On first impressions…
A huge city with little good food to be found!

On further examination…
A really cool community initiative which we were first exposed to in Bogota is the ‘Cyclovia’. Every Sunday and on public holidays, the main highways and roads are closed for free reign of cyclist and runners to get their exercise on! Market stalls selling food and drinks and bike mechanics set up alongside the path. Exercise groups arrange large stages and hundreds of people move together to the loud thud of the drums and the voice of the instructor on stage. It was quite the site and we were lucky enough to have our city bike tour on a Cyclovia day!

Although highly recommended, our bike tour didn’t start off with a bang. With around 40 other cyclists and a very softly spoken American guide we were quickly wandering if we had made the right decision. However after we divided into two groups and we were allocated to the younger, Colombian guide Mateo, the tour took off. First stop, the fruit market where we were introduced to a number of different varieties of Colombian dragon fruit, passion fruit and avocados. A root vegetable that tasted strangely fresh and fruity, the Lulu fruit and even a vegetable that promises to give men strong energy and vigour! Mateo described the importance of herbs within the Colombian culture, and their effects in maintaining health and positive living!
Next stop a traditional Columbian games hall where we were introduced to Columbia’s beloved national sport, Tejo! The game consists of throwing a metal disc (tejo), across an alley from about 20 meters away. Your aiming for a one meter by one-meter board covered with clay, set at a 45-degree angle. Set in the clay are small triangular pyramid pockets (mechas), which inside contain gun powder! If your accurate enough and hit the target, on impact a loud explosion is created, a sound like a gun firing! To add to the excitement, it would be offensive to play the game without a beer in hand. Quite the combination, beer and gunpowder. Only in Columbia!

The rest of the tour took us along the Cyclovia, through diverse neighbourhoods, past hundreds of walls with politically driven graffiti art and past the coffee factory. Mateo’s stories of growing up in Bogota with the constant threat of danger were both fascinating and terribly sad.

In the end…
From all the negative whispers we had heard, Bogota was only going to be a quick, unavoidable stop over. It surprised us! The people are proud and determined to right the wrongs of the past. An inspiration community.