On the subject of gold (lots and lots of it!), blackberries, and Montserrate.

This is an imperfect picture taken inside Bogota's Gold Museum. This particular object (made entirely of gold) depicts a floating raft that carries a Muisca chieftain and his crew. It was found at the bottom of a lake, as it was cast in the water hundreds of years ago as part of a religious ritual. This single item is probably worth more than everything we own, seeing as we are too poor.

We arose early today, eager to go eat breakfast with our friend Maria Angelica and her awesome family. We enjoyed some scrambled eggs, sausage, and cornmeal arepas, then spent the next couple of hours catching up. Like nearly every Colombian family, this family treated me and my mission companions extremely well, and a lot of incredible memories were made here.

Today was no different! Not only did they feed us and give us little gifts, the "abuelita," the family's elderly mother, insisted on picking a bunch of fresh blackberries for us before we left. Note the clear jealously in the little girl's glare.

Afterwards we caught a taxi to the Gold Museum. The museum itself is huge, and the entire building is secured like a bank. Every room that we entered we passed through huge safe doors at least a foot thick. Apparently there is so much gold here that Colombia counts it as part of their treasury (think USA and Fort Knox). The gold here comes from various tribes all over Colombia, and much of it is fashioned into really remarkable objects. What is more remarkable is that most of this gold was sacrificed into lakes, or buried with important individuals. Just look at this room--all this gold was recovered from one or two Colombian lakes, and the picture only shows a quarter of just one room. This is a four story museum!

After the Gold Museum we headed to Montserrate, a Catholic sanctuary that is built high in the mountains that border Bogota. Just to get to the top we had to take a five minute cable car ride up to nearly 10,000 feet in elevation. The views were spectacular--you can see the entire city from up there.

Of course, this being both a sacred place and a tourist destination, the sanctuary boasted an enormous, loud bazaar:

As well as more bathrooms that wanted to charge you to do your business.

We finished off the day at one of two gourmet restaurants. We were lucky enough to be seated right by a corner window, so our ajiaco, steak, and desserts came with a view.

Did I mention that it was cold? It couldn't have been more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. That didn't bother us too much, however, since we're heading back to the beach tomorrow! A quick morning flight and we'll be back in Cartagena, where we'll spend a few days before our trip comes to a close. We'll be coming at you from there tomorrow!