"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”– Lao Tzu

Day 124 & 125 – Bogota, Colombia

After a day of recovering from the journey, it was time to explore Bogota! We were staying in La Candeleria, the old colonial part of town, and walked into the Central Square, which was covered in pigeons! The buildings are beautiful but dotted in paint from a student protest about three months ago. God knows why they haven’t cleaned it up, but it’s all over every government building. Another place where students aren’t happy about tuition raises, eh?

We walked down the main street and while Bogota is in many ways, a typical big city, we did find some jewels – the Botero museum, with paintings and small bronzes from Fernando Botero, whose big sculptures we saw in Medellin. It had a history of his life and work, along with his usual fat portraits. The best one was the chubby Mona Lisa!

The other major gem is the Gold Museum. They seems to have them all over Colombia but we were told to wait for Bogota, and it truly is amazing. They have more pre-colonial gold then anywhere I have ever seen, thousands of pieces of jewelry, from nose rings, to collars, to headgear.

And you’d think it would be quite basic work, but it’s incredibly intricate, using techniques we still use today. The picture below is from 490 d.c (a.d.)!! We went with Kelly and Adam from the US, and Shane from Australia, and we were all pretty blown away. Not the normal museum reaction! Highly recommend going, just for the sheer amount of stuff to see!

And the exciting thing for me was that I also FINALLY got to do Silks again! Carolina, a friend of a friend from London, trains silks in the capital and told me of a place. Happily, it was nearby, and so I went to try it out. Ivar, the Colombian coach, didnt speak a word of English, but with my Spanish and some hand signals, we managed to make it happen. It’s definitely tough being off practice for 5 months, but I did as much as I coulf, and it was really interesting to watch new tricks from the girls there! Really fun!

So that was Days 1 & 2, just checking out the city and getting a feel for the place. Big cities are a bit samey, so it’s nice to find the best parts of each place. Tomorrow we do a bike tour of Bogota, which promises a view not usually seen by tourists. Hmm… sounds intruiging!

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