Europe-2018: Colombia February 2017

Bogota

Our first day in Bogota we ate lunch with Elisa and her brother-in-law - Herman Beltran. We ate in an asian fusion restaurant. I had something like an Indian dosa with a shrimp filling eaten with lettuce leaves a-la Vietnamese.

The next day we visited a monastery. We traveled up the hill in an inclined rail car (funicular in Spanish) and later came down in a cable car (teleferico). The green/blue buildings in the foreground are dormitories shared by 4 universities in the area around the buildings.

This is a map of the monastery called Cerro de Monserrate. it is quite commercial as well and extremely well-maintained.

The gardens are beautiful and all the architecture has a certain British Colonial style to it.

I'm not very good at heights and this trip that awaits us lasts 4 minutes exactly - an eternity.

What we saw of Bogota was a clean, well-maintained city. This is the entrance to one of the universities - just one food vendor.

We passed the statue of a famous peruvian writer - Ricardo Palma - no bird shit, no mess.

Then we ate in a lovely restaurant - Casa Vieja.

I had sancocho - a stew of 3 types of meat that comes in that earthen-ware jar. Olga had tongue and was very happy

I didn't leave anything

The next day we went to an old salt mine which has been turned into an attraction based on the concept of a cathedral. There is a chapel and stations of the cross, etc. Salt mines have large galleries where salt has been removed and large parts untouched holding up the ceiling of the mine.

The idea for a cathedral came from the custom of the miners to pray before going underground and of leaving some kind of carved cross each time they stopped working in a gallery. This is a diagram of the galleries. you could visit.

Here is a shot of the roof of the tunnel we were in

This is the main nave of the cathedral. The cross is about 15 meters tall. It looks as though it is suspended in the air in front of the wall behind.

Looking more closely you can see that the cross is carved out of the rock.

This is another gallery

This is made by a local sculptor.

I would have liked to see a lot more of this

Elisa, Olga and myself.

This is just a picture of a house in Bogota. Very much like an English council house. A lot of the residential architecture we saw is like this.

Peru is famous for its balconies but Bogota has good examples as well.

The Plaza Bolivar really doesn't compare with the Plaza San Martin or the Plaza de Armas of Lima. Nor is it nearly as nice as the rest of Bogota. I don't know why. Lots of pigeons, not many tourists.

This corner of the Plaza Bolivar looks very french doesn't it.

I don't know what offices these buildings contain but it is a nice modern fit to the older buildings.

This is Elisa's apartment building

And her office where she spends most of her time.

A good meal and we are off to the airport. Elisa's sister, her bother in law and a niece. Next stop Lima.

National Aviary

On our second day we went to the National Aviary. We spent the morning there and went to a beach later for lunch (very good, fresh fish) and to hang out for a while

The big display as you enter of aviary is of large parrots. They are free to go where they want so I guess they hang around because they are well fed.

This display tells a bit about where birds came from. A couple of the birds on display had the look of this pre-historic bird

This fellow was very coy. Kept showing us his bum.

Just to prove we were actually there. Here we are.

I don't know what kind of birds these are but they seemed unperturbed by people all around.

Another aggressive bird who kept going after our feet.

This eagle is named after the the harpies.

There is a head in there somewhere

A little boy was standing beside me when I took this picture. I pointed out to him that they were both wearing rings so they must be married. The little kid got quite excited and grabbed hold of his mother to see the married birds.

This guy put on a bit of display so I took his picture

I couldn't get a good shot of front of this bird but his colour was very nice.

This fellow too but my camera wasn't centered very well.

There were lots of solitary birds walking around as well as those in cages who might fly away.

Just a pretty bird - the grey necked wood rail.

And this one is called the black necked stilt

This is some kind of ibis.

And there were lots of these fellows. I thought the guy in the bottom left was a child pestering its mother but it seemed to pester just about every other bird so perhaps its a male or something.

I think this is some kind of black swan

And a few more flamingos. I once saw 250,000 of them in Lake Nakuru in Kenya.

This guy had a very nice beak.

And this one is called the roseate spoon bill.

This guy could extend his neck and puff up his feathers to make himself look considerably larger than he was. He was offended by another bird trying to build a nest near him.

And this is a scarlet ibis.

This fellow was being noisy

And these two are co-workers. The first

makes holes in the tree and the second makes a nest in there

These are emus and they were protecting their eggs. One egg was broken. They had the area to themselves so perhaps one of them stepped on the egg. It seems an odd place to put their eggs - right beside the footpath. I am still not sure why these are supposed to be native to Colombia. It seems more likely to me they are lost.

This fellow was super aggressive. Perhaps he was demanding food.

We ended the day at a nearby beach where we had a great lunch of fresh fish (Olga got to eat two fish heads) and rested until it was time to return to Cartagena. This is our group heading home.

Cartagena

We arrived in Cartagena around 11AM and went straight to our airbnb digs. The apartment is small but everything we expected.

This is the view of the street from our balcony. Looking in the other direction you see the wall of this walled city. Cartagena is lucky it had no money to remove the wall years ago so now it gives the place a great deal of charm.

We are staying in a residential complex; several buildings surrounding a nice little park. Not too little actually. The "hall-way" is interesting.

This is Olga with Mirtha Castro, our host, in the hallway outside our apartment. Mirtha is retired and a great host, giving us lots of her time.

The garden I talked about is quite ample and backs on the oldest church in Cartagena.

There must be a couple of hundred apartments and the entrance to the street is guarded.

Cartagena is a mixture of ultra-modern and traditional, rich and poor.

Much of its wealth is based on tourism. This is the low period and it is still very busy. The prices are "comfortable" for the traveler. A beer costs less than $2 at the beach.

Our first day we did a city tour. I got my pocket picked but didn't lose too much money. Probably this will keep me more vigilant and lose less in the long run. We went to a monastery for a view of the city

That wedge of land near the coast in the top right if the photo is the walled city where we are staying. We have all seen those ceramic souvenir trucks from Colombia. Well, our "chiva" was called La Cariñosa and all of us were Los Cariñosos

There must be some point of bringing attention to ourselves by riding in such a vehicle; perhaps it is to make sure no one tries to cut in front of us in traffic. It had a very intimidating bumper.

The last place we visited was a fortress. We took a picture of ourselves just to show how typically touristy we were.

The brick and stone work is typical of the workmanship (or lack thereof) of the Spaniards. I wonder if the reason for the difference between what the workers for the Inca produced (seen in picture below)

and what the Spaniards built along side Incan monuments and elsewhere is that one construction was imbued with spiritual meaning so it had to be perfect and the other totally utilitarian so it only had to do a job.

Regardless the tour guides in Peru point to the two constructions and tell you one was built by "The Incas" and the other by "the Incapables".

Next posting will be on our visit to the National Aviary today.

Bucaramanga

This year's trip starts in Colombia, visiting Rafael Saavedra in Bucaramanga. Rafael worked at SUNY New Paltz and retired to Colombia.

First impressions are that money is much better distributed in Colombia than in Peru. The city of Bucaramanga has about 1M inhabitants and a real estate development that you will only see in Lima, Peru and in no other city of Peru.

This is a street far from the city center but very cosmopolitan. People with experience in peru will be surprised.

Rafael made us feel right at home. The picture on our bedside table was of Olga and me over 30 years ago. Nice touch.

After lunch, on our fist day we went to town and had a coffee

The tea Olga is drinking is made from fresh, red fruit and some leaves - mint, etc. It is delicious.

The tea is called "aromatica de frutos rojos". The recipe is: in hot water add lemon grass and any red fruit, a slice of apple (that is apple floating on top) with a bit of sugar. It is delicious.

For breakfast we have a very light soup made of milk. Very nice and as you can see, good for the figure. Rafael hasn't gained an ounce.

Yesterday we went to a digital art gallery. The paintings were digital images on big and small screens of known paintings. One of them offered the opportunity of pressing a button so I did.

Turns out it wasn't an art gallery at all but a municipal office where you performed whatever service you wanted by way of an artistic interface. Very nice. In all respects except that you filled out forms, etc, this looked like a nice art gallery.

In the afternoon we climbed a mountain by cable car. I don't like looking down in such situations.

It was very smooth and silent but still unnerving for me.

Rafael likes the colours of this picture.

Up top there was a statue of Christ. Beside it there was a tower where you got a better view of the valley.

The statue is about 120 ft high. Rafael went up top but we didn't.

When the sun went down, the fountain became the focus of a son et lumiere presentation. We had some more of that te aromatico before we went down.

Rafael's apartment building is in the middle of this picture.

Good night!

On Wednesday, our second full day in Bucarmanga, we did a little tourism in a small town - Giron - nearby. Very colonial.

and under restoration

We have been eating typical meals here and have enjoyed our meals. Very healthy. Our breakfast consists of a light soup called Changua containing tomato, onion, cream, potato, a raw egg, cilantro