The Gold Museum is one of the 'must do' things in Bogotá, so we obediently went along to check it out. I'm not usually a big museum person as I get bored pretty easily, but who am I to say no to the museum with the biggest collection of pre-Hispanic gold work in the world? So we spent an hour or two wandering through room after room of glittering displays of goldsmith work from different cultures, jewellery and every kind of decorative body armour you can think of. And more. It was very impressive, but after a while we'd seen as much gold as we could handle for one day.
Another museum on the list is the Botero Museum, which houses a shitload of drawings, paintings and sculptures by Colombia's famous artist, Fernando Botero. You might know him as the guy who paints/sculpts fat people. It's one of the more unique museums I've been to, with halls full of all things chubby - people, animals and things that you never even knew could be chubby like buildings, fruit and flowers. It's not every day you see a painting of a fat skeleton playing a fat guitar. Among the Botero works there were also pieces by other artists such as Picasso, Renoir, Dali, Matisse and Monet. And what's even better is that it's free entry. Now that's the magic word when travelling.
One thing that wasn't free was the cable car up Monserrate, a hill/mountain that towers 3,152m high with incredible views over the city. It cost about $10 for a round trip (so still cheap by NZ and Australian standards) and the view was definitely worth it. The hill is a pilgrim destination as there is a church at the top with a shrine, built in the 17th century, but mostly it's a tourist spot. The views really are spectacular, taking in the massive sprawl of Bogotá spread out for miles below. And thankfully it was a clear day when we went up, so visibility was perfect. There was of course the usual touristy crap being sold at stalls at the top, but you could easily avoid all that if you wanted to which was nice for a change. Nothing makes you want to leave a place more than being hassled every five seconds by people wanting you to buy their stuff. After the 20th time, it gets very hard to maintain a polite 'No, gracias'.
Going to museums and other touristy things can be fun and interesting, but sometimes the best thing you can do is just go for a walk, because chances are you'll see the coolest things then. This was the case in Bogotá, where there is a plethora of street art and graffiti, some of which is amazing. We had looked at doing a walking tour of all the major graffiti spots, but we missed it by a day so we decided to just walk around ourselves and see what we could see. A lot as it turned out. There was such a variety of street art and graffiti that we were happily snapping away around every corner. The best thing about it is that graffiti isn't illegal in Bogotá (except on government buildings) - in fact, it's encouraged. To avoid having their building tagged, a lot of owners choose to have a mural painted as it's more likely to be respected by other graffiti artists and not defaced. How cool is that?
Aside from seeing the sights in Bogotá, we also devoted a bit of quality time to sport and drink appreciation. Just to balance things out. And we chose the perfect hostel to do that, or to meet a group of like-minded people at least. We already knew that Kat and Cam, the Kiwi couple we'd met in Salento were coming to the same hostel a day or two after us, and we'd already planned to celebrate Kat's birthday. But the night before that was the AFL Grand Final and we met a few Aussies who were keen to watch it - Charlie and Renee, Chris and Mel, and Arn joined us on what turned out to be a failed trip across the city to a sports bar that had assured Kurt they were showing the game. Of course it turned out that they didn't get the channel and couldn't stream it online, so we raced (literally) back across the city in taxis to a hostel a couple of blocks from ours. And thankfully we were just in time to grab seats and cold beers and settle in for a night of it. It was a good couple of nights/days watching sports, drinking and talking shit with new friends.
After about a week in Bogotá it was time for Kurt to fly home for his brother's wedding, so I decided to head onto the next metropolis - Medellín.
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