The Capital!
Trip Start
Jan 12, 2008
1
26
41
Trip End
Jan 15, 2009
Bogota,
Colombia
Monday, June 2, 2008
There are a few unspoken rules for bus trips (long distance) according to ME (Katie). #1 no children or babies within 10 rows, #2 never push your seat completely back into the reclining position, #3 never sit near the toilet and #4 never play music on an overnight trip. Our nine hour trip from Buccarramunga to Bogota surpassed all of my horrors and broke rule 1 through to 4. The horrors of my bus trip cannot be fully retold as it is not suitable for some readers.
We have been very impressed by Colombias extensive bus system and bus terminals
01 Bogota
. All buses have large soft recliner chairs, toilet and air conditioning. Terminals have food, showers, toilets and seats!!! It is amazing, a true luxury. Buses run everywhere and at lots of different times, making travel here very very easy. So Bogota was just a stop over, a place to check out in between night bus trips. So after having about 2 hours sleep we locked our bags with a grumpy old man at the bus terminal and headed off to try our luck with local buses. I always think it isnt a great sign (safety wise) when you get on a bus and the driver is sitting behind a huge breakproof screen with only a tiny 4 holes to talk through. Never the less we boarded the bus with all of our courage. HAHAHA. Asking the driver to tell us when to get off for Plaza Bolivar we headed off into central Bogota.
Well the lovely bus driver forgot to tell us to get off and only by chance some nice passangers helped us stop the bus and pointed us in the right direction. Simon Bolivar was a revolutionist here and as such is much revered. We eventually made our way into the old section of the city, which looks and feels like an old eurpoean town. The buildings are beautiful. One thing we did notice however was the massive police and military presence around the plaza. We went and asked the friendly solider with his massive automatic gun where the plaza was and what was going on
02 Bogota
. He did infact turn out to be friendly and said that this Monday was a holiday in Colombia and that on these days they close off some of the main roads in the city and cyclists and walkers can walk and exercise in safety and on a lovely route. So happy with the information he gave us we headed off on the side walk to find the plaza. Now you would think that the sidewalk is the correct place to walk in a big city. However after taking all of 3 steps we heard laughing and running behind us. Coming towards us was the friendly soldier with his massive gun, he told us we werent allowd to walk on the foot path and would have to walk on the road. So that was ok, off we went. That footpath had number of gaurds posted along it and we figured that it must be some sort of parliment building or something.We spent the day slowly walking around, checking out the town, watzing through a few markets and avoiding dodgy looking charecters. All in all we had a great day and bought a little watch for Katie as hers was yet to be replaced from Guatemala. We had a delightfully nutritious meal of McDonalds with Mayonaise covered fries for lunch and headed back to the bus station around 4pm to wait for our 5:30pm bus which would take 14 hrs down to Popayan. Oh yeah... 14 hours! Good times... I (Joe) had a great time.. I fell asleep around 10:30 and woke again when it was light in the morning with minimal distractions in between! The perfect bus ride, fall asleep in one place and wake in another when the journey is done. Katie on the other hand was getting a bit annoyed with the turkeys behind us that wouldnt shut up and scored fewer points for night busing...
