Day 3 - Coffee Tour, Poloquemao Market & Monserrate


I had booked a coffee tour in advance with Trevesia Coffee (https://www.cafetravesia.com). They do a couple of tours in Bogota of specialty coffee shops, one in La Candelaria and one in Chapinero. I opted for the La Candelaria one. The tours are quite reasonable, $25USD for a two and half hour tour.

I met up with Alejandro at 9:30am to start the tour. Fortunately I was the only one who booked the tour that morning so I would have a private tour.

Alejandro was super knowledgeable on the history of coffee, what makes good coffee and different methods for brewing.

Interesting thing about Colombian coffee is that they grow some of the best coffee in the world but most of it is exported. The specialty coffee scene in Colombia and Bogota is fairly small.

We started off our tour at Union Cafe where we tried a couple of different coffee beans brewed in a french press. We also tried coffee with locally grown chocolate.



Next stop was Casa Galeria where we tried natural coffee Chemex brewed.




Then our final stop was Contraste Coffee Lab where we tried another coffee brewed via Kalita coffee cone.




The tour was great, learned a lot about specialty coffees.

Now that I was super caffeinated, I headed to the Paloquemao Farmers Market. The market is on the edge of downtown. I walked there from La Candelaria. The neighborhood you walk through is not very good so would recommend taxi/uber to go there.

The market is huge and carries an amazing assortment of fruits and vegetables of the likes I have never seen. They also have a large flower market but I could not find it.










There are loads of cooked food vendors around the periphery of the market. I stopped by one and grabbed lunch.

A chicken soup and chicken ranchero.



I ubered back to La Candelaria after the market and then headed to Monserrate.

Monserrate is the mountain that pretty much dominates Bogota.

View of Monserrate as I made my way to the funicular.


Entrance to the funicular. The charge is roughly $7USD for roundtrip.







The trip to Monserrate is a must do when visiting Bogota.

After the trek, I headed back to the AirBNB. Passed some more great street art.