Bogota
November 2023
Our final stop of our entire trip was the capital city of Colombia, Bogota. We didn't have high expectations from fellow travellers, or Google, but we were pleasantly surprised by what Bogota had to offer!
We went on a walking tour of the historic centre, with a fantastic local guide, who took us to a food market to try some Colombian fruits (all unrecognisable, and really sour!), to a notable street covered in indigenous graffiti, to a local cafe to try the traditional hot chocolate which comes with a lump of cheese in the bottom of the cup (not our thing), and for a quick game of Tejo!
We also independently visited the Botero museum for more oggling at chubby artwork, some street markets, an authentic paella restaurant, and the Museum of Modern Art. On Sundays, a major street through the historic centre is pedestrianised, and is transformed into a street market for as far as the eye can see, selling just about everything. It was sensory overload, with noise coming from everywhere, vendors touting for business, and in the middle of it all, small elderly Colombian men playing street chess!
We stayed about a 45-minute drive from the historic centre, in an Airbnb in a neighbourhood called Chico. Our Airbnb was on the edge of Chico, so we had to get a taxi to cafes and restaurants, but it was really close and cheap. We were very surprised by how cosmopolitan and modern Bogota was, with loads of fancy coffee shops, restaurants, rooftop bars, posh apartment blocks and hotels, and boutique shops. We also felt very safe. We had been warned it was a bit dodgy, and never walked anywhere at night, instead opting for cheap Ubers, but we always felt fine. It felt much more safe than Medellin had done, which is much more visited by foreign tourists.
We spent a week in Bogota, and started to feel like a resident. We indulged in being able to order food to the apartment, got some tattoos from very talented artists, at a fraction of the price of London, and Em got her eyebrows and nails done (again, much cheaper than getting them done at home, and a nice treat at the end of the trip). Em went to one tattoo artist's home and had never been so well looked after. At lunchtime, the maid cooked up homemade Ajiaco, a traditional Colombian soup involving chicken, potatoes, and corn, and served it with rice, avocado, coffee, and a brownie!
On our final day, we had a lot of time to kill. After a disappointing trip to the botanical gardens which were closed with no warning, we ended up at a huge mall, playing Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and air hockey! At 9 pm, we packed all our worldly possessions for the last time and made our way to the airport. We had a 10-hour night flight, during which we barely slept so arrived at Heathrow as zombies.
We landed 400 days after we had left, and what a journey it had been...We visited 12 countries (40 together in total), covered 45,500 miles on various modes of transport, met so many wonderful people, and had a truly unforgettable time. We felt a lot of mixed emotions as our trip came to an end...relief that we got to do everything we wanted to do without anything major going wrong (trust us we had a LOT of near misses!), impatient to see our families after 13 months apart, sad that this once in a lifetime experience was over, as well as the freedom that came with it, excited to start our new jobs, tired and ready for some beans on toast and our own bed, and extremely grateful to have spent the last 400 days together. I doubt we will ever spend another 400 days in a row right next to each other, so we felt very fortunate to have had that time and left closer than ever.
We both plan to spend a few weeks with our families in the north of England, before packing up our lives again and getting the train down to London for the next chapter!
