Bogotá

Some cities are conquered and some are learned. Bogotá belongs to the second kind: two thousand six hundred forty meters that the visitor negotiates in sips — of water, of coffee, of aguadepanela — while the city teaches that here the tropics are measured vertically. The cold is not cold: it is páramo with midday sun, and when that sun leans in, the whole Séptima walks in shirtsleeves.

The sensible traveller lives her by floors: La Candelaria for the mornings, when the museums open and the steep streets still belong to the students; Chapinero and the Zona G for the table — Bogotá eats better than she admits —; Usaquén for the Sunday market; and Monserrate to understand, from above, that the sabana never ends.

The Guide walks her with its usual honesty: the gold is in the museum, not in the shop windows; the high-altitude sun burns more than it warms; and the best Bogotá is Sunday's, when the ciclovía turns a hundred kilometers of avenues into the continent's longest park. The rest is letting yourself be carried — uphill, always.