We needed almost two whole days for the journey from Samoa to South America and we crossed the dateline. We flew in 4h on 31. January afternoon from Apia to Auckland in New Zealand. There we had to move the clocks 1h back. After 5h stay we had a 12h overnight flight to Los Angeles. We need to turn the time 3h forward, but it was in L.A. still. afternoon 14:00 Clock on 31. January. So this 31. Januar mit 45h der bisher längste Tag den wir je hatten 😉
For the Check-In in L.A. the lady at the counter wanted to have a departure ticket for Colombia as well. But we didn't had one. Luckily, our friend Angie, we wanted to visit her in Bogota, was still at work (she works in a travel agency). We sent her a message and she sent us a few minutes later a faketicket. Die Dame am Schalter war zufrieden und wir konnten endlich einchecken 🙂 Spät abends flogen wir dann von L.A. to Fort Lauderdale in Florida in 4h, waited 4h more and finally had our fourth and last flight to Bogota, where we arrived 5h later, in the afternoon of 1. February.
Angie picked us up from the airport and in a rapid taxi ride we went to her apartment in the district of "Bella Suiza" – “Beautiful Switzerland”. Bei dem Namen haben wir uns doch gleich ein bisschen heimisch gefühlt 😉 Am Sonntag mußten wir erstmal ausschlafen, because we could feel the jet lag. After breakfast we visited a local market and tried some typical fruit juices with such exotic names as “Lulo”.
Bogotá is located at 2600m and especially I noticed the thin air. Just after a few steps, I was out of breath. But it got better day by day. Three weeks we stayed with Angie and took during this time a few Spanish lessons with Andrea, a student. We also got quickly in contact with the locals, because Angie has no internet and we tired to get a USB internet stick for us. The USB device was quickly bought, but since it worked only for a short time, it was quite hard later. We spent hours in the internet shop, because the employees were not able to solve the problem. Finally, we got our money back, but we needed quite a lot of patience and nerves, especially because our Spanish skills were not good enough to start discussion. But Angie helped us. With the next provider, we had better luck and everything worked smoothly.
On our first weekend in Colombia we went to third on a trip to Villa de Leyva. The next weekend we discovered together Bogotá. We took a slightly different city tour, namely a Graffiti-Tour. That was really interesting, because there is so many different street art, as e.g.. small masks on the walls, usually you will completely ignored this when you walk through the streets. During the tour we learned a lot about the backgrounds of the sprayer, the meaning of the pictures and how they are related to the history and politics of Colombia.
After the Graffiti tour we took the cable car to the 3200m high mountain Cerro de Monserrate. There is also a small church and especially on weekends a lot visitors are there. In the afternoon it started, as actually every day, to rain and it was pretty cool, so we headed back home.
Seppel and I also walked to “Candelaria” ,, Bogotá’s colonial quarter with narrow streets, old houses, museums, Cafes and the Plaza de Bolivar. The “Museo del Oro”, the most important gold museum in the world, we have visited too and learned a lot about the history of gold in Colombia.
Since Bogotá has a population of almost 7 Mio. people and is quite large, we usually took a taxi into the center. With John we had our personal taxi driver, because he is a friend of Angie.
Besides sightseeing and Spanish lessons we also continued to work on our blog and planned our further journey through Colombia. The planning of the next trips was not so easy, as there are so many beautiful places in Colombia. It could be much easier for us, if there would be a travel search engine for South America similar to GoEuro ,, which is easy to find the various connections to the different places. But with a little bit more effort we could finish our rough planning before we went with Angie over the weekend to San Gil.
During our time in Bogota we got also sad news. Yok Do, our guide for the Jungle Tour in Cambodia, was bitten by a cobra and has to stay for at least 3 months in the hospital. He was lucky and will bear no other damages. But since he can not work the next few months and thus do not make money, the existence of his family is strongly threatened. Therefore, we supported Yok Do with a donation and hope, he will be better soon. We also want to say thank you to GoEuro ,, who donated 100 Euro for him!
Please let us know, if you to support our friend Yok Do as well!
Thanks also to Frank Eiselt, has our friend Yok also supports.