Thewesternprovinceblog

Hola todos! For my last day in Bogotá I decided to hop an Uber back down to la candelaria and go check out a few museums in the morning.

First stop is the Gold Museum or Museo del Oro. 🪙. I arrive at it’s actually gratis para domingo which is excellent news for me save some cutter.

It’s a 3 story museum and there is a lot to see and read up about though today I was a little short on time so I didn’t read everything though it was more about the ancient tribes that lived in Colombia before the Spanish conquest such as the Muisca, Tairona etc. There are a lot of exhibitions which show the various artefacts and personal articles made by these tribes. In short what we know was the land was (and still is) abundant with Gold, Silver, copper and platinum – all the stuff which goes into creating money and many of the consumer goods which we take for granted in the west today.

I wrapped up that tour and then took a walk through Plaza Bolivar. Get some photos then get touted by some shifty looking fellas who would do this thing where they would point to the floor like you dropped something and they try to come up to you and make chit chat, presumably then youd get asked if you want to buy powder or something. I didn’t engage and gave them the hand ✋ and not even said anything. Not sure what the game was there but was not in the mood for more of this.

Taking a walk out past these hombres I come across another museum called “Museo casa de moneda”. As you can expect this was an old minting house turned museum. Go inside they have all the old presses there and an exhibition of the history of money through Colombia’s time as a Spanish, colony up to independence and into the modern age. 

It has within coins from different eras and a detailed explanation of how much care and precision went into smelting coins for currency. Gold and silver content had to be very precise at each stage of the smelting and when the ingots were smelted again and turned into coins they had to be carefully weighed again for purity and to make sure it was all exactly to what the law said it was. This was of course the old fashioned way of doing it – back from the days when a dollar was actually worth a dollar. Modern times it’s a whole lot simpler – fed printer go BRRRRRR and keep on printing till we go full Weimar Germany once again! 

My museum visit was kept fairly short as I had a catch up with my pal Simon once again. We chatted about various things including the upcoming journey into Inca Country which looks like it will be difficult but more to come when we get there.

Later that night I met up with Alejandro, a man I met back in Medellin who is an actor and is from Bogotá, he was back in town so met up with him and some of his pals and we had a few beers at this street rave. The rave was a big celebration – they changed noise laws in this district which meant that parties can now go on till 6 am as opposed to 3 am! It was a good but short catch up. We then went out separate ways as I had to get myself sorted for the journey to Ibagué tomorrow.