Bogota! Bogota!

We got to Bogota on Saturday just as the presidential elections were concluding. The combination of our flight delay and some friends we met in Cartagena that we were joining up with for dinner meant that are plans for dinner at a famous Colombian steakhouse and dance ranchero were foiled. Instead we arrived in Bogota and went out to find a late dinner and check out the festive scene. The neighborhood of "la t" is super nice, fancy, full of bars, clubs and restaurants - it was pulsing. Our first day in Bogota we took the wonderfully designed bus rapid transit (wish Hawaii had this) to the central business district to try and ride an elevator up the tallest building but sadly it was closed for repairs. Therefore we wandered the streets, which was very pleasant since it was car free Sunday! Everyone was out on bikes and rollerblades and running. We went to the gold museum and saw the treasure of el dorado. We walked around la candelaria, which is the old colonial part and went to the plaza bolivar at the center of the city. The plaza and many buildings throughout the city were decorated with Colombian flags and colors because of the election. For dinner we made it to the famous steakhouse, their other venue. Dinner was huge! And we got serenaded, if that is the right word, by a small marching band while paper hearts and butterflies fell from the sky over our heads.
The next morning we went up Monserrat, 10000 feet in elevation. Bogota is an incredible city. It spread north, west, and south from the slopes of an eastern mountain ridge. It was just so beautiful just like the photo in chapter 3 or 4 in my Dime UNO! Textbook. For the ride up we went in the train at a 60+ degree slope. On the way down we rode the funicular dangling out 2000 feet above la candelaria. We loved it.

From Monserrat we headed down back to La Candelaria for some traditional food. The day before we had found a sweets shop that also served lunch so we went back. Ching Jen had a dish called ajiaco, a thick soup with potatoes, chicken, avocado,capers and corn- it's one of my favorite meals so far! After lunch we went to the Museo Botero, which featured his works (many from the late 90's) and many other famous artists like Picasso, Miro, Klimt, Giacometti,and Degas. Botero's paintings were great-his perspective of everything fat made it fun. His painting of the Mona Lisa is a favorite.

The next day we took a bus to Zipaquira, a small town about an hour away from Bogota. It's famous for a salt mine in which a cathedral was built into it. 14 enclaves were built down a winding pathways, each one depicting a station of the cross. Then we were lead further into the mine where we entered the actual cathedral. We were standing amongst columns 25 meters tall! Because it is dark in the mines, the crossses were often lit, making for pretty photo opportunities. The salt mine was formed when the ocean receded and left the salt, and then the tetonic plates shifted so that the Andean mountains formed over the salt, and then the salt rose towards the top of the different sediments because of pressures underground. Their is more excavation of the mine going on, they plan on digging another level in the mine and turning the excavated salt into revenue. Needless to say, it was neat to see!