COLOMBIA: BOGOTA PART II (SHOPPING, PLAZA DE BOLIVAR, CITY STREETS, AND A SERENDIPITOUS MEET-UP)

 March 17, 2023

From the Botero Museum, we walked to an area where souvenir items are for sale on tables lining the street. This is the "Old Town," known in Bogotá as the Candelaria District, and it includes the foundation buildings of the city. Candelaria is Spanish for "Candlemas," a Christian holiday that commemorates the presentation of the baby Jesus at the temple.

On our way there, we passed this awesome three-wheeler that was selling, among other things, arroz con leche, or rice pudding.

The Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) is extremely popular in his home country of Colombia, as well he should be. There are many sites named for him, such as the cultural center in Bogotá that we walked by.

We also saw many artworks depicting "Gabo," as he is affectionately known in Colombia. He looks like someone I would want to know, at least in this painting!

There was a lot of art for sale, often copies of well-known works, such as Botero's Mona Lisa in the bottom right corner.

COLOMBIA: BOGOTA, PART I (WHEREIN WE VISIT MONSERRATE AND SIMON BOLIVAR'S HOUSE, MY PHONE IS STOLEN, AND WE GET UP-CLOSE WITH BOTERO)

 March 17, 2023

Our second destination after Cartagena was the capital city of Colombia, Bogotá.

I got up at 4:30 AM to take a shower and repack so that I'd be ready for our return trip to the Cartagena Airport. It is a very small facility--essentially one large room. We got there about an hour before our flight to Bogotá, and there wasn't much to do. Our flight was pretty short, maybe 1 hour 25 minutes, but it would have taken almost 20 hours to drive it because of the roads and the terrain between the two cities.

On our arrival in Bogotá, we were picked up by a non-English speaking man and a driver named, of all things, Judy. They took us to our hotel, the Hotel Casa Deco:

. . . but it was still pretty early in the morning and the room wasn't ready, so we left our luggage and headed out with our guide, a woman whose name we never really got. She turned out to be a good guide, although she spoke a bit too fast and was harder to understand than Carolina, our fantastic guide in Cartagena, and she often misinterpreted our questions. I think if she had just slowed down, communication would have been a lot better.

The first place we visited was Monserrate, the tallest mountain in the city and therefore, like yesterday's Mount la Popa in Cartagena, a great place to begin because it offers a 360° view of the city.  Unlike the lower elevation of Cartagena's viewpoint, however, Monserrate is 10,341 feet above sea level and a 2,000 foot elevation gain from bottom to top. 

Pilgrims make their way to the top of the mountain on foot, but we opted for a funicular ride. Our guide had purchased "fast  pass" tickets, so we didn't have to wait in what was a very long line, which saved a ton of time. The funicular had four sections with maybe 20 passengers in each, all standing.

You can get an idea of how steep it is from these photos Savannah took: