Bogota for five days   PHOTO LINK –>>Bogota for 5 days

Day 1

John and I flew to Bogota Colombia’s capitol for 6 very full days. Upon arriving you notice that the climate is vastly different to Santa Marta even though they are only 500 miles apart. Bogota is cool, temperatures were in the 50s and 60s, with the lack of humidity, but with the sunshine this made it a very pleasant change. The city is massive, 9,000,000 people live there making it the second largest city in South America.

As we caught the 6:00am flight we were at the Hotel Bh Bicentenario by 8:00, left our bags, had a breakfast at the Juan Valdez next to the hotel and joined the

10:00am Ingelise (English) walking tour.

The tour lasted 3 hours, toured us around all the key sites in the historic center La Candelaria area – (centro historico La Candelaria), which is a living museum. It was a brilliant start as we were then able to navigate ourselves plus

knew the background history of the city. After our lunch we checked into our room, wandered down Avenida Jimenez and around the central plaza – Plaza de Bolivar, explored further, had dinner and retired early as we had been up since 3:30am.

 

 

 

 

Day 2

The next day we set off to the Gold Museum – Museo Del Oro.

This houses an amazing collection of indigenous gold workings plus tells the history of the gold production of the indigenous peoples of Colombia. It is amazing to see the sophistication of the work. Almost all of the works are smelted, with the Muisca and Sinu peoples using the “lost wax” technique, with a number of other metals being purposely alloyed. Here we saw intricately crafted and designed jewelry, artifacts, ornaments and many more. One of the highlights was the golden raft created by the Muisca people. It portrays the El Dorado “Golden One” ritual. What makes this even more incredible is the age of the work on display. It all dates back hundreds and hundreds of years. It was absolutely amazing and a museum that is probably the best I have visited. Luckily most of the signs had English too so we were educated about the true history of this northern region of South America. We spent 4 hours in the museum and enjoyed it immensely.

 

That afternoon we joined the walking Graffiti tour.

Bogota is known to be one of the top places for graffiti in the world. It is a form of social commentary and cultural expression especially during “La Violencia” and the height of the civil war. The modern designs have become quite complex via stencils, spray paint, sticker and wheat pasted posters. We started by visiting the oldest part of the city La Candelaria. Here the graffiti is more a work of art with a message. There are hidden messages and hidden forms of graffiti, which were all pointed out to us, but after a short while we were able to spot the different Taggers/artists and find the hidden messages. I found the art to be brilliant!  In this area of the city the buildings are very old and protected due to their historical importance and so much of the graffiti has been sponsored, permission given and encouraged. There were pieces by artists like Guache, Stinkfish, Bastardilla, Rodez, DJUL and Toxicoano from Colombia, Pez from Barcelona, Spain, and CRISP from Australia, plus many more. Next we went to the more commercial area where the graffiti was political. Again the artwork was full of messages, this time with deep political messages. It was a wonderful 4-hour tour and completely free, just gave a tip after of 30,000pesoes – $10.

Again we were completely exhausted from a very full day.

Day 3

We had arranged Bogota Pass to do a day trip to Laguna De Guatavita – Lake of Fools Gold and Zipaquira The Salt Cathedral.

Alex our English-speaking guide and driver arrived at 8:00am and off we drove. As it was a Sunday we had less traffic but in Bogota on Sunday’s everyone takes to exercise especially biking. The road through the mountains was clogged with bikers zipping along downhill or slogging up hill literally by the hundreds. Most of them were doing a 60-kilometer circuit up and down the mountains. We stopped for a lovely view of the city. We continued until Emblase de Tomine a large reservoir area where we next stopped. This reservoir flooded the town of Guatavita in to 1960s. We stopped next to visit the newly built town that replaces the old town – Nueva Guatavita. It is lovely; all the buildings are white with the red tiled roofs.

The countryside that we drove through was reminiscent of the European lower alpine scenery, just beautiful. The air was clear, the sun shining, and wild flowers everywhere on the farms on the slopes. We were in fact over 11,000 feet. We arrived at the site of the famed legend

El Dorado – Laguna De Guatavita. There we met up with a group, (unfortunate for us it was a Spanish speaking group) and proceeded to walk the path to the famous mountain lake. We did luck out in that some of the signs were in English and Alex did tell us the story surrounding the legend. Apparently the native Muisca Indians of the surrounding area had been using this lake for religious ceremonies for hundreds of years. These ceremonies included upon the death of a chief his nephew would be covered in gold dust, ornaments and jewelry. The “new leader” plus objects were deposited in the middle of the lake to appease the gods when acknowledging a new Shaman or leader. The lake was said to be perfectly round and bottomless. However when the Europeans/Spanish arrived and heard the legend they were determined to find El Dorado and retrieve the gold and jewels. Many attempts were made, they even tried to drain the lake, some did find treasures but the lake has remained sacred and mysterious.

The walk to the top was very pleasant with beautiful scenery along the way. The lake it self is small and a dark green, quite lovely to see. I did find the climb quite tiring due to the altitude, but short and it was worth it. After there we drove passed an area where a very rich Colombian has built a replica of the Taz Mahal and other famous buildings. It is now a fun park.

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped for a lunch at a roadside eatery. This was one of the lunches that the country is famous for a huge carne roast. Whole animals on spits roasting. You have to love meat to appreciate it. We ordered two meals between the three of us and I just sampled from John and Alex’s plates. I personally enjoyed the Arepas the most. These are corn based “pancakes” stuffed with differing ingredients in different regions. Mine were stuffed with the local cheese and delicious. John just loved the meat all of it, pork and beef.

 

 

 

 

From there we drove to Zipaquira and walked around the town. It is a beautiful town and being Sunday the townsfolk were out enjoying the plaza and the inns, selling wares, playing ball and having fun. The architecture was stunning, such a mix of early colonial Spanish and traditional, the colors really made it special.

Then it was off to the Salt Cathedral – Catedral de Sal.

We had an English-speaking guide for the Salt Cathedral. He explained the size of the mine – 240 feet below ground, producing many, many tons of salt daily has enough salt for another 500 years. Salt is extracted these days by using water. However in years gone by it was mined. The miners decided to create the cathedral in the space left behind from the mining. There is no way to describe the size except to say vast, massive and quite incredible. The tunnels have chapels with differing crosses carved, some with statues and some with just lighting and carvings. There is the main chamber with the largest cross that has been carved and other carvings in the walls all dedicated to Christianity as Colombia is a very religious, (Catholic) country. It was truly an amazing wonder to behold and not at all what either of us was expecting. To tour the mine took 2 hours. From there we drove back to Bogota and we’re back by 8:00pm. Another very full day!

Day 4

We set out to visit the monastery – Cerro de Monserrate. Set on the mountain behind the city at 10,341 feet. We could see it from our hotel window. There are various ways to reach the monastery, walk up the path, take the tram or the “train” we decided to take a ride up and walk down. (The faithful have been known to “walk” up on their knees during Holy Week.) We rode up – straight up- in the “train” I would call it a tram but the hanging gondola is called the tram, quite confusing. At the top we walked a lovely garden like path to the monastery where the viewpoint looked out across the entire of Bogota. It is a spectacular view of the city. Our walk back down took over an hour, yes that is how long the path is with countless steps and being quite steep it must be quite a challenge to climb, especially on your knees.

 

 

That afternoon we visited the Museo Botero – art gallery. Here is a large collection of works of art by the Colombian born artist Fernando Botero, (John’s new favorite artist), plus also his personal collection of some famous artists, Picasso, Dali, Monet and such. We both really enjoyed looking at the art, which John said was the 1st time he remembered appreciating artwork. His favorite artist Botero with everything being a round corpulent interpretation.

 

Day 5

I really wanted to see the Wax Palms, Colombia’s national tree which stands over 200 feet plus the Colombian Orchid. So off to the Botanical gardens – Jardin Botanico we went for the morning. We managed to follow the Spanish map and advice of the guide to find our way around, but all the signs were in Spanish so much of the info was unobtainable for us. We walked all of the pathways and really enjoyed the botanical displays. The wax palms were magnificent, unfortunately the orchid house was under renovations, but I did get to see some lovely orchids in the greenhouse area.

 

We were returning from our visit in a taxi down one of the freeways, 4 lanes for each side and with a central lane for the metro busses which are 3 carriages long, when we could see police stopping cars, mobs of people, the busses all stopped and then a mob of people running towards our lanes. The taxi driver sped up but a man jumped in front of our taxi pointing a lollipop at the windscreen so the taxi driver screeched to a stop. Masses of people mainly women and children dressed in blue stood across the 4 lanes screaming in Spanish honking handheld horns, blowing whistles and apparently protesting about something. Well they would not let the traffic pass, some bikes hopped the central zone others tried to press through but were stuck. We remained so for 5 – 10 minutes when John paid the taxi driver and we started to walk down the freeway. Luckily as we were at the head of the line we could quite quickly walk to the next lane leading into the freeway, flag down a taxi and off we escaped the crazies.

Our destination was the Museo Nacional – National Museum. We had a picnic lunch in front of the museum and then entered. It is located in an old jail built in the 1800s, so the building is very historic too. Inside we enjoyed seeing more relics of Colombian indigenous peoples past, of the Spanish colonials, the religious relics, artwork and much more. From there we had a great time walking along one of the very busy commercial streets where you could buy anything imaginable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 6

The mornings all started with an excellent breakfast at our Hotel Bh Bicentenario. However on returning to our room we received a phone call from friends Lynne and Eric onboard Amarula to say that they had been attacked during the night. It was shocking news! Thank goodness they had just been roughed up, but unfortunately they had been robbed, literally cleaned out, everything of value taken. We told them that we would arrange for them to enter the marina and would be back later that night to help in anyway we could. It was terrible for them :-((

This last day we set out to see the Casa de Nariño the Presidential Palace and the area surrounding it. We found that the huge Plaza de Bolivar was fully decorated for Christmas, the tree being huge and beautiful. Plus there were different groups demonstrating, one group of Indians were in red and green with a large flag and the face of someone plastered everywhere. Another group were carrying orange, mainly balloons, they were protesting women’s rights and the abuse women had to suffer. While in the Presedential grounds there was an official parade taking place. The security was everywhere with their big guns.

After watching the military march around we visited several churches and the Cathedral Primada. The churches: Iglesia and Claustro De San Agustin and Iglesia de San Francisco are amazingly well preserved for being hundreds of years old. The Cathedral was drab compared to some of the churches, which were adorned with gold leaf, fantastic carvings, paintings, domed ceilings, chandeliers, magnificent stained glass windows, ornaments, and chapels of all types. The churches are amazing!

 

 

We did our shopping mainly for the fantastic crafts that were for sale. We both loved the beadwork and the brass wire objects that were being crafted. We flew back to Santa Marta to Aeeshah and Chico.

PHOTO LINK –>> Rodadero, Taganga and Santa Marta

Taganga where friends were attacked

We had visited Taganga before we went to the Lost City. It is the bay to the east of Santa Marta and you can get a regular city taxi there for just a few pesos more than the usual fee of 5,000 ($2:00). There is a very nice view of Taganga from the slopes above it as you drive down and to me that was the nicest part of Taganga. It is really just one main road leading to a long beach and broad walk. There are several places to eat along this beach area, hostels and bars, but it is very neglected, run down area. We walked along the front, were warned by the police of bandits if we left the front and saw many druggies/addicts. There was an open style eatery selling fresh fish lunches which we agreed to stop at and really enjoyed their food. We then left Taganga as neither of us liked the area. This is the bay where our friends had anchored and checked in to Colombia upon the advice of a Colombian agent/official.   An account of their attack is written here:

 http://amarulasail.com/2015/11/28/boarded-and-robbed-in-taganga-bay-colombia/

Upon our return to Santa Marta we helped Lynne and Eric as much as possible and then they left for Cartagena where we agreed to meet a week later.

Rodadero

Another side trip we had taken was to Rodadero, which again you can reach via a yellow Santa Marta taxi. This area is to the western side of Santa Marta is where most locals go to spend a day at the beach. We walked all along the beach, looking at the locals, water taxis, venders and such. It is a very nice beach with lots on offer for a day at the beach. There are many very nice shops, hotels and restaurants along the front too. We found a small eatery and had some ……… Before heading back to the Marina.

Santa Marta again

After we returned from Bogota our friends John and Kay on Bad Bunny headed out for western Colombia and the San Blas islands. It felt very strange not having them there as our neighbors, however before we knew it more boats arrived and we had new neighbors. There was a weekend where the Colombian Cross Fit Championships were held at the marina. It was fun to watch.

However we basically spent the next week working on all the projects we needed finishing. It was a mad rush to get ready to leave for Cartagena. We really loved Santa Marta and will return, as there are still places to visit and things to do there for us. Meanwhile we are now in Cartagena.