Into Villa de Leiva

Continuing on the highway north, we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. All restaurants in the towns we tried ended up being closed so we picked this one pretty much randomly.  It turned out to be really good!  We both had churrasco and it was better than the fancy restaurant we went to in Bogota... and it was only twenty dollars for the two of us. Try doing that in the US!

We passed through more and more rural areas punctuated by small towns. There were lots of cows amidst rolling verdant landscapes.  I should get some pictures on the way back tomorrow.  It was a lovely ride.  Our guide and driver was quite daring on these roads, darting out to overtake trucks with a small margin.

We got to Villa de Leiva just after dark and after a brief rest we went out on a night tour of the town. This town has been preserved with historical cobblestone streets and building facades.  There is definitely a feel of similarity to Andalusia. The hotel had an open-air garden courtyard like the hotel we stayed in Cordoba. And we actually ate at a restaurant named Andalusia even. I had my Spanish favorite of jamon tapas.

We had a nice conservation with a guy from Spain. He have us some nice tips on what to do in Cartagena. We also talked about the Spanish economy. It sounds rough there.

Okay more about the town tomorrow. Time for bed...

The Salt Cathedral

We had an early start today as we had setup a two day tour north of Bogota to Villa de Leiva.  It took us a little while to get out of the city traffic -- it's as bad as any city here.  We realized how bad the pollution was with the weekday traffic filling the roads. It was nice to get out of that. Bogota is a city of ten million, after all...

We had a short coffee stop on the way. I finally managed to get some money out of the ATMs.  These have been particularly finicky for us.  Credit cards aren't universal and we'll need cash to pay for a lot of things.

Our next stop was the Salt Cathedral.  This is a cathedral carved out of a salt mine. We descended down 180m below the surface.  There was some white salt but a lot was a gray type of salt.  Along the way, they had carved out crosses out of the salt.  It was interesting albeit commercialized a bit. They advertise this as the number one wonder of Colombia.  They had a LED light show and a 3-D movie at bottom.  Take a look at a few of the pictures...  One is of a four inch pool of salt water that was a perfect reflector!

Dinner at the hotel

Lazy night. Just dinner at the hotel. I had penne pasta with consejo (rabbit).  It was good albeit salty. Kathy had chicken with gorgonzola and ham. That's notable because Princess Katherine does not normally eat fowl.  Here's pictorial proof.

Musee del Oro

Okay, onto this museum. This is the Gold Museum and is supposedly one of the best museums in all of South America. Also, free to us today. :-)

It was a very nice museum with a wide range of pieces from throughout Colombian history.  This was one of the better curated museums I've been to. The signage was in English and well-written. There was theme of the interplay of animals and animism in the shaping of historical gold pieces displayed. I've included a few samples of the works there.

We had lunch at the museum restaurant. It was the perfect ambience given the rain pouring outside. We both had aijiaco, a traditional Colombian soup with rice, potatoes, shredded chicken, corn on the cob, avocados, and a few more ingredients I'm missing. I also had my first Colombian beer.

After lunch, we finished the museum. The highlight was this round room that you entered via a kind of airlock when it was pitch black. It slowly lightened to music, highlighting hundreds of gold pieces on display. It was quite impressive and one of the top things to see in the museum. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to use my phone camera. So pictures with my regular one later.

The rain had mostly stopped and we've gone on to the cathedral for a youth orchestra concert. Another nice bit of culture and a break.  We thought that everyone was standing in the beginning because they were parents.  So we grumbled a bit... but then we realized that it was the National Anthem. Woops!

Okay back to the music..

Museums in the rain

Our original plan called for us to take a funicular up to Montserrate, a church up on a ridge with nice views of Bogota.  But an afternoon thunderstorm killed that idea. Hopefully, we'll be able to fit it in some other time.

In the morning, we first went to the Primero Cathedral. Mass was going on, so we didn't spend much time there. The Cathedral fronts the Plaza de Bolivar, a large square with pigeons, shopping stands, guys with llamas that you could ride, and tons of people. 

Afterwards, we walked to a bunch of museums. Along the way, we saw an outdoor ad hoc salsa class in a plaza outside of a mall.

We went to a trio of museums all connected.  They were free for us with today being a Sunday.  The Musee Botera was a rather nice art museum with Picassos, Renoirs, Degases and more. Botero is a prominent Colombian artist. His paintings seem to make everyone plump. See the attached picture.

In the complex, we also saw the coin museum and another art museum. Those were less exciting though it was nice seeing the old coin presses.

We continued our museum day when it started to rain and we visited the Musee del Oro.  More about that in the next post.

Yesterday's Restaurant Pictures

Here are a few pictures from yesterday's restaurants. The first couple were from the traditional Colombian hole-in-the-wall.  The last is from the trendy high-end restaurant we went for lunch.

Inside of the cathedral

Not sure how it came out greenish. Let me also switch to smaller pics now to speed the uploads.