Adios to Bogota & Colombia

Today is the final day of our trip. We live on jetBlue at 9:00 AM. We fly to Orlando, where Jane will be getting off. She is going to spend a week with her mother and Herb. Charlie will fly on home to St. George.

We had breakfast here at the Platypus Hostal, which they provide. (yogurt, granola, 2 pieces of white bread, butter, jelly and coffee). We decided to spend some time walking around the streets and finishing up some shopping.

At Simon Bolivar plaza we ran into a couple of police who told us that we could visit the Police Museum for free. It was just down the street so off we went. We had a private tour of the museum with a 18 year old police guide who spoke English. We spent about an hour touring the museum. At the end of the tour the director of the museum wanted to speak to us. He thanked us for visiting the museum and for visiting Bogota and Colombia.

During our conversation with the guide we found out that all Colombians have to spend a year in one of the branches of the service or on the police force. We had seen many young police men and women and had been wondering why there so many in the police force. The guide said that the police on the streets had the most dangerous jobs. They rode motorcycles and always went with a partner. They were around 18 or 19 years old.

Sunday is Ciclovia, where the major streets are closed for most of the day so people can bicycle ride, roller blade or walk the main streets without any cars. It was fun to watch all the people doing whatever.

We walked around a couple of hours, bought some t-shirts and returned to our hostal and tried to repack our suitcases for the flight home. We took a siesta and read our books for a while.

Later in the afternoon we went out for lunch and to look at emeralds. The emerald jewelry is very nice but not cheap. Emerald jewelry shop owner.

We returned to our hostal and arranged to have a taxi pick us up at 6:30 tomorrow to take us to the airport.

Our Colombia adventure ends here. We've had a great trip, met many interesting people, seen some great sites and have a had a great time being together. We felt pretty safe and were always careful about where we went and heeded the words of advice from fellow travelers. We know there is still a lot more of Colombia to see and may return again.

We successfully completed our "12 Traveling Steps" program.

We've had a great time blogging our trip and we hope you've enjoyed reading about our travels. We would love to read any comments that you may have for us.

Adios until the next adventure.

Jane, Charlie & our traveling iPad

 

Leaving for Bogota

This morning we caught our flight to Bogota. The flight was about an hour long.

At the airport we took a taxi back to Platypus Hostal. The taxi driver didn't know how to get there so Charlie had to give him directions. It was strange that a Vermonter had to give direction to a taxi driver from Bogota. We checked in to the Hostal Platypus, the same place we stayed when we first arrived in Bogota. We are staying in a different building then we stayed in the first time. It is a much nicer and warmer room with two twin beds and one double bed. Very spacious.

For lunch we went back to the vegeterian restaurant we had eaten in previously when were were first in Bogota. We had eggplant lasagna, soup, juice and banana pudding. ($24,000 each). This has been the best place to eat on the trip.

We bought a box of coca tea at the restaurant. About $11,000. It's all natural!

We came back to the hostal and read for a while and headed into town around 4:00. I am looking for a liquid soap dispenser that they have in the rooms here.

I thought it would work great at camp. We walked around looking for a store that might sell them. No luck. Then it started to pour. We headed back to the hostal and by the time we got there we were soaking wet. The hostal has a dryer so we dried all our wet clothes.

We were so lucky not to have any rain the first week we arrived in Bogota.

Charlie the bartender. We managed to find rum in a box container and real orange juice at a small tienda to take back to the hostal for the evening.

Off to bed.

Cartagena Tour

Today is our last day in Cartagena. We had a little surprise in our room this morning. We found the resident turtle in our shoe pile. We can't figure out how he got in our room. Jane picked him up and put him in the hallway. We now have our blog updated for each day we were on the island.

We walked around the walled city today. We bought bread at the restaurant we found when we were here before and decided to have a fruit and bread lunch.

We knew where the street fruit sellers were located so we walked around the city and bought some grapes, pears, bananas, some little green fruit and some kind of melon. We went with our food back to the hostal and had lunch.

Lunch

Scenes around Cartagena

We toured the Cartagena Naval Museum. They had lots of great model ships. The museum told the history of Cartagena and it's naval presense during the 1600's and up. The only problem it was all in Spanish.

Charlie took a siesta and Jane worked on finishing the blog posts of the days on Isla Grande.

Around 4:00 we walked to Castillo San Felipe De Barajas. This fort was built to protect Cartagena from pirates in 1657. The fort was added to and rebuilt over the ensuing years.

website: http://www.fortificacionesdecartagena.org

We decided to have supper out in one of the pazza's which had many restaurants and dancers in the street performing. We went for Italian food and had ravolli and shrimp ceviche. Needless to say, the food wasn't as good as what we can cook at home.

Our last night in Cartagena. Our flight to Bogota leaves at 10:40 tomorrow morning. Time to pack. Good night!

Wind surfing in Cartagena

Full moon over Cartagena

 

Boat ride back to Cartagena

We had to get up at 6:00 this morning to catch the local boat back to Cartagena. It cost $20,000 per person, where our tourist boat ride to the island cost $70,000 plus tax per person!! We had some coffee and fruit for breakfast. We said our good-byes with hugs and kisses to Ana and Manuel. We felt that we were leaving family. It was a sad, but we were glad to be heading home.

Ana and Manuel

Manuel walked us 10 minutes to the dock where we would catch the local boat to the mainland. The boat arrived, we got in, and off we went.

The sea was pretty rough and we got wet a couple of times. This boat took a different route to the mainland than the way we came out. We went to Isla Baru and went through a channel in the mangroves and came out on the other side of the island where the water was calmer. We traveled down Baru island and eventually cut through another mangrove channel in another island and followed this channel.

We ended up at an island that seemed to be a refueling place for work boats and a ship yard. Our boat took on some fuel and off we went.

Our next stop was Cartagena but it was not the tourist docks. It was where all the local fisherman came in and it was not very clean. It was a place you would not want to come in at night.

Local dock

Local dock

Cartagena from the boat

We took a taxi to Hostel Real where we had left our luggage and stayed when we first arrived in Cartagena.

The first thing we did was to take a real shower, although they only have cold water, it felt great. Then we gathered our dirty clothes and took it to the laundry to have it washed. ($16,000)

We needed to get flight tickets for Saturday for Bogota, but first needed to get cash. We have been using a debit card and it has worked great. We haven't had to carry around a lot of US dollars.

We found the Avianca Airlines office and bought our tickets for Saturday morning.

The rest of the day we walked around the old city, bought some t-shirts and returned to the restaurant we had previously found that baked great baguettes and bought one.

Back at our hostal we have been trying to update our blog and catch up on any emails.

For supper we had an ice cream cone. We just couldn't eat anything fried or with fish, chicken or rice.

We watched the sunset from the fort wall and came home to go to bed.