South America,  Colombia,  Travel

bogota

November 17, 2019 /

It has been a whole year since I started backpacking alone last year, and I started a new journey again, going to South America for the first time. El Salvador connecting flight to Colombia. The little Brazilian beauty sitting next to San Francisco on the same flight lived in Santa Cruz, and when they arrived in El Salvador, they also transferred to Colombia together. We chatted all the way, and then we talked about Southern California. Her husband was born and raised there, but he went to the high school I taught before. How come our school has alumni all over the world! When she arrived in El Salvador, she texted her husband and found out that her husband's uncle was also my former colleague. The three of us were shocked, the world is really too small!

  • San Salvador Airport

The first stop in Colombia was Bogota, the capital. The owner of the sofa is a local, but the family moved to New York when he was 10 years old, and then lived in Miami, the Netherlands, and Spain, and only moved back last year. The place where the sofa owner lives is surrounded by local residential areas, which are very similar to the second and third tier cities in China. There are stalls on the street at night, and there is also a night market, which has a unique atmosphere of life. The breakfast sofa owner made Colombian hot chocolate with cheese, which sounds super weird, but it's delicious to eat with bread. I especially like his coffee mug, which says "No haga planes, deja que la vida te sorprenda." It roughly means "There is no need to make plans, let life surprise you." This is simply the credo of my travels now !

Since I experienced the way of travel last year, I basically didn’t make any strategy in advance except buying a round-trip ticket this time. I followed the sofa owner for a whole day. I used to see all kinds of Asian tour groups wherever I traveled, but today I didn't see any other Asians all day. If I could live here for a few months, I would be so good at speaking Spanish!

In addition to the fact that Chinese citizens do not need a visa, another important reason for deciding to come to Colombia is that watching "Narcos Drug Lords" is very addictive. The picture below is a scene in Plaza Bolívar. There are super artistic and colorful murals everywhere in the city center, and many streets still maintain the original buildings of the Spanish colonial period.

In the morning, I went to Cerro de Monserrate. There is a Catholic church on the top of the hill, overlooking the whole city from here. I heard that it was super cold and rainy every day for a week or two before I came here. Today is the first day when it cleared up and it still didn’t rain. In the end, the sofa owner took me to a well-known local restaurant, and I got back all the calories I burned after walking for a day.

The sofa owner's two dogs are so cute, they rub against me whenever they have nothing to do. I went out for a walk with him early in the morning and bought Colombian empanadas and tamals, which are different from Mexican ones. The ingredients in them include rice and egg yolks. The shape of Tamal is also different, not a long one, but a big lump. By the way, I promoted Chinese zongzi with him.

The happiest thing about traveling is meeting a sofa owner who is also a foodie and advocating delicious food. This buddy has studied in a chef school in Spain for two years. After walking his dog, he made Caldo de costilla Colombian beef soup (prepared last night). It is actually one of the breakfasts we often eat here.

I feel that Bogota is very similar to some cities in China and Southeast Asia: the traffic is quite congested, the distance between cars is close, and there are many motorcycles carrying people shuttling between motor vehicles. Bogota does not have a subway system, but there is TransMilenio, which is similar to the domestic express bus. It has a special express lane, but it is comparable to the Beijing subway, and it is crowded. In the relatively large pedestrian street in the city center, there are many ordinary people who play chess with tables. Immediately, I think of what it would be like if there were tables with chess players on Wangfujing Pedestrian Street in Beijing. There are stalls selling freshly squeezed juices everywhere in the streets and alleys. There is another thing that surprised me: the convenience store pharmacy in the community, no matter how much you buy, you can make a phone call and deliver it to your door for free.

At noon, I went to a local farmers market, Plaza de Mercado de Paloquemao, and saw all kinds of fruits and vegetables that I had never seen before: giant avocados, maggot-like white radishes, fruits that looked like worm eggs but tasted super sweet, yellow Small dragon fruit, giant long beans and other indescribable tropical fruits and vegetables. Opened my eyes!

  • Plaza de Mercado de Paloquemao

In the afternoon, I went to the Gold Museum and the Botelo Art Museum, which are free to enter on Sunday. I have no interest in the Gold Museum at all, and I came out after half an hour of shopping. But another painting in the Botero Museum of Art is so hilarious, and I am happy to see this easy-to-understand artwork. Fernando Botelo is the most famous Colombian figurative art master, known as the best artist in the world who can draw chubby fat people. All the characters in the pen have facial features gathered together, their movements are dull, and their expressions are dull. Apart from figures, what he painted most were all kinds of fruits.

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