Into the mountains

Days 3/4

Kranky croc hostel, Bogota > Renacer hostel, villa de leyvas

As I write this from a hammock, whilst looking out at a panorama of the Colombian highlands, perfectly warm at 7:30 am, I feel pretty lucky! 

We now find ourselves in the beautiful village of Villa de Leyvas, a fairly touristy 'stop-off village' for travellers and Colombians alike. For those who know Norfolk I would describe it as a Colombian Holt.

Better just catch up on the backlog of the past couple of days. On day 3, we finally made the famous trip to the top of the Montserrate. Unfortunately the chance of uploading photos has not yet arisen but the best way to describe the view would be through picture. The three of us and our adopted friend Nick took the rickety funicular (train) up to the top. With clouds looming, it felt like a race against time, but on arrival, there was a pretty clear view of Bogota. I ignorantly thought that our little tour of the previous day had shown us a good chunk of the city, but seeing it from this view, stretching round the mountain and far off into the hazy distance, coupled with the knowledge that there are 8.3 million inhabitants, I was proven very wrong. The chapel at the top of the mountain was very simple, truly devoted to religious locals, not the camera-clad touristy riffraff like ourselves. We touched on a 'tat-market', as I like to call it, where I characteristically bought some tat, hat earrings for 3000 pesos (£1). Happy with my purchase I went to see what Bean was looking at, a shot glass in a hoof, and tried to convince her it would be heavy to carry around for the whole trip...! When I get the chance I will put up photos of Montserrate.

In the afternoon, we visited the museo del oro (gold museum) which took an individual approach to teaching us about South American history, through the importance of gold to each generation of South Americans. We were appreciative of this, of course, but 3 floors of gold, and many never to be looked at again photos later we were flagging. We returned to kranky croc, our little haven, and started rounding up the troops for a night out. 

A local who was 'friends with the hostel' convinced us to follow him the 'la zona rosa' area if bogota, a 20 min taxi ride across town. Despite the club of choice having prices comparable to the UK and us 'hard-done-by' backpackers feeling a little scammed, when a local Colombian band came onto stage, the dancing began and we were placated. After the band the salsa started and I decided that having taken dance lessons before this trip would have been far more useful than most of the preparation that I did. We were also shamed by Lizzie, who had clearly done this before...!

And so we woke up fairly early, heads a little sore, to catch our bus to villa de leyvas, a 4 hour ride north of Boggy. We said our goodbyes to the kranky croc team, had a team photo (cringe) and vowed to cross paths again at a later date. We have all been impressed by how friendly everyone has been so far :)

The bus ride up here was...memorable. Genuinely felt like we were back in the uk because we spent so much time on the left hand side of the road (they drive on the right here). We also got our first taste of the Colombian countyside, of which we had high expectations. The highlight for me was when a fight broke out between mother nature's good and evil sides; a rainbow in the east and billowing clouds with sunrays poking out at all angles to the west. They really were vying for our attention, but due to the crisp colours of the rainbow, that was what I chose to capture (badly) on my camera. 

We arrived 5 hours later and made our way to the Renacer hostel, situated up a hill - tiring to get to but worth it for the views. It does sort of feel like paradise here. 

Overall we're all content, our little trio is gelling quite well!!

A demain!