Bogota: Against all expectations

Friday, August 25th

We woke up to the sound of the bus engine roaring through the mountains of one of Colombia´s cordilleras. The scenery was very different than we had seen through our trip. Pine trees were prevalent as well as beautiful mountains nearby. It was barely getting brighter outside. I ressumed reading my book while Alexey kept sleeping a bit longer.

Another loud movie was played and soon it was time for breakfast on a roadside bus stop. This was a very welcomed time for resting since I felt that the motion sickness pills were wearing off. Took a second dosis and had some greasy breakfast. Alexey had a soup. We moved on.

After an uneventful rest of the bus ride, we arrived at the Bogota bus terminal. We still don´t know where we are going to be staying. Mauricio, our friend from school, has told us to call him so he can hook us up. We did as told after we managed to convince the bus driver to release Alexey´s bag from the storage since he had lost his claim ticket. On the phone Mauricio tells us that there is a Howard Johnson that has availability (his apartment is being remodeled so we can´t stay with him) for only $190K! Well, let me tell you guys something, we have been staying at places that come nowhere near to the quality of the HJ to say the most. We thought Cartagena was expensive at $65K per night! But oh well, this is going to be a splurge city for the sound of it. We had another hotel in mind for a bit cheaper but we´ll go with Mauricio´s suggestion due to it being more convenient for him to visit and take us out.

The hotel was incredibly nice. We had a queen sized bed for each of us!! The price was $240K in the end but oh well.. this is living! Soon after taking a shower, sending our clothes to the laundry place and resting Mauricio showed up to welcome us. We shared a glass of our remaining Flor de Cana Nicaraguan rum with him to celebrate. At this point all of my clothes are in the washers and the only thing I have left is this Guatemalan shirt that I bought, black pants, black shoes and white socks!! Ugly. So Mauricio calls his contacts and promises to hook me up with black socks soon after.

We leave. The first impression is that we are in for quite a bit of fun.. and spending. Mauricio´s driver (yes, you read me right) welcomes us on this brand new BMW. He is definitely living large and well here. He works as a Director of Sales Planning for the Bavaria brewery in Colombia. We head over for what he calls the ¨best sushi in the whole world¨. No no.. really, this guy has travelled quite a bit and he says this is the BEST. So we go to Watakushi and meet up with his friend Paola, quite beautiful and fun. We devoured the succulent treats of the sea before getting the succulent (for the owner) bill. No problem we say and play it as if we are also high rollers.

It´s time for starting the night well and we do so by going to a bar (name unknown) for drinks. This is supposed to be a casual encounter with Mauricio´s friends, a few (female) friends of theirs and us. We sat down in this packed bar with great music! Some U2, some Billy Joel, even some 80s latin rock. It is here where we met Luis (a Romanian Colombian fellow), Diana, Angelina, Patricia, and other friends. Between all of us we put down something like 2 or 3 Johnny Walker bottles and felt quite in a great mood. Having kicked this bar good bye, we headed to Cha Cha. This was a dance club in the 41st floor of the Orquidea Real building. The views of the city were awesome (or saw we heard because we were barely in a state that would warrant any credibility).

Our group danced the night away and saw alcohol come and dissapear rather quickly (same as our hard earned cash). We started going for RBandVK and Alexey got excited as he frequently does, and purchased a bottle of Absolut. Word on the street is that some of the girls got mad at Alexey for dancing too close or touching them.. not sure why but we don´t remember. It was fun nonetheless!

Mauricio called Don Hector, his driver, and we picked up Paola and drove home. This was definitely a great partying night and look forward to tomorrow. However, we will have to recover from this one first. One thing at a time.