Day 13 in Colombia!

Today Owen had us up early again. He sure is an early riser! After an early breakfast at El Refugio, we had to get ready for a trip to Mount Monserrate, where there is a Catholic church up in the mountains of Bogotá that you need to take a cable car to reach. We loaded up a big van (with just the Sibley’s and us) and made the wild drive up to the foot of the mountain.

Along the way, the driver stopped by the side of the road so we could take a picture looking down on the city of Bogotá.

After buying tickets, we all piled into the cable car and rode it up to Mount Monserrate.

There sure were some good views…

After getting to the top, we first checked out the church...

We then wandered through the market, which was full of shops and food stands. The Sibley’s were pretty adventurous and tried out some jumbo roasted corn on the cob which they said was very tasty. Before leaving, we checked out the statues and the views of the mountain and Bogotá.

After riding the cable car down to the bottom...

...we found our driver who took us to Old Bogota.

Owen having fun in the car

After navigating the very narrow streets of the old neighborhood, the driver asked us if we were going to eat lunch. We said yes so he stopped the car and proceeded to back the car up 3 blocks (avoiding oncoming traffic). He then stopped in front of an old building that he said would be a good place to eat lunch.

We walked in the front door and almost knocked over a table. There were about 4 tables, all filled, and a spiral staircase leading upstairs. The waitress told us to head up the stairs, which we did, expecting to find a lot more seating. Nope, there were about 8 more tables all packed in. It was definitely the smallest restaurant we had ever seen! They cleared a table in the back for us, and the 4 of us (plus Owen and Lucas) crammed into tiny chairs.

We expected the waitress to bring us menus. Instead she listed a bunch of food in Spanish, which we thought we were supposed to choose from, but later found out that there was only one entrée they were serving. Lunch was very good and only $6,000 pesos per person! (which is only around $3 US dollars!!)

The entire upstairs of the resturant

Heading down the very narrow spiral staircase

The outside of the restaurant (it was only around 9 feet wide!)

After lunch we were planing on walking around Old Bogotá, but our driver was anxious to get us back to El Refugio, so back to the residencia we headed.

The rest of our day was pretty typical, playing with Owen, dinner and bedtime. Although we did find out that we were assigned to Court 14, which we've heard takes an average amount of time to get sentencia (about 4-5 weeks following BienEstar). We're just happy we didn't get one of the super slow courts!