LAST DAY FOR ME

I wake up early (as in 5am…) and work on my blog, wondering whether travel bloggers do this because they’re terminally jetlagged and awake when others aren’t. Whatever the reason, it’s a satisfying thing to do for your own self. When you read your stories and look at the photos, your travels and experiences jump to life even years after they happened. I used to do scrapbooks before there were laptops. I’d clip and glue brochures – never photos, that was cheating – and write my text in a notebook bought at our first stop with multicolored pens acquired during the trip also. Whenever I look at one of those today the trip comes alive with all the little moments I’d forgotten.

It’s my last day in Bogota. Oswaldo will stay on for his conference and only leave on Sunday afternoon. I pack my suitcase after the lovely hotel breakfast, 

and then we head out in the rainy streets to see the Museo de las Esmeraldas, which turns out to be housed in a modern office building near the Museu del Oro. The streets are lined with colorful vendors, 

but also with soldiers in full military gear and policemen walking dogs with big muzzles. They are there to detect the bombs that have fortunately not yet reached Bogotá.

I photograph several and even spot a female Malinois, much darker than Thor, but with the same black face and wide-set eyes. The dogs never look at me, not even when I bark to make them look at the camera!

The emerald museum also has a lot of security. No wonder when you see the treasures inside. On the 23rd floor our guide takes us through a narrow, dark tunnel showing different types of emerald ore and explains about the peculiarities of the Colombian emeralds (not volcanic, like the Brazilian once, and therefore with less inclusions), as well as the working conditions in the mines. In some workers deal with temperatures reaching 45-60 degrees Celsius, this 600m under the ground, and in others they move in water to their knees; their dream of finding that huge life- changing million dollar rock keeps them going.

We emerge into a showroom filled with emeralds, in the brute and lapidated, and in colors ranging from a deep bluish pine green to a watery mint. It’s a fascinating sight and we ask many questions. 

Afterwards we join the lunch crowd on the street, stopping to buy odds and ends, 

but heading back to the hotel where Oswaldo has to change rooms. He gets a new room on the same floor, but with a view to the mountains, which reminds me strongly of Thimpu in Bhutan.

We have lunch in a great place, El Olivar, just around the corner, and eat our best meal in Bogota: mushrooms cooked with herbs in a buttery sauce, a salad with all the crunchy vegetables you can imagine, including nuts, and finally grilled salmon with pure of a yellow root and a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers. All so simple and so good.

There’s only time left to return to the hotel and brush my teeth and grab my suitcase. Mauricio, the driver,  is waiting outside, Today there’s no traffic and we have a tranquil trip, chatting in Spanish about our dogs – he has three - and of taking his family to Lake Guatavita, which they'd never seen, after having gone there with us.

The airport is another story, but then they always are. As I leave Bogota a huge full moon is rising over the mountains, the same moon that I will see when I land in São Paulo 6 hours later in the middle of the night local time.

Here are the last pictures including some of the street-vendors:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157629232717795/    Hasta luego!