The Trans-Milenio

After yesterday´s long journey, I started today off with what Suffield students would call a double (or perhaps triple) sleep in. It was good to get a good long nights sleep before tackling Bogota!

Museums and cathedrals, cathedrals and museums. I spent all day going from one to another. There are big museums and little ones, big cathedrals and little chapels. Overall, it was a great day.

I started with the Museo Botero. Fernandez Botero liked things chubby. Everything he painted or scultped was round, plump, chubby, Rubenesque. Big men, big women, big fruit, big horses, big buildings, bug sculptures, big Adam and Big Eve, Big man on a big horse. Overall he liked a bit of meat on the bones...seems almost like a fetish really. The museum also has some other very famous works by Monet, Picasso, Pisarro, etc. It was pretty cool. The Museo Botero is part of a complex that includes several other museums and I was abl to learn about Colombia´s money development, some history, some natural history, etc. It was good.

I made my way to the Plaza de Bolivar and that where it started with the churches, every where you look you se some church with something cool inside. I think I went into five different ones today...that´s a lot of praying for this guy. Overall, some are very ornate, some are much more subdued, and many have been or are being restored. I found the Police Museum and the big exhibit on Pablo Escobar. Remember him, huge drug lord shot down as he was running on the roofs in Medellin? One of richest men in the world and actually used some of his money for good in Colombia...and a lot of it for bad. He has a great story. I finally made it to the Colombia´s most famous museum, the Museo del Oro (Gold Musuem). It was really impressive. They have an amamzing collection of gold artifacts and have done a really nice job of displaying the work ( with a little bit of English too). One of the most amazing parts of the exhibit was that you enter in a round room and the doors close. You begin to har a Shaman chant and the walls and floor are covered with ancient gold work if very cool designs. The lighting is set with the chanting and it is a very cool experience. One I won´t forget soon.

The last thing I wanted to tell you about today is the Trans-Milenio bus routes throutghout Bogota. They are half bus half subway (although all above ground). See I am usually a little nervous about taking buses in new places. You never quite know how they work. How much does it cost, where does it actually go, when do I need to get off, etc. The Trans-Milenio or T (sounds familiar) works like a subway, it has one fare and you can transfer buses and there are stations, and it has specific routes. but it is a bus subject to traffic and traffic lights. Supposedly it has its own roads free from the traffic of Bogota, but this only leads to Trans-Milenio traffic. There are thousands and thousands of buses using these special lanes. It is somewhat amazing that they have created this very organized system. You buy a card with the number of trips you need, you go through a turnstile and you find your bus. Seems easy? the problem is the nubmer of people who are taking these buses is incredible. Remember the images in Japan of people being pushed into the subway cars? It was the same thing. People are all over each other trying to get in and out, the buses are packed. But it is a cool and efficient way to move a million people a day. Really. They estimate a million people a day take it. Wow.