Colombia September 2015

It's a story how I got to Colombia in the first place.  Letty is a Colombian woman from my 2002 mother's group.  She has always talked about inviting other American women in the group to come with her to Colombia, but we were always too busy with our little ones.  Then a week before the trip, I was out to dinner with Letty when she told me she was going to Colombia the next week and bringing an American friend with her.  I thought - wow - I'm not doing anything really important next week and another American is already going- so I wouldn't be a burden.  I asked Letty to send me her itinerary and the next day I owned a $637 ticket to Bogota!  Letty had only paid $350 just weeks before me, but still, I thought I got a good deal.  In the next few days, I rearranged my schedule, found carpools for my kids, got immunizations for Hepatitis A and typhoid, checked out some Colombian travel books from the library, arranged my hotel in Cartagena, bought a discreet crossbody purse and comfy sandles, and before I knew it, I was in:

Bogota

My flight came in at 4AM and boy was I lucky that Letty's cousin, Alvaro, was there waiting for me.  He took me to his home and showed me my bedroom, where Kim who had flown in hours earlier was already sleeping.  Thank goodness I had taken the time to meet Kim for an hour before we left on the trip.  It would have been too bizarre getting in bed with a complete stranger.

In the morning Alvaro woke us up at 8:30 AM to serve us breakfast and show us around Bogota before our 4PM flight to Valledupar.   Now we were really to experience Colombian hospitality.  The dining room was decorated with welcome signs. Alvaro's mom had made us a big breakfast of homemade tamales like no tamales we had ever had.  Plus there was coffee and fruit salad.  Alvaro's father gifted me a guacharaca.  He knew I liked Latin music and would need it on the streets of Valledupar!

Welcome sign for Letty, Kim and me

Front of Alvaro's house.  Their driveways are gated off for safety.

Then Alvaro spent the whole day with us, taking us to the Museo del Oro and trying to communicate with us.  At first we were scared to death by his driving.  Kim used her translator app to look up "crazy driver" and kept calling him a conductor loco, to which he just laughed and insisted his driving was quite normal.   We assumed it was his testosterone streak that make him weave through traffic at high speed and not stop for pedestrians.  Later we learned that Colombian law leaves the pedestrian at fault if hit by a car.  Aside from that danger, he protected us by warning us not to show our iPhones in public and not to leave the windows open at stoplights or to flash our cash out of our wallets.

At the museum, he took the time to see what we were interested in and learn about it with us.  We learned how the indigenous Colombians threw gold into a lake as offerings to the Gods.  We learned that gourd shapes represented female fertility and that the land is female and cultivated by planting seeds in it.  We saw 1000's of gold nose rings which seemed to be good for hanging over the mouth and hiding their lack of orthodontic care.

Kim and Sheila in front of the Museo del Oro

Alvaro showed us the variety of emerald stores near the museum.  Ironically, just five minutes after I was considering buying an emerald ring, my husband texted me not to buy any emeralds because of a well-known scam of selling green glass.  Alvaro was happy to drive us around Bogota and show us the best views.  When my husband texted me to go see the funicular, I mentioned it to Alvaro and he brought us right there.

Bogota is situated at the foot of the dramatic Andes Mountains.  Ever cool, it is over 8,000 feet above sea level.

one of the tallest buildings in Latin America

Triple Length buses!

  Then Alvaro took us to the mall, which looked a lot like an American mall, and treated us to what he thought was good quality authentic Colombian cuisine.  The large serving sizes were no joke, so Kim and I agreed it would be better to share a meal next time, even though the meals were so cheap- about $2.

Ajiaco soup served with corn, avocado, banana.  Ajiaco is made of 3 types of Colombian potatoes.  The consistency and spice are delectable.  Plus an appetizer of tortilla and salsa and beer

Our day with our amazing Colombian host was almost complete.  Little did we know he would walk us all the way to security check at the airport.  He left us wanting nothing.

Valledupar

Sure enough, as soon as we got off the plane, Letty and her friends, Angela and Lily, were waiting for us.  The trip was going as planned- no glitches!  Angela is Letty's property manager and good friend.  She agreed to host all 3 of us for the week.  It turned out that her son who was an engineer had married a dentist, and they were doing so well that they were able to move to a bigger, nicer place than the modern, spacious apartment they left for us for the week for free!  Angela's home was just around the corner from her son's apartment, in one of the best neighborhoods in Valledupar.  Letty explained to us that utilities were more expensive in that neighorhood and not the same rate all over the city.  The convenience of our apartment being only one block from Angela meant that we could easily walk to her house for our daily breakfast and wifi usage, not to mention just hanging out on her gated front porch.

exterior of Angela's upper middle class home

Angela's front patio with Wifi, plenty of Spanish magazines and non-stop drink service

What we learned about Angela is that she is a woman who loves to take care of other people.  Three out of her four children had already moved away, and we believed she missed taking care of them.  So she adopted others to take care of; sometimes she forgot to take care of herself in the process.  She treated her tenant, Lily, as a daughter and Letty, too.  She even treated Kim and me like her daughters.  It was fabulous to be under her care.  She took us to her favorite salon to get facials, massages, manicures and pedicures.  She was careful to explain to us how much to pay the taxi driver, and then she negotiated with the salon people for us, explaining that we weren't as rich as we looked.

When we had a mishap during our facials and massages (our estetician was taking pictures of us on her iPhone!) we told Angela when she came to pick us up.  Angela demanded to see the pictures and requested that they delete them in front of us!   Wow!  What were they going to do with those pictures?  They told us it was for our memories.  Yet, they never asked for our permission to take the pictures.  And as we were walking out the salon, they seemed to be making no effort to find our emails to send us the pictures.  Letty thinks we might have been the first American white women ever at that salon.  They probably wanted to use our pictures for advertisements.  Creepy!  We will never know if they emailed the photos to themselves before we had them deleted.  Perhaps our pictures with paper bras and panties and goop on our faces will show up on the internet?

La Junta

Angela, her husband, and Lily took us on a day trip our second day in Valledupar.  I got to go in Lily's car with Angela because "Sheila, you know Spanish- so you can hold yourself in a car with 2 Spanish speaking women."  Lily was a cute 20 something with a vet med degree.  She was doctoring the cows at the various farms around Valledupar.  She had left her often bragged about hometown of Medellin for this job but found a wonderful landlord in Angela, who "adopted" her as her daughter.  Lily and I had great discussions about neglected cows that were left to eat garbage and about our favorite Latin music.   She even played the songs we mentioned and was happy to learn I was a Zumba teacher.

Our first stop was La Junta, where we met some local children as we cautiously got out of our car.  They asked for a tip right away.  I told them I didn't need any services but if I felt the urge to have a manicure or pedicure, I would let them know before anyone else.  Their donkey's name was Catalina. Kim loved that name.  The highlight of this town is a museum which was the home of a poor girlfriend of famous singer, Domedez.  He used to stand in her window and sing to her.  Her father hated Domedez because of his reputation with women, drugs and alcohol, so he kept a gun  Domedez has 28 children from many different women.  In fact, many of those women's homes are museums around Colombia!  It was quite cute that the people of this town are so proud of their museum

The donkey, Catalina, in La Junta

Museum of the home of Domedez' girlfriend and the gun

Then we started driving toward El Rio Bodillo for a cold swim and lunch.  On the bumpy road through the desert you can see houses made of mud and sticks and much desert landscape.  It was cacti heaven.  I found it hard to believe that just miles away there was supposed to be a natural rainforest with monkeys and 40 other types of mammals.  Angela didn't think we should go to that ecopark, however, due to Guerilla activity and poor military surveillance. 

Desert landscape and mud house

At the River Badillo, a vendor was trying to sell iguana meat, but by the time I was ready to eat it, I couldn't find him anymore.  I ended up with a hearty meal of lamb and potatoes, enough to have plenty of leftovers to bring home for a small dinner.  The river was discolored from sediment due to a recent rain, which meant the others didn't want to swim.  They even warned me not to go in because it was easy to slip on the rocks and die.  But Colombian humidity, being what it is, lured me right in.  To my surprise, the water was warm, not cold glacial water from the Sierras as they had warned me.  I had a great time floating and dancing on the rocks with my guacharacas, which I kept in my backpack, just in case.  Not until 1 week and 3 days later, when I was back at home, did I suspect this river to be the cause of itchy hives all over my body, and Kim's too.

Dancing on the River Bodillo

Santa Marta

The next day we took a luxury air conditioned bus with reclining seats over bumpy highways for four hours to Santa Marta.  Each ticket was about $7.  Letty's friend let us stay in her beach view apartment for free for a night.

our ocean view apartment in Santa Marta

  Wandering down the beach without our phone cameras for fear of being mugged that evening, we ran into some vallenato bands practicing on the beach.  We happily joined in and danced with the men but knew when it was time to leave.  I could buy a hearty meat kabob for $1 and enjoy the lovely beachfront promenade.  The disco bus was quite enticing, but we elected to forego it.  Later we saw the bus driving with loud music and people dancing on it!  Maybe next time!  Fortunately, I brought my ear plugs with because some party animals played music all night in front of our apartment!

Santa Marta beach front promenade

Taganga

The next day, we decided to go to the fishing village of Taganga by taxi.  There we had breakfast by the seaside, and not without the usual vendors that always seem to accompany you in Colombia.  We bought coral jewelry and coconut sweets.

taxi stop on the way to the fishing village of Taganga

seaside breakfast in Taganga

After breakfast, we took a ferry to Playa Grande, where we could go snorkeling.  I was surprised that they let us on the boat without having us sign anything or handing us any life preservers.  When I asked for a life preserver after the boat had already taken off, the guide pulled out some really tattered ones.  This, plus the fact that there was garbage on the beach and at least 10 men sitting around instead of picking up the garbage, made us realize that Colombia needs to make a few more efforts to gain and keep American tourists.

Then we took a ferry to a beach.  

Views near Plaza Grande

Still, the views upon approaching Plaza Grande were splendid.  We were told we could rent snorkeling equipment for about $7 each and reclining beach chairs for less than $2 each.  We didn't want to leave all our bags with them while snorkeling, so we decided to let one person get a beach chair and watch our bags while the other two went snorkeling.

Beach chair for rent on La Playa Grande

  Then we would switch off.  I didn't know how to say life jacket in Spanish, but I'm good at making do.  Although I had asked for a "chaqueta de sobrevivir" and received a laughing response, it was not until I was in the water with my gear that I realized they had never brought me one.  Since we were to snorkel near some rocks, I thought it best we should have some.  So I went ashore to look for our snorkel vendor.  Many were helping me find him but no one knew if he had life jackets or where he kept them.  Once we found him, he said that since we said we knew how to swim, he didn't think we needed a life jacket.  I explained I needed one for safety. (You never know if you're going to get bitten by something or washed into a rock by a wave.)  Again, I received the same laugh that Alvaro gave in response to our insinuation of crazy driving.  Moreover, I was told that we had only paid for the snorkel gear and would have to pay extra for the jackets.   I argued, reminding them that I had asked for a "chaqueta de sobrevivir" in the beginning, to which they had laughed.  Of course, our vendor remembered this and gave me the jackets for no charge.

For snorkeling off the shore, the variety of fish was not bad.  Since there were no waves and the water was the perfect temperature, such that you don't even think about it, we decided to teach our Colombian amiga how to swim and snorkel.  Of course, our student was nervous that she couldn't stand in the water,  Several times, she let us know that she wasn't breathing.  I asked her to put her hand over the top of her snorkel.  Do you feel the air coming out?  Yes.  Then you are breathing.  Our efforts in convincing her to float with her face in the deep water for 15 seconds would prove useful the next day.

bus from Tanganga to Santa Marta

It turned out to be much cheaper taking the city bus back to Santa Marta.  Once back, we plopped down at a restaurant for some lunch prior to our bus trip to Cartagena.  Here we learned an important fact:  Colombians never have change.  Ok, so our meal we were sharing was only about 10,000 pesos ($3.70) with beer, but when I pulled out a 50,000 bill, the waiter looked bewildered.  He had to run down the street to find change for us.  Later, we garnered many laughs just telling our story to other Colombians, who agreed that the problem in Colombia is that there is no change.

When we arrived at the Santa Marta bus station, a variety of drivers were trying to sell us van rides to Cartagena.  The first thing I asked was whether the vans had seat belts.  Sitting on a big tour bus with no seat belt was one thing, but sitting unharnessed in a van for 3 or 4 hours didn't seem like a good idea to me.  Of course, they answered they had seat belts, but when we got on the van after already paying, we found just 1 or 2 broken belts.  Again, I asked the porter, and he pointed to the broken seatbelts as if they were supposed to appease me.

In Colombia, you never know exactly when the van or bus will depart.  It seems that it departs when it has enough customers.  Finally on the go, we learned that our van driver was no less crazy than Alvaro and that he had a doorman who called out the window the whole time, "Cartagena, Barranquilla.."  They were literally finding more passengers along the way.  We realized that at this rate with all the constant stops, it was going to take forever to get to Cartagena, not to mention, we were slowly being poisoned by the smell of gasoline in the back seats.

Fortunately, in Barranquilla, Letty saw a tour bus pointed toward Cartagena.  She weaved through the seats up to our driver and said, "I want to be on that bus."  With very little conversation, the door man grabbed our suitcases and ran us over to the tour bus, where he paid the driver with cash from his pocket.  We were now on a non-stop, non-poisonous ride to Cartagena.  We guessed the van drivers were eager to get rid of us- maybe they never wanted to drive all the way to Cartagena?

Cartagena

Cartagena was beautiful with its European style streets and massive doors and reminded me of Santa Barbara or Spain. Our hotel, Casa del Curato, was the only time we had to pay for our lodging in Colombia, so $90/room per night didn't seem too bad.

cute lobby of Casa Curato

Restaurant in the trees inside Santa Clara Hotel

That night, we weren't hungry, but we decided to get a nice, expensive dinner.  We chose the Santa Clara Hotel because Letty had spent her honeymoon there 15 years prior, and the luscious garden in the center of the hotel was a perfect dining locale. Plus it was quite hard to get into the hotel.  The guards told Letty we needed a reservation just to walk in.  So I argued that I could be someone with $1,000 in my wallet who took a late plane into Cartagena with no reservation and just wanted to walk in and buy a room.  Here, my American accent helped me out, and we were allowed to enter.

We set out to share our pricey meal and a $20 bottle of wine.  We ordered sopa de mariscos and a carrot cake with coconut ice cream and mandarin soup.  It was small and gorgeous just like at a pricey restaurant in the US.  While enjoying our meal, Letty asked the server to bring the manager over so she could rave about the service to the manager.  The manager was refined with wonderful English skills cultivated from his years of living in Canada.  He distinguished his hotel from others by explaining the Santa Clara was one of few to offer personal butlers.  In the end, we promised to write him a grand review on Trip Advisor.

When we got our bill, we were shocked because everything was 1/3 the price set out in the menu.  Our wine bottle was $7.  I was both delighted and dismayed to find that my share of the credit card bill was $3.45.  We had set out to have an expensive meal.  Perhaps Letty knew what she was doing by sucking up to the manager.

After dinner, strolling the cutesy streets, some loud music caught up to my back, so I joined in the dance.  I had found myself some Cartagenan rappers.  They ended our song by labeling Letty the girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio.  Check out the video!  In the end they held out their hats for their much deserved tip.

We also found where we wanted to have lunch the next day.  This Argentine restaurant, just 1 block from Casa Curato, is decorated from head to toe in bottle caps and other fine details. Patagonia Asados Del Sur.  137, esquina Calle 39, Cra. 7 #38.  The food turned out to be worth the visit.

    

                                                               Cartagenan rappers

Exterior of Argentine restaurant

Inviting steps of Argentine restaurant

Interior of Argentine restaurant

Later that night, not being able to find any salsa dancing but needing to dance off the wine, we hit a nightclub TuCandela that played a lot of Reggaeton.  In fact, 75% of the songs were ones I knew from my Zumba classes.  Here, if you're blond like Kim, you're likely to attract plenty of attention.  After being charged no cover the first night, we were surprised when we came back the second night and they wanted to charge us.  All we said was that we were here the night before with no cover, and they let us in for free!

TuCandela Nightclub

Isla Del Rosario

We took a one day tour to Isla del Encanto, part of Isla del Rosario.  The hotel pickup, 3 hour round trip boat tour, time on the island and buffet lunch was $43/person.  Letty knew the owner, so this was a discounted rate.  This time we were required to wear our life jackets for the whole trip.  It was hard for me to shake off the "But in America" attitude as I thought how Americans would make you sign a waiver and keep a life jacket with you but not necessarily make you wear it!  When we arrived on the island at 10:30, we were told the bell would ring 3 times: at 11:30 for an activity, at 1:30 for lunch and at 3:15 to go home.

view of Cartagena from tour van

 We paid an extra $13 to go out on a snorkel boat for the 11:30 activity.  Thankfully, Letty had learned to snorkel for 15 seconds the day before in Taganga because now she had to jump off the boat!  The guide was great and pulled her along with a life ring.  She could put her face in and look whenever she wanted.  She said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  Sure enough, the fish variety was excellent.  I swam right next to the guide so I could learn as much as possible.  He showed us sea worms, parrot fish, brain coral, jewelfish and more.  It was as good of snorkeling as I've done anywhere in Florida, Hawaii, the Bahamas or the Philippines.

View of Cartagena from tour boat

lunch buffet on Isla del Encanto

This boat ride was the only place where we met tourists from other countries.  I sat next to an American from NY who had moved to Colombia 3 months prior.  He resided in Medellin, the City of Eternal Spring, because it is one of the cheapest big cities to live in anywhere.  He had yet to learn Spanish and find a job.

snorkel boat ride

snorkel boat

beach recliners on Isla del Encanto

Clear water of Isla Del Encanto

Iglesia and Plaza Santa Domingo

Cartagena streets

James Rodriguez jerseys

Cartagena

On our last day in Cartagena, we took the Michelin Guide walking tour of Cartagena, which started at the Plaza de los Coches and ended back in the area of our hotel.  Overall, we learned about churches, hotels, and mansions that dated back to the 1500's.

Plaza de los Coches

We had a great time taking videos of each other, sampling 30 cent bakery items, buying Colombian candy from the Portal de los Dulces, trying on pricey dresses along the Calle de Santo Domingo, visiting the Charleston Santa Teresa, where Bill Clinton has stayed, and checking out many other mansions and points of interest.
Kim's sons sent her on a mission to find James

San Pedro Church

Rodriguez soccer jerseys.  Once we were in Cartagena, this turned out to be an easy mission as they were everywhere and only about $7 each.  We felt proud to make such wise purchases knowing they could be $60 and up at Soccer Craze in the US.  The first shop that had them didn't have James printed on the back, but we bought them anyway.  Then when we found the right shirts minutes later, we set out to return our shirts.  The shop keeper, (the same one who just stood there and said "Si," when we asked if he had a bigger size), said no returns, exchange only.  But when I got to give a speech in Spanish that Kim felt sad that she couldn't return the shirts because she found the perfect shirt down the street in the perfect size with James on the back, the man gave in and entered "devolver" on his cash register screen!  Success in Spanish!  Later Letty told us that returns are not the norm in Colombia.

Barranquilla

We didn't want to leave Cartagena, but Letty had a dentist appointment the next day in Valledupar, so we took a bus to Barranquilla where we were supposed to get another ticket to Valledupar.  Unfortunately, we had to wait 3 hours for the 2nd bus.  An "employee" of the bus station became our personal butler during this wait.  He was a Colombian, deported from Venenzuela, like 50,000 other Colombians.  He was told he could sleep on the buses at the station and work for tips.

Our 3 hour resting spot in Barranquilla

He helped us to navigate the endless bus terminal and find the best restaurant.  By that point in my trip, we had already grown weary of plantains with queso.  Was there really only one type of cheese in Colombia?  And it tasted just like Russian farmer's cheese.  How could two countries in different hemispheres have the same cheese?  Lo and behold!  This restaurant had two types of plantains.  Forget the salty bland ones.  Now we knew to ask for the sweet tajadas de platano maduro.

Were there really that many buses at this station?  It seemed as big as an airport.  Could there really be so many different bus companies?  Did they really need that many restaurants?  While you are waiting, have some fried chicken with a plastic glove.  Keep your hands clean because you will need to pay 1,000 pesos to use the restroom.  Did Shakira and Sophia Vergar, who both come from Barranquilla, actually come here?

The bus back to Valledupar was from midnight to 4AM and not the favorite part of our trip.  At least the bus was virtually empty, so we could each lie down on 3 seats.  The air conditioning was so strong that we almost froze.  The only thing that could warm my feet was my chair's head rest cover.  In the morning, I found out that Kim had taken 5 covers!  I was not so resourceful as I had thought.

Valledupar
Now we had just a couple days left in Colombia.  I gave a 20,000 peso bill to our 18 yr old maid as a tip for making us breakfasts and cleaning our apartment.  She lives with her husband and baby in a house of plastic and cardboard.  Angela helped her to build it.  Letty guesses she makes about 35,000 pesos per day.

Of course I had to do some cleaning myself because it's hard to remember not to flush paper down the toilet.  So I had to buy a plunger for 3,000 pesos ($1) and do the honors, as Letty was embarrassed to tell Angela we had clogged the toilet again since Angela was embarrassed to tell her son the first time it had happened.

The highlight of my trip for sure was attending Juank Ricardo's private accordeon concert at his home on my last evening there.  Juank is Angela's son and a prominent vallenato accordeonist.  He let me interview him, so I've promised to make and publish a Zumba routine using one of his songs and to include his interview on my Zumba blog.

Guacharaca lesson with Juank

But the real joy was learning to play my guacharacas from him and accompanying his accordeon.  I definitely felt musical synergy as we played together and looked into each other's eyes.

Juank Ricardo

faster lesson

The next day I arranged a tourguide for Kim and me since Letty was busy with the dentist and legal matters, the reason for her trip in the first place. (Dental work is so cheap in Colombia, explaining why so many adult cashiers everywhere were wearing braces) But as soon as Angela's husband heard we were going to pay $20 each for a 2 hour tour, he said he could take us himself for half the price.  Of course we agreed.

Cemetery outside of Valledupar, with Sierras in the background

 He brought us to the mall, a nearby river, some cemeteries, some vallenato statues (so I could take pictures for my Juank blog), and the center of town.  I forgot to mention that on our first night in Valledupar, Angela took us to the historic center, where we watched a wedding about to start.  Air conditioning was pouring out of the open church doors and everyone was dressed in gowns that could have rivaled anything from Sak's.  I felt uncomfortable standing in front of the church door and waiting for the bride to arrive, but Angela and Letty seemed to think it was quite normal to stand in the middle of someone's formal wedding.  Anyway, now Angela's husband showed us the same center in the daylight.

Acordeon statue in Valledupar, home of Vallenato 

                                                 Visiting the Guatapuri river was particularly interesting because of the locals jumping from the bridge.  One man told me he would like to be a professional high diver.  Here he is:

He wants to be a professionial high diver.

                                                                               

Guatapuri River near Valledupar

       succession of jumpers

best seafood restaurant in Valledupar

On our last day we wanted to take our hosts out to the best restaurant in Valledupar.  According to Angela, the best seafood restaurant was Ricuras del Mar. The seafood soup was amazing, but still, the final bill was only $75 for 6 people, including beer.  As we were leaving for the restaurant I saw Juank carrying the giant avocado that Kim had bought that morning.

avocado vendor in front of Angela's house.  $2

When I asked him why he was walking off with Kim's avocado, he said we were taking it to the restaurant.  I asked if it was permissible to bring outside food to a nice restaurant.  He said that is was of course normal to bring an avocado but that you couldn't bring chicken, for example.  That left me laughing for the rest of the day.  Is an avocado like a birthday cake?  I guess I still have a lot to learn about Colombian norms.  And then there's the mom with hair rollers driving her son on a motorcycle.  Well of course you can't wear a helmet if you have your rollers in.

Both Juank and his mom, Angela, drove me to the airport and saw me all the way to security check.  I'll never forget how they went out of their way to take care of me, and they didn't even know me before my trip!  Angela wanted me to text her after every flight to let her know that I was ok.  I'll never forget their warm Colombian hospitality!

Well everything was good up till the airport.  Unfortunately, a storm delayed my flight by 3.5 hours.  By the time I got to Bogota, at about 11:30PM, I had about 25 minutes till my gate to Houston was supposed to close, or 45 till the flight, at 12:14.  I knew I'd have to run.  I didn't know exactly where to but I had hoped that would become evident through signs and airport personnel .

My terminal only had gates 1-10, and I needed gate 24, according to the electronic boarding pass my husband had emailed me.   So I asked a random worker where gate 24 was and he told me to get on the bus behind him.  Well, there was no sign on the door, the wall or on the bus.  And there was no one else on the bus.  hmmm- was I about to be abducted at the airport?  Since I seemed to have no better alternatives for finding gate 24, I reluctantly took a seat and told him I was late.   He drove so slowly and so far and made a long u-turn that seemed purposeless.  Anyway I got to another teriminal where I ran with my carry-on flying at my side and stopped every 30 seconds to ask which way to gate 24.  A finger always pointed me in the general direction until I found International departures!  But the lady said they weren't accepting electronic boarding passes for Houston!  I'd have to go to United and get a paper pass.  Oh my word!  I ran back and asked everyone I saw, "Donde esta United?"  So many relaxed faces watched me, and some even shrugged their shoulders.  Finally, I heard, "United esta cerrada."   Closed?  How can I get a boarding pass then?  Finally an airport employee found me an automated boarding pass printer that said United.  It seemed to be the only one that did.  I can't describe how slowly she acted to help me, but finally I ran off with my pass in hand.  To my dismay, gate 24 was at the farthest end of the airport.  I was running like mad with my backpack awkwardly weighing me down and my chest burning.  Then all I heard was "Houston esta cerrada."  No!  It's only 11:59.  The flight isn't till 12:14.  Please let me on.  Sorry, the next flight is at 7AM.  I was crying and swearing in Spanglish, and an airport employee escorted me all the way to the Avianca office.  Avianca had the late flight that caused me to miss my connection.  After waiting for 2 hours and expecting a free trip to Colombia for my hassles, I ended up with:

great English from such a big company, huh?

All they would give me was a rebooked flight onto Copa Airlines to Panama City at 5AM and then SF and a voucher for a free breakfast at Presto.

Well I walked that whole airport looking for Presto.  I've memorized the Bogota Airport!  I asked at least 10 people where it was, and got 10 different answers.  on the third floor.  on the first floor. on the second floor...  Well at last I found it in an obscure part of the airport.  But it was closed, and the restaurant next door said it opened at 5AM, exactly when my flight for Panama City was.  I wasn't happy, but at least Copa Airlines gave plenty of food, and my problems seemed trivial to the man sitting next to me who was carrying a 15 day old baby on the plane.  That baby had gone from Saint Martin to Colombia to have surgery and was returning home now.  He didn't cry a wink so I considered myself lucky, and lucky again to sleep on the floor of the Panama City airport and be able to say, "I saw the Panama Canal from the airplane."  That this trip came together so quickly gives me hope to think that perhaps another opportunity to travel and learn could come from anywhere at anytime.

Costa Rica - December 2014

I'd always wanted to go to Costa Rica,  ever since I was a college student and saw a travel video about white water rafting through the jungle.  Ironically, one of my children was too scared to go whitewater rafting, so we didn't go.  White water or not, we still enjoyed Costa Rica!  We let the airline prices dictate how long we'd stay there.  Since we found the best Christmas break deal to be a 10 day span, that is what we did.  So we decided to divide the stay between two parts of the country.  We chose Arenal for the volcano/rainforest and Manuel Antonio for the ocean/rainforest.

Hotel Arenal Rabfer

In Arenal, We picked Hotel Rabfer because our friends who had visited Costa Rica a year earlier had stayed there.  It was a good choice in that it was reasonably priced and very close to the La Fortuna downtown with all the restaurants and travel agencies.  When we booked the rooms, they wouldn't let all 6 of us share a room.  They said there would be no room.  To the contrary, we thought rooms were huge.  The first thing we tried to do upon arrival in La Fortuna was buy a phone.  The stores sold the wrong type of SIM cards though.  The saleslady told us we didn't need a phone because all the hotspots had phones to call taxis, and that turned out to be true.  Even if you were going to a hiking trail, you could tell the driver what time to come back for you, and they were always on time.

Our first trip was to Fortuna Falls.  We flagged down a taxi for $10/person.  The 8 yr old was free.  We walked the steep path down to the falls and felt their cold force, played in the river and then trudged back up and called for a taxi.

Fortuna Falls

Later that evening we had dinner and interviewed tour sellers to plan the next parts of our trip.  Arturo, who worked at our restaurant but used to be a biology teacher in Switzerland, gave us a Costa Rican biology lesson where he pulled out his laptop and brought it to our table and showed us all kinds of animals we could find in his country.  Then he personally walked us to his brother's travel agency to sign us up for a volcano walk in Arenal National Park.

The falls inside Arenal National Park

Our tour guide of Arenal National Park stopped the van to show us a group of coati in the middle of the road.  He couldn't find any animals during the hike itself, so he felt bad and stopped the van in the middle of nowhere, walked out into a swamp with his flashlight and brought us back a huge green frog so we could take a picture of something.  In Costa Rica, you can't always find what you are looking for so easily.  After that, he really impressed us by taking us to the free stretch of the hot river where he showed us how to give ourselves a natural mud facial.  Although the trip advertisement had promised us each a water bottle, he poured us a sugar cane drink instead while we waded in the hot river with the locals.

El Silencio Trail near La Fortuna

We liked the guide but didn't think he was worth the price so we chose to do two more hikes without a guide.  To get to El Silencio cost $20 each way by taxi.  The hike itself was $4/person.  We were a little annoyed that there were no free hiking trails anywhere.  Hiking fees must go to helping to maintain the trails and protect the environment.  After our hike, which looked the same everywhere, but not as pretty as Cerro Chatto and left us with few memories since we had no guide to point anything out, we went to Pizza Latina for dinner.  It was too loud, with no service and messy, soft pizza.   

Arenal Canopy Tour

  

The whole family went zip lining with Arenal Canopy Tour.  That was definitely fun.  We must have done about 10 crossings.  You have to wait in line some because there are a lot of people, and the ride goes by really fast, so it's hard to focus on anything.  I wouldn't do it just to see the jungle; there are slower ways to do that where you can see more, but it's still fun.  

Arenal on top.  Cerro Chatto is the smaller water-filled crater below..  It's not so small as it looks!  What a climb up!

Top rim trail at Cerro Chatto

On Christmas Eve, walking near Rabfer hotel, we ran into some local boys, whose parents ran a hostel.  They helped us find a blue jeans frog in the creek.  They offered to be our personal guides at Cerro Chatto the next day.  They were 14 years old and didn't even speak English but offered to guide us for $35/person.  After refusing them, they offered $15/person.  We didn't accept, but they still told us where we could find toucans and a sloth nearby at 9AM.   The toucans land there every morning at the same time.  Indeed we found them, after which we set off for our Christmas Day Cerro Chatto hike on our own.  It was a steep, muddy climb up as it rained most of the day.  My poncho protected my fanny pack and my phone/camera.  My father had to turn back early because the hike was too steep for him, my 10 yr old hated it entirely, my 12 yr old thought it would be a somewhat memorable Christmas, but my 14 yr old thought it was the best hike she had ever done.  While the others turned back early, the two of us made it to the top and into the volcano.  The climb down into the crater involved climbing on tree branches that were growing straight out of the vertical mud walls.  We ended up being covered in mud but didn't care.  We walked barefoot for a good part of the return trip because it was just too muddy for shoes.  Once down at the bottom, we spotted some good-sized toucans.

One of our last trips in Arenal was this safari rafting trip down El Rio de las Penas Blancas.  Our tour guide, Gabriel, was great, and we had a good time amusing ourselves at how the guide looked and acted like our pet rabbit, Dip.  They shared similar ears and a mischievous expression.  He truly loved his work and pointed out all the crocodiles, sloths, iguanas and Kingfishers.  Unfortunately, when he stopped our raft under some howler monkeys, my younger daughter gazed up into the tree with her mouth open and received a less that pleasant sprinkle of a gift from one of those monkeys.  She won't be forgetting that.  The exciting part of the trip was when it began to rain!  It poured hard and I was lucky I had a water proof bag for my camera.  We paddled through and came out soaking wet at a farm house stop called Don Pedro, where we got to dry up and sample the local snacks such as coffee, bread, cheese and plantains.  This is where we learned about the Costa Rican philosophy, La Pura Vida, as they showed us how to cook banana leaves in their mud floor electricity-free kitchen.  At the end of the trip, Gabriel told us he used to own 55 rabbits.

Instead of renting a car, we hired a driver to pick us up from Arenal and drive us to Manuel Antonio.  This was very comfortable and affordable.  The driver mentioned places along the way we might like to stop at.   This was one- literally 32 crocodiles in the Taracoles river under the highway 34 bridge.  We encountered a 20 minute traffic jam before this point because of all the cars stopping to look at these beasts.

location of Verde Mar Hotel: a hop and a skip from the beach and in the middle of a monkey jungle-all connected to the National Park

the Hotel Pool- where monkeys came to pound on the roof and make a scene.

Our second stop of the trip was at Manuel Antonio.  We stayed at Hotel Verde Mar, which was conveniently located walking distance from the beach, the town and the National Park.  While exploring the National Park, I did pay for a guide.  It was only about $20 and well worth it because the guides are certified and point out so many plants and creatures that I otherwise would have not noticed.  The guide had binoculars and a telescope and could find you a sloth or whatever you wanted to see, really.  Here is what I saw:  3 toed sloth, Coatimundi,Waxtail cicada or plant hopper, Carob tree, Royal palm, Rainbow Grasshopper, Citronella, Rattlesnake plant, Shorttail night hawk, Golden nape woodpecker,

Blue butterfly, Land crabs, Golden orb spider, Tent making bat, Northern raccoon,Laughing falcon, Lesser white line bats,

Heliconia, Adult male green iguana, monkeys 

The highlight of staying in Manuel Antonio was witnessing the monkeys traverse the town via telephone cables.  Two families/types of monkeys followed me down the beach from the grocery store to the hotel - I was carrying a bag of bananas. There were so many distractions on the way: Ticos bbqing chicken and tourists offering pineapple. Many monkeys are dying from tourist food and heart disease. They are spending less time in the national park and more time on the beach.

While staying in Manuel Antonio, almost the whole family went on a catamaran snorkel trip off the coast of Manuel Antonio.  My son, however, came down with the stomach flu the night before and spent the day in the hotel room.  This catamaran had room for 40 tourists but somehow the five of us were the only clients that day.  We had our own crew of three men and unlimited drinks and food.  The snorkeling was nothing noteworthy, but the boat trip was memorable.  It had always been my dream to lie down on the point of a catamaran and here I got to do just that. 

Toward the end of our trip, the others were tired of adventure and bummed around at the beach in front of Verde Mar Hotel.  But Leo and I went horseback riding near Quepos.  This was a neat trip because the guides broke us into 2 groups- experienced and inexperienced riders.  It was one of Leo's first times riding, so I stayed with him.  Luckily, everyone caught on fast, so we were able to trot through the rivers at pretty fun speeds.  The other group got to gallop.  Still, trotting through the river was a romantic experience.  You could feel the freedom to do something you wouldn't be able to do with your own feet- so fast anyway- but without any motorboat.  and of course the horse goes on land and water.  The company we went with provided us a nice dinner afterward on their ranch.

kayaking with Kayak-lodge.com

Above Leo and I are kayaking through the white mangroves near Quepos.  The others stayed at the hotel for a beach day.   Since we saw long-nose bats and a hawk attack on a group of Capuchin monkeys, this was probably the most interesting part of our trip; it's a shame the rest of the family was not up for adventure that day.  Being able to master delicate control of the paddle to maneuver through tight and twisty turns kept the interest level high and made me feel like I was playing a live video game.  Meander through without hitting trees or getting stuck.  I actually formulated a whole mangrove video game in my head while taking this trip.

Finally, our driver picked us up and drove us a few hours to our hotel near the airport.  It was New Year's Eve.  We were to fly home early in the morning on New Year's Day.  It stinks when low airfare sort of forces you to waste your New Year's Eve, but that's what happened to us.  The only restaurant we could find open was a Chinese one.  The appetizer was Wonder bread with mayonnaise and catsup.  We ordered wantons but received what were obviously just tacos.  Our hotel was shaking like a WW2 bomb shelter from all the uncontrolled fireworks.  My kids were not happy about how we were spending our New Year's Eve.  They were at the age where they would rather have stayed home for Christmas, but I'm glad we went anyway.  It's the one time of year when everyone has time off from school, work and extracurricular activities.  We ran into some tourist traps, rain and Wonder bread but the trip was still worth it.