La Candeleria de Bogotá

After being here for almost two months now, I discovered that I obviously adapted to living here because I started to get bored. So I decided it's the perfect time to do a short trip to Bogotá, and because no one had time/money to accompany me, I went alone.

Bogotá is way colder than Ibagué and I could finally use my long jeans and my scarf I brought from Austria for the first time. Unfortunately, the cold weather also triggered my throat that was already a little scratchy to get even more scratchy and on the first night I felt really unwell. That was also a reason why I didn't use my time to visit anything outside the center and kept my trip shorter than I initially planned. But it also gave me the opportunity to visit some museums I definitely wouldn't have visited while trying to efficiently use all my time to see as much as possible.

The candeleria which is the oldest part of the city is filled with stunning street arts which impressed me instantly. That's not just some drawing somebody thought would be nice, that's defintely art and absolutely beautiful. Also the houses that are not decorated with stunning art are pretty colourful, still with colonial charm.

This particular photo above was taken on the plaza where Bogota was founded. Today, it's a place for young people (mostly punks) to meet and drink but nevertheless it hasn't lost its charm. I just didn't understand how they could just sit there because it was actually raining gently all the weekend but it seemed not to affect the youth here. But I did see some people walking around with winter jackets while we had almost 20 degrees. I just thought "you poor boy, let's hope you never experience real winter".

 

Directly next to the candeleria there's a mountain with a church on it at 3150m altitude where you can get up and look at the church or just enjoy the beautiful view over the city. There are actually pilgrims that walk up all the way on the weekend for the mass but there's also a funicular for those who don't want to do the 1 1/2h climb and I definitely didn't want to, not after a really bad night and especially not in the rain.

The church itself is not as spectacular as you would expect from a church that has its own funicular but the panorama was really stunning. I did not realize how big Bogota really is. And I didn't see all of it. of course, but I guess as an Austrian that's not living in Vienna, you get stunned by big cities pretty easily.

Afterwards I went to the museum of gold and it was absolutely surprising how old the tradition of using gold actually is here in Colombia. Some rooms looked more like a scene of a horror movie but there were also sculptures and jewelry. And since it was my day of museums I also visited the museum of Botero that was for free.

Fernando Boterois an artist from Medellín that specialized on fat people, animals and even fruits. There are lots of his sculptures in Medellín (like the picture above from Medellín where I - of course - found the cat to take a picture with) and so in Bogota I could discover the paintings he also made. It was really weird to look at.

For me the trip was quite interesting because it was the first time since arriving to Colombia that I actually did something just on my own. After arriving, I kind of missed having company while walking around. Also, there was this great nightclub I read about and wanted to go to on saturday night but I didn't want to do it alone. But after a really bad night of feeling completely sick, I rearranged my priorities and started to enjoy being just by myself. I had some gread insights and even started to think about what will be when I come back home (except for that I will probably bake a chocolate cake everyday because I really miss selfmade cakes and I miss delicious chocolate even more!).

Also, my friends seemed to really miss me which made it easier to convince them to go on the next trip with me which will be the Tatacoa desert in two weeks (except if I get bored earlier or need some new insights.. who knows?)