Colombia

I went to Colombia this past week so that's the reason for the delayed blog post. I was visiting friends of my mom who had studied at Penn State with her. On Monday we went to a fair with indigenous crafts from across South America. The goods they were selling were different from the usual stuff they have in Ecuador so that was interesting. Bogota itself is huge. I had kind of felt like Quito was pretty big being 1.5 million people, but Bogota has 8 million. The public transportation is pretty awful and there are always traffic jams. At night we went to a park where they had set up lights and Christmas decorations. It was more impressive than it sounds although very Americanized.

On Tuesday I visited the old historic center of Bogota. It was pretty impressive. There were loads of churches. We walked by the president's house and visited several museums including the Museum of Gold which was pretty cool. There were loads of old artifacts and the like. On Wednesday we drove to the department of Boyaca. For those not familiar with South American colonial history, there was an important battle in Boyaca which ended up being the decisive battle where Colombia gained its independence from Spain. The battlefield was pretty neat and there was a cool monument for Simon Bolivar. Simon Bolivar is "el Liberador" or the liberator and is practically worshiped all over South America. After visiting the battlefield we drove to Villa de Leyva which is an old colonial town. All the architecture is colonial and the streets were all cobblestone which I thought was pretty awesome. From there we visited some ponds that were incredibly blue and we also visited a fossil museum with a huge aquatic dinosaur skeleton. For lunch we stopped at an ostrich farm so I ate ostrich. It wasn't all that great. It was more similar to beef than chicken and very chewy.

On Thursday we drove back towards Bogota and visited a sacred lake called Guatavita. Apparently it was the original El Dorado, but there are so many places that claim to be the original El Dorado that you need to take that claim with a grain of salt. The lake was cool though. It was on top of a mountain and surrounded by more mountains. After Guatavita we went to La Catedral de Sal, which is a cathedral carved into a salt mine. I really liked it. It was huge and built with a series of tunnels. Everything was carved out of the salt rocks.

The last day I climbed a mountain called Monserrate which had a view of Bogota. The city was covered in a layer of visible pollution. After that I visited the Quinta de Bolivar which was a mansion where Simon Bolivar lived for a bit. It had a nice garden as well. Apparently Bolivar was really short. He was only about 5'4. I walked through Bogota's main university before leaving for Quito again. The university was pretty big and had a pretty nice campus. There was lots of graffiti everywhere. It was mostly pro-communist stuff. The students named the main square Plaza Che.

In other news, Stephan is coming to Ecuador tonight. We'll be heading to Peru on Thursday so I probably won't update this until I'm back in the states in January.

Catedral de Sal

Guatavita

Villa de Leyva

Battlefield of Boyaca

The Colombian President's house

Fiestas de Quito

This weekend was the Fiestas de Quito. The entire week had events including bullfights. I went to one on Friday. It was pretty cool, but pretty gruesome at the same time. I knew that they were going to kill the bull, but actually seeing them stab it was pretty nasty. I was kind of rooting for the bull at times. The bullfight was cool in part because it was such a big event. Walking into the stadium we got showered with free stuff. Anything from cards, hats to snacks were given to us. It is a pretty high class affair, and everyone there wears a stupid hat. Luckily we got given hats, so we wore them to fit in. The toreadors were pretty good. Apparently they're the best in the world. There were two kinds of bullfights. One was the traditional kind with a guy with a piece of red cloth. First however there was a guy on an armored horse that would stab the bull with a spear while the bull tried to knock the horse down. Then some other guys ran by with hooks and stabbed the bull and then ran away as fast as they could. Finally the actual toreador came out with a sword. He would toy with the bull for a while and then stab it with his sword. Eventually the bull would die. Two of the toreadors did that, while the third one came out on a horse. He would ride around the bull and stab it with various spears and such. I preferred that kind, it was a bit more exciting. It was interesting how the toreadors would taunt the bulls and strut around the stadium in stupid poses. Each toreador went twice so we saw six bulls get killed. I can really see where the people who want to ban bullfighting are coming from.

On Sunday we tried to go to a Liga soccer game, but the tickets were being scalped for ridiculously high prices so we decided against it. Since we were playing one of our rivals from Guayaquil, I had some threats yelled at me by opposing fans because I was wearing my Liga jersey. We went to a bar instead to watch the game then. After the game we went to an indigenous market close to the bar and Rafael Correa (the president of Ecuador) came strolling past us. He said hello to one of my friends there so that was pretty cool. We spent part of the day walking through the park where there was loads of stuff going on. They blocked off a street to hold a concert. At night we went to old town and looked at some of the festivities going on there. There was another concert and it was pretty crowded. Another thing about the Fiestas de Quito is that there are loads of chivas. Chivas are party buses that blare music while people drink, whistle and dance all while the buses drive around town. Afterwards we headed back to the fiestas going on close to the park. People started campfires with cardboard in the middle of the streets which was kinda cool. We had Monday off because December 6 is the day Quito was founded. We went to a concert way in the South of Quito. The Wailers were performing which are the group that Bob Marley used to play with. It was pretty cool.