Lazy Day

4 am Friday morning.

6:30 am Saturday morning.

These are the times that the music has stopped playing at this hostel. For any future travelers, do NOT stay at a hostel which has a restaurant and bar below it. You will not get a peaceful night's sleep. I woke up early and often due to the music. And it's not even latino music. It's American music.

There was no real plan yesterday, I just wanted to check out a few places. Maybe find a laundromat. The National Parks office. A post office. The tourist booth so I could get a map. But first, I had to get lunch. Breakfast is included at this hostel, but it was a cup of coffee, two slices of untoasted bread and half a scrambled egg. Who really wants dry, untoasted bread in the morning? ;)

Lunch was an executive menu. Down here, they have these things called executive lunches. It's usually a meat (chicken, beef, fish) with soup or rice, a salad and lemonade. This will run you about $3-4. There are two lunches pictured below.

After lunch, I went with my laundry bag to find a laundromat. But I couldn't find the one that they described in my Lonely Planet book. Lesson 2 for today: buy a guide book that is more recent than 2006. I didn't find the laundromat, but I did see this cool mural spray painted on a wall.

After this development, I walked for a while more to find the national parks office of Colombia. I wanted to go to the Guatavita Laguna, where the legend of El Dorado was born, but you need a permit and there are only a limited amount. When I spoke to the lady at the counter with my broken Spanish and her broken English, it quickly became apparent that I was at the wrong office. Turns out Guatavita is a regional park, not a national park, and I would have had to walk another 16 blocks to find it. No thanks. Maybe next time.

I was hot by then, so I stopped in at an ice cream shop where I had a Helado Copa (cup of ice cream). But it was so fancy! Much better than DQ.

This led me to the third and fourth items on my list, find a post office and the tourist office. I wanted the post office to send some post cards and the tourist office because I like maps. We've been navigating the streets pretty well without one. And I'm not really going to pull out a map in the middle of Bogota to announce that I'm a target. But it's nice to have one just in case. I asked the guy in the office, "Usted tiene una mapa de Bogota?" which means do you have a map of Bogota. And he started going off in Spanish. Apparently my pronunciation was good enough that he thought I knew Spanish. I was very impressed with myself.

Me and my sack of laundry

In the last post I mentioned that I went to watch a championship match between the top two clubs in Bogota, Millonaros FC and Santa Fe FC. As I was leaving the tourist office, I saw the entire Millonaros team getting on their bus.  There was also a marching band. I don't know why. Just cuz I guess. Lol.

After carrying around my laundry all day, I ended up doing it at the hostel. Hahaha. What a day.