That yellow trumpet-shaped flower

I thought I had seen it somewhere; I immediately asked the guide Luis if it was the ancestral flower of the Muisca gods of sleep; I could see his surprise when he saw that I already knew it.

“Of course, the floripondio borrachero or tijiki,” Luis answered me.

“How do you know about this?” he asked me smiling.

“I was on another tour in Bogotá with you on the tour to the highest waterfall in Colombia, La Chorrera, and the guide Marcela told me about this.” I answered.

“Let’s continue, my people, we still have a lot to discover!” Our guide told us.

The climb had been shocking and I also experienced the sudden and accelerated change in altitude with the popping and popping of my ears; going from 2600 meters above sea level to 3200 as Luis explained to us in less than 10 minutes. Minutes on the funicular was a unique experience and a wonderful view, but a change that our body was already making us feel now when walking with oxygen that was harder to absorb.

I have never been very religious and I had drunk Monserrate more than anything to have an excellent view to top off the photos of my trip through Bogotá and its surroundings; but when I saw this church and learned about its history, what was my astonishment when I learned about its age and imagined with each description how difficult and titanic the effort was at that time for its construction. I fell in love with the architecture and the mix of the high Andean forest with religion in the heart of the great Bogotá of more than 10 million inhabitants; we also walked through the corridor of crafts and typical foods, I found myself face to face with the Lord of Monserrate, the black virgin who gave her name to the sanctuary; but the beggar Jesus lying on a random bench, which had been made by a Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, his reality and nature; That showed us Jesus, the one who paid for everyone, the one who is in everyone, from the most earthly to those who, like me, do not believe, was what ended up making me fall in love even more with that very special place.

By Fredy Calderón