Week 13 - Istanbul & Bogotá

Returning the car went smoothly and we caught our Turkish Airlines flight on time. From the beginning, we had the idea of continuing from Africa to South America. During our last big trip in 2012, we had some experience with Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, and despite our limited Spanish skills, we really enjoyed it and said back then that we wanted to visit the northern countries at some point. Now, seven years later, the time had come. Luckily, we had Spanish skills this time. Since there were no suitable direct flights from South Africa to South America, we made a stopover in Istanbul. This was actually convenient as we had never been to Istanbul before. We found out that if you fly with Turkish Airlines and have a longer stopover in Istanbul, you can take advantage of a free city tour including breakfast and lunch. So, together with others, we visited the Blue Mosque, Horse Square, Hagia Sophia, and a spice market. Despite the sunshine, it was quite cold. We were definitely not used to the temperatures anymore after months in the African sun. We arrived back at the airport in the evening, quite exhausted. We didn't get much sleep on the plane the night before, and our energy reserves were slowly running out. We tried to get a few hours of sleep in a quiet corner of the airport before our flight to Bogotá started shortly after midnight.

We arrived in Bogotá in the early morning hours, completely exhausted. And unfortunately, it turned out as expected. The luggage was 'forgotten'. Not only from both of us, but from EVERYONE! The plane flew empty, so to speak, without luggage, but with plenty of fuel for this 14-hour flight. After completing all the paperwork at the Lost and Found counter, we took a taxi to our hostel. Luckily, we were able to check into our room right away - although you could rather call it a cell - and get some rest. Our plan was to stay in Bogotá for only about 3 days and then fly on to Cusco, Peru. Fortunately, we hadn't booked our flight yet, because in the end, we waited 6 days for our luggage. We were repeatedly promised that it would arrive soon. In hindsight, we can say that being 'stuck' in Bogotá for a week is probably not the worst thing that can happen. The only annoying thing was that we couldn't change hostels because we had given this address as the delivery address. So, we had to make do with the room without a window, the shared showers, overflowing toilets, and noisy nights (the ceiling of our room was the floor of the upper dormitory and through the gaps, you could even see the light from the upper room). We had to admit that we are definitely too old for such dive accommodations...

But Bogotá itself was very beautiful. Our hostel was located in the Candelaria district. The streets were paved with cobblestones, and the buildings were mostly from the colonial era. Almost every wall had a large graffiti or painting by a street artist. Bogotá is known for that. But there are also uglier inscriptions or splashes of paint on the walls that testify to the riots. Especially young people are protesting against the government. We liked the beautiful artworks and took a guided graffiti tour where we got interesting information about the different artworks and artists. If anyone is in Bogotá, we highly recommend 'Bogota Graffiti Tour' as the provider. In the next few days, we also took a trip to Cerro de Monserrate. Cerro de Monserrate is a 3152-meter-high mountain in the Santa Fe district, from where you have a perfect view of the city. Since we already had a bit of a cold and the high altitude was making it even worse, we took the funicular. We also visited the Gold Museum, the Sunday flea market, took a guided city tour that didn't focus on the graffiti, and of course, we had to do some shopping for clothes. After days in the same clothes and being repeatedly told when our backpacks would arrive, it was high time. We were often only out during the day (also because of the jet lag). It was said to be dangerous at night. It is recommended to take a taxi even just for one city block.

On the sixth day in Bogotá, when I finally lost my patience and made a rather angry call to the hotline, things suddenly went very quickly. The luggage arrived and within a few minutes, we had booked our flight. Early the next morning, we continued to Cusco via Lima.