A Quick Visit to Bogotá

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We arrive in Bogotá airport 40 minutes late. Edgar from Explore Bogota, is waiting for us www.explorabogota.com/index_english.html. We had only one day in the city so I decided to book a tour. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the city in a very short time. I had read about Edgar on the internet. He has great reviews on tripadvisor.com so two weeks before our departure I contract him and worked out two tours. He picks us up at the airport and takes us to the hotel to drop off our stuff (Hotel looks great!) We start with the City Tour. He drives us part way up a hill in the city. We exit and go a building where we catch a swiss style gondola that climbs to Convent Monserrate. From here, the view is breathtaking. You can see the entire city and I had no idea Bogóta was this big. Monserrate is a mountain in the city centre of Bogotá. It rises to 3152 m. At the top is a church (built in the 17th century) with a shrine, devoted to "El Señor Caído" (Fallen Lord). Edgar tried to explain to us about the shrine inside but some lady started yelling at him that this was a place of worship not a tourist site. Edgar responded that actually this was a tourist site. She yelled some more so we left. We talked and joked about how rude she was the rest of the day. This isa tourist site. You pay to enter, it is listed as one of the TOP TOURIST SITEs in all the materials and there are about 50 stands selling cheap tourist souvenirs. Oh well, who knows what was occurring in her life. From here we went to the Gold Museum, home of the world’s largest pre-Hispanic gold work collection. We did just a bit of shopping after we left the museum and made a brief stop to learn about the emerald process. It began to rain really, really, hard. Edgar had umbrellas, but it was raining so hard that the streets were literally rivers. We walked in the rain to ¨Plaza de Bolívar¨ From the knees down, we were soaked and when we arrived there were hundreds and hundreds of people standing in a line that looped the entire square. It was still raining like crazy so I turned to Edgar and said, “let’s get out of here.” We had a 30 second glance at the Prime Cathedral, the Presidential Palace, the National Capitol, Casa 20 de Julio, and the Justice Palace. We left and drove through the streets of La Candelaria, the historical district. Here the architecture is different from the rest of the city and surprising colonial. We left the city.

Next stop, Zipaquirá Village home of the Salt Mines and Catholic Cathedral. The drive to Zipaquirá was a bit longer than I had expected, about an hour and half. This is considered one of Latin America’s wonders: a gigantic cathedral, which was built inside a salt mine. It is considered a magnificent work of engineering. We went under the earth’s surface to find a beautiful artistic collection of salt and marble sculptures and a tranquil religious environment. It really was cool. Edgar said it could be rented for a wedding at a total cost of $15,000 USD. Ouch. Unfortunately, it was getting late so we just took a quick drive through the quaint village of Zipaquirá. The beautiful colonial buildings were both colorful and true monuments to the cities history. Edgar then drove us to a wonderful restaurant where I had Filet Mignon for the third time in one week! It was delicious.

Our 9 days in Columbia have come to an end. We left for the airport at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday. Everything clicks in the airport in Bogotá. We arrive in Fort Lauderdale 10 minutes early and customs is a breeze. We check in and I am ready for my 2:00 p.m. flight by 12:30 p.m. I only have a 45 minute layover in Atlanta and should arrive in Cincinnati at 6:00 p.m. I go to the monitor and this is when my world comes unglued. My flight has been delayed for 1 hour and 38 minutes. I go the desk and find that Atlanta has terrible thunderstorms, everything is a mess and our plane is having trouble getting out of Atlanta. The short version is I am rebooked on a flight leaving Atlanta at 9:45 p.m. arriving Cincinnati at 11:45 p.m. When the plane arrives in Fort Lauderdale, they announce that it must be inspected as it (and the passengers) went through strong turbulence leaving Atlanta and the new departure time is now 6:38 pm – assuming the inspection goes well. I find a nice Delta agent and I am able to switch to my brother's flight to Atlanta at 4:30 p.m. We arrive and I get more bad news – really bad news. The 9:45 pm departure to Cincinnati has been delayed to 12:00 am. Ugh. We finally depart at 12:35 am and arrive in Cincinnati at 1:55 am. Teresa and I get home shortly before 3 a.m. We are both exhausted. By the way, Lance’s flights were totally unaffected. Twenty-one hours in airports is not the way to end an otherwise wonderful trip!

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