Today we get to explore around Bogota, driving into the city
last night was a good sight as the high rise buildings and the lighting gave a
good impression of the city. Our first
stop was the Plaza de Bolivar, the main plaza in the historic part of
town. Well the plaza itself was a major
disappointment. It was just a concrete
block which was invaded by a mass of pigeons.
Around the plaza was a mixture of buildings, the Capitolio Nacional, the
seat of Congress, was a massive stone building with a hint of Greek style. Opposite this was the Palacio de Justicia,
which was a similar type building. The
Alcaldia which is the mayors office was a standard building, the largest church
in Bogota was the Cathedral Primada, and then there was the only colonial
building in the plaza, the Capilla del Sagrario. All in all it was a mixture of different
styles of buildings. A big call this,
but probably so far it was the worst plaza we had seen in South America. Huge call!!!
After a short wander around the historic city centre, we
made our way a few blocks north towards the Museo del Oro. This is a gold museum which has 34,000 pieces
of gold on display from all the pre Hispanic cultures in Colombia. It is known as the most important gold museum
in the world! The 34,000 pieces of gold are shown over two large floors, it
takes us about 3 hours to go through the whole museum. Part of the display was a room where there is
a ‘gold show’. They lock you in a room
for a few minutes and have some music playing and play with the lights to
display some pieces of gold. These
looked like the lower end of the scale (in comparison to the rest of the
museum), but they had done a good job in enlightening the experience.
All of a sudden we had skipped lunch, the time at
the gold museum had flown. We stop in at
the supermarket and pick up a bite to eat and then walk over to the Museo
Historico Policia. When we arrived we
were expecting to walk through and see some of the history of the Colombian
Police. Well when we got to the door the
Police started talking to us in fantastic English and told us that an English
tour of the museum had just started 5 minutes ago, so we joined the group. In this museum we were told about the history
of Colombia’s crime, especially the story of Pablo Escobar, who was the drug
lord of Colombia a couple of decades ago.
This guy was so rich he even offered to pay off all of Colombia’s
debt. Of course the Government wanted
none of this as his money was all dirty from cocaine dealings. Part of the museum was Pablo Escobar’s gold
adorned Harley Davidson motorbike, the jacket he was wearing when the Police
shot and killed him in a rooftop shootout in 1993 in Medellin and a blood
stained roof tile. This shooting was the
turning point for Medellin as while Escobar was alive, he was paying hit men
US$1,000 for each police officer they killed.
Also during the tour we saw the history of everything police, from
uniforms, armoury, radio communication and a lot more. This tour went for about two and a half
hours, once again time flew by! We had
other plans for the day but we wanted to go to the supermarket to get some food
for dinner and then get home, so those plans can wait until tomorrow.
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