Martin went to the Salt Cathedral, I had an immensely cheap breakfast in Zipaquira which was fantastic, and spent time working on Spanish with Mauricio. I'm terrible, I need like a 2 month refresher in the basic connectors of language, but nouns are relatively easy to absorb for a logical brain. The "outside Bogota" landscape appears awesome for biking - big houses up on the hills that clearly need roads suitable for BMW convertibles, plus guys shuttling downhill bikes near the Salt Cathedral were clear signals of riding potential (that's aside from cheap and delicious breakfast and Juan Valdez's handywork). Downtown Calgary coffee is like Jann Arden; Colombian coffee is like Shakira... quality to do the opening ceremonies for the biggest event in the biggest sport on earth at the FIFA World Cup. On the topic of good food, everyone else I've spoken to who are the Canadiense touristas also notice the purity and basic goodness of the food, it's so free of processing that you just feel more wholesome and right after a while here.
Today was a Bogota typical winter day. Deluge. Puddles everywhere on the road that you need to slow down for, and even then the splash from the wheels blankets the windshield. God help you if you're next to a bus, wipers better be on high. The amount of lluiva the clouds can produce here is entirely amazing for this climata seca guy.
We visited an emerald museum, which was interesting. They used to trade at equal value by weight as salt. Colombia is the world market share producer of las esmareldas. Pretty cool. Really labour intensive industry still. Got to look at them through magnifiers and chromium coated lenses to see which were fake and real. Got to look at cutting and polishing. The sales people at the end were disappointed I wasn't a customer, especially after a dialogue about my girlfriend being in France. The Colombian sales lady said I needed to buy more presents rather than less with a girl swimming in a sea of Frenchmen. What I liked more was the mirror frames at the place we were at. Going to BC Bike Race next doesn't leave me with much appetite for buying stuff, but having said that, if a woman likes gold, jewels and flowers, Colombia produces (and encourages showering gifts of) all of those.
Plethora of emerald rings for sale. The sales lady didn't quite appreciate my logic that "Tori needs to come home to be considered for one". She said romance works the opposite way. I said I've never been accused of being a successful romantic in the classic sense. Not a good time to get into my shortcomings with love, women and romance.
This is a gold statue of a birth. I'm not sure if I was buying gold statues that a birth scene would be it, but I commend the uniqueness. Maybe it'd look good on a coffee table, the little head popping out had a pretty cute smile on its face. Tori and I had a humorous email thread going, at the very least she can stop by here one day for some emerald and gold shopping if that fits the bill for her. If "exotic" and "latin" and "lover" are needed on the stop, I'm not befitting of any of those by genetics or other pedigree.
We went for an early dinner at a nice place, I had entirely badass doses of gourmet seafood, plus a guayaba pie to leave me with loving memory. I'll leave the name aside, as they closed early and let the group that organized the dinner book a private room, in which we could ignore with a decent degree of safety the national prohibition this weekend (put in place to reduce riotous behaviour around the elections). Like us Canadienses are a riotous type, especially in international politics. Santos won, as expected. Colombia is now facing the first time that Colombians need visas to travel to Venezuela, and at the same time Venezuela is in an embarrassing situation of food shortage yet tonnes of food were found rotting in warehouses. Apparently intra-country trade has been stifled at the border, but now there's a special edict allowing 250mm eggs as the Venezuelans have no huevos. Gong show. I just hope he doesn't go too crazy, seeing Cambodia 30+ years after their craziness and seeing that it takes 30+ years to get on track is sad and scary. Let's hope a hole that deep isn't being dug. Bulk imports when the top decries a shortage doesn't work, a few minds, no matter how great, can't track a whole economy. Millions of minds observing many data points of supply and demand are more effective. We had a great time with malbec, red bull y grey goose, and Club Colombia watery American style beer kept us chatting. Some supermodels, err Colombian waitresses kept us going.
Other random Bogota awesomeness for the day was listening to a quality Don McLean American Pie remix in the driving rain (in my opinion, this is the "other" American anthem after The Star Spangled Banner, and further I side note that it never ceases to amaze me what Colombians offer for opinion or wishes that they could bring their entrepreneurism to Norte America - either America or Canada, and how we're viewed as world gifts), traffic light entertainment a notch above loser squegee kids - for example fire eaters and jugglers that stand shoulder on shoulder 3 people tall (top a woman) and juggle, and napping in my French chaize lounge a foot away from a panoramic window with the rain falling outside. Man I need more of that in life. Also there's a massive lingerie store just down the street (more importanly, across the street from the BBC - Bogota Beer Company) I'm gonna try to get a picture of the outside. Every window is full ad pictures stuck to it, and let's just say Colombia emphasizes the sexy in advertising.
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