Sunday September 20th-Bogota

What a wonderful day. Even though we got in late last night, we woke up early since we had lots planned for the day. But first, the hostel. It is a beautiful place with two courtyards and an enclosed kitchen with a wood stove so it stays warm. The style is Spanish Colonial with stucco walls and exposed log beams. The staff are very friendly and perhaps the best thing-they have hot water!! A treat in South America. The price is a little higher than we like to pay-approx $35 for a double room but it is well worth it.
The first project of the day was riding the “funicular” (cable car built for steep slopes) up Cerro Monserrate. Great experience and the view from the top is incredible.

We then went to BiciCafe to rent bikes for the Ciclovia (COP$15,000 each for four hours). The Ciclovia is an every Sunday event. Some of the major streets in Bogota are closed to vehicular traffic from 7am-2pm and hundreds of people take to the streets on bicycles, in-line skates, skateboards, walking, wheelchairs-you name it. It is quite an experience. Along the streets various performance groups and individuals entertain crowds of various sizes. Today one of the parks featured music and dance presentations by various schools (appeared to be mainly high school age). They included dancers, orchestras and bands, and costumed stilt-walkers. All the usual food booths and street vendors plus restaurants are open along the way. It was great fun!! Unfortunately towards the end of the day at the far south end of the main street, I hit something and my tire went flat, so we got the experience of “hike-a-bike” the 10 or 11 blocks back to the bike shop.

Mike showed us where a neat little ice cream shop was so we indulged in more food (this was on top of a bunch of things from the street vendors which tasted wonderful but I am not sure what they were). It started raining but we decided to walk back to the hostel and found we have gotten used to a lot of walking-much of it uphill!!.

After a nap-we headed out for dinner and discovered that practically nothing is open for dinner on Sunday night. We ended up in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where the food was actually pretty good. Tomorrow we fly out to Orlando and back to San Juan, Puerto Rico, so more later.