My wife and I had a wonderful time visiting the dynamic city of Bogotá; meeting conference contributors from Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Canada; and enjoying the warm hospitality of the faculty and students of the Universidad Piloto de Colombia.

While touring the city and the surrounding countryside with the group in a bus, it was difficult to stop for any length of time to draw but I did manage to sketch a few scenes. This first view shows what is possible even if you only have a few minutes to draw. While the bus dropped us off on one corner of the central square in Zipaquirá and drove around to pick us up in the opposite corner, I managed to quickly sketch this view of the cathedral, noting the way the slope of the square was integrated by mounding the brick pavement around the palm trees.

After a tour of the Catedral de Sal and a quick run through Zipaquirá, we drove to the historic Hacienda San Cayetano for a BBQ lunch. This is the courtyard of the hacienda, where a local Colombian noted that we unfortunately transport forms and traditions that are not compatible with the local climate. In this case, the water feature of the courtyard that worked in warmer, dryer climates wasn’t quite as effective in the humid conditions of the high plateau on which Bogotá is located.

A few days is never enough time to fully understand the culture of a place and this is even more true when visiting a country as diverse as Colombia but I hope to return again in the future.