We didn’t leave for the airport until 2pm as our flight was at 10pm. We walked from our house, 30 minutes to the mall in the cold Canadian February weather. When we arrived at the mall, Jives bought some gum for the flight. He needs it to equalize the pressure in his ears on landing. We then headed to the GO bus stop to catch the bus for 2:49 but it  never arrived. Eventually at 3:30pm they sent another bus and we made our way to the Burlington Go Station. The ride took about an hour and we arrived at the Burlington Go station for 4:15 ish. We had to wait until 4:45 for the next train, as we had just missed the train by one minute! 

We got on the train at 4:45 and took our seats. A young boy was rapping loudly and scaring some people from the car we were in. This train took a little over an hour, and we arrived at Union station in Toronto around 6:15. Our train was full of Toronto Maple Leaf fans in jerseys heading to a game downtown. The Go bus and the Go train combined cost us $16 as we had Presto cards that gave us a discount. It is super easy to transfer to the airport train at Union station, the train is called “UP” and it is also run by the same company that runs GO so you can use a Presto card. We used the kiosk to buy tickets to the airport which cost us $12 each. This next train took less than an hour. I was surprised by the amount of masked people on this train (as we had been masking the entire journey and felt very out of place). 

We arrived at Pearson around 7pm, exactly three hours before our flight. We were able to get our boarding passes printed, which was nice and then we headed through customs. Security was pretty quick and we were through to the boarding gates in no time. We packed the lightest we had ever packed, in small personal item sized school backpacks (as we had some internal flights in Colombia that did not allow carry on bags). 

We made our way to our gate where we bought two overpriced mozzarella sandwiches and ordered a sour beer. Just before boarding time (9:50) my co worker Moe called me. He couldn’t close the cash register, so I walked him through the close process over the phone. We finished that just in time to board the plane. 

We had been seated separately, one row apart but both on an aisle seat. A Colombian man was sitting in Jives’ seat and asked Jives to switch (but Jives would then have a window seat beside a very large gentleman) so Jives said he would rather not switch, which really pissed off this guy. We then tried to make a different arrangement with the larger gentleman so that the Colombian guy could sit next to his companion, but he said “no way, not after you said no!” This Colombian man would go on to be the most aggressive airplane passenger I have ever met. I sat beside a very nice family of three. The plane was old with barely functioning screens and very little to watch when they did work. I watched four episodes of Ted Lazzo. We were served dinner, but in true Air Canada fashion we were denied the vegetarian meals we had ordered. The meal was very small without the main, just a veggie mayo salad and a bun. I ordered red wine with my dinner…. But this is when our Colombian seat mate went OFF! He was denied wine as he had been drinking before the flight and had bragged about it on the way on to the plane. He kept swearing and calling the flight attendant a bitch, every other word was “fuck you”. The head flight attendant came over and said “we will make you a deal, if you swear less, we will give you wine”…well his response was even more f-words then before. The larger gentleman beside him (who he did not know) pleaded with him to just do what they said but he did not. The rest of the flight was ok.. (mostly) as it was only six hours direct to Bogota. The landing was bumpy, I haven’t felt a pilot break so hard and abruptly before. We gathered our stuff and got off the plane. The companion of the Colombian man was talking to the flight attendant outside the plane door. They called the Colombian man over but he refused and swore and told his sister to walk away. I was very glad that we had not switched seats with him because if the Colombian man had refused to give his information to the flight attendant, they would have gone by his seat manifest information… and if Jives had switched, that would have been HIS information. 

We walked to customs and immigration where we had to wait in a special “Canadian” line to pay $85 (249,000 pesos) to process our visas. Apparently it’s a new reciprocal fee to retaliate for a similar fee charged by the Canadian government for Colombians. This process took about an hour. This was the beginning of our credit card not working though… We then went through immigration which was very simple. Oddly there were no forms to fill out at all. We then entered the baggage claim area where we found an ATM to take out Colombian Pesos. We took out 1,000,000 which with fees was about $390 Canadian. We then walked through arrivals. 

A few taxi drivers approached us, but they took “no gracias” without any push. We were sort of afraid after Egypt that taxi drivers in Colombia might be a bit aggressive, but we were pleasantly surprised. 

We turned right after exiting the baggage claim area and found a small shop with a cafe attached. This shop sold CLARO Sim cards for much cheaper than the Claro phone booths in the airport arrivals area. We got two- 15 day sims for 120,000 Pesos or $20 each Canadian. This gave us a Colombian phone number and 20GB of data each for 15 days. There was also a seven day sim for half the price. Honestly, coming from Canada $20 each for 20GB is soooooo cheap. We pay close to $100 Cad a month for 5GB each at home! The lovely ladies at the shop installed the cards for us, as we would have struggled a lot with the Spanish. You can pay with cash or credit card. 

We then walked to the taxi filled roadway outside of arrivals. If you cross over to the small road just past the taxis, you will find your options for buses. We recommend taking the 16-14 feeder bus (small and green) that takes you to the bus station (El Dorado) 10 minutes away for free. The stop is clearly marked as is the bus. 

From El Dorado bus station you can take a bus into the city centre. We had to cross the road (there is a tunnel) to get to the side with the bus we needed, M86 to the Chapinero area that we were staying in. 

You can buy a bus pass for 5,000 “Tarjeta Tullave” from a vending machine at the “El Dorado” Bus Station. You can even charge the card with whatever amount you would like . Push the “Tullave” button and insert a bill, 20,00 or 50,000 etc. You will not get change, but whatever amount you enter will be added on to the 5000 card issuing cost as value you can use to take the bus. We chose to put 20,000 on our cards or about $6.50 Canadian. Every single trip on the bus costs 2,300 pesos no matter where you travel (with a few transfer exceptions). 

We tapped our cards as we entered the station and then got on the M86 that would take us straight to our accommodation (or within a 6minute walk). The sun was just rising, at about 6:30am. We jumped off the bus and walked 6 minutes to our accommodation. We waited until 7am and asked the lady at reception if we could leave our small backpacks until check in at 1pm. The lady spoke zero English and we spoke zero Spanish, but we communicated somehow. 

We then walked around our neighbourhood of Chapinero. This was a lovely hilly area full of cafes, parks, plants and shops. I am so glad we stayed in this area (as we would experience more later…). We eventually had breakfast at a place a few minutes from our hotel called “Mesa Salvaje”. Jives had a brioche bun with pesto, egg, sun dried tomato and mayonnaise. He said it was incredible! I had a black garlic sour dough toast with poached eggs. We both had americanos. The meal was delicious and cost 64,000 pesos. I gave the server 80,000 as we didn’t have smaller bills yet, he tried to give us 20,000 back as he did not have change.. But we gave it to him as a tip instead. 

We kept exploring our neighbourhood a bit longer before attempting to head to the old town of La Candelaria. To use the bus app I had downloaded, you have to pin a location on a map and then it tells you the bus to get there… it’s not easy to use. We ended up passing the old town area without the bus stopping. We thought we would just get off at the next stop, but the stops on the express buses are far apart. The south area of the old town is still very unsafe, actually the whole area around the old town is unsafe. Two sketchy young boys with scrap metal in big bags forced their way off our bus, setting the alarm off and then they walked in front of a speeding ambulance. The area looked desolate, dusty and full of demolished buildings. People were sifting through the rubble and selling things from it. It looked like a set out of Mad Max or Fist of the North Star. We felt so unsafe, but we had to get off the bus at the next stop or risk going further into the cartel controlled areas. I desperately tried to find out how to retrace our steps one stop, but could not figure it out, as the buses are numbered differently in different directions. I had read a lot that you should not have your phone out in public, but I had to… I was trying so hard to conceal my phone and desperately search for a way out of this unsafe area. I’m not going to lie, I was really scared. 

Eventually I saw a sign for a bus going to “El Dorado”, the terminal near the airport. I thought, in the worst case scenario we end up back at the airport, best case we can go back one or two stops and end up in La Candaleria. Well, there were very few stops, so we ended up back at the airport, but at least we were safe. 

Also, on the bus ride there were musical acts that would get on and try to make money. Two guys had small speakers and played almost like live karaoke. The music was a mix of almost folky pop with definite latin influences. Another guy got on with a saxophone and he was amazing! He played amazing latin jazz, Jives said it almost had a Klezmier feel like jewish traditional music. We took a bus (M86) back to our neighbourhood of the Chapinero and went back to the same cute cafe we had gone to earlier. We tried to sit on a different patio, but it was a lovely sunny Saturday and all the patios were full! We ordered a beer to sit in the sun and relax with, after our ordeal. It was a “13” brand craft beer, generic but good. The sun had come out and it was nice to sit on the patio and relax. The beers were about 28,000 total, so not cheap.

We then headed to our hotel to check in. There was certainly a language barrier between my limited crossover knowledge of French and its relation to Spanish and the receptionists’ very limited amount of English, but we got there eventually. The room was on the top floor and really lovely with a view over the roof tops of Bogota with the orange tilled roofs. There was also a large roof top patio just outside our door and a full (ish) kitchen in our room. The fridge didn’t work (I fixed it later on) but the shower had a skylight! We rested in the room a bit and Jives had a shower. A few hours later we headed to a restaurant nearby called “Mini Mar”. It had a lovely setting outdoors with red and white checked table cloths and lots of plants (it reminded me of the Italian restaurant in an alley we had eaten at in Cairo). We sat inside, as it was raining, at a table with a cup as a lamp (another had a cheese grater lamp). 

We each ordered a soup and empanadas to share as well as two Colombia Gold beers. The soup was very traditional and amazing! The first soup was called “Citric soup” traditionally from the Cocuy mountain lands with a very citrusy broth, lemongrass, squid, spinach, mushroom and conopio balls (made with a seed like cardamon), fried cheese cubes and a kick of spice. I loved it! Jives had a “Samai” peanut and mute corn soup, apparently a grandmother’s recipe from Sibunday Valley. It was full of beans and potatoes in a veggie broth, and also sooooo good! The empanadas were good too, but the soups stole the show. The bill was about 90,000 pesos or $30 Canadian, expensive by Colombian standards but cheap for Canada. 

We then walked to the corner store to get breakfast supplies and some beers to have in the room. This cost 50,000 pesos or about $15. We enjoyed the beers in the room and watched a lovely sunset from our room, over Bogota.