Colombia, Bogota, Cota and Villa de Leyva 2018

Columbia, departments of Cundinamarca and Boyaca

Patricia and I stayed at her sister's casa, 15 miles from Bogota in peaceful Cota, population 25,000, also took a 3 day trip North to Villa de Leyva.

 Hotel Rincon de la Montana near Cota

 Oregon like fertile land at 8,500 feet elevation and 5 degrees North latitude, so there are two rainseasons and two dry seasons per year.  The greenhouses grow flowers for export to the USA.

Seashell at the Gold Museum in Bogota, gold was hammered on the shell, then the shell dissolved leaving only the gold.

ceramic creatures at the Bogota Gold Museum

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We spent a week in the Bogota area, visiting a wonderful orphanage run by Patricia's niece.  We then took a bus for the Easter weekend and music festival in Villa de Leyva.

Patricia and musicians in the Villa de Leyva plasa

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Water powered flour mill built in the 1700's, when the Spaniards forced a change from indigenous corn to wheat

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The Muisca people's Sun God's symbol was the pineapple (you can see a Sun image if you slice the fruit.) The Catholic priests put wooden carved pineapples at the communion rail of the mission to force the Indians to take communion in front of their Sun God.  They also forced the native people to weave wool instead of cotton.

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Molino la Mesopotamia

Hotel Molino la Mesopotamia

Enrico took us to the ancient astronomical site "El Infiernito" with stones placed where the Sun and stones line up during events like the solstices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Infiernito

He showed us a dip in the mountains behind us where the legend talks of a flood when ice dam broke though, an event sounding similar to the cataclysmic flood of Lake Missoula during the melting of the last ice age.

I would have been afraid to visit Columbia  by myself, imagined drug cartels, paramilitary and guerillas, but the government and FARC have made a deal, the cartels have moved to Mexico, and life seems good in Bogota and the small town of Cota, dozen miles East.  Lots of US or European type of museums and shopping malls in Bogota, a half dozen stores with excellent and affordable vegetables in Cota.  The peaceful town has paved third world streets and a scary looking powerlines, but a freeway with modern industrial parks bypasses it several miles to the South.  I have been very lucky to have been traveling with Patricia in her native land!