We got up a little later after yesterday’s festivities. Juan prepared a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, empanadas and fruit with yogurt. We then got organised, and Luke, Juan, Sarah, Christine and I made our way into the centre of Bogota so that we could do some exploring. 

The first stop on our journey was Monserrate, we took the train to the top of the mountain as the cable car doesn’t run until 12, much to Christine’s relief. The views from the top were nothing less than spectacular. We took some photographs and then ran the drone. The drone was not happy about running at such a high altitude and had a big warning sign on its screen, having said that it worked perfectly and we were able to get a couple of great shots, we had just finished packing away the drone when one of the caretakers came to let us know that we were not permitted to fly drones at the top of the mountain. No problem we had all the video we needed. We took the train back down the mountain and continued with our exploration. 

Juan and Sarah took us to a trendy little neighbourhood where there was street art on many of the buildings and trendy little cafes, bars and restaurants everywhere. We tried Chicha, a traditional fermented corn drink that they were selling in one of the bars, it had an interesting fermented flavour that was not unpleasant. By this stage Juan’s girlfriend, Nicole, had joined us on our adventure. We continued on to the Museum of Money which unsurprisingly told of the history of money in Colombia through time. I asked one of the ladies who were manning the displays what had happened for the currency to suddenly jump from the relatively normal denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 pesos to the current large notes around the early to mid 90s. She was unsure, so I decided that I would ask Diego later as he, like myself, would have lived through that time and may be able to shed some light on the story. 

We went to get some lunch at a restaurant with really low ceilings, delicious food and a great atmosphere. We chatted with the waiters and some of the other patrons while we were there. After lunch we wandered through the markets to pick up some souvenirs to take back for friends and family back home. We picked up some great hand made bags from a lady at the markets, we got one for Charlotte, Luke’s partner, Kaitlyn, Christine’s daughter and Lillian, one of our friends from work. We also picked up a shirt for Brandon, Christine’s son, some friendship bracelets, key chains and Colombian lanyards for Luke and Myself to use with our work keys as a part of our uniform to advertise Spanish back at the school.  

After all of our adventures we decided that it was time to head back to the house. We caught the subway for a bit, and then caught a bus, as we drove along the streets of Bogota one of the things that stood out was the quality of the street art. There were some absolutely spectacular works of art on some of the walls and tunnels that we passed on our way back to Diego and Erica’s place, I was in ore of the quality. 

On the way back to the house Juan and Sarah organised for us to try yuca, cassava, a type of bread with cheese, another pan with cheese and some empanadas with meat filling. All of these snacks were delicious. By the time we arrived back at the house Diego had prepared an enormous feast for dinner, it was hearty, delicious and well needed after our day of adventures. We chatted into the evening and touched on a wide range of subjects from education to the current level of development that was going on in and around various places in Colombia. Erica was chatting animatedly in Spanish and Diego and Juan would tell her to slow down now and again. Thankfully by this point in the trip we were mostly able to keep up.