Bogotá: March 2016
Zona T, Bogotá. We liked our neighborhood.
We decided to give ourselves a break from the buses and to fly to Bogota instead. What a nice change. We were surprised to find it was chilly in Bogota, albeit a pleasant surprise. We were staying in Zona T, which according to our taxi driver was really far away from the tourist attractions, and not the greatest choice. He also told us that the only way to get to the tourist area (downtown) was to take a taxi all while ripping us off with his own inflated prices. We are left feeling like maybe we had made a mistake with our location, but what could we do?
El transmillenium. Bus Station.
Turns out…we loved our location! There were very few tourists, which was great for us. Zona T is an upscale area of Bogota, which means there were great places to eat, plenty of shopping malls to walk around, and a chance to stock up on some necessities. We were staying at an Airbnb apartment and asked our hosts for some guidance on getting to downtown. Out of the three days we were in Bogota, we went downtown once, and that was plenty for us. We found out that the cab driver lied, and there are buses that go to downtown. Bogota has a busline called the Transmillenium. It works like a metro, but just with buses.
The sounds. walking to Bolivar Square. Bogota. Vendors and music.
There are platforms in the middle of the road where people wait, the buses have their own lanes, more or less, to avoid traffic, and they’re jammed packed. We took one of these beauties to the downtown area. At first, it was interesting. There were people everywhere, selling everything from carpet, to pool toys, to Jesus music. That was actually the most noticeable thing…the sounds. We’ve seen a lot of street vendors, and everyone is always trying to get you to come into their store, but here, it’s like the people compete with music. There’s everything… reggaeton, salsa, Spanish rock, Beiber, and of course, Jesus. It’s a bit of sensory overload.
So correct your sexual amerikabulteni.com order generic viagra problem so that you can get efficiency being hard. Obviously, this levitra cheapest prospects to taking a toll on our skin. These sexual viagra cialis achat issues do not really leave the person so easily and sometimes stay for longer time duration. The test taken for best prices cialis sensitivity of the visual reaction likely to result from the inhibition of PDE6.
Jackie getting the perfect picture.
One of the other things we noticed, was there were many homeless people walking the streets. Now, seeing homeless people is not really something new, but these people seemed to have something in common- they were mostly younger men, and they all had, what seemed to us as, obvious drug issues. Homeless people are fine, homeless people on drugs, is scary. We made our way through the Magdalena neighborhood to the famous Plaza de Bolivar. The plaza was covered in pigeons, and they were having a protest of some sort. We would see, two days later on TV, that they were rioting in this same square.
The Muisca raft is the main piece in the Offering Boat Room of the gold museum.
We went to the Gold Museum, where there is this famous piece of artwork called The Muisca Raft- it’s a raft with people on it…all made of gold. We saw other things in the museum, but to be honest, we weren’t that impressed. Overall, we were terribly underwhelmed by downtown Bogota, so much so, we decided to skip Monserrat, a lookout point on top of the mountain, and headed back home.
We decided to extend our stay in Bogota by one day, and headed over to Zipatica to see the Salt Cathedral. The Salt Cathedral is an underground cathedral entirely made out of…you guess it, salt.
Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá
The greater underground area is used to mine salt and emeralds, but we were there for the cathedral. It is truly impressive. On the walk there, we joined an English tour group and walked the tunnels towards the actual cathedral. The tunnel is lined with carvings that include crosses and other salt forms. There are lights and plaques on the walls depicting the different scenes. Good thing too, since they all look more or less the same. As you progress down the tunnel, the 14 stations, if you will, each depict a scene from Jesus’ life from birth to death. Like I said, it’s a good thing there were plaques and guides, because coming up with these stories based solely on the carvings would take some serious imagination. When we finally arrived at the nave, and ultimately the cathedral, we were impressed. Everything is lit in purples and blues, which only add to the mystery of the whole place. There are statues of angles here and there, and these incredibly thick salt pillars. This place was definitely the coolest thing we saw in all of Bogota.
To see more pictures of Bogotá, click HERE.