Staycationing in Bogotá

Eating and playing in the street behind the Paloquemao Market.

Bogotá is vacant these days (except for tourists), its streets empty, schools and shops closed and many homes unoccupied. The wealthy and middle classes have mostly cleared out to the coast or their countryside fincas.

But the poorer, working class folks, such as these families of the Los Martyrs neighborhood behind

Paloquemao Market, mostly stay put, either because they have to work or because they can't afford to travel.

But life in an emptied out Bogotá isn't so bad: it's peaceful, relatively unpolluted, and you can play in the street, as this family was doing the other day.

Doesn't that beat crowding onto a dirty beach where you're surrounded by screaming kids and grouching adults, the sun fries your skin and your new shoes get stolen?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours