Today we were booked in for a grafiti tour and a half day city tour. Luckily i re-read my voucher for the afternoon city tour as we had to reconfirm via e-mail and my confirmation came back that the driver would be there in 10 minutes. As luck would have it our half day tour had now become a full day tour and we were being picked up at 8:30am.
Our tour consisted of Juan (the guide) the four of us and an American couple Eric and Sarah. First stop was Monserrate which is at 3170m. There is a beautiful cathedral at the top of the mountain as well as a spectacular view of the city. Unfortunately i left my backpack in the van so Beyonce didn’t join us for the tour.
Fortunately for me the cable car was being serviced so we went up and down on the funicular railway (which in itself was a little freaky). Juan was saying that locals often use the walking track and run up the mountain (they also do pushups sit-ups and step jumps at the top).
After admiring the view and the cathedral we made our way back down the mountain to find that the poor driver couldn’t pick us up – he had a flat so we got to walk into town and the Museo de Oro (gold museum). Along the way we saw so much street art. The grafiti along the road into town is amazing.
The gold museum had a huge collection of pre-colombian gold that the indigenous tribes fought to keep hidden (collection included a real mummy) – they did this by hiding the sacred sites from the Spanish. Mind you the Spanish were pretty devious in finding them too. Once Spaniard went as far as marrying an indigenous woman to trick her over time into revealing where they were (most of them were lakes). After an unusual but delicious lunch of Colombian bread with cheese dipped in hot chocolate (do not judge until you’ve tried it) we walked back through the centre of the city. Unfortunately we were so hungry we forgot to photo. If we have it again Ill make sure i get a photo.
We are now back at the Masaya and are waiting for the bar to open at 4 so we can have cocktails. I feel a little hung over today which isn’t from alcohol – Bogota is at 2670m so we are all mildly effected by the altitude good news is it is so mild we should be great tomorrow. Ive added a photo of the mural above our bed.
davstuholidays 