It felt so good to sleep in, and all the way till 8am too! Heaven. We were happily met with fresh Colombian coffee, eggs, and sweet rolls. The adventure on tap for today was a 5-6 hour bike tour through the city and as you will read, it did NOT disappoint. We started at a very sketchy tour shop with bikes that looked as if a strong breeze could blow them apart. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic Colombian with decent English who, throughout the tour, would repeat phrases like, "this is very controversial" or "much misery" while giving us the history of his country.
But nonetheless off we went, 20 foreigners on bikes, careening through winding streets, competing with cars, motorcycles, pedestrians in a distopia of traffic and crumbling infrastructure. At one point I saw Emily disappear between two trucks with less than a foot of space between them. She was fearless. The first portion of the tour was only sprinkled with perils, image biking in congested city traffic without any rules or concern for one another's welfare. But like I said it got more thrilling as our courageous guide informed us that we would be biking through, "the ghetto, so please all women up front and all men back to protect the women. Very dangerous area." And he was not kidding, skyscrapers gave way to slums, bustling shoppers turned into junkies and the homeless, and dirty streets evolved into people deficating before our very eyes. He did stop in the tour fashion and point all of this out while locals were catcalling the ladies in our group. Next we pushed our way through the ghetto to the open market where our guide had us try a variety of new fruits.
It was exhilarating, apparently all Colombian fruit has afrodesiac properties. We played in the market for a bit then rejoined the group.
Next we stopped at a Colombian coffee factory to sample Colombia's 2nd most profitable export. Delicious.
Then it was time to go through the red light district. Many of you may not know this but prostitution is legal in this country and business is booming! It reminded me of the nights in Tijuana. Finally we reached my highlife of the trip. Bombs and beers! They took us to this unique bar where you line an iron ring with gun powder and throw iron balls at it in an attempt to get it to explode and when that deafening BOOM! echoes through the bomb/bar hall everyone cheers (well all not the foreigners, who duck under tables and shutter in WTF fear).
In my inebriated state with a beer in one hand and an iron ball in the other I eyed the ring of explosives and summon all of my undergrad skills and hurled the metal lump towards them. An earth shattering explosion results. The first gringo to accomplish this bizarre ritual (thank you Kappa Sigma). From there we weaved our way home. Dropped off the bikes then made our way to the #1 chicken soup joint in the city, over 200 years old!
All I can report is... Wow. We finished up with an afternoon siesta.
After a longer than anticipated siesta we dressed for a night out in Bogata. First we grabbed a taxi to La Zona Rosa (uppity night life spot) there we had the the most spectacular dinner of 2016. Perfect carne asada with coconut rice. The staff were amazing and pleasant. Next we somehow found ourselves in a bottle service only Casa en el Aire a pure Colombian club with a crazy mariachi band on a roof top. Next after being rumba'd out we headed back to our district were we closed the bar in a sweaty dance-fest. I haven't danced like that for a long time. It was so much fun. Emily got the DJ to kick everyone's butt into gear with some Macklemore and the rest was history.
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