Thewesternprovinceblog

Hola todos! Day 2 in Bogotá was quite a shitty one saved by an evening that ended up going really well.

Entonces vamos a empezar! First up my initial 2 nights in this hostel was done and so I asked to stay one more night as while I wanted to move out of there I needed to do laundry and catch up on other admin bits so I extended by 1 night all okay then asked about a laundry place nearby, they said they could do it, without looking for others I accepted but coming to pay I got hit with more gringo tax with my loads being like another 3000 peso per kilo to other people’s (60p) not much in the grand scheme but it pissed me off – people trying to nickle and dime an extra couple of bucks out of you as the gringo has been a constant thing across much of Colombia and a constant piss off to be honest. You’d get it occasionally in Mexico and Central but here its probably like a 1/3 chance there will be something and it’s always petty like trying to put an extra drink on your bill or prices changing in places depending on who’s serving you. One day something costs X amount then another day the same thing is 50p more then back to the other. Petty but it’s annoying. 

Anyways what next? I booked to do a walking tour at 13:00 round the historic town centre. This was one of those ones you paid £10 for up front (the free tours work the same with the customary til being around £10 too by the way).

So I go to the meetup point in this square and nobody is there who resembles who this company’s people are. After about 20 minutes I WhatsApp them they then say someone will be there for 14:00. Okay, meanwhile I sit and have a beer outside this cafe. 14:00 rolls round still nobody there. I order another beer and it’s now 14:30 and nobody has come. At this point I just pay my tab and head home clearly this lot stood us up. Lo que hay I guess! It’s now siesta time. 

Some point earlier this day I messaged a friend who was with me back in Medellin in the Spanish School who said she was in Bogotá asking if she was still there and turns out she was and asked me if I was up for some Tejo later. I say yes.

So at 6pm I head to the place she suggested which happened to be 2 minutes walk from my hostel. She shows up about the same time. We have some empanadas and catch up a bit about what we’ve been up to since we left. She left the school about a week before I did. After some chatting we got round to playing.

Tejo is a traditional Colombian pub game that in a way is a bit of a cross between Darts and Skittles, simple game but hard to master. Basically you have to throw a rock ‘puck’ at a clay board trying to hit these triangles and the centre. When you hit a triangle they are actually filled with gunpowder so you get a good pop similar to popping old school party poppers. You get points for hitting near the triangles, the centre and the triangles themselves. It is good fun and quite a workout actually since the rock discs aren’t that light. We weren’t really keeping score but have a feeling she won having played this before.

After Tejo we go for a walk to Plaza Bolivar, that square where Gustavo was doing his speeches when the Colombians were having their soberana (Sovereignty) march the other week after Trump was threatening Colombia after the Maduro raid. 

After this we end up going back to her hostal, having some more food and a drink then we go our separate ways. That evening saved the day.

The next day I moved up to Chapinero on the North side of the city. I will skip blogging on that as all it was, was getting the lay of the land up there and  settling into the new gaff. The day after that was epic however. When I visited the Mines of Moria!