Bogotá

Hello loyal followers of the Shapiroadventures.com team. We have arrived in Bogotá. Our bus got in yesterday morning around 7:00 A.M. We have finally had some luck with couchsurfing and our host picked us up an hour and a half later. We are staying with him and his grandmother in a neighborhood called Galicia in southern Bogotá. He has a job at the biggest beer production facility in South America and works off hours so he was able to pick us up in the morning. We had some lunch and hopped on the TransMilenio. The TransMilenio is a really unique public transportation system with huge articulated buses driving down their own lanes to avoid Bogotá's notorious traffic. Also, many of the stations have alimentadores which are other buses that distribute and collect riders in neighborhoods around the main stations. We headed to the centro looking for a friend of mine who we eventually met at a Juan Valdez, South America's version of Starbuck's. We hung out for a while and ended up heading to a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles where Sarah ordered a cheese and caramel crepe, mmmmmmm. We hopped on the TransMilenio, which was packed, and headed home. Today we are going to the gold musuem, and probably a few other musuems since there are about 20 in downtown Bogotá. On Friday's here they close down a few main streets downtown and they are for pedestrians only. Should be an interesting show of local culture. We will keep you posted.