El viaje

Quick 8 hour drive through the lush Colombian mountain ranges to the beast of a city that is Bogotá.

We expected much, but as for usual im Colombia, everything we found exceeded our expectations.

The city is located in the center of Colombia, on a high plateau known as the Bogotá savanna in the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes. Bogotá is the third highest capital in South America and in the world after Quito and La Paz at an average of 2600 meters above sea level. Subdivided into 20 localities, Bogotá has an area of 1,500 square kilometers and a relatively cool climate that is constant through the year.

Its estimated population in 2022 is 12,8 m (!) for the metropolitan area.

It is the political, economic, administrative, and industrial center of the country.

There obviously is a lot of history here and i would not even know where to start. But just imagine what it must have been like when the first indigenous settlers came here and looked down into this incredibly fertile valley…. This is the view from Monseratte.

The Monseratte (named after Catalan homonym mountain Montserrat) is a high mountain that dominates the city center of Bogotá and was also our first destination there.

Shout out to our dear friend Monse here for very obvious reasons!

You go up with a cable car.

It rises to 3,100 meters above the sea level, where there is a church (built in the 17th century) with a shrine, devoted to El Señor Caído (The Fallen Lord).

Again, the view is spectacular.

We then checked around the La Candelaria for a bit.

La Candelaria is the 17th locality of Bogotá and a historic neighborhood in the city’s downtown. The architecture of the old houses, churches and buildings are wild mix of Spanish Colonial, Baroque and art deco styles.

La Candelaria houses several universities, libraries and museums one of which we went to. The Botero Museum. Museo del Oro was closed that day..but more of that in the next post.

The Botero Museum located on Carrera 11, contains works by painter/sculptor Fernando Botero as well as works by artists including Money, Picasso, Ernst, Dalí and some other heavyweights from Botero’s private collection. The guy was actually from Medellín but the Museum here holds more art than the one there.

It really is worth is a visit, my personal favorites:

I have to sneak in one Ernst , just because the dude is one of my very favorites 😉

It feels like the weather changes every 10 minutes in this city and i think while walking around we had sun switch to rain, rain switch back to sun and some heavy winds in a back to back fashion for a couple of times.

Tired from all the new input we drove up the hills to get a glimpse of the city at sunset. Luckily there was a nice snack station at our curbside mirador.

Happy but tired campers we went to bed early , but not before making a massive portion of Aglio e Olio pasta.