From Armenia to Bogota

11/12/23

Today we're going by bus

over the Andes to Bogota.

We get a great breakfast around Kawa Mountain one last time and they even give us lunch packages for free.

This was truly the best hotel we have had in Colombia so far.

As always, the taxi arrives on time and takes us to the bus station in Armenia for 160,000 pesos. We bought the bus ticket online again and everything is going according to plan. The bus is more comfortable and has more horsepower than last time, which as we will later notice is necessary on the gradients.

In Calarcá, passengers still get off to the bus stop Calarcá is actually just a kiosk.

And off we go up and down through the mountains, chaotic as always and again and again we hang behind completely underpowered trucks that try to get up the mountain at a maximum of 10 km/h.

Which always leads to daring overtaking maneuvers. At a pass our luggage is passed through a

Military checkpoint searched with drug dogs.

Stowaways sometimes ride on the trucks...adventurous.

Ultimately we need for the. Just over 300 km to Bogota and including a break 7.5 hours, which is a good average. We've heard of 10 hour journeys, so we can't complain.

When we arrive in Bogota, we take a lowered taxi (which is not a good idea given these road conditions) to the hotel.

The taxi driver unnecessarily inflates the price by taking a tour of the city, so we end up paying almost 70,000 pesos instead of 40,000 pesos. But today we're not in the mood for discussions.

The hotel has no advertising outside, so we had a bit of trouble finding it.

Just a bell button without a name?

Camilo, a nice older gentleman, opens the door to us and the house, which looks inconspicuous from the outside, has a surprise in store. It has been so lovingly restored and equipped that you can't get enough of it. There are so many beautiful details and it is absolutely clean.

It's getting dark and we take a short walk through La Candelaria, the old town of Bogota.

We are really positively surprised at how beautiful it is here. We didn't expect that.

We'll see more of it tomorrow.