One night in Bogota

Our month-long journey begins in Bogotá, Colombia. We arrived early Monday morning, hoping to spend the entire day sightseeing. We first checked into the hostel, dropped our bags off and hit the streets of Bogota. We stayed at the Cranky Croc Hostel in the La Candaleria district. It's a cool hostel with a great environment. It is here that our plans for Bogotá changed entirely. (I'll get back to that in a bit.)

We walked for 3.5 miles and along the way we got to see the botero museum, the presidential house, saw a bunch of cool graffiti art, colorful houses, the capital building, hung out at bolivar square and took the trolley to Mount Monserrsate where we got to see the entire city of bogota at 11,000 feet up. We were fortunate enough to see a beautiful sunset on what looked like a cloudy and muggy day (in the morning), to a perfect sunny day while we were atop the mountain.

After taking some cool pictures and videos from atop the mountain, we stopped and had dinner at this restaurant called Sanalejo cafe bar restaurant. It is here that we got to feast like kings! Filet mignon & a fresh premium salmon for a mere $22 American Dollars.

When we finished dinner we quickly made our way back to the Hostel to shower and get ready for the night ahead! When we arrived in our dorm room we met all of our roommates, many from different countries. Scotland, England, Holland, Switzerland, & Ireland. Aaron and I were the only Americans, which we had no problem with. Everyone was super friendly and we all ended up playing some drinking games in the lobby and chatting about our future adventures. We became very close with two Irishmen, Sean and Aaron (not to be confused with my buddy Aaron). We were all having a blast, however, we ran out of liquor. So Aaron and I made a trip to the liquor store to stock up. It was about 9:30pm, it was dark, the streets were pretty empty, and it was a little sketchy, but we made it to the liquor store and back with no problem. The same can't be said about our new Irish friend, Sean. Roughly ten minutes after I went to the store, Sean and Irish Aaron went to the store to stock up on some more Colombian liquor. His quick trip wasn't so pleasant. As he was walking back to the Hostel a short man approached him and shouted, "hey gringo". He then placed a knife to his chest and told him to give him all of his money or die. So of course, he gave him what he had which was about 70,000 pesos or roughly $23 American dollars. It just goes to show you that the streets of Bogotá can be a very dangerous place, especially for tourists.

Once Sean told us the story we were all shocked but we were all on holiday (europeans word for vacation) and had only one solution... Drink mas!

And yes, the Irish know how to drink. Drinks started flying, the good times were rolling, and everything was forgotten.

This is where Sean and Aaron (Irish Aaron) told us that tonight was their last night in Bogotá and tomorrow they would be flying out to Medellin, Colombia. We were having so much fun together that neither of us wanted it to end. They told us to come to Medellin with them and continue the fun. And well, they convinced us and we booked flights that night at 11:40pm to fly to Medellin at 10:00am the next day. After booking the flights, we had to celebrate, of course. So we all went out to this little house/bar/club/I don't know what to call it. It was weird, different, but very Colombian. It ended up being an awesome first/last night in Bogotá.

And well...This was our one night in Bogotá.

On top of Mount Monserrate