Mucho Gusto!
I knew today was going to be a great day when, just as we were being seated on the verandah of the chocolate museum for breakfast (yes, Oliver is never coming home) which overlooks a beautiful courtyard with a large Spanish moss draped oak, ‘The Saints, Go Marching In’, starts to play over the speaker.
It was a day full of laughter, surprise, and a bit of New Orleans funk.
In One Day:
Only in Colombia could you wander through cobblestone streets shaded by colorful bougainvillea and peek through courtyard doors trying to find the source of school children’s laughter being carried over the white washed walls.
Only in Colombia could you see dogs running through a 500 year old convent’s museum and see their little wet noses pressed to display cases holding priceless relics of Saints such as Saint Joseph, Thomas Aquinas, Saint Christopher, … and other first century Christians.
Only in Colombia can you sit and visit with a nun on an ancient plaza and then twenty minutes later be in an ancient field of phallic relics that were part of a pagan fertility cult, which adjoin an ancient sun clock.
A sacred place of the Muisca’s pre-Columbian culture and considered to be the Stonehenge of Colombia. The astronomical and fertility features are intertwined in determining when to plant and when to reap the harvest.
Only in Colombia can you spend an afternoon at a winery sipping great wine and then walk through a house that the Mad Potter of Biloxi, George Ohr, would have been proud to call home.
Only in Colombia could you hire a private car company and agree on a price and time to leave and then 8 hours later the driver comes to your hotel to tell you that he did not realize the place that he were taking you was twice as far as he originally thought. So you must take the bus, which not one bus company knows what time the bus leaves or which bus company drives there and we have to be there tomorrow.
Only in Colombia is this not disappointing because after a day of being immersed in such culture and beauty, where every dog you see has a smile and every person a warm greeting, it is impossible not to smile and be so thankful for such a beautiful day. As the Colombians say, “Mucho gusto!”