After Brazil, Bogota was a breath of fresh air - rarified to be sure at 8000 feet above sea level - but a welcome change from Brazil. Of the 92 countries I have visited Brazil ranks towards the bottom on the list of favorites. It's nothing I can put my finger on, just a lot of little things; the language, the cost, the logistics of getting around - this plus the fact that we committed to more time in Brazil than we actually needed. Or wanted. Brazil is different enough from the US that you know you are somewhere else but not interesting enough to get excited about.
Bogota from the cable car
Bogota is another large city, about 8 million or so, but colonial Bogota has a Spanish feel to it. Hotel Muisca sits up Calle 10 (our hotels always seem to be uphill) from the main plaza. It is a truly funky place, classically old and whimsically decorated with large, not always quiet rooms, passable WIFI and a good breakfast. We were wiped out when we arrived on Monday afternoon, having been awake for nearly 30-hours. But we managed to scope out the town while waiting for our room to be ready.
Las Muiscas, Museo del Ouro
On Tuesday we visited to highly-recommended Museo del Ouro, the gold museum. It tells the history of metallurgy throughout history and has an amazing collection of gold artifacts from the indigenous people of what is now Columbia. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of the incredible amount of gold from the New World. Even more impressive is the fact that most of the wealth shipped from South America to Spain was in the form of silver.
It's a long way from Sarajevo, Julian
If you have been following our trip journals you might remember an experience we had in 2011 while trying to get from Kosovo to Bosnia-Herzegovina. We shared several buses and spend many freezing nighttime hours in a deserted bus station in Montenegro with Julian, a Columbian working at the time in Sarajevo. We ended up spending some time with him and his Welsh friend, Andrew - such is how friends are made. Julian is back home in Bogota and contacted us through our journal. We had a wonderful lunch catching up on the past year-and-a-half then Julian took us on a cook's tour of his town including the estate of Simon de Bolivar. We hope to see him again when we return from Cartagena.
