I’m here! Alex’s Coffee Adventure has reached its primary destination: Colombia! I’m so excited to be here and enjoy all of the incredible things that Colombia has to offer.
I arrived early this morning after many delays in Orlando. My flight eventually took off at 11:30pm from Orlando, about 3.5 hours after it was supposed to leave, which means I didn’t get in until about 3:30am Bogotá time. I barely survived through customs and immigration to meet my cab driver, who brought me to the hotel, where I immediately went to sleep at 4:30. It was pretty rough, but I made it!
I woke up this morning, took a very nice long shower, and got going to see Bogotá! It was supposed to be about 60º out, so I wore my shorts and Tevas. This was a mistake. Immediately I noticed that everyone else was wearing pants, most were wearing sweaters, and some were even in full winter coats! I guess this is cold weather for Colombia, but if you gave me this day in Princeton, NJ, I’d be very grateful.
My hotel is located in a very international, fancy business district called Parque de la 93. Here’s a map to help orient you:
Park 93 is the little green square next to me. The neighborhood is very clearly home to the international business scene, as one of the first things I noticed looking out the window this morning was the large number of people in suits. The second thing I noticed was that across the street were Starbucks, Le Pan Quotidien, and a McDonald’s. The Princeton travel safety consultants were very firm and very risk averse with their travel recommendations, which I’m supposed to abide by. For example, they “strongly recommend” against taking the bus and advise me to only take taxis instead. (Lonely Plant says the bus is the best way to get around Bogotá because it has its own dedicated highways and is inexpensive, and of course it’s incredibly safe. Luckily, Ubers are also absurdly cheap and a bit faster, so I can take them around and keep everyone happy.)
My first stop this morning was a wonderful specialty coffee shop named Azahar in the Park 93 neighborhood:
I got a Chemex of exquisite specialty Colombian coffee and a yellow corn arepa with cheese, also called a Chocolo. It was about $7usd for the whole breakfast. In the states, I’ve never seen a Chemex of specialty coffee for less than $7 by itself! The arepa was also incredible.
After breakfast I quickly went back to the hotel to put some pants, shoes, and a jacket on, so that I wouldn’t stick out as much. From the hotel I walked to a nearby shopping mall to try to get a SIM card for my phone. Some travel blogs online recommended Claro as the best Colombian carrier for tourists, so I went to the Claro store at the mall.
At Claro, I had my first real run-in with my embarrassing lack of Spanish. (The barista at Azahar spoke English, which was a nice touch, but also should probably be expected in Park 93.) I proceeded to the window after about a 15 minute wait in line and got a little nervous. I said “hola,” to which the clerk responded with a large series of words that I couldn’t comprehend. I mustered back, “SIM card?”, to which I got a quizzical look in response. The clerk said some more things very quickly. For a second try, I went with “Colombiano SIM card?” “Ah!” The clerk got this one, but motioned that she couldn’t help me, and pointed to the other clerk at the front of the store. Turns out, the line I was in was for something totally different; if you wanted to buy stuff you just talked to the clerks standing in the store. I think that the line is for refilling your minutes or something, but I didn’t quite figure that out.
The other clerk knew how to get me a SIM card and asked a few questions about what kind I wanted. I had no idea what he was saying, but trusted him to make the right decisions, and it worked out ok! He started typing furiously on the computer screen facing both of us and probably filled in about 20 different forms of information. I was a little nervous that he was going to hand me a new iPhone or something and ask me to pay for it, but I continued to stand and give my signature clueless-foreigner-thumbs-up. At one point, I typed in my name to the computer. The clerk went to the back of the store and picked up a sim card and put it in my phone, then dialed a few phone numbers from it. After that, he went back to the computer, clicked through a bunch more forms, and handed me my phone back. “Esta bien.” I tried it out, and I had full bars of 4G and it was working great! I figured out at some point that my plan was probably the 1.8GB of data for 30 days. He took me to the cash register and kept saying a phrase I could not understand, “efectivo o tarjeta.” Eventually, we figured out through hand gestures that it meant “cash or card.” He brought over the credit card reader and up popped a surprising number – it cost $10.98usd for my 30 day sim card. Talk about a deal!
I walked around the mall a bit more. It was a very impressive shopping mall located in a bustling neighborhood south of Park 93.
After that, I wanted to get away from the business district further into the heart of the city. I walked for a few miles downtown until I reached another coffee shop that was on my list, Bourbon Coffee Roasters. Or maybe it was Coco Coffee Lab – google maps lists them as the same place, and it says Coco everywhere inside, but the sign out front says Bourbon. Either way, it was fantastic.
Bourbon was tucked into a beautiful old building. It’s pretty intimate on the inside but is clearly a no-holds-barred specialty coffee shop, replete with a 2-group La Marzocco and a pour-over bar. I asked the barista for a pour-over, at which point he walked me over to their selection of coffees. I picked a honey processed Gesha, which is an extremely rare coffee variety that is very hard to grow and is known for its beautiful brightness and crisp floral flavors. Most Geshas are processed with the washed process, which results in a slightly cleaner cup, so I was interested in trying the honey processed. In the states, a pour-over of honey processed Gesha could easily run you upwards of $10 a cup at a specialty coffee shop. Here, it was $1.38usd! I was really excited.
The barista did an excellent job with the coffee and it turned out beautifully. Afterwards, we chatted a bit in limited English phrases. I mentioned that I’ve roasted coffee and he took me back to see their roasting lab, which looked really fun. All in all, it was a lovely shop and a great experience, and I highly recommend Bourbon to anyone in town!
After cafe numero dos, I wanted to get into some of the more touristy stuff. I walked through town quite a bit more and felt like I got to experience some of the hustle and bustle of Bogotá. It’s a really charming city bursting with life and spirit. The city is laid out as a very long vertical strip, if you refer to the map above. The northern end is the business district while the southern tip is the sightseeing/historic/touristy part, so I’m kind of at the opposite end that I want to be. You could say I kind of got jipped by the travel safety people, but I’m not salty about it.
One thing that makes Bogotá so wonderful is that it’s fully flanked on the east side by a piercing range of green mountains that look over the city, adding a natural and secluded feel to it. The city is built right up to the base of the mountains, so you can really see them wherever you go. To the east, the city slowly tapers off into industrial use and suburbs (although I guess they’re not really called suburbs here).
I called an Uber to the Gold Museum, which supposedly has a bunch of ancient pieces of golden artwork made by the indigenous people before colonization. The Uber took about 30 minutes, but only cost $2.50! Crazy!! The Gold Museum, or Museo del Oro, is recommended as one of the top sights of Bogotá, but unfortunately when I got there it was closed for Monday. Whoops! Instead, I walked around a bit more, somewhat aimlessly, and picked up some street food along the way. I started off pretty gently with a cookie from a street-facing bakery, then branched out ever so slightly into some kind of fried dough ball. I decided to play it safe and stick to pastries and juice today for street food, but I will get more adventurous soon!
Finally, it started to rain pretty heavily and I called an Uber to get back to my hotel. I stayed in for the night and got room service, hoping to rest up a bit, as I was still pretty exhausted from my travels. On the docket for tomorrow is a bike tour of Bogotá, more coffee shops, some museums, and a cool restaurant. Have a great day, see you tomorrow!
Phrase of the day: “efectivo o tarjeta,” meaning “cash or credit.” Used at checkout!
Alex
Alex's Coffee Adventure 
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