Paloquemao Market Scenes

In the great market in Bogotá, Colombia

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Paloquemao Market in Bogotá

The Paloquemao Market in Bogotá is large, colorful, crowded, and filled with gorgeous flowers and yummy foods. For the next few days I'll be posting photos from this down-to-earth, very photogenic place.

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Museo de Oro

The Gold Museum in Bogotá has one of the greatest collections of New World gold objects, excellently displayed.

Shadows cleverly cast to show how the ornaments were worn.

A reenactment of the ritual of throwing precious gold objects in the river, 

to be revealed to a new shaman.

Our museum guide, Victoria, who explained all this to us.

Another Side of Bogotá

So far I've shown mainly the attractive tourist side of Bogotá. But it's a huge city (more than 8 million people) in a country with many problems from drugs, violence, etc. So our tour went to a not-so-nice part of town, just below a favela on a steep hillside, to visit the "Los Niños de los Andes" Foundation, where homeless teen-age boys with drug problems (often living in the streets and sewers) are rescued and rehabilitated. This work is supported, in part, by the Road Scholar Foundation.

A small section of the favela

The electricity distribution system in the neighborhood.

Some of the boys, with whom we had a good Q&A about drugs and other issues 

in Colombia and the USA.

Non-Tourist Bogotá

On the second day of our tour we left the tourist-centered Candelaria district of Bogotá and drove across the city through less prosperous neighborhoods. A couple of shots from the bus window:

Evening Sky over Bogotá

From Monserrate Hill at dusk

Nature and Civilization

On/from Monserrate Hill, Bogotá