Bogotá is back in business after the popular holiday period in the first week of 2017. So traffic’s back! So it’s time to know how brilliant Waze is for getting around. I’m sure most residents here would know about Waze by now. I’m not paid to endorse anyone. In fact, I’m proud to say I have not been paid by any of the restaurants/business I talk about here! I wouldn’t have done it without it. It’s saved my ass so many times from arriving late in meetings. It actually enhances productivity!

Some people have told me they find it hard to use e.g. they don’t know where to start. Trust me it’s worth the pain at the beginning. It can be difficult to get your destination address up and set up your route. But it’s worth the 5 minute fiddle to cut your journey short by 30 minutes (it happens here since roads are literally paralysed.)

It’s true it has problems coming up with the address of your destination. The trick is, if the address is Calle 97ª No. 8 – 10, put it in this way: Calle 97A 8 10. Another example: Calle 35 No. 7-25 = Calle 35 7 25. If problem still exists, one way to get around it is to go straight to the map to find the place you wanna go, and put your finger there to ‘pin’ it.

A new trick I recently learn, is that you can make Waze ‘go to sleep’ with a power switch icon on the top left corner when you bring out the left-hand-side navigation menu (see below), which is brilliant because you won’t be wasting away your data while the app is not necessary.

The great thing I also found out last year is that you don’t need to know the city at all to drive. No need to know about the direction of the streets and the turns. Just bring up Waze.