a large part of Bogotan culture. He even showed us some impressive street art that he was commissioned to help create, most of which had a theme of social issues, especially environmentalism.
Bogotá is a very bike friendly place, we biked through several neighborhoods and almost all had bike lanes. The neighborhoods themselves are very distinct from each other though. We crossed from very affluent neighborhoods to relatively poor neighborhoods several times, all separated by about a street.
Our first stop was at a fruit market where we tried a bunch of local fruits – similar to what we did in Lima but with almost no crossover! Highlight and most unique fruit we tried was the lulo, it was incredibly sour but tasty.
We also stopped at a local coffee roaster where we learned that in general if you want good Colombian coffee, you should buy it outside of Colombia. This is because almost all of the best quality coffee beans are exported and sold internationally leaving only the low quality beans to be sold in Colombia. Apparently that trend is slightly changing due to the increase in tourism in Colombia, but in general if you go to a random coffee shop in Colombia you’ll be disappointed. Christine being the coffee fanatic that she is was very disappointed to hear this, but luckily the coffee roaster we visited caters to tours like we were on and their coffee was delicious.
One of the most interesting things we learned on the tour was about the history of Chicha. It’s a traditional fermented corn drink that dates back over 500 years. When Germans came to Colombia near the end of the 1800’s, they brought beer along with them. To break into the alcohol market, they conducted an ad campaign that claimed people who drank chicha were criminals (or bound to be, due to the drinking) and they should drink beer instead. After a long series of events and riots that were unrelated to chicha but largely blamed on the drink, it was banned from the country and beer became the clear alternative. It became legal again in 1991, but does not have nearly the consumer base it used to. We’ve tried it a few times and like it, but think we will continue to stick to beer ourselves!
Our tour ended with a game of tejo, a traditional drinking game in Colombia. It is essentially cornhole, except you’re throwing metal pucks at gunpowder filled targets that explode on impact. Gunpowder and drinking, what could go wrong! It is quite an entertaining game with very loud bangs whenever someone hits the target, we can see why it’s popular!
Monserrate
Bogotá is surrounded by mountains, the most famous of which is Monserrate. One of the coolest (and most touristy) things to do in Bogotá is hike up the mountain to get a panoramic view of the city and visit the Monserratte church on top. We were told it’s safest when it’s busy, so we went against all of our typical rules for hikes and decided to hike it at the busiest possible time, a Sunday morning. Not only were we surrounded by hundreds of tourists, we were also surrounded by hundreds of locals that make the trek up to the church on Sundays.
It was a unique combination of hike and tourist trap – we were definitely working up a sweat climbing up the mountain, but also had endless opportunities to buy food/beer/trinkets/etc. The one thing we had the hardest time finding was coffee, which we could not understand considering we were in coffee country. After asking several vendors if they had café and getting responses of “no, tinto”, we finally realized that tinto was coffee, just different enough from your typical coffee shop café that they distinguish between the two. It is black coffee, typically pretty simply made and a little watery, but it is actually very delicious.
The view at the top was definitely worth it, you could see all across the massive city. And if you don’t feel like hiking, they also have a cable car and funicular option for a relatively cheap price. After wandering around the gardens we decided to take the funicular down rather than hiking back down in the rain and the crowds, which was a fun experience in itself!
The Food
We only scratched the surface of Bogotá’s food scene, but it left us itching for more! If you were to sum up the food in one word, that word would be “fried.” Just about everywhere you look are empanadas, arepas, and buñuelos plucked fresh (and sometimes not so fresh) from the fryer. Colombian empanadas, in our opinion, are superior to those in Peru. Rather than a heavy and oily pastry shell filled with oppressively salty filling, these have a lighter corn shell with meat, potato, and veggies inside. As for the arepas, we’re still struggling to land on a definition. Arepas seem to come in all different shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. From what we can gather, something can be called an arepa if it’s made of corn and is flat-ish. If there were a “typical” arepa, it would probably be a pancake-like cornmeal patty stuffed with cheese. To us, though, the king of Colombian fried food is the buñuelo. It’s essentially a giant hushpuppy – a fluffy, heavenly ball of seasoned and fried corn dough.
It would be misleading (and probably a little insulting) to portray all Colombian food as fatty and fried. Colombians love their soups. At our friend Santiago’s house, his mother prepared us a traditional Colombian soup called ajiaco made with chicken, corn on the cob, and potatoes. She served it alongside avocado, sweet plantains, and rice, and it was delicious! We mostly ate breakfast at our hostel, but one morning John went and got a breakfast tamale (Christine was sick, probably from all the fried food) which came with the best hot chocolate he’s ever had. On our hike to Monserrate, we passed food stand after food stand serving cubes of cheese drizzled with jam and some goopy orange sauce. It looked revolting, but we thought “if all the locals are eating it, it must be good!” This is usually a good rule to follow, but not in this case. Needless to say, most of it unfortunately ended up in the trash.
We had some awesome drinks in Bogotá as well. They serve chicha (the broad category of fermented corn beverages we mentioned in an earlier Peru post). The chicha they serve here is most like Peruvian chicha horra (the fun version with lots of alcohol). When we bought some from a street vendor, it came in a bottle in an inconspicuous brown paper bag. We also had some great beer with Santiago. Coming from Seattle, we’re admittedly beer snobs. But Bogotan beer was tasty enough that we drank more than we should have!
Overall Bogotá was a great place to start our Colombian tour. The weather was a little too similar to Seattle for our liking (60 degrees and rainy, we didn’t travel across the world for that!) but the history and food was definitely worth visiting for.
Christine & John