The weather here in Bogota is similar to that back in the UK, being cold, windy, lightly showering and not at all how I imagined Colombia would be during mid November, but then I guess it is fairly flat, low down and central rater than like Cartagena which is on the coast and more caribbean than south american.
I met up with my friend C' just before lunchtime and I had a 2 kilo pile of stuff that I wanted to send home, so before we made a day of visiting places I asked her if she could help me find a post office and send it off. However I was not expecting the queues to be so long and slow moving and half an hour later we still had not even go to the counter. When we finally did, I was told ta I would have to buy a box and that it would be quicker to get it sent through fedex, so off we went and after a similarly long wait I was totally knocked off my socks to hear that they wanted to charge 440,000 pesos to send the package back home.
440,000 was around £100, and all that just for a few fliers, receipts and such, so I did the fastest about face that I have ever done and marched us back to my hotel where I gave up the idea of posting it and suggested we pause her for a brief bite to eat before heading off to visit the gold musuem, the worlds largest.
When we arrived at the gold museum I thought that it would be good to ge the audio guides for the 6,000 pesos that they wanted, in addition to the 2,600 pesos admin charge, but walking through the museum I was very disappointed and angry that there was almost nowhere to use the audio guides and I think I only used it twice the whole two hours I was there. The gold museum itself is well laid out, has many many pre-colombian pieces of gold, plenty of signs in Spanish and enough security guards to occupy paris, though strangly they aren't allowed to take your photo even if you ask nicely.
The only gripe that I have is that the entire place is forbidden to use flash photograpy, which wouldnt normally be a complete nuisance, but all the exhibits and artifacts were housed in near darkness and the corridors and hallways were almost in pitch black, so taking photographs of each other was almost impossible, so instead you will have to accept the dozen or so photographs of exhibits that I managed to take.
Outside the musuem we took a brief tour of the Plaza de Bolivar and it was here that I caught the guy trying to pickpocket C', and was filled with a mixture of anger, hatred, disapointment and frustration as he quickly walked away and as he had not actually got away with anything there was nothing I could do in retaliation and to call the police for a prevented pickpocket would have just been a complete waste of time.
But it did knock my confidence enough for me to insist that we grab a taxi pronto and hightail it out of such a crime ridden area and off to somewhere safer and more peaceful. The place where we ended up was far in the north, and I have to admit that the houses and private universities looked very different from the downtown area and I would almost have thought that I was in a completely different city.
Walking around we spotted a crepe and pancake place and so I dragged C' in and we had a coffee while I scoffed the tastiest fruit and ice cream crepe that I have tasted in many a month, and was almost a saving grace for the city.
Almost, as around 5pm we decided to go back to the north and watch a movie, yet it was impossible to find a taxi that was free and thus we just walked and walked and waited and waited. The traffic was a nightmare and when I say impossible, I mean that it took us ten blocks and over two hours before we finally found a taxi that was free and would stop to let us enter, and 2 hours for me is the same as good impossible as it was then too late to catch the showing of the film we had planned to see.
As it was so much later than planned we just went back to the hotel and listened to some music for an hour or two, while we talked and chatting and then it was time for C' to go and for me to plan what I was going to do the next day.
There are still a few places that I want to see in the city centre, but the previous two days have made me have a healthy distrust for the denizens of the downtown area and the sooner I fly out to Santa Marta the happier I will be, and its a rare capital city that I would advice people to just give a complete miss to, but on this occasion I have not seen enough good to outweigh the bad and make me want to spend more time here.
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