First Steps in South America: Arrival in Bogotá

Days 35 & 36 Pines 2 Patagonia log

Panamá City, Panamá

To

Bogota, Columbia

South America here we come! This is the day it all got real. Not that any of us would want to stop the trip, but shipping your bikes and yourselves to another continent really brought it all to light. We are committed.

We slept in the best we could and then checked out of our shabby hostel and headed to the airport. The Panamá airport was much larger than we expected however we sailed through the check-in process and the security process. We explored the duty free shops and grabbed some Krispy Kreme donuts while we still could. Sadly Robert showed up after we had eaten all of them.

The flight was only 1.5 hours and was pretty smooth until the last 15 minutes or so. The views out the window changed as we ate our dried plantain chips and questioned how we ended up here anyways.

After we landed the 4 of us were picked up and taken to Hotel Boutique Mendoza where we would stay for several nights until we could get the bikes. This is a beautiful little hotel in a nice part of Bogota. They hosts were amazing and took excellent care of us the entire time.

We ate some tacos and had a few drinks thanks to the generous contributions made by our friends. After repeatedly stating WE ARE IN SOUTH AMERICA we decided it was best to get some rest and call the it a night.

The next day Adam, Matt and Red set out to explore Bogota. We ended up going to the opposite side of town and visiting Monserrate Bogota.

At 10,341 feet above sea level, and nearly 3,000 feet above downtown Bogota the views of the city, hills and Andes mountains are breathtaking. Monserrate can be accessed by aerial tramway (a cable car known as the teleférico), by railway (a single passenger car known as a funicular), or by climbing, the preferred way of pilgrims but not the P2P crew.

It was Sunday so there was mass going on in the church and lots of people up on the hill. There were the normal tourist trap shops and restaurants lining the walkways but everyone there was very pleasant and we all had a great time.

After riding the rail car down from the mountain we headed to a mall for some supplies. Keeb needed some undies. We didn’t make it shopping as originally planned because we all saw a giant sign that advertised go kart racing downstairs. So off we went! The electric karts were not going to set any records but we had a blast as we raced locals and each other around a neon and black light trimmed course. Matt was victorious with the fastest lap time in both races. Red had the only on course incident attempting to “move” Matt over and take the lead, however it ended with both karts being disabled for a minute and lots of laughing afterwards.

We got back on course and completed our shopping only to walk outside and see another storm had rolled in. This one complete with thunder and lightning was even more intense than the first one we experienced. Due to the Keeb’s fear of being struck by lightning we opted for an UBER and headed back to Mendoza to grab Robert and get some dinner.

It was a really great first day in Colombia 🇨🇴