The rest of Bogota

One more day into my stay in Bogotá and I got the whole history lesson I was looking for!

Plaza Bolivar

Laura and I took a stroll to the biggest plaza in the city, in front of where the President lives and where all the government and judicial offices are. There was quite a bit of propaganda, encouraging people to vote for peace this Sunday (there's a vote on whether or not to end the civil war that's been ongoing here for more than fifty years).

On the way there, she explained all the details of what has been going on politically in Colombia and showed me statues and tributes to important political characters along the way. We also stopped to watch the changing of the guards and the folding of the flag outside the President's house.


These are historic moments in Colombia's history and it's super interesting to be here for it. The 26th, the day I got to Bogotá, was the day they finished all the paperwork for ending the war. Sunday, the day I get to Cali, is the day that the Colombian people will officially vote to end the war (hopefully).

 We went to another, huge market (that takes up an entire block) and I tried even more fruits that I had never seen before. It rained on and off in the afternoon so we spent our time in a couple different cafes. It was great because I'm slightly obsessed with the cafes here. Chains aren't popular so each cafe is really unique. They have creative menus (one place had an entire book where the first few pages were the menu and the other pages were there for the customers to draw or write whatever they wanted), interesting decorations (beautiful murals, different plants or a whiskey bottle used as the soap dispenser in the bathroom at one place), amazing coffee (each place has its own house specialties and they all offer a variety of options of coffee with liquor in it as well), and it's all super cheap!!

Coffee served with cinnamon, chocolate & whiskey

Inside a cute little cafe near Plaza del Chorro

The Gold Museum

The next day, we walked around the Botanical Garden and, because she's an ecologist, she was able to tell us what almost everything was. It was pretty impressive and the place was beautiful. We also walked though the Modern Art Museum and the Gold Museum, which has some really pretty displays and reminds you about the Spanish colonization...which is not a happy topic. I love Spain and the people from there but we thought that "Malditas Españoles" ("The Damn Spanish") would've been a more hilarious and maybe even more appropriate name for the museum.

Botanical Garden

That was my last day staying at Laura's house so, at night, I switched to my next couchsurfing place! I'm staying with another family who's also really sweet! I set it up with Juliana, who's 22, and I'm staying with her family. She and her boyfriend and I talked for a few hours when I got here last night and they are awesome. They're both new to couch surfing and dying to travel so they had tons of questions about the places I've been. She studies French so we talked about linguistics and they also explained a lot about how the Colombian education and health systems work.

Again, they gave me my own room (which I think I'm borrowing from her little sister who is sleeping with her mom while I'm here) so that is unbelievably nice! There's no hot water in the shower, which threw me off since it's pretty cold here in Bogota, but that's part of the adventure of traveling! They made me breakfast this morning, too...some fresh juice and a potato soup which was a breakfast first for me.

Now that I've been here for a few days, my brain is finally starting to successfully switch between Spanish and Portuguese without getting so mixed up but I still need a lot of practice. I'm speaking way more slowly than I used to in Spanish because I'm having to concentrate more (making it all-the-more embarrassing when I tell someone here I majored in Spanish, haha!) but I think after a couple of months here, my brain will be able to switch between the two pretty easily. That's the goal, anyway!

 I only have today and tomorrow left in this city so I'm gonna make the most of it!

I love walking around in this city. It's huge but it's not like a typical big, dirty city. There are some skyscrapers and big avenues and whatnot, but there are also so many small, adorable little streets that remind me of Cuzco (with the mountains all around the city and everything!).











Random side note: The weather here is completely insane. It's sunny one minute and rainy the next! They don't have distinct seasons here but they said you can see all four seasons every day and it's true! The first day I went for the bike tour, Laura asked me if I'd put on sunscreen. In the same breath, she told me to take something for the rain. It sounded crazy but I found out pretty quickly that she was right. Both necessary.

To sum up, Bogotá is amazing so I'm gonna go explore some more!