bogota

Despite its impressive size, it is almost impossible to get lost in Bogota.
The streets have a clear system, knowing which, you always understand where to go.

It's like everywhere in the world: you know that there are even houses on one side of the street, and odd ones on the other, but more globally.

First, you can always be guided by the mountains. High mountains are located all along with Bogota. If they are to your right, then you are looking South, and if to your left, then North.

In addition, the streets running parallel to the mountains are called Carrera, and perpendicularly called Calle.

There are also diagonal streets, they are called Diagonal, and inclined, that is, not connecting two intersections, but coming into the middle of the street, they are called Traversal.

All streets have numbers (instead of names). At Carreras, the numbers increase from West to East, and at Calles - from North to South.

There are also several avenues called Avenida. They usually have names. In addition, they are always wider and often faster.

Cleanliness is an important part of the order. In Bogota, unlike many other countries in South America, it is very clean.

This is not only the merit of thousands of janitors and the presence of trash cans at every step but a whole system that works like a clock.

Locals have a habit of throwing trash bags out onto the street. And they do not care whether it is an avenue or a small street in the yard. By evening, at almost every intersection, there are mountains of packages and small hills of small debris around.

In the nighttime, everyone is falling asleep and garbage trucks wake up.

They carefully collect all the bags and all the rubbish that they see. But they also have their own oddities. For example, in some places, there are still trash cans. Of course, not everyone can put their bag in a container, so they put it next to it, but if the garbage gets into the tank, then the garbage man dives there too. He first throws the bags out, and then his colleague loads them into the garbage truck.

Colombia strives to keep up with global trends and sort waste. This is not yet closely monitored, so half of the population simply does not know where to put different kinds of garbage. But multi-colored trash bins and containers are already on all the streets of the city.

COP is the local currency designation for the Colombian Peso. I will talk about it a little later, but here I'll talk about the police.

The police in Colombia is really protective. They are trusted and you feel safe with them.
Yes, there is still corruption and bribery in Colombia, but not everything can be bought off.

Where there are police officers, no one will snatch your phone or bag out of your hands.

By the way, here neither the ordinary nor the traffic police have "plans of catching you", so you can safely cross the road to the red right in front of them - if you did not interfere with anyone, then everything is fine, no one will touch you.

This is how I wrote down for myself in a hurry the nickname of these people, so as not to forget to tell about them.

When you need to leave a small street on a large busy avenue, where cars, buses, and trucks go in an endless stream, they come to the rescue.

People in bright T-shirts run out with outstretched arms right into the middle of the street, cars naturally slow down, and you can dive into the stream at this time. And when you pass him, give him 1-2 thousand pesos.

Yes, people are willing to take risks like this for a penny, but I'm sure they get pleasure and adrenaline from this job and feel a little like superheroes who can stop the flow of cars.

Read further how much (or little) is 1-2 thousand pesos...