Day 2: Bogotá

First things first:  Isn't my wife the cutest?

On to the day's sights...

On our way to Monteserrate, we saw this guy doing soccer tricks for money during a red light in the middle of a busy intersection.  Sure beats the cardboard signs the homeless people in San Francisco use.

Bogotá geography:  The Andes run the length of South America up the western side, and split into 3 mountain ranges at the southern tip of Colombia.  Bogotá sits in a plateau 8,600 feet up on the easternmost of these ranges.  It's surrounded by even higher peaks, including "El Cerro de Monserrate" (Monserrate Peak) which is pretty prominent and rises dramatically right behind Bogotá's downtown.  There's a good picture here.  At the top of the peak there is a church built in the 17th century.  Popular destination for pilgrims and tourists alike. 


8,600 feet is plenty high, but surprisingly none of us had felt any physical effects of the altitude.  Then we took the gondola (or, as Joaquin called it, the "gongola") up almost another 2000 feet to Monserrate.  Oofah.  Surprisingly, priests in the 1600's hadn't anticipated tourists pushing 3-year-olds in small-wheeled strollers and paved the little village surrounding the church with uneven stones and stairs.   I felt like I was an out-of-shape sherpa scaling Everest without oxygen as I carried around the 40 pound load.  Picture here from Betsy's blog.


Anyway, as you might imagine, there were some incredible views.  This is what a city of 9 million people looks like:

Here's the family out and about at Monserrate

Overall take on Bogotá:  I loved it.  Incredible city.  Cool urban feel, very clean and functional for a huge city, surrounded by lush green hills and countryside, great food, friendly people...it really exceeded my expectations.  We had a great time.  My family is from Medellín (where we're headed tomorrow), which is the second largest city of Colombia, and is an incredible place, but has a little bit of a second-city inferiority complex to Bogotá.  People from Medellín are very similar in civic pride and temperament to Texans -- the first thing out of their mouth when you meet them is that they're from Medellín, and the second is something about how much they don't like Bogotá.   Too cold, the people are snobs, etc.  Not true.  I love Medellín and its gritty vibrancy, and can't wait to get there.  But it will definitely feel like the wild west after the cool sophistication of Bogotá.

Lots more pictures of the village and Bogotá on the trip photo album.  See you in Medellín.