Hitting the Capitals – Bogotá and Lima

“Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” – Lawrence Block

Bogota

When I arrived in Bogotá, I remember sitting in a cab driving from the airport thinking “I’m going to like it here much more than I thought.”

I didn’t initially want to go to Bogotá.  After Panama City, Medellin, and Cartagena I was about done with high rise buildings and crowded streets.  Big cities wear me out.  For those of you crying hypocrite – yes, I’m aware that I have always been an urbanite by residence.  But traveling is different.  My favorite globe-trotting moments usually involve  fresh air and scenery.

The other thing worth mentioning is that Bogota is a really big city.  It’s geographically massive at over 600 square miles and is home to over 8 million people.  On paper, this sounds positively exhausting.  But my flight to Peru automatically routed through here.  So I figured I might as well get off the plane and see what the fuss is all about.

Stopping in Bogotá was one of my better travel decisions.

True, Bogotá is mind bogglingly huge.  Yes, there’s traffic and crowds and sketchy parts of town like any city.  But it also has highly redeeming qualities.  Bogotá is home to several universities, as well as trendy restaurants and quiet residential neighborhoods.  It boasts amazing architecture, and has well-planned park space that’s full of families and running children on the weekends.   It’s also surrounded by mountains and the city’s high elevation (over 8,600 ft above sea level) makes for the bluest of blue skies on a clear day.

I’m such a sucker for that kind of thing.

Friendly Tour Guides

The few days I spent in Bogota were also aided by new friends.  There’s nothing like a local tour guide to make you feel at home in a new place.  And traveling can bring the most random, but welcome connections.

Juan and I met in Medellin, where we both rented different rooms in the same Airbnb apartment.  He picked me up at my hotel the morning of my second day in Bogota and spent an entire day showing me around.  Since it was election day in Colombia, this was no easy task as a lot of the typical tourist sites and major streets were closed off for voting stations.  Still, he managed to bring me out for a traditional Colombian breakfast, followed by a sunny(ish) afternoon of city exploration.

Juan and I talk mostly in English.  He gets confused by my Spanish, and I get frustrated when he talks too fast in Spanish for me to understand what he’s saying.  But every few hours we have a half an hour of Spanish-only time, which provides a good opportunity for me to hone my basic conversational skills.  Juan is a Venezuelan youth at 24, but is an an old soul for his young age.  He also appreciates food almost as much as I do.  So walking around town with him and stopping to try various culinary treats is a more than a pleasant way to spend a day.

The following day in Bogota I met up with an even newer friend, Paola who I met through not one, but several random travel encounters.  On a walking tour of Cartagena the prior week, my friend Erica and I met and shared a drink with a fellow DC resident Brittany.  Brittany left Cartagena the following day, but we hung out long enough to realize that her and I would have a small overlap in our future travel plans in Bogotá.  We exchanged numbers, and I met up with Brittany for dinner my first night in Bogotá.  At dinner, she brought her friend Paola.

Paola is a native Colombian, but befriended Brittany when attending American University in DC for a semester a few years ago.  While I only got to hang out with Brittany for that one dinner before she left Bogotá, Paola was nice enough to offer to meet me over her lunch hour on Monday to show me the major sites downtown.

Good luck if you can follow that, but that’s how I met Paola.

Paola used to work at the Colombian Finance ministry and helped to calculate the country’s annual GDP.  Now she works for the Cultural Ministry and is in the process of getting her masters.  She’s in her mid 20’s, and is soft spoken, but intelligent, kind, and also generous with her time.  She took a 2 ½ hour lunch break to show me around the art museums downtown, and point out the various government buildings to me.  Before she headed back to work we also went out for a delicious lunch at a local spot I never would have found on my own.  My only regret is that I forgot to take a picture with her.

Touring on My Own

My Bogotán (not sure that’s a word) friends have full time jobs aside from being my personal chauffeur, so I also explored Bogotá for a few days on my own.  I spent a lot of time simply strolling the streets, which I enjoyed plenty.  But another Bogotá highlight was my visit to Monserrate.   Monserrate is a mountain on the eastern border of the city where there is also a church.  It’s possible to climb stairs up to Monserrate, but tourists who do so should be prepared for a strenuous and long climb made more challenging by the city’s altitude.  I was in a more relaxed mood when visiting, so I sprung $7 USD for a trip up the cable car to the top.  The views don’t disappoint.

I arrived here in the late afternoon, and extended my stay to sunset by sitting with a glass of wine at one of the two cafés at the top.  Monserrate is a major tourist site for a reason.  I can’t think of a better way to spend my last day in Bogotá.

Lima

This brings me to my next destination and a new country – Peru.  Being as Peru is home to Machu Picchu, and a significant portion of the Andes, my primary plans here involve a few hundred kilometers of trekking.  Similar to Bogota, I didn’t plan on spending much time in Lima but it’s a necessary stop to other places in Peru.  And after Bogotá I was ready to be surprised.

I’m sorry to say I did not have the same unexpected love for Lima as I did for Bogotá.  And I blame this on Miraflores.

Lima is geographically about half the size of Bogotá but houses even more people, just over 10 million.  It’s one of the most populated cities in the world.  And for whatever reason, just about every travel blog, guide, and internet search tells tourists to stay in Miraflores.  Miraflores sits near the coastline, and is a very safe neighborhood.  The coastline is also nice. But in my opinion, it is the most uninteresting part of the city.

If I only visited Miraflores while in Lima, I would have left the city thinking it was a dull and sterile place that is all together skippable. It’s all high rise apartment buildings and shopping malls.  Even more concerning to me was the complete lack of street food in this part of town. This is a stark contrast to every other city I’ve visited in Latin and South America and is a red flag of alarm if I ever knew one.

Luckily after spending my first day here I escaped this barren drudgery and visited other parts of Lima.

Eating My Way Through Lima

One thing that Lima is known for that I will give major props to without question – food.  Peru is the source of Ceviche, Peruvian chicken, pisco sours, and countless fusion options including the ever popular Chifas.  Chifas are Chinese/Peruvian fusion restaurants and are easily found throughout the country.  These qualities make Peru’s capital the culinary capital of South America.  So what better way to experience Lima than through a food tour.

In an effort to get the hell out of Miraflores, I booked a food tour in the neighborhood of Barranco.  My guide books told me Barranco was the ‘artistic’ part of town.  While popular with graffiti artists and hipsters, it can be a little sketchy at night and is not a recommended place to stay.  In my personal experience, this is bull.  Barranco is colorful, lively, and perfectly safe as long as you have an iota of common sense.  The neighborhood sits a few miles down the Lima coastline from Miraflores.  The graffiti art is eye catching, the ocean views breathtaking, and it’s got great tucked away pedestrian friendly streets with art galleries, as well as great Peruvian and fusion restaurants.  If I ever went back to Lima, I would stay here.

I would also highly recommend a food tour as a way of exploring Lima.  There are several companies offering this kind of tour, in many different neighborhoods.  My only regret in leaving Lima is that I didn’t get the chance to do more than one.  In my tour of Barranco, I ate and drank everything from beef hearts, to purple corn pudding, to Coca Beer.  I didn’t love it all but the flavors were interesting and I definitely ate it all (no shocker there).

Heading Downtown

For my last day in Lima I took a cab downtown.  FINALLY I found where all the street vendors were hiding.  As well as about 8 million of the 10 million people living in Lima.  I wouldn’t recommend staying in downtown, but it’s definitely worth a visit.  It showed me a cultural view of Lima beyond the high rise apartments and shopping centers of Miraflores. It has large open plazas, historical architecture, and grandiose churches.  It’s a good place to wander in the morning or early afternoon.  My eyes never stopped finding something interesting to look at.

As the afternoon wears on, however, millions of people hit the streets of downtown Lima in a clusterf*ck of pedestrians and traffic.  Initially, I wanted to walk to nearby Chinatown for dinner.  But as the day wore on, I got so bombarded by the crowds that I couldn’t take it.  I was inching down the street standing shoulder to shoulder with a bazillion locals.  I needed to get the hell out of there before everyone got out of work and it got really crazy.

That’s my trip to Lima, short and sweet.  After a few days I caught a night bus to head up north to Huaraz, a city on the brim of the Cordillera Blanca range of the Andes.  I didn’t see everything there is to see in Lima but I’d had enough big cities.  Let the hiking begin.