Another day in Bogota

I woke up at a sensible time, but allowed myself a long and lazy morning by just loafing around my hotel room and catching up with a few unreplied email.

After a nice stroll down the main high street and snapping a few photos, I spotted an rare sight of an adult cinema, and I couldn't remember the last time I saw one still open, so when I returned later to my hotel I researched it and it turns out to be the last remaining cinema of its kind in the city, as over the last decade the numbers are down from over 300 per day to less than ten, all thanks to the wonders of the internet so the owner claims.

I continued along the road and found lots of cheap restaurants, a few billiard halls and a lot of smaller shops before I reached the National musuem and the city Bullfighting ring, both great examples of architecture.

I didn't think that I had enough time to go round the entire National Museum, so I just took a few photos and then walked the long route back to the fornicular station at the base of Cerro de Monserrate. The walk lasted about an hour and on the way I stopped to get a burger and coke, only for the waitress to have a sudden bought of confusion and served me a burger and a raspberry smoothie, no idea how she got coca cola and whatever the Spanish for fresh fruit smoothie is !?!

The fornicluar entrance is just behind one of the cities Universities and up the road a bit, and as chance would have it I shared the cabin with two west London lads that were doing their own whistlestop tour of Central and South America and were even staying in the same hostel that I had been recommended to stay in whilst lodging in Manizales.

The view from the top was fantastic, the inside of the church was great and for a change I even managed to take a good photo of the inside without it coming out all blurred and fuzzy.

After a bit of a chit chat we ended up sitting at the top, taking snaps and swapping travel stories and they suggested that I give myself a few days to relax in Belize, visit the Mayan temples and enjoy that fact that plenty of people there talk English as it used to be a British colony for over a hundred years.

Once we finished a couple of beers we made out way back down, after both expressing an interest in visiting the Salt Church at Zipaquira and so we might catch up again the following morning.