Colombia Part 1 Cartagena and Bogota

Colombia is FABULOUS! I could live here in a second….the first thing I want to say is that the danger factor is really overrated. Yes, it may be bad for those involved in the shadier things, but for regular tourists, no problem! We feel no different here than in any of the other countries we´ve been. The people here explained that the current president has done a lot to improve security in the country. Yes, we see military guards frequently on the roads, but they are there to protect and help. Also, the Colombian people here are fantastic! So helpful, kind and warm…as you will soon learn.

We DID have to fly to from Panama City to Cartagena because there are no buses. You can take a cargo ship (and one of my friends did, but we haven´t heard back from him yet), but they advise against it because sometimes the cargo ships run drugs and of course, if you happen to be on the ship when pirates arrive with their automatic weapons to take those drugs, well, just imagine…..I mean, we like adventure, but that´s a little over the top, even for us! So, I know what you are saying, ¨Bonnie just said that Colombia is not dangerous, yet she and Stacy wouldn´t cross the Panama-Colombia border by land.¨ I didn´t say Colombia was perfect, I said it´s fine for tourists. Of course it is not fine for tourists to wander into known drug trafficking areas. So we didn´t.

We arrived in Cartagena and Tia Monica was there at the airport to pick us up! Tia Monica is my ex-husband Erick´s aunt, both from San Andres island. (San Andres is a tiny little island in the Caribbean closer to Nicaragua, but owned by Colombia. Of course my Nicaraguan friends will protest that comment as it used to belong to Nicaragua.) A more wonderful person than Tia Monica you will never meet. She opened her arms and her home to both of us and treated us like queens! Tia Monica is an energetic 70-year old and the very first woman tour guide in Cartagena.

Cartagena…a gorgeous city sitting on the edge of the Caribbean sea, Latin music playing everywhere, smiling happy people. Colorful buildings, lots to do and see. Our first night we went to a birthday party in a relative´s house. We danced up a storm with the uncles and cousins at the birthday party and had a great time. The next day Tia Monica showed us all the sites, explained all the details and history. We even went to an Inquisition Museum that had all sorts of real torture instruments! Everyone in Cartagena knows Tia Monica and loves her. We got in free to every place because we were with her…what a treat! We went back, ate and went out dancing at a nightclub with Monica´s daughter Luz Marina and her boyfriend Gustavo. EVERYONE dances in Colombia. I believe there is not a man in Colombia who doesn´t dance! Children dance before they walk!

Another day we went with Tia Monica, her daughter Luz Marina and her granddaughter Monica to Playa Blanca, a lovely beach with warm, turquoise water. The adventure was not the beach. The adventure was getting there. After a 45 minute bus ride, we arrived in a small town called Pasa Caballo (I could live here!) to take a ferry. A ferry like we had never seen before! It seemed like just a slab of concrete. But cars, people, motorcycles and even buses could fit on the slab. But how was it going to move? It didn´t have any visible means of motion, not a motor, not an oar, nothing. All of a sudden we started moving! But how? At first we couldn´t figure it out. But then, behind us, we saw one man in a type of native canoe with a little motor pushing the huge ferry with a stick. I hope we have a picture of that, but I´m not sure. Once we got to the other side of the river, we hopped into a broken down, holes in the floor, pieces falling off truck from the last century that spewed gasoline and bumped and bounced and made horrible wrenching noises the next 22 kilometers to the......gorgeous, turquoise water, white sand beach lined with quaint restaurants. Stacy tried her first coco loco at this place and she was quite glad she did. I had tried them on San Andres island and insisted her trip would not be complete without it. For those of you who don´t know what a coco loco is, it is a real coconut, mixed with a lot of aguardiente (the cheapest liquor in the country), the natural coconut juice, and flavourings, in this case pineapple juice and strawberry syrup. They are really strong...but this one seemed to have no effect on Stacy. Not to get too carried away with one story ´cause we have so much to tell, suffice it to say we had a wonderful day here.

We had one especially exciting night in Cartagena. While Stacy was taking a shower, I was drying my hair. I don´t know if it was because I plugged my hair dryer into an extension cord or what, but suddenly I smelled and saw smoke coming from across the room. Next, my hair dryer stopped working! Then.....I saw flames! Stacy´s suitcase was on fire! I guess you never know what you are going to do in a crisis until you are in one, but I didn´t say a word, didn´t yell, nothing. I calmly went over to the fire and stamped it out with my foot. When Stacy came back, I calmly told her what happened. We turned her suitcase over and sure enough.....the fire had eaten a hole through it (fortunately not the most functional part of the suitcase). Good thing I was in the room at the time or the whole house could have burned down. But our gracious hosts took the whole thing in stride and actually told their friends and neighbors and were laughing about it. Speaking of suitcases, both of our roller bags are taking a beating. Stacy´s handle broke upon arrival at the airport. BUT, Luz Marina´s boyfriend, Gustavo, was able to break it more to make it operational, for now anyway.

We moved on to Bogota in a 20-hour bus ride. To be fair, these are not chicken buses. They are huge, plush vehicles where the seats go almost all the way back, you get to see four lousy movies and there is even a bathroom (which you don´t want to have the misfortune of sitting next to). But Stacy and I have learned to love these bus rides. We are finally able to catch up on our sleep because try as we might, they won´t let us dance on the bus! So these bus rides are a wonderful way of slowing us down. We read, we talk, we plan, we get to meet the native people (because we have not run into a single person from the U.S. here, nor many tourists from anywhere for that matter) who are wonderful and helpful and we view the unbelievably gorgeous countryside! Mountains, jungles, cloud forests, raging rivers, waterfalls, sunsets, smiling people in their humble homes, we´ve seen it all. We buy food before we get on the bus because it is never clear whether they are going to stop or not and sometimes they don´t! Supplies include fresh Delicious and Granny Smith apples from Washington state, fresh baked Colombian bread, cheese, coca cola and my little silver flask, which is conveniently filled with the local rum. (Still think Flor de Cana Gran Reserva from Nicaragua is the best).

Bogota is a fabulous place!!! We stayed in the old part of the city, with cobblestone and brick streets. With 9 million people, this is a major city. Nice mixture of old and new. Our little hotel room ($17.50 USD for two people) was a delight with hard wood floors, two little beds with FIVE blankets on each one! Yes folks, Bogota is about 10,000 feet above sea level and it´s cold. Did I bring warm clothes? One jacket, one pair of socks, one long-sleeved shirt and the rest tank tops and crop pants. Did I forget about Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and especially Bolivia, where things are really freezing?????? Guess so. Stacy enjoyed the cool weather, but I will definitely have to buy some things to keep me warm in the rest of the trip. We spent some time in Bogota with my ex-brother-in-law Edgar, his wife Nancy and their adorable little one-year old Hannah. We took the bus to Edgar´s house and have to share this little story with you to show you just how kind the people are in Colombia. We gave the bus driver Edgar´s address, which was very far away. In fact, the bus ride took an hour and 25 minutes and we were in the city the whole time!!! The bus driver told us that when we got off we would have to walk six blocks to get to Edgar´s house. Understand that this was a regular, huge city bus. As the ride continued, the sun set and it got dark out. The driver finally announced that we were approaching our stop. However, he didn´t stop! The driver took the big bus off its route and dropped us off right at Edgar´s house! This is the second time in Latin America (the first time was in Granada, Nicaragua) when the bus driver just decided to drive us precisely to where we were going!

Edgar is part of a musical group called K-Y-O who is just becoming famous. I was once watching Latin MTV in my house in Nicaragua and who did I see on a video, but Edgar!!! Now touring all over South America and just finishing up their first U.S. tour in Florida, it was fun talking to him about his rise to fame and watching his music videos because I knew him, Billy and Sammy (the other guys in the band) 12 years ago when they were just young single guys on San Andres Island with a dream. A dream that is just now coming true. They took us up to Cerro de Monserrate, and I don´t want to keep using the words fabulous, wonderful, beautiful, marvelous, fantastic, but I guess sometimes there just aren´t words to describe a place or person. This location is the highest spot in Bogota, so you get to see the city spread out before you, with the mountains surrounding the city. On top of that, there is a church there and everything was decorated for Christmas in such a great way it just made you smile to see it. We went just before sunset, and saw a sky phenomenon we had never seen before. The combination of sun, clouds, shadows, etc. made a striped sky! Hopefully that photo came out. When the lights came on in the city and in the area where we were, it was magnificent! (See? There I go using boring words again.)

The next day we took a walking tour of Bogota by ourselves using our very outdated Lonely Planet guide. The food you ask? Mixed bag in Bogota. The first day we were in a hurry and ate at a local fast food place. We had a Mexican taco and burrito. They were identical. And they were both horrible. We went to another place that seemed to serve us chicken stew from a can, like the kind you buy from Hormell. However, we did manage to find a couple of great places. Right around the corner from our hotel was a French bistro that had a breakfast of eggs and ham, a fresh croissant, delicious Colombian coffee and fresh juice (made from Colombian fruits that we never recognized like Lulo). For our breakfast dessert we each chose a French pastry, from peach tarts to chocolate éclairs and more. All for $5.00! We also found a special place for lunch on our last day called Antigua Santa Fe. We had a typical Colombian soup called Ajaico Santafereno prepared with chicken, three types of potatoes, corn on the cob, shredded chicken, whipped cream, capers, and ¨guascas¨(green leafy vegetable that we couldn´t identify), and a unique hot chocolate that was laced with cinnamon and other spices served with cheese and butter cookies. Great food finally!

Everyone knows that Stacy and I like to go out dancing. Well, we found ourselves in the dancingest (now there´s a good word) country in the world! So we went out dancing the two nights we were there. But it´s our New Year´s eve we have to describe. I´m sure you want to know exactly what we were doing at midnight! Everyone told us that people from Bogota do NOT go out on New Year´s eve. Many, in fact, leave the city for New Year´s and go to Cali or Medellin to party. The others just stay home with their families. We couldn´t believe that people wouldn´t be out dancing on New Year´s. So we put on our fanciest party dresses and went to a place that had been recommended in our book. We got there and there were two couples. Only two couples. The place was big. OK. It was 11:15, surely others would arrive. The DJ was playing great music, the two couples and Stacy and I were dancing. Sometimes we´d dance all together. Then, lo and behold...the door opened and in walked four Colombian National Police, all decked out in uniforms! They stood there watching us, then two of them came over and asked us to dance. They even brought over their bottle of rum for us to drink! So....at the stroke of midnight, Stacy and I were dancing with two of Colombian´s finest....in Bogota! I asked if they were working, they said yes, but they were about to go off duty. They left after awhile to go change their clothes (they said), but we left shortly after and that was the end of that. At midnight everyone in the place (the two couples, the four police, the DJ and the workers all kissed each other and us Happy New Year). Even though we spent the evening with just a few strangers, we had a great, great time! Our theme song for the trip has become the Spanish version of ¨I know I want you, You know you want me, blah blah....Zoombah, blah blah blah Rumbah......¨ that wonderful reggaeton tune that gets everyone jumping!

Bogota is over and it´s off to Cali, working our way to the border with Ecuador. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.