Visiting Colombia

In November I visited my friend and fellow grad student Dave, who is doing research in Colombia. I flew from Caracas to Bogotá and from there we went on to visit Villa de Leyva and Barichara. Bogotá is a great city. Very different from Caracas. Although I know more people live in Bogotá, it doesn’t feel as “big city” as Caracas, probably because there’s more room to spread out. There are also more colonial buildings (many have been destroyed in Caracas from earthquakes) so it has a different feeling.
Here are a couple of pictures of Bogotá. One is one side of the main plaza. The plaza is huge and full of pigeons. The other picture is one of the streets in Candelaria, the old area of Bogotá, coming off the plaza.
While we were in Bogotá we went to a number of places, including La quinta Bolívar, which is the home given to Simon Bolívar by the newly independent Gran Colombia. We also rode the cable car to the top of the mountain where there is a church named Montserrat. It is a popular pilgrimage for lots of people on Sundays. They often walk up - we just walked down and got caught in a huge rainstorm. It was fun though. The next two pictures are of Montserrat. You can see there are a lot of people and vendors there.

We also went to the Gold Museum and the Botero Museum. The Gold Museum had lots of displays of pre-Colombian gold pieces from various Andean populations. The Botero Museum is dedicated to the works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. The picture I've included here not only has a typical Botero woman, but also a self-portrait of the artist.


The first little town we went to is Villa de Leyva. It's a couple of hours from Bogotá and a popular tourist destination for people from the capital city. Here's a picture of the main plaza and one of our hotel, which was an old mill from the 1600s.


The final town we visited was Barichara. It's even smaller and further away from Bogotá, and so not as crowded, but even more picturesque. I must have taken a million pictures. I just kept looking and thinking, "Oh, I have to have a picture of that." So I'll just try to pick a couple to share.
All in all, it was a great and much needed vacation. I found Colombia to be a great country and am really glad to have had the opportunity to visit. I probably would not have gone there on my own because I thought it was too dangerous. I actually felt like Bogota was safer or at least calmer than Caracas, with all the political stuff that goes on here. I had a number of Colombians tell me that it is much safer now than it used to be and that Americans always think it's dangerous until they go there. The flip side of that is that I have lots of caraqueños tell me how dangerous the city is now - but that it didn't used to be. Some also tell me they would never go downtown - which is where I go every day. Though I have heard about people getting hassled by the police for taking pictures downtown, which is why I haven't.

But I still need to travel more in my adopted country of Venezuela. I have some pictures of Caracas that I'll post later, but nothing outside of the city yet. I've been reading about Venezuela and have a long list of places I want to visit.

First Post

¡Feliz navidad y prospero año nuevo de Caracas!

OK, this is my first post to this new endeavor of blogging. I thought it might be fun to record my thoughts and experiences while I'm here in Caracas and, who knows, maybe even after I return to Albuquerque. For those who know me, most of this post will be repeats of what you have already heard or know about me. I'm a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and I'm in Caracas, thanks to a grant from the Fulbright Commission, to do dissertation research. Although I'm not quite the oldest grad student in the world, I'm probably close. I'm a returning student who got tired of "Corporate America" and decided to do something more fun. I'm a historian and my research topic is on women living within the slave society of Caracas between 1750 and 1854 (the year of emancipation in Venezuela). I spend most of my days reading old handwritten Spanish documents in archives in Caracas.

It's a few days after my first Christmas in Venezuela and all the archives are closed for the holidays. Just about everyone I know here in Caracas is gone - either back to the states, another country, or the beach - so I have time on my hands and not much to do. Hopefully someone will actually read this and respond, either through comments or email, for those of you who have my email address. The picture is a view from my apartment window of Avila - the big mountain on the north side of Caracas. A week or so ago I rode the cable car to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but hopefully the person I was with will email me the pictures she took and then I'll post them. The view of the city was spectacular but the view of the other side was clouds. I had hoped we would be able to see the Caribbean, but no luck that day. I'll have to go back again.