Our outing to Museo del Oro

Hola from Kristin! We had a good but tiring day today. Actually, I shouldn't complain- Chad let me go back to bed after early morning Josh duty and I slept until 9AM. We had to make our first emergency trip to McDonald's for me today. I skipped breakfast and then lunch was a cabbage salad and a casserole thingy with the main ingredient as potatoes. But I must say that it was a mighty tasty burger and fries!!

We requested a driver that could speak English today, and Mario picked us up around 2PM. Our drive to the Museo del Oro was much longer than I expected- at least a half hour- and the curvy roads and crazy driving had me a little green in the back seat. Josh, of course, fell right asleep. Mario came into the museum with us, and much to our surprise, was our personal tour guide.
The Museo del Oro, or gold museum, is one of Bogota's boasts. According to our guide book, the Gold Museum "contains more than 34,000 gold pieces from all the major pre-Hispanic cultures in Colombia. It is arguable the most important gold museum in the world." Colombia had a rich resource of gold that the natives put to use. Mario gave us a geography and history lesson while describing all of the gold pieces in the museum. When Christopher Columbus landed on the northern coast of Colombia (where the country's name came from) he was greeted by natives wearing and bearing everything gold you could think of. Some of the natives told of a place where there was a lake filled with gold. It was where the legend of 'El Dorado' came from. The gold caused the Spanish to push into and occupy the country in search of 'El Dorado' and gold. He also told us of the various tribes and the geographic regions they occupied. We both learned a lot about Colombia AND about being parents!

We did come prepared with a bottle. Josh let us know loudly when it was feeding time, right in the middle of an exhibit. Josh seemed to like the lights and the sparkly gold! After passing Josh to Chad, Chad was initiated into a new level of parenting- Josh's diaper leaked! Mario told us the bathroom was very far away, so on a bench in the Museo del Oro, Josh was stripped down and changed completely. Chad, on the other hand, did not bring a spare outfit and had a soggy museum tour from this point! On the way home, Mario drove us around downtown Bogota. You'll see pictures that Chad took from the car in our photo gallery. Mario drove us through La Candelaria, the oldest part of the city.

We also posted pictures of our interesting dinner from tonight. We had ajioco, served in an individual skillet, it is a dish that both of the girls recognized. It was chicken, potatoes, part of a cob of corn, and a liquid broth. Our side dish was slices of avocado, which everyone salted and ate with their hands. Then for dessert we had dolea con arequipe. I give a lot of the food strange looks and so people are always explaining it to me! This dessert tasted like a thin ice cream cone with caramel in the middle. I personally could hit McDonald's again, but we did stock up with snacks just in case...