Today has been a fantastic day. One of the best! It started early with a visit to Monserrate. Our tour guide (Mouricio, with good seat belts :) picked us up at 8:30 and drove us into the mountains to one of Bogota's most famous places. Monserrate was built in 1640 and overlooks the city of Bogota. Please look at the following website if you are interested in learning more:
www.cerromonserrate.com
We boarded the train in the last car, so we got an excellent view as we road up the mountain. Lucia was very excited about riding the train.
This is looking down at the track as we drove up. It was very steep!
Lucia is leaning against the window of the train. Notice the steep tracks below her and the city behind her.
Once at the top of the mountain, we began a climb to the church. The stations of the cross were along the cobblestone path that lead up to the church.
We are almost there!
The view was breathtaking. We took a gazillion pictures. This is the view from one side of the mountain. This is the city of Bogota. It helped us appreciate just how big this city is. And also we were able to see how Bogota is in the mountains, nestled in a plateau b/t the central and west Andes Mountains ridges.
In stark contrast to the view on the other side of Monserrate is the view on this side. Lush mountainside. The clouds were hiding the top of the mountains. Gorgeous.
Monserrate Church.
We had a great time touring Monserrate. It was much colder and windier than we were prepared for. But nonetheless, we had a wonderful time and believe it is a must see for anyone who travels to Bogota.
When we got back down the mountain we saw this guy with a llama. The llama had a very fancy saddle and it made us laugh.
Another car picture...but alas, we are all buckled in with working seat belts. Well, all of us but Silas. We held on to him tightly! But it made for a tricky feeding.
After Monserrate, our tour guide took us to the old town (1500's) of Bogota called La Candeleria. This is Bolivar Plaza, we think. La Candeleria has beautiful architecture. The hard part for us was the intense traffic. It was very slow moving which is hard with two little ones.
One reason for the bad traffic was that university students were protesting the U.S. putting military bases in Colombia. So they filled the street we were on and stopped the traffic. We got to see all kinds of "friendly" signs about us yankees. Fortunately, this is not a common thread here. The cars on our street ended up having to back up a fair distance to get to another street. Made for an interesting trip through the old city!
1 comment:
Beautiful scenary (spell)! Thanks for sharing. Really like that pic of lucia at the train.
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