Bars in Turrialba 6: Filo's Bar

Boleros all night. Beats both karaoke and reggaeton.

The IWCRP staff unanimously decided that Filo's was the best bar in Turrialba, much thanks to the two musicians singing boleros all night, very nice indeed. Also, the very nice owners receive special thanks for running around town in the middle of the night looking for -and finding- more tonics for us after we had emptied the fridge.

Bars in Turrialba 5: Pura Vida

The man on the left insisted I take a picture of them. I think it's a nice picture. When looking at it shortly after, another man came by to have a look, and hollered "look how fat the lady is, she's fat, a fat, fat lady". I explained that the lady looks good on the picture (and in general), and that she's slimmer than a supermodel.

One of several karaoke stars

Ladies' room. Thanks to MJ for valuable research.

Bar Pura Vida is one of the livelier places in Turrialba, with a lot of very active karaoke singers and quite a few active drunks. Perhaps not the fanciest place in the hemisphere, but jolly good fun.

Bars in Turrialba 4: El Puente

Friendly owners, karaoke singer on the left

Classic urinal

El puente, cleverly named after the nearby bridge, is a nice little bar, also serving food and karaoke. The guests, mostly men in their 50s or older, seemed to like the combination of large amounts of beer and loud karaoke.

Pool in Turrialba: Pym Boll

"Please flush"

Native person planning his next move

Again, the name of this place has been forgotten by some irresponsible IWCRP staff member. However, it can be recognized by the sign at the entrance saying "Pym Boll", refering to the pinball machines inside. This place also has a secret room with shirtless men playing cards for money, very underground.

Bars in Turrialba 3: Unknown Soldier

Some of the beers we tested. They were all good.

David Lynch urinals

Across one of the streets from Cinco Esquinas, we found a bar with beer for sale and a David Lynch style toilet. As always, the reward for providing us the name of this unknown soldier is US$ 10.000.

Bars in Turrialba 2: Cinco Esquinas

An old favourite of ours revisited. A legitimate chinchorro without dresscode, but with cheap beer and Radio Sinfonola on full volume.

Bars in Turrialba 1: La garza

The first and best stop was la Garza, on the (SW?) corner of the park. They gave us a beer after a long journey, god bless them.

El Bogotazo: Sightseeing in BogotáMontserrat

A man doing push-ups, for some silly reason

What would Jesus say if he saw this? Did he not kick farisean ass when they were making money by the temple? Or something like that? This is much worse, so I think Jesus would go bananas.

Montserrat is a mandatory stop for every tourist in Bogotá, so we went up there and were very satisfied with the view. Apart from looking down at the city, there's not really much to do, unless you're really interested in buying kitchy souvenirs. Fortunately, beer can be purchased as well (despite this being holy ground), but be aware that facilities are limited, and they charge 800 pesos.

El Bogotazo: Internet café in Bogota, Colombia.

DANGER

The door into this WC/ storage room can be closed without much effort, but opening it is extremely difficult and requires shouting and external help. Therefore, if you recognize the WC on the picture, avoid direct contact, run as fast as you can and call the police.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia : Rescoldo's

Rescoldo's Parrilla Argentina

Calle 11 # 3-83, La Candelaria

Rescoldo's is a little pricey, but worth it. Here we got a really good bife de chorizo for the first time since we moved the IWCRP headquarters from Argentina last year. The wine was good, too, although we would have appreciated more options. Even the service was very argentinian; a slightly grumpy, elderly man doing things the way he likes them, without any polite bullshit. Rescoldo's is hereby highly recommended by the IWCRP for special occations.

El Bogotazo: Shopping in BogotáCentro Comercial Atlantis Plaza

Centro Comercial Atlantis Plaza
Calle 81 # 13-05

Mall WCs have saved many a bursting bladder. This one, at an upscale mall in Zona Rosa, appeared in the very last minute.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia: Quimbay Café

Quimbay Café
Av. 19 #6-11

We were served a good coffee and a horrid sandwich here. There's a second floor with a terrace where you can sit and watch avenida 19, listen to the cars and smell the smog. Probably not the best place in Colombia, but an option if you're outside and you don't want to walk any more to get to a good place.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 13: BEK Café

BEK Café
Av. 19 # 3a-43, Santa Fé

Serious measures have been taken to avoid #2 here

Although lacking personality and decent beer prices, this bar was an OK place to watch football.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia. Unknown Soldier

All WCs are unique, and make a lasting impression on those who are fortunate enough to see them. Nonetheless, we can't remember where we took this picture. It's a café somewhere in Bogotá, so we hereby encourage everyone to go treasurehunting. The first fifteen people who can give us the name of the place will receive $100.000 and two free rolls of toilet paper.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 12: Pitia Beer Pub

Pitia Beer Pub
Calle 18 # 4-48, La Candelaria

This place has good coffee and orange juice, otherwise nothing special.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia: MalAbar

MalaAbar

Chorro de Quevedo
Carrera 1A #13-30

Chorro de Quevedo seen from the restaurant window

What we came to see

Nice atmosphere here, and cred to the restaurant for giving us a warm sangria on a cold night, but unfortunately the food was expensive and hardly edible. If given a table by the window, you can watch life on the plaza, mainly flower people and / or stoners.

In order to please the world population, we did some research and found a video from the area (early) at night. From about 0:30 - 0:50 into the video we can spot the unknown soldier on the corner to the right, before we walk through the spooky alley, passing the Rock and Chicha and then Bullitas del Callejon, both on the left side, and then the plaza known as Chorro de Quevedo appears. Interestingly, the person with the camera manages to go undisturbed for almost one whole minute before the inevitable informal worker appears, giving a high speed history class.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 11: Unknown Soldier

The entrance

spooky alley

The bar; lovely decoration

Bathroom door and comfy chairs

Urinal

Save time: wash your hands while you take a leak. This system resembles one previously seen in Valparaiso, Chile. It is a powerful evidence that there has been contact between the two cultures at som stage in history.

Cerveza de colores, how joyful. And very friendly wall decoration covering the zink walls.

We're not sure what this place is called, nor its address. However, it's in the dodgy part of la Candelaria, on the corner of the spooky alley where one can find bars like Bullitas del Callejon and Rock and Chicha. We kind of liked the place; cheap beer will have to take most of the credit for that. Also, the atmosphere was pleasant and definitely unpretensious. Outside, we were attacked by a young man who wanted our stuff one night, and a couple of nights later we found ourselves in the middle of a street battle between stone-throwing punks and armed cops.

Conclusion: not a boring place at all.

Animal Planet Bogotá: Man's Best Friend

I never quite understood why some people like dogs. The IWCRP will give $10.000 to anyone who can explain what is so charming about the creature on the picture.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia: Café de la Peña

Café de la Peña
Cuadra 3 # 9-66, La Candelaria

click image to see smiling lady inside

flowers!

cleanliness!

A nice place to sit down with a coffee, this one is located in a nice part of la Candelaria, a good place to go sightseeing. Good coffee and the nicest WC we saw in Bogotá.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 10: La esquina de los mariachis

Another establishment storing the cleaning utensils in the urinal.

Somewhere in B. Galerías we met a rather drunk young man called Fernando, and together we went looking for open bars at 3 a.m. We found this one, about one block away from la esquina de los mariachis, where you can hire mariachis, buy drugs or simply sit down and inhale glue till you pass out.

The bar in question was much like la esquina, but without the mariachis. It had no sign, just a doorbell. Inside we counted seven persons sleeping, five persons sending a pipe around between them, and about twenty guys looking gloomily around. No women here, except the ones the owner kept in a room in the back and let out if a guest had special needs. We stayed untill Fernando began to loudly insist that he was a tourist from Leicester, although he is in fact a literature student from Bogotá.

Probably the seediest bar the IWCRP has ever visited.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 9: Miro bar

Miro Bar

calle 52 #26-56, B. Galerías

This is one of the better options in the area, despite there being many bars nearby. Miro is a rock bar, nothing special about it, but OK for a quick beer.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 8: Valledupar

Valledupar
Tienda vallenata
Calle 53 #27A-49, B. Galerías

Past grampa's bedtime

Attracting a younger crowd by hanging posters of the hippest new stars on the walls

The walls above the urinal were completely clad in mirrors

We stumbled in here because we were lost in Bogotá well after midnight and it was raining and freezing cold outside. It was a strange place; crazy latin love songs, people sleeping by the tables and elderly couples making out like teenagers on the dancefloor. This could also be an evil parallel dimension instead of a bar, we're not sure, but the beer prices certainly indicated evil dimension.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 7: Angel Rock bar

Angel Rock Bar
Cuadra 15 #80-46

Mr. Ángel and his wife, Angélica

Clean and functional, no funny smells

This lovely little basement near la Zona Rosa had opened just a few weeks ago when the IWCRP delegation came to investigate. Mr. Ángel himself turned out to be a very friendly young man, and even gave us a drink on the house. We must insist, though, that this was not corruption. The IWCRP always work completely undercover. This night we posed as olympic swimmers in order to confuse our surroundings.

Mr. Ángel plays music stored on his computer; mostly 80's rock. However, he let us connect our mp3 and be DJs, and he even claimed to enjoy the mongolian throat singing. It should still be stored on his computer, so if you like mongolian throat singing, get on the first plane to Bogotá.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 6: The Irish Pub

The Irish pub
Zona T (Zona Rosa)

This is the only picture we took at the irish pub. Click the picture to enlarge it and see a genuine colombian pubic hair.

A picture we stole from some web page. Sorry.

Irish pubs are like chinese restaurants and peruvian street musicians; they are everywhere, wherever you go. The irish pub in Bogotá is perhaps not as irish as one might be led to believe; they don't even serve guinness, which is an atrocity whether you call yourself an irish pub or not. Anyway, a hip and packed place, and much too expensive.

El Bogotazo: Bars in Bogota, Colombia. 5: Colombian Beer

Colombian Beer
calle 19 # 437

If the WC should be dirty, it's not because of a lack of cleaning utensils.

Colombian beer is a chain with several bars in Bogotá. This one, downtown, was a good place to watch football. The beer was good, too; they offer imported beer, including Erdinger, and what appears to be their own brand: Colon. Not bad, but way more expensive than other bars in the area.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia : Sanalejo

Restaurant Sanalejo

Avenida Jimenez #3-73

We ususally prefer the hole-in-the-wall kind of establishments, but this one has such a lovely door, so we accept it.

Good food and excellent service, but a little expensive. A good place to chill out at lunchtime, gets more hectic at night.