Colombia

Bogotá Colombia: is it safe for tourists there?

5 days in the capital of the empire of Simon Bolivar

DThis article will undoubtedly be of interest to those who are considering traveling to Colombia and are interested in the state of affairs with the safety of tourists in its capital, Bogotá. What is Bogota like, general impressions, the real state of affairs and advice for travelers and tourists.

Day one - no incidents and troubles

I really became aware of the fact that I was flying to the South America already at the end of the flight, when on the plane of the Moscow-Bogota flight, the Latinos began to frankly get drunk and sing mysterious Latin American songs, and a Colombian girl was crawling under my chair, playing with her Colombian dolls ...

From airport to hotel

The flight took place in a cheerful friendly atmosphere, the only annoying thing was that I did not understand what they were talking about among themselves. The Lufthansa plane landed in Santa Fe de Bogota at 7 pm, the girl at passport control slapped a stamp in the passport for 90 days and said "Welcome to Colombia".

The first hour I wandered around the Eldorado airport to find an exchanger, later it turned out that it was located between the airport terminals. I change 500 USD and get about 1 million 650 thousand Colombian pesos in my hands.

A thousand pesos is called a mile here, so 5 thousand is 5 miles, respectively. Having exchanged money, I left the airport in search of a taxi, and a “kind person” appeared out of nowhere near me, who began to offer a taxi, a hotel and other services.

Almost immediately, a policeman came up and, inquiring about what I needed, pointed his finger at one and parked taxis, motivating this by the fact that for me this would be the safe option. Well, a promising start...

The taxi driver rushed through the evening city like crazy, as if he was late for a bullfight or football. Both are madly loved here. European football matches are constantly broadcast on various city screens.

Center of Bogotá
Business center of Bogota. Banks, offices and other capitalist costs

For the journey from the airport to the hotel, I paid 25 miles, that is, 25 thousand pesos, which, translated into Russian money, amounted to about 460 rubles. Actually a little expensive! But that was the road from the airport and also without a meter.

I must say right away that the only people with whom I could communicate at least in English in Bogota were the girls at the hotel reception. As expected, the rest of the staff, as well as taxi drivers, waiters and sellers, did not speak English. Again, as expected, in Colombia everyone speaks Spanish. But with Spanish, I'm a little tight. To be more honest, apart from “astalavista baby”, “dos serves” and “puto madre” (I don’t pretend to be correct in pronunciation), I don’t know anything ...

Bogota: sightseeing tour upon arrival

To start a question: Bogota Which syllable is stressed on the first, second or third? In general, it would be correct to pronounce this name with an emphasis on the last letter, which turned out to be a revelation for me, since childhood I thought that the capital of Colombia was Bogota. Well, I was wrong all my life, now I know you too ...

The most popular transport in Bogotá is Transmillenio. This is a bus message system that moves along dedicated lines. Transmillenio is very similar to the metro, only it is ground-based, and buses provide transportation.

Transmillenio
The main and favorite transport in the city

The rest is the same, the system is similar to our metro. You buy a magnetic card, which you replenish in advance and lean against the turnstile when you want to go to the station. There are automatic doors at the stations, and when the bus pulls up, they open. The cost of one trip, including transfers to other lines, is 1400 pesos, which is approximately 26 rubles.

 Station Heroes
The photo shows the Heroes station, which is a transfer station to another branch

In the city center there are even dedicated bike paths, though I came across very few cyclists. People walk along these paths without worrying, yes ... not Germany. But in Bogotá, motorcycles are very popular. But do not confuse with Thai mopeds and scooters, namely motorcycles.

Bike lanes in Bogotá
Dedicated paths for cyclists. which are mostly occupied by pedestrians

Mexican cuisine is popular in Colombia. Lots of different tacos and burritos. Let me remind you again for orientation that 1000 pesos is a little over 18 rubles, so that the prices can be calculated without difficulty, if anyone is interested. The tacos and burritos themselves are just standard for my taste - nothing special, but not bad either.

Public catering
Tacos and burritos and quesadillas on the city streets

The streets of Bogota, like most of the cities I visited, are completely different. But at the same time, I clearly formed a vision of the most typical streets of the capital. Although it is the capital, its true face and soul seemed to me exactly like this: consisting of small and rather shabby old streets.

Streets of Bogotá
Typical street in the old center of Bogotá

There are more than enough monuments in Bogotá. In fact, there are a great many of them. But to my regret, many characters depicted in stone or bronze were completely unfamiliar to me.

Monument
This is a monument. But pay attention to the woman on the right, she is clearly not adequate.

There is another specific feature, and not only of the wonderful capital, but of the whole of Colombia as a whole. Let's say people live for themselves, and not to say that in absolute purity, which, however, cannot be compared with mud and rubbish in India, but clean shoes are indeed the national idea of Colombians.

Shoe shiners on the streets of Bogotá
The national feature of Colombia is shoe shine: always, everywhere and often

Shoe shine is offered everywhere, and some company has put this business on stream and in crowded places you can see 6-10 offers at once. In general, I made the following conclusion: no matter how homeless you are, your shoes should shine.

Day two and first robbery attempt

The second day of my stay in Bogota began unexpectedly festively and nothing foreshadowed some kind of crime. I went out of the hotel to the street, and I just smelled like May Day and National Unity Day. The fact is that in Bogotá every day there are some kind of demonstrations. Under the windows of my hotel, they were held daily at about 11 am, while the audience there was always diverse in composition.

Demonstration in the capital
A column of demonstrators moves along the streets of the capital

However, at the beginning of the column and at its end there were always policemen on motorcycles. Each column slowly moved and chanted something. I saw both schoolchildren and students and workers on different days. Well, behind the column, as usual, buses, cars and taxis slowly trudged, cursing the next popular procession.

Poster
The banner read something like: “Children are fragile creatures, we will provide them with safe transitions”

Just on the next street, from the one along which the demonstrators were walking, I was robbed for the first time. I walked to my hotel in broad daylight, through neighboring streets and lanes, along the way stopping at intersections and opening the map. Well, still a new city for me, an unfamiliar area, so to speak.

And at one of the crossroads, an unfamiliar guy comes up to me. He smiles peacefully at me and says something in Spanish. I answer him that I only speak English, to which he babbles even more in Spanish and points me to a map somewhere. I understand that the dialogue here is meaningless, I tell him for now and move on.

I pass the block, turn right, I’m already walking along the street leading to my hotel and then another guy catches up with me at the same time and says something, supposedly offering to buy something, rubs around, looks around and sharply puts his hand into the pocket of my windbreaker .

In the windbreaker, my pockets were open, it was not problematic to get into them. In addition, one pocket was bulging. The camera was in this pocket. By the way, the camera was not a lens, but an ordinary soap dish. The Latino grabs him, I, in turn, grab his arm. Then the camera falls to the ground, the guys yell something piercingly, and I also yell at them, sorry for the camera, there are also pictures.

As a result, I pick up a camera from the ground, there are no police around, and passers-by do not care. They, as I understand it, wished me to die in agony, I also gave them something similar, and in the end we just parted ways.

Day three and second robbery attempt

There was a case that before the trip to Bogota, I wrote on the forum with a guy named Sergey, who was going to South America at about the same time. We decided to go with him to Peru, to the Amazonian jungle, but otherwise our route was different.

So in Bogota we crossed paths for one day and decided to walk along the streets of the city. The street we walked down was full of people on Sunday evening. I stopped at a kiosk to buy something and began to count out the money, when suddenly some hefty black man from behind snatched it out of my hands and ran.

I ran after him, shouting something like "hold a black man." There were a lot of people around, one might say a whole crowd, even the police were somewhere nearby. As a result, the robber just took and threw my money on the ground, but I just picked it up. So far, this was the second failed robbery attempt.

Men playing chess on the street
Right next to this table, they tried to rob me a second time

What should I say, Bogota - in general, a city of crime. There are tourist areas where there are police on every corner, but you don’t want to live on a reservation either. Therefore, if you walk the streets, in no case do not take a SLR camera, a watch, take money to a minimum and put it in reliable pockets, preferably with a zipper.

I want to say right away that the second robbery or an attempted robbery was the last for me - in Bogotá (but not in Colombia!) No one else robbed me. But, to be honest, more than once I literally felt the possibility of a repetition of such events. I'll tell you why below.

The capital of Colombia in faces and pictures

And now I propose to look at the capital of Colombia, as I saw it. Colombia is a Christian, Catholic country. In addition to Catholics, there are only Indian tribes in the jungle with their own beliefs.

Temple
Catholic church in Bogotá

The oldest temple in Bogotá Temple Iglesia de San Francisco was built in the 16th and 17th centuries. San Francisco Temple is a Catholic church under the auspices of St. Francis of Assisi. Italian Saint Francis Assisi founder of three orders: Franciscans, Clarisse, Tertiarii. The temple is located in the Veracruz area, on Avenida Jimenez. It is a group consisting of two objects La Tercera and La Veracruz.

Iglesia de San Francisco
The oldest church that has been preserved in Bogota is located in the northwestern part of Avenida Jiménez with Carrera Séptima

A little about the famous historical figure - Francisco de Paolo Santander. He fought for the independence of Latin America from 1810-1826. After the end of the war with the Spaniards, and the independent inhabitants of America tried to be from them, Santander became vice-president of Gran Colombia.

Monument to Francisco de Paolo Santander
Monument to Francisco de Paolo Santander - the national hero of Colombia

Great Colombia lasted for 12 years until 1831 and combined the lands of both Colombia and Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama. And the president at that time was Simon Bolivar, after whose death Great Colombia fell apart and ceased to exist.

Monument First President Simón Bolivar "killed" a little less than completely ... It's sad, but this situation with the monument to the hero-general, apparently, does not particularly bother the locals. It seems that no one touches the sculpture itself, but the pedestal ...

Monument to Simon Bolivar
Simon Bolivar - the most influential and popular leader of the war for the independence of the Spanish colonies in the Americas

In general, Simon Bolivar and Santander were all hot guys. In 1828, Santander led a rebellion against Bolívar, but he managed to survive. Simon Bolivar is a very popular person among South Americans, the country of Bolivia got its name in his honor.

Even in Colombia, there are many monuments of incomprehensible content. For example, what is red twisted? And there are plenty of such pieces of iron around. By the way, the monument is located near the building of the prosecutor's office.

metal sculpture
Sculpture made of metal near the prosecutor's office
Prosecutor's office
Prosecutor's Office of Bogotá

Much more attractive than incomprehensible monuments - local graffiti. Many walls are painted very professionally, and the plots of individual drawings smack of psychedelia. For me, all this is much more interesting than the red metal curls.

Graffiti
Mysterious Graffiti Drawing

Feminist graffiti. In translation, something like: “Enough violence against a woman!”. All this, as I understand it, is in the spirit of local trends and moods and echoes various demonstrations.

graffiti social
Graffiti "No to violence against women"
graffiti about debt
Debt related graffiti

The style of this street art seemed rather strange to me personally. But it is difficult to argue with the artist, you can only express your personal assessment and feelings. Unusual, but somehow strange.

Drawing
Very strange style. for an amateur

In Bogota, graffiti came across to my taste. But even the beautiful examples of street art in this city look unexpectedly depressing.

Graffiti woman with flower
Sad woman smelling a yellow flower

Bogotá has several museums and the most popular one is gold museum (museo del oro). I also liked the museum, I recommend it. The museum exhibits finds made of gold and other metals, some from the BC era. Basically, these are various decorations, shaman masks, totems, utensils, etc. On the third floor there is an installation, which is shown in the photo below.

installation
Installation in the museum of the city

Left building Fernando Botero Museum. Entrance to the museum is free. In general, all museums in Bogotá are free, with the exception of the Gold Museum, the entrance to which cost 3,500 pesos. Fernando Botero calls himself the most Colombian artist among Colombians.

Botero Museum
Museum of one author, but the most Colombian

The heroes of his paintings have pronounced rounded and dense forms, which distinguishes his style from many others. The genre of his works is figurative art. Here is an example of a typical Botero painting.

Painting by Fernando Botero
Woman with Oranges by Fernando Botero

There is a wonderful view from the windows of the museum. It is pleasant to walk in the museum, there are very few visitors. The museum comes across paintings by famous artists such as Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Matisse and others, however, only a couple of paintings, no more.

View of the capital
View of the city from the window of the Botero Museum

The same figure of a cat by Botero, but greatly enlarged, stands on the Rambla de Raval in Barcelona.

Raval cat Botero
Fernando Botero is not only an artist, but also a sculptor created the Ravalsky cat

Once again about Transmilenio. Since 2000, Bogota has had a non-standard urban transport organization system. Many experts call it advanced and almost the best in the world.

Transmilenio - Skytrain
City bus rides on a dedicated lane. She's just for him!

In addition to the popular and modern bus system, residents of the capital have not forgotten more traditional modes of transport. In a word, horse-drawn transport in the city is also developed.

Donkey in the city
Donkey on the street of Bogotá

Parqueadero - This is parking. National business coupled with shoe shiners. Parking lots everywhere offer per-minute rates. And the little man smiled wickedly...

parking
Parqueadero is a national business
House in Bogotá
Just a nice house. And a restaurant. And a mannequin

It often rains in Bogotá. The city is located at an altitude of 2600 meters above sea level, it is surrounded by mountains and it rained every day for an hour or two. But cleanliness every day without any utility vehicles!

Shower
Livni are frequent guests in the Colombian capital

Candelaria area - old townfrom which modern Bogotá originates. This area differs from the modern areas of the city with old colonial buildings. I am glad that, despite the struggle for independence from Spain, the old buildings remained intact and were reconstructed. It's nice to walk in this area during the day, but don't even think about walking here at night.

Candelaria area
The old town is a great place to walk. but only for daytime

read about the poor in India? Check it out and compare the two countries. Although every tenth inhabitant of Bogotá looks something like the man in the photo below, you definitely won’t see such horror as in India.

Bogotá resident
Ordinary resident of the capital

Again, an interesting feature. This person, during a red traffic light, deliberately goes to the middle of the road and duplicates the stop signal. It seems that everyone is standing at a red light, but it’s more reliable this way. Cool work and after all the municipality finds funds for this.

Man with a sign
It just duplicates the traffic light

On the main square of the city Plaza de Bolivar rises Bogota Catedral Cathedral (Catedral Primada de Colombia). A nice building in which the fighters for the independence of the country are buried. This building reminded me a lot of something very similar to it, but only located in Santo Domingo in Dominican Republic.

 Bogota Catedral
Bogota Cathedral - the official metropolitan cathedral church of the Immaculate Conception

Artists perform daily on the square during the day. As we stood and watched one of them perform, the artist waved his hand and asked where we were from. We answered, after which he came up to us and shook hands. Apparently not often here such guests. It was nice, especially since no one tried to rob us :))

street dancer
Street dancer gets everyone's attention

The city is preparing for the Catholic Christmas. The Christmas tree, of course, artificial, stands on the square named after Bolivar. But in my opinion, there is a catastrophic lack of Christmas markets like in Germany. What to do, well, mulled wine and all kinds of punches are not held in high esteem among Colombians.

artificial spruce
Christmas preparations are in full swing

Colombia, as well as some other countries in the region, is famous for its cheap and at the same time huge pieces of meat. And it still remains a mystery to me how they make it so tasty ?!

Grilled meat
An excellent portion of delicious meat at a price of 315 rubles
Meat in a cafe
This piece of meat cost 330 rubles

Well, this is a salad of ingredients unknown to me, but there is definitely meat and fish there. I repeat that I did not fully understand the recipe, but in general it is very tasty.

Salad
This dish costs only 150 rubles.

A must to visit in Bogota should be Climbing Montserrat on the funicular. On Montserrat there is a church and a sculpture of Our Lady of the Virgin Mary. The last way up the mountain is only on foot, and along the way there are sculptures that reflect the last journey of Christ to Calvary.

There is an opinion, widespread among local Catholics, that the crucifix, which is located in the cathedral on Mount Montserrat, has the gift of healing. I don’t know about crucifixion, but coca leaves helped me a lot at such a height.

Bogota from the funicular
View of the city from above
sculptural composition
Sculpture symbolizing the mournful journey of Christ the Redeemer to Golgotha

The mountain offers a great view of Bogota. The maximum height here is 3150 meters above sea level. It is felt that the air is rarefied and it is difficult to climb the stairs higher and higher. But for the sake of such beautiful views, you can strain yourself.

On the mountain
The view from the top of one of the mountains is impressive
Bogota
As you can see from the mountain - the city is not small in area

One amigo didn't eat coca leaves and was knocked out right upstairs. He simply passed out, either from lack of air, or from a religious impression. After 10 minutes, the doctors came for this guy. When I came down the mountain, he was still on the stretcher.

Fainting
Fainting, possibly due to lack of oxygen

Perhaps that all the high-rise buildings of the business district are displayed on this patch. All other buildings in Bogota are 2-4 storey buildings, not higher.

Downtown Bogotá
High-rise buildings of the business center at a glance
clouds on the mountain
An unforgettable experience - the clouds are literally a few meters above your head

Temple on Montserrat. Nowadays, there are several ways to get to the temple. For pilgrims, the most ancient and proven way is to climb to a height of two km along the path. Tourists are also offered a funicular or cable car.

Temple of Montserrat
Sanctuary on Mount Montserrat - a sacred place for many Colombians

On the mountain, you can legally buy coca leaves or drink coca tea. I drank tea, then chewed the whole thing with leaves. Very good, my mouth was numb, but I didn’t feel any more reactions.

Coca
Coca tea - a drink for tourists

Having descended from Mount Montserrat, we decided to take a little more walk around the city and its streets. We walked around, wandered around, until we came to some small cafe on a small street. No, they didn’t try to rob me there, on the contrary, they gave me good advice.

One of the men who was standing near the cafe strongly advised not to go further down the street to the right and generally recommended turning back. “Crime, crime,” he repeated. It was already getting dark and, returning home, we walked looking around at night Bogotá. I had a bag in which a faithful assistant lay, my hand was constantly groping for his hilt.

Cafe
A kind man from a cafe who took away possible troubles from us

Instead of a SLR camera, I recommend taking with you on a trip, for example, the Zarya artel knife. To acquaint the local population with a product of Soviet quality. It’s a joke, I don’t insist, but at least it’s worth thinking about pepper spray.

In conclusion, I want to say that Bogotá is really very criminal city. There is nothing to do here for more than three or five days. If you are going to Colombia, then I recommend visiting other cities, for example, Medellin, Cali, Santa Marta and others, which, unlike the capital, are less criminal, safer and interesting in their own way.

2 Comments

  1. Many advise skipping Bogota if possible on a trip to Colombia, but it’s still worth looking at the huge capital, resembling an anthill from a height. Here, European culture is mixed with Spanish and Indian, and prosperity coexists with poverty. This is especially evident in the division into regions. The south is the poorest part of the city, where the low-income part of the population lives in ugly slums, and the level of crime and crime is off scale. The north is the most modern and respectable part of Bogota with shopping centers, expensive restaurants and expensive apartments, all more or less wealthy citizens strive to move here.

  2. How often do they write about Bogota in tourist brochures? “Rich is filled with the sounds and melodies of hot Latin American music from late evening to early morning. The main entertainment district of the city is the Rosa Zone, or the Pink Zone. There are many nightclubs here. It also has the biggest discos in the city. These are: Salome, on Carrera 14A No. 82-16; Cafe Cafe Libro, Calle 81, no. 11-92, and Quiebra Canto, Carrera 15, no. 79-28.” Everything is basically true, but not a word is said about the fact that at this time and in these places Bogota is “filled” with the sounds of showdowns and banal fights. So this point is also worth considering :)

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