The Yancey Family: Adventures in La Candelaria

My $20 street emerald

We joined up with our neighbor Sarah and her daughter for an adventure on Saturday. We ordered a taxi and took a ride to Candelaria, which is the historic center of Bogota. All 5 of us squished into the back seat of the taxi. It took about an hour to get to our destination. An hour of crazy driving in a taxi. As soon as we arrived, we walked a little ways and could see several old churches. It was amazing. Bogota is the emerald capital of the world, and Ben was hit up right away by a man selling emeralds. We still don't know if they are real or not, but Ben haggled with him and bought me an emerald for about $20. my birthstone is an emerald and I have always wanted an emerald ring. I don't know if the one we bought was real or not, but it's pretty cool and a fun story. The man that sold us the emerald kept following us and trying to get us to buy more. We had to work hard to ditch him.
We stopped for lunch at a little hole in the wall cafe. Sarah asked for a menu and was told something like they only had soup. She ordered soup and Ben ordered rice and beans and meat for us. Sarah's soup came out with a huge beef bone in it. We laughed a lot about it, she finally got brave enough to try it. She said it was pretty good, but she couldn't eat much. We had arepas with our lunch, they were amazing, they tasted like cheesecake. I think they had cream cheese and a lot of sugar in them.
We walked to the gold museum, or the Museo de Oro. It's a museum that is owned by the central bank of Colombia. It was a very nice museum, with lots of historical gold pieces and other artifacts. There were security guards every where and they seemed to follow us around. The kids had enough and so we left and continued our tour of the area. We walked towards the main square, there were tons of people. We saw a street performer dressed as some futuristic space man, he made noise with every movement. Ben threw a coin in his can and he came over and shook the kids hands. I don't think Diego cared too much for it. A little farther and there was a man dressed as a soldier, he was painted green. If you threw a coin in his can he would march and wave his Colombian flag, or salute. We made our way to Bolivar square and had to try some of the street food. They had fried plantain chips. They were huge, and very good. There was some kind of protest going on in the square. There was someone yelling and then they would play music. It was a very peaceful protest. I kept looking around at all of the amazing old buildings. There were people and vendors everywhere. There were people offering llama rides and selling corn to feed the thousands of pigeons. Sarah bought some corn and she and the kids fed the pigeons. It was kind of creep having pigeons surround us, think the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" kind of creepy. Diego sat on a llama and we took lots of pictures. When the noise became too much, we walked further and saw the presidential palace. There were military officers everywhere with M-16's, they checked our bags as we passed through the gates to walk on the street to the side of the palace. We stopped and took our picture with one of the soldiers standing guard. There were some places where we couldn't even stand on the sidewalk because of security reasons. There were so many beautiful views of the streets and the mountains. We walked further up until we found Sanctuary of our lady of mount Carmel. It was stunning. It is red and white striped with lots of gold and bright colors. We walked up and around then came back down an old cobblestone street. We walked back to the San Agustine church and were able to go inside and look around. It was incredible, the ornate interior, paintings and sculptures that were everywhere. It was beautiful. We walked across the street and saw the back side of the presidential palace. The gardens surrounding the palace were beautiful. We walked back through the square and it was even more crowded, there were lots of punk looking people. Lots of mohawks and colored hair. We made our way back to the emerald museum. It was on the 23rd floor of a huge building. We were escorted upstairs and paid for our tour. We had an English speaking tour guide. We watched a movie and then were escorted through a mock mine shaft with different types of emerald mining areas. Our tour guide talked fast and in a very monotone voice, he was hard to understand. He then showed us around a room with display cases of emeralds. Emeralds are beautiful. The displays were interesting, but not quite worth the money we paid for the tour. The museum is privately owned, it's someones private collection. It was kind of strange. Diego filled his diaper something awful and the emerald museum's bathroom was out of order. Luckily the gold museum was just across the street and they let us back in to use the bathroom and change diapers. This kid has some impressive diapers. Sarah and I had a man who was very drunk tie bracelets on our wrists and wanted us to pay 50,000 pesos (about $25) We laughed and he kept dropping the price. He was getting pretty angry with us, so we took off the bracelets and set them at his feet. He kicked them away and we had to just keep walking. It was getting dark and the streets were getting a little crazy. We decided that we better feed the kids so that they could just go to bed when we got home. We stopped at a little cafe, and I mean little. We made our way to the back and squished into a little tiny spot with our strollers. There was a man right by us who was laying tile. It was a little squishy. We had hamburger arepas. Hamburgers on arepas with cheese and french fries. Diego loves french fries. We might get some meat on him yet. After dinner, we walked out to the street and ordered a taxi. Our driver was kind of funny, Ben tried to tell him where we were going and the driver kept yelling "what?". Ben had to pull up the address of our hotel on his phone and show the driver. Our ride home wasn't as long, but it was just as crazy. There were times I found myself holding my breath, or I couldn't watch because I was certain we were going to be side swiped. We finally made it back home. Diego was a good boy and went right to bed. We were able to Skype with the kids for a few minutes and then it was off to bed for Ben and I. It was a long, fun day of adventures. Thank you Sarah for suggesting La Candelaria.