Wednesday

We woke up early Wednesday because Juan & Cristina serve as Missionaries at the Bishop's Storehouse and they had to be there by 9:30 that morning. We stopped at the storehouse and they showed us around and saw what they did every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We then went to the Botanical Garden. It was absolutely beautiful. We saw the trees and foliage that grow locally and we saw these cardboard cutouts of the local animals. We actually saw some local vultures on the side of the road on our way back from the Laguna on Monday - and apparently, armadillos just run wild. After the garden we were going to attempt to go to Monserrate for the 2nd time. Well, not only did it rain, but it also hailed quite a bit. So, of course, attempt #2 failed. Instead of Monserrate we decided to go to Zipaquira instead. Pilar dropped us off at the bus stop and we started on our way. On the bus ride a young man started selling DVDs. We thought hey cool, Wall-E - that isn't even out on DVD yet! He let us try them out on his DVD player before we bought them and they were a very good price so we ended up buying about 12 different DVD's.

(We just watched a couple of them and we found out that they were actually recorded by a hand-held video camera by someone sitting in a movie theater. Occasionally you will see a person walk in front of the camera and the sound is horrible, so yes, we were scammed, but I guess 50 cents per DVD isn't a whole lot to be scammed out of.)

Back on track - We ended up missing our stop because Adam was busy talking and of course I didn't know where we were going but we finally made it to Zipaquira. Zipaquira is a city near Bogota and they turned an old salt mine into a cathedral. It was absolutely amazing (well dark and dreary as all cathedrals are but still amazing). We toured the cathedral and when we were done we walked out and it was pouring cats and dogs. I luckily brought my umbrella but I was the only one, so needless to say by the time we walked like 15 blocks to the bus we were completely soaked for our 90 minute bus ride back home.