Bogota and my Dad's Visit

Last we left off, we had just come back to Cartagena from the beautiful Playa Blanca. We didn't have much time there though before our journey continued. First we watched the Notre Dame game online and were sadly disappointed when we lost to Michigan. Then we tried to visit any remaining tourist attractions we could before we left Cartagena for good. Finally, the day of our flight arrived and we flew into the capital of Colombia, Bogota.

It was good to get away from Cartagena and get into a real city that doesn't depend on tourism for its existence. And how could it? Bogota has a reputation for kidnappings and crime that make every website we've visited about this country assure us that everything is much better now. Luckily the websites were not lying. The city itself is much like any other capital city we've visited in South America and just as safe or unsafe depending on what you did. Luckily we had a friend in Bogota who welcomed us into her apartment and let us stay with her. Suzanne has a whole blog post on Amanda Lyons in her head so I won't spoil it, but I can say that we absolutely loved staying with Amanda for a couple of days. She took us to some of the nicest places in town and gave us her bed to sleep in. We told her of our plans and she gave suggestions and advice. It was real hospitality.

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Dad's visit

We didn't have long in Bogota till the main event occurred. My Dad, who had been unable to make the journey down when my brother Thomas came to visit was able to reschedule his flight for a long weekend in Bogota with us! We booked a place in the old colonial part of town (named the “Candelaria”) and picked Dad up from the airport. We were amazed at how quickly he seemed at home in Bogota. On the cab ride to the hotel he chatted with the driver the entire time about Colombia, his time growing up in Cuba, and the current state of Latin American politics. His Spanish skills hadn't diminished at all since he had stopped traveling internationally over 35 years ago. In fact, Dad seemed more at ease in Bogota than he often appears in the states! He would often strike up conversations with random Colombians wherever we found them and just chat with them for 10-15 minutes. I usually don't see that in the states. As you may know, my dad spent the first 15 years of his life in Cuba before Castro came into power. His dad was a businessman who had to flee before Fidel nationalized all businesses.

Dad just chatting with a local about Cuba:

From Bogota

Since we only had a weekend we tried to fill it with the major sites. We started out at the Gold Museum. Wow. In a previous post I talked about never seeing so much gold before in my life. This museum beat it by far. It was 3 full floors of gold artifacts from the native peoples in Columbia. The crazy thing is that this is all the gold the Spanish missed! There were frequent quotes from the old explorers about how everyone in a village would have a gold nose-ring or earings. (Gold was admired but not used as a currency). In the end you got tired of all the gold in the room and just went past it. This is in great contrast to some of the museums in the southern countries where the gold breastplate was the prized asset of the museum! Not only was the content amazing but the presentation was excellent. All signs had English sections and the material was excellent. We learned about all the methods used to make these beautiful artifacts, methods which are still used today. In fact, there are no new methods other than the ones these people used, how crazy is that?! Unfortunately, I assumed that there would be no picture taking in the museum so I didn't take my camera, so no pictures. :( You'll just have to go yourself!

Dad and Suzanne looking over Bogota city:

From Bogota

Me and Dad in the botanical gardens

From Bogota

The other big site we visited was the Salt Cathedral. There is a big salt mine just outside of Bogota and the miners constructed a church out of the huge chambers they created. Then the church became unstable and they had an international contest to design a new mine. This is the one we got to visit. It was pretty cool. It holds 10,000 people and is just huge. The way in begins with the stations of the cross which are made out of salt (everything is made out of salt). Then it opens into the huge nave with some absolutely massive columns. Overall, pretty cool. :)

Stations of the cross in the salt cathedral:

From Bogota

From Bogota

From Bogota

From Bogota

We had a great time with Dad and the only regret was that it was so short. However, this was mitigated by the fact that in about a month we will be coming home! Yes, you read correctly. We are going to be done with our adventure in South America in just about a month! Why? Well, its a mix of factors. First, we're going to be out of money in a month. We really should have planned on spending $150 a day instead of just $100, second, we are starting to become tired of traveling. Things that shouldn't bother us (like that massage lady in the last post) really start to become nerve rattling and things that should delight us are just not that interesting anymore. We miss our families and our country and just want to come home! But not yet. :)

We had always wanted to spend time in Buenos Aires, longer than the 3 days we spent there at the very beginning of our trip. Our dream was to spend 6 weeks there originally but we took a look at our money left and decided that one month would work too. We have some friends who live there, plus it's arguably one of the best cities in South America.

The big loser country in our decision to come home early is Brazil. It's not that we didn't want to go, but the combination of the factors above (out of money and getting tired of traveling) plus the facts that it is one of the most expensive countries, speaks a different language, requires you to get an expensive visa, and is absolutely huge all caused us to look at the country and say “we'll try to get back to you”. So sorry Brazil.

We arrived in BA last Thursday and have been living in a furnished apartment since Thursday. We love it! BA is such an amazing city. It's like visiting a European city but without the expensiveness! We are really lucky to have our friends Ximena and Andres here. They are excellent guides, showing us things we never would have seen just using our guidebooks.

Next post will be more about BA and our new life there. :)

~Mike

Playa Blanca

First off we'll start with some pictures of Cartagena that we promised in the last blog post!

From Cartagena

Mike defending the city:

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

Cartagena being on the Carribean Sea makes it very close to some beautiful islands. Given the heat we were anxious to get to a beach that would allow us to get into the water. We headed to the best beach around, Playa Blanca (white beach).  There was a tour that went there that also included a trip to the Isla Rosario islands which are supposed to be cool so we went ahead and booked it.  However, the boat was incredibly slow and while the islands were ok, they were not really worth the trouble.  They did bring you to an open air aquarium however which included some cool sharks, turtles and dolphins!
Shark!

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

After that we headed to the beach.  When we finally arrived (again, the boat was really slow) we were bombarded by local people trying to sell you crap.  Luckily they left us alone to eat in relative peace but the second we got up they began again.  Since we had time we had decided to stay a night on the beach and this was probably the best decision we could make as the tour boat only gave you about an hour on the beach before it started its lumbering journey back.  As an added benefit, after the tour boat left, the hawkers all went home!  However, this was not before one lady who was offering massages decided to give Suzanne a "free" preview of her massage.  After telling her repeatedly "no gracias" and knowing that "free" quickly turns into demands for payment she refused to stop so I lost my patience and told her to go away.  She then got angry saying it was her beach and what right did I have et cetera et cetera...  So we just stopped saying anything and ignored her and eventually she left saying we should buy a massage tomorrow!  :)  Hilarious.  

Anyway, after the hawkers left the beach was transformed from tourist hell into tourist paradise.  We stayed in a little cabana right on the beach and drank delicious pina coladas all night long and watched the sun set over the horizon.  It was so beautiful we couldn't drag ourselves away to take a picture.  Then we dined on delicious lobster and shrimp and then headed to bed, falling asleep to the sound of waves on the beach.  The next morning we woke up with the sun, had a delicious breakfast and went snorkeling on the reef just off the beach!  At 7am the beach was even more deserted and we had the place to ourselves!  The wind hadn't picked up either so the waves were almost nonexistent and the water so clear!  Eventually though the army of hawkers came in to get ready for the tourist boats but this time we were ready.  Then our boat came and we had to bid goodbye to playa blanca.  

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

Cartagena Columbia

Last we left off we were in Quito trying to decide whether we should take a 30 hour bus ride to Bogota or fly. While the real distances aren't that great (its mostly the mountains that make it 30 hours), the flights were pretty expensive. In the end we decided on the plane trip but used our newly discovered trick to get an extra flight out of it for very little. We arrived on Thursday the 2^nd and have been here since. Cartagena is a beautiful city! It was the place where the Spanish took all their gold they plundered and stored it until the Galleons could take it back to Spain. It therefore became very rich. That richness is shown through the wonderful colonial architecture of the historic center. However its richness was its curse. Everyone wanted a piece of the action and Cartagena became a target of pirates and other nations. Sir Francis Drake sacked the place (before he became a “sir”) and so did a french guy. In response the Spanish set about fortifying the bejeezus out of the place. The old city has very thick walls around it and there are numerous large forts protecting every angle of attack. In the end the fortifications were effective, repelling a huge English invasion that kept Columbia a Spanish colony until they lost it to independence. As I said before all this history and riches truly make Cartagena one of the most beautiful cities we've seen. It's kind of like Venice but with a Spanish-colonial twist. It's really fun just to walk around the old city and marvel at the pretty buildings with their balconies filled with bougainvilleas (we think that's what they are). Pictures to be shown in next post...

Cartagena is also on the Caribbean sea so that makes it hot! This woke us up to an important fact. In all our travels we have very rarely been in any kind of hot climate! Since we've pretty much traveled up the spine of the Andes mountains, we've always been at some altitude or away from the equator far enough for it not to be hot. Not so anymore! We're here and for the first time in months have longed for an air conditioned room!

Mud Volcano

Just a couple miles outside of Cartagena is something I never would have guessed. They call it a Mud Volcano. It's exactly what it sounds like. Apparently its some heat below the earth is mixing with water and dead organic material and pushing up this stuff in one spot. The result is a big cone of mud. Since the heat is pretty far removed, the mud is a nice lukewarm temperature and now a tourist attraction! How many times have you climbed into a mud volcano? I bet its a big fat 0! It was really cool. The mud is thick but very liquid at the same time. It's very dense so you just float in it. If you lay on your back you just float and you can stand straight up in it and you just float there. I tried to push myself down as deep as I could but the most I could get to was my neck. Overall really fun.

From MUD Volcano

From MUD Volcano

It was just a little crowded. :)

Next up we're going to be heading to the most beautiful beach in the area called Playa Blanca. The plan is to stay a night but I'm slightly torn about that because Notre Dame will be playing Michigan on Saturday and I'm pretty sure this beach won't have a high speed internet connection. :) I know, Notre dame plays every year and how often are you going to be on a beautiful beach on the carribean? But I still have a strong desire to watch it! We'll see if we can find some way to do both. Nothing like having your cake and eating it too!

~Mike

ps.  Posted this after our disappointing loss to Michigan.  Stupid Michigan...