Bogota by Bike

We have arrived in Salento, a little town in the Zona Cafeteria, and are enjoying the Colombian Independence Day celebration here - more on that in a later post! Yesterday, we spent five hours biking our way through the busy streets of downtown Bogota. If you have ever biked in Philadelphia, you know how challenging it can be to negotiate both city traffic and pedestrians. Now take the worst day of biking in Philly, and it probably still does not compare to the adventure of biking in Bogota.

Now imagine riding through this crowd on a bike
Our twelve miles of city touring not only included seeing the sights but also learning the political and social history of the city through our tour guide Mike, a former American journalist who has lived in Colombia for the past five years. We visited a giant local food market, the cemetery (where plots are rented for just four years), the bull fighting ring, and many other spots of interest. We even came across two separate political demonstrations related to today´s Independence Day.

Steve surprised by the sourness of the unidentified fruit at the market
If you are ever in Bogota, we can´t recommend the Bogota Bike Tour enough. It is a great way to get a feel for the culture and history of the city.

We don´t have wifi where we are staying in Salento (maybe in the whole town itself), so we will have to wait to post about today´s celebration, but look forward to sharing our photos and videos! We are loving the town here, and despite our limited Espanol, all of the people we meet continue to be so gracious and friendly. We´ll post back when we can!