01/05/2019 – Monseratte, Bogota, Colombia

We woke up to our alarms and had coffee and breakfast before getting our sports clothes and suncream on, it was a nice bright day today. We walked with John to the bottom of Monseratte, a mountain in the centre of the city. Its peak is at about 3152m above seal level, and you can walk the 2.1km steep incline or take a cable car to the top. John runs it in about 26 minutes, all the way to the top, about 3 times a week! Josh and I decided to do our own pace. After jogging for a few minutes up the steep stairs it already felt like we would never be able to catch our breath, so we had to pause to take a breather. Jogging up it is absolutely nutty! We ended up light jogging/power walking, physically it’s so demanding with such a steep incline and with the altitude. It was really busy because it was a bank holiday, but this was a good thing in a way because I have read that sometimes people can get robbed on the trail. Josh and I managed to complete it in about 50 minutes, I think it’s good to do it in under an hour so we were pleased with that time! The views were amazing, so we took some pictures, drank some water and had a look around before jogging back down again (just over 30 mins). We walked back to the hostel and chilled with some water before showering and having coffee. We dropped some laundry at our favourite little shop over the road and then went for some lunch at a local vegan café. We had avocado and sweetcorn arepas and then a dish called Tamales. It is basically a mixture of ingrediants (ours was tofu, rice, chickpeas, mushrooms and some other vegetables) wrapped in plaintain leaves and steamed for a few hours. It was absolutely delicious, kind of risotto like but a bit more mushy. We had a mango, banana and coconut smoothie too which was really refreshing. The cafe was also part of a artisanal shop selling clothes and homemade soaps and toiletries. I got shown where the bathroom was, it was basically through what looked like the front door of the house. However, when I went through the front door I was suddenly in a huge open space under a canvas roof, with a round homemade fire burning, it felt very indigenous! There was an old man sanding a wooden cabinet built into the wall and another man putting some wood on the fire and some kids that looked pretty wild running about in baggy white outfits.

We left and went to the local supermarket for more groceries before heading home to chill for a bit. That exercise this morning has us absolutely pooped! As our tummies started to get hungry again we realised we were actually in need of some more money so went on an ATM hunt, which is surprisingly difficult in this developed city! But on reflection I think this is perhaps because most ATMs here are within public buildings, perhaps to improve safety. Everywhere was shut and the city was eerily quiet, I guess because of the bank holiday. Feeling bit prangy because we knew we would be walking around with cash and because it was dark and quiet out, we were trying to be a bit careful. We walked past a guy sat in a pile of rubbish, and had to walk in single file on the road to skirt around him, just as I walked past him, behind Josh, he lunged and shouted ‘Fuck you man!’ at the top of his lungs at me and then started laughing. How I didn’t squeal I have no idea! Luckily he was so intoxicated he couldn’t actually move too far but it definitely gave me a startle! After a few failed attempts we ended up above the supermarket Exito, where we managed to get some more cash. We headed home and ordered pizza takeaway on Ubereats and ate it whilst watching Netflix, it was nice and chilled, I don’t think either of us want to move much this evening!