This morning I downgraded my hostel to a cheap and cheerful place in the apparently dodgy district, La Candelaria. It’s proved to be a good decision so far. La Candelaria is a historic neighbourhood in downtown Bogota, with narrow cobbled, colourful streets and colonial, baroque and art deco architecture. A fairly big contrast to the Zona Rosa district I stayed in last night. After moving in this morning I headed out to explore and wasn’t disappointed. On Sundays, the main road Carrera 7 is closed to traffic and only cyclists and pedestrians are allowed down. The road becomes a huge market and theatre, with hundreds of stalls and loads of street performers. There were countless tropical fruit and juice sellers, fake Converse stalls, somewhere you could bet on guinea pigs going under washing up bowls, break dancers, artists painting landscapes to hardstyle, a man eating broken glass and a llama wearing trainers. A good day all in all.

I decided to head out for a quick run this evening to get to know the area a little bit better. One of the great things about running is that you have not much to do except look and think (and run). So finding new spots to return to (or avoid) later happens all the time. I headed out of my hostel (the red one), up through hilly La Candelaria towards the mountains.

Bogota’s system of naming streets is very efficient and useful for unfamiliar tourists like me! Streets which run North to South are called ‘Carreras’ and are numbered consecutively. Those which run East to West are called ‘Calles’ and are also numbered. So theoretically if you know which Calle/Carrera you live on, you can’t really get lost. The system served me well and after a short run I traced my way back to Calle 9 as it started to darken in dodgy downtown Bogota.

Unfortunately my downgrade doesn’t seem to include hot water. Back at the hostel I braved an ice cold shower. Faint ukulele music was playing in the background, thanks to one of my roommates. Did someone say romance is dead?