Bolivar, Tierragrata, & Farallon

Last post from Colombia (sniff sniff).

Our last few days were spent in the coffee-farming region of my parent´s birth and childhood.  The main town is Bolivar:

While in Bolivar, the kids took a horse-drawn carriage ride around the town (with me accompanying them).  Good times.

(see full Bolivar photo album here)

We stayed the first two nights at a friend´s farm called Tierragrata (we also stayed there in 2008).

See full Tierragrata album here.

The last 2 days were at my cousin Rodrigo´s farm, a few miles from Bolivar near a smaller village called Farallon (named after the nearby mountain range.)   We had an excellent time there, riding horses, swimming in local watering holes, and in general living the good life.

Adrian riding at Rodrigo´s Farm

See the full Farallon album here

Adios y Gracias

A la familia y los amigos Colombianos...

Mil y un gracias por todo.  Les agradecemos en el alma lo que han hecho por nosotros en este viaje.  Desde la recogida en el aeropuerto hasta las despedidas en Farallon y Medellin, todo el mundo nos ha tradado como regalías.

Por favor, perdóname si algunos de mis mensajes en facebook o el blog fueron malinterpretadas -- hemos tenido un tiempo maravilloso y hemos apreciado todas las cortesías.  Todo el mundo nos ha tratado con tanta amabilidad que aunque estamos en un continente lejano y Betsy y los muchachos no hablan el idioma, todos nos hemos sentido como en nuestra casa.

Hasta la proxima vez que nos veamos, adios y gracias.

Oscar

Day 11: Medellin

Another short post because we're in a hurry.  Heading off to Bolivar (small town in the heart of the coffee-farming region) for 4 days.  No posts until at least Monday afternoon.

I put a bunch of pictures up on Facebook.  Here and here.  Sorry Google/Blogspot - it's much easier to upload pictures to FB.


Having a great time, talk to you soon.

Day 10: Rio Negro

Short post today.  Got lazy and just posted all the pictures to Facebook.   

Great trip to family friend's farm in Rio Negro, about 45 minutes from Medellin, up by the airport.  Gorgeous country.  Rode horses and ATV's.  Incredible.  See the pictures here.

OK, here's a couple...

Day 7 & 8: Balcones

Spent the weekend at a friend's family farm.  The kids got their first taste of horseback riding on this trip, and took their first solo laps.  This is one of our favorite places in Colombia, and it was a real treat staying the night.


Half the fun of getting there is the ride.  It’s about a mile up a very steep, narrow, and bumpy road that basically goes straight up the mountain.  Click here for a GPS tracking map that I did of the trip from my parent’s house up to the farm.  Note that the last mile is a straight line that goes perpendicular to the elevation markings on the map.

Abuela & Joaquin

Adrian

Joaquin in the Patio

Cooling off

Yes, that's a rooster on the motorcycle

Here are some pictures of the same farm from our trip in 2008.

Day 6: Guatapé / Piedra del Peñol (Peñol Rock)

And what a rock it is.  

About 2 hours from Medellin, surrounded by a man-made lake, 600 feet of granite and feldspar.

As soon as we got there I had one of my favorite Colombian snacks - mango slices doused in lemon and sprinkled generously with salt.  Betsy and Nicolas said it tasted like jumping into the Pacific with their mouths open, but I love it...

There's a cleft on the shortest side into which they jerry-rigged a series of stairs (702 steps, and yes, we counted -- works out to about a 50 story building).   Adrian, Nicolas and I climbed to the top (much harder than I had expected.)

The view of the lake and the surrounding countryside from the base of the rock is already impressive...

but the view from the top is even more incredible.

Afterwards we had lunch at the nearby town of "New Guatapé", the "old" Guatapé having been submerged by the building of the dam that formed the lake.  Both boys ordered the Lemon Trout, which was caught from the lake that morning.

Impressive cumulonimbus clouds on the drive home...

as a parting shot, two of the cutest kids in the world...

Day 4: Medellín

Sorry, I skipped a day yesterday.  Had a tough time putting down the kids, and didn't have any fun pictures anyway.

Yesterday we took a 30 minute Avianca flight from Bogota to Medellín.  Avianca domestic flights remind you that flying used to be glamorous.  Clean, nice, new plane, friendly and beautiful and/or handsome flight attendants, in-flight video system to Virgin America, not crowded, well-dressed passengers...it was another world from a United Airlines or Southwest flight...

Met at the airport by my parents & the requisite gang of cousins/aunts/friends who joined along to greet us. (Remember when you used to get picked up at the airport?  How come that never happens anymore?) .  My wife and kids tried their best to keep up with the Spanish that everyone was speaking to them ans said "Hola" when stuck for words.  My kids are troopers and my wife is a saint for putting up with this with such great spirits.  I really appreciate them.

Today we experienced the gritty vibrancy and can-do spirit of Medellín in all its glory.  Here's a street in the San Javier neighborhood, where several of my cousins live:

Note the open air shops on the left.  Ice cream shop, butcher, shoe store, electronics store, you get the picture.  The purpose of our trip was to take a ride on the "MetroCable" -- a gondola-extension to the city's Metro (subway) system that serves the slums on the hillsides.

We walked to the Metro station, which, in the midst of this hot, crowded, tropical city, is as clean as the Singapore subway.

The gondolas themselves are identical to those from a ski resort.  The only thing missing are the Quicksilver stickers.

We took the 14 minute ride from the San Javier stop up, over 2 ridges and series of slums.

My dad and my cousin Elba

Many of the houses were basically squatters residences which people have built themselves with brick and sheet metal.  See work in progress below.

homebuilder at work on the left

It's as third world as it gets, and the Metro system that serves it is as nice as any public facility I've seen anywhere.  It was a really incredible experience.

(Note:  it's 11 pm as I write this, and I hear thunder outside...I love the tropics).

We got out at the top to get some ice cream and take a few pictures.  Incredible views of the city.

Long trip tomorrow, got to get to bed, signing out.

Day 2: Bogotá

First things first:  Isn't my wife the cutest?

On to the day's sights...

On our way to Monteserrate, we saw this guy doing soccer tricks for money during a red light in the middle of a busy intersection.  Sure beats the cardboard signs the homeless people in San Francisco use.

Bogotá geography:  The Andes run the length of South America up the western side, and split into 3 mountain ranges at the southern tip of Colombia.  Bogotá sits in a plateau 8,600 feet up on the easternmost of these ranges.  It's surrounded by even higher peaks, including "El Cerro de Monserrate" (Monserrate Peak) which is pretty prominent and rises dramatically right behind Bogotá's downtown.  There's a good picture here.  At the top of the peak there is a church built in the 17th century.  Popular destination for pilgrims and tourists alike. 


8,600 feet is plenty high, but surprisingly none of us had felt any physical effects of the altitude.  Then we took the gondola (or, as Joaquin called it, the "gongola") up almost another 2000 feet to Monserrate.  Oofah.  Surprisingly, priests in the 1600's hadn't anticipated tourists pushing 3-year-olds in small-wheeled strollers and paved the little village surrounding the church with uneven stones and stairs.   I felt like I was an out-of-shape sherpa scaling Everest without oxygen as I carried around the 40 pound load.  Picture here from Betsy's blog.


Anyway, as you might imagine, there were some incredible views.  This is what a city of 9 million people looks like:

Here's the family out and about at Monserrate

Overall take on Bogotá:  I loved it.  Incredible city.  Cool urban feel, very clean and functional for a huge city, surrounded by lush green hills and countryside, great food, friendly people...it really exceeded my expectations.  We had a great time.  My family is from Medellín (where we're headed tomorrow), which is the second largest city of Colombia, and is an incredible place, but has a little bit of a second-city inferiority complex to Bogotá.  People from Medellín are very similar in civic pride and temperament to Texans -- the first thing out of their mouth when you meet them is that they're from Medellín, and the second is something about how much they don't like Bogotá.   Too cold, the people are snobs, etc.  Not true.  I love Medellín and its gritty vibrancy, and can't wait to get there.  But it will definitely feel like the wild west after the cool sophistication of Bogotá.

Lots more pictures of the village and Bogotá on the trip photo album.  See you in Medellín.

Day 1: Bogota

First, let me get a shout out to my blogging wife Betsy.  She has taken some great pictures with her iPhone 4 and is blogging at Betsy's Colombia Trip Blog

Great day 1.  Catedral de Sal and Museo de Oro accomplished.  Details here:  Betsy's Blog, Day 1


Here’s our hotel.

Like most modern buildings in Bogota & Medellin, it’s made of brick.  It works for me, I think it looks great.  Here's the building across the street.  Pretty typical of the nice residential neighborhood.

and a shot of Joaquin, just because he's so cute.

On to Zipaquira / Catedral de Sal.  Nothing makes you feel safer than heavily-armed military police just hanging out at the entrance to the park.

mmmm...arepas.  Arepas are the Colombian version of tortillas, but imagine if they stopped pounding them flat at 1/4 of an inch.  And instead of bland flour or white corn, use very sweet yellow corn.  Grill quickly, so they're crispy on the outside but still gooey on the inside.  Now slather in butter and cover with cheese.  Yes, yummy.   That’s why I was so excited to see a sign for a food stand called “Arepa’s World” (don’t sweat the apostrophe.  We’ll see much worse misuse of English throughout our journey).

What good is an amazing cathedral carved into the hollows of an old salt mine without a huge rock-climbing structure outside?  Adrian rocked it.

Inside the salt cathedral.  Walking down the mine shaft tunnel to the cathedral, there is salt lining the walls.  Even though you know that thousands of visitors before you have done the exact same thing, you can’t help yourself - you lick your finger, touch the wall, and lick your finger again to prove to yourself that yes, this is salt.  I propped the kids up on my shoulders to allow them to lick-dab-lick the ceiling of the tunnel, where hopefully fewer people had done so before.

Lots more pictures on the trip photo album here.