Monday 14th December

Had a good breakfast at the hotel & took a cab to the base of Cerro de Monserrate where we boarded a funicular train car to ascend to the park & the chapel overlooking Bogota. It was a good ride but still a fair walk up the hill to reach it. The highlight for me was that as we walked up through a garden of various plants we saw humming birds feeding from the flowers. Jane & I had seen this near Machu Pichu on Peru but there they were feeding from bird feeders & not from the vegetation. Their flight is incredible as they hover to drink the nectar with their long fine beaks. At the top the panoramic view of Bogota is amazing as it lies in a bowl; on the west side the hills appear to be relatively sparsely covered, whilst to the east the rain forest appears to be quite dense. We had an excellent coffee at a cafe overlooking the city & watched as humming birds came within 2m of us at one stage.

The descent was by cable car & from there we took a cab to Plaza de Bolivar, which is the main square in the old city. From here we walked back to our hotel via 3 churches which were very austere externally but had quite ornate interiors. I was particularly impressed with a recruiting poster in one for men to join the Franciscans, somewhat reminiscent of a military recruiting advert in WW1.

At about 4.30 we set out for north Bogota to meet Victoria, a good friend of Matilde in Perth. It was quite a way but we all met up & she then took us on a tour of this very upmarket area, through 2 large shopping malls. It was such a contrast to where we are staying in at present, as most of the shops are big European names a la King St, in Perth. She then took us to meet Miguel, Matilde's brother, who has a magnificent apartment nearby. Here we had drinks & snacks before he drove us to his favourite French restaurant, where he wined & dined us magnificently.

It was great to meet them both as they are very widely travelled & they gave us insights into the problems of this beautiful but rather poorly run, country.

We returned to the hotel, quite late for us & Jane downloaded our photos before bed.

Tuesday 15th December

After a latish start we walked to the Museo del Oro, quite close by. This was a revelation, both for its contents & the quality of its displays, which were magnificent. It is largely devoted to pre Colombian artifacts of the Muisca people, who were very capable goldsmiths & produced some exquisite items.

On 4 floors, it is an example to all museums of how to display items but the effect is almost numbing as one becomes overloaded at times, with the multitude of similar objects.

After the inevitable well earned coffee we set off in a cab for the National Museum set in an old prison. This was also well done but I think we were becoming too tired to fully enjoy it. It is clear that Colombia has had a troubled history since it became independent in 1815 & one wonders if it still has more problems ahead of it.

Wednesday 16th December

Set off for Usaquen, another northern suburb recommended to us. On arrival we were a bit underwhelmed, as apart from a small square & a few oldish buildings, it seemed somewhat ordinary.

After a good coffee we blundered into a very large, almost deserted, shopping centre but we found a Gold Museum Shop & then a techno shop to buy a USB stick for Jenny to take copies of all Jane's photos. To return to the hotel we hailed a cab & the trip took about an hour mostly spent inching along in heavy traffic. For this we paid A$7, just over half what we had paid to go out there. If they use the meter, trips are incredibly cheap but some exploit foreigners & refuse to use it, as I found out later.

In the afternoon we went to the Emerald Museum, on the 23rd floor of a building. This was quite illuminating, although the major lesson we learned was to beware when buying them. Luckily Jane doesn’t seem to care for them too much & I can take or leave them.

This evening we went out to an Italian restaurant where the food was great but the taxi took us first to the wrong address initially & the driver was angry because I wanted him to use the meter. The return trip was a lot shorter so one wonders if they really do know where they are going sometimes.

Thursday 17th December

After breakfast we walked down to the Cathedral as it was open between 9 & 10am each day, only to hear a brass band playing in the square in front. It was all cordoned off with barriers as there was a police awards presentation ceremony being conducted there. The music was stirring but we were amused to see a huge contingent of police drawn up but lounging very casually in their lines resplendent in their best ceremonial uniforms. Unfortunately the cathedral was closed but on another corner was the Independence Museum, which covered a variety of topics including the gaining of independence from Spain in 1810, the Bogota riots of 1948 & the siege of the Palace of Justice in 1985. It also had an interesting section on the ethnic & linguistic study of the people of Colombia undertaken originally in the 1850s. Among the exhibits were 2 paraffin wax figurines of peasants, done in the 1850s, which were very similar to those which our grandfather had brought back from his travels, at the turn of the 19th century. According to the text they were made in Mexico which was quite a surprise to us. We were thrilled as we had hoped, without any luck, to find them in the National Museum.

Returning to the hotel we all took a car to the airport for our flights, home for Jenny & to New York for us. Our flight was fine but we had to queue for more than an hour to pass through Immigration in New York & by the time we arrived at our Air B&B place it was past midnight. Looking from our window on the 12th floor we could see the top of the Empire State building wreathed in mist but glowing like a large incandescent candlestick.