After a heavy sleep, I woke up around 8:45a to make it to the complimentary breakfast served at my hotel (Hotel CityFlats). There were two lovely women making me eggs, coffee, and fresh-squeezed juice. I had a leisurely breakfast, reading a book and people watching.
By 11:15, I’d left for the day taking an Uber to Monserrate. High above Bogota is a beautiful, lush mountain. At the top is a church, some restaurants, and a hiking path. Visitors can get to the top by taking a funicular or a cable car. The lines were long as its still peak holiday tourism season here, but I made it up and got some nice photos from the top. On a really clear day, it would be great to go up for lunch with friends. While definitely worthwhile going, the church was a bit hokey, and there was rain in and out throughout the day making visibility of the city not as great as it could have been. I didn’t stay up there long.
A taxi into Candelaria, the historic center of town, dropped me off at Museo del Oro. The ticket to enter was cheap, and upon my arrival, a free guided, english tour was about to begin. It worked out beautifully. For about two hours, our guide told us about the value of precious metals and how they were used during pre-hispanic South America era.
Shamans would be responsible for educating the people of their villages. They would sit for hours or even days on end simply thinking. To keep their mind active, they would chew on coca leaves mixed with snail’s ashes, referred to as “lime”. This was essentially like having a Red Bull, and was not like cocaine, the drug we know today made in a lab.
The sun was believed to represent life, energy, and warmth. The moon, which affects tides, represented water and night. Sun, water, and land give people life. These pre-hispanic societies believed gold represented the sun, silver the moon, and copper, with its red hues, the land and soil. For this reason, they would wear the three together in unison to celebrate and honor the things that gave them life. They would also build tools with the metals to help people with their day-to-day jobs/activities. The metals were not viewed as valuable or precious. They were just a material within everyday life.
With the sun, the land, and water, they also viewed the world in three “levels”. The uppermost level being the air/sky. Gold represented this level as did animals like birds. The middle level was represented by copper and land animals, including humans. The lower level was represented by silver, water, and animals like fish, snakes, and crocodiles.
Shamans believed they could learn the secrets of life from animals, and needed to interact with the animal spirits from all the levels to do so. They would “transform” into these animals by adorning themselves in mixed-metal jewelry shaped like animals. Much of the ancient artifacts show funny looking shapes with a human face, a fish body, a jaguar tail, wings, and funny ears. These types of relics represent the shamans transforming into the animals from all the levels.
After Museo del Oro, I walked along Carrera 7, a pedestrian street. I popped into a hole-in-the wall for a late-lunch arepa, empanada, and jugo de lulo. Further down, I tried a popular street food, oblea. Oblea is dulce de leche sandwiched between two, flat, cake cone wafers.
I continued walking to Museo del Botero. Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist, is known for his plump, well, everything - every person, animal, fruit, or otherwise that he draws, paints, or sculpts is plump. The museum was free of charge and the building was lovely and intimate, with the galleries housed around a central courtyard.
After the museum, I was wiped. Back to CityFlats for the evening due to an early flight tomorrow morning to Pereira.
