A Stay in Bogota

For a few days I stayed in the oldest part of Bogota, the capital of Colombia. This place has roads made out of rocks and the business places are houses. Less than a block away from where I was staying was the absolute oldest house in Bogota, built in 1538.

The place where I was staying was called the Chorro de Quevedo, it was a bed and breakfast. The inside looked exactly like a house. In the bed and breakfast there were tourists from different parts of the world. I met people from New Zealand, Peru, South Africa, the Netherlands, Sweden, the US and Italy.

While I stayed in Bogota I went to el Museo de Oro, or the Museum of Gold. There I saw many things for it had 7 floors. I am going to tell you about my top 3 favorite pieces of the museum.

1) La Balsa Muisca.  Muiscan political and religious leaders with other men used a raft to offer gold to the gods as the way to make things better. They would paddle out to the middle of a lake or lagoon and drop in gold, emeralds and other offerings.  The people wore masks that looked like animals. (These offerings gave rise to the legend of El Dorado, or the search for a place of piles of gold by the conquistadores).

2) There were these miniature clay replicas of some of the types of work the Indians did.

3) In the museum there was this room with some of the gold offerings that they found. This room only had gold things. The art of the gold looked like jewelry. At first the room was completely dark and you could hear the priests chanting and the paddling in the water. Then you could hear the dropping of the offerings into the water and the lights reflected the gold.  It was like being at the bottom of the lagoon with the gold.

These three things really interested me.

This day in Bogota was very educational.


Peace,
 Coco