The most remarkable aspect of our journey to Bogotá was that the bus set off exactly on time! Our arrival in the city was greeted by rain and dark so, mindful of warnings to be careful in this reportedly dangerous city, we joined a queue for a taxi in the vast bus station. We expected this to be a quick job because we had already seen literally hundreds of taxis all around the station.

However, the bus station has now introduced a new system where you queue to tell a person in a booth where you are going and your name. The correct fare is calculated and a ticket in duplicate is produced that you take and join the next taxi. This ensures that taxis do not charge extortionate fares to those new to the city but takes an absolute age. It was even worse on our arrival day, a bank holiday, with an even higher than usual volume of travellers. All around, taxi drivers were making their opinion obvious and would-be passengers were also getting restless. During the half hour that were in the queue, a crew from the local TV station were interviewing a bus station representative about the problem. Interestingly, as soon as the interview finished, an extra ticket desk was opened. Must be the power of the media!

When we got to our hostel we were a bit surprised. Although their website had offered and we had booked a room with an ensuite bathroom, the guy at the reception clearly couldn't find one. He phoned the owner who arrived to tell us that he hasn’t got any rooms with ensuite bathrooms (admittedly, like most cheap hostels in Bogotá). The hostel is perfectly adequate and does at least have constant hot water but the deception annoyed us a bit. Our late arrival meant we didn’t really have any choice but establish that the offered room was cheaper than our booked room and take it (although he later refused to deduct the $10 deposit we’d paid on line from our bill!).

Another impact of our arrival day being a holiday was that cafes and bars were closed for business (no we don’t think it makes sense either). The dark and rainy streets were deserted although Jen was sure she could see movement in every shadowy doorway or alley. We therefore resigned ourselves to snacks and beer at a corner shop near the hostel. In fact this was very pleasant, the music was playing loud and there were a few younger people chatting and drinking at other tables. For our part, we tried to ignore the constant procession of private security men with their guns and big sticks who kept coming in for drinks, snacks and general chat. We had plenty of other opportunities to hang out in cafes including one very hippy joint (Merlin) and another in a railway carriage centrally located in a carpark.

The next day started out bright and sunny as our taxi driver from the bus station had predicted. We followed our guide book walking tour taking in a number of the main sights. When we got to the main square (Plaza Bolívar) the cathederal didn’t look right until we realised that the old photograph in our room was printed back to front! Apart from a small chapel, none of the buildings on the square are colonial or earlier. The Palace of Justice, filling one side of the square, was built in 1986 to replace the old building which was gutted by fire when M19 guerillas took it over. There was a 28 hour seige by the army in which over 100 people died uncluding 11 supreme court judges. This country, like so many in South America has a violent past that is not that long past.

There are more museums and galleries in Bogotá than you can shake an Amazonian shaman’s stick at, and most of them are free or very cheap. However, quite a few are also (predictably) closed for restoration but there were still enough to keep us busy. We went into the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) with some trepidation. We have already seen quite a bit of gold and this museum claims to have more 34,000 pieces from all the major pre-hispanic cultures of Colombia. This seems to suggest that the Colombian grave robbers have been significantly less effective than those from the other countries we have visited!




In fact the museum was beautifully laid out, attractive and informative, and with a lot of the labels in English! We spent quite a while entranced by the quality and detail of the work and some of the time amazed that they might even want to make pieces like this. The most exquisite piece, beautifully displayed in its own special room, was a complicated and detailed model of a raft. This seems to represent an annual Muisca ritual where gold and emeralds were thrown into Lake Guatavita.
However, you can have too much of a good thing and we were not really unhappy that we appeared to have reached the final rooms. Just as we were about to leave, an attendant leapt out to stop us and tell us that there was a very special exhibit that we really must not miss. We entered a pitch dark circular room, the doors closed around us and the sound of shamanic chanting began. Suddenly coloured lights began to appear and we realised that we were surrounded by a display of gold pieces, arranged purely for effect. Then a part of the floor illuminated showing a sort of subterranean tomb of more gold pieces. The whole show did not take a long time but was very impressive!

The Colombian artist Fernando Botero was obviously extremely prolific but doesn’t seem to have sold too much. He donated a huge number of statues to his home city of Medellin (see our blog from there) and he also gave a lot of his statues and paintings to the country, which are housed in a museum here. As well as his own stuff, he donated his personal art collection. Hence the gallery here has a wonderful group of paintings by Chagall, Picasso, Degas and Matisse amongst others as well as the odd (literally) statue by Dalí. The Donación Botero is right next door to and interlinked with the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República (the bank appears to have a very strong commitment to the arts). Here there were several interesting exhibitions of art from many ages, including some interesting international pieces such as Tapiés and Rauschenburg. We were amazed to find a collection of paintings of dead nuns; our second during this trip, the other in the convent of Santa Catalina in Arequipa.

There were several other shows going on in different galleries which, although smaller, were quite interesting. LC/BOG El Plan Director was a series of linked shows about the swiss architect Le Corbousier’s plan to remodel Bogotá in the 1950s. LC designed large blocks of flats surrounding and forming huge plazas, zones for commercial use and a host of cultural and sporting centres in his then ultramodern style. Predictably enough, very little of the plan actually came into place but the shows used lots of modern interactive technology to compare then, now and the plan, in stark contrast to box of 35mm slides and the typewritten text that the man himself used to show his designs.

Two other linked exhibitions were related to the body. The first was related to the body modification of Amerindian peoples including face and body painting, jewellery etc. These were linked to such other aspects of their lives such as pottery and celebrations and a bit to modern culture. We saw a bunch of schoolkids just coming out, proudly showing their painted tattoos. The other exhibition was of artworks related the body including lots about the links with Catholicism. Of course there were lots of religious relics such as bones, blood and skulls as well as gory paintings and sculptures. Jen, predictably, was totally enraptured!

One museum we simply had to visit (said Jen) was the Police Museum. Here we were led around by a very small boy who claimed to be a policeman, showing us various bits of equipment, badges and uniforms used by the police in Colombia. They were very proud of their long history at the forefront of crime detection and there was a record of the other countries who had sent delegations to learn from them. The last one was in 1938. Much of the museum focused on the career and eventual shooting of the leading drug gangster from Medellin, Pablo Escobar. None of the displays said much about the fact that the police actually had him in custody but let him escape! They then devoted most of their forces to searching for him for 499 days, thereby allowing hoardes of other gansters to build nice powerbases totally unchallenged. The police eventually caught up with him by managing to track his telephone when he called his mother (they always love their mothers don’t they?) As our young man said, 'He tried to escape on the roof and shot his gun, so we had to shoot him.’ The museum has his coat which is often described as ‘the coat he was wearing when shot’ but the photos of the incident clearly show he’s not wearing a coat. Our young guide also pointed out that because Escobar had changed his appearance with plastic surgery they used DNA testing to prove it actually was him. ‘Why didn’t they just check his fingerprints?’ said Jen.

Our final excursion was to ascend one of the mountains that overlook the city, Cerro Montserate. There is usually a choice of cable car or funicular railway but the latter is currently closed. Although the views of the city were interesting and showed just how big the place really is, there was little else to do up there so we didn’t stay too long. Also the summit, the slopes and the roads leading to the cable car are supposed to be particularly dangerous parts of town, prone to muggings etc and we did not want to try our luck too far!