Today we slept in a bit which was amazing! We got up, made breakfast and chatted with Thor a bit. He was going to get his guitar fixed and then had to head into town in the direction we were going, so we decided to accompany him to the guitar shop. I've never been to a guitar repair shop before but I thought it was amazing that the guy could completely rebuild the guitar and fix some other cracks in it for just $35. And it would be ready in just 3 days. Thor said he would have spent a ton more back in the UK.
We left Thor and headed to the Botero museum. The museum had tons of Botero but also had paintings from other artists. I was excited to see what Monet they had since he is my favorite artist. They only had one Monet which was really drab and not my favorite but there were a lot if ther good impressionists on display. The Botero paintings proved to be as interesting as his sculptures that we had seen in Medellin but I was surprised by how recent they were. Most of them were done in the 90's which would have made him pretty old when he painted them.
After the Botero museum we headed to the gold museum. Bogota has the largest gold museum in the world so we figured it was the one to see. The museum had an extensive collection of gold pieces dating back to 500BC. I really enjoyed learning about how the indigenous people had learned to mine for the different metals and how to manipulate them. The fact that they could figure out the different melting points of the metals so that they could separate and anneal them blows my mind. They also developed many techniques for making jewelry like making molds out of bees wax that were really ingenious for the time. We spent four hours wandering around the museum and it proved to be really interesting.
After the museum we decided to grab some lunch. We had been told that the best place to get Ajiaco was at this place called "La Puerta"- a little hole in the wall restaurant with no more than three tables. Ajiaco is their local yucca soup with chicken, corn on the cob, avocado, rice, capers and cream. Alyssa had also read that the place was famous for Chocolate Santafereno which is essentially hot chocolate that you put a piece if cheese into and eat with bread. We tried both and really liked them.
After lunch, Alyssa had to get her usual fruit cup. I had never had papaya before this trip but I have decided I don't like it. It really tastes like feet.
The riot police were still out en force today. We asked around and apparently the governor was in town and they were afraid the students were going to riot in protest of his education policies. I don't mind the police presence actually, it keeps people in line.
The picture below shows one of 20 horses that were riding around with full bulletproof vests on- head to hoof. I didn't even know they made those for horses, lol...not a good sign. Since we knew that the city probably wouldn't be in any better shape once it was dark, we stopped at the store and picked up things to make PB&J, fruit and rum for dinner.
We had dropped of some laundry at the cleaners in the morning (since it would not dry in this weather if we washed it ourselves in the sink) and after picking it up, we met Thor for a beer at Bogota Beer Company.
We sampled all of their microbrews which were actually really good! Thor said that only the rich Colombians went there because a beer was $5 which is more than twice the price of a beer on the street.
Once we got back to the hostel we were contemplating going out. Our hostel was having a little party at the roof top bar, so we pre-partied with our juice boxes of rum and ate sandwiches in our room.
We finally ventured upstairs to join in the festivities. The upstairs can only fit a maximum of 30 people, so the small quarters forced everyone to be social. Two of the boys played guitar and sang for us while we had the fire in the background, burning in a wheelbarrow.
For a while it was a plesant little get together. Then the boys insisted we go salsa dancing. Alyssa and I were unsure since we don't like to stay out too late and screw ourselves for the next day (these boys had been staying out until 10am every night we'd been there) but I am always happy to have male escorts in towns like this so we agreed. We went and got ready to go but then it started pouring rain. The boys said it was only a 7 minute walk, but in the rain. I thought that sounded awful and I think Alyssa was relieved not to have to go out. We went to bed and let the boys go out without us.
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