Another day spent at the Notaria 1. Leo liked to go with me, because it's right in the central part of downtown where a lot of tourists are targeted for pickpocketing, etc. But eventually, I did go a couple of times myself because Leo just wasn't home enough. The Notaria is in a colonial era building that is centuries old and the notary itself has existed since the 1500s. Anyway, this time I went by myself AND I found an awesome reproduction pottery shop nearby where I bought pottery later on.
But yeah, the notary isn't what you would call up to date technology-wise.
We rode the bus together that particular day and so I had a bird's eye view of this cool car.
And we passed one of the universities that Leo attended before he moved to the States. The end.
Michael Jackson impersonator street performer, just a half block from our house. We usually had a street performer playing the violin just around the corner from our house every Friday afternoon, close enough we could hear it with the windows open.
There were the statue guys and transformers a couple times too.
I thought this old hacienda was so pretty. There was still horses in the field next to it. Leo used to live around here as a kid and he was always turning old man on us when we drove through that area--"There was only fields here when I was a kid!" etc.
The only Gatorade worth drinking and not available in the State. SO sad!
The pretty corner by our house.
There are so many dog walkers in Bogotá. At the Spanish school I attended, one of the teachers said that over 80% of Bogotanos had a pet dog. I completely believe it. Outside the major hardware store (like Lowe's or Home Depot) there were dog crates you could keep your dog in while you shopped. But most places (like the mall) you could just bring your dog in with you. There was no such thing almost as a dogs not allowed. Also at Pricesmart there was these short little hitching posts that you could tie your dog to to leave outside while you shopped.
Roses delivered by motorbike.
Crazy monkey children. Efraim and Jubal lived in those trees every afternoon at the park while Nicolas played soccer. Sometime Jubal would play soccer (he played goalie) but not nearly as much as he climbed trees.
Oh, one time at the park, this guy had his soccer ball stuck in a tree (not these ones in the photos) super high up in the branches that were a long distance from the trunk. He was trying to throw another soccer ball up to dislodge it, and finally I sent Nicolas home to get Sebastian, and Sebastian climbed the tree (about 15-20 ft up) and crawled a little ways out onto the limb, and then the guy passed him this 10 ft pole that was left by crew doing construction I think, and Sebastian managed to stretch that out the rest of the way to the end of the limb and knock the soccer ball loose. There was a crowd old people by that point and they all cheered for him. A few of the old ladies remembered us after that and would always say hi, even months later.
Yeah, that is what you think it is. A sewer rat crawled up through our toilet. I don't think I'll ever like Flushed Away as much as I used to now. I think because sometimes we'd flush little bits of leftover soups that we'd didn't want to save down that toilet. Don't do that. Learn from our mistake. Anyway, Efraim found it sitting there. So I promptly took a photo, slammed the door shut and shoved a towel against the gap by the floor to keep it in. Then I proceeded to ask the door guard next door what to do, but discovered he wasn't from Bogotá and I couldn't understand him at all, so that wasn't helpful. I walked to the nearby Carulla's to see if they had poison or a trap, but came up with nothing. Then I called our bishop because I was desperate and didn't know what to do, and he said he would come in a bit and help get rid of it. And after all this, I felt very foolish and decided to cowboy up, so I had Sebastian help me catch it with his butterfly net and then I killed it with one of our exercise weights. Ugh. Definitely not a highlight of my life.
I posted on Facebook in real time and to my family to ask for advice and report that I might die, and as usual, my family was very helpful.
My husband said we could name her Zimza and let her move in with Elena, and most of my siblings said move back immediately and/or let Sebas catch it, and then Derek said we should let him cook dinner...awesome.
Kayli responded:
Farewell. I guess since I currently am in possession of your piano and camping stuff and canoes and trailer, and possession is 9/10s of ownership, I get to keep them all?
And my friend Allyson: Aw, cutie patootie rat had a sudden urge to weight lift not realizing he wasn't strong enough and so was smooshed.
Poor guy...lol
My kids were very disturbed and Nicolas got out his suitcase to start packing to go home to the States. Poor kid.
If nothing else, it gave us quite the story to tell.
There's SOOOOOO many photos in this post, and I thought of separating it out into more than one post. But I was lazy. Have fun scrolling forever.
This was one of my favorite places we went while in Colombia. It's just so different and stark--gorgeous!
And all the plants were so different.
Getting fresh water from the lake. The guide insisted we could just drink it, but we still filtered it. 🙃
Everyone was so photogenic that day, so of course I had to post all these photos. Look how pretty Isabel is!
Chingaza National Park is super fascinating because it's a páramo, a "neotropical high mountain biome" (considered a type of moor land) that's a biodiversity hotspot with lots of endemic species (kind of like cloud forests), and one of the last places where Andino bears live. We LOVED it! The frailejones soak in water out of the clouds and are a "water factory" providing drinking water to the major cities of Colombia. The whole place was super marshy and the plants were just so different than anything I've ever seen before. Super cool.
😍😍😍
Our guide told us that on a clear day you could see a volcano. But I forgot the volcano's name.
To go into Chingaza National Park, you have to take a guide. We hired this guide and man could he out hike us in his gum boots. However, I think we had more endurance in the long run, he looked pretty tired by the end, I mean he was only 75. 😉.We definitely gained a thousand feet elevation in only about ¾ of a mile, it was brutal. I wish we could have spent more time hiking. I felt we ended really early in the afternoon. Guides are required because Colombia's water supply is largely from the páramos, so they're very careful in protecting the environment there. No apple cores on the ground, that sort of a thing.
There's lots of documentaries about the páramos, and I definitely recommend watching one, but here's just a video promoting water conservation that I liked for the videography (in Spanish, lo siento).
This was on the walk up to the park. The van couldn't make it all the way up because, well look at the road.
It was a STEEP incline. Colombians apparently, don't believe in switchbacks.
You could press on any of the plants and they'd be filled with water.
STEEP!
Awww! Gorgeous view and gorgeous people.
This is Lando's favorite pose. I think Nicolas would have made a good Romantic era poet or something.
And Jubal doing the same pose.
We hiked around the Siecha Lakes, a group of three glacier lakes.
In the colonial period, the lakes were partly drained to extract the golden artefacts of the Muisca from the water. In 1855 a golden raft was found in one of the lakes, similar to the famous Muisca raft. It was named Balsa de Siecha or "Siecha raft" and pictured in the book El Dorado by Muisca scholarLiborio Zerda in 1883. The discovery of the raft made Zerda believe that the site of the initiation ritual of the new zipa was not in Lake Guatavita, yet in the Siecha Lakes.[5] Later, the raft was more-or-less legally taken from Colombia to Europe. The transporting ship burnt in the harbour of Bremen and the raft was lost. (According to Wikipedia).
It's kind of wild to see lakes at different elevations.
I swear this looked like a spectacled bear, but I really couldn't zoom in farther than this. Our guide said he saw a spectacled bear in the area the day before with a cub.
So what do you say, is it a spectacled bear and cub?
Here's a bear for reference. Okay, so Sebas and I just in depth discussed these photos and decided that yes, it was bears, and now Sebastian is so disappointed in me that I didn't point them out to everyone else. 😔😔😔
All the different stones represented different towns and lakes that were connected to the Muisca religion and were in some way connected to the stars as well.
Unfortunately, I couldn't catch much and Leo was translating like 3 words for every 100 the guide said.
Frailejones are well known for contributing to the world in water sustainability by capturing water vapor from passing clouds in its spongy trunk and releasing it through the roots into the soil,[2] thus helping to create vast high-altitude subterranean water deposits and lakes that will eventually form rivers. (Thanks, wikipedia).
The frailejones grow only one inch a year, so the ones were standing by are about 500 yrs old. Sebas, of course, licked one.
The animals found in Chingaza include the spectacled bear, deer, tapirs, pumas, Andean condors, cock-of-the-rocks, jaguars, turkeys, woolly monkeys, nocturnal monkeys, ocelots, and toucans. The large number of endemic species makes the Eastern Ranges one of the most important geographic regions for wildlife in Colombia.[2]
It is estimated that the total flora of the park may exceed 2,000 species. There are eight species of peat moss, which can absorb up to 40 times their weight in water.[4]. (Also all according to Wikipedia).
I'm a mom and a nurse, hopefully decent at both but that's debatable. I love history and family history and blogging is my way of keeping my family's history. Most of all, I love Leo (mi papacito esposo de Colombia) and Ana, Elena, Isabel, Sebastian, Nicolas, Jubal, and Efraim (mis hijos). My other passion is also dark and rico and from South America--that would be chocolate. Basically I like to eat chocolate, eat chocolate icecream, eat frozen hot chocolates from Dairy Queen, eat Peppermint Yorks, Junior Mints, and of course dark chocolate truffles. Okay, now that I've wiped the slobber off my chin from thinking about all of that, I'll get on to the rest of my blog. Oh, and I'm trying to learn Spanish but spend too much time blogging/sewing/reading/sewing instead.
"Managing a home involves much more than keeping a house clean, organized, and attractive. These skills are important...but these skills are only a means to an end. The paramount objective is to create a setting where family and friends are comfortable and happy, where there are good dinners and good times, where there is fun and laughter, where children acquire good habits and are taught life skills and how to be self-reliant and responsible, where challenges are faced by coupling temporal endeavors with eternal perspectives, where joy through gospel teaching and living prevails, where kindness and respect reign supreme, where love is strong enough to bind the family forever, and where children are nurtured toward eternal life."
--Daryl Hoole
“Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels.” Elder Boyd K. Packer - November 1993 Ensign
"Dear Prude,
Sober of not, I am forever yours."
-Percy French, a letter to his wife (1776)
"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories."
-John Wilmot
"Science advances, it's like a ladder--one step leads to another. But art isn't like that. Art is about being human. Children make art instinctively. Archaeologists know that when they find evidence of art, they're found evidence of human beings. It expresses all that is best in us--our desires, our hopes, our truth. And so, art changes, but it doesn't get better."
