Bogotá, city of... bogotanos... and street art and stuff.

Our first morning in Bogotá, Cal and I went with a lovely Mexican girl I met on the bus to the Gold Museum , which displays the world's largest pre-Hispanic gold collection. It was even free on Sunday   So here's some photos of gold stuff:

Repairs made with tiny rings.

And some clay things...

Almost the Boosh face?

Trays from which priests inhaled 'yopo,' with which they performed their prophetic duties and communicated with mythical beings.

Quasi-pounamu!

Our visit was a bit rushed, as had only had a bit over an hour to meet someone to go to the Salt Cathedral, which is something like 45 minutes out of Bogotá near the town of Zipaquirá. When we got there we got sold tickets on a tourist train to the entrance to the cathedral along with the entrance, which didn't cost much more than the entrance alone. Pretty cool little town:

The cathedral is in a salt mine that's been (and still is) in use for something like 2500 years. The current level of mining is the 2nd or 3rd below the first, with a few different techniques being used over the years. In the 90's, a competition was held for the design of a new salt cathedral in an unused section. The winning design has 12 crosses in mined-out chambers, which symbolise Jesus' final journey to the cross. To me they looked like big crosses. Was pretty hard to understand the guide so I mostly didn't bother. In any case the whole thing's pretty impressive:

Blue cupola.

After the crosses, there's the cathedral itself, which takes up 3 huge chambers, representing the father, the son and the holy spirit:

We spent the next few days exploring around the hostel, which was in a reasonably nice area full of street art. I also had to buy a coat and some gloves, because Bogotá is fucking cold at night... One of the nights we went up to the top of Monserrate Hill to watch the sunset, which was pretty spectacular.

La plaza de Bolívar

Both sides of this entire street were just suit shops.

Church at the top of the cerro (hill, I guess).

Someone tight-roped the 850m or so between the two hills. Blindfolded.

'So artsy, do one with the city in focus.'

For New Year's Eve, Cal and I went to The Hobbit in the evening, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, then got a cab back to the plaza de Bolívar, where we were expecting there to be many partiers. But the normally-well-populated streets in the Candelaria were basically deserted, and the square near the hostel that was packed on every other night was almost empty. So we sat around in the square and the streets drinking and chatting with a couple of locals before going back to the hostel and finishing the night with Shihad. Fuck yeah NZ.

A couple days later Cal flew to Peru, and the only other thing of note I did before leaving to San Gil was walk around and take photos of the street art: