Glass Factory // Bogota, Colombia

I wish I had a name to give you for the glass factory, since it was such a fun part of my city tour of Bogota, but I don’t. I don’t even have the name of the store we visited after, where the products are sold and where I bought three small animal figurines. But this was such a cool part of my city tour and I have so many photos from it that I have to share anyway.

After we left Monserrate, Nestor asked if I’d be interested in visiting a glass factory. I absolutely love glass blowing and have visited places like this in the US, so I was excited to see a glass factory in action again. As soon as we arrived and parked at the side of the street in front of a nondescript building, a man stepped out. Nestor greeted him warmly and introduced me to a long-time friend of his, the owner of the factory. I ducked through the doorway to avoid bumping my head on the top of the low doorframe and was greeted by a man standing next to a cart, breaking apart pieces it glass. This factory buys recycled glass, breaks it down and then puts it into the fire to get the glass that they use and turn into glassware and the cute little figurines that I bought.

This factory does its work without the use of machines, so the owner employs a lot of people and they have an incredibly efficient system. It was so much fun to walk around and see the tools they used to create the different objects, like the piece of wood that was used to shape this glass, as well as the piece of the wood used to determine that this glass was the correct size.

As I walked around the factory, the men were so accommodating to the visitor in their midst. They paused so that I could snap a photo and even pulled me over and suggested that I take a video of someone putting the base on a piece they worked on. (I’ll share that soon. I don’t have a lot of video footage from Colombia—I’m still not used to recording video and it doesn’t always come to mind!—but I do have some, so I’m going to put what I have together into a Colombia video.)

It was so cool to see how they worked together. They each have a job to do, which allows them to create a lot of product in a short amount of time.

Glassblowing is always mesmerizing to me, but to watch this group move around and work together was even more so. I would have been happy to sit off to the side and watch the glassblowing, but we had more to see. Once we left, we stopped at the store that sells the products and then we were off to La Candelaria, the old city. This part of Bogota really spoke to me and I’m looking forward to telling you all about it!

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