Reaching new heights!!

Nov. 16

Spending the day in Bogota was a great decision, normally we try to avoid big cities, but we are still getting climatized to the culture and thought a day of adjustment would be good.  We decided to ride around town for a bit and then take in the Montserrate Monastary. The ride took us around the downtown area which reminded us of many other Latin America cities, narrow streets with lots of commerce taking place. While trying to find the Monastery entrance we came across the University area and a large park with a nice twisty access road. The road was divided and had good banked corners on the way down, which the skateboarders seemed to appreciate. We seen at least two dozen of them riding their long-boards down the twisty road and by the looks of the skid marks it is a popular and challenging past-time. The monastery is atop a mountain overlooking the valley that Bogota is located in. We figured this would be a great vantage point to see the city and the hike up would also give us a good workout. There is an amazing rock stairway the entire distance.  The slow grind up allowed for many vantage points of the valley along with spectacular views of the city that has grown up the neighboring hills.

 The sign shows the 2,000 meter elevation gain from the base to the top.

 

Amazing rock work on the stairway.

 

Brenda was enjoying the workout.

 

Once at the top there is the monastery of course and the some cafeteria’s and one very fancy restaurant. Many attractions in Colombia are either free or very inexpensive. For example if you choose to take the tram up it costs only $8USD, if you choose to hike up as we did it is free and you can get a ride down as well. We chose to walk down as it was a gorgeous day and the tram looked very crowded.

 Above Exterior, Below Interior of Monastery

There were all kinds of people on the hike as well as at the top. Surprisingly many ladies chose to wear very high heals to walk the cobblestone surface, they looked good but their ankles must be destroyed.

We met a 72 year old fella that runs marathons up the stairway and he also elaborated on a race he did up 980 steps of one of the business towers in downtown. He was rattling on quite quickly in Spanish so it was hard to catch all of it, suffice to say he was in great shape for his age, any age really.

 

We descended down the stone stairway once we took a good look around at the grounds which were nicely decorated with Christmas lights.

 

The bikes were safe and sound where we left them, the nice people at the food booth who waved us in when we stopped at the parking lot entrance to read the signs, took good care of them as we ended up parking behind their booth on a small slab of concrete. I think their son liked the big bikes but he was shy and would peak around the corner of the booth then duck out of site. I managed to call him over to where Brenda and I were enjoying a cup of fresh cut fruit, from his parents booth, and he looked on with curiosity as I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled out a shiny Canadian quarter, I gave it to him and he said “25 cents” in English, I told him to keep it as a souvenir, he smiled and his Mom proceeded to give him the biggest hug and kiss on the head. I think she was proud of him for receiving a gift but as she spoke no English and I could not catch what she said in Spanish, I am just reading body language and drawing conclusions. Sometimes communication is like charades without knowing if you got the answer correct.

 

 

 

Once back at the hotel, we cleaned up and went for yet another walk around the neighborhood. We were looking for a restaurant and found a keeper. The waiter gave us a menu that looked like an adding machine tape, the food choices were not recognizable, so we just order what sounded good, as we read it. I had also order a beer, the waiter brought two. Then the food showed up, Brenda got a roated quarter chicken with fries and salad. We knew it would be chicken but we were not sure what else was coming as the dish was called “Pollo Canasta”. We thought maybe we would get to play some cards or something. Mine was considerably larger. What showed up was a large oval skillet filled with rice, ground beef? Homemade baked beans, spear of avocado, two pieced of pork fat that was deep fried, a fried banana/plantain, a mini hot dog, and a fried egg to top it off. All tolled with beers, about $12CDN.

 

And on the walk home we seen some beautiful flowers.